March/April 99 - I was Mandy's first
victim
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There is little information in the public domain about this elitist group except for an article published in Lobster 33 (kindly forwarded to me and reproduced below). It seems to be a CIA sponsored self selecting group who pretend to 'define' the transatlantic relationship. No mention here of building links between Native Americans and marginalised groups in the UK. The agenda is corporate, the ideology is capitalist, hardly a fair reflection of the best in future transatlantic potential.[TG]
Ever wondered how you get to be a Bilderberger? Well, there's a kindergarten where you'll learn all you need to know. The British American Project for the Successor Generation (BAP) was set up by Ronnie Reagan, Rupert Murdoch and Sir James Goldsmith in 1985 for the elite of up 'n' coming thirtysomethings from both sides of the Atlantic to be nurtured in the 'special relationship' existing between the two nations. Past members Peter Mandelson and George Robertson have both recently spoken at Bilderberg. BAP has just held its 14th annual shindig (described by ex-member Jeremy Paxman as 'four days of beer') in Harrogate, with this years' theme 'Making Culture Count'. No Tracy Emin here, of course, just Saatchi & Saatchi execs and the like discussing art's role in the global marketplace and in the words of Alison Holmes, chair of the executive committee: "It's all been quite mad, sorting out the world's problems and drinking too much". Quite. BAP emerged in response to worries about the anti-nuke, anti-American drift of the Labour Party in the early '80's and the current co-ordinator is all-round bad egg Lord Carrington, ex-NATO chief and chair of the Bilderbergers for 9 years. Sounds dodgy? Never! As Alison Holmes told a Big Issue journalist: "Bilderwhat? I've never heard of that in all my life."
If you would like to peer at the wannabe élite who intend to run your lives in the coming decades, it would be worth booking in to the Majestic Hotel, Harrogate, from 13 to 16 November. The rates are reasonable by today's standards (£85-a-night for a double room) and, after the air has grown moist from being peppered with kisses, the sessions in the gym booked and anti-social deviants loudly thanked for not smoking, observers will be able to relax and contemplate the degeneration of the mid-Atlantic political class.
The 1999 conference of the British-American Project for the Successor Generation will unintentionally reveal where a century of fawning to America has brought us. It was founded in 1985 and has always seemed a neo-colonial institution to its critics. Each year, 24 bright natives, aged between 28 and 40, are introduced to 24 young Americans. The Brits are encouraged to help their careers by following the American way. Ginny Felton, the director of the project's British office, gushed to me about the push up the greasy pole BAP fellows might receive. The conference would be a marvellous opportunity for 'young achievers to get together, to network, to make friends, to stay friends and use that friendship!' she said.
The network is impressive. In the Cabinet, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson and Chris Smith are project alumni, as is Baroness Symons, the Indonesian military's favourite junior Defence Minister. Journalists who have been elevated to the ranks of the Atlanticist elect include Jeremy Paxman of Newsnight, Charles Moore, the editor of the Telegraph, James Naughtie, the Today programme presenter, and Trevor Phillips, the TV reporter who was briefly a candidate for mayor of London. The project's leading wonks are Jonathan Powell, Blair's chief of staff, and Matthew Taylor, a former Labour hack who became head of the vaguely leftish and nominally independent Institute for Public Policy Research. As the list shows, New Labour's victory was a triumph for the project. The Blair landslide incited an ecstatic headline writer in its newsletter to declare: 'UK election news: Big Swing to BAP.'
Democratic sensibilities are always offended by self-congratulatory cliques on the make, but the main charge against the project is that it is a continuation of Cold War American infiltration of British public life.
In a fascinating book, Who Paid the Piper? (Granta), which deserved far more attention than it received when it was published in the summer, the historian Frances Stonor Saunders detailed the relentless efforts by the CIA to ensure that educated opinion in Britain and Europe became and stayed pro-American. An American National Security Directive of 1950 said that propaganda to influence foreigners in the fight against the Soviet Union was vital. The best manipulation was when 'the subject moves in the direction you desire for reasons he believes to be his own'. The funding of the high-brow 'British' journal of ideas, Encounter, in the Fifties was therefore pushed through front organisations and private individuals. The interventions in the 'British' cinema which ensured that the film version of Orwell's Animal Farm had its final scene changed, in a thoroughly Orwellian manner, to make it less anti-capitalist and more anti-communist was as covert as the provision of secret funding to pro-European movements. (I always find it peculiar that Euro enthusiasts say we must chose between being European or American. For decades, the US State Department has tried to get Britain into an ever-closer European union.)
The liberal-Left was the spies' main target, in part because the Right could be expected to do as it was told and in part because the CIA feared Lefties would fall for the charms of Stalinists. Now I suspect that intelligent Americans might think that the ugliness of a society with heaving death rows, two million in prison, 30 million without health care and incurable racism could disgust the few progressive Europeans who care about such matters. Patronage corrals their concern. It encourages them to look at the world through US eyes and take every policy initiative from the zero tolerance of crime to workfare for single mothers from the United States.
Lobster, a left-wing magazine, found documents recording that Ronald Reagan was so worried about the growth of anti-American sentiment in the early Eighties that he called Rupert Murdoch and Sir James Goldsmith for a conference on how to mount a pro-Nato propaganda war. 'A special concern will be the successor generations,' Reagan told them. 'These younger people are the ones who will have to work together in the future on defence and security.' Whether or not Sir Charles Villiers, an old Etonian who served the secret services during the war, and Lewis van Dusen, a former American representative at Nato, knew about Reagan's demand for action is unclear - the project denies it vigorously - but two years later they launched the British-American Project for the Successor Generation.
The world has moved from the Cold War to global capitalism and the project reflects the new American power. Instead of being backed by spooks, it is sponsored by Monsanto, Philip Morris and arms companies. Instead, of being concerned with intellectual debate, it is obsessed with marketing.
This year's conference is called Making Culture Count. Its star guest will be Maggie Semple. She joined the Project in 1992 and is now responsible for creating the great cultural monument of fin de siècle Britain, the Greenwich Dome. In her paper to delegates, she boasts, with a slack-jawed clumsiness, about its size - it's 'high enough to contain the Statue of Liberty... if inverted under Niagara Falls, the Dome would take 10 minutes to fill with water' - before unveiling the main attraction. 'A highlight of the Dome will be the McDonald's Our Town Story where for 210 days, people will perform and exhibit their town's past, present and future.'
For indeed, the only truly national celebration of 1,000 years of history on these islands will be an advertising campaign for an American multi-national. Semple and her colleagues have given McDonald's the opportunity to send promotional literature and teacher packs into every school in the country. Teenagers, who McDonald's want as low-paid workers as well as customers, will write McPlaylets while learning that the corporation is the benign custodian of their community.
At the turn of the century, British imperialists encouraged eager American adventurers to take up 'a white man's burden' it could no longer carry. In the Cold War, establishment Britain wanted to be the Greeks to the American Romans, offering sophisticated advice to the brash young super-power. Whatever crimes were committed and excused from Jakarta to Santiago, you cannot deny that many Cold Warriors believed they were defending civilisation and freedom and were genuinely interested in the battle of ideas and serious culture. Now a century of battles is over. Freedom has been reduced to the free market. The Dome celebrates the summit of Anglo-American achievement: junk food and duped and spotty children.
The British American Project (BAP) was founded in 1985 to encourage 'transatlantic friendship' between 'future leaders' of Britain and the United States. It is funded by donations from large corporations and was originally known as the 'British-American Project for the Successor Generation'. Each year BAP invites 24 American and 24 British delegates to take part in four days of dinners, parties and discussions.
The aim is to "create, at a time of growing international strains and stresses, a closer rapport between Britain and the United States among people likely to become influential decision-makers during the next two decades". Delegates are nominated by existing fellows. They include George Robertson, Chris Smith, Mo Mowlem, Peter Mandelson, Jonathan Powell, Trevor Phillips, Charles Moore, James Naughtie and Evan Davis. Critics of BAP, such as John Pilger, have suggested that it constitutes a type of right-wing "casual freemasonry".
March/April 99 - I was Mandy's first
victim
An expression of thanks to the NUJ for its support 13 years after the event may seem to be little thanks at all. But on the twin principles that late is better than never and that solidarity remembered is solidarity reinforced, I now offer some reflections on those distant days when I was Peter Mandelson's first unsatisfactory recruit to the cause of spin-doctoring for "New Labour" back in 1986.
I won't weary union members only too familiar with the management tactics of the Thatcher years on how the newly appointed Labour director of communications headhunted me to be his deputy and then fired me a few months later with the words: "If we have to terminate your contract I will make any fabrication of the truth and stick by it faithfully".
Those with stomachs strong enough to chew on those unedifying events and the subsequent undermining of John Underwood, Joy Johnson and countless others who Mandelson took against can find it accurately recorded in Paul Routledge's new Mandy biography.
But in expressing belated gratitude to the union for its support in a difficult situation - a general election pending and Mandelson initially unwilling to permit me union representation - let me offer a few thoughts on how a man who later told Conservative MPs he would plead guilty to any accusation of "trying to create the truth", prospered for as long as he did.
Partly, of course, it was sheer hard work, the round-the-clock determination to promote Labour and himself. But what made that effort easier was the willingness of many journalists, particularly in Parliament, to follow his dumbed-down agenda.
Now I don't subscribe to an American friend's description of the Westminster Lobby as a system of synchronised self-abuse: I know enough about coverage of US politics to take lessons from Washington. But it remains true that with a few honourable exceptions, members of the Lobby are not distinguished by their willingness to leave the herd. And their world of non-attribution - the exact opposite of what every young reporter is trained to practise - is precisely the one in which Mandelson, with his stock-in-trade of whisper, smear and innuendo, flourished.
You don't have to take my word for that. In Goodbye to All That, Bryan Gould's valedictory volume, the former Labour MP tells us of how his suspicions of Mandelson, then a party employee, were confirmed when a Financial Times reporter quietly inquired why Peter Mandelson was "out to get" him. Gould concluded that Mandelson's "playing of favourites ... probably did more to undermine Shadow Cabinet unity and to distract major players from the job in hand than any other factor".
In all the publicity that followed the publication of Gould's book and the many subseqent references to the "Prince of Darkness" by many victims before his own departure, few journalists ever spelled out the mechanics of what was going on. Why?
Partly, too, because Mandelson was an important source, close first to Neil Kinnock and then Tony Blair and acting with their approval. (John Smith had more sense and kicked him into touch.) Not to be vouchsafed his briefings meant a drying up of political pap - the daily diet of those reporting the affairs of our democracy.
Undesirable as all this is in terms of truth and accountability, not all of it can be blamed on political journalists. For behind the Lobby system lies the power of the political status quo. Mandelson had powerful friends. With John Birt at the BBC, the Murdochs and senior figures at The Mirror and the broadsheets on his side, how many journalists were willing to go out on a limb?
And to have as a leading Labour spokesman someone like Mandelson who essentially wanted to adhere to establishment orthodoxy exactly fitted the wishes of the powers that be on both sides of the journalistic divide. To have him smearing trade union leaders and opponents in the Labour party - anyone like Gould, for example, who challenged the power of the City and Brussels - was not just easy copy for incurious hacks but pieces of eight for those who employed them.
But the picture is even bigger than that. For as John Pilger is regularly pointing out these days in the New Statesman, Mandelson is part of an elite transatlantic security and defence network, the British American Project for the Successor Generation. In addition to Mandelson, current senior Government members include Chris Smith, Mo Mowlam, Lyz Symons and George Robertson as well as the former diplomat turned No. 10 chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.
The BAP journalistic membership includes senior BBC journalists such as Jeremy Paxman and James Naughtie and leading figures from The Independent, The Economist and, almost inevitably, News International. What better for the international status quo than a well-heeled freemasonry of politicians and journalists setting the news agenda?
Let's start with the easiest question: what do George Robertson, Chris Smith
and Marjorie 'Mo' Mowlam have in common? They are, of course, all strong
Tony Blair supporters in the new Labour Cabinet. And what about Peter Mandelson
and Elizabeth Symons? Not yet quite Cabinet members, but both are key figures
in the 'modernising project' in Blair's 'New Labour' government: Mandelson
as Minister without Portfolio having a roving brief to monitor, coordinate
and brief the press on all areas of government activity and Symons, the former
leader of the union for top civil servants, the First Division Association,
is the Foreign Office Minister in the House of Lords.
Symons shares her unelected status with two other key figures
in the new Blair administration, Jonathan Powell and Michael Barber. Powell,
a former British diplomat in Washington, is now Blair's chief of staff at
10 Downing Street and Barber is special adviser to Education Secretary David
Blunkett. And what do these two and the four ministers in the new government
share with Ms Symons? They are all members of the British-American Project
for the Successor Generation (BAP for short) - an elite transatlantic network
launched in 1985 with $425,000 from a Philadelphia-based trust with a long
record in the US of supporting right-wing causes.
Its membership reaches beyond formal politics to include rising figures in
finance, industry, academia, the military and the civil service. Media members
include Economist political editor David Lipsey, Independent
economics editor Diane Coyle, Times Educational Supplement editor
Caroline St John-Brooks and BBC journalists Jeremy Paxman, Isabel Hilton,
Trevor Phillips and James Naughtie.
The first recorded mention of the need for a 'successor generation'
came in 1983 when President Ronald Reagan spoke to a group, including Rupert
Murdoch and Sir James Goldsmith, in the White House. The reason for the 21
March gathering that year was US fear of the rising opposition to the siting
of Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe. Reagan's administration
took this movement so seriously that it recalled its ambassador to Ireland,
Peter Dailey, to Washington. He was given the task of coordinating a strategy
to defeat the broad-based opposition to Reagan's 'evil Empire' policy and
with it the first major European challenge to the NATO orthodoxies
of the previous 35 years. The meeting, organised by National Security Council
staff with the support of USIA director Charles Wick, was intended to recruit
'private sector donors' to help in this task.
In a confidential NSC memorandum Walt Raymond, the CIA
director of operations who had left Langley for the NSC shortly before,
described the upcoming meeting as 'the first session with donors and Charlie
[Wick] has focused this meeting specifically on our needs in Europe ... I
do not know whether the group assembled on March 21 will serve as the
core for a large funding effort which could support the ³National Endowment
for Democracy² or whether the group, by background and interest, will
remain focused on Europe. The problems of European public opinion, however,
are sufficiently great that this is enough of a task to take on at this time.'
When Reagan stepped into the Situation Room that March afternoon
his audience was not only Murdoch and Goldsmith, but also Ambassador Dailey,
now restyled 'Chairman, European Public Diplomacy Committee', George Gallup,
chairman of the polling organisation and Joachim Maitre, 'coming as personal
representative of Axel Springer, German publishing executive.'
Reagan told them: 'Last June I spoke to the British Parliament,
proposing that we - the democracies of the world - work together to build
the infrastructure of democracy. This will take time, money, and efforts
by both government and the private sector. We need particularly to cement
relations among the various sectors of our societies in the United States
and Europe. A special concern will be the successor generations, as these
younger people are the ones who will have to work together in the future
on defense and security issues.' (emphasis added) 1
The British-American Project's own account of its foundation
makes no reference to the President's remarks, but clearly shares the same
concern for an improvement in US-UK relations when, in the early Eighties,
both the Labour and Liberal parties opposed the major arms spending increases
- nuclear and non-nuclear - central to Reagan and the Conservative government
of Margaret Thatcher.
In the BAP version of its foundation it would appear that
the institution of regular meetings of '24 Americans and 24 Britons aged
between 28 and 40 who by virtue of their present accomplishments had given
indication that, in the succeeding generation, they would be leaders in their
country and perhaps internationally' was the idea of two old Oxford friends
- Sir Charles Villiers and US Rhodes scholar Lewis Van Dusen. Villiers,
an old-Etonian banker, was a wartime Special Operations Executive veteran
who subsequently became chairman of the British Steel Corporation. Van
Dusen, senior partner in the law firm Drinker, Biddle and Reath, was deputy
to the first US representative to NATO between 1950 and 1952.
The BAP account describes a dinner between the two
old friends early in the Reagan presidency and observes that Villiers'
'relationship between him and Lew [Van Dusen] had implications far beyond
their personal friendship and in fact provided networking for personal
friendships and broader relationships between Britain and the US, with
countrywide benefits. He [Villiers] further observed that such relationships
were not continuing as they had hoped.
'Arrangements were made for Charles [Villiers] to see Robert
I Smith, then the head of the Pew Memorial Trust. Subsequent discussions
resulted in a grant underwriting the first three years of the Project.
Advisory Boards were established in the US and Britain. The School
of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns Hopkins University,
Washington DC, would administer the American side. The Royal Institute of
International Affairs at Chatham House, London, would serve a similar function
in Britain.
'Since that time, alternate conferences lasting approximately
four days have been held annually in the US and Britain. All expenses including
travel are paid for first-time delegates. Initially topics for study and
discussion were proposed by Chatham House and SAIS.'
George Robertson
One of the Britons chosen for the delicate task of selecting participants
for the Successor Generation project was George Robertson MP, the former
Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland who, to the surprise of some, was
made Defence Secretary in the new Blair government. Why there should have
been any shock in this move is in itself surprising because Robertson has
been a pillar of the Anglo-American/NATO establishment from the time he left
the service of the General and Municipal Workers' Union (as it then was called)
in 1978 to become Labour MP for Hamilton.
A former secretary of the right-wing Labour Manifesto group
(most of whose members defected to the Social Democratic party in 1981),
Robertson joined the government-funded British Atlantic Committee in the
same year that it was publicly attacking the Labour party's non-nuclear defence
policy. He was on the Council of the Royal Institute for International Affairs
(Chatham House) from 1984 to 1991 and on the steering committee of the annual
Konigswinter conference for much of that time. He has been a governor of
the Ditchley Foundation since 1989 and was vice-chairman of the Westminster
Foundation for Democracy from 1992 to 1994. A man more likely to be
given the defence brief and less likely to include the possession of nuclear
weapons in the Blair government's newly announced defence review can scarcely
be imagined.
David Lipsey
Robertson was helped in the task of selecting promising transatlantic
talent for the early years of the BAP by David Lipsey, a man who also started
life as a researcher with the GMWU. After Oxford Lipsey got to know
and admire Anthony Crosland, the Gaitskellite MP, author of The Future
of Socialism and one-time consultant to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural
Freedom. Crosland became Lipsey's mentor, hiring him as adviser at
the Department for Environment and then at the Foreign Office. After
Crosland's death in 1977, Lipsey moved to the office of Prime Minister
James Callaghan. With the defeat of Labour in 1979 Lipsey switched
to journalism, first at New Society and then the Sunday Times
before returning as editor of New Society in 1986.
At the time he was helping to launch the BAP he was also
involved in setting up the Sunday Correspondent, the short-lived and
largely US-funded weekly. When it folded in 1990 he became associate
editor of Murdoch's Times, quitting that for the Economist in
1992 and becoming its political editor two years later. Along the way he
has been chairman of the Fabian Society, a visiting professor at the University
of Ulster and a non-executive director of the Personal Investment
Authority.
Nick Butler
An old Streatham Labour party friend of Lipsey's from the Seventies,
Butler is a central figure in the British-American Project. Alongside a career
in British Petroleum, Butler has combined political activity in the Fabians
(for many years he was its treasurer), Chatham House and Konigswinter with
writing for the US Council for Foreign Relations journal Foreign
Affairs. The Cambridge-educated Butler jointly authored with Neil
Kinnock Why Vote Labour in 1979 and through the Fabian Society was
deeply involved in the former Labour leader's successful efforts to move
the party away from unilateral nuclear disarmament in the late Eighties.
His wife, a former senior BBC current affairs executive, now works for the
Institute for Public Policy Research.
Butler has been deeply involved in the BAP programme from
the outset. He was UK treasurer when, in 1984, the Pew Trust Æ
a big funder of the right-wing Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise
Institute at the time Æ chipped in with the $425,000 launch money.
After Robertson, he is the senior Labour member of the UK advisory
board, which is chaired by the former conservative Foreign Secretary and
NATO secretary general Lord Carrington. The two other party political
members of that board are Alan Lee Williams and Lord Holme of Cheltenham.
3
Alan Lee Williams
Williams was Labour party national youth officer under Hugh Gaitskell's
leadership before becoming an MP. He was parliamentary private secretary
when Roy Mason was Defence Secretary and he followed when Mason became Northern
Ireland
Secretary. Defence was a constant interest of Williams, chairing the
Parliamentary Labour Party's Defence Committee and, after losing his Hornchurch
seat in 1979, chairing Peace Through NATO. In addition to work for the European
Movement - he was treasurer from 1972 to 1979 - he has strong US links. He
is currently director of the Atlantic Council. He became one of David
Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission members in 1976 and has chaired the European
working group of the right-wing Centre for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington since 1987. In 1981, Williams was one of the founding members
of the Social Democratic party and subsequently of the Liberal Democratic
alliance.
Richard Holme
Lord Holme of Cheltenham came to that alliance via the Liberal party
of which he was president in the year the SDP was launched. After Oxford
and Harvard, Richard Holme became active in the Liberal party and stood for
them unsuccessfully on several occasions. A director of RTZ-CRA, which now
helps fund the Successor Generation project, Holme is a central figure in
'centre' politics. He has directed the Campaign for Electoral Reform; chaired
the Constitutional Reform Centre; remains a director of Political Quarterly,
as well as vice-chairman of the Hansard Society for
Parliamentary Government and, in addition, chairs Threadneedle Publishing,
a major publisher of political reference works.
He has been chairman of Brassey's, the defence publishers
once owned by Robert Maxwell with a US subsidiary chaired by the late Senator
John Tower, (President George Bush's unsuccessful nomination for Defence
Secretary). He took over the chairmanship of the consultancy firm Prima
Europe from Dick Taverne, the former Labour MP turned Social Democrat. Until
his election as policy adviser to the Blair government, Prima also employed
Roger Liddle, the former SDP candidate who jointly authored The Blair
Revolution with Peter Mandelson.
Holme acted as treasurer of the Green Alliance for 11 years,
during some of which time Tom Burke, an SDP activist turned adviser to
Conservative governments, was director. Burke, a former adviser to David
Owen, was one of a batch of younger SDP figures selected by the UK board
for Successor Generation membership in its early days a decade ago.
SDP activists
Others SDP activists receiving early invitations to join the Successor
Project were Sue Slipman, the former Communist president of the National
Union of Students; Penny Cooper, an old Communist party and NUS colleague
of Slipman's who, like her, was a founder member of the SDP; Becky Bryan,
a defence analyst and later BBC reporter who was 1983 Alliance candidate
for East Hampshire, and Rabbi Julia Neuburger, a member of the government-backed
multilateralist Council for Arms Control in the early Eighties and a prominent
member of the SDP national committee.
Chris Smith
Slipman, Bryan and Neuberger were joined at the 1986 BAP gathering in
Philadelphia by George Robertson's fellow Cabinet colleague, Chris Smith.
The MP for Islington South is no stranger to the United States. Between his
first degree at Cambridge and his doctorate there, a Kennedy scholarship
took him to Harvard for a year. A few years in local government earned him
the chance of a seat and shortly after being elected became, first, secretary
and then chairman of the Tribune group of Labour MPs.
Majorie Mowlam
Even more familiar with the United States is another Blair Cabinet member
with a doctorate and a past involvement in the Tribune group, Northern Ireland
Secretary 'Mo' Mowlam. After Durham University, Mowlam studied and taught
in American universities for most of the Seventies. After winning Redcar
in 1987 she followed Smith as secretary of the Tribune group at the time
it was becoming less the voice of the radical Left in the parliamentary party
and more of a support group for Neil Kinnock in his 'modernising' moves,
particularly on defence.
Mowlam attended the 1988 gathering of the BAP in St Louis, where
she was joined by the Labour Party's then director of campaigns and
communications, Peter Mandelson. The theme, 'Present Alliance, Future
Challenges', was very relevant to a world in which the Cold War was moving
into a new phase with the crumbling of the former Soviet empire. Kurt Campbell,
a Harvard academic who had lectured on Soviet studies in what was then apartheid
South Africa, led the first session on 'New Empires for Old'.
In the subsequent discussion Æ led, according to the confeence
report by British participants Æ Mowlam and Mandelson heard the
contributions of Tim Gardam, the editor of the BBC TV current affairs programme,
Panorama, and Michael Maclay, at that time a producer for 'Weekend World',
London Weekend Television's rival programme on which Mandelson had been working
before his Labour party job.
Michael Maclay
Maclay is an interesting figure in the BAP network. A career Foreign
Office official, he left the diplomatic service for a media career, first
at LWT and then, with David Lipsey, as a founding figure of the Sunday
Correspondent. After that paper's collapse Maclay was rapidly recruited
to Robert Maxwell's new newspaper venture, The European. His latest
appointment has taken him out of journalism and back into diplomacy as special
adviser to the European Union's High Representative in the former Yugoslavia,
the Swedish Conservative, Carl Bildt.
Colonel Bob Stewart
That same 1988 BAP gathering also included a soldier subsequently widely
known through television for his presence in Bosnia and subsequently as a
supporter of BBC war correspondent Martin's Bell's 1997 election candidature
in Tatton - Colonel Bob Stewart. Less well known, perhaps, is that Stewart
was a key figure on NATO's military committee and between 1994 and 1995 was
chief of policy at Supreme Headquarters, Allied Powers, Europe. Since
resigning from the Army in 1996 Stewart has been hired by the international
public affairs consultants, Hill and Knowlton. 4
Also at the same BAP meeting were Jill Rutter, now Chancellor Gordon
Brown's Treasury publicity chief who in 1988 was private secretary to John
Major. Her attendance in St Louis was during her Harkness Fellowship
at the University of California, Berkeley. Her fellow Treasury colleague
Douglas Board was along with her, as was Colin Walters the
then head of the police division at the Home Office. So, too, was Iain
Elliott, associate director of the CIA-funded Radio Liberty and former
editor of Soviet Analyst.
Andrew Gimson, a former Conservative Central Office
researcher who was then editorial page editor of the Independent newspaper
was one of two British journalists present, the other being Yasmin Alibhai
Brown, then an editor of the New Statesman and now a freelance
writer whose work appears widely.
The purpose of the 1988 gathering - as of all the BAP functions
Æ was summed up by Tory MP David Willetts, previously director
of studies at the Centre for Policy Studies founded by Margaret Thatcher
and Sir Keith Joseph in 1974. Willetts said: 'The object of the conference
is to enable bright young people from the United States and the United Kingdom
to get to know each other in a friendly environment. This will help reinforce
Anglo-American links, especially if some members already do, or will eventually,
occupy positions of influence.' Given the result of the 1997 general election,
it is unlikely that David Willetts will have quite the same influence for
Atlanticism he exercised as a Tory minister or as a pathfinder for privatisation
at the Centre for Policy Studies.
Liz Symons
But there are plenty of Successor Generation members around to carry
on the work. Robertson, Mowlam, Smith and Mandelson are central figures in
the Blair regime. In place, too, is 1990 BAP attendee Liz Symons, the
partner of Rupert Murdoch's labour editor at the Times, Phil Bassett.
The BAP's 1996 newsletter welcomed her elevation to the Lords as follows:
'Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, aka Liz Symons, has tendered her resignation
as general secretary of the FDA following the announcement of her life peerage
in August. She will continue there until the end of 1996. After that she
can be reached at House of Lords, London SW1A 1AA. Congratulations from all
of us.'
Symons came to trade unionism by a somewhat unusual route,
being an official of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation while her father,
Ernest Vize Symons, was the Board of Inland Revenue's director general. (He
was also, coincidentally, governor of the English-Speaking Union at about
the time Alan Lee Williams was successfully seeking a post-parliamentary
career as director of the ESU). Alongside her as a trade unionist within
the Project is Barry Reamsbottom, the former editor of the Civil Service
union paper Red Tape. Since 1992 he has been general secretary
of the Civil and Public Servants' Association - the other end of the public
service spectrum represented until last year by Symons at the FDA.
A third trade unionist with long-standing US connections
was an early participant in the Successor network. He is John Lloyd,
then of the electricians' union, the EEPTU, as it was called at the time
of his participation in the 1987 conference.5 Lloyd's successive bosses
at the union, Frank Chapple and Eric Hammond, are long-standing anti-Communist,
pro-NATO figures in the trade union movement. Both were active in the
US-funded Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding and Alan Lee
Williams's European Working Group at the CSIS in Washington. 6
The only other figure with a trade union connection in
the BAP network would appear to be Michael Barber, the University
of London education specialist who was, for a short time, a policy official
at the National Union of Teachers. Barber now has the role of principal policy
adviser to the new Education Secretary, David Blunkett.
Readers who have followed this catalogue of careers and connections thus
far might ask why they have read and heard nothing of the Successor Generation
network in the media - after all, it has been in existence since 1985 and
some quite important figures have taken part in its deliberations.
One reason might be that the network contains lots of
journalists, a group who are often less willing to disclose their own activities
than those of others. Of the most familiar names James Naughtie, the
co-presenter of Radio Four's daily current affairs programme Today, is probably
least surprising to find on the BAP's list of alumni. Naughtie's
postgraduate studies were in New York at Syracuse and in 1981 he was awarded
the Laurence M Stern Fellowship to spend a summer working on the Washington
Post. A review of his radio documentary output makes it clear that
transatlantic relations are a key field of interest.
Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight interviewer was a BAP participant
in 1990, along with BBC current affairs producer Margaret Hill.
Christopher Cragg of the Financial Times, kept them company,
as did George Brock, the foreign editor of the Times.
Before them had come Michael Elliott and Daniel
Franklin of the Economist; Isabel Hilton, at the time Latin
America editor of the Independent and now freelancing, among others
for the BBC and the Guardian; Frederick Kempe of the Wall
Street Journal; Charles Moore, then of the Spectator and
now the editor of the Daily Telegraph; Trevor Phillips, an
ex-National Union of Students president at the time with LWT and now, more
recently with the BBC and Pepper Productions, a joint UK/USA/South Africa
production company, and Hugh Raven of the Sunday Telegraph.
The journalists' list is completed by Diane Coyle,
a Treasury economist turned economics editor of the Independent and
Caroline St John-Brooks, a former colleague of David Lipsey at New
Society and the Sunday Times. After a spell working with the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, she has this
year been appointed to edit Rupert Murdoch's Times Educational
Supplement.
Dotted around these annual gatherings are always a few defence and
security specialists. Calum McDonald, the University of
California-educated Labour MP for the Western Isles, is a stalwart opponent
of unilateralism. Raj Thamotheram founded Saferworld, a defence
and foreign affairs think-tank opposed to unilateralism. Colonel Tom
Thomas is a NATO adviser with expertise in counter-insurgency.
James Sherr is a New Yorker based in Britain who has worked for Group
Captain Bolton's RUSI and the Heritage-funded Institute for European Defence
and Strategic Studies, the latter a fierce opponent of the Labour party and
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in the Eighties. Gloria
Franklin has headed the Ministry of Defence's civilian think-tank and
has been responsible for the annual Defence White Paper. Steve
Smith of the University of East Anglia lectures on strategic issues and
Gregory Treverton of Princeton and Harvard has worked closely with
the Council for Foreign Relations, the US sister organisation to Britain's
Chatham House.
Last, but by no means least, on the foreign policy and
defence front, we have Jonathan Powell, the career diplomat who gave
up his posting at the Washington embassy to work for Tony Blair in opposition
and now runs his No 10 office as chief of staff. Powell is the youngest
of the Powell brothers, of whom Charles, the eldest, was Thatcher's foreign
policy specialist and the middle one, Chris, advertising adviser to the Labour
party. Jonathan Powell was the smiling presence at the Successor
Generation's 10th anniversary get-together at Windsor in 1995.
The British organiser of that conference was a member of
a familiar, if not quite so influential, family. Matthew Taylor is
the son of sociologist-cum-media personality Laurie Taylor. Taylor Jr is
the Labour party's new policy director. His US counterpart, Nina Easton,
looked back proudly on that Windsor meeting.
'Once again the project demonstrated its commitment to grooming leaders for
a new generation, and highlighted the leading global role that these two
allies will continue to play in promoting democracy.'
A decade after calling on his visiting White House multi-millionaires to
help create a reliable 'successor generation', a fitter Ronald Reagan might
today have cause for a chuckle. The Labour administration his successor Bill
Clinton came to smile upon in May seems safely in the hands of an elite
well-groomed in the ways of Atlantic cooperation.
From: roundtable
<the_roundtable@iname.com>
Subject: British American Project - CFR/RIIA Study Group
In 1997 Lobster Magazine, a British journal of intelligence, parapolitics, and state research published an article about the British American Project.The article identifies the groups administering the project as:
> The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of the Johns
Hopkins
>University,
> Washington DC, would administer the American side. The Royal Institute
of
>International Affairs
>at Chatham House, London, would serve a similar function in Britain.
The School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) is a Council on Foreign Relations think-tank and spook training school, see Foundations of War http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/2807/foundation.html. The SAIS has a branch in Red China that has a greater influence on Chinese policy then the Chinese do.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs is England's CFR sister organization.
Serendipitously, the Council on Foreign Relations and Royal Institute of International Affairs were formally established at another Majestic Hotel in Paris on March 19, 1919, by a group of Rhodes's secret society members who attended the Paris Peace Conference as diplomats, members of the British Secret Service, or members of the first U.S. central intelligence agency the INQUIRY. Edward Mandell House, close personal advisor to President Woodrow Wilson, and the first U.S. National Security Advisor, hosted the meeting.
Propaganda, is the effort to alter the picture to which men respond, to substitute one social pattern for another. Propaganda is used to create false reality worlds using sleight of mind. Psycho-political operations are propaganda campaigns. Strategic psycho-political operations focus propaganda at powerful individuals, or small groups of people capable of influencing public opinion or the government of a particular country. Tactical psycho-political operations focus propaganda at the masses by interference in specific events, their comments, and their appeals through mass communication media ( i.e. newspapers, radio, television, textbooks, educational material, art, entertainment, etc. ). Both forms of propaganda are used to manipulate public opinion to attain foreign policy goals in a given period. If the operations are designed to conceal both the operation and the sponsor the operation is clandestine. If the operations are designed to conceal only the sponsor the operation is covert.
The CFR/RIIA has become so successful at scripting, directing, and implementing psycho-political operations that we are now living in an age of rationalized propaganda backed by a powerful press and technical media that consciously manipulates symbols and myths in a calculated manner to suit CFR/RIIA goals. High international tensions are whipped up with astonishing rapidity at the dictate of the controlling groups. Tensions meant to maximize profits of CFR/RIIA controlled medicine, munitions, media, food, and banking industries which profit most during periods of unrest and war. Illusions and delusions are deliberately imposed on large masses on an international scale to conceal real social conflicts of greater significance.
The Secret Society of Cecil Rhodes used "discussion-groups" to generate material used in propaganda campaigns for shaping national policy and influencing public opinion. The Council on Foreign Relations, Royal Institute of International Affairs, and other secret-society branch organizations use "discussion-groups," and a more formalized program known as "study-groups" to this day. "Study-groups" are organized to investigate an important national policy issue. A designated expert prepares a draft statement and presents it to a group of fellow experts who often hold widely divergent views. The issue is discussed thoroughly, sometimes at several successive meetings, and the discussion recorded by a research secretary. A digest of the discussion and a position paper with a written analysis and policy conclusions credited to a single author is produced. Material generated is used to shape national policy and influence public opinion.
The British American Project is nothing more than a Council on Foreign Relations/Royal Institute of Internal Affairs, sponsored study-group, meant to generate material for creating covert strategic, and tactical psycho-political operations for influencing public opinion to allow CFR/RIIA industries to maximize their profits at the expense of the public at large, and to further the CFR/RIIA goal of forming one world government run by CFR/RIIA members. Hosting the meeting at the Majestic Hotel is a clue for future historians to credit the formation of the New World Order to the Secret Society of Cecil Rhodes and the organizations that evolved from it.
The British-American Project exists to reinforce the long-standing special ties between the United States and Britain by bringing together young people from the two countries who have achieved distinction in their chosen fields. The Project's primary activity is an annual intensive four-day conference, which brings together 24 exceptional people from each side of the Atlantic to tackle a specific issue of importance to both countries.
Delegates are chosen for proven leadership in their field, and are drawn from a wide range of backgrounds and views; they include senior representatives from business, government, the media, voluntary /non-profit organizations, law, medicine, and the armed forces.
Since its first conference in 1985, the British-American Project has built an influential Fellowship of more than 600 members, many of whom return to the annual conference in subsequent years. The success of the Project is remarkable, and its impact on those who attend lasting.
"You discuss ideas, you face challenges, you have your prejudices questioned, you make friends, you learn a lot and you have fun. It's an incredibly worthwhile venture."
The Rt. Hon. Chris Smith, MP, Secretary of State forCulture, Media & Sport, UK Fellow
"The Project is one of the most valuable and eye-opening experiences I have ever had. It gives me a wonderful perspective on international relations, and an unprecedented opportunity to mix with a highly stimulating and knowledgeable group."
Senator Jay Dardenne, Senate Floor Leader for the Louisiana Legislature, US Fellow
While the Fellows return at their own expense, the Project funds the attendance of participants in their first year to ensure the broadest possible gathering of talent. In addition, the Project produces newsletters and reports on conference deliberations to promote deeper trans-Atlantic ties.
The Project is run by its Fellowship whose elected officers and its Advisory Board, led by the Rt. Hon the Lord Carrington KG, manage its development. Their challenge is to ensure the long-term financial viability of the Project so that its valuable and distinctive contribution to Anglo-American relations can continue.
1st Common Bonds and Common Burdens Middle Aston, Oxfordshire, 1985
2nd Common Bonds and Common Challenges Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1986
3rd The Pace of Change Turnberry, Scotland, 1987
4th Present Alliance, Future Challenges St. Louis, Missouri, 1988
5th The Management of Change Buxted Park, East Sussex, 1989
6th The Management of Diversity Airlie, Virginia, 1990
7th The Process of Change Buxted Park, East Sussex, 1991
8th Effecting Change Through Individual Responsibility Atlanta, Georgia,1992
9th The Management of Conflict Newcastle, Northern Ireland, 1993
10th Beyond Conflict - Shaping the Pluralistic Community Oakland, California, 1994
11th The Renewal of Civil Society , Old Windsor, 1995
12th Science and Society -Separation or Synergy Dallas, Texas, 1996
13th The Politics of Identity Peebles, Scotland, 1997
14th Are you Global? New Orleans, Louisiana, 1998
15th (an arts theme, being developed) Harrogate, York, UK, 1999
16th (tbd) New York, NY, 2000
'One of the most intellectually stimulating experiences of my life.'
Robert Hoffman, President, The Coca-Cola Bottling Group (SW) Inc.
'A marvelous way of meeting a varied cross-section of trans-Atlantic friends.'
Jeremy Paxman, Journalist and BBC broadcaster.
'The small-group, public policy discussions I had with Fellows made the British-American Project conference the most intellectually engaging and stimulating I've ever attended. '
Tom Proulx, author of Quicken software and co-founder of Intuit Inc.
'The lasting relationships that are built up are the only way to underpin an enduring Special Relationship. Takes the working out of networking.'
Jonathan Powell Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, The Rt. Hon. Tony Blair, MP.
'A unique and extraordinary opportunity to build personal relationships with our British friends that can endure a lifetime. '
Robert Mosbacher, Jr., President, Mosbacher Energy Company
'The British-American Project performs an invaluable role in promoting contact and friendship between the United States and Great Britain.'
The Rt. Hon. Stephen Dorrell, MP
'My involvement with the British American Project ranks as one of my life's intellectual and cultural high points. '
Jimmie Lee Solomon, Executive Director of Minor League Operations, Office of the Commissioner, Major League Baseball.
'The British-American Project provides an invaluable understanding of the way our two systems of government and business can best operate. '
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean, Under Secretary of State, Foreign & Commonwealth Office
'I had always thought of the relationship as special and this program gave that idea a deeply human meaning.'
Jack Fuller, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chicago Tribune
'The dialogue is unique. There is no other forum that allows you such breadth of vision.'
Rabbi Julia Neuberger, Chief Executive, The Kings Fund
'Young Britons need to know America and Americans. The British-American Project provides them with an attractive way of doing so.'
Charles Moore, Editor, The Daily Telegraph
'The opportunity to interact with a diverse group of worldly people from the United Kingdom and the United States was both interesting and intellectually stimulating. The experience was invaluable.'
The Hon. Vanessa D. Gilmore, United States District Judge
A. H. Belo Corporation
Air Touch Communication
American Airlines
American Express
Anhauser Busch
Annenberg Foundation
Apple Computer, Inc.
ARCO
Baker & Botts
Baring Foundation
BAT Industries
BayBank Boston
Bell South
British Airways
British-American Commerce Association
Campbell's Soup
Chicago Tribune Foundation
The Chubb Corporation
Coopers & Lybrand
Willis Corroon
Dallas World Salute
Dan Oleksiw
Deloitte & Touche
Delta Air Lines
Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, Inc.
E. I du Pont de Nemours and Company
Fleishman-Hillard, Inc.
Fujitsu-ICL
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
Grand Metropolitan, Inc
HJ Russell & Company
Honeywell, Inc.
Hughes & Luce
ICL Fujitsu-ICL Systems, Inc.
Int'l Licensing & Marketing
Isadore & Joan Scott
Langley & Branch
Lewis Van Dusen
Locke Purnell Rain Harrell
Monsanto Company
National Semiconductor
Nations Bank
Northwest Airlines
PaineWebber
Pew Charitable Trust
Philip Morris Companies
Raytheon Company
Russell & Miller, Inc.
Ryder System, Inc.
Saatchi & Saatchi
SmithKline Beecham
Southwestern Bell Telephone
Texas Commerce Bank
Texas Instruments
The Coca-Cola Company
The Equitable
The Pillsbury Company
The Sun Company
Transamerica
Unilever plc
United Advertising
Vinson & Elkins
Wachovia Bank
Wagg & Co. Ltd.
Waste Management of Alameda
Wells Fargo Bank
William T. Kemper Charitable Trust
Willis Corroon
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
Under the sponsorship of Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), the British-American Project is exempt from Federal income tax under section 101(6) of the Revenue Act of 1934. This ruling was affirmed on May 6, 1938 and December 5, 1951, under section 101(6) of the revenue Act of 1936 and section 101(6) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1939.
The exemption of the University is currently applicable under section 501(c)(3) of the 1954 Code which corresponds to section 101(6) of the above- named Acts and the 1939 Code.
The Tax Exempt Number is 8200-5482401. * The Federal I.D. Number is 520-595-110.
Checks should be sent to Carobel Calhoun, US Project Director, British- American Project, at the address below and made payable to: Johns Hopkins University/SAIS and marked for the British-American Project
For more information, contact Carobel Calhoun c/o SAIS, 1740 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington, DC 20036; phone 703-553-9188; fax 703-553-9189; or e-mail carobel@aol.com
US Project Director, Carobel Calhoun. She can be reached by e-mail: Carobel@aol.com
UK Project Director, Ginny Felton. She can be reached by e-mail: GinnyFelton@compuserve.com
George Robertson is in BAP http://www.mod.uk/aboutmod/ministers/sofs.htm
BAP Project email list? http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/baproject.html
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