https://powerbase.info/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=Billy&feedformat=atomPowerbase - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T21:42:09ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.31.5https://powerbase.info/index.php?title=User_talk:Claire_Harkins&diff=93595User talk:Claire Harkins2009-08-12T16:39:37Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The [[Asia Pacific Alcohol Policy Alliance]] is a network of NGOs committed to the development of effective alcohol policy in the Asia Pacific region. We aim to work with other organisations in reducing alcohol-related harm worldwide by promoting science-based policies independent of commercial interests.<br />
<br />
The [[National Social Norms Institute]]<br />
[[Brewing Research International]] (BRi)<br />
<br />
Dominic Grieve http://www.addiction-ssa.org/mpinterests.htm<br />
<br />
2. Remunerated employment, office, profession etc<br />
- Barrister.<br />
- Ex-member of Lloyds' reinsured into Equitas and a member of NACDE, a Names Action Group.<br />
6. Overseas visits<br />
- 30 March-4 April 2006, to Pakistan, on fact-finding visit organised by the Conservative Muslim Forum. Airline tickets and accommodation were paid for by Bestway Cash and Carry which sponsored the visit. Other transport and official hospitality in Pakistan was provided by the Pakistan Government. (Registered 27 April 2006)<br />
8. Land and Property<br />
- House in London, generating rental income.<br />
- I am part-owner of building land in France.<br />
9. Registrable shareholdings<br />
- (b) Rio Tinto<br />
- (b) Shell<br />
- (b) Diageo<br />
- (b) GlaxoSmithKline<br />
- (b) GUS<br />
- (b) Taylor Woodrow<br />
- (b) Cadbury Schweppes<br />
- (b) Reckitt Benckiser<br />
- (b) Reed Elsevier<br />
- (b) Royal Bank of Scotland<br />
- (b) Schroders<br />
- (b) Anglo American Platinum Corp<br />
- (b) Astrazeneca Ord.<br />
- (b) Standard Chartered<br />
- (b) LVMH <br />
[[Tim Ambler]]<br />
[[Landmark Europe]]<br />
[[Image:Tosspock3.jpg|right|thumb|Claire's favourite Star Trek character]]<br />
Have a look at the resources section of the page on CoRWM: http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/CoRWM or http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Bell_Pottinger_Communications#References<br />
<br />
The key thing is to reference docuemtns fully (ie author, title, source, vdate etc) and to upload the documents to the site via the 'upload image' link under 'special pages'. To determine the url for the uploaded file right click on the name of it once uploaded and 'copy link location'.<br />
<br />
FOI ref<br />
author, [http://www.spinprofiles.org/images/2/23/Foi.pdf title for this doc] dates etc et<br />
<br />
<br />
Hi,<br />
<br />
great stuff on Rycroft. The SDP links and Bell Pottinger info is great. Maybe it is worth having a setion at the bottom on his career which just lists the dates of his various appointments? I was confused about when whe was where and if he cae from and went to Bell Pottinger or was only there once etc?<br />
<br />
--[[User:David|David]] 08:59, 28 August 2008 (BST)<br />
<br />
Hi,<br />
<br />
No, I think two pages is fine. If you are fleshing this page out I would include a short ref to the history of Hnover as Media strategy on the Hanover page and reserve most of the pr-Hanover history for the Media Strategy Page.<br />
<br />
Check for typos...<br />
<br />
Good stuff<br />
--[[User:David|David]] 08:45, 25 September 2008 (BST)<br />
<br />
Hi Claire<br />
<br />
Great that you can work on Claire Fox--pls do update her page also with any material you have about her booze-related activities.<br />
<br />
Re your spinprofiles email account, as a portal editor, you should have had a couple of weeks ago an email from Bill, the spinprofiles web guy, giving you an email adde, which shd be<br />
claire.harkins@spinprofiles.org<br />
and a user name and password. you need to go into yr email prog and set up a new account with the details that Bill has sent you. It's slightly techie so you might want to get someone to help you. I have sent you a test email to this adde so let me know if you get it! Also let me know if you didn't get such an email from Bill. I am still struggling to work out the technical details of how the site runs myself.<br />
<br />
BW<br />
Claire<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
just doing a tour of the portal pages. think yr booze one is looking good. if there's one thing that may make it more accessible to the public before the launch, I think it might be to introduce them in simple language to a couple of the main issues around booze. In the Issues box or similar? I am not an expert on the topic but one possib that comes to mind is the industry's attempts to link lack of regulation of booze with liberty/freedom from government in the public mind? also people are worried about the licensing hours issue because of the violent binge-drinkers etc rolling along the streets at all hours--and relaxing licensing hours has got to be about raising revenue for the government hasn't it? because they get more tax back from the booze sold as a result of the longer hours? these are just guesses--as I said, I'm not an expert, but is it possible just to choose a couple of issues to foreground for the public? whatever the industry is/has been lobbying for I guess are the things to highlight. <br />
<br />
hope I didn't trip over yr toes on Claire Fox--thought you'd finished her when I dived in. my apologies for that. must be like working in a field of vultures...<br />
<br />
BW, Claire<br />
<br />
== From Rick Berman need sorted and referenced ==<br />
<br />
Berman & Co. are behind the [[Center for Consumer Freedom]], formerly known as the Guest Choice Network, known to have received a $200,000 donation from Monsanto. The Consumer Freedom campaign smears organic food as dangerous and promotes what t calls 'genetically improved food'. Berman and his firm paint GM opponents as terrorists, asserting that 'anti-biotech extremists' are part of a 'growing wave of domestic terrorism'. They say the people we need to worry about are not just al-Qa'ida but 'the middle-class kids down the street.' (Terrorists On The March -- In America, USA Today) <br />
<br />
Berman & Co. have even declared the charity of the British and Irish churches, Christian Aid, a 'far-left leaning' group that 'flat-out lies about GE foods', hiding 'behind a religious facade to more easily malign farmers, scientists, food companies, and even PR people who deal with GE foods.'.<br />
<br />
Berman & Co's internet PR campaign also includes [[ActivistCash.com]] which claims to 'root out the funding sources' of 'the most notorious and extreme groups that conspire to restrict the public's food and beverage choices'. However, the [[Center for Media and Democracy]] says ActivistCash.com draws on information already largely public and mixes it with distortions and misinformation. <br />
Curiously, Monsanto's $200,000 donation to Berman's PR activities only became public as a result of information from a whistle-blower. And Berman appears to take great exception to attempts to root out his own financial relationship with the various lobby organisations run by Berman & Co. He even threatened a lawsuit for defamation after attention was drawn to his 'funneling millions of corporate dollars - donated to non-profit organizations he runs - right into his own bank accounts. Berman pays himself the cash both directly and personally in the form of salary and benefits for his role as 'Executive Director,' as well as through payments he makes from the non-profits to his own corporation, Berman & Company, Inc., for 'consulting.' ' <br />
[http://www.vegsource.com/articles/berman_release.htm http://www.vegsource.com/articles/berman_release.htm] <br />
[http://www.parentalfreedom.com/response2berman.htm http://www.parentalfreedom.com/response2berman.htm]<br />
Berman was also implicated in a [http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2001Q1/berman2.html cash-for-favors scandal] involving Newt Gingrich.<br />
<br />
== question about globalisation pages ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
I am going to be working on these pages, below, in preparation for the launch. David says that on certain pages to do with alcohol (and maybe others as you were involved in supervising students who created them) I need to consult with you. Cd you give the pages a quick look over please and let me know which pages I need to consult you on?<br />
<br />
------ Forwarded Message<br />
From: David Miller <davidmiller@strath.ac.uk><br />
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 2009 15:40:28 +0000<br />
To: 'Claire Robinson' <claire.robinson@spinprofiles.org><br />
Subject: RE: Re:<br />
<br />
Some final pages needing work:<br />
<br />
some pages done by students which either need deleting or the good material adding to proper pages – ie removing material afrom the page and creating a page with a proper title (ie not globalisation at the beginning).. There is quite a lot.<br />
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Globalisation<br />
<br />
Thanks v much<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 19:40, 12 January 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== things to do on Alcohol portal prior to launch ==<br />
<br />
Hi Claire<br />
<br />
going thru all portals prior to launch and have posted the following on David's talk page<br />
<br />
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/User_talk:David#Still_to_do<br />
<br />
as some of my q's on Alcohol Portal involve coding and I haven't a clue how to alter it without messing everything up. Here's what I left on his talk page--can you go through these points and clear up anything that is within yr power? Many thanks--we are almost ready! --[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 17:45, 27 January 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Alcohol portal<br />
<br />
One of the two “Welcome to the alcohol portal” headers should be got rid of Gap top left above pic should be expunged<br />
<br />
Gap top right above Priority Companies should be expunged<br />
<br />
I know we are trying to attract writers to do “priority pages” for us but something in my guts tells me it’s dangerous to advertise who we are scouting for info on, esp in the case of a certain group of people we all know. I feel we should only come out with stuff on people when it’s quite bullet-proof, ie when an article is done and sourced. What do you think?<br />
<br />
“Booze in the News” a great idea but can something go in there?<br />
<br />
What about taking out “Newest Pages” and “Recently Updated Articles” as too much info on unrelated topics for Alcohol portal page?? What do you think about taking out the generic spin stuff, “Getting Started”, “Can You Help” and “SpinP History” out of each portal page? Too cluttered with it?<br />
<br />
If I am right in assuming that all articles in Alc portal have the “Alcohol” category attached to them, can we add “For all articles in the Alcohol portal, see [link to Alcohol category page]” as I have done in GM Watch portal? The benefit of this is that the reader does not have to worry about whether he is guessing the correct category when he wants to know about a person or org, and there is no way (as things are) that he can know that all the articles in this portal are collected under Alcohol category. I can add this if Claire H approves.<br />
<br />
I will send Claire H this message too as she will need to decide on/work on some of these things.--Claire Robinson 17:40, 27 January 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== logos ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
finally solved a question that's been bugging me for a while -- seems it's not legal to use company logos without their permission<br />
<br />
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070624081029AAAJRvx<br />
<br />
This applies to your page on Diageo in the booze portal -- haven't checked any others in your portal but can you do a quick trawl and remove any logos that you see if you haven't got permission to use? Boring I know ...<br />
<br />
I will add this policy to the copyrights and legal sections of the guidelines.<br />
<br />
Copying to David in case he knows something I don't.<br />
<br />
thanks and best wishes<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 21:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== what's hot ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
can u put in the new "What's hot" box on main page, a link to something topical and newsworthy from booze portal? I have put in something for GM already.<br />
<br />
thanks! --[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 12:12, 2 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== great ==<br />
<br />
Thanks v much Claire, very good. I have put it at the top, as the topics are in alpha order, so alcohol comes at the top.<br />
<br />
BW<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 21:19, 9 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== booze marketing term ==<br />
<br />
Hi Claire<br />
<br />
In "Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug and Violence Prevention"<br />
<br />
could you very briefly explain what social norms marketing is in the appropriate section? I know you have a page on it but would be good just to have a phrase on this page defining the term.<br />
<br />
thank you!<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 15:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== category ==<br />
<br />
Hi Claire<br />
<br />
Anal act of the week -- I renamed the Alcohol NGO's category Alcohol NGOs as this is correct punctuation -- no apostrophe for plurals, also renamed Scottish NGO's as Scottish NGOs. You don't need to do anything as I reassigned all the pages in the old spelling category to the new spelling category -- I'm just letting you know so you can spell the category Alcohol NGOs when you next use it...<br />
<br />
hope all is well<br />
<br />
best wishes<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 21:37, 26 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== good ==<br />
<br />
Hi Claire<br />
<br />
directors look good to me. I have just rearranged them in alpha order.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 11:00, 27 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Anheuser Busch question ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
On<br />
<br />
Anheuser Busch<br />
<br />
The first para's meaning wasn't quite clear grammatically and I tried to fix it but couldn't as I wasn't sure what the sequence of events was. so it doesn't make sense as it stands. cd you pls go in and fix, making clear when the merger was, who is a subsidiary of who and since when, etc etc? sorry for adding confusion!<br />
<br />
many thanks<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 09:50, 31 May 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== conservation body ==<br />
<br />
Claire I have put them here:<br />
<br />
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/International_Conservation_Caucus_Foundation<br />
<br />
feel free to add any booze info you have, I note Anheuser-Busch are in their corp partners list<br />
<br />
thanks! <br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 09:32, 1 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== coding trick re hyphenations etc ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
good q. Yes there is a way. I have applied this system outlined below to the only Anheuser-Busch I could find in the article I just put up (the conservation caucus) and do feel free to do a search thru the site for Anheuser-Busch and code it like this (this is making the assumption that while some people spell it with hyphen, you spell it on the site without):<br />
<br />
if you want to replicate someone else's usage with hyphen:<br />
<br />
Anheuser-Busch<br />
<br />
but you have on the site called it:<br />
<br />
Anheuser Busch<br />
<br />
there is a way of honoring other people's spelling while keeping yours the way you want it. <br />
<br />
What you type:<br />
<br />
<nowiki>[[Anheuser Busch|Anheuser-Busch]]</nowiki><br />
<br />
What you get: <br />
<br />
[[Anheuser Busch|Anheuser-Busch]]<br />
<br />
Likewise, say for example you wanted to quote a quote about Bill Clinton (e.g. Monica Lewinsky said, "Bill ignored me after that.")<br />
<br />
but you know that his entry in spin is under William Jefferson Clinton (not true but this is just an example). so you can code it like this if you want a hotlink to Clinton's page:<br />
<br />
what you type:<br />
<br />
<nowiki>Monica Lewinsky said, "[[William Jefferson Clinton|Bill]] ignored me after that."</nowiki><br />
<br />
what you get:<br />
<br />
Monica Lewinsky said, "[[William Jefferson Clinton|Bill]] ignored me after that."<br />
<br />
Only the "Bill" will show up in blue, not red, if there is actually a page called William Jefferson Clinton.<br />
<br />
BUT having said all this I just did a search for Anheuser Busch on the web and wiki hyphenates it, Anheuser-Busch. cd u do a search and see what is the correct version? If no hyphen is incorrect after all, we will need to 'move' the page to one called Anheuser-Busch, with hyphen. this will preserve all the links even to the unhyphenated form. Not sure if you can move pages or whether this is sysop privilege, but if you have that tab at the top of your Edit page, you can.<br />
<br />
let me know how you get on.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 07:25, 2 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== Robertson Trust q ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
just a q on Robertson Trust. This sentence:<br />
<br />
In 1995 the editor of the journal Alcohol and Alcoholism, whose parent body the UK Medical Council on Alcoholism is subsidized by the Robertson Trust.<br />
<br />
seems to be incomplete, lacks a main verb?<br />
<br />
thanks<br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 08:06, 2 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
don't mean to pepper you with messages but you are writing lots at the moment (great) so...<br />
<br />
In<br />
<br />
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/Matthew_Gloag<br />
<br />
we have the history section going straight into a quote. I am trying to encourage all our writers to set quotes in context with a lead-in sentence to guide the reader. see<br />
<br />
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php/SpinProfiles:How_to_Structure_an_Article#Put_quotes_in_context<br />
<br />
also in that passage there is a rogue character -- which I suspect crept in during the changeover of the site to make it public. I am not sure what should be there -- ellipse? dash? so could you fix?<br />
<br />
thank you! I will leave you in peace now.<br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 10:03, 2 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== BRi page ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
re<br />
<br />
BRi<br />
<br />
I have amended the refs for that Caroline Walker beer doc "Bliss up" to point direct to the pdf rather than just the website. always best if we can to make the weblink go to the actual doc.<br />
<br />
many thanks<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 10:21, 6 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== AIM ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
did a new page on Dr Caroline Walker and came across these guys, who published a thing by her on vitamins in beer<br />
<br />
Alcohol in Moderation<br />
<br />
http://www.aim-digest.com/<br />
<br />
their people<br />
<br />
http://www.aim-digest.com/gateway/S&Pinterim.htm<br />
<br />
include Elizabeth Whelan <br />
<br />
worth a page?<br />
<br />
best wishes<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 11:35, 6 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== hyphens etc ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
sorry to take so long to reply -- I no longer get emailed when someone leaves me messages on my talk page and I have no idea why this is, as my preferences are set for me to be told.<br />
<br />
Re Anheuser Busch and hyphens, I've made a redirect thingie under the hyphenated form of the name<br />
<br />
http://www.spinprofiles.org/index.php?title=Anheuser-Busch&redirect=no<br />
<br />
hope that solves it?<br />
<br />
BTW you can sign your messages to me by hitting the squiggle icon third from right in the edit function--it should sign your name automatically. then maybe it might set off some alert thing that tells me you have left me a message?<br />
<br />
best wishes<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 13:56, 10 June 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== tiny point ==<br />
<br />
Hi Claire<br />
<br />
very small point: only one space needed at end of a sentence. Like this. Not like this.<br />
<br />
It's a convention that's changed since the advent of computers -- in typescript, it was usual to leave 2 spaces.<br />
<br />
that's all for now<br />
<br />
many thanks<br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 13:19, 1 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
== pls check edit ==<br />
<br />
HI Claire<br />
<br />
I edited first para of Landmark Europe for grammar and clarity but might have changed the meaning so it's no longer accurate. cd u check pls and adjust as nec?<br />
<br />
thanks!<br />
<br />
--[[User:Claire Robinson|Claire Robinson]] 18:21, 11 August 2009 (UTC)<br />
<br />
wow!</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=David_Hannay&diff=74430David Hannay2009-01-22T18:39:44Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Image:Hannay old iron.jpg|left]] Former Ambassador to the UN and the EU, David Hugh Alexander Hannay, Baron Hannay of Chiswick, GCMG, CH is a British diplomat born in London and educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford. He entered the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1959, and was initially posted to positions in Tehran and Kabul. Starting in 1965 and continuing into the early 1970s, held various positions in the foreign office in London during the 1970s and 1980s: in 1970 he was appointed 1st Secretary to the team negotiating the UK's entry into the European Community (EC). From 1973 to 1977 he was Chef de Cabinet for Sir [[Christopher Soames]], Vice-President of the Commission of the EC. From 1977-84 he returned to the Foreign Office where he served as Head of the Energy, Science and Space department until 1979, when he was made Head of the Middle East Department and then Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the European Community. Hannay was a minister at the British Embassy in Washington, DC in 1984-1985, and was then promoted to ambassador and permanent representative to the European Economic Community from 1985 to 1990. He then spent the next five years as ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations, recently he has taken on specialized roles such as membership of the UN [[High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change]], reporting to the Secretary-General in December 2004.<ref>http://dic.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/464583</ref><ref>http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Lord-Hannay-of-Chiswick</ref><br />
<br />
He is also the Chair of the [[United Nations Association of the UK]] and vice-chair of of the United Nations All-Party Parliamentary Group. He is a member of the [[Centre for European Reform]].<br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Center_for_Strategic_and_International_Studies&diff=68278Talk:Center for Strategic and International Studies2008-10-31T01:48:28Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The CSIS was also co-founded by Ray S. Cline<br />
<br />
and Arleigh Burke needs a bit more explanation — quite a guy...</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Anthony_Browne&diff=68277Anthony Browne2008-10-31T01:39:56Z<p>Billy: /* External links */</p>
<hr />
<div>Anthony Browne is Policy Director to the Mayor of London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
Browne holds a degree in Mathematics from [[Cambridge University]]. He is married with two children and lives in North London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1988-89 Booz Allen Hamilton==<br />
Browne worked as a Business analyst for management consultants [[Booz Allen Hamilton]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1989-92==<br />
Browne worked in various media jobs, including diarist for the [[Daily Telegraph]]'s Peterborough column and producer for television production company [[Uden Associates]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1992-97 BBC==<br />
From 1992 to 1997 Browne worked for BBC TV and Radio news, including working on the Money Programme and Business Breakfast. he was promoted to become business reporter, economics reporter and acting economics correspondent for main TV and Radio programmes, including the Today programme, World at One, One O'Clock and Nine O'Clock News.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1997-2002 Observer==<br />
From 1997 to 2002, Browne worked at the [[Observer]] newspaper as economics correspondent, deputy business editor, health editor and environment editor.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==2002-2007 Times==<br />
From 2002 to 2007, Browne worked at [[The Times]] newspaper as environment editor, Brussels correspondent, and chief political correspondent.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
During his time at the Times, Browne became embroiled in controversy over his comments on VDare, a an anti-immigration US web forum, affiliated to the [[Center for American Unity]].<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/03/media.pressandpublishing Bloggers target Times writer], by Chris Tryhorn, Media Guardian, 3 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
In a 2002 Times article he wrote:<br />
::The only political party of which I have been a member is Labour, and the danger of giving encouragement to the racist British National Party is a strong reason to stay silent. But what is happening now is so extreme and so damaging, and the determination of pro-immigrationists to suppress debate and smear critics so fearsome, that silence is no longer an option.<ref>Britain is losing Britain, by Anthony Browne, The Times, 7 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
He subsequently wrote about the article on [[VDARE]]: <br />
::It was bubbling around inside my head making me toss and turn in the small hours, and then at 4 A.M. it exploded out in 2,500 words: a cri de coeur about what uncontrolled immigration is doing to Britain, and the almost ruthless determination of the pro-immigrationists to distort facts, smear opponents and stifle debate. Having researched the article for three months for a pamphlet, the facts just poured out of my fingertips.<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_article.htm The London Times’ Anthony Browne Writes VDARE.COM About His Dramatic Article], Anthony Browne, VDARE, 13 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
In a January 2003 [[VDARE]] article Browne wrote:<br />
::It isn’t every day that the interior minister of a mature western democracy publicly announces that his policies are leading to the collapse of social order and uncontrollable widespread communal violence, things more usually associated with places like Gujarat (and northern Nigeria.)<br />
<br />
::But last week David Blunkett, Britain’s Home Secretary, warned that society is “like a coiled spring” where the tensions and frustrations could spill over into “the disintegration of community relations and social cohesion,” with such widespread vigilantism that Britain could “tip into a situation we could not control.”<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_britain.htm Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, VDARE.com, 28 January 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
[[VDARE]]'s [[James Fulford]] said of this piece: "This one was actually an article we commissioned and paid for, the links, et cetera, added by me, and with some editing by [[Peter Brimelow]], as usual."<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/fulford/050818_fulford_file.htm Guilt By Association (With VDARE.COM!) In Britain], by James Fulford, VDARE.com, 18 August 2005.</ref> The article was also posted at [[David Horowitz]]'s Frontpagemag.<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BAE92D3E-0F17-444E-B451-F8839CC8B185 Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, FrontPageMag.Com, 3 February 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne was also criticised over an August 2005 article which stated:<br />
::The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko [[Socialist Workers Party]] joined forces with the [[Muslim Association of Britain]], the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the [[Stop the War Coalition]]. The former Labour MP [[George Galloway]] created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.<ref>[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article550184.ece Fundamentally, we're useful idiots], by Anthony Browne, The Times, 1 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne had been the Times' chief political correspondent for less than a year when he left to join Policy Exchange.<ref>Times loses three reporters, Media Guardian, 6 March 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
==2007-08 Policy Exchange==<br />
From 2007 to 2008, Browne worked as Director of the right-wing think-tank [[Policy Exchange]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref>. According to ConservativeHome's ToryDiary "During his time at PX there was a doubling of staff numbers but a concern that the think tank became too close to Project Cameron."<ref>[http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/07/anthony-browne.html Anthony Browne leaves Policy Exchange to become Boris Johnson's Policy Director], ToryDiary, ConservativeHome, 21 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==2008 GLA==<br />
Browne was appointed as Policy Director to the Mayor of London on 21 July. The Guardian remarked: "Browne's appointment – the fourth from [[Policy Exchange]] to get a top job in the Tory party – marks a further high watermark in the influence of Policy Exchange on future Tory policy.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/conservatives.thinktanks A change in the political weather], by David Hencke, guardian.co.uk, 22 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==Affiliations==<br />
*[[Policy Exchange]]<br />
*[[New Culture Forum]]<br />
*[[Civitas]]<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Experts/expert-profile.aspx?id=347 Anthony Browne] - Policy Exchange profile<br />
<br />
* Arun Kundnani the editor of Race & Class in a (2008) essay [http://www.irr.org.uk/2008/september/ak000003.html" How are thinktanks shaping the political agenda on Muslims in Britain?] argues that Policy Exchange, the [[Social Affairs Unit]] and the [[Centre for Social Cohesion]] are driving the political agenda on Muslims in Britain while think tanks on the left are largely silent on the matter.<br />
<br />
There is also a section in the essay which puts forward the idea of a reviving or recasting of the cold war:<br />
<br />
:What Browne's, Moore's and Gove's comments illustrate is the attempt to justify illberal policies in the name of defending 'liberal' western values against an alien 'totalitarian' threat. This is the paradoxical project that is now the major theme of centre-Right thinking on multiculturalism and the 'war on terror'. Indeed, the debate on multiculturalism has become a part of what many regard as a new 'cultural' cold war to promote a 'moderate' (i.e. pro-western) Islam across the globe - and particularly in Europe. This is a model that has been endorsed by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has spoken of a new cold war against 'Muslim extremism', fought through the 'soft power' of cultural influence. The role of thinktanks would then not only be to supply political parties with policy suggestions but also to popularise the idea of 'Islamism' as an existential threat to the West that requires a hardline, Cold War-style response. As Dean Godson, a research director at PX who has strong links to well-known Washington neoconservatives, wrote in 2006: 'During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers. For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence.'<br />
<br />
It also adds that:<br />
<br />
:Encounter, of course, was covertly funded by the CIA. But Godson's suggestion has been taken up with the launch of Standpoint magazine, published by another thinktank, the Social Affairs Unit (SAU). Its editor Daniel Johnson explicitly sees Standpoint as a 21st-century version of Encounter, except with Islamism replacing communism as the threat to western civilisation. By uniting around the formula of the 'defence of the liberal West against the Islamists', the magazine has been able to incorporate pro-Iraq war 'liberal' writers, such as Nick Cohen and Julie Burchill, with neoconservatives. Michael Gove serves on the magazine's advisory board, as does Gertrude Himmelfarb (one of Gordon Brown's favourite historians and wife and mother of the leading US neoconservatives Irving and William Kristol).<br />
<br />
The references of the essay contain links to some of the debate over other think tanks', such as [Demos] attitude to aspects of the debate:<br />
<br />
[http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/martin-bright/2008/07/islamexpo-hamas-sawalha-speak Martin Bright, 'Hamas at Olympia', New Statesman (10 July 2008)].<br />
[http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/16/nick-cohen-demos-and-islamexpo/ Nick Cohen, 'Demos and IslamExpo', Harry's Place (16 July 2008)].<br />
<br />
The [[Social Affairs Unit]] contains two former members of the [[Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies]], [[Antonio Martino]] and [[John O’Sullivan]], which had strong ties to both the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] and the [[Information Research Department]] and [[Encounter]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Anthony_Browne&diff=68276Anthony Browne2008-10-31T01:35:25Z<p>Billy: /* External links */</p>
<hr />
<div>Anthony Browne is Policy Director to the Mayor of London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
Browne holds a degree in Mathematics from [[Cambridge University]]. He is married with two children and lives in North London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1988-89 Booz Allen Hamilton==<br />
Browne worked as a Business analyst for management consultants [[Booz Allen Hamilton]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1989-92==<br />
Browne worked in various media jobs, including diarist for the [[Daily Telegraph]]'s Peterborough column and producer for television production company [[Uden Associates]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1992-97 BBC==<br />
From 1992 to 1997 Browne worked for BBC TV and Radio news, including working on the Money Programme and Business Breakfast. he was promoted to become business reporter, economics reporter and acting economics correspondent for main TV and Radio programmes, including the Today programme, World at One, One O'Clock and Nine O'Clock News.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1997-2002 Observer==<br />
From 1997 to 2002, Browne worked at the [[Observer]] newspaper as economics correspondent, deputy business editor, health editor and environment editor.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==2002-2007 Times==<br />
From 2002 to 2007, Browne worked at [[The Times]] newspaper as environment editor, Brussels correspondent, and chief political correspondent.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
During his time at the Times, Browne became embroiled in controversy over his comments on VDare, a an anti-immigration US web forum, affiliated to the [[Center for American Unity]].<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/03/media.pressandpublishing Bloggers target Times writer], by Chris Tryhorn, Media Guardian, 3 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
In a 2002 Times article he wrote:<br />
::The only political party of which I have been a member is Labour, and the danger of giving encouragement to the racist British National Party is a strong reason to stay silent. But what is happening now is so extreme and so damaging, and the determination of pro-immigrationists to suppress debate and smear critics so fearsome, that silence is no longer an option.<ref>Britain is losing Britain, by Anthony Browne, The Times, 7 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
He subsequently wrote about the article on [[VDARE]]: <br />
::It was bubbling around inside my head making me toss and turn in the small hours, and then at 4 A.M. it exploded out in 2,500 words: a cri de coeur about what uncontrolled immigration is doing to Britain, and the almost ruthless determination of the pro-immigrationists to distort facts, smear opponents and stifle debate. Having researched the article for three months for a pamphlet, the facts just poured out of my fingertips.<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_article.htm The London Times’ Anthony Browne Writes VDARE.COM About His Dramatic Article], Anthony Browne, VDARE, 13 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
In a January 2003 [[VDARE]] article Browne wrote:<br />
::It isn’t every day that the interior minister of a mature western democracy publicly announces that his policies are leading to the collapse of social order and uncontrollable widespread communal violence, things more usually associated with places like Gujarat (and northern Nigeria.)<br />
<br />
::But last week David Blunkett, Britain’s Home Secretary, warned that society is “like a coiled spring” where the tensions and frustrations could spill over into “the disintegration of community relations and social cohesion,” with such widespread vigilantism that Britain could “tip into a situation we could not control.”<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_britain.htm Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, VDARE.com, 28 January 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
[[VDARE]]'s [[James Fulford]] said of this piece: "This one was actually an article we commissioned and paid for, the links, et cetera, added by me, and with some editing by [[Peter Brimelow]], as usual."<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/fulford/050818_fulford_file.htm Guilt By Association (With VDARE.COM!) In Britain], by James Fulford, VDARE.com, 18 August 2005.</ref> The article was also posted at [[David Horowitz]]'s Frontpagemag.<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BAE92D3E-0F17-444E-B451-F8839CC8B185 Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, FrontPageMag.Com, 3 February 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne was also criticised over an August 2005 article which stated:<br />
::The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko [[Socialist Workers Party]] joined forces with the [[Muslim Association of Britain]], the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the [[Stop the War Coalition]]. The former Labour MP [[George Galloway]] created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.<ref>[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article550184.ece Fundamentally, we're useful idiots], by Anthony Browne, The Times, 1 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne had been the Times' chief political correspondent for less than a year when he left to join Policy Exchange.<ref>Times loses three reporters, Media Guardian, 6 March 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
==2007-08 Policy Exchange==<br />
From 2007 to 2008, Browne worked as Director of the right-wing think-tank [[Policy Exchange]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref>. According to ConservativeHome's ToryDiary "During his time at PX there was a doubling of staff numbers but a concern that the think tank became too close to Project Cameron."<ref>[http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/07/anthony-browne.html Anthony Browne leaves Policy Exchange to become Boris Johnson's Policy Director], ToryDiary, ConservativeHome, 21 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==2008 GLA==<br />
Browne was appointed as Policy Director to the Mayor of London on 21 July. The Guardian remarked: "Browne's appointment – the fourth from [[Policy Exchange]] to get a top job in the Tory party – marks a further high watermark in the influence of Policy Exchange on future Tory policy.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/conservatives.thinktanks A change in the political weather], by David Hencke, guardian.co.uk, 22 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==Affiliations==<br />
*[[Policy Exchange]]<br />
*[[New Culture Forum]]<br />
*[[Civitas]]<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Experts/expert-profile.aspx?id=347 Anthony Browne] - Policy Exchange profile<br />
<br />
* Arun Kundnani the editor of Race & Class in a (2008) essay [http://www.irr.org.uk/2008/september/ak000003.html" How are thinktanks shaping the political agenda on Muslims in Britain?] argues that Policy Exchange, the [[Social Affairs Unit]] and the [[Centre for Social Cohesion]] are driving the political agenda on Muslims in Britain while think tanks on the left are largely silent on the matter.<br />
<br />
There is also a section in the essay which puts forward the idea of a reviving or recasting of the cold wa:<br />
<br />
:What Browne's, Moore's and Gove's comments illustrate is the attempt to justify illberal policies in the name of defending 'liberal' western values against an alien 'totalitarian' threat. This is the paradoxical project that is now the major theme of centre-Right thinking on multiculturalism and the 'war on terror'. Indeed, the debate on multiculturalism has become a part of what many regard as a new 'cultural' cold war to promote a 'moderate' (i.e. pro-western) Islam across the globe - and particularly in Europe. This is a model that has been endorsed by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has spoken of a new cold war against 'Muslim extremism', fought through the 'soft power' of cultural influence. The role of thinktanks would then not only be to supply political parties with policy suggestions but also to popularise the idea of 'Islamism' as an existential threat to the West that requires a hardline, Cold War-style response. As Dean Godson, a research director at PX who has strong links to well-known Washington neoconservatives, wrote in 2006: 'During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers. For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence.'<br />
<br />
It also adds that:<br />
<br />
:Encounter, of course, was covertly funded by the CIA. But Godson's suggestion has been taken up with the launch of Standpoint magazine, published by another thinktank, the Social Affairs Unit (SAU). Its editor Daniel Johnson explicitly sees Standpoint as a 21st-century version of Encounter, except with Islamism replacing communism as the threat to western civilisation. By uniting around the formula of the 'defence of the liberal West against the Islamists', the magazine has been able to incorporate pro-Iraq war 'liberal' writers, such as Nick Cohen and Julie Burchill, with neoconservatives. Michael Gove serves on the magazine's advisory board, as does Gertrude Himmelfarb (one of Gordon Brown's favourite historians and wife and mother of the leading US neoconservatives Irving and William Kristol).<br />
<br />
The references of the essay contain links to some of the debate over other think tanks', such as [Demos] attitude to aspects of the debate:<br />
<br />
[http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/martin-bright/2008/07/islamexpo-hamas-sawalha-speak Martin Bright, 'Hamas at Olympia', New Statesman (10 July 2008)].<br />
[http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/16/nick-cohen-demos-and-islamexpo/ Nick Cohen, 'Demos and IslamExpo', Harry's Place (16 July 2008)].<br />
<br />
The [[Social Affairs Unit]] contains two former members of the [[Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies]] which had strong ties to both the [[Congress for Cultural Freedom]] and the [[Information Research Department]] and [[Encounter]].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Anthony_Browne&diff=68275Anthony Browne2008-10-31T01:30:29Z<p>Billy: /* External links */</p>
<hr />
<div>Anthony Browne is Policy Director to the Mayor of London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
Browne holds a degree in Mathematics from [[Cambridge University]]. He is married with two children and lives in North London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1988-89 Booz Allen Hamilton==<br />
Browne worked as a Business analyst for management consultants [[Booz Allen Hamilton]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1989-92==<br />
Browne worked in various media jobs, including diarist for the [[Daily Telegraph]]'s Peterborough column and producer for television production company [[Uden Associates]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1992-97 BBC==<br />
From 1992 to 1997 Browne worked for BBC TV and Radio news, including working on the Money Programme and Business Breakfast. he was promoted to become business reporter, economics reporter and acting economics correspondent for main TV and Radio programmes, including the Today programme, World at One, One O'Clock and Nine O'Clock News.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1997-2002 Observer==<br />
From 1997 to 2002, Browne worked at the [[Observer]] newspaper as economics correspondent, deputy business editor, health editor and environment editor.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==2002-2007 Times==<br />
From 2002 to 2007, Browne worked at [[The Times]] newspaper as environment editor, Brussels correspondent, and chief political correspondent.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
During his time at the Times, Browne became embroiled in controversy over his comments on VDare, a an anti-immigration US web forum, affiliated to the [[Center for American Unity]].<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/03/media.pressandpublishing Bloggers target Times writer], by Chris Tryhorn, Media Guardian, 3 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
In a 2002 Times article he wrote:<br />
::The only political party of which I have been a member is Labour, and the danger of giving encouragement to the racist British National Party is a strong reason to stay silent. But what is happening now is so extreme and so damaging, and the determination of pro-immigrationists to suppress debate and smear critics so fearsome, that silence is no longer an option.<ref>Britain is losing Britain, by Anthony Browne, The Times, 7 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
He subsequently wrote about the article on [[VDARE]]: <br />
::It was bubbling around inside my head making me toss and turn in the small hours, and then at 4 A.M. it exploded out in 2,500 words: a cri de coeur about what uncontrolled immigration is doing to Britain, and the almost ruthless determination of the pro-immigrationists to distort facts, smear opponents and stifle debate. Having researched the article for three months for a pamphlet, the facts just poured out of my fingertips.<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_article.htm The London Times’ Anthony Browne Writes VDARE.COM About His Dramatic Article], Anthony Browne, VDARE, 13 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
In a January 2003 [[VDARE]] article Browne wrote:<br />
::It isn’t every day that the interior minister of a mature western democracy publicly announces that his policies are leading to the collapse of social order and uncontrollable widespread communal violence, things more usually associated with places like Gujarat (and northern Nigeria.)<br />
<br />
::But last week David Blunkett, Britain’s Home Secretary, warned that society is “like a coiled spring” where the tensions and frustrations could spill over into “the disintegration of community relations and social cohesion,” with such widespread vigilantism that Britain could “tip into a situation we could not control.”<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_britain.htm Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, VDARE.com, 28 January 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
[[VDARE]]'s [[James Fulford]] said of this piece: "This one was actually an article we commissioned and paid for, the links, et cetera, added by me, and with some editing by [[Peter Brimelow]], as usual."<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/fulford/050818_fulford_file.htm Guilt By Association (With VDARE.COM!) In Britain], by James Fulford, VDARE.com, 18 August 2005.</ref> The article was also posted at [[David Horowitz]]'s Frontpagemag.<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BAE92D3E-0F17-444E-B451-F8839CC8B185 Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, FrontPageMag.Com, 3 February 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne was also criticised over an August 2005 article which stated:<br />
::The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko [[Socialist Workers Party]] joined forces with the [[Muslim Association of Britain]], the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the [[Stop the War Coalition]]. The former Labour MP [[George Galloway]] created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.<ref>[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article550184.ece Fundamentally, we're useful idiots], by Anthony Browne, The Times, 1 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne had been the Times' chief political correspondent for less than a year when he left to join Policy Exchange.<ref>Times loses three reporters, Media Guardian, 6 March 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
==2007-08 Policy Exchange==<br />
From 2007 to 2008, Browne worked as Director of the right-wing think-tank [[Policy Exchange]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref>. According to ConservativeHome's ToryDiary "During his time at PX there was a doubling of staff numbers but a concern that the think tank became too close to Project Cameron."<ref>[http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/07/anthony-browne.html Anthony Browne leaves Policy Exchange to become Boris Johnson's Policy Director], ToryDiary, ConservativeHome, 21 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==2008 GLA==<br />
Browne was appointed as Policy Director to the Mayor of London on 21 July. The Guardian remarked: "Browne's appointment – the fourth from [[Policy Exchange]] to get a top job in the Tory party – marks a further high watermark in the influence of Policy Exchange on future Tory policy.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/conservatives.thinktanks A change in the political weather], by David Hencke, guardian.co.uk, 22 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==Affiliations==<br />
*[[Policy Exchange]]<br />
*[[New Culture Forum]]<br />
*[[Civitas]]<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Experts/expert-profile.aspx?id=347 Anthony Browne] - Policy Exchange profile<br />
<br />
* Arun Kundnani the editor of Race & Class in a (2008) essay [http://www.irr.org.uk/2008/september/ak000003.html" How are thinktanks shaping the political agenda on Muslims in Britain?] argues that Policy Exchange, the [[Social Affairs Unit]] and the [[Centre for Social Cohesion]] are driving the political agenda on Muslims in Britain while think tanks on the left are largely silent on the matter.<br />
<br />
there is also a section in the essay which puts forward the idea of a reviving or recasting of the cold wa:<br />
<br />
:What Browne's, Moore's and Gove's comments illustrate is the attempt to justify illberal policies in the name of defending 'liberal' western values against an alien 'totalitarian' threat. This is the paradoxical project that is now the major theme of centre-Right thinking on multiculturalism and the 'war on terror'. Indeed, the debate on multiculturalism has become a part of what many regard as a new 'cultural' cold war to promote a 'moderate' (i.e. pro-western) Islam across the globe - and particularly in Europe. This is a model that has been endorsed by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has spoken of a new cold war against 'Muslim extremism', fought through the 'soft power' of cultural influence. The role of thinktanks would then not only be to supply political parties with policy suggestions but also to popularise the idea of 'Islamism' as an existential threat to the West that requires a hardline, Cold War-style response. As Dean Godson, a research director at PX who has strong links to well-known Washington neoconservatives, wrote in 2006: 'During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers. For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence.'<br />
<br />
It also adds that:<br />
<br />
:Encounter, of course, was covertly funded by the CIA. But Godson's suggestion has been taken up with the launch of Standpoint magazine, published by another thinktank, the Social Affairs Unit (SAU). Its editor Daniel Johnson explicitly sees Standpoint as a 21st-century version of Encounter, except with Islamism replacing communism as the threat to western civilisation. By uniting around the formula of the 'defence of the liberal West against the Islamists', the magazine has been able to incorporate pro-Iraq war 'liberal' writers, such as Nick Cohen and Julie Burchill, with neoconservatives. Michael Gove serves on the magazine's advisory board, as does Gertrude Himmelfarb (one of Gordon Brown's favourite historians and wife and mother of the leading US neoconservatives Irving and William Kristol).<br />
<br />
The references of the essay contain links to some of the debate over other think tanks', such as [Demos] attitude to aspects of the debate:<br />
<br />
[http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/martin-bright/2008/07/islamexpo-hamas-sawalha-speak Martin Bright, 'Hamas at Olympia', New Statesman (10 July 2008)].<br />
[http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/16/nick-cohen-demos-and-islamexpo/ Nick Cohen, 'Demos and IslamExpo', Harry's Place (16 July 2008)].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Anthony_Browne&diff=68274Anthony Browne2008-10-31T01:29:45Z<p>Billy: /* External links */</p>
<hr />
<div>Anthony Browne is Policy Director to the Mayor of London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
Browne holds a degree in Mathematics from [[Cambridge University]]. He is married with two children and lives in North London.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1988-89 Booz Allen Hamilton==<br />
Browne worked as a Business analyst for management consultants [[Booz Allen Hamilton]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1989-92==<br />
Browne worked in various media jobs, including diarist for the [[Daily Telegraph]]'s Peterborough column and producer for television production company [[Uden Associates]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1992-97 BBC==<br />
From 1992 to 1997 Browne worked for BBC TV and Radio news, including working on the Money Programme and Business Breakfast. he was promoted to become business reporter, economics reporter and acting economics correspondent for main TV and Radio programmes, including the Today programme, World at One, One O'Clock and Nine O'Clock News.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==1997-2002 Observer==<br />
From 1997 to 2002, Browne worked at the [[Observer]] newspaper as economics correspondent, deputy business editor, health editor and environment editor.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==2002-2007 Times==<br />
From 2002 to 2007, Browne worked at [[The Times]] newspaper as environment editor, Brussels correspondent, and chief political correspondent.<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref><br />
<br />
During his time at the Times, Browne became embroiled in controversy over his comments on VDare, a an anti-immigration US web forum, affiliated to the [[Center for American Unity]].<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2005/aug/03/media.pressandpublishing Bloggers target Times writer], by Chris Tryhorn, Media Guardian, 3 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
In a 2002 Times article he wrote:<br />
::The only political party of which I have been a member is Labour, and the danger of giving encouragement to the racist British National Party is a strong reason to stay silent. But what is happening now is so extreme and so damaging, and the determination of pro-immigrationists to suppress debate and smear critics so fearsome, that silence is no longer an option.<ref>Britain is losing Britain, by Anthony Browne, The Times, 7 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
He subsequently wrote about the article on [[VDARE]]: <br />
::It was bubbling around inside my head making me toss and turn in the small hours, and then at 4 A.M. it exploded out in 2,500 words: a cri de coeur about what uncontrolled immigration is doing to Britain, and the almost ruthless determination of the pro-immigrationists to distort facts, smear opponents and stifle debate. Having researched the article for three months for a pamphlet, the facts just poured out of my fingertips.<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_article.htm The London Times’ Anthony Browne Writes VDARE.COM About His Dramatic Article], Anthony Browne, VDARE, 13 August 2002.</ref><br />
<br />
In a January 2003 [[VDARE]] article Browne wrote:<br />
::It isn’t every day that the interior minister of a mature western democracy publicly announces that his policies are leading to the collapse of social order and uncontrollable widespread communal violence, things more usually associated with places like Gujarat (and northern Nigeria.)<br />
<br />
::But last week David Blunkett, Britain’s Home Secretary, warned that society is “like a coiled spring” where the tensions and frustrations could spill over into “the disintegration of community relations and social cohesion,” with such widespread vigilantism that Britain could “tip into a situation we could not control.”<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/misc/browne_britain.htm Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, VDARE.com, 28 January 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
[[VDARE]]'s [[James Fulford]] said of this piece: "This one was actually an article we commissioned and paid for, the links, et cetera, added by me, and with some editing by [[Peter Brimelow]], as usual."<ref>[http://www.vdare.com/fulford/050818_fulford_file.htm Guilt By Association (With VDARE.COM!) In Britain], by James Fulford, VDARE.com, 18 August 2005.</ref> The article was also posted at [[David Horowitz]]'s Frontpagemag.<ref>[http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BAE92D3E-0F17-444E-B451-F8839CC8B185 Britain on the Brink], by Anthony Browne, FrontPageMag.Com, 3 February 2003.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne was also criticised over an August 2005 article which stated:<br />
::The support of Islamic fascism spans Britain’s Left. The wacko [[Socialist Workers Party]] joined forces with the [[Muslim Association of Britain]], the democracy-despising, Shariah-law-wanting group, to form the [[Stop the War Coalition]]. The former Labour MP [[George Galloway]] created the Respect Party with the support of the MAB, and won a seat in Parliament by cultivating Muslim resentment.<ref>[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article550184.ece Fundamentally, we're useful idiots], by Anthony Browne, The Times, 1 August 2005.</ref><br />
<br />
Browne had been the Times' chief political correspondent for less than a year when he left to join Policy Exchange.<ref>Times loses three reporters, Media Guardian, 6 March 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
==2007-08 Policy Exchange==<br />
From 2007 to 2008, Browne worked as Director of the right-wing think-tank [[Policy Exchange]].<ref>[http://www.london.gov.uk/view_press_release.jsp?releaseid=17942 Mayor appoints Policy Director], Greater London Authority, 21 July 2008</ref>. According to ConservativeHome's ToryDiary "During his time at PX there was a doubling of staff numbers but a concern that the think tank became too close to Project Cameron."<ref>[http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2008/07/anthony-browne.html Anthony Browne leaves Policy Exchange to become Boris Johnson's Policy Director], ToryDiary, ConservativeHome, 21 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==2008 GLA==<br />
Browne was appointed as Policy Director to the Mayor of London on 21 July. The Guardian remarked: "Browne's appointment – the fourth from [[Policy Exchange]] to get a top job in the Tory party – marks a further high watermark in the influence of Policy Exchange on future Tory policy.<ref>[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/22/conservatives.thinktanks A change in the political weather], by David Hencke, guardian.co.uk, 22 July 2008.</ref><br />
<br />
==Affiliations==<br />
*[[Policy Exchange]]<br />
*[[New Culture Forum]]<br />
*[[Civitas]]<br />
<br />
==External links==<br />
*[http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Experts/expert-profile.aspx?id=347 Anthony Browne] - Policy Exchange profile<br />
<br />
* Arun Kundnani the editor of Race & Class in a (2008) essay [http://www.irr.org.uk/2008/september/ak000003.html" How are thinktanks shaping the political agenda on Muslims in Britain?] argues that Policy Exchange, the [[Social Affairs Unit]] and the [[Centre for Social Cohesion]] are driving the political agenda on Muslims in Britain while think tanks on the left are largely silent on the matter.<br />
<br />
there is also a section in the essay which puts forward the idea of a reviving or recasting of the cold wa:<br />
<br />
:What Browne's, Moore's and Gove's comments illustrate is the attempt to justify illberal policies in the name of defending 'liberal' western values against an alien 'totalitarian' threat. This is the paradoxical project that is now the major theme of centre-Right thinking on multiculturalism and the 'war on terror'. Indeed, the debate on multiculturalism has become a part of what many regard as a new 'cultural' cold war to promote a 'moderate' (i.e. pro-western) Islam across the globe - and particularly in Europe. This is a model that has been endorsed by Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has spoken of a new cold war against 'Muslim extremism', fought through the 'soft power' of cultural influence. The role of thinktanks would then not only be to supply political parties with policy suggestions but also to popularise the idea of 'Islamism' as an existential threat to the West that requires a hardline, Cold War-style response. As Dean Godson, a research director at PX who has strong links to well-known Washington neoconservatives, wrote in 2006: 'During the Cold War, organisations such as the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office would assert the superiority of the West over its totalitarian rivals. And magazines such as Encounter did hand-to-hand combat with Soviet fellow travellers. For any kind of truly moderate Islam to flourish, we need first to recapture our own self-confidence.'<br />
<br />
It also adds that:<br />
<br />
:Encounter, of course, was covertly funded by the CIA. But Godson's suggestion has been taken up with the launch of Standpoint magazine, published by another thinktank, the Social Affairs Unit (SAU). Its editor Daniel Johnson explicitly sees Standpoint as a 21st-century version of Encounter, except with Islamism replacing communism as the threat to western civilisation.[13] By uniting around the formula of the 'defence of the liberal West against the Islamists', the magazine has been able to incorporate pro-Iraq war 'liberal' writers, such as Nick Cohen and Julie Burchill, with neoconservatives. Michael Gove serves on the magazine's advisory board, as does Gertrude Himmelfarb (one of Gordon Brown's favourite historians and wife and mother of the leading US neoconservatives Irving and William Kristol).<br />
<br />
The references of the essay contain links to some of the debate over other think tanks', such as [Demos] attitude to aspects of the debate:<br />
<br />
[http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/martin-bright/2008/07/islamexpo-hamas-sawalha-speak Martin Bright, 'Hamas at Olympia', New Statesman (10 July 2008)].<br />
[http://www.hurryupharry.org/2008/07/16/nick-cohen-demos-and-islamexpo/ Nick Cohen, 'Demos and IslamExpo', Harry's Place (16 July 2008)].<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=The_Clandestine_Caucus&diff=68110The Clandestine Caucus2008-10-28T18:19:33Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The Clandestine Caucus was written in the 1996 by Lobster editor Robin Ramsay and was an early attempt to understand the significance of a nexus of intelligence connected groups which covertly influenced the political landscape of the post-war UK including the [[Economic League]], The [[Council on Foreign Relations]], [[Common Cause]]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Part 1: Clearing the ground: the unions, socialism and the state==<br />
<br />
A surprising number of Labour Party members believe that it was once a socialist party, began as a<br />
socialist party, and was then seduced from the golden pathway. This engenders the language of betrayal and sell-out which is so familiar and depressing a part of life in the Labour Party and on the British Left in general.(1) But the view of the Labour Party as originally socialist is just wrong. The history of Britain's union and labour movement is one of continuous conflict between socialist and anti-socialist wings; and within that conflict the bit of the story that is usually not told is that describing the relationship between the anti-socialist section of the labour movement and British and US capital and their states. <br />
<br />
The conflict between the anti- and pro-socialist wings of the labour movement sharpened markedly after the 1918 Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although wehave surprisingly little information on the turbulent years between 1918 and 1926, and, in particular, on the British Right's preparation to meet the Bolshevik 'threat',(2) we know that much of the early effort was put into groups aimed at the exploitation of so-called 'patriotic labour', such as the British Workers League.(3) <br />
<br />
World War 1 produced the modern British state - the Cabinet Office etc. - and mobilisation: things wererun from the centre and new relationships were formed.<br />
<br />
:'By the end of 1919, a new form of political activity was growing up, as yet only half understood, but radically different from the pre-war system ..... but there now existed formal, powerful, employers' institutions, a fully fledged Ministry of Labour, and a TUC [[Trades Union Congress]] increasingly accustomed to dealing in the political arena, wedded to a major political party which, almost alone in Europe, encompassed the majority of the non-Conservative working class. At the same time, the government's apparatus for manipulating public opinion had grown inordinately, enabling it - on its own estimate - to confront the spectre of Bolshevism and survive. Lloyd George himself, searching always for a middle way in politics, had shifted away from Liberal radicalism towards a corporatism best described as the creation in Parliamentary politics of a staatspartei, composed of Liberals and mainstream Conservatives (leaving a fringe right wing and a much larger, but powerless Labour Left); complemented in industrial politics by a triangular collaboration in which employers' organisations and TUC should make them-selves representative of their members and in return receive recognition as estates by government.'(4) <br />
<br />
The [[British Commonwealth Union]], the FBI ([[Federation of British Industries]], precursor of today's CBI) and the other predominantly Midlands manufacturing group, the [[National Union of Manufacturers]], were set up during the first World War and they mark the origins of the British corporate movement.(5) One of the leading figures of the group, Sir [[Dudley Docker]], envisaged <br />
<br />
:'a completely integrated society and economy in which industry would have its organisation of workers and management, the two sets of organisations united by peak federations and all finally capped by a great national forum of workers and managers and employers, embraced by the protection of an Imperial Tariff.'(6) <br />
<br />
Another of the corporatist groups financed by Midlands industrialists, the [[British Commonwealth Union]] (BCU), led by the Birmingham MP, Sir [[Patrick Hannon]], began funding MPs to form an Industrial Group in Parliament. The first 11 candidates were subsidised by the BCU in the 1918 election: by 1924 the group in parliament consisted of 105 (mostly Tory) members. Hannon's Industrial Group chiefly wanted government protection of British industry against foreign competition, but, to quote Hannon, they also 'wanted the largest measure of freedom in the relationship between capital and labour and the least state intervention possible.'(7) <br />
<br />
These early corporatist dreams failed for a number of reasons. Employer organisations were none too happy at the idea of the trade unions as some kind of partners.(8) And vice versa. Too much was being expected; it was too big a change, happening too quickly. In any case, the corporatists among the members of the [[Federation of British Industries]] (FBI) were a minority strand in the thinking of the Tory Party and British industrial capital; and even among the corporatists there were divisions.(9) <br />
<br />
Frank Longstreth called this network of BCU, Industrial Group, FBI and other employer propaganda groups of the period, such as the [[Economic League]], the Preference Imperialists, and noted their links to the earlier Midlands manufacturing-based Tariff Reform League.(10)As Longstreth suggested, it is possible to view the British economy since 1900 as a protracted struggle between British manufacturing (domestic capital) and the City of London (international finance capital), with the City in control for most of the century.(11) [[Oswald Mosley]]'s movement in the 1930s was<br />
<br />
:'in effect, the perverted continuation of the social imperialism of an earlier generation of industrialists, supporting imperial autarchy, social reform, conversion from a bankers' to a producers' economy, protectionism, public control of credit, and the suppression of the class struggle through the state'.(12) <br />
<br />
Although the great schemes of corporatism failed, the cooperation between the state and the trade unions which began during the First World War, continued after the General Strike and was deepened by the first two Labour governments.(13) Peter Weiler quotes Ernest Bevin's view in the 1930s that that the TUC had 'virtually become an integral part of the State, its views and voice upon every subject, international and domestic, heard and heeded.'(14) This statement of Bevin's is an exaggeration: no doubt the TUC's views were heard; but heeded? <br />
<br />
The powers-that-be set about educating and socialising these new leaders. In 1938, for example, one of the most important of the trade union leaders, Ernest Bevin, with his wife, was taken off on a tour of the empire, at the behest of the [[Royal Institute of International Affairs]].(15) Trade union leaders they might be, seeking justice and a better deal for the British worker, but they remained patriots and imperialists for the most part, and not socialists. The gentlemen (mostly men) of the TUC did not dream - publicly or secretly - of taking over British capitalism, or of destroying the British empire. The institutional links with the British state begun before World War 2 were solidified enormously by the war. The trade unions were in the national coalition<br />
government, and some of their leaders were Ministers of the Crown - very important people. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== After the war ==<br />
<br />
<br />
In the immediate post-war period the TUC was dominated by what Lewis Minkin called a 'praetorian guard' against the left; Arthur Deakin of the Transport Workers, Will Lawther of the Mineworkers and Tom Williamson of the General and Municipal. Minkin describes in detail how this trio ran the what he calls 'an unprecedented period of "platform" dominance at Party conference';(16) but noted that this alliance was defensive in nature and saw a communist conspiracy behind all criticism. <br />
<br />
The political beliefs of the leaders of trade unions in this period was mixed. Some were supporters of [[Moral Rearmament]] (MRA). At the 1947 MRA World Assembly at Caux-sur-Martreux in France, delegates from Britain included E.G. Gooch MP, President of the Agricultural Workers. An MRA press release on October 15, 1947 noted that signatories to a message of support for the Caux assembly included trade union leaders Andrew Naesmith, (General Secretary of the Amalgamated Weavers' Association), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council representative; former General Secretary of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), George Chester (General Secretary of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), W. B. Beard and J. W. Stephenson (Chair of Building Trade Operatives).Some trade union leaders supported campaigns by avowedly anti-socialist groups such as [[Aims of Industry]] and the [[Economic League]]. In 1952 the New Statesman reported that recent Aims of Industry literature had included essays by - or under the name of, perhaps - Florence Hancock of the TUC General Council and Bob Edwards, the General Secretary of the Chemical Workers' Union, who was later to be found on the Advisory Council of the anti-communist organisation, [[Common Cause]].(17) <br />
<br />
== The Trades Union Congress and the state ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Bevin's 'integration' into the British state meant a role for the TUC in the overseas state, the empire, as well as in Britain itself; and before and during the war the TUC began working with the Foreign and Colonial offices - a relationship about which few trade unionists knew - or know - anything at all.(18) As one of the Colonial Office officials quoted by Weiler said, with the clarity of simpler times, the TUC could be relied upon to guide young trade unions in the empire into becoming <br />
<br />
:'trades unions which the employers in the colony would feel they could respect and trust and which could be relied upon loyally to keep an agreement.'(19) <br />
<br />
In 1948, a member of the US State Department, Third Secretary at the London Embassy, Herbert E. Weiner, reported from London on 'Attitude of Trades Union Congress Towards World Federation of Trade Unions and American International Trade Union Leaders', and wrote: <br />
<br />
:'When asked how the Trades Union Congress hoped to prevent the Communists from using the technique of bona fide forms of trade union action in order to infiltrate unions in Germany and in "undeveloped"(colonial) areas, my informant said ........:in areas where trade unionism is undeveloped e.g. colonial areas, the Trades Union Congress through the British Labour Attaches keeps in close touch with Communist union activities'.(20) <br />
<br />
In the 1970s the TUC seconded two of its international staff to the Foreign Office. This caused a minor furore when it was brought to the attention of the TUC members.(21) Alan Hargreaves, TUC International Secretary in the 1970s, came to the TUC from the Foreign Office and refused to discuss his Foreign Office work.(22) <br />
<br />
Attacked by the socialists - and communists - on the left at home, and working against the left abroad with the Colonial and Foreign Offices, little wonder that the TUC slipped so comfortably into the Cold War role allotted to it. <br />
<br />
<br />
== '''Notes''' ==<br />
<br />
'''''Please note''': details of the books and articles cited in these footnotes are in the bibliography at the end of the essay, indexed by author's surname.'' <br />
<br />
<br />
1.There is wide-spread confusion about whether or not to capitalise the 'L' in left or the 'R' in right. I will try to stick to this rule: capital letters only when proper nouns; thus British Left and the left.<br />
<br />
2.Or am I being naive to be surprised that the one period in British twentieth history when there may have been something like a pre-revolutionary climate seems under researched? Stephen White, in 1975, offered a glimpse of a dense hinterland of largely short-lived parties and groups forming on the right in Britain in this period. Stephen White, 'Ideological Hegemony and Political Control: the sociology of anti-Bolshevism 1918-1920' in Scottish Labour History Society Journal, No. 98, June 1975. See also Webber 1987, and John Hope's 'Fascism, the Security Service and the Curious<br />
Career of Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes' in Lobster 22. <br />
<br />
3.See, for example. 'In The Excess of Their Patriotism: the National Party and Threats of Subversion' by Chris Wrigley in Wrigley (ed.). Of the groups which appeared in this period only the Economic League survived into Mrs Thatcher's era. <br />
<br />
4.Middlemas p. 151.<br />
<br />
5.This mirrored what was happening elsewhere in Europe, notably Germany and Italy. See, for example, Scott Newton's 'The economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during World War 2', in Lobster 20.<br />
<br />
6.Blank p. 14.<br />
<br />
7.Farr, thesis, p. 179. See also Wrigley, 'In The Excess' pp. 108 and 9, and 'Sir Allan Smith, the<br />
Industrial Group and the Politics of Unemployment 1919-24' by Terence Rodgers, in Davenport-Hines (ed.).<br />
<br />
8.Ibid. pp. 222-5.<br />
<br />
9.Patrick Hannon's abortive attempt to create an Industrial Group of MPs and union leaders using the British Commonwealth Union is in Barbara Lee Farr's thesis. Her information came from the Hannon papers in the House of Lords. I was alerted to this remarkable piece of work by John Hope. <br />
<br />
Rodgers, in note 7, does not cite Farr's work and gives slightly different figures for the size of the Industrial Group of MP's, while quoting the same source, namely the Hannon papers. See his footnotes 13 and 16. Hannon's obituary appeared in The Times, 11 January 1963.<br />
<br />
10.Frank Longstreth, 'The City, Industry and the State' in Crouch (ed.).<br />
<br />
11.See, for example, Newton and Porter.<br />
<br />
12.Longstreth, ibid. p. 171. <br />
<br />
13.This is a major theme of the Alan Bulloch biography of Ernest Bevin, for example.<br />
<br />
14.Weiler p. 19.<br />
<br />
15.I discussed this in Lobster 28, p. 11.<br />
<br />
16.Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 83.<br />
<br />
17.New Statesman, 12 January 1952. See also H.H. Wilson, 'Techniques of Pressure - Anti-Nationalisation Propaganda' in Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1951. Edwards' obituary in The Independent, 25 June 1990 noted that he had been a member of the ILP and was an enemy of the Communist Party. His was thus an improbable name on the list of labour movement figures who had allegedly helped the KGB supplied by former KGB officer [[Oleg Gordievsky]]. See Gordievsky pp. 286<br />
and 7.<br />
<br />
18.'At least since the foundation of the International Affairs Department, TUC staff have kept<br />
close contact with the Foreign Office, a practice which persists to the present day.' Harrod p. 105. The study by Marjorie Nicholson of this subject does not mention the International Affairs Department, though as Anthony Carew pointed out, this may tell us nothing as she worked in the Colonial/Commonwealth Department. For a more critical view see Peter Weiler, chapter 1.<br />
<br />
19.Ibid. p. 29.<br />
<br />
20.My thanks to John Booth for this document. On the origins of this see Majorie Nicholson, chapter 6, especially pp. 209-11, and Weiler chapter 1.<br />
<br />
21.See Thompson and Larson pp. 27-8, and New Statesman, 16 November, 1979, 'FO reinforces TUC<br />
links', for two examples. I do not know if this practice pre-dates the 1970s.<br />
<br />
22.See the New Statesman, 20 April 1979 for the TUC's response, and 'TUC's foreign policy' by Patrick Wintour, New Statesman, 2 March 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== U.S. influence after the war ==<br />
<br />
<br />
I do not want to re-run the long debate about the origins of the Cold War or - in particular - the<br />
causes of the break-up of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949, except to say that it is pretty clear now, with this much hindsight, that by then the British trade union leaders were determined to break the WFTU - whatever the Soviet bloc had done - and this would have been pushed through, supported by the Americans.(23) As Dennis MacShane MP demonstrates in his book,(24) the European social democratic trade union movement was not going to coexist with the Soviet bloc, either. If the USA leaned on the door, as Peter Weiler and what might loosely be called 'the left' believe, it was half open already - and was never going to shut again. Into this domestic anti-communist climate came the USA's loans - and the people and ideas, the strings attached to the<br />
money. <br />
<br />
From the first request from Churchill for clandestine assistance before America had officially entered the war, the US 'aid' had come with strings attached. Despite his famous remark that he had not taken office to oversee the destruction of His Majesty's empire, Churchill had actually done precisely that to pay for the war: and the process continued after it. It was left to some of the Tory Right and some of the Labour Left - the same groups that are still sceptical of the<br />
European Union - to oppose the acceptance of the<br />
conditions attached to the post-war US loans. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== The Council on Foreign Relations ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Planning for the US takeover of the countries of non-communist Europe was done, during the war, in the Council on Foreign Relations, the informal, semi-secret, think tank-cum-social club of the East<br />
Coast elite - the bankers, the lawyers and managers of US international capital.(25) But when the war ended the details had not been worked out, and there was significant domestic opposition to be taken into consideration. The result was that in the chaos of the post-war years the American 'interventionists', as Pisani calls them, had to improvise.(26) The 'coordination of public and private efforts was achieved by using the [[Council on Foreign Relations]] (CFR) as a clearing house for projects'.(27) It was CFR personnel, for example, who raised money to intervene in the Italian elections of 1947.(28) And in the immediate post-war years the political interventionist picture is complicated: there was nothing like the clear-cut overt/covert dichotomy which we think characterised US foreign policy when things settled down into the State Department/ CIA mix perceived after the sixties.(29) <br />
<br />
<br />
== The Economic Cooperation Agency ==<br />
<br />
At the most overt level, there was the Economic Cooperation Agency (ECA) which doled out the dollars in support of what is known as multilateral trade: that is, the ECA sought to break down barriers against American goods. A former acting head of the ECA said that: <br />
<br />
<br />
:'In everything we did we sought to change or to strengthen opinions - opinions about how to build free world strength, about America's role, cooperative effort by Europeans, investment, productivity, fiscal stability, trade measurement, industrial competition, free labour unions etc.'(30) <br />
<br />
But ECA also had what we would call a covert arm and ran psychological warfare operations.(31) In France, <br />
<br />
<br />
:'The ECA mission chief wore two hats. He was the conduit for economic assistance and defense<br />
mobilisation, as well as for psychological and economic warfare components provided by the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).'(32) <br />
<br />
As part of that psychological warfare programme, for example, the ECA persuaded the British TUC to produce - a least put its name to - a report on productivity subsequently used all over Europe. 'The ECA mission in London distributed a large number of copies abroad, urged its translation into foreign languages and prepared numerous press releases and feature articles for planting in the British and foreign press.' The US London Embassy's Labour Information Officer William Gausmann reported that 'from a trade union point of view, this is the most valuable document that has been<br />
produced under ECA auspices to date.'(33) <br />
<br />
<br />
== The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) ==<br />
<br />
The OPC, the first of the euphemistic cover names of US covert action agencies in the post-war era, was formed in 1948, staffed and run by the newly created CIA but nominally under the control of the State Department. In effect the CIA's covert arm, by 1952 the OPC had forty-seven stations, 2,812 staff and a budget of $84 million.(34) Much of this growth had been funded by money from the Marshall Plan.(35) What we now think of as the CIA, that is the covert operation, intervention arm of US multi-national capital - the post-war bogey man supreme for the left - began as the enforcement arm of the Marshall Plan, engaged in operations against the left and the trade unions of Europe, communist or non-communist. The OPC was the US administration's recognition that the ECA alone couldn't 'get the job done'.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Labour Attachés ==<br />
<br />
Another weapon in the post-war US armoury was the Labour Attache programme which was established towards the end of the war. In the words of one its creators, Philip Kaiser, 'the labor attache is expected to develop contacts with key leaders in the trade union movement, and to influence their thinking and decisions in directions ''compatible with American goals''....' (Emphasis added)(37) The first Labour Attache in London was [[Sam Berger]], who, in the words of [[Denis Healey]], <br />
<br />
<br />
:'By developing good personal relations with many key figures in the British Labour movement at the end of the war, including [[Sam Watson]] and Hugh Gaitskell, exerted an enduring influence on British foreign policy.'(38) <br />
<br />
Philip Kaiser commented that Berger <br />
<br />
<br />
:'had extraordinary access to many members of the [Attlee] cabinet, including the prime minister. It was universally recognised that he was the ''key member of our embassy''.'(39)(emphasis added) <br />
<br />
There were also 'Labour Information Officers' attached to the Marshall Plan staff in the US Embassy in London. One such, [[William Gausman]], <br />
<br />
<br />
:'in May 1950 began discussions with a section of the leadership of the Clerical and Allied Workers Union on how to eliminate communists from the union..... <br />
<br />
:'cultivated the leadership of the Birmingham Labour Party, whose journal, The Town Crier, closely<br />
supported Atlanticism and American foreign policy objectives in general..... <br />
<br />
:'convened a group in South Wales....to launch a Labour-oriented newspaper, The Democrat.... <br />
<br />
:'worked unofficially on Socialist Commentary"' .....and became a founder member of its offshoot, the Socialist Union, 'which served as a think tank for the emerging Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party..... <br />
<br />
:'liaised, advised, wrote, lectured, published - and helped IRD [the Information Research Department] with the distribution of one of their early publications, The Curtain Falls.'(40) <br />
<br />
The US post-war penetration of the British Labour Party and wider trade union movement climaxes with Joe Godson, who was Labour Attache in London from 1953-59. Godson became very close to the Labour Party leader [[Hugh Gaitskell]] - to the point where Gaitskell and Godson were writing Labour Party policies and planning campaigns against their enemy, Aneuran Bevan. For example, after a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party to discuss the expulsion of Bevan, Gaitskell recorded how he 'drove to the Russell Hotel, where I saw Sam Watson with [[Joe Godson]], the Labour Attache at the American Embassy.'(41) <br />
<br />
The leader of the Labour Party is discussing Executive Committee tactics with the US Labour Attache! This is one of the dividing lines of this essay. You either think is this unexceptional, uninteresting - even a good thing - or you do not. I do not. I think it is rather shocking; and I think that would have been the reaction of most of the Executive Committee at the time had they been made aware of it. In a footnote on p. 384 of the Gaitskell Diaries, editor Philip Williams writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
:'Godson, Sam Watson's close friend....thanks to his trade union post was, like many labour attaches, seen as representing his country's workers rather than its government. But Gaitskell came in time to feel that he was involving himself too deeply in Labour Party affairs.'(42) <br />
<br />
It may even be more complex than this for there is evidence that the Labour Attache posts have been used as cover by the CIA. Jonathan Kwitney of the Wall Street Journal tracked down one Paul Sakwa, who told him that he had been the case officer for Irving Brown, the most important CIA agent in the labour movement in Europe, handling Brown's budget of between $150,000 and $300,000 a year, between 1952 and 1954. From being Brown's case officer in Washington, Sakwa went on to a post under cover as the Assistant Labour Attache at the US embassy in Brussels.(43) <br />
<br />
It was about the CIA - but not just them. The CIA was only one of many agencies working in Britain in the post-war years. Labour Attaches reported, formally anyway, to the State Department. In the end, would it make any difference to know that Joe Godson had really been a genuine employee of the State Department, and not CIA under cover as we might have once suspected? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Notes ==<br />
<br />
<br />
23.This thesis has been most convincingly articulated<br />
by Peter Weiler.<br />
<br />
24.International Labour and the Origins of the Cold<br />
War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992.<br />
<br />
25.See Shoup and Minter.<br />
<br />
26.I guess 'interventionist' is less offensive to the American academic ear than imperialist. 'The<br />
determination to intervene in Europe between 1945 and 1948 was fragmented, uncoordinated.' Pisani pp. 40 and 41.<br />
<br />
27.Ibid. p 4.<br />
<br />
28.'James Forrestal raised private money for the Italian elections of 1947. His initiative 'signalled an end to the notion that redemocratizing European countries could be accomplished simply by regenerating their economies'. Ibid. p. 67.<br />
<br />
29.I put it as 'think' because the reality was never that neat and tidy.<br />
<br />
30.Cited in Carew p. 84.<br />
<br />
31.Pisani p. 91.<br />
<br />
32.Ibid. p. 96. ECA 'does engage in some gray and black propaganda' but 'the programmes represent a very small percentage of the total effort and are coordinated with the CIA' Ibid . p. 12.<br />
<br />
33.Carew p. 153.<br />
<br />
34.Ranelagh p. 135.<br />
<br />
35.'From its creation in 1948 until 1952 when the Marshall Plan was terminated, the OPC operated as the plan's complement.' Pisani p. 70.<br />
<br />
36.Ibid. p. 67.<br />
<br />
37.Kaiser p. 113 'The labor attache...had...an unusual opportunity to enhance American influence<br />
among individuals and institutions that historically have no contact with U.S. diplomatic missions'. Ibid. p. 119.<br />
<br />
38.Denis Healey p. 113. Berger has two innocuous entries in the Gaitskell Diaries, and the footnote<br />
from the editor, Philip Williams, on p. 120 that he was 'first secretary at the U.S. Embassy'.<br />
<br />
39.Kaiser p.120.<br />
<br />
40.Carew pp. 128 and 9.<br />
<br />
41.Godson obituary in The Times, 6 September 1986. See Gaitskell Diary ed. Philip Williams, pp. 339-41. Carew p. 129 notes that there was some conflict between Gausmann and Joseph Godson, apparently reflecting divisions within the US labour movement. He discusses these differences on pp. 84-5.<br />
<br />
42.Godson's son, Roy, who appears on the same trade union/spook circuit in the 1970s, married Sam Watson's daughter. Watson was one of the most important trade union leaders in the post-war period, chairman of the National Executive Committee's International Committee and a 'liaison officer' between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the major unions.<br />
<br />
43.Kwitney pp. 334-5 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Post-war: private sector propaganda begins to regroup ==<br />
<br />
<br />
As the war ended domestic politics returned to normal. The propaganda organisations of domestic capital restarted, though without the frenzy which had marked the post 1918 period. Their big issue was the threat of nationalisation of companies. The so-called Mr Cube Campaign of 1949/50, against the possibility of the nationalisation of the sugar industry, spent an estimated £250,000 in that year.(44) The campaign had been jointly organised by the sugar company, [[Tate and Lyle]], and Aims of Industry, an anti-socialist pressure group formed in 1942 by a group of well known British<br />
industrialists. The Aims original Council had representatives from Fords, English Electric, Austin, Rank, British Aircraft, Macdougall's and Firestone Tyres.(45) There were also smaller campaigns by the Cement Makers Federation, the Iron and Steel Federation and by the insurance companies represented by the British Insurance Association.(46) The Road Haulage Association sponsored anti-nationalisation campaigns by the [[British Housewives' League]], led by Dorothy Crisp.(47) <br />
<br />
By 1949 Aims of Industry had 'twelve area offices blanketing the industrial sections of Britain. For the fiscal year 1949-50 expenditures were budgeted for an an additional anticipated income of £260,000'.(48) The pre-war tradition, discussed below, of newspapers reprinting anti-left briefings from Conservative Party groups or fronts, continued with Aims of Industry. Aims estimated that they had gained 93,178 column-inches of editorial space in 1949, worth over £1,800,000.(49) In the first six months of 1949 Aims claims to have had 41 radio broadcasts on the Home or Light programmes of the BBC; and just before the election of 1950 in January, 362 magazines and newspapers gave 11,269 column inches to Aims-inspired stories. Aims magazine, The Voice of Industry, thanked the British press for their 'impartial partnership', in March 1950, noting that 'News about the achievements of private enterprise and the failures of nationalisation and state control has been of sufficient value to editors for them to have given it space in their columns free.'(50) <br />
<br />
The Economic League survived the war. In 1951 it claimed to have held 20,058 meetings and 57,505 group talks in the previous year; distributed 18 million leaflets, and obtained 31,064 column inches of press publicity; it employed 50 full-time speakers, 27 part-time speakers and 37 leaflet distributors; had a full-time staff of 135, owned 43 vehicles etc.(51) These figures apparently describing massive campaigns by Aims and the League have to be treated with caution. They might well be exaggerated and it is not clear how successful they were. For all this anti-Labour propaganda, Labour's total vote went up in the 1951 General Election. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== The Information Research Department ==<br />
<br />
In the labour movement the Trades Union Congress was working with the newly-formed, Foreign Office-based, political warfare executive, operating under cover as the [[Information Research Department]] (IRD), in an anti-communist drive. IRD was not an innovation. British politics since World War 1 is studded with clandestine propaganda operations involving the mass media of the day. The claims of massive post-World War 2 media penetration by Aims of Industry and the Economic League are reminiscent of the operations of the post World War 1 propaganda network operated by Sydney Walton, described in Keith Middlemas' wonderful book about British political history.(52) In the great Bolshevik panic following the First World War, funded by the industrial sources like the Engineering Employers' Federation, Sydney Walton <br />
<br />
<br />
:'took the main propaganda role from a variety of front organisations, set up during the war, such as the British Empire League, the British Workers' League, the National Democratic and Labour Party, and the National Unity Movement, all of whom had been in receipt of industrial subscriptions'. <br />
<br />
With a budget of £100,000 a year - about what, £20 million in today's money? - Walton's 'information service' was supplied with information by the Special Branch and the intelligence services of the day. Walton eventually claimed to be able to put 'authoritative signed articles' in over 1,200 newspapers.(53) Parallel to the Walton network, another group of major employers formed [[National Propaganda]],(54) which evolved into the Economic League.(55) McIvor tells us that the League by 1926 had formed an Information and Research Department,(56) was organising in 'cells',(57) and was forming 1000 study groups a year.(58) <br />
<br />
The state followed suit. In 1919 it formed the Supply and Transport Committee and prepared to run two separate propaganda organisations in an emergency, headed by..... Admiral Blinker Hall of National Propaganda and Sydney Walton.(59) After 1922, this network had largely been abandoned, and Middlemas makes the point that while Walton spent over £25,000 in the first six months of the 1926 General Strike, this was spent on publicity, advertising and speakers - not on the bribing of journalists and his earlier techniques.(60) Out of this milieu - and the changes in tactics it went through - emerged the Economic League. <br />
<br />
The Conservative Party had also been busy between the wars developing propaganda systems through which it issued, sometimes under its own name, sometimes under cover of fronts, pro-Conservative material to the newspapers for them to 'top and tail' and present as normal, internally-generated copy.(61) <br />
<br />
These examples of how to manipulate the media had been learned by others in the British state system and a few years later Neville Chamberlain and other supporters of the appeasement policy secretly bought and ran the weekly newspaper ''Truth''. This was largely an operation run by the former MI5 officer and ''eminence grise'' of the time, Sir [[Joseph Ball]]. Ball used the official government information machine to push the Chamberlain line, formed the National Publicity<br />
Bureau to do the same and, in 1937, through a frontman, Lord Luke of Pavenham, bought Truth, and<br />
proceeded to use it to denigrate the opponents of Chamberlain and appeasement.(62) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== IRD's genesis ==<br />
<br />
Former Labour Minister [[Christopher Mayhew]] still thinks he was responsible for the creation of IRD.(63) In fact its origins are a good deal earlier. In March 1946 Frank Roberts in the British Embassy in Moscow began sending telegrams to London warning of Soviet imperialism and aggression.(64) In April the Russia Committee of the Foreign Office was formed. In its second meeting on May 7 1946, the Committee decided to set up a propaganda organisation.(65) It was then just a question of getting the Labour Cabinet to approve the proposal. On the way junior Foreign Office Minister, Christopher Mayhew, proposed such a propaganda offensive in October 1947, and the<br />
combination of deteriorating political circumstances and a proposal from within the Party itself swung the day and the Cabinet approved the formation of this outfit in January 1948. In the second volume of his Diaries, [[Robert Bruce-Lockhart]], who had been a part of the war-time clandestine propaganda system, records on 4 February 1948 that he dined with Christopher Warner who had just become the Assistant Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office in charge of 'our Information Services'. Warner offered a new version of the origins of IRD, telling Lockhart that '''As a result of a paper<br />
put up by the Imperial Defence College'', F.O. [Foreign Office] have decided to ''renew'' political warfare on a limited scale.' (emphasis added)(66) <br />
<br />
In Foreign Secretary Bevin's presentation to the Cabinet he spoke of Britain as a 'third force', who would 'give a lead in the spiritual, moral and political sphere to all democratic elements in Western Europe'. The line was to be neither Washington nor Moscow, apparently.(67) How seriously Bevin intended this we do not know. But however nicely it was being dressed up, this was pretty clearly part of the developing anti-communist struggle. Mayhew said so in a memo to Bevin. In any case, why would propaganda in favour of social democracy have to be hidden?(68) <br />
<br />
IRD was in a kind of management limbo between MI6, who supplied it with some of its information and tasks, and the Foreign Office, whose budget concealed it. IRD was, very clearly, simply the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) reborn - another example of the ability of intelligence agencies, once established, to survive the vagaries of their nominal masters in the political system. <br />
<br />
IRD was a triple layer. On the surface was its formal cover within the Foreign Office as an information and research department. Beneath that was IRD's role as a propaganda organisation, dispensing white (true) and grey (half true) propaganda in briefings to journalists and politicians. But beneath that was the third layer, the 'black' or psychological warfare (psywar) tier. This third tier is hinted at in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office''s recently published<br />
history of IRD's origins . On p. 7 it notes that in September 1948 - i.e. almost immediately - 'part of the costs of the unit [were] transferred to the secret vote......the move would.....avoid the unwelcome scrutiny of operations which might require covert or semi-covert means of execution.'(69) <br />
<br />
There is little evidence of Bevin's 'third force' notions in IRD's work once the politicians' backs were turned and they had moved on to another item on the agenda. The minutes of a 1950 meeting between IRD officials and their U.S. counterparts show no evidence at all such concepts. Christopher Warner, one of the 'fathers' of IRD, talks exclusively of anti-communist activities.(70) <br />
<br />
IRD eventually had representatives in all British Embassies abroad. In the recollection of a former MI6 officer of the period, IRD was involved in 'some of the more dubious intelligence operations which characterised the early years of the cold war.'(71) Former Ambassador Hilary King was told by a former SIS officer who had worked in Germany after the war trying to estimate Soviet bloc tank strength, that IRD circulated a paper on the subject over-estimating that strength by a factor of 40.(72) When the SIS officer complained about the inaccuracy of the estimate he was told by an IRD official 'what does it matter old boy as long as the Labour government [i.e. of Attlee] push<br />
through rearmament.' At home, in its second level role, IRD wrote papers and briefing notes, and planted stories in the media. Mayhew remembers that 'at home, our service was offered to and accepted by, large numbers of selected MP's, journalists, trade union leaders, and others, and was often used by BBC's External Services. We also developed close links with a syndication agency and various publishers.'(73) The 1950 minutes of the IRD-US talks include Ralph Murray's comment that 'Trade Union organisations and various groups are used to place articles under the by-line of well known writers.'(74) Among individuals who received IRD material were Percy Cudlipp of the Co-operative Movement, Herbert Tracey, pub-licity director of the TUC and the Labour Party, and Denis Healey, then the Party's International Secretary.(75) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The Freedom and Democracy Trust==<br />
Part of this anti-communist programme was the creation of 'an influential group, including several members of the [TUC] General Council, which was determined to root out the communists.'(76) Among the group were George Chester (General Secretary of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), George Gibson (former TUC chair), Lincoln Evans (General Secretary<br />
of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation [ISTC]) Andrew Naesmith (General Secretary of the Amalgamated Weavers' Association), Alf Roberts (General Secretary of the National Association of Card, Blowing and Ring Room Operatives, later on the Board of the Bank of England), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council representative; General Secretary in 1939 of National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), John Brown (ISTC) and Tom O'Brien (Kine Employees).(77) In<br />
April 1948 this group became the [[Freedom and Democracy Trust]], and began publishing a periodical called [[Freedom First]]. with the help of IRD.(78) <br />
<br />
Unfortunately for all concerned, mixing with the founders of the Trust was an American businessman<br />
called Sydney Stanley, and the whole enterprise was 'blown' when Stanley became the centrepiece of the infamous Lansky Tribunal hearings into civil service corruption during the winter of 1948. Not only did Stanley have many pre-war contacts with the U.S unions, he adopted the robust American attitude to officialdom: bribe it when you have to. But he got caught. <br />
<br />
<br />
== Notes ==<br />
<br />
<br />
44.Finer p. 94.<br />
<br />
45.See H.H. Wilson for an account of the Mr Cube campaign. Aims Council personnel is from Kisch p. 28.<br />
<br />
46.See Crofts, chapter 14 for these examples.<br />
<br />
47.See ibid. pp. 99-109, especially p. 106 where the League's funding by the Road Haulage Association, then distantly threatened with nationalisation, is discussed. Best account is Hinton's. Dorothy Crisp is the historical figure who most resembles Margaret<br />
Thatcher.<br />
<br />
48.H.H. Wilson p. 228.<br />
<br />
49.Crofts p. 216. For more details of alleged activities, see also the pamphlet The FBI, (Federation of British Industry) Labour Research Department, 1949.<br />
<br />
50.H.H. Wilson pp. 229 and 238. Kisch p. 37 claims that by the late 1950s Aims 'controlled no less than twenty-six monthly, weekly and quarterly publications [and] edited and produced forty-five house magazines for the Tate and Lyle organisation, the Express Dairy and other organisations as well as the house magazines of most of the leading members of the 4,000 or so companies who constituted its chief supporters'.<br />
<br />
51.Labour Research, July 1952. As late as 1981 it had 130 full-time employees. See the Daily Telegraph, 26 January 1981.<br />
<br />
52.Politics in Industrial Society, Andre Deutsch, 1979.<br />
<br />
53.Ibid. pp. 131/2.<br />
<br />
54.Ibid.<br />
<br />
55.See, for example, McIvor's essays.<br />
<br />
56.Echoed - intentionally? - twenty years later by the state's IRD.<br />
57. McIvor 'A Crusade...' p. 641.<br />
<br />
58.Ibid p. 646.<br />
<br />
59.Middlemas pp. 153/4.<br />
<br />
60.Ibid p. 354.<br />
<br />
61.See 'The Party, Publicity and the Media' by Richard Cockett in Seldon and Ball (eds.), especially pp. 550-553.<br />
<br />
62.Cockett pp. 9-12.<br />
<br />
63.Mayhew p.107 where he cites the memo he wrote in late 1947 to Bevin. Philip M. Taylor in his 'The Projection of Britain Abroad, 1945-51', writes that 'The IRD was formed at the Foreign Office as a direct response to increasingly hostile Soviet propaganda in the wake of the communist coup in Prague, the escalating blockade of West Berlin and mounting pressure on Finland.' Taylor in Michael Dockrill and John W. Young (eds.) 1989.<br />
<br />
64.See, for example, Ray Merrick; and, more recently, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's own publication, IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office Research Department 1946-48, (History Notes, August 1995).<br />
<br />
65.Ibid. p. 458 This is before the Cominform rejection of the Marshall Plan, for example, over a<br />
year away in 1947; before even the March arrest of Dr Allan Nunn May and the revelation of the<br />
Canadian-based Soviet spy ring; and before Churchill's American speech in which he first used the term 'Iron Curtain'.<br />
<br />
66.Kenneth Young (ed.) p. 648.<br />
<br />
67.Merrick p. 465.<br />
<br />
68.Best account of IRD's early years is in Lucas and<br />
Morris.<br />
<br />
69.See note 21 above.<br />
<br />
70.Notes on a meeting between Christopher Warner and Edward Barnett, in London, Saturday May 20, 1950, in Foreign Relations of the United States, Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1977, pp. 1641-6.<br />
<br />
71.Verrier, Looking Glass, p. 52 . Someone might usefully re-examine all the forgeries in the first<br />
phase of the Cold War and what influence - if any - they had on policy-making. Two examples are discussed in Sulzberger pp. 345-7. In 1948, having discovered that something called 'Protocol M', alleging secret Comintern instructions to the West German communists was a forgery, a month late he is offered another one in Italy, 'Plan K', plans for an alleged communist insurgency. He comments that there is 'a network of forgers and falsifiers ...busily peddling allegedly secret documents to embassies, intelli-gence officers, ministries and correspondents'. (p. 346) 'Protocol M' is reproduced in Appendix II of Heilbrunn.<br />
<br />
72.Telephone conversation with author, June 27, 1987.<br />
<br />
73.Mayhew p. 111. There are some details of this in the FCO publication in footnote 64 above.<br />
<br />
74.Foreign Relations op. cit.<br />
<br />
75.Weiler p. 216.<br />
<br />
76.Ibid. p. 217 citing The Times, February 10, 1948.<br />
<br />
77.Weiler op. cit. fn 184, p. 369.<br />
<br />
78.Ibid. fn 189 citing The Times, 2 December 1948. <br />
<br />
<br />
--------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
==Common Cause and IRIS==<br />
The failure of the Freedom and Democracy Trust seems<br />
to have deterred the TUC members from creating another<br />
body so directly linked to the TUC General<br />
Council.(79) Instead, some individual members of the<br />
General Council, who had been involved in the Freedom<br />
and Democracy Trust fiasco, joined a private group<br />
with the same anti-communist aims. This was Common<br />
Cause, whose origins are to be found in the merging of<br />
two quite distinct political strands. <br />
<br />
<br />
==The AEU's 'Club'==<br />
One strand was the clandestine anti-communist (and<br />
anti-socialist) organisation in British trade unions,<br />
of which the best example is to found within the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Within the AEU, <br />
<br />
<br />
'An anti-Communist organisation was established at<br />
meetings of the fifty-two-member national committee,<br />
their ruling body in 1943 and 1944, and was followed a<br />
few years later by a loose national organisation,<br />
working in secret and known as "the side" or the<br />
"antis" which succeeded in removing a good many<br />
communists from office.'(80) <br />
<br />
This was the organisation which later came to be known<br />
as 'the Club' or 'the Group', and 'defined its purpose<br />
in terms of preventing a Communist takeover of the<br />
union'.(81) <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the mid 1950s ..... the Right-wing members of the<br />
Executive Council began attending the factional<br />
meeting. In this period also a National Committee<br />
"Club" organiser was discreetly appointed from amongst<br />
the regular delegates to tighten the organisation of<br />
the Right-wing faction(82)....At all National<br />
Committee meetings during the period from 1956 to 1970<br />
the right-wing controlled all places on the Standing<br />
Orders Committee, and J. Ramsden, organiser of the<br />
National Committee "Club" for nine years, was also<br />
Chairman of its Standing Orders Committee for seven of<br />
them. With [President] Carron in the Chair at the<br />
National Committee and the union Secretaryship also<br />
held by a "Club" member for the whole of the period,<br />
procedural control by the Right was overwhelming.'(83)<br />
<br />
<br />
The late Ernie Roberts MP quotes from a report of a<br />
1951 meeting of 'the Club' (infiltrated by a member of<br />
the left in the union), and notes that the principal<br />
figure was Cecil Hallett, then AEU General<br />
Secretary.(84) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause==<br />
This clandestine trade union anti-socialism joined up<br />
with an Anglo-American anti-communist group called<br />
Common Cause. The American group was formed in January<br />
1947 as Common Cause Incorporated, by Mrs Natalie<br />
Wales Latham (nee Paine). Among the great and the good<br />
on its letterhead National Council were Adolph Berle<br />
Jnr, Max Eastman, Sumner Welles and Hodding Carter.<br />
Another well-known member was Clare Booth Luce, wife<br />
of the owner of Time, Henry Luce, and later US<br />
Ambassador to Italy. In his biography of Mrs Luce,<br />
Alden Hatch notes that as early as 1946, before its<br />
official launch, Common Cause had established liaison<br />
with the anti-Soviet group, Russian Solidarists,<br />
better known as NTS, and that John Foster Dulles was<br />
the organisation's 'unofficial adviser'.(85) Hatch<br />
also notes that Mrs Wales Latham became Lady Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton - the only link I am aware of between<br />
the US and UK groups. For when the British Common<br />
Cause was formally launched in 1952, its first joint<br />
chairs were John Brown, ex General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and member of the<br />
TUC General Council and the self-same Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton MP.(86) <br />
<br />
The British Common Cause, however, had been in<br />
existence for some years before its official launch,<br />
originally very much as the vehicle of Dr. C. A.<br />
Smith, one of the more interesting mavericks of the<br />
British Left in the 20th century. Smith met Trotsky in<br />
the 1933, was Chairman of the Independent Labour Party<br />
from 39-41, quit and joined Common Wealth as its<br />
Research Officer in 1941. When some of the Common<br />
Wealth party left to join the Labour Party, Smith<br />
became Chair of Common Wealth. As the nature of the<br />
Stalinist takeover of Eastern Europe became clear in<br />
1947, Smith tried to take Common Wealth with him in<br />
his increasingly anti-Soviet stance. They baulked and<br />
eventually Smith left the party and joined or formed -<br />
which is not clear - Common Cause in Easter 1948.(87) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The British League for European Freedom==<br />
Whatever the British Common Cause amounted to in 1948,<br />
four years before its official launch, it had joined<br />
forces with the British League for European Freedom<br />
(BLEF), the first organisation formed in this country<br />
in direct response to the Soviet Union's takeover in<br />
Eastern Europe. The BLEF had been initiated in 1944 by<br />
a quartet of Tory MP's, including Victor Raikes, a<br />
pre-war member of the Imperial Policy Group.(88)<br />
Despite the dominance of Tory MPs, the BLEF attracted<br />
a trio of Labour MPs: Ivor Thomas (who defected to the<br />
Tories in 1950 after the publication of his book The<br />
Socialist Tragedy); George Dallas, former TUC General<br />
Council member and Labour MP, Chair of the Labour<br />
Party's International Committee during the war; and<br />
Richard Stokes MP. Stokes was a 'socialist' of the<br />
most idiosyncratic kind, having been a member of the<br />
anti-Semitic Right Club before the war.(89) Although<br />
information on these groups in this period is very<br />
thin, it is clear that Common Cause and the BLEF were<br />
very close. In 1950, for example, Common Cause<br />
published a pamphlet, Communism and Democracy, by<br />
Smith, in which he said he was writing as a member of<br />
the BLEF. The two groups shared an office in Elizabeth<br />
Street in London donated by the wealthy Duke of<br />
Westminster.(90) <br />
<br />
The Duchess of Atholl, one of the founders of the<br />
BLEF, notes in her autobiography that the decline in<br />
the BLEF's 'political work' was attributable to the<br />
arrival of Common Cause, and from then on the BLEF<br />
'concentrated its efforts on bringing home to people<br />
the unhappy plight of the many Displaced Persons still<br />
in Germany.'(91) This is something of a euphemism for<br />
the BLEF's role as support group for Eastern European<br />
exile groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of<br />
Nations (ABN) then being run by the Secret<br />
Intelligence Service (SIS). The BLEF produced an<br />
offshoot, the Scottish League for European Freedom,<br />
headed by Victor Raikes' colleague in the Imperial<br />
Policy Group, the Earl of Mansfield. In 1950 the<br />
Scottish League organised a conference in Edinburgh<br />
for Eastern European exiles, many of them Nazi war<br />
criminals and collaborators, who had been recruited by<br />
SIS. They had been moved to the UK during the scramble<br />
at the end of World War 2 by the British and American<br />
governments for good, reliable, anti-Soviet 'assets'.<br />
(92) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause USA==<br />
In the USA the fledgling CIA had sponsored a front<br />
organisation, the National Committee for a Free Europe<br />
(NCFE). NCFE's 'sister organisation' was Common Cause<br />
Inc., which included among its personnel 'many of the<br />
men - Adolf Berle, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Eugene<br />
Lyons, among others - who simultaneously led<br />
CIA-financed groups such as the NCFE and, later, the<br />
American Committee for Liberation from<br />
Bolshevism.'(93) Christopher Simpson notes that it was<br />
Common Cause Inc. which, in 1948, sponsored the NTS<br />
founder on a tour of the United States. (94) Just as<br />
the British League for European Freedom became the<br />
sponsor for the British exile groups in the<br />
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Christopher<br />
Emmet, Chairman of the American Common Cause Inc,<br />
turns up later as head of the American Friends of the<br />
Captive Nations, the domestic support group for the<br />
CIA-sponsored Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN).(95) <br />
<br />
The BLEF's George Dallas was one of those who stayed<br />
close to American interests. He became preoccupied<br />
with the danger of a communist take-over in China, and<br />
formed the Friends of Free China Association, with<br />
himself as chair and the Duchess of Atholl as<br />
president. Dallas eventually attended the 1958<br />
foundation meeting of what became the the World<br />
Anti-Communist League. The one time socialist farm<br />
labourer had come a long way. With him at that meeting<br />
were Marvin Liebman, one of the key members of the US<br />
'China Lobby', the late Yaroslav Stetsko, Ukranian<br />
collaborator with the Germans and head of the ABN, and<br />
Charles Edison of the John Birch Society.(96) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause UK==<br />
The official, 1952-launched Common Cause was<br />
apparently founded by Neil Elles, Peter Crane (on both<br />
of whom, more below) and C.A. Smith. Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton, then a Scottish Tory MP, and John<br />
Brown were joint chairs. Brown had been the Treasurer<br />
of the Freedom and Democracy Trust which had tried to<br />
launch Freedom First five years before. It set up a<br />
national structure with local branches - in 1954 there<br />
were 14 - published a monthly Bulletin, and<br />
distributed many of the standard anti-communist texts<br />
of the time, for example Tufton Beamish's Must Night<br />
Fall?; some, such as the 'Background Books' series,<br />
published and/or subsidised by IRD; and leaflets from<br />
the CIA labour front in Europe, the International<br />
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).(97) <br />
<br />
In 1955 Common Cause's 'Advisory Council' included: <br />
<br />
* Tom O'Brien and Florence Hancock, both past TUC<br />
presidents;(98) <br />
* Bob Edwards, General Secretary of the Chemical<br />
Workers Union, 1947-51;(99) <br />
* Cecil Hallett, Assistant General Secretary of the<br />
AEU 1948-57; General Secretary 1957-64;<br />
* Philip Fothergill, ex President of the Liberal<br />
Party;<br />
* Admiral Lord Cunningham;(100) <br />
* a coterie of other retired senior military, the<br />
Duchess of Atholl and Lord Ammon. <br />
<br />
Such 'advisory bodies' may mean very little: this<br />
might just be a notepaper job. Nonetheless, some of<br />
the 'advisory body' were people with rather<br />
specialised interests. For example, at one point the<br />
name of General Leslie Hollis appeared on it. Hollis<br />
had been the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff<br />
committee which 'considered, with Sir Stewart Menzies,<br />
the head of MI6, and Warner [of IRD] and William<br />
Hayter of the Foreign Office, what form of<br />
organisation was required to establish a satisfactory<br />
link between the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office on<br />
matters connected with the day-to-day conduct of<br />
anti-Communist propaganda overseas.'(101) <br />
<br />
In the Autumn of 1955 the Common Cause Bulletin<br />
reported that there had been moves at the Labour Party<br />
conference that year to get it proscribed - but the<br />
motion to that effect 'was among the many crowded out<br />
from discussion'.(102) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Labour Party's intelligence-gathering<br />
Common Cause was one of the sources of information<br />
used by the Labour Party in its anti-communist<br />
activities in the 1950s. While no central unit was<br />
ever formally established 'for collecting information<br />
or monitoring the activities of communist-inspired or<br />
pro-Soviet groups', in practice the National Agent's<br />
Department at Labour headquarters, Transport House,<br />
did the job, using as sources the publications of<br />
proscribed organisations, regional organisers'<br />
reports, 'Foreign Office' material - i.e. IRD - and<br />
Common Cause.(103) The National Agent's Department<br />
[NAD] had 'lay responsibility for compiling the<br />
[proscription] list'. Shaw notes that in 1953 the<br />
proscription list was expanded by the addition of<br />
eighteen fresh groups. <br />
<br />
<br />
'What happened was rather unusual. Without consulting<br />
the NAD the International Department had submitted a<br />
report to the Overseas Subcommittee on "peace" and<br />
"friendship" societies. In response the Subcommittee<br />
recommended that they all be proscribed. NAD officials<br />
were never told the source of the International<br />
Department's information though they assumed it to be<br />
the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special<br />
Branch.'(104) <br />
<br />
A glimpse of the content of the NAD's<br />
intelligence-gathering has been provided by the late<br />
Ian Mikardo MP, who saw 'dossiers' in the possession<br />
of National Agent Sarah Barker At a meeting of a<br />
subcommittee of the NEC in 1955, Sara Barker objected<br />
to Konni Zilliacus and Ernie Roberts as prospective<br />
Parliamentary candidates. When Barker began quoting<br />
derogatory comments from files she had in her<br />
possession, Mikardo demanded to see the files. <br />
<br />
<br />
'They were an eye-opener. No MI5, no Special Branch,<br />
no George Smiley could have compiled more<br />
comprehensive dossiers. Not just press-cuttings,<br />
photographs and document references but also notes by<br />
watchers and eavesdroppers, and all sorts of<br />
tittle-tattle. I'm convinced that there was input into<br />
them from government sources and from at least a<br />
couple of Labour Attaches at the United States embassy<br />
who were close to some of our trade union leaders,<br />
notably Sam Watson.'(105) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause splits - IRIS is formed==<br />
The pretty unstable-looking mixture of admirals,<br />
generals and trade union leaders that was Common<br />
Cause, disintegrated in 1956. C.A.Smith resigned along<br />
with Advisory Council members Fothergill, Edwards,<br />
Ammon, Professor Arthur Newell and Sydney Walton.(106)<br />
This group complained that the organisation had become<br />
'reactionary' and that the promised democratic<br />
structure had never materialised. In August 1956<br />
Common Cause Ltd was registered, owned and controlled<br />
by the 'reactionary' faction. <br />
<br />
The original directors of Common Cause Ltd were: <br />
<br />
* the new chair, Peter Crane, the director of a number<br />
of British subsidiaries of American companies,<br />
including Collins Radio of England, whose American<br />
headquarters had connections with the CIA.(107) <br />
* David Pelham James - Conservative MP, and Director<br />
of the Catholic publishing house, Hollis and Carter.<br />
There were a number of Catholics prominent in the<br />
Common Cause network, including the man who ran IRIS<br />
for any years, Andy McKeown. This is discussed below.<br />
* Neil Elles, barrister and later a member of the<br />
European-wide anti-subversion outfit, INTERDOC.(108) <br />
* Christopher Blackett - a Scottish landowner and<br />
farmer and, I presume, but cannot prove, a relative of<br />
Frances Blackett, the original secretary of the<br />
British League for European Freedom, discussed<br />
above.(109) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS<br />
More or less in parallel with the formation of Common<br />
Cause Ltd., an industrial wing, Industrial Research<br />
and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and<br />
set up in the headquarters of the National Union of<br />
Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed<br />
three directors: <br />
<br />
* Jack Tanner, the recently retired President of the<br />
AEU;<br />
* William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from<br />
1938-47;<br />
* and Charles Sonnex, the Secretary and Managing<br />
Director, and the link with the parent body Common<br />
Cause.(110) Also it had a manager, James L. Nash.(111)<br />
According to Labour Research (January 1961), Nash left<br />
to join the CIA labour front, the ICFTU. <br />
<br />
In an interview with Richard Fletcher in 1979, C. A.<br />
Smith, attributed the formation of IRIS to Common<br />
Cause's discovery of just how careful they had to be<br />
about interfering in union affairs.(112) Another<br />
proximate cause for the formation of IRIS is suggested<br />
by the comment from the Common Cause Bulletin of<br />
January 1956 (pp. 4/5) that 'only a near-miracle can<br />
prevent the Executive of the AEU from passing under<br />
communist control during 1956.....already there are<br />
clear signs of an all-out Communist effort to put Reg<br />
Birch in this top trade union job'. <br />
<br />
However, another interpretation of the Common Cause<br />
split and the formation of IRIS is possible. In April<br />
1955 SIS (MI6) were forced to acknowledge that their<br />
networks of 'agents' inside the Soviet Union had all<br />
been penetrated. Worse, the Soviets had been running a<br />
deception operation with uncomfortable parallels with<br />
the 'Trust' deception in the 1920s in which the Soviet<br />
intelligence service created and ran a fake resistance<br />
group to which the British government gave a lot of<br />
money.(113) SIS had been using agents from Bandera's<br />
OUN in Ukraine and from NTS.(114) Some time later that<br />
year, SIS gave up all its emigre groups and in<br />
February 1956 SIS handed over control of NTS to the<br />
CIA.(115) What follows is what I surmise happened but<br />
for which I have no evidence. Having taken control of<br />
the British networks, new people were put in to run<br />
things. The NTS support group in the United States was<br />
Common Cause Inc. - with its British counterpart. In<br />
London, the limited company Common Cause was formed<br />
and all the trappings of members and branches were<br />
dumped; a CIA officer or agent, under cover, the<br />
cut-out to the Agency, was installed. (If this sounds<br />
banal, it has to be remembered that in 1956 none of<br />
this had ever been made public and there was no reason<br />
for them to be anything but banal.) The American<br />
assessment of the group's activities was that its most<br />
important work had been, and should continue to be, in<br />
the British trade union movement. The previous year's<br />
attempt to have Common Cause put on the Labour Party's<br />
proscription list was noted and a spin-off, trade<br />
union subsidiary, was formed. Common Cause would fund<br />
it - and act as another layer of insulation between it<br />
and the Agency. <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS activities to 1963<br />
IRIS published a newsletter and a variety of<br />
pamphlets. They formed 'cells' - their word - to<br />
combat communists in the trade unions. How many cells,<br />
we do not know; nor in how many unions other than the<br />
AEU. They intervened in union elections. A member of<br />
ASSET, (which became ASTMS and is currently a part of<br />
MSF) sued IRIS and won in 1958 after IRIS News called<br />
him a communist. In the report of the TUC annual<br />
conference in 1960, delegates describe IRIS personnel<br />
intervening in the Association of Engineering and<br />
Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD) and the Association of<br />
Supervisory Staff and Technicians (ASSET). The<br />
delegate of the latter describes IRIS News publishing<br />
the allegation that a candidate in a union election<br />
was a communist. Labour Research alleged an IRIS role<br />
in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Foundry<br />
Workers (as well as AESD and ASSET).(116) Reporting<br />
these events, Labour Research commented on IRIS News<br />
that 'the main feature in the paper however is and<br />
always has been news and advice about union elections.<br />
In most cases the paper reports that certain<br />
candidates are "receiving communist support" '. It<br />
seems reasonably certain - though unproven - the IRIS<br />
was receiving some of its information from IRD. <br />
<br />
In putting out information - its monthly magazine and<br />
pamphlets - and telling its readers who to vote for<br />
and not vote for in union elections, IRIS behaved as<br />
an exact mirror image of the groups on the left: start<br />
a paper and put out a 'line'. The late Ernie Roberts<br />
MP, for many years the only left-winger in the senior<br />
ranks of the AEU - the union from whence came two of<br />
the IRIS directors in 1956 - describes how the left in<br />
the union and IRIS/and 'the Club' spent their time<br />
infiltrating and reporting on each other's<br />
meetings.(117) <br />
<br />
In February 1966 the left-wing magazine Voice of the<br />
Unions, part of the opposition to IRIS within the AEU,<br />
asked where the IRIS money was coming from and<br />
commented, 'At one time we are told IRIS employed an<br />
office staff of six to ten.' Almost thirty years later<br />
we learned that some of the money had come from the<br />
British government after Lord Shawcross had contacted<br />
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and asked for funding<br />
for IRIS.(118) <br />
<br />
Shawcross had approached Macmillan at the right time,<br />
for 'Supermac' had become infected with the fear of<br />
the 'communist threat'. The Radcliffe Tribunal had<br />
reported in 1962, devoting a whole section to the<br />
Civil Service staff associations and trade unions,<br />
expressing concern at the number of communists and<br />
communist sympathisers holding positions in the<br />
unions;(119) and his administration was being<br />
afflicted by the espionage scandals of George Blake<br />
and Vassell - and the Profumo Affair which Macmillan<br />
apparently believed was part of a communist conspiracy<br />
the bring him down.(120) <br />
<br />
<br />
Catholic Action?<br />
There is a distinct Catholic tinge to Common Cause and<br />
IRIS. Hollis and Carter, the company which published<br />
the Common Cause Bulletin, was a Catholic publishing<br />
house. Catholics among the leading figures in Common<br />
Cause included chairs David Pelham James(121) and<br />
Peter Crane, Brigadier George Taylor, a director of<br />
Common Cause circa 1958,(122) and Sir Tom O'Brien.<br />
Catholics among the AEU/IRIS network include AEU<br />
President Bill Carron and Jim Conway, IRIS's Cecil<br />
Hallett, and the man who ran IRIS for nearly twenty<br />
years, Andy McKeown.(123) So was there, as some on the<br />
British Left believed,(124) a national Catholic Action<br />
organisation operating in Britain, as it had in other<br />
countries, such as Australia? Joan Keating<br />
investigated this belief in the course of her doctoral<br />
thesis, and though she found quite a thriving<br />
Association of Catholic Trade unionists - the Catholic<br />
Worker was selling 25,000 copies in 1956 - she found<br />
no evidence at all of any national, co-ordinated<br />
organisation.(125) <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
79. Though there is a hint that such activities may<br />
have been continued abroad. In Coleman's book on the<br />
Congress for Cultural Freedom (discussed below) there<br />
is a reference to an Indian anti-communist politician,<br />
Minoo Misani, who in the early post-war years, founded<br />
the Democratic Research Service and published a<br />
magazine called..... Freedom First. Coleman p. 150.<br />
80. Wigham, p. 128<br />
81. Minkin p. 180<br />
82. Ibid.<br />
83. Ibid.<br />
84. Roberts pp. 124/5<br />
85. Hatch, p. 187<br />
86. The Times 25 February, 1952<br />
87. Details on Smith from J.C. Banks, Editor of the<br />
Common Wealth Journal. In the obituary of Smith in the<br />
The Libertarian, the Common Wealth journal, no. 25,<br />
Summer 1985, Smith is said to have formed Common<br />
Cause. I believe this to be mistaken.<br />
88. The Imperial Policy Group was largely the work of<br />
Kenneth de Courcy. De Courcy edited and published the<br />
Review of World Affairs during the Second World War.<br />
The IPG and de Courcy in particular were much disliked<br />
by the Soviet government of the time. Since then de<br />
Courcy has published the newsletters Intelligence<br />
Digest and Special Office Brief. De Courcy had some<br />
influence on the right of the Tory Party into the<br />
1960s. See index references in Highams on De Courcy.<br />
89. This information from John Hope who has had access<br />
to the Right Club's membership list. It is possible<br />
Stokes had joined for reasons other than agreement<br />
with the Club's aims.<br />
90. Duchess of Atholl p. 252<br />
91. Ibid.<br />
92. Loftus p. 204<br />
93. Simpson p. 222<br />
94. Ibid p. 223<br />
95. Ibid. p. 222. 'Christopher Emmet is a classic<br />
example of those who ran the British Intelligence<br />
fronts before and during World War II and who, having<br />
proven themselves faithful and competent, went on to<br />
run the CIA/MI6 fronts of the Cold War.' Mahl, thesis,<br />
p. 198.<br />
96. Details of the WACL meeting is in Charles<br />
Goldman's 'World Anti-Communist League', adapted from<br />
Under Dackke, ed. Frik Krensen and Petter Sommerfelt<br />
(Demos, Copenhagen, 1978). I am unsure of the source<br />
of this Goldman article but it appears to be an early<br />
edition of Counterspy. Dallas' career, with some of<br />
the later associations glossed over, is described by<br />
his son in the Dictionary of Labour Biography eds.<br />
Saville and Bellamy, vol. 4 1977.<br />
97. On ICFTU and the CIA see the comments of former<br />
CIA officers Joseph Smith (p. 138) and Philip Agee<br />
(CIA Diary) (p. 611). For a more general discussion<br />
see Winslow Peck. The rival but much less significant<br />
World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was, of<br />
course, funded and run by the Soviet Union.<br />
98. Hancock had been Chief Woman Officer of the TUC.<br />
99. Edwards had been chair of the ILP. During 1948 the<br />
Chemical Workers Union had been involved in protracted<br />
proceedings over alleged forged ballot papers by<br />
communists.<br />
100. In 1945, as Chief of the Defence Staff he had<br />
threatened Attlee with resignation over proposed<br />
defence cuts.<br />
101. Scott Lucas and Morris p. 101.<br />
102. For which, perhaps, read 'our friends fixed the<br />
agenda'.<br />
103. Shaw p. 58<br />
104. Ibid. pp. 58 and 9 Shaw notes in footnote 44 p.<br />
314 that 'at least one NAD official was approached by<br />
a member of the Special Branch [and brother of a<br />
future International Secretary] offering<br />
"assistance".'<br />
105. Mikardo p. 131.<br />
106. The Times, April 6, 1957<br />
107. Collins Radio was first linked with CIA<br />
operations by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished<br />
manuscript, The Dallas Conspiracy, ch. 11 p. 3. More<br />
recently, 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back<br />
Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, lists a number of<br />
links between the company and the CIA-controlled<br />
anti-Castro milieu of the early 1960s<br />
108. On INTERDOC see Crozier pp. 49 and 81.<br />
109. Frances Blackett in Duchess of Atholl, p. 250.<br />
110. The Times, 6 April 1957<br />
111. IRIS News, vol. 1, no 1, 1956. According to<br />
Anthony Carew, Nash was also a member of the AEU.<br />
112. Fletcher's notes of the conversation say that<br />
that 'wealthy people got at [Common Cause executive<br />
member Charles] Sonnex (without telling CAS) asked him<br />
to lead IRIS. S.[onnex] remained on CC exec. Rich<br />
people attached more importance to IRIS.'<br />
113. See Tom Bower's Red Web on the SIS post-war<br />
operations and chapter 8, in particular, on the<br />
dawning realisation that they had been taken for a<br />
ride - again. On 'the Trust' see Andrew, Secret<br />
Service pp. 445-8<br />
114. Ibid p. 165<br />
115. Yakovlev p. 105. Soviet publications in this<br />
field are not famously accurate, but this account has<br />
since been confirmed by Tom Bower's biography of SIS<br />
chief Dick White The Perfect English Spy, pp. 206 and<br />
7. Yakovlev quotes from what purports to be an SIS<br />
document, 'A Proposed Statement to the NTS<br />
Leadership', which, presuming it to be genuine, may<br />
have been given to the Soviets by Kim Philby or George<br />
Blake. Bower quotes a brief section from the same<br />
document.<br />
116. Labour Research, January 1961, p. 10<br />
117. See Roberts pp. 101, 122-4, 131 157, 203.<br />
The left-wing Engineering Voice, Christmas 1966,<br />
reported having received 'an anonymous and undated<br />
document purporting to describe the proceedings of a<br />
secret meeting recently convened by supporters of the<br />
present leadership of the AEU.' The document referred<br />
to a 'National Group meeting' and said attending it<br />
had been fourteen full-time officers of the AEU.<br />
118. Guardian, 2 January 1995, based on papers<br />
released under the 30 year rule. See also 'Anti-red<br />
and alive' in New Statesman, 10 February 1995.<br />
119. Pincher, Inside Story p. 335<br />
120. On Macmillan's paranoia about the 'communist<br />
conspiracy' see Bower, Perfect English Spy pp. 308-9.<br />
121. A director of Hollis and Carter<br />
122. Keating, PhD thesis, p. 350<br />
123. Ferris, p. 85. Engineering Voice, March 1969,<br />
reported a two-day conference of the Association of<br />
Catholic Trade Unionists, at which were H.E. Matthews,<br />
a director of Cable and Wireless and some time<br />
director of IRIS, and Andy McKeown of IRIS. Keating<br />
quotes McKeown as suggesting that originally IRIS was<br />
anti-Catholic because 'Freemasonry' had a 'strong<br />
hold' on the organisation, and claiming that the man<br />
who initially ran IRIS, Charles Sonnex, was a Mason!<br />
124. One of those who believes there was a national<br />
Catholic Action is former President of the Trades<br />
Union Congress, Clive Jenkins. Conversation with the<br />
author, 1995.<br />
125. Keating thesis, p. 335. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
Part 2 <br />
<br />
Atlantic Crossings<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism and the CIA<br />
As well as the programmes to inculcate American<br />
notions of free market economics and union-management<br />
relations - and good feelings about America - there<br />
were operations aimed at the wider public and the<br />
Labour Party. Large numbers of Labour MPs and trade<br />
unionists were paid to visit the United States. Among<br />
the Gaitskellite grouping in the Parliamentary party,<br />
Gaitskell, George Brown, Anthony Crosland and Douglas<br />
Jay all made visits.(1) Under the umbrella of just one<br />
minor aspect of the Marshall Plan, the Anglo-American<br />
Council on Productivity, 900 people from Britain -<br />
management and unions - went on trips to the United<br />
States to see the equivalent of 'Potemkin<br />
villages'.(2) Hundreds of trade unions officers went<br />
on paid visits to the US in the fifties under the<br />
auspices of the European Productivity Agency and<br />
groups of British union leaders were sent on three<br />
month trade union programme run twice yearly by the<br />
Harvard Business School.(3) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom<br />
There was a European-wide - and world-wide - programme<br />
to boost the social democratic wings of socialist<br />
parties and movements. <br />
<br />
<br />
'At Thomas Braden's suggestion and with the support of<br />
Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner [then head of the Office<br />
of Policy Coordination], the CIA began its covert<br />
support of the non-Communist political left around the<br />
world - trade unions, political parties and<br />
international organisations of students and<br />
journalists.'(4) <br />
<br />
The biggest of these programs that we are aware of was<br />
the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF from here on),<br />
which began in 1950 with a large conference in the US<br />
zone in Berlin, a demonstration of the strength of<br />
anti-Soviet feeling among some of the West's<br />
intellectuals and a response to the Soviet 'Peace<br />
offensive' then underway.(5) At the time funds for<br />
these gatherings were said to have come from the<br />
American Federation of Labour, via Jay Lovestone - a<br />
story offered up again recently by CCF apologist Peter<br />
Coleman in his The Liberal Conspiracy. In fact they<br />
came from the CIA, something alleged by the Soviet<br />
bloc's media at the time but not believed.(6) The one<br />
thing the Congress for Cultural Freedom's paymasters<br />
were not interested in was cultural freedom. Peter<br />
Coleman does his best. Of the first big 1950 jamboree<br />
he writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
'almost all the participants were liberals or social<br />
democrats, critical of capitalism and opposed to<br />
colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, racism and<br />
dictatorship'. <br />
<br />
If the British delegation is anything to go by, this<br />
is not true. Of the four British delegates named by<br />
Coleman, one was Christopher Hollis, a right-wing<br />
Catholic and some time Tory MP, (7) and another was<br />
Julian Amery, one of the Tory Party's leading<br />
imperialists! In any case 'cultural freedom' was a<br />
euphemism for 'American capitalism'. <br />
<br />
<br />
Encounter<br />
The CCF began publishing journals - in Britain,<br />
Encounter, which first appeared in 1953. Encounter<br />
became a major outlet for the 'revisionist' - i.e.<br />
anti-socialist, anti-nationalist - thinking of the<br />
younger intellectuals around Labour leader Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, such as Peter Jay, Patrick Gordon-Walker,<br />
Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, all of whom were in<br />
Harold Wilson's first cabinet in 1964. The 1955 CCF<br />
conference in Milan, 'The Future of Freedom', was<br />
attended by Crosland, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey,<br />
Roy Jenkins and W. Arthur Lewis MP.(8) Anthony<br />
Crosland was a member of the International Council of<br />
the CCF: his role, said the CIA officer who was<br />
running CCF, was 'encouraging sympathetic people' to<br />
attend CCF conferences.(9) There is no evidence that<br />
Crosland was witting of the CIA connection. (And none<br />
that he was wasn't, either.) Peter Coleman(10) lists<br />
Gaitskell, Jenkins, Crosland, Rita Hinden, Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker, John Strachey, Dennis Healey and<br />
Roderick Macfarquhar as Labour writers published in<br />
Encounter. In 1960 editor Melvin Lasky wrote to fellow<br />
CCF officer, John Hunt, referring to 'an enormous<br />
friendly feeling for Encounter' in the centre and<br />
right wing of the Labour Party.(11) <br />
<br />
The revisionist wing of the Labour Party also had<br />
Forward, the less glamorous (and poorer) Labour<br />
weekly, set up to combat the influence of Tribune.<br />
Money for Forward came from Alan Sainsbury, Chairman<br />
of the retailers Sainsbury (whose son was to fund the<br />
Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s), Henry<br />
Walston, the land-owner, and the restaurateur, Charles<br />
Forte.(12) There was also the $3000 'expenses' paid<br />
made to Hugh Gaitskell for a talk to the Jewish Labour<br />
Committee in the USA.(13) <br />
<br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary<br />
As well as Encounter and Forward there was the monthly<br />
Socialist Commentary as a vehicle for the<br />
anti-socialists in the Labour Party. Socialist<br />
Commentary began life as a journal of an obscure<br />
revisionist group of German refugees but by the early<br />
1950s it had been absorbed by the revisionist wing of<br />
the Labour Party. In 1953 a 'Friends of Socialist<br />
Commentary' group was set up with Gaitskell as<br />
Treasurer.(14) 'Socialist Commentary and the Socialist<br />
Union were plugged in direct to the USA's Marshall<br />
Plan operation in Britain by virtue of the fact that<br />
William Gausmann, Labour Information Officer in the<br />
London mission, was a member of the journal's<br />
editorial board.'(15) <br />
<br />
The dominant figure in Socialist Commentary was its<br />
editor for 20 years, Rita Hinden, who had been<br />
co-founder of the Fabian Colonial Bureau in 1940. The<br />
Bureau, and Hinden in particular, became an important<br />
influence on the thinking of the Labour Party - and,<br />
to some extent of the British state - on post-war<br />
management of the empire.(16) Hinden was also a<br />
participant in CCF functions, wrote for Encounter, and<br />
was described by the CIA officer in charge of CCF,<br />
Michael Josselson, as 'a good friend of ours', on<br />
whose advice the CIA 'relied heavily ...for our<br />
African operations.'(17) On her death Denis Healey,<br />
who had written widely for Socialist Commentary's<br />
American counterpart, New Leader, said that 'Only Sol<br />
Levitas of the American New Leader had a comparable<br />
capacity for exercising a wide political influence<br />
with negligible material resources.' But as Richard<br />
Fletcher commented, 'He [Healey] obviously hadn't paid<br />
a visit to Companies House whose register shows that<br />
in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing<br />
on a capital reserve of over �75.000.'(18) (Healey was<br />
apparently also unaware that Sol Levitas was also<br />
taking the CIA shilling.) <br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary has got to be CIA but there is<br />
not a shred of direct evidence that I am aware of. <br />
<br />
<br />
The social democratic network<br />
By the mid 1950s there was a palpable social<br />
democratic network operating in and around the Labour<br />
Party in Britain and reaching out into the British and<br />
American states, both overt and covert. The career of<br />
Saul Rose in this period illustrates this. After<br />
wartime service in Army Intelligence, Rose was a<br />
lecturer at Aberdeen University, before becoming the<br />
Labour Party's International Secretary for three<br />
years. He then moved to the then recently established<br />
St Antony's College at Oxford, one of two British<br />
institutions which sponsored Congress of Cultural<br />
Freedom seminars in the UK. The other was Ditchley<br />
Manor, Oxford. Both were outposts of the Foreign<br />
Office/MI6 network.(19) (Former MP Dick Taverne,<br />
mentioned recently that as as young man he went to a<br />
Young Fabian conference at the other major Foreign<br />
Office country retreat, Wilton Park....(20)) <br />
<br />
The same elements are visible in the contributors to<br />
the short-lived Fabian International Review, begun in<br />
1953. In its three years its contributors included two<br />
academics from St Antony's, Gausmann, the Labour<br />
Information Officer at the US embassy in London,<br />
Douglas Jay, William Rodgers, and Mary Benson of the<br />
Africa Bureau.(21) <br />
<br />
It is easy at this distance to be indignant about<br />
Labour politicians hobnobbing with the CIA. But in<br />
1955, say, when Saul Rose left his job as Labour's<br />
International Secretary, the media simply did not<br />
discuss the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services. There were Americans with money scattered<br />
about the higher reaches of the Labour movement in<br />
Britain; but Americans with money had been scattered<br />
about Britain since the war years, they had been<br />
Britain's allies only a few years before, they were<br />
anti-Stalinist - and some of them, the labour officers<br />
in one guise or another, were originally from the US<br />
labour movement.(22) I think it likely that in the<br />
1950s the Labour revisionists, the Hindens and<br />
Croslands, believed they were taking part in a<br />
'liberal conspiracy'(23) against the Soviet Union,<br />
with progressive, democratic forces - people they<br />
perceived to be like themselves. But from the CIA's<br />
point of view, they were being run in one of the most<br />
successful psy-war operations of the Cold War. This<br />
operation had as one of its aims the struggle against<br />
Stalinism; but the Americans sponsored and funded the<br />
European social democrats not because they were social<br />
democrats, but because social democracy was the best<br />
ideological vehicle for the major aim of the<br />
programme: to ensure that the governments of Europe<br />
continued to allow American capital into their<br />
economies with the minimum of restrictions. This aim<br />
the revisionists in the Labour Party chose not to look<br />
at. As the history of US imperialism since the war<br />
shows, the US is basically uninterested in the<br />
ideology of host governments, and has supported<br />
everything from social democrats to the most feral,<br />
military dictatorships in South and Central America.<br />
But its other aims went largely unrecognised. (This,<br />
perhaps, is a tribute to the skill of the US personnel<br />
running the operations.) Looking at the networking of<br />
the social democrats in the these post-war years, the<br />
intimacy between US labour attache, Joe Godson, and<br />
Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, which once looked so<br />
extraordinary, now looks less some awful aberration -<br />
and triumph for Godson - than business as usual. <br />
<br />
<br />
The end-of-ideology ideology<br />
The strategically important thing for the United<br />
States about the revisionist's version of socialism<br />
was its central conclusion that ownership of economic<br />
assets was no longer of paramount importance. (In the<br />
USA, sociologist Daniel Bell was arguing the same<br />
thesis, sponsored by the same people, under the rubric<br />
of 'the end of ideology'.) This was obviously the key<br />
line for US capital which wanted to penetrate the<br />
world's markets and was meeting resistance from people<br />
who called them imperialists. Officially the US was<br />
also opposed to colonialism - especially British and<br />
French; imperialism - especially British;<br />
totalitarianism (except where dictators were the best<br />
allies US business could find) and nationalism -<br />
except Americanism, which was a universal creed of<br />
such perspicacity and moral purity as to be beyond<br />
objection. The one to take seriously among that<br />
quartet is nationalism. In democratic Europe the CIA<br />
chiefly funded those who were not nationalists. To US<br />
capital, socialism was functionally simply a form of<br />
exclusionary, anti-American, economic nationalism:<br />
communism the most extreme of all.(24) The<br />
internationalists in democratic Europe in the<br />
immediate post-war years were, mostly, on the liberal<br />
or centre left; the European right was, mostly,<br />
nationalist. In France De Gaulle opposed US capital.<br />
(And the CIA was to help finance the OAS against him.)<br />
In Britain it was the nationalist Tories and some of<br />
the socialist left who voted against the Marshall Plan<br />
in the House of Commons. The US government only had<br />
one operating criterion where a foreign government was<br />
concerned: is it willing to allow US capital in or<br />
not? It was called anti-communism, but it was also<br />
anti-nationalism. Yes, it was precisely 'Taking the<br />
teeth out of British socialism', as Richard Fletcher<br />
put it in his seminal piece in 1977;(25) but it could<br />
just as accurately have been called 'Taking the teeth<br />
out of British economic nationalism'. <br />
<br />
The US-supported drive by the revisionists in the<br />
Labour Party had its first major set-back with the<br />
rise of CND, climaxing with the famous narrow majority<br />
in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the<br />
party conference in 1960. To the Gaitskellites in the<br />
Labour Party it was little more than another communist<br />
conspiracy. Gaitskell's leadership of the party had<br />
largely been defined by the struggle with the left<br />
(real and imaginary), and he believed the CPGB had<br />
infiltrated the Labour Party, and was manipulating the<br />
apparently Labour Left gathered round the newspaper<br />
Tribune.(26) The Gaitskellites' response to the 1960<br />
resolution had three dimensions: the formation of a<br />
party faction, the Campaign for Democratic Socialism<br />
(CDS); in the unions, the work of IRIS cells and other<br />
anti-communist groups; and the use of the party<br />
machine itself. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS)<br />
While the Gaitskellites dominated the PLP leadership,<br />
and had the support of the major unions, they had<br />
socialist opposition among the party's members.<br />
Gaitskell needed a faction. What became the Campaign<br />
for Democratic Socialism began before the pro-CND<br />
Labour Party conference resolution in February 1960<br />
when William Rodgers, Secretary of the Fabian Society,<br />
a part of the social democratic network in the UK,<br />
organised a letter of support for Gaitskell from<br />
prospective parliamentary candidates. Among the<br />
fifteen who raised their heads above the parapets in<br />
this way were: <br />
<br />
* Maurice Foley, who had been secretary of the British<br />
section of the European Youth Campaign from<br />
1951-59,(27) and later became a Foreign Office<br />
Minister and trustee of the Ariel Foundation; (28) <br />
* Ben Hooberman, a lawyer involved in the ETU<br />
ballot-rigging case;<br />
* Bryan Magee, who subsequently became a Labour MP and<br />
then joined the SDP;<br />
* Dick Taverne, who later stood against the Labour<br />
Party as 'Democratic Labour' and joined the SDP;<br />
* Shirley Williams, one of the 'Gang of Four', who<br />
founded the SDP; <br />
<br />
Shortly after, a steering committee, containing<br />
Crosland, Jenkins and Gordon-Walker, was set up with<br />
Rodgers as chair. The group began working on a<br />
manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell's<br />
defeat in the forthcoming defence debate at the Party<br />
conference. On 24 November 1960, after the narrow<br />
defeat for Gaitskell's line at the conference, this<br />
group announced itself as the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism, with Rodgers as chair.(29) Immediately<br />
after the formation of CDS, after his speech at<br />
Scarborough Gaitskell 'consulted Sarah Barker [the<br />
party's National Agent] who advised him that the<br />
Campaign could have his distant blessing'.(30) <br />
<br />
It set up permanent headquarters, officially 'financed<br />
by contributions from individual members of the Labour<br />
Party'. Ever since the Richard Fletcher article on CDS<br />
et al in 1977 there have been questions about how this<br />
operation was funded. In mid November 1960 - i.e. a<br />
fortnight after the launch - Rodgers 'reported to the<br />
steering committee that many small donations had been<br />
received, together with a large sum from a source who<br />
wished to remain anonymous.' As we saw above, Charles<br />
Forte donated money to the founders of Forward, and in<br />
his autobiography he quotes a letter from Gaitskell,<br />
thanking him for his financial generosity. This is<br />
undated unfortunately, but from the context it is 1961<br />
or thereabouts.(31) <br />
<br />
This donation, whatever it was, enabled CDS to have<br />
'field workers in the constituencies and unions, whom<br />
it supported with travelling expenses, literature and<br />
organisational back-up, and other publications, plus a<br />
regular bulletin campaign, circulated free of charge<br />
to a large mailing list within the movement. And all<br />
this was produced without a single subscription-paying<br />
member.'(32) John Diamond was the CDS fund-raiser.(33)<br />
<br />
<br />
A 1961 letter in CDS Campaign announced support from<br />
45 MPs including Austen Albu (who wrote for IRIS),<br />
Crosland, Diamond (who joined the SDP), Donnelly<br />
(Desmond), who resigned in '68; Roy Jenkins (founder<br />
and leader of the SDP), Roy Mason, Christopher Mayhew<br />
(who joined the Liberals) and Reg Prentice (who joined<br />
the Tories).(34) The following year were added new MPs<br />
William Rodgers (another of the 'Gang of Four') and<br />
Dick Taverne (who defected as a Democratic Labour MP,<br />
later SDP) The Gaitskellites' historian, Stephen<br />
Haseler noted, 'The whole Central Leadership of the<br />
Party in Parliament, with the single exception of<br />
Wilson, were Campaign sympathisers.'(35) In the<br />
party's grassroots their significance is harder to<br />
assess but a 1962 study found that CDS did have some<br />
measurable effect in swinging perhaps as many as 1 in<br />
3 of the Constituency Labour Parties in which they<br />
were active.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
In the unions<br />
Working in some of the unions were clandestine<br />
anti-communist groupings, the best known of which was<br />
the AEU's 'club', and IRIS discussed above.(37) One of<br />
the people bridging the gap between the parliamentary<br />
and trade union wings of the movement was Charles<br />
Pannell, Secretary of the Parliamentary Trade Union<br />
Group of MP's and an AEU-sponsored MP.(38) Pannell<br />
told the American academic Irving Richter, of his<br />
'close relationship' with the General Secretary of the<br />
AEU, Cecil Hallett,(39) and of their combined efforts<br />
to defeat the Left in the industrial and political<br />
wings of the movement, by building IRIS 'cells'.<br />
Pannell told Richter that he, Hallet, and the IRIS<br />
cells working inside the AEU, were crucial in<br />
overturning the AEU's 1960 vote for CND and so<br />
restoring Labour Party's policy to being pro-nuclear,<br />
pro-NATO.(40) Birmingham MP Denis Howells 'devoted<br />
himself full time from the beginning of the Campaign<br />
until his reelection to Parliament and then after that<br />
part time to reversing the votes in the Trade<br />
Unions....[and] played a very important part.'(41) <br />
<br />
After the 1960 Party conference 20 members of the TUC<br />
General Council signed a statement supporting NATO.<br />
Four of them, James Crawford, Harry Douglass, John<br />
Boyd and Sid Greene, were or were to become, officers<br />
(on paper, at any rate) of IRIS: a fifth, Sir Tom<br />
O'Brien, was still on the notepaper of Common Cause.<br />
There were public gestures of support for CDS from<br />
messrs Carron, Williamson and Webber, Ron Smith (Post<br />
Office Workers), Dame Flora Hancock, Anne Goodwin, W.<br />
Tallon and Jim Conway (both AEU), and Joe Godson's<br />
friend, the NUM's Sam Watson.(42) <br />
<br />
<br />
Using the party organisation<br />
A committee 'consisting of the Party Leader, the Chief<br />
Whip, Bill Rodgers, the secretary of the right-wing<br />
ginger group the Campaign for Democratic Socialism,<br />
and other influential figures' was formed and met<br />
regularly 'to secure the selection of right-wing<br />
candidates for winnable constituencies'.(43) Professor<br />
George Jones, who had also been in CDS, commented that<br />
'the relationship between CDS and the regional<br />
organisers of the Labour Party was very<br />
important.'(44) The CDS had the support of at least<br />
half of the Regional Organisers, though how many is in<br />
dispute. Seyd suggests seven out of the party's<br />
twelve. Shaw thinks that Seyd must have got this wrong<br />
because one of the seven was left-winger Ron Hayward,<br />
who denies it.(45) CDS organiser Bill Rodgers said<br />
that the regional organisers <br />
<br />
<br />
'were fairly well disposed, including the youngest of<br />
them who was called Ron Hayward, was very keen to have<br />
CDS making a contribution in the areas in which he was<br />
responsible..... We believed that the party could be<br />
saved from itself and Hugh Gaitskell offered the best<br />
prospect of saving it. Once we had established that<br />
thought in the minds of the regional organisers, they<br />
acquiesced in what we did.'(46) <br />
<br />
<br />
Partnership of the two wings<br />
There are glimpses of the two wings of the labour<br />
movement working together. Cecil Hallett described a<br />
meeting between IRIS and the Trade Union Group of MPs<br />
in 1955 addressed by the CIA's labour man in Europe,<br />
Irving Brown.(47) CDS member Bernard Donoughue<br />
recalled how <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the summer of 1964, the MP for Finsbury died and I<br />
was telephoned by a friend, a left-wing journalist,<br />
and told that I must watch out, that there had been a<br />
meeting of key left-wing people and they had decided<br />
to capture Finsbury. They had a candidate, they had<br />
approached a number of people in the constituency,<br />
they had 27 votes, the candidate was going to be Clive<br />
Jenkins. I contacted one or two friends and the list<br />
of CDS people in Finsbury, including the Post Office<br />
and Telegraph Union people and they organised very<br />
actively. It emerged that the left, despite its<br />
incompetence,(sic) had their candidate and had 27<br />
potential votes. CDS campaigned in the constituency<br />
and we won by 31 to 27, that was the summer of<br />
1964.'(48) <br />
<br />
In the recollection of the candidate concerned, Clive<br />
Jenkins, it was 1963. He was 'approached by a number<br />
of trade unions and ward Labour parties to stand for<br />
selection'. At the TUC at Blackpool he was tipped off<br />
that the General Management Committee of the<br />
Shoreditch and Finsbury constituency had been sent a<br />
document which described him as, among other things,<br />
the 'chief Trotskyist in Great Britain'. This had been<br />
given to journalists by none other than Jim Matthews,<br />
the national industrial officer of the Municipal and<br />
General Workers Union, and an officer of Common Cause.<br />
Jenkins sued, collected damages and costs and later<br />
speculated about a CIA connection: <br />
<br />
<br />
'I was told by reliable friends that the anonymous<br />
letter, which had been mailed to every member of the<br />
selection committee came from a man who was seemingly<br />
a member of the CIA and operating under the cover of a<br />
petty news agency.'(49) <br />
<br />
It is interesting to see Donoughue referring to 'the<br />
Post Office and Telegraph Union people'. I presume he<br />
means the Union of Post Officer Workers, one of the<br />
British unions with which the CIA is known to have<br />
worked in the 1960s. In the 1950s Peter D. Newell was<br />
an active member of the Socialist Party of Great<br />
Britain. He worked as a draughtsman but wanted a<br />
change of career. It was suggested to him that he join<br />
the Post Office Initially not keen on what he saw it<br />
was a downward move, he has recalled how 'quite subtly<br />
(I now realise) it was suggested that once in the PO,<br />
I would soon be able to write forThe Post , the<br />
official fortnightly journal of the UPW [Union of Post<br />
Office Workers] - and be paid for it!'(50) He duly<br />
joined the Post Office, was contacted by Norman Stagg,<br />
the editor of the journal almost immediately, and<br />
began writing an anonymous, anti-communist column for<br />
it under the by-line of 'Bellman'. For his column<br />
Stagg provided source material from the ICFTU, IRIS<br />
and the AFL-CIO. At the time the Union of Post Office<br />
Workers was a member of the trade union international<br />
body Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International.<br />
(PTTI) Like many of the these international trade<br />
union organisations, the PTTI was penetrated - some<br />
would say run - by the CIA.(51) Its president was the<br />
late Joe Beirne of the Communication Workers of<br />
America. Beirne was also founder and<br />
Secretary-Treasurer of American Institute for Free<br />
Labor Development (AIFLD), created and run by the<br />
CIA.(52) As far as it is possible to be sure of<br />
anything in this field without a confession from the<br />
man himself or his case officer, Joe Beirne was a<br />
major asset of the CIA in the American and world<br />
labour movements.(53) <br />
<br />
<br />
Social democratic centralism<br />
What Eric Shaw wittily calls social democratic<br />
centralism, the attempt by the right to police the<br />
entire Labour Party and trade union membership, peaked<br />
in 1962. In March 1961 five MPs, including Michael<br />
Foot, were expelled from the Parliamentary party for<br />
voting against the Tory government's defence<br />
estimates. The Gaitskellites repulsed the<br />
unilateralists at the annual conference that year; and<br />
in the Labour Party its 'personnel committee', the<br />
organisational subcommittee, was dominated by Ray<br />
Gunter MP(54) and George Brown, a 'CIA source', and<br />
serviced by the Party's National Agent's Department,<br />
which received its information from IRD and others.<br />
Then things went wrong. Determined upon a final purge<br />
of the Parliamentary party, George Brown approached<br />
MI5, via the journalist Chapman Pincher, for evidence<br />
of Soviet links to Labour MP's believed to be 'fellow<br />
travellers'. But MI5 declined, apparently because<br />
afraid that to do so would reveal their sources within<br />
the PLP;(55) and then, with the Macmillan government<br />
in what appeared to be terminal decline, Gaitskell<br />
died suddenly and the right in the Parliamentary Party<br />
- and the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services - saw the party leadership slip from the<br />
Gaitskellites' hands as Harold Wilson won the<br />
leadership election - and then the general election of<br />
1964. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
1. There is no detailed examination of this as far as<br />
I know and I am not even sure how many such programmes<br />
were run. Roy Hattersley recently commented that his<br />
first visit to the US was paid for by 'something which<br />
was laughingly called The Young Leaders' Program'. The<br />
Guardian, 27 February 1995. In his memoir, A Bag of<br />
Boiled Sweets (Faber and Faber, 1995) pp. 77-8, the<br />
Conservative MP, Julian Critchley describes how, upon<br />
letting the Tory Party Whips know that he had never<br />
been to the United States, he was immediately fixed up<br />
with a six week freebie courtesy of the US embassy in<br />
London.<br />
2. Carew p. 137<br />
3. Ibid. pp.189/90. The British trade union whose<br />
leadership responded most enthusiastically to these<br />
American overtures was the General and Municipal<br />
Workers' Union (GMWU) and it 'provided from among its<br />
leading officials half the British participants in the<br />
university trade union courses at Harvard and<br />
Columbia...' Ibid. p. 191. GMWU General Secretary, Tom<br />
Williamson, was one of the participants at the first<br />
meeting of the Bilderberg Group in 1954. (Eringer p.<br />
49) Other British participants included Hugh Gaitskell<br />
and Dennis Healey, who discusses the Bilderberg<br />
meetings in his memoir, The Time of My Life.<br />
4. Smith, OSS p. 368.<br />
5. Lasch p. 332 The 1951 CCF conference in Delhi was<br />
explicitly a reply to a 'World Peace Conference'<br />
sponsored by the Soviet Union.<br />
6. Dittberner p. 112. Mr Coleman's objectivity on this<br />
matter can be seen by his description of CIA officer,<br />
Irving Brown, as 'European representative of the AFL',<br />
the cover story even the Americans have abandoned.<br />
Coleman p. 34.<br />
7. Later a member of the editorial board of the<br />
Catholic magazine,The Tablet This is the Hollis family<br />
in Hollis and Carter, the Catholic publishers of the<br />
Common Cause Bulletin.<br />
8. Coleman p. 110 'Finally, Lasky moved Encounter<br />
closer to the Hugh Gaitskell wing of the British<br />
Labour Party.... Encounter became one of the principal<br />
publications in which C.A.R. Crosland developed his<br />
"revisionist" social democratic, Keynesian program'.<br />
Coleman p. 185<br />
9. Hirsch and Fletcher pp. 59 and 60. Labour Party<br />
leader Hugh Gaitskell attended the conferences in in<br />
1955, 57, 58 and 62.<br />
10. p. 73<br />
11. Coleman p. 185. Roy Jenkins, splendidly<br />
insouciant,on Encounter: 'We had all known that it had<br />
been heavily subsidised from American sources, and it<br />
did not seem to me worse that these should turn out to<br />
be a US Government agency than, as I had vaguely<br />
understood, a Cincinnati gin distiller.' Jenkins,<br />
Life, p. 118<br />
12. Francis Williams p. 309<br />
13. '...which helped him underwrite the costs of<br />
Forward.' Carew pp. 129 and 30<br />
14. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 68<br />
15. Carew p. 245<br />
16. The Bureau 'enjoyed a direct and amiable<br />
relationship with the Colonial Office, its advice was<br />
always considered if not always followed.' Pugh p.<br />
222. Another commentator's assessment was that<br />
'Officials at the Colonial Office came to respect her<br />
knowledge, judgement and persistence.' Labour MP and<br />
fellow Bureau member, W. Arthur Lewis, quoted in the<br />
entry on Hinden in the Dictionary of Labour Biography,<br />
vol. 2, Macmillan 1974.<br />
17. She visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored<br />
trip after the Suez crisis. Fletcher in Agee, Dirty<br />
Work p. 195<br />
18. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 67. This �75,000 must be be<br />
'the small capital grant (a modest bequest) on which<br />
it had so far survived' in the account of Desai.<br />
Commenting on the closure of Socialist Commentary in<br />
1978, Desai writes (p. 174) that it 'had always<br />
operated on a shoestring budget which had to be<br />
supplemented by the dedication and persuasive power of<br />
Rita Hinden, its editor for most of its life'. �75,000<br />
was a lot of money in the mid 1970s when Fletcher<br />
found this out. The accounts of Socialist Commentary<br />
were prepared by the accountancy practice of John<br />
Diamond MP, one of the leading Gaitskellites, who<br />
later joined the SDP and is now in the House of Lords.<br />
He was also, for example, the Honorary Treasurer of<br />
the Labour Committee for Europe. See Finer, Appendix<br />
2. In this latter role John Campbell in his biography<br />
of Roy Jenkins, p. 51, states that Diamond was<br />
'charged with raising money that did not come from the<br />
City of London.<br />
19. Coleman p. 260 for the CCF connection. St<br />
Antony's, Richard Deacon wrote in his The British<br />
Connection, was 'an unofficial annex of MI6 in the<br />
fifties.' p. 259<br />
20. Dick Taverne, Institute for Historical Research<br />
(IHR) Witness Statement on CDS, 1990, p. 8<br />
21. Of the Africa Bureau, Anthony Verrier wrote:<br />
'liberal, UK-based....on which [Colonial Secretary]<br />
Macleod relied greatly for detailed background<br />
intelligence on African independence movements. Unlike<br />
some liberal organisations, the Africa Bureau was<br />
never troubled by the attentions of the security<br />
services or the Metropolitan Special Branch.' Verrier,<br />
The Road to Zimbabwe, p. 335. From an old SIS hand<br />
like AV, this is running up a flag and shouting<br />
'spook'.<br />
22. There had been contacts between the British TUC<br />
and the U.S. labour movement ever since the late 19th.<br />
century. See Marjorie Nicholson pp. 27 and 28. These<br />
contacts were sufficiently intimate for Sir Walter<br />
Citrine to work with senior figures from the US AFL in<br />
one of the many front groups set up by British<br />
intelligence to persuade US public opinion to support<br />
the war in Europe. Mahl, thesis, p. 75.<br />
23. The title of Coleman's study of CCF.<br />
24. The best exposition of this thesis is in Fred. L.<br />
Block.<br />
25. Richard Fletcher, 'Who Were They Travelling with?'<br />
in Hirsch and Fletcher.<br />
26. For this latter belief, to my knowledge, the<br />
Gaitskellites produced no evidence. Some of the Labour<br />
Right proved incredibly gullible when it came to this<br />
'communist conspiracy', accepting as genuine the most<br />
obvious forgeries. See for example pp. 224-6 of Jack<br />
and Bessie Braddock's memoir The Braddocks,<br />
(Macdonald, London, 1963) for a particularly choice<br />
example, passed to them by J. Bernard Hutton, who<br />
fronted several such forgeries. Who produced the<br />
forgeries? We do not know, but my guess would be IRD.<br />
27. This was funded by the CIA, though Foley has<br />
denied knowing this. See Bloch and Fitzgerald p. 106<br />
28. On Ariel see ibid pp. 151-2 and Kisch pp. 67-8.<br />
29. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 211<br />
30. David Marquand, IHR CDS Witness Statement, 1990,<br />
p. 6. At the same seminar Bill Jones noted 'the<br />
importance of Philip Williams...Philip had a fantastic<br />
network of MPs'. IHR CDS Witness Statement, p. 13<br />
31. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62. See Forte p. 81 where<br />
Gaitskell writes, 'things have gone remarkably well<br />
inside the Party. And for this a very large amount of<br />
credit must go to our friends in the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism, which you have helped so<br />
generously.' (emphasis added.)<br />
32. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62<br />
33. Windlesham p. 107<br />
34. Haseler p. 217<br />
35. Ibid p. 219<br />
36. Driver p. 97 citing Political Quarterly.<br />
37. There are odd traces of such groupings elsewhere:<br />
In Labour's Northern Voice in May 1969 Chris Norwood<br />
MP reported on the the 'Progressive Labour Group' in<br />
the shop-workers' union, USDAW, originally formed to<br />
fight communists but still operating and producing<br />
lists of approved candidates, the core activity of<br />
such a caucus.<br />
38. Windlesham fn 3 p. 82<br />
39. Hallett was on the Common Cause council in the<br />
fifties.<br />
40. Richter pp. 144 and 5<br />
41. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 14<br />
42. Windlesham p. 109<br />
43. Shaw Discipline p. 114<br />
44. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 24<br />
45. Shaw fn 150, p. 331<br />
46. Rodgers, IHR, CDS Witness Statement p. 25<br />
47. Richter p. 151. George Brown, according to Tom<br />
Bower's recent biography of Sir Dick White, was a 'CIA<br />
source'. See p. 356<br />
48. Bernard Donoughue, IHR CDS pp. 23/24<br />
49. Jenkins pp. 49-51. I asked Jenkins about this in<br />
1995 but he was unable to remember further details.<br />
50. Letter to author, 25 May 1990.<br />
51. See Agee, CIA Diary p. 618<br />
52. Newell was introduced to Beirne at the UPW<br />
conference at Blackpool. Newell wrote of this episode<br />
in his life in <br />
Freedom, September 25 1976, and more recently in<br />
Perspectives number 9, 1995. On the late Joseph Beirne<br />
and CIA see Counterspy, February 1974 pp. 42 and 43<br />
and May 1979 p.13, and Agee CIA Dairy, p. 603.<br />
53. On AIFLD see Fred Hirsch 'The Labour Movement:<br />
Penetration Point for U.S. Intelligence and<br />
Transnationals' in Hirsch and Fletcher, and 'The<br />
AFL-CIA' by former US Air Force Intelligence officer<br />
Winslow Peck in Frazier (ed.).<br />
54. In 1968 he became a director of IRIS.<br />
55. It also possible, of course, that they declined<br />
because they had no such information, either because<br />
none existed, or because they were too incompetent to<br />
collect it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The subversion hunters and the social democrats in the<br />
1970s<br />
The arrival of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour<br />
Party must have been a serious shock to the<br />
Anglo-American intelligence services. One minute the<br />
party was in the complete control of a faction which<br />
they had been promoting - 'running' would be too<br />
strong - since about 1950, and the next the party, and<br />
the second most important part of the NATO alliance,<br />
is in the hands of someone who has spent the post-war<br />
years going to and from Moscow as an East-West trader!<br />
<br />
<br />
The rise of the left in the Labour Party and trade<br />
union movement, symbolised by the ascent of Wilson,<br />
was being monitored by IRD and its satellites, the<br />
Economic League, IRIS, Common Cause - and by Brian<br />
Crozier, who raised the alarm in the 1970 collection<br />
he edited, We Will Bury You..(73) Working the same<br />
seam - presumably for different sponsors - was former<br />
Army officer and Conservative MP, Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith. In Stewart-Smith's journal, East-West<br />
Digest, in 1972, for example, we find the names who<br />
appeared in Crozier's 1970 anthology: Harry Welton of<br />
the Economic League, who had been in the anti-left<br />
business for 'fifty fighting years', to cite the title<br />
of the League's in-house history, and David Williams,<br />
the main writer for the Common Cause Bulletin.(74) <br />
<br />
<br />
The abolition of the proscription list<br />
Anxiety among the subversive-watchers heightened<br />
throughout the Heath years as the insurrection in<br />
Northern Ireland continued and conflict with the<br />
labour movement on the mainland UK increased, and<br />
leapt enormously with the abolition of the<br />
Proscription List of the Labour Party in 1973. Most of<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time seems to<br />
have barely noticed its abolition, so insignificant<br />
did the event seem. Of the various members of the<br />
Wilson governments who have published memoirs or<br />
dairies covering this period, only Tony Benn thought<br />
it an event worth recording.(75) But to the<br />
subversion-watchers it showed the extent of the CPGB's<br />
influence in the Labour Party. Chapman Pincher at the<br />
Daily Express, for example, one of the outlets for the<br />
anti-subversion lobby, wrote nearly twenty years later<br />
that 'the left-wing extremists who had infiltrated the<br />
National Executive of the Labour Party induced the<br />
1973 Party conference to abolish the Proscribed list.'<br />
(emphases added)(76) But to what end? Pincher tells us<br />
it 'meant that even MPs could join the World Peace<br />
Council, the British-Soviet Friendship Society and<br />
other outfits run essentially for the benefit of<br />
Moscow.'(77) But these never amounted to much in the<br />
1950s, and meant less than nothing in 1973. It was<br />
precisely because those groups meant so little that<br />
the list was abolished as an anachronism.(78) <br />
<br />
For the subversion hunters the Proscription List<br />
disappearing was one more event in a bad year, for<br />
1973 also saw the first assault on IRD by the rest of<br />
the more detente-minded Foreign Office.(79) The next<br />
year saw the Heath government's defeat at the hands of<br />
the National Union of Mineworkers, in some part due to<br />
a CPGB sympathiser named Arthur Scargill. By mid 1974<br />
the anti-subversive chorus were all singing from the<br />
same page and the theory of Soviet control through the<br />
CPGB, through the trade unions, through the Labour<br />
Party, was being broadcast by everything from the Tory<br />
press to the activists with connections in the<br />
intelligence services and the military.(80) This is<br />
the background to the cries and alarums of 1974/5, the<br />
talk of military coups and the formation of<br />
semi-clandestine 'action groups' and militias by,<br />
inter alia, former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, and the late David Stirling. The<br />
trade unions were at the heart of the<br />
subversive-hunters' theory, with the AEU the most<br />
important of them. When David Stirling's grandiose<br />
Better Britain-GB75 plans were 'blown' prematurely in<br />
1974, he abandoned them and joined forces with<br />
TRUEMID, another group of anti-socialist former AEU<br />
officials. (TRUEMID is discussed below.) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA)<br />
Within the Labour Party itself there was activity to<br />
combat the rise of the left. On the party political<br />
axis two latterday Gaitskellites, Stephen Haseler and<br />
Douglas Eden, in 1975 formed the Social Democratic<br />
Alliance (SDA) and began the struggle with the left in<br />
local London politics. (81) Over the next three years<br />
the SDA, and Haseler in particular, received much<br />
favourable newspaper coverage for their accounts of<br />
the subversives' takeover of the Labour Party and<br />
trade unions, much of it fanciful in the extreme.(82)<br />
For example on the publication of his book, The Death<br />
of British Democracy, Haseler wrote in The Times (29<br />
April 1976) that 'we may now be on the verge of an<br />
economy which will remove itself from the Western<br />
trading system by import controls, strict control of<br />
capital movements and eventually non-convertability of<br />
the currency. At home this will involve rationing, the<br />
direction of capital and labour and the final end of<br />
the free trade union movement'; and in 1980, among the<br />
Labour MPs Haseler and the SDA proposed to put up<br />
candidates against, were those well-known<br />
revolutionaries Stan Orme, Clive Soley, Neil Kincock<br />
and Geoff Rooker! (83) Among the SDA's early<br />
supporters was Peter Stephenson, then the editor of<br />
Socialist Commentary. <br />
<br />
<br />
And the AEU<br />
July 1974 saw the formation, with Common Cause<br />
funding, of the Trade Union Education Centre for<br />
Democratic Socialism (TUECDS), which described itself<br />
as 'an independent trade union education body run by<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists for<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists'.(84) TUECDS was<br />
launched in November 1974 with a lecture by the SDA's<br />
Dr Stephen Haseler. The personnel involved in the<br />
early stages of TUECDS's life were members of the AEU,<br />
notably John Weakley, and the building workers' union<br />
UCATT. Among those who had been attending the first<br />
year's meetings were UCATT officials, AEU officials,<br />
David Moller, a journalist from the Readers' Digest,<br />
then still one of the most important psy-war outlets<br />
for the CIA, the widow of Leslie Cannon, Lord Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker and Kate Losinska, then recently elected<br />
president of the civil service union, the CPSA.(85) <br />
<br />
More former AEU officials, Ron Nodes, Sid Davies and<br />
Ron McLaughlin, were involved in the formation of<br />
TRUEMID, (the Movement for True Industrial Democracy<br />
or the True Movement for Industrial Democracy, it's<br />
been called both), launched in 1975 with finance from<br />
a variety of industrial and City enterprises.(86)<br />
TRUEMID did was IRIS had done: it tried to influence<br />
the election of union officials by putting out<br />
information about the supposed left in the union.<br />
TRUEMID's activities were chiefly focused on the AEU,<br />
the civil service union the CPSA and the electricians<br />
union, the EETPU. David Stirling, after the collapse<br />
of his GB 75 and Better Britain plans, was recruited<br />
onto the TRUEMID council.(87) <br />
<br />
Also reappearing in this period was the some time US<br />
Labour Attache to Britain, Joseph Godson who, though<br />
formally retired, had returned to the UK in 1971 and<br />
continued with his labour attache work - pushing out<br />
US views and interests among the British trade union<br />
movement, and selecting trade unionists for freebies<br />
to the US. Godson was a founder member of the Labour<br />
Committee for TransAtlantic Understanding (LCTU), the<br />
labour section of the British Atlantic Committee, a<br />
NATO support group.(88) In May 1976 LCTU began the<br />
Labour and Trade Union Press Service (LTUPS). On the<br />
LTUPS editorial committee was the ubiquitous Peter<br />
Stephenson, editor of the Gaitskellite Socialist<br />
Commentary, and one of the early members of the Social<br />
Democratic Alliance. Treasurer of the LTUPS was<br />
General Secretary of the EEPTU, Frank Chapple, and its<br />
chair was Bill Jordan of the AEU.(89) <br />
<br />
<br />
Europe<br />
The social democratic wing of the Labour Party had two<br />
key positions: British membership of NATO and<br />
retention of British nuclear weapons, and membership<br />
of the EEC. After the defeat of CND at the Labour<br />
conference of 1961 it was European Economic Community<br />
(EEC) membership which became their great cause. With<br />
this achieved with the EEC referendum vote 'yes' in<br />
1975, when it came to the ideological struggles within<br />
the Labour Party in the mid and late 1970s, in David<br />
Marquand's words, 'they lost the battle of ideas with<br />
the Left by default ....they really didn't fight the<br />
battle of ideas.' <br />
<br />
Support for EEC membership within the Labour Party had<br />
been formally organised first in 1959 by the Labour<br />
Common Market Committee (founders Roy Jenkins, Jack<br />
Diamond and Norman Hart), which became the Labour<br />
Committee for Europe in the mid 1960s. European unity<br />
had been one of the projects favoured by the USA,<br />
looking for good anti-Soviet alliances in the early<br />
post-war era, and the European Movement had been<br />
funded by the Agency.(90) As well as receiving the<br />
support of the US, in the 1960s Gaitskellites Roy<br />
Jenkins, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers were<br />
among the regular attenders of the annual Anglo-German<br />
Konigswinter conferences.(91) This time the social<br />
democrats were being supported by the British Foreign<br />
Office, which had decided by then that their future<br />
lay in the Common Market. <br />
<br />
The CDS, the Gaitskellites, never accepted Wilson as<br />
the legitimate leader of the Labour Party and plotted<br />
constantly against him. The personnel of the<br />
Gaitskellites, the Labour Committee on Europe and the<br />
CDS were virtually identical.(92) In the 1960s it was<br />
the CDS that Harold Wilson identified as the group<br />
working against him.(93) When the group formally broke<br />
up it continued as a dining club, the 1963 Club. In<br />
the early 1970s Tony Benn identified them as 'the old<br />
Campaign for Democratic Socialism-Europe group'.(94) <br />
<br />
In 1970 the election of the Heath government meant<br />
that another serious effort to get Britain in the EEC<br />
would be made and the issue would divide the Labour<br />
Party then in opposition. In early 1971 Tony Benn's<br />
diary records him talking - with Roy Jenkins - of the<br />
Common Market issue splitting the Labour Party.(95)<br />
Ten months later, on October 19, after a pro- and<br />
anti- clash in the Shadow Cabinet, Benn commented on<br />
the emergence of 'a European Social Democrat wing in<br />
the Parliamentary Party led by Bill Rodgers.'(96) This<br />
group formally announced itself on 28 October 1971<br />
when 69 pro-Market Labour MPs voted with the<br />
Conservative government in favour of entry into the<br />
EEC in principle. From then on the group operated as a<br />
party within a party, with William Rodgers acting as<br />
an unofficial whip.(97) <br />
<br />
<br />
A new social democratic party?<br />
The leadership of the Parliamentary Gaitskellite<br />
faction had fallen to Roy Jenkins, and as early as<br />
1970 some of that group has begun trying to get him to<br />
lead the formation of a new party.(98) After the<br />
Europe vote in 1971 Dick Taverne and Bill Rodgers went<br />
to Jenkins and told him they should resign and form a<br />
new party.(99) Jenkins declined. Taverne's selection<br />
for the Lincoln seat had been organised by the<br />
pro-CDS, pro-Europe, Labour Party regional organiser<br />
for the area, Jim Cattermole.(100) In December 1972 MP<br />
Taverne, at odds with his constituency party, and<br />
about to be deselected, decided to fight them and<br />
suggested again that Jenkins leave and form a new<br />
party. Jenkins declined.(101) In 1973, after winning<br />
the Lincoln by-election as a Democratic Labour<br />
candidate, against the official Labour Party<br />
candidate, Taverne formed the Campaign for Social<br />
Democracy and sought Jenkins' support. Jenkins<br />
declined.(102) That year, however, helped by Sir Fred<br />
Hayday, former chair of the TUC, and Alf Allen, future<br />
chair of the TUC, Jenkins did 'set up an institutional<br />
framework' with moderate trade union leaders - a<br />
regular dining group in the Charing Cross Hotel.(103) <br />
<br />
In December 1974 the Manifesto Group was formed within<br />
the PLP. Described by Barbara Castle as 'a group of<br />
middle-of-the-road and right-wing Labour MPs [which]<br />
had been meeting to discuss how to counter the growing<br />
influence of the left-wing Tribune group of MPs',(104)<br />
its chair was Dr Dickson Mabon, its Secretary was John<br />
Horam, now (1995) a Tory Minister, and two of its most<br />
active members were CDS enthusiasts David Marquand and<br />
Brian Walden.(105) <br />
<br />
In the third Wilson government, formed in 1974, the<br />
Jenkins group in cabinet was down to 'a beleaguered<br />
minority of four', to use Jenkins' words, Jenkins,<br />
Harold Lever, Shirley Williams and the late Reg<br />
Prentice.(106) In his memoir Jenkins describes<br />
Prentice as 'a man of flat-footed courage who had<br />
emerged in the previous two years [i.e. 1973 and 74]<br />
out of the rather stolid centre of the Labour Party<br />
into....my most unhesitating ally in the<br />
Cabinet.'(107) Throughout 1974-5 Prentice was moving<br />
right very quickly and his speeches began to reflect<br />
this. In 1975 Prime Minister Wilson took exception to<br />
one of them, and 'More out of enlightened<br />
self-interest than generosity', as he put it, Jenkins<br />
told Wilson that if Prentice was sacked from the<br />
cabinet he would also go.(108) Shortly afterwards<br />
Wilson called Jenkins' bluff and shifted Prentice to a<br />
junior ministry post outside the Cabinet proper.<br />
Jenkins resolved to resign, tried to take Shirley<br />
Williams and Harold Lever with him in resignation -<br />
only to find that while he was ready now, Harold Lever<br />
was not.(109) <br />
<br />
In Jenkins' memoir there are some wistful remarks on<br />
'1975 as a great missed opportunity for Heath and<br />
Whitelaw and a whole regiment of discarded<br />
Conservative "wets" as much for Shirley Williams and<br />
Steel and me.'(110) Jenkins was looking back on the<br />
1975 Common Market referendum campaign during which he<br />
found it more congenial working with pro-EEC Tories<br />
and Liberals than he did with the left-wing of his own<br />
party. It would not be hard to imagine that left-wing<br />
Tories like Heath and Whitelaw found Jenkins more<br />
congenial than some of the right-wing yahoos then<br />
gathering on the Tory Party's fringe;(111)and there is<br />
a large hint in Mrs Thatcher's second volume of<br />
memoirs, that some kind of realignment was attempted<br />
on the back of the referendum.(112) <br />
<br />
In December 1976 Prentice was discussing how to bring<br />
down the Callaghan government with, inter alia, Tory<br />
MPs Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan, and<br />
Gaitskellite Labour MP's Walden and the late John<br />
McIntosh.(113) Haseler, whose information on this<br />
comes from Prentice's diaries, tells us that, 'For<br />
some years past the arguments for a realignment had<br />
been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative<br />
Party who had been close to Macmillan.'(114) Prentice<br />
may have thought he was discussing bringing down the<br />
government with Parliamentary colleagues, but in this<br />
context they had other, more interesting, connections.<br />
Amery was a former SIS officer and a friend of the<br />
former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late George Kennedy<br />
Young, who was then machinating against the Labour<br />
government with his Unison Committee for Action.(115)<br />
Maurice Macmillan had been a director of one of the<br />
IRD front companies and had also been involved in the<br />
attempt in the mid 1974 to launch a government of<br />
national unity to prevent the reelection of Harold<br />
Wilson. Prentice proposed that Jenkins form a<br />
coalition with Margaret Thatcher as leader but, on<br />
Prentice's account, haunted by memories of 1931 and<br />
the fate of Ramsay MacDonald, not surprisingly, once<br />
again Jenkins declined.(116) <br />
<br />
When Harold Wilson resigned in 1976, Jenkins stood for<br />
leader of the Labour Party, lost, and went off to<br />
Brussels as President of the EEC. Jenkins bailed out<br />
at a good time, for the pro-Common Market wing of the<br />
Labour Party was losing the fight against the left in<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party - while constantly<br />
talking about quitting and forming a new party. In<br />
1977 the Campaign for a Labour Victory, 'in many ways<br />
a resurrection of the of the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism', was launched.(117) William Rodgers' PA was<br />
one of the chief organisers and it set up its office<br />
in the HQ of the EETPU.(118) Its full-time organiser<br />
was Alec McGivan who became the first full-time worker<br />
for the SDP, four years later. <br />
<br />
Around Jenkins in exile gathered some of the<br />
Gaitskellites. Mike Thomas, a Labour and then SDP MP:<br />
'there in fact were a group of people working with Roy<br />
Jenkins outside parliament, most of whom were known to<br />
many of us, friends of ours, some who were less well<br />
known, in the SDA or elsewhere'.(119) In November<br />
1979, after Jenkins' had been given the Dimbleby<br />
Lecture on BBC TV in which to more or less announce<br />
his intention of forming a social democratic party,<br />
businessman Clive Lindley and London Labour Councillor<br />
Jim Daley, both of whom had been active in the<br />
Campaign for Labour Victory,(120) set up the Radical<br />
Centre for Democratic Studies, 'a press cutting and<br />
information service on the political scene in Britain'<br />
- and a support group for Jenkins.(121) <br />
<br />
Finally a group met to discuss forming the new party.<br />
From the SDA there was Stephen Haseler; from Roy<br />
Jenkins' UK support group, Clive Lindley and Jim Daly;<br />
David Marquand, Jenkins' his PA in Brussels, and Lord<br />
Harris, who had been Jenkins' PR man in the<br />
1960s.(122) The last stop on their way out of the<br />
Labour Party for these social democrats was the<br />
formation of the Council for Social Democracy in 1981.<br />
<br />
<br />
Soon after the Social Democratic Party launch, issue<br />
52 of the now defunct radical magazine The Leveller<br />
had as its cover story: 'Exposed:the CIA and the<br />
Social Democrats'. The author was Phil Kelly, one of<br />
the journalists who had exposed Brian Crozier's<br />
Forum/CIA links, who had been the recipient of the<br />
leaked documents from inside the Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict, and had led the campaign to prevent<br />
the Labour government expelling former CIA officer,<br />
Philip Agee. For his temerity Kelly had been labelled<br />
a 'KGB man' in briefings given by MI5, one of which<br />
was foolishly committed to paper by Searchlight editor<br />
Gerry Gable.(123) Kelly's article went over some of<br />
the ground covered in this essay, but though the CIA<br />
was visible in the connection to the Congress for<br />
Cultural Freedom and Forum World Features, the piece<br />
otherwise failed to justify its billing. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
73. The charge that these groups were IRD 'satellites'<br />
is difficult to substantiate. None of their personnel<br />
has, to my knowledge, every admitted it. However, all<br />
these groups have published material which, in my<br />
view, could only have come from the state - and I<br />
presume that IRD was the proximate conduit. Take, for<br />
example, the Economic League's 'Notes and Comments'<br />
series. In No. 895, 'The New Face of Communism', there<br />
is material quoted from Yugoslav radio and TV and<br />
Radio Moscow. The Economic League, presumably, did not<br />
have its own monitoring service.<br />
74. East-West Digest mostly consisted of large chunks<br />
of blind (authorless), extremely detailed, apparently<br />
pretty accurate material on the British Left: reports<br />
on meetings and conferences; documents and journals<br />
analysed.<br />
75. Benn entry for 11 June 1973.<br />
76. Pincher 1991 p. 113.<br />
77. Ibid.<br />
78. The important group on that list was the then<br />
minute Revolutionary Socialist League which was to<br />
spend the next decade penetrating the Labour Party as<br />
the Militant Tendency.<br />
79. Crozier calls this 'the IRD massacre', but points<br />
out that IRD had grown to become the largest single<br />
Foreign Office department. See Crozier pp. 104-8.<br />
80. From the likes of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky we<br />
have learned that the KGB were unaware that they were<br />
apparently on the verge of controlling the Labour<br />
Party through the trade unions.<br />
81. Patrick Wintour in the New Statesman, 25 July<br />
1980: 'three of [Frank] Chapple's closest union<br />
colleagues, including his research assistant, have<br />
been active in the Social Democratic Alliance'. <br />
<br />
Crozier notes in his memoir that he first met the<br />
SDA's Douglas Eden at one of the early sessions of the<br />
National Association for Freedom. 'The NAF was<br />
supposed to be strictly non-party, and the presence of<br />
a long-time Labour man, as Eden was, emphasised this<br />
aspect of its work.' p. 147<br />
82. See, for example, Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1977,<br />
The Times, 29 April 1976, and Daily Mail, 9 August<br />
1979.<br />
83. See 'Moderates drive to challenge 11 Labour MPs',<br />
Daily Telegraph,1 February 1980.<br />
84. This is from the only TUECDS document I have seen,<br />
a progress report dated May 12, 1975.<br />
85. TUECDS is discussed by Paul Foot in Socialist<br />
Worker, 1 November 1975.<br />
86. Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry claims the<br />
credit for introducing Stirling to Ron Nodes. See his<br />
obituary notice on Stirling in the Independent, 17<br />
November 1990. Some of the TRUEMID funding is given in<br />
'The bosses' union' in Leveller 17, 1978, and the most<br />
detailed account of the organisation is in Hoe ch. 24.<br />
87. See 'The Company They Keep', Monica Brimacombe, in<br />
the New Statesman, 9 May 1986. Paul Foot in the piece<br />
cited in note 12 states that TRUEMID had six permanent<br />
full-time staff and three temporary full-time staff.<br />
88. see also State Research no. 16, pp. 68-74 and no.<br />
17 pp. 95 and 96, and Sunday Times, 17 February 1980.<br />
It was later funded by the US government's National<br />
Endowment for Democracy.<br />
89. Jordan was later to be among the founders of<br />
another 'moderate' caucus in the trade unions in the<br />
1980s, Mainstream.<br />
90. The Movement's youth wing, the European Youth<br />
Movement, had as its secretary Maurice Foley, one of<br />
the Gaitskellites. See 'The CIA backs the Common<br />
Market' by Weissman, Kelly and Hosenball in Agee ed.<br />
Dirty Work.<br />
pp. 201-3.<br />
91. Bradley p. 52<br />
92. With a number of important qualifications. Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, for example, was not pro EEC membership.<br />
93. Dorril and Ramsay p. 188<br />
94. Ibid.<br />
95. Entry for 13 January 1971, pp. 324-5 of Office<br />
Without Power<br />
96. Benn ibid. p. 381. Benn also added in that<br />
paragraph: 'When I heard Charlie Pannell say that for<br />
him Europe was an article of faith, he put it above<br />
the Labour Party and above the Labour Movement, I was<br />
finally convinced that this was a deep split.'.<br />
Pannell was AEU, Common Cause, Catholic.<br />
97. Bradley p. 53<br />
98. 'Dick Taverne recalls a meeting of pro-Marketeers<br />
in his flat to discuss tactics as early as June 1970.'<br />
Ibid.<br />
99. Ibid. pp. 53/4<br />
100. Shaw, Discipline, p. 108. In the 'witness<br />
seminar' on the CDS, p. 24, David Marquand referred to<br />
'the great barony of Jim Cattermole'.<br />
101. Ibid. p. 55<br />
102. Jenkins in his memoir on 1973: 'Excluding the<br />
possibility of forming an independent party, which at<br />
that stage neither I nor my supporters were remotely<br />
prepared for...' p. 360 (emphasis added).<br />
103. Jenkins p. 354. In the CDS 'witness seminar", p.<br />
27, William Rodgers stated that CDS had a 'very close<br />
working relationship with Fred Hayday of the General<br />
and Municipal Workers'.<br />
104. Castle Diaries p.156<br />
105. Bradley p. 60. With the exception of Giles Radice<br />
and George Robertson, both GMWU/GMB-sponsored, the<br />
whole of the active leadership of the Manifesto Group<br />
subsequently defected to the SDP.<br />
106. Jenkins p. 427<br />
107. Ibid. p. 419<br />
108. Jenkins tells us that he sent this message<br />
through the Prime Minister's Principal Private<br />
Secretary, Robert Armstrong, thus - deliberately or<br />
not - informing the Whitehall establishment. Ibid. p.<br />
420<br />
109. Ibid. p. 422<br />
110. Ibid. pp. 425-6<br />
111. On 14 October 1975 Tony Benn records in his<br />
diary: 'Robert Kilroy-Silk, Labour MP for Ormskirk,<br />
told me that �2 million had been left unspent by the<br />
pro-Market lobby and it was a fund of which the<br />
trustees were Heath, Thorpe and Jenkins....the rumour<br />
was that if Wilson moved too far to the Left they<br />
would use the money to set up a new party.'<br />
112. See The Path to Power, p. 331.<br />
113. Haseler, Battle for Britain, pp. 59 and 60<br />
114. Ibid.<br />
115. The best account of Unison is in Dorril and<br />
Ramsay.<br />
116. Prentice thus managed to misunderstand - and<br />
insult - both Jenkins and Mrs Thatcher.<br />
117. Bradley p. 59<br />
118. 'How Frank Chapple says on top', New Statesman,<br />
25 July 1980<br />
119. CDS Seminar p. 50<br />
120. Owen p. 457<br />
121. Bradley p. 73<br />
122. Ibid. David Marquand on Haseler; 'Haseler's<br />
invective is all working class... He's invented a<br />
history of a sort of populist radicalism, Norman<br />
Tebbitry in a way, ....I remember being involved in a<br />
television thing in the early 1970s on Europe where he<br />
opposed it on a sort of proletarian, solidarity,<br />
populist-nationalist ground.' Desai pp. 10-11 fn. 11<br />
123. This is the so-called Gable memo, first revealed<br />
in the New Statesman, 15 February 1980 and reprinted<br />
in full, for the first time, in Lobster 24. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
The Crozier operations<br />
Running through much of this activity in the 1970s was<br />
Brian Crozier who had been warning about the rise of<br />
the British Left since the late 1960s. Crozier takes<br />
us back to the CIA operation the Congress for Cultural<br />
Freedom (CCF) discussed in chapter five. The CIA<br />
control of the CCF and the magazine Encounter began to<br />
be threatened with exposure in 1963 when, reviewing an<br />
anthology from the magazine, Conor Cruise O'Brien<br />
wrote that 'Encounter's first loyalty is to America';<br />
and an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph referred to a<br />
secret and regular subvention to Encounter from 'the<br />
Foreign Office'.(124) The next year, after a US<br />
congressional inquiry into private foundations found<br />
that some had received donations from the CIA, the New<br />
York Times set journalists to work on the story. From<br />
that point on exposure of the CIA fronts, which were<br />
funded by some of these private foundations, was<br />
inevitable. <br />
<br />
<br />
Forum World Features<br />
Faced with this impending exposure, the CCF/CIA began<br />
to take action. The Congress's press agency was<br />
detached, reorganised and renamed Forum World<br />
Features, and Crozier was appointed its director in<br />
1965.(125) Crozier claims that 'In 1968 the KGB made a<br />
first attempt to wreck Forum';(126) and perhaps in<br />
anticipation of the day when Forum was 'blown', with<br />
other personnel from the IRD network Crozier set up<br />
the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) between<br />
1968 and 1970.(127) <br />
<br />
<br />
ISC<br />
The first funding came from Shell and BP but then, as<br />
Crozier puts it, 'the Agency [CIA] now came up with<br />
something bigger', and put him in contact with the<br />
American multi-millionaire, anti-communist Richard<br />
Mellon Scaife, who duly came up $100,000 p.a. for<br />
ISC.(128) <br />
<br />
ISC commissioned and published reports and began<br />
briefing the UK military and police establishments on<br />
the Crozier view of the Soviet threat to Britain.(129)<br />
Crozier became a founder member of the National<br />
Association for Freedom (NAFF), whose launch was timed<br />
to coincide with publication of the dystopian<br />
disinformation in The Collapse of Democracy by his<br />
ally and colleague at ISC, Robert Moss. The<br />
unfortunately acronymed NAFF was a gathering of the<br />
anti-subversive and pro-capital propaganda groups such<br />
as Aims of Industry, and, almost immediately became<br />
the major focus of the British Right. It absorbed the<br />
remnants of the 1974/5 civilian militias, and began<br />
series of psy-war projects against the left and the<br />
unions which prefigured much of what was to come in<br />
the Thatcher government.(130) <br />
<br />
<br />
Shield and the Pinay Circle<br />
At the same, Crozier's voice was being heard in<br />
Shield, a committee of former intelligence officers<br />
and bankers, who, in the absence of IRD, prepared<br />
briefings on the alleged communist threat for the then<br />
leader of the Tory Party, Mrs Thatcher.(131)Crozier<br />
was also a member of the transnational psy-war outfit,<br />
the Pinay Circle, working alongside senior<br />
intelligence, military and political figures from the<br />
NATO countries,(132) was working with US Senate<br />
Subcommittee on International Terrorism,(133) and<br />
launched the apparently still-born US Institute for<br />
the Study of Conflict.(134) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Wilson plots<br />
Because hard information on the covert operations of<br />
this period came first from Colin Wallace, a member of<br />
the British Army's psychological warfare unit in<br />
Northern Ireland, in whose narrative the 'bad guys'<br />
were MI5, and from Peter Wright, who had been an MI5<br />
officer, those of us who began researching this period<br />
in 1986 and after began by looking for MI5<br />
operations.(135) In fact three British intelligence<br />
agencies had an iron in the fire of the mid 1970s<br />
crisis. There was a group of MI5 officers, led by<br />
Peter Wright, who were plotting against the Wilson<br />
government and, for example, trying to use the<br />
Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland to spread<br />
disinformation about Wilson and other British<br />
politicians whom MI5 regarded as 'unsound';(136) there<br />
was also a group of ex SIS and former military<br />
officers, led by former SIS number two, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, operating as the Unison<br />
Committee for Action;(137) and there was the<br />
Crozier-IRD subversion-watcher network. <br />
<br />
The detente with the Soviet Union was the background.<br />
In the UK it provided the context for IRD to be<br />
reigned back. In the US, in the wake of Watergate and<br />
the subsequent revelations of CIA activities in the US<br />
and abroad, and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976,<br />
there was a purge in the CIA. To Crozier and others of<br />
his ilk detente was a farce - a Soviet deception<br />
operation - and these intelligence cuts a catastrophe.<br />
(In their worst imaginings they were the result of<br />
Soviet operations.) <br />
<br />
<br />
Private sector intelligence agencies?<br />
Into the breach stepped Crozier and a group which<br />
included ex SIS officer Nicholas Elliot and US General<br />
Vernon Walters. They created 'a Private Sector<br />
Operational Intelligence agency' and named it 6I - the<br />
Sixth International(138) - and found funding in the US<br />
Heritage Foundation. Crozier began publishing<br />
newsletters, Transnational Security, and British<br />
Briefing, his own version of the IRD briefings on<br />
British subversion which had been curtailed in 1974<br />
upon the election of the Labour government. British<br />
Briefing was financed by the Industrial Trust, edited<br />
by Charles Elwell, 'soon after retiring from MI5', and<br />
published by IRIS.(139) <br />
<br />
What had begun a quarter of a century before as an<br />
anti-communist caucus among the AUEW's senior<br />
officers, had ended up fronting for Britain's leading<br />
anti-socialist psychological warfare expert. I do not<br />
know when British Briefing was first published, but<br />
the issue which began to circulate on the left in the<br />
early 1990s, number 12, was published in 1989, at<br />
which time IRIS's directors included Sir John Boyd<br />
CBE, General Secretary of the AEU 1975-82, Lord<br />
(Harold) Collinson CBE, General Secretary of the<br />
National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers from<br />
1953-69, and W. (Bill) Sirs, General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation from 1975-85.(140)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The union leaders and the spooks<br />
The IRIS-Crozier-British Briefing set-up sums up much<br />
of what I have been trying to tease out. Three<br />
anti-socialist, senior trade union leaders fronted the<br />
clandestine production of an anti-socialist bulletin,<br />
written and edited by former intelligence officers,<br />
financed by British capital.(141) This anti-socialist<br />
mechanism also involved the connivance of the Charity<br />
Commission which allowed the Industrial Trust to<br />
operate in a breach of the charity laws,(142) another,<br />
non-charitable trust, the Kennington Industrial<br />
Company, and personnel from large numbers of British<br />
companies which funded it. (The money went to the<br />
Industrial Trust which passed it on to Kennington,<br />
which passed it on to IRIS; thus enabling the<br />
Industrial Trust to cling on to its charitable - and<br />
tax deductible - status.) <br />
<br />
If this was still being funded in 1989, after 15 years<br />
of Thatcherism and the fall of the Soviet Empire, how<br />
big was this anti-socialist structure in, say, 1975?<br />
Or 1965? Our knowledge of the whole operation while<br />
greater now than ever, is still pretty limited,<br />
despite the revelations about the Economic League in<br />
the past ten years. For example, Aims of Industry is<br />
thought of as simply a propaganda organisation. But it<br />
is not so; at least it was not always so. In 1990 the<br />
Aims Director, Michael Ivens, wrote: <br />
<br />
<br />
Once, when Aims of Industry was rather more flexible<br />
than it is now, we put a member of our staff into a<br />
factory, at the request of the management, to prevent<br />
a far-left take over.' (143) <br />
<br />
Another part of this anti-socialist network is British<br />
United Industrialists (BUI), one of the funnels<br />
through which British companies pour money into the<br />
Conservative Party and other groups on the right. In<br />
1985 BUI's then director, Captain Briggs, told a<br />
researcher I know who wishes to remain anonymous, who<br />
was posing as a right-winger, that BUI were then<br />
funding the Solidarity group of Labour MPs, the Union<br />
of Democratic Mineworkers and the right-wing faction<br />
in the Civil and Public Servants Association<br />
(CPSA).(144) <br />
<br />
The Labour Left has never really grasped just how<br />
central, how commonplace a function of British<br />
capitalism it has been to fund its opponents. This<br />
knowledge has remained largely confined to Labour<br />
Research and pockets within individual unions. (It is<br />
hardly surprising that the Labour Party has never<br />
shown much interest in this as it would have<br />
embarrassed some of its biggest supporters in the<br />
trade unions.) <br />
<br />
By 1980 Crozier seems to have gone some way towards<br />
replacing IRD's anti-subversive role by his own<br />
efforts; and, with the election of Mrs Thatcher, he<br />
and Robert Moss abandoned the National Association for<br />
Freedom (by then renamed the Freedom Association) and<br />
concentrated on the USA and the wider Soviet 'threat'.<br />
<br />
<br />
It is impossible to evaluate the significance of<br />
psychological warfare projects. Was the barrage of<br />
anti-union propaganda put out by the<br />
subversion-watchers in the period 1972-79 as<br />
significant as the so-called Winter of Discontent in<br />
its effect on public opinion in Britain? How effective<br />
Crozier was, I don't know. He seems to think he had<br />
quite a hand in the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.<br />
In one of the planning papers written by Crozier for<br />
his 'transnational security organisation', he wrote: <br />
<br />
'Specific Aims within this framework are to affect a<br />
change of government in <br />
<br />
<br />
(a) the United Kingdom - accomplished......'(145)<br />
<br />
<br />
Grandiose nonsense? Perhaps. Crozier has never been<br />
taken as seriously in this country by the London<br />
media-political establishment as he has has been<br />
abroad, and his memoir was hammered by most of its<br />
reviewers.(146) But this, for example, was the view of<br />
a German intelligence officer, the source of the Der<br />
Spiegel pieces, of Crozier in November 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The militant conservative London publicist, Brian<br />
Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been<br />
working with his diverse circle of friends in<br />
international politics to build an anonymous action<br />
group(147) "transnational security organisation", and<br />
to widen its field of operations. Crozier has worked<br />
with the CIA for years. One has to assume, therefore<br />
that they are fully aware of his activities....' <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
124. Coleman p. 186. In this context 'the Foreign<br />
Office' is a euphemism for MI6.<br />
125. In his 1993 memoir Crozier acknowledges the CIA<br />
connection. See pp. 63-5. But he had denied it as late<br />
as 1990, in his review of Coleman's history of the<br />
CCF. See 'A noble mess' in The Salisbury Review,<br />
December 1990.<br />
126. Crozier p. 75<br />
127. With a Council including Max Beloff,<br />
Major-General Clutterbuck, Sir Robert Thompson and<br />
Hugh Seton-Watson.<br />
128. Crozier p. 90.<br />
129. See the documents leaked - or stolen - from ISC<br />
published in Searchlight 18, 1976, and Crozier pp. 121<br />
and 2<br />
130. Crozier acknowledged the psy-war role in his<br />
memoir. See page 118. <br />
131. Shield employed as its researchers Peter Shipley,<br />
who ended up in the Conservative Party Central Office<br />
in time for the 1987 election, and Douglas Eden,<br />
co-founder of the Social Democratic Alliance. But<br />
Stephen Hastings has a slightly different version from<br />
Crozier. See Hastings p. 236.<br />
132. On Pinay see David Teacher's pieces in Lobsters<br />
17 and 18. Crozier more or less gave a nod of approval<br />
to these accounts by citing them, without criticism,<br />
in his memoir. See note 3 facing p. 194. Among the<br />
Pinay personnel were ex CIA director Colby, ex-SIS<br />
officers Julian Amery and Nicholas Elliot, and Edwin<br />
Feulner from the Heritage Foundation.<br />
133. Crozier pp. 123-4<br />
134. US ISC is missing from his memoirs. It was<br />
formally launched in 1975, chaired by George Ball,<br />
with a line-up which included Richard Pipes and Kermit<br />
Roosevelt. See Document 3 in Searchlight 18.<br />
135. Hence Lobster 11, 'Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of<br />
Thatcher'.<br />
136. This is discussed at length in Foot, Who Framed<br />
...<br />
137. It was Young and Unison, for example, who<br />
initiated General Sir Walter Walker's Civil<br />
Assistance.<br />
138. Crozier pp. 134-6. Six 'I', says Crozier, because<br />
there had already been 5 'internationals'. 'The fourth<br />
International was the Trotskyist one, and when it<br />
split, this meant that on paper, there were five<br />
Internationals.' p. 136<br />
139. On the Industrial Trust see Black Flag, 15 August<br />
1988 which reproduced the Trust's accounts for 1986/7;<br />
and on the IRIS connection to British Briefing, and<br />
Elwell's role, see the Observer, 16 December 1990,<br />
'Top companies funded smears through charity', and 23<br />
December 1990<br />
140. Although IRIS was still publishing its little<br />
newsletter, IRIS News, in 1989, compared to British<br />
Briefing it was so piffling as to be little more than<br />
a cover story. Collinson and Boyd are dead and Sirs<br />
did not respond to my questions<br />
141. In 1986/7 twenty eight British companies gave<br />
money to the Industrial Trust, including BP, Bass,<br />
Unilever, ICI, Cadbury Schweppes and Grand<br />
Metropolitan. Industrial Trust accounts filed with<br />
Charity Commissioners were reproduced in Black Flag,<br />
15 August 1988.<br />
142. See 'Breach of charity rules justified' in the<br />
Guardian,7 February 1991.<br />
143. Sunday Telegraph (Appointments) 4 February 1990<br />
144. I reported this first in footnote 93 on p. 43 of<br />
Lobster 12 in 1986. I received no reaction to what I<br />
thought was a rather explosive allegation. Kevin<br />
McNamara MP, when I told him of this, replied that the<br />
UDM hardly needed money as they had inherited the<br />
considerable wealth of the old 'Spencer' union formed<br />
in the 1920s.<br />
145. Originally published in Der Spiegel no 37, 1982,<br />
this was translated by David Teacher and reproduced in<br />
Lobster 17, p. 14.<br />
146. The best review was by Bernard Porter in<br />
Intelligence and National Security, vol. 9, No. 4.<br />
Most of Crozier's projects, says Porter, were<br />
'pointless.'<br />
147. 'Action group', is one of the key terms used in<br />
this field. G.K. Young's Unison was the Unison<br />
Committee for Action, a clear hint to the intelligence<br />
insider as to its intentions. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Was there a 'communist threat'?<br />
The term 'communist' was always flexibly applied by<br />
the anti-socialist groups. The Common Cause and IRIS<br />
reports, for example, went much wider to actually mean<br />
the left, i.e. socialists; and sometimes simply anyone<br />
who opposed those in positions of power.(148)<br />
Nonetheless in a thesis about the political uses of<br />
anti-communism we have to consider whether there was<br />
anything to the 'communist threat', or if it was<br />
simply a red herring dragged across the trail of<br />
British politics. <br />
<br />
On the British Left the question which heads this<br />
chapter would provoke laughter, derision or anger from<br />
many. For some, since 1956 the CPGB has been a<br />
declining, bureaucratic relic, hardly a 'threat' to<br />
anybody.(149) For others merely asking the question<br />
gives credibility to disinformation from the right.<br />
But the fact remains that significant sections of the<br />
British Right, in the propaganda organisations of<br />
capital, the state and the Conservative Party,<br />
believed that the CPGB was part of a global<br />
conspiracy, directed and financed by Moscow, which was<br />
working in the union movement and wider society to<br />
undermine capitalist democracy in Britain. And it is<br />
no longer self-evident that this was complete<br />
nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
Orders from Moscow?<br />
We now know that the CPGB actually was being directed,<br />
to some extent, from Moscow after the war. Bob Darke<br />
was a member of the Party's National Industrial Policy<br />
Committee from the end of the war until 1951, when he<br />
left the Party. He described that committee as 'a<br />
Cominform puppet', receiving instructions, via<br />
visiting French communists, from the Cominform.(150)<br />
In the year Darke quit the Party, 1951, the CPGB<br />
published a landmark policy statement, 'The British<br />
Road to Socialism'. This announced a major shift in<br />
policy in which the British CPGB ceased to base itself<br />
on the Soviet model and would henceforth pursue a<br />
peculiarly British, 'parliamentary road to<br />
socialism'.(151) But in 1991 former CPGB assistant<br />
general secretary, George Matthews, admitted that much<br />
- though precisely how much is still not clear to me -<br />
of the programme contained in the 'British Road to<br />
Socialism' had been written by the Soviet Politburo<br />
and approved by Stalin himself.(152) <br />
<br />
<br />
Moscow gold?<br />
There was 'Moscow gold' - bags of used notes, as well<br />
as the subsidy by virtue of the Soviet Union's bulk<br />
order of copies of the Daily Worker/Morning Star. The<br />
'Moscow gold' claim was regarded as absurd, a state<br />
smear, by most on the British Left, not least by CPGB<br />
members, subjected to endless fund-raising appeals and<br />
newspaper selling, and CPGB employees surviving on the<br />
terrible wages the Party paid its staff.(153) But now<br />
we know that the Soviet Union began sending money to<br />
the British Party after the Hungarian revolt was put<br />
down - apparently to compensate the British Party for<br />
the loss of its membership (and hence membership fees)<br />
incurred by the Party's refusal to condemn the Soviet<br />
invasion. Senior CPGB person, Reuben Falber, would<br />
meet the man from the Soviet Embassy and take delivery<br />
of the bags of used notes. These would be stored in<br />
the loft of Falber's house and then laundered through<br />
the Party's accounts as 'anonymous donations' and the<br />
like. It was as amateurish as that. <br />
<br />
The Moscow money seems to have been used chiefly to<br />
fund the Party's full-time staff. In the 1960s,<br />
despite constantly falling membership, the party<br />
employed a lot of people, 70 according to one source,<br />
including the industrial network,(154) what 1980s CPGB<br />
member Sarah Benton described as 'until the late<br />
1970s, the privileged section of the party'. (The<br />
Moscow subsidy ended in 1979.)(155) <br />
<br />
<br />
Secret Party members?<br />
There were also secret Party members, though how many<br />
there were and what they did is unclear. The existence<br />
of 'secret members', a staple on the right since the<br />
war, appeared most strikingly in Spycatcher in which<br />
Peter Wright recounts how MI5 had found the CPGB<br />
membership files stashed in a rich member's flat and<br />
photographed the whole lot - 55,000 files - in one<br />
weekend, 'with a Polaroid camera'.(156) Wright claimed<br />
that these files also 'contained the files of covert<br />
members of the CPGB..... people who had gone<br />
underground largely as a result of the new vetting<br />
procedures brought in by the Attlee Government'.(157)<br />
Wright's claims were denied by George Matthews, who<br />
had been editor of the Daily Worker and assistant<br />
general secretary of the Party.(158) However Bob Darke<br />
described members, who for 'Personal Security', were<br />
allowed not to reveal themselves as members when the<br />
Party decreed that all members should 'come out' as<br />
CPGB members in the other organisations to which they<br />
belonged.(159) It may be that Wright simply remembered<br />
it wrongly: it was not members who went underground<br />
but who stayed underground. Further, Francis Beckett<br />
reveals (though without a source) the existence of a<br />
hitherto secret section of the Party, the Commercial<br />
Branch, consisting of 'rich members, often Jews...<br />
secret members... important industrialists' (emphasis<br />
added), set up by Reuben Falber in the 1930s, which<br />
apparently survived into the mid 1950s.(160) It<br />
appears that it was partly the loss of the income from<br />
this group after the revelations of anti-semitism in<br />
the Soviet Union and the invasion of Hungary which<br />
forced the Party to go to Moscow for money.(161) <br />
<br />
But some money and instructions from Moscow, though a<br />
striking confirmation in part of the right's theories,<br />
do not in themselves tell us anything about the<br />
influence of the CPGB.(162) (Conspiracies may be small<br />
and ineffectual but nonetheless conspiracies.) And<br />
measuring the influence of an activity with<br />
clandestine aspects, which both the Party and its<br />
opponents have had good reasons to exaggerate, will be<br />
very imprecise at best. <br />
<br />
Initially, post-war, the major focus of the state's<br />
anti-communists seems to have been on the Soviet front<br />
groups - the friendship societies etc. Eric Shaw<br />
mentions that in 1953 the Labour Party's Proscription<br />
List suddenly expanded with information about these<br />
groups assumed to come from 'the Foreign Office [i.e.<br />
IRD] and Special Branch' run through the International<br />
Department of the Party.(163) This focus on the CPGB<br />
front groups seems to be attributable to two things.<br />
If Bower's recent biography of MI5 head Dick White is<br />
accurate, one is the inadequacies of MI5 in the<br />
post-war years.(164) The second is the the locus of<br />
IRD within the Foreign Office network, where, engaged<br />
in a propaganda struggle with the Soviet bloc<br />
overseas, it was thus more interested in pro-Soviet<br />
groups than in activities on the shop-floor. <br />
<br />
The network of pro-Soviet groups is still the focus of<br />
the big IRIS pamphlet in 1957, The Communist Solar<br />
System; but the 1956 pamphlet by Woodrow Wyatt MP, The<br />
Peril in Our Midst was subtitled 'the Communist threat<br />
to Britain's trade unions', and since then it has been<br />
the Party's industrial wing which has received almost<br />
all of the attention - and about which there has been<br />
quite wide agreement, across a broadish political<br />
spectrum.(165) Wyatt in 1956 claimed that the CPGB<br />
controlled the ETU and the Fire Brigades Union, nearly<br />
had control of the AEU and had considerable influence<br />
in the NUM. In 1962 the Radcliffe Committee, set up by<br />
the Macmillan government in the wake of the Vassell<br />
spy case, reported on the apparently extensive Party<br />
control of the civil service unions; and that year the<br />
Conservative MP Aidan Crawley claimed that the CPGB<br />
was strongest in the NUM, building workers and the<br />
AEU, and claimed they were making inroads into the<br />
clerical unions, citing sections of the woodworkers',<br />
the plumbers' and the painters' unions as being under<br />
CP control.(166) Less ideologically interested,the<br />
historian Keith Middlemas saw 'substantial CP<br />
influence in the ETU, Foundry Workers, AEU and the<br />
NUM, especially in Fife and South Wales';(167)and in<br />
his recent history of the Party Francis Beckett<br />
claimed that 'the Party practically had full control<br />
of the Fire Brigades Union, the Amalgamated<br />
Engineering Union, the Foundry Workers and the<br />
Electrical Trades Union'.(168) Though not in<br />
themselves proof of anything - proof would entail much<br />
more detailed analysis of the various unions than I am<br />
capable of - the lists are strikingly consistent over<br />
the period from 1956 to 1994. <br />
<br />
<br />
The struggle for the AEU<br />
One of the recurring themes in the literature, from<br />
the 1950s onwards, is the centrality of the struggle<br />
in the AEU. IRIS was formed by AEU members and was<br />
most active in that union (discussed above). This<br />
concern quickens in the late 1960s and early 1970s as<br />
the left, focused round the publications Voice of the<br />
Unions and Engineering Voice, began to make<br />
progress.(169) It is found, for example, in Brian<br />
Crozier's 1970 anthology We Will Bury You, and in the<br />
1972 IRIS pamphlet In Perspective: Concerning the role<br />
of the Communist Party and its Effectiveness. In David<br />
Stirling's GB75 documents, leaked and printed in Peace<br />
News in August 1974, Stirling's opening paragraph,<br />
'The Objective Summarised', is about the lack of a<br />
contingency plan to 'weather the crucial first 3 or 4<br />
days of a General Strike or one involving the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical<br />
Trades Union.'(170) Shortly after the leak, i.e. late<br />
August 1974, Stirling met Ron McClaughlin and Frank<br />
Nodes, both former AEU officials, who were forming<br />
TRUEMID, the Movement for True Industrial Democracy. A<br />
decade later the AEU was at the centre of former SIS<br />
no. 2, G. K. Young's Subversion and the British<br />
Riposte.(171) <br />
<br />
While CPGB influence in the British unions - and thus<br />
in the Labour Party - was a constant refrain on the<br />
right, before the hysteria of 1974/5 there were only<br />
two occasions in the post-war period when the CPGB was<br />
even semi-seriously alleged to be posing a threat to<br />
the whole economy. The first was the 1948 dock strike.<br />
Charges of communist control were made at the time,<br />
and by senior members of the Labour Government,(172)<br />
but I have seen no evidence to support this claim and,<br />
in its absence, think we can reasonably attribute the<br />
claims to cynical manipulation of the 'red card'<br />
during a period of intense domestic difficulty for the<br />
Attlee government. <br />
<br />
'Cynical manipulation of the red card' has often been<br />
the description of the second occasion, during the<br />
1966 seamen's strike, when Harold Wilson made his<br />
notorious comments in the House of Commons about the<br />
role of the CPGB in the strike, and actually named<br />
CPGB members said to be active in it. This incident<br />
deserves examination. <br />
<br />
<br />
The 1966 seamen's strike<br />
There are two issues here, only one of which, whether<br />
Wilson should have said what he did, usually gets<br />
discussed. Most people, including most of his<br />
colleagues at the time, think it was a tactical<br />
mistake, at best. Peter Shore told Tony Benn that he<br />
thought Wilson's remarks were 'completely bonkers';<br />
and Benn noted in his diary, 'I think I share this<br />
view'.(173) The Labour Left were appalled by Wilson's<br />
behaviour; some by his use of what they perceived as<br />
the 'red card', and others by his use of clandestine<br />
sources of information from MI5 and Special Branch.<br />
For some, this was when they first perceived the<br />
shifty, careerist Wilson, prepared to even play the<br />
anti-communist card, to break the seamen's strike.<br />
This view is powerfully expressed by Paul Foot in his<br />
1967 essay 'The Seamen's Struggle'.(174) <br />
<br />
In his essay Foot says that the 'basic charge' in<br />
Wilson's second statement to the Commons was 'that<br />
certain members of the Communist Party had been<br />
engaging in a desperate battle to extend the seamen's<br />
strike against the will of the NUS members.'(175) In<br />
fact what Wilson said was much more complicated - and<br />
more reasonable - than this suggests.(176) He began by<br />
describing the CP's 'efficient and disciplined<br />
industrial apparatus', and continued that 'for some<br />
years now the Communist Party has had as one of its<br />
objectives the building up of a position of strength<br />
not only in the Seamen's Union, but in other unions<br />
concerned with docks and transport. It engages in this<br />
struggle for power in the Seamen's Union because it<br />
recognises..... that democracy is shallow-rooted in<br />
the union, not only that grievances and exploitation<br />
have festered for many years.' He called it a<br />
'take-over bid'. <br />
<br />
Wilson said the objectives of the CPGB in the strike<br />
were: 'First, to influence the day-to-day policy of<br />
the executive council; secondly, to extend the area of<br />
stoppage' [this is the bit emphasised by Foot] and<br />
thirdly, 'to use the strike not only to improve the<br />
conditions of the seamen - in which I believe them to<br />
be genuine - but also to secure what is at present the<br />
main political and industrial objective of the<br />
Communist Party - the destruction of the government's<br />
prices and incomes policy.' Wilson went on to say that<br />
he knew that the NUS executive committee was dominated<br />
by Joe Kenny and Jim Slater and that, while he knew<br />
neither of them were communists, he knew of their<br />
meetings with CPGB members in the union and the CPGB's<br />
industrial organiser, Bert Ramelson.(177) <br />
<br />
But smashing Wilson's pay policy was the aim of the<br />
CPGB - and just about everybody else on the British<br />
Left and in some of the trade unions. The rest of what<br />
he said amounts to little more than an account of the<br />
routine activities of all left groups in the labour<br />
movement. They try to expand their positions and<br />
influence inside every forum. This is what they do. If<br />
Bert Ramelson et al were not trying to do these<br />
things, CPGB members would be entitled to ask for<br />
their subscriptions back. This is what they were<br />
employed to do. The young Tony Benn also thought<br />
Wilson's statement less than overwhelming. On June 28,<br />
after Wilson' s listing of the CPGB members allegedly<br />
involved in the strike, Benn wrote in his diary that<br />
while the speech made him 'sick' and reminded him of<br />
'McCarthyism', he added: 'In a sense Harold said<br />
nothing that was new, since every trade union leader<br />
knew it.' <br />
<br />
The seamen's strike was a great boost for the CPGB and<br />
for Bert Ramelson who had only taken over as the<br />
Party's chief industrial organiser from Peter Kerrigan<br />
earlier that year. Under Ramelson the Party began<br />
classical 'broad left' campaigns in many of the<br />
unions, run by Party-controlled 'advisory committees'.<br />
Willie Thompson, himself a member of the CPGB, derides<br />
the idea that these committees had any power. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The CP advisory committees...were credited by an<br />
alarmist press with being an organisational framework<br />
through which a tight stranglehold was maintained upon<br />
the country's economic existence; a network through<br />
which flowed intelligence and commands enabling the<br />
Kremlin via King Street to direct its thrusts...For<br />
better or worse the advisories were just that - advice<br />
forums - and their coordinating function even within<br />
the individual area each one covered was weak.' (p.<br />
136) <br />
<br />
<br />
The evidence on this just is not clear: Beckett offers<br />
a different account of these committees. However<br />
Thompson more or less agrees with Beckett's claims<br />
that destruction of the Wilson-Castle trade union<br />
reform proposals, in the 'In Place of Strife'<br />
document, was 'largely a communist triumph and Wilson<br />
knew it';(178) and the latter cites the 1970 dock<br />
strike, the postal strike of 1971 and the miners'<br />
strikes of 1972 as disputes in which the Party played<br />
a significant role. <br />
<br />
In the 1970s, the anti-subversion lobby, orbiting<br />
around IRD, and presumably informally briefed on the<br />
reality of the 'Moscow gold' by MI5, took the picture<br />
of real - and arguably, increasing - CPGB influence on<br />
the trade unions, and added KGB/ Soviet control.To<br />
this theory the Communist Party itself contributed by<br />
occasionally boasting of its influence on the Labour<br />
Party;(179) with the Labour Party itself unwittingly<br />
adding the final touch by abolishing in 1973 the<br />
Proscription List of organisations - mostly the 1950s<br />
Soviet fronts - that Labour Party members could not<br />
join, thus convincing the paranoids on the right that<br />
the mice were in pantry. (180) Unaware of the 'Moscow<br />
gold' evidence, the left dismissed the right's Soviet<br />
angle as manifestly nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
MI5's role<br />
Unaware of the evidence: this is the key point. For<br />
while the members of the CPGB - and the wider public -<br />
knew nothing of the packets of used fivers arriving in<br />
London, we know now that MI5 had been aware of the<br />
Moscow gold run almost as soon as it was begun. We can<br />
start with Peter Wright's memory again. <br />
<br />
<br />
'Then there was the Falber affair. After the PARTY<br />
PIECE operation, MI5 went on the hunt for CPGB files<br />
which listed the secret payments made to the Party by<br />
the Soviets. We suspected that perhaps they might be<br />
held in the flat of Reuben Falber, who had recently<br />
been made cashier of the Russian funds.'(181) <br />
<br />
MI5 knew about the payments, and knew Falber was in<br />
charge of them.(182) All they wanted were the presumed<br />
accounts, the books - the evidence. Wright tells us<br />
that MI5 planned to burgle Falber's flat but their<br />
first plan failed - and leaves it there! To MI5 the<br />
proof of the Moscow Gold must have had something of<br />
the status of the Holy Grail; and we are to believe<br />
that having located it they made only one attempt to<br />
get it? Wright really wants us to believe that for 20<br />
years, aware that the CPGB were getting actual Soviet<br />
cash money, MI5 were either unable to detect the<br />
payoffs in London, or, having made one failed attempt,<br />
just gave up? This is simply not credible. <br />
<br />
In the USA the FBI famously had so many agents inside<br />
the CPUSA as to make the whole enterprise a farce; and<br />
J. Edgar Hoover is quoted by a fairly senior ex FBI<br />
source as having said, 'If it were not for me, there<br />
would not even be a Communist Party of the United<br />
States. Because I've financed the Communist Party, in<br />
order to know what they are doing.'(183) As far as we<br />
know, nothing quite like this happened in the UK. The<br />
large transmitter found attached to the bottom of the<br />
table in the CPGB's central meetings room, displayed<br />
by ex CPGB Central Committee member George Mathews in<br />
the Independent (25 November 1989), illustrates Peter<br />
Wright's claim that 'By 1955....... the CPGB was<br />
thoroughly penetrated at almost every level by<br />
technical surveillance or informants'; and with the<br />
spreading disillusion in the 1950s, climaxed by<br />
Hungary, MI5 can have had no trouble recruiting active<br />
and former party members, like the late Harry Newton,<br />
to inform on the British comrades. <br />
<br />
I do not want to argue that MI5 were running the CPGB.<br />
<br />
<br />
But it did allow the CPGB to run.(184) <br />
<br />
Had the existence of the 'Moscow gold' been revealed<br />
in 1958 or 9, coming after the Soviet invasion of<br />
Hungary, the CPGB would have been terminally damaged.<br />
But for MI5 the 'communist threat' - and the link to<br />
the Soviet Union - was simply too useful a stick with<br />
which to beat the much more important wider labour<br />
movement and Labour Party to be surrendered. The<br />
Soviet connection with the CPGB enabled the Security<br />
Service to portray both unions and the left of the<br />
Labour Party, some of whom worked with the CPGB, as<br />
subversives; and with a subversive minority in its<br />
midst, this enabled the Labour Party as a whole to be<br />
portrayed as a threat to the well-being of the<br />
nation,(185) and thus a legitimate target for MI5.<br />
Reviewing Willie Thompson's history of the Party,<br />
social democrat John Torode (whose father had been a<br />
significant pre-war member of the Party) charged that:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'The [CPGB's] constant encouragement of strikes in<br />
support of unrealistic wage demands, the destruction<br />
of Barbara Castle's union reforms and the coordinated<br />
attempts to capture positions of power in order to<br />
influence Labour Party policy, did much to destroy the<br />
credibility of that party.'(186) <br />
<br />
In one sense Torode is merely saying that the CPGB<br />
tried to use such influence as it had in the trade<br />
unions to frustrate social democratic policies and<br />
build up its own position. Is this not what Communist<br />
Parties always did? But in another way Torode has<br />
missed the point. For the link with the CPGB<br />
discredited the Labour Party because of the CPGB's<br />
perceived connection to Moscow. If Torode's charge is<br />
true - and I think it is to some extent - it was only<br />
possible because MI5 had concealed the Moscow<br />
financial connection and preserved the CPGB as a<br />
significant force on the British Left. <br />
<br />
Since so much of the British Left came either from, or<br />
in opposition to, the CPGB, it is impossible to even<br />
speculate convincingly how the the British Left - or<br />
British Politics - would have developed if the Moscow<br />
gold had been exposed in the late fifties. But it<br />
certainly is possible that the anti-union hysteria of<br />
the late 1970s, leading to the catastrophe of<br />
Thatcherism - and the subsequent collapse of the<br />
Labour Party - could have been avoided. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
148. In 1964, for example, Common Cause issued a<br />
pamphlet naming 180 people in Britain with 'Communist<br />
connections', including Bertrand Russell, Lord Boyd<br />
Orr and the painter Ruskin Spear! See the Sunday<br />
Times, 31 May 1964. 'Big Jim' Matthews of the GMWU was<br />
one of the Common Cause directors who approved the<br />
publication<br />
149. For this view see the memoir by Des Warren, The<br />
Key to My Cell, New Park, London, 1982. One of the<br />
so-called Shrewsbury pickets, imprisoned in 1972,<br />
Warren had been a member of the CPGB, became<br />
disillusioned and joined the Workers' Revolutionary<br />
Party.<br />
150. Darke pp. 59 and 60<br />
151. A CPGB activist at the time, Harry McShane<br />
describes in his memoir how 'overnight we all became<br />
democratic and amazingly interested in Acts of<br />
Parliament.....the idea was that, whereas the old<br />
Industrial Department was concerned with industrial<br />
action, the Labour Movement Department would influence<br />
the Labour Party and the trade unions and change the<br />
character of those bodies....'. McShane p. 246.<br />
152. See Guardian, September 14 1991 and the<br />
discussion in Labour History Review, Vol. 57, no. 3,<br />
pp. 33-5.<br />
153. My parents were both in the CPGB in the 1945-56<br />
period and talked of the burden of trying to sell<br />
Party literature. On the Party's low wages see, for<br />
example, the letter from former Party employee Bill<br />
Brooks in Guardian, 21 November 1991.<br />
154. Independent, 15 November 1991<br />
155. The people I knew of in the CPGB were, on the<br />
whole, well intentioned left democrats who, almost to<br />
a man and woman, became Euro-communists in the 70s and<br />
80s. The impact on the Party of the revelation of<br />
Soviet funding is discussed in detail in Mosbacher.<br />
156. Think of the logistics of this: assuming only one<br />
page per file, for 48 hours, using 1955 technology,<br />
and without disturbing the other tenants in the block<br />
of flats? It seems unlikely to me.<br />
157. Wright, Spycatcher p. 55<br />
158. Beckett p. 138 repeats the denials of Matthews,<br />
attributing it to 'CP officials'.<br />
159. Darke p. 86. On this 'coming out' of concealed CP<br />
members, see the conference report in Labour History<br />
Review, vol. 57, No. 3 Winter 1992, p. 29.<br />
160. Beckett pp. 147-8<br />
161. Evidence of secret CP members also comes from<br />
another Communist Party. In her 1990 autobiography the<br />
Australian feminist, poet and Communist Party<br />
activist, Dorothy Hughes wrote of the period just<br />
after World War 2, when the ACP was under pressure<br />
from the state: 'Peter Thomas, Joan's former husband,<br />
writes leaders for the West Australian and is an<br />
undercover member of the State Committee of the<br />
Party.' (emphasis added) Dorothy Hughes, Wild Card,<br />
Virago, London, p. 122.<br />
162. Other left-wing parties in Britain have received<br />
foreign funding without amounting to anything. The<br />
Workers' Revolutionary Party for example.<br />
163. Shaw, Discipline, p. 59<br />
164. See Bower, The Perfect English Spy, chapter 4<br />
165. The Peril In Our Midst, Phoenix House, London,<br />
1956.<br />
166. The Hidden Face of British Communism, Aidan<br />
Crawley, Sunday Times, October 28 1962, reprinted as a<br />
pamphlet.<br />
167. Middlemas, footnote on p. 414<br />
168. Beckett p. 109. Like the rest of Beckett's book,<br />
this is unsourced but presumably the estimate is from<br />
CPGB members or former members.<br />
169. See Roberts pp. 210-216. IRIS discussed 'Voice'<br />
newspapers in their pamphlet The British 'Left',<br />
August 1970, pp. 18 and 19. The scare quotes round<br />
'Left' are IRIS's.<br />
170. Peace News, special issue, 23 August, 1974.<br />
171. Ossian, Glasgow, no date but circa 1984.<br />
172. This is still believed on the right. See for<br />
example in the obituary of the London CPGB dockers'<br />
leader, Jack Dash, in the Daily Telegraph June 9,<br />
1989. The various dock strikes and the alleged<br />
'communist threat' are discussed in Jim Phillips.<br />
173. Pimlott p. 407<br />
174. In Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.). In that, and in<br />
his book The Politics of Harold Wilson, Foot traces<br />
the origins of the strike back to the smaller 1960<br />
strike and the formation of the National Seamen's<br />
Reform Movement. I discussed Foot's highly selective<br />
account of the origins of the strike in Lobster 25. <br />
<br />
Historian of the CPGB Willie Thompson writes that 'the<br />
Prime Minister indicted the CP (quite inaccurately)<br />
for fomenting and organising the strike....accusing<br />
King Street of having organised it with the deliberate<br />
purpose of inflicting damage on the national economy.'<br />
(emphasis added) p. 137. Actually Wilson did not<br />
accuse the CPGB of deliberately trying to damage the<br />
national economy, and Thompson says nothing more about<br />
the alleged CPGB influence on the strike.<br />
175. Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.) p. 175<br />
176. His statement is reproduced in his The Labour<br />
Government 1964-70 Penguin 1974, pp. 308-11.<br />
177. On this the evidence is incomplete and<br />
contradictory. On the one hand Dr Raymond Challinor<br />
told me that he discussed this with Jim Slater just<br />
before the latter's death, and Slater told him that he<br />
had never met Bert Ramelson, that he had told Wilson<br />
this, and that Wilson had acknowledged that he had<br />
been misinformed. But in his history of the CPGB<br />
Beckett tells us that Slater was part of a 'left<br />
caucus.... people who had a high regard for [CPGB<br />
Industrial Organiser] Ramelson'. Beckett p. 182<br />
178. Beckett p. 175, Willie Thompson pp. 138/9.<br />
179. This is attributed to Ramelson in Seamus Milne's<br />
obituary of him in the Guardian, 16 April 1994.<br />
180. Blake Baker, one of the media experts on the<br />
CPGB, who wrote for the Daily Telegraph for many<br />
years, on p. 96 of his The Far Left wrote of the<br />
subsidies from Moscow: 'No one has ever been able to<br />
produce evidence, let alone prove it. ... All that<br />
would be necessary is a car or a taxicab to collect a<br />
suitcase full of money.' Is Baker hinting here that he<br />
knew about the cash from Moscow and how it was<br />
delivered?<br />
181. Spycatcher p. 175 Falber's account is in Changes,<br />
16-19 November 1991. In it he writes: First, did the<br />
authorities know about it [the Moscow money]? I think<br />
they did.'<br />
182. This suggests either that the CPGB had a<br />
high-level MI5 mole in its ranks who has never been<br />
identified, or that SIS had a hitherto unknown agent<br />
inside the Soviet intelligence apparatus.<br />
183. Summers, p. 191<br />
184. Something similar happened in the United States<br />
where the people who handled the secret Soviet Union<br />
donations to the CPUSA, Morris and Jack Childs, were<br />
actually FBI agents. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics<br />
II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico and Cuba (Green Archive<br />
Publications, Skokie, Illinois, USA 1995), p. 93,<br />
citing David J. Garrow's The FBI and Martin Luther<br />
King (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981).<br />
185. This was a staple of the subversive-hunters in<br />
the mid 1970s. But compare and contrast Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith's Not To Be Trusted: Left Wing Extremism<br />
in the Labour and Liberal Parties of February 1974,<br />
with his 1979 Hidden Face of the Labour Party, 1979.<br />
By 1979 he has added Trotskyist groups in the Labour<br />
Party to the CPGB as 'the threat'.<br />
186. The Independent, 1 October 1992. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Books and articles cited<br />
<br />
* Agee, Philip, CIA Diary: Inside the Company,<br />
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1975<br />
* Agee, Philip and Wolf, Louis, Dirty Work: the CIA in<br />
Western Europe, Zed Press, London, 1981<br />
* Allen, V.L., The Russians Are Coming: The Politics<br />
of Anti-Sovietism, Moor Press, 1987<br />
* Andrew, Christopher, Secret Service, Sceptre,<br />
London, 1986<br />
* Atholl, Duchess of, Working Partnership, Arthur<br />
Barker, London, 1958<br />
* Baker, Blake, The Far Left, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,<br />
London, 1981<br />
* Beckett, Francis, Enemy Within: The Rise and Fall of<br />
the British Communist Party, John Murray, London, 1995<br />
* Benn, Tony, Against the Tide; Diaries 1973-6,<br />
Hutchinson, London, 1989<br />
* Benn, Tony, Office Without Power; Dairies 1968-72,<br />
Arrow, London, 1988<br />
* Blackburn, Robin and Cockburn, Alexander, The<br />
Incompatibles: trade union militancy and the<br />
consensus, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967<br />
* Blank, Stephen, Industry and Government in Britain:<br />
the Federation of British Industries in Politics,<br />
1945-64, Saxon House, Farnborough (UK), 1973 <br />
* Bloch, Jonathan and Fitzgerald, Patrick, British<br />
Intelligence and Covert Action, Junction Books,<br />
London, 1983<br />
* Block, Fred L., The Origins of International<br />
Economic Disorder, University of California Press,<br />
London, 1977<br />
* Bower, Tom, The Red Web, Arum Press, London, 1989<br />
* Bower, Tom, The Perfect English Spy, Heinemann,<br />
London, 1995<br />
* Bradley, Ian, Breaking the Mould? The Birth and<br />
Prospects of the Social Democratic Party, Martin<br />
Robertson, Oxford, 1981<br />
* Campbell, John, Roy Jenkins: A Biography, Weidenfeld<br />
and Nicolson, London, 1983<br />
* Carew, Anthony, Labour under the Marshall Plan,<br />
Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1987.<br />
* Carruthers, Susan L., Winning Hearts and Minds:<br />
British Governments, the Media and Colonial<br />
Counter-Insurgency 1944-60, University of Leicester<br />
Press, Leicester and New York, 1995<br />
* Castle, Barbara, The Castle Diaries 1974-76, Book<br />
Club Associates, London, 1980<br />
* Chapple, Frank, Sparks Fly, Michael Joseph, London,<br />
1984<br />
* Cockett, Richard, Twilight of Truth, Weidenfeld and<br />
Nicolson, London, 1989<br />
* Coleman, Peter, The Liberal Conspiracy, Collier<br />
Macmillan, London, 1989<br />
* Crofts, William, Coercion or Persuasion: Propaganda<br />
in Britain after 1945, Routledge, London, 1989<br />
* Crosland, Susan, Tony Crosland, Coronet, London,<br />
1982<br />
* Crouch, Colin (ed.), State and Economy in<br />
Contemporary Capitalism, Croom Helm, London, 1979<br />
* Crozier, Brian, Free Agent, HarperCollins, London,<br />
1993<br />
* Darke, Bob, The Communist Technique in Britain,<br />
Penguin, London, 1952<br />
* Davenport-Hines, R.P.T. (ed.), Speculators and<br />
Patriots, Frank Cass, London, 1986<br />
* Desai, Radhika, Intellectuals and Socialism: 'Social<br />
Democrats' and the Labour Party, Lawrence and Wishart,<br />
London, 1994<br />
* Dittberner, Job L., The End of Ideology and American<br />
Social Thought, UMI Press, USA, 1979<br />
* Dockrill, Michael, and Young, John W. (eds.),<br />
British Foreign Policy 1945-56, Macmillan, London,<br />
1989<br />
* Dorril, Stephen and Ramsay, Robin, Smear! Wilson and<br />
the Secret State, Fourth Estate, London, 1991<br />
* Driver, Christopher, The Disarmers, Hodder and<br />
Stoughton, London, 1964<br />
* Eringer, Robert, The Global Manipulators, Pentacle<br />
Books, Bristol, 1980<br />
* Farr, Lee Barbara The Development and Impact of<br />
Right-wing Politics in England 1918-39, unpublished<br />
PhD thesis, University of Illinois, 1976<br />
* Ferris, Paul, The New Militants, Penguin,<br />
Harmondsworth, 1972<br />
* Finer, S.E., Anonymous Empire; A Study of the Lobby<br />
in Great Britain, Pall Mall, London, 1969 <br />
* Foley, Charles, Legacy of Strife; Cyprus from<br />
rebellion to civil war, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964<br />
* Foot, Paul, Who Framed Colin Wallace?, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1989<br />
* Foot, Paul, The Politics of Harold Wilson, Penguin,<br />
Harmondsworth, 1968.<br />
* Frazier, Howard (ed.), Uncloaking the CIA, Collier<br />
Macmillan, London, 1978<br />
* Gordievsky, Oleg, Next Stop Execution, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1995<br />
* U.S. Government Printing Office, Foreign Relations<br />
of the United States, Washington DC, 1977 <br />
* Hamilton, Willie, Blood on the Walls, Bloomsbury,<br />
London, 1992<br />
* Harrod, Jeffrey, Trade Union Foreign Policy,<br />
Macmillan, London, 1972<br />
* Haseler, Stephen, The Gaitskellites, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1969 <br />
* The Battle for Britain: Thatcher and the New<br />
Liberals, I.B. Tauris, London, 1989<br />
* Hastings, Stephen, The Drums of Memory, Leo Cooper,<br />
London, 1994.<br />
* Hatch, Alden, Clare Booth Luce, Heinneman, London,<br />
1956<br />
* Healey, Denis, The Time of My Life, Michael Joseph,<br />
London, 1989<br />
* Heilbrunn, Otto, The Soviet Secret Services, George<br />
Allen, London, 1956<br />
* Higham, Charles, Wallis, Pan, London, 1988<br />
* Hinton, James, 'Militant Housewives: the British<br />
Housewives' League and the Attlee Government' in<br />
History Workshop, Autumn 1994<br />
* Hirsch, Fred and Fletcher, Richard, CIA and the<br />
Labour Movement, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1977<br />
* Hoe, Alan, David Stirling, Little Brown and Company,<br />
London, 1993<br />
* Institute for Historical Research, Witness Seminar<br />
transcript (manuscript), Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism, London, 1990 <br />
* Institute for Historical Research, Witness Seminar<br />
transcript (manuscript), The Launch of the SDP<br />
1979-83, London, 1991<br />
* Jenkins, Clive, All Against the Collar, Methuen,<br />
London, 1990<br />
* Jenkins, Roy, A Life At the Centre, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1991<br />
* Kaiser, Philip, Journeying Far and Wide, Maxwell<br />
Macmillan International, Oxford, 1992<br />
* Keating, Joan, Roman Catholics, Christian Democracy<br />
and the British labour movement 1910-1960, unpublished<br />
PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1992<br />
* Kisch, Richard, The Private Life of Public<br />
Relations, MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1964<br />
* Kwitney, Jonathan, Endless Enemies, Congdon and<br />
Weed, New York, 1984<br />
* Lasch, Christopher, 'The Cultural Cold War: a short<br />
history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom', in<br />
Barton J. Bernstein (ed.) Towards a New Past:<br />
Dissenting Essays in American History, Vintage Books,<br />
(Random House), New York, 1969<br />
* Loftus, John, The Belarus Secret, Penguin,<br />
Harmondsworth, 1983<br />
* Lucas, W. Scott and Morris, C.J., 'A Very British<br />
Crusade: the Information Research Department and the<br />
Beginning of the Cold War', in Aldrich, Richard J.<br />
(ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold<br />
War, Routledge, London, 1992<br />
* MacShane, Denis, International Labour and the<br />
Origins of the Cold War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992<br />
* McIvor, Arthur 'Political blacklisting and<br />
anti-socialist activity between the Wars' in British<br />
Society for the Study of Labour History, vol. 51, no.<br />
1, Spring 1988; and 'A Crusade for Capitalism:the<br />
Economic League, 1919-39' in the Journal of<br />
Contemporary History, vol. 23, 1978<br />
* McShane, Harry with Joan Smith, No Mean Fighter,<br />
Pluto Press, London, 1978<br />
* Mahl, Tom, "48 land": The United States, British<br />
Intelligence and World War II, unpublished PhD thesis,<br />
Kent State University, 1994<br />
* Mayhew, Christopher, Time To Explain, Century<br />
Hutchinson, London, 1987<br />
* Merrick, Ray, 'The Russia Committee of the British<br />
Foreign Office and the Cold War, 1946-47' in Journal<br />
of Contemporary History, vol. 20, 1985<br />
* Middlemas, Keith, Politics in Industrial Society,<br />
Andre Deutsch, London, 1979<br />
* Mikardo, Ian, Back-bencher, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,<br />
London, 1988<br />
* Milne, Seamus, The Enemy Within, Verso, London, 1994<br />
* Minkin, Lewis, The Labour Party Conference, Allen<br />
Lane, London, 1978<br />
* Minkin, Lewis, The Contentious Alliance, University<br />
of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1991<br />
* Mosbacher, M.O., 'The British Communist Movement and<br />
Moscow: How the demise of the Soviet Union affected<br />
the Communist Party and its Successor Organisations',<br />
M.A. Dissertation, University of Exeter, 1995<br />
* Nicholson, Marjorie, The TUC Overseas, Allen and<br />
Unwin, London, 1986<br />
* Newton, Scott and Porter, Dilwyn, Modernisation<br />
Frustrated, Unwin Hyman, London, 1988.<br />
* Owen, David, Time To Declare, Penguin, London, 1992<br />
* Peck, Winslow, 'The AFL-CIA' in Frazier (ed.)<br />
* Phillips, Jim, The Great Alliance: Economic Recovery<br />
and the Problems of Power 1945-51, Pluto Press, London<br />
1996<br />
* Pimlott, Ben, Harold Wilson, HarperCollins, London,<br />
1992<br />
* Pincher, Chapman, Inside Story, Sidgwick and<br />
Jackson, London, 1978<br />
* The Truth About Dirty Tricks, Sidgwick and Jackson,<br />
London, 1991<br />
* Pisani, Sallie, The CIA and the Marshall Plan,<br />
University of Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh, 1992.<br />
* Pritt, D.N., Brasshats and Bureaucrats, Lawrence and<br />
Wishart, London, 1966<br />
* Pugh, Patricia, Educate, Agitate, Organise: 100<br />
Years of Fabian Socialism, Methuen, London, 1984<br />
* Ranelagh, John, The Agency: the rise and decline of<br />
the CIA, Sceptre, London, 1988<br />
* Richter, Irving, Political Purpose in Trade Unions,<br />
Allen and Unwin, London, 1973<br />
* Roberts, Ernie, Strike Back, Ernie Roberts,<br />
Orpington, Kent, 1994<br />
* Seldon, Anthony, and Ball, Stuart (eds.), The<br />
Conservative Century: the Conservative Party since<br />
1900, Oxford University Press, 1994<br />
* Shaw, Eric, Discipline and Discord in the Labour<br />
Party, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1988<br />
* Shoup, Laurence H. and Minter, William, Imperial<br />
Brain Trust, Monthly Review Press, London and New<br />
York, 1977<br />
* Simpson, Christopher, Blowback: America's<br />
Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War,<br />
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1988<br />
* Smith, Joseph, B., Portrait of a Cold Warrior,<br />
Ballantine, New York, 1986<br />
* Smith, Richard Harris, OSS: the Secret History of<br />
America's Central First Intelligence Agency,<br />
University of California Press, 1972<br />
* Smith, Lyn, 'Covert British Propaganda; The<br />
Information Research Department: 1974-77', in<br />
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 9<br />
No. 1<br />
* Stephenson, Hugh, Claret and Chips, Michael Joseph,<br />
London, 1982<br />
* Sulzberger, C.L., A Long Row of Candles, Macdonald,<br />
London, 1969<br />
* Summers, Anthony, Official and Confidential: the<br />
Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, Victor Gollancz,<br />
London,1993<br />
* Taylor, Philip M., 'The Projection of Britain<br />
Abroad, 1945-51', in Dockrill (ed.)<br />
* Thompson, Don and Larson, Rodney, Where were you,<br />
brother?, War on Want, London, 1978<br />
* Thompson, Willie, The Good Old Cause; British<br />
Communism 1920-1991, Pluto Press, London, 1992<br />
* Verrier, Anthony, Through the Looking Glass,<br />
Jonathan Cape, London, 1982<br />
* Verrier, Anthony, The Road to Zimbabwe 1890-1980,<br />
Jonathan Cape, London, 1986 <br />
* Webber, G.C., The Ideology of the British Right,<br />
1919-39, Croom Helm, London, 1986<br />
* Weiler, Peter, British Labour and the Cold War,<br />
Stanford University Press, California, 1985<br />
* Wigham, Eric, What's Wrong with the Unions?,<br />
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1961<br />
* Williams, Francis, Nothing So Strange, Cassell,<br />
London, 1970.<br />
* Wilson, H.H. 'Techniques of Pressure -<br />
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* Windlesham, Lord, Communication and Political Power,<br />
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* Winks, Robin, Cloak and Gown, Collins Harvill,<br />
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* Wright, Peter, with Greengrass, Paul, Spycatcher,<br />
Viking, New York, 1987<br />
* Wrigley, Chris (ed.), Warfare, Diplomacy and<br />
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* Yakovlev, Nikolai, CIA Target: the USSR, Progress,<br />
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* Young, Kenneth (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Robert<br />
Bruce Lockhart, Vol. 2 1939-65, Macmillan, London,<br />
1980 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=The_Clandestine_Caucus&diff=68106The Clandestine Caucus2008-10-28T17:37:24Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The Clandestine Caucus was written in the 1996 by Lobster editor Robin Ramsay and was an early attempt to understand the significance of a nexus of intelligence connected groups which covertly influenced the political landscape of the post-war UK including the [[Economic League]]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Part 1: Clearing the ground: the unions, socialism and the state==<br />
<br />
A surprising number of Labour Party members believe that it was once a socialist party, began as a<br />
socialist party, and was then seduced from the golden pathway. This engenders the language of betrayal and sell-out which is so familiar and depressing a part of life in the Labour Party and on the British Left in general.(1) But the view of the Labour Party as originally socialist is just wrong. The history of Britain's union and labour movement is one of continuous conflict between socialist and anti-socialist wings; and within that conflict the bit of the story that is usually not told is that describing the relationship between the anti-socialist section of the labour movement and British and US capital and their states. <br />
<br />
The conflict between the anti- and pro-socialist wings of the labour movement sharpened markedly after the 1918 Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although wehave surprisingly little information on the turbulent years between 1918 and 1926, and, in particular, on the British Right's preparation to meet the Bolshevik 'threat',(2) we know that much of the early effort was put into groups aimed at the exploitation of so-called 'patriotic labour', such as the British Workers League.(3) <br />
<br />
World War 1 produced the modern British state - the Cabinet Office etc. - and mobilisation: things wererun from the centre and new relationships were formed.<br />
<br />
:'By the end of 1919, a new form of political activity was growing up, as yet only half understood, but radically different from the pre-war system ..... but there now existed formal, powerful, employers' institutions, a fully fledged Ministry of Labour, and a TUC [[Trades Union Congress]] increasingly accustomed to dealing in the political arena, wedded to a major political party which, almost alone in Europe, encompassed the majority of the non-Conservative working class. At the same time, the government's apparatus for manipulating public opinion had grown inordinately, enabling it - on its own estimate - to confront the spectre of Bolshevism and survive. Lloyd George himself, searching always for a middle way in politics, had shifted away from Liberal radicalism towards a corporatism best described as the creation in Parliamentary politics of a staatspartei, composed of Liberals and mainstream Conservatives (leaving a fringe right wing and a much larger, but powerless Labour Left); complemented in industrial politics by a triangular collaboration in which employers' organisations and TUC should make them-selves representative of their members and in return receive recognition as estates by government.'(4) <br />
<br />
The [[British Commonwealth Union]], the FBI ([[Federation of British Industries]], precursor of today's CBI) and the other predominantly Midlands manufacturing group, the [[National Union of Manufacturers]], were set up during the first World War and they mark the origins of the British corporate movement.(5) One of the leading figures of the group, Sir [[Dudley Docker]], envisaged <br />
<br />
:'a completely integrated society and economy in which industry would have its organisation of workers and management, the two sets of organisations united by peak federations and all finally capped by a great national forum of workers and managers and employers, embraced by the protection of an Imperial Tariff.'(6) <br />
<br />
Another of the corporatist groups financed by Midlands industrialists, the [[British Commonwealth Union]] (BCU), led by the Birmingham MP, Sir [[Patrick Hannon]], began funding MPs to form an Industrial Group in Parliament. The first 11 candidates were subsidised by the BCU in the 1918 election: by 1924 the group in parliament consisted of 105 (mostly Tory) members. Hannon's Industrial Group chiefly wanted government protection of British industry against foreign competition, but, to quote Hannon, they also 'wanted the largest measure of freedom in the relationship between capital and labour and the least state intervention possible.'(7) <br />
<br />
These early corporatist dreams failed for a number of reasons. Employer organisations were none too happy at the idea of the trade unions as some kind of partners.(8) And vice versa. Too much was being expected; it was too big a change, happening too quickly. In any case, the corporatists among the members of the [[Federation of British Industries]] (FBI) were a minority strand in the thinking of the Tory Party and British industrial capital; and even among the corporatists there were divisions.(9) <br />
<br />
Frank Longstreth called this network of BCU, Industrial Group, FBI and other employer propaganda groups of the period, such as the [[Economic League]], the Preference Imperialists, and noted their links to the earlier Midlands manufacturing-based Tariff Reform League.(10)As Longstreth suggested, it is possible to view the British economy since 1900 as a protracted struggle between British manufacturing (domestic capital) and the City of London (international finance capital), with the City in control for most of the century.(11) [[Oswald Mosley]]'s movement in the 1930s was<br />
<br />
:'in effect, the perverted continuation of the social imperialism of an earlier generation of industrialists, supporting imperial autarchy, social reform, conversion from a bankers' to a producers' economy, protectionism, public control of credit, and the suppression of the class struggle through the state'.(12) <br />
<br />
Although the great schemes of corporatism failed, the cooperation between the state and the trade unions which began during the First World War, continued after the General Strike and was deepened by the first two Labour governments.(13) Peter Weiler quotes Ernest Bevin's view in the 1930s that that the TUC had 'virtually become an integral part of the State, its views and voice upon every subject, international and domestic, heard and heeded.'(14) This statement of Bevin's is an exaggeration: no doubt the TUC's views were heard; but heeded? <br />
<br />
The powers-that-be set about educating and socialising these new leaders. In 1938, for example, one of the most important of the trade union leaders, Ernest Bevin, with his wife, was taken off on a tour of the empire, at the behest of the [[Royal Institute of International Affairs]].(15) Trade union leaders they might be, seeking justice and a better deal for the British worker, but they remained patriots and imperialists for the most part, and not socialists. The gentlemen (mostly men) of the TUC did not dream - publicly or secretly - of taking over British capitalism, or of destroying the British empire. The institutional links with the British state begun before World War 2 were solidified enormously by the war. The trade unions were in the national coalition<br />
government, and some of their leaders were Ministers of the Crown - very important people. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== After the war ==<br />
<br />
<br />
In the immediate post-war period the TUC was dominated by what Lewis Minkin called a 'praetorian guard' against the left; Arthur Deakin of the Transport Workers, Will Lawther of the Mineworkers and Tom Williamson of the General and Municipal. Minkin describes in detail how this trio ran the what he calls 'an unprecedented period of "platform" dominance at Party conference';(16) but noted that this alliance was defensive in nature and saw a communist conspiracy behind all criticism. <br />
<br />
The political beliefs of the leaders of trade unions in this period was mixed. Some were supporters of [[Moral Rearmament]] (MRA). At the 1947 MRA World Assembly at Caux-sur-Martreux in France, delegates from Britain included E.G. Gooch MP, President of the Agricultural Workers. An MRA press release on October 15, 1947 noted that signatories to a message of support for the Caux assembly included trade union leaders Andrew Naesmith, (General Secretary of the Amalgamated Weavers' Association), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council representative; former General Secretary of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), George Chester (General Secretary of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), W. B. Beard and J. W. Stephenson (Chair of Building Trade Operatives).Some trade union leaders supported campaigns by avowedly anti-socialist groups such as [[Aims of Industry]] and the [[Economic League]]. In 1952 the New Statesman reported that recent Aims of Industry literature had included essays by - or under the name of, perhaps - Florence Hancock of the TUC General Council and Bob Edwards, the General Secretary of the Chemical Workers' Union, who was later to be found on the Advisory Council of the anti-communist organisation, [[Common Cause]].(17) <br />
<br />
== The Trades Union Congress and the state ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Bevin's 'integration' into the British state meant a role for the TUC in the overseas state, the empire, as well as in Britain itself; and before and during the war the TUC began working with the Foreign and Colonial offices - a relationship about which few trade unionists knew - or know - anything at all.(18) As one of the Colonial Office officials quoted by Weiler said, with the clarity of simpler times, the TUC could be relied upon to guide young trade unions in the empire into becoming <br />
<br />
:'trades unions which the employers in the colony would feel they could respect and trust and which could be relied upon loyally to keep an agreement.'(19) <br />
<br />
In 1948, a member of the US State Department, Third Secretary at the London Embassy, Herbert E. Weiner, reported from London on 'Attitude of Trades Union Congress Towards World Federation of Trade Unions and American International Trade Union Leaders', and wrote: <br />
<br />
:'When asked how the Trades Union Congress hoped to prevent the Communists from using the technique of bona fide forms of trade union action in order to infiltrate unions in Germany and in "undeveloped"(colonial) areas, my informant said ........:in areas where trade unionism is undeveloped e.g. colonial areas, the Trades Union Congress through the British Labour Attaches keeps in close touch with Communist union activities'.(20) <br />
<br />
In the 1970s the TUC seconded two of its international staff to the Foreign Office. This caused a minor furore when it was brought to the attention of the TUC members.(21) Alan Hargreaves, TUC International Secretary in the 1970s, came to the TUC from the Foreign Office and refused to discuss his Foreign Office work.(22) <br />
<br />
Attacked by the socialists - and communists - on the left at home, and working against the left abroad with the Colonial and Foreign Offices, little wonder that the TUC slipped so comfortably into the Cold War role allotted to it. <br />
<br />
<br />
== '''Notes''' ==<br />
<br />
'''''Please note''': details of the books and articles cited in these footnotes are in the bibliography at the end of the essay, indexed by author's surname.'' <br />
<br />
<br />
1.There is wide-spread confusion about whether or not to capitalise the 'L' in left or the 'R' in right. I will try to stick to this rule: capital letters only when proper nouns; thus British Left and the left.<br />
<br />
2.Or am I being naive to be surprised that the one period in British twentieth history when there may have been something like a pre-revolutionary climate seems under researched? Stephen White, in 1975, offered a glimpse of a dense hinterland of largely short-lived parties and groups forming on the right in Britain in this period. Stephen White, 'Ideological Hegemony and Political Control: the sociology of anti-Bolshevism 1918-1920' in Scottish Labour History Society Journal, No. 98, June 1975. See also Webber 1987, and John Hope's 'Fascism, the Security Service and the Curious<br />
Career of Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes' in Lobster 22. <br />
<br />
3.See, for example. 'In The Excess of Their Patriotism: the National Party and Threats of Subversion' by Chris Wrigley in Wrigley (ed.). Of the groups which appeared in this period only the Economic League survived into Mrs Thatcher's era. <br />
<br />
4.Middlemas p. 151.<br />
<br />
5.This mirrored what was happening elsewhere in Europe, notably Germany and Italy. See, for example, Scott Newton's 'The economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during World War 2', in Lobster 20.<br />
<br />
6.Blank p. 14.<br />
<br />
7.Farr, thesis, p. 179. See also Wrigley, 'In The Excess' pp. 108 and 9, and 'Sir Allan Smith, the<br />
Industrial Group and the Politics of Unemployment 1919-24' by Terence Rodgers, in Davenport-Hines (ed.).<br />
<br />
8.Ibid. pp. 222-5.<br />
<br />
9.Patrick Hannon's abortive attempt to create an Industrial Group of MPs and union leaders using the British Commonwealth Union is in Barbara Lee Farr's thesis. Her information came from the Hannon papers in the House of Lords. I was alerted to this remarkable piece of work by John Hope. <br />
<br />
Rodgers, in note 7, does not cite Farr's work and gives slightly different figures for the size of the Industrial Group of MP's, while quoting the same source, namely the Hannon papers. See his footnotes 13 and 16. Hannon's obituary appeared in The Times, 11 January 1963.<br />
<br />
10.Frank Longstreth, 'The City, Industry and the State' in Crouch (ed.).<br />
<br />
11.See, for example, Newton and Porter.<br />
<br />
12.Longstreth, ibid. p. 171. <br />
<br />
13.This is a major theme of the Alan Bulloch biography of Ernest Bevin, for example.<br />
<br />
14.Weiler p. 19.<br />
<br />
15.I discussed this in Lobster 28, p. 11.<br />
<br />
16.Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 83.<br />
<br />
17.New Statesman, 12 January 1952. See also H.H. Wilson, 'Techniques of Pressure - Anti-Nationalisation Propaganda' in Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1951. Edwards' obituary in The Independent, 25 June 1990 noted that he had been a member of the ILP and was an enemy of the Communist Party. His was thus an improbable name on the list of labour movement figures who had allegedly helped the KGB supplied by former KGB officer [[Oleg Gordievsky]]. See Gordievsky pp. 286<br />
and 7.<br />
<br />
18.'At least since the foundation of the International Affairs Department, TUC staff have kept<br />
close contact with the Foreign Office, a practice which persists to the present day.' Harrod p. 105. The study by Marjorie Nicholson of this subject does not mention the International Affairs Department, though as Anthony Carew pointed out, this may tell us nothing as she worked in the Colonial/Commonwealth Department. For a more critical view see Peter Weiler, chapter 1.<br />
<br />
19.Ibid. p. 29.<br />
<br />
20.My thanks to John Booth for this document. On the origins of this see Majorie Nicholson, chapter 6, especially pp. 209-11, and Weiler chapter 1.<br />
<br />
21.See Thompson and Larson pp. 27-8, and New Statesman, 16 November, 1979, 'FO reinforces TUC<br />
links', for two examples. I do not know if this practice pre-dates the 1970s.<br />
<br />
22.See the New Statesman, 20 April 1979 for the TUC's response, and 'TUC's foreign policy' by Patrick Wintour, New Statesman, 2 March 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== U.S. influence after the war ==<br />
<br />
<br />
I do not want to re-run the long debate about the origins of the Cold War or - in particular - the<br />
causes of the break-up of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949, except to say that it is pretty clear now, with this much hindsight, that by then the British trade union leaders were determined to break the WFTU - whatever the Soviet bloc had done - and this would have been pushed through, supported by the Americans.(23) As Dennis MacShane MP demonstrates in his book,(24) the European social democratic trade union movement was not going to coexist with the Soviet bloc, either. If the USA leaned on the door, as Peter Weiler and what might loosely be called 'the left' believe, it was half open already - and was never going to shut again. Into this domestic anti-communist climate came the USA's loans - and the people and ideas, the strings attached to the<br />
money. <br />
<br />
From the first request from Churchill for clandestine assistance before America had officially entered the war, the US 'aid' had come with strings attached. Despite his famous remark that he had not taken office to oversee the destruction of His Majesty's empire, Churchill had actually done precisely that to pay for the war: and the process continued after it. It was left to some of the Tory Right and some of the Labour Left - the same groups that are still sceptical of the<br />
European Union - to oppose the acceptance of the<br />
conditions attached to the post-war US loans. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== The Council on Foreign Relations ==<br />
<br />
<br />
Planning for the US takeover of the countries of non-communist Europe was done, during the war, in the Council on Foreign Relations, the informal, semi-secret, think tank-cum-social club of the East<br />
Coast elite - the bankers, the lawyers and managers of US international capital.(25) But when the war ended the details had not been worked out, and there was significant domestic opposition to be taken into consideration. The result was that in the chaos of the post-war years the American 'interventionists', as Pisani calls them, had to improvise.(26) The 'coordination of public and private efforts was achieved by using the [[Council on Foreign Relations]] (CFR) as a clearing house for projects'.(27) It was CFR personnel, for example, who raised money to intervene in the Italian elections of 1947.(28) And in the immediate post-war years the political interventionist picture is complicated: there was nothing like the clear-cut overt/covert dichotomy which we think characterised US foreign policy when things settled down into the State Department/ CIA mix perceived after the sixties.(29) <br />
<br />
<br />
== The Economic Cooperation Agency ==<br />
<br />
At the most overt level, there was the Economic Cooperation Agency (ECA) which doled out the dollars in support of what is known as multilateral trade: that is, the ECA sought to break down barriers against American goods. A former acting head of the ECA said that: <br />
<br />
<br />
:'In everything we did we sought to change or to strengthen opinions - opinions about how to build free world strength, about America's role, cooperative effort by Europeans, investment, productivity, fiscal stability, trade measurement, industrial competition, free labour unions etc.'(30) <br />
<br />
But ECA also had what we would call a covert arm and ran psychological warfare operations.(31) In France, <br />
<br />
<br />
:'The ECA mission chief wore two hats. He was the conduit for economic assistance and defense<br />
mobilisation, as well as for psychological and economic warfare components provided by the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC).'(32) <br />
<br />
As part of that psychological warfare programme, for example, the ECA persuaded the British TUC to produce - a least put its name to - a report on productivity subsequently used all over Europe. 'The ECA mission in London distributed a large number of copies abroad, urged its translation into foreign languages and prepared numerous press releases and feature articles for planting in the British and foreign press.' The US London Embassy's Labour Information Officer William Gausmann reported that 'from a trade union point of view, this is the most valuable document that has been<br />
produced under ECA auspices to date.'(33) <br />
<br />
<br />
== The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) ==<br />
<br />
The OPC, the first of the euphemistic cover names of US covert action agencies in the post-war era, was formed in 1948, staffed and run by the newly created CIA but nominally under the control of the State Department. In effect the CIA's covert arm, by 1952 the OPC had forty-seven stations, 2,812 staff and a budget of $84 million.(34) Much of this growth had been funded by money from the Marshall Plan.(35) What we now think of as the CIA, that is the covert operation, intervention arm of US multi-national capital - the post-war bogey man supreme for the left - began as the enforcement arm of the Marshall Plan, engaged in operations against the left and the trade unions of Europe, communist or non-communist. The OPC was the US administration's recognition that the ECA alone couldn't 'get the job done'.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Labour Attachés ==<br />
<br />
Another weapon in the post-war US armoury was the Labour Attache programme which was established towards the end of the war. In the words of one its creators, Philip Kaiser, 'the labor attache is expected to develop contacts with key leaders in the trade union movement, and to influence their thinking and decisions in directions ''compatible with American goals''....' (Emphasis added)(37) The first Labour Attache in London was [[Sam Berger]], who, in the words of [[Denis Healey]], <br />
<br />
<br />
:'By developing good personal relations with many key figures in the British Labour movement at the end of the war, including [[Sam Watson]] and Hugh Gaitskell, exerted an enduring influence on British foreign policy.'(38) <br />
<br />
Philip Kaiser commented that Berger <br />
<br />
<br />
:'had extraordinary access to many members of the [Attlee] cabinet, including the prime minister. It was universally recognised that he was the ''key member of our embassy''.'(39)(emphasis added) <br />
<br />
There were also 'Labour Information Officers' attached to the Marshall Plan staff in the US Embassy in London. One such, [[William Gausman]], <br />
<br />
<br />
:'in May 1950 began discussions with a section of the leadership of the Clerical and Allied Workers Union on how to eliminate communists from the union..... <br />
<br />
:'cultivated the leadership of the Birmingham Labour Party, whose journal, The Town Crier, closely<br />
supported Atlanticism and American foreign policy objectives in general..... <br />
<br />
:'convened a group in South Wales....to launch a Labour-oriented newspaper, The Democrat.... <br />
<br />
:'worked unofficially on Socialist Commentary"' .....and became a founder member of its offshoot, the Socialist Union, 'which served as a think tank for the emerging Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party..... <br />
<br />
:'liaised, advised, wrote, lectured, published - and helped IRD [the Information Research Department] with the distribution of one of their early publications, The Curtain Falls.'(40) <br />
<br />
The US post-war penetration of the British Labour Party and wider trade union movement climaxes with Joe Godson, who was Labour Attache in London from 1953-59. Godson became very close to the Labour Party leader [[Hugh Gaitskell]] - to the point where Gaitskell and Godson were writing Labour Party policies and planning campaigns against their enemy, Aneuran Bevan. For example, after a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party to discuss the expulsion of Bevan, Gaitskell recorded how he 'drove to the Russell Hotel, where I saw Sam Watson with [[Joe Godson]], the Labour Attache at the American Embassy.'(41) <br />
<br />
The leader of the Labour Party is discussing Executive Committee tactics with the US Labour Attache! This is one of the dividing lines of this essay. You either think is this unexceptional, uninteresting - even a good thing - or you do not. I do not. I think it is rather shocking; and I think that would have been the reaction of most of the Executive Committee at the time had they been made aware of it. In a footnote on p. 384 of the Gaitskell Diaries, editor Philip Williams writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
:'Godson, Sam Watson's close friend....thanks to his trade union post was, like many labour attaches, seen as representing his country's workers rather than its government. But Gaitskell came in time to feel that he was involving himself too deeply in Labour Party affairs.'(42) <br />
<br />
It may even be more complex than this for there is evidence that the Labour Attache posts have been used as cover by the CIA. Jonathan Kwitney of the Wall Street Journal tracked down one Paul Sakwa, who told him that he had been the case officer for Irving Brown, the most important CIA agent in the labour movement in Europe, handling Brown's budget of between $150,000 and $300,000 a year, between 1952 and 1954. From being Brown's case officer in Washington, Sakwa went on to a post under cover as the Assistant Labour Attache at the US embassy in Brussels.(43) <br />
<br />
It was about the CIA - but not just them. The CIA was only one of many agencies working in Britain in the post-war years. Labour Attaches reported, formally anyway, to the State Department. In the end, would it make any difference to know that Joe Godson had really been a genuine employee of the State Department, and not CIA under cover as we might have once suspected? <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Notes ==<br />
<br />
<br />
23.This thesis has been most convincingly articulated<br />
by Peter Weiler.<br />
<br />
24.International Labour and the Origins of the Cold<br />
War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992.<br />
<br />
25.See Shoup and Minter.<br />
<br />
26.I guess 'interventionist' is less offensive to the American academic ear than imperialist. 'The<br />
determination to intervene in Europe between 1945 and 1948 was fragmented, uncoordinated.' Pisani pp. 40 and 41.<br />
<br />
27.Ibid. p 4.<br />
<br />
28.'James Forrestal raised private money for the Italian elections of 1947. His initiative 'signalled an end to the notion that redemocratizing European countries could be accomplished simply by regenerating their economies'. Ibid. p. 67.<br />
<br />
29.I put it as 'think' because the reality was never that neat and tidy.<br />
<br />
30.Cited in Carew p. 84.<br />
<br />
31.Pisani p. 91.<br />
<br />
32.Ibid. p. 96. ECA 'does engage in some gray and black propaganda' but 'the programmes represent a very small percentage of the total effort and are coordinated with the CIA' Ibid . p. 12.<br />
<br />
33.Carew p. 153.<br />
<br />
34.Ranelagh p. 135.<br />
<br />
35.'From its creation in 1948 until 1952 when the Marshall Plan was terminated, the OPC operated as the plan's complement.' Pisani p. 70.<br />
<br />
36.Ibid. p. 67.<br />
<br />
37.Kaiser p. 113 'The labor attache...had...an unusual opportunity to enhance American influence<br />
among individuals and institutions that historically have no contact with U.S. diplomatic missions'. Ibid. p. 119.<br />
<br />
38.Denis Healey p. 113. Berger has two innocuous entries in the Gaitskell Diaries, and the footnote<br />
from the editor, Philip Williams, on p. 120 that he was 'first secretary at the U.S. Embassy'.<br />
<br />
39.Kaiser p.120.<br />
<br />
40.Carew pp. 128 and 9.<br />
<br />
41.Godson obituary in The Times, 6 September 1986. See Gaitskell Diary ed. Philip Williams, pp. 339-41. Carew p. 129 notes that there was some conflict between Gausmann and Joseph Godson, apparently reflecting divisions within the US labour movement. He discusses these differences on pp. 84-5.<br />
<br />
42.Godson's son, Roy, who appears on the same trade union/spook circuit in the 1970s, married Sam Watson's daughter. Watson was one of the most important trade union leaders in the post-war period, chairman of the National Executive Committee's International Committee and a 'liaison officer' between the Parliamentary Labour Party and the major unions.<br />
<br />
43.Kwitney pp. 334-5 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
== Post-war: private sector propaganda begins to regroup ==<br />
<br />
<br />
As the war ended domestic politics returned to normal.<br />
The propaganda organisations of domestic capital<br />
restarted, though without the frenzy which had marked<br />
the post 1918 period. Their big issue was the threat<br />
of nationalisation of companies. The so-called Mr Cube<br />
Campaign of 1949/50, against the possibility of the<br />
nationalisation of the sugar industry, spent an<br />
estimated �250,000 in that year.(44) The campaign had<br />
been jointly organised by the sugar company, Tate and<br />
Lyle, and Aims of Industry, an anti-socialist pressure<br />
group formed in 1942 by a group of well known British<br />
industrialists. The Aims original Council had<br />
representatives from Fords, English Electric, Austin,<br />
Rank, British Aircraft, Macdougall's and Firestone<br />
Tyres.(45) There were also smaller campaigns by the<br />
Cement Makers Federation, the Iron and Steel<br />
Federation and by the insurance companies represented<br />
by the British Insurance Association.(46) The Road<br />
Haulage Association sponsored anti-nationalisation<br />
campaigns by the British Housewives' League, led by<br />
Dorothy Crisp.(47) <br />
<br />
By 1949 Aims of Industry had 'twelve area offices<br />
blanketing the industrial sections of Britain. For the<br />
fiscal year 1949-50 expenditures were budgeted for an<br />
an additional anticipated income of �260,000'.(48) The<br />
pre-war tradition, discussed below, of newspapers<br />
reprinting anti-left briefings from Conservative Party<br />
groups or fronts, continued with Aims of Industry.<br />
Aims estimated that they had gained 93,178<br />
column-inches of editorial space in 1949, worth over<br />
�1,800,000.(49) In the first six months of 1949 Aims<br />
claims to have had 41 radio broadcasts on the Home or<br />
Light programmes of the BBC; and just before the<br />
election of 1950 in January, 362 magazines and<br />
newspapers gave 11,269 column inches to Aims-inspired<br />
stories. Aims magazine, The Voice of Industry, thanked<br />
the British press for their 'impartial partnership',<br />
in March 1950, noting that 'News about the<br />
achievements of private enterprise and the failures of<br />
nationalisation and state control has been of<br />
sufficient value to editors for them to have given it<br />
space in their columns free.'(50) <br />
<br />
The Economic League survived the war. In 1951 it<br />
claimed to have held 20,058 meetings and 57,505 group<br />
talks in the previous year; distributed 18 million<br />
leaflets, and obtained 31,064 column inches of press<br />
publicity; it employed 50 full-time speakers, 27<br />
part-time speakers and 37 leaflet distributors; had a<br />
full-time staff of 135, owned 43 vehicles etc.(51)<br />
These figures apparently describing massive campaigns<br />
by Aims and the League have to be treated with<br />
caution. They might well be exaggerated and it is not<br />
clear how successful they were. For all this<br />
anti-Labour propaganda, Labour's total vote went up in<br />
the 1951 General Election. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Information Research Department<br />
In the labour movement the Trades Union Congress was<br />
working with the newly-formed, Foreign Office-based,<br />
political warfare executive, operating under cover as<br />
the Information Research Department (IRD), in an<br />
anti-communist drive. IRD was not an innovation.<br />
British politics since World War 1 is studded with<br />
clandestine propaganda operations involving the mass<br />
media of the day. The claims of massive post-World War<br />
2 media penetration by Aims of Industry and the<br />
Economic League are reminiscent of the operations of<br />
the post World War 1 propaganda network operated by<br />
Sydney Walton, described in Keith Middlemas' wonderful<br />
book about British political history.(52) In the great<br />
Bolshevik panic following the First World War, funded<br />
by the industrial sources like the Engineering<br />
Employers' Federation, Sydney Walton <br />
<br />
<br />
'took the main propaganda role from a variety of front<br />
organisations, set up during the war, such as the<br />
British Empire League, the British Workers' League,<br />
the National Democratic and Labour Party, and the<br />
National Unity Movement, all of whom had been in<br />
receipt of industrial subscriptions'. <br />
<br />
With a budget of �100,000 a year - about what, �20<br />
million in today's money? - Walton's 'information<br />
service' was supplied with information by the Special<br />
Branch and the intelligence services of the day.<br />
Walton eventually claimed to be able to put<br />
'authoritative signed articles' in over 1,200<br />
newspapers.(53) Parallel to the Walton network,<br />
another group of major employers formed National<br />
Propaganda,(54) which evolved into the Economic<br />
League.(55) McIvor tells us that the League by 1926<br />
had formed an Information and Research Department,(56)<br />
was organising in 'cells',(57) and was forming 1000<br />
study groups a year.(58) <br />
<br />
The state followed suit. In 1919 it formed the Supply<br />
and Transport Committee and prepared to run two<br />
separate propaganda organisations in an emergency,<br />
headed by..... Admiral Blinker Hall of National<br />
Propaganda and Sydney Walton.(59) After 1922, this<br />
network had largely been abandoned, and Middlemas<br />
makes the point that while Walton spent over �25,000<br />
in the first six months of the 1926 General Strike,<br />
this was spent on publicity, advertising and speakers<br />
- not on the bribing of journalists and his earlier<br />
techniques.(60) Out of this milieu - and the changes<br />
in tactics it went through - emerged the Economic<br />
League. <br />
<br />
The Conservative Party had also been busy between the<br />
wars developing propaganda systems through which it<br />
issued, sometimes under its own name, sometimes under<br />
cover of fronts, pro-Conservative material to the<br />
newspapers for them to 'top and tail' and present as<br />
normal, internally-generated copy.(61) <br />
<br />
These examples of how to manipulate the media had been<br />
learned by others in the British state system and a<br />
few years later Neville Chamberlain and other<br />
supporters of the appeasement policy secretly bought<br />
and ran the weekly newspaper Truth. This was largely<br />
an operation run by the former MI5 officer and<br />
eminence grise of the time, Sir Joseph Ball. Ball used<br />
the official government information machine to push<br />
the Chamberlain line, formed the National Publicity<br />
Bureau to do the same and, in 1937, through a<br />
frontman, Lord Luke of Pavenham, bought Truth, and<br />
proceeded to use it to denigrate the opponents of<br />
Chamberlain and appeasement.(62) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRD's genesis<br />
Former Labour Minister Christopher Mayhew still thinks<br />
he was responsible for the creation of IRD.(63) In<br />
fact its origins are a good deal earlier. In March<br />
1946 Frank Roberts in the British Embassy in Moscow<br />
began sending telegrams to London warning of Soviet<br />
imperialism and aggression.(64) In April the Russia<br />
Committee of the Foreign Office was formed. In its<br />
second meeting on May 7 1946, the Committee decided to<br />
set up a propaganda organisation.(65) It was then just<br />
a question of getting the Labour Cabinet to approve<br />
the proposal. On the way junior Foreign Office<br />
Minister, Christopher Mayhew, proposed such a<br />
propaganda offensive in October 1947, and the<br />
combination of deteriorating political circumstances<br />
and a proposal from within the Party itself swung the<br />
day and the Cabinet approved the formation of this<br />
outfit in January 1948. In the second volume of his<br />
Diaries, Robert Bruce-Lockhart, who had been a part of<br />
the war-time clandestine propaganda system, records on<br />
4 February 1948 that he dined with Christopher Warner<br />
who had just become the Assistant Under-Secretary at<br />
the Foreign Office in charge of 'our Information<br />
Services'. Warner offered a new version of the origins<br />
of IRD, telling Lockhart that 'As a result of a paper<br />
put up by the Imperial Defence College, F.O. [Foreign<br />
Office] have decided to renew political warfare on a<br />
limited scale.' (emphasis added)(66) <br />
<br />
In Foreign Secretary Bevin's presentation to the<br />
Cabinet he spoke of Britain as a 'third force', who<br />
would 'give a lead in the spiritual, moral and<br />
political sphere to all democratic elements in Western<br />
Europe'. The line was to be neither Washington nor<br />
Moscow, apparently.(67) How seriously Bevin intended<br />
this we do not know. But however nicely it was being<br />
dressed up, this was pretty clearly part of the<br />
developing anti-communist struggle. Mayhew said so in<br />
a memo to Bevin. In any case, why would propaganda in<br />
favour of social democracy have to be hidden?(68) <br />
<br />
IRD was in a kind of management limbo between MI6, who<br />
supplied it with some of its information and tasks,<br />
and the Foreign Office, whose budget concealed it. IRD<br />
was, very clearly, simply the Political Warfare<br />
Executive (PWE) reborn - another example of the<br />
ability of intelligence agencies, once established, to<br />
survive the vagaries of their nominal masters in the<br />
political system. <br />
<br />
IRD was a triple layer. On the surface was its formal<br />
cover within the Foreign Office as an information and<br />
research department. Beneath that was IRD's role as a<br />
propaganda organisation, dispensing white (true) and<br />
grey (half true) propaganda in briefings to<br />
journalists and politicians. But beneath that was the<br />
third layer, the 'black' or psychological warfare<br />
(psywar) tier. This third tier is hinted at in the<br />
Foreign and Commonwealth Office''s recently published<br />
history of IRD's origins . On p. 7 it notes that in<br />
September 1948 - i.e. almost immediately - 'part of<br />
the costs of the unit [were] transferred to the secret<br />
vote......the move would.....avoid the unwelcome<br />
scrutiny of operations which might require covert or<br />
semi-covert means of execution.'(69) <br />
<br />
There is little evidence of Bevin's 'third force'<br />
notions in IRD's work once the politicians' backs were<br />
turned and they had moved on to another item on the<br />
agenda. The minutes of a 1950 meeting between IRD<br />
officials and their U.S. counterparts show no evidence<br />
at all such concepts. Christopher Warner, one of the<br />
'fathers' of IRD, talks exclusively of anti-communist<br />
activities.(70) <br />
<br />
IRD eventually had representatives in all British<br />
Embassies abroad. In the recollection of a former MI6<br />
officer of the period, IRD was involved in 'some of<br />
the more dubious intelligence operations which<br />
characterised the early years of the cold war.'(71)<br />
Former Ambassador Hilary King was told by a former SIS<br />
officer who had worked in Germany after the war trying<br />
to estimate Soviet bloc tank strength, that IRD<br />
circulated a paper on the subject over-estimating that<br />
strength by a factor of 40.(72) When the SIS officer<br />
complained about the inaccuracy of the estimate he was<br />
told by an IRD official 'what does it matter old boy<br />
as long as the Labour government [i.e. of Attlee] push<br />
through rearmament.' At home, in its second level<br />
role, IRD wrote papers and briefing notes, and planted<br />
stories in the media. Mayhew remembers that 'at home,<br />
our service was offered to and accepted by, large<br />
numbers of selected MP's, journalists, trade union<br />
leaders, and others, and was often used by BBC's<br />
External Services. We also developed close links with<br />
a syndication agency and various publishers.'(73) The<br />
1950 minutes of the IRD-US talks include Ralph<br />
Murray's comment that 'Trade Union organisations and<br />
various groups are used to place articles under the<br />
by-line of well known writers.'(74) Among individuals<br />
who received IRD material were Percy Cudlipp of the<br />
Co-operative Movement, Herbert Tracey, pub-licity<br />
director of the TUC and the Labour Party, and Denis<br />
Healey, then the Party's International Secretary.(75) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The Freedom and Democracy Trust==<br />
Part of this anti-communist programme was the creation<br />
of 'an influential group, including several members of<br />
the [TUC] General Council, which was determined to<br />
root out the communists.'(76) Among the group were<br />
George Chester (General Secretary of the National<br />
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), George Gibson<br />
(former TUC chair), Lincoln Evans (General Secretary<br />
of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation [ISTC])<br />
Andrew Naesmith (General Secretary of the Amalgamated<br />
Weavers' Association), Alf Roberts (General Secretary<br />
of the National Association of Card, Blowing and Ring<br />
Room Operatives, later on the Board of the Bank of<br />
England), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council<br />
representative; General Secretary in 1939 of National<br />
Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), John<br />
Brown (ISTC) and Tom O'Brien (Kine Employees).(77) In<br />
April 1948 this group became the [[Freedom and Democracy Trust]], and began publishing a periodical called<br />
[[Freedom First]]. with the help of IRD.(78) <br />
<br />
Unfortunately for all concerned, mixing with the<br />
founders of the Trust was an American businessman<br />
called Sydney Stanley, and the whole enterprise was<br />
'blown' when Stanley became the centrepiece of the<br />
infamous Lansky Tribunal hearings into civil service<br />
corruption during the winter of 1948. Not only did<br />
Stanley have many pre-war contacts with the U.S<br />
unions, he adopted the robust American attitude to<br />
officialdom: bribe it when you have to. But he got<br />
caught. <br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
44. Finer p. 94<br />
45. See H.H. Wilson for an account of the Mr Cube<br />
campaign. Aims Council personnel is from Kisch p. 28.<br />
46. See Crofts, chapter 14 for these examples.<br />
47. See ibid. pp. 99-109, especially p. 106 where the<br />
League's funding by the Road Haulage Association, then<br />
distantly threatened with nationalisation, is<br />
discussed. Best account is Hinton's. Dorothy Crisp is<br />
the historical figure who most resembles Margaret<br />
Thatcher.<br />
48. H.H. Wilson p. 228<br />
49. Crofts p. 216. For more details of alleged<br />
activities, see also the pamphlet The FBI, (Federation<br />
of British Industry) Labour Research Department, 1949.<br />
50. H.H. Wilson pp. 229 and 238. Kisch p. 37 claims<br />
that by the late 1950s Aims 'controlled no less than<br />
twenty-six monthly, weekly and quarterly publications<br />
[and] edited and produced forty-five house magazines<br />
for the Tate and Lyle organisation, the Express Dairy<br />
and other organisations as well as the house magazines<br />
of most of the leading members of the 4,000 or so<br />
companies who constituted its chief supporters'.<br />
51. Labour Research, July 1952. As late as 1981 it had<br />
130 full-time employees. See the Daily Telegraph, 26<br />
January 1981.<br />
52. Politics in Industrial Society, Andre Deutsch,<br />
1979<br />
53. Ibid. pp. 131/2.<br />
54. Ibid.<br />
55. See, for example, McIvor's essays.<br />
56. Echoed - intentionally? - twenty years later by<br />
the state's IRD.<br />
57. McIvor 'A Crusade...' p. 641<br />
58. Ibid p. 646<br />
59. Middlemas pp. 153/4<br />
60. Ibid p. 354<br />
61. See 'The Party, Publicity and the Media' by<br />
Richard Cockett in Seldon and Ball (eds.), especially<br />
pp. 550-553.<br />
62. Cockett pp. 9-12<br />
63. Mayhew p.107 where he cites the memo he wrote in<br />
late 1947 to Bevin. Philip M. Taylor in his 'The<br />
Projection of Britain Abroad, 1945-51', writes that<br />
'The IRD was formed at the Foreign Office as a direct<br />
response to increasingly hostile Soviet propaganda in<br />
the wake of the communist coup in Prague, the<br />
escalating blockade of West Berlin and mounting<br />
pressure on Finland.' Taylor in Michael Dockrill and<br />
John W. Young (eds.) 1989<br />
64. See, for example, Ray Merrick; and, more recently,<br />
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's own publication,<br />
IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office<br />
Research Department 1946-48, (History Notes, August<br />
1995)<br />
65. Ibid. p. 458 This is before the Cominform<br />
rejection of the Marshall Plan, for example, over a<br />
year away in 1947; before even the March arrest of Dr<br />
Allan Nunn May and the revelation of the<br />
Canadian-based Soviet spy ring; and before Churchill's<br />
American speech in which he first used the term 'Iron<br />
Curtain'.<br />
66. Kenneth Young (ed.) p. 648<br />
67. Merrick p. 465<br />
68. Best account of IRD's early years is in Lucas and<br />
Morris.<br />
69. See note 21 above.<br />
70. Notes on a meeting between Christopher Warner and<br />
Edward Barnett, in London, Saturday May 20, 1950, in<br />
Foreign Relations of the United States, Government<br />
Printing Office, Washington DC, 1977, pp. 1641-6<br />
71. Verrier, Looking Glass, p. 52 . Someone might<br />
usefully re-examine all the forgeries in the first<br />
phase of the Cold War and what influence - if any -<br />
they had on policy-making. Two examples are discussed<br />
in Sulzberger pp. 345-7. In 1948, having discovered<br />
that something called 'Protocol M', alleging secret<br />
Comintern instructions to the West German communists<br />
was a forgery, a month late he is offered another one<br />
in Italy, 'Plan K', plans for an alleged communist<br />
insurgency. He comments that there is 'a network of<br />
forgers and falsifiers ...busily peddling allegedly<br />
secret documents to embassies, intelli-gence officers,<br />
ministries and correspondents'. (p. 346) 'Protocol M'<br />
is reproduced in Appendix II of Heilbrunn.<br />
72. Telephone conversation with author, June 27, 1987.<br />
73. Mayhew p. 111. There are some details of this in<br />
the FCO publication in footnote 64 above.<br />
74. Foreign Relations op. cit.<br />
75. Weiler p. 216<br />
76. Ibid. p. 217 citing The Times, February 10, 1948.<br />
77. Weiler op. cit. fn 184, p. 369<br />
78. Ibid. fn 189 citing The Times, 2 December 1948. <br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
==Common Cause and IRIS==<br />
The failure of the Freedom and Democracy Trust seems<br />
to have deterred the TUC members from creating another<br />
body so directly linked to the TUC General<br />
Council.(79) Instead, some individual members of the<br />
General Council, who had been involved in the Freedom<br />
and Democracy Trust fiasco, joined a private group<br />
with the same anti-communist aims. This was Common<br />
Cause, whose origins are to be found in the merging of<br />
two quite distinct political strands. <br />
<br />
<br />
==The AEU's 'Club'==<br />
One strand was the clandestine anti-communist (and<br />
anti-socialist) organisation in British trade unions,<br />
of which the best example is to found within the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Within the AEU, <br />
<br />
<br />
'An anti-Communist organisation was established at<br />
meetings of the fifty-two-member national committee,<br />
their ruling body in 1943 and 1944, and was followed a<br />
few years later by a loose national organisation,<br />
working in secret and known as "the side" or the<br />
"antis" which succeeded in removing a good many<br />
communists from office.'(80) <br />
<br />
This was the organisation which later came to be known<br />
as 'the Club' or 'the Group', and 'defined its purpose<br />
in terms of preventing a Communist takeover of the<br />
union'.(81) <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the mid 1950s ..... the Right-wing members of the<br />
Executive Council began attending the factional<br />
meeting. In this period also a National Committee<br />
"Club" organiser was discreetly appointed from amongst<br />
the regular delegates to tighten the organisation of<br />
the Right-wing faction(82)....At all National<br />
Committee meetings during the period from 1956 to 1970<br />
the right-wing controlled all places on the Standing<br />
Orders Committee, and J. Ramsden, organiser of the<br />
National Committee "Club" for nine years, was also<br />
Chairman of its Standing Orders Committee for seven of<br />
them. With [President] Carron in the Chair at the<br />
National Committee and the union Secretaryship also<br />
held by a "Club" member for the whole of the period,<br />
procedural control by the Right was overwhelming.'(83)<br />
<br />
<br />
The late Ernie Roberts MP quotes from a report of a<br />
1951 meeting of 'the Club' (infiltrated by a member of<br />
the left in the union), and notes that the principal<br />
figure was Cecil Hallett, then AEU General<br />
Secretary.(84) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause==<br />
This clandestine trade union anti-socialism joined up<br />
with an Anglo-American anti-communist group called<br />
Common Cause. The American group was formed in January<br />
1947 as Common Cause Incorporated, by Mrs Natalie<br />
Wales Latham (nee Paine). Among the great and the good<br />
on its letterhead National Council were Adolph Berle<br />
Jnr, Max Eastman, Sumner Welles and Hodding Carter.<br />
Another well-known member was Clare Booth Luce, wife<br />
of the owner of Time, Henry Luce, and later US<br />
Ambassador to Italy. In his biography of Mrs Luce,<br />
Alden Hatch notes that as early as 1946, before its<br />
official launch, Common Cause had established liaison<br />
with the anti-Soviet group, Russian Solidarists,<br />
better known as NTS, and that John Foster Dulles was<br />
the organisation's 'unofficial adviser'.(85) Hatch<br />
also notes that Mrs Wales Latham became Lady Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton - the only link I am aware of between<br />
the US and UK groups. For when the British Common<br />
Cause was formally launched in 1952, its first joint<br />
chairs were John Brown, ex General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and member of the<br />
TUC General Council and the self-same Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton MP.(86) <br />
<br />
The British Common Cause, however, had been in<br />
existence for some years before its official launch,<br />
originally very much as the vehicle of Dr. C. A.<br />
Smith, one of the more interesting mavericks of the<br />
British Left in the 20th century. Smith met Trotsky in<br />
the 1933, was Chairman of the Independent Labour Party<br />
from 39-41, quit and joined Common Wealth as its<br />
Research Officer in 1941. When some of the Common<br />
Wealth party left to join the Labour Party, Smith<br />
became Chair of Common Wealth. As the nature of the<br />
Stalinist takeover of Eastern Europe became clear in<br />
1947, Smith tried to take Common Wealth with him in<br />
his increasingly anti-Soviet stance. They baulked and<br />
eventually Smith left the party and joined or formed -<br />
which is not clear - Common Cause in Easter 1948.(87) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The British League for European Freedom==<br />
Whatever the British Common Cause amounted to in 1948,<br />
four years before its official launch, it had joined<br />
forces with the British League for European Freedom<br />
(BLEF), the first organisation formed in this country<br />
in direct response to the Soviet Union's takeover in<br />
Eastern Europe. The BLEF had been initiated in 1944 by<br />
a quartet of Tory MP's, including Victor Raikes, a<br />
pre-war member of the Imperial Policy Group.(88)<br />
Despite the dominance of Tory MPs, the BLEF attracted<br />
a trio of Labour MPs: Ivor Thomas (who defected to the<br />
Tories in 1950 after the publication of his book The<br />
Socialist Tragedy); George Dallas, former TUC General<br />
Council member and Labour MP, Chair of the Labour<br />
Party's International Committee during the war; and<br />
Richard Stokes MP. Stokes was a 'socialist' of the<br />
most idiosyncratic kind, having been a member of the<br />
anti-Semitic Right Club before the war.(89) Although<br />
information on these groups in this period is very<br />
thin, it is clear that Common Cause and the BLEF were<br />
very close. In 1950, for example, Common Cause<br />
published a pamphlet, Communism and Democracy, by<br />
Smith, in which he said he was writing as a member of<br />
the BLEF. The two groups shared an office in Elizabeth<br />
Street in London donated by the wealthy Duke of<br />
Westminster.(90) <br />
<br />
The Duchess of Atholl, one of the founders of the<br />
BLEF, notes in her autobiography that the decline in<br />
the BLEF's 'political work' was attributable to the<br />
arrival of Common Cause, and from then on the BLEF<br />
'concentrated its efforts on bringing home to people<br />
the unhappy plight of the many Displaced Persons still<br />
in Germany.'(91) This is something of a euphemism for<br />
the BLEF's role as support group for Eastern European<br />
exile groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of<br />
Nations (ABN) then being run by the Secret<br />
Intelligence Service (SIS). The BLEF produced an<br />
offshoot, the Scottish League for European Freedom,<br />
headed by Victor Raikes' colleague in the Imperial<br />
Policy Group, the Earl of Mansfield. In 1950 the<br />
Scottish League organised a conference in Edinburgh<br />
for Eastern European exiles, many of them Nazi war<br />
criminals and collaborators, who had been recruited by<br />
SIS. They had been moved to the UK during the scramble<br />
at the end of World War 2 by the British and American<br />
governments for good, reliable, anti-Soviet 'assets'.<br />
(92) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause USA==<br />
In the USA the fledgling CIA had sponsored a front<br />
organisation, the National Committee for a Free Europe<br />
(NCFE). NCFE's 'sister organisation' was Common Cause<br />
Inc., which included among its personnel 'many of the<br />
men - Adolf Berle, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Eugene<br />
Lyons, among others - who simultaneously led<br />
CIA-financed groups such as the NCFE and, later, the<br />
American Committee for Liberation from<br />
Bolshevism.'(93) Christopher Simpson notes that it was<br />
Common Cause Inc. which, in 1948, sponsored the NTS<br />
founder on a tour of the United States. (94) Just as<br />
the British League for European Freedom became the<br />
sponsor for the British exile groups in the<br />
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Christopher<br />
Emmet, Chairman of the American Common Cause Inc,<br />
turns up later as head of the American Friends of the<br />
Captive Nations, the domestic support group for the<br />
CIA-sponsored Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN).(95) <br />
<br />
The BLEF's George Dallas was one of those who stayed<br />
close to American interests. He became preoccupied<br />
with the danger of a communist take-over in China, and<br />
formed the Friends of Free China Association, with<br />
himself as chair and the Duchess of Atholl as<br />
president. Dallas eventually attended the 1958<br />
foundation meeting of what became the the World<br />
Anti-Communist League. The one time socialist farm<br />
labourer had come a long way. With him at that meeting<br />
were Marvin Liebman, one of the key members of the US<br />
'China Lobby', the late Yaroslav Stetsko, Ukranian<br />
collaborator with the Germans and head of the ABN, and<br />
Charles Edison of the John Birch Society.(96) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause UK==<br />
The official, 1952-launched Common Cause was<br />
apparently founded by Neil Elles, Peter Crane (on both<br />
of whom, more below) and C.A. Smith. Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton, then a Scottish Tory MP, and John<br />
Brown were joint chairs. Brown had been the Treasurer<br />
of the Freedom and Democracy Trust which had tried to<br />
launch Freedom First five years before. It set up a<br />
national structure with local branches - in 1954 there<br />
were 14 - published a monthly Bulletin, and<br />
distributed many of the standard anti-communist texts<br />
of the time, for example Tufton Beamish's Must Night<br />
Fall?; some, such as the 'Background Books' series,<br />
published and/or subsidised by IRD; and leaflets from<br />
the CIA labour front in Europe, the International<br />
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).(97) <br />
<br />
In 1955 Common Cause's 'Advisory Council' included: <br />
<br />
* Tom O'Brien and Florence Hancock, both past TUC<br />
presidents;(98) <br />
* Bob Edwards, General Secretary of the Chemical<br />
Workers Union, 1947-51;(99) <br />
* Cecil Hallett, Assistant General Secretary of the<br />
AEU 1948-57; General Secretary 1957-64;<br />
* Philip Fothergill, ex President of the Liberal<br />
Party;<br />
* Admiral Lord Cunningham;(100) <br />
* a coterie of other retired senior military, the<br />
Duchess of Atholl and Lord Ammon. <br />
<br />
Such 'advisory bodies' may mean very little: this<br />
might just be a notepaper job. Nonetheless, some of<br />
the 'advisory body' were people with rather<br />
specialised interests. For example, at one point the<br />
name of General Leslie Hollis appeared on it. Hollis<br />
had been the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff<br />
committee which 'considered, with Sir Stewart Menzies,<br />
the head of MI6, and Warner [of IRD] and William<br />
Hayter of the Foreign Office, what form of<br />
organisation was required to establish a satisfactory<br />
link between the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office on<br />
matters connected with the day-to-day conduct of<br />
anti-Communist propaganda overseas.'(101) <br />
<br />
In the Autumn of 1955 the Common Cause Bulletin<br />
reported that there had been moves at the Labour Party<br />
conference that year to get it proscribed - but the<br />
motion to that effect 'was among the many crowded out<br />
from discussion'.(102) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Labour Party's intelligence-gathering<br />
Common Cause was one of the sources of information<br />
used by the Labour Party in its anti-communist<br />
activities in the 1950s. While no central unit was<br />
ever formally established 'for collecting information<br />
or monitoring the activities of communist-inspired or<br />
pro-Soviet groups', in practice the National Agent's<br />
Department at Labour headquarters, Transport House,<br />
did the job, using as sources the publications of<br />
proscribed organisations, regional organisers'<br />
reports, 'Foreign Office' material - i.e. IRD - and<br />
Common Cause.(103) The National Agent's Department<br />
[NAD] had 'lay responsibility for compiling the<br />
[proscription] list'. Shaw notes that in 1953 the<br />
proscription list was expanded by the addition of<br />
eighteen fresh groups. <br />
<br />
<br />
'What happened was rather unusual. Without consulting<br />
the NAD the International Department had submitted a<br />
report to the Overseas Subcommittee on "peace" and<br />
"friendship" societies. In response the Subcommittee<br />
recommended that they all be proscribed. NAD officials<br />
were never told the source of the International<br />
Department's information though they assumed it to be<br />
the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special<br />
Branch.'(104) <br />
<br />
A glimpse of the content of the NAD's<br />
intelligence-gathering has been provided by the late<br />
Ian Mikardo MP, who saw 'dossiers' in the possession<br />
of National Agent Sarah Barker At a meeting of a<br />
subcommittee of the NEC in 1955, Sara Barker objected<br />
to Konni Zilliacus and Ernie Roberts as prospective<br />
Parliamentary candidates. When Barker began quoting<br />
derogatory comments from files she had in her<br />
possession, Mikardo demanded to see the files. <br />
<br />
<br />
'They were an eye-opener. No MI5, no Special Branch,<br />
no George Smiley could have compiled more<br />
comprehensive dossiers. Not just press-cuttings,<br />
photographs and document references but also notes by<br />
watchers and eavesdroppers, and all sorts of<br />
tittle-tattle. I'm convinced that there was input into<br />
them from government sources and from at least a<br />
couple of Labour Attaches at the United States embassy<br />
who were close to some of our trade union leaders,<br />
notably Sam Watson.'(105) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause splits - IRIS is formed==<br />
The pretty unstable-looking mixture of admirals,<br />
generals and trade union leaders that was Common<br />
Cause, disintegrated in 1956. C.A.Smith resigned along<br />
with Advisory Council members Fothergill, Edwards,<br />
Ammon, Professor Arthur Newell and Sydney Walton.(106)<br />
This group complained that the organisation had become<br />
'reactionary' and that the promised democratic<br />
structure had never materialised. In August 1956<br />
Common Cause Ltd was registered, owned and controlled<br />
by the 'reactionary' faction. <br />
<br />
The original directors of Common Cause Ltd were: <br />
<br />
* the new chair, Peter Crane, the director of a number<br />
of British subsidiaries of American companies,<br />
including Collins Radio of England, whose American<br />
headquarters had connections with the CIA.(107) <br />
* David Pelham James - Conservative MP, and Director<br />
of the Catholic publishing house, Hollis and Carter.<br />
There were a number of Catholics prominent in the<br />
Common Cause network, including the man who ran IRIS<br />
for any years, Andy McKeown. This is discussed below.<br />
* Neil Elles, barrister and later a member of the<br />
European-wide anti-subversion outfit, INTERDOC.(108) <br />
* Christopher Blackett - a Scottish landowner and<br />
farmer and, I presume, but cannot prove, a relative of<br />
Frances Blackett, the original secretary of the<br />
British League for European Freedom, discussed<br />
above.(109) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS<br />
More or less in parallel with the formation of Common<br />
Cause Ltd., an industrial wing, Industrial Research<br />
and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and<br />
set up in the headquarters of the National Union of<br />
Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed<br />
three directors: <br />
<br />
* Jack Tanner, the recently retired President of the<br />
AEU;<br />
* William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from<br />
1938-47;<br />
* and Charles Sonnex, the Secretary and Managing<br />
Director, and the link with the parent body Common<br />
Cause.(110) Also it had a manager, James L. Nash.(111)<br />
According to Labour Research (January 1961), Nash left<br />
to join the CIA labour front, the ICFTU. <br />
<br />
In an interview with Richard Fletcher in 1979, C. A.<br />
Smith, attributed the formation of IRIS to Common<br />
Cause's discovery of just how careful they had to be<br />
about interfering in union affairs.(112) Another<br />
proximate cause for the formation of IRIS is suggested<br />
by the comment from the Common Cause Bulletin of<br />
January 1956 (pp. 4/5) that 'only a near-miracle can<br />
prevent the Executive of the AEU from passing under<br />
communist control during 1956.....already there are<br />
clear signs of an all-out Communist effort to put Reg<br />
Birch in this top trade union job'. <br />
<br />
However, another interpretation of the Common Cause<br />
split and the formation of IRIS is possible. In April<br />
1955 SIS (MI6) were forced to acknowledge that their<br />
networks of 'agents' inside the Soviet Union had all<br />
been penetrated. Worse, the Soviets had been running a<br />
deception operation with uncomfortable parallels with<br />
the 'Trust' deception in the 1920s in which the Soviet<br />
intelligence service created and ran a fake resistance<br />
group to which the British government gave a lot of<br />
money.(113) SIS had been using agents from Bandera's<br />
OUN in Ukraine and from NTS.(114) Some time later that<br />
year, SIS gave up all its emigre groups and in<br />
February 1956 SIS handed over control of NTS to the<br />
CIA.(115) What follows is what I surmise happened but<br />
for which I have no evidence. Having taken control of<br />
the British networks, new people were put in to run<br />
things. The NTS support group in the United States was<br />
Common Cause Inc. - with its British counterpart. In<br />
London, the limited company Common Cause was formed<br />
and all the trappings of members and branches were<br />
dumped; a CIA officer or agent, under cover, the<br />
cut-out to the Agency, was installed. (If this sounds<br />
banal, it has to be remembered that in 1956 none of<br />
this had ever been made public and there was no reason<br />
for them to be anything but banal.) The American<br />
assessment of the group's activities was that its most<br />
important work had been, and should continue to be, in<br />
the British trade union movement. The previous year's<br />
attempt to have Common Cause put on the Labour Party's<br />
proscription list was noted and a spin-off, trade<br />
union subsidiary, was formed. Common Cause would fund<br />
it - and act as another layer of insulation between it<br />
and the Agency. <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS activities to 1963<br />
IRIS published a newsletter and a variety of<br />
pamphlets. They formed 'cells' - their word - to<br />
combat communists in the trade unions. How many cells,<br />
we do not know; nor in how many unions other than the<br />
AEU. They intervened in union elections. A member of<br />
ASSET, (which became ASTMS and is currently a part of<br />
MSF) sued IRIS and won in 1958 after IRIS News called<br />
him a communist. In the report of the TUC annual<br />
conference in 1960, delegates describe IRIS personnel<br />
intervening in the Association of Engineering and<br />
Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD) and the Association of<br />
Supervisory Staff and Technicians (ASSET). The<br />
delegate of the latter describes IRIS News publishing<br />
the allegation that a candidate in a union election<br />
was a communist. Labour Research alleged an IRIS role<br />
in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Foundry<br />
Workers (as well as AESD and ASSET).(116) Reporting<br />
these events, Labour Research commented on IRIS News<br />
that 'the main feature in the paper however is and<br />
always has been news and advice about union elections.<br />
In most cases the paper reports that certain<br />
candidates are "receiving communist support" '. It<br />
seems reasonably certain - though unproven - the IRIS<br />
was receiving some of its information from IRD. <br />
<br />
In putting out information - its monthly magazine and<br />
pamphlets - and telling its readers who to vote for<br />
and not vote for in union elections, IRIS behaved as<br />
an exact mirror image of the groups on the left: start<br />
a paper and put out a 'line'. The late Ernie Roberts<br />
MP, for many years the only left-winger in the senior<br />
ranks of the AEU - the union from whence came two of<br />
the IRIS directors in 1956 - describes how the left in<br />
the union and IRIS/and 'the Club' spent their time<br />
infiltrating and reporting on each other's<br />
meetings.(117) <br />
<br />
In February 1966 the left-wing magazine Voice of the<br />
Unions, part of the opposition to IRIS within the AEU,<br />
asked where the IRIS money was coming from and<br />
commented, 'At one time we are told IRIS employed an<br />
office staff of six to ten.' Almost thirty years later<br />
we learned that some of the money had come from the<br />
British government after Lord Shawcross had contacted<br />
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and asked for funding<br />
for IRIS.(118) <br />
<br />
Shawcross had approached Macmillan at the right time,<br />
for 'Supermac' had become infected with the fear of<br />
the 'communist threat'. The Radcliffe Tribunal had<br />
reported in 1962, devoting a whole section to the<br />
Civil Service staff associations and trade unions,<br />
expressing concern at the number of communists and<br />
communist sympathisers holding positions in the<br />
unions;(119) and his administration was being<br />
afflicted by the espionage scandals of George Blake<br />
and Vassell - and the Profumo Affair which Macmillan<br />
apparently believed was part of a communist conspiracy<br />
the bring him down.(120) <br />
<br />
<br />
Catholic Action?<br />
There is a distinct Catholic tinge to Common Cause and<br />
IRIS. Hollis and Carter, the company which published<br />
the Common Cause Bulletin, was a Catholic publishing<br />
house. Catholics among the leading figures in Common<br />
Cause included chairs David Pelham James(121) and<br />
Peter Crane, Brigadier George Taylor, a director of<br />
Common Cause circa 1958,(122) and Sir Tom O'Brien.<br />
Catholics among the AEU/IRIS network include AEU<br />
President Bill Carron and Jim Conway, IRIS's Cecil<br />
Hallett, and the man who ran IRIS for nearly twenty<br />
years, Andy McKeown.(123) So was there, as some on the<br />
British Left believed,(124) a national Catholic Action<br />
organisation operating in Britain, as it had in other<br />
countries, such as Australia? Joan Keating<br />
investigated this belief in the course of her doctoral<br />
thesis, and though she found quite a thriving<br />
Association of Catholic Trade unionists - the Catholic<br />
Worker was selling 25,000 copies in 1956 - she found<br />
no evidence at all of any national, co-ordinated<br />
organisation.(125) <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
79. Though there is a hint that such activities may<br />
have been continued abroad. In Coleman's book on the<br />
Congress for Cultural Freedom (discussed below) there<br />
is a reference to an Indian anti-communist politician,<br />
Minoo Misani, who in the early post-war years, founded<br />
the Democratic Research Service and published a<br />
magazine called..... Freedom First. Coleman p. 150.<br />
80. Wigham, p. 128<br />
81. Minkin p. 180<br />
82. Ibid.<br />
83. Ibid.<br />
84. Roberts pp. 124/5<br />
85. Hatch, p. 187<br />
86. The Times 25 February, 1952<br />
87. Details on Smith from J.C. Banks, Editor of the<br />
Common Wealth Journal. In the obituary of Smith in the<br />
The Libertarian, the Common Wealth journal, no. 25,<br />
Summer 1985, Smith is said to have formed Common<br />
Cause. I believe this to be mistaken.<br />
88. The Imperial Policy Group was largely the work of<br />
Kenneth de Courcy. De Courcy edited and published the<br />
Review of World Affairs during the Second World War.<br />
The IPG and de Courcy in particular were much disliked<br />
by the Soviet government of the time. Since then de<br />
Courcy has published the newsletters Intelligence<br />
Digest and Special Office Brief. De Courcy had some<br />
influence on the right of the Tory Party into the<br />
1960s. See index references in Highams on De Courcy.<br />
89. This information from John Hope who has had access<br />
to the Right Club's membership list. It is possible<br />
Stokes had joined for reasons other than agreement<br />
with the Club's aims.<br />
90. Duchess of Atholl p. 252<br />
91. Ibid.<br />
92. Loftus p. 204<br />
93. Simpson p. 222<br />
94. Ibid p. 223<br />
95. Ibid. p. 222. 'Christopher Emmet is a classic<br />
example of those who ran the British Intelligence<br />
fronts before and during World War II and who, having<br />
proven themselves faithful and competent, went on to<br />
run the CIA/MI6 fronts of the Cold War.' Mahl, thesis,<br />
p. 198.<br />
96. Details of the WACL meeting is in Charles<br />
Goldman's 'World Anti-Communist League', adapted from<br />
Under Dackke, ed. Frik Krensen and Petter Sommerfelt<br />
(Demos, Copenhagen, 1978). I am unsure of the source<br />
of this Goldman article but it appears to be an early<br />
edition of Counterspy. Dallas' career, with some of<br />
the later associations glossed over, is described by<br />
his son in the Dictionary of Labour Biography eds.<br />
Saville and Bellamy, vol. 4 1977.<br />
97. On ICFTU and the CIA see the comments of former<br />
CIA officers Joseph Smith (p. 138) and Philip Agee<br />
(CIA Diary) (p. 611). For a more general discussion<br />
see Winslow Peck. The rival but much less significant<br />
World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was, of<br />
course, funded and run by the Soviet Union.<br />
98. Hancock had been Chief Woman Officer of the TUC.<br />
99. Edwards had been chair of the ILP. During 1948 the<br />
Chemical Workers Union had been involved in protracted<br />
proceedings over alleged forged ballot papers by<br />
communists.<br />
100. In 1945, as Chief of the Defence Staff he had<br />
threatened Attlee with resignation over proposed<br />
defence cuts.<br />
101. Scott Lucas and Morris p. 101.<br />
102. For which, perhaps, read 'our friends fixed the<br />
agenda'.<br />
103. Shaw p. 58<br />
104. Ibid. pp. 58 and 9 Shaw notes in footnote 44 p.<br />
314 that 'at least one NAD official was approached by<br />
a member of the Special Branch [and brother of a<br />
future International Secretary] offering<br />
"assistance".'<br />
105. Mikardo p. 131.<br />
106. The Times, April 6, 1957<br />
107. Collins Radio was first linked with CIA<br />
operations by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished<br />
manuscript, The Dallas Conspiracy, ch. 11 p. 3. More<br />
recently, 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back<br />
Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, lists a number of<br />
links between the company and the CIA-controlled<br />
anti-Castro milieu of the early 1960s<br />
108. On INTERDOC see Crozier pp. 49 and 81.<br />
109. Frances Blackett in Duchess of Atholl, p. 250.<br />
110. The Times, 6 April 1957<br />
111. IRIS News, vol. 1, no 1, 1956. According to<br />
Anthony Carew, Nash was also a member of the AEU.<br />
112. Fletcher's notes of the conversation say that<br />
that 'wealthy people got at [Common Cause executive<br />
member Charles] Sonnex (without telling CAS) asked him<br />
to lead IRIS. S.[onnex] remained on CC exec. Rich<br />
people attached more importance to IRIS.'<br />
113. See Tom Bower's Red Web on the SIS post-war<br />
operations and chapter 8, in particular, on the<br />
dawning realisation that they had been taken for a<br />
ride - again. On 'the Trust' see Andrew, Secret<br />
Service pp. 445-8<br />
114. Ibid p. 165<br />
115. Yakovlev p. 105. Soviet publications in this<br />
field are not famously accurate, but this account has<br />
since been confirmed by Tom Bower's biography of SIS<br />
chief Dick White The Perfect English Spy, pp. 206 and<br />
7. Yakovlev quotes from what purports to be an SIS<br />
document, 'A Proposed Statement to the NTS<br />
Leadership', which, presuming it to be genuine, may<br />
have been given to the Soviets by Kim Philby or George<br />
Blake. Bower quotes a brief section from the same<br />
document.<br />
116. Labour Research, January 1961, p. 10<br />
117. See Roberts pp. 101, 122-4, 131 157, 203.<br />
The left-wing Engineering Voice, Christmas 1966,<br />
reported having received 'an anonymous and undated<br />
document purporting to describe the proceedings of a<br />
secret meeting recently convened by supporters of the<br />
present leadership of the AEU.' The document referred<br />
to a 'National Group meeting' and said attending it<br />
had been fourteen full-time officers of the AEU.<br />
118. Guardian, 2 January 1995, based on papers<br />
released under the 30 year rule. See also 'Anti-red<br />
and alive' in New Statesman, 10 February 1995.<br />
119. Pincher, Inside Story p. 335<br />
120. On Macmillan's paranoia about the 'communist<br />
conspiracy' see Bower, Perfect English Spy pp. 308-9.<br />
121. A director of Hollis and Carter<br />
122. Keating, PhD thesis, p. 350<br />
123. Ferris, p. 85. Engineering Voice, March 1969,<br />
reported a two-day conference of the Association of<br />
Catholic Trade Unionists, at which were H.E. Matthews,<br />
a director of Cable and Wireless and some time<br />
director of IRIS, and Andy McKeown of IRIS. Keating<br />
quotes McKeown as suggesting that originally IRIS was<br />
anti-Catholic because 'Freemasonry' had a 'strong<br />
hold' on the organisation, and claiming that the man<br />
who initially ran IRIS, Charles Sonnex, was a Mason!<br />
124. One of those who believes there was a national<br />
Catholic Action is former President of the Trades<br />
Union Congress, Clive Jenkins. Conversation with the<br />
author, 1995.<br />
125. Keating thesis, p. 335. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
Part 2 <br />
<br />
Atlantic Crossings<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism and the CIA<br />
As well as the programmes to inculcate American<br />
notions of free market economics and union-management<br />
relations - and good feelings about America - there<br />
were operations aimed at the wider public and the<br />
Labour Party. Large numbers of Labour MPs and trade<br />
unionists were paid to visit the United States. Among<br />
the Gaitskellite grouping in the Parliamentary party,<br />
Gaitskell, George Brown, Anthony Crosland and Douglas<br />
Jay all made visits.(1) Under the umbrella of just one<br />
minor aspect of the Marshall Plan, the Anglo-American<br />
Council on Productivity, 900 people from Britain -<br />
management and unions - went on trips to the United<br />
States to see the equivalent of 'Potemkin<br />
villages'.(2) Hundreds of trade unions officers went<br />
on paid visits to the US in the fifties under the<br />
auspices of the European Productivity Agency and<br />
groups of British union leaders were sent on three<br />
month trade union programme run twice yearly by the<br />
Harvard Business School.(3) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom<br />
There was a European-wide - and world-wide - programme<br />
to boost the social democratic wings of socialist<br />
parties and movements. <br />
<br />
<br />
'At Thomas Braden's suggestion and with the support of<br />
Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner [then head of the Office<br />
of Policy Coordination], the CIA began its covert<br />
support of the non-Communist political left around the<br />
world - trade unions, political parties and<br />
international organisations of students and<br />
journalists.'(4) <br />
<br />
The biggest of these programs that we are aware of was<br />
the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF from here on),<br />
which began in 1950 with a large conference in the US<br />
zone in Berlin, a demonstration of the strength of<br />
anti-Soviet feeling among some of the West's<br />
intellectuals and a response to the Soviet 'Peace<br />
offensive' then underway.(5) At the time funds for<br />
these gatherings were said to have come from the<br />
American Federation of Labour, via Jay Lovestone - a<br />
story offered up again recently by CCF apologist Peter<br />
Coleman in his The Liberal Conspiracy. In fact they<br />
came from the CIA, something alleged by the Soviet<br />
bloc's media at the time but not believed.(6) The one<br />
thing the Congress for Cultural Freedom's paymasters<br />
were not interested in was cultural freedom. Peter<br />
Coleman does his best. Of the first big 1950 jamboree<br />
he writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
'almost all the participants were liberals or social<br />
democrats, critical of capitalism and opposed to<br />
colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, racism and<br />
dictatorship'. <br />
<br />
If the British delegation is anything to go by, this<br />
is not true. Of the four British delegates named by<br />
Coleman, one was Christopher Hollis, a right-wing<br />
Catholic and some time Tory MP, (7) and another was<br />
Julian Amery, one of the Tory Party's leading<br />
imperialists! In any case 'cultural freedom' was a<br />
euphemism for 'American capitalism'. <br />
<br />
<br />
Encounter<br />
The CCF began publishing journals - in Britain,<br />
Encounter, which first appeared in 1953. Encounter<br />
became a major outlet for the 'revisionist' - i.e.<br />
anti-socialist, anti-nationalist - thinking of the<br />
younger intellectuals around Labour leader Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, such as Peter Jay, Patrick Gordon-Walker,<br />
Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, all of whom were in<br />
Harold Wilson's first cabinet in 1964. The 1955 CCF<br />
conference in Milan, 'The Future of Freedom', was<br />
attended by Crosland, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey,<br />
Roy Jenkins and W. Arthur Lewis MP.(8) Anthony<br />
Crosland was a member of the International Council of<br />
the CCF: his role, said the CIA officer who was<br />
running CCF, was 'encouraging sympathetic people' to<br />
attend CCF conferences.(9) There is no evidence that<br />
Crosland was witting of the CIA connection. (And none<br />
that he was wasn't, either.) Peter Coleman(10) lists<br />
Gaitskell, Jenkins, Crosland, Rita Hinden, Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker, John Strachey, Dennis Healey and<br />
Roderick Macfarquhar as Labour writers published in<br />
Encounter. In 1960 editor Melvin Lasky wrote to fellow<br />
CCF officer, John Hunt, referring to 'an enormous<br />
friendly feeling for Encounter' in the centre and<br />
right wing of the Labour Party.(11) <br />
<br />
The revisionist wing of the Labour Party also had<br />
Forward, the less glamorous (and poorer) Labour<br />
weekly, set up to combat the influence of Tribune.<br />
Money for Forward came from Alan Sainsbury, Chairman<br />
of the retailers Sainsbury (whose son was to fund the<br />
Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s), Henry<br />
Walston, the land-owner, and the restaurateur, Charles<br />
Forte.(12) There was also the $3000 'expenses' paid<br />
made to Hugh Gaitskell for a talk to the Jewish Labour<br />
Committee in the USA.(13) <br />
<br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary<br />
As well as Encounter and Forward there was the monthly<br />
Socialist Commentary as a vehicle for the<br />
anti-socialists in the Labour Party. Socialist<br />
Commentary began life as a journal of an obscure<br />
revisionist group of German refugees but by the early<br />
1950s it had been absorbed by the revisionist wing of<br />
the Labour Party. In 1953 a 'Friends of Socialist<br />
Commentary' group was set up with Gaitskell as<br />
Treasurer.(14) 'Socialist Commentary and the Socialist<br />
Union were plugged in direct to the USA's Marshall<br />
Plan operation in Britain by virtue of the fact that<br />
William Gausmann, Labour Information Officer in the<br />
London mission, was a member of the journal's<br />
editorial board.'(15) <br />
<br />
The dominant figure in Socialist Commentary was its<br />
editor for 20 years, Rita Hinden, who had been<br />
co-founder of the Fabian Colonial Bureau in 1940. The<br />
Bureau, and Hinden in particular, became an important<br />
influence on the thinking of the Labour Party - and,<br />
to some extent of the British state - on post-war<br />
management of the empire.(16) Hinden was also a<br />
participant in CCF functions, wrote for Encounter, and<br />
was described by the CIA officer in charge of CCF,<br />
Michael Josselson, as 'a good friend of ours', on<br />
whose advice the CIA 'relied heavily ...for our<br />
African operations.'(17) On her death Denis Healey,<br />
who had written widely for Socialist Commentary's<br />
American counterpart, New Leader, said that 'Only Sol<br />
Levitas of the American New Leader had a comparable<br />
capacity for exercising a wide political influence<br />
with negligible material resources.' But as Richard<br />
Fletcher commented, 'He [Healey] obviously hadn't paid<br />
a visit to Companies House whose register shows that<br />
in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing<br />
on a capital reserve of over �75.000.'(18) (Healey was<br />
apparently also unaware that Sol Levitas was also<br />
taking the CIA shilling.) <br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary has got to be CIA but there is<br />
not a shred of direct evidence that I am aware of. <br />
<br />
<br />
The social democratic network<br />
By the mid 1950s there was a palpable social<br />
democratic network operating in and around the Labour<br />
Party in Britain and reaching out into the British and<br />
American states, both overt and covert. The career of<br />
Saul Rose in this period illustrates this. After<br />
wartime service in Army Intelligence, Rose was a<br />
lecturer at Aberdeen University, before becoming the<br />
Labour Party's International Secretary for three<br />
years. He then moved to the then recently established<br />
St Antony's College at Oxford, one of two British<br />
institutions which sponsored Congress of Cultural<br />
Freedom seminars in the UK. The other was Ditchley<br />
Manor, Oxford. Both were outposts of the Foreign<br />
Office/MI6 network.(19) (Former MP Dick Taverne,<br />
mentioned recently that as as young man he went to a<br />
Young Fabian conference at the other major Foreign<br />
Office country retreat, Wilton Park....(20)) <br />
<br />
The same elements are visible in the contributors to<br />
the short-lived Fabian International Review, begun in<br />
1953. In its three years its contributors included two<br />
academics from St Antony's, Gausmann, the Labour<br />
Information Officer at the US embassy in London,<br />
Douglas Jay, William Rodgers, and Mary Benson of the<br />
Africa Bureau.(21) <br />
<br />
It is easy at this distance to be indignant about<br />
Labour politicians hobnobbing with the CIA. But in<br />
1955, say, when Saul Rose left his job as Labour's<br />
International Secretary, the media simply did not<br />
discuss the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services. There were Americans with money scattered<br />
about the higher reaches of the Labour movement in<br />
Britain; but Americans with money had been scattered<br />
about Britain since the war years, they had been<br />
Britain's allies only a few years before, they were<br />
anti-Stalinist - and some of them, the labour officers<br />
in one guise or another, were originally from the US<br />
labour movement.(22) I think it likely that in the<br />
1950s the Labour revisionists, the Hindens and<br />
Croslands, believed they were taking part in a<br />
'liberal conspiracy'(23) against the Soviet Union,<br />
with progressive, democratic forces - people they<br />
perceived to be like themselves. But from the CIA's<br />
point of view, they were being run in one of the most<br />
successful psy-war operations of the Cold War. This<br />
operation had as one of its aims the struggle against<br />
Stalinism; but the Americans sponsored and funded the<br />
European social democrats not because they were social<br />
democrats, but because social democracy was the best<br />
ideological vehicle for the major aim of the<br />
programme: to ensure that the governments of Europe<br />
continued to allow American capital into their<br />
economies with the minimum of restrictions. This aim<br />
the revisionists in the Labour Party chose not to look<br />
at. As the history of US imperialism since the war<br />
shows, the US is basically uninterested in the<br />
ideology of host governments, and has supported<br />
everything from social democrats to the most feral,<br />
military dictatorships in South and Central America.<br />
But its other aims went largely unrecognised. (This,<br />
perhaps, is a tribute to the skill of the US personnel<br />
running the operations.) Looking at the networking of<br />
the social democrats in the these post-war years, the<br />
intimacy between US labour attache, Joe Godson, and<br />
Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, which once looked so<br />
extraordinary, now looks less some awful aberration -<br />
and triumph for Godson - than business as usual. <br />
<br />
<br />
The end-of-ideology ideology<br />
The strategically important thing for the United<br />
States about the revisionist's version of socialism<br />
was its central conclusion that ownership of economic<br />
assets was no longer of paramount importance. (In the<br />
USA, sociologist Daniel Bell was arguing the same<br />
thesis, sponsored by the same people, under the rubric<br />
of 'the end of ideology'.) This was obviously the key<br />
line for US capital which wanted to penetrate the<br />
world's markets and was meeting resistance from people<br />
who called them imperialists. Officially the US was<br />
also opposed to colonialism - especially British and<br />
French; imperialism - especially British;<br />
totalitarianism (except where dictators were the best<br />
allies US business could find) and nationalism -<br />
except Americanism, which was a universal creed of<br />
such perspicacity and moral purity as to be beyond<br />
objection. The one to take seriously among that<br />
quartet is nationalism. In democratic Europe the CIA<br />
chiefly funded those who were not nationalists. To US<br />
capital, socialism was functionally simply a form of<br />
exclusionary, anti-American, economic nationalism:<br />
communism the most extreme of all.(24) The<br />
internationalists in democratic Europe in the<br />
immediate post-war years were, mostly, on the liberal<br />
or centre left; the European right was, mostly,<br />
nationalist. In France De Gaulle opposed US capital.<br />
(And the CIA was to help finance the OAS against him.)<br />
In Britain it was the nationalist Tories and some of<br />
the socialist left who voted against the Marshall Plan<br />
in the House of Commons. The US government only had<br />
one operating criterion where a foreign government was<br />
concerned: is it willing to allow US capital in or<br />
not? It was called anti-communism, but it was also<br />
anti-nationalism. Yes, it was precisely 'Taking the<br />
teeth out of British socialism', as Richard Fletcher<br />
put it in his seminal piece in 1977;(25) but it could<br />
just as accurately have been called 'Taking the teeth<br />
out of British economic nationalism'. <br />
<br />
The US-supported drive by the revisionists in the<br />
Labour Party had its first major set-back with the<br />
rise of CND, climaxing with the famous narrow majority<br />
in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the<br />
party conference in 1960. To the Gaitskellites in the<br />
Labour Party it was little more than another communist<br />
conspiracy. Gaitskell's leadership of the party had<br />
largely been defined by the struggle with the left<br />
(real and imaginary), and he believed the CPGB had<br />
infiltrated the Labour Party, and was manipulating the<br />
apparently Labour Left gathered round the newspaper<br />
Tribune.(26) The Gaitskellites' response to the 1960<br />
resolution had three dimensions: the formation of a<br />
party faction, the Campaign for Democratic Socialism<br />
(CDS); in the unions, the work of IRIS cells and other<br />
anti-communist groups; and the use of the party<br />
machine itself. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS)<br />
While the Gaitskellites dominated the PLP leadership,<br />
and had the support of the major unions, they had<br />
socialist opposition among the party's members.<br />
Gaitskell needed a faction. What became the Campaign<br />
for Democratic Socialism began before the pro-CND<br />
Labour Party conference resolution in February 1960<br />
when William Rodgers, Secretary of the Fabian Society,<br />
a part of the social democratic network in the UK,<br />
organised a letter of support for Gaitskell from<br />
prospective parliamentary candidates. Among the<br />
fifteen who raised their heads above the parapets in<br />
this way were: <br />
<br />
* Maurice Foley, who had been secretary of the British<br />
section of the European Youth Campaign from<br />
1951-59,(27) and later became a Foreign Office<br />
Minister and trustee of the Ariel Foundation; (28) <br />
* Ben Hooberman, a lawyer involved in the ETU<br />
ballot-rigging case;<br />
* Bryan Magee, who subsequently became a Labour MP and<br />
then joined the SDP;<br />
* Dick Taverne, who later stood against the Labour<br />
Party as 'Democratic Labour' and joined the SDP;<br />
* Shirley Williams, one of the 'Gang of Four', who<br />
founded the SDP; <br />
<br />
Shortly after, a steering committee, containing<br />
Crosland, Jenkins and Gordon-Walker, was set up with<br />
Rodgers as chair. The group began working on a<br />
manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell's<br />
defeat in the forthcoming defence debate at the Party<br />
conference. On 24 November 1960, after the narrow<br />
defeat for Gaitskell's line at the conference, this<br />
group announced itself as the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism, with Rodgers as chair.(29) Immediately<br />
after the formation of CDS, after his speech at<br />
Scarborough Gaitskell 'consulted Sarah Barker [the<br />
party's National Agent] who advised him that the<br />
Campaign could have his distant blessing'.(30) <br />
<br />
It set up permanent headquarters, officially 'financed<br />
by contributions from individual members of the Labour<br />
Party'. Ever since the Richard Fletcher article on CDS<br />
et al in 1977 there have been questions about how this<br />
operation was funded. In mid November 1960 - i.e. a<br />
fortnight after the launch - Rodgers 'reported to the<br />
steering committee that many small donations had been<br />
received, together with a large sum from a source who<br />
wished to remain anonymous.' As we saw above, Charles<br />
Forte donated money to the founders of Forward, and in<br />
his autobiography he quotes a letter from Gaitskell,<br />
thanking him for his financial generosity. This is<br />
undated unfortunately, but from the context it is 1961<br />
or thereabouts.(31) <br />
<br />
This donation, whatever it was, enabled CDS to have<br />
'field workers in the constituencies and unions, whom<br />
it supported with travelling expenses, literature and<br />
organisational back-up, and other publications, plus a<br />
regular bulletin campaign, circulated free of charge<br />
to a large mailing list within the movement. And all<br />
this was produced without a single subscription-paying<br />
member.'(32) John Diamond was the CDS fund-raiser.(33)<br />
<br />
<br />
A 1961 letter in CDS Campaign announced support from<br />
45 MPs including Austen Albu (who wrote for IRIS),<br />
Crosland, Diamond (who joined the SDP), Donnelly<br />
(Desmond), who resigned in '68; Roy Jenkins (founder<br />
and leader of the SDP), Roy Mason, Christopher Mayhew<br />
(who joined the Liberals) and Reg Prentice (who joined<br />
the Tories).(34) The following year were added new MPs<br />
William Rodgers (another of the 'Gang of Four') and<br />
Dick Taverne (who defected as a Democratic Labour MP,<br />
later SDP) The Gaitskellites' historian, Stephen<br />
Haseler noted, 'The whole Central Leadership of the<br />
Party in Parliament, with the single exception of<br />
Wilson, were Campaign sympathisers.'(35) In the<br />
party's grassroots their significance is harder to<br />
assess but a 1962 study found that CDS did have some<br />
measurable effect in swinging perhaps as many as 1 in<br />
3 of the Constituency Labour Parties in which they<br />
were active.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
In the unions<br />
Working in some of the unions were clandestine<br />
anti-communist groupings, the best known of which was<br />
the AEU's 'club', and IRIS discussed above.(37) One of<br />
the people bridging the gap between the parliamentary<br />
and trade union wings of the movement was Charles<br />
Pannell, Secretary of the Parliamentary Trade Union<br />
Group of MP's and an AEU-sponsored MP.(38) Pannell<br />
told the American academic Irving Richter, of his<br />
'close relationship' with the General Secretary of the<br />
AEU, Cecil Hallett,(39) and of their combined efforts<br />
to defeat the Left in the industrial and political<br />
wings of the movement, by building IRIS 'cells'.<br />
Pannell told Richter that he, Hallet, and the IRIS<br />
cells working inside the AEU, were crucial in<br />
overturning the AEU's 1960 vote for CND and so<br />
restoring Labour Party's policy to being pro-nuclear,<br />
pro-NATO.(40) Birmingham MP Denis Howells 'devoted<br />
himself full time from the beginning of the Campaign<br />
until his reelection to Parliament and then after that<br />
part time to reversing the votes in the Trade<br />
Unions....[and] played a very important part.'(41) <br />
<br />
After the 1960 Party conference 20 members of the TUC<br />
General Council signed a statement supporting NATO.<br />
Four of them, James Crawford, Harry Douglass, John<br />
Boyd and Sid Greene, were or were to become, officers<br />
(on paper, at any rate) of IRIS: a fifth, Sir Tom<br />
O'Brien, was still on the notepaper of Common Cause.<br />
There were public gestures of support for CDS from<br />
messrs Carron, Williamson and Webber, Ron Smith (Post<br />
Office Workers), Dame Flora Hancock, Anne Goodwin, W.<br />
Tallon and Jim Conway (both AEU), and Joe Godson's<br />
friend, the NUM's Sam Watson.(42) <br />
<br />
<br />
Using the party organisation<br />
A committee 'consisting of the Party Leader, the Chief<br />
Whip, Bill Rodgers, the secretary of the right-wing<br />
ginger group the Campaign for Democratic Socialism,<br />
and other influential figures' was formed and met<br />
regularly 'to secure the selection of right-wing<br />
candidates for winnable constituencies'.(43) Professor<br />
George Jones, who had also been in CDS, commented that<br />
'the relationship between CDS and the regional<br />
organisers of the Labour Party was very<br />
important.'(44) The CDS had the support of at least<br />
half of the Regional Organisers, though how many is in<br />
dispute. Seyd suggests seven out of the party's<br />
twelve. Shaw thinks that Seyd must have got this wrong<br />
because one of the seven was left-winger Ron Hayward,<br />
who denies it.(45) CDS organiser Bill Rodgers said<br />
that the regional organisers <br />
<br />
<br />
'were fairly well disposed, including the youngest of<br />
them who was called Ron Hayward, was very keen to have<br />
CDS making a contribution in the areas in which he was<br />
responsible..... We believed that the party could be<br />
saved from itself and Hugh Gaitskell offered the best<br />
prospect of saving it. Once we had established that<br />
thought in the minds of the regional organisers, they<br />
acquiesced in what we did.'(46) <br />
<br />
<br />
Partnership of the two wings<br />
There are glimpses of the two wings of the labour<br />
movement working together. Cecil Hallett described a<br />
meeting between IRIS and the Trade Union Group of MPs<br />
in 1955 addressed by the CIA's labour man in Europe,<br />
Irving Brown.(47) CDS member Bernard Donoughue<br />
recalled how <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the summer of 1964, the MP for Finsbury died and I<br />
was telephoned by a friend, a left-wing journalist,<br />
and told that I must watch out, that there had been a<br />
meeting of key left-wing people and they had decided<br />
to capture Finsbury. They had a candidate, they had<br />
approached a number of people in the constituency,<br />
they had 27 votes, the candidate was going to be Clive<br />
Jenkins. I contacted one or two friends and the list<br />
of CDS people in Finsbury, including the Post Office<br />
and Telegraph Union people and they organised very<br />
actively. It emerged that the left, despite its<br />
incompetence,(sic) had their candidate and had 27<br />
potential votes. CDS campaigned in the constituency<br />
and we won by 31 to 27, that was the summer of<br />
1964.'(48) <br />
<br />
In the recollection of the candidate concerned, Clive<br />
Jenkins, it was 1963. He was 'approached by a number<br />
of trade unions and ward Labour parties to stand for<br />
selection'. At the TUC at Blackpool he was tipped off<br />
that the General Management Committee of the<br />
Shoreditch and Finsbury constituency had been sent a<br />
document which described him as, among other things,<br />
the 'chief Trotskyist in Great Britain'. This had been<br />
given to journalists by none other than Jim Matthews,<br />
the national industrial officer of the Municipal and<br />
General Workers Union, and an officer of Common Cause.<br />
Jenkins sued, collected damages and costs and later<br />
speculated about a CIA connection: <br />
<br />
<br />
'I was told by reliable friends that the anonymous<br />
letter, which had been mailed to every member of the<br />
selection committee came from a man who was seemingly<br />
a member of the CIA and operating under the cover of a<br />
petty news agency.'(49) <br />
<br />
It is interesting to see Donoughue referring to 'the<br />
Post Office and Telegraph Union people'. I presume he<br />
means the Union of Post Officer Workers, one of the<br />
British unions with which the CIA is known to have<br />
worked in the 1960s. In the 1950s Peter D. Newell was<br />
an active member of the Socialist Party of Great<br />
Britain. He worked as a draughtsman but wanted a<br />
change of career. It was suggested to him that he join<br />
the Post Office Initially not keen on what he saw it<br />
was a downward move, he has recalled how 'quite subtly<br />
(I now realise) it was suggested that once in the PO,<br />
I would soon be able to write forThe Post , the<br />
official fortnightly journal of the UPW [Union of Post<br />
Office Workers] - and be paid for it!'(50) He duly<br />
joined the Post Office, was contacted by Norman Stagg,<br />
the editor of the journal almost immediately, and<br />
began writing an anonymous, anti-communist column for<br />
it under the by-line of 'Bellman'. For his column<br />
Stagg provided source material from the ICFTU, IRIS<br />
and the AFL-CIO. At the time the Union of Post Office<br />
Workers was a member of the trade union international<br />
body Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International.<br />
(PTTI) Like many of the these international trade<br />
union organisations, the PTTI was penetrated - some<br />
would say run - by the CIA.(51) Its president was the<br />
late Joe Beirne of the Communication Workers of<br />
America. Beirne was also founder and<br />
Secretary-Treasurer of American Institute for Free<br />
Labor Development (AIFLD), created and run by the<br />
CIA.(52) As far as it is possible to be sure of<br />
anything in this field without a confession from the<br />
man himself or his case officer, Joe Beirne was a<br />
major asset of the CIA in the American and world<br />
labour movements.(53) <br />
<br />
<br />
Social democratic centralism<br />
What Eric Shaw wittily calls social democratic<br />
centralism, the attempt by the right to police the<br />
entire Labour Party and trade union membership, peaked<br />
in 1962. In March 1961 five MPs, including Michael<br />
Foot, were expelled from the Parliamentary party for<br />
voting against the Tory government's defence<br />
estimates. The Gaitskellites repulsed the<br />
unilateralists at the annual conference that year; and<br />
in the Labour Party its 'personnel committee', the<br />
organisational subcommittee, was dominated by Ray<br />
Gunter MP(54) and George Brown, a 'CIA source', and<br />
serviced by the Party's National Agent's Department,<br />
which received its information from IRD and others.<br />
Then things went wrong. Determined upon a final purge<br />
of the Parliamentary party, George Brown approached<br />
MI5, via the journalist Chapman Pincher, for evidence<br />
of Soviet links to Labour MP's believed to be 'fellow<br />
travellers'. But MI5 declined, apparently because<br />
afraid that to do so would reveal their sources within<br />
the PLP;(55) and then, with the Macmillan government<br />
in what appeared to be terminal decline, Gaitskell<br />
died suddenly and the right in the Parliamentary Party<br />
- and the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services - saw the party leadership slip from the<br />
Gaitskellites' hands as Harold Wilson won the<br />
leadership election - and then the general election of<br />
1964. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
1. There is no detailed examination of this as far as<br />
I know and I am not even sure how many such programmes<br />
were run. Roy Hattersley recently commented that his<br />
first visit to the US was paid for by 'something which<br />
was laughingly called The Young Leaders' Program'. The<br />
Guardian, 27 February 1995. In his memoir, A Bag of<br />
Boiled Sweets (Faber and Faber, 1995) pp. 77-8, the<br />
Conservative MP, Julian Critchley describes how, upon<br />
letting the Tory Party Whips know that he had never<br />
been to the United States, he was immediately fixed up<br />
with a six week freebie courtesy of the US embassy in<br />
London.<br />
2. Carew p. 137<br />
3. Ibid. pp.189/90. The British trade union whose<br />
leadership responded most enthusiastically to these<br />
American overtures was the General and Municipal<br />
Workers' Union (GMWU) and it 'provided from among its<br />
leading officials half the British participants in the<br />
university trade union courses at Harvard and<br />
Columbia...' Ibid. p. 191. GMWU General Secretary, Tom<br />
Williamson, was one of the participants at the first<br />
meeting of the Bilderberg Group in 1954. (Eringer p.<br />
49) Other British participants included Hugh Gaitskell<br />
and Dennis Healey, who discusses the Bilderberg<br />
meetings in his memoir, The Time of My Life.<br />
4. Smith, OSS p. 368.<br />
5. Lasch p. 332 The 1951 CCF conference in Delhi was<br />
explicitly a reply to a 'World Peace Conference'<br />
sponsored by the Soviet Union.<br />
6. Dittberner p. 112. Mr Coleman's objectivity on this<br />
matter can be seen by his description of CIA officer,<br />
Irving Brown, as 'European representative of the AFL',<br />
the cover story even the Americans have abandoned.<br />
Coleman p. 34.<br />
7. Later a member of the editorial board of the<br />
Catholic magazine,The Tablet This is the Hollis family<br />
in Hollis and Carter, the Catholic publishers of the<br />
Common Cause Bulletin.<br />
8. Coleman p. 110 'Finally, Lasky moved Encounter<br />
closer to the Hugh Gaitskell wing of the British<br />
Labour Party.... Encounter became one of the principal<br />
publications in which C.A.R. Crosland developed his<br />
"revisionist" social democratic, Keynesian program'.<br />
Coleman p. 185<br />
9. Hirsch and Fletcher pp. 59 and 60. Labour Party<br />
leader Hugh Gaitskell attended the conferences in in<br />
1955, 57, 58 and 62.<br />
10. p. 73<br />
11. Coleman p. 185. Roy Jenkins, splendidly<br />
insouciant,on Encounter: 'We had all known that it had<br />
been heavily subsidised from American sources, and it<br />
did not seem to me worse that these should turn out to<br />
be a US Government agency than, as I had vaguely<br />
understood, a Cincinnati gin distiller.' Jenkins,<br />
Life, p. 118<br />
12. Francis Williams p. 309<br />
13. '...which helped him underwrite the costs of<br />
Forward.' Carew pp. 129 and 30<br />
14. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 68<br />
15. Carew p. 245<br />
16. The Bureau 'enjoyed a direct and amiable<br />
relationship with the Colonial Office, its advice was<br />
always considered if not always followed.' Pugh p.<br />
222. Another commentator's assessment was that<br />
'Officials at the Colonial Office came to respect her<br />
knowledge, judgement and persistence.' Labour MP and<br />
fellow Bureau member, W. Arthur Lewis, quoted in the<br />
entry on Hinden in the Dictionary of Labour Biography,<br />
vol. 2, Macmillan 1974.<br />
17. She visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored<br />
trip after the Suez crisis. Fletcher in Agee, Dirty<br />
Work p. 195<br />
18. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 67. This �75,000 must be be<br />
'the small capital grant (a modest bequest) on which<br />
it had so far survived' in the account of Desai.<br />
Commenting on the closure of Socialist Commentary in<br />
1978, Desai writes (p. 174) that it 'had always<br />
operated on a shoestring budget which had to be<br />
supplemented by the dedication and persuasive power of<br />
Rita Hinden, its editor for most of its life'. �75,000<br />
was a lot of money in the mid 1970s when Fletcher<br />
found this out. The accounts of Socialist Commentary<br />
were prepared by the accountancy practice of John<br />
Diamond MP, one of the leading Gaitskellites, who<br />
later joined the SDP and is now in the House of Lords.<br />
He was also, for example, the Honorary Treasurer of<br />
the Labour Committee for Europe. See Finer, Appendix<br />
2. In this latter role John Campbell in his biography<br />
of Roy Jenkins, p. 51, states that Diamond was<br />
'charged with raising money that did not come from the<br />
City of London.<br />
19. Coleman p. 260 for the CCF connection. St<br />
Antony's, Richard Deacon wrote in his The British<br />
Connection, was 'an unofficial annex of MI6 in the<br />
fifties.' p. 259<br />
20. Dick Taverne, Institute for Historical Research<br />
(IHR) Witness Statement on CDS, 1990, p. 8<br />
21. Of the Africa Bureau, Anthony Verrier wrote:<br />
'liberal, UK-based....on which [Colonial Secretary]<br />
Macleod relied greatly for detailed background<br />
intelligence on African independence movements. Unlike<br />
some liberal organisations, the Africa Bureau was<br />
never troubled by the attentions of the security<br />
services or the Metropolitan Special Branch.' Verrier,<br />
The Road to Zimbabwe, p. 335. From an old SIS hand<br />
like AV, this is running up a flag and shouting<br />
'spook'.<br />
22. There had been contacts between the British TUC<br />
and the U.S. labour movement ever since the late 19th.<br />
century. See Marjorie Nicholson pp. 27 and 28. These<br />
contacts were sufficiently intimate for Sir Walter<br />
Citrine to work with senior figures from the US AFL in<br />
one of the many front groups set up by British<br />
intelligence to persuade US public opinion to support<br />
the war in Europe. Mahl, thesis, p. 75.<br />
23. The title of Coleman's study of CCF.<br />
24. The best exposition of this thesis is in Fred. L.<br />
Block.<br />
25. Richard Fletcher, 'Who Were They Travelling with?'<br />
in Hirsch and Fletcher.<br />
26. For this latter belief, to my knowledge, the<br />
Gaitskellites produced no evidence. Some of the Labour<br />
Right proved incredibly gullible when it came to this<br />
'communist conspiracy', accepting as genuine the most<br />
obvious forgeries. See for example pp. 224-6 of Jack<br />
and Bessie Braddock's memoir The Braddocks,<br />
(Macdonald, London, 1963) for a particularly choice<br />
example, passed to them by J. Bernard Hutton, who<br />
fronted several such forgeries. Who produced the<br />
forgeries? We do not know, but my guess would be IRD.<br />
27. This was funded by the CIA, though Foley has<br />
denied knowing this. See Bloch and Fitzgerald p. 106<br />
28. On Ariel see ibid pp. 151-2 and Kisch pp. 67-8.<br />
29. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 211<br />
30. David Marquand, IHR CDS Witness Statement, 1990,<br />
p. 6. At the same seminar Bill Jones noted 'the<br />
importance of Philip Williams...Philip had a fantastic<br />
network of MPs'. IHR CDS Witness Statement, p. 13<br />
31. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62. See Forte p. 81 where<br />
Gaitskell writes, 'things have gone remarkably well<br />
inside the Party. And for this a very large amount of<br />
credit must go to our friends in the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism, which you have helped so<br />
generously.' (emphasis added.)<br />
32. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62<br />
33. Windlesham p. 107<br />
34. Haseler p. 217<br />
35. Ibid p. 219<br />
36. Driver p. 97 citing Political Quarterly.<br />
37. There are odd traces of such groupings elsewhere:<br />
In Labour's Northern Voice in May 1969 Chris Norwood<br />
MP reported on the the 'Progressive Labour Group' in<br />
the shop-workers' union, USDAW, originally formed to<br />
fight communists but still operating and producing<br />
lists of approved candidates, the core activity of<br />
such a caucus.<br />
38. Windlesham fn 3 p. 82<br />
39. Hallett was on the Common Cause council in the<br />
fifties.<br />
40. Richter pp. 144 and 5<br />
41. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 14<br />
42. Windlesham p. 109<br />
43. Shaw Discipline p. 114<br />
44. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 24<br />
45. Shaw fn 150, p. 331<br />
46. Rodgers, IHR, CDS Witness Statement p. 25<br />
47. Richter p. 151. George Brown, according to Tom<br />
Bower's recent biography of Sir Dick White, was a 'CIA<br />
source'. See p. 356<br />
48. Bernard Donoughue, IHR CDS pp. 23/24<br />
49. Jenkins pp. 49-51. I asked Jenkins about this in<br />
1995 but he was unable to remember further details.<br />
50. Letter to author, 25 May 1990.<br />
51. See Agee, CIA Diary p. 618<br />
52. Newell was introduced to Beirne at the UPW<br />
conference at Blackpool. Newell wrote of this episode<br />
in his life in <br />
Freedom, September 25 1976, and more recently in<br />
Perspectives number 9, 1995. On the late Joseph Beirne<br />
and CIA see Counterspy, February 1974 pp. 42 and 43<br />
and May 1979 p.13, and Agee CIA Dairy, p. 603.<br />
53. On AIFLD see Fred Hirsch 'The Labour Movement:<br />
Penetration Point for U.S. Intelligence and<br />
Transnationals' in Hirsch and Fletcher, and 'The<br />
AFL-CIA' by former US Air Force Intelligence officer<br />
Winslow Peck in Frazier (ed.).<br />
54. In 1968 he became a director of IRIS.<br />
55. It also possible, of course, that they declined<br />
because they had no such information, either because<br />
none existed, or because they were too incompetent to<br />
collect it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The subversion hunters and the social democrats in the<br />
1970s<br />
The arrival of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour<br />
Party must have been a serious shock to the<br />
Anglo-American intelligence services. One minute the<br />
party was in the complete control of a faction which<br />
they had been promoting - 'running' would be too<br />
strong - since about 1950, and the next the party, and<br />
the second most important part of the NATO alliance,<br />
is in the hands of someone who has spent the post-war<br />
years going to and from Moscow as an East-West trader!<br />
<br />
<br />
The rise of the left in the Labour Party and trade<br />
union movement, symbolised by the ascent of Wilson,<br />
was being monitored by IRD and its satellites, the<br />
Economic League, IRIS, Common Cause - and by Brian<br />
Crozier, who raised the alarm in the 1970 collection<br />
he edited, We Will Bury You..(73) Working the same<br />
seam - presumably for different sponsors - was former<br />
Army officer and Conservative MP, Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith. In Stewart-Smith's journal, East-West<br />
Digest, in 1972, for example, we find the names who<br />
appeared in Crozier's 1970 anthology: Harry Welton of<br />
the Economic League, who had been in the anti-left<br />
business for 'fifty fighting years', to cite the title<br />
of the League's in-house history, and David Williams,<br />
the main writer for the Common Cause Bulletin.(74) <br />
<br />
<br />
The abolition of the proscription list<br />
Anxiety among the subversive-watchers heightened<br />
throughout the Heath years as the insurrection in<br />
Northern Ireland continued and conflict with the<br />
labour movement on the mainland UK increased, and<br />
leapt enormously with the abolition of the<br />
Proscription List of the Labour Party in 1973. Most of<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time seems to<br />
have barely noticed its abolition, so insignificant<br />
did the event seem. Of the various members of the<br />
Wilson governments who have published memoirs or<br />
dairies covering this period, only Tony Benn thought<br />
it an event worth recording.(75) But to the<br />
subversion-watchers it showed the extent of the CPGB's<br />
influence in the Labour Party. Chapman Pincher at the<br />
Daily Express, for example, one of the outlets for the<br />
anti-subversion lobby, wrote nearly twenty years later<br />
that 'the left-wing extremists who had infiltrated the<br />
National Executive of the Labour Party induced the<br />
1973 Party conference to abolish the Proscribed list.'<br />
(emphases added)(76) But to what end? Pincher tells us<br />
it 'meant that even MPs could join the World Peace<br />
Council, the British-Soviet Friendship Society and<br />
other outfits run essentially for the benefit of<br />
Moscow.'(77) But these never amounted to much in the<br />
1950s, and meant less than nothing in 1973. It was<br />
precisely because those groups meant so little that<br />
the list was abolished as an anachronism.(78) <br />
<br />
For the subversion hunters the Proscription List<br />
disappearing was one more event in a bad year, for<br />
1973 also saw the first assault on IRD by the rest of<br />
the more detente-minded Foreign Office.(79) The next<br />
year saw the Heath government's defeat at the hands of<br />
the National Union of Mineworkers, in some part due to<br />
a CPGB sympathiser named Arthur Scargill. By mid 1974<br />
the anti-subversive chorus were all singing from the<br />
same page and the theory of Soviet control through the<br />
CPGB, through the trade unions, through the Labour<br />
Party, was being broadcast by everything from the Tory<br />
press to the activists with connections in the<br />
intelligence services and the military.(80) This is<br />
the background to the cries and alarums of 1974/5, the<br />
talk of military coups and the formation of<br />
semi-clandestine 'action groups' and militias by,<br />
inter alia, former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, and the late David Stirling. The<br />
trade unions were at the heart of the<br />
subversive-hunters' theory, with the AEU the most<br />
important of them. When David Stirling's grandiose<br />
Better Britain-GB75 plans were 'blown' prematurely in<br />
1974, he abandoned them and joined forces with<br />
TRUEMID, another group of anti-socialist former AEU<br />
officials. (TRUEMID is discussed below.) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA)<br />
Within the Labour Party itself there was activity to<br />
combat the rise of the left. On the party political<br />
axis two latterday Gaitskellites, Stephen Haseler and<br />
Douglas Eden, in 1975 formed the Social Democratic<br />
Alliance (SDA) and began the struggle with the left in<br />
local London politics. (81) Over the next three years<br />
the SDA, and Haseler in particular, received much<br />
favourable newspaper coverage for their accounts of<br />
the subversives' takeover of the Labour Party and<br />
trade unions, much of it fanciful in the extreme.(82)<br />
For example on the publication of his book, The Death<br />
of British Democracy, Haseler wrote in The Times (29<br />
April 1976) that 'we may now be on the verge of an<br />
economy which will remove itself from the Western<br />
trading system by import controls, strict control of<br />
capital movements and eventually non-convertability of<br />
the currency. At home this will involve rationing, the<br />
direction of capital and labour and the final end of<br />
the free trade union movement'; and in 1980, among the<br />
Labour MPs Haseler and the SDA proposed to put up<br />
candidates against, were those well-known<br />
revolutionaries Stan Orme, Clive Soley, Neil Kincock<br />
and Geoff Rooker! (83) Among the SDA's early<br />
supporters was Peter Stephenson, then the editor of<br />
Socialist Commentary. <br />
<br />
<br />
And the AEU<br />
July 1974 saw the formation, with Common Cause<br />
funding, of the Trade Union Education Centre for<br />
Democratic Socialism (TUECDS), which described itself<br />
as 'an independent trade union education body run by<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists for<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists'.(84) TUECDS was<br />
launched in November 1974 with a lecture by the SDA's<br />
Dr Stephen Haseler. The personnel involved in the<br />
early stages of TUECDS's life were members of the AEU,<br />
notably John Weakley, and the building workers' union<br />
UCATT. Among those who had been attending the first<br />
year's meetings were UCATT officials, AEU officials,<br />
David Moller, a journalist from the Readers' Digest,<br />
then still one of the most important psy-war outlets<br />
for the CIA, the widow of Leslie Cannon, Lord Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker and Kate Losinska, then recently elected<br />
president of the civil service union, the CPSA.(85) <br />
<br />
More former AEU officials, Ron Nodes, Sid Davies and<br />
Ron McLaughlin, were involved in the formation of<br />
TRUEMID, (the Movement for True Industrial Democracy<br />
or the True Movement for Industrial Democracy, it's<br />
been called both), launched in 1975 with finance from<br />
a variety of industrial and City enterprises.(86)<br />
TRUEMID did was IRIS had done: it tried to influence<br />
the election of union officials by putting out<br />
information about the supposed left in the union.<br />
TRUEMID's activities were chiefly focused on the AEU,<br />
the civil service union the CPSA and the electricians<br />
union, the EETPU. David Stirling, after the collapse<br />
of his GB 75 and Better Britain plans, was recruited<br />
onto the TRUEMID council.(87) <br />
<br />
Also reappearing in this period was the some time US<br />
Labour Attache to Britain, Joseph Godson who, though<br />
formally retired, had returned to the UK in 1971 and<br />
continued with his labour attache work - pushing out<br />
US views and interests among the British trade union<br />
movement, and selecting trade unionists for freebies<br />
to the US. Godson was a founder member of the Labour<br />
Committee for TransAtlantic Understanding (LCTU), the<br />
labour section of the British Atlantic Committee, a<br />
NATO support group.(88) In May 1976 LCTU began the<br />
Labour and Trade Union Press Service (LTUPS). On the<br />
LTUPS editorial committee was the ubiquitous Peter<br />
Stephenson, editor of the Gaitskellite Socialist<br />
Commentary, and one of the early members of the Social<br />
Democratic Alliance. Treasurer of the LTUPS was<br />
General Secretary of the EEPTU, Frank Chapple, and its<br />
chair was Bill Jordan of the AEU.(89) <br />
<br />
<br />
Europe<br />
The social democratic wing of the Labour Party had two<br />
key positions: British membership of NATO and<br />
retention of British nuclear weapons, and membership<br />
of the EEC. After the defeat of CND at the Labour<br />
conference of 1961 it was European Economic Community<br />
(EEC) membership which became their great cause. With<br />
this achieved with the EEC referendum vote 'yes' in<br />
1975, when it came to the ideological struggles within<br />
the Labour Party in the mid and late 1970s, in David<br />
Marquand's words, 'they lost the battle of ideas with<br />
the Left by default ....they really didn't fight the<br />
battle of ideas.' <br />
<br />
Support for EEC membership within the Labour Party had<br />
been formally organised first in 1959 by the Labour<br />
Common Market Committee (founders Roy Jenkins, Jack<br />
Diamond and Norman Hart), which became the Labour<br />
Committee for Europe in the mid 1960s. European unity<br />
had been one of the projects favoured by the USA,<br />
looking for good anti-Soviet alliances in the early<br />
post-war era, and the European Movement had been<br />
funded by the Agency.(90) As well as receiving the<br />
support of the US, in the 1960s Gaitskellites Roy<br />
Jenkins, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers were<br />
among the regular attenders of the annual Anglo-German<br />
Konigswinter conferences.(91) This time the social<br />
democrats were being supported by the British Foreign<br />
Office, which had decided by then that their future<br />
lay in the Common Market. <br />
<br />
The CDS, the Gaitskellites, never accepted Wilson as<br />
the legitimate leader of the Labour Party and plotted<br />
constantly against him. The personnel of the<br />
Gaitskellites, the Labour Committee on Europe and the<br />
CDS were virtually identical.(92) In the 1960s it was<br />
the CDS that Harold Wilson identified as the group<br />
working against him.(93) When the group formally broke<br />
up it continued as a dining club, the 1963 Club. In<br />
the early 1970s Tony Benn identified them as 'the old<br />
Campaign for Democratic Socialism-Europe group'.(94) <br />
<br />
In 1970 the election of the Heath government meant<br />
that another serious effort to get Britain in the EEC<br />
would be made and the issue would divide the Labour<br />
Party then in opposition. In early 1971 Tony Benn's<br />
diary records him talking - with Roy Jenkins - of the<br />
Common Market issue splitting the Labour Party.(95)<br />
Ten months later, on October 19, after a pro- and<br />
anti- clash in the Shadow Cabinet, Benn commented on<br />
the emergence of 'a European Social Democrat wing in<br />
the Parliamentary Party led by Bill Rodgers.'(96) This<br />
group formally announced itself on 28 October 1971<br />
when 69 pro-Market Labour MPs voted with the<br />
Conservative government in favour of entry into the<br />
EEC in principle. From then on the group operated as a<br />
party within a party, with William Rodgers acting as<br />
an unofficial whip.(97) <br />
<br />
<br />
A new social democratic party?<br />
The leadership of the Parliamentary Gaitskellite<br />
faction had fallen to Roy Jenkins, and as early as<br />
1970 some of that group has begun trying to get him to<br />
lead the formation of a new party.(98) After the<br />
Europe vote in 1971 Dick Taverne and Bill Rodgers went<br />
to Jenkins and told him they should resign and form a<br />
new party.(99) Jenkins declined. Taverne's selection<br />
for the Lincoln seat had been organised by the<br />
pro-CDS, pro-Europe, Labour Party regional organiser<br />
for the area, Jim Cattermole.(100) In December 1972 MP<br />
Taverne, at odds with his constituency party, and<br />
about to be deselected, decided to fight them and<br />
suggested again that Jenkins leave and form a new<br />
party. Jenkins declined.(101) In 1973, after winning<br />
the Lincoln by-election as a Democratic Labour<br />
candidate, against the official Labour Party<br />
candidate, Taverne formed the Campaign for Social<br />
Democracy and sought Jenkins' support. Jenkins<br />
declined.(102) That year, however, helped by Sir Fred<br />
Hayday, former chair of the TUC, and Alf Allen, future<br />
chair of the TUC, Jenkins did 'set up an institutional<br />
framework' with moderate trade union leaders - a<br />
regular dining group in the Charing Cross Hotel.(103) <br />
<br />
In December 1974 the Manifesto Group was formed within<br />
the PLP. Described by Barbara Castle as 'a group of<br />
middle-of-the-road and right-wing Labour MPs [which]<br />
had been meeting to discuss how to counter the growing<br />
influence of the left-wing Tribune group of MPs',(104)<br />
its chair was Dr Dickson Mabon, its Secretary was John<br />
Horam, now (1995) a Tory Minister, and two of its most<br />
active members were CDS enthusiasts David Marquand and<br />
Brian Walden.(105) <br />
<br />
In the third Wilson government, formed in 1974, the<br />
Jenkins group in cabinet was down to 'a beleaguered<br />
minority of four', to use Jenkins' words, Jenkins,<br />
Harold Lever, Shirley Williams and the late Reg<br />
Prentice.(106) In his memoir Jenkins describes<br />
Prentice as 'a man of flat-footed courage who had<br />
emerged in the previous two years [i.e. 1973 and 74]<br />
out of the rather stolid centre of the Labour Party<br />
into....my most unhesitating ally in the<br />
Cabinet.'(107) Throughout 1974-5 Prentice was moving<br />
right very quickly and his speeches began to reflect<br />
this. In 1975 Prime Minister Wilson took exception to<br />
one of them, and 'More out of enlightened<br />
self-interest than generosity', as he put it, Jenkins<br />
told Wilson that if Prentice was sacked from the<br />
cabinet he would also go.(108) Shortly afterwards<br />
Wilson called Jenkins' bluff and shifted Prentice to a<br />
junior ministry post outside the Cabinet proper.<br />
Jenkins resolved to resign, tried to take Shirley<br />
Williams and Harold Lever with him in resignation -<br />
only to find that while he was ready now, Harold Lever<br />
was not.(109) <br />
<br />
In Jenkins' memoir there are some wistful remarks on<br />
'1975 as a great missed opportunity for Heath and<br />
Whitelaw and a whole regiment of discarded<br />
Conservative "wets" as much for Shirley Williams and<br />
Steel and me.'(110) Jenkins was looking back on the<br />
1975 Common Market referendum campaign during which he<br />
found it more congenial working with pro-EEC Tories<br />
and Liberals than he did with the left-wing of his own<br />
party. It would not be hard to imagine that left-wing<br />
Tories like Heath and Whitelaw found Jenkins more<br />
congenial than some of the right-wing yahoos then<br />
gathering on the Tory Party's fringe;(111)and there is<br />
a large hint in Mrs Thatcher's second volume of<br />
memoirs, that some kind of realignment was attempted<br />
on the back of the referendum.(112) <br />
<br />
In December 1976 Prentice was discussing how to bring<br />
down the Callaghan government with, inter alia, Tory<br />
MPs Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan, and<br />
Gaitskellite Labour MP's Walden and the late John<br />
McIntosh.(113) Haseler, whose information on this<br />
comes from Prentice's diaries, tells us that, 'For<br />
some years past the arguments for a realignment had<br />
been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative<br />
Party who had been close to Macmillan.'(114) Prentice<br />
may have thought he was discussing bringing down the<br />
government with Parliamentary colleagues, but in this<br />
context they had other, more interesting, connections.<br />
Amery was a former SIS officer and a friend of the<br />
former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late George Kennedy<br />
Young, who was then machinating against the Labour<br />
government with his Unison Committee for Action.(115)<br />
Maurice Macmillan had been a director of one of the<br />
IRD front companies and had also been involved in the<br />
attempt in the mid 1974 to launch a government of<br />
national unity to prevent the reelection of Harold<br />
Wilson. Prentice proposed that Jenkins form a<br />
coalition with Margaret Thatcher as leader but, on<br />
Prentice's account, haunted by memories of 1931 and<br />
the fate of Ramsay MacDonald, not surprisingly, once<br />
again Jenkins declined.(116) <br />
<br />
When Harold Wilson resigned in 1976, Jenkins stood for<br />
leader of the Labour Party, lost, and went off to<br />
Brussels as President of the EEC. Jenkins bailed out<br />
at a good time, for the pro-Common Market wing of the<br />
Labour Party was losing the fight against the left in<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party - while constantly<br />
talking about quitting and forming a new party. In<br />
1977 the Campaign for a Labour Victory, 'in many ways<br />
a resurrection of the of the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism', was launched.(117) William Rodgers' PA was<br />
one of the chief organisers and it set up its office<br />
in the HQ of the EETPU.(118) Its full-time organiser<br />
was Alec McGivan who became the first full-time worker<br />
for the SDP, four years later. <br />
<br />
Around Jenkins in exile gathered some of the<br />
Gaitskellites. Mike Thomas, a Labour and then SDP MP:<br />
'there in fact were a group of people working with Roy<br />
Jenkins outside parliament, most of whom were known to<br />
many of us, friends of ours, some who were less well<br />
known, in the SDA or elsewhere'.(119) In November<br />
1979, after Jenkins' had been given the Dimbleby<br />
Lecture on BBC TV in which to more or less announce<br />
his intention of forming a social democratic party,<br />
businessman Clive Lindley and London Labour Councillor<br />
Jim Daley, both of whom had been active in the<br />
Campaign for Labour Victory,(120) set up the Radical<br />
Centre for Democratic Studies, 'a press cutting and<br />
information service on the political scene in Britain'<br />
- and a support group for Jenkins.(121) <br />
<br />
Finally a group met to discuss forming the new party.<br />
From the SDA there was Stephen Haseler; from Roy<br />
Jenkins' UK support group, Clive Lindley and Jim Daly;<br />
David Marquand, Jenkins' his PA in Brussels, and Lord<br />
Harris, who had been Jenkins' PR man in the<br />
1960s.(122) The last stop on their way out of the<br />
Labour Party for these social democrats was the<br />
formation of the Council for Social Democracy in 1981.<br />
<br />
<br />
Soon after the Social Democratic Party launch, issue<br />
52 of the now defunct radical magazine The Leveller<br />
had as its cover story: 'Exposed:the CIA and the<br />
Social Democrats'. The author was Phil Kelly, one of<br />
the journalists who had exposed Brian Crozier's<br />
Forum/CIA links, who had been the recipient of the<br />
leaked documents from inside the Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict, and had led the campaign to prevent<br />
the Labour government expelling former CIA officer,<br />
Philip Agee. For his temerity Kelly had been labelled<br />
a 'KGB man' in briefings given by MI5, one of which<br />
was foolishly committed to paper by Searchlight editor<br />
Gerry Gable.(123) Kelly's article went over some of<br />
the ground covered in this essay, but though the CIA<br />
was visible in the connection to the Congress for<br />
Cultural Freedom and Forum World Features, the piece<br />
otherwise failed to justify its billing. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
73. The charge that these groups were IRD 'satellites'<br />
is difficult to substantiate. None of their personnel<br />
has, to my knowledge, every admitted it. However, all<br />
these groups have published material which, in my<br />
view, could only have come from the state - and I<br />
presume that IRD was the proximate conduit. Take, for<br />
example, the Economic League's 'Notes and Comments'<br />
series. In No. 895, 'The New Face of Communism', there<br />
is material quoted from Yugoslav radio and TV and<br />
Radio Moscow. The Economic League, presumably, did not<br />
have its own monitoring service.<br />
74. East-West Digest mostly consisted of large chunks<br />
of blind (authorless), extremely detailed, apparently<br />
pretty accurate material on the British Left: reports<br />
on meetings and conferences; documents and journals<br />
analysed.<br />
75. Benn entry for 11 June 1973.<br />
76. Pincher 1991 p. 113.<br />
77. Ibid.<br />
78. The important group on that list was the then<br />
minute Revolutionary Socialist League which was to<br />
spend the next decade penetrating the Labour Party as<br />
the Militant Tendency.<br />
79. Crozier calls this 'the IRD massacre', but points<br />
out that IRD had grown to become the largest single<br />
Foreign Office department. See Crozier pp. 104-8.<br />
80. From the likes of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky we<br />
have learned that the KGB were unaware that they were<br />
apparently on the verge of controlling the Labour<br />
Party through the trade unions.<br />
81. Patrick Wintour in the New Statesman, 25 July<br />
1980: 'three of [Frank] Chapple's closest union<br />
colleagues, including his research assistant, have<br />
been active in the Social Democratic Alliance'. <br />
<br />
Crozier notes in his memoir that he first met the<br />
SDA's Douglas Eden at one of the early sessions of the<br />
National Association for Freedom. 'The NAF was<br />
supposed to be strictly non-party, and the presence of<br />
a long-time Labour man, as Eden was, emphasised this<br />
aspect of its work.' p. 147<br />
82. See, for example, Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1977,<br />
The Times, 29 April 1976, and Daily Mail, 9 August<br />
1979.<br />
83. See 'Moderates drive to challenge 11 Labour MPs',<br />
Daily Telegraph,1 February 1980.<br />
84. This is from the only TUECDS document I have seen,<br />
a progress report dated May 12, 1975.<br />
85. TUECDS is discussed by Paul Foot in Socialist<br />
Worker, 1 November 1975.<br />
86. Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry claims the<br />
credit for introducing Stirling to Ron Nodes. See his<br />
obituary notice on Stirling in the Independent, 17<br />
November 1990. Some of the TRUEMID funding is given in<br />
'The bosses' union' in Leveller 17, 1978, and the most<br />
detailed account of the organisation is in Hoe ch. 24.<br />
87. See 'The Company They Keep', Monica Brimacombe, in<br />
the New Statesman, 9 May 1986. Paul Foot in the piece<br />
cited in note 12 states that TRUEMID had six permanent<br />
full-time staff and three temporary full-time staff.<br />
88. see also State Research no. 16, pp. 68-74 and no.<br />
17 pp. 95 and 96, and Sunday Times, 17 February 1980.<br />
It was later funded by the US government's National<br />
Endowment for Democracy.<br />
89. Jordan was later to be among the founders of<br />
another 'moderate' caucus in the trade unions in the<br />
1980s, Mainstream.<br />
90. The Movement's youth wing, the European Youth<br />
Movement, had as its secretary Maurice Foley, one of<br />
the Gaitskellites. See 'The CIA backs the Common<br />
Market' by Weissman, Kelly and Hosenball in Agee ed.<br />
Dirty Work.<br />
pp. 201-3.<br />
91. Bradley p. 52<br />
92. With a number of important qualifications. Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, for example, was not pro EEC membership.<br />
93. Dorril and Ramsay p. 188<br />
94. Ibid.<br />
95. Entry for 13 January 1971, pp. 324-5 of Office<br />
Without Power<br />
96. Benn ibid. p. 381. Benn also added in that<br />
paragraph: 'When I heard Charlie Pannell say that for<br />
him Europe was an article of faith, he put it above<br />
the Labour Party and above the Labour Movement, I was<br />
finally convinced that this was a deep split.'.<br />
Pannell was AEU, Common Cause, Catholic.<br />
97. Bradley p. 53<br />
98. 'Dick Taverne recalls a meeting of pro-Marketeers<br />
in his flat to discuss tactics as early as June 1970.'<br />
Ibid.<br />
99. Ibid. pp. 53/4<br />
100. Shaw, Discipline, p. 108. In the 'witness<br />
seminar' on the CDS, p. 24, David Marquand referred to<br />
'the great barony of Jim Cattermole'.<br />
101. Ibid. p. 55<br />
102. Jenkins in his memoir on 1973: 'Excluding the<br />
possibility of forming an independent party, which at<br />
that stage neither I nor my supporters were remotely<br />
prepared for...' p. 360 (emphasis added).<br />
103. Jenkins p. 354. In the CDS 'witness seminar", p.<br />
27, William Rodgers stated that CDS had a 'very close<br />
working relationship with Fred Hayday of the General<br />
and Municipal Workers'.<br />
104. Castle Diaries p.156<br />
105. Bradley p. 60. With the exception of Giles Radice<br />
and George Robertson, both GMWU/GMB-sponsored, the<br />
whole of the active leadership of the Manifesto Group<br />
subsequently defected to the SDP.<br />
106. Jenkins p. 427<br />
107. Ibid. p. 419<br />
108. Jenkins tells us that he sent this message<br />
through the Prime Minister's Principal Private<br />
Secretary, Robert Armstrong, thus - deliberately or<br />
not - informing the Whitehall establishment. Ibid. p.<br />
420<br />
109. Ibid. p. 422<br />
110. Ibid. pp. 425-6<br />
111. On 14 October 1975 Tony Benn records in his<br />
diary: 'Robert Kilroy-Silk, Labour MP for Ormskirk,<br />
told me that �2 million had been left unspent by the<br />
pro-Market lobby and it was a fund of which the<br />
trustees were Heath, Thorpe and Jenkins....the rumour<br />
was that if Wilson moved too far to the Left they<br />
would use the money to set up a new party.'<br />
112. See The Path to Power, p. 331.<br />
113. Haseler, Battle for Britain, pp. 59 and 60<br />
114. Ibid.<br />
115. The best account of Unison is in Dorril and<br />
Ramsay.<br />
116. Prentice thus managed to misunderstand - and<br />
insult - both Jenkins and Mrs Thatcher.<br />
117. Bradley p. 59<br />
118. 'How Frank Chapple says on top', New Statesman,<br />
25 July 1980<br />
119. CDS Seminar p. 50<br />
120. Owen p. 457<br />
121. Bradley p. 73<br />
122. Ibid. David Marquand on Haseler; 'Haseler's<br />
invective is all working class... He's invented a<br />
history of a sort of populist radicalism, Norman<br />
Tebbitry in a way, ....I remember being involved in a<br />
television thing in the early 1970s on Europe where he<br />
opposed it on a sort of proletarian, solidarity,<br />
populist-nationalist ground.' Desai pp. 10-11 fn. 11<br />
123. This is the so-called Gable memo, first revealed<br />
in the New Statesman, 15 February 1980 and reprinted<br />
in full, for the first time, in Lobster 24. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
The Crozier operations<br />
Running through much of this activity in the 1970s was<br />
Brian Crozier who had been warning about the rise of<br />
the British Left since the late 1960s. Crozier takes<br />
us back to the CIA operation the Congress for Cultural<br />
Freedom (CCF) discussed in chapter five. The CIA<br />
control of the CCF and the magazine Encounter began to<br />
be threatened with exposure in 1963 when, reviewing an<br />
anthology from the magazine, Conor Cruise O'Brien<br />
wrote that 'Encounter's first loyalty is to America';<br />
and an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph referred to a<br />
secret and regular subvention to Encounter from 'the<br />
Foreign Office'.(124) The next year, after a US<br />
congressional inquiry into private foundations found<br />
that some had received donations from the CIA, the New<br />
York Times set journalists to work on the story. From<br />
that point on exposure of the CIA fronts, which were<br />
funded by some of these private foundations, was<br />
inevitable. <br />
<br />
<br />
Forum World Features<br />
Faced with this impending exposure, the CCF/CIA began<br />
to take action. The Congress's press agency was<br />
detached, reorganised and renamed Forum World<br />
Features, and Crozier was appointed its director in<br />
1965.(125) Crozier claims that 'In 1968 the KGB made a<br />
first attempt to wreck Forum';(126) and perhaps in<br />
anticipation of the day when Forum was 'blown', with<br />
other personnel from the IRD network Crozier set up<br />
the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) between<br />
1968 and 1970.(127) <br />
<br />
<br />
ISC<br />
The first funding came from Shell and BP but then, as<br />
Crozier puts it, 'the Agency [CIA] now came up with<br />
something bigger', and put him in contact with the<br />
American multi-millionaire, anti-communist Richard<br />
Mellon Scaife, who duly came up $100,000 p.a. for<br />
ISC.(128) <br />
<br />
ISC commissioned and published reports and began<br />
briefing the UK military and police establishments on<br />
the Crozier view of the Soviet threat to Britain.(129)<br />
Crozier became a founder member of the National<br />
Association for Freedom (NAFF), whose launch was timed<br />
to coincide with publication of the dystopian<br />
disinformation in The Collapse of Democracy by his<br />
ally and colleague at ISC, Robert Moss. The<br />
unfortunately acronymed NAFF was a gathering of the<br />
anti-subversive and pro-capital propaganda groups such<br />
as Aims of Industry, and, almost immediately became<br />
the major focus of the British Right. It absorbed the<br />
remnants of the 1974/5 civilian militias, and began<br />
series of psy-war projects against the left and the<br />
unions which prefigured much of what was to come in<br />
the Thatcher government.(130) <br />
<br />
<br />
Shield and the Pinay Circle<br />
At the same, Crozier's voice was being heard in<br />
Shield, a committee of former intelligence officers<br />
and bankers, who, in the absence of IRD, prepared<br />
briefings on the alleged communist threat for the then<br />
leader of the Tory Party, Mrs Thatcher.(131)Crozier<br />
was also a member of the transnational psy-war outfit,<br />
the Pinay Circle, working alongside senior<br />
intelligence, military and political figures from the<br />
NATO countries,(132) was working with US Senate<br />
Subcommittee on International Terrorism,(133) and<br />
launched the apparently still-born US Institute for<br />
the Study of Conflict.(134) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Wilson plots<br />
Because hard information on the covert operations of<br />
this period came first from Colin Wallace, a member of<br />
the British Army's psychological warfare unit in<br />
Northern Ireland, in whose narrative the 'bad guys'<br />
were MI5, and from Peter Wright, who had been an MI5<br />
officer, those of us who began researching this period<br />
in 1986 and after began by looking for MI5<br />
operations.(135) In fact three British intelligence<br />
agencies had an iron in the fire of the mid 1970s<br />
crisis. There was a group of MI5 officers, led by<br />
Peter Wright, who were plotting against the Wilson<br />
government and, for example, trying to use the<br />
Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland to spread<br />
disinformation about Wilson and other British<br />
politicians whom MI5 regarded as 'unsound';(136) there<br />
was also a group of ex SIS and former military<br />
officers, led by former SIS number two, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, operating as the Unison<br />
Committee for Action;(137) and there was the<br />
Crozier-IRD subversion-watcher network. <br />
<br />
The detente with the Soviet Union was the background.<br />
In the UK it provided the context for IRD to be<br />
reigned back. In the US, in the wake of Watergate and<br />
the subsequent revelations of CIA activities in the US<br />
and abroad, and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976,<br />
there was a purge in the CIA. To Crozier and others of<br />
his ilk detente was a farce - a Soviet deception<br />
operation - and these intelligence cuts a catastrophe.<br />
(In their worst imaginings they were the result of<br />
Soviet operations.) <br />
<br />
<br />
Private sector intelligence agencies?<br />
Into the breach stepped Crozier and a group which<br />
included ex SIS officer Nicholas Elliot and US General<br />
Vernon Walters. They created 'a Private Sector<br />
Operational Intelligence agency' and named it 6I - the<br />
Sixth International(138) - and found funding in the US<br />
Heritage Foundation. Crozier began publishing<br />
newsletters, Transnational Security, and British<br />
Briefing, his own version of the IRD briefings on<br />
British subversion which had been curtailed in 1974<br />
upon the election of the Labour government. British<br />
Briefing was financed by the Industrial Trust, edited<br />
by Charles Elwell, 'soon after retiring from MI5', and<br />
published by IRIS.(139) <br />
<br />
What had begun a quarter of a century before as an<br />
anti-communist caucus among the AUEW's senior<br />
officers, had ended up fronting for Britain's leading<br />
anti-socialist psychological warfare expert. I do not<br />
know when British Briefing was first published, but<br />
the issue which began to circulate on the left in the<br />
early 1990s, number 12, was published in 1989, at<br />
which time IRIS's directors included Sir John Boyd<br />
CBE, General Secretary of the AEU 1975-82, Lord<br />
(Harold) Collinson CBE, General Secretary of the<br />
National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers from<br />
1953-69, and W. (Bill) Sirs, General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation from 1975-85.(140)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The union leaders and the spooks<br />
The IRIS-Crozier-British Briefing set-up sums up much<br />
of what I have been trying to tease out. Three<br />
anti-socialist, senior trade union leaders fronted the<br />
clandestine production of an anti-socialist bulletin,<br />
written and edited by former intelligence officers,<br />
financed by British capital.(141) This anti-socialist<br />
mechanism also involved the connivance of the Charity<br />
Commission which allowed the Industrial Trust to<br />
operate in a breach of the charity laws,(142) another,<br />
non-charitable trust, the Kennington Industrial<br />
Company, and personnel from large numbers of British<br />
companies which funded it. (The money went to the<br />
Industrial Trust which passed it on to Kennington,<br />
which passed it on to IRIS; thus enabling the<br />
Industrial Trust to cling on to its charitable - and<br />
tax deductible - status.) <br />
<br />
If this was still being funded in 1989, after 15 years<br />
of Thatcherism and the fall of the Soviet Empire, how<br />
big was this anti-socialist structure in, say, 1975?<br />
Or 1965? Our knowledge of the whole operation while<br />
greater now than ever, is still pretty limited,<br />
despite the revelations about the Economic League in<br />
the past ten years. For example, Aims of Industry is<br />
thought of as simply a propaganda organisation. But it<br />
is not so; at least it was not always so. In 1990 the<br />
Aims Director, Michael Ivens, wrote: <br />
<br />
<br />
Once, when Aims of Industry was rather more flexible<br />
than it is now, we put a member of our staff into a<br />
factory, at the request of the management, to prevent<br />
a far-left take over.' (143) <br />
<br />
Another part of this anti-socialist network is British<br />
United Industrialists (BUI), one of the funnels<br />
through which British companies pour money into the<br />
Conservative Party and other groups on the right. In<br />
1985 BUI's then director, Captain Briggs, told a<br />
researcher I know who wishes to remain anonymous, who<br />
was posing as a right-winger, that BUI were then<br />
funding the Solidarity group of Labour MPs, the Union<br />
of Democratic Mineworkers and the right-wing faction<br />
in the Civil and Public Servants Association<br />
(CPSA).(144) <br />
<br />
The Labour Left has never really grasped just how<br />
central, how commonplace a function of British<br />
capitalism it has been to fund its opponents. This<br />
knowledge has remained largely confined to Labour<br />
Research and pockets within individual unions. (It is<br />
hardly surprising that the Labour Party has never<br />
shown much interest in this as it would have<br />
embarrassed some of its biggest supporters in the<br />
trade unions.) <br />
<br />
By 1980 Crozier seems to have gone some way towards<br />
replacing IRD's anti-subversive role by his own<br />
efforts; and, with the election of Mrs Thatcher, he<br />
and Robert Moss abandoned the National Association for<br />
Freedom (by then renamed the Freedom Association) and<br />
concentrated on the USA and the wider Soviet 'threat'.<br />
<br />
<br />
It is impossible to evaluate the significance of<br />
psychological warfare projects. Was the barrage of<br />
anti-union propaganda put out by the<br />
subversion-watchers in the period 1972-79 as<br />
significant as the so-called Winter of Discontent in<br />
its effect on public opinion in Britain? How effective<br />
Crozier was, I don't know. He seems to think he had<br />
quite a hand in the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.<br />
In one of the planning papers written by Crozier for<br />
his 'transnational security organisation', he wrote: <br />
<br />
'Specific Aims within this framework are to affect a<br />
change of government in <br />
<br />
<br />
(a) the United Kingdom - accomplished......'(145)<br />
<br />
<br />
Grandiose nonsense? Perhaps. Crozier has never been<br />
taken as seriously in this country by the London<br />
media-political establishment as he has has been<br />
abroad, and his memoir was hammered by most of its<br />
reviewers.(146) But this, for example, was the view of<br />
a German intelligence officer, the source of the Der<br />
Spiegel pieces, of Crozier in November 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The militant conservative London publicist, Brian<br />
Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been<br />
working with his diverse circle of friends in<br />
international politics to build an anonymous action<br />
group(147) "transnational security organisation", and<br />
to widen its field of operations. Crozier has worked<br />
with the CIA for years. One has to assume, therefore<br />
that they are fully aware of his activities....' <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
124. Coleman p. 186. In this context 'the Foreign<br />
Office' is a euphemism for MI6.<br />
125. In his 1993 memoir Crozier acknowledges the CIA<br />
connection. See pp. 63-5. But he had denied it as late<br />
as 1990, in his review of Coleman's history of the<br />
CCF. See 'A noble mess' in The Salisbury Review,<br />
December 1990.<br />
126. Crozier p. 75<br />
127. With a Council including Max Beloff,<br />
Major-General Clutterbuck, Sir Robert Thompson and<br />
Hugh Seton-Watson.<br />
128. Crozier p. 90.<br />
129. See the documents leaked - or stolen - from ISC<br />
published in Searchlight 18, 1976, and Crozier pp. 121<br />
and 2<br />
130. Crozier acknowledged the psy-war role in his<br />
memoir. See page 118. <br />
131. Shield employed as its researchers Peter Shipley,<br />
who ended up in the Conservative Party Central Office<br />
in time for the 1987 election, and Douglas Eden,<br />
co-founder of the Social Democratic Alliance. But<br />
Stephen Hastings has a slightly different version from<br />
Crozier. See Hastings p. 236.<br />
132. On Pinay see David Teacher's pieces in Lobsters<br />
17 and 18. Crozier more or less gave a nod of approval<br />
to these accounts by citing them, without criticism,<br />
in his memoir. See note 3 facing p. 194. Among the<br />
Pinay personnel were ex CIA director Colby, ex-SIS<br />
officers Julian Amery and Nicholas Elliot, and Edwin<br />
Feulner from the Heritage Foundation.<br />
133. Crozier pp. 123-4<br />
134. US ISC is missing from his memoirs. It was<br />
formally launched in 1975, chaired by George Ball,<br />
with a line-up which included Richard Pipes and Kermit<br />
Roosevelt. See Document 3 in Searchlight 18.<br />
135. Hence Lobster 11, 'Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of<br />
Thatcher'.<br />
136. This is discussed at length in Foot, Who Framed<br />
...<br />
137. It was Young and Unison, for example, who<br />
initiated General Sir Walter Walker's Civil<br />
Assistance.<br />
138. Crozier pp. 134-6. Six 'I', says Crozier, because<br />
there had already been 5 'internationals'. 'The fourth<br />
International was the Trotskyist one, and when it<br />
split, this meant that on paper, there were five<br />
Internationals.' p. 136<br />
139. On the Industrial Trust see Black Flag, 15 August<br />
1988 which reproduced the Trust's accounts for 1986/7;<br />
and on the IRIS connection to British Briefing, and<br />
Elwell's role, see the Observer, 16 December 1990,<br />
'Top companies funded smears through charity', and 23<br />
December 1990<br />
140. Although IRIS was still publishing its little<br />
newsletter, IRIS News, in 1989, compared to British<br />
Briefing it was so piffling as to be little more than<br />
a cover story. Collinson and Boyd are dead and Sirs<br />
did not respond to my questions<br />
141. In 1986/7 twenty eight British companies gave<br />
money to the Industrial Trust, including BP, Bass,<br />
Unilever, ICI, Cadbury Schweppes and Grand<br />
Metropolitan. Industrial Trust accounts filed with<br />
Charity Commissioners were reproduced in Black Flag,<br />
15 August 1988.<br />
142. See 'Breach of charity rules justified' in the<br />
Guardian,7 February 1991.<br />
143. Sunday Telegraph (Appointments) 4 February 1990<br />
144. I reported this first in footnote 93 on p. 43 of<br />
Lobster 12 in 1986. I received no reaction to what I<br />
thought was a rather explosive allegation. Kevin<br />
McNamara MP, when I told him of this, replied that the<br />
UDM hardly needed money as they had inherited the<br />
considerable wealth of the old 'Spencer' union formed<br />
in the 1920s.<br />
145. Originally published in Der Spiegel no 37, 1982,<br />
this was translated by David Teacher and reproduced in<br />
Lobster 17, p. 14.<br />
146. The best review was by Bernard Porter in<br />
Intelligence and National Security, vol. 9, No. 4.<br />
Most of Crozier's projects, says Porter, were<br />
'pointless.'<br />
147. 'Action group', is one of the key terms used in<br />
this field. G.K. Young's Unison was the Unison<br />
Committee for Action, a clear hint to the intelligence<br />
insider as to its intentions. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Was there a 'communist threat'?<br />
The term 'communist' was always flexibly applied by<br />
the anti-socialist groups. The Common Cause and IRIS<br />
reports, for example, went much wider to actually mean<br />
the left, i.e. socialists; and sometimes simply anyone<br />
who opposed those in positions of power.(148)<br />
Nonetheless in a thesis about the political uses of<br />
anti-communism we have to consider whether there was<br />
anything to the 'communist threat', or if it was<br />
simply a red herring dragged across the trail of<br />
British politics. <br />
<br />
On the British Left the question which heads this<br />
chapter would provoke laughter, derision or anger from<br />
many. For some, since 1956 the CPGB has been a<br />
declining, bureaucratic relic, hardly a 'threat' to<br />
anybody.(149) For others merely asking the question<br />
gives credibility to disinformation from the right.<br />
But the fact remains that significant sections of the<br />
British Right, in the propaganda organisations of<br />
capital, the state and the Conservative Party,<br />
believed that the CPGB was part of a global<br />
conspiracy, directed and financed by Moscow, which was<br />
working in the union movement and wider society to<br />
undermine capitalist democracy in Britain. And it is<br />
no longer self-evident that this was complete<br />
nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
Orders from Moscow?<br />
We now know that the CPGB actually was being directed,<br />
to some extent, from Moscow after the war. Bob Darke<br />
was a member of the Party's National Industrial Policy<br />
Committee from the end of the war until 1951, when he<br />
left the Party. He described that committee as 'a<br />
Cominform puppet', receiving instructions, via<br />
visiting French communists, from the Cominform.(150)<br />
In the year Darke quit the Party, 1951, the CPGB<br />
published a landmark policy statement, 'The British<br />
Road to Socialism'. This announced a major shift in<br />
policy in which the British CPGB ceased to base itself<br />
on the Soviet model and would henceforth pursue a<br />
peculiarly British, 'parliamentary road to<br />
socialism'.(151) But in 1991 former CPGB assistant<br />
general secretary, George Matthews, admitted that much<br />
- though precisely how much is still not clear to me -<br />
of the programme contained in the 'British Road to<br />
Socialism' had been written by the Soviet Politburo<br />
and approved by Stalin himself.(152) <br />
<br />
<br />
Moscow gold?<br />
There was 'Moscow gold' - bags of used notes, as well<br />
as the subsidy by virtue of the Soviet Union's bulk<br />
order of copies of the Daily Worker/Morning Star. The<br />
'Moscow gold' claim was regarded as absurd, a state<br />
smear, by most on the British Left, not least by CPGB<br />
members, subjected to endless fund-raising appeals and<br />
newspaper selling, and CPGB employees surviving on the<br />
terrible wages the Party paid its staff.(153) But now<br />
we know that the Soviet Union began sending money to<br />
the British Party after the Hungarian revolt was put<br />
down - apparently to compensate the British Party for<br />
the loss of its membership (and hence membership fees)<br />
incurred by the Party's refusal to condemn the Soviet<br />
invasion. Senior CPGB person, Reuben Falber, would<br />
meet the man from the Soviet Embassy and take delivery<br />
of the bags of used notes. These would be stored in<br />
the loft of Falber's house and then laundered through<br />
the Party's accounts as 'anonymous donations' and the<br />
like. It was as amateurish as that. <br />
<br />
The Moscow money seems to have been used chiefly to<br />
fund the Party's full-time staff. In the 1960s,<br />
despite constantly falling membership, the party<br />
employed a lot of people, 70 according to one source,<br />
including the industrial network,(154) what 1980s CPGB<br />
member Sarah Benton described as 'until the late<br />
1970s, the privileged section of the party'. (The<br />
Moscow subsidy ended in 1979.)(155) <br />
<br />
<br />
Secret Party members?<br />
There were also secret Party members, though how many<br />
there were and what they did is unclear. The existence<br />
of 'secret members', a staple on the right since the<br />
war, appeared most strikingly in Spycatcher in which<br />
Peter Wright recounts how MI5 had found the CPGB<br />
membership files stashed in a rich member's flat and<br />
photographed the whole lot - 55,000 files - in one<br />
weekend, 'with a Polaroid camera'.(156) Wright claimed<br />
that these files also 'contained the files of covert<br />
members of the CPGB..... people who had gone<br />
underground largely as a result of the new vetting<br />
procedures brought in by the Attlee Government'.(157)<br />
Wright's claims were denied by George Matthews, who<br />
had been editor of the Daily Worker and assistant<br />
general secretary of the Party.(158) However Bob Darke<br />
described members, who for 'Personal Security', were<br />
allowed not to reveal themselves as members when the<br />
Party decreed that all members should 'come out' as<br />
CPGB members in the other organisations to which they<br />
belonged.(159) It may be that Wright simply remembered<br />
it wrongly: it was not members who went underground<br />
but who stayed underground. Further, Francis Beckett<br />
reveals (though without a source) the existence of a<br />
hitherto secret section of the Party, the Commercial<br />
Branch, consisting of 'rich members, often Jews...<br />
secret members... important industrialists' (emphasis<br />
added), set up by Reuben Falber in the 1930s, which<br />
apparently survived into the mid 1950s.(160) It<br />
appears that it was partly the loss of the income from<br />
this group after the revelations of anti-semitism in<br />
the Soviet Union and the invasion of Hungary which<br />
forced the Party to go to Moscow for money.(161) <br />
<br />
But some money and instructions from Moscow, though a<br />
striking confirmation in part of the right's theories,<br />
do not in themselves tell us anything about the<br />
influence of the CPGB.(162) (Conspiracies may be small<br />
and ineffectual but nonetheless conspiracies.) And<br />
measuring the influence of an activity with<br />
clandestine aspects, which both the Party and its<br />
opponents have had good reasons to exaggerate, will be<br />
very imprecise at best. <br />
<br />
Initially, post-war, the major focus of the state's<br />
anti-communists seems to have been on the Soviet front<br />
groups - the friendship societies etc. Eric Shaw<br />
mentions that in 1953 the Labour Party's Proscription<br />
List suddenly expanded with information about these<br />
groups assumed to come from 'the Foreign Office [i.e.<br />
IRD] and Special Branch' run through the International<br />
Department of the Party.(163) This focus on the CPGB<br />
front groups seems to be attributable to two things.<br />
If Bower's recent biography of MI5 head Dick White is<br />
accurate, one is the inadequacies of MI5 in the<br />
post-war years.(164) The second is the the locus of<br />
IRD within the Foreign Office network, where, engaged<br />
in a propaganda struggle with the Soviet bloc<br />
overseas, it was thus more interested in pro-Soviet<br />
groups than in activities on the shop-floor. <br />
<br />
The network of pro-Soviet groups is still the focus of<br />
the big IRIS pamphlet in 1957, The Communist Solar<br />
System; but the 1956 pamphlet by Woodrow Wyatt MP, The<br />
Peril in Our Midst was subtitled 'the Communist threat<br />
to Britain's trade unions', and since then it has been<br />
the Party's industrial wing which has received almost<br />
all of the attention - and about which there has been<br />
quite wide agreement, across a broadish political<br />
spectrum.(165) Wyatt in 1956 claimed that the CPGB<br />
controlled the ETU and the Fire Brigades Union, nearly<br />
had control of the AEU and had considerable influence<br />
in the NUM. In 1962 the Radcliffe Committee, set up by<br />
the Macmillan government in the wake of the Vassell<br />
spy case, reported on the apparently extensive Party<br />
control of the civil service unions; and that year the<br />
Conservative MP Aidan Crawley claimed that the CPGB<br />
was strongest in the NUM, building workers and the<br />
AEU, and claimed they were making inroads into the<br />
clerical unions, citing sections of the woodworkers',<br />
the plumbers' and the painters' unions as being under<br />
CP control.(166) Less ideologically interested,the<br />
historian Keith Middlemas saw 'substantial CP<br />
influence in the ETU, Foundry Workers, AEU and the<br />
NUM, especially in Fife and South Wales';(167)and in<br />
his recent history of the Party Francis Beckett<br />
claimed that 'the Party practically had full control<br />
of the Fire Brigades Union, the Amalgamated<br />
Engineering Union, the Foundry Workers and the<br />
Electrical Trades Union'.(168) Though not in<br />
themselves proof of anything - proof would entail much<br />
more detailed analysis of the various unions than I am<br />
capable of - the lists are strikingly consistent over<br />
the period from 1956 to 1994. <br />
<br />
<br />
The struggle for the AEU<br />
One of the recurring themes in the literature, from<br />
the 1950s onwards, is the centrality of the struggle<br />
in the AEU. IRIS was formed by AEU members and was<br />
most active in that union (discussed above). This<br />
concern quickens in the late 1960s and early 1970s as<br />
the left, focused round the publications Voice of the<br />
Unions and Engineering Voice, began to make<br />
progress.(169) It is found, for example, in Brian<br />
Crozier's 1970 anthology We Will Bury You, and in the<br />
1972 IRIS pamphlet In Perspective: Concerning the role<br />
of the Communist Party and its Effectiveness. In David<br />
Stirling's GB75 documents, leaked and printed in Peace<br />
News in August 1974, Stirling's opening paragraph,<br />
'The Objective Summarised', is about the lack of a<br />
contingency plan to 'weather the crucial first 3 or 4<br />
days of a General Strike or one involving the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical<br />
Trades Union.'(170) Shortly after the leak, i.e. late<br />
August 1974, Stirling met Ron McClaughlin and Frank<br />
Nodes, both former AEU officials, who were forming<br />
TRUEMID, the Movement for True Industrial Democracy. A<br />
decade later the AEU was at the centre of former SIS<br />
no. 2, G. K. Young's Subversion and the British<br />
Riposte.(171) <br />
<br />
While CPGB influence in the British unions - and thus<br />
in the Labour Party - was a constant refrain on the<br />
right, before the hysteria of 1974/5 there were only<br />
two occasions in the post-war period when the CPGB was<br />
even semi-seriously alleged to be posing a threat to<br />
the whole economy. The first was the 1948 dock strike.<br />
Charges of communist control were made at the time,<br />
and by senior members of the Labour Government,(172)<br />
but I have seen no evidence to support this claim and,<br />
in its absence, think we can reasonably attribute the<br />
claims to cynical manipulation of the 'red card'<br />
during a period of intense domestic difficulty for the<br />
Attlee government. <br />
<br />
'Cynical manipulation of the red card' has often been<br />
the description of the second occasion, during the<br />
1966 seamen's strike, when Harold Wilson made his<br />
notorious comments in the House of Commons about the<br />
role of the CPGB in the strike, and actually named<br />
CPGB members said to be active in it. This incident<br />
deserves examination. <br />
<br />
<br />
The 1966 seamen's strike<br />
There are two issues here, only one of which, whether<br />
Wilson should have said what he did, usually gets<br />
discussed. Most people, including most of his<br />
colleagues at the time, think it was a tactical<br />
mistake, at best. Peter Shore told Tony Benn that he<br />
thought Wilson's remarks were 'completely bonkers';<br />
and Benn noted in his diary, 'I think I share this<br />
view'.(173) The Labour Left were appalled by Wilson's<br />
behaviour; some by his use of what they perceived as<br />
the 'red card', and others by his use of clandestine<br />
sources of information from MI5 and Special Branch.<br />
For some, this was when they first perceived the<br />
shifty, careerist Wilson, prepared to even play the<br />
anti-communist card, to break the seamen's strike.<br />
This view is powerfully expressed by Paul Foot in his<br />
1967 essay 'The Seamen's Struggle'.(174) <br />
<br />
In his essay Foot says that the 'basic charge' in<br />
Wilson's second statement to the Commons was 'that<br />
certain members of the Communist Party had been<br />
engaging in a desperate battle to extend the seamen's<br />
strike against the will of the NUS members.'(175) In<br />
fact what Wilson said was much more complicated - and<br />
more reasonable - than this suggests.(176) He began by<br />
describing the CP's 'efficient and disciplined<br />
industrial apparatus', and continued that 'for some<br />
years now the Communist Party has had as one of its<br />
objectives the building up of a position of strength<br />
not only in the Seamen's Union, but in other unions<br />
concerned with docks and transport. It engages in this<br />
struggle for power in the Seamen's Union because it<br />
recognises..... that democracy is shallow-rooted in<br />
the union, not only that grievances and exploitation<br />
have festered for many years.' He called it a<br />
'take-over bid'. <br />
<br />
Wilson said the objectives of the CPGB in the strike<br />
were: 'First, to influence the day-to-day policy of<br />
the executive council; secondly, to extend the area of<br />
stoppage' [this is the bit emphasised by Foot] and<br />
thirdly, 'to use the strike not only to improve the<br />
conditions of the seamen - in which I believe them to<br />
be genuine - but also to secure what is at present the<br />
main political and industrial objective of the<br />
Communist Party - the destruction of the government's<br />
prices and incomes policy.' Wilson went on to say that<br />
he knew that the NUS executive committee was dominated<br />
by Joe Kenny and Jim Slater and that, while he knew<br />
neither of them were communists, he knew of their<br />
meetings with CPGB members in the union and the CPGB's<br />
industrial organiser, Bert Ramelson.(177) <br />
<br />
But smashing Wilson's pay policy was the aim of the<br />
CPGB - and just about everybody else on the British<br />
Left and in some of the trade unions. The rest of what<br />
he said amounts to little more than an account of the<br />
routine activities of all left groups in the labour<br />
movement. They try to expand their positions and<br />
influence inside every forum. This is what they do. If<br />
Bert Ramelson et al were not trying to do these<br />
things, CPGB members would be entitled to ask for<br />
their subscriptions back. This is what they were<br />
employed to do. The young Tony Benn also thought<br />
Wilson's statement less than overwhelming. On June 28,<br />
after Wilson' s listing of the CPGB members allegedly<br />
involved in the strike, Benn wrote in his diary that<br />
while the speech made him 'sick' and reminded him of<br />
'McCarthyism', he added: 'In a sense Harold said<br />
nothing that was new, since every trade union leader<br />
knew it.' <br />
<br />
The seamen's strike was a great boost for the CPGB and<br />
for Bert Ramelson who had only taken over as the<br />
Party's chief industrial organiser from Peter Kerrigan<br />
earlier that year. Under Ramelson the Party began<br />
classical 'broad left' campaigns in many of the<br />
unions, run by Party-controlled 'advisory committees'.<br />
Willie Thompson, himself a member of the CPGB, derides<br />
the idea that these committees had any power. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The CP advisory committees...were credited by an<br />
alarmist press with being an organisational framework<br />
through which a tight stranglehold was maintained upon<br />
the country's economic existence; a network through<br />
which flowed intelligence and commands enabling the<br />
Kremlin via King Street to direct its thrusts...For<br />
better or worse the advisories were just that - advice<br />
forums - and their coordinating function even within<br />
the individual area each one covered was weak.' (p.<br />
136) <br />
<br />
<br />
The evidence on this just is not clear: Beckett offers<br />
a different account of these committees. However<br />
Thompson more or less agrees with Beckett's claims<br />
that destruction of the Wilson-Castle trade union<br />
reform proposals, in the 'In Place of Strife'<br />
document, was 'largely a communist triumph and Wilson<br />
knew it';(178) and the latter cites the 1970 dock<br />
strike, the postal strike of 1971 and the miners'<br />
strikes of 1972 as disputes in which the Party played<br />
a significant role. <br />
<br />
In the 1970s, the anti-subversion lobby, orbiting<br />
around IRD, and presumably informally briefed on the<br />
reality of the 'Moscow gold' by MI5, took the picture<br />
of real - and arguably, increasing - CPGB influence on<br />
the trade unions, and added KGB/ Soviet control.To<br />
this theory the Communist Party itself contributed by<br />
occasionally boasting of its influence on the Labour<br />
Party;(179) with the Labour Party itself unwittingly<br />
adding the final touch by abolishing in 1973 the<br />
Proscription List of organisations - mostly the 1950s<br />
Soviet fronts - that Labour Party members could not<br />
join, thus convincing the paranoids on the right that<br />
the mice were in pantry. (180) Unaware of the 'Moscow<br />
gold' evidence, the left dismissed the right's Soviet<br />
angle as manifestly nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
MI5's role<br />
Unaware of the evidence: this is the key point. For<br />
while the members of the CPGB - and the wider public -<br />
knew nothing of the packets of used fivers arriving in<br />
London, we know now that MI5 had been aware of the<br />
Moscow gold run almost as soon as it was begun. We can<br />
start with Peter Wright's memory again. <br />
<br />
<br />
'Then there was the Falber affair. After the PARTY<br />
PIECE operation, MI5 went on the hunt for CPGB files<br />
which listed the secret payments made to the Party by<br />
the Soviets. We suspected that perhaps they might be<br />
held in the flat of Reuben Falber, who had recently<br />
been made cashier of the Russian funds.'(181) <br />
<br />
MI5 knew about the payments, and knew Falber was in<br />
charge of them.(182) All they wanted were the presumed<br />
accounts, the books - the evidence. Wright tells us<br />
that MI5 planned to burgle Falber's flat but their<br />
first plan failed - and leaves it there! To MI5 the<br />
proof of the Moscow Gold must have had something of<br />
the status of the Holy Grail; and we are to believe<br />
that having located it they made only one attempt to<br />
get it? Wright really wants us to believe that for 20<br />
years, aware that the CPGB were getting actual Soviet<br />
cash money, MI5 were either unable to detect the<br />
payoffs in London, or, having made one failed attempt,<br />
just gave up? This is simply not credible. <br />
<br />
In the USA the FBI famously had so many agents inside<br />
the CPUSA as to make the whole enterprise a farce; and<br />
J. Edgar Hoover is quoted by a fairly senior ex FBI<br />
source as having said, 'If it were not for me, there<br />
would not even be a Communist Party of the United<br />
States. Because I've financed the Communist Party, in<br />
order to know what they are doing.'(183) As far as we<br />
know, nothing quite like this happened in the UK. The<br />
large transmitter found attached to the bottom of the<br />
table in the CPGB's central meetings room, displayed<br />
by ex CPGB Central Committee member George Mathews in<br />
the Independent (25 November 1989), illustrates Peter<br />
Wright's claim that 'By 1955....... the CPGB was<br />
thoroughly penetrated at almost every level by<br />
technical surveillance or informants'; and with the<br />
spreading disillusion in the 1950s, climaxed by<br />
Hungary, MI5 can have had no trouble recruiting active<br />
and former party members, like the late Harry Newton,<br />
to inform on the British comrades. <br />
<br />
I do not want to argue that MI5 were running the CPGB.<br />
<br />
<br />
But it did allow the CPGB to run.(184) <br />
<br />
Had the existence of the 'Moscow gold' been revealed<br />
in 1958 or 9, coming after the Soviet invasion of<br />
Hungary, the CPGB would have been terminally damaged.<br />
But for MI5 the 'communist threat' - and the link to<br />
the Soviet Union - was simply too useful a stick with<br />
which to beat the much more important wider labour<br />
movement and Labour Party to be surrendered. The<br />
Soviet connection with the CPGB enabled the Security<br />
Service to portray both unions and the left of the<br />
Labour Party, some of whom worked with the CPGB, as<br />
subversives; and with a subversive minority in its<br />
midst, this enabled the Labour Party as a whole to be<br />
portrayed as a threat to the well-being of the<br />
nation,(185) and thus a legitimate target for MI5.<br />
Reviewing Willie Thompson's history of the Party,<br />
social democrat John Torode (whose father had been a<br />
significant pre-war member of the Party) charged that:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'The [CPGB's] constant encouragement of strikes in<br />
support of unrealistic wage demands, the destruction<br />
of Barbara Castle's union reforms and the coordinated<br />
attempts to capture positions of power in order to<br />
influence Labour Party policy, did much to destroy the<br />
credibility of that party.'(186) <br />
<br />
In one sense Torode is merely saying that the CPGB<br />
tried to use such influence as it had in the trade<br />
unions to frustrate social democratic policies and<br />
build up its own position. Is this not what Communist<br />
Parties always did? But in another way Torode has<br />
missed the point. For the link with the CPGB<br />
discredited the Labour Party because of the CPGB's<br />
perceived connection to Moscow. If Torode's charge is<br />
true - and I think it is to some extent - it was only<br />
possible because MI5 had concealed the Moscow<br />
financial connection and preserved the CPGB as a<br />
significant force on the British Left. <br />
<br />
Since so much of the British Left came either from, or<br />
in opposition to, the CPGB, it is impossible to even<br />
speculate convincingly how the the British Left - or<br />
British Politics - would have developed if the Moscow<br />
gold had been exposed in the late fifties. But it<br />
certainly is possible that the anti-union hysteria of<br />
the late 1970s, leading to the catastrophe of<br />
Thatcherism - and the subsequent collapse of the<br />
Labour Party - could have been avoided. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
148. In 1964, for example, Common Cause issued a<br />
pamphlet naming 180 people in Britain with 'Communist<br />
connections', including Bertrand Russell, Lord Boyd<br />
Orr and the painter Ruskin Spear! See the Sunday<br />
Times, 31 May 1964. 'Big Jim' Matthews of the GMWU was<br />
one of the Common Cause directors who approved the<br />
publication<br />
149. For this view see the memoir by Des Warren, The<br />
Key to My Cell, New Park, London, 1982. One of the<br />
so-called Shrewsbury pickets, imprisoned in 1972,<br />
Warren had been a member of the CPGB, became<br />
disillusioned and joined the Workers' Revolutionary<br />
Party.<br />
150. Darke pp. 59 and 60<br />
151. A CPGB activist at the time, Harry McShane<br />
describes in his memoir how 'overnight we all became<br />
democratic and amazingly interested in Acts of<br />
Parliament.....the idea was that, whereas the old<br />
Industrial Department was concerned with industrial<br />
action, the Labour Movement Department would influence<br />
the Labour Party and the trade unions and change the<br />
character of those bodies....'. McShane p. 246.<br />
152. See Guardian, September 14 1991 and the<br />
discussion in Labour History Review, Vol. 57, no. 3,<br />
pp. 33-5.<br />
153. My parents were both in the CPGB in the 1945-56<br />
period and talked of the burden of trying to sell<br />
Party literature. On the Party's low wages see, for<br />
example, the letter from former Party employee Bill<br />
Brooks in Guardian, 21 November 1991.<br />
154. Independent, 15 November 1991<br />
155. The people I knew of in the CPGB were, on the<br />
whole, well intentioned left democrats who, almost to<br />
a man and woman, became Euro-communists in the 70s and<br />
80s. The impact on the Party of the revelation of<br />
Soviet funding is discussed in detail in Mosbacher.<br />
156. Think of the logistics of this: assuming only one<br />
page per file, for 48 hours, using 1955 technology,<br />
and without disturbing the other tenants in the block<br />
of flats? It seems unlikely to me.<br />
157. Wright, Spycatcher p. 55<br />
158. Beckett p. 138 repeats the denials of Matthews,<br />
attributing it to 'CP officials'.<br />
159. Darke p. 86. On this 'coming out' of concealed CP<br />
members, see the conference report in Labour History<br />
Review, vol. 57, No. 3 Winter 1992, p. 29.<br />
160. Beckett pp. 147-8<br />
161. Evidence of secret CP members also comes from<br />
another Communist Party. In her 1990 autobiography the<br />
Australian feminist, poet and Communist Party<br />
activist, Dorothy Hughes wrote of the period just<br />
after World War 2, when the ACP was under pressure<br />
from the state: 'Peter Thomas, Joan's former husband,<br />
writes leaders for the West Australian and is an<br />
undercover member of the State Committee of the<br />
Party.' (emphasis added) Dorothy Hughes, Wild Card,<br />
Virago, London, p. 122.<br />
162. Other left-wing parties in Britain have received<br />
foreign funding without amounting to anything. The<br />
Workers' Revolutionary Party for example.<br />
163. Shaw, Discipline, p. 59<br />
164. See Bower, The Perfect English Spy, chapter 4<br />
165. The Peril In Our Midst, Phoenix House, London,<br />
1956.<br />
166. The Hidden Face of British Communism, Aidan<br />
Crawley, Sunday Times, October 28 1962, reprinted as a<br />
pamphlet.<br />
167. Middlemas, footnote on p. 414<br />
168. Beckett p. 109. Like the rest of Beckett's book,<br />
this is unsourced but presumably the estimate is from<br />
CPGB members or former members.<br />
169. See Roberts pp. 210-216. IRIS discussed 'Voice'<br />
newspapers in their pamphlet The British 'Left',<br />
August 1970, pp. 18 and 19. The scare quotes round<br />
'Left' are IRIS's.<br />
170. Peace News, special issue, 23 August, 1974.<br />
171. Ossian, Glasgow, no date but circa 1984.<br />
172. This is still believed on the right. See for<br />
example in the obituary of the London CPGB dockers'<br />
leader, Jack Dash, in the Daily Telegraph June 9,<br />
1989. The various dock strikes and the alleged<br />
'communist threat' are discussed in Jim Phillips.<br />
173. Pimlott p. 407<br />
174. In Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.). In that, and in<br />
his book The Politics of Harold Wilson, Foot traces<br />
the origins of the strike back to the smaller 1960<br />
strike and the formation of the National Seamen's<br />
Reform Movement. I discussed Foot's highly selective<br />
account of the origins of the strike in Lobster 25. <br />
<br />
Historian of the CPGB Willie Thompson writes that 'the<br />
Prime Minister indicted the CP (quite inaccurately)<br />
for fomenting and organising the strike....accusing<br />
King Street of having organised it with the deliberate<br />
purpose of inflicting damage on the national economy.'<br />
(emphasis added) p. 137. Actually Wilson did not<br />
accuse the CPGB of deliberately trying to damage the<br />
national economy, and Thompson says nothing more about<br />
the alleged CPGB influence on the strike.<br />
175. Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.) p. 175<br />
176. His statement is reproduced in his The Labour<br />
Government 1964-70 Penguin 1974, pp. 308-11.<br />
177. On this the evidence is incomplete and<br />
contradictory. On the one hand Dr Raymond Challinor<br />
told me that he discussed this with Jim Slater just<br />
before the latter's death, and Slater told him that he<br />
had never met Bert Ramelson, that he had told Wilson<br />
this, and that Wilson had acknowledged that he had<br />
been misinformed. But in his history of the CPGB<br />
Beckett tells us that Slater was part of a 'left<br />
caucus.... people who had a high regard for [CPGB<br />
Industrial Organiser] Ramelson'. Beckett p. 182<br />
178. Beckett p. 175, Willie Thompson pp. 138/9.<br />
179. This is attributed to Ramelson in Seamus Milne's<br />
obituary of him in the Guardian, 16 April 1994.<br />
180. Blake Baker, one of the media experts on the<br />
CPGB, who wrote for the Daily Telegraph for many<br />
years, on p. 96 of his The Far Left wrote of the<br />
subsidies from Moscow: 'No one has ever been able to<br />
produce evidence, let alone prove it. ... All that<br />
would be necessary is a car or a taxicab to collect a<br />
suitcase full of money.' Is Baker hinting here that he<br />
knew about the cash from Moscow and how it was<br />
delivered?<br />
181. Spycatcher p. 175 Falber's account is in Changes,<br />
16-19 November 1991. In it he writes: First, did the<br />
authorities know about it [the Moscow money]? I think<br />
they did.'<br />
182. This suggests either that the CPGB had a<br />
high-level MI5 mole in its ranks who has never been<br />
identified, or that SIS had a hitherto unknown agent<br />
inside the Soviet intelligence apparatus.<br />
183. Summers, p. 191<br />
184. Something similar happened in the United States<br />
where the people who handled the secret Soviet Union<br />
donations to the CPUSA, Morris and Jack Childs, were<br />
actually FBI agents. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics<br />
II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico and Cuba (Green Archive<br />
Publications, Skokie, Illinois, USA 1995), p. 93,<br />
citing David J. Garrow's The FBI and Martin Luther<br />
King (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981).<br />
185. This was a staple of the subversive-hunters in<br />
the mid 1970s. But compare and contrast Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith's Not To Be Trusted: Left Wing Extremism<br />
in the Labour and Liberal Parties of February 1974,<br />
with his 1979 Hidden Face of the Labour Party, 1979.<br />
By 1979 he has added Trotskyist groups in the Labour<br />
Party to the CPGB as 'the threat'.<br />
186. The Independent, 1 October 1992. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=The_Clandestine_Caucus&diff=68105The Clandestine Caucus2008-10-28T17:11:08Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The Clandestine Caucus was written in the late 1990s by Lobster editor Robin Ramsay and was an early attempt to understand the significance of a nexus of intelligence connected groups which covertly influenced the political landscape of the post-war UK including the [[Economic League]]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Part 1: Clearing the ground: the unions, socialism and the state==<br />
<br />
A surprising number of Labour Party members believe that it was once a socialist party, began as a<br />
socialist party, and was then seduced from the golden pathway. This engenders the language of betrayal and sell-out which is so familiar and depressing a part of life in the Labour Party and on the British Left in general.(1) But the view of the Labour Party as originally socialist is just wrong. The history of Britain's union and labour movement is one of continuous conflict between socialist and anti-socialist wings; and within that conflict the bit of the story that is usually not told is that describing the relationship between the anti-socialist section of the labour movement and British and US capital and their states. <br />
<br />
The conflict between the anti- and pro-socialist wings of the labour movement sharpened markedly after the 1918 Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although wehave surprisingly little information on the turbulent years between 1918 and 1926, and, in particular, on the British Right's preparation to meet the Bolshevik 'threat',(2) we know that much of the early effort was put into groups aimed at the exploitation of so-called 'patriotic labour', such as the British Workers League.(3) <br />
<br />
World War 1 produced the modern British state - the Cabinet Office etc. - and mobilisation: things wererun from the centre and new relationships were formed.<br />
<br />
:'By the end of 1919, a new form of political activity was growing up, as yet only half understood, but radically different from the pre-war system ..... but there now existed formal, powerful, employers' institutions, a fully fledged Ministry of Labour, and a TUC [[Trades Union Congress]] increasingly accustomed to dealing in the political arena, wedded to a major political party which, almost alone in Europe, encompassed the majority of the non-Conservative working class. At the same time, the government's apparatus for manipulating public opinion had grown inordinately, enabling it - on its own estimate - to confront the spectre of Bolshevism and survive. Lloyd George himself, searching always for a middle way in politics, had shifted away from Liberal radicalism towards a corporatism best described as the creation in Parliamentary politics of a staatspartei, composed of Liberals and mainstream Conservatives (leaving a fringe right wing and a much larger, but powerless Labour Left); complemented in industrial politics by a triangular collaboration in which employers' organisations and TUC should make them-selves representative of their members and in return receive recognition as estates by government.'(4) <br />
<br />
The [[British Commonwealth Union]], the FBI ([[Federation of British Industries]], precursor of today's CBI) and the other predominantly Midlands manufacturing group, the [[National Union of Manufacturers]], were set up during the first World War and they mark the origins of the British corporate movement.(5) One of the leading figures of the group, Sir [[Dudley Docker]], envisaged <br />
<br />
:'a completely integrated society and economy in which industry would have its organisation of workers and management, the two sets of organisations united by peak federations and all finally capped by a great national forum of workers and managers and employers, embraced by the protection of an Imperial Tariff.'(6) <br />
<br />
Another of the corporatist groups financed by Midlands industrialists, the [[British Commonwealth Union]] (BCU), led by the Birmingham MP, Sir [[Patrick Hannon]], began funding MPs to form an Industrial Group in Parliament. The first 11 candidates were subsidised by the BCU in the 1918 election: by 1924 the group in parliament consisted of 105 (mostly Tory) members. Hannon's Industrial Group chiefly wanted government protection of British industry against foreign competition, but, to quote Hannon, they also 'wanted the largest measure of freedom in the relationship between capital and labour and the least state intervention possible.'(7) <br />
<br />
These early corporatist dreams failed for a number of reasons. Employer organisations were none too happy at the idea of the trade unions as some kind of partners.(8) And vice versa. Too much was being expected; it was too big a change, happening too quickly. In any case, the corporatists among the members of the [[Federation of British Industries]] (FBI) were a minority strand in the thinking of the Tory Party and British industrial capital; and even among the corporatists there were divisions.(9) <br />
<br />
Frank Longstreth called this network of BCU, Industrial Group, FBI and other employer propaganda groups of the period, such as the [[Economic League]], the Preference Imperialists, and noted their links to the earlier Midlands manufacturing-based Tariff Reform League.(10)As Longstreth suggested, it is possible to view the British economy since 1900 as a protracted struggle between British manufacturing (domestic capital) and the City of London (international finance capital), with the City in control for most of the century.(11) [[Oswald Mosley]]'s movement in the 1930s was<br />
<br />
:'in effect, the perverted continuation of the social imperialism of an earlier generation of industrialists, supporting imperial autarchy, social reform, conversion from a bankers' to a producers' economy, protectionism, public control of credit, and the suppression of the class struggle through the state'.(12) <br />
<br />
Although the great schemes of corporatism failed, the cooperation between the state and the trade unions which began during the First World War, continued after the General Strike and was deepened by the first two Labour governments.(13) Peter Weiler quotes Ernest Bevin's view in the 1930s that that the TUC had 'virtually become an integral part of the State, its views and voice upon every subject, international and domestic, heard and heeded.'(14) This statement of Bevin's is an exaggeration: no doubt the TUC's views were heard; but heeded? <br />
<br />
The powers-that-be set about educating and socialising these new leaders. In 1938, for example, one of the most important of the trade union leaders, Ernest Bevin, with his wife, was taken off on a tour of the empire, at the behest of the [[Royal Institute of International Affairs]].(15) Trade union leaders they might be, seeking justice and a better deal for the British worker, but they remained patriots and imperialists for the most part, and not socialists. The gentlemen (mostly men) of the TUC did not dream - publicly or secretly - of taking over British capitalism, or of destroying the British empire. The institutional links with the British state begun before World War 2 were solidified enormously by the war. The trade unions were in the national coalition<br />
government, and some of their leaders were Ministers of the Crown - very important people. <br />
<br />
<br />
After the war In the immediate post-war period the TUC was dominated by what Lewis Minkin called a 'praetorian guard' against the left; Arthur Deakin of the Transport Workers, Will Lawther of the Mineworkers and Tom Williamson of the General and Municipal. Minkin describes in detail how this trio ran the what he calls 'an unprecedented period of "platform" dominance at Party conference';(16) but noted that this alliance was defensive in nature and saw a communist conspiracy behind all criticism. <br />
<br />
The political beliefs of the leaders of trade unions in this period was mixed. Some were supporters of [[Moral Rearmament]] (MRA). At the 1947 MRA World Assembly at Caux-sur-Martreux in France, delegates from Britain included E.G. Gooch MP, President of the Agricultural Workers. An MRA press release on October 15, 1947 noted that signatories to a message of support for the Caux assembly included trade union leaders Andrew Naesmith, (General Secretary of the Amalgamated Weavers' Association), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council representative; former General Secretary of the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), George Chester (General Secretary of the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), W. B. Beard and J. W. Stephenson (Chair of Building Trade Operatives).Some trade union leaders supported campaigns by avowedly anti-socialist groups such as [[Aims of Industry]] and the [[Economic League]]. In 1952 the New Statesman reported that recent Aims of Industry literature had included essays by - or under the name of, perhaps - Florence Hancock of the TUC General Council and Bob Edwards, the General Secretary of the Chemical Workers' Union, who was later to be found on the Advisory Council of the anti-communist organisation, [[Common Cause]].(17) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Trades Union Congress and the state Bevin's 'integration' into the British state meant a role for the TUC in the overseas state, the empire, as well as in Britain itself; and before and during the war the TUC began working with the Foreign and Colonial offices - a relationship about which few trade unionists knew - or know - anything at all.(18) As one of the Colonial Office officials quoted by Weiler said, with the clarity of simpler times, the TUC could be relied upon to guide young trade unions in the empire into becoming <br />
<br />
<br />
:'trades unions which the employers in the colony would feel they could respect and trust and which could be relied upon loyally to keep an agreement.'(19) <br />
<br />
In 1948, a member of the US State Department, Third Secretary at the London Embassy, Herbert E. Weiner, reported from London on 'Attitude of Trades Union Congress Towards World Federation of Trade Unions and American International Trade Union Leaders', and wrote: <br />
<br />
<br />
:'When asked how the Trades Union Congress hoped to prevent the Communists from using the technique of bona fide forms of trade union action in order to infiltrate unions in Germany and in "undeveloped"(colonial) areas, my informant said ........:in areas where trade unionism is undeveloped e.g. colonial areas, the Trades Union Congress through the British Labour Attaches keeps in close touch with Communist union activities'.(20) <br />
<br />
<br />
In the 1970s the TUC seconded two of its international staff to the Foreign Office. This caused a minor furore when it was brought to the attention of the TUC members.(21) Alan Hargreaves, TUC International Secretary in the 1970s, came to the TUC from the Foreign Office and refused to discuss his Foreign Office work.(22) <br />
<br />
Attacked by the socialists - and communists - on the left at home, and working against the left abroad with the Colonial and Foreign Offices, little wonder that the TUC slipped so comfortably into the Cold War role allotted to it. <br />
<br />
<br />
== '''Notes''' ==<br />
<br />
''Please note: details of the books and articles cited in these footnotes are in the bibliography at the end of the essay, indexed by author's surname.'' <br />
<br />
<br />
1.There is wide-spread confusion about whether or not to capitalise the 'L' in left or the 'R' in right. I will try to stick to this rule: capital letters only when proper nouns; thus British Left and the left.<br />
<br />
2.Or am I being naive to be surprised that the one period in British twentieth history when there may have been something like a pre-revolutionary climate seems under researched? Stephen White, in 1975, offered a glimpse of a dense hinterland of largely short-lived parties and groups forming on the right in Britain in this period. Stephen White, 'Ideological Hegemony and Political Control: the sociology of anti-Bolshevism 1918-1920' in Scottish Labour History Society Journal, No. 98, June 1975. See also Webber 1987, and John Hope's 'Fascism, the Security Service and the Curious<br />
Career of Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes' in Lobster 22. <br />
<br />
3.See, for example. 'In The Excess of Their Patriotism: the National Party and Threats of Subversion' by Chris Wrigley in Wrigley (ed.). Of the groups which appeared in this period only the Economic League survived into Mrs Thatcher's era. <br />
<br />
4.Middlemas p. 151.<br />
<br />
5.This mirrored what was happening elsewhere in Europe, notably Germany and Italy. See, for example, Scott Newton's 'The economic background to appeasement and the search for Anglo-German detente before and during World War 2', in Lobster 20.<br />
<br />
6.Blank p. 14.<br />
<br />
7.Farr, thesis, p. 179. See also Wrigley, 'In The Excess' pp. 108 and 9, and 'Sir Allan Smith, the<br />
Industrial Group and the Politics of Unemployment 1919-24' by Terence Rodgers, in Davenport-Hines (ed.).<br />
<br />
8.Ibid. pp. 222-5.<br />
<br />
9.Patrick Hannon's abortive attempt to create an Industrial Group of MPs and union leaders using the British Commonwealth Union is in Barbara Lee Farr's thesis. Her information came from the Hannon papers in the House of Lords. I was alerted to this remarkable piece of work by John Hope. Rodgers, in note 7, does not cite Farr's work and gives slightly different figures for the size of the Industrial Group of MP's, while quoting the same source, namely the Hannon papers. See his footnotes 13 and 16. Hannon's obituary appeared in The Times, 11 January 1963.<br />
<br />
10.Frank Longstreth, 'The City, Industry and the State' in Crouch (ed.).<br />
<br />
11.See, for example, Newton and Porter.<br />
<br />
12.Longstreth, ibid. p. 171. <br />
<br />
13.This is a major theme of the Alan Bulloch biography of Ernest Bevin, for example.<br />
<br />
14.Weiler p. 19.<br />
<br />
15.I discussed this in Lobster 28, p. 11.<br />
<br />
16.Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 83.<br />
<br />
17.New Statesman, 12 January 1952. See also H.H. Wilson, 'Techniques of Pressure - Anti-Nationalisation Propaganda' in Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1951. Edwards' obituary in The Independent, 25 June 1990 noted that he had been a member of the ILP and was an enemy of the Communist Party. His was thus an improbable name on the list of labour movement figures who had allegedly helped the KGB supplied by former KGB officer [[Oleg Gordievsky]]. See Gordievsky pp. 286<br />
and 7.<br />
<br />
18.'At least since the foundation of the International Affairs Department, TUC staff have kept<br />
close contact with the Foreign Office, a practice which persists to the present day.' Harrod p. 105. The study by Marjorie Nicholson of this subject does not mention the International Affairs Department, though as Anthony Carew pointed out, this may tell us nothing as she worked in the Colonial/Commonwealth Department. For a more critical view see Peter Weiler, chapter 1.<br />
<br />
19.Ibid. p. 29.<br />
<br />
20.My thanks to John Booth for this document. On the origins of this see Majorie Nicholson, chapter 6, especially pp. 209-11, and Weiler chapter 1.<br />
<br />
21.See Thompson and Larson pp. 27-8, and New Statesman, 16 November, 1979, 'FO reinforces TUC<br />
links', for two examples. I do not know if this practice pre-dates the 1970s.<br />
<br />
22.See the New Statesman, 20 April 1979 for the TUC's response, and 'TUC's foreign policy' by Patrick Wintour, New Statesman, 2 March 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
U.S. influence after the war<br />
I do not want to re-run the long debate about the<br />
origins of the Cold War or - in particular - the<br />
causes of the break-up of the World Federation of<br />
Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949, except to say that it is<br />
pretty clear now, with this much hindsight, that by<br />
then the British trade union leaders were determined<br />
to break the WFTU - whatever the Soviet bloc had done<br />
- and this would have been pushed through, supported<br />
by the Americans.(23) As Dennis MacShane MP<br />
demonstrates in his book,(24) the European social<br />
democratic trade union movement was not going to<br />
coexist with the Soviet bloc, either. If the USA<br />
leaned on the door, as Peter Weiler and what might<br />
loosely be called 'the left' believe, it was half open<br />
already - and was never going to shut again. Into this<br />
domestic anti-communist climate came the USA's loans -<br />
and the people and ideas, the strings attached to the<br />
money. <br />
<br />
From the first request from Churchill for clandestine<br />
assistance before America had officially entered the<br />
war, the US 'aid' had come with strings attached.<br />
Despite his famous remark that he had not taken office<br />
to oversee the destruction of His Majesty's empire,<br />
Churchill had actually done precisely that to pay for<br />
the war: and the process continued after it. It was<br />
left to some of the Tory Right and some of the Labour<br />
Left - the same groups that are still sceptical of the<br />
European Union - to oppose the acceptance of the<br />
conditions attached to the post-war US loans. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Council on Foreign Relations<br />
Planning for the US takeover of the countries of<br />
non-communist Europe was done, during the war, in the<br />
Council on Foreign Relations, the informal,<br />
semi-secret, think tank-cum-social club of the East<br />
Coast elite - the bankers, the lawyers and managers of<br />
US international capital.(25) But when the war ended<br />
the details had not been worked out, and there was<br />
significant domestic opposition to be taken into<br />
consideration. The result was that in the chaos of the<br />
post-war years the American 'interventionists', as<br />
Pisani calls them, had to improvise.(26) The<br />
'coordination of public and private efforts was<br />
achieved by using the Council on Foreign Relations<br />
(CFR) as a clearing house for projects'.(27) It was<br />
CFR personnel, for example, who raised money to<br />
intervene in the Italian elections of 1947.(28) And in<br />
the immediate post-war years the political<br />
interventionist picture is complicated: there was<br />
nothing like the clear-cut overt/covert dichotomy<br />
which we think characterised US foreign policy when<br />
things settled down into the State Department/ CIA mix<br />
perceived after the sixties.(29) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Economic Cooperation Agency<br />
At the most overt level, there was the Economic<br />
Cooperation Agency (ECA) which doled out the dollars<br />
in support of what is known as multilateral trade:<br />
that is, the ECA sought to break down barriers against<br />
American goods. A former acting head of the ECA said<br />
that: <br />
<br />
<br />
'In everything we did we sought to change or to<br />
strengthen opinions - opinions about how to build free<br />
world strength, about America's role, cooperative<br />
effort by Europeans, investment, productivity, fiscal<br />
stability, trade measurement, industrial competition,<br />
free labour unions etc.'(30) <br />
<br />
But ECA also had what we would call a covert arm and<br />
ran psychological warfare operations.(31) In France, <br />
<br />
<br />
'The ECA mission chief wore two hats. He was the<br />
conduit for economic assistance and defense<br />
mobilisation, as well as for psychological and<br />
economic warfare components provided by the Office of<br />
Policy Coordination (OPC).'(32) <br />
<br />
As part of that psychological warfare programme, for<br />
example, the ECA persuaded the British TUC to produce<br />
- a least put its name to - a report on productivity<br />
subsequently used all over Europe. 'The ECA mission in<br />
London distributed a large number of copies abroad,<br />
urged its translation into foreign languages and<br />
prepared numerous press releases and feature articles<br />
for planting in the British and foreign press.' The US<br />
London Embassy's Labour Information Officer William<br />
Gausmann reported that 'from a trade union point of<br />
view, this is the most valuable document that has been<br />
produced under ECA auspices to date.'(33) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC)<br />
The OPC, the first of the euphemistic cover names of<br />
US covert action agencies in the post-war era, was<br />
formed in 1948, staffed and run by the newly created<br />
CIA but nominally under the control of the State<br />
Department. In effect the CIA's covert arm, by 1952<br />
the OPC had forty-seven stations, 2,812 staff and a<br />
budget of $84 million.(34) Much of this growth had<br />
been funded by money from the Marshall Plan.(35) What<br />
we now think of as the CIA, that is the covert<br />
operation, intervention arm of US multi-national<br />
capital - the post-war bogey man supreme for the left<br />
- began as the enforcement arm of the Marshall Plan,<br />
engaged in operations against the left and the trade<br />
unions of Europe, communist or non-communist. The OPC<br />
was the US administration's recognition that the ECA<br />
alone couldn't 'get the job done'.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
Labour Attaches<br />
Another weapon in the post-war US armoury was the<br />
Labour Attache programme which was established towards<br />
the end of the war. In the words of one its creators,<br />
Philip Kaiser, 'the labor attache is expected to<br />
develop contacts with key leaders in the trade union<br />
movement, and to influence their thinking and<br />
decisions in directions compatible with American<br />
goals....' (Emphasis added)(37) The first Labour<br />
Attache in London was Sam Berger, who, in the words of<br />
Denis Healey, <br />
<br />
<br />
'By developing good personal relations with many key<br />
figures in the British Labour movement at the end of<br />
the war, including Sam Watson and Hugh Gaitskell,<br />
exerted an enduring influence on British foreign<br />
policy.'(38) <br />
<br />
Philip Kaiser commented that Berger <br />
<br />
<br />
'had extraordinary access to many members of the<br />
[Attlee] cabinet, including the prime minister. It was<br />
universally recognised that he was the key member of<br />
our embassy.'(39)(emphasis added) <br />
<br />
There were also 'Labour Information Officers' attached<br />
to the Marshall Plan staff in the US Embassy in<br />
London. One such, William Gausman, <br />
<br />
<br />
'in May 1950 began discussions with a section of the<br />
leadership of the Clerical and Allied Workers Union on<br />
how to eliminate communists from the union..... <br />
<br />
'cultivated the leadership of the Birmingham Labour<br />
Party, whose journal, The Town Crier, closely<br />
supported Atlanticism and American foreign policy<br />
objectives in general..... <br />
<br />
'convened a group in South Wales....to launch a<br />
Labour-oriented newspaper, The Democrat.... <br />
<br />
'worked unofficially on Socialist Commentary"'<br />
.....and became a founder member of its offshoot, the<br />
Socialist Union, 'which served as a think tank for the<br />
emerging Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party..... <br />
<br />
'liaised, advised, wrote, lectured, published - and<br />
helped IRD [the Information Research Department] with<br />
the distribution of one of their early publications,<br />
The Curtain Falls.'(40) <br />
<br />
The US post-war penetration of the British Labour<br />
Party and wider trade union movement climaxes with Joe<br />
Godson, who was Labour Attache in London from 1953-59.<br />
Godson became very close to the Labour Party leader<br />
Hugh Gaitskell - to the point where Gaitskell and<br />
Godson were writing Labour Party policies and planning<br />
campaigns against their enemy, Aneuran Bevan. For<br />
example, after a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour<br />
Party to discuss the expulsion of Bevan, Gaitskell<br />
recorded how he 'drove to the Russell Hotel, where I<br />
saw Sam Watson with Joe Godson, the Labour Attache at<br />
the American Embassy.'(41) <br />
<br />
The leader of the Labour Party is discussing Executive<br />
Committee tactics with the US Labour Attache! This is<br />
one of the dividing lines of this essay. You either<br />
think is this unexceptional, uninteresting - even a<br />
good thing - or you do not. I do not. I think it is<br />
rather shocking; and I think that would have been the<br />
reaction of most of the Executive Committee at the<br />
time had they been made aware of it. In a footnote on<br />
p. 384 of the Gaitskell Diaries, editor Philip<br />
Williams writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
'Godson, Sam Watson's close friend....thanks to his<br />
trade union post was, like many labour attaches, seen<br />
as representing his country's workers rather than its<br />
government. But Gaitskell came in time to feel that he<br />
was involving himself too deeply in Labour Party<br />
affairs.'(42) <br />
<br />
It may even be more complex than this for there is<br />
evidence that the Labour Attache posts have been used<br />
as cover by the CIA. Jonathan Kwitney of the Wall<br />
Street Journal tracked down one Paul Sakwa, who told<br />
him that he had been the case officer for Irving<br />
Brown, the most important CIA agent in the labour<br />
movement in Europe, handling Brown's budget of between<br />
$150,000 and $300,000 a year, between 1952 and 1954.<br />
From being Brown's case officer in Washington, Sakwa<br />
went on to a post under cover as the Assistant Labour<br />
Attache at the US embassy in Brussels.(43) <br />
<br />
It was about the CIA - but not just them. The CIA was<br />
only one of many agencies working in Britain in the<br />
post-war years. Labour Attaches reported, formally<br />
anyway, to the State Department. In the end, would it<br />
make any difference to know that Joe Godson had really<br />
been a genuine employee of the State Department, and<br />
not CIA under cover as we might have once suspected? <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
23. This thesis has been most convincingly articulated<br />
by Peter Weiler.<br />
24. International Labour and the Origins of the Cold<br />
War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992<br />
25. See Shoup and Minter.<br />
26. I guess 'interventionist' is less offensive to the<br />
American academic ear than imperialist. 'The<br />
determination to intervene in Europe between 1945 and<br />
1948 was fragmented, uncoordinated.' Pisani pp. 40 and<br />
41.<br />
27. Ibid. p 4.<br />
28. 'James Forrestal raised private money for the<br />
Italian elections of 1947. His initiative 'signalled<br />
an end to the notion that redemocratizing European<br />
countries could be accomplished simply by regenerating<br />
their economies'. Ibid. p. 67.<br />
29. I put it as 'think' because the reality was never<br />
that neat and tidy<br />
30. Cited in Carew p. 84<br />
31. Pisani p. 91<br />
32. Ibid. p. 96. ECA 'does engage in some gray and<br />
black propaganda' but 'the programmes represent a very<br />
small percentage of the total effort and are<br />
coordinated with the CIA' Ibid . p. 12<br />
33. Carew p. 153<br />
34. Ranelagh p. 135<br />
35. 'From its creation in 1948 until 1952 when the<br />
Marshall Plan was terminated, the OPC operated as the<br />
plan's complement.' Pisani p. 70.<br />
36. Ibid. p. 67<br />
37. Kaiser p. 113 'The labor attache...had...an<br />
unusual opportunity to enhance American influence<br />
among individuals and institutions that historically<br />
have no contact with U.S. diplomatic missions'. Ibid.<br />
p. 119<br />
38. Denis Healey p. 113. Berger has two innocuous<br />
entries in the Gaitskell Diaries, and the footnote<br />
from the editor, Philip Williams, on p. 120 that he<br />
was 'first secretary at the U.S. Embassy'.<br />
39. Kaiser p.120<br />
40. Carew pp. 128 and 9<br />
41. Godson obituary in The Times, 6 September 1986.<br />
See Gaitskell Diary ed. Philip Williams, pp. 339-41.<br />
Carew p. 129 notes that there was some conflict<br />
between Gausmann and Joseph Godson, apparently<br />
reflecting divisions within the US labour movement. He<br />
discusses these differences on pp. 84-5.<br />
42. Godson's son, Roy, who appears on the same trade<br />
union/spook circuit in the 1970s, married Sam Watson's<br />
daughter. Watson was one of the most important trade<br />
union leaders in the post-war period, chairman of the<br />
National Executive Committee's International Committee<br />
and a 'liaison officer' between the Parliamentary<br />
Labour Party and the major unions.<br />
43. Kwitney pp. 334-5 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Post-war: private sector propaganda begins to regroup<br />
As the war ended domestic politics returned to normal.<br />
The propaganda organisations of domestic capital<br />
restarted, though without the frenzy which had marked<br />
the post 1918 period. Their big issue was the threat<br />
of nationalisation of companies. The so-called Mr Cube<br />
Campaign of 1949/50, against the possibility of the<br />
nationalisation of the sugar industry, spent an<br />
estimated �250,000 in that year.(44) The campaign had<br />
been jointly organised by the sugar company, Tate and<br />
Lyle, and Aims of Industry, an anti-socialist pressure<br />
group formed in 1942 by a group of well known British<br />
industrialists. The Aims original Council had<br />
representatives from Fords, English Electric, Austin,<br />
Rank, British Aircraft, Macdougall's and Firestone<br />
Tyres.(45) There were also smaller campaigns by the<br />
Cement Makers Federation, the Iron and Steel<br />
Federation and by the insurance companies represented<br />
by the British Insurance Association.(46) The Road<br />
Haulage Association sponsored anti-nationalisation<br />
campaigns by the British Housewives' League, led by<br />
Dorothy Crisp.(47) <br />
<br />
By 1949 Aims of Industry had 'twelve area offices<br />
blanketing the industrial sections of Britain. For the<br />
fiscal year 1949-50 expenditures were budgeted for an<br />
an additional anticipated income of �260,000'.(48) The<br />
pre-war tradition, discussed below, of newspapers<br />
reprinting anti-left briefings from Conservative Party<br />
groups or fronts, continued with Aims of Industry.<br />
Aims estimated that they had gained 93,178<br />
column-inches of editorial space in 1949, worth over<br />
�1,800,000.(49) In the first six months of 1949 Aims<br />
claims to have had 41 radio broadcasts on the Home or<br />
Light programmes of the BBC; and just before the<br />
election of 1950 in January, 362 magazines and<br />
newspapers gave 11,269 column inches to Aims-inspired<br />
stories. Aims magazine, The Voice of Industry, thanked<br />
the British press for their 'impartial partnership',<br />
in March 1950, noting that 'News about the<br />
achievements of private enterprise and the failures of<br />
nationalisation and state control has been of<br />
sufficient value to editors for them to have given it<br />
space in their columns free.'(50) <br />
<br />
The Economic League survived the war. In 1951 it<br />
claimed to have held 20,058 meetings and 57,505 group<br />
talks in the previous year; distributed 18 million<br />
leaflets, and obtained 31,064 column inches of press<br />
publicity; it employed 50 full-time speakers, 27<br />
part-time speakers and 37 leaflet distributors; had a<br />
full-time staff of 135, owned 43 vehicles etc.(51)<br />
These figures apparently describing massive campaigns<br />
by Aims and the League have to be treated with<br />
caution. They might well be exaggerated and it is not<br />
clear how successful they were. For all this<br />
anti-Labour propaganda, Labour's total vote went up in<br />
the 1951 General Election. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Information Research Department<br />
In the labour movement the Trades Union Congress was<br />
working with the newly-formed, Foreign Office-based,<br />
political warfare executive, operating under cover as<br />
the Information Research Department (IRD), in an<br />
anti-communist drive. IRD was not an innovation.<br />
British politics since World War 1 is studded with<br />
clandestine propaganda operations involving the mass<br />
media of the day. The claims of massive post-World War<br />
2 media penetration by Aims of Industry and the<br />
Economic League are reminiscent of the operations of<br />
the post World War 1 propaganda network operated by<br />
Sydney Walton, described in Keith Middlemas' wonderful<br />
book about British political history.(52) In the great<br />
Bolshevik panic following the First World War, funded<br />
by the industrial sources like the Engineering<br />
Employers' Federation, Sydney Walton <br />
<br />
<br />
'took the main propaganda role from a variety of front<br />
organisations, set up during the war, such as the<br />
British Empire League, the British Workers' League,<br />
the National Democratic and Labour Party, and the<br />
National Unity Movement, all of whom had been in<br />
receipt of industrial subscriptions'. <br />
<br />
With a budget of �100,000 a year - about what, �20<br />
million in today's money? - Walton's 'information<br />
service' was supplied with information by the Special<br />
Branch and the intelligence services of the day.<br />
Walton eventually claimed to be able to put<br />
'authoritative signed articles' in over 1,200<br />
newspapers.(53) Parallel to the Walton network,<br />
another group of major employers formed National<br />
Propaganda,(54) which evolved into the Economic<br />
League.(55) McIvor tells us that the League by 1926<br />
had formed an Information and Research Department,(56)<br />
was organising in 'cells',(57) and was forming 1000<br />
study groups a year.(58) <br />
<br />
The state followed suit. In 1919 it formed the Supply<br />
and Transport Committee and prepared to run two<br />
separate propaganda organisations in an emergency,<br />
headed by..... Admiral Blinker Hall of National<br />
Propaganda and Sydney Walton.(59) After 1922, this<br />
network had largely been abandoned, and Middlemas<br />
makes the point that while Walton spent over �25,000<br />
in the first six months of the 1926 General Strike,<br />
this was spent on publicity, advertising and speakers<br />
- not on the bribing of journalists and his earlier<br />
techniques.(60) Out of this milieu - and the changes<br />
in tactics it went through - emerged the Economic<br />
League. <br />
<br />
The Conservative Party had also been busy between the<br />
wars developing propaganda systems through which it<br />
issued, sometimes under its own name, sometimes under<br />
cover of fronts, pro-Conservative material to the<br />
newspapers for them to 'top and tail' and present as<br />
normal, internally-generated copy.(61) <br />
<br />
These examples of how to manipulate the media had been<br />
learned by others in the British state system and a<br />
few years later Neville Chamberlain and other<br />
supporters of the appeasement policy secretly bought<br />
and ran the weekly newspaper Truth. This was largely<br />
an operation run by the former MI5 officer and<br />
eminence grise of the time, Sir Joseph Ball. Ball used<br />
the official government information machine to push<br />
the Chamberlain line, formed the National Publicity<br />
Bureau to do the same and, in 1937, through a<br />
frontman, Lord Luke of Pavenham, bought Truth, and<br />
proceeded to use it to denigrate the opponents of<br />
Chamberlain and appeasement.(62) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRD's genesis<br />
Former Labour Minister Christopher Mayhew still thinks<br />
he was responsible for the creation of IRD.(63) In<br />
fact its origins are a good deal earlier. In March<br />
1946 Frank Roberts in the British Embassy in Moscow<br />
began sending telegrams to London warning of Soviet<br />
imperialism and aggression.(64) In April the Russia<br />
Committee of the Foreign Office was formed. In its<br />
second meeting on May 7 1946, the Committee decided to<br />
set up a propaganda organisation.(65) It was then just<br />
a question of getting the Labour Cabinet to approve<br />
the proposal. On the way junior Foreign Office<br />
Minister, Christopher Mayhew, proposed such a<br />
propaganda offensive in October 1947, and the<br />
combination of deteriorating political circumstances<br />
and a proposal from within the Party itself swung the<br />
day and the Cabinet approved the formation of this<br />
outfit in January 1948. In the second volume of his<br />
Diaries, Robert Bruce-Lockhart, who had been a part of<br />
the war-time clandestine propaganda system, records on<br />
4 February 1948 that he dined with Christopher Warner<br />
who had just become the Assistant Under-Secretary at<br />
the Foreign Office in charge of 'our Information<br />
Services'. Warner offered a new version of the origins<br />
of IRD, telling Lockhart that 'As a result of a paper<br />
put up by the Imperial Defence College, F.O. [Foreign<br />
Office] have decided to renew political warfare on a<br />
limited scale.' (emphasis added)(66) <br />
<br />
In Foreign Secretary Bevin's presentation to the<br />
Cabinet he spoke of Britain as a 'third force', who<br />
would 'give a lead in the spiritual, moral and<br />
political sphere to all democratic elements in Western<br />
Europe'. The line was to be neither Washington nor<br />
Moscow, apparently.(67) How seriously Bevin intended<br />
this we do not know. But however nicely it was being<br />
dressed up, this was pretty clearly part of the<br />
developing anti-communist struggle. Mayhew said so in<br />
a memo to Bevin. In any case, why would propaganda in<br />
favour of social democracy have to be hidden?(68) <br />
<br />
IRD was in a kind of management limbo between MI6, who<br />
supplied it with some of its information and tasks,<br />
and the Foreign Office, whose budget concealed it. IRD<br />
was, very clearly, simply the Political Warfare<br />
Executive (PWE) reborn - another example of the<br />
ability of intelligence agencies, once established, to<br />
survive the vagaries of their nominal masters in the<br />
political system. <br />
<br />
IRD was a triple layer. On the surface was its formal<br />
cover within the Foreign Office as an information and<br />
research department. Beneath that was IRD's role as a<br />
propaganda organisation, dispensing white (true) and<br />
grey (half true) propaganda in briefings to<br />
journalists and politicians. But beneath that was the<br />
third layer, the 'black' or psychological warfare<br />
(psywar) tier. This third tier is hinted at in the<br />
Foreign and Commonwealth Office''s recently published<br />
history of IRD's origins . On p. 7 it notes that in<br />
September 1948 - i.e. almost immediately - 'part of<br />
the costs of the unit [were] transferred to the secret<br />
vote......the move would.....avoid the unwelcome<br />
scrutiny of operations which might require covert or<br />
semi-covert means of execution.'(69) <br />
<br />
There is little evidence of Bevin's 'third force'<br />
notions in IRD's work once the politicians' backs were<br />
turned and they had moved on to another item on the<br />
agenda. The minutes of a 1950 meeting between IRD<br />
officials and their U.S. counterparts show no evidence<br />
at all such concepts. Christopher Warner, one of the<br />
'fathers' of IRD, talks exclusively of anti-communist<br />
activities.(70) <br />
<br />
IRD eventually had representatives in all British<br />
Embassies abroad. In the recollection of a former MI6<br />
officer of the period, IRD was involved in 'some of<br />
the more dubious intelligence operations which<br />
characterised the early years of the cold war.'(71)<br />
Former Ambassador Hilary King was told by a former SIS<br />
officer who had worked in Germany after the war trying<br />
to estimate Soviet bloc tank strength, that IRD<br />
circulated a paper on the subject over-estimating that<br />
strength by a factor of 40.(72) When the SIS officer<br />
complained about the inaccuracy of the estimate he was<br />
told by an IRD official 'what does it matter old boy<br />
as long as the Labour government [i.e. of Attlee] push<br />
through rearmament.' At home, in its second level<br />
role, IRD wrote papers and briefing notes, and planted<br />
stories in the media. Mayhew remembers that 'at home,<br />
our service was offered to and accepted by, large<br />
numbers of selected MP's, journalists, trade union<br />
leaders, and others, and was often used by BBC's<br />
External Services. We also developed close links with<br />
a syndication agency and various publishers.'(73) The<br />
1950 minutes of the IRD-US talks include Ralph<br />
Murray's comment that 'Trade Union organisations and<br />
various groups are used to place articles under the<br />
by-line of well known writers.'(74) Among individuals<br />
who received IRD material were Percy Cudlipp of the<br />
Co-operative Movement, Herbert Tracey, pub-licity<br />
director of the TUC and the Labour Party, and Denis<br />
Healey, then the Party's International Secretary.(75) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The Freedom and Democracy Trust==<br />
Part of this anti-communist programme was the creation<br />
of 'an influential group, including several members of<br />
the [TUC] General Council, which was determined to<br />
root out the communists.'(76) Among the group were<br />
George Chester (General Secretary of the National<br />
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), George Gibson<br />
(former TUC chair), Lincoln Evans (General Secretary<br />
of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation [ISTC])<br />
Andrew Naesmith (General Secretary of the Amalgamated<br />
Weavers' Association), Alf Roberts (General Secretary<br />
of the National Association of Card, Blowing and Ring<br />
Room Operatives, later on the Board of the Bank of<br />
England), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council<br />
representative; General Secretary in 1939 of National<br />
Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), John<br />
Brown (ISTC) and Tom O'Brien (Kine Employees).(77) In<br />
April 1948 this group became the [[Freedom and Democracy Trust]], and began publishing a periodical called<br />
[[Freedom First]]. with the help of IRD.(78) <br />
<br />
Unfortunately for all concerned, mixing with the<br />
founders of the Trust was an American businessman<br />
called Sydney Stanley, and the whole enterprise was<br />
'blown' when Stanley became the centrepiece of the<br />
infamous Lansky Tribunal hearings into civil service<br />
corruption during the winter of 1948. Not only did<br />
Stanley have many pre-war contacts with the U.S<br />
unions, he adopted the robust American attitude to<br />
officialdom: bribe it when you have to. But he got<br />
caught. <br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
44. Finer p. 94<br />
45. See H.H. Wilson for an account of the Mr Cube<br />
campaign. Aims Council personnel is from Kisch p. 28.<br />
46. See Crofts, chapter 14 for these examples.<br />
47. See ibid. pp. 99-109, especially p. 106 where the<br />
League's funding by the Road Haulage Association, then<br />
distantly threatened with nationalisation, is<br />
discussed. Best account is Hinton's. Dorothy Crisp is<br />
the historical figure who most resembles Margaret<br />
Thatcher.<br />
48. H.H. Wilson p. 228<br />
49. Crofts p. 216. For more details of alleged<br />
activities, see also the pamphlet The FBI, (Federation<br />
of British Industry) Labour Research Department, 1949.<br />
50. H.H. Wilson pp. 229 and 238. Kisch p. 37 claims<br />
that by the late 1950s Aims 'controlled no less than<br />
twenty-six monthly, weekly and quarterly publications<br />
[and] edited and produced forty-five house magazines<br />
for the Tate and Lyle organisation, the Express Dairy<br />
and other organisations as well as the house magazines<br />
of most of the leading members of the 4,000 or so<br />
companies who constituted its chief supporters'.<br />
51. Labour Research, July 1952. As late as 1981 it had<br />
130 full-time employees. See the Daily Telegraph, 26<br />
January 1981.<br />
52. Politics in Industrial Society, Andre Deutsch,<br />
1979<br />
53. Ibid. pp. 131/2.<br />
54. Ibid.<br />
55. See, for example, McIvor's essays.<br />
56. Echoed - intentionally? - twenty years later by<br />
the state's IRD.<br />
57. McIvor 'A Crusade...' p. 641<br />
58. Ibid p. 646<br />
59. Middlemas pp. 153/4<br />
60. Ibid p. 354<br />
61. See 'The Party, Publicity and the Media' by<br />
Richard Cockett in Seldon and Ball (eds.), especially<br />
pp. 550-553.<br />
62. Cockett pp. 9-12<br />
63. Mayhew p.107 where he cites the memo he wrote in<br />
late 1947 to Bevin. Philip M. Taylor in his 'The<br />
Projection of Britain Abroad, 1945-51', writes that<br />
'The IRD was formed at the Foreign Office as a direct<br />
response to increasingly hostile Soviet propaganda in<br />
the wake of the communist coup in Prague, the<br />
escalating blockade of West Berlin and mounting<br />
pressure on Finland.' Taylor in Michael Dockrill and<br />
John W. Young (eds.) 1989<br />
64. See, for example, Ray Merrick; and, more recently,<br />
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's own publication,<br />
IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office<br />
Research Department 1946-48, (History Notes, August<br />
1995)<br />
65. Ibid. p. 458 This is before the Cominform<br />
rejection of the Marshall Plan, for example, over a<br />
year away in 1947; before even the March arrest of Dr<br />
Allan Nunn May and the revelation of the<br />
Canadian-based Soviet spy ring; and before Churchill's<br />
American speech in which he first used the term 'Iron<br />
Curtain'.<br />
66. Kenneth Young (ed.) p. 648<br />
67. Merrick p. 465<br />
68. Best account of IRD's early years is in Lucas and<br />
Morris.<br />
69. See note 21 above.<br />
70. Notes on a meeting between Christopher Warner and<br />
Edward Barnett, in London, Saturday May 20, 1950, in<br />
Foreign Relations of the United States, Government<br />
Printing Office, Washington DC, 1977, pp. 1641-6<br />
71. Verrier, Looking Glass, p. 52 . Someone might<br />
usefully re-examine all the forgeries in the first<br />
phase of the Cold War and what influence - if any -<br />
they had on policy-making. Two examples are discussed<br />
in Sulzberger pp. 345-7. In 1948, having discovered<br />
that something called 'Protocol M', alleging secret<br />
Comintern instructions to the West German communists<br />
was a forgery, a month late he is offered another one<br />
in Italy, 'Plan K', plans for an alleged communist<br />
insurgency. He comments that there is 'a network of<br />
forgers and falsifiers ...busily peddling allegedly<br />
secret documents to embassies, intelli-gence officers,<br />
ministries and correspondents'. (p. 346) 'Protocol M'<br />
is reproduced in Appendix II of Heilbrunn.<br />
72. Telephone conversation with author, June 27, 1987.<br />
73. Mayhew p. 111. There are some details of this in<br />
the FCO publication in footnote 64 above.<br />
74. Foreign Relations op. cit.<br />
75. Weiler p. 216<br />
76. Ibid. p. 217 citing The Times, February 10, 1948.<br />
77. Weiler op. cit. fn 184, p. 369<br />
78. Ibid. fn 189 citing The Times, 2 December 1948. <br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
==Common Cause and IRIS==<br />
The failure of the Freedom and Democracy Trust seems<br />
to have deterred the TUC members from creating another<br />
body so directly linked to the TUC General<br />
Council.(79) Instead, some individual members of the<br />
General Council, who had been involved in the Freedom<br />
and Democracy Trust fiasco, joined a private group<br />
with the same anti-communist aims. This was Common<br />
Cause, whose origins are to be found in the merging of<br />
two quite distinct political strands. <br />
<br />
<br />
==The AEU's 'Club'==<br />
One strand was the clandestine anti-communist (and<br />
anti-socialist) organisation in British trade unions,<br />
of which the best example is to found within the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Within the AEU, <br />
<br />
<br />
'An anti-Communist organisation was established at<br />
meetings of the fifty-two-member national committee,<br />
their ruling body in 1943 and 1944, and was followed a<br />
few years later by a loose national organisation,<br />
working in secret and known as "the side" or the<br />
"antis" which succeeded in removing a good many<br />
communists from office.'(80) <br />
<br />
This was the organisation which later came to be known<br />
as 'the Club' or 'the Group', and 'defined its purpose<br />
in terms of preventing a Communist takeover of the<br />
union'.(81) <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the mid 1950s ..... the Right-wing members of the<br />
Executive Council began attending the factional<br />
meeting. In this period also a National Committee<br />
"Club" organiser was discreetly appointed from amongst<br />
the regular delegates to tighten the organisation of<br />
the Right-wing faction(82)....At all National<br />
Committee meetings during the period from 1956 to 1970<br />
the right-wing controlled all places on the Standing<br />
Orders Committee, and J. Ramsden, organiser of the<br />
National Committee "Club" for nine years, was also<br />
Chairman of its Standing Orders Committee for seven of<br />
them. With [President] Carron in the Chair at the<br />
National Committee and the union Secretaryship also<br />
held by a "Club" member for the whole of the period,<br />
procedural control by the Right was overwhelming.'(83)<br />
<br />
<br />
The late Ernie Roberts MP quotes from a report of a<br />
1951 meeting of 'the Club' (infiltrated by a member of<br />
the left in the union), and notes that the principal<br />
figure was Cecil Hallett, then AEU General<br />
Secretary.(84) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause==<br />
This clandestine trade union anti-socialism joined up<br />
with an Anglo-American anti-communist group called<br />
Common Cause. The American group was formed in January<br />
1947 as Common Cause Incorporated, by Mrs Natalie<br />
Wales Latham (nee Paine). Among the great and the good<br />
on its letterhead National Council were Adolph Berle<br />
Jnr, Max Eastman, Sumner Welles and Hodding Carter.<br />
Another well-known member was Clare Booth Luce, wife<br />
of the owner of Time, Henry Luce, and later US<br />
Ambassador to Italy. In his biography of Mrs Luce,<br />
Alden Hatch notes that as early as 1946, before its<br />
official launch, Common Cause had established liaison<br />
with the anti-Soviet group, Russian Solidarists,<br />
better known as NTS, and that John Foster Dulles was<br />
the organisation's 'unofficial adviser'.(85) Hatch<br />
also notes that Mrs Wales Latham became Lady Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton - the only link I am aware of between<br />
the US and UK groups. For when the British Common<br />
Cause was formally launched in 1952, its first joint<br />
chairs were John Brown, ex General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and member of the<br />
TUC General Council and the self-same Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton MP.(86) <br />
<br />
The British Common Cause, however, had been in<br />
existence for some years before its official launch,<br />
originally very much as the vehicle of Dr. C. A.<br />
Smith, one of the more interesting mavericks of the<br />
British Left in the 20th century. Smith met Trotsky in<br />
the 1933, was Chairman of the Independent Labour Party<br />
from 39-41, quit and joined Common Wealth as its<br />
Research Officer in 1941. When some of the Common<br />
Wealth party left to join the Labour Party, Smith<br />
became Chair of Common Wealth. As the nature of the<br />
Stalinist takeover of Eastern Europe became clear in<br />
1947, Smith tried to take Common Wealth with him in<br />
his increasingly anti-Soviet stance. They baulked and<br />
eventually Smith left the party and joined or formed -<br />
which is not clear - Common Cause in Easter 1948.(87) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The British League for European Freedom==<br />
Whatever the British Common Cause amounted to in 1948,<br />
four years before its official launch, it had joined<br />
forces with the British League for European Freedom<br />
(BLEF), the first organisation formed in this country<br />
in direct response to the Soviet Union's takeover in<br />
Eastern Europe. The BLEF had been initiated in 1944 by<br />
a quartet of Tory MP's, including Victor Raikes, a<br />
pre-war member of the Imperial Policy Group.(88)<br />
Despite the dominance of Tory MPs, the BLEF attracted<br />
a trio of Labour MPs: Ivor Thomas (who defected to the<br />
Tories in 1950 after the publication of his book The<br />
Socialist Tragedy); George Dallas, former TUC General<br />
Council member and Labour MP, Chair of the Labour<br />
Party's International Committee during the war; and<br />
Richard Stokes MP. Stokes was a 'socialist' of the<br />
most idiosyncratic kind, having been a member of the<br />
anti-Semitic Right Club before the war.(89) Although<br />
information on these groups in this period is very<br />
thin, it is clear that Common Cause and the BLEF were<br />
very close. In 1950, for example, Common Cause<br />
published a pamphlet, Communism and Democracy, by<br />
Smith, in which he said he was writing as a member of<br />
the BLEF. The two groups shared an office in Elizabeth<br />
Street in London donated by the wealthy Duke of<br />
Westminster.(90) <br />
<br />
The Duchess of Atholl, one of the founders of the<br />
BLEF, notes in her autobiography that the decline in<br />
the BLEF's 'political work' was attributable to the<br />
arrival of Common Cause, and from then on the BLEF<br />
'concentrated its efforts on bringing home to people<br />
the unhappy plight of the many Displaced Persons still<br />
in Germany.'(91) This is something of a euphemism for<br />
the BLEF's role as support group for Eastern European<br />
exile groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of<br />
Nations (ABN) then being run by the Secret<br />
Intelligence Service (SIS). The BLEF produced an<br />
offshoot, the Scottish League for European Freedom,<br />
headed by Victor Raikes' colleague in the Imperial<br />
Policy Group, the Earl of Mansfield. In 1950 the<br />
Scottish League organised a conference in Edinburgh<br />
for Eastern European exiles, many of them Nazi war<br />
criminals and collaborators, who had been recruited by<br />
SIS. They had been moved to the UK during the scramble<br />
at the end of World War 2 by the British and American<br />
governments for good, reliable, anti-Soviet 'assets'.<br />
(92) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause USA==<br />
In the USA the fledgling CIA had sponsored a front<br />
organisation, the National Committee for a Free Europe<br />
(NCFE). NCFE's 'sister organisation' was Common Cause<br />
Inc., which included among its personnel 'many of the<br />
men - Adolf Berle, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Eugene<br />
Lyons, among others - who simultaneously led<br />
CIA-financed groups such as the NCFE and, later, the<br />
American Committee for Liberation from<br />
Bolshevism.'(93) Christopher Simpson notes that it was<br />
Common Cause Inc. which, in 1948, sponsored the NTS<br />
founder on a tour of the United States. (94) Just as<br />
the British League for European Freedom became the<br />
sponsor for the British exile groups in the<br />
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Christopher<br />
Emmet, Chairman of the American Common Cause Inc,<br />
turns up later as head of the American Friends of the<br />
Captive Nations, the domestic support group for the<br />
CIA-sponsored Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN).(95) <br />
<br />
The BLEF's George Dallas was one of those who stayed<br />
close to American interests. He became preoccupied<br />
with the danger of a communist take-over in China, and<br />
formed the Friends of Free China Association, with<br />
himself as chair and the Duchess of Atholl as<br />
president. Dallas eventually attended the 1958<br />
foundation meeting of what became the the World<br />
Anti-Communist League. The one time socialist farm<br />
labourer had come a long way. With him at that meeting<br />
were Marvin Liebman, one of the key members of the US<br />
'China Lobby', the late Yaroslav Stetsko, Ukranian<br />
collaborator with the Germans and head of the ABN, and<br />
Charles Edison of the John Birch Society.(96) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause UK==<br />
The official, 1952-launched Common Cause was<br />
apparently founded by Neil Elles, Peter Crane (on both<br />
of whom, more below) and C.A. Smith. Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton, then a Scottish Tory MP, and John<br />
Brown were joint chairs. Brown had been the Treasurer<br />
of the Freedom and Democracy Trust which had tried to<br />
launch Freedom First five years before. It set up a<br />
national structure with local branches - in 1954 there<br />
were 14 - published a monthly Bulletin, and<br />
distributed many of the standard anti-communist texts<br />
of the time, for example Tufton Beamish's Must Night<br />
Fall?; some, such as the 'Background Books' series,<br />
published and/or subsidised by IRD; and leaflets from<br />
the CIA labour front in Europe, the International<br />
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).(97) <br />
<br />
In 1955 Common Cause's 'Advisory Council' included: <br />
<br />
* Tom O'Brien and Florence Hancock, both past TUC<br />
presidents;(98) <br />
* Bob Edwards, General Secretary of the Chemical<br />
Workers Union, 1947-51;(99) <br />
* Cecil Hallett, Assistant General Secretary of the<br />
AEU 1948-57; General Secretary 1957-64;<br />
* Philip Fothergill, ex President of the Liberal<br />
Party;<br />
* Admiral Lord Cunningham;(100) <br />
* a coterie of other retired senior military, the<br />
Duchess of Atholl and Lord Ammon. <br />
<br />
Such 'advisory bodies' may mean very little: this<br />
might just be a notepaper job. Nonetheless, some of<br />
the 'advisory body' were people with rather<br />
specialised interests. For example, at one point the<br />
name of General Leslie Hollis appeared on it. Hollis<br />
had been the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff<br />
committee which 'considered, with Sir Stewart Menzies,<br />
the head of MI6, and Warner [of IRD] and William<br />
Hayter of the Foreign Office, what form of<br />
organisation was required to establish a satisfactory<br />
link between the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office on<br />
matters connected with the day-to-day conduct of<br />
anti-Communist propaganda overseas.'(101) <br />
<br />
In the Autumn of 1955 the Common Cause Bulletin<br />
reported that there had been moves at the Labour Party<br />
conference that year to get it proscribed - but the<br />
motion to that effect 'was among the many crowded out<br />
from discussion'.(102) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Labour Party's intelligence-gathering<br />
Common Cause was one of the sources of information<br />
used by the Labour Party in its anti-communist<br />
activities in the 1950s. While no central unit was<br />
ever formally established 'for collecting information<br />
or monitoring the activities of communist-inspired or<br />
pro-Soviet groups', in practice the National Agent's<br />
Department at Labour headquarters, Transport House,<br />
did the job, using as sources the publications of<br />
proscribed organisations, regional organisers'<br />
reports, 'Foreign Office' material - i.e. IRD - and<br />
Common Cause.(103) The National Agent's Department<br />
[NAD] had 'lay responsibility for compiling the<br />
[proscription] list'. Shaw notes that in 1953 the<br />
proscription list was expanded by the addition of<br />
eighteen fresh groups. <br />
<br />
<br />
'What happened was rather unusual. Without consulting<br />
the NAD the International Department had submitted a<br />
report to the Overseas Subcommittee on "peace" and<br />
"friendship" societies. In response the Subcommittee<br />
recommended that they all be proscribed. NAD officials<br />
were never told the source of the International<br />
Department's information though they assumed it to be<br />
the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special<br />
Branch.'(104) <br />
<br />
A glimpse of the content of the NAD's<br />
intelligence-gathering has been provided by the late<br />
Ian Mikardo MP, who saw 'dossiers' in the possession<br />
of National Agent Sarah Barker At a meeting of a<br />
subcommittee of the NEC in 1955, Sara Barker objected<br />
to Konni Zilliacus and Ernie Roberts as prospective<br />
Parliamentary candidates. When Barker began quoting<br />
derogatory comments from files she had in her<br />
possession, Mikardo demanded to see the files. <br />
<br />
<br />
'They were an eye-opener. No MI5, no Special Branch,<br />
no George Smiley could have compiled more<br />
comprehensive dossiers. Not just press-cuttings,<br />
photographs and document references but also notes by<br />
watchers and eavesdroppers, and all sorts of<br />
tittle-tattle. I'm convinced that there was input into<br />
them from government sources and from at least a<br />
couple of Labour Attaches at the United States embassy<br />
who were close to some of our trade union leaders,<br />
notably Sam Watson.'(105) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause splits - IRIS is formed==<br />
The pretty unstable-looking mixture of admirals,<br />
generals and trade union leaders that was Common<br />
Cause, disintegrated in 1956. C.A.Smith resigned along<br />
with Advisory Council members Fothergill, Edwards,<br />
Ammon, Professor Arthur Newell and Sydney Walton.(106)<br />
This group complained that the organisation had become<br />
'reactionary' and that the promised democratic<br />
structure had never materialised. In August 1956<br />
Common Cause Ltd was registered, owned and controlled<br />
by the 'reactionary' faction. <br />
<br />
The original directors of Common Cause Ltd were: <br />
<br />
* the new chair, Peter Crane, the director of a number<br />
of British subsidiaries of American companies,<br />
including Collins Radio of England, whose American<br />
headquarters had connections with the CIA.(107) <br />
* David Pelham James - Conservative MP, and Director<br />
of the Catholic publishing house, Hollis and Carter.<br />
There were a number of Catholics prominent in the<br />
Common Cause network, including the man who ran IRIS<br />
for any years, Andy McKeown. This is discussed below.<br />
* Neil Elles, barrister and later a member of the<br />
European-wide anti-subversion outfit, INTERDOC.(108) <br />
* Christopher Blackett - a Scottish landowner and<br />
farmer and, I presume, but cannot prove, a relative of<br />
Frances Blackett, the original secretary of the<br />
British League for European Freedom, discussed<br />
above.(109) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS<br />
More or less in parallel with the formation of Common<br />
Cause Ltd., an industrial wing, Industrial Research<br />
and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and<br />
set up in the headquarters of the National Union of<br />
Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed<br />
three directors: <br />
<br />
* Jack Tanner, the recently retired President of the<br />
AEU;<br />
* William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from<br />
1938-47;<br />
* and Charles Sonnex, the Secretary and Managing<br />
Director, and the link with the parent body Common<br />
Cause.(110) Also it had a manager, James L. Nash.(111)<br />
According to Labour Research (January 1961), Nash left<br />
to join the CIA labour front, the ICFTU. <br />
<br />
In an interview with Richard Fletcher in 1979, C. A.<br />
Smith, attributed the formation of IRIS to Common<br />
Cause's discovery of just how careful they had to be<br />
about interfering in union affairs.(112) Another<br />
proximate cause for the formation of IRIS is suggested<br />
by the comment from the Common Cause Bulletin of<br />
January 1956 (pp. 4/5) that 'only a near-miracle can<br />
prevent the Executive of the AEU from passing under<br />
communist control during 1956.....already there are<br />
clear signs of an all-out Communist effort to put Reg<br />
Birch in this top trade union job'. <br />
<br />
However, another interpretation of the Common Cause<br />
split and the formation of IRIS is possible. In April<br />
1955 SIS (MI6) were forced to acknowledge that their<br />
networks of 'agents' inside the Soviet Union had all<br />
been penetrated. Worse, the Soviets had been running a<br />
deception operation with uncomfortable parallels with<br />
the 'Trust' deception in the 1920s in which the Soviet<br />
intelligence service created and ran a fake resistance<br />
group to which the British government gave a lot of<br />
money.(113) SIS had been using agents from Bandera's<br />
OUN in Ukraine and from NTS.(114) Some time later that<br />
year, SIS gave up all its emigre groups and in<br />
February 1956 SIS handed over control of NTS to the<br />
CIA.(115) What follows is what I surmise happened but<br />
for which I have no evidence. Having taken control of<br />
the British networks, new people were put in to run<br />
things. The NTS support group in the United States was<br />
Common Cause Inc. - with its British counterpart. In<br />
London, the limited company Common Cause was formed<br />
and all the trappings of members and branches were<br />
dumped; a CIA officer or agent, under cover, the<br />
cut-out to the Agency, was installed. (If this sounds<br />
banal, it has to be remembered that in 1956 none of<br />
this had ever been made public and there was no reason<br />
for them to be anything but banal.) The American<br />
assessment of the group's activities was that its most<br />
important work had been, and should continue to be, in<br />
the British trade union movement. The previous year's<br />
attempt to have Common Cause put on the Labour Party's<br />
proscription list was noted and a spin-off, trade<br />
union subsidiary, was formed. Common Cause would fund<br />
it - and act as another layer of insulation between it<br />
and the Agency. <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS activities to 1963<br />
IRIS published a newsletter and a variety of<br />
pamphlets. They formed 'cells' - their word - to<br />
combat communists in the trade unions. How many cells,<br />
we do not know; nor in how many unions other than the<br />
AEU. They intervened in union elections. A member of<br />
ASSET, (which became ASTMS and is currently a part of<br />
MSF) sued IRIS and won in 1958 after IRIS News called<br />
him a communist. In the report of the TUC annual<br />
conference in 1960, delegates describe IRIS personnel<br />
intervening in the Association of Engineering and<br />
Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD) and the Association of<br />
Supervisory Staff and Technicians (ASSET). The<br />
delegate of the latter describes IRIS News publishing<br />
the allegation that a candidate in a union election<br />
was a communist. Labour Research alleged an IRIS role<br />
in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Foundry<br />
Workers (as well as AESD and ASSET).(116) Reporting<br />
these events, Labour Research commented on IRIS News<br />
that 'the main feature in the paper however is and<br />
always has been news and advice about union elections.<br />
In most cases the paper reports that certain<br />
candidates are "receiving communist support" '. It<br />
seems reasonably certain - though unproven - the IRIS<br />
was receiving some of its information from IRD. <br />
<br />
In putting out information - its monthly magazine and<br />
pamphlets - and telling its readers who to vote for<br />
and not vote for in union elections, IRIS behaved as<br />
an exact mirror image of the groups on the left: start<br />
a paper and put out a 'line'. The late Ernie Roberts<br />
MP, for many years the only left-winger in the senior<br />
ranks of the AEU - the union from whence came two of<br />
the IRIS directors in 1956 - describes how the left in<br />
the union and IRIS/and 'the Club' spent their time<br />
infiltrating and reporting on each other's<br />
meetings.(117) <br />
<br />
In February 1966 the left-wing magazine Voice of the<br />
Unions, part of the opposition to IRIS within the AEU,<br />
asked where the IRIS money was coming from and<br />
commented, 'At one time we are told IRIS employed an<br />
office staff of six to ten.' Almost thirty years later<br />
we learned that some of the money had come from the<br />
British government after Lord Shawcross had contacted<br />
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and asked for funding<br />
for IRIS.(118) <br />
<br />
Shawcross had approached Macmillan at the right time,<br />
for 'Supermac' had become infected with the fear of<br />
the 'communist threat'. The Radcliffe Tribunal had<br />
reported in 1962, devoting a whole section to the<br />
Civil Service staff associations and trade unions,<br />
expressing concern at the number of communists and<br />
communist sympathisers holding positions in the<br />
unions;(119) and his administration was being<br />
afflicted by the espionage scandals of George Blake<br />
and Vassell - and the Profumo Affair which Macmillan<br />
apparently believed was part of a communist conspiracy<br />
the bring him down.(120) <br />
<br />
<br />
Catholic Action?<br />
There is a distinct Catholic tinge to Common Cause and<br />
IRIS. Hollis and Carter, the company which published<br />
the Common Cause Bulletin, was a Catholic publishing<br />
house. Catholics among the leading figures in Common<br />
Cause included chairs David Pelham James(121) and<br />
Peter Crane, Brigadier George Taylor, a director of<br />
Common Cause circa 1958,(122) and Sir Tom O'Brien.<br />
Catholics among the AEU/IRIS network include AEU<br />
President Bill Carron and Jim Conway, IRIS's Cecil<br />
Hallett, and the man who ran IRIS for nearly twenty<br />
years, Andy McKeown.(123) So was there, as some on the<br />
British Left believed,(124) a national Catholic Action<br />
organisation operating in Britain, as it had in other<br />
countries, such as Australia? Joan Keating<br />
investigated this belief in the course of her doctoral<br />
thesis, and though she found quite a thriving<br />
Association of Catholic Trade unionists - the Catholic<br />
Worker was selling 25,000 copies in 1956 - she found<br />
no evidence at all of any national, co-ordinated<br />
organisation.(125) <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
79. Though there is a hint that such activities may<br />
have been continued abroad. In Coleman's book on the<br />
Congress for Cultural Freedom (discussed below) there<br />
is a reference to an Indian anti-communist politician,<br />
Minoo Misani, who in the early post-war years, founded<br />
the Democratic Research Service and published a<br />
magazine called..... Freedom First. Coleman p. 150.<br />
80. Wigham, p. 128<br />
81. Minkin p. 180<br />
82. Ibid.<br />
83. Ibid.<br />
84. Roberts pp. 124/5<br />
85. Hatch, p. 187<br />
86. The Times 25 February, 1952<br />
87. Details on Smith from J.C. Banks, Editor of the<br />
Common Wealth Journal. In the obituary of Smith in the<br />
The Libertarian, the Common Wealth journal, no. 25,<br />
Summer 1985, Smith is said to have formed Common<br />
Cause. I believe this to be mistaken.<br />
88. The Imperial Policy Group was largely the work of<br />
Kenneth de Courcy. De Courcy edited and published the<br />
Review of World Affairs during the Second World War.<br />
The IPG and de Courcy in particular were much disliked<br />
by the Soviet government of the time. Since then de<br />
Courcy has published the newsletters Intelligence<br />
Digest and Special Office Brief. De Courcy had some<br />
influence on the right of the Tory Party into the<br />
1960s. See index references in Highams on De Courcy.<br />
89. This information from John Hope who has had access<br />
to the Right Club's membership list. It is possible<br />
Stokes had joined for reasons other than agreement<br />
with the Club's aims.<br />
90. Duchess of Atholl p. 252<br />
91. Ibid.<br />
92. Loftus p. 204<br />
93. Simpson p. 222<br />
94. Ibid p. 223<br />
95. Ibid. p. 222. 'Christopher Emmet is a classic<br />
example of those who ran the British Intelligence<br />
fronts before and during World War II and who, having<br />
proven themselves faithful and competent, went on to<br />
run the CIA/MI6 fronts of the Cold War.' Mahl, thesis,<br />
p. 198.<br />
96. Details of the WACL meeting is in Charles<br />
Goldman's 'World Anti-Communist League', adapted from<br />
Under Dackke, ed. Frik Krensen and Petter Sommerfelt<br />
(Demos, Copenhagen, 1978). I am unsure of the source<br />
of this Goldman article but it appears to be an early<br />
edition of Counterspy. Dallas' career, with some of<br />
the later associations glossed over, is described by<br />
his son in the Dictionary of Labour Biography eds.<br />
Saville and Bellamy, vol. 4 1977.<br />
97. On ICFTU and the CIA see the comments of former<br />
CIA officers Joseph Smith (p. 138) and Philip Agee<br />
(CIA Diary) (p. 611). For a more general discussion<br />
see Winslow Peck. The rival but much less significant<br />
World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was, of<br />
course, funded and run by the Soviet Union.<br />
98. Hancock had been Chief Woman Officer of the TUC.<br />
99. Edwards had been chair of the ILP. During 1948 the<br />
Chemical Workers Union had been involved in protracted<br />
proceedings over alleged forged ballot papers by<br />
communists.<br />
100. In 1945, as Chief of the Defence Staff he had<br />
threatened Attlee with resignation over proposed<br />
defence cuts.<br />
101. Scott Lucas and Morris p. 101.<br />
102. For which, perhaps, read 'our friends fixed the<br />
agenda'.<br />
103. Shaw p. 58<br />
104. Ibid. pp. 58 and 9 Shaw notes in footnote 44 p.<br />
314 that 'at least one NAD official was approached by<br />
a member of the Special Branch [and brother of a<br />
future International Secretary] offering<br />
"assistance".'<br />
105. Mikardo p. 131.<br />
106. The Times, April 6, 1957<br />
107. Collins Radio was first linked with CIA<br />
operations by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished<br />
manuscript, The Dallas Conspiracy, ch. 11 p. 3. More<br />
recently, 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back<br />
Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, lists a number of<br />
links between the company and the CIA-controlled<br />
anti-Castro milieu of the early 1960s<br />
108. On INTERDOC see Crozier pp. 49 and 81.<br />
109. Frances Blackett in Duchess of Atholl, p. 250.<br />
110. The Times, 6 April 1957<br />
111. IRIS News, vol. 1, no 1, 1956. According to<br />
Anthony Carew, Nash was also a member of the AEU.<br />
112. Fletcher's notes of the conversation say that<br />
that 'wealthy people got at [Common Cause executive<br />
member Charles] Sonnex (without telling CAS) asked him<br />
to lead IRIS. S.[onnex] remained on CC exec. Rich<br />
people attached more importance to IRIS.'<br />
113. See Tom Bower's Red Web on the SIS post-war<br />
operations and chapter 8, in particular, on the<br />
dawning realisation that they had been taken for a<br />
ride - again. On 'the Trust' see Andrew, Secret<br />
Service pp. 445-8<br />
114. Ibid p. 165<br />
115. Yakovlev p. 105. Soviet publications in this<br />
field are not famously accurate, but this account has<br />
since been confirmed by Tom Bower's biography of SIS<br />
chief Dick White The Perfect English Spy, pp. 206 and<br />
7. Yakovlev quotes from what purports to be an SIS<br />
document, 'A Proposed Statement to the NTS<br />
Leadership', which, presuming it to be genuine, may<br />
have been given to the Soviets by Kim Philby or George<br />
Blake. Bower quotes a brief section from the same<br />
document.<br />
116. Labour Research, January 1961, p. 10<br />
117. See Roberts pp. 101, 122-4, 131 157, 203.<br />
The left-wing Engineering Voice, Christmas 1966,<br />
reported having received 'an anonymous and undated<br />
document purporting to describe the proceedings of a<br />
secret meeting recently convened by supporters of the<br />
present leadership of the AEU.' The document referred<br />
to a 'National Group meeting' and said attending it<br />
had been fourteen full-time officers of the AEU.<br />
118. Guardian, 2 January 1995, based on papers<br />
released under the 30 year rule. See also 'Anti-red<br />
and alive' in New Statesman, 10 February 1995.<br />
119. Pincher, Inside Story p. 335<br />
120. On Macmillan's paranoia about the 'communist<br />
conspiracy' see Bower, Perfect English Spy pp. 308-9.<br />
121. A director of Hollis and Carter<br />
122. Keating, PhD thesis, p. 350<br />
123. Ferris, p. 85. Engineering Voice, March 1969,<br />
reported a two-day conference of the Association of<br />
Catholic Trade Unionists, at which were H.E. Matthews,<br />
a director of Cable and Wireless and some time<br />
director of IRIS, and Andy McKeown of IRIS. Keating<br />
quotes McKeown as suggesting that originally IRIS was<br />
anti-Catholic because 'Freemasonry' had a 'strong<br />
hold' on the organisation, and claiming that the man<br />
who initially ran IRIS, Charles Sonnex, was a Mason!<br />
124. One of those who believes there was a national<br />
Catholic Action is former President of the Trades<br />
Union Congress, Clive Jenkins. Conversation with the<br />
author, 1995.<br />
125. Keating thesis, p. 335. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
Part 2 <br />
<br />
Atlantic Crossings<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism and the CIA<br />
As well as the programmes to inculcate American<br />
notions of free market economics and union-management<br />
relations - and good feelings about America - there<br />
were operations aimed at the wider public and the<br />
Labour Party. Large numbers of Labour MPs and trade<br />
unionists were paid to visit the United States. Among<br />
the Gaitskellite grouping in the Parliamentary party,<br />
Gaitskell, George Brown, Anthony Crosland and Douglas<br />
Jay all made visits.(1) Under the umbrella of just one<br />
minor aspect of the Marshall Plan, the Anglo-American<br />
Council on Productivity, 900 people from Britain -<br />
management and unions - went on trips to the United<br />
States to see the equivalent of 'Potemkin<br />
villages'.(2) Hundreds of trade unions officers went<br />
on paid visits to the US in the fifties under the<br />
auspices of the European Productivity Agency and<br />
groups of British union leaders were sent on three<br />
month trade union programme run twice yearly by the<br />
Harvard Business School.(3) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom<br />
There was a European-wide - and world-wide - programme<br />
to boost the social democratic wings of socialist<br />
parties and movements. <br />
<br />
<br />
'At Thomas Braden's suggestion and with the support of<br />
Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner [then head of the Office<br />
of Policy Coordination], the CIA began its covert<br />
support of the non-Communist political left around the<br />
world - trade unions, political parties and<br />
international organisations of students and<br />
journalists.'(4) <br />
<br />
The biggest of these programs that we are aware of was<br />
the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF from here on),<br />
which began in 1950 with a large conference in the US<br />
zone in Berlin, a demonstration of the strength of<br />
anti-Soviet feeling among some of the West's<br />
intellectuals and a response to the Soviet 'Peace<br />
offensive' then underway.(5) At the time funds for<br />
these gatherings were said to have come from the<br />
American Federation of Labour, via Jay Lovestone - a<br />
story offered up again recently by CCF apologist Peter<br />
Coleman in his The Liberal Conspiracy. In fact they<br />
came from the CIA, something alleged by the Soviet<br />
bloc's media at the time but not believed.(6) The one<br />
thing the Congress for Cultural Freedom's paymasters<br />
were not interested in was cultural freedom. Peter<br />
Coleman does his best. Of the first big 1950 jamboree<br />
he writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
'almost all the participants were liberals or social<br />
democrats, critical of capitalism and opposed to<br />
colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, racism and<br />
dictatorship'. <br />
<br />
If the British delegation is anything to go by, this<br />
is not true. Of the four British delegates named by<br />
Coleman, one was Christopher Hollis, a right-wing<br />
Catholic and some time Tory MP, (7) and another was<br />
Julian Amery, one of the Tory Party's leading<br />
imperialists! In any case 'cultural freedom' was a<br />
euphemism for 'American capitalism'. <br />
<br />
<br />
Encounter<br />
The CCF began publishing journals - in Britain,<br />
Encounter, which first appeared in 1953. Encounter<br />
became a major outlet for the 'revisionist' - i.e.<br />
anti-socialist, anti-nationalist - thinking of the<br />
younger intellectuals around Labour leader Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, such as Peter Jay, Patrick Gordon-Walker,<br />
Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, all of whom were in<br />
Harold Wilson's first cabinet in 1964. The 1955 CCF<br />
conference in Milan, 'The Future of Freedom', was<br />
attended by Crosland, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey,<br />
Roy Jenkins and W. Arthur Lewis MP.(8) Anthony<br />
Crosland was a member of the International Council of<br />
the CCF: his role, said the CIA officer who was<br />
running CCF, was 'encouraging sympathetic people' to<br />
attend CCF conferences.(9) There is no evidence that<br />
Crosland was witting of the CIA connection. (And none<br />
that he was wasn't, either.) Peter Coleman(10) lists<br />
Gaitskell, Jenkins, Crosland, Rita Hinden, Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker, John Strachey, Dennis Healey and<br />
Roderick Macfarquhar as Labour writers published in<br />
Encounter. In 1960 editor Melvin Lasky wrote to fellow<br />
CCF officer, John Hunt, referring to 'an enormous<br />
friendly feeling for Encounter' in the centre and<br />
right wing of the Labour Party.(11) <br />
<br />
The revisionist wing of the Labour Party also had<br />
Forward, the less glamorous (and poorer) Labour<br />
weekly, set up to combat the influence of Tribune.<br />
Money for Forward came from Alan Sainsbury, Chairman<br />
of the retailers Sainsbury (whose son was to fund the<br />
Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s), Henry<br />
Walston, the land-owner, and the restaurateur, Charles<br />
Forte.(12) There was also the $3000 'expenses' paid<br />
made to Hugh Gaitskell for a talk to the Jewish Labour<br />
Committee in the USA.(13) <br />
<br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary<br />
As well as Encounter and Forward there was the monthly<br />
Socialist Commentary as a vehicle for the<br />
anti-socialists in the Labour Party. Socialist<br />
Commentary began life as a journal of an obscure<br />
revisionist group of German refugees but by the early<br />
1950s it had been absorbed by the revisionist wing of<br />
the Labour Party. In 1953 a 'Friends of Socialist<br />
Commentary' group was set up with Gaitskell as<br />
Treasurer.(14) 'Socialist Commentary and the Socialist<br />
Union were plugged in direct to the USA's Marshall<br />
Plan operation in Britain by virtue of the fact that<br />
William Gausmann, Labour Information Officer in the<br />
London mission, was a member of the journal's<br />
editorial board.'(15) <br />
<br />
The dominant figure in Socialist Commentary was its<br />
editor for 20 years, Rita Hinden, who had been<br />
co-founder of the Fabian Colonial Bureau in 1940. The<br />
Bureau, and Hinden in particular, became an important<br />
influence on the thinking of the Labour Party - and,<br />
to some extent of the British state - on post-war<br />
management of the empire.(16) Hinden was also a<br />
participant in CCF functions, wrote for Encounter, and<br />
was described by the CIA officer in charge of CCF,<br />
Michael Josselson, as 'a good friend of ours', on<br />
whose advice the CIA 'relied heavily ...for our<br />
African operations.'(17) On her death Denis Healey,<br />
who had written widely for Socialist Commentary's<br />
American counterpart, New Leader, said that 'Only Sol<br />
Levitas of the American New Leader had a comparable<br />
capacity for exercising a wide political influence<br />
with negligible material resources.' But as Richard<br />
Fletcher commented, 'He [Healey] obviously hadn't paid<br />
a visit to Companies House whose register shows that<br />
in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing<br />
on a capital reserve of over �75.000.'(18) (Healey was<br />
apparently also unaware that Sol Levitas was also<br />
taking the CIA shilling.) <br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary has got to be CIA but there is<br />
not a shred of direct evidence that I am aware of. <br />
<br />
<br />
The social democratic network<br />
By the mid 1950s there was a palpable social<br />
democratic network operating in and around the Labour<br />
Party in Britain and reaching out into the British and<br />
American states, both overt and covert. The career of<br />
Saul Rose in this period illustrates this. After<br />
wartime service in Army Intelligence, Rose was a<br />
lecturer at Aberdeen University, before becoming the<br />
Labour Party's International Secretary for three<br />
years. He then moved to the then recently established<br />
St Antony's College at Oxford, one of two British<br />
institutions which sponsored Congress of Cultural<br />
Freedom seminars in the UK. The other was Ditchley<br />
Manor, Oxford. Both were outposts of the Foreign<br />
Office/MI6 network.(19) (Former MP Dick Taverne,<br />
mentioned recently that as as young man he went to a<br />
Young Fabian conference at the other major Foreign<br />
Office country retreat, Wilton Park....(20)) <br />
<br />
The same elements are visible in the contributors to<br />
the short-lived Fabian International Review, begun in<br />
1953. In its three years its contributors included two<br />
academics from St Antony's, Gausmann, the Labour<br />
Information Officer at the US embassy in London,<br />
Douglas Jay, William Rodgers, and Mary Benson of the<br />
Africa Bureau.(21) <br />
<br />
It is easy at this distance to be indignant about<br />
Labour politicians hobnobbing with the CIA. But in<br />
1955, say, when Saul Rose left his job as Labour's<br />
International Secretary, the media simply did not<br />
discuss the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services. There were Americans with money scattered<br />
about the higher reaches of the Labour movement in<br />
Britain; but Americans with money had been scattered<br />
about Britain since the war years, they had been<br />
Britain's allies only a few years before, they were<br />
anti-Stalinist - and some of them, the labour officers<br />
in one guise or another, were originally from the US<br />
labour movement.(22) I think it likely that in the<br />
1950s the Labour revisionists, the Hindens and<br />
Croslands, believed they were taking part in a<br />
'liberal conspiracy'(23) against the Soviet Union,<br />
with progressive, democratic forces - people they<br />
perceived to be like themselves. But from the CIA's<br />
point of view, they were being run in one of the most<br />
successful psy-war operations of the Cold War. This<br />
operation had as one of its aims the struggle against<br />
Stalinism; but the Americans sponsored and funded the<br />
European social democrats not because they were social<br />
democrats, but because social democracy was the best<br />
ideological vehicle for the major aim of the<br />
programme: to ensure that the governments of Europe<br />
continued to allow American capital into their<br />
economies with the minimum of restrictions. This aim<br />
the revisionists in the Labour Party chose not to look<br />
at. As the history of US imperialism since the war<br />
shows, the US is basically uninterested in the<br />
ideology of host governments, and has supported<br />
everything from social democrats to the most feral,<br />
military dictatorships in South and Central America.<br />
But its other aims went largely unrecognised. (This,<br />
perhaps, is a tribute to the skill of the US personnel<br />
running the operations.) Looking at the networking of<br />
the social democrats in the these post-war years, the<br />
intimacy between US labour attache, Joe Godson, and<br />
Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, which once looked so<br />
extraordinary, now looks less some awful aberration -<br />
and triumph for Godson - than business as usual. <br />
<br />
<br />
The end-of-ideology ideology<br />
The strategically important thing for the United<br />
States about the revisionist's version of socialism<br />
was its central conclusion that ownership of economic<br />
assets was no longer of paramount importance. (In the<br />
USA, sociologist Daniel Bell was arguing the same<br />
thesis, sponsored by the same people, under the rubric<br />
of 'the end of ideology'.) This was obviously the key<br />
line for US capital which wanted to penetrate the<br />
world's markets and was meeting resistance from people<br />
who called them imperialists. Officially the US was<br />
also opposed to colonialism - especially British and<br />
French; imperialism - especially British;<br />
totalitarianism (except where dictators were the best<br />
allies US business could find) and nationalism -<br />
except Americanism, which was a universal creed of<br />
such perspicacity and moral purity as to be beyond<br />
objection. The one to take seriously among that<br />
quartet is nationalism. In democratic Europe the CIA<br />
chiefly funded those who were not nationalists. To US<br />
capital, socialism was functionally simply a form of<br />
exclusionary, anti-American, economic nationalism:<br />
communism the most extreme of all.(24) The<br />
internationalists in democratic Europe in the<br />
immediate post-war years were, mostly, on the liberal<br />
or centre left; the European right was, mostly,<br />
nationalist. In France De Gaulle opposed US capital.<br />
(And the CIA was to help finance the OAS against him.)<br />
In Britain it was the nationalist Tories and some of<br />
the socialist left who voted against the Marshall Plan<br />
in the House of Commons. The US government only had<br />
one operating criterion where a foreign government was<br />
concerned: is it willing to allow US capital in or<br />
not? It was called anti-communism, but it was also<br />
anti-nationalism. Yes, it was precisely 'Taking the<br />
teeth out of British socialism', as Richard Fletcher<br />
put it in his seminal piece in 1977;(25) but it could<br />
just as accurately have been called 'Taking the teeth<br />
out of British economic nationalism'. <br />
<br />
The US-supported drive by the revisionists in the<br />
Labour Party had its first major set-back with the<br />
rise of CND, climaxing with the famous narrow majority<br />
in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the<br />
party conference in 1960. To the Gaitskellites in the<br />
Labour Party it was little more than another communist<br />
conspiracy. Gaitskell's leadership of the party had<br />
largely been defined by the struggle with the left<br />
(real and imaginary), and he believed the CPGB had<br />
infiltrated the Labour Party, and was manipulating the<br />
apparently Labour Left gathered round the newspaper<br />
Tribune.(26) The Gaitskellites' response to the 1960<br />
resolution had three dimensions: the formation of a<br />
party faction, the Campaign for Democratic Socialism<br />
(CDS); in the unions, the work of IRIS cells and other<br />
anti-communist groups; and the use of the party<br />
machine itself. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS)<br />
While the Gaitskellites dominated the PLP leadership,<br />
and had the support of the major unions, they had<br />
socialist opposition among the party's members.<br />
Gaitskell needed a faction. What became the Campaign<br />
for Democratic Socialism began before the pro-CND<br />
Labour Party conference resolution in February 1960<br />
when William Rodgers, Secretary of the Fabian Society,<br />
a part of the social democratic network in the UK,<br />
organised a letter of support for Gaitskell from<br />
prospective parliamentary candidates. Among the<br />
fifteen who raised their heads above the parapets in<br />
this way were: <br />
<br />
* Maurice Foley, who had been secretary of the British<br />
section of the European Youth Campaign from<br />
1951-59,(27) and later became a Foreign Office<br />
Minister and trustee of the Ariel Foundation; (28) <br />
* Ben Hooberman, a lawyer involved in the ETU<br />
ballot-rigging case;<br />
* Bryan Magee, who subsequently became a Labour MP and<br />
then joined the SDP;<br />
* Dick Taverne, who later stood against the Labour<br />
Party as 'Democratic Labour' and joined the SDP;<br />
* Shirley Williams, one of the 'Gang of Four', who<br />
founded the SDP; <br />
<br />
Shortly after, a steering committee, containing<br />
Crosland, Jenkins and Gordon-Walker, was set up with<br />
Rodgers as chair. The group began working on a<br />
manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell's<br />
defeat in the forthcoming defence debate at the Party<br />
conference. On 24 November 1960, after the narrow<br />
defeat for Gaitskell's line at the conference, this<br />
group announced itself as the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism, with Rodgers as chair.(29) Immediately<br />
after the formation of CDS, after his speech at<br />
Scarborough Gaitskell 'consulted Sarah Barker [the<br />
party's National Agent] who advised him that the<br />
Campaign could have his distant blessing'.(30) <br />
<br />
It set up permanent headquarters, officially 'financed<br />
by contributions from individual members of the Labour<br />
Party'. Ever since the Richard Fletcher article on CDS<br />
et al in 1977 there have been questions about how this<br />
operation was funded. In mid November 1960 - i.e. a<br />
fortnight after the launch - Rodgers 'reported to the<br />
steering committee that many small donations had been<br />
received, together with a large sum from a source who<br />
wished to remain anonymous.' As we saw above, Charles<br />
Forte donated money to the founders of Forward, and in<br />
his autobiography he quotes a letter from Gaitskell,<br />
thanking him for his financial generosity. This is<br />
undated unfortunately, but from the context it is 1961<br />
or thereabouts.(31) <br />
<br />
This donation, whatever it was, enabled CDS to have<br />
'field workers in the constituencies and unions, whom<br />
it supported with travelling expenses, literature and<br />
organisational back-up, and other publications, plus a<br />
regular bulletin campaign, circulated free of charge<br />
to a large mailing list within the movement. And all<br />
this was produced without a single subscription-paying<br />
member.'(32) John Diamond was the CDS fund-raiser.(33)<br />
<br />
<br />
A 1961 letter in CDS Campaign announced support from<br />
45 MPs including Austen Albu (who wrote for IRIS),<br />
Crosland, Diamond (who joined the SDP), Donnelly<br />
(Desmond), who resigned in '68; Roy Jenkins (founder<br />
and leader of the SDP), Roy Mason, Christopher Mayhew<br />
(who joined the Liberals) and Reg Prentice (who joined<br />
the Tories).(34) The following year were added new MPs<br />
William Rodgers (another of the 'Gang of Four') and<br />
Dick Taverne (who defected as a Democratic Labour MP,<br />
later SDP) The Gaitskellites' historian, Stephen<br />
Haseler noted, 'The whole Central Leadership of the<br />
Party in Parliament, with the single exception of<br />
Wilson, were Campaign sympathisers.'(35) In the<br />
party's grassroots their significance is harder to<br />
assess but a 1962 study found that CDS did have some<br />
measurable effect in swinging perhaps as many as 1 in<br />
3 of the Constituency Labour Parties in which they<br />
were active.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
In the unions<br />
Working in some of the unions were clandestine<br />
anti-communist groupings, the best known of which was<br />
the AEU's 'club', and IRIS discussed above.(37) One of<br />
the people bridging the gap between the parliamentary<br />
and trade union wings of the movement was Charles<br />
Pannell, Secretary of the Parliamentary Trade Union<br />
Group of MP's and an AEU-sponsored MP.(38) Pannell<br />
told the American academic Irving Richter, of his<br />
'close relationship' with the General Secretary of the<br />
AEU, Cecil Hallett,(39) and of their combined efforts<br />
to defeat the Left in the industrial and political<br />
wings of the movement, by building IRIS 'cells'.<br />
Pannell told Richter that he, Hallet, and the IRIS<br />
cells working inside the AEU, were crucial in<br />
overturning the AEU's 1960 vote for CND and so<br />
restoring Labour Party's policy to being pro-nuclear,<br />
pro-NATO.(40) Birmingham MP Denis Howells 'devoted<br />
himself full time from the beginning of the Campaign<br />
until his reelection to Parliament and then after that<br />
part time to reversing the votes in the Trade<br />
Unions....[and] played a very important part.'(41) <br />
<br />
After the 1960 Party conference 20 members of the TUC<br />
General Council signed a statement supporting NATO.<br />
Four of them, James Crawford, Harry Douglass, John<br />
Boyd and Sid Greene, were or were to become, officers<br />
(on paper, at any rate) of IRIS: a fifth, Sir Tom<br />
O'Brien, was still on the notepaper of Common Cause.<br />
There were public gestures of support for CDS from<br />
messrs Carron, Williamson and Webber, Ron Smith (Post<br />
Office Workers), Dame Flora Hancock, Anne Goodwin, W.<br />
Tallon and Jim Conway (both AEU), and Joe Godson's<br />
friend, the NUM's Sam Watson.(42) <br />
<br />
<br />
Using the party organisation<br />
A committee 'consisting of the Party Leader, the Chief<br />
Whip, Bill Rodgers, the secretary of the right-wing<br />
ginger group the Campaign for Democratic Socialism,<br />
and other influential figures' was formed and met<br />
regularly 'to secure the selection of right-wing<br />
candidates for winnable constituencies'.(43) Professor<br />
George Jones, who had also been in CDS, commented that<br />
'the relationship between CDS and the regional<br />
organisers of the Labour Party was very<br />
important.'(44) The CDS had the support of at least<br />
half of the Regional Organisers, though how many is in<br />
dispute. Seyd suggests seven out of the party's<br />
twelve. Shaw thinks that Seyd must have got this wrong<br />
because one of the seven was left-winger Ron Hayward,<br />
who denies it.(45) CDS organiser Bill Rodgers said<br />
that the regional organisers <br />
<br />
<br />
'were fairly well disposed, including the youngest of<br />
them who was called Ron Hayward, was very keen to have<br />
CDS making a contribution in the areas in which he was<br />
responsible..... We believed that the party could be<br />
saved from itself and Hugh Gaitskell offered the best<br />
prospect of saving it. Once we had established that<br />
thought in the minds of the regional organisers, they<br />
acquiesced in what we did.'(46) <br />
<br />
<br />
Partnership of the two wings<br />
There are glimpses of the two wings of the labour<br />
movement working together. Cecil Hallett described a<br />
meeting between IRIS and the Trade Union Group of MPs<br />
in 1955 addressed by the CIA's labour man in Europe,<br />
Irving Brown.(47) CDS member Bernard Donoughue<br />
recalled how <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the summer of 1964, the MP for Finsbury died and I<br />
was telephoned by a friend, a left-wing journalist,<br />
and told that I must watch out, that there had been a<br />
meeting of key left-wing people and they had decided<br />
to capture Finsbury. They had a candidate, they had<br />
approached a number of people in the constituency,<br />
they had 27 votes, the candidate was going to be Clive<br />
Jenkins. I contacted one or two friends and the list<br />
of CDS people in Finsbury, including the Post Office<br />
and Telegraph Union people and they organised very<br />
actively. It emerged that the left, despite its<br />
incompetence,(sic) had their candidate and had 27<br />
potential votes. CDS campaigned in the constituency<br />
and we won by 31 to 27, that was the summer of<br />
1964.'(48) <br />
<br />
In the recollection of the candidate concerned, Clive<br />
Jenkins, it was 1963. He was 'approached by a number<br />
of trade unions and ward Labour parties to stand for<br />
selection'. At the TUC at Blackpool he was tipped off<br />
that the General Management Committee of the<br />
Shoreditch and Finsbury constituency had been sent a<br />
document which described him as, among other things,<br />
the 'chief Trotskyist in Great Britain'. This had been<br />
given to journalists by none other than Jim Matthews,<br />
the national industrial officer of the Municipal and<br />
General Workers Union, and an officer of Common Cause.<br />
Jenkins sued, collected damages and costs and later<br />
speculated about a CIA connection: <br />
<br />
<br />
'I was told by reliable friends that the anonymous<br />
letter, which had been mailed to every member of the<br />
selection committee came from a man who was seemingly<br />
a member of the CIA and operating under the cover of a<br />
petty news agency.'(49) <br />
<br />
It is interesting to see Donoughue referring to 'the<br />
Post Office and Telegraph Union people'. I presume he<br />
means the Union of Post Officer Workers, one of the<br />
British unions with which the CIA is known to have<br />
worked in the 1960s. In the 1950s Peter D. Newell was<br />
an active member of the Socialist Party of Great<br />
Britain. He worked as a draughtsman but wanted a<br />
change of career. It was suggested to him that he join<br />
the Post Office Initially not keen on what he saw it<br />
was a downward move, he has recalled how 'quite subtly<br />
(I now realise) it was suggested that once in the PO,<br />
I would soon be able to write forThe Post , the<br />
official fortnightly journal of the UPW [Union of Post<br />
Office Workers] - and be paid for it!'(50) He duly<br />
joined the Post Office, was contacted by Norman Stagg,<br />
the editor of the journal almost immediately, and<br />
began writing an anonymous, anti-communist column for<br />
it under the by-line of 'Bellman'. For his column<br />
Stagg provided source material from the ICFTU, IRIS<br />
and the AFL-CIO. At the time the Union of Post Office<br />
Workers was a member of the trade union international<br />
body Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International.<br />
(PTTI) Like many of the these international trade<br />
union organisations, the PTTI was penetrated - some<br />
would say run - by the CIA.(51) Its president was the<br />
late Joe Beirne of the Communication Workers of<br />
America. Beirne was also founder and<br />
Secretary-Treasurer of American Institute for Free<br />
Labor Development (AIFLD), created and run by the<br />
CIA.(52) As far as it is possible to be sure of<br />
anything in this field without a confession from the<br />
man himself or his case officer, Joe Beirne was a<br />
major asset of the CIA in the American and world<br />
labour movements.(53) <br />
<br />
<br />
Social democratic centralism<br />
What Eric Shaw wittily calls social democratic<br />
centralism, the attempt by the right to police the<br />
entire Labour Party and trade union membership, peaked<br />
in 1962. In March 1961 five MPs, including Michael<br />
Foot, were expelled from the Parliamentary party for<br />
voting against the Tory government's defence<br />
estimates. The Gaitskellites repulsed the<br />
unilateralists at the annual conference that year; and<br />
in the Labour Party its 'personnel committee', the<br />
organisational subcommittee, was dominated by Ray<br />
Gunter MP(54) and George Brown, a 'CIA source', and<br />
serviced by the Party's National Agent's Department,<br />
which received its information from IRD and others.<br />
Then things went wrong. Determined upon a final purge<br />
of the Parliamentary party, George Brown approached<br />
MI5, via the journalist Chapman Pincher, for evidence<br />
of Soviet links to Labour MP's believed to be 'fellow<br />
travellers'. But MI5 declined, apparently because<br />
afraid that to do so would reveal their sources within<br />
the PLP;(55) and then, with the Macmillan government<br />
in what appeared to be terminal decline, Gaitskell<br />
died suddenly and the right in the Parliamentary Party<br />
- and the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services - saw the party leadership slip from the<br />
Gaitskellites' hands as Harold Wilson won the<br />
leadership election - and then the general election of<br />
1964. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
1. There is no detailed examination of this as far as<br />
I know and I am not even sure how many such programmes<br />
were run. Roy Hattersley recently commented that his<br />
first visit to the US was paid for by 'something which<br />
was laughingly called The Young Leaders' Program'. The<br />
Guardian, 27 February 1995. In his memoir, A Bag of<br />
Boiled Sweets (Faber and Faber, 1995) pp. 77-8, the<br />
Conservative MP, Julian Critchley describes how, upon<br />
letting the Tory Party Whips know that he had never<br />
been to the United States, he was immediately fixed up<br />
with a six week freebie courtesy of the US embassy in<br />
London.<br />
2. Carew p. 137<br />
3. Ibid. pp.189/90. The British trade union whose<br />
leadership responded most enthusiastically to these<br />
American overtures was the General and Municipal<br />
Workers' Union (GMWU) and it 'provided from among its<br />
leading officials half the British participants in the<br />
university trade union courses at Harvard and<br />
Columbia...' Ibid. p. 191. GMWU General Secretary, Tom<br />
Williamson, was one of the participants at the first<br />
meeting of the Bilderberg Group in 1954. (Eringer p.<br />
49) Other British participants included Hugh Gaitskell<br />
and Dennis Healey, who discusses the Bilderberg<br />
meetings in his memoir, The Time of My Life.<br />
4. Smith, OSS p. 368.<br />
5. Lasch p. 332 The 1951 CCF conference in Delhi was<br />
explicitly a reply to a 'World Peace Conference'<br />
sponsored by the Soviet Union.<br />
6. Dittberner p. 112. Mr Coleman's objectivity on this<br />
matter can be seen by his description of CIA officer,<br />
Irving Brown, as 'European representative of the AFL',<br />
the cover story even the Americans have abandoned.<br />
Coleman p. 34.<br />
7. Later a member of the editorial board of the<br />
Catholic magazine,The Tablet This is the Hollis family<br />
in Hollis and Carter, the Catholic publishers of the<br />
Common Cause Bulletin.<br />
8. Coleman p. 110 'Finally, Lasky moved Encounter<br />
closer to the Hugh Gaitskell wing of the British<br />
Labour Party.... Encounter became one of the principal<br />
publications in which C.A.R. Crosland developed his<br />
"revisionist" social democratic, Keynesian program'.<br />
Coleman p. 185<br />
9. Hirsch and Fletcher pp. 59 and 60. Labour Party<br />
leader Hugh Gaitskell attended the conferences in in<br />
1955, 57, 58 and 62.<br />
10. p. 73<br />
11. Coleman p. 185. Roy Jenkins, splendidly<br />
insouciant,on Encounter: 'We had all known that it had<br />
been heavily subsidised from American sources, and it<br />
did not seem to me worse that these should turn out to<br />
be a US Government agency than, as I had vaguely<br />
understood, a Cincinnati gin distiller.' Jenkins,<br />
Life, p. 118<br />
12. Francis Williams p. 309<br />
13. '...which helped him underwrite the costs of<br />
Forward.' Carew pp. 129 and 30<br />
14. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 68<br />
15. Carew p. 245<br />
16. The Bureau 'enjoyed a direct and amiable<br />
relationship with the Colonial Office, its advice was<br />
always considered if not always followed.' Pugh p.<br />
222. Another commentator's assessment was that<br />
'Officials at the Colonial Office came to respect her<br />
knowledge, judgement and persistence.' Labour MP and<br />
fellow Bureau member, W. Arthur Lewis, quoted in the<br />
entry on Hinden in the Dictionary of Labour Biography,<br />
vol. 2, Macmillan 1974.<br />
17. She visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored<br />
trip after the Suez crisis. Fletcher in Agee, Dirty<br />
Work p. 195<br />
18. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 67. This �75,000 must be be<br />
'the small capital grant (a modest bequest) on which<br />
it had so far survived' in the account of Desai.<br />
Commenting on the closure of Socialist Commentary in<br />
1978, Desai writes (p. 174) that it 'had always<br />
operated on a shoestring budget which had to be<br />
supplemented by the dedication and persuasive power of<br />
Rita Hinden, its editor for most of its life'. �75,000<br />
was a lot of money in the mid 1970s when Fletcher<br />
found this out. The accounts of Socialist Commentary<br />
were prepared by the accountancy practice of John<br />
Diamond MP, one of the leading Gaitskellites, who<br />
later joined the SDP and is now in the House of Lords.<br />
He was also, for example, the Honorary Treasurer of<br />
the Labour Committee for Europe. See Finer, Appendix<br />
2. In this latter role John Campbell in his biography<br />
of Roy Jenkins, p. 51, states that Diamond was<br />
'charged with raising money that did not come from the<br />
City of London.<br />
19. Coleman p. 260 for the CCF connection. St<br />
Antony's, Richard Deacon wrote in his The British<br />
Connection, was 'an unofficial annex of MI6 in the<br />
fifties.' p. 259<br />
20. Dick Taverne, Institute for Historical Research<br />
(IHR) Witness Statement on CDS, 1990, p. 8<br />
21. Of the Africa Bureau, Anthony Verrier wrote:<br />
'liberal, UK-based....on which [Colonial Secretary]<br />
Macleod relied greatly for detailed background<br />
intelligence on African independence movements. Unlike<br />
some liberal organisations, the Africa Bureau was<br />
never troubled by the attentions of the security<br />
services or the Metropolitan Special Branch.' Verrier,<br />
The Road to Zimbabwe, p. 335. From an old SIS hand<br />
like AV, this is running up a flag and shouting<br />
'spook'.<br />
22. There had been contacts between the British TUC<br />
and the U.S. labour movement ever since the late 19th.<br />
century. See Marjorie Nicholson pp. 27 and 28. These<br />
contacts were sufficiently intimate for Sir Walter<br />
Citrine to work with senior figures from the US AFL in<br />
one of the many front groups set up by British<br />
intelligence to persuade US public opinion to support<br />
the war in Europe. Mahl, thesis, p. 75.<br />
23. The title of Coleman's study of CCF.<br />
24. The best exposition of this thesis is in Fred. L.<br />
Block.<br />
25. Richard Fletcher, 'Who Were They Travelling with?'<br />
in Hirsch and Fletcher.<br />
26. For this latter belief, to my knowledge, the<br />
Gaitskellites produced no evidence. Some of the Labour<br />
Right proved incredibly gullible when it came to this<br />
'communist conspiracy', accepting as genuine the most<br />
obvious forgeries. See for example pp. 224-6 of Jack<br />
and Bessie Braddock's memoir The Braddocks,<br />
(Macdonald, London, 1963) for a particularly choice<br />
example, passed to them by J. Bernard Hutton, who<br />
fronted several such forgeries. Who produced the<br />
forgeries? We do not know, but my guess would be IRD.<br />
27. This was funded by the CIA, though Foley has<br />
denied knowing this. See Bloch and Fitzgerald p. 106<br />
28. On Ariel see ibid pp. 151-2 and Kisch pp. 67-8.<br />
29. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 211<br />
30. David Marquand, IHR CDS Witness Statement, 1990,<br />
p. 6. At the same seminar Bill Jones noted 'the<br />
importance of Philip Williams...Philip had a fantastic<br />
network of MPs'. IHR CDS Witness Statement, p. 13<br />
31. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62. See Forte p. 81 where<br />
Gaitskell writes, 'things have gone remarkably well<br />
inside the Party. And for this a very large amount of<br />
credit must go to our friends in the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism, which you have helped so<br />
generously.' (emphasis added.)<br />
32. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62<br />
33. Windlesham p. 107<br />
34. Haseler p. 217<br />
35. Ibid p. 219<br />
36. Driver p. 97 citing Political Quarterly.<br />
37. There are odd traces of such groupings elsewhere:<br />
In Labour's Northern Voice in May 1969 Chris Norwood<br />
MP reported on the the 'Progressive Labour Group' in<br />
the shop-workers' union, USDAW, originally formed to<br />
fight communists but still operating and producing<br />
lists of approved candidates, the core activity of<br />
such a caucus.<br />
38. Windlesham fn 3 p. 82<br />
39. Hallett was on the Common Cause council in the<br />
fifties.<br />
40. Richter pp. 144 and 5<br />
41. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 14<br />
42. Windlesham p. 109<br />
43. Shaw Discipline p. 114<br />
44. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 24<br />
45. Shaw fn 150, p. 331<br />
46. Rodgers, IHR, CDS Witness Statement p. 25<br />
47. Richter p. 151. George Brown, according to Tom<br />
Bower's recent biography of Sir Dick White, was a 'CIA<br />
source'. See p. 356<br />
48. Bernard Donoughue, IHR CDS pp. 23/24<br />
49. Jenkins pp. 49-51. I asked Jenkins about this in<br />
1995 but he was unable to remember further details.<br />
50. Letter to author, 25 May 1990.<br />
51. See Agee, CIA Diary p. 618<br />
52. Newell was introduced to Beirne at the UPW<br />
conference at Blackpool. Newell wrote of this episode<br />
in his life in <br />
Freedom, September 25 1976, and more recently in<br />
Perspectives number 9, 1995. On the late Joseph Beirne<br />
and CIA see Counterspy, February 1974 pp. 42 and 43<br />
and May 1979 p.13, and Agee CIA Dairy, p. 603.<br />
53. On AIFLD see Fred Hirsch 'The Labour Movement:<br />
Penetration Point for U.S. Intelligence and<br />
Transnationals' in Hirsch and Fletcher, and 'The<br />
AFL-CIA' by former US Air Force Intelligence officer<br />
Winslow Peck in Frazier (ed.).<br />
54. In 1968 he became a director of IRIS.<br />
55. It also possible, of course, that they declined<br />
because they had no such information, either because<br />
none existed, or because they were too incompetent to<br />
collect it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The subversion hunters and the social democrats in the<br />
1970s<br />
The arrival of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour<br />
Party must have been a serious shock to the<br />
Anglo-American intelligence services. One minute the<br />
party was in the complete control of a faction which<br />
they had been promoting - 'running' would be too<br />
strong - since about 1950, and the next the party, and<br />
the second most important part of the NATO alliance,<br />
is in the hands of someone who has spent the post-war<br />
years going to and from Moscow as an East-West trader!<br />
<br />
<br />
The rise of the left in the Labour Party and trade<br />
union movement, symbolised by the ascent of Wilson,<br />
was being monitored by IRD and its satellites, the<br />
Economic League, IRIS, Common Cause - and by Brian<br />
Crozier, who raised the alarm in the 1970 collection<br />
he edited, We Will Bury You..(73) Working the same<br />
seam - presumably for different sponsors - was former<br />
Army officer and Conservative MP, Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith. In Stewart-Smith's journal, East-West<br />
Digest, in 1972, for example, we find the names who<br />
appeared in Crozier's 1970 anthology: Harry Welton of<br />
the Economic League, who had been in the anti-left<br />
business for 'fifty fighting years', to cite the title<br />
of the League's in-house history, and David Williams,<br />
the main writer for the Common Cause Bulletin.(74) <br />
<br />
<br />
The abolition of the proscription list<br />
Anxiety among the subversive-watchers heightened<br />
throughout the Heath years as the insurrection in<br />
Northern Ireland continued and conflict with the<br />
labour movement on the mainland UK increased, and<br />
leapt enormously with the abolition of the<br />
Proscription List of the Labour Party in 1973. Most of<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time seems to<br />
have barely noticed its abolition, so insignificant<br />
did the event seem. Of the various members of the<br />
Wilson governments who have published memoirs or<br />
dairies covering this period, only Tony Benn thought<br />
it an event worth recording.(75) But to the<br />
subversion-watchers it showed the extent of the CPGB's<br />
influence in the Labour Party. Chapman Pincher at the<br />
Daily Express, for example, one of the outlets for the<br />
anti-subversion lobby, wrote nearly twenty years later<br />
that 'the left-wing extremists who had infiltrated the<br />
National Executive of the Labour Party induced the<br />
1973 Party conference to abolish the Proscribed list.'<br />
(emphases added)(76) But to what end? Pincher tells us<br />
it 'meant that even MPs could join the World Peace<br />
Council, the British-Soviet Friendship Society and<br />
other outfits run essentially for the benefit of<br />
Moscow.'(77) But these never amounted to much in the<br />
1950s, and meant less than nothing in 1973. It was<br />
precisely because those groups meant so little that<br />
the list was abolished as an anachronism.(78) <br />
<br />
For the subversion hunters the Proscription List<br />
disappearing was one more event in a bad year, for<br />
1973 also saw the first assault on IRD by the rest of<br />
the more detente-minded Foreign Office.(79) The next<br />
year saw the Heath government's defeat at the hands of<br />
the National Union of Mineworkers, in some part due to<br />
a CPGB sympathiser named Arthur Scargill. By mid 1974<br />
the anti-subversive chorus were all singing from the<br />
same page and the theory of Soviet control through the<br />
CPGB, through the trade unions, through the Labour<br />
Party, was being broadcast by everything from the Tory<br />
press to the activists with connections in the<br />
intelligence services and the military.(80) This is<br />
the background to the cries and alarums of 1974/5, the<br />
talk of military coups and the formation of<br />
semi-clandestine 'action groups' and militias by,<br />
inter alia, former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, and the late David Stirling. The<br />
trade unions were at the heart of the<br />
subversive-hunters' theory, with the AEU the most<br />
important of them. When David Stirling's grandiose<br />
Better Britain-GB75 plans were 'blown' prematurely in<br />
1974, he abandoned them and joined forces with<br />
TRUEMID, another group of anti-socialist former AEU<br />
officials. (TRUEMID is discussed below.) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA)<br />
Within the Labour Party itself there was activity to<br />
combat the rise of the left. On the party political<br />
axis two latterday Gaitskellites, Stephen Haseler and<br />
Douglas Eden, in 1975 formed the Social Democratic<br />
Alliance (SDA) and began the struggle with the left in<br />
local London politics. (81) Over the next three years<br />
the SDA, and Haseler in particular, received much<br />
favourable newspaper coverage for their accounts of<br />
the subversives' takeover of the Labour Party and<br />
trade unions, much of it fanciful in the extreme.(82)<br />
For example on the publication of his book, The Death<br />
of British Democracy, Haseler wrote in The Times (29<br />
April 1976) that 'we may now be on the verge of an<br />
economy which will remove itself from the Western<br />
trading system by import controls, strict control of<br />
capital movements and eventually non-convertability of<br />
the currency. At home this will involve rationing, the<br />
direction of capital and labour and the final end of<br />
the free trade union movement'; and in 1980, among the<br />
Labour MPs Haseler and the SDA proposed to put up<br />
candidates against, were those well-known<br />
revolutionaries Stan Orme, Clive Soley, Neil Kincock<br />
and Geoff Rooker! (83) Among the SDA's early<br />
supporters was Peter Stephenson, then the editor of<br />
Socialist Commentary. <br />
<br />
<br />
And the AEU<br />
July 1974 saw the formation, with Common Cause<br />
funding, of the Trade Union Education Centre for<br />
Democratic Socialism (TUECDS), which described itself<br />
as 'an independent trade union education body run by<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists for<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists'.(84) TUECDS was<br />
launched in November 1974 with a lecture by the SDA's<br />
Dr Stephen Haseler. The personnel involved in the<br />
early stages of TUECDS's life were members of the AEU,<br />
notably John Weakley, and the building workers' union<br />
UCATT. Among those who had been attending the first<br />
year's meetings were UCATT officials, AEU officials,<br />
David Moller, a journalist from the Readers' Digest,<br />
then still one of the most important psy-war outlets<br />
for the CIA, the widow of Leslie Cannon, Lord Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker and Kate Losinska, then recently elected<br />
president of the civil service union, the CPSA.(85) <br />
<br />
More former AEU officials, Ron Nodes, Sid Davies and<br />
Ron McLaughlin, were involved in the formation of<br />
TRUEMID, (the Movement for True Industrial Democracy<br />
or the True Movement for Industrial Democracy, it's<br />
been called both), launched in 1975 with finance from<br />
a variety of industrial and City enterprises.(86)<br />
TRUEMID did was IRIS had done: it tried to influence<br />
the election of union officials by putting out<br />
information about the supposed left in the union.<br />
TRUEMID's activities were chiefly focused on the AEU,<br />
the civil service union the CPSA and the electricians<br />
union, the EETPU. David Stirling, after the collapse<br />
of his GB 75 and Better Britain plans, was recruited<br />
onto the TRUEMID council.(87) <br />
<br />
Also reappearing in this period was the some time US<br />
Labour Attache to Britain, Joseph Godson who, though<br />
formally retired, had returned to the UK in 1971 and<br />
continued with his labour attache work - pushing out<br />
US views and interests among the British trade union<br />
movement, and selecting trade unionists for freebies<br />
to the US. Godson was a founder member of the Labour<br />
Committee for TransAtlantic Understanding (LCTU), the<br />
labour section of the British Atlantic Committee, a<br />
NATO support group.(88) In May 1976 LCTU began the<br />
Labour and Trade Union Press Service (LTUPS). On the<br />
LTUPS editorial committee was the ubiquitous Peter<br />
Stephenson, editor of the Gaitskellite Socialist<br />
Commentary, and one of the early members of the Social<br />
Democratic Alliance. Treasurer of the LTUPS was<br />
General Secretary of the EEPTU, Frank Chapple, and its<br />
chair was Bill Jordan of the AEU.(89) <br />
<br />
<br />
Europe<br />
The social democratic wing of the Labour Party had two<br />
key positions: British membership of NATO and<br />
retention of British nuclear weapons, and membership<br />
of the EEC. After the defeat of CND at the Labour<br />
conference of 1961 it was European Economic Community<br />
(EEC) membership which became their great cause. With<br />
this achieved with the EEC referendum vote 'yes' in<br />
1975, when it came to the ideological struggles within<br />
the Labour Party in the mid and late 1970s, in David<br />
Marquand's words, 'they lost the battle of ideas with<br />
the Left by default ....they really didn't fight the<br />
battle of ideas.' <br />
<br />
Support for EEC membership within the Labour Party had<br />
been formally organised first in 1959 by the Labour<br />
Common Market Committee (founders Roy Jenkins, Jack<br />
Diamond and Norman Hart), which became the Labour<br />
Committee for Europe in the mid 1960s. European unity<br />
had been one of the projects favoured by the USA,<br />
looking for good anti-Soviet alliances in the early<br />
post-war era, and the European Movement had been<br />
funded by the Agency.(90) As well as receiving the<br />
support of the US, in the 1960s Gaitskellites Roy<br />
Jenkins, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers were<br />
among the regular attenders of the annual Anglo-German<br />
Konigswinter conferences.(91) This time the social<br />
democrats were being supported by the British Foreign<br />
Office, which had decided by then that their future<br />
lay in the Common Market. <br />
<br />
The CDS, the Gaitskellites, never accepted Wilson as<br />
the legitimate leader of the Labour Party and plotted<br />
constantly against him. The personnel of the<br />
Gaitskellites, the Labour Committee on Europe and the<br />
CDS were virtually identical.(92) In the 1960s it was<br />
the CDS that Harold Wilson identified as the group<br />
working against him.(93) When the group formally broke<br />
up it continued as a dining club, the 1963 Club. In<br />
the early 1970s Tony Benn identified them as 'the old<br />
Campaign for Democratic Socialism-Europe group'.(94) <br />
<br />
In 1970 the election of the Heath government meant<br />
that another serious effort to get Britain in the EEC<br />
would be made and the issue would divide the Labour<br />
Party then in opposition. In early 1971 Tony Benn's<br />
diary records him talking - with Roy Jenkins - of the<br />
Common Market issue splitting the Labour Party.(95)<br />
Ten months later, on October 19, after a pro- and<br />
anti- clash in the Shadow Cabinet, Benn commented on<br />
the emergence of 'a European Social Democrat wing in<br />
the Parliamentary Party led by Bill Rodgers.'(96) This<br />
group formally announced itself on 28 October 1971<br />
when 69 pro-Market Labour MPs voted with the<br />
Conservative government in favour of entry into the<br />
EEC in principle. From then on the group operated as a<br />
party within a party, with William Rodgers acting as<br />
an unofficial whip.(97) <br />
<br />
<br />
A new social democratic party?<br />
The leadership of the Parliamentary Gaitskellite<br />
faction had fallen to Roy Jenkins, and as early as<br />
1970 some of that group has begun trying to get him to<br />
lead the formation of a new party.(98) After the<br />
Europe vote in 1971 Dick Taverne and Bill Rodgers went<br />
to Jenkins and told him they should resign and form a<br />
new party.(99) Jenkins declined. Taverne's selection<br />
for the Lincoln seat had been organised by the<br />
pro-CDS, pro-Europe, Labour Party regional organiser<br />
for the area, Jim Cattermole.(100) In December 1972 MP<br />
Taverne, at odds with his constituency party, and<br />
about to be deselected, decided to fight them and<br />
suggested again that Jenkins leave and form a new<br />
party. Jenkins declined.(101) In 1973, after winning<br />
the Lincoln by-election as a Democratic Labour<br />
candidate, against the official Labour Party<br />
candidate, Taverne formed the Campaign for Social<br />
Democracy and sought Jenkins' support. Jenkins<br />
declined.(102) That year, however, helped by Sir Fred<br />
Hayday, former chair of the TUC, and Alf Allen, future<br />
chair of the TUC, Jenkins did 'set up an institutional<br />
framework' with moderate trade union leaders - a<br />
regular dining group in the Charing Cross Hotel.(103) <br />
<br />
In December 1974 the Manifesto Group was formed within<br />
the PLP. Described by Barbara Castle as 'a group of<br />
middle-of-the-road and right-wing Labour MPs [which]<br />
had been meeting to discuss how to counter the growing<br />
influence of the left-wing Tribune group of MPs',(104)<br />
its chair was Dr Dickson Mabon, its Secretary was John<br />
Horam, now (1995) a Tory Minister, and two of its most<br />
active members were CDS enthusiasts David Marquand and<br />
Brian Walden.(105) <br />
<br />
In the third Wilson government, formed in 1974, the<br />
Jenkins group in cabinet was down to 'a beleaguered<br />
minority of four', to use Jenkins' words, Jenkins,<br />
Harold Lever, Shirley Williams and the late Reg<br />
Prentice.(106) In his memoir Jenkins describes<br />
Prentice as 'a man of flat-footed courage who had<br />
emerged in the previous two years [i.e. 1973 and 74]<br />
out of the rather stolid centre of the Labour Party<br />
into....my most unhesitating ally in the<br />
Cabinet.'(107) Throughout 1974-5 Prentice was moving<br />
right very quickly and his speeches began to reflect<br />
this. In 1975 Prime Minister Wilson took exception to<br />
one of them, and 'More out of enlightened<br />
self-interest than generosity', as he put it, Jenkins<br />
told Wilson that if Prentice was sacked from the<br />
cabinet he would also go.(108) Shortly afterwards<br />
Wilson called Jenkins' bluff and shifted Prentice to a<br />
junior ministry post outside the Cabinet proper.<br />
Jenkins resolved to resign, tried to take Shirley<br />
Williams and Harold Lever with him in resignation -<br />
only to find that while he was ready now, Harold Lever<br />
was not.(109) <br />
<br />
In Jenkins' memoir there are some wistful remarks on<br />
'1975 as a great missed opportunity for Heath and<br />
Whitelaw and a whole regiment of discarded<br />
Conservative "wets" as much for Shirley Williams and<br />
Steel and me.'(110) Jenkins was looking back on the<br />
1975 Common Market referendum campaign during which he<br />
found it more congenial working with pro-EEC Tories<br />
and Liberals than he did with the left-wing of his own<br />
party. It would not be hard to imagine that left-wing<br />
Tories like Heath and Whitelaw found Jenkins more<br />
congenial than some of the right-wing yahoos then<br />
gathering on the Tory Party's fringe;(111)and there is<br />
a large hint in Mrs Thatcher's second volume of<br />
memoirs, that some kind of realignment was attempted<br />
on the back of the referendum.(112) <br />
<br />
In December 1976 Prentice was discussing how to bring<br />
down the Callaghan government with, inter alia, Tory<br />
MPs Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan, and<br />
Gaitskellite Labour MP's Walden and the late John<br />
McIntosh.(113) Haseler, whose information on this<br />
comes from Prentice's diaries, tells us that, 'For<br />
some years past the arguments for a realignment had<br />
been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative<br />
Party who had been close to Macmillan.'(114) Prentice<br />
may have thought he was discussing bringing down the<br />
government with Parliamentary colleagues, but in this<br />
context they had other, more interesting, connections.<br />
Amery was a former SIS officer and a friend of the<br />
former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late George Kennedy<br />
Young, who was then machinating against the Labour<br />
government with his Unison Committee for Action.(115)<br />
Maurice Macmillan had been a director of one of the<br />
IRD front companies and had also been involved in the<br />
attempt in the mid 1974 to launch a government of<br />
national unity to prevent the reelection of Harold<br />
Wilson. Prentice proposed that Jenkins form a<br />
coalition with Margaret Thatcher as leader but, on<br />
Prentice's account, haunted by memories of 1931 and<br />
the fate of Ramsay MacDonald, not surprisingly, once<br />
again Jenkins declined.(116) <br />
<br />
When Harold Wilson resigned in 1976, Jenkins stood for<br />
leader of the Labour Party, lost, and went off to<br />
Brussels as President of the EEC. Jenkins bailed out<br />
at a good time, for the pro-Common Market wing of the<br />
Labour Party was losing the fight against the left in<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party - while constantly<br />
talking about quitting and forming a new party. In<br />
1977 the Campaign for a Labour Victory, 'in many ways<br />
a resurrection of the of the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism', was launched.(117) William Rodgers' PA was<br />
one of the chief organisers and it set up its office<br />
in the HQ of the EETPU.(118) Its full-time organiser<br />
was Alec McGivan who became the first full-time worker<br />
for the SDP, four years later. <br />
<br />
Around Jenkins in exile gathered some of the<br />
Gaitskellites. Mike Thomas, a Labour and then SDP MP:<br />
'there in fact were a group of people working with Roy<br />
Jenkins outside parliament, most of whom were known to<br />
many of us, friends of ours, some who were less well<br />
known, in the SDA or elsewhere'.(119) In November<br />
1979, after Jenkins' had been given the Dimbleby<br />
Lecture on BBC TV in which to more or less announce<br />
his intention of forming a social democratic party,<br />
businessman Clive Lindley and London Labour Councillor<br />
Jim Daley, both of whom had been active in the<br />
Campaign for Labour Victory,(120) set up the Radical<br />
Centre for Democratic Studies, 'a press cutting and<br />
information service on the political scene in Britain'<br />
- and a support group for Jenkins.(121) <br />
<br />
Finally a group met to discuss forming the new party.<br />
From the SDA there was Stephen Haseler; from Roy<br />
Jenkins' UK support group, Clive Lindley and Jim Daly;<br />
David Marquand, Jenkins' his PA in Brussels, and Lord<br />
Harris, who had been Jenkins' PR man in the<br />
1960s.(122) The last stop on their way out of the<br />
Labour Party for these social democrats was the<br />
formation of the Council for Social Democracy in 1981.<br />
<br />
<br />
Soon after the Social Democratic Party launch, issue<br />
52 of the now defunct radical magazine The Leveller<br />
had as its cover story: 'Exposed:the CIA and the<br />
Social Democrats'. The author was Phil Kelly, one of<br />
the journalists who had exposed Brian Crozier's<br />
Forum/CIA links, who had been the recipient of the<br />
leaked documents from inside the Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict, and had led the campaign to prevent<br />
the Labour government expelling former CIA officer,<br />
Philip Agee. For his temerity Kelly had been labelled<br />
a 'KGB man' in briefings given by MI5, one of which<br />
was foolishly committed to paper by Searchlight editor<br />
Gerry Gable.(123) Kelly's article went over some of<br />
the ground covered in this essay, but though the CIA<br />
was visible in the connection to the Congress for<br />
Cultural Freedom and Forum World Features, the piece<br />
otherwise failed to justify its billing. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
73. The charge that these groups were IRD 'satellites'<br />
is difficult to substantiate. None of their personnel<br />
has, to my knowledge, every admitted it. However, all<br />
these groups have published material which, in my<br />
view, could only have come from the state - and I<br />
presume that IRD was the proximate conduit. Take, for<br />
example, the Economic League's 'Notes and Comments'<br />
series. In No. 895, 'The New Face of Communism', there<br />
is material quoted from Yugoslav radio and TV and<br />
Radio Moscow. The Economic League, presumably, did not<br />
have its own monitoring service.<br />
74. East-West Digest mostly consisted of large chunks<br />
of blind (authorless), extremely detailed, apparently<br />
pretty accurate material on the British Left: reports<br />
on meetings and conferences; documents and journals<br />
analysed.<br />
75. Benn entry for 11 June 1973.<br />
76. Pincher 1991 p. 113.<br />
77. Ibid.<br />
78. The important group on that list was the then<br />
minute Revolutionary Socialist League which was to<br />
spend the next decade penetrating the Labour Party as<br />
the Militant Tendency.<br />
79. Crozier calls this 'the IRD massacre', but points<br />
out that IRD had grown to become the largest single<br />
Foreign Office department. See Crozier pp. 104-8.<br />
80. From the likes of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky we<br />
have learned that the KGB were unaware that they were<br />
apparently on the verge of controlling the Labour<br />
Party through the trade unions.<br />
81. Patrick Wintour in the New Statesman, 25 July<br />
1980: 'three of [Frank] Chapple's closest union<br />
colleagues, including his research assistant, have<br />
been active in the Social Democratic Alliance'. <br />
<br />
Crozier notes in his memoir that he first met the<br />
SDA's Douglas Eden at one of the early sessions of the<br />
National Association for Freedom. 'The NAF was<br />
supposed to be strictly non-party, and the presence of<br />
a long-time Labour man, as Eden was, emphasised this<br />
aspect of its work.' p. 147<br />
82. See, for example, Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1977,<br />
The Times, 29 April 1976, and Daily Mail, 9 August<br />
1979.<br />
83. See 'Moderates drive to challenge 11 Labour MPs',<br />
Daily Telegraph,1 February 1980.<br />
84. This is from the only TUECDS document I have seen,<br />
a progress report dated May 12, 1975.<br />
85. TUECDS is discussed by Paul Foot in Socialist<br />
Worker, 1 November 1975.<br />
86. Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry claims the<br />
credit for introducing Stirling to Ron Nodes. See his<br />
obituary notice on Stirling in the Independent, 17<br />
November 1990. Some of the TRUEMID funding is given in<br />
'The bosses' union' in Leveller 17, 1978, and the most<br />
detailed account of the organisation is in Hoe ch. 24.<br />
87. See 'The Company They Keep', Monica Brimacombe, in<br />
the New Statesman, 9 May 1986. Paul Foot in the piece<br />
cited in note 12 states that TRUEMID had six permanent<br />
full-time staff and three temporary full-time staff.<br />
88. see also State Research no. 16, pp. 68-74 and no.<br />
17 pp. 95 and 96, and Sunday Times, 17 February 1980.<br />
It was later funded by the US government's National<br />
Endowment for Democracy.<br />
89. Jordan was later to be among the founders of<br />
another 'moderate' caucus in the trade unions in the<br />
1980s, Mainstream.<br />
90. The Movement's youth wing, the European Youth<br />
Movement, had as its secretary Maurice Foley, one of<br />
the Gaitskellites. See 'The CIA backs the Common<br />
Market' by Weissman, Kelly and Hosenball in Agee ed.<br />
Dirty Work.<br />
pp. 201-3.<br />
91. Bradley p. 52<br />
92. With a number of important qualifications. Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, for example, was not pro EEC membership.<br />
93. Dorril and Ramsay p. 188<br />
94. Ibid.<br />
95. Entry for 13 January 1971, pp. 324-5 of Office<br />
Without Power<br />
96. Benn ibid. p. 381. Benn also added in that<br />
paragraph: 'When I heard Charlie Pannell say that for<br />
him Europe was an article of faith, he put it above<br />
the Labour Party and above the Labour Movement, I was<br />
finally convinced that this was a deep split.'.<br />
Pannell was AEU, Common Cause, Catholic.<br />
97. Bradley p. 53<br />
98. 'Dick Taverne recalls a meeting of pro-Marketeers<br />
in his flat to discuss tactics as early as June 1970.'<br />
Ibid.<br />
99. Ibid. pp. 53/4<br />
100. Shaw, Discipline, p. 108. In the 'witness<br />
seminar' on the CDS, p. 24, David Marquand referred to<br />
'the great barony of Jim Cattermole'.<br />
101. Ibid. p. 55<br />
102. Jenkins in his memoir on 1973: 'Excluding the<br />
possibility of forming an independent party, which at<br />
that stage neither I nor my supporters were remotely<br />
prepared for...' p. 360 (emphasis added).<br />
103. Jenkins p. 354. In the CDS 'witness seminar", p.<br />
27, William Rodgers stated that CDS had a 'very close<br />
working relationship with Fred Hayday of the General<br />
and Municipal Workers'.<br />
104. Castle Diaries p.156<br />
105. Bradley p. 60. With the exception of Giles Radice<br />
and George Robertson, both GMWU/GMB-sponsored, the<br />
whole of the active leadership of the Manifesto Group<br />
subsequently defected to the SDP.<br />
106. Jenkins p. 427<br />
107. Ibid. p. 419<br />
108. Jenkins tells us that he sent this message<br />
through the Prime Minister's Principal Private<br />
Secretary, Robert Armstrong, thus - deliberately or<br />
not - informing the Whitehall establishment. Ibid. p.<br />
420<br />
109. Ibid. p. 422<br />
110. Ibid. pp. 425-6<br />
111. On 14 October 1975 Tony Benn records in his<br />
diary: 'Robert Kilroy-Silk, Labour MP for Ormskirk,<br />
told me that �2 million had been left unspent by the<br />
pro-Market lobby and it was a fund of which the<br />
trustees were Heath, Thorpe and Jenkins....the rumour<br />
was that if Wilson moved too far to the Left they<br />
would use the money to set up a new party.'<br />
112. See The Path to Power, p. 331.<br />
113. Haseler, Battle for Britain, pp. 59 and 60<br />
114. Ibid.<br />
115. The best account of Unison is in Dorril and<br />
Ramsay.<br />
116. Prentice thus managed to misunderstand - and<br />
insult - both Jenkins and Mrs Thatcher.<br />
117. Bradley p. 59<br />
118. 'How Frank Chapple says on top', New Statesman,<br />
25 July 1980<br />
119. CDS Seminar p. 50<br />
120. Owen p. 457<br />
121. Bradley p. 73<br />
122. Ibid. David Marquand on Haseler; 'Haseler's<br />
invective is all working class... He's invented a<br />
history of a sort of populist radicalism, Norman<br />
Tebbitry in a way, ....I remember being involved in a<br />
television thing in the early 1970s on Europe where he<br />
opposed it on a sort of proletarian, solidarity,<br />
populist-nationalist ground.' Desai pp. 10-11 fn. 11<br />
123. This is the so-called Gable memo, first revealed<br />
in the New Statesman, 15 February 1980 and reprinted<br />
in full, for the first time, in Lobster 24. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
The Crozier operations<br />
Running through much of this activity in the 1970s was<br />
Brian Crozier who had been warning about the rise of<br />
the British Left since the late 1960s. Crozier takes<br />
us back to the CIA operation the Congress for Cultural<br />
Freedom (CCF) discussed in chapter five. The CIA<br />
control of the CCF and the magazine Encounter began to<br />
be threatened with exposure in 1963 when, reviewing an<br />
anthology from the magazine, Conor Cruise O'Brien<br />
wrote that 'Encounter's first loyalty is to America';<br />
and an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph referred to a<br />
secret and regular subvention to Encounter from 'the<br />
Foreign Office'.(124) The next year, after a US<br />
congressional inquiry into private foundations found<br />
that some had received donations from the CIA, the New<br />
York Times set journalists to work on the story. From<br />
that point on exposure of the CIA fronts, which were<br />
funded by some of these private foundations, was<br />
inevitable. <br />
<br />
<br />
Forum World Features<br />
Faced with this impending exposure, the CCF/CIA began<br />
to take action. The Congress's press agency was<br />
detached, reorganised and renamed Forum World<br />
Features, and Crozier was appointed its director in<br />
1965.(125) Crozier claims that 'In 1968 the KGB made a<br />
first attempt to wreck Forum';(126) and perhaps in<br />
anticipation of the day when Forum was 'blown', with<br />
other personnel from the IRD network Crozier set up<br />
the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) between<br />
1968 and 1970.(127) <br />
<br />
<br />
ISC<br />
The first funding came from Shell and BP but then, as<br />
Crozier puts it, 'the Agency [CIA] now came up with<br />
something bigger', and put him in contact with the<br />
American multi-millionaire, anti-communist Richard<br />
Mellon Scaife, who duly came up $100,000 p.a. for<br />
ISC.(128) <br />
<br />
ISC commissioned and published reports and began<br />
briefing the UK military and police establishments on<br />
the Crozier view of the Soviet threat to Britain.(129)<br />
Crozier became a founder member of the National<br />
Association for Freedom (NAFF), whose launch was timed<br />
to coincide with publication of the dystopian<br />
disinformation in The Collapse of Democracy by his<br />
ally and colleague at ISC, Robert Moss. The<br />
unfortunately acronymed NAFF was a gathering of the<br />
anti-subversive and pro-capital propaganda groups such<br />
as Aims of Industry, and, almost immediately became<br />
the major focus of the British Right. It absorbed the<br />
remnants of the 1974/5 civilian militias, and began<br />
series of psy-war projects against the left and the<br />
unions which prefigured much of what was to come in<br />
the Thatcher government.(130) <br />
<br />
<br />
Shield and the Pinay Circle<br />
At the same, Crozier's voice was being heard in<br />
Shield, a committee of former intelligence officers<br />
and bankers, who, in the absence of IRD, prepared<br />
briefings on the alleged communist threat for the then<br />
leader of the Tory Party, Mrs Thatcher.(131)Crozier<br />
was also a member of the transnational psy-war outfit,<br />
the Pinay Circle, working alongside senior<br />
intelligence, military and political figures from the<br />
NATO countries,(132) was working with US Senate<br />
Subcommittee on International Terrorism,(133) and<br />
launched the apparently still-born US Institute for<br />
the Study of Conflict.(134) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Wilson plots<br />
Because hard information on the covert operations of<br />
this period came first from Colin Wallace, a member of<br />
the British Army's psychological warfare unit in<br />
Northern Ireland, in whose narrative the 'bad guys'<br />
were MI5, and from Peter Wright, who had been an MI5<br />
officer, those of us who began researching this period<br />
in 1986 and after began by looking for MI5<br />
operations.(135) In fact three British intelligence<br />
agencies had an iron in the fire of the mid 1970s<br />
crisis. There was a group of MI5 officers, led by<br />
Peter Wright, who were plotting against the Wilson<br />
government and, for example, trying to use the<br />
Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland to spread<br />
disinformation about Wilson and other British<br />
politicians whom MI5 regarded as 'unsound';(136) there<br />
was also a group of ex SIS and former military<br />
officers, led by former SIS number two, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, operating as the Unison<br />
Committee for Action;(137) and there was the<br />
Crozier-IRD subversion-watcher network. <br />
<br />
The detente with the Soviet Union was the background.<br />
In the UK it provided the context for IRD to be<br />
reigned back. In the US, in the wake of Watergate and<br />
the subsequent revelations of CIA activities in the US<br />
and abroad, and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976,<br />
there was a purge in the CIA. To Crozier and others of<br />
his ilk detente was a farce - a Soviet deception<br />
operation - and these intelligence cuts a catastrophe.<br />
(In their worst imaginings they were the result of<br />
Soviet operations.) <br />
<br />
<br />
Private sector intelligence agencies?<br />
Into the breach stepped Crozier and a group which<br />
included ex SIS officer Nicholas Elliot and US General<br />
Vernon Walters. They created 'a Private Sector<br />
Operational Intelligence agency' and named it 6I - the<br />
Sixth International(138) - and found funding in the US<br />
Heritage Foundation. Crozier began publishing<br />
newsletters, Transnational Security, and British<br />
Briefing, his own version of the IRD briefings on<br />
British subversion which had been curtailed in 1974<br />
upon the election of the Labour government. British<br />
Briefing was financed by the Industrial Trust, edited<br />
by Charles Elwell, 'soon after retiring from MI5', and<br />
published by IRIS.(139) <br />
<br />
What had begun a quarter of a century before as an<br />
anti-communist caucus among the AUEW's senior<br />
officers, had ended up fronting for Britain's leading<br />
anti-socialist psychological warfare expert. I do not<br />
know when British Briefing was first published, but<br />
the issue which began to circulate on the left in the<br />
early 1990s, number 12, was published in 1989, at<br />
which time IRIS's directors included Sir John Boyd<br />
CBE, General Secretary of the AEU 1975-82, Lord<br />
(Harold) Collinson CBE, General Secretary of the<br />
National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers from<br />
1953-69, and W. (Bill) Sirs, General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation from 1975-85.(140)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The union leaders and the spooks<br />
The IRIS-Crozier-British Briefing set-up sums up much<br />
of what I have been trying to tease out. Three<br />
anti-socialist, senior trade union leaders fronted the<br />
clandestine production of an anti-socialist bulletin,<br />
written and edited by former intelligence officers,<br />
financed by British capital.(141) This anti-socialist<br />
mechanism also involved the connivance of the Charity<br />
Commission which allowed the Industrial Trust to<br />
operate in a breach of the charity laws,(142) another,<br />
non-charitable trust, the Kennington Industrial<br />
Company, and personnel from large numbers of British<br />
companies which funded it. (The money went to the<br />
Industrial Trust which passed it on to Kennington,<br />
which passed it on to IRIS; thus enabling the<br />
Industrial Trust to cling on to its charitable - and<br />
tax deductible - status.) <br />
<br />
If this was still being funded in 1989, after 15 years<br />
of Thatcherism and the fall of the Soviet Empire, how<br />
big was this anti-socialist structure in, say, 1975?<br />
Or 1965? Our knowledge of the whole operation while<br />
greater now than ever, is still pretty limited,<br />
despite the revelations about the Economic League in<br />
the past ten years. For example, Aims of Industry is<br />
thought of as simply a propaganda organisation. But it<br />
is not so; at least it was not always so. In 1990 the<br />
Aims Director, Michael Ivens, wrote: <br />
<br />
<br />
Once, when Aims of Industry was rather more flexible<br />
than it is now, we put a member of our staff into a<br />
factory, at the request of the management, to prevent<br />
a far-left take over.' (143) <br />
<br />
Another part of this anti-socialist network is British<br />
United Industrialists (BUI), one of the funnels<br />
through which British companies pour money into the<br />
Conservative Party and other groups on the right. In<br />
1985 BUI's then director, Captain Briggs, told a<br />
researcher I know who wishes to remain anonymous, who<br />
was posing as a right-winger, that BUI were then<br />
funding the Solidarity group of Labour MPs, the Union<br />
of Democratic Mineworkers and the right-wing faction<br />
in the Civil and Public Servants Association<br />
(CPSA).(144) <br />
<br />
The Labour Left has never really grasped just how<br />
central, how commonplace a function of British<br />
capitalism it has been to fund its opponents. This<br />
knowledge has remained largely confined to Labour<br />
Research and pockets within individual unions. (It is<br />
hardly surprising that the Labour Party has never<br />
shown much interest in this as it would have<br />
embarrassed some of its biggest supporters in the<br />
trade unions.) <br />
<br />
By 1980 Crozier seems to have gone some way towards<br />
replacing IRD's anti-subversive role by his own<br />
efforts; and, with the election of Mrs Thatcher, he<br />
and Robert Moss abandoned the National Association for<br />
Freedom (by then renamed the Freedom Association) and<br />
concentrated on the USA and the wider Soviet 'threat'.<br />
<br />
<br />
It is impossible to evaluate the significance of<br />
psychological warfare projects. Was the barrage of<br />
anti-union propaganda put out by the<br />
subversion-watchers in the period 1972-79 as<br />
significant as the so-called Winter of Discontent in<br />
its effect on public opinion in Britain? How effective<br />
Crozier was, I don't know. He seems to think he had<br />
quite a hand in the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.<br />
In one of the planning papers written by Crozier for<br />
his 'transnational security organisation', he wrote: <br />
<br />
'Specific Aims within this framework are to affect a<br />
change of government in <br />
<br />
<br />
(a) the United Kingdom - accomplished......'(145)<br />
<br />
<br />
Grandiose nonsense? Perhaps. Crozier has never been<br />
taken as seriously in this country by the London<br />
media-political establishment as he has has been<br />
abroad, and his memoir was hammered by most of its<br />
reviewers.(146) But this, for example, was the view of<br />
a German intelligence officer, the source of the Der<br />
Spiegel pieces, of Crozier in November 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The militant conservative London publicist, Brian<br />
Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been<br />
working with his diverse circle of friends in<br />
international politics to build an anonymous action<br />
group(147) "transnational security organisation", and<br />
to widen its field of operations. Crozier has worked<br />
with the CIA for years. One has to assume, therefore<br />
that they are fully aware of his activities....' <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
124. Coleman p. 186. In this context 'the Foreign<br />
Office' is a euphemism for MI6.<br />
125. In his 1993 memoir Crozier acknowledges the CIA<br />
connection. See pp. 63-5. But he had denied it as late<br />
as 1990, in his review of Coleman's history of the<br />
CCF. See 'A noble mess' in The Salisbury Review,<br />
December 1990.<br />
126. Crozier p. 75<br />
127. With a Council including Max Beloff,<br />
Major-General Clutterbuck, Sir Robert Thompson and<br />
Hugh Seton-Watson.<br />
128. Crozier p. 90.<br />
129. See the documents leaked - or stolen - from ISC<br />
published in Searchlight 18, 1976, and Crozier pp. 121<br />
and 2<br />
130. Crozier acknowledged the psy-war role in his<br />
memoir. See page 118. <br />
131. Shield employed as its researchers Peter Shipley,<br />
who ended up in the Conservative Party Central Office<br />
in time for the 1987 election, and Douglas Eden,<br />
co-founder of the Social Democratic Alliance. But<br />
Stephen Hastings has a slightly different version from<br />
Crozier. See Hastings p. 236.<br />
132. On Pinay see David Teacher's pieces in Lobsters<br />
17 and 18. Crozier more or less gave a nod of approval<br />
to these accounts by citing them, without criticism,<br />
in his memoir. See note 3 facing p. 194. Among the<br />
Pinay personnel were ex CIA director Colby, ex-SIS<br />
officers Julian Amery and Nicholas Elliot, and Edwin<br />
Feulner from the Heritage Foundation.<br />
133. Crozier pp. 123-4<br />
134. US ISC is missing from his memoirs. It was<br />
formally launched in 1975, chaired by George Ball,<br />
with a line-up which included Richard Pipes and Kermit<br />
Roosevelt. See Document 3 in Searchlight 18.<br />
135. Hence Lobster 11, 'Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of<br />
Thatcher'.<br />
136. This is discussed at length in Foot, Who Framed<br />
...<br />
137. It was Young and Unison, for example, who<br />
initiated General Sir Walter Walker's Civil<br />
Assistance.<br />
138. Crozier pp. 134-6. Six 'I', says Crozier, because<br />
there had already been 5 'internationals'. 'The fourth<br />
International was the Trotskyist one, and when it<br />
split, this meant that on paper, there were five<br />
Internationals.' p. 136<br />
139. On the Industrial Trust see Black Flag, 15 August<br />
1988 which reproduced the Trust's accounts for 1986/7;<br />
and on the IRIS connection to British Briefing, and<br />
Elwell's role, see the Observer, 16 December 1990,<br />
'Top companies funded smears through charity', and 23<br />
December 1990<br />
140. Although IRIS was still publishing its little<br />
newsletter, IRIS News, in 1989, compared to British<br />
Briefing it was so piffling as to be little more than<br />
a cover story. Collinson and Boyd are dead and Sirs<br />
did not respond to my questions<br />
141. In 1986/7 twenty eight British companies gave<br />
money to the Industrial Trust, including BP, Bass,<br />
Unilever, ICI, Cadbury Schweppes and Grand<br />
Metropolitan. Industrial Trust accounts filed with<br />
Charity Commissioners were reproduced in Black Flag,<br />
15 August 1988.<br />
142. See 'Breach of charity rules justified' in the<br />
Guardian,7 February 1991.<br />
143. Sunday Telegraph (Appointments) 4 February 1990<br />
144. I reported this first in footnote 93 on p. 43 of<br />
Lobster 12 in 1986. I received no reaction to what I<br />
thought was a rather explosive allegation. Kevin<br />
McNamara MP, when I told him of this, replied that the<br />
UDM hardly needed money as they had inherited the<br />
considerable wealth of the old 'Spencer' union formed<br />
in the 1920s.<br />
145. Originally published in Der Spiegel no 37, 1982,<br />
this was translated by David Teacher and reproduced in<br />
Lobster 17, p. 14.<br />
146. The best review was by Bernard Porter in<br />
Intelligence and National Security, vol. 9, No. 4.<br />
Most of Crozier's projects, says Porter, were<br />
'pointless.'<br />
147. 'Action group', is one of the key terms used in<br />
this field. G.K. Young's Unison was the Unison<br />
Committee for Action, a clear hint to the intelligence<br />
insider as to its intentions. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Was there a 'communist threat'?<br />
The term 'communist' was always flexibly applied by<br />
the anti-socialist groups. The Common Cause and IRIS<br />
reports, for example, went much wider to actually mean<br />
the left, i.e. socialists; and sometimes simply anyone<br />
who opposed those in positions of power.(148)<br />
Nonetheless in a thesis about the political uses of<br />
anti-communism we have to consider whether there was<br />
anything to the 'communist threat', or if it was<br />
simply a red herring dragged across the trail of<br />
British politics. <br />
<br />
On the British Left the question which heads this<br />
chapter would provoke laughter, derision or anger from<br />
many. For some, since 1956 the CPGB has been a<br />
declining, bureaucratic relic, hardly a 'threat' to<br />
anybody.(149) For others merely asking the question<br />
gives credibility to disinformation from the right.<br />
But the fact remains that significant sections of the<br />
British Right, in the propaganda organisations of<br />
capital, the state and the Conservative Party,<br />
believed that the CPGB was part of a global<br />
conspiracy, directed and financed by Moscow, which was<br />
working in the union movement and wider society to<br />
undermine capitalist democracy in Britain. And it is<br />
no longer self-evident that this was complete<br />
nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
Orders from Moscow?<br />
We now know that the CPGB actually was being directed,<br />
to some extent, from Moscow after the war. Bob Darke<br />
was a member of the Party's National Industrial Policy<br />
Committee from the end of the war until 1951, when he<br />
left the Party. He described that committee as 'a<br />
Cominform puppet', receiving instructions, via<br />
visiting French communists, from the Cominform.(150)<br />
In the year Darke quit the Party, 1951, the CPGB<br />
published a landmark policy statement, 'The British<br />
Road to Socialism'. This announced a major shift in<br />
policy in which the British CPGB ceased to base itself<br />
on the Soviet model and would henceforth pursue a<br />
peculiarly British, 'parliamentary road to<br />
socialism'.(151) But in 1991 former CPGB assistant<br />
general secretary, George Matthews, admitted that much<br />
- though precisely how much is still not clear to me -<br />
of the programme contained in the 'British Road to<br />
Socialism' had been written by the Soviet Politburo<br />
and approved by Stalin himself.(152) <br />
<br />
<br />
Moscow gold?<br />
There was 'Moscow gold' - bags of used notes, as well<br />
as the subsidy by virtue of the Soviet Union's bulk<br />
order of copies of the Daily Worker/Morning Star. The<br />
'Moscow gold' claim was regarded as absurd, a state<br />
smear, by most on the British Left, not least by CPGB<br />
members, subjected to endless fund-raising appeals and<br />
newspaper selling, and CPGB employees surviving on the<br />
terrible wages the Party paid its staff.(153) But now<br />
we know that the Soviet Union began sending money to<br />
the British Party after the Hungarian revolt was put<br />
down - apparently to compensate the British Party for<br />
the loss of its membership (and hence membership fees)<br />
incurred by the Party's refusal to condemn the Soviet<br />
invasion. Senior CPGB person, Reuben Falber, would<br />
meet the man from the Soviet Embassy and take delivery<br />
of the bags of used notes. These would be stored in<br />
the loft of Falber's house and then laundered through<br />
the Party's accounts as 'anonymous donations' and the<br />
like. It was as amateurish as that. <br />
<br />
The Moscow money seems to have been used chiefly to<br />
fund the Party's full-time staff. In the 1960s,<br />
despite constantly falling membership, the party<br />
employed a lot of people, 70 according to one source,<br />
including the industrial network,(154) what 1980s CPGB<br />
member Sarah Benton described as 'until the late<br />
1970s, the privileged section of the party'. (The<br />
Moscow subsidy ended in 1979.)(155) <br />
<br />
<br />
Secret Party members?<br />
There were also secret Party members, though how many<br />
there were and what they did is unclear. The existence<br />
of 'secret members', a staple on the right since the<br />
war, appeared most strikingly in Spycatcher in which<br />
Peter Wright recounts how MI5 had found the CPGB<br />
membership files stashed in a rich member's flat and<br />
photographed the whole lot - 55,000 files - in one<br />
weekend, 'with a Polaroid camera'.(156) Wright claimed<br />
that these files also 'contained the files of covert<br />
members of the CPGB..... people who had gone<br />
underground largely as a result of the new vetting<br />
procedures brought in by the Attlee Government'.(157)<br />
Wright's claims were denied by George Matthews, who<br />
had been editor of the Daily Worker and assistant<br />
general secretary of the Party.(158) However Bob Darke<br />
described members, who for 'Personal Security', were<br />
allowed not to reveal themselves as members when the<br />
Party decreed that all members should 'come out' as<br />
CPGB members in the other organisations to which they<br />
belonged.(159) It may be that Wright simply remembered<br />
it wrongly: it was not members who went underground<br />
but who stayed underground. Further, Francis Beckett<br />
reveals (though without a source) the existence of a<br />
hitherto secret section of the Party, the Commercial<br />
Branch, consisting of 'rich members, often Jews...<br />
secret members... important industrialists' (emphasis<br />
added), set up by Reuben Falber in the 1930s, which<br />
apparently survived into the mid 1950s.(160) It<br />
appears that it was partly the loss of the income from<br />
this group after the revelations of anti-semitism in<br />
the Soviet Union and the invasion of Hungary which<br />
forced the Party to go to Moscow for money.(161) <br />
<br />
But some money and instructions from Moscow, though a<br />
striking confirmation in part of the right's theories,<br />
do not in themselves tell us anything about the<br />
influence of the CPGB.(162) (Conspiracies may be small<br />
and ineffectual but nonetheless conspiracies.) And<br />
measuring the influence of an activity with<br />
clandestine aspects, which both the Party and its<br />
opponents have had good reasons to exaggerate, will be<br />
very imprecise at best. <br />
<br />
Initially, post-war, the major focus of the state's<br />
anti-communists seems to have been on the Soviet front<br />
groups - the friendship societies etc. Eric Shaw<br />
mentions that in 1953 the Labour Party's Proscription<br />
List suddenly expanded with information about these<br />
groups assumed to come from 'the Foreign Office [i.e.<br />
IRD] and Special Branch' run through the International<br />
Department of the Party.(163) This focus on the CPGB<br />
front groups seems to be attributable to two things.<br />
If Bower's recent biography of MI5 head Dick White is<br />
accurate, one is the inadequacies of MI5 in the<br />
post-war years.(164) The second is the the locus of<br />
IRD within the Foreign Office network, where, engaged<br />
in a propaganda struggle with the Soviet bloc<br />
overseas, it was thus more interested in pro-Soviet<br />
groups than in activities on the shop-floor. <br />
<br />
The network of pro-Soviet groups is still the focus of<br />
the big IRIS pamphlet in 1957, The Communist Solar<br />
System; but the 1956 pamphlet by Woodrow Wyatt MP, The<br />
Peril in Our Midst was subtitled 'the Communist threat<br />
to Britain's trade unions', and since then it has been<br />
the Party's industrial wing which has received almost<br />
all of the attention - and about which there has been<br />
quite wide agreement, across a broadish political<br />
spectrum.(165) Wyatt in 1956 claimed that the CPGB<br />
controlled the ETU and the Fire Brigades Union, nearly<br />
had control of the AEU and had considerable influence<br />
in the NUM. In 1962 the Radcliffe Committee, set up by<br />
the Macmillan government in the wake of the Vassell<br />
spy case, reported on the apparently extensive Party<br />
control of the civil service unions; and that year the<br />
Conservative MP Aidan Crawley claimed that the CPGB<br />
was strongest in the NUM, building workers and the<br />
AEU, and claimed they were making inroads into the<br />
clerical unions, citing sections of the woodworkers',<br />
the plumbers' and the painters' unions as being under<br />
CP control.(166) Less ideologically interested,the<br />
historian Keith Middlemas saw 'substantial CP<br />
influence in the ETU, Foundry Workers, AEU and the<br />
NUM, especially in Fife and South Wales';(167)and in<br />
his recent history of the Party Francis Beckett<br />
claimed that 'the Party practically had full control<br />
of the Fire Brigades Union, the Amalgamated<br />
Engineering Union, the Foundry Workers and the<br />
Electrical Trades Union'.(168) Though not in<br />
themselves proof of anything - proof would entail much<br />
more detailed analysis of the various unions than I am<br />
capable of - the lists are strikingly consistent over<br />
the period from 1956 to 1994. <br />
<br />
<br />
The struggle for the AEU<br />
One of the recurring themes in the literature, from<br />
the 1950s onwards, is the centrality of the struggle<br />
in the AEU. IRIS was formed by AEU members and was<br />
most active in that union (discussed above). This<br />
concern quickens in the late 1960s and early 1970s as<br />
the left, focused round the publications Voice of the<br />
Unions and Engineering Voice, began to make<br />
progress.(169) It is found, for example, in Brian<br />
Crozier's 1970 anthology We Will Bury You, and in the<br />
1972 IRIS pamphlet In Perspective: Concerning the role<br />
of the Communist Party and its Effectiveness. In David<br />
Stirling's GB75 documents, leaked and printed in Peace<br />
News in August 1974, Stirling's opening paragraph,<br />
'The Objective Summarised', is about the lack of a<br />
contingency plan to 'weather the crucial first 3 or 4<br />
days of a General Strike or one involving the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical<br />
Trades Union.'(170) Shortly after the leak, i.e. late<br />
August 1974, Stirling met Ron McClaughlin and Frank<br />
Nodes, both former AEU officials, who were forming<br />
TRUEMID, the Movement for True Industrial Democracy. A<br />
decade later the AEU was at the centre of former SIS<br />
no. 2, G. K. Young's Subversion and the British<br />
Riposte.(171) <br />
<br />
While CPGB influence in the British unions - and thus<br />
in the Labour Party - was a constant refrain on the<br />
right, before the hysteria of 1974/5 there were only<br />
two occasions in the post-war period when the CPGB was<br />
even semi-seriously alleged to be posing a threat to<br />
the whole economy. The first was the 1948 dock strike.<br />
Charges of communist control were made at the time,<br />
and by senior members of the Labour Government,(172)<br />
but I have seen no evidence to support this claim and,<br />
in its absence, think we can reasonably attribute the<br />
claims to cynical manipulation of the 'red card'<br />
during a period of intense domestic difficulty for the<br />
Attlee government. <br />
<br />
'Cynical manipulation of the red card' has often been<br />
the description of the second occasion, during the<br />
1966 seamen's strike, when Harold Wilson made his<br />
notorious comments in the House of Commons about the<br />
role of the CPGB in the strike, and actually named<br />
CPGB members said to be active in it. This incident<br />
deserves examination. <br />
<br />
<br />
The 1966 seamen's strike<br />
There are two issues here, only one of which, whether<br />
Wilson should have said what he did, usually gets<br />
discussed. Most people, including most of his<br />
colleagues at the time, think it was a tactical<br />
mistake, at best. Peter Shore told Tony Benn that he<br />
thought Wilson's remarks were 'completely bonkers';<br />
and Benn noted in his diary, 'I think I share this<br />
view'.(173) The Labour Left were appalled by Wilson's<br />
behaviour; some by his use of what they perceived as<br />
the 'red card', and others by his use of clandestine<br />
sources of information from MI5 and Special Branch.<br />
For some, this was when they first perceived the<br />
shifty, careerist Wilson, prepared to even play the<br />
anti-communist card, to break the seamen's strike.<br />
This view is powerfully expressed by Paul Foot in his<br />
1967 essay 'The Seamen's Struggle'.(174) <br />
<br />
In his essay Foot says that the 'basic charge' in<br />
Wilson's second statement to the Commons was 'that<br />
certain members of the Communist Party had been<br />
engaging in a desperate battle to extend the seamen's<br />
strike against the will of the NUS members.'(175) In<br />
fact what Wilson said was much more complicated - and<br />
more reasonable - than this suggests.(176) He began by<br />
describing the CP's 'efficient and disciplined<br />
industrial apparatus', and continued that 'for some<br />
years now the Communist Party has had as one of its<br />
objectives the building up of a position of strength<br />
not only in the Seamen's Union, but in other unions<br />
concerned with docks and transport. It engages in this<br />
struggle for power in the Seamen's Union because it<br />
recognises..... that democracy is shallow-rooted in<br />
the union, not only that grievances and exploitation<br />
have festered for many years.' He called it a<br />
'take-over bid'. <br />
<br />
Wilson said the objectives of the CPGB in the strike<br />
were: 'First, to influence the day-to-day policy of<br />
the executive council; secondly, to extend the area of<br />
stoppage' [this is the bit emphasised by Foot] and<br />
thirdly, 'to use the strike not only to improve the<br />
conditions of the seamen - in which I believe them to<br />
be genuine - but also to secure what is at present the<br />
main political and industrial objective of the<br />
Communist Party - the destruction of the government's<br />
prices and incomes policy.' Wilson went on to say that<br />
he knew that the NUS executive committee was dominated<br />
by Joe Kenny and Jim Slater and that, while he knew<br />
neither of them were communists, he knew of their<br />
meetings with CPGB members in the union and the CPGB's<br />
industrial organiser, Bert Ramelson.(177) <br />
<br />
But smashing Wilson's pay policy was the aim of the<br />
CPGB - and just about everybody else on the British<br />
Left and in some of the trade unions. The rest of what<br />
he said amounts to little more than an account of the<br />
routine activities of all left groups in the labour<br />
movement. They try to expand their positions and<br />
influence inside every forum. This is what they do. If<br />
Bert Ramelson et al were not trying to do these<br />
things, CPGB members would be entitled to ask for<br />
their subscriptions back. This is what they were<br />
employed to do. The young Tony Benn also thought<br />
Wilson's statement less than overwhelming. On June 28,<br />
after Wilson' s listing of the CPGB members allegedly<br />
involved in the strike, Benn wrote in his diary that<br />
while the speech made him 'sick' and reminded him of<br />
'McCarthyism', he added: 'In a sense Harold said<br />
nothing that was new, since every trade union leader<br />
knew it.' <br />
<br />
The seamen's strike was a great boost for the CPGB and<br />
for Bert Ramelson who had only taken over as the<br />
Party's chief industrial organiser from Peter Kerrigan<br />
earlier that year. Under Ramelson the Party began<br />
classical 'broad left' campaigns in many of the<br />
unions, run by Party-controlled 'advisory committees'.<br />
Willie Thompson, himself a member of the CPGB, derides<br />
the idea that these committees had any power. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The CP advisory committees...were credited by an<br />
alarmist press with being an organisational framework<br />
through which a tight stranglehold was maintained upon<br />
the country's economic existence; a network through<br />
which flowed intelligence and commands enabling the<br />
Kremlin via King Street to direct its thrusts...For<br />
better or worse the advisories were just that - advice<br />
forums - and their coordinating function even within<br />
the individual area each one covered was weak.' (p.<br />
136) <br />
<br />
<br />
The evidence on this just is not clear: Beckett offers<br />
a different account of these committees. However<br />
Thompson more or less agrees with Beckett's claims<br />
that destruction of the Wilson-Castle trade union<br />
reform proposals, in the 'In Place of Strife'<br />
document, was 'largely a communist triumph and Wilson<br />
knew it';(178) and the latter cites the 1970 dock<br />
strike, the postal strike of 1971 and the miners'<br />
strikes of 1972 as disputes in which the Party played<br />
a significant role. <br />
<br />
In the 1970s, the anti-subversion lobby, orbiting<br />
around IRD, and presumably informally briefed on the<br />
reality of the 'Moscow gold' by MI5, took the picture<br />
of real - and arguably, increasing - CPGB influence on<br />
the trade unions, and added KGB/ Soviet control.To<br />
this theory the Communist Party itself contributed by<br />
occasionally boasting of its influence on the Labour<br />
Party;(179) with the Labour Party itself unwittingly<br />
adding the final touch by abolishing in 1973 the<br />
Proscription List of organisations - mostly the 1950s<br />
Soviet fronts - that Labour Party members could not<br />
join, thus convincing the paranoids on the right that<br />
the mice were in pantry. (180) Unaware of the 'Moscow<br />
gold' evidence, the left dismissed the right's Soviet<br />
angle as manifestly nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
MI5's role<br />
Unaware of the evidence: this is the key point. For<br />
while the members of the CPGB - and the wider public -<br />
knew nothing of the packets of used fivers arriving in<br />
London, we know now that MI5 had been aware of the<br />
Moscow gold run almost as soon as it was begun. We can<br />
start with Peter Wright's memory again. <br />
<br />
<br />
'Then there was the Falber affair. After the PARTY<br />
PIECE operation, MI5 went on the hunt for CPGB files<br />
which listed the secret payments made to the Party by<br />
the Soviets. We suspected that perhaps they might be<br />
held in the flat of Reuben Falber, who had recently<br />
been made cashier of the Russian funds.'(181) <br />
<br />
MI5 knew about the payments, and knew Falber was in<br />
charge of them.(182) All they wanted were the presumed<br />
accounts, the books - the evidence. Wright tells us<br />
that MI5 planned to burgle Falber's flat but their<br />
first plan failed - and leaves it there! To MI5 the<br />
proof of the Moscow Gold must have had something of<br />
the status of the Holy Grail; and we are to believe<br />
that having located it they made only one attempt to<br />
get it? Wright really wants us to believe that for 20<br />
years, aware that the CPGB were getting actual Soviet<br />
cash money, MI5 were either unable to detect the<br />
payoffs in London, or, having made one failed attempt,<br />
just gave up? This is simply not credible. <br />
<br />
In the USA the FBI famously had so many agents inside<br />
the CPUSA as to make the whole enterprise a farce; and<br />
J. Edgar Hoover is quoted by a fairly senior ex FBI<br />
source as having said, 'If it were not for me, there<br />
would not even be a Communist Party of the United<br />
States. Because I've financed the Communist Party, in<br />
order to know what they are doing.'(183) As far as we<br />
know, nothing quite like this happened in the UK. The<br />
large transmitter found attached to the bottom of the<br />
table in the CPGB's central meetings room, displayed<br />
by ex CPGB Central Committee member George Mathews in<br />
the Independent (25 November 1989), illustrates Peter<br />
Wright's claim that 'By 1955....... the CPGB was<br />
thoroughly penetrated at almost every level by<br />
technical surveillance or informants'; and with the<br />
spreading disillusion in the 1950s, climaxed by<br />
Hungary, MI5 can have had no trouble recruiting active<br />
and former party members, like the late Harry Newton,<br />
to inform on the British comrades. <br />
<br />
I do not want to argue that MI5 were running the CPGB.<br />
<br />
<br />
But it did allow the CPGB to run.(184) <br />
<br />
Had the existence of the 'Moscow gold' been revealed<br />
in 1958 or 9, coming after the Soviet invasion of<br />
Hungary, the CPGB would have been terminally damaged.<br />
But for MI5 the 'communist threat' - and the link to<br />
the Soviet Union - was simply too useful a stick with<br />
which to beat the much more important wider labour<br />
movement and Labour Party to be surrendered. The<br />
Soviet connection with the CPGB enabled the Security<br />
Service to portray both unions and the left of the<br />
Labour Party, some of whom worked with the CPGB, as<br />
subversives; and with a subversive minority in its<br />
midst, this enabled the Labour Party as a whole to be<br />
portrayed as a threat to the well-being of the<br />
nation,(185) and thus a legitimate target for MI5.<br />
Reviewing Willie Thompson's history of the Party,<br />
social democrat John Torode (whose father had been a<br />
significant pre-war member of the Party) charged that:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'The [CPGB's] constant encouragement of strikes in<br />
support of unrealistic wage demands, the destruction<br />
of Barbara Castle's union reforms and the coordinated<br />
attempts to capture positions of power in order to<br />
influence Labour Party policy, did much to destroy the<br />
credibility of that party.'(186) <br />
<br />
In one sense Torode is merely saying that the CPGB<br />
tried to use such influence as it had in the trade<br />
unions to frustrate social democratic policies and<br />
build up its own position. Is this not what Communist<br />
Parties always did? But in another way Torode has<br />
missed the point. For the link with the CPGB<br />
discredited the Labour Party because of the CPGB's<br />
perceived connection to Moscow. If Torode's charge is<br />
true - and I think it is to some extent - it was only<br />
possible because MI5 had concealed the Moscow<br />
financial connection and preserved the CPGB as a<br />
significant force on the British Left. <br />
<br />
Since so much of the British Left came either from, or<br />
in opposition to, the CPGB, it is impossible to even<br />
speculate convincingly how the the British Left - or<br />
British Politics - would have developed if the Moscow<br />
gold had been exposed in the late fifties. But it<br />
certainly is possible that the anti-union hysteria of<br />
the late 1970s, leading to the catastrophe of<br />
Thatcherism - and the subsequent collapse of the<br />
Labour Party - could have been avoided. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
148. In 1964, for example, Common Cause issued a<br />
pamphlet naming 180 people in Britain with 'Communist<br />
connections', including Bertrand Russell, Lord Boyd<br />
Orr and the painter Ruskin Spear! See the Sunday<br />
Times, 31 May 1964. 'Big Jim' Matthews of the GMWU was<br />
one of the Common Cause directors who approved the<br />
publication<br />
149. For this view see the memoir by Des Warren, The<br />
Key to My Cell, New Park, London, 1982. One of the<br />
so-called Shrewsbury pickets, imprisoned in 1972,<br />
Warren had been a member of the CPGB, became<br />
disillusioned and joined the Workers' Revolutionary<br />
Party.<br />
150. Darke pp. 59 and 60<br />
151. A CPGB activist at the time, Harry McShane<br />
describes in his memoir how 'overnight we all became<br />
democratic and amazingly interested in Acts of<br />
Parliament.....the idea was that, whereas the old<br />
Industrial Department was concerned with industrial<br />
action, the Labour Movement Department would influence<br />
the Labour Party and the trade unions and change the<br />
character of those bodies....'. McShane p. 246.<br />
152. See Guardian, September 14 1991 and the<br />
discussion in Labour History Review, Vol. 57, no. 3,<br />
pp. 33-5.<br />
153. My parents were both in the CPGB in the 1945-56<br />
period and talked of the burden of trying to sell<br />
Party literature. On the Party's low wages see, for<br />
example, the letter from former Party employee Bill<br />
Brooks in Guardian, 21 November 1991.<br />
154. Independent, 15 November 1991<br />
155. The people I knew of in the CPGB were, on the<br />
whole, well intentioned left democrats who, almost to<br />
a man and woman, became Euro-communists in the 70s and<br />
80s. The impact on the Party of the revelation of<br />
Soviet funding is discussed in detail in Mosbacher.<br />
156. Think of the logistics of this: assuming only one<br />
page per file, for 48 hours, using 1955 technology,<br />
and without disturbing the other tenants in the block<br />
of flats? It seems unlikely to me.<br />
157. Wright, Spycatcher p. 55<br />
158. Beckett p. 138 repeats the denials of Matthews,<br />
attributing it to 'CP officials'.<br />
159. Darke p. 86. On this 'coming out' of concealed CP<br />
members, see the conference report in Labour History<br />
Review, vol. 57, No. 3 Winter 1992, p. 29.<br />
160. Beckett pp. 147-8<br />
161. Evidence of secret CP members also comes from<br />
another Communist Party. In her 1990 autobiography the<br />
Australian feminist, poet and Communist Party<br />
activist, Dorothy Hughes wrote of the period just<br />
after World War 2, when the ACP was under pressure<br />
from the state: 'Peter Thomas, Joan's former husband,<br />
writes leaders for the West Australian and is an<br />
undercover member of the State Committee of the<br />
Party.' (emphasis added) Dorothy Hughes, Wild Card,<br />
Virago, London, p. 122.<br />
162. Other left-wing parties in Britain have received<br />
foreign funding without amounting to anything. The<br />
Workers' Revolutionary Party for example.<br />
163. Shaw, Discipline, p. 59<br />
164. See Bower, The Perfect English Spy, chapter 4<br />
165. The Peril In Our Midst, Phoenix House, London,<br />
1956.<br />
166. The Hidden Face of British Communism, Aidan<br />
Crawley, Sunday Times, October 28 1962, reprinted as a<br />
pamphlet.<br />
167. Middlemas, footnote on p. 414<br />
168. Beckett p. 109. Like the rest of Beckett's book,<br />
this is unsourced but presumably the estimate is from<br />
CPGB members or former members.<br />
169. See Roberts pp. 210-216. IRIS discussed 'Voice'<br />
newspapers in their pamphlet The British 'Left',<br />
August 1970, pp. 18 and 19. The scare quotes round<br />
'Left' are IRIS's.<br />
170. Peace News, special issue, 23 August, 1974.<br />
171. Ossian, Glasgow, no date but circa 1984.<br />
172. This is still believed on the right. See for<br />
example in the obituary of the London CPGB dockers'<br />
leader, Jack Dash, in the Daily Telegraph June 9,<br />
1989. The various dock strikes and the alleged<br />
'communist threat' are discussed in Jim Phillips.<br />
173. Pimlott p. 407<br />
174. In Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.). In that, and in<br />
his book The Politics of Harold Wilson, Foot traces<br />
the origins of the strike back to the smaller 1960<br />
strike and the formation of the National Seamen's<br />
Reform Movement. I discussed Foot's highly selective<br />
account of the origins of the strike in Lobster 25. <br />
<br />
Historian of the CPGB Willie Thompson writes that 'the<br />
Prime Minister indicted the CP (quite inaccurately)<br />
for fomenting and organising the strike....accusing<br />
King Street of having organised it with the deliberate<br />
purpose of inflicting damage on the national economy.'<br />
(emphasis added) p. 137. Actually Wilson did not<br />
accuse the CPGB of deliberately trying to damage the<br />
national economy, and Thompson says nothing more about<br />
the alleged CPGB influence on the strike.<br />
175. Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.) p. 175<br />
176. His statement is reproduced in his The Labour<br />
Government 1964-70 Penguin 1974, pp. 308-11.<br />
177. On this the evidence is incomplete and<br />
contradictory. On the one hand Dr Raymond Challinor<br />
told me that he discussed this with Jim Slater just<br />
before the latter's death, and Slater told him that he<br />
had never met Bert Ramelson, that he had told Wilson<br />
this, and that Wilson had acknowledged that he had<br />
been misinformed. But in his history of the CPGB<br />
Beckett tells us that Slater was part of a 'left<br />
caucus.... people who had a high regard for [CPGB<br />
Industrial Organiser] Ramelson'. Beckett p. 182<br />
178. Beckett p. 175, Willie Thompson pp. 138/9.<br />
179. This is attributed to Ramelson in Seamus Milne's<br />
obituary of him in the Guardian, 16 April 1994.<br />
180. Blake Baker, one of the media experts on the<br />
CPGB, who wrote for the Daily Telegraph for many<br />
years, on p. 96 of his The Far Left wrote of the<br />
subsidies from Moscow: 'No one has ever been able to<br />
produce evidence, let alone prove it. ... All that<br />
would be necessary is a car or a taxicab to collect a<br />
suitcase full of money.' Is Baker hinting here that he<br />
knew about the cash from Moscow and how it was<br />
delivered?<br />
181. Spycatcher p. 175 Falber's account is in Changes,<br />
16-19 November 1991. In it he writes: First, did the<br />
authorities know about it [the Moscow money]? I think<br />
they did.'<br />
182. This suggests either that the CPGB had a<br />
high-level MI5 mole in its ranks who has never been<br />
identified, or that SIS had a hitherto unknown agent<br />
inside the Soviet intelligence apparatus.<br />
183. Summers, p. 191<br />
184. Something similar happened in the United States<br />
where the people who handled the secret Soviet Union<br />
donations to the CPUSA, Morris and Jack Childs, were<br />
actually FBI agents. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics<br />
II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico and Cuba (Green Archive<br />
Publications, Skokie, Illinois, USA 1995), p. 93,<br />
citing David J. Garrow's The FBI and Martin Luther<br />
King (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981).<br />
185. This was a staple of the subversive-hunters in<br />
the mid 1970s. But compare and contrast Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith's Not To Be Trusted: Left Wing Extremism<br />
in the Labour and Liberal Parties of February 1974,<br />
with his 1979 Hidden Face of the Labour Party, 1979.<br />
By 1979 he has added Trotskyist groups in the Labour<br />
Party to the CPGB as 'the threat'.<br />
186. The Independent, 1 October 1992. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Books and articles cited<br />
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* Dorril, Stephen and Ramsay, Robin, Smear! Wilson and<br />
the Secret State, Fourth Estate, London, 1991<br />
* Driver, Christopher, The Disarmers, Hodder and<br />
Stoughton, London, 1964<br />
* Eringer, Robert, The Global Manipulators, Pentacle<br />
Books, Bristol, 1980<br />
* Farr, Lee Barbara The Development and Impact of<br />
Right-wing Politics in England 1918-39, unpublished<br />
PhD thesis, University of Illinois, 1976<br />
* Ferris, Paul, The New Militants, Penguin,<br />
Harmondsworth, 1972<br />
* Finer, S.E., Anonymous Empire; A Study of the Lobby<br />
in Great Britain, Pall Mall, London, 1969 <br />
* Foley, Charles, Legacy of Strife; Cyprus from<br />
rebellion to civil war, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1964<br />
* Foot, Paul, Who Framed Colin Wallace?, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1989<br />
* Foot, Paul, The Politics of Harold Wilson, Penguin,<br />
Harmondsworth, 1968.<br />
* Frazier, Howard (ed.), Uncloaking the CIA, Collier<br />
Macmillan, London, 1978<br />
* Gordievsky, Oleg, Next Stop Execution, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1995<br />
* U.S. Government Printing Office, Foreign Relations<br />
of the United States, Washington DC, 1977 <br />
* Hamilton, Willie, Blood on the Walls, Bloomsbury,<br />
London, 1992<br />
* Harrod, Jeffrey, Trade Union Foreign Policy,<br />
Macmillan, London, 1972<br />
* Haseler, Stephen, The Gaitskellites, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1969 <br />
* The Battle for Britain: Thatcher and the New<br />
Liberals, I.B. Tauris, London, 1989<br />
* Hastings, Stephen, The Drums of Memory, Leo Cooper,<br />
London, 1994.<br />
* Hatch, Alden, Clare Booth Luce, Heinneman, London,<br />
1956<br />
* Healey, Denis, The Time of My Life, Michael Joseph,<br />
London, 1989<br />
* Heilbrunn, Otto, The Soviet Secret Services, George<br />
Allen, London, 1956<br />
* Higham, Charles, Wallis, Pan, London, 1988<br />
* Hinton, James, 'Militant Housewives: the British<br />
Housewives' League and the Attlee Government' in<br />
History Workshop, Autumn 1994<br />
* Hirsch, Fred and Fletcher, Richard, CIA and the<br />
Labour Movement, Spokesman, Nottingham, 1977<br />
* Hoe, Alan, David Stirling, Little Brown and Company,<br />
London, 1993<br />
* Institute for Historical Research, Witness Seminar<br />
transcript (manuscript), Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism, London, 1990 <br />
* Institute for Historical Research, Witness Seminar<br />
transcript (manuscript), The Launch of the SDP<br />
1979-83, London, 1991<br />
* Jenkins, Clive, All Against the Collar, Methuen,<br />
London, 1990<br />
* Jenkins, Roy, A Life At the Centre, Macmillan,<br />
London, 1991<br />
* Kaiser, Philip, Journeying Far and Wide, Maxwell<br />
Macmillan International, Oxford, 1992<br />
* Keating, Joan, Roman Catholics, Christian Democracy<br />
and the British labour movement 1910-1960, unpublished<br />
PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1992<br />
* Kisch, Richard, The Private Life of Public<br />
Relations, MacGibbon and Kee, London, 1964<br />
* Kwitney, Jonathan, Endless Enemies, Congdon and<br />
Weed, New York, 1984<br />
* Lasch, Christopher, 'The Cultural Cold War: a short<br />
history of the Congress for Cultural Freedom', in<br />
Barton J. Bernstein (ed.) Towards a New Past:<br />
Dissenting Essays in American History, Vintage Books,<br />
(Random House), New York, 1969<br />
* Loftus, John, The Belarus Secret, Penguin,<br />
Harmondsworth, 1983<br />
* Lucas, W. Scott and Morris, C.J., 'A Very British<br />
Crusade: the Information Research Department and the<br />
Beginning of the Cold War', in Aldrich, Richard J.<br />
(ed.), British Intelligence, Strategy and the Cold<br />
War, Routledge, London, 1992<br />
* MacShane, Denis, International Labour and the<br />
Origins of the Cold War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992<br />
* McIvor, Arthur 'Political blacklisting and<br />
anti-socialist activity between the Wars' in British<br />
Society for the Study of Labour History, vol. 51, no.<br />
1, Spring 1988; and 'A Crusade for Capitalism:the<br />
Economic League, 1919-39' in the Journal of<br />
Contemporary History, vol. 23, 1978<br />
* McShane, Harry with Joan Smith, No Mean Fighter,<br />
Pluto Press, London, 1978<br />
* Mahl, Tom, "48 land": The United States, British<br />
Intelligence and World War II, unpublished PhD thesis,<br />
Kent State University, 1994<br />
* Mayhew, Christopher, Time To Explain, Century<br />
Hutchinson, London, 1987<br />
* Merrick, Ray, 'The Russia Committee of the British<br />
Foreign Office and the Cold War, 1946-47' in Journal<br />
of Contemporary History, vol. 20, 1985<br />
* Middlemas, Keith, Politics in Industrial Society,<br />
Andre Deutsch, London, 1979<br />
* Mikardo, Ian, Back-bencher, Weidenfeld and Nicolson,<br />
London, 1988<br />
* Milne, Seamus, The Enemy Within, Verso, London, 1994<br />
* Minkin, Lewis, The Labour Party Conference, Allen<br />
Lane, London, 1978<br />
* Minkin, Lewis, The Contentious Alliance, University<br />
of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1991<br />
* Mosbacher, M.O., 'The British Communist Movement and<br />
Moscow: How the demise of the Soviet Union affected<br />
the Communist Party and its Successor Organisations',<br />
M.A. Dissertation, University of Exeter, 1995<br />
* Nicholson, Marjorie, The TUC Overseas, Allen and<br />
Unwin, London, 1986<br />
* Newton, Scott and Porter, Dilwyn, Modernisation<br />
Frustrated, Unwin Hyman, London, 1988.<br />
* Owen, David, Time To Declare, Penguin, London, 1992<br />
* Peck, Winslow, 'The AFL-CIA' in Frazier (ed.)<br />
* Phillips, Jim, The Great Alliance: Economic Recovery<br />
and the Problems of Power 1945-51, Pluto Press, London<br />
1996<br />
* Pimlott, Ben, Harold Wilson, HarperCollins, London,<br />
1992<br />
* Pincher, Chapman, Inside Story, Sidgwick and<br />
Jackson, London, 1978<br />
* The Truth About Dirty Tricks, Sidgwick and Jackson,<br />
London, 1991<br />
* Pisani, Sallie, The CIA and the Marshall Plan,<br />
University of Edinburgh Press, Edinburgh, 1992.<br />
* Pritt, D.N., Brasshats and Bureaucrats, Lawrence and<br />
Wishart, London, 1966<br />
* Pugh, Patricia, Educate, Agitate, Organise: 100<br />
Years of Fabian Socialism, Methuen, London, 1984<br />
* Ranelagh, John, The Agency: the rise and decline of<br />
the CIA, Sceptre, London, 1988<br />
* Richter, Irving, Political Purpose in Trade Unions,<br />
Allen and Unwin, London, 1973<br />
* Roberts, Ernie, Strike Back, Ernie Roberts,<br />
Orpington, Kent, 1994<br />
* Seldon, Anthony, and Ball, Stuart (eds.), The<br />
Conservative Century: the Conservative Party since<br />
1900, Oxford University Press, 1994<br />
* Shaw, Eric, Discipline and Discord in the Labour<br />
Party, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1988<br />
* Shoup, Laurence H. and Minter, William, Imperial<br />
Brain Trust, Monthly Review Press, London and New<br />
York, 1977<br />
* Simpson, Christopher, Blowback: America's<br />
Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War,<br />
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1988<br />
* Smith, Joseph, B., Portrait of a Cold Warrior,<br />
Ballantine, New York, 1986<br />
* Smith, Richard Harris, OSS: the Secret History of<br />
America's Central First Intelligence Agency,<br />
University of California Press, 1972<br />
* Smith, Lyn, 'Covert British Propaganda; The<br />
Information Research Department: 1974-77', in<br />
Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 9<br />
No. 1<br />
* Stephenson, Hugh, Claret and Chips, Michael Joseph,<br />
London, 1982<br />
* Sulzberger, C.L., A Long Row of Candles, Macdonald,<br />
London, 1969<br />
* Summers, Anthony, Official and Confidential: the<br />
Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover, Victor Gollancz,<br />
London,1993<br />
* Taylor, Philip M., 'The Projection of Britain<br />
Abroad, 1945-51', in Dockrill (ed.)<br />
* Thompson, Don and Larson, Rodney, Where were you,<br />
brother?, War on Want, London, 1978<br />
* Thompson, Willie, The Good Old Cause; British<br />
Communism 1920-1991, Pluto Press, London, 1992<br />
* Verrier, Anthony, Through the Looking Glass,<br />
Jonathan Cape, London, 1982<br />
* Verrier, Anthony, The Road to Zimbabwe 1890-1980,<br />
Jonathan Cape, London, 1986 <br />
* Webber, G.C., The Ideology of the British Right,<br />
1919-39, Croom Helm, London, 1986<br />
* Weiler, Peter, British Labour and the Cold War,<br />
Stanford University Press, California, 1985<br />
* Wigham, Eric, What's Wrong with the Unions?,<br />
Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1961<br />
* Williams, Francis, Nothing So Strange, Cassell,<br />
London, 1970.<br />
* Wilson, H.H. 'Techniques of Pressure -<br />
Anti-Nationalisation Propaganda in Britain', in Public<br />
Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1951<br />
* Windlesham, Lord, Communication and Political Power,<br />
Cape, London, 1966<br />
* Winks, Robin, Cloak and Gown, Collins Harvill,<br />
London, 1987<br />
* Wright, Peter, with Greengrass, Paul, Spycatcher,<br />
Viking, New York, 1987<br />
* Wrigley, Chris (ed.), Warfare, Diplomacy and<br />
Politics, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1986<br />
* Yakovlev, Nikolai, CIA Target: the USSR, Progress,<br />
Moscow, English edition 1982<br />
* Young, Kenneth (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Robert<br />
Bruce Lockhart, Vol. 2 1939-65, Macmillan, London,<br />
1980 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=The_Clandestine_Caucus&diff=68102The Clandestine Caucus2008-10-28T16:52:55Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>The Clandestine Caucus was written in the late 1990s by Lobster editor Robin Ramsay and was an early attempt to understand the significance of a nexus of intelligence connected groups which covertly influenced the political landscape of the post-war UK including the [[Economic League]]<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==Part 1: Clearing the ground: the unions, socialism and the state==<br />
<br />
A surprising number of Labour Party members believethat it was once a socialist party, began as a<br />
socialist party, and was then seduced from the golden pathway. This engenders the language of betrayal and<br />
sell-out which is so familiar and depressing a part of life in the Labour Party and on the British Left in<br />
general.(1) But the view of the Labour Party as originally socialist is just wrong. The history of<br />
Britain's union and labour movement is one of continuous conflict between socialist and anti-socialist wings; and within that conflict the bit of the story that is usually not told is that describing the relationship between the anti-socialist section of the labour movement and British and US<br />
capital and their states. <br />
<br />
The conflict between the anti- and pro-socialist wings of the labour movement sharpened markedly after the<br />
1918 Bolshevik revolution and the subsequent formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Although wehave surprisingly little information on the turbulent years between 1918 and 1926, and, in particular, on<br />
the British Right's preparation to meet the Bolshevik 'threat',(2) we know that much of the early effort was<br />
put into groups aimed at the exploitation of so-called 'patriotic labour', such as the British Workers<br />
League.(3) <br />
<br />
World War 1 produced the modern British state - the Cabinet Office etc. - and mobilisation: things wererun from the centre and new relationships were formed.<br />
<br />
:'By the end of 1919, a new form of political activity was growing up, as yet only half understood, but<br />
radically different from the pre-war system ..... but there now existed formal, powerful, employers' institutions, a fully fledged Ministry of Labour, and a TUC [[Trades Union Congress]] increasingly accustomed to dealing in the political arena, wedded to a major political party which, almost alone in Europe, encompassed the majority of the non-Conservative working class. At the same time, the government's apparatus for manipulating public opinion had grown inordinately, enabling it - on its own estimate - to confront the spectre of Bolshevism and survive. Lloyd George himself, searching always for a middle way in politics, had shifted away from Liberal radicalism towards a corporatism best described as the creation in Parliamentary politics of a staatspartei, composed of Liberals and mainstream Conservatives (leaving a fringe right wing and a much larger, but powerless Labour Left); complemented in industrial politics by a triangular collaboration in which employers' organisations and TUC should make them-selves representative of their members and in return receive recognition as estates by government.'(4) <br />
<br />
The [[British Commonwealth Union]], the FBI ([[Federation of British Industries]], precursor of today's CBI) and the other predominantly Midlands manufacturing group, the [[National Union of Manufacturers]], were set up during<br />
the first World War and they mark the origins of the British corporate movement.(5) One of the leading<br />
figures of the group, Sir [[Dudley Docker]], envisaged <br />
<br />
:'a completely integrated society and economy in which industry would have its organisation of workers and<br />
management, the two sets of organisations united by peak federations and all finally capped by a great national forum of workers and managers and employers, embraced by the protection of an Imperial Tariff.'(6) <br />
<br />
Another of the corporatist groups financed by Midlands industrialists, the [[British Commonwealth Union]] (BCU),<br />
led by the Birmingham MP, Sir [[Patrick Hannon]], began funding MPs to form an Industrial Group in Parliament.<br />
The first 11 candidates were subsidised by the BCU in the 1918 election: by 1924 the group in parliament<br />
consisted of 105 (mostly Tory) members. Hannon's Industrial Group chiefly wanted government protection<br />
of British industry against foreign competition, but, to quote Hannon, they also 'wanted the largest measure<br />
of freedom in the relationship between capital and labour and the least state intervention possible.'(7) <br />
<br />
These early corporatist dreams failed for a number of reasons. Employer organisations were none too happy at<br />
the idea of the trade unions as some kind of partners.(8) And vice versa. Too much was being expected; it was too big a change, happening too quickly. In any case, the corporatists among the members of the [[Federation of British Industries]] (FBI) were a minority strand in the thinking of the Tory Party and British industrial capital; and even among the corporatists there were divisions.(9) <br />
<br />
Frank Longstreth called this network of BCU, Industrial Group, FBI and other employer propaganda groups of the period, such as the [[Economic League]], the Preference Imperialists, and noted their links to the earlier Midlands manufacturing-based Tariff Reform League.(10)As Longstreth suggested, it is possible to view the British economy since 1900 as a protracted struggle between British manufacturing (domestic capital) and the City of London (international finance capital), with the City in control for most of the century.(11) [[Oswald Mosley]]'s movement in the 1930s was<br />
<br />
:'in effect, the perverted continuation of the social imperialism of an earlier generation of industrialists, supporting imperial autarchy, social reform, conversion from a bankers' to a producers' economy, protectionism, public control of credit, and the suppression of the class struggle through the state'.(12) <br />
<br />
Although the great schemes of corporatism failed, the<br />
cooperation between the state and the trade unions<br />
which began during the First World War, continued<br />
after the General Strike and was deepened by the first<br />
two Labour governments.(13) Peter Weiler quotes Ernest<br />
Bevin's view in the 1930s that that the TUC had<br />
'virtually become an integral part of the State, its<br />
views and voice upon every subject, international and<br />
domestic, heard and heeded.'(14) This statement of<br />
Bevin's is an exaggeration: no doubt the TUC's views<br />
were heard; but heeded? <br />
<br />
The powers-that-be set about educating and socialising<br />
these new leaders. In 1938, for example, one of the<br />
most important of the trade union leaders, Ernest<br />
Bevin, with his wife, was taken off on a tour of the<br />
empire, at the behest of the Royal Institute of<br />
International Affairs.(15) Trade union leaders they<br />
might be, seeking justice and a better deal for the<br />
British worker, but they remained patriots and<br />
imperialists for the most part, and not socialists.<br />
The gentlemen (mostly men) of the TUC did not dream -<br />
publicly or secretly - of taking over British<br />
capitalism, or of destroying the British empire. The<br />
institutional links with the British state begun<br />
before World War 2 were solidified enormously by the<br />
war. The trade unions were in the national coalition<br />
government, and some of their leaders were Ministers<br />
of the Crown - very important people. <br />
<br />
<br />
After the war<br />
In the immediate post-war period the TUC was dominated<br />
by what Lewis Minkin called a 'praetorian guard'<br />
against the left; Arthur Deakin of the Transport<br />
Workers, Will Lawther of the Mineworkers and Tom<br />
Williamson of the General and Municipal. Minkin<br />
describes in detail how this trio ran the what he<br />
calls 'an unprecedented period of "platform" dominance<br />
at Party conference';(16) but noted that this alliance<br />
was defensive in nature and saw a communist conspiracy<br />
behind all criticism. <br />
<br />
The political beliefs of the leaders of trade unions<br />
in this period was mixed. Some were supporters of<br />
Moral Rearmament (MRA). At the 1947 MRA World Assembly<br />
at Caux-sur-Martreux in France, delegates from Britain<br />
included E.G. Gooch MP, President of the Agricultural<br />
Workers. An MRA press release on October 15, 1947<br />
noted that signatories to a message of support for the<br />
Caux assembly included trade union leaders Andrew<br />
Naesmith, (General Secretary of the Amalgamated<br />
Weavers' Association), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General<br />
Council representative; former General Secretary of<br />
the National Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile<br />
Workers), George Chester (General Secretary of the<br />
National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), W. B.<br />
Beard and J. W. Stephenson (Chair of Building Trade<br />
Operatives).Some trade union leaders supported<br />
campaigns by avowedly anti-socialist groups such as<br />
Aims of Industry and the Economic League. In 1952 the<br />
New Statesman reported that recent Aims of Industry<br />
literature had included essays by - or under the name<br />
of, perhaps - Florence Hancock of the TUC General<br />
Council and Bob Edwards, the General Secretary of the<br />
Chemical Workers' Union, who was later to be found on<br />
the Advisory Council of the anti-communist<br />
organisation, Common Cause.(17) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Trades Union Congress and the state<br />
Bevin's 'integration' into the British state meant a<br />
role for the TUC in the overseas state, the empire, as<br />
well as in Britain itself; and before and during the<br />
war the TUC began working with the Foreign and<br />
Colonial offices - a relationship about which few<br />
trade unionists knew - or know - anything at all.(18)<br />
As one of the Colonial Office officials quoted by<br />
Weiler said, with the clarity of simpler times, the<br />
TUC could be relied upon to guide young trade unions<br />
in the empire into becoming <br />
<br />
<br />
'trades unions which the employers in the colony would<br />
feel they could respect and trust and which could be<br />
relied upon loyally to keep an agreement.'(19) <br />
<br />
In 1948, a member of the US State Department, Third<br />
Secretary at the London Embassy, Herbert E. Weiner,<br />
reported from London on 'Attitude of Trades Union<br />
Congress Towards World Federation of Trade Unions and<br />
American International Trade Union Leaders', and<br />
wrote: <br />
<br />
<br />
'When asked how the Trades Union Congress hoped to<br />
prevent the Communists from using the technique of<br />
bona fide forms of trade union action in order to<br />
infiltrate unions in Germany and in "undeveloped"<br />
(colonial) areas, my informant said ........:in areas<br />
where trade unionism is undeveloped e.g. colonial<br />
areas, the Trades Union Congress through the British<br />
Labour Attaches keeps in close touch with Communist<br />
union activities'.(20) <br />
<br />
<br />
In the 1970s the TUC seconded two of its international<br />
staff to the Foreign Office. This caused a minor<br />
furore when it was brought to the attention of the TUC<br />
members.(21) Alan Hargreaves, TUC International<br />
Secretary in the 1970s, came to the TUC from the<br />
Foreign Office and refused to discuss his Foreign<br />
Office work.(22) <br />
<br />
Attacked by the socialists - and communists - on the<br />
left at home, and working against the left abroad with<br />
the Colonial and Foreign Offices, little wonder that<br />
the TUC slipped so comfortably into the Cold War role<br />
allotted to it. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
Please note: details of the books and articles cited<br />
in these footnotes are in the bibliography at the end<br />
of the essay, indexed by author's surname. <br />
<br />
<br />
1. There is wide-spread confusion about whether or not<br />
to capitalise the 'L' in left or the 'R' in right. I<br />
will try to stick to this rule: capital letters only<br />
when proper nouns; thus British Left and the left.<br />
2. Or am I being naive to be surprised that the one<br />
period in British twentieth history when there may<br />
have been something like a pre-revolutionary climate<br />
seems under researched? Stephen White, in 1975,<br />
offered a glimpse<br />
of a dense hinterland of largely short-lived parties<br />
and groups forming on the right in Britain in this<br />
period. Stephen White, 'Ideological Hegemony and<br />
Political Control: the sociology of anti-Bolshevism<br />
1918-1920' in Scottish Labour History Society Journal,<br />
No. 98, June 1975. See also Webber 1987, and John<br />
Hope's 'Fascism, the Security Service and the Curious<br />
Career of Maxwell Knight and James McGuirk Hughes' in<br />
Lobster 22. <br />
3. See, for example. 'In The Excess of Their<br />
Patriotism: the National Party and Threats of<br />
Subversion' by Chris Wrigley in Wrigley (ed.). Of the<br />
groups which appeared in this period only the Economic<br />
League survived into Mrs Thatcher's era. <br />
4. Middlemas p. 151.<br />
5. This mirrored what was happening elsewhere in<br />
Europe, notably Germany and Italy. See, for example,<br />
Scott Newton's 'The economic background to appeasement<br />
and the search for Anglo-German detente before and<br />
during World War 2', in Lobster 20.<br />
6. Blank p. 14<br />
7. Farr, thesis, p. 179. See also Wrigley, 'In The<br />
Excess' pp. 108 and 9, and 'Sir Allan Smith, the<br />
Industrial Group and the Politics of Unemployment<br />
1919-24' by Terence Rodgers, in Davenport-Hines (ed.).<br />
8. Ibid. pp. 222-5<br />
9. Patrick Hannon's abortive attempt to create an<br />
Industrial Group of MPs and union leaders using the<br />
British Commonwealth Union is in Barbara Lee Farr's<br />
thesis. Her information came from the Hannon papers in<br />
the House of Lords. I was alerted to this remarkable<br />
piece of work by John Hope. <br />
<br />
Rodgers, in note 7, does not cite Farr's work and<br />
gives slightly different figures for the size of the<br />
Industrial Group of MP's, while quoting the same<br />
source, namely the Hannon papers. See his footnotes 13<br />
and 16. Hannon's obituary appeared in The Times, 11<br />
January 1963.<br />
10. Frank Longstreth, 'The City, Industry and the<br />
State' in Crouch (ed.).<br />
11. See, for example, Newton and Porter.<br />
12. Longstreth, ibid. p. 171. <br />
13. This is a major theme of the Alan Bulloch<br />
biography of Ernest Bevin, for example.<br />
14. Weiler p. 19<br />
15. I discussed this in Lobster 28, p. 11.<br />
16. Minkin, Contentious Alliance, p. 83<br />
17. New Statesman, 12 January 1952. See also H.H.<br />
Wilson, 'Techniques of Pressure - Anti-Nationalisation<br />
Propaganda' in Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 1951.<br />
Edwards' obituary in The Independent, 25 June 1990<br />
noted that he had been a member of the ILP and was an<br />
enemy of the Communist Party. His was thus an<br />
improbable name on the list of labour movement figures<br />
who had allegedly helped the KGB supplied by former<br />
KGB officer Oleg Gordievsky. See Gordievsky pp. 286<br />
and 7.<br />
18. 'At least since the foundation of the<br />
International Affairs Department, TUC staff have kept<br />
close contact with the Foreign Office, a practice<br />
which persists to the present day.' Harrod p. 105. The<br />
study by Marjorie Nicholson of this subject does not<br />
mention the International Affairs Department, though<br />
as Anthony Carew pointed out, this may tell us nothing<br />
as she worked in the Colonial/Commonwealth Department.<br />
For a more critical view see Peter Weiler, chapter 1.<br />
19. Ibid. p. 29<br />
20. My thanks to John Booth for this document. On the<br />
origins of this see Majorie Nicholson, chapter 6,<br />
especially pp. 209-11, and Weiler chapter 1.<br />
21. See Thompson and Larson pp. 27-8, and New<br />
Statesman, 16 November, 1979, 'FO reinforces TUC<br />
links', for two examples. I do not know if this<br />
practice pre-dates the 1970s.<br />
22. See the New Statesman, 20 April 1979 for the TUC's<br />
response, and 'TUC's foreign policy' by Patrick<br />
Wintour, New Statesman, 2 March 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
U.S. influence after the war<br />
I do not want to re-run the long debate about the<br />
origins of the Cold War or - in particular - the<br />
causes of the break-up of the World Federation of<br />
Trade Unions (WFTU) in 1949, except to say that it is<br />
pretty clear now, with this much hindsight, that by<br />
then the British trade union leaders were determined<br />
to break the WFTU - whatever the Soviet bloc had done<br />
- and this would have been pushed through, supported<br />
by the Americans.(23) As Dennis MacShane MP<br />
demonstrates in his book,(24) the European social<br />
democratic trade union movement was not going to<br />
coexist with the Soviet bloc, either. If the USA<br />
leaned on the door, as Peter Weiler and what might<br />
loosely be called 'the left' believe, it was half open<br />
already - and was never going to shut again. Into this<br />
domestic anti-communist climate came the USA's loans -<br />
and the people and ideas, the strings attached to the<br />
money. <br />
<br />
From the first request from Churchill for clandestine<br />
assistance before America had officially entered the<br />
war, the US 'aid' had come with strings attached.<br />
Despite his famous remark that he had not taken office<br />
to oversee the destruction of His Majesty's empire,<br />
Churchill had actually done precisely that to pay for<br />
the war: and the process continued after it. It was<br />
left to some of the Tory Right and some of the Labour<br />
Left - the same groups that are still sceptical of the<br />
European Union - to oppose the acceptance of the<br />
conditions attached to the post-war US loans. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Council on Foreign Relations<br />
Planning for the US takeover of the countries of<br />
non-communist Europe was done, during the war, in the<br />
Council on Foreign Relations, the informal,<br />
semi-secret, think tank-cum-social club of the East<br />
Coast elite - the bankers, the lawyers and managers of<br />
US international capital.(25) But when the war ended<br />
the details had not been worked out, and there was<br />
significant domestic opposition to be taken into<br />
consideration. The result was that in the chaos of the<br />
post-war years the American 'interventionists', as<br />
Pisani calls them, had to improvise.(26) The<br />
'coordination of public and private efforts was<br />
achieved by using the Council on Foreign Relations<br />
(CFR) as a clearing house for projects'.(27) It was<br />
CFR personnel, for example, who raised money to<br />
intervene in the Italian elections of 1947.(28) And in<br />
the immediate post-war years the political<br />
interventionist picture is complicated: there was<br />
nothing like the clear-cut overt/covert dichotomy<br />
which we think characterised US foreign policy when<br />
things settled down into the State Department/ CIA mix<br />
perceived after the sixties.(29) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Economic Cooperation Agency<br />
At the most overt level, there was the Economic<br />
Cooperation Agency (ECA) which doled out the dollars<br />
in support of what is known as multilateral trade:<br />
that is, the ECA sought to break down barriers against<br />
American goods. A former acting head of the ECA said<br />
that: <br />
<br />
<br />
'In everything we did we sought to change or to<br />
strengthen opinions - opinions about how to build free<br />
world strength, about America's role, cooperative<br />
effort by Europeans, investment, productivity, fiscal<br />
stability, trade measurement, industrial competition,<br />
free labour unions etc.'(30) <br />
<br />
But ECA also had what we would call a covert arm and<br />
ran psychological warfare operations.(31) In France, <br />
<br />
<br />
'The ECA mission chief wore two hats. He was the<br />
conduit for economic assistance and defense<br />
mobilisation, as well as for psychological and<br />
economic warfare components provided by the Office of<br />
Policy Coordination (OPC).'(32) <br />
<br />
As part of that psychological warfare programme, for<br />
example, the ECA persuaded the British TUC to produce<br />
- a least put its name to - a report on productivity<br />
subsequently used all over Europe. 'The ECA mission in<br />
London distributed a large number of copies abroad,<br />
urged its translation into foreign languages and<br />
prepared numerous press releases and feature articles<br />
for planting in the British and foreign press.' The US<br />
London Embassy's Labour Information Officer William<br />
Gausmann reported that 'from a trade union point of<br />
view, this is the most valuable document that has been<br />
produced under ECA auspices to date.'(33) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC)<br />
The OPC, the first of the euphemistic cover names of<br />
US covert action agencies in the post-war era, was<br />
formed in 1948, staffed and run by the newly created<br />
CIA but nominally under the control of the State<br />
Department. In effect the CIA's covert arm, by 1952<br />
the OPC had forty-seven stations, 2,812 staff and a<br />
budget of $84 million.(34) Much of this growth had<br />
been funded by money from the Marshall Plan.(35) What<br />
we now think of as the CIA, that is the covert<br />
operation, intervention arm of US multi-national<br />
capital - the post-war bogey man supreme for the left<br />
- began as the enforcement arm of the Marshall Plan,<br />
engaged in operations against the left and the trade<br />
unions of Europe, communist or non-communist. The OPC<br />
was the US administration's recognition that the ECA<br />
alone couldn't 'get the job done'.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
Labour Attaches<br />
Another weapon in the post-war US armoury was the<br />
Labour Attache programme which was established towards<br />
the end of the war. In the words of one its creators,<br />
Philip Kaiser, 'the labor attache is expected to<br />
develop contacts with key leaders in the trade union<br />
movement, and to influence their thinking and<br />
decisions in directions compatible with American<br />
goals....' (Emphasis added)(37) The first Labour<br />
Attache in London was Sam Berger, who, in the words of<br />
Denis Healey, <br />
<br />
<br />
'By developing good personal relations with many key<br />
figures in the British Labour movement at the end of<br />
the war, including Sam Watson and Hugh Gaitskell,<br />
exerted an enduring influence on British foreign<br />
policy.'(38) <br />
<br />
Philip Kaiser commented that Berger <br />
<br />
<br />
'had extraordinary access to many members of the<br />
[Attlee] cabinet, including the prime minister. It was<br />
universally recognised that he was the key member of<br />
our embassy.'(39)(emphasis added) <br />
<br />
There were also 'Labour Information Officers' attached<br />
to the Marshall Plan staff in the US Embassy in<br />
London. One such, William Gausman, <br />
<br />
<br />
'in May 1950 began discussions with a section of the<br />
leadership of the Clerical and Allied Workers Union on<br />
how to eliminate communists from the union..... <br />
<br />
'cultivated the leadership of the Birmingham Labour<br />
Party, whose journal, The Town Crier, closely<br />
supported Atlanticism and American foreign policy<br />
objectives in general..... <br />
<br />
'convened a group in South Wales....to launch a<br />
Labour-oriented newspaper, The Democrat.... <br />
<br />
'worked unofficially on Socialist Commentary"'<br />
.....and became a founder member of its offshoot, the<br />
Socialist Union, 'which served as a think tank for the<br />
emerging Gaitskellite wing of the Labour Party..... <br />
<br />
'liaised, advised, wrote, lectured, published - and<br />
helped IRD [the Information Research Department] with<br />
the distribution of one of their early publications,<br />
The Curtain Falls.'(40) <br />
<br />
The US post-war penetration of the British Labour<br />
Party and wider trade union movement climaxes with Joe<br />
Godson, who was Labour Attache in London from 1953-59.<br />
Godson became very close to the Labour Party leader<br />
Hugh Gaitskell - to the point where Gaitskell and<br />
Godson were writing Labour Party policies and planning<br />
campaigns against their enemy, Aneuran Bevan. For<br />
example, after a meeting of the Parliamentary Labour<br />
Party to discuss the expulsion of Bevan, Gaitskell<br />
recorded how he 'drove to the Russell Hotel, where I<br />
saw Sam Watson with Joe Godson, the Labour Attache at<br />
the American Embassy.'(41) <br />
<br />
The leader of the Labour Party is discussing Executive<br />
Committee tactics with the US Labour Attache! This is<br />
one of the dividing lines of this essay. You either<br />
think is this unexceptional, uninteresting - even a<br />
good thing - or you do not. I do not. I think it is<br />
rather shocking; and I think that would have been the<br />
reaction of most of the Executive Committee at the<br />
time had they been made aware of it. In a footnote on<br />
p. 384 of the Gaitskell Diaries, editor Philip<br />
Williams writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
'Godson, Sam Watson's close friend....thanks to his<br />
trade union post was, like many labour attaches, seen<br />
as representing his country's workers rather than its<br />
government. But Gaitskell came in time to feel that he<br />
was involving himself too deeply in Labour Party<br />
affairs.'(42) <br />
<br />
It may even be more complex than this for there is<br />
evidence that the Labour Attache posts have been used<br />
as cover by the CIA. Jonathan Kwitney of the Wall<br />
Street Journal tracked down one Paul Sakwa, who told<br />
him that he had been the case officer for Irving<br />
Brown, the most important CIA agent in the labour<br />
movement in Europe, handling Brown's budget of between<br />
$150,000 and $300,000 a year, between 1952 and 1954.<br />
From being Brown's case officer in Washington, Sakwa<br />
went on to a post under cover as the Assistant Labour<br />
Attache at the US embassy in Brussels.(43) <br />
<br />
It was about the CIA - but not just them. The CIA was<br />
only one of many agencies working in Britain in the<br />
post-war years. Labour Attaches reported, formally<br />
anyway, to the State Department. In the end, would it<br />
make any difference to know that Joe Godson had really<br />
been a genuine employee of the State Department, and<br />
not CIA under cover as we might have once suspected? <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
23. This thesis has been most convincingly articulated<br />
by Peter Weiler.<br />
24. International Labour and the Origins of the Cold<br />
War, Clarendon, Oxford, 1992<br />
25. See Shoup and Minter.<br />
26. I guess 'interventionist' is less offensive to the<br />
American academic ear than imperialist. 'The<br />
determination to intervene in Europe between 1945 and<br />
1948 was fragmented, uncoordinated.' Pisani pp. 40 and<br />
41.<br />
27. Ibid. p 4.<br />
28. 'James Forrestal raised private money for the<br />
Italian elections of 1947. His initiative 'signalled<br />
an end to the notion that redemocratizing European<br />
countries could be accomplished simply by regenerating<br />
their economies'. Ibid. p. 67.<br />
29. I put it as 'think' because the reality was never<br />
that neat and tidy<br />
30. Cited in Carew p. 84<br />
31. Pisani p. 91<br />
32. Ibid. p. 96. ECA 'does engage in some gray and<br />
black propaganda' but 'the programmes represent a very<br />
small percentage of the total effort and are<br />
coordinated with the CIA' Ibid . p. 12<br />
33. Carew p. 153<br />
34. Ranelagh p. 135<br />
35. 'From its creation in 1948 until 1952 when the<br />
Marshall Plan was terminated, the OPC operated as the<br />
plan's complement.' Pisani p. 70.<br />
36. Ibid. p. 67<br />
37. Kaiser p. 113 'The labor attache...had...an<br />
unusual opportunity to enhance American influence<br />
among individuals and institutions that historically<br />
have no contact with U.S. diplomatic missions'. Ibid.<br />
p. 119<br />
38. Denis Healey p. 113. Berger has two innocuous<br />
entries in the Gaitskell Diaries, and the footnote<br />
from the editor, Philip Williams, on p. 120 that he<br />
was 'first secretary at the U.S. Embassy'.<br />
39. Kaiser p.120<br />
40. Carew pp. 128 and 9<br />
41. Godson obituary in The Times, 6 September 1986.<br />
See Gaitskell Diary ed. Philip Williams, pp. 339-41.<br />
Carew p. 129 notes that there was some conflict<br />
between Gausmann and Joseph Godson, apparently<br />
reflecting divisions within the US labour movement. He<br />
discusses these differences on pp. 84-5.<br />
42. Godson's son, Roy, who appears on the same trade<br />
union/spook circuit in the 1970s, married Sam Watson's<br />
daughter. Watson was one of the most important trade<br />
union leaders in the post-war period, chairman of the<br />
National Executive Committee's International Committee<br />
and a 'liaison officer' between the Parliamentary<br />
Labour Party and the major unions.<br />
43. Kwitney pp. 334-5 <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Post-war: private sector propaganda begins to regroup<br />
As the war ended domestic politics returned to normal.<br />
The propaganda organisations of domestic capital<br />
restarted, though without the frenzy which had marked<br />
the post 1918 period. Their big issue was the threat<br />
of nationalisation of companies. The so-called Mr Cube<br />
Campaign of 1949/50, against the possibility of the<br />
nationalisation of the sugar industry, spent an<br />
estimated �250,000 in that year.(44) The campaign had<br />
been jointly organised by the sugar company, Tate and<br />
Lyle, and Aims of Industry, an anti-socialist pressure<br />
group formed in 1942 by a group of well known British<br />
industrialists. The Aims original Council had<br />
representatives from Fords, English Electric, Austin,<br />
Rank, British Aircraft, Macdougall's and Firestone<br />
Tyres.(45) There were also smaller campaigns by the<br />
Cement Makers Federation, the Iron and Steel<br />
Federation and by the insurance companies represented<br />
by the British Insurance Association.(46) The Road<br />
Haulage Association sponsored anti-nationalisation<br />
campaigns by the British Housewives' League, led by<br />
Dorothy Crisp.(47) <br />
<br />
By 1949 Aims of Industry had 'twelve area offices<br />
blanketing the industrial sections of Britain. For the<br />
fiscal year 1949-50 expenditures were budgeted for an<br />
an additional anticipated income of �260,000'.(48) The<br />
pre-war tradition, discussed below, of newspapers<br />
reprinting anti-left briefings from Conservative Party<br />
groups or fronts, continued with Aims of Industry.<br />
Aims estimated that they had gained 93,178<br />
column-inches of editorial space in 1949, worth over<br />
�1,800,000.(49) In the first six months of 1949 Aims<br />
claims to have had 41 radio broadcasts on the Home or<br />
Light programmes of the BBC; and just before the<br />
election of 1950 in January, 362 magazines and<br />
newspapers gave 11,269 column inches to Aims-inspired<br />
stories. Aims magazine, The Voice of Industry, thanked<br />
the British press for their 'impartial partnership',<br />
in March 1950, noting that 'News about the<br />
achievements of private enterprise and the failures of<br />
nationalisation and state control has been of<br />
sufficient value to editors for them to have given it<br />
space in their columns free.'(50) <br />
<br />
The Economic League survived the war. In 1951 it<br />
claimed to have held 20,058 meetings and 57,505 group<br />
talks in the previous year; distributed 18 million<br />
leaflets, and obtained 31,064 column inches of press<br />
publicity; it employed 50 full-time speakers, 27<br />
part-time speakers and 37 leaflet distributors; had a<br />
full-time staff of 135, owned 43 vehicles etc.(51)<br />
These figures apparently describing massive campaigns<br />
by Aims and the League have to be treated with<br />
caution. They might well be exaggerated and it is not<br />
clear how successful they were. For all this<br />
anti-Labour propaganda, Labour's total vote went up in<br />
the 1951 General Election. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Information Research Department<br />
In the labour movement the Trades Union Congress was<br />
working with the newly-formed, Foreign Office-based,<br />
political warfare executive, operating under cover as<br />
the Information Research Department (IRD), in an<br />
anti-communist drive. IRD was not an innovation.<br />
British politics since World War 1 is studded with<br />
clandestine propaganda operations involving the mass<br />
media of the day. The claims of massive post-World War<br />
2 media penetration by Aims of Industry and the<br />
Economic League are reminiscent of the operations of<br />
the post World War 1 propaganda network operated by<br />
Sydney Walton, described in Keith Middlemas' wonderful<br />
book about British political history.(52) In the great<br />
Bolshevik panic following the First World War, funded<br />
by the industrial sources like the Engineering<br />
Employers' Federation, Sydney Walton <br />
<br />
<br />
'took the main propaganda role from a variety of front<br />
organisations, set up during the war, such as the<br />
British Empire League, the British Workers' League,<br />
the National Democratic and Labour Party, and the<br />
National Unity Movement, all of whom had been in<br />
receipt of industrial subscriptions'. <br />
<br />
With a budget of �100,000 a year - about what, �20<br />
million in today's money? - Walton's 'information<br />
service' was supplied with information by the Special<br />
Branch and the intelligence services of the day.<br />
Walton eventually claimed to be able to put<br />
'authoritative signed articles' in over 1,200<br />
newspapers.(53) Parallel to the Walton network,<br />
another group of major employers formed National<br />
Propaganda,(54) which evolved into the Economic<br />
League.(55) McIvor tells us that the League by 1926<br />
had formed an Information and Research Department,(56)<br />
was organising in 'cells',(57) and was forming 1000<br />
study groups a year.(58) <br />
<br />
The state followed suit. In 1919 it formed the Supply<br />
and Transport Committee and prepared to run two<br />
separate propaganda organisations in an emergency,<br />
headed by..... Admiral Blinker Hall of National<br />
Propaganda and Sydney Walton.(59) After 1922, this<br />
network had largely been abandoned, and Middlemas<br />
makes the point that while Walton spent over �25,000<br />
in the first six months of the 1926 General Strike,<br />
this was spent on publicity, advertising and speakers<br />
- not on the bribing of journalists and his earlier<br />
techniques.(60) Out of this milieu - and the changes<br />
in tactics it went through - emerged the Economic<br />
League. <br />
<br />
The Conservative Party had also been busy between the<br />
wars developing propaganda systems through which it<br />
issued, sometimes under its own name, sometimes under<br />
cover of fronts, pro-Conservative material to the<br />
newspapers for them to 'top and tail' and present as<br />
normal, internally-generated copy.(61) <br />
<br />
These examples of how to manipulate the media had been<br />
learned by others in the British state system and a<br />
few years later Neville Chamberlain and other<br />
supporters of the appeasement policy secretly bought<br />
and ran the weekly newspaper Truth. This was largely<br />
an operation run by the former MI5 officer and<br />
eminence grise of the time, Sir Joseph Ball. Ball used<br />
the official government information machine to push<br />
the Chamberlain line, formed the National Publicity<br />
Bureau to do the same and, in 1937, through a<br />
frontman, Lord Luke of Pavenham, bought Truth, and<br />
proceeded to use it to denigrate the opponents of<br />
Chamberlain and appeasement.(62) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRD's genesis<br />
Former Labour Minister Christopher Mayhew still thinks<br />
he was responsible for the creation of IRD.(63) In<br />
fact its origins are a good deal earlier. In March<br />
1946 Frank Roberts in the British Embassy in Moscow<br />
began sending telegrams to London warning of Soviet<br />
imperialism and aggression.(64) In April the Russia<br />
Committee of the Foreign Office was formed. In its<br />
second meeting on May 7 1946, the Committee decided to<br />
set up a propaganda organisation.(65) It was then just<br />
a question of getting the Labour Cabinet to approve<br />
the proposal. On the way junior Foreign Office<br />
Minister, Christopher Mayhew, proposed such a<br />
propaganda offensive in October 1947, and the<br />
combination of deteriorating political circumstances<br />
and a proposal from within the Party itself swung the<br />
day and the Cabinet approved the formation of this<br />
outfit in January 1948. In the second volume of his<br />
Diaries, Robert Bruce-Lockhart, who had been a part of<br />
the war-time clandestine propaganda system, records on<br />
4 February 1948 that he dined with Christopher Warner<br />
who had just become the Assistant Under-Secretary at<br />
the Foreign Office in charge of 'our Information<br />
Services'. Warner offered a new version of the origins<br />
of IRD, telling Lockhart that 'As a result of a paper<br />
put up by the Imperial Defence College, F.O. [Foreign<br />
Office] have decided to renew political warfare on a<br />
limited scale.' (emphasis added)(66) <br />
<br />
In Foreign Secretary Bevin's presentation to the<br />
Cabinet he spoke of Britain as a 'third force', who<br />
would 'give a lead in the spiritual, moral and<br />
political sphere to all democratic elements in Western<br />
Europe'. The line was to be neither Washington nor<br />
Moscow, apparently.(67) How seriously Bevin intended<br />
this we do not know. But however nicely it was being<br />
dressed up, this was pretty clearly part of the<br />
developing anti-communist struggle. Mayhew said so in<br />
a memo to Bevin. In any case, why would propaganda in<br />
favour of social democracy have to be hidden?(68) <br />
<br />
IRD was in a kind of management limbo between MI6, who<br />
supplied it with some of its information and tasks,<br />
and the Foreign Office, whose budget concealed it. IRD<br />
was, very clearly, simply the Political Warfare<br />
Executive (PWE) reborn - another example of the<br />
ability of intelligence agencies, once established, to<br />
survive the vagaries of their nominal masters in the<br />
political system. <br />
<br />
IRD was a triple layer. On the surface was its formal<br />
cover within the Foreign Office as an information and<br />
research department. Beneath that was IRD's role as a<br />
propaganda organisation, dispensing white (true) and<br />
grey (half true) propaganda in briefings to<br />
journalists and politicians. But beneath that was the<br />
third layer, the 'black' or psychological warfare<br />
(psywar) tier. This third tier is hinted at in the<br />
Foreign and Commonwealth Office''s recently published<br />
history of IRD's origins . On p. 7 it notes that in<br />
September 1948 - i.e. almost immediately - 'part of<br />
the costs of the unit [were] transferred to the secret<br />
vote......the move would.....avoid the unwelcome<br />
scrutiny of operations which might require covert or<br />
semi-covert means of execution.'(69) <br />
<br />
There is little evidence of Bevin's 'third force'<br />
notions in IRD's work once the politicians' backs were<br />
turned and they had moved on to another item on the<br />
agenda. The minutes of a 1950 meeting between IRD<br />
officials and their U.S. counterparts show no evidence<br />
at all such concepts. Christopher Warner, one of the<br />
'fathers' of IRD, talks exclusively of anti-communist<br />
activities.(70) <br />
<br />
IRD eventually had representatives in all British<br />
Embassies abroad. In the recollection of a former MI6<br />
officer of the period, IRD was involved in 'some of<br />
the more dubious intelligence operations which<br />
characterised the early years of the cold war.'(71)<br />
Former Ambassador Hilary King was told by a former SIS<br />
officer who had worked in Germany after the war trying<br />
to estimate Soviet bloc tank strength, that IRD<br />
circulated a paper on the subject over-estimating that<br />
strength by a factor of 40.(72) When the SIS officer<br />
complained about the inaccuracy of the estimate he was<br />
told by an IRD official 'what does it matter old boy<br />
as long as the Labour government [i.e. of Attlee] push<br />
through rearmament.' At home, in its second level<br />
role, IRD wrote papers and briefing notes, and planted<br />
stories in the media. Mayhew remembers that 'at home,<br />
our service was offered to and accepted by, large<br />
numbers of selected MP's, journalists, trade union<br />
leaders, and others, and was often used by BBC's<br />
External Services. We also developed close links with<br />
a syndication agency and various publishers.'(73) The<br />
1950 minutes of the IRD-US talks include Ralph<br />
Murray's comment that 'Trade Union organisations and<br />
various groups are used to place articles under the<br />
by-line of well known writers.'(74) Among individuals<br />
who received IRD material were Percy Cudlipp of the<br />
Co-operative Movement, Herbert Tracey, pub-licity<br />
director of the TUC and the Labour Party, and Denis<br />
Healey, then the Party's International Secretary.(75) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The Freedom and Democracy Trust==<br />
Part of this anti-communist programme was the creation<br />
of 'an influential group, including several members of<br />
the [TUC] General Council, which was determined to<br />
root out the communists.'(76) Among the group were<br />
George Chester (General Secretary of the National<br />
Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives), George Gibson<br />
(former TUC chair), Lincoln Evans (General Secretary<br />
of the Iron and Steel Trades Confederation [ISTC])<br />
Andrew Naesmith (General Secretary of the Amalgamated<br />
Weavers' Association), Alf Roberts (General Secretary<br />
of the National Association of Card, Blowing and Ring<br />
Room Operatives, later on the Board of the Bank of<br />
England), G. H. Bagnall (TUC General Council<br />
representative; General Secretary in 1939 of National<br />
Union of Dyers, Bleachers and Textile Workers), John<br />
Brown (ISTC) and Tom O'Brien (Kine Employees).(77) In<br />
April 1948 this group became the [[Freedom and Democracy Trust]], and began publishing a periodical called<br />
[[Freedom First]]. with the help of IRD.(78) <br />
<br />
Unfortunately for all concerned, mixing with the<br />
founders of the Trust was an American businessman<br />
called Sydney Stanley, and the whole enterprise was<br />
'blown' when Stanley became the centrepiece of the<br />
infamous Lansky Tribunal hearings into civil service<br />
corruption during the winter of 1948. Not only did<br />
Stanley have many pre-war contacts with the U.S<br />
unions, he adopted the robust American attitude to<br />
officialdom: bribe it when you have to. But he got<br />
caught. <br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
44. Finer p. 94<br />
45. See H.H. Wilson for an account of the Mr Cube<br />
campaign. Aims Council personnel is from Kisch p. 28.<br />
46. See Crofts, chapter 14 for these examples.<br />
47. See ibid. pp. 99-109, especially p. 106 where the<br />
League's funding by the Road Haulage Association, then<br />
distantly threatened with nationalisation, is<br />
discussed. Best account is Hinton's. Dorothy Crisp is<br />
the historical figure who most resembles Margaret<br />
Thatcher.<br />
48. H.H. Wilson p. 228<br />
49. Crofts p. 216. For more details of alleged<br />
activities, see also the pamphlet The FBI, (Federation<br />
of British Industry) Labour Research Department, 1949.<br />
50. H.H. Wilson pp. 229 and 238. Kisch p. 37 claims<br />
that by the late 1950s Aims 'controlled no less than<br />
twenty-six monthly, weekly and quarterly publications<br />
[and] edited and produced forty-five house magazines<br />
for the Tate and Lyle organisation, the Express Dairy<br />
and other organisations as well as the house magazines<br />
of most of the leading members of the 4,000 or so<br />
companies who constituted its chief supporters'.<br />
51. Labour Research, July 1952. As late as 1981 it had<br />
130 full-time employees. See the Daily Telegraph, 26<br />
January 1981.<br />
52. Politics in Industrial Society, Andre Deutsch,<br />
1979<br />
53. Ibid. pp. 131/2.<br />
54. Ibid.<br />
55. See, for example, McIvor's essays.<br />
56. Echoed - intentionally? - twenty years later by<br />
the state's IRD.<br />
57. McIvor 'A Crusade...' p. 641<br />
58. Ibid p. 646<br />
59. Middlemas pp. 153/4<br />
60. Ibid p. 354<br />
61. See 'The Party, Publicity and the Media' by<br />
Richard Cockett in Seldon and Ball (eds.), especially<br />
pp. 550-553.<br />
62. Cockett pp. 9-12<br />
63. Mayhew p.107 where he cites the memo he wrote in<br />
late 1947 to Bevin. Philip M. Taylor in his 'The<br />
Projection of Britain Abroad, 1945-51', writes that<br />
'The IRD was formed at the Foreign Office as a direct<br />
response to increasingly hostile Soviet propaganda in<br />
the wake of the communist coup in Prague, the<br />
escalating blockade of West Berlin and mounting<br />
pressure on Finland.' Taylor in Michael Dockrill and<br />
John W. Young (eds.) 1989<br />
64. See, for example, Ray Merrick; and, more recently,<br />
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office's own publication,<br />
IRD: Origins and Establishment of the Foreign Office<br />
Research Department 1946-48, (History Notes, August<br />
1995)<br />
65. Ibid. p. 458 This is before the Cominform<br />
rejection of the Marshall Plan, for example, over a<br />
year away in 1947; before even the March arrest of Dr<br />
Allan Nunn May and the revelation of the<br />
Canadian-based Soviet spy ring; and before Churchill's<br />
American speech in which he first used the term 'Iron<br />
Curtain'.<br />
66. Kenneth Young (ed.) p. 648<br />
67. Merrick p. 465<br />
68. Best account of IRD's early years is in Lucas and<br />
Morris.<br />
69. See note 21 above.<br />
70. Notes on a meeting between Christopher Warner and<br />
Edward Barnett, in London, Saturday May 20, 1950, in<br />
Foreign Relations of the United States, Government<br />
Printing Office, Washington DC, 1977, pp. 1641-6<br />
71. Verrier, Looking Glass, p. 52 . Someone might<br />
usefully re-examine all the forgeries in the first<br />
phase of the Cold War and what influence - if any -<br />
they had on policy-making. Two examples are discussed<br />
in Sulzberger pp. 345-7. In 1948, having discovered<br />
that something called 'Protocol M', alleging secret<br />
Comintern instructions to the West German communists<br />
was a forgery, a month late he is offered another one<br />
in Italy, 'Plan K', plans for an alleged communist<br />
insurgency. He comments that there is 'a network of<br />
forgers and falsifiers ...busily peddling allegedly<br />
secret documents to embassies, intelli-gence officers,<br />
ministries and correspondents'. (p. 346) 'Protocol M'<br />
is reproduced in Appendix II of Heilbrunn.<br />
72. Telephone conversation with author, June 27, 1987.<br />
73. Mayhew p. 111. There are some details of this in<br />
the FCO publication in footnote 64 above.<br />
74. Foreign Relations op. cit.<br />
75. Weiler p. 216<br />
76. Ibid. p. 217 citing The Times, February 10, 1948.<br />
77. Weiler op. cit. fn 184, p. 369<br />
78. Ibid. fn 189 citing The Times, 2 December 1948. <br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
==Common Cause and IRIS==<br />
The failure of the Freedom and Democracy Trust seems<br />
to have deterred the TUC members from creating another<br />
body so directly linked to the TUC General<br />
Council.(79) Instead, some individual members of the<br />
General Council, who had been involved in the Freedom<br />
and Democracy Trust fiasco, joined a private group<br />
with the same anti-communist aims. This was Common<br />
Cause, whose origins are to be found in the merging of<br />
two quite distinct political strands. <br />
<br />
<br />
==The AEU's 'Club'==<br />
One strand was the clandestine anti-communist (and<br />
anti-socialist) organisation in British trade unions,<br />
of which the best example is to found within the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). Within the AEU, <br />
<br />
<br />
'An anti-Communist organisation was established at<br />
meetings of the fifty-two-member national committee,<br />
their ruling body in 1943 and 1944, and was followed a<br />
few years later by a loose national organisation,<br />
working in secret and known as "the side" or the<br />
"antis" which succeeded in removing a good many<br />
communists from office.'(80) <br />
<br />
This was the organisation which later came to be known<br />
as 'the Club' or 'the Group', and 'defined its purpose<br />
in terms of preventing a Communist takeover of the<br />
union'.(81) <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the mid 1950s ..... the Right-wing members of the<br />
Executive Council began attending the factional<br />
meeting. In this period also a National Committee<br />
"Club" organiser was discreetly appointed from amongst<br />
the regular delegates to tighten the organisation of<br />
the Right-wing faction(82)....At all National<br />
Committee meetings during the period from 1956 to 1970<br />
the right-wing controlled all places on the Standing<br />
Orders Committee, and J. Ramsden, organiser of the<br />
National Committee "Club" for nine years, was also<br />
Chairman of its Standing Orders Committee for seven of<br />
them. With [President] Carron in the Chair at the<br />
National Committee and the union Secretaryship also<br />
held by a "Club" member for the whole of the period,<br />
procedural control by the Right was overwhelming.'(83)<br />
<br />
<br />
The late Ernie Roberts MP quotes from a report of a<br />
1951 meeting of 'the Club' (infiltrated by a member of<br />
the left in the union), and notes that the principal<br />
figure was Cecil Hallett, then AEU General<br />
Secretary.(84) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause==<br />
This clandestine trade union anti-socialism joined up<br />
with an Anglo-American anti-communist group called<br />
Common Cause. The American group was formed in January<br />
1947 as Common Cause Incorporated, by Mrs Natalie<br />
Wales Latham (nee Paine). Among the great and the good<br />
on its letterhead National Council were Adolph Berle<br />
Jnr, Max Eastman, Sumner Welles and Hodding Carter.<br />
Another well-known member was Clare Booth Luce, wife<br />
of the owner of Time, Henry Luce, and later US<br />
Ambassador to Italy. In his biography of Mrs Luce,<br />
Alden Hatch notes that as early as 1946, before its<br />
official launch, Common Cause had established liaison<br />
with the anti-Soviet group, Russian Solidarists,<br />
better known as NTS, and that John Foster Dulles was<br />
the organisation's 'unofficial adviser'.(85) Hatch<br />
also notes that Mrs Wales Latham became Lady Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton - the only link I am aware of between<br />
the US and UK groups. For when the British Common<br />
Cause was formally launched in 1952, its first joint<br />
chairs were John Brown, ex General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation and member of the<br />
TUC General Council and the self-same Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton MP.(86) <br />
<br />
The British Common Cause, however, had been in<br />
existence for some years before its official launch,<br />
originally very much as the vehicle of Dr. C. A.<br />
Smith, one of the more interesting mavericks of the<br />
British Left in the 20th century. Smith met Trotsky in<br />
the 1933, was Chairman of the Independent Labour Party<br />
from 39-41, quit and joined Common Wealth as its<br />
Research Officer in 1941. When some of the Common<br />
Wealth party left to join the Labour Party, Smith<br />
became Chair of Common Wealth. As the nature of the<br />
Stalinist takeover of Eastern Europe became clear in<br />
1947, Smith tried to take Common Wealth with him in<br />
his increasingly anti-Soviet stance. They baulked and<br />
eventually Smith left the party and joined or formed -<br />
which is not clear - Common Cause in Easter 1948.(87) <br />
<br />
<br />
==The British League for European Freedom==<br />
Whatever the British Common Cause amounted to in 1948,<br />
four years before its official launch, it had joined<br />
forces with the British League for European Freedom<br />
(BLEF), the first organisation formed in this country<br />
in direct response to the Soviet Union's takeover in<br />
Eastern Europe. The BLEF had been initiated in 1944 by<br />
a quartet of Tory MP's, including Victor Raikes, a<br />
pre-war member of the Imperial Policy Group.(88)<br />
Despite the dominance of Tory MPs, the BLEF attracted<br />
a trio of Labour MPs: Ivor Thomas (who defected to the<br />
Tories in 1950 after the publication of his book The<br />
Socialist Tragedy); George Dallas, former TUC General<br />
Council member and Labour MP, Chair of the Labour<br />
Party's International Committee during the war; and<br />
Richard Stokes MP. Stokes was a 'socialist' of the<br />
most idiosyncratic kind, having been a member of the<br />
anti-Semitic Right Club before the war.(89) Although<br />
information on these groups in this period is very<br />
thin, it is clear that Common Cause and the BLEF were<br />
very close. In 1950, for example, Common Cause<br />
published a pamphlet, Communism and Democracy, by<br />
Smith, in which he said he was writing as a member of<br />
the BLEF. The two groups shared an office in Elizabeth<br />
Street in London donated by the wealthy Duke of<br />
Westminster.(90) <br />
<br />
The Duchess of Atholl, one of the founders of the<br />
BLEF, notes in her autobiography that the decline in<br />
the BLEF's 'political work' was attributable to the<br />
arrival of Common Cause, and from then on the BLEF<br />
'concentrated its efforts on bringing home to people<br />
the unhappy plight of the many Displaced Persons still<br />
in Germany.'(91) This is something of a euphemism for<br />
the BLEF's role as support group for Eastern European<br />
exile groups such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of<br />
Nations (ABN) then being run by the Secret<br />
Intelligence Service (SIS). The BLEF produced an<br />
offshoot, the Scottish League for European Freedom,<br />
headed by Victor Raikes' colleague in the Imperial<br />
Policy Group, the Earl of Mansfield. In 1950 the<br />
Scottish League organised a conference in Edinburgh<br />
for Eastern European exiles, many of them Nazi war<br />
criminals and collaborators, who had been recruited by<br />
SIS. They had been moved to the UK during the scramble<br />
at the end of World War 2 by the British and American<br />
governments for good, reliable, anti-Soviet 'assets'.<br />
(92) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause USA==<br />
In the USA the fledgling CIA had sponsored a front<br />
organisation, the National Committee for a Free Europe<br />
(NCFE). NCFE's 'sister organisation' was Common Cause<br />
Inc., which included among its personnel 'many of the<br />
men - Adolf Berle, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Eugene<br />
Lyons, among others - who simultaneously led<br />
CIA-financed groups such as the NCFE and, later, the<br />
American Committee for Liberation from<br />
Bolshevism.'(93) Christopher Simpson notes that it was<br />
Common Cause Inc. which, in 1948, sponsored the NTS<br />
founder on a tour of the United States. (94) Just as<br />
the British League for European Freedom became the<br />
sponsor for the British exile groups in the<br />
Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), Christopher<br />
Emmet, Chairman of the American Common Cause Inc,<br />
turns up later as head of the American Friends of the<br />
Captive Nations, the domestic support group for the<br />
CIA-sponsored Assembly of Captive Nations (ACEN).(95) <br />
<br />
The BLEF's George Dallas was one of those who stayed<br />
close to American interests. He became preoccupied<br />
with the danger of a communist take-over in China, and<br />
formed the Friends of Free China Association, with<br />
himself as chair and the Duchess of Atholl as<br />
president. Dallas eventually attended the 1958<br />
foundation meeting of what became the the World<br />
Anti-Communist League. The one time socialist farm<br />
labourer had come a long way. With him at that meeting<br />
were Marvin Liebman, one of the key members of the US<br />
'China Lobby', the late Yaroslav Stetsko, Ukranian<br />
collaborator with the Germans and head of the ABN, and<br />
Charles Edison of the John Birch Society.(96) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause UK==<br />
The official, 1952-launched Common Cause was<br />
apparently founded by Neil Elles, Peter Crane (on both<br />
of whom, more below) and C.A. Smith. Lord Malcolm<br />
Douglas-Hamilton, then a Scottish Tory MP, and John<br />
Brown were joint chairs. Brown had been the Treasurer<br />
of the Freedom and Democracy Trust which had tried to<br />
launch Freedom First five years before. It set up a<br />
national structure with local branches - in 1954 there<br />
were 14 - published a monthly Bulletin, and<br />
distributed many of the standard anti-communist texts<br />
of the time, for example Tufton Beamish's Must Night<br />
Fall?; some, such as the 'Background Books' series,<br />
published and/or subsidised by IRD; and leaflets from<br />
the CIA labour front in Europe, the International<br />
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).(97) <br />
<br />
In 1955 Common Cause's 'Advisory Council' included: <br />
<br />
* Tom O'Brien and Florence Hancock, both past TUC<br />
presidents;(98) <br />
* Bob Edwards, General Secretary of the Chemical<br />
Workers Union, 1947-51;(99) <br />
* Cecil Hallett, Assistant General Secretary of the<br />
AEU 1948-57; General Secretary 1957-64;<br />
* Philip Fothergill, ex President of the Liberal<br />
Party;<br />
* Admiral Lord Cunningham;(100) <br />
* a coterie of other retired senior military, the<br />
Duchess of Atholl and Lord Ammon. <br />
<br />
Such 'advisory bodies' may mean very little: this<br />
might just be a notepaper job. Nonetheless, some of<br />
the 'advisory body' were people with rather<br />
specialised interests. For example, at one point the<br />
name of General Leslie Hollis appeared on it. Hollis<br />
had been the Secretary of the Chiefs of Staff<br />
committee which 'considered, with Sir Stewart Menzies,<br />
the head of MI6, and Warner [of IRD] and William<br />
Hayter of the Foreign Office, what form of<br />
organisation was required to establish a satisfactory<br />
link between the Chiefs of Staff and Foreign Office on<br />
matters connected with the day-to-day conduct of<br />
anti-Communist propaganda overseas.'(101) <br />
<br />
In the Autumn of 1955 the Common Cause Bulletin<br />
reported that there had been moves at the Labour Party<br />
conference that year to get it proscribed - but the<br />
motion to that effect 'was among the many crowded out<br />
from discussion'.(102) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Labour Party's intelligence-gathering<br />
Common Cause was one of the sources of information<br />
used by the Labour Party in its anti-communist<br />
activities in the 1950s. While no central unit was<br />
ever formally established 'for collecting information<br />
or monitoring the activities of communist-inspired or<br />
pro-Soviet groups', in practice the National Agent's<br />
Department at Labour headquarters, Transport House,<br />
did the job, using as sources the publications of<br />
proscribed organisations, regional organisers'<br />
reports, 'Foreign Office' material - i.e. IRD - and<br />
Common Cause.(103) The National Agent's Department<br />
[NAD] had 'lay responsibility for compiling the<br />
[proscription] list'. Shaw notes that in 1953 the<br />
proscription list was expanded by the addition of<br />
eighteen fresh groups. <br />
<br />
<br />
'What happened was rather unusual. Without consulting<br />
the NAD the International Department had submitted a<br />
report to the Overseas Subcommittee on "peace" and<br />
"friendship" societies. In response the Subcommittee<br />
recommended that they all be proscribed. NAD officials<br />
were never told the source of the International<br />
Department's information though they assumed it to be<br />
the Foreign Office [i.e. IRD] and Special<br />
Branch.'(104) <br />
<br />
A glimpse of the content of the NAD's<br />
intelligence-gathering has been provided by the late<br />
Ian Mikardo MP, who saw 'dossiers' in the possession<br />
of National Agent Sarah Barker At a meeting of a<br />
subcommittee of the NEC in 1955, Sara Barker objected<br />
to Konni Zilliacus and Ernie Roberts as prospective<br />
Parliamentary candidates. When Barker began quoting<br />
derogatory comments from files she had in her<br />
possession, Mikardo demanded to see the files. <br />
<br />
<br />
'They were an eye-opener. No MI5, no Special Branch,<br />
no George Smiley could have compiled more<br />
comprehensive dossiers. Not just press-cuttings,<br />
photographs and document references but also notes by<br />
watchers and eavesdroppers, and all sorts of<br />
tittle-tattle. I'm convinced that there was input into<br />
them from government sources and from at least a<br />
couple of Labour Attaches at the United States embassy<br />
who were close to some of our trade union leaders,<br />
notably Sam Watson.'(105) <br />
<br />
<br />
==Common Cause splits - IRIS is formed==<br />
The pretty unstable-looking mixture of admirals,<br />
generals and trade union leaders that was Common<br />
Cause, disintegrated in 1956. C.A.Smith resigned along<br />
with Advisory Council members Fothergill, Edwards,<br />
Ammon, Professor Arthur Newell and Sydney Walton.(106)<br />
This group complained that the organisation had become<br />
'reactionary' and that the promised democratic<br />
structure had never materialised. In August 1956<br />
Common Cause Ltd was registered, owned and controlled<br />
by the 'reactionary' faction. <br />
<br />
The original directors of Common Cause Ltd were: <br />
<br />
* the new chair, Peter Crane, the director of a number<br />
of British subsidiaries of American companies,<br />
including Collins Radio of England, whose American<br />
headquarters had connections with the CIA.(107) <br />
* David Pelham James - Conservative MP, and Director<br />
of the Catholic publishing house, Hollis and Carter.<br />
There were a number of Catholics prominent in the<br />
Common Cause network, including the man who ran IRIS<br />
for any years, Andy McKeown. This is discussed below.<br />
* Neil Elles, barrister and later a member of the<br />
European-wide anti-subversion outfit, INTERDOC.(108) <br />
* Christopher Blackett - a Scottish landowner and<br />
farmer and, I presume, but cannot prove, a relative of<br />
Frances Blackett, the original secretary of the<br />
British League for European Freedom, discussed<br />
above.(109) <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS<br />
More or less in parallel with the formation of Common<br />
Cause Ltd., an industrial wing, Industrial Research<br />
and Information Services (IRIS) Ltd. was formed and<br />
set up in the headquarters of the National Union of<br />
Seamen, Maritime House. Initially, IRIS Ltd listed<br />
three directors: <br />
<br />
* Jack Tanner, the recently retired President of the<br />
AEU;<br />
* William McLaine, General Secretary of the AEU from<br />
1938-47;<br />
* and Charles Sonnex, the Secretary and Managing<br />
Director, and the link with the parent body Common<br />
Cause.(110) Also it had a manager, James L. Nash.(111)<br />
According to Labour Research (January 1961), Nash left<br />
to join the CIA labour front, the ICFTU. <br />
<br />
In an interview with Richard Fletcher in 1979, C. A.<br />
Smith, attributed the formation of IRIS to Common<br />
Cause's discovery of just how careful they had to be<br />
about interfering in union affairs.(112) Another<br />
proximate cause for the formation of IRIS is suggested<br />
by the comment from the Common Cause Bulletin of<br />
January 1956 (pp. 4/5) that 'only a near-miracle can<br />
prevent the Executive of the AEU from passing under<br />
communist control during 1956.....already there are<br />
clear signs of an all-out Communist effort to put Reg<br />
Birch in this top trade union job'. <br />
<br />
However, another interpretation of the Common Cause<br />
split and the formation of IRIS is possible. In April<br />
1955 SIS (MI6) were forced to acknowledge that their<br />
networks of 'agents' inside the Soviet Union had all<br />
been penetrated. Worse, the Soviets had been running a<br />
deception operation with uncomfortable parallels with<br />
the 'Trust' deception in the 1920s in which the Soviet<br />
intelligence service created and ran a fake resistance<br />
group to which the British government gave a lot of<br />
money.(113) SIS had been using agents from Bandera's<br />
OUN in Ukraine and from NTS.(114) Some time later that<br />
year, SIS gave up all its emigre groups and in<br />
February 1956 SIS handed over control of NTS to the<br />
CIA.(115) What follows is what I surmise happened but<br />
for which I have no evidence. Having taken control of<br />
the British networks, new people were put in to run<br />
things. The NTS support group in the United States was<br />
Common Cause Inc. - with its British counterpart. In<br />
London, the limited company Common Cause was formed<br />
and all the trappings of members and branches were<br />
dumped; a CIA officer or agent, under cover, the<br />
cut-out to the Agency, was installed. (If this sounds<br />
banal, it has to be remembered that in 1956 none of<br />
this had ever been made public and there was no reason<br />
for them to be anything but banal.) The American<br />
assessment of the group's activities was that its most<br />
important work had been, and should continue to be, in<br />
the British trade union movement. The previous year's<br />
attempt to have Common Cause put on the Labour Party's<br />
proscription list was noted and a spin-off, trade<br />
union subsidiary, was formed. Common Cause would fund<br />
it - and act as another layer of insulation between it<br />
and the Agency. <br />
<br />
<br />
IRIS activities to 1963<br />
IRIS published a newsletter and a variety of<br />
pamphlets. They formed 'cells' - their word - to<br />
combat communists in the trade unions. How many cells,<br />
we do not know; nor in how many unions other than the<br />
AEU. They intervened in union elections. A member of<br />
ASSET, (which became ASTMS and is currently a part of<br />
MSF) sued IRIS and won in 1958 after IRIS News called<br />
him a communist. In the report of the TUC annual<br />
conference in 1960, delegates describe IRIS personnel<br />
intervening in the Association of Engineering and<br />
Shipbuilding Draughtsmen (AESD) and the Association of<br />
Supervisory Staff and Technicians (ASSET). The<br />
delegate of the latter describes IRIS News publishing<br />
the allegation that a candidate in a union election<br />
was a communist. Labour Research alleged an IRIS role<br />
in the National Union of Mineworkers and the Foundry<br />
Workers (as well as AESD and ASSET).(116) Reporting<br />
these events, Labour Research commented on IRIS News<br />
that 'the main feature in the paper however is and<br />
always has been news and advice about union elections.<br />
In most cases the paper reports that certain<br />
candidates are "receiving communist support" '. It<br />
seems reasonably certain - though unproven - the IRIS<br />
was receiving some of its information from IRD. <br />
<br />
In putting out information - its monthly magazine and<br />
pamphlets - and telling its readers who to vote for<br />
and not vote for in union elections, IRIS behaved as<br />
an exact mirror image of the groups on the left: start<br />
a paper and put out a 'line'. The late Ernie Roberts<br />
MP, for many years the only left-winger in the senior<br />
ranks of the AEU - the union from whence came two of<br />
the IRIS directors in 1956 - describes how the left in<br />
the union and IRIS/and 'the Club' spent their time<br />
infiltrating and reporting on each other's<br />
meetings.(117) <br />
<br />
In February 1966 the left-wing magazine Voice of the<br />
Unions, part of the opposition to IRIS within the AEU,<br />
asked where the IRIS money was coming from and<br />
commented, 'At one time we are told IRIS employed an<br />
office staff of six to ten.' Almost thirty years later<br />
we learned that some of the money had come from the<br />
British government after Lord Shawcross had contacted<br />
Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and asked for funding<br />
for IRIS.(118) <br />
<br />
Shawcross had approached Macmillan at the right time,<br />
for 'Supermac' had become infected with the fear of<br />
the 'communist threat'. The Radcliffe Tribunal had<br />
reported in 1962, devoting a whole section to the<br />
Civil Service staff associations and trade unions,<br />
expressing concern at the number of communists and<br />
communist sympathisers holding positions in the<br />
unions;(119) and his administration was being<br />
afflicted by the espionage scandals of George Blake<br />
and Vassell - and the Profumo Affair which Macmillan<br />
apparently believed was part of a communist conspiracy<br />
the bring him down.(120) <br />
<br />
<br />
Catholic Action?<br />
There is a distinct Catholic tinge to Common Cause and<br />
IRIS. Hollis and Carter, the company which published<br />
the Common Cause Bulletin, was a Catholic publishing<br />
house. Catholics among the leading figures in Common<br />
Cause included chairs David Pelham James(121) and<br />
Peter Crane, Brigadier George Taylor, a director of<br />
Common Cause circa 1958,(122) and Sir Tom O'Brien.<br />
Catholics among the AEU/IRIS network include AEU<br />
President Bill Carron and Jim Conway, IRIS's Cecil<br />
Hallett, and the man who ran IRIS for nearly twenty<br />
years, Andy McKeown.(123) So was there, as some on the<br />
British Left believed,(124) a national Catholic Action<br />
organisation operating in Britain, as it had in other<br />
countries, such as Australia? Joan Keating<br />
investigated this belief in the course of her doctoral<br />
thesis, and though she found quite a thriving<br />
Association of Catholic Trade unionists - the Catholic<br />
Worker was selling 25,000 copies in 1956 - she found<br />
no evidence at all of any national, co-ordinated<br />
organisation.(125) <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
79. Though there is a hint that such activities may<br />
have been continued abroad. In Coleman's book on the<br />
Congress for Cultural Freedom (discussed below) there<br />
is a reference to an Indian anti-communist politician,<br />
Minoo Misani, who in the early post-war years, founded<br />
the Democratic Research Service and published a<br />
magazine called..... Freedom First. Coleman p. 150.<br />
80. Wigham, p. 128<br />
81. Minkin p. 180<br />
82. Ibid.<br />
83. Ibid.<br />
84. Roberts pp. 124/5<br />
85. Hatch, p. 187<br />
86. The Times 25 February, 1952<br />
87. Details on Smith from J.C. Banks, Editor of the<br />
Common Wealth Journal. In the obituary of Smith in the<br />
The Libertarian, the Common Wealth journal, no. 25,<br />
Summer 1985, Smith is said to have formed Common<br />
Cause. I believe this to be mistaken.<br />
88. The Imperial Policy Group was largely the work of<br />
Kenneth de Courcy. De Courcy edited and published the<br />
Review of World Affairs during the Second World War.<br />
The IPG and de Courcy in particular were much disliked<br />
by the Soviet government of the time. Since then de<br />
Courcy has published the newsletters Intelligence<br />
Digest and Special Office Brief. De Courcy had some<br />
influence on the right of the Tory Party into the<br />
1960s. See index references in Highams on De Courcy.<br />
89. This information from John Hope who has had access<br />
to the Right Club's membership list. It is possible<br />
Stokes had joined for reasons other than agreement<br />
with the Club's aims.<br />
90. Duchess of Atholl p. 252<br />
91. Ibid.<br />
92. Loftus p. 204<br />
93. Simpson p. 222<br />
94. Ibid p. 223<br />
95. Ibid. p. 222. 'Christopher Emmet is a classic<br />
example of those who ran the British Intelligence<br />
fronts before and during World War II and who, having<br />
proven themselves faithful and competent, went on to<br />
run the CIA/MI6 fronts of the Cold War.' Mahl, thesis,<br />
p. 198.<br />
96. Details of the WACL meeting is in Charles<br />
Goldman's 'World Anti-Communist League', adapted from<br />
Under Dackke, ed. Frik Krensen and Petter Sommerfelt<br />
(Demos, Copenhagen, 1978). I am unsure of the source<br />
of this Goldman article but it appears to be an early<br />
edition of Counterspy. Dallas' career, with some of<br />
the later associations glossed over, is described by<br />
his son in the Dictionary of Labour Biography eds.<br />
Saville and Bellamy, vol. 4 1977.<br />
97. On ICFTU and the CIA see the comments of former<br />
CIA officers Joseph Smith (p. 138) and Philip Agee<br />
(CIA Diary) (p. 611). For a more general discussion<br />
see Winslow Peck. The rival but much less significant<br />
World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) was, of<br />
course, funded and run by the Soviet Union.<br />
98. Hancock had been Chief Woman Officer of the TUC.<br />
99. Edwards had been chair of the ILP. During 1948 the<br />
Chemical Workers Union had been involved in protracted<br />
proceedings over alleged forged ballot papers by<br />
communists.<br />
100. In 1945, as Chief of the Defence Staff he had<br />
threatened Attlee with resignation over proposed<br />
defence cuts.<br />
101. Scott Lucas and Morris p. 101.<br />
102. For which, perhaps, read 'our friends fixed the<br />
agenda'.<br />
103. Shaw p. 58<br />
104. Ibid. pp. 58 and 9 Shaw notes in footnote 44 p.<br />
314 that 'at least one NAD official was approached by<br />
a member of the Special Branch [and brother of a<br />
future International Secretary] offering<br />
"assistance".'<br />
105. Mikardo p. 131.<br />
106. The Times, April 6, 1957<br />
107. Collins Radio was first linked with CIA<br />
operations by Peter Dale Scott in his unpublished<br />
manuscript, The Dallas Conspiracy, ch. 11 p. 3. More<br />
recently, 'Collins Radio' by Bill Kelly, in Back<br />
Channels, (USA) Vol. 1, Number 4, lists a number of<br />
links between the company and the CIA-controlled<br />
anti-Castro milieu of the early 1960s<br />
108. On INTERDOC see Crozier pp. 49 and 81.<br />
109. Frances Blackett in Duchess of Atholl, p. 250.<br />
110. The Times, 6 April 1957<br />
111. IRIS News, vol. 1, no 1, 1956. According to<br />
Anthony Carew, Nash was also a member of the AEU.<br />
112. Fletcher's notes of the conversation say that<br />
that 'wealthy people got at [Common Cause executive<br />
member Charles] Sonnex (without telling CAS) asked him<br />
to lead IRIS. S.[onnex] remained on CC exec. Rich<br />
people attached more importance to IRIS.'<br />
113. See Tom Bower's Red Web on the SIS post-war<br />
operations and chapter 8, in particular, on the<br />
dawning realisation that they had been taken for a<br />
ride - again. On 'the Trust' see Andrew, Secret<br />
Service pp. 445-8<br />
114. Ibid p. 165<br />
115. Yakovlev p. 105. Soviet publications in this<br />
field are not famously accurate, but this account has<br />
since been confirmed by Tom Bower's biography of SIS<br />
chief Dick White The Perfect English Spy, pp. 206 and<br />
7. Yakovlev quotes from what purports to be an SIS<br />
document, 'A Proposed Statement to the NTS<br />
Leadership', which, presuming it to be genuine, may<br />
have been given to the Soviets by Kim Philby or George<br />
Blake. Bower quotes a brief section from the same<br />
document.<br />
116. Labour Research, January 1961, p. 10<br />
117. See Roberts pp. 101, 122-4, 131 157, 203.<br />
The left-wing Engineering Voice, Christmas 1966,<br />
reported having received 'an anonymous and undated<br />
document purporting to describe the proceedings of a<br />
secret meeting recently convened by supporters of the<br />
present leadership of the AEU.' The document referred<br />
to a 'National Group meeting' and said attending it<br />
had been fourteen full-time officers of the AEU.<br />
118. Guardian, 2 January 1995, based on papers<br />
released under the 30 year rule. See also 'Anti-red<br />
and alive' in New Statesman, 10 February 1995.<br />
119. Pincher, Inside Story p. 335<br />
120. On Macmillan's paranoia about the 'communist<br />
conspiracy' see Bower, Perfect English Spy pp. 308-9.<br />
121. A director of Hollis and Carter<br />
122. Keating, PhD thesis, p. 350<br />
123. Ferris, p. 85. Engineering Voice, March 1969,<br />
reported a two-day conference of the Association of<br />
Catholic Trade Unionists, at which were H.E. Matthews,<br />
a director of Cable and Wireless and some time<br />
director of IRIS, and Andy McKeown of IRIS. Keating<br />
quotes McKeown as suggesting that originally IRIS was<br />
anti-Catholic because 'Freemasonry' had a 'strong<br />
hold' on the organisation, and claiming that the man<br />
who initially ran IRIS, Charles Sonnex, was a Mason!<br />
124. One of those who believes there was a national<br />
Catholic Action is former President of the Trades<br />
Union Congress, Clive Jenkins. Conversation with the<br />
author, 1995.<br />
125. Keating thesis, p. 335. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
Part 2 <br />
<br />
Atlantic Crossings<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism and the CIA<br />
As well as the programmes to inculcate American<br />
notions of free market economics and union-management<br />
relations - and good feelings about America - there<br />
were operations aimed at the wider public and the<br />
Labour Party. Large numbers of Labour MPs and trade<br />
unionists were paid to visit the United States. Among<br />
the Gaitskellite grouping in the Parliamentary party,<br />
Gaitskell, George Brown, Anthony Crosland and Douglas<br />
Jay all made visits.(1) Under the umbrella of just one<br />
minor aspect of the Marshall Plan, the Anglo-American<br />
Council on Productivity, 900 people from Britain -<br />
management and unions - went on trips to the United<br />
States to see the equivalent of 'Potemkin<br />
villages'.(2) Hundreds of trade unions officers went<br />
on paid visits to the US in the fifties under the<br />
auspices of the European Productivity Agency and<br />
groups of British union leaders were sent on three<br />
month trade union programme run twice yearly by the<br />
Harvard Business School.(3) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Congress for Cultural Freedom<br />
There was a European-wide - and world-wide - programme<br />
to boost the social democratic wings of socialist<br />
parties and movements. <br />
<br />
<br />
'At Thomas Braden's suggestion and with the support of<br />
Allen Dulles and Frank Wisner [then head of the Office<br />
of Policy Coordination], the CIA began its covert<br />
support of the non-Communist political left around the<br />
world - trade unions, political parties and<br />
international organisations of students and<br />
journalists.'(4) <br />
<br />
The biggest of these programs that we are aware of was<br />
the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF from here on),<br />
which began in 1950 with a large conference in the US<br />
zone in Berlin, a demonstration of the strength of<br />
anti-Soviet feeling among some of the West's<br />
intellectuals and a response to the Soviet 'Peace<br />
offensive' then underway.(5) At the time funds for<br />
these gatherings were said to have come from the<br />
American Federation of Labour, via Jay Lovestone - a<br />
story offered up again recently by CCF apologist Peter<br />
Coleman in his The Liberal Conspiracy. In fact they<br />
came from the CIA, something alleged by the Soviet<br />
bloc's media at the time but not believed.(6) The one<br />
thing the Congress for Cultural Freedom's paymasters<br />
were not interested in was cultural freedom. Peter<br />
Coleman does his best. Of the first big 1950 jamboree<br />
he writes, <br />
<br />
<br />
'almost all the participants were liberals or social<br />
democrats, critical of capitalism and opposed to<br />
colonialism, imperialism, nationalism, racism and<br />
dictatorship'. <br />
<br />
If the British delegation is anything to go by, this<br />
is not true. Of the four British delegates named by<br />
Coleman, one was Christopher Hollis, a right-wing<br />
Catholic and some time Tory MP, (7) and another was<br />
Julian Amery, one of the Tory Party's leading<br />
imperialists! In any case 'cultural freedom' was a<br />
euphemism for 'American capitalism'. <br />
<br />
<br />
Encounter<br />
The CCF began publishing journals - in Britain,<br />
Encounter, which first appeared in 1953. Encounter<br />
became a major outlet for the 'revisionist' - i.e.<br />
anti-socialist, anti-nationalist - thinking of the<br />
younger intellectuals around Labour leader Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, such as Peter Jay, Patrick Gordon-Walker,<br />
Roy Jenkins and Anthony Crosland, all of whom were in<br />
Harold Wilson's first cabinet in 1964. The 1955 CCF<br />
conference in Milan, 'The Future of Freedom', was<br />
attended by Crosland, Richard Crossman, Denis Healey,<br />
Roy Jenkins and W. Arthur Lewis MP.(8) Anthony<br />
Crosland was a member of the International Council of<br />
the CCF: his role, said the CIA officer who was<br />
running CCF, was 'encouraging sympathetic people' to<br />
attend CCF conferences.(9) There is no evidence that<br />
Crosland was witting of the CIA connection. (And none<br />
that he was wasn't, either.) Peter Coleman(10) lists<br />
Gaitskell, Jenkins, Crosland, Rita Hinden, Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker, John Strachey, Dennis Healey and<br />
Roderick Macfarquhar as Labour writers published in<br />
Encounter. In 1960 editor Melvin Lasky wrote to fellow<br />
CCF officer, John Hunt, referring to 'an enormous<br />
friendly feeling for Encounter' in the centre and<br />
right wing of the Labour Party.(11) <br />
<br />
The revisionist wing of the Labour Party also had<br />
Forward, the less glamorous (and poorer) Labour<br />
weekly, set up to combat the influence of Tribune.<br />
Money for Forward came from Alan Sainsbury, Chairman<br />
of the retailers Sainsbury (whose son was to fund the<br />
Social Democratic Party in the early 1980s), Henry<br />
Walston, the land-owner, and the restaurateur, Charles<br />
Forte.(12) There was also the $3000 'expenses' paid<br />
made to Hugh Gaitskell for a talk to the Jewish Labour<br />
Committee in the USA.(13) <br />
<br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary<br />
As well as Encounter and Forward there was the monthly<br />
Socialist Commentary as a vehicle for the<br />
anti-socialists in the Labour Party. Socialist<br />
Commentary began life as a journal of an obscure<br />
revisionist group of German refugees but by the early<br />
1950s it had been absorbed by the revisionist wing of<br />
the Labour Party. In 1953 a 'Friends of Socialist<br />
Commentary' group was set up with Gaitskell as<br />
Treasurer.(14) 'Socialist Commentary and the Socialist<br />
Union were plugged in direct to the USA's Marshall<br />
Plan operation in Britain by virtue of the fact that<br />
William Gausmann, Labour Information Officer in the<br />
London mission, was a member of the journal's<br />
editorial board.'(15) <br />
<br />
The dominant figure in Socialist Commentary was its<br />
editor for 20 years, Rita Hinden, who had been<br />
co-founder of the Fabian Colonial Bureau in 1940. The<br />
Bureau, and Hinden in particular, became an important<br />
influence on the thinking of the Labour Party - and,<br />
to some extent of the British state - on post-war<br />
management of the empire.(16) Hinden was also a<br />
participant in CCF functions, wrote for Encounter, and<br />
was described by the CIA officer in charge of CCF,<br />
Michael Josselson, as 'a good friend of ours', on<br />
whose advice the CIA 'relied heavily ...for our<br />
African operations.'(17) On her death Denis Healey,<br />
who had written widely for Socialist Commentary's<br />
American counterpart, New Leader, said that 'Only Sol<br />
Levitas of the American New Leader had a comparable<br />
capacity for exercising a wide political influence<br />
with negligible material resources.' But as Richard<br />
Fletcher commented, 'He [Healey] obviously hadn't paid<br />
a visit to Companies House whose register shows that<br />
in recent years Socialist Commentary has been drawing<br />
on a capital reserve of over �75.000.'(18) (Healey was<br />
apparently also unaware that Sol Levitas was also<br />
taking the CIA shilling.) <br />
<br />
Socialist Commentary has got to be CIA but there is<br />
not a shred of direct evidence that I am aware of. <br />
<br />
<br />
The social democratic network<br />
By the mid 1950s there was a palpable social<br />
democratic network operating in and around the Labour<br />
Party in Britain and reaching out into the British and<br />
American states, both overt and covert. The career of<br />
Saul Rose in this period illustrates this. After<br />
wartime service in Army Intelligence, Rose was a<br />
lecturer at Aberdeen University, before becoming the<br />
Labour Party's International Secretary for three<br />
years. He then moved to the then recently established<br />
St Antony's College at Oxford, one of two British<br />
institutions which sponsored Congress of Cultural<br />
Freedom seminars in the UK. The other was Ditchley<br />
Manor, Oxford. Both were outposts of the Foreign<br />
Office/MI6 network.(19) (Former MP Dick Taverne,<br />
mentioned recently that as as young man he went to a<br />
Young Fabian conference at the other major Foreign<br />
Office country retreat, Wilton Park....(20)) <br />
<br />
The same elements are visible in the contributors to<br />
the short-lived Fabian International Review, begun in<br />
1953. In its three years its contributors included two<br />
academics from St Antony's, Gausmann, the Labour<br />
Information Officer at the US embassy in London,<br />
Douglas Jay, William Rodgers, and Mary Benson of the<br />
Africa Bureau.(21) <br />
<br />
It is easy at this distance to be indignant about<br />
Labour politicians hobnobbing with the CIA. But in<br />
1955, say, when Saul Rose left his job as Labour's<br />
International Secretary, the media simply did not<br />
discuss the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services. There were Americans with money scattered<br />
about the higher reaches of the Labour movement in<br />
Britain; but Americans with money had been scattered<br />
about Britain since the war years, they had been<br />
Britain's allies only a few years before, they were<br />
anti-Stalinist - and some of them, the labour officers<br />
in one guise or another, were originally from the US<br />
labour movement.(22) I think it likely that in the<br />
1950s the Labour revisionists, the Hindens and<br />
Croslands, believed they were taking part in a<br />
'liberal conspiracy'(23) against the Soviet Union,<br />
with progressive, democratic forces - people they<br />
perceived to be like themselves. But from the CIA's<br />
point of view, they were being run in one of the most<br />
successful psy-war operations of the Cold War. This<br />
operation had as one of its aims the struggle against<br />
Stalinism; but the Americans sponsored and funded the<br />
European social democrats not because they were social<br />
democrats, but because social democracy was the best<br />
ideological vehicle for the major aim of the<br />
programme: to ensure that the governments of Europe<br />
continued to allow American capital into their<br />
economies with the minimum of restrictions. This aim<br />
the revisionists in the Labour Party chose not to look<br />
at. As the history of US imperialism since the war<br />
shows, the US is basically uninterested in the<br />
ideology of host governments, and has supported<br />
everything from social democrats to the most feral,<br />
military dictatorships in South and Central America.<br />
But its other aims went largely unrecognised. (This,<br />
perhaps, is a tribute to the skill of the US personnel<br />
running the operations.) Looking at the networking of<br />
the social democrats in the these post-war years, the<br />
intimacy between US labour attache, Joe Godson, and<br />
Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell, which once looked so<br />
extraordinary, now looks less some awful aberration -<br />
and triumph for Godson - than business as usual. <br />
<br />
<br />
The end-of-ideology ideology<br />
The strategically important thing for the United<br />
States about the revisionist's version of socialism<br />
was its central conclusion that ownership of economic<br />
assets was no longer of paramount importance. (In the<br />
USA, sociologist Daniel Bell was arguing the same<br />
thesis, sponsored by the same people, under the rubric<br />
of 'the end of ideology'.) This was obviously the key<br />
line for US capital which wanted to penetrate the<br />
world's markets and was meeting resistance from people<br />
who called them imperialists. Officially the US was<br />
also opposed to colonialism - especially British and<br />
French; imperialism - especially British;<br />
totalitarianism (except where dictators were the best<br />
allies US business could find) and nationalism -<br />
except Americanism, which was a universal creed of<br />
such perspicacity and moral purity as to be beyond<br />
objection. The one to take seriously among that<br />
quartet is nationalism. In democratic Europe the CIA<br />
chiefly funded those who were not nationalists. To US<br />
capital, socialism was functionally simply a form of<br />
exclusionary, anti-American, economic nationalism:<br />
communism the most extreme of all.(24) The<br />
internationalists in democratic Europe in the<br />
immediate post-war years were, mostly, on the liberal<br />
or centre left; the European right was, mostly,<br />
nationalist. In France De Gaulle opposed US capital.<br />
(And the CIA was to help finance the OAS against him.)<br />
In Britain it was the nationalist Tories and some of<br />
the socialist left who voted against the Marshall Plan<br />
in the House of Commons. The US government only had<br />
one operating criterion where a foreign government was<br />
concerned: is it willing to allow US capital in or<br />
not? It was called anti-communism, but it was also<br />
anti-nationalism. Yes, it was precisely 'Taking the<br />
teeth out of British socialism', as Richard Fletcher<br />
put it in his seminal piece in 1977;(25) but it could<br />
just as accurately have been called 'Taking the teeth<br />
out of British economic nationalism'. <br />
<br />
The US-supported drive by the revisionists in the<br />
Labour Party had its first major set-back with the<br />
rise of CND, climaxing with the famous narrow majority<br />
in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament at the<br />
party conference in 1960. To the Gaitskellites in the<br />
Labour Party it was little more than another communist<br />
conspiracy. Gaitskell's leadership of the party had<br />
largely been defined by the struggle with the left<br />
(real and imaginary), and he believed the CPGB had<br />
infiltrated the Labour Party, and was manipulating the<br />
apparently Labour Left gathered round the newspaper<br />
Tribune.(26) The Gaitskellites' response to the 1960<br />
resolution had three dimensions: the formation of a<br />
party faction, the Campaign for Democratic Socialism<br />
(CDS); in the unions, the work of IRIS cells and other<br />
anti-communist groups; and the use of the party<br />
machine itself. <br />
<br />
<br />
The Campaign for Democratic Socialism (CDS)<br />
While the Gaitskellites dominated the PLP leadership,<br />
and had the support of the major unions, they had<br />
socialist opposition among the party's members.<br />
Gaitskell needed a faction. What became the Campaign<br />
for Democratic Socialism began before the pro-CND<br />
Labour Party conference resolution in February 1960<br />
when William Rodgers, Secretary of the Fabian Society,<br />
a part of the social democratic network in the UK,<br />
organised a letter of support for Gaitskell from<br />
prospective parliamentary candidates. Among the<br />
fifteen who raised their heads above the parapets in<br />
this way were: <br />
<br />
* Maurice Foley, who had been secretary of the British<br />
section of the European Youth Campaign from<br />
1951-59,(27) and later became a Foreign Office<br />
Minister and trustee of the Ariel Foundation; (28) <br />
* Ben Hooberman, a lawyer involved in the ETU<br />
ballot-rigging case;<br />
* Bryan Magee, who subsequently became a Labour MP and<br />
then joined the SDP;<br />
* Dick Taverne, who later stood against the Labour<br />
Party as 'Democratic Labour' and joined the SDP;<br />
* Shirley Williams, one of the 'Gang of Four', who<br />
founded the SDP; <br />
<br />
Shortly after, a steering committee, containing<br />
Crosland, Jenkins and Gordon-Walker, was set up with<br />
Rodgers as chair. The group began working on a<br />
manifesto to be released in the event of Gaitskell's<br />
defeat in the forthcoming defence debate at the Party<br />
conference. On 24 November 1960, after the narrow<br />
defeat for Gaitskell's line at the conference, this<br />
group announced itself as the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism, with Rodgers as chair.(29) Immediately<br />
after the formation of CDS, after his speech at<br />
Scarborough Gaitskell 'consulted Sarah Barker [the<br />
party's National Agent] who advised him that the<br />
Campaign could have his distant blessing'.(30) <br />
<br />
It set up permanent headquarters, officially 'financed<br />
by contributions from individual members of the Labour<br />
Party'. Ever since the Richard Fletcher article on CDS<br />
et al in 1977 there have been questions about how this<br />
operation was funded. In mid November 1960 - i.e. a<br />
fortnight after the launch - Rodgers 'reported to the<br />
steering committee that many small donations had been<br />
received, together with a large sum from a source who<br />
wished to remain anonymous.' As we saw above, Charles<br />
Forte donated money to the founders of Forward, and in<br />
his autobiography he quotes a letter from Gaitskell,<br />
thanking him for his financial generosity. This is<br />
undated unfortunately, but from the context it is 1961<br />
or thereabouts.(31) <br />
<br />
This donation, whatever it was, enabled CDS to have<br />
'field workers in the constituencies and unions, whom<br />
it supported with travelling expenses, literature and<br />
organisational back-up, and other publications, plus a<br />
regular bulletin campaign, circulated free of charge<br />
to a large mailing list within the movement. And all<br />
this was produced without a single subscription-paying<br />
member.'(32) John Diamond was the CDS fund-raiser.(33)<br />
<br />
<br />
A 1961 letter in CDS Campaign announced support from<br />
45 MPs including Austen Albu (who wrote for IRIS),<br />
Crosland, Diamond (who joined the SDP), Donnelly<br />
(Desmond), who resigned in '68; Roy Jenkins (founder<br />
and leader of the SDP), Roy Mason, Christopher Mayhew<br />
(who joined the Liberals) and Reg Prentice (who joined<br />
the Tories).(34) The following year were added new MPs<br />
William Rodgers (another of the 'Gang of Four') and<br />
Dick Taverne (who defected as a Democratic Labour MP,<br />
later SDP) The Gaitskellites' historian, Stephen<br />
Haseler noted, 'The whole Central Leadership of the<br />
Party in Parliament, with the single exception of<br />
Wilson, were Campaign sympathisers.'(35) In the<br />
party's grassroots their significance is harder to<br />
assess but a 1962 study found that CDS did have some<br />
measurable effect in swinging perhaps as many as 1 in<br />
3 of the Constituency Labour Parties in which they<br />
were active.(36) <br />
<br />
<br />
In the unions<br />
Working in some of the unions were clandestine<br />
anti-communist groupings, the best known of which was<br />
the AEU's 'club', and IRIS discussed above.(37) One of<br />
the people bridging the gap between the parliamentary<br />
and trade union wings of the movement was Charles<br />
Pannell, Secretary of the Parliamentary Trade Union<br />
Group of MP's and an AEU-sponsored MP.(38) Pannell<br />
told the American academic Irving Richter, of his<br />
'close relationship' with the General Secretary of the<br />
AEU, Cecil Hallett,(39) and of their combined efforts<br />
to defeat the Left in the industrial and political<br />
wings of the movement, by building IRIS 'cells'.<br />
Pannell told Richter that he, Hallet, and the IRIS<br />
cells working inside the AEU, were crucial in<br />
overturning the AEU's 1960 vote for CND and so<br />
restoring Labour Party's policy to being pro-nuclear,<br />
pro-NATO.(40) Birmingham MP Denis Howells 'devoted<br />
himself full time from the beginning of the Campaign<br />
until his reelection to Parliament and then after that<br />
part time to reversing the votes in the Trade<br />
Unions....[and] played a very important part.'(41) <br />
<br />
After the 1960 Party conference 20 members of the TUC<br />
General Council signed a statement supporting NATO.<br />
Four of them, James Crawford, Harry Douglass, John<br />
Boyd and Sid Greene, were or were to become, officers<br />
(on paper, at any rate) of IRIS: a fifth, Sir Tom<br />
O'Brien, was still on the notepaper of Common Cause.<br />
There were public gestures of support for CDS from<br />
messrs Carron, Williamson and Webber, Ron Smith (Post<br />
Office Workers), Dame Flora Hancock, Anne Goodwin, W.<br />
Tallon and Jim Conway (both AEU), and Joe Godson's<br />
friend, the NUM's Sam Watson.(42) <br />
<br />
<br />
Using the party organisation<br />
A committee 'consisting of the Party Leader, the Chief<br />
Whip, Bill Rodgers, the secretary of the right-wing<br />
ginger group the Campaign for Democratic Socialism,<br />
and other influential figures' was formed and met<br />
regularly 'to secure the selection of right-wing<br />
candidates for winnable constituencies'.(43) Professor<br />
George Jones, who had also been in CDS, commented that<br />
'the relationship between CDS and the regional<br />
organisers of the Labour Party was very<br />
important.'(44) The CDS had the support of at least<br />
half of the Regional Organisers, though how many is in<br />
dispute. Seyd suggests seven out of the party's<br />
twelve. Shaw thinks that Seyd must have got this wrong<br />
because one of the seven was left-winger Ron Hayward,<br />
who denies it.(45) CDS organiser Bill Rodgers said<br />
that the regional organisers <br />
<br />
<br />
'were fairly well disposed, including the youngest of<br />
them who was called Ron Hayward, was very keen to have<br />
CDS making a contribution in the areas in which he was<br />
responsible..... We believed that the party could be<br />
saved from itself and Hugh Gaitskell offered the best<br />
prospect of saving it. Once we had established that<br />
thought in the minds of the regional organisers, they<br />
acquiesced in what we did.'(46) <br />
<br />
<br />
Partnership of the two wings<br />
There are glimpses of the two wings of the labour<br />
movement working together. Cecil Hallett described a<br />
meeting between IRIS and the Trade Union Group of MPs<br />
in 1955 addressed by the CIA's labour man in Europe,<br />
Irving Brown.(47) CDS member Bernard Donoughue<br />
recalled how <br />
<br />
<br />
'In the summer of 1964, the MP for Finsbury died and I<br />
was telephoned by a friend, a left-wing journalist,<br />
and told that I must watch out, that there had been a<br />
meeting of key left-wing people and they had decided<br />
to capture Finsbury. They had a candidate, they had<br />
approached a number of people in the constituency,<br />
they had 27 votes, the candidate was going to be Clive<br />
Jenkins. I contacted one or two friends and the list<br />
of CDS people in Finsbury, including the Post Office<br />
and Telegraph Union people and they organised very<br />
actively. It emerged that the left, despite its<br />
incompetence,(sic) had their candidate and had 27<br />
potential votes. CDS campaigned in the constituency<br />
and we won by 31 to 27, that was the summer of<br />
1964.'(48) <br />
<br />
In the recollection of the candidate concerned, Clive<br />
Jenkins, it was 1963. He was 'approached by a number<br />
of trade unions and ward Labour parties to stand for<br />
selection'. At the TUC at Blackpool he was tipped off<br />
that the General Management Committee of the<br />
Shoreditch and Finsbury constituency had been sent a<br />
document which described him as, among other things,<br />
the 'chief Trotskyist in Great Britain'. This had been<br />
given to journalists by none other than Jim Matthews,<br />
the national industrial officer of the Municipal and<br />
General Workers Union, and an officer of Common Cause.<br />
Jenkins sued, collected damages and costs and later<br />
speculated about a CIA connection: <br />
<br />
<br />
'I was told by reliable friends that the anonymous<br />
letter, which had been mailed to every member of the<br />
selection committee came from a man who was seemingly<br />
a member of the CIA and operating under the cover of a<br />
petty news agency.'(49) <br />
<br />
It is interesting to see Donoughue referring to 'the<br />
Post Office and Telegraph Union people'. I presume he<br />
means the Union of Post Officer Workers, one of the<br />
British unions with which the CIA is known to have<br />
worked in the 1960s. In the 1950s Peter D. Newell was<br />
an active member of the Socialist Party of Great<br />
Britain. He worked as a draughtsman but wanted a<br />
change of career. It was suggested to him that he join<br />
the Post Office Initially not keen on what he saw it<br />
was a downward move, he has recalled how 'quite subtly<br />
(I now realise) it was suggested that once in the PO,<br />
I would soon be able to write forThe Post , the<br />
official fortnightly journal of the UPW [Union of Post<br />
Office Workers] - and be paid for it!'(50) He duly<br />
joined the Post Office, was contacted by Norman Stagg,<br />
the editor of the journal almost immediately, and<br />
began writing an anonymous, anti-communist column for<br />
it under the by-line of 'Bellman'. For his column<br />
Stagg provided source material from the ICFTU, IRIS<br />
and the AFL-CIO. At the time the Union of Post Office<br />
Workers was a member of the trade union international<br />
body Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International.<br />
(PTTI) Like many of the these international trade<br />
union organisations, the PTTI was penetrated - some<br />
would say run - by the CIA.(51) Its president was the<br />
late Joe Beirne of the Communication Workers of<br />
America. Beirne was also founder and<br />
Secretary-Treasurer of American Institute for Free<br />
Labor Development (AIFLD), created and run by the<br />
CIA.(52) As far as it is possible to be sure of<br />
anything in this field without a confession from the<br />
man himself or his case officer, Joe Beirne was a<br />
major asset of the CIA in the American and world<br />
labour movements.(53) <br />
<br />
<br />
Social democratic centralism<br />
What Eric Shaw wittily calls social democratic<br />
centralism, the attempt by the right to police the<br />
entire Labour Party and trade union membership, peaked<br />
in 1962. In March 1961 five MPs, including Michael<br />
Foot, were expelled from the Parliamentary party for<br />
voting against the Tory government's defence<br />
estimates. The Gaitskellites repulsed the<br />
unilateralists at the annual conference that year; and<br />
in the Labour Party its 'personnel committee', the<br />
organisational subcommittee, was dominated by Ray<br />
Gunter MP(54) and George Brown, a 'CIA source', and<br />
serviced by the Party's National Agent's Department,<br />
which received its information from IRD and others.<br />
Then things went wrong. Determined upon a final purge<br />
of the Parliamentary party, George Brown approached<br />
MI5, via the journalist Chapman Pincher, for evidence<br />
of Soviet links to Labour MP's believed to be 'fellow<br />
travellers'. But MI5 declined, apparently because<br />
afraid that to do so would reveal their sources within<br />
the PLP;(55) and then, with the Macmillan government<br />
in what appeared to be terminal decline, Gaitskell<br />
died suddenly and the right in the Parliamentary Party<br />
- and the Anglo-American intelligence and security<br />
services - saw the party leadership slip from the<br />
Gaitskellites' hands as Harold Wilson won the<br />
leadership election - and then the general election of<br />
1964. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
1. There is no detailed examination of this as far as<br />
I know and I am not even sure how many such programmes<br />
were run. Roy Hattersley recently commented that his<br />
first visit to the US was paid for by 'something which<br />
was laughingly called The Young Leaders' Program'. The<br />
Guardian, 27 February 1995. In his memoir, A Bag of<br />
Boiled Sweets (Faber and Faber, 1995) pp. 77-8, the<br />
Conservative MP, Julian Critchley describes how, upon<br />
letting the Tory Party Whips know that he had never<br />
been to the United States, he was immediately fixed up<br />
with a six week freebie courtesy of the US embassy in<br />
London.<br />
2. Carew p. 137<br />
3. Ibid. pp.189/90. The British trade union whose<br />
leadership responded most enthusiastically to these<br />
American overtures was the General and Municipal<br />
Workers' Union (GMWU) and it 'provided from among its<br />
leading officials half the British participants in the<br />
university trade union courses at Harvard and<br />
Columbia...' Ibid. p. 191. GMWU General Secretary, Tom<br />
Williamson, was one of the participants at the first<br />
meeting of the Bilderberg Group in 1954. (Eringer p.<br />
49) Other British participants included Hugh Gaitskell<br />
and Dennis Healey, who discusses the Bilderberg<br />
meetings in his memoir, The Time of My Life.<br />
4. Smith, OSS p. 368.<br />
5. Lasch p. 332 The 1951 CCF conference in Delhi was<br />
explicitly a reply to a 'World Peace Conference'<br />
sponsored by the Soviet Union.<br />
6. Dittberner p. 112. Mr Coleman's objectivity on this<br />
matter can be seen by his description of CIA officer,<br />
Irving Brown, as 'European representative of the AFL',<br />
the cover story even the Americans have abandoned.<br />
Coleman p. 34.<br />
7. Later a member of the editorial board of the<br />
Catholic magazine,The Tablet This is the Hollis family<br />
in Hollis and Carter, the Catholic publishers of the<br />
Common Cause Bulletin.<br />
8. Coleman p. 110 'Finally, Lasky moved Encounter<br />
closer to the Hugh Gaitskell wing of the British<br />
Labour Party.... Encounter became one of the principal<br />
publications in which C.A.R. Crosland developed his<br />
"revisionist" social democratic, Keynesian program'.<br />
Coleman p. 185<br />
9. Hirsch and Fletcher pp. 59 and 60. Labour Party<br />
leader Hugh Gaitskell attended the conferences in in<br />
1955, 57, 58 and 62.<br />
10. p. 73<br />
11. Coleman p. 185. Roy Jenkins, splendidly<br />
insouciant,on Encounter: 'We had all known that it had<br />
been heavily subsidised from American sources, and it<br />
did not seem to me worse that these should turn out to<br />
be a US Government agency than, as I had vaguely<br />
understood, a Cincinnati gin distiller.' Jenkins,<br />
Life, p. 118<br />
12. Francis Williams p. 309<br />
13. '...which helped him underwrite the costs of<br />
Forward.' Carew pp. 129 and 30<br />
14. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 68<br />
15. Carew p. 245<br />
16. The Bureau 'enjoyed a direct and amiable<br />
relationship with the Colonial Office, its advice was<br />
always considered if not always followed.' Pugh p.<br />
222. Another commentator's assessment was that<br />
'Officials at the Colonial Office came to respect her<br />
knowledge, judgement and persistence.' Labour MP and<br />
fellow Bureau member, W. Arthur Lewis, quoted in the<br />
entry on Hinden in the Dictionary of Labour Biography,<br />
vol. 2, Macmillan 1974.<br />
17. She visited India and Japan on a CCF-sponsored<br />
trip after the Suez crisis. Fletcher in Agee, Dirty<br />
Work p. 195<br />
18. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 67. This �75,000 must be be<br />
'the small capital grant (a modest bequest) on which<br />
it had so far survived' in the account of Desai.<br />
Commenting on the closure of Socialist Commentary in<br />
1978, Desai writes (p. 174) that it 'had always<br />
operated on a shoestring budget which had to be<br />
supplemented by the dedication and persuasive power of<br />
Rita Hinden, its editor for most of its life'. �75,000<br />
was a lot of money in the mid 1970s when Fletcher<br />
found this out. The accounts of Socialist Commentary<br />
were prepared by the accountancy practice of John<br />
Diamond MP, one of the leading Gaitskellites, who<br />
later joined the SDP and is now in the House of Lords.<br />
He was also, for example, the Honorary Treasurer of<br />
the Labour Committee for Europe. See Finer, Appendix<br />
2. In this latter role John Campbell in his biography<br />
of Roy Jenkins, p. 51, states that Diamond was<br />
'charged with raising money that did not come from the<br />
City of London.<br />
19. Coleman p. 260 for the CCF connection. St<br />
Antony's, Richard Deacon wrote in his The British<br />
Connection, was 'an unofficial annex of MI6 in the<br />
fifties.' p. 259<br />
20. Dick Taverne, Institute for Historical Research<br />
(IHR) Witness Statement on CDS, 1990, p. 8<br />
21. Of the Africa Bureau, Anthony Verrier wrote:<br />
'liberal, UK-based....on which [Colonial Secretary]<br />
Macleod relied greatly for detailed background<br />
intelligence on African independence movements. Unlike<br />
some liberal organisations, the Africa Bureau was<br />
never troubled by the attentions of the security<br />
services or the Metropolitan Special Branch.' Verrier,<br />
The Road to Zimbabwe, p. 335. From an old SIS hand<br />
like AV, this is running up a flag and shouting<br />
'spook'.<br />
22. There had been contacts between the British TUC<br />
and the U.S. labour movement ever since the late 19th.<br />
century. See Marjorie Nicholson pp. 27 and 28. These<br />
contacts were sufficiently intimate for Sir Walter<br />
Citrine to work with senior figures from the US AFL in<br />
one of the many front groups set up by British<br />
intelligence to persuade US public opinion to support<br />
the war in Europe. Mahl, thesis, p. 75.<br />
23. The title of Coleman's study of CCF.<br />
24. The best exposition of this thesis is in Fred. L.<br />
Block.<br />
25. Richard Fletcher, 'Who Were They Travelling with?'<br />
in Hirsch and Fletcher.<br />
26. For this latter belief, to my knowledge, the<br />
Gaitskellites produced no evidence. Some of the Labour<br />
Right proved incredibly gullible when it came to this<br />
'communist conspiracy', accepting as genuine the most<br />
obvious forgeries. See for example pp. 224-6 of Jack<br />
and Bessie Braddock's memoir The Braddocks,<br />
(Macdonald, London, 1963) for a particularly choice<br />
example, passed to them by J. Bernard Hutton, who<br />
fronted several such forgeries. Who produced the<br />
forgeries? We do not know, but my guess would be IRD.<br />
27. This was funded by the CIA, though Foley has<br />
denied knowing this. See Bloch and Fitzgerald p. 106<br />
28. On Ariel see ibid pp. 151-2 and Kisch pp. 67-8.<br />
29. Haseler, Gaitskellites p. 211<br />
30. David Marquand, IHR CDS Witness Statement, 1990,<br />
p. 6. At the same seminar Bill Jones noted 'the<br />
importance of Philip Williams...Philip had a fantastic<br />
network of MPs'. IHR CDS Witness Statement, p. 13<br />
31. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62. See Forte p. 81 where<br />
Gaitskell writes, 'things have gone remarkably well<br />
inside the Party. And for this a very large amount of<br />
credit must go to our friends in the Campaign for<br />
Democratic Socialism, which you have helped so<br />
generously.' (emphasis added.)<br />
32. Hirsch and Fletcher p. 62<br />
33. Windlesham p. 107<br />
34. Haseler p. 217<br />
35. Ibid p. 219<br />
36. Driver p. 97 citing Political Quarterly.<br />
37. There are odd traces of such groupings elsewhere:<br />
In Labour's Northern Voice in May 1969 Chris Norwood<br />
MP reported on the the 'Progressive Labour Group' in<br />
the shop-workers' union, USDAW, originally formed to<br />
fight communists but still operating and producing<br />
lists of approved candidates, the core activity of<br />
such a caucus.<br />
38. Windlesham fn 3 p. 82<br />
39. Hallett was on the Common Cause council in the<br />
fifties.<br />
40. Richter pp. 144 and 5<br />
41. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 14<br />
42. Windlesham p. 109<br />
43. Shaw Discipline p. 114<br />
44. IHR CDS Witness Statement p. 24<br />
45. Shaw fn 150, p. 331<br />
46. Rodgers, IHR, CDS Witness Statement p. 25<br />
47. Richter p. 151. George Brown, according to Tom<br />
Bower's recent biography of Sir Dick White, was a 'CIA<br />
source'. See p. 356<br />
48. Bernard Donoughue, IHR CDS pp. 23/24<br />
49. Jenkins pp. 49-51. I asked Jenkins about this in<br />
1995 but he was unable to remember further details.<br />
50. Letter to author, 25 May 1990.<br />
51. See Agee, CIA Diary p. 618<br />
52. Newell was introduced to Beirne at the UPW<br />
conference at Blackpool. Newell wrote of this episode<br />
in his life in <br />
Freedom, September 25 1976, and more recently in<br />
Perspectives number 9, 1995. On the late Joseph Beirne<br />
and CIA see Counterspy, February 1974 pp. 42 and 43<br />
and May 1979 p.13, and Agee CIA Dairy, p. 603.<br />
53. On AIFLD see Fred Hirsch 'The Labour Movement:<br />
Penetration Point for U.S. Intelligence and<br />
Transnationals' in Hirsch and Fletcher, and 'The<br />
AFL-CIA' by former US Air Force Intelligence officer<br />
Winslow Peck in Frazier (ed.).<br />
54. In 1968 he became a director of IRIS.<br />
55. It also possible, of course, that they declined<br />
because they had no such information, either because<br />
none existed, or because they were too incompetent to<br />
collect it. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The subversion hunters and the social democrats in the<br />
1970s<br />
The arrival of Harold Wilson as leader of the Labour<br />
Party must have been a serious shock to the<br />
Anglo-American intelligence services. One minute the<br />
party was in the complete control of a faction which<br />
they had been promoting - 'running' would be too<br />
strong - since about 1950, and the next the party, and<br />
the second most important part of the NATO alliance,<br />
is in the hands of someone who has spent the post-war<br />
years going to and from Moscow as an East-West trader!<br />
<br />
<br />
The rise of the left in the Labour Party and trade<br />
union movement, symbolised by the ascent of Wilson,<br />
was being monitored by IRD and its satellites, the<br />
Economic League, IRIS, Common Cause - and by Brian<br />
Crozier, who raised the alarm in the 1970 collection<br />
he edited, We Will Bury You..(73) Working the same<br />
seam - presumably for different sponsors - was former<br />
Army officer and Conservative MP, Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith. In Stewart-Smith's journal, East-West<br />
Digest, in 1972, for example, we find the names who<br />
appeared in Crozier's 1970 anthology: Harry Welton of<br />
the Economic League, who had been in the anti-left<br />
business for 'fifty fighting years', to cite the title<br />
of the League's in-house history, and David Williams,<br />
the main writer for the Common Cause Bulletin.(74) <br />
<br />
<br />
The abolition of the proscription list<br />
Anxiety among the subversive-watchers heightened<br />
throughout the Heath years as the insurrection in<br />
Northern Ireland continued and conflict with the<br />
labour movement on the mainland UK increased, and<br />
leapt enormously with the abolition of the<br />
Proscription List of the Labour Party in 1973. Most of<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party at the time seems to<br />
have barely noticed its abolition, so insignificant<br />
did the event seem. Of the various members of the<br />
Wilson governments who have published memoirs or<br />
dairies covering this period, only Tony Benn thought<br />
it an event worth recording.(75) But to the<br />
subversion-watchers it showed the extent of the CPGB's<br />
influence in the Labour Party. Chapman Pincher at the<br />
Daily Express, for example, one of the outlets for the<br />
anti-subversion lobby, wrote nearly twenty years later<br />
that 'the left-wing extremists who had infiltrated the<br />
National Executive of the Labour Party induced the<br />
1973 Party conference to abolish the Proscribed list.'<br />
(emphases added)(76) But to what end? Pincher tells us<br />
it 'meant that even MPs could join the World Peace<br />
Council, the British-Soviet Friendship Society and<br />
other outfits run essentially for the benefit of<br />
Moscow.'(77) But these never amounted to much in the<br />
1950s, and meant less than nothing in 1973. It was<br />
precisely because those groups meant so little that<br />
the list was abolished as an anachronism.(78) <br />
<br />
For the subversion hunters the Proscription List<br />
disappearing was one more event in a bad year, for<br />
1973 also saw the first assault on IRD by the rest of<br />
the more detente-minded Foreign Office.(79) The next<br />
year saw the Heath government's defeat at the hands of<br />
the National Union of Mineworkers, in some part due to<br />
a CPGB sympathiser named Arthur Scargill. By mid 1974<br />
the anti-subversive chorus were all singing from the<br />
same page and the theory of Soviet control through the<br />
CPGB, through the trade unions, through the Labour<br />
Party, was being broadcast by everything from the Tory<br />
press to the activists with connections in the<br />
intelligence services and the military.(80) This is<br />
the background to the cries and alarums of 1974/5, the<br />
talk of military coups and the formation of<br />
semi-clandestine 'action groups' and militias by,<br />
inter alia, former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, and the late David Stirling. The<br />
trade unions were at the heart of the<br />
subversive-hunters' theory, with the AEU the most<br />
important of them. When David Stirling's grandiose<br />
Better Britain-GB75 plans were 'blown' prematurely in<br />
1974, he abandoned them and joined forces with<br />
TRUEMID, another group of anti-socialist former AEU<br />
officials. (TRUEMID is discussed below.) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Social Democratic Alliance (SDA)<br />
Within the Labour Party itself there was activity to<br />
combat the rise of the left. On the party political<br />
axis two latterday Gaitskellites, Stephen Haseler and<br />
Douglas Eden, in 1975 formed the Social Democratic<br />
Alliance (SDA) and began the struggle with the left in<br />
local London politics. (81) Over the next three years<br />
the SDA, and Haseler in particular, received much<br />
favourable newspaper coverage for their accounts of<br />
the subversives' takeover of the Labour Party and<br />
trade unions, much of it fanciful in the extreme.(82)<br />
For example on the publication of his book, The Death<br />
of British Democracy, Haseler wrote in The Times (29<br />
April 1976) that 'we may now be on the verge of an<br />
economy which will remove itself from the Western<br />
trading system by import controls, strict control of<br />
capital movements and eventually non-convertability of<br />
the currency. At home this will involve rationing, the<br />
direction of capital and labour and the final end of<br />
the free trade union movement'; and in 1980, among the<br />
Labour MPs Haseler and the SDA proposed to put up<br />
candidates against, were those well-known<br />
revolutionaries Stan Orme, Clive Soley, Neil Kincock<br />
and Geoff Rooker! (83) Among the SDA's early<br />
supporters was Peter Stephenson, then the editor of<br />
Socialist Commentary. <br />
<br />
<br />
And the AEU<br />
July 1974 saw the formation, with Common Cause<br />
funding, of the Trade Union Education Centre for<br />
Democratic Socialism (TUECDS), which described itself<br />
as 'an independent trade union education body run by<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists for<br />
politically-moderate trade unionists'.(84) TUECDS was<br />
launched in November 1974 with a lecture by the SDA's<br />
Dr Stephen Haseler. The personnel involved in the<br />
early stages of TUECDS's life were members of the AEU,<br />
notably John Weakley, and the building workers' union<br />
UCATT. Among those who had been attending the first<br />
year's meetings were UCATT officials, AEU officials,<br />
David Moller, a journalist from the Readers' Digest,<br />
then still one of the most important psy-war outlets<br />
for the CIA, the widow of Leslie Cannon, Lord Patrick<br />
Gordon-Walker and Kate Losinska, then recently elected<br />
president of the civil service union, the CPSA.(85) <br />
<br />
More former AEU officials, Ron Nodes, Sid Davies and<br />
Ron McLaughlin, were involved in the formation of<br />
TRUEMID, (the Movement for True Industrial Democracy<br />
or the True Movement for Industrial Democracy, it's<br />
been called both), launched in 1975 with finance from<br />
a variety of industrial and City enterprises.(86)<br />
TRUEMID did was IRIS had done: it tried to influence<br />
the election of union officials by putting out<br />
information about the supposed left in the union.<br />
TRUEMID's activities were chiefly focused on the AEU,<br />
the civil service union the CPSA and the electricians<br />
union, the EETPU. David Stirling, after the collapse<br />
of his GB 75 and Better Britain plans, was recruited<br />
onto the TRUEMID council.(87) <br />
<br />
Also reappearing in this period was the some time US<br />
Labour Attache to Britain, Joseph Godson who, though<br />
formally retired, had returned to the UK in 1971 and<br />
continued with his labour attache work - pushing out<br />
US views and interests among the British trade union<br />
movement, and selecting trade unionists for freebies<br />
to the US. Godson was a founder member of the Labour<br />
Committee for TransAtlantic Understanding (LCTU), the<br />
labour section of the British Atlantic Committee, a<br />
NATO support group.(88) In May 1976 LCTU began the<br />
Labour and Trade Union Press Service (LTUPS). On the<br />
LTUPS editorial committee was the ubiquitous Peter<br />
Stephenson, editor of the Gaitskellite Socialist<br />
Commentary, and one of the early members of the Social<br />
Democratic Alliance. Treasurer of the LTUPS was<br />
General Secretary of the EEPTU, Frank Chapple, and its<br />
chair was Bill Jordan of the AEU.(89) <br />
<br />
<br />
Europe<br />
The social democratic wing of the Labour Party had two<br />
key positions: British membership of NATO and<br />
retention of British nuclear weapons, and membership<br />
of the EEC. After the defeat of CND at the Labour<br />
conference of 1961 it was European Economic Community<br />
(EEC) membership which became their great cause. With<br />
this achieved with the EEC referendum vote 'yes' in<br />
1975, when it came to the ideological struggles within<br />
the Labour Party in the mid and late 1970s, in David<br />
Marquand's words, 'they lost the battle of ideas with<br />
the Left by default ....they really didn't fight the<br />
battle of ideas.' <br />
<br />
Support for EEC membership within the Labour Party had<br />
been formally organised first in 1959 by the Labour<br />
Common Market Committee (founders Roy Jenkins, Jack<br />
Diamond and Norman Hart), which became the Labour<br />
Committee for Europe in the mid 1960s. European unity<br />
had been one of the projects favoured by the USA,<br />
looking for good anti-Soviet alliances in the early<br />
post-war era, and the European Movement had been<br />
funded by the Agency.(90) As well as receiving the<br />
support of the US, in the 1960s Gaitskellites Roy<br />
Jenkins, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers were<br />
among the regular attenders of the annual Anglo-German<br />
Konigswinter conferences.(91) This time the social<br />
democrats were being supported by the British Foreign<br />
Office, which had decided by then that their future<br />
lay in the Common Market. <br />
<br />
The CDS, the Gaitskellites, never accepted Wilson as<br />
the legitimate leader of the Labour Party and plotted<br />
constantly against him. The personnel of the<br />
Gaitskellites, the Labour Committee on Europe and the<br />
CDS were virtually identical.(92) In the 1960s it was<br />
the CDS that Harold Wilson identified as the group<br />
working against him.(93) When the group formally broke<br />
up it continued as a dining club, the 1963 Club. In<br />
the early 1970s Tony Benn identified them as 'the old<br />
Campaign for Democratic Socialism-Europe group'.(94) <br />
<br />
In 1970 the election of the Heath government meant<br />
that another serious effort to get Britain in the EEC<br />
would be made and the issue would divide the Labour<br />
Party then in opposition. In early 1971 Tony Benn's<br />
diary records him talking - with Roy Jenkins - of the<br />
Common Market issue splitting the Labour Party.(95)<br />
Ten months later, on October 19, after a pro- and<br />
anti- clash in the Shadow Cabinet, Benn commented on<br />
the emergence of 'a European Social Democrat wing in<br />
the Parliamentary Party led by Bill Rodgers.'(96) This<br />
group formally announced itself on 28 October 1971<br />
when 69 pro-Market Labour MPs voted with the<br />
Conservative government in favour of entry into the<br />
EEC in principle. From then on the group operated as a<br />
party within a party, with William Rodgers acting as<br />
an unofficial whip.(97) <br />
<br />
<br />
A new social democratic party?<br />
The leadership of the Parliamentary Gaitskellite<br />
faction had fallen to Roy Jenkins, and as early as<br />
1970 some of that group has begun trying to get him to<br />
lead the formation of a new party.(98) After the<br />
Europe vote in 1971 Dick Taverne and Bill Rodgers went<br />
to Jenkins and told him they should resign and form a<br />
new party.(99) Jenkins declined. Taverne's selection<br />
for the Lincoln seat had been organised by the<br />
pro-CDS, pro-Europe, Labour Party regional organiser<br />
for the area, Jim Cattermole.(100) In December 1972 MP<br />
Taverne, at odds with his constituency party, and<br />
about to be deselected, decided to fight them and<br />
suggested again that Jenkins leave and form a new<br />
party. Jenkins declined.(101) In 1973, after winning<br />
the Lincoln by-election as a Democratic Labour<br />
candidate, against the official Labour Party<br />
candidate, Taverne formed the Campaign for Social<br />
Democracy and sought Jenkins' support. Jenkins<br />
declined.(102) That year, however, helped by Sir Fred<br />
Hayday, former chair of the TUC, and Alf Allen, future<br />
chair of the TUC, Jenkins did 'set up an institutional<br />
framework' with moderate trade union leaders - a<br />
regular dining group in the Charing Cross Hotel.(103) <br />
<br />
In December 1974 the Manifesto Group was formed within<br />
the PLP. Described by Barbara Castle as 'a group of<br />
middle-of-the-road and right-wing Labour MPs [which]<br />
had been meeting to discuss how to counter the growing<br />
influence of the left-wing Tribune group of MPs',(104)<br />
its chair was Dr Dickson Mabon, its Secretary was John<br />
Horam, now (1995) a Tory Minister, and two of its most<br />
active members were CDS enthusiasts David Marquand and<br />
Brian Walden.(105) <br />
<br />
In the third Wilson government, formed in 1974, the<br />
Jenkins group in cabinet was down to 'a beleaguered<br />
minority of four', to use Jenkins' words, Jenkins,<br />
Harold Lever, Shirley Williams and the late Reg<br />
Prentice.(106) In his memoir Jenkins describes<br />
Prentice as 'a man of flat-footed courage who had<br />
emerged in the previous two years [i.e. 1973 and 74]<br />
out of the rather stolid centre of the Labour Party<br />
into....my most unhesitating ally in the<br />
Cabinet.'(107) Throughout 1974-5 Prentice was moving<br />
right very quickly and his speeches began to reflect<br />
this. In 1975 Prime Minister Wilson took exception to<br />
one of them, and 'More out of enlightened<br />
self-interest than generosity', as he put it, Jenkins<br />
told Wilson that if Prentice was sacked from the<br />
cabinet he would also go.(108) Shortly afterwards<br />
Wilson called Jenkins' bluff and shifted Prentice to a<br />
junior ministry post outside the Cabinet proper.<br />
Jenkins resolved to resign, tried to take Shirley<br />
Williams and Harold Lever with him in resignation -<br />
only to find that while he was ready now, Harold Lever<br />
was not.(109) <br />
<br />
In Jenkins' memoir there are some wistful remarks on<br />
'1975 as a great missed opportunity for Heath and<br />
Whitelaw and a whole regiment of discarded<br />
Conservative "wets" as much for Shirley Williams and<br />
Steel and me.'(110) Jenkins was looking back on the<br />
1975 Common Market referendum campaign during which he<br />
found it more congenial working with pro-EEC Tories<br />
and Liberals than he did with the left-wing of his own<br />
party. It would not be hard to imagine that left-wing<br />
Tories like Heath and Whitelaw found Jenkins more<br />
congenial than some of the right-wing yahoos then<br />
gathering on the Tory Party's fringe;(111)and there is<br />
a large hint in Mrs Thatcher's second volume of<br />
memoirs, that some kind of realignment was attempted<br />
on the back of the referendum.(112) <br />
<br />
In December 1976 Prentice was discussing how to bring<br />
down the Callaghan government with, inter alia, Tory<br />
MPs Julian Amery and Maurice Macmillan, and<br />
Gaitskellite Labour MP's Walden and the late John<br />
McIntosh.(113) Haseler, whose information on this<br />
comes from Prentice's diaries, tells us that, 'For<br />
some years past the arguments for a realignment had<br />
been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative<br />
Party who had been close to Macmillan.'(114) Prentice<br />
may have thought he was discussing bringing down the<br />
government with Parliamentary colleagues, but in this<br />
context they had other, more interesting, connections.<br />
Amery was a former SIS officer and a friend of the<br />
former Deputy Chief of SIS, the late George Kennedy<br />
Young, who was then machinating against the Labour<br />
government with his Unison Committee for Action.(115)<br />
Maurice Macmillan had been a director of one of the<br />
IRD front companies and had also been involved in the<br />
attempt in the mid 1974 to launch a government of<br />
national unity to prevent the reelection of Harold<br />
Wilson. Prentice proposed that Jenkins form a<br />
coalition with Margaret Thatcher as leader but, on<br />
Prentice's account, haunted by memories of 1931 and<br />
the fate of Ramsay MacDonald, not surprisingly, once<br />
again Jenkins declined.(116) <br />
<br />
When Harold Wilson resigned in 1976, Jenkins stood for<br />
leader of the Labour Party, lost, and went off to<br />
Brussels as President of the EEC. Jenkins bailed out<br />
at a good time, for the pro-Common Market wing of the<br />
Labour Party was losing the fight against the left in<br />
the Parliamentary Labour Party - while constantly<br />
talking about quitting and forming a new party. In<br />
1977 the Campaign for a Labour Victory, 'in many ways<br />
a resurrection of the of the Campaign for Democratic<br />
Socialism', was launched.(117) William Rodgers' PA was<br />
one of the chief organisers and it set up its office<br />
in the HQ of the EETPU.(118) Its full-time organiser<br />
was Alec McGivan who became the first full-time worker<br />
for the SDP, four years later. <br />
<br />
Around Jenkins in exile gathered some of the<br />
Gaitskellites. Mike Thomas, a Labour and then SDP MP:<br />
'there in fact were a group of people working with Roy<br />
Jenkins outside parliament, most of whom were known to<br />
many of us, friends of ours, some who were less well<br />
known, in the SDA or elsewhere'.(119) In November<br />
1979, after Jenkins' had been given the Dimbleby<br />
Lecture on BBC TV in which to more or less announce<br />
his intention of forming a social democratic party,<br />
businessman Clive Lindley and London Labour Councillor<br />
Jim Daley, both of whom had been active in the<br />
Campaign for Labour Victory,(120) set up the Radical<br />
Centre for Democratic Studies, 'a press cutting and<br />
information service on the political scene in Britain'<br />
- and a support group for Jenkins.(121) <br />
<br />
Finally a group met to discuss forming the new party.<br />
From the SDA there was Stephen Haseler; from Roy<br />
Jenkins' UK support group, Clive Lindley and Jim Daly;<br />
David Marquand, Jenkins' his PA in Brussels, and Lord<br />
Harris, who had been Jenkins' PR man in the<br />
1960s.(122) The last stop on their way out of the<br />
Labour Party for these social democrats was the<br />
formation of the Council for Social Democracy in 1981.<br />
<br />
<br />
Soon after the Social Democratic Party launch, issue<br />
52 of the now defunct radical magazine The Leveller<br />
had as its cover story: 'Exposed:the CIA and the<br />
Social Democrats'. The author was Phil Kelly, one of<br />
the journalists who had exposed Brian Crozier's<br />
Forum/CIA links, who had been the recipient of the<br />
leaked documents from inside the Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict, and had led the campaign to prevent<br />
the Labour government expelling former CIA officer,<br />
Philip Agee. For his temerity Kelly had been labelled<br />
a 'KGB man' in briefings given by MI5, one of which<br />
was foolishly committed to paper by Searchlight editor<br />
Gerry Gable.(123) Kelly's article went over some of<br />
the ground covered in this essay, but though the CIA<br />
was visible in the connection to the Congress for<br />
Cultural Freedom and Forum World Features, the piece<br />
otherwise failed to justify its billing. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
73. The charge that these groups were IRD 'satellites'<br />
is difficult to substantiate. None of their personnel<br />
has, to my knowledge, every admitted it. However, all<br />
these groups have published material which, in my<br />
view, could only have come from the state - and I<br />
presume that IRD was the proximate conduit. Take, for<br />
example, the Economic League's 'Notes and Comments'<br />
series. In No. 895, 'The New Face of Communism', there<br />
is material quoted from Yugoslav radio and TV and<br />
Radio Moscow. The Economic League, presumably, did not<br />
have its own monitoring service.<br />
74. East-West Digest mostly consisted of large chunks<br />
of blind (authorless), extremely detailed, apparently<br />
pretty accurate material on the British Left: reports<br />
on meetings and conferences; documents and journals<br />
analysed.<br />
75. Benn entry for 11 June 1973.<br />
76. Pincher 1991 p. 113.<br />
77. Ibid.<br />
78. The important group on that list was the then<br />
minute Revolutionary Socialist League which was to<br />
spend the next decade penetrating the Labour Party as<br />
the Militant Tendency.<br />
79. Crozier calls this 'the IRD massacre', but points<br />
out that IRD had grown to become the largest single<br />
Foreign Office department. See Crozier pp. 104-8.<br />
80. From the likes of KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky we<br />
have learned that the KGB were unaware that they were<br />
apparently on the verge of controlling the Labour<br />
Party through the trade unions.<br />
81. Patrick Wintour in the New Statesman, 25 July<br />
1980: 'three of [Frank] Chapple's closest union<br />
colleagues, including his research assistant, have<br />
been active in the Social Democratic Alliance'. <br />
<br />
Crozier notes in his memoir that he first met the<br />
SDA's Douglas Eden at one of the early sessions of the<br />
National Association for Freedom. 'The NAF was<br />
supposed to be strictly non-party, and the presence of<br />
a long-time Labour man, as Eden was, emphasised this<br />
aspect of its work.' p. 147<br />
82. See, for example, Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1977,<br />
The Times, 29 April 1976, and Daily Mail, 9 August<br />
1979.<br />
83. See 'Moderates drive to challenge 11 Labour MPs',<br />
Daily Telegraph,1 February 1980.<br />
84. This is from the only TUECDS document I have seen,<br />
a progress report dated May 12, 1975.<br />
85. TUECDS is discussed by Paul Foot in Socialist<br />
Worker, 1 November 1975.<br />
86. Michael Ivens of Aims of Industry claims the<br />
credit for introducing Stirling to Ron Nodes. See his<br />
obituary notice on Stirling in the Independent, 17<br />
November 1990. Some of the TRUEMID funding is given in<br />
'The bosses' union' in Leveller 17, 1978, and the most<br />
detailed account of the organisation is in Hoe ch. 24.<br />
87. See 'The Company They Keep', Monica Brimacombe, in<br />
the New Statesman, 9 May 1986. Paul Foot in the piece<br />
cited in note 12 states that TRUEMID had six permanent<br />
full-time staff and three temporary full-time staff.<br />
88. see also State Research no. 16, pp. 68-74 and no.<br />
17 pp. 95 and 96, and Sunday Times, 17 February 1980.<br />
It was later funded by the US government's National<br />
Endowment for Democracy.<br />
89. Jordan was later to be among the founders of<br />
another 'moderate' caucus in the trade unions in the<br />
1980s, Mainstream.<br />
90. The Movement's youth wing, the European Youth<br />
Movement, had as its secretary Maurice Foley, one of<br />
the Gaitskellites. See 'The CIA backs the Common<br />
Market' by Weissman, Kelly and Hosenball in Agee ed.<br />
Dirty Work.<br />
pp. 201-3.<br />
91. Bradley p. 52<br />
92. With a number of important qualifications. Hugh<br />
Gaitskell, for example, was not pro EEC membership.<br />
93. Dorril and Ramsay p. 188<br />
94. Ibid.<br />
95. Entry for 13 January 1971, pp. 324-5 of Office<br />
Without Power<br />
96. Benn ibid. p. 381. Benn also added in that<br />
paragraph: 'When I heard Charlie Pannell say that for<br />
him Europe was an article of faith, he put it above<br />
the Labour Party and above the Labour Movement, I was<br />
finally convinced that this was a deep split.'.<br />
Pannell was AEU, Common Cause, Catholic.<br />
97. Bradley p. 53<br />
98. 'Dick Taverne recalls a meeting of pro-Marketeers<br />
in his flat to discuss tactics as early as June 1970.'<br />
Ibid.<br />
99. Ibid. pp. 53/4<br />
100. Shaw, Discipline, p. 108. In the 'witness<br />
seminar' on the CDS, p. 24, David Marquand referred to<br />
'the great barony of Jim Cattermole'.<br />
101. Ibid. p. 55<br />
102. Jenkins in his memoir on 1973: 'Excluding the<br />
possibility of forming an independent party, which at<br />
that stage neither I nor my supporters were remotely<br />
prepared for...' p. 360 (emphasis added).<br />
103. Jenkins p. 354. In the CDS 'witness seminar", p.<br />
27, William Rodgers stated that CDS had a 'very close<br />
working relationship with Fred Hayday of the General<br />
and Municipal Workers'.<br />
104. Castle Diaries p.156<br />
105. Bradley p. 60. With the exception of Giles Radice<br />
and George Robertson, both GMWU/GMB-sponsored, the<br />
whole of the active leadership of the Manifesto Group<br />
subsequently defected to the SDP.<br />
106. Jenkins p. 427<br />
107. Ibid. p. 419<br />
108. Jenkins tells us that he sent this message<br />
through the Prime Minister's Principal Private<br />
Secretary, Robert Armstrong, thus - deliberately or<br />
not - informing the Whitehall establishment. Ibid. p.<br />
420<br />
109. Ibid. p. 422<br />
110. Ibid. pp. 425-6<br />
111. On 14 October 1975 Tony Benn records in his<br />
diary: 'Robert Kilroy-Silk, Labour MP for Ormskirk,<br />
told me that �2 million had been left unspent by the<br />
pro-Market lobby and it was a fund of which the<br />
trustees were Heath, Thorpe and Jenkins....the rumour<br />
was that if Wilson moved too far to the Left they<br />
would use the money to set up a new party.'<br />
112. See The Path to Power, p. 331.<br />
113. Haseler, Battle for Britain, pp. 59 and 60<br />
114. Ibid.<br />
115. The best account of Unison is in Dorril and<br />
Ramsay.<br />
116. Prentice thus managed to misunderstand - and<br />
insult - both Jenkins and Mrs Thatcher.<br />
117. Bradley p. 59<br />
118. 'How Frank Chapple says on top', New Statesman,<br />
25 July 1980<br />
119. CDS Seminar p. 50<br />
120. Owen p. 457<br />
121. Bradley p. 73<br />
122. Ibid. David Marquand on Haseler; 'Haseler's<br />
invective is all working class... He's invented a<br />
history of a sort of populist radicalism, Norman<br />
Tebbitry in a way, ....I remember being involved in a<br />
television thing in the early 1970s on Europe where he<br />
opposed it on a sort of proletarian, solidarity,<br />
populist-nationalist ground.' Desai pp. 10-11 fn. 11<br />
123. This is the so-called Gable memo, first revealed<br />
in the New Statesman, 15 February 1980 and reprinted<br />
in full, for the first time, in Lobster 24. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
The Crozier operations<br />
Running through much of this activity in the 1970s was<br />
Brian Crozier who had been warning about the rise of<br />
the British Left since the late 1960s. Crozier takes<br />
us back to the CIA operation the Congress for Cultural<br />
Freedom (CCF) discussed in chapter five. The CIA<br />
control of the CCF and the magazine Encounter began to<br />
be threatened with exposure in 1963 when, reviewing an<br />
anthology from the magazine, Conor Cruise O'Brien<br />
wrote that 'Encounter's first loyalty is to America';<br />
and an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph referred to a<br />
secret and regular subvention to Encounter from 'the<br />
Foreign Office'.(124) The next year, after a US<br />
congressional inquiry into private foundations found<br />
that some had received donations from the CIA, the New<br />
York Times set journalists to work on the story. From<br />
that point on exposure of the CIA fronts, which were<br />
funded by some of these private foundations, was<br />
inevitable. <br />
<br />
<br />
Forum World Features<br />
Faced with this impending exposure, the CCF/CIA began<br />
to take action. The Congress's press agency was<br />
detached, reorganised and renamed Forum World<br />
Features, and Crozier was appointed its director in<br />
1965.(125) Crozier claims that 'In 1968 the KGB made a<br />
first attempt to wreck Forum';(126) and perhaps in<br />
anticipation of the day when Forum was 'blown', with<br />
other personnel from the IRD network Crozier set up<br />
the Institute for the Study of Conflict (ISC) between<br />
1968 and 1970.(127) <br />
<br />
<br />
ISC<br />
The first funding came from Shell and BP but then, as<br />
Crozier puts it, 'the Agency [CIA] now came up with<br />
something bigger', and put him in contact with the<br />
American multi-millionaire, anti-communist Richard<br />
Mellon Scaife, who duly came up $100,000 p.a. for<br />
ISC.(128) <br />
<br />
ISC commissioned and published reports and began<br />
briefing the UK military and police establishments on<br />
the Crozier view of the Soviet threat to Britain.(129)<br />
Crozier became a founder member of the National<br />
Association for Freedom (NAFF), whose launch was timed<br />
to coincide with publication of the dystopian<br />
disinformation in The Collapse of Democracy by his<br />
ally and colleague at ISC, Robert Moss. The<br />
unfortunately acronymed NAFF was a gathering of the<br />
anti-subversive and pro-capital propaganda groups such<br />
as Aims of Industry, and, almost immediately became<br />
the major focus of the British Right. It absorbed the<br />
remnants of the 1974/5 civilian militias, and began<br />
series of psy-war projects against the left and the<br />
unions which prefigured much of what was to come in<br />
the Thatcher government.(130) <br />
<br />
<br />
Shield and the Pinay Circle<br />
At the same, Crozier's voice was being heard in<br />
Shield, a committee of former intelligence officers<br />
and bankers, who, in the absence of IRD, prepared<br />
briefings on the alleged communist threat for the then<br />
leader of the Tory Party, Mrs Thatcher.(131)Crozier<br />
was also a member of the transnational psy-war outfit,<br />
the Pinay Circle, working alongside senior<br />
intelligence, military and political figures from the<br />
NATO countries,(132) was working with US Senate<br />
Subcommittee on International Terrorism,(133) and<br />
launched the apparently still-born US Institute for<br />
the Study of Conflict.(134) <br />
<br />
<br />
The Wilson plots<br />
Because hard information on the covert operations of<br />
this period came first from Colin Wallace, a member of<br />
the British Army's psychological warfare unit in<br />
Northern Ireland, in whose narrative the 'bad guys'<br />
were MI5, and from Peter Wright, who had been an MI5<br />
officer, those of us who began researching this period<br />
in 1986 and after began by looking for MI5<br />
operations.(135) In fact three British intelligence<br />
agencies had an iron in the fire of the mid 1970s<br />
crisis. There was a group of MI5 officers, led by<br />
Peter Wright, who were plotting against the Wilson<br />
government and, for example, trying to use the<br />
Information Policy Unit in Northern Ireland to spread<br />
disinformation about Wilson and other British<br />
politicians whom MI5 regarded as 'unsound';(136) there<br />
was also a group of ex SIS and former military<br />
officers, led by former SIS number two, the late<br />
George Kennedy Young, operating as the Unison<br />
Committee for Action;(137) and there was the<br />
Crozier-IRD subversion-watcher network. <br />
<br />
The detente with the Soviet Union was the background.<br />
In the UK it provided the context for IRD to be<br />
reigned back. In the US, in the wake of Watergate and<br />
the subsequent revelations of CIA activities in the US<br />
and abroad, and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976,<br />
there was a purge in the CIA. To Crozier and others of<br />
his ilk detente was a farce - a Soviet deception<br />
operation - and these intelligence cuts a catastrophe.<br />
(In their worst imaginings they were the result of<br />
Soviet operations.) <br />
<br />
<br />
Private sector intelligence agencies?<br />
Into the breach stepped Crozier and a group which<br />
included ex SIS officer Nicholas Elliot and US General<br />
Vernon Walters. They created 'a Private Sector<br />
Operational Intelligence agency' and named it 6I - the<br />
Sixth International(138) - and found funding in the US<br />
Heritage Foundation. Crozier began publishing<br />
newsletters, Transnational Security, and British<br />
Briefing, his own version of the IRD briefings on<br />
British subversion which had been curtailed in 1974<br />
upon the election of the Labour government. British<br />
Briefing was financed by the Industrial Trust, edited<br />
by Charles Elwell, 'soon after retiring from MI5', and<br />
published by IRIS.(139) <br />
<br />
What had begun a quarter of a century before as an<br />
anti-communist caucus among the AUEW's senior<br />
officers, had ended up fronting for Britain's leading<br />
anti-socialist psychological warfare expert. I do not<br />
know when British Briefing was first published, but<br />
the issue which began to circulate on the left in the<br />
early 1990s, number 12, was published in 1989, at<br />
which time IRIS's directors included Sir John Boyd<br />
CBE, General Secretary of the AEU 1975-82, Lord<br />
(Harold) Collinson CBE, General Secretary of the<br />
National Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers from<br />
1953-69, and W. (Bill) Sirs, General Secretary of the<br />
Iron and Steel Trades Confederation from 1975-85.(140)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
The union leaders and the spooks<br />
The IRIS-Crozier-British Briefing set-up sums up much<br />
of what I have been trying to tease out. Three<br />
anti-socialist, senior trade union leaders fronted the<br />
clandestine production of an anti-socialist bulletin,<br />
written and edited by former intelligence officers,<br />
financed by British capital.(141) This anti-socialist<br />
mechanism also involved the connivance of the Charity<br />
Commission which allowed the Industrial Trust to<br />
operate in a breach of the charity laws,(142) another,<br />
non-charitable trust, the Kennington Industrial<br />
Company, and personnel from large numbers of British<br />
companies which funded it. (The money went to the<br />
Industrial Trust which passed it on to Kennington,<br />
which passed it on to IRIS; thus enabling the<br />
Industrial Trust to cling on to its charitable - and<br />
tax deductible - status.) <br />
<br />
If this was still being funded in 1989, after 15 years<br />
of Thatcherism and the fall of the Soviet Empire, how<br />
big was this anti-socialist structure in, say, 1975?<br />
Or 1965? Our knowledge of the whole operation while<br />
greater now than ever, is still pretty limited,<br />
despite the revelations about the Economic League in<br />
the past ten years. For example, Aims of Industry is<br />
thought of as simply a propaganda organisation. But it<br />
is not so; at least it was not always so. In 1990 the<br />
Aims Director, Michael Ivens, wrote: <br />
<br />
<br />
Once, when Aims of Industry was rather more flexible<br />
than it is now, we put a member of our staff into a<br />
factory, at the request of the management, to prevent<br />
a far-left take over.' (143) <br />
<br />
Another part of this anti-socialist network is British<br />
United Industrialists (BUI), one of the funnels<br />
through which British companies pour money into the<br />
Conservative Party and other groups on the right. In<br />
1985 BUI's then director, Captain Briggs, told a<br />
researcher I know who wishes to remain anonymous, who<br />
was posing as a right-winger, that BUI were then<br />
funding the Solidarity group of Labour MPs, the Union<br />
of Democratic Mineworkers and the right-wing faction<br />
in the Civil and Public Servants Association<br />
(CPSA).(144) <br />
<br />
The Labour Left has never really grasped just how<br />
central, how commonplace a function of British<br />
capitalism it has been to fund its opponents. This<br />
knowledge has remained largely confined to Labour<br />
Research and pockets within individual unions. (It is<br />
hardly surprising that the Labour Party has never<br />
shown much interest in this as it would have<br />
embarrassed some of its biggest supporters in the<br />
trade unions.) <br />
<br />
By 1980 Crozier seems to have gone some way towards<br />
replacing IRD's anti-subversive role by his own<br />
efforts; and, with the election of Mrs Thatcher, he<br />
and Robert Moss abandoned the National Association for<br />
Freedom (by then renamed the Freedom Association) and<br />
concentrated on the USA and the wider Soviet 'threat'.<br />
<br />
<br />
It is impossible to evaluate the significance of<br />
psychological warfare projects. Was the barrage of<br />
anti-union propaganda put out by the<br />
subversion-watchers in the period 1972-79 as<br />
significant as the so-called Winter of Discontent in<br />
its effect on public opinion in Britain? How effective<br />
Crozier was, I don't know. He seems to think he had<br />
quite a hand in the election of Mrs Thatcher in 1979.<br />
In one of the planning papers written by Crozier for<br />
his 'transnational security organisation', he wrote: <br />
<br />
'Specific Aims within this framework are to affect a<br />
change of government in <br />
<br />
<br />
(a) the United Kingdom - accomplished......'(145)<br />
<br />
<br />
Grandiose nonsense? Perhaps. Crozier has never been<br />
taken as seriously in this country by the London<br />
media-political establishment as he has has been<br />
abroad, and his memoir was hammered by most of its<br />
reviewers.(146) But this, for example, was the view of<br />
a German intelligence officer, the source of the Der<br />
Spiegel pieces, of Crozier in November 1979. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The militant conservative London publicist, Brian<br />
Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the<br />
Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been<br />
working with his diverse circle of friends in<br />
international politics to build an anonymous action<br />
group(147) "transnational security organisation", and<br />
to widen its field of operations. Crozier has worked<br />
with the CIA for years. One has to assume, therefore<br />
that they are fully aware of his activities....' <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
124. Coleman p. 186. In this context 'the Foreign<br />
Office' is a euphemism for MI6.<br />
125. In his 1993 memoir Crozier acknowledges the CIA<br />
connection. See pp. 63-5. But he had denied it as late<br />
as 1990, in his review of Coleman's history of the<br />
CCF. See 'A noble mess' in The Salisbury Review,<br />
December 1990.<br />
126. Crozier p. 75<br />
127. With a Council including Max Beloff,<br />
Major-General Clutterbuck, Sir Robert Thompson and<br />
Hugh Seton-Watson.<br />
128. Crozier p. 90.<br />
129. See the documents leaked - or stolen - from ISC<br />
published in Searchlight 18, 1976, and Crozier pp. 121<br />
and 2<br />
130. Crozier acknowledged the psy-war role in his<br />
memoir. See page 118. <br />
131. Shield employed as its researchers Peter Shipley,<br />
who ended up in the Conservative Party Central Office<br />
in time for the 1987 election, and Douglas Eden,<br />
co-founder of the Social Democratic Alliance. But<br />
Stephen Hastings has a slightly different version from<br />
Crozier. See Hastings p. 236.<br />
132. On Pinay see David Teacher's pieces in Lobsters<br />
17 and 18. Crozier more or less gave a nod of approval<br />
to these accounts by citing them, without criticism,<br />
in his memoir. See note 3 facing p. 194. Among the<br />
Pinay personnel were ex CIA director Colby, ex-SIS<br />
officers Julian Amery and Nicholas Elliot, and Edwin<br />
Feulner from the Heritage Foundation.<br />
133. Crozier pp. 123-4<br />
134. US ISC is missing from his memoirs. It was<br />
formally launched in 1975, chaired by George Ball,<br />
with a line-up which included Richard Pipes and Kermit<br />
Roosevelt. See Document 3 in Searchlight 18.<br />
135. Hence Lobster 11, 'Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of<br />
Thatcher'.<br />
136. This is discussed at length in Foot, Who Framed<br />
...<br />
137. It was Young and Unison, for example, who<br />
initiated General Sir Walter Walker's Civil<br />
Assistance.<br />
138. Crozier pp. 134-6. Six 'I', says Crozier, because<br />
there had already been 5 'internationals'. 'The fourth<br />
International was the Trotskyist one, and when it<br />
split, this meant that on paper, there were five<br />
Internationals.' p. 136<br />
139. On the Industrial Trust see Black Flag, 15 August<br />
1988 which reproduced the Trust's accounts for 1986/7;<br />
and on the IRIS connection to British Briefing, and<br />
Elwell's role, see the Observer, 16 December 1990,<br />
'Top companies funded smears through charity', and 23<br />
December 1990<br />
140. Although IRIS was still publishing its little<br />
newsletter, IRIS News, in 1989, compared to British<br />
Briefing it was so piffling as to be little more than<br />
a cover story. Collinson and Boyd are dead and Sirs<br />
did not respond to my questions<br />
141. In 1986/7 twenty eight British companies gave<br />
money to the Industrial Trust, including BP, Bass,<br />
Unilever, ICI, Cadbury Schweppes and Grand<br />
Metropolitan. Industrial Trust accounts filed with<br />
Charity Commissioners were reproduced in Black Flag,<br />
15 August 1988.<br />
142. See 'Breach of charity rules justified' in the<br />
Guardian,7 February 1991.<br />
143. Sunday Telegraph (Appointments) 4 February 1990<br />
144. I reported this first in footnote 93 on p. 43 of<br />
Lobster 12 in 1986. I received no reaction to what I<br />
thought was a rather explosive allegation. Kevin<br />
McNamara MP, when I told him of this, replied that the<br />
UDM hardly needed money as they had inherited the<br />
considerable wealth of the old 'Spencer' union formed<br />
in the 1920s.<br />
145. Originally published in Der Spiegel no 37, 1982,<br />
this was translated by David Teacher and reproduced in<br />
Lobster 17, p. 14.<br />
146. The best review was by Bernard Porter in<br />
Intelligence and National Security, vol. 9, No. 4.<br />
Most of Crozier's projects, says Porter, were<br />
'pointless.'<br />
147. 'Action group', is one of the key terms used in<br />
this field. G.K. Young's Unison was the Unison<br />
Committee for Action, a clear hint to the intelligence<br />
insider as to its intentions. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Was there a 'communist threat'?<br />
The term 'communist' was always flexibly applied by<br />
the anti-socialist groups. The Common Cause and IRIS<br />
reports, for example, went much wider to actually mean<br />
the left, i.e. socialists; and sometimes simply anyone<br />
who opposed those in positions of power.(148)<br />
Nonetheless in a thesis about the political uses of<br />
anti-communism we have to consider whether there was<br />
anything to the 'communist threat', or if it was<br />
simply a red herring dragged across the trail of<br />
British politics. <br />
<br />
On the British Left the question which heads this<br />
chapter would provoke laughter, derision or anger from<br />
many. For some, since 1956 the CPGB has been a<br />
declining, bureaucratic relic, hardly a 'threat' to<br />
anybody.(149) For others merely asking the question<br />
gives credibility to disinformation from the right.<br />
But the fact remains that significant sections of the<br />
British Right, in the propaganda organisations of<br />
capital, the state and the Conservative Party,<br />
believed that the CPGB was part of a global<br />
conspiracy, directed and financed by Moscow, which was<br />
working in the union movement and wider society to<br />
undermine capitalist democracy in Britain. And it is<br />
no longer self-evident that this was complete<br />
nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
Orders from Moscow?<br />
We now know that the CPGB actually was being directed,<br />
to some extent, from Moscow after the war. Bob Darke<br />
was a member of the Party's National Industrial Policy<br />
Committee from the end of the war until 1951, when he<br />
left the Party. He described that committee as 'a<br />
Cominform puppet', receiving instructions, via<br />
visiting French communists, from the Cominform.(150)<br />
In the year Darke quit the Party, 1951, the CPGB<br />
published a landmark policy statement, 'The British<br />
Road to Socialism'. This announced a major shift in<br />
policy in which the British CPGB ceased to base itself<br />
on the Soviet model and would henceforth pursue a<br />
peculiarly British, 'parliamentary road to<br />
socialism'.(151) But in 1991 former CPGB assistant<br />
general secretary, George Matthews, admitted that much<br />
- though precisely how much is still not clear to me -<br />
of the programme contained in the 'British Road to<br />
Socialism' had been written by the Soviet Politburo<br />
and approved by Stalin himself.(152) <br />
<br />
<br />
Moscow gold?<br />
There was 'Moscow gold' - bags of used notes, as well<br />
as the subsidy by virtue of the Soviet Union's bulk<br />
order of copies of the Daily Worker/Morning Star. The<br />
'Moscow gold' claim was regarded as absurd, a state<br />
smear, by most on the British Left, not least by CPGB<br />
members, subjected to endless fund-raising appeals and<br />
newspaper selling, and CPGB employees surviving on the<br />
terrible wages the Party paid its staff.(153) But now<br />
we know that the Soviet Union began sending money to<br />
the British Party after the Hungarian revolt was put<br />
down - apparently to compensate the British Party for<br />
the loss of its membership (and hence membership fees)<br />
incurred by the Party's refusal to condemn the Soviet<br />
invasion. Senior CPGB person, Reuben Falber, would<br />
meet the man from the Soviet Embassy and take delivery<br />
of the bags of used notes. These would be stored in<br />
the loft of Falber's house and then laundered through<br />
the Party's accounts as 'anonymous donations' and the<br />
like. It was as amateurish as that. <br />
<br />
The Moscow money seems to have been used chiefly to<br />
fund the Party's full-time staff. In the 1960s,<br />
despite constantly falling membership, the party<br />
employed a lot of people, 70 according to one source,<br />
including the industrial network,(154) what 1980s CPGB<br />
member Sarah Benton described as 'until the late<br />
1970s, the privileged section of the party'. (The<br />
Moscow subsidy ended in 1979.)(155) <br />
<br />
<br />
Secret Party members?<br />
There were also secret Party members, though how many<br />
there were and what they did is unclear. The existence<br />
of 'secret members', a staple on the right since the<br />
war, appeared most strikingly in Spycatcher in which<br />
Peter Wright recounts how MI5 had found the CPGB<br />
membership files stashed in a rich member's flat and<br />
photographed the whole lot - 55,000 files - in one<br />
weekend, 'with a Polaroid camera'.(156) Wright claimed<br />
that these files also 'contained the files of covert<br />
members of the CPGB..... people who had gone<br />
underground largely as a result of the new vetting<br />
procedures brought in by the Attlee Government'.(157)<br />
Wright's claims were denied by George Matthews, who<br />
had been editor of the Daily Worker and assistant<br />
general secretary of the Party.(158) However Bob Darke<br />
described members, who for 'Personal Security', were<br />
allowed not to reveal themselves as members when the<br />
Party decreed that all members should 'come out' as<br />
CPGB members in the other organisations to which they<br />
belonged.(159) It may be that Wright simply remembered<br />
it wrongly: it was not members who went underground<br />
but who stayed underground. Further, Francis Beckett<br />
reveals (though without a source) the existence of a<br />
hitherto secret section of the Party, the Commercial<br />
Branch, consisting of 'rich members, often Jews...<br />
secret members... important industrialists' (emphasis<br />
added), set up by Reuben Falber in the 1930s, which<br />
apparently survived into the mid 1950s.(160) It<br />
appears that it was partly the loss of the income from<br />
this group after the revelations of anti-semitism in<br />
the Soviet Union and the invasion of Hungary which<br />
forced the Party to go to Moscow for money.(161) <br />
<br />
But some money and instructions from Moscow, though a<br />
striking confirmation in part of the right's theories,<br />
do not in themselves tell us anything about the<br />
influence of the CPGB.(162) (Conspiracies may be small<br />
and ineffectual but nonetheless conspiracies.) And<br />
measuring the influence of an activity with<br />
clandestine aspects, which both the Party and its<br />
opponents have had good reasons to exaggerate, will be<br />
very imprecise at best. <br />
<br />
Initially, post-war, the major focus of the state's<br />
anti-communists seems to have been on the Soviet front<br />
groups - the friendship societies etc. Eric Shaw<br />
mentions that in 1953 the Labour Party's Proscription<br />
List suddenly expanded with information about these<br />
groups assumed to come from 'the Foreign Office [i.e.<br />
IRD] and Special Branch' run through the International<br />
Department of the Party.(163) This focus on the CPGB<br />
front groups seems to be attributable to two things.<br />
If Bower's recent biography of MI5 head Dick White is<br />
accurate, one is the inadequacies of MI5 in the<br />
post-war years.(164) The second is the the locus of<br />
IRD within the Foreign Office network, where, engaged<br />
in a propaganda struggle with the Soviet bloc<br />
overseas, it was thus more interested in pro-Soviet<br />
groups than in activities on the shop-floor. <br />
<br />
The network of pro-Soviet groups is still the focus of<br />
the big IRIS pamphlet in 1957, The Communist Solar<br />
System; but the 1956 pamphlet by Woodrow Wyatt MP, The<br />
Peril in Our Midst was subtitled 'the Communist threat<br />
to Britain's trade unions', and since then it has been<br />
the Party's industrial wing which has received almost<br />
all of the attention - and about which there has been<br />
quite wide agreement, across a broadish political<br />
spectrum.(165) Wyatt in 1956 claimed that the CPGB<br />
controlled the ETU and the Fire Brigades Union, nearly<br />
had control of the AEU and had considerable influence<br />
in the NUM. In 1962 the Radcliffe Committee, set up by<br />
the Macmillan government in the wake of the Vassell<br />
spy case, reported on the apparently extensive Party<br />
control of the civil service unions; and that year the<br />
Conservative MP Aidan Crawley claimed that the CPGB<br />
was strongest in the NUM, building workers and the<br />
AEU, and claimed they were making inroads into the<br />
clerical unions, citing sections of the woodworkers',<br />
the plumbers' and the painters' unions as being under<br />
CP control.(166) Less ideologically interested,the<br />
historian Keith Middlemas saw 'substantial CP<br />
influence in the ETU, Foundry Workers, AEU and the<br />
NUM, especially in Fife and South Wales';(167)and in<br />
his recent history of the Party Francis Beckett<br />
claimed that 'the Party practically had full control<br />
of the Fire Brigades Union, the Amalgamated<br />
Engineering Union, the Foundry Workers and the<br />
Electrical Trades Union'.(168) Though not in<br />
themselves proof of anything - proof would entail much<br />
more detailed analysis of the various unions than I am<br />
capable of - the lists are strikingly consistent over<br />
the period from 1956 to 1994. <br />
<br />
<br />
The struggle for the AEU<br />
One of the recurring themes in the literature, from<br />
the 1950s onwards, is the centrality of the struggle<br />
in the AEU. IRIS was formed by AEU members and was<br />
most active in that union (discussed above). This<br />
concern quickens in the late 1960s and early 1970s as<br />
the left, focused round the publications Voice of the<br />
Unions and Engineering Voice, began to make<br />
progress.(169) It is found, for example, in Brian<br />
Crozier's 1970 anthology We Will Bury You, and in the<br />
1972 IRIS pamphlet In Perspective: Concerning the role<br />
of the Communist Party and its Effectiveness. In David<br />
Stirling's GB75 documents, leaked and printed in Peace<br />
News in August 1974, Stirling's opening paragraph,<br />
'The Objective Summarised', is about the lack of a<br />
contingency plan to 'weather the crucial first 3 or 4<br />
days of a General Strike or one involving the<br />
Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical<br />
Trades Union.'(170) Shortly after the leak, i.e. late<br />
August 1974, Stirling met Ron McClaughlin and Frank<br />
Nodes, both former AEU officials, who were forming<br />
TRUEMID, the Movement for True Industrial Democracy. A<br />
decade later the AEU was at the centre of former SIS<br />
no. 2, G. K. Young's Subversion and the British<br />
Riposte.(171) <br />
<br />
While CPGB influence in the British unions - and thus<br />
in the Labour Party - was a constant refrain on the<br />
right, before the hysteria of 1974/5 there were only<br />
two occasions in the post-war period when the CPGB was<br />
even semi-seriously alleged to be posing a threat to<br />
the whole economy. The first was the 1948 dock strike.<br />
Charges of communist control were made at the time,<br />
and by senior members of the Labour Government,(172)<br />
but I have seen no evidence to support this claim and,<br />
in its absence, think we can reasonably attribute the<br />
claims to cynical manipulation of the 'red card'<br />
during a period of intense domestic difficulty for the<br />
Attlee government. <br />
<br />
'Cynical manipulation of the red card' has often been<br />
the description of the second occasion, during the<br />
1966 seamen's strike, when Harold Wilson made his<br />
notorious comments in the House of Commons about the<br />
role of the CPGB in the strike, and actually named<br />
CPGB members said to be active in it. This incident<br />
deserves examination. <br />
<br />
<br />
The 1966 seamen's strike<br />
There are two issues here, only one of which, whether<br />
Wilson should have said what he did, usually gets<br />
discussed. Most people, including most of his<br />
colleagues at the time, think it was a tactical<br />
mistake, at best. Peter Shore told Tony Benn that he<br />
thought Wilson's remarks were 'completely bonkers';<br />
and Benn noted in his diary, 'I think I share this<br />
view'.(173) The Labour Left were appalled by Wilson's<br />
behaviour; some by his use of what they perceived as<br />
the 'red card', and others by his use of clandestine<br />
sources of information from MI5 and Special Branch.<br />
For some, this was when they first perceived the<br />
shifty, careerist Wilson, prepared to even play the<br />
anti-communist card, to break the seamen's strike.<br />
This view is powerfully expressed by Paul Foot in his<br />
1967 essay 'The Seamen's Struggle'.(174) <br />
<br />
In his essay Foot says that the 'basic charge' in<br />
Wilson's second statement to the Commons was 'that<br />
certain members of the Communist Party had been<br />
engaging in a desperate battle to extend the seamen's<br />
strike against the will of the NUS members.'(175) In<br />
fact what Wilson said was much more complicated - and<br />
more reasonable - than this suggests.(176) He began by<br />
describing the CP's 'efficient and disciplined<br />
industrial apparatus', and continued that 'for some<br />
years now the Communist Party has had as one of its<br />
objectives the building up of a position of strength<br />
not only in the Seamen's Union, but in other unions<br />
concerned with docks and transport. It engages in this<br />
struggle for power in the Seamen's Union because it<br />
recognises..... that democracy is shallow-rooted in<br />
the union, not only that grievances and exploitation<br />
have festered for many years.' He called it a<br />
'take-over bid'. <br />
<br />
Wilson said the objectives of the CPGB in the strike<br />
were: 'First, to influence the day-to-day policy of<br />
the executive council; secondly, to extend the area of<br />
stoppage' [this is the bit emphasised by Foot] and<br />
thirdly, 'to use the strike not only to improve the<br />
conditions of the seamen - in which I believe them to<br />
be genuine - but also to secure what is at present the<br />
main political and industrial objective of the<br />
Communist Party - the destruction of the government's<br />
prices and incomes policy.' Wilson went on to say that<br />
he knew that the NUS executive committee was dominated<br />
by Joe Kenny and Jim Slater and that, while he knew<br />
neither of them were communists, he knew of their<br />
meetings with CPGB members in the union and the CPGB's<br />
industrial organiser, Bert Ramelson.(177) <br />
<br />
But smashing Wilson's pay policy was the aim of the<br />
CPGB - and just about everybody else on the British<br />
Left and in some of the trade unions. The rest of what<br />
he said amounts to little more than an account of the<br />
routine activities of all left groups in the labour<br />
movement. They try to expand their positions and<br />
influence inside every forum. This is what they do. If<br />
Bert Ramelson et al were not trying to do these<br />
things, CPGB members would be entitled to ask for<br />
their subscriptions back. This is what they were<br />
employed to do. The young Tony Benn also thought<br />
Wilson's statement less than overwhelming. On June 28,<br />
after Wilson' s listing of the CPGB members allegedly<br />
involved in the strike, Benn wrote in his diary that<br />
while the speech made him 'sick' and reminded him of<br />
'McCarthyism', he added: 'In a sense Harold said<br />
nothing that was new, since every trade union leader<br />
knew it.' <br />
<br />
The seamen's strike was a great boost for the CPGB and<br />
for Bert Ramelson who had only taken over as the<br />
Party's chief industrial organiser from Peter Kerrigan<br />
earlier that year. Under Ramelson the Party began<br />
classical 'broad left' campaigns in many of the<br />
unions, run by Party-controlled 'advisory committees'.<br />
Willie Thompson, himself a member of the CPGB, derides<br />
the idea that these committees had any power. <br />
<br />
<br />
'The CP advisory committees...were credited by an<br />
alarmist press with being an organisational framework<br />
through which a tight stranglehold was maintained upon<br />
the country's economic existence; a network through<br />
which flowed intelligence and commands enabling the<br />
Kremlin via King Street to direct its thrusts...For<br />
better or worse the advisories were just that - advice<br />
forums - and their coordinating function even within<br />
the individual area each one covered was weak.' (p.<br />
136) <br />
<br />
<br />
The evidence on this just is not clear: Beckett offers<br />
a different account of these committees. However<br />
Thompson more or less agrees with Beckett's claims<br />
that destruction of the Wilson-Castle trade union<br />
reform proposals, in the 'In Place of Strife'<br />
document, was 'largely a communist triumph and Wilson<br />
knew it';(178) and the latter cites the 1970 dock<br />
strike, the postal strike of 1971 and the miners'<br />
strikes of 1972 as disputes in which the Party played<br />
a significant role. <br />
<br />
In the 1970s, the anti-subversion lobby, orbiting<br />
around IRD, and presumably informally briefed on the<br />
reality of the 'Moscow gold' by MI5, took the picture<br />
of real - and arguably, increasing - CPGB influence on<br />
the trade unions, and added KGB/ Soviet control.To<br />
this theory the Communist Party itself contributed by<br />
occasionally boasting of its influence on the Labour<br />
Party;(179) with the Labour Party itself unwittingly<br />
adding the final touch by abolishing in 1973 the<br />
Proscription List of organisations - mostly the 1950s<br />
Soviet fronts - that Labour Party members could not<br />
join, thus convincing the paranoids on the right that<br />
the mice were in pantry. (180) Unaware of the 'Moscow<br />
gold' evidence, the left dismissed the right's Soviet<br />
angle as manifestly nonsense. <br />
<br />
<br />
MI5's role<br />
Unaware of the evidence: this is the key point. For<br />
while the members of the CPGB - and the wider public -<br />
knew nothing of the packets of used fivers arriving in<br />
London, we know now that MI5 had been aware of the<br />
Moscow gold run almost as soon as it was begun. We can<br />
start with Peter Wright's memory again. <br />
<br />
<br />
'Then there was the Falber affair. After the PARTY<br />
PIECE operation, MI5 went on the hunt for CPGB files<br />
which listed the secret payments made to the Party by<br />
the Soviets. We suspected that perhaps they might be<br />
held in the flat of Reuben Falber, who had recently<br />
been made cashier of the Russian funds.'(181) <br />
<br />
MI5 knew about the payments, and knew Falber was in<br />
charge of them.(182) All they wanted were the presumed<br />
accounts, the books - the evidence. Wright tells us<br />
that MI5 planned to burgle Falber's flat but their<br />
first plan failed - and leaves it there! To MI5 the<br />
proof of the Moscow Gold must have had something of<br />
the status of the Holy Grail; and we are to believe<br />
that having located it they made only one attempt to<br />
get it? Wright really wants us to believe that for 20<br />
years, aware that the CPGB were getting actual Soviet<br />
cash money, MI5 were either unable to detect the<br />
payoffs in London, or, having made one failed attempt,<br />
just gave up? This is simply not credible. <br />
<br />
In the USA the FBI famously had so many agents inside<br />
the CPUSA as to make the whole enterprise a farce; and<br />
J. Edgar Hoover is quoted by a fairly senior ex FBI<br />
source as having said, 'If it were not for me, there<br />
would not even be a Communist Party of the United<br />
States. Because I've financed the Communist Party, in<br />
order to know what they are doing.'(183) As far as we<br />
know, nothing quite like this happened in the UK. The<br />
large transmitter found attached to the bottom of the<br />
table in the CPGB's central meetings room, displayed<br />
by ex CPGB Central Committee member George Mathews in<br />
the Independent (25 November 1989), illustrates Peter<br />
Wright's claim that 'By 1955....... the CPGB was<br />
thoroughly penetrated at almost every level by<br />
technical surveillance or informants'; and with the<br />
spreading disillusion in the 1950s, climaxed by<br />
Hungary, MI5 can have had no trouble recruiting active<br />
and former party members, like the late Harry Newton,<br />
to inform on the British comrades. <br />
<br />
I do not want to argue that MI5 were running the CPGB.<br />
<br />
<br />
But it did allow the CPGB to run.(184) <br />
<br />
Had the existence of the 'Moscow gold' been revealed<br />
in 1958 or 9, coming after the Soviet invasion of<br />
Hungary, the CPGB would have been terminally damaged.<br />
But for MI5 the 'communist threat' - and the link to<br />
the Soviet Union - was simply too useful a stick with<br />
which to beat the much more important wider labour<br />
movement and Labour Party to be surrendered. The<br />
Soviet connection with the CPGB enabled the Security<br />
Service to portray both unions and the left of the<br />
Labour Party, some of whom worked with the CPGB, as<br />
subversives; and with a subversive minority in its<br />
midst, this enabled the Labour Party as a whole to be<br />
portrayed as a threat to the well-being of the<br />
nation,(185) and thus a legitimate target for MI5.<br />
Reviewing Willie Thompson's history of the Party,<br />
social democrat John Torode (whose father had been a<br />
significant pre-war member of the Party) charged that:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
'The [CPGB's] constant encouragement of strikes in<br />
support of unrealistic wage demands, the destruction<br />
of Barbara Castle's union reforms and the coordinated<br />
attempts to capture positions of power in order to<br />
influence Labour Party policy, did much to destroy the<br />
credibility of that party.'(186) <br />
<br />
In one sense Torode is merely saying that the CPGB<br />
tried to use such influence as it had in the trade<br />
unions to frustrate social democratic policies and<br />
build up its own position. Is this not what Communist<br />
Parties always did? But in another way Torode has<br />
missed the point. For the link with the CPGB<br />
discredited the Labour Party because of the CPGB's<br />
perceived connection to Moscow. If Torode's charge is<br />
true - and I think it is to some extent - it was only<br />
possible because MI5 had concealed the Moscow<br />
financial connection and preserved the CPGB as a<br />
significant force on the British Left. <br />
<br />
Since so much of the British Left came either from, or<br />
in opposition to, the CPGB, it is impossible to even<br />
speculate convincingly how the the British Left - or<br />
British Politics - would have developed if the Moscow<br />
gold had been exposed in the late fifties. But it<br />
certainly is possible that the anti-union hysteria of<br />
the late 1970s, leading to the catastrophe of<br />
Thatcherism - and the subsequent collapse of the<br />
Labour Party - could have been avoided. <br />
<br />
<br />
Notes<br />
<br />
148. In 1964, for example, Common Cause issued a<br />
pamphlet naming 180 people in Britain with 'Communist<br />
connections', including Bertrand Russell, Lord Boyd<br />
Orr and the painter Ruskin Spear! See the Sunday<br />
Times, 31 May 1964. 'Big Jim' Matthews of the GMWU was<br />
one of the Common Cause directors who approved the<br />
publication<br />
149. For this view see the memoir by Des Warren, The<br />
Key to My Cell, New Park, London, 1982. One of the<br />
so-called Shrewsbury pickets, imprisoned in 1972,<br />
Warren had been a member of the CPGB, became<br />
disillusioned and joined the Workers' Revolutionary<br />
Party.<br />
150. Darke pp. 59 and 60<br />
151. A CPGB activist at the time, Harry McShane<br />
describes in his memoir how 'overnight we all became<br />
democratic and amazingly interested in Acts of<br />
Parliament.....the idea was that, whereas the old<br />
Industrial Department was concerned with industrial<br />
action, the Labour Movement Department would influence<br />
the Labour Party and the trade unions and change the<br />
character of those bodies....'. McShane p. 246.<br />
152. See Guardian, September 14 1991 and the<br />
discussion in Labour History Review, Vol. 57, no. 3,<br />
pp. 33-5.<br />
153. My parents were both in the CPGB in the 1945-56<br />
period and talked of the burden of trying to sell<br />
Party literature. On the Party's low wages see, for<br />
example, the letter from former Party employee Bill<br />
Brooks in Guardian, 21 November 1991.<br />
154. Independent, 15 November 1991<br />
155. The people I knew of in the CPGB were, on the<br />
whole, well intentioned left democrats who, almost to<br />
a man and woman, became Euro-communists in the 70s and<br />
80s. The impact on the Party of the revelation of<br />
Soviet funding is discussed in detail in Mosbacher.<br />
156. Think of the logistics of this: assuming only one<br />
page per file, for 48 hours, using 1955 technology,<br />
and without disturbing the other tenants in the block<br />
of flats? It seems unlikely to me.<br />
157. Wright, Spycatcher p. 55<br />
158. Beckett p. 138 repeats the denials of Matthews,<br />
attributing it to 'CP officials'.<br />
159. Darke p. 86. On this 'coming out' of concealed CP<br />
members, see the conference report in Labour History<br />
Review, vol. 57, No. 3 Winter 1992, p. 29.<br />
160. Beckett pp. 147-8<br />
161. Evidence of secret CP members also comes from<br />
another Communist Party. In her 1990 autobiography the<br />
Australian feminist, poet and Communist Party<br />
activist, Dorothy Hughes wrote of the period just<br />
after World War 2, when the ACP was under pressure<br />
from the state: 'Peter Thomas, Joan's former husband,<br />
writes leaders for the West Australian and is an<br />
undercover member of the State Committee of the<br />
Party.' (emphasis added) Dorothy Hughes, Wild Card,<br />
Virago, London, p. 122.<br />
162. Other left-wing parties in Britain have received<br />
foreign funding without amounting to anything. The<br />
Workers' Revolutionary Party for example.<br />
163. Shaw, Discipline, p. 59<br />
164. See Bower, The Perfect English Spy, chapter 4<br />
165. The Peril In Our Midst, Phoenix House, London,<br />
1956.<br />
166. The Hidden Face of British Communism, Aidan<br />
Crawley, Sunday Times, October 28 1962, reprinted as a<br />
pamphlet.<br />
167. Middlemas, footnote on p. 414<br />
168. Beckett p. 109. Like the rest of Beckett's book,<br />
this is unsourced but presumably the estimate is from<br />
CPGB members or former members.<br />
169. See Roberts pp. 210-216. IRIS discussed 'Voice'<br />
newspapers in their pamphlet The British 'Left',<br />
August 1970, pp. 18 and 19. The scare quotes round<br />
'Left' are IRIS's.<br />
170. Peace News, special issue, 23 August, 1974.<br />
171. Ossian, Glasgow, no date but circa 1984.<br />
172. This is still believed on the right. See for<br />
example in the obituary of the London CPGB dockers'<br />
leader, Jack Dash, in the Daily Telegraph June 9,<br />
1989. The various dock strikes and the alleged<br />
'communist threat' are discussed in Jim Phillips.<br />
173. Pimlott p. 407<br />
174. In Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.). In that, and in<br />
his book The Politics of Harold Wilson, Foot traces<br />
the origins of the strike back to the smaller 1960<br />
strike and the formation of the National Seamen's<br />
Reform Movement. I discussed Foot's highly selective<br />
account of the origins of the strike in Lobster 25. <br />
<br />
Historian of the CPGB Willie Thompson writes that 'the<br />
Prime Minister indicted the CP (quite inaccurately)<br />
for fomenting and organising the strike....accusing<br />
King Street of having organised it with the deliberate<br />
purpose of inflicting damage on the national economy.'<br />
(emphasis added) p. 137. Actually Wilson did not<br />
accuse the CPGB of deliberately trying to damage the<br />
national economy, and Thompson says nothing more about<br />
the alleged CPGB influence on the strike.<br />
175. Blackburn and Cockburn (eds.) p. 175<br />
176. His statement is reproduced in his The Labour<br />
Government 1964-70 Penguin 1974, pp. 308-11.<br />
177. On this the evidence is incomplete and<br />
contradictory. On the one hand Dr Raymond Challinor<br />
told me that he discussed this with Jim Slater just<br />
before the latter's death, and Slater told him that he<br />
had never met Bert Ramelson, that he had told Wilson<br />
this, and that Wilson had acknowledged that he had<br />
been misinformed. But in his history of the CPGB<br />
Beckett tells us that Slater was part of a 'left<br />
caucus.... people who had a high regard for [CPGB<br />
Industrial Organiser] Ramelson'. Beckett p. 182<br />
178. Beckett p. 175, Willie Thompson pp. 138/9.<br />
179. This is attributed to Ramelson in Seamus Milne's<br />
obituary of him in the Guardian, 16 April 1994.<br />
180. Blake Baker, one of the media experts on the<br />
CPGB, who wrote for the Daily Telegraph for many<br />
years, on p. 96 of his The Far Left wrote of the<br />
subsidies from Moscow: 'No one has ever been able to<br />
produce evidence, let alone prove it. ... All that<br />
would be necessary is a car or a taxicab to collect a<br />
suitcase full of money.' Is Baker hinting here that he<br />
knew about the cash from Moscow and how it was<br />
delivered?<br />
181. Spycatcher p. 175 Falber's account is in Changes,<br />
16-19 November 1991. In it he writes: First, did the<br />
authorities know about it [the Moscow money]? I think<br />
they did.'<br />
182. This suggests either that the CPGB had a<br />
high-level MI5 mole in its ranks who has never been<br />
identified, or that SIS had a hitherto unknown agent<br />
inside the Soviet intelligence apparatus.<br />
183. Summers, p. 191<br />
184. Something similar happened in the United States<br />
where the people who handled the secret Soviet Union<br />
donations to the CPUSA, Morris and Jack Childs, were<br />
actually FBI agents. Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics<br />
II: Essays on Oswald, Mexico and Cuba (Green Archive<br />
Publications, Skokie, Illinois, USA 1995), p. 93,<br />
citing David J. Garrow's The FBI and Martin Luther<br />
King (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1981).<br />
185. This was a staple of the subversive-hunters in<br />
the mid 1970s. But compare and contrast Geoffrey<br />
Stewart-Smith's Not To Be Trusted: Left Wing Extremism<br />
in the Labour and Liberal Parties of February 1974,<br />
with his 1979 Hidden Face of the Labour Party, 1979.<br />
By 1979 he has added Trotskyist groups in the Labour<br />
Party to the CPGB as 'the threat'.<br />
186. The Independent, 1 October 1992. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
----------------------------------------------------------------</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Roy_Godson&diff=68099Talk:Roy Godson2008-10-28T16:42:51Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Richard H. Shultz Jr. is worth a profile (elsewhere he is just Richard Shultz) there's a good CV at the Tufts Uni site.<br />
<br />
<br />
Richard H. Shultz Jr. is Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School and his CV on the university's site tells us that he writes with Roy Godson and has done since the early 1980s in publications such as a special issue of International Studies Notes (Winter 1983) devoted to teaching foreign intelligence. The three articles prepared for the issue include: “Teaching Foreign Intelligence;” “Intelligence —The Evolution of a New Teaching Subject;” and “Resource Materials on Intelligence;” “Covert Action,” in Intelligence Requirements for the 1990s, ed. by Roy Godson (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1989).<br />
<br />
Shultz produced several books promoting the Soviet Union as behind world terrorism (often funded by the Hoover Institution) such as: “Countering Third World Marxist-Leninist Regimes: Policy Options for the United States,” in Vulnerabilities of Third World Marxist-Leninist Regimes: Implications for U.S. Policy (New York: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1985); “The Role of the Soviet Union in Promoting Insurgency in the Third World,” in National Security Strategy: Choices and Limits, ed. by Stephen Cimbala (New York: Praeger, 1984); “Low Intensity Conflict: The Nature of the Soviet Role,” in Strategic Response to Conflict in the 1980s, ed. by William J. Taylor, Jr. (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1984); “Soviet Strategy and Support for International Terrorist Groups,” in The 1980s: Decade of Confrontation? (Washington, DC: The National Security Affairs Institute, 1982) and Hydra of Carnage: The International Linkages of Terrorism (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1985). Co-editor with Uri Ra’anan, Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr., Ernst Halperin, and Igor Lukes. <br />
<br />
Shultz's CV also notes that he is a Director of the Armed Groups Project, of the [[National Strategy Information Center]] (which funded the IEDSS). <br />
<br />
the fletcher tufts school is a bit of a hot bed too.....</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Exxon_Mobil:_Influence_/_Lobbying&diff=67986Exxon Mobil: Influence / Lobbying2008-10-27T16:22:00Z<p>Billy: /* Resources */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Exxon Mobil|ExxonMobil Main Page]]<br />
<br />
==Lobbying Groups==<br />
<br />
[[ExxonMobil]] does extensive lobbying in Washington themselves. Before the merger of [[Exxon]] and [[Mobil]], the ''New York Times'' reported that Mobil and Exxon spent $5.3 million and $5.2 million respectively on lobbying {{ref|58}}. In 1999 it was estimated that ExxonMobil spent $11,695,800 on lobbying. {{ref|59}}<br />
<br />
ExxonMobil spent $5.8 million on the following lobbying firms in 1999: [[Akin, Gump et al]], [[Cassidy & Assoc]], [[Gardere & Wynne]], [[Mobil Business Resources Corp]], and [[Swidler, Berlin et al]]. {{ref|60}}<br />
<br />
Below some of the groups that Exxon Mobil is a member of are listed and briefly explained. This is just a very short list, and does not claim to be a comprehensive list of the most important groups.<br />
<br />
*[[American Petroleum Institute]] (API) http://www.api.org<br />
<br />
:The oil industry's think-tank, explains that its "most pressing issues revolve about public perceptions and government policies toward our industry -- many of which have international dimensions," {{ref|61}} one of these issues being climate change. The institute lobbies against any action on climate change that could be perceived as a threat to the petroleum industry, and is extremely sceptical about the science behind climate change. "[T]he debate is about whether enough is known about climate change to warrant the lost jobs, higher consumer prices and a weakened US economy that would come with implementing the Kyoto Protocol, an agreement which at best would make only slight progress toward solving climate change." {{ref|62}} ExxonMobil is a financial supporter of the API and sits on the board. In 1998, Exxon helped API to plan its $7 million PR campaign to undermine confidence in the scientific consensus about climate change {{ref|63}}. The API is a member of the [[Global Climate Coalition]] (see below).<br />
<br />
*[[US Council For International Business]] http://www.uscib.org<br />
<br />
:"The USCIB advances the global interests of American business both at home and abroad. It is the American affiliate of the [[International Chamber of Commerce]] (ICC), the [[Business and Industry Advisory Committee]] (BIAC) to the OECD, and the [[International Organisation of Employers]] (IOE). As such, it officially represents US business positions in the main intergovernmental bodies..." {{ref|64}}<br />
<br />
:After Bush's rejection of the Kyoto agreement the USCIB sent him a letter stating, "[we] believe that the US should move quickly to chart a farsighted path forward within the [[UNFCCC]] process that will avoid the Kyoto Protocol's unrealistic targets, timetables and lack of developing country participation." {{ref|65}}<br />
<br />
*[[European Chemical Industry Council]] (CEFIC) http://www.cefic.be {{ref|66}}<br />
<br />
:CEFIC actively lobby the EU and at UN climate negotiations for voluntary action as the alternative to government regulation. CEFIC rejects absolute targets being imposed on the chemical industry and threatens to, "relocate to cap-free countries," warning that the end result will not help the environment and will bring massive job losses to the EU. {{ref|67}}<br />
<br />
*The [[Centre for European Policy Studies]] (CEPS) http://www.ceps.be {{ref|68}}<br />
<br />
:The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) is a 'think tank lobby' group supporting corporate interests in the EU. CEPS formed a working group on 'EU Climate Change Policy: Priorities for COP-6' before the COP 6 meeting in Den Haag 2000. The group chaired by [[BP]]'s [[Barbara Kuryk]] aims to steer the EU away from government regulation and towards voluntary initiatives and market-based mechanisms. It also lobbies for binding CO2 reductions to include southern countries.<br />
<br />
*[[Global Climate Coalition]] (GCC) http://www.globalclimate.org<br />
<br />
:A climate sceptic organisation, representing a diverse range of US businesses. The GCC argues that, "Unrealistic targets and timetables, such as those called for under the Kyoto Protocol, are not achievable without severely harming the US economy and all American families, workers, seniors and children." {{ref|69}}<br />
<br />
:GCC received such heavy criticism that companies such as [[BP]], [[Ford]] and [[Texaco]] decided to leave it. Exxon however stayed a member until GCC decided that only trade associations were suitable for membership. {{ref|70}}<br />
<br />
==Links with government==<br />
<br />
===ExxonMobil===<br />
<br />
[[George W. Bush]] himself is an old Texas oilman. In 1977 he set up the oil company [[Arbusto Energy]] (''Arbusto'' is Spanish for 'Bush'). The company was never very successful; it changed name, went through a merger and was bought up. Bush left the oil business in the early 1990s. {{ref|71}} His close ties to the oil industry were however visible when he as governor let Exxon draft the 'voluntary' emissions reporting system for Texas. {{ref|72}} (This Clean Air Programme turned out to be utterly ineffective.) {{ref|73}}<br />
<br />
In 2000, ExxonMobil gave $1.2 million to the [[Republican Party]]. {{ref|74}} According to the [[Center for Responsive Politics]], only [[Enron]] (a gas and electricity corporation) gave a higher amount of political donations the same year (which makes ExxonMobil the largest oil and gas donor). {{ref|75}}<br />
<br />
Bush's cabinet turned out to contain several persons with links and interests to the oil industry and ExxonMobil. Some have very direct links, such as the under secretary of economic affairs, [[Kathleen B. Cooper]], also Chief Economist and Manager of the Economics and Energy Division of ExxonMobil. Some are not direct links, like [[Dick Cheney]], secretary of state, a former CEO of [[Halliburton]], who shows a predisposition to share the views of the oil industry. The above and below examples are from Multinational Monitor's May 2001 issue ('Bush's Corporate Cabinet').<br />
<br />
*[[Elaine Chao]], secretary of labor, was a distinguished fellow at the [[Heritage Foundation]], a right wing think-tank sponsored by (among others) ExxonMobil.<br />
<br />
*[[Christine Whitmank]], environmental protection agency administrator, holds stocks in ExxonMobil and has several economic interests in the oil industry.<br />
<br />
*[[Gale Norton]], secretary of the interior, worked at the right-wing law firm [[Mountain States Legal Foundation]] from 1979 to 1983. The firm was funded by (among others) Exxon, [[Amoco]], [[Chevron]] and [[Ford]]. She is the national chair of the [[Coalition for Republican Environmental Advocates]] (the steering committee of which includes lobbyists from the car and oil industries).<br />
<br />
*[[Donald Evans]], secretary of commerce, whose former job was CEO for [[Tom Brown Inc.]] (a Denver-based oil and gas company), and has large financial interests in several oil companies.<br />
<br />
*[[Paul H. O'Neill]], treasury secretary, is a trustee at the [[American Enterprise Institute]] (a conservative think-tank) and is a director of [[Institute for International Economics]]. Both are sponsored by ExxonMobil.<br />
<br />
*[[Robert Zoellick]], US trade representative, is on the board of the [[Council on Foreign Relations]], and in the advisory committee of the [[Institute for International Economics]] and the [[Brookings Institute for Policy and Economic Programs]]. All three of these are sponsored by ExxonMobil.<br />
<br />
Among the president's advisors you can also find connections to the oil industry. [[Lawrence Lindsey]], top economic advisor to the president, holds a chair at the American Enterprise Institute, [[Diana Furchgott-Roth]], staff chief to the Council of Economic advisors, is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and [[Nina Rees]], adviser to the vice President Cheney is a senior analyst at the [[Heritage Foundation]]. Both organisations are sponsored by ExxonMobil.<br />
<br />
===Esso UK===<br />
<br />
The most politically engaged aspect of Esso was its former UK chairman and chief executive [[Keith Taylor]]. He sat on the [[Cleaner Vehicles Task Force]], and was involved in various higher education policy roles.<br />
<br />
Esso's 'Trees of Time and Place' initiative invited MPs to get involved. [[John Swinney]] and [[Andrew Welsh]] both participated. The [[Scottish Wildlife Trust]] is involved in co-ordinating the initiative in Scotland. [[Paddy Ashdown]] and [[John Battle]] were early joiners.<br />
<br />
==PR Companies and Greenwash attempts==<br />
<br />
:"ExxonMobil strives to be a good corporate citizen and a good neighbour wherever we do business."<br />
::- ExxonMobil's homepage {{ref|76}}<br />
<br />
ExxonMobil likes to point out its great social responsibility and its contributions to the environment. Information about who they sponsor can be found at http://www.exxonmobil.com/community. They also list institutions that they have sponsored, among them several lobby groups and right-wing/conservative think-tanks.<br />
<br />
The first sponsorship they mention is their support for tiger conservation. This is an important part of ExxonMobil's image, since the tiger is also the company's mascot. However, one of the greatest threats to the tiger could turn out to be loss of habitat due to stress caused by climate change.<br />
<br />
ExxonMobil also give a lot of support to education. Some of this sponsorship has come under criticism for being more promotional material than educational material. The [[Center for Commercial-Free Public Education]] writes: "Some teachers were duped by Exxon's lesson plan about the healthy, flourishing wildlife in Prince William Sound, Alaska, which showed beautiful eagles, frolicking sea otters, and sea birds in their habitat. In reality, the program was a public relations vehicle designed to help Exxon clean up its image after the Valdez oil spill." {{ref|77}}<br />
<br />
Below is a sample of the organisations that ExxonMobil supports (full list at http://www.exxonmobil.com/community):<br />
<br />
*The [[American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research]] (Washington, DC) is a conservative think-tank. Among other things, it has published the book ''The Bell Curve'' by [[Charles Murray]] & [[Richard Hernstein]], one of the most prominent racist books published. The book made 'scientific' claims that black people are less intelligent than white people.<br />
<br />
*The [[American Legislative Exchange Council]] (Washington, DC) is a right-wing organisation that lobbies state legislators.<br />
<br />
*The [[Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change]] (Tempe, Arizona) promotes climate sceptic ideas. Their homepage (http://www.co2science.org) blatantly shows their aggressively anti-climate-science stance.<br />
<br />
*The [[Citizens for a Sound Economy Educational Foundation]] (Washington, DC) promotes market solutions for economic and social problems.<br />
<br />
*[[Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment]] (Bozeman, Montana) is working against environmental legislation. It gives seminars that resemble free luxury vacations for judges to promote their ideas. {{ref|78}}<br />
<br />
*The [[Heartland Institute]] (Chicago, Illinois) is an arch-conservative think-tank.<br />
<br />
*The [[Heritage Foundation]] (Washington, DC) is an ultra-conservative organisation promoting 'traditional American values', free enterprise, a strong national defence, and drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge, among other things.<br />
<br />
*The [[Hoover Institution]] (Stanford, California) promotes its antipathy against federal social welfare and questions the science behind global warming. [[Michael J. Boskin]] (Member of the ExxonMobil board) is a Senior Fellow at the institute.<br />
<br />
*The [[Manhattan Institute for Policy Research]] (New York, NY) argues for cuts in welfare, medical and health spending, and for privatisation and deregulation of environmental and consumer protection.<br />
<br />
*The [[Political Economy Research Center]] (Bozeman, Montana) is a conservative organisation challenging environmental regulation.<br />
<br />
==Influencing Research and Education==<br />
<br />
===Worldwide===<br />
<br />
ExxonMobil invests more than $650 million per year on research and development. {{ref|79}}<br />
<br />
===UK===<br />
<br />
Former [[Esso]] UK chairman and chief executive [[Keith Taylor]], according to the ''Times'', personally championed Esso's higher education support scheme and engineering fellowships. He was visiting professor at Surrey University and member of the [[Higher Education Funding Council]] for England. {{ref|80}} The University of Birmingham gave an Honorary Doctor of Engineering to Keith Taylor in early 1997, when he was joint chair of the university's chemical engineering senior advisory group. {{ref|81}}<br />
<br />
[[Esso]] uses [[London Business School]] to train all graduate recruits, an absolute key to their corporate culture.<br />
<br />
All university applicants for the exploration division must attend 8-week summer work experience in Leatherhead, during their last summer vacation. This summer programme has the "full support" of the [[Natural Environment Research Council]] (NERC). {{ref|82}}<br />
<br />
===A few miscellaneous connections===<br />
<br />
*Esso sponsors fellowships in chemical engineering - these are worth £6000 for the first year, declining over the following four, in return for which Esso expects some of the fellow's time. One of the Esso fellowships was awarded to Dr. [[David Faraday]] at Surrey University, who had previously arranged industrial placements for his students with Esso. {{ref|83}}<br />
<br />
*Professor [[Graeme Simpson]], the first Schlumberger Chair of Energy Industry Management at Aberdeen, was formerly Business Opportunities Group Manager with Esso Exploration and Petroleum UK. {{ref|84}}<br />
<br />
*[[Heriot-Watt University]] has an Esso Teaching Resources Facility, (£15,000 from Esso), which underpins a communications skills module for chemistry undergraduates. {{ref|85}}<br />
<br />
*[[Loughborough University]] was awarded £8,600 by Esso Higher Education Support Scheme for a project to develop computer-based teaching material. {{ref|86}}<br />
<br />
*The [[University of Wales]], Swansea has an Esso Lecture Theatre in its Department of Engineering.<br />
<br />
*[[John Avery]], formerly of Esso Petroleum, went on to become head of Real Estate Management at the HEFCE (the [[Higher Education Funding Council for England]]), where he was responsible for a capital budget of £100m, leading HEFCE's work in promoting private finance in higher education. {{ref|87}}<br />
<br />
*The Geology and Petroleum Geology at [[Aberdeen University]] - staff include: Dr. [[AJ Hartley]], the Mobil Lecturer in Production Geoscience; Dr. [[Tim Reston]], the Mobil Lecturer in Structural Geology. There are also research fellows sponsored by Mobil. {{ref|88}}<br />
<br />
*The [[University of Dundee]] has a Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP). The Assistant Director of the Centre, [[Armando Zamora]], previously worked for Mobil Oil. {{ref|89}} Part-time and honorary teaching staff include [[Richard Beazley]] (President, Mobil CIS). {{ref|90}}<br />
<br />
*At the [[University of Nottingham]], Esso offers one bursary of £500 each year to Mechanical Engineering students, and BP £1,500 to Chemical Engineering students, both awarded at the start of the second year and renewable in the final year. {{ref|91}}<br />
<br />
The [[Greenpeace]] International report called '''Exxon Valdez - a case of corporate virtual reality''' by [[Andrew Rowell]] explains how Exxon used three British academics to help explain that Prince William Sound is just fine after the Exxon Valdez accident. See case study below. The full report is available online at: http://www.greenpeace.org/~climate/arctic99/reports/exxon2.pdf<br />
<br />
==Case Study: The Exxon Valdez spill damage==<br />
<br />
After the grounding of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker off Alaska in March 1989, Exxon flew three British scientists out to the scene to assess the damage: Prof. [[Robert Clark]] (Dept of Zoology, [[University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne]]), Dr. [[Paul Kingston]] (Institute of Offshore Engineering, [[Heriot-Watt University]]) and Dr. [[Jenny Baker]] (consultant).<br />
<br />
Clark, Kingston and Baker released a report in 1990, which argued that, "The overall impact of the oil spill on the environment in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska is likely to be short-lived." It claimed that, "Animals may accumulate petroleum hydrocarbons while their environment is oily, but they subsequently purge themselves in a relatively short time and return to normal levels. It is important to understand that oil is not like pesticides, mercury and other substances that cannot be metabolised, cannot be excreted, and thus build up in the flesh." {{ref|92}}<br />
<br />
In June 1990, Prof. Clark said, "Oil spills create a big mess. They cause short-term damage, but the long-term effects are nil." {{ref|93}} In a 1991 article, Clark observed that, "The effects of the cleanup, coupled with the scouring action of winter storms, left the shoreline largely free of oil by the spring of 1990... There is evidence that [the] remaining oil is neither toxic nor harmful." {{ref|94}} Looking at particular species, Clark notes for example that in 1990, "sea otters are still abundant in the sound and, with their high reproductive rate, can rapidly reverse whatever losses they sustained." Of murres (seabirds), Clark states that in the northeast Atlantic their population has mushroomed despite losses from oil pollution, and he expects the same to be the case in Prince William Sound (PWS). {{ref|95}}<br />
<br />
By contrast, the [[National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration]] estimated in autumn 1992 that 12% of the total oil spilled still remained in sub-tidal sediments, and 3% on the beaches. {{ref|96}} [[Rick Steiner]], an Associate Professor at the [[University of Alaska]], commented that, "Four years after the spill, oil still remains trapped in mussel mats in the inter-tidal zone, being picked up into the food chain." {{ref|97}} The [[Exxon Valdez Oil Spill State/Federal Trustee Council]] is now sponsoring a research team to find out how much oil is still left. During the summer of 2001, the group could still easily find oil by digging 15 centimetres into the beach. {{ref|98}} The Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustees expect direct damage to wilderness to continue for decades. {{ref|99}}<br />
<br />
An overview of the scientific studies of sea otters reported that, "By late 1991, three findings indicated that chronic damages were limiting recovery of the sea otter population in PWS: patterns of mortality were abnormal when compared to prespill data, surveys showed no increase in abundance, and juvenile survival was low in oiled areas of western PWS." {{ref|100}} According to the Trustees, by 1993 there was still little or no evidence of recovery of the sea otter population, which may take decades. {{ref|101}} The number of breeding murres fell by up to 70%, and there was complete reproductive failure in 1989, 1990 and 1991; {{ref|102}} the Trustees suggest that it may take a century for the population to recover, if at all. {{ref|103}}<br />
<br />
Thus the views put forward by Baker, Clark and Kingston are not shared by all scientists of marine pollution. In fact, the three are known as 'sceptics' with regard to the ecological damage caused by oil spills (their main point being that oil spills' effects are short-term, and do not significantly impact upon populations or ecosystems in the longer term), and have written extensively on the subject since at least the early 1980s. Kingston is part of the Institute of Offshore Engineering at Heriot-Watt University, most of whose work is for the oil and gas industry, and Kingston himself "has worked on most major North Sea petroleum developments." {{ref|104}}<br />
<br />
Because their views are 'friendly' is at least partly why Exxon chose these three to assess the Valdez damage. But more cynically, [[Otto Harrison]], Exxon's Director of Operations in Alaska, told an Institute of Petroleum conference in London that Exxon had used British scientists because the American public would find a scientific message more credible and more impressive if spoken in an English accent. {{ref|105}}<br />
<br />
==Resources==<br />
<br />
*[[Exxon Mobil]]<br />
*[[Exxon Mobil: Who, Where, How Much?]]<br />
*[[Exxon Mobil: Corporate Crimes]]<br />
*[[Exxon Mobil: Links, contacts & resources]]<br />
<br />
[http://www.motherjones.com/news/featurex/2005/05/exxon_chart.html Mother Jones Magazine] published an overview "Put a Tiger In Your Think Tank" in their May/June 2005 Issue, outlining how ExxonMobil has pumped more than $8 million into more than 40 think tanks; media outlets; and consumer, religious, and civil rights groups that preach skepticism about climate catastrophe.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<br />
#{{note|58}} Leslie Wayne, 'Companies Used to Getting Their Way', ''New York Times'', December 4, 1998<br />
#{{note|59}} The Center for Responsive Politics website http://www.opensecrets.org/lobbyists/client.asp?ID=92872&year=1999, viewed 23.08.01<br />
#{{note|60}} ibid.<br />
#{{note|61}} American Petroleum Institute website http://www.api.org/about/aboutindex.htm, viewed 31/08/01<br />
#{{note|62}} American Petroleum Institute website http://www.api.org/globalclimate/bigpicture.htm, viewed 31/08/01<br />
#{{note|63}} 'The Case Against Esso', a Stop Esso campaign briefing available at http://www.stopesso.com/about.htm<br />
#{{note|64}} United States Council for International Business website http://www.uscib.org/dkpuscib.asp<br />
#{{note|65}} United States Council for International Business website http://www.uscib.org/bushclim.asp<br />
#{{note|66}} Greenhouse Market Mania-UN climate talks corrupted by corporate pseudo-solutions, CEO, November 2000, available at http://www.xs4all.nl/~ceo/greenhouse/index.html<br />
#{{note|67}} CEFIC, 'Climate Policies and the Chemical Industry', June 1999<br />
#{{note|68}} ibid.<br />
#{{note|69}} Global Climate Coalitions website http://www.globalclimate.org/climscience.htm<br />
#{{note|70}} 'The Case Against Esso', a Stop Esso campaign briefing available at http://www.stopesso.com/about.htm<br />
#{{note|71}} The Center for Responsive Politics' web site, http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet.asp#1<br />
#{{note|72}} 'The Greening of George W. Bush (The Governor's 'Clean Air' Bill Hasn't Cleaned Up Texas' Air)', by Louise Dubose, 27/10/2000<br />
http://www.auschron.com/issues/dispatch/2000-10-27/pols_feature9.html<br />
#{{note|73}} 'A Decade of Dirty Tricks: ExxonMobil's attempts to stop the world tackling climate change', a briefing by Greenpeace (July 2001), online at http://www.stopesso.com/pdf/Dirty%20Tricks.pdf<br />
#{{note|74}} ExxonMobil website http://www.exxonmobil.com/em_newsrelease<br />
#{{note|75}} The Center for Responsive Politics website http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/contrib.asp?Ind=E01, viewed 23.08.01<br />
#{{note|76}} ExxonMobil website http://www.exxonmobil.com/community/<br />
#{{note|77}} The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education website http://www.commercialfree.org/sem.html, viewed 23.08.01<br />
#{{note|78}} http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/free.htm<br />
#{{note|79}} ExxonMobil annual report 2001, p.5<br />
#{{note|80}} The ''Times'', 16/10/00, Keith Taylor Obituary<br />
#{{note|81}} Lynne Williams, 'Honorary degrees/noticeboard', in THES #1266, 7/2/97, p.30<br />
#{{note|82}} ExxonMobil, 'We cover a lot of ground', recruitment brochure, 2000<br />
#{{note|83}} Lloyds List Energy Day - Recruitment & Training - 'Strategies for major change', 23/3/98, p.10<br />
#{{note|84}} Lynne Williams, 'Chairs/noticeboard' in THES #1295, 29/8/97, p.26<br />
#{{note|85}} Olga Wojtas, 'Chemists to make complex simple', in THES, no.1241, 16/8/96, p.7<br />
#{{note|86}} THES, 'Motor math', in no.1227, 10/5/96, p.SP/2<br />
#{{note|87}} Managing HE, Issue 1, Winter 1995 (pub. Hobsons)<br />
#{{note|88}} University of Aberdeen, Department of Geology & Petroleum Geology, Staff directory, on worldwide website http://www.abdn.ac.uk/geology/staff/staffdir.htm, viewed 8/10/98<br />
#{{note|89}} University of Dundee, 'Armando Zamora', on website, http://www.dundee.ac.uk/petroleumlaw/html/zamora.htm, viewed 5/2/99<br />
#{{note|90}} University of Dundee, 'CEPMLP profile', on website, http://www.dundee.ac.uk/petroleumlaw/html/profile.htm,viewed 5/2/99<br />
#{{note|91}} University of Nottingham, 'Scholarships open to Undergraduate Students', pp.E.46-E.48, 1996/97<br />
#{{note|92}} Dr. Jenifer Baker, Prof. Robert Clark & Dr. Paul Kingston, 'Environmental Recovery in Prince William Sound and the Gulf of Alaska', June 1990, commissioned by Exxon, pp.3,9 (pub. Institute of Offshore Engineering, Heriot-Watt University)<br />
#{{note|93}} Reuter News Service, 'Exxon scientists see Alaska oil spill recovery', 14/6/90; quoted in Andrew Rowell, 'The Exxon Valdez - a case of corporate virtual reality', March 1994, p.16 (pub. Greenpeace International)<br />
#{{note|94}} Robert Clark, 'Recovery: the untold story of Valdez spill', in Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy, Winter 1991, pp.24-26<br />
#{{note|95}} ibid.<br />
#{{note|96}} Golob's Oil Pollution Bulletin, 'Exxon claims ecosystem has recovered from Exxon Valdez', in vol.V no.11, 7/5/93; quoted in Rowell, op.cit., p.15<br />
#{{note|97}} Rick Steiner, 'Lessons from Alaska for Shetland - lessons from both for the world', 1993; quoted in Rowell, op.cit., p.15<br />
#{{note|98}} Scientists still finding oil after 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, by Doug O'Harra, ''Anchorage Daily News'', http://www.nandotimes.com/nation/story/43784p-681103c.html<br />
#{{note|99}} Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, Exxon Valdez oil spill restoration plan - summary of alternatives for public comment, supplement to draft, Anchorage, June 1993, B17; quoted in Rowell, op.cit.,p.15<br />
#{{note|100}} Brenda Ballachey & James Bodkin (both of Alaska Fish & Wildlife Research Centre, National Biological Survey, Anchorage), & Anthony De Gange<br />
#{{note|101}} Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, op.cit.<br />
#{{note|102}} Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustees, Exxon Valdez oil spill restoration - Volume 1 - restoration framework, Anchorage, April 1992, pp.31-32; quoted in Rowell, op.cit., p.13<br />
#{{note|103}} Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, op.cit., B9<br />
#{{note|104}} Baker, Clark & Kingston, op. cit., p.12 - About the authors<br />
#{{note|105}} Otto Harrison (of Exxon), 'Lessons from the Exxon Valdez', lecture to Institute of Petroleum, 4/3/92; cited in Rowell, op.cit., p.25<br />
<br />
[[Category:Transnational Corporations]][[Category:Oil Industry]]</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Richard_Holme&diff=67649Talk:Richard Holme2008-10-22T16:48:21Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>holme died fairly recently - he was also part of transparency international<br />
<br />
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20080507/ai_n25392552/pg_2<br />
<br />
the very wide range of national and international public bodies to which he contributed, often as chairman or vice-chairman. These included the House of Lords Constitutional Committee (he was created a life peer in 1990 as Baron Holme of Cheltenham), the Constitutional Reform Centre, the Independent Television Commission, the Broadcasting Standards Commission, the World Business Council on Corporate Responsibility (a favourite subject), the Hansard Society (another passion), the UK and Ireland Advisory Board, the British American Project, Transparency International, the Overseas Development Institute, the BBC Charter Committee, the ICC Environment Commission, the Royal African Society and many many others.<br />
<br />
also has<br />
<br />
Richard Gordon Holme, politician and publisher: born London 27 May 1936; Vice-Chairman, Liberal Party Executive 1966-67; Director, Campaign for Electoral Reform 1976-85; Secretary, Parliamentary Democracy Trust 1977-2008; President, Liberal Party 1980-81; CBE 1983; Chairman, Constitutional Reform Centre 1985-94; chairman, DPR Publishing 1988-98; chairman, Black Box Publishing 1988-95; chairman, Hollis Directories 1989-98; created 1990 Baron Holme of Cheltenham; chairman, Brassey's Ltd 1996-98; Chairman, Broadcasting Standards Commission 1999-2000; Deputy Chairman, ITC 1999; Liberal Democrat spokesman on Northern Ireland, House of Lords 1992-99; Chairman, Liberal Democrat Election Campaign 1997; PC 2000; Chairman, Select Committee on the Constitution, House of Lords 2004- 08; married 1958 Kay Powell (two sons, two daughters); died Lurgashall, West Sussex 4 May 2008.</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Antony_Fisher&diff=67157Antony Fisher2008-10-15T16:16:33Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>[[Antony Fisher]] was a member of the [[Mont Pelerin Society]]<br />
<br />
:It may be the dominant political force of our times, but the economic creed that came to be known as Thatcherism was born in obscure circumstances. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, politics was dominated by a single philosophy. Central planning and state control of industry was seen by both Labour and Conservatives as the only sensible way to run Britain's economy... It fell to outsiders such as [[Anthony Fisher]] - an Old Etonian chicken farmer - to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy; even if, initially, they were written off as cranks or dangerous ideologues. Fisher, who made his fortune by pioneering battery farming techniques, founded a think tank, The [[Institute of Economic Affairs]], in the mid 1950s to spread his free market philosophy.{{ref|tory}} <br />
<br />
==Affiliations==<br />
*[[Mont Pelerin Society]]<br />
*[[Institute of Economic Affairs]]<br />
*[[Manhattan Institute]]<br />
<br />
==Resources==<br />
<br />
Paul Labarique [http://www.voltairenet.org/article30072.html The Manhattan Institute, Neoconservatives’s Lab], Voltaire Net, 15 September 2004.<br />
<br />
<br />
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=998798983265285291&q=sir+anthony+fisher&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Fisher speaks from the grave].<br />
==Notes==<br />
# {{note|tory}} Brian Wheeler [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4766446.stm Tory! Tory! Tory! (Part one)] BBC Online, Last Updated: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 15:38 GMT</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Antony_Fisher&diff=67156Antony Fisher2008-10-15T16:15:42Z<p>Billy: /* Notes */</p>
<hr />
<div>[[Antony Fisher]] was a member of the [[Mont Pelerin Society]]<br />
<br />
:It may be the dominant political force of our times, but the economic creed that came to be known as Thatcherism was born in obscure circumstances. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, politics was dominated by a single philosophy. Central planning and state control of industry was seen by both Labour and Conservatives as the only sensible way to run Britain's economy... It fell to outsiders such as [[Anthony Fisher]] - an Old Etonian chicken farmer - to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy; even if, initially, they were written off as cranks or dangerous ideologues. Fisher, who made his fortune by pioneering battery farming techniques, founded a think tank, The [[Institute of Economic Affairs]], in the mid 1950s to spread his free market philosophy.{{ref|tory}} <br />
<br />
==Affiliations==<br />
*[[Mont Pelerin Society]]<br />
*[[Institute of Economic Affairs]]<br />
*[[Manhattan Institute]]<br />
<br />
==Resources==<br />
<br />
Paul Labarique [http://www.voltairenet.org/article30072.html The Manhattan Institute, Neoconservatives’s Lab], Voltaire Net, 15 September 2004.<br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
# {{note|tory}} Brian Wheeler [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4766446.stm Tory! Tory! Tory! (Part one)] BBC Online, Last Updated: Wednesday, 8 March 2006, 15:38 GMT<br />
<br />
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=998798983265285291&q=sir+anthony+fisher&total=5&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Fisher speaks from the grave].</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:John_Gvozdenovic_Kennedy&diff=66910Talk:John Gvozdenovic Kennedy2008-10-10T16:16:43Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>well good grief how did this manage to get put up so quickly?</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Tom_McNally&diff=65515Talk:Tom McNally2008-09-24T13:22:05Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-6105842_ITM<br />
has McNally as :<br />
<br />
<br />
2003 Haymarket Business Publications Ltd.<br />
<br />
The Corporation of London has re-appointed Weber Shandwick UK vice-chairman Lord Tom McNally as its public affairs counsellor following a review of its lobbying needs.<br />
<br />
The reorganisation, overseen by PR director [[Tony Halmos]], led to the scrapping of an account that had been held by WS and its predecessor... <br />
<br />
haven't read full story may connect with Corp of London's previous use of GPC Market Access in late 90s and intrigue thereof. Also Halmos former SDP organiser and memb of [[Editorial Intelligence]].</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:English_Speaking_Union&diff=65338Talk:English Speaking Union2008-09-20T16:43:17Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Board of Governors<br />
Lady Appleyard (Heather Brigstocke)<br />
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/baroness-brigstocke-549882.html<br />
diplomat husband, Geoffrey Brigstocke, whom she married in 1952, to Washington<br />
Lady Boyd<br />
Mr Saroj Chakravarty<br />
'''Sir Richard Dearlove'''<br />
Mr Jonathan Dye<br />
Mr Alexander Finnis*<br />
Sir Brian Fall GCVO KCMG<br />
Ms Cheryl Gillan MP<br />
Sir David Green KCMG<br />
Mr Andrew Hay<br />
Ms Jennifer Hibbert<br />
Mr Steven Isserlis CBE<br />
Mr Richard Kaye<br />
Captain Sir Norman Lloyd-Edwards<br />
Mr Colin McCorquodale<br />
Mr Brian Marsh OBE<br />
'''Sir Christopher Meyer''' KCMG<br />
Mrs Jeanne Pumfrey<br />
Mr Christopher Redman<br />
Dame Mary Richardson DBE<br />
Miss Margaret Rudland<br />
'''The Baroness Smith''' of Gilmorehill DL<br />
Mr Peter Sparling*<br />
Baroness Elizabeth Symons<br />
The Lord Watson of Richmond CBE<br />
Mr Anthony Westnedge OBE<br />
Mr Anthony Williams<br />
Sir Robert M Worcester KBE DL<br />
<br />
http://www.esuworld2008.org/speakers.htm<br />
<br />
http://cache.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=9708567&page_id=117104016&page_url=%2f%2fwww.oxweek.com%2fwho.html&page_last_updated=6%2f18%2f2002+2%3a05%3a50+AM&firstName=Brian&lastName=Fall</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:English_Speaking_Union&diff=65337Talk:English Speaking Union2008-09-20T15:37:04Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Board of Governors<br />
Lady Appleyard (Heather Brigstocke)<br />
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/baroness-brigstocke-549882.html<br />
diplomat husband, Geoffrey Brigstocke, whom she married in 1952, to Washington<br />
Lady Boyd<br />
Mr Saroj Chakravarty<br />
'''Sir Richard Dearlove'''<br />
Mr Jonathan Dye<br />
Mr Alexander Finnis*<br />
Sir Brian Fall GCVO KCMG<br />
Ms Cheryl Gillan MP<br />
Sir David Green KCMG<br />
Mr Andrew Hay<br />
Ms Jennifer Hibbert<br />
Mr Steven Isserlis CBE<br />
Mr Richard Kaye<br />
Captain Sir Norman Lloyd-Edwards<br />
Mr Colin McCorquodale<br />
Mr Brian Marsh OBE<br />
'''Sir Christopher Meyer''' KCMG<br />
Mrs Jeanne Pumfrey<br />
Mr Christopher Redman<br />
Dame Mary Richardson DBE<br />
Miss Margaret Rudland<br />
'''The Baroness Smith''' of Gilmorehill DL<br />
Mr Peter Sparling*<br />
Baroness Elizabeth Symons<br />
The Lord Watson of Richmond CBE<br />
Mr Anthony Westnedge OBE<br />
Mr Anthony Williams<br />
Sir Robert M Worcester KBE DL<br />
<br />
http://www.esuworld2008.org/speakers.htm</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Edward_Lansdale&diff=65243Talk:Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T16:25:10Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>still working on this will finish it off today<br />
<br />
eh..tomorrow</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65242Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T16:24:44Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
<br />
::"That guy's a dingbat..."<br />
::(Al Haig on Lansdale<ref>Don Bohning (2004)The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1965, page 86.</ref>)<br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba ==<br />
[[Image:Che fidel.jpg|left|thumb|Two assassination targets of US covert operations]]<br />
In 1961 Lansdale was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. This was to become the infamous "Operation Mongoose" and Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
John Ranelagh notes some of the many peculiarities of the operation:<br />
<br />
:"The Mongoose team came up with thirty-three different plans to do "something" about Castro. Included in these schemes were intelligence collection, the use of armed force, and biological and chemical attacks on the Cuban sugar crop. One of the more creative plans involved an attempt to convince Cuba's large Roman Catholic population that the Second Coming was soon and that Christ would return in Cuba if the Cubans got rid of Castro, the anti-Christ, first. This particular idea was Lansdale's. He had conducted a similar scheme in the Philippines during the anti-Huk campaign, using helicopters fitted with loudspeakers to broadcast to primitive tribesmen from the sky. In the case of the more advanced Cuba, rumors were to be circulated in the country that the Second Coming was actually going to take place in Cuba very soon. Once these rumors had taken hold and, it was hoped, generated a popular uprising against Castro, a U.S. submarine off the Cuban coast would fill the night sky with star shells. This display would be taken as indicating that Christ was on his way by the natives, who would promptly complete the overthrow of Castro. "Elimination by illumination," was what Walt Elder, McCone's executive assistant, termed this scheme, which was too fanciful even for the Mongoose team and was not implemented."<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 386.</ref><br />
<br />
Mongoose followed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion President Kennedy named his brother, United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to oversee Operation Mongoose in cooperation with Kennedy's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of civilian experts on foreign relations. Here several senior CIA officials allegedly began working with members of the mafia. The mafia would give the CIA 'plausible deniability' if an assassination plot were uncovered. Mongoose (and the Bay of Pigs) was a continuation of a secret operation against the Cuban regime that began during the Eisenhower Administration. The component of Mongoose that Lansdale oversaw (as far as can be determined from released material) was the psychological warfare or 'PsyOps' aspect of Operation Mongoose. <br />
<br />
:Lansdale created an anti-Castro radio broadcast that covertly aired in Cuba. Leaflets were distributed that depicted Castro as getting fat and wealthy at the expense of citizens. Operatives circulated stories about heroic freedom fighters. Yet, the main thrust of Lansdale's plans was a series of large scale "dirty tricks" meant to evoke a call to arms against Cuba in the international community. One plan called for a space launch at Cape Canaveral to be sabotaged and blamed on Cuban agents. Operation Bingo called for a staged attack on the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay in hopes of creating a mandate for the U.S. military to overthrow Castro. When the Church Committee investigated the actions of the national intelligence agencies in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974, notes on Operation Mongoose surfaced for the first time. The committee commented not only on the assassination plots, but also noted the "dirty tricks" proposed by Lansdale. Little else was revealed about the operation for three more decades.<ref>http://www.espionageinfo.com/Nt-Pa/Operation-Mongoose.html</ref><br />
<br />
Other sources indicate that the use of the 'mafia' was an integral consideration in the plan:<br />
<br />
:Utilizing his authority to employ all available means in the project, Lansdale openly spelled out the tasks of different agencies involved —tasks that had already been undertaken covertly but had not been put in writing in documents such as this. These included a proposal that the CIA undertake "bold new actions" and that it utilize the "potential of the underworld" and, in close cooperation with the FBI, "enlist the assistance of American links" to the Mafia in Cuba.<ref>http://www.themilitant.com/2002/6637/663750.html</ref><br />
<br />
==Psy-Op... The Movie!==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
L. Fletcher Prouty alleges that it was Lansdale's job to provide "actors", and "screenplays" for certain black operations deployed by the covert operatives and extends this into the incredible assertion that he believes that the a man walking away from the camera in a photograph of a group of 'tramps' taken after Kennedy was assassinated is Edward Lansdale— who finds Prouty somewhat paranoid.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDlansdale.htm</ref><br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65241Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T16:12:43Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
<br />
::"That guy's a dingbat..."<br />
::(Al Haig on Lansdale<ref>Don Bohning (2004)The Castro Obsession: U.S. Covert Operations Against Cuba, 1959-1965, page 86.</ref>)<br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba ==<br />
[[Image:Che fidel.jpg|left|thumb|Two assassination targets of US covert operations]]<br />
In 1961 Lansdale was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. This was to become the infamous "Operation Mongoose" and Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
John Ranelagh notes some of the many peculiarities of the operation:<br />
<br />
:"The Mongoose team came up with thirty-three different plans to do "something" about Castro. Included in these schemes were intelligence collection, the use of armed force, and biological and chemical attacks on the Cuban sugar crop. One of the more creative plans involved an attempt to convince Cuba's large Roman Catholic population that the Second Coming was soon and that Christ would return in Cuba if the Cubans got rid of Castro, the anti-Christ, first. This particular idea was Lansdale's. He had conducted a similar scheme in the Philippines during the anti-Huk campaign, using helicopters fitted with loudspeakers to broadcast to primitive tribesmen from the sky. In the case of the more advanced Cuba, rumors were to be circulated in the country that the Second Coming was actually going to take place in Cuba very soon. Once these rumors had taken hold and, it was hoped, generated a popular uprising against Castro, a U.S. submarine off the Cuban coast would fill the night sky with star shells. This display would be taken as indicating that Christ was on his way by the natives, who would promptly complete the overthrow of Castro. "Elimination by illumination," was what Walt Elder, McCone's executive assistant, termed this scheme, which was too fanciful even for the Mongoose team and was not implemented."<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 386.</ref><br />
<br />
Mongoose followed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion President Kennedy named his brother, United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to oversee Operation Mongoose in cooperation with Kennedy's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of civilian experts on foreign relations. Here several senior CIA officials allegedly began working with members of the mafia. The mafia would give the CIA 'plausible deniability' if an assassination plot were uncovered. Mongoose (and the Bay of Pigs) was a continuation of a secret operation against the Cuban regime that began during the Eisenhower Administration. The component of Mongoose that Lansdale oversaw (as far as can be determined from released material) was the psychological warfare or 'PsyOps' aspect of Operation Mongoose. <br />
<br />
:Lansdale created an anti-Castro radio broadcast that covertly aired in Cuba. Leaflets were distributed that depicted Castro as getting fat and wealthy at the expense of citizens. Operatives circulated stories about heroic freedom fighters. Yet, the main thrust of Lansdale's plans was a series of large scale "dirty tricks" meant to evoke a call to arms against Cuba in the international community. One plan called for a space launch at Cape Canaveral to be sabotaged and blamed on Cuban agents. Operation Bingo called for a staged attack on the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay in hopes of creating a mandate for the U.S. military to overthrow Castro. When the Church Committee investigated the actions of the national intelligence agencies in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974, notes on Operation Mongoose surfaced for the first time. The committee commented not only on the assassination plots, but also noted the "dirty tricks" proposed by Lansdale. Little else was revealed about the operation for three more decades.<ref>http://www.espionageinfo.com/Nt-Pa/Operation-Mongoose.html</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
L. Fletcher Prouty alleges that it was Lansdale's job to provide "actors", and "screenplays" for certain black operations deployed by the covert operatives and extends this into the incredible assertion that he believes that the a man walking away from the camera in a photograph of a group of 'tramps' taken after Kennedy was assassinated is Edward Lansdale— who finds Prouty somewhat paranoid.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDlansdale.htm</ref><br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65240Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T16:07:44Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
<br />
::"That guy's a dingbat..."<br />
::(Al Haig on Lansdale)<br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba ==<br />
[[Image:Che fidel.jpg|left|thumb|Two assassination targets of US covert operations]]<br />
In 1961 Lansdale was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. This was to become the infamous "Operation Mongoose" and Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
John Ranelagh notes some of the many peculiarities of the operation:<br />
<br />
:"The Mongoose team came up with thirty-three different plans to do "something" about Castro. Included in these schemes were intelligence collection, the use of armed force, and biological and chemical attacks on the Cuban sugar crop. One of the more creative plans involved an attempt to convince Cuba's large Roman Catholic population that the Second Coming was soon and that Christ would return in Cuba if the Cubans got rid of Castro, the anti-Christ, first. This particular idea was Lansdale's. He had conducted a similar scheme in the Philippines during the anti-Huk campaign, using helicopters fitted with loudspeakers to broadcast to primitive tribesmen from the sky. In the case of the more advanced Cuba, rumors were to be circulated in the country that the Second Coming was actually going to take place in Cuba very soon. Once these rumors had taken hold and, it was hoped, generated a popular uprising against Castro, a U.S. submarine off the Cuban coast would fill the night sky with star shells. This display would be taken as indicating that Christ was on his way by the natives, who would promptly complete the overthrow of Castro. "Elimination by illumination," was what Walt Elder, McCone's executive assistant, termed this scheme, which was too fanciful even for the Mongoose team and was not implemented."<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 386.</ref><br />
<br />
Mongoose followed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion President Kennedy named his brother, United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to oversee Operation Mongoose in cooperation with Kennedy's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of civilian experts on foreign relations. Here several senior CIA officials allegedly began working with members of the mafia. The mafia would give the CIA 'plausible deniability' if an assassination plot were uncovered. Mongoose (and the Bay of Pigs) was a continuation of a secret operation against the Cuban regime that began during the Eisenhower Administration. The component of Mongoose that Lansdale oversaw (as far as can be determined from released material) was the psychological warfare or 'PsyOps' aspect of Operation Mongoose. <br />
<br />
:Lansdale created an anti-Castro radio broadcast that covertly aired in Cuba. Leaflets were distributed that depicted Castro as getting fat and wealthy at the expense of citizens. Operatives circulated stories about heroic freedom fighters. Yet, the main thrust of Lansdale's plans was a series of large scale "dirty tricks" meant to evoke a call to arms against Cuba in the international community. One plan called for a space launch at Cape Canaveral to be sabotaged and blamed on Cuban agents. Operation Bingo called for a staged attack on the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay in hopes of creating a mandate for the U.S. military to overthrow Castro. When the Church Committee investigated the actions of the national intelligence agencies in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974, notes on Operation Mongoose surfaced for the first time. The committee commented not only on the assassination plots, but also noted the "dirty tricks" proposed by Lansdale. Little else was revealed about the operation for three more decades.<ref>http://www.espionageinfo.com/Nt-Pa/Operation-Mongoose.html</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
L. Fletcher Prouty alleges that it was Lansdale's job to provide "actors", and "screenplays" for certain black operations deployed by the covert operatives and extends this into the incredible assertion that he believes that the a man walking away from the camera in a photograph of a group of 'tramps' taken after Kennedy was assassinated is Edward Lansdale— who finds Prouty somewhat paranoid.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDlansdale.htm</ref><br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65239Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T16:06:09Z<p>Billy: /* The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba */</p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba ==<br />
[[Image:Che fidel.jpg|left|thumb|Two assassination targets of US covert operations]]<br />
In 1961 Lansdale was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. This was to become the infamous "Operation Mongoose" and Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
John Ranelagh notes some of the many peculiarities of the operation:<br />
<br />
:"The Mongoose team came up with thirty-three different plans to do "something" about Castro. Included in these schemes were intelligence collection, the use of armed force, and biological and chemical attacks on the Cuban sugar crop. One of the more creative plans involved an attempt to convince Cuba's large Roman Catholic population that the Second Coming was soon and that Christ would return in Cuba if the Cubans got rid of Castro, the anti-Christ, first. This particular idea was Lansdale's. He had conducted a similar scheme in the Philippines during the anti-Huk campaign, using helicopters fitted with loudspeakers to broadcast to primitive tribesmen from the sky. In the case of the more advanced Cuba, rumors were to be circulated in the country that the Second Coming was actually going to take place in Cuba very soon. Once these rumors had taken hold and, it was hoped, generated a popular uprising against Castro, a U.S. submarine off the Cuban coast would fill the night sky with star shells. This display would be taken as indicating that Christ was on his way by the natives, who would promptly complete the overthrow of Castro. "Elimination by illumination," was what Walt Elder, McCone's executive assistant, termed this scheme, which was too fanciful even for the Mongoose team and was not implemented."<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 386.</ref><br />
<br />
Mongoose followed the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion President Kennedy named his brother, United States Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to oversee Operation Mongoose in cooperation with Kennedy's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, a group of civilian experts on foreign relations. Here several senior CIA officials allegedly began working with members of the mafia. The mafia would give the CIA 'plausible deniability' if an assassination plot were uncovered. Mongoose (and the Bay of Pigs) was a continuation of a secret operation against the Cuban regime that began during the Eisenhower Administration. The component of Mongoose that Lansdale oversaw (as far as can be determined from released material) was the psychological warfare or 'PsyOps' aspect of Operation Mongoose. <br />
<br />
:Lansdale created an anti-Castro radio broadcast that covertly aired in Cuba. Leaflets were distributed that depicted Castro as getting fat and wealthy at the expense of citizens. Operatives circulated stories about heroic freedom fighters. Yet, the main thrust of Lansdale's plans was a series of large scale "dirty tricks" meant to evoke a call to arms against Cuba in the international community. One plan called for a space launch at Cape Canaveral to be sabotaged and blamed on Cuban agents. Operation Bingo called for a staged attack on the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay in hopes of creating a mandate for the U.S. military to overthrow Castro. When the Church Committee investigated the actions of the national intelligence agencies in the wake of the Watergate scandal in 1974, notes on Operation Mongoose surfaced for the first time. The committee commented not only on the assassination plots, but also noted the "dirty tricks" proposed by Lansdale. Little else was revealed about the operation for three more decades.<ref>http://www.espionageinfo.com/Nt-Pa/Operation-Mongoose.html</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
L. Fletcher Prouty alleges that it was Lansdale's job to provide "actors", and "screenplays" for certain black operations deployed by the covert operatives and extends this into the incredible assertion that he believes that the a man walking away from the camera in a photograph of a group of 'tramps' taken after Kennedy was assassinated is Edward Lansdale— who finds Prouty somewhat paranoid.<ref>http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDlansdale.htm</ref><br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65236Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T15:31:10Z<p>Billy: /* The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba */</p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba ==<br />
[[Image:Che fidel.jpg|left|thumb|Two assassination targets of US covert operations]]<br />
In 1961 Lansdale was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. This was to become the infamous "Operation Mongoose" and Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
John Ranelagh notes some of the many peculiarities of the operation:<br />
<br />
:"The Mongoose team came up with thirty-three different plans to do "something" about Castro. Included in these schemes were intelligence collection, the use of armed force, and biological and chemical attacks on the Cuban sugar crop. One of the more creative plans involved an attempt to convince Cuba's large Roman Catholic population that the Second Coming was soon and that Christ would return in Cuba if the Cubans got rid of Castro, the anti-Christ, first. This particular idea was Lansdale's. He had conducted a similar scheme in the Philippines during the anti-Huk campaign, using helicopters fitted with loudspeakers to broadcast to primitive tribesmen from the sky. In the case of the more advanced Cuba, rumors were to be circulated in the country that the Second Coming was actually going to take place in Cuba very soon. Once these rumors had taken hold and, it was hoped, generated a popular uprising against Castro, a U.S. submarine off the Cuban coast would fill the night sky with star shells. This display would be taken as indicating that Christ was on his way by the natives, who would promptly complete the overthrow of Castro. "Elimination by illumination," was what Walt Elder, McCone's executive assistant, termed this scheme, which was too fanciful even for the Mongoose team and was not implemented."<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 386.</ref><br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=File:Che_fidel.jpg&diff=65235File:Che fidel.jpg2008-09-18T15:24:38Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65233Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T15:22:53Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== The Mongoose in the Pentagon goes to Cuba ==<br />
<br />
In 1961 Lansdale was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. This was to become the infamous "Operation Mongoose" and Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
John Ranelagh notes some of the many peculiarities of the operation:<br />
<br />
:"The Mongoose team came up with thirty-three different plans to do "something" about Castro. Included in these schemes were intelligence collection, the use of armed force, and biological and chemical attacks on the Cuban sugar crop. One of the more creative plans involved an attempt to convince Cuba's large Roman Catholic population that the Second Coming was soon and that Christ would return in Cuba if the Cubans got rid of Castro, the anti-Christ, first. This particular idea was Lansdale's. He had conducted a similar scheme in the Philippines during the anti-Huk campaign, using helicopters fitted with loudspeakers to broadcast to primitive tribesmen from the sky. In the case of the more advanced Cuba, rumors were to be circulated in the country that the Second Coming was actually going to take place in Cuba very soon. Once these rumors had taken hold and, it was hoped, generated a popular uprising against Castro, a U.S. submarine off the Cuban coast would fill the night sky with star shells. This display would be taken as indicating that Christ was on his way by the natives, who would promptly complete the overthrow of Castro. "Elimination by illumination," was what Walt Elder, McCone's executive assistant, termed this scheme, which was too fanciful even for the Mongoose team and was not implemented."<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 386.</ref><br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65232Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T15:14:49Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as 'Magsaysay for President'. Lansdale's [http://www.af.mil/bios/bio.asp?bioID=6141 Airforce biography]makes no mention of the CIA. </ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: "The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable." <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65231Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T15:04:52Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
[[Image:Pentagon.jpg|left|thumb|A Pentagon and not Edward Lansdale or a Mongoose]]<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=File:Pentagon.jpg&diff=65230File:Pentagon.jpg2008-09-18T15:03:29Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65229Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:57:20Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|thumb|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65228Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:56:49Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
[[Image:Lansdale.jpg|left|Edward Lansdale and not a Mongoose]]<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=File:Lansdale.jpg&diff=65227File:Lansdale.jpg2008-09-18T14:55:51Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65226Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:53:02Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
::(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|right|thumb|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65225Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:52:35Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
:(Former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|centre|thumbA Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65224Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:51:58Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
(former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
[[Image:Mongoose singular.JPG|centre|A Mongoose]]<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=File:Mongoose_singular.JPG&diff=65223File:Mongoose singular.JPG2008-09-18T14:51:00Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65222Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:48:30Z<p>Billy: /* Pentgon */</p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
(former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==The Mongoose in the Pentagon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
[[Daniel Ellsberg]] the author of 'The Pentagon Papers' served with Lansdale in the mid to late 1960s as a member of Lansdale's senior liaison office of elite intelligence agents and with with Henry Kissinger —his former teacher:<br />
<br />
:When not engaged in typical RD Program "Civil Affairs" activities, such as helping the local Vietnamese build perimeter defenses around their villages, Ellsberg and his fellow RD advisors, under the tutelage of Lansdale, dressed in black pajamas and reportedly slipped into enemy areas at midnight to "snatch and snuff" the local Viet Cong cadre, sometimes making it appear as if the VC themselves had done the dirty deed, in what Lansdale euphemistically called "black propaganda" activities.<ref>http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine03082003.html</ref><br />
<br />
Ellsberg disconcerted government officials by organizing a group of five associates to write a letter to the New York Times and the Washington Post denouncing the war.<br />
<br />
:He began to see not only himself but everyone who did not demonstrated actively against the war as a "war criminal." He seemed obsessed, and his friends found it impossible to get him to talk of other topics; many were put off when he called them "good Germans" for not protesting against the war.<ref>http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml</ref><br />
<br />
This "act of conscience" helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War, and inadvertently contributed to the demise of President Richard Nixon, when CIA officer [[E. Howard Hunt]], and former FBI agent [[G. Gordon Liddy]], went to burgle confidential files from Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, and instead opened up the can of worms of the CIA inspired dirty tricks the Republican Party relied upon to wage political warfare.<br />
<br />
Lansdale's (1962)"Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations," prepared for the U.S., Department of State, which was once secret is now online.<ref>Edward Lansdale's (1962)[http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/mongoose.htm "Operation Mongoose: Program Review by the Chief of Operations,"] prepared for the U.S., Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1961-1963, Volume X Cuba, 1961-1962).</ref><br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65221Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T14:19:50Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>::"His battles were over ideas and his weapons were the tools to convince, not kill. His influence with Asians came more from his preference to listen to them than from a compulsion to tell them, an unfortunately rare attribute among the other Americans they knew. He was more interested in their songs and stories than in their armaments and believed the people's rich traditions and history were more important than their military's stockpiles in the long run." <br />
(former CIA director William E. Colby on Lansdale)<ref>From his introduction to Cecil Currey's biography of Lansdale, quoted from [http://faculty.buffalostate.edu/fishlm/folksongs/lansdale.pdf Lydia M. Fish (1989) General Edward G. Lansdale and the Folksongs of Americans in the Vietnam War, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 102 October-December, No. 406.]</ref><br />
<br />
Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: the prototype for novelist Graham Greene's character Alden Pyle in ''The Quiet American'' (1955), and the inspiration for William Lederer and Eugene Burdick's ''The Ugly American'' (1958), as well as these works' subsequent Hollywood film adaptations.although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and also to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a CIA operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963. Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the [[Pentagon Papers]].<ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pentagon2/doc100.htm Excerpts from memorandum from Brig. Gen. Edward G. Lansdale, Pentagon expert on guerrilla warfare, to Gen. Maxwell D. Taylor, President Kennedy's military adviser, on "Resources for Unconventional Warfare, SE. Asia," undated but apparently from July, 1961] see also [http://www.clemson.edu/caah/history/facultypages/EdMoise/pentagon.html Vietnam War Bibliography: The Pentagon Papers.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the CIA's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, "In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,"Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting "the American way" through a blend of economic aid and efforts at "winning the hearts and the minds of the people."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
== Cuba ==<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
==Pentgon==<br />
<br />
Some writers see American Cold War culture and the complex ways in which Lansdale both embodied and helped to shape it in terms of Lansdale as the career military officer and advisor, and Lansdale as Cold War celebrity; a combination which points to the interface of PR and military propaganda and covert operations:<br />
<br />
:Using the artistic skills he developed in college and his experience in advertising, Lansdale became the ultimate confidence man, "combining American belief systems with the persuasive forces of money and military strength" [...] Lansdale was caught between liberal and warrior values. The career Air Force officer and apparent operative for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) empathized with the colonial struggle, and had an anthropologist-like interest in the cultures and history of Southeast Asia. Lansdale sought knowledge of Asian culture through his experiences, and then attempted to use that cultural knowledge to benefit American policy. Simultaneously, Lansdale used illiberal tactics (advertising schemes, propaganda, black operations, rigged elections, counterinsurgency) to put American policy into practice in Southeast Asia. As a result, Lansdale accrued a tremendous amount of power helping the governments of the Philippines and South Vietnam in the 1950s and 1960s. The heads of these two governments, Ramon Magsaysay and Ngo Dinh Diem, respectively, gave Lansdale tremendous latitude to create "layer upon layer of confidence schemes mobilized by the power of publicity" (p. 72) so as to win the hearts and minds of the people in the struggle against the spread of communism. Lansdale assumed that these plans, which met limited success in Vietnam and failed in Cuba, would ensure the success of American-style democracy.<ref>Jonathan Nashel. Edward Lansdale's Cold War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005. [http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12661 Reviewed by Charles J. Pellegrin.]</ref><br />
<br />
In a sense this mythology links back to the 'The Quiet American' and 'The Ugly American' duality. Nashel (quoted above) contends that Lansdale hoped he could utilize this celebrity to carry out the "selling" of South Vietnam to the Americans and includes a verbatim transcript of a March 1956 letter from Lansdale to Joseph Mankiewicz (the director of the 1958 film version of The Quiet American) that suggested screenplay changes to make Vietnam a much more attractive locale and to place the communists in a more negative light, thereby "transforming the ideological purposes of a novel whose politics and tone he despised into a film he could enjoy."<br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Edward_Lansdale&diff=65212Talk:Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T12:48:39Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>still working on this will finish it off today</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Edward_Lansdale&diff=65211Edward Lansdale2008-09-18T12:47:55Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Edward G. Lansdale, was an Air Force officer whose influential theories of counterinsurgent warfare were developed in the Philippines after World War II and again in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Lansdale is rumoured to have inspired characters in two novels involving guerrilla warfare: ''The Quiet American'' by Graham Greene and ''The Ugly American'' by Eugene Burdick and William J. Lederer, although the accuracy of this is disputed.<br />
<br />
Lansdale acted as an adviser in the newly independent Philippines in the late 1940's and early 1950's and was an influence in operations by the Philippine leader Ramon Magsaysay against the Communist-dominated Hukbalahap rebellion. John Ranelagh's (1987) 'The Agency'<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see pages 224-225 on Lansdale's use of proxy forces, counter-gangs and the creation of 'nation-building features such as 'the National Movement for Free Elections and pseudo-civic organisations such as ' Magsaysay for President'.</ref>states that in 1950-53 Lansdale was on loan to the CIA from the Airforce when advising Ramon Magsaysay as part of the major long-term project of keeping Communists from power in the far east and take over the old empires in Southeast Asia rather than ally itself with the nascent nationalist and independence movements identified by CIA analists previously: this also represented a shift away from Europe.<ref>John Ranelagh (1987)'The Agency', see page 226</ref> Here he was working in the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC) itself set up in 1948 as a result of National Security Council directive 10/2 whereby the newly formed CIA could engage in "covert operations" in such a manner that:<br />
<br />
:all activities conducted pursuant to this directive which are so planned and executed that any U.S. Government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorized persons and that if uncovered the U.S. Government can plausibly disclaim any responsibility for them.<br />
<br />
The directive lists:<br />
<br />
:Specifically, such operations shall include any covert activities related to: propaganda, political action; economic warfare; preventive direct action, including sabotage, anti-sabotage, demolition; escape and evasion and evacuation measures; subversion against hostile states or groups including assistance to underground resistance movements, guerrillas and refugee liberation groups; support of indigenous and anti-communist elements in threatened countries of the free world; deceptive plans and operations; and all activities compatible with this directive necessary to accomplish the foregoing. Such operations shall not include: armed conflict by recognized military forces, espionage and counterespionage, nor cover and deception for military operations.<ref>http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/appC.html see also http://cryptome.org/ic-black4701.htm</ref><br />
<br />
According to the New York Times obituary: <br />
<br />
:It was in the Philippines that General Lansdale framed his basic theory, that Communist revolution was best confronted by democratic revolution. He came to advocate a four-sided campaign, with social, economic and political aspects as well as purely military operations. He put much emphasis on what came to be called civic-action programs to undermine Filipinos' backing for the Huks.<br />
Looking back on what he learned in Asia, he once said: ''The Communists strive to split the people away from the Government and gain control over a decisive number of the population. The sure defense against this strategy is to have the citizenry and the Government so closely bound together that they are unsplittable.'' <ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
Lansdale became an adviser to South Vietnamese and United States military leaders, and to Ambassador [[Henry Cabot Lodge]]. The Times obituary argues that he made efforts to generate popular support for the embattled Saigon Government, at a time when the United States military role in Vietnam remained limited, and that this "failed to forestall an escalation of the insurgency to full-scale conventional warfare". <br />
<br />
:Early in the war, General Lansdale was considered to be the individual who provided the intellectual direction to the counterinsurgency and nation-building efforts. But he became less significant when the conflict left the counterinsurgency phase and became a more conventional war.<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0DE1D8153BF937A15751C0A961948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print ERIC PACE (1987)EDWARD LANSDALE DIES AT 79; ADVISER ON GUERRILLA WARFARE, New York Times obituary, February 24.]</ref><br />
<br />
Lansdale was born Feb. 6, 1908, and after university became an advertising executive.<br />
<br />
He joined the Army as a captain in 1943 and rose to major by 1947, when he left the Army. During World War II he also served in the [[Office of Strategic Services]]. He joined the Air Force as a captain the same year.<br />
<br />
After the Philippines victory, by then an Air Force Colonel, he went to Vietnam in 1954 as a Central Intelligence Agency operative and helped in setting up the South Vietnamese Government of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was overthrown and killed in a coup in 1963.<br />
<br />
In that era he also championed the idea of forming and deploying a counterinsurgency force, rather than conventional armed forces, in opposing insurgents in South Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Early in his Vietnam service, Colonel Lansdale was head of a team of agents that carried out undercover operations against North Vietnam. The team turned in a vivid report of its actions shortly before pulling out of Hanoi in October 1954 after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. The team's report, later included among the Pentagon Papers, said it ''spent the last days of Hanoi in contaminating the oil supply of the bus company for a gradual wreckage of engines in the buses,'' and ''in taking actions for delayed sabotage of the railroad.'' 'Dizzy and Weak-Kneed'<br />
<br />
''The team had a bad moment when contaminating the oil,'' it went on. ''They had to work quickly at night in an enclosed storage room. Fumes from the contaminant came close to knocking them out. Dizzy and weak-kneed, they masked their faces with handkerchiefs and completed the job.''<br />
<br />
He was posted to the Pentagon in 1956 and there, by some accounts, assisted in the formation of the Special Forces, which had the special patronage of President Kennedy.<br />
<br />
After retiring from the Air Force, Mr. Lansdale served from 1965 to 1968 as a special assistant to Ambassador Lodge and as a United States representative to a committee of the South Vietnamese Government intended to win support in the countryside for the Government. His activities were varied, ranging from liaison functions between the United States Embassy and Vietnamese leaders to efforts at what was called ''rural reconstruction'' as a way of turning the tide against the insurgents.<br />
<br />
With advice from General Lansdale, South Vietnam's Premier, Air Vice Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky, declared early in 1966 that his Government would concentrate on a ''rural reconstruction'' program to pacify the countryside, putting thousands of newly trained ''cadres'' into the field to attempt to reassert Government control, enhance the peasants' life and extirpate the Vietcong.<br />
<br />
He also served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency's undercover operations in Indochina.<br />
<br />
In a 1977 book, ''In the Midst of Wars: An American's Mission to Southeast Asia,'' General Lansdale argued that the United States could still prevail in remote third-world nations by exporting ''the American way'' through a blend of economic aid and efforts at ''winning the hearts and the minds of the people.''<br />
<br />
Stanley Karnow, in his 1983 book ''Vietnam: a History,'' said that in the novel ''The Ugly American'' General Lansdale was glorified as Col. Edwin Hillendale, ''who captured 'hearts and minds' with his harmonica.'' Mr. Karnow also said that in ''The Quiet American'' General Lansdale was depicted as Alden Pyle, ''the naive U.S. official who believed that Vietnamese peasants instilled with the precepts of town hall democracy would resist Communism.''<br />
<br />
General Lansdale said that in 1961 he was told by the Kennedy Administration to draft a contingency plan to overthrow President Fidel Castro of Cuba. But he said years later that the idea had not been viable because it depended on recruiting Cuban exiles to generate an uprising in Cuba, and he had not formed that team.<br />
<br />
General Lansdale's first wife, the former Helen Batcheller, died in 1972. He is survived by his second wife, the former Patrocinio Yapcinco; by two sons by his first marriage, Edward, of Garden City, L.I., and Peter, of Oakton, Va., and five grandchildren. <br />
<br />
==References==<br />
<references/></div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:British_Atlantic_Committee&diff=65205Talk:British Atlantic Committee2008-09-18T12:04:26Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div><br />
<br />
'bomb paths'! that's what the image needed to orientate the viewer — just in case...</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Fishburn_Hedges&diff=64910Talk:Fishburn Hedges2008-09-06T17:03:02Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>surely we need a lot more on the individuals involved with FH<br />
<br />
http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/uploads/Achievements.pdf<br />
<br />
talks of (1998) Publication of ‘Company Law and Accountability’ by John Williams. Explores the<br />
major issues in preparation for the DTI review of Company Law — eh!</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Fishburn_Hedges&diff=64909Fishburn Hedges2008-09-06T16:59:42Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>Fishburn Hedges is a corporate communications company (PR firm) owned by [[Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO]], the UK's largest advertising agency, which is, in turn, ultimately owned by the global communications group [[Omnicom]].<br />
<br />
==Company Overview==<br />
===History===<br />
[[Fishburn Hedges]] was established in 1991 as a corporate communications company that specialises in public relations, advising companies on how best to communicate ideas and products to their target audience. <ref>Fishburn Hedges, [http://www.fishburn-hedges.co.uk/aboutus/ About Us]</ref><br />
<br />
<br />
John Williams an independent consultant specialising in corporate marketing and reputation was co-founder and its former Chairman, having started his career in consumer advertising with [[J. Walter Thompson]]. At Fishburn Hedges, he is said to have developed a particular interest in corporate social responsibility and also built a practice serving the not-for-profit sector. He worked for five years with [[Shell]] on their global stakeholder engagement programme. <br />
<br />
He is currently Chairman of the governance and leadership think tank, [[Tomorrow's Company]], a board member of [[Business in the Community]] and was, until recently, deputy Chair of ChildLine. <br />
<br />
Williams is currently a Charity Commissioner, with the Charity Commission, as one of the five non-executive Commissioners responsible for the regulation of 190,000 charities in England and Wales.<ref>http://www.executivephilanthropy.com/speakers.html</ref><br />
<br />
===Activities===<br />
FH representatives say that they draw ideas from all over the place:<br />
<br />
:Typically our client teams will mix career PR practitioners with consultants who have professional experience in that client’s field. Our consultants include former bankers, advertising planners, authors, civil servants, trade unionists, stock brokers, charity fund raisers and, of course, journalists.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060111190701/http://www.fishburn-hedges.co.uk/Content/home/people.cfm People] retrieved from the Internet archive of 11 January 2006 on 31 July 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
The journalists are, of course, the greatest influence and one can see here a similar example of the merger between journalism and PR promoted by [[Editorial Intelligence]]. Perhaps coincidentally F-H is one of the main backers of ei with chief Exec [[Ron Finlay]] and adviser to the project.<br />
<br />
The company's list of clients are some of the UK's and US's biggest controversial corporations. FH handles [[Shell]]'s 'Global reputation management programme'; the [[Bank of America]]'s 'Media relations strategic counsel and public affairs internal communications'; [[Barclay’s Bank|Barclay's]] 'Personal finance media relations programme and business banking media relations programme'; [[BT|BT’s]] public relations programme with BT Retail; [[Serco]]; and [[IBM]].<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060111190701/http://www.fishburn-hedges.co.uk/Content/clients/private.cfm Private clients] retrieved from the Internet archive of 11 January 2006 on 31 July 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
And what do they get for their money? According to FH’s own website: ‘all PRs should take note that purple type on their CV, a thorough knowledge of East Enders and frequent pretence of sincerity goes a long way’.<ref>Fishburn Hedges [http://web.archive.org/web/20060111190701/http://www.fishburnhedges.co.uk/content/home/news.cfm We owe you a long lunch...] Financial Adviser 128 words, 26 August 2004, English (c) 2004 Financial Adviser, retrieved from the Internet archive of 11 January 2006 on 31 July 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
===PR Campaigns===<br />
[[Transport for London]] paid FH a massive £100,000 a month for 'advice' on [[Ken Livingstone]]'s congestion charge. The total fee amounted to more than £2.4m over two years (2001-03). F-H (spot the ‘pretence of sincerity’?), says it is offering value for money.<ref> Julia Day [http://www.guardian.co.uk/congestion/story/0,12768,871332,00.html PR firm defends massive payment for London traffic advice] Tuesday April 10, 2001 MediaGuardian.co.uk</ref><br />
<br />
The FH website points to the following services it provides to clients: <br />
<br />
*government relations and regulatory affairs to campaigning<br />
*reactive crisis and issue management to planned corporate positioning<br />
*corporate ethics to corporate community involvement<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060111190701/http://www.fishburnhedges.co.uk/Content/what_we_do/BinDat/Public_Affairs_Brochure.pdf Public Affairs Brochure] retrieved from the Internet archive of 11 January 2006 on 31 July 2007. </ref><br />
<br />
Let’s translate that a bit:<br />
<br />
*use the subterranean skills of the lobbyist to schmooze politicians.<br />
*try to convince us we want what their clients want and reframe the clients, perhaps by changing its name to something more innocent sounding. <br />
*start a 'grass roots' organisation or perhaps a seemings independent foundation or institute which has the ostensible function of 'education' or environmental advocacy.<br />
<br />
This is what FH themselves say they have done for their clients:<br />
<br />
#We have helped clients to win competition cases. For [[William Hill]], we helped to persuade the competition authorities and the Trade & Industry Secretary to block the proposed merger of [[Ladbrokes]] with [[Coral]]. We worked with [[J Sainsbury]] during the “Rip off Britain” furore to ensure that it came out of the Competition Commission inquiry into the major supermarkets with a clean bill of health.<br />
#We have helped to reposition [[Powergen]] with government not only as a respected industry voice but also as leading the way on the environmental and social agenda<br />
#Our work for [[Unilever]], one of the world’s largest food companies, has included communicating its approach to sustainable development to government, opinion formers, NGOs and the media. By working towards best practice, Unilever has added strength to its voice on all the major UK/EU policy issues facing food, farming and fisheries. The programme has included: working with [[Forum for the Future]], the NGO led by [[Jonathon Porritt]], which has advised on the development of Unilever’s Sustainable Agriculture Project.<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060111190701/http://www.fishburnhedges.co.uk/Content/what_we_do/BinDat/Public_Affairs_Brochure.pdf Public Affairs Brochure] retrieved from the Internet archive of 11 January 2006 on 31 July 2007. </ref><br />
<br />
Both the first and second of these are classic lobbying campaigns, and the second also suggests ‘corporate positioning’. If we take the third in the list at face value and assume that [[Forum for the Future]] operates as described, this still leaves the conflict of interest represented by F-H retaining some of the worst corporate polluters as clients (such as [[Shell]] and [[Powergen]]). <br />
<br />
However, [[Forum for the Future]] is actually a paradigmatic example of a front group and not actually an independent non-government organisation. In the circular world of PR the Forum is itself a client of FH, which in turn runs the forum's website for it. [[Tetra Pak]] the carton manufacturing company owned by the Rausing family also works with (or is a client of?) the Forum. The company is also a client of F-H<ref>[http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/TetraPakWastedopportunities_pdf_media_public.aspx Wasted Opportunities]</ref> The Forum's ”business partners" are largely drawn from the UK’s FTSE 250 and include major multi-nationals such as [[Unilever]], [[BP]], [[GlaxoSmithKline]], [[ICI]] and [[Vodafone]] – all of whom are not known for their environmental sustainability.<br />
<br />
===Front Groups===<br />
FH also operates a Front Group called the [[Pre-school Learning Alliance]]:<br />
<br />
:"As part of our work with the Pre-school Learning Alliance, we combined a major conference on early years education and childcare, addressed by the Education Secretary, with the presentation by pre-school children of a cake to the PM at Number Ten as it was his birthday."<ref>Check ref</ref><br />
<br />
The VP of the Alliance is [[Graham McMillan]] — Director of [[Fishburn Hedges]]. The whole project is largely an effort to offset the government's plans to offer free access to that which the Learning Alliance's 'partners' want to sell.<ref>[http://education.guardian.co.uk/curriculumonline/story/0,,884679,00.html BBC education chief falls on his sword] Owen Gibson Wednesday January 29, 2003<br />
MediaGuardian.co.uk</ref><br />
<br />
===Monitoring activists===<br />
Fishburn Hedges also takes a keen policing interest in activist campaigns if they prompt TV and radio coverage. When a customer ([[Steve Pardoe]]) exposed on his website that [[BT Cellnet]] ‘had been making unauthorised debits from thousands of people's bank and credit card accounts, then cynically fobbing off their victims,’<ref>Steve Pardoe [http://www.pardoes.com/cellnet/precis.htm Steve Pardoe's Cellnet Précis Page], accessed 10 December 2007.</ref> the campaign grew to attract mainstream media attention and so Fishburn helped out with some of that ‘reactive crisis and issue management’<ref>[http://web.archive.org/web/20060111190701/http://www.fishburnhedges.co.uk/Content/what_we_do/BinDat/Public_Affairs_Brochure.pdf Public Affairs Brochure] retrieved from the Internet archive of 11 January 2006 on 31 July 2007. </ref>, including:<br />
<br />
:BT Cellnet and their PR firm, Fishburn Hedges, visited this site on 16. February, the day before transmission, and later in the week. Fishburn Hedges' visit was presumably to gauge the extent and detail of media exposure of Cellnet's fraud. <ref>Steve Pardoe [http://www.pardoes.com/cellnet/media.htm Steve Pardoe's Cellnet Media Page], accessed, 10 December 2007.</ref><br />
<br />
The 'Corporate use of codes of ethics: 2004 survey' was put together by Fishburn Hedges and it reportedly shows ‘that responsibility for how corporate codes of ethics operate is increasingly being taken by directors and boards in Britain's biggest companies.’<ref>ACCA Global, [http://www.accaglobal.com/publications/as_index/ Publications]</ref> Given the F-H approach, it is difficult to know if this is true or the result of a ‘pretence of sincerity’<br />
<br />
==Staff==<br />
<br />
Staff listed on the company website are: <ref>"People", Fishburn Hedges, http://www.fishburn-hedges.com/aboutus/people/</ref><br />
<br />
*[[Andrew Marshall]]<br />
*[[Andrew Reid]]<br />
*[[Andy Berry]]<br />
*[[Chris Reed]]<br />
*[[Clare Looker]]<br />
*[[Daniel Mines]]<br />
*[[Elizabeth Bickham]]<br />
*[[Fiona Thorne]]<br />
*[[Lucy Burns]]<br />
*[[Marc Moninski]]<br />
*[[Morgan Bone]]<br />
*[[Neil Hedges]]<br />
*[[Nick Wright]]<br />
*[[Philippa Dale-Thomas]]<br />
*[[Rachel Jones]]<br />
*[[Ron Finlay]]<br />
*[[Sarah Croom-Johnson]]<br />
*[[Simon Burton]]<br />
*[[Simon Matthews]]<br />
*[[Suzanne Morris]]<br />
<br />
==Clients==<br />
===2007===<br />
Fishburn Hedges' clients in 2007 included: <ref> "Client List, Fishburn Hedges, http://www.fishburn-hedges.co.uk/ourclients/corporate_and_professional_services/; "Client List", Fishburn Hedges, http://www.fishburn-hedges.co.uk/ourclients/public_sector__social_affairs_and_not-for-profit_organisations/<br />
</ref><br />
<br />
*[[Amway]]<br />
*[[ASDA]]<br />
*[[Association of British Pharmaceutical Industries]]<br />
*[[Bank of America]]<br />
*[[Barclays]]<br />
*[[British Library]]<br />
*[[British Marine Federation]]<br />
*[[Barrow Cadbury Trust]]<br />
*[[Carbon Trust]]<br />
*[[National Express]]<br />
*[[National Treatment Agency]]<br />
*[[Powergen]]<br />
*[[Pre-school Learning Alliance]]<br />
*[[Royal College of Nursing]]<br />
*[[Scottish Widows]]<br />
*[[Shell International]]<br />
*[[South Bank Centre]]<br />
*[[Transport for London]]<br />
*[[TetraPak]]<br />
*[[Unilever]]<br />
<br />
===2008===<br />
[[ABPI]] | [[Atos Origin]] | [[Aviva ]] | [[Capital One]] | [[CITB Construction Skills]] | [[Digital UK]] | [[ERSA]] | [[EEDA]] | [[Job Centre Plus]] | [[JPMorgan ]] | [[Laing O’Rourke]] | [[Norwich Union]] | [[Pension Protection Fund]] | [[Sainsbury’s]] | [[Starbucks]] | [[Tetra Pak]] | [[Virgin Trains]] | [[West Midlands Passenger Transport Authority]] / [[West Midlands Metropolitan Authorities]]<ref>Fishburn Hedges, Fee-Paying clients for whom UK PA consultancy services provided this quarter, ‘’APPC Register’’ March – May 2008</ref><br />
<br />
In 2008, Fishburn Hedges is reported to be a member of [[GFC/Net]]<ref> GFC/Net [http://www.gfcnet.com/members.php Members] Accessed 13th February 2008</ref><br />
<br />
==External Resources==<br />
*[[Fishburn Hedges UK Clients and Staff 30.11.03 to 3.05.04]]<br />
*[[Fishburn Hedges UK Staff and clients, 1 June 2005 to 30 Nov 2005]]<br />
<br />
==Notes==<br />
<references/><br />
[[Category:Lobbying firms]]<br />
[[Category:Public relations firms]]<br />
[[Category:PR Industry]]</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Frank_Gardner&diff=64569Talk:Frank Gardner2008-08-30T17:38:09Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>can see RICU work in<br />
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:1FAgOt_xl-wJ:www.buckscc.gov.uk/moderngov/mgConvert2PDF.asp%3FID%3D3730%26J%3D1+Challenging+Violent+Extremist+Ideology+Through+Communications&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=uk<br />
<br />
This predates Gardner fuss, but shows basic concepts of Unit being disseminated<br />
<br />
http://www.layalina.tv/press/PR_IV.4.asp<br />
<br />
http://cryptome.org/mi6-bombings.htm<br />
<br />
http://www.bifm.org.uk/bifm/filegrab/ConferenceBrochure_Security_23August06.pdf?type=documents&ref=1785.<br />
<br />
I don't like the Unltd connection with the festival and this <br />
<br />
Isabel Carlisle has been working on the project since early 2003. She started her career as an archaeologist, working abroad in Jerusalem, Rome, Pompeii and Sparta. '''In Jerusalem she worked at the British School of Archaeology as part of a team surveying the Mamluk buildings around the Dome of the Rock.''' Freelance editiorial work at the Burlington and Apollo magazines, interspersed with periods of living abroad in '''Italy''' and Germany, eventually led to the position of Deputy Editor of The Art Newspaper shortly after it was founded in 1990. In 1995 she became '''deputy art critic of The Times''' and in 1998 moved to the Royal Academy as an exhibitions curator, subsequently becoming deputy head of exhibitions. Apart from numerous reviews and articles published in newspapers and magazines she has published essays in exhibition catalogues for the Royal Academy and elsewhere. <br />
<br />
is a bit odd - British School of Archaeology were caught up in something a while back - i also get a whiff of Michael ledeen's wife here: needs further invest.<br />
<br />
http://www.thecitycircle.com/events_full_text3.php?id=356</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Frank_Gardner&diff=64568Talk:Frank Gardner2008-08-30T17:37:13Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>can see RICU work in<br />
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:1FAgOt_xl-wJ:www.buckscc.gov.uk/moderngov/mgConvert2PDF.asp%3FID%3D3730%26J%3D1+Challenging+Violent+Extremist+Ideology+Through+Communications&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=uk<br />
<br />
This predates Gardner fuss, but shows basic concepts of Unit being disseminated<br />
<br />
http://www.layalina.tv/press/PR_IV.4.asp<br />
<br />
http://cryptome.org/mi6-bombings.htm<br />
<br />
http://www.bifm.org.uk/bifm/filegrab/ConferenceBrochure_Security_23August06.pdf?type=documents&ref=1785.<br />
<br />
I don't like the Unltd connection with the festival and this <br />
<br />
Isabel Carlisle has been working on the project since early 2003. She started her career as an archaeologist, working abroad in Jerusalem, Rome, Pompeii and Sparta. '''In Jerusalem she worked at the British School of Archaeology as part of a team surveying the Mamluk buildings around the Dome of the Rock.''' Freelance editiorial work at the Burlington and Apollo magazines, interspersed with periods of living abroad in '''Italy''' and Germany, eventually led to the position of Deputy Editor of The Art Newspaper shortly after it was founded in 1990. In 1995 she became '''deputy art critic of The Times''' and in 1998 moved to the Royal Academy as an exhibitions curator, subsequently becoming deputy head of exhibitions. Apart from numerous reviews and articles published in newspapers and magazines she has published essays in exhibition catalogues for the Royal Academy and elsewhere. <br />
<br />
is a bit odd - British School of Archaeology were caught up in something a while back - i also get a whiff of Michael ledeen's wife here: needs further invest.</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Frank_Gardner&diff=64566Talk:Frank Gardner2008-08-30T17:21:44Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>can see RICU work in<br />
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:1FAgOt_xl-wJ:www.buckscc.gov.uk/moderngov/mgConvert2PDF.asp%3FID%3D3730%26J%3D1+Challenging+Violent+Extremist+Ideology+Through+Communications&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=uk<br />
<br />
This predates Gardner fuss, but shows basic concepts of Unit being disseminated<br />
<br />
http://www.layalina.tv/press/PR_IV.4.asp<br />
<br />
http://cryptome.org/mi6-bombings.htm<br />
<br />
http://www.bifm.org.uk/bifm/filegrab/ConferenceBrochure_Security_23August06.pdf?type=documents&ref=1785.</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Frank_Gardner&diff=64558Talk:Frank Gardner2008-08-29T15:53:22Z<p>Billy: </p>
<hr />
<div>can see RICU work in<br />
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:1FAgOt_xl-wJ:www.buckscc.gov.uk/moderngov/mgConvert2PDF.asp%3FID%3D3730%26J%3D1+Challenging+Violent+Extremist+Ideology+Through+Communications&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=10&gl=uk<br />
<br />
This predates Gardner fuss, but shows basic concepts of Unit being disseminated<br />
<br />
http://www.layalina.tv/press/PR_IV.4.asp<br />
<br />
http://cryptome.org/mi6-bombings.htm</div>Billyhttps://powerbase.info/index.php?title=Talk:Middle_East_Association&diff=64556Talk:Middle East Association2008-08-29T15:44:18Z<p>Billy: </p>
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<div>http://shellbrand.blogspot.com/2004/03/fall-of-sir-philip-watts.html<br />
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Paddy Briggs, an ex-Shell employee alleges that:<br />
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Nobody would ever accuse Phil Watts of being smooth and patrician. Where Moody-Stuart and Martin van den Bergh were products of elite schools and universities Watts was from a far more humble background. He was a hard-nosed technocrat with few social graces and with a style at odds with those (be they Dutch or British) who preceded him as Shell Chairman. In the (as it turned out) misplaced belief that Shell needed a period of a more brutal management style (Watts’s hallmark) he got the job. His failure is attributable to three main factors. Firstly the Dutch (who own 60% of the Group) were less than delighted when an Englishman followed an Englishman and their support for Watts was going to have to be earned by him - he never in Shell succeeded in this task. Second much of the role of Chairman is external and Watts never cut the right figure in the wider business world – in particular he was universally derided by the financial analysts. Third (and crucially) Watts had few Shell friends who would loyally fight his internal battles for him. There were the usual acolytes who made themselves useful to him in their own interests - but few of these proved loyal when the chips were down. Watts had trampled over too many others in his rise to the top to expect that the battalions of middle managers in the Group would fight to the death in his support. He became an increasingly isolated and lonely figure and in the end this affected his judgement – as the debacle over the revaluation of Shell’s reserves, which in the end brought about his downfall, showed.<br />
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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/17/business/worldbusiness/17shell.html?_r=1&oref=slogin<br />
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:Sir Philip Watts, in his first public statement since he was ousted as chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group in March, said on Thursday that British financial regulators had violated his rights in their investigation of the company's restatement of its oil and natural gas reserves.</div>Billy