Wishing and hoping I met Tony Benn only once, while researching Smear! He’s a lovely man with a big blind spot about the politics of the early 1980s in general and the Militant Tendency in particular. Here’s Benn in the course of an appreciation of Arthur Scargill on his standing down as President of … Read more
[…] good issue, for in addition to Hayes there is a piece on the CIA’s co-opting of civilian air planes for covert missions, discussion of Oklahoma, an FBI agent provocateur, and an essay by Professor Carrie Foster of the Coalition on Political Assassinations Speakers Bureau, ‘Conspiracy is as American as Apple pie’. Must be something […]
The Economic League Labour Research (April 1988) have produced a written version of the essential content of the two World in Action programmes on it, with current personnel and the names of some 350 British companies which have funded the EL since 1972. In line with the thesis suggested by White in his essay (see … Read more
1. Getting even more ugly I confess: I have given up buying Searchlight. There just isn’t anything that can be believed in it. In any case, other people send me the good bits – if ‘good’ is the right word. In June’s Searchlight this paragraph appeared; ‘Seasoned political observers in Northern Ireland say that the … Read more
[…] around in certain sections of the British Right for about 45 years since the late and unlamented Kenneth de Courcy first alleged that Rothschild was a Soviet agent. But apart from that – I basically don’t ‘get’ this book. If there is someone reading this with more knowledge – and more interest – in […]
Michael Smith Gollancz, London,1996, £20 This is a curious and rather pointless book. In short chapters Smith attempts potted histories of MI5, SIS, signals and military intelligence. These are quite well done, but covering half a century in 20 pages, say, the chapters are barely more than sketches. (The Information Research Department gets a page!) … Read more
Just for the historical record, these rather faded cuttings from the Daily Express are just two of the stories that Wallace planted on Chapman Pincher while working in Information Policy. By Chapman Pincher the man who gives you tomorrow’s news -today THE SECURITY forces in Northern Ireland are facing a serious threat from American ex-Vietnam … Read more
[…] of the Palestine Solidarity Committee, added the following information on LFI. (2) The Director of Labour Friends of Israel is David Mercer, former research assistant and electoral agent for Gwyneth Dunwoody, ‘life president’ of LFI. The parliamentary register of Members’ interests shows that recent visitors who have had flights and accommodation paid by Labour […]
Tony Geraghty Harper Collins, London 1998, £19.99 Before dawn one Thursday in December 1998 a team of six Ministry of Defence police raided the home of the writer and journalist, Tony Geraghty. After seven hours, they left taking his computer, modem, disks and work in progress, having charged him under Section V of the Official […]
Terror Within: Terrorism and the Dream of a British RepublicClive Bloom Stroud, Glos.: Sutton, 2007, h/bk, 297 pages, h/b, £20.00 This sets out to provide a narrative describing the range of ‘attempts’ to set up a republic in Britain from the time of the French revolution until the present day. (Although the bulk of … Read more
