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

Book cover
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 […]

The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism

Book cover
Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh New York and London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006 $75.00 (US), £37.99 (UK), h/b   This is an interesting and timely book and it is a great pity it is so expensive. Put out as a paperback and maybe with a less academic-sounding title, this would sell. Little of it is intellectually taxing and any […]

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

Book reviews

Lobster Issue 4 (1984) £££

Behind World Revolution: The Strange Career of Nesta H. Webster. Vol. 1 Richard Gilman, Insight Books, Ann Arbor (U.S.) 1982 As one of the major sources of the Jewish/Illuminati fantasies of the loony right on both sides of the Atlantic, Nesta Webster has a lot to answer for. Her books, it has to be said, … Read more

Combat 18 and MI5: some background notes

Lobster Issue 30 (December 1995) £££

[…] White Aryan Resistance against charges of state collaboration laid against them by Covington. Not having seen yet the primary sources to which the NSV report refers, my mind is still open on this episode. If their case against Covington here is correct, then his hurling of false accusations would be just the sort of […]

USA & the CIA

Book cover
Lobster Issue 39 (Summer 2000) £££

A Covert Life. Jay Lovestone: Communist, Anti-Communist, and Spymaster Ted Morgan New York: Random House, 1999, $29.95 Freedom’s War: The US Crusade Against the Soviet Union Scott Lucas Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999, £45 Secret History: The CIA’s Classified Account of its Operations in Guatemala 1952-54 Nick Cullather Stanford (California): Stanford University Press 1999, £8.95 […]

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 […]

How to Fix an Election

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

Election time! Ah, the roar of the hustings; the pulse of democracy is about to be taken. The enduring worthiness of our political system is about to be proven yet again. But what’s that you say? Something’s not quite right with the result? You smell a rat? Be quiet. Such things only happen in tin-pot … Read more

The limits of accountability

Lobster Issue 53 (Summer 2007) £££

We know that torture is going on in secret and not so secret prisons. We know thanks to the excellent research done by <www.cageprisoners.com> that elements of the British government, be they MI5, MI6 or diplomats from the FCO, have been involved. Yet we seem unable to stop it. Civic society raises its voices in … Read more

Accessibility Toolbar