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 […]

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 […]

Our leader

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] more mundane figure than the PR machine would have us believe. Early Blair The PM had no great connection with the Labour Party (his father was a Conservative barrister, widely tipped as likely to get a seat in Parliament before a disabling stroke) and has, arguably, no great connection either with the English or […]

The British Watergate

Lobster Issue 13 (1987) £££

[…] may not appear to be elements within MI5, but these fringe organisations operated in conjunction with MI5 officers. That is what an inquiry would establish. Indeed it might establish that some of the people involved were in the mainstream of British politics. As I have said, two Conservative hon. Members are identified by Mr. Wright.

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 […]

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 […]

Another Pinay sighting

Lobster Issue 22 (1991) £££

“There was another institution which gave Billy particular pleasure. It was called Le Cercle, and outside the circle nothing was known about it but the name. Its origins and membership were (and still are) as deeply cocooned in mystery as those of the most exclusive Masonic lodge. It appears to have been founded by the … Read more

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 […]

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 […]

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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