Thatcher’s Secret War: Subversion, Coercion, Secrecy and Government, 1974-90

The first book to explore the secret campaign that Mrs Thatcher and her government waged before and after the Falklands War against ‘subversives’. Margaret Thatcher remains one of the UK’s most polarising prime ministers. In this new and revised edition, Thatcher’s Secret War sheds new light on the secret, internal ‘cold war’ that the Iron Lady and her government waged against ‘the enemy within’: anti-nuclear, new age and ecology campaigners; poll tax protesters; trade unionists at GCHQ and striking miners; feminists and homosexuals; Scottish nationalists; protesters and rioters in Brixton, Toxteth and Broadwater Farm; the far right; the EU; and the IRA
among others. It was a campaign fuelled by paranoia on both the left and right of the political spectrum and fought with corruption, black propaganda, dirty tricks and even murder. Clive Bloom surmises that the UK is rapidly changing and that although Thatcher’s ideals seem to have vanished, one remains: the power and importance of the extra-parliamentary state and its surveillance methods and hidden powers in a new age of terrorism. AUTHOR: Clive Bloom is Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies at Middlesex University. He was the historical consultant to the BBC and a number of national and international newspapers on the G20 and the summer riots in Britain. He is an occasional feature writer for the Financial Times, The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Irish Times and the London Evening Standard, regularly appearing on television and radio. 16 b/w illustrations