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Thatcher’s Secret Wars tells the story of the rise of the secret state in modern times and the way the state-within-the-state warped the history of her premiership and manipulated the population into supporting an ideology designed to defeat her definition of the ‘enemies within’; everyone she could not see eye to eye with. It is also about how her supporters recognised whether a civil servant, journalist, union leader or simple member of the public was ’one of us’ rather than one of those: the subversive and unwashed socialists of whom her government were so wary.
The central argument of the book is that there was not only a secret and undeclared, internal ‘cold war’ fought throughout the 1980s (a war that had started in the 1970s), but that the consequences of those years have huge implications for the importance and role of the state as it evolved beyond into the twenty-first century outside parliamentary control. It is in the years between the 1970s and 1990 that the state became a direct arm of government policy, but one which was undeclared as such and unexamined in parliament. This has led to the secret bureaucracy of the state actually metamorphosing into the real and uncontrolled hidden political power in Britain; a power no longer decided by parliamentary process.
"Bloom is a [...] public intellectual, a regular media commentator and the prolific author and editor of books on pulp fiction, Poe and Freud, graphic novels, politics and literature, best-sellers, American Gothic, British horror, violence and the occult. In short, he has street cred" Times Higher Education Magazine
Described by The Times as "a polymath", CLIVE BLOOM is Emeritus Professor of English and American Studies at Middlesex University, best-selling author and publisher. When Professor Bloom isn't writing and researching he divides his time between New York University and The University of Notre Dame.
Clive 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 and he is quoted in the Columbia Book of World Quotations.
His numerous books include Restless Revolutionaries, Violent London: 2000 Years of Riots, Rebels and Revolts, Bestsellers: Popular Fiction Since 1900, Terror Within: The Dream of a British Republic, Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory; and Gothic Horror, all of which have enjoyed international recognition.
Follow Clive on Twitter @CliveBloom. Contact Clive directly at cbloom4189@aol.com, find him on Linked In or Like on Facebook.
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