[…] MI6 no. 2, George Kennedy Young, loomed large in the imagination of the section of the British left which was interested in the political activities of former intelligence officers. His activities with Unison in 1973-5 remain unclear but here John Andrews describes the group which succeeded it, Tory Action. Lobster 19 contained an autobiographical […]
[…] the NSA-run global network of communications interception. But his work goes much further than that and anyone interested in GCHQ or the NSA, the history of signals intelligence since WW2, the relationship between politicians and spooks, the anti-nuclear campaign in New Zealand, or, indeed, the geo-politics of that part of the Pacific, will find […]
[…] which Porter, in view of his previous works, is ideally placed to have made. (1) There are plenty of works detailing the activities of the security and intelligence services and their allies in the Forces, in the City and in industry at key moments in the development of contemporary Britain, but most of these […]
In Parish Notices in the last issue I wrote ‘there isn’t much in this issue about the economic situation because there really isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said, for example by Larry Elliot in The Guardian every week.’ Well, I changed my mind about that and here are the bits I found … Read more
[…] index. The most important book on the case published in the last few years. A mass of new evidence – Oswald as FBI informant, Ruby’s gun-running activities, intelligence agencies out of control, and more. Marred only by the La Fontaines’ novelistic autobiographical interludes and the belief that the Anti-Castro Cuban groups could go for […]
[…] In the Sunday Times of 5 December 1999 Stephen Grey reported: Tony Blair is under pressure from European leaders to support the creation of a ‘federalised’ EU intelligence service to help manage world crises. The move, proposed by Gerhard Schröder, the German chancellor, and President Jacques Chirac of France, is seen as the first […]
The Men with the Guns G.F. Newman (Sphere, London 1984) I’ve got a lot of time for G.F. Newman. He’s written some of the best, sharpest, things about contemporary Britain: the Law and Order series and the Terry Sneed novels are the obvious places to start. But this – perhaps because of the shift to … Read more
[…] events on the British (and Spanish) political underground since the war and the book is thus dotted with interesting fragments about the area where the state, the intelligence services and political activity overlap. There are little bits of new information or perspectives, for example, on Will Owen, the Labour MP who was ripping-off the […]
Benny Morris London: I. B Tauris, 2002, £24.50, h/b In report after report on the major media we hear about or see pictures of ‘refugee camps’ in Israel – and no-one ever explains from where the refugees came. Perhaps editors think we know already. Benny Morris is an Israeli historian who became well known … Read more
[…] and Easton essays complement the Lobster Special Issue advertised on p. 20. Armen Victorian had the irritating experience of seeing his piece on the US military and intelligence psychic research appearing in Lobster 30 just as the CIA began declassifying some of its material on that subject. His latest piece of research on the […]
