Is this what failure looks like? Brian Sedgemore 1937–2015

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015)

[PDF file]: […] the preceding Conservative government (and of course, by implication, critical of any accommodation with those hinted at 1 Labour won Wandsworth – at that point a pre- Thatcher, pregentrified area of London à la Up the Junction – in 1971 and held it until 1978. by Wilson, Jenkins, Healey and Callaghan), its central thrust […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] believed the conspiracy theory of ‘the enemy within’. This said that the Soviet Union ran the CPGB, which ran the unions, which ran the Labour Party. Mrs Thatcher was one such patriot. When leader of the Opposition, she took the various allegations 20 Details at . In Lobster 81 at or . 21 Precisely […]

Kincora: abuse and the British state

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] activities of the RUC, the Army and of the Security Services and he had not done so.’ In terms of the file which I sent to Mrs Thatcher personally in November 1984, for onward transmission to the Hughes Inquiry, Sir John Blelloch wrote: ‘Judge Hughes feels that the terms of Lord Trefgarne’s letter of […]

A tale of two Islingtons: How Blair opened the door for Corbyn

Lobster Issue 77 (Summer 2019)

[PDF file]: […] Executive Committee (NEC) had agreed proposals for the selection and re-selection of Parliamentary candidates, as suggested by the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy. Even after 1979, with Thatcher markedly unpopular, it was assumed (pre-Falklands War) that Labour would win any general election called in 1982-1983.7 Had Labour won a general election in 1978, then, […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] with Lobster. *new* Broken-down Blighty In my local library book sale I picked up a copy of Dominic Sandbrook’s 2019 account of the early years of Mrs Thatcher, Who Dares Wins. Yes, the title is meant to evoke the SAS and the Iranian Embassy siege but it also represents Sandbrook’s view that Mrs T […]

View from Bridge copy

Lobster Issue

[…] the 1980s which were released in late December, was one concerning the Peter Wright book Spycatcher. The Guardian reported that on one of these documents prime minister Thatcher wrote in October 1986: ‘I am utterly shattered by the revelations in the book. The consequences of publication would be enormous.’ 8 Obviously she didn’t have […]

View from Bridge copo

Lobster Issue

[…] call) Thatcherism and thus the person chiefly responsible for the creation of today’s Broken-down Britain. Of the triumvirate in charge of the economic policy in the first Thatcher government, he was the one who knew what he was doing. Geoffrey Howe and Thatcher merely had some free market clichés in their brains at the […]

Atomic Albion

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] £18.99, p/b, £30 h/b The last time nuclear power was controversial, or at any rate the subject of intense public debate, Lobster had not long started, Margaret Thatcher was crushing the miners’ strike and Duncan Campbell was the go-to journalist for all things secret state. It was a deeply paranoid time, book-ended by the […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] shop. Heseltine served in the government of Edward Heath, which was partly responsible for the worst inflation this country has every experienced, and in that of Margaret Thatcher, which created the worst recession since the 1930s. I was curious to see how he dealt with these politically uncomfortable facts. Not well, is the answer. […]

ATOMIC ALBION

Lobster Issue

[…] £18.99, p/b, £30 h/b The last time nuclear power was controversial, or at any rate the subject of intense public debate, Lobster had not long started, Margaret Thatcher was crushing the miners’ strike and Duncan Campbell was the go-to journalist for all things secret state. It was a deeply paranoid time, book-ended by the […]

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