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Gun crime: the Metropolitan police Big lie
Winston Smith

There is a Hebrew saying: “The wicked, even at the gate of hell, do not repent”. Sixty years ago in Nazi Germany, the wicked used the Big-lie, a propaganda technique, to stereotyped Jews as criminals. This was the prelude to depriving Jews of their citizenship, deporting them and their systematic murder.

Today in Britain, British National Party members, unrepentant Nazis, are at home in British police forces.

The Metropolitan Police force employs detective constable Linda Daniels, spouse of British Nazi Keith Beaumont, as a race crime investigator (1).

The Metropolitan police botch investigations of racist murders of Jamaicans.

In partnership with the Home Office, the Metropolitan police stereotype Jamaicans as criminals responsible for all gun-crimes. Is the stereotype a Big-lie?

A worthwhile answer will be found by examining the Big-lie and its purpose; how it related to German Jews; its similarities, if any, with the Met’s stereotype of Jamaicans as responsible for gun-crime; and the link, if any, between the stereotype and the Home Office introduction of visas requirement for visitors from Jamaica to Britain in January 2003. Doing so will provide a clue as to whether the government new legislation to deprive naturalised citizens of their citizenship is the ultimate goal of the Metropolitan police anti-Jamaican propaganda.

As a propaganda technique, the Nazis developed the Big-lie. In essence it consists of four elements. The first element is obvious enough: it is the deliberate telling of untruths, lies. No puny lies will do, they must be real whoppers, Big-lies.

Hitler’s advice to his propagandists was when they lie, tell big lies; ‘in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility” (Hitler, 1925:159). He reckoned because the “broad mass of a nation … tell small lies in small matters”, people would not suspect others of telling “large-scale falsehood” in important matters (Hitler, 1925: 160-1 and 383). For that reason, people are more likely to fall victim to a Big-lie on important matters rather than a small lie on unimportant matters.

An important matter about which the Nazi told deliberate lies was cause of the economic crisis that crippled German in the early 1930s. They blamed the Jews, who Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister, accused of controlling international finance (Goebbels, 1941).

In reality, the primary cause of the economic crisis was the spectacular collapse in the value of investment trust shares on the New York Stock Exchange, which began on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929 (Galbraith, 1961:121).

Europe was not to be spared the fallout from collapses in share prices. Carr argues: “Europe was so heavily dependent on American investment by this time she could not escape the consequences of the Wall Street Crash” (1989:292).

American banks and firms that had provided German financial institutions and companies with credits and short-term loans demanded immediate re-payment of them (Carr 1989:296). Such demands were being made at a time when export markets for German product were dwindling (Bullock 1971:152).

As a result of the credit squeeze, loan repayments and declining export markets, German companies began to shed workers. Unemployment mushroomed from 900,000 in the summer of 1929 to over six millions in 1932 (Carr 1989:296, Bullock 1971:152).

Poverty, homelessness and social strife grew as a result of mass unemployment. They provided the human condition, despair, in which people became susceptible to the Big-lie and Nazi propagandists doled it out in bucketfuls: Jews were to blame for unemployment.

Simplicity is the second element of the Big Lie. The lie must be confined to simple one-loners: sound-bites. Hitler argued: “all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare necessities and then expressed in a few stereotyped formulas” (Mein Kampf 1925:159).

Examples of such stereotyped formulas were: “All Jews by virtue of their birth and their race are a part of an international comspiracy” (Goebbels, 1941); Jewish goal was total world domination (Goebbels, 1941); they used culture and “any form of foulness” to cause moral and social decay (Gilbert 2000:20); they stabbed Germany in the back in 1918 (Carr 1989:323); “The Jews are criminals too. Their hair is usually dark and often curly like a Negro’s” (Streicher, 1936)

Consistency is the third element of the Big Lie. It is the “very first condition which has to be fulfilled in every kind of propaganda: a systematically one-sided attitude towards every problem that has to be dealt with” (Hitler, 1925: 160-1 and 383). In other words, define every problem as “a homogeneous problem”. Never waver from the lie even when it has become apparent the stereotype is a “large-scale falsehood” or its contradiction blindingly obvious.

All Jews, for example, were simultaneously “the moving spirit behind Marxism and monopoly capitalism” (Carr 1989:32). They were all atheists yet they kidnapped Christian children, killed them and used their blood to make matzos at Passover: the blood libel.

Repetition is the final element of the Big-lie. Lies must be retold continuously in order for them to be at the forefront of people’s consciousness. People must never be allowed to forget the message contained within the lie (Carr 989:301). Hitler said: “Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting a idea on the memory of a crowd” (Mein Kampf 1925:163).

Ultimately the idea Nazis wanted to imprint on people’s memory was “Jews are guilty” of whatever they were accused of: Jews were guilty because they were Jews (Goebbels, 1941).

The Big lie consists of “large-scale falsehood” about important matters. It is a simple lie without elaboration or explanation: a stereotype. It is a lie to which the propagandist sticks even when the lie is exposed. Repetition keeps the lie alive in people’s memory, which is the ultimate success of the Big lie as a propaganda technique.

The aim of Big-lie propaganda was not simply to libel Jews, stereotype them. Goebbels argued that, “Propaganda is not a end in itself, but a means to an end” (Noakes and Pridham 1987:381). As a “means” the Big lie was used to mobile Germans, to organize them and to win them over to Nazism: an ideology based racial conflict and supremacy. The “end” was persecution of Jews.

Nazi persecution of Jews manifested itself in various ways. In terms of their right to be in Germany, the mobilization of hatred towards Jews was a means of desensitising non-Jewish Germans to what would happen to Jews: depriving them of citizenship; deporting them to eastern Europe; and murdering them (Gilbert 200:30-92).

Are there any similarities between the Nazi use of Big-lie propaganda to mobile hatred towards the Jews from the 1920s until 1945 and the Metropolitan Police stereotype of Jamaicans as responsible for gun- crimes?

A meaningful answer is found by first looking at how the Metropolitan police define gun-crime. And then see whether there are any similarities between the Met’s definition of gun-crime and the Big lie.

The Metropolitan police define gun-crime as consisting of four components: first, nationality and race; second, cocaine trafficking and the crack cocaine trade; third, gang warfare; and fourth, location- Britain’s black communities (Smith, 1984). The author will focus on two of those components: nationality and race, and cocaine trafficking and crack dealing.

The Metropolitan police claims Jamaicans are the “major players” responsible for trafficking cocaine into Britain (2).

Bob Ainsworth, Home office minister with responsibility for drug, lends supports to the Met’s claim. In June 2002, he said most cocaine entering Britain comes “mostly from Jamaica” (3).

Support for the Met’s claim also comes from Phil Sinkinson, British high commission in Jamaica. In January 2002 in a radio interview, he claimed one in ten passengers on each flight from Jamaica is carrying cocaine. He said these so-called “drug mules” are responsible for smuggling more than “30kg of cocaine” on each flight (4).

Notwithstanding Home and Foreign Offices support, the facts do not support the Met’s claim concerning the source of the absolute majority of cocaine entering Britain and the racial profile of the major traffickers.

The sources of the world’s cocaine supply are the three Andean countries: Peru, Colombian and Bolivia (UN 2000:29). In these countries, the coca plants are grown, their leaves harvested and cocaine hydrochloride is manufactured from them. The finished product, cocaine powder, “is trafficked in bulky consignments often by container ship” (UN 2000:33).

According to the UN 68% of global cocaine trafficking is concentrated in five countries: USA, Colombia, Mexico, Spain and Panama (UN 2000:35).

The absolute majority of cocaine destined for Britain enters Europe directly having crossed the Atlantic from South American. For the most part, the cocaine lands in Spain, but also in the Netherlands and Portugal.

From those countries, the cocaine is smuggled in Britain. According to HM Customs an estimated “65% of cocaine arrives in the UK on cross-channel transport, 15% by ship, 15% by air, 4% by rail and 1% by mail”(Corkery 2002:19).

HM Custom figures show that from October 2000 to September 2001, roughly 7% of the cocaine seized entering the UK came from Jamaica (5).

Jamaica neither grows the coca plant nor harvests its leaves nor manufacture cocaine hydrochloride from them. These activities are confined to the Andean countries from where all cocaine entering Europe originate. On arrival by ship in Europe, landing mostly in Spain, the cocaine powder enters Britain via the channel ports.

The racial profile of traffickers who dominate the trafficking of cocaine from South America to Europe and then into Britain is white. In other words, white drug traffickers are responsible for trafficking the absolute majority of cocaine entering Britain.

Further attention will be given to the racial profile of cocaine traffickers when comparing the Met’s gun-crime definition with the Big-lie.

For now let’s move on to look at the link the Metropolitan police make between Jamaicans and the UK crack cocaine trade.

According to the Met Jamaicans and British-born Blacks of Jamaican descent are the “major players” in the UK crack cocaine trade (2). Jamaicans manufacture crack from the cocaine they smuggled into the UK. Using well-established Jamaican-yardie networks, they distribute crack throughout the country. As a result of such criminal activities, crack addiction is almost at epidemic proportion.

In June 2002, at a “ crack conference” called by the Home Office in Birmingham, the Met said recorded offences for trafficking crack increased from 493 in March 2000 to 1, 117 in March 2002. Avon and Somerset police told the conference that: “the total weight of seizures of crack cocaine between 1999 and 2002 rose from 761 to 2, 212 kilos” (6). The Met said Jamaican mules are responsible for 20% of the crack cocaine smuggled into the country (7).

Speaking after the conference, Bob Ainsworth said: “the use of crack cocaine is greater in black communities” (Drugscope).

Having outlined the links which the Met makes between the crack trade and Jamaicans, a critical eye will now be cast over three aspects of the claims: recorded offences for trafficking; the weight of crack cocaine seized in the UK; and the racial profile of the “major players” in the UK crack trade.

The Met relies on police recorded crime statistics to support its claim about the scale of the crack cocaine problem caused by Jamaicans. In June 2002, The Guardian reported “statistics from the Metropolitan police show … a three fold increase” in recorded offences for crack trafficking (7).

Two reports by Nick Davies in The Guardian found that the police routinely “fiddle” recorded crime statistics (8 & 9).

Furthermore, criminologists and government statisticians criticise as unreliable recorded crime statistics produced by the police (Maguire 2002:334).

Police decide “which kind of offence to include or not include in the official statistics, and what counting rule to apply” (Maguire 2002:335). These decisions “can make a huge difference to the published totals and hence to the impression given about the levels of crime in society" (Maguire 2002:335). The last point is reinforced by the claim made by the Met in June 2002 about increases in recorded offences for crack trafficking.

By referring to the growth from 493 to 1, 117 in recorded offences for possession over two years, the impression is given that increases in the number of seizures matched proportionately increases in the weight of crack cocaine seized by the police. However, although UK police recorded making 2,892 crack seizures in 2000, of those seizures 1, 993 involved less than one gram of crack cocaine (Corkery 2002:9).

This brings us to the second aspect of police claim concerning the link between crack cocaine and Jamaicans: the weight of crack cocaine seized in the UK. According to a Home Office report, from 1999 to 2001 the total weight of crack cocaine seized by HM Custom and the police was 97.6kg (Corkery and Airs 2002:2).

Avon and Somerset police claim the “total weight” of crack cocaine seized in 2002 was 2, 212 kilos (6). If that claim were true, then in the first six months of 2002 the police would have had to seize 2,114.4kg of crack cocaine. In other words, in a six-month period the police allegedly seized approximately 15 times the total weight, 145kg, of crack cocaine seized jointly by HM Custom and police in the period 1990-2000, i.e. a ten-year period (Corkery 2002: 9-10).

Turnings now briefly to the racial profile of criminals who the Met claims are “major players” in the UK crack trade: Jamaicans and their British-born descendants. According to the Home Office, “the majority of crime associated with crack, including supply, is carried out by white crack users” (Tackling Crack 2002:10-11). In other words, white criminals dominate the manufacture and supply of crack cocaine.

The conclusions to be drawn from the preceding examination of the Met’s linkage of Jamaicans and their descendants to the crack trade are as follows. First, police recorded crime statistics do not give an accurate impression of the scale of trafficking in crack cocaine. There is no correlation between increases in the number of seizures and the weight of crack cocaine seized.

Second, government statistics contradict police claim that the “total weight” of crack cocaine seized mushroomed from 761kg to 2,212kg between 1999 and 2002 (6). According to Home Office statistics, the “total weight” of crack cocaine seized in the UK by HM Custom and police between 1999 and 2001 was 97.6kg. In other words, the annual weights seized were: 16.6kg in 1999; 25.5kg in 2000; and 55.7kg in 2001 (Corkery and Airs 2002:9). Given the weights seized in the preceding three years, it is inconceivable police seizure of crack cocaine would have amounted to 2, 114kg in 2002.

The Metropolitan police highlight Jamaica as a source of cocaine and Jamaicans as cocaine traffickers. It also publicises Jamaicans involvement in the crack trade. By contrast, the Met conceal by omission the true extent of white criminals involvement as cocaine traffickers and crack dealers. Consequently, the Met creates a falsehood about Jamaicans.

Having looked at how the Metropolitan police define gun-crime, in particular its alleged link with Jamaican cocaine traffickers and crack dealers, it is time to see whether there are any similarities between gun-crime definition and the Big-lie.

This will be done within the context of comparing the Nazis use of race in the Big-lie and one aspect of the Met’s definition of gun-crime: the national and racial profile of the main cocaine traffickers.

The Nazis used race in their Big-lie to stir up anti-Semitism. Allegedly, by means of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a libel about Jewish plan for world domination, Jews were the major players behind global finance (Gilbert 2000:21): “international finance Jewry” crippled the German economy in the 1930s. That was a large-scale falsehood, like the other anti-Semitic allegations made by the Nazis.

Race and nationality are key aspects of the Met’s definition of gun-crime. Like Nazi falsehoods about Jewish responsibility for the German 1930 depression, the Met’s stereotype of Jamaicans as international “major players” behind cocaine trafficking satisfies the main criteria of the Big lie: a large-scale falsehood about important matters. Such a conclusion is inescapable from the evidence presented above.

However, further evidence of the Met’s Big-lie comes from the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS). According to The Economist, NCIS role is to provide “intelligence and analysis of organised crime to local police forces” (10). NCIS “UK threat assessment” for each year from 2001 to 2003 reveals the following. First, the UK receives its absolute majority of cocaine by sea from South America via mainland Europe.

Second, its 2001 assessment emphasized, “London as the main distribution point for cocaine entering the UK” (NCIS 2001:25). As a reason for the metropolis importance in cocaine distribution, NCIS points to the concentration of Colombian and West Indian traffickers” in London. The inference is Colombians and West Indians, “specifically Jamaicans” fit the national profiles of the “main” traffickers and distributors of cocaine.

In its 2002 assessment, NCIS corrects this inference with regards to Colombians but not Jamaicans: “secondary distribution … is organised by British criminals rather than by Colombians (as implied in [UK Threat Assessment 2001])” (NCIS 2002:29).

Finally, NCIS 2003 assessment is explicit about the national and racial profile of the “major players” behind the trafficking and distribution of cocaine to and within the UK: “At the wholesale (multi-kilo) level, cocaine distribution appears to be controlled mainly by British Caucasians and Colombians” (NCIS 2003:38). This is the same conclusion NCIS made in 2000: “British Caucasian criminals make up by far the majority of organised crime groups in the UK. They are involved in the full range of serious and organised crime including activities including the trafficking of all drugs, arm robbery….” (NCIS 2000:41).

Furthermore, “British Caucasian criminals are also involved in the distribution of crack cocaine within the UK, particularly at street level” (NCIS 2003:38). NCIS thus proves as a Big-lie the Metropolitan police stereotype of Jamaicans as being the “major players” behind cocaine trafficking and the crack trade.

The Big-lie is not told simply to libel, stereotype Jamaicans as drug criminals. But rather as with the Nazi anti-Semite propaganda, it is a means to an end not an end itself. As means the Big-lie is used to mobilise suspicion and fear of Jamaicans. As an end, such fear and suspicions justify persecution of West Indians, especially Jamaicans, who the Met find politically dangerous.

Such danger comes from West Indians, “specifically Jamaicans”, relentless campaign against the Metropolitan police racist corporate practice. The1999 Macpherson Report confirms Jamaicans and others belief about racist policing. The Report came about as a result of the campaign by the Jamaican parents of a murder teenager, Steven Lawrence.

A racist gang in London killed Steven Lawrence, a 19-year-old architectural student, in April1993. The Met botched the murder investigation. The Lawrence headed a campaign for a public inquiry into the Met’s handling of the investigation. This they won. The Macpherson Report makes a number of recommendations that address the Met’s racist practices, such as indiscriminate stops and searches of Blacks.

Ever since its publication the Metropolitan police have campaigned for a return to the pre-Macpherson “good old days” of uncontrolled racist policing (11). Hence the gun-crime Big-lie the first purpose of which is to mobilise anti-Jamaican sentiments as means of desensitising non-Jamaicans to whatever measures police take to tackle the supposed threat Jamaicans posed to British society.

The end product of the Met’s Big-lie is to have the government empowered police to persecute Jamaicans more effectively. Police persecution of Jamaicans takes the form of government legislations requiring them alone of West Indians to have visas in order to enter Britain. On publication of the Macpherson Report, the Met began its Jamaican visas campaign.

It is as part of the Metropolitan police campaign, from 1999 to 2003, to have the government introduced visas for Jamaican visitors that NCIS 2001 and 2002 assessments become especially significant.

NCIS deliberately hyped the significance Jamaicans play in cocaine trafficking in its 2001 and 2002 assessments so as to lend credibility to the Metropolitan police Big-lie. It did so in order to hype public fear of gun-crime alleged perpetrators: Jamaicans.

As with the Nazis, the government role is significant in the Met’s Big-lie. Bob Ainsworth, Home Office minister, played a lead-role in the Met’s campaign to have visas introduced for Jamaicans visitors. Like NCIS, Ainsworth gave credibility to the Met’s Big-lie by stage-managing a two-day “crack conference” in Birmingham in June 2002. The conference purpose was to discuss solutions to the Jamaican “problem”.

As a possible gun-crime solution, imposing visa requirement for Jamaican visitors to Britain was proposed within months of Macpherson publication. In July 1999, Shadow Home Office minister David Lidington said the solution to the “spate” of gun related homicides in London: “is to impose a visa requirement on visitors to this country from Jamaica” (BBC News).

Labour MPs condemned Lidington statement as “racist”. Oona King said it was “unintelligent racial stereotyping” (BBC News). Ken Livingston said: “the only effect of the statement is to whip up a wholly racist image of Black Britons in order to identity them in the mind of white people as criminals and gangsters” (Livingston).

Livingston identified the link between Lidington’s statement and the Met’s campaign to rollback the effects of Macpherson’s recommendations. If visas were introduced, he said, “all the good work following Macpherson report will be under threat” (Livingston, 1999).

When the Home Office introduced visas for Jamaican visitors in January 2003, ministers claimed the measure was aimed at cutting down the number of visitors who did not return to Jamaica once they entered Britain. Figures released to the press by the Home Office apparently showed that in the first six months of 2002, “1000 Jamaican absconded after being given temporary admission” (12). The Home Office later admitted that no such figures existed. A spokesman said: “The figure we gave in the [press release] for overstayers was not precise. It was an estimate as actual figures are not available” (13). In other words, the Home Office had told a “large-scale falsehood” about an important matter: right of entry into the Britain.

It has been shown that the Metropolitan police stereotype of Jamaicans as responsible for gun-crime is Big-lie propaganda. As with the Nazi use of the Big-lie, the end product of Met’s propaganda is racial persecution. In particular, the imposition on Jamaicans of a visas requirement is justified by a large-scale falsehood. Is the ultimate end of Met’s propaganda not merely to prevent Jamaicans entering Britain but the deportation of Jamaican-born British citizen?

The Asylum, Immigration and Nationality Act 2002, empowers the Home Secretary to deprive naturalised citizens of their citizenship and to deport them to their country of origin. Many British citizens are Jamaican-born. In other words, they are naturalised British citizens upon whom the new nationality law may impact.

Proof of that possibility comes via the Met’s ongoing anti-Jamaican propaganda. In June 2003, the then head of the Met’s anti-black crime squad, John Coles, claimed Jamaicans “now pose the biggest threat to policing” second only to “international terrorism”.

The Met’s equation of Jamaicans with terrorists is telling. UK anti-terrorist laws are exceptionally harsh for suspected terrorists. First, police are empowered to detain them indefinitely. Second, if they are naturalised British citizens, the Home Secretary can strip them of their citizenship and deport them.

The Metropolitan police have campaigned to be empowered to detain indefinitely suspected crack cocaine traffickers.

If the Home Office buys into the Met’s Jamaican threat to policing Big-lie, then it is conceivable that section 4 of the Asylum, Immigration and Nationality Act 2002 will be used to deprive Jamaican-born British citizens of their citizenship before deporting them back to Jamaica. Such a possibility is very real with David Blunkett, “the hard man of the Right” (13), as Home Secretary.

Consequently, for the first time in fifty years, the Big-lie is used by a European government and its police force to mobilise suspicion and fear of a whole people in preparation for depriving them of their citizenship and deporting them.

In view of the role played by West Indians, specifically Jamaicans, in fighting Nazism, in British post-war reconstruction and cultural evolution, the Metropolitan police Big-lie is truly wicked. Furthermore, it undermines the lesson of the Holocaust: Never Again.

Winston Smith © Blaqfair

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(3) The Guardian (25/06/2002)
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(4) The Telegraph (4/01/2002)
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(5) The Telegraph (25/06/02)
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(6) The Guardian (23/06/02)
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(7) The Guardian (25/06/02)
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(8) The Guardian (18/03/99)
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(9) The Guardian (11/07/03)
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(10) The Economist
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(11) The Guardian (20/12/00)
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(12) The Guardian (9/01/03)
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(13) New Nation
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(14) The Telegraph (6/09/02)
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