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

What Price National Security?

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] national security.’ Only recently the government had tried to put the editor of Punch in prison. (3) ‘I used to think the problem was 18 years of Conservative government, now I think the problem is government per se.’ Rear Admiral Nick Wilkinson, Secretary of the D-Notice Committee, believes that without the D-notice system there […]

The Making of New Labour’s European Policy

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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 […]

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

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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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Fifth Column

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

The Brittle Society Alarmists, like Naomi Wolf, have been exaggerating the degree to which the US, and by implication the UK, have been slipping towards a police state. The evidence for true tyranny in either country is weak. However, since it came to power in 1997, it might be reasonably argued(1) that New Labour has … 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 […]

Major Farran’s Hat

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Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] into pointless murder. It will come as no surprise to learn that Farran walked away from the crime, wrote a best-selling memoir, stood for parliament as a Conservative candidate in 1950 (he was defeated by the sitting Labour MP, a certain George Wigg), and went on to have a successful political career in Canada. […]

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 […]

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