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Unpeople: Britain's Secret Human Rights Abuses

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As a British citizen living under the long shadow of the New Labour political project, it is difficult not to be overwhelmed with cynicism when pondering the motivations and goals of a set of politicians so deeply in thrall to Big Business. Increasingly, too, the poverty of ideals among the mainstream UK political parties, in essence rival factions of the same party representing the narrow interests of the ruling state-corporate elite (as in the US), makes many fearful for the future of representative democracy in the UK.

Yet, even for those disillusioned with this depressing state of affairs, modern historian Mark Curtis' disturbing new book, Unpeople, is still likely to come as a huge shock. Unstintingly and unswervingly, in case study after case study, Curtis uncovers the extraordinary levels of deception lurking beneath the squeaky-clean veneer of UK foreign policy's much-vaunted concern for human rights. At the heart of the author's portrayal of Britain as an outlaw state - one that certainly gives the US a good run for its money - lie the 'unpeople'. These are the expendable citizens of faraway countries who have suffered and died under the miseries imposed by the equally ruthless foreign policies of both Labour and Tory governments. Indeed, according to Curtis' conservative calculations, Britain may well be complicit in the deaths of in excess of 10 million 'unpeople' since World War Two.

Those who have already read Curtis' previous expose, Web of Deceit (2003), will immediately recognise the rigour of his content and the thoroughness of his research, while warming once again to his very readable writing style. In many ways, this book continues where 'WOD' left off, bringing the UK's misadventures in Iraq up to date (circa autumn 2004) while mining declassified government documents in order to lay bare Britain's malevolent influences in conflicts as far afield and removed in history as Vietnam and Biafra (during the 1960s under the Wilson government) and contemporary Colombia.

In summary, 'Unpeople' is essential - though highly unpalatable - reading for anyone seeking to understand Britain's real role in the world. Be prepared for this five-star text to disabuse you of some comforting but misplaced assumptions.

Curtis has based his excellent new book on considerable research in the National Archive, especially the newly available government documents from the early 1970s.

He shows how British governments backed coups in British Guyana, Oman, Idi Amin in Uganda and Pinochet in Chile. He shows how Labour backed the US aggression against Vietnam, tore up the Geneva Agreement, supported every escalation, opposed every effort at negotiation, used the SAS and MI6, gave military training and sold arms.

Now Labour backs Nepal's king, who has dismissed the elected government and postponed elections indefinitely. It aids and trains his forces, which have a far worse human rights record than the resistance.

Labour backs the Obasanjo tyranny in Nigeria, which has killed at least 2,200 people (far more killed than in Zimbabwe, for instance), but Nigeria has yielded $300 billion worth of oil over the last few decades.

Labour backs the Colombian government, a drug-dealing tyranny which has killed tens of thousands pretending that it is warring on drugs. British firms are the country's largest investors, at $10 billion. BP has invested $2 billion and controls half Colombia's oil output.

Labour backs Sharon's plan for permanently occupying the West Bank, which tears up all the UN Resolutions requiring Israel to withdraw from the illegally occupied territories. Labour doubled its arms exports to Israel in 2001-02 - machine guns, rifles, tear gas, leg irons, electric shock belts, and parts for tanks, helicopters and F-16 planes. It abstained in the UN vote declaring Israel's wall illegal.

Curtis proves with a wealth of examples that the key features of the current war on Iraq are endemic and typical of Britain's ruling class: "in particular: the violation of international law, the government's abuse of the UN, its deception of the public and its support for US aggression." Only the incompetence of this government is unusual: their lies were so bad that we rumbled them.

As the House of Commons Defence Committee reported approvingly in March 2004, the Ministry of Defence's "media strategy was an integral part of the overall military plan." The Foreign Office's London-based 'public diplomacy' cost £340 million a year. The Army says it must keep 'moral as well as information dominance'. 'Embedding' journalists 'helped secure public opinion in the UK.' British land force commander General Brims said, "none of them let the side down."

Curtis sums up Labour's policy, in alliance with NATO and the EU: "First, Britain is deepening its support for state terrorism in a number of countries; second, unprecedented plans are being developed to increase Britain's ability to intervene militarily around the world; third, the government is increasing its state propaganda operations, directed towards the British public; and fourth, Whitehall's planners have in effect announced they are no longer bound by international law."

Curtis' book is a slashing indictment of a ruling class in decline, ever more at odds with what British society needs and wants, ever more interventionist abroad. However, the right response is not a 'global justice movement', a rootless internationalism, but workers' nationalism seizing real democracy, as in Cuba.

By juxtaposing commentaries on contemporary action against recently released and previously secret foreign office records (some still censored), Mark Curtis confirms our worst fears.

UK foreign policy has been consistent in upholding the power of the rich, and often corrupt, to keep ransacking the world's wealth. Changes of government hardly noticable and the few sane alternative voices pretty short lived.

Who invented depriving Arab villages of their water supplies - Israel? - no UK in Aden decades back.

Mark Curtis has relieved me of the burden of guilt I felt over my governments murderous foreign policy. He illustraites quite clearly that our military interventions are NOT under taken in the national interest but in the interest of the elites who controll our society - the corporations, the oil industry and unaccountable Foreign Office mandarins who seek to cling on to Britain's 'major power' status.

But it is the ordinary people of this nation and the West in general who will reep the consequences of their cack-handed attempts to play on the 'Grand Chessboard' (Zbigniew Brzezinski). We overthrew a popular government in Iran in 1953, instituting the venal Shah. He proved to be murderously repressive and so the Iranian people deposed him in 1979. Unfortunately they chose to replace him with the Islamists our government and media are now priming us to attack.

People not politics anyone?

A remarkable book upon the subject of 'realpolitik'. In this case, British power politics since the end of WWII, during the declononisation and dismantling of the British empire, and the apparent, wide-spread disregard for Human Rights. Curtis - a former Research Fellow of the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), uses the term 'Unpeople' to refer to those people that the British state has deemed 'unworthy' of life, whilst pursuing political and economic gain. Curtis argues that the 'Unpeople' have taken the place of the 'savage', a term and concept that was common during Britain's imperial expansion across the globe the last two hundred years or so. This group of people are not accorded basic human dignity - indeed, they are not perceived as fully 'human' at all, but much like the German notion of 'Lebensunwertes Leben' (life unworthy of life), this group is viewed as fully expendable, and their collective lives are seen as worthless, something to be thrown away, ignored or removed at the whim of a politician.

The paperback (2004) contains 377 numbered pages and is comprised of an Introduction, a Conclusion and is separated into four parts:

Introduction.
Part I. Iraq.
Part II. Propaganda, Reality.
Part III. Terror, Aggression.
Part IV. Coups, Dictators.

Although contemporary with the Tony Blair-New Labour government, this research covers British foreign policy over the years, including the British 'secret' support for US aggression in Vietnan, the war for oil policy in Nigeria, covert operations in Indonesia, the support of Idi Amin in Uganda, protecting a dictator in Chile (Thatcher's friend general Pinochet), and the dirty wars in British Guiana and Arabia. Much information is provided regarding the sheer scope of lying and dishonesty surrounding the second Gulf War in the first chapter, but Curtis, whilst working backwards in time, is infact, demonstrating a core of more or less continuous foreign policiy pursued by the British state. Curtis highlights three general areas of concerns in the British files, which he presents as trends:

a) British ministers lying to the British public is normal and routine.
b) Policy makers are frank in the secret files about their true intentions.
c) Humanitarian concerns do not, and have not figured in the rationale behind British foreign policy - the few times that they are mentioned, is purely from the point of view of 'spin' and 'public relations'.

Mark Curtis, in this book, presents previously 'secret', but now 'declassified' British government files. His logic is sound and his conclusions, although probably difficult for many to accept, are, nevertheless, equally difficult to argue with. The evidence speaks for itself. The world of politics 'behind the scenes' as it were, is often a mrky affair, Curtis' research sheds light on an area of British politics that many ordinary British people will find surprising, particularly as the events that Curtis explains are perpetrated in the name of the British people, who by and large, remain ignorant of them. A fine book.

This expose of the British governments true colours would be unbelievable if it weren't so well referenced. Mark Curtis is a hero of the people, truely.

In considering the various blackguardly actions of the UK under all governments, Mr Curtis continues from his excellent "Web of Deceit" to hammer home the incontestable truth that our great and good have had virtually no concern for the killings and maimings entailed in their suppression of the lesser races.
All this done in our name, and, if we believe the media, in the best of all possible taste, and , of course, in the national interest.Chapter 8, From the Horse's Mouth , notes files from the cabinet meetings and FO which were not really for contemporary public consumption, but which demonstrate the clear-headed, cold-hearted resolve of our lords and masters to impose their world-view and choices. Since about 1970, we have been more and more clearly the "junior partner" , as Mr Cameron put it, to the US in the ruthless imposition of "our" will on "the natives". While many who keep their head even as all are invited to worship militarism have long known some of the stories behind our leaders' mask of humanity, it is good to see Mark Curtis reminding us of the ghastly Pinochet's tortures and murders - not so long ago.The shameful and shabby episode of Diego Garcia is mentioned. At the nd of the book, the table of Britain and Global Deaths comes as a useful summary of the last 50-60 years. It was, I think, Lieutenant William Calley who remarked that "no one ever told him that Communists were people". One supposes that he shared this ignorance with the "counter-insurgency" experts such as Sir Gerald Templar and Robert Thompson from the Malayan days. Let's face it, we hear very little about the killed and wounded and the destruction of homes and hope among the Afghans, Iraqis or others, perhaps in areas where the British "junior partners" are vying in awfulness with their US "special forces" comrades, but about whom the UK public is not informed (Colombia ?)If they're against "us", they're unpeople, aren't they ?
One hopes that many will read this well-researched eye-opener and remember "a man's a man, for a' that"