[…] fact sheet on sovereignty was suppressed rather than admit that Parliament would have to accept European regulations that conflicted with its own statutes. Officials were encouraged to spy on the Labour Party’s plans to oppose the terms of entry and even drafted speeches for pro-European Labour frontbenchers to deliver at their party conference. The […]
One of many reasons why the lobbying industry attracts opprobrium is because Britain’s political system offers only limited public sector facility to those who wish to influence it but lack the funding and/or patronage to do so. ‘The lobbyists’ did not cause the injustice. It is up to government to come up with the solutions. … Read more
[…] bass” and landed in Havana in 1959, just as the first Russian freighter was arriving. Fairly early on Beck’s narrative begins to resemble the ‘Get Smart’ TV spy spoof. He dresses up as a tourist and hangs around the docks with his Brownie, in the bar of the Hilton, and at a travel agents’ […]
[…] Later I mentioned the idea that the spooks fed material into novels to Fred Holroyd, and, to my surprise, he told me that one of Britain’s leading spy fiction writers had cheerfully confirmed that the spooks did indeed send him material they wanted planting in his books. The perceptible increase in this country of […]
Charlie Bubbles One of Lobster’s contributors had dinner a few years ago with Charlie Falconer, the current Lord Chancellor, and reported that he was a fount of information on the B-sides of pop singles of the 1960s. Well, pop-pickers, our civil liberties are safe in his hands then. Or not. As New Labour prepares to … Read more
First off, a slight digression. There’s been much talk recently about just how many books have been published on the assassination. ‘Over 2000’ is the figure that has been thrown around and this may be traced to the very opening sentence of Gerald Posner’s egregious Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK … Read more
Secret Agenda: Watergate, Deep Throat and the CIA Jim Hougan (Random House, US 1984) Those who read Hougan’s last book Spooks will know that the arrival of a new one is something of an event. As expected, his latest has so many trails to follow, intriguing little titbits to ponder that one read is insufficient … Read more
Richard B. Spence Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003 , $29.95, h/b Boasting over 1800 footnotes and a magnificent bibliography (including texts published in Turkmenistan) this would be awarded A for Application if such a prize existed in academia. The author, Professor of History at the University of Idaho, appears to be something of an … Read more
[…] threaten the emerging Lloyd George corporate/military state. Hoare sketches the background against which this unfolded. Theatrical, social and sexual mores are analysed, as are both the enemy spy hysteria of 1915 and the belief of the time in a unique German /Jewish form of decadence (cue Krafft-Ebing and Freud). The grind of a nation […]
[…] See Francis Elliott and Sophie Goodchild, ‘Diana verdict: an accident. But did US bug her calls?’ The Independent, 10 December 2006; Byron York, ‘Did the Clinton administration spy on Princess Diana? No’, National Review Online, 14 December 2006. The Express predictably cried ‘foul’ (Mark Reynolds and John Chapman, ‘Diana: it’s a whitewash…’ The Express, […]
