Review of 2018

What has changed over the past year?

Immigration

Immigration to  the First World is the most important political issue. It remains very high, for example, net UK immigration  to June 2018 (the most up to date figures) shows net immigration to be  273,000.  That is worrying enough but it  does not tell anything like the  full immigration  story  because 625,000 was the total number of immigrants, i.e., the number people who actually came to live here,  the vast majority of whom were foreigners rather than British people returning after a period living abroad.  This means the UK is undergoing a radical and rapid. transformation of the nature of its population if this scale of replacement of native British people continues. If it does 6 million or so immigrants would arrive in the UK  over the next ten years.

What is happening to the UK is  being replicated throughout the West. The rise of so-called populist movements (in reality simply native populations in the West acting out of desperation as they see their countries being threatened by immigrants ) arise from the scale of migration to the First World.  As yet, with a few exceptions such a Hungary building a fence,  little has been done by Western Governments, especially those of the largest countries, to stop or even severely reduce the flow of migrants from the third world.

What needs to be done is (1)   change the public language about mass immigration to the West  and identify it  for what it is, invasion, and d(2) disabuse immigrants  of   the idea  that they have any right to migrate to the West.

Brexit

The behaviour of the Remainers over the past year has been both sinister and contemptible.  However, it was not unexpected, because once the Remainer Theresa May became PM and appointed a majority Remainer Cabinet  the writing was on the wall, namely, that Remainers would do everything they could to subvert the referendum vote to leave the EU.

May’s demeanour has been much commented upon because despite engaging in persistent  and obvious lying she has remained surreally calm. This is easily explained, she is achieving precisely what she set out to do, namely, sabotage Brexit.

May   will  probably see herself variously as St Theresa the  Martyr  and Agent May in enemy territory (the UK) carrying out OPERATION  QUISLING on behalf of the EU.

What the behaviour of the Remainers has done is shatter utterly the idea that the UK is a functioning democracy. Rather, it is an elective oligarchy whereby the electorate are offered an opportunity every few years to choose between competing parts of the elite, an elite in the UK whose general political ideas are largely shared by the various competing parts of that elite.

It is no surprise that democracy is being thwarted. The German sociologist Robert Michels in the early years of the twentieth century  developed what he called the Iron Law of Oligarchy.

Michels was particularly interested in  the way that organisations such as social democratic parties and trade unions which purported to exist to promote the interests of the working class invariably ended up serving the interest of those who came to wield power in such bodies, whilst becoming progressively  more authoritarian and bureaucratic.

But although Michels had a special interest in leftist organisations the Iron Law of Oligarchy is generally applicable to any organisation or even any informal social group. The  historian of 18^th Century English politics Lewis Namier estimated that Britain was ruled by a few hundred families when the population was less than 10 million. The depressing reality is that probably today Britain is effectively ruled  by no more than a few thousand families today. Look at the mainstream media, the politicians and with great wealth and the same families pop up over and over again.

The long march through the institutions

The treacherous behaviour of the Remainers is an object lesson in  how internationalist elites have become dominant  in Western politics  since  1945.

A German student leader of the 1960s  Rudi Dutschke put forward the idea of the Long March Through the Institutions whereby societies were subverted from within by those of an internationalist bent who would patiently work to gain positions of power and influence. Eventually there would be sufficient of such people to change the  policies of Western societies from national to internationalist ones.  That point was reached in the UK at least 50 years ago and the politically correct stranglehold on our society is now in full  flower.

The capture of Western societies by internationalists has allowed them to permit  and even overtly encourage mass immigration of people from different cultures , denigrate their own societies,  traduce  the West and its native populations generally and introduce gradually the pernicious  totalitarian creed of political correctness which has “anti-racism”  (in reality anti-white racism)  at its heart.  The last brick  in the politically correct building is the increasingly draconian treatment of anyone who  refused to toe the politically correct line , treatment which is increasingly including the use of the criminal law and imprisonment.

The idea of the Long March through the institutions  has several emotional appeals. First, it has the allure of a conspiracy, of being part of something both bigger than its individual members  and  something terribly important.  The fact that it is a long term project does not matter because each individual member of the conspiracy can see themselves as helping to build towards the promised end even if that end is not achieved in their lifetime.

It is no surprise that Marxixts of  various hues have been attracted to it because Marxism works on the same principles of working towards  a utopia without any certainty that it will happen in a particular individual’s lifetime.

Robotics and AI

The lack of action by politicians throughout the world and in particular in the First Word is  staggering. It is quite clear that robotics and AI systems development is rushing ahead. When  it reaches the level where most jobs can be done by machines the game is up for capitalism as we know it because huge and rapid unemployment will inevitably result and that in turn will cause a catastrophic drop in demand.

The fact that politicians routinely bleat out  the claim that as with all previous technological innovations new jobs will be made to replace the ones taken by machines shows how far away they are from understanding what is happening, Intelligent machines will not only take existing jobs they will be able to do the new jobs which arise.

For a worked out idea of what will happen when most jobs can be done by machines see my See my  Robotics and the real (sorry Karl you got it wrong) final crisis of capitalism.

Free expression

Free expression is a straight  forward concept , you either have it or a  range of permitted opinion, a range which may be altered at any time.  No country has ever had true freedom of expression but some, especially the Anglophone countries, have  had a very wide range of permitted opinion. No more . The range of permitted opinion in Britain and the West has  rapidly  declined, largely driven by the  tentacles of political correctness  being spread ever further and more tightly.  That creed routinely requires reality is to be denied, for example, schoolchildren are now to told that boys have periods and judges insist that  transsexuals  appearing in court must be referred to as she (in the case of a transsexual man)  or he (in the case of a transsexual  woman). What difference is there between such sinister nonsense and Winston Smith in 1984  being forced to say he saw five  fingers when  only four  of  O’Brien’s fingers were held up before him?

That is the real killer about political  correctness. It  requires a constant denial of reality whether that is something as crass boys having periods or the more subtle pressure to disregard reality which comes with the demand that racial and cultural diversity  in a society  is a good in itself.

It is universities in the West which are most publicly driving a general  intolerance of ideas which fall outside the internationalist left’s concept of what should be permitted.  To those end students clamour for “safe spaces” where nothing which offends the politically correct is allowed  and any speaker with a contrary view is  refused a hearing in what is known as no-platforming.

This mentality is also prevalent throughout schools  where even the most unlikely subject such as maths can be dragooned into the service of political correctness. Hence, by the time pupils reach the age of 18 they have been well and truly indoctrinated with the “right” politically correct views.

The ideological justification for  such behaviour is found in the concept of Repressive Tolerance developed by Herbert  Marcuse :

“  Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.

“Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements that promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or that oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.”

China,  Russia and India

All my adult life I have cleaved to the idea that China and Russia (or the USSR)  should be kept at arms length. This is  because by their very nature and , in the case of China also by  her  very size ,they represent  threats to the West. Instead, naive Western politicians, who are almost all  politically  correct fantasists by now, have not merely engaged with China and Russia but have done so on the comically mistaken  basis that by engaging with the Russians and Chinese  they would change  Russian and Chinese ways to that of the West as they discovered the supposed benefits of free markets and “joys of diversity.”  The result has been that both Russia and China,  far from  succumbing to Western cultural values, have become increasingly powerful.

They represent different dangers.   Russia has all the characteristics of a gangster state but one with  a formidable number of nuclear weapons and the Chinese are  ever more aggressive and assertive generally. It bodes very ill for the future, especially in China’s case , for that gigantic country has extraordinary ambitions as is shown by  their belt and road infrastructure project to provide roads and waterways which will allow China  to have access to much of the East . Their disregarded for anything resembling a justice system is seen by the subsequent arrest of  three Canadians – see here and here  –   in response to the Canadians arresting  Meng Wanzhou, Chief Financial Officer of the Chinese  electronics giant Huawei. Meng’s  arrest was at the request of the USA for extradition to the US for breaching sanctions imposed on Iran.  The arrest of the three Canadians so soon after Meng’s arrest is best seen as hostage taking by China.

India is  showing signs  of mimicking China in it attitude towards the West. However, India is far less monolithic than the former, for whereas China  as a country and culture has a  genuine  historical identity ,  the state of India is a creation of the Raj. Before the Raj the  territory  which comprises modern India  was simply a geographical expression just as Europe is. Consequently, being so  much more fragmented than China and lacking a centralising controlling power , there is a much less uniform  response to the West by India than that of China to the West.

Africa and Latin America

No real  change. Africa has been as brutal as ever and Latin America, although superficially more sophisticated that Africa, is still remarkably violent and disorderly.

The shrinking of democratic control

Throughout the West there is growing  serious opposition to mass immigration and internationalist politicians who generally ignore the wishes of their electorates.  The internationalists have only themselves to blame if their political correct ideals are trampled on because they are the ones with their incontinent approach to immigration and the realities of human nature who have wrought this change.   If the world is headed for racially and ethnically based repression at best  and ethnically and racially based civil war at worst  they are to blame.

Democracy is a tricky concept which is best thought of as a measure of control over the elite rather than an absolute quality . The hard truth is that there is only one important general political question in any society, namely, how far are the masses able to control the naturally abusive nature of the elite?

The best form of control the masses have is representative government based on a full adult franchise. If  the country also has a written constitution  with protection  for things such as freedom of speech and assembly  with a  means of holding  voter instituted referenda so much the better. Of course, like every human institution it can be perverted but any other political arrangement will  make elite abuse much easier for then we are in the realm of dictatorship.

The reality is that countries which have a long lasting  and unbroken tradition of  political representation on a broad franchise (and consequently a respect for freedom and individual rights) are remarkably rare. The UK, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are the outstanding examples.  All have avoided both civil war and occupation by a conquering power for over 150 years.

In continental Europe there is not a major state with such an unbroken  record of avoidance of civil war and occupation better than better than the 73 years since the end of the second world war. Most cannot boast a record of  even 50 years (think of Spain and the divided Germany).

Even amongst the more   Minor European states it would be difficult to find others who have had a long and unbroken record of representative government.. Switzerland  was successfully   invaded  during Napoleonic times  and did not give women the vote until 1971; Denmark, Sweden and Norway were all absolute monarchies  until well into the 19^th  century (although  intermittent representative  activity in these countries occurred) , with Denmark and Norway .being invaded during the Second World War.

In  Asia and Africa the idea of representative  politics where it exists, which is not very often,  is at best a very corrupt  version of what we call democracy.

Latin America has seen many attempts at  Bolivarian inspired democracy,  but almost as many failures and the area  is really not better than Asia or Africa in its actual way of  conducting politics.

It is interesting to compare the effectiveness of the English derived states – USA, Canada, Australia and NZ – with the fallibility  of the Spanish  derived states in Latin America. England and Spain were the two colonial powers who settled large numbers of their own people in colonies  which later became independent states . The difference in the political success of the English and Spanish in  England and Spain was replicated in their heavily settled colonies.

The European Union has be a great dissolver of democratic control in the First World  since 1945.

The world becomes ever more disorderly

I cannot do better than quote my words from 2017:

“Contrary to Steven Pinker’s view that the world is becoming more peaceful,  if civil conflict is included things are getting worse.   Formal war may be less easy to identify , but ethnic  (and often religious ) based strife plus repression by  rulers  is so widespread outside the West that it is best described as endemic. Globalisation =  destabilisation because by making the world’s economic system more complex , there is simply more to go wrong both economically and socially. Sweeping aside  traditional relationships and practices is a recipe for social discord.  All of economic history tells you one thing above all else: a strong domestic economy is essential for the stability of any country.   The ideology of laissez faire, is like all ideologies,  at odds with  human nature and reality generally and its application inevitably creates huge numbers of losers when applied to places such as China and India.”

The trial of Alison Chabloz

Day 1 – 10 1 2018

Robert Henderson

Presiding: District Judge John Zani sitting without a jury

Karen Robinson – Prosecuting counsel

Adrian Davies – Defence counsel

Witnesses  for the Prosecution

Gideon Falter,   chairman of the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA)

Stephen Silverman Director of Investigations and Enforcement  CAA

The background to the prosecution 

Ms Chabloz denies three charges of sending obscene material by public communication networks and two alternative charges of causing obscene material to be sent. The case involves three songs which the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) claim are anti-Semitic: Survivors,   Nemo’s Anti-Semitic Universe and I Like The Story As It Is.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to prosecute the case originally but after the CAA started a private prosecution and threatened a judicial review of the CPS’ refusal to prosecute, the CPS agreed to reverse their original decision and take over the private prosecution.

At the same time the CAA had sought and been given permission to take another case of alleged anti-Semitism   – that of Jeremy Bedford-Turner –  to judicial review  but before that happened the CPS agree to prosecute Mr Bedford-Turner.  It is reasonable to assume that the CPS’ change of mind on Ms Chabloz’s case was linked to the decision in the Turner-Bedford  case.

The events of the day

Alison Chabloz  arrived with a healthy band of supporters (around 2 dozen) who filled the public gallery. There was a significant media presence outside the court and a  sprinkling of  reporters in the courtroom .  Miss Chabloz’s song Survivors  was played early in the proceedings and drew a round of applause  which filled the courtroom. Judge Zani warned those in the public gallery that a repeat of such behaviour would result in those responsible being removed from the court.

Karen Robinson began the day by outlining the prosecution’s case. Importantly she made it clear  in her opening remarks that the case was not about whether the holocaust existed or how many Jews died.  Rather, it was  the level of insult generated by Miss Chabloz ‘s songs which was the issue.  Robinson allowed  that  material resulting in insult was within the law but gross insult was not.  She offered no explanation  of how an objective distinction between insult and gross  insult was to  be determined . Instead  she  merely baldly asserted that  ‘ by the standards of an open and multi-racial society, they are grossly offensive’.  This opened up a can of worms.

To begin with it is objectively  impossible  to distinguish between lesser and greater  degrees of insult. Then there is the function of criticism in a democracy.  The idea that there can be limits to insult in a democracy is chilling. Moreover, there is a long tradition in England of the most devastating political insults most notably in the cartoons   of the likes of  Gilray and Rowlandson. Take away the freedom to be as insulting as  you like and British politics would become a constricted fearful business. Indeed, this  is already happening for political correctness generally  is being imposed through a mixture of the criminalising of opinions which oppose the dictates of  political correctness and the non-legal penalties such as being driven out of a job.

It is also a fact that laws relating to “hate crimes” is rarely if ever applied to the politically correct. Indeed, the claim  by  the prosecution  that  ‘ by the standards of an open and multi-racial society, they [the songs]  are grossly offensive’”  is  an unequivocal  statement of  politically correctness .  It assumes that the  standards of political correctness  on the subject of race are  shared by the vast majority of the UK population for unless they are shared by the vast majority they cannot be the standards by which UK society operates.

There is strong objective evidence that  the standards of an open and multi-racial society  are not the standards which the large  majority of the UK population shares.   Polls on immigration consistently show a solid majority of  those polled concerned about immigration and its effects.  This concern played a strong role in achieving  the Brexit vote. Research by the think tank British Future published in 2014 found a strong majority for ending  mass immigration   and 25% of those questioned wanted the removal of all immigrants already  in the UK.

The question of veracity

Truths are often “grossly insulting”.  The implication of the Prosecution’s case  is that  truths could be illegal.

The accusations in  Miss Chabloz’s songs of falsehood and misrepresentation  by the likes of   Holocaust survivor Irene Zysblat, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, and the teenage diarist Anne have substance as  Adrian Davies showed  during  his  efficient  cross examination.

The prosecution witnesses

I found both the CAA’s witnesses unconvincing . Falter was simply feeble.  Not only was he unfamiliar with texts which one would have thought he would have known, he gave signs of  working from  a prepared script, always a fatal thing for someone under cross examination because all the cross examiner has got to do it keep pressing buttons until the inevitable happens and the prepared script fails to provide meaningful answers.

Silverman was more assured and collected but his performance when  being questioned by prosecuting counsel was giving evidence by numbers.  He gave explanations for various words and phrases but they were  for  the most part obvious to any non-Jew.  He didn’t add much to the evidence available simply by reading or listening to  the song lyrics. His explanation  of the word “goy” (plural goyim)was of interest because he  falsely  said it was a non-offensive word for non-Jews.

The difference between words in a song and words in a speech.

Miss Chabloz performances of her songs is  accomplished . These are not  easy songs to deliver   not least because of the complexity and sophistication of  her  lyrics. Her enunciation  is first class. That she executes  the songs  well and they are very  lively and engaging musically may help her  case. It is one thing to express sentiments in a speech,  quite another in a song.  When it is done in song and the song and performance are engaging,  the emotional response of the listener will be  first and foremost   a response to an artistic act not a political one.

The case will recommence on 7  March (This is not a misprint, the next hearing is in March).

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Day 2 – 7   3  2018

Robert Henderson

Presiding: District Judge John Zani sitting without a jury

Karen Robinson – Prosecuting counsel

Adrian Davies – Defence counsel

Witnesses  for the defence

Alison Chabloz

 

The background to the prosecution 

Ms Chabloz denies three charges of sending obscene material by public communication networks and two alternative charges of causing obscene material to be sent. The case involves three songs which the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) claim are anti-Semitic: Survivors,   Nemo’s Anti-Semitic Universe and I Like The Story As It Is.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to prosecute the case originally but after the CAA started a private prosecution and threatened a judicial review of the CPS’ refusal to prosecute, the CPS agreed to reverse their original decision and take over the private prosecution.

At the same time the CAA had sought and been given permission to take another case of alleged anti-Semitism   – that of Jeremy Bedford-Turner –  to judicial review  but before that happened the CPS agree to prosecute Mr Bedford-Turner.  It is reasonable to assume that the CPS’ change of mind on Ms Chabloz’s case was linked to the decision in the Turner-Bedford  case.

The events of the day

Despite having a whole day for the case  we are not yet not at the end of the defence case. Ms Chabloz gave evidence but the second witness for the defence Peter Rushton never entered the witness box.

Ms Chabloz did  well in the witness box.   Being under cross examination is very tiring because apart from the natural nervous tension – everyone is nervous when they first  experience  being in the   witness box – and  the need to concentrate intensely is draining. Moreover,   Ms Chabloz was  in the witness box for the better part of two hours. Not only did she not wilt, towards the end of  her  testimony she had prosecuting counsel a little rattled.  (Karen Robinson made the mistake of getting into a verbal  cul-d-sac when she kept repeating the same question over and over instead of  trying to get  at the answer she wanted by asking  the  question in different ways.)

Ms Robinson began her cross examination by concentrating on the songs which are the subject of the charges Ms Chabloz faces. Then she swerved into raising questions about a song which was not part of the charges and tried to make a case for Ms Chabloz being a racist generally.

Ms Chabloz picked up very quickly on the fact that Robinson had gone off piste and protested that the questioning was irrelevant,  but Robinson was allowed to proceed with the line of questioning. Eventually defence counsel Adrian Davies objected that the line of questioning was not relevant to the charges but Zani still allowed Robinson to pursue the line of questioning.

I suspect that  Adrian Davies allowed   Robinson to continue without objection by him  for as long as  she did  to provide the basis for Mr Rushton’s evidence to be accepted. However, it is  worth noting that Ms Robinson’s attempt to broaden the argument against Ms Chabloz to a general charge of racism is of a different nature to Mr Rushton’s research which is,  as far as it could be judged by what was said in court, simply concerned with validating Ms Chabloz’s claims.

At the end of Ms Chabloz’s cross-examination Adrian Davies’ second witness Peter Rushton was expected to testify.  Mr Rushton  has been down at the British Library ferreting out  evidence which objectively supported  the claims made in  Ms Chabloz’s  songs.   However, his evidence was deemed to be of a nature which did not require him to go into the witness box provided the prosecution accepted that  his  research could be entered as evidence. This  Ms Robinson agreed to  and obviated the need for Mr Rushton to go into the witness box.

The court then  turned to  the question of whether  written  not oral arguments speaking to  Mr Rushton’s research  should  be made  The prosecution wanted only written arguments . (I suspect that  the prosecution were nervous about having seriously non-pc  statements  read out in court in whole or part). Adrian  Davies  wanted  to make oral arguments.  judge  Zani  ruled that  oral arguments could be made  as well as the written ones and booked another hearing which he thought should last for around  an hour.

This is  unsatisfactory because it means that the prosecution’s attempt to present to present Ms Chabloz as a general racist was made in open court, while Mr Rushton’s evidence supporting  Ms Chabloz  will not, at least in its entirety,  be presented in open court.  (Some of Mr Rushton’s evidence  will presumably become clear during the oral submissions on his evidence).

As things stand

The upshot of all  this  activity  is:

1. Written arguments on Mr Rushton’s evidence must be submitted  by   Friday 16th March
2. Oral arguments will be made on Monday 14th May
3. Judge Zani will reserve his judgement.
4. A further hearing will be held on 25th May at which Zani will give his verdict and the reasons for it.

There were around 20 supporters of Ms Chabloz.  There were a number of interruptions from  the public gallery in support of Mis Chabloz . These annoyed  the judge  enough to make him  threaten to clear the public  gallery.

Compared with the first day’s hearing on 10 January  there was little media interest,  although Martin Bashir sat in the press section. During one of several adjournments he engaged in a n extended conversation with prosecuting counsel Karen Robinson.

Robert Henderson  11   March 2018

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Day  3 –   14 5   2018

Robert Henderson

Presiding: District Judge John Zani sitting without a jury

Karen Robinson – Prosecuting counsel

Adrian Davies – Defence counsel

The background to the prosecution

Ms Chabloz denies three charges of sending obscene material by public communication networks and two alternative charges of causing obscene material to be sent. The case involves three songs which the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) claim are anti-Semitic: Survivors,   Nemo’s Anti-Semitic Universe and I Like The Story As It Is.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to prosecute the case originally but after the CAA started a private prosecution and threatened a judicial review of the CPS’ refusal to prosecute, the CPS agreed to reverse their original decision and take over the private prosecution.  At the same time the CAA had sought and been given permission to take another case of alleged anti-Semitism   – that of Jeremy Bedford-Turner –  to judicial review  but before that happened the CPS agree to prosecute Mr Bedford-Turner.  It is reasonable to assume that the CPS’ change of mind on Ms Chabloz’s case was linked to the decision in the Turner-Bedford  case.

The events of the day

The bulk of the day was taken up by  oral arguments amplifying   and rebutting the  written arguments  made by both defence and prosecution  since the previous hearing on 3^rd March and final  speeches made by  prosecution and the defence.

Much time was devoted to the question  of what constitutes a public electronic communications  network  (PECN)  and who was responsible to the distribution of material once it was uploaded to the PECN.  Frankly, this had the feel of theologians arguing about how many angels could sit  on a pinhead.  Adrian Davies said it was actually YouTube which was responsible for “sending the message”, with Ms Chabloz unable to ascertain who the recipient would be.

He said: “If someone who’s drunk or unstable or eccentric decides to phone up the Speaking Clock and shout some obscenity, it is not conceivable that they are committing an offence – it’s absurd.

“Uploading a video to YouTube – the only ‘recipient’ is a lump of silicon in a concrete bunker in California.”

Most dramatically, Davies told   Zani that his judgement would l ‘set a  precedent’ for free speech in what would be a landmark case.

Davies said his client had not committed an offence because “It is hard to know what right has been infringed by Miss Chabloz’s singing  …“There has to be a convincing argument to interfere with Miss Chabloz’s right to freedom of speech.”

Prosecuting counsel Karen Robinson denied Chabloz’s songs were for comic affect,  and claimed they were “ not political songs… which were “ no more than a dressed-up attack on a group of people for no more than their adherence to a religion.”

There was a strong turnout of supporters of Ms Chabloz.

Day  4 –   25 May 2018

The background to the prosecution

Ms Chabloz  has denied   three charges of sending obscene material by public communication networks and two alternative charges of causing obscene material to be sent. The case involves three songs which the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) claim are anti-Semitic: Survivors,   Nemo’s Anti-Semitic Universe and I Like The Story As It Is.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to prosecute the case originally but after the CAA started a private prosecution and threatened a judicial review of the CPS’ refusal to prosecute, the CPS agreed to reverse their original decision and take over the private prosecution.

At the same time the CAA had sought and been given permission to take another case of alleged anti-Semitism   – that of Jeremy Bedford-Turner –  to judicial review  but before that happened the CPS agree to prosecute Mr Bedford-Turner.  It is reasonable to assume that the CPS’ change of mind on Ms Chabloz’s case was linked to the decision in the Turner-Bedford  case.

The events of the day

The hearing  was  to render  a verdict.  Ms Chabloz was found guilty on  three charges , namely, two counts of sending an offensive, indecent or menacing message through a public communications network and a third charge relating to a song on YouTube.

Zani emphasised two things, remorse and the fact that he judged  Ms Chabloz  had comfortably passed the standard of offensiveness required for a custodial sentence.  Arrangements were made for Ms Chabloz  to attend an interview with a probation officer on 31 May who would prepare a report  for Zani to consider before he pronounced  sentence.

On remorse Zani  said this in his written judgement (para 108) : “Far from there being any real remorse for or appreciation of the offence that this court finds will have undoubtedly  been caused  to others, Ms Chabloz remains defiant that her claim to free speech trumps all else and that any attempt to curtail  her right would be quite wrong,”

The impression left was clear: Ms Chabloz must express remorse if she wished to escape a custodial sentence.

There was a strong turnout of Ms Chabloz’s supporters, some of whom were physically attacked  outside the court building by supporters of the prosecution of Ms Chabloz.

Day  5 –   14 6   2018

The background to the prosecution

Ms Chabloz has  been found guilty of three charges of sending obscene material by public communication networks and two alternative charges of causing obscene material to be sent. The case involves three songs which the Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) claim are anti-Semitic: Survivors,   Nemo’s Anti-Semitic Universe and I Like The Story As It Is.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refused to prosecute the case originally but after the CAA started a private prosecution and threatened a judicial review of the CPS’ refusal to prosecute, the CPS agreed to reverse their original decision and take over the private prosecution.  At the same time the CAA had sought and been given permission to take another case of alleged anti-Semitism   – that of Jeremy Bedford-Turner –  to judicial review  but before that happened the CPS agree to prosecute Mr Bedford-Turner.  It is reasonable to assume that the CPS’ change of mind on Ms Chabloz’s case was linked to the decision in the Turner-Bedford  case.

The events of the day

This  hearing  was for sentencing.

Prosecution counsel  and defence  counsel both made oral  representations before  the sentences were announced;  prosecuting counsel at some length; defence counsel  quite briefly   The idea that these could have had any meaningful effect on the judge ‘s sentence was absurd because Zani  announced the sentences immediately after the representations.

Ms Chablis was sentenced to   20 weeks of imprisonment suspended for two years, 180 hours of community service,  victim surcharge and costs.  She was also barred from using social media for a year.

There was a distinctly odd element in Zani’s  sentencing.  When he  gave his verdict on 25th May he emphasised  two things, remorse and the fact that he judged  Ms Chabloz  had comfortably passed the standard of offensiveness required for a custodial sentence.

On remorse Zani  said this in his judgement (para 108) : “Far from there being any real remorse for or appreciation of the offence that this court finds will have undoubtedly  been caused  to others, Ms Chabloz remains defiant that her claim to free speech trumps all else and that any attempt to curtail  her right would be quite wrong,”

The impression left was clear: Ms Chabloz  must express remorse if she wished to escape a custodial sentence.

Bearing in mind these remarks on remorse and sentencing it was somewhat of a surprise that Zani imposed suspended sentences because  he  stated during sentencing that Ms Chabloz  had shown no proper remorse  and repeated his previous statement about the case having passed the custodial sentence test.

What was going on here?  The  most plausible explanation would be that Zani never had any intention of sending Ms Chabloz to prison and his performance on the 25th May was simply  to intimidate her into collapsing in heap and saying she was sorry and how terrible had been her actions and words. When that ploy did not work Zani decided  that he would nevertheless  give a suspended sentence (plus costs plus community work, plus victim’s surcharge).

Why would Zani have been unwilling to give a custodial sentence?   For an explanation of that one must look at the reason for prosecutions such as this. Out politically correct elite (which includes the mainstream media)   want the convictions to frighten the general public  (and maintain politically correct discipline within the agencies of the state who enforce political correctness). But what  our politically correct elite do not want is widespread mainstream media coverage of such trials. In short they want the convictions but not the details, not least because they wish at one and the same time  to censor and maintain a claim that they are in favour of free expression. There was a marvellous moment  during  sentencing when Zani dilated on the necessity and value of free speech in a democracy before saying  in the next sentence, with no sense of irony  that  there are limits to free expression. This is very obvious nonsense. Free expression is a very simply concept you either have it or you have a range of permitted opinion which can be altered at any moment. Joseph Stalin would feel increasingly at home in present day England.

Yet again there was a very healthy turnout  of supporters of Ms Chabloz.  When Zani announced the suspended sentence several supporters of the prosecution yelled loudly and ran out of the public gallery.

Unlike the previous hearing there was no physical violence.

The ever narrowing range of permitted opinion in England

Robert Henderson

On 14 May 2018 Jeremy Bedford-Turner  known as Jez Turner was convicted at Southwark Crown Court in London of inciting racial hatred during a speech he gave in 2015 outside Downing Street. He was sentenced to 12 months, six of which will be served in prison and the rest on licence.

In his speech   Mr Bedford-Turner attacked Jewish influence, most particularly, the  Met Police’s support for and enablement of  a  Jewish organisation  known as the Shomrim run by a charity called the Community Security Trust (CST). This  organisation   has astonishing  support from the Met Police including the use of police cars and the wearing of uniforms which look very similar to those worn by police officers.

Did Mr Bedford-Turner have a chance of acquittal?  He  had a jury trial so  that gave him some chance of an acquittal. Had it been a trial without a jury he would almost certainly have had  none. After decades of ever more ruthlessly enforced political correctness  judges in England all  subscribe to  the wonders of diversity multiracial game without thinking  and, consequently, it  is very difficult to imagine a judge sitting on his own daring to find a defendant accused of racism  not guilty.

But even with a jury the odds were heavily against a not guilty verdict. In the minds of jurors must be the fear of being called a racist, a fear  which has been so successfully inculcated in the general population that  it produces an automated reflex of panic and terror when faced with the possibility of the label being  stuck on them. Any juror faced with a case such as this must have it in the back of their minds  that to return a not guilty verdict would be to risk being called a racist. There is also the sheer shock factor of hearing politically incorrect views being unashamedly spoken. As it was the jury was out for less than two hours and returned a unanimous verdict of  guilty. (For the record there were two black women and one black man on the jury plus one other man who may have been a Turk.  The rest were white).

The Crown Prosecution Service  (CPS) initially  refused to prosecute Mr Bedford-Turner  because the case  did not meet their evidential standard for a prosecution.  The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism  (CAA)  then threatened the CPS with a judicial review of their decision not to prosecute. Faced with that the CPS caved in and prosecuted Mr Bedford-Turner. Running a judicial review is very expensive.  The fact that  the CAA managed to get the CPS  to prosecute  by starting the process to have a judicial review  effectively created two tiers of justice, one  for the rich and one  for the poor.

I  shall be writing a fuller account of the trial later but I can say unequivocally that the judge, David Tomlinson,  showed his bias against Mr Bedford-Turner  from the word go in both his actions and manner.

He began by refusing a request by Mr Bedford-Turner’s barrister to put  questions to prospective jurors to discover if any of them were members of the CAA or the  CST.  The judge’s explanation was that he valued the principle of  random selection. In a place such as London that is always likely to throw up a jury which through its diverse composition is likely to hinder any defendant charged with inciting racial hatred.

During this passage of the hearing the judge  also said with great distaste that it was shocking that such an organisation as the CAA needed to exist but that was the way of the world.

Tomlinson  also intervened on a number of occasions when Mr Bedford-Turner was being cross-examined. These  interventions were not to elucidate Mr Bedford-Turner’s  testimony for either the judge or the jury,   but were   attempts to contradict the defendant  using an aggressive tone and manner. This behaviour was highly questionable because in effect the judge  kept on  taking over the prosecution counsel’s cross-examination.  ( If I had been prosecution counsel I would have been more than a little put out  because Tomlinson’s interjections suggested that prosecution counsel was not making a good job of the cross-examination. )

The  other thing to note was the way both judge and prosecuting counsel accepted opinion as fact and were seemingly oblivious to what they were doing, namely,  enforcing the politically correct  view of the world. For example, prosecuting counsel thought nothing of citing a case DPP v Collins 2006 on the question of what is grossly offensive,  viz:

“It is for the trial court to determine as a question of fact whether a message is grossly offensive.  In making this determination the standards of an open and just multi-racial society are to be applied”

That may reasonably be translated as whatever political correctness  decrees.

The prosecution have to justify their position that the words are grossly offensive but they do not have to show anyone was grossly offended. This seems mad to the lay person,  but there are many crimes which rely on actions carried out before any harm is done, for example, preparations for committing terrorist acts and conspiracies. The real problem with this type of charge is that it allows a high degree of subjectivity in making the value judgement of what is grossly offensive.

Later in the proceedings the judge decided that although the educated classes would not be affected by  words written or spoken by Mr Beford-Turner and his ilk, the uneducated classes  might well be  prey to such blandishments . (I kid you not).

Little media coverage

The other striking thing about this trial is the paucity of media comment.  One might have thought the mainstream media would have jumped all over the matter  but the only mainstream press  with a representative attending the trial was the Press Association. Why? Well, I suspect it was because although the politically correct wanted the prosecution and a guilty verdict they did not want the politically incorrect nature of much of the evidence to come before the public’s eyes.

There was also a very curious incident on day one of the trial. The acoustics in the public gallery  were poor and I was unable to catch the name of the prosecuting counsel. After the hearing was adjourned for the day I asked the barrister in question what his name was explaining that I had not been able to catch it during the hearing. He refused to give me his name. This struck me as very odd indeed because the trial was not being held in camera so his name was public knowledge – it is Louis Malby QC. On the second day of the trial a Press Association journalist also refused to give me his name. Could it be that those involved with a trial which drove a coach and horses through the notion of free expression  are ashamed of being part of  it?

Where does all this leave us?

What has been made very clear in this trial (and that of the trial of Alison Chabloz) is that we have an elite  which is hell bent on squeezing the range of permitted opinion ever more tightly into a politically correct shape.

The reality is cases such as that of  Mr Bedford-Turner are show trials pure and simple. They are show trials because there is only one permissible  result, that is,  guilty.  The evidence is irrelevant.

The intention of the British  elite  – political, academic and the mainstream media – is to ruthlessly reduce what is permitted to be written or spoken until politically incorrect  ideas are, if not entirely eradicated , driven underground or held only by those without power. This was what Orwell envisaged with NewSpeak,  a  language so altered and stripped of important meaning that people could no longer rebel because they lacked the language with which to do it.

Free expression is essential to democracy and political freedom. Take it away and oppression soon fills the void. It also has a general cultural value

Britain and the West in general are rapidly losing that essential freedom. We desperately need to fight to save it.

What to do if you are accused of inciting racial hatred

Robert Henderson

There is a growing enthusiasm by the authorities in Britain  to  prosecute people who are judged to have  broken the law by  being  racist in speech or writing.   This enthusiasm is fuelled by  the adoption of political correctness as the elite ideology of the day.   Anyone in a position of power and influence is forced on pain of being cast from  such circles to at least pay lip service to the creed and the fear of being called racist has those without power or influence in a vice-like grip as they see people who have been accused of racism having  their lives turned upside down by  the media engaging in hate campaigns against them,  their jobs taken from  them and, in an increasing number of cases,  criminal records put upon them for simply saying what they think.

The police have become frantically keen on showing their politically correct credentials. Recently the  Home Secretary  Amber Rudd  found the police recording a complaint of racism  against her after she made a speech dealing with immigrants as a  “non-crime hate incident, a category without any statutory basis  that the police have invented.  In cases such as this the police cease to act as police and become political commissars.

The “non-crime hate incident”  will be logged on a police computer,  quite possibly the  central computer the  police have. It is unlikely to affect the likes of Rudd but anyone without power or influence could well find the police bringing such a record into play  if they end up, for whatever reason,   being questioned by the police. Even if it never happens it will hang heavy in the minds of the person to whom such a record  refers because  they  will have become “a person known to the police” despite  ever having been charged with an offence.  It might well come up on a criminal records check undertaken because of the nature of a job someone is applying for. Even if that never happens to you imagine  how your  employer  or your family  might  react if  becomes public knowledge in some other way such as a newspaper report    that  you are  a person deemed  to have been the perpetrator of a “hate non-crime incident”.

The police are rather less enthusiastic about one class of complaint of racism. Any complaint of a “non-crime hate incident ” to the police which falls outside what the politically correct deem to be a worthy case – basically any complaint involving racial incitement against whites –  will not be recorded. I have in the past tried out the police’s willingness to record such complaints, for example, I made a complaint of racial incitement against Greg Dyke when he was Chairman of the BBC following  his “hideously white” description of the Corporation.  The police refused to record the complaint let alone investigate it.

The great advantage you have

All that will seem daunting to anyone  accused of racism which reaches the police . Do not despair. People accused of this type of offence has one great advantage : those with power and influence in the UK  have a dread of the issue of free expression  being the subject of public debate in the courts. This is so for two reasons. First,  they know that prosecuting people for simply saying something  goes against the idea of a free society, something which the British elite  invariably  claim to believe in in the abstract.   Second,  the free speech that is being  suppressed is that which goes against  the politically correct version of what is permissible. The politically correct know in their heart of hearts that  political incorrectness is the natural order of things and that only by censoring  can the pretence that political correctness reflects reality  be maintained.

As a consequence  of these fears  the police and those in the  justice system do everything possible to persuade those charged with such offences to plead guilty.  This was graphically shown in the case of  Emma West who maintained her innocence for many months even though initially she was held on remand in the highest security women’s prison in the UK .  Her crime? To make  what was really no more than a public  protest about  the consequences of mass immigration. Eventually, she pleaded guilty to lesser charges after the stress got to her, not least the fear that  her young son would be taken from her.  The extraordinary efforts to  made to get  the woman to change her plea strongly suggests  that had she stuck by her original Not Guilty plea there was  a very good chance the case would never have come to court.

The lesson of all this is always get on the front foot if you are threatened  by those with power and influence.  Show that you are afraid and intimidated and the powers-that-be will simply ride all over you.  Let those who are harrying you know that you are coming out fighting. That is not only your best chance of neutralising the accusation of racism it is probably your only chance.  Try googling  cases of  people accused of pc “crimes” who tamely pleaded guilty. Despite assiduous researching  I cannot find one  case which ended  with a person pleading guilty  being left in their original position, either in their work  or  socially.  At best,  the  common outcome  is for people   to lose their job  and to find getting another one very difficult; at worst they can  end up in prison.  Pleading guilty to such charges is never a soft option.

Subject access requests

If the complaint which has led to criminal charges being brought  has been made by someone representing an organisation rather than just acting as an individual you may be able to get useful information  from your accusers  by using the Data Protection Act  to make a subject access request . This places the data holder (the organisation to whom you are directing the subject access request)  under a legal obligation to supply the person making the request  with copies of any information they hold about them.

It is also worthwhile to put in a subject access request to other organisations, for example

1. the police force which is dealing with the complaint against you.
2. Any media organisation such as a the BBC or a national newspaper if it has shown an interest in your case.

Such organisations  may  hold  data which will be at embarrassing at best  and at worst damaging to their accusation against you. For example, there may be data showing that there were  arguments against  making a complaint  by some members of  the organisation making or supporting the complaint;  details of the surveillance of you before any alleged crime has been acted upon by the police or attempts to entrap you which depending on circumstances could be illegal.

There is an exemption in the Act for legal  documents and information held for journalistic purposes, but  often  the recipient of a subject access request will have data which is not covered by the exceptions.

Apart from possibly gaining useful information, the effect of making a subject access request will be  to reinforce  the fact that  you are coming out  fighting for even if no useful  data is forthcoming  the sending of a subject access request will signal that you mean business.

How do you do make a subject access request?  Use the wording   below for the request, enclose £10 for the fee  and ask for the data they hold in paper form. The reason for asking for the material in paper form is that often paper documents have manuscript notes written on them.  These may carry important information.

Dear Sirs,

I am making a subject access request to the  Campaign Against Anti-Semitism  under section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA).  This data will include any qualifying information held on any type of media.

Please send to me copies of any data relating to me which your organisation holds within the 40 calendar days allowed by  the Act.

I want any qualifying  information you hold to be supplied to me  in paper form.

A cheque for £10 is enclosed to pay the fee.

Yours faithfully,

———————————————————————————————————————————

If the matter does go a trial

Base your defence on free expression  and the fact that political correctness requires the denial of  the reality  of  homo sapiens’  biology  and evolved social nature.

For free expression  make  these arguments:

1. When it comes to censorship there is a simple binary choice: there is either free expression or a range of permitted opinion which may be altered at any time.  In present day  Britain there is only  a range of permitted opinion, the scope of which narrowing by the day.
2. Free expression is an integral part of democracy. If people are not allowed to put forward their views there is no democracy.
3. By definition any totalitarian ideology is incompatible with democracy because it excludes any viewpoint apart from its own.

Political correctness is a totalitarian ideology. It  both potentially covers every aspect of life because the non-discrimination test can be applied to any aspect of  life and   insists that the only correct and permissible view  of anything  where political correctness applies is the politically correct view.  The defining of antisemitism , especially in its present very broad  sense, is part of political correctness.

4. Many in the West who want to censor also wish to also pretend  quite absurdly that they support free expression. It is important to  ensure that  their hypocrisy is made clear at every opportunity . The notes below provide a potent way of driving  those adopting this position into a corner.
5. For a detailed examination of the issue of free expression see Free Expression or a range of permitted opinion . Use the details in that essay   to give chapter and verse on the  vast constraints on free expression in England today.  Simply  reciting in court   the long list   of ways in which free speech is discouraged today  should have the effect of knocking on the head any claim that free speech exists.

For the denial of  the reality  of  homo sapiens’  biology  and evolved social nature use these arguments:

Humans are social animals. Social animals only become social (what biologists call the development of sociality)  by setting limits to those within their group. This is because sociality can only develop where there is trust  and trust comes from triggers ranging from scent and chemical triggers  to, in the case of humans, a recognition of those who belong to a group through a mixture of biology –  basically does this person look like me? –   and acquired knowledge that an individual belongs to the  group through their cultural behaviour, for example, speaking the same language or having the same accent. That is the basis of group or tribal  belonging .  Tribal feeling is not  an optional extra. It is an essential  evolved behaviour which protects the group.

Political correctness denies  that humans have  an evolved social nature and insists against all the evidence that everything is down to cultural imprinting.  When presented with this argument simply point out  (1) that  wherever a society is racially/culturally  mixed there is always serious friction and (2) that  the universality  of racial and ethnic tension  in mixed societies can only be plausibly explained  by tribal feeling being innate .

Dealing with accusations of racism generally

Always  get those accusing you of racism to define the word. This will simply stump most people because they are rarely if ever called upon to explain what is meant by racism. That is particularly true of the politically correct who rely on their control of the positions of power and influence, including the media,  to censor out challenges to political correctness.  That this is done and accepted as legitimate by the politically correct tells us one thing: at some level they realise, as the religious do, that their beliefs cannot stand up to argument.

Asking for a definition of what is meant by racism is a tool which can be used to fluster and unsettle everyone involved in bringing and prosecuting a case against you. If  they are unable give a satisfactory definition  you are halfway to winning the case.  If they give a definition to which you can answer “I do not meet that definition” so much the better. Indeed, there is a good chance that asked for a definition of racism people are  likely to say  something along the lines of “Well, it  means you think some people are inferior to you because of their colour”. To that you can say, no, that does not  apply to me. I merely, like all human beings, naturally seek the company of those who resemble me because of my evolved nature.

The person to whom the question of a definition has been addressed  may well be unable to  meaningfully expand on their original offering.  If they do it will probably be by saying something like “It’s discriminating against people”.  This allows the defence to then bring out the fact that all humans have to discriminate all the time between people because  we have to make choices.

That is just a few  examples of how even in a court the prosecution and their witnesses can be exposed as having no firm grasp of what they mean by racism and that in turn will make it difficult in principle to say whether what you are accused of inciting actually  exists.

The effect of this type of defence is to keep the prosecution on the  back foot.

The special case of  Antisemitism

These  contrary arguments  will cover most of the  accusations of anti-Semitism:

1. It is not anti-Semitic to apply the same test to Jews as should rationally be applied to any minority group, namely, is the group or  members of the group attempting to gain an advantage for their group which is achieved at the cost of disadvantaging the rest of the society  in which they live. That is simply rational self-preservation by the majority population.  The most potent  example of  unacceptable behaviour by a minority group  is  one which advocates free immigration to the country in which the group lives and whose members are  either immigrants themselves or  the descendants of immigrants.
2. It is not anti-Semitic to be concerned if there are  a disproportionately large  number of Jews in positions of power and influence such as politics and the mainstream media.   The prime example of this is the Jewish lobby in the USA. Such positions  are gained most commonly not because the best person gets the job but because those occupying them are either born into a privileged position or the position is an appointment made  by patronage.  For example, a significant percentage of  those  employed in the media have relations who worked in the media before them.
3. It is not anti-Semitic to refuse to treat the Holocaust as an event which is uniquely abominable and consequently something that must be placed before the world to be condemned ceaselessly. It is now 71 years since the ending of the Second World War . Even the youngest of the surviving   death camp survivors will be old.  Most will be dead or in their eighties and nineties.  Time has reduced to the Holocaust to  what everything  eventually becomes,  an historical event which can be viewed objectively.
4. It is not anti-Semitic to point out that huge numbers of  non-Jewish  people  died in the Camps and that the  frequent portrayal of the mass killings as an essentially  Jewish event is wrong. That is not to deny  that  huge numbers of Jews died or to belittle their  suffering.  Rather, it is to provide an accurate account of what the death camps were  and to rebalance the emotional response to what occurred.
5. It is not anti-Semitic to treat the six million figure for Jews  killed as uncertain.  That does not mean six  million did not die. Indeed, many more may well  have done so.  What matters here is that the  six  million figure is not an historical fact.   To give just a couple  of  examples of the difficulty in calculating the numbers  killed. Estimates of  the number of Jews in Europe before  1933 run into two primary problems: the definition of who is a Jew  (which covers a wide span of circumstances) and  the reliability  and lack of uniformity of methodology  of  census  records  compiled in different jurisdictions. Piled on top of that is the post-Holocaust dispersal of  European Jews outside of Europe which makes  comparison of the  pre-1933 Jewish  European population  with the post-1945 population of Jews in Europe very difficult even if the definition of who is Jew is ignored.
6. It is not anti-Semitic to view the modern state of Israel as illegitimate in foundation and support for it to be against Western interests because it puts the West perpetually at odds with the Arab world in particular and the Muslim world in  general.

How to deal with the police

Do not be aggressive to or try to ingratiate yourself with the police. Be formally polite but reserved. Make it clear by your behaviour that you are not to be intimidated. I realise that is difficult for people who have no experience of the police but adopting  a  reserved manner will go a long way to achieving this. Always have at the front of your mind that  the police and the justice system are not geared up to deal with people who will not plead guilty to charges relating to racism.

If  you have been  arrested get your lawyer to  ask the police to justify the arrest – they must have reasonable grounds for suspecting that you have committed a crime or intend to commit a crime.

Always remain silent until you have  a lawyer present.

The police must caution you if they  are attempting to get evidence from you about a crime that you have committed or  are intending to commit  or are otherwise involved with, for example, fencing stolen goods.

If you have been cautioned without being arrested  you  must be told that you are free to leave at any time.

Be aware that if you accept the offer of a formal police caution (this can be with or without conditions) to avoid going to trial that  can be as damaging as having a criminal  record particularly if you work  in jobs requiring a criminal records check.  These cautions have nothing to do with the caution previously described

Be aware  that if you  accept an offer to plead guilty to a lesser charge  in the long run this can be as damaging to your life as fighting a more serious charge.

For my detailed advice on dealing with the police see https://englandcalling.wordpress.com/what-to-do-if-you-become-involved-with-the-criminal-law/

 

 

 

 

2016 and the future

Robert Henderson

What has changed over the past year?

The grip of the Western globalists is slipping.   They do not   realise it yet but their day is  almost done. Their ramshackle ideology,   a toxic blend of open borders politically correct internationalism  and what is crony capitalism but called by  those with a vested interest in it neo-liberal or laissez faire  economics , has wrought as it was certain to do,  rage and increasingly despair amongst  the majority of electors in Western states who are increasingly turning to  politicians that at least have some grasp of what is necessary to preserve  the viability of Western nation states.

The most  optimistic possibility for the West  is that  parties which do have some real attachment to what the great mass of people seek will be both elected and when in office carry through their pre-election promises.  But this is far from certain. It does not follow that what will replace globalism will be a politics which reflects the wants and needs of Western voters because the existing elites may drop all pretence of being anything other than an authoritarian clique and go in for wholehearted suppression of any dissent.  There are already signs that  this might happen with  the  growing willingness  amongst Western  elites  to  censor  political ideas, potent examples of which have been the  recent conviction of Gert Wilders in Holland for inciting racial hatred by saying there should be fewer Moroccans in  Holland , while in the UK  the  Prime Minister Theresa May has just sanctioned the putting into law of a definition of anti-Semitism so broad that any criticism Jews or Israel could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. Much will depend on how Donald Trump’s presidency develops.

In Britain the  EU referendum  has dominated everything both before and after the vote to leave in the political year .The anti-democratic mind-set of those who wanted to remain in the EU has been nakedly shown by colossal attempts to  sabotage the result of the referendum through legal  and political action and an incessant bleat about how they want a soft Brexit not a hard Brexit when only  Brexit  exists.

Something which the government calls Brexit will  eventually emerge,  but it could easily  be  a beast which is  directly at odds with what the British people voted on when they went to the polls on 23^rd June, namely, for a clean break with the EU.  If this government, or conceivably its successor, concludes  a deal which stitches the UK back into the EU with  such things as free movement of EU citizens into the UK, the UK paying for the “privilege” of remaining in the Single Market and the UK being subject to the European Court of Justice, there  is surely a serious risk of political violence. But even if that  is  avoided British politics would be seriously curdled by such a betrayal.

The other  pressing political  need  is  for an  English parliament and government  to balance the devolution of powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. A procedure to have only  MPs sitting for  English seats  voting on English only legislation  (English votes for English laws  or EVEL for short)  began a trial in 2015,  but  it  has few teeth because  it is difficult to disentangle what is English only  legislation, not least  because  MPs  for seats outside of England argue  that any Bill dealing solely with English matters has financial implications for the rest of the UK and , consequently, is not an England only Bill. Nor does EVEL allow English MPs to initiate English only legislation. Most importantly  England , unlike Scotland,  Wales and Northern Ireland, is left without any national political representatives   to concentrate on purely English domestic matters.

The House of Lords review of its first year  in operation makes EVEL’s  limitations clear:

The EVEL procedures introduced by the Government address, to some extent, the West Lothian Question. They provide a double-veto, meaning that legislationor provisions in bills affecting only England (or in some cases, England and Wales, or England and Wales and Northern Ireland), can only be passed by the House of Commons with the support of both a majority of MPs overall, and of MPs from the nations directly affected by the legislation.

Yet English MPs’ ability to enact and amend legislation does not mirror their capacity, under EVEL, to resist legislative changes. The capacity of English MPs to pursue a distinct legislative agenda for England in respect of matters that are devolved elsewhere does not equate to the broader capacity of devolved legislatures to pursue a distinct agenda on matters that are devolved to them

The most dangerous general global threats are plausibly these in this order

1. Mass immigration, the permitting of which by elites is the most fundamental treason because unlike an invasion by force, there is no identifiable concrete foreign enemy for the native population to resist. Yet the land is effectively colonised just the same.

2 Uncontrolled technology, which leaves the developed world in particular  but increasingly the  world generally,  very vulnerable  to suddenly being left without vital services if computer systems fail naturally or through cyber attacks.  Judged by the number of reports in the mainstream media the frequency of personal data being hacked and major computer systems  going down, most notably banks, is increasing. This is unsurprising because both state organisations and private business are remorselessly  forcing  customers and  clients to use web-based contact points rather than deal with a human being.  This in itself makes life unpleasant and for older people in particular most difficult.

In the  medium  term –  probably within ten years –  there is the existential  threat  to humans of general purpose robots being able to cause a catastrophic  drop in demand by taking over  so many jobs that demand collapses because huge numbers are rapidly made unemployed.  To that can be added the development of military robots which have the capacity to make autonomous judgements about killing humans.

The  general lack of political concern and a seemingly  universal inability of those with power and influence to see  how robotics and AI systems generally  are rapidly  developing is astonishing. Time and again when the subject of robots and AI systems is raised with such people they will bleat that new jobs will arise due to the new technology, as new technology has always created jobs, and these developments will provide the jobs for humans.

This is sheer “it’ll never replace the horse” ism .  Intelligent robots and AI systems will not only take existing jobs,  they will take most or even all of the new jobs that arise.  This is the potential catastrophe that humans face from robots and AI,  the rapid loss of such  huge amounts of employment  that the economic systems of both the developed and the developing world cannot function  because of the loss of demand,  not the SF style scare stories about intelligent robots making war on humans.  The other thing that  politicians do not seem to understand is that when there are  robots and AI systems sophisticated enough to do most of the jobs humans do, the loss of human jobs will occur at great speed. We can be certain of this for two reasons; our experience with digital technology  is of rapid advances and robots and AI systems will be able to design and build even more advanced  robots and AI systems, probably  very quickly.

Aside from digital technology,  advances in genetic engineering and ever more radical transplant surgery raise the question of what it is to be a human being if full face transplants are now available and the possibility of things such as a head being transplanted in the not too distant future.   We need to ask ourselves what it is to be human.

3. Islam – serious unrest is found throughout the world wherever there are large numbers of Muslims.
4. Ever increasing general instability. Contrary to Steven Pinker’s view that the world is becoming more peaceful, if civil conflict is included things are getting worse.  Formal war may be less easy to identify , but ethnic  (and often religious ) based strife plus repression by  rulers  is so widespread outside the West that it is best described as endemic. Globalisation =  destabilisation because by making the world’s economic system more complex , there is simply more to go wrong both economically and socially. Sweeping aside  traditional relationships and practices is a recipe for social discord.  All of economic history tells you one thing above all else: a strong domestic economy is essential for the stability of any country.   The ideology of laissez faire, is like all ideologies,  at odds with  human nature and reality generally and its application inevitably creates huge numbers of losers when applied to places such as China and India.

The most dangerous specific  threats to global peace and stability are:

–              The heightened tension between China and the rest of the Far East (especially Japan) as a consequence of China’s growing territorial ambitions.

–              China’s extraordinary expanding  shadow world empire which consists of both huge investment in the first world and de facto colonial control in the developing world.

–              The growing power of India which threatens Pakistan. An India/Pakistan nuclear exchange is  probably the most likely use of nuclear weapons I the next ten years.

–              The increasing authoritarianism of the EU due to both the natural impetus towards central control and the gross mistake of the Euro.   This will end either in a successful centralisation of  EU power after the UK has left the EU  or the attempt at centralisation will lead to a collapse of the EU.

The Eurofanatics  continue to play  with fire in their attempts to lure border states of Russia into the EU whilst applying seriously damaging sanctions to Russia. It is not in the West’s interest to have a Russia which feels threatened or denied its natural sphere of influence.

–   The ever more successful (at least in the short run) attempt of post-Soviet Russia to re-establish their suzerainty over the old Soviet Empire and Putin’s increasingly martial noises including substantial re-armament.  However, these ambitions will be likely to be mitigated by the plight of the Russian provinces of the Far East where there is unofficial Chinese infiltration of the sparsely populated and natural resource rich land there. Eventually China will wish to capture those territories.

Robert Henderson 17  12 2016

Film reviews – 50 Shades of Grey (tedium)

Main cast

Dakota Johnson – Anastasia Steele

Jamie Dornan  – Christian Grey

Eloise Mumford  –   Kate

Director: Sam Taylor-Johnson

Running time 125 minutes

Imagine a script written by Barbara Cartland  after she had developed an  interest in  bondage and sado-masochism and you will be well on the way to understanding  exactly how dire this film is as  both a dramatic vehicle and a piece of pornography.

Anastasia (Dakota Johnson)  and her  best friend Kate (Eloise Mumford)share a flat.  They are university students well into their courses but behave like excitable fifteen-year-olds, gushingly and obsessively  talking about men whenever they are alone.  Sadly, for the politically correct, this means they fail the  Bechdel Test in traumatically emphatic fashion.  (The test was devised by  the cartoonist Alison Bechdel and judges the feminist credentials of a film by the number of occasions female characters talk together about something other than a man).

The film religiously follows the romantic tosh novel plot-by-numbers template.  Grey (Jamie Dorman) is  depicted as a self-made millionaire at the age of 27, a pianist of concert standard, a helicopter pilot and a glider pilot.  This is par for the romantic tosh novelist who loves nothing more than a  fabulously rich, ridiculously talented hero.  Amazingly, the man has achieved  all this despite being the son of a whore with a crack habit who died when he was four.  Another tick goes against the romantic tosh checklist, the troubled object of female desire.

When Anastasia  (classic romantic tosh writer name) is introduced by Christian ( classic romantic tosh writer name) to his family  the trouble object of female desire theme is ramped up with Grey’s  step mother  making  jolly clear that she is so glad to see Christian with such a nice girl because he needs a rock in his life.

Sadly, in view of the film’s racy reputation,  50 Shades of Grey  engages in what can only be described as  overly extended foreplay  with audience as it crawls so agonisingly slowly towards any erotic action that nothing happens for the first hour. Not to worry,  there is an inordinate amount of staring into one another’s eyes  with what are  meant to be meaningful looks.   Again, this  is absolutely in accordance with the romantic tosh template because  love or even raw desire  is not meant to rush headlong to its conclusion.

The dialogue is screenplay writing by numbers with no cliché or hideously obvious banality safe from  molestation. Here is a sample:

I have died a thousand deaths since Thursday.”

“I want to give you the world, Anastasia.”

“You’re the only person I’d fly three thousand miles to see.”

“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”

“I’m fifty shades of f*cked up”

The ending is classic romantic tosh novelist. Anastasia rushes from Christians flat to a lift.  Christian follows.  Anastasia enters the lift and looks out at Christian who has not entered the lift . Just before the lift door closes Christians says “Anastasia” and Anastasia cries “Christian” (accompanied by some some especially meaningful staring) before the lift  doors close and Anastasia sinks from view. There we have the frequently used  romantic tosh novel of  false lost love  ploy which experienced readers of romantic tosh novels  will realise is simply a signal for a future reunion of the ill-starred lovers.

As for the sado-masochism, this consists primarily of  Anastasia and  Grey looking at a roomful  glutted with  whips, canes, belts and so on  all neatly stacked on racks,  a few tentative smacks of Dakota Johnson’s bottom  and one short strapping sequence which was very obviously faked.

The real  pornography  in the film is not the sex but the unashamed vulgar material  excess , with Grey’s apartment and office  both in scale and the  self-conscious interior décor  falling effortlessly into the category of megalomaniac  chic.  His supposed desire for dominance is primarily displayed in inappropriately lavish and embarrassing  gifts.  When they barely know each other  Grey  sends Dakota first editions of nineteen century English writers such as Jane Austen because she has casually expressed an interest in such work.  Later he arranges to sell her  old banger of a car without telling her and replaces  it with a new and expensive vehicle.

Rather damagingly for the film, sexual chemistry between Johnson and Dornan is unambiguously absent.  Johnson lacks sexual excitement. Judged by Hollywood standards she is not ultra attractive which is what the role required as a bare minimum.   Worse,  her  character  has had  a vivacity bypass.   She is just dull, dull, dull.

As for Dornan’s Grey,  far from  depicting a dominant, charismatic man he gives the character  the persona of a petulant self-absorbed adolescent with a  most irritating  addiction to  moron’s profundity, namely, the emitting of pretentious banalities in a tone which suggests they are plumbing the most sonorous depths of  insightfulness.

The best that can be said for the rest  of the cast is that they valiantly manage to keep  straight faces whilst delivering  dialogue  which in common humanity   should have been labelled  as unfit for thespian use.  One can only hope they have not been permanently damaged by the experience.

The film fails both as a drama and as a piece of pornography, it being as  sexually arousing as an Enid Blyton story with much the same level of psychological complexity  but considerably  less development of plot.

The BBC decide one call with a minute to go is enough for immigration on Any Answers

Robert Henderson

Any Questions (BBC R4 1 August 2014 ) included a question on whether immigration had made Britain poorer. The question provoked an extended  debate which would have been much longer if the chairman had not cut the discussion short.

 

Both the time devoted to the question in the show  and the fact that every poll shows immigration to be at or near the top of the public’s current political concerns should have made it  one of the primary subjects of the following Any Answers. The reverse happened. 

First, the presenter  Anita Anand put the question down the batting order as she introduced Any Answers by asking for questions on the subjects discussed – she placed it very near the end –  then she took  just one call with 29 minutes of the thirty minute  programme, a call which lasted a few seconds. 

 

There is no reasonable explanation for the failure to relegate the question to a point where it virtually vanished from Any Answers.  The one caller who got on did complain about the late introduction of the question and was fobbed off with the usual BBC excuse of the weight of calls on other subjects driving it down the list. The excuse was particularly absurd in this case because the interest immigration provokes. It is reasonable to believe that the BBC deliberately  kept callers about immigration off the air to further their own political agenda.  The fact that Anand ancestry is subcontinental adds to the suspicion. 

 

As the BBC is a closed shop when it comes to how prospective callers to are chosen, there is no way to get an independent check on what they are doing.  It is also true that they operate of telephone system which blocks out callers deemed to be a nuisance – details below. 

 

Please investigate how the BBC chooses who shall be put on air during  phone-ins  and how the extraordinary treatment of  immigration on this Any Answers programme occurred. I would be delighted to come on to Feedback to question whoever the BBC puts up to justify their behaviour. 

 

I have submitted a complaint to Roger Bolton at the BBC’s Feedback programme. The email for those wishing to complain is feedback@bbc.co.uk.

 

For details of the censoring of phone-ins see     https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/how-the-bbc-surreptitiously-censors-callers-to-phone-in/

Piers Morgan’s illegal receipt of information from the Met Police referred to the IPCC

The Met Police’s  Directorate of Professional Standards has knocked back my appeal against the refusal of the police to investigate Piers Morgan’s illegal receipt of information from one or more police officers – see the email below the one to Anne Owers. Below that is the ongoing correspondence with the IPCC.

The refusal is based on the usual guff about the matter having been previously investigated when it has never been investigated. I have now referred the matter to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) . In terms of officialdom that is as far as I can go because I have exhausted all other channels.

For previous posts on this subject click on the tag Operation Elveden

Robert Henderson

———————————————————————————————————-

Dame Anne Owers

Chair

Independent Police Complaints Commission

PO Box 473

Sale

M33 0BW

8 July 2014

Dear Dame Anne,

On 21 January 2013 I passed to Operation Elveden clear evidence of serious criminality involving the Daily Mirror newspaper and one or more  Metropolitan Police  officers. The criminality consisted of the then editor of the Mirror Piers Morgan and the paper’s then chief crime correspondent  Jeff Edwards receiving information illegally from one or more Metropolitan Police officers and their subsequently perjury before the Leveson Inquiry.

I appended to these reports of crime  a  further complaint against a senior Scotland Yard officer, Det Supt Jeff Curtis,  who had  years before failed to investigate,  despite having  been given the strongest evidence possible,  namely, a letter from Piers Morgan to the PCC in which Morgan admitted receiving the  information in circumstances which can only have been illegal, viz: “The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect”.( A copy of that letter in facsimile is attached. You will need to load it into an Adobe Reader).  I was the subject of the information illegally received by the Mirror.

You will also find  enclosed  my complete correspondence with variously Operation Elveden, the DPP and other staff at the CPS and the Met Police’s  Directorate of Professional Standards. This correspondence is divided between those three categories and within each category the documents run from the earliest to the latest in descending order.

The most efficient way to read yourself into the matter is to read the first document down which is my original submission to the then head of Operation Eleveden, Deputy Assistant Commissioner  Steve Kavanagh.

As you work through the correspondence  you will encounter the same absurdity over and over again: I keep being told that the matter has already been investigated and found to be unsubstantiated. This is simply false.  The original officer Jeff Curtis  failed to investigate and no one since I made the complaint to Operation has done so. Yes, that is right, despite having the letter from Piers Morgan, neither Morgan or anyone else at the Mirror has ever been interviewed   or any examination of the Mirror’s records been made to see if there was evidence of payment being made for the information.  A very telling fact is, as you will see from the enclosed correspondence, the blanket refusal of the police to meet me to take a formal statement, despite my persistent requests that they do so.  It is reasonable to interpret that strange reluctance as a cynical device to avoid having to justify their failure to act to my face.

Throughout I have met with the same corrupt refusal to investigate that the many victims of sexual abuse have experienced.  The simple truth is that where those with power, wealth and influence are involved neither the police nor the prosecuting authorities will  investigate properly or at all if they can possibly help it. Such refusals amount to  both misconduct in public office of the grossest kind and an unambiguous perversion of the course of justice.

The story I have to tell should come as no surprise to you. In March of this year you made this statement in a radio interview “Police officers that come to us appear all too often like sulky teenagers and won’t say anything in interviews. I and the public find it very difficult to understand how a police officer, who is a professional, doesn’t want to cooperate with an inquiry as a witness to what happened, why it happened and how something like that can be prevented in future.”

I have exhausted all other avenues, both informal and formal. Consequently,  I ask you to take up my complaints to (1) ensure that those within the police who have refused to investigate the cast-iron evidence of criminality I have provided are disciplined and (2)  ensure that an honest and complete investigation into my complaints is made.

We are in who shall guard the guards?  territory here, Dame Anne.

Yours sincerely,

 

Robert Henderson

Cc

Rachel Cerfontyne  (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Sarah Green  (IPCC Deputy Chair)

Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner)

Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner)

Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner)

James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner)

Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner)

Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner)

Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner)

Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner)

Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner)

Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive)

Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary)

Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General)

Alison Saunders (DPP)

G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division)

Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner)

DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS)

DCI Tim Neligan (DPS)

CI Andy Dunn (DPS)

Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden)

Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden)

John Whittingdale MP

George Eustice MP

Sir Gerald Howarth MP

Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk

Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit

 

———————————————————————–  

 

 Metropolitan Police 

Directorate of Professional Standards

Prevention and Organisational Learning Command

 

DPS Appeals Unit

22nd Floor

Empress State Building

Empress Approach

Lillie Road

London

SW6 1TR

 

E-Mail: Appeals@met.pnn.police.uk

 

Our reference:  PC/00455/14

 

Date: 19th June 2014

Dear  Mr Henderson

This letter is about your appeal against the outcome of your complaint against police received on 5th December 2013. Your complaint was dealt with in two parts. Firstly, you received an ‘outcome of investigation’ report from DCI Neligan, detailing your complaints about DI Smith. Additionally, your complaint concerning retired Detective Superintendent Curtis was subject of something called a ‘disapplication’. You appealed against the outcome of the investigation, in your appeal email dated 6th April 2014. Upon receipt of a further letter dated 16th April 2014, informing you of the decision to disapply the latter part (against Mr Curtis) you submitted a further email of appeal, dated 27th April 2014. Both aspects of your appeal will be discussed and addressed in this letter.   1. Appeal against Investigation   In answer to the first part of your appeal (investigation), the Metropolitan Police Appeals Team’s role in the appeal process is to review the investigation into your complaint, not to re-investigate your complaint. This appeal outcome is completed on behalf of Superintendent Sarti, with delegated authority for dealing with Appeals on behalf of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service.   Our decision on your appeal is linked to paragraph 25 of Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002. I have looked at the following issues in concluding your appeal:   ·         Whether the findings of the investigation need to be reconsidered ·         Whether the outcomes, for example in relation to whether any disciplinary or other actions should be taken, are appropriate ·         Whether you received adequate information about the findings of the investigation   I have reviewed your email of complaint dated 5th December 2013, addressed to the Commissioner. You complaint was recorded on 8th January 2014.   The decisions I have reached in relation to your appeal are outlined below:   1.    Are the findings of the police investigation appropriate/ proportionate to the complaint? Your heads of complaint have been obtained from the following:     Your email of 5th December 2013 and accompanying attachments/email string   Your complaint was about the decision by Detective Inspector Daniel Smith, and his refusal to investigate three allegations of crime concerning Mr Piers Morgan and Mr Jeff Edwards, repeated below;   1. That Piers Morgan when editor of the Mirror obtained information from a Met Officer(s) in circumstances which can only have been illegal. The letter from Morgan to the PCC which I have supplied to Elveden and which you have a copy of in facsimile conclusively proves this. 2. That Jeff Edwards when chief crime reporter for the Daily Mirror illegally received information from Met Officer(s).  Morgan’s letter plus the story printed by the Daily Mirror about me conclusively prove Edwards received such information.   3. That both Morgan and Edwards  committed perjury when questioned under oath about receiving information illegally from the police. I provided Operation Elveden with the relevant Leveson transcripts.   In his response to your allegations of crime, DI Daniel Smith responded;   Dear Mr. Henderson,   I write in relation to the allegations you made following your contact with DC Rooke in January of this year. I have reviewed the matters raised by you in this, and subsequent communications, with DC Rooke. I understand that the matters raised by you relate to an article published in 1997 and that the matter was investigated by the Metropolitan Police Service (Complaints Investigation Bureau). The matter was referred to the Police Complaints Authority in 1999. I understand that there is no new evidence or information available and as a result I have decided that no investigation will be conducted into the points raised by you. In relation to the Perjury allegation, having read the transcripts provided, I do not believe there is evidence that shows an offence has been committed. As a consequence this allegation will not be investigated.   Yours sincerely,   Detective Inspector Daniel Smith   Complaint Versus Criminal investigation DCI Neligan was appointed to investigate your public complaint about DI Smith’s decision, not to investigate the criminal allegations about Mr Morgan and Mr Edwards. That is an important point to differentiate because in your email of appeal you appear to be confusing the two issues.   In the outcome letter sent to you, dated 10th March 2013, DCI Neligan has identified your complaint and the steps taken to investigate it. I therefore consider that a proportionate investigation has been carried out.   I have considered your grounds for appeal, as set out in your email dated 6th April 2014.   Point 1, you have appealed on the basis that you have not been interviewed personally by the Investigating Officers, either of the criminal investigation, or the complaint investigation. In my considerations, I have looked at the email strings you have submitted. The details of the criminal allegations are comprehensive and sufficiently detailed upon which DI Smith based his initial assessment in terms of the criminal allegations. Likewise, there is sufficient detail upon which DCI Neligan can base his assessment of his complaint investigation and therefore I do not consider it necessary to interview you at any stage up to those reviews being conducted.    In terms of the criminal investigation, DI Smith had articulated his rationale for not investigating your first 2 criminal allegations (that they were already investigated by the PCA in 1999) as there is no new evidence; there was no merit in further investigation of those allegations. The third allegation, (perjury), was subject to a preliminary review, as DI Smith explained, when he reviewed the transcripts. His assessment was that there is no evidence of the offence of perjury having been made out. Consequently, that allegation would not be further investigated.   In his report, DCI Neligan has elaborated upon these points and provided you with additional information in terms of the police obligations under National Crime Recording Standards as well as the MPS Crime Management Policy. Point 2, you believe the findings of DCI Neligan’s investigation “are absurd because of the Morgan letter alone, but the Mirror story and Curtis’s failure to investigate Morgan, Edwards and the Mirror generally make them doubly ridiculous.”    I mentioned above, the difference between DI smith’s investigation and DCI Neligan’s, but following on from Point 2 above, it is important to make absolutely clear, the role difference between the two investigations.   DI Smith was asked to investigate your criminal allegations. You disagreed with his decisions and have made a public complaint about DI Smith. DCI Neligan was appointed to and has, investigated the complaint about DI Smith. DCI Neligan has not investigated your criminal allegations about Morgan and Edwards. However, in conducting his investigation, DCI Neligan has looked at the actions/decisions made by DI Smith when looking at the investigation of Morgan and Edwards.   I find the steps taken by DCI Neligan, in examining the actions of DI smith, to be proportionate and reasonable.   Point 3, I similarly refer to the response to point 2 above.   Point 4, DCI Neligan is being asked to consider if DI Smith has committed a criminal offence, by his (Smith) not investigating your criminal allegations any further. DCI Neligan has concluded that the actions of DI Smith are correct and therefore there are no criminal actions for the CPS to consider. I concur with that rationale.   On the basis of this assessment the conclusion reached by the Investigating Officer, DCI Neligan is appropriate. I do not uphold your appeal.   2.    Is the decision that the police have made about whether an officer has a case to answer for misconduct appropriate? Yes. The outcome of the Investigation is appropriate and the Investigating Officer has concluded there is insufficient evidence to prove a case of misconduct against DI Smith. I do not uphold your appeal.   3.    Are the force’s proposed actions following the investigation adequate? Yes. The Investigation has not found a case to answer and no action has been proposed. I do not uphold your appeal.   4.    Have you been provided with adequate information following the investigation of your complaint?   Yes. The original report by DCI Neligan addresses all of the complaints submitted by you, the rationale behind the conclusions reached, and includes your right to appeal. I do not uphold your appeal.   5.    Has the investigation been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)? If not, is this decision appropriate? The report has not been referred to the CPS. I consider this decision to be appropriate as the investigation and the underlying evidence does not indicate that a criminal offence has been made out.  I refer to my assessment under Point 4 above. I do not uphold your appeal.   After considering all the information available I have now made a decision about your appeal against the outcome of the investigation. I have not upheld your appeal.   You are not able to appeal against the assessment of your appeal. If you have any questions or need more information about the appeal decision please contact me using the details shown at the top of this letter.   2. Appeal against Disapplication   I will now respond to your other appeal, against the decision to disapply the requirements of Schedule 3 Police Reform Act 2002 to your complaint about ex-DSU Jeff Curtis. Your appeal was received on 27th April 2014. An appeal may be made to the relevant appeal body against a decision to disapply the requirements of Schedule 3 of the Police Reform Act 2002.  The Chief Officer (where they are the relevant appeal body) must determine whether the decision to disapply those requirements should have been taken. This appeal outcome is completed on behalf of Detective Superintendent Sarti, with delegated authority for dealing with Appeals on behalf of the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service   In determining your appeal, I must consider the following points ;   Has the complaint been, or should it have been, referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)?   The complaint about retired Detective Superintendent Curtis concerned his alleged conduct in 2003 and specifically, that he deliberately failed to investigate your original allegations against Mr Morgan & Mr Edwards despite promises made to you in a telephone conversation. Such a complaint does not meet the criteria for a mandatory referral to the IPCC, nor was it so referred (to the IPCC). The Relevant Appeal Body is therefore the Force itself.   Was the decision to disapply made with the permission of the IPCC?   No. The complaint was not referred and did not require referral to the IPCC. Therefore, permission to disapply was not required from the IPCC.   Was the complainant offered the opportunity to make representations before the decision to disapply was made and if any representations were provided, were these taken into account in making the decision to disapply?   Yes. Within the Outcome of Investigation report, dated 10th March 2014, included a request for you to provide reasons why your complaint concerning ex-DSU Jeff Curtis ought not to be disapplied on the basis that it was ‘out of time’ i.e. More than 12 months have elapsed between the date of the incident complained of and the making of the complaint, and no good reasons could be shown for that delay.     You responded in your email of 6th April 2014, and those responses were considered by Chief Inspector Dunn who decided there were no good reasons for the delay of over 12 years in the making of the complaint. I accept that you had previously reported the matters originally to the Police Complaints Authority who had ‘rejected them’.   After considering your email of appeal, dated 27th April 2014, I consider the decision to disapply your complaint was appropriate. The incident complained of was more than 12 months before the complaint was made and no good reason for that delay has been demonstrated. Your appeal is not upheld.   Actions required of the MPS The MPS will take no further action regarding your complaints or the appeals. You are not able to appeal the outcome of this appeal assessment. No further right of appeal exists with the IPCC. If you disagree with this appeal assessment, you are advised to seek independent legal advice.   Yours sincerely     David Corbet Inspector Appeals Unit —————————————————————————- !enquiries  Jul 10 at 4:27 PM To ‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk’ Dear Mr Henderson Thank you for your email of 8 July 2013. I note that the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) have finalised the complaints that you made. You were provided with a right of appeal to the DPS Appeals Panel which you exercised. You were provided with the outcome of this appeal in an email dated 16 June 2014. In this case, the IPCC is not able to take any action in relation to your appeal. The IPCC can only act as an appeals body in cases where we are named as the relevant appeal body. I have attached a Frequently Asked Questions sheet which explains how the relevant appeal body is decided upon. The only avenue left open to you in terms of challenging the decision of the DPS Appeals Panel is judicial review. I appreciate that this is not the response that you were seeking from the IPCC, but I am unable to advise you any differently. Yours sincerely   Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) Tel: 03000200096 enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:jack.paynter@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> http://www.ipcc.gov.uk&lt;http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/&gt; IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-guidance&gt; ———————————————————————————————————— Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 17 July 2014   Dear Mr Paynter, I have your response dated 10 July to my email of 8 July.  Having scoured the IPCC website I am at a loss to understand why the IPCC cannot take it on. In the Statutory Guidance to the police service  on the handling of complaints (yes, all 135 pages of it, an absurdly long and densely written document which is intended  for the guidance of the ordinary person) I found this: Appeals 1.27 Chief officers now have responsibility for handling certain appeals. All appeals about the recording of complaints will continue to be dealt with by the IPCC. The IPCC will also deal with any appeal concerning a complaint about the conduct of a senior officer or complaints that have been or must be referred to the IPCC. Please explain to me how my complaints about senior officers do not necessitate their referral to the IPCC. The IPCC  Mandatory referral criteria contains this The appropriate authority must refer complaints and conduct matters involving: serious corruption complaints or conduct matters which are alleged to have arisen from the same incident as anything falling within these criteria Please explain to me why my complaints do not fall within these categories, especially  that of serious corruption. Let me remind you exactly how serious and extensive are the complaints I have made against the police.  I  provided Operation Elveden with a letter to the PCC  from Piers Morgan  when he was editor of the Daily Mirror  – you should already have a copy of that letter in facsimile,  but I attach a copy to this email. In that letter Morgan admits that he received information (about me) from a Met Police officer in circumstances which can only have been illegal, viz: ““The police source of our article (whose identity we have a moral obligation to protect)…” That letter alone would have been enough to charge Morgan and the Mirror’s then Chief Crime Reporter Jeff Edwards with criminal offences.  In addition, there was also the evidence of a Mirror story which corroborated the Morgan letter.  A copy of that Mirror story was supplied to Operation Elveden. The officer who dealt with my original complaint, Det Supt Jeff Curtis of Scotland Yard,  promised me that he would interview Morgan and Edwards then failed to do so. I supplied Operation Eleveden with a tape recording of Curtis making the promise.  No contact with the Mirror was made.  This meant  that not only was no investigation made of the certain offences resulting from the admitted  illegal receipt of information  in Morgan’s letter, but no investigation of the possibility of the information having been purchased was made. It is probable that the information was purchased by the Mirror. All of that  constituted a clear misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice by Curtis. My complaint to Operation Elveden has met with the same wilful neglect of my allegations of  serious crimes that Curtis displayed. Every person who has dealt with my complaint from Operation Elveden’s receipt of it to the rejection of my appeal has,  by ignoring the cast iron evidence of Morgan’s letter to the PCC, committed the crimes of misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice. These people are: 1. Operation Elveden Deputy Assistant Commissioner  Steve Kavanagh Commander Neil Basu Detective Inspector Daniel Smith 2. Metropolitan Police’s Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Det Chief Superintendant  Alaric Bonthron Chief Inspector Andy Dunn Det Chief Inspector Tim Neligan Inspector David Corbet I have also kept Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe fully informed of the nature and treatment of my complaints. I want every one of these people investigated. A very telling fact about my complaints to Operation Eleveden and the DPS is that, despite my numerous requests to do so, I have been unable to meet with any police officer handling the case.  That can only be explained by the facts of the case putting  the persistent  refusal to investigate beyond any reasonable explanation. Everyone involved knows I have given them an open and shut conviction. I ask that I meet with someone senior from the IPCC, preferably Anne Owers. There is a sinister absurdity in  the position you are claiming for the IPCC.  Iin effect you are saying that if a police force refuses to address a complaint honestly  and does not refer it to the IPCC,  then nothing can be done because the IPCC can only take cases which are referred to them.  In short, the police can get rid  of any complaint, no matter how serious,  simply by refusing to  record or refer it to the IPCC.  Do  you dispute my interpretation of the situation? Your suggestion that judicial review could apply is frankly adding insult to injury because there are very few people who could afford such a hideously expensive legal action. It is the equivalent to telling a  poor man that the Ritz is open to all. Yours sincerely,   Robert Henderson ——————————————————————————————— IPCC ref: 2014/030525 !enquiries  Today at 3:19 PM (21 July 2014) To ‘robert henderson’ Dear Mr Henderson Thank you for your email of 17 July 2014. While I appreciate that you are unhappy that there is no avenue of appeal to the IPCC, I am unable to advise you any differently. It is also significant that your allegation of corruption with regard to an unknown police officer passing information to the Daily Mirror was referred to the Police Complaints Authority (PCA)  in 1999. The IPCC is not able to deal with matters which were dealt with by the PCA. However, I note that your email contains allegations about a number of officers within the Metropolitan Police which have not been made in your earlier complaint. Therefore, I have forwarded your email on to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) so that these matters can be considered as a new complaint. Finally, the IPCC is unable to accede to your request for a meeting. Yours sincerely Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)   Tel: 03000200096 enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk http://www.ipcc.gov.uk IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints   —————————————————————————————————————   IPCC ref: 2014/030525 !enquiries  Today at 3:46 PM (21 July 2014) To ‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk’ Dear Mr Henderson Further to my earlier email, I write to confirm that I have forwarded your email to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS). It is now their responsibility to assess the new allegations you have made. Please find attached a Frequently Asked Questions sheet which may be of some use. Yours sincerely   Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) Tel: 03000200096 enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:jack.paynter@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> http://www.ipcc.gov.uk&lt;http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/&gt; IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-guidance&gt; —————————————————————————- Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 24  July 2014   Dear Mr Paynter, I have your two emails of 21 July. Two points arise: 1. You have not answered  questions I put in my 8 July  email, viz: Appeals 27 Chief officers now have responsibility for handling certain appeals. All appeals about the recording of complaints will continue to be dealt with by the IPCC. The IPCC will also deal with any appeal concerning a complaint about the conduct of a senior officer or complaints that have been or must be referred to the IPCC. Please explain to me how my complaints about senior officers do not necessitate their referral to the IPCC. The IPCC  Mandatory referral criteria contains this The appropriate authority must refer complaints and conduct matters involving: serious corruption complaints or conduct matters which are alleged to have arisen from the same incident as anything falling within these criteria Please explain to me why my complaints do not fall within these categories, especially  that of serious corruption.  And  There is a sinister absurdity in  the position you are claiming for the IPCC.  In effect you are saying that if a police force refuses to address a complaint honestly  and does not refer it to the IPCC,  then nothing can be done because the IPCC can only take cases which are referred to them.  In short, the police can get rid  of any complaint, no matter how serious,  simply by refusing to  record or refer it to the IPCC.  Do  you dispute my interpretation of the situation? Do you refuse to answer these  questions? If so on what grounds? I would remind you that  the IPCC has a public service obligation  to answer reasonable questions from the public.  Your failure to answer my questions as a matter of  course suggests that I am correct in believing that the IPCC does have the power to take this matter. 2. You say that because my complaint against Det Supt Jeff Curtis was refused by the  Police Complaints Authority (PCA)  it cannot be taken by the IPCC.  The fact that it was refused by the DPA does one thing only: it unequivocally demonstrates  that the DPA were part of the corrupt manipulation of my complaints against the Mirror, the police and the Blairs. Despite having the proof of Morgan’s letter and the knowledge that Jeff Curtis had failed to investigate this clearest of evidence, they refused to take the matter up.  You can add them to the already large cast of those guilty of misconduct in a public office and a perversion of the course of justice. What the IPCC needs to understand is that this whole affair was very political, in fact just about as political as it is possible to get.  If you look at the facsimile of Morgan’s letter to the PCC you will see that it involved Tony and Cherie Blair. During the six most important weeks of Blair’s life the Blairs  suddenly decided to try to have me prosecuted under the Malicious Communications Act for letters I had written to them seeking their help after I was grossly abused by the media  in 1995 and had exhausted all  avenues – PCC,  BBC Complaints,  my MP – without getting redress.  I wrote to Blair as the prospective next PM and his wife as a leading human rights lawyer. The Blairs suffered the gross humiliation of having their attempt rebuffed by the Crown Prosecution Service within hours of it being referred to them – just think of the pressure on the CPS to do what Blair wanted –  with the CPS saying unequivocally my letters were perfectly legal.     Not only that,  but the Blairs did not go to the police when I sent them the letters. Rather, they only made their complaints later  after  I had  circulated them and the non-replies I was getting from their offices to every mainstream media outlet at the beginning of the 1997 election campaign. Clearly the Blairs were not disturbed by the content  of the letters as such. What worried them was their failure to meaningfully respond to my requests for help and a fear that this would be taken up by the mainstream media during the election campaign. Tellingly, after the Blairs failed to have me prosecuted they failed to take any civil action (with its much lower evidential standard of the balance of probabilities) against me.  Instead they engaged in an illegal  ten year long harassment of me using  the state security apparatus and/or private operators. (The Mirror story which induced Morgan’s letter to the PCC stated that Special Branch had taken the matter up and  I subsequently used the Data Protection Act to prove that both Special Branch and MI5 had files on me). The harassment covered everything from death threats to the ostentatious opening of my post. The harassment ceased as soon as Blair left Downing Street.  In 1999 Sir Richard  Body put down this EDM for me: 10 November 1999 CONDUCT OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MEMBER FOR SEDGEFIELD 10:11:99  Sir Richard Body  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. This motion is now part of the official House of Commons record – see  http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=16305&SESSION=702 I give you that brief précis so that you and your  colleagues can understand exactly why everyone from the police to the DPP have been so desperately keen to keep this story under wraps. Of course, the longer the time it extends, the more people involved, the greater the scandal  becomes and the more desperate is  the desire to censor the matter . This is a wholly  exceptional matter.  I have given the IPCC the clearest evidence of wilful and sustained criminal behaviour throughout the police and justice system.  When the guards can longer be trusted, they need to be overthrown. The IPCC has the power to do that. I ask again for a meeting with someone senior within the IPCC.   You can of course continue to refuse but think on this: if I do manage to get the scandal into the public fold the IPCC will have to explain exactly what it was doing covering up serious criminal behaviour by the police. Yours sincerely,   Robert Henderson Cc Rachel Cerfontyne  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Sarah Green  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner) Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner) Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner) James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner) Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner) Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner) Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner) Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner) Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner) David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive) Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary) Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General) Alison Saunders (DPP) G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division) Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner) DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS) DCI Tim Neligan (DPS) CI Andy Dunn (DPS) Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden) Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden) John Whittingdale MP George Eustice MP Sir Gerald Howarth MP Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit —————————————————————————-                    Dame Anne Owers Chair Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 27 July 2014   Dear Dame Anne, Further to my email of 8 July   I have had a look at the Police Reform Act 2002 which established the IPCC.  The sections of interest are:   12 Complaints, matters and persons to which Part 2 applies (1)In this Part references to a complaint are references (subject to the following provisions of this section) to any complaint about the conduct of a person serving with the police which is made (whether in writing or otherwise) by— (a)a member of the public who claims to be the person in relation to whom the conduct took place;…. (2)In this Part “conduct matter” means (subject to the following provisions of this section, paragraph 2(4) of Schedule 3 and any regulations made by virtue of section 23(2)(d)) any matter which is not and has not been the subject of a complaint but in the case of which there is an indication (whether from the circumstances or otherwise) that a person serving with the police may have—   (a)committed a criminal offence; or (b)behaved in a manner which would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings. (3)The complaints that are complaints for the purposes of this Part by virtue of subsection (1)(b) do not, except in a case falling within subsection (4), include any made by or on behalf of a person who claims to have been adversely affected as a consequence only of having seen or heard the conduct, or any of the alleged effects of the conduct….   (5)For the purposes of this section a person shall be taken to have witnessed conduct if, and only if—   (a)he acquired his knowledge of that conduct in a manner which would make him a competent witness capable of giving admissible evidence of that conduct in criminal proceedings; or (b)he has in his possession or under his control anything which would in any such proceedings constitute admissible evidence of that conduct…..   My complaint ticks all the boxes: 1. I am the person directly involved. 2. The crimes which are the subject of my complaint misconduct in a public office and the perversion of the course of justice – are serious and thus  should have been submitted to the IPCC under the Mandatory Referral requirement.  The fact that they have not been submitted creates at least a disciplinary offence and quite possibly another  a criminal offence if it has been done with the intent of suppressing a crime. 3. I have supplied to the police conclusive evidence of a serious crime, namely, Morgan’s own written word that he received information from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal, and conclusive evidence of a large number of police officers refusing to investigate the crime. 3. All the evidence I have is admissible, viz: a) The copy of Morgan’s letter was sent to me by the PCC and hence was  not obtained by theft or subterfuge. b) The Mirror story which utilised the illegal information is public knowledge. c)  It is a checkable fact (just look at the police record of my original complaint) that Det Supt  Jeff Curtis did not interview Piers Morgan, Jeff  Edwards or any other Mirror employee or freelance and consequently did not make any examination of the Mirror’s records to see if they had  paid for the  information. d) The evidence of the persistent failure of the police from Operation Elveden to the Directorate of  Professional Standards to investigate the conclusive evidence of  serious crime is contained my correspondence with Operation Elveden and the DPS, copies of which the IPCC has and which I again  include below. Please explain to me by return why the IPCC is refusing to take up my complaint.  The refusal is  clearly in breach of the law. Yours sincerely, Robert Henderson CC Rachel Cerfontyne  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Sarah Green  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner) Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner) Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner) James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner) Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner) Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner) Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner) Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner) Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive) Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary) Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General) Alison Saunders (DPP) G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division) Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner) DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS) DCI Tim Neligan (DPS) CI Andy Dunn (DPS) Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden) Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden) John Whittingdale MP George Eustice MP Sir Gerald Howarth MP Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit —————————————————————————– PCC ref: 2014/030525 !enquiries  Jul 28 at 4:45 PM To ‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk’ Dear Mr Henderson Thank you for your two emails of 24 and 27 July 2014. I will endeavour to answer the points that you raised. In your email of 24 July 2014, you questioned why your complaints against senior officers had not been referred to the IPCC. To support your assertion that your complaints should have been referred to the IPCC because they were against senior officers, you quote the following passage from the IPCC Statutory Guidance: ‘Appeals 1.27 Chief officers now have responsibility for handling certain appeals. All appeals about the recording of complaints will continue to be dealt with by the IPCC. The IPCC will also deal with any appeal concerning a complaint about the conduct of a senior officer or complaints that have been or must be referred to the IPCC.’ However, this passage does not state that complaints against senior officers need to be referred to the IPCC. Rather, it states that the IPCC will act as the relevant appeal body for any complaint about the conduct of a senior officer. I note that your complaints are against a DI Smith and a DS Curtis. In the context of the above passage, a senior officer is an officer holding a rank above Chief Superintendent. In both your emails of 24 and 27 July, you repeat your assertion that your complaints should have been referred to the IPCC because they constitute serious corruption. However, both of your complaints against DI Smith and DS Curtis essentially amount to an allegation that they have failed to investigate criminal allegations against Mr Piers Morgan and Mr Jeff Edwards. While I accept that your original complaint against the unnamed officer who passed information to Mr Piers Morgan would meet the mandatory referral criteria, I again remind you that this incident was referred to our predecessor the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999. The IPCC is not able to deal with matters which  have already been dealt with by the PCA. I hope that my email is satisfactory.   Yours sincerely   Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)   Tel: 03000200096 enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:jack.paynter@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> http://www.ipcc.gov.uk&lt;http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/&gt; IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-guidance&gt; —————————————————————————– Dame Anne Owers Chair Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 6  August  2014 Dear Dame Anne, On 28 July I  received yet another reply from Jack Paynter  (see below) which failed to address the question  of the IPCC’s legal obligations to investigate. He seems to either be unaware of the IPCC’s own definition of corruption or is aware of it and is cynically using that well tried and tested bureaucratic trick of trying to exhaust  a complainant by multiplying correspondence through a deliberate failure to answer questions adequately or at all. Mr Painter takes issue with me over  the meaning of corruption.  He claims that my complaints post Jeff Curtis do not fall within the meaning of the word as far as the IPCC is concerned. Well, here is the IPCC definition, viz.:   35. Police forces and police authorities are required by law to refer complaints or conduct matters to the IPCC if the allegation includes serious corruption which is defined in the IPCC’s Statutory Guidance  2010 as including: • Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely seriously to harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system • Payments or other benefits or favours received in connection with the performance or duties amounting to an offence in relation to which a magistrates’ court would be likely to decline jurisdiction • Corrupt controller, handler or informer relationships   •Provision of confidential information in return for payment or other benefits or favours where the conduct goes beyond a possible prosecution for an offence under section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 • Extraction and supply of seized controlled drugs, firearms or other material • Attempts or conspiracies to do any of the above18 All my complaints against the police  are of misconduct in a public office and the perversion of the course of justice. The offences arise from a failure to act on conclusive evidence of criminal behaviour by Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards when they were employed by the Daily Mirror.  Ergo, these complaints  indubitably fall under  the IPCC’s “Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely seriously to harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system”. They are also  relevant offences which  qualifies them for mandatory referral to the IPCC.. By own rules and regulations you cannot legally refuse to investigate these complaints. The fact that they have not been submitted automatically to the IPCC as the law requires also means you need to take action against the responsible officers for failing to comply with the law. Most importantly, you must ensure  that an investigation of Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards is begun  ASAP.   If you fail to do any or all of  these things you will yourself be guilty of misconduct in a public office and arguably of attempting to pervert the course of justice. That leaves my complaint against De Supt Jeff Curtis and the failure of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999 to investigate my complaints. Mr Painter says that the IPCC cannot investigate complaints rejected by the PCA  Please let me know the legal basis for this claim. But  regardless of whether there is such a legal bar, if the other police officers who have entered the picture since Jeff Curtis’ involvement are investigated it would be absurd if Curtis was not also investigated. I ask once again to meet you. Yours sincerely, Robert Henderson Cc Rachel Cerfontyne  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Sarah Green  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner) Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner) Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner) James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner) Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner) Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner) Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner) Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner) Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive) Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary) Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General) Alison Saunders (DPP) G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division) Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner) DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS) DCI Tim Neligan (DPS) CI Andy Dunn (DPS) Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden) Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden) John Whittingdale MP George Eustice MP Sir Gerald Howarth MP Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit  —————————————————————- !enquiries  Aug 12 at 3:15 PM To ‘robert henderson’ Dear Mr Henderson Thank you for your email dated 6 August 2014, unfortunately Dame Anne is not in a position to respond to individual enquires and your email has been passed to the Customer Contact Team to respond. I am sorry that you feel we were unable to answer your questions in our previous response, however our position remains the same.  This incident was referred to our predecessor the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) in 1999, the IPCC is not able to deal with matters which  have already been dealt with by the PCA. Kind Regards Claire Parker Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW Tel: 0300 020 0096 enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> http://www.ipcc.gov.uk&lt;http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/&gt; IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-guidance&gt; —————————————————————————- Dame Anne Owers Chair Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 17  August  2014 Dear Dame Anne, As you will see from the email from Claire Parker  immediately below I have been sent  yet another reply from your office which fails to answer my questions.  Let me list the questions again: 1. Since when has a senior public servant not been in a position to answer individual queries from a member of the public with serious and pertinent reasons to ask for a meeting, namely, (1) the persistent refusal of the Met Police to investigate serious crimes and  (2) the persistent refusal of IPCC staff to engage with the clearest evidence of serious criminality within the Met Police? 2. In my last email to you (6 August) I asked for the  legal basis for Mr Paynter’s  claim that a complaint already reviewed by the Police Complaints Authority (PCA)  – my complaint against De Supt Jeff Curtis – could not be investigated by the IPCC.  Ms Parker has failed to provide the legal basis. Please supply it. 3. I wrote this in my last email to you: “All my complaints against the police  are of misconduct in a public office and the perversion of the course of justice. The offences arise from a failure to act on conclusive evidence of criminal behaviour by Piers Morgan and Jeff Edwards when they were employed by the Daily Mirror.  Ergo, these complaints  indubitably fall under  the IPCC’s “Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely seriously to harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system”. They are also  relevant offences which  qualifies them for mandatory referral to the IPCC.”  Ms Carter has failed to address this matter. Please explain to me why my complaints other than the one concerning Det Sup Jeff Curtis do not fall within the IPCC’s remit. You are treading on very dangerous ground Dame Anne.  I have provided you with ample opportunity to take up these matters and your refusal to do already constitutes the criminal offence of misconduct in a public office and arguably  is an attempt to pervert the course of justice as the IPCC is de facto part of the justice system. If the story got into the public fold you probably would be tempted to claim that you knew nothing about the business. That would be a difficult position to sustain because (1) I have circulated my emails relating to the matter, including my emails to you, to enough people within the IPCC and the Police to make it improbable that you would not know of the case and  (2) the nature of those involved with the case,  including most importantly Tony and Cherie Blair, makes  it exceedingly likely that it would have been  brought to your attention. Throughout my ten year battle with the Blairs I had these  senior police officers personally deal with my complaints against the Blairs and others such as Piers Morgan who were attached to the story: Det Chief Supt Tony Dawson – The Met’s Internal Investigations Command Dept Supt Jeff Curtis Chief Supt John Yates Chief Supt Eric Brown Supt Cliff Hughes Supt Alex Fish Chief Inspector Julia Wortley Chief Inspector Ian West Det Chief Inspector Stephen Kershaw  My complaints ranged from  the Blairs’ attempts to pervert the course of justice by making allegations to the police about me which as lawyers they must have known were bogus to the death threats I was receiving.  As I am sure you are aware officers of this seniority  would not normally be involved at the operational level with such allegations of crimes.  Yet I had the likes of Tony Dawson – a very influential as well as senior copper – personally taking my statements.  The only reasonable explanation for such utterly exceptional treatment was the Blairs’ involvement. You have a legal obligation to answer my questions.  I suggest you do it before  you put yourself unambiguously into the realm of criminality.  I ask again that we meet to discuss the matter. One further point.  In his email to me of 21 Jusly Mr Paynter wrote “…I note that your email contains allegations about a number of officers within the Metropolitan Police which have not been made in your earlier complaint. Therefore, I have forwarded your email on to the Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) so that these matters can be considered as a new complaint.” I have received nothing from the DPS after 4 weeks.  Please take action to make the DPS contact me about  these complaints. Incidentally, they all fall within the IPCC definition of corruption. Therefore,  the DPS has a mandatory duty to refer them to you. Yours sincerely, Robert Henderson Cc Rachel Cerfontyne  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Sarah Green  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner) Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner) Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner) James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner) Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner) Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner) Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner) Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner) Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive) Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary) Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General) Alison Saunders (DPP) G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division) Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner) DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS) DCI Tim Neligan (DPS) CI Andy Dunn (DPS) Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden) Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden) John Whittingdale MP George Eustice MP Sir Gerald Howarth MP Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit —————————————————————————-IPCC 2014/030525enquiries  Aug 26 at 10:17 AMTo ‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk’ Dear Mr Henderson, Thank you for your email of 17 August 2014. For the legal basis of my assertion that the IPCC is unable to take action with regard to a complaint that was referred to and investigated by the PCA, please refer to The Independent Police Complaints Commission (Transitional Provisions) Order 2004. With regard to your query as to why your subsequent complaints have not been referred to the IPCC, please refer to my email of 28 July 2014. Please note, I consider that I have dealt with these matters in my previous emails. Any further emails received which raise matters which have previously been deal with will be filed, but not responded to. However, as you have not received a recording decision concerning the complaint I forwarded on 21 July 2014 within 15 working days, I have forwarded your email to our Casework Administration department. They will process your appeal and you will receive a formal acknowledgment in due course. Please send any appeal related information via email to northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk. Finally, I note that you continue to copy numerous individuals within the IPCC into your emails. As you may have gathered, these emails are passed to the Customer Contact Centre to be dealt with. In future, please send any emails concerning your appeal to northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk>. Any general enquiries should be sent to enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk>. If you continue to send your emails to multiple individuals within the IPCC, we may consider restricting your email access to the organisation. Yours sincerely   Jack Paynter Customer Contact Advisor Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC)   Tel: 03000200096 enquiries@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:jack.paynter@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> http://www.ipcc.gov.uk&lt;http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/&gt; IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-guidance&gt; ———————————————————————————————————————-   Dame Anne Owers Chair Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 30  August  2014   Dear Dame Anne, I have received  another email from your office, this time from Jack Paynter. His email is dated 26 August. A copy is directly below. Mr Paynter has answered one of my questions, namely, the authority which debars complaints submitted to the Police Complaints Authority being accepted by the IPCC, viz: “(3) No conduct matter shall be recorded under paragraph 10 or 11 of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act if its subject-matter was previously submitted to the appropriate authority or referred to the Authority under Chapter 1 of Part 4 of the Police Act 1996 and as respects that complaint or matter any of the events mentioned in paragraph (1)(a) to (e) occurred.” ( The Independent Police Complaints Commission (Transitional Provisions) Order 2004). As my complaint to the PCA was corruptly rejected by them,  the legislation leads to the dangerous (for justice)   situation whereby  a complainant has no remedy for a gross  abuse of power.  However, in view of the legal position I will set this complaint aside for the moment. That does not get out of the deep hole you have dug for yourself. The rest of my complaints were never submitted to the PCA. Hence,  the IPCC has a legal obligation to accept the complaints and a legal obligation to take disciplinary action against the various police officers who have failed to perform  their mandatory  duty of referring the complaints to the IPCC  – all my complaints are relevant offences  and hence the referral to you is mandatory Mr Paynter has simply ignored these matters, both in his latest email and his previous ones.  It is high time you dealt with these matters yourself. You have the full details of the outstanding complaints   in my previous emails so I will not repeat them. One last thing, Mr Paynter complains about the fact that I have been circulating my emails to the senior management of the IPCC and threatens to restrict my ability to email them.  That is very telling. Stopping the circulation of damaging  facts  is the final refuge of the public servant in trouble because they have misbehaved. I am writing to the senior management to ensure that the failure of the IPCC to do its legal duty is known to each and every one of you so that none of those emailed will be able to say they did not know what was going on when the matter becomes public. I repeat my request to meet with you. Yours sincerely,   Robert Henderson ——————————————————————————————————————————- Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW Our reference no: 2014/030525 Mr Robert Henderson 156 Levita House Chalton St London NW1 1HR 11 September 2014 Dear Mr Henderson . Thank you for your appeal, received in this office on 17 August 2014. You asked us to review the non-recording of your complaint by the Metropolitan Police. This letter acknowledges receipt of your appeal. However, none of the issues have yet been considered. As part of the appeals process the IPCC will contact the relevant chief officer or local policing body, to get all the papers they hold about your complaint. We will use this to assess your appeal. We are currently experiencing a significant volume of work and therefore it may take up to 8 weeks for your appeal to be allocated a casework manager. We would like to assure you that we are doing all we can to manage our appeals work effectively and apologise for any delay you may experience. It is possible that your appeal may be allocated more quickly than this. If you have any further information in support of your appeal  you should provide this to us immediately.  Any addition information you provide should relate to your original complaint. You will not be able to  provide additional information for us to consider after a decision has been made on your appeal or about any new complaint you have made or will be  making. We deal with appeals in date order based on the date they are received by the IPCC.  Please see the appeals area of the IPCC website for the latest forecast of the overall delay , and the date of receipt of appeals that are currently allocated and being reviewed by a Casework Manager. Our role is to review whether or not the chief officer is the appropriate authority to consider your complaint  and whether or not they should have recorded the matter as a complaint under  the Police Reform Act 2002.  If you have not been given a recording decision we can direct the chief officer to provide you with this. Once we have completed the review, the decision we make about your appeal is final. Any direction  made about recording our complaint is not an indication from the IPCC about the merit of your complaint. Yours sincerely, Peter Keane Casework Administrator Mr Peter Keane Casework Administrator Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW Tel: 0161 246 8502 northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk ——————————————————————————————————————————- Independent Police Complaints Commission Mr Peter Keane Casework Administrator PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 23 September  2014 Your  reference no: 2014/030525 Dear Mr Keane, I have just received your letter of 11 September. There are problems with the mail in my area because deliveries are being outsourced to a private company who are regularly dumping post rather than delivering  it.  Consequently, it would be better to conduct future correspondence with me by email. To ensure you have copies of  the full correspondence relating to this case I enclose that correspondence below. It contains everything from my initial contact with Operation Elveden to my last email to Anne Owers dated 30 August. The important thing to grasp is that my complaints fall within the category of those which must as a matter of legal obligation be referred by the police to the IPCC. The IPCC  Mandatory referral criteria contains this   The appropriate authority must refer complaints and conduct matters involving: serious corruption complaints or conduct matters which are alleged to have arisen from the same incident as anything falling within these criteria Serious corruption For the purposes of paragraphs 4(1)(b) and 13(1)(b) of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act and regulations 2(2)(a)(iii) and 5(1)(c) of the Regulations, the term ‘serious corruption’ shall refer to conduct that includes: • Any attempt to pervert the course of justice or other conduct likely to seriously harm the administration of justice, in particular the criminal justice system • Payments or other benefits or favours received in the connection with the performance of duties where a Magistrates’ Court would be likely to decline jurisdiction • Corrupt controller/handler/informer relationships • Provision of confidential information in return for payment or other benefits or favours where the conduct goes beyond a possible prosecution for an offence under section 55 of the Data Protection Act 1998 • Extraction and supply of seized controlled drugs, firearms or other material • Attempts or conspiracies to do any of the above.   All of my complaints apart from that against Supt Jeff Curtis fall within those regulations.  I have made this clear to the IPCC in my emails to  Anne Owers dated 8 July, 6 August, 17 August and 30 August and my email to Jack Paynter dated 17 July and  24 July. When obtaining the information from the various police bodies involved please ensure that everything a sent to Operation Elveden is obtain. This includes a tape recording of Jeff Curtis promising to interview the Mirror editor and other personnel which he then failed to do. Yours sincerely, Robert Henderson Cc Anne Owers (IPCC Chair) Rachel Cerfontyne  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Sarah Green  (IPCC Deputy Chair) Cindy Butts (IPCC Commissioner) Derrick Campbell (IPCC Commissioner) Mary Cunneen(IPCC Commissioner) James Dipple-Johnstone (IPCC Commissioner) Carl Gumsley (IPCC Commissioner) Jennifer Izekor (IPCC Commissioner) Kathryn Stone(IPCC Commissioner) Jan Williams (IPCC Commissioner) Jonathan Tross (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  Ruth Evans (IPCC non-operational commissioner)  David Bird (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Sue Whelan-Tracy (IPCC non-operational commissioner) Amanda Kelly (IPCC Chief Executive) Rt Hon Theresa May MP (Home Secretary) Rt Hon Dominic Grieve MP (Attorney-General) Alison Saunders (DPP) G McGill (CPS Head of Organised Crime Division) Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe (Commissioner) DCS Alaric Bonthron (Head of DPS) DCI Tim Neligan (DPS) CI Andy Dunn (DPS) Commander Neil Basu (Head of Operation Elveden) Detective Inspector Daniel Smith (Operation Elveden) John Whittingdale MP George Eustice MP Sir Gerald Howarth MP Mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk Directorate of Professional Standards (DPS) Appeals Unit ——————————————————————————————————————————- From: !NorthCasework <_NorthCasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> To: “‘anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk'” <anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk> Sent: Wednesday, 24 September 2014, 12:26 Subject: IPCC appeal – 2014/030525 Our ref: 2014/030525 Dear Mr Henderson Thank you for contacting the IPCC. I have made a note on your case to ensure that all  future correspondence is now sent to you via email rather than post. This email acknowledges receipt, it is not a response to any points you have raised. Your correspondence will be reviewed and a response will be sent to you. Yours sincerely Lucy Quin Casework Administrator Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW Tel:  (+44) 0161 246 8502 Email: northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk<mailto:northcasework@ipcc.gsi.gov.uk> http://www.ipcc.gov.uk&lt;http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/> IPCC Statutory Guidance on the handling of police complaints<http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/page/statutory-guidance> ——————————————————————————————————————————- Lucy Quin Casework Administrator Independent Police Complaints Commission PO Box 473 Sale M33 0BW 23 September  2014 Your  reference no: 2014/030525 Dear Ms Quinn, I attach a facsimile copy of the Piers Morgan letter to the PCC in which he admits receiving information  from the police in circumstances which can only have been illegal.  I have supplied this to all the parties mentioned in  the voluminous correspondence I have copied to Mr Keane  and you should have it already. I send it to you to make absolutely certain that this vital piece of evidence does not go missing before the appeal takes place. Yours sincerely, Robert Henderson

The Commons Education Select Committee and the libel of the white working-class

Robert Henderson

The Commons Select Committee (CSC) on Education has  produced a report on the underachievement of white British working-class children.  This  ostensibly  highlights the poor educational performance of white British children who are eligible for free meals (FSM)  compared to those in receipt of FSM from ethnic minority groups such as those of Indian and Chinese ancestry.  I say ostensibly because there are severe flaws in methodology.  These are:

1. The definition of white British is far from simple. The report distinguishes between Irish,  traveller of Irish heritage,  Gypsy/Roma and Any other white background (see CSC table 2 page 13).  The Any other white background is the largest.  It is not clear from the report how the white British were defined, for example , a child of white immigrants might well consider his or herself white British.  Who would whether they were or were not British?
2. The numbers of  some of the ethnic minority groups cited are small, for example, at the end of Key Stage 4 (the end of GCSE courses) in 2013 there were only  168 Chinese in the country who pupils who qualified for FSM. (see CSC table 2 page 13).

3. The use of FSM  as a proxy for working-class  means that  white British apples are being compared with variously coloured ethnic minority  oranges. Most importantly the use of FSM means that the British white working-class as a whole is not represented , but only the poorest  section of it. Hence, the general treatment in the media of the report, that it shows the white working-class to be falling behind ethnic minorities, is grossly misleading. The report recognises this:

…measuring working class performance in education through FSM data can be misleading. The Centre for Research in Race and Education (CRRE) drew our attention to a mismatch between the proportion of children who were eligible for free school meals and the proportion of adults who would self-define as working class:17 in 2012/13, 15% of pupils at the end of key stage 4 were known to be eligible for free school meals,18 compared with 57% of British adults who defined themselves as ‘working class’ as part of a survey by the National Centre for Social Research.The CRRE warned that projecting the educational performance of a small group of economically deprived pupils onto what could otherwise be understood to be a much larger proportion of the population had “damaging consequences” on public understanding of the issue. The logical result of equating FSM with working class was that 85% of children were being characterised as middle class or above.

The  white British group  will be overwhelmingly drawn from the most deprived part of that  group’s population, while many of the ethnic minority groups  held up as superior to the white British children , will have a large  component of people who are not drawn from the lower social reaches of their society, but are poor simply because they are either  first generation immigrants or the children of first generation immigrants and  have not established themselves in well paid work – think of all the tales the mainstream media and politicians regale the British with about immigrant graduates doing menial jobs.  These  parents  will both have more aspiration for their children and a greater  ability to assist their children with their schoolwork.

The range  of  those qualifying for FSM is extensive and there is  considerable  complexity resulting from pupils  going in and out of the qualifying criteria, viz:

(Para 12 of the report) . Of the  Children are eligible for free school meals if their parents receive any of the following payments:

Income Support

• Income-based Jobseekers Allowance

• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance

• Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999

• the guaranteed element of State Pension Credit

• Child Tax Credit (provided they are not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and

have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)

• Working Tax Credit run-on—paid for 4 weeks after they stop qualifying for

Working Tax Credit

• Universal Credit

13. A report for the Children’s Society noted that the criteria for FSM mean that parents working 16 or more hours per week (24 hours for couples from April 2012) lose their entitlement to FSM since they are eligible for working tax credit; as a result there are around 700,000 children living in poverty who are not entitled to receive free school meals. In addition, not all those who may be eligible for FSM register for it; a recent report for the Department for Education estimated under-registration to be 11% in 2013. This figure varies across the country: in the North East under-registration is estimated to  be 1%, compared to 18% in the East of England and 19% in the South East. 

4. Greater resources, both material  advantages and better quality staff,  are being put into schools which have a  very large ethnic  minority component  than schools which are predominantly filled with white British children.  This is occurring both as a matter of deliberate government policy and through not-for-profit corporations such as charities.

Government policies are things such as the  pupil premium . This is paid to schools for each pupil  who qualifies under these criteria:

In the 2014 to 2015 financial year, schools will receive the following funding for each child registered as eligible for free school meals at any point in the last 6 years:

£1,300 for primary-aged pupils

£935 for secondary-aged pupils

Schools will also receive £1,900 for each looked-after pupil who:

has been looked after for 1 day or more

was adopted from care on or after 30 December 2005, or left care under:

a special guardianship order

a residence order

The amounts involved for a school can  be considerable. Suppose that a secondary school with 1,000 children  has 40% of its pupils qualifying for  FSM. That would bring an additional  £374,000 to the school in this financial year.   At present £2.5 billion is being spent on the pupil premium.

According to a Dept of Education (DoE) investigation published in 2013, Evaluation of Pupil Premium Research Report ,  a  good deal of this money is being spent on ethnic minorities and those without English as a first language     (see tables 2.1 and 2.2, pages27 and 30) . The pupil premium can be used to provide extra staff, better staff, improved equipment after school activities and so on.

Schools can allocate the Pupil Premium money  at their discretion and often make the identification of where money has gone next to impossible because they do things such as merging the Pupil Premium money with money from other budgets and joining forces with other schools in the area to provide provision (see pages 14/15 in the DoE report).  It is probable that the Pupil Premium money brought into schools by white British working-class FSM children  is being used,  at least in part,  to benefit ethnic minorities. The converse is wildly improbable.

Ethnic minorities are concentrated in particular areas and particular schools. This makes it more  likely that ethnic children will go to schools with a higher  proportion of  free school meal pupils than schools dominated by  white pupils.  That will provide significantly greater funding for an ethnic  minority majority school than for one dominated by white Britons, most of whom will not qualify for the Pupil Premium. .

Because ethnic minority families, and especially those of first generation immigrants, are substantially larger on average than those of  white Britons, the likelihood of ethnic minority children qualifying for FSM will be greater than it is for white Britons because  the larger the family the more likely a child is to qualify for FSM.   This will boost the additional money from the pupils premium going to ethnic  minority dominated schools.

An example of not-for-profit intervention is  the charity Teach First.  The select committee report (para  116) describes their work:

 The Government’s response to the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s first annual report noted that Teach First will be training 1,500 graduates in 2014 to 2015 and placing them in the most challenging schools, and that as of 2014/15 Teach First will be placing teachers in every region of England.

The Teach First  website states:  “Applicants to our Leadership Development Programme are taken through a rigorous assessment process. We select only those who demonstrate leadership potential, a passion to change children’s lives and the other skills and attributes needed to become an excellent teacher and leader. These participants teach and lead in our partner primary and secondary schools in low-income communities across England and Wales for a minimum of two years, ensuring every child has access to an excellent education.”

Apart from specific programmes such as the Pupil Premium and special training for teachers to prepare them what are euphemistically called “challenging schools” which end up disproportionately  favouring ethnic minority pupils,  there is also scope within  the normal funding of state schools to favour ethnic minorities because head teachers have a good deal of discretion in how funds are spent. That applies with knobs on to Academies and Free Schools.

There is also a considerable difference in funding between the funding of areas with large ethic minority populations, especially black and Asian groups,  and areas with largely white populations,  for example,   between East Anglia and London: “ The government has announced plans to raise per-pupil funding 3.7pc in Norfolk to £4,494, 7pc in Cambridgeshire to £4,225 and 2.5pc in Suffolk to £4,347 next year following a campaign by MPs.

“But councillors have called for a long term overhaul of the funding system, which will still see each student in the county receive around half of the allocation in the City of London, which will get £8,594.55 for each pupil.”

5. The effect of political correctness. With good reason any teacher,  and  especially white teachers,   will be fearful of not seeming to be devoutly political correct.  They know they are at the mercy of other teachers , parents and pupils and know that an accusation of racism from any  source could well end their teaching career at worst and at best seriously disrupt their lives while a complaint is being investigated. In addition, many  teachers will be emotionally attached to political correctness generally and to multiculturalism in particular.

In such circumstances it is reasonable to suspect that teachers in schools with a mix of ethnic minority and white British children  will devote more time and patience to ethnic minority pupils than   to white children.  They may do this without conscious intent, with either  fear or the ideological commitment making such a choice seem the natural one.

Such preferential treatment for ethnic minority children is facilitated by the large amount of continuous assessment  involved in GCSE.  (This is supposedly being reduced but the results of the change has not yet worked through to the end of a GCSE cycle.  Teachers routinely help children to re-write work which does not come up to par, in some cases re-doing the work themselves . Teachers have also been caught helping pupils  to cheat during exams . The opportunity and the temptation to help ethnic minority children is there and the pressure of political correctness may cause opportunity to become actuality.

6. The disruptive effect on schools of a large number of pupils from different backgrounds with English as a second language, the type of schools where the headmaster boasts “We have 100 languages spoken here”.   The most likely white British children to be in such schools are those from the poorest homes which means they qualify as FSM pupils.  They will be lost in these Towers of Babel not only because often they will be in the minority,  but also because, unlike children with English as a second language or  ethnic minority English speakers  who will have a good chance of enhanced tuition, the white British FSM pupils  will not enjoy  such a privilege and may be actually ignored to a large extent because of the desire of the staff to assist ethnic minority children.

7 . The downplaying of British culture. The school curriculum in Britain and  especially in England (where the vast majority of the British live)   is shaped to reflect the politically correct worldview.  This means that ethnic minority culture and history  are frequently  pushed ahead of British culture and history.   The larger the percentage of ethnic minorities in a school, the greater will be the tendency to marginalise the white British pupils, who will almost certainly be drawn largely from those qualifying for FSM. They will be deracinated and become culturally disorientated.

To this school propaganda is added the politically correct and anti-British, anti-white  propaganda which is pumped out  ceaselessly by mainstream politicians and the media. This  will reinforce the idea that being white and British is  somehow at best  inferior to that of ethnic minority cultures and at worst something to be ashamed of, something  to be despised, something which is a  danger  to its possessor.

Conclusion

As far as the general public is concerned, the Select Committee report is saying the white working-class children – all of them not just those receiving FSM  – are doing less well than ethnic minority children.   The reason for this is simple, the mainstream media have reported the story in a way which would promote such a belief, both in their  headlines and the stories themselves.

A comparison between  the  white British population as a whole and the ethnic minority populations as a whole would be nearer to reality, but it would still be comparing apples and oranges for the reasons given above. The ethnic minority children would still be likely to have on average parents who would not be representative of the ancestral populations they came from, political correctness would still drive teachers to favour ethnic minority pupils,  continuous assessment would still allow teachers to illegally aid ethnic minorities, heads could still decide to divert more funds towards ethnic minorities and the promotion of ethnic minority cultures and history would still exist.

What could be done to remedy matters? Continuous assessment should stop  and end of  course synoptic exams substituted . Ethnic minority children should not have more spent on them than white British children.  School funding in different areas should be broadly similar per capita.  British culture and history should be the dominant teaching driver.  Political correctness should be removed from the curriculum generally.

As for future studies, these should be controlled in a much more subtle manner than simply using FSM  as a criterion.  Any study of all or any part of group should control for parents’ education,  income, the amount of money spent on each pupil, the teacher pupil ratio,  the quality of the teachers and the general facilities of the school.

Those suggestions would not entirely cure the problem,  but it would be good start to both getting at the truth and ending the demonization of the white working-class  which has gathered pace ever since the Labour Party decided to drop the white working-class as their client base and substitute for them the politically correct groups of gays, feminists and most potently ethnic minorities.

See also

http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/the-english-white-working-class-and-the-british-elite-from-the-salt-of-the-earth-to-the-scum-of-the-earth/

 

The Camp of the Saints tested against reality

English translation from the French by Norman Shapiro, Professor of French Romance Languages and Literatures Department 3089, Wesleyan University,  Connecticut, USA.   Email nshapiro@wesleyan.edu

The full English text can be found at https://archive.org/stream/CampOfTheSaints/Camp_of_the_Saints_djvu.txt

Robert Henderson

The French writer Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints  was  published in 1973. It is notorious or famous,  according to your politics,  for its story of  the Third World poor successfully invading the First World. The invaders come  armed not with guns and bombs,  but the potent weapons of  their huge  numbers and  the knowledge  that  the self-destructive  ideology of Western elites  – what we would  nowadays call  the “anti-racist” part of political correctness  – had warped the minds of most of those  elites  and also  those  of the masses of  the First World,  who  have been beaten into a state  where they either cannot see when their own interests are being sacrificed on the altar of one worldism or are cowed to the point where  they are paralysed into inaction.

At the time of its writing the  book  was set in twenty or so years in  the future. As the story opens a  fleet of 100 ramshackle ships  dubbed the Ganges Armada  gathers in India and soon  sets off  for Europe.  In the ships are one million of the subcontinent’s poor.  The intention of the Armada is to run  the ships aground on European shores – this is a strictly one way voyage – decant their cargo and present the land on which they descend  with a dilemma, namely,  allow the million  to invade or resist them with force with the ultimate sanction being mass slaughter of the invaders.

It takes  the ships fifty daysto arrive on the northern shores of the Mediterranean with Southern France as the final  destination.   As the Ganges Armada sails the Western elites are either  starry eyed about their dream of a world in which there is no us and them – no nation states, just Mankind  with a capital M –  or paralysed by the one-world propaganda which has been so assiduously fed to them.

Even those members of the elite who do not  believe in the One Worldism  have developed the  peculiar state of mind which arises  when  propaganda is not only incessant but gainsaying the propaganda is seen as   dangerous.  Such people do not embrace the content of the propaganda,  nor play along out of abject and immediate  fear. Rather, they sublimate the fear and develop a feeling that to rebut the propaganda is somehow wrong, although if asked they could not say exactly where the wrongness lay.   The state of mind is akin to that of a person who feels that a sick joke is inappropriate if expressed in company even if it makes them inwardly laugh.  In short, they have been conditioned to think of certain ideas and words as unclean for no other reason that they have been told over and over again that these things are beyond the Pale.   As for the masses,  they have variously bought into the propaganda,   had their true feelings suppressed  by the constant propaganda as described above or  been censored out of public life.

But human nature has not been utterly transformed.  There is the natural  human response to trouble of thinking it will not happen. While the Ganges Armada is a long way off heads are buried in the sand with non-pc thoughts such as that the ships will all be sunk by rough weather and seas  before they reach Europe because of their decrepit state.  Hardly anyone in a position of authority or influence is realistic and honest about the outcome of the Armada if it reaches its destination , namely,  that it will be an invasion which if not resisted will overturn the societies into which the human cargo,  full of misery  and entitlement, is decanted.  Instead they either preach the  message that  the arrival of the Armada will be a great blessing for it will allow the West to show its generosity of spirit by welcoming the invaders with open arms or indulge in the hypocrisy of secretly hoping the ships will founder at sea.

But the weather is unusually clement and the Ganges Armada comes closer and closer until its arrival off the French Mediterranean coast is imminent.  This causes the vast majority of the population of the South of France  to abandon any pretence of seeing the ships’  arrival as anything other than a threat  and the vast majority  flee to the North of France. This is only a temporary place of safety and before  long much of the French elite also hot-foot it  to Switzerland ,  thinking wrongly that it will be a haven against the One Worldist mania –eventually the Swiss fall prey to the same lack of will to resist the invaders and open their borders to the invading Third World hordes.

The most naïve of the  One Worlders advance towards  the point at which the ships will make landfall in the sublimely silly expectation that they will be welcomed with open arms  by the invading one million. Once they  arrive the One Worldist simpletons are at best ignored and at worst attacked. They also find that they are at risk from the Third World immigrants and their descendants who are  already in France.

When the Ganges Armada finally  arrives and  sheds its cargo of one million there is little resistance because not only have most of the population fled , but the  French armed forces prove worthless, most having been robbed of the will to resist the invasion with  brute force by the ceaseless propaganda which has been fed to them.   The result is mass desertions.

The Ganges Armada is only the beginning.  Other fleets full of  Third World  misery to west upon the West  are being prepared. Nor is it just a seaborne invasion. Even as the Ganges Armada is at sea huge numbers of Chinese are massing on the Chinese border with the Asiatic Russian territories.

The novel ends with France overrun and the white native French population reduced to not exactly slavery but an irrelevance as power shifts to the non-white migrants who were either in France before the Armada arrived or are part of the Armada and its successor Third World invasion. The same general thing happens throughout the West, with the white native population everywhere becoming subordinate, becoming strangers in a strange land which was once theirs but is now utterly changed.

How prophetic is  the Camp of the Saints? Raspail understood when he published the  book that it would not  be prophetic in the detail of his imaginings,    but only in his  general  message. Indeed, in  his short preface  he admits that the detail of the action in the book is unrealistic: “I had wanted to write  a lengthy preface to explain my position and show that this is no wild-eyed dream; that even if the specific action, symbolic as it is, may seem farfetched, the fact remains that we are inevitably heading for something of the sort. We need only glance at the awesome population figures predicted for the year 2000, i.e., twenty-eight years from now: seven billion people, only nine hundred million of whom will be white.”

The invasion of the First World has not occurred as  dramatically as Raspail portrayed it. If it had perhaps even the Quisling politically correct  politicians of the West would have been forced to resist it with force,  both because they feared the fury of the people they supposedly represented and for fear of what the reality would be if such an invasion force had landed.  Instead the immigration  has  happened piecemeal, surreptitiously.  There has never been a dramatic massing  of Third World immigrants to gain entry to the First World Promised Land in one fell swoop, just an  incessant trickle through numerous points of entry. The nearest events  to what Raspail describes  are the various boat people  arriving in the West  from Latin America, Africa and Asia. But although large in aggregate,  each individual attempt at invasion contains hundreds at best and most commonly in numbers of less than ten. When seaborne they come not as an imposing  fleet but singly or as a small flotilla  at worst.  More commonly their illegal entry is by plane, train or motor vehicle, a handful at a time.

Where Raspail was  strikingly astute is his prediction of the immense weight of “anti-racist”  politically correct propaganda which the West has seen. He l catalogues all the politically correct grotesquery  we have today with definitive characters.   There are those in positions of authority and influence such Albert Dufort, the trendy radio journalist,  who prostitute themselves and their country by representing  the  Ganges Armada  and the other soon to be launched Third World invasion fleets, not as a threat but as a great opportunity to show their humanity.  There are those drawn from the ethnic minorities already well ensconced in French society such as the  Algerian Ben Suad (who goes by the name of Clement Dio)  whose lives are devoted to biting the hand that feeds them.  Perhaps most forlornly there are the French  young who have  had their natural tribal feeling sucked from them: “ That scorn of a people for  other races, the knowledge that one’s own is best, the triumphant joy at feeling oneself to be part of humanity’s finest — none of that had ever filled these youngsters’ addled brains, or at least so little that the monstrous cancer implanted in the Western conscience had quashed it in no time at all. In their case it wasn’t a matter of tender heart, but a morbid, contagious excess of sentiment, most interesting to find in the flesh and observe, at last, in action.”  Chapter 1

All of this is most impressive because when the book was written political correctness was in its  early stages.  In Britain  a couple of Race Relations Acts  had been passed in 1965 and 1968, and one worldism, especially with a Marxist tinge, was very popular in academia. But there was no general  propagandising of the British population and punishments for being non-pc about race and immigration had barely begun to get a hold on British society. Even in the United States, the most advanced of states promoting  “anti-racist” measures ,  measures such as “positive discrimination” and “affirmative action”  were still in their infancy.  The secular inquisition of individuals accused of pc “crimes” that we know today with people increasingly  being sent to prison or routinely losing their jobs  did not exist. The long march through the institutions still had a good  distance to go.

The book’s general argument that the West would be subject to massive immigration which would radically change their societies  is correct.  In Britain the last national census  in 2011 showed this for the population of England and Wales combined :

White was the majority ethnic group at 48.2 million in 2011 (86.0 per cent). Within this ethnic group, White British1 was the largest group at 45.1 million (80.5 per cent).

The White ethnic group accounted for 86.0 per cent of the usual resident population in 2011, a decrease from 91.3 per cent in 2001 and 94.1 per cent in 1991.

White British and White Irish decreased between 2001 and 2011. The remaining ethnic groups increased, Any Other White background had the largest increase of 1.1 million (1.8 percentage points).

The population of England and Wales at the time of the census was”  56,170,900 in mid-2011, with the population of England estimated to be 53,107,200 and the population of Wales estimated to be 3,063,800”. In a generation the white population, British and foreign , has dropped by 8% and those describing themselves as white British  were only 45 million out of 56 million.

There is also strong evidence that the idea of deliberately encouraging mass immigration of the unassimilable to change Western societies  has been practised by  Western Governments. Think of the words of a Tony Blair special adviser  Andrew Neather :

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.

In May 2014 the British  think tank Policy Exchange  published a report  on racial  and ethnic minorities entitled A portrait of modern Britain.  The headline grabbing statistic in the report is the claim that ”the five largest distinct Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities could potentially double from 8 million people or 14% of the population [now] to between 20-30% by the middle of the century. Over the past decade, the UK’s White population has remained roughly the same while the minority population has almost doubled. Black Africans and Bangladeshis are the fastest growing minority communities with ethnic minorities representing 25% of people aged under the age of five.”

Because immigrants and their descendants  have a substantially greater propensity to breed than that of the native white British population and that fact coupled with  the  much younger average age  of immigrants than that of native Britons means that the Policy Exchange projections are realistic.

What the Camp of the Saints should do is force people to accept at both an intellectual and emotional level what mass immigration represents.   It is a form of conquest,  and conquest of the most pernicious and fundamental   kind when it consists primarily of  those who cannot or will not fully assimilate into the native population. Oncesuch  immigrants are  in a country in large numbers,  the country is faced with two terrible choices:  either capitulate to the fact of  their conquest and allow the country to dissolve  into a motley multicultural mess occupying a single territory or forcibly remove the  immigrants and their descendants through expulsion or  massacre.  Nor should it be imagined that the dissolution of the country into racial/ethnic  blocs will mean an absence of war. History tells a single simple story about racially and ethnically divided territories: violence is an inevitable and ineradicable  part of such societies and the more the different groups within a territory begin to be of equal size the greater the risk of conflict.

The question which Raspail brings us to is this, is the invasion to be permitted through an excessive and fatal excess sentiment or is it to be  resisted through force, including in the final extremity the    mass killing of men , women and children,  or will the invaders be permitted to come, breed and settle the territory of the original population? Mass immigration is conquest, just as surely as an armed invasion is conquest.  A people who forgets that or buries their collective head in the political sand hoping the bogeyman will go away is doomed.

There are weaknesses in the novel purely as a literary work,  although the fact that I am commenting on an English translation should be born in mind. There is little character development, the dialogue is feeble,  the language flowery, there is a good deal of Gallic intellectual exhibitionism and a considerable amount of what I can only describe as a third person stream of consciousness.  The last I must confess is not to my taste. Raspail also gives his story a strong flavour of the leftist student protest of 1968 and the widespread attraction to the Western intelligentsia of Marxism, especially in its Troskyite manifestations.  This seems like another world today  even though the period  is only 40 odd years ago and may make the work seem alien or simply dated to some readers.

But these  weaknesses do not diminish the importance of the book, for it is  Raspail’s general  message which   matters. The message is important both because its general thrust is true and for the shameful fact that it is saying things which if expressed in a new work being offered for publication today would ensure that it did not find a mainstream publisher in the West.