The Green Ribbon

The Litvinenko Affair revisited

David Habbakuk will be familiar to readers of Col Pat Lang's blog Sic Semper Tyrannis. He has some very interesting thoughts on the November 2006 death of Alexander Litvinenko over at Yuri Mamchur's Russia Blog:

Uncritical acceptance of claims by [Oleg] Gordievsky about how Litvinenko died is particular bizarre -- given that he has made different and incompatible claims at different times, so as a simple point of logic some of what he has claimed has to be false. A further curious feature of Gordievsky's accounts, however, is that much of what he has claimed directly contradicts central elements of what has become the official British version of Litvinenko's death. And in fact, while one would be ill-advised to take anything Gordievsky says at face value, some of what he has claimed fits in distinctly better with the publicly available evidence than the official version does.

DUP looks to a hung parliament

Slugger's Fair Deal became the latest contributor to the OurKingdom blog today, with some interesting thoughts on the direction of the DUP under its new leader Peter Robinson:

Nationally, the relationship with Gordon Brown is probably the coolest of all, mostly at his own behest. Brown was indifferent to Blair’s peace project,  gave short shrift to proposals for a better financial package and the DUP has been angered by the in-out (usually out) attitude to Northern Ireland in Brown’s Britishness project.

Beyond devolution, Unionism is eyeing the possibility of a hung parliament. If it does occur, Robinson will do business - but for a much higher price than the UUP in the Callaghan and Major eras. In that scenario Brown may rue his present approach. (OurKingdom)

American Comintern: Six decades of covert operations in Britain

[My latest piece at Spinwatch.]

Is the Cold War the best guide to how Britain should deal with Islam? That is what Charles Moore suggested in a speech to the Centre for Policy Studies last month:

Think of the long debate about how best to deal with trade union militancy and with its relationship to Communist infiltration during the Cold War. It was not, in fact, the Conservatives who first tried to tackle this. It began as a conflict within the Labour movement in which a few brave souls, like Frank Chapple of the Electricians, would not bow to the extremist tactics.

As Moore admits, 'the analogies between British trade unions and an ancient world religion are inexact, to put it mildly.' Nevertheless, the anti-communist paradigm is becoming increasingly influential as a template for dealing with Islamist extremism. Moore's Policy Exchange colleague Dean Godson 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. At the moment, the extremists largely have the field to themselves.

As I have noted previously, the Information Research Department and Encounter were both covert operations, created as part of a wider effort known as the 'Cultural Cold War.' The CIA ran Encounter through the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was secretly funded throughout the 1950s and early 1960s to carry out propaganda among European intellectuals. Some of those involved had carried out similar activities for Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s as agents of the Comintern.

One former Comintern delegate was Jay Lovestone, the one-time head of the American Communist Party and disciple of Nikolai Bukharin. His Communist Party (Opposition) faction of the 1930s became over time an anti-communist network with close links to the US Government.

Great Hatred, Little Room by Jonathan Powell

My review of Jonathan Powell's account of the peace process, Great Hatred, Little Room, is now online over at OurKingdom.

Update 11 April: David Frum points us to a review by Dean Godson in the Spectator. Godson's more critical view is in line with the terms of the debate described in my OK piece.