The Oyston Affair continues: D909 and the friends of Margaret Thatcher

Lobster Issue 35 (Summer 1998)

[…] and offences under the Official Secrets Act. I was already aware of the activities of Michael Murrin, a private investigator who was employed and financed by prominent Conservative politicians, including the MPs Sir Peter, now Lord, Blaker and Robert Atkins, now Sir Robert Atkins. Michael Murrin recorded his telephone conversations and following a compromise […]

Cold War: Building for Nuclear Confrontation 1946-1989

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Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

Wayne Cocroft and Roger Thomas, edited by P.S.Barnwell English Heritage, 2003, h/b, £24.99   A very high-quality, well presented book that is considerably more appealing to look at than most of the unlovely structures which are illustrated between its large, hardback covers. It is partly because of the non-photogenic subject matter that the book is … 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 […]

Hacks, pols and PR

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Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] hard-working, middle-of-the-road. They were victims of the Political Class who had been left with no one to speak up for them, and nowhere to go. Neither the Conservative opposition, nor the New Labour government, is speaking for these people…….This estrangement between a tiny governing elite and mainstream British society is one of the overwhelming […]

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 League of Empire Loyalists and the Defenders of the American Constitution

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] that the Chicago-based right-wing publisher Henry Regnery had agreed to issue. Regnery, however, backed out of the deal at the last minute. Chesterton next approached another American conservative publisher, Devin Adair, but it too rejected the book. (24) At Chesterton’s request, del Valle searched for yet another American publisher. Through Josephine Beaty, the DAC […]

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 […]

Twilight in the desert: the coming Saudi oil shock and the world economy

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

Matthew R. Simmons London: Wiley, 2005, h/b   Ironic, perhaps, that I finished reviewing this book in Calgary, just south of the largest land-based oil project in the American hemisphere, the Athabasca shale tar sands oil recovery projects. Collectively these will realise investment between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the next ten years. Pipelines … Read more

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 […]

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 […]

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