Correspondence

Lobster Issue 5 (1984)

[…] him if they could reprint it. He automatically said yes, having no idea whatsoever of the nature of the periodical, believing it merely to be some local Conservative newsletter. I know Leigh and when I first read this story in Searchlight I was amazed. There is no way Leigh has any sympathies with fascism, […]

Morningside Mata Haris: How MI6 deceived Scotland’s great and good

Book cover
Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] ‘Morningside Mata Haris’, Morningside is an upper-crust area in Edinburgh famous – in Scotland, any way – for having a distinctive accent, posh Edinburgh. Malcolm Rifkind, erstwhile Conservative Foreign Minister, is an example of it. Elma Dangerfield and the Duchess of Atholl don’t seem to have had much to do with Morningside and were […]

Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since The Industrial Revolution

Book cover
Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

[…] interest in whether fortunes are inherited or acquired in one generation, and his interest in ‘politics’ concerns only which parties the rich support. His approach is unquestioningly conservative. This edition is an update of the author’s now classic book from 1981 on the history of the super-rich in Britain. It coincided with the rise […]

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 […]

Pariah: Misfortunes of the British Kingdom

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] that followed the collapse of communism in the 1980s.’ Notes 2 Here is Gordon Brown on 26 February 1992: ‘Let no one, absolutely no one on the Conservative benches, try to peddle the misleading statement that the Labour party is not committed to playing its full part within the workings of the ERM and […]

Blairusconi: populism and elite rule

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

Tony Blair will be remembered not just for the slaughter in Iraq, and the subsequent collapse of Labour in Scotland in face of a resurgent SNP, but as the Labour leader who could have forged common links across Europe but chose to side with one of the continent’s most despised figures. Charles Clarke, one of … Read more

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

The Making of New Labour’s European Policy

Book cover
Lobster Issue 44 (Winter 2002/3)

[…] the ERM fiasco of 1992, is wary of the single currency, fearing another ERM-style debacle. (2) ‘New Labour’ is stuck in precisely the same way that the Conservative Party was stuck and it is entirely unclear whether or not a pro-single currency propaganda campaign like those described in Andy Mullen’s piece above would work […]

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 […]

Marching to the fault line: The 1984 miners’ strike and the death of industrial Britain

Book cover
Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] Scargill made no bones about it, seeking funding from the Soviet bloc and Colonel Gaddafi. (It was as if he was following a script written by the Conservative Central Office and MI5.) But Rimington’s statement does not quite support Thatcher’s ‘the enemy within’ theory about the CPGB. I assume that MI5 knew that her […]

Accessibility Toolbar