Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

[…] 37, 1982, an article called ‘Victory for Strauss’. The Langemann papers 8th November 1979 Protected source contributions to state security. Personal for the state minister only”The militant conservative London publicist, Brian Crozier, Director of the famous Institute for the Study of Conflict up to September 1979, has been working with his diverse circle of […]

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, […]

At Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The Chiefs of Britain’s Intelligence Agency, MI6

Book cover
Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

[…] made public.’ You can’t buy an endorsement better than that, thanks very much. And if ‘the Establishment’ was cross with ‘West’ it didn’t stop him becoming a Conservative MP; and under Margaret Thatcher, who hated dishers of dirt and secrets. So, for me, ‘West’ has always been a puzzle: a conservative (and Conservative) historian […]

Terrorism and Intelligence in Australia

Book cover
Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] The author’s account also shows a Labour Party dimly aware of all this, making the occasional half-hearted stab at reining in ASIO, which the agency and its conservative allies easily outflanked or overturned. Cain’s account has the familiar virtues and the faults of academic writing on these subjects. On the plus side it is […]

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 […]

Letter from America

Lobster Issue 28 (December 1994) £££

Compromised Reporting Taking its cue from a powerful network of far-right radio commentators, the American press insists on noting only those financial scandals which don’t sully ultra- conservative politicians. Of either party. For example: Rush Limbaugh, who has become the Republican Party’s Goebbels, loudly applauded Clinton’s appointment of Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, an appalling […]

Forty Years of Legal Thuggery

Lobster Issue 9 (1985) £££

[…] JOSEPH KBE (1936) OBE (19) B 1885, D 10.7.61 KINGS COLL LONDON 1913 BAR 1914 EUROPEAN WAR 1921 MI5 (CIVIL ASSIST TO MIL INTELLIGENCE) 1924 HEAD OF CONSERVATIVE CENTRAL OFFICE INTELLIGENCE DEPT (RENAMED PUBLICITY DEPT) 1930-39 DIRECTOR CONSERVATIVE RESEARCH DEPT 1934-39 DEP CHAIRMAN NATIONAL PUBLICITY BUREAU 1940-42 DEP CHAIRMAN SECURITY EXEC – OVERSEEING THE […]

The ‘Wilson plots’ and related parapolitics (Book review)

Lobster Issue 27 (1994) £££

[…] of Labour MPs could effectively bring down the government. For some years past the arguments for a realignment had been taken seriously by a section of the Conservative Party who had been close to MacMillan. Since 1973, Reg Prentice had taken a lone path, one which would eventually take him out of the Labour […]

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