[…] of the American liberal-left who were so easily persuaded to surrender their independence and their critical judgement by the red scare of the early Cold War. I SPY: The Secret Life of a British Agent Geoffrey Elliott St Ermin’s Press/Little, Brown, London, 1998, £18.99 The agent in question was Elliott’s father, Kavan, about whom […]
[…] the parlance of the contemporary government information worker. This was the anonymous call received by George Wigg, the Labour MP, urging him to forget about Vassall the spy and look instead at Profumo. Wigg always claimed it was anonymous but there is good circumstantial evidence he knew the identity of the caller – John […]
[…] foreign correspondents at Kemsley included: Anthony Terry, Stephen Coulter, and Donald McCormick. Terry, in Army Intelligence during the war, was married to Sarah Gainham (nee Stainer), the spy novelist. Coulter was with Reuters and SHAPE staff officer in France and Scandinavia during the war. From 1945-65 Coulter was staff correspondent in Paris and then […]
[…] have to pretend that everything starts with them? Milner’s Kiwi Milner In car-boot sale near Scarborough I picked up a copy of the Australian-published The Rhodes Scholar Spy by Richard Hall (Random House, Australia, 1991). It is an account of Ian Milner, a pre-WW2 New Zealand Rhodes Scholar who became a Soviet agent in […]
One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. … Read more
MI6: Fifty years of Special Operations Stephen Dorril Fourth Estate, London, 2000, £25 hb Harold Smith As I can testify from personal experience, having in 1960 been summoned to Government House in Lagos, Nigeria, to have my death sentence pronounced by the Governor General, MI6 is brutal, cruel, merciless and totally unforgiving. Dorril’s courage, … Read more
[…] supporting seventeen, were Bob Parry – and the aforementioned Bill Michie Les trois amis de Crozier concluded, somewhat obscurely, that, ‘None of this makes Mr Rogers a spy, or even an agent of influence. It simply serves to illustrate why agents of influence and fellow-travellers need fear as little opposition from the Security Service […]
[…] fact sheet on sovereignty was suppressed rather than admit that Parliament would have to accept European regulations that conflicted with its own statutes. Officials were encouraged to spy on the Labour Party’s plans to oppose the terms of entry and even drafted speeches for pro-European Labour frontbenchers to deliver at their party conference. The […]
[…] considered for what they are and what they mean, not for who pays the bills. The important thing is that a good many intellectuals and America’s leading spy agency came to the same conclusions at much the same time about America’s role in world society.'(15) Of course, as was mentioned in relation to Edward […]
Charlie Bubbles One of Lobster’s contributors had dinner a few years ago with Charlie Falconer, the current Lord Chancellor, and reported that he was a fount of information on the B-sides of pop singles of the 1960s. Well, pop-pickers, our civil liberties are safe in his hands then. Or not. As New Labour prepares to … Read more
