
FLUSHING OUT THE SCOTTISH FINANCIAL MAFIA:
The shady Case of the Glasgow Development Agency

by Billy Clark

    The aim here is to examine in some detail an 
organisation called Scottish Enterprise (SE) which 
was invented in 1988 by Bill Hughes, at the time a 
CBI boss and advisor to the Thatcher government, 
now the director of Grampian Holdings. SE is the 
parent body of 14 local Enterprise Companies (LECs) 
and by looking in detail at one of these, the 
Glasgow Development Agency (GDA), we shall see 
that it represents a gathering of powerful 
business/financial alliances. The information 
provided here aims to inform our understanding 
of the forces in operation here, how they 
function and in whose interest.

    When Hughes proposed the SE system, he bypassed 
the then Secretary of  State for Scotland, Malcolm 
Rifkind, going straight to Mrs. Thatcher.   This 
unusual tactic was adopted because after the disastrous 
fall in the  Scottish Tory vote in the '87 elections, 
the Scottish Office was blamed for  resisting the new 
economic culture through the Scottish Development  
Agency (SDA).  Unable to conceive that her policies 
alienated the  Scottish electorate, Thatcher was 
already mulling over plans to scapegoat and abolish 
the SDA when Hughes opportunistically  knocked on 
her door.  We cannot fully reconstruct their 
conversation, but  perhaps Hughes promised to set 
things to rights by transforming the SDA  (created 
in '75 by Willie Ross) from a child of Wilsonian 
Corporatism, into a vehicle for promoting Thatcherism .   
Perhaps too, he would have said something about the 
deal being squeezed  past the Treasury via the promise 
of selling off, what could  be sold of  the SDA's 
property portfolio (they managed to raise 100m pounds 
before the slump set in), and privitising anything  
else the SDA had a share in.  In any case something 
made Thatcher's eyes  light up and two years later 
the project was launched at the Dunblane  Hydro.  It 
has hardly met with a word of praise since.

OBVIOUS CONNECTIONS

 Its initial hierarchy was established as follows: at 
the head of SE Sir  David Nickson  of the Clydesdale 
Bank, General Accident, Hambros Bank and  Scottish & 
Newcastle Breweries.  This choice alone represented a 
sizable  percentage of Scottish Capital and was further 
enlarged with the two  leaders of the main LECs in 
Glasgow and Edinburgh: Lord McFarlane and Sir  
Charles Annand Fraser respectively. Having the more 
obvious connections  to Nickson, McFarlane is the 
director of some fifty or so companies, the main 
ones being The Clydesdale Bank,  General Accident, 
The American Trust, Clansman,  Edinburgh Fund Managers  
and United Distillers/Guiness plc.  His other 
companies concentrate on  the construction and 
fitting out of offices from their painting right 
down to the packaging the furniture comes in,  
its transportation, and adhesive labels, the 
lot basically : if you work  in an office, go 
the bank then go for a drink, McFarlane's interests  
are well served. Politically we can locate him on 
the Authoritarian Right, he funds British United 
Industries (a  somewhat secretive channel for 
funding right-wing political projects),  and of
course the Conservative Party, General Accident 
alone donates  around 50,000 pounds a year.

     In the light of this it is clear that McFarlane 
would readily be attracted by a steering  role in an 
organisation devoted to manipulating the political 
climate of  Glasgow towards the right, and that he 
would have identified this agenda  as one which 
would in due course enhance his own empire.  McFarlane 
also seemed to have been highly aware of the  
opportunity the creation of the Glasgow LEC 
offered in openly  manipulating the Labour controlled 
District Council: and it looks like he  achieved 
everything he set out to do in this respect, but 
we will return to this subject later. 

      Sir Charles Annand Fraser's interests are 
similar to McFarlane's, and  they have been similarly 
financially enhanced through the hype of local  
enterprise. He is the director of about sixty companies 
including Scottish Television, Scottish Widows, Stakis 
plc and United  Biscuits.  Fraser's main activities 
are inextricably linked to Edinburgh  tourism, with 
Stakis and United Biscuits, and are augmented with 
other  interests concerning property development and 
"Heritage" projects; further interests being offshore 
tax-exempted  trusts ( British Assets Trust, Fidelity, 
Investors Capital Trust etc)  dealing mostly in cash 
deposits in various currencies .   These are all  
very large companies if not monopolising their 
fields, certainly dominating them, Scottish Widows 
alone makes  profits of 1,000m and is the second 
biggest Company in Scotland.  So  here we have two 
rich, highly important and influential men, who 
would  feel insulted if we did not describe them 
as motivated solely by personal gain and the 
pursuit of wealth, at the head of  the Glasgow 
Development Agency (GDA) and Lothian and 
Edinburgh Enterprise  Ltd. (LEEL). The question is why?  
The other question - as ever - is  where is all the
money going? 

A COMMUNAL SLUSH FUND

But there are more than just two men running the Scottish 
Financial Mafia, the  LECs as an adjunct to the process 
of profiteering seems to be acting as a  communal slush 
fund for a fair cross section of Scottish capitalism.  
If  we were to examine the other directors of even one 
each of McFarlane and Fraser's main companies we would 
see  that they are connected to almost the entire 
spectrum of the  nonparliamentary right who control 
finance, investment and industry in  Scotland.  To 
identify just the Banking interests alone: McFarlane 
and SE boss Sir David Nickson as we have already seen  
represent The Clydesdale Bank and General Accident.  
General Accident's  other directors include the 
directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the  TSB 
and the Ottoman Bank so we have four banks there, 
(five if we count Nickson's directorship of Hambros 
which is  a Merchant bank).   One of Sir Charles 
Annand Fraser's Company, Scottish  Widows, contains 
directors of the Clydesdale Bank, The Royal Bank of  
Scotland, The Bank of Scotland and Merchant Bank 
Kleinwort Benson, together with directors of the 
main Scottish  Investment Trusts, Murray Johnstone, 
Jardine Fleming and Baille Gifford.   Undoubtedly it 
was these connections -  and you will appreciate we 
have  just skimmed the surface - which would further 
recommend them for the job of heading a LEC.  Such 
alliances are  not unusual: we would find  similar 
groups of supposedly competing banks  always in existence, 
to a greater or lesser extent, if we examined any of  
the top Clearing Banks, Merchant Banks, Insurance 
Companies or Investment Trusts.

    It should also be pointed out that the official 
function  of an LEC is defined as that of encouraging 
enterprise by providing  business with financial or 
other forms of "strategic leadership and tactical 
support" including the encouragement of investment 
and training.   It has never been openly advanced in 
their own publicity material that  they have, a now 
somewhat anachronistic, "Thatcherite" mission, nor what  
that might entail.  Their involvement in local politics 
is usually defined, if at all, in terms of  unsubstantiated
boasts or buzzwords such as "job creation" and "inward  
investment".  Each of the LECs have a budget of upwards of 
55m pounds, while  the total SE expenditure was put at 
449m pounds for the last financial year.  While the overall 
initial popular perception of this  was that the money is 
given to deserving cases, SE have made it clear  that they 
do not think their role is to "bail out bankrupt companies".   
(Herald 1/5/93). They are however hell-bent on spending money 
on themselves.
 
 THEY LIKE TO SAY YES !

Now let us focus on the Glasgow LEC, the Glasgow Development 
Agency  (GDA).   McFarlane recently departed his post handing 
it over to Forbes  McPherson (the director of the TSB, Glasgow 
Cultural Enterprises, Hill Samuel Bank (a Merchant bank subsidiary 
of the TSB), The  Scottish Metropolitan Property Co. and Scottish 
Mutual Assurance).  Under  his leadership the GDA has funded 
several "new operations", the main ones, indeed the onlyones,   
include aiding Abbey National Life in occupying the building 
that BP vacated when they removed their  operation elsewhere 
(to be awarded 260,357  by Forth Valley Enterprise,  whose 
directors include Edward Ferguson of BP Chemicals).  The GDA 
has  also funded "second round investments", passing funds to 
Direct Line Insurance (a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of  
Scotland ), Provincial Insurance, British Airways, Barclays 
Stockbrokers,  The Norwich Union and the Army Personnel 
Centre, most of which as we shall see are old friends to 
Bill Hughes. The GDA's 92/93 Accounts  and Report  gives 
us an interesting insight into how they arrived at these 
decisions : "Other location marketing  activities 
include ... participation in complementary events such as 
the  Scottish Financial Enterprise dinner in London ."  
Some readers may have  already come to the conclusion that 
for a business to relocate in Glasgow it will most likely 
have closed its  operation somewhere else, obviously resulting 
in staff dismissals, and  such is the case with the examples 
cited above: the Army Pay Centre for  example relocating from 
Ashton-under-Lyne with all the workers being sacked.   If we 
examine the pattern of funding  we would see that the financial 
institutions received funds on the  pretext of training. This 
too is somewhat misleading given that virtually  all of the 
large financial institutions have been heavily fined by their 
regulatory bodies for failing to properly  train their staff 
and engaging in professional misconduct (thus  precipitating 
the massive private pensions swindle); including ofcourse   
Abbey National Life and the Norwich Union (who suspended their 
entire pensions sales staff as part of their  re-training).

      So here we have an insight into the process of how 
the GDA works, which could be roughly summarised as follows: 
(1) You go to a free lunch in London with a group of people 
who are stockbrokers, bankers and insurance men. (2) They tell 
you what to do. (3) You give them lots of money. (4) They sack 
a lot of their workforce.

A NICE LINE IN........

The decision to award 250,000 to Direct Line Insurance (again 
taken from  the GDA training budget) did not pass without 
comment by the Labour Party  who called for an enquiry into 
the matter.   By the reactionary nature of the enquiry they 
demanded, it  could be easily argued that they either completely 
fail to understand the  reality of the function of the GDA or 
are unwilling to concede their own  role in it.  Their posture 
of outrage seems solely fuelled by the fact that Direct Line 
gained a high public  profile as one of the fastest growing 
companies in the UK, with one of  the highest paid directors, 
Peter Wood, who receives a yearly salary of  6m.  The Labour 
Party are happy with SE as a whole, and they have to be, because 
their argument that Directline  should fund themselves rather 
than dip into pork barrel, while being   morally inspiring in 
an abstract way, directly intertwines with the  process of 
Labour Party patronage, as we shall see below.   One could 
also say the same concerning the fuss made over  the fact 
that a great deal of the LECs, all of them it would seem, 
have  been awarding funds to companies owned by members of 
the LECs.  Direct  Line is not run by anyone  on the GDA, 
it is though run by someone on Dumfries and Galloway 
Enterprise: its  chairman, Sir Michael Herries (also of 
Scottish Widows and one of Sir  Charles Fraser's Investment 
Companies).

  Although the GDA claim (Glasgow Herald 11/11/93) that 
"no directors or  connected persons had a material interest 
in any contract [issued by the GDA]"  they add the paradoxical 
rejoinder that "this does not mean, however,  that there were 
no financial contracts involving companies with  directoral 
links".  Sadly they declined to provide any further information, 
but what they are most likely concealing is  the fact that 
Scottish Mutual Assurance, Forbes McPherson's company, is a  
subsidiary of the Abbey National, who as referred to above 
are supposedly slipping quietly into the old BP offices aided 
by GDA funds and good wishes.  Coincidentally BP Chemicals 
had to hand over  most of the 260,357 when it was fined a 
total of 230,000 for burning  one worker to death and seriously 
burning three others in February '92. So there we have another 
use for enterprise cash: if you kill your workers your local LEC
will cover your legal fees.

  Research has only begun into the merry-go-round of funding 
concerning LEC's director's  companies receiving LEC funds 
(Herald 11/11/93); a bigger and more  revealing picture of 
this process would show the  inter-relationships between 
LECs funding other LEC directors companies. 

  RETURN OF THE JOKER

But none of this would come as any surprise to our founding 
father Bill  Hughes.  Who has gone on record as viewing the 
situation thus :  "You're  always going to get the joker,
always that one case every year or two where the Fraud Squad 
is called in.  That's unavoidable in any walk of  life 
today ... If we are going to have top-quality people serving 
on LEC  boards I would be surprised if they weren't trying to 
help their own  businesses.  Gosh they're giving up their 
time for nothing and that's good news".

    That kind of talk cuts both ways ofcourse: as was mentioned 
above Hughes  runs a company called Grampian Holdings which is 
engaged in such diverse  activities as transport bulk tippers, 
plant hire equipment, sporting goods and pharmaceuticals, its 
institutional shareholders are Murray  Johnstone: 4.08%, Scottish 
Widows: 4.89%, Barclays Bank: 4.3%, Standard  Life: 3.48%, Scottish 
Amicable: 3.52%, National Westminster Bank: 3.09%,  Abbey Life: 
(a subsidiary of Abbey National) 3.27% and Scottish Mutual 
Insurance: 3.55%, the bulk of whom we have  already encountered 
above as the recipients of GDA funding.  Another director of 
Grampian Holdings is  Professor Donald Mackay who last year 
took over from Sir David Nickson  as the overall head of 
Scottish Enterprise.  Professor Mackay (an advisor to six 
Secretaries of State for Scotland,  and whose other Company 
Pieda  has been receiving SE  money from the start)  has 
his work cut out for him, with an investigation by  the EC  
Commission's Co-ordination of Fraud Prevention Unit (Glasgow 
Herald 10/7/93), the result of an adverse audit of SE  
accounts in relation to their disposal of European Social 
Fund Money (money designed to help the poor),resulting in 
the present Commons Select Committee on Scottish Affairs  
enquiry into the operation of all the Enterprise agencies.

     It will be interesting to see if the Commons enquiry 
touches upon the  GDA's secret allocation of 500,000 to 
another of the UK's fastest  growing companies, Peel 
Holdings.  This is something of a farcical tale  of Peel 
Holdings  claiming that it had negotiated a contractual 
claim on a plot of land in Cambuslang  Glasgow (which 
incidentally is highly polluted) during the old days of  
the SDA.  They made their claim known when the GDA 
paradoxically offered  the same land to a very peculiar 
company called Superstadia (run by a man facing racketeering 
charges in the USA).   The money was given to Peel so they 
would give up their "rights" to the  land; but because of 
the secrecy of the transaction the nature of these  were never 
fully established.  Peel itself is based in Manchester and 
run by a  millionaire property speculator,  some local 
Councillors and individuals from the local Manchester  
Development/Enterprise companies.   On a similar theme, 
and unfortunately  for our righteously indignant Labour 
Party, the enquiry could also touch on one of their more 
sensitive points, namely  an old SDA loan to a property 
company run by some Monklands District  Councillors which 
was unaccountably written off.  The Labour Party calls  
for investigation into quangos has already reached points 
of transcendental absurdity with ousted Glasgow City 
Council  Leader Jean McFadden going into print railing on 
about their lack of  accountability, without disclosing 
that she herself is on  the board of  the GDA, as  was 
her predecessor  Pat Lally, and as is STUC "supremo" 
Campbell  Christie .

     Turning back to Forbes McPherson, the reader will 
recall that he is a  member of a company called Glasgow 
Cultural Enterprises (GCE).  This was  set up in 1990 
during the "Year of Culture " to profit from and administrate 
(including the spending of a 1m Council subsidy) the recently 
built Royal Concert Hall, (a similar deal being struck with   
the other main Glasgow concert venue, the SECC).  Similar to 
the GDA, GCE  is made up of a  alliance of Labour Councillors 
and top Businessmen and aptly demonstrates the willingness  
(some would say complicity) of the Labour Council to embrace 
the  privatisation of its amenities indicative of the transfer 
of power  integral to the GDA's right-wing agenda.  The 
celebrations of a new Glasgow in 1990 directly coincided 
with the launch of the  GDA, which from its onset completely 
took over the Council's budget and  responsibilities regarding
the "redevelopment" of the City, largely on  the pretext that 
they would encourage "culture and tourism". In regard to their 
Thatcherite crusade (inasmuch as  that word merely mystifies 
the unaccountable power of finance capital and  the City of 
London) the notion of cultural redevelopment provides the 
GDA  with an all encompassing scope for tinkering with 
local democracy.

   FINGERS IN THE PIE

Another significant member of GCE is (the recently knighted)  
Sir Ray  Johnstone whose directorships include Scottish Amicable, 
Murray Johnstone  Investment Trust, and Scottish Financial 
Enterprise (SFE).  The reader  will also recall that it is 
SFE  which advises the GDA at those London dinners.   
A partial breakdown of some of the other directors of 
Scottish Amicable  including their other directorships 
would include:
Dr. William Brown:  GMTV,  Pauline Hyde & Associates, 
Radio Clyde. The Scottish Arts Council, STV. 
[Brown is an ex-director of the  GDA].

Roy Nicolson:  Cathedral Investments, Eurosalas Properties, 
Forth Valley  Enterprise,  J. Rothschilds Assurance.

Maurice Paterson:  Lautro Ltd. 
[The regulatory body for Insurance Companies].

Thomas Johnston:  Bank of Scotland, Science Projects (Scotland).

Ronald Miller:  Dawson International, Christian Salvesen, Securities  
Trust of Scotland.

Peter Jamieson:  Robert Fleming Holdings, Jardine Fleming Group (Bermuda),
 Kleinwort Overseas Investment Trust.

Bernard Solomans:  Allied Provincial, Edinburgh Fund Managers 
Investment  Trust, The London Stock Exchange, Scottish Financial 
Enterprise. 

Through Ray Johnstone we can see an intimate picture of the 
relationship between SFE, GCE, and the LECs not to mention 
Cultural funding  bodies, the media and a range of Investment 
Trusts and Financial  Institutions.  One other, now ex-director 
of SFE is Angus Grossart whose  companies Noble Grossart 
(Scotland's first merchant Bank), Alexander & Alexander, 
American Trust, Scottish Investment  Trust, Scottish Television, 
The Royal Bank of Scotland, Edinburgh Fund  Managers, Hewden 
Stuart and Murray International Holdings; make Grossart  one 
of the most influential men in Scotland : Alexander & Alexander 
is the world's second biggest insurance broker,  and has 
recently(more or less) taken over the running of the Glasgow 
Royal Infirmary  Trust, imposing ludicrous conditions on the 
ancillary staff who have  started a strike in protest.And 
here we have the crux of the matter: if you have a conflict 
of interest, because it is they who make their money through 
people making private provision for theses things, through 
private pensions, health care insurance and so forth, add 
to that the unaccountability of a quango and we can see 
the LECs as a key instrument in basic covert right-wing 
operations. We can connect Angus up with Norman McFarlane 
through The American Trust which they  both run (interestingly 
along with Aims of Industry member Lord Goold);  they  also 
jointly run Edinburgh Fund Managers, its parent company.   
These two companies run the mineworkers Pension scheme and 
the British Coal staff pension scheme, investing it in  
American securities.  Edinburgh Fund Managers also manage 
the investment  portfolio of The Smaller Companies 
International Trust, which they  foolishly invested 
in a company called International Signal & Control 
(IS&C), which some readers may know became part of  
the BCCI/Iran-Contra saga: it was an arms Company 
which merged with  Ferranti and then collapsed, 
leaving a 1bn hole in Ferranti's accounts  (causing
its collapse) and sending IS&C's far-right chairman 
into an American jail (the other directors who were  
Washington power brokers seem to have escaped).

  It would be interesting to see when Edinburgh Fund 
Managers ditched  their IS&C shares, this would reveal 
the extent of Grossart and McFarlane's far-right 
connections.  The investment world is a tricky  
business and to get in on the bottom floor one must 
engage in what can  only be termed espionage.  The 
world of banking and high finance has long  
interpenetrated with that of the Secret Service and
 the sharing of intelligence forms the basis of how 
UK interests  are protected and advanced. 

FAR RIGHT CONNECTION 

The far-right connections seem to abound here, going 
back to Forbes  McPherson, our GDA leader shares his 
seats on the board of the TSB and Hill Samuel with 
Sir Richard Lloyd of the Ditchley Foundation  and 
various arms companies.  The Ditchley Foundation is
based at Ditchley  Park and " is a conference centre...used 
for private VIP meetings guarded  by Special Branch and MI5.  
It was used by the ISC [Institute for the study of Conflict] 
as a conference  centre from 1972 onwards; the ISC Council 
minutes of 21/1/72 mention an  ISC conference on Ireland 
that was held under conditions of extreme  secrecy.  Ditchley 
park is closely linked to the Bilderberg Group, 14 of whose 
members sit on the centre's board of  Governors."  
(Lobster no.26 page 16). Lloyd has been on the Council of  
management of the Ditchley Foundation since 1974, and he 
also sat in on  the mid-seventies Wilson Committee's 
attempts to curb the unaccountable power of the financial 
world, so Forbes keeps  some interesting company. 

   The question of whether the LECs are underwriting the  
expenses of the larger businesses and financial institutions 
is hardly  open to debate .  It is hard to see what the 
waste of time and money  represented by the Commons 
tinkering enquiry into it will achieve, a fine perhaps, 
some government funds returning to  the Treasury, one or 
two resignations ?   Already there has been a few  
resignations from within the LECs on the basis that 
some directors were  not told what was actually going 
on. 

SCREENING FOR WORKFARE

  It has also been reported, even in the mainstream 
media, that the banks  have taken over the role hitherto 
the province of the Economic League:  that of amassing 
personal information on individuals to establish a political 
and  social profile with a view to political vetting 
and blacklisting.  Secretive elements in what must be 
the most sinister aspect of the work of  the LECs can 
be tentatively identified in aspects of their training  
projects, particularly with the work of the Restart 
Programme (the LECs receive a large part of their funding 
from the Department of Employment).  It is true that the 
management of the  unemployed is moving into the hands of 
shady little companies which are  funded by the LECs while 
assuming the guise of private companies.   One  of the more 
peculiar activities of the week-long compulsory Restart 
course is the collection of data on its  subjects: they 
are asked to write a CV as an exercise and these are  
collected (typed out by persons unknown) and never 
returned to the  individual, there are also several 
personality assessment questionnaires which are again 
assiduously collected.   All  "long-term" unemployed 
individuals have to endure these courses or  suffer the 
withdrawal of their benefit.   Amounting to  little more 
than pencil sharpening and clock watching, the courses  
offer a golden opportunity to gather all manner of  
intelligence on "troublemakers".  They are also staffed 
at a higher level  by people fresh from training in the 
US on the Workfare system,the model for future Government 
policy.

   The  Natwest Bank has also become the owner of the
 Contaminated Land Register,  which lists thousands of 
polluted sites throughout the UK.   Prior to the last 
election the Government did  promise that this would be 
published and made public, but they reneged on  this and 
now a company or individual has to pay the Natwest (after a  
suitable vetting no doubt) to find out what lies beneath the 
surface of a prospective development or an existing one.   
The LECs are also supposedly responsible for clearing up 
polluted sites  of, for example ex-steel mills such as 
Ravenscraig.  This is (at times  literally) something of 
a minefield in social, economic and political terms, 
particularly since the property and  construction industries 
(the two biggest clients of the Banks and  Insurance 
companies) are in such a slump.  There are massive 
interests  being protected here: in the US a new report 
estimates that the insurance Companies will have to 
reserve $260bn in  additional funds to meet their exposure 
to environmental and asbestos  claims over the next 15 
years (Financial Times 13/4/94).   And it is much  the 
same in the UK, only made worse by the partially 
cataclysmic problems already facing Lloyds (which acts 
as the  clearing house through which every Insurance 
company works).  So a  document like the Contaminated 
Land Register, and the responsibility for  clearing up 
the mess, of at times immortal toxins, strewn all over 
post-industrial Britain, has to be put into safe  hands 
or better still in nobodies, hands in the Natwest's 
bomb proof  bunker.
   
STARSHIP ENTERPRISE

 The concept of Enterprise and Enterprise Zones are, on a 
wider scale,  at the core of how the World Bank and the 
IMF function as the premier development agencies.  Both  
draw on  top executives from the main European and American 
Banks, and of course  function as a wing of Western, mainly 
US, foreign policy; largely free  from legislative, judicial 
constraints and popular influence, they are increasingly the 
principal agents in  forcing governments to  "devalue their 
currency, privitise their  industries, open their doors to 
foreign investment, freeze wages, raise  food prices, slash 
social services and implement Bank-sanction population 
programmes."  (Covert Action No 39, p28).

   With a Government as intertwined with the financial 
Institutions  as  we have in the UK, what is done in the 
name of development by the World  Bank and the IMF is not 
restricted to the "Third World" but is continually modified 
into local variants for home  application.  Professor 
Donald MacKay, the new SE leader made his name as  
a consultant by winning a $1m Economic consultancy 
from the World Bank .  Firmly in the neo-conservative 
monetarist camp, he believes that "the only way public 
spending can be cut in any  meaningful way would be a 
through a major shake up of the social security  system 
including a rethink about the principle of universal benefits".    
(Scotsman 12/1/93)  It was Bill Hughes' experimental contribution 
to this, in the form of the creation of SE,  which would have 
really made Mrs. Thatcher's eyes light up.   Back in '88   
when she gave him the go-ahead Hughes must have felt like 
Yul Brenner in  the Magnificent Seven, gathering up 
institutional investors in his own Company and his 
CBI chums and riding  into town, the difference being 
that the Bandits terrorising the locals  are 
indistinguishable from their new found protectors. 

