Word: sirs
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...essence of a secret service that it must be secret, and if you once begin disclosure, it is perfectly obvious . . . that there is no longer any secret service." That wisdom, intoned by Sir Austen Chamberlain during his tenure as Foreign Secretary from 1924 to 1929, has long been the motto of British governments. Indeed, officials traditionally denied the very existence of a secret service...
Wright accuses the late Sir Roger Hollis, who headed MI5 from 1956 to 1965, of having been a double agent for the Soviet Union. He charges the service with bugging friendly French and West German embassies in London and breaking into Soviet consulates abroad. Wright also says MI5 was involved in a plot to assassinate Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser during the 1956 Suez crisis. The accusations are not new: since retiring in 1976, Wright has pursued a campaign to make his charges known. Moreover, other authors have published similar allegations...
Present at the divisive Marlborough House summit, in addition to Gandhi and Kaunda, were Prime Ministers Brian Mulroney of Canada, Robert Hawke of Australia, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Sir Lynden Pindling of the Bahamas. On the second day of the meeting, Thatcher dropped her opposition to a proposed European Community ban on South African coal, steel and iron, and said she would accept "voluntary" restrictions on new British investment and the promotion of South African tourism. For the other six leaders present, this was nowhere near enough. Together they endorsed a set of sanctions proposed at a previous Commonwealth...
...pressure for sanctions increased last month, Thatcher twice sent her Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, to Pretoria. His mission: to seek the release from prison of Black Leader Nelson Mandela and the "unbanning" of the African National Congress, the exiled black political movement, in the hope of heading off sanctions. Howe was rebuffed at every turn, both by black leaders angered at Thatcher's refusal to consider sanctions and by the government of State President P.W. Botha for "direct interference" in South Africa's affairs. By mid-July, Kaunda was threatening to leave the Commonwealth if Thatcher remained adamant. Reports...
Botha's outburst was directed at British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe, even though his government has been a holdout against the use of sanctions. Howe was winding up a futile week-long attempt to open a dialogue with the key players in South Africa's racial conflict. Despite his good intentions, he had been rudely rebuffed by both sides. As Howe was leaving Pretoria, Botha held his bitter press conference. He dismissed all such mediating efforts as "direct interference in our internal affairs" and part of "this hysterical outcry of certain Western countries against South Africa...