George Orwell and the IRD

Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

[…] Orwell’s Politics op cit, pp. 124-130. Ibid, pp. 72-77. Orwell’s third way must not, of course, be confused with New Labour’s third way as advocated by Orwell’s conservative namesake, Tony Blair. New Labour’s third way is committed not to the socialist but to the capitalist transformation of British society. For Orwell as Tribune Socialist […]

Five at Eye

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] throughout the world, attention has been diverted from what the other side are up to over here. In fact, just four years and five months after the Conservative Government expelled 105 Soviet KGB and GRU (military intelligence) officers from Britain, the Russian spy network is back at full strength. There are nearly 200 Soviet-controlled […]

JFK bits and pieces

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

JFK bits and pieces Paul Hoch recommends JFK:The Book of the Film (Applause Books, 211 West 71 St NY, NY 10023). This contains a footnoted JFK screenplay and about 350 pages of published articles, including some of the best anti-Stone stories. The final badge of honour was bestowed upon Stone’s movie by a long, ludicrous … Read more

Enemies Within?

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] British state and Thatcherism in 1984/5 and lost. (Beckett suggests that the CPGB leadership did not want this show-down.) After 1974 and the Saltley depot event, the Conservative Party and the British state prepared not to be defeated ever again: the miners and the British Left in general did nothing. Like other generals before […]

Twilight in the desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy

Book cover
Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

Matthew R. Simmons London: Wiley, 2005, h/b   Ironic, perhaps, that I finished reviewing this book in Calgary, just south of the largest land-based oil project in the American hemisphere, the Athabasca shale tar sands oil recovery projects. Collectively these will realise investment between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the next ten years. Pipelines … Read more

Defector Politics: or, grooving with Mr G.

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] presence of the Labour MP Allan Rogers on the new Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. They quote examples of his support for left-wing causes taken from the Conservative Party’s 1992 Who’s Left: An index of Labour MP’s and Left-wing causes 1985-1992 (which Julian Lewis had a hand in compiling). Mr Rogers comes in about […]

No one ever suddenly became depraved

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] ethical policy would he lead Labour into? ‘It is a fairly radical policy and it comes close to some aspects of what has become known as Neo Conservative politics in the United States — the proposal of a new kind of interventionism which has been called liberal interventionism, or in some places neo-imperialism.’ () […]

The CIA: A history of torture

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] law and order Home Secretary such as John Reid, arrested and expelled from the country, but are instead welcome guests, mixing freely with both New Labour and Conservative politicians as well as maintaining an intimate relationship with Britain’s own security services.(3) The CIA’s role in the overthrow of governments is well-known, beginning with the […]

Confessions of a Crawler

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 1 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Pan Books, 1998, £7.99 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 2 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Macmillan, 1999, £25 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Vol. 3 ed. Sarah Curtis London: Macmillan 2000, £25 Woodrow Wyatt’s diaries are quite remarkable. Any normal persons would have tried … Read more

‘Conspiracy Theories’ and Clandestine Politics

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] this century, had played a key role in establishing the system of apartheid in South Africa, and in the process helped to ensure the preservation of ultra- conservative Afrikaner cultural values and Afrikaner political dominance until 199. Yet this organization also existed. It was known as the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), and it formed a […]

Accessibility Toolbar