111 Winter 2010. the europhile Foreign Office’s networks. To his credit (and to the detriment of his career) he never pretended to be anything other than the Euro-enthusiast that he was. In one entry in 1998, he and Blair are discussing the possibility of a revolt against Murdoch by sections of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and he quotes Blair as saying: ’It only makes my job more difficult when I want to discuss policy issues with Murdoch and his executives.’ Blair discussing policies with Murdoch and complaining (Campbell p. 420) that ‘It would be so much easier if I didn’t have the party around my ankles the whole time’, either sums up the dilemma for a modern Labour leader – lumbered with party members uninterested in the results of the latest focus group in the Home Counties and obliged to kiss the shite media’s arse 8 – or expresses everything that was wrong with the NuLab ‘project’. Bilderberg Radice’s account of attending a Bilderberg meeting in 1995 is the third by a British politician I can think of. The brief comments of Denis Healey (in his autobiography) and Paddy Ashdown (in his diaries) are on-line. Radice writes: ‘I am sent by the Blair office as none of the front-line Labour spokesmen can go.’ So much for Bilderberg being the executive committee of world capitalism! Blair, Brown etc. had more pressing engagements. Bilderberg is ‘much more right-wing than Koenigswinter’, says Radice. (p. 337) Another batch of Bilderberg meeting minutes has 8 This would be would be Radice’s view. He was co-author of the influential 1992 pamphlet Southern Discomfort which, using focus groups to analyse the political attitudes of voters in marginal seats who had considered supporting Labour in 1992 but in the event stayed Conservative, provided support for those who believed that to get elected Labour had to become a version of the Conservative Party. 112 Winter 2010. appeared, on Wikileaks;9 and Public Intelligence has many lists of participants at the meetings.10 I haven’t read this latest batch of minutes and probably never will. How interesting or useful are the minutes of a meeting in which none of the speakers are identified? ‘A German said.....an American said....’ The Wikileaks preamble to the minutes states that the organisation does not have a Website. It does now: . Bilderberg as an organisation was never quite as secret as the list of those attending its meetings used to be. When I wrote to its office in 1999 to ask if it was true that Labour leader the late John Smith had been on their steering committee, I received a brief but prompt reply from the secretary confirming it and giving dates. Electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EHS) EHS is barely recognised by the medical profession. One recent study concluded: ‘The symptoms described by “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” sufferers can be severe and are sometimes disabling. However, it has proved difficult to show under blind conditions that exposure to EMF can trigger these symptoms. This suggests that “electromagnetic hypersensitivity” is unrelated to the presence of EMF, although more research into this phenomenon is required.’ 11 And – of course – the mobile phone industry wants to deny its existence. So where is the evidence? Some French scientists 9 10 11 1 1 3 Winter 2010. have just provided some. They took an EHS sufferer and scanned – encephaloscanned – his brain. Then he went to live for several months in a spot in France almost free of electromagnetic radiation. Then they scanned his brain again and found that areas of his brain which had been relatively inactive have come back to life. You can see the pictures.1 2 La Lutte continue Lady Falkender, Marcia Falkender as was, Harold Wilson’s political secretary, has a website, . I don’t know if it is still open – I am now denied access – but when I had access to it and initially skimmed across its sections, she was using it to attack/critique the treatment of her and Harold Wilson, in the books of Joe Haines (Glimmers of Twilight) and Bernard Donoughue (Downing Street Diary). The fascist plot to take the White House in 1933 I am still regularly gob-smacked by what is available on the Net. Take the infamous but murky 1933 plot by some Wall Street bankers to overthrow Roosevelt and his New Deal. The hearings of the congressional committee which halfheartedly investigated it are on-line1 3; as is the text of the only book written about it, Jules Archer’s The Plot to Seize the White House, which relies heavily on the committee’s report.1 4 Why did the committee do it so badly? One version quoted here has it that President Roosevelt used the plot’s existence to neutralise the banksters in return for not prosecuting them. Practical politics first. On a quick skim neither account seems to 12 A collection of articles about this and related subjects is at Click on ‘Studies and statements showing mobile phone health risk’. 13 14 1 1 4 Winter 2010. answer the central question: why did the plotters want Smedley Butler, a high profile, Quaker general, to front their scheme? From NuLab to NuTory In the previous issue Anthony Frewin reviewed John Stafford’s book about democracy (or its absence) in the Tory Party. Stafford has an essay on the current state of the TP,1 5 most of which could have been written about the Labour Party: takeover of the party by rich individuals and corporate money; no need for members who are just an encumbrance. It’s the American model, of course; it’s what Tony Blair yearned for. Very striking. Tugwell and InfPol Way back when.....there was a Canadian JFK researcher called Scott Van Wynsberghe who wrote a couple of pieces for Lobster. In number 27 I noted that Van Wynesberghe had graduated from writing for Lobster (e.g. issue 24) to one of Canada’s leading daily papers, the Globe and Mail; and that his ticket into the big media had been a recanting of his previous writing, and acknowledgement that Lee Harvey Oswald had done the dirty deed in Dallas. I had declined to publish Van Wynesberghe’s change of tack in issue 26 and suggested to him that he should try the straight media in Canada; they would love it. And they did. I heard no more of the man until November this year when Dr Noel Currid alerted me to a piece in the Globe and Mail 15 ‘Allowing and encouraging meaningful participation is the key to reviving the Tory grassroots’ at 1 1 5 Winter 2010. by Van Wynesberghe, ‘I Remember Maurice Tugwell’. Tugwell has appeared before in these columns as he had been in Northern Ireland at the same time as Colin Wallace, and in the same line of work. Tugwell, who lived in Canada, died in October this year; and in his piece Van Wynesberghe recounts an interview he did with Tugwell in 1994.1 6 This is the key section about the British psy-ops unit in Northern Ireland, Information Policy. ‘He [Tugwell] sighed when I introduced myself and brought up Information Policy – I was obviously not the first to bug him about it. But he then spared me 15 minutes and patiently explained the actual nature of the unit.’ ‘No, he said, it was not a psychological-warfare gang that deliberately spread lies. Rather, its purpose was to co-ordinate between frontline troops and publicrelations officers, who had not been interacting well in such a charged, political environment.’ ‘Also, the unit studied the media campaigns of the Irish Republican Army and suggested rebuttals. Taken aback, I mentioned the whistleblower Colin Wallace, who had been one of those PR officers working with Tugwell.’ ‘Wallace had admitted to peddling disinformation, but Tugwell quickly pointed out a major discrepancy between the highly professional man he and others once knew and the teller of lurid tales Wallace became years later.’ ‘Whatever Wallace had been up to, Tugwell was adamant that he himself had not knowingly spread false accounts.’ So there was Tugwell still running the InfPol cover story, years after the British government had acknowledged that Wallace’s 16 < http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20101122. IREMTUGWELLATL//TPStory/Obituaries> 1 1 6 Winter 2010. version of events was true. News from Airstrip One Solomon Hughes had an important piece in The Morning Star on the US-British military relationship.1 7 Using the Freedom of Information Act, Hughes got some British documents about the American use of British bases from which to bomb Libya in 1986. ‘A “top secret” draft press release written by a senior official in the Defence Department on April 11 1986 makes clear that the raid was not a “joint decision” in terms of the 1952 communiqué [which governs US-UK actions]. It says: “The prime minister agreed that the US should if necessary use their forces in the United Kingdom, but there was no ‘joint decision’ on the action in Libya, which is a national action by the United States.” In the accompanying letter the official makes clear the Ministry of Defence worried that allowing the US to fly its planes without a joint decision weakened British control of our territory. He writes: “The argumentation about the decision on the use of US bases in this country raises two issues which will require very careful consideration.” These are “the need to avoid anything which could set a precedent affecting our ability in the future to control US use of assets in this country” and “our possible concern on this occasion to avoid stating publicly that the US actions had been a matter of ‘joint decision’ in the terms of the 1952 Churchill-Truman agreement.” ’ 17 18 November 2010 1 1 7 Winter 2010. The whole thing is worth reading. Hughes concludes: ‘The documents show that the US didn’t really discuss the bombing, that the British government worried about losing control, that it rushed to support the US bombing anyway and that ministers were shocked at how unpopular the bombing was.’ My only quibble would be with Hughes’ comment: ‘In fairness to Reagan, it is likely Libyan secret services were involved in the nightclub bombing.’ Is it? In his book The Other Side of Deception, the former Mossad officer, Victor Ostrovsky, claimed that Libya had been framed by Mossad for the nightclub bombing in Berlin which led to the American raid, with Mossad planting a radio beacon – a Trojan – in Libya and using to it broadcast signals implicating Libya in the bombing. ‘ “Using the Trojan, the Mossad tried to make it appear that a long series of terrorist orders were being transmitted to various Libyan embassies around the world,” Ostrovsky continues. As the Mossad had hoped, the transmissions were deciphered by the Americans and construed as ample proof that the Libyans were active sponsors of terrorism. What’s more, the Americans pointed out, Mossad reports confirmed it. “The French and the Spanish, though, were not buying into the new stream of information. To them it seemed suspicious that suddenly, out of the blue, the Libyans, who had been extremely careful in the past, would start advertising their future actions…..The French and the Spanish were right. The information was bogus.”’18 To my knowledge Ostrovsky is the only source on this. Briefly 18 1 1 8 Winter 2010. * The filmmaker, Adam Curtis (‘The Power of Nightmares’, ‘Pandora’s Box’ etc), perhaps the most important documentary maker in the English-speaking world today, has a blog – more accurately, a website – on which he puts bits and pieces of film and research. Well worth a look.19 * Richard Cummings, who wrote in Lobster about The Paris Review and the CIA, now has a blog.20 His essay there on the actions of the Republicans in America, ‘The Prosperity of Treason’, concludes thus: ‘All of these actions by the Republicans were treasonous, .... And because the Republicans keep winning, “none dare call it treason.” ’ * Ola Tunander’s ‘Approaching the dual state of the west’, an interesting essay on the subject of the ‘deep state’, the parapolitical state, beneath the formal structures of democratic regimes, is on-line.2 1 Tunander considers a wide range of covert operations – the strategy of tension, Aginter Press etc. This essay was eventually incorporated into a chapter of the book Government of the Shadows: Parapolitics and Criminal Sovereignty, which I hope to review in the next issue. * Did the CIA shelter Nazis after WW2? Yes they did; and now it’s official. A 600 page report of a recent Justice Department investigation of the subject is now on-line.22 Of particular interest may be the chapter which critiques John Loftus’s book The Belarus Secret, which for many years was the only source on some of this. 19 21 22 1 1 9 Winter 2010. Sir John Sawer’s speech and some aspects of SIS PR Corinne Souza An article in Lobster ten years ago claimed that SIS would not see its centenary (1909-2009). Lobster was right. SIS Chief Sir John Sawer’s speech on 28 October 2010 – a public first – was a closing statement, even if the new chief cleverly made it look like an opening one.1 In much the same way as the influence of ‘big oil’ is in decline because, with the exception of Washington, everybody else recognised the environment debate, so too has ‘big’ espionage collapsed. The last of the Cold War spook agencies with leading brand status to topple in ignominy like the rest of them was SIS: in its case because of the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, and allegations of complicity in torture, rendition and other issues. The condemnation of spook behaviour, led by activists, some journalists and politicians, and some supporting ‘silent lobbying’ by honourable men and women at all levels of Britain’s judiciary and public service, including the spooks, delivered a rebuke so deafening that it has led to a once-in-ageneration catastrophic collapse of SIS’s reputation. Nothing gives a new chief more power or as much room for manoeuvre as this sort of circumstance. Sir John made clear his belief that he has the people and the relationships for SIS to recover. (‘We work with over 200 partner services around the world 1 Sir John defined his products. No intelligence chief does this because they change according to local markets and conditions. Lobster 60 120 Winter 2010. with hugely constructive results.’) PR distraction In the meantime, non-spook colleagues can use hideous allegations of complicity in torture, as a PR distraction. The real crisis was never SIS’s reputation, as poor as this had become, the tragedy of the innocents, or indeed the guilty now confirmed in their hatreds, but the unasked question: ‘Do the spooks represent the British people and their values, or the state and some particularly nasty individuals within it?’ The fact that the majority of the public did not know the question existed when confined to the spooks, let alone that until Sir John’s speech no answer had been given, is an example of this country’s state censorship and finest top spin. This is one of the reasons why we have historically succeeded in avoiding revolution – making a virtue of ‘evolution’ is perception management – but it is also a real time example of an ad hoc ‘fall guy’ PR state construct.2 The fall guy in this case was SIS, which was in trouble anyway. It could just as easily have been some other organ of state. Its purpose was to distract attention from the real question to which the people do know the answer: does the British state represent the people and their values, or does it represent a whole bunch of crooked businessmen, politicians and the like and theirs? The ‘noise’ honourably generated by activists about torture and the spooks has been used to divert attention away from that for which the spooks were not responsible – corruption of the state machine – even if at one time some spooks or their assets were obscenely well-rewarded 2 Not all fall guys are underdogs. This is the value of the construct: it can be used against soft or strong targets. The Americans used the same trick against BP following the Gulf of Mexico spill. 121 Winter 2010. facilitators – e.g. the BAE debacle.3 SIS Presentation As a chastened, and in due course, aggregated national spook alliance sorts itself out,4 Sir John admirably pulled his organisation away from the past, staking Britain’s future not in America’s long war but in alternative thought leadership: he is the only global intelligence chief to be able to broadcast live on all media his abhorrence of torture.5 This ongoing fight is as significant a battle as the one against slavery, today’s vested interests no different to the slave owners and slave traders of yesteryear. As a result of the speech, SIS is now able to offer a gold standard choice distinguishing it from others. As a competitor pitch it was a clear, targeted invitation to the honourable and the best to join Britain in common cause. In this respect, it was one of the most memorable, moral and official British ‘Fuck-You-Neanderthals’ in years. Including to those in this country. Control Principle This is why it was a disappointment to watch Sir John sink into litigation lobbying in the hope that the judicial process will 3 The same thing happened to commercial lobbyists when the state was the cause of the problem having created the political information market in the first place, controlling the cartel. Similar parallels vis-avis the state can be made with the private security industry and military consultancies. Allow one issue to unravel, they collapse into and collide with each other. 4 Sir John said: ‘The next five years will see us intensifying our collaboration.....’ Convergence of services always results in greater consolidation – aggregation. A spook name change cannot be far off. 5 Sir John gave his speech while a former Mongolian torture chief is being held on an international arrest warrant in Wandsworth prison. Mongolia is seen as a strategic ally ‘not least because of its geographical position sandwiched between Russia and China’, The Independent, 5 November 2010. 122 Winter 2010. continue to look favourably upon what is known as the ‘Control Principle’: that intelligence material provided by one country to another should remain confidential to the country providing it, and it should never be disclosed, directly or indirectly, by the receiving country without the provider’s permission. Sir John did not even acknowledge the legitimacy of the other side’s arguments as they defend that which is central to British law. If nothing else, this was poor PR. In PR, omission is a mechanism to force polarisation. It is an instrument of authoritarian command – not something Sir John should have exposed, given he was talking to civilians. He was so intent on being loyal to his friends that by using the phrase ‘Control Principle’ twice, he bumped up the number of times he mentioned the word ‘control’, in a short speech, to seven. This is plain silly in a statement to postleadership civilian Britain even though abbreviating it to ‘the Principle’ would have been a spin too far. Because the spooks have allowed appalling miscarriages of justice to go uncorrected, a pragmatic arrangement will eventually end. This is bad news: some very decent people work for lousy regimes. This way, they feed their families and serve their co-patriots as best they can. If, for their own honourable reasons, they are also working with the Brits, the Control Principle (CP) is of incalculable comfort and protection because they are situated within some pretty nasty efficient administrations. CP removal exposes them and their families to the possibility of appalling retribution. CP also prevents an SIS competitor-ally from poaching or undermining them, whether deliberately or inadvertently. Evolving terrorism language Top down language is always a give-away and can be a pleasing indication of progress. So, for example, in Professor 123 Winter 2010. Jeffery’s reference work, MI6, the history of the Secret Intelligence Service 1909 – 1949, there is an example of the huge lobbying pressure that the educator – a crucial spook role – would have been under when writing it. On page 689 he consigns militant Zionists intent on violence fifty years ago to civilian ‘groups’ and military ‘units’ involved in ‘sabotage operations’ – which is how the Allies explained their similar work in the Second World War – even though British authorities of the day described militant Zionists intent on violence as terrorists, in the same way as militant Islamists intent on violence today are also described as terrorists.6 Now turn to Sir John’s speech and see how, also as a result of lobbying, including women’s groups whose opinions are given parity by an intelligence chief for the first time – he has moved the terrorist debate on.7 Instead of the simplistic demonisation of recent years, and while remaining neutral, he recognised some of the reasons behind it.: ‘There is no one reason for the terrorist phenomenon. Some blame political issues like Palestine or Kashmir or Iraq. Others cite economic disadvantage. Distortions of the Islamic faith. Male supremacy .....’ Given precedents – e.g. Irgun and more recently terrorist groups in Ireland – it can be only a matter of time before negotiations are opened with Al-Qaeda. By key-wording, Sir John provided spook PR teams a vehicle by which they could create a base reputation pulse score, allowing for subsequent 6 Terrorism/bombing of the King David Hotel, 1946: in July 2006, the British Ambassador in Tel Aviv, and the Consul-General in Jerusalem, condemned Israel’s commemoration: ‘We do not think that it is right for an act of terrorism, which led to the loss of many lives, to be commemorated.’ Sunday TimeS 20 July 2006. 7 Language evolution: See how the term ‘rogue state’ has been dropped since some say it can be used against the UK, in favour of ‘failing’ state. 124 Winter 2010. measurement of issues in order to monitor or influence them.8 Non-verbal PR Sir John also got his non-verbal PR right on 28 October, enabling him to get his various messages across to the global publics he hoped would be viewing him. Everything would have been considered including the time of day that he spoke. Out went dated British tailoring. In came British style, of great consequence overseas where a fashion frump cuts no ice. The light blue colour of his civilian clothing was appropriate for the hot climates where some of his key audiences were based. Delivering his statement from Reuters’ London office, he stood at a lectern like a cutting-edge trainer in stylish ‘Strictly Come Spooking’ mode. Behind him, instead of a Union flag – too militaristic – was the logo of the Society of Editors. His photo released to the press was a non-dominant half-body shot taken from a soft angle.9 In a cosy real time newsblog immediately after the speech, the Guardian correspondent summarised the main points, parcelling out each of Sir John’s key issues to separate media or newspapers including a tweet from Channel 4. No information about the Society of Editors was given – a PR ploy ensuring that interested parties’ googled it. If they did so, they discovered that prestigious speakers lined up for 8 It may make the reader wince but a retailer’s reputation-monitoring and taking action on consumer issues and biggest complaints is no different to what the spooks are doing re: say, torture. For example, a reputational pulse score – if one is being taken by SIS – for, say, the Daily Telegraph’s full page coverage of Sir John’s speech, would be lower than hoped because of non-related headlines on the facing page beside Sir John’s photograph. 9 International relations students find photo PR useful: e.g. state photographs of captured terrorists which are no longer demonic. National leaders use it to talk to their people, offering in the process a snapshot of their society’s different levels of development: Prime Minister Putin showing off his biceps; intelligence chief Sawers photographed by his wife in his speedos. 125 Winter 2010. its annual conference included Alexander Lebedev, the Russian proprietor of important British newspapers, and Ellis Watson, CEO of Simon Cowell’s Syco Entertainment. Subtext: British spooks have access to international media and entertainment elites, a crucially influential global sector which have overtaken, say, Hollywood movie moguls. Ostensibly part of a chieftain rolling programme – Sir John’s speech followed those given by the director of GCHQ and directors general of MI5 – the statement was the finale to an impressive three pronged SIS PR campaign. In addition to Sir John’s talk, this comprised the September launches of John le Carré’s latest novel Our Kind of Traitor and Professor Jeffery’s book mentioned above. The subliminal messaging – Sir John wrote forewords to both – was SIS’s association with high status civilians whose occupations and attributes have world-wide followings or significant niche networks. The two men complemented each other – patrician Englishman, scruffy Irishman. It included the cover design colours of their books (black and gold; red and gold) which ‘talk’ to key listeners abroad. The jacket to Professor Jeffery’s in particular looked as if it had been designed to knock out others. Publication was perfectly timed for Christmas buyers, the markets maturing six months down the track sustaining separate dialogue streams around – when they fall due – the verdict of the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war, and Sir Peter Gibson’s into allegations that SIS was complicit in the torture of detainees.1 0 Every gizmo under the sun was used to launch the books – the bill picked up by the private sector, not the taxpayer – in a marketing campaign that was traditional, experiential, digital and impressively expensive. 10 ‘Resolution’ either way of torture allegations will concentrate minds on the present, letting SIS off the hook re: any other misconduct long into the past, the lives trashed, including those of patriotic British businessmen. 126 Winter 2010. The books by Professor Jeffery and John le Carré Professor Jeffery’s book was linked directly to the MI6 James Bond website offering free copies in answer to the question: ‘What is the name of the London tube station closest to the SIS/MI6 HQ’. In addition, the site played a YouTube video of Sir John’s speech, a pretty Asian girl in the frame, interspersed with action shots from the latest James Bond movie.1 1 The book itself, errors and omissions excepted, sets out as faithfully as possible old loyalties and prejudices, creating a base document which invites comparisons with British foreign policy today. This provides Sir John with the hooks he requires to flag-up modernisation – e.g. changing attitudes towards terrorism as evidenced by evolving language (see above). Simultaneous to the non-fiction, the movie of John le Carré’s fiction was announced which, if it is faithful to the novel, will showcase the ‘good’ British spook, unable to defeat the wicked – classic underdog appeal which works across all continents and cultures. Le Carré himself used his global celebrity to give a punishing round of ‘last’ interviews including one to Channel 4. In this he skilfully placed the ‘good’ British spook wholly at the public’s – not the state’s – side, which is where Sir John is repositioning his staff. In a bravura performance, the eighty-year old le Carré forcefully set off a round of complementary viral sound-bites, some recycled – ‘we spoke truth to power’ – and some new, creating sound-bite and PR collateral for the future. Speaking as a former interrogator, he was contemptuous of anything other than ‘sweet interrogation’; and expressed the belief that to do a distasteful job, a ‘pastoral connection’ was the ideal: i.e. he condemned torture and had the credibility to do 11 Question: how do you give a YouTube video legs? Answer: you remove it. Keep in mind that The Sunday Times reported ‘Sawers wants to phase out the image of the MI6 officer as a globetrotting James Bond figure who undertakes glamorous missions abroad.’ 17 October 2010. 127 Winter 2010. so.1 2 He also condemned Russian oligarch corruption and complicity at the highest levels of British politics, as well as setting out the task ahead: ‘our next job is to deal with the excesses of capitalism’; i.e. the PR message was that the spooks are the people’s friend not their enemy. Britain’s brand Sir John gave his speech when Britain’s overall reputation in some parts of the world is low.1 3 Two companies with which SIS prestige is also linked have sunk: BP has lost its status as the world’s biggest non-state oil producer. De La Rue, a onetime British world leader with a licence to print bank notes for countries across the globe, is collapsing under falsified test certificates. It’s a new world order The new world order also causes anxieties. In the latest version of the scramble for Africa, middle class Africans have to be airbrushed. If water is the new oil in some parts of the world, people in pre-consumer societies are the new oil in others. African countries are always presented as basket cases because Britain needs Africa to need Britain and therefore has to portray it as needy. An existing and growing middle class Africa has to be airbrushed out of the picture in 12 Parts of Mr le Carre’s performance were the best piece of ham acting in years. 13 Canada’s former Prime Minister Paul Martin who eradicated his country’s debt by harsh reductions in public spending, said that he believes Britain’s decision to increase foreign aid funding has been recognised ‘throughout the world’ and will pay ‘huge dividends’ for the UK, not least in attracting business and influencing public policy in Africa. The Independent, 31 October 2010. 1 2 8 Winter 2010. consequence. 1 4 In fact, in consumer PR terms, Britain is running a loyalty programme (Aid budget), paid for by the taxpayer, as part of its soft power initiative to guarantee new markets and influence. History, usually crucial to soft power cannot be used. Instead, Africa’s nu-history will lower the status of the independence movements and begin instead with, say, genocide, followed by reconstruction courtesy of the West. Unlike in Britain, where personal history (genealogy) is the new sportism,1 5 Africa will not ‘do’ history. The scramble for the continent is about more than stealing its mineral wealth. While at the moment some African countries suffer from Al Qaeda training up new recruits, over time this will subside. What will not go away is Islam: while some parts of Africa will remain Christian, the predominant faith will remain Muslim not least because the implosion of the Church of England in Africa pretty much leaves only the Vatican as Islam’s faith challenger which, incidentally is the case world-wide. This is why ‘the West’ has thrown itself into promoting the antiracism/religious tolerance messages, in much the same way, as Lobster’s Tom Easton has pointed out, that the Israeli lobby allied itself a generation ago in common 14 This nu-history is most evident when seeing how Rwanda is presented today. Fifteen years ago, Rwanda suffered one of the deadliest genocides in world history, when an estimated 800,000 people were killed in 100 days. This year it was named the world’s top reformer in the World Bank’s Doing Business report. It has the highest proportion of female politicians in the world (52%) and a growing number of female entrepreneurs. PRWeek, awards issue, 2010. 15 Perhaps ‘sport-ism’? Maybe this is clearer. The point I am making is that sport has been promoted world-wide not only because of the money it brings in which is a result not a tactic, but because it became necessary for ‘ordinary’ people to see reflections of themselves and that which they could attain if they trained hard enough and had the talent – no different to the 'It could be you' strap-line that once promoted the National Lottery. This was the foil to the ‘ordinary’ person seeing, say, a parade of top politicians who did not necessarily have the talent but were top-dogs because of a patronage or class system to which the ‘ordinary’ person has no access. Sport now provides an alternative patronage system. 129 Winter 2010. cause with antiracist movements promoting black rights, drawing attention away from racism against Palestinians/ Arabs. In very clever perception management today, ‘the West’ pretends its devotion to the religious tolerance cause, is because it is the solution for Christian/Muslim violence in the Sudan. In fact it is the solution all over Africa for ‘the West’, which is predominantly white, secular or Christian, so that in due course huge potential African consumers do not boycott it. These markets will be so vast that during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, African faces predominated in the Chinese promotional video in Beijing when China is one of the most racist countries in the world. At the far end of Europe a trio of countries – the 21st century versions of the one-time Hindu and Islamic empires of India, Persia and the Ottomans – demand recognition equal to their huge populations and status. How does the Foreign Office grab a share of the consumer markets without offending both Israel and the royal princes of Arabia? Besides which, their re-emergence was never one it envisaged – Turkey with its years of understanding of Russia, the Balkans and the Levant as well as of its southern neighbours; Persia, now in control of Iraq, and with substantial knowledge of Russia and the ‘Stans’. 1 6 As for shining India, it has long history with Russia and Central Asia; recognises that Pakistan is essential for 16 With all the avarice, it is interesting to note the number of times ‘Mesopotamia’ now creeps into discussion of Iraq. ‘The Allies’ will do all it takes to get their hands on the oil which could lead to an independent Kurdistan after all. Turkey’s water theft of the Tigris and Euphrates, which once irrigated many countries of the region, means that it is impossible to get at the oil in southern Iraq now because vast amounts of water are needed to get it out of the ground. Oil companies plans to build conduit to transport sea water from the Persian Gulf deep into the Iraqi desert in ‘probably the largest industrial project of its kind ever undertaken’. See ‘Iraq's “third river”, the largest industrial project of its kind’ in The Times, 8 November 2010. 130 Winter 2010. Afghanistan and will not countenance a 21st century version of the Baghdad Pact; has exceptional global Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Muslim, Parsee and Sikh diasporas, including in South America; is equal to the might of ‘harmonious’ (!) China; and is happy to engage on its own terms with America – tumbling balance-of-power tacticians in Britain and Bismarck’s Old Europe into meltdown in the process. Meaning, as Sir John knows all too well, it is boom time for spooks again and SIS in particular. Sir John Sawyer’s speech This is why Sir John’s speech promoting SIS was a good example of bid-related communications: ostensibly open and certainly well-timed, revealing head and heart decision-making along with aggression and strong messages. In so doing Sir John subliminally showcased British society – ‘we want to enjoy public confidence’ – which was an essential component of his pitch. Unable to turn some of SIS’s biggest liabilities into positive attributes – not least because ‘liability’ and ‘attribute’ mean different things to different audiences – Sir John mixed his messages. For example, he rightly praised heroic agents who, for their own honourable motives, work with SIS – an attribute to most British audiences; but a liability if a philosophical discussion of the morality of espionage is being held, or you are the current President of Iran.1 7 Unsurprisingly, there was some ludicrous top spin: Sir John tried to give the public the impression they were his sole priority when he has many, including the preservation of the corrupt banking system. He said the ‘debate on SIS’s role is not well-informed’, when the cumulative picture of SIS is truly well-informed. His comments about ‘our support for forces of moderation around the world’, followed by almost in the same 17 Iran has accused Britain of not only carrying out ‘secret espionage activities in the country but also funding and supporting certain terrorist groups. . .’ The Times, 5 November 2010. 131 Winter 2010 . breath condemnation of Al-Qaeda for wanting to control the Arab world’s oil reserves, was laughable given that Britain and America have had the same goals for over a century. And, incidentally, while ‘weakening the power of the West’ is certainly an Al-Qaeda ambition, Western corruption has done a far better job. Personalisation PR Nor did Sir John personalise some of his arguments which is essential if you are in the persuasion business.1 8 Personalisation could have been helpful when Sir John said ‘if we demand an abrupt move to the pluralism that we in the West enjoy, we may undermine the controls that are now in place.’ Suggesting that people favour stability, which allows their children to go to school in safety, over instability, which may result in their children being shot if their societies are modernised too swiftly, would have furthered empathy, a PR staple. Sir John was rightly proud of what is known in PR as an ‘influencer programme’, which works for organisations that deliver change across a complex network of partners: ‘We offer training and support to partner services around the world. It wins their co-operation, it improves the quality of their work, and it builds respect for human rights.’ Does he mean that this is a one-way street and SIS has nothing to learn from others? For example, while Saudi Arabia is revoltingly lacking in some areas, it has also established a humane de-radicalisation programme for its young Al-Qaeda supporters, a coincidental echo of John le Carre’s ‘pastoral care’ message. Surely our country has need of this sort of expertise? 18 In PR, personalisation is so important, it is the reason the Americans said ‘only’ three men were water-boarded; and that the information obtained as a result, protected Londoners – a ‘perception positive’ – which claim was disputed. 132 Winter 2010. Sir John rightly praised his staff whom he wants us to like and trust, but whom he disadvantaged by dehumanising. They ‘receive recognition for their work only within the confines of the Service’ – in PR, an internal recognition/applause programme. Less reductive language would have explained that, in addition to the utmost need for their identities to be protected, these ‘exceptional’ and ‘remarkable’ men and women are profoundly modest people anyway and do not seek or want public recognition. We have some idea of exactly how awesome they are given the formidable qualifications made available to us, following the tragic death in August 2010 of a young star on secondment to SIS. Agents Where Sir John did personalise, as a measure of his fervour, was when he expressed his sincere gratitude to SIS’s foreign agents, whom he described as ‘the true heroes of our work’ which they are. As he rightly said: ‘They have their own motivations and hopes. Many of them show extraordinary courage and idealism....’ Although it is some years since I researched the subject, so far as I am aware Sir John has done more than any other country’s intelligence chief to lift the agent profile and give credit where it is due. In particular, he broke new ground by smashing a long held pejorative consensus proselytised by some who should have known better. ‘Our agents are working today in some of the most dangerous and exposed places, bravely and to hugely valuable effect, and we owe a debt to countless more whose service is over.’ The last part of that phrase, speaking intimately to this generation of the recently retired or their families, was profoundly touching. Sir John’s gracious correction of other people’s bad manners was an end in itself but had a further legitimate 133 Winter 2010. motive. At a time when intense competition for good agents is likely to be at an all time high, he wanted the public to understand why SIS make them ‘a solemn pledge: that we shall keep their role secret’. Given the courage of these agents, the risks they take, the unbearable haunting sorrows, the debt public owes them, it is the very least that they deserve.19 Parts of Sir John’s speech seemed unnecessarily obtuse. I did not understand his definition of SIS as ‘a sovereign national asset’. It may be that he was confirming SIS’s status. However, it could also be a spook way of explaining that SIS staff are Crown Servants. In my dated experience and if this is what Sir John meant, it invited legal query which today may well have been resolved. Questions once included: is the Crown immune from prosecution? Given that for their own protection some may have no written proof of their contract, what protection is there for agents and the sources they are running? The person who plays a pivotal role in all this is an agent’s case officer. The vivid experience of espionage offers a passport into other people’s lives which is a privilege. For this and many other reasons, the qualities of SIS staff could not be more important. Sir John described them in the warmest possible terms as patriotic, loyal, dedicated and innovative people who act with the utmost integrity.20 While I have no knowledge of the present generation, and my family’s 19 Agents and staff are not the only brave civilians and they certainly would not claim to be. For example, a Human Rights Watch report was based on months of working undercover in remote and dangerous areas. Daily Telegraph, 29 October 21010 20 See also a suspicious story in Sunday Times 17 October 2010 about the impact of Sir John’s internal SIS changes and alleged poor SIS morale; glowing advertorial for Australian Secret Intelligence Service; SIS alumni programme; SIS middle managers being offloaded which simultaneously twin spook experience (e.g. job losses) and concerns (e.g. torture allegations) with the public for the first time since the ending of the Cold War. 134 Winter 2010. relationship with SIS went badly wrong, I have no reason to disbelieve him.2 1 I wish him, his staff and agents well. Corinne Souza’s father, Lawrence de Souza (1921–1986), was a senior decorated SIS agent for nearly twenty years. 21 Unlike their predecessors whose international views were likely to have been formed by the influence of the Second World War and the Cold War, thus chiming with much public opinion then, British spooks in their twenties and thirties today are of the generation who learned about, say, the tragedy of Palestine through the protest movements when they were at university, or about the destruction of the Aral Sea through environment protesters. This is to say, we have a generation whose knowledge of international relations may have been formed by civilian protest: they know that Kazakhstan, with all the endemic hideous corruption and repression (torture), is eyed greedily by China, India, Russia and the US, but their views may be conditioned not by pragmatism but by their primary influences. In much the same way as the Second World War created a moral generation of public servants and politicians of all political parties who did not wish to visit on their children the same carnage, protest movements various are likely to have grown today’s equally moral generation who are more representative of issues-based opinion and a British public starved of virtuous example than the top echelons of elected and administrative government may wish to admit. 135 Winter 2010. Books Another way Meltdown UK: There is another way Stephen Haseler London: Forum Press, £19.99 Crisis and Recovery: Ethics, economics and justice Rowan Williams and Larry Elliott (eds.) London and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, £20.00 Tom Easton One can only admire the ubiquitous energy of Stephen Haseler. He was a precocious Gaitskellite parliamentary candidate in Saffron Walden in the 1960s, a fellow of the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC in the 1970s, as well as being a founding member with Douglas Eden of the Social Democratic Alliance in the UK, and then helped launch the SDP in the 1980s. In that latter period he also helped set up Heritage’s London operation, the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, while authoring anti-Labour material here alongside his old acquaintance Brian Crozier and 136 Winter 2010 Lobster 60. in the United States with Roy Godson (Lobster 31 et seq). He is now director of the Global Policy Institute, a senior fellow of the Federal Trust and a prominent republican, opining recently on BBC Radio 4 on the forthcoming royal marriage. His latest book is a fulminating criticism of those elected to power in Britain while he was busy on these assorted activities. His main focus is globalisation and the way these islands have suffered its orthodoxies, particularly in the areas of the City and finance, with the ‘meltdown’ future he envisages in his title. He calls for a stronger state as a force for democratic action at home and a new Europe-wide ‘protectionism’ abroad. Haseler’s is a forceful work with some footnotes and a limited index. The Williams and Elliott volume is much better, and much of Haseler’s ground is covered in a rather less hectoring manner. The contributors range from the Archbishop himself to Zac Goldsmith, with stimulating thoughts from ‘Red Tory’ Philip Blond, Financial Services Authority general counsel Andrew Whittaker, and theology student turned investment banker John Reynolds. The contributions from New Labour familiars Jon Cruddas and Will Hutton offer little that is new or incisive. Rowan Williams calls for ‘an unashamedly immodest and ambitious plea for a renewal of political culture and social vision, a renewal of civic energy and creativity, in our own country and world-wide’. Amen to that. Israel, the lobby and its critics If I Am Not For Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew Mike Marqusee London and Brooklyn: Verso, £9.99 (UK) 1 3 7 Winter 2010. ‘This Time We Went Too Far’: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion Norman G. Finkelstein New York: O R Books, £12 War Crimes in Gaza and the Zionist Fifth Column in America James Petras Atlanta: Clear Day Books, $15 Europe’s Alliance With Israel: Aiding the occupation David Cronin London: Pluto, £17.99 Tom Easton One of the more heartening developments in this chilly political climate is the growth of Jewish groups and individuals speaking out and organising against the policies of Israel. Some are prominent figures like Miriam Margolyes, who recently used her fame as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter series to publicise the living conditions of Palestinians in Gaza. Her self-description as ‘a proud Jew and an ashamed Jew’ is one that disarmingly cuts through the bile and bluster of those who routinely reach for the ‘anti-Semite’ smear. Two of these authors have suffered that fate. Mike Marqusee recounts a moment is his teens when his father abused him as a ‘self-hating Jew’. The occasion was when the young Marqusee first measured the behaviour of Israeli forces against the humane, Judaism-derived principles of his liberal family in New York. Norman Finkelstein has long been targeted by the US lobby for Israel, most famously losing his battle for a tenured teaching post after a campaign of vilification led by Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard professor of law. Dershowitz doesn’t 138 Winter 2010. just go for people like Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors. As several of these authors point out, he also led the charge against the United Nations report on the Gaza conflict led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone. (James Petras’s book contains some striking images from Operation Cast Lead.) All four books point up the increasing difficulties faced by those who support the current policies of Israel, but also warn that increasingly forceful efforts are being made by that country and its allies in an effort to surmount them. David Cronin provides the best published survey I have yet seen on the Israel lobby in Europe. He shows that Brussels has become the focus of much of that activity, where, he suggests, Israel now has a status not far short of full European Union membership. He lists the failures of the EU to act on Middle East matters where it has direct interests and responsibilities, and indicates the proliferation of organisations set up to promote Israeli interests under other guises. Both in Brussels and London are politicians in hock in one way or another to supporters of Israel – and he names some of the names. All four books are well footnoted and three – Petras’s being the exception – have an index. For those looking to the European dimension, the Marqusee, beautifully written and, in places, deeply moving, is much recommended for its human depth as well as its detailed knowledge. The Cronin book is a big step forward in our understanding of the mechanics of the Israeli lobby in Brussels and London. There’s much more to be revealed, but it’s a good push in the right direction. The last word should go to Finkelstein, who has paid a heavy price for his commitment and who says the latest bloodletting in Gaza has now roused the world’s conscience: ‘Israel can no longer count on reflexive support for its policies. Public opinion polls not only outside but inside 139 Winter 2010. Jewish communities around the world over the past decade reveal a growing unease with Israeli conduct. This shift largely stems from the fact that the public is now much better informed.’ ‘Historians have dispelled many of the myths Israel propagated to justify its dispossession and displacement of Palestine’s indigenous population; human rights organisations have exposed Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians living under occupation; and a consensus has crystallised in the legal-diplomatic arena around a settlement of the conflict that upholds the basic rights of Palestinians.’ Political life in Britain Talking to a Brick Wall: How New Labour stopped listening to the voter and why we need a new politics Deborah Mattinson London: Biteback, 2010, £17.99 People, Politics and Pressure Groups: Memoirs of a lobbyist Arthur Butler Hove: Picnic Publishing, £12.99, 2010 Bonfire of the Liberties: New Labour, Human Rights and the Rule of Law K. D. Ewing Oxford and New York: OUP, £19.99 The Meaning of David Cameron 140 Winter 2010. Richard Seymour New Alresford: Zero Books, £6.99 Tom Easton Deborah Mattinson is just one of the many early enthusiasts for what became New Labour to have been enriched during its 13 years in government. She keeps company with the Kinnocks, Alastair Campbell and partner Fiona Millar, Lords Mandelson, Liddle, Reid and Gould, YouGov’s multimillionaire Peter Kellner and his wife, EU foreign minister Kathy Ashton, and a very long list of New Labour’s single-minded student politicos who turned their address books into lucrative consultancies and careers of one kind or another. In Mattinson’s case, her early membership of Mandelson’s 1980s Shadow Communications Agency alongside peer-to-be Philip Gould led her after 1997 into winning lots of lucrative government contracts. Her own Opinion Leader Research company became part of the Chime Communications conglomerate owned by Margaret Thatcher’s PR adviser Tim (now Lord) Bell. Her book travels from her early focus group ‘discovery’ that Labour grassroots members ‘were all a bit weird.....all slightly strange people.....strange personally I mean’, to her late disappointment with ‘Team GB’, the Brownite faction within New Labour she came to favour. In between she describes her efforts – initially very successful, she claims – to make Labour saleable despite of its ‘weird members’. But at no point does she ask how ‘normal’ were the New Labour hierarchy who sought to benefit from her ‘qualitative’ polling. All the memoirs, diaries and accounts since the general election seem to confirm what many members – weird or not – long suspected: that their ‘leaders’ were very strange people 141 Winter 2010. indeed, and that their governments were scarred by petty personality feuding that probably damaged ‘Labour’ – New, Old or ageless – as a focus of political organisation, action and loyalty for ever. As someone who once took part in a Mattinson company focus group I must admit to scepticism about the rigour of its methods. The event conducted on behalf of what is now Age UK was wholly bogus. The dominant figure in the group pretending to have voted Lib Dem in a marginal constituency in the 2005 election was, in fact, the Labour leader on a local council miles away making a bit of cash-in-hand, focus group money. He told me afterwards, contrary to his expressed views on the Iraq war at the group, that he’d met Tony Blair at a Labour Friends of Israel bash and wouldn’t have a word said against him. But setting my experience aside, I find Mattinson’s reasoning – ‘how New Labour stopped listening to the voter’ – weak, and her prescriptions for a ‘new politics’ unconvincing. Like many New Labour leading lights she dismisses the catastrophic collapse of the Tories under John Major. And what was New Labour, after all, other than a ‘new politics’? It’s sad, but not surprising, that a party’s fate was in the hands of the likes of those so insubstantial as Mattinson, and that The Sunday Times serialisation of this book generated more media heat than light on the dead body politic that is New Labour. No such razzmatazz attended the appearance of Arthur Butler’s wry, wise and well-drawn memoirs of post-war political Britain. And more’s the pity, for these tales from the Westminster journalist turned successful lobbyist fill in parts of our history necessary to grasp and digest if we are ever to have genuinely ‘new politics’ in this sceptr’d isle. He offers insight into the media world of Lord Beaverbrook – the Rupert Murdoch of his day in this country – 142 Winter 2010. and the political world of Hugh Gaitskell and his SDP followers 20 years after his death. As the founding brain behind lobbies for tobacco and the motor industry, and a pioneer of the development of expert parliamentary committees, Butler tells us much about the real world of business, science and politics. Butler also took on local government reform and offered what aid he could to communities devastated by the loss of traditional employment, and to others at home and abroad needing support and encouragement. Along the way he has fascinating stories to tell about John Addey, James Sherwood, Joseph Godson, the Gang of Four and many more. He also had experiences of the intelligence services worth reading. This is not an academic work, though academics could learn much from it. Nor is it just a collection of anecdotes from a long and fascinating working life. It is well-written British political life intelligently observed and reflectively considered. It is everything the Mattinson book isn’t – and that’s probably one of the reasons it wasn’t serialised by Uncle Rupert. Keith Ewing is professor of public law at King’s College, London, and an angry chronicler of the erosion of civil liberties under New Labour. He’s travelled a fair bit of the world and knows a lot of law. He brings both together in a clearly written, heavyweight assault on Blair and Brown governments packed with lawyers with little apparent concern for either the legality of their actions on their far-reaching consequences for human rights and well-being. From surveillance and the national security state to the ‘war on terror’ and control orders and rendition, Ewing’s solid, incisive work reaches out to lawyers and journalists, but also to a broader band of concerned citizenry. Richard Seymour, who blogs at Lenin’s Tomb (http://leninology.blogspot.com/), has produced a short guide to David Cameron’s politics, but crammed a lot into it in an 143 Winter 2010. accessible way. Those to whom the current crop of Tories are largely unknown will learn lots about ‘Red Toryism’, the Henry Jackson Society/neocon network and the ‘wealth creators’. There’s no index, but decent footnotes. The Return of the Public Dan Hind London and New York: Verso, £14.99 Death of the Liberal Class Chris Hedges New York: Nation Books, £14.99 Tom Easton Lobster contributor Dan Hind has produced a mind-stretching plea to no longer leave politics to the experts – the practitioners and the gatekeepers who control access to what is going on in our name and with our money and leave most of us persuaded or confused into passivity. As a former gatekeeper in commercial publishing himself, Hind knows of what he speaks. He sees techological change as being a lever for fundamental reform of the media – that, in turn, then being part a process of radically changing politics into something for doing rather than watching. Literate, drawing on wide sources historically as well in philosophically, this is a bracing warm-up class for the overdue heavy lifting this country’s politics badly needs. Like The Return of the Public, the latest book from Chris Hedges is well footnoted and indexed. Hedges has covered 144 Winter 2010. wars around the world, is a columnist for Truthdig.com and a widely published writer of power, passion and refinement. He marks the decline of ‘the liberal class’ in the United States – the press, the labour movement, universities, the Democratic party and liberal religious institutions – from the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall. He says there are now no counterweights to the corporate state, with profound consequences for those seeking to live and survive in that new dispensation. His Death of the Liberal Class is not a book for faint hearts. It has much of the challenging force of those German anti-Nazis – Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Fritz Reck-Malleczewen are two names who come readily to mind – who steadfastly marked out the ground in earlier battles for rights, decency and integrity in a disordered world. Tom Easton is a freelance writer. Industrial relations and social democracy Ethical Socialism and the Trade Unions: Allan Flanders and British industrial relations reform John Kelly, New York/Abingdon: Routledge: 2010, £70 (h/b) Lawrence Black By the 1960s Allan Flanders was amongst the foremost industrial relations experts in Britain. A key figure in the ‘Oxford School’, he sat on the government Commission on Industrial Relations, provided key evidence to the Donovan Commission and, particularly since his 1964 study The Fawley Productivity Agreements, was listened to by shop stewards and 145 Winter 2010. management alike. Yet his politics originated in revolutionary German socialism in the 1930s. He was schooled by the miniscule Militant Socialist International (MSI), inspired by the philosopher Leonard Nelson, which became the Socialist Vanguard Group in Britain. How to explain this unique political trajectory: a transition from anti-capitalism to working within the system; vexed by the ‘indiscipline’ of 1960s workers; accepting but also keen to institutionalise the role of shop stewards; and, whilst never opposed to free collective bargaining, prepared to countenance state intervention in the national interests of industrial peace and productivity? That many revolutionaries lose their fervour, Flanders’ wartime work with the TUC, and the pressures of the Cold War, seem plausible candidates. But Kelly argues it was ethical socialism, born of Nelson’s vehement critique of materialism, that was the continuous thread and motor of Flanders’ various works. Flanders’ concern always went beyond the material benefits of trade unionism to issues of dignity and respect. Indeed he feared that unalloyed, monopoly trade union power would counterproductively push up prices and prejudice non-unionized workers. Kelly contends that Flanders used ethical values somewhat indiscriminately – dogmatically asserting their presence often in spite of contrary evidence. And whether rethinking socialist principles or advocating a tripartite, union-state-management industrial relations system, Flanders was a devoted advocate of reason, dialogue and discussion. There were other legacies of Nelsonism: the ethical end justified almost any means; anti-communism (for its materialism as much as anything); a focus on monopoly not ownership as the root fault in capitalism; and a scepticism about democracy and emphasis on leadership. This dovetailed with the emerging Labour revisionism in the 1950s and Kelly notes how Flanders found the elite, factional atmosphere of 146 Winter 2010. the Campaign for Democratic Socialism, formed to defend Gaitskell’s leadership from unilateralists, ‘congenial’ (p. 113). Yet the ascetic, vegetarian, moralist Flanders and Socialist Union (as the SVG had become) were always slightly at odds with the more consumerist, libertarian revisionists. Flanders, collaborators like Rita Hinden and their journal Socialist Commentary, were also intimate with the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The extent of their knowledge and collusion with what was later exposed as a CIA-funded organisation has long been of interest. Kelly has trawled the CCF archives, but found little new or concrete evidence – not entirely surprising, as he admits. And one has to ask: had they known, would this have unduly bothered such committed international anticommunists? Flanders’ reputation fell with the collapse of the ‘Social Contract’ soon after his death in 1973 and the real skill of this book is in reconstructing that world of industrial relations. Kelly undertakes this not uncritically. He accepts that by the 1970s Flanders had little to counter Marxists critics like Richard Hyman and former allies like Alan Fox who argued that he failed to acknowledge the persistent power structures of capitalism; and notes how sociologist John Goldthorpe’s work highlighted Flanders’ paradoxical focus on the material realms of work and production, rather than to what purposes earnings were put. But in all its complexity, Flanders was an exemplar of this world, fusing academia, politics and policy. His Donovan mantra that management would only recover control by sharing it was scotched in the 1980s. Yet he might have contended his case that there was little union advantage in alternatives to institutional co-operation was also brutally proven. And in bridging the academic disciplinary gap between industrial relations and politics that has opened since, it reminds us how central an industrial vision once was to Labour politics. 147 Winter 2010. If this is a narrative about the contradictions of social democratic thinking by the 1970s, it also one about the influence that a small, dedicated group of activists can obtain and an important, neglected chapter in the history of Anglo- German socialism. Willie Eichler, who headed the MSI until 1946, was a prime mover of West German Social Democrats’ Bad Godesburg reformist program of 1959. In short, this rigourously argued and detailed study tells us a lot about UK industrial relations and social democracy. The price, sadly, tells us a lot about UK academic publishing. Lawrence Black teaches modern British history at Durham University and in 2010-11 is a Visiting Professor at Duke University, North Carolina, USA. Media matters Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy Matthew Alford London: Pluto Press, 2010, £13.00 (p/b) Robin Ramsay On the British right there is a widespread view that the BBC is full of lefties and puts out lefty propaganda. Here’s Melanie Phillips: ‘With a few honourable exceptions, the BBC views every issue through the prism of left-wing, secular, antiwestern thinking. It is the Guardian of the air. It has a knee-jerk antipathy to America, the free market, big 148 Winter 2010. business, religion, British institutions, the Conservative party and Israel; it supports the human rights culture, the Palestinians, Irish republicanism, European integration, multiculturalism and a liberal attitude towards drugs and a host of social issues.’ A bit of this is true: the BBC certainly supports the human rights culture and multiculturalism. But how could it not do so? These are the official policies at both national and European level, and are supported by the dominant factions of all three major political parties. Nor are these particularly or intrinsically left-wing. However, as you could listen to/watch the BBC’s output for a week and never hear a socialist, republican (let alone Irish republican) anti-business or anti-American voice, the rest of Phillips’ paragraph is either a delusion, or a strategy of constantly calling the BBC left-wing to try to make it more right-wing. In Phillips’ case it’s a bit of both, motivated in part by her shift rightwards but also by her fear that the BBC may one day report what the Israeli state has been doing for the last half century. In America the right believes or pretends to believe that Hollywood is a nest of pinkos (or Jews, or pinko Jews) undermining America with its liberal propaganda. This belief is the target of this book. Alford does a detailed analysis – genre by genre – of the recent films costing over $30 million from Hollywood’s major studios, and shows that their movies almost always express the notion that in its foreign policy, the endless wars in which it engages, America is always right, well intentioned and frequently the victim. That this fantastic lie is in the films owes something (how much isn’t clear) to the Pentagon and CIA liaison operations with the studios. ‘Wanna borrow a submarine? Talk to the Navy guy.’ If Alford isn’t quite describing the corporations and the state running joint psy-ops, it will do until joint psy-ops come along. 149 Winter 2010. On the other hand, how could Hollywood not portray America as a benevolent force in the world? The domestic audience, still the major market, would not pay to see films showing America as the cause of most of the casualties in the world since WW2, supporter of the worst dictators, trainer of torturers and a major feature in the world drug traffic. There are the occasional exceptions, recently most notably Avatar – estimated takings $237 million – which I read (I haven’t seen it) has definite liberal, eco, anti-corporate capitalism themes. Alford wiggles past this: Avatar ‘is one of those partial exceptions that highlight the rule.’ Partial exceptions? Surely it either is or isn’t. Highlight the rule? Is that something weaker than ‘proves the rule’? I wonder how much the ideological content of most movies actually matters to their producers. Maybe the fact that a major studio made Avatar simply suggests that the corporations which own Hollywood are chiefly interested in profits and if green-lefty stuff makes them money, their dream factories will make that, too. Just as there was in the 1970s, in the wake of Watergate and the subsequent revelations of FBI and CIA covert operations, there is a little bit of liberal dissidence in mainstream American movies, mostly at the low budget end, which the author discusses. But ‘a little bit’ is all. This is competently done, decently written and, if you’ve seen a lot of American movies – and I have – it is interesting to have the ideological content articulated. I could do it myself, and I’m sort of subliminally aware of it; but most of the time I’m just watching the movie. So the author’s considerable efforts are both useful and entertaining. They are also slightly chastening: he makes me feel that I don’t have my ideology detector turned up high enough. 150 Winter 2010. Bio-Blackwaters Anthrax War Dead silence.....fear and terror on the anthrax trail Bob Coen and Eric Nadler Berkeley: Counterpoint, 2009, £10 (UK) p/b Robin Ramsay Starting with an interest in the anthrax attack on Congress which followed 9/11, the authors, both big league print and TV journalists, investigated the world of CBW, chemical and biological weapons. This is an investigation and an account of the investigation; a written version of a documentary film. And what they found is really scary stuff. CBW programs are the dirty secret of post-WW2 states. The Soviets, the Americans learned from a defector in 1989, had a monster programme – and maybe the Russians still do, though officially they don’t. (Dr. David Kelly was part of an inspection of the program that doesn’t exist.) The Rhodesians used anthrax in the war of the 1970s, killed maybe 10,000 black Africans. The apartheid regime in South Africa had a large programme, Operation Coast, though what it amounted to is as murky as the rest of these stories and lots of its funding may simply have been stolen. En route the authors wander into all manner of interesting byways, including the CIA trials in the early 1950s and the Frank Olsen case; and David Kelly and other dead microbiologists. (Just google ‘dead microbiologists’ to get a flavour.) This is reminiscent of the dead Marconi scientists story of a decade ago. Is someone knocking-off microbiologists? As happened with Marconi, they are told that statistically nothing interesting is happening here. But they wonder. 151 Winter 2010. After the anthrax attack in America on politicians – the people who write the cheques – the US CBW pork barrel really got rolling and now amounts to $50 billion a year. CBW is the perfect dollar-generating threat: infinitely expandable and seriously frightening. This being America – the universal good guys, of course – it’s all defensive research, looking for antidotes to possible attack by others. But it means developing the bugs for research into antidotes; and so a defensive program and an offensive program look pretty similar. At the end we don’t know who did the original US anthrax attack and you take your pick. I think some sharp cookie/psychopath realised that the post 9/11 climate was perfect for a push in the CBW field and mailed some anthrax. The rest of us better hope the crazy bastard doesn’t get us all killed. Because being America, large chunks of the state’s enlarging CBW activities have been handed over to the private sector: bio-Blackwaters. Someone says to the authors,’ It’s the Wild West out there’ – money sloshing round, programs being cobbled together to get the funds, no regulation worth mentioning. And it would take just one of the 10,000 Americans currently qualified to work in this field to ‘go postal’, or one company to begin cutting corners in pursuit of profit.... 1 5 2 Winter 2010.