What I’m currently working on for the Master of Special Operations and Irregular Warfare at UNSW Canberra @ ADFA for the graduate unit ZHSS8461 Threats (Guerrilla, Revolutionary, Insurgent and Militia) and Irregular Warfare.
Abstract
In 1975, the United Kingdom faced significant domestic turmoil (Medhurst 2014, Sandbrook 2013, Beckett 2008).
The minority government of Labour’s Harold Wilson had succeeded the prior Conservative government of Edmund Heath (1970-74). This essay investigates a Foreign Internal Defence intervention: the pivotal role that financier Sir James Goldsmith played in founding the National Association for Freedom in 1975 (which later became the Freedom Association) in order to facilitate the knowledge transfer of SAS-like Executive Action skills to a Civil Affairs oriented target audience (Curtis 1999a & 1999b, Midgley & Hutchins 2004, Wansell 1988).
Sir James Goldsmith was concerned about economic decline, the loss of the industrial base, and perceived communist subversion in the trade union movement. In a now infamous live interview on the BBC’s The Money Programme in 1977, he directly confronted journalists Hugh Stephenson and James Bellini (The Money Programme 1977a, 1977b). CEOs subsequently used this interview for media training and PR crisis management handling.
This paper makes several original contributions. It highlights that the Special Operations domains of Foreign Internal Defence, Psychological Operations and Civil Affairs have a long Cold War history in the Anglosphere that foreshadow contemporary anxieties and fears. This is crucial to elite management and social influence over allowable public discourse (Drochon 2026, Drezner 2017). It examines how conservative and reactionary business elites function tactically and operationally in being a ‘counterveiling power’ (Galbraith 1967) to left-wing socio-political revolutionaries and vanguards. Finally, it begins to co-integrate theory-building constructs used to examine terrorist organisations (Burns 2020, Burns 2011-2020) with the strategic logics of proxy warfare conducted via subversion based policy instruments (Maher 2024).
Bibliography
Beckett, Andy. When The Lights Went Out: Britain In The 1970s. London: Faber, 2008.
Burns, Alex. ‘PhD Dissertation Candidature Files.’ Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 2011-2020, https://unsw.academia.edu/AlexBurns/PhD%20Dissertation
Burns, Alex. ‘The Strategic Culture of Terrorist Organisations.’ PhD Dissertation. Clayton, Australia: Monash University, 2020, https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/thesis/The_Development_of_Strategic_Culture_in_Terrorist_Organisations/12154533/1?file=22349793
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Maher, Andrew. ‘The Strategic Logic of Proxy Warfare: Addressing Australia’s Policy for Competition.’ PhD Dissertation. Canberra, Australia: UNSW Canberra, 2020, https://unsworks.unsw.edu.au/entities/publication/f58df354-ccee-45a6-908d-23467d7a3ed5
Medhurst, John. That Option No Longer Exists: 1974-1976. London: Zer0 Books, 2014.
Midgley, Dominic & Chris Hutchins. Goldsmith: Money, Women and Power. London: Neville Ness House Ltd, 2004.
The Money Programme. ‘Sir James Goldsmith Interview – Part 1.’ London: BBC, 1977a,
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Sandbrook, Dominic. Seasons In The Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979. London: Penguin Press, 2013.
Wansell, Geoffrey. Tycoon: Life of James Goldsmith. London: Grafton, 1988.