Woodrow Wyatt, Conspiracies and the Anti-Semitism Smears

I’ve put up a number of pieces already taking apart one of the arguments used to smear Mike as an anti-Semite. This is because he described the plotting by Shai Masot of the Israeli embassy with his Zionist colleagues in the Tories to have certain politicians removed from the Cabinet and replaced by those, who were more favourable to Israel, as a conspiracy. His use of the term was anti-Semitic, because it supposedly harkened back to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other noxious, paranoid fantasies about the Jews secretly running the world and conspiring to destroy the White race and enslave gentiles. In fact, as I pointed out in recent blog post, Masot and his associates were indeed conspiring, and it is entirely fair and reasonable to describe what they were doing in precisely this term. Real conspiracies, like Masot’s, do occur. They are short-term plots in which clandestine or private groups meet together in order to achieve certain limited goals. Like the examples Jeffrey M. Bale provided in his Lobster article, in which he cited as example the influence of the Italian Masonic lodge, P2, in promoting Fascist violence in Italy as part of the ‘strategy of tension’ in the 1970s, and the Afrikaner Broederbond in South Africa, which succeeded in setting up the system of apartheid. These conspiracies are in stark contrast to anti-Semitic or other bogus conspiracy theories, as the latter are always much bigger. The groups involved in these conspiracy theories are seen as being active throughout history, pursuing a unity of purpose and omniscience and omnipotence which is actually quite superhuman. This type of conspiracy theory acts as a psychological explanation for the existence of whatever those who believe them consider to be wrong in the world. It thus acts as a malign mythology to explain the faults of contemporary society in terms of a uniquely evil other.

But this does not mean that real conspiracies don’t exist. They do. And the people involved in them may also frankly describe their plotting as such. One of them was Woodrow Wyatt, an arch-Tory, who acted as the conduit for IRD propaganda about the Communist threat in the ’70s and ’80s, and also acted as Murdoch’s go-between in his negotiations with Thatcher and then John Major.

Wyatt’s journals, edited by Sarah Curtis, were published in three volumes at the beginning of this century, 2001/2, and were reviewed in Lobster 42 by the magazine’s long-term contributor, John Newsinger, in his article, ‘Confessions of a Crawler’ on pages eight and nine. In his introduction, Newsinger describes exactly just what a repulsive character Wyatt was. He wrote

Woodrow Wyatt’s diaries are quite remarkable. Any normal persons would have tried to conceal such a career of arse-licking sycophancy, but Wyatt positively revels in it. The result is really quite disgusting. Wyatt is revealed as a thoroughly contemptible individual and the great and bad against whom he rubbed himself are inevitably diminished. he was a power and wealth fetishist and these are the diaries of a pervert. But are they of any interest other than the prurient? Yes, indeed. First of all, there is what they don’t reveal about Wyatt’s connection with the secret state and dirty tricks (he had ben an important Information Research Department conduit). Much more important is what they do reveal about how contemporary Britain is ruled, and the word ruled is used very deliberately. In the period covered by these diaries, Wyatt was Rupert Murdoch’s fixer in London and, in particular, acted as his go-between, first with Margaret Thatcher, and later with John Major. This material is extremely interesting, providing, among other things, an insider’s account of Murdoch’s embrace of Tony Blair and New Labour. In a country with a more robust democratic tradition what Wyatt reveals would be a scandal. In Britain we have become so used to governments courting Murdoch that it hardly draws comment. (p. 8).

I also seem to remember that Wyatt also had a column in the Sunday Express, before that rag collapsed in the ’90s. This shows how Thatcherite and far right that newspaper was.

What I found particularly interesting in Newsinger’s review, was a passage from the diaries he discusses, which describe a meeting Wyatt attended with various members of the British secret state and a far right pressure group on the 2nd June 1986. In his diary Wyatt explicitly described himself and the others there as ‘conspirators’. He wrote

Meeting with conspirators, Brian Crozier, Julian Lewis and a man from Aims of Industry whose name I’ve forgotten and another man who I never identified. How to make the public realise that Labour is still dominated by the extremists.

Brian Crozier was a member of the British secret services, who was active in a number of anti-Communist, anti-Soviet propaganda campaigns, as well as against the general British left. Aims of Industry was another far right group of British businessmen, vehemently anti-Socialist and determined to destroy the trade unions. Newsinger observes that, apart from this passage, there isn’t much in the diaries about his involvement in schemes and plots by the secret state. He suggests this may be due to his editor removing them, or Wyatt having the discretion not to record them. But Wyatt does record how he persuaded the electricians at Wapping to provide Murdoch with blackleg labour, and openly describes how Murdoch deliberately intended to provoke the printers into striking. When the print workers walked, Murdoch showed Wapping around his plant and told him that

the police were ready in case there were pickets and they had riot shields stored in a warehouse nearby and every now and again a police helicopter came over to see that there was no trouble. (p. 8).

Which shows you how, in addition to the miners, Maggie used the police as her own private army to break the unions.

But what is particularly interesting in Mike’s circumstances is the passage where Wyatt describes the British agents and others from right-wing business groups as ‘conspirators’. He’s right. That’s exactly what they were. Just as Shai Masot and his friends in the Israel lobby were also conspirators, when they met to plot who they wanted in May’s cabinet. It’s entirely reasonable to describe them as such when the term is also used of gentile plotters like Wyatt and his grotty colleagues. Describing the meeting by Masot and the others as a conspiracy certainly does not imply that they were part of any wider, stupid, bogus global conspiracy, like those murderous fantasies about the Jews or reptoid aliens. It is simply an apt description of what Masot and the others were doing.

Wyatt states in his diary that he was part of a conspiracy. Shai Masot was also a conspirator. And describing him and his colleagues in such terms is certainly not anti-Semitic.

The NAFF Origins of the Tory Claim the BNP are ‘Socialist’

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan – claims BNP are Socialist, while wanting to privatise the NHS.

I’ve blogged before on the Tory claim that Fascism, Nazism and, in Britain, the BNP, are forms of Socialism. There is indeed a perfectly respectable academic debate about how revolutionary the various European Fascist movements were. Mussolini started out as an extreme Left-wing Socialist, who broke with the Italian Socialist party in his demands that Italy should enter the First World War. He then moved increasingly and opportunistically to join the Italian Right, and in the red scare following the invasion of the factories by radical Italian workers promoted Fascism was a force, which would defend private property and the middle class against the threat of socialist revolution. The Nazi party in Germany also contained several Socialist demands in its 1926 political programme, such as profit-sharing and the confiscation of excessive profits from the War. These were also ignored, with the exception of a half-hearted attempt by Hitler to nationalise the department stores, when the Nazis finally came to power. Again, this was partly achieved through Hitler appealing to the middle classes, offering to defend them from Socialism and the organised working class on the way hand, and big business on the other.

The allegation that Fascism is a form of Socialism re-emerged a few years ago with the Republicans in America at about the same time Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism was published. It’s an attempt to smear Socialism or an kind of progressive politics, which can be linked to socialism, like welfare provision or greater state regulation of the economy through a simple process of guilt by association and by suggesting some kind of equivalence. The argument is roughly that if Fascism is a form of Socialism, so, therefore, Socialism is also a threat to freedom and human life, like Fascism. Good American citizens should therefore reject Socialism, or anything that looks even remotely like it, such as Obamacare, and should vote for small-state Republicans instead. The most extreme example of this attitude was the extreme Right-wing American TV presenter, Glenn Beck. After Anders Breivik committed his horrific massacre of the children attending a summer camp run by the Norwegian Socialist party’s youth organisation, Beck went on to describe them as like the Hitler Youth in Germany. The reason for this vile accusation was that the Norwegian Socialists had criticised Israel for its policies towards the Palestinians. Beck saw this as demonstrating that the Socialists were anti-Semites, and therefore exactly like the Nazi party.

Over here the accusation that Fascism is a form of Socialism has been repeatedly made by the Tory MEP for Dorset and Telegraph columnist, Daniel Hannan. Guy Debord’s Cat has produced a detailed refutation of one of one of his columns making this argument, which I’ve also reblogged. As far as I’ve been able to make out so far, the accusation was first made in the context of modern Tory politics by the Libertarian wing of the Conservative party in 1977. The group Aims of Industry published an attack by Stephen Ayres with the title The National Front is a Socialist Front. Ayres was an activist for NAFF, the National Association For Freedom, which later became the Freedom Association. The National Front rejected the accusation, and in return criticised the NAFF in the pages of its journal, Spearhead, for ‘simply echoing the voice of the new Toryism by emphasising the freedoms and rights that the individual should possess vis-à-vis the state but is afraid to mention the duties that the individual should hold towards the State and Nation.’ (See Larry O’Hara, ‘Notes from the Underground: British Fascism 1974-92, Part 1, 1974-83’, in Lobster 23: 15-20 (16, n. 30, 19). lobster’s editor, Robin Ramsay, has suggested that Thatcherism was based on Libertarianism, rather than the authoritarian Fascism of the BNP/ NF Right, as it seemed at the time. This seems to be true. Thatcher was strongly influenced by von Hayek and the monetarism of the Chicago School. As this has now become the dominant ideology within British Conservatism and the Republicans in America, so the Libertarian accusation that Fascism is somehow a form of Socialism continues to be made.

In fact, Libertarians also have a history of backing extremely Right-wing, illiberal movements. Guy Debord’s Cat has pointed out that von Hayek himself served in the government of the Austro-Fascist, Vollmar Dollfuss. Dollfuss banned the Austrian Socialist party from the fear that they were organising a Revolution, and established a Corporate state like that of Mussolini’s Italy following the theories of Othmar Spann. Fascist Austria was more tolerant than Nazi Germany. A range of political opinions were permitted with the exception of Socialism. Nevertheless, it was still a Fascist state. After the War, von Hayek went to Chile to view the operation of the monetarist policies put in place by General Pinochet’s military dictatorship. And Libertarianism elsewhere also had a history of supporting murderous extreme Right-wing dictatorships. I distinctly remember the accusation that one of the Central American dictatorships and its death squads was also supported by the Freedom Association.

While Fascism did contain left-wing elements, in practice it allied itself with the Right as the defender of property and private industry. The accusation that it, and its British forms, the NF and now the BNP, is really a form of Socialism, was rejected by the NF itself, and comes from the Libertarians, who have themselves supported brutal Right-wing dictatorships. The claim has been made to present the Tory party as the only authentic party representing and defending freedom. As has been shown recently by the authoritarian stance of successive Conservative administrations, including Maggie Thatcher and her policy of the strong state, this simply isn’t the case. Moreover, it supports the economic freedoms of industry against the welfare of the working and lower middle class majority, leaving them exploited by their social and political superiors. They support freedom, but only for a very narrow, select, and extremely wealthy few. For everyone else, it’s wage slavery.