The Bruges Group meeting From Here to the Referendum held on 12 February 2013

Robert Henderson

The Tory  MPs Peter Bone and Richard Shepherd were the speakers . (http://www.brugesgroup.com/eu/from-here-to-the-referendum.htm?xp=speeches).  Both are in favour of the UK leaving the EU, although that of course begs the question of on what terms.   Much of their speeches were not directly to do with the referendum . To get the parts which were go  into  the Peter Bone speech at 9 minutes 27 seconds and the Richard Shepherd speech at 11 minutes and 50 seconds to get to their views on the future and the prospective referendum.

The MPs were frank about why no referendum could be held in this Parliament:  a consequence of the lack of a Commons majority and the deadweight of the Lib Dems on the government. Both admitted that  prospects of a referendum being held  in the next Parliament  (the  audience was decidedly sceptical on this point)  were far from certain, but they were distinctly more optimistic than most of the people at the meeting.

The most positive move suggested by the MPs was for a campaign by Tory Eurosceptic MPs  to get Cameron to introduce a paving Bill for an in/out referendum  before the next General Election for a referendum in the next Parliament.  This would put both Labour and the Lib Dems in a difficult position because, if they did not support and pass such a bill,  it would allow the Conservative Party to go into the next election as the only major party promising a referendum. If such a paving Bill were passed, it would then be effectively impossible not to have a referendum in the next Parliament.   In principle, this is a sound tactic but of course it does beg the question of the terms of the referendum and how it would be done.  Reports appeared  in the media for precisely such a Bill on 17 February (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/active/9875024/Tory-MPs-want-new-law-to-lock-in-EU-referendum-pledge.html) .

Apart from the question of whether  a referendum will actually be held, there were two things of note  about the meeting: a widespread legalism which led  a number of the questioners from the audience to fret over the restrictions placed on a member state leaving by Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty and an  undue  concentration by both the speakers and audience on economics as the ground on which the anti-EU and pro-EU camps would fight. (Richard Shepherd in his general comments  did show himself to have a strong sense of  nation and to understand that the core issue at stake was being masters in our own house, but still fell back on economics when it came to his doubts about how the public would respond).

When I asked  a question I prefaced it with a refutation  of the idea that leaving the EU meant invoking  Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty .  I did this by pointing out that international law is no law,  but merely agreements between sovereign states. For laws to have meaning, they must be  applied equally within the jurisdiction. International law patently does not do this, a  fact due to  the absence of  any practical means to make all states abide by the law (who would invade China or the USA to enforce breaches or  impose sanctions? )  Richard Shepherd thanked me for making the point with which he agreed. After the meeting a number of people sought me out and did the same.  I suspect this would have widespread appeal in a referendum campaign.

As for the concentration on economics, this is simply playing into the hands of the Europhiles.  The general public simply will not take the detailed economic arguments  on board.  At worst they will simply hear the frightening false claims about millions of jobs being lost.  The campaign to leave the EU should be centred on the question “Do we wish to be masters in our own house?” That will be readily understandable to anyone of normal intelligence and will tap into the innate tribal sense of human beings.  If the stay-in camp have to fight on ground other than the economic they will have no sure footing, their only argument  being the demonstrably false one that the EU has prevented war in Europe for 60 years. (This argument can be readily punctured by pointing out that for its first twenty years there were only six countries involved and only until the 1980s.  It was the  Cold War that kept the peace).  The economic arguments must be addressed but they  should be subordinate to the political issue of sovereignty.

When I got to my question,  I took the subject  beyond the next election and painted a future in which   the  Tories had been returned with a working majority, the in/out referendum had been held and the vote had been to leave the EU. I then asked what confidence we could have that whoever was in power would not sell us down the river by renegotiating  terms which would in practice lock us into the EU through such things as the “Four Freedoms”  of the EU, the free movement of goods, services, capital and most importantly people not only within the EU states but the larger European Economic Area which includes the likes of Norway.   I particularly stressed the importance of regaining control over our borders when it came to immigration, something which got the loudest murmur of agreement of the night.   I got no meaningful answer from the MPs  on that point –  the best they could offer was the tactic already described of pushing for a paving Bill for a referendum.

Apart from the question of the EU, it was very interestingly to see how disenchanted both Bone and Shepherd were with Cameron’s leadership  and the issue of gay marriage in particular. Shepherd spoke of Cameron “racing against his party” (Go into his speech at 5 minutes).   The audience was very much in sympathy with both their general dissatisfaction and their opposition to “gay marriage”.

There were  approximately 60 people attending.

Anders Breivik and the problem of political trials

Robert Henderson

The  Norwegian court judgement that  the mass killer Anders Breivik is sane and can be held in prison rather than treated as a psychiatric patient in a secure hospital (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19365616) shows how difficult it is to hold a meaningful trial where a case is heavily politicised.

There can be little doubt that the Norwegian elite would have much  preferred Breivik to be declared insane because then his motives for committing the killings could have been swept under the carpet. They wanted this because his motives  challenged everything that the religiously  politically correct Norwegian elite hold most dear: multiculturalism, mass immigration and  the feminisation of Norwegian society as they attempt the transformation of Norwegian society  from one of peaceable homogeneity to a fractured heterogeneity and the creation of a new human being fit  to live in their imagined multicultural paradise in the  manner of Stalin working to breed the New Soviet Man.

Had it been left to the Norwegian elite Breivik would have vanished into a psychiatric limbo. But there were two problems with this. The Norwegian public have not been brainwashed to the extent that they have become so  devoid of all natural human emotion that they will treat someone who has killed so many people as the victim,  and an unwitting one at that if he had been judged insane.  They quite naturally wanted Breivic  tried and convicted as a criminal. So ironically did Breivik, although of course he does not view himself as a criminal.  It is noteworthy that the panel of judges – two professional and three lay members – all agreed Breivik was  sane (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19365616). Such unlikely  unanimity strongly  suggests that they were responding to Norwegian public opinion rather than acting on the psychiatric testimony.

The second difficulty for the Norwegian elite was the opportunity it would provide  for further public questioning of their politics if Breivik  had been found insane. He  would undoubtedly have appealed against the ruling of insanity.  That would have allowed him  to both deride the Norwegian justice system as being no justice at all because it was politically manipulated and Norwegian politicians for being unable to counter  his  justifications for his actions. An appeal against insanity would also have provided an opportunity to repeat and expand upon those  justifications.

That politics not  psychiatric  opinion drove  the court to a  judgement of sanity is shown by the prosecution’s desire to have Breivik declared insane and the court’s ignoring of court commissioned psychiatric opinion which found Breivik to be insane.   It is a  very odd situation  for the prosecution to be asking for a mass killer to be declared insane and not responsible for his actions and the defence to be insisting that the defendant is sane and responsible.   The norm  is for the defence to claim insanity and the prosecution to try to rebut the claim.

The behaviour of the Breivik prosecution  is doubly odd because it is very difficult to see how Breivik could have been plausibly thought to be criminally insane.  Breivik did not have voices in his head telling him to kill. He had well-developed ideas which provided his motive.  He spent a great deal of time in preparation for the crime and  produced a 1,500 page manifesto. In addition,  Breivik was fully aware of what he was doing and the terrible nature of his act.  Had he committed such a crime in England the question of his sanity  would have been determined  by the McNaghten Rules. These  rest on whether a person accused of a crime knew they were doing something wrong or were suffering a defect of reason through mental illness,  most commonly paranoia, which drove them to commit the crime in the belief that it was necessary to commit it , most probably because of a belief that they or someone else was in danger. Clearly Breivik  was aware of what he was doing and how it would be viewed by society. That leaves only the question of whether he was acting under a delusion. That test would fall because manifestly what he fears, the objective threats to his society from mass immigration, multiculturalism, political correctness and Islam, are concrete facts. How far they could be judged to be mortal threats is another matter, but no one could reasonably argue that, in particular, mass immigration and Islam are not real and substantial  threats to the nature of Norwegian society.

It is also worth bearing in mind that terrorists are not rarely if ever  treated as mad by Western courts. The fact that Breivik killed so many in brutal fashion does not mean he is insane, or at least no more disturbed than others who kill for political reasons.  The prosecution’s attempt to have Breivik ruled mad is most plausibly  explained by a simple desire to produce a situation where his political ideas and actions could be dismissed as the ravings of a madman leaving, at least in the Norwegian elite’s eyes, their ideology without meaningful challenge.

Court-appointed psychiatrists disagreed on Breivik’s sanity.  He was examined twice. Breivik cooperated with the first team but not the second. The first  team which examined him came up with a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/05/you-must-be-mad-if-you-dont-believe-in-the-liberal-globalist-credo/) , but  the second found Breivik to be  sane. In England that might have resulted in each evaluation cancelling out the other,  but in the Norwegian justice system the presumption is that even if it is not certain that someone is insane,  they should be treated as such if there is any doubt about their sanity as judged by supposed psychiatric experts. During the trial the lead prosecutor Svein Holden said  ‘ the prosecution had not been convinced by the delusion the authors of the first report, Synne Sorheim and Torgeir Husby, advanced as their core evidence that for Breivik’s schizophrenia: that he believed he had a mandate which gave him the right to decide who should live and who should die.

But they [the two prosecutors Holden and Inga Bejer Engh) said that under Norwegian law, this was not enough.

“It is worse that a psychotic be sentenced to custody than a non-psychotic is sentenced to psychiatric care”.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/9347018/Anders-Behring-Breivik-should-be-declared-insane.html).

Apart from noting  the  chilling idea that it is reasonable to subject someone sane to psychiatric  treatment just in case,  it is clear that  Norwegian law has been cavalierly  overturned  in Breivik’s case.

The question of Breivik’s  sanity is not absolutely settled. The prosecution could appeal against the finding of sanity.  It would also be possible for Breivik to be declared insane during the course of his imprisonment.

Had the prosecution not insisted on pushing for an insanity ruling, the trial could have been conducted in a manner much closer to  that of a normal criminal case.  By doing so they shifted the focus from the killing and why Breivik committed the act to whether he was or was not sane.  That  gave credence to Breivik’s claim that the whole of the Norwegian power structure is a conspiracy to enforce the politically correct ideology at all costs.

No appeal

Breivik has said he will not appeal his conviction  because  he does not recognise the court as it is (in his view)  an illegitimate body which is a  tool of the politically correct elite who are his enemy. By appealing  against conviction he believes he would tacitly accept the court’s legitimacy.

I think Breivik has missed a trick here. If his appeal was based on his claim that the court was illegitimate his objection would dissolve and he would be left free to reiterate his complaints against the Norwegian elite.  It could be objected that the appeal itself would be made to a courts or courts which were appointed by the same class of  people who appointed the court which tried him and which were consequently also illegitimate.  However,  if his appeal failed, as it surely would, Breivik  could then move beyond the Norwegian courts to the European Court of Human Rights. Eventually he would run out of legal road,  but he could argue that in his appeals  he was not legitimising the courts but simply demonstrating the politicised nature of justice both in Norway and at a supranational level.

The unanswered questions

What has not been addressed by the Norwegian elite are Breivik’s complaints against them and their politics.  Where these touch on mass immigration and Islamicisation they are all too  real. Although there are elements of the ridiculous about Breivik’s writings, such as his obsession with uniforms and the Knights Templars,  his concern about the rapid turning of Norway from a homogeneous  into a  heterogeneous  society as a matter of policy is self-evidently reasonable and vitally important.  Norway has a small population of less than 5 million (http://www.ssb.no/english/subjects/02/befolkning_en/).  If mass immigration of those who cannot or will not assimilate fully continues at the pace it is running at, it is quite possible that within a couple of generations native Norwegians will be outnumbered.  Imagine a situation where Muslims became the largest population group in Norway. Does anyone believe they would,  as a group , subscribe to Norwegian customs and morals or if they become the majority would not try to create and Islamic state?

What the Norwegian elite has been doing is engage in an orgy of self-congratulation about how civilised the country is to allow Breivik the full protection and access to the law and that this national tolerance has nullified Breivik’s message .  This has been eagerly echoed by the British media. Here is an example  of the political goo even conservative commentators have been ejecting:

“Reading the reports, the first thing that strikes you is how pathetic Breivik sounds, like a teenage boy fantasising about being a soldier: describing shoot-em-up computer games as “training”, claiming that he used “Japanese warrior meditation techniques” to “de-emotionalise” himself, writing a 1,500-page “manifesto” describing his half-baked racist theories and his ludicrous self-identification with the Knights Templar. Breivik himself, with his idiotic beard and self-satisfied smile, looks less like the personification of evil and more like an irksome pub bore.

 But when you drag your attention away from him, you notice how clear-eyed, how sane, the Norwegian response has been.

In the aftermath of the attacks, Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian prime minister, told a gathering in his capital’s cathedral: “Our response is more democracy, more openness, and more humanity.” He went on in an interview with this newspaper: “It was our democratic, open society that was under attack… it was quite logical to say that the answer was more of what was attacked. (Tom Chivers –  http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tomchiversscience/100177883/norway-gives-a-dignified-lesson-in-how-to-deal-with-horror/)

The truth is rather different. The justice Breivik has been given is in its way a show trial, not one as obvious as those of, say, Stalin, but one emanating from the cloyingly politically correct society which Norway has become.   Far from allowing Breivik to put his case publicly,  his access to the Norwegian public has been very limited.  He has spent most of his time since his arrest without contact with other prisoners. (According to reports, after his conviction  Breivik  is to be kept without  contact with other prisoners  for the time being).  He was denied any  opportunity to see news programmes  after he was arrested and this may be continuing. When the trial was finally held,  Breivik’s testimony and that of his witnesses were not broadcast, while the prosecution’s submissions and witnesses were put on air.  When Breivik has been allowed to speak in court he has been frequently interrupted and harassed by the presiding judge.  This happened again at his appearance during the  court judgement where he was declared sane and sentenced to 21 years with the strong possibility that he will never be released as the period of imprisonment  can be increased if a prisoner is deemed dangerous at the expiry of their  formal sentence.

Apart from Breivik’s treatment, it is reasonable to consider the general fairness of the Norwegian justice system.  The use of the jury is rare even in serious crimes and the readiness to put people in psychiatric unity just in case  places a serious question mark over whether anyone charged with a crime which challenges the Norwegian commitment to political correctness could expect a fair trial.  Latterday liberals have a mentality very similar to that of Marxists which allows them to persuade themselves that the end justifies the means and consequently  those who fall outside the parameters of whatever are the limits of political correctness at the time – like all ideologies it shifts its shape continuously – are not to be allowed any scope for challenging political correctness, indeed, cannot be allowed to do so because widespread challenge would bring the ideological house of cards down.

No country’s justice  is immune from  political taint

The problem of politics contaminating justice affects any country  at some level, no matter how good  its general record on providing untainted justice as far as that is practically possible – the prejudice of jurors, judges and magistrates cannot be legislated away and there is always the problem of the rich being able to buy access to the law when the poor cannot do so.

Political correctness is now a strong driver of the politicisation of justice  in much of the West.  A first rate example of   politicised justice In England is the trial and conviction of  Gary Dobson and David Norris (both white)   for the murder of Stephen Lawrence  (black) was driven not by a desire for justice based on strong evidence but an hysterical desire by the British liberal elite to see people not only convicted for his murder to but the people who were convicted  should be those labelled as racist whites  (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/).  Their  trial was obviously  illegitimate simply on the grounds of public prejudice against the defendants generated by a 17 year hate campaign orchestrated by the media, politicians and various interest groups – a campaign probably unique in English history –  but the new “evidence” presented was also risibly fallible, depending  as it did on highly questionable forensics which could not  legitimately have passed the English law beyond a  reasonable doubt test for criminal conviction.  In addition, police videos obtained secretly of Dobson and Norris (with others)  engaging in racist behaviour  and discussing the Lawrence killing but making no confession of responsibility or even saying anything which implied they were responsible, were played to the jury despite  defence objections that it was unreasonably prejudicial-  a well established principle in English law –  because it  reinforced the idea of the defendants (who were respectively aged 16 and 17 at the time of the murder in 1993)  as racists without  providing any meaningful evidence that they were responsible for the murder.

Despite the highly questionable convictions, Dobson and Norris’ attempt to have the convictions overturned have been stopped at the first hurdle with  their application to appeal – not an appeal note but merely an application to make an appeal  -  having been turned down in short order (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192830/Stephen-Lawrence-killers-refused-leave-appeal-life-sentences-racist-murder.html#ixzz24SjMdeTO).  That is not the end of the matter because they can appeal against the refusal and there is also a theoretical eventual possibility of the Criminal Cases Review Commission considering the case. However, in the prevailing political climate in Britain it is not unreasonable to presume that any avenue of appeal , let alone the overturning of the convictions,  will be blocked regardless of the quality of  their grounds for appeal.

If national justice systems are intermittently  fallible because of political interference,  supra-national bodies such as the  Nuremburg  tribunal which tried Nazis  for war crimes,  the tribunals set up by the UN such as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda  (created in 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in Resolution 955) and  the International Criminal Court  are invariably contaminated by politics.  This is because the alleged crimes are political in nature and there is no possibility of any big fish brought before the tribunals or courts being found innocent because too much political capital has been invested in the prosecutions by powerful nations for someone like Milosevic to go free. A few lesser fry may be found not guilty because their acquittals, in terms of the public’s  perception,  are swallowed up by  the conviction of the important defendants and  such acquittals also have the beneficial effect for those running the  courts  of giving their proceedings generally a specious appearance of fairness.

There are also courts such as  the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) and the EU’s European Court of Justice (ECJ) which deal  with a mixture of what in England would be called criminal and civil cases, the vast majority being civil cases which involve the behaviour of national governments in making and applying laws which breach the treaties to which a country has signed up.  They are less obviously political in the sense that cases are not  brought for obvious  political reasons, but the manpower and conduct of  such courts is frequently open to question, for example, many judges in the  ECJ and ECHR  are drawn from countries, most notably those within the old Soviet bloc, which have no tradition of unpoliticised  justice.

The  fundamental question Breivik posed

The fundamental question which Breivik’s actions and motives pose is this: what non-violent means can be employed to prevent political elites in the West from turning their countries from natural homogenous nations into multicultural and multiracial messes when the elites make any serious non-violent opposition to such policies practically impossible?

Courage is the best defence against charges of racism

Robert Henderson

The trial of Emma West on two racially aggravated public order charges which was scheduled for 11 June has been postponed until 16 July to enable further psychiatric reports to be prepared. (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Emma-West-race-rant-trial-moved-July/story-16346869-detail/story.html).

As Miss West was charged over six months ago and has been  brought before courts several times,  it does seem rather strange that psychiatric reports need to be prepared now, especially as it was made clear months ago that she was being treated for depression when the events took place and had taken a double dose of her normal medication on the day of the alleged offences, both of which were of obvious utility as defences or mitigation. If they were going to be used by the defence surely psychiatric reports would have been made long ago. Had Miss West suddenly decided to plead guilty that could explain it, but there is no evidence that she has changed her plea. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that she  has stood firm on her intention to plead not guilty That would make her a decidedly rare bird amongst those who have found themselves arraigned in Britain on criminal charges merely for expressing non-pc views about mass immigration and its effects in general or for challenging the politically correct elite ideology in a particular instance where they have become embroiled in a dispute with someone who is black, Asian or a white person who claims ethnic minority status. Such a plea would also be a most unwelcome development for those who have brought her to trial.

The British liberal elite relies on fear to drive the enforcement of their totalitarian doctrine of political correctness, of which multiculturalism and “anti-racism” form the central part. The political elite – backed and aided by their auxiliaries in the mainstream media, public service, academia and the ethnic minorities themselves,  with big business tagging along provided the globalist and laissez faire tune is played by the politicians  – create and feed on that fear in various ways. They pass laws which make employers vulnerable to claims of racial and sexual discrimination; make the loss of a job, especially in publicly funded jobs, commonplace for those judged to have committed a politically incorrect “crime!” and criminalise dissent from those in the native British population who repudiate the idea of mass immigration as a good and lament the willful tainting of what was until the 1950s a remarkably homogenous population.

The political elite and their auxiliaries have been very successful to date in controlling dissent both through the creation of fear and the willing collusion of the mainstream media who happily accept the restrictions of Acts such as the Race Relations Act (9176), the 1986 Public Order Act and the Race Relations Amendment Act (2000) whilst proclaiming their belief in free expression. But the trick, like all acts of censorship and propaganda, only works while alternative views are excluded from the public fold.

What every liberal knows in his or her heart of hearts is that the creed they supposedly live by is no more than an aspiration and the reality of the time they live in is that human beings generally do not wish to live according to the dictates of political correctness and, most particularly, are naturally antagonistic to the idea that homo sapiens is just one big happy species without any meaningful innate or ineradicable cultural differentiation.  This means that any breach in the public censorship of politically incorrect ideas represents a potent danger for the British elite. They realize that if the truth is told about both the consequences of  mass immigration and the feelings of the native British towards it, the pack of ideological cards will tumble down, just as it did in the Soviet Union where the discontinuity between the political rhetoric of a communist paradise with equality, bumper harvests and every increasing industrial production contrasted fantastically with the miserable material lives of the Soviet masses and the brutal repression and ever more absurd Marxist-Leninist dogma.  In the case of the liberal regime in Britain, the equivalent absurdities are the liberal’s insistence that mass immigration had been a most wondrous boon bringing huge economic benefits and marvelous cultural enrichment while the large majority of the native population saw, often at first hand, the reality of the “cultural enrichment” as areas were effectively colonized, crime, especially violent crime, committed on an industrial scale by immigrants and their descendants, traditional British freedoms rapidly eroded in the name of multiculturalism and protest against the effects of immigration criminalized.

The elite fear of the public contradiction of the politically correct narrative on race and immigration  may have caused the postponement of Emma West’s trial to either prepare the ground to get her to change her plea to guilty or have her declared unfit to plead, the latter being the ideal result for the authorities because it would allow her to be represented as mad. This would fit beautifully with the liberal idea that only the mentally ill can hold non-pc views.

Until the last few years there have not been many prosecutions for inciting racial hatred or allied crimes. Instead, the British elite have relied on visits by the police to people who have had the temerity to put golliwogs on sale in their shop or make some mildly non-pc comment which has got into the media. It is very rare that charges have been brought, not least because the “crimes” they are supposedly investigating are often difficult to identify under existing laws. But an eagerly complicit British media has made sure that such action by the police is given great publicity.  This has laid the foundation for the general fear now present amongst the native British of voicing or even being associated with someone who voices a politically incorrect opinion, a fear symbolized by the almost inevitable “I’m not a racist” disclaimer when someone ventures to express mild concern about immigration or the behavior of a particular ethnic minority or even, because the “anti-racism” disease has become hideously virulent, a criticism of any person drawn from a pc protected group.

In the past few years more and more cases have ended up in court, two of the most recent being the jailing for 21 weeks of Jacqueline Woodhouse for behavior similar to that of Miss West and the Swansea U student Liam Stacey, who was jailed for 56 days after making comments deemed to be racist on Twitter (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/prison-for-merely-speakingnon-custodial-sentences-for-sustained-physical-attacks/). Both played the liberal game of Maoist-style confession which did them no good at all.

Sadly, very few native Britons in the past forty years have pleaded not guilty when charged with racially based offences. They have allowed themselves to be either intimidated into pleading guilty or on the rare occasions when a not guilty plea has been entered, gone along at their lawyers’ insistence with either a technical defence, for example, claims that they were wrongly charged or the evidence used was inadmissible , or a defence which does not say they had the democratic right to say or write whatever it was they said or wrote, but only challenges the charges on the grounds of what the words meant in the context of the law, for example, in the case of charges under section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act were the words insulting, viz:

(1)A person is guilty of an offence if he— .

(a)uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or .

(b)distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, .

with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1986/64).

The liberal elite fear anyone who pleads not guilty, even if it is on grounds, such as those just described, which do not challenge  directly the basis of the multicultural fantasy. This is because any contested trial brings into the public fold a dissenting voice and , consequently,  demonstrates  that the law is being used in a way which is incompatible with either a free society or a democracy, because it is inherent in the concepts of both a free society and a democracy that any opinion must be allowed to be argued or by definition the society is neither free nor a democracy.

If someone charged with politically correct “crimes” puts forward a defence that the laws under which they are charged are illegitimate because the laws are tyrannical and destructive of both freedom and democratic participation, the problem for the liberal elite is much amplified because it nakedly reveals their hypocrisy. Whilst happily using and tolerating the use of power appropriate only for a totalitarian state,  the official liberal line is that they are the most wonderfully moral and tolerant people in the world who find any form of discrimination or imposition of values obnoxious. Any person who wished to mount a forthright defence on the grounds of free expression and democratic participation would be  crying that the Emperor had no clothes.

The other very damaging possibility(for liberals) would be if a defendant argued that a failure to apply the law regarding racial incitement, threat, insult and so on equally rendered the law both morally null and legally incomprehensible, because it was literally impossible for any individual to judge what was and what was not illegal.  This would be very simple to do because there are many glaring examples of blacks engaging in racist abuse of whites not being judged to have committed racist crimes – two prime examples can be found in http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/05/31/prison-for-merely-speakingnon-custodial-sentences-for-sustained-physical-attacks/.

To these instances of double standards  can be added the vast numbers of incitements to racial hatred against the native white population of Britain by politicians, the mainstream media, academics and ethnic minority spokesmen who insist that Britain is a racist society because its native white population is racist. These not only attract no attention from the police but no condemnation by politicians or the mainstream media. ( I referred Greg Dyke when Director-General of the BBC to Scotland Yard  after he referred to the BBC staff as “hideously white”, a clear incitement to hatred against whites and especially potent because of his public position. Scotland Yard refused to open an investigation).

This brings us back to the question of why Emma West has been referred for psychiatric reports. The authorities have already done their best to intimidate her. After Miss West’s arrest she was held on remand “for her own protection” according to the court in Bronzefield Prison, the nearest to a high security Category A prison in England, a prison which has housed amongst others the mass murderess Rosemary West. They did this despite the facts that  (1) she made no request for protection nor was any firm evidence of serious threats to her safety produced.and (2) she has a three year old son to look after. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-2/)

Despite these intimidating experiences and the danger that her son may be taken from her by social services, Miss West still appears to want to plead not guilty. If she is resolute in that, her best way of winning her case or, quite possibly ,having the case dropped before it comes to court , is to fight the charges on the  grounds that they are an affront to free expression and democracy.  Miss West should also add the double standards in applying the law to the embarrassment she can cause the liberal elite. If she relies on a defence or mitigation based on her history of depression or the medication she took, it is unlikely to save her from conviction or provide much by way of mitigation because she has pleaded not guilty. There would be every chance she would go to prison and/or lose custody of her son.

What I recommend to Miss West is good advice to anyone who is arrested for a “racial crime”.  Make it clear from the moment you are approached by the police that you will plead not guilty on the grounds that free expression is a necessity in a free society and to engage in the democratic process.  There is a fair chance they will not even caution you, let alone try to bring you to court because the last thing the British political elite want are large numbers of trials with the defendants pointing out that the liberal emperor has no clothes.

Easy to say, difficult to do  I can hear people saying.. That is true. Being brave in such circumstances is deeply difficult, even for those  in political parties which have some public profile and base their politics on politically incorrect ideas of race and immigration.  In 2005 the leader of the BNP Nick Griffin emailed me to ask whether I would appear as a witness in a court case in which he was appearing as a defendant to charges of .  I had never met, spoken to or exchanged emails or letters with the man before his email arrived, nor had any dealings with him after our 2005 exchange of emails.

Griffin contacted me because Tony and Cherie Blair, quite bizarrely, attempted to have me prosecuted, and failed dismally, under the Malicious Communications Act during the 1997 General Election. Those interested in the case can find a summary at http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/when-tony-and-cherie-blair-tried-to-have-me-jailed/. He wanted me to give evidence which showed political tampering with the justice system.  This I agreed to do because Griffin was “the subject of both a  political law and a political prosecution.” . I wrote a detailed note which both laid out what evidence I could bring and my advice about how he could best run his defence.  Griffin accepted this then did precisely what I had warned him against doing, namely, letting his lawyers run a defence which did not defend the principle of free expression. Griffin was found not guilty but that verdict left him with a problem he cannot shake off. By allowing the defence he did, he tacitly accepted the legitimacy of the laws under which he was charged. I include the relevant exchange of emails with Griffin at the end of this article.

If the leader of a political party with enough support to justify the odd media appearance cannot be brave, why should the ordinary person be brave?  If the arguments about the value of free expression do not convince, consider the fate of  those who have been brought before courts in recent times. Jacqueline Woodhouse and Liam Stacey pleaded guilty and made the most abject public apologies. It did not save them.  They were both sent to prison for merely speaking in a country where burglars commonly do not receive a prison sentence  until their third or fourth conviction and violent assaults by blacks on whites receive community service, for example, . http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2070562/Muslim-girl-gang-kicked-Rhea-Page-head-yelling-kill-white-slag-FREED.html#ixzz1flw8TY6p.

Nor will the effects of meekly pleading guilty be over after your court appearance is done and your sentence served.  You will probably lose your job and find it difficult to get another one.  If you are in higher education you will probably be excluded from the university, either temporarily or permanently.  Even if you do complete your course, your job prospects will be blighted because prospective employers will have somewhere in their minds a memory of your trial and the publicity surrounding it. Depending on your social circumstances, you may find yourself socially ostracized if you are middle class or be an object of fear to anyone because you will carry the label “racist” around with you and that will make you seem dangerous to most people regardless of their private views on race and immigration. In short, pleading guilty is never going to be an easy way out.   At worst, if you are going to pick up a criminal record and possibly a prison sentence, you can  keep your self-respect intact by fighting the case on the grounds of freedom of expression and the right to tell the truth about the most profound act of treason, the permitting of mass immigration.

——————————————————————-

My correspondence with Nick Griffin  

To:                      Philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk

Subject:              a crack at Blair?

From:                  BNP Chairman

Date:     19 June 2005 21:24:02

Dear Mr Henderson

It occurs to me that there’s just an outside chance that something you have on Blair and his cronies (and/or the BBC) might just be able to be worked in to my defence against Race Act prosecution in Leeds Crown Court later this year.

The problem, of course, is making a connection so that the judge would rule such material relevant and admissable, but if you have anything that you think could possibly fit the bill, and which you would like to see given a very public airing in full view of the national media, then please drop me an email at your convenience.

Yours sincerely

Nick Griffin

British National Party

————————————————————-

To:                      BNP Chairman

Subject:              Re: a crack at Blair?

From:                  Robert Henderson <philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk>

Date:     21 June 2005 13:45:35

OK. Just answer me one question for the moment. Do you want to frighten Blair and co into dropping the prosecution or do you positively want the case to go ahead so you can use it as a political platform? I

don’t care which it is but I would need to know before we go any further.

RH

———————————————–

To:                      Robert Henderson <philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk>

Subject:              Re: a crack at Blair?

From:                  BNP Chairman

Date:                   21 June 2005 15:58:02

Option a) would be marginally better because then we can always get a bite of cherry b) at a later date by going head-to-head with their proposed Islamophile ‘law’.

N

—————————————————————-

To:                      BNP Chairman

Subject:              Suggested action you should take

From:                  Robert Henderson <philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk>

Date:     04 July 2005 17:11:57

Dear Mr Griffin,

I have had a good think about your request. In principle I am willing to help you and those being prosecuted with you. I do this simply because you are the subject of both a political law and a political prosecution. However, I must insist on one thing: that you all are entirely honest with me.

You say you ideally wish to frighten Blair and co out of the prosecution. What I am going to suggest will both serve that purpose and also provide a good skeleton for your defence if you get to court.

Your tactics

I suggest the following:

1. Call the Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith

Calling Goldsmith would be legitimate simply because he is both a politician and the man who took the decision to prosecute. You should argue that there is no proper separation of powers and consequently no fair judicial process. The Human Rights Act provides for a fair judicial process. There should be grounds to challenge the prosecutions on those grounds alone, i.e., that the judicial process is unfair.

More particularly, you can argue that he should be called as witness on the grounds that the prosecution has been undertaken for political not judicial reasons and without any consideration of the public interest.

There is public evidence that Goldsmith does allow his politics to colour his legal judgement. He changed his mind over the advice he gave to Blair on the legality of theinvading Iraq. On 7th March 2003 Goldsmith was doubtful about the legality of the war without a second UN resolution – his opinion has now been published. By 17th March 2003 he was telling Blair there was no problem without a second resolution. Goldsmith has never explained satisfactorily why he changed his mind in the space of ten days.

You should also argue (1) that the law itself is incompatible with democracy and (2) that there is a great public interest in not prosecuting, because the people being prosecuted represent a political party which is both acting within the democratic rules and has significant electoral support. You should further argue that the Human Rights Act protects both freedom of speech and democratic political activity.

2. Call Blair as a witness. The justification for this would be the collusion by Blair and Goldsmith over the Iraq advice and Goldsmith’s change of opinion. If you get permission to call Goldsmith it would be difficult for the court to refuse the calling of Blair.

3. Challenge what is meant by racially inciting. Get them to define it. Introduce examples of racial incitement by ethnic minorities. The Koran is a particularly good source of embarrassing quotes – I send you a selection by separate email.

4. Accumulate examples of ethnic abuse of whites which has not been prosecuted. If you know of whites who have made complaints to the police of racial incitement by blacks or Asians against whites which the police have failed to investigate or the attorney-general failed to prosecute, introduce these into evidence to show that Goldsmith or his predecessors are not even handed. I send you examples of complaints I have made which have not been investigated let alone prosecuted.

Calling people as witnesses

If you call someone as a witness you cannot cross-examine them. This puts considerable restrictions on what can be asked and the manner of the questioning (although a decent barrister should be able to get most of what he wants out of a witness even under those circumstances). Where a witness is reluctant – and the likes of Blair and Goldsmith would do everything they can to avoid being called – you can make application to the court for them to be treated as a hostile witness. If granted, this allows them to be cross-examined in all but name. Even allowing for the political pressure on the court, I doubt if any judge would fail to rule that they were hostile witnesses.

Your legal representation

Those labeled as racists generally have a problem with legal representation, both in getting it at all and in the nature of the representation when it is found. Barristers in particular have a habit of distancing them from their clients with words along the line of “My client is a vile racist but that does not mean he is guilty”. Consequently, it is vital that you give written instructions to both your solicitor and counsel forbidding such behaviour and laying out clearly how you want your defence conducted.

Remember, you instruct your lawyers, not they you. Once they have accepted your instructions they are bound to obey them r resign from the case. However, the courts look very unfavourably on counsel resign in criminal cases, so once you have got your instructions accepted there is a good chance they will be followed.

Lawyers generally will kick up about a client who wishes his  instructions to be followed – they are often the most arrogant of people who take the view that the conduct of the  case has damn all to do with the client. But you must face them down on this.

Representing yourself

In extremis, i.e., no one will take your instructions,  represent yourself. I would normally be very loth to  suggest this because there is a great deal of truth in the legal maxim that a man who has himself for a client has a fool for a client, but as it is a political trial it could be your best course of action.

If you do take this course, you should prepare yourself by producing schedules of questions. These should be primary and supplementary questions in this fashion:

Primary Question: Lord Goldsmith, did you discuss the case  with any member of the Labour Party before making your  decision to prosecute?

Secondary questions.

If Goldsmith answers YES ask: Which member or members did  you discuss it with?

If Goldsmith answers NO ask: Did you discuss the case with  any member of the Labour Party after making your decision to  prosecute?

In short, your schedules must anticipate as far as is possible the responses a witness will make.

Questions to witnesses should be “closed” wherever possible,  i.e., the questions should permit only a yes or no answer.

There are some questions which must be asked which will not allow a yes or no, for example, in the demonstration  questions above there would obviously come a point where you  would be forced to ask a question along the lines of “What  did you say to X”. If Goldsmith admitted that he had spoken  with a Labour Party member before he decided to prosecute,  you would probably need to ask such a question, although if  you are cross examining you could keep suggesting scenarios  to the witness, e.g., “Did you say Y to X?”.

My involvement with the Blairs

I am assuming that you have familiarised yourself with the  detailed case from my website.

I can say as a matter of objective fact that Blair is at the  least very wary of me. There is first the amazing fact that  Blair and his wife were willing to get involved in a criminal  prosecution involving me during the six most important weeks  of Blair’s life – the 1997 election campaign. The killer fact  for them is that they did not go to the police when I sent  them the letters but only after I circulated to the media the  letters and the replies I had received from their offices.

Second, is the remarkably experience I have had with the  police since 1997. I made various formal complaints against  the Blairs and the Mirror in 1997 and several since  due to  various attempts in internet  newsgroups  to incite  violence against me.  against me.

Normally such complaints would be dealt with by a detective  sergeant. To date I have dealt with a Det Chief Supt (head  of the Met’s Dept of Professional Standards, a very powerful copper indeed), a Scotland Yard Det Supt and two Det Chief  Inspectors. All came to my home when I requested it. That such senior officers have been assigned to my complaints  shows that the police and Blair are colluding when it comes  to dealing with me.

Consequently, if the authorities think you will be putting  me in the witness box, they will probably chicken out.

The best public document relating to me to wave at them is  the EDM put down by Sir Richard Body, viz:

On 10 November 1999, Sir Richard Body MP, put down this  Early Day Motion in the House of Commons:

That this House regrets that the Right honourable  Member for Sedgefield [Tony Blair] attempted to persuade the Metropolitan Police to bring criminal  charges against Robert Henderson, concerning the Right honourable Member’s complaints to the police  of an offence against the person, malicious letters and racial insult arising from letters  Robert Henderson had written to the Right  Honourable Member complaining about various  instances of publicly-reported racism involving the  Labour Party; and that, after the Crown Prosecution Service rejected the complaints of the Right  honourable Member and the Right honourable Member  failed to take any civil action against Robert  Henderson, Special Branch were employed to spy upon  Robert Henderson, notwithstanding that Robert  Henderson had been officially cleared of any  illegal action.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson 4 7 2005

——————————————————————

To:                      Robert Henderson <philip@anywhere.demon.co.uk>

Subject:              Re: Suggested action you should take

From:                  BNP Chairman

Date:                   05 July 2005 13:31:35

Of course. Thanks – though I usually tell lawyers that I think Will Shakespeare had the best idea about how to deal with them, and generally they take it well as they know deep down that they’re parasites.

N

Administrative justice: Gordon Brown misbehaved in the same general way as Jeremy Hunt

A very large research laboratory, The Francis Crick Institute,  is being built on land behind the British Library in Kings Cross, London -  http://ukcmri.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/objection-to-ukcmri-planning-application-for-a-research-centre-in-brill-place-london-nw1/.

The land on which it being built was publicly owned. It was sold by ostensibly  public tender  by the Department of  Culture, Median and Sport (DCMS) in 2007 to  a consortium the United Kingdom Centre for Medical Research and Innovation (UKCRMI).

Just as the decision on the Murdoch bid to buy all the shares in BSkyB that News  Corps did not own was supposed to be decided impartially by a minister (Jeremy Hunt),  so was the sale of the land by the  Secretary of State for the DCMS . The reality was that there was no impartiality exercised. As is clear from the documents below which I obtained using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), Gordon Brown persistently interfered with the sale by putting his weight behind one of a number of bidders. This invalidated the bidding process and

I made great efforts to get the story into the mainstream media and politics  – see http://ukcmri.wordpress.com/. These were unsuccessful which says a great deal about both our politicians and political  journalists. Nonetheless, it does stand as evidence of the persistent willingness of politicians to misuse their power  and of the British media to suppress political stories when it suits them.

There is another strong public interest in this story because the Francis Crick Institute will by dealing with highly toxic viruses and bacteria in its research. This makes it a serious and potentially catastrophic danger to London, both from lapses in bio-security and terrorist action.  The full story can be found at http://ukcmri.wordpress.com/.

Robert Henderson 27 4 2012

Gordon Brown’s involvement in the sale of the land to UKCRMI

February 21, 2011
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To make  the matter as simple as possible to follow,  I have selected from the  documents in my possession which show Gordon Brown’s illegitimate involvement in the sale of  the land to UKCRMI six which form a paper trail from the period before the closing date for expressions of interest  to the announcement of the sale of the land by Gordon Brown.  Some of the  documents are lengthy. To prevent readers having to plough through them   I have highlighted  (by bolding) the passages in the documents which refer directly or indirectly to Brown’s interest.  Where a figure such as  [40] appears, that means redaction has occurred under the exemptions in the FOIA –  the number relates to the clause number of the exemption.  These documents  also give a good sketch of the background to the bidding process.

Further relevant documents can be found athttp://ukcmri.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/objection-to-ukcmri-planning-application-for-a-research-centre-in-brill-place-london-nw1/

————————————————————————————

NB This document shows that  Brown was interfering even before the closing date for expressions of interest was closed.  The relevant date is not that on Rosemary Banner’s letter, but the enclosure which came with the letter, i.e., 1 August 2007. 

HM TREASURY

I Horse Guards Road London SWIA 2HQ

Rosemary Banner

Head of Information Rights Unit

Tel: 020 7270 5723

Fax:

rosemary.banner@hm-treasury.x.gsi.gov.uk

http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk

Mr R Henderson

24 June 2009

Dear Mr Henderson

Freedom of Information Act 2000: medical research centre   We wrote to you on 27 August 2008 conveying the conclusions of the internal review carried out in relation to your complaint to the Treasury about the handling of your April 2008 request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

In light of your complaint to the Information Commissioner we have reconsidered the single item of information that falls within the scope of your request that has not already been disclosed. As a result of this re-examination we have identified additional information that we are now able to provide to you. Please see attachment at the end of this letter. For the avoidance of doubt we should make it clear that the Treasury continues to regard its original decision not to release this information as correct at the request and review stage. However, given the passage of time, we believe that the public interest in withholding has diminished and can now be released.

We have, however, decided to continue to withhold two sentences from this information under section 35(1 )(a) of the Act. These sentences continue to relate to ongoing policy. We have explained our position to the ICO regarding this, and are able to clarify that the redacted sentences contain information on a bid for funding from the MRC that the Department for Business Innovation and Skills are assessing in the normal way. Funding decisions have not concluded. As always the Government will publish actual funding provisions once a decision has been reached. Due to the way funding bids are negotiated and assessed this was been a live issue at the time of the request; internal review; and remains so at this present time. To be helpful we refer to evidence published by the select committee in December 2007. You will see that at that time the bid was £118 million.

http://www. parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/cm200708/cmselect/cmdius/1 85/1 85we02.htm

The Treasury is not able to comment as to what the final figure will be until a decision has been made, I reiterate that once decided it will be announced publicly.

Rosemary Banner

Head of Information Rights Unit

For HM Treasury

EXTRACT of relevant information extracted from a report prepared

 1 August 2007

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF MEDICAL RESEARCH (NIMR)   MRC concluded some years ago that the NIMR’s future location should be close to a London Teaching Hospital. With this in mind, MRC purchased at their risk for £28M in March 2006, but with Treasury’s knowledge, a one-acre site at the National Temperance Hospital location (NTH) in London.

MRC has recently learnt that its earlier preferred site for NIMR, a three-acre site adjacent to the British Library, has now become available. This larger site would have the major advantage of accommodating more translational research. Encouragingly MRC has most recently proposed that the site would be developed in partnership with Cancer Research UK (CRUK), Wellcome Trust and UCL as a potentially strong consortium. The Wellcome Trust have mentioned that they would be prepared to make a sizeable investment to help establish a new world class medical research facility in North London if they can secure DCMS-owned land and planning permission from Camden Council. At present the consortia has registered its interest in buying the site.

This project has had a very long gestation period, during which the arguments for the strong scientific case for relocating within London (which has a cluster of medical research and teaching hospitals) and the need to retain MRC’s highly skilled staff.

The recent preparation of a suitable business case has been further complicated of late by both the re-emergence of the British Library site as a possible location.  

The PM is also most recently stated that he is very keen to make sure that Government departments are properly coordinated on this project and that if there is a consensus that this is indeed an exciting project then we do what we can to make it happen. This is extremely helpful from a DIUS and MRC perspective, but, formally a NIMR relocation project in London has yet to receive Lyons approval from Treasury (for either the first planned NTH site or the possible BL site).

MRC have employed Deloitte to prepare a full business case for the relocation project.

The scientific and operational case for a London location is strong in our view.

Key Dates for the Preparation and Appraisal of the NIMR Proposal

- July 2007 — Letter to Treasury to inform CST of MRC’s proposed bid for the BL site.

-July/August 2007 — Expression of interest in the BL site registered by  the MRC Consortium.

-September 2007 — further substantive discussions with MRC/Deloitte  on Lyons and emerging business case material.

-September 2007 — MRC NIMR project included by RCUK in the 2007 Roadmap consultation.

-October 2007 — first full draft business case prepared by MRC/Deloitte.

-October 2007 — MRC consortium formally bid to DCMS for the BL site.

-November 2007 — Full revised business case received and Lyons case consideration undertaken by Treasury.

-December — Progress submission to Ministers.

-December 2007 — MRC Consortium formed and, if successful in bidding, payment to DCMS for the BL site.

-December 2007 — MRC’s NIMR project prioritised by Research Council Directors for receipt of DIUS funding through the Large Facility Capital Fund.

-February/March 2008 — Submission to Ministers for approval of LFCF allocation to support the MRC’s NIMR project, subject to our final assessment of (a) the outcome of the Lyons case (b) the full business case and (C) prioritisation by RCUK of the use of the available LFCF,

April/May 2008 — DIUS Ministerial announcement of NIMR relocation project approval (subject to all the above).

Further Background to the National Institute of Medical Research (NIMR) The NIMR is one of the MRC’s largest and oldest research institutes. The NIMR is recognised as once of the UK’s foremost basic research institutes with a strong scientific track record and reputation. NIMR currently  houses the World Influenza Centre (WIC), which was established by  World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1948. The Centre, works with a  network of collaborating laboratories to detect and characterise the emergence of new influenza virus anywhere in the world including avian virus H5N1. NIMR is also at the forefront of international research to discover how molecular changes in the virus affect its ability to infect people and cause disease.

The NIMR has been at its present site since 1950. If it were to remain there the buildings would need substantial refurbishment. It is currently a ‘stand-alone’ Institute not physically linked to any University, Medical School or Hospital. In 2003 the MRC set up an expert Task Force to examine the strategic positioning of the NIMR research within the MRC portfolio. The Task Force concluded that their vision for NIMR would be best delivered through an intramural — i.e. with the staff employed by MRC — research institute on a single site in central London in partnership with a leading university and hospital (they received proposals from King’s College and University College) and this would enhance: – The multidisciplinary nature of NIMR’s work, providing access to other biologists, physical scientists, engineers, and mathematicians – Opportunities to collaborate more closely with clinicians and strengthen the focus of translational research.

Remaining at Mill Hill was considered by the Task Force where the majority view was that this would not be a viable option as it would not deliver Council’s vision for a world class research institute carrying out basic, clinical and translational research in partnership with a leading university and hospital. The position was endorsed by the MRC Council. This disappointed some staff at NIMR and there has been much lobbying of Ministers and MPs and as a result the issue has received some media interest.

MRC Council selected UCL as its preferred partner for the renewal and relocation of NIMR in Central London, in close proximity to a major teaching hospital (University College Hospital) and relevant university departments, including chemistry and physics.

The MRC Council approved an outline Business Plan for the renewal and relocation of NIMR in July 2005. The Business Plan confirmed the feasibility of developing the renewed Institute on the National Temperance Hospital (NTH) site in Hampstead Road, which MRC bought (at its own risk but with Treasury’s knowledge), for £28M in 2006, suggesting that the new site could provide accommodation for up to 1,058 staff, including 248 from UCL and potentially 40 additional research staff.

MRC have recognised that their development of the business case needed to ensure a successful project and to satisfy the requirements of DIUS and Treasury requires additional skills to those residing within the MRC and most recently further advice has been procured by MRC from Deloitte for assistance with preparation of the business case.

It was also not our intention at review stage to withhold names of senior civil servants of the email provided at initial request. While we explained that the sender was Jeremy Heywood from the Cabinet Office we overlooked to state the other officials who were recipients of that email. They were: The Permanent Secretaries of DIUS and DCMS Ian Watmore and Jonathan Stephens; the Managing Director of Public Spending in HMT, John Kingman; and the Chief Operating Officer, DCMS Nicholas Holgate.

————————————————————————————

NB This document shows Brown’s  interest just before the short list of bidders was decided. 

RESTRICTED – POLICY & COMMERCIAL

To James Purnell Margaret Hodge, Jonathan Stephens,Ros Brayfield

From Nicholas Holgate

Date 18 September 2007 ____________

SALE OF LAND TO THE NORTH OF THE BRITISH LIBRARY

Issue: mainly for information but also to ask how you would wish to be involved in this transaction.

The Department owns 3.6 acres to the north of the British Library. With the completion of the new train terminal, we are able to sell it and have been conducting a competitive process so that Ministers can choose what represents best value, comprising not just the proceeds from sale but also the use to which the bidder intends to put the land.

2. We are bound to be concerned about proceeds:

a. There is an obvious obligation, on Jonathan as the department’s Accounting Officer, to secure the best return we can for the taxpayer;

b. the Government is close to breaching its fiscal rules and has set itself a demanding target for asset disposals. Your predecessor strongly rebutted the Treasury’s proposal that we should sell assets worth £150m by 2010-11 and it has not formally been debated since your arrival; but we are likely to have to raise some funds from disposals. In any case:

c. proceeds from this sale are earmarked to contribute towards the budget of the Olympic Delivery Authority for 2007-08.

3. Subject to Treasury agreement, we can nevertheless also take public value” into account. We are aware of two such bids one led by the Medical Research Council, with support from the Wellcome Foundation and others for a research facility; and one that wishes to remain confidential but which is essentially related to faith and education.

4. The facts are:

a. We have now received 28 bids in response to a prospectus. Amongst other things, the prospectus drew attention to the local planning policy guidance, which steers bidders towards a scheme that is roughly 50:50 commercial and residential development with 50% affordable housing. It is Camden Borough Council and the Mayor who will have the last word on what is in fact built on the site;

b. Our professional advisers have scored the bids on various criteria and are interviewing the top seven plus two others (the medical research bid is one of the two others) next week;

c. There is a significant financial gap between the top bids and the medical research bid.

5. Jonathan and I are meeting Jeremy Heywood (who is aware of both public value bids), Ian Watmore (Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills) and John Kingman (Treasury) tomorrow. We need to agree an orderly and appropriate process for selling the land, given the public value bidders, other Departments’ interest and the likelihood that the Prime Minister might wish to take an interest too.

6. We will report back to you then. Subject to your views and others’, one potential way forward is a. DIUS economists be invited to assess the public value of the medical research bid. We will need some such calculation if we sell at a discount. DCMS should not do this as we should display some neutrality between bidders . We decide whether we expect the medical research bid to match the best bid, improve their offer but not necessarily to match, or take a lower value on the chin. Given their backers, they can afford to match. But they may refuse to play; and/or we may not wish to be seen to be reducing their funding for good causes just to maximise proceeds;

c. We see whether there is a Government champion for the other bidder;

and

d. We then fairly characterise the two public value bidders and the best commercial bid (or bids, if they differ significantly in what they propose) to Ministers and No 10 for a decision.

Nicholas Holgate

Chief Operating Officer

————————————————————————————

NB This shows Brown’s interest a few weeks before the sale to UKCRMI was agreed.

BRIEFING NOTE FROM POLICY ADVISERS DATED 12 NOVEMBER 2007 TO THE PRIME MINISTER COPIED TO No 10 OFFICIALS.

THE NOTE WAS ENTITLED: PROJECT BLISS – CREATING A WORLD-LEADING MEDICAL RESEARCH FACILITY IN LONDON

Disclosable extracts:

We are close to being ready to announce Government support for the creation of a world-leading medical research facility in London.

The key component being finalised is the sale of land, which will allow the BLISS partner organisations (the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London) to develop their detailed proposals for the creation of the centre.

We anticipate that the deal will be finalised over the next few days and we should be able to announce the outcome of the process In the next few weeks. On current plans, we would expect the sale to complete during December and preparations for development to begin straight away. The expectation is that the Institute would be up and running by 2012.

This is an important opportunity to demonstrate what the UK’s commitment to medical research really means in practice. And it fits very well with the focus of your intended health speech.

What would you be announcing?

• We would be committing Government support to the creation of a new centre for UK biomedical research, with 1,500+ scientists, at a level commensurate with the very best institutions in the world.

• The BLISS consortium brings together four of the leading medical research institutions in the UK – the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London.

• The Centre responds to the vision, outlined in Sir David Cooksey’s review of UK health research presented to Treasury in 2006, of better integration and translation of research into patient and public benefit. The Centre will benefit from economies of scale, enhanced infrastructure, the critical mass to optimise collaboration, and the capacity to take scientific discoveries from the lab bench to the hospital bed.

• These four key partners, together with the expectation that other organisations would come forward to invest In the centre or to lease research space, bring a powerful combination of skills and capabilities — basic research, applied research, the capabilities to convert research and innovation for public and commercial use, and the skills and opportunities presented by access to a leading university and teaching hospital. The potential, In terms of understanding disease, and developing new drugs, treatments and cures, is huge.

How to announce?

The suggestion is that you announce this a few days before your health speech, planned for 6th December. We would suggest a visit to a high-tech medical site in the morning to get pictures, followed by a meeting at No lO with all relevant stakeholders (primarily the four partner organisations) at which you make the formal announcement and ‘launch’ the project. Let us know your thoughts on whether this is the right way to proceed with the BLISS announcement?

Background

The vision for the BLISS Centre has six themes:

Research innovation and excellence • Bring together outstanding scientists from two world-class research institutes (MRC NIMR and the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute), collaborating with UCL, to address fundamental questions of human health and disease. • Through Wellcome Trust funding, development of tools for integrative biology, with an emphasis on the development of advanced microscopy imaging and on the mathematicaland computational needs in this field.

• Increase scientific innovation through new links with the physical sciences, life sciences, mathematics, engineering and the social Sciences at UCLI

• Develop close links between the Centre and the outstanding hospitals nearby (Including the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases at Queens Square, Great Ormond Street, Moorfields and University College Hospital) and other major hospitals in London (including Hammersmith Hospital and the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre at Hammersmith, and the Maudsley Hospital and the Institute of Psychiatry)1 State-of-the-art research facilities

• Develop a multidisciplinary research complex operating in state-of-the-art facilities, with the size and diversity to be internationally competitive with the world’s top research institutes.

• Establish a new centre for development of advanced imaging technologies and analysis. A national focus for biomedical science

• Interact with other local centres of excellence to foster and facilitate collaboration between basic, translational and Clinical scientists1  Host national and international research meetings and conferences, facilitated by its proximity to national and International transport links and the conference facilities of the British Library. An effective interface with technology transfer and development

• Facilitate the effective development of therapeutic and diagnostic devices and drugs, by allowing the technology transfer arms of MRC and Cancer Research UK to work closely together.

• Drive innovation in developing tests and technologies through interaction between researchers and development laboratories.

Finding and developing the scientists of the future • Provide an attractive environment to secure and retain world-class scientists by providing an outstanding setting for research and collaboration. • Boost the recruitment and training of scientists and doctors of the future by providing an excellent environment for postgraduate and postdoctoral training, and for training outstanding clinical scientists committed to medical research.

Engaging with the public

• Educate the public on important issues in health and disease.

• Bring together and enhance partners’ public information and education programmes, with a particular focus on engaging younger people.

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NB This document shows Brown’s involvement just prior to the sale of the land.

BRIEFING NOTE FROM NO 10 POLICY ADVISER TO THE PRIME MINISTER DATED 27 NOVEMBER 2007

COPIED TO NO 10 OFFICIALS

ENTITLED “MEETING WITH PAUL NURSE ON BLISS PROJECT”

You are meeting Paul Nurse who is likely to lead the BLISS institute, along, with Mark Walport, Director of The Wellcome Trust, and Harpal Kumar, Head of Cancer Research, two partners in BLISS

We are close to being ready to announce Government support for plans to create a world-leading medical research facility in London, led by the BLISS consortium made up of the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, the Wellcome Trust and University College London.

We have now effectively finalised negotiations on the sale of the 35 acre site, adjacent to the British Library: a price has been agreed with DCMS, and the deal is complete subject to agreement on how much of the proceeds DCMS will retain. We are therefore ready for an announcement next week on the sale of the land – but will not be announcing full details of the project overall, as there remain various Issues to resolve, including reaching agreement on business plans and gaining planning permission. We would therefore announce the Government’s support for the vision of the new centre – rather than definitive support for the centre itself. The Project BLISS consortium brings together four leading medical research institutions in the UK and will create a new centre for UK biomedical  research, with 1,500+ scientists, at a level commensurate with the very best Institutions in the world.

The Centre responds to the vision, outlined in Sir David Cooksey’s review of UK health research presented to Treasury in 2006, of better integration and translation of research into patient and public benefit.

The Centre will benefit from economies of scale, enhanced infrastructure, the critical mass to optimise collaboration, and the capacity to take scientific discoveries from the lab bench to the hospital bed. The Centre will create a place for:

• collaboration, between leading scientists and clinicians, working on some of the most pressing medical problems of our time;

 • excellence, maintaining the quality of the UK’s life sciences research base;

• application, making links between research, medical practice and the pharmaceutical industry;

• innovation, translating research innovation into new treatments;

 • learning, bringing forward a new generation of scientific leaders;

  •discovery, showcasing the challenges and potential of life sciences to a new audience.

• Using the close proximity to the British Library, the Centre will develop a public engagement and education programme.

Sir Paul Nurse

Sir Paul Nurse is President of Rockerfeller University, formerly Joint Director General of Cancer Research UK and winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize for Medicine. His appointment has not yet been publicly announced,but he is set to lead the project as chair the Scientific Planning Committee.

Briefing note from Bliss

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NB This document from just before the sale of the land shows  the extent of Brown’s involvement with the suggestion that he would arbitrate.  

Sent: 27 November 2007 13:09

To: HOLGATE NICHOLAS

Cc: _[40]_____________

Subject: RESTRICTED – Land to the North

Hi Nicholas,

Jonathan spoke to Jeremy Heywood this morning. Jeremy said he needed the bid to be agreed by next Wednesday – 5 Dec (or Thursday  latest) as PM wanted to get MRC in then (or possible public announcement.

Jonathan explained that there are two issues from our point of view: .No revised formal offer has been received by DCMS .HMT are not being helpful of recycling returns – without an improved offer from HMT JS said it would he v hard to justify.

JR said he thought the offer was sent to us yesterday – have checked but  nothing in JSs post or email – JH will chase. JH also said he would go   back to HMT to see what more they can do, but that ultimately PM may have to arbitrate.

Cheers

[40]

[40]

Private Secretary  to Jonathan Stephens

Department for (Culture, Media and Sport 2-4 Cockpur Street, London

SWlY 5Dl1 email: [40]@culture.gsi.gov.uk tel: 0207211 fax: 020 72116259

————————————————————————————

NB This document shows Brown’s state of mind immediately after the sale of the land was agreed.

Treasury document

From – name censored

Sent: 04 December 2007 19:49

To: name(s) censored.

CC: name(s) censored)

Thanks for everyone’s help and support in making the announcement tomorrow happen. The PM is truly delighted that departments have been able to work together to secure this huge opportunity for Britain

RESTRICTED – COMMERCIAL

Politically incorrect film reviews – Coriolanus

Main Cast

Ralph Fiennes as Coriolanus

Gerard Butler as Tullus Aufidius

Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia

Brian Cox as Menenius

Jessica Chastain as Virgilia

John Kani as General Cominius

James Nesbitt as Sicinius

Paul Jesson as Brutus

Jon Snow as TV Anchorman

Coriolanus  competes  with Roman Chainsaw Massacre aka Titus Andronicus  as the least accessible Shakespeare play  today.   Its estrangement from the   modern Western audience  lies in its treatment  of subjects –  patriotism, treason, the warrior spirit  and revenge – which that peculiar creature the latterday  liberal has been remarkably  successful in suppressing from public view, although not from the privacy of the individual mind.   It is this expression of these unfashionable sentiments and emotions which make it so valuable a play for our times because they are fundamental to the way in which human societies organise themselves.  That is why it should be seen, even though it is not  one of Shakespeare’s great plays.

The play is set in the period following the fall of the Tarquins as kings of Rome, an event traditionally dated to 508 BC,  when the Republic is being established.  Rome is at war with the Volsci.  The Roman general Caius Martius is victorious over the Volscian city of Corioli and is granted the additional name of Coriolanus in recognition of the feat and seeks to become a consul, the most powerful and prestigious magistrate in the Roman Republic.  He is thwarted in this by an aristocratic pride which knows no restraint and drives  him into exile after  he refuses to sweet-talk the plebians.

In exile Coriolanus joins with  Volsci and leads an attack on Rome  to revenge himself. But before he attacks he is persuaded by his mother Volumina to spare Rome the sack and instead concludes a treaty between Rome and the Volsci.   By this time Aufidius has become jealous of  his one-time enemy’s charisma and power over the Volsian troops and has him murdered.

The character of Coriolanus is a common enough one, the great general who turns his hand to politics and finds it a very different business.  Wellington is a good example .On becoming prime minister he could not understand why his fellow cabinet members would not simply receive his orders and execute them, but instead argued and engaged in the dark political arts to subvert those policies they disliked.

Wellington is also an exemplar of the post-French Revolution  aristocratic reactionary, having an absolute belief in the right and need of his class to rule and the dire consequences of allowing  not only the masses but also the rising middle classes to  have any hand in government.  (Looking  mournfully at the first Parliament elected after the Great Reform Act  which placed a sprinkling of men of the middling sort  in House of Commons  he dolefully remarked  that he had “never seen so many bad hats in his life”. )

The patrician contempt for the masses  may seem to be merely self-serving, a justification for maintaining the status quo which privileges the patrician class.  There is an element of that,  but it is not simply self-serving  propaganda.  Elites commonly  have  a genuine fear of the masses and in societies without any history of representative government based on a broad franchise  those fears would seem reasonable.  Nor, in undemocratic but settled  societies ,  is the idea of noblesse oblige altogether a sham, for those  born into families which have long had social power in a particular area will often have a relationship with  the population about them  which is based on the duty of privilege as well as its power.

Coriolanus, like Wellington, has a  patrician cast of mind, but unlike Wellington  who had the manners of a gentleman and a strong sense of noblesse oblige,    Coriolanus has only his  insane pride which leads him to baulk at offering  the plebs even civil  words let alone flattering ones and is contemptuous of pleas to  remind them of his service to Rome on the battlefield by showing them his many  scars.

Wellington saw war as a bloody business to be avoided where possible,  although never shirked when necessary;  Coriolanus is in love with it “ Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night; it’s spritely, waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy: mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men. “ (4.5.238)

The idea that war is a desirable occupation in itself  is a strange one to those brought up in modern Western  societies which ostensibly promote peace at all cost and shudder at the very thought of war, unless of course it is war which suits their liberal internationalist purposes.   But the idea would have seemed perfectly natural, indeed praiseworthy, in most times and places throughout history, for  the warrior has commonly had an integral role in society.

The basic organising  template of homo sapiens has almost certainly not changed from the time when he wandered  in small bands. The anthropology of extant hunter-gathers  today  tells the same  story: men are  valued for  their courage and ability to hunt and fight;  the women do the gathering and child rearing.  It is not an unreasonable assumption to think that this is the way humans have behaved  throughout their history.

To the evidence of present day anthropology  can be added the fact that  such a division of labour between males and females makes perfect sense in tribal societies ,  both in terms of the obvious efficiency  of allotting different roles to men and women  where the women have the task of carrying and then weaning children and in the difference in size,  power and body shape of men and women. There is the further evidence of overt male dominance in societies generally throughout history and in most places today.   It is also worth noting that primates (and mammals generally) normally have  males which are larger and more powerful than the females and it would be very odd if homo sapiens did not display the same sexual dimorphism because we are descended from beings which had this quality.

War not peace has been the normal state for human beings throughout history.  There is a very good reason for that.  Because homo sapiens is a social animal we have to set limits to the group for  without such limits a hierarchy cannot evolve as there is no beginning and end to tie the hierarchy to.   Without a hierarchy no social animal can exist because there would be no means of the animal establishing the sorts of behaviours which make  social animals work,  most notably submission not through violence but by an acceptance of a place in the pecking order.  However, such submission has to be earned through violence for the hierarchy is established through physical dominance.

Homo sapiens being  self-conscious beings with  high intelligence and  possessed of language can, even at the level of hunter gatherers or more settled tribal peoples ,do better than simply establish a hierarchy through violence or even physical size.  Nonetheless, violence plays a part with high rates of mortality from fighting within tribes being widely reported in studies of tribal peoples. Not only that but conflict between tribes  is commonplace. This is unsurprising because each group which sees itself as a separate unit is doing what any other organism does which is fight  for resources,  whether that be territory, women or  food.  Fighting between tribes will reinforce the high status of the warrior within the band or tribe.

When societies get larger and more sophisticated they  find different ways of developing  and maintaining hierarchies such as inherited land and status, but violence  still plays a part as the countless  violent struggles for political power throughout history show.  In addition, the larger the  size of  a society  the greater the potential  threat it poses to its neighbours . That alone will make war likely. But the more sophisticated a society is the greater its ability to intellectualise threats from those outside the tribe, clan or nation and to create reasons which justify war and exalt the position of the warrior.  This also makes war more likely because it not only plays on fears but creates a social structure, as happened for example  in mediaeval Europe, whereby the  primary  purpose of the warrior class (in Europe’s case the knights) was to  wage war.

Even where there is no explicit warrior class in the sense of the knightly class, the martial values still endure.  As  Europe gradually moved into what we call modernity,  armed conflict between  societies  did not diminish. Bravery in arms was still much admired. Moreover, masculinity generally was  admired.  When the First World War broke out Britons were at first very gung-ho about joining the fight and as the reality of modern war became apparent and enthusiasm for enlisting waned,  British men who did not volunteer were called cowards, not least by women.   The idea that it was natural for men to fight in defence of the tribe was still strong.

If this is, broadly speaking,  a true description of human society throughout time it is scarcely surprising that something of the warrior spirit remains even in those societies which are supposedly most removed from the primitive. Natural selection has worked to produce fighters and hunters, selected  males to protect their women and children,  to defend their territory and preserve their tribe.   To be a man is to feel  that it is natural to want to protect with force that which he cares about and to know that is what women and his fellow men expect him to feel. Dr Johnson’s remark “Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea” has a great deal of sense in it.

Even in today’s  western world where the idea of violence is officially treated as a primitive aberration,  few men find it  comfortable to be thought a  physical coward, even though physical bravery is often far easier  to summon than moral courage. Nor is there a disgust at the idea of violence as such,  especially amongst men.  A  large part of the staple fare of the mass media has always been  violence, whether of war or gangsters in fiction or ever increasing reporting of  real violence.  Sports, especially contact sports, also cater to the interest, they being surrogates for war.  (If anyone doubts the potency of sports to substitute, on the emotional level, for war they should go to an evening’s  professional boxing and observe the behaviour of the crowd, both male and female. The atmosphere is  raw, with the men on the verge of violence themselves and the women palpably sexually excited.

Even in a country such as Britain which is tightly constrained by political correctness  physical courage is still applauded, not only by the public at large, but by the liberal elite when it suits them.  The likes of Cameron and Blair have been  ready enough to fight wars  to further their political objectives; more than happy to use the police to silence dissent and every willing to employ personal bodyguards. In their heart of hearts they have no doubt about the value of men with a talent for violence.

As for the population at large, they still genuinely celebrate personal bravery because as  Johnson saw  “the profession of soldiers and sailors has the dignity of danger. Mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so general a weakness.”

Treason is an concept which liberals  have largely extinguished as a conscious  idea in Britain.  But it still lurks in natural emotional baggage of  the overwhelming majority of people, perhaps even everyone. No one is really comfortable, no, not even liberals, when they see, for example,  Britain unable to defend her own trade and industry or control her borders because of  sovereignty given away.  White, mainly middleclass flight, from areas of high immigration tells its own story of the true feelings of white liberals.  The idea of treason is simply the intellectualisation of natural human instincts.

When it comes to treason, the position of Coriolanus is unusual. He has been exiled from Rome despite his great service  to her as a soldier.  It could be argued that he is not committing treason at all because his countrymen have cast him out. And yet and yet… patriotism is not a simply matter of individual rights and wrongs, something which is taken up or put down by on rational or petty grounds. It is visceral. For all his harshness and desire for personal retribution, his egotism and individualism,   Coriolanus is swayed to spare Rome the worst.

That leaves us with revenge. The idea of revenge  is portrayed as a primitive emotion by latterday liberals, yet what is recourse to the criminal law but revenge? If a person did not wish to revenge themselves why report a crime? In the vast majority of cases a criminal conviction will bring the victim no material compensation from  the criminal. All it will result in is the punishment of the criminal. We may try to justify our reporting of crime by the such ploys as saying “We did it to protect others”, but that does not really work because most people who are convicted of a crime either do not go to prison or  receive only a short sentence. Moreover, a criminal conviction may well make the criminal more likely to offend because a criminal record shuts of job opportunities and if he or she goes to prison they may become more enmeshed in the criminal fraternity.  The reality is we want revenge. The purpose of a justice system is to substitute law for personal revenge.

What of the film? There are problem with it . The main  plus point is that  the major characters are well cast. Fiennes is exactly right in the role of Coriolanus, his sharp features accented by a closely shaven head  being as flint-like as his  character’s disdain; Brian Cox brings his natural authority to the placatory and honest patrician Menenius and Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus’ mother Volumnia shows remarkable moral and physical energy for a woman well into her seventies.  Of the rest Gerrard Butler as the Volscian leader  Tullus Aufidius  projects the necessary  toughness and  the Tribunes, James Nesbitt as Sicinius and Paul Jesson as Brutus,  both display the moral shabbiness of the populist politician – Jesson in particular is satisfyingly slimey.

There is also the compensation of  the language. Even in his lesser  plays  Shakespeare manages to produce a stream of  wonderful encapsulations : “Many-headed multitude”, “Nature teaches beasts to know their friends”;  “These eyes are not the same I wore in Rome”.

But there are significant problems with the film. The director has decided (sigh) to set the action in the Balkans during the 1990s and panders further to the cult of “relevance” by using a well known British TV face, the newsreader Jon Snow, to pass comments and conduct interviews. Would that a modern director  would do something really radical and produce Shakespeare in settings appropriate to  each play.

The film also suffers from what might be called “Troy discordance”, after Brad Pitt’s heroic refusal in the role of Achilles in the 2004 film Troy   to abandon his American accent while the rest of the cast, whether English or otherwise, spoke  with various English accents. There is the same problem here. Most of the major parts are taken by actors speaking forms of received pronunciation  but  the others and all the minor characters offer a mishmash of  Scottish, Northern Irish, American and  Mittel European voices.  I have nothing against any of these accents as such, but it is their mixture which creates a disobliging cacophony.  Give me an all-American, all Slav  or all Scottish cast in the film and I would have no problem. It would  also have been reasonable to had one side in the conflict speaking in one accent and the other side speaking in another.

This discordance is added to by the inability of the minor actors generally  and Jessica Chastain , especially, to master the syntactical complexities of  Shakespeare’s words.

There was one utterly gratuitous piece of political correctness, the casting of the black actor John Kani as General Cominius, a man who seems to believe that speaking in a monotone heavy timbre rumbling equates to fine Shakespearean diction.

But the pluses outweigh the minuses and  the importance  and relevance of the play to our own time make it worth  viewing,  not least because the vast majority of people will not have an opportunity to see a good stage version.

The claustrophobia of diversity

The claustrophobia of diversity

Robert Henderson

In November a 34-old woman Emma West was recorded on a tram in Croydon (near to London) expressing her very no-pc views of  the effects of immigration on England even though she was surrounded by ethnic minorities.   Since her public complaints were recorded by a passenger and put on YouTube other instances of such behaviour have come to light, the most recent to hit the national media being another youngish white woman (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097142/Woman-filmed-hurling-racist-abuse-Tube-passengers-ANOTHER-video-rant-London-transport.html#ixzz1lgvuUjuO).  I put a few URLs for videos of such behaviour  from England at the end of the article. The examples are all of people who are under the age of 40. Nor does it take long for instances of such behaviour in the USA to be found on media hosting sites.  This goes against the oft made claims by liberals that what they term racial prejudice is restricted to the older generation,  who it is implied “don’t know any better”, while the young are race-blind.

Such outbursts are surprising  because of the risk they carry of assault by the ethnic minorities listening to them. They are doubly unexpected because present day England (and Britain)  is rigid with political correctness.  As  Emma West’s case vividly shows, the authorities are ever more penal in their  repression of dissent.  After her arrest in December 2011  Miss West was kept for weeks on remand in a high security prison for what the authorities coyly called “her own protection” http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/07/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-2/) . She  has since been charged but not as yet tried (she appears at Croydon Crown Court on 17 2 2012) with a serious criminal offences  which carry a potential jail sentence of two years. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state-part-3/).  All of that for simply expressing her anger at the consequences of mass immigration.

But even if people are not charged with criminal offences, to be publicly labelled a racist in England is to risk the loss of a job or accommodation if rented, a campaign of media abuse and social ostracism.  The risk of losing a job is particularly high for public service employees.  In extreme cases such as those accused of  the murder of Stephen Lawrence the persecution may be officially generated and sustained and  last indefinitely and include  the holding of trials which are manifestly unfair because of  hate-campaigns conducted against the accused by both politicians and the mainstream media. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/stephen-lawrence-gary-dobson-david-norris-and-a-political-trial/).

With these very considerable disincentives to expressing honest views about race and immigration under any circumstances, what is it that drives people to express them uninhibitedly in situations which objectively place them in physical as well as legal danger?  After all the instinct for self-preservation lies at the core of human behaviour   and people are generally media savvy enough these days to realise that  anything they say in public is likely to be recorded and placed on sites such as YouTube.  So why do people like Emma West ignore all these formidable barriers to behaving in this way? Drink or drugs you may think, yet the noteworthy thing about most of the examples caught on mobile phones is that they  show no signs of being seriously intoxicated by either.  These are people who are doing it in the full knowledge of what they are doing and its likely effects. But  even if they were intoxicated with drink or drugs all that would mean is that the brakes of sobriety were removed and the true feelings of the person released.

A clue to what is happening can be found in the fact that their complaints gather around the same theme: that England is being invaded and colonised to the point where, in places such as parts of London,  it  scarcely seems to be England in anything in name.  Their  complaints are not about the particular ethnic minorities with which  they are surrounded when they make their public complaints or against individual immigrants generally,  but the general effects of mass immigration.

These people are suffering from what I call the  claustrophobia of diversity.  They feel that they are being oppressed by immigrants, that the land which is ancestrally theirs  is being colonised to the extent that parts of the country are no longer part of England . Worst of all they see themselves as helpless to prevent it because the colonisation is being facilitated and encouraged by their own elite who  all, whatever their ostensible political colour,  subscribe to the treason and viciously support the suppression of  dissent to the betrayal.  This mixture of the act of elite-sponsored colonisation by foreigners, the failure of democracy through the tacit conspiracy of the political elite  to ensure that no meaningful alternative policy on  immigration is offered by any party capable of forming a government and the inability of the native population to even voice their  protest at this betrayal of their most pressing interests  in the mainstream media produces an ever growing sense of rage, a rage made all the more terrible and onerous  by  the feelings of impotence engendered by the ever more oppressive  restrictions on public expression which British governments have imposed.

These feelings are with the English all the time. If someone  English lives  in an area which  does not have a large ethnic minority population the anger and frustration may  remain bubbling below the surface most of the time, although they will be exacerbated by reports of their fellow county men and women elsewhere being harassed and bullied by the liberal elite into towing the multiculturalist line while ethnic minorities are pandered to ever more grotesquely  with bizarre interpretations of what constitutes a human right and  the constant growth of  interest groups which cater solely for ethnic minorities, for example,  the Refugee Council (http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/about/board).

But those who live in an area which is heavily populated  by ethnic minorities  will face constant triggers for the anger and frustration to come to the forefront of their minds. Every time someone in such an area walks the streets they will be reminded of how the demographic balance has changed and is changing. Every time a native  English  parent seeks a school for their children they will be faced often enough with choices of schools where many, quite often a majority, of the pupils are from ethnic minorities.  A visit to their GP or hospital will find them sitting in waiting rooms outnumbered by ethnic minorities.  When they go for a job, especially if it is low-skilled or unskilled, they are likely to find themselves being asked to work, if they can get such work at all,  in a situation where they are in the ethnic minority and English is  not the common workplace language.  If they go into a shop, cinema or café they are increasing likely to find themselves being served by foreigners with inadequate English for the job.

Everywhere the white English man or woman in an area with a large ethnic minority population looks  it seems that their world is being changed utterly and that they can do nothing about it because of the elite complicity in what has happened and is happening. That is why the public outbursts of frustration such as that of Emma West occur.  They are the bursting of the emotional  dam.  The fact that the episodes recorded so often occur on  public transport  is  unsurprising because it is here that the proximity with those who trigger the feelings of rage and  betrayal is greatest and there is the  least opportunity to escape from these reminders of the surreptitious elite-sponsored conquest of England. The physical claustrophobia of being on a crowded train or bus marries with the social claustrophobia of diversity.

The people recorded in the urls at the end of this essay are white  working class Englishwomen. They of course are  from the class  who had to and have to suffer the main brunt of  mass immigration. They live cheek-by-jowl with the immigrants and their descendants. They send their children to schools where their child may be the only white English child in their class. They live in the tower blocks where they are the only white English family in the block. Not for them the middle class white liberals escape through white flight to the suburbs or countryside or the gentrification of once working class areas such as Islington. It is small wonder that people such as Emma West should feel deserted and betrayed and eventually lose all patience with public silence.

But uninhibited racial language and complaint is not restricted to those without status, wealth, influence and power. Two well know and recent examples are the fashion designer John Galliano  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CQO8q3FSH0) and the actor and director Mel Gibson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_qMJSPtqY&feature=relatedso – go in at 1 minute 17 sec). There is far more to these public displays of anger at the fact of mass immigration and the behaviour of the political elite  than simple desperation. It is entirely natural behaviour.  Public expression of dissent can be  partially successful but it will never be entirely complete. Even in extreme autocracies such as the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany there were still voices raised in  opposition. The English have been subject several generations of ever greater elite propaganda and censorship of dissent about immigration and its effects but this has not made them race or ethnicity blind, merely increasingly reticent, fearful and stressed  about immigration and its consequences.  Not only that, but the oppression arising from mass immigration is different in quality from the oppression  of a native  elite which merely tries to enforce its will on the masses. The effects of mass migration are around people all the time. There is no respite.

When people are asked to  suppress their normal feelings  stress occurs. Where the suppression of feelings relates to the most fundamental social and psychological structures  stress is at its greatest. That is what happens when an elite tries to  recreate society by asking the population to override the behaviour which makes a society strong and stable.

Social animals have two universal features: they form discrete groups and within the group produce hierarchies – although both the group and the hierarchy vary considerably in form and intensity.  Why they do this is a matter of debate but it is a fact that this what invariably happens.  Human beings are no exception; whether they are hunter-gatherers or people populating a great modern city they all have a need to form groups in which they feel naturally comfortable and within that group form hierarchies.

But the sense of being separate, of belonging to a discrete group with identifiable characteristics is of a different order of complexity than it is for any other social animal because homo sapiens is high intelligence, self-awareness and most importantly language.  Where an animal may simply accept another member of the species as part of the group through simple and obvious triggers such as scent, markings or imprinting, human beings judge by wide variety of criteria who is and is not part of the group, the most potent of which are racial characteristics and cultural differences. In some ways that makes acceptance of the outsider easier – at least in theory -  but in  others much more difficult than it might be for an animal,  for there are  many more reasons for human beings to accept or not accept someone into the group than there are for a non-human social animal.

Social animals form hierarchies  almost certainly because otherwise there would be no way of the society organising itself to accommodate the differing qualities and abilities  of individuals which arise in any species. Societies which consist of various human groups that  see themselves as separate  from each other disrupt the creation of a healthy hierarchy. Instead of there being a single hierarchy within an homogenous group (defining homogenous as a population in a discrete territory  which sees itself as a group), there are  hierarchies formed within each group and a further overarching hierarchy formed from the various groups themselves with  each group hierarchy competing within the population as a whole.

Man is also a territorial being.  Homo sapiens  need the security of a homeland. Remove that and insecurity is perpetual.  That is why mass immigration is the most fundamental of treasons.  That which  is called racism by liberals and their ethnic minority auxiliaries is simply  political protest of the most fundamental kind. When someone resorts to complaint  based on race, ethnicity or nationality  in their own country they are saying “This is my land, you will not steal it from me without a fight”.  The time to worry is when there are no public demonstrations of dissent to the policy of mass immigration and its consequences.

The package of emotion transmuted into conscious thought we call  patriotism is an essential part of maintaining a society (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/09/20/patriotism-is-not-an-optional-extra/).  A society which forgets that is doomed.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pONVYjAd1wc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTocvGIEqOU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfGqwtn3GZY

Stephen Lawrence, Gary Dobson, David Norris and a political trial

Robert Henderson

The conviction of Gary Dobson and David Norris for the murder of Stephen Lawrence is a savage and sinister travesty of justice. That is not because the defendants are necessarily innocent . What is profoundly worrying is the decision to prosecute regardless of the feeble quality of the new  evidence,  the placing in double jeopardy of Dobson (who had been formally acquitted in 1996 of the murder  when a private prosecution was brought) ,   the general  difficulties of a trial held 18 years after the event, the all too perniciously potent legacy of the Macpherson Report  and the almost continuous media circus which has accompanied the Lawrence killing for nearly 19 years and repeatedly savaged the reputation of the defendants .

The impossibility of a fair trial

The question of whether Dobson and Norris could get a fair trial should have been tested before the case was heard.   Despite assiduous attempts, I can find no  media reports that either Dobson or Norris’ lawyers applied to have the trial struck down on those grounds.  If no application was made by their lawyers ,the defendants would have every reason to feel cheated  because if ever there was a case where a fair trial would have been impossible this is it.

To understand exactly how outlandishly contaminating the circumstances surrounding the defendants were  it is necessary to  know of the  previous attempts at prosecution,  the scandalous behaviour tolerated at the Macpherson Inquiry, especially the behaviour towards the suspects,  and the virulent and extended  hate campaign waged by the British media against Dobson and Norris (and other  suspects).

The police originally had five  white  youths in the frame  for the murder, Dobson and Norris plus  Luke Knight and the brothers Neil and  Jamie Acourt.  The CPS refused to prosecute in 1994. The parents of Stephen Lawrence  then initiated a private prosecution   against  the five suspects, but only Jamie Acourt, Gary Dobson and Luke Knight  stood trial. The granting of a private prosecution is rare for any crime because the Attorney-General has to sanction such prosecutions; for a charge of murder it is unprecedented at least  in modern times( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/first-private-prosecution-for-murder-3-held-1616684.html.)

The trial collapsed when the judge ruled that the identification evidence of  Lawrence’s friend Duwayne Brooks, who had been with him on the night, was inadmissible (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-41.htm#41.3). That was scarcely surprising as Brooks originally told  the police he could not positively identify any of the attackers then later changed his story and said he could and picked out Neil Acourt and Luke Knight. As by his own story, Brooks ran away as fast he could when the attack happened and the  attack took place at night (around 10.30 pm on 22 April), it would seem improbable that he could have identified  the attackers with any certainty.  It is worth adding that (1) identification evidence is notoriously unreliable, especially where strangers are involved, and (2) the three independent witnesses to the attack were unable to identify any of the attackers.  The attack was also over very quickly.

Despite the failure to mount a criminal prosecution by the CPS and the abject failure of the private prosecution, the British media continued their campaign against those suspected of the murder. In 1997 the Daily Mail ran a front page which accused the five suspects of murder and challenged them to sue for libel (http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/frontpage/lawrence.html).    This was an act of outright cowardice by the Mail because they knew none of those they accused could afford to sue them.  A libel case against a the Daily Mail would have probably  have cost, at 2012 prices,  £1m to fund  because the Mail were determined to take it to court. But even if  the case was  won,  the judge would probably not have awarded  the plaintiff their  costs in full or even at all  and any  award would certainly be far less than the plaintiff’s  costs and probably derisory. If  the case was lost the plaintiff  would have to bear his  own costs and those of the Mail which would mean at least £2 million at today’s values.

The one family amongst the accused which had some degree of affluence at the time of  murder was that of David Norris, whose father Clifford was reputedly running  the drug trade in South London.  But Clifford Norris was jailed for nine years in 1994 and served seven years which reduced him to penury. In 2006 the Guardian found him living in a bedsit (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/aug/06/politics.lawrence).

But   even if a libel suit  had by some miracle been mounted, it is dubious if it would have succeeded because of the public demolition of the suspects’  characters over years. That would almost certainly have seriously biased any jury against them and  it could have been argued that the plaintiff(s) had no reputation to lose. Even if  a suit was successful, any damages would probably have been derisory on the same grounds of little reputation to lose.   It is worth mentioning that the editor of the Mail, Paul Dacre, knew Stephen Lawrence’s father  Neville, because Neville  had done some plastering work for him.

In 1998, through a combination of the more or less perpetual  media campaign and the religiously  politically correct  Blair Government,    the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry began presided over by a   senior judge,   Sir William Macpherson. This contained truly amazing scenes. In what was  a quasi-judicial proceeding there was an atmosphere close to mob rule.  Within the Inquiry  frequent interruption occurred in the public galleries, especially when the police were giving evidence.  At one point members of the Nation of Islam invaded the building and fought with the police (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/02/99/stephen_lawrence/282378.stm).

When the five suspects left the Inquiry after giving evidence  they were met by a mob and were physically attacked  by missiles and  directly assaulted by members of the mob (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/123608.stm).  Why they were expected to walk  through a mob when they left the building is a mystery because the police must have realised the crowd was likely to attack. Nor did the police show any urgency to either protect the suspects or arrest their assailants.

The publication of the Macpherson Report  in 1999 on the evidence given at the  Inquiry ensured the  Lawrence murder remained in the mainstream media throughout the eleven years leading up to the recent trial.   In addition, Macpherson’s  “anti-racist” recommendations, which included a dangerously broad definition of a racial incident as ” any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm),  were adopted throughout public service and then by private and not-for-profit  employers, especially the larger ones, many of which rely heavily on public contracts.

Politicians  of all mainstream parties competed to be the most enthusiastic  about this new quasi-Maoist “anti-racist” regimen under which  to make any comment which could be construed as “racist”,   however absurdly,  would probably mean the end of a career of a politician or public servant.  Unsurprisingly, public servants at all levels became eager to demonstrate how politically correct they were, both to advance their careers and to protect themselves.

Perhaps the single  most sinister  consequence of Macpherson  was the institutionalising of “anti-racism” – extremely crude  propaganda in practice – within the British state education system (http://www.schools-out.org.uk/teachingpack/stephenlawrence.htm), but the effect on  the police and justice system runs it close.

Macpherson did not believe that  racism did not  have to be consciously motivated.  He labelled the Metropolitan Police “institutionally racist”  (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-06.htm#6.6) ,  by which he meant, as far as he meant anything, unwitting racism arising from the general culture of  a corporate body.  The Metropolitan police at first rejected the tag of institutional racism but eventually  caved in, after which the other police forces in Britain followed suit.

To attack police racism, whether  deliberate or unintentional, Macpherson recommended that the police be directly placed under race laws:   “47/11That the full force of the Race Relations legislation should apply to all police officers, and that Chief Officers of Police should be made vicariously liable for the acts and omissions of their officers relevant to that legislation.” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).   This was enshrined in law in the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2000/34/contents)

The effect of Macpherson on  the police was to render them, and especially the most senior officers,  rigid with political correctness – the toxic fruits of which  can be starkly  seen in the police statement that the recent killing of the Indian student Anuj Bidve by a white attacker in Salford was a “hate crime” despite the fact that  the police admitted  there is no evidence for this  (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/12/30/white-attackernon-white-victim-racist-motive-non-white-attackerwhite-victim-no-racist-motive/).   This mentality has continued to drive the Stephen Lawrence case.

The publication of the Macpherson Report provided the mainstream media with a never ending stream of stories related to the Lawrence killing. He became the lead icon for “anti-racism”. No area of life escaped. Not only schools and the police but every workplace was directly or indirectly affected by the consequences of the Lawrence murder.  Stephen’s mother Doreen ceaselessly  campaigned for further investigations  into the death . The ever expanding band of “anti-racist” interest groups were ready at the drop of a hat to use his death as a lever to get other perceived racist affronts into the public eye.    The mainstream media, without exception dominated  by enthusiastic “anti-racists” and “multiculturalists”, was  always willing to run another Stephen Lawrence story and only too eager to seize on any claimed example of racism and give it an airing, frequently with reference to the Lawrence murder.

Because of the constant media’s constant return to the Lawrence story there was never any chance that it would fade in the public mind.  Any trouble the  five suspect got into, including criminal convictions,  was given great prominence in the media.   The period after 1993 was also the time when the Internet took off so that no mainstream  story is ever really taken from the public fold.  Details of Norris and Dobson’s criminal past may not have been allowed into evidence at their trial, but anyone googling their names would have soon discovered the material.

With all that history,  is it conceivable that a jury could be empanelled which  was not aware of the defendants’ past  and was not influenced by the massive amount of adverse and often crudely abusive media coverage they would have inevitably experienced just in the normal course of living? To not be aware of the media’s  representation of the Stephen Lawrence case and Dobson and Norris’ involvement in it, the jurors would not  have read newspapers or listened or watched news bulletins or current affairs programmes over the past 18 years;  not found such information when using the Internet; not attended  “antiracist” courses in their workplace  and not been at school (and probably university)  after 1999  because of the institutionalisation of “antiracism” propaganda  (with Stephen Lawrence at its centre)  in British schools following the recommendation  that this be done in the Macpherson Report (Recommendation 67 – http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).  .

Even  if by some miracle twelve people could be found who were unaware of the Lawrence case and the reputation of  Dobson and Norris,  there would still be the hurdle to overcome of the intensely politically correct atmosphere that has been gradually  created by the British elite over the past forty years.   Whites in Britain have been conditioned to believe that  it is dangerous not to play the multiculturalist game. To fail to accept the Lawrence case narrative presented to them and find Dobson and Norris not guilty would expose them to the dreaded charge of racism.  At the same time non-whites have developed a tremendous sense of victimhood  which leaves them unlikely to approach a trial such as this in disinterested fashion.

However the jury was comprised the jurors would have had good cause to return a guilty verdict regardless of the evidence.  If the jury was all white they could, and almost certainly would have been,  be portrayed, at best,  as whites  looking after their own. If the jury was racially mixed it would be very difficult for the white members to argue for a not guilty verdict if the non-white members were against it.  Conversely, a non-white member on the jury who did not believe guilt had been proved would be nervous – for fear of being seen as an uncle Tom – about voting  for not guilty, if such a vote would mean there was a unanimous  verdict and consequently it would be known that they had voted that way.

(I have not been able to  discover any details about the composition of the  jury other than that it was comprised of 8 men and 4 women  and people from the locality of the killing were excluded (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15735026). If anybody has details of the age, class, race and ethnicity of the jurors please let me know. )

If there is an equivalent case  in terms of sustained adverse  media coverage which has gone to trial I would glad to know of it.

The racist video

A video made secretly by the police of some of   the suspects including,  Dobson and Norris, during the original investigation   into the murder shows Dobson and Norris (and the others) engaging in extremely crude racist talk. Here is an example:

Neil Acourt. Sequence 11. “I reckon that every nigger should be chopped up mate and they should be left with nothing but fucking stumps….”

David Norris. Sequence 50. “If I was going to kill myself do you know what I’d do? I’d go and kill every black cunt, every paki, every copper, every mug that I know..

I’d go down to Catford and places like that I’m telling you now with two sub-machine guns and I’m telling you I’d take one of them, skin the black cunt alive mate, torture him, set him alight …. I’d blow their two legs and arms off and say go on you can swim home now …. (laughs).”

Gary Dobson. Sequence 27. “He said the fucking black bastard I am going to kill him. I cracked up laughing. I went what black geezer. He went the Wimpy one the fucking black nigger cunt, fucking black bastard. I went what the Paki……”

Luke Knight. Sequence 11. “…. it was Cameroon, a fucking nigger country… Fucking our presenters saying oh yeah we want Cameroon to win this, why the fuck should he want niggers to win it when they’re playing something fucking like Italy…..”  (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-07.htm#7.11)

It is astonishing that the video was allowed in evidence because there is a principle in English law  that  nothing can be introduced into evidence if it is not direct evidence of the crime and  would be likely to serious  bias jurors. The prime example of this is the long-standing refusal to allow evidence of previous convictions into evidence (this has been weakened as a principle too,  but still obtains in most criminal cases).  The video clearly falls into this  category because there is no admission in the recording that the suspects had committed the crime.

It has been suggested that those involved suspected or even knew they were being bugged,  and deliberately went over the top with their language to taunt the police.  But there is no hard evidence that this is the case.  Moreover, if the prosecution seriously believed that  the recording was made  when those recorded knew or suspected they were being recorded, that would have been another reason for  excluding it from evidence because it did not represent Dobson and Norris’ normal behaviour.   Because of the  conditioning to the “antiracist” mindset  outlined above, it is difficult to believe the playing of the recording to the jury followed by the evidence given by Dobson and Norris about the recording would not have had an adverse effect on the jury.

The fact that no admission of having killed Lawrence was made in the secret recording is  a pointer to their innocence.   To build on that instance there is a considerable  amount of surveillance over the years which failed to catch any of the suspects  making any admission of involvement in the murder:

“ Just weeks before the Macpherson report was published in February 1999, then Met Deputy Commissioner John Stevens asked one of his top detectives  John Grieve, to launch a no-expense spared new probe.

Career detective Mr Stevens told Mr Grieve, a deputy assistant commissioner, he could recruit the best detectives in the force.

At its peak, 120 officers were working on Operation Athena Tower, which lasted four years.

Yard chiefs were in constant contact with the then Home Secretary Jack Straw, the only person who could authorise telephone intercepts on the suspects.

Yard Assistant Commissioner David Veness approved dozens of bugging operations on the gang’s cars, homes and workplaces, while a surveillance team was constantly on their trail.

A source said: ‘It was run like a big anti-terror operation. The team had every piece of kit you have ever heard of. It was pure James Bond.’

It was during this phase that a house was purchased in the same street as one of the murder suspects, and an undercover officer tasked with infiltrating the gang.

TV INTERVIEW AND A SPY HELICOPTER

Two months after the Grieve probe started, the five suspects agreed to be interviewed by Martin Bashir on ITV’s Tonight With Trevor McDonald.

Programme makers were in close contact with the Met before the programme was recorded but for legal reasons, detectives ruled out suggesting the line of questioning.

Had they done so, defence lawyers could have argued they had used Bashir as ‘an agent of the police’ – scuppering the possibility of using it as evidence at any future trial.

Bedrooms and other pre-selected rooms in the secret house in Scotland where the interview was filmed had recording devices installed.

Scotland Yard even had a helicopter hover over the group as they played golf nearby, recording their comments, relayed by satellite from tiny microphones hidden in their golf trolleys. But the ‘bugged golf buggies’ did not provide any vital new leads – and neither did the TV show.

In May 2004, the CPS announced there was insufficient evidence to bring murder charges. One detective remarked at the time that the Yard’s best hope was if one of the suspects ‘became a vicar’ and gave a true account of what happened”. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged-killers-homes-cars-pubs.html  – this Mail article is worth reading in its entirety).

The fact that, despite the immense surveillance efforts made over a long period, no admission was ever recorded or heard by undercover officers pretending to be their friend strongly points to their innocence.  The temptation for young  men, adolescents when the crime happened,  to boast  amongst themselves about the crime if they had committed it would have been very strong because that is the way of young men.  Imagine keeping quiet about it for years on end even when you are drunk and  amongst people you think are your friends. It would argue for an iron self-discipline that few could muster and would be vanishingly  unlikely  to be found in every one of a group of five or more.

The breaching of double jeopardy

The ancient English law principle of no double jeopardy  – that there should be no more than one trial on the same offence or evidence after an acquittal  has been gained – was diluted by the Criminal Justice Act 2003. This provided for  more than twenty offences  to attract the possibility of a second trial on the same charge after being acquitted previously.  Murder is one of the qualifying offences. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44/part/10).   The breaching of double jeopardy was one of the Macpherson  recommendations – no 28  – although he was making the suggestion only in relation to racist crimes. (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-47.htm).

The removal of double jeopardy is dangerously wrong  in itself,  because of the opportunity it gives to the state to behave in an oppressive manner. To that  ill  is added that of de facto retrospection, for it is not only crimes committed after the 2003 Act which are caught by it but any crime committed before the Act was passed. Dobson was acquitted during  the private prosecution  and  until the 2003 Act was passed could not have been retried.   He is also a victim of retrospection.

There are supposedly strong safeguards against the abuse of power built into the 2003 Act.  The court of Appeal  has to quash the original acquittal and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)  has to give the go ahead for a new prosecution.  There is also a seemingly stern test for the new evidence on which a fresh trial will be based. Section 78 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 requires that the new evidence must meet the following tests:

78 New and compelling evidence

(1)The requirements of this section are met if there is new and compelling evidence against the acquitted person in relation to the qualifying offence.

(2)Evidence is new if it was not adduced in the proceedings in which the person was acquitted (nor, if those were appeal proceedings, in earlier proceedings to which the appeal related).

(3)Evidence is compelling if—

(a)it is reliable,

(b)it is substantial, and

(c)in the context of the outstanding issues, it appears highly probative [Having the effect of proof, tending to prove, or actually proving] of the case against the acquitted person.

(4)The outstanding issues are the issues in dispute in the proceedings in which the person was acquitted and, if those were appeal proceedings, any other issues remaining in dispute from earlier proceedings to which the appeal related.

(5)For the purposes of this section, it is irrelevant whether any evidence would have been admissible in earlier proceedings against the acquitted person. (http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/44/part/10).

The problem with such putative safeguards is that they  allow a great deal of latitude in their interpretation and the decisions,  whether or not to quash the original acquittal or mount a fresh prosecution, are made by members of the  elite who are often associated with politicians.  For example, the present DPP,  Keir Starmer, is a member of the Labour Party (he was named after Keir Hardie) and was  appointed by a Labour government.   Consequently , there is also a  “Who shall guard the guards” element to fret over.    But I shall leave that  question  to the judgement of the reader. What I shall go into in some detail is the question of the “New and compelling evidence” on which the re-trial was based.

The new forensic evidence

This consists of a minute blood stain identified as Lawrence’s blood, two human hairs of 1mm and 2mm  respectively (which could only be tested for maternal DNA because the hairs had no root) and a small amount of fibre identified as coming from Lawrence’s clothes which was found on clothing taken from  the defendants’ homes after the murder.   Technology was not advanced enough in 1993 to have extracted a complete DNA profile from the blood stain, but that is irrelevant because, according to media reports,  the blood stain was not spotted in 1993. The stain was tiny but not invisible being 0.25mm by 0.5mm (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081758/Stephen-Lawrence-verdict-The-evidence-convicted-David-Norris-Gary-Dobson.html).  

In the 1990s two separate forensic examinations were made of the clothes and other items gathered by the police in 1993 as possible evidence.  The first was conducted by Adam Wain  who was working with the police. The second  by Dr Angela Gallop who acted for the Lawrence family in 1995 when the private prosecution was being prepared.  Both found blood and textile fibres; both came to the same conclusions: that there was too little blood to test and  the connection between Lawrence and any of the suspects’  clothing was thin,  in Dr Gallop’s words  “Even in combination these fibres provide only very weak evidence of any association between Lawrence’s and Dobson’s clothing.” (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-25.htm – this is section 25 of the Macpherson Report)

But there were  fibres which had some similarity with the garments worn by Dobson and Lawrence:

“ 25.7 In summary, the conclusions of Mr Wain were really as follows: First, amongst the extraneous fibres removed from the bag from the right hand were two brown wool fibres that had the same microscopic and colour characteristics as those from Mr Dobson’s cardigan. One of these had similar dye components as those from the cardigan. The other one was too small for dye testing. 

Also he found that one grey cotton fibre from Stephen Lawrence’s jacket had the same microscopic characteristics as fibres from Mr Dobson’s jacket. That discovery was made in June 1994. Also a single white polyester fibre found in the bag from Stephen Lawrence’s right hand had the same microscopic characteristics as those from Mr Dobson’s jacket. As that fibre was white no further relevant tests could be carried out.”

25.8 The report of Mr Wain continued as follows … “Evaluation conclusions … where fibres are found to match the component fibres of a garment, this does not mean that they necessarily came from that garment. They could have come from another garment of the same type or another source of similar fibres. Therefore, in my opinion, there is weak support for the assertion that the two brown wool fibres recovered from the bag that was covering Stephen Lawrence’s right hand came from an exhibit ASR/2, namely a cardigan recovered from Dobson’s home”, and that, “there is very weak support for the assertion that the single grey cotton and white polyester fibres that were recovered from Lawrence’s jacket and right hand bag came from item LA/5, namely a jacket found at Dobson’s home.” (Ibid)

The importance of these early findings on the fibres are twofold: (1) it shows that extensive searches for fibres and their extended  testing was undertaken when the evidence was fresh and less likely to be contaminated (2) that  similarity of fibre was weak evidence of  where the fibre came from.

It is rather difficult to see how two highly experienced forensic scientists could have missed the fibres which were presented as evidence in the trial just concluded.  More to the point, even if they did miss them,  why are these putatively new  fibres any more potent as evidence now than those  found and tested in between 1993-1995? There would seem to be no ready answer to that because a fibre is just a fibre, a dye is just a dye.  There has not been  technological advance which will identify the  particular garment from which a fibre has come.

Even if there was other evidence, forensic or otherwise,  the new  fibre evidence  would add little to it simply because of its uncertainty.  If there was a great deal of evidence which pointed to Dobson and Norris being involved with the killing it might add a small  circumstantial something  but that is all. But there was not a great mass of strong evidence in this trial. The two hairs  found on Norris’ clothing could have been simple contamination as the evidence bags nestled together, unwitting transferred during other tests or even transferred by the officers initially  collecting evidence who also visited the Lawrence home.  It is worth adding that the clothes from which fibres were taken were not  collected for several weeks after the murder and the police themselves thought it unlikely that any fibres  from Lawrence would have been left on the clothes after that time(http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-25.htm) .

The only really  important new evidence put forward was the microscopic blood sample on Dobson’s jacket collar (http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16141534) and the two hairs.   The fibre and hair evidence really added nothing to this. The DNA evidence either stood or fell on its own merits. As  there was no blood evidence against Norris (only inconclusive  fibres and the two tiny hairs). He should have been acquitted because there was no meaningful evidence against him.

The blood evidence against Dobson presents more complex problems.   The defence did not question the blood  DNA analysis. Instead they attacked its veracity as evidence by claiming contamination.  There were solid grounds for doing this.   The blood stain was not seen  by the two forensic scientists who had examined the jacket in the 1990s. The evidence  had been stored for 18 years.  The clothes were stored in paper  evidence bags sealed only with sellotape - the original forensic scientist  Adam Wain warned of the  dangers of contamination as the bags and sellotape seals degraded (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/11/24/stephen-lawrence-murder-trial-forensic-expert-had-concerns-about-contamination-of-evidence-old-bailey-hears-86908-23585745)  Evidence bags containing Lawrence’s clothes and effects were stored with those containing the Dobson and Norris evidence.   Detective Sergeant John Bevan and Detective Constable Linda Holden, two of the officers involved in the initial investigation,  visited the Lawrence home as well as taking raids on the suspects homes (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8908314/Officers-may-have-contaminated-Stephen-Lawrence-evidence.html).  An officer on the case  DC Paul Steed  deliberately  sabotaged his records relating to the forensic  evidence (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/09/stephen-lawrence-trial_n_1139000.html . A forensic worker Yvonne Turner  mislabelled evidence in 1993, including the garments at issue in the Dobson/Norris trial (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/nov/23/stephen-lawrence-trial-evidence-mislabelled)  It is also true that contamination of forensic evidence is a not uncommon problem in many cases which heavily rely on it.  (http://www.impactnottingham.com/2012/01/can-we-really-rely-on-forensic-science/).

Having said all that there is the question of how the blood soaked into the Dobson jacket collar. Three other flakes of blood which tested as being that of Lawrence were found loose in the evidence bag, although again these had been missed in the earlier forensic examination.  They could plausibly have been in the bag as  the result of contamination by a simple mechanical transfer of material.  Dobson’s defence rested on the fact that the blood on the collar could have been caused by the liquid with which the jacket was sprayed to test for saliva. This could have softened another scrap of dried blood which allowed the blood to soak into the collar.

The prosecution brought Rosalyn Hammond as an expert forensic witness to say this was “practically impossible” (http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/2011/12/08/stephen-lawrence-murder-trial-contamination-not-to-blame-for-bloodstain-on-accused-s-jacket-says-expert-86908-23620646/).   Prosecuting counsel in his final speech to the jury said the blood on the collar could not “realistically be caused by contamination”. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16271736). Note that neither the witness or the prosecutor say it was actually  impossible. In fact, they used  the sort of phrases that people use when they are trying to paper over the cracks in an argument. Nor  is the spraying for saliva the only plausible way the blood could have got onto the collar. For example, someone opening the bag which had been contaminated with loose tiny flakes of blood could have had water or another liquid on their hands and without knowing it transferred both blood and liquid to the Dobson jacket.  It is also rather curious that only a tiny amount of blood would have soaked into  the Dobson jacket if it had been transferred during the attack or conceivably after the attack with blood from the knife or hands.  The fact that the blood was on the collar makes it even less probable because staining elsewhere – the sleeve or front of jacket would have been more likely  than the collar, especially if the blood was transferred in the attack. It should also be remembered that the blood stain and the three other loose flakes in the evidence bag were missed by both forensic investigations in the 1990s.

There are further strong circumstantial reasons to doubt the blood sample. Much was made in the Macpherson report of the failure to arrest any of the suspects for two weeks  after the killing and the fact that on two occasions before any arrests were made Dobson and Jamie Acourt  were seen leaving their homes carrying black plastic refuse sacks which might have contained items of clothing (http://www.archive.official-documents.co.uk/document/cm42/4262/sli-18.htm).  The Macpherson report concluded that  this might have been clothes worn at the killing which were being disposed of to destroy any potential forensic evidence, a rather large assumption to say the least.   But If that was indeed the case why would they have kept any of the clothes? Common sense would have told anyone who had been involved in the killing to get rid of everything. . In  addition,  it should be remembered that David Norris’ father Clifford was a heavyweight villain who reputedly ran the drugs trade in South London at that time.  If he knew  his son and others had been involved with the murder  it is difficult to believe he would not have told his son  to make sure all those involved got  rid of any clothing or anything else they were carrying or wearing in case  these  provided  forensic evidence.

Exactly how the Court of Appeal and the DPP concluded this was “New and compelling evidence” I am at a loss to understand.   As for the jury, the judge warned them they had to accept the forensic evidence as being beyond reasonable doubt before moving to the question of whether Dobson and Norris were guilty.   Whether the jury understood the full ramifications and complexity of the forensic evidence we shall never know, but it is difficult to see how they could have met the steep test of “beyond a reasonable doubt”  on any rational basis.

The viciousness of the  white liberal

Nothing I have written is meant to suggest  that Dobson and Norris (or the other suspects) are  admirable human beings.  However, it is interesting to see the hypocrisy and viciousness of   modern day liberals as they respond to this case.

If this had been black defendants from similar backgrounds to those of the five accused the mainstream media would have been full of broadcasts and articles saying their environment was responsible for their misbehaviour, how disadvantaged they were and so on.    Nor has any meaningful  allowance has been  made by the mainstream media for the youth of  Dobson (17) and Norris (16) at the time of the attack or the fact that Norris had a father who was a serious criminal. It should also be borne in mind that the suspects lived in an area of heavy non-white immigration, unlike the regulation issue white liberal who,  curiously you may think for those putative worshippers of diversity, so often manage to  arrange their affairs so that they live in very white worlds.

As they are white working class men,   white liberals (and their black and Asian auxiliaries) feel free to casually vilify them in the crudest manner which demolishes any pretence they have to actually believing in the “liberal internationalist, be understanding, don’t blame anyone”  credo they continuously promote.

That bastion of liberal sanctimony the Guardian greeted the convictions with the tabloid worthy headline Monsters in the dock (http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/06/1?newsfeed=true) while the Daily Telegraph from supposedly the other side of the political spectrum  thought it relevant to comment on the physical appearance of the three members of the original five suspects not charged in this trial – The Acourt brothers and Luke Knight – and to sneer at the difficulties which the all but Jamie Acourt have experienced since the Lawrence murder (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8974918/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Jamie-Acourt-Neil-Acourt-and-Luke-Knight-profiles.html).

The vindictiveness of the liberal can be seen in their howling for longer sentences for Dobson and Norris – despite the fact that they were aged 17 and 16 at the time of the murder -  and the willingness of those with power to pander to the public cries. The Attorney-General  – a politician in the British government – has already agreed to review the sentences to see if they are “unduly lenient”  because one or more “members of the public” have requested that he do so  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8994957/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-Attorney-General-to-review-sentences.html)

It might be thought that the liberal dominated media would at least have been disturbed by the diluting of double jeopardy, but with a few honourable exceptions such as Peter Hitchens  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2083636/Stephen-Lawrence-murder-I-dont-believe-man-stand-trial-twice-crime.html#ixzz1irbOpuHd) there has been a ghastly silence.

The unpleasant truth (for liberals) is that modern liberals, far from being interested in truth and fairness and  treating all human beings alike, are just like every other human being: they favour those they approve of and attack those they deem beyond the Pale.  In fact, liberals today are more likely to behave viciously towards those of whom they disapprove than the general run of Britons because they are rigid ideologues and like all ideologues they carry their beliefs to any length of sinister absurdity.

Shades of the Barry George conviction

When Barry George was convicted  of the murder of the  television presenter Jill Dando in 2001 I  wrote a pamphlet for the Libertarian Alliance entitled  Barry George and the celebrity effect  [http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/barry-george-and-the-celebrity-effect/ ]. In it I argued  that the evidence  was very weak and entirely circumstantial and the conviction palpably wrong.   The prosecution case, like that in the Dobson/Norris trial, also rested on dubious  forensic evidence.

I attributed the jury’s willingness to convict on such feeble evidence  to Dando’s  celebrity and the massive amount of irrelevant character assignation of George which occurred during the trial, character assassination which  was then gleefully amplified  by the media. Barry George was acquitted on appeal in 2008 when the weakness of the case against him was finally officially recognised.

Something similar seems to have  happened in the case of Dobson and Norris.   The police, the DPP, the  Court of Appeal  had obvious reason not to bring the case to trial or, in the case of the jury, to reach a verdict of guilty. Dobson should not have tried again because of the breach of double jeopardy and even under the new rules on second trials after an acquittal,  neither Dobson nor Norris should have been retried because of the patent impossibility that they would get a fair trial because of all that had occurred in the previous 18 years.  In addition, the new forensic  evidence was seriously compromised by the very real risk of contamination. This should have caused the case to fail to meet the “new and compelling” criteria for a new trial. The jury should have come to a not guilty verdict because clearly the “beyond a reasonable doubt”  standard was not met because of the risk of contamination.   The only plausible explanation for all of these things not happening is the creation by the media, politicians and interest groups of an atmosphere in which none of those involved in the process from gathering evidence to giving a verdict felt it possible to do anything other than allow the process of re-trial to proceed.

It is not necessary for those involved to have consciously made a decision not to do what circumstances and facts said they should do. All that it required is for those involved to have been in effect brainwashed by the coverage of the Lawrence case over 18 years and the ever increasing grip which  “antiracist” propaganda has on Britain which makes many white Britons believe that in some curious way whites are always in the wrong when black complaints of abuse by whites are involved.

This was a political trial pure and simple.  The desire for a conviction became part of the “anti-racist” crusade which the murder generated.  No expense has been spared  with an estimated £50 million having been spent on it  (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged- killers-homes-cars-pubs.htm). At its height 120 officers were employed on the case full time (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2081901/Stephen-Lawrence-trial-Police-bugged-killers-homes-cars-pubs.html). Even today there are 25 officers doing the same and suggestions that they should be re-deployed to other duties is causing media uproar.  The squad may well continue, viz.: ‘ Scotland Yard has denied reports that the team investigating the murder of Stephen Lawrence is being disbanded but it admitted the case is currently “dormant”’. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16435790)

Compare the Lawrence case with the investigation of  the murder of a fifteen year old white boy Richard Everitt by Asians in 1994. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/the-deaths-of-richard-everitt-and-stephen-lawrence-compare-and-contrast/). One person was convicted of the murder  and released after 11 years. Upwards of ten were in the gang which killed him who went looking for a white boy to attack. Unlike the Lawrence case there has been no sustained  median campaign to bring the others to justice, no Public Inquiry like that of Macpherson, no ongoing massive police  squad devoted to a continuing investigation, no outcry by the media at the release of the convicted killer after only 11 years.  This was a murder which the British elite wished to sweep under the carpet as quickly as possible.  The double standards of the British elite are howlingly obvious and disturbing.  The British public can see what is happening and are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the “white, wrong; black,  right”  policies and mentality of those with power and influence in this country. That could be the ultimate legacy of the Stephen Lawrence circus: the straw which broke the grip of the “antiracist” multicultural propagandists on British life.

Stephen Lawrence’s murder was just that, a murder.  It was as grave a crime as any other murder arising from the similar circumstances of a gang attack. No more, no less.

You must be mad if you don’t believe in the liberal globalist credo

Robert Henderson

Anders Breivik has been declared insane at the time of his mass killings on 22 July 2011 by Norwegian  psychiatrists, Synne Serheim and Torgeir Husby. They claim Breivik was psychotic  before and during  his bomb attack in Oslo and shooting  attack on  Utoya Island which together  left 76 dead.  Prosecutor Svein Holden said Beivik has been diagnosed as  insane and that  ”He lives in his own delusional universe and his thoughts and acts are governed by this universe”.  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8922760/Anders-Behring-Breivik-not-accountable-for-attacks.html).  If this diagnosis is upheld ,  first by a Norwegian  legal medical commission and then by  the Norwegian courts,    Breivik will  be  incarcerated in an asylum, most probably for the rest of his life.

The question of whether Breivik will have a chance to speak at length in open  court  is  still open, viz.:  “The trial will proceed in much the same manner as if Breivik had been found sound of mind. Evidence will still be examined, and the court has the final say as to whether or not they believe Breivik is guilty of having carried out the attacks.”( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15954370). However,  if the question of insanity is the primary issue for the court to decide,  that could mean that Breivik is not allowed to testify  either at all or as freely as he would wish. They could well decide that he was guilty of the crimes without any testimony from Breivik (the facts are scarcely at issue and Breivik admitted his responsibility soon after the event (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14265526)  and then decide on the question of insanity based only on the “expert” evidence.  It is also possible that any court hearing could be held in camera. (It is only too easy to imagine politically correct Norway claiming that as the man was judged to be mentally disturbed,  he should  not be subjected to public scrutiny).   Unless Breivik has a  trial in open court he will disappear from public view without any opportunity  to speak his mind in public.

The matter is further complicated by the question of how Breivik will plead. If he rejects a plea of insanity and wishes to plead not guilty, he will have the obstacle to overcome of having admitted the fact that he did undertake the bombings and shootings.  If he pleads  not guilty  that could result in the court excluding any testimony from Breivik  relating to motive and deciding the matter purely on  his admission to the facts and the question of whether he is or was insane at the time of the killings.  If the Breivik is to plead justification for committing the killings he would need to do so in a way which it would be difficult for the court to refuse him the opportunity to speak at length.  I  think the most probable way he could do this is by arguing that he was acting in self-defence because he believed that the policies of his ruling elite were putting his society and by extension himself at risk. The weakness in his argument would be that he has not attacked those with the actual power and influence but the  youth wing of the party with power..

Breivik’s alternative would be to plead guilty and then use whatever chance the court offers him to speak in mitigation to put forward his justification.  However, if he does that  it would be both easier for the court to restrict what he might say and hold the proceedings in camera.

It will be interesting to see if Breivik is allowed to bring the  witnesses he wants or, indeed,  any witnesses at all,  to court.  These could be to support his claim of sanity or his belief that Norway (and the rest of the European world) is being betrayed by its elites through their  permitting of mass immigration and suppression of dissent about the effects of the immigration.   Those  relevant to supporting his political position could be distinctly embarrassing as Breivik could try to call those politicians he blames for Norway and Europe’s betrayal.  Such applications would almost certainly be refused, but  Norwegian officialdom’s refusal  of them would add to the impression of an elite determined to not hear Breivik’s case.

A taste of the way the things are likely to go in any trial  can be gleaned from this report of Breivik’s court appearance of  15 November 2011: ‘He [Breivik]  then questioned the competence of Judge Torkjel Nesheim “because (the judge) has a mandate from organizations that support multi-culturalism in Norway. Multi-culturalism is an anti-Norwegian hate ideology designed to destruct the Norwegian ethnic group.” He got as far as adding that “destructing the Norwegian ethnic group is the same as ethnic cleansing…” before the judge cut him off, saying the court only wanted to hear from Breivik about his impressions of prison life.

‘Breivik later said he had no problems with the conditions of his custody, but said he “doesn’t accept” his imprisonment because he’s a “military commander.” He recommended Norwegian police look to Saudi Arabia for other “methods of torture.” The judge cut him off several times, refusing to allow Breivik to use the hearing as a “soapbox” to spread his beliefs. As reported earlier, his request to directly address survivors and victims’ families was denied.’ (http://www.newsinenglish.no/2011/11/15/breiviks-altered-sense-of-reality/).  This refusal to allow Breivik to explain himself goes along with the keeping him in solitary confinement and denying him any knowledge of what was happening in the outside world.

Is Breivik  mad?

The psychiatric assessment  is that “He lives in his own delusional universe and his thoughts and acts are governed by this universe”.  The problem with this judgement is that while  Breivik’s  political views can be rejected on the grounds that they  are unpalatable,  they are not  based on fantasy. There has been massive immigration into Western societies.  Vast numbers of Muslims have come to Europe. Post-war non-white immigration has both radically altered the societies into which they have come  and  resulted in European elites who suppress dissent and ceaselessly promote multiculturalism.  If immigration continues at a similar rate it will be a fact that over the next half century societies, especially ones with small populations like Norway, are in danger  of seeing their native populations become minorities in their own lands.  To be insane, at least in the English legal sense (McNaughton Rules), Breivik would have to have been  captured by delusions which rendered him unable to understand  reality, for example, a hearing voices in his head directing him to kill people or suffering from a paranoid belief that someone was trying to kill him.    Clearly this is not the case with Breivik’s political ideas. Those are based in reality and long considered.

There is also  the evidence of the meticulous  planning Breivik undertook and his extensive writings  which show someone fully aware of what he wanted to do and, most importantly for an insanity plea , why he wanted to do it. Breivik clearly understood that what he was doing would have been immoral as uncontexted acts, but these were given (he believed)  a  moral context because of the political and social circumstances  created by the liberal elites.

Nor could Breivik’s killing spree be reasonably used to decide that he is insane. There are innumerable terrorists who have killed with the same callous disregard but they have not been adjudged insane or, indeed, has there been any official  attempt to suggest that they were insane.   Evil, bad, immoral maybe, but not mad.

Compare  Breivik’s s assessment of the world  with the modern  liberals’ belief system. His is a recognition of what mass immigration and political correctness has actually wrought: theirs is a fantasy world  in which humanity is one big happy family with its human atoms readily interchangeable between place, culture and time regardless of race or sex.

An elite stitch up?

The diagnosis  of insanity  comes as no surprise.  Shortly after Breivik’s arrest his lawyer Geir Lippestad  conducted a press conference (on 26^th July)  in  which client confidentiality was non-existent and Lippestad’s adverse opinions of his client were given full reign  in a way which is astonishing to  British eyes.   Apart from telling  the world that Breivik was a “a cold personality” ;  assuring them that Breivik hates “anyone who democratic” and that he thinks Breivik’s ideology as outlined in his manifesto is irrelevant to the case (which is a pointer to how his defence may be conducted),  Lippestad  made the astonishing comment  “This whole case has indicated that he’s insane “ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14292212).  I listened to  press conference as it was taking place and I noted  Lippstad as saying he was  discussing  an insanity plea with the prosecutor, although he has not seen fit  to tell his client that he is doing any of this.  (I have not been able to track down a full version of the press conference and the excerpts  which  are publicly available do not contain these  statements. Nor can I find it reported anywhere  in print. The longest extract I have found online is around 14 minutes long http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtXIGw0BvbM&feature=related).  A diagnosis of insanity would appear to have been the tacitly  or overtly agreed Norwegian  elite solution to the acute problem Breivik represents for not only them but  for elites everywhere  in countries whose governments  have signed up to the globalist multiculturalist creed. As for Breivik’s chances of controlling his defence, Lippestad stated baldly The “I won’t take no instructions [from Breivik]”  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtXIGw0BvbM&feature=related –  enter at 2 minutes 14 seconds).  On the face of it Breivik has a lawyer who will be unwilling to present a defence as Breivik wishes it to be presented.

How does  Breivik view the situation? He is reported as  describing the insanity diagnosis  as insulting   (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15954370). However,  he might not be too perturbed in reality because such a ploy by the  Norwegian judicial system would bolster his claims of a  corrupt and treasonous political elite who will stop at nothing to enforce their will and ideology.

Breivik’s  choice of lawyer Geir Lippestad  is interesting. Lippestad is a member of the Norwegian Labour Party.  He  specifically asked for Lippestad to represent him. Bearing in mind Beivik’s penchant for planning and research, it is improbable that he did not know Lappestad was a member of the party he despised. Why did he choose Lappestad?  Probably to ensure that his trial was seen as seriously flawed, to demonstrate publicly through the manner of Lippestad’s  defence how biased and controlling the Norwegian elite has become. The choice of Lippestad also has the advantage of placing a member of the Norwegian liberal establishment in the excruciatingly embarrassing situation of defending the man who has waged war on the young of Lippestad’s  own political party. (I have had the sneaking feeling ever since the killings that Breivik is working the Norwegian liberal elite with his foot).

It has been suggested that Lippestad was chosen because he defended  the white  killer of a mixed race victim in 2002 and Breivik asked for him because he thought Lippestad would be the best defence lawyer  because of the way that Lippestad conducted the 2002 case.  This is very implausible because Breivik could have had no illusions about being found either not guilty or insane.   The best Breivik could hope for  was a trial in open court with his ideas put before the public.  The quality of the defence  lawyer is irrelevant  in such circumstances (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8663525/Norway-killers-lawyer-Geir-Lippestad-defended-neo-Nazi.html

Doubtless a public trial in which he has his chance to speak at length  would have been Breivik’s preferred outcome, but the sinister act of having him declared mad – a tactic all too familiar from regimes such as those of the Soviet Union and  Communist China – could fit into his general purpose of demonstrating the  mentality he accuses Western elites of possessing. A flawed trial caused by the wilful inadequacies of his lawyer would reinforce the point that the Norwegian elite are determined not to allow any view but their own politically correct one to have a public hearing.

Can Breivik get a fair trial?

Beivik has been kept in solitary confinement and denied any knowledge of what is happening in the outside world. When he has appeared in court it has been mostly in camera. What we  know of Breivik’s attempts to speak at his court appearances show a judiciary determined to disallow any attempt to explain his motives.  Breivik’s lawyer has made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of doing what Breivik wants.  To cap it all, psychiatrists find Breivik insane.

The solitary confinement might just about be explained by fears  that other prisoners would attack Breivik, although he could have been placed with prisoners without a history of violence. For the  rest it is simply an attempt to

denial of knowledge of the outside  world there is no security excuse and it can only have been  done for the petty reason of denying  Breivik any chance of deriving satisfaction from seeing what effect he has had. However, it has the unintended consequence of  making  it impossible for him to properly instruct his lawyer or  assess the advice given by his lawyer,  things which would seriously mitigate against a fair trial.   It also means that Breivik cannot use the response of politicians and the media to the attacks in any justification based on his  political position.

The liberal’s fear of Breivik

Why are liberals so very terrified of Breivik that they cannot bear the idea of him being thought sane or willingly countenance his  justifications for the attacks being presented to the public ?  After all,  this is a mass murderer  who presents his ideas in a distinctly eccentric form by wrapping his idea for a revolution against the ruling elites in the highly anachronistic clothes of the mediaeval military order of the Knights Templars, a group to which he considers himself and fellow spirits to be the heirs to.   Here is a sample of his curious mixture of ancient and modern:

“3.12 Re-founding of Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici – PCCTS, the Knights Templar The European Military Order and Criminal Tribunal (the PCCTS – Knights Templar) was created by and for the free indigenous peoples of Europe. One of the primary purposes of the tribunal and order is to attempt/contribute to seize political and military control of Western European multiculturalist regimes and to try, judge and punish Western European cultural Marxist/multiculturalist perpetrators (category A, B and C traitors) for crimes committed against the indigenous peoples of Europe from 1955 until this day.

“Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici – PCCTS (the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon), the Knights Templar was re-founded in London in 2002 by representatives from eight European countries, for the purpose of serving the interests of the free indigenous peoples of Europe and to fight against the ongoing European Jihad (referred to as the “third Jihad”). The Knights Templar was re-founded as a pan-European nationalist military order and a military/criminal tribunal with two primary objectives. The order is to serve as an armed Indigenous Rights Organisation and as a Crusader Movement (anti-Jihad movement). “  2083 – A European Declaration of Independence

The original Breivik  link to the manifesto – http://andersbreivik.co.uk/2083/ – has been nullified,  but the full document can be found at (http://www.kevinislaughter.com/wp-content/uploads/2083+-+A+European+Declaration+of+Independence.pdf).

Nonetheless,  in between all the romantic eccentricity are  ideas which strike deep into the heart of the liberal fantasy:  that Islam is compatible with Western society, that mass immigration is treason and that  feminism enfeebles a society by feminising men.   Breivik  is a challenge to   the entire politically correct edifice on which the liberal rests.    Worse, the liberal, like all ideologues, knows in their heart of hearts that their  ideology cannot withstand contrary argument because ideologies are always  incomplete description of  the world and consequently erroneous guides to action.

In the case of liberal internationalism  the ideology is especially vulnerable.  The liberal knows that the society they wish to see conflicts with  the way in which human beings actually behave  in the most fundamental way. That does not discourage the liberal because they do not believe in human nature and ascribe all behaviours to social conditioning. Consequently, any behaviour of which they disapprove can be changed by altering the conditioning.  Any failure of the re-conditioning is ascribed to it being applied over  insufficient time or of the re-conditioning not being rigorous enough.  There is never a natural point for the 24 carat liberal believer to say this will not work.

But although the liberal is certain that success will be eventually attained, they know that during the re-conditioning period the old social habits will remain and can still be powerfully appealed to.  That drives the liberal to believe that suppression of any dissent directed at the imposition of the new “liberal”  behaviours is morally justified on the grounds that the ends justify the means. The problem is the liberal’s view of how human beings  work is wondrously wide of the  mark and the re-conditioning will never succeed because it goes against basic human desires. The best the liberal can hope for is to suppress dissent to give the appearance of a step change in human behaviour.  Breivik is a frightening  challenge to that strategy of suppression.

No matter what the evidence to the contrary is, the true believers will continue to  believe because to do otherwise would be emotionally impossible for them. They believe still that it is simply a question of time and “education”, a word which is unreservedly sinister in the mouth of the modern liberal.  But  many , probably most, ostensible  liberals understand that there is such a thing as human nature and know that what they are asking of people is unnatural and will never be accepted. The problem for such people is that they are trapped into a situation where they have to keep pretending the ideology is correct for reasons of self-preservation.  At best they risk the loss of their privileged position if the liberal censorship is broken ; at  worse, they  could  be held to account for the treason which is mass immigration. Those fears  drive them to support the unreconstructed true believers  when they  behave ever more tyrannically in their suppression of dissent, which in Breivik’s case means  doing their best to censor his words and pretend that he is simply an unbalanced aberration which has nothing to do with their ideology.

Perhaps the most telling moments during Geir Lippestad  press conference of 26^th July were  when he   answered the question “Why did he [Breivik] think it was a good idea to start a war by  attacking  members of  the Labour Party  rather than Islamics?”  With “I cannot understand that”  followed by repetitions along the same lines.  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnbOtoJHUZI – go into the recording at  33 seconds). This was unbelievable because Breivik had  a clear and obvious motive, namely, Breivik was attacking the  next generation of the class whom he had identified as being responsible for the political and social problems which had driven him to act.   In  his mind Breivik  was culling those he saw as the future traitors and  sending messages to both the Norwegian elite and general public that the permitting of mass immigration = treason.   Yet Lippestad could not bring himself to either acknowledge what was obvious or even  offer an alternative explanation.  Interestingly, it was during this  answer that Lippestad  appeared to be at his most stressed during the press conference.

The right-wing broadcaster Glen Beck likened the youth wing whose members Breivik shot to the Hitler Youth: “”There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like the Hitler youth, or, whatever. I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics. Disturbing,” (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/26/glenn-beck-norwegian-dead-hitler) .  It would be more accurate to liken the Norwegian Labour Party’s youth wing  the Workers’ Youth League (Arbeidernes ungdomsfylking, AUF) to the Soviet youth organisation  Komsomol . The AUF is  affiliated with the International Union of Socialist Youth and  Young European Socialists  and the Nordic Labour Youth Movement (FNSU).  Many members of the AUF have gone on to high positions in the party. Indeed, the present Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg, was once a member.  It is in that context that Breivik’s decision to attack the AUF  members should be seen.  I would agree with Beck that “a camp for kids that’s all about politics” is disturbing under any circumstances; in the context of Norwegian politics it is verging on the sinister because of the dominance of the Norwegian Labour Party over a very long period of time.

A de facto one-party state

How ideologically one-dimensional Norwegian society has become can be seen from the position of the Norwegian Labour Party (NLP).  Between 1945 and 1961 it held an absolute majority in the Norwegian parliament.   Since 1935 there have only been 16 years when the Norwegian Prime Minister has not been drawn from the Party.  It is presently the dominant party in the Red-Green Coalition which governs Norway.  (The coalition is formed of the  Socialist Left Party  and the Centre Party).

The history of the NLP  over the past thirty years  mirrors that of the British Labour Party. It began the period as a social democratic party, then shifted to supporting economic liberalisation and a programme of privatisation. At the same time it became every more ideologically committed to what is now called political correctness.

Interestingly, In 2011, the Norwegian Labour Party (Det norske arbeiderparti)  dropped the Norwegian and became simply the  Labour Party (Arbeiderpartiet).  This was ostensibly on the ground that the electorate was confused  by the term Norwegian Labour Party because it was known commonly as the Labour Party. I suspect that the explanation will strike most people as simply absurd as the Norwegians had been returning the Party to the Norwegian parliament in droves for over seventy years.

A more likely explanation is that the “Norwegian” part of the title sat uneasily in a party which was firmly committed to internationalism in general and to Norway’s eventual  membership of the EU in particular.  The EU dimension is more important than it might seem. It is true that the Norwegian electorate thwarted the Norwegian political elite’s wish for Norway to sign up as a full member of the EU, but  the lesser relationship which Norway  agreed to  – its membership of the European Economic Area (EEA) – still allows the EU to exercise profound influence over Norway (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/if-we-leave-the-eu-we-mustnt-be-another-norway/ ).

EEA membership requires that subscribing states have to accept the “four freedoms” of the EU: the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital among the EEA countries as well as those comprising the EU.  This the prime reason for not joining the EEA or having a bilateral relationship with the EU similar to that of Switzerland.  These “four freedoms” mean amongst other things that  EEA members cannot meaningfully control immigration, protect their economy, prevent foreign takeovers or  freely engage in any new taxpayer funded  subsidy  for  which is judged to interfere with the market (article 61).

These restrictions on Norway’s sovereignty mean that the Norwegian political elite can obtain much of their internationalist politically correct ends . Most importantly for the Breivik case, the four freedoms mean that Norway cannot prevent immigration from the EU.  This has allowed the immigration which has disturbed so many Norwegians.  Before the “four freedoms” Norway could control its immigration: now it cannot. Take away the immigration and Breivik may well have never even contemplated doing what he did.

What drove Breivik from ideas to action?

In  Right Now! magazine in July 1995 (issue 8 The Treason of the Liberals (http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/the-oslo-massacre-and-the-treason-of-the-liberals/ ) I examined the reasons which led Timothy McVeigh to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. I attributed the cause to the creation by white liberal elites of circumstances which utterly alienated the white masses in whose interests they supposedly exercised power. The permitting of the mass immigration of those who by their nature could not or would not assimilate into white European societies and their overseas offshoots such as the USA by itself undermined the national cohesion.

If that was not damaging enough, the liberal elites used the upheaval wrought by mass immigration as a launch pad for what has become a rigid ideological creed by the name of political correctness. In the name of “anti-discrimination” all the old certainties were overturned: the dominance of the white population in white societies; the traditional place of the man; the distrust of homosexual behaviour all went by the board. The white male who was outside the liberal elite was left high and dry, constantly hemmed in with criticism and accusations about what was permissible.

To enforce the new politically correctly regime the state became ever more intrusive and the white person, and especially the white male, found themselves ever more marginalised. Whites became actively disadvantaged in ever sphere as far as it was in the power of governments to arrange this. Minority groups were given preference in employment (especially state employment) and higher education; political parties and corporate bodies rushed to ensure they could present a “diverse” face to the public and. To speak against this courted loss of employment or even jail.

At the same time Governments throughout the First World wrapped themselves ever more tightly in international treaties such as those of the UN, the WTO and the EU. More and more was taken out of the hands of national governments. More and more liberal elites insisted they could not do anything other than the politically correct because it would breach a treaty or be illegal. Democratic control was sucked  from national politics. Anyone who disagreed with what was being done under the liberal internationalist banner had no democratic path to follow.

The dimension of violence

Many in the West like to imagine that their societies are  beyond not only the crude politics of violence, but  of  socially approved violence generally. This is a myth.  Western societies value many purveyors of violence;  the police, state security organisations, armed forces and private  security guards.  The rich and powerful  have no doubt about the value of personal bodyguards, celebrities routinely use “minders”, clubs use bouncers and everyone but everyone is only too glad to see another use violence to defend them should the need arise.

Liberals will of course recoil at the idea that they are comfortable with  violence, but they are as willing as anyone to embrace those with a talent for violence. Look at the war-mongering propensities of Blair and Cameron which have ensured Britain has been at war since the late 1990s. Even if they do not war-monger they keep their mouths shut when  it suits them. Take the state massacre at Waco (http://www.serendipity.li/waco.html). That happened under Bill Clinton’s presidency. Were the government agents responsible brought to justice? They were not.   Did liberals generally rail against that monstrous act which resulted in women and children being burnt to death? They did not. Somehow the people at Waco were not quite the right sort of victim for liberals to care deeply about.

But it is not just violence which might seem legitimate in as much as the state  overtly  sanctions it  for reasons which are ostensibly at least for the defence of the individual and society at large, whether that be the maintenance of law and order, the defence of  national territory or the etiolated  national interest claims which cover the aggressive wars  in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that is accepted as legitimate. Anyone who enjoys watching a sport which involves violence and danger is not merely saying this is violence which is regrettably necessary, they are actively enjoying the violence.  If you wish to see the excitement at its most explicit  and primal go to a an evening of professional boxing.  The men will be excited,  but it is the women you want to watch. They will be in a state of what can only be described as sexual arousal.

Then  there is the very considerable appetite for violence in films, plays and pornography.  War, gangster  and violent super-hero films are perennially popular.  There is a current fad for “torture porn” offerings such as the “Saw”  series.  Sadomasochistic websites are legion – I put “sadomasochism”  into Google and it came up with 2,490,000 results.  People routinely stop to gawp at road accidents. Going back into history the popularity of the Roman games  and the large crowds public executions point to the fact that the interest in violence is deeply imbedded in human nature.  It needs an outlet.  A society which too rigorously controls  such desires  may cause people to satisfy their inclinations  in much more harmful ways than  one which takes a relaxed attitude and offers relatively harmless outlets for the desires.

Why does violence hold such a fascination for humans?  It is dramatic. It causes the adrenalin to flow.   Fictional depictions of it at least offer an innocent escape from a world which is generally not only violence free but physically risk free. Perhaps most pertinently for the Breivik killings, depictions of violence in fictional form may  have a special attraction for men living in a society which is tightly controlled not only in matters of violence but generally. Films such as the Godfather  trilogy show a world in which people are not constrained by the rules of society, a world  in which men respond to even petty irritations with unbridled and disproportionate force. That has an obvious attraction for men  living in societies  which are  subjected to  the petty tyrannies of  political correctness which require  men to deny  all their natural instincts.

Norway is just such a society, one in which feminism is especially strong.   For example, there is a    legal requirement for  women to form at  least  40%  of  the boards of both  private enterprise  publicly quoted  companies  and state owned companies – the latter  include  any company which is  two-thirds owned by a municipality (http://www.nordiclabourjournal.org/i-fokus/gender-equality/article.2011-03-06.0387074773). At the level of mainstream Norwegian politics at least, masculinity is severely marginalised. One of Breivik’s complaints is that he was feminised by Norwegian society because of its emphasis on feminism. It could be that at least part of the reason he moved from thought to dramatic action was because his natural male instincts towards violence had no adequate outlet within the  society, that he felt suffocated by the cloying feminism.

His capacity for and willingness to use violence  sets Breivik  apart. It is one thing to hold dissident views, quite another to translate them into dramatic action . The psychological  power of violence is immense. It gives significance to all who use it. In the film Bronson, Tom Hardy plays Britain’s longest  serving prisoner  Michael Gordon Peterson who adopted the name of Charles Bronson.  At one point in the film Bronson is being transferred to a new jail. There he is  interviewed by the prison governor who says “Bronson, you are ridiculous and pathetic”, which would have been true but for one thing: Bronson’s amazing  capacity for violence.  This simple quality made him anything but ridiculous and pathetic  because it introduced the  most disabling  of emotions “fear”  into the equation.  That  is what saves Breivik from being pathetic , ridiculous and impotent, his capacity for violence and his will to use it.

Breivik put himself beyond the Pale because of the incontinent  manner of his killings, although they were not random because his targets were members of a type of Norwegian Komsomol. But  here is a question: what if Beivik  had killed only those with power, those who had committed  that most fundamental act of treason, namely, the covert conquest of a homeland by mass immigration?  Would it be quite so easy to see his actions as maniacally evil?

The Autumn issue of the Quarterly Review is out

 

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CARTOON BY MITCH DAVIES

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CONTENTS

Editorial Derek Turner Please click here

A conservative maverick in the Antipodes – Edwin Dyga interviews Senator Cory Bernardi

9/11 – the rage, the pride and the disastrous policies Mark G. Brennan on the scars of 11 September 2001 Please click here

The “Universal Class” and unintended consequences Geoffrey Partington on Hegel’s legacy

The Lords Spiritual, Temporal – and invaluable Merlin Sudeley on the hereditary peers in Parliament

Immigration – the reserve army of capital Alain de Benoist on big business and immigration

Socialist sociology Robert Henderson reviews Matthew Goodwin’s New British Fascism

The Churchill Memorandum – gift of the Gabb Edward Dutton reviews Sean Gabb’s The Churchill Memorandum

Correspondence – Ewa M. Thompson, David Ashton, Luise Hemmer Pihl

Taki’s Universe Taki on Jackie Kennedy

L’affaire Dreyfus – fraternité deferred Leslie Jones reviews Ruth Harris’s The Man on Devil’s Island

Jean Améry and multiple identities Stoddard Martin reviews Irène Heidelberger-Leonard’s The Philosopher of Auschwitz

The writes of Stravinsky Stuart Millson reviews Keller and Cosman’s Stravinsky – The Music-Maker

The Symbolist – Jean Moréas’ life and legacy Nick Louras

Replay – Soylent Green Mark Wegierski

Flight Announcement Peter Stark

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Sample article

New British Fascism

Rise of the British National Party

Matthew J Goodwin

Routledge

New British Fascism comes in the guise of an objective academic study, replete with tables and charts and a fair dollop of dry analysis.  But that is camouflage  for  the  author’s  liberal-left  prejudices, although it is probable that Goodwin, as with so many of the left,  is self-deluding enough to be unaware of his bias.

Goodwin   gives the ideological game away in the book’s title  by attaching  the arch pejorative “fascist”  to the BNP  without making any attempt to explain  what he means by this complex  word (hint: “far right extremist” does not equal fascist)  and  follows this up in the introduction  with “This book follows  political scientist Elizabeth Carter in considering  right-wing extremism as a particular form of political ideology  that is defined by two anti-constitutional and anti-democratic elements: first, right-wing extremists are extremist because they reject or undermine the values, procedures and institutions of the democratic state; and second, they are right wing because they reject the principle of fundamental human equality” (p6).

The author’s acceptance of Carter’s  definition taints the book. If you do not adopt  the liberal internationalist’s view that human beings are just one big happy indistinguishable and interchangeable family you are a right-wing extremist.  When Carter  writes of undermining the “values, procedures and institutions of the democratic state”,  she does not mean  that right wing parties refuse to play by the democratic rules as they are commonly understood – free elections, universal suffrage, parliaments  and governments being  accountable to the  law. Rather,  for her being democratic means that any person regardless of origin – in  principle the seven  billion people currently alive – must be treated equally  because to do otherwise would constitute the rejection of “ the principle of fundamental human equality “.  That means  any election which produced a decision that failed to accord  with the idea that all human beings everywhere should be treated equally, for example,   a government in favour of an end to all further mass immigration and the expulsion of all those without citizenship, would be classed as undemocratic .

Then there is the label of “extremist”.  By assiduous propaganda over decades, politicians of all the major mainstream British parties have assiduously been  placing in the public arena the idea that to  support  or advocate any political views which diverge seriously from those of liberal internationalism  is to be extreme . The erasing of the  traditional political vocabulary from mainstream British politics means that  any group or individuals outside the narrow ideological  confines of  what the British political class  now represent as being the only  legitimate democratic politics may be described as  extremists and hence dismissed as  of no account or dangerous and in need of suppression through laws such as the Race Relations Act.

It is also a very strange thing to define parties and individuals  as being right-wing  simply on the grounds of being opposed to immigration, which is what Goodwin effectively  does . The idea that being resistant to immigration is inherently right-wing is historically false. Not only is it a natural human response to territory being invaded,  political parties of the left and trade unions have until quite recently been opposed to mass immigration.   Unions in particular have a long history of opposing immigration primarily  on the ground that  it increases competition in the labour market  and reduces both wages and conditions.    The Labour Party   for most of its existence qualifies  as extreme right wing under Carter’s definition, because not only did it in practice stand against mass immigration because of union hostility towards it,  but it  also believed in the nation state. It is worth remembering  that  the Labour government of Harold Wilson passed an immigration Act in 1968 which considerably tightened immigration rules for  those from the new (non-white) Commonwealth after the Tories had done very little in 13 years to stem immigration.  It is also telling  that Goodwin himself mentions that only four out of ten BNP voters think of themselves as right wing (p107).

Goodwin acknowledges that  the BNP  has gone far beyond simply relating issues to immigration and have under Griffin developed a fully- fledged political agenda.  Indeed, much of its recent manifestoes could sit comfortably within the those of the mainstream political parties and even more in the manifestoes of twenty or thirty years ago.  He also spends considerable time examining how the  BNP have  in the past decade or so  greatly softened their rhetoric about race and immigration, more or less dropped  anti-Semitism, produced a broad political platform which deals with all the major areas of political debate and adopted the strategy of  building the party from local roots in much the same way that the LibDems have done.  Indeed, to look at the official literature of the BNP is to see a party which in many ways is aping the  political antics of the major British parties. But for Goodwin this is not a sincere  change of heart merely the BNP attempting to “rally Britons by downplaying its toxic brand”.  It is difficult to see how the BNP could ever, in Goodwin’s mind, escape from the locked cell of Carter’s definition because whatever they did or said Goodwin would still say they should be classified as  “extreme right-wingers” because the change was not genuine.

As for the BNP’s success or failure, Goodwin acknowledges that they  have done considerably better  than any other party he brackets with them, for example, the National Front,  but less well than similar European parties. This fact has little force because  the comparative BNP  failure  is readily  attributable to the widespread  use of electoral systems  on the continent  which contain some element of proportional representation while Britain retains first-past-the-post for Westminster elections.

There is a frequent  failure to query the overt message of statistics. For example Goodwin  looks at  Britons’ response to  poll questions about  who is British (chapters 3/ 5)  which show that a majority  say that race is immaterial in determining the question.  What he fails to do is consider whether the  polling results may significantly under-estimate  concern about racial and ethnic difference  because of the prevailing atmosphere of fear generated by the ever tightening grip of political correctness.   This type of omission is all the more visible  because  Goodwin is more than happy to speculate elsewhere in the book, so such a failure is not the result of some self-denying academic ordinance.

The same lack of imagination shows when Goodwin considers the social shape  of BNP voters. He compares them  with those who vote for the major political parties and UKIP (p102).  According to his statistics,  there are fewer BNP voters  in the professional AB category than those of  the other parties, but there are still 11 per cent of BNP voters who fall into that category as opposed to 18 per cent for Labour and UKIP.   Moreover, the general shape  of the entire voting population of BNP voters is not wildly  different from that of Labour which draws 57% of its voters from the  two lowest  social groups as against 70% for the BNP according to the figures Goodwin  cites.  Hence, there is nothing unreservedly abnormal about the BNP vote.

Goodwin also looks at the ages and sex structure of BNP Membership (p102). This shows most BNP members to be in the 34+ age group with a strong preponderance (69%) of male.  Goodwin  represents this as a sign of a failing party. The problem with this argument is that his own figures show that the major parties have a similar age profile.  The age profile of the BNP  is surely just a consequence  of the ageing British population and the much greater   propensity of older voters to vote.

Goodwin  argues  from  the age profile of the BNP  that  racial hostility is a phenomenon  of the older generations because  younger people have grown up with an ethnically mixed society.   This is contradicted by the  race riots in northern England  in the early years of the century and emergence of the English Defence League,   but Goodwin dismisses such behaviour  as a residual phenomenon  of the young who have elders with “far-right” beliefs or who live in places  with a “right wing tradition (p104)

As to motivation for supporting the BNP,  Goodwin  suggests that  the BNP client base is essentially that of the “angry  white male” who has had his security threatened by immigration and its ongoing consequences. . While this  has an element of truth because it is the white working class man who has suffered most from  competition from immigration,  you could argue the same of the Labour Party vote.

The  only stark difference between the BNP and the major parties is in sex.  But there is probably nothing  remarkable in that. To support the BNP requires a  personality which can handle conflict. Men are almost certainly better able to do that.  The fact that UKIP has only 40 per cent of female  voters  supports this interpretation .

Goodwin seems genuinely puzzled by the  “extreme right’s” concentration on Muslims.  The answer is that this is plausibly all part of the  re-branding  exercise such as that conducted by the BNP under Nick Griffin. Because of the  intense grip that political correctness has on western societies,   parties which wish to resist immigration and its consequences have been forced to play within the rules of political correctness. This means they take up causes such “Islamification”  because that avoids directly engaging in the question of race.

The marvel of Goodwin is that he cannot see his own bias even though he accepts the massive constraints placed on any minor party under the British political system and describes well the intimidatory  actions of  both  the political elite through laws such as the Race Relations Act (RRA)which prevents  free debate on pain of criminal sanction and the all too ready willingness of  politicians, public service organisations, unions, big business  and the mainstream media to harass and penalise those who express their political  views outside the permitted parameters of political correctness:

“The disadvantages of joining an extremist party might include official punishments, threats from rival movements and group reprisals for participating’ . In fact, those who have join have been shown to experience abuse, jeopardise employment prospects and damage relationships with friends and family. “ (p138)

Goodwin  also happily describes  the persistent harassment of the BNP by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission  (EHRC) over its membership qualifications (p122); admits  freely that the  British electoral system is heavily weighted against parties without an established  Westminster presence (p)  and draws attention to the limited ability of national governments to  govern because of their entanglement in international treaties and supra-national bodies such as the EU.

One might imagine that someone who understands the undemocratic restraints placed on unestablished parties in general and  the additional undemocratic  blocks placed before parties such as the BNP,  would conclude that they are placed in a position in which  they cannot meaningfully engage in the democratic process.  Not Goodwin.  He sees no discord between insisting that a party can only be considered democratic  if it plays by the democratic rules ,whilst showing absolutely no discomfort  when he acknowledges that  those who set the rules of the political game do so  in such a way as to preclude meaningful participation in the democratic process.

What Goodwin is saying can be  reduced to this:  any  party  (or person) standing  for something which the vast majority of human beings at all times and places  would consider normal and desirable, namely, defending the tribe, clan or nation against invasion by main force or stealth,  is, in Goodwin’s eyes, part of the far right  – he coyly implies (p178) that the BNP and UKIP are not a million miles apart on the political spectrum.

Can I recommend New British Fascism?  I can but not for the reason the author would want.  Read this book not to understand the BNP but that most curious of things  the modern liberal mind.

 

 

That NuLabour “mistake” over mass immigration wasn’t a mistake non-shock

Since they lost the 2010 election, the Labour Party have been religiously spinning the line that the massive immigration they presided over during their 13 years in office was a mistake. A favourite ploy is to try to concentrate all the admission of failure on the decision to allow the better part of a million migrants from Eastern Europe into Britain when new entrants were admitted to the EU. Labour’s new leader Ed Miliband was at it in September 2011. Asked by Nick Robinson of the BBC whether Labour had lied about immigration, Miliband said “I don’t think we lied but I do think we got it wrong in a number of respects. I think that first of all we clearly underestimated the number of people coming in from Poland and that had more of an effect therefore than we would otherwise have thought. And secondly, I think there’s this really important issue about people coming into the country and the pressures on people’s wages. People aren’t prejudiced but people say to me look I’m worried about the pressure on my wages of people coming into this country, I’m worried about what it does to housing supply – all those issues. Now some of that is real and some of it isn’t but I think you have to address not just tough immigration policy but underlying issues as well.”  (http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/nickrobinson/2011/04/ed_miliband_we.html).

The claim that the immigration was a mistake takes some swallowing.  To begin with there is the sheer volume of it.  Although there are disputes about the figures,  millions arrived  while far fewer left. The think tank Migration Watch UK estimates that from 1997-2010 the official arrivals totalled 3.2 million, while  941,000 Britons left. Approximately 80% of immigrants came from outside the EU.  The old white dominions – Australia, Canada and New Zealand – received more migrants from Britain than Britain received from them.   The greatest source of immigrants from outside the EU was the Sub-Continent.  Consequently, it   is reasonable to assume that the majority of immigrants were Asian or black. (http://migrationwatchuk.com/pdfs/MWK001-Migration-UK-report_Print.pdf).  To those official figures must be added an unknown number of illegal immigrants. Migration Watch estimates these at another one million under the Blair and Brown governments.  That may be on the conservative side, but taking it as a reasonable figure would mean that a net immigration figure of 3 million during the 13 years of Labour rule.  It is difficult to see how that vast increase in immigration – in 1997 net migration was  around 40,000 – could have happened by accident.   Just how could a Government not see what was happening for 13 years and do nothing “by accident”?

But it is not necessary to rest the case for mass immigration being a deliberate policy on the numbers and nature of the immigration. Labour in power left a number of smoking guns to show that it was indeed a deliberate policy. In 2003 the Home Secretary David Blunkett said that there was “No obvious limit” to the  immigration of skilled labour,  adding incredibly  that he did not believe there was  was a maximum population for the UK  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3265219.stm).  This was at a time when immigration had already ballooned to around 170,000 per annum.

Tony Blair  said very little about immigration beyond  while in office beyond uttering the usual pc sanctioned platitudes about how valuable immigrants were to Britain . He did say asylum applications and illegal immigration were too high, but this was done whilst allowing legal immigration to get out of hand (Blair managed to reduce asylum applications, but did nothing about illegals.  The asylum drop probably meant only that illegal immigrants chose other ways to enter Britain than  asylum).  In his autobiography Blair  mentions  immigration on precisely six pages out of 691 (pp 204/5; 523/4; 630; 678).  Here  he concentrates almost entirely on the reduction of asylum; the use of immigration as a prime lever to justify his desire for ID cards and  his wish that the EU controlled immigration. Blair does ( p 524) let the cynical cat out of the bag by boasting that he shut the immigration debate down by putting ” ID cards at the centre of the argument”  and winning “Because our position was sophisticated enough - a sort of confess and avoid’, as the lawyers say…” In short, say things have gone awry under Labour  but avoid blame by switching attention to what is to be done in the future.

Blair broke his reticence about  immigration on  29 October 2011 in an interview with the ethnic British newspaper Eastern Eye. Here he not only spoke warmly of mass and mixed immigration but claimed it was a necessity for Britain:

‘It’s been a very positive thing and there is no way for a country like Britain to succeed in the future unless it is open to people of different colours, faiths and cultures.’ ‘

He went on to say:

“That is not to say you don’t have problems at certain points, but those problems are to be overcome without losing the essence of what has actually allowed this country’s people to get on and do well.’

… I think the majority of people in Britain today are not prejudiced and can understand the benefits of migration.

‘I think what people worry about is where they feel there is no control over who comes in and there are no rules governing who comes in or not, and that is a different issue altogether.

‘It would be very unfortunate if by putting those rules into place, we view that immigration was a somehow bad thing for the country, because it is not.’  ( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2054903/Tony-Blair-defends-opening-door-mass-migration.html#ixzz1cCP3YCrZ).

Blair’s comments give credence to the claims in 2009 of  a special advisor Andrew Neather during the Blair government years.  He maintained  that  not only was mass immigration a deliberate policy of  the Government,  it was specifically designed to create an ever more diverse society:

” I [Neather] wrote the landmark speech given by then immigration minister Barbara Roche in September 2000, calling for a loosening of controls. It marked a major shift from the policy of previous governments: from 1971 onwards, only foreigners joining relatives already in the UK had been permitted to settle here.

“That speech was based largely on a report by the Performance and Innovation Unit, Tony Blair‘s Cabinet Office think-tank.

“The PIU’s reports were legendarily tedious within Whitehall but their big immigration report was surrounded by an unusual air of both anticipation and secrecy.

“Drafts were handed out in summer 2000 only with extreme reluctance: there was a paranoia about it reaching the media.

“Eventually published in January 2001, the innocuously labelled “RDS Occasional Paper no. 67″, “Migration: an economic and social analysis” focused heavily on the labour market case.

“But the earlier drafts I saw also included a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural.

“I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date. That seemed to me to be a manoeuvre too far.

“Ministers were very nervous about the whole thing. For despite Roche’s keenness to make her big speech and to be upfront, there was a reluctance elsewhere in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour‘s core white working-class vote.

“This shone through even in the published report: the “social outcomes” it talks about are solely those for immigrants.

“And this first-term immigration policy got no mention among the platitudes on the subject in Labour’s 1997 manifesto, headed Faster, Firmer, Fairer.

“The results were dramatic. In 1995, 55,000 foreigners were granted the right to settle in the UK. By 2005 that had risen to 179,000; last year, with immigration falling thanks to the recession, it was 148,000.

“In addition, hundreds of thousands of migrants have come from the new EU member states since 2004, most requiring neither visas nor permission to work or settle. The UK welcomed an estimated net 1.5 million immigrants in the decade to 2008.

“Part by accident, part by design, the Government had created its longed-for immigration boom.” (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23760073-dont-listen-to-the-whingers—london-needs-immigrants.do).

After the 2010 election a Labour peer Lord Glasman leant further support to the idea that  New Labour’s immigration policy was deliberately dishonest in an interview with the Labour journal Progress: :

“….immigration and multiculturalism … has become ‘the big monster that we don’t like to talk about’, claims Glasman. Mass immigration under Labour, he believes, served to ‘act as an unofficial wages policy’. The party’s position, Glasman contends, occupied a ‘weird space where we thought that a real assault on the wage levels of English workers was a positive good’. More seriously, he charges the last government with having acted in a ‘very supercilious, high-handed way: there was no public discussion of immigration and its benefits. There was no election that was fought on that basis. In fact there was a very, very hard rhetoric combined with a very loose policy going on. Labour lied to people about the extent of immigration and the extent of illegal immigration and there’s been a massive rupture of trust.’

“Perhaps most controversially, Glasman calls on progressives to recognise their ‘responsibility for the generation of far-right populism’, currently manifested in the growth of the English Defence League. ‘You consider yourself … so opposed that you don’t want to talk to them, you don’t want to engage with them, you don’t want anybody with views like that anywhere near the party.’ This, he believes, is to ignore ‘a massive hate and rage against us’ from working-class people ‘who have always been true to Labour’. The solution, he says, is ‘to build a party that brokers a common good, that involves those people who support the EDL within our party. Not dominant in the party, not setting the tone of the party, but just a reconnection with those people that we can represent a better life for them, because that’s what they want.’

That process begins, argues Glasman, by understanding that ‘working-class men can’t really speak at Labour party meetings about what causes them grief, concerns about their family, concerns about immigration, love of country, without being falsely stereotyped as sexist, racist, nationalist’.”  (http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2011/04/19/labour-isnt-working/).

In true Maoist fashion Glasman soon confessed his “fault” (daring to speak honestly about race and immigration) –   http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2011/07/blue-labour-immigration-2.

In virtually any time and place other than the developed world in the modern era  the deliberate injection of  vast numbers of people into a society, many of them incapable of assimilation because of   racial difference or ethnic stubbornness, would have been considered unconscionable. It is the betrayal of the tribe, the most fundamental form of treason because once the interlopers are present in large numbers they have effectively conquered part of the receiving land’s territory.    Had Blair and Brown pursued a policy of  mass immigration because they saw it as part of their worship of market economics that would have been bad enough, a crime worthy of death in a sane world.   But it is clear from their own words that they had a more obnoxious and fundamental motive.  Blair and Brown and their political associates actively hate their own society and sought to change it utterly whilst at the same time repressing any native dissent about the changes wrought. That is not merely treason but a form of psychopathy.

But it is not only the followers of New Labour who contain the poison. The entire British political elite pay at least lip service to the same internationalist “anti-racist”  ideology.   When the Neather article appeared there was no outrage from the Tory and Lib Dem leadership. When the Blair Government’s estimate of 13,000 migrants from the new east European entrants  to the EU turned out to be  monstrously wrong as hundreds of thousands poured in, the Tories and Lib Dems said little or nothing. Nor has the Tory/LibDem Coalition Government done anything to reduce immigration since they took office.  Most tellingly, no mainstream British political party has challenged freedom of movement within the EU, without an end to which no meaningful  immigration controls can be operated.

The terrible reality is this: Britain  has a political elite to whom treason is second nature; men and women who make the profoundest of mistake of  imagining  that human beings are  interchangeable regardless of race or culture and that consequently societies  can be socially engineered without danger.   Hayek saw their nihilistic qualities  70 years ago:

“The  Left intelligentsia…have so long  worshipped   foreign  gods that they seem to have become  almost  incapable of seeing any good in the  characteristic  English institutions and traditions. That the moral   values  on which most of them pride themselves  are   largely  the products of the institutions they  are out to destroy, these socialists cannot, of course,   admit.  And  this  attitude  is  unfortunately  not confined to avowed socialists. Though one must hope that  it  is not true of the less  vocal  but  more  numerous  cultivated  Englishman,  if one  were  to  judge by the ideas which find expression in current  political discussion and propaganda the  Englishman who not only  “the language speak that  Shakespeare  spake”,  but also “the faith and morals  hold  that   Milton  held”  seems to have almost vanished.  [The Road to Serfdom p222 Chapter Material Conditions and Ideal Ends]  

Some would object that none of British political elite counts as  Leftist  today. That is true in the sense that the classic economic aims of socialism - the public ownership of the means of production - were dumped by  Blair’s transmogrification of Labour to New Labour.  But that is all which as been dropped. The Fabian desire to interfere with and control people’s lives through social engineering has become even stronger and the form of internationalism  (very much a left project) we call globalism has captured  the major British political parties.  All mainstream British politicians now pay lip service at least to the  attendant ideology which has been developed to both  justify  the desire  to control people’s lives and promote globalism, namely, political correctness.  The politicians who subscribe to it are the heirs of  the “Left intelligentsia” Hayek found in Britain.