LABOUR MP FOR RHONDDA CHRIS BRYANT HAS BEEN WORKING WITH A LOBBYING ORG BRANDED “ANTI-MUSLIM” BY A LEADING ACADEMIC
BRYANT HAS BEEN A LONG-TIME MEMBER OF THE NEOCONSERVATIVE HENRY JACKSON SOCIETY, AT ONE POINT SITTING ON THEIR POLITICAL COUNCIL AND CHAIRING THEIR FOREIGN POLICY DISCUSSIONS
THE MP HAS SAID THAT HE COLLABORATES WITH THE SOCIETY ON THE “SOLE ISSUE OF RUSSIA”, BUT VOICE.WALES HAS FOUND PROOF OTHERWISE
By Mark S Redfern @genericredfern.
Labour MP Chris Bryant has had a long and close relationship with the Henry Jackson Society (HJS), a foreign policy think-tank popular with US war-hawk politicians.
The politician representing the Rhondda has kept the company of neoconservatives at numerous publication launches and panel discussions, despite the organisation drifting increasingly towards the far right.
Douglas Murray, a virulently Islamophobic political commentator, sits as one of the Society’s Associate Directors and the organisation is infamous for its lobbying on tougher anti-terror legislation and foreign warfare, specifically in the Middle East.
When asked about his affiliation with the HJS during a webchat hosted by The Guardian in 2015, Bryant said “I’ve co-operated with the Henry Jackson Society on the sole issue of Russia”.
But that’s not the organisation’s only talking point and Bryant’s relationship with the Society goes beyond simple co-operation.
The Society keeps a tight leash on the information it publishes about its members and as a result the earliest event featuring Bryant that voice.wales could unearth was in December 2007 on a discussion regarding Islamic extremism, not Russia. In a statement Bryant says he was “not aware” of the meeting.
The Labour MP has spoken regularly at HJS events over the years and as recently as July 2020, when the Society gave US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a platform to accuse the World Health Organisation of being too close to China during the Covid-19 pandemic and leaving “dead Britons” in its wake.
Bryant has contributed a foreword to one of their major reports and has chaired high profile events for the secretive lobbying org, including one with Russian opposition-leader Alexei Navalny in 2011 and the prominent anti-Putin punk group Pussy Riot in 2014.
The Rhondda MP is listed as one of the group’s “signatories to the statement of principles,” which pleads for foreign interventionism and the spread of free market ideals, with the Labour MP at one point sitting on the HJS Political Council.
Lobbying
The organisation is grand in scale, self-congratulating it’s events capacity in charity filings as being “the busiest in the Westminster world” and in 2019 splashing £1.2million on lobbying activity.
The group has also been loose with giving thousands of pounds in cash donations to hard-right politicians like Priti Patel and Michael Gove.
Gove believes “a sizeable minority” of British Muslims hold “rejectionist Islamist views”, whilst Patel has explored the possibility of confining migrants seeking asylum to processing centres built on tiny islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. Just this week, she ordered the deportation of around 50 Black British residents to Jamaica in an episode reminiscent of the Windrush scandal.
Whilst the HJS has given money to these politicians, Bryant has consistently voted against tougher regulation of lobbyists in Westminster.
In the past the HJS has been quiet about its funding sources, to the extent that in 2014 the organisation withdrew funding from two parliamentary groups rather than reveal who its private donors were.
Despite this, the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which Bryant sits, still found the Henry Jackson Society to be an authoritative source on foreign policy.
Co-founded in 2005 by Dr Alan Mendoza and a number of other free market activists, the think-tank has often been found influencing Conservative party rhetoric on foreign affairs.
I hope you realise this is the world of hard left politics. Nasty and brutish masquerading as peace-loving. https://t.co/ciSZm5lkYq
— Chris Bryant (@RhonddaBryant) July 12, 2016
William Kristol and Richard Pearle, two men who worked tirelessly to lobby for the invasion of Iraq, are among the many veteran neoconservatives that make up the think-tank. The top brass of the organisation has more recently been found to be using the alt-right outlet Breitbart to sell their agenda to the masses in the US.
The UK Government decided to halt advertisements on Breitbart after then-Labour MP Mary Creagh called the website a “home to misogyny, homophobia, anti-Semitism, islamophobia, racism and wild conspiracy theories”.
Islamophobia
Also of concern is that one of the HJS Associate Directors is Douglas Murray, who in 2006 told a conference that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board.”
The political commentator has also in the past described mass inaction against immigration as white Britons “abolishing themselves,” but despite these comments has found a comfortable living at the HJS.
Bryant has continued his affiliation with the organisation in the face of their employment of Murray and their indulgence with far-right media, yet the Society has long had a rotten reputation as a reactionary lobbying firm.
David Miller, a Professor of Political Sociology in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, has been outspoken on the threat the HJS poses to Muslims in Britain and around the globe.
Prof Miller told voice.wales: “It’s named after a slightly obscure Democratic senator from the US who was very hawkish on foreign policy issues.”
The HJS started life in 2005 as a cross-party think-tank with members from all political strands, but “they’ve become less bi-partisan as time has gone on and obviously more neoconservative and anti-Muslim, essentially.”
According to Miller, neoconservatives “were a movement in the US and best known for their role in taking us to war in Iraq. They were behind the idea to invade Iraq to get rid of the fictitious Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
Bryant has voted consistently for the invasion of Iraq, a conflict which resulted in an estimated 1.1million deaths in the country and gave the world the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the chemical warfare of Fallujah and spiralling conflict in the region.
“At the same time,” Prof Miller told us, “internally, they push for more and more discriminatory legislation against Muslims, like counter-terrorism legislation… they put a nice wrapping around anti-Muslim ideas, give them some respectability.”
The Society has focussed effort on bolstering the UK Government’s Prevent strategy, an anti-extremism policy that Spinwatch describes in their report, The Cold War on British Muslims, as “likely to stigmatise and criminalise politically active Muslims – as well as leftists and liberals”.
Bryant has also shown himself to be fond of strengthening anti-terror laws.
Chris Bryant has told voice.wales he was “not aware” of having spoken on the subject of Islamic extremism in 2007 or at any other point, and has “repeatedly worked with the society on matter relating to human rights in Russia.”
1 Comments
Comments are closed.