One of the most peculiar aspects of modern politics is the prevalence of former leftists who have shifted to the right. Dubbed "neo-cons," this group has considerable influence over the White House, the Pentagon, the British government, and the Labour party. Yet, a subgroup of this group has moved even further and went from the outer edges of the left to the furthest echelons of the libertarian right in support of corporations. While their politics have widely transformed, their methods of infiltrating organizations to gain power have remained unaltered. Recent research reveals that members of this faction have infiltrated a critical section of the British establishment.

The group materialized as a Trotskyist offshoot known as the Revolutionary Communist Party back in the late 1970s. From the beginning, they sought to eradicate all opposing factions. When nurses and cleaners marched for better wages, they picketed their demonstrations. They even penetrated Outrage, the gay rights movement, with the intention of shutting it down. They also attempted to sabotage the miners’ strike, destabilized the Anti-Nazi League, and almost destroyed the radical Polytechnic of North London. RCP members allegedly attacked members of opposing factions on two occasions.

In 1988, they established Living Marxism, which later became LM. By this time, led by Frank Furedi, a scholar, Mick Hume, a journalist, and Claire Fox, a teacher, the organization had shifted overtly to the far-right. Their objective was to promote "confident individualism" void of social constraints. They supported gun ownership, opposed banning tobacco advertising and child pornography, advocated for global warming, human cloning, and the freedom of corporations. They defended the Bosnian Serb ethnic cleansers and Tory MP Neil Hamilton. They also offered the corporate think tanks, the Center for Defense of Free Enterprise and the Institute for Economic Affairs, a platform for their writers. Furedi wrote for the Centre for Policy Studies, co-founded by Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher, and contacted supermarket chains, offering to educate their customers about complex scientific issues for £7,500.

In the late 1990s, they began infiltrating the media with unprecedented success. They appeared to control scientific and environmental broadcasting on Channel 4 and the BBC for a while. They used platforms such as Equinox, Against Nature, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Counterblast, and Zeitgeist to argue that environmentalists are Nazi sympathisers standing in the way of human progress. LM magazine was sued in 2000 by ITN for claiming falsely that its journalists had fabricated evidence of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims. LM closed, but the group emerged as the digital publication Spiked and the decision-making organization the Institute of Ideas.

The researcher and activist Jonathan Matthews published a report on his website, www.gmwatch.org, unveiling a possible new strategy in this group’s campaign for individualism. Group members have taken on crucial roles in the formal communication infrastructure used by the science and medical establishment.

Firstly, there’s the Association for Sense About Science (SAS), a lobbying organization led by Liberal Democrat peer Lord Taverne. Its board consists of prominent scientists such as Professor Sir Brian Heap, Professor Dame Bridget Ogilvie, and Sir John Maddox. In October, it organized a letter to The Times by 114 scientists grumbling that the government failed to justify genetic engineering. In response, Tony Blair informed the Commons that he had not ruled out the commercialization of GM crops in Britain. Sense About Science shares the same phone number as Global Futures, a publishing house. Its two trustees include Phil Mullan, a former RCP activist and LM contributor who appears as the registrant of Spiked magazine’s website. The only article available on the Global Futures site was authored by Frank Furedi, the godfather of the cult. Ellen Raphael, Sense About Science’s deputy director, serves as the contact person for Global Futures. Tracey Brown, SAS’s director, has written for both LM and Spiked, and published with the Institute of Ideas, all derived from the RCP. Both Brown and Raphael learned under Frank Furedi at the University of Kent before working for Regester Larkin, a public relations firm that represents companies like biotech giants Aventis CropScience, Bayer, and Pfizer against consumer and environmental campaigners. Adam Burgess, another LM contributor, shares Brown’s address. LM’s health writer and a trustee on both Global Futures and Sense About Science is Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick.

Fiona Fox is the director of the Science Media Centre, a public relations organization established by Baroness Susan Greenfield of the Royal Institution, and is supported by several pharmaceutical companies, including Astra Zeneca, Dupont, and Pfizer. Fox has utilized this platform to promote the views of these companies and to publicly attack those who question their authority. For example, she ran a campaign to discredit the BBC drama Fields of Gold.

Other organizations involved in similar activities include the Genetic Interest Group’s policy officer, John Gillott, who formerly served as the science editor of LM and regularly contributed to Spiked. Juliet Tizzard, a contributor to LM, Spiked, and the Institute of Ideas, leads the Progress Educational Trust, which advocates for human embryo research, and helps run the online clinical genetics library Genepool. The chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service is Ann Furedi, a regular contributor to LM and Spiked and the wife of Frank Furedi. Ellie Lee, a frequent writer for LM and Spiked, is the coordinator for the Pro-Choice Forum, which raises awareness of abortion issues and currently serves as the series editor for the Institute of Ideas.

While it is unclear why these groups seem to share such a close affiliation, the scientific establishment appears unwittingly to have allowed its interests to be represented by the members of a bizarre and cultish political network instead of rebuilding public trust in science and medicine. This group’s philosophy may ultimately cause irreparable damage to the industry if allowed to persist unchecked.

Note: The information sources for this and all George Monbiot’s recent articles can be found on his website at www.monbiot.com.