Private Eye and Lobster on the Pinay Circle

This fortnight’s Private Eye, for 25th January to 7th February 2019 also published a very interesting article for conspiracy watchers on the Pinay Circle, now simply known as ‘Le Cercle’. This is a secret organization of extreme right-wing politicians, intelligence agents and businessmen. The Eye’s article reports how two Tory MPs, Mark Garnier and Greg Hands, attended one of their meetings in Washington last June. The article, ‘Spooky Circles’ on page 11, runs

DESPITE the convulsions in the Tory party, two former trade ministers still found time before Christmas to attend a secretive conference in the US stuffed with spies and business people.

Wyre Forest MP Mark Garnier, sacked as international trade minister a year ago after calling his secretary “sugar tits” and asking her to buy sex toys, and Chelsea and Fulham MP Greg Hands, a minister in the same department until he resigned over Heathrow expansion last June, both attended a Washington meeting of Le Cercle, a hush-hush foreign affairs group with a strong interest in international security.

According to the latest parliamentary register, the MPs’ four-to-five day trips cost 4,000 pounds per MP. Hands says he spoke on “international trade”. Given their former ministerial posts, it seems likely both men discussed the UK’s prospects post-Brexit.

Le Cercle was founded in the 1950s by a former French prime minister and a former German chancellor as a pro-European body that would cement Franco-German relations and strengthen US-European alliances. Today it has strong links with the intelligence world and to hawkish US politicians. Former Tory minister Alan Clark claimed it was funded by the CIA.

As Wikileaks revealed via a letter from former Tory defence secretary Michael Ancram, who chaired Le Cercle in 2012, its meetings are “attended by about 80 to 100 people” who are “largely European and American – Members of Parliament, diplomats, members of the intelligence community, commentators and businessmen from over 25 countries”. Who they are and what they discuss is never fully disclosed as “there is no Press and everything that is said is off the record”.

Hawkish free marketer US politicians like Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld have been notable Le Cercle attendees. There is widespread suspicion the group receives corporate as well as intelligence funding, but the source is also secret. What better way for Tories to explore possible new trade relations with the US and Europe than a secretive trip to DC to meet un-named spies, Republicans and business people?

Hands is particularly well placed to make sure multinationals influence new trade relations. In November, five months after resigning, he accepted a part-time job as a “political consultant/adviser” to giant French bank BNP Paribas which is reported paying him 108,000 pounds a year on top of his MP’s salary.

The long-running conspiracies/parapolitical magazine Lobster has published several articles on the Pinay Circle, as it used to be called, way back in issues 11, 17, and 18. Issue 17 contained two reports from the German intelligence agencies on the circle, analyzing a piece of correspondence which suggested that it was running plots in Britain, Germany and elsewhere to promote right-wing politicians – Thatcher over here, and the notorious Franz-Josef Strauss in the Bundesrepublik. David Teacher’s article, ‘The Pinay Circle and Destabilisation in Europe’ in Lobster 18, page 22, contains more information on the Circle itself, and its possible involvement in various plots to destabilize left-wing or opposition governments across the world. This contained the following passage briefly describing the organization and its activities.

The Pinacy Circle (also called the Cercle Violet) is an international right-wing propaganda group which brings together serving or retired intelligence officers and politicians with links to right-wing intelligence factions from most of the countries in Europe. The intelligence community has been represented by SIS Chief from 1978-82, Arthur ‘Dicke’ Franks, SIS Department Head Nicholas Elliott, CIA Director William Colby, Swiss Military Intelligence Chief of Provisions, Colonel Botta, SDECE chief from 1970-81 Alexandre de Marenches, and, last but not least, the man who took over the running of the Circle when Pinay got too old, Jean Violet, a Parisian Lawyer who worked for the SDECE from 1957-70. violet became so much an ’eminence grise’ in the SCESE that Alexandre de Marenches had to dispense with his services in order to assert his authority as new SDECE chief in 1970. This episode has however not prevented them from working together within the Circle. At the time the Langemann papers were written, both Franks and Marenches were serving heads of British and French intelligence respectively.

On the political side, Pinay – a former French Prime Minister – forged links with Nixon, Kissinger and Pompidou. The Circle’s present members include Giulio Andreotti, former Italian Prime Minister; Portuguese putschist General Antonio de Spinola; former Franco minister and senior Opus Dei member Silvio Munoz; and Vatican prelate and BND agent Monsignore Brunello. Paul violet, Jean Violet’s son, is one of Chirac’s closest advisors, nicknamed ‘the adjutant’ by Canard Enchaine. Langemann also reports that Sir Arthur Franks and Nicholas Elliott were invited to Chequers for a working meeting with Mrs Thatcher, after her election. But perhaps the key political figure was the late Franz Josef Strauss, Bavarian Premier and Langemann’s boss.

Strauss was a close friend of Alexandre de Marenches and was a frequ8ent visitor to the SDECE’s headquarters during Marenches’ time. The Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung, the political trust attached to Strauss’ Christian Social Union party, is an important group in international parapolitical manipulation. Active in Latin America for the Contras, supporting Mobuto in Zaire, involved in the Fiji coup in 1987, it was caught diverting state development aid from Germany into right-wing party coffers in Ecuador in the same year. Strauss and CSU were the main beneficiaries of identified Pinay Circle activities; i.e. the promotion of right-wing European politicians through Brian Crozier, Robert Moss, Fred Luchsinger of the Neue Zurcher Zeitung and Gerhard Luwenthal, anchorman on current affairs programmes for ZDF television, the major German network.

The Pinacy Circle has a wide range of contacts and its members interlock with the whole panoply of right-wing/parallel intelligence and propaganda agencies – WACL, Heritage Foundation, Western Goals, ISC, Freedom Association, Interdoc, the Bilderberg Group, the Jonathan Institute, P2, Opus Dei, the Moonies’ front CAUSA, IGFM ((International Society for Human Rights), and Resistance International. Lowenthal, for instance, is a member of IGFM, Resistance International, WACL, CAUSA, the Jonathan Institute, Konservative Aktion and the European Institute on Security.

The Pinay Circle’s significance lies in the fact that it is a forum which brings together the international linkmen of the Right like Crozier, Moss and Lowenthal, with secret service chiefs like Franks and Marenches. Through such contacts it can intervene by media action or covert funding whenever and wherever a political friend is in need of support. (p. 22).

The minutes of the Pinay Circle’s meeting in Zurich in June 1980s discussed the possibilities of securing the election of Strauss in Germany and Ronald Reagan in the US. It also discussed the Saudis opening a radio transmitter to broadcast into Russia and supporting the Israeli intelligence unit. The evidence linking the Circle to attempts to remove left-wing politicians across the world was so strong that Teacher concluded that

It is becoming more and more apparent that the treatment reserved for Harold Wilson at the hands of the intelligence services was only the UK end of an international phenomenon. Around 1973-5 a surprising number of governments were targeted by their own 9or others’) intelligence agencies because of their radical policies. If the world political scene in the 1960’s was one of the decolonization, then the 1970’s was the decade of destabilization. Among those cases of destabilization we were already aware of are:

– the UK: the concerted effort by elements in the British intelligence and security services, with CIA and BOSS, to bring down Wilson, Thorpe and Heath.

– the USA: the CIA’s Operation Chaos, the FBI’s Cointelpro programme and, of course, Watergate

– Australia: the loans scandal and other destabilization of Gough Whitlam by the CIA and SIS.

– West Germany: the destabilization of Willi Brandt because of his overture to ‘the other Germany’ through Ostpolitik. The CIA and MI5 (5) suspected Brandt of being recruited by Moscow during his wartime service with the resistance in Scandinavia. (p. 23).

The article also pointed out that Nicholas Elliott was a member of the Wilkinson/McWhirter/Ivens group, the Research Foundation for the Study of Terrorism, and speculate whether the Pinay Circle was involved in attempts to destabilise Mitterand’s government in France in 1974, the murder of Olof Palme in Sweden, and a possible attempted Fascist coup in Belgium in 1973. Of this latter, Teacher writes

Issue 17 of Celsius devotes six pages to the study of a coup d’état planned by gendarmerie officers and extreme right-wing groups in 1973. The article – ‘The big bad look of the 1970’s: the destabilization of the State’ – is based on the confessions of Martial Lekeu, a former gendarme who fled to the USA when sought for questioning in the ‘Killers of the Brabant Wallon’ enquiry. The killers, who specialized in holding-up supermarkets with maximum violence and minimum loot, killed 28 people between 1982 and 1985, always attacking the same chain of supermarkets on the same day of th week with the same kind of car, needlessly gunning people down and then escaping with cash rarely more than a few thousand pounds. Leukeu stated what many suspected: the killers were part of a political psy ops campaign aimed at reinforcing the State structures. Whether there is a link between the 1973 coup plans and the 1980’s destabilization remains to be seen: various parliamentary enquiries and comm9issions have so far failed to get to the bottom of the affair. (p. 24.) Teacher regrets, however, that information on the group and its activities are very limited, consisting of the 1972 ISC memo and the minutes released by Langemann in the Bavarian parliament in 1979-80.

It’s clear from this that the Circle is a very sinister organization with connections to other extreme right-wing groups, like WACL, whose name stands for World Anti-Communist League, and whose members include real Fascists and Nazis. I’m not surprised that the Tories sent two of their MPs to its meeting last year. The Tories’ right wing has always overlapped with some deeply unpleasant groups and organisations. Western Goals, an American Republican organization, according to Lobster, had a British subsidiary, Western Goals UK, which was also linked to them.

What is also interesting is that Private Eye published its piece on the Pinay Circle at all, considering how it called Nisar Malik a conspiracy theorist for believing in the Zionist control of the media. It seems the Eye is open to discussing real conspiracies, so long as they don’t involve the real, documented subterfuge and plotting of the Israeli state.

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First Windrush, Next Ugandan Asians?

If this is true, then it’s utterly despicable and really shows that no-one is safe from the Tories’ programme of racist deportations.

Mike in another of his posts reporting and commenting on the unjust deportation of Windrush migrants, at https://voxpoliticalonline.com/2018/04/24/nothing-has-changed-despite-their-claims-tory-racism-remains-in-place-for-everyone-apart-from-commonwealth-migrants/, included a tweet from Carole Hawkins. She posted

Ugandan Asians are next for deportation as reported on the Westminster Hour on R4 22/4/18. How far are the Tories going to take this?
Voting all Tory councillors out on May 3rd tells Tess her policies are cruel & her power base erodes, something Tories can’t stand. https://twitter.com/bassmadman/status/988329689885310977 …

Mike checked her source, and found that what she said was correct, at least according to the Beeb. He states

Carole Hawkins is absolutely correct. Listen to that evening’s edition of Westminster Hour and around 18 minutes into the programme you will hear: “The next group to be snared in this will be Ugandan Asians; people who were allowed to come here by Ted Heath when they were fleeing Idi Amin. And that is going to be another painful moment in the life of the government.”

It continues: “They arrived in 71-72 so we can expect to get that problem for the government in 2019-2020… This problem is not going to go away.”

Mike’s article is worth reading in total as it comments on the institutional racism behind May’s immigration policies. It’s not just the discrimination against the children of Windrush migrants. This includes the story of two brothers, who have had their lives wrecked by May’s decision that they, and others like them, aren’t British citizens but foreign residents, who should be deported. It’s also the very high rates of racism and racist abuse in the Border Control Force and aggressive policing by officers looking for Asian men with foreign passports.

But the possibility that the government has been thinking about doing the same to the Ugandan Asians is a new, particularly vile low, even by the Tories’ abysmal standards.

As Mike points out in his piece, the Ugandan Asians were expelled from their homeland by the country’s vicious dictator, Idi Amin. They were given sanctuary in Britain in 1971-2 by Ted Heath, after many other nations, including India, refused to take them in. Immigration was a very hot topic, I’ve read since then that many Tories thought Heath was risking electoral disaster by allowing them to come to Britain. But he did, and it’s undoubtedly to his credit, despite everything else he stood for as a Tory.

Way back in the 1990s our mother helped to run a small day centre for the elderly here in south Bristol. One of the guest speakers, who came in to talk to the seniors using the club was a member of Bristol’s Asian community. The man was also a Ugandan Asian. He told of his people’s expulsion by Amin. They were forced out of their homes and businesses and made to leave. And along the route out of the country, to the airport or wherever, there were roadblocks, the soldiers on which took the opportunity to rob the expellees of whatever they could. I think he said that you would have wept if you saw how they robbed and abused people. And I’ve no doubt he’s right. But, he continued, Ugandan Asians are grateful to Britain for taking them in.

I believe that the community also has its own museum, or at least a museum gallery devoted to them in one of the northern towns. I think I saw it featured a year or so ago on Bargain Hunt or one of the other related antiques programmes put out by the Beeb. That part of the programme and the gallery itself also covered the community’s expulsion and their arrival in Britain.

Now it seems that May and her vile crew have decided that they want to deny citizenship and expel the children of people, who have already endured one traumatic expulsion by a vicious dictator.

The Ugandan Asian community included professionals and businesspeople, and Britain has benefited from their hard work and skills. Now the Tories want to repay them and their gratitude towards Britain for giving them refuge, by throwing them out.

Absolutely disgraceful. As is the treatment of the Windrush generation. I’d even call it a national disgrace, because of how badly it reflects on Britain.

And for all her huffing and puffing, trying to put the blame on Labour, this all comes down to Cameron and Tweezer. May took the decision to destroy the landing permits, which would have allowed the Windrush children to prove their citizenship. She also secretly removed the legislation that protected them.

She’s a racist bully, picking on those members of the Black and Asian community she thinks she can brutalise and throw out without anyone noticing or complaining. Well, she’s wrong. And people are rightly outraged.

She should resign. Now. No ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’. And if she doesn’t, parliament should work until she does. Because she has shown by her actions that she regards British citizenship not as a right, but as a gift that can be withdrawn at the whim of herself and the other racist monsters in her party. And until she goes, and proper regulations are put in place to correct this and stop it being inflicted on anyone else, no-one in this country is safe.

Get her out.

Secular Talk: Iranian Cleric Claims 60 Per Cent of American Women Prefer to Have Sex with Dogs

This piece of sheer lunacy comes from Iran. It’s a piece from Secular Talk in which the host, Kyle Kulinski, talks about a piece in the Daily Beast by Shima Sharabi, in which she talks about the propaganda she and other Iranian young people were exposed to from the mullahs in the Strategic Centre for Chastity and Modesty. This was a section of the Iranian theocracy devoted to encouraging women and girls to wear the hijab. One of these clerics, Mehdi Bayati, declared that feminism in the west was due to western women not wearing the hijab, and that this is why sixty per cent of American women ‘preferred to sleep with dogs rather than men’. He also claimed that not wearing the hijab also reduced general sexual desire in the surrounding society. Although he saw many couples kissing each other when he was in America, they did so ‘without heat’. This was because they were too used to seeing women’s hair that men were no longer aroused by it, despite having kissed 94 people previously.

Kulinski makes the point that this says more about the mullahs in Iran and their perverted little minds than it ever does about the west. He states quite forcefully, and with good reason, that he has never thought about women having sex with dogs before now, and neither have most people, before they heard this piece of prize nonsense from Bayati. He also makes the point that while men may admire a particular haircut on a woman, they don’t find it sexually arousing. But this, he states, is a result of the repressed society like Iran, where women have to be covered up from head to toe, so that the merest hint of hair is seen as arousing.

The Sex Assaults in Germany and Birmingham

I’m reblogging this because it says much that’s very important about official prejudices towards the west in Muslim and Middle Eastern societies, prejudices that contribute to the wave of sexual assaults that took place in Germany and other countries last month, and similar incidents that have been committed in Birmingham according to the British politician, Jess Philips.

Pornography, Bogus Statistics and Anti-American Propaganda

Firstly, it’s undoubtedly true that the figure for American women sleeping with dogs is completely bogus. It’s something that Bayati pulled out of thin air. And he did it deliberately to arouse disgust. The idea that anyone would want to have sex with animals is revolting enough, but dogs are considered unclean in Islam. It’s his way of claiming that American women, and by extension all western, non-Muslim women, are particularly dirty and disgusting. It’s a product of his filthy mind. And if he did live anywhere in America where it actually went on, there’s the question why he didn’t call the cops. That type of figure sounds like it comes from the lowest, vilest, degrading pieces of pornography. This kind of stuff is illegal, as he should know if he lived in America as he claimed. So if he was encountering this material, why didn’t he alert the police to get the people producing and selling it busted? The reason is either that he actually got turned on by it, and was actively seeking it out, or that it is just propaganda. This is far more likely. It reminds me of the similarly bogus statistics the Soviets used to put out about crime in America during the Cold War. These included completely spurious factoids about the numbers of robberies and murders committed every minute or so in the Land of the Free. They were supposed to show that capitalist America was a vile cesspool of violence, robbery and murder. This was in contrast to the tranquillity of the Communist bloc, where violence and mass murder was strictly a state monopoly.

Last month in Cologne in Germany, and other countries in northern Europe, including Finland, there was a spate of rapes and sexual assaults carried out by gangs. The rapists were described as being of Middle Eastern and North African appearance, and a majority of the suspects arrested were indeed Arabs and others from that part of the world.

Jess Philips, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and Sex Assaults in Birmingham

Then last week, Jess Philips caused a storm of protest when she claimed that assaults like these occurred every day on one particular street in Birmingham. Civic minded Brummies, full of wounded pride, and others subjected her to a tirade of abuse on social media. Among other things, she was denounced as racist.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, the Indie’s long-time correspondent specialising in racial issues, actually defended her in a piece in Monday’s edition. Alibhai-Brown stated that Philips’ piece was actually reasonable and measured, and certainly not a racist rant. She said that only some – but certainly not all – Muslim men were responsible, and compared the assaults and the sexist attitudes behind them to those of the British during the Empire.

Mullahs Repeating the Same Racist Attitudes of European Imperialists

And Philips and Alibhai-Brown are exactly right. During the heyday of European imperialism, the nudity of some of the indigenous peoples was seen as an indication both of their lack of civilisation and culture, and their own sexual depravity. It added spice to the lurid tales of cannibalism and human sacrifice. Blacks in particular came to be seen as highly sexualised, and so entirely deserving of the abuse and sexual exploitation Black women were subjected to on the slave plantations. And if they weren’t seen as highly sexualised, they were viewed as the opposite. There’s a piece in Elliot Rose’s sceptical study of European witchcraft, A Razor for a Goat, for example, which reveals the attitudes to indigenous societies at the time the book was first written in the 1950s. Reviewing the sado-masochistic elements that were supposedly practiced in Western witchcraft, he compared them with the extreme sexual practices of primal peoples outside Europe. These peoples did not have the same sexual vigour as Europeans, and so needed flogging and other such acts to properly stimulate them for the sexual act. It’s rubbish, of course, and says much less about real conditions and attitudes amongst the world’s indigenous peoples than it does about the weird and prurient attitudes of the sexually repressed European society at the time.

Just as Mullah Bayati’s rantings about the perverted tastes of western women and the lack of sexual desire in western society says nothing about the west, and everything about officially approved Islamic attitudes. It’s the same sneering about supposedly degenerate, naked inferior peoples, that the British and other European colonial powers did, and for pretty much the same reason. It was to bolster their sense of superiority, and stop any members of their ruling elite from going ‘jungly’ and adopting the customs and attitudes of the people around them.

Muslim Anti-Western Propaganda as Contributing Factor to Sex Assaults by Muslims in West

I’m not saying all Muslims have these attitudes, by a long chalk. I know women, who married Iranian Muslim husbands and said that, in contrast to some indigenous British men, they treated them like ladies. But with mullahs like Bayati bellowing at their congregations across the Middle East, on TV, the radio from the pulpit in the mosques, that women, who don’t wear the hijab or chador are lewd, promiscuous whores, and it’s only to be expected that some will act on it. Criminals, who don’t know how to behave, and believe such women deserve to be raped and assaulted, because, by their standards, they’re worthless tarts. Such attitudes aren’t confined to Muslim men, by a long way. I don’t doubt at all that most rapists, and those who commit other forms of indecent assault are White. But attitudes like Bayati’s and the rest of the Iranian mullahs on this don’t help, and contribute to the problem.

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown was concerned that feminism was being sacrificed to anti-racism. Of course, she’s right, though it goes far beyond feminism, back to the basic level of proper decency and respectful behaviour. The ravings of the Iranian mullahs and their Strategic Centre for Chastity and Modesty show just how necessary the Slut Walks that took place around the world are. No woman deserves to be raped or assaulted, simply because of the way she dresses. Just as the reverse is also true, and no woman should be insulted, attacked or killed, as some women have been, simply because they wore the chador or hijab.

Vox Political on the Criminalisation of Youth Unemployment

Mike over at Vox Political wrote this piece on Cameron’s promise to make community work compulsory for young, unemployed people between 18 and 21. As he points out, this is the sentence usually dished out to petty offenders. The article’s called Conservatives would put unemployed on community service, and begins

It used to be a punishment for low-level criminals, but now David Cameron has admitted a future Conservative government would force it on people who have been out of work for more than six months. Those aged 18-21 will have to go straight into this work.

What does that say about Cameron’s opinion of the unemployed?

Is he trying to make it seem like a criminal offence? Is he trying to make it a criminal offence to be young and out of work?

It’s all part of his ‘divide and conquer’ plan for the UK, one supposes – treat the unlucky as an underclass and make those who are fortunate enough to be in (well-paid) work thank their lucky stars.

Take note of that caveat about ‘well-paid’ work; part of this scheme to criminalise the unemployed is an intention to force more and more people into underpaid jobs without in-work benefits, in order to make more money for his rich donors (who of course will pass some of the benefit on to the Conservative Party). You know the kind – the zero-hours contracts that Labour plans to outlaw; part-time work, temporary work, minimum wage work that means people still have to claim benefits.

There’s also an intentional – but superficial – resemblance to Labour’s plan; the job guarantee.

Both would compel benefit claimants into work after six months, but after that, the Tory plan does not stand up well at all.

Mike then goes on to compare it to Labour’s plan to provide the young with compulsory, but paid employment.

I can’t say I’m happy with Labour’s plan. It’s too much like an improved version of workfare. That said, it is much better than what the Tories are offering, which is vicious, punitive and degrading. Pretty much like them.

The Criminalisation of Unemployment under the Tories and Elizabethans

As for the Tories’ policy effectively criminalising the unemployed young – I think that’s absolutely correct. It bears comparison with the Elizabethan poor laws of the 16th century, when the country was first having to grapple with the problem of unemployment caused by changes in the economy. These also notoriously criminalised poverty. Unemployment was seen very much as the fault of the unemployed themselves. They were seen not as victims of economic forces, but simply idle and lazy.

Moreover, in a nation that was still very feudal with a social order based on subservience to a landholding elite, the unemployed were considered to be a threat to order and authority. They were ‘masterless men’, outside the feudal and guild bonds that tied the peasant to the landlord and the apprentice to the master craftsmen. Simply by being unemployed, they were a threat to society and its order. They were also a source of fear because of the threat they posed as a drain on the primitive welfare provisions that were in place, such as the parish vestry and private alms. And then, of course, there was the additional fear of the dangers they also posed of robbery and theft.

It’s no accident that when workhouses first appear to accommodate the unemployed and teach them a trade under Edward VI, they were described as ‘houses of correction’. One of the first laws to tackle unemployment stipulated that an unemployed person could not legally turn down an offer of work made by a prospective employer, no matter what the conditions. If he did so, the employer was empowered to seize and enslave him. The law didn’t last long before it was removed, but it shows the panic and the punitive nature of the authorities at the perceived threat the unemployed pose.

The Tories and their cheerleaders in the right-wing press pretty much have exactly the same attitudes. Unemployment is a result of idleness and the character defects of unemployed and disabled themselves. It is not the product of the economy.

And the unemployed are a threat to society. They’re feeding off the earnings of the ‘hard-working’ taxpayer, and without work to discipline them are undoubtedly all criminals, committing theft, robbery and drugs. Thus, they all should be forced onto workfare.

Once upon a time, the same right-wing loudmouths used to prescribe national service as the solution for poorly educated, ill-disciplined, slovenly and potentially criminal young people. That seems to have gone by the board, as the Tories are trying to dismantle the regular army because it costs too much. More importantly, the voters tend to get upset when their sons, daughters and partners start coming back in body bags. It’s not good for national morale, and so the army is being reduced to what would have been called a militia back in Elizabeth’s time, and much of the fighting done by private military contractors. We’re still seeing our boys and girls come back in the body bags, though.

Lord Lucan, Public School Thuggery and Establishment ‘Omerta’

Lord Lucan: The detective investigating his case said that he encountered a wall of silence greater than at amongst professional criminals.

Yesterday evening I reblogged Mr Pride’s post ‘Violent thugs with public school accents and connections to the very top of the Tory Party’. This was about the derisory sentence – a fine of £350 – handed out to two thugs, who had attacked and robbed two women in car in 2007. The men were both friends of David Cameron and were leading members of the Heythrop Hunt. One of them was Charles Otis Ferry, the Marlborough-educated son of pop star Bryan Ferry. Otis Ferry was a strong supporter of the pro-fox hunting group, the Countryside Alliance, who took part in their invasion of the floor of the House of Commons when it was banned by Blair’s government. There’s more than a suspicion here that upper class solidarity played a very strong part in the exceptionally low penalty given to the two men, despite the violence of the attack. The two men had blocked the road in front of the two women with their car, and then smashed the women’s windows in order to get the money. It was a violent crime, and there is absolutely no way that someone from the working or lower middle classes would have been treated with such contemptible leniency if they had been responsible for a similar assault.

In this respect, it reminds me of what I’ve heard about the wall of silence and establishment class solidarity the police detective charged with investigating the affair of Lord Lucan encountered. Lucan was the lord, who disappeared after the murder of his children’s nanny. A friend of mine with a far greater interest in the case than me told me that the detective investigating the case was appalled by the complete lack of co-operation he received from the other members of the aristocracy. The attitude was very much that Lucan may have been a nasty piece of work, but he went to the same public school, and so they stood by him against the detective trying to get to the truth and obtain justice for the murdered nanny. The detective remarked that not even amongst the hardened criminals of the East End had he encountered such an attitude of solidarity and deliberate silence to cover up a crime. The aristocratic establishment thus have a stronger sense of protecting their own, criminal members than the mafia’s ‘omerta’ – their notorious code of silence.

And clearly this class solidarity is still very strong, and shared by the judge, who awarded such a paltry penalty to Otis Ferry and his accomplice. This shows you just how low David Cameron and his friends consider the safety of the working and lower middle classes and their property, compared to protecting their fellow aristos. They have no concern or interest in them at all. All they’re really interested in is preserving and maintaining their own, highly privileged place in society.

And so the violent thugs, who robbed two women on an isolated country road got a fine of £350. And Lord Lucan got away with murder.