Blackburn, England: I’m standing with Craig Murray who’s working for Parliament on this gritty former mill city. We’re on a slender road with brick row homes that jaggedly descend down a hill. The sky is overcast. There may be intermittent rain.
Craig, portly, his white hair unkempt and wearing a clashing checkered shirt with a paisley tie, is handing out leaflets on the entrance of the Masjid e Tauheedul Islam, Blackburn’s largest mosque. He introduces himself politely to these leaving the noon prayers.
I converse with about half a dozen of the worshippers, who like a lot of the Muslim neighborhood in Blackburn, are of Indian and Pakistani origin. They curtly dismiss the leaders of the ruling Labour and Conservative events as out of contact with their lives and considerations, together with their outrage over the genocide in Gaza.
Craig’s central marketing campaign concern, like that of George Galloway — who was just lately elected as MP for Rochdale — is ending the genocide in Gaza, together with the halting of all arms shipments to Israel. Craig is working on the ticket of Galloway’s socialist Staff Get together of Britain, to counter what he says is the “appalling pro-genocide stance” of the opposition Labour Get together, which appears to be like set to win the British elections on July 4, ousting the Conservative Get together authorities led by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The Labour Get together has gained the parliamentary elections in Blackburn for the final 69 years. The socialist crusader, Barbara Citadel — instrumental in exposing the British atrocities in Kenya, together with the deaths of maybe 300,000 Kikuyu individuals and the detention of as much as 320,000 extra in over 100 camps, the place prisoners have been tortured, murdered and died of illness — beforehand held this seat, as did the previous overseas secretary Jack Straw. Straw was decidedly much less progressive. He was one of many architects of the 2003 conflict in Iraq underneath former prime minister Tony Blair. Craig challenged Straw for the seat in 2005 on an anti-war platform. He obtained 5 % of the vote.
The Labour MP for Blackburn, Kate Hollern, within the final election in 2019, gained 64.9 % of the vote. She deviates from the Labour Get together line on Gaza, calling for a direct ceasefire and a suspension of arms shipments to Israel. She was one of many few occasion members who remained loyal to Jeremy Corbyn when his marketing campaign to run for prime minister was sabotaged by occasion apparatchiks near Blair, who accused him of being an anti-Semite due to his protection of Palestinians.
“I’ve nothing unhealthy to say concerning the girl actually, besides that if elected, she can be a part of placing Keir Starmer into Quantity 10 and I’ve a really nice deal towards Keir Starmer,” Craig says of his Labour opponent.
Straw, though out of Parliament, casts an ominous shadow over Craig’s marketing campaign. For, as in a lot of the constituencies the place Labour is being challenged by candidates that oppose Labour’s assist for Israel, a second well-funded unbiased, devoid of political expertise or a public report on almost all points, can be working on an anti-genocide platform. Within the case of Blackburn, this individual is Adnan Hussain. Whereas Hussain spends a lot of his marketing campaign attacking Craig, Craig has held a collection of conferences on Palestine, together with one the place he, Richard Medhurst and I spoke to a packed corridor at Saint Paul’s Methodist church in Blackburn. Craig has additionally hosted marketing campaign occasions with Professor David Miller, who was fired in 2021 from the College of Bristol for his criticisms of Israel, and Dr. Bob Gill, who has documented the defunding, outsourcing and marketization of Britain’s Nationwide Well being Service by all ruling events since Margaret Thatcher. Roger Waters is scheduled to carry a marketing campaign rally in Blackburn for Craig on July 2.
The Muslim media website, 5Pillars, proposed that Craig and Hussain toss a coin to see who ought to run as an unbiased towards the Labour Get together. Craig agreed. Hussain, a 34-year-old lawyer, refused.
“The individuals behind Hussain’s marketing campaign are Jack Straw’s individuals,” Craig says. “The individuals financing and organizing his marketing campaign are Jack Straw’s individuals. The Labour Get together is splitting the problem. It’s not solely right here. It’s occurring across the nation.”
Craig’s cluttered second ground marketing campaign workplace sits on a slender road above the Mi Chaii cafe on Whalley Vary. Protecting the home windows exterior are enormous posters and billboards with footage of public figures, together with George Galloway, Roger Waters and Stella Assange, with their transient endorsements supporting Craig’s candidacy.
Almost half of Blackburn’s constituents are Muslim. The city is reputed to have extra mosques than any city in Europe. British Muslims, like Muslims within the U.S. who’ve deserted Joe Biden, have walked away from the Labour Get together due to Starmer’s unequivocal assist for Israel. In Blackburn’s native council elections in Could, Labour suffered a vital decline in votes.
Craig, the previous ambassador to Uzbekistan, was pushed out of the Overseas Workplace after leaking to The Monetary Instances, in 2004, a memorandum he authored that detailed the CIA torture and extraordinary rendition program in Uzbekistan. Craig says his inner protests to the Overseas Workplace have been ignored.
He uncovered practices in Uzbek black websites of sexual humiliation, genital mutilation, the rape of women and men, chopping and the dousing of prisoners with boiling liquid, together with the loss of life of a prisoner who was immersed in a vat of boiling water.
“The Uzbeks have been doing it on behalf of the CIA,” he tells me one morning as we sit in his marketing campaign workplace. “At first, the prisoners have been principally Uzbeks who had been captured in Afghanistan. However latterly, individuals have been being introduced in from in every single place.”
In accordance with the Council of Europe report on extraordinary rendition, of all of the CIA flights that stopped in Poland, 50 % went to Uzbekistan.
Straw, on the time of Craig’s revelations, was the overseas secretary. He pushed for Craig’s prosecution, one thing the Overseas Workplace determined towards. Caught in a “money for entry” sting, Straw was compelled to retire from politics. However he stays a powerbroker within the Labour Get together, particularly in Blackburn.
“That is solely prompted by the genocide in Gaza,” Craig says of his parliamentary marketing campaign. “I wouldn’t have come again have been it not for the genocide in Gaza. Starmer’s perspective to the genocide in Gaza jogs my memory of Straw’s perspective to torture, extraordinary rendition and the Iraq conflict. The Labour Get together is corrupt. It doesn’t stand for any of the ideas the Labour Get together is meant to face for.”
“Gaza represents the dislocation of the political class from the individuals,” he says. “The individuals need to cease it, definitely right here within the U.Ok., however they haven’t any leverage. The political class is not related to the individuals. It’s related to the arms business, to the lobbyists, notably the Zionist foyer. That’s the place the pursuits of the political class lie. They don’t care concerning the individuals. That’s true of each of the principle events. They endure no hardship as a result of there’s no person else more likely to be elected. Western democracy has turn into meaningless. The political class is homogeneous. All of them might transfer from one of many predominant events to the opposite predominant occasion with out altering something. If we’re going to save lots of democracy, we have now to supply an precise democratic various. Gaza introduced that residence to individuals.”
Craig, an ardent supporter of Julian Assange, who produced essentially the most erudite reporting on Julian’s many courtroom hearings, spent 4 months in jail in Edinburgh in the summertime of 2022.
He was present in media contempt of courtroom for his reporting on the trial of the Scottish independence chief Alex Salmond, who was accused of sexual assault.
“It was one other instance of the state utilizing sexual allegations to undermine and wreck the fame of an opponent,” he says of Salmond and Julian.
The group of girls who introduced the costs towards Salmond have been intently related to the then first minister, Nicola Sturgeon. Craig was jailed for hinting at this reality in his courtroom studies.
Salmond was discovered not responsible.
“Over 5,000 people wrote to me in jail,” he says. “I answered all these by hand, 50 or 60 letters a day.”
“There have been various illiterate prisoners,” he says. “If you need something in jail it’s important to fill in a type. For those who minimize your foot and wish a sticking plaster, it’s important to fill a type. If you need a household go to it’s important to fill in a type. Kinds would seem underneath my cell door. Somebody would shout by way of the door what they needed crammed in. A majority of prisoners are there due to poverty. Their crime is poverty. They’ve all been born into deprivation. They’ve had a really poor training. Most of them have been born into habit. The quantity who should not addicts is tiny. On my total block, which might be 120 individuals, there have been two individuals who weren’t addicts and one in all them was me.”
“Most of them are in jail for very, very petty crimes,” he continues. “They shoplift or burgle or deal small quantities of medication to be able to feed their habit. After which they get put in jail. They get no remedy for habit in jail. They get pharmaceuticals each day as a result of the guards need to preserve them dazed. Each morning they get their repair. They serve two years. They’re launched again out once more. They go and burgle another person and get caught after which they’re again in once more. Most of them have been in jail 5 or 6 instances. The variety of actual criminals, as in violent individuals or individuals who have carried out giant scale crime, is tiny. Most of them are very, very unhappy, incapable individuals who need assistance with their lives. They don’t want locking up.”
“I hadn’t realized so many individuals have abject, bleak lives, lives with out hope,” he says softly. “Their complete life has been with out hope from the day they have been born. They by no means had an opportunity, by no means had path. I believed I used to be socially conscious. I spotted I’m not. I didn’t know what it was like on the backside of society.”
“The state has a monopoly on violence and makes use of it,” he says. “It used excessive violence towards Julian Assange, which had a deleterious impact on his well being, each psychological and bodily.”
On October 16, 2023, as he was coming back from a WikiLeaks assembly in Reykjavik, the place he additionally attended a pro-Palestine demonstration, Craig was detained and interrogated in Glasgow airport underneath Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. He was questioned about his relationship with WikiLeaks and his assist for the Palestinians. He later obtained a letter informing him that he was underneath investigation underneath the Terrorism Act and that his digital units, which had been confiscated on the airport, wouldn’t be returned.
The Terrorism Act 2000 is usually used to detain and interrogate politically lively people, members of “suspect communities” reminiscent of Muslims, Tamils and Kurds, and journalists, reminiscent of David Miranda, for carrying the Snowden recordsdata. Package Klarenberg of The Grayzone was detained underneath the 2019 Counter-Terrorism and Border Act, after his report revealed journalist Paul Mason’s shut ties to British intelligence.
“I’m a traitor of their eyes,” Craig says of the ruling class. “I used to be an insider, a member of the institution who turned towards the institution.”
“It’s empathy,” he says once I ask him what drives him, “empathy for the individuals being tortured in Uzbekistan and for his or her households, for all those that endure. I used to be pushed by horror at what occurred to the victims of the Iraq conflict. I’m pushed by horror at what I see occurring to the youngsters of Gaza. I hate human struggling. I do my greatest to alleviate it.”
