Dean Godson

Dean Godson is the Research Director for the Policy Exchange, a United Kingdom think-tank.

He is a graduate of Caius College, Cambridge. Between 1983 to 1984, he served as Secretary in the US Navy and in 1987-1989 as Special Assistant to John Lehman. Dean Godson also served as a Research Fellow in the Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies in 1990-1992. His political career includes Joint Deputy Chairman of Kensington and Chelsea Conservative Association. He is the author of Himself Alone: David Trimble and the Ordeal of Ulster Unionism. Currently, Mr. Godson serves as the Chief Editorial writer of the Daily Telegraph, the Associate Editor of the Spectator and Special Assistant to Conrad Black. After his departure from Hollinger, he has been the Research Director of the Policy Exchange, a neo-conservative think tank.

Neo-Conservatism

Dean Godson has a long history with neoconservatism, starting out as assistant to John Lehman, a signatory to the Project for a New American Century and Conrad Black. Bringing the ideas of neo-conservatism to the UK, Godson has compared Britain's 'late-imperial defeatism' with America's 'self-confident liberal interventionism.'

In his own words:

" 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. At the moment, the extremists largely have the field to themselves." ^[1]

To that effect, he has (at the Policy Exchange) patronised the publication of When Progressives Treat with Reactionaries and Living Apart Together: British Muslims and the paradox of multiculturalism.

Connections

Dean's brother, Dr Roy Godson, director of the International Labor Program at Georgetown University in Washington DC., organized "educational visits" for British trade unionists to visit the U.S. during the Reagan administration "to broaden international education about Western democratic values."^[2]

Affiliations

• Joseph Godson, father
• Roy Godson, brother
• Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Godson has written for it.

Further reading

• Wikipedia Dean Godson
• Tom Griffin, PC Spooks? II: The Godsons, the IRD and Fr Denis Faul, 27 June 2006

Notes

1. ^ The Times, 5 April 2006
2. ^ Thomas Kenny, A Review of Himself Alone: David Trimble by Dean Godson. Harper Collins, ISBN 0-00-257098-X, Irish Democrat, 10 March 2005.