A Difference of Opinion: My Political Journey by Jim Sillars

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[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 […]

South of the Border

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] Collin in his Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House, Staines said of David Hart: ‘He’s completely charming and can charm senior people like Thatcher for a while. But any proximity to him for a long period of time, you know he’s completely off his fucking head.’ 31 Perhaps it was […]

‘To Stand against Israel is to Stand against God’: Zionism, Trump and the US Christian Right

Lobster Issue 83 (Summer 2022)

[PDF file]: […] that under his particular scheme of Christian charity, ‘(p)eople will not starve to death, although their standard of living may not be sustained’. Falwell singled out Margaret Thatcher, who had just become Prime Minister in Britain, for particular praise. Having thus established his conservative credentials, he went on to address the ‘culture wars’ agenda […]

All In It Together: England in the early 21st Century by Alwyn Turner

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] London: Profile Books, 2021, £20, h/b Dan Atkinson On March 20 1976, in the immediate wake of Harold Wilson’s resignation as Prime Minister and Labour leader, Margaret Thatcher told the Conservative Central Council about ‘a little piece of advice’ she had given him the previous week. ‘Go’ I said, ‘and go now’. ‘It’s always […]

Cummings, Greensill and all that

Lobster Issue 82 (Winter 2021)

[PDF file]: […] ‘shake it up’, ‘make it more efficient’, is one of the recurring themes of British politics in the last fifty years or so – particularly the post- Thatcher era. The report on the Lex Greensill affair by Nigel Boardman,3 notes on p.13: ‘. . . longstanding aspiration of successive governments to attract people from […]

Friends of Israel

Lobster Issue 86 (2023)

[PDF file]: […] friend of Israel currently portrayed by Aked. That doesn’t look likely in the present dilapidated state of British democracy. But I felt that about Britain when Margaret Thatcher continued to support apartheid South Africa in the face of growing world outrage. Israel under Benjamin Netanyahu is rapidly running out of international credit at the […]

The Story of British Propaganda Film by Scott Anthony

Lobster Issue 90 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] the day-to-day activities of Prince Philip and Princess Margaret. The output from the latter days of the COI come across, now, as being rather miserable. During the Thatcher years it was used to justify the dismantling and sale of national infrastructure, notably with the 1986 British Gas privatization adverts, which provided a cosy aesthetic […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 76 (Winter 2018)

[PDF file]: […] values were ‘market competition, private enterprise and economic stability’. NuLab was a con-job on the members of the Labour Party. In economics they really were just Mrs Thatcher in light drag. The price I remember 9/11. When the second plane hit I said to my partner something like ‘Oh shit, we’re in for it […]

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