RIP Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd

[Paul Rigby]

Friends in high places

UK members of the British-American Project include:
Peter Mandelson EU trade commissioner
Jonathan Powell Tony Blair's chief of staff
Jeremy Paxman broadcast journalist and author
Mo Mowlam former Labour Northern Ireland secretary
Adair Turner head of pensions commission
Trevor Phillips chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality
James Naughtie broadcast journalist and author
Matthew Taylor Downing Street head of policy
Chris Smith former Labour culture secretary
Baroness Symons Foreign Office minister
Lord Robertson former Nato secretary-general
Douglas Alexander Foreign Office and trade minister
Geoff Mulgan former head of Downing Street's policy and strategy unit
Baroness Scotland Home Office minister
Julia Hobsbawm public relations consultant
Steve Hilton Conservative special adviser
Benjamin Zephaniah poet and activist
Colonel Bob Stewart former commander of British forces in Bosnia
David Willetts Conservative shadow work and pensions secretary
Alan Sked founder of Ukip
Stephen Dorrell former Conservative health secretary
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown columnist and broadcaster
Charles Moore former editor of the Daily Telegraph
Nick Butler BP group vice-president, strategy and policy development
Lord Lipsey Labour peer and author

The only real surprise there is Benjamin Zephaniah. Caribbean roots, dreadlocks, pot-smoking Bob Marley fan. Resident of Ladywood, Birmingham, a place I know well from years driving though on route to my office in neighboring Hockley. Seems to be very popular with the still alienated black community there too. Also, a couple of years ago he ostentatiously refused an OBE saying he didn't want ANY association with the British Empire (OK Alibhai-Brown has a similar view but she is simply too stuck-up revolting for words).

No surprises whatsoever with any of the others though. Ruthless establishment career climbers to a man - and woman.

Alibhai-Brown has recently discovered the Afghan invasion was not all it was cracked up to be. Smart cooky, no?

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/com...76500.html

I wonder whether Charles Moore bumped into Zephaniah at any of the BAP career conventions? A potentially interesting exchange, given Moore's early-80s (or was it late 70s?) pamphlet-paean to white working-class London, The Old People of Lambeth (?).