Blood revenge: the aftermath of the assassination of Airey Neave

Lobster Issue 8 (1985) £££

[…] Liberation Army (INLA) soon claimed responsibility. The widespread shock which greeted his assassination was probably nowhere more clearly felt than by Mrs Thatcher, then leader of the Conservative opposition. Neave had masterminded Thatcher’s rise to power in the Conservative Party, organising her election as party leader. It was probably him who directed the ‘dirty […]

Historical Notes: Wilson and sterling in 1964

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005) £££

[…] saga certainly played its part in creating the impression that Labour could not be trusted to run the economy competently, a view frequently promoted thereafter by the Conservative Party and then, in the 1990s, by ‘new’ Labour. The criticisms from the right were reinforced from the left by arguments that Wilson, his Chancellor Jim […]

Parapolitical bits and pieces

Lobster Issue 7 (1985) £££

Ex-British intelligence officer Richard Winch said KGB defectors regularly named 7 ‘MPs, trade union leaders and 1 former Conservative Cabinet Minister’ as KGB agents. (Daily Telegraph 24 and 27 September 1984) What, only 7? According to Frederick Forsyth’s ‘sources’ in the British labour movement there are 20. (See Times 31 August 1984). And doesn’t […]

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 […]

Reflections on the ‘cult of the offensive’

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] a functioning military concept for the US, which can be located in the evolution of US strategic doctrine. In the early 1980s, the first period of neo- conservative dominance in US politics, analysts of international relations were struck by similarities between the ‘new cold war’ prosecuted by the Reagan administration and the great power […]

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 […]

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 […]

Rolling Back Revolution: The Emergence of Low Intensity Conflict

Book cover
Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Ivan Molloy London: Pluto Press, 2001, £18.99/£55   In the 1980s the resurgent US military and neo-conservatives were in a bind: faced with a variety of challenges to the American economic empire, the enormous military power they possessed was constrained by PR considerations; American parents who didn’t want their children dying abroad (the so-called ‘Vietnam … Read more

New Labour Notes

Lobster Issue 37 (Summer 1999) £££

[…] by the late Sir Fitzroy Maclean…… managing director, Christopher James…..Baroness Smith joins Sir Brian Cubbon, a former top civil servant, Lord Laing of Dunphail, Treasurer of the Conservative Party towards the end of the Thatcher period…Earl Jellicoe….Sir Peter Cazalet, director of the P and O Group, former BP Chairman…and Sir Peter Holmes, one-time managing […]

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