Word: brittan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...ailing British helicopter manufacturer, had ballooned into one of the severest tests for Margaret Thatcher in her nearly seven years as Prime Minister. The controversy has already prompted the angry resignation of Defense Minister Michael Heseltine and threatened to force the ouster of Trade and Industry Minister Leon Brittan. In the House of Commons last week, amid charges of high-level deceit and manipulation, Thatcher's critics turned the debate into a full-scale assault on her whole style of governing. Neil Kinnock, the leader of the opposition Labor Party, demanded an investigation...
Heseltine embarrassed Thatcher two weeks ago by becoming the first British Minister since 1887 to resign by storming out of a Cabinet meeting. He followed that flamboyant gesture by charging Brittan with trying to pressure British Aerospace into pulling out of the European consortium. Brittan denied the claim, but conceded that he had warned British Aerospace that a decision against Sikorsky might be considered anti-American and could hurt the firm's U.S. sales, which account for about 12% of revenues...
When the House of Commons met on Monday afternoon, Heseltine asked Brittan if he was aware of a letter from British Aerospace to the government, said to contain the company's account of a Jan. 8 meeting in which Brittan allegedly urged it to withdraw from the European group. In his reply, Brittan denied four times that such a letter had come in. Within an hour, however, the Prime Minister's office admitted that Thatcher had indeed received the letter and had mentioned it to Brittan. The Minister then executed a sharp about-face, explaining that he had not felt...
...protests were directed at the governing board of the BBC. The previous week, after objections from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, the board had canceled a television documentary that featured interviews with Irish extremists, including an alleged leader of the Irish Republican Army. Thatcher, the target of an I.R.A. bomb last October, had declared a month ago that terrorists should be denied the "oxygen of publicity...
...controversy grew, Brittan said he had not ordered a cancellation but had objected like "any member of the public." The board of the nominally independent BBC maintained that it had acted because the program was "unbalanced." Others charged that the government's action was censorship. "Unfortunately our board of governors, appointed to be the watchdogs of liberty, failed to bark," said Vincent Hanna of the National Union of Journalists...