Friday 11 May 2018

Coup Against Corbyn

In 1982 Chris Mullin wrote a fictional thriller called A Very British Coup; it was then adapted twice into TV movies, see: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Very-British-Coup-foretold-Corbyn/dp/1846687403. The title unfortunately gives away the ending, but don't let that put you off. The story is a vivid account of the frailties and limits of democracy, and therefore its fraud; and it was written by a government insider. Chris Mullin was the Member of Parliament for the Sunderland South consistency from 1987 to 2010. It follows the career of a left wing, "Old Labour" politician who through some terrible oversight on the part of the "Men in Grey Suits" ends up getting elected Prime Minister. Harry Perkins is a working class Yorkshireman from a long line of steelworkers and the story contains numerous anecdotes portraying him as a down-to-Earth man-of-the-people; for example he uses a Sheffield Wednesday football bag instead of a suitcase to carry his paperwork and he walks between Buckingham Palace and Downing Street when he meets with the Queen. He immediately begins implementing policies that during the early 1980's, when the story was conceived, were indeed the manifesto of the real British opposition Labour Party: improvements to the Welfare State, complete re-vitalization of the National Health Service and the nationalization all service industries. An end to nuclear power, unilateral nuclear disarmament, a departure from NATO and the abolition of all Anglo-American Cold War treaties. Between the scenes of Harry Perkins at work are interspersed shots of darkly lit rooms in the headquarters of MI5 where sinister-looking men watch him on TV in malevolent silence. When Perkins announces to the American ambassador that he has two years to remove all US bases from British shores the CIA get involved too. Perkins then holds a ceremony on TV where the first nuclear warhead from Britain's independent nuclear deterrent is dismantled; the first of every single one of them. With the help of a CIA agent in the US embassy a smear campaign is initiated by the security services, aided and abetted by top military officers and a media mogul who is thinly-disguised parody of Rupert Murdoch. In the end the conspirators resort to forging documents that apparently prove that Perkins is in the pay of the Soviet Union. Perkins apparently gives in and books a TV announcement to resign as Prime Minister, but as soon as he's on the air he dumps his script and instead speaks out about the plot against him. He calls a general election which he is about to win decisively and the final scene of the film is of an empty polling station and the sound of helicopters and military radio chatter. The ending may be slightly ambiguous, but I think there’s no doubt that the implication is that, having failed using every other method, the conspirators decide to take over the country in a military coup. You might think such practices are normal for a Third World dictatorship, but a far-fetched concept for a Western democracy; however such things are not unprecedented. There have indeed been coups d'etat in developed world powers. In 1975 Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister of Australia, was dismissed by the Queen and there is good reason to think that there was an attempt to do the same to Harold Wilson, the UK's Prime Minister around the same period, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG6FR03BqIQ. The removal of Margaret Thatcher was a type of coup, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im9c1JHtrI0. There was also an attempted coup during the last days of the Soviet Union in 1991, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IAy7t2ipQQ. In his famous controversial autobiography Spycatcher, MI5 officer Peter Wright reports attending a meeting in about 1980 in which some mysterious individuals say they have an agenda to prevent a Labour victory at the next election, at all costs! (Ironically this book became a bestseller due to the Government's attempts to ban it and it remains in print to this day; the Government should have just kept their mouth shut, in which case it would have remained an obscure back-shelf title.)

Now a rumour has emerged that something similar might happen in Britain if Jeremy Corbyn wins the next general election. A week after he ascended to Labour leadership, an unnamed serving army general told a reporter from the The Telegraph that if Jeremy Corbyn becomes Prime Minister the armed forces would not stand for it. There would be a direct and public challenge if Corbyn was considered to be jeopardising the country's security. "The army wouldn't stand for it... people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul to prevent that." Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/05/09/could-army-coup-remove-jeremy-corbyn-just-almost-toppled-harold/. Interestingly the latest edition of A Very British Coup has a subtitle: "The novel that foretold the rise of Corbyn". I know some of you might be thinking: "Good! Corbyn is a lefty pinko and we're best rid of him!" However, the point here is not whether you agree or not with Corbyn politically; it's whether you support the normal mechanism of politics being switched off so that one group of the population can have their way. I am unconditionally opposed to that regardless of my opinions of the person being forcibly ousted. In a way, what the remoaners are calling for is a coup d'etat. They want the EU referendum declared void because they "don't like it!" Interestingly the phrase "by any means, fair or foul" was uttered by a remoaner I know.

2 comments:

Joe said...

I take your point Ben but we must be ruthless and fanatical in dealing with all forms of marxism even if it means siding with the establishment. Marxism is nothing short of a cancer in the body politic and we need to fight it until our dying breath. I have been a HPANWO follower for a long time but I must say I'm disappointed with your ambivalence here. Regards, Joe

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Joe, deferring due process to the state is hardly fighting Marxism! In fact one of the tactics of cultural Marxism is to make sincere people over-reach into a situation where their opposition can be controlled. Ben