[…] an initial trawl. Future historians of the Conservative Party may discover that upon its heart in the 1960s “Rhodesia” was indelibly graven.(1) With the arrival of Mrs Thatcher in 1975 came “the New Right”, with about as much claim to be called “new” as had the “New Left’ a decade earlier. Although the Tory […]
Ronald Gray, founder and owner of The Hammersmith Bookshop (1948-1963) and Hammersmith Books (1963-2000) died on 30 May at the age of 87. He was a most remarkable person, with a passionate interest in everything relating to politics and to recent history. He developed the vast stock of out-of-print books in Hammersmith Books to reflect … Read more
[…] beyond him as an individual and will indicate the circles within which he moves, circles which overlap with, and are integrated into, the British State. Introduction When Thatcher was first elected to office in 1979, unemployment was already rising fast and the Labour Party leadership (Callaghan and Healey in particular) had, in practical terms, […]
[…] for fourth and fifth men working for Moscow, and away from those now working, in effect, for Washington. By 1979, Andrew Boyles The Climate of Treason presented Thatcher with a gift by blowing Anthony Blunts cover, and heaping further obloquy on Keynes former alma mater. When the Empire was finally wound up in the […]
[…] ’75 he was living in Switzerland and listed his occupation as ‘tax exile’. His current address is Tonbridge, Kent (he stopped being a ‘tax exile’ during the Thatcher years) and is ‘active in personal development and social change’. Currently a Senior Partner of Performance Consultants Ltd., he has written a number of books including […]
[…] at all costs any possibility of hitting a police officer with the predictable and very costly consequences for the Libyan regime and economy? And why did the Thatcher government allow the 22 employees of the embassy to leave the country without hindrance? Hints from Ministers The then Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, was so unhappy […]
[…] ten pages of it; and he later confirmed, to the Times Diary, that he had got the idea from MI5. Presumably it is this section that Mrs Thatcher finds so interesting. During the House of Commons debate on the Official Secrets Bill on 15 February 1989, Norman Buchan MP mocked the Prime Minister for […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] as being a ‘link with the foreign office’, he was trusted by the Foreign Office mandarins even more than security overlord Sir Maurice Oldfield, appointed by Mrs Thatcher in 1979. The appointment in 1980 of Sir Brooks Richard, an ex-diplomat, as Security Co-ordinator in Northern Ireland, was seen as giving the Foreign Office ‘game […]
[…] it is unclear whether or not the author has interpreted what is going on around him correctly. And yet the parade of the military-political characters from the Thatcher years, an almost palpable smell of the growing British arms industry in the period, not to mention a picture of a world I know a little […]
