"We Know All About You". Britain's surveillance police state.

 

Much of the publicity surrounding the spy cops (Mitting) inquiry has focused on women who were deceived into sexual relationships with undercover Special Branch Officers.

This is shocking enough, but what I think as received less attention, is the role these undercover police officers played as agent provocateurs. They tried to instigate people into committing criminal acts like arson and then shopped them.

It has been alleged that one undercover police officer carried out an arson attack on a Debenhams Store and tried to encourage others to do so. Another undercover police officer, tried to get other activists to fire bomb a shop that he claimed was the property of an Italian fascist.

Much of what we get told about the work of the British security services, tends to be about countering espionage. What they're less happy to talk about, is the role they play in spying on British citizens.

In his book, 'We know all about you: The Story of Surveillance in Britain', Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, writes there is a "Tendency in the UK for people to be put under government surveillance for political purposes which sometimes had little to do with national security."

In 1986, Duncan Campbell estimated that one citizen in five was the "subject of police local intelligence files." He drew attention to MI5's Joint Computer Bureau in Mayfair which had 20 million people in its system.  Yet some British people like to be under the thumb of authority. In a TNS poll in 2014, some 64% of respondents thought that the UK intelligence agencies should be able to monitor the communications of all citizens not just likely suspects.

There's little doubt that blacklisting in some British industries, wasn't just about identifying so-called "troublemakers" but was also about weakening and undermining the labour movement. Many workers became afraid to report hazards because they feared being put on a blacklist. 

Blacklisting was made illegal in the U.S. in 1935. The 1959 'Landrum Griffin Act', required firms to disclose to the U.S. Department of Labour, payments made to firms engaged in labour espionage and blacklisting. Despite this and the introduction of a Freedom of Information Act in 1966 and a Privacy Act in 1974, unions in the U.S. still complain of blacklisting. Union busting is still big business in America and many American workers fear joining a union because of blacklisting.

Crowborough residents protest about camp for illegal immigrants.

 

I recently watched a TV program on GB News about illegal migrants who have been sent to an army camp in Crowborough, in East Sussex. The Home Office appointed ‘Clearsprings Ready Homes’ owned by multi- millionaire, Graham King, to run the Crowborough Army Camp which is now being used to accommodate asylum seekers and illegal migrants.

Local residents who complain that they weren't consulted about the scheme to house illegal migrants, are now saying that house prices in the area have plummeted and they're having difficulty selling their homes. Although King doesn't own the army camp, but runs it, he's made himself a fortune out of public contracts to house illegal migrants. Some of the refugees compared the army camp to a prison but according to GB News, they're free to come and go as they please and can leave the camp for up to seven days before returning. Many of these illegal migrants have travelled to Britain without valid documents and very little is known about them.

Residents living in the area, say that the migrants are often seen around the town and golf course, drinking cans of beer. Some female residents complained that they no longer feel safe walking in more remote parts of the town like Ashdown Forest. It seems that the camp provides transport so the illegal migrants can visit Crawley where they are less conspicuous.

GB News presenter, Patrick Christys, who was in Crowborough talking to residents, never mentioned Graham King, or Clearsprings Ready Homes, or the vast amounts of taxpayers' money that is going into the pockets of people like Graham King and Serco.

Jalil Ahmad, a young Afghan refugee, who spoke fairly good English, who was interviewed by GB News, told Christys that he'd been told that if he stayed at the camp for three or four months, he would be given accommodation in a House of Multiple Occupation, (HMO). He said that he'd left Afghanistan because it wasn't a good country to live in under the Taliban and that he thought that Britain offered him more opportunities as an MMA professional fighter, with UFC aspirations. Young Jalil, who was probably far too honest for his own good, did say that the migrants living in the camp generally got on with one another because they were all in the same boat, but he also compared the situation to living in a jungle.

Starmer's crusade against bogus anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.

 

Margaret Hodge

The ousted UK Prime Minster, Keir Starmer, told the House of Commons, "I ripped anti-Semitism out of my party."

Its never been clear to me when the Labour Party and Jeremy Corbyn, suddenly become anti-Semitic? We were told that a Corbyn led Labour government would pose "an existential threat to Jews living in Britain." It was nonsense upon stilts.

The whole issue of antisemitism was weaponized to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and to replace him with Keir Starmer. I have never quite understood why an anti-Semite would join the Labour Party.

Both Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner served in Corbyn's shadow cabinet. If they thought that Corbyn posed a threat to Jews living in Britain or was an anti-Semite, why didn't they say so at the time.

Margaret Hodge, allegedly denounced Jeremy Corbyn as a "f..king anti-Semite” in the House of Commons. When she received a letter from Jennie Formby, the General Secretary of the Labour Party, regarding alleged abusive behaviour, Hodge acted as though she'd received a summons from Himmler and the Gestapo. She said that receiving the letter had reminded her of what her father had always told her. That she should always have a suitcase packed and left behind the front door, in case they had to leave in a hurry. Despite refusing to apologise, any investigation or probe into Margaret Hodge was quietly dropped.

Is Britain becoming more authoritarian and restricting free speech?

 

Johann Most

When I was growing up in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, you didn't hear about people being prosecuted for hate speech, or using language that was likely to cause alarm, harassment or distress. There was no cancel culture, no platforming or racially aggravated offences. There was a Board of British Film Censors who had a say in what films were shown and there were obscenity laws. British comedians like Bernard Manning were deliberately provocative and often used racism as part of their act.

What has changed is that people now have access to the internet and social media which has given people a medium, a public voice, in which to express their opinions. At one time you would have written a letter to a local newspaper, if you could write a letter and get it published. Many British people today, are more likely to make complaints to the police about injured feelings or opinions that they find unacceptable. Many Brits also seem to like being under the thumb of authority, which can lead to a kind of creeping totalitarianism and the police state.

I find Britain today far more authoritarian than what it was when I was growing up. Boris Johnson, the former Conservative Prime Minister, claimed that 10,000 people are year are being arrested in Britain for comments posted on social media. This is broadly in line with Freedom of Information data showing over 12,000 annual arrests in England and Wales for online communication offences. Arresting British people for comments they have made on social media and jailing some of them, would have been unthinkable not very long ago.

However, I don't believe that there ever was a time when the English had an unfettered right to free speech. During the reign of King Henry VIII, John Wycliffe was burnt at the stake for translating the Bible into English. In 1881, The anarchist Johann Most, got 18 months in Clerkenwell Gaol for celebrating the assassination of the Russian Tsar. In 1763, Peter Annet, a 70-year-old school master was jailed and stocked for translating Voltaire and other free-thinking tracts.

Nowadays, requests to remove books from library shelves are on the rise in Britain. Some classic books are being sanitised or rewritten for the modern British market. Publishers frequently hire "sensitivity readers" to review or remove language deemed offensive, racist, sexist, or non-politically correct and many books contain trigger warnings for snowflakes. It's not actually book burning but book binning. 

The 'Uniparty' and the legacy of Tony Blair.

 

Margaret Thatcher called Tony Blair and New Labour, her greatest legacy to the country. Blair not only lied us into going into war in Iraq, but he was also the chief architect of Brexit. Blair and New Labour were responsible for the political exclusion of the working-class. They welcomed immigration in 2004 when other E.U. countries placed a five-year restriction on it.

According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), during thirteen years of a New Labour government, almost 80% of new jobs created in Britain, went to immigrants from Eastern Europe. When Gordon Brown encountered Mrs Gillian Duffy on a council estate in Rochdale, she expressed her concern about the levels of immigration into Britain. He was then heard to call her a "bigoted" woman. 

New Labour failed to understand how society in Britain had changed. They obliterated any mention of the working-class and blurred any distinction between New Labour and the Conservatives and filled their ranks with middle-class MPs. This strategy was known as the prawn cocktail offensive. We were all told to get under Tony's "big tent." 

In 1979, 40% of the Parliamentary Labour Party had done working-class jobs. Today, only around 6 or 7% of Labour MPs, have done working-class jobs. Many working-class traditional Labour voters stopped voting Labour because they felt ignored or they felt there was no difference between Labour or Tory. Many stopped voting altogether or started to vote for UKIP. 

Tony Blair and his modestly named 'Tony Blair Institute for Global Change' are behind the national digital ID scheme that Labour want to introduce to keep us all under surveillance. Blair's institute is funded by tech billionaires like the American Larry Ellison of Oracle, who have a financial vested interest in it. Blair, who is estimated to be worth around £60 million, is also lobbying to end the triple lock that uprates the British state pension and he wants to reform the British state pension because he says it's unaffordable and unsustainable. 

The English historian David Starkey, talks about the 'Uniparty' to describe the pernicious influence that Blairism has had British politics. He basically thinks you can't get a gnat's whisker between any of the mainstream political party’s in Britain? 

Darwin & the survival of the fittest.

 

Leading Fabian's like the Webb's (Sidney and Beatrice Webb), and George Bernard Shaw, were huge fans of the dictator Joseph Stalin and his so-called Soviet Communist Regime. The Webb's wrote a two-volume study called 'Soviet Communism: A New Civilization?' which was published in 1935. They also supported Stalin's show trials and the purges. They believed in a kind of enlightened despotism and rule by technocrats and experts.

Shaw was a eugenicist who advocated compulsory sterilisation for people deemed "feeble minded", but so did Winston Churchill. He advocated for the sterilisation of the mentally unfit. Winston Churchill did say that the best argument against democracy was a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

I recently saw film footage of George Bernard Shaw which is circulating on Facebook where he was arguing for tribunals to set up which we would be forced to attend, to justify our existence. He was basically saying that some people have no right to exist because they're not useful to society. If some people have no right to exist, then what are you going to do with them?

What is called "social Darwinism" and the "survival of the fittest" has nothing really to do with Charles Darwin. He never used the term and didn't support its core premises. It has more to do with the ideas of Herbert Spencer and Darwin's cousin Francis Galton. It was used to justify social inequality, imperialism, laissez-faire capitalism and eugenics.

Charles Darwin once asked a breeder of racing dogs, how he got a winner. The dog breeder told him that he bred many and hanged many. It is a bit more difficult to do that with human beings.

Farage and the convicted fraudster.

 

George Cottrell

Nigel Farage hasn't got a leg to stand on.

Baby Face George Cottrell is a convicted fraudster who has donated money to Reform UK. He's not a fairy godmother. He served time in a U.S. jail when he pleaded guilty to wire fraud in return for other charges being dropped. He was caught in an FBI sting operation and initially charged with 21 offences including conspiracy to commit money laundering, wire fraud, blackmail and extortion. Undercover agents posed as drug traffickers and Cottrell was caught agreeing to launder money for them.

Farage knew all about this because Cottrell was arrested in the U.S. when he visited America with Farage and others, in 2016. Despite this Cottrell is still hanging around with Farage. They say that a man is known by the company he keeps. Farage is not fit to be the UK Prime Minister.

I'm surprised that the British mainstream press has been so quiet about Cottrell's links to Nigel Farage when this has been well publicised on social media. How George Cottrell makes his money seems to be clouded in mystery but much of it seems to come from speculation and gambling.

British sympathies with fascism.

 

There were many English upper middle-class Conservative types that admired the Italian fascist, Benito Mussolini. 

The English novelist Evelyn Waugh, supported Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and supported General Franco and the Croation fascist Ante Pavelic, the leader of the Ustase. Winston Churchill called Mussolini the "Roman Genius" and praised him for ridding the world of Bolshevism.The Daily Mail admired Mussolini and supported Oswald Mosley, the leader of the black shirt British Union Fascists, who was financed by Mussolini. Churchill visited Italy in 1927 and declared that had he been an Italian, he would have been a fascist. 

King George V, gave Mussolini an honorary knighthood that was only withdrawn when he declared War on Great Britain. Lady Austen Chamberlain, the sister-in-law of Neville Chamberlain, was a Fascist sympathiser who idealised Mussolini.

Italian fascism in its early days wasn't anti-Semitic and many Italian Jews were fascists. They became fascists out of a sense of patriotism or to get on. The Italian fascists didn't target Jews until they hooked up with Hitler. What they targeted was the left - communists, socialists, anarchists, trades unionists. 

In May 1924, the secretary general of the Italian Socialist Party, Giacomo Matteotti, denounced the Fascist Party and Mussolini to the Chamber of Deputies. He challenged the results of the recent elections and denounced the violence and abuses that had brought the party to power. He declared, "I've said my piece...now get ready for my death." Less than two weeks later, on 10 June, six fascists squadristi kidnapped him as he walked along the banks of the Tiber in Rome. In August, his mutilated body was discovered buried just outside the city, near Riano Flamino.

Mussolini took full responsibility for the murder of Matteotti and dared his critics to prosecute him. After a prolonged judicial inquiry into the murder, the six suspects arrested for the murder, were allowed to walk free. Mussolini established a police state in Italy and suppressed opposition parties and killed lefties. Despite this, many people in Britain, accepted Mussolini and subsequently Hitler, as modernizing reformers.