Political prisoners in Starmer’s Britain: “We have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do”

Political prisoners in Starmer’s Britain: “We have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do”

Rhoda Wilson

“We have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do where people cannot critique, they cannot question.  And they’re being locked up for giving their opinion,” Gerard Batten said in a speech on Saturday.

Last Saturday, the ‘Stop the Isolation’ rally was held in London, England.  Organised by Urban Scoop, the rally aimed to highlight that Tommy Robinson is a political prisoner and is being held in isolation, which is a form of mental torture.  The rally was to also highlight that people have been jailed for social media posts which is also political imprisonment. Thousands attended the rally to support these political prisoners. 

Related: Tommy Robinson speaks out from prison

At the rally, Gerard Batten gave a speech. Batten is a British politician who served as the Leader of the UK Independence Party (“UKIP”) from 2018 to 2019. He was a founding member of UKIP in 1993 and served as a Member of the European Parliament (“MEP”) for London from 2004 to 2019.

“I grew up in an era of political prisoners,” Batten said.

“I remember reading about people who were being locked up for giving their opinions, for criticising and questioning a government’s agenda.  Such people were put in prison, they were put in re-education camps or they were put in gulags,” he said.

And we have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do where people cannot critique, they cannot question.  And they’re being locked up for giving their opinion.”

Is Keir Starmer Becoming the UK’s Robert Mugabe?

Batten called Starmer a Marxist. “The first tenet of Marxism is that you have to destroy the old order and society,” he said.  He says that in the UK this will be done by using mass illegal immigration as a tool.  “[Mass immigration] breaks down national identity, it destroys national loyalty and it destroys national cohesion,” he said.

Keir Starmer has been associated with Marxist groups in the past. He was involved with Socialist Alternatives, a Marxist magazine, in the 1980s, and was on its editorial board from 1986 to 1989. The Socialist Alternatives was the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency. Being a small group in the UK, it was best known for its Marxist magazine.

However, Starmer’s ideological stance seems to have evolved over time.

In January 2020, The Times quoted a spokesperson for Starmer who said, “Keir is a proud socialist … He is standing in this [Labour] leadership contest because of his determination to deliver a radical Labour Government at the next election.”

In March 2020, Vice quoted Starmer as saying, “I still see myself as a socialist. Whether I still agree with everything I did or said in my 20s is another matter … You gain experiences as you go along, but I would still call myself a socialist.”

In his first major speech after the general election, Starmer reiterated that he considered himself a “socialist.”

Indeed, Starmer, as has every Labour Prime Minister, is a member of the Fabian Society, a British socialist organisation.  Starmer has a strong association with the Fabian Society; in 2020, he was a member of the Fabian Society’s executive committee. 

While the Fabian Society shares some ideological similarities with Marxism the two part ways on how their illiberal and degressive ideologies should be imposed on society.  The Fabian Society advocates for a gradual transition from a democracy to a socialist or communist society through reformist efforts (by e.g. permeating existing political parties and influencing public policy), rather than through revolutionary means – “a class war leading to revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat” – as advocated by Marxists.

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