Thatcher - Page 23 of 49

Phoenix: Policing the Shadows, and, Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

[…] Special Branch, SAS and MI5. By the 1990s the British government was seeking an accommodation with Sinn Fein and counter-terror was passing out of favour. Whereas under Thatcher, the SAS (‘her boys’) had what amounted to a license to kill PIRA volunteers, under John Major the license was revoked. After 1990 the Chief Constable […]

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Ten Thirty Three: The Inside Story of Britain’s Secret Killing Machine in Northern Ireland

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] of Sinn Fein/IRA politicians, gunmen, bombers, supporters and sympathisers by the UDA, aided and abetted by British Military Intelligence, was known about by MI5, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a few senior government ministers and civil servants (p. 160). There is no ‘smoking gun’ in the form of a document authorising British co-operation with […]

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Historical Notes on Tom Nairn and the British State

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023) FREE

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[PDF file]: […] Her ideological mentor, Sir Keith Joseph, commented in 1976 that ‘the pursuit of income inequality will turn this country into a totalitarian slum’. During the 1979 election Thatcher told BBC reporter Michael Cockerell, ‘I can’t bear Britain in decline, I just can’t’.18 Like the coup plotters, the Thatcher governments were determined to reverse a […]

The Atlantic Semantic

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014) FREE

[PDF file]: […] November 1981. 12 ‘Social Democratic Alliance statement,’ The Times, 29 September 1975. 13 Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, Lobster 11 (1986), ‘Wilson, MI5 and the Rise of Thatcher: Covert Operations in British Politics 19741978,’ appendix 6: ‘Examples of political psy ops targets 1973/4 – non Army origin’. 14 ‘New Marxism charge for privileges body’, […]

What if…

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013) FREE

[PDF file]: […] Atkinson and Elliot’s Going South, in Lobster 65,1 Simon Matthews offered a kind of alternative history of British history in the 1970s and 80s, in which Mrs Thatcher did not win the general election of 1979. Michael Morton contacted me to let me know such speculation had already been done by Andrew Marr in […]

Historical Notes

Lobster Issue 86 (2023) FREE

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[PDF file]: Historical Notes Scott Newton Nigel Lawson and the Thatcher U-turn Nigel Lawson, who died earlier this year, received a good press from a series of laudatory tributes and obituaries, which naturally spent a lot of time discussing his period as Margaret Thatcher’s Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1983 and 1989. The Thatcher government’s economic […]

How our politicians helped to kill UK manufacturing

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020) FREE

[PDF file]: […] British goods out of export markets.’ (p. 247) (emphases added) Exchange rate policies and high interest rates . . . is there a theme here? Prime Minister Thatcher, Financial Secretary to the Treasury Nigel Lawson and Chancellor Geoffrey Howe were in charge of the economy during the first years of Thatcherism. Mostly it was […]

Falling Down: The Conservative Party and the Decline of Tory Britain by Phil Burton-Cartledge

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022) FREE

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[PDF file]: […] early and mid 1980s, encouraged a trend to self-employment and a rise in the number of small businesses. Life became unpredictable and sometimes precarious for many; but Thatcher offered compensation to the old working class in the form of popular capitalism. This was based on possession of assets. These generally took two forms: either […]

Historical notes on the use of troops during the 1984-85 miners’ strike

Lobster Issue 89 (2024) FREE

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[PDF file]: […] troops during the 1984-85 miners’ strike Scott Newton Witness Testimony There have been persistent rumours, over the 40 years since the miners’ strike of 1984-85, that the Thatcher Government deployed the Armed Forces against the strikers. So far, not one retired soldier has come forward to admit that this happened. Nor are there any […]

Historical Notes on troops and the miners’s strike

Lobster Issue

[…] troops during the 1984-85 miners’ strike Scott Newton Witness Testimony There have been persistent rumours, over the 40 years since the miners’ strike of 1984-85, that the Thatcher Government deployed the Armed Forces against the strikers. So far, not one retired soldier has come forward to admit that this happened. Nor are there any […]