On the jacket of his new book, reviewed in this issue, Steve Dorril writes there that he ‘is founder-editor of the widely respected journal’ Lobster. I invite you to look on the rear cover of this magazine and see who the editor is. That’s right: it’s not Steve Dorril. I have resisted going into detail in print about the split between Dorril and I for seven years. But enough is enough. Reviewing his book, three broadsheet newspapers have referred to him as ‘editor of Lobster‘.
Lobster began in 1983. Dorril isn’t ‘the founder-editor’: he was one co-founder; I was the other. As for editing it: when we began it I was on the dole and Steve had a job, so our original (unwritten) agreement was that Steve would cover the magazine’s losses and I would do the work of producing the magazine – keyboarding, editing, pasting-up etc. In the event it never cost Dorril a penny. Indeed he still owes me £300 of £400 I was foolish enough to lend him from Lobster’s account about ten years ago.
From the first issue, virtually all the work was done by me. Steve didn’t learnt to type until after issue 11. Prior to that all his pieces arrived handwritten. I keyboarded everything, did the editing, such as it was, pasted it up, did the mail, maintained the subscription list, tried to distribute it etc. (I didn’t do any of this well but I did do it.) The only issues to which Dorril contributed anything beyond writing articles and the occasional graphic were no 9, which he helped me paste up, and the Who’s Who, whose text he provided.
In the middle of our researching the Colin Wallace material (i.e. early 1986) Steve was offered the chance to go and work with Anthony Summers on what became the book Honeytrap – and more or less gave up on the Wallace-Holroyd material. I thus inherited his ongoing correspondence with Colin Wallace and Fred Holroyd and wrote Lobster 11. (Steve’s research formed much of the appendices).
After issue 11 Dorril’s contributions to the magazine were
- 12 Nil.
- 13 Nil.
- 14 Nil.
- 15 One article.
- 16 Two articles
- 17 One and a bit articles.
- 18 Part of the cover image. Produced text of Who’s Who of British Secret State.
- 19 Three articles and cover image.
- 20 Nil.
- 21 Nil.
- 22 Book review, article, list of spooks.
- 23 Two articles.
- 24 Nil.
Of the 13 issues between Lobster 11 and Lobster 24 Steve contributed nothing at all to six of them.
After Steve and I co-wrote Smear! for Fourth Estate, he went on to begin writing another book and I carried on producing the magazine. We used to meet about twice a year. We would have a couple of beers, chew the fat and I would tell him what was going to be in the next issue. Between issues 23 and 24 when I rang to arrange a meeting he told me he was too busy writing the book which became The Silent Conspiracy to meet me to discuss Lobster24. OK, thought I, this is silly: too busy to meet to even discuss the magazine which carries your name? I simply took his name off the magazine at issue 24. At that point I was editor, publisher, paste-up person, subscription manager; I had all the back copies; all the original artwork save the Who’s Who; all the correspondence and account books; and ran the bank account.
Of course I should have done something years before but it is always easier doing nothing. (And it looks better being part of something: a one man band make people slightly nervous.) For the first ten issues Steve contributed a lot of material (and later the Who’s Who); and between no 11 and the writing of Smear! we were in regular, sometimes daily contact by telephone. For a while I didn’t object to doing everything: it made life a lot easier than trying to jointly produce something when the two people concerned live 70 miles apart. So I left Steve’s name on the magazine: it said ‘Lobster is Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay’. It didn’t actually state who did what. How could it when I did everything and he virtually nothing?
A year after I took his name off no. 24, and some months after I published Lobster 25, Dorril produced a magazine and called it ‘Lobster 26’. We then had two magazines called Lobster which earned us some well deserved ridicule in the media. He produced two more issues then changed the name to ‘The Original Dorril Lobster’. Since the ‘original’ Lobster 1 was keyboarded, pasted-up, taken to the printer and distributed by me, I don’t know what his use of ‘Original Dorril’ was meant to signify. Since when, if he has produced another issue I haven’t heard of it.
Steve Dorril is very good at what he does, his book on SIS is a huge achievement; as I said in my review of it in Tribune, it is a landmark in the field. He just isn’t – and never was – editor of Lobster. The interpretation of his insistence that he was and is I leave to you.