[…] year (the Gibraltar shootings followed by killings at two funerals, ‘Death on the Rock’, Lisburn, Ballygawley and other bombs) had led, only a month previously, to Mrs Thatcher appealing to the British media to withhold publicity from IRA sympathisers. A spokesman for the IBA said, ‘The fact that After Dark is a live programme […]
Neil Cooper I. B. Tauris, London, 1997, £39.50 This is an analysis of the arms business in the UK, chiefly about the MOD’s procurement system. Not a subject I knew much about, I approached the book expecting little. Discovering it had begun as a PhD reduced my expectations even further. In fact it is a … Read more
[…] and not by military and industrial power (neither of which Britain has any more). Newsinger’s thesis about the psycho-political uses to which the SAS was put under Thatcher, is undoubtedly correct, it’s just that he has underplayed the extent to which it was built on an older theme in our society. That quibble aside, […]
[…] look. Since 1997 house prices have tripled and private debt topped a trillion pounds in July.(5) Thatcherism continued Brown-Balls have simply continued the economic policies of the Thatcher government. Like them they have no exchange rate policy: get inflation under control, they believe, and everything else will follow. Indeed, Brown has warned of the […]
Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing Stephen Marshall (Guerilla News Network, $13.22. Available from and ) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism Naomi Klein, (London: Allen Lane, £25.00) ‘When new (forms of capitalism) emerged in the past …they sparked a flood of analysis and debate about how such seismic shifts in the production of […]
[…] electoral reform, none of which came to fruition. etc. At the other end of the spectrum Blair was anxious to be seen to take advice from Margaret Thatcher in the early years of his premiership. No such involvement was offered to previous senior Labour Party figures. The point is tellingly made that Blair is […]
[…] may turn out to be more interesting than it first appears. And let’s hope that McCoy, now living in Australia, is working on that material . RR Thatcher and Friends: The Anatomy of the Tory Party Ian Ross (London 1983) This might have been a very good book, but inclusion in Pluto’s ‘Arguments for […]
[…] based on the Wills family tobacco fortune.(3) Grant-seekers must apply to a panel of high-powered Conservatives. Trustees listed for 1994 include Lord Carrington, Foreign Secretary under Mrs Thatcher and currently Chair of the Bilderberg organisation; Lord Gowrie, former arts minister and chair of the Arts Council; and John Kemp-Wallace, former chair of the Stock […]
[…] is strongest, as one would expect, in those who have exercised power at the highest levels – among the Men in Suits. From Chamberlain through Heath and Thatcher, each deposed leader retained the support of the Party beyond Westminster. Tory supporters in their associations and clubs felt a great sense of loss and bereavement […]
[…] Cambridge before serving in Germany and Vienna. He lists his hobbies as watching sport, gardening, beachcombing, and is 59 years old…MI5 Director is Sir John Lewis Jones…. Thatcher has a new spy chief at No.10. Air Vice-Marshall Basil Lock is Cabinet Security Adviser – known in Whitehall and Pall Mall clubs by the nickname […]
