SIS: Dearlove, Spedding and PR

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

[…] Although a face-saving exercise will be agreed, it is unlikely that the Treasury will fund ‘make believe’ indefinitely. Notes 1 The Times, 16 October 2001 2 Former Conservative politician Dr Hartley Booth, now a partner with international lawyers Berwin Leighton, is Chairman of the British-Uzbek Society. This recent initiative was warmly welcomed by the […]

Patriotism Perverted: Captain Ramsay, the Right Club and British anti-semitism 1939/1940

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Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

Richard Griffiths Constable, 1998. Ten years ago this would have been a publishing sensation. Griffiths, the great expert on the British right and their fellow travellers, has found the membership list of the Right Club – a group active in 1939/1940 seeking to coordinate the work of all the patriotic societies. This book is his […]

An Incorrect Political Memoir

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

[…] some research on him, which was published in a campus alternative paper I edited. Here was a multi-millionaire entrepreneur who was well-connected with corporate elites, and very conservative, with a CIA-on-campus issue thrown in for good measure. My story came and went, seniors graduated, and McCone stayed. By 1973 the CIA had overthrown Allende […]

Kennedy Miscellany

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] Salandria ‘soon found that liberals were not interested in what he had to say. So has he stopped saying it? Of course not; he has shifted to conservative audiences. The trouble is that some of those audiences are extremely conservative.’ What does this mean? Salandria talks to the fascists? Not quite fascists? No names? […]

The 1975 Referendum on Europe

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Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

[…] the shape of IRD. The only bits of interest are an entertaining account by Alan Sked of his career as a eurosceptic and this snippet from former Conservative MP Richard Body: ‘Carefully selected people were invited to luncheon and dinner ……..to hear speakers give what they claimed to be confidential briefings “off the record”. […]

Getting it right: the security agencies in modern society

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] in this field? Why do MPs sit on the ISC doing degrading, keep-em-busy, shit-work? Why do MPs take no notice of a £200 million overspend? From a Conservative government we would expect nothing else, of course. The security agencies simply are not on their agenda. The Tories are historically the Queen and country party, […]

A political journey

Lobster Issue 41 (Summer 2001) £££

[…] three-year window of opportunity, to out-flank New Labour with a national welfare model and fully caught in the time warp of the period 1983 to 1992. The Conservative Party has not recognised that sufficient of the electorate did not reject it because of scandal but because the Thatcherite model of society was unbalanced – […]

Northern Ireland Act 1974

Lobster Issue 14 (1987) £££

[…] treason by MI5 officers in Britain and abroad. I do not believe for a minute that these things could have been going on without members of the Conservative party being kept informed in the generality if not in specific details. It looks increasingly likely that Mr. Airey Neave was in touch with some of […]

Contemporary British History 1931-61: politics and the limits of policy

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

[…] World War and post-war official controls’ huffs and puffs merely to show that while the City was sat on between 1939 and 1951, as soon as the Conservative Party got into office, it got its hands back on economic policy. Notice how Roberts puts this: “Two decades of cheap money came to an end […]

The Rebel Who Lost His Cause: the tragedy of John Beckett MP

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Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] constructive statesman, admittedly flawed, but certainly not a criminal; in fact, as a great wasted talent. This man, we are routinely assured, could have led either the Conservative or the Labour party; but then so could Tony Blair, so this hardly amounts to a great endorsement, even assuming its validity. But what does this […]

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