A secretive Home Office propaganda unit, RICU, founded by a former MI6 officer in 2007, has been covertly advising police on “controlling the narrative” during race riots in Belfast and Southampton. Critics say the 22-strong outfit – which plants media stories, deploys undercover operatives and reportedly ghost-writes victims’ family statements – is now ‘out of control’. The Mail has the story:
While the streets of Belfast were ablaze with anti-immigration protests last week, behind the scenes a group of spies, spinners and soldiers were deploying the ‘dark arts’ to try to defuse tensions.
The name of the secretive Government propaganda unit trying to manipulate events makes it sound like an innocuous back-office operation – the Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU.
But the dull moniker is part of the deliberate camouflage of an outfit which uses deception and skulduggery to try to manage the ‘challenges’ of multiculturalism.
Its techniques range from planting stories in the media, using undercover operatives to lay flowers at the scene of terrorist attacks and even, in one case, sending a pop group to sing anti-extremist songs in Muslim schools.
The 22-strong unit was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, as part of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.
Modelled on the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit established by the Attlee government in 1948 to blacken the names of communists and other political opponents, RICU operates out of the Home Office’s Westminster headquarters.
While its original purpose was to monitor and challenge the spread of Al Qaeda propaganda and to vet the language used by public officials when describing terrorism, its tentacles now stretch far across Whitehall – to the extent that critics say it risks strangling free speech.
When the mobs took to the streets of Northern Ireland last week following the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie, allegedly by Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum-seeker, RICU swung into action to advise the police in the province on how to ‘control the narrative’.
A source said: “They are working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland’s C3 intelligence unit to identify those posting the online ‘calls to protest’ in Belfast and other areas, as well as giving strategic messages to the police to ensure that the protesters were portrayed as unsympathetic thugs, rather than activists, and effecting behavioural change.”
The source said that the unit had also been advising the police in Southampton following the horrific murder of Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa – who falsely claimed he had been racially abused and had acted in self-defence – saying: “RICU made sure that the liaison team dealing with the family were well briefed.”
It has also been claimed that the unit intervenes to write statements by the families of victims of potentially racially linked incidents to stop them from inflaming tensions further with their remarks.
The source said: “You can see their fingerprints all over the statements released by the families of victims in these volatile situations – they usually have a similar tone.”
However, RICU is regarded by many Whitehall insiders to be ‘out of control’, after last year putting its name to a Home Office recommendation that the police should record more ‘non-crime hate incidents’ – the controversial, sub-criminal measures used to inhibit people from making reference to matters of race, religion, sexual orientation or disability.
Ministers finally bowed to pressure by scrapping the measures, telling the police to stop recording everyday rows and online spats.
The unit also claimed that the prevalence of sexual grooming gangs in Pakistani communities was being exploited by the far-Right to stir up hatred against Muslim communities.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Interestingly, the Mail did not allow comments.
It was pretty obvious that the Nowak family’s statement was not genuine.
Just as it’s pretty obvious that the crowds of people all holding professionally produced placards supporting migrants and demanding we “don’t look back in anger” after every atrocity are not from the local community which has been attacked.
Yes indeed, very obvious!
Why does this not suprise me, or anyone for that matter? Its blatantly obvious that anyone but Westminster runs the country, no wonder uncivil servants dont want Reform in.
Surprise, surprise, the government and their cronies are acting against the people who pay their wages. Who would have thought it.
Reminds me of Henry Nowak’s father’s statement: “We do not want Henry’s murder to be used to create further hatred, division or tension.”
Yes, and yet Henry’s stepfather, who was kept out of the limelight, has reportedly been deeply touched by the huge angry public response in support of Henry and the family.
Yes, they always do it. It was very, very obvious to me and to many others that didn’t come down with the last shower that those words were not the family’s own. There was definitely external input there and it stood out like a sore thumb.
I think this chap nails it in 1 minute and it’s why I don’t condone violence as a reaction because the establishment, presstitutes and Lefty attack dogs need no more encouragement or ammo. Any time some tragedy like this happens they’re watching for the reaction so don’t give it to them on a plate, and people like Farage can’t do right for doing wrong, merely because he’s the opposition. He reacts like a normal human being would to a tragedy and they go to town on him for it, then, before you know it, nobody in government or the MSM is talking about the victim or the perpetrator, certainly not mass immigration. The re-framing and change of focus is complete.
The pro-refugee useful idiots who make up these large ‘anti-racist/anti-fascist/Socialist Worker’ gatherings that are organized quick sharp are the predictable icing on the cake;
https://x.com/FatEmperor/status/2066229043783991712
Yes, very VERY obvious!
Thanks to Mr Musk buying Twitter, clumsy thought policemen will fail. And thanks to Toby Lord Young.
This is right across Europe, so why is this?
UN Agenda 2030, SDG 10. What has to happen for people to read this communist manifesto?
Folks we pay these people who are stamping on us, we pay their wages. Perhaps if the majority of people who are sick of this opression, the contempt the elite has for us (but more than happy to leech off us), if we all en masse refused to go to work for a couple of weeks, refused to complete tax returns, and peacefully withdrew our financial and physical support such that the Country grinds to a halt, perhaps, just perhaps the Politicians might just start to take notice and listen.
But it won’t happen as the modus operandi in these parasites is to create division and so keep themselves in power. I am sick of being a slave,
I’m shocked.
Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goal 10. Why is this never mentioned? We are signed up to it.
The thing about pressure cookers, is the more weight you put on it when it starts whistling, the more powerfully destructive is the explosion when it inevitably goes UNLESS YOU TURN OFF THE HEAT.
Starmer being thick as shit perhaps doesn’t understand this basic fact of life, and seems determined to keep the heat on full blast.
An unkind comparison.
Excrement at least has a use.
Well done to the Daily Mail & the DS for exposing this sinister “Nudge Unit”! That explains why many commenters online are saying that the families of victims have been pressured by the government into issuing these statements, by making the families feel “responsible” for rioting if they don’t cooperate!
That also explains why mainstream news articles always focus on the “grief” and “tributes” to victims, instead of asking awkward questions about what happened, and allowing people to express their anger. Righteous Wrath is a powerful thing, feared by the Globalist Mafia.
When all the birds of a feather are twittering the same, it is certain they all have the same song sheet.
I feel so sorry for the families. At a time when they are most vulnerable they have this lot rocking up and adding to their stress by pressing them to make certain statements. Those that don’t are then ignored and sidelined.
Yes, ignored, sidelined and made to feel guilty as if the protests are all their fault!!!
Exactly.
Message to RICU from a guy from a former communist country (me): you are going to lose.
The more you suppress information, the more you censor the news, the more suspicious we become.
Look, I lived in a country where absolutely 100% of the media was controlled by the government. I’m not saying Britain is not making progress in this area – who would have thought that the BBC would become a woke cultural Marxists propaganda outlet – but still, you are far from the same level of control, especially with the Internet and all that.
Which is why more and more people are getting their info from other sources, particularly the Internet and why Govt is desperate to control “social media” – a broad definition.
But Statists overlook something, the ingenuity of the Human mind and durability of the Human spirit… and financial incentive. Nobody foresaw “social media” in the 1990s.
It would be wrong to imagine there won’t be a replacement, particularly as minds will be incentivised to find one as Govt tries to shut down existing means of mass communication, and if there’s a profit to be made.
Governments are always retroactive: it cannot be otherwise because it is run by dummies.
It’s a numbers game in the end.
How many free spirits are out there vs sheep who don’t think, don’t care, can’t be bothered enough?
When the establishment pushes for total Internet control under the pretext of protecting minors, they are calculating that it has majority support.
Like lockdowns, masks, jabs. They all had widespread popular support, at least initially.
And so it is with free speech. Most people don’t want it or believe in it.
And that’s our system, where a presumed majority is used to impose totalitarrian measures on everyone.