The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] colleague of Clermont member David Stirling – was curious, as neither prior to this event nor subsequently, did he demonstrate any interest in being leader of the Conservative Party. His candidacy, which allowed Thatcher to look more ‘centrist’ than she actually was, attracted 16 votes and damaged Heath, who lost to Thatcher by 119 […]

British Spooks “Who’s Who” part 2

Lobster Issue 10 (1986)

[…] FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS. HEAD OF COMMITTEE LOOKING INTO PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AGAINST COMMUNIST REGIMES 1954 PARLIAMENTARY UNDER SEC FOR COMMONWEALTH RELATIONS 1947-50 CHAIRMAN BRITISH EMPIRES PRODUCERS ORGANISATION 1962-64 CONSERVATIVE COMMONWEALTH COUNSELLOR DONELLY, MAJOR FRANK MI6 (B) 1946 DEPT Q RESPONSIBLE FOR ‘CLEAN’ ARMS AND EXPLOSIVES FOR CLANDESTINE OPERATIONS 1949 ALBANIAN OPERATION DONNELLY, JOSEPH BRIAN B […]

Empire’s Workshop

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

Greg Grandin New York: Metropolitan books, 2006, $25.00   Reviewing a biography of Harold Laski in 1953,([1]) the historian A. J. P. Taylor remarked on ‘the dilemma of our times’: that ‘no-one who believes in liberty can ever work sincerely with communists, or trust them, yet no-one who has socialism in his bones can ever … Read more

My enemy’s enemy…: Museum Street

Lobster Issue 22 (1991)

[…] Sutch. There was the Moyle affair in which a police report about Colin Moyle’s nocturnal activities on the streets of Wellington somehow got into the hands of Conservative leader Muldoon. There was the “Think tank’ affair, in which the newspaper Truth concocted a conspiracy fantasy in which Labour was going to nationalise all the […]

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)

[…] the story has been subject to some ridicule by some sectors of the defence establishment. Tam Dalyell’s initial source, shortly after the Falklands War, was a senior Conservative back-bench MP with an interest in defence matters and close links with the Ministry of Defence, and who later held ministerial office. Tam later had it […]

Re:

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

[…] from Michael Moore overload? Then you might want to take a look at Celsius 41.11, ‘…the truth behind the lies of Fahrenheit 9/11…’. Produced by a Washington-based conservative group, Citizens United, it probably won’t be coming to a cinema near you but can be viewed at . (The title, incidentally, refers to the temperature […]

The Business of Death: Britain’s Arms Trade at Home and Abroad

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] contracts a year with the ministry, and the top 5 contractors account for 31 percent of MOD business.’ p. 178 ‘In the two years to 1995, the Conservative Party received almost £1 million from those firms paid £5 million or more by the MOD in 1995-6.’ p. 178 A European defence industry? ‘The risk […]

Challenge to Democracy

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] family’s own think-tank (St George’s House at Windsor Castle) ‘said he could see no way out of the current situation except a change of leadership in the Conservative Party.’ Were the Royals, or some of them, showing Heath the door? On March 22 1974 (p.98), we learn that the Department of Trade and Industry […]

The View from the Bridge: Blair. IMF. Bilderberg, etc

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] June 2000, he has been welcomed back into the ranks of the Pinay Circle and attended the June meeting of the Circle in Lisbon. Also present were Conservative MPs Michael Howard and Alan Duncan and Lord Cranbourne, leader of the Tories in the House of Lords. NATO and Kosovo The most surprising comments on […]

Dangerous Men: the SAS and Popular Culture

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] heroes. This changed in the 1980s when the SAS found themselves enlisted as Thatcher’s Praetorian Guard, their exploits, both past and present, exploited as part of the Conservative Party’s ideological offensive against the post-1945 political and social settlement.’ (p. 3) He notes the ‘interesting cultural difference between Britain and the United States that there […]

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