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Keir Rodney Starmer:

Born in Southwark, London on 2 September 1962. His parents were Labour Party supporters and named him after the party’s first parliamentary leader, Keir Hardie. Raised in Oxted, Surrey he attended Reigate Independent Grammar School, then graduated from Leeds University with a BA(Law) in 1985remaining in education he gained a postgraduate BA (Civil Liberty) from Oxford University in 1986.

He became a barrister in 1987 and was appointed Queen’s Counsel (QC) on 9 April 2002. From 2003–08, he was the human rights adviser to the Policing Board in Northern Ireland before taking up a similar role with the Foreign Office.

Education and politics 1962-2008:

He excelled at school and at university achieving excellent grades and qualifications in law and civil liberties and his career as a lawyer was praiseworthy in part due to the human rights causes/trials he successfully supported/defended,(many pro-bono). In the years before university, his political leaning was similar to that of Jeremy Corbyn. His views were mellowed at university and he identified more with the political ideology of Gordon Brown.

He married Victoria J Alexander in 2007. They have 2 children and live in Camden North London. Victoria is Jewish and has family in Tel-Aviv, Israel. the couple’s children are being raised in the Jewish faith.

Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle about his family he said “As you probably know my wife’s family is Jewish. On her father’s side there are bar mitzvahs, synagogues there are all the traditions. On Friday’s my wife’s family gather at our Camden home for supper. It is about just being with the family.

He told the Jewish News: “I absolutely support the right of Israel to exist as a homeland. My only concern is that Zionism can mean slightly different things to different people, and to some extent it has been weaponized. I wouldn’t read too much into that. I said it loud and clear and meant it that I support Zionism without qualification.” He also told the Jewish Chronicle: “If the definition of ‘Zionist’ is someone who believes in the state of Israel, in that sense I’m a Zionist.”

afternote: Starmer is reputedly very protective of his wife and family and has withheld information from the public, other than the scant details already in circulation. I possess the knowledge but honouring his wishes I will not reveal it. 

2008-2013: Poacher turns Gamekeeper

He was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2008 and held these roles until 2013. Abandoning his work as a private practitioner for a high profile career in the employ of the State was risky and surprised many since his exposure to criminal law and personnel management was limited and taking charge of over 8000 employees was a daunting task even for an experienced professional.

The CPS under the previous DPP had started allocating advocacy work in-house and Starmer fast-tracked the process determined to enforce the policy regardless of criticism and/or opposition, claiming the benefits of financial savings and consistent prosecutions to be paramount.

The DPP and the CPS under his leadership merged and transformed into a state-run investigation and prosecution agency, similar to the FBI.

The Chairman of the Bar was unconvinced the changes were in the public interest and expressed concerns that the transfer of the bulk of prosecution work to employees of the State could compromise the independence of process provided by self-employed counsel. In his inaugural speech he said:

“the ever-expanding monolith of the state prosecutor may have detrimental consequences for the independence of the prosecuting service or at least the perceptions of its independence.”

This early warning of the potential excesses of a state-run command and control, centralising, leader,  is to be found in the conduct of the FBI and J Edgar Hoover:

“For years the FBI was widely suspected of using questionable or illegal methods to gain information. Its counterintelligence programme penetrated suspect organizations and used state resources to disrupt and discredit them. After Hoover’s death, a congressional committee investigated and documented the FBI’s surveillance of groups and individuals, many of whom had done no more than exercise their First Amendment rights to criticize the government. The committee concluded that the FBI had often abused its powers, spying illegally on U.S. citizens persecuting those who opposed the will of the State.”

https://scotland.openrightsgroup.org/blog/

The widespread abuse of the public by British police infiltration of environmental and anti-capitalist protest groups

In 2011, the trial of an environmental activist accused of plotting to break into Ratcliffe power station collapsed after it emerged that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had withheld vital evidence. The evidence was comprised of a number of recordings an undercover spy-cop named  Kennedy, had made of planning meetings.

20 people previously prosecuted from the same evidence had their convictions overturned and a further 29 people convicted of blocking a train carrying coal to Drax power station also had their convictions quashed due to Kennedy’s involvement.

Starmer who was present in court the day the case was thrown out later said that the spy cop’s actions were not systematic. But they were. In 2015, it was reported that 83 people could have been wrongfully convicted after evidence of spy-cop involvement had been withheld. And details of exactly how systematic it was are still surfacing.

The campaign group “Opposing Police Surveillance” claimed “If the 150 or so officers under investigation have similar tallies (as Kennedy), it means about 7,000 wrongful convictions are being left to stand. It may well be that “spy cops” are responsible for the biggest nobbling of the judicial system in English history.

The scandal wasn’t just the police. Released papers showed the Crown Prosecution Service had been deeply involved. They knew about the plan before the arrests and they worked with the police to withhold evidence from the defence and the courts.

Starmer as DPP promoted the report and agreed to be interviewed on television by Jeremy Paxton. Clearly untrained for media appearances’s his rapid eye movement under questioning was clearly evident when he lied.

Paxman opened by asking if Starmer could be sure there were no other cases of spy cops being in prosecuted groups of activists apart from Kennedy. Starmer did the blinking thing and said that the public had to accept the discredited conclusions of the report. This was not an answer to the question, so Paxman asked again…It made for excruciating viewing.

Starmer went on to say “if anyone suspects a co-defendant might have been a spy cop, tell me.” But identifying an undercover cop is akin to getting burgled, finding a fingerprint and the police saying “come to us if you know whose print it is”. It is a proven fact that police officers deceived the courts and orchestrated wrongful convictions for decades, and they did it with the active collusion of the Crown Prosecution Service.

As head of the CPS, Starmer knew this but, rather than try to expose it, he covered it up, saying it was only rogue officer Kennedy who had been involved even though the public knew this to be false.

As DPP, Starmer also worked with Nick Paul, the CPS National Coordinator for Domestic Extremism, even though that term had no legal definition and thus no meaning in law. As the Undercover Research Group reported, Paul was in a powerful position of control from the start, overruling senior police as he steered the case.

Which raised unanswered questions about his role in other cases. He had already helped create another miscarriage of justice the previous year, securing the wrongful convictions for the ‘Drax 29’ group of climate activists. The CPS refused to reveal which other cases he had handled. And this raised questions about Starmer’s suitability for Labour’s top job, particularly for anyone who was ever photographed or filmed attending a protest and could be loosely labelled a domestic extremist.

Police working “deep” undercover were encouraged to establish long-term sexual relationships with female suspects and their supporters.

Mae Benedict, mother of a young child who was spied on said “This is about my people, our people, us. It’s hard to explain to generations below us the immense damage that these bastards did to us, not just as activists, as a community, but on a personal level, and much more so for those closest to them.

This will never, ever be forgiven or forgotten. Starmer was head of an organisation that supported and enabled political policing. And even if he didn’t have an oversight of what was happening with spy cops, he was happy to be part of the system. Starmer’s work as the DPP is a classic case of poacher turned gamekeeper. (The Canary)

In at least 27 cases, British police officers deceived women and entered into intimate relationships with them in undercover missions. According to a verdict handed down the police force in charge also interfered with the physical integrity, privacy and political activities of those involved. (https://digit.site36.net/2021/10/01/undercover-operations-uk-special-court-sentences-police-for-sexual-relations/)

Armed police execution of Jean Charles de Menezes

On 7 July 2005, 52 people were killed and more than 700 people wounded in coordinated suicide bombings across London’s transport system, the deadliest terrorist incident on British soil since the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. Two weeks later, the capital was targeted again, but the explosives failed to detonate. Police found a lead for the suspects in the unexploded bag – an address in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill.

Menezes, who had been working as an electrician in London since 2002 and lived on Scotia Road, was wrongly identified as (Hussain Osman) one of the suspects, Police followed Menezes to Stockwell station and onto a train, where they pinned him down and shot him seven times in the head and once in the shoulder.

Scotland Yard was fined £175,000 for breaching health and safety laws, but the CPS said there was less than a 50% chance of convicting any individual officers, based on insufficient evidence that an offence had been committed.

The inquest jury decided that Jean had not been killed lawfully, that many terrible mistakes had been made and they did not accept police officers’ accounts of the incident.

The jury returned an open verdict after the coroner said it was not possible to conclude with certainty, that Menezes had been unlawfully killed. More here: (https://netpol.org/2017/02/23/cressida-dick/)

On review, the CPS agreed that there had been inconsistencies in the officers’ evidence to the inquest jury, but offered the excuse that there were inconsistencies in other witness accounts.

The reviewing lawyer said: “I concluded that in the confusion of what occurred on the day, a jury could not be sure that any officer had deliberately given a false account of events.”

The officer in charge of the operation and gave the order to use extreme force was Cressida Dick. Later appointed Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/topic/cressida-dick?)

In the first few months following his appointment Starmer, in a High Court appeal lodged by the family upheld the decision not to prosecute the officers who had executed de Menezes. Stating that there was not enough evidence that would make him reconsider the earlier decision not to prosecute more senior officers for negligence. Full story here: (https://gizmonaut.net/blog/uk/menezes_health_and_safety.html)

The Unlawful Killing of Ian Tomlinson

On 1 April 2009, in the midst of a huge protest against the G20 summit in London, newspaper seller Ian Tomlinson, was violently assaulted by Metropolitan police officer, Simon Harwood causing severe internal bleeding and his death. The incident was captured on video, and there were multiple witnesses.

Intent on justifying the assault the police lied, claiming protesters had thrown missiles at them when they were applying first aid to Tomlinson. They also instructed journalists not to talk to Tomlinson’s relatives and withheld information from his family. The so-called ‘Independent’ Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) repeatedly failed to handle the case correctly.

The police selected pathologist Freddy Patel to perform a post-mortem examination and asked him to “rule out any assault or crush injuries associated with public order”. Patel incorrectly concluded that Tomlinson had died from a heart attack a finding crucial in preventing any conviction of Harwood. But two further examinations suggested Tomlinson had actually died of an abdominal haemorrhage caused by blunt force trauma to his back. Patel was struck off a few years later following a GMC investigation of 29 allegations of incompetence. Too late for Tomlinson.

In July 2010, Starmer announced the decision not to prosecute police officer Harwood in relation to the death of Ian Tomlinson leading to accusations by Tomlinson’s family of a police cover-up. After a subsequent inquest found that Tomlinson had been unlawfully killed, he announced that Harwood would be prosecuted for manslaughter. The officer was acquitted in July 2012 by a jury, but dismissed from the police for gross misconduct. Afternote: Three weeks after the announcement of the not guilty verdict the press released this information which had not been provided to the jury:

“PC Simon Harwood had a disciplinary record littered with complaints of aggressive behaviour and misconduct and once admitted being sent into “red mist mode”, In August 2001, a note was entered on his record to say that he would not be disciplined but he would be compulsorily retired on medical grounds because of ongoing problems purportedly arising from a 1998 car accident. Three days after leaving the service he was reemployed by the Metropolitan Police Force as a member of its civilian staff. In April 2003 Harwood, (despite his record) successfully applied to join the Surrey Police Force as an officer. In January 2004 yet another allegation of aggressive behaviour was made against him, this time by one of his own colleagues.” So much for British justice.

2011 Rioting and Starmer’s “lock ’em up” policy

During the 2011 riots, he intervened and introduced a policy prioritizing the rapid prosecution and long term incarceration of rioters, which he justified saying that the policy had been instrumental in bringing “the situation under control.”

Later that year following the revelations of police infiltration of environmental and anti-capitalist protest groups, he was forced to order a review of the convictions and invited protestors convicted of aggravated trespass to appeal their sentences. But he declined to authorise a wider inquiry.

The DPP/CPS and Jimmy Savile – The belated review of the police investigation and CPS indecision

In 2007 and 2008, Surrey Police investigated three complaints that Savile had “engaged in sexual behaviour with young girls”. During the same period, Sussex Police investigated a similar complaint involving a young woman.

Savile was interviewed under caution by police in October 2009 and denied wrongdoing. He was not arrested. No prosecution was brought in relation to any of the four complaints, on the grounds that none of the victims was “prepared to support any police action”, for example testifying in court.

Savile died in October 2011. After his death, it emerged that he sexually abused hundreds of children and women at locations including hospitals, schools and the BBC.

In January 2013, when news of his abuse was revealed, an investigation into whether the CPS had been right not to charge Savile in 2009 was published by Alison Levitt QC. who reported that she had “reservations” about the prosecutor’s decision not to press charges.

She said: “On the face of it, the allegations made were both serious and credible; the prosecutor should have recognised this and sought to “build” a prosecution.” She said the police treated the victims and the accounts they gave “with a degree of caution which was neither justified nor required”. Three of the victims told her that had they had received more information from the police at the time of the investigation and particularly if each had been told she was not the only woman who had complained they would “probably have been prepared to give evidence.”

Ms Levitt said that, in the case of two of the allegations, there would have been a “realistic prospect of conviction” if the women had given evidence. “Having spoken to the victims I have been driven to conclude that had the police and prosecutors taken a different approach a prosecution might have been possible,” she wrote. Ms Levitt was critical of the approach taken by both the CPS’ reviewing lawyer and the police in failing to build a prosecution against Savile in 2009.

2011: Operation Elveden – The Witch Hunt

Starmer authorised a legal witch hunt by the Metropolitan Police and Crown Prosecution Service’s against journalists of the Sun newspaper, using as an excuse, an almost unheard of 13th-century law “misconduct in a public office”.

The hunt (Operation Elveden) included dawn raids and searches on suspects’ homes. He attempted to shift the blame onto his successors when the botched £30 million probes fell apart.

Despite acknowledging that not a single one of the 24 Sun journalists arrested were convicted, he would not say sorry. Yet he was in charge when the five-year process was launched. Senior MPs from across the political divide called for an investigation into the catastrophe and changes in the law so that the abuse of the public by the state would not be repeated. (The Sun)

2013: Benefit cheaters in his sights

Starmer introduced new sentencing guidelines threatening individuals found to be guilty of improperly claiming welfare benefits with up to ten years in prison. His critics levelled against him, the claim that he was the most contemptible of Labour archetypes, “the class traitor.”

Nov 2010: Jack Straw Labour MP for Blackburn Alerts the UK to Sexual abuse of young white girls by Pakistani men

A gang of men were convicted of systematically grooming and sexually abusing teenage girls in Derbyshire. Many of the victims were given alcohol or drugs before being forced to have sex in cars, rented houses or hotels across the Midlands. One girl described a sexual assault involving at least eight men. The nine men were convicted during three separate trials at Leicester Crown Court.

Straw said increasing numbers of Pakistani Muslim men view white girls as “easy meat” for sex abuse and highlighted it was endemic in Blackburn and in many other areas with significant Muslim populations across England.

Aug 2014: Pakistani Grooming gangs reportedly raped near a million underage non-Muslim girls and the CPS failed their pleas for justice

Jack Straw’s warning was ignored by the DPP and the CPS. Four years and 1 million more rapes later the UK public was outraged and angered by party political attempts to shift the blame away from the State onto the victims. 

Reports suggested that there were around 1,400 raped Yorkshire children, (a conservative estimate) given there were multiple rapes on each child.

Adding in the Pakistani Muslim grooming operating in Oxford, Bradford, Rochdale, Newcastle and other cities in England takes the count of rapes committed by Pakistani Muslim men against white children into the millions.

The judge in the Oxford case said the brutal rapists demeaned their victims because they did not share the men’s “religion and culture”.

Nor is it a “small number” of Muslims. It is an endemic problem in Muslim-dominated towns and cities. 

The UK public needs to see justice. That means more than “historic abuse” “no blame game” “no party politics” “look to the future” and all the other rubbish politicians wheel out. We don’t need “the police”, “the council”, “the CPS”. We need names and prosecutions.

Police officers who abetted the rape of children need to go to jail. And another thing who will be responsible for prosecuting members of the CPS for their misconduct?

Keir Starmer, the highly politicised Director of Public Prosecutions, said his CPS did not prosecute because they made assumptions about the credibility of the evidence of victims.

So the DPP and the CPS took on the role of judge and jury and failed the abused children. Why?

It was Labour who did this in Rotherham and Rochdale to win Muslim votes. The police, Labour PCCs, Labour councillors, Labour-leaning prosecutors. 

The Rotherham report says a Conservative councillor brought his concerns to the leader but was told not to make it public.

The Head of Children’s Services Joyce Thacker told The Times she would punish the leaker and in 2008 Labour gave her an OBE for her Services to Young People.

Labour’s greedy, sleazy pandering to Muslim votes brought about the introduction of Sharia tribunals. Labour set them up in law.

Postal vote fraud, uncontrolled immigration, Trojan Horse schools, and now this sick hell.

The Pakistani immigrant community has not fully integrated into British life. Instead of spreading out over the country and adopting British values whilst retaining their own religion, they have been encouraged to massively dominate a few towns where they attempt to impose their culture on others.

Social planning needs to address the undesirability of one community” taking over an English town or city. We have seen that with our mixed Afro-Caribbean heritage Britons, with Jewish-heritage Britons and all classes and races up until now.

Politicians, the Media and the Press are persistent in their use of the expression “The Pakistani Community” providing confirmation of the failed immigration policy of the Labour Party who actively encouraged mass uncontrolled immigration of Pakistani immigrants so that they would be able to gain their votes in future elections.

Reference to “the community” should address all citizens regardless of ethnic origin. (The Sun)

White girls abused by Muslim child-rape gangs should shut their mouths for the good of diversity

Labour Party leader, Sir Keir Starmer promoted MP Naseem ‘Naz’ Shah, who infamously shared a tweet stating “Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths for the good of diversity”.

The British-Pakistani Labour MP for Bradford West liked and shared a tweet in 2017 admonishing white, English girls who spoke out about being raped and sexually enslaved by organised gangs of Muslim paedophiles.

The UK was rocked to its foundations by the never-ending stream of scandals involving predominantly Muslim men targeting white English girls from working-class backgrounds for sexual exploitation.

Most shockingly of all is the fact that authorities and the mainstream media were aware of this for years if not decades but refused to act, even when girls and parents pleaded for help, for fear of being accused of racism by PC fanatics.

The Labour MP for Rotherham, a town where Muslim child-raping gangs were allowed to operate for years with impunity, Sarah Champion, has said that up to 1 million English girls are likely to have fallen victim to Muslim rape gangs as of 2016.

Scotch on the Rocks

At the beginning of the 1970s, the UK was in crisis faced with working-class challenges to an establishment that had failed to improve standards of living in preference for the retention of the “class” system which had endured for many years.

The Labour Party though hopelessly divided was given chances in government but failed to provide the consistent leadership required to improve the lives of those who voted it into government and the Conservative Party seized the initiative with the assistance of Mi5.

Its Director Joseph Ball, (believed by many to have played a central role in the 1930 Zinoviev Letter scandal that brought down Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour Government), established the Conservative Research Department (CRD) a secretive “Special Operations” unit and perfected the sustained delivery to the UK public, through the media and the BBC, of dirty tricks and disinformation campaigns many of which were designed to poison the minds of the electorate against the Labour Party, Trade Unions and Scottish Nationalists with false news accusing them of being fronts for the USSR and communist agitators.

Tory MP, Douglas Hurd, who had been recruited from the Foreign Office in Rome to the CRD wrote a novel “Scotch on the Rocks” a drama which told a story of Mi5 and Special Branch officers infiltrating a Scottish Nationalist paramilitary organisation, the (SLA) in an effort to thwart a separatist military coup.

The BBC actively supported the aims of the (CRD) in 1973, with the commissioning, production and delivery of the anti-Scottish nationalist television programme “Scotch on the Rocks” an adaptation of the book.

At the time of the screening, Hurd was Private Secretary to Prime Minister, Edward Heath and was well aware of the intent of the programme and its links to the Security Services.

“Scotch on the Rocks” was a provocative broadcast, released to coincide with the end of the Scottish Conservative Party Conference, during which the 80-year old founder of the National Party of Scotland, Wendy Wood was quietly removed from the hall at the Conference just one day before the programme was broadcast.

The series sent shockwaves throughout Scotland and the BBC Programme Complaints Commission upheld criticism by the Scottish National Party that its five-part thriller had seriously impugned the party by suggesting it was involved in using violence for political ends. The BBC responded by promising never to show the series again.

But the furore after the broadcast had no detrimental impact on the Scottish National Party. The energy the drama had pumped into the mythical “home rule” movement resulted in Harry Selby losing one of Scotland’s safest Labour seats, Glasgow Govan to the SNP’s Margo MacDonald and with a re-energized “it’s Scotland’s Oil” campaign the party won a further six seats in the General Election that followed and the SNP took 33% 0f the Scottish vote.

see clip at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCwIblx2VPc

Comments: Eton educated Tory MP, Douglas Hurd served in the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major as Minister of State (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) 1979-1983, Minister of State (Home Office) 1983- 1984, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland 1984-1985, Home Secretary 1985-1989 and, Foreign Secretary 1989-1995.

His son, Eton and Oxford-educated Tom Hurd was appointed by Boris Johnson to the post of “Director-General of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism” in 2020 and was lined up to take over as chief of MI6 in 2021 before his transfer to the UN where he is a member of the UK/UN Security Council team. And there are many untold stories about his career in the underworld of politics.

The article highlights the similarities between the under the radar activities and successes of the European Research Group (ERG) and the Conservative Research Department (CRD)

The European Research Group (ERG)

Formed around 1994 the European Research Group (ERG) only came to public prominence in 2017 as a pressure group within the Tory party when it sent a letter to Theresa May warning her against signing a transitional deal with the EU keeping the UK in the single market.

In a follow up soon after the group’s chairperson Suella Braverman, then a junior government aide, (since appointed Attorney General by Boris Johnson) appeared on television and said: “justice must be done to Brexit. No deal is better than a bad deal.”

The political intervention in matters of state by the previously little known group caused consternation in political circles and investigative journalists gave attention to unmasking its membership and political history. What they unearthed was a group of hardliners, including a number of government ministers who had created a party within a party.

Adding insult to injury it was identified that because the group’s purpose was political research it had been funded by taxpayers through a mechanism that allowed contributing MP’s to reclaim donations as an expense. Members were required to pay an annual membership fee of around £2,000 each year. It is estimated that the partisan pressure group varied in strength over the years but forty would be an appropriate figure providing a total income of £2.20 million.

Incredulously the public purse unknowingly underwrote the ERG’s fictitious research for years. The taxpayer funding was crucial to the ERG’s success since it paid for the staff that moulded it into a well-drilled political force dedicated to leaving the European Union. A highly efficient “WhatsApp” group was activated and provided daily updates briefing members of breaking news and current affairs.

The success of the “leave” campaign strengthed the Euroscepticism of the ERG and extended its popularity to private donors. Paul Dyer, a pro-Brexit businessman, gave £10,000 and the ERG also received cash from the Constitutional Research Council,(CRC) the shadowy group behind the Democratic Unionist Party’s secretive £435,000 Brexit donation. In December 2016, the CRC gave £6,500 to then chair Steve Baker for an ERG Christmas party.

By that time the ERG had established links to key figures in the DUP. Nigel Dodds, the party’s Westminster leader, was a regular at ERG meetings. Former DUP Westminster chief of staff Christopher Montgomery joined the ERG as a researcher.

Like Dodds, Montgomery was a former Vote Leave board member who had maintained a long-standing personal relationship with the CRC’s chair Scottish Tory, Richard Cook who posted in the “WhatsApp” group: “I applaud Steve Baker’s outstanding leadership of Brexit. He is indeed a superstar in a parliament with too many political pygmies!” the Scottish businessman wrote.

The ERG is an unincorporated association, (as is Richard Cook’s, CRC) and it is not required to publish accounts or list its members. This means it is able to exert an influence on British politics well beyond its legitimacy with little or no oversight or transparency about the sources of its finance. And the substantial new finance available afforded the opportunity for the ERG to consult widely in Northern Ireland and led to the drafting of alternative proposals for the Irish border.

And the establishment of a number of front groups” such as “StandUp4Brexit” staffed by those who worked with former “Vote Leave” chief technology officer Thomas Borwick provided manufactured evidence of a groundswell of popular support on social media for key ERG policies.

Similar spoiler campaigns appeared almost daily all opposing the EEC and Prime Minister Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement. The ERG was even reported to be working with Australian spin doctor Lynton Crosby’s agency which had run the 2015 and 2017 Conservative general election campaigns and donated money and staff to Boris Johnson’s successful Tory leadership bid.

Britain & Europe

The British people were given a referendum on Europe in 1975 and voted decisively for joining the Common Market, then defined as an economic alliance of individual nations.

But by the early 1990s public concern about the direction of the European Union had risen sharply and the Euro-skeptic movement although embraced by only a small group of Tories in Parliament was well underway in the Conservative ranks.

The deal-breaker for the Tories was “Maastricht” when more of them became angered by regulations passed by the European Commission in Brussels which took precedence over laws passed in Westminster.

Concerned about the strengthening of European bureaucracy and its effect on Britain’s democratic sovereignty, more and more Tories joined the Euro-skeptic wing.

By 1996 the Tory Party was in trouble. After 18 years in power, it was losing ground with the British electorate despite an economic boom financed by oil revenues from Scottish oilfields. The Tories had squashed the unions, decimated social-welfare programs, privatized many key state-owned industries and promoted a free low tax business environment. London and the South East had flourished at the expense of North East England and Scotland who had borne the brunt of Thatcher’s excesses.

Since his election as Labour Party leader in the spring of 1994, Tony Blair alerted to the failure of the Tory Party had captured the public imagination by moving the Labour Party to the centre-ground of British politics.

On just about every economic issue, Blair’s party co-opted Tory promises pledging not to increase public spending or raise taxes with result that the Labour Party enjoyed a consistent lead of some 20 points over the Tories in the months before the 1997 election.

The late Sir James Goldsmith (1933-1997) & the Referendum Party

The Goldschmidts, neighbours and rivals of the Rothschild family, were a wealthy, Frankfurt-based, Jewish family that had been influential in international merchant banking since the 16th century.

James Goldsmith was a billionaire crusading politician who fought to change the future of Europe. A high-flying financial buccaneer he was the father of eight children, who lived an infamous unconventional life, sharing homes in London, Paris, Burgundy, Spain, and Mexico with his wife, a British aristocrat born Annabel Vane-Tempest-Stewart, the sister of the Marquess of Londonderry, and the inspiration for the eponymous “Annabel” nightclub in London’s Berkeley Square. His ex-wife (the former Ginette Lery, his one-time secretary) and a mistress (Laure Boulay de la Meurthe, a wellborn French magazine editor), who at one time lived in two parts of the same house in Paris. Like an Arab pasha, Goldsmith moved among all three households, supporting everyone with lavish generosity.

Having multiplied his fortune as a brash corporate raider in the United States during the 1980s, Goldsmith was an unlikely politician. But his retreat from business led him to question many of his assumptions about the world and he came to believe that global free trade would lead to severe societal dislocations. He also concluded that the movement to unify Europe politically, as well as economically, would restrict national sovereignty and undermine democracy as unelected European Union bureaucrats assumed greater control.

His beliefs spurred in him the impetus for the creation of the “Referendum Party” which he launched in November 1997 when he concluded he could have a greater impact in Britain because democratic traditions were stronger than on the continent and in an early statement using rhetoric that was direct and withering he said: “European nations are deeply rooted but you cannot push nations together against their will. The Conservative government is appalling on all the most important issues that matter and John Major thinks leadership is equilibrium but he is the ultimate rubber-man and “New Labour” is nothing more than a soft Tory Party. They are all as one.”

For Goldsmith, being attacked meant being noticed, and being noticed meant being taken seriously. At the start of campaigning, he said: “I am prepared to spend upwards of £30M fielding Referendum Party candidates against every member of Parliament in the 1997 general election who argues against a plebiscite. We will pressure the British government into giving its citizens a chance to vote on the extent of their involvement in the European Union.”

In 1994. in France, he was elected to the European Parliament. Then terminally ill with cancer, in 1997 he failed in his bid for a seat in the British Parliament.

Goldsmith knew he would never be the British Prime Minister and his bid for a seat in parliament was unsuccessful, two months later he died but he altered the mood and the thinking in Britain about the value of a unified Europe and elevated a political concern into a national preoccupation.

United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIRP)

The financial backing of Goldsmith supported the early careers of prominent members of the Bruges Group, formed in 1988, under the leadership of University of Oxford undergraduate student, Scotsman, Patrick Robertson.

Alan Sked (who went on to found the UK Independence Party in September 1993).

Its founding chairman, Lord Harris of High Cross (former head of the Institute of Economic Affairs, 1957-1987 and board member of Rupert Murdoch’s Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd from 1988 until 2001).

Many of the Referendum Party’s activists and voters went on to join and support UKIP which ultimately led to a sea-change in English politics and twenty-three years later the withdrawal of Britain from the European Union.

Patrick Robertson Founder & Chairman of WorldPR

Robertson is an international political strategist and professional public relations, consultant. He founded WorldPR in the early 1990s and has been an advisor to many British and international political and business leaders for nearly three decades. He currently offers strategic advice to foreign corporations and governments on, among other matters, the opportunities and implications of Brexit.

His experience of frontline political campaigns started early, in 1988, when as an undergraduate at Oxford he founded the Bruges Group to campaign against European federalism. In recognition of the group’s remarkable success in provoking a nationwide debate, Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, became its Hon. President in 1990. The Bruges Group is credited with having played an influential role in Britain’s ultimate decision to leave the European Union in 2016.

After a period based in Geneva as a Special Advisor to the World Economic Forum Robertson went into business with Gerald Howarth and Lord Parkinson, former Chairman of the Conservative Party and cut his teeth as a political adviser to senior British Tory government ministers, including Neil Hamilton, Corporate Affairs minister, and Jonathan Aitken, Chief Secretary to the Secretary. He also enjoyed, for a number of years, a highly successful business collaboration with Lord Tim Bell, PR adviser to successive British prime ministers.

In 1994, Sir James Goldsmith, the Anglo-French billionaire and financier, hired WorldPR to orchestrate the campaign of the Referendum Party, the most ambitious eurosceptic campaign of modern times, with an unprecedented spend of £35 million.

As the party’s Chief of Staff, Robertson was responsible for executing its strategy for the 1997 British general election in which it fielded 547 candidates and, as a measure of its success, secured the historic commitment from both the Conservative government and the Labour Opposition not to join the European single currency without a binding referendum.

Among the early staffers of the Referendum Party who went on to achieve front-rank careers in British politics is The Rt. Hon. Priti Patel MP, Home Secretary, and Ben Elliot, Chairman of the Conservative Party.

Tory Government’s participation in the miscarriage of justice

Actor Ricky Tomlinson claimed that the 1973 documentary “Red Under The Bed” was part of a British Government conspiracy to jail a group of striking workers for offences linked to the 1972 builders’ strike in Shrewsbury.

He stated: “They made a film which went out on television the night the jury were out considering the verdict… and it was so anti-trade union that two of the jury changed their mind and brought a majority verdict in of 10-2 guilty. The film was designed, written, produced and paid for by the security services. This article confirms Ricky Tomlinson’s allegations and should be read together with a previous article (https://caltonjock.com/2022/02/06/i-bet-you-have-never-heard-of-david-russell-walters-but-in-his-45-years-in-politics-he-has-ruthlessly-hammered-the-scots-and-he-has-plans-to-inflict-more-pain/)

27 Aug 2012: File-PREM 15/2011- TV programme-‘Red Under the Bed’

The National Archives website said that the file had been “retained” by the Cabinet Office under section 3(4) of the Public Records Act 1958. Why would the file be withheld from the public when it related to a current affairs programme that was broadcast on ITV in November 1973?

In August 2013, following a freedom of information request by a Shrewsbury 24 campaign researcher the Cabinet Office finally conceded and released some of the papers. Why is the file relevant? It is relevant because of the film ‘Red Under the Bed’ broadcast on 13 November 1973, the very day on which the prosecution completed its case against the pickets. And it was fully featured in the TV listing section of the local evening newspaper, the Shropshire Star, which would have been read by many of the jurors.

The film included a highly tendentious commentary by Woodrow Wyatt, interspersed with footage that showed the following:

two of the six defendants, John Carpenter and Des Warren.

1. At Shrewsbury Crown Court, surrounded by police officers, with a group of demonstrators attending a meeting nearby.
2. Images of a march through Shrewsbury in which the defendants could be made out.
3. Violence and damage alleged to have been caused by pickets on building sites during the national building strike of 1972.
4. Violence and damage alleged to have been caused by pickets during a recent coal strike and a recent dock strike.

The day after the broadcast, defence counsel applied to the judge for the television company to be held in contempt. The judge viewed the film and dismissed the application and criticised the defence for raising the point.

The film, which lasted for one hour, was followed by a studio discussion of 30 minutes. Damningly, the follow-up discussion was not broadcast across all ITV regions but it was transmitted only by ATV, the region covering Shrewsbury.

The final words of that discussion were from the then Conservative MP Geoffrey Stewart-Smith who was asked by the studio chairman, the late Richard Whiteley:

“Can you give me one example in 1973 of blatant communist influence?”

Stewart-Smith replied:

“The violence in the building strike was called by a group, The Building Workers Charter, operating in defiance of the union leadership indulging in violence and flying pickets and this is an example of these people operating, opposing free trade unions”.

Stewart Smith’s statement was blatantly prejudicial to the trial and the questions that needed to be asked and answered were: Why was the film made and why it was shown on that particular date?. Events since reveal the highest level of collusion between the Government, the security services and the producers of the film.

The first document in the file was a memo from Mr Thomas Barker of the Information Research Department (IRD)* to a Mr Norman Reddaway in which he boasts:

“We had a discreet but considerable hand in this programme….In general, the film, given national networking, can only have done good.”

He went on to praise the studio discussion after the broadcast.

The file contained other documents, including a note from the Prime Minister, Ted Heath, supporting the film after being sent a copy of the transcript by the Cabinet Secretary.

26 May 2020: More revelations on the “Red Under the bed” miscarriage of justice

The Guardian updated followers of the campaign for justice through the publication of newly declassified documents which revealed that Home Secretary Robert Carr had taken a personal interest in the prosecution of Ricky Tomlinson and his men. At the centre of his personal interest was the “Red Under the Bed” documentary, written by Woodrow Wyatt, directed by John Phillips and Norman Fenton and commissioned by the IRD on the encouragement of the Conservative government under the leadership of Edward Heath.

A memo from an IRD official, dated 21 November 1973, referred to the show’s broadcast on 13 November and revealed how the IRD had a “discreet but considerable hand in this programme”.

The Prem 15/2011 file also confirms that the IRD had colluded with the Department of Employment and the Security Service (Mi5) to provide a “large dossier of background material”, including a paper on “Violent Picketing”, to the film’s writer, Woodrow Wyatt.

The programme was, in the words of the IRD a “hard-hitting and effective exposure of Communist and Trotskyist techniques of industrial subversion” — a feather in the cap of the Tory government’s “new unit” and its sister organisation, (IRIS). But this hadn’t stopped them from wanting to go further. Much further.

By Means Foul or Fair

It was confirmed that the documentary was originally intended to conclude with Wyatt’s message that the main aim of Britain’s Communist Party was to take over the Labour Party “by means foul or fair”. To achieve this, Wyatt had carefully stitched together extracts from interviews with leading Communists, Trade Unionists and Industrialists and presented them as evidence to support the IRD’s theory that the Communist Party of Great Britain was infiltrating the Trade Unions using coercive and violent means to create wide-scale civil disruption.

There was only one snag. Brian Connell, the former Intelligence man put in charge of the documentary found that Wyatt’s message didn’t comply with the Independent Broadcasting Authority’s standards of objectivity. Wyatt was enraged. The general feeling among executives at the IRD was that the proposed cuts to Wyatt’s commentary had “left the ending of the film rather formless”.

To pack the kind of punch that they had in mind, TV audiences would need to come away from the show utterly convinced that the ‘violent acts of picketing’ organised by Warren and Tomlinson were Communist acts of industrial subversion and that its bid to seize control of the Labour Party and British pits was urgent and real.

The documentary’s ‘principal witness’ was News of the World journalist, Simon Regan, a sleazy tabloid hack specializing in ‘rumour, gossip and nudge-and-wink innuendo’ whose series of reports on violent picketing in November 1972 had been completed under the direction of the IRIS in the first place.

The picture that Regan painted for the viewers was a cruel and disturbing one: “I was witness to people being shaken from the scaffolding … I was witness to men being punched and kicked.” Regan went on to describe how the Communist Party “Action Committee” would bus-load pickets into towns and hunt men down. According to the 30-year old journalist, they even went to his pub and threatened to shoot him through both legs.

As a result of the IBA’s misgivings, the broadcast was shelved for some six months before Connell had a brainwave. Wyatt and the IRD found that they were able to get around the cuts enforced by the IBA by tagging on a special discussion programme that would immediately follow the main film. The studio discussion segment would be chaired by Richard Whiteley with a panel that would include Barbara Castle MP, Geoffrey Stewart-Smith MP and Alan Fisher. And it was this discussion segment — with John Fairley drafted in as Executive Producer — that allowed Woodrow Wyatt to make many of the points that had been “excised” from the film by the IBA’s standards committee.

The finished programme was broadcast on 13 November 1973 just as the prosecution was closing its case against Tomlinson and Warren at Shrewsbury Crown Court. Whilst there’s no evidence to suggest that Wyatt, Fairley or other members of the production crew knew the extent to which they were being manipulated, the impact of the film was brutal.

The jury who convened in the weeks following the programme’s broadcast found both men guilty of unlawful assembly, causing an affray and conspiracy to intimidate. On 19 December 1973, Justice Hugh Mais handed Warren a three-year prison sentence and Tomlinson was awarded two years. Four other men in the so-called ‘terror squad’ received lesser sentences.

It should come as no surprise to learn that Justice Hugh Mais’ cousin was author, broadcaster and former journalist, S.P.B. Mais whose publisher, Johnson Publications and its assistant editor, Geoffrey Baber, were deeply enmeshed in the shamelessly right-wing Monday Club, alongside former Mi6 deputy director, George Kennedy Young. Young was subsequently accused by Labour MP John Mann of having played a backstage role in the whole shameful Shrewsbury drama. (The Guardian)

1976: Tory David Russell Walters

Welshman Walters joined the party in the Glamorgan-shire valleys in 1976, and was a Young Conservative (YC) and university branch Chairman and Chairman of South East Region FCS.

On graduating, he took a year’s sabbatical at the Adam Smith Institute, and became a Vice Chairman of the National Association of Conservative Graduates and researcher in the House of Commons.

In his 45 years in politics he has been involved in many right wing campaigns in support of Tory Libertine group agendas. He is a very close confidant of Boris Johnson and was a member of his team when he was lord Mayor of London and true to form when Johnson formed his Tory Government he appointed Walters to the post of Chief of Staff in the House of Commons. His modus operanti is very much under the radar and not a lot is known about his private life except that he enjoyed his time with the Fever party organisation.

1987: Walters failed in a bid for election to the post of vice-chairman of the Young Conservative’s. His campaign brochure said he had served as an officer with the Association for a Free Russia and the International Society for Human Rights stating: “You may have been misled by one of the scandalous lies put into circulation about the Thatcherite team: that we support apartheid and legalisation of hard drugs. Discount such propaganda.”

1988: Russell Walters Lead Researcher For the Right Wing Economic League

The London based Economic League was formed in 1919 and funded by business subscribers to defend ”free enterprise, individual liberty, and parliamentary democracy.”

In addition to compiling lists of political agitators and trade union activists it provided names to companies who used the information when recruiting.

It was also active in the propaganda war waged at the gates of strike-hit factories and saw it as its function to counter trade union and left wing literature with pamphlets of its own.

A World in Action TV programme highlighted the link between the league and its activities and the Conservative party through the exposure of Walters as a much valued member of the research department.

In April, 1988, Walters was involved in a House of Commons row when it emerged that a list he was said to have compiled contained details of the alleged activities and affiliations of Labour MPs, including a number on the moderate wing of the party.

Maria Fyfe, Labour MP for Glasgow Maryhill, a leading campaigner against the league unsuccessfully proposed a Commons Bill intended to make its activities illegal and was astounded that Forsyth had appointed one of its principal research-intelligence officers to high office in the Scottish Tory Party.

She said, “we wanted to amend the Data Protection Act so that the Economic League could not keep card index files on individuals without their knowledge. Their officials have blacklisted thousands of people who know nothing whatever of it and they very often get things wrong. There are now 70 MPs who are members of our campaign.

We have representatives from all parties except the Tories. But we shouldn’t be surprised that Forsyth appointed someone like Walters. They both belong to the hard right after all. This will not go down well with the people of Scotland. Appointments such as these will backfire on the Tories because they hold attitudes alien to most Scots.”

4 Oct 1989 – Forsyth Tightens Grip On Scottish Tories – But Walters runs the show

Over the years the libertarian wing of the party maintained a solid base in Scotland. Forsyth was FCS chairman in the mid-seventies and gloried in its image as the Blue Trots with more radical elements advocated legalisation of adult incest, hard drugs, and much else besides.

Moderate Tories were therefore alarmed as party chairman Michael Forsyth completed his right-wing revolution at Scottish Conservative Party headquarters in Edinburgh.

His grip on the party in Scotland was now total with the appointment to senior Central Office posts of a string of young gay men with a background on the ultra-right wing of the party.

But real administrative power now rests with Chief of Staff, Walters. A party insider said: “Make no mistake, Walters is in charge. He now runs the show.” Walters was the first appointment made by Forsyth who was himself the personal choice of Margaret Thatcher who perceived him as the man with the qualifications to run the new-model Scottish Tory Party.

Welshman Walters, was hired as part of Forsyth’s campaign to cleanse the party of those not in tune with his philosophy that “politics is a battleground” and that many Scottish Tories had forgotten how to fight. Right-wingers Simon Turner and Douglas Young, both in the Walters-Forsyth mould with a political past on the libertarian right, were also in the Forsyth’s team.

Forsyth surrounded himself with zealous young gay men whose background was in the controversial world of the now disbanded Federation of Conservative Students (FCS) and similarly rightist groupings.

May 2005: Fever Club orgies and the Tory Party

The Fever Club was launched in 1998 by Walters, a political adviser and speech writer to senior Tory MPs and preacher of the Tory’ morally-focused back-to-basics policies, Dougie Smith and property tycoon Jonathan Friedman, The first event was a debauched party in a Central London penthouse. Its 2,500 worldwide members include captains of industry, celebrities and multi-millionaire tycoons. Orgies for the rich and beautiful are hosted twice yearly in London and Manchester but there are parties over the summer in New York and Ibiza. Fever receives over 400 applications for each party and the vetting process is extremely strict. The upper age limit of 35 was recently raised to 40 to take account of the advancing years of some of the organisers.

15 Apr 2008: Multinational construction companies illegally blacklisted trade unionists in the UK building industry for years

Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd. played a key role in setting up the Consulting Association to deny workers, most of whom were simply raising concerns over health and safety, employment.

Following extensive investigations the Information Commissioners Office raided the Consulting Association and recovered over 3,214 files naming construction workers and environmental activists.

Police then attended the offices of Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd and served an arrest warrant on Cullum McAlpine for human rights violations relating to the scandal.

In a 2013 follow up a Scottish Affairs Select Committee reported that: “major construction firms caught in illegal anti-union blacklisting are still dodging responsibility”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UGdffWtzEE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRB9DjmhBHg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI1mh2N7OOg (Blacklisting in Employment)

23 October 2013 – Police Colluded In Secret Plan To Blacklist 3200 Building Workers

Police officers across the country supplied information on workers to a blacklist operation run by Britain’s biggest construction companies, the police watchdog has told lawyers representing victims.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission informed those affected that a Scotland Yard inquiry into police collusion identified that it is “likely that all special branches were involved in providing information” that kept certain individuals out of work.

The blacklist, run by a company called the Consulting Association, funded by 40 major firms in the construction industry including Balfour Beatty and Sir Robert McAlpine, was discovered in 2009 after a raid by the information commissioner’s office.

Since then, the victims have fought to find out who was providing information against them. The IPCC’s correspondence is regarded as a major breakthrough.

The information commissioner’s officers confirmed in a freedom of information response that they held notes from a meeting between the Consulting Association and officers from the police national extremism tactical co-ordination unit, which runs undercover officers.

The notes of the 2008 meeting were part of a haul of documents seized by the information commissioner’s office when it discovered the existence of the secret blacklist during a raid on an office in Droitwich, Worcestershire.

Sir Robert McAlpine ltd, a major player in the establishment and funding of the blacklist, is currently being sued in the high court over an unlawful conspiracy to amass a database of information against thousands of people.

Last week, in a dramatic twist, eight major construction companies, including Sir Robert McAlpine ltd., announced that they would compensate some of the 3,213 workers whose names had been on a blacklist.

A joint statement said: “The companies – Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska UK and Vinci – all apologise for their involvement with the Consulting Association and the impact that its database may have had on any individual construction worker.”

A solicitor representing 69 victims in the high court, said he cautiously welcomed the announcement but raised concerns over the involvement of the unions, which are also suspected of providing information to the blacklist operation in some cases.

He said: “We note that there has been reference to the consultation of Ucatt and Unite in the formulation of the proposed compensation scheme and we express serious concern about the involvement of those organisations.

We have seen evidence that implicates Amicus (which evolved into Unite) and Ucatt officials in the supply of negative commentary about the suitability of their members for employment.

That commentary frequently made its way onto the Consulting Association database and was no doubt one of the factors that led to denials of employment.

It is also worthy of note that those unions refused to support their members in bringing a High Court claim so that they could seek redress for the hardship that they suffered.

Many of those that we represent are firm that they object to Unite or Ucatt playing any part in negotiations with the relevant companies for these reasons.”

10 Dec 2013 – The Shrewsbury 24 Conspiracy Parliamentary Debate

Nineteen seventy-two was a momentous year for industrial relations in this country. A weak Government had twice declared states of emergency, first in February during the first miners’ strike for almost half a century, and secondly in August during the national dockworkers’ strike.

Matters were made worse by the Government’s attempts to prevent unions from defending their members’ rights, wages and conditions at work. It was clear that of all the work forces in the United Kingdom, the building industry was a bigger mess than all the rest put together. Wages were low, there was no job security and exploitation was rife through a system known as “the lump.”

Reflecting on the Shrewsbury 24 issue, the conditions that existed in the building industry in the 1970s were a blight on society. Sites with hundreds of thousands of men were given two rat-infested, filthy toilets. There was nowhere to change, so if workers got soaked in the rain, they would either have to go home and lose their pay, or continue to work sodden and freezing. The health and safety conditions were appalling. In 1973 alone, there were 231 fatal accidents in construction.

Protestors were victimised because they raised serious health and safety concerns so as to ensure that workers were safe in the workplace. The response from employers was swift. They acted against the trade unions to make sure that health and safety issues were not raised. The agenda of the bosses was not about looking after their workers.

The Shrewsbury 24 picketed in horrific conditions, calmly protesting against injustice. But it was an almost impossible task trying to organise building workers who were often moved to new temporary sites.

The Shrewsbury 24 hired six coaches and picketed large sites around Shrewsbury, which were chosen because they were not as well organised as some places in the bigger cities. It was peaceful. There were no cautions and no arrests. They had the permission of site owners. Chief Superintendent Meredith even shook the hand of Des Warren and thanked him for the co-operation of the UCATT and the then Transport and General Workers Union.

For that reason, when 24 men were arrested on conspiracy charges months later, they were shocked and confused. Six were sent to jail, and over four decades later, the pickets still deny that they were guilty of any of the charges levelled against them.

The sentences had a devastating impact on these men. While in prison, Des Warren was regularly forced to drink “liquid cosh”, which has been blamed for his death from Parkinson’s disease in 2004. These men struggled to get work afterwards. Let me finish by saying that if there were any sort of national security issue, it would never be viewed as acceptable in this day and age that information for which people are looking should be denied to them.

The Scottish Affairs Select Committee investgated issues past and current arising from blacklisting. And the evidence tabled by Trade Unions confirmed that even today trade union organisers are being refused access to building sites, simply because they want to raise health and safety issues that the employer does not wish to be addressed.

23 Jan 2014 – Who Was It Who Funded the Economic League’s Secret Committee?

Lord McAlpine ltd. funded the Economic League’s secret committee but it was Tory researcher, Russell Walters, who was chief of staff for would-be Tory leader, the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) who also worked for Economic League.

Another person involved was Edward Walsh, a 5th columnist who in the 1960s and 1970s convinced the unions that he worked only in their interests whilst employed by the Economic League. A well-organised conspiracy.

27 Jan 2015: David Russell Walters planning for the future with his right-wing-Group “The Young Britons Foundation”

Behind heavy wooden doors in Committee Room 10, in the House of Commons Walters is actively involved in teaching young Tory graduates. Formed in 2003 its heroes are Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and their free-market, libertarian, low-tax ideals.

With strong links with the American neo-conservative movement, the YBF regularly sends activists on subsidised trips to conferences in the US. An insider said: “We go into schools and preach conservatism and then get hold of the best kids and train them up. We have been described as a Conservative madrasa, so we send the next generation out to the States and bring them back radicalised.”

The YBF claims to have trained 2,500 party activists and sources familiar with the Conservative Central office said there is an understanding that the YBF is the main provider of training for young Conservative activists. Significantly, at least 11 Tory parliamentary candidates have either been delegates or speakers at its courses since 2003. It seems the graduates of the “Conservative madrasa” could be about to take power.

Tory Central Office Adviser – Douglas Smith

In the 1997 general election, Scottish born Smith campaigned energetically for Sir James Goldsmith’s Referendum Party and became great mates with Sir Jimmy’s son Zac whom he later recruited to the Tory party.

Smith was the respected co-ordinator of the influential Tory think tank Conservatives for Change (C.change) spearheaded by Tory modernisers and set up by party chairman Francis Maude.

But he also devoted a deal of his attention to coordinating the activities of the “Fever Club” which enjoyed a reputed 2,500 worldwide membership including captains of industry, celebrities and multi-millionaire tycoons.

Orgies for the ultra-rich and politically influential were hosted twice yearly in London and Manchester and other parties were held over the summer in New York and Ibiza. The club received over 400 applications for each party was launched in January 1998 with a debauched event in a Central London penthouse.

Leading moderniser Smith forged the morally-focused back-to-basics policies of the Tory government of the ill-advised John Major. He was forced to cut his links with “Fever”. Following which he took on the role of political adviser and principal speechwriter to David Cameron the leader of the Tory Party.

Smith was also previously an adviser to the late Sir James Goldsmith and wrote speeches for a number of leading Conservative MPs including former party leader Michael Howard. He was also the Head of the political section of “Conservative Intelligence.”

6 Aug 2006: The Fever Party Orgies

Entrepreneur Smith ran the sex parties for toffs for five years. Events saw couples swapping partners and taking part in bizarre sexual combinations.

According to Fever’s website, the parties were the most “exclusive and sizzling sex parties” going. They were held at glitzy locations including a townhouse in London’s Mayfair, luxury villas in Ibiza and a country mansion near Manchester. Summer parties attracted couples from all over England. Couples also flew in from Grenada, the Netherlands, the South of France and Iceland.

The parties have strict entry rules – people must be under 40, good looking, and prepared to leave any inhibitions at the door. Guests are asked to make a financial contribution, usually no less than £500 per person. Couples are lavished with free drinks and party bosses boast of their reputation for attracting stunning couples to their events.

Smith and Cameron

Smith was a speech-writer for family man Cameron, a leader desperate to shake off the sleazy image of previous Tory regimes. A senior Tory source said: “Dougie was a very valued member of David Cameron’s team and played an important role.” But participants in the “five-star” events he organised for “Fever” tell of orgies with giant double beds heaving with writhing couples. His key role horrified senior Tories who wanted to promote Cameron as squeaky clean and a “new breed” of politician. One said: “we really didn’t want someone like this involved with running our organisation these parties are filthy and disgusting. What kind of message does that send out about us?”

14 Jun 2021: Smith Special Adviser to Boris Johnson

It’s never the crime that gets them, it’s always the cover-up. That’s the saying in politics, and while there’s no hint whatsoever of any misdemeanour associated with Smith, there is certainly a growing whiff of intrigue hanging around Boris Johnson’s senior aide.

When questioned the Prime Minister’s official spokesperson said Smith was a Special Advisor who reported to the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff. But when asked why he hadn’t been on the official list of Special Advisors as of 2020 there was no immediate answer.

Smith has a desk in No.10 and is part of the set-up but appears not to have been on the books. But no one got selected as a Tory candidate for the 2019 general election without their name first going in front of “Dougie.” A fact the 1922 Committee Executive having been indifferent to are definitely becoming more and more interested in. But it is possible that the secrecy, to do with who pays Smith, and what they pay him, is just a coincidence.

Smith’s friend Ben Elliot and his career in politics

A nephew of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Elliot is the mastermind behind top concierge service Quintessentially. An excellent well-connected networker, he was appointed co-chairman of the Conservative Party by Boris Johnson in July 2019. He is a regular fixture at charity events and openings, where he is often pictured alongside celebrities.

He finds his relaxation at high stakes weekly poker tournaments at Aspinall’s in the company of Dougie Smith, Boris Johnson and fellow old-Etonian Zac (now Lord Goldsmith courtesy of Boris Johnson) who asked Elliot to join his failed campaign to become London mayor in 2016. As campaign treasurer, the role gave Elliot his first introduction to the world of political fundraising.

Munira Mirza’s job with a salary of £123k courtesy of London Mayor Boris Johnson

Mirza is married to Dougie Smith, who works out of the Tory party Central Office. So it’s who you know!!

Aged just 30, after nearly a decade spent in academia and with little relevant work experience, she was appointed as an art adviser by Boris Johnson. And only a year later she was promoted to the deputy mayor for education and culture. Never having had a proper job she was now a paid-up member of the establishment. Privilege is a fitting term. No need to fill in online applications for jobs, just get a friend to whisper in Boris’s ear and before long you might be selected to be an MP and enjoy the perk of renting out your second home etc. (total politics)

3 Feb 2022: Munira Mirza resignation

Munira Mirza has worked for Boris Johnson for 14 years, resigned as head of Downing Street’s policy unit after he failed to apologise, as she had advised for falsely accusing Sir Keir Starmer of failing to charge Jimmy Savile when he was Director of the Crown Prosecution Service.

News of her resignation was released by The Spectator’s James Forsyth, a friend of Mirza whose wife Allegra Stratton worked alongside her in Downing Street.

Before today’s event, there was no closer confidant to the Prime Minister than Mirza, other than her husband Dougie Smith. The Oldham-born daughter of Pakistani immigrants, Mirza worked with Johnson throughout his eight-year reign as Mayor of London and her departure will hurt Boris more than any aide resigning or MP filing a letter of no confidence. Here is the full letter of resignation:

“Dear Prime Minister,

It is with great regret that I am writing to resign as your Head of Policy. You are aware of the reason for my decision: I believe it was wrong for you to imply this week that Keir Starmer was personally responsible for allowing Jimmy Savile to escape justice. There was no fair or reasonable basis for that assertion. This was not the normal cut-and-thrust of politics; it was an inappropriate and partisan reference to a horrendous case of child sex abuse. You tried to clarify your position today but, despite my urging, you did not apologise for the misleading impression you gave. I have served you for fourteen years and it has been a privilege to do so. You have achieved many important things both as Prime Minister and, before that, as Mayor of London. You are a man of extraordinary abilities with a unique talent for connecting with people. You are a better man than many of your detractors will ever understand which is why it is desperately sad that you let yourself down by making a scurrilous accusation against the Leader of the Opposition. Even now, I hope you find it in yourself to apologise for a grave error of judgement made under huge pressure. I appreciate that our political culture is not forgiving when people say sorry, but regardless, it is the right thing to do. It is not too late for you but, I’m sorry to say, it is too late for me.

Yours sincerely, Munira.”

Jonathan Brocklebank

Is this the SNP’s biggest Twit? Rude, insulting, crass and often sent in the dead of night, Pete Wishart’s tweets have offended so often even some in his own party wish he’d shut up.

Puerile insults: The SNP’s Pete Wishart is a regular presence on social media

Twenty-odd years ago tensions were running high in the Celtic rock band Runrig. The singer, Donnie Munro, was a lifelong Labour supporter whose heart was set on becoming an MP. The keyboard player, Pete Wishart, was increasingly politically engaged to having given up his card-carrying membership of the Labour party – as an ardent Nationalist.

Where did this leave a group whose identity was rooted in its Scottishness? In songs about the nation’s history and politics, what was the band’s message to a fanbase steeped in Caledonian culture? Something had to give. It was Skye-born Munro who blinked first, leaving Runrig in 1997 and, in the process, unburdened himself of years of frustration.

SNP activists had called him an ‘English b *** ’, an ‘English lover’ and ‘a traitor’, he said. He feared the party was capitalising on the populist symbolism of the film Braveheart to poison Scottish minds against their neighbours across the Border. He warned that a rump of SNP supporters now believed anyone who was not one of them must be the enemy. As a description of the kind of fingers-in-ears Nationalist shouter Pete Wishart was to become, it was spookily accurate. In the years since their paths diverged, the man Mr Munro once shared a stage with has become one of the most malignant public figures on Twitter – and better known as the trolling MP than he ever was as a member of Runrig or, before that, Big Country. In short, the singer has watched his old musical mucker become the leading exponent of exactly the kind of aggressive, tribal Nationalism that prompted him to leave the band in the first place. Having established himself over several years as a tweet-first, engage brain-later SNP firebrand, the Dunfermline-born politician plumbed fresh depths when he shared a mocked up council election ballot paper on his Twitter account. On it the Lib Dems were described as W, Labour as Wier and the Conservatives as Absolute Total W. Puerile insults from a 55year-old parliamentarian in the very week his party leader Nicola Sturgeon had called for a civilised and respectful debate in Scotland. How eyes must have rolled at SNP HQ. But the timing of his crassness was disastrous for another reason: days after it appeared, Prime Minister Theresa May announced a General Election. Mr Wishart’s own name was about to appear on a ballot paper three years earlier than scheduled – and his Perth and North Perthshire seat is a prime Tory target. ‘I will treat this as a marginal constituency and fight for every vote,’ he pledged last month. ‘I’m the longest-serving MP for Scotland and everyone in North Perthshire will know someone I have helped.’

The trouble is almost everyone will know someone he has offended too – and many even in his own party would cheerfully see him lose his seat.

Mr Wishart’s cause will not be helped by signs of impatience among his own constituents over an MP apparently more interested in Twitter trolling than any other part of the job. Then there is the fact that his own party appears increasingly embarrassed by him.

Even party leader Miss Sturgeon has joked to journalists that she would like to confiscate his mobile phone to keep him off Twitter.

Sources indicate that senior SNP figures now see him as ‘Uncle Pete’, the bedraggled curmudgeon who shoots his mouth off at weddings and is tolerated only through gritted teeth. They dearly wish he would give social media a rest.

‘He is, to all intents and purposes, a professional internet troll,’ said one parliamentary source. ‘He’s looking for a reaction. He thrives on reaction and annoying Unionists on Twitter and absolutely revels in it. Basically, it’s a hobby for him but the party’s patience has been wearing thin for a long time now.’

Mr Wishart deleted his offensive ballot paper tweet 24 hours after posting it – but still tried to have the last word.

He tweeted: ‘For press accuracy. It was a retweet of a popular meme that’s doing the rounds on a popular Chewing the Fat sketch. You’re welcome.’

Whatever the mechanics, his lamentable lack of judgment was well established long before the latest episode. In October last year, he opined on Twitter that ‘Blairites are now like your embarrassing incontinent old relative stuck away in a care home who you might go and visit occasionally’.

In his haste to get his attempt at satire online, it seemed he never stopped to consider that SNP supporters had elderly relatives too.

OUTRAGE ensued. Among those appalled by the comment was Edinburgh man Andy Morris. He tweeted the politician saying his late grandfather, who had fought for his country in the war, had suffered from incontinence. ‘The only embarrassing thing is you,’ he told him.

Even those who acknowledged the existence of a ‘Planet Pete’ with different laws of political discourse than their own thought the remark uniquely brainless and attention-seeking. Indeed, in what is thought to be a first, Mr Wishart himself expressed disapproval for his crassness. ‘Sorry for any offence,’ he tweeted as the scale of the revulsion he had caused became clear.

Yet, while Mr Wishart is all about getting up Unionist noses on Twitter, those who know him well insist he is capable of civility in person.

‘In real life, he’s a world away from the persona he creates for himself as a complete monster on Twitter,’ said one parliamentary source. ‘The difference is remarkable, to be honest. He treats it like a game, he knows what he is doing online and he’s doing it deliberately.’

The problem is his online persona and often infantile behaviour in the Commons have come to define him. He has become a figurehead to the most mindless Nationalists on the web and ringleader of the most disruptive SNP element in the chamber – MPs the late Father of the House, Sir Gerald Kaufman, described as ‘goons’.

Witness the rota Mr Wishart organised to ensure Nationalist MPs were always sitting on the front row of the opposition benches and thus deny veteran Labour MPs such as Dennis Skinner their place there.

And witness his vendetta last year against the journalist and Mail writer Stephen Daisley who, at the time, wrote a column for the STV website. In it, he expressed the view the SNP was ‘expert at mining grievance from even the most innocuous act or statement’.

Rising inexorably to the bait, Mr Wishart tweeted the journalist’s employer: ‘Hi @STVnews is this your view or just the view of the “digital” arm of the “STV family”?’ That earned a delicious rejoinder from author JK Rowling, whose Perthshire home is in Mr Wishart’s constituency: ‘Is trying to intimidate journalists you dislike @TheSNP policy or just a vendetta of your own?’

Yet, following online pressure from both Mr Wishart and fellow MP John Nicolson, himself a former TV newsman, the journalist’s column was axed. Had they just used Twitter as a weapon to silence a high-profile critic?

‘If any other journos want to be intimidated just let me know,’ tweeted Mr Wishart, clearly in his element. ‘We’re offering a cheap deal in gagging just now.’

Then there was the time in 2015 when ‘Uncle Pete’ went off-piste on the issue of second jobs for MPs. Getting to his feet in the Commons, he let rip at other parties whose MPs had a second job, directorships or place on a company. And here, to the dismay of senior party figures, he left no room for doubt – not one Nationalist MP had a ‘second master’.

He was speaking in February that year when Nationalist MPs numbered only six. By May they were joined by 50 more, bringing their second jobs, directorships and places on companies with them. The charges of hypocrisy flew.

Things have a nasty habit of going wrong even when Mr Wishart thinks he is on message. Some suggest that in common with other parliamentary colleagues, he struggles to consider issues in the round. Party politics alone determine whether things are good or evil, which makes expounding on them hazardous. Hence, at the height of the Named Person controversy, his declaration that all opponents of the scheme were clearly Tory/Unionist. As if this were purely a question of tribalism rather than personal freedom and parental rights.

And hence the extraordinary strategy adopted by this elected politician and several SNP colleagues of blocking followers on Twitter who post comments disagreeing with them, however politely. Silencing critics, so the reasoning appears to go, gets the job done better than engaging with them. ‘He’s like 90 per cent of the SNP politicians at Westminster,’ said one insider there. ‘He does not understand why people could have voted No in the referendum and valued the Union. He just doesn’t get it.’ Mr Wishart’s political journey, according to his bandmate Donnie Munro at least, began as a card-carrying member of the Labour Party. It was something of a surprise, therefore, for the singer to be accused by him of abandoning his core beliefs. The keyboard player had ‘crossed the political divide only a matter of years ago, wrote Mr Munro. Mr Wishart hit back, claiming ‘it was New Labour’s adoption of Conservative policies, and Donnie’s subsequent adoption of them’ that had scuppered the singer’s bid to become an elected politician. The pair bickered through newspaper columns and letters pages for years until, in 2001, Mr Wishart achieved for the SNP what Mr Munro had failed to do for Labour. He got himself elected as MP for Tayside North. Married to primary teacher Caroline Lindsay, with a young son Brodie, the newcomer MP took some time to find his mojo.

AS SNP spokesman for sport, one of his early hobby horses was the introduction of a requirement for Scottish referees to declare publicly which team they supported. Once this was known, they should not be allowed to officiate at their team’s matches, Mr Wishart said.

But what if they were Celtic supporters, asked critics. Should they be allowed to referee Rangers matches? Or Aberdeen or Hibernian ones if they were catching Celtic in the league. Wasn’t it better, they asked, just to expect referees to be impartial? Mr Wishart went back to the drawing board.

But, with the advent of Twitter, his confidence grew. Now divorced, and sitting up late in his London bolthole, he threw himself into the medium as the independence debate gathered pace and grew nastier.

The ultimate badge of honour came in March 2015 when he was named parliamentary tweeter of the year at the Political Twitter Awards. ‘So chuffed,’ he tweeted. ‘Twitter allows us to have conversations with our constituents, promote the issues that are important to us and it is also just great fun.’

Could it be that the ‘fun’ has distracted Mr Wishart from the job in hand – that of representing the people of Perth and North Perthshire?

Perhaps Commons Speaker John Bercow sums the position up best. Last year, following a particularly witless heckle from the former musician, he declared: ‘Order. Pete Wishart is an aspiring statesman. His aspiration may be a little way from fulfilment.’

THE WIND OOT MA SAILS – To all who are concerned, and to Pete Wishart MP (who should be).

Like a good many other Scots, in Scotland, and around the globe, I woke up on 19 Sep 2014, as one bereaved. And tragically, even a lot of those people who voted No were also gutted. On some level, they must have known the YES group were the goodies. But they had not been convinced. They admitted it, Project Fear worked on them. But here was the thing, before the dust settled on the day, before the next sunset, the whole country, the whole country, had a plan, a solid, clear road map to Indy, and the wind was in our sails.

First SNP Membership rose from 15,000 – 100,000 in months. The 3rd biggest party in the UK. Wow. Then the GE. Lend us your vote, said Nicola, and Yes, No’s and Mibbaes Aye did, overwhelmingly 56 out of 59. And not only that but real human beings got elected. Black, Shepherd, Whitford. Fresh voices, fresh ideas. Right in the face of Westminster and boy did they know it. And then adjusted…… Westminster is the oldest hand at taming its subjects, practice makes perfect. And in spite of the best efforts of the 56, how little did their presence achieve.

And then Brexit, no clear literature, mixed messages from HQ, poor leadership on many a level, and the Yessers divided. On a UK vote leave level a campaign overwhelmingly racist, dumbed down to the most simplistic base instincts, with a big lie on a bus as a salve for their conscience – How much for the NHS a week? … aye right. And no one, not even the most hopeful, devoted Yesser, could have believed the outcome. Every part of Scotland voted to stay, a 62% majority. The democratic contrast between Scotland and England could not be more clear cut. And Brexit, a mystery, wrapped in a soundbite, Brexit means…. blah blah. (the only clear thing about Brexit, is what a total clusterf*ck it is. For the economy, for the prices of everything, for farming and fishing and manufacturing, and human rights, the environment, employment. Nothing, nothing good is coming from Brexit. It’s brexshit and bad all the way, except for the already rich, who will carve up the NHS, and keep their tax havens.) and still, we had a plan, the leadership say ‘hold, hold’ and we get that, ‘patience, there is a plan’. And a snap GE, snap for us, well planned in advance by the Unionist Parties. And not just one, but 2 terrorist incidents in the middle. And still, we had a plan, a mandate, a get out of jail free card, a cast-iron ‘we’ve damned well had enough’ mandate, ‘we reserve the right to call another referendum in the event of extraordinary circumstances, such as Scotland being pulled out of the EU against her will’. Doesn’t get much clearer than that, does it? Didn’t put it in small print, thinking no one would read it did they. I was conscious of voting for it, with that in mind. 3 times, 3 times they tried to scupper it, and 3 times, the people of Scotland voted for this mandate. (2 x GE,s and 1 x SE). And still, in the face of all that Westminster and its complicit whore – the medial, could throw at it, we won, still the biggest party in Scotland. Still the wind in our sails and the road rising up to meet us. Never losing faith, never losing courage, never losing sight of the plan, and never stopping the campaign. And for those of us, worried that there seemed to be a lack of urgency at the SNP party level, a complacency, a quietening on the urgency for another referendum. Well, we put our concerns to one side, with their brilliant governance, and the promise of a peoples’ energy company wow, a peoples’ bank superb (set up by someone from Tesco’s no less – sure to be radical yeh right, fingers crossed). We took comfort from the quiet insistence, ‘hold, hold, patience’. There is a plan, once Brexit is known. And we put to one side, concerns that there appears to be no plan to countenance the nonstop propaganda from the BBC it exists, that at least is acknowledged, but nothing to hit back at it, nothing. No leaflet drops, no public meetings, no poster competitions to get the message out, no car posters for every member with info on them, not some mindless slogan, not a bloody thing. An open goal totally ignored. So we take stock and re-assure ourselves with certain facts, that a party in Governance has responsibilities and has to behave in a certain manner, and we go off and use the grassroots movement to try and plug the gap. And still, the road ahead is clear, there is a plan. And then one day, one week, one month, 3 things happen, and all is changed.

April 2018: War against Syria is waged, on the thinnest and most dodgy of evidence. And the clear siren voice of decency, of common sense and common reason, that voice that rung out in protest over Iraq, that voted in unison against the vote to bomb Syria the first time, that voice, this time became the muted, muffled, so, so, politicians double speak of a bland bank manager.

And next up, Pete Wishart goes to press, ‘now is not the time’ maybe’s later if yir all good boys and girls, after another general election if you stop being naughty and vote for us again. And the song being sung has backing even the Tory party like it.

And the third blow, Wings Over Scotland publish the article ‘Elephant in the Courtroom’ that even if we want to use our mandate, Westminster could stop us, unless we win the right in court, or at any rate, exhaust that avenue. And devastatingly, on this issue, the SNP are deathly silent. Is there a plan, have they considered this, are they even aware of it and just have their heads in the sand. Questions, questions, and of answers there are none. The silence is deafening. And this is truly devastating the grassroots can’t fill this gap. Only the SNP, in government, can implement this. On this issue, we fall. 3 things, 3 things together, have brought me to my knees in a way the 2014 IndyRef vote never did. The wind is out of my sails, I’m bailing out water, and days ago I was sailing on at a good steady pace, plotting a course and making good progress. The shore has never seemed so close, and at the same time so far away.

On 21 April 2018 Pete Wishart reiterated his argument, and I welcome the fact he did so in a more reasoned tone. And I am more certain now than ever, this is policy, the policy being finessed and sold to us, whether we like it or not. And so the purpose of this essay is to address his arguments, in a polite manner. There are some who say any disagreement should be done at branch level, behind closed doors. Pete Wishart’s article was public, therefore the arguments against should be public also. His debate seems to centre around whether we should proceed with a referendum simply because we currently possess a mandate or whether we hold one when there is good evidence it can be won.’

There was nothing simple about obtaining that Mandate, that 3 times won Mandate. If we lose it by waiting for another general election, we lose it forever. Wishart’s ‘I want to see evidence it can be won, and I want to see it held at the time of our choosing when optimum conditions are in place for success’. Well, I want to win the lottery, I want the full bonanza, and I’d like it to happen pretty much now, or at a time when it would suit me best.

Dearest Pete, you will never see evidence it can be won, the Westminster establishment will burn any such evidence, destroy any person who can present such evidence, and take the country to war to distract from any hint of evidence of this kind. ‘At a time of our choosing’ what fantasy planet do you live on?

When ‘Optimum Conditions are in place for success’ there’s no such bloody thing, optimum conditions my arse, what a fair wind, sunny weather, Scotland winning the football? Pete ‘go over what these ‘optimal conditions’ are not’ ‘Less than a year from having lost one-third of our indy supporting MP’s’

Dear Pete – remember Nicola’s phrase, ‘lend us your vote’. Well, they did, and they were disappointed. To go from 6 MP’s to 56 in one vote and then think that’s your new normal is incredibly foolish and presumptuous. ‘we cannot ignore the fact the SNP lost half a million votes’, No you can’t, but where’s your analysis, your evidence, your polls and your research to identify the whys of the loss. Hmmm, pretty big on insisting others show you evidence, you show yours and do so as a matter of urgency. You have people campaigning on the doors, this evidence would be bread and butter to assist them.

‘Optimal Conditions are not when a significant gap exists between support for indy and support for an early indy ref’. Really, you whit!!!! Imagine for a second, that for the second time in Scotland’s history, we get a second chance to vote for Independence for Scotland, and on voting day, do you really think someone is going to go, ‘that’s it, I’m voting No told them to hold it a week on Tuesday, but would they listen, no, well that’ll teach them.

And that Tory voter you met, who previously voted for Indy, bet they voted for Brexit, Hmm, bet they did. And like a lot of them at the time, never gave it much thought beyond the simplistic message about immigration! Speak to Brexiteers now and a significant number of them, now know it’s a damned sight more complicated than that, with zero good news coming through. Immigration has been knocked off the poster board as an issue when it comes to Brexit. Immigration, for those who have that fear, is going to get an awful lot bigger under a Tory Government desperate to strike any kind of deal with India, for which ‘free movement of people will be an absolute condition. Fancy that do you, with workers rights Binned under Brexit. If you want to win back the Yes/Leave voters I‘d strongly suggest the above hard fact might be one to start shouting from the rooftops.

Pete, you say that support for Independence is holding strong at 45%, and then in the next sentence talk about it being opposed by a ‘significant margin,’ that margin is 5%. You identify this 5% as the hardest group to convert. You say we ‘need a new case’ and we ‘have to get on their territory’, everyday issues such as ‘pensions, currency, perceived deficits’ are to be addressed and to win, ‘we are going to have to be creative. On this, I agree and am pulling my hair out at your almost complete lack of ambition. You are aiming for 5%, 5%! Aim for 30%, aim for 40%. Damn well aim to win. And where, where, where is your new case for pensions, your new case for currency, for perceived deficits. Anyone following the issues will know, Prof Richard Murphy has done more work on ‘perceived deficits’ than you – did you print it off, did you do a leaflet drop – did you hell. Currency look to the Common Green, they’ve done all the heavy lifting there. Did you print it off, did you get billboards commissioned with the info. Did you hell. The last time around the SNP produced a 500-page white paper, grassroots Wings Over Scotland produced The Wee Blue Book, thank god they did. You ‘get creative’ if you want to, the rest of us would be better off putting a big simple message on the side of a bus. You talk about returning to a ‘One Scotland’ approach to independence. I do hope you didn’t pay anyone money for that slogan. Money down the drain if you did. You talk of Brexit, of not leaving those who voted Leave. Semi-detached from the Yes Movement, proceeding to another indyref with this unresolved will be like having one hand tied behind our backs.

Well, Pete, let us hear you ‘get creative’ about sorting this one out eh.
Suggestions, ideas, policies. Where are they? It’s been over a year since the
Brexit vote, where are they? what are they? EFTA, EEA, what about it, argue the case. You say, ’ Brexit will be an unmitigated disaster for our fellow Scots and when it properly hits our fellow Scots will want to review their constitutional options. It (optimum conditions) is hitting the sweet spot when Brexit impacts and people actively want out of an isolated, desolated UK. It means support for the SNP returning to the levels we achieved around the last referendum in electoral contests.’ So you’re going to let an unmitigated disaster befall us, a Brexit impact that will
isolate and desolate us, and if we’re good boys and girls and vote SNP in
enough numbers you might just honour the mandate we voted for the first time. Stronger for Scotland my arse. Please, please listen, when I say this. If we do not hold another Indy Ref before the next General Election and before we lose our mandate. The mandate will be squandered, our single market membership to the EU will be lost, our economy, our businesses, universities, environment, NHS Scotland, our Parliament, ruined, and gone, gone, gone. These are desperate times, not chosen times, not optimum times, desperate times. Last time we had a choice, a choice for change or no change. This time out we have a fight for survival and only a short window of opportunity to achieve it.

Your current stance has done, what the BBC, the Tories, the Labour Party
and the No Voters could never do. You’ve taken the wind from my sails.
That’s me for now. Now, where did I leave that pair of oars? Yours in kindness and in commitment. Daisy Walker

Kirsty Blackman

Blackman is an MP who evidently enjoys her reputation as a “shock jock.” This article pulls together a number of incidences of her ongoing confrontational politicking in the media against anyone possessing the temerity to challenge her views. Her irrational behaviour is a cause for concern amongst her constituents and other political observers who have noted she suffers from recurring depression due to the stressful environment she is required to work in as an MP at Westminster. It might be in her best interests if she stood down for a time.

2 Jan 2018: The Blackman Interview

Blackman, the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster, is rejecting hugs. She said: “I met someone recently and we had a conversation about whether or not they would give me a hug and actually I don’t particularly want people to hug me. If somebody goes to hug me and I don’t want them to hug me, I say: “excuse me, I’d rather shake hands.”

This no-nonsense approach is characteristic of the 31-year-old, who has represented Aberdeen North since 2015. As well as being deputy leader of the SNP group in the UK parliament, Blackman speaks for her party on the economy and caught the public’s attention when she was censured by the parliamentary authorities in 2016 for bringing her two young children to a Commons committee hearing.

Blackman argues much more could be done to improve parliament as a workplace, starting with its bars. She said: “I don’t think that the problem is that we have bars because I think it is reasonable that people have somewhere that they can go in the evening and have a drink after work. What I do think is a concern for me is the way that those places are managed. I’ve worked in pubs before. There are people that come to any one of those bars that there’s no way I would have served.” I would have said: “You’re too drunk. Get out of this place. If you have them run as professional bars, rather than some kind of social club, then you have a situation where everybody is much safer.”

Her party’s other preoccupation is Brexit, on which the SNP believes it has a clearer policy than the constructive ambiguity of Labour’s. “I think the key thing that’s differentiating us from Labour at the moment is their policy on Brexit because they are in an utter shambles. The SNP have that absolute consistency that we believe we should be members of the European Union; if we’re not going to be members of the European Union we should be members of the single market and the customs union.”

She is markedly less keen to talk about Scottish independence, the SNP’s founding principle. She says she is not in Westminster to pressure the government for a referendum. “I don’t think most folks in their daily lives give two hoots about whether Scotland is a member of the union. The constitutional issues are not the biggest concern for an awful lot of people and, in fact, I very rarely talk about Scottish independence in the chamber, because I talk about things that matter to the people of Aberdeen.”

Blackman confirmed she will keep gender equality in the public eye saying: “I think there were a lot of people who came out and said: “We’ve got zero tolerance of this,” and then it kind of fizzled out. I would like this to stay as something that we’re talking about on a regular basis and I am determined not to let the sexual harassment scandal drop.”

5 Feb 2018: The SNP has failed to make the case for Scottish independence

Blackman, MP for Aberdeen North since 2015, said her party needed to accept that most voters were simply not obsessed with the independence question. She said: “There is a framing issue around it. A lot of people don’t get up in the morning and think about the union and how wonderful it is for their lives or how wonderful independence would be for their lives. Even ardent supporters of independence or unionism don’t think about those things. They get up in the morning and think ‘should I put on the washing?’ or wonder how much their shopping bills are going to cost. What we need to do is make the arguments relevant to people. That’s something politicians have struggled with and haven’t done well enough. We need to be talking about the economic benefits of independence because I believe there are lots of them and how that would impact people’s daily lives.

18 Jul 2018: Scots should do it for Nicola

Blackman said that growing the country’s population should be a key priority in the wake of a future Yes vote and this would be most easily achieved by increasing levels of immigration”. Adding: “Denmark decided it would do a thing called ‘Do It For Denmark’ and Scotland’s leaders could follow the example of other nations by encouraging more reproduction”.

1 Jul 2020: SNP deputy leader at Westminster quits her post

Kirsty Blackman quit her leadership role after saying her mental health was being adversely affected by the impact of the Covid lockdown. She indicated her intention to continue to support her constituents in Aberdeen North. She has been open about mental health in the past, tweeting in 2017 that “talking about depression is hard.”

21 Jan 2021: LGBTQ row surfaces on Twitter

Sarah Phillimore’s Twitter account was removed from the platform for allegedly violating its rules against hateful conduct. Heavily criticising the ban, Joanna Cherry, the MP for Edinburgh South West, told followers of the site that she was “calling out” Twitter for “sexism” and “human rights violations”, adding that the company’s hateful conduct policy “did not protect women.”

In response, that same day “Out for Independence”, the official LGBTQ+ wing of the SNP, posted a challenging tweet stating: “As an inclusive, intersectional organisation we condemn the support given to Sarah Phillimore by an SNP MP,” they followed up by writing: “Phillimore’s antisemitism and transphobia are not part of Scotland we want to see – bigotry in all forms must be opposed.”

Joanna replied to the tweet, labelling it grossly defamatory and in breach of the SNP code of conduct and said: “Your attacks on a prominent party representative who is also a lesbian are disgraceful.” Adding: “I’ve reported it to the party’s National Secretary & he has promised me to take urgent action.

Blackman, took a contrary view, tweeting her support for “Out for independence, she posted: “I often disagree with daft moderation policies by social media companies, but in this instance, they should be praised for censoring or banning someone for spouting transphobia or anti-Semitism, rather than criticised. Like so many in the SNP, I continue to oppose both transphobia and anti-Semitism”. Adding “I’m no QC, but for something to be defamation, doesn’t it have to be, err, untrue?”

Comment

The spat revealed the ongoing battle within the SNP over the party’s stance on proposed changes to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), which would allow people to “self-identify” as trans or non-binary without receiving a medical diagnosis for gender dysphoria.

Stuart Smith, together with some other members of the group, recently resigned from his post as Vice-Convenor an “Out For Independence” telling followers he “could no longer morally justify staying in a party that has become a breeding ground for bigotry.”

Concerns over the resignations were raised to the party leadership and hours later, in an extraordinary intervention, Nicola Sturgeon posted a video message on Twitter, insisting that transphobia should be treated with “zero tolerance” in the party. Pointedly addressing the members who had resigned, she added: “That is not acceptable to me – as SNP leader I will do everything I can to change that impression and persuade all of you that the SNP is your party and you should come home where you belong.”

The following evening, the SNP announced that it’s National Executive Committee would convene to draw up a definition of transphobia to be added to the members’ code of conduct.

A statement signed by the Business Convenor, Kirsten Oswald, and the Depute Leader, Keith Brown, stated: “a number of members left the SNP because they did not consider the party to be a safe tolerant place for trans people. We are sorry that we’ve let you down and today pledge ourselves to change. The SNP does not and will not tolerate transphobia. We all need to have an open conversation about how we got here and how we remove the toxicity from our discussions. Discussions and debates should always be constructive and respectful. The protection of women’s rights is vital. However, transphobia under the guise of concern for women’s rights is still transphobia. Anyone can have a strongly held opinion without the need to insult, offend or display prejudice against others. And that’s the place we all need to reach. Transphobia is just as unacceptable as racism, homophobia and sexism. And trans people have as much right as anyone to feel safe, secure, valued and respected for who they are. We are an inclusive party, and we always have been. The SNP has always been a family for those who believe in independence. A number of members have recently left because they felt they were not welcome anymore. But they are. And we hope they will reconsider and re-engage. It is clear that we have work to do.

A number of initial requests will go to the NEC this weekend including the need to agree to a definition of transphobia so that all SNP members know the standard of behaviour that is expected from them. Where complaints against individuals are made on this or any issue, the National Secretary will consider these fairly and decide if further action is required. All complaints will be considered without fear or favour. For anyone thinking about leaving the party. Please talk to us before you do. We have already reached out to our youth organisations and Out for Indy to allow those affected to talk to us directly about their concerns. We know we have work to do. So please help us shape the future of the SNP. Let’s work to get towards a more progressive equal independent Scotland.” (Scotsman)

1 Feb 2021: Joanne Cherry sacked from SNP frontbench at Westminster

Joanna Cherry, an advocate and queen’s counsel and one of Nicola Sturgeon’s fiercest internal critics, has been sacked from the Scottish National Party’s frontbench at Westminster after a public feud with its former deputy leader Kirsty Blackman.

The former spokesperson for home affairs hit out at her Westminster colleagues and party leadership over its strategy on independence and implied that she would continue criticising party leaders from her new position on the party’s ruling national executive. She tweeted: “Westminster is increasingly irrelevant to Scotland’s constitutional future and the SNP would do well to radically rethink our strategy.”

Joanna was elected to the national executive as one of the most senior SNP activists openly critical of Sturgeon’s cautious approach to staging a second referendum and of her stance on transgender rights. A supporter of “gender critical” campaigners, she also has close links to the Women’s Pledge grouping of SNP activists who won seats on the national executive and other party committees who argue that the Scottish government’s measures to strengthen the rights and protections for trans people are eroding rights for women.

She also clashed with Kirsty Blackman, the SNP’s former deputy leader at Westminster, over the SNP’s policies on trans rights. It was not the first time the two had disagreed on the subject on social media. Blackman, who quit as Commons deputy leader last year and is now an economy spokesperson, said on Twitter that trans people and their supporters were leaving the SNP because of Cherry’s behaviour and that of senior party figures, and then said: “Things have moved on since the 80s.” To which Joanna responded that she had done nothing to set back the rights of trans people. The MP, herself a lesbian, further accused Blackman of breaching the SNP’s code of conduct with her tweet, adding: “I’ll ignore the ageism as I wouldn’t expect a privileged young straight woman to know what it was like for lesbians in the 80s.”

The Day after, Sturgeon broadcast a video on Twitter, in her role as SNP leader, insisting that transphobia had no place in her party and adding that there had been a number of resignations by younger party members critical of the perception the Scottish government had been diluting pro-trans measures in recent legislation.

8 Mar 2021: Blackman tweeted: Having had to resign as deputy leader last year due to my health and scaling back my work in Parliament dramatically I am now ramping it up again.

28 Apr 2021: Blackman speaks about depression

Appearing in person in the Commons after more than a year she told MPs: “This is the first time that I’ve stood in this House to speak since January 2020. During the past year and a bit, I’ve been battling with the black dog of depression.

4 Oct 2021: Blackman demands Joanna Cherry’s sacking

Yet more confirmation of the bitter rift between them was revealed when Blackman shared a public message demanding the sacking from the Party of her colleague in a deepening row over gender and trans rights. It also showed how the wider debate on women’s rights, transgender issues and the right for gender self-ID is causing splits in the SNP.

Blackman deleted her demand later in the day but apparently unrepentant added: “I am clear though, the SNP needs to do more to tackle internal transphobia, including sanctioning or expelling those in the party who are transphobic.”

Joanna responded on social media, saying: “As a lesbian and a feminist I’ve spent a lifetime campaigning for equality and to be clear I support trans rights. What I don’t support is the right of any man to self-ID as a woman and access the single-sex spaces which the Equality Act protects for women and girls.”

24 Oct 2021: SNP researcher has been suspended from the Commons

Jonathan Kiehlmann retweeted an extremist post advocating armed violence against women who defend their rights under the Equality Act. His behaviour was particularly sickening because he retweeted the repellent tweet just one day after the murder of MP David Amess.

The incident occurred in the week when Blackman, branded an LGB gathering across the road from Parliament a “hate conference” knowing that her colleague Joanna Cherry and several other MPs & peers would be attending.

Blackman even showed up to join a picket of the conference although she later tried to laugh it off and pretend she was just having her photograph taken.

Guess who the armed violence against women used to work for in the House of Commons? Blackman of course. And the real scandal is that the hate-mongering MP for Aberdeen North hasn’t received so much as a slapped wrist from her Party. (https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1452228971328851973.html)

5 Nov 2021: SNP MP facing calls to resign after apology for ‘abhorrent’ post about suicide

Facing sanctions for breaching lobbying rules and following the suicide of his wife Rose, Owen Paterson, made the “painful decision” to resign his position as MP for North Shropshire. The day after Blackman, in a brutal political attack on the Tory politician included an ‘appalling’ reference to his late wife’s suicide: “Missed your bus because your wife committed suicide and so you were two minutes late to your jobcentre appointment? – Lobby the Government on behalf of companies who pay you £9k a month? oh, you poor lamb, no sanction for you.” Blackman later retracted the tweet after a sustained backlash from appalled Twitter users and said: “After some reflection, I have deleted a tweet I made earlier. I offer my unreserved apologies for tweeting it, particularly to anyone who may have been upset or offended. I’m sorry.”

29 Nov 2021: Ministers urged to probe LGBTI charity in a row over ‘online hostility’ against gay MP

Joanna Cherry has written to Shona Robison, the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice, asking her to get officials to “investigate and report” on the Equality Network’s decision to publish a tweet that the MP says resulted in a “large volume of hostile communications” aimed at her.

It stems from a row when it was claimed Joanna had endorsed conversion therapy sometimes called “reparative therapy” or “gay cure therapy,” the practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In a tweet, she said: “Reconversion therapy which any right-thinking person should oppose we must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help patients with gender dysphoria to feel comfortable in their birth sex.”

Blackman tweeted that she had complained about Joanna “through the proper channels, repeatedly, for years” and yet it had “resulted in nothing happening and these views still being expressed – and still causing harm to so many people.”

The Equality Network which receives around 90% of its near 530K funding from the SNP Government also shared a picture of Joanna’s tweet, adding the comment: “apparently we must not make it a criminal offence for therapists to try to help lesbian & gay patients to feel comfortable in a mixed-sex relationship. Conversion therapy is harmful and wrong whether it’s trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or their gender identity.”

In her letter to Robison, Joanna said this was an “abhorrent statement which I had not, and would never make about the use of conversion therapy in relation to the sexual orientation of lesbians and gay men.” Adding: “The statement had been placed in quotation marks above an image of my earlier tweet; it was clearly intended to attribute this view to me.” She went on to say that the decision to put the offensive words in quotation marks led to “numbers of people assuming that those were a direct quote from me. Such a reading could have been easily anticipated. That impression and the more general association of my original statement with this offensive view undoubtedly contributed to the large volume of hostile communications I’ve received this week.”

Joanna then said the taxpayer-funded organisation had behaved “recklessly” and urged Robison to “make it clear to the organisation as a matter of urgency that this was inappropriate behaviour and to obtain reassurances from it that it will now manage its communications in a way that prevents any similar occurrence. MPs, MSPs and others engaging in debates about policy and law should not expect government-funded organisations to go out of their way to generate online hostility towards them. Yet that is what happened here. I suggest the SNP Government, as its funder, should seek an apology to me from the Equality Network for its action here.” (Holyrood)

Blackman attacks LGB Alliance 

Hardly befitting conduct of a sitting MP to castigate the UK’s only charity formed on the basis of sexual orientation. It’s astounding that a sitting MP can label a charity based on protected characteristics a hate organisation. It doesn’t look like the SNP are capable of ensuring their MP’s, Councillors, or indeed, Researchers live up to standards that don’t bring Parliament into disrepute. (https://voidifremoved.substack.com/p/smearing-the-lgb-alliance.)