The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 73 (Summer 2017) FREE

[PDF file]: […] 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 […]

Holding Pattern

Lobster Issue 70 (Winter 2015) FREE

[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 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] 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 […]

Laissez faire as religion

Lobster Issue 58 (Winter 2009/2010) FREE

[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 […]

The Mossad Spy It’s not what you’ve done it’s who you are… the transgender spy

Lobster Issue

[…] like to be transgender two generations ago. But most of all it is a stunning indictment of the lawless, literally murderous, unaccountable British secret state in the Thatcher years. Olivia’s experience shows that MI5 committed arson, falsely imprisoned people, manipulated the National Insurance system, the passport office, the prison service, the criminal justice system, […]

In The Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023) FREE

[PDF file]: […] ‘given by the Prince of Wales in honour of Wafic Said and his charitable work, and to mark his eightieth birthday’. This wonderful man had given Margaret Thatcher ‘the 4 run of a lovely country house in Oxfordshire’ during her final years. (pp. 483, 535) Wafic Said, it is worth remembering, was involved in […]

Various: Political life in Britain by Tom Easton

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: 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 Tom Easton Deborah Mattinson is just one of the many early enthusiasts for what became New Labour to […]

Megrahi – You Are My Jury: The Lockerbie Evidence by John Ashton

Lobster Issue 64 (Winter 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] case. It’s Scotland’s biggest terrorist atrocity. These are serious questions raised by serious people, and the world is watching.’ But Mr Salmond, following the precedents of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, was adamant in his refusal: ‘They’re looking for an inquiry for the responsibility, ultimately, for Lockerbie. That […]

Books on New Labour

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010) FREE

[PDF file]: […] the tough world of NUM politics, largely keeping from public view his disagreements with Mick McGahey and Arthur Scargill and others while facing the venom of Margaret Thatcher and the power of the state. This is an insider’s view of the 1984/85 miners’ strike, the subsequent closures and the working of the NUM. But […]

Mark Lewis and ‘the ultimate hacker’

Lobster Issue 63 (Summer 2012) FREE

[PDF file]: […] were described in ‘Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair’ in Lobster 34 (Winter 1998). property dealer who had several times hosted prime-minister Margaret Thatcher at his home in Preston. More delivered to Bill Harrison financial profiles of the Labour leader of Preston, the deputy Labour leader of Preston and their […]

Accessibility Toolbar