The view from the bridge

Lobster Issue 43 (Summer 2002) £££

The view from the bridge Bilderberg and the EU The Diaries of former Liberal-Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, (volume one 1988-1997, London: Allen Lane, Penguin, 2000) is a pretty uninteresting read with a couple of striking sections. Pages 42-46 contain his account of attending a Bilderberg meeting – by far the longest and most detailed account … Read more

The New Public Diplomacy: Soft power in international relations

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Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

Ed. Jon Melissen London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, h/b, £50.00   Just after World War 1, a group of the liberal-left in Britain began campaigning against orthodox – i.e. secret – diplomacy. It had caused the mind-bogglingly stupid carnage of World War 1, they argued, and had to go. This was the Union for Democratic Control … Read more

Stakeknife and Mad Dog

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Lobster Issue 47 (Summer 2004) £££

Stakeknife: Britain’s Secret Agents in Ireland Martin Ingram and Greg Harkin Dublin: The O’Brien Press: 2004, £8.99, p/back Mad Dog: The rise and fall of Johnny Adair and ‘C Company’ David Lister and Hugh Jordan Edinburgh: Mainstream, 2003, £15.99, h/back     Stakeknife is a former member’s account of some of the operations of the … Read more

Brian Crozier, the Pinay Circle and James Goldsmith

Lobster Issue 17 (1988) £££

In Lobster 11 we included a little appendix on ‘the Pinay Circle’. Lobster 11 was done at full-tilt, researched, written and produced in about 4 months, and there were a number of bits and pieces we didn’t evaluate which went undigested into the appendices. One was this Pinay Circle. At the time all we had … Read more

Notes from the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92. Part 2

Lobster Issue 24 (December 1992) £££

See also: Part 1: British Fascism 1974-92 (Lobster 23) Part 3: British fascism 1983-6 (Lobster 25) Part 4: British Fascism 1983-6 (II) (Lobster 26) The 1986 National Front Split (Lobster 29) Introduction In the first part of this essay, in Lobster 23, after reviewing the strategies adopted by significant British fascist parties in the period, … Read more

Oscar Wilde’s Last Stand: Decadence, Conspiracy and the First World War

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Lobster Issue 38 (Winter 1999) £££

Philip Hoare, Duckworth Press, London, 1997, £16.99 The opening of MI5’s archives up to and including 1919 gives historians and researchers the chance to exhume the genesis of the right in British domestic politics as well as the early activities of the secret state. Despite its title (Oscar died in 1900) Hoare dips quite a … Read more

Out of the blue and into the black

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Lobster Issue 51 (Summer 2006) £££

Into the Dark Johnston Brown Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2006, £22.99, h/b   When Fred Holroyd first made his disclosures regarding the activities of SAS Captain Robert Nairac to Duncan Campbell of The New Statesman in 1984, they were credible because Holroyd was a loyal Army Intelligence Captain with absolutely no sympathies for IRA terrorism. … Read more

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