My Roman Empire: Meghan Markle, The HJS, and the Article That Shouldn't Have Been Published P1
Grenfell Fire, Henry Jackson Society, and a 2016 Article Revisited
(Part 1 will introduce the story and provide important background info. Part 2 will dive into the 2018 article of interest. Part 3 will wrap up some loose threads.)
I am not someone who set an alarm for an ungodly east coast hour to watch William and Kate or Harry and Meghan tie the knot. I can’t tell one tiara from another (although I am getting better thanks to others that do it so well, here & here). I had virtually no knowledge of Harry and Meghan’s journey until the Harry & Meghan Netflix documentary that came out in December 2022.
What ultimately stuck out to me in the documentary and started me down this path was the British Media’s coverage of Meghan. One article stood head and shoulders above the rest, and not because of its journalistic integrity. Thus, this 2018 article published in The Telegraph has become my Roman Empire ever since I stumbled across it in December 2022. The title alone, “Meghan cookbook mosque linked to 19 terror suspects including 'Jihadi John' in group's investigation”, is purposefully inflammatory. It felt like a tenuous connection to say the least and played into some predictable tropes—and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) keywords.
And then I read the article.
The itch I haven’t been able to scratch is this part in particular:
What research suggests? Where’s the source link? Is information about men, some of whom died years before, pertinent and will you show me why? (Spoiler: No, but the reason is implied.) For the longest time I theorized the research was one of the many papers produced by the Henry Jackson Society, better known as the HJS, an anti-extremist think tank with a lens on a specific kind and color of extremism (HJS is basically stuck in a 2001 time capsule).
I finally got my answer a few weeks ago
from the reporter herself, Camilla Tominey. In our DM exchange, she ultimately revealed much more than the basis of the research; she revealed the angle of the article and, in doing so, gave away much more about the unconscious (or conscious) biases that undergirds the British Media’s coverage of marginalized groups.
Before we dive into the article, we need to establish the foundation. Let’s discuss the Grenfell Tower fire and the Henry Jackson Society.
Background on the Grenfell Tower Fire
On the night of June 14th 2017 Munira Mahmud woke suddenly to the sounds of people screaming “fire” in Grenfell Tower—a high rise apartment building in a poorer part of London comprised mostly of immigrants—where she resided with her husband, father-in-law and two children. Munira grabbed her young children and they raced down 5 flights of stairs barefoot, in PJ’s, smoke already filling the stairwells. 72 people died as a result of the fire and hundreds more had to figure out how to rebuild their lives.
The Grenfell Tower put into stark contrast the growing inequality in the UK. Literally, a palace within walking distance of the tower that was covered with a cheap, highly flammable cladding cover—designed to make the building more attractive—over a fireproof alternative. Looks over substance, which really could be a metaphor to the monarchy’s approach to charity.
And then there was the immediate slide to xenophobia. As author Afua Hirsch notes in her book Brit(ish) about the tragedy, “The slew of racist abuse and virulent hate that can be found in any thread online discussing the Grenfell victims - who happened to be disproportionately Muslims - and the conceptual linking of the dead families to the terrorists at London Bridge and Manchester the month prior (2017) speaks loudly of how ‘Muslim’ has become a racialised, culturally essentialist category in twenty-first century Britain.”
Survivors of the fire were put up in hotels where some, like Munira’s family, stayed for 19 months while the government ineffectively scrambled to find new homes for them. Families were given takeaway vouchers (takeout food), but it wasn’t the same as a home cooked meal. Food wasn’t just about sustenance; it was a reminder of home, something familiar and grounding. Munira couldn’t cook the way she wanted to—the way she had cooked since she was 7 years old. With her 9 year wedding anniversary coming up, she decided to take matters into her own hands. One day she walke into Al Maanar, a local mosque and Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, and asked if she could use the kitchen to cook an anniversary dinner for her husband. Not only did she receive a resounding “yes”, but on account of the fact that she was a Grenfell survivor, she was told she could come in twice a week to cook. Munira jumped at the chance to help others like herself start to heal through cooking and community. Thus the Hubb Community Kitchen was born.
Rarely is food just food. It’s the hours spent in the kitchen, sharing stories, tears, and laughter with other women, while remembering to keep an eye on the stove. For Grenfell survivors, the kitchen was a place to cook with other women, sharing recipes along with joy and pain and starting, in little ways, to heal the deep wounds left by the tragedy. For Munira, cooking was a lifeline. She had tried talk therapy and counseling, but the only thing that truly worked was cooking. The simple act of sharing a meal with other people. Sharing an experience. For a few hours, Grenfell survivors could forget they were returning to hotel rooms and an uncertain future.
With the fire occurring practically in their backyard, members of the British Royal Family quickly got involved. Queen Elizabeth and Prince William visited with first responders and survivors less than 48 hours after the fire broke out, on June 16th 2017. Prince Harry and Prince William also visited the Support4Grenfell Community Hub in Kensington in early September 2017.
Media coverage of the British Royal Family’s support for the survivors of Grenfell continued over the next few years, including a one year anniversary event the Queen and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, attended in June 2018. Prince William donned a hard hat and rolled up his sleeves in 2018 to help paint a community centre on the TV programme DIY SOS to, “replace the boxing club destroyed in the fire.” Kate, then Duchess of Cambridge, and Prince William attended the 5 year anniversary of the Grenfell tragedy in June of 2022 to pay their respects. These are nice gestures but, according to author Laura Clancy in her book Running the Family Firm, another example of taking while giving. The royals appear to be ‘giving’, without ceding any power or giving up their, “position in the very London borough that facilitated the unequal conditions for the fire.” Even though Meghan Markle’s charitable work with Grenfell survivors was far more impactful, it still didn’t address the structural inequalities that led to a fire in a housing development for majority Muslim immigrants.
Nevertheless, her involvement with the survivors of Grenfell was hands-on—literally—going farther than a moment of silence or a quick visit to an anniversary ceremony. What started as a visit where Meghan surprised even Munira by rolling up her sleeves, grabbing an apron, and diving right into prep work, turned into a joint effort between the Duchess and the women of Hubb Community Kitchen to create a community cookbook to raise funds, allowing the women to use the kitchen more than two days a week.
Why, after the glowing coverage of other members of the British Royal Family’s involvement with the survivors, was Meghan Markle labeled as helping Muslim women at a mosque connected to terrorism according to the HJS? Why was the Duchess of Sussex singled out in Ms. Tominey’s article? That’s for part two.
(Snack Break: IE if you’ve run out of steam, pause here and come back. I know it’s long but it’s worth it.)
The Henry Jackson Society: Founding
The Henry Jackson Society, established at Cambridge in the early 2000s, is a
”nonpartisan” think tank serving up the kind of pro-democracy that typically ends with invading a non-democratic foreign country and then complaining about immigration when those affected by the destabilization seek refuge in their countries. Where capitalism is a selling point (literally, one of their statement of principles - #7 if you’re nosey - includes, “give 2 cheers for capitalism.”).
Interesting tidbit, then-Prince Charles opened The Henry Jackson Initiative for Inclusive Capitalism conference in 2014, so there are ties there.
HJS took a sharp turn in the 2010’s and an even more more unapologetic anti-Muslim stance. Presumably the addition of Douglas Murray to HJS was one of the catalysts. Douglas Murray was the founder of The Centre for Social Cohesion in 2007, which later became a part of the Henry Jackson Society, where Murray was an associate director from 2011-2018. Murray had this to say about Muslims in a February 2006 speech at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference on Europe and Islam:
Conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board: Europe must look like a less attractive proposition… From long before we were first attacked it should have been made plain that people who come into Europe are here under our rules and not theirs… Where a mosque has become a centre of hate it should be closed and pulled down. If that means that some Muslims don't have a mosque to go to, then they'll just have to realise that they aren't owed one.
Hilary Aked, a freelance researcher and co-author of a report titled The Henry Jackson Society and the Degeneration of British Neoconservatism for the Cordoba Foundation wrote, “the Henry Jackson Society has an "inglorious history of propagating questionable research and targeting Muslims with spurious 'extremism' smears.” Mr. Murray is but one example of the prevailing ethos from an organization that, as Marko Hoare, former European Neighbourhood Section Director for HJS, who resigned in 2012, said HJS is no longer, “a centrist, bipartisan think-tank seeking to promote democratic geopolitics through providing sober, objective and informed analysis to policy-makers. Instead, it has become an abrasively right-wing forum with an anti-Muslim tinge, churning out polemical and superficial pieces by aspiring journalists and pundits that pander to a narrow readership [..].” Translation? This went way more right-wing than he was comfortable with. Milquetoast conservatism for me please!
Matthew Jamison, one of HJS’ co-founders, echoed Hoare’s assessment in a 2017 LinkedIn post where he wrote that he was “ashamed” of helping form the society:
“It was never supposed to be an anti-Islam, anti-Muslim racist organisation, peddling bigotry and most certainly never a smear, propaganda vehicle for foreign governments to wage disinformation campaigns against their regional bugbears. Sadly, however that is exactly what it has degenerated into [sic].”
Then there were the people who stayed, like Executive Director and founding member of the HJS, Dr. Alan Mendoza. (Dr. Mendoza is quoted as the “expert” in the article we will get to in part 2.) Breitbart—an alt-right site owned by Trump advisor, Steve Bannon—praised the HJS and Mendoza’s work when he had him on his podcast in May 2020 co-hosted by former HJS employee Raheem Kassem. That is not the only time Mendoza has been connected to Breitbart either. Dr. Mendoza has also penned articles for the likes of the Daily Mail, writing in August 2022 that, “it needs to be pointed out, loudly and often, that acknowledging the risk of Islamist extremism is not the same as being racist against Muslims.” It’s giving your uncle at Thanksgiving that always brings up “Black on Black crime” to negate any argument over homegrown domestic white terrorism in the United States. As if the last two plus decades following their ally (The United States) into 2 wars purportedly over fighting radical Islam, leading to a rise in Islamophoic hate crimes, wasn’t taking it seriously enough.
In her Machievellian secret guide for corporate execs, author of The Playbook: How to Deny Science, Sell Lies, and Make a Killing in the Corporate World, Jennifer Jacquet describes how think tanks are a way, “to influence public opinion and advocate for free market ideology” while capitalizing on their, “reputation as places of imagination, but many think tanks today ultimately exist to challenge regulations, draft legislation, fund advertisements, provide expert testimony, influence public opinion, and provide institutional homes for experts.”
The HJS fits that definition to a T (along with 2 cheers for capitalism, obvi.)
HJS | The British Government | The Royal Family | American Right-Wing Groups
Here is my mind map, that closely resembles cold, congealed spaghetti, so I’m going to lay out some key takeaways. (This could be a whole sep. deep dive for another time)
British Government Connections: (These are just a few connections.) There are many, many more. There are a number of HJS employees or people the HJS has donated to that went on to become Home Secretaries including: Sajid Javid, Prit Patel, and Amber Rudd. The HJS also donated to conservative politician Michael Gove, who has served various positions in Conservative governments. While Gove was director of the group, the HJS received more than £80,000 in funding from the UK Home Office between 2015 to 2017 for a report. The Home Office later said it didn’t own the report and pointed people in the direction of the HJS website, and a broken hyperlink. Worth noting that, in 2022, following the accession of PM Rishi Sunak, Gove was reinstated to his previous roles of Secretary of State for Leveling Up, Housing and Communities and Minister for Intergovernmental Relations. (Fun fact, he was married to Sarah Vine, royal reporter at the Daily Mail who wrote that “niggling” feeling about Meghan and Harry after their engagement photos were released.) And finally, one of the more eyebrow raising connections, The Charity Commission, charged with looking into a Jan. 2017 Times investigation that the HJS was paid by the Japanese embassy to spread anti-Chinese sentiment (we’ll get into that), found that its charity status was not impacted by this. The Chair of the Charity Commission: William Shawcross, former director of the aforementioned HJS. Conflict of interest anyone?
USA Connections: (There are many connections between the HJS and far-right US Groups. This is just a sampling.) HJS’ Dr. Alan Mendoza and Douglas Murray spoke at the Horowitz Freedom’s Restoration Weekend in 2017, along with far-right figures such as; Milos Yiannopolous, Katie Hopkins, Gavin McInnes and, Sebastian Gorka. There’s also a pattern of people going from working for the HJS or The Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom to the Heritage Foundation in the USA, and vice versa. One example is Robin Simcox, who was a HJS fellow before becoming a 2016 Margaret Thatcher Fellow for the Heritage Foundation. Now, Simcox is the lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism for the UK Government. Here are some tweets about that:
HJS Inc: (Again, just a sampling.)In America we have a terrible dark money problem that the HJS has taken advantage of by establishing HJS Inc. right here in the US—a non-profit vehicle that provides a bulk of its funding. Much of the funding is hard to find, but IRS filings pulled by Byline Times from other US foundations found that it received funding by two organizations in particular—the Emerson Family Foundation and Myron Zimmerman Foundation—who also donated to Turning Point USA, a rightwing group targeting high school and college campuses. Besides far right groups, there’s also an overlap of funding to Republican candidates and HJS Inc.
Now onto our final part…
The HJS At Work in the Media
Here’s an example of how the HJS works to influence through the media from 2016, when former Foreign Secretary from 1995-1997 under Prime Minister John Major as well as a minster in Margaret Thatcher’s government, Malcolm Rifkind, penned this commentary for The Telegraph.
It was a commentary by Rifkind on the dangers of Chinese involvement with British infrastructure, specifically, the Hinkley C Project. Only problem? Malcom Rifkind didn’t write the piece. Which isn’t in itself an uncommon practice, but the fact that the HJS, who was being paid about £10,000 a month by Japan to wage a propaganda campaign against China according to The Times, did write it, is a problem. Rifkind said he was not made aware of the HJS’s financial relationship with the Japanese embassy, adding that the HJS, “ought to have informed me of that relationship when they asked me to support the article they provided. It would have been preferable if they had.”
It’s also worth noting that whether paid for or not, HJS has continued with an anti-Chinese position. According to Byline Times reporting, on July 21st, 2020 Mike Pompeo, then-Secretary of State under Donald Trump, visited the UK for the second time in 2020, “during a diplomatic round trip to Europe and headed for a private meeting hosted by the HJS with Johnson and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab. The closed-door meeting, organised by Mendoza, was regarding the US and UK’s newfound agreement on stepping up actions to isolate China.” Weeks before, director of the HJS’ Asia Studies Centre, Matthew Henderson, published a report calling on China to pay compensation for the Covid outbreak. Henderson was interviewed about the report on Breitbart News Tonight (podcast).
So that is where we find ourselves in November 2018 when HJS research was used as the basis for a Telegraph article. Analysis of the article and the missing piece to our puzzle in the next installment.
-Meredith
Big thank you to my assistant sleuth, Amy, and the contributions of Sera and Mary.
Thank you to Nikky for the gorgeous cover art. Visit her site here.
When you think about the absolute horror the survivors faced, and then you look at that headline and story, it can make your blood boil. Fantastic read.
You write very well! My eyes welled up at a certain point. Will be looking forward to the other parts as always.