A note on the British deployment of nuclear weapons in crises – with particular reference to the Falklands and Gulf Wars and the purchase of Trident

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994)

[…] up in Private Eye (16 July, 1982, p. 20). Duncan Campbell and John Rentoul, ‘All Out War’, New Statesman, 24 August 1984. I learnt this from a BBC journalist shortly afterwards. Reported, for example in The Observer, 6 January, 1991. Strategic Advisory Group of the Joint Strategic Planning Staff, US Strategic Air Command, ‘The […]

The ‘Wilson plots’ and related parapolitics (Book review)

Lobster Issue 27 (1994)

[…] claimed to have been working for MI5, was involved in a climbing accident in the Alps. Colin Wallace The Observer (12 December, 1993) reported that a proposed BBC drama-documentary, based on the Paul Foot book about Colin Wallace, had been scrapped. (The Observer had Wallace as ‘former MI5 officer’, but we’ll let that pass.) […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] Warfare kit to collect……some seeds. Being Frank In his account of being shot in Iraq, ‘The man who would not die’ in The Guardian 19 April 2005, BBC correspondent Frank Gardner said of the person who shot him: ‘He didn’t see me as a non-partisan reporter who’s simply trying to report what’s going on.’ […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] of the inability of Labour and Democratic politicians to look reality in the face. Tunes and pipers Phil Chamberlain alerted me the reference in the blog of BBC Chief Political Correspondent Nick Robinson to Gordon Brown reading Frances Stonor Saunders’ Who Paid The Piper?, her long account of the CIA’s ‘cultural war’ in the […]

Stalker, Conspiracy?

Lobster Issue 23 (1992)

[…] of the bug was for fear that Stalker might discover that MI5 had also bugged the car in which McTerr, Toman and Burns were killed. According to BBC reporter Chris Moore, ‘the security forces involved in the covert surveillance operation were able to listen to the conversation going on in the car.’ (21) An […]

Brands and Britannia: Some aspects of national image and identity

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] country’s most expensive PR firms.’ (The Journalist, November 2007). Declaration of Interests: I am a supporter of the Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom which supports the BBC. See Independent on Sunday, 16 September 2007 See admission by former SIS Chief Sir Richard Dearlove of sympathy with what he called ‘initial use’ of rendition […]

Historical Notes: Channel 4 SOE mystery. Venona Decrypts

Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000)

[…] them up the Anglo-Americans assembled an ‘invasion fleet’ on the English east coast and launched 3215 fighter and bomber sorties against ‘invasion targets’.(3) On 17 August the BBC announced ‘the liberation of occupied countries has begun’. But the Germans did not believe any of it. Indeed they actually moved some divisions out of France […]

Wallace on Pincher on Wallace

Lobster Issue 21 (1991)

Introduction There are a couple of interesting chapters in Chapman Pincher’s recent The Truth About Dirty Tricks, (Sidgwick and Jackson, 1991), especially the one about Harold Wilson’s ‘spymaster’, the late George Wigg; but, despite the usual shower of interesting fragments, mostly it is junk. Pincher’s primary strategy is clear enough. During the mid 1970s bureaucratic […]

Blairusconi: populism and elite rule

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

Tony Blair will be remembered not just for the slaughter in Iraq, and the subsequent collapse of Labour in Scotland in face of a resurgent SNP, but as the Labour leader who could have forged common links across Europe but chose to side with one of the continent’s most despised figures. Charles Clarke, one of […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

[…] study: Murphy’s Law……. Notes Robert Verkaik, ‘The Freedom of Information Act misused’, The Independent, 22 March 2007. The complete text can be read at . For a BBC version of the original ‘Israeli art students’ story from 2002 see . Or, rather, don’t see that URL for it evoked a 404 when I tried […]

Accessibility Toolbar