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Mike Hughes Spies at Work Blog
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Welcome to
Spies at Work
Founded in 1919, the Economic League was a right-wing political organisation in the UK, established in response to the extension of the vote to all working men and to, for the first time women.
It was both a "crusade for capitalism" and an unprincipled crusade against radical thought amongst the newly enfranchised, and mostly, ordinary people who had become voters.
Behind its aggressive campaigning public facade there were dark and profoundly undemocratic intentions and methods. Most notorious of these was its Blacklist of undesirable potential employees which was maintained secretly into the 21st century.
This website is a portal into the Leagues's history and place to find original documents. It is a history that is still being discoveredWe are currently relaunching the site with more historic resources to download including internal League Documents, Economic League publications and documents about the Economic League. s At Work
A Spies at Work Gift for May Day 2024
An alternative interim Report on the Tranche 1 of Mitting
Since retiring I’ve spent the last two years trying to close some of the gaps in the story of the Economic League’s organisational development and also making better use of some of the archives I have collect over the last thirty odd years. In doing that I have been greatly helped by brilliant expansion in the online availability of local newspapers through the British Newspaper Archive and even the evidence published so far by Mitting Inquiry. I am putting the finishing touches to two books that I hope to have published before the Mitting Inquiry starts meeting in July.
I’ve also been doing my homework for the new public hearings, reviewing the UCPI progress and preparing for the next stage. One of the frustrating features of Mitting is its limited consideration and understanding of the historical and ideological context of the events it is considering and of all the participants – both the state perpetrators and the citizen victims.
That is doubly frustrating because there is only one advantage to using an inquisitorial methodology. It should be to make it easier to get to the truth but that is not happening or going to happen while the corporate and individual state witness behave like uncooperative and ashamed defendants, in the face the least challenging interrogation of their stories.
In Tranche 1 there was a surprising large amount of discussion of “subversion”, most of which was absolute balderdash, historically and constitutionally. Since we have at least two more years of evidence taking and before the final report starts to be prepared and pulled together, I think it should be challenged sooner rather than later. So I have prepared my own Tranche 1 interim report .
It is a subversive guide to subversion and it is available to download for free from my website spiesatwork.co.uk. It is also free to distribute under the creative commons. It could also make an interesting companion read for UNITE’s report into Union collusion when it is published.
It provides taster for the two books I am publishing in the summer – “Inside the Economic League” and “Attlee’s Industrial Purge”
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