Having rediscovered my copy of the late anarchist Stuart Christie’s seminal work on Frank Kitson’s ‘Low Intensity Operations’ I dust it down. From the preface on its excellent stuff. Example:
“Kitson defines ‘subversion’ in the way the Law defines ‘obscene’ a tendency to corrupt and deprave. Like, man, table legs as phallic symbols(you know!) and horsecollars yucht; Writing letters in The Neaseden Knocker becomes High Treason in his Ideal State. Analysising this creep’s mind became for me a moral and historical necessity.”
“Three weeks and one hundred and fifty reading hours later found me locking up his book each night as if it was ‘Just Musk’, ‘Shouldn’t be allowed,’ Maybe smallpox virus is a better image, The strategy which Kitson creates for what he terms ‘civil and military’ power, i.e. State power, irresistibly paints a bad scene: a dangerous virus sneaks into a healthy social cell, throws off its menacing disguise and stands dominant, black, faceless, menacing a Darth Vadar of the Right.”
“Only this isn’t no sci-fi trip. Once its envelope of low profile meaning is slashed open, “Low Intensity Operations” has the chilling credibility of a captured Top Secret document of State. May the force bolt from you, Frank!”
Kitson ‘murder gang manual’ takes the lessons he had learned from the torture and mayhem the British Army and Colonial Police applied in Kenya, Malaya. Cyprus and Aden then transposed these on to Ireland in the war in the six counties. However Christie recognized that Kitson saw it as a template for more extensive control within the British State. As Christie put it:
“After sniffing whiffs of Kitson over the years his book fell on my foot in Charing Cross Road last June. I read it straight then deepsixed parts of it.”
Christie recognised how dangerous Kitson and his ideas were. Christie is no longer with us – sadly Kitson and more pertinently his ideology still is!
Image: Kitsons Army Record ID. The introductory graphic in the preface of Christie’s critique (High Intensity Subversion) of Kitsons doctrine ‘Low Intensity Operations’ – Inset: The late Stuart Christie.
Bernard Moffatt
Assistant General Secretary Celtic League (18th August 2020)
