Holding pattern

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: […] I acquired Atkinson’s obscure booklet from eBay. The first is the following assertion (p. 14): ‘Because Fleet Street expressed pre-Falklands doubts 3 7 as to whether Margaret Thatcher could deliver a second Tory Government, the possibility of a new pro-European Democratic Alliance was explored immediately following Labour’s defeat in 1979 – indeed talks did […]

The State of Secrecy: Spies and the Media in Britain by Richard Norton-Taylor

Lobster Issue 80 (Winter 2020)

[PDF file]: […] reoccurs elsewhere in the book. We’re told that, during the Cold War, leaks from heroic defectors and double agents helped preserve peace. For instance, they helped convince Thatcher that Mikhail Gorbachev was serious about reforming the Soviet Union. Norton-Taylor also gives honourable mentions to politicians like Robin Cook, Tam Dalyell and Menzies Campbell for […]

Haters, Baiters and Would-be Dictators: Anti-Semitism and UK Far Right by Nick Toczek

Lobster Issue 71 (Summer 2016)

[PDF file]: Haters, Baiters and Would-be Dictators Anti-Semitism and UK Far Right Nick Toczek London: Routledge, 2016; £24.99, p/b This is a very detailed account of the British anti-semites of the first half of the twentieth century, the hard-core handful who believed that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion really was a blueprint for Jewish domination […]

In The Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] ‘given by the Prince of Wales in honour of Wafic Said and his charitable work, and to mark his eightieth birthday’. This wonderful man had given Margaret Thatcher ‘the 4 run of a lovely country house in Oxfordshire’ during her final years. (pp. 483, 535) Wafic Said, it is worth remembering, was involved in […]

Political life in Britain

Lobster Issue

Contents Political life in Britain Talking to a Brick Wall: How New Labour stopped listening to the voter and why we need a new politics Deborah Mattinson London: Biteback, 2010, £17.99 People, Politics and Pressure Groups: Memoirs of a lobbyist Arthur Butler Hove: Picnic Publishing, £12.99, 2010 Bonfire of the Liberties: New Labour, Human Rights […]

Various: Political life in Britain by Tom Easton

Lobster Issue 60 (Winter 2010)

[PDF file]: How New Labour stopped listening to the voter and why we need a new politics Deborah Mattinson London: Biteback, 2010, £17.99 People, Politics and Pressure Groups: Memoirs of a lobbyist Arthur Butler Hove: Picnic Publishing, £12.99, 2010 Tom Easton Deborah Mattinson is just one of the many early enthusiasts for what became New Labour to […]

Books on New Labour

Lobster Issue 59 (Summer 2010)

[PDF file]: […] the tough world of NUM politics, largely keeping from public view his disagreements with Mick McGahey and Arthur Scargill and others while facing the venom of Margaret Thatcher and the power of the state. This is an insider’s view of the 1984/85 miners’ strike, the subsequent closures and the working of the NUM. But […]

The Scottish National Party and the American State

Lobster Issue 85 (Summer 2023)

[PDF file]: […] will of the party is void: Sturgeon is the party. The party payroll is as close to a cult as I have witnessed in mainstream UK politics. Thatcher experienced greater dissension within the Tories at the height of her popularity. There are two main schools of thought regarding Sturgeon’s inaction in progressing independence. * […]

Book reviews

Lobster Issue

[…] the tough world of NUM politics, largely keeping from public view his disagreements with Mick McGahey and Arthur Scargill and others while facing the venom of Margaret Thatcher and the 190 Summer 2010 power of the state.1 1 This is an insider’s view of the 1984/85 miners’ strike, the subsequent closures and the working […]

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