Pogróm is a word with Yiddish origin, and is a Russian word meaning “to wreak havoc, to demolish violently, to destroy, or to devastate a town”.

but then later in the article uses the commonly accepted meaning of the term:

Pogróm originally meant attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire. The first was anti-Jewish rioting in Odessa in 1821. The term “pogrom” gained common use with anti-Jewish riots across the Ukraine and southern Russia between 1881 and 1884,

and proceeds to outline in graphic detail what pogroms actually were. He then goes on to associate the Russian pogroms with the actions of Eric Pickles, the local government ‘tsar’ (sic!), against the Dale Farm Travellers. You don’t have to carry a torch for the execrable Pickles to see that associating him with violent anti-Semitic genocide (not a word the RCP/LM would use, mind, for ideological reasons) is way over the top. For all the seeming disclaimers, that’s what Abley does, but of course being RCP/LM and imbued with its virulent hatred of environmentalists he also tars them with the same brush in the article:

So Pickles is now going deeper into the green prejudice that people are sprawling over the countryside, and need to be contained. At Dale Farm he is tapping into the prejudice amongst environmentalists that large families are a problem. Many Gypsies and Travellers like to have large families, and look after each other, but their sociable culture is evidently at odds with the anti-human idea amongst greens that population growth is threatening the planet.

The word “evidently” is, of course, used without any evidence at all of environmentalists backing Pickles’ anti-Traveller campaign, being ‘backed up’ solely by the RCP’s standard anti-Green prejudice:

The anti-human prejudice is common to environmentalists,

That Greens and all sorts of Left and radical groups (for instance, the redoubtable anarchists at Schnews, and the ubiquitous Socialist Workers Party) are actively campaigning against Pickles’ plans in solidarity with the Travellers gets no mention in Abley’s rant, which also fits in with the standard RCP modus operandus which is never to ally with other groups in the same cause.

The article is illustrative of the pugnacious anti-environmentalist tone of the whole of the Audacity ‘campaign’, and is unsurprising given the prominence of the old RCP hands James Heartfield (the ‘intellectual’ in the sect going back to the earliest RCP days) and James Woudhuysen in the people behind Audacity. Indeed, the home page of the website is unequivocably anti-environmentalist.

The front has recently set up the “250 New Towns Club” initiative, and has emailed subscribers to the Institute of Ideas mailing list inviting them to join it, and to back the campaign for the High-Speed Rail link (HSR). It implicitly claims the backing of established organisations such as Shelter and the National Housing Federation for the “Club”. If these organisations are truly involved, rather than their logos simply being used as decoration, they’d do well to look closely at the background of Audacity and its personnel before committing themselves to a sect front.

The article gives a good insight into how the RCP/LM manages its ‘offshoots’, and to why the MM eventually bit the dust. The poster is not unsympathetic to the Institute of Ideas:

Something which can be said of the new generation of recruits clustered around the Institute of Ideas is that they are on the whole more personable and open minded than the old RCP stalwarts. Indeed, the clique that originally banded together to form the majority of Modern Movement’s members were drawn to do so on the basis of their dissatisfaction with the present line of the continuity RCP’s leading lights—Frank Furedi, Claire Fox, etc.—and a desire for a space to stake out their own unique positions on the new issues thrown up by the 2008/09 financial crisis.

Although he does see the RCP as “a group straddling the fine line between a committed cadre and a middle class cult”, you get the feeling that he supports their general attitude. However, it appears that for all the RCP/LM’s trumpeting of “intellectual ambition and curiosity” and “open and robust debate” [2], intellectually speaking they operate on a pretty basic level, and in MM actively sought to lower the level of intellectual debate and suppress dissent. Not long after MM’s formation, according to the poster, it split between a “left” faction which was anti-capitalist and supportive of airline workers, and the dominant “right” faction led by the RCP/LM personalities:

In the short space of a month or two a left and a right faction of MM started to appear. Broadly speaking the rightwing leadership clique were closest to the IoI, most reverent for the traditions of the RCP, dismissive of democracy, and pro-capitalist. Conversely, the leftwing faction were more insistent on marking a break from the old formulas of the RCP, operating in a democratic fashion and taking an openly anti-capitalist line.

This split eventually brought about the movement’s dissolution:

Members of the right started to flake away, leaving the rightist leadership clique increasingly isolated. And then, suddenly, they just quit. With the scales having tilted decidedly in favour of the left the democratic decision to take an anti-capitalist message to the G20 was too much for the leadership to stomach.

The impression given fits in with other anecdotal reports of groups and events organised by the RCP/LM: that the sect tightly controls debate, is undemocratic, and is controlled by a cabal of senior figures going back to the RCP days. “Open debate” is not a feature of RCP/LM groups and events, for all Claire “Her Master’s Voice” Fox’s combative rhetoric on the Moral Maze and Question Time.

The closing paragraph of the post is telling and damning:

And so in a microcosm there you have a demonstration of the kind of shenanigans favoured by the post RCP. Secrecy, an aggressive ‘Leninism’ based on no respect for democracy, a tight control over ‘the message’, often at odds with the real aims. It could be added that the IoI itself reflects all these tendencies. Essentially a fringe political party in all but name, but lacking even the faintest trace of internal democracy, debate over fundamental principles or tolerance of dissent from Frank Furedi’s ideology. Evasiveness over core ideology is even promoted amongst new recruits; and as such, for all the endless show debates put on by the organization, there is next to no theoretical exposition or discussion of their central beliefs. The ‘line’ spread both inside and outside is that there is ‘no line’ and, as O’Brien tells Winston in Orwell’s 1984, 2 + 2 does equal 5.

[1] “Inside Modern Movement: the anatomy of the continuity Revolutionary Communist Party“, Necessary Agitation, 4/8/10

[2] Institute of Ideas website home page, accessed 6/8/10

In an article “Why we were right to fight”, Mick Hume (now earning a decent buck in the Murdoch Press) is unapologetic about publishing the mendacious article by Thomas Deichmann which claimed that photos of the Serb concentration camp at Trnopolje, Bosnia, were faked.

It’s worth noting that Vulliamy, unlike any of the the RCP/LM mob or Deichmann himself, was actually at the concentration camp and was there when the photos were taken, so he not unsurprisingly got a serious hump about being called a brazen liar and faker, which allegations if proven would have killed his journalistic career stone dead. Another nail in LM’s court defence was that it spurned the chance to cross-examine a doctor who’d actually been imprisoned in that very camp, so could argue very forcefully indeed that it existed [2]. That would have been an encounter worth seeing, the sect’s lawyer telling the ex-inmate that the camp was a figment of his imagination, but even the RCP/LM has limits to its chutzpah.

Of course you’d not expect Hume to be otherwise, and indeed the trial was the making of the sect as a champion of free speech and gained them an enormous amount of publicity in the liberal Press and amongst the chattering classes, which did them the power of good. [2]

“Unconditional support”

Hume does, however, come out with a brazen lie in his apologia:

“LM took no side in the bloody and destructive Yugoslav civil war, apart from siding against Western intervention that we saw could only make matters worse.”

This is completely untrue, and he surely knows it. Whilst LM magazine may not have explicity supported Serb forces, the RCP/LM most definitely did as a matter of Leninist doctrine. As noted in comments to previous blog entries, tireless RCP activists on Usenet regularly called for “unconditional” support for Serbia against the West, based on Leninist ideology. One of the RCP’s gruesome twosome, the bruiser Justin Flude posting as “Big Mac”[3], wrote:

Poster: Big Mac <whop…@speed.com>
Newsgroup(s): alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
Date: June 15 1998
Thread:  Nationalism:Its significance.

: Lenin understood that imperialism necessarily involves the political oppression of
:backward capitalist countries.  Therefore the struggle of the people in those countries
:against imperialism was anti-capitalist and demanded the unconditional support of
:revolutionaries.

Or again, in the same thread:

:>Why, because you participate mystically in the guilt of your bourgeois
: >government?!  Get over it, and start thinking straight.  Being critical does
: >not mean “sitting on the fence,” LM Assholes!
:
: Do you back Serbia unconditionally against the West or not?  Yes or no?

Or again, on the Srebrenica massacre:

:Which graves?  Where are they?  Why, despite all the claims of
:massacres in Srebrenica, has nobody been able to find the bodies?  Why
:do witnesses that claim to have seen the massacres give contradictory
:accounts?  Why did the Dutch troops based in the town testify that they
:saw no massacres?  Why did two successive UN reports not find any
:evidence to support the claims?  Why have the army of Western
:journalists that have reported from the region not been able find any
:evidence either?
:
:Because it never happened.

[4]

Gary Dale, the other member of the twosome, was equally as robust:

Poster: Gary Dale <gd@ee.ed.ac.uk>
Newsgroup(s): alt.politics.socialism.trotsky
Date: Nov 13 1998
Thread: Re: Nationalism:Its significance.

They were adding to the chauvinism, propaganda and demonisation that justified the presence of the West.  The character of Milosevic regime is utterly irrelevant: the issue is that the West and your government has no RIGHT to be there.  And you have no MORAL right to whine about what the Serbian government was and was not doing. Also, when push comes to shove, those who oppose oppression MUST support military victory for Serbia against foreign intervention.

More quotes abound, but you get the picture. Flude’s last quote shows the logical consequence of “unconditional support” for a regime – you have to rubbish any story critical of it, and play up any story supportive of it. So the RCP/LM regularly trashed, on Usenet and in print, stories of atrocities by Serb forces, whilst reporting uncritically stories of Croatian and Bosniak crimes [5].

But because LM was sued for libel, rather than having its claims exposed as lies resulting from their “unconditional support” of the murderous Milosevic and Karadzic regimes, it was able to turn the agenda away from their support of genocidists to Press freedom, and to pose as champions of free speech, a banner the sect continues to hold proudly to this day. Instead of being exposed as apologists for war criminals, Uncle Frank and his boys and girls came out smelling of libertarian roses, and never looked back. Truly, the libel trial was the best thing to happen to the sect, turning it from an irritation into the England-wide media phenomenon it is today.

So thanks a bundle, ITN, for throwing petrol on the smouldering embers of what was becoming a moribund sect.

[1] “Why we were right to fight“, Spiked Online, 18/3/2010

[2] Apart from being morally wrong to stifle free speech, even when it was a blatant lie, ITN and Vulliamy really shot themselves in the foot with their action. If not for the court case, the chances are that the sect wouldn’t be 1000th as influential as it is nowadays. The suit was a major strategic blunder. For background on the case, see the  Wikipedia article on the ITN v LM libel suit.

[3] One of his many aliases, but he was plainly identifiable by writing style and, more importantly, posting IP address which was always his work PC.

[4] These quotes are summarised in the thread “ITN launches libel action against LM” which appeared on the newsgroup alt.politics.socialism.trotsky on March 2, 2000.

[5] Such as the mass explulsion of ethnic Serbs from Croatia after the defeat of Serb forces.

Hayes is unfamiliar to RCP Watch, and we did wonder if he was a new convert to the cause but he looks a bit too old and wizened for the sect which prefers bright young things like Ben Pile and James Panton. Wrinkly recruits aren’t worth investing effort into as they’ll soon retire and/or die off. However, it turns out, from the credits of one of Hayes’ many articles for Spiked [1], that he was once “head of the centre for professional education at Canterbury Christchurch University”, which reveals the connection as The Dear Leader, Uncle Frank Furedi, is of course Professor at the University of Kent at Canterbury, so they’d have been old muckers.A bit of a comedown for Hayes to go from a 3rd- to a 4th-rate university, but needs must in tight times, one supposes.

The announcement of the “Salon” includes the following chuckleworthy statement:

“Salons have attracted many progressive thinkers including Frank Furedi, Kenan Malik, Austin Williams, Jeremy Taylor, Helene Guldberg and James Woudhuysen.”

All of whom are RCP/LM stalwarts, so that nails the sects colours to the East Midlands mast. (Could you not think of any non-RCP names, Dennis?) The inaugural meeting will be on the 26th January in case anyone wants to see “progressive thinkers” in the flesh. Other names to watch out for are helpfully mentioned in the event announcement:

“The East Midlands Salon is the brainchild of University of Derby Education expert Professor Dennis Hayes, Dr Vanessa Pupavac from the University of Nottingham and a third organiser Ciaran Guilfoyle”

Guilfoyle‘s been involved in the IoI’s Culture Wars and Battle of Ideas evénements and studied Philosophy at Nottingham Uni, so an experienced RCP/LM hack. Vanessa Pupavac, though, is an unlikely sect adherent as her Uni of Nottingham staff page describes her thus:

“Dr Vanessa Pupavac is a lecturer in International Relations at the University of Nottingham. She has previously worked for the UN Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia and other international organisations.”

RCP Watch wonders whether she’s aware that she’s been working with a group that “unconditionally supported” the Milosevic and Karadzic regimes during the Balkan Wars of the early 90s, and one of whose more aggressive Usenet propagandists baldly stated that “Srebrenica never happened”.  And, of course, LM itself was defeated in libel court for having effectively claimed, via an article by Robert Deichmann, that photos of Serb concentration camps were faked. Perhaps she’s unaware of the historical continuity of the Institute of Ideas with the LM and RCP.

[1] Would you like relish with that A Level? Dennis Hayes, Spiked Online, 29/3/08

Follow-up

As a ‘PS’ to this post, the East Midlands ‘Salon’ is pushing the boat out with a meeting on the 23rd February at a posh hotel in Nottingham’s swanky Lace Market, featuring a Professor James Woudhuysen, described as  “Professor of Forecasting and Innovation” (not an academic discipline that RCP Watch has heard of) at De Montfort University but who is also a prolific author for Spiked Online. This time punters are asked to shell out a fiver for the privilege. Details on the “Salon” Facebook page.

All we need now is for Fox to reappear with Malik and Panton and we’ll have 3 of a kind on the programme, leaving just one place for a full takeover of the Moral Maze. Will the RCP/LM try to slip another member in, or would that be too brazen even for them? Time will tell.

Quite what the MM producers are thinking is a mystery. Everyone and their uncle in the metropolitan meedja world knows of the RCP/LM and their members and tactics, not least because they’re guaranteed contrarians – if you want a wind-up merchant on your programme to generate controversy, the RCP/LM is an immediate goto, and they always produce the goods. Yet the MM producers have now allowed 3 RCPers to appear as interrogators, which begs the question: do they know what they’re doing, and if so do they give a monkey’s? The charitable answers would be no and yes, but chances are it’s vice versa.

Does it matter if a secretive authoritarian entryist sect takes over a crappy Radio 4 programme hardly noted for its intellectual rigour (any programme that has that reactionary thicket Melanie Phillips on has no claim to be highbrow)? Well, it is a primetime programme broadcasting to the very chattering ABC1 classes, aka ‘commentariat’, that the RCP/LM sees as its prime audience and recruiting ground, so it matters in that sense. And if you consider dishonesty and duplicity to be moral problems, it matters in that sense as well. If you’re a world-weary cynic then you’ll likely think ‘what the f*ck’ and ignore it, which might be the best move – who knows?

Links

Moral Maze on the BBC website

Pro-Test

James Panton staff page at St Johns College, Oxford University (with mugshot – tough lookin’ cuss, ain’t he?)

James Panton hagiography on the Battle of Ideas website

Shiraz Socialist blog: RCP hegemonise the Moral Maze

Other articles in the Spiked pandemic section (including those by Dr Mike Fitzpatrick who as a practicing GP should, and almost certainly does, know better) say much the same thing, in lots of words with much sneering and sarcasm – that swine flu is a minor sub-lethal infection that’s been blown up into a major health hazard to engender public hysteria and fear for the purposes of social control.

This obeisance to the Dear Leader’s Big Idea has been the sect’s stock response to all crises that have emerged in recent years, including the biggest of all, climate change. Furedi’s belief is that fear will restrict and obstruct human scientific, intellectual and material progress, and as such progress is paramount, anything that stands in its way must be fought in a “Battle of Ideas”. Whether or not climate change or avian flu or phthalates[3] (to name but a few of the ‘scares’ the RCP opposes) have any basis in reality, and regardless of their scientific validity (or otherwise), they have to be fought with all the RCP/LM’s might as they restrict human progress as defined by the ultra-humanist RCP.

With swine flu, though, the sect may well come unstuck. The scientific community has been warning for many years that a flu pandemic is overdue, and that avian flu was a wake-up call for states worldwide to prepare. Scientists are taking swine flu very seriously indeed, as unlike avian flu it’s human to human tranmissible and has already killed hundreds [4]. Just today the BBC reported that 14 patients in the UK have died after contracting swine flu, with some 335 in hospital, 43 of whom are in critical care [5]. This isn’t just a case of the sniffles, this is life-threatening. So far those who’ve died, according to official sources, had “underlying health problems” (ie they were a bit dicky to start with), but there’s a scientific consensus that the virus will emerge in a more dangerous form come the wet conditions of autumn and winter [6].

This may not happen, of course. The pandemic might fizzle out as did H5N1 (avian flu), and we all fervently hope it does and that the pandemic becomes another cry of “Wolf!”. There’s a decent probability, though, that the virus will increase in lethality, and that there will be deaths amongst otherwise healthy patients. If that were to happen, and the wolf really did turn out to be real, then the RCP/LM will be left with some serious egg on its collective face, in particular the Dear Leader himself who’s staked his whole intellectual reputation on the Culture of Fear [TM]. Truth may be an elastic concept to the sect, which judges the validity of an issue not on its ‘truth’ but on its utility, or otherwise, to the RCP/LM [7], but a virus will bite you on the bum (or more accurately cause a potentially lethal auto-immune reaction) – viruses are no respecters of party lines.

Let’s hope that H1N1 remains relatively mild, but if it doesn’t and the death toll rises, expect to see some serious finessing by the RCP/LM. Whilst no sect member will bluntly state that swine flu doesn’t exist as that would leave a massive hostage to fortune, there’s no question from the number and tone of ‘sceptical ‘ articles on Spiked that this is the sect’s line, and it would be plain sophistry for Furedi, Hume, Fitzpatrick et al to argue otherwise were the worst to occur. [8]

References
[1] What swine flu reveals about the culture of fear, Frank Furedi, Spiked Online, 5/5/09

[2] Furedi ibid

[3] Science by Committee: The Euro-ban on phthalates is a dangerous sign of the times. Spiked Online, 5/6/01. Also

[4] See, for example, New Scientist’s Epidemics and Pandemics section, with numerous articles on the virus.

[5] UK swine flu death toll hits 14, BBC News online, 9/7/09

[6] See for instance: Swine flu can turn more lethal in winter, Times of India, 21/6/09; Swine flu sweeps the Southern hemisphere, New Scientist, 9/7/09

[7] A view common amongst Trotskyist sects, which perhaps not unnaturally have a historical aversion to “truth” given how the concept was so obscenely abused by Stalin.

[8] LM carried out a similar strategy during the Bosnian wars of the 90s, when it never officially supported the Serb forces (though its Usenet propagandists were unrestrained, calling for “unconditional support” of Serbia against “Western imperialism”) yet routinely rubbished reports of Serb atrocities whilst playing up atrocity reports involving Bosniaks and Croats. It thus pretended that it was simply against Western intervention and was otherwise neutral. No-one who took an interest in LM at the time could be in any doubt as to their line on the war. See the letter by Martin Cohen to the Guardian, 17/3/00, as an example, but many quotes could be pulled from the postings of the RCP/LM’s Usenet warriors.

Does it matter that the RCP/LM has colonised the programme? In one sense probably not – MM is little more than a bear-baiting session for panellists to ride hobbyhorses to death, and Fox in particular is absolutely assiduous in pushing the RCP/LM line at every opportunity. The intellectual quality of the ‘debate’ is uniformly low, as befits panellists, such as the rabidly reactionary “social commentator” Melanie Phillips, who have no understanding of moral philosophy or ethics. In another sense maybe it does matter, because for all its intellectual vacuity, MM does go out on primetime on the middle class’s house radio channel, so will have some influence on the chattering classes.

What really burns, though, isn’t that the programme producers allow them both on the show knowing full well, as just about anyone in the meedja knows, that they’re RCP to the core. They give good radio, with Fox acting the rabid pitbull and Malik the considered intellectual, a sort of RCP/LM good cop/bad cop act, and the producers only really care about ratings. It’s the sheer dishonesty of neither of them even acknowledging that they’ve been mates and comrades for over two decades that really rankles. The two act as complete strangers. This dishonesty gives the impression that they’re two independent voices, and thus they lend spurious legitimacy to each other’s views.

There are a couple of blog posts on the same theme:

• Shiraz socialist: RCP hegemonise the Moral Maze
• Harry’s Place: The RCP Establishment

Indeed, if you do a search for “Kenan Malik RCP LM” you’ll get more than enough material to keep you going for days. Do the MM producers not know how to use Google, or has the RCP/LM assimilated them also? Curious minds want to know…

A new series of the Moral Maze starts this Wednesday, 3rd June, at 8pm on R4. If you can bear the gutter-low and intellectually puerile ‘moral debate’ then it’s worth listening to the RCP’s double act, at least in the opening and closing stages, to get an idea of the current party line on the programme topic.

The UK has become a risk averse and politically stagnant country where the state is intervening constantly at every level. Is it possible for genuine innovation and change to thrive inside a society which is wedded to risk aversion,state intervention and welfarism?.

To which the RCP answer is, obviously, no, otherwise they wouldn’t ask the question. Killick writes a busy blog called UK After the Recession, which touches on a number of RCP/LM lines, in particular anti-environmentalism, with entry titles such “What’s wrong with a Green New Deal” (parts 1 and 2), and “Say no to the politics of austerity”, plus big and frequent plugs for the Battle for the Economy conference. Flavours of his thinking:

Those of us who believe that economic growth is the basis for human freedom will have a tough task arguing against the new advocates of austerity (After the G20 – what next?)

But Marx never rejected the economic growth that capitalism can bring. He understood that freedom from want was the basis of civilisation and that remains true today. (Capitalism, anti-capitalism and the G20) (a nice interpretation of Marx to chime with Uncle Frank’s, erm, idiosyncratic and certainly revisionist Marxism).

Since the collapse of the left in the 80s the sphere of ideological disputation in political life has diminished consistently. (Politicians pay the price for the recession) (also fitting in nicely with Uncle Frank’s view that the Left is dead, so the only hope left for human progress is unrestrained capitalism)

According to the reliable Sourcewatch site:

Rob Killick, also known as Rob Knight, is a partisan of the libertarian LM network. He is CEO of cScape, an internet company he co-founded with RCP activist Keith Teare [1] and has spoken at events organised by Spiked Online [2].

A search for “killick” on Spiked Online brings up a good few articles he’s written for them. A name to keep an eye on, as the sect will likely wheel him out for public appearances on radio and TV related to the economy to counter recessionary doom and gloom, and especially any calls for slower/no growth and restrictions on business. We’ll be hearing his name increasingly frequently in the future, one suspects. Perhaps the RCP/LM will try to present him as a Robert Peston alternative?

This wouldn’t be the first time that the organisation has formed and used Internet companies. In the LM days, Easynet was known as the RCP’s ISP, and according to SpinProfiles’ page on Keith Teare:

In the mid-90s, with the RCP heading more and more in its new pro-technology, pro-enterprise direction, Teare helped set up a series of internet business ventures, including Cyberia, Easynet, and Cscape. These were mostly headed by and employed other RCP-ers.

See also Sourcewatch on Keith Teare.

“Tracey Brown and Frank Furedi have worked with both LM and Spiked and have also both worked with the Institute of Ideas, which has published a book co-authored by Brown: Compensation Crazy.”

SAS has a very impressive list of profs and docs on its trustee board and advisory council [2] which lends it legitimacy and gives the impression of independence and scientific rigour (although it is notable that long-time RCP/LM inner circle member Dr Michael Fitzpatrick is among the trustees). It’s also very well-funded from a wide range of donors [3]. Wisely, it eschews the aggressive anti-environmentalism of most other RCP/LM fronts for a more considered, softly softly approach, and consequently reaps the benefits of media respectability. A glance at the SAS website, though, shows a glaring omission: there’s nearly nothing on it about global warming, which has to rank in the top 5 of hot science topics these days. Compare this to the large Climate Change section on the website of New Scientist magazine. Why the omission? Because the RCP/LM is one of the most implacable ‘sceptics’ of climate change, as to accept that global warming is anthropogenic would necessarily conflict with the organisation’s raison d’etre, namely the promotion of unrestricted human material progress. If SAS were to pronounce on climate change it would have to repeat this hardline denial and blow its cover, as well as lose all respectability in the mainstream scientific community from which SAS draws its legitimacy. The closest SAS comes to a ‘position’ on global warming is its booklet “Making Sense of the Weather and Climate” (PDF) which has a decidedly sceptical tone, set by the contents page:

“We should distinguish between the possible effects of predicted climate change and the extreme weather that is part of the normal variability of the climate.” (emphasis in original)

On the whole, though, SAS soft-pedals climate change. It’s rather more forthright and positive about Genetically Modified crops, however. According to Sourcewatch:

“Tracey Brown is on the Stakeholder Platform of the Innogen Centre^[6]- the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics – along with a number of other GM proponents, including Dr Andrew Cockburn of Monsanto, Phil Dale of the John Innes Centre and John Hillman of the Scottish Crop Research Institute.” [4]

This fondness for GM came to public attention in February 2009 following the publication of an article in the Times Higher Education magazine [5] which accused SAS of not disclosing that some authors of its recently-published guide Making Sense of GM (PDF) have links to the GM industry and pro-GM organisations. In her rebuttal of the article, Tracey Brown claimed that it relied on “tortuously indirect links, inaccurate information and positions many years out of date”, and described the accusations as “mischievous”[6]. Unfortunately for SAS, Private Eye picked up the story, and found that an unpublished draft listed an author with very direct and current GM links:

“But the Eye has a copy of an unpublished draft of the guide – and it seems it wasn’t just the industry links of some of its authors that didn’t appear in the final version. One of the guide’s listed authors, Andrew Cockburn, is also missing. Who he? None other than GM giant Monsanto’s former director of scientific affairs [...]“. [7]

Egg on face time for Tracey Brown, and a dent in SAS’s facade of scientific respectability.

SAS has a sister organisation which is also a known RCP/LM front. The Science Media Centre is headed by Fiona Fox, the sister of the redoubtable rottweiler Claire (of Moral Maze and Question Time fame) who leads the Institute of Ideas. Both the SMC and SAS go some way to remedying the RCP/LM’s long-standing scientific illiteracy, a result of its almost exclusive recruitment of bright young graduates from ‘soft’ subjects.

References

[1] The uncritical Wikipedia entry on Sense About Science references a good number of Press stories related to SAS.

[2] Sourcewatch: Sense About Science

[3] ibid.

[4] ibid.

[5] Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests. THE, 19/2/09.

[6] SAS defends GM guide. THE, 26/2/09

[7] Private Eye, No. 1232, p.26

Links

Sense About Science website

Sourcewatch: Tracey Brown profile

Science Media Centre website

Lobbywatch: Fiona Fox profile

Lobbywatch: Science Media Centre

Fiona Fox’s blog: On Science and the Media

Times Higher articles:

• Charity guide criticised for not declaring GM interests (the comments are even more informative than the main article)
• Reply by Tracey Brown
• Letter from Jonathan Matthews of GM Watch
• Letter from David Miller, University of Strathclyde

It’s quite likely that MM will get a fair bit of publicity, as print and broadcast journalists love contrarians, and more importantly often seek out opposing voices for ‘balance’. So it’s a cert that the next time Plane Stupid hit the headlines with another spectacular, MM will be approached for ‘balancing’ comment. The RCP/LM sure does know how to play the media game, and play it well.

PS: since the publication of this article, RCP Watch has engaged in an entertaining and occasionally informative spat with MM members on the Modern Movement Facebook Wall. This is a highly unusual occurrence to be able to debate openly online with the RCP/LM, as it’s usually very careful to control debate. For instance, the Spiked and Institute of Ideas websites have no fora, but rather invite emailed contributions to editors. This caution no doubt results from their disastrous, for them, experiment with open discussion on the now defunct LM website, which ran a forum to which critics and ex-RCP members and supporters posted damaging revelations. RCP Watch wonders quite how long the MM Facebook Wall will remain online…

References

[1] Such that the Spiked editor, Brendan O’Neill, likens the use of the term “climate change denial” to the incarceration by Soviet regimes of political dissidents in psychiatric hospitals. We’ve told you a million times not to exaggerate, Brendan… See Pathologising Dissent: Now that’s Orwellian in Spiked Online.

[2] Try a search of Spiked for “Suzy Dean” and “Robin Walsh” to bring up plenty of articles, none on flying/transport until very recently.

[3] For example: “99% of scientists can be wrong”. This from the organisation that runs the successful front Sense About Science, and is fervently pro-progress and pro-science.

Links

Modern Movement website

Modern Movement Facebook Group

Modern Movement Facebook Wall

Articles

It’s not the end of the world as we know it. Robin Walsh (MM co-founder), Spiked Online, 4/3/09

>Re: Photo blog: Plane Stupid Modern Movement

American Aboard blog: Gate-crashing Greenies