This is a slightly abridged version of part of chapter four of Mark Curtis’s book The Ambiguities of Power: British Foreign Policy since 1945 (Zed Press, 1995) reviewed below. In August 1953 a coup overthrew Iran’s nationalist government of Mohammed Musaddiq and installed the Shah in power. The Shah subsequently used widespread repression and torture … Read more
The Dirty War Martin Dillon, Hutchinson, London, 1990. The SAS in Ireland Raymond Murray, Mercier Press, Cork and Dublin, 1991 Martin Dillon is a freelance journalist in Northern Ireland with a long career behind him: editor and radio presenter for the BBC in Northern Ireland, co-author of the Penguin Special, Political Murder In Northern Ireland … Read more
Feminine Fascism: Women in Britain’s Fascist Movement 1923-1945 Julie Gottlieb, London: I.B. Tauris, 2000, £39.50 The Viceroy’s Daughters Anne de Courcy London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £20.00 Blackshirts on-Sea J. S. Booker London: Brockinday Publications, 1999, £18.00 Fascism is generally regarded as a fiercely masculine political movement committed to excluding women from the worlds … Read more
Extracts from an address by John Allman, Secretary of Christians Against Mental Slavery, to the civil rights rally in Houston, Texas, on 30 July 2004. My name is John Allman. I am honoured to have been invited to come here from England to talk to you about a new danger facing all mankind. A favourite … Read more
This is the press release issued to the media with Lobster 11. (April 1986) Embargoed until 3pm, April 30th Something very strange happened in British politics almost a decade ago. A Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, and the journalist with the closest links to the British intelligence services, Chapman Pincher, both said that elements of MI5 … Read more
William Blum New York: Soft Skull Press, 2002, $15 www.softskull.com The working lives of writers, especially writers of non-fiction like Blum – or me – are rather dull. To produce Lobster and my other bits and pieces I have to stay in one place, read e-mails every day, books, newspapers, visit libraries, go to … Read more
ed. ‘Nigel West’ Faber and Faber, London, 1993 The title isn’t to be taken seriously. This is 610 pages of short extracts from some of the books written by British MI5 and MI6 personnel, with short biographical sections by ‘West’. Some of this is quite interesting — lots of it was new to me — … Read more
Feedback From Ernest Wistrich Dear Sir, I have read the article ‘Spinning the European Union: pro-European propaganda campaigns in the British media’ by Andy Mullen in your Winter 2002 issue. Whilst it contains a number of minor inaccuracies it includes one major misrepresentation, namely that the European Movement, of which I was director between 1969 … Read more
Are raw prawns pink? Fun and games Down Under where a great brouhaha developed over allegations that Australia’s most famous – and left-wing historian, the late Manning Clark, was a Soviet agent. It started when the Australian poet Sid Murray reported that 26 years before he had seen Clark at a dinner wearing the Order … Read more
Earlier articles in Lobster (issues 39, 41, 43, 45, 49) have followed Malcolm Kennedy’s case. The human rights organisation, Liberty, took his complaint about interference with his communications and other forms of surveillance and harassment, to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), the body set up under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA) to … Read more
