Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described how, under Stalinism, the Cheka would storm into apartments in the dead of night and abduct innocent citizens to imprison them in the Gulag system. “Each of us is a center of the Universe,” he wrote, “and that Universe is shattered when they hiss at you: ‘You are under arrest.’
“The majority sit quietly and dare to hope. Since you aren’t guilty, then how can they arrest you? It’s a mistake! They are already dragging you along by the collar, and you still keep on exclaiming to yourself: “It’s a mistake! They’ll set things straight and let me out!”
At least 2 million were imprisoned in the Gulag system, or exiled to Siberia, by Stalin. The arbitrariness of arrests, concocting of false charges, and coercion of false confessions were all tools used to scare the population into submission. So, when the UK is led by Keir Starmer, a lifelong Trotskyist, whose Chancellor hung a portrait of the British Communist Party co-founder in Downing Street, we should grow worried. The Prime Minister has set about releasing thousands of violent offenders from prison, while instructing magistrates courts to work round-the-clock to convict those present at the protests following summer’s Southport massacre. Now Britain suffers from a two-tier justice system, which can hardly be distinguished from a Soviet state.
On October 29th, Axel Rudakubana, an 18-year-old second-generation Rwandan immigrant, has been charged with the murders of Elsie Dot Stancombe, Alice da Silva Aguiar, and Bebe King, the attempted murder of ten others, and possession of a knife during the Southport massacre. Newspapers wrote stories, featuring images of Rudakubana as a child, saying he was a quiet Welsh choir-boy from a devout Christian family. Heads were scratched as to how such an inexplicable atrocity could have occurred. As Douglas Murray wrote this week in The Spectator, we were told that:
the identity of the attacker didn’t matter, because one dogma of the multicultural state is that once you are in Britain you become as British as roast beef, whether you originated here or not.
Then his pre-trial hearing was delayed from its allotted date of October 25th, without an announcement. However, when the rescheduled hearing happened on October 29th, the reason became clear. Rudakubana was also charged with the production of the biological toxin ricin, under Section 1 of the Biological Weapons Act 1974, and with possessing a PDF of Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants: The Al-Qaeda Training Manual, under Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. However, for reasons unknown, the Southport massacre has still not been declared a terrorist incident.
Outrage and accusations of a cover-up ensued. Merseyside Chief Constable Serena Kennedy released a statement, saying “You may have seen speculation online that the police are deciding to keep things from the public. This is certainly not the case.” But surely Keir Starmer, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, and the police were in possession of these facts while they insulted anyone who suggested a link between Rudakubana and Islamic terror as racist, a conspiracy theorist, and “Far Right”? After further charges were brought against Rudakubana, Starmer’s Deputy Official Spokesman said, “We must let the police do their jobs and trial establish the facts.” But Starmer didn’t wait for those involved in the protests to be charged before condemning them with “far-right thuggery”, conducted “Under the pretence – and it is a pretence – of ‘legitimate protest’.”
A Downing Street spokesman has said it is “not correct” to say the Government withheld facts. The government is now playing semantic games, saying they only became aware of Rudakubana’s additional charges “in the past few weeks”. The Sunday Times revealed that the Crown Prosecution Service first sought permission from the attorney-general’s office to charge Rudakubana with possession of a biological weapon on October 15. This means the government knew of the charges fourteen days before they were announced. The Home Office, Crown Prosecution Service, and attorney-general’s office all refused to comment on why the delay occurred. They may plead ignorance; but a former senior counter-terror officer has told The Telegraph that the government would have been informed of the evidence which led to these additional charges within hours of the discovery. Reminder: Rudakubana’s home was searched on July 29th – the same day he was apprehended at the scene of the massacre.
People were smeared, questioned, charged, and imprisoned for suggesting there was a link between Rudakubana and Islam. During a documentary broadcast on Channel 4 in October, Home Office-funded activist organization HOPE Not Hate accused Laurence Fox of spreading Islamophobic misinformation for suggesting the Southport massacre was linked to Islamic terror. State regulator Ofcom has yet to announce action will be taken against Channel 4 for spreading misinformation. Starmer promised that those involved in civil unrest or making inflammatory statements on social media would face the “full force of the law”. Participants were swiftly arrested, charged, and sentenced. Toby Young of the Free Speech Union suggested that some were encouraged to plead guilty to expedite their sentences. He cited a Home Office post on X, which stated incorrectly that all those arrested — not charged or convicted — are “criminals”, as reason to think those accused would not receive an impartial trial, and so plead guilty for a more lenient sentence.
In the instance that guilt was denied, the accused have been acquitted of charges of stirring up racial hatred. Defendant Mark Heath, who circulated a false news report, misidentifying the Southport perpetrator as a Syrian asylum seeker, on X, told the court he had expressed “strong opinions” which “did not encourage violence”. Heath said, “I am very much right-wing. I do not hate all Muslims, but I do have major issues with radical Islam.” Likewise, Bernadette Spofforth was arrested on August 8th after sharing the false identity, but was released without charge. Curiously, so was the Pakistani national who spread the fake name online in the first place: Farhan Asif, who admitted to fabricating the story, and misleading police during questioning, but was released without charge.
Others were not so fortunate. “Keyboard warrior” Wayne O’Rourke was imprisoned for three years for “publishing written material online to stir up racial hatred” after alleging the Southport murders were a terrorist attack carried out by a Muslim. Will O’Rourke have his sentence revised in light of new evidence? Grandfather Peter Lynch was jailed for two years and eight months for shouting at police during one of the protests; and was found hanged to death in his cell on October 19th, aged 61. Tragically, nothing can be done to bring Lynch back to his family. But will anyone in government at least have the humility to admit fault and apologize?
It is unlikely, given the concerted effort to censor debate since the charges were brought forward. There has also been a concerted effort to present public knowledge and discussion of these facts. Westminster blog Guido Fawkes disclosed that they “were pressured by the authorities” not to publish this information before the delayed hearing. At Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, MPs were subject to an unusual withdrawal of Parliamentary privilege, and blocked from mentioning the new charges. This is because, in the UK, the press and public are sequestered on behalf of the jury, rather than the other way around.
Time will tell as to whether or not eyewitness accounts can provide more insight into Rudakubana’s motive. But the disparity in how conclusive Starmer, Cooper, and the courts were that all the protestors and violent rioters were “Far Right”, and those same figures now urging we do not speculate as to why Rudakubana had an Al-Qaeda training manual in his possession, entrenches the feeling that there is a two-tier system at work here.
The delayed charges were also coordinated to avoid coinciding with Tommy Robinson’s third “Unite the Kingdom” rally on October 26th. Robinson himself could not attend: as he was remanded in custody after returning to the UK, for breaching a court order preventing him from showing his film Silenced, ruled libelous in 2021. He was charged under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act for refusing to provide the police with the PIN code to his phone. Robinson told journalist Lewis Brackpool that he would do so, to protect sources he claims allege sexual assault against a Labour politician. He was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court on October 28th. He was imprisoned in conditions akin to solitary confinement in HMP Belmarsh — where Rudakubana is also being held before his trial in January. He was recently transferred to HMP Woodhill, which has the highest rate of serious assaults against staff of any prison in England and Wales, according to the chief inspector of prisons. In 2023, at least 26 prisoners were self-isolating in their cells in fear of their safety. Both Belmarsh and Woodhill are category A prisons, housing the UK’s most violent offenders.
Robinson is a civil non-violent offender, but is being held in conditions befitting a terrorist because of the very real risk to his life that other inmates pose. When he was imprisoned in 2017, Robinson was transferred from HMP Hull, with a 7.45% Muslim population at that time, to HMP Onley, with a 30.4% Muslim population. Robinson told Tucker Carlson, in an interview after being released in 2019, that his below-ground cell was opposite the mosque, where prisoners would pass by and pour excrement through the window. His outspoken criticism of Islam, and coverage of the Grooming Gangs scandal in towns and cities across the UK, has made him a high-profile target for Muslim criminals. In Woodhill, in 2023, 37% of prisoners were Muslims, and 12% were foreign nationals. Robinson’s life is now more in danger than ever.
HMP Belmarsh is notorious for housing Islamic terrorists, including hook-handed Finsbury Park cleric Abu Hamza, ISIL supporter Anjem Choudary, and Lee Rigby murderers Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. In 2016, a Muslim whistleblower said HMP Belmarsh’s maximum-security wing was “like a jihadi training camp”, where “the Akhi […] almost have the run of the prison” — and that “governors, prison officers and imams all know about this”. Twice-failed Jihadist Mohiussunnath Chowdhury, jailed for a minimum term of 25 years in 2020, said he met with “likeminded brothers”, including Parsons Green bomber Ahmed Hassan and a friend of “Jihadi John”, while in Belmarsh. In 2017, a Muslim terror cell calling themselves the “Three Musketeers” were jailed, after meeting in HMP Belmarsh and plotting to murder MPs. When statistics were last published in December 2019, a quarter of inmates were Muslim.
This is the same across the prison system: with Muslims making up 6.5% of the UK population, but 18% of prison inmates. This population has increased 323% since 1997. 1 in 5 Muslim inmates are White converts. In April, The Mail reported on Muslim prison gangs subjecting other inmates to Sharia law, forced Quran readings, and having hot cooking oil poured over them. A former prison officer said Muslim gangs are the dominant faction in Britain’s prisons, and “people don’t want to talk about” it. A 2019 report disclosed the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest of these Islamic prison gangs. I will detail the extent to which Muslim activists have set the agenda in government departments in a forthcoming essay. But suffice to say, whether by the government, justice system, prison guards, or fellow inmates, those sympathetic to Robinson or the Southport protestors will be poorly treated for their objections to Islam.
We need not speculate about this: Sky News crime correspondent Martin Brunt said during coverage of the civil unrest after Southport that,
Somebody who told me — somebody who knows about these things — said any rightwing, ‘Far Right’ protestors landing up in jail can expect a very ‘cold’ reception in jail from what he says are Asian gangs inside prison who are looking out for them.
Conditions within prisons present a lethal threat to Starmer’s political enemies. In effect, Labour has fed the “Far Right” to the wolves; while withholding information about the motives of the alleged perpetrator of the murders which sparked the protests in the first place.
Since coming to power, Starmer has courted prisoners as a clientele group. On October 22nd, 1,100 prisoners were released after completing only 40% of their sentence to “ease overcrowding”. These include those convicted of kidnapping, grievous bodily harm, and torturing a child on Snapchat. This followed September 10, when 1,700 inmates were also released — including 37 freed by mistake, who have since been returned behind bars. Despite Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood promising this was a one-time mistake, a GB News correspondent caught a prison escapee later that same day.
16,000 prisoners have been released early since October 2023 — with over half of those let out in the first quarter of 2024 already back in prison. Recalled prisoners are now 1 in 7 of all inmates. If Labour wanted to make space, they could deport the >11,000 foreign nationals in Britain’s prisons to their countries of origin. In fact, they could stop importing foreign criminals altogether: with immigrants arrested 34% more often than the native population, and convicted 2.5 times more for crimes in other European countries. But for some reason, this has been ruled out as an option — all the while Britain boasts the highest number of foreign offenders in Western Europe.
That’s if they make it to prison at all. Neil O’Brien MP has published that, since 2007, people have been spared jail despite having over 50 previous convictions on 50,000 occasions — including 4,000 people who had over 100 previous convictions. Magistrates have been instructed to spare violent offenders from prison sentences in order to make space for participants in summer’s civil unrest. It’s as if Starmer took this challenge to his newfound power personally, and marshalled all his experience as a seasoned prosecutor against his political opponents. Those given suspended sentences include a child rapist who broke the terms of his release agreement; a former Metropolitan Police officer convicted of six offences of possessing category-A child sexual exploitation images; and thirty other pedophiles in possession of thousands more images, as profiled by The Sun. Hit-and-run driver Mohammad Rashid, who struck and killed pedestrian James Risk in “very good lighting conditions” in 2022, was sentenced to only 300 hours of unpaid work and a 27-month driving ban. In fact, the judge, Jeremy Richardson, who sentenced Peter Lynch to his lethal stay in prison had previously handed a suspended sentence to a woman who killed a cyclist while driving, and to a repeat-offending pedophile, citing “concerns about his mental health in prison”.
Others have been spared deportation to their countries of origin, despite committing heinous offences. A convicted Indian pedophile won his ECHR appeal to remain in the UK, after an independent social worker concluded his deportation “would be too harsh on the man’s children”. A Portuguese drug-dealer, despite prior offences, also appealed to Article 8 of the ECHR and won the right to remain, arguing “if he was forcibly removed from Britain it would harm his mother’s mental health”. A deported Albanian burglar who snuck back into Britain was spared deportation, appealing to the ECHR on the grounds that he had married and impregnated his Lithuanian girlfriend. And an Albanian murderer, who lied about his identity on his asylum application, won an appeal to remain in the UK using, you guessed it, the ECHR.
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As I wrote last month, one of the breaking boughs of British politics is its commitment to international treaties and membership of supra-national institutions, established for wholly different purposes following the Second World War. Were Sir Winston Churchill reanimated from his long rest, would we expect he would support the ECHR being used to keep foreign thieves, murderers, and pedophiles in taxpayer-funded prisons and social housing? I expect the bulldog’s jowls would fold into quite the frown at the thought.
There appear to be three reasons for these lenient punishments. The first is a naive anthropology that presumes criminals to be the victims of society. As I detailed in a previous essay, because liberals treat all people as blank slates, a criminal has been failed by society somehow — not the other way around. This means they require rehabilitation, resources, and lenient treatment, rather than retributive punishment to deter reoffending. The second is the manipulation of democracy by importing and enfranchising client groups. This benefits Leftist parties in particular, as they have no reservations about reducing whole populations to wards of the welfare state. If repeat offenders think one party will privilege them with lenient or suspended sentences, then they become patrons of that party.
The third is anarcho-tyranny, which Louise Perry characterizes as “a system of government that fails to protect its citizens from violence, while simultaneously persecuting conduct that would typically be regarded as innocent.” The government neglects to enforce the law against violent criminals, while criminalizing any criticism of the state or its protected client groups. This has the dual purpose of rendering the law-abiding, tax-paying population dependent on the state to solve a problem it created, while also rendering the state impervious to criticism. Consent is manufactured for the expansion of state power, which is then weaponized against those committing thought crime against the vagrants, drug addicts, and killers that come to populate big cities. For example, see the UN’s insistence that rough sleeping, substance addiction (including while pregnant), and even sexual activity with minors be decriminalized, while its Secretary-General calls for legislation to “confront bigotry by working to tackle the hate that spreads like wildfire across the internet”.
The first reason may seem incompatible with reasons two and three, because creating a client group of criminals requires a recognition that different groups exist, and behave in different ways. However, the policing of speech under anarcho-tyranny is conducted with the aim of ensuring equality. If only criminals were not antagonized with the pesky recognition that certain cultures and family structures produce more criminals than others, then we would all be peaceful and equal.
But all three reasons converge on the same ends: rendering Britain indistinguishable from the Soviet Union. While no atrocities comparable to the Holodomor have been committed in Britain, it is important to draw historical parallels to the conditions which preceded them. As Solzhenitsyn warned, an ignorance of history “makes us an easy prey for liars”.
The term “political correctness” was first used in the Soviet Union, as Lenin consolidated power following the Bolshevik Revolution. Pardinost, meaning “party membership, party-mindedness or party spirit”, demanded reality conform to Marxist-Leninist ideology (pravda, hence the magazine). If historical materialism is the means of bringing history to its foregone conclusion, why delay utopia with something so trivial as doubt or free-thought? Likewise, if Labour is to steward us toward a multicultural egalitarian Britain, then why are questions about the ethnic or religious identity of the Southport assailant relevant? If only divisive populists stopped noticing patterns about which religion or regions of the world are responsible for the overwhelming amount of violent crime and terror attacks, then we would all be singing John Lennon’s Imagine already. As such, it is perfectly sensible to imprison these merchants of misinformation, for slowing our progression toward the ideal society.
Purging the political right — from social media, street protests, or even as organized political opposition — also becomes legitimate. This is why, during the height of the riots, Keir Starmer invited the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (founded by his new Chief of Staff) to a strategy meeting with members of the Home Office, Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ofcom, and Metropolitan Police, to discuss how to “kill Musk’s Twitter”. Dissent is intolerable to Marxists with a roadmap to utopia, or an even stronger contempt for counter-revolutionary enemies. “Anti-Rightist” action was how Chairman Mao transformed China into the one-party state it remains today. In 1957, Mao commanded Deng Xiaoping wage an “anti-rightist campaign” against half-a-million political opponents, to set the stage for the Great Leap Forward. Eventually, Mao urged Xiaoping to exercise restraint, explaining that “if we kill too many, we will forfeit public sympathy and a shortage of labor power will arise.” But during the subsequent Cultural Revolution, thousands more were accused of being “rightists”, and publicly shamed, berated, beaten, and killed. 17 million students were banished from cities to be re-educated in Manchuria and Xinjiang, in labor camps. 2 million were murdered during land expropriation. A total of 45 million died during the ensuing Great Famine. We should begin to be concerned when Keir Starmer so easily denounces whole swathes of concerned citizens as “Far Right” — a term synonymous with fascist, Nazi, and irredeemably evil.
The dynamic between thought criminals and violent offenders in Stalin’s Gulags also sounds eerily similar to the “warm welcome” awaiting those imprisoned for being party to the protests after Southport. As Solzhenitsyn wrote,
In Old Russia there existed (just as there still exists in the West) an incorrect view of thieves as incorrigible, permanent criminals (a “nucleus of criminality”). Because of this the politicals were segregated from them on prisoner transports and in prisons. In Old Russia there was just one single formula to be applied to the criminal recidivists: “Make them bow their heads beneath the iron yoke of the law!” And so it was that up to 1914 the thieves did not play the boss either in Russia as a whole or in Russian prisons.
But the shackles fell and freedom dawned. In the desertion of millions in 1917, and then in the Civil War, all human passions were largely unleashed, and those of the thieves most of all, and they no longer wished to bow their heads beneath the yoke; moreover, they were informed that they didn’t have to. It was found both useful and amusing that they were enemies of private property and therefore a revolutionary force which had to be guided into the mainstream of the proletariat, yes, and this would constitute no special difficulty. Reasoning on a social basis: wasn’t the environment to blame for everything? So let us re-educate these healthy lumpenproletarians and introduce them into the system of conscious life! […]
The thieves flourished because they were encouraged. Through its laws the Stalinist power said to the thieves clearly: Do not steal from me! Steal from private persons! You see, private property is a belch from the past. […]
And there is always that sanctifying lofty theory for everything. […] And here is how it was worked out. Professional criminals can in no sense be equated with capitalist elements (i.e., engineers, students, agronomists, and “nuns”), for the latter are steadfastly hostile to the dictatorship of the proletariat, while the former are only (!) politically unstable! (A professional murderer is only politically unstable!) The lumpenproletarian is not a property owner, and therefore cannot ally himself with the hostile-class elements, but will much more willingly ally himself with the proletariat (you just wait!). That is why in the official terminology of Gulag they are called socially friendly elements. […]
But when this elegant theory came down to earth in camps, here is what emerged from it: The most inveterate and hardened thieves were given unbridled power on the islands of the Archipelago, in camp districts, and in camps—power over the population of their own country, over the peasants, the petty bourgeoisie, and the intelligentsia, power they had never before had in history, never in any state in all the world, power which they couldn’t even dream of out in freedom. And now they were given all other people as slaves. What bandit would ever decline such power? The central thieves, the top-level thieves, totally controlled the camp districts.
In the final analysis, a criminal underclass does not threaten the power of the command-economy state. They exist at the behest of the state, and so reinforce its power. Labour knows this, and so is letting violent offenders roam free, while imprisoning their political opponents for Facebook posts. As the logic went, in the Soviet Union: “Criminals are the result of the repulsive conditions of former times, and our country is beautiful, powerful and generous, and it needs to be beautified.” Therefore, violent criminals imprisoned by the prior government are victims of circumstance; whereas Starmer’s political opponents are “Far Right” racists who require re-education, to be re-integrated into British society. Whether by the hook of censorship, or the crook of the violent criminals unleashed on local communities, Starmer hopes to keep the British people silent and compliant.
Keir Starmer is returning to his communist roots
The new Labour government rules in a way which goes against the free spirit of Englishmen. This is why Starmer has plunged 49 points in popularity since the July 4th general election. Their dishonesty and disregard for the equal application of the law violates Britain’s common law tradition and Christian inheritance. The Old and New Testaments assert the God-given value of innocent human life. In Deuteronomy, Moses told the Israelites that the paramount Commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” When asked which is the greatest Commandment, Christ echoed Moses, and added, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Consolidating this, Christ gave his Disciples a new Commandment: “that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” In selflessly creating the world, God wills the good for mankind; so much so, that he incarnated as Christ, to act as moral exemplar, and to sacrifice himself to absolve their sins. If we recognise this act of love, then we also recognise that Christ’s crucifixion was an unjust persecution, never to be repeated. Thus, we are to treat one another with the love God gives to us — so the Christian account goes.
From this, England derived the presumption of innocence. William Blackstone based his famous formulation on the dialogue between God and Abraham in Exodus, where Sodom and Gomorrah would be spared if ten innocent men could be found. This same insistence on the worth of a life, despite social standing, is why Magna Carta was drafted to constrain the attempt by King John I to become an absolute monarch, like those on the European continent. This is the difference between English common law, and for example, French imperial law. As Sir John Fortescue commented in On the Laws and Governance of England, there is continuity between Biblical, Mosaic law and the laws which constrained the powers of English Kings. Just as Caesar’s Earthly power was challenged by the incarnation of Christ, no king may claim to serve God while depriving his people of habeas corpus.
No wonder that Starmer, the first atheist Prime Minister, holds no candle for such traditions. Nor did those who led the Soviet states that he idolized in his youth. Paul Kengor compiles horrific accounts of how the Securitate tortured priests and Christians in Ceaușescu’s Romania. In Pitești, Christians were mock-baptized with buckets of excrement, beaten to the point of fainting for not renouncing their faith, and defecated on during mock crucifixions. Their hatred of Christianity had its roots in Marx and Engels’ texts: with Christianity derided as “the opium of the people”, blocking man’s ability to live by bread alone. In fact, one’s possession of wealth, and perpetuation of the false consciousness of Christianity and capitalism, was enough to warrant “the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples”. Whereas Christianity places a premium on the worth of human life, the socialism for which Starmer remains a sycophant has no problem with the persecution of those it decrees to be revolutionary adversaries. Whereas Solzhenitsyn knew the line between good and evil is a moral law inscribed on every human heart — and that “even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained [and] even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil” — Starmer is unwilling to extend the same consideration to anyone he sees as “Far Right”.
Like him or loathe him, Tommy Robinson deserves due process, protection while in prison, and the right to peacefully assemble and protest. As do all those whose trials were expedited during the summer riots, influenced by Keir Starmer’s leftist politics. Anything less is to disrespect Britain’s unique and enviable heritage of free speech and fair trials, and become one of the tin-pot dictatorships trapped behind the Iron Curtain prior to 1989. As Solzhenitsyn warned:
We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations. […]
It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!
Let’s hope the Red Wall falls in the same fashion, before Starmer turns Britain into a different sort of archipelago.
