Changing the guard: Notes on the Round Table network and its offspring

Lobster Issue 6 (1984)

[…] Hurd, now Minister for Northern Ireland. It would be interesting to know if this Round Table connection has anything to do with his promotion within the contemporary Conservative Party despite his role as Heath’s private secretary and apologist. A profile of Hurd in the Sunday Telegraph (16 September 1984) contains a good deal of […]

The Angolan hostages episode, and more …

Lobster Issue 5 (1984)

[…] which he stated that he had been approached ten days before the hostage taking with a view to reporting the capture. Glover was approached by an unnamed Conservative MP with an interest in Africa, who suggested flying with him and a senior director of Lonrho to Unita’s headquarters at Jamba, Southern Angola, to preside […]

The state in politics: Wallace, Holroyd and Lobster

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996)

[…] first: why did the story emerge now? The answer, I think, is to be found in the veiled complaints in the last year or so from the Conservative Party that Boothroyd, qua Speaker of the House of Commons, was prejudiced against them. The charge has no foundation as far as I am aware: it […]

The Blairs and their Court

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6)

[…] to Beckett and Hencke, in the late 1980s Nigel Lawson could never understand why Tony Blair was a member of the Labour Party rather than of the Conservative Party. This question subsequently occurred to a growing number of Labour Party members and the answer they came up with saw tens of thousands of them […]

Coach into pumpkin: some problems with Paget

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] International Red Cross campaign against landmines. What would normally have been a strictly humanitarian gesture was given a political dimension by the fact that John Major’s rapidly-deflating Conservative government had stalled repeatedly on banning landmines, whereas Labour was promising a foreign policy with ‘an ethical dimension’. Declassified US diplomatic cables record that ‘Government officials […]

Perfidious Albion: an end to deceit

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

[…] pay to guarantee assured outcomes to his backers: active members, after all, can rock the boat carrying the big donor cheques which keep New Labour afloat. The Conservative party is no better placed and it is difficult to see how they would want to change the direction of foreign policy anyway. Whatever Hutton concludes, […]

In a Common Cause: the Anti-Communist Crusade in Britain 1945-60

Lobster Issue 19 (1990)

[…] the Labour Party and socialism. Hulton, who later joined the Common Cause Advisory Board, had earlier told his editor, ‘Kindly remember that I am not only a Conservative, I am loyal supporter of Mr Neville Chamberlain.’ (25) Hulton, like many right-wing Tories, may have supported corporatist aims in war-time, but never socialism. He was […]

Fifth Column: A brief sojourn East of Suez: a last gasp for British great power status

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

The debate about whether the British should have a military presence East of Suez seemed to have been settled under the Wilson-Callaghan Government in the 1960s and 1970s. The process of withdrawal started with the independence of India and Pakistan (widely celebrated in the UK media recently on its sixtieth anniversary), was confirmed by the […]

Historical Notes

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002)

[…] Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Electrical Trades Union. I have talked to individuals of varying ranks in the Armed Services….and to some senior members of the late Conservative Government. From these discussions I have concluded that there is no effective contingency plan at the present time.’ (4) So it seems that Walker, Young and […]

Travesty: The trial of Slobodan Milosevic

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Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

[…] Ann Arbor: Pluto Press; 2007, £14.99 (UK) $24.95 (US), p/b   Laughland is an interesting figure, whose writing appears in media across the ideological spectrum, from the conservative right to The Guardian and here, Pluto Press. It is thus a little hard to identify his politics. Three years ago David Aaronovitch wrote about him. […]

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