The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War by Craig Whitlock

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] unlikely that we shall ever know the scale of British complicity in this crime. There is also the determination of retired generals and politicians from both the Conservative and Labour parties to cover up the reality of the war in Afghanistan. Without any shame whatsoever, the war was portrayed as being about the protection […]

Europe Isn’t Working by Larry Elliott and Dan Atkinson

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] that my economics tutor gave it to us non-specialists in our second year to kick around. Four years or so later this nonsense was adopted by the Conservative Party. It is unclear to me if they believed it or not. My guess would be that Mrs Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe – both tax lawyers […]

Peer group pressure

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] feature which Mandelson’s connection with a cyber security outfit suggested: Labour peers seem to have a far greater predilection for working with cyber security firms than do Conservative peers. 1 Judging by the political affiliations of Vice Chairs of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Cyber Security,2 which MPs can join, this is […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 67 (Summer 2014)

[PDF file]: […] had been involved with the National Union of Students in the early 1980s. He recalled the libertarian right which was then a force in the Federation of Conservative Students – all that macho posturing in support of the Cold War, the Contras in Nicaragua and the South African government against the ANC. How many […]

The Western Union Clandestine Committee: Britain and the ‘Gladio’ networks

Lobster Issue 72 (Winter 2016)

[PDF file]: […] Executive (SOE) were instigated. One figure who played a part in the preparations for what would become the ‘Gladio’ networks was British military intelligence officer (and future Conservative MP) officer Airey Neave. From late May of 1942, Neave was an officer in the ‘escape and evasion’ department MI9 and engaged in ‘secret communications with […]

When the Lights Went Out, and, Strange Days Indeed

Lobster Issue

[…] sixties’ – irritates serious historians; but in the case of the 1970s it does make a a kind of sense, the decade being bookended in Britain by Conservative Party election victories in 1970 and 1979, heralding a return to the market: the half-hearted version under Heath, ‘Selsdon man’, and then the real thing with […]

Late Soviet Britain: Why Materialist Utopias Fail by Abby Innes

Lobster Issue 89 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] getting better and that the United Kingdom was about to become the most innovative country in the world, or, as Rishi Sunak put it at the 2021 Conservative Conference: “the most exciting place on the planet”. A government comprised of ministers apparently impervious to basic social and scientific facts had found that their only […]

Maggie’s guilty secret

Lobster Issue 66 (Winter 2013)

[PDF file]: […] taken in evidence by the Metropolitan Police as the investigation unfolded. These still exist and point directly to the direct complicity of the CIA, Whitehall and the Conservative government in a murky tale of illegality and corruption at the heart of the Reagan and Thatcher administrations. Many got rich out of the inside knowledge […]

Count Knut Bonde and the Search for a Compromise Peace 1939-1941

Lobster Issue

[…] It would be interesting to know a bit more about him. Simon Matthews is writing a study of Winston Churchill’s period as First Lord of the Admiralty 1939-1940, for publication in 2026. Her son, Sir John Barlow, continued the political tradition sitting as a National Liberal and Conservative MP between 1945 and 1966. 7 5

Accessibility Toolbar