Update: Catholic Orangemen instantly into top 1000 on Amazon, many thanks.

My book The Catholic Orangemen of Togo is now available in paperback and Kindle

I have explained before that this blog does not ask for donations but is financed through book sales. If you have enjoyed or benefited from this blog, I do urge you to buy a copy of The Catholic Orangemen of Togo. Here is the blurb from the book:

In this prequel to the bestselling Murder in Samarkand, Craig Murray describes how he discovered the dark heart at the centre of Tony Blair’s shiny New Labour administration shortly after its beginning, when Murray was the key witness in the Arms to Africa Affair which rocked the British political establishment. Murray makes a strong case against “liberal intervention” as he describes the use of mercenaries to obtain African mineral resources for Western financial interests. In so doing, Murray takes us on a journey into some of the darkest recesses of colonial history in Africa. As ever with Murray the story is laced with personal anecdotes, sometimes hilarious, sometimes terrifying, and sometimes both.

It was a blow to me when my publisher backed out of publishing this book after threats from mercenary commander Tim Spicer, then head of Aegis, the mercenary command which had more troops in Iraq than the British army and made billions. Spicer wished to suppress the revelations in this book about Executive Outcomes and Sandline, and their history of atrocity in Africa.

The privatisation of killing is the ultimate expression of Toryism.

After the publisher dropped the book I self-published 1,200 hardback copies, which soon sold out. I also made it available free online, where more than 100,000 people downloaded it. Spicer and his lawyers Schillings never did carry out their threat to sue.

I have now brought it out in paperback using Amazon’s self-publishing platform. I appreciate people’s objections to Amazon, but it is the most practical method for me at the moment. I do hope those who have not read The Catholic Orangemen will find it informative. It is, I believe, a massive refutation to those who hold out Sierra Leone as Blair’s “good war”. This brief talk in American University, Washington DC last year is the only one I have ever given where I basically outline the main content of The Catholic Orangemen.

If you have already read it online for free, you would do me a large favour by purchasing the paperback to help with funding my work here. You can always give it as a present!

Like Murder in Samarkand, it is very much a warts and all autobiography, and I hope is a fearlessly honest look at myself. One young lady told me she hated me already by the end of page one, and had recovered by the end of the book, but would find it easier to say why she hated me than what dissipated the feeling! I rather know what she meant.

The major theme of the book is my personal encounters with the varied legacy of colonialism in Africa, of which my stumbling upon Catholic Orangemen is an amusing if somewhat whimsical example. I do hope you enjoy it.

I hope to have Murder in Samarkand back in print by the same method in a few weeks.

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Confident of victory off the back of large numbers of murdered people changing the media agenda, a triumphalist Theresa May yesterday vowed – contrary to the Tory manifesto – to “rip up” human rights legislation.

This feels to me like it could be Theresa May’s “awright! awright! awright!” moment. Most of my readers will recall the 1992 election, where Neil Kinnock finished with a rally in Sheffield at which his high octane triumphalism was viewed by many of the public as revealing a rather unpleasant character, which possibly helped engender a shock last minute swing which lost him the election.

May’s Slough meeting is very different to that Sheffield rally – for one thing May’s crowd of Tory activists was tiny, and as always that BBC video uses tight focus to hide her lack of enthusiastic support. But what it has in common with Sheffield is hubris. I strongly suspect that ditching human rights is wildly popular among the rabid racist Brexiteers who constitute her core vote. Locking up Muslims without charge and throwing away the key will appeal to them. But a great deal of the rest of the population are bright enough to work out that proposal is likely to cause more, not less, terrorism. They will view May’s performance as presumptive and alarming.

Of course, abandoning human rights would make May’s Saudi friends feel more at home when they come to London to entertain call girls in their penthouses. But I expect May’s declaration may cost the Tories several seats, not least to the Liberals in South West London.

There is one very obvious point that the mainstream media has deliberately avoided. The Tories having made Brexit central to May’s campaign, there is no minister more crucial to the election than David Davis, the Brexit Secretary. Davis is a libertarian with a long and genuinely distinguished record in opposing human rights encroachments made in the name of the War on Terror. There is no way Davis is going to go along with substantial censorship of the internet, increased surveillance powers, and detention without trial. If May pushes ahead with her draconian plans, she will need a new Brexit Secretary.

For this reason, Davis has disappeared from the Tory campaign since the focus was shifted by the mainstream media to those conveniently timed terror attacks. They were especially conveniently timed for the Saudi sponsors of terror, as a Labour government would be committed to ending arms exports to Saudi, and would not support bombing Assad forces in support of jihadists in Syria.

Why has nobody in the mainstream media pointed out that Davis will not support May’s new anti-human rights proposals? Why have they not attempted to interview him on the subject?

Mainstream media spend thousands of hours probing differences within Labour. Yet this massive disagreement on what the media themselves have described as the main issue of the election, between the two major figures of the Conservative campaign, goes completely unremarked. Media silence. We must not question our masters.

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There should already be no questioning of the inhumanity of Tory policies, given their concentration on tax cuts for the wealthy, starving the NHS and schools, and cutting benefits to those desperately in need. But the blatant and shameless attempts in the last 48 hours by Theresa May to exploit the deaths of the recent victims of terrorism for party advantage, are truly tasteless and sickening. The populist new pledge to “rip up human rights” is a further appeal to the basest instincts of society, while looking to seize the moment further to increase the powers of the state. The cycle of alienation will only be enhanced, causing more terrorism, by draconian state actions which inevitably will lead to injustice and grievance.

We have to stop the Tories. That must be the basis of any decent person’s vote. If you doubt me, just go down to a newsagent and look at the appalling front pages of today’s newspapers. The question is how to do it?

1) In Scotland, vote for the SNP. There is no constituency where an SNP vote risks letting the Tory in. There are scores of votes, especially in rural and in south central Scotland, where any switch of voters from SNP to Labour could gain the Tories enough seats to give Theresa May a working majority.

2). In England and Wales, vote for whoever is best placed to defeat the Tory. If you have a sitting non-Tory MP, lend them your support. So Lib Dems and Greens should vote Labour in Labour constituencies. That would, on current polling evidence, make almost all existing Labour seats safe. I make an exception for Birmingham Yardley where Labour voters should switch to the excellent John Hemming to get rid of the horrible Jess Phillips. In Hastings and Rye if Lib Dems vote Labour there is every chance to get rid of Amber Rudd, which is an aim every Lib Dem should support.

The Guardian have published a useful guide to some seats where tactical voting might be effective. I endorse it.

How to react to first past the post is a personal decision. But the danger of a continued Tory majority is so great that my own view is that anybody who is not hard right should, on this occasion, do what is practically most likely to mitigate it.

For Labour voters to vote to damage the SNP with the effect of electing Tories would be self harm. Lib Dem voters should find May’s attitude to human rights and to Brexit anathema. I am asking more Lib Dems to vote tactically, to support sitting Labour MPs, than any other group. This one time, the value of halting May outweighs the existentialist act of declaring personal allegiance. In the smaller number of constituencies where I am asking Lab voters to support Lib Dems, the same applies.

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