The UK deep state is very real. The exploiter class is fighting a war with the exploited class. And they are using the state to do it. There are UK secret police. And they are working with US spies to monitor British political activists. The NSA and GCHQ are monitoring us right now, and sharing the information with their chums. As you read this post, there is at least two digital files being updated. Regardless of whether you want to believe or not, Edward Snowden showed us exactly what they are doing.
And this isn’t a recent thing. As early as the 1950s the FBI ran a programme called the Counter Intelligence Programme (CoIntelPro) targeting political activists in the US. And, even then, the UK deep state was little more than a client deep state. And it has continued, right up to today. Now, in the UK we not only have a state-approved secret police, but we also have the private contractor secret police, to help protect the valiant wealthy from pesky do-gooders and trade unions. Let us never forget Snowden.
After twenty years of campaigning, protesting and writing I have come to terms with the fact that my communications are monitored and archived, and that any significant sized political meeting I go to will have at least one undercover from one of the various actors within the UK deep state, possibly even their foreign intelligence collaborators. When I meet new people and begin to communicate with them digitally, I know that both of our secret files will be amended to record that relationship, regardless of the nature of it. I’m not special. It is happening to all of us. The reality is, that the powerful and the powerless aren’t in this together. In truth, it is quite the reverse. We are in direct confrontation. Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are caught in a class war.
There are sections of the state apparatus that recognise that in an unequal world, people seeking equality are a threat to the status quo. Those who enjoy the comforts of the wealth disparity feel threatened by those who suffer the inequities of it. Arguably, the fundamental principle of the modern system of government is to protect and expand inequality, or as Chomsky reminds us when quoting Madison, “the primary goal of government is ‘to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.” Unsurprisingly, one of the ways that the opulent are protected is through the use of covert paramilitary force. As part of that disparity in power and freedom, our privacy is subject to the whims of those born rich enough to secure power.
One of the things I have struggled to understand, is why large sections of the progressive left chose to avoid talking about it until the state is forced to admit it, or someone who is difficult to ignore makes a very public spectacle about it. I approached 7 of what I would consider the key left publications in the UK, many of which I have written for over the years, and clearly felt my writing was good enough to publish. And of those 7 only one, The Morning Star, was willing to review Seven May Days. Stunned by the lack of wider interest, or even acknowledgement, I contacted several of them to find out why. After all, some of them had even been victims of exactly these sorts of operations … and may well still be. Some refused to answer me. Some got quite shirty, suggesting that they knew what was best for their readers. And two, terribly apologetically, pretended to be interested and then stop responding to any further contact. Draw your own conclusions. I certainly did.
Regardless of all that. I can’t state clearly enough how truly grateful I am to Paul Simon for taking the time to read both books, review them, and pick them among his fiction highlights for 2016 and 2017, and of course to everyone at the Morning Star for publishing his reviews. Thank you.
If you would like to know more about Seven May Days, or to link through to the two reviews it did receive, or even find out where to get a copy from, please click through to the page.