Secrecy and Power in the British State: A History of the Official Secrets Act

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Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] that an effective analysis of the use of power “should refrain from posing the labyrinthine and unanswerable question who then has power and what has he in mind?” Instead, it is a case of studying power at the point where its intention, if it has one, is completely investigated in its real and effective […]

Crozier country: Free Agent: the unseen war 1941-1991

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

Brian Crozier HarperCollins, London, 1993 This is a very interesting book which greatly adds to our knowledge of the clandestine shaping of British politics in the 1970s and 80s. It is also a book which, like Chapman Pincher’s Inside Story, will repay repeated re-reading. But amidst all the new material a surprising amount of these … Read more

Fifth Column: A brief sojourn East of Suez: a last gasp for British great power status

Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8)

[…] sort of stability to Anbar – but we are sure it is not quite what the mild-mannered liberal and evangelical advocates of peace and reconciliation had in mind when they surged around the government for pet project funding. The illusion of Northern Ireland is that constant dialogue and alternatively talking tough and offering concessions […]

Bank-havens: Exposures Of The Rich

Lobster Issue 4 (1984)

As a recent TV programme (James Bellini’s ‘The Polite Conspiracy’ 4th April 1984 BBC2) made clear, the rich have devised some artful ways of avoiding tax. Of course they also have a government committed to drastically reducing their tax ‘burden’ (e.g. Nigel Lawson’s abolition of investment income surcharge, formerly payable on high unearned incomes). Naturally, … Read more

Enduring Freedom

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004)

Global Intelligence: the World’s Secret Services Today Paul Todd and Jonathan Bloch, London and New York, Zed Books, 2003 h/back £32.95/ $55.00 p/back £9.99/ $17.50   ‘We lacked specific information on many key aspects of Iraq’s WMD program’ – Vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, Stuart Cohen, December 2003 With the spectacular failure of […]

Rebranding SIS

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] 30 July 2000 The Punch story, in issue 117, October 2000, about Sir John Browne of BP, Prime Minister Blair and the Russian oil money comes to mind – unless the retired SIS officer that sits on BP’s board forgot to check out the latest news from Russia with his former SIS colleagues. It […]

In a Common Cause: the Anti-Communist Crusade in Britain 1945-60

Lobster Issue 19 (1990)

[…] 1960pp. 485-6. The World of Learning, 1980-81 (Switzerland) p 1236 See Chapter 9, ‘Human Ecology’ in John Marks, The Search for the ‘Manchurian Candidate’: The CIA and Mind Control (Allen Lane, London 1979). In 1955 the CIA incorporated the Society for the Study of Human Ecology which was renamed the Human Ecology Fund in […]

Our Friends in the North West: The Owen Oyston Affair

Lobster Issue 34 (Winter 1997)

[…] Peter Blaker discuss newly-appointed Minister Robert Atkins Blaker You know that Robert’s in the government now? Murrin Yes, I did. Yes. Blaker Which is good for him. Mind, he deserves to be. Done a great job. …. I think we should keep Robert in on this, by the way. Murrin Oh everything that you’ve […]

Updating and Ongoing

Lobster Issue 26 (1993)

[…] ‘Application of Extremely Low Frequency Electromagentic Fields to Non-Lethal Weapons’. Anybody who has wondered why I have been running — however incompetently — the material on ELF, mind control etc. since Lobster 19, please note. This stuff is for real: potentially this is the biggest military technology development since the hydrogen bomb. Spooks bending […]

The Westminster Whistleblowers

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Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007)

The Westminster Whistleblowers: Shirley Porter, homes for votes and twenty years of scandal in Britain’s rottenest borough Paul Dimoldenberg London: Politicos, 2006, £12.99, p/b   The author was a Labour councillor in Westminster during Porter’s ‘reign of terror’ and was instrumental in eventually bringing her down. With an insider’s view he has written an immensely … Read more

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