Blob of the month Hear the one about the supposedly spook-watching magazine whose editor misspelt the name of the head of MI5? Yep: Rimmington, I had in the last issue: Rimington it should have been. Searchlight News Their campaign against Larry O’Hara has reached new depths. In the March issue they published his picture and … Read more
Most of a talk given at Housman’s bookshop in March. The talks in this book (1) kind of parallel some of the things that I have been writing about elsewhere. I began publishing Lobster in 1983; and I also joined the Labour Party that year, partly, I confess, because it seemed a likely source of … Read more
Hugo Young Macmillan, 1998, £20 I cannot stand Hugo Young. He is a long-winded, pompous arsehole whose columns in the Guardian are mostly a waste of paper and ink. But he has his uses, notably as a mouthpiece for the Foreign Office. In this book he has revealed in infinitely greater detail than before the … Read more
The final testimony of George Kennedy Young Introduction When this was published we believed that it had been written by a close friend of his. Subsequently we learned that it had been written by Young himself. As far as we were able to judge, it is accurate. But this is by no means the whole … Read more
Donald Allen During 1987, when some of the London media were pursuing the ‘Wilson plots’ story, Colin Wallace, the only public source on the story at the time, was working with a Channel 4 journalist called Robert Parker. At one point disinformation about Wallace was being fed to Parker, through another journalist, from a former … Read more
The former deputy Labour leader of Preston has been given legal aid to sue the Inland Revenue, two chief constables, two former Tory government ministers, two millionaires and a former fish and chip shop owner, for conspiring to steal his tax records. Frank McGrath was swept out of power in a Labour Party purge after … Read more
Ah, the wonderful private sector In ‘Blair anti-corruption plan weakened by British firms’ in The Independent 2 September 2002, Geoffrey Lean reported: ‘Britain has the world’s most corrupt companies, and some of the weakest legislation among industrialised countries for dealing with them….Half of the 70 companies identified by the World Bank as so corrupt that … Read more
Through The Looking Glass: British Foreign Policy In An Age Of Illusions Anthony Verrier (Cape, London 1983) This will probably turn out to be an important book, maybe even a little landmark in the (scanty) literature on British foreign policy since the war. So far it has been largely ignored by the literary/political establishment, receiving … Read more
NuLab and Uncle Sam In the last issue I discussed the research by Giles Scott-Smith on the US State Department’s funding of a big freebie trip to the US for Mrs Thatcher in 1967, after the US embassy in London had spotted her as a possible future prime minister. Scott-Smith has more information on the … Read more
