Britain never had a reckoning with the fascists in our midst

In the 1930s the British upper classes were absolutely riddled with fascists and antisemites.

There was Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, which boasted tens of thousands of members, and loads of high-profile supporters including the Daily Mail proprietor Lord Rothermere (great-grandfather of the current owner), who was a personal friend of Adolf Hitler.

There were fascist-sympathisers throughout the aristocracy and the royal family. We've all seen the pictures of Edward teaching the young future queen Elizabeth to do Nazi salutes in the gardens of Balmoral Castle (despite royalist efforts to censor them).

The Tory party was particularly infested with fascists, with loads of Tory MPs and lords signed up to secretive organisations aimed at promoting fascist and antisemitic ideologies.

The Anglo-German Fellowship was dedicated to fostering stronger relations with Nazi Germany. It boasted dozens of Tory party politicians amongst its membership, as well as Bank of England director Frank Cyril Tiarks (who was also a member of the British Union of Fascists), Bank of England governor Montagu Norman, Admiral Sir Barry Domvile, and Geoffrey Dawson who was editor of The Times.

Tory members of the Anglo-German Fellowship included Peter Agnew, Lawrence Dundas, Ernest Bennett, Robert Bird, Robert Tatton Bower, Douglas Douglas-Hamilton, Robert Vaughan Gower, Thomas "Loel" Guinness, Norman Hulbert, Archibald James, Alfred Knox, John Macnamara, Thomas Moore, Assheton Pownall, Frank Sanderson, Duncan Sandys, Murray Sueter, Charles Taylor, Ronald Tree, Lord Brocket, Lord Galloway, the Earl of Glasgow, Lord Mount Temple, Lord Londonderry, Lord Nuffield, Lord Redesdale, Lord Rennell, and the Duke of Wellington.

The Anglo-German Fellowship was supported by a propaganda operation called The Link, headed up by the traitor Barry Domville.

There was also the Imperial Fascist League which was led by the virulent antisemite Arnold Leese, who continued propagandising in favour of Nazi Germany deep into the Second World War from a series of hideouts.

Then there was the truly despicable Right Club which sought to drive Jewish people out of public life, founded by the Tory MP Archibald Ramsay.

The Right Club attracted a load of high profile establishment figures, including the 5th Duke of Wellington, Lord Redesdale, Lord Lymington, Arnold Leese, A. K. Chesterton, George Henry Drummond, the 2nd Duke of Westminster, Tory MP John Hamilton Mackie, and William Joyce (who went on to become Lord Haw-Haw).

The Right Club finally collapsed in 1940 when they were discovered plotting to undermine the British war effort by stealing secret cables between Winston Churchill and President Roosevelt, with the intention of leaking them.

And let's not forget that the widely-celebrated Tory MP Nancy Astor was one of the leaders of the fascist-sympathising Cliveden Set.

Tories, royals, capitalists, and establishment elitists adored Nazi Germany because the first thing Adolf Hitler did when he came to power was to send all the socialists, communists, anarchists, trade unionists, and other assorted leftists to the concentration camps.

They saw fascism as the perfect means of preserving their own wealth, power and privilege, through the ruthless persecution of the political left.

A small minority of the most egregiously pro-fascist figures like Barry Domville, Arnold Leese, Oswald Mosley, and Archibald Ramsay were interned as national security threats during the Second World War, and Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw) was captured and executed for treason in 1946.

However the vast majority of these establishment fascists were allowed to keep their positions of power and influence in the upper echelons of British society throughout the Second World War, and long into the post-war period.

Loads of these aristocratic fascists were even handed important promotions in the post-war period, and lavished with establishment honours like knighthoods and seats in the unelected House of Lords.

Is anyone really naïve enough to believe that all of these people simply gave up their extreme-right, antisemitic, and rabidly anti-left politics, despite having suffered absolutely no punishment whatever for holding such disgusting beliefs, even after our cities had been pounded to rubble by the people they'd been championing?

Of course they didn't. They just learned to hide their despicable extreme-right political views more carefully.

This abject post-war failure to stamp fascists out of public life is one of the big reasons why there's still a disturbing and powerful seam of fascist ideology within Britain's grotesque establishment class.

You look at the racism of the British tabloid press and their constant scapegoating of immigrants; the revocation of British rights from Commonwealth citizens in the 1970s; Enoch Powell's "Rivers of Blood" speech; the anti-gay hysteria of the 1980s; the decades-long campaign of blacklisting of left-leaning journalists from the BBC; the rampant racism within institutions of state like the Metropolitan Police; the casual disregard for the millions of victims of Britain's imperialist war-mongering; the systematic demonisation of all left-wing political figures; the extreme-right ultranationalism that drove Brexit over the winning line; the fetishisation of nationalist symbolism and the military; the idolisation of disgustingly antisemitic Nazi-sympathisers like Nancy Astor; the massive blacklists of trade union activists across numerous industrial sectors; the ongoing systematic persecution of disabled people; Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" and the Windrush Scandal; the constant right-wing agitation for the destruction of our human rights; Boris Johnson's depraved "let the bodies pile high" attitude to the plight of vulnerable people during the pandemic; and Priti Patel's deportation of refugees to Rwanda ...

The reason the British establishment class is so rotten is that we never had a reckoning with the people who wanted Britain to emulate Nazi Germany.

Instead we let them keep their positions of power and influence, and quietly seep their disgusting fascist ideology into the fabric of British society.

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OR

Justin Welby's 'forgive Andrew' comments look even worse in light of his sordid past

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has made some extraordinary statements about Prince Andrew's sexual abuse case, claiming that Andrew is "seeking to make amends" and framing the rest of us as being at fault, because we apparently need to “learn to be a more open and forgiving society”!

In reality, one of the most important aspects of "making amends" is admitting what you did wrong, which Andrew has steadfastly refused to do by denying he ever even met his accuser (despite paying her £millions to drop her case against him, and despite that notorious photo at Ghislaine Maxwell's house).

Andrew hasn't even vaguely sought to "make amends". He's just used his family's immense wealth to buy his way out of trouble, and now he's hoping to ride the scandal out and return to public life as if nothing has happened.

And the head of the Church of England is publicly siding with him in this ambition, and making out that it's the rest of us who have the real problems if we object to it!

This is far from the first example of Welby's scandalous behaviour. 

Few could forget the way he tore up the political neutrality of the Church of England during the 2019 general election campaign, by vitriolically attack Jeremy Corbyn, in order to pressure people into voting for his fellow Old Etonian Boris Johnson.

It was illustrative of how corrupted the Church of England has become to see the head of the  organisation wilfully rip up the institution's longstanding political neutrality to endorse a bigoted, lying, greed-worshipping philanderer for Prime Minister, because you could barely imagine a more unchristian character than Johnson could you?

This call to forgive Andrew isn't even the first time Welby has wheeled out this 'importance of forgiveness' narrative to defend his establishment chums either.

Just last year Welby used the same narrative to obfuscate the massive Tory coronavirus corruption scandal, when they cynically used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to tear up the anti-corruption procurement rules, and then fill their own pockets via secretive lobbying and dodgy untendered multi-million PPE contracts.

Then there's the fact that Welby is guilty of turning a blind eye to child sex abuse within the Church of England during his time as dean of Liverpool Cathedral.

When Welby was informed about child sex abuse allegations against Canon John Roberts in 2011, he didn't just decide not to inform the police or initiate internal disciplinary action against him, he actively sided with Roberts and banned his victim from the cathedral!

What makes it so much worse is that Welby knew at the time that Roberts had a 1989 conviction for child sex offences, and that he'd been allowed to continue working in the church. Despite knowing that Roberts had a history of abusing children, Welby chose to take his side, and take action against his accuser.

When Roberts was finally convicted of the abuse that Welby ignored, he issued a statement saying how much he regretted siding with the sex offender against his victim, but Welby's public statements in support of Andrew over his child sex abuse allegations just go to prove the absolute insincerity of the man.

And let's not forget Welby's personal involvement in sadistic abuse camps in the 1970s, that were set up to indoctrinate young Christians into a radically right-wing version of Christianity.

The church knew about the violent beatings at these Iwerne "bash camps" in the early 1980s and exiled the main perpetrator to Zimbabwe in 1982, but they kept the whole thing secret, allowing Iwerne members like Welby to rise up the ranks of the Church of England.

It's remarkable that the media have just left Welby alone on his personal involvement in this sadistic indoctrination cult, but that's just the way things work in Britain.

Establishment elitists benefit from a protective culture of impunity, which allows them to get away with all kinds of corruption and depravity that ordinary folk would be monstered for.

And whenever one of them appears to be in trouble, the rest close ranks to protect them.

Welby defending Andrew like this is just another example of one establishment sadist demanding impunity for another.

And the worst thing is that the Church of England is apparently happy to have such a sordid individual repeatedly portray their institution as a bunch of savagely right-wing child sex abuse apologists.

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OR

Do the royals really make us richer?

At times like this, the crawling sycophants always appear in droves to misleadingly insist that the royal family constitute a net benefit to the UK economy.

The absurd creeps making these claims are often so economically illiterate, that they've even been known to claim the entire £19 billion (declared) net worth of the royal family as an annual benefit to Britain!

Putting aside the ludicrous claims that the royal family contribute their entire net wealth to the UK economy every single year, the usual tactic of these subservient grovelers is to place the annual profit generated by the Royal Collection Trust, and the revenue of the Crown Estates in the positive column, without any effort whatever to properly explain what these things actually are, or to add any of the costs of the royal family into the negative column.

Tourism

The most common claim from these fawning royal boot-lickers is that the royal family generates huge amounts of cash in tourism, usually citing the annual profits from the Royal Collection Trust, which are mainly made through tickets to visit royal properties, and gift shop sales.

In 2019/20 they made £49.9 million in profit, but this figure has to be offset by the fact that most of these royal residences would be making far higher profits without a bunch of idle scroungers occupying the properties and dictating opening times.

The former royal palace of Versailles is one of the most profitable tourist attraction in France generating 65 million euros in ticket sales alone in 2019, yet the combined income of all of the royal properties in the UK combined amounted to only £71 million!

Versailles obviously wouldn't be generating anything like as much cash if it was barely open to the public because it was still being occupied by a bunch of inherited wealth squatters, would it?

Imagine how much Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle would generate if they were fully open to the public most days of the year, rather than used almost exclusively for private purposes.

Imagine how much these properties might generate as ultra-luxurious hotels, where obscenely wealthy guests could pay tens of thousands to dress up in royal garb and pretend to be king or queen of England for the night.

In reality the £50 odd million royalists endlessly claim as a benefit to Britain actually represents a huge loss on what could be being made if the royal family was abolished and the properties were efficiently managed to actually maximise revenues.

The Crown Estates

The claims about tourism are misleading enough, but royal brown-nosers adding Crown Estates revenue into the positive column constitutes downright deception.

The Crown Estates include a 384,000 acre landholding, and the Duchy of Cornwall (another separate estate which has been run since 1377 for the benefit of the heir to the throne) which consists of another 133,000 acres.

Added together, over half a million acres makes the Crown Estates the third biggest land holding in the entire country, after the Ministry of Defence and the Forestry Commission, yet somehow it only brings in £269.3 million in net profit (2021).

If you were some kind of simpleton, you'd add this £250m+ into the positive column for the royal family, but this would simply illustrate that you don't know what the Crown Estates actually are, or how they operate.

In the 18th Century the debt-laden royal family handed over the royal property portfolio to parliament in return for an annual subsidy paid out of public funds, which is loosely based on Crown Estates revenues. In 2020-21 this subsidy amounted to a whopping £86.3m.

Without this whopping Sovereign Grant being taken out of Crown Estates revenues to fund the lifestyles of these inherited wealth layabouts, the public finances would be almost a hundred million quid better off per year!

It's absurd to argue that the wealth generated by the Crown Estates constitutes a net positive, while allowing the royals to siphon off a massive chunk for themselves, and without considering the potential that this vast land-holding could be put to more efficient use without their involvement.

Just like with potential tourist revenues, the continued existence of the royal family actually cause a drain on Crown Estates revenues.

The hidden costs

Aside from the royal sycophants' tactic of brazenly misusing tourist and crown property revenues to make an misleadingly-positive case in favour of the royal family, these grovelling creeps also love to omit the hidden costs from the negative column too.

Boot-lickers love to forget that the fortunes of the royal family are not subject to Inheritance Tax.

If we accept the £19 billion net worth figure as legitimate, they'd owe £7.6 billion when Elizabeth II dies, which adds up to an astonishing £109 million for every single year of her reign so far!

If anyone was interested in doing a fair cost-benefit analysis on the royal family, they'd surely have to add in the £100m+ annual cost of their absurd Inheritance Tax exemption, wouldn't they?

Then there are the secretive royal powers to interfere in parliamentary legislation for their own financial benefit. The UK government still vehemently refuses to reveal which laws have been tampered with by the royal family, meaning it's extremely difficult to estimate what these secretive powers have ended up costing the UK economy.

It's been especially difficult to estimate the economic damage since the Tory government decided to exempt the royal finances from Freedom of Information requests back in 2011, However it's still easy to see how the royals could use this secret veto on democratic legislation to enrich themselves at the expense of the wider UK economy.

Beyond economic considerations

beyond the money, there are other costs to be considered too:

The United Kingdom one of the most unequal countries in the developed world with unacceptably high rates of poverty and destitution, and incredibly low levels of social mobility.

The royal family exist as the figureheads of this unequal and iniquitous system, which is built on valuing inherited wealth and establishment connections ahead of qualities like hard work, integrity, ingenuity, and intelligence.

A bunch of idle malingerers occupying the very top positions in the social order, based on nothing more than hereditary privilege, provides compelling evidence that the UK is nothing like a meritocracy.

Some people are so lacking in self-respect that they actually like to think of themselves as lowly serfs in comparison to their inherited-wealth lords and masters, but the existence of this squalid mob at the top of the pile is an absolute affront to those of us who consider no human as being more inherently valuable than any other, purely by virtue of birth.

Then there's the national embarrassment of a family that insists on bailing out an absolute creep like Andrew, to the tune of £millions, in order to buy his way out of facing up to child sex allegations in court.

What does it tell the rest of the world about the British people that we allow this disgusting creep to continue parading around in public, and representing our nation on the world stage?

What does it tell child sex abuse survivors in Britain, and across the rest of the world, that this vile individual is being allowed to get away with what he's accused of, purely because he was born into a family of born-to-luxury grifters?

Conclusion

Tourist revenues would obviously be higher if the royal properties were fully opened to the public, rather than housing an idle bunch of inherited wealth squatters

The Crown Estates could almost certainly be run more efficiently without the involvement of Elizabeth's squalid mob, and definitely without them siphoning the best part of a hundred million quid out of the public finances each year to fund their lavish lifestyles.

Even if we accept the £19 billion net wealth figure is valid, and not minimised through the hiding of overseas assets, that still adds up to a whopping £7.6 billion in Inheritance Tax these idle parasites are going to avoid through their unjustifiable tax exemption when Elizabeth II dies.

The royal powers to interfere in democratic legislation are so secretive that it's impossible to even estimate how many £billions worth of damage they've done to the wider UK economy by rewriting legislation for their own benefit, but even with such a shroud of secrecy protecting the actual figures, it's clearly an affront to democracy that these powers exist at all.

And then there's the social damage of maintaining such a grotesque social hierarchy, especially when one of the most high-profile figures at the top of it is a sweatless-creep like Andrew.

In light of all of this, the only way to maintain the fiction that the royal family constitutes any kind of benefit to the UK, is through an absurdly biased, and downright misleading interpretation of the actual facts.

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OR

The contrasting fates of Alan Turing and the traitor Lord Sempill

Most British people have heard of Alan Turing. You would have to have studiously avoided learning about the the history of Second World War, computer science, code breaking and gay rights issues in order to have remained ignorant of one of the greatest mathematical minds of the 20th Century and his extraordinary contribution to the British war effort. Fewer people have heard of William Forbes-Sempill, 19th Lord Sempill, yet his influence on the British war effort was no less dramatic.

Alan Turing was born in London to Julius Mathison Turing, a recently returned Indian civil servant and Ethel Sara Stoney, the daughter of a noted railway engineer. As a child he attended private schools, eventually earning a place at Cambridge University where he graduated with a first class honours degree in Mathematics. Turing managed to thrive at establishment institutions like Sherbourne and Cambridge University because of his intelligence, however he was treated with suspicion by the establishment elite due to his non-aristocratic background, eccentric nature, intimidating genius and his homosexual tendencies.

After obtaining a PhD from the prestigious Princeton University in New Jersey he returned to the UK to work with the secret Government Code and Cypher School (GCCS) intelligence service where he concentrated on cryptanalysis of the German Enigma code. 

During the Second World War Turing was an important figure at the Bletchley Park codebreaking facility where he made many invaluable contributions to the deciphering of complex German military codes. He was described by fellow codebreaker Asa Briggs "the genius" that Bletchley Park needed.

It has been estimated that the work of Turing and his colleagues at Bletchley Park shortened the war by between two and four years, and that without their contributions the outcome of the war would have been uncertain. Turing didn't only make a significant contribution to the British war effort, he also did pioneering work in computing and is widely considered to be the father of computer science and artificial intelligence.

William Forbes-Sempill was the Eton educated son of John Forbes-Sempill, 9th Baronet of Craigievar and hereditary member of the House of Lords. 

During the First World War the younger Sempill served as a pilot with the Royal Flying Corps and then with the Royal Navy Air Service. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service during the war.

Captain Sempill showing a Gloster Sparrowhawk
to Admiral Togo Heihachiro, in 1921.

In the aftermath of the war he led a British deputation to Japan where he assisted the Japanese navy in setting up an airforce base and establishing their aircraft carrier fleet. Sempill received a personal letter from the Japanese Prime Minister Tomosaburo Kato thanking him for his work with the Japanese navy, in which his contribution was described as "almost epoch-making" and he later received Japan's highest honour, the Order of the Rising Sun, for his "especially meritorious military service".

After American concerns were raised about the growing naval strength of the Japanese, Sempill's mission in Japan was officially discontinued. However Sempill carried on providing support to the Japanese by passing classified military and technical information to Japanese Naval attache in London, Captain Teijiro Toyoda. 

In 1925 he was questioned about his distribution of official secrets, but for undisclosed reasons he was never prosecuted under the official secrets act.

By the 1930s Sempill was an active member of several far-right, fascist and Anti-Semitic organisations including the Anglo-German Fellowship, The Link and Archibald Ramsay's The Right Club, (which was a secretive organisation with the aim of ridding the Tory party of Jews). Sempill was far from the only member of the British establishment elite to embrace the fascist ideology. The founder of the British Union of Fascists was Sir Oswald Mosley, 6th Baronet, of Ancoats, whose fascist activities received a lot of positive press from the 1st Viscount Rothsmere's Daily Mail newspaper. 

The British Union of Fascists counted dozens of Knights, Earls, Dukes, Barons, Lords, Ladies and Viscounts amongst its members. The Royal family, who were at the very epicentre centre of this orgy of hereditary entitlement and establishment ennoblement, also had a number of keen fascists, Edward VIII maintained notoriously close relations with Nazi Germany, causing their arms industry minister Albert Speer to lament that "I am certain that through him, permanent friendly relations could have been achieved. If he had stayed, everything would have been different. His abdication was a severe loss for us.". The Queen mother famously stated that she would have been happy for the Nazis to invade the UK, as long as they kept the Royal family, and the Royal adults famously taught the infant Elizabeth to do Nazi salutes in the gardens of Balmoral castle.

Most of the intelligence files on Sempill's activities during the 1930s and 1940s mysteriously "disappeared" from the national archive, however it is known that he continued to receive regular payments from the Japanese government owned Mitsubishi Corporation, and entertained several high ranking Nazis throughout the period.

Despite his track record of passing classified information to foreign powers and his collusion with fascists, Sempill was assigned to the Admiralty in 1939 on the outbreak of war with Nazi Germany. 

Sempill's position allowed him access to highly sensitive information about the latest British military hardware and official secrets. In June 1940 MI5 discovered that Sempill was still receiving payments from Mitsubishi, and an investigation revealed that he was almost certainly passing secret information to the Japanese. However the Attorney General (Lord Donald Somervell, Baron Somervell of Harrow) advised against prosecution, and Sempill was allowed to keep his position in the Admiralty and his access to sensitive information. 

In 1941 Sempill personally intervened to secure the release of the Japanese ambassador Makahara, who had been arrested under suspicion of spying.

Six months after the August 1941 Newfoundland Conference meeting between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Japanese Embassy in London sent detailed notes about the meeting back to Tokyo. These encrypted notes were intercepted and decoded at Bletchley Park and the transcript was passed to Churchill, who noted that they were "very accurate", Three months later, further notes on Churchill's personal agenda and inner circle were intercepted on their way from Japanese Embassy in London to Tokyo. An investigation by Anthony Eden concluded that only two men could have created the notes: Commander McGrath or Lord Sempill.

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill intervened
to protect Lord Sempill despite a mountain of
 evidence the he'd been spying for the Japanese.

On 9 October 1941 Churchill gave instructions to "clear him out while time remains". The following week the Admiralty confronted Sempill and told him he could either resign or be fired. Sempill protested, and Churchill intervened to say "I had not contemplated Lord Sempill being required to resign his commission, but only to be employed elsewhere in the Admiralty". Sempill was then shifted to a post in northern Scotland, however he still continued to assist the Japanese. 

In Early December a raid on his office found him in possession of classified documents that he had been instructed to return months previously. Then around a week later he was caught making phone calls to the Japanese (more than a week after the Japanese invasion of British Malaya and their attack on Pearl Harbour). Sempill was made to resign, but he was never prosecuted for his treasonous relationship with the Japanese that did so much to help them to develop the technology they used to kill thousands of British and American servicemen during the Pacific War.

Sempill's activities were never made public during his lifetime and he continued to live the privileged life of establishment nobility, keeping his position in the House of Lords that he had inherited from his father, and even receiving the chairmanships of the Institute of Advanced Motorists and the British Gliding Association.

Sempill died peacefully in 1956 having never faced punishment or public criticism for his crimes. His hereditary seat in the Lords passed to his daughter Ann, and his Baronetry to his younger brother Ewan. It was only in 2002 that the scale of his treachery and his fascist and Anti-Semitic tendencies came to light after classified documents about his activities were finally released into the public domain.

All of the vital codebreaking activities that took place at Bletchley Park
remained shrouded in secrecy until well into the 1970s.

Returning to Alan Turing; he had a much harder time after the end of the war. All of his codebreaking work was classified by the government so he could never talk about his extraordinary contribution to the war effort.

Turing continued his work with computers, famously devising the Turing Test as a means of determining whether a computer has achieved artificial intelligence, a test that remains an essential concept in the philosophy of artificial intelligence. He also developed the LU Decomposition method (complex algebra) and did pioneering work in the field of morphogenesis, (which is the study of how biological organisms develop their shape).

In 1952 Turing was charged with the "crime" of Gross Indecency after admitting to having had a homosexual relationship with a man who later robbed his house. He was found guilty and given the choice of imprisonment or chemical castration. 

This conviction meant that his security clearance was revoked, which meant that he was barred from continuing his cryptographic work with the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).

Turing chose to be chemically castrated rather than face imprisonment.

On the 8th of June 1954 Turing was found dead by his cleaner. A post mortem examination determined that the cause of death was cyanide poisoning, however no forensic examination of the property took place, and his death was officially attributed to suicide.

Many people, including his mother, refused to accept the suicide verdict. The ambiguous circumstances of his death and the lack of a thorough investigation mean that nobody will ever know whether his death was intentional suicide, accidental poisoning, or the result of foul play.

Turing's brilliance was not recognised until years after his death. In 1966 the Turing Award was established to for technical contributions to the computing community. It is widely considered to be the computing world's highest honour, equivalent to a Nobel Prize in computing. It took until 2009 for the British establishment to make an official public apology, which was made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown on behalf of the British government for the way in which Turing was treated after the war.

The similarity between the two men lies in the way the war conduct of both of them remained shrouded in secrecy until long after their deaths. Sempill was never exposed as the traitor he was, and it seems that somebody intervened to ensure that many presumably incriminating files from the 1930s and 1940s "disappeared", never to reach the public domain at all. Meanwhile, all the hugely important work undertaken at Bletchley Park remained secret until the 1970s, meaning that Turing's outstanding contribution to the war effort was not recognised until long after his death.

In the UK, living in a castle like this and an Eton education 
seems to provide immunity from prosecution for treason.

Had the public been allowed to know about the codebreaking work at Bletchley Park, Winston Churcill's famous speech about the valiant fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain could easily have been made about the codebreakers too; "never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".

What is remarkable about the contrasting fates of these two men is the way that members of the British establishment (including the Prime Minister and the Attorney General) repeatedly intervened to protect one of their own, despite his fascist tendencies and decades of treasonous behavior, whilst the establishment people Turing had known and associated with during his time at Cambridge University and at Bletchley Park refused to intervene to help him when criminal charges were brought against him for the trivial offence of engaging in homosexual acts, despite his outstanding contribution to the war effort.

It seems amazing that British nobility, including the Prime Minister, would repeatedly intervene to ensure that another member of their privileged class avoided prosecution for the incredibly serious crime of passing official secrets to foreign powers at a time of war, yet wouldn't do anything to lean on prosecutors to drop the charges against a war hero and genius who happened to have been born into the "lower social orders".

The British nobility turned a blind eye the most heinous of crimes (espionage, treason, fraternising with the enemy, Anti-Semitism)  because it was one of their own class doing it, yet they refused to intervene to prevent a true war hero from suffering homosexual prosecution and chemical castration, simply because he was not one of the upper classes.

This disparity in the way these two men were treated illustrates the classism that is still rampant in Britain today.

If you're one of the establishment elitists you can do pretty much anything without fear of criticism or punishment from your fellow elitists who maintain an enormously disproportionate influence over the criminal justice system, the political system, and the media.

However if you're from non-elitist stock, woe betide you if you ever dare to step out of line, because the establishment elitists will make you suffer for it.

It's one set of rules for the establishment class, and another much harsher and more unforgiving set of rules for the rest of us. It's the way it's always been, and it's the way it will continue to be until something is done to confront the absolute scourge of classism in Britain.

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The scrounging royals have been stashing their cash in tax havens

The royal family have been caught out using secretive offshore tax havens to hide at least £10 million while they simultaneously expect the British taxpayer to bankroll their lavish lifestyles, to refurbish their central London palace (because they're pleading poverty), and to throw in a free luxury yacht for the Queen too.

The royal family expect to live their lavish lifestyles on the backs of ordinary taxpayers, but then they spit in our faces by stashing their cash in secretive offshore tax havens.

Just imagine the forelock-tugging subservience of the people scrabbling to perform mental gymnastics to make excuses for this outrageous behaviour. 

Just imagine the kind of subservience that allows these people no real interest in stuff like fairness, decency, or integrity because all logical and moral considerations are overruled by deference to people they consider to be their rightful lords and masters.

The whole concept of monarchy is a ridiculous anachronism. It's an embarrassment to all of the countries that insist on persisting with unelected heads of state that are determined by birth, not by merit. 

Not only does this archaic system of hereditary patronage still persist in the UK, but the idle beneficiaries of it are so comfortable and complacent in their positions that they feel entitled to stash their unearned wealth in tax havens while pleading poverty so that ordinary taxpayers have to pay the cost of renovating the central London palace they've neglected to maintain properly for decades.

One of the worst things about royalist forelock-tuggers is that so many of them have allowed themselves to be trained by the mainstream media to spit outrage, bile, and hatred upon command at "scroungers" like a pack of salivating Pavlov's dogs. But when it comes to the biggest, dodgiest and most high profile pack of scroungers of all, they react with delight at the very thought of their own subservience to them.

How is it that people can fail to draw a connection between the tax-dodging of the super-rich establishment class, and the fact that our public services are at breaking point and in-work poverty and child poverty are soaring out of control?

How is it that people can think it fair that the hard-working exploited poor should not get any help whatever from the state to provide for a third child, but erupt in joy that William and Kate are expecting a third child who is destined to live its entire life suckling on the taxpayers' teat?

How is it that the thought of a guy claiming unemployment benefits and working cash in hand on the side provokes such ire, but the thought of a family of scroungers living lives of absolute luxury at the public expense and stashing their cash in secretive offshore tax havens has them in raptures of delight?

I guess it's just a matter of approach. 

If the tax-dodging scrounger is just some working class chap who tries to hide what he's up to, then the forelock-tugger Daily Mail-reader types would gladly spew hatred at him upon demand.

However if this hypothetical scrounger took a more brazen approach and flaunted his ill-gotten gains by riding around the streets in a gold carriage wearing a diamond encrusted hat, perhaps they'd love him for it? Perhaps they'd queue for hours for the chance to catch a glimpse of him and save up their hard-earned cash to buy mugs, plates and all kinds of awful tat with his face printed on it? And perhaps they'd gladly have their taxes used to refurbish one of his mansions and buy him a brand new luxury yacht, even though they know perfectly well that he's living large at the public expense and diddling the taxman as he does it?

Who knows how these people think? How they maintain such unshakeable faith in an antiquated system of patronage bestowed on an idle bunch of scroungers who spit in our faces by hiding their cash in tax havens while they simultaneously plead poverty and expect ordinary taxpayers to pay for their yachts and castles?

I guess the answer is that some people just like to be subservient. They like to be abused and taken advantage of by people they consider to be their superiors. Like Stockholm syndrome, but with flags, and castles, and parades, and pageantry, and golden carriages.

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Imagine if the Catalan situation was happening in Scotland

One of the easiest ways to get an idea of how extreme the situation in Catalonia is, just imagine if the same scenario had been playing out in Scotland.

If this was happening in Scotland

Imagine that Nicola Sturgeon had used her democratic mandate from the Scottish parliament to unilaterally call another independence referendum, and that Theresa May's responses were to launch a sustained campaign of cyber attacks against the Scottish government and pro-independence websites.

Let's say that the cyber-attacks were an inconvenience, but the referendum went ahead anyway, so on the day of the referendum Theresa May sent thousands of police from English forces into Scotland to steal ballot boxes, drag women out of polling stations by their hair, beat up Scottish pensioners, and brutally attack crowds of non-violent Scottish civilians, all recorded by onlookers and broadcast to the world via social media.

Let's say that Theresa May refused to condemn, or even acknowledge the violence.

Then let's say that the Queen makes a speech in which she also refuses to condemn the violence, and blames the Scottish government, and the Scottish people for what is happening, and in front of a portrait of Henry VIII (who sent Edward Seymour to pillage and slaughter in Scotland).

Now let's say that a loud-mouthed member of Theresa May's cabinet decided to issue a veiled death threat against Nicola Sturgeon, but Theresa May and the Tories refuse to reprimand, let alone sack the blabber-mouthed gibbon who made the threats.

Now let's say that the ruling establishment in London decide to arrest the heads of civic Scottish independence groups (Common Weal, Radical Independence Campaign) and imprisoned them without trial.

Let's say that in response to calls for dialogue from Nicola Sturgeon, Theresa May's next move is to continue refusing to talk, and to actually collude with Jeremy Corbyn in order to shut down the Scottish parliament, take over control of the Scottish police force, and impose direct Westminster rule on Scottish broadcast media.

Do you think this sequence of events would crush Scotland into submission to London rule, or do you think it would probably have completely the opposite effect?

Similarities and differences

Of course it's not possible to draw exact parallels, but the similarities are uncanny. Both Theresa May and Mariano Rajoy are hard-right Prime Ministers with too few MPs to form a majority government. Both are far too weak to sack ministers who speak out of line (Boris Johnson and Pablo Cascado who issued the veiled death threat against the Catalan President spring to mind). Additionally both the Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon have established clear democratic mandates from their own parliaments to hold referendums on independence.

There are a few obvious differences too though. Although Scotland has obviously suffered tragic levels of economic neglect at the hands of the Westminster establishment, and been used as a testing ground for vile Tory policies like Poll Tax and the Bedroom Tax, they haven't suffered anything like the scale of repression that Catalans have. It's important to remember that within living memory Catalonia was ruled from Madrid by the fascist Franco dictatorship who banned the Catalan language, executed the Catalan President (Lluís Companys), and tried to eradicate the Catalan cultural identity.

Another major difference is that although I believe in the abolition of the British monarchy, I'm reasonably confident that the British royal family would not be anything like as foolish and unstatesmanlike as king Felipe. Although their inclination would obviously be to side with the Westminster establishment, there's no way they would make such an obviously biased political intervention. Even if Theresa May pleaded with the Queen to do it, she would be unlikely to agree to dramatically escalate the situation by spewing British nationaist rhetoric, condemning Scotland and the Scottish people, and actually doing it in front of a portrait of one of her ancestors who attacked and repressed the people of Scotland.

And one other obvious difference is that although Jeremy Corbyn opposes Scottish independence, there's absolutely no way he'd imitate the mistake of the Spanish socialist leader Pedro Sánchez by colluding with Theresa May to shut down the Scottish parliament, seize control of the Scottish police, and impose Westminster rule on Scottish broadcasters. Love him or hate him, Corbyn has stuck by his principles for decades, so anything other than calls for dialogue and deescalation would be a massive betrayal of the hundreds of thousands of people who have flocked to the Labour Party to support his leadership.

Conclusion

Although it's obviously impossible to draw an exact parallel between what is happening in Catalonia, and what could be imposed on Scotland if Nicola Sturgeon were to push on with another independence referendum, there are many similarities.

Just imagine for a moment that the Westminster political class responded in a similar manner to the way the Spanish nationalists in Madrid have (cyber war, violent repression of non-violent Scots by English police, taking of political prisoners, Tory government ministers issuing death threats, abolition of the Scottish parliament, and politically motivated take overs of the Scottish police and broadcast media).

Do you think the Scottish people would take this lying down and meekly submit to continued London rule? Or do you think this kind of violent and profoundly anti-democratic display of British nationalism would have precisely the opposite effect and fuel the campaign for Scottish independence?

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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