Corbyn, Trident and a Nuclear 'Deterrent' that probably doesn't work!

Last Friday the Independent newspaper published an article in its on-line 'indy100' supplement in which it claimed that 'The British public believe media coverage of Jeremy Corbyn has been deliberately biased against him.' Among the numerous attacks that the Tories and opponents from within his own Party have mounted on his leadership and potential leadership qualities, both of the Labour Party itself as well as in relation to his bid to become Prime Minister, has been with regard to his principled stance on nuclear weapons. Indeed, the chain of events that led ultimately to the Labour loss of Copeland in Cumbria were all ultimately linked to the toxic legacy of Britain's Nuclear options.

Here in the United Kingdom the Civil and Military Nuclear Industries have a longstanding association with one another, based on the fact that Britain's Civil Nuclear Industry evolved out of the decision, by the former Ministry of Supply, to adapt the one time site of the Sellafield Royal Ordnance Factory for the production of weapons grade Plutonium. The links between the Unions at Sellafield and the Labour Movement in general, combined with Jeremy Corbyn's longstanding commitment to peace and nuclear disarmament, were to put him on a collision course from the outset with those elements within his own Party who are committed to maintaining Britain's Nuclear Deterrent, as well his Tory opponents. Indeed, both Theresa May and Michael Fallon have both attacked Corbyn vociferously in recent weeks with regard to his stance on Nuclear Weapons.

According to a recently published article in 'The Sun' Fallon referred to the Labour leader directly as 'a national security risk', before confirming that his Party had 'made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike.' Elsewhere in the same article a spokesman for Theresa May was likewise quoted as saying that there was 'no reason to disagree'. Fallon's insistence that the Conservatives 'had the guts to press the button', whilst simultaneously confirming that Corbyn was too weak to contemplate such a scenario, only goes to show just what little grasp both Fallon himself and the Conservative Party's supporters in the tabloid press have of the true gravity of the situation when it comes to nuclear weapons.

'The Sun's' article originally appeared on Tuesday 25th April, just two days after Jeremy Corbyn had appeared on the Andrew Marr Show, where he was interviewed in a very robust fashion by someone who doesn't actually seem to have a great deal of understanding of the international nuclear question either. During the course of the discussion Marr attempted to browbeat Mr. Corbyn in such a way as to sideline such key issues as Britain's adherence to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, of which the United Kingdom is a key signatory. This commits us first and foremost to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons; along with the two other core  principles of nuclear disarmament and the peaceful non-military use of nuclear energy.

Mr. Corbyn then had to struggle to stop himself being interrupted as he set out another of his key priorities. That of using the Six Party Talks on North Korea's Nuclear Program as a way of de-escalating nuclear tensions in the Asia Pacific Region. Interesting then that on 24th April, the day after Jeremy Corbyn's appearance on the Andrew Marr Show, the North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) released a photograph of an ‘underwater test-fire' of a 'strategic submarine ballistic missile’ which the country's navy had just conducted at 'an undisclosed location' according to the UK Guardian. So who, exactly, has got a better command of the overall situation right now? Andrew Marr of the BBC, an institution responsible for the great Jimmy Savile Cover Up, or Jeremy Corbyn? Interesting point.

Meanwhile, on the very same day as North Korea had released images of its apparently unsuccessful nuclear test, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon dropped a bombshell of his own by claiming on BBC Radio 4's 'Today Program' that, even if Britain was not actually under attack, the Conservatives would not rule out a 'First Strike' option. In an article posted on the website of the Russian news service RT, which included embedded video of the interview he had just given, Fallon told listeners that “In the most extreme circumstances we have made it very clear that you can’t rule out the use of nuclear weapons as a first strike.” The Russian response to the interview, which appeared on the UK Independent website shortly afterwards, was that Britain would be 'literally erased from the face of the earth' according to Russian Senator and retired Army Colonel Franz Klintsevich.

What Mr. Fallon failed to grasp is that to use nuclear weapons as part of a 'First Strike' option is actually in breach of international law. So, both he and Theresa May have committed themselves to a course of action that could well result in them being found guilty of war crimes at some point in the future. Assuming that is that the pair of them hadn't been evaporated in a retaliatory nuclear strike. Of course, it would be impossible for most Sun readers, or Sun journalists for that matter, to actually understand the full ramifications of such a course of action to begin with. However, for those interested in some of the legal issues surrounding Nuclear War in general, I would refer my readers to David M. Corwin's 1987 work on 'The Legality of Nuclear Arms Under International Law', published in Volume 5 of the 'Penn State International Law Review'; and Professor John H.E. Fried's 'INTERNATIONAL LAW PROHIBITS THE FIRST USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS'; both of which are freely available for download.

Then of course there is the still unresolved question as to whether or not anyone could get our so called 'Nuclear Deterrent' to actually work in the first place. In February of this year I wrote an article for the on-line American magazine 'Distract the Media', under the heading 'Trident Missile Test Cover Up Worse Than You Think'. In it I exposed the fact that a high profile story published in the 'Sunday Times' on January 22nd this year, under banner headlines proclaiming how ‘No 10 covered up Trident missile fiasco’, was only the tip of the iceberg as there were also extensive engineering failures on the Submarine that is supposedly going to fire the missile itself.

‘The Sunday Times’ report on the UK government cover up over the failed Trident missile test at the centre of the article, however, also implicated the British Prime Minister herself in an apparent attempt to conceal the truth. The abortive missile launch, which had taken place in June 2016, had come at a critical time for Britain’s Nuclear Deterrent, when discussions over the exact nature of its future were entering an important phase in Parliament and elsewhere. Interesting then that Andrew Marr never sought to solicit Mr. Corbyn's opinion with regard to this aspect of a very shady story indeed. Choosing instead to concentrate on a particular line of questioning that was intended to portray Mr. Corbyn as weak, to distract viewers from the fact that the present Tory administration may have criminal intentions when it comes to the use and deployment of our soon to be upgraded 'Nuclear Deterrent'.

Corbyn, Momentum, and more allegations of an 'Entryist Plot' from Watson

The Guardian has really excelled itself this weekend. Giving another platform to Tom Watson, in order to enable him to attack Momentum for fomenting an alleged 'hard left' plot to seize permanent control of the Labour Party, whilst at the same time giving those who it claims are at the centre of this apparent conspiracy no chance whatsoever to answer the charges he and the newspaper have been making against them. I say alleged, because the actual 'evidence' of the supposed 'plot' unmasked by the paper's sister publication, 'The Observer', earlier today, doesn't actually appear to be anything of the sort.

Indeed, the embedded sound recording which currently adorns the Guardian website suggests that it is little more than an attempt to ensure that when Jeremy Corbyn eventually steps down as leader of the Opposition, members of the Labour Party are able to engage in a fair and democratic election, in which candidates who 'have enormous support among the membership can get onto the ballot paper', so that their grass roots supporters can actually vote for them. During the course of the recording, Jon Lansman, who is the present focus of the Guardian's latest attack on the Corbyn leadership, stresses throughout that the entire plan is about winning votes on crucial motions to ensure that the rank and file of ordinary Party members have their views properly represented. Hardly a plot or an 'Entryist' Coup by any reasonable standard one would have thought. But then again, we are dealing with the Guardian here, where things do not always appear to be as they seem.

The fact that Jon Lansman has been given no opportunity whatsoever to explain himself in this matter is deeply worrying, when one considers that the person who has been given an open platform to attack him is a proven associate of Max Mosley: from whom he has received a very large sum in personal donations. This last point is particularly relevant when one considers that, as I pointed out in a previous post, Max Mosley was a key player in the Bernie Ecclestone Affair. The first major scandal to taint the Blair Administration. More worrying still is the additional fact that Max Mosley is the son of the Wartime British Union of Fascists leader Sir Oswald Mosley. He is also on record as having had extensive political involvements with his Father's little known Post-War Party, the Union Movement or 'UM', which sought a Post War unification of Europe which its critics on the Left believe would have been modelled along lines similarly envisaged by Hitler's Nazis.

And, as if that wasn't enough, the previous evening Nick Cohen had penned an absolutely vitriolic piece, which appeared on the Guardian's website just after Midnight on Sunday morning under the heading 'Don’t tell me you weren’t warned about Corbyn', in which he actually resorted to the use of the 'F' word. In view of the number of comments that are regularly deleted from the discussion threads on the Guardian website for alleged breach of the paper's 'community standards', I for one am completely astounded that this piece wasn't more thoroughly sub-edited before it went to press. The piece, which its author inferred was an attempt to address supporters of Jeremy Corbyn directly, was more the sort of attempted smear that one would expect to find in the pages of Breitbart, where right wing commentators find common ground with supporters of Radical Zionism, than on the website of a paper that was, until comparatively recently, a beacon of journalistic integrity.

Interestingly enough, this is not the first time that the mainstream media have accused Momentum and its supporters of being involved in conspiracies. Perhaps the best example of the kind of smears that have been generated around what is, to all intents and purposes, a grass roots movement, that has no involvements whatsoever with the mainstream media hacks who spew vitriolic attacks against Corbyn out of almost every on-line publication imaginable on a near daily basis, was the so called 'Brick Gate Affair'. An attempt to attribute an incident involving the throwing of an alleged ‘brick’ through the alleged ‘window’ of Labour MP Angela Eagle’s Wallasey constituency office to pro-Corbyn "thugs". As the exclusively on-line publication, the Canary, have since pointed out, however, 'no such damage was reported to the police'.

The source of the Canary's facts in relation to this matter appears to have been an FOI request submitted by the little known on-line blog 'Wirral In It Together', which appears to have been informed by the Information Commissioner's Office that the Police employee who logged the incident had reported to their superiors that ‘just one big window in the hallway’ had been targeted, before adding that the ‘person reporting the damage is likely to have known if any damage had been caused to the constituency office window, but no such damage was reported to the police’; according to the Canary's report. Since the FOI request was made the Canary also appears to have established a number of other key facts which appear to have been completely ignored by the mainstream media.

In addition to establishing the fact that, first and foremost, the window was not actually in her office, but a communal stairwell, the publication has also presented so far uncontested claims that the entire locality is a black spot for what the Canary has described as 'non-political vandalism'. It would also appear that just two days previous to the 'Brickgate' incident, 'Fathers 4 Justice' had occupied the roof of the building as part of one of their numerous and well documented demonstrations. The Canary have also discovered that not only had Wirral Council classed the entire locality as a “hot spot” for anti-social behaviour, but Eagle’s office building in particular appears to have been a specific focus for such low level criminal activities. Add all this to the previously established facts that the Police and the ICO had confirmed there was no concrete evidence a brick had actually broken the window in the first place, and that no one has ever been charged over the incident, it is easy to see just how far the mainstream media have been getting it wrong.

 

Copeland, Corbyn and Some Real Facts that the Mainstream Media don't want you to know!

The Chattering Classes were at it again this weekend. Putting the boot in on Jeremy Corbyn. The same vitriolic personal attacks from the same caustic mainstream media publications who have been out to get him from day one. Indeed, John McDonnell hit the nail on the head when he told the Independent that the 'whole media establishment' is out to destroy Jeremy Corbyn', having previously announced, in the immediate aftermath of the Copeland byelection result, that a 'second Labour coup' had already begun.

Interestingly enough, just as the Shadow Chancellor was being quoted by the Independent as saying that mainstream media attacks on the current leadership should be attributed to 'oligarchs protecting their power base', one of the Blairites in his own party was claiming in the pages of the same newspaper that Mr. Corbyn was 'the one issue on the doorstep' at Copeland the previous week'; and that anyone who suggested otherwise was 'lying'. The Blairite in question, Ben Bradshaw, had then gone on to repeat his claim that 'the only issue was Jeremy Corbyn,' before continuing in praise of the 'incredible and very important' contributions that Tony Blair and John Major had made to the Brexit debate.

Meanwhile, on the Guardian's website, news had broken that a controversial new report had been leaked which was suggestive of the Labour Party having lost 'nearly 26,000 members since mid-2016' and that 'most of those leaving had joined the party after' the '2015 general election, with 7,000 quitting after Corbyn told MPs to back' the 'Brexit bill'. Unfortunately, due to the fact that none of those whose membership had lapsed were actually questioned by Labour, or interviewed in the Guardian, with regard to why they had left the Party, or no longer appeared on the stats, their exact reasons for leaving remain obscure. So, as John Harris quipped from another page on the same website that although 'Twitter parodies won’t worry Corbyn', '....his supporters deserting him should', the entire basis for the overall content of his column for this week was speculative to say the least.

In view of this, it should be remembered first and foremost that large numbers of people had paid good money to join the Labour Party after the 2015 General Election, on the understanding that they would be able to participate in the Labour leadership election; only to be told that this was not the case. Besides the three thousand or so members who were prevented from active participation for non compliance with the ‘aims and values’ of the Labour Party, and other related issues, some 40,000 of the 183,000 people who joined in the immediate run up to the vote appear to have been disqualified by the Party, with a further 10,000 being given a referral to the scrutiny committee. And this, according to the very same website that is now trying to insinuate that this supposed mass exodus is all down to Corbyn or Brexit. Even the Russian news service RT could only offer more speculative conjecture on the matter, cobbled together from the Twittersphere.

So what are the true facts regarding the Copeland byelection? Last week, whilst engaging in some of the debate on the Guardian discussion threads on the 'comment is free' section of the paper's website, I chanced upon some interesting observations from a gentleman named Martin Snell. Unlike most, if not all, of the media pundits who seemed to be trying to put the blame for it all on Corbyn, Mr. Snell seemed to exhibit a detailed local knowledge of geography, social demographics and politics, which had led him to draw everyone's attention to some interesting and hitherto overlooked facts that the mainstream media appeared to be completely unaware of. 'There are different kinds of opinion, informed, unbiased and their alternatives, for instance,' Mr. Snell began, without pointing the finger at anyone in particular.

'Bearing that in mind it is difficult not to wonder why the assertion that 'this constituency' has been in Labour control for over 80 years, repeated ad nauseum in the last 24 hours has gone unchallenged', he then continued, before pointing out that in fact 'this constituency' has only existed in its current state since the boundary changes of 2010, which saw the incorporation of (amongst others) the town of Keswick which, according to the latest census, has a population of over 5,000, over 80% of whom self-identify as 'Professional, Management, or Skilled Technical '.

Anyone commenting on the 'historic' nature of Labour's defeat in Copeland would do well to research the history and changing demographics of the constituency before allowing themselves the luxury of considering their opinion to be either unbiased or, for that matter, informed.

Such a person might do well to read an editorial piece penned in April 2010 (in local paper The News and Star) entitled 'Have boundary changes made Copeland a marginal seat?'

They might also do well to consider that, even before changes to both the boundaries and regional demographics, a previous incumbent, Dr Jack Cunningham, saw his own majority slashed to less than 5000 in 2001, from more than 12000 four years earlier, a majority that had remained virtually unchanged for thirty years. (A loss, incidentally, of 7000 votes, compared to the 4000 lost this time).

By 2015, Cunningham's successor, Jamie Reid, had seen that majority halved again to just over 2500.

History can be read as a series of precipitous events, or it can be viewed as the result of long-standing trajectories.

A less biased commentator than I might view Labour's defeat as a culmination, a slow-motion train crash, that began with the breaking of trust between the Blair/Brown Labour Party, and the working classes they were elected to represent.' 

These are the true facts that the mainstream media, and the Guardian and the Independent in particular, have chosen to ignore. For those who are interested as to why this should be, one of the prime movers in the campaign to unseat Jeremy Corbyn, with particular reference to the Copeland byelection, has been Tom Watson. Last week I conjectured, in a previous blog post, that Mr. Watson's universally declared financial links to Max Mosley, a key player in the Bernie Eccleston Affair that scandalized the Blair Administration during its first term of office, may have had something to do with the Deputy Leader's present stance on Mr. Corbyn.

In view of this, I would be interested to see if Ben Bradshaw would go so far as to refer to Mr, Snell as a liar. I would also be interested to know exactly who the Guardian's main sponsors presently are, and what, exactly, their openly declared political leanings are: if they have any. The answers are out there, truly out there!

Corbyn, Copeland and the Toxic Legacy of 'Nuclear Jack' Cunningham

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell, 2016 Labour Party Conference, courtesy of Rwendland via Wikimedia Commons

As the chattering classes spewed out their predictably characteristic response to the Copeland byelection result, little attention was paid to the real political and environmental issues that should have been under discussion. Indeed, as 'The Usual Suspects' launched yet another attack on the Labour leader in what looks like a clear and unrepentant attempt to oust him once and for all, the same stale stories appeared to be being rewritten again and again, as if none of us can remember ever having read them at all in the first place. Whilst Toby Helm and Ewen MacAskill gave Tom Watson an open platform for his attempt to make Jeremy Corbyn shoulder full responsibility for a result that had far more to do with future energy and environment policy in Post Brexit Britain than simple Party Politics, Andrew Rawnsley and Jonathan Freedland, two veteran BBC broadcast journalists, launched vitriolic attacks on the Labour leader void of a single word about the real issue that should have been under discussion in the wake of this landmark byelection result: that of Nuclear Power.

As I pointed out towards the end of last year, when the Guardian covered Jamie Reed's high profile resignation from his former seat, thus triggering the byelection that we have just had, what most of these so called 'experts' appear to have conveniently forgotten, if they ever knew it in the first place, is that we are dealing with the toxic legacy of 'Nuclear Jack' Cunningham: whose Father was jailed along with T. Dan Smith for his part in the Poulson Affair. As I also pointed out at the time in my comments in the Guardian discussion threads, there was, at the precise moment of writing, an interesting picture of Reed with Cunningham, whose Father Andrew was a senior union official before his subsequent fall and incarceration, on the www.whitehaven.org.uk website. Interesting because, prior to his high profile resignation as Shadow Health Minister, on 12 September 2015, 'one minute into Jeremy Corbyn's acceptance speech as leader of the Labour Party' according to his own Wikipedia entry, Reed had previously held the position of Shadow Environment Minister in what had up until then been the old 'Tory Lite' Miliband Shadow Cabinet that had lost his Party the 2015 General Election.

The fact that in the aftermath of the Fukushima Disaster on 11 March 2011 Miliband saw fit to continue to allow a vociferous proponent of nuclear power to sit on his front bench as a Shadow Spokesman on the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, a position Reed held between October 2010 and October 2011 whilst the international outcry over the disaster reached a crescendo, says something indeed about how the Tory Lite version of New Labour has made the Party so infinitely unelectable; whilst simultaneously offering up Jeremy Corbyn as a scapegoat for their own abysmal failings. Of further interest perhaps is the fact that Reed was not the first Pro-Nuclear Front Bench Environment Spokesman to have been appointed to the post at a time when the Party's leadership was busy making itself completely unelectable. In view of this then, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the person who held that very position at a very similar point in time, politically speaking at least, was none other than Jamie Reed's predecessor in his former constituency, Jack Cunningham; who held the equivalent post during Neil Kinnock's disastrous stint as Party Leader back in the nineteen eighties; as Thatcher was still riding high on her post Falkland's War crest of a wave.    

In yesterday's diatribe against Corbyn, the Guardian's Jonathan Freedland claimed that since the second Labour leadership election the mainstream media has 'barely bothered' with him, before adding that blaming the Parliamentary Labour Party and the Mainstream Media 'doesn’t quite bite the way it used to.' Interesting then that directly after Theresa May's 'Brexit Bill' passed through Parliament, and on to the Upper House, the publication that he writes for had launched another of its scathing attacks on Corbyn under the heading 'Real fight starts now': Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit tweet prompts bruising response'. More interesting still perhaps is the fact that one of the principal human agencies responsible for the attacks on Corbyn is Peter Mandelson, who makes no secret of the fact that he spends every single day trying to cause problems for Jeremy Corbyn. A statement that has received its fair share of coverage in the Guardian. Meanwhile, attempts by anyone, myself included, to challenge the Guardian's constant sniping at Corbyn are met with the usual barrage of right wing trolling that readers of the on-line version of the publication have become accustomed to seeing on a regular basis for quite some time now.

Interestingly enough, Mandelson's former involvement with the very EU institutions that stand most to lose if, in the wake of Brexit, other countries such as Holland choose to follow suit, was the ultimate cause of his second political demise. As I myself was swift to point out, in an earlier posting on this blog, during his time as a European Commissioner Lord Mandelson became involved in a scandal over his links to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, whose United Company RusAl had benefited considerably from the former Minister Without Portfolio's two decisions to cut aluminium tariffs.

So, in view of the fact that the Guardian chose to use the Copeland by election result to give Tom Watson a soap box from which to launch yet more attacks on the Labour leadership, it is perhaps of relevance that Mr. Watson has himself been linked in the press to a series of financial transactions which many Labour members see as totally inappropriate. The payments in question, which have amounted to some £500,000 in total if the Telegraph website is in any way to be believed, came from Max Mosley, son of the Wartime British Union of Facists leader Sir Oswald Mosley, who was himself implicated in the first major New Labour Sleaze Scandal generally referred to as the Bernie Eccleston Affair.  

Another equally interesting anecdote is that Jamie Reed, who is the person who should be being blamed for the situation at Copeland instead of Jeremy Corbyn, is the grandson of the late well known union boss, Thompson Reed, who, having moved from the Communist Party to Labour, then gravitated to the SNP in 2005; just a short while before the picture of Reed in the company of 'Nuclear Jack Cunningham' referred to in paragraph two was taken. Given his family's longstanding tendency towards political shape shifting then, I can envisage a time when Mr. Reed rejoins the political fray once again. This time as a Pro Nuclear Conservative.

For those who think that this is a far fetched statement to make, it should be pointed out that Reed is now Head of Development and Community Relations for Sellafield Ltd. The company that acts as the principal hub of nuclear industrial employment within Jack Cunningham's old constituency. For those who are still sceptical with regard to what I have just said, it is perhaps of further relevance that the Poulson Affair that saw Jack Cunningham's Father jailed brought together a wide range of vested and political interests that ranged right the way across the political spectrum. Just like the Eccleston Affair, which involved high profile former Tory donors ingratiating themselves with 'New Labour', by means of similar financial donations to those that they had previously been giving to the Tories. Indeed, Max Mosley is cited as having worked for the UK Conservative Party with a possible view to becoming a parliamentary candidate back in the nineteen eighties. Previous to this he had served as an election agent for his father's post-war fringe political party the 'UM', or Union Movement, which advocated a Far Right United Europe along similar lines to that espoused by Hitler and the Nazis.

But to return to the toxic legacy of Nuclear Jack, in 1972 the then Tory Home Secretary Reginald Maudling was forced from office as a direct result of the John Poulson Corruption Scandal. Maudling’s involvement with Poulson’s Leeds based firm of architects, at that time the largest international practice in Western Europe, was to lead to the jailing of former Chair of Durham County Council Andrew Cunningham: Jack Cunningham's Father. Others jailed as a result of the Police investigation that was to follow the winding up of Poulson’s company after the latter was declared bankrupt, and the firm’s books fell into the hands of the receivers, was Cunningham’s Newcastle City Council counterpart T. Dan Smith. In spite of the fact that Poulson’s company had clearly been involved in widespread corruption, throughout local government and a number of inter-connected departments, comparatively few people were actually jailed. Those who were imprisoned on the other hand appear, for the most part, to have had involvements with the Labour Party. Whilst those who were allowed to slip silently away into the shadows seem to have been affiliated to the Tories. The faction who had most to gain from this symbiotic relationship from the outset.

In view of the weekend's developments then it is perhaps of further relevance that Jamie Reeds's original reason for his resignation from the Shadow Cabinet, following Jeremy Corbyn's elevation to the Party Leadership, was wholly on the grounds of the latter's stance on Nuclear Energy, and in particular his stance on the country's Nuclear Deterrant. Indeed, in relation to this specific issue he has been quoted as describing Mr. Corbyn as 'reckless, juvenile and narcissistic'. Taking into consideration the recent high profile political scandal over a number of key issues linked to the cover up over a failed Trident missile test, coupled with the emergence of a controversial dossier detailing the consistent under reporting of dozens of nuclear alerts by the British MoD, it is by no means impossible that Mr. Reed's words may well end up turning into radioactive ashes in his own mouth at some point in the near future.  

Corbynmania, the Media Backlash and the Hidden Legacy of the Eighteenth Century Pacification of the Scottish Highlands

Orders given to Capt. Robert Campbell, 1696. which resulted in the Massacre of Glencoe  img source: Wikimedia Commons

On the afternoon of Saturday 12th September, my birthday, Jeremy Corbyn was elected outright leader of the Parliamentary Labour Party and a new era in British politics began. Three days later, following his attendance at a Battle of Britain Memorial Service, where he was observed standing passively and respectfully in silence as a characteristically jingoistic congregation sang the National Anthem, in an outward exhibition of what is widely viewed as 'Patriotism' by a predominantly Right Wing Tory press, an unrelenting media food frenzy began. Much of what has been said since in the 'Daily Telegraph', the 'Daily Mail', the 'Daily Express' and elsewhere seems to have been aimed at toppling the new Labour leader before he can even take up the task that has been alloted to him by a substantial working majority of his numerous Constituency Labour Parties, not to mention their attendant supporters.

One interesting point that most of the commentators, who have subsequently joined the fray in relation to Mr. Corbyn's decision not to sing this thoroughly jingoistic dirge on both sides of the argument, appear to have missed is that the original version of the song that was being sung, 'God Save the King', was an important tool of government propaganda during a particularly dark and bloody period in Britain's not so distant historical past: the suppression of the Highland Clans and the Pacification of the Scottish Highlands. A long drawn out process that began in February 1692 with the Massacre of Glencoe and ended in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Culloden in April 1746.  

The previous year, 1745, saw the appearance in print, in the pages of ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine', to which the venerable Dr. Samuel Johnson was himself a noted contributor, of ‘A song set for two voices, as sung in.....playhouses’ to a tune by Thomas Arne. It's subsequent popularity in the coffee houses, taverns and other public meeting places in London at that time, and its widespread performance in the theatres of Drury Lane immediately after its publication, were all part of the Hanoverian Government's campaign to legitimize the ruthless manner with which it was to deal with the largely Catholic Gaelic speaking supporters of the exiled Stuart Line.

In one of the verses the virtues of the use of military force, to suppress the seditious inclinations of government opponents, are extolled in the eloquent style of the time in a fashion so characteristic of what Gaelic speaking Scots still refer to as 'Mi-run Mor nan Gael': the hatred many of those who hail from below the Highland Line feel for the wild, often ungovernable and fiercely independent Clans of Athole, Moidart, Appin and the Isles, who had joined the Bonnie Prince on his arrival in the Highlands that self same year. In spite of the quality of the language, however, the message is abundantly clear.  

'Lord, grant that Marshal Wade 

May by thy mighty aid 

Victory bring. 

May he sedition hush and like a torrent rush, 

Rebellious Scots to crush. 

God save the King.' 

Some fifty four years previously, on 27th August 1691, King William III of Orange had offered an outright pardon to all those who had participated in a previous Jacobite Rising in return for swearing an Oath of Allegiance to the Crown. The oath, which had to be sworn before a magistrate prior to January 1st of the following year, was intended to destroy support for the Stuart Cause once and for all. What happened next however was to assure the Stuart Cause a wealth of support amongst subsequent generations, and to romanticize the image of the Scottish Highlander as a brutally oppressed under dog right into our own immediate historical era. 

When Alasdair MacIain, Chief of Glencoe, failed to meet the statutory deadline by a mere six days, due to an unfortunate and overseen error which had necessitated an arduous seventy mile journey from Fort William to Inverary in the middle of a Highland Winter, a decision had been made to make an example of him and his fellow Clansmen. John Dalrymple, Master of Stair, King William's previously appointed Lord Advocate and the then Secretary of State for Scotland, a position he would later share with James Johnston, saw this as a perfect opportunity to teach the rebellious Highlanders a lesson, and a small force, under the command of Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, was duly dispatched to Glencoe; where they were to accept the traditional hospitality of the Highlands from their unsuspecting victims. After having spent ten days receiving food and drink under the roofs of the MacDonalds of Glencoe, the soldiers' mood was to change dramatically on 12 February when Glenlyon received the following order from his immediate superior, Major Robert Duncanson:

'You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the McDonalds of Glencoe, and put all to the sword under seventy. You are to have a special care that the old Fox and his sons do upon no account escape your hands, you are to secure all the avenues that no man escape.'

In spite of attempts by the men under Glenlyon's command to carry out their orders to the letter, some of the McDonalds did manage to escape the massacre, making their way on foot away from the principal government military base at Fort William in the direction of Pitlochrie in the Perthshire Highlands. Here, according to an account derived from Small in Ferguson and Fergusson's 'Records of the Clan and Name of Fergusson, Ferguson and Fergus', published by David Douglas, Edinburgh, in 1895, they were to find shelter in the nearby Manse of Crathie, through the intercession of my own direct ancestor, Adam Fergusson, the celebrated Minister of Moulin. Fergusson's decision to risk the possibility of death, or at the very least indenture and transportation to the Caribbean or the Americas, appears to have been derived from his kinship with the House of MacVurich, a Sept of Clan Macpherson, who until 1726 were to hold the post of Hereditary Clan Bards to the MacDonalds of Clanranald. 

The Massacre of Glencoe was to usher in a fifty five year armed struggle which was to involve some of the most brutal and bloody episodes in the History of the Two Kingdoms. During the course of the various insurrections that would follow the wholesale massacre of innocent civilians, and the mass deportation of those fortunate enough to surivive, was to become an alarming feature of a situation in many ways reminiscent of the recent conflicts in the Balkans that began in the closing years of the last century. In 1695, more than three years after the Massacre had taken place, King William III, who had signed the original order that was to lead to the deaths of no fewer than thirty eight men, women and children on that fateful day, and the subsequent deaths of many more in the days and weeks that were to follow, was forced to order an enquiry into the affair in spite of a previous government cover up. 

But, in spite of the fact that the victims were later found to have been murdered under trust in an act in no ways dissimilar to the atrocities exposed by Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and others in the wake of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq so vociferously opposed by Jeremy Corbyn himself, then as now no one was ever brought to trial. In view of this it is perhaps worth noting that if the true significance of the song that Mr. Corbyn declined to sing was viewed in proper historical perspective the supposedly 'popular press' might have had considerably less to say on the matter than they do now.

After the Massacre of Glencoe' by Peter Graham (1836 - 18 October 1921) Public Domain