Who Are Hakluyt?

As I wrote recently, Bloomberg has reported that Starmer's Blue Labour has enlisted the services of Hakluyt and Co., to assist it in developing better ties to the main enemies of the British workers, in British business. As Bloomberg notes, Hakluyt is a firm established by former MI6 spies, and, as everyone who has read any of the Le Carre etc. novels knows, once a spook, always a spook. So, exactly who are Hakluyt that Starmer has jumped into bed with.

Wikipedia, which notes, that it was established 28 years ago, by former MI6 agents, and has, “recruited several former spies and journalists from the FT”, provides a list of some of its employees, including various former CEO's of global corporations, as well as former Tory Minister Andrew Mitchell. It also notes its continued close links to MI6, saying,

“Hakluyt has strong links with the British intelligence service MI6. The Evening Standard wrote in 2012 that "Spies preparing for retirement are approached discreetly in St James’s clubs and asked if they would like some lucrative freelance action to top up their pensions".

Hakluyt refused to comment when asked whether former employees of MI6 were required to cut ties with the intelligence agency when recruited to work at Hakluyt.”

According to Open Democracy, Hakluyt is just one of a series of private spying outfits with links to the secret services that have been engaged by big business, as well as by local governments, to spy on activists, be they environmentalist activists, or labour movement activists, of the type who might think that the Labour Party would be sympathetic to their interests, rather than engaging spooks and agents of the state to spy on them. It notes,

“But it seems that one company in particular enjoys access to the upper levels of government.

Hakluyt, which is chaired by Conservative peer Paul Deighton, has been described as a “retirement home for ex-MI6 officers”. It made headlines last month for hiring the UK’s Brexit negotiator, Ollie Robbins.”

It also cites the Sunday Times, from 2001, which accused the company of spying on Greenpeace activists. Given the experience and exposes of the actions of under cover state agents in not only the activities of various campaigning groups, but also in the intimate private lives of individual activists, in those groups, you might think that Starmer would steer a million miles away from them, as these activities of lying to individuals, some of whom were subsequently made pregnant by those agents, makes the activities of Russell Brand look tame by comparison.

Forty years ago, when Starmer was a member of the Pabloite Socialist Alternatives, he is one of those who might have been the subject of such spying activities, or, may be not!

The connection of Halkuyt to Ollie Robbins, is, of course, consistent with Starmer's reactionary, pro-Brexit position, and his need, now, to square that both with the need to appeal to the vast majority of Labour voters, who oppose Brexit, many on a progressive, international socialist basis, and seek to rejoin the EU, not to mention the many progressive, liberal voters that Labour needs to win, as well as with the interests of big business, which opposes Brexit, and which Starmer, meanwhile, needs to get on board.

Open Democracy also give a list of meetings between Halkuyt employees and government ministers, the existence of which was only uncovered as a result of Freedom of Information requests, but with the actual purpose and details of those meetings all hidden from public view. One of the activities seems also to have been in relation to Britain's relation to China, which is significant given the growing butting of heads between the two global imperialist blocs of US/NATO and Russia/China, whether in Ukraine, the Middle East, and increasingly the Pacific.

“openDemocracy previously reported how Hakluyt met with then-minister for investment Gerry Grimstone in 2020 – during which no minutes were taken. But internal documents suggest that a government operation called Project DEFEND, which aimed to reduce the UK’s reliance on China for medical equipment, was discussed at the meeting.”

Starmer and the Blue Labour Right have repeatedly brought the enemy class forces into the affairs of the labour movement to serve their purposes in attacking the Left, which comprises the large majority of party members. Bringing in the EHCR was just one example, and now we see openly a connection to the forces of the capitalist state, in its most vicious form.  Of course, connections to other organisations with open links to foreign states is not at all new, as with the connections of numerous right-wing Labour MP's with BICOM, and its relations to the Zionist state.  A look at BICOM's website shows the connections of its staff to the Zionist state, within which many of them formerly worked.

Opendemocracy also relates the way the Greater London Authority used another such firm, Welund, in 2020,

“to provide intelligence about activists. Documents obtained by openDemocracy now show that the Greater London Authority (GLA) had previously hired the firm on another contract several months earlier, in 2019.

“Welund provides a curated daily dashboard with listings of planned demonstrations, events and protests,” an internal GLA email says. It adds that the firm has “consistently given warning of gatherings in London that are potentially disruptive, that [City Hall] did not have information on from other sources – including [the Metropolitan Police].”

The GLA was also implicated in the intelligence gathering of environmental protesters last summer. OpenDemocracy revealed how security officials linked to a GLA event “spied” on a group of environmental activists and blocked them from participating in a public debate.

Video footage obtained by openDemocracy shows how campaigners who wanted to ask questions at an event with London Mayor Sadiq Khan at the O2 arena were personally identified and turned away at the door.

In one clip, a plain-clothes security official at the entrance calls out the campaigners’ names as they approach, but refuses to tell them who he is working for. A second clip also shows an O2 security guard admitting he had received “intelligence” about the green campaigners.”

All of this activity, actively conspiring with the class enemies of the working-class, brings the Labour Party into disrepute. For those who think this is a recent phenomena, a simple Google search, or look on the Hakluyt website, will show the links between its employees and other Labour politicians, such as Gordon Brown. Andrew Hilland, was a political advisor to Brown, as was Simon King, and Alex Canfor-Dumas.

We need a full scale workers inquiry into these links between the Blue Labour leadership, and the forces of the secret state, who form the most potent weapon of the ruling class against the labour movement.