The Oyston Affair appears to have been the longest and most expensive privately-funded political dirty tricks campaign in recent British history. The astonishing 15-year campaign waged against Owen Oyston by Michael Murrin, the owner of a fish and chip shop in the village of Longridge, Lancs, was backed by help and cash payments raised by … Read more
Luke Harding, David Leigh and David Pallister Penguin, 1997, £6.99 George Orwell said that Robinson Crusoe was a good example of a bad book, clumsily written but of natural interest due to its subject. The same is true here. Heroic and triumphant in tone, the troika of authors concentrate mainly on the paraphernalia, research and … Read more
Dan Hind London: Verso, 2007, h/b, £24.99 Hind’s ‘concern is to examine how ideas from the historical Enlightenment function in contemporary society.’(p. 6) His starting point is the aftermath of 9/11 and the outbreak of loose talk of there being a conflict between radical Islam and ‘the enlightenment’. (12) Some of this came from … 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
This is the text of a letter The Guardian declined to print It was sent from Fred Holroyd on May 13th 1987 Dear sir, It comes as no surprise that Mrs Thatcher over reacted to the media attempting to discover the real facts of the Gibraltar shootings. Her attitude is vulnerable to close scrutiny, especially … Read more
‘Isn’t it true that when those poor devils stop suffering it is through a loss of what you call psyche?'(1) The psychotronics era The former Soviet Union had a long history of programmes in energetics and psycho-energetics technology, known to the West as psychotronics. Until recently, the bulk of the initial work on the science … Read more
Ian Macgregor, Lazards, Pearsons, and Amax PART 1 See also Part 2 in Lobster 6 Summary This article attempts to show that the present chairman of the National Coal Board, Ian MacGregor, is far more than the “right man for the job” imported from the U.S. by a Government set simply on technical efficiency. Macgregor’s … Read more
Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire Anne Norton New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004 $25/£16 What’s the Matter with America? Thomas Frank The Resistable Rise of the American Right London: Secker & Warburg, 2004, £12 Most of us in Europe find it difficult to understand what happened in America on … Read more
Thinking about the Falklands Paul Johnson recently sneered in The Times at the ‘conspiracy theories’ about the Falklands War held by the likes of Tam Dalyell MP. Reading this, what struck me was just how few conspiracy theories about that war have emerged in the past 3 years. So, here are a couple. Mine is … Read more
NFTB There is a new issue, no 6, of Larry O’Hara’s Notes from the Borderland. It is 68 pages, glossy paper, with essays on ‘journo-cops’, Paul Foot, Shayler and Machon and the Copeland bombing. In the UK this is £3.50 from BM 4769, London WC1N 3XX; a two issue sub is £7.50. Outside the UK: … Read more
