Phoenix: Policing the Shadows, and, Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland

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Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

[…] Special Branch, SAS and MI5. By the 1990s the British government was seeking an accommodation with Sinn Fein and counter-terror was passing out of favour. Whereas under Thatcher, the SAS (‘her boys’) had what amounted to a license to kill PIRA volunteers, under John Major the license was revoked. After 1990 the Chief Constable […]

Clippings Digest. June/July 1984

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] of trying to suppress chapter in OECD report on the economy which states that unemployment causes poverty. We kid you not! Guardian 16 June Material on Mrs Thatcher and her links with the Oman business and Trafalgar House removed from World in Action programme by IBA. This is the result of recent changes in […]

England and the Aeroplane

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] it is that the technological nation of the 1950s and 60s he describes had so little influence that it was unable to prevent both the Heath and Thatcher governments from deregulating the City of London — and wrecking the manufacturing economy. Or, more interestingly perhaps, how it was that the Tories persuaded the manufacturing […]

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 […]

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

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Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

[…] 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 of spookery with ambiguous relations […]

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

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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 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 […]

Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain Since The Industrial Revolution

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Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

W. D. Rubinstein (Second edition, revised and updated) London: Social Affairs Unit, 2006, pp., £20   Did you know that, on his death in 2001, former Beatle, George Harrison, left the second largest fortune in the UK (£98,916,000)? If you like facts like this, you will enjoy this book, and you will be in good … Read more

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 […]

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