EPISODE 2/4: Seasoned activists, thick as thieves

14/09/2021 · Colin Meier

Do Imran Ahmed and the CCDH really speak on behalf of these victims, by the way? I ask this question because, not being vaccinated against covid-19, I would, according to him, be one of the victims of vaccine disinformation. Yet I do not feel in the least a victim or disinformed, quite the contrary. On the other hand, we will discover that the connections of I. Ahmed and the CCDH are linked to disinformation campaigns and have the blood of victims on their hands.

Jeremy Corbyn in the crosshairs

However, even if I took his words seriously, I would feel very poorly represented by I. Ahmed. When you look a little more closely at him and at the CCDH, you realise that their actions attract the support ^{[1], [2], [3]} of conservative politicians with ties to industry. More importantly, they maintain fairly close professional relationships with members of a certain conservative, anti-Corbynite wing of the English Labour Party, Labour.

Thus the company Brixton Endeavour Ltd. ^[4], registered in London in 2018 by the Labour official Morgan James McSweeney ^[5], was renamed Center for Countering Digital Hate Ltd. in 2019 ^[6], and saw its assets grow by almost 55% between the end of October 2019 and the end of October 2020 ^[7]. In April 2020, Mr McSweeney ^[8] left the CCDH to become campaign chief for the current Labour leader, Keir Starmer ^[9], who prevailed over Jeremy Corbyn (party leader from 2015 to 2020). As fate would have it, Mr McSweeney was also the head of Labour Together (LT), an electoral organisation collecting donations, among other things for K. Starmer's campaign, and now under investigation for failing to declare certain major donors within the required deadlines ^{[10], [11]}.

Following Mr McSweeney's departure, I. Ahmed took over at the CCDH ^[12]. Curiously, his name and position appear only on the CCDH website and his Twitter account, while no official document confirming his appointment as CEO or his status as a founding member can be found ^{[13], [14], [15]}. That said, I. Ahmed has also worked as an election campaign manager for several Labour MPs opposed to J. Corbyn. Thus, from 2012 to 2016, he was the strategic adviser to the election campaign of Hilary Benn, Labour MP and member of the shadow cabinet under Ed Miliband, then under J. Corbyn. I. Ahmed supported H. Benn in the 2015 general election and in his pro-EU campaign during the 2016 referendum (on Brexit) ^[16]. But who is this Labour MP to whom I. Ahmed rendered services for several years? As shadow foreign secretary, H. Benn repeatedly opposed his party leader, J. Corbyn, in particular on the question of Labour support for military intervention in Syria in 2015 ^[17]. His opposition to the party leader would lead him to plot against him ^[18] and to declare his support for Owen Smith ^[19] in the 2016 party leadership election, which pitted Smith against J. Corbyn.

Troubling links

As for I. Ahmed, he also advised Labour MP Angela Eagle during her bid for the Labour leadership in 2016 ^[20], she too an opponent of J. Corbyn. She in turn abandoned her failed bid in favour of Owen Smith ^[21], who ended up losing nonetheless. Like H. Benn, she opposed J. Corbyn's leadership of Labour, in particular his refusal to support military intervention in Syria ^[22].

A juicy detail: both H. Benn and A. Eagle approved not only this intervention but also the Iraq war a few years earlier, considering that enough evidence of weapons of mass destruction incriminating Saddam Hussein's government had been provided ^{[23], [24], [25]}, whereas it rested on a war propaganda campaign ^{[26], [27], [28], [29]}. Both also opposed an inquiry into the Iraq war. They both also expressed their support for the American bombing of Syrian armed forces ^[30] following the gas attacks allegedly carried out by the latter against the civilian population in Douma ^[31]. Might this perhaps explain why I. Ahmed included in his list of victims of disinformation the White Helmets ^[32], a group whose role in the Syrian war, including in Douma, is more than dubious ^[33]?

Friends of Israel

But the troubling links of the CCDH and its CEO do not stop there. Before supporting #DontSpreadtheVirus ^[34], presenter Rachel Riley ^[35], a supporter of the CCDH, took part in the smear campaign against J. Corbyn and those close to him ^[36], such as former Labour MP George Galloway, accusing them – wrongly, it seems ^{[37], [38], [39]} – of antisemitism ^{[40], [41], [42]}. A. Eagle, for her part, is a member ^[43] of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), an organisation that promotes cooperation between Labour and Israeli parties. The former chairs of LFI, Joan Ryan and Louise Ellman ^[44], also voted for the Iraq war (and against an inquiry into it) and for the military interventions in Syria ^{[45], [46]}, before slamming the door on Labour in protest at J. Corbyn's alleged antisemitism ^{[47], [48]}. Let us also note in passing that H. Benn was LFI's guest of honour speaker in 2015^[49].

Let us add that K. Starmer, the current leader of Labour, received £50,000 from Trevor Chinn, an English businessman and Zionist lobbyist ^[50], chairman of the United Jewish Israel Appeal (UJIA). He too supported O. Smith, J. Corbyn's opponent in 2016 ^[51], donating £27,000 to him, just as he supported J. Ryan, the former head of LFI, on several occasions ^[52]. The icing on the cake: T. Chinn also gave £225,000 ^[53] to Labour Together, the electoral organisation headed by Mr McSweeney (K. Starmer's campaign chief), of which he is a director^[54], and which is currently under investigation.

How can it be explained that the CCDH, I. Ahmed, his predecessor or his supporters can, on the one hand, take part in smear campaigns and, on the other, claim to fight “disinformation for the victims it causes”, and repeatedly support politicians who have, just as repeatedly, approved military interventions based on war propaganda and who refuse any subsequent inquiry into them? Wars that have caused many victims: the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people ^{[55], [56]}, whose exact number will probably never be known, not to mention countless refugees and displaced people ^{[57], [58]}. On behalf of which victims is I. Ahmed still speaking?

By Colin Meier, independent citizen journalist and correspondent for Germany at BAM!

[1] www.linkedin.com/in/harrietgould/?originalSubdomain=uk: A member of the British Conservative Party, Harriet Gould has been employed as advertising director since the end of 2020 at the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), where she had already worked between 2011 and 2018. The RSC cooperates with several multinationals in the agri-food (PepsiCo), chemical (Procter & Gamble, Unilever) and pharmaceutical sectors, such as Eli Lilly, Roche – one of the companies profiting most from covid, as its diagnostics division soared by +55% in one year, offsetting falls in its other divisions and now accounting for around 30% of turnover thanks to its PCR and rapid antigen tests –, Walgreens & Boots – the latter having praised the anti-covid vaccines and declared itself ready to vaccinate 12- to 15-year-olds –, as well as certain laboratories that have developed or are seeking to develop anti-covid vaccines, such as AstraZeneca and GSK. Many RSC trustees also come from industry (BP, EDF Energy, GSK, Pfizer), where they hold or have held senior positions. H. Gould's small and seemingly harmless support (see note 11) for the CCDH, which for its part hunts down “anti-vaxxers” and critics of the official narrative on covid-19, may therefore not be entirely harmless.

[2] twitter.com/hariert?lang=en

[3] www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/harriet-gould-countering-digital-hate?utm_term=vrNa4ywZ9

[4] find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127

[5] uk.linkedin.com/in/morgan-mcsweeney-04ab367

[6] find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127

[7] find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127/filing-history: see Micro company accounts made up to 31 October 2020. NB: The statement for 2019 had been signed by Mr McSweeney, the director at the time, whereas the one for 2020 was signed by Simon Clark, not I. Ahmed.

[8] opencorporates.com/events/1809969711

[9] macemagazine.com/spads/morgan-mcsweeney/

[10] www.businessinsider.com/labour-together-donations-under-investigation-by-electoral-commission-2021-2?r=US&IR=T

[11] www.thecanary.co/trending/2021/02/20/a-labour-group-linked-to-starmer-is-under-investigation-by-the-electoral-commission/

[12] www.counterhate.com/our-people

[13] opencorporates.com/companies/gb/11633127

[14] find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127/filing-history

[15] find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/11633127/persons-with-significant-control

[16] www.cumberlandlodge.ac.uk/about-us/people/imran-ahmed

[17] www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34980504

[18] www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/25/hilary-benn-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leadership-eu-referendum-brexit

[19] labourlist.org/2016/07/which-mps-and-meps-have-nominated-owen-smith/