I helped carry William Burroughs to the medical tent

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] the 1930s, were extremely popular with audiences across the UK, much to the annoyance of the Churchill government.3 Plugge lost his seat in Parliament in the 1945 Labour landslide but retained his commercial interests. For some years in the 1940s the Attlee government and the Foreign Office made serious attempts, without success, to acquire […]

Moscow Gold: ‘the Communist threat’ in post-war Britain

Lobster Issue 25 (1993)

[PDF file]: […] more academic discussion of the CPGB-Moscow relationship, but which does not cover the ‘Moscow gold’, see ‘The Communist Party of Great Britain and Moscow’, Stephen Hopkins, in Labour History History Review, Vol 57, No. 3, Winter 1992. 1 For one response, see the letter from former full-time CP employee Bill Brooks in Guardian 21 […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 79 (Summer 2020)

[PDF file]: […] discussing the CIA. There is still is no evidence of this operation to my knowledge. For non-UK readers: a group of MPs on the centre/right of the Labour Party quit and formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). This took millions of votes from Labour in the 1983 general election, enabling the election of Margaret […]

Farming, Fascism and Ecology: A Life of Jorian Jenks by Philip M. Coupland

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion, published in 1939. Released from internment, in 1942 he joined the Rural Reconstruction Association, founded in 1925 by the Labour Party activist Montague Fordham, remaining a member until his death. From 1942 onwards he was also active in the agricultural section of the Economic Reform Club, […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue

[…] discussing the CIA. There is still is no evidence of this operation to my knowledge. For non-UK readers: a group of MPs on the centre/right of the Labour Party quit and formed the Social Democratic Party (SDP). This took millions of votes from Labour in the 1983 general election, enabling the election of Margaret […]

They were the less pleasant side of capitalism

Lobster Issue 93 (2026)

[PDF file]: […] the regulator was no match for such complexity, he told me. ‘Essentially, they were throwing dust in the regulator’s face.’ (p. 201) To its credit, the new Labour government of 1997 toughened up regulations affecting the water industry. By then the whole process of privatisation had become deeply unpopular with the public – higher […]

The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 91 (2025)

[PDF file]: […] the forefront of transforming an agency focused on espionage into a global organisation capable of tackling modern-day threats dies aged 63’. It included this line: ‘A lifelong Labour supporter and former Young Socialist, Ritchie saw no contradiction between his intelligence work and his egalitarian ideals.’2 A pinko spook? We have come a long way […]

Apocryphylia

Lobster Issue 68 (Winter 2014)

[PDF file]: […] times, and certainly pre-1979, the monthly trade figures were a piece of ritualised political theatre that required urgent announcements, elaborate explanations, and, sometimes, finished political careers (usually Labour). This is no longer the case. Even The Times opined that Britain imports too much and its only hope if it wishes to reverse this is […]

Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation by Liz Featherstone

Lobster Issue 75 (Summer 2018)

[PDF file]: […] clear purpose, and his triangulation and Third Way politics underscored his policy vacuum. It seemed natural then that, wishing to emulate Clinton’s election success in 1992, New Labour would ramp up the use of heavily US-influenced market research techniques prior to the 1997 UK election. This was ‘the modernisers’ way of doing politics and […]

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