Digging in the Oyston archive

Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

Tons of documents and tape recordings recovered from an old manor house in Lancashire reveal the true depths of corruption in English provincial life at the end of the twentieth century. Owen Oyston was the British Labour Party’s biggest private financial contributor in the Thatcher years. The millionaire owner of radio stations and glossy magazines … Read more

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: Recollections of an errant politician

Book cover
Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] the food producers. At one point Nott describes himself as ‘a rebel by nature’. Let’s see: from public school to Cambridge University, into the City and the Conservative Party, back to the City and thence, after a brief, eye-opening but unsuccessful spell in the real economy, into retirement as a country gentleman – that […]

The Northern Front

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] July 2007, Charles Glass wrote in The Nation about what he knew well in those heady days during which he composed his diary: ‘Washington’s ideologically charged neo- conservative coterie possessed little or no understanding of the Middle East, allowing it to dismiss the easily predictable consequences of invading and occupying Iraq.’ A defensible charge, […]

Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946-1989

Book cover
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

Wayne Cocroft and Roger Thomas, edited by P.S.Barnwell English Heritage, 2003, h/b, £24.99   A very high-quality, well presented book that is considerably more appealing to look at than most of the unlovely structures which are illustrated between its large, hardback covers. It is partly because of the non-photogenic subject matter that the book is … Read more

Enemies of the state

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] do they have to do to get the sack?) NB on this paragraph see the correction in Lobster 26. Kevin Taylor — Manchester businessman, Chair of Manchester Conservative Association, whose life and business were ruined by MI5 and the police looking for dirt with which to smear his friend John Stalker, then deputy chief […]

The International Centre of Free Trade Unionists in Exile

Lobster Issue 31 (June 1996)

[…] Briefing, edited by a former head of MI5’s F Branch, Charles Elwell. In 1995 it was revealed that in 1963 IRIS had received £40,000 from the ( Conservative) government via its ‘secret vote’, unaccountable funds, and a further £35,000 from a number of large companies, including Ford and Shell. See The Times, Guardian and […]

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 League of Empire Loyalists and the Defenders of the American Constitution

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] that the Chicago-based right-wing publisher Henry Regnery had agreed to issue. Regnery, however, backed out of the deal at the last minute. Chesterton next approached another American conservative publisher, Devin Adair, but it too rejected the book. (24) At Chesterton’s request, del Valle searched for yet another American publisher. Through Josephine Beaty, the DAC […]

Non-lethality: John B. Alexander, the Pentagon’s Penguin

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

On April 22, 1993 both BBC1 and BBC2 showed on their main evening news bulletins a rather lengthy piece concerning America’s latest development in weaponry — the non-lethal weapons concept. David Shukman, BBC Defence Correspondent, interviewed (Retired) U.S. Army Colonel John B. Alexander and Janet Morris, two of the main proponents of the concept. (1) … Read more

Decoding Edward Jay Epstein’s ‘LEGEND’

Lobster Issue 2 (1983)

[…] threatened by Soviet expansionism (13). (This had always been Angleton’s view and the reason for his support of Israel.) By 1979 Commentary had become a full-blown neo- Conservative, pro-Reagan platform: the editor, Norman Podhoretz, had even seen the prospect of the ‘Finlandisation of America’ lurking behind detente. (14). Along the way two books had […]

Accessibility Toolbar