Political prisoners in Starmer’s Britain: “We have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do”

“We have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do where people cannot critique, they cannot question. And they’re being locked up for giving their opinion,” Gerard Batten said in a speech on Saturday.

Last Saturday, the ‘Stop the Isolation’ rally was held in London, England. Organised by Urban Scoop, the rally aimed to highlight that Tommy Robinson is a political prisoner and is being held in isolation, which is a form of mental torture. The rally was to also highlight that people have been jailed for social media posts which is also political imprisonment. Thousands attended the rally to support these political prisoners.

At the rally, Gerard Batten gave a speech. Batten is a British politician who served as the Leader of the UK Independence Party (“UKIP”) from 2018 to 2019. He was a founding member of UKIP in 1993 and served as a Member of the European Parliament (“MEP”) for London from 2004 to 2019.

“I grew up in an era of political prisoners,” Batten said.

“I remember reading about people who were being locked up for giving their opinions, for criticising and questioning a government’s agenda. Such people were put in prison, they were put in re-education camps or they were put in gulags,” he said.

“Of course, it wasn’t happening here [in the UK]. It was happening in the old Soviet Union. And we have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do where people cannot critique, they cannot question. And they’re being locked up for giving their opinion.”

Gerard Batten, Stop the Isolation rally, London, 1 February 2025. Source: Tommy Robinson on Gettr

Is Keir Starmer Becoming the UK’s Robert Mugabe?

Batten called Starmer a Marxist. “The first tenet of Marxism is that you have to destroy the old order and society,” he said. He says that in the UK this will be done by using mass illegal immigration as a tool. “[Mass immigration] breaks down national identity, it destroys national loyalty and it destroys national cohesion,” he said.

Keir Starmer has been associated with Marxist groups in the past. He was involved with Socialist Alternatives, a Marxist magazine, in the 1980s, and was on its editorial board from 1986 to 1989. The Socialist Alternatives was the British section of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency. Being a small group in the UK, it was best known for its Marxist magazine.

However, Starmer’s ideological stance seems to have evolved over time.

In January 2020, The Times quoted a spokesperson for Starmer who said, “Keir is a proud socialist … He is standing in this [Labour] leadership contest because of his determination to deliver a radical Labour Government at the next election.”

In March 2020, Vice quoted Starmer as saying, “I still see myself as a socialist. Whether I still agree with everything I did or said in my 20s is another matter … You gain experiences as you go along, but I would still call myself a socialist.”

In his first major speech after the general election, Starmer reiterated that he considered himself a “socialist.”

Indeed, Starmer, as has every Labour Prime Minister, is a member of the Fabian Society, a British socialist organisation. Starmer has a strong association with the Fabian Society; in 2020, he was a member of the Fabian Society’s executive committee.

While the Fabian Society shares some ideological similarities with Marxism the two part ways on how their illiberal and degressive ideologies should be imposed on society. The Fabian Society advocates for a gradual transition from a democracy to a socialist or communist society through reformist efforts (by e.g. permeating existing political parties and influencing public policy), rather than through revolutionary means – “a class war leading to revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat” – as advocated by Marxists.

Robert Mugabe

Now let’s compare Starmer to Zimbabwe’s first dictator from 1980 to 2017, Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe identified as a Marxist-Leninist during the 1970s and 1980s, and he presented himself as such in his speeches and radio broadcasts, often speaking warmly of Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries like Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro.

His ideology was influenced by his experiences and education, and he sought support from Marxist-governed states like the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Mugabe founded his regime on a mishmash of pan-Africanism, Marxist-Leninism and racism that reflected and encouraged a sense of grievance among black people.

However, Mugabe’s ideological stance evolved over time. Following the collapse of the Marxist-Leninist regimes in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, “in 1991 ZANU–PF removed references to ‘Marxism-Leninism’ and ‘scientific socialism’ in its material; Mugabe maintained that ‘socialism remains our sworn ideology’,” according to the book ‘Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe’.

He aimed to convert Zimbabwe from a parliamentary democracy into a one-party socialist state. Mugabe’s approach to socialism was more about state control and gradual reforms rather than empowering the working and peasant classes. His policies included top-down reforms and changes in ideology without addressing the opinions of the working masses. His rule was marked by authoritarianism, violence, intimidation and a decreasing tolerance of political opposition.

By the end of the 1980s, it became clear that Mugabe’s socialist experiment had catastrophically failed. In 1990, he pledged himself to free market economics and accepted a structural adjustment programme provided by the International Monetary Fund (“IMF”). This economic reform package called for Zimbabwe to privatise state assets and reduce import tariffs; Mugabe’s government implemented some, but not all, of its recommendations. By then it was too late for Zimbabwe, the country once known as the “Jewel of Africa.”

As Wikipedia notes, over the course of the 1990s, Zimbabwe’s economy steadily deteriorated. By 2000, living standards had declined from 1980; life expectancy was reduced, average wages were lower and unemployment had trebled. And then came the land grab, which began in 2000.

In the build-up to the 2002 election, the government changed the electoral rules and regulations to improve Mugabe’s chances of victory. Criticising the president was made illegal by introducing new security legislation that made it an offence to insult the office of the president. This law carried a hefty fine and a brief jail sentence and was used to penalise criticism of the government. The defence force commander stated that the military would not recognise any election result other than a Mugabe victory. After being in power for more than 20 years, Mugabe claimed that these and other measures taken in the build-up to the 2002 presidential election to ensure his victory represented a struggle against colonialism.

“After the first quarter-century of Mugabe’s tyranny, many ordinary Zimbabweans looked back on [Ian] Smith’s era with nostalgia, while racists, white farmers, black union officials and priests found themselves on the same side, opposing him. Millions fled into exile, as much to escape the economic hopelessness as to escape the regime’s repression,” the Los Angeles Times noted.

There are lessons to be learnt from Mugabe’s socialist experiment. “Mugabe wasn’t the only charismatic socialist who ruined a country and the lives of millions,” The Federalist warned. “Socialism has failed everywhere and every time.”

You can find a list of some books about Zimbabwe HERE.

This article (Political prisoners in Starmer’s Britain: “We have started to copy what the old Soviet Union used to do”) was created and published by The Expose and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Rhoda Wilson

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