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this mysterious organization? It was founded in 1954 and it took its name from the hotel in the Netherlands where the first meeting was held. Its founder members were British politician Denis Healey, Joseph Retinger, David Rockefeller and Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands, a man who, it is often pointed out, was a member of the Nazi party in his youth (though how that impacts upon those conspiracy theorists who see the Bilderberg Group as a Jewish conspiracy is anyone's guess).
    The group is still based in the Netherlands, for administrative purposes at least. It maintains an office in the quiet town of Leiden. Phone calls to the office, however, are invariably met with an anonymous answerphone message.
    The official purpose of the Bilderberg group, inasmuch as it has been publicly expressed, was to further the understanding between Western Europe and North America through informal meetings between powerful individuals. If it has an agenda, says founder member Lord Healey, it is to promote democracy across the globe. To this end, a steering committee draws up an invitation list each year with up to a hundred names on it, all of them either European or North American. The location of the annual meeting is fixed, with countries taking it in turn to host the meetings. Funding for the conferences is then raised from friendly corporations like Nokia or Fiat, for these conferences are where the top names in politics and industry meet. The list of participants is made available to the public, but the topics of the discussions are not. And attendees have to promise not to reveal what has been said at Bilderberg meetings. This secrecy, of course, has attracted much sceptical coverage and has provided the conspiracy theorists with ammunition. Bilderbergers themselves claim that it is not secrecy but privacy – and that privacy is essential if prominent people are to be allowed to speak freely, without the fear of media attention.
    A DARKER PURPOSE?
One thing is for sure, though. Few people ever turn down an invitation to a Bilderberg event and attending one of their meetings is almost always a good career move. Some say that this is just the way of the world. There are plenty of exclusive clubs where the rich and powerful meet away from prying eyes: the Bilderberg is simply the most exclusive club of them all.
    Its members like to suggest that the Bilderberg Group is a benign organization, a think-tank dedicated to the values of liberal democracy, whose interest is simply in helping the world to run better. Its critics, however, feel that the group has a much darker purpose. They find it hard to believe that an organization that is genuinely committed to democracy should feel the need to shroud its discussions in secrecy. At best, say the critics, the Bilderberg is an engine of globalization, an organization dedicated to producing a bland new world where we all consume the same goods, watch the same TV shows and believe the same identikit politicians. A world, in short, that is run for profit. Earth plc.
    Others feel that the aims of the group are more sinister yet. They claim that the Bilderberg is an actively neo-Nazi organization that is working to build a world fascist state. Others suggest that the Bilderberg Group is simply the latest front organization for the Illuminati, the secret rulers of the world for centuries.
    So which of these is the Bilderberg? Benign talking shop or sinister cabal? There seems to be little or no evidence for the more extreme claims. However, the accusation that this is an organization that is committed to globalization seems to have some substance. It is surely no coincidence that one of the delegates in 2005 is Mrs Bill Gates, wife of the supreme globalizer. Yet globalization is hardly a secret matter: one has only to walk down any shopping street from Berlin to Baltimore to see that. Perhaps the truth of the matter is that today, political, media and commercial power is increasingly concentrated