Politics: nice guys finish last

By Richard North - June 15, 2026

Now that the Mail has lifted the lid on the Home Office’s “dirty tricks” department, it is evident that the government is not playing a straight bat when it comes to dealing with public reactions to the failures of multiculturalism.

Details set out by the paper include revelations that, while the streets of Belfast were ablaze with anti-immigration protests last week, behind the scenes a group of spies, spinners and soldiers were deploying the “dark arts”’ to try to defuse tensions.

This was the Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU, a secretive government propaganda unit trying to manipulate events, with a name that makes it sound like an innocuous back-office operation.

The “dull moniker”, says the Mail, is part of the deliberate camouflage of an outfit which uses deception and skulduggery to try to manage the “challenges” of multiculturalism.

Its techniques range from planting stories in the media, using undercover operatives to lay flowers at the scene of terrorist attacks and even, in one case, sending a pop group to sing anti-extremist songs in Muslim schools.

Apparently, the 22-strong unit was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, as part of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy. It was modelled on the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit established by the Attlee government in 1948 to blacken the names of communists and other political opponents.

Currently, RICU operates out of the Home Office’s Westminster headquarters and while its original purpose was to monitor and challenge the spread of Al Qaeda propaganda and to vet the language used by public officials when describing terrorism, its tentacles now stretch far across Whitehall – to the extent that critics say it risks strangling free speech.

As the protests multiplied in the streets of Northern Ireland last week following the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie by Hadi Alodid, RICU swung into action to advise the police in the province on how to “control the narrative”.

It was said to be working with the PSNI C3 intelligence unit to identify those posting the online “calls to protest” in Belfast and other areas, as well as giving strategic messages to the police to ensure that the protesters were portrayed as unsympathetic thugs, rather than activists, and effecting behavioural change.

One source told the newspaper that the unit had also been advising the police in Southampton following the murder of Henry Nowak. RICU, we are told, made sure that the liaison team dealing with the family were “well briefed”.

It has also been claimed that the unit intervenes to write statements by the families of victims of potentially racially linked incidents to stop them from inflaming tensions further with their remarks. The source says: “You can see their fingerprints all over the statements released by the families of victims in these volatile situations – they usually have a similar tone”.

That much was evident in the extraordinarily naff statement released by the Ogilvie family which had a cynical Allison Pearson scoffing that: “No normal shocked family sounds like this. This is panicking, stop the natives revolting, crisis-management speak”.

But it turns out that this may have been much more than simply “crisis-management speak”. Rather, it was part of a deliberate government strategy to exploit the vulnerabilities of grieving families to insert messages aimed at manipulating public behaviour.

This was almost certainly the case with Henry Nowak’s father, Mark, who was doubtless fed the words: “We do not want Henry’s murder to be used to create further hatred, division or tension” – phrasing which was used in an attempt to shut down comment about the murder, and a stick with which to beat Farage when he tried to raise the issue in the Commons.

Given the structured, tone-deaf responses, it is unsurprising that people feel the need to vent their anger on the streets. But when protest broke out in Southampton after the Nowak murder, they were unfortunately marred by the same mindless violence that we saw in the Southport riots – the net effect being the lengthy incarceration of those involved in the rioting, to the tune of smug moralising of judges and Guardian columnists.

Against the calculated crisis management perpetrated by the state, some have felt that street protests and allied activities need to be rather more sophisticated than congregating in front of tooled-up riot police and hurling wheely bins and traffic cones at them.

Certainly, after the Ogilvie attack, astute observers of the Northern Ireland scene noted that the protesters – schooled by decades of the Troubles, and retaining an institutional memory – were slightly more adept in making their displeasure known to the authorities.

Evident from the video clips from the protests was a repetition of the old tactic of using young boys to hurl Molotov cocktails (crates of which mysteriously appear when needed) at police vehicles, knowing that the boys can’t be prosecuted, while over-reaction has often been framed as examples of police brutality.

Observers also witnessed the flexible use of temporary street blockades, where they sprung up suddenly and were used to suck in police resources. Yet they seemed often to be only lightly defended – commonly with children – while other public-spirited activities were conducted elsewhere by the grown-ups.

Such tactics were well known during the Troubles, with protesters staging multiple incidents, keeping the police unbalanced and overstretched. The avoidance of direct confrontation, and easily targeted concentrations, often seemed to be the aim.

As police riot control technology improves, though, we may well see a corresponding evolution on the part of protesters. We have yet to see, for instance, the widespread use of drones and rather than the ubiquitous use of spectacular but ineffective Molotov cocktails, the employment of thermite cannot be far away.

Learning from experiences in Ukraine, if protesters sought to combine the technologies, the PSNI armoured Land Rovers and water cannon could well be in trouble.

But what has also emerged is that more precise targeting of dissent can be far more effective than direct confrontation with the police. During the Belfast protests, we saw organised gangs rooting out immigrants and burning their houses. This certainly had an effect.

Now it transpires, though, that much the same effect can be achieved without resorting to firebombing, just by circulating anonymous lists of properties marked down for attention. This has achieved a very rapid and substantial depopulation in certain parts of South Belfast.

Turning to the mainland, we have seen Farage promise that under a Reform government, foreign nationals in social housing will be given three months to find private accommodation or face being deported.

Pete, however, points out the pitfalls of such a policy which, in practical terms, might be extremely difficult to implement, riven with unwanted consequences.

Given that government agencies have had no scruples about employing “dirty tricks” – which will doubtless intensify in the event of a Reform government being elected, there are those who might feel that one should fight fire with fire, so to speak.

Thus, we could even see on the mainland the deft circulation of target lists and other indirect stratagems which seek to level the playing field against an establishment which has no scruples when it comes to getting its own way.

Pete writes in his conclusion that civil wars happen when government loses all legitimacy, and confidence in the capacity of politics to fix things evaporates. We might already be at that point, he says, but that does not necessarily mean that direct action will prevail.

One cannot help but think that those seeking change will have to be as every bit as canny and unscrupulous as the government agencies which are currently keeping the lid on things. As the man said: “nice guys finish last”.