Historical Notes: Blair and Gladstone

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2)

[…] the banks another £46 million: the public finances were running out of cash. (2) At this point alarm bells rang in London and Paris. In 1875 the Conservative administration of Benjamin Disraeli used the crisis to buy the Khedive’s shares in the newly built Suez Canal. In 1876 Egypt was forced to accept a […]

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

Enemies Within?

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

[…] British state and Thatcherism in 1984/5 and lost. (Beckett suggests that the CPGB leadership did not want this show-down.) After 1974 and the Saltley depot event, the Conservative Party and the British state prepared not to be defeated ever again: the miners and the British Left in general did nothing. Like other generals before […]

Why are we with Uncle Sam?

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009)

[…] defeated two years later in a leadership contest by Margaret Thatcher, whom the Americans had been cultivating and promoting since 1967 as a potential leader of the Conservative Party. This may have been pay-back for Heath daring to defy the Americans. An American colony? Is Britain then just an American colony? Not in any […]

JFK bits and pieces

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

JFK bits and pieces Paul Hoch recommends JFK:The Book of the Film (Applause Books, 211 West 71 St NY, NY 10023). This contains a footnoted JFK screenplay and about 350 pages of published articles, including some of the best anti-Stone stories. The final badge of honour was bestowed upon Stone’s movie by a long, ludicrous … Read more

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 […]

Defector Politics: or, grooving with Mr G.

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

[…] presence of the Labour MP Allan Rogers on the new Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee. They quote examples of his support for left-wing causes taken from the Conservative Party’s 1992 Who’s Left: An index of Labour MP’s and Left-wing causes 1985-1992 (which Julian Lewis had a hand in compiling). Mr Rogers comes in about […]

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 […]

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 […]

‘Conspiracy Theories’ and Clandestine Politics

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

[…] this century, had played a key role in establishing the system of apartheid in South Africa, and in the process helped to ensure the preservation of ultra- conservative Afrikaner cultural values and Afrikaner political dominance until 199. Yet this organization also existed. It was known as the Afrikaner Broederbond (AB), and it formed a […]

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