http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2012/10/Eric_Pickles_Conference_2012.aspx
Worth now runs the Better Public Services Project at the right wing Policy Exchange ‘think tank’ and his Telegraph article rails against opponents of Con Dem public sector reform - particularly campaigners who are encouraging local people to exercise their democratic rights to participate in the local consultative structures which provide a fig leaf of democracy concealing the break-up of universal public services.
Trapped in a Cold War bubble like Pickles, Worth advocates that the Con Dem Government should use counter insurgency methods formulated by the British military in the aftermath of protracted imperial wars in Malaya and Vietnam:
‘Which brings us back to the analogy of guerrilla warfare. The most effective answer to dealing with that was developed by a free-thinking British Army officer, Robert Thompson, in the Sixties. Unlike the rest of the top brass of his time, Thompson understood that, ultimately, the battle for the hearts and minds of ordinary people was far more important than endlessly chasing after the guerrillas themselves or appealing to intellectual elites. The lesson applies more than ever in politics today’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9775821/Fighting-back-against-the-Left-wing-guerrillas.html
In 1949 the then US Secretary of Defence, James Forrestal was reported to have said, "The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming. They're right around. I've seen Russian soldiers!" Later that same year he committed suicide by jumping out a hospital window.
That we have Conservative politicians and lobbyists with a similar unhinged mentality calling the shots on Government policy shows the scale of the threat to public services in the UK.