[PDF file]: […] Commons in 1997, looking forward to a long period of Labour government that would ‘buttress parliamentary power, entrench historic civil liberties which had been threatened by the Thatcher administration and address the twin problems of poverty and inequality’. He was, in his own words, a ‘poor innocent fool’. What went wrong? He fixes most […]
[PDF file]: […] history of bribery in Britain’s arms trade Nicholas Gilby London: Pluto Press, 2015, p/b, £14.00 This is very good: clearly written, massively documented1 and carefully done. Mark Thatcher, for example, some of whose wealth is widely believed to come from BAE’s 1985 Al Yamamah deal with the Saudis, isn’t mentioned. What might be sayable […]
[PDF file]: […] credible industrial strategy to get the UK back on its feet’.18 Well, well, well: ‘Industrial strategy’ and ‘the establishment’ is the language (and thought) of the pre- Thatcher era. Curious that he’s a City commentator because few in the City give a dull fuck about an industrial strategy – or the nation, for that […]
[PDF file]: […] marked reluctance to contemplate renationalising water, often because the ‘cost would be too high’. This attitude perhaps ignores the fact that when the water industry was privatised, Thatcher wrote off £5 billion of debt, gave the industry a ‘green dowry’ of £1.6 billion and other sweeteners were thrown in – such as tax writeoffs […]
[PDF file]: […] Gaitskellites. In the late 1960s and 70s it gathered round Roy Jenkins and eventually split Labour to form the SDP – a move which ensured that Mrs Thatcher won the 1983 general election. After which, job done, the SDP faded away. After the Labour election defeat of 1987 its leadership, Kinnock and Hattersley, set […]
[…] the (theoretical) risk of prosecution. Today it wouldn’t. What has changed? Then it seemed worthwhile to stick two fingers up to the British state, headed by Margaret Thatcher, by revealing (minor) state secrets. Today we have Cameron and Clegg, imitations of Tony Blair, Thatcher’s successor, who hardly matter. Then, influenced by research on the […]
[…] in explaining Soviet policy and thinking just at the point when the Soviet Union was cracking up, thus smoothing to way for the Gorbachev relationship first with Thatcher and then with the Americans. ‘Decisive’ – maybe not; but not insignificant. Angus Hanton in his Vassal State, writes that 56% of British shares are now […]
[…] in explaining Soviet policy and thinking just at the point when the Soviet Union was cracking up, thus smoothing to way for the Gorbachev relationship first with Thatcher and then with the Americans. ‘Decisive’ – maybe not; but not insignificant. Dallas again 1) a correction In the previous issue, in this column under subhead […]
[PDF file]: […] are not Socratic dialogues; for the most part they are the necessary pantomimes to rubberstamp decisions taken in Whitehall. On the other hand, this was 1984: the Thatcher regime was still being challenged by the left; the Labour Party had not then embraced the ‘Washington consensus’; the American banks had not completed their take-over […]
[…] in explaining Soviet policy and thinking just at the point when the Soviet Union was cracking up, thus smoothing to way for the Gorbachev relationship first with Thatcher and then with the Americans. ‘Decisive’ – maybe not; but not insignificant. Dallas again 1) a correction In the previous issue, in this column under subhead […]
