European Health Ministers
A kind correspondent sent me the following details about Health Ministers in France, Portugal, Italy and Spain, in that order. It makes interesting reading, if a bit frightening when we come to Spain’s Health Minister, who goes by the name of Leire (or Leyre) Pajín.
In the first of this three-part series about British and international secret services and their chiefs, three British spy-masters were described fairly extensively – those three who controlled British Intelligence from its creation as ‘SIS’, though its period as ‘MI6’, until the secret services were ‘outed’ and no longer secret in the second half of the twentieth century.
Our previous two articles made it clear that secret services (usually founded by a monarch, though not always) are by no means an imaginary cloak-and-dagger operation invented by eminent authors like John le Carré, Frederick Forsyth, Len Deighton and Ian Fleming. Alexander the Great entrusted much of the intelligence side of his staggering conquests to his most trusted general Ptolomy, aided by Alexander’s companion Hephaistion. Alfred before he became The Great had spies reporting to him from the Danish/Norwegian occupied parts of Eastern England; But perhaps the first officially set-up spy system, almost purely national, was thought up by the first Tudor king, Henry VII. His choice as spy-master was, of course, a churchman.
Carey ex-Archbishop of Canterbury confessed he ‘had doubts about his Faith’
All ends have to have a beginning, and the beginning of the end for the Church of England started at the beginning of the 20th century. The outrage had nothing to do with vicars, rectors, fathers, priests, vergers or even church wardens. A decision was made by the church hierarchy to sell off most of the parsonages, vicarages, deaneries – call them what you will, in the United Kingdom.
Previously, the Church of England had been the largest landowner in the UK. This was because not only did the church building itself (and often the land it was built on) belong to the Church, but its attendant graveyard as well, and, most importantly, the vicarage where the parson and his family (if he had one) lived, and the parson wrote (or copied) his sermons while his wife busied herself with the teacups.
In a recent edition I talked about MI6, which was once called SIS, and which, oddly enough, is mostly referred to these days using that original acronym (the Secret Intelligence Service). In many ways the service is similar to the United States’ CIA. Just as in that vast country the FBI (founded by Edgar Hoover) has some similarities with Britain’s MI5, in re the CIA and the SIS are supposed to deal with overt and covert overseas surveillance (and actions). The FBI and MI5 are supposed to deal with national or interior security and/ or surveillance.
Whatever you call them, between the two, no citizen can keep any secrets hidden from the all-seeing eye. George Orwell was right, as usual. The ordinary citizen may not know this, but governmental organisations know ALL (from your CV to your favourite toothpaste) – about YOU.
The real Cardinal Richelieu / commons.wikimedia.org
In half a dozen films, especially Hollywood films, the figure of the Duke of Richelieu has been categorized by famous actors as a plotting, conspiring, malignant courtier and politician who tried, among other dastardies, to seduce the French Queen, and dared to dissolve the King’s personal bodyguard – the Musketeers. The only thing the studios got right was Richelieu’s great height, which is why tall actors such as Vincent Price, Tim Rice and Charlton Heston played him in films.
Armand Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1585 – 1642) was Chief Minister to Louis XIII from 1628 to 1642, and certainly used the royal influence to encourage royal absolutism in France, and French influence in Europe. After his consecration as Bishop of Luçon in 1607 he joined the council of the Regent, Marie de Medici in or around 1616.
Not very long ago the British people decided they had had enough of Blairism, not enhanced much by Brownism when Tony Blair stood down as prime minister. Typically, they just managed to elect a Tory premier – without a majority. It never matters to the British people (or the Spanish for that matter) what an elected government actually achieves during its mandate, only that it should be of the right colour, usually red. The British had the chance to elect a new type of government which, had it obtained an absolute majority, could have had at least the opportunity to pull poor old Britain up by the bootstraps. Instead, the voters forever besotted with the idea that Socialism is the ninth wonder of the world, landed the Brits with a coalition.
I am reminded by the publication of an enormous new book (810 pages) written by Keith Jeffery that Great Britain’s first official secret service agency has just passed its hundredth anniversary. The book is called MI6: the history of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909 – 1949.
It was late in 1949 that a retired naval officer, Mansfield Cumming was prompted to organise what became known by its initials – SIS – the Secret Intelligence Service. Cumming was only 50.
In 1910 it was unthinkable that a whole book might eventually be dedicated to an analysis of a secret service, which, by the nature of its name, should be secret. This heavy tome is probably the first part of a two-volume history, since it deals with the period ending in 1949. Mansfield Cumming himself once said that if he had been asked to write an autobiography he would agree and produce a 400 page book, vellum-covered, with every page blank.
What happened to Czechoslovakia?
The middle-European country formerly known as Czechoslovakia was created from the northern part of the collapsed Austro-Hungarian Empire, at the end of the First World War. The then new state incorporated the Czechs of Bohemia-Moravia in the western part, with the Slovaks from the east.
Tomas Masaryk was the republic’s new President, and a certain Benes the foreign minister. The League of Nations existed then, and Masaryk was loyal to this ill-assorted group hastily thrown together after the holocaust of the World War, in which millions died hopelessly and uselessly. Alliances were made with Yugoslavia and Roumania in 1921, followed by a pact with France in 1924, and with the Soviet Union in 1935. These associations proved to give a certain notion of stability, but thinking Czechs were uncertain and suspicious, as indeed they should have been.
The ‘Schlieffen Plan’ / schoolhistory.co.uk
General Count von Schlieffen (1833 – 1913) was Chief of the German General Staff from 1891 until he retired in 1905. As a testament to his work for Germany, he finished an operational plan with which Germany could successfully attack France.
With certain modifications, the ‘Schlieffen Plan’ as it became known, was used as the basis for the massive German attack in 1914. Schlieffen believed a number of things, based on his military knowledge, and general awareness of exactly what was what and what could be done, or not done:
In a recent article, I published a brief account of the rise and fall of the British empire. The empire was just as much a product of private enterprise and individual initiative as it was a result of British and foreign politics. British adventurers discovered the lands and islands that eventually formed the empire, British politicans secured their ‘new ownership’, and British administrators managed the vast possessions, while the British Navy sailed round the world protecting them. James Brooke is a perfect example. Young, ambitious, ruthless, slight in build but wide in intellect, Brooke arrived in Borneo as just another administrator. He immediately set about helping one of the Brunei princes to put down a revolt, organised what ships of the fleet he could find to seek out pirates (of which there were thousands) and destroy them, and found himself rewarded with the governorship of Kuch in 1841 before he was forty.