It’s hard to expect a nation which reveres official secrecy and popular self-delusion to admit to evil in real time
~ punkacademic ~
On Saturday afternoon, hours after the US and Israel had launched large-scale attacks on Iran, Prime Minister Keir Starmer addressed the nation.
Starmer assured British citizens and anyone else listening that whilst the UK was not directly involved in the attacks, its government wasn’t against them either. British planes were “in the sky”, but in a purely “defensive” role. All OK then.
Except that like everything Starmer’s government promotes, this version of ‘the truth’ isn’t the truth at all. Whilst RAF aircraft may not have dropped bombs on Saturday, by Sunday evening Starmer had already changed his tune and permitted US strikes directly from British bases. Even so, the death and destruction in Iran had already made plentiful use of British goodwill and practical support.
For weeks, US aircraft have been transiting through the UK, specifically through RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, bases which though nominally British are actually home to the US Air Force in the UK. Lakenheath, as Freedom has regularly reported, since last summer has also been home to US nuclear weapons.
These are housed in the Norfolk countryside eighty miles from London, beyond British control, with no debate or discussion. Occasionally the locals worry about it. The Lakenheath Alliance for Peace holds a vigil on the third Saturday of every month. Few others care. This is the reality of life in a US vassal state.
The aircraft that rained death on schools and neighbourhoods in Iran were merrily parked up in that Suffolk countryside a few days ago. F-22 Raptors were pictured at Lakenheath, resting like weary travellers on a layover.
Whither Britain? As our predecessors reflected in the article we reprinted yesterday, British imperialism has a long and disgraceful history. The ability of Britain as a nation-state to tell itself lies about what it has done or what it is doing, at least matches that of the United States, if not surpasses it.
It was after all the US who during a brief thawing of relations with Iran in the 2010s admitted – in the face of protests from the British government – that the UK and the US had worked together in Operation Ajax in 1953 to bring down the only nominally democratic government Iran had ever had. Even sixty years on, Britain didn’t want to face up to its crimes.
So it’s hard to expect a nation which reveres official secrecy and popular self-delusion to admit to evil in real time. Starmer claimed Britain ‘wasn’t involved’, and MoD sources briefed that permission was denied to use certain bases – RAF Fairford in the UK and Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean – for US strikes. But that didn’t last.
And in any event, the list of US aircraft that passed through the UK is a long one, including F-15E Strike Eagle fighter bombers, the F-22s mentioned earlier, and tanker aircraft.
And the British planes “in the sky” on Saturday were, by the Defence Secretary’s John Healey’s own admission, participating in “regional defensive operations” including shooting down Iranian drones and missiles aimed at UK allies engaged in strikes against Iran, strikes now launched from UK bases too. By any measure, these actions play a key role in enabling US and Israel’s campaign of terror.
Healey refused to rule out the UK joining more actively in the new war on Iran, and doubtless should Iranian resistance continue pressure will mount on the UK government to give up even its trivial fig-leaf of ambivalence.
The Iranian regime for its part has few illusions as to Britain’s involvement. UK forces shot down two missiles aimed at Cyprus, where RAF Akrotiri, the UK’s major base in the eastern Mediterranean, is located.
The UK claimed these were merely ‘indiscriminate’ attacks – which it then it argued justified the decision to allow the US to strike from its bases. However minutes after that decision was announced RAF Akrotiri was hit by Iranian drones.
During the Freedom Anarchist News Review last Thursday, we reflected on how the UK appeared to be sleepwalking into a war at the behest of the US. It reminded me of the 1984 BBC TV film Threads, when the UK found itself dragged into an all-out nuclear war due to a US confrontation with then Soviets. In Iran.
Life imitates art, but no more so than in the depiction of British everyday ignorance. As the rumour of war builds, news broadcasts are switched off or radios drowned out by the shouting of domestic rows. Iran is a long way away.
But as an attack on the UK finally appears imminent, panic sets in. People flee the cities. One man takes his family to Lincolnshire, saying the Soviets won’t hit it – there’s nothing there but a few houses and a pub – blissfully ignorant of the huge range of primary targets in the form of RAF bases throughout the county.
Today, in reality, not fiction, US nuclear weapons rest in the Norfolk countryside, on bases where planes left a few days ago on the next leg of their journey to rain death on schoolchildren and families far away in Iran.
Starmer can say what he likes. Britain is very much involved, as it has always been.
Image: Number 10 on Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
