Response to attempted Political Censorship
Political censorship and attempted discreditation of Farmers Movement Cornwall by Cornwall Council
In early 2025 we began sending out a document to all town and parish councils in Cornwall, it asked them to consider voting on the declaration of a food security crisis and subsequently to vote on the adoption of a food security restoration policy in order to address the decline in our agricultural self sufficiency within the county and within the UK.
This campaign effort was underpinned by our own studies of DEFRA food security report data and by the work of Professor Tim Lang of City University in his report to the UK Preparedness Commission entitled ‘Just in Case: 7 Steps to Narrow the UK Civil Food Resilience Gap’.
Our primary objective was to raise awareness of the issues surrounding food security and to begin effecting remediative change through the use of pro farming/pro food security policy at the grassroots level of town/parish council governance. Once sufficient support from this primary level of local governance had been secured our secondary objective was to consult with Cornwall Council and request them to debate the adoption of our policy recommendations, namely the declaration of food security crisis followed by the creation of a food system resilience committee within the council to oversee improvements in food security for the county.
In March we became aware that Simon Mould from the communities department at the council had emailed all town, parish and county councillors telling them that the council was concerned about some of the information on our website saying that it ‘could’ be seen as discriminatory and ‘not in line with their collective local government values’. He stated that he wished to bring this to the attention of councillors so that they could undertake their own due diligence. He also stated that the Localism team had been instructed to not share our correspondence or website address with any external organisations.
I responded by asking the following questions:
1. Can you get off the fence and say whether the information in question is discriminatory or not?
2. Can you state to which exact pieces of information on our website you are referring?
3. Can you confirm that I could have a valid case against Cornwall Council for unsubstantiated political censorship and discrimination based on political beliefs?
Their response was entirely unsatisfactory:
1. They failed to state whether or not the content in question was discriminatory, they simply maintained their ambiguous position that ‘some’ people ‘could’ see the content as discriminatory.
2. There was no exact reference by them to any specific pieces of text displayed on our website. The only information provided was a reference to an author whose work was listed in a section relating to books which have had an influence on my wider geopolitical beliefs. Cornwall Council stated that ‘some’ people ‘could’ see some of the content as discriminatory and anti-Semitic. It seems to have escaped the members of the localism team that the author in question (Henry Makow) is himself Jewish, this level of ignorance leads me to believe that they know nothing of his work, something which can only reinforce my opinion that their actions against our campaign group are unsubstantiated. The whole premise of the work by Henry Makow is to make the clear distinction between the everyday people of Jewish faith who live by the law of God as given to Moses in the 10 commandments and who assimilate and live peacefully and productively within their respective host nations and those who follow the political movement of Zionism. He in fact warns both the Jewish people and the wider world as a whole about what he considers to be the threats posed by the Zionist movement.
3. They refused to say if they considered that I had a valid claim against them for discrimination on the grounds of political belief and in fact stated that their instruction to not share our correspondence or website address with outside organisations was not censorship.
Such an unsatisfactory response leads me to the conclusion that their actions are unsubstantiated, they are politically motivated and that they do in fact amount to censorship on the grounds of political belief. Furthermore I believe they are an underhanded attempt at engendering predetermination and bias against our group through the suggestion and inference of discreditation.
I will leave all those who receive any communications from us to make up their own minds.
I will not be pursuing this matter any further with Cornwall Council as I see no point in getting tied up in a time consuming and expensive legal challenge for discrimination and political interference against them, this will not only take my time away from the vital food security campaign work that I and Farmers Movement Cornwall do but it will ultimately cost the taxpayer in legal fees incurred by Cornwall Council. Money wasting of this nature is wrong and unjustifiable especially in our current economic circumstances and despite the moral validity of my case it is something to which I will not be party.
We fight on.
Best wishes
Peter Lawrence
Farmers Movement Cornwall
British Democrats