WATCH: The Plot Against Harold Wilson
2006 BBC Documentary Newly Relevant In Wake of Pompeo Leak
Kit Knightly
In 2006, to mark the 30th anniversary of Harold Wilson’s retirement, the BBC release the above documentary: The Plot Against Harold Wilson. It details how, throughout Wilson leadership, MI5 and the CIA were engaged in plans to undermine Wilson – even to the extent of having plans in place for a full-blown military coup should the need arise.
The tactics included attacking Wilson’s staff and key allies, accusing him of being compromised by the Kremlin, and labelling him as “soft on the IRA”.
These probably sound very familiar to anyone who pays the slightest bit of attention to British politics.
Given Mike Pompeo’s recent comments about America’s willingness to overthrow Corbyn, if they deem it necessary, these past events take on a new significance.
Perhaps the greatest lesson we can take from this is just how far our media has fallen in only thirteen years.
The BBC was never the bastion of truth it pretended to be, but ask yourself: would the BBC make this documentary now? Would not this be deemed “conspiracy theory” in our modern media landscape?
Even Jonathan Freedland, writing in the Guardian in 2006, did not question the truth of this. Instead, deeming it “Britain’s Watergate”, in his usual incredibly subtle way.
And yet, that same man has systemically taken part in very similar manoeuvres to undermine both Jeremy Corbyn and Donald Trump. Smearing both as “antisemite” and “tool of the Kremlin” respectively, and even throwing around words like “traitor” and “treason”. These are moves straight out of the CIA playbook.
We know for a fact that the Israeli embassy had agents trying to undermine Corbyn, and that the US Secretary of State outright stated they would removed Corbyn from power. There’s even been rumblings of potential anti-Corbyn military coups in the past.
None of these received the coverage that the anti-Wilson plots did, just 13 years ago.
So what has happened to our media? Did they change their minds? Were they brainwashed? Bought off? Was the appearance of impartiality always just a thin veneer?
It’s impossible to say.
One key difference, of course, is the time elapsed. Writing about something that happened 30 years ago, is very different from writing about something that’s happening right now. Writing about the past, one can take the “thank god we’re not like that anymore” angle, “haven’t things improved”, “wasn’t Nixon dreadful” etc.
Writing about topical Deep State operations actually puts the agenda at risk, and that’s something the media are totally unwilling to do. They will question old narratives, but not current ones.
I wasn’t alive in 1976, but I can guess there was very little media coverage of these ideas then. I don’t know if they threw around the “conspiracy theory” epithet with the gusto they do today, but I can guess anyone suggesting the Deep State was trying to bring down Wilson’s government probably found it difficult to get column inches in the mainstream press.
It’s now a matter of record, uncontested by the British press, that the US/UK Deep State attempted to destabilise the elected government of the United Kingdom in the 1970s, they may well have succeeded in driving Wilson out of office.
It’s also a fact that the current Secretary of State has said they would do the same again against Corbyn. The increasingly controlled corporate media has shown they would be an ally in this.
It falls to the public, and the alternative media, to prevent this the only way we can. Spreading awareness. Telling the truth.
Please share widely.
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I’m not sure making a documentary 30 years after the events and with the main protagonist long dead is particularly brave. Indeed this tends to be the media tactic – cover up the truth when it matters, then ‘reveal’ it (or some of it) when it ceases to be that important. Something similar happened with the Iraq War.
However, thank you for the timely article. Another parallel between Wilson and Corbyn is that Wilson was long the target of a smear campaign by the security agencies – in Wilson’s case falsely claiming that he was spying for the Soviets.
I found Channel 4’s take on Wilson and the plots against him managed to include a lot more valuable information in less than an hour.
Perhaps Wilson’s biggest crime was failure to commit British troops to Vietnam?
Wilson was a threat because he continued the post war Labour covenant. The Atlantist neocons were always burrowing away, people like Jenkins and co.
The Corbyn ‘threat’ is much much worse to the aristo robber barons because of the ressurgent individual membership – they fear such widespread grassroots politics.
The only hope to vanquish that nemesis is to divide the membership. So the ludicrous attempts at smear, ridicule and slander, hoping to get a rise out of attacks on the Labour leadership – which is why that leadership doesn’t fight back.
I’ll say that history is repeating.
Gandhi was first ignored, then ridiculed and finally attacked before achieving his goal. Even though the Mahatamma was assasinated before finishing his work.
Biblically the fable of Moses is relevant too (ironically). Freedom from Pharoah involved a long journey and the turning away from golden idolators within their midst. They eventually got to the promised land but Moses didn’t cross into it himself!
Mandela was another example, he at least did live long enough.
At the root of all these stories is the cry for justice, equality and freedom from the people.
No wonder the aristos and robber barons are up in arms.
Jezza has already won.
Perhaps it is, literally, impossible to say, but common sense has its own language, and, in that language, the media have clearly been intimidated and bribed into becoming the tool of the wicked.
No point in denial any more.
Macchiavelli might actually have been a rather charming person, but ambition led him to advise his Prince in the ways of greed and wickedness in the pursuit and retention of power, which served only to encourage the corrupt to emulate him in the 20th and 21st Centuries.
And that’s why Macchiavelli deserves his blackened name, as will the Murdochs of today’s and tomorrow’s world.
you must read Machiavelli’s ”Discorsi” to appreciate it. Here Machiavelli seeks to develop anti-elitist, anti-oligarchic, properly democratic and participatory principles and institutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau considered the Discourses (as well as the Florentine Histories) to be more representative of Machiavelli’s true philosophy:
”Machiavelli was a proper man and a good citizen; but, being attached to the court of the Medici, he could not help veiling his love of liberty in the midst of his country’s oppression. The choice of his detestable hero, Cesare Borgia, clearly enough shows his hidden aim; and the contradiction between the teaching of The Prince and that of the Discourses on Livy and the History of Florence shows that this profound political thinker has so far been studied only by superficial or corrupt readers. The Court of Rome sternly prohibited his book. I can well believe it; for it is that Court it most clearly portrays.”
— Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book III. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discourses_on_Livy
Thank you Iskratov.
You are, of course, right.
My casual criticism of Macchiavelli was really based upon the feeling that his ability to play “devil’s advocate” in “The Prince” was uncannily and remarkably well developed, and, by writing it, he was certainly taking a chance with his reputation, which has remained black amongst the “superficial or corrupt readers” you mention – along with most of the general public.
Nevertheless, he was obviously a pretty wise man, living in very uncertain times, and even “The Prince” provides excellent food for thought.
P.S. It was also hasty of me to put Murdoch alongside him – our media would likely be in much better shape with Macchiavelli behind them . . .
Corbyn/Wilson new age same tactics
Following on from Frank Lee’s excellent comment below: truth is like an onion …a familiar enough metaphor. There is the truth about the Wilson/Corbyn threat. Then there is the core truth – that bourgeois neoliberal pseudo-socialists refuse to address – Corbyn/McDonnell have gone to great brown-nosing lengths to assuage the Establishment fears that they are ‘pro-business’. In fact, it seems to have passed everyone by that one of the centuries leading neoliberal globalist ideologues – ‘Lord Jim’ O’Neil (former Goldman Sachs investment strategist who invented the BRIC alternative globalisation strategy; expanded the EMEs investment portfolio for surplus capital colonisation and deprivation; former Tory Minister) – took out an FT spread (on the eve of conference last year) to say Labour are now THE party of business. Corbyn even gave him a shout out in his leaders address …the significance of which passed the majority by: but not me. A fact confirmed by the aspiration to bring neoliberal redistributionist tinkerer Stiglitz as an economic policy advisor. Labour plan to change absolutely nothing about the core business model of the UK’s global rent, taxation (by usury), and tributary model of global accumulation by dispossession.
It is a superficial pseudo-argument, then, to say Labour are a real threat to the Established order – they are the Established neoliberal order. As McDonnell’s “We are the party of business now” mantra confirms. Proposing fiscal policies to increase ‘progressive’ taxation – to redistribute blood and conflict money stolen from the rest of the deliberately impoverished world is a real world core-truth policy initiative that is taboo in the broad social discourse. It is not even a permissible political issue. It needs to be.
Having established the City as the epicentre of global poverty – where a good portion of global wealth flows in tributary human-sacrificial offerings – to be drained off as blood money and re-distributed to finance the Trans-National Suprastate (TNS) …the anti-bourgeois arguments the likes of Shaxson refuse to make – rather than lament the surfeit that flows offshore and elsewhere; we should condemn the entire core imperialist neoliberal ethics of over-financialisation …which is funding global dehumanisation, poverty, and environmental desecration …making the entire world poorer: not just the bourgeois.
Within a shallow and superficial appreciation of the UK’s core imperialism: Labour can be said to pose a minor re-distributive ‘threat’. But they have positioned themselves proudly – to the point of boasting gleefully – as allied to and defenders of ‘Global Britain’s’ core imperialist neoliberal business model. Which they only threaten by post hoc taxing the global poverty tax; and redistributing the already upwardly redistributed stolen private property tax on the global economy. Facilitating global redistribution of wealth from the intentionally impoverished global poor – so we can have bourgeois blood-socialism – remains their core exceptionalist ethic.
Something pseudo-socialists astutely ignore by re-imagining Corbyn as a credible ‘threat’. He is, to humanity. Unfortunately, too few see it that way. Certainly not enough to re-imagine socialism as being truly universalist and egalitarian – where globally, everyone matters – and not just for their surplus value blood-tributes. Which can be obfuscatory re-imagined – in the manner of superficial non-threats to bourgeois re-distributionism – for and by the core imperialist bourgeois.
Politics in the UK will remain moribund until people are willing to look beyond the headlines in the media imaginary – only in which Labour pose any threat at all. They do not, and will not. Only the people can become a threat: if, or when, they wish to challenge the dynamics of neoliberal globalised dehumanisation and other-peoples inter-generational wealth re-distribution. Which means taking critical self-responsibility for being our own universal non-materialistic wealth creators. If Labour ever truly embrace the true universal ethics of love: then they will be a threat …not until.
Small steps BigB. Embrace the smallest seed of the potential beginnings of change. And stop intellectualizing yourself into the corner of an empty room, where all the people you need to educate and get onside, have stopped listening and left. Coz you’ve frightened them away. Your demanding too much too soon. Corporate power can only be stripped away from within. Trojan horse style, or they won’t even let you in the door (or on the ballot paper). Surely the ridiculous smear campaign campaigns against Labour mean something?
Small steps, gradualist reformism, legitimate existing power structures, submit to democratise …? Where have I heard that before?
In the meanwhile: neoliberal institutional power structures have taken tacit legitimation and submittance as a mandate to depoliticise, de-democratise, and de-sovereigntise decency, humanity, empathy, and the universal ethics of true peace, egality, and freedom. To the point that any real critical realism and international class solidarity are the orphans of politics. They took our humanity, respect for the democratic process, and patient waiting for the right leader to enact social reformism as a sign of weakness. Our oh so very British Britishness has amounted to forming an orderly queue to be shat on: not once …but time and time again. But still we queue. And still they shit on us …from greater, and greater, and greater heights …built on dislocated and surrendered autonomy and sovereignty.
Whilst we have been patiently waiting: an inverse totalitarian elected dictatorship has replaced any form of legitimate power structure. The General Will and Social Contract have been commodified, marketised, financialised, and privatised …the ownership of the commoditised populace belongs to a long chain of shell companies and resides in Trust in Luxembourg, Ireland, the Channel Isles, and Hong Kong. Corporate power can only be “stripped from within” if you have any idea where “within” is established. It is not ‘here’ for sure. [Meek’s ‘Private Island’ details how the post-Thatcher UK came to be wholly owned offshore].
Neoliberal power structures are institutionally depoliticising. The TNCs are not transparent, pay no tax, have no identifiable owners, have no elected members, are not subject to a single countries fiscal or regulatory framework, operate offshore in a totally centreless, deterritorialised open market that respects nothing and no one …except the bottom line of short-term shareholder profit. Their power cannot be stripped by legitimating the current UN/WTO/IMF/WB global governance; or EU constitutional and institutional neoliberalism – all of which de-sovereigntise vestigial nation state ersatz democracies and Parliamentary dictatorships …such as ours.
But we go through the more or less daily charade of pretending we can: long after real power and sovereign wealth was transferred offshore into the TNS. We uphold the pretense that Corbyn or Gabbard will come to challenge the established neoliberal order, end austerity, usher in a new glory age of perpetual prosperity, transcending the need for war and ending imperialism.
All the while we have been engaged in such a socio-political displaced dream imaginary: neoliberal globalisation is completing: giving almost total autonomy to a very small entitled elite; self-governing autocracy to the TNCs; and neo-totalitarian power to the international offshore banking cabal that own nearly everything for the 0.0001%. Not content with owning nearly everything: the TNCs are fronting a global campaign to corporate capture the rest – using our locked up collateral to purchase commodified ‘natural capital’ to rent and tax farm ‘human capital’. I’m referring to the sustainable growth and decarbonisation objective that is going to be the political Zeitgeist for the rest of your life. For instance, the Tory ‘net zero’ psyop launched today.
All the time we have been advocating gradualist reformism has been used by the trans-national globalist elite to completely re-structure the world in an utilitarian international class structure – designed purely for the instrumental means and ends of capitalist accumulation by dispossession. And we are going to ask the corporate self-governing and self-responsible offshore state to kindly re-order the global economy to return production and prosperity to the very people that they disenfranchised and disinherited to steal their wealth in the first place?
One day people may wake up to the global economic governance model that has installed itself over the last forty years. The time for gradualist reformism was in the 70s. It is going to take a lot more than baby steps to turn things around. For every one small baby step we take: the unelected, unnaccountable trans-national corporate omnicidal kleptocracy takes a giant leap for mankind. Unfortunately, it is in the wrong direction for us.
If the realities I express are too bleak: I’m sorry for that …I truly am. Facing up to the stark and terrifying nature of the reality we have had coercively installed whilst we were waiting for Godot – and were passively and materially complicit with – is indeed harsh. But pretending the Human Impact crisis will resolve itself: with the voluntarist ethic of the trans-national corporatocracy and their onshore neoliberal globalist proconsuls is actually unconscionable. It was their extractivist, perpetual expansionst, hyper-and omni-exploitative business model that precipitated the potential collapse model. The same model will not manifest a socialist utopia …more likely a crisis-capitalist fascism. Are we going to reform that by incrementalism?
Unlike the play: Godot is here or hereabouts …the consequences of all of our subjectivist choices collectivised up. It’s bleak, friend …it’s fucking bleak. It only get’s bleaker with displaced attention. It is like the metaphorical cancer diagnosis: do we want to know …or do we want to play pretend. I’d rather know. I want our future back. Do you?
Let’s set the record straight. Labour was, is, and remains an imperialist party; pro-NATO, pro-Trident, pro-Zionist and riddled with zionist front organizations such as Labour Friends of Israel. It is also the principal Euro-Vassal of the United States. In the Greek civil war 1944-49 it chose the wrong side and also capitulated in Palestine to zionist terrorism in the shape of Irgun Zvei Leumi and Loḥamei Ḥerut Yisra (The Stern Gang). This has been the case since the inception in 1906. Looking at the historical leadership of the party is a rather dispiriting experience: Ramsay MacDonald, Attlee, Gaitskell, Wilson, Callaghan, Blair, Brown. Throughout its history if has played the role of the second 11 when the Tories were out of power. Her Majesty’s loyal opposition. It’s sole achievements were the establishment of the National Health Service in the immediate post-war period – no mean feat – but in general terms it has fallen into line when the British establishment has snapped its fingers.
Sure it is not quite as bad as the Tories, but I remember the Tories led by Macmillan during the 1950s and early 60s were a quite reformist party. It was Macmillan’s boast prior to the 1959 General Election that he had built 500,000.00 Council houses (imagine any Tory or Blairite saying this today!) which was true and was enough to return the Tories to power. Those were the ‘never had it so good years’ of the Tory ascendancy.
Throughout the post-war period there has been an unwritten understanding in the political class that nothing to radical should be attempted in making the sort of changes that were needed in the UK economy or foreign policy. The UK was to remain loyal to the US occupation of Europe through NATO, the pivotal organization. Certainly there was an ongoing cultural revolution, the Beatles, Carnaby Street, etc., and more general lifestyle changes. But foreign policy and economic policy remained sacrosanct and they still do, finding their expression in the move to the centre by both parties – Blatcherism.
Of course there were the outliers of both left and right; Brave souls like Ralph Miliband – author of Parliamentary Socialism, and The State in Capitalist Society – and John Saville of the Socialist Register, but these were a minority in a party denominated by the bloc vote at Annual Conference where TUC bigwigs such as Deakin, Carron and Green voted down anything that looked remotely like socialism. Similarly there were elements on the far right, particularly in the intelligence agencies who were politically marginal, but were celebrated by authors John Le Carre ‘Smiley’s People’ and Ian Fleming the James Bond books and films, who became world famous.
Yet there still persists this silly myth that a Labour government is somehow going to enact what would be a fundamental transformation of UK society and economy as well as a non-aligned foreign policy neutrality. Well, it should be said at the outset that this is a completely utopian notion. Utopian because, if any government takes for granted the institutional framework of the internationalised market economy and its institutions such as the EU and WTO then it will necessarily have to implement these same neoliberal policies irrespective of whether it calls itself a government of the left, right or centre. But this is exactly what the globalist left does today. Radical change ‘from within’ is not possible. But history doesn’t seem to have taught any lessons on the true believers. Change through incremental reform has been easily reversed, generally failed and likely will continue to fail. In his work ‘The Death of the Liberal Class’ Christopher Hedges has drawn attention to this fundamental shift in western politics, a fundamental fact of political life which doesn’t seem to have dawned in the true believers .
The US Democrats, the Labour Party and the rest of the social democratic movement in Europe have been, or soon will be, drawn into the vortex of neo-liberalism and neo-conservatism. That is a flat fact and will not easily be reversed, if at all. If there is going to ‘change we can believe in’ it will I think occur outside of the political institutions involving mass movements and leaders like Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. We shall see.
I agree that the UK is in the vice-grip of the Establishment and nothing will be allowed to change.
Change will simply not happen from the outside unless it’s in support of their agenda, e.g. the neoliberal / neocon project of Brexit is intended to divide and conquer the EU, and to achieve that they’ve allowed the growth of the Brexit Party.
Any other attempts are thwarted at every step, look at how Change UK has fizzled away to almost zero in the same timescale that the BP has mushroomed. Change from within is the only way remotely possible, but it will be very long and slow path, if ever.
Change UK aka Gemini A Ltd were not about change at all.
They are for more of the same neoliberal agenda.
The Labour Party needs to be written off and people’s energies directed elsewhere. Whatever its merits in the past, it is now the problem and cannot be the solution. We need to avoid the Lesser Evils trap or nothing will ever change and we will just have to accept the New Serfdom. Look at Labour and what you get is Watson, Phillips, Bradshaw, Bryant, Ellman and even worse.
Just like black people in the US need to get off the plantation and dump the corporate democrats.
Where? What is the alternative in the REAL world? Yes, you may fantasise about anarchy, but in the real world we need a Labour party run by a Wilson type of figure.
Nice one. You have just enunciated the doctrine of surrender/collaboration and, moreover, the need to adapt to it. In the real world the forces of reaction are running amok. So what is the solution? Let’s try to persuade our own supporters that neoliberalism is actually quite a good idea. You may have a set of counter proposals but since it seems unlikely that they, the PTB, will agree, or even take seriously your considered recommendations, you simply agree and carry on with what amounts to class collaboration. And it goes further, you even try to persuade your supporters that neoliberalism is the way of the future; it is TINA and ‘cool’ unlike fuddy-duddy notions of capital controls, independent fiscal and monetary policies which would be a function of national sovereignty. All post-war Labour Governments – with the possible exception of Attlee in 1945 – have fallen into this latter category. Hopeless. ‘Pale Pink Humbug’ as Orwell once described them.
The ‘Realism’ argument actually rebounds on you and shows how completely conservative (small c) the Labour party is, and as a matter of fact always was. Basically your position is, like your co-thinkers, one of abject surrender. See Syriza(Greece), PS (France) SPD (Germany) PSOE (Spain) and Democrats (USA).
This evolution was evident at a much earlier date: Robert Michels ‘Political Parties’ 1911. From Poacher to Gamekeeper.
That’s very well put. I suggested a few alternatives above.
Think about what you’re saying.
We just have to be content with whatever they condescend to give us.
Vote for Big Bag Of Bugger All 1 because it is marginally less obnoxious than Big Bag Of Bugger All 2.
Play their Lesser Evil and Divide And Rule games and hope against hope that this time it really, really, really will be different. Maybe they’ll even let us have a gay or a woman or a trannie as their stooge this time.
Just play the Controlled Opposition games and be happy.
You can cheer to your heart’s content as they act out their mock battles over some phoney peripheral issue like toilets for trannies, and carry on robbing everybody blind and lying through their teeth. Maybe they’ll even give you a pat on the head and an extra sausage at Christmas.
I just happen to think that is not only totally pointless, but a very harmful distraction and diversion and waste of energy.
If you think differently, carry on putting your faith in a failed, dysfunctional system. Who knows? Maybe you’re right. Maybe this isn’t the triumph of hope over experience.
I don’t fantasise about many things nowadays, and certainly not anarchy.
What is the alternative? Not sure, but I have a few ideas.
Here are a few of them. There are others.
I’ve long thought some things a lot less energetic than anarchy had possibilities.
Ignoring them. Refusing to watch their lying media. Refusing to play their games. Refusing to vote or sign petitions. It’s all pointless anyway. 130 million people voted for the Orange Baboon, Crooked Hilary and the 2 other Bags Of Bugger All in 2016. 120 million (48%) didn’t. Suppose that 120 million became 250 million. Or 100 million went out and spoiled the ballot papers. Wouldn’t that cut these posturing, preening bags of bugger all down to size and deny them the oxygen of legitimacy?
There are some signs this is happening. I remember when the Tory and Labour Parties each had about 2 million members. The Tory Party is down to about 100,000, average age about 100. So the next PM will be chosen by a few thousand geriatric Tory OAPs. This is quite good in away. It cannot be concealed that everything has now long since degenerated into broad farce. And that is a positive development.
Any action that is taken has to be outside their system. As soon as they lose control they begin to panic and run around like headless chickens. The Gilets Jaunes and the Grenfell Tower community activity are good examples. There is no guarantee of success, but any productive activity has to be of that character and outside the strait jacket of elections and political parties and mainstream media. If these people turn up trying to exercise control, as they did at Grenfell, it’s time to get out the tar and feathers. These people have to be run out of town. We don’t want to gain their attention or appeal to their better nature. They haven’t got one. They have to be told they don’t represent us, and never will.
Unfortunately, this can lend itself to Soros type astroturfing and controlled opposition. As with XR, Occupy, and Black Lives Matter. Though the motivation of many who took part was no doubt commendable.
One less obvious alternative is non political participation in your local area. Local (definitely not national) charities and food banks do a lot of good work and are deserving of support. So are schools, sports clubs and churches. It’s possible to form networks that may be all we have left when economic and political collapse become a reality. So are things like this site, 21st Century Wire and others like them we all know of. There is a lot of fertile ground to be sown. Sometimes there is an explosion of anger that rocks the established order, like public animosity towards the Royal Family a few years ago and MPs expenses. This has a lot of potential.
As regards some kind of long term vision, I have always thought referendums have a lot of possibilities, even over supposedly complex issues. A few years ago, the Commander of the Swiss Air Force said he wanted some new planes. This is something that is taken very seriously in Switzerland. They’d never tolerate someone like Gavin Williamson there. So this was put to a referendum. Can the Commander have some new planes? The answer came back yes. Also the choice of planes. American, Swedish and Russian ones were available. The answer came back, buy him some Russian ones. Seemed to work quite well. Of course they still have a government and a prime minister. But he rides the tram to work, and most people wouldn’t know who he was if he jumped up and bit them. He doesn’t go around in a mile long motorcade with regiments of bodyguards and squadrons of helicopter gunships. Seems to work okay.
Just a few ideas. There are others.
Sorry, it was American planes, F18s.
They take defence very seriously in Switzerland.
During the war, they fought a pretty ferocious undeclared war against the Luftwaffe that kept violating their airspace, though for some reason nobody has written much about it.
Well said! And I think All of The Above, plus other ideas of course, in a spirit of open-minded, skeptical and patient experimentation, knowing this is a generational process. It really is up to us, and always has been. But we have to earn whatever new system will surpass the current rot by learning it, doing it, living it.
We don’t need our Big Daddies and Mummies any more.
Mark’s right, but so is Frank. Anarchy, coming from the current political consciousness would be chaos. But taming the Parliamentary dictatorship and ongoing political Treason is easily achievable …as soon as we realise we have a written Constitution and a Common Law basis to repeal – by Jury Trial – any anti-Constitutional Statute Law. Particularly anything to do with the EU: which we never should have joined.
So we have legal and rightful means of redress: should we wish to use them. The current Lynn Thyer deportation case is a point in reference …not least because a properly constituted Common Law court has to be respected. At least in the short term: it has delayed her wrongful deportation.
We are only as weak as we want to be. No one is suggesting that not voting for either anti-humanist party of Treason should be an end of it. It is a first step to reclaiming democracy …rather than voting it away.
Why is it that I can’t view the video (and another one I tried to watch a few days ago) without having to go through a VPN that has a British server? I wouldn’t expect that from the OffGuardian, but maybe it the the site that hosts the actual videos?
That’s down to the vid host (YouTube) I’m afraid
It’s YouTube geo-restrictions. Some licensed content is restricted to specific countries only, so anyone outside is blocked. This is down to the license holder (producer) requirements, not YouTube’s.
The BBC are pretty strict on copyright.
This time round its not the communists they’re afraid of, but Corbyn’s support for the wrong semites. Are there any true communists left?
Corbyn will never be empowered even by some miracle he does get into #10 the establishment/deep state/ whitehall will sabotage his every move. That’s not to mention the insidious parasites that have infected the labour party, the dreaded liberals & lets not forget the MSM propaganda machine.
As we’ve seen over the last few years democracy is an illusion they let us have until we dare to make the wrong choice. I predict the Tories will steal power again, either jump into bed with farage or offer tax cuts to bribe the voters back into voting conservative.
Boris is already offering tax cuts.
There is no need for such over whelming pessimism.
Yes you are right about the vested interests who have soiled themselves at the prospect of a genuine Labour govt.
The donkey voters – they are well groomed after 4 decades of Thatcher/Blair – are indeed happy to be led by their noses, unwilling to consider they are dumb asses.
But they are fewer by the day.
Consider that the UK does not have or elect a president, like the US or French. Therefore Corbyn is not an equivalent of either. It is a cabinet based governance. That cabinet can rebel against their PM (witness what happened to May).
As I keep reminding people daily – the monstering of Corbyn is futile, doh its all about the manifesto not the individual.
Because our msm cannot attack the Labour manifesto easily, because it threatens to reaffirm the post war social democratic ideals, they (establishment) are forced to attack the leadership (that they lost control of by the self inflicted defenestration of the Blairite con artistes).
Of course the leadership and these that drive the resurgence know this and Corbyn is happy that he takes the flak, as the main body of minesterial candidates get control of their briefs and are able to defend themselves first from the ousted neoconmen/women, secondly from the special interest lobbyists and msm thugs and third as they confidently take control of the levers of government.
Corbyn already won.
Even if he personally doesn’t move into No10 and happily returns to his missed allotment.
Reasons to be cheerful.
Who says i’m pessimistic? Besides there’s a worlds difference between pessimism & reality.
I’ve hated Tories all my life & I can remember what life was like under a true socialist government in the 60s (kind of) & the 70s. Funnily enough strikes & power cuts don’t dominate my memories.
I agree with almost everything Corbyn claims to stand for (except allotments, I hate gardening) BUT he doesn’t seem so keen to leave the EU does he! Which I am before the neo-liberals become unstoppable. Once upon a time the term liberal stood for liberty, not now, they seem to have adopted all the worst things of both the left & the right & abandoned the good.
However hypothetically, if a new constitution was to be written I wouldn’t want a socialist to write it. Actually (and this goes against the grain for me) The only current politician i would want to write a constitution would be Farage, hes clearly a libertarian at heart, his tory policies would just have to be repealed at a later date.
Ha ha nice try but no cigar yet.
What do you make of the die hard Labour for life supporters who were conned into making NuLabInc and the Blairite dynasty, they are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome and believe that Corbyn is inferior?
Corbyn said the EU is not perfect but was 7 out of 10 good and that we would be better of arguing the toss from within rather than lost on the high seas by ourselves. He is happy to persue a brexit that the majority of people are happy with – not a schroedingers cat one that we are offered by the WTO pushers.
Liberal, liberty, libertarian …
Which one is Farage? You think he is a politician? Cobblers he is a media puppet, kept in the limelight.
He is the Emu to Murdochs Rod Hull. A Basil Fox even. Boom boom!
https://graziadaily.co.uk/celebrity/news/happened-lily-allen-went-garden-party-nigel-farage-rupert-murdoch/
That is immediately after the referendum and just before Nigels redeployment to the Trump campaign. The nexus/spectre hides in plain sight.
There is already a human rights declaration, international laws and courts that every country should adopt and respect, but we don’t because we claim exceptionality – hypocrisy thy name is Empire.
Farage indeed. Pull the other one.
We could start with ensuring that a common standard for voting is applied to all countries that claim to have democratic elections – and that an international body oversees every such election with sufficient resources and trained people to enable that.
That is the only future that allows for the survival of the human race and indeed most life on Earth.
Have a nice day.
Its exactly because he isn’t a politician. Its not about personality or policy its about freedom from slavery. I don’t care what he does or where he goes afterwards, its no interest to me.
The hypocrisy is groveling to politicians to give you “rights”. All so called liberals & most socialists know is how to make everyone criminals so they can lock us up when ever we don’t comply with their demands.
Survival is the law of nature & natural processes, it aint pretty it aint nice, it aint fair, it does discriminate & diversity is only possible through competition & conflict, that’s how life on earth works, ecological principles apply to all living things humans are no exception.
As humans we have to find a compromise but not the rules based civilization the liberal left FORCE on us.
Have a good life.
Your trust in Nigel, who failed to get elected as an MP multiple times even as he dressed up as a beer swilling, smoking, common man – shows he is no politician.
At best he is a shock-jock joker and lighting rod for the ex national fronters and EDL/Kipper gammonite mini-me of il Duce.
At worst he is drummer boy and rabble rouser, a banker, a hypocrite, a coward and a traitor to his country.
He has NO policies.
He has NO constitution to offer.
He rejects the Human Rights Laws and international Courts and Agreements. Etc etc etc
Do you even know the negative connotations of ‘libertarian’? Or are you using it knowledgeably?
Try this Urban Dictionary definition, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Libertarian
‘A philosophy held by people who fundamentally fail to grasp that human beings are social animals.’
That sounds like the basis of the gobbledygook of your ‘Survival / Law of the Jungle’ paragraph.’
You gave the game away there; As you do with your weasel words on ‘compromise’ which are screaming ‘Nigels Way’ or no way!
I’m having a reasonably good life and it got better today.
Think on.
Uhh Oooh, alarm bells are ringing on my hypocrisy meter, I sense a remoaner, must be true. The lack of reasonable civil debating skills are showing you up for a liberal.
Gosh and there I was thinking we WERE debating.
Nige doesn’t like debating with anyone that doesn’t agree with the ‘Narrative’ he is the face for.
You can see why, by the way your argument is so easily dismantled and your non sequitur response … hypocrisy! Lol
You need to get up even earlier if you want the worm. Lol
I’m sorry, I never waste time conversing with deluded liberals, they’re incapable of rational coherent conversation.
Yup you sure come across as sorry.
Stick with the toss pot on LBC.
He doesn’t do debate either if anyone can get on to challenge him.
Your logical fallacy was easy to point out.
Your final response is a classical example of Projection
“incapable of rational coherent conversation.”
Did you get up even earlier or rant on until daylight – still no get the worm eh? Yup you certainly are a sorry example for the early birds! Lol.
An interesting read is “Pinochet in Piccadilly”
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6021262-pinochet-in-piccadilly
This is a valuable story. It’s so easy to don the rose tinted spectacles and mourn over an age of “lost innocence”. It’s easy to think the world of your childhood was innocent because you were naturally ignorant at the time. But the bastards were always there.
Is it not about time to start killing Americans when they behave like this? An assaasination of Mike Pompeo would be the world’s most widely celebrated contract killing.
Pompeo can have no complaints. He is an extrajudicial torturer, a gangster and a criminal.
He is neither a politician nor a statesman. He has no right any longer to respect, dignity or legal due process.
Appeasement is not the appropriate course of action and those who collude with him should be told in no uncertain terms to cease all contact with him.
And as for Mossad, it is not antisemitic to treat them like the IRA…..
Calm down for goodness sake.
As a pacifist I cannot agree with your wish to see even more people dead, and it would be totally counter-produtive. And there’s more Pompeos who would replace him, and a lot worse.
No incitements to violence please. That makes you no better than anyone else who thinks murder of the undeserving is a sound ethical choice.
Good and timely reminder Kit, really enjoy your articles. A ‘Traditional’ Labour party with a brave and shrewd Wilson in charge, that’s what the UK is missing today and the country is suffering as a consequence. No wonder that the Establishment were shit scared and out to get him.
Corbyn is probably not of the same order of threat to the Establishment because although his ideas may be broadly similar as Wilson’s, his character and desire to lead and fight the status quo is simply not present.
Corbyn is a nice man, but in the snake pit he’s being crushed by the boa constrictors of the Establishment and their media organs. Pompeo and the spooks are clearly working against him, especially with all the smears, but I don’t see him as being the same level of threat to them as Wilson was. However, given the involvement of right wing Israeli politics this time around, someone else is probably calling the shots on Corbyn compared to Wilson’s time.
By coincidence I was just reading Peter Wright’s Spycatcher which is compelling. The Labour Party at this time (according to Wright) was riddled with Soviet agents. A couple were caught red-handed and there was more than a whiff surrounding Wilson himself. The CIA asserted that Wilson was a Soviet spy but would provide no evidence of this to MI5. Czechoslovakian defectors claimed Hugh Gaitskell was in fact assassinated by Russians in order to establish their man Wilson as Labour leader. MI5 and MI6 were “penetrated” to the highest levels throughout the 1960s so it would be fairly surprising if the same did not apply to the Labour Party. Wilson had spent considerable time in Russia as had the majority of Russian spies.
Wright himself claims to have come within a whisker of leaking information which would have buried the Labour Party.
I’m not advocating for any such skullduggery – far from it. But labour weren’t exactly squeaky clean either.
You can never tell, but I wasn’t that impressed by Wright’s version of events.
I too have read Spycatcher. Peter Wright came across as totally deluded ‘reds under every bed’ type of spook. Gradually the truth is coming out that it was always the US/UK looking to attack and destroy the USSR, not the other way round. That the Russians wanted a neutral Germany, but the US/UK wanted a divided Germany that would be a base and launch pad to attack the USSR. We are forever being bombarded with propaganda about the evils of communism and the millions killed, but never about the evils of capitalism and the even greater numbers killed. Even this morning, the Guardian has a smear piece about Serbia and Kosovo, how the plucky west saved Kosovo from the evil Serbs, when in fact, the opposite was the case.
There was a hearing in Parliament the other day where a Huawei employee was being barracked by a Tory and a Labour MP.
“China is just like Nazi Germany.”
“Huawei is just like, IG Farben, the German company that built the gas chambers.”
I never liked Wilson. He was an incredibly slippery, devious, dodgy character, who couldn’t be trusted as far as you could throw him. But he was a political operator of some talent, who could get things done after a fashion and stop the wheel falling off completely in very difficult circumstances. He had to take over the country in an appalling situation in 1973 after the Oil Shock, 3 Day Week and miners strikes, and balance pressures from a collapsing economy, a very powerful union movement, and a very radical left wing.
What he deserves most credit for is keeping us out of Vietnam. We could easily have been dragged into that quagmire, Blair/ Iraq style. Australia and New Zealand were involved and the SAS was on the ground already as things kicked off. And the UK was extremely dependent on Washington at the time, with IMF bail outs to stop the economy collapsing. LBJ put extreme pressure on Wilson to get involved militarily in Vietnam, “Just give us the Green Howards.” Most British PMs, before and since, would have complied, with disastrous consequences as that bloodbath escalated out of control. Instead, he prevaricated and found excuses not to get involved. Instead, he said what amounted to, “Of course we support you in your efforts to sort out these evil commies, and you can rest assured that we will hold your coat and do plenty of cheering from the sidelines.” Imagine what could have happened if someone else had been in his shoes and caved in to pressure. He deserves to be forgiven for a lot of things just on those grounds.
He certainly was being bugged at No. 10, and was aware of this, though at the time some people dismissed him as being paranoid. He resigned suddenly, and there was speculation that he had been blackmailed by the Spooks, who had something on him. But it seems clear that he was just suffering from Alzheimer’s at the time, and retired to the Scilly Islands. There were some very dodgy characters around him, people like Lord Kagan.
The Spook Agencies have a long history of interfering in domestic politics, with things like the Zinoviev Letter of the 1920s, when a Labour Government was brought down. They seem to have convinced themselves that Wilson was a Kremlin agent in a way that foreshadowed the current Russiagate Hoax against Trump. There were plans for a Pinochet style military coup. A shadowy clandestine organisation was being set up under an ex SAS colonel called Stirling to “deal with disorder and civil unrest, strikes etc.” It is easy to see where this was leading. It could be repeated if necessary against Corbyn in similar circumstances.
The Spook Agencies have long been a law unto themselves and completely out of control. They are responsible for a lot of the false flag terrorist attacks in Northern Ireland, like the Armagh Bombing and the Miami Show Band. In 1994 they attempted unsuccessfully to assassinate Gaddafi on their own initiative. Now we have Skripal, Litvinenko, the Syrian Gas Hoaxes, and the Steele Dossier Affair. This is probably just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We are lucky to have escaped Vietnam and a Chile style coup. Nothing much has changed. The same situation could easily arise again.
I was young when Wilson was PM, but my working class parents appreciated him very much as a PM, not least that they were from the same town as him. Your view of his character, I wouldn’t know about it I was too young, but I’d say in his defence that perhaps it needed those traits in order to be able to survive the onslaught from the spooks.
He certainly had his work cut out trying to keep the wheel from falling off. The economy seemed to be collapsing and the country increasingly ungovernable, high inflation, taxation and interest rates, devaluation, balance of payments crises, industrial relations resembling trench warfare, constant strikes and instability and the IRA blowing everything up. (Not that different from today, maybe.) We were probably lucky to escape another coup.
Excactly Mark, well said.
I’ve been an idealist for many a long year, genuinely, but reality has hit me hard along the way. I can dream of Paradise or my Socialist utopia, but I realised that those people who can make at least some improvements in our terribly broken system deserve our strong support, even if they fall far from my ideals. I guess that’s what I am trying to get across to you and a few others in my various posts. Fundamentally, I agree with your goals, more or less, but it’s how, and when, we get there which I think is the main difference.
Best wishes,
Frank
People might strongly disagree with me, but I think the old Yugoslavia was quite a civilised place before the Neocons decided to bomb it. Preserved its sovereignty, quite a good standard of living, free enterprise allowed if you didn’t employ over 25 people, freedom to travel and work abroad.
Even the GDR as well. Its rulers were dealt a very poor hand, but they did their best at making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, and had some achievements to their credit. Of course there were a lot of negatives and you can’t turn back the clock.
I had occasion to visit Dresden a few years ago. This “Jewel box on the Elbe” was, as you all know, destroyed in a terrible firestorm caused by allied bombing in February 1945. I was brought up to believe that the GDR was some crass, culturally backward, and soulless country. But there in Dresden I saw a beautiful city with churches and palaces totally restored. I am not old enough to have seen its earlier incarnation. Perhaps it had not quite achieved its former glory but, compared to the UK, and its postwar reconstruction, it appeared magnificent. I thought, at the time, that this must have happened post-reunification with West Germany, but some research showed that I was wrong.
The GDR did do some beautiful restoration work, including the theatre. They also left some ruins to act as reminders of the atrocity ( I believe the Frauenkirche was one such). I think that decision was later reversed however and no record of the destruction survives today
Yes, people talk about the Stasi but they seem a bit tame compared to the blanket snooping we’ve got now. There was a high level of welfare and social provision and a reasonable economic performance given the seizure of everything east of the Oder by Poland, Stettin and Silesia with its mining industry.
If Thatcher were not elected in 79, there was to be a coup.