After Iraq: some FCO/SIS issues

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

When falsehoods are bared, we have to be alert to those that will take their place as well as the ones that remain concealed.(1) At the time of writing (October 2004), the deluge of media coverage on the false justifications for the Iraq war – now understandably giving way to greater anxieties about the well-being … Read more

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

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] Sir Keith Joseph’s talk of instituting a ‘patriotic’ history curriculum in secondary schools, and, arguably, the reappearance of The Round Table. All have taken place since the Thatcher Government removed exchange controls and allowed the current flood of UK capital abroad to take place. (About £60 billion has gone since 1979.) As the core […]

Ten Thirty Three: The Inside Story of Britain’s Secret Killing Machine in Northern Ireland

Book cover
Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] of Sinn Fein/IRA politicians, gunmen, bombers, supporters and sympathisers by the UDA, aided and abetted by British Military Intelligence, was known about by MI5, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and a few senior government ministers and civil servants (p. 160). There is no ‘smoking gun’ in the form of a document authorising British co-operation with […]

The meaning of the 2009 Budget

Lobster Issue 57 (Summer 2009) £££

[…] per cent of the UK GDP. It fell back from this level over the subsequent twenty years, but its share still remained over 30 per cent. The Thatcher years saw a much more rapid decline, as large parts of British industry closed down while the financial and service sectors expanded. This process slowed down, […]

Our American problem

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Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] anti-democratic, and keen on ‘leadership’. (Some Straussians have problems with women leaders. Norton points out how unusual Carnes Lord is among American conservatives in not admiring Margaret Thatcher. ‘On the contrary, is castigated for being too harsh, too demanding; for humiliating men.’) Again, some of this sounds almost fascist. (Almost?) For European liberals, aware […]

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 […]

Ian MacGregor: AMAX and armaments (Part 2)

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] it clear that the giant firms he has been put in control of must be made to “balance their books”. The implication, forcefully promoted by the ‘monetarist’ Thatcher, is that the nationalised industries don’t work and privatisation is necessary. But, as we have seen, a massive rationalisation movement has been going throughout the capitalist […]

Listen, Marxist

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] to those tracking them over the years: ‘modernism’ must be reclaimed from the reactionary forces of the anti-technology left that was emerging from the period of the Thatcher Junta. On the streets of Britain the left was reforming. From the Battle of the Beanfield in 1983 to Twyford Down, the heroic fight against the […]

Shorts

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] Conflict of Loyalties. GCHQ 1984 – 1991 Hugh Lanning and Richard Norton-Taylor This is the first full account of one of the most controversial disputes of the Thatcher era — the removal of trade union rights at the GCHQ intelligence base in Cheltenham and the campaign for their restoration.. The authors, one a trade […]

The New European Order – judges, modernising conservatives and Tony Blair

Lobster Issue 48 (Winter 2004) £££

[…] US to sign anti-terror co-operation deal’, Madrid, 20 September. 8 ‘Spain “secretly backed coup by sending warships”‘, The Times, 27 August, 2004 9 ‘US was told of Thatcher “coup plot”‘, The Sunday Times 29 August 2004, where there is reference to a proposed ‘carbon copy’ of the arrest of General Pinochet. However, this report […]

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