Conference Preparations

Following meetings on absentee ballots at the American Enterprise Institute and the USAID 1st July 2003 conference on Iraq (our proposals in regard to Iraq can be viewed on www.sortition.org.uk) Dr Nilsen invited Rebecca Vigil-Giron, the President of the US National Association of State Secretaries, to a conference on international electoral standards in London. She accepted the invitation and enquiries were made at both Labour and Conservative Party conferences in 2004, and subsequently among embassies in London. Positive responses were received from politicians and diplomats from seventeen nations. It was decided to hold the conference in London on 1st April 2005. However difficulties arose in regard to security and the conference was postponed.

As enquiries to British Foreign Office staff eventually established after some delay and mixed messages, despite diplomatic interest in the conference, since the CDRSB is an NGO it would not be able to use secure government venue facilities. We could not therefore provide conference security commensurate with the high state of alert against terrorism in London prior to the 2005 General Election. Unlike citizens in the Swiss and American republican democracies British subjects have been deprived of the right to bear arms for purposes of self defence granted them in perpetuity by the English Bill of Rights. There is a perceptible linkage between abrogation of this Right and more general difficulties of democratic development discussed at the conference. Abrogation of both the right to a secret ballot and to armed self defence by the Left has accelerated since the 'collapse' of communism throughout the United States and Europe, but more especially in the European Union, which has effectively abolished the right to armed self defence and is now intent on such measures even in Switzerland.

Violations of these Rights in the UK are not premised on sound legal foundations. The 1872 Ballot Act granted the right to a secret ballot but the 2000 Representation of the People Act effectively repeals it, in an underhand way, as George Cunningham has made clear. Measures curtailing the right to armed self defence are even more suspect, as is apparent from any vaguely impartial reading of the 1689 Act. As will be shown, conservative and radical positions have been inverted in regard to such rights, as if one side had swapped coats with the other. The relation between faction, totalitarianism and conference security will therefore be reported on in some detail here.

Questions of impartiality have been raised in regard to the role of security services which have a bearing on the high state of alert then in place in London. In the United States, as Democratic Senator Zel Miller made clear at the 2004 Republican Party conference, his party adopted partisan positions against the President in time of war which were without precedent. Similarly partisan differences developed in Britain. The 2005 British General Election was the first one to take place in which the Leader of the Opposition publicly condemned the Prime Minister as a liar, and refused to withdraw this allegation. Factional strife in regard to intelligence matters have been the main source of this polarisation. On 12th October 2003 British Leader of the Opposition Iain Duncan Smith, according to the British Mail on Sunday, accused John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, of being a 'lying shit' in regard to security matters of the highest importance. Mr Scarlett was subsequently appointed head of MI6 by the Prime Minister.

These considerations informed the approach taken by the CDRSB to matters of security and with this the asymmetric nature of risks posed by terrorist activity in the context of what Donald Rumsfeld has described as the 'murky' world of intelligence.

Such risks are difficult to quantify and assess. For example, it has been alleged that George Bush senior is the 'deep throat' informant who brought down President Nixon, a close colleague of Senator McCarthy. By way of further illustration, at the Transatlantic Studies Conference held at Nottingham University in July 2005 these concerns were raised in respect of the work of Anatoly Golitsyn, a senior KGB defector. Despite the fact that his views in regard to the war on terror have not been reported it was suggested (by Gavin Bailey, a history lecturer at Dundee University) that it is dangerous to discuss them. Luis Andrade, Professor at the University of the Azores and a NATO training officer, argued that no matters should be beyond discussion in a democracy. Mr Golitsyn confirmed Senator McCarthy's claim that Western political institutions have been thoroughly infiltrated by communist fifth column forces. Their strategic intentions include suborning nation state independence to a Euro-Asian alliance between 'soft' and 'hard' totalitarian forces directed against the United States. Mr Golytsin's views are no longer openly endorsed by the CIA. However, Shadow Defence Minister Julian Lewis confirmed at the 2005 Tory Party conference that Golytsin still receives state protection services 45 years after defecting.

Although to our knowledge there has been virtually no mention of Mr Golytsin's views on any major media outlet in the last ten years (excepting BBC Radio 4 on the 30th July 1998 when Kenneth Clarke, former Tory Chancellor, debated whether the European Union (EU) is a 'Leninist collective' with Christopher Story, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher and Golytsin advocate) views of a similar nature have been expressed by many public figures.

Margaret Thatcher's closest Ministerial colleague, Lord Norman Tebbitt (who opposes the unrestricted use of postal ballots) has described EU policy as 'fascist' and has alleged that the UK Independence Party has been supported by MI6 not to keep Britain out of Europe but to keep the Tories out of power. Mr Tebbit has stated publicly his inability to decide whether the present Tory leader, David Cameron, is some sort of 'Pol Pot.' The British National Party, which opposes immigration but has been described as a 'left wing' party by Mr Tebbit because it opposes UK membership of NATO, has similarly taken the view that the Conservative Party and the BBC are infiltrated by Marxists. Jeremy Paxman, the chief reporter on Newsnight, the leading BBC programme of political analysis, has publicly stated that the BBC is run by 'superannuated Marxists.'

Simon Heffer, of the Daily Mail, has repeatedly claimed that Britain is being subverted by a totalitarian form of government. Christopher Booker, of the Daily Telegraph, believes there is no longer any shadow cabinet opposition to the Government, and cited a Ministry of Defence 'stealth' policy of breaking links to America in favour of integration with European armaments manufacture. Shadow Defence Minister Liam Fox has supported, not opposed, Labour's arms procurement Minister in 'warning' the US Senate Armed Services committee that UK-US joint fighter aircraft electronic source codes must be disclosed to UK command structures even though their EU links to France will probably result in advanced weapons technology transfer to China. The CDRSB supported Liam Fox's Tory leadership bid due to his seeming support for CDRSB positions, even though our suspicions in regard to his sincerity were aroused at the 2005 Tory conference when he avoided answering our questions regarding the secrecy of postal ballot voting figures. Mr. Booker's criticisms have deepened these suspicions.

Problems of factional strife have affected the London Police. Opposition politicians have alleged that the present Government's programme of reform threatens democracy by placing increasing restrictions on the right to trial by jury, granting legislative powers to Ministers, and transforming the security forces into an instrument of partisan policies by methods including an extreme policy of centralisation. Juries are now selected effectively in secret by a single national computer. UK inquests will shortly be conducted in secret. Local police forces are soon to be abolished despite the postal ballot fraud investigations which most of them began following the 2005 General Election. The impartiality of the present head of the Metropolitan force, Sir Ian Blair, has been challenged in consequence of his lobbying activities on behalf of Government policy, and in regard to what has been considered a leftist approach to matters of political correctness. There is evidence that police massively exaggerated antiwar demonstration numbers. Confidence in Sir Ian has also been undermined by his attempts to deceive the public in regard to his responsibility for the killing of an unarmed, innocent civilian during anti-terrorist operations. Police rules for shooting suicide bomb suspects on sight unlike those for Israeli police do not require visual confirmation that the suspect has a bomb. This is of concern given the experience of shoot to kill operations in Northern Ireland, which it has been alleged amounted to a death squad strategy to murder selectively targeted dissidents and lawyers, which could thereafter be covered up by restrictive inquest practices. The Crown Prosecution Service is now reportedly preparing charges against Sir Ian Blair.

A further problem in regard to the conference preparations for 2005 was that a General Election had been called. Bill Worthington, a Labour MP, wrote to us regarding this: "I also rather fear for your conference that we will be at the start of an election campaign at that time." Given these difficulties the CDRSB postponed the conference (we asked the US Embassy if they would assume responsibility for conference security but got no reply).

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