The Oyston Affair appears to have been the longest and most expensive privately-funded political dirty tricks campaign in recent British history. The astonishing 15-year campaign waged against Owen Oyston by Michael Murrin, the owner of a fish and chip shop in the village of Longridge, Lancs, was backed by help and cash payments raised […]
[…] recordings recovered from an old manor house in Lancashire reveal the true depths of corruption in English provincial life at the end of the twentieth century. Owen Oyston was the British Labour Party’s biggest private financial contributor in the Thatcher years. The millionaire owner of radio stations and glossy magazines had bailed out both […]
[…] Angel, said to have cost about £25 million. Lancashire commerce branch detectives trawled the financial affairs of politicians who were friendly with the now-jailed ‘socialist’ tycoon, Owen Oyston, but no councillor or council official has yet been convicted of any offence under Operation Angel. Councillor Frank McGrath, a millionaire in 1987, from investments in […]
[PDF file]: The Oyston Files Andrew Rosthorn Darwen, Lancashire: Red Sea Books, 2021, £16.99, h/b Nick Must At a macro level, this is a fairly simple story: Owen Oyston, a multi-millionaire supporter of the Labour Party,1 was subject to a politically motivated smear campaign that lasted nearly two decades. Andrew Rosthorn identifies the three main instigators […]
[…] (and related) literature, by Anthony Frewin, from Lobster 31 (1996) Who were they travelling with? By Tom Easton, from Lobster 31 (1996) UFOs and the governments of the USA and UK, by Armen Victorian, from Lobster 32 (1996) Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair, Andrew Rosthorn, from Lobster Issue 34 (1997)
[…] just go ahead and try them out on involuntary subjects, which is what seems to be happening. This issue contains a very long chronology on the Owen Oyston case, one of the most important as well as one of the most under-reported examples of parapolitics in this country’s post-war history. As usual, the author-less […]
[PDF file]: […] Blackpool Football Club in a £34 million award in damages and costs. Mr Justice Marcus Smith decided that the majority owner of Blackpool FC, estate agent Owen Oyston, and his son Karl, the chairman of the football club, had ‘abused their majority powers’ to the detriment of both Valeri Belokon.5 The Belokon investment started […]
[PDF file]: […] Playoff Final. Admission to a season in the Premier League and the future revenue that goes with it is worth about £200 million. See . Belokon versus Oyston The value of Valeri Belokon’s investment in a team that put Blackpool into the Premiership, and in various stadium-building activities in the famous Lancashire seaside resort, […]
[PDF file]: […] years, retained by their solicitors Biddle & Co. in the million pound libel action brought against The Sunday Times in 1988 by the ‘socialist media tycoon’ Owen Oyston. Rupert Murdoch’s senior UK executive Andrew Knight ordered the case to be settled at lunchtime on the first day of the hearing. Hired by Michael Murrin, […]
[PDF file]: […] that were pioneered by Margaret Thatcher – to create a ‘British FBI’ for fighting domestic crime by 3 4 ‘Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair’, Lobster 34 (Winter 1998). 2 using redundant Cold War MI5 spooks and electronic surveillance by GCHQ. The outcome of ‘intelligence-led policing’ by undercover spies and […]
