Mick Hall asks "What are these British values the likes of David Cameron and Hilary Benn talk up so proudly?" Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage. 

One of the most destructive outcomes of Blairism, it left little clear blue water between the policies of the two main political parties in the UK, the Tories and New Labour.

This was best demonstrated by the language used by the leading politicians of these two parties. The meaning of words like reform and modernisation were turned on their heads. Deficit reduction and British values dripped of their tongues and out into the wider mainstream media.

Obscuring the impact of the unpleasant consequences of neoliberalism was the name of the game. Genocide became ethnic cleansing, sacking someone letting him or her go. People pass away rather than die; CCTV cameras monitoring public and private spaces were for our comfort and safety, if you had nothing to hide you had nothing to fear; invading another peoples country while violating it's national sovereignty became humanitarian intervention; and the shell shock which the invading military suffered from evolved into battle fatigue before finally winding up as post-traumatic stress disorder, all the better to disguise the awkward fact that occupying other people lands and killing people in cold blood can do very bad things to a human being's mental health.

Any and all mainstream politicians who refused to accept neoliberalism as the common sense of the age where consigned to the outer ring of the Pale.

Little has changed amongst these neoliberal fanatics. We witnessed a recent example of this when MP's voted to extend airstrikes to Syria. Those who favored extending airstrike into Syria, led by David Cameron and Hilary Benn, despite having called ISIL Islamic State since it became a main player in parts of the middle east, in unison started calling this monstrous bunch of head choppers Daesh, an acronym for the Arabic phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham. (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)

Why would they suddenly do this, if not to show they are all on the same page? from that moment on the mainstream media also began using the Arabic terminology. Never mind this would be seen by ISIL as a victory, as Daesh is the word its own members use to describe their wretched organisation, as do their paymasters in the Persian Gulf states.

Both men also tried to justify entering the airspace of an independent UN member nation without first receiving an invitation by the Syrian government by citing upholding British values.

What are these British values we hear so much of these days? From where I sit they seem very thin on the ground. According to the mainstream media "patriotism and spirit of sacrifice" are one of the key British values along with a love of animals, good manners, putting the other man at his ease. I know this list is getting surreal, honour, respect, fairness and justice without prejudice featured next.

Perhaps 'spirit of sacrifice' was what the current Tory cabinet minister Oliver Letwin meant when in 1985 he told Margret Thatcher:  
lower-class unemployed white people had lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale.

Or more likely he is just another typical class prejudiced and racist bigot. What is abundantly clear, little have changed in the Tory psyche since Letwin gave his advice to Thatcher. In 2012 after the riots in north London the prime minister David Cameron declared:
Let’s be clear. These riots were not about race … These riots were not about government cuts … And these riots were not about poverty,... This was about behaviour. People showing indifference to right and wrong ...

Same old, same old.

British values?
What does the British government have to say about these 'esteemed values?' The government's own web site points out the fundamental British values of democracy are the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.
It goes on to recommend to UK state schools how they should teach British values: 

  • Enable students to develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-confidence.
  • Enable students to distinguish right from wrong and to respect the civil and criminal law of England.
  • Encourage students to accept responsibility for their behavior, show initiative, and to understand how they can contribute positively to the lives of those living and working in the locality of the school and to society more widely.

It's a bit rich for the British government to claim accepting responsibility for one's behavior as a British value, when not a single senior politician, military officer, intelligence officer or civil servant who engineered and supported the Iraq war and occupation took responsibility for their illegal and monstrous behavior and resigned. Indeed most of those who were responsible for the worst post WW2 foreign policy disaster have prospered and been promoted to the highest posts in the land. The best examples of this are David Cameron and Hilary Benn, who both supported the Iraq war and occupation yet went on to occupy senior government ministries.

After the 2008 banking crash and scandal one would have thought the bankers would have be lining up to do the right thing by upholding British values and resigned. But no. Within a couple of years it was back to business as usual, along with the million pound plus annual bonuses stuffed into off shore bank accounts. The government having bailed out the banks could have sacked the whole wretched bunch but no, this was one British value they wanted no part of. But I digress:

The governments advice to State schools continues:
Enable students to acquire a broad general knowledge of and respect for public institutions and services in England; further tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions by enabling students to acquire an appreciation of and respect for their own and other cultures; encourage respect for other people; and encourage respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic processes, including respect for the basis on which the law is made and applied in England.

At first glance this seems little more than the apple pie and mom toffee so favored by US politicians, but when you delve a little deeper we glance the gross hypocrisy which lurks within the heart of the British State. Indeed given the UK doesn't have a written constitution or a clear understanding of a constitution of any type, the following is down right dangerous as oppression lurks in the text.
An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens and is essential for their well being and safety.

That is fascistic; as it leaves the question open if one doesn’t have an appreciation of the ruling classes so called rule of law, does that leave them beyond the rule of law?

An understanding that there is a separation of power between the executive and the judiciary, and that while some public bodies such as the police and the army can be held to account through Parliament, others such as the courts maintain independence. This is so far beyond the actual reality it beggars belief. One would have to be brain dead to believe the police or military are accountable to parliament, if so how?

Did the family of Jean Charles de Menezes feel the police were accountable when they shot Jean dead on his way to work? Did the families of the British army's victims on Bloody Sunday get justice when the lives of their loved ones were stolen in plain sight - did any of the perpetrators of this crime end up in a court of law? Where was the rule of law when coal miners who were defending there jobs and communities by expressing their democratic right to strike, were arrested en mass and hauled up before the courts after police officers from the South Yorkshire constabulary fitted them up? These are just three of the most prominent miscarriages of justice, there are countless others I could name.

As to the Judiciary being independent of the State that lie has worn that thin. 
Increasingly victims of injustice refuse to take part in public inquiries if headed by an English judge, having witnessed time and again how in previous public inquiries they have always favored the State and its institutions. How could it be otherwise when well over 75% of senior judges come from a minority class? Say what you will about the English ruling class but one thing they never do is rain on their own parade.

A single Religion runs through every orifice of British State.
An understanding that the freedom to choose and hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law.

an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should be accepted and tolerated, and should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour; and an understanding of the importance of identifying and combating discrimination.

This 'common value' is so uncommon it is deserves a gale of laughter and a rage of abuse. Far from the State combating religious discrimination it has actively set it in stone. The head of the British state must also be the head of the Church of England, a bastard child of the Roman Catholic faith. Just how deep the deceit has sunk its putrid claws within the British establishment the English church lies about itself without an ounce of shame by claiming it was first establishment in the 6th century.

When the whole world knows the Church Of England came into being when Henry VIII was eying the great wealth of the Church of Rome and angry with the Pope's refusal to secure him an annulment from his wife Catherine of Aragon, sacked the Catholic churches and monasteries in the 1530s and stole its wealth and then created a religious sect of his own.

A practicing Catholic Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, etc, and non believers are all discriminated against and excluded from what is regarded as the top job in the land. Not only that, 26 bishops of the Church of England have the right to sit in the unelected parliamentary chamber the House of Lords. The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, and the Anglican churches in Wales, the North of Ireland are all denied this right. In other words they're discriminated against by the State.

What you actually have in the UK today is an unrepresentative mockney democracy in which a single minority class have common values and these values are based on greed, avarice, violence and low cunning. They've been practicing these 'values' for centuries at the expense of their own peoples and their victims overseas. It's time we all said enough!

Harewood House built between 1759 and 1771 for plantation owner and slaver Edwin Lascelles,1st Baron Harewood whose family married into royalty in 1922 and still live there.


It is not a quirk of history that David Cameron's family wealth was first built up by the slave trade, lift the duvet of most of the English ruling class and you will whiff the stench of oppression and death. If you pick out almost any of the so called great houses of the UK they were all built on the blood and sweat of slaves, theft, usury, sexual exploitation of female family members, exploited workers, and Rachman type renters.

Downton Abbey they're not, rogues and villains every one.

Cameron & Benn ProudllyTalking Up British Values

Mick Hall asks "What are these British values the likes of David Cameron and Hilary Benn talk up so proudly?" Mick Hall is a Marxist blogger @ Organized Rage. 

One of the most destructive outcomes of Blairism, it left little clear blue water between the policies of the two main political parties in the UK, the Tories and New Labour.

This was best demonstrated by the language used by the leading politicians of these two parties. The meaning of words like reform and modernisation were turned on their heads. Deficit reduction and British values dripped of their tongues and out into the wider mainstream media.

Obscuring the impact of the unpleasant consequences of neoliberalism was the name of the game. Genocide became ethnic cleansing, sacking someone letting him or her go. People pass away rather than die; CCTV cameras monitoring public and private spaces were for our comfort and safety, if you had nothing to hide you had nothing to fear; invading another peoples country while violating it's national sovereignty became humanitarian intervention; and the shell shock which the invading military suffered from evolved into battle fatigue before finally winding up as post-traumatic stress disorder, all the better to disguise the awkward fact that occupying other people lands and killing people in cold blood can do very bad things to a human being's mental health.

Any and all mainstream politicians who refused to accept neoliberalism as the common sense of the age where consigned to the outer ring of the Pale.

Little has changed amongst these neoliberal fanatics. We witnessed a recent example of this when MP's voted to extend airstrikes to Syria. Those who favored extending airstrike into Syria, led by David Cameron and Hilary Benn, despite having called ISIL Islamic State since it became a main player in parts of the middle east, in unison started calling this monstrous bunch of head choppers Daesh, an acronym for the Arabic phrase al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham. (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant)

Why would they suddenly do this, if not to show they are all on the same page? from that moment on the mainstream media also began using the Arabic terminology. Never mind this would be seen by ISIL as a victory, as Daesh is the word its own members use to describe their wretched organisation, as do their paymasters in the Persian Gulf states.

Both men also tried to justify entering the airspace of an independent UN member nation without first receiving an invitation by the Syrian government by citing upholding British values.

What are these British values we hear so much of these days? From where I sit they seem very thin on the ground. According to the mainstream media "patriotism and spirit of sacrifice" are one of the key British values along with a love of animals, good manners, putting the other man at his ease. I know this list is getting surreal, honour, respect, fairness and justice without prejudice featured next.

Perhaps 'spirit of sacrifice' was what the current Tory cabinet minister Oliver Letwin meant when in 1985 he told Margret Thatcher:  
lower-class unemployed white people had lived for years in appalling slums without a breakdown of public order on anything like the present scale.

Or more likely he is just another typical class prejudiced and racist bigot. What is abundantly clear, little have changed in the Tory psyche since Letwin gave his advice to Thatcher. In 2012 after the riots in north London the prime minister David Cameron declared:
Let’s be clear. These riots were not about race … These riots were not about government cuts … And these riots were not about poverty,... This was about behaviour. People showing indifference to right and wrong ...

Same old, same old.

British values?
What does the British government have to say about these 'esteemed values?' The government's own web site points out the fundamental British values of democracy are the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs.
It goes on to recommend to UK state schools how they should teach British values: 

  • Enable students to develop their self-knowledge, self-esteem and self-confidence.
  • Enable students to distinguish right from wrong and to respect the civil and criminal law of England.
  • Encourage students to accept responsibility for their behavior, show initiative, and to understand how they can contribute positively to the lives of those living and working in the locality of the school and to society more widely.

It's a bit rich for the British government to claim accepting responsibility for one's behavior as a British value, when not a single senior politician, military officer, intelligence officer or civil servant who engineered and supported the Iraq war and occupation took responsibility for their illegal and monstrous behavior and resigned. Indeed most of those who were responsible for the worst post WW2 foreign policy disaster have prospered and been promoted to the highest posts in the land. The best examples of this are David Cameron and Hilary Benn, who both supported the Iraq war and occupation yet went on to occupy senior government ministries.

After the 2008 banking crash and scandal one would have thought the bankers would have be lining up to do the right thing by upholding British values and resigned. But no. Within a couple of years it was back to business as usual, along with the million pound plus annual bonuses stuffed into off shore bank accounts. The government having bailed out the banks could have sacked the whole wretched bunch but no, this was one British value they wanted no part of. But I digress:

The governments advice to State schools continues:
Enable students to acquire a broad general knowledge of and respect for public institutions and services in England; further tolerance and harmony between different cultural traditions by enabling students to acquire an appreciation of and respect for their own and other cultures; encourage respect for other people; and encourage respect for democracy and support for participation in the democratic processes, including respect for the basis on which the law is made and applied in England.

At first glance this seems little more than the apple pie and mom toffee so favored by US politicians, but when you delve a little deeper we glance the gross hypocrisy which lurks within the heart of the British State. Indeed given the UK doesn't have a written constitution or a clear understanding of a constitution of any type, the following is down right dangerous as oppression lurks in the text.
An appreciation that living under the rule of law protects individual citizens and is essential for their well being and safety.

That is fascistic; as it leaves the question open if one doesn’t have an appreciation of the ruling classes so called rule of law, does that leave them beyond the rule of law?

An understanding that there is a separation of power between the executive and the judiciary, and that while some public bodies such as the police and the army can be held to account through Parliament, others such as the courts maintain independence. This is so far beyond the actual reality it beggars belief. One would have to be brain dead to believe the police or military are accountable to parliament, if so how?

Did the family of Jean Charles de Menezes feel the police were accountable when they shot Jean dead on his way to work? Did the families of the British army's victims on Bloody Sunday get justice when the lives of their loved ones were stolen in plain sight - did any of the perpetrators of this crime end up in a court of law? Where was the rule of law when coal miners who were defending there jobs and communities by expressing their democratic right to strike, were arrested en mass and hauled up before the courts after police officers from the South Yorkshire constabulary fitted them up? These are just three of the most prominent miscarriages of justice, there are countless others I could name.

As to the Judiciary being independent of the State that lie has worn that thin. 
Increasingly victims of injustice refuse to take part in public inquiries if headed by an English judge, having witnessed time and again how in previous public inquiries they have always favored the State and its institutions. How could it be otherwise when well over 75% of senior judges come from a minority class? Say what you will about the English ruling class but one thing they never do is rain on their own parade.

A single Religion runs through every orifice of British State.
An understanding that the freedom to choose and hold other faiths and beliefs is protected in law.

an acceptance that other people having different faiths or beliefs to oneself (or having none) should be accepted and tolerated, and should not be the cause of prejudicial or discriminatory behaviour; and an understanding of the importance of identifying and combating discrimination.

This 'common value' is so uncommon it is deserves a gale of laughter and a rage of abuse. Far from the State combating religious discrimination it has actively set it in stone. The head of the British state must also be the head of the Church of England, a bastard child of the Roman Catholic faith. Just how deep the deceit has sunk its putrid claws within the British establishment the English church lies about itself without an ounce of shame by claiming it was first establishment in the 6th century.

When the whole world knows the Church Of England came into being when Henry VIII was eying the great wealth of the Church of Rome and angry with the Pope's refusal to secure him an annulment from his wife Catherine of Aragon, sacked the Catholic churches and monasteries in the 1530s and stole its wealth and then created a religious sect of his own.

A practicing Catholic Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, etc, and non believers are all discriminated against and excluded from what is regarded as the top job in the land. Not only that, 26 bishops of the Church of England have the right to sit in the unelected parliamentary chamber the House of Lords. The Church of Scotland, which is Presbyterian, and the Anglican churches in Wales, the North of Ireland are all denied this right. In other words they're discriminated against by the State.

What you actually have in the UK today is an unrepresentative mockney democracy in which a single minority class have common values and these values are based on greed, avarice, violence and low cunning. They've been practicing these 'values' for centuries at the expense of their own peoples and their victims overseas. It's time we all said enough!

Harewood House built between 1759 and 1771 for plantation owner and slaver Edwin Lascelles,1st Baron Harewood whose family married into royalty in 1922 and still live there.


It is not a quirk of history that David Cameron's family wealth was first built up by the slave trade, lift the duvet of most of the English ruling class and you will whiff the stench of oppression and death. If you pick out almost any of the so called great houses of the UK they were all built on the blood and sweat of slaves, theft, usury, sexual exploitation of female family members, exploited workers, and Rachman type renters.

Downton Abbey they're not, rogues and villains every one.

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