Fifth Column: The decadence of our political system

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] Hindsight and Truth But hindsight is a wonderful thing. After the invasion of Poland, Suez, the intervention of the IMF in the 1970s, the arrival of Maggie Thatcher, the Falklands War, the Iraq War, there are always those who see an inevitability that may never have been there in the first place. So it […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

After Kelly: ‘After Dark’, David Kelly and lessons learned

Lobster Issue 55 (Summer 2008) £££

[…] year (the Gibraltar shootings followed by killings at two funerals, ‘Death on the Rock’, Lisburn, Ballygawley and other bombs) had led, only a month previously, to Mrs Thatcher appealing to the British media to withhold publicity from IRA sympathisers. A spokesman for the IBA said, ‘The fact that After Dark is a live programme […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

Publications and Book Reviews

Lobster Issue 6 (1984) £££

[…] may turn out to be more interesting than it first appears. And let’s hope that McCoy, now living in Australia, is working on that material . RR Thatcher and Friends: The Anatomy of the Tory Party Ian Ross (London 1983) This might have been a very good book, but inclusion in Pluto’s ‘Arguments for […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

New Labour, New Atlanticism: US and Tory intervention in the unions since the 1970s

Lobster Issue 33 (Summer 1997) £££

[…] based on the Wills family tobacco fortune.(3) Grant-seekers must apply to a panel of high-powered Conservatives. Trustees listed for 1994 include Lord Carrington, Foreign Secretary under Mrs Thatcher and currently Chair of the Bilderberg organisation; Lord Gowrie, former arts minister and chair of the Arts Council; and John Kemp-Wallace, former chair of the Stock […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

A Very British Jihad

Book cover
Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

[…] Larkin thinks that the ‘collusion’ can be traced back to the ‘quiet coup’ run in the UK in the 1970s which led to the election of Mrs Thatcher. This chapter, the one which he has written from other published sources, without the kind of detailed research he conducted in Northern Ireland, is the weakest […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

Notes From the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92

Lobster Issue 23 (1992) £££

[…] under an NF regime would ‘find themselves in police cells so quickly they won’t know what hit them’ — closing off space to the Left just as Thatcher had drawn off support from the Right. (27) In this period there were allegations of collusion with the repressive apparatus of the state, centred around Martin […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

The rise of warfare capitalism

Book cover
Lobster Issue 54 (Winter 2007/8) £££

Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing Stephen Marshall (Guerilla News Network, $13.22. Available from and ) The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism Naomi Klein, (London: Allen Lane, £25.00)   ‘When new (forms of capitalism) emerged in the past …they sparked a flood of analysis and debate about how such seismic shifts in the production of […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

UK Eyes Alpha: the Inside Story of British Intelligence

Book cover
Lobster Issue 32 (December 1996) £££

[…] the spooks is money wasted. For much of the past twenty years none of this mattered much, for the intelligence services had one major fan – Mrs Thatcher. If no-one else took their reports seriously, she did, taking them home in the evenings; and under her the spooks’ budgets more than doubled. This isn’t […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

From Bevan to Blair: 50 years reporting from the political front line

Book cover
Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

[…] didn’t get this to read yet another account of post-war British politics. I got it because in Lobster 39 (p. 21) I noted comments made by Mrs Thatcher to Robert Armstrong, MI5 liaison at the Home Office, in the mid 1970s on her ‘misgivings’ about the presence of Goodman in the Labour government. There […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

The League of Empire Loyalists and the Defenders of the American Constitution

Lobster Issue 46 (Winter 2003) £££

Kevin Coogan is the author of the study of the American fascist Francis Parker Yockey, Dreamer of the Day, reviewed in Lobster 39. He sent me an essay primarily about the American far-right group the Defenders of the American Constitution. The essay, while fascinating, is too big (about 20 pages) for these columns. However within […]

To access this content, you must subscribe to Lobster (click for details).

Accessibility Toolbar