the fringe left and the far right in the UK

  • Post last modified:August 9, 2024
  • Reading time:44 mins read


“I don’t want them to live here. I don’t want them here. They came under false pretenses. Many of them came illegally, and continue to come illegally, and we don’t want them here”.

So said Douglas Murray, associate editor of the Spectator and regular contributor to the Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Sun, the Daily Mail, New York Post, National Review, the Free Press, and UnHerd, to Jonathan Anderson on his show on 6 August in response to the race riots in the UK.

A triple murder setting off a chain of events

Eight days after the first signs of what would be widespread race riots that have seized Middlesbrough, Liverpool, Manchester, and Southport – where they started following the murder of three girls and the injuring of eight others – a statement released by the Merseyside Police on Monday said the suspect is 17 and from Banks, Lancashire, about 8km (five miles) from the site of the attack. The suspect was born in Cardiff, the capital and largest city of Wales. The statement added that the suspect had been taken to a police station where he was investigated by detectives.

We soon found out who killed the girls. His name, ethnicity, and citizenship were spread far following his appearance at a hearing at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday 1 August and the unprecedented act of the judge unsealing his identity after hearing he was due to turn 18 in just six days.

Recorder of Liverpool Andrew Menary KC told Liverpool Crown Court revealing his identity would help to stop misinformation from fuelling further disorder. He said:

Continuing to prevent full reporting at this stage has the disadvantage of allowing others who are up to mischief to continue to spread misinformation in a vacuum and runs the risk that when the information becomes publicly available in six days’ time, that will provide an additional excuse for a fresh round of public disorder.

Allowing full reporting will undoubtedly remove some of the misreporting as to the identity of the defendant.

He added:

Whilst I accept it is exceptional given his age, principally because he is 18 in six days’ time I do not make an order under section 45.

Conversations with John Anderson, featuring interviews with public intellectuals from the right, is an Australian show. So, no doubt that’s why Murray went on to say:

If I hated Australia, hated the Australian people, hated Australian history, hated the Australian way of life, broke into the country illegally and spent my time trying to undermine Australia. Why should I be in Australia? Why? What would I have brought the country? What benefit, what moral benefit, what financial benefit, what social benefit? The answer is, you have brought no benefit.

Murray is amongst a coterie of individuals saying much the same thing, with varying levels of affect and effect. His fellow travellers include Matt Goodwin, an academic, Claire Fox or Baroness Fox Of Buckley since 2020, and Lord Walney, the political violence Tsar.

John Woodcock: the supposed political violence Tsar

In November 2020 John Woodcock, now Lord Walney who is married to the deputy editor of the Spectator Isabel Hardman, was appointed as an Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption to the UK Government.

Not too long after in March 2021 he published a report on political extremism and violence. It devotes 65 pages to the threat from the left (JSO, XR, BLM), and just 28 to the threat from the right.

I asked the noble Lord Walney how he failed to anticipate all the violent racists causing havoc across the country, and somehow missed any online disinformation networks and missed whatever Russian force multipliers were active before 29 July. We had no response at time of publication.

Woodcock has characterised pro-Palestine protesters as “extremists”. In January 2024 he visited Israel. Upon his return he wrote a report suggesting MPs shouldn’t meet with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and that the police should crack down on protests.

On 8 August, days after the race riots started, he had this to say of a poster advertising an anti-fascist demo:

Disturbing. Even amidst attempts to reject far-right violence, antisemitic poison openly infects parts of the far left and some bodies who claim to speak for Muslims in the UK. If you blame it on Jews, you’re little better than the thugs trashing our towns.

‘We’ve been too polite. I’m done with it’

In 2019 Claire Fox was the host of a panel which starred Murray called ‘What’s Killing Western Civilisation’ which you can find on the Ayn Rand Institute’s YouTube channel.

Not long after Murray went on a book tour for The War on the West, he quoted Lord Clarke in a promo video in which he decried the ‘War on White People’. Clarke produced the series Civilisation in the 60s and is famous for saying:

Civilization means something more than energy and will and creative power, it needs a sense of permanence. Civilised man must feel that he belongs somewhere in space and time; that he consciously looks forward and looks back.

In the same interview Murray said he will no longer be polite:

Well, here’s what I think. I think we’ve been being polite, and I’m done with it. Totally done with it. Now, what does this look like, this lack of politeness? Well, it would look like telling some truths that ARIA has been too polite not to say in recent years, at any rate.

In the end of his series on civilization, Lord Clark, remember, we said that courtesy was one of the things that defined the West. It’s a very interesting thing to fall on at the end of his thing, but courtesy, courtesy is a hugely important thing in Western society. But it’s not endless. So here would be a non-courteous thing to say.

We’ve been told that other ways of knowing, other ways of doing maths, non race, anti racist science and all this sort of thing. Yet we do not go to any Aboriginal communities for vaccines. We go to no first peoples for cancer treatment. We go to them for no mathematical, scientific or artistic discoveries.

We do not go to them to rediscover other languages and other cultures, partly, largely because such communities seem to have not much interest in other cultures. Unlike the Western mind, they seem not to have taken a great interest.

So the not courteous thing would be us saying we’ve been courteous for an awfully long time, and we’re going to stop because it seems not to be doing us much good. So we will pursue truth wherever we want to pursue it for whatever means we have and whatever disciplines we have, and we will stop pretending that alongside all the great philosophy of the West, Native American philosophy is equal.

Whose civilisation is under siege?

Now, in a few days time, as director of the Academy of Ideas which says it “seeks to renew social life through debate, discussion, and education about the big ideas that have inspired humanity throughout history”, Claire Regina Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley, is hosting ‘Civilisation Under Siege’ on 17-18 August.

The Academy of Ideas site says that:

the problems of the current moment are frequently described as ‘civilisational’ in their importance. Some say the culture wars pose a threat to the building blocks of civilisation: family life, privacy, or civility. Others would argue the real threat to civilisation is from ‘global challenges’ like climate change or AI. In the wars in Gaza or Ukraine, some repose arguments about the ‘clash of civilisations’.

But in many quarters, especially in academia, the very idea of civilisation is dismissed or treated as a dirty word. Wherever we look, there is a sense that civilisation itself is under siege from hostile forces.

For the event ‘Culture under-Siege’ the text asks questions:

Does the attack on classical art mirror a wider attack on Western civilisation? Or has the tradition of the classics largely run its course? Will anyone defend the achievements of the West?’

In ‘What is Western Civilisation and how to defend it’ they say:

This lecture will explore the legacy of Western civilisation in this space of autonomy outside state, church or ideology – and ask how we can defend it?

In ‘Reclaiming the Institutions’ they ask:

how we should face the issue of cultural decay within key institutions of western civilisation.

I asked Baroness Buckley what using the word ‘face’ in this context means tangibly? I have had no response as of publication time.

Taking back control – but in an intellectual way, of course

This kind of rhetoric is echoed by a tweet that Claire’s protege and assistant Venice Allan posted recently:

The Cass review is just the beginning of the end, we need to take back control of all our institutions, firstly the NHS.

I asked Venice how she intends to ‘take back control’ of the NHS and could she provide examples of her plan. We had no response at time of publication.

Tom Gann, editor of the New Socialist, upon seeing details of the summer programme told me:

This throws up important questions over medium-long term strategy. What constitutes them is how the current (as Stuart Hall put it) respectable far-right is simultaneously quite intellectual (they trade in ideas) and not very intellectual (the ideas are drivel, they’re not decisive). Why do they trade in ideas? At least one way is to make a distinction with (Hall again) the rough far-right. “We’re intellectuals, we’re just asking questions”, while at the same time the gap between the rough and respectable far-right is broken down. And, let’s face it too, we can be vulgar materialists when necessary: there’s a lot of money in being the plausibly denied far-right intellectual.

I asked Claire Fox, Douglas Murray, and Matt Goodwin if they could estimate how much a far right public intellectual might earn per annum in sterling and whether some of the intellectual/respectful far right intellegisia could chose to have ideas other than ones currently in the public debate, e.g. instead of asking ‘Is Rising Ethnic Diversity a Threat to the West?’ replace it with other ideas that don’t potentially incite hatred of minorities or push open further the Overton Window on racism and xenophobia – considering some intellectual far right have thousands of subscribers/followers on and offline. I had no responses at time of publication.

‘Get to your feet’ in the context of race riots

Nonetheless on 6 August in conversation with former deputy prime minister of Australia Jonathan Anderson, Douglas Murray did say:

I think there are things now able to be discussed and suggested which were not able to be suggested or discussed even a few years ago. My view is that, I mean, for instance, there’s a there’s a sort of idiot conversation you can have when it comes to these things, which consists of something like the following, I would say, if this is a typical BBC question for you, you see, I’d say John Anderson, but how do we how do we balance the the the issues between a liberal society and then illiberalism? On the other hand, we’ve had 20 years of that. We’ve had 20 years of these silly games and naval gazing parlor games. It’s too late to keep playing those games. We have 1000s, 10s of 1000s, probably hundreds of 1000s, of people in the UK who have no love at all for the UK, but yet live here.

We have a couple of choices, clearly at this point. One of them is, and I say this metaphorically for the time being, but it’s not that metaphorical. One is to stand up, and the other is to beg on your knees. I don’t think the British public should be on their knees begging, particularly not people who dislike them. So best to be on your feet. The soul of England, the soul of Britain, is about to be trampled on very, very visibly, by people who are gleeful in their trampling, and they have defaced and defiled all of our holy places.

And I think I know that the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing. These people came into our house. Many of them broke into our house illegally. Many of them were never wanted here, and they have come here. They have betrayed all of our attempts at hospitality. They’ve spat in our faces, and now they want to trample everything we have underfoot.

Tom Gann, editor of the New Socialist told me that:

Murray in particular is even more fascinating as someone who has found outright fascism pays very well. I do think a lot of this is that there’s just less competition – fashy intellectuals are quite stupid, there aren’t many of them and there’s a constant media demand for them.

Samuel Huntington: still influencing the respectable far right

Much of the Academy of Ideas program comes from the mind of Samuel Huntington who wrote Clash of Civilisations in 1996 and was an important influence on forces who have led the past 35 years of war on Islam to impose Israel as a regional hegemon and ensure the US-led Axis retains its supremacy.

The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order is an expansion of the 1993 Foreign Affairs article written by Huntington that hypothesised a new post-Cold War world order. Huntington, who died in December 2008, developed a new “Civilization paradigm” to create a new understanding of the post-Cold War order

I asked Claire Fox, Matthew Goodwin, and Douglas Murray whether they had met Huntington before he died and about one of Huntington’s predictions.

Huntington predicts and describes great clashes that will occur among civilizations. First, he anticipated a coalition or cooperation between Islamic and Sinic (the common culture of China and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia, including Vietnam and South Korea) cultures to work against a common enemy, the West.

Three issues that separate the West from the rest are identified by Huntington as:

1. The West’s ability to maintain military superiority through the nonproliferation of emerging powers.
2. The promotion of Western political values such as human rights and democracy.
3. The Restriction of non-Western immigrants and refugees into Western societies.

I went on to ask Claire Fox if the gap between the far right on the streets in the last few days and the respectable far-right – for example Douglas Murray and Matthew Goodwin – was being broken down, considering the rhetoric from both in just the last 72 hours.

We were unable to reach Matthew Goodwin for comment at his Kent university email address which is still listed on his website as the only means of contacting him. According to a piece in the New European published on 7 August:

all mention of the University of Kent has been stripped from Goodwin’s X account, and a spokesman said that Goodwin had “left the University of his own accord”, with his final day being 31 July.

Aurelian Mondon, who researches the mainstreaming of reactionary and far-right politics, said on X:

The fact Goodwin left Kent in such a hush hush manner, without him blaming the woke left or cancel culture really makes me wonder what was behind it.

A rather rag-tag book launch

Meanwhile, in the summer of 2019 a rag tag group of people gathered in a room in SOAS for a book launch and panel event, chaired by Novara’s Aaron Bastani. It was being hosted by The Full Brexit, who say in their founding statement:

The Full Brexit will set out radical arguments for a clean break with the European Union. Instead of the conservative nostalgia of the Eurosceptics, our arguments will put the interests of working people – the majority of citizens – at the centre of the case for a democratic Brexit.

Their spokesman Lee Jones, professor of Political Economy and International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London, told me that:

The clear and exclusive inference is that other European peoples should, like the British, seek to leave the European Union through peaceful, democratic means.

In the room were academics, trade unionists, activists, journalists, and others. Their institutions include the London School of Economics and Political Science, Queen Mary University of London, Durham University, University of Cambridge, University of Manchester, University of Westminster, Goldsmiths College, University of London, University of Central Lancashire, University of Oxford, University of Liverpool and of course, professor Costas Lapavitsas of the School of Oriental and African Studies who booked the room.

Also invited was economics and politics commentator: staff writer for Tribune and panellist on TalkTV Grace Blakeley, Novara Media co-founder and GB News pundit Bastani, and former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and former MEP, Claire Fox.

Enter ‘The Full Brexit’

Founded in 2018, The Full Brexit is a volunteer-run network. A small steering group of Philip Cunliffe, Mary Davis, Maurice Glasman, George Hoare, Lee Jones, Costas Lapavitsas, Peter Ramsay, Anshu Srivastava, and Richard Tuck meet regularly to develop their thinking and organise their activities, they told me. Its online and offline activities are maintained by the goodwill and donations of its members and small donations from visitors too.

They have since hosted the book launch for trade unionist and commentator Paul Embery, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, and an online event ‘Economic Policy after Brexit and COVID-19: Taking Control’.

The Full Brexit were prolific on Facebook for a number of years, posting articles by academics such as Working-Class Anger, Brexit and the 2019 General Election, and
The Flaw in the Crown: Why Popular Sovereignty in Britain Means Reunification in Ireland, and How Boris Johnson Broke the Brexit Interregnum. Some links are still active on their Facebook page, others direct you to 404 pages. They posted a meme of Grace Blakeley in 2019, which says ‘Brexit is an opportunity for radical economic change’. She told me:

I wasn’t aware of it. Also, they spelled my name wrong.

The group stopped posting on Facebook and X  in September 2023, perhaps having succeeded in their goal of achieving a full Brexit, except one of their stated aims which was:

withdrawing Britain from Ireland and extending the dynamic of popular sovereignty and democratisation within Britain itself.

Professor Lee Jones clarified this statement, telling me:

The Full Brexit does not take any collective positions beyond those co-signed as such by the steering group. The article to which you refer was not co-signed and so represents the view of the author(s) only.

He also told me that:

The formal process of Brexit concluded in early 2021. The network’s activities consequently wound down thereafter.

Lord Moonie, a Labour peer, is listed as one of the supporters of their founding statements alongside a host of academics. Claire Fox’s name is not listed.

In 2018 she alongside Matthew Goodwin (who is another academic who signed the founding statement of The Full Brexit), David Aaronovitch, Trevor Phillips, and Eric Kauffman were accused of pushing far-right rhetoric by a different group of academics. They were accused in an open letter of normalising the far right by framing the question in terms of white supremacist discourse.

Lee Jones told me that:

Some members of the network have spoken in an individual capacity at the Battle of Ideas, a large annual public event with which Claire Fox is closely associated. Beyond this, Claire Fox has not been involved with The Full Brexit.

Justification after justification after justification for race riots

Matthew Goodwin, in a piece to camera this week, said:

Like many British people, I’m angry, upset, frustrated and disillusioned with the state of the country. After the murders and stabbings in Southport, three children who thought they were going to a Taylor Swift dance class instead were murdered. Another eight were injured at the hands of a son of two Rwandan migrants. And I think for many people out there in the country, this is not just a sickening event, but it underlines something more profound. Because when a nation cannot look after its own children, when a nation cannot protect its own children, something has gone fundamentally wrong, and something in Britain has gone fundamentally wrong. We can all see that. We can all sense it, even if people in the ruling class are trying to ignore it, downplay it, or reframe it as misinformation and disinformation. All of that is is nonsense. What is happening in Britain right now is the culmination of decades of disastrous policies that have been imposed on the country by a ruling class that is no longer in touch with the rest of that country.

He said this a matter of days or it may have even been hours after the nation saw footage of a man wielding what looked like a chain saw but turned out to be a just as lethal hedge trimmer chasing a car with non-white people in it, and the car of a care worker being set on fire.

Claire Fox herself used similarly inflammatory language in her talk show of choice TalkTV last week, saying:

I think that the anger is completely justified, and I think there’s a lot of pent up frustration. Because, let’s be honest, for the last few years, there’s been attempting, attempts to gaslight anyone who asks any questions at all about, for example, civil, you know, dis unrest, people who say, I feel very frightened by seeing these pro Gaza demos, not the demos, but the fact that there have people on them, causing trouble, you know, shouting anti semitic slogans, getting away with it, blatantly supporting violent, murderous terrorists on us, and feeling that, you know, just stock oil, you know, prepared to disrupt your everyday journeys, and somehow that’s to be ignored anyway you can understand and just a general sense that mass shoplifting can happen and nobody can do anything about it. The police have seemed to say, emasculated, if I can use that word, without being accused of sexism, completely robbed of any gumption. So that can be true, and people are angry, and of course, then this absolutely awful tragedy in Southport of children being butchered, and we’ll bring that out.

I asked the editor-in-chief of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson, whether he intended to continue publishing their work considering their inflammatory nature. I had no response at the time of publication.

Moves in public, and moves behind closed doors

In 2019 Claire became a candidate for European Parliament. For the announcement she sat alongside Nigel Farage who she has gone on to champion in his role in his new business venture, Reform UK.

Her movements since then have both been more and less private.

She had already founded Spiked Online and the Academy of Ideas by then but began to appear regularly on TalkTV, the right-wing news channel launched in 2022 by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK.

What is less known is her involvement in a virulent anti-trans eco system in which some of her closest advisors, fellow travellers, Matthew Goodwin, and others have been central to.

Her assistant, Venice Allan who works with her three days a week and spends the rest of the week careering from protest to protest, and on social media denouncing trans people, is one of the network.

Venice began working for Claire in January 2024, a month before Claire made an amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill on gender transitioning in prison and name changes on 26 February. I asked Clare Fox how she came to employ Venice Allan and whether she was recommended to her, and by who, or did she send in her CV. We had no reply at time of publication.

Fomenting the anti-trans movement

I spoke to Mallory Moore, a researcher and founder of the Trans Safety Network. She told me that Claire Fox was an early champion of the Gender Critical movement, as early as 2018 using her Academy of Ideas platform to promote a “debate” stacked with mainly gender critical voices and one token trans advocate to promote the “what is a woman” talking point that would plague Labour in opposition for the next five years.

Another of her closest advisors, the brother of Venice, is a left wing lobbyist and regular contributor to the Morning Star; it was also supportive of The Full Brexit and gained exclusive footage of their event ‘The Full Brexit In Conversation: The British Left after Brexit’.

Venice’s brother, who’s views on Brexit remain unknown, is however responsible for creating the infamous phrase ‘adult human female’ he told me on 6 June 2024; a rallying cry for the Gender Critical movement whose nominal head JK Rowling has posted on her prolific X feed numerous times.

I asked Venice Allan who was in the room when the term ‘adult human female’ was workshopped as a term to differentiate groups of the public. Was it in the House of Lords, somewhere on the parliamentary estate, or at a private event or household? We had no response at the time of publication.

Mallory also told me that Claire Fox was useful to the Tories in creating a superficially plausible impression of bipartisan anti-trans political consensus at a time when the trans community repeatedly exposed the well funded, far-right transatlantic religious conservative movement’s connections to separating trans rights from wider civil liberties.

First-hand experience – up close and personal

In 2023 Venice Allan posted on her X account pictures showing she had torn down signs saying “Nazis not welcome.” I asked Claire if she encourages the taking down of posters such as the ones taken down of Israelis kidnapped on 7 October. We had no response at the time of publication. In the meantime, Venice’s brother was pictured canvassing for MP Rosie Duffield in the crucial pre-election period.

Venice spends much of her time with Claire discussing anti-trans matters and I was invited to a meeting she organised in parliament on 12 March 2024. I was intending to go and listen to the Lords debate on imprisonment for public protection which Claire Fox was proposing an amendment to, and would be speaking at.

The morning debate was hosted by Sex Matters and organised by Venice Allan with support from her brother who has a parliamentary pass that allows him to move freely through the corridors of power. Richard Dawkins was the guest of honour. It was Chatham House rules, but some photos did appear on social media.

Venice has found another job to compliment the work she does for Claire. A benefactor has apportioned money for her to work on trans issues this summer on a per-day rate. I asked Venice to confirm the day rate remuneration. I had no response at time of publication.

Who is SEEN in Journalism?

In the meantime, a network of anonymous social media accounts known as SEEN in Journalism have appeared challenging the mainstreaming of trans voices on TV. Recently they said on their X account:

It’s vital for all journalists, on any issue, at any time, to be able to acknowledge facts. There’s no reason trans-identified people shouldn’t be able to acknowledge the facts around sex. But if they don’t, their coverage will be flawed. Hopefully recruiters will check.

Claire Fox’s sister Fiona Fox is the chief executive of the Science Media Centre, has a degree in journalism, and has many years of experience working in media relations for high profile national organisations. She couldn’t be reached for comment on whether she had any hand in the network or whether she is doing the promo for her sister’s Civilisation Under Siege weekend in August.

Since beginning this investigation we had a tip that the first SEEN network was at the Guardian, and Susanna Rustin and Sonia Sodha were the pioneers.

Unlike Claire Fox who went to the University of Warwick then the University of Greenwich, Sonia went to Oxford University, then on to a career of policy and politics before becoming the chief leader writer at the Observer and deputy opinion editor at the Guardian.

We asked her and Susanna Rustin whether the Guardian or any institution or person they knew including themselves were involved in funding and/or running the social media accounts that say ‘they are network for journalists and content makers who seek to restore accuracy and impartiality to media coverage of sex and gender’ known on X as @JournalismSEEN.

We also asked whether they had discussed SEEN In Journalism with Claire Fox, Douglas Murray, John Woodcock, Matthew Goodwin, Lord Moonie, Munira Mirza, Dougie Scott, Kath Viner, any editors at the Guardian or Observer or anyone involved with The Full Brexit. With no reply forthcoming we also asked whether they were involved in any way with writing or having discussions about the amendment to the Victims and Prisoners Bill on gender transitioning in prison and name changes – that Claire Fox proposed in parliament on 24 February 2024.

Lies?

There was no reply at the time of publication from either Sonia Sodha or Susanna Rustin. Kath Viner or Paul Webster did not respond to me personally. However, a spokesperson for the Guardian said they “don’t recognise any of the allegations” that I put to them.

However, as Trans Writes exposed, the Guardian does have a “Sex Equality Group” which formed during the outlet’s Diversity Week in early 2023. I’m also in contact with a whistleblower who has more on this part of the story.

When asked for comment, both Claire and Venice did not respond by the time of publication.

Filling in the gaps, Mallory of the Trans Safety Network told me that:

In her role in parliament as an unaffiliated peer she could then use parliamentary questions to trash concerns raised by trans people that legal attacks on trans rights were an effort to smuggle in attacks on wider reproductive rights. This was all at a time when mainstream feminist voices around the world were recognising a wider growing “anti-gender” movement – a feminist concern which has been widely ignored in the British press compared with the scapegoating of trans people.

However, with race riots and random attacks on Black and brown people now spreading to the North of Ireland, Claire has found that another area of her biography is under scrutiny again.

The North of Ireland and the far right

In the summer of 2023, after a young woman was killed, weeks of unrest ensured – with masked men standing outside establishments that housed asylum seekers. What followed is what the Daily Mail are now calling a ‘summer of discontent’. The London Review of Books’ Daniel Finn described it in an article named Ireland’s Far Right:

Ireland’s local and European elections, held simultaneously on 7 June, saw far-right groups win a foothold in the political mainstream for the first time

The right-wing campaigns this year drew on energies that were generated outside the electoral field.

Since the end of 2022, there have been protests against the housing of asylum seekers in areas such as Dublin’s north inner city. Two of the new independent councillors elected in Dublin, Gavin Pepper and Malachy Steenson, were prominently involved in them. Ireland has taken in about 100,000 Ukrainian refugees since 2022, and there has been an increase in asylum claims from other parts of the world too. But it would be wrong to see the growing salience of immigration on the political agenda simply as a function of how many people are arriving in the country.

Ireland’s far-right activists have spent the last few years scrambling around for a cause they can latch onto.

They found a wider audience during the Covid pandemic, when frustration at lockdowns sent many people down conspiracist rabbit-holes. As normal life resumed, some leading figures on the far right organised protests at public libraries, demanding the censorship of books that were said to promote ‘gender ideology’.

One striking feature of the protests was the laid-back response of the Gardaí. When the trade union representing public sector workers in Cork organised a rally in support of the library staff, their main demand was simply for the Gardaí to enforce the law and protect the workers from abuse.

In another case, police officers escorted far-right protesters into a North Dublin library while keeping a counter-demonstration at bay.

A twitter account called Reel Message Eire claimed on 24 July that “Ireland is not accepting gangs of foreigners being dumped on our communities anymore. Big up the people of Coolock!” attached to a video of a burning construction yard and graffiti on one wall saying, ‘Coolock Says No.’

Similar signs were seen being held in Belfast just three days ago:

Engineer Mark who has been keeping a sharp eye on escalating violence said to his social media followers:

There are those who refuse to believe the Irish far right are working with fringe loyalists to whip up hate in the island due to share white supremacist views.

Today provides explicit evidence of that those links are active, live and ongoing. We hear much about how those organising anti migrant bigots are just concerned Irish patriots. Allying with bigoted loyalists intent on intimidating an entire community because of their (Islamic) religious faith is very tone deaf to our history Anyone having anything to do with the ‘Says No’ groups should know that they are getting involved in. If you think those wrapping the union jack to attack people of Muslim faith are happy to stop there, you’re not just an idiot, you are a danger to the community you are in.

The Claire Fox connection

Spiked Online which was previously Living Marxism (where Claire Fox was co-publisher until it was forced to close following a court case about faking evidence of the Bosnian genocide) is a vital part of the reactionary propaganda industry which includes the Institute of Ideas (now called the Academy of Ideas), Academics for Academic Freedom, Free Speech Union, the Critic, Unherd, GB News, and TalkTV. Spiked is based in the former Revolutionary Communist Party offices.

In 2020, BBC journalist Mark Devenport wrote about Claire Fox’s Lords appointment. It was seen as controversial mostly for her stance on the North of Ireland, which she has gone on to explain in detail but not retract.

Mark was told that the Conservative Party’s longest serving adviser on the North of Ireland, Lord Jonathan Caine, had “serious misgivings” over the decision to give the former Brexit MEP Claire Fox a peerage.

In recent years, Ms Fox had enjoyed a high profile, both as a pro-Brexit campaigner and as a broadcaster on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. However, in her youth she was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party which refused to condemn atrocities like the Birmingham, Brighton, and Warrington bombings.

The party’s position – spelled out after the 1984 attack on Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party conference in Brighton – was that “we support unconditionally the right of the Irish people to carry out their struggle for national liberation in whatever way they choose”. During her campaign for European election in 2019, Fox’s track record on the IRA was put in the spotlight.

Seeking to diffuse the situation and save her campaign she called Colin Parry, whose 12-year-old son Tim was killed in the Warrington bombing. According to the BBC he concluded that her repeated refusal to disavow her former party’s comments on the bombing, ‘proved to him she had not changed her original views’.

According to the BBC’s Mark Devenport, her appointment was also very controversial both in and outside of Parliament. But she did get some surprising support.

No need for defence – Claire is now in the Lords

Ruth Dudley Edwards wrote an article on the Spectator titled In Defence of Claire Fox in August 2020. We asked Fraser Nelson who approached who to write the article and how much she was paid for it. We have had no answer at time of publication.

During a raucous Prime Minister’s Questions in September 2020 in which Boris Johnson accused the-then leader of the opposition Keir Starmer of complicity in tolerance for the IRA, he replied:

One thing we would remind the prime minister is that he has the power to block Claire Fox being nominated as a member of the House of Lords. So if he wants to take any action on this issue we suggest he does that.

Claire Fox was made a peer by Boris Johnson and was introduced into the House as Baroness Fox of Buckley on 8 October 2020 after intervention by former Revolutionary Communist Party comrade Munira Mirza – the then-director of the Number 10 Policy Unit – and her lobbyist husband Dougie Smith – a British political advisor who has worked as a senior Conservative Party aide for British prime ministers David Cameron, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson.

I asked Claire about her response to last year’s violence in Dublin and this week’s violence in the North of Ireland considering her comments on TalkTV last week. We have had no response at time of publication.

‘Winning public opinion is what makes change possible’

In 2023, Claire began to get involved in the Justice for IPP campaign which is where I first met her – and included her in episode 11 of the Trapped: The IPP Prisoner Scandal podcast, Prisoners of Politics. After I had a particular frustrating day she tweeted to me:

I know you must feel despondent but your journalism has had a HUGE effect. No longer forgotten prisoners because more and more people now know about the #IPPscandal. Winning hearts and minds in the court of public opinion is exactly what makes change possible.

So I knew she valued public service journalism and had expected a fulsome response to all my questions for this article. The same with Venice’s lobbyist brother who was instrumental in organising this Early Day Motion to honour the tireless IPP campaigners and to urge politicians to listen to the Trapped series.

Whilst nobody on the streets has been shouting the names Douglas Murray, Matthew Goodwin, John Woodcock, Claire Fox, or Samuel Huntington – they have been screaming Tommy Robinson at anyone who will listen.

It’s clear there is a network of well funded and secretive organisations, publications, and power brokers who have funded both the anti-trans movement and the intellectual justification for the current far-right mobilisation.

In 2018, the Guardian revealed that:

The British far-right activist Tommy Robinson is receiving financial, political and moral support from a broad array of non-British groups and individuals, including US thinktanks, rightwing Australians and Russian trolls, a Guardian investigation has discovered.

This included the Gatestone Institute, where Douglas Murray is a senior fellow.

There is a link between the rhetoric within the ivory towers of the Academy of Ideas, the Lords chamber, the books of Douglas Murray, the writings of Matthew Goodwin, and the agitation of Tommy Robinson.

Free speech – as long as it comes out of the mouths of white, far-right people

Matthew Goodwin today has come out in defiance at the reactions to his various public states statements this week and last and his appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Moral Maze with Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar on Wednesday which was met with a fierce backlash on the both. Via his Substack with thousands of followers he has said that he is not just reflecting ‘their’ beliefs, he represents them:

With your support, people like me, platforms like this, can have just as much reach, influence, and power in the national conversation, if not more, as the established elite class.

This is why, when I get the chance, I keep going in the national debate. I do not give an inch. And I refuse to be bullied, harassed and pushed out of the public square. Because I am especially conscious of the fact that I am now one of only a few voices in this country that genuinely reflects and represents the views of millions of people who are downplayed, ignored, or insulted in the national conversation. I feel an enormous sense of obligation and responsibility to them. And I always will.

So keep hating, keep shrieking, keep calling for the public square to be shut down.

Because I am going nowhere.

Douglas Murray, in his chilling soliloquy on Australian TV, said:

The soul of Britain, is about to be trampled on very, very visibly, by people who are gleeful in their trampling, and they have defaced and defiled all of our holy places. And I think I know that the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing. These people came into our house. Many of them broke into our house illegally. Many of them were never wanted here, and they have come here. They have betrayed all of our attempts at hospitality. They’ve spat in our faces, and now they want to trample everything we have underfoot. No, no.

The storm that is brewing around Murray and his comments has even reached the point where chairman of the Spectator, Andrew Neil, has felt the need to publicly comment – distancing himself and the magazine from Murray, while inadvertently making it clear that all parties are not that distant at all:

The fruits of war manifesting as race riots – as the fringe left and far right cheer them on

Having viewed the footage of Douglas Murray being interviewed by Jonathan Anderson, Anas Mustapha head of public advocacy from CAGE International told me:

If Samuel Huntington proposed that conflicts were to be along civilisational and cultural lines, then it was the job of warmongering neoconservatives like Douglas Murray to not only try and give life to it, but to help build state policy on this assumption. For decades, like Huntington who framed Islam itself as the problem for the West, Murray has targeted Islam as incompatible and the cause of political violence. His efforts stretch across the social strata into the street level. This includes supporting EDL, the astroturfed “grass-roots” movement which harnessed football hooliganism and redirected it as a “response from non-Muslims to Islamism”.

What we are witnessing today in the form of Tommy Robinson and his instigation of riots in the UK is the fruits of this deeply ideological “long war”.

But what is clear is that the current far-right race riots are the largest failing of the security services since the last century, and akin to the failings in Israel’s intelligence service preceding 7 October which has since prompted reflection and resignations from senior members of Israel’s security establishment.

Asked by broadcasters about lessons learned and what the government could do differently in the future, Keir Starmer replied:

The most important lesson is for those involving themselves in disorder, because what we’ve seen is that those who’ve been arrested – now numbered in their hundreds, many have been charged, some already in court, and now a number of individuals sentenced to terms of imprisonment, that is a very important message to those involved in disorder.

And I say it again, anybody involving themselves in disorder, whatever they claim as their motive, will feel the full force of the law.

It’s important I repeat that because we need to make sure that in the coming days, we can give the necessary reassurance to our communities, many of whom – I’ve been talking to some this morning – are very anxious about the situation.

From his comments it seems almost certain that the current iteration of the Labour Party led by Keir Starmer have not learned any lessons from the explosions on the English and North of Ireland streets the past few days, about how and why we got here, the rise of the far-right and what part the British left have played.

Everyone mentioned in this article was given the opportunity to respond to the allegations made and the evidence presented. If they did response, their responses are published here.

Featured image via the Canary





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