One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. … Read more
[…] with, she tells us, through her ‘employment law work’. This is a complete travesty. The strike was deliberately provoked by Murdoch, with the full support of the Thatcher government, in order to deny the workers their redundancy payments. She must have known this at the time through, as she puts it, her ‘employment law […]
[…] the women’s movement as evidenced at Greenham Common, much more dangerously so. The Iran Contra documents make clear that the first Reagan administration was seriously afraid that Thatcher, and even Kohl, might not be re-elected. This was a prospect not to be contemplated if their successful opponents were not to conform to traditional NATO […]
[…] too convincing. The problem is he doesn’t give precise dates for this supposed event. One is left to suppose that it all revolves around the ‘rise of Thatcher’ – a formula he rightly refuses. The historical perspective he brings to bear down-plays the decisive significance of the 1980s. It all looks, in retrospect, as […]
[…] in Northern Ireland, what amounts to a revisionist history in miniature of WW2 intelligence operations on the British side, and a sardonic post-script on the Falklands: “Mrs Thatcher postured absurdly in the immediate aftermath …an illusion about an independent almost an imperial role comparable to that which regards nuclear weapons as deterrents to every […]
[…] research in marketing), The Mayfair Set (about a section of the British right in London in the 1970s considered as a microcosm of and forerunner to the Thatcher era) and, most recently, The Trap. I didn’t think much of The Trap’s thesis and thought its version of the concept of freedom contrived and philosophically […]
[…] was quickly moved to one side. Holroyd notes that Stalker’s downfall came after he and Colin Wallace had sent their file of allegations and evidence to Mrs Thatcher in 1984. After which ‘two events took place: the first was the Government’s robust attempt to stop Spycatcher; the second was the attack on the integrity […]
[…] was a sign that Atlanticism in the UK was now bipartisan. After 1979 the two major political parties had gone separate ways on the special relationship: under Thatcher the Tories had drawn closer to the USA than they had been under Heath; while Labour under Foot and Kinnock had adopted a stance critical of […]
[…] that Garnett’s book, another rattling good read, traces the story from the mid-1970s to now, while Mr Turner begins in 1970 and calls a halt when Mrs Thatcher takes office in May 1979. Mr Garnett is unafraid to interpose his opinions into his own narrative, as when he declares that private medicine and education […]
Christopher Harvie Hamish Hamilton, London, 1994 This is nominally the book of the Channel 4 TV series on NSO. TV is an entertainment medium, almost wholly useless for conveying detail or arguments. (An hour’s documentary viewing covers what you might read in ten minutes – or less.) So the TV series was interesting in small … Read more
