{"id":327986,"date":"2026-06-15T07:05:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-15T07:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=327986"},"modified":"2026-06-17T08:18:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:18:06","slug":"revealed-the-shadowy-government-thought-police-unit-suppressing-speech-to-keep-a-lid-on-racial-tensions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=327986","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: The Shadowy Government \u2018Thought Police\u2019 Unit Suppressing Speech to \u2018Keep a Lid\u2019 on Racial Tensions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toby Young \u2013 The Daily Sceptic June 14, 2026<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/h1>\n

A secretive Home Office propaganda unit, RICU, founded by a former MI6 officer in 2007, has been covertly advising police on \u201ccontrolling the narrative\u201d during race riots in Belfast and Southampton. Critics say the 22-strong outfit \u2013 which plants media stories, deploys undercover operatives and reportedly ghost-writes victims\u2019 family statements \u2013 is now \u2018out of control\u2019. The Mail<\/em>\u00a0has the story<\/a>:<\/p>\n

While the streets of Belfast were ablaze with anti-immigration protests last week, behind the scenes a group of spies, spinners and soldiers were deploying the \u2018dark arts\u2019 to try to defuse tensions.<\/p>\n

The name of the secretive Government propaganda unit trying to manipulate events makes it sound like an innocuous back-office operation \u2013 the Research, Information and Communications Unit, or RICU.<\/p>\n

But the dull moniker is part of the deliberate camouflage of an outfit which uses deception and skulduggery to try to manage the \u2018challenges\u2019 of multiculturalism.<\/p>\n

Its techniques range from planting stories in the media, using undercover operatives to lay flowers at the scene of terrorist attacks and even, in one case, sending a pop group to sing anti-extremist songs in Muslim schools.<\/p>\n

The 22-strong unit was established in 2007 by the late Charles Farr, a former MI6 officer, as part of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy.<\/p>\n

Modelled on the Information Research Department (IRD), a propaganda unit established by the Attlee government in 1948 to blacken the names of communists and other political opponents, RICU operates out of the Home Office\u2019s Westminster headquarters.<\/p>\n

While its original purpose was to monitor and challenge the spread of Al Qaeda propaganda and to vet the language used by public officials when describing terrorism, its tentacles now stretch far across Whitehall \u2013 to the extent that critics say it risks strangling free speech.<\/p>\n

When the mobs took to the streets of Northern Ireland last week following the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie, allegedly by Hadi Alodid, a 30-year-old Sudanese asylum-seeker, RICU swung into action to advise the police in the province on how to \u2018control the narrative\u2019.<\/p>\n

A source said: \u201cThey are working with the Police Service of Northern Ireland\u2019s C3 intelligence unit to identify those posting the online \u2018calls to protest\u2019 in Belfast and other areas, as well as giving strategic messages to the police to ensure that the protesters were portrayed as unsympathetic thugs, rather than activists, and effecting behavioural change.\u201d<\/p>\n

The source said that the unit had also been advising the police in Southampton following the horrific murder of Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa \u2013 who falsely claimed he had been racially abused and had acted in self-defence \u2013 saying: \u201cRICU made sure that the liaison team dealing with the family were well briefed.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has also been claimed that the unit intervenes to write statements by the families of victims of potentially racially linked incidents to stop them from inflaming tensions further with their remarks.<\/p>\n

The source said: \u201cYou can see their fingerprints all over the statements released by the families of victims in these volatile situations \u2013 they usually have a similar tone.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, RICU is regarded by many Whitehall insiders to be \u2018out of control\u2019, after last year putting its name to a Home Office recommendation that the police should record more \u2018non-crime hate incidents\u2019 \u2013 the controversial, sub-criminal measures used to inhibit people from making reference to matters of race, religion, sexual orientation or disability.<\/p>\n

Ministers finally bowed to pressure by scrapping the measures, telling the police to stop recording everyday rows and online spats.<\/p>\n

The unit also claimed that the prevalence of sexual grooming gangs in Pakistani communities was being exploited by the far-Right to stir up hatred against Muslim communities.<\/p>\n

Worth reading in full<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A secretive propaganda unit covertly advised police on \u201ccontrolling the narrative\u201d following recent riots. However, critics say the outfit \u2013 which plants stories, deploys undercover operatives and reportedly ghost-writes victims\u2019 family statements \u2013 is now \u2018out of control\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":327987,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[53,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-327986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mind_control","category-Surveillance"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=327986"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327989,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327986\/revisions\/327989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/327987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=327986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=327986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=327986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}