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“... Never underestimate the importance of fortuitous timing in the development of events. Governments and nations can get onto a motorway, and then find to their alarm that they are on a journey on which they never intended to travel, but from which there is no acceptable exit. We are faced with a shooting war in the South Atlantic that few British politicians thought could, should or would occur ...”

“... usually more candid. In their accounts the bruises tend to show; so does the anger. The fury of Mr Tam Dalyell, Labour Member of Parliament for Linlithgow, at his inability to damage the Prime Minister over her role in the Belgrano affair and other matters, borders upon the uncontainable. He is the politician who has turned tenacity into an art ...”

“... In all, 255 task-force lives were lost in the operation. A further 777 were injured but, pace Tarn Dalyell, who has already asked more than three hundred Parliamentary questions about the war, the majority were not ‘maimed for life’: indeed, seven hundred are said to be fully employed. Some thirty-four aircraft were lost (including nine helicopters aboard ...”

“... so inconclusive: the parties stand firmly at opposite poles, and shout past each other. If, like Tam Dalyell, your basic political philosophy is progressive, then you seize upon the intentional character of science, and make your case on the assumption that well-planned research is an effective way of opening a path to any desired goal. What society can ...”

“... In​ his recent book, The Question of Scotland: Devolution and After (Birlinn, £9.99) Tam Dalyell, for many years the Labour MP for West Lothian, identifies several points at which the march of Scottish nationalism could have been halted. His list is typically eccentric: had Willie Whitelaw succeeded Ted Heath, Scotland’s industrial base would have been saved from Thatcherism; had Geoffrey Crowther, chair of the Royal Commission on the Constitution, not died of a heart attack at Heathrow in 1972, the commission would never have recommended setting up a Scottish parliament ...”

“... may still have had a few qualms when they saw their man in the flesh. A photograph reproduced in Tam Dalyell’s peculiar but highly entertaining memoir of Crossman gives some idea of what he might have looked like. It shows the young Dick seated in the centre of a group of five Winchester scholars. Grave and gowned, he looks out with supreme ...”

“... meetings with the intention of discussing the Falklands with him, but this was now history and Tam Dalyell didn’t seem interested in answering my letters. A member of the party had prostate cancer and ‘PC’ started appearing on number plates. It meant either ‘President Clinton’ or ‘Prostate Cancer’. I prayed to God that the president ...”

“... W.G. Runciman, Neal Ascherson, Christopher Hitchens, R.W. Johnson, Ross McKibbin, E.P. Thompson, Tam Dalyell and Peter Clarke. What they wrote seemed excellent to me, with Runciman bearing the palm for aphoristic conciseness. In embarking on a review, also in 1989, of Hugo Young’s biography of her, R.W. Johnson was also concise: ‘personally, she is ...”

“... a peaceful solution to the problem of the Falkland Islands. In a recent London Review of Books, Tam Dalyell has highlighted the vast increase in the armaments the Argentinians possess compared with what they had in 1982. Paul Rogers, defence analyst at Bradford University, can show that 74 strike aircraft lost by the Argentine Air Force during the ...”

“... a rat sandwich with the authorities. When Ponting, having been tried for passing information to Tam Dalyell about the sinking of the General Belgrano in the Falklands War, was acquitted on public interest grounds, the government stipulated in the Official Secrets Act 1989 that the ‘public interest’ is what the government of the day takes it to ...”

“... of these unprovoked attacks the previous day. Careful Parliamentary questioning, notably by Tarn Dalyell,* coupled with inquiries from journalists such as Paul Foot and from defence analysts, has shown that all of these assertions are false. The Conqueror had been shadowing the cruiser for over thirty hours with orders to attack only if it entered the ...”

“... accepted this. Abse’s rather florid taste in waistcoats had already made him conspicuous. Tam Dalyell begged him not to ‘wear his funny dresses’ but Abse’s idiosyncrasies seemed to help the cause along. All his speeches assumed that no MP had ever taken part in such depraved activity. Homosexuals were a handicapped species, completely alien ...”

“... whined at the withdrawal of his megaphone from their ears. Nor did any Member of Parliament – Tam Dalyell excepted – raise the constitutional point made by Harris that ‘in the past, the rule which Prime Ministers had insisted upon was that the Cabinet could argue strenuously in private, but that in public a united front must be presented. Mrs ...”

“... and perhaps even make governments. We applaud the gritty independence of a George Cunningham or a Tam Dalyell; we rejoice when a backbench revolt emasculates a Government measure; we call for stronger committees, more independent of the Whips; we deplore the mania for secrecy that dominates Whitehall. But on a different level, on the level of actual ...”

“... and became a music teacher. Another Loch maverick, whose father took his mother’s name, is Tam Dalyell, the Father of the House of Commons and indefatigable critic of British foreign policy. But he was only 14 at the time of Indian independence. The roll-call of families might give the impression that a vast British population was settled over a ...”