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A series of five unexplained bomb scares were widely reported in the UK in just 96 hours. They are being used to fuel a hysterical anti-Russian atmosphere in the week the Starmer Labour government gave Ukraine the green light to use UK Storm Shadow missiles to target Russian territory—in a de facto declaration of war.
No-one should take at face value any report emanating from the police and security services and their amplification by Britain’s yellow press.
The sequence of events in chronological order is as follows:
- On Wednesday, November 20, Buchanan Bus station in Glasgow was evacuated after a “suspicious package” was reported at 1.10pm. Police carried out a controlled explosion. This followed an initial report that Police Scotland described as “a credible threat”. The BBC reported, “However, nothing suspicious was found” and that “Three men arrested over possession of offensive weapons after the evacuation of Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow have been released without charge.” Nearby Glasgow Caledonian University campus was also evacuated “as a precaution” and “Trains from Queen Street which run through a tunnel… and the bus station were also affected.”
- On Friday, November 22 London Gatwick Airport was the scene of another “bomb scare”. At around 8:20am, a Sussex Police bomb disposal team reportedly made the package “safe”, according to the force. The South Terminal was evacuated and shut for four hours. Despite causing disruption for thousands of travellers—with dozens of flights delayed, grounded and forced to turn back mid-air—it was reported that that two people detained during the investigation were allowed to continue their journeys. All that was revealed was that a “suspected prohibited item” was found in luggage.
- Also Friday, the US Embassy in London was locked down due to what was described as a “suspicious package”. An armed police unit carried out a controlled explosion within a cordoned area. The Metropolitan Police said, “Initial indications are that the item was a hoax device. An investigation will now follow.”
- At around 5pm the same day, the Cheshire Police and bomb squads carried out a controlled explosion at the bus and railway stations in Chester city centre. The BBC reported that “Cheshire Police later said report of a package on the buses appeared to have been ‘malicious’ and it wanted to speak to a female passenger who spoke to a bus driver.”
- On Saturday November 23, a controlled explosion was carried out by “specialist officers” on a package outside London’s Euston station, one of the largest and busiest in the capital. The station was evacuated and a Metropolitan Police cordon put in place.
Two more events should be noted. On Saturday, the BBC, Guardian and Independent reported that the United States Air Force (USAF) had confirmed that unidentified drones have been spotted over three airbases. The BBC commented, “The incidents, which occurred between Wednesday and Friday, saw ‘small unmanned aerial systems’ spotted over RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall, in Suffolk, and RAF Feltwell in the neighbouring county of Norfolk.
“The USAF, which uses the bases, said it was unclear at this stage whether the drones were considered hostile.”
On Sunday, the Mail, Express and Sun reported, based on an account in the German tabloid Bild, that a “mystery drone” was seen following the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, two days earlier. The Mail reported that the carrier “seemed to be tailed by an unidentified 1.5-by-1.5metre drone at the entrance to the port of Hamburg, Germany, on Friday.
“The German military tried to target the drone with HP-47 jammers before it flew away, according to the German newspaper Bild.”
This has all the hallmarks of a black propaganda campaign to condition the population for outright war against Russia. Significant mobilizations of the police and state forces are being organised with the explanation that there is an ongoing domestic terror threat that must be combatted, and that Russia is likely pulling the strings.
For years the former Conservative government, backed by the Labour Party when in opposition, have clamped down on basic democratic rights on the premise that “extremism” must be eradicated—especially opposition to the UK’s backing of Isreal’s genocide in Gaza. This not only continues but, like the war in Ukraine, has accelerated now Labour is in government.
While the multiple bomb scare operations were being reported, senior figures within Britain’s ruling elite doubled down on warning that Britain and its allies was being targeting for “hybrid” warfare by Moscow, with critical UK infrastructure the main target.
On Monday Cabinet Office Minister Pat McFadden, whose portfolio includes national security, told participants at a NATO cybersecurity conference in London, “Military power is one thing. But cyberwar can also be destabilising and debilitating. And with a cyber attack, Russia can turn off the lights for millions of people. It can shut down power grids.”
He added, “The aim is to gain a strategic advantage, to degrade the states that support Ukraine.” Nothing was safe anymore as “Here in the UK, Russia has targeted our media, our telecoms, our political and democratic institutions, and our energy infrastructure.”
McFadden added for good measure, “Some of the biggest threats in cyberspace emanate from China, North Korea and Iran.”
The government is backed to the hilt by a virulently anti-Russian media. On Monday, the Guardian editorialised on “Europe’s duty to Ukraine: solidarity must not waver in the age of Trump”. It warned that the permission by the US and Britain to allow Ukraine to use long-range missiles against Russian territory “was not a gamechanger in what has become a cruel, relentless war of attrition.
“The potential withdrawal of American aid by an isolationist Donald Trump next year, in order to force an unjust peace on Ukraine, certainly would be. European nations urgently require a strategy to respond to that prospect.”
Noting growing anti-war sentiment, it warned, “A sense of war weariness has become more widespread in Europe following the failed Ukrainian counter-offensive of 2023, the subsequent outbreak of war in the Middle East, and an ongoing cost of living crisis.”
This followed an op-ed published in the newspaper Saturday by Simon Tisdall: “After Kyiv used Storm Shadow missiles, Russia’s leader asserted his ‘right’ to attack the UK and US. In truth, he has been doing exactly that for two years now”.
Tisdall stated, “Britain and its allies have been under constant Russian attack since the war began. Using sabotage, arson, deniable cyber-attacks and aggressive and passive forms of covert ‘hybrid’ and ‘cognitive’ warfare, Putin has tried to impose a high cost for western support of Ukraine.”
Tisdall claimed, “Suspected Russian hybrid warfare actions on land, in Europe and the UK, are multiplying in scope and seriousness. They range from large-scale cyber-attacks, as in Estonia, to the concealing of incendiary devices in parcels aboard aircraft in Germany, Poland and the UK.”
Tisdall noted that a summit held in Poland last week of the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France, plus the UK, Italy and Spain, agreed that “Moscow’s escalating hybrid activities against NATO and EU countries are unprecedented in their variety and scale, creating significant security risks.”
As to how far the imperialists will go in making the case for war and justifying repression, in a previous period of heightened global and class tensions, NATO operated an underground army of extreme right-wing, forces, Gladio, which specialized in acts of sabotage throughout Europe.
The most class conscious workers also know that every genuine terrorist act in the UK over several decades since the US-led war on terror in 2001 was carried out not by Russia, but by forces that were well-known to the intelligence agencies beforehand—the most recent being the Abidi brothers, with Salman Abedi able to blow up Manchester Arena in 2017 killing 22 people.
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