This blog has published a few stories about the pro-migration and pro-Islam ‘community group’ Citizens UK (see links, sources and appendices list at the bottom of this piece), stories that have in the main been pretty critical and to my mind justifiably so. I’ve covered Citizens UK related stories that range from them trying to strong-arm local councils into taking ‘refugees’ along with stuff showing that Citizens UK, and their supporters, are not averse to hanging round with some quite disgusting Islamic extremists. It seems that there is no Shariah supporter too extreme, as with the East London Mosque or Shakeel Begg, or no political dishonesty so great, as with the ‘fake children of Calais’, that’s beyond the pale for Citizens UK in the pursuit of their aims, especially when it comes to their open borders activism.
Citizens UK have been in the forefront of attempts to bring into the UK what they call ‘unaccompanied vulnerable refugee children’. They’ve consistently promoted the narrative that the Calais camp and similar migrant camps in France and elsewhere in Europe are full of sad little children, separated from their parents and who really need to be saved. They’ve bombarded politicians, the media and the public with images of desperate under 11’s in an apparently successful ploy to tug at the heartstrings of decision makers. Unfortunately for Citizens UK the reality is different. The ‘vulnerable children’ that Citizens UK have shroud-waved about have often turned out to be in reality adult Muslim men aged roughly between 20 and 35 which are the sort of people that countries should be defending themselves against, rather than inviting in.
Some of the fake ‘child’ refugees who entered the UK under the Dubs Amendment which has thankfully today been junked by PM Theresa May
It seems that Citizens UK have been on somewhat of a political roll in recent years. Religious leaders, large businesses and politicians from across the mainstream political spectrum praised them for their ‘community work’ even though much of it, such as the ‘living wage’ campaign, is of a decidedly socialistic bent. They’ve cultivated contacts within a great number of local authorities and with various government departments and they’ve also got themselves in a position where they have what looks very much like undue influence over religious organisations such as the Church of England and some of Britain’s non-Orthodox Jewish groups. The level and type of contacts that Citizens UK have cultivated has given them a power that they do not deserve and which they’ve often used for causes that many Britons would vehemently object to, such as open borders.
I would strongly advise readers to study the linked Annual Report to the Charities Commission submitted to them by Citizens UK. It makes worrying reading on several counts.
Firstly is the breadth of this group’s political and social ambitions. They do not just want to help in specific areas of life as many other charities such as Macmillan or Diabetes UK do, their ambitions seem nothing less than the remaking of the UK, socially, economically and politically. I pick up the distinct and unpleasant stench of megalomania when I read their annual report.
The second worrying thing is just how deeply embedded Citizens UK is with the ‘refugees welcome’ movement, in fact in the report Citizens UK themselves claim a large part of the credit for this movement, which has not been an unalloyed success as many people who are not blinkered by political correctness can see. Basically, if you want someone or something to blame for the ‘refugees welcome’ movement and the rapists, jihadists, criminals and ponces that this movement has brought to civilised European nations, including the UK, then look no further than Citizens UK.
The third factor that should give people concern about Citizens UK is their noted pro-Islam bias. The group commissioned a report into Muslims in public life and the presence of former Muslim Council of Britain employees on the Citizens UK board should tell us all we need to know about what sort of tone this ‘citizens commission’ will take. Also, it is notable that the first concern of Citizens UK with reference to the ongoing Islamic Jihad attacks on Europe’s citizens is not those at risk of attack from jihadists, but Muslims themselves. As I have said before on the subject of Citizens UK, they are the community organisation that really isn’t on your side.
Neil Jameson the head honcho of Citizens UK addressing a Muslim Council of Britain meeting
Finally there’s the claimed political influence of Citizens UK on political parties. I don’t know about you, but I feel uncomfortable with politicians from across the spectrum promoting and being persuaded by a group with such leanings as Citizens UK. I found this section of the report on the issue of detention of ‘non-returnable refugees’ in relation to the 2015 General Election particularly chilling: ‘138 Parliamentary candidates from the three main political parties, including three government minsters, signed our pledge to support the call to an end to indefinite detention before the General Election’.
Now you may or may not agree with the policy of indefinitely detaining failed asylum seekers who can’t be returned to their countries of origin because the countries are too dangerous to return them to. However voters should at least be given a choice of voting for someone who is speaking their own view on this matter, not merely mouthing the views of Citizens UK. Having so many potential politicians from across the political spectrum, all doing Citizens UK’s bidding, or following Citizens UK’s lead, robs voters of a major element of choice. You may, for example, believe that detaining someone indefinitely because they can’t be released into the UK but also can’t be returned, is a good idea, but because of Citizens UK’s influence on the mainstream politicians, you can’t choose a politician who is likely to win your constituency seat who would reflect your view. This is dangerous. British voters should not be placed in a situation, where because of Citizens UK’s influence and lobbying, whoever you vote for, whether it be Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, you will always get at least one if not more policies influenced or proposed by Citizens UK.
The power and influence that Citizens UK have garnered for themselves, along with their high profile contacts, including backing from former Prime Minister David Cameron, have rendered them to some extent, untouchable. They have been able to ride out scandals that would have sunk any other community group or charity. For example: A few years ago, their CEO Neil Jameson rushed round defending the extremism-linked East London Mosque when that organisation was caught out hosting pro-Hamas hate preachers. Although the Harry’s Place blog and a few others criticised Citizens UK for this, it didn’t do them any lasting damage although many will agree with me that standing up for Islamic preachers who call for jihad, should have done them damage.
So apart from the undue political influence, the pandering to Islam and the co-opting and having significant which some call malign, influence of the direction of the management of various religious groups, what else is there to be concerned about when it comes to Citizens UK? Well there’s the money of course. I took a look at the financial balance sheet for the umbrella group Citizens UK and I was shocked at the amount of public and charitable trust money that was being funnelled to this highly political and politicised group.
Here’s a selection of how much money they got and where it has come from, with the occasional comment from me. I must say page 42 of their 2016 annual report was a serious eye-opener on the matter of which groups and government departments are supporting the Citizens UK group.
First the government and other public sector entities:
The Cabinet Office £ 40,909
London Borough of Hackney £ 35,331
London Borough of Tower Hamlets £ 18,600
Guys and St Thomas’ Hospitals £ 159,279
Queen Mary University £ 34,033
UK Commission for Employment
and Skills (UKCES) £ 93,200
That’s a grand total of money going
to Citizens UK directly from our
taxpayer pockets of…. £381,352
You may like me feel that nearly four hundred grand of our money could be far better spent than on the sort of stuff that Citizens UK spends it on, especially when they’ve so loudly agitated for the sort of ‘refugees welcome’ policies that have been such a profound disaster for Germany, Sweden, Austria, Belgium, Spain etc.
Let’s now look at the money that Citizens UK are taking off of the church plate. I wonder how many Christians would be happy that some of the money that they are putting into the church collection plate of a Sunday is ending up in the pockets of Citizens UK? This is especially relevant bearing in mind that Citizens UK are helping to import some of those ‘refugees’ who have probably been oppressing or even murdering Christians in the Middle East.
Here’s the Church figures of monies donated to Citizens UK:
Nottingham Anglican Oak Foundation £135,176
Sisters of Mercy Catholic charity £ 25,000
Trust For London (originally a Church of
England charitable fund) £ 80,000
Therefore the grand total of monies expended
on Citizens UK by church-based or church
founded entities is….. £240,176
There are also quite significant sums of money from companies including JP Morgan, left-leaning groups like Avarua and 38 Degrees, along with charitable trusts of the ‘social justice’ variety, such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which splurged £110k on Citizens UK.
Other sources of income that enable Citizens UK to push their brand of Left wing politics on the rest of us include:
£77,025 from ‘Europe for Citizens‘ a shady EU front group designed, in their words, to:
Give citizens the opportunity to interact and participate in constructing an ever closer Europe, united in and enriched through its cultural diversity;
- Forging a European identity, based on recognised common values, history and culture;
- Enhancing mutual understanding between European citizens respecting and celebrating cultural diversity, while contributing to intercultural dialogue.
Along with £25,000 from The ‘Comic Relief’ trust. In other words when you raise money for Comic Relief or buy a ‘Red Nose’ because you want to help those in need at home and abroad, remember you are also directly contributing to Citizens UK’s overtly political activities along with this group’s dangerous ‘refugees welcome’ nonsense. Having learned that Comic Relief gave £25k to a group like Citizens UK doesn’t encourage me to give to any Comic Relief event or fund in the future. After all why should I contribute to an organisation that is helping to bring in the very people who may end up as a threat to my child’s life in the future?
Money also arrived to the Citizens UK coffers by way of the Coutts Foundation, which gave Citizens UK £50k in ‘unrestricted funds’. Now for those who do not know ‘restricted funds’ are money donated for a particular purpose for example someone may donate £500 to a group with the express instructions that it be used to provide say old age pensioners with a free Christmas dinner. However unrestricted funds are for the organisation to do whatever they want with them. £50k is a lot of money to give as ‘unrestricted’ funds, especially to a group like Citizens UK who behave very much like a political rather than charitable animal.
There’s also apparently money from the ‘Prism Trust for Giving’ which has been thrust somewhat into the limelight recently, as this organisation with considerable financial muscle is funding the legal fight by the ‘Help Refugees’ group to get the Dubs Amendment to the Immigration Act reinstated. This Prism Trust gave Citizens UK £32,250
I’m afraid that is just a small selection of the public and private charitable trust money that has been given to Citizens UK. You can see the whole wasteful fiscal horror story for yourself by looking at page 42 of Citizens UK’s annual report. As well as linking to this report, I have also uploaded a copy of it to this site just in case the significant political influence that Citizens UK at present has, results in the report being taken down from the Charity Commission website. You can find the document in the links section at the bottom of this piece.
I found myself getting more and more disgusted and more and more concerned about both the nature of Citizens UK itself and many of the campaigns that they are involved in. These campaigns interfere in the free market, as the ‘Living wage campaign’ does, which makes labour more expensive for small firms and entrepreneurs. They also attack companies’ right to advertise where they choose, such as the dubious and prescriptive ‘stop funding hate’ campaign which Citizens UK is supporting and which has recently been bullying ‘The Body Shop’ to try to stop it advertising in the Daily Mail and the Sun.
Another thing that should concern people who are opposed to the aims of Citizens UK is this organisation’s use of ‘front groups’ and side campaigns designed to build support in local areas that Citizens UK activists wish to operate in. For example: Open borders and pro-immigration groups such as ‘Safe Passage UK’ give the impression that they are genuine grass roots organisations, but they are not, Safe Passage UK is almost wholly the creation of Citizens UK. The case of Safe Passage UK makes me wonder just how many other similar open borders and pro-migration groups are either in whole or in part the creations of Citizens UK itself? I would guess that a fair number of these types of groups probably do have some connection with Citizens UK.
All in all, it must be said that Citizens UK has wielded an awful lot of political power over the last few years, far more than many would feel comfortable with a ‘charity’ wielding. They’ve also been astute in cultivating journalists and garnering publicity even when the publicity is for stuff that a large number of people would be opposed to, such as the ‘refugees welcome’ campaign or bullying companies to change their advertising policies even when such a move would be likely to damage these companies’ bottom line. The support of politicians such as David Cameron and Boris Johnson has given this organisation a sort of ‘Teflon’ coating to which no mud will stick, no matter how hard or how accurately it has been flung.
However, there are now signs that this ‘Teflon’ community group may not be as invulnerable as they have been in the past. A change of Prime Minister from Cameron to Theresa May, along with the political and cultural changes brought by Brexit and by the rise of populist political leaders such as President Donald Trump and others, could mark the start of a political culture that is much more hostile to Citizens UK than it has been in the past. One example of this was the government’s welcome abandonment of the Dubs Amendment to immigration legislation. I believe that in this the government realised that they’d been conned by Citizens UK into taking fake refugees and even faker children and killed this amendment off as quickly as they could, although to my mind it was not quick enough and should have been resisted in the first place.
Another cultural change is the willingness of ordinary people to start to take a more critical look at Citizens UK itself and to see behind the ‘community’ and ‘inclusion’ bullshit with which CUK often liberally smear their campaigns. Across social media there have been criticisms, some quite vehement, of Citizens UK expressed by those who believe that their campaigns will do bugger all for them and their families. A growing number of people are asking Citizens UK some awkward questions, especially about their involvement in importing potentially dangerous fake ‘refugees’. Those who live in areas where Citizens UK have helped to dump ‘refugees’ know that the people that Citizens UK are helping to bring in are not improving their quality of life but are often making it worse.
I hear of grumblings coming from Jews of the political centre-Right about the co-opting of their religious movements by Citizens UK, which have sadly in some cases been aided and abetted by the senior management of these movements. In the case of Liberal Judaism, the infiltration of Citizens UK into the organisation has been so pervasive that it has created a situation where for many individual synagogues Citizens UK aligned campaigns are the ‘only social action game in town’ as one person put it to me. In this situation, critics of Citizens UK have been sidelined, their opinions dismissed as irrelevant and in some cases individuals have even been forbidden to speak about their concerns. Such restrictions on debate are to my mind something that is profoundly ‘unJewish’ as Judaism has traditionally thrived on religious and political debate. Such suppression of justifiable criticism of Citizens UK cannot be condoned and must be condemned. As time goes on, the discrepancy between what Citizens UK say about issues such as ‘refugees’ and the reality of the situation is becoming more and more stark.
People who may have ignored Citizens UK in the past, or may have taken a fluffy view of them are starting to wake up to the sort of socialistic, pro-Islam anti-nation aims of Citizens UK and they are starting to speak up. Some are even bringing their concerns directly to Citizens UK themselves, but I’ve had a number of people approach me to say that the response they got was unsatisfactory to say the least. When individuals have asked questions of Citizens UK about their involvement in the ‘refugees welcome’ movement they’ve either been given bullshit about ‘vulnerable children’ or they’ve been immediately blocked. This does not strike me as the sort of action or attitude that should be taken by an organisation that claims to be acting ‘for the common good’. Citizens UK are not responsive to criticism and they and their activists often behave in an arrogant and high-handed manner, especially when challenged.
Citizens UK are a dangerous organisation, well funded, well connected and with some seriously troubling friends, such as the extremism linked East London Mosque. They may have taken some political hits recently, what with the change of government and greater public scrutiny, but they are slightly down but not yet out. People need to keep up the pressure and the criticism of Citizens UK, both directly to them and in public via social media etc. Even if Citizens UK ignore or block you, then make sure that others know what Citizens UK have done. Remember the more that your audience know about your concerns and the response to them (or lack of it) by Citizens UK, the better it is. Speak to your local media about your concerns about Citizens UK, as the person in the example below has done, on an LBC radio phone-in programme on the subject of the abandonment of the Dubs Amendment.
Also, if your organisation such as your church, chapel, synagogue, temple or community organisation is starting to be targeted by Citizens UK activists, with the aim of co-opting it to Citizens UK campaigns, then this needs to be resisted early. It’s no good waiting until after the point when Citizens UK has corrupted or has gained influence with your management committee before you take action. Resistance to Citizens UK needs to be done before your management committee get involved, or as soon as they start to show sympathy for some or all of Citizens UK aims. People who belong to community groups and religious organisations need to be engaged with what is going on within them, or they may find their management committee has been subjected to some dog and pony show put on for them by Citizens UK, which convinces them to sign up to Citizens UK campaigns, even if members of such organisations may have valid criticisms of the aims of Citizens UK or the manner in which they work.
If you disagree with what Citizens UK is up to then it’s up to you to get together with others and tell CUK to F**K off. Remember Citizens UK’s idea of the ‘common good’ may not be everyone’s idea of the ‘common good’ and groups like Citizens UK should not be allowed to set the agenda on the issues and concerns that face us all.
Links and Appendices
The Citizens UK website. It’s worth looking at their ‘local chapters’ section to see if an organisation you are involved with or which you are supporting is involved with Citizens UK. This is especially important if you have concerns about the activities of Citizens UK and you want to check whether your group is supporting Citizens UK. If I was you I would use this information to contact these organisations, especially if you are a member of one of them, to express your disquiet at engagement with Citizens UK.
Harry’s Place article on Citizens UK staff running political cover for the extremism-linked East London Mosque when an Imam there was caught out making pro-Hamas statements.
http://hurryupharry.org/2011/07/21/london-citizens-stand-by-their-man/
Gatestone Institute article on the Muslim Council of Britain, which Citizens UK seem to have no problem associating with and which even has ex MCB staff on their board of trustees.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9889/muslim-council-britain-miqdaad-versi#.WJ3wIUTxzZ8.twitter
A direct link to the Citizens UK 2016 annual report to the Charities Commission. It’s worth reading firstly to find out what they are up to and how much money is being thrown in their direction but also to get some idea of the scale of their ambitions.
http://apps.charitycommission.gov.uk/Accounts/Ends64%5C0001107264_AC_20160331_E_C.pdf
Here’s an upload of the same pdf in case it ‘disappears’ from the Charity Commission website
Ends64_0001107264_AC_20160331_E_C
Other stories from Fahrenheit211 regarding the Citizens UK organisation and their activities
Citizens UK run easily defraudable ‘reinstate Dubs Amendment’ petition
Citizens UK an organisation plainly not on the side of the average UK citizens
Part One
Part Two
Citizens UK are one of those behind plans to dump hundreds of potentially dangerous ‘Syrian refugees’ on Birmingham
Citizens UK working against British citizens and the British national interest
Citizens UK helping everyone except it seems Britons themselves
George Gabriel of Citizens UK spins for open borders
Fahrenheit 211 Editor appears on Red Fox Radio to discuss the fake ‘reinstate Dubs Amendment’ petition from Citizens UK
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2017/02/14/audio-dodgy-petitions-and-even-dodgier-faux-feminists/
Rabbi Janet Darley, who is closely associated with Citizens UK, appears on platform with Islamic extremist Shakeel Begg
Holly Kal Weiss a supporter of Citizens UK who allegedly tried to feed the invaders in the Calais camp.
The Birmingham ‘Refugees Welcome Summit’ a meeting of ‘holy fools’ and sharp and cynical political operators
British ‘progressive’ Jews continue to associate with the extremism-linked East London Mosque via their membership of Citizens UK
Appendix 1
I took the time to inform Citizens UK that their ‘Dubs reinstatement’ petition was open to fraud. Below is the email that I sent them a few days ago. As yet I have had no reply from them apart from an automatic email acknowledgement. I am forced therefore to conclude that this lack of reply and the reports of Citizens UK refusing to engage with critics, even polite ones, on social media shows them to be an organisation that arrogantly refuses to see any other view apart from their own.
From: editor@fahrenheit211 To:
pr***@ci********.org
Dear Citizens UK
Your petition to reinstate the Dubs Amendment is a total and utter fraud. I was alerted to it by colleagues who were suspicious about how quickly the numbers were growing, so I decided to check to see how easy it was to make false signatories on it. I found it extremely easy indeed.
Your fake petition put together to allow into the UK even more fake ‘refugees’ and ‘children’ has been well and truly busted.
You should be ashamed of yourselves misusing the story of the kindertransport in order to hoodwink people into thinking that these migrants are under the same threat as those rescued by the Kindertranspoert. They are not. These migrants are basically country shoppers who’ve crossed the borders of several safe countries to get to the UK.
See this article for more details
What a bunch of terrible and easily caught out dissemblers your group has turned out to be.
Josuha
Editor
Fahrenheit211
Appendix 2
If you are as concerned as I am about the nature and activities of Citizens UK then I would strongly advise you to contact them and tell them. Unfortunately they have no easily discernable central public email address so I would advise you to use the ‘press’ address as detailed above. If you want to write to them by post, then their head office address is as follows:
112 Cavell Street
London
E1 2JA
Alternatively, you can phone them on 020 7043 9881.
For completeness here is the link to Citizens UK’s ‘contact’ page
http://www.citizensuk.org/contact_us
