Declassified UK, September 2024

Hi everyone, Mark Curtis here. I hope you are all bearing up.

 

This month, one of our journalists, John McEvoy, was banned from attending the Labour party conference in Liverpool. The move drew condemnation from the National Union of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders.

 

At the same time, the British government appears to be cracking downon free speech, at least when it comes to Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza, as we documented this month.

 

These are worrying signs. There does indeed need to be a crackdown – but on those ministers complicit in war crimes and violations of international law. Britain’s new government admits that Israel could use UK weapons for war crimes in Gaza. So we ask – will their Conservative predecessors be investigated for complicity in supplying those weapons?

This month, we also showed how the Israeli government waged a decade-long campaign to protect its officials from criminal proceedings in Britain. And how the Israel lobby in Britain got Lebanon’s Hezbollah banned. And how Britain’s military could be receiving intelligence from Israel that was obtained under torture. And how arms destined for Israel have been secretly flown through Britain’s airspace.

 

This is the kind of journalism that can get you banned from a ruling party conference.

But we haven’t only been focusing on the Middle East crisis. Independent journalist Adam Ramsay’s first article for us looked at the members of the House of Lords whose forebears had financial ties to transatlantic slavery.

 

Richard Norton-Taylor wrote about how Labour has reinforced the “special relationship” with Washington by agreeing to make Britain’s nuclear arsenal permanently dependent on the US. In a little-noticed move (most important moves in UK foreign policy are little-noticed in the media that we endure), Labour amended a long-standing military agreement that is crucial to Britain’s Trident nuclear missile system. Officials deleted a long-standing sunset clause that required it be renewed every ten years.

This month, I wrote a long-read on Ukraine, showing how both Conservative and Labour governments seem intent on prolonging the war rather than seeking peace. There are good reasons for this – the British establishment actually has major interests in wars, and it is happy to continue a proxy one against Russia, its key rival for influence in Europe.

I also wrote about how Whitehall media planners and mainstream journalists connive with each other during wars, as shown by the declassified files during the 1991 Gulf war. It’s not difficult to see the continuation of this over Gaza and Ukraine.

We’re trying to reveal what British policy-makers are really doing, surrounded by a national media largely covering this up. Although we’re growing, we’re tiny, with five staff trying to cover all the bases. The revenues of the Guardian are 1,147 times greater than ours.

But we know that many people feel the same as we do about the need to reveal what our government is really doing. And that’s why the numbers of people reading our articles, subscribing to this newsletter and supporting us with regular donations, are all growing – fast. If you’re not already, please become one of them. Together, we will change things.

Thank you for subscribing.

Mark Curtis