Hacks, pols and PR

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

[…] hard-working, middle-of-the-road. They were victims of the Political Class who had been left with no one to speak up for them, and nowhere to go. Neither the Conservative opposition, nor the New Labour government, is speaking for these people…….This estrangement between a tiny governing elite and mainstream British society is one of the overwhelming […]

The Trouble With Harry: A memoire of Harry Newton, MI5 agent

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

[…] at various times a Communist Party member, Ban-the-Bomber and Rank and File shop steward.’ It omitted to say that he had also been a member of the Conservative Party at one stage in a rather varied career. The balloon goes up On February 20, 1985, Channel 4 banned a 20/20 Vision documentary programme and […]

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

Liddle and Lobbygate: reflections on a Downing Street drama

Lobster Issue 36 (Winter 1998/9) £££

[…] the way the party was changing under Harold Wilson. The trio had been at the core of the 69 pro-Market Labour MPs who had voted with the Conservative Government in 1971.(7) Bradley quotes Liddle’s future business partner, Taverne, as saying of that time: ‘We feared not only that the party would turn against the […]

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 Holocaust Denial

Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££

[…] 1986) which is more or less an expansion of this final chapter. My opinions on the current “line” in anti-racist strategies are of no relevance here, but when I read in Heidel’s essay that “the racism of the neo- conservative New Right is cultural” it seems to me that something has gone wrong. ‘Cultural racism’?

Obituaries

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££

[…] during the late 1970s. Once upon a time, the stories continued, the Communist Party invited him to join. But Ace turned them down ‘because they were too conservative.’ Ace was bright and articulate, in a gruff sort of way. He had no tolerance for the well-turned subtleties of talking heads and conventional wise men. […]

Fifth Column. New directions for parapolitics: investigating the trans-national security elite

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

Given a WTO-driven free trade regime in a world without enforceable international law and with large accumulations of capital emerging from the supply of consumer wants (including guns, sex, labour, drugs, untaxed goods and unregulated financial services), the lifting of capital controls by the Reagan-Thatcher generation also meant the globalisation of criminality in all its … Read more

The British Watergate

Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££

[…] may not appear to be elements within MI5, but these fringe organisations operated in conjunction with MI5 officers. That is what an inquiry would establish. Indeed it might establish that some of the people involved were in the mainstream of British politics. As I have said, two Conservative hon. Members are identified by Mr. Wright.

The Oyston Affair continues: D909 and the friends of Margaret Thatcher

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998) £££

[…] and offences under the Official Secrets Act. I was already aware of the activities of Michael Murrin, a private investigator who was employed and financed by prominent Conservative politicians, including the MPs Sir Peter, now Lord, Blaker and Robert Atkins, now Sir Robert Atkins. Michael Murrin recorded his telephone conversations and following a compromise […]

Accessibility Toolbar