[…] Special Branch, SAS and MI5. By the 1990s the British government was seeking an accommodation with Sinn Fein and counter-terror was passing out of favour. Whereas under Thatcher, the SAS (‘her boys’) had what amounted to a license to kill PIRA volunteers, under John Major the license was revoked. After 1990 the Chief Constable […]
[…] and the War on Terror was, however, provided in Central America in the 1980s and early 1990s. There the United States (with the full support of the Thatcher government) engaged in two of the most brutal counter-insurgency campaigns of modern times in El Salvador and Guatemala, as well as waging an illegal covert war […]
[…] Sir Keith Joseph’s talk of instituting a ‘patriotic’ history curriculum in secondary schools, and, arguably, the reappearance of The Round Table. All have taken place since the Thatcher Government removed exchange controls and allowed the current flood of UK capital abroad to take place. (About £60 billion has gone since 1979.) As the core […]
[…] of Sinn Fein/IRA politicians, gunmen, bombers, supporters and sympathisers by the UDA, aided and abetted by British Military Intelligence, was known about by MI5, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a few senior government ministers and civil servants (p. 160). There is no ‘smoking gun’ in the form of a document authorising British co-operation with […]
[…] per cent of the UK GDP. It fell back from this level over the subsequent twenty years, but its share still remained over 30 per cent. The Thatcher years saw a much more rapid decline, as large parts of British industry closed down while the financial and service sectors expanded. This process slowed down, […]
[…] anti-democratic, and keen on ‘leadership’. (Some Straussians have problems with women leaders. Norton points out how unusual Carnes Lord is among American conservatives in not admiring Margaret Thatcher. ‘On the contrary, is castigated for being too harsh, too demanding; for humiliating men.’) Again, some of this sounds almost fascist. (Almost?) For European liberals, aware […]
[…] it clear that the giant firms he has been put in control of must be made to “balance their books”. The implication, forcefully promoted by the ‘monetarist’ Thatcher, is that the nationalised industries don’t work and privatisation is necessary. But, as we have seen, a massive rationalisation movement has been going throughout the capitalist […]
[…] to those tracking them over the years: ‘modernism’ must be reclaimed from the reactionary forces of the anti-technology left that was emerging from the period of the Thatcher Junta. On the streets of Britain the left was reforming. From the Battle of the Beanfield in 1983 to Twyford Down, the heroic fight against the […]
[…] Conflict of Loyalties. GCHQ 1984 – 1991 Hugh Lanning and Richard Norton-Taylor This is the first full account of one of the most controversial disputes of the Thatcher era — the removal of trade union rights at the GCHQ intelligence base in Cheltenham and the campaign for their restoration.. The authors, one a trade […]
[…] US to sign anti-terror co-operation deal’, Madrid, 20 September. 8 ‘Spain “secretly backed coup by sending warships”‘, The Times, 27 August, 2004 9 ‘US was told of Thatcher “coup plot”‘, The Sunday Times 29 August 2004, where there is reference to a proposed ‘carbon copy’ of the arrest of General Pinochet. However, this report […]
