The covert origins of the Biafran War

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[…] Harold Macmillan, it was not surprising that the Nigerian political leader of great personal integrity and honesty — Awolowo — who based his party machine on the Conservative Party and was a devout Christian and believer in British fair play would soon after Independence find himself not in the President’s or Prime Minister’s office […]

The Enemy Within: Thatcher’s Secret War Against the Miners; GB84

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

The Enemy Within: The Secret War Against the Miners Seumas Milne London: Verso, 2004, p/back, £8 GB84 David Peace London: Faber & Faber, 2004, p/back, £12.99   On the 20th anniversary of the most significant power struggle in post war Britain, two very different books on the miners’ strike of 1984-85, read alongside each other, … Read more

More views from the bridge

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

Crime fighting? There must many candidates for the title ‘The most damaging thing I have read about this government’. My current candidate is a piece by Simon Jenkins, ‘A Keep Police off the Streets Strategy Unit’ (The Times 2 February 2002). After reminding the reader that in the UK the police are a local service, … Read more

Letter from America: CIA set for Pentagon buyout?

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995)

[…] the possibility of a ‘third party’ in the US. The media’s chosen standard bearer last time was the extraterrestrial Texas magnate Ross Perot (the media, liberal and conservative, regularly ignore the sizeable Libertarian Party and the efforts of Jesse Jackson while fixating on weird eccentrics). This time as a ‘third party’ possibility both Perot […]

Plundering the Public Sector

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] from public to private. (And because they were the Labour Party, they could do this without the opposition from the unions and the public sector that the Conservative Party would have faced. Many of the trade union supporters and members of New Labour have been in a state of total denial about the reality […]

Britain’s Secret Propaganda War

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Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999)

[…] and 60s’, and Lashmar and Oliver’s chapter on IRD’s domestic operations takes that contention a good deal further forward. The authors tell us that in 1956 the Conservative MP Douglas Dodds-Parker, a former anti-communist ally of Labour Foreign Secretary Bevin, had been appointed to the Foreign Office as Under-Secretary – and apparently in formal […]

A vote in the can is worth two for George Bush

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004)

[…] which has grown like Jack’s beanstalk as partisans and disinteresteds alike slug it out.(11) However, history is written by the victors. Former Clinton ally (i.e. converted neo- conservative) Dick Morris gave the world the benefit of his insight shortly after election day. Who does Mr Morris think is to blame for the discrepancies in […]

The Open Side of Secrecy: Britain’s Intelligence and Security Committee

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Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] from the government line on Iraq, and he is now at the Brunel Centre. Between them they have much academic and practical knowledge. The authors are essentially conservative defenders of the British security and intelligence system. It isn’t that they aren’t critical; it’s just that they don’t want to, or are unable to, deal […]

The getting elected project

Book review
Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9)

[…] reading one sheet of A4. One final point: this reminded me again that among the leading architects of the creation of the current muddled but fundamentally neo- conservative NuLab were a group of ex-CPGB members and one ex-Trot (Mulgan), who in their left incarnations despised the Labour Party, and finally got to help kill […]

Notes from the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92. Part 2

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] undertaken, associated with Rising, at both the Liss Forest home of Rosine de Bouniaville and the Suffolk farm owned by the father of Nick Griffin, accountant and Conservative Party activist, Edgar Griffin. Certain things nobody disputes took place at these seminars — ideological instruction, physical fitness programmes, self-defence training, and plotting how to get […]

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