ABSTRACT
The author had decided to ‘speak clearly’ one more time, and wrote to the chairman of the Britain-Russia Centre, Sir Rodric Braithwaite. It was going to be a notice included in the normal end of summer mail-shot, saying that the AGM would be on 21 October and that there would be a vote on amended Articles of Association, copies of which members could obtain by sending an SAE. That struck the author as falling short of the usual norms and certainly short of the standard set by Curtis Keeble and myself in our day. The author hopes that can be looked at again, if necessary. The Centres would be changed into little more than operational tools of the Britishapparat, licensed to bid for tasks defined as falling within official ‘mission statements’. This was history repeating itself as Whitehall farce.
