The League of Empire Loyalists and the Defenders of the American Constitution

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003)

Kevin Coogan is the author of the study of the American fascist Francis Parker Yockey, Dreamer of the Day, reviewed in Lobster 39. He sent me an essay primarily about the American far-right group the Defenders of the American Constitution. The essay, while fascinating, is too big (about 20 pages) for these columns. However within […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

Mr Tony was a spook? Issue 7 of Larry O’Hara’s Note from the Borderland () includes a section from the Anne Machon and David Shayler book, Spies, Lies and Whistleblowers (reviewed in Lobster 49), which was apparently dropped by the publisher. The key section is this, from an unnamed MI5 officer: ‘Blair was recruited early […]

The ‘Terrorist Threat’ in Britain

Lobster Issue 17 (1988)

With the decline of the revolutionary socialist Left the Right has turned to the anarchists for a law-and-order bogeyman – and a stick to beat the Left with. One journalist involved is Jamie Dettmer. Having worked for Tribune for a while, Dettmer migrated to the Sunday Telegraph (for whom his first article was an ‘expose’ […]

My encounter with George K. Young and Tory Action, 1979-1988

Lobster Issue 52 (Winter 2006/7)

[…] community which was threatened by immigration. GKY’s aims But who was he trying to impress? The ‘correspondents’ themselves, the party leaders – or both? Or the ‘anti- Thatcher’ element in the party? He claimed that pro-Heath elements wanted to stage a comeback through the constituencies. GKY did not want people to join the National […]

New Labour tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] Murdoch three name checks; and John Rentoul of The Independent on Sunday managed ‘10 brief mentions’ in his big Blair book. Was it any different with Margaret Thatcher? ‘Hugo Young’s much-praised book on Margaret Thatcher, One of Us, reserves one minor, passing reference to Murdoch,’ writes Oborne. Will, the political chroniclers be more outspoken […]

One Boggis-Rolfe or two?: Philby: The Hidden Years

Book cover
Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999)

[…] Mother, after all. Before he died, Andrew Boyle, whose book finally exposing Blunt came soon after her election in 1979, expressed to me his opinion that Margaret Thatcher had withdrawn Blunt’s immunity from publicity rather than let him successfully sue Boyle for libel, only to have the truth emerge when Blunt died of old […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

[…] Madrid he was appointed permanent secretary to the European Community in 1978 during Roy Jenkins’ presidency and then ran the Foreign Office news operation during the middle Thatcher years. John Major made him press secretary at No 10 and then Blair sent him to Washington in 1997. Diplomat and upmarket spin merchant Meyer, who […]

Out of the blue and into the black

Book cover
Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

[…] shamefully corrupt and racist and openly sided with capital against the working class in major industrial disputes. As Reiner tells us, the Police Federation overtly campaigned for Thatcher before the 1979 election. Then came the riots in 1981 followed by Scarman, and a forced policy of reform and change that was initially resisted by […]

Ken Livingstone’s questions

Lobster Issue 16 (1988)

[…] only from 1978 to 87, and for officers only, not civilians and officers, the figures were: 1978 -72 1987 -164 This doubling over the period of the Thatcher years is very interesting. For while the South and Midlands has voted Tory, Scotland has been moving leftwards throughout the Thatcher period – the Tories now […]

New Labour news

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

BERR In a profile of John Hutton, the new Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, Hutton said that Labour ‘is the natural party of business’,(1) another benchmark (or, in Corinne Souza country, ‘rebranding’) in the shift from old to New Labour. For it was Harold Wilson’s boast that he had made Labour … Read more

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