Clockwork Orange 2 Jottings Here is another, previously unpublished section from Wallace’s 1974 jottings for the aborted operation ‘Clockwork Orange 2’. Can Politicians Be Trusted? N. St. Stevas: homosexual – boyfriend of Elton John’s manager – cocaine user at parties Homosexual relationships – Heath, Van Straubenzee, St. John Stevas, Thorpe Child prostitution: William McGrath, Van … Read more
In 1998, I left the New Labour Party, more out of exhaustion than anything else. For two or three years, I had been at the forefront of the drive to modernise the Party through promoting internal party democracy, first as Deputy Chair and Founding Member of Labour Reform, and then as Coordinator of the Grassroots … Read more
Radio Enoch: the station you love to hate Radio Enoch (see Lobster 46) was one of a number of Free Radio stations operating illegally during the 1960s and 1970s. Unlike its more pop music oriented contemporaries, however, Radio Enoch’s output consisted solely of right wing political propaganda, albeit with a musical background. (1) Its origins … Read more
Empires Apart: America And Russia From The Vikings To Iraq Brian Landers Hove: Picnic Publishing, 2009, £15, p/b Is America an empire? Tsarist Russia and its Soviet successor were certainly seen as such through western eyes. That America is not showing the heavily ideologised world through which we frame history. In a bold sweep … Read more
Nick Kochan London: Thomson, 2005, £19.99, h/b/b Nick Kochan is one of a small band of writers who try to bring together business and politics in an effort to understand a world often rendered incomprehensible by narrow specialists in these fields. He moves from the safe places think of the cosy world of … Read more
Scott et al I do have a copy of the Scott Report but I simply have not had time to read it. It seems pretty clear from the comments of a number of the knowledgeable minority who have followed this story for the past few years that, for whatever reason, Scott and his team have … Read more
The Last Supper: The Mafia, the Masons and the killing of Roberto Calvi Philip Willan London: Robinson, 2007, £7.99, p/b Willan wrote the wonderful The Puppet Masters about post-war Italian politics and this is more of the same, a smaller patch examined in more detail. Never mind the subtitle: yes, he does reexamine the … Read more
The story of the Ulster Citizens’ Army (UCA for the rest of this essay) is a tiny fragment in the intricate history of Protestant politics in Northern Ireland in the mid 1970s – so tiny that none of the general accounts I have looked at even mention it. But the UCA lingers on: it is … Read more
Introduction In early January the American writer Martin Cannon, whose ‘Mind Control and the American Government’, was published in Lobster 23, and who has a very interesting letter in this issue, offered me a big piece of his on the so-called Gemstone File. Cannon had got access to some of the original documents on which … Read more
Frost/Nixon Or, a load of old dick When Frost/Nixon first appeared at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London back in 2006 I wondered why on earth anyone would want to stage, to recreate, what was, essentially, a non-event. Why indeed? One can imagine mere actors relishing the opportunity to ‘interpret’ Frost and Nixon but who … Read more
