The Perfect English Spy

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] tried to clamp down on information about the spooks, there was a massive explosion of leaking by the services themselves. White is portrayed as a kind of agent for the overt Whitehall, put in charge of both services to re-orient them, make them face the realities of the post-war world – and be more […]

SISies: MI6: Fifty Years of Special Operations and A Life: A. J. Ayer

Book cover
Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1) £££

[…] unimportant points and issues. For example, with only the word of an unnamed ex-MI6 officer (Tomlinson?) as evidence, he claims that Nelson Mandela was once an MI6 agent. If true, this is important. It not only changes our perception of Mandela, the most important African politician of this generation, but also of the scope […]

I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels

Book cover
Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] perspectives, for example, on Will Owen, the Labour MP who was ripping-off the Czechs and got done (but acquitted) for espionage; the attempting framing of Peter Hain; agent provocateurs in the labour movement; the ‘Angry Brigade’; Searchlight magazine, and the role of state agents here, there and everywhere. (I know nothing about Spanish history […]

How to Fix an Election

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

[…] votes’ meant that ‘no details had been checked’.(10) In local elections in 1990, a Labour councillor in Chorley, a Conservative councillor in West Lancashire, and a Liberal agent in Sheffield, were separately convicted of forging proxy votes. In Enfield in 1992, Tory agent Miles Parker was fined £750 for the same offence. In Brighton […]

International Labour and the Origins of the Cold War

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

Denis McShane Clarendon Press, Oxford, £37.50 The origins of the Cold War in Europe has been a major battle ground now for nearly 40 years. The first version of the story, written while the Cold War was still going on and produced as part of the ideological struggle, was a simple folk tale of evil … Read more

Feedback

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

From Garrick Alder Re: John Newsinger’s ‘Orwell and the IRD in Lobster 38 The appearance since Lobster 45 of further details of Orwell’s dealings with the IRD has reminded me how very interested I was by Mr Newsinger’s admirable reappraisal of the Orwell/IRD incidents. Two things have struck me that seems to have escaped comment … Read more

Parallel development: the Workers Party and the Progressive Unionist Party in Northern Ireland

Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] was a dangerous and particularly nasty organisation. It also welcomed the National Front’s ‘political soldiers’ when they set up shop in Belfast; and Bingham served as election agent to George Seawright, a fascist and sectarian bigot who had even managed to get himself expelled from Paisley’s DUP. Seawright had come from Glasgow, where he’d […]

Orders for the Captain

Lobster Issue 15 (1988) £££

[…] the Munster and Leinster Bank to handle funds from the North for weapons purchases. Having drawn a blank at weapons supplies from America, and uncovered an MI6 agent called Captain Peter Markham-Randall who came to Dublin posing as an arms dealer, Northern representatives began negotiating with a Hamburg arms dealer called Otto Schleuter and, […]

Web Update

Lobster Issue 42 (Winter 2001/2) £££

Many thanks, as always, to Terry Hanstock for contributions. Comments and contributions welcome. My email is ‘War on Terrorism’: Repercussions of 11 Sept. 2001 The Sept 11 2001 attacks on the US and subsequent ‘war against terrorism’ have provided law enforcement/intelligence agencies with an opportunity to push for sweeping new powers, plus fast-tracking of … Read more

Secrets from Germany

Lobster Issue 15 (1988) £££

[…] relations. He refers specifically to operations aimed at incriminating Syria and Libya in terrorist activities, such as the case of Hassan el Harti, a Palestinian and Mossad agent provocateur, who was arrested in 1979, with six accomplices, on bomb charges, then allowed bail and given back his passport. The article describes a trio of […]

Accessibility Toolbar