Rupert Murdoch's Hitmen (working title)

This is no mere speculation or hearsay. Cutler was there. He was right there in the middle of it all. Read Cutler’s first hand account of the despicable activities at the News of the World, Daily Mirror, The Sun and other publications for which he worked for many years. Cutler just needs to get this off his chest while he still can.

He was born Ian Garnett Cutler in November 1944, in Caledonian Road, London N7. His cousin was Sir Horace Walter Cutler OBE (28 July 1912 - 2 March 1997), one time Leader of the Greater London Council. He married a former prostitute a quarter of his age, lucky bugger.

Ian Cutler has always alleged that Sir Horace conned his father out of a substantial legacy due from his grandfather. As a result, Ian’s family was poor and he was brought up on a council housing estate. Sir Horace lived in luxury for the whole of his life, until he died in 1997. His illegitimate son (mother was fucking the chauffeur) inherited the family fortune, some 150,000 quid (a lot of money in those days), which Ian has always alleged was, in part at least, due to his family.

Cutler first became interested in photography at the age of nine, when a lorry overturned outside his family home. He photographed the incident on his Brownie box camera and sold the pictures (pics or pix in the jargon) to the Islington Gazette for what was a very large sum of money for a kid.

He left school at 15 and became a beach photographer in Bognor Regis, working for two lesbians, where he met a man called Liam who showed him the ropes and later got him a job as a photographer at the Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, London. It wasn't for him and he only stayed a few weeks. That was in 1965, the year Winston Churchill died. While everybody was outside the hotel watching the fueral prosession, semeone nipped back in and stole 10,000 quid from the safe. Some people claimed it was Cutler but we will never know.

Later that year Cutler took up wedding photography. He took to the profession like a duck to water and pretty soon was making a good living as a freelance press photographer during the weekdays and a wedding photographer at weekends. Both careers combined when the bridegroom at the wedding he was photographing was shot dead by local gangsters. A news agency circulated the pictures to 30 newspapers worldwide and he became a teenage press photographer star, with assignments flowing in on a regular basis.

Cutler’s career was rudely interrupted by a five year custodial sentence, which he served in Maidstone, Albany, Pentonville, Wormwood Scrubs and Wandsworth prisons.

The incident which initiated the prison sentence resembled a Laurel and Hardy movie. A waiter in one of London’s many Chinese restaurants spilled a plate of soup on Cutler’s lap, ruining his suit. He got up to walk out and the Chinese owner stopped him, insisting that he pay for the meal he never ate. Cutler did offer to pay for the soup, provided the owner paid for his ruined suit. He was then karate chopped to the ground. He again attempted to leave but was kung-fu'd to the floor on a number of occasions. When he eventually managed to get out he vowed that the restaurant would have to go. So he hired someone to burn it down during the early hours of the following morning. As Cutler had threatened to burn it down during the hot soup incident, the police managed to convict him of arson and Cutler was sentenced at the Old Bailey to three years inside. He was not a model prisoner, imagine our surprise, so served two extra years.

During his long spell inside, Cutler used the prison libraries to further his education. Upon release, he resumed his career as a star press photographer, spending much of the next eighteen years specialising in photographic exposes for the News of the World, where he earned the nickname 'The Camera Assassin'.

Cutler left the News of the Screws as the paper was often affectionately known, with a golden handshake and started his own publications -Scallywag, Private Spy and Action News - specialising in exposing dirty deeds and the sexual indiscretions of the rich, famous and influential.

Despite the most revealing and intimate exposes, no one ever sued him for defamation. But then ”truth” is the ultimate defence against libel. During this period Cutler discovered that a senior police officer was a drug addict and was also involved with the underworld in drug dealing. His knowledge ensured that he became a target of both the police and of the underworld.

The law was used against him and he soon found himself under arrest. No charge was ever laid against him. Nevertheless, during his time in the cells, he was badly beaten up by the police. Cutler suffered a stroke which greatly reduced the use of his right arm and leg, effectively ending his career as a photojournalist. Cutler sued the Metropolitan Police and won and was awarded a substantial amount in damages.

He then bought a London pub, the Cap’t Cutler, near Fleet Street where the newspaper business was located. Many of his journalist buddies used it and business was great.

In 2000 Cutler agreed to sell the pub for a million pounds, but the underworld stepped in and demanded 50,000 of it or they would burn the building down. He told them to "fuck off". Within 24 hours the pub was burnt down with him inside. Cutler managed to make a miraculous escape. He sold what was now vacant land for a miserly sum and went to Thailand.

Read Camera Assassin to discover what was really happening in Fleet Street and the truth behind many of the sensational (faked) stories. I promise it will open your eyes.

Meet Jack Cox

Jack Cox is a freelance writer and photographer, he took his first photography post while still at school, just a holiday job in a photographic retailer and darkroom. That was the summer of 1966.

On leaving school in 1967 he worked as a photographic assistant in a portrait and wedding studio before moving on to a commercial studio specialising in images for packaging. These posts gave him a through training in what has been a life-long passion.

However he took a six year break from professional photography, joining the Royal Signals in 1971. Later, at the age of 30, he spent 4 years at Greenwich University gaining a BSC in Environmental Science with a view to entering the field of environmental journalism. But first some practical experience working for the Royal Society For The Protection of Birds (RSPB) on a reserve in Norfolk and for a private nature reserve in Somerset.

In 1995, following the death of his girlfriend from thyroid cancer, he decided he needed a change of scenery and moved to Spain for a fresh start. While there he wrote a number of walking and travel guides, including one on the mountain range in the north of the country called the Picos de Europa.

Cox also ran a bar in Spain, Jack’s Tavern, which is how he met Ian Cutler and collaborated on the writing of the third edition of his book, Camera Assassin. It was Cutler who introduced Cox to Bobby Cummines and the three of them got together to write this present book.

Jack is the founder of the Towards Utopia movement.

Chapter One - Its a Dirty Old World Out There
by Bobby Cummines OBE

Who rules the world? In an ideal world it would be the people, you and me, ruling through our elected representatives, the politicians. But of course we don't live in an ideal world and we are unlikely to do so any time soon.

So who really rules the roost here on planet Earth? Politicians? Rich banking families? Multinational corporations? The police and security services? Or perhaps it’s the media barons such as Rupert Murdoch? Well I suppose they all do, to a greater or lesser extent. Each echelon of power certainly exercises a high degree of influence over all the others, as you will see in this book.

The thing that always amuses me is how each of these groups think they have the right to police themselves. It would be like asking Al Capone to investigate the Mafia. You know, its exactly the same. Ok the Mafia are accused of this or that and we are bringing in this specialist gangster, Al Capone, to investigate them.

'All right Al, how are you getting on?'

'We didn't do it. '

’sweet. Alright, so what we are doing now, what we do, we're going to retire you, rather than go to jail we are going to retire you on mental health grounds. you’ve had a breakdown. When you shot all those people on Saint Valentine’s Day, you had a nervous breakdown.'

It’s laughable, it is.

Who is investigating the politicians? Other politicians. And the police, who politicians control anyway, who’s controlling who? It’s the old thing, who will guard the guardians?

Its like Kipling said. I used to have it on my wall. If? 'If you can bear to hear the truth You’ve spoken, twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools ...' .

Well honest men stand up to challenge these people, right? But politicians twist the truth. The knaves, the fools, are the public. And that’s how it works, of course. But we vote for them because we think they will stand up for us.

And the spin doctors, who are the spin doctors? Professional fucking liars, that’s who.

Tell you what, you give a professional liar a political title and you make him a spin doctor. I've got this guy who tells fantastic lies that will make one gasp and stretch one’s eyes.

Like Matilda by Hilaire Belloc (1870-1953). If you read the poem, that’s what a spin doctor is. Matilda, tells such fantastic lies that will make one gasp and stretch one’s eyes, and the public believe it. Here you are, I've really fouled up. Now what I said there, I meant it. Like Brown in the car, when he said that woman’s a nutter and all that. He fouled up, spin doctors moved in straight away, let’s make out he didn't really mean that.

When you write to a politician, when you get too near the bone like he’s written to a politician, the Home Secretary or gawd knows who else, they think he’s a bit too close to the mark they put him down as a nutter, don't answer the letter.

Tony Benn didn't like the fact that when Blair came he stopped anybody from talking to the press freely. They had to go through him first.

Not only that but when Peter Mandalson, and his old woman, got involved is some iffy mortgage deal. we never heard another thing about that. Never heard another word about that. It just got buried in the long grass.

The thing is, the other thing is, look at it both ways. you’ve got the other thing now that because they want to play everything correct, they put, like Bloody Sunday, they put a paratrooper on trial and yet they've got the IRA pumped up, and they give them the Good Friday Agreement and let them all out of jail. How disgusting is that on Poppy Day?

You’ve got young troops out there and one of my friend’s sons is there, in Afghanistan. We are asking them to loose limbs, blow themselves up for a poxy couple of quid a week. And when they come back, with post traumatic stress disorder, they haven't even got a decent place to live. How many of them have got their own home? And who sent them to war? Blair!

And what was it about? It wasn't about caring about the Iraqis. Who put Sadam Husain in power? The CIA. As soon as he doesn't do what they say, well they top him and get some other megalomaniac in there.

Same with Gaddafi. Gaddafi started looking after his people. I was in prison with a Gaddafi general who shot and killed a dissident outside the Regents Park mosque. According to him it was an execution, not a murder. and Gaddafi had signed the death warrant. He gave his gun to the copper, the arresting officer, and had a cushy time in prison. He had velvet curtains in his cell, his very own butler, members of his family were flown in to visit him. Then one day he vanished. A few days later Charlie Richardson received a card from Libya. They had swapped him for a prisoner over there. Politics is a dirty business. Talk about the Mafia. Politicians are the real Mafia.

You can control people’s minds through the media, telling them what to think. And you can control people’s minds through finance by saying if you don’t do as we say we can stop you getting a lone or a mortgage, or even a job, There are many ways to assassinate someone. The media, the police, the politicians, they are all in it together because of what they all have on each other or because they are on the take.

Leverson set out with good intent. He got close. They probably told him that if he pushed it any further he would not be in favour. They probably have some dirt on him that he did didn't want dug up. What would do if they offered you two choices? If they said we will pay you off or we can bury you, financially and politically. What would you do? These are very powerful people. Knowledge, in the form of dirt, is very powerful and the media barons, such as Murdoch, know how to wield that power. Are you going to fuck with those people, if you have kids? No you're not.

Not unless you are a lunatic like me who says 'fuck you. You’ve done it to me now I’m going to do it back on you. I’m going to show the people who you really are'.

It takes brave men to do that because you’re under so much pressure not to do that. Even if you are clean, with no skeletons in your cupboard, you can be fitted up. They could go in my house tonight and plant explosives in there, say its a terrorist cell.

I could walk out of here tonight, they could have me whacked and claim it was an underworld killing. They could say, 'well he was a gangster, other gangsters got the hump with him so they shot him' . But it weren’t gangsters, it was the police. How would anyone ever know?

Back when I got nicked, in North London, in the 70's, they told people they weren't going to nick me, they were going to shoot me.

They said that to Dicky Smith. The Serious Crime Squad went into the Aardvark Restaurant and said to Dicky "Have you seen that flash bastard?"

He went "No."

Dicky was going out with my sister so he's not going to shop me is he!

So they said to Dicky "Tell him we're not going to arrest him, we're going to shoot him."

That's why I was going to pick up a machine gun that day. So the SWAT team came to do me. They're not like proper Old Bill, they wear berets and stuff. They done me on the street near The Anchor on Holloway Road. They were waiting for me. Smokey was with me. He nearly shat himself.

I told Smokey "Don't touch your pockets 'cause they will whack you, this is a proper SWAT team."

They went "Come out and lay in the middle of the road."

They shouted it with megaphones and all that. They'd been hiding in an ice-cream van. This geezer is out there with a rifle in an ice-cream van!

They went "Come out and lay in the middle of the road."

I went "Go fuck yourself. I am wearing an 800 quid suit. I am not going to lay in the middle of the road."

He went "Well alright, there is a volvo there, put your hands on the bonnet."

So I put my hands on the bonnet. Barber come up, he was head of the mob, he just laughed. He went "We've got a supergrass so you're gone but to tell my SWAT team to go fuck themselves, I've never heard that before, they should have shot you."

"Go fuck them" I said.

"If they shot me no problem but I paid a lot of money for the suit, I ain't fucking laying in the middle of the road, I ain't a dog."

Then they done me. Barber went "I am not even going to take a statement, we have a supergrass, you're gone for a 30."

"You said that when I done Barclays Bank in Swiss Cottage. I walked out off that one."

"Well you won't walk away from this one."

When they brought all the stuff in knew I was gone, I knew I was gone. But it was fun in a way. It was the greatest thing in the world because they done me for everything. They were talking about bodies, said I had wiped out five people. So I went "Well where's the bodies? And that one over Hampstead when you say your frog team jumped in the lake to find a body. All you found was a rolled up carpet."

They wanted to nick me for another murder then they could have put me away. They jumped in there and all they found is an old fucking carpet.

Anyway as it was a public place they couldn't shoot me. They were shouting and people were looking so they couldn't do it, they had to arrest me. That's the only reason I'm here today.

You look at Jermaine Baker, the squads just went in and shot him. He was only 28. Its cheaper than a trial and it stops embarrassing truths coming out. Its easier to whack you. That’s how they operate.  Now murder charges may be brought against a police firearms officer who killed him in north London in December 2015.  Police claimed he was in a gang called 'Bloodline' and was preparing to spring two Turkish gangsters from a prison van. Now he is dead we will never know.

Murdoch had an agenda about everything, even Iraq. It was all about building himself a bigger empire. Think of any tyrant you want, what they want to do is expand and take their competitors out of the game. Its like when I was running a gang, I wanted to take other firms out because if I took them out I could take over their business. It was purely down to money and power.

If I went weak then another firm would come in and do me. The 'P' in 'power' also stands for 'paranoia'. Murdoch has power but he’s scared that if he doesn’t stay on top, someone else will come along and swallow him up. At that level it really is all about survival. You can't trust anybody. I used to sleep with a gun under my pillow and a gun in every room in my house. When I went to the pub or the club I was always looking around. I used to drink bitter lemon in those days because I never knew if someone was going to whack me, or someone with a loose mouth was going to pick up the phone and put me away for thirty years.

You didn't know if your best friend had ambitions about taking over your business. He could just pick up the phone and set you up to get whacked. You can't trust anybody. The 'P' in 'prison' stands for 'paranoia' too. Even in there you get whacked.

Look at Rupert Murdoch’s track record with fake stories. Look at the stories Ian Cutler faked for him, the one about the dole scroungers, the one about British Leyland workers sleeping on the night shift. Lies, all lies but Murdoch published them knowing they were lies. Why? Because those fake stories reinforced the propaganda Maggie Thatcher was putting out to attack and weaken the unions. Maggie and Murdoch were thick as thieves together.

That was back in the 70s and 80s but look at today. Tony Blair wanted to invade Iraq. There were reserves of oil and minerals there. Murdoch was running fake stories about weapons of mass destruction (WMDs). Why? What was his connection with Blair, a Labour Prime Minister? Thatcher had been a Conservative Prime Minister so surely it wasn't an ideological motivation. Of course Bush wanted the same things and he was a Republican President.

Not only that but Murdoch was most likely cutting deals with MI6 and the CIA. They wanted Saddam Hussein out of power because he had been their puppet but now he was starting to think for himself. We will never know what conversations took place behind closed doors or what bribes or threats may have been made. But we do know that Murdoch ran these fake stories about WMDs.

A picture paints a thousand words. That’s where photography comes in. If you find lots of dossers on the river or down to subway and you give them a few drinks and get them to pose for some photos, now you can write a story. You can write any old bollocks you want, about benefit scroungers, people working while claiming the dole, whatever you like. Doesn’t' have to be true. You have the pictures and people will believe you.

If someone took a photo of you today, sitting here, talking to me, with my reputation, they could say we were planning a hit together. They could say any old bollocks they wanted and dishonest media barons like Murdoch would probably run it. You try and prove it wrong. They could say we were plotting to assassinate the queen. That wouldn't work because I am an out and out royalist but you get the idea.

I have known Ian Cutler since I was a lad. He was always good to me since I was a kid. I was a bit of a naughty kid in them days but he always kept an eye out for me. When I went to prison he always made sure I got my newspapers. Then he had his stroke but he still made sure I got my newspapers. 

He is a good lad. He’s an absolute diamond. He is family to me, he is family, I love him with all my heart because he was there for me and now I’m there for him

When I got older and I started running North London and he was working for the News of the World before he had his stroke, and they was getting up to their mischief with my brother.

My brother Smokey used to supply them with the people for the fake stories. I found out about it and was worried about him because he had been a fireman and he got burnt badly. He became an alcoholic. He was just getting drunk and then Ian took him under his wing to make sure he was OK.

When I heard they was doing these fake stories I got a bit worried about it and so I went to see him and said 'what the fuck is this all about? Can he get nicked?

Ian said 'no, now come and meet the people'.

So I met Rod Tyler, it was Rod Tyler I met then, I said to him 'listen ,my brother is involved in this'.

Tyler was the Features Editor of the News of the World. I said 'my brother is involved in this and these fucking stories are dodgy, if anything happens to him I will be coming to visit you, and you wouldn’t want that'.

He knew I was running North London at the time and I had shot a few people, and been shot myself. I got done for murder and then I got done for numerous bank robberies, discharging fire arms and endangering life. It’s all in my first book. if you read my book it’s all in there.

I said to Tyler 'if he gets nicked I will be visiting you and the only thing you will be writing in your newspaper is your obituary'.

So that’s what I said to him. He went 'We can protect him, I promise you'.

I said 'but what happens when Murdoch finds out it’s all fake?'

So he says to me 'who do you think is running the show? He tells us he wants this story, if we can’t get it for real then make the story up'.

Murdoch knew all about it. I said 'what about the Old Bill? This is basically a fucking fraud. What you are doing?'

Tyler told me that Murdoch owns the police, and the politicians. That is what Rod Tyler said. 'Rupert owns the police. Everyone thinks the politicians run this country but they don’t, Rupert does, the media runs this country because the public only get what the media wants to give them.'

That is power. He’s like the Mafia.

So anyway I said to Ian 'you know my brother was getting the bodies and you are taking photographs'.

I didn’t like Tyler at all and I didn’t want to know about none of that. All I knew was my brother was involved in faking the stories and I got to make sure that none of these people  get hurt in faking these stories. I used to go round and see the people and persuade them. He would only give us £ 50 and it’s all front page in the News of the World. I would go round to them and I would say to them 'have a drink and there is another 50 quid in it for you if you forget all about  it'.

They understood,  they would forget it because I had to protect Ian and my brother. Ian was taking the pictures but Chapman was writing stories and so was Gerry Brown and the rest of them. Ray Chapman and Gerry Brown would write the stories and Ian Cutler would take the pictures. My brother was involved in faking the stories.

I was in some of them too. I dressed up in a crash helmet and a false moustache for a silly story Ian was doing about the YMCA and I done another one too, dressed up as a wedding photographer, I had a camera and a little hat on for that.

Another story, Fiddler On the Roof, that was my brother Smokey who posed for that story and recruited the other guys, just lumps really. I just stood there guarding my brother. We had to gets lumps up on the roof so Ian could snap them there.

Chapman gave them fifty quid each, took them to a pub. He and Smokey recruited these people who were down on their luck. Fifty quid to them in them days was quite a lot of money. Smokey was wearing a T-shirt with 'Britain is Great' on it. Chapman told Smokey 'Just chat to them, like a normal chat'.

So it looked like they were doing an actual exposè. They were reading off a script, I saw that with my own eyes, saw them sitting in the pub with the script and that’s what they used to do. Then the next weekend there it was in the paper.

Chapman had a tape machine in a briefcase, gave them the scripts, told them to read the scripts and he would give them another fifty quid. Simple, Ian took the pictures, Chapman recorded the statements and the story ran in the News of the World that Sunday.

One of the lumps saw the story and went crazy, said he was going to rip Smokey’s fucking head off. I had to go round and see the guy, gave him another fifty quid 'have a drink, behave yourself.'

That guy could have got my brother really hurt cause he didn’t know what Chapman was going to write, as far as they were concerned they were having a laugh with Ian, just posing for photos. Fifty quid to pose for photos, the would have posed as fucking Donald Duck, it wouldn’t matter to them. They would have said they had had sex with Prince Phillip or whatever, you know, it was fifty quid.

But when he realised what Chapman wrote, different ball game. It destroyed their lives, stopped their housing benefit, their dole money. The Dole Office read the paper and thought they were working. But they weren’t, they just posed for a few photos but they lost their benefit anyway. They were really pissed off. Chapman didn’t give a shit. Three weeks later there is a disclaimer in the paper, just a couple of lines, but the damage has been done.

I thought it as just a bit of a lark at the time. I didn’t realise what these fake stories were for. if they said to me pose with a sawn off shotgun I would have posed with a sawn off shotgun but I could have done that for real anyway but you know I said to him it’s a joke but I realised when I got more educated with the open university cause I did a degree in sociology and psychology and then I went and did another degree in Housing architecture and law.

Brown, Chatman and Ian were doing stories about prostitutes and that sort of thing too. Later we found out that Chapman was having sex with the prostitutes and even had sex with under aged girls. Lucky for him they kept him well away from me.

Chatman was a terrible pervert, I didn’t like the man at all.

Being mates with Ian, helping him fake stories, I learnt a lot about how things work. I soon figured it out. I mean, even the Idi Amin thing. Amin was the President of Uganda between 1971 and 1979. That heads in the fridge story was a load of bollocks but the people loved it. He was no cannibal. That was just spin. So many fake stories, now if you sold a fake Rembrandt you would be in the nick but he’s telling fake stories as the truth, untouchable, Rupert is like Teflon, nothing sticks to him. I said that to Blair once, much later when I was running Unlock, told him to his face, Teflon Tone, he was in Rupert’s pocket.

That’s about the time when it sort of started going down a bit. I got nicked for all my villainy and Ian had his stroke. I went in Ian’s house once to see how he was getting on and it was all the News of the World team there. It was like a Roman orgy. I come from a staunch Catholic family so we didn’t do bad manners or that sort of stuff .

People called it the News of the Screws. They were screwing each other, writing about themselves. I was quite shooked by it all.

When I thought about it all, about Rupert Murdoch, he was the real gangster, these people pointing the finger at everybody else. I think we have got to expose what they do, because people believe what they read. When Maggie Thatcher was in power she wanted to remove all the so-called "spongers" from society and she wanted to give people on the dole queue a battering. So she spoke to Rupert and my brother went out and recruited a few drunks and made these stories up. It was front page stuff and it which helped Maggie Thatcher enormously. They lied about the most vunerable people in society. Of course some people realised that the News of the World was a comic, you might as well be reading the Bino, or Parade or Playboy magazine, but others were taken in.

Rupert didn’t give a fuck. Do Murdoch’s people believe what they read? Of course not. We need to tell the people.

These things they were writing destroyed people. One guy committed suicide over this, his name was Arnold Lewis, a maths teacher. A NoW reporter phoned him one Saturday afternoon in 1978 , says "I’m just ringing to say we'll be naming you in tomorrow’s paper, story about wife-swappers". He had been advertising in the contact magazines, nothing more. Named and shamed by one of Murdoch’s hitmen and dead by the morning. His sad suicide note was read out at the inquest.

Rupert Murdoch controls the media all over the world. Not just him of course. He is just the main one in the news himself recently. There are lots of media barons just like him and they wield tremendous power. They are all in the same swindle and they are all vying against each other.

Media barons like Murdoch work with politicians for a whole range of different reasons. The bribes and the threats can work either way. If a politician has some dirt on a media baron or a media baron has some dirt on a politician, that’s power. And organised crime has their fingers in the pie too, believe me, they are players on the same game.

Who are the Mafia anyway? There just a bunch of immigrants who came over here, couldn't get a job, so started fiddling. Its no different to what we were doing. And it goes all the way to the top, it always has.

Drug dealers are nothing new. This country and other counties like France, look at the opium dens in China. We turned the Chinese into a race of dope addicts. Same with rubber. If the kids didn’t work the rubber trees they cut their hands off. The first concentration camps. You talk about the Nazis. The first concentration camp was by the British in South Africa during the Boer War. We invented this stuff and we’ve been doing it for hinders of years. Next to them I might have well have been picking pockets or nicking sweets out of Woolworth s.

This country, same as other countries, is run by organised criminals who have been doing it for generations. That’s why they have have their own schools such as Eaton. That is where they cultivate the future godfathers. Oxford and Cambridge. Where are spies recruited? They don’t come from the local technical collage up the road. Its all very incestuous. Same with the big crime families. When you get to the top gangs, we were very incestuous. We would think that because we had known a family for three or five generations we knew we could work with them.

The people in power do the same, we learnt it off them. Its an alternative system. they've got the big cake. They can make the laws to suit themselves. They can make it so the way we steal from them is illegal but the ways they steel from us are legal. By working with the media barons they can make sure the propaganda suites their own agendas. And they can make out its all for our own good. No! They are doing it for their good.

Even when people realise they've been had over, are they going to admit it, even to themselves? Are they going to admit that they've been had over all their lives?

GB doesn't stand for Great Britain any more. Now it stands for Gullible Britain.

When we were kids we believed in the Tooth Fairy. We have come to a point in history where the truth has become so blurred, you look at it and ask 'what is truth?' When You’ve been getting so much detritus for so many years you no longer want to face up to the truth. Its easier to go on believing in the tooth fairy. The lies are easier to live with. You can feel comfortable. You can go to sleep at night thinking the government will protect us.

The truth is, of course, that they don’t really want to protect us against Isis / Daesh. Back in WW2 they dropped two big bombs on two Japanese cities and they capitulated instantly. If we could beat the Germans and the Japanese then, we can beat Daesh today. But our leaders don't really want to war in Syria or international terrorism to end because they are making too much money from it, selling arms to the terrorists, selling arms to the military of NATO, Russia AND the Syrian government. The top echelon of society are getting richer by the day. Why should they kill the goose that’s laying their golden eggs?

Talk about gangsters like me. Well sorry, there are no bigger gangsters than the politicians . Political Parties are really just firms of gangsters. doing deals behind closed doors and getting rich. Sometimes they just do deals with other parties and sometimes with other countries. Say Russia is getting a bit naughty, getting away with something, and people are asking questions. Other countries will agree to split it with them and then create an unstable situation as a diversion, such as Daesh for instance, to divert the peoples' attention. That’s the job of MI6 and the CIA, to manipulate world events on the quiet. Then its up to the media bosses to make the people see what the politicians want them to see. Its a dirty business.

Who profits from all the wars? Our boys are getting whacked but who profits? Who is the next firm of gangsters? Arms dealers. They are happy to have wars 24/7. And who is the biggest arms producing country? America, the USA. The European Union is a very close second (stats here please).

What they are all worried about these days are the Chinese. The Chinese own everything now.
They are investing so much money into western counties as to be in a position to destabilise our economies any time they choose. They own half of Africa’s minerals. They will own our next nuclear power-station.

Why do you think we have started teaching Mandarin in our schools? And Urdu as well. What do you think That’s really about?

If you want to know whose at it just follow the money trail. How did they nick Al Capone? They followed the money trail. Who’s got all the wealth? It aint you and it sure as hell aint me. The more money there is, the more corruption there is and the more gangsterism there is. And when the people get too close to it they have accidents.

When Diana got killed, who did the post-mortem at Fulham mortuary in 1997? Their own pathologist. The establishment made sure they did it just in case there was something dodgy. Or maybe they expected something dodgy. We will never know, although there was certainly motivation. She had become a serious embarrassment.

In his book, ' How They Murdered Princess Diana: The Shocking Truth', author John Morgan claims to have discovered the truth of what actually happened during the 24 hours following the deaths of the Princess and Dodi Al Fayed in a Paris.

”There is a lot of evidence which points to the toxicology testing being carried out on samples that did not come from the body of Princess Diana,” he said. He believes the samples were switched as part of an establishment cover-up.

And what about John F. Kennedy? It certainly wasn’t that little Oswald guy. He couldn’t win a teddy-bear at the fair with that little shooter. Clearly Kennedy had upset some very powerful people, there had to be a huge cover-up. For a start the arms industry was worried he was going to take America out of Vietnam. He was also threatening the autonomy of America’s Central Bank. Lots of powerful people wanted him dead.

A study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research at United Nations University reports that the richest 1% of adults owned 40% of global assets in the year 2000, and that the richest 10% of adults accounted for 85% of the world total.

Another study found that the richest 2% own more than half of global household assets.

That’s a lot of wealth and power concentrated at the top. They are so powerful they control governments, they control the banks, they control the media. They even control Murdoch. And they have been running things for hundreds of years, the same super-rich families have been running things for hundreds of years.

The Bilderberg Group has long been suspected of running the world. They have been the subject of much speculation for years. But what do we really know about the secretive international meetings between top politicians and bosses of multi-national corporations?

The location of their meetings is now public. In 2014 the Danish capital, Cophenhagen, was the venue of choice. In 2015 it was Tyrol in the Austrian Alps where George Osborne and Ed Balls attended, as did José Barroso, the former EU Commission President, and executives from firms including Google, BP, Shell, and Deutsche Bank.

Topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Chemical Weapons Threats, Current Economic Issues, European Strategy, Globalisation, Greece, Iran, the Middle East, NATO, Russia, Terrorism, the United Kingdom, the USA and the US Elections were up for discussion.

The area around the venue is completely locked down and the host government always provides security and police protection.

There are no minutes taken of the meetings, and no reports are made of any conclusions reached. No votes are taken. Journalists attempting to interview attendees have been arrested in the past. What on earth is that all about?

All US presidents are believed to have belonged to the Bilderberg Group, as have all British prime ministers. Some people even think the Queen is a member All those with money belong to it.

They are poisoning our water with fluoride, a know carcinogen. What’s that all about? They are poisoning our shampoos and household products with hormone disrupters that reduce our fertility What’s that all about? They are poisoning our food with artificial colours, preservatives and flavour enhancers, not to mention agricultural chemicals, more know carcinogens. What’s that all about? And then there are GMOs.

Mention your very legitimate concerns are you get written off as a 'conspiracy theorist'. The media bosses are in on it of course so don’t expect the papers or television to take you seriously. If they run such stories at all its along the lines of poking fun at the daft conspiracy theorists.

Same with UFOs yet the Germans in the second world war were working on flying saucers and maybe the Americans or the Russians still are. Maybe that’s what people are seeing and maybe that’s why its all so hush hush.

And the Nazis were also working on ways to kill people without leaving a trace. During World War II, several of German doctors conducted painful and often fatal experiments on thousands of concentration camp prisoners without their consent.

That’s part of what Josef Mengele was doing with his hideous experiments at Auschwitz. He was working on lots of different ideas including genetic modification. Now Monsanto has taken up the work. Its not about feeding the world. It was never about feeding the world. Its about controlling the food supply. What better way to control the people than to control their food supply.

Do you remember when GMO research first got media attention. It was portrayed as a way to breed pest and disease resistant crops you could grow without chemicals.. What did Monsanto do instead? They produced Roundup resistant crops. And who makes Roundup? Monsanto of course, who else?

Once again the people are being conned and its all about money and power. People commit crimes for three different reasons, need, greed or power. Not just people like me. Rich politicians, international arms dealers and media barons have no need. They are just motivated by greed and power.

Ordinary crooks like I was, committing crimes, most of them are victims of crime because they have had no proper upbringing. They come from broken homes, they come from drug addicts and they become drug addicts themselves. The worst thing that happened to this country was drugs because when we was doing villainy we had a code of ethics what you could do and what you couldn’t do, you couldn’t hurt someone in front of the wife and the kids, if you did you would get hurt yourself, if you were going to whack a guy you couldn’t do that in a public place you take them away and do it when they done me in the streets just drove by in a car and bang. Rival gangs tried to assonate me three times and I’m still here to tell about it.

I am still here. I thought I wouldn’t make thirty because, when you are in that life, you don’t expect to live that long. Life expectancy rates drops down and the bigger you get, the quicker it drops. I’m still here today and II've got a sweet life, it’s a nice life.

It’s funny when we talk about the House of Lords and the House of Commons, my kids call them the House of Conmen and the House of Frauds. They are not far wrong 'cause if you look at them they are all fiddling their expenses. The public has got to wake up. We have Rupert Murdoch destroying lives, controlling so much power that he’s above the police and above everything else. He’s been done for corruption. Has he gone to gaol? NO! If I done what Rupert has done I would be doing a thirty stretch.

Him and his little firm of gangsters, all those paedophiles and blaggers, all basically fraudsters, they all stay safe. Has Rebekah Brooks gone to prison? NO! None of them got bird. Andy Coulson? NO!!! None of them has got bird. You know why, because Rupert has the dirt on every politician and every top cop, Special Branch, all the lot. Even Commander Bert Wickstead (a.k.a 'The Old Grey Fox' or 'The Gangbuster' of Scotland Yard) was working for Murdoch. Rupert goes 'you turn on one of mine this pops up in the newspaper. I don’t have to print it here. Put a 'D Notice' on and I'll just have it published in Germany or in France or in Australia and your careers are over.'

They all eating Rupert’s meal, he’s throwing them a few scraps. 'Behave yourselves and you will be alright, you want to be in power I'll back you, you go against me you won’t get into No.10.'

That’s how powerful that man is, he’s a godfather more than the Mafia, he’s got his own Mafia, the House of Commons and the House of Lords is another Mafia, but he’s got the biggest 'cause he’s got the dirt on all of them. Rupert knows who’s selling them drugs, cocaine for their parties, whose having the rent boys. He don’t always print them stories. What he does, he puts them in the safe for later so if you come up against him he has it on you. Are you going to go against Murdoch? No! You are not. That’s why no one else will print a book like this. They are all frightened that Rupert will end their careers or their newspaper if they go against him. We three me, Ian and Jack, we are old now, our careers are over anyway and we don't give a fuck anymore.

Chapter Two - Don't Believe Everything You Read In The Papers
by Ian Cutler

The most commonly discussed forms of media propaganda bias occur when a paper or news channel supports or attacks a particular political party, candidate or ideology. The Murdoch press are generally right wing while papers such as The Guardian lean heavily towards the left.

Media bias can take other forms too, such as advertising bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please advertisers. Papers depend for their livelihoods on advertising revenue so are unlikely to want to upset their best paying clients.

There is also corporate bias, when stories are selected or slanted to please corporate owners of media. Murdoch has always been a very hands-on type of owner and his editors knew they had to please him if they wanted to keep their jobs.

Then there is mainstream bias, a tendency to report what everyone else is reporting, and to avoid stories that will offend anyone. It takes a brave editor to stick his or her head out and tread the road less travelled. More recently, editors have been running scared of Muslim intolerance. Look what happened to those poor Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in Parris in January 2015. They were murdered just for drawing satirical cartoons. When cowardly religious fundamentalists react so violently to a little harmless humour, journalists and editors become frightened to report the real truth.

Sensationalism is another form of media bias where the exceptional is favoured over the ordinary. This gives people the false impression that rare events, such as plane crashes and terrorist attacks, are more common than they really are.

Concision bias is a tendency to summarise events succinctly, rather than devote space and time to an in-depth analysis.

Other forms of bias include reports that favour or attack a particular race, religion, gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnic group, or individual.

Lastly there is gate keeping bias, deciding whether to release a story or keep it under wraps.

Of course politicians have long employed spin doctors to twit and distort the truth about their disastrous actions and policies. Arguably the most famous of these professional liars was probably Alastair Campbell, 'Director of Communications and Strategy' for Tony Blair between 1997 and 2003.

The term spin doctor was probably first used in print in October 1984 in the New York Times and derives from the phrase 'to spin a yarn', although the practice is much older. If you are interested in Hebrew mythology, the first spin doctor may well have been the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

During my time at the News of the World, the paper was definitely used as a spin doctor for Margaret Thatcher and her government.

The general public would not believe how many news stories are fake, and how many sex and sleaze activities exposed by the press were regularly indulged in by the very same two-faced journalists who had blown the lid off them. Is it any wonder that journalists are now rated by the general public on the same low footing as lawyers, the police, politicians and pornographers? The newspaper stories I mention below were all bent in some way, yet they were put out by the editors of each respective newspaper.

In this chapter I give the real, inside story on on many tall tales published as the truth. The press cuttings of these stories can be viewed online at http://cameraassassin.co.uk

Take Piers Morgan for example. He was fired recently after printing 60 pages of rubbish about our forces torturing Iraqui prisoners. It was all lies and faked pictures. (Stuart Kuttner who remained in his job, printed even more rubbish, until the News of the World's demise in 2011).

God knows how many coalition troops were killed or wounded as a result of Morgan’s cynical and opportunist photos. During his most recent TV appearance you would have thought it never happened. He didn’t refer to it once! Nor was he asked a question about it by his pals on the chat show!

Pure Fiction: The time span was the seventies and eighties when I teamed up with reporter Ray Chapman on at least 20 major series ordered by Murdoch. These included a long-running saga on so-called 'Welfare Scroungers', then exposing 'leftwing revolutionaries' and finally many so-called sex scandals, mainly exposing wife swappers, one of whom committed suicide after a dubious story appeared.

Chapman was one of the longest serving reporters on the paper until his retirement in 2007. Almost every single story I was associated with was pure fiction. If the facts didn’t fit the brief, we made them up. I paid actors to pose in so-called 'snatch' pictures. A snatch or candid picture is one where the subject is not aware of being photographed or is unwilling to be photographed.

When Rupert Murdoch first bought the News of the World in one of the city’s most controversial take-overs, he was determined to be a hands on proprietor. At first the staff, including the editor Stafford Summerfield, treated him as an Aussie sheep farmer. But he fired anyone who got in his way, including Summerfield, and soon made radical changes to the paper.

A little while later he added the Sun to his Bouverie Street stable.

Murdoch had an obsession to expose welfare scroungers and left-wing militants and continually put his executive into fast forward for exposure stories. Everyone from the news editor to the top brass would accept almost anything if it pleased Murdoch, with scant regard for truth.

Rupert said, "The subjects were tailor made for a journalistic scam".

Dole Dodgers: One of the things which first appalled Murdoch about London was what he saw a blatant abuse of the social services by welfare scroungers. He declared war on them and let his executives know that he wanted a full and long running exposure. Every budding, hungry, or down and out freelance quickly realised that the paper would buy almost any story which exposed dole fiddlers.

Me and my sidekick Ray Chapman retained several freelancers who spotted an immediate and lucrative money-spinner and got to work. We often used two down and outs, one called Smokey and the other Michael, to manufacture stories and both were immediately recruited to hunt out the dole dodgers. Smokey was Bobby Cummines' brother, an ex-fireman who was down on his luck folowing a bad accident at work.

The whole campaign went on for a decade but was kicked off by a two part series to which veteran reporter Ron Mount put his name. Mount was a suspect ex-policeman who, when in the force, had been useful to the News of the World as an informer. When he was found out and fired, the paper gave him a job.

He was also a chronic alcoholic who had two girl friends and a wife and family at home. His favourite watering hole was the Wine Press, a trendy place actually in Fleet Street at the top of Bouverie Street.

We faked too many stories to list. Here are just a few of them:

Spaghetti Scroungers (News of the World - August 1979) - A story ran on the front page of the News of the World about numerous Italian immigrants. The story was another fabrication. Me and Ray Chapman faked the photographs to support it. It led to an investigation by Lynda Chalker who was Under Secretary of the Health and Social Security department at the time. Not all these men were claiming social security but it was another winner for Rupert.

Me and Chapman ferreted out some good tales but, to tell the truth, every last one of them was a setup. We’d go out, set up a picture, then Chapman would invent the story to go with them and we’d deliver it to Ron Mount (the ex flying squad copper).

Throughout the whole series, Mount never left the wine bar and never came on a single story.

On one occasion, knowing that we had a free hand, me and Chapman bought six bottles of wine and went to a dole office in Bishops Gate where welfare could be obtained instantly in cash because it specialised in helping homeless people.

The faithful Smokey, always pocketing his 50 quid daily fee, went up to the queue (which was spilling out onto the street) and gave the claimants the six bottles of wine. I duly photographed this merry band downing the wine with glee. A certain piquancy was added to the story because I had bought Smokey a T-shirt which said plainly on the back "Britain is Great".

Chapman then wrote a wholly inaccurate piece alleging that these same people went to a different dole queue each day and spent all their money having street parties at the taxpayer’s expence. We delivered it to Mount in the wine bar where he was incoherent and he in turn gave it to his news editor, Bob Warren. The story went straight up to Murdoch who was elated. The News of the World duly thundered about the dole dodgers and Mount bathed for weeks in the series' success.

Fiddler On the Roof (News of the World - August 1978) was one of our most important faked stories, published on  Sunday 6th August 1978, It took over the whole of the front page. It was one of many made up ”Scroungers” stories ordered directly by Murdoch. This story was about a fictitious building and roofing contractor Stan Clarke, who was supposed to have employed men off the dole and turned a blind eye to them claiming benefits whilst working for him.

Stan Clarke didn’t exist of course, the story was totally fabricated by Ray Chapman and myself. Rupert laughed at the idea. Smokey Cummines was dressed up in my hat and coat for this faked picture. As before Smokey recruited claimants direct from the DHSS offices to ‘pose’ for pictures. They were each paid ten pound cash to pose as roofing workers.

Cummines was actually a former firreman, badly burnt while on duty. He pretended to be Stan Clarke and I lent him my hat and overcoat to ‘disguise’ him as a ‘bare-faced fiddler on the roof’. We paid him his usual fee, £ 50, for this scam. He only did it for the beer money.

The Good Night Shift (News of the World - November 1979).  This was another good one. Me and Gerry Brown were sent up to Birmingham to catch the British Leyland night shift workers at the Longbridge plant sleeping on the job. When we got there we found both production lines working at full pelt. The whole thing had been a hoax.

Nevertheless we had been sent to get the pictures so that’s what we did. There was a room where the workers went during rest breaks so we set up some fake shots there.

To our utter amassment the nation fell hook line and sinker for this garbage. But it was the time when Mrs. Thatcher’s spin doctors had been bombarding us all with their propaganda about workers and unions. Other right wing papers eagerly picked up on the story and the Sun’s cartoonist, Franklin, had a field day.

Rupert would print any old lies as long as they sold papers and pleased Margrate Thacher. I can't prove that she was paying him to spread her propaganda against workers, uniuons and imagrants. Maybe he really believed that the cause was worth supporting, and lieing for. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.

Gay YMCA (News of the World - March 18th 1980 ) G.A.Y.M.C.A.: Out of all the manufactured stories in which I took part as a willing accomplice (and often engineering them myself) the story on the frontpage of the News of the Worldtakes the biscuit. It was headlined, We expose the shocking truth about the GAYMCA with a strap line - Showpiece Hotel is pick-up paradise for these weirdos.

Remember that attitudes to homosexuality were very different back then.

The story went into great detail about the 15 million pound showpiece of the Young Men’s Christian Association - Plush Hotel Y - which had supposedly become a gathering place for rent boys. The by-lines were: Special Investigation by Martin Turner and Michael Parker. Pictures by Ian Cutler.

Following a tip-off, the three of us tried to penetrate Hotel Y, which for a while we did. But the tip-off just didn’t stand up. We couldn’t find a genuine rent boy, even after touting ourselves and offering fairly serious money. So we decided to provide our own evidence.

I cannot now recall whether Turner was fully involved with the subterfuge, but Michael Parker most certainly was, Parker knew full well that I, through my underground contacts in the sex trade which I often exploited, had hired a rent boy for the day and paid him 50 quid over and above the going rate.

The story we concocted ’exposed’ three youths purporting to be rent boys, using the hotel to ply their trade. Making them look like snatch shots (journalistic jargon for snapping a victim when they are unawares) Parker and I dressed up the hired boy in widely different garbs. Three of the pictures taken and submitted actually depict the same youth. In one shot he is wearing a false moustache and a crash helmet, presumably entering the premises, the next, without a moustache is the same boy hiding behind a book smoking a joint, and the third is an innocuous picture of a young man, which did not get published but seemed genuine enough to warrant three separate statements which were entirely fabricated by Cyril, Paul and Alan.

The unholy alliance of Parker and myself then triumphantly took the pictures and story back to the News of the World. We made sure it was put into the hands of Craig McKenzie (brother of the notorious Kelvin) who was then one of the chief sub editors. McKenzie himself then became fully and knowingly involved with this wretched subterfuge.

Cheeky Confessions of the Wedding Photographer (News of the World - March 1980). Another fake story appeared in the News of the World in March 1980. This one was a complete fabrication about the invented character Robert Croft, who was allegedly a wedding photographer Casanova. The man didn’t exist but the story sold papers. Rupert was happy again.

The character of Robert Croft was roughly based on my own life. In my teens, as a young wedding photographer, before joining the News of the World, I would do eight or nine weddings every Saturday in Finsbury Town Hall. It would often happen that the bridegroom would get pissed and I would take the opportunity to screw his new bride. Failing that I would usually get to fuck a bridesmaid or two. I
have always enjoyed my work.

Bobby Cummines OBE FRSA, Smokey’s brother, became the CEO of the pressure group Unlock, The National Association of Reformed Offenders. He often used to pose for me in fake stories. This time we slung a camera around his neck and used him to help us 'expose' a fictitious wedding photographer who supposedly seduced brides. I held a drinks party in my garden and posed all the pictures, but there never was a bride or a marriage.

Newspaper stories like these can be used to divert public attention away from the more controversial activities of Parliament. Was it just a coincidence that while these stories were running, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was pushing through one of her most unpopular pieces of legislation? The Housing Act (1980) gave five million council house tenants in England and Wales the right to buy their house and flats, on the cheep, from their local authority. The Act came into force on the 3rd October 1980 and is seen as a defining policy of Thatcherism. It was great news for the long term renters suddenly able to own their own homes for the first time in their lives. Nevertheless it was a huge disaster in the long term because the Act totally failed to require councils to spend the money on replenishing their housing stock. As a result, waiting lists lengthened and homeless people ended up in temporary accommodation which ended up costing the public purse far, far more. This compounded a housing shortage for people on low incomes.

In the first four years of the scheme 380,912 homes were sold off (an average of 95,228 a year) while only 145,270 new ones were built to replace them (an average of 36,317 a year). That means that over half of our council homes were lost in those four years.

Throughout this period and up to the present day, the building of new council homes never increased. (Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-social-housing-sales AND https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building).

This is just one example.

Dramatic Thames Rescue (Evening Standard). Another major story, for the Evening Standard this time, showed a photograph of Douglas Smith being rescued by Patrick O'Connor. The story told how Smith had fallen overboard from a pleasure boat on the Thames, and O'Connor, a bystander had gallantly dived in to save him. However, the two knew each other and planned the stunt together to get some positive publicity for O'Connor who was shortly due in court. This illustrates just one way that the media can be used to pervert the course of justice.

Hitler Diaries (News of the World - April 1983). We had to laugh at Rupert over the Hitler Diaries story. On 22nd April 1983, German magazine Stern announced that it had discovered the Hitler Diaries. Journalist Gerd Heidemann claimed to have received the diaries from East Germany, smuggled out by a "Dr. Fischer". The diaries were supposed to be part of a consignment of documents recovered from an aircraft crash in Bornersdorf near Dresden in April 1945.

Two historians, Hugh Trevor-Roper of Times Newspapers and Gerhard Weinberg of Newsweek, authenticated the diaries. Serialisation rights were sold for huge sums. Murdoch was one of the top bidders and the Times ran a front page scoop on The Hitler Diaries.

When they were exposed as fakes Rupert said IT’s ONLY FUCKING ENTERTAINMENT ANYWAY!

Stern editors Peter Koch and Felix Schmidt resigned from the magazine; Frank Giles stood down as editor of The Sunday Times; and William Broyles resigned from Newsweek.

The episode was much ridiculed in the UK media (particularly by the Sunday Times' rival newspapers, and Trevor-Roper’s reputation was seriously damaged. But did Murdoch suffer? What do you think?

Council Workers Moonlighting In Council Time (News of the World - 1984). Ted Knight (born 13 June 1933) controlled Lambeth council. When the Conservative Government passed the Rates Act 1984 to limit the budgets of local councils, several left-wing Labour councils organised a rebellion in which they refused to set a budget.

All the councils eventually backed down except Liverpool City Council and Lambeth. The district auditor found that the council had lost interest on tax payments as a result, which was held to be due to the "wilful misconduct" of Knight and 31 other councillors. Each was required to repay the amount of lost interest in a surcharge and banned from holding office for five years.

Neil Kinnock, the Labour Party leader, blamed leaders like "Red Ted" Knight and Linda Bellos from Lambeth, for bringing the party into disrepute. In our attempt to embarrass him further, Chapman and I paid for black models to pose as council workers moonlighting in council time with council equipment. Another policaly motivated fake story.

When trying to expose illegal immigrants claiming dole at Kings Cross we couldn't find any. So me and Chapman dived into an Italian restaurant called Luigi’s and paid all the waiters and kitchen staff £ 10 each to pose outside the dole office making rude gestures to the welfare state.

Scandal of the Sardine Hostels (News of the World - July 1984). Me and Gerry Brown went on a story about overcrowded student accommodation. We found a few privately run dormitories but nothing that came anywhere close to the squalor we were looking for so I faked the pictures. We even claimed that some tourists to London were being treated like this. Ridiculous !!!

Fury of the Evil Escort Boss (News of the World - July 1984)  made for another good headline. In July 1984 Trevor Kempson and me went to London’s West End to expose an escort agency offering 'extras'. During the interview the owner of the agency, a pimp known locally ad 'The Beast', hit Trevor.

In the article Trevor claimed he had been kicked and hit with a gas cylinder. Before photographing his injuries I applied make up to Trevor’s face to make the damage look much worse than it was. One of the girls photographed wasn't even involved. She was my girlfriend, we just needed an extra face. Of course the News of the World hierarchy were well aware that we had fabricated part of this story.

So what were Parliament up to in 1984? What did the wish to divert attention away from? Could it have been the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984? PACE was extremely controversial as the Act gave considerable extra powers to the police.

Posh Beckham Kidnapping (News of the World - November 2002). It wasn't all politiccaly motivated. Sometime we just faked stories for the fun of it, and for profit too of course. The Posh Spice (famous singer and David Beckham’s wife) kidnapping was one such fun story. It was hashed up by reporters Mazher Mahmoud and Gerry Brown (known to colleagues as 'Gerry-can' or ‘Brown Gerry’, brown as in toilet).

In 2002 Detective Chief Superintendent John Coles, the head of SO7, said: "As a result of information from the News of the World, SO7 Kidnap Unit conducted an operation to arrest a group of individuals who are suspected of having been involved in theft and a conspiracy to commit kidnap".

Stuart Kuttner, managing editor of the News of the World, told Sky News: "About six weeks ago we were alerted that a gang of Romanian and Albanian criminals, or people of that persuasion, had a plan to try and kidnap Victoria Beckham".

Although I wasn't personally involved in this story (I had retired by then) I knew the journalists who were and I had no doubt what was going on. I contacted Gavin Hodges and Joseph Reams, solicitors of 70 Marylebone Lane, London W14 2TT. They were the defence team for the Bosnian defendants accused of kidnapping David Beckham’s wife Victoria (formerly known as Posh Spice of the pop group the Spice Girls).

The Spice / Beckham kidnap story was all Bollocks!! Rupert loved this idea.

I posed the question as to how a bunch of immigrants who didn't know London from the Suez Canal could find out where David and Victoria Beckham lived when most Londoner’s born and bred had no idea.

Knowing the gutter press well, having worked for the News of the World for so long, and how they often set up stories or simply make them up, my instinct was that the down on their luck immigrants had been given the address where David and Victoria Beckham lived.

I had little doubt who had put the kidnap idea into their heads. A financial inducement from the press in order to create a story that would engender massive income worldwide would be par for the course. The story was all bollocks, just six pages of rubbish approved by Rupert.

Solicitors for the defence used my information and put it to the judge. Armed with this knowledge and the iffy nature of the police allegations, which by then had created massive worldwide media coverage, the Judge threw the case out.

Could the press have set up a fake kidnapping? I think so. Whatever, Rupert Murdoch’s News of the Screws did all right out of it. If the press had actually set up the story and bribed desperate immigrants to attempt to carry out the kidnap, they got their money’s worth.

The year was 2002. A lot was going on in Parliament that year, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act, the Land Registration Act, the Enterprise Act, the Tax Credits Act, the Commonhold and Leasehold Reform Act, the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Finance Act, the Education Act, the Enterprise Act, the Homelessness Act, the Police Reform Act, the State Pension Credit Act, the Local Government Act, the Adoption and Children Act and the Homeland Security Act was passed in America n 2002. That’s a lot of controversy to want to divert people’s attention from.

At the time I was setting up all these fake stories I was not aware of any political adgenda, beyond pleasing Murdoch so he could sell papers as well as please whoever was pulling his strings. I have given it a lot of thought since though.

While The News of the Screws was supporting Thatcher, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was being accused of left-wing bias. Norman Tebbit, Thatcher’s Secretary of State for Employment, called the BBC the "Stateless Person’s Broadcasting Corporation" in his autobioraphy because of the way it covered the Falklands War.

Conservative M.P. Peter Bruinvels ran a campaign calling it the "Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation."

Stuart Young, the accountant and brother of one of Thatcher’s staunchest cabinet allies, David Young, was appointed as BBC chairman in 1983. A plainly political appointment, Thatcher hoped that Young, as a Conservative, would challenge the more left-leaning Director-General of the BBC, Alasdair Milne. When first appointed, Young argued that the BBC should be funded by advertising. However, he later changed his mind and argued for the continuation of the television. This disappointed Prime Thatcher who accused him of 'going native'.

In 1985 left wing biased the Daily Star ran a virulent campaign against the BBC calling it ”Beaten, Boring and Costly”

Young was replaced in 1986 by Marmaduke Hussey, another Tory party insider. The Tory party chairman at the time, Norman Tebbit, said that Hussey had been appointed 'to get in there and sort the place out'.

The controversies continued with several BBC television programmes. The Nationwide general election special with Thatcher in 1983, a Panorama documentary called Maggie’s Militant Tendency, the Real Lives interview with Martin McGuinness, the BBC’s coverage of the United States' 1986 Bombing of Libya and the Zircon affair all leaned towards the left.

Milne was forced to resign in 1987. Thatcher later said: "I have fought three elections against the BBC and don't want to fight another against it."

Much later, in 2006 Tebbit said: "The BBC was always against Lady Thatcher."

In 2010 Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC was reported as saying "In the BBC I joined 30 years ago there was, in much of current affairs, in terms of people’s personal politics, which were quite vocal, a massive bias to the left. The organisation did struggle then with impartiality."

Of course every Prime Minister becomes paranoid about the BBC at some time. Margaret Thatcher was not the first. Harold Wilson had no love for the organisation. He was so convinced they were sympathising with the Conservatives and trying to rubbish his government that he refused to allow the BBC to interview him on his victory train following the 1966 general election.

You don't need to tell lies to be biased, just tell selective bits of the truth. On February 27th 2016 the Guardian reported that tens of thousands of protesters gathered in central London for Britain’s 'biggest anti-nuclear weapons rally in a generation'. Campaigners came from across the world. Some even came all the way Australia to protest against the renewal of Trident. Others had come from the west coast of Scotland, where Britain’s nuclear deterrent submarines are based. Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, addressed the crowd and Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and Caroline Lucas joined the protesters. However Angus Crawford of the BBC dismissed the gathering as being far fewer than the 300,000 strong peace protest of 1983 and his camera operator selected a small section of stragglers to film, giving a totally false impression of the huge numbers present.

So who was telling the truth The Guardian or the BBC? They both were. Tens of thousands were less than 300,000 AND it was the 'biggest anti-nuclear weapons rally in a generation'. Both statements were true although the gave widely different impressions of the march. It is so important that we read our newspapers and watch television news bulletins with awareness and through the pages of this book we are trying to give you this awareness.

I was probably the first press whistleblower with my Camera Assassin book but I was not the last. Recently ex-BBC reporter, John Darvall, has exposed simmilar goings-on at the Beeb. ”Trust nothing you read or watch” he warns.

Darvall was driven to speak out following the insensitive reporting of the tragic death of his daughter, Polly, by the BBC and other outlets. The BBC itself misreported specific information about his family, which added even further to their grief. "This poor piece of journalism made Tuesday probably the worst day of this whole episode so far" he bitterly remarked.

"This week TV and newspapers have proven to me why they are not the future of news. ... The internet allows us to come to our own conclusions by checking our own facts. We really can’t trust the traditional outlets to do it right or properly. ... If they can’t even get their facts right, be trusted with clear information and then report it accurately, is it any wonder that we are all turning to Facebook, Twitter and other internet sources for our news and information? ... I am ashamed to be a journalist. Trust nothing you read or watch."

Research by Cardiff University has shown the BBC to be pro-business and conservative. An analysis of BBC News at Six revealed that, in 2007, business representatives outnumbered trade union representatives by a ratio of more than 5-to-1 , and of in By 2012 that figure had risen to a staggering 19-to-1!

Research into the BBC coverage of the 2008 financial crisis revealed similar pro-business sentiment. Opinion was almost completely dominated by investment bankers, stockbrokers and other city voices.

So it wasn't just me, Chapman and Brown, in the pay of Rupert Murdoch, who were presenting a highly skewed version of reality.

Chapter Three - United We Stand
by Jack Cox

Why can't folks just get along? If you want to start a company to make widgets you will need certain things. Your will need a factory building, raw materials, machinery, design engineers, skilled workers (who are also qualified engineers) to operate the machines, accountants, administrators and managers, sales reps, cleaners and other unskilled workers. You will need all of these. If you leave out any of these people you will not be able to make and market your widgets. Its that simple. All these people are contributing, in their different ways, to the success of the company. Without them, you will be out of a job yourself. They are all essential, so why not treat them all with respect and pay them well?

Of course the people who put their life savings into starting a company, and may well work many long hours for little reward for the fist few years of operation, deserve to be rewarded for their enterprise and for the gamble they took with their money. Unless there are financial incentives to start a company nobody would ever start one.

But there is a big difference between incentive and greed. Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) realised that the greatest power would inevitably be wielded by the owners of the means of production, the factory owners. Prior to the industrial revolution, the owners of the means of production had been the farm owners.

In medieval times, poor people controlled small strips of land where they grew their own food, a bit like allotment holders today. But the rich, greedy, land owners had a different vision and as they also were the politicians of the day they were in a position to abuse their power.

The Enclosure Acts were a series of Acts of Parliament which enclosed open strip farmed fields and common land, creating legal property rights to rich land owners who were effectively steeling the land from the poor.

Between 1604 and 1914, over 5,200 individual enclosure acts were put into place, enclosing 2,800,000 hectares of land. The people depended on this land in order to eat. Loosing it forced them to become paid labourers. And with so many people flooding the labour market its not hard to see that individually they didn't have a lot of bargaining power. Indeed their wages were so low that they spent their entire lives close to starvation while the rich land owners grew ever fatter. Indeed this had been the plan all along.

At the beginning of this period people had been forced into near-slave labour on the big farming estates. But with the coming of the industrial revolution they ended up leaving the land altogether and sought employment in the new factories, mills and mines. As the rich land owners were the ones with all the money, they were the ones to open the factories and they brought their bad attitudes with them. They weren't all bad of course but most of them just wanted to make as much money for themselves as possible and to hell with everybody else. That meant keeping production costs as low as possible and wages were considered to be just another production cost. It never occurred to them that their workers were an essential part of the business and deserved a fair proportion of the profit they were helping to create.

Indeed it would be better not to look upon wages as a production cost at all but rather, one of the ways that profit is distributed to the people who create the wealth, on an equal footing with shareholder dividends.

As it turned out, ownership of the means of production was not the only source of power. Another was collective action and so the trade unions were born. As mentioned earlier, the rich landowners held the political power so were able to pass laws to suite themselves. As a result, collective bargaining had been outlawed as far back as the 14th century with The Ordinance of Labourers (1349).  Some 400 years later the Combination Act (1799) banned trade unions and collective bargaining by British workers.

Arguably the first modern union was the The General Union of Trades (also known as the Philanthropic Society) which was founded in 1818 in Manchester. The factory owners / politicians were not happy about this so they passed the Combinations of Workmen Act (1825) to further prohibited trade unions from attempting to collectively bargain for better terms and conditions at work, and suppressed the right to strike.

There is no doubt that the unions were needed and did a good job in protecting worker rights. However, as is so often the nature of things, they themselves grew very powerful, some would argue too powerful.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This is also what had happened with Russian communism. Originally set up to empower the people, 'the people' soon became a term euphemistically used to mean 'the government'. The Russian Revolution had merely replaced one oppressor with another and that is not freedom.

In Britain, trade unions had begun to oppress, as well as empower their members. Closed Shops had been introduced forcing workers to join a union as a condition of gaining employment and strike ballots were far from fair or democratic. Votes were usually decided on a show of hands rather than a secret ballot. Even worse, workers who did not agree with a strike or with the aims of the union were branded ’scabs' and were subject to much persecution, often violent persecution. Workers who did not vote in accordance with the wishes of the union were often beaten up.

The right way to release the iron grip of the unions would have been to render them obsolete by enshrining worker rights in law, guaranteeing fair wages and safe working conditions. Instead the goernment tried to break them. Battle lines were drawn. Government intentions may have been good, to begin with, but ther methods most certainly were not and they went far too far.

Why can't people just get along? Why can't they share profits fairly, without being forced to, just because its the decent thing to do? I am sick of hearing captains of industry bleating on that they can't pay their workers more because it would make the business unprofitable. It never occurs to their blinkered minds that they can indeed pay their people more, without increasing their overall wage bill one penny, just by paying themselves proportionally less. Such a solution would not make the business unprofitable so why is it never mentioned? But successive Conservative governments didn't want a fair and equitable solution for all, they just wanted to hammer the unions.

Flying pickets or secondary pickets are groups of strikers who move from one workplace to another to picket there. Usually flying pickets are illegal - you can only join a picket line at your own workplace although trade union representatives can be on picket lines at different workplaces if they're responsible for organising workers in those workplaces. The practice of secondary picketing was banned in the 1970s while Ted Heath was Prime Minister.

The first ever national building industry strike was held in 1972. Working conditions on building sites were second only to coal mines for fatalities and serious injuries. Basic facilities which people took for granted in factories, offices and shops were scarce or non-existent. There were hardly any (or no) toilets, washbasins, or lockers, let alone canteens.

Ricky Tomlinson (born1939, former building worker, now an actor, comedian and activist), remarked 'McAlpines looked after their horses better than the workers on their sites'.

Fatal accidents were hardly a rarity.

Tomlinson was one of the shrewsbury 24, a group of 24 flying pickets who were arrested during the Builders Strike in September of 1972, while Ted Heath was still Prime Minster.

Five coach loads of pickets visited Shropshire to protest against poor working conditions in the building industry. Five months later on 14th February 1973, 24 of the pickets, including Ricky Tomlinson, were arrested and charged with over 200 offences. The charges related to picketing in the Shrewsbury area on 6th September 1972. They included charges of unlawful assembly, intimidation and affray. Six of the pickets were also charged with conspiracy to intimidate. None of the pickets had been cautioned or arrested during the strike.

There had been around 70 police officers shadowing the pickets at all times. No complaints were made to the unions or laid against the pickets at the time.

Several separate trials further and after several different convictions, the pickets always denied they were guilty of any of the charges which were levelled against them. For 40 years they have maintained that there was government interference in the prosecutions. The government just wanted to make examples of them.

Since its inception in 2006, the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign has subsequently sought for the complete release of all papers relating to the case and the arrests.

Successive governments have used Section 23 of the Freedom of Information Act (2000) to prevent the release of the papers that might shed light on any role the government of the day played in the prosecutions.

A pressure group, The Shrewsbury 24 Campaign, was formed to try to overturn the unjust prosecution of the 24 building workers.

Their main focus is an application to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to have these cases referred to the Court of Appeal and for these miscarriages of justice to be overturned. It was submitted on the 3rd April 2012.

The Paper Petition demanding that the Government release documents relating to the conviction of the men was served at Number 10 Downing Street on Monday 16th December 2013. The petition lead to a parliamentary debate which was held on 23rd January 2014. It was was won by 120 to 3.

Have you ever noticed the media bias in the way industrial deputes are reported? Even the left wing papers like The Mirror and The Guardian unconsciously follow this trend but Murdoch’s The Sun and The Times (and The New of the World in its day) are quite blatant. They write about the Steel Workers' Strike or the Miners' Strike, like its all one sided and the workers are to blame for bringing the country to a standstill.

Strikes do not happen in a vacume. They are not caused by the workers or by seniour management alone. Rather they are caused the the faliure of both sides to agree on certain matters. It would be fairer to refer to the Steel Industry Dispute or the Mining Industry Dispute.

Ok, they may often just be dissagreeing on what constitutes decent wages but they are just as likily to dissagree on vital matters of saftey. Since the earlist times, manual workers have been considered to be expendable. Working class lives don't matter.

We could reduce the income gap between business owners and their employees, without reducing incentives to start businesses or to rise within them, if we replaced Income Tax with a Differentials Tax.

Basic rate:           20%     on £ 0 to £ 31,785 above your Personal Allowance
Higher rate:          40%     on earnings between £ 31,786 to £ 150,000 above your Personal Allowance
Additional rate:     45%     on earnings over £ 150,000 above your Personal Allowance

Basic rate:           20%     on £ 0 to £ 31,785 above your Personal Allowance
Higher rate:          40%     on earnings between £ 31,786 to £ 150,000 above your Personal Allowance
Additional rate:     45%     on earnings over £ 150,000 above your Personal Allowance


I absolutely do not want to give the impression that politicians and the media are always working against the interests of ordinary people. Far from it. Many politicians, business people, journalists and editors, of all political persuasions, have a strong social conscience.  Indeed working conditions have been steadily improving, year after year, for a long time. The Labour Party and the trade unions have been working tirelessly for a fairer society. So have the other parties.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher LG, OM, PC, FRS (1925 - 2013) was a British stateswoman and politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and the leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. Politicians do like to have their scapegoats. For Margaret Thatcher, that meant the unions. She was the nemesis of the trade union movement. Indeed she managed to destroy the power of the trade unions for almost a generation. However she did bring in Enterprise Zones and an Enterprise Allowance which helped thousands of unemployed and redundant people to set up small businesses. In fact all the parties have done some good and done some harm.

The whole left, right and centre model of politics is flawed anyway. The right want a world in which ordinary people are powerless and dependant on the owners of the means of production. The left want a world where ordinary people are powerless and dependant on the government and the unions. The common denominator is people being powerless and dependant. Maybe its time for a complete rethink.

The left, right and centre model is further complicated by immigration. You would think the right wound support immigration because increased competition for jobs pushes down wages, You would think the left would oppose immigration for the exact same reason. However the opposite is often the case. Makes you think what really does motivate these people.

The usual argument put forward in support of immigration is that immigrants work hard and pay taxes. Statistics are produced to show that, on balance, immigrates pay more in taxes than they take in benefits. What this argument conveniently fails to mention is that if the immigrants weren't there, British people would be doing those self same jobs and paying that self same tax, and what is more, they would be off the dole so saving the country having to keep them in their idleness.

Short sighted leaders in industry, and in the private sector, often find it easier to import foreign workers than to train British people. This has been especially true in the National Health Service (NHS). That’s why we have far too many foreign doctors and nurses and why Brexit is causing a panic within the NHS. We will just have to stop pirating workers from other countries and start training more of our own people, and we will have to do it quickly.

But Theresa May's new government is doing the exact opposite. In July 2016, just before clearing off for their extended summer holidays, the government announced their intention to scrap NHS bursaries for university students by 2017.

The plan to scrap bursaries and replace them with loans would result in trainee nurses leaving university with over £ 50,000 worth of debt yet the starting salary for a newly trained NHS nurse is just £ 21,692 per year. Just when we should be encouraging more British people into the nursing profession, Theresa May is making it even harder for them. What on earth is she thinking?!?!

The whole idea of student loans in a nonsense. I was lucky. Back in my day we got free tuition, a maintenance grant and travelling expenses. My classmates and I left university with zero debt. The country is in a pickle. The only way out of a pickle is to think our way out. The only way to do that is to help our people become better educated, not make it harder for them.

In this book we draw attention to much that is wrong in the world and ways improvements could be made but its not all doom and gloom. Very far from it. So many things are better now than when I was growing up. Some things are worse but lots of things are better. Our standard of living is better for a start.

By way of illustration of how much worse conditions were in the past, and how far we have come, let me quote from a report that appeared in the New Statesman in October 2014. It was written by Harry Leslie Smith, an RAF veteran, now in his 90s, who was born into an impoverished mining family in the 1920s.

You can read the full article here - http://ww.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/10/hunger-filth-fear-and-death-remembering-life-nhs

Chapter Four - The Leveson Enquiry
and The Demise of the News of the World
by Jan Cutler

On 13th July 2011 then Prime Minister David Cameron appointed Lord Justice Leveson as Chairman of a public inquiry with a remit to look into the specific claims about phone hacking at the News of the World. The initial police inquiry and allegations of illicit payments to police by the press, and a second inquiry to review the general culture and ethics of the British media.

The News of the World had long been a dirty newspaper, especially since Murdoch took it over. Lies, double standards, sleaze and dirty tricks had been its stock in trade.

Then, starting in 2006, allegations of phone hacking began to engulf the paper. These culminated in the revelation on 4th July 2011 that, nearly a decade earlier, a private investigator hired by the newspaper had intercepted and deleted the voicemail of missing British teenager Milly Dowler, who was later found murdered. However, a Scotland Yard spokesperson admitted at the Leveson Inquiry that it had not been a private investigator who had deleted Dowler’s voicemail.

Due to the public backlash, the withdrawal of advertising and maybe my own revelations too, News International announced the closure of the News of the World on 7th July 2011.

The scandal deepened when the paper was alleged to have hacked into the phones of families of British service personnel killed in action. Senior figures on the newspaper were questioned by police. Former editor Andy Coulson and former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman were arrested on 8th July 2011.

The former executive editor Neil Wallis was arrested on 15th July and former editor Rebekah Brooks was arrested on 17th July.

In October 2016, former News of the World reporter Mazher Mahmood was imprisoned for 15 months after being found guilty of tampering with evidence in the collapsed drug trial of singer Tulisa Contostavlos. After a two-week Old Bailey trial the so-called 'Fake Sheik' and his driver Alan Smith, were found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice by changing a police statement. News UK was left facing more than 45 civil claims relating to Mahmood's stings.

Chapter Five - Who Are The Real Gangsters?
by Bobby Cummines OBE

I was a gangster, sure. I was one of the most dangerous men in England, but I turned my life around. I committed terrible crimes and I served my time. What gets me mad are all the villains who never get caught because their sins are not actually illegal. I am talking about the rich MPs and bankers whose atrocities are not illegal for the simple fact they they make the laws to suit themselves. Even when they do break the law they always seem to get away with it because they have connections.

That’s why I used to call Tony Blair 'Teflon Tone', nothing sticks to him. I told him that to his face once.

I am working on my second book and that’s about the prison service, what goes on in there, that’s my next book and it’s all about maximum security prisons, what really went on in there on, how people got murdered that sort of stuff. They used to cover it up, they wouldn’t even record it. People were vanishing from the prisons. Going away to psychiatric institutions like Broadmoor, coming back fried. If they couldn’t control them they sent them away. They come back as sick young guys, fit young guys come back fit guys who used the gym, slamming dominoes on the table. Oh he’s a subversive, they would vanish under the mental health act.

They don’t do it with electrodes now, they did me with electrodes, they electrocuted me because I was supposed to be a very violent offender.

I them days it was called aversion therapy. They electrocuted me but nowadays they don’t use that, because that was classed as torture. They had to close down the control unit. I was 19 when they done that to me and then what happened after that. They started using drugs like Largactil Tuinal and Nembutal so they ply you with that now instead of electrodes.

The prison officer who sat with me when they brought me back. cause they doped me up twice, they give me too much dope, when they done it you have a strobe light put in front of your face. They put wires on you then they give you it.

Anyway, they was worried I wasn’t going to make it. I will never forget he was a good prison officer, you get good and bad on both sides of the fence. He was a good prison officer and he sat with me all fucking night and I woke up about 3 o'clock the next night, 3am, thumping headache if you can imagine the worse migraine You’ve ever had and he went 'are you alright Bob?'

I went 'I don’t feel well'.

I was still drugged up and I had pounding headaches and that guy sat with me and I tell you what. He didn’t like what had been done, I think between you and me, he was a little bit of a whistle blower. I think he let the journalists know what was going on, because all of a sudden MPs started coming in and they shut down all the control units under the Torture Act.

The best friend I had, ever, who stood by me all the way through my bird, was my Buddhist monk. He used to visit me everywhere I went and Tony Benn, used to write to me regular. When I used to sit in parliament and Hilary was there, he used to go "I know Bobby you know my Dad."

Hilary Benn, Tony Benn was his Dad. Tony Benn was Lord Wedgewood Benn who gave up the lordship to be a Labour MP. He was the main one who stuck up for the miners in the miners' strike, so me and him used to write to each other regularly. That’s why it was iffy. Once I had him and I had the Duke of Devonshire writing to me. The screws got worried then because I had powerful people on my side. They couldn’t do what they used to do any more Those two gentlemen really saved my life. The screws could have topped me me and made it look like suicide, any time they liked.

I had a lot of respect for Tony Benn over the way he helped during the miners' strike. He always stood up for ordinary people. Tony heard what I had been through and he took a little bit of a shine to me.

One of the miners, a guy called Terry French , told Tony about me. Of course he is dead now, so is Tony. Somehow me and Tony just clicked. Tony said to me 'you know you’re really bright, why are you in prison?'

Tony never came to the prison but we used to write to each other regularly, like once a week, we would write to each other and then someone mentioned something to the Duke of Devonshire and they said you had better write to him Bobby he’s really interesting.

So I wrote to the Duke of Devonshire cause he knew Tony Benn, and I used to get letters from the Duke of Devonshire. That freaked out the prison authorities. Me getting letters from Tony Benn and the Duke of Devonshire .

David Mellor and Lord Belsted had labelled me one of the most dangerous men in British jails. There is David Mellor, the Minister of Justice at the time, and he got caught sucking Koo Stark’s toes. She was an high class playgirl. I doubt if she was a prostitute but she was moving round in high class circles having fun and games with all the pervies.

It embarrassed him when it all came out but then, all these people banging on about cracking down on crime, sanctimonious twats, just a bunch of perverts the lot of them.

Much later, when I was on the radio, I remember saying to an MP 'I think you are in the wrong business, you should be in garden centres instead of politics, you would make a fortune.'

He said 'how do you work that out?'

I said 'With what comes out of your mouth, you could grow beautiful roses'.

The people loved that and so they knew I could do the one shot when I was meeting politicians, cause the thing was when you are not telling lies and they are telling lies, they tell one lie they have to tell a thousand to cover that one, you stick to the truth they are done. The truth really does set you free.

Another time, on Radio 4, I done Jack straw over prison overcrowding. I knew Jack well in fact I quite liked Jack He said he was going to provide 10,000 more prison spaces. So I said to him 'Jack, let’s get this right, your stats not my stats, we know that every person in prison has committed at least three other offences. Is that correct? So let’s get this straight, what you are telling the British public is you’re quite willing to let 30,000 victims of crime suffer to fill your 10,000 places. One victim of crime is too much for me but 10,000 is all right for you',

That slaughtered him, done him, even the presenter of the show started laughing. When I walked out Jack went 'that was well below the belt Bobby'.

I went 'your stats not mine Jack, there’s this thing called honesty, you were trying do the politician shuffle, I don’t do that.'

When Murdoch had to testify to the House of Commons, how many of those MPs did he own? If he owns you and he gets the word to you through nefarious sources not to ask him certain questions, then you are not going to ask him those questions. How much power has that man got? Is he a godfather? I think he’s the biggest godfather you could ever meet, on both sides of the Atlantic,  but that’s just my opinion. If he can bring down governments he can do it here, he can do it in America, he can do it in Australia,  he can do it everywhere.
 
Murdoch doesn't own all the press of course. There are other people that run newspapers. They are like little mandarins. They are  like little gods themselves between them but put them together they make the American mafia, the Russian mafia, the Triads and all that look like mere gas meter bandits.
 
I'll tell you something, You’ve got to be careful cause  if you go against Rupert he’s got the dirt on MI5, MI6, C.I.A., he’s got the dirt on all of them. In other countries they put trouble makers in cells, as political prisoners, and that sort of thing. In this country they do it quite differently. They make sure you don’t get a job, or you don’t get credit, or you don’t get a mortgage. There are many ways to kill people. You can kill them with a bullet or you can kill with a phone call.
 
They control the media, they can make you look like a nutcase, they can make you look like whatever they want. When you have the police in your pocket and you have the politicians in your pocket and you own the media what the fuck have you got to worry about?
 
I fear no one, don’t worry about that, if he wants it I'll have it with him. He has fucked up people’s lives. I might not get my knighthood or my lordship out of it but I've already got an OBE. What else do I need?
 
I went to Charlie Richardson’s funeral. I read the eulogy. He was my best friend. I had certain MPs say to me 'Bobby if I was you I wouldn’t do that because he led a notorious South London torture gang. Going to his funeral could mess you up for your knighthood. You are going places'.

I replied that if I turned my back on a friend for a knighthood what sort of man would I be. 'Go and fuck yourself, I am doing it anyway'.

And I did. You've got to stand up for what's right in this world.
 
I look at it this way, II've got children, there’s people got children, these people have so much control. They control your children’s education, they control the laws and polices your children will be living with. No one should have that sort power, no one man should have that power. Murdoch is like a god.
 
Tony Benn had integrity, he had he was a brilliant guy.
 
B: That’s what they say right when Tony Benn give up the House of Lords over the miners' strike they shut him down. Everyone turned against him  cause they were all worried about having their noses in the trough. They were climbing up the political ladder. That’s why Rupert was able to control them.  They knew that if Murdoch brought out a scandal their careers would be finished.
 
They don’t give a shit about the working classes but they gave a shit about their own careers. We proved it, politicians' duck houses being installed at public expense. Sir Peter Viggers claimed £ 1,645 for a floating duck house, and Kitty Ussher was forced to resign as a Treasury minister after avoiding a £ 17,000 tax bill on the sale of her home. Fiddling bastards.
 
If a mother on a housing estate fiddled her housing benefits to buy her kid a pair of shoes, she would do six months in Holloway.
 
Politicians fiddled  thousands and its still going on. How many of them went to gaol? Three, Lord Taylor went to gaol and Jeffery Archer and Jonathan Aitken .

Aitken, a former cabinet minister, was jailed for 18 months after admitting perjury and perverting the course of justice.

Mr. Justice Scott Baker told him: "For nearly four years you wove a web of deceit in which you entangled yourself and from which there was no way out unless you were prepared to come clean and tell the truth. Unfortunately you were not."
 
He was so blatant. They are all same.  Aitken even tried to get his daughter to take the wrap for him.

These so-called honourable gentlemen are not that honourable. We looked after our own, they will throw their own kids to the wall to look after their political careers. Not the sort of people I'd like to have a drink with. I am particular about who I drink with.

There are gangsters everywhere, in politics, in the police, in the security services in terrorist organisation and among freedom fighters.

When the IRA were blowing up England we never said Catholic terrorists, we never labelled them by religion. They called themselves the Irish Republican Army, the IRA, not the Catholic Republican Army. But now Islamic terrorists want to be called the Islamic State so we talk about Islamic terrorists.

The Troubles in Ireland weren't really about religion. You had Protestants who were loyal to Britain and Catholics, the IRA, who wanted independence from Britain. You had the orange and the green. Is was about politics, not religion.

You had the loyalist lot out there, the Shankhill Road lot, cutting each other up, cutting the Catholics up with razors and killing them. The Shankill Butchers they called them. Then you had the IRA going and shooting people in front of their wives and kids.

All those people were let out of jail on the Good Friday Agreement and there was even Secret Service reports saying don't nick this guy, don't nick that guy, even though they knew they were terrorists or gangsters. There were gangsters for the government as well.

The British government and the American government have created the Islamic terrorist situation because we're going for the oil fields. We need an excuse to go into the Arab countries. We are not going in to liberate them, we are going in to conquer them and the only way we can justify that is by pretending it's a war on terror.

Now we have got a religious thing, you had it since day one. In the 12th century it was Saladin verses Richard the Lion Heart but that wouldn't have got any support so they sold it to the people as a holy crusade. Before that, Alfred the Great rallied his troops by saying they were fighting pagans. Had he admitted he wanted to rule over them and take their taxes instead of letting the Vikings do the same thing, they would have told him to piss off. Religion is a very good motivator.

Always ask yourself, who was involved? what are the politicians going to gain from this? What are the bankers going to gain from this? what are the arms manufacturers going to gain from this? Think to yourself what political story is unfolding that they want to divert your attention away from? And ask yourself which back bencher got promoted to the cabinet because of this?

What about bribery and corruption? The days of the brown envelopes may be over but there are still deals being done behind the scenes. How come G4S keep getting all these government contracts? Couldn't possibly be because Theresa May's husband is a major shareholder, could it? G4S crashed the Olympic Games and have been taken out of 140 Dutch jails. Even in South Africa they are getting rid of them. Yet Theresa May keeps giving them more contracts.

How do corporations bung a politician? I will tell you how. They find out all his relatives. ”We can't give you a bung but we will give your relatives a share of our company.”

That's how you do a kick back.

Chapter Six - What’s Really Happening in the Middle East?
by Jack Cox

Some conspiracy theorists will tell you that we have nothing to fear from Muslim extremists, that its just a storm in a teacup whipped up by the media and the politicians to scare us into giving them more power. In this chapter I intend to demonstrate that that point of view is only half correct.

Yes it has been whipped up by the media and the politicians. Yes they are trying to scare us. Yes they do want us to surrender more of our precious freedoms. However ISIS / Daesh, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram and other terrorist groups really do present a very real and present danger.

It is my contention that these very dangerous groups are the puppets of western arms traders and the politicians and media barons who are in bed with them.

In November 2015 former Lib Dem leader, Lord 'Paddy' Ashdown, told the BBC that British Conservative  politicians are  linked to the rich Arabs who fund the jihadists. He claimed that closeness was the reason ministers are reluctant to tackle the Gulf States. Lord Ashdown said 'rich businessmen' in Gulf countries are funding terror and nations like Saudi Arabia haven't been fighting hard against ISIS. Lord Ashdown went on to say that David Cameron (the then Prime Minister) must pressure Gulf states to play their part. Of course Downing Street refused to accept Ashdown’s suggestion and praised their strong relationships with the east.

Lord Ashdown said it was essential that any strategy for tackling Daesh in Syria addressed the role of the states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Although the two countries are nominally part of the military coalition against Daesh, Lord Ashdown said neither had been involved in military action for months although  funds were continuing to flow from the two countries to the extremists. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "I don’t say the governments have been doing it, but their rich businessmen certainly have."

He said that the Prime Minister’s strategy on Syria needed to include international pressure on the Gulf states to ensure they "play their part" in the coalition.

"One element of this which is pressure on the Gulf states to stop funding Sunni jihadism, and pressure on the Gulf states if we are going to send our aircraft in to make sure that theirs are present too, is a crucial part of this strategy," he said.

I am not, yet, in a position to name names but its becoming increasingly apparent that there is a deadly game being played that is making a few rich business people, media barons and politicians an awful lot richer and a lot of poor solders an awful lot deader.

Paddy Ashdown, as an ex SAS officer, feels for the brave soldiers sent to die and to kill, fired up by lies. I too took the queen’s shilling back in 1971 and was sent off to Northern Ireland to take pot shots at the IRA. I was armed with a 7.62mm high velocity rifle, a pouch full of ammunition and a head full of lies. I was told by my C.O. that the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland were squabbling, and killing innocent civilians, over whether the eucharist symbolically represented the blood and body of Christ or whether it literally, magically became the blood and body of Christ. Surely, I was told, such stupid fanatics needed to be stopped and it was our duty to stop them.

Many of the lads I served with actually believed that crap. Of course the conflict was a lot more complicated than that. It was about the Catholic descendants of the native population trying to claw back political and financial power from the Protestant descendants of the English invaders.

Religious wars are always far more complicated than they apper on the surface. People, especially uneducated poor people,  get very emotional about their religions. The ruling elete know this and play on it. 1200 years ago King Alfred of Wessex rallied the support of his people against the invading, viking Danes, not by saying 'we must fight the invaders to protect my crown' but rather 'we Christians must resist the advance of the Pagans'. He never mentioned the uncomfortable fact that just a hundred years previously, the Saxons had followed a very similar Pagan religion to that of the Danes. Indeed their chief god, Wodin, was just another name for the Danish chief god, Odin.

Alfred and his priests told so many lies about the Pagans that, evan after all this time, the word 'Pagan' induces fear and revution in the hearts of many brainwashed Christians. Of those who claim to stand for religious freedom, few want to extend that freedom to modern-day Pagans.

I know what lies I was told, and what lies the Saxons were told, but I can only guess at what our brave boys are being told now to make them kill and die in Afghanistan and in Syria. And I can only guess what lies the terrorists are being told. Must be huge great whopping lies to make them strap on suicide vests and blow their daft brains out. Yes they are extremely dangerous. Our boys are extremely dangerous too. Both sides are misguided because they have been lied to by wicked and greedy men and women. The ordinary fighters on both sides, the cannon fodder, victims, all victims of greedy, wicked liars.

And not just lies to give them reasons to kill but also lies to soften the tradgedy of their own deaths.

The newly Christanised Saxons were promised they would live on in a paradice called Heaven, the Danes were told they would feast in the halls of Valhala, and the Islamists are being told they will be given the use of 72 virgins (houris) when they get to their Heaven. What god would give other human beings as a reward is hard to imagine but these poor, uneducated, brainwashed people seem to believe it.

The whole process of radicalisation in a con trick. Take Anjem Choudary for instance. He preaches that Muslims are God’s chosen people and that 'infidels' (non-Muslims) owe Muslims a living. He preaches that its good for Muslims to move to Britain, refuse to work and claim Job Seekers' Allowance (JSA). Indeed, Choudary calls JSA 'Jihad Seekers Allowance'. He says we infidels work hard to pay the taxes that pay their benefits. So, according to Choudary, by living off the state, Muslims are treating infidels as slaves, which is the right and proper order of things.

How can any rational person possibly be taken in by such outrageous nonsense? Choudary is an educated man. Does he really believe the lunacy that comes out of his mouth or is he deliberately stoking the fires of unrest for some darker purpose?

How can we tell whether the liars believe their lies, whether the radicalisers really have been radicalised themselves? Or are they deliberately misleading their followers for some sinister reason? Clearly if you go far enough up the chain of command you come to the deliberate liars, the spreaders of misinformation, the warmongers and the arms dealers.

Of course Muslims have genuine grievances. Just take a look at their history. The West had taken a very cavalier approach to Middle East affairs during the colonial years and it was the West that caused the very creation of Daesh.

Even before Islam was invented, East and West had often clashed swords. The Persians invaded Europe in an attempt to conquer the Greeks in the fifth century B.C.E. The Greek, Alexander the Great, attempted to conquer all of Asia, as far as India, in the fourth century B.C.E. Both the Persians and the Greeks set up colonial empires in their occupied territories. The Romans established colonies in Mesopotamia, north-western Arabia, and Assyria in the second century C.E. Much blood was spilt and there was much suffering on both sides. Thus started a festering resentment of the West that still exists today.

The Avars from northern China and Mongolia besieged Constantinople in 626 C.E. Mohammed was working as a merchant in Arabia at the time. Indeed, the Avars, by this siege, were one of the many different forces that weakened the Byzantines to the extent that the Byzantine empire fell, relatively easily, to the Muslims.

In 624 Mohammed led a raid against a Meccan caravan, killing 70 Meccans, for mere material gain. Between 630 and the death of Mohammed in 632 C.E., Muslims, led personally by Mohammed, conquered the bulk of western Arabia and southern Palestine.

After Mohammed’s death the new Muslim caliph, Abu Bakr, launched Islam into almost 1,500 years of continual imperialist, colonialist, bloody conquest and subjugation of others through invasion and war, a role Islam continues to this very day.

Muslim imperial wars were waged against hundreds of nations, over millions of square miles. At the height of their power they controlled more land than British Empire ever did. They ranged from what is now southern France and Spain, to the Philippines, Austria, Nigeria, and New Guinea. This is the classic definition of imperialism -- "the policy and practice of seeking to dominate the economic and political affairs of weaker countries."

The Muslim Moors invaded the Iberia peninsular in 722.

The Muslim subjugation of Palestine began with the Battle of Yarmk in August 636. With the help of the local Jews, who welcomed the Muslims as liberators, the Muslims took all of Palestine but had not been able to capture Jerusalem.

In July 637, Muslims began a bloody siege of Jerusalem which lasted for five months. Jerusalem fell in February 638. Arabs did not sack the city, indeed no destruction was permitted.

For the next 100 years or so Jerusalem prospered under Muslim rule. Then, under the succeeding Abbasids, the city began to decline. By the first quarter of the 8th century the Arabian Empire was starting to break up and warlike revolutionary groups and extremist Muslim sects were taking advantage of the situation.

A new policy was introduced whereby all non-Muslims were obliged to convert to Islam and the language of the government became Arabic. As you can imagine, that did not go down too well with the Christians, Jews, Pagans and followers of other religions. Around 750 the Caliph destroyed the walls of Jerusalem, leaving it defenceless.

By the 11th century Christians and Jews, who were the majority in Jerusalem, were suffering greatly. The Muslims were ransacking the countryside and destroying Christian churches, building mosques on the top of Christian churches and attacking and robbing Christian pilgrims from Europe.

The Crusades were a series of military campaigns to try to expel the Muslims from Jerusalem. It is said that history is written by the victors but in reality, two opposing versions of events often arise. At school I was taught the version of history stated above. Muslim children are probably taught that The Crusades were an attempt by Europeans to invade their lands. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle.

The Fall of Constantinople occurred in 1453. The battle ended the Byzantine-Ottoman Wars (1265-1453).

The Byzantine Empire, sometimes referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire, was the continuation of the Roman Empire in the East during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The Roman state continued and Roman traditions were maintained. However modern historians distinguish Byzantium from ancient Rome insofar as it was centred on Constantinople, oriented towards Greek rather than Latin culture, and characterised by Greek Orthodox Christianity.

The Ottoman Empire, also known as the Turkish Empire, was founded in 1299 by Oghuz Turks under Osman I in north-western Anatolia. It was the one of the largest and longest lasting Empires in history. It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam, and Islamic institutions.

Following the fall of Constantinople, The Ottoman Empire replaced the Byzantine Empire as the major power in the Eastern Mediterranean. But the Muslims were not getting it all their own way. Europe was fighting back. The 'reconquest of Spain' began with The Battle of Covadonga (in what is now northern Spain) in 711. This was the first victory by a Christian military force in Iberia against the Moors. It ended in 1462 when the Moors were finally ousted from Gibraltar. The Spanish then ruled Gibraltar for 242 years until 1704 when it became British. At the time of writing, Gibraltar has been British for 312 years, 70 years longer than it was Spanish. Still the Spanish moan that they want it 'back', but I digress.

The Ottoman Empire held on in the Eastern Mediterranean until after the First World War. The Ottomans had sided with the Germans. The Ottoman Army had engaged in the Italo-Turkish War (1911), the Balkan Wars (1912-1913), and the continuous unrest caused by the Counter coup, which preceded the 1912 Ottoman coup d'etat (Saviours) and the 1913 Ottoman coup d'etat).

The Treaty of Sevres in 1920 gave them a nominal land holding and permitted them to use the title Ottoman Caliphate, provided they presented no further threat. However the terms of the treaty brewed hostility and nationalistic feeling amongst Turks.

The signatories of the treaty were stripped of their citizenship by the Grand National Assembly led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and the treaty ultimately led to the Turkish War of Independence, following which Atatürk and Turkish nationalists accepted a new treaty, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, which effectively brought into being the modern-day Republic of Turkey.

But the land borders were all messed up. They were no longer drawn along religious or ethnic lines. For instance, the Kurdish people no longer had their own state but were divided between Turkey and Syria.

Lawrence of Arabia found fame in the First World War. He gained an almost mythical status amongst the Arabs who called him ‘Al Auruns’. Thomas Edward Lawrence was born at Tremadoc in Wales in 1888. At Oxford University, Lawrence read History and gained a first class honours pass. While a student at Oxford, he travelled to the Levant where he visited Crusader castles. After gaining his degree, he joined an expedition by D. G. Hogarth to excavate Carchemish. He found that he had a natural affinity with the Arab people who he met. He learned their language and customs and spent time reading about their history. When war was declared, Lawrence joined the intelligence branch of the general staff. His knowledge of Arabic led to a posting to Egypt where he served in the ‘Arab Bureau’.

The British military campaign in the Middle East had got off to a shaky start. The British had easily repulsed a Turkish attack on the Suez Canal but their pursuit of the Turks across Sinai ground to a halt near Gaza.

In other areas in the region, the Turks had been more successful, especially in Aden. The Ottoman Empire, controlled by the Turks, had swallowed a great deal of the Middle East and led to much anti-Turk feeling among the Arab tribes.

In 1915 there was much unrest amongst the Arabs. There was talk of a uprising. The revolt, which was to begin the following year, was to be led by a Sunni Muslim, Hussein bin Ali, Sharif of Mecca. It was the aspiration of a disparate grope of tradespeople to throw off Turkish shackles and build a nation state for themselves.

The Turks had recently built a railway track east - west, from Constantinople to Bagdad. Lawrence had been working under Colonel Ronald Storrs (later to become Governor of Northern Rhodesia), gathering intelligence about the possible uprising.

In October of that year, the British sent Storrs and Lawrence to talk to Hussein bin Ali and his son, Amir Feisal. Lawrence believed in the revolt. He understood what it would mean to the Arabs as well as to British imperial interests. The Arabs knew that their only hope of independence was to wage war against the Turks while they were weakened fighting for Germany. They also knew only too well how ill equipped and supplied they were. They would need an ally to support an arm them. Britain was the obvious candidate but could we be trusted?

So he asked for a pledge that if they fought for Britain, we would guarantee their independence after the war. In 1915 opinion in the British government was that the revolt would be just a splash in the pan but could prove useful for a while. On that tongue in cheek basis they gave Hussein bin Ali their pledge. Lord Kitchener even arranged to drop leaflets on Arab territory pledging Arab independence if they helped us win the war against the Turks.

On the strength of that promise Sharif Hussein called his people to war and on June 5th, 1916, the Arab Uprising began. I think its fair to say that at this point Lawrence believed his government’s pledge. At that point, but not for long.

Feisal and Lawrence developed an immediate rapport Feisal’s men were keen fighters but lacked discipline. Lawrence realised they had little chance of winning while the Turks controlled the railway. He believed their best option lay in guerrilla warfare against the railway line.

They fought well capturing Mecca but the Arabs failed to take the main railway line. The Turks quickly sent trainloads of reinforcements as well as German planes and the revolt lost its impetus for a while. They needed modern weapons as well as tactical advice. Britain, on Laurence’s advice, sent, ammunition, food and cigarettes.

Lawrence, who had received training in explosives, helped them blow up the track. Soon afterwards they captured Medina.

In 1917 Lawrence and Feisal captured Aqaba after defeating a whole Turkish battalion. Feisal moved his headquarters to Aqaba and placed himself and his men under the command of General Allenby, British commander in Palestine. Allenby planned to use the growing Arab revolt against the Turks to his advantage. He provided the Arabs with guns, ammunition and gold. Small numbers of British, French and Indian troops were sent to Aqaba to support Feisal’s men. The Turkish Army contained a number of conscripted Arab units and Allenby hoped they would change sides in a demonstration of Arab unity. Many of them did.

The Turks were now in serious trouble. On December 9th, 1917, Allenby’s forces entered Jerusalem. Lawrence was with him. Both men got on with one another despite their different ranks. Allenby was quite happy for Lawrence to wear Arab dress which other British officers hated.

During January 1918, Lawrence led an attack on the Turks at Tafila in which a whole battalion was destroyed. By this time word had reached Laurence of the planned British double-cross although he said nothing to his Arab friends. In fairness let’s just say he had 'divided loyalties'.

The Arabs had entered the war on the British side, on the back of a British promise Lawrence knew in his heart would never be honoured. The word of the British was greatly respected at that time (note the past tense) and the Arabs believed they were told but Lawrence already knew the promise had been broken. The Sykes–Picot Agreement (1916) between Britain and France had already been concluded in order to to carve up the Middle East after the war. The negotiation of the treaty occurred between November 1915 and March 1916 and the agreement was signed on 16 May 1916 but was kept secret until November 1917. It was a huge betrayal in which Britain lost all honour.

Lawrence and the Arabs continued to push north. British troops also pushed north making for a two pronged attack on Jerusalem, and then Damascus.

The Turks fled Jerusalem in December 1917 in the face of the advancing British an allied armies led by British Commander-in-Chief Sir Edmund Allenb. Laurence hurried to join the victory celebrations.

We often think of the creation of Israel to be a World War 11 phenomenon but as far back as 1917 Jewish Zionists were lobbying the British parliament to help them regain their long lost homeland. On the 2nd November 1917, Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Walter Rothschild, one of the Jewish leaders, saying "His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country."

This declaration, although a right and proper reinstatement of Jewish rights, flew in the face of their pre-existing promise to the Arabs.

The Arabs believed they were fighting for their independence. Feisal believed that if the Arabs could successfully take Damascus they could claim their independence. Lawrence knew it would not be so straightforward but said nothing to disillusion him. The British government continued their pretence, even designing a flag for the new Arab nation. Whatever it took to keep them fighting on the British side.

It is generally agreed that the betrayal did not sit well with Lawrence, especially as he help bury his Arab friends and comrades, thousands of Arabs had fallen in battle, but his loyalty to his country came first.

In his book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom, Lawrence confesses the conflict of interests that tore him apart towards the end of the war. He loved the Arabs dearly but he loved his country too. "They had joined the war to win freedom, therefore for every reason, strategical, tactical, moral, we are going on" he wrote.

Having taken Jerusalem, the two armies now advanced north on Damascus, the Allies taking the western flank and Lawrence and the Arabs on the eastern flank. Lawrence knew that if the Allies arrived first the deception would be exposed but if the Arabs arrived first, took he city and were firmly entranced by the time the British arrived, that might have some negotiating power. It was a desperate strategy but it just could have worked.

The Turks fled as the liberating Arab army poured into the city. There was rejoicing and dancing in the streets. The people truly believed they had been liberated and that they were now free. The Arab flag, given to them by the British government, was hoisted over the City Hall. Emir Feisal was driven into the city as a conqueror. He had become a hero to his people. He had no idea he had been double-crossed by the British.

When the other allied leaders arrived in Damascus, talks were held. This was the first time Feisal heard about the Sykes–Picot Agreement and the double cross. Of course he lodged strong objections which led to the British using Lawrence as a scapegoat, blaming him for misrepresenting the British position. Feisal walked out in disgust and Lawrence was posted back to an England celebrating the end of the war.

Lawrence was summoned to address War Cabinet’s Eastern Committee where he presented his plan for the Arab region. He also launched a lobbying campaign in support of an Arab state in partnership with the Britain and France. He most probably believed that he himself had acted in good faith in helping to deceive the Arabs, even though he had known about the Sykes–Picot Agreement but had kept the knowledge to himself. He needed to save face and he did genuinely care about the plight of his Arab friends.

His letters, which were published in The Times, made waves in the government but not enough. He knew he was loosing the argument. He was to receive the Distinguished Service Order and the Companion in the Order of the Bath from King George. However, in order to make his point about the Arab double cross he refused the honours. This snub backfired on him and The Time began editing out the more controversial parts of his letters. British society was closing ranks against him.

Lawrence’s next move was to invite Feisal to London and introduce him to  Chaim Weizmann (later to become President of the World Zionist Organization). The meeting was friendly and showed much promise of an agreement but the British showed little interest.

In 1919 Lawrence accompanied the Arab delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference in France where Weizmann and Feisal signed the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement. It was a short-lived agreement for Arab–Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East but the French and British insisted upon an international administration.

Britain and France shamefully carved up the Middle East between themselves and a new map was drawn up. The Arabs were pushed south out of Syria which became French territory and the French even sent troops to eject Feisal from Damascus.

The Arabs were pushed west out of Mesopotamia and Persia which was taken by the British and the Jews were given Jerusalem and Palestine for their homeland.

After Versailles, Lawrence resigned from the army in protest. Basically we treated the Arabs in the same way our U.S. cousins treated the Native Americans, lies and broken promises. A ‘what’s an Indian / Arab anyway?’ attitude. Is it any wonder that so many Muslims consider Europeans to be without honour?

Is it any wonder that they hate us so much?

The Treaty of Versailles paved the way for a century or more of resentment which is still causing much bloodshed today.

Now this is all very true, as far as it goes. But let's remember that Sharif Hussein and Feisal were Sunni Muslims. Daesh are Sunni Muslims. If his revolt had succeeded, would it really have been a unified Arab nations for Sunnis and Shias alike, not to mention the Kurds and the non-Muslims living in the region? And what about provision for a Jewish homeland? I don't think so. Yes we Brits acted deplorably, no excuses, but did our government know something perhaps? Something about the way Sunni Muslims tend be with people of other faiths? Maybe they weren't like that then? I don’t know, I’m just asking the question.

Modern Zionism emerged in the late-19th century as Jews began buying up lands formaly controled by their ancestors. 

In November 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, announcing its intention to facilitate the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people."

Following the British capture of Ottoman territories during World War I, Jewish immigration to Israel increased, as did Arab–Jewish tensions.

In 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine which included, among other things, provisions calling for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, facilitating Jewish immigration and encouraging Jewish settlement on the land.

Palestinians and Israel were granted independence from Britain in 1948. This was marked by a further massive migration of Jews from both Europe and the Muslim countries to Israel. It also sparked a mass exodus of Arabs from Israel. About 42% of the world’s Jews live in Israel today, the largest Jewish community in the world.

Palestinians have never accepted the State of Israel or the return of the Jews to their ancestral homeland.

Just imagine how different Palestine - Israeli relations would be today had Britain and France not scuppered the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement. Just imagine how different relations would be between the Muslim world and the West had Laurence not conspired with the British and French governments to mislead Feisal. But we live in a world of lies and deceit, of corruption and double dealing, by governments, the media and multinational corporations. How can we ever know anything for certain when we live each day in a web of lies. If forced to choose an adjective to describe the human species it would be ‘deceitful’.

The Bible talks of the ”The Lord visits the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” or something like that. Those who view the Bible as a religious text probably think that means some unfair God punishing people for what their ancestors did but think about ”mistakes” and their consequences and it becomes a philosophical text. In Western - Middle Eastern affairs the mistakes made in the first two decades of the last century are still causing pain and bloodshed today. And when we stop making the same mistakes, when we stop lying to each other, cheating each other, trying to profit at each other’s expense, the suffering will still take generations to run out of steam. So the sooner we make a start the better.

There were a couple of very silly American movies made in the 80s, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are high school buddies starting a band. However, they are about to fail their history class. Silly the films may have been, in many ways, but they carried a revolutionary catch phrase, ”BE EXCELLENT TO EACH OTHER” Well maybe that’s the only way we will ever get ourselves out of this mess, by ceasing to lie and cheat each other and by being excellent to each other instead. Shall we give it a try?

Now I am absolutely not saying that we Brits must forever bow our heads in shame for what our ancestors did before we were even born. That attitude disgusts me. We are a proud nation and the way to rebuild our reputation is to act honourably today.

I am saying we have already done enough damage in the Middle East and we should now keep our runny noses out of Muslim affairs in their own lands. We had no business invading Iran, we had no business interfering in Afghanistan and in Libya and we have no business now messing around in Syria. We must leave them to sort out their own affairs because whenever we get involved we end up making things worse.

It is not our place to tell Muslims how to behave in their own countries just as it is not their place to tell us what to do, or not do, here. We don’t like them spreading their backward sharia law in the West and they don't like us spreading our democracy and human rights over there. We must both learn to respect each other’s ways. We are all different and its our differences that make us special.

We talk more about tolerance today than we have ever done but its Orwellian New Speak. The way we are taught to be tolerant is to not offend Muslims but that’s backward. Tolerant people are not easily offended. Tolerance is all of us doing our own different things and tolerating each other doing our own different things NOT walking around on eggshells trying not to offend each other. That’s just nonsense.

In a book this size I can't go into all the details of how the West have pissed off the Muslim world over the years. I have mentioned the crusades, I have mentioned the Treaty of Versailles (1919), then there was the Suez War fiasco (1956), the first Gulf War (August 1990 to February 1991 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.), the Russian invasion of Afghanistan (December 1979 to February 1989), the Allied campaign in Afghanistan (2001 - 2014) , the second Gulf War (Shock and Awe 2003–2011). Ok, lets pause there for a minute.

On the 20th March 2003 Iraq was invaded by a multi-national coalition force including troops from the US, the United Kingdom, Australia, Poland, South Korea, Italy, Georgia, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Spain, El Salvador, Romania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Moldova, Slovakia, Lithuania, Portugal, Thailand, New Zealand, the Philippines, Norway, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Honduras, Japan, Iceland, Nicaragua, Mongolia, and several more. After the overthrow of the legitimate Iraqi government, the multi-national coalition force was joined by Iraqi army and troops of the so-called 'Awakening Council'.

Initially the coalition force attacked the Republic of Iraq’s army. Once the government was overthrown, Ba'ath Party loyalist troops; Sunni insurgent groups such as Ansar al-Sunnah and the Islamic Army of Iraq; and Shia insurgent groups like the Asaib Ahl al-Haq and the Mahdi Army took over the defence. The cost in lives of this totally unnecessary and illegal war were huge, 24,219 Coalition troops killed and 117,961 wounded, an estimated 28,821 to 37,405 Iraqi combatants killed, and approximately 600,000 civilian deaths.

Why? Some commentators say this was the final campaign of the First Gulf War, and George W. Bush finishing what his father had started. Let’s also bear in mind that in 2001, the World Trade Center in America had been hit by aeroplanes in a massive terrorist attack generally blamed on Al-Qaeda and Bush wanted revenge.

The Bush Administration in America focused special attention on alleged ties between Saddam Hussein and Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who U.S. Secretary of State Powell called a "collaborator of Osama bin Laden." However, soon after the start of the war, evidence of the ties was discredited by multiple U.S. intelligence agencies including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Department’s Inspector General’s Office. A CIA report in early October 2004 "found no clear evidence of Iraq harbouring Abu Musab al-Zarqawi,"

The coalition claimed that the intent was to remove "a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harboured and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world." Additional reasons have been suggested such as "to change the Middle East so as to deny support for militant Islam by pressuring or transforming the nations and transnational systems that support it."

Al-Qaeda probably had stronger ties with Saudi Arabia and with Pakistan than they ever had with Iraq anyway and it was eventually proved that Iraq never did have any weapons of mass destruction. It was all lies.

George W. Bush had it in for Saddam Hussein for a different reason. George W believed, rightly or wrongly, that Hussein had ordered an assassination attempt on his father. There may have been other motivations too. Back then public opinion was that the coalition of nations were going to Iraq for its oil. Indeed, securing oil supplies into the future may well have had a lot to with it. Additionally there was talk of increasing the West’s sphere of influence or "sphere of democracy" as it was euphemisticaly called. You don't promote democracy by invading people.

There is evidence that American intelligence operatives had been using Hussein as their instrument for more than 40 years but he was becoming a lose cannon.

The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), originally known as the Baghdad Pact or the Middle East Treaty Organization (METO) was formed in 1955 by Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and the United Kingdom to oppose soviet Cold War interests in the region.

In July 1958, General Abd al-Karim Qasim led a coup which overthrew the Iraqi monarchy. The following yar he annoused his intention to withdraw Iraq from CENTO. Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union. It has been alleged that Saddam Hussein may have been part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad sent to assassinate Qasim. According to this source, Saddam Hussein was installed in an flat in al-Rashid Street, Baghdad, directly opposite Qasim’s office to observe his movements.

Adel Darwish, a Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon" said the move was done with the full knowledge of CIA and that Hussein’s handler was an Iraqi dentist working for the CIA and Egyptian intelligence.

The assassination was set for 7th October 1959, but failed misserably. One former CIA official said the 22-year-old Hussein lost his nerve and fired too soon. Apperently he killed Qasim’s driver and only wounding Qasim in the arm and shoulder.

Saddam Hussein escaped to Beirut where the CIA put him through a brief training course.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Ba'ath Party coup. Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer, claimed that the CIA was behind the coup which had been sanctioned by President John Kennedy.

The Ba'ath Party was hunting down Iraqi communists, a fact which interested the CIA greatly and Saddam Hussein was helped to become head of the Ba'ath Party’s intelligence service. Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, said the CIA enjoyed close ties with the Ba'ath Party at this time.

During the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, the CIA regularly sent Saddam Hussein battlefield intelligence.

Saddam Hussein fell out with American intelligence in 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait. Their ally had become a bitter enemy. In August of that year George Bush senior launched the first Gulf War and in 2003 the family feud continued with the second Gulf War.

Saddam Hussein was executed on Saturday 30th December 2006. He had been sentenced to death for crimes against humanity and for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shi'ites in the town of Dujail in 1982 AND in reality, for pissing off the Americans.

Hussein was gone but the resentment against the West was stronger than ever. The Jordanian Salafi jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his militant group Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, founded in 1999, achieved notoriety in the early stages of the Iraqi insurgency for their suicide attacks on Shia Islamic mosques, civilians, Iraqi government institutions and Italian soldiers of the invading multinational coalition who they thought of as "crusaders". Talk about being stuck in the past.

Al-Zarqawi’s group officially pledged allegiance to al-Qaeda in October 2004, changing its name to Tanzim Qaidat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn. In January 2006 they joined forces with several smaller Iraqi insurgent groups under an umbrella organisation called the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) and on 12th October 2006, the MSC united with three smaller groups and six Sunni Islamic tribes to form the "Mutayibeen Coalition". The State of Iraq (ISI) was declaired in 2006  claiming Baqubah as their capital city.

In late 2009, the commander of the American forces in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, stated that ISI "has transformed significantly in the last two years. What once was dominated by foreign individuals has now become more and more dominated by Iraqi citizens".

On 18th April 2010, the ISI’s two top leaders, Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, were killed in a joint US-Iraqi raid near Tikrit.

In a press conference General Odierno reported that 80% of the ISI’s top 42 leaders, including recruiters and financiers, had been killed or captured, with only eight remaining at large and hat they had been cut off from al-Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan.

On 16th May that year Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was appointed the new leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and several former Ba'athist military and intelligence officers, who had served during Saddam Hussein, were appointed to top positions.

In March 2011 protests began in Syria against the cruel government of Bashar al-Assad. Over the next few months, violence escalated on both sides. In August, al-Baghdadi saw an opportunity for expansion and began sending Syrian and Iraqi ISI members into Syria to establish a branch of ISI there.

The following month al-Baghdadi announced that the al-Nusra Front had been established, financed, and supported by the Islamic State of Iraq and that the two groups were merging under the name "Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham". In 2013 they started calling themselves Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and on 29th June 2014, they grandly proclaimed themselves to be a worldwide caliphate.

Obviously they are only a ’state' or a 'caliphate' within the privacy of their own deluded minds. Many prefer to call them 'Daesh'. This is an acronym of their Arabic name - Dawlat al-Islamiyah f'al-Iraq w Belaad al-Sham. It is similar to another Arabic word - 'das' - which means 'to trample down' or 'crush'.

'The Crushers' hate the name so much that they have threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who uses it in public.

So now we know where these idiots came from, what do they want?

As  I have claimed before, the majority of world leaders, in ploitics, the media and big business, all want the  same thing. They want more money and power over other people. What they tell their followers is another matter however.

So what is the official line? What does Daesh claim to want? The first thing is obvious, they want to overthrow Bashar al-Assad and to rule Syria in his place. But their ambitions, driven by their hatred of the West, go much further than that.

In August 2014 The brutal Sunni Muslim terrorist group, Daesh, announced its new five year plan to overrun several countries in the Middle East, Africa and even Europe.

In a map widely-shared by Daesh supporters on social networks, the Islamist group outlined a five-year plan for how they would like to expand their boundaries beyond the present Muslim world.