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

The Thomas Mair Affair

Robert Henderson

Thomas Mair has been convicted of the murder of the Labour MP Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) . His sentence was  a whole life tariff which makes it very unlikely  that he will ever be released.

That is the bare bones of the matter, but there is something distinctly odd about this case for the reported facts  relating to it do not seem to hang comfortably together. That Mair killed Cox is clear  and  his ostensible  motive for committing the murder , namely,  that she was a supporter of the remain side in the EU referendum is established, but precious little is else is satisfactorily explained.

The strangeness of the killing

Mair  has no revealed previous history of violence , yet his attack on Cox was both sustained and involved not only the shooting of Cox but  multiple stabbings.  For a supposed first time killer Mair showed surprisingly little panic or squeamishness when confronted with the actuality of attacking someone in such a physically  intimate manner.   Instead , he  was remarkably self-possessed during the attack and afterwards according to media reports, so much so that when a man called Rashid Hussain tried to intervene  during the attack on Cox Mair coolly told him “ Move back, otherwise I’m going to stab you.”  He also reloaded his .22 gun twice, shot Cox three times and stabbed her 15 times.  Such determined and  unflustered behaviour is unusual to say the least  for someone who had never done anything like it before.  About the only thing  amateurish  about the attack was the fact that he did not kill the MP quickly.

After the attack, Mair made no meaningful  attempt to flee – he was arrested a mile away from the murder – and he  did not disguise himself.  A number of people witnessed  the attack on Cox  and as  the killing was near Mair’s  home the odds against him not being rapidly identified were vanishingly small.

The discontinuity between Mair’s behaviour before the trial and in the trial

After being arrested  Mair refused to answer questions put to him by the police including questions about his political  leanings. Again he  appeared very self-possessed.  Photographs showing him in a custody booth  could have been taken of a man waiting quietly in a hospital  before he is  called for an examination.

During the act of killing he was reported to have shouted   “Britain first”, “this is for Britain”, “Britain always comes first” and “keep Britain independent”  and when  he made his first appearance in court he  gave his name as Death to Traitors, freedom for Britain”.  There is some dispute about the exact words but the discovery of  a good deal of  hard right literature  in his home makes such statements plausible. Mair’s behaviour to this point suggested  he   wanted to be caught and to use his trial as a platform to complain about the EU and the support MPs such as Cox gave to it.

At his trial everything changed. When called upon to plead he refused to do so and  pleas  of not guilty to the various charges  were entered on his behalf,  as is usual in English courts.  The refusal to plead could be interpreted as Mair  doing what many politically motivated people do when placed on trial, namely,  attempt to remove legitimacy from the court by refusing to acknowledge it.  However, people who take that course generally, one way or another,  make it crystal clear what they are doing. All that Mair offered was silence until he had been convicted for he did not give evidence in his own defence.

What his attitude or strategy was in behaving in this manner is debatable because he can have had no meaningful expectation that  the verdict would be anything but t guilty. Hence, he would have had no reason to fear cross examination because the fact that he killed Cox could not be reasonably said to be in dispute and prosecuting counsel  would have had little to grill Mair  about because the facts of the killing  were not in dispute.    Mair would have been able to have his own barrister lead him through whatever  he wanted to say without  much fear of the prosecution  making him look silly in cross examination because there would have been precious little the Prosecution  could have gained from cross examination as not only were the facts of the killing clear Mair  defence did not include  any evidence  of mental illness.

Mair’s attempt to speak after conviction

After conviction  Mair  did try to speak before sentence but was refused leave to do so by the judge Mr Justice Wilkie .  The ground for the refusal  was Mair’s failure to give evidence. This struck me as very rum so   I asked an experienced  lawyer whether such a refusal was sound judicial practice and their  answer was an unequivocal no. The refusal  seem  more than a little rather strange not least because little if any mitigation was presented by his barrister

The right to make an unsworn sentence before conviction was abolished in England in 1982 (by section 72 of the Criminal Justice Act. However, the Act gave a convicted defendant the right to speak in mitigation, viz:

“2 Abolition of right of accused to make unsworn statement.

(1)Subject to subsections (2) and (3) below, in any criminal proceedings the accused shall not be entitled to make a statement without being sworn, and accordingly, if he gives evidence, he shall do so [F1(subject to sections 55 and 56 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999)] on oath and be liable to cross-examination; but this section shall not affect the right of the accused, if not represented by counsel or a solicitor, to address the court or jury otherwise than on oath on any matter on which, if he were so represented, counsel or a solicitor could address the court or jury on his behalf.

(2)Nothing in subsection (1) above shall prevent the accused making a statement without being sworn—

(a)if it is one which he is required by law to make personally; or

(b)if he makes it by way of mitigation before the court passes sentence upon him.”

Plainly Mair could have wanted to make  a plea in mitigation and it would almost certainly have been a plea of mitigation in the sense that he wished to explain his actions which would whatever they were bear on mitigation even if he was to say he thought his action justified because Cox was a traitor for supporting the EU.

The refusal to allow him to speak should have been challenged by his barrister but appears  not to  have been.

Another oddity of the trial was the reading into evidence, that is, before Mair was convicted, of the Labour MP  Stephen Kinnock’s statement about how praisworthy he thought Cox  was. That was simply bizarre because it could have no bearing on Mair”s guilt or innocence. Again Mair’s brief appears to have made no protest.

After sentencing there was one last loose end put into the public arena. The police announced that they were  trying to find the person, if any,  who sold Mair the gun with which he shot Cox.   (The gun was legally held by someone other than Mair before it was stolen in August 2015.)  By the time of the trial  the police  had had more than four months to  start such a search and it is somewhat surprising that they have made no progress to date. It may even be that the police  have only just started looking because the Daily Telegraph on 23 November 2016  stated that “  A major manhunt was underway on Wednesday night for the person who handed the 53-year-old loner the modified bolt-action rifle, which was stolen almost a year before the murder.”  

Mair’s silence

What are we to think about Mair’s failure to give evidence? If  the man  was driven by  his politics his natural course would surely have been to make a statement to police detailing his reasons for killing Cox.  Moreover, he was  distinctly bullish about his motives and politics during the killing and at  his first court appearance. He might have been overwhelmed with what he had done and the reality of the circumstances he found himself in.  But his calm demeanour  after arrest  and during  the trial itself  makes this unlikely and in any case he wanted to speak before sentence.

It is possible although  improbable that Mair  decided  he would  refuse  to acknowledge the legitimacy of the court by failing to either plead or give evidence  until he was convicted and then give whatever message he wanted to put before the public . If so he was thwarted by the judge. I   can find no media report  which either carried details of a protest in court  by Mair at being denied an opportunity to speak   or of his barrister making representations on his behalf that he should be allowed to speak. It is conceivable that the media collectively decided not to carry details of Mair protesting or his barrister arguing that he should be allowed to speak,  but that would surely  be stretching credulity past breaking point.

The only really plausible  explanations for Mair’s  behaviour  would seem to be that  he  is  either mentally ill or that he was intimidated by the authorities into not giving evidence.

Mair’s history of mental illness

One of the most surprising things about the case  is that no psychiatric evidence was offered in court. This was noteworthy for two reasons. The first was the obvious one that Mair’s behaviour and the nature of the crime itself was such as to make  an assessment of his state of mind  necessary if justice was to be seen to be done. The second was the fact that Mair had not only received psychiatric treatment in  the past for depression  but on the day before the killing he attempted unsuccessfully  to get help for that condition.

There is plenty of opportunity within the justice system for mental illness to be picked up. The police have powers to order a psychiatric examination of  someone they suspect  has a mental illness.   The question of fitness to plead may be raised before arraignment by the prosecution, defence or Judge.  Requesting psychiatric reports after conviction but before  sentencing is  often done. It is important to understand  that an accused cannot simply declare himself or herself as fit to plead.

Despite all these opportunities  there was no psychiatric evidence presented to the court. Of course if Mair instructed his lawyers not to bring his mental health issues in court as a defence or mitigation they could not do so if he was considered fit to plead which he was.  However, the court itself could have ordered psychiatric reports before sentencing took place and  apparently  did not do so.

But if Mair instructed  to his lawyers  not to use his medical history in the case that would make it  all the more extraordinary  that he failed to  either give evidence or to make a public protest when he was being  denied an opportunity to speak.

Had his  psychiatric history been used at his trial  it is possible it could have made a significant difference to the sentence Mair received . The charge could have been reduced  to manslaughter  if  Mears  was judged to have diminished  responsibility  or lead to a sentence of something less than a whole life term.

Intriguingly the Guardian reported that Mair had undergone a psychiatric examination but no evidence of mental illness was found, a rather surprising conclusion because of the nature of the crime, Mair’s behaviour during the attack and the fact that Mair had been treated for depression.  However, the Guardian report does not say who commissioned the assessment.

The behaviour of Mair’s barrister

Judged by the media reports Mair’s barrister Simon Russell-Flint QC  was virtually inert throughout the trial. He challenged only one minor point of the prosecution’s evidence, did not bring any evidence on behalf of Mair  and failed to challenge the judge’s refusal to allow Mair to speak after sentence.  H

A barrister’s attempt at explaining Russell-Flint’s behaviour can be found here.

It is worth noting that Mair received £75,000 in legal aid for his defence.  It would be fascinating to see the detailed breakdown of  how the money was spent.

What the British state had to gain from Mair’s silence

The alternative explanation that  state  actors have  frightened Mair into keeping quiet  raises the question what did  they have  to gain?   The British elite are very twitchy about having trials in which those charged with breaches of the totalitarian ideology known as political correctness are unwilling to plead  guilty. Moreover, even those who do  plead not guilty very  rarely rest their defence on the right to free expression seeking instead to blame their behaviour on things such as the side effects of  prescription drugs.  Often those who start off with a not  guilty plea will be gradually worn down by officialdom until they agree to plead guilty.   A first rate example of this is the case of  Emma West who, after complaining on a tram about the level of immigration,  was first held in the UK’s nearest to a maximum security prison for women and,  after being given bail , was then harassed for  months simply because she would not plead guilty. Eventually worn down by the delay and fearing that her young son might be taken away from her, she pleaded guilty to some lesser charges than those originally laid.

The reason why our politically correct powers-that -be  fear a not guilty plea in such cases is they do not want their willingness to suppress free expression attacked or simply made starkly visible in a public forum or for those in the dock to challenge the politically correct view of the world.  Part of the politically correct narrative is that political correctness does not impinge on free expression. This is self-evidently absurd, but it is an essential  plank in the enforcement of political correctness.   For the politically correct  to say  otherwise would be to undermine their crand show it nakedly for what it is, a totalitarian creed which insists the only acceptable view of anything which political correctness touches is the politically correct one. In  principle this means everything  important in human existence because the  concept of discrimination lays every aspect of life open to intrusion by the ideology.  No totalitarian ideology can survive if it is questioned  and political correctness is more vulnerable to intellectual demolition than most because  it is  series of injunctions  which conflict horribly with human nature .

It could have been this elite fear of having political correctness challenged which prompted the judge to refuse Mair leave to address the court.  Mair’s  case was of course very different from those prosecuted for non-pc speech  because of his undisputed crime of murder, but the threat of someone calling those with power who supported the  UK’s membership  traitors, as Mair  most probably would have done judged by his previous public statements during the killing and his first court appearance,  might have seemed a little too close to home for our politicians in particular to view with equanimity.  Treason is a unique crime. Whether it is on the statute book or not, whether it is formally defined one way or another, everyone knows in their heart  of hearts  what it is,  the most  heartrending of emotional blows, namely, betrayal.

There was also  the possibility of elite fear of what one might call  the Anders Breivik effect. If Mair had spoken in court and given a purely political motive for the killing and justified on the grounds that Cox was committing treason this would  almost certainly this would have  created an ambivalent response amongst the public.  The British experience with Irish terrorism are a good example of the tendency where Irish Republicans would often say after a bombing atrocity “I  don’t approve of their methods but….”   There would have been condemnation of the act of killing of course, but along with that in quite a few  minds there would  be a sense that Mair’s political reason for the attack, that he was killing  a traitor, somehow softened  the purely  criminal sharpness  of the deed. There will also be a hard core of those who  were unambiguously glad to see her dead .  A piece of research carried out by Birmingham City and  Nottingham Trent Universities on tweets about the murder of Cox found that  at least 25,000 out of 50,000 tweets studied celebrated her death.

A  silent or at least a Mair not allowed to speak publicly is a perfect  fit to fill  two roles for the  UK’s politically correct elite’s narrative.  First,  he could be  typified as the  type of person the remain side of the referendum said was the typical leave voter, someone who  was ignorant and potentially  violent;  second he  could be pointed at as a  “far right”  terrorist  to balance  against the many Muslim terrorists.  This has already happened : here are a few example  links  one, two, three .

There is also the possibility that  the security services  or the police knew about Mair and did not take any action because they  hoped  that he might do something which would promote the idea  of that those who wanted to leave the EU are  dangerous extreme rightwingers . It is conceivable  although very improbable , that in some way the security services surreptitiously encouraged Mair to  attack  Cox to feed into the general propaganda of the pro-EU side of the  Brexit referendum that portrayed leavers as racist far right know-nothings.   More plausibly  the security services  might  thought that Mair would not do anything more than engage in a public protest or perhaps a bit of criminal damage and they seriously misjudged the situation.  It  would be very damaging  if that was the case and they had been forced to admit such a thing in the witness box.

There are those who  believe that state actors or possibly  fanatical remainers arranged the killing to play into the remainer propaganda that  Breiteers  were racist far righters. This is wildly improbable for three reasons.   First, the  large the number of people who would have to be engaged in such a conspiracy;  second, if such a plot existed why would a novice  MP with little public profile be selected to die?

Then there is the idea that Cox is not dead and the killing was in fact a sham. Only one question really needs to be asked here, namely, why on Earth would Cox have agreed to taking part in such a plot?  The number of people who would have had to be in on the plot would have had to even greater than those in  an actually killing arranged by the state or fanatical remainers.

Finally,   there is the idea that the  man who was convicted as  Thomas Mair was not Thomas Mair’ but someone else who is presumably playing a part.  This theory can be easily struck down. Photos of Mair when he was younger and as he was when arrested are claimed  by  supporters of the substitution theory to  show two different people.     In fact, they do the opposite,. Both photos show a similar  growth on the right cheek ; the eye colour is the same, the shape of the distinctive nose is the same, and the hair colour is the same. There is also the fact that if the person who was convicted  was not Mair everyone who knew him,  including  Mair’s relatives, would  have had to refrain from pointing this out, an absurd idea.

What is the chance of  British elite behaving badly?

What is the chance of the British elite behaving badly. Well, consider the case of the Liberal MP Cyril Smith. Smith admitted to the then leader of the Liberal Party David Steel that when involved with the  Cambridge House boys hostel he had both spanked boys with their pants down and conducted what he euphemistically called medical examinations on the boys . Steel took no action and Smith remained within the Party and an MP.

One thing is certain about this case, we have not heard anything like the whole truth about it. We are being asked to believe that a politically motivated killer of his own volition  steadfastly failed to use his capture and trial to send a political message to the public. It makes no sense.

 

The persecution of Emma West continues

Robert Henderson

Emma West  was arrested in November 2011 after she protested about immigration whilst travelling on a bus. Her protest was captured on video and uploaded to YouTube as well as being copied by many national media outlets. The video was  viewed millions of times.

Following the upload of the video Emma was arrested, held in the UK’s highest security prison for women , released and then subjected to a year and a half’s intimidation by the state as the powers-that-be desperately tried to get her to plead guilty to charges relating to racially motivated serious crimes (racially aggravated intentional harassment and racially aggravated assault)  which would have almost certainly sent her to prison. Eventually, worn down by the stress she pleaded guilty to the  lesser charge of racially aggravated harassment, alarm or distress.

I say Emma’s outburst was a protest against immigration because that is precisely what it is. Here are some of her comments:

She says: “What’s this country coming too?

“A load of black people and and load of f***ing Polish.”

One commuter challenges West, who rounds on him telling him: “You aren’t English”, to which he replies “No, I’m not”

She then scans the tram, pointing out people one-by-one, saying: “You ain’t English, you ain’t English, None of you are f***ing English.

“Get back to your own f***ing countries.”

“Britain is nothing now, Britain is f***k all.

“My Britain is f**k all now.”

You can argue that is foulmouthed,  but you cannot argue it is anything but a protest against immigration. In fact, it is the most grass-root form of political protest there is, namely, directly engaging with the effects of policy.

Emma lives in a country which has been made unrecognisable by the permitting of mass immigration for over sixty years. Neither Emma nor any other native English man or woman (or Briton come to that) has had any say in this invasion of the country. This most fundamental act of treason has been committed by generations of British politicians who to date have got away with their crime. But to continue to get away with the crime the guilty men and women need to suppress public protest against what they have done.  That is why the authorities were so desperate to get to plead guilty. She was a refusnik and they could not let that pass.  That she resorted to foul language in her frustration is entirely understandable.

But those with power were not satisfied simply with her criminal conviction. Emma has now had her livelihood as a dental nurse taken away by the General Medical Council with this preternaturally smug judgement:

A [Dental Council] spokeswoman said: “Her conduct was truly appalling.

“It clearly has the capacity to bring the profession into disrepute and to undermine public confidence in its standards.

“Furthermore, her violent and abusive conduct would demonstrate a real risk to the safety of patients.

“In relation to her racially aggravated offence, this was committed in a public setting and received further public exposure, as a person had uploaded the video clip to the internet which has been viewed extensively.”

So there you have it, political correctness can not only send you into the clutches of the law but take your means of living away.

For the full story of Emma West’ persecution see

The oppression of Emma West : the politically correct end game plays out

Posted on July 2, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson In November 2011 Emma West was arrested  and subsequently charged for a racially aggravated public order offence (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/emma-west-immigration-and-the-liberal-totalitarian-state/). The charges concerned her  public denunciation of the effects of mass immigration whilst on a tram in Croydon,  a suburb … Continue reading →

Posted in Culture, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged Emma West, ethnicity, invasion, political correctness, race|61 Comments | Edit

Emma West and the State – The State has its way (sort of)

Posted on June 5, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West has finally been worn down. Eighteen months after she was charged with racially aggravated intentional harassment and racially aggravated assault , she has agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of racially aggravated harassment, alarm … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Politics | Tagged birthright, Emma West, independence, invasion, liberal bigotry, political correctness, quisling elite, race | 21 Comments | Edit

Emma West’s trial scheduled for the sixth time

Posted on April 10, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West was due to stand trial at Croydon Crown Court for  two racially aggravated public order offences  arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 . The … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged birthright, censorship, crime, Emma West, ethnicity, invasion,laws,political correctness, race | 36 Comments | Edit

Emma West trial scheduled for the fifth time

Posted on March 13, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson A fifth, yes that’s fifth,  date for the start of Emma West’s trial on criminal charges arising from her complaint about  mass immigration and its effects made on a Croydon tram  in November 2011 has been set  for  … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood | Tagged crime, Emma West, English, ethnicity, invasion, laws, liberal bigotry,political correctness, race | 28 Comments | Edit

What has happened to Emma West?

Posted on January 8, 2013by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson It is now 14 months since Emma West was charged with racially aggravated public order offences after she got into an argument on a tram which led her to make loud complaint about the effects of mass immigration. … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, ethnicity, invasion, political correctness, race | 31 Comments | Edit

Emma West trial delayed for the third time

Posted on September 8, 2012by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson The trial of Emma West on racially aggravated public order offences has been delayed for the third time ( http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Emma-West-trial-adjourned-time/story-16820636-detail/story.html ).  No further date has been set.   The trial was originally scheduled for June, then July and finally September … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, free speech, invasion, liberty, political correctness | 13 Comments | Edit

Emma West has her trial delayed yet again

Posted on July 27, 2012by Robert Henderson

The trial of Emma West on two racially aggravated public order offences has been put back to 5 September to allow further medical reports (http://www.thisiscroydontoday.co.uk/Trial-alleged-YouTube-tram-racist-Emma-West-moved/story-16543355-detail/story.html).  Her trial was meant to take place on 17th July but a request for … Continue reading →

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged authoritarianism, crime, Emma West, English,independence,invasion, political correctness, race | 12 Comments | Edit

Courage is the best defence against charges of racism

Posted on June 12, 2012by Robert Henderson

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

Posted in Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged censorship, Emma West, invasion, laws, political correctness | 7 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 3

Posted on January 4, 2012by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West appeared at Croydon magistrates court on 3rd January.  She  will stand trial  on  two racially aggravated public order offences, one with intent to cause fear. She will next appear in court  – Croydon Crown Court –  … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglophobia, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, Englishness, ethnicity,invasion,laws, political correctness, public order, race | 12 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state part 2

Posted on December 7, 2011by Robert Henderson

Robert Henderson Emma West has been remanded in custody until 3rd of January when she will appear at Croydon Crown Court (http://uk.news.yahoo.com/tram-race-rant-woman-court-052333359.html).  By 3rd January she will in, effect , have served a custodial sentence of 37 days,  [RH She was … Continue reading →

Posted in Anglophobia, Culture, Immigration, Nationhood, Politics | Tagged crime, Emma West, English,ethnicity,invasion, political correctness, quisling elite, race | 23 Comments | Edit

Emma West, immigration and the Liberal totalitarian state

Posted on December 1, 2011by Robert Henderson

Emma West of New Addington, London has been arrested and placed in “protective custody” following the publication on YouTube of  a two minute 25 second  recording labelled by the YouTube poster as “Racist British Woman on the Tram goes CRAZY …Continue reading →

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/

How the BBC fixes the political bias of Any Questions

Robert Henderson

The programme is fixed generally because all those invited will on subjects such as race, immigration, homosexuality and feminism  toe the pc line to a large degree. (Ask yourself when was the last time you heard someone on Any Questions saying that mass immigration is an unalloyed ill). They will do this either from ideological conviction or the fear of the consequences if they become accused of a pc “crime”.

There is also a more particular built in bias which will generally result in preponderance politically correct  and left leaning answer. To demonstrate this I have compiled  the details of panel members  for a couple of recent two month runs of Any Questions – June-July 2013 and January-February 2014 (17 programmes). These details are shown at the bottom of this blog post.

Then there are  the biases produced by race, ethnicity and employment. Those who are there as right leaning representatives,  but are immigrants or the children of immigrants, members of a racial or ethnic minority or compromised by receiving public money or favours such as those bestowed on the quangocracy will often be left leaning in certain areas such as the desirability of mass immigration or the worth of public service, regardless of their nominal political orientation.

In the four months covered by the two periods chosen, the leftist, politically correct bias is clear: on every panel at least two (half the panel) of the participants are formally left leaning and in a number of cases more than two. A good example is the 28 2 2014 programme where at least three members (Hughes, Eagle, Greer)  are of the left and arguably all four because Chua being the child or immigrants and a member of an ethnic minority will in many areas automatically be pc (for example immigration)  even if she has some non pc ideas as well.

There is no example of any programme with more than two right leaning members  on it. Moreover, many of those classified as right-leaning will be right leaning only in the area of economics and even there someone who supports laissez faire economics is veering into the leftist world because the effects of globalism feed into the liberal left internationalist credo.

It is also noteworthy that although there are a few members of panels who may  reasonably be categorised as of the hard left, for example, Diane Abbott and Laurie Penny,   there is no one who represents the far right.

It is reasonable to suspect that the BBC packs all its audiences for political and current affairs programmes in a  similar way.

28 2 2014

The Bath Literature Festival with Justice Minister Simon Hughes MP, Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment Food and Rural Affairs Maria Eagle MP, Yale Law professor and author Amy Chua, and writer and broadcaster Germaine Greer.

Political count: two left-leaning MPs (Hughes and Eagle), an immigrant and radical feminist (Greer) and an ethnic minority representative  and child of immigrants to the USA (Chua).

21 2 2014

Blundells School in Tiverton, Devon, with Secretary of State for Scotland and Lib Dem MP Alistair Carmichael, Conservative backbench MP Nadhim Zahawi MP, New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny and Labour backbench MP Frank Field.

Political count: two left leaning MPs (Field and Carmichael ), one ethnic minority  immigrant  and right leaning MP (Zahawi) and one member of the hard left (Penny).

14 2 2014

Central Hall Methodist Church in Walsall with Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee Keith Vaz MP, Fisheries and Farming Minister George Eustice MP, Pauline Black from The Selecter and UKIP Party Director Lisa Duffy.

Political count: ne Left leaning MP, immigrant  and ethnic minority representative (Vas), one right leaning  MP (Eustice), one ethnic minority  representative  (Black) and  one right leaning representative from a minor party (Duffy).

7 2 2014

Altrincham Grammar School for Girls with Defence Minister and Tory MP  Anna Soubry, journalist and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, the Liberal Democrat MP Jeremy Browne and the Former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw MP.

Political count: one Tory MP but with a strong streak of political correctness (Soubry), two left leaning MPs (Browne and Straw) and one leftist journalist and campaigner (Monroe).

31 1 2014

Purfleet in Essex with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles MP, Labour backbencher Diane Abbott MP, author and columnist Simon Heffer and the new Green party peer Baroness Jenny Jones

Political count: one centrist Tory MP (Pickles), one hard left MP who is the  daughter of immigrants  and an ethnic minority representative (Abbott), one right leaning journalist (Heffer) and , one hard left peer, (Jones).

24 1 2014

Gwyn Hall in Neath, with the First Minister of Wales, Carwyn Jones, Jill Evans Plaid Cymru MEP for Wales, Conservative Vice Chairman for Campaigning, Michael Fabricant MP, and the former leader of the Liberal Party Lord Steel.

Political count: two  left leaning politicians (Jones and Evans) and one right leaning  MP (Fabricant) and one left leaning peer (Steel).

17 1 2014

Greenbank High School in Southport with the former Chief Whip Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Health Andy Burnham, Supermarket Ombudsman Christine Tacon and Liverpool based textiles businessman Tony Caldeira.

Political count:  one right leaning MP (Mitchell), one left leaning MP (Burnham), one member of the Quangocracy (Tacon) and one businessman who is a Tory Party supporter (Caldeira).

10 1 2014

Heythrop College in London with Justice Secretary Chris Grayling MP, Shadow Justice Secretary Sadiq Khan MP, Patrick O’Flynn the new Communications Director for UKIP and former coalition minister the Liberal Democrat MP Sarah Teather.

Political count: two left leaning MPs (Khan and Teather), one right leaning Tory MP (Grayling) and one rightist representative for a minor party (O’Flynn).

27 7 2013

Endellion, Cornwall with Lord Hattersley, writer Jessica Mann, Times columnist Phil Collins and Jacob Rees Mogg MP.

Political count: one leftist peer (Hattersley), one rightist MP (Rees-Mogg), one immigrant  who has been part of Quangocracy (Mann), one left leaning journalist (Collins) .

19  7 2013

Bridport in Dorset with Lord Ashdown, Kate Hoey MP, Baroness Julia Neuberger and former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lawson.

Political count: two left leaning peers (Ashdown and Neuberger), one centrist Tory peer (Lawson) and one left leaning MP (Hoey). Neuberger is the daughter of an immigrant mother and a member of an ethnic minority.

12 7 2013

Bushey in Hertfordshire with Chuka Umunna Shadow Business Secretary, Vice Chairman of the Society of Business Economists Bronwyn Curtis, Grant Shapps Chairman of the Conservative Party and the Speaker’s Chaplain the Reverend Rose Hudson-Wilkin.

Political count: one left-leaning immigrant and member of an ethnic minority MP  (Umunna), One immigrant Australian economist (Curtis), one right leaning MP (Shapps) and one ethnic minority immigrant representative (Rose Hudson-Wilkin).

5 7 2013

from Keswick in the Lake District with Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron, Shadow Europe Minister Emma Reynolds MP, Deputy leader of UKIP Paul Nuttall and Leader of the 1922 Committee Graham Brady MP.

Political count: two left leaning MPs (Farron and Reynolds), one right leaning member of a minor party  (Nuttall) and one right leaning MP (Brady).

28 6 2013

Titchfield in Hampshire with John Denham MP, Chair of the Public Administration Select Committee Bernard Jenkin MP, Chair of the Bar Council Maura McGowan QC and Minister of State for Justice Lord McNally.

Political count: one left leaning MP (Denham), one right leaning MP (Jenkin), one criminal lawyer  with no obvious political affiliation (McGowan) and , one left leaning peer (McNally).

21 6 2013

Purley in Croydon. The panel are Labour peer Baroness Oona King; editor of Prospect magazine Bronwen Maddox, Foreign and Commonwealth minister Alistair Burt and the novelist, journalist and human rights activist Joan Smith.

Political count: one left leaning ethnic representative peer (King), one right leaning journalist (Maddox), one right leaning MP (Burt) and one left leaning journalist (Smith).

14 6 2013

Great Yarmouth Racecourse in Norfolk with Daniel Hannan MEP, commentator Mehdi Hasan, Communities and Local Government Minister Don Foster MP and Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Mary Creagh MP.

Political count: one right leaning MEP (Hannan), one son of immigrants and left leaning ethnic minority representative journalist (Medhi Hassan) and two left leaning MPs (Foster and Creagh)

7 6 2013

The Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth, Wales with Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Owen Paterson MP, Labour’s Peter Hain MP, Leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Woods, and commentator James Delingpole.

Political count: one right leaning MP (Paterson) one left leaning MP (Hain), one hard left representative (Woods)  and one rightist journalist (Delingpole).

1 6 2013

Slough in Berkshire. The panel includes the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers MP, the director of the think-tank British Future Sunder Katwala, Business woman Julie White and Labour peer Lord Adonis.

Political count: one right leaning MP (Villiers), one left leaning ethnic minority representative who is the son of immigrants (Katwala), one business woman whose company D-Drill gets a good deal of its work from government (White) and one left leaning peer (Adonis).

Democracy and Political Ignorance – Why smaller government is smarter

Ilya Somin

Stanford University Press

ISBN 978-0-8047-8661-4

Does the ignorance of voters matter in a system of representative democracy? Somin thinks it has very serious consequences because it leads voters to make “wrong” decisions and laments the low level of political knowledge in the USA.  (I put wrong  in inverted commas because unfortunately he has a political bias which often makes him equate wrong with “these are not my politics” which are broadly liberal left.  This seriously taints his work).  The book  is primarily concerned with the effects and implications of  voter ignorance on the American political system,  but has implications for any political system, democratic or otherwise,  for as anyone who follows politics closely will be only too well aware  political ignorance is not restricted to voters but afflicts politicians and their advisors.

Listen to a vox pop or phone-in on a political subject  and  the ignorance of the general public can be startling when it comes to the detail of  politics,  not least because  educated respondents are frequently as at sea with political subjects as the uneducated.  Somin cites a large number of prime examples of crass political ignorance amongst Americans. For example, two  2006  polls respectively found that only 42% of Americans could name the three branches of the federal government, the executive (President), legislature (Congress) and judiciary (Supreme Court)  and only 28% could name two or more of the five rights guaranteed by the first amendment (p19). As for specific policies,   a 2010 survey showed that 67% of the population did not know that the economy had grown the previous year, despite the economy being judged as one of the most important policy areas by Americans (p21).

This may be dismaying at first glance, but in practice  it is irrelevant how limited is the detailed political knowledge of an electorate. This  is because no individual,  however diligent, erudite, insightful and intelligent,   could be seriously  knowledgeable about all but a very small proportion of  the problems and policies  arising in a  minimalist state constructed on  the Hayek model, let alone the vast ocean of  policy areas which are  covered in the modern industrial state.   That would apply even if political power was devolved. Indeed, in a devolved situation (and Somin is strongly in favour of devolved power)  the position could be even worse because there could be more to know and understand with multiple jurisdictions to vote for on important issues.

Does this mean that representative democracy should be done away with? Not a bit of it. Even though he is worried about democratic outcomes based on ignorance and sceptical about the chances of improving political knowledge amongst  voters, Somin in the end comes down in favour of it: “Despite political ignorance, democracy retains many advantages over rival systems of government.” (P199).

Indeed it does. Whether electors can make considered decisions on all matters or even the vast majority of issues  is not really the point of representative democratic politics.  What matters is the fact that such a political system  can best restrain the naturally abusive tendencies of elites and provide by far the best  legal mechanisms for the formal and peaceful transition of power, something which  makes coups and civil war much less probable.

Voters  can meaningfully answer the big political questions. They can oppose mass immigration on the rational ground that this is an invasion of territory which utterly changes their country. They can say whether they  want their country to go to war. The can approve or disapprove of whether political correctness should or should not be part of their country’s legal system. They can say whether they feel more comfortable with a welfare state or no welfare state. They can make a meaningful choice on whether they wish their country to be part of a supranational bloc such as the EU. They can decide what punishment should be meted out to criminals. They can say yea or nay to whether  essential industries should be  in public hands. Electors can also make purely rational  decisions  (for example, those made simply on arithmetical grounds) on competition for resources, for example, it is perfectly rational to oppose immigration on the grounds that it increases competition for housing, education, jobs and welfare.

The fact that voters’  answers to such questions, if they were ever allowed to vote on them in referenda,  would  generally run contrary to the wishes of elites in  countries such as the USA  and Britain and are routinely  thwarted by those  elites,   tells us that the real reason  voters are denied the chance to directly make decisions about policy is not that they are incapable of doing so on  many major issues,  but rather that the opinions of voters are opposed to those with power, wealth and influence.

A major problem with the book is the fact Somin  wants politics to be a science, to have an objective reality like physics. In the long  distant past when I was a history and politics undergraduate I had  to take a compulsory  course  entitled Modern Political Analysis. This involved flow charts, graphs and formulae which  purported to elevate the  study of politics to the level of a science. Politics students were solemnly expected to take seriously, say, a flow chart which started with a box marked electorate, had boxes marked with words such as election and  government before ending  with a box marked democratic outcome (I kid you not).     Democracy and Political Ignorance is cut from the same misdirected intellectual cloth, nothing like  so crudely but still in a marvellously wrongheaded manner which assumes that the democratic process can be reduced to quantifiable  data. He even has a few formulae such as this  gruesome  example:

“Assume that UV equals utility of voting, CV equals the cost of voting and  D equals the expected difference in welfare per person if the voter’s preferred candidate defeats her opponent. Let us further assume that this is a presidential election in a nation with three hundred people,, that the voter’s ballot has only a one  in one hundred chance of being decisive , and the they voter values the welfare of his fellow citizens an average of a thousand time less than his own. .. thus we get the following equation D(300 million/1000)/ (100 million) – CV = Uv  (p67).

That is the general error of the book, to imagine that human behaviour can be reduced to a miscellany of objective fact which can be used to determine how people  should (or even would of necessity)  behave if only they were in full possession of these facts.  This matters greatly because the vast majority of   political decisions have no objective truth or falsity.

The particular mistakes Somin makes are  to imagine that there is such a thing as perfect information which leads to  objectively  right answers to political questions and  to approach the subject of political ignorance  from a politically correct starting point, something he banally and  tiresomely signals by  assiduously alternating  she and her with he and his as a generic term for humanity  throughout the book.

It is true that Somin attempts to give an appearance of even-handedness, splattering his analysis  with qualifications, but somehow he always comes down on the liberal left “right on” side. Take the question of judicial review to which he devotes an entire chapter.  He hums and haws over how undemocratic this is  because it overrides the majority will but in the end concludes “Once we  recognise that ignorance is a pervasive element of modern democracy, the counter-majoritarian difficulty turns into a much less than previously assumed.” This is because “Much of the legislation subject to judicial review is not actually the product of informed democratic consent.”  (p169).

His political correctness also drives him to the conclusion that some political knowledge can be damaging: “Why might political knowledge exacerbate the harm caused by an electorate with bad values? Consider an electoral majority that is highly racist and wants to inflict as much harm as possible on  a despised racial minority. If such racist voters become more knowledgeable about the effects of government policies, they might force elected officials to implement policies that increase the  minority group’s suffering.” (P54).

That might seem a reasonable position at first glance, but a few moments consideration will reveal the dangers involved in it. What would constitute racism? After all, governments of all colours routinely favour incidentally or deliberately one group over another,  whether the group be defined by race, ethnicity or class. At the present time governments in the Western world, and especially the USA, have favoured the have over the have-nots in their economic policies. This means the poor have been most disadvantaged by the policies. Ethnic and racial minorities tend to be poorer on average than the majority population,  Does that mean the policies are racist? Trying to objectively define what was racist behaviour by a government would in practice would be impossible because inevitable judgements would be highly subjective.  A real can of worms.

Somin gives a further hostage to fortune when it comes to subjectivity with ‘This book does not provide a defense of any particular vision of political morality. But unless we adopt the view that all values are equally good – including those of racists and Nazis [note that he does not include Marxists who have been responsible for far more deaths than the Nazis] –  we must admit that good political knowledge might sometimes be put in the service of “bad” values.’ (p55)

Political correctness also damagingly colours  Somin’s judgement of what is a fact.  Two examples. First, he claims  that the  mistreatment of blacks in post slavery  USA was in part built on the belief of  whites  that blacks were prone to excessive criminality and every black man was just waiting to rape white women; second,  that hostility towards homosexuals and lesbians is in part the result of  ignorance about the likelihood that sexual orientation is genetically determined (p10).

The danger with overt human reasons is that they are often a mask for the real covert ones. Hence, whether post-slavery white America did genuinely fear black criminality is not necessarily the real issue. Human beings will use justifications for likes and dislikes which are not the real reasons for their choices when they feel either that they simply do not like something without having any clear idea why (everyone has probably experienced an immediate dislike for someone as soon as they have been introduced) or are afraid for legal and social reasons that their motivation for holding a view  would be unacceptable or even dangerous for them if expressed. That is the position with anything which is deemed non-pc today . Whites  in the old slave owning states may  have used any number of rationalisations  for segregation post-slavery,  while their actual motivation was  that they did not see blacks as their equals or,   more fundamentally,  simply as different, as not part of the national American “tribe”. There is, incidentally,  nothing inherently irrational about that. Human beings have, as do  all social animals, an innate desire to  associate with  those whom they see as sharing the same characteristics as themselves. Ultimately, humans are driven by desires not reason because it is from emotions that motives arise.  If this were not so, humans would be automata.

Another serious problem with Somin’s examples of false information is that he routinely presents  baldly asserted or weakly supported opinions  as  either  hard fact or as having a high probability of being true.  His  position on homosexuality and lesbianism is a good example.  There is no conclusive evidence that homosexuality or lesbianism are genetically determined, but even if it was so proven it would not mean that it was irrational to dislike such behaviour  or feel uncomfortable with its existence. There could be sound evolutionary reasons why people are hostile to homosexuality and lesbianism, for example,  the rejection of the individual who does not breed and help the continuation of the “tribe”.  That does not mean there should be persecution of gays and lesbians. Rather, it is a plea to not to pretend that something is an objective fact when it is not.

There is also the fundamental difficulty of how any objectively true information could exist in some instances. Take Slomin’s post-slavery claim.   It is not  irrational to have a fear that an enslaved group once set free might wreck physical revenge on the group which had held them enslaved.  That being so, it is difficult to see how American whites who believed that could have their fears assuaged by more  knowledge. In the nature of things there could be no such knowledge available to decide  the question  of whether freed slaves and their descendants  would be violently criminal if left to live without any strict social control,  for  that knowledge could  only exist  by testing the matter with the removal of   the repressive conditions under which blacks lived.  If whites feared mayhem would result if such conditions were removed,  they could not make a rational decision to end those  conditions.  In this context it  is worth noting that there has been a considerable growth in the  number of violent crimes perpetrated by blacks on whites in the USA since the civil rights movement and the end of segregation in the 1960s and they are now pro rata hugely greater in number than  crimes of violence committed by whites on blacks (http://www.examiner.com/article/federal-statistics-of-black-on-white-violence-with-links-and-mathematical-extrapolation-formulas). There is also the experience of  post-Apartheid South Africa where black murders of whites, and particularly white farmers, has been considerable. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22554709).

None of this is to  argue for slavery or segregation.  I am simply examining the situation from the viewpoint of the  mental state of whites, especially those in the slave states, after the end of slavery. Whether or not their fears were justified is not the issue.  What matters is that it would be a rational fear and,  indeed,  it was precisely the fear expressed in all the cases of ending slavery or other forms of unfreedom, from the British ending of slavery to the freeing of the serfs in Russia.

Somin  also has a full blown faith in laissez faire economics. That might seem to sit oddly with his political correctness but, that ideology does not have  a fixed menu. Its core ancestral beliefs are the triad of race, gay rights and feminism, of which race is by far the most toxic and is the springboard which has allowed the other parts of political correctness to develop and grow.  However, other things have been added over the past forty years. One of those is a belief in laissez faire economics and free trade (the two are distinct for free trade merely means the exchange of goods and services produced between radically different economic systems).  That laissez faire  and free trade are an integral part of political correctness at present can be readily seen from the fact that support for globalism (which of course includes free movement of  peoples and the undermining the nation state) is now a core part of political correctness. That does not mean laissez faire and free trade  will remain a core part and, indeed,  I see the first signs of the pc wind changing on the matter of economics, but it is as yet a nascent development.

Somin’s  belief in it provides another example of  a highly contentious claim  which is effectively unsupported – he  merely says it is the opinion of most economists “…voters who support protectionist policies in the erroneous expectation that they will benefit the economy as a whole rather than weaken it will also end up undermining their own goals” (p6)

The reality is that  historically, protectionism has often been very successful, for example, the British industrial revolution occurred behind one of the most comprehensive and successful protectionist walls in the shape of the Navigation Acts and the Old Colonial System the world has ever seen.  All the countries which followed the British lead most successfully did so behind protectionist barriers.

Interestingly, Somin does not address the fact that it is not just a lack of interest or education which stops people becoming politically knowledgeable, but also lack of innate qualities such as intelligence, intellectual inclination and  extroversion. Perhaps that is because his politics debar him from believing that people will or will not do or be something because that is the way they are born. That would fit into his modern liberal mindset.  IQ is particularly important because the lower the IQ the less ability to handle abstractions or complex data. This is not a trivial matter because at least ten percent of the population of Western states have IQs of 80 or less . That is the level which most psychologists working in the field of IQ believe that a person begins to struggle to live an independent life in an advanced modern society.

Somin is much taken with the concepts of rational ignorance and rational irrationality.  Rational ignorance  is the idea that voters do not devote time to educating themselves about political issues because they make a rational decision that  their votes will count for next to nothing. I sincerely doubt whether anyone actually makes a decision to remain ignorant on that basis, although they may use it as an excuse for being politically ignorant.

But even if voters did make a considered decision to remain ignorant it would not self-evidently be a rational decision. To begin with there are  many electoral circumstances  where a vote is important. That is true where the electorate is small or a seat is marginal. Under the first past the post system used in Britain there are a considerable number of seats where the main party candidates are near enough in their support to make voting a far from redundant business. But even where there is no  main party candidate who appeals to an elector  or one of the main party candidates is odds on certain to win there is still a point in voting. To begin with if turnout is persistently low it could be used  by those with power to argue for a restricted franchise or even no franchise at all.  Then there is the overall vote a party gets. If, for example, a party or presidential candidate gets elected with less of the popular vote  than their main opponent their mandate is weakened.  If all else fails, a vote for a candidate of a minor party such as UKIP in Britain,  the  minor  presidential candidate in the USA  or a spoiled ballot sends a public message about the state of elector dissatisfaction with the mainstream parties. Somin is not entirely blind to such objections,  but mysteriously and annoyingly they appear to carry little weight with him.

Rational irrationality  is the brainchild of the  economist Bryan Caplan. The idea is  that voters not only have incentives to remain ignorant but also incentives to “engage in highly biased  evaluation of  the information they do have” (p13).  The tempting response to this is a sarcastic “Dearie me, who would have thought it?”

Pursuing the idea of rational irrationality,  Somin likens  the politically interested who are seriously committed to supporting political parties to  fans of sports teams who support their team blindly,  generally give weight to information which boosts  their team and disregard that which does not.  The rewards for doing so are emotional. This of course is not irrational behaviour  because it is natural for human beings to indulge their “tribal” instincts and defend their position and that of their group.

Where rational ignorance and rational irrationality come together, they are to Somin’s mind the most toxic political democractic cocktail, one which could only be overcome or at least ameliorated if those pesky voters would just become “correctly” informed.

What are Somin’s solutions to reduce what he sees as the harm of voter  ignorance?  It is to reduce the amount which government does (with much of the slack being taken up by private enterprise)  and bring as much as possible of politics to the local or regional level, viz: . “Despite political ignorance, democracy retains many advantage over rival systems of government. Nonetheless  , political ignorance will probably continue to be a serious weakness of democratic government. We are unlikely to eliminate that weakness completely. [another example of the blindingly obvious] . But we can reduce its dangers by limiting and decentralising the role of government in society”  p199

There are real  problems with both of these policies. In a large industrialised society government of necessity has to do a considerable amount, whether that is at the local or national level.  There have to be good communications for people, goods and information. A universal school system is unlikely to exist  if it is not in large part funded by the taxpayer. Defence and the maintenance of law and order cannot reasonably be left to private initiatives. Foreign policy, especially for a super-power such as the USA, has wide-reaching ramifications for domestic policy and is frequently very complex to master.

As already mentioned, it would not matter how rigorously the areas of action for government were curtailed, that pruning would not come close to making the voter’s task of informing themselves sufficiently to make considered decisions when voting light enough to be practical. If the present burden of legislation was halved in countries such as the USA and Britain it would not make a blind bit of difference to the problem of political interference because there would still be vastly more for the individual to master than any individual could manage. Even in the minimalist libertarian state there would still be a good deal of legislation and government administration, far too much for any one person to master in sufficient detail to make them informed on all or even most issues.  This limitation also applies to elected full time politicians.

It might be objected that the Internet has made the acquiring of information vastly simpler. That may be true, although it presupposes that people will know enough to look for what they need. But even if they find the information how is the ordinary person to know whether the information is correct or the whole truth? The answer is that they cannot possibly be expected to do so. However intelligent a person is, they are not going to be able to judge the veracity and completeness of claims from seemingly unimpeachable sources if they  do  not have access to the raw data  on which research conclusions are made. Such data is rarely available. There is also the problem of who controls public information.   If   government agencies and the large media corporations are the main sources of such information, the public will only get the received opinion of the elite most of the time there being a great deal of  shared ideology and collusion between the various parts of the elite:  politicians and the public bodies they control,  the mainstream media, big business and not-for-profit organisations such as the larger charities.

As for decentralisation of  politics,  the more local the decision making the smaller the pool of political talent available. This may well result in poorer decisions being made, especially where the policy is complex.  It is also true that if the number of political bodies which can raise and spend taxes  increases, the opportunities for corruption  increase and this generally means more corruption.

Then there is the question of exactly what should be devolved from the centre. There would never be anything approaching  general agreement on that.  Even within the individual there would be intellectual confusion and inconsistency. Take Somin as an example. He would have a conflict between the idea of decentralisation and his politically correct view of the world. One of the reasons Somin favours  the idea of decentralisation is because it offers the opportunity for foot voting, that is,  a person moving from one jurisdiction to another in search of policies more to their liking, literally voting with their feet.   But for  someone of his  political orientation, there is the  unfortunate fact that the more local politics becomes,  the greater the opportunity for racial and ethnic groups to exploit their dominance of an area to their advantage. It is difficult to imagine Somin thinking that federal action to enforce politically correct behaviour throughout America would be damaging or that he would  readily  tolerate  a local jurisdiction which, for example, refused to apply equal rights laws.

Overall all Somin is gloomy about the likelihood of political knowledge increasing.  He glumly points to the fact that despite rising IQ scores, educational standards and the great ease of access to information because of the Internet over recent decades,  there has been little increase in political knowledge during that time (p199) or of rationality (in his terms).

Perhaps most damaging  for Somin’s desire for greater political knowledge is research (which he cites)  that suggests that the more knowledgeable voters are  “more biased in their evaluation of  new evidence than those with less prior information”( P80).  If this is true – and it is very plausible because the more data someone has, the greater the material from which  to construct arguments – then the whole idea of a better educated electorate producing superior outcomes falls completely to pieces.

The primary problem with democracy at present is not voter ignorance – which in any case cannot be reasonably expected to improve – is the way in which elites have hijacked the process by adopting very similar policies on all the major issues – a commitment to ever more restrictive political correctness, the use of the law to effectively ban dissent from their views, their control of the mainstream media and perhaps most damaging for democratic control, the movement of national politics to the supranational level. The most complete example of the last is the EU which now controls a remarkably wide range of policy areas in whole or part, everything from immigration to labour laws.

The answer to this is to constrain representatives both in what they promise and what they deliver or fail to deliver. This can be done in various  ways, for example,  by tying the representative firmly to a constituency which they have lived in for a long time, by making any candidate standing for election put forward his policy position on all the major issues, by making it illegal for any elected representative to renege on his policy as stated in an election manifesto and outlawing any system of party coercion such as the British practice of whipping MPs (that is instructing those of a party to vote en bloc in support of the party’s policy) .

There is an important book to be written about voter ignorance  within a democracy.  Sadly this is not it. I don’t deny that he has written a densely argued book which systematically works out his ideas.  The problem is that he is completely wrong headed in his premises. Consequently, his arguments count for nothing. However, the book is  worth reading as a first rate example of the attempts of those working in what are mistakenly called the  “social sciences” to pretend that these subjects  are bona fide sciences just like physics and chemistry and a very revealing look into the modern liberal mind.

Operation Eleveden, Tom Harper, The Independent and the censoring of elite criminality

Robert Henderson

On 11^th July 2013 I met the  journalist Tom Harper  who works for the Independent. I was introduced to him by the lawyer  Mark Lewis who has represented many of the phone-hacking victims.

The meeting was to discuss Operation Elveden’s refusal to investigate my complaints about  Piers Morgan  and Jeff Edwards receiving information from the police in circumstances that can only be illegal, Morgan and Edwards’ perjury before the Leveson Inquiry and the failure of the police (led by then Det Supt Jeff Curtis) to investigate my original complaints against Morgan and Edwards; this  despite my supplying them with a letter from Morgan to the PCC in which he admits the Mirror received the information from the police. The details of my dealings with Elveden are at  (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2013/07/25/operation-elveden-piers-morgan-et-al-the-dpp-advised-of-elvedens-refusal-to-investigate/).

We spent more than an  hour together. Our discussion expanded beyond Operation Eleveden  to the refusal of the Leveson Inquiry to call  me as a witness or use any of the information  I supplied to the Inquiry (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/11/25/the-leveson-inquiry-the-blairs-the-mirror-the-police-and-me/).  From there it went to the Blairs’ attempts to have me prosecuted and the use of Special Branch and MI5 to keep me under surveillance after failing to do persuade the  CPS to sanction an investigation of me.  (https://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2010/10/26/when-tony-and-cherie-blair-tried-to-have-me-jailed/) That in turn led to the story attached to the publication in Wisden Cricket Monthly  of my article  Is it in the blood?  in 1995. (http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2013/01/19/is-it-in-the-blood-cmj-and-the-hypocrisy-of-the-media/)

During our conversation I supplied Harper with a good deal of material and the next day I emailed him with the other information he requested such as the responses to my  Data Protection Act requests to Special Branch  and MI5. ( The major evidence is listed in my first email to Harper reproduced below.)  Thus Harper  had all the information he asked for by 12^th July.

Throughout our  meeting Harper was very enthusiastic about the material I gave him and the story I had to tell.  At the end of the meeting he said he was definitely going to run the story and wanted to do so quickly.

I rang Harper on 12 July and asked what was happening. He was still adamant the story was going to be used soon. I asked whether it would come out that  weekend . Interestingly, he responded in panicky fashion by asking me if I was going to offer the story to someone else. I assured him I had no plans to do that but did need some action soon. Harper promised to come back to me when publication was scheduled.

A week later I still had not heard from him. When I tried to ring him I always went to voicemail. I left messages but got no reply. Eventually on the 22^nd July I emailed him and copied the letter to Mark Lewis. That shamed him into action and I received the email from him which I reproduce below.

Harper’s email is utterly at odds with both his behaviour at our meeting and the phone call of 12^th July. My further email to him reproduced below deals with this transmutation of his attitude.  Harper did not reply to this email.

The most plausible explanation for his change of heart is that he has been leant on by someone in a position of authority, most probably his editor.  Whatever the reason, Harper can be added to the list of journalists and broadcasters who have censored the stories I have to tell, all of which are by any standard of prime public interest.

———————————————————————————–

From: robert henderson [mailto:anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk]

Sent: 22 July 2013 16:00

To: Tom Harper

Subject: I need to know your intentions Tom

Tom Harper

The Independent

22 7 2013

Dear Tom,

I have given you gratis  at least four  major stories:

1. The Blairs misuse of the security services against me

2. Unshakeable evidence of Piers Morgan’s illegal receipt of information from the police.

3. The failure of the police to twice investigate the Mirror’s illegal receipt of information.

4. Leveson’s corrupt behaviour in failing to call me as a witness or using  any of the evidence I supplied to him including the Piers Morgan letter – see below.

Most importantly, I have not simply asserted these things happened. Instead  I have given you absolute proof that they happened by supplying you with, amongst other things:

a) Piers Morgan’s letter to the PCC admitting he received information from the police in circumstances which can only be illegal.

b) A tape recording of Det Supt Jeff Curtis of Scotland Yard promising to interview Morgan and Edwards, something he failed to do.

c). My correspondence with Operation Elveden showing their utter refusal to investigate my complaints against Morgan, Edwards and Jeff Curtis despite the fact that they had cast iron evidence of the alleged offences.

d) Correspondence with Special Branch and MI5 relating to my use of the DPA which demonstrated (1) they held data on me and (2) there was data that the y refused to release. This despite the fact that the CPS ruled the Blairs’ complaints against me as “NO CRIME” within hours of receiving the papers from Belgravia police.

e) A copy of the Belgravia Police report on the Blairs’ complaint which clearly showed the “No Crime” ruling.

f) Correspondence between the Met Police and me relating to the Belgravia Police report. This shows (1) that I managed to get the report significantly changed using the DPA and (2) that the Blairs had referred to me as “an irritant like Henderson”, a distinctly sinister phrase  from a man who was on the brink of becoming PM.

When we met You assured me that you were going to use the information and that it would be used quickly. You have now had the information the better part of two weeks,. No story has appeared and my attempts to contact you by phone have proven fruitless.  I need to know ASAP whether you intend to use the story and if not why you have changed your mind.

All political ills flow from censorship and most particularly censorship of the misbehaviour of the powerful.   Milton put it beautifully:  ‘And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose upon the earth, so truth be in the field [and] we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter…’ [Areogapitica].

Only those who are uncertain of their case ever wish to suppress information and argument.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson

—————————————————————————————-

From: Tom Harper <T.Harper@independent.co.uk>

To: robert henderson <anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk>

Sent: Monday, 22 July 2013, 16:10

Subject: RE: I need to know your intentions Tom

Dear Robert,

Apologies for the delay in responding to you. I have been tied up with other stories that were on the go before I met you.

I have reviewed the information now. I am very grateful to you for taking the time to come and meet me and show me your dossier.

However, I do not think I can use it for a news story in The Independent.

I do not doubt that what happened back in 1997 was wrong, inhuman and had a deleterious effect on your health. I am truly sorry you had to go through those awful experiences.

But I do not think the information you have provided proves the stories that you say. Although it is mildly embarrassing that Morgan has admitted The Mirror got the info from a police source, there is no suggestion any money changed hands. That is the allegation that would create my “top line” – and it is flawed.

I know you will strongly disagree and I am sorry about that. But if you read some of my past work, you will see I am not afraid of having a pop at the police and/or the press and I am not being censored. I just do not think the evidence stacks up in quite the way you suggest.

However, I do think that some of it could be used as background material for a wider piece, but sense you want to try and get maximum impact so I would suggest approaching other journos.

Thanks very much for meeting up with me and good luck.

Warmest regards,

Tom

——————————————————————————————-

From: robert henderson <anywhere156@yahoo.co.uk>

To: Tom Harper <T.Harper@independent.co.uk>

Cc: Mark <mark.lewis@thlaw.co.uk>

Sent: Monday, 22 July 2013, 16:53

Subject: Re: I need to know your intentions Tom

Dear Tom,

Your response literally makes no sense. You had the all information by the end of our meeting. Your attitude throughout our meeting was very enthusiastic. Not only  that but you promised me you would be using the story. You said the same when I spoke with you  a week ago. Now suddenly you pretend it is no story. Do you honestly imagine, Tom, that any disinterested third party would believe that you have rejected the story because it is not of great public interest?  If you had run it not only would it have brought down  Piers Morgan and several senior police officers, but it would have put the Blairs in a very awkward position.

I will address the particular point of Piers Morgan letter. I explained the relevant law to you during our meeting. Whether or not Morgan, Edwards or any other Mirror employee paid for the information is irrelevant to whether a criminal offence was committed.  The offences of misconduct in a public office, conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office, breaches of the DPA and   breaches  of the Official Secrets Act  (there is a reciprocal offence for those knowingly  receiving material in circumstances covered by the Act regardless of whether they had signed the Act – the police do sign the Act)  were committed. Conspiracies to commit the other offences could conceivably also be brought. You will recall that Damien Green was investigated for conspiring  to commit misconduct in a public office in 2009 (http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/leading-article-misconduct-in-public-office-1669922.html).  Of course, the odds are that the Mirror did pay for the information and that needs to be investigated as well.

As for Jeff Curtis and Operation Elveden, a failure to investigate an alleged serious crime when there is clear evidence of it constitutes a perversion of the course of justice.

You have thrown away a most tremendous story. I will not speculate here as to why, but I think we both know why.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Henderson