The once and future king?

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] MP.(18) But for bureaucratic reasons, neither Livingstone nor Knight achieved their objectives before the 1983 General Election. The Brent East selection was not finalised by the time Thatcher asked for Parliament to be dissolved and Freeson automatically remained the Labour candidate. Knight failed in an effort to become PPC for Coventry North East.(19) Plan […]

The Pinay Circle and Destabilisation in Europe

Lobster Issue 18 (1989) £££

[…] advisors, nicknamed ‘the adjutant’ by Canard Enchaine. Langemann also reports that Sir Arthur Franks and Nicholas Elliott were invited to Chequers for a working meeting with Mrs Thatcher, after her election. But perhaps the key political figure was the late Franz Josef Strauss, Bavarian Premier and Langemann’s boss. Strauss was a close friend of […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] senior TV, radio and news executives, civil servants, academics, politicians and business figures promising ‘public diplomacy’ backing for their efforts to stifle the critics of Reagan and Thatcher. All were named in the Senate hearings document. Wick was also the organiser of the 1983 White House meeting (Lobsters passim) at which Rupert Murdoch and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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finally exposing Blunt came soon after her election in 1979, expressed to me his opinion that Margaret Thatcher had withdrawn Blunt’s immunity from publicity rather than let him successfully sue Boyle for libel, only to have the truth emerge when Blunt died of old […]

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 […]

Tittle-tattle

Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

[…] heads Opinion Leader Research (OLR), part of the Chime Communications empire of Tim (since 1990, Lord) Bell, who served in a somewhat similar advisory capacity to Margaret Thatcher. I have yet to see any report of how much of Gould and Mattinson’s wealth has come from Labour party sources in those 20 years, or […]

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