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The plot that was not
MAT COWARD takes us back 230 years to the inglorious era of George III and a treasonous plan by the London Corresponding Society, in which all was not as it seemed…
SKULDUGGERY: LCS speakers address the crowds at the now-demolished Copenhagen Fields, Islington, 1795

ATTEMPTING to neutralise dissidents by accusing them of serious crimes is a trick governments never get tired of.

Older readers will remember (though they may wonder if they dreamed such a bizarre episode) the time that Peter Hain was tried at the Old Bailey for robbing a bank. Now a respectable Labour peer, but then a radical Young Liberal and leading anti-apartheid campaigner, Hain was framed in 1976 by agents working for the South African government with the approval of the British secret police. He was only acquitted on a majority verdict. Even during a period of strange political trials, that one was sufficiently farcical to stand out.

At least the crime Hain was falsely accused of actually occurred. Unlike The Pop-Gun Plot...

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