Category: Uncategorized
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Troubles legacy bill threatens collusion inquiries
The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill received its second reading in the House of Lords last week. In a generally high-quality debate, perhaps the most illuminating intervention came from the former Policing Ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Baroness Nuala O’Loan, who gave a stark assessment of the bill’s implications. The Bill does four very important…
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Working in the dark? Willie Carlin and British intelligence
Thatcher's Spy: My Life as an MI5 agent inside Sinn Féin, by Willie Carlin. Merrion Press, 2019. Amazon/Bookshop/Hive This autobiography of Willie Carlin, a former British intelligence agent inside Sinn Fein, garnered significant press attention on publication last year. That's not surprising given that Carlin's career crossed paths with key figures from Martin McGuinness to…
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Election 2019 – useful sites
A few sites worth keeping an eye on in the coming weeks of the UK general election campaign: Democratic Dashboard – If you are a UK resident this is a good place to find tailored information on the elections in your area. UK General Election 2019 poll tracker – from the Guardian. UK Polling…
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Sinn Féin brings unity call to Irish in Britain
Do the Irish in Britain have a role to play in bring about a united Ireland? That was the theme of a one-day conference hosted by Sinn Fein at the TUC in London on Saturday. Such conferences have been a regular feature of Sinn Fein's engagement with the diaspora, but the latest event came at…
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Archival Research
I am available to conduct research at the National Archives, the British Library and other venues in the London area at a rate of £30 an hours (including travel costs). I can supply digital photo files of archival material made with my Kindle Fire 8 HD at no extra charge, or photocopies made with onsite…
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England’s New Money Lords: the implications of private wealth and political power for personal privacy
In the wake of the Panama Papers, a number of commentators have expressed an unease at the scrutiny of the Cameron family’s financial affairs, even while acknowledging the significance of the issue of offshore tax avoidance. I couldn’t help but be reminded of a very apposite comment by the 1930s muckraking journalist Ferdinand Lundberg: The…
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From Saville to Goddard: How MI5 vouched for a key Kincora witness
On April 8th, the High Court is due to rule on whether the Goddard Inquiry into child sex abuse should look at the Kincora Boys' Home in Belfast. Several people have come forward over the years, claiming that MI5 was informed about abuse by Kincora housemaster William McGrath in the 1970s, and did nothing. Witnesses include…
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Tottenham in the nuclear balance of power
Just back from The Beehive in Tottenham where my local Labour Party hosted a debate on Trident tonight, between John McTernan the former political secretary to Tony Blair, and the former Director of the National Peace Council, Timmon Wallis. Given the media's dire predictions of party bloodletting over the issue, the old journalist in me couldn't…
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Tax credits in the House of Lords – The balance of forces
With a motion in the Lords looking like the best chance of forcing the Government to rethink its cuts to tax credits, here's a quick back of the envelope calculation of the balance of forces in the upper house. No doubt the whips will be aware of factors like pairing, illness etc that will affect…
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‘Admittedly a Cold War Programme’ – Maurice Oldfield on covert information operations in the United States
A small nugget from my latest research at the National Archives: Maurice Oldfield, then Security Co-ordinator in Northern Ireland gives his advice on information operations in the US in 1979. It is interesting given that the theme of a monolithic Soviet-backed international terrorist network was beginning to become prominent at the time, with that year's…