Contents Political life in Britain Talking to a Brick Wall: How New Labour stopped listening to the voter and why we need a new politics Deborah Mattinson London: Biteback, 2010, £17.99 People, Politics and Pressure Groups: Memoirs of a lobbyist Arthur Butler Hove: Picnic Publishing, £12.99, 2010 Bonfire of the Liberties: New Labour, Human Rights […]
[PDF file]: Haters, Baiters and Would-be Dictators Anti-Semitism and UK Far Right Nick Toczek London: Routledge, 2016; £24.99, p/b This is a very detailed account of the British anti-semites of the first half of the twentieth century, the hard-core handful who believed that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion really was a blueprint for Jewish domination […]
[PDF file]: Inside the Trump Administration Revolution: Trump, Washington and ‘We The People’ K T McFarland New York: Post Hill Press, 2020 In Trump Time: A Journal of America’s Plague Year Peter Navarro St Petersburg, Florida: All Seasons Press, 2021 The Chief’s Chief Mark Meadows St Petersburg, Florida: All Seasons Press, 2021 I’ll Take Your Questions Now: […]
[PDF file]: A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey Jim Sillars Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2021, £14.99 John Booth There aren’t many people still active in British politics who served in the Royal Navy when sailors were given 200 free cigarettes a month.1 But Jim Sillars is one of them and has lived to reflect thoughtfully on the 65 […]
[PDF file]: […] fleeting shadow of an MI5 officer. alumnus of the far-right Murdoch-funded Campaign for a Free Britain, in which Hart tried to cajole Wyatt (a friend of Mrs Thatcher and the Queen Mother) into recommending Crozier to Thatcher for a knighthood. It really is a small world in the British Establishment. Speaking of which….. Coulson […]
[…] of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), told its annual conference that they had to ‘to take the gloves off and have a bare-knuckle fight’ with the Thatcher government.34 But no such fight ensued, Beckett resigned and in the following decade while the City boomed, British manufacturing shrank by about 20%. The focus these […]
[PDF file]: […] in his concluding paragraphs headed ‘The struggle for values’, writes: The analysis of this book . . . forces us to reinterpret the historical significance of Margaret Thatcher, an ardent Atlanticist. While she is mostly credited with reducing the role of the state, cutting the power of trade unions and promoting private enterprise, her […]
[PDF file]: Hope & Despair: Lifting the lid on the murky world of Scottish politics Neil Findlay Edinburgh: Lulath Press, £14.99 But What Can I Do?: Why politics has gone so wrong, and how you can help fix it Alastair Campbell London: Hutchinson Heinemann, £22.00 John Booth Here we have two approaches to politics and public life […]
[PDF file]: Contents Lobster 58 Laissez faire as religion Robert Henderson The enemy of rationality is ideology. By an ideology I mean a mental construct which consists of a menu of tenets which the adherent applies without regard to their utility or truth. The observance of the ideology becomes an end in itself. All ideologies are inadequate […]
[…] listen to polls and focus groups for their professed views, I find myself unable to suppress the thought: I wonder what they are really thinking? Take Margaret Thatcher: what did she really think she was doing when she fronted the creation of the grossly unequal society we now have? Frank Field MP gave us […]
