From time to time writers have speculated about those in British Society who have plotted a formal right wing coup involving use of the army and the police and there are anecdotes that there have been plans if not attempts, notably surrounding the 1970’s organisation set up by Stirling, the founder of the SAS in the UK to ensure the continuation of public services in the event of a general strike but which he abandoned because of the involvement of extremists who wanted to use such a situation for a military backed based coup.
The main protagonist for many of the secret mission groups is a former MI6 officer who from a cursory examination of his writing seems to have confused the existence of legitimate private international and national organisations with missions to bring about change within a democratic framework with those who undoubtedly exist on the extremes of right and left politics, religious and economic interests who seek to gain and maintain ascendancy through force of arms and dictatorship. He lists such groups as the Bildenbergers, the Committee of 300 and The Club of Rome who are part of former than the latter category.
It is also true that private armies do officially exist with Sandline International the most well known in the UK for their involvement in New Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. However one Internet site brackets this registered organisation with Control Risks which although has 2000 employees with agents in 100 countries is the top of range advice group on how to trade in dangerous places without taking unnecessary risks.
This is by way of introduction to the latest BBC drama series Hidden which has a clandestine group who plot a military backed take over in the UK with the unwitting support of a substantial number of Members of the House of Commons because the current Prime Minister cannot reform a Coalition government and is attempting to operate as a minority government with resultant political instability and economic chaos. I found the four part series riveting and convincing and more compelling that Spooks. More on a work which could vie for honours with Spooks in a moment.
However in addition to my preoccupation this week with Intelligence past and present I have attempted to grasp the implications of the European summit on euro funding crisis and the House Commons E Petition debate on Monday in which without a three line Whip issued by the three main political Parties a motion to hold a referendum on the future UK relationship with the European Economic Community could have passed at the most inopportune of moments.
As a young man I supported the United Nations Association and its various branches to promote health and cultural developments. The disappointment has been its lack of intervention to prevent wars between nations and its failure to prevent genocide within countries and imprisonment without the rule of law. Its support for intervention in Libya to protect massacres was welcomed initially but then increasing question in the manner of the intervention as the situation progressed. It is evident that further interventions will require the approval of China, the USA and Russia, Brazil in South America, South Africa in Africa, India, the Arab States and the emerging United States of Europe as the latter develops its own Foreign Ministry, creates and Economic Minister and proceeding with greater political integration over the next decade. .
Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair recognised that if the UK was to continue as a world power it had to also establish closer ties with the United States but also open and develop economic links with China and Russia together with ongoing trading links with the Commonwealth which is meeting in Australia to day.
Independent self Government is OK as long as you can maintain and develop living standards for the majority of the population and maintain a military (including air and sea force for self defence and to protect economic interests which will because of the size of population, lack of ongoing natural energy sources, have to be global. We also have to take account that sometime over the next twenty five years Ireland will reunite into one political and economic self governing entity and Scotland much sooner. The reality if such developments is that that England and Wales cannot afford, and I pick my word carefully, not to be part of United States of Europe with a Single economic and financial policy based on a single currency. This is where The Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary both Euro sceptics are now trapped between a Rock- the increasing majority of their Political Party, a Hard Place- a Coalition in which their Partner recognises the need to remain at the centre of the European Development Movement, and economic and political reality.
The significant of the settlement reached by the EEC members with a single currency is that within the next three to five years we shall see a single Economic and Financial Ministry with clout so even if the Union falls short of declaring itself a United States of Europe this is what it will be in all but name as there is already a President, a Foreign Secretary and a Defence Minister is also planned. The danger facing the UK is that in the present mood of the majority of the Tory Party and the printed Media, to less extent visual and audio media is the wish to exit the present set up let alone join something more integrated. The question to be asked is who will the Chinese, the Russian, the Americans, The Indians, the Brazilians want to do business with first in 25 year’s time. A United State of Europe or an England and Wales as presumable by then Scotland and a United Ireland will be within the new European structure while England and Wales is without?
Now back to The Hidden with the excellent Philip Glenister, David Suchet and the less well known Anna Chancellor, Thelka Reuten and Peter Guiness. A mysterious lawyer Gina Hawkes(Thelka Reuten) hires Harry Vann(Philip Glenister( a solicitor) to represent a low life in prison Stevie Quirke who tells Harry to find Joe Collins who will provide an alibi and his lap top has the evidence that will clear Quirke of the allegations against him.
Harry is divorced/separated but maintains contact with his adolescent and rebellious son and is on good terms with his ex wife/ wife.
Harry is haunted by guilt and hunted by a Police Detective because of what happened 20 years before. Harry was persuaded by his elder brother to drive him and an associate to the home of a family where they kill the parents and shoot the son who is crippled. They then turn their guns on two security police who stop at the waiting vehicle at the entrance of the grounds. The elder brother is wounded in the shoot out and dies later having been taken to hospital, The other associate also dies. The detective responsible for the case is convinced there was a driver and that the driver was Harry. Harry’s father has never got over the death of his eldest son and relationships with Harry have reached breaking point especially over the break up of the marriage
Harry is bewildered and uncertain about the assignment he has been asked to undertake especially as he cannot f trace of Gina among British law firms. We the audience know she is also haunted by what happened to her mother, who was stabbed in a Paris Street and by the death of her father in a questionable road accident on the same day.
Later we learn that following the death of her parents she was brought up by the kindly David Suchet who plays, a leading Judge, Sir Nigel Fountain, with whom she retains a strong emotional attachment. When Harry meets up with Fountain he finds him protective and supportive of Gina and anxious that Harry keeps in touch, but he also gives the impression that he is not sympathetic to her preoccupation with Quirke or finding Collins
Running alongside Harry’s investigation we the audience are party to the situation that has developed within the political system. The existing Coalition has broken down and the Prime Minister is attempting to continue in office as leader of a minority government. There is financial as well as political instability given the banking crisis, the economic and euro crisis with protests and rioting on the streets. Another politician, the series is careful not to identify individual political parties and allegiances is open in his criticism of the Prime Minister and is supported in this by the Owner of a daily paper akin to the Daily Mail or Express Elspeth Verney by Anna Chancellor whose extraordinary upper class political and artistic background fits her into the role perfectly and who acts with a wealthy country house owning tycoon and others and as we learn later with Sir Nigel Fountain.
At first they appear only involved in a normal political coup pushing one politician in and another out and getting hold of damaging information for the purpose without any direct connection to the pasts and present concerns of Harry and Gina. The connecting link first becomes Jason Styles played by Peter Guinness who comes to Harry’s attention when he is seen at the prison where Quirke is murdered by an inmate before he can provide Harry with further information.
The seedy office where Harry and his Assistant work is blown up with the explanation of a gas leak although we know better. As part of attempting to work out who Gina is, Harry turns to a private detective who has saved from prison a couple of times and who breaks into the practice of a private medical doctor where the big clue is the portrait of a Battle of Britain fighter pilot who died several decades before. The man’s ideas and ambitions appeared to be shared by the Cabal behind the political coup being plotted.
Henry then follows the elusive Gina to Paris where she appears determined to keep him at arms length and give him the slip. Fortunately for her he has the ingenuity to keep track and saves her life as she goes to confront the recently released man from prison she believes killed her mother. The significant finding and establishment of the link between the two is when Harry discovers that one the assassins sent to kill Gina is the associate of his elder brother involved in he killing of he parents of the wheel chair bound Ben Lander two decades before..
It is only in the last of the four episodes that the various leads are knotted together to an extent. Sometime in the 1970’s before his death a Battle of Britain Ace and friends created an organisation with an intelligence and enforcement arm to ensure that the UK remained a Monarchy, independent, powerful and capitalist. They will have been the kind of individuals who resented the granting or accepting of independence by the colonies, the close involvement with Europe and the opening of he borders to migrants from what they would regard as alien religions cultures and races. In effect the kind of people who gathered with David Stirling the SAS founder and War Hero who formed GB 75 to combat the kind of strife which occurred in the Winter of Discontent in 1979 when the rubbish remained uncollected and bodies unburied.
In the series the organisation which the Fifhter Ace led continued waiting for the opportunity to take Britain back from those they regarded had destroyed the old order and ruined the position of the UK in the world. The political instability in the face of economic chaos of a Coalition failure provided that opportunity, just as there are politicians on the right now who are determined to ensure Britain does not enter a political union in Europe and they are backed by various interests in the UK who believe likewise. They are known to be working to unscramble the coalition as early as possible before the schedule next General Election and fight that Election on the issue of the retention of national sovereignty versus the existing or closer integration with Europe.
In Hidden the opportunity arises with the collapse of the coalition and the rioting together with obtaining a dossier of information to the discredit of the Prime Minister. The ostensible plan is for the chosen replacement, a family man with impeccable background and a media friendly personality to make the disclosure before the media of the world and then address an organised public rally and lead them on a march of protest to Parliament to force the Prime Minister to resign and for the chosen one to be called upon to form a government with popular acclaim and with the support of a substantial number of Members of Parliament.
However those behind the coup have a different scenario. They plan to assassinate the chosen politician as he is about to speak to the world’s media which they will therefore witness and with evidence then made available to suggest he was assassinated by the Prime Minister or those in his behalf inciting the assembled crowd to riot at which the sympathetic units of the military and police already in place to restore order.
Harry only becomes aware of this when he locates the missing Joe Collins hiding at a hotel at Heathrow and secures the lap top from him in exchange for funds to escape, although because the phone of Gina is bugged Styles and co are in hot pursuit and kill Collins.
This is the fourth time in days that Gina has narrowly escaped death. After the Paris situation she turns to her guardian for help and he says he will arrange for her to be taken to somewhere safe but fortunately she recognises the escort as Styles. Suchet has been reassured that she will be held until the coup has taken place but we the audience know Styles has been given instructions to kill her. She escapes and join Harry on his way to visit Lander and the private eye. After visiting Lander Gina insist on going to confront the guardian that her parents had been assassinated, that Sanders’ parents had also been killed to order and not the subject of a robbery break in that went wrong and that her knew she was to be killed. She agrees to meet him at one of the tropical houses in Kew Gardens and at the point when he is willing to answer her questions he suddenly spots the marker of riffle on her so her bends forwards and hugs and he is assassinated and she escapes. After the escape at the Heathrow Hotel she stays with Harry at the home of his wife before going to somewhere safe until after the day of days.
Harry has to wait for his computer friend to arrive at the store he operates in order to get into the computer and before he can view the contents he notes the arrival of the never giving up Detective called in by local police who have spotted the registration number of the car and commence a shop by store check. He hides in a dry cleaners and is able to read the last communication on the computer which provides information via a telephone number and various password and code checks to confirm that the assassination of the chosen candidate is active and that the chosen assassin is his dead brother. There has been the suggestion that his brother was still alive to the extent that Harry had checked with his father that the he was certain that the body was that of his son.
In the finale Harry fails to gain entry into the press conference so in desperation he calls the Detective Inspector as he is about to removed from the scene by security police. He is able to persuade the Inspector that there is an assassination attempt being made and that he can identify the would be killer. However he cannot do so and is therefore unable to prevent a security guard from drawing a weapon that has been handed to him and shooting not the chosen politician but the accompanying tycoon. The assassin then escapes sufficiently long to kill Styles before also being shot. Harry is then interviewed in custody by the pursing detective for the original murders of the Landers but when Harry maintains his non involvement he is charged. Gina then turns up as his lawyer confident that she can defend his position but cannot immediately arrange bail. Shortly after arrival in prison he is placed in the same waiting where Quirke was murdered only in this instance he is confronted by his brother in the uniform of a prison guard who has come to get him out of jail and presumably become part of he ongoing organisation behind the brother for the past two decades. Harry thinks about it but decides to remain in prison despite the presence of an open door to immediate freedom saying he has a good lawyer.
There are a considerable number of story holes and unanswered questions which on a different day I might have enumerated, but for once I chose not too. It was not that kind of experience and I need to move on.
There are a couple of good films outstanding Route Irish and Casino Jack to report and I am tempted to go to the cinema to see The Help and the Ides of March. There has been the sporting week and my every day activities including a Safety recall for my car which has a Twist. There is another batch of Tremé episodes to catch up but these will be covered sometime over the week’s after I engaged in other work activity and some correspondence and then back to the Riots, the Hacking Inquiries and Leveson where the available online records and transcripts continues to mount with several hundred pages of material.
The main protagonist for many of the secret mission groups is a former MI6 officer who from a cursory examination of his writing seems to have confused the existence of legitimate private international and national organisations with missions to bring about change within a democratic framework with those who undoubtedly exist on the extremes of right and left politics, religious and economic interests who seek to gain and maintain ascendancy through force of arms and dictatorship. He lists such groups as the Bildenbergers, the Committee of 300 and The Club of Rome who are part of former than the latter category.
It is also true that private armies do officially exist with Sandline International the most well known in the UK for their involvement in New Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia. However one Internet site brackets this registered organisation with Control Risks which although has 2000 employees with agents in 100 countries is the top of range advice group on how to trade in dangerous places without taking unnecessary risks.
This is by way of introduction to the latest BBC drama series Hidden which has a clandestine group who plot a military backed take over in the UK with the unwitting support of a substantial number of Members of the House of Commons because the current Prime Minister cannot reform a Coalition government and is attempting to operate as a minority government with resultant political instability and economic chaos. I found the four part series riveting and convincing and more compelling that Spooks. More on a work which could vie for honours with Spooks in a moment.
However in addition to my preoccupation this week with Intelligence past and present I have attempted to grasp the implications of the European summit on euro funding crisis and the House Commons E Petition debate on Monday in which without a three line Whip issued by the three main political Parties a motion to hold a referendum on the future UK relationship with the European Economic Community could have passed at the most inopportune of moments.
As a young man I supported the United Nations Association and its various branches to promote health and cultural developments. The disappointment has been its lack of intervention to prevent wars between nations and its failure to prevent genocide within countries and imprisonment without the rule of law. Its support for intervention in Libya to protect massacres was welcomed initially but then increasing question in the manner of the intervention as the situation progressed. It is evident that further interventions will require the approval of China, the USA and Russia, Brazil in South America, South Africa in Africa, India, the Arab States and the emerging United States of Europe as the latter develops its own Foreign Ministry, creates and Economic Minister and proceeding with greater political integration over the next decade. .
Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair recognised that if the UK was to continue as a world power it had to also establish closer ties with the United States but also open and develop economic links with China and Russia together with ongoing trading links with the Commonwealth which is meeting in Australia to day.
Independent self Government is OK as long as you can maintain and develop living standards for the majority of the population and maintain a military (including air and sea force for self defence and to protect economic interests which will because of the size of population, lack of ongoing natural energy sources, have to be global. We also have to take account that sometime over the next twenty five years Ireland will reunite into one political and economic self governing entity and Scotland much sooner. The reality if such developments is that that England and Wales cannot afford, and I pick my word carefully, not to be part of United States of Europe with a Single economic and financial policy based on a single currency. This is where The Prime Minister and his Foreign Secretary both Euro sceptics are now trapped between a Rock- the increasing majority of their Political Party, a Hard Place- a Coalition in which their Partner recognises the need to remain at the centre of the European Development Movement, and economic and political reality.
The significant of the settlement reached by the EEC members with a single currency is that within the next three to five years we shall see a single Economic and Financial Ministry with clout so even if the Union falls short of declaring itself a United States of Europe this is what it will be in all but name as there is already a President, a Foreign Secretary and a Defence Minister is also planned. The danger facing the UK is that in the present mood of the majority of the Tory Party and the printed Media, to less extent visual and audio media is the wish to exit the present set up let alone join something more integrated. The question to be asked is who will the Chinese, the Russian, the Americans, The Indians, the Brazilians want to do business with first in 25 year’s time. A United State of Europe or an England and Wales as presumable by then Scotland and a United Ireland will be within the new European structure while England and Wales is without?
Now back to The Hidden with the excellent Philip Glenister, David Suchet and the less well known Anna Chancellor, Thelka Reuten and Peter Guiness. A mysterious lawyer Gina Hawkes(Thelka Reuten) hires Harry Vann(Philip Glenister( a solicitor) to represent a low life in prison Stevie Quirke who tells Harry to find Joe Collins who will provide an alibi and his lap top has the evidence that will clear Quirke of the allegations against him.
Harry is divorced/separated but maintains contact with his adolescent and rebellious son and is on good terms with his ex wife/ wife.
Harry is haunted by guilt and hunted by a Police Detective because of what happened 20 years before. Harry was persuaded by his elder brother to drive him and an associate to the home of a family where they kill the parents and shoot the son who is crippled. They then turn their guns on two security police who stop at the waiting vehicle at the entrance of the grounds. The elder brother is wounded in the shoot out and dies later having been taken to hospital, The other associate also dies. The detective responsible for the case is convinced there was a driver and that the driver was Harry. Harry’s father has never got over the death of his eldest son and relationships with Harry have reached breaking point especially over the break up of the marriage
Harry is bewildered and uncertain about the assignment he has been asked to undertake especially as he cannot f trace of Gina among British law firms. We the audience know she is also haunted by what happened to her mother, who was stabbed in a Paris Street and by the death of her father in a questionable road accident on the same day.
Later we learn that following the death of her parents she was brought up by the kindly David Suchet who plays, a leading Judge, Sir Nigel Fountain, with whom she retains a strong emotional attachment. When Harry meets up with Fountain he finds him protective and supportive of Gina and anxious that Harry keeps in touch, but he also gives the impression that he is not sympathetic to her preoccupation with Quirke or finding Collins
Running alongside Harry’s investigation we the audience are party to the situation that has developed within the political system. The existing Coalition has broken down and the Prime Minister is attempting to continue in office as leader of a minority government. There is financial as well as political instability given the banking crisis, the economic and euro crisis with protests and rioting on the streets. Another politician, the series is careful not to identify individual political parties and allegiances is open in his criticism of the Prime Minister and is supported in this by the Owner of a daily paper akin to the Daily Mail or Express Elspeth Verney by Anna Chancellor whose extraordinary upper class political and artistic background fits her into the role perfectly and who acts with a wealthy country house owning tycoon and others and as we learn later with Sir Nigel Fountain.
At first they appear only involved in a normal political coup pushing one politician in and another out and getting hold of damaging information for the purpose without any direct connection to the pasts and present concerns of Harry and Gina. The connecting link first becomes Jason Styles played by Peter Guinness who comes to Harry’s attention when he is seen at the prison where Quirke is murdered by an inmate before he can provide Harry with further information.
The seedy office where Harry and his Assistant work is blown up with the explanation of a gas leak although we know better. As part of attempting to work out who Gina is, Harry turns to a private detective who has saved from prison a couple of times and who breaks into the practice of a private medical doctor where the big clue is the portrait of a Battle of Britain fighter pilot who died several decades before. The man’s ideas and ambitions appeared to be shared by the Cabal behind the political coup being plotted.
Henry then follows the elusive Gina to Paris where she appears determined to keep him at arms length and give him the slip. Fortunately for her he has the ingenuity to keep track and saves her life as she goes to confront the recently released man from prison she believes killed her mother. The significant finding and establishment of the link between the two is when Harry discovers that one the assassins sent to kill Gina is the associate of his elder brother involved in he killing of he parents of the wheel chair bound Ben Lander two decades before..
It is only in the last of the four episodes that the various leads are knotted together to an extent. Sometime in the 1970’s before his death a Battle of Britain Ace and friends created an organisation with an intelligence and enforcement arm to ensure that the UK remained a Monarchy, independent, powerful and capitalist. They will have been the kind of individuals who resented the granting or accepting of independence by the colonies, the close involvement with Europe and the opening of he borders to migrants from what they would regard as alien religions cultures and races. In effect the kind of people who gathered with David Stirling the SAS founder and War Hero who formed GB 75 to combat the kind of strife which occurred in the Winter of Discontent in 1979 when the rubbish remained uncollected and bodies unburied.
In the series the organisation which the Fifhter Ace led continued waiting for the opportunity to take Britain back from those they regarded had destroyed the old order and ruined the position of the UK in the world. The political instability in the face of economic chaos of a Coalition failure provided that opportunity, just as there are politicians on the right now who are determined to ensure Britain does not enter a political union in Europe and they are backed by various interests in the UK who believe likewise. They are known to be working to unscramble the coalition as early as possible before the schedule next General Election and fight that Election on the issue of the retention of national sovereignty versus the existing or closer integration with Europe.
In Hidden the opportunity arises with the collapse of the coalition and the rioting together with obtaining a dossier of information to the discredit of the Prime Minister. The ostensible plan is for the chosen replacement, a family man with impeccable background and a media friendly personality to make the disclosure before the media of the world and then address an organised public rally and lead them on a march of protest to Parliament to force the Prime Minister to resign and for the chosen one to be called upon to form a government with popular acclaim and with the support of a substantial number of Members of Parliament.
However those behind the coup have a different scenario. They plan to assassinate the chosen politician as he is about to speak to the world’s media which they will therefore witness and with evidence then made available to suggest he was assassinated by the Prime Minister or those in his behalf inciting the assembled crowd to riot at which the sympathetic units of the military and police already in place to restore order.
Harry only becomes aware of this when he locates the missing Joe Collins hiding at a hotel at Heathrow and secures the lap top from him in exchange for funds to escape, although because the phone of Gina is bugged Styles and co are in hot pursuit and kill Collins.
This is the fourth time in days that Gina has narrowly escaped death. After the Paris situation she turns to her guardian for help and he says he will arrange for her to be taken to somewhere safe but fortunately she recognises the escort as Styles. Suchet has been reassured that she will be held until the coup has taken place but we the audience know Styles has been given instructions to kill her. She escapes and join Harry on his way to visit Lander and the private eye. After visiting Lander Gina insist on going to confront the guardian that her parents had been assassinated, that Sanders’ parents had also been killed to order and not the subject of a robbery break in that went wrong and that her knew she was to be killed. She agrees to meet him at one of the tropical houses in Kew Gardens and at the point when he is willing to answer her questions he suddenly spots the marker of riffle on her so her bends forwards and hugs and he is assassinated and she escapes. After the escape at the Heathrow Hotel she stays with Harry at the home of his wife before going to somewhere safe until after the day of days.
Harry has to wait for his computer friend to arrive at the store he operates in order to get into the computer and before he can view the contents he notes the arrival of the never giving up Detective called in by local police who have spotted the registration number of the car and commence a shop by store check. He hides in a dry cleaners and is able to read the last communication on the computer which provides information via a telephone number and various password and code checks to confirm that the assassination of the chosen candidate is active and that the chosen assassin is his dead brother. There has been the suggestion that his brother was still alive to the extent that Harry had checked with his father that the he was certain that the body was that of his son.
In the finale Harry fails to gain entry into the press conference so in desperation he calls the Detective Inspector as he is about to removed from the scene by security police. He is able to persuade the Inspector that there is an assassination attempt being made and that he can identify the would be killer. However he cannot do so and is therefore unable to prevent a security guard from drawing a weapon that has been handed to him and shooting not the chosen politician but the accompanying tycoon. The assassin then escapes sufficiently long to kill Styles before also being shot. Harry is then interviewed in custody by the pursing detective for the original murders of the Landers but when Harry maintains his non involvement he is charged. Gina then turns up as his lawyer confident that she can defend his position but cannot immediately arrange bail. Shortly after arrival in prison he is placed in the same waiting where Quirke was murdered only in this instance he is confronted by his brother in the uniform of a prison guard who has come to get him out of jail and presumably become part of he ongoing organisation behind the brother for the past two decades. Harry thinks about it but decides to remain in prison despite the presence of an open door to immediate freedom saying he has a good lawyer.
There are a considerable number of story holes and unanswered questions which on a different day I might have enumerated, but for once I chose not too. It was not that kind of experience and I need to move on.
There are a couple of good films outstanding Route Irish and Casino Jack to report and I am tempted to go to the cinema to see The Help and the Ides of March. There has been the sporting week and my every day activities including a Safety recall for my car which has a Twist. There is another batch of Tremé episodes to catch up but these will be covered sometime over the week’s after I engaged in other work activity and some correspondence and then back to the Riots, the Hacking Inquiries and Leveson where the available online records and transcripts continues to mount with several hundred pages of material.
No comments:
Post a Comment