The murky past of Paul Staines

The following article can be found at the Centre for Media and Democracy
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Paul_Staines

Paul Staines was the creator of Popular Propaganda, a libertarian marketing enterprise which produced T-shirts and posters aimed at the student market. It was moderately successful and earned him a degree of notoriety in the mid-80s in student politics.

'In the Grip of the Sandinistas', his critical study of a decade of Marxist rule in Nicaragua, was published in 1989. He was a foreign policy analyst with the Committee for a Free Britain before becoming director of the Freedom to Party Campaign and later UK secretary-general of the International Society for Human Rights and editor of 'Human Rights Briefing.' [1]

Paul Staines is a former member of the Committee for a Free Britain, a shadowy organisation which was funded by Sir James Goldsmith, Rupert Murdoch and David Hart. His self described role with the organisation was as "a foreign policy analyst".

Paul Staines went on to become one of the people behind the Acid House craze of the early 90s and was involved with the "Sunrise" and "Back to the Future" M25 orbital raves that led the police on a merry dance. He features in the best selling "Altered State : The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House" written by Matthew Collin, ex-editor of trend bible ID magazine.

"Generation Ecstasy : Into the World of Techno and Rave Culture" by Simon Reynolds describes him as "a Libertarian Conservative whose day job was as assistant to rabid freemarket ideologue David Hart, one of Thatcher's favorite advisors." David Hart[2] masterminded the breaking of the miner's strike and was a favourite courtier of Thatcher. She would ask multi-millionaire Hart to make suggestions for her speeches. Staines as aides-de-camp was reputed to come up with the jokes. Hart and Staines shared a right-wing hippy libertarian outlook.

Staines wrote a seminal chapter in Nicholas Saunder's classic "E for Ecstasy" where he admits to enjoying deliberately mixing politics, dance music and drugs.

He is reputed to have made his later fortune in Asia from investing in technology companies via Bahamas based hedge fund, Mondial Global Investors LLC[3] and the Tokyo based MGI Nihon Seicho Kabushiki Fund. Mondial Global Investors is now defunct.

His current overt public political activity appears to be restricted to working with the Global Growth Organisation,an NGO he founded in 2004. GGO focuses on international trade and development issues advocating "enterprise based solutions to poverty". It campaigns against protectionism and advocates free trade for Africa and the opening up of Western economies to developing world exports unilaterally. GGO has held fund raisers at the Cobden Club in Notting Hill.

A controversial Thunderer column with the headline "You want policy? In cash?" under his byline appeared in The Times (December 20, 2005) attacking think tanks as "wonk whores" for taking covert corporate funding.

Paul Staines has neither denied or confirmed that he is the author of Guido Fawkes' Blog. The popular political gossip site won the 2005 Guardian Political Commentary Blog of the Year Award and has a large following in media and political circles. "Guido Fawkes" co-edited with Iain Dale the bestselling Little Red Book of New Labour Sleaze published in May 2006.

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External Links

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Articles By Staines/ 'Guido Fawkes'

• Paul Staines, "Human Rights and the inevitability of politics", Foreign Policy Perspectives No. 18, Libertarian Alliance, 1990. ISSN 0267-6761 ISBN 1 85637 001 1
• Paul Staines, "Acid House Parties Against the Lifestlye Police and the Safety Nazis", Political Notes No. 55, Libertarian Alliance, 1991. ISSN 0267-7059 ISBN 1 85637 039 9
• Paul Staines, Spare us the party police, The Independent (London), December 15, 1995. (A letter to the editor on behalf of the Freedom to Party Campaign).
• 'Guido Fawkes', "In defence of the blogger", The Guardian, July 10, 2006.

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General Articles

• Stephen Cook, People diary, The Guardian (London), July 16, 1987.
• Andrew Moncur, Diary, The Guardian, May 25, 1988.
• Andrew Moncur, Diary, The Guardian, September 23, 1988
• Mondial Global Investors, "Paul Staines Chief Investment Officer", undated accessed January 2005.
• Backbencher, The Guardian (London), February 2, 2005 points out that Guido Fawkes' blog shares a fax number with Paul Staines.
• Christopher Silvester, "Policemen's Helmets off to Guido Fawkes", Independent on Sunday, April 16, 2006. (About the police investigation of 'Cash for Peerages' identifies the anonymous political blogger 'Guido Fawkes' as Paul Staines.)
• Colin Brown, "'Dirty tricks' claim over Tory blogs", Independent, 5 July 2006. (Brown, the biographer of John Prescott, claims that Paul Staines was running a dirty tricks campaign against the Deputy Prime Minister.)
• "Net provocateurs invade Westminster", The Observer, July 9, 2006. (The article warns that "this could well be remembered as a watershed week in media coverage of British politics, when John Prescott's career was brought crashing down by a self-styled internet 'anarcho-capitalist' named Paul Staines - aka 'Guido Fawkes' - is the most in-your-face of Britain's new tribe of political bloggers.")

Tory student leader in ‘ racist ‘ party link / Paul Delarie-Staines of FCS attempts to form pact with British National Party in Hull

The Guradian 31 May 1986

Tory student leader in ‘ racist ‘ party link / Paul Delarie-Staines of FCS attempts to form pact with British National Party in Hull
By David Rose

A leader of the Federation of Conservative Students wrote to an organiser of the British National Party proposing joint ‘direct action’ to disrupt the meetings of leftwing students. Secrecy, he emphasised, was essential: ‘The Reds would simply go wild if they got to hear of a BNP-FCS link. I would personally be in danger of being expelled from the Conservative Party.’

The author of the letter is Mr Paul Delarie-Staines, the chairman of the federation’s 50-strong branch at the Humberside college of Higher Education. Mr Delarie-Staines, who is in his first year of a degree course in business information studies, wrote on May 22 to Mr Ian Walker, a BNP organiser in Hull.

He was, he said, against several of the aims of the BNP, which campaigns for the repatriation of black citizens. Several of its members have been convicted of offences under the Race Relations Act, and others for crimes of violence against ethnic minorities. Its leader, Mr John Tyndall, is a former chairman of the National Front.

Mr Delarie-Staines said he did not share the BNP view on immigration: as a member of the ‘libertarian’ faction of the FCS he advocated the free movement of labour, albeit with the caveat that ‘you come here to work - or starve. ‘

He went on: ‘I share a lot of your objectives.‘ These included a return to leadership and statesmanship, the abolition of the welfare state, and ‘the elimination of Communism in Britain - the mass media, the trade unions, and the schoolroom. ‘

Mr Delaire-Staines continued: ‘Nevertheless, even though we have our differences, I know a lot of BNP people at college do support the FCS (some are members of the FCS). I can certainly envisage some degree of cooperation.

‘For instance, we are moving away from just the normal political debate and towards more direct action - anti-Communist slogans on bridges, disrupting the leftist meetings by posing as leftists and then causing trouble, and also convincing individual leftists of the error of their ways.

‘Perhaps members of the BNP would care to join us in our anti-leftist activities. We can arrange a meeting to discuss possible joint future activities. ‘

Other examples of Mr Delaire-Staines work reached the Guardian, including a number of songs. One, entitled FCS Bootboys, reads: ‘Gas them all, gas them all, the Tribune group trendies and all. Crush Wedgwood Benn and make glue from his bones, Burn the broad left in their middle class homes.

‘Yes we’re saying goodbye to the Left, as safe in their graveyards they rest. ‘Cos they’ll get no further, we’ll stop with murder, the bootboys of FCS. ‘

In a letter to a friend, Mr Delaire-Staines said that he had been on a ‘community arts course - well. not exactly community arts, more spraypainting a bridge at 3am. Quite good fun really, ducking out of sight of passing police cars’

Mr Delaire-Staines told the Guardian that he had not meant violence by direct action at leftist meetings, only ‘causing as much noise as possible’. He said that he had tried to forge links with the BNP because ‘we share their anti-Communist view’.

He added: ‘They’re not far-right. They’re just racists, they believe in one colour. ‘

Mr John Barrow, the national chairman of FCS and a Lambeth councillor, said that Mr Delaire-Staines was ‘a bit silly. I wouldn’t hold it against him. I’m sure he’ll grow out of it.’ After hearing extracts from the letter to the BNP he added. ‘He’s absolutely right that he’s in danger of being thrown out of the Conservative Party.’

Mr James Goodsman, the Conservative Central Office official responsible for the FCS, said: ‘If the evidence comes my way I will certainly look into it.

You may also view copies of this fascinating article here and here and here