The British state’s failed attempt to kill off the Freedom of Information Act

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] a uniform commencement of 1 January 2005, which, it was believed, would allow for public sector bodies to consult, confer, and prepare for the new openness. As Conservative Party researchers demonstrated, the five-year lead-in also coincided with a notable uptick in file destruction by Whitehall departments, with some civil service branches essentially doubling their […]

Chris Hani book

Lobster Issue

[…] over the past 40 years or so.4 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a ” conservative cast of mind”’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan […]

Do Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad by Michela Wrong

Lobster Issue 84 (Winter 2022)

[PDF file]: […] Not Disturb: The Story of a Political Murder and an African Regime Gone Bad. What Wrong has to say is tremendously important, not least because of the Conservative government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda despite – or perhaps because of – the Kagame regime’s wholly justified reputation for repression and murder. The […]

Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics by Neil Findlay and But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it by Alastair Campbell

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] If the current line is held to the election, the ducking and diving of Labour will become as big a turn-off as the deceit and dissembling of Conservative ministers.’ 2 He promptly backed the election of Tony Blair as Labour leader and left journalism to work for him as spokesman on a salary we […]

Chris Hani book copy

Lobster Issue

[…] over the past 30 years or so.3 He quotes a South African report from 1991 describing it as ‘an informal forum of influential representatives of a ” conservative cast of mind”’ – which is what Pinay/Le Cercle was and remains. Among recent British participants are former Conservative MPs Norman Lamont, Rory Stewart and Jonathan […]

Mad Mitch’s Tribal Law: Aden and the end of Empire by Aaron Edwards

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] high enough), ‘what do politicians at home know of the cruel, hard facts of life when civil disorder has broken out?’ He deliberately courted controversy thereafter, as Conservative MP for Aberdeenshire West, joining the pretty extremist Monday Club and Anglo-Rhodesian Society. He also became an ‘icon’ for the Conservative Right, who of course didn’t […]

The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America by Gerald Horne

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] weapons exports and military expenditure it still certainly is), then the Founding Fathers certainly intended a counter-revolution. When the dead US president, now beatified, spoke to the Conservative Political Action Conference two hundred and ten years later he said: ‘They are our brothers, these freedom fighters, and we owe them our help. I’ve spoken […]

More Hess

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] interest. His interlocutor at this point, Lt Murrough Loftus, had been commissioned in the Scots Guards on 21 December 1940 and was the son of Pierse Loftus, Conservative MP for Lowestoft. It seems to be assumed in various accounts, including Padfield,7 that Lt. Loftus was sent to guard Hess to obtain from him details […]

Reporting Trump

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: […] his chief of staff were decidedly frosty too. (pp. 63-64) It is worth remembering here that McCain was not some sort of liberal, but a right-wing warmongering conservative who just could not stomach Trump’s ignorance, dishonesty and corruption. This, one cannot help but thinking, is what Sopel considers the limit of legitimate opposition to […]

Newsinger Armed and Dangerous 88

Lobster Issue

[…] of racial violence and vandalism. There would be much more horror to come’. And ‘at least two prominent white supremacist organizations – Stormfront and the Council of Conservative Citizens – saw their websites crash due to the flood of online traffic that came their way following Obama’s victory’. Incredibly, Johnson has had the faces […]

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