Take a good look at the man on the front cover of this publication; if he looks familiar that is because he is a well-known QC, and, he would have the world believe, a civil rights activist. In reality, Michael Mansfield’s commitment to civil rights is somewhat selective. Chances are, if your skin is white, you have no rights at all as far as he and his ilk are concerned. Michael Mansfield you see is the President of the self-styled National Civil Rights Movement, (henceforth NCRM).

What is so bad about civil rights, you say? Nothing at all, but as any lawyer will tell you, it is not the label but the content that determines what an organisation – or anything else – is. Put cyanide in a milk bottle and label it Gold Top, and it is still poison.

On its website, the NCRM offers membership at £10 for individuals, and “Minimum organisational affiliation fees” of £150 (national organisations); £50 (branches of national organisations); £25 (local organisations/community groups); £200 for private companies; and a staggering £250 for chambers/legal firms. (1)

According to its propaganda, the NCRM’s objectives are to: “struggle for racial justice and human rights....[to] challeng[e] the discriminatory criminal justice system and institutional racism in all forms [and] to build a grass-roots network capable of providing immediate effective and sustained practical and political support to all victims of racial injustice.”

Most people would agree that these are laudable goals, but the propaganda of the Nazi Party, the Ku Klux Klan and the Al-Qeida Network sounds just as laudable; it is by its deeds not by its fine words that any ideology or organisation must be judged. And when one probes behind the fine words of the NCRM, one finds a far more sinister agenda than fighting racial injustice and promoting the universal brotherhood of man.

Not all of the campaigns this organisation supports are worthless, but many of them are wilfully misleading, and two of them are downright scandalous. These are the campaigns to exculpate two men convicted of brutal and senseless murders on overwhelming evidence. One of these is the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of the December 1981 shooting of a police officer in his native Philadelphia. The other is on behalf of a domestic murderer, Satpal Ram.

Satpal Ram was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court in June 1987 of the November 1986 murder of Clarke Pearce. His case has been before the Court of Appeal twice. In March 1989, the full court presided over by the Lord Chief Justice himself dismissed Ram’s first appeal at the leave stage. In November 1995, his second appeal was dismissed in a strongly worded judgment, and in September 2001, the Criminal Cases Review Commission declined to refer his conviction back to the Court of Appeal for a third time. Ram’s case has been reported extensively in the regular media, including the Guardian newspaper and Channel Four where he has inevitably received sympathetic coverage which has omitted vital incriminating details.

What purports to be a summary of Ram’s case, and his unjust conviction appears on the NCRM’s website. This summary is reproduced in full here on pages 11-3. (2) Anyone reading this summary might be tempted to believe that Ram had indeed received a raw deal from British justice, especially as a highly respected QC is the President of this apparently prestigious campaigning organisation which is backing him. There is though one tiny detail which should undermine any such belief. The facts of Regina v Ram as reported in this summary are a tissue of lies. These lies were, and are, endorsed wilfully and with malice aforethought by Michael Mansfield QC and by the rest of this civil rights circus.

Just in case the reader has any doubt about what I have just said, let me run that by him again. This summary is a tissue of lies. These lies are easily provable. They are known to be lies by Michael Mansfield QC, Imran Khan, Suresh Grover, and all the other liars and schemers who run this filthy cabal. These lies are published and endorsed with malice aforethought in a wilful effort to deceive the public.

The other two players in this conspiracy named above are also well-known propagandists. Imran Khan is a high profile lawyer whose obsession with racism plays second fiddle to the pursuit of justice. He is best known for his meddling in the Stephen Lawrence affair. (3) Many police officers and government lawyers blame Khan for leading Doreen and Neville Lawrence up the garden path. He has also of late been meddling in the Bowyer and Woodgate affair, and will probably end up causing more grief to Sarfraz Najeib, the young Asian who had his head used as a football outside a Leeds night club in January 2000.

Suresh Grover is the least well-known of this unholy trinity. He is another self-styled civil rights activist, and a man who could find racism in an egg cup.

Returning to Satpal Ram, in October 2000, the Parole Board, duped by Ram’s well organised disinformation campaign, recommended his immediate release from prison on life licence. In murder cases though the final word rests with the Home Secretary, (4) who at that time was Jack Straw. (5) Even his best friends would admit that Straw is a man with many faults, but not even his worst enemy would question his integrity. After reading Ram’s file, Straw blocked his release. Notwithstanding that, Ram is being considered for parole anyway, in spite of the fact that he has never shown a gramme of remorse for his crime, and that he has had numerous disciplinary findings against him while serving his life sentence.

Undoubtedly Ram will be released someday, (6) as will most lifers; that is not the issue here. What is the issue is the many times proven lies that are still being peddled by Ram’s supporters with the full knowledge that they are brazen lies.

A Point By Point Refutation Of The Lies
Wilfully Endorsed by Michael Mansfield QC,
Imran Khan And Suresh Grover

Read the NCRM’s version? Good. Now here is the truth. The claim that “Six drunken white people” came into the restaurant where Ram’s party were eating is not true. These people were in the restaurant when Ram arrived; they had been there many times before. Contrary to what is implied here, the party was not made up of six white men but of three couples. One of these couples was Clarke Pearce (not Pierce) and his fiancée; the second couple was made up of Clarke’s elder sister and her husband. The third couple were friends.

The claim that Clarke Pearce attacked Ram is an outright lie; it was Ram who both initiated the incident and started the fight, if one can call this attack a fight. Clarke Pearce did not strike Ram with a broken glass, nor did he back him into a corner. At Ram’s trial, one of the many witnesses claimed that Pearce hit Ram over the head with a glass, but this witness did not have a clear view of what happened, and there were other errors in his evidence. This witness was not lying, he was simply mistaken because the incident happened very quickly. (7) Furthermore, after Ram fled the scene of the crime with the murder weapon still in his hand, he sought treatment at a local hospital for a small cut to his face, which required three stitches. He also had a small cut on his left forearm which the doctor said did not require any attention. It is possible that either or both of these cuts could have been self-inflicted due to the ferocity of Ram’s attack, and the fact never mentioned by his campaigners that he was drunk at the time.

The claim that Ram had been backed into a corner and was in fear of his life is simply untrue.

It is claimed here that Ram had “a little Stanley knife” on his person, that he defended himself with that knife, and that “Both his attackers were hurt and the fight stopped.” More lies.

Usually it is claimed that Ram used a pen knife on his victim. This is the claim Ram himself made after his arrest. In its 1995 judgment the Court of Appeal rejected this claim as manifestly untrue.

There were only two people involved in the incident; the claim that Ram was attacked by two men is not true any more than is the claim that he was attacked by one. It is true that Clarke Pearce was five inches taller and some four stone heavier than Ram, but a knife is a great leveller, especially when the larger man is attacked from behind. Rather than defend himself with a small pocket knife, Ram launched a ferocious attack on his victim with a flick knife, an illegal weapon, and stabbed him two, perhaps three times, in the back. The pathologist’s report indicated that one of the wounds suffered by the victim was “a complex double incised wound”, which could mean that Clarke was stabbed twice in the same place, or that the knife was twisted the second time.

But the foulest lie about Clarke Pearce reproduced on this website, and endorsed by Michael Mansfield, is the claim that the victim was responsible for his own death.

“Clarke Pierce went to hospital but he was very abusive to the medical staff and he pulled out his drips, saying he did not want to be treated by a woman doctor. He discharged himself and went home, where he later died.”

This is not only a lie but an admitted lie. According to the Free Satpal campaign’s own tainted evidence, Clarke Pearce was pronounced dead at 4.23am, less than two hours after the knife attack. The reason for the lie about Clarke refusing medical treatment is the same as the reason for the other oft’ repeated lie, that Ram was racially abused and attacked by six white men. To garner sympathy for him and to portray him as the underdog and a victim of racist oppression. Both these lies, and many others, are employed by Ram’s campaigners whenever they think they can get away with them. Ram even has the gall to compare himself with Stephen Lawrence.

The grain of truth in the claim that Clarke refused medical treatment is that he pulled out a drip while being transferred to the operating theatre. According to his sister – who had to sign a consent form – he was in shock and probably thought he was still in the restaurant and being attacked. This is confirmed by the doctor who treated him.

All these lies were drawn to the attention of the NCRM as long ago as July 2001 (see page 15). In a letter dated January 18, 2002 these lies were drawn to the personal attention of Michael Mansfield QC. His reply (page 17) is dated 8 February, 2002.

No further comment was received either from him or from the NCRM, and the same lies are still being peddled.

The fact that Mr Mansfield continues to endorse these lies raises serious questions about his professional integrity.

Sadly, Michael Mansfield, Imran Khan and Suresh Grover are not the only people prepared to lie on behalf of Satpal Ram. In January 2000, an Early Day Motion was set down by the Labour MP John McDonnell calling for Ram’s release, and an inquiry into his trial. Ram was said to have killed one of the people who attacked him, but only because the man who died “refused medical treatment”.

It remains to be seen if John McDonnell is a useful idiot, in Lenin’s parlance, or something more sinister, but others who most certainly cannot be unaware of the true facts of Ram’s case are the left wing so-called comedian Mark Thomas and not a few journalists who have peddled the same line over the past few years.

Another fellow traveller is former Prisons Minister Paul Boateng, who ignored no less than three communications addressed directly to him concerning allegations of ill-treatment by Ram and his cohorts. When finally the Home Office was forced to answer this correspondence by a chaser from a diligent Conservative MP, they came back with a reply that had no bearing on the questions originally asked. It is clear that Boateng was involved in some sort of underhand deal to try to secure Ram’s freedom, possibly in return for his campaigners keeping a low profile.

Contrary to the assertions of Ram’s small but dedicated army of liars, there was no racial motive in this case; Ram attacked his victim in a drunken frenzy simply because he objected to something Clarke had said about the background music being played in the restaurant. Many other lies and distortions have been spread about this case wilfully. One tactic has been to blame Ram’s barrister, the late Douglas Draycott, QC, for stitching up his client by refusing to allow him to give evidence at the trial. In its 1995 judgment the Court of Appeal vindicated Draycott, who had formed the opinion that Ram would have been a “vulnerable witness”. (8) Ram may not have liked this trial strategy any more than he liked the trial, but he agreed to it. It is not his lawyers but himself he has to blame for his plight.

At the local elections in May this year, the British National Party won three seats on Burnley Council, which led to hysteria in the media, hysteria which continues to this day. But it is hardly surprising that so many ordinary white working class people voted from the BNP because of the way they are treated by the system.

Clarke Pearce was an ordinary decent working man cut down in the prime of his life by a vicious thug in a drunken frenzy. But because he was white and his attacker was not, he doesn’t count. All that is necessary is to denounce him as a racist – whatever that is supposed to mean – and his murder is not only justified but his killer is a hero, a victim of the oppressive, white racist, capitalist system.

White working men and women aren’t rubbish, and both the race industry and self-styled “anti-racists” should stop treating them as such.

As stated above, not every cause this organisation supports, or professes to support, is worthless. One of its worthier causes was to bring to justice the killers of Michael Menson. Menson, the son of a Ghanaian diplomat, and one-time chart musician, was set on fire in a London street in January 1997. Because he had been suffering from schizophrenia his death was at first dismissed as self-inflicted, but later white racists were blamed. Eventually, his killers were brought to book, although they weren’t exactly white, and a racial motive was doubtful. (9) But apart from the disgraceful campaign to whitewash and free drunken thug and murderer Satpal Ram, most of the NCRM’s campaigns deserve careful scrutiny. Take the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

According to the NCRM, this is a case either of extreme mistaken identity or gross frame-up by suppression of exculpatory evidence. In reality the case against Mumia Abu-Jamal is every bit as strong as the case against Satpal Ram. He was clearly identified by a number of witnesses, and unlike Ram he was found at the scene of the crime not only with the murder weapon but with a bullet from the slain officer, Daniel Faulkner, in his chest. This case has been described as a prosecutor’s dream; the state literally had the smoking gun, but a well-organised international campaign has spread all manner of disinformation so that countless people across the world have become convinced that this is another example of police/state corruption. That being said, the true facts of the case are easily discernible; transcripts and contemporaneous reports have been available on-line for some time. If Mansfield and his buddies at the NCRM had the slightest critical faculty they would never have taken up such a worthless case. (10)

While the Ram and Abu-Jamal campaigns are scandalous misrepresentations, some of the alleged injustices put forward as racist or racially motivated are ludicrous. These include:

i) 19 year old Vijay Sainu who died while trying to enter the UK illegally, clinging to a plane!

ii) Elizabeth Chou, another 19 year old. This Oriental girl disappeared in 1999; the police are taken to task because they refused to investigate her disappearance for three days, which is standard practice.

iii) Fifty-eight so-called asylum seekers (fifty-four men and four women) who were found dead in the back of a lorry while trying to enter the country illegally. Both the Chinese Government and the BBC accept that these people were economic migrants.

iv) A number of people who died in custody, including a twenty-seven year old convicted drug smuggler who committed suicide in Holloway Prison.

Apart from Elizabeth Chou – who may have been the victim of a sex killer – none of these cases has anything to do with abuses of civil liberties or human rights, much less racism.