[…] 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 […]
[…] first was the reports in March and April that the Treasury was beginning to question the workings of Britain’s financial system – after the non-regulation of the Thatcher period. The second was the report by Richard Norton-Taylor in the Guardian (9 February, 1994) that the government was actually reviewing the activities – i.e. the […]
‘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
[…] century, but totally ignores the IRA bombing campaigns in the 1950s and then from the 1970s until the 1990s (apart from the attempt to blow up Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet at Brighton in 1984) – even though those would presumably be sufficiently ‘terroristic’ to qualify for inclusion. (And if the problem is that […]
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 […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] A lot of people wouldn’t realise that the authorities in Nottingham would use their own police officers to resolve what was a civil law situation, but that’s Thatcher for you.’(24) All in the mind? A series of experiments ‘tested whether lacking control increases illusory pattern perception… …as the identification of a coherent and meaningful […]
[…] 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 […]
