Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] million blank ballot papers.2 This led almost inevitably to a rash of public 1 This may be a new name for the National Domestic Extremism and Disorder Intelligence Unit. About which see . The text of a request to the Met to explain the relationship between the two organisations is at 2 scepticism (given […]

Various: Political life in Britain by Tom Easton

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] way he has fascinating stories to tell about John Addey, James Sherwood, Joseph Godson, the Gang of Four and many more. He also had experiences of the intelligence services worth reading. 2 strange people indeed, and that their governments were scarred by petty personality feuding that probably damaged ‘Labour’ – New, Old or ageless […]

Using the UK FOIA

Lobster Issue 74 (Winter 2017)

[PDF file]: […] This is because disclosure of the withheld information would breach the principle that the UK government does not release the names of officials from its own external intelligence agency, and by extension, those of allied intelligence services. Consequently, the 1 FCO has argued that it would seriously compromise such cooperation and thus prejudice the […]

The Plots Against the President, by Sally Denton

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] gone along with it in the first place. Nor is it any good to pin the blame solely on General MacArthur, for egging Hoover on with false intelligence about communist infiltration of the protests. Hoover had other and better sources of information available, but chose instead to rely on someone who drew out his […]

Political life in Britain

Lobster Issue

[…] way he has fascinating stories to tell about John Addey, James Sherwood, Joseph Godson, the Gang of Four and many more. He also had experiences of the intelligence services worth reading. This is not an academic work, though academics could learn much from it. Nor is it just a collection of anecdotes from a […]

The Clandestine Caucus: a minor update

Lobster Issue 88 (2024)

[PDF file]: […] recommended that a ‘Home Desk’ should be ‘added to the Information Research Department . . . to act as the focus for the collation and dissemination of intelligence about communist activities on the home front’. McEvoy describes some of the later concerns of the Home committee – for example the historian Eric Hobsbawm and […]

On getting it wrong and getting it right: Ronald Stark, LSD and the CIA

Lobster Issue 78 (Winter 2019)

[PDF file]: […] Stark’s involvement in LSD production was either part of a CIA operation, or tolerated by the agency as long as Stark was in a position to supply intelligence. The parapolitical ‘classics’ in this field are: • • Stewart Tendler and David May, The Brotherhood of Eternal Love: From Flower Power to Hippie Mafia – […]

Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza by Peter Oborne

Lobster Issue 92 (2026)

[PDF file]: ‘Damn you Keir Starmer’ Complicit: Britain’s Role in the Destruction of Gaza Peter Oborne London: OR Books, 2025, £11.99, p/b John Newsinger This is a tremendously powerful book, written with both a determined forensic intensity and a sometimes barely controlled outrage. Oborne, one feels, sometimes just cannot believe what is going on, the enormity of […]

Parish Notices

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: […] military power; indeed its subsidiary status is shown by the cables which show diplomatic staff being asked to gather ‘biometric’ data, as if they were low level intelligence assets. Digital security simply isn’t possible. In two years Ministry of Defence staff lost 340 laptops.1 The simple but uncomfortable truth is that to be secure, […]

Swedish echoes

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] short notice as it was deemed too serious a topic for the ‘family friendly’ Wogan. Captain Hayward’s book mentioned nothing at all about his service in 14 Intelligence Company. No doubt, rightly or wrongly, he felt abandoned by the British state (which he had protected by sanitising what could have been a much juicier […]

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