Pat Pottle News Today

Pioneering lawyer and civil liberties campaigner who paved the way for the abolition of the death penalty in Britain

Daniel Khalife made a remarkable escape – but it can’t match the panache of some of his predecessors

Much to the anger of the government and the right-wing media, juries simply aren't buying that any disruptions must be seen as illegal

Letters:<strong> Peter Davis</strong> says it is important that what citizens can do without being penalised criminally should be predictable, while <strong>John Marriott</strong> argues that taking the law into your own hands is never right

Barnaby Kay’s gripping drama explores what really happened during 1966 prison breakout by Russian spy 14 January, 2021 — By Lucy Popescu BREAKING Blake opens in October 1966 with a memorable football match – England against Northern Ireland – and a prison breakout. George Blake (Michael Maloney), a Russian spy, has just escaped from Wormwood Scrubs. It was initially assumed that the KGB had masterminded his escape, but Barnaby Kay’s gripping drama explores what really h...

IT WAS one of those gloriously serendipitous coincidences. In the Morning Star of December 28 late last year Nick Wright gave us an analytical obituary of spy and novelist John Le Carre and the writer’s undoubted deep understanding of the Cold War. In the same edition, on the paper’s news pages was the report that George Blake, one of Russia’s best known spies in Britain, had died in his Moscow “dacha,” or country cottage at the age of 98. The news item reported tributes to the forme...

by Binoy Kampmark / December 29th, 2020 Filling the espionage ranks with legions of the non-belonging comes with its share of risk.  The process is counter-intuitive, putting stock in skill and aptitude above the potential compromise of loyalty and divergence.  Eventually, such a recruit might find a set of closely guarded principles. The son of a Sephardic Jew and Dutch Protestant might well count as excellent material for British intelligence but George Behar ended up condemned in Britain a...

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MASTER spy George Blake has died at the age of 98 in Moscow. For nine years during the Cold War he spied for the Soviet Union from inside the British intelligence services. He was caught in 1961 and jailed for 42 years, the longest sentence for a crime other than murder ever handed down in the UK. He escaped from Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1966 to live out his days in Moscow as a Soviet hero. Russian President Vladimir Putin described him as an “outstanding professional of special courag...

Monday, 28 December 2020, 2:52 pm Filling the espionage ranks with legions of the non-belonging comes with its share of risk. The process is counter-intuitive, putting stock in skill and aptitude above the potential compromise of loyalty and divergence. Eventually, such a recruit might find a set of closely guarded principles. The son of a Sephardic Jew and Dutch Protestant might well count as excellent material for British intelligence but George Behar ended up condemned in Britain and the to...