The Perfect English Spy

Lobster Issue 29 (1995)

[…] simply is not sourced; and sometimes the source can be inferred from the context. For example, there is this paragraph on p. 76. ‘Clement Attlee, Britain’s new Labour prime minister, and particularly his more socialist colleagues, influenced by their wartime encounters with MI5 officers, suspected the service’s activities were uncontrolled. MI5, they complained, was […]

Parapolitical bits and pieces

Lobster Issue 7 (1985)

[…] and 1 former Conservative Cabinet Minister’ as KGB agents. (Daily Telegraph 24 and 27 September 1984) What, only 7? According to Frederick Forsyth’s ‘sources’ in the British labour movement there are 20. (See Times 31 August 1984). And doesn’t Chapman Pincher talk of 60 plus in his various books? Confirmation – if any were […]

Paul Foot 1938 – 2004

Lobster Issue 49 (Summer 2005)

[…] about his own writing, accepting editing suggestions on their merits. During a lunch break he said to me: ‘What’s a bright guy like you doing in the Labour Party?’ I replied: ‘What’s a bright guy like you doing in the SWP?’ We laughed. The second time we worked together was during our most minor […]

Kiss me on the apocalypse!

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] prospective candidates were insufficiently robust on this issue. The Goldsmith effect By 1995 it seemed clear to many observers of UK politics that Tony Blair and the Labour Party, now packaged as the ‘New Labour project’, were likely to do very well at the forthcoming general election. For a range of reasons, notably the […]

The Best Democracy Money Can Buy

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Lobster Issue 45 (Summer 2003)

[…] he brought his brand of clever, witty and vigorous exposure to bear on the Blair government in 1998. For detailing the corruption at the heart of New Labour in his Lobbygate reports in The Observer (see Lobsters 36 and 38), Palast was branded a liar on the front page of the then Blair-backing Daily […]

The View from the Bridge: Blair. IMF. Bilderberg, etc

Lobster Issue 40 (Winter 2000/1)

[…] Sometimes chronology implies causality and sometimes not. Consider the following sequence of events: in January 1994 Tony Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary and career-long member of the Labour Friends of Israel, took a four day freebie trip to Israel, with his wife, at the expense of the Israeli government. Two months later Tony Blair […]

The View from the Bridge

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008)

[…] Standards in Public Life about the influence of the Israeli lobby in the UK, is on-line.(5) Most usefully, it includes details of the Conservative as well as Labour Friends of Israel. The authors comment: ‘In the meantime your Committee is aware how the lobby group, Friends of Israel, has embedded itself in the British […]

Our Searchlight problem

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992)

[…] through a phone intercept at my end or his? (3) Searchlight smears O’Hara The Gable-Searchlight controversy resurfaced last year in the columns of the London left magazine Labour Briefing in the context of splits in the ranks of London anti-racists.(4) In October 1991 Larry O’Hara joined in the debate and reminded Labour Briefing readers […]

Out of the blue and into the black

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Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

[…] This point was again made by Holroyd himself, in evidence given to the Barron Inquiry in Dublin in 2003. At its simplest, and to paraphrase what Irish Labour Leader Pat Rabbitte recently said about Jonty Brown’s disclosures, in the Irish Dail in October 2005: when credible allegations as serious as this are made, they […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006)

[…] the Communist Party and the IRA. And here is the core of my complaint: it wasn’t just a plot against Wilson; it was a plot against the Labour and Liberal parties and the Heath wing of the Tories. And it wasn’t just MI5 doing it, either.(1) It did contain two significant new pieces of […]

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