[…] understand the shift to the right in British politics we have to look to the shift in the balance of class forces in British society accomplished by Thatcher and consolidated by Blair. The rich and powerful have more influence in British society and over British politics today than at any time since the end […]
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
‘Britain, 2005. Saddam Hussein, still the ruler of Iraq and possessor of a long-range nuclear missile, seeks revenge on the west. Warned by intelligence reports of Saddam’s plan, the United States deploys a space-based missile shield, which will catch the Iraqi rocket before it gets to Washington. The key installation is based in Yorkshire — … Read more
Media Monitoring Unit This looks like another case of the British Right imitating its American counter-parts, in this case AIM (Accuracy in Media – analysed in great detail in Covert Action Information Bulletin No 21, available from PO Box 50272 Washington DC 20004 $3.00). The main people behind MMU appear to be Julian Lewis and […]
[…] Protestant paramilitaries in Northern Ireland in the killing of Catholics. The programme — which I don’t remember — apparently claimed that the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement between the Thatcher Government and that of the Irish Republic convinced significant sections of the Ulster Protestant community that they were going to be sold down the river. This […]
[…] the week before had revealed that 23 countries had experienced serious civil unrest in the previous year as a result of implementing IMF policies. In retrospect, the Thatcher economic programme of 1980-83, riots and all, was the standard IMF ‘structural adjustments’. 18 Will Hutton, ‘Log cabin to White House? Not any more’ in The […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] a private security firm (who, I kid you not, codenamed Gable ‘Horse’!) and a Tory MP. The outcome was a police report which ‘was given to Mrs Thatcher at a meeting in Downing Street and to Lord Bridge, then Chairman of the Security Commission’. Murray leaves this extraordinary episode thus: What happened from that […]
[…] UK amounted to a good deal more than it does now. But has the revival of the City of London, fueled by North Sea oil and the Thatcher period of high real interest rates, really seen a revival of British imperialism? I think this is over-stating it somewhat. While it is true that, with […]
[…] former managing director of Goldman Sachs, as a special adviser at 10 Downing Street.(1) She has been brought in to advise Brown on welfare reform! If the Thatcher government had appointed someone like her to such a position, Labour MPs would have been outraged. Today, barely a murmur. There were some protests about the […]
