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 […]

Terrorism, Anti-Semitism and Dissent

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

[…] NED was funding the opposition in Venezuela when MacShane denounced Hugh Chavez during the failed coup attempt. (8) The Labour Friends of Israel Dunwoody’s researcher and election agent for some time was David Mencer, a former member of the Israel armed forces, and now secretary of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI). Stephen Byers, one […]

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

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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 […]

The crony capitalists: a fond farewell to some regular guys?

Lobster Issue 56 (Winter 2008/9) £££

[…] Padreda, a fellow officer of the Dade County Republican Party. Padreda, a former intelligence officer for deposed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, hired Jeb Bush as the leasing agent for a $1.4 million building Padreda had used federal money to build – money from the corrupt Department of Housing and Urban Development.(34) Four years earlier, […]

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

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

The state in politics: Wallace, Holroyd and Lobster

Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] Czech intelligence officer Husack to the MI5 officer attached to his Ministry did not prevent MI5 later using those contacts to try and portray Stonehouse as an agent of the Soviet bloc. Charles Laughlin MP reported contacts from another Czech official but MI5 did not tell him that the official was an intelligence officer […]

KO-ing the Kennedys: The Kennedys and State Secrets

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Lobster Issue 50 (Winter 2005/6) £££

[…] Neville Chamberlain, the Prime Minister. It is not clear that he did so. However, a little while later, in an unrelated episode, Wolkoff was asked by an agent MI5 had planted in the Right Club if she would send a message (the text of which had been drafted by MI5) to Germany by giving […]

‘Conspiracy Theories’ and Clandestine Politics

Lobster Issue 29 (1995) £££

[…] of covert and clandestine politics which are directly relevant to this study. See, for example, Gary Marx, ‘Thoughts on a Neglected Category of Social Movement Participant: The Agent Provocateur and the Informant’, American Journal of Sociology 80:2 (September 1974), especially pp. 402-3. One of the few dissertations dealing directly with this topic, though not […]

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