Caroline Cox

Baroness Cox, House of Lords, House of Lords, Henry Jackson Society event, 19 May 2008

Caroline Cox (Baroness Cox) is member of the British House of Lords and a right-wing campaigner. Since 2005 she has been a co-president of the Jerusalem Summit, a hardline pro-Israel advocacy outfit. Their conference was sponsored by the Michael Cherney Foundation, which also funds the Intelligence Summit in the US, both of which are gatherings of neoconservatives such as Michael Ledeen, Richard Perle, Daniel Pipes, Harold Rhode, Walid Phares, R. James Woolsey and others. In 2009 she was one of two UK peers to invite Dutch anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders to the UK.

Background

Cox was born on 6 July 1937 in London to Robert and Dorothy Love. Her father was a surgeon who served in the Medical Corps during the First World War. The family was originally Presbyterian but converted to Anglicanism before Cox's birth.

Cox became a nurse at the London Hospital at the age of 18. Whilst there she met neurosurgeon Murray Cox, who she married in 1959. She gave up nursing after suffering from tuberculosis shortly after the birth of her first child.

Cox took a degree in Sociology as an external student at the Polytechnic of North London, graduating with a first in 1968.

Activities

Polytechnic of North London

Cox's first academic job was as Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the Polytechnic of North London. An Evangelicals Now article on her bckground describes her approach to sociology: 'As a committed Christian she presented a Christian view of Sociology.' Cox was among the targets of the student movement at the time. According to Evangelicals Now:

It was a time of student unrest and the students organised demonstrations to disrupt lectures or meetings which they considered anti-Marxist. Caroline bore the brunt of this and in 1974 the students passed a vote of no confidence in her.

In 1975, Cox published The Rape of Reason: The Corruption of the Polytechnic of North London with John Marks and Keith Jacka. According to Christianity today International the book attacked 'the "physiognomy of hatred" propagated at her school by hardline Marxist/Leninist thought.' Bernard Levin devoted three of his columns in The Times to its contents.

Cox was a member of the study group behind a report published in 1977 by the intelligence connected Institute for the Study of Conflict alleging a Marxist penetration into British academia. Considering the ideological orientation of the members of the group, The Observer commented that: ‘The study group seems to believe with Professor Hayek and his disciple, Sir Keith Joseph, that true liberty is possible only in a capitalist, free market civilisation.’

The Times reported the group's findings that: ‘radical minorities...often disagreed with each other, but they had a common distaste, bordering at times upon sheer hatred for the liberal, tolerant society in which they moved.’ The Times published extracts of the report, but also criticised it as having an ‘alarmist tone which goes beyond his [the main author's] evidence.’

Cox became Head of Sociology at North London Polytechnic but resigned in 1977. From 1977-84 she was Director, Nursing Education Research Unit, Chelsea College, London University.

According to Daniel Callaghan's (2006) Conservative Party Education Policies, 1976-1997 in the early 1980s Cox and the co-author of her book, John Marks, began to work through the Centre for Policy Studies' Education Study Group, to influence the Thatcher Government. Previously Cox had been a ‘Fabian socialist’ while Marks had been a ‘Gaitskellite member of the Labour Party,’ but their joint experience as academics in the Polytechnic of North London led them, in 1977, to join the Conservative party’s education campaign "with a commitment and unperturbability that only converts tend to exhibit".

According to Callaghan, Marks was probably the person 'most disliked by the education establishment.' He also adds that a 1988 profile in the Times stated that:

All the most formidable and mysteriously named little groupings are to be found on the right [and] Lady Cox seems to be on the steering committee of almost every one of them ... lady Cox is one of the “link people” among the new Party groups...

The Times also added that Cox believed that when Margaret Thatcher read The Rape of Reason, she recommended that Cox be made a working peer. Callaghan suggests that it was more her work on the Centre for Policy Studies (1982) The Right to Learn(p. 10) that influenced Thatcher, and notes the influence of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and Centre for Policy Studies on education, citing their attempts to introduce the enforcement of market forces within education in a series of pamphlets including Rhodes Boyson’s series of Black Papers and the IEA’s housing of the National Council for Educational Standards, the Social Affairs Unit and an Education Unit under Stuart Sexton and the 'No Turning Back Group'. Callaghan identifies another category of influence other than the overlapping CPS and IEA ‘mutual support’ networks:

The low-church fervour of the ‘economic evangelicals’ in attacking post-war economic settlement would be more than matched by the high church contumely of the ‘neo-conservatives’ or ‘cultural restorationists’ in attacking what was perceived as a parallel moral decline.

The Hillgate Group comprised Cox, Jessica Douglas-Home, John Marks, Laurie Norcross and Roger Scruton; they were said have adopted both neo-liberal and neo-conservative approaches to policies and were heavily influenced by neo-conservative critiques of progressivism.

Another part of this network is given as the Conservative Philosophy Group, formed in 1975 by John Casey and Roger Scruton (who wrote for the IEDSS) based around the Salisbury Review. Callaghan suggests a dichotomy between moralists and the free-marketeers, whose disproportional prominence in the media had an ultimately damaging role in the educational reforms of the 1980s. He also suggests that these groups were peddlers of a crisis in education by creating a moral panic, citing Cox’s work as a key example of this. Cox (a director of the CPS from 1983-85) also wrote for the Social Affairs Unit with (1981)The Pied Pipers of Education along with Anthony Flew and John Marks and was part of the ‘Hilgate Group’ with Scruton, Marks and Jessica Douglas Home which published (1985) Education and Indoctrination, warning (yet again) of the pernicious left-wing bias. Callaghan states (quoting Scruton) that the publications were quietly encouraged by 10 Downing Street to concoct an outside pressure group to influence policy.

In one sense the campaign against local authority control of schools tied in with Cox's anti-soviet work, as Woodrow Wyatt stated a "political indoctrination by Marxist and CND teachers" was the problem:

The government seems unconcerned about that dishonestly named subject, peace studies. Teachers are urged by their organizations and some public bodies to seek information overwhelmingly from such groups as CND, the National Peace Council, Teachers for Peace and others which campaign for one-sided nuclear disarmament. Sources such as the Ministry of Defence and the British Atlantic Committee hardly get a mention; no pro-Nato campaigning organization is mentioned at all. In Peace Studies for Schools, John Marks presents massive evidence of the heavily biased nature of the political propaganda in schools in favour of the CND position. DES officials officials have doubtless put the document under the carpet.

In 2003, still writing with John Marks, Cox wrote The ‘West’, Islam and Islamism: Is ideological Islam compatible with liberal democracy? and is on the advisory council of Migration Watch which was described as "a xenophobic body" by Lord Peston in the House of Lords.Sir Andrew Green, former Foreign Office mandarin, Arabist, one-time ambassador to Syria and Saudi Arabia wrote the introduction to Cox and Marks' Civitas book and also runs Migration Watch. Cox argues that the government used IICORR.

Both Cox and Marks gave a presentation promoting the Civitas book at the Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium, June 9, 2005.

Attacking the peace movement in the 1980s

Cox’s profile in The International Who’s Who of Women, states that in 1984 she was a chair of the Academic Council for Peace and Freedom and at the same time with the Jagiellonian Trust — with Roger Scruton who was also a co-founder and trustee. Founded in 1980, the Trust focussed on democracy promotion in Poland and Hungary and was, with the Medical Aid for Poland Fund (MAPF), one of the reasons Cox used to visit Poland according to her statement in the House of Lords on 29 April 1998. Here she added:

With the Jagiellonian Trust, we tried to maintain spiritual, cultural and academic lifelines [...] Underground university meetings and the smuggling of samizdat material maintained contact with a people cut off from the rest of the world, excluded from contact with international media and deprived of access to literature, both classical and contemporary. Taking in the means for the publication of facts and ideas risked serious penalties — even blank paper could result in one’s imprisonment. I was told that it was dangerous because it enabled people to write down their ideas. That was the name of the game of totalitarianism.

According to Hansard of 1 February 1991, the ‘Jagiellonian Trust Seminars’ were funded (£16,000) by the Government via the Poland know-how fund via the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

In 1985 former Defence Minister Lord Chalfont (a member of The Committee for a Free World) and Jillian Becker and her partner Bernhard Adamczewski founded the Institute for the Study of Terrorism (IST). The Presiding Council included Cox, who was then Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, and Lord Orr-Ewing. The IST’s International Advisory Council included experts in many Western countries on Terrorism, Security, Weaponry, and Geo-Politics. Cox was Executive Director from 1985-1990.

In the 80s Cox was part of those on the right who complained that peace groups were using their charitable status as cover for promoting pro-Soviet propaganda. She waged a campaign, against the London Centre for International Peace-building, set up in 1983 by Brigadier Michael Harbottle, who also ran Generals for Peace and Disarmament from the same building in east London. Funds were channelled to the centre through a charity called the Caroline Gourlay Trust. In a letter to the Charity Commission, Cox wrote:

'The Caroline Gourlay Trust has been set up to support the centre, and the centre is deeply involved in supporting the so-called Generals for Peace - which is linked with the propaganda machine of the central committee of the USSR.'

Harbottle hit back at the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, a pro-Nato defence charity for which Cox wrote articles before joining its advisory committee, and said: 'That woman is trying to discredit us in any way possible, but on the other hand she is writing for a group which she sees as justified in having charitable status.' Gerald Frost, who rans the IEDSS, said: 'We don't campaign like the groups on the left. Take Oxfam's Campaigns Unit - they urge people to take political action. We have never done that.'

Oxfam's activities also attracted criticism from the Tory councillor and pro-Nato campaigner, Tony Kerpel, who also complained to the Charity Commission. In return, the 'peace lobby' complained to the commission about the activities of a government-funded charity, the British Atlantic Committee. As a result, the committee had to give off its political campaigning to the non-charitable organisation Peace Through Nato.

Neoconservative connections

Baroness Cox and Thomas Cushman, House of Lords, Henry Jackson Society event, 19 May 2008.

Jeff Halper in Counterpunch argues that just as it has benefited from the rise of the Right in the US and elsewhere in Europe, Israel under Likud (though not exclusively under Likud) has become a center for mobilizing right-wing ideological and political forces on a global scale. He uses the annual Jerusalem Summit (actually held in the Israeli city of Herzliya) as an example of "where the neo-con tribe gathers and galvanizes its plans for world domination around their concern for Israel."

We are not speaking of marginal “kooks,” but of top right-wing political leaders from Israel, the US, Europe and other parts of the world, high military officers and leading academics. Its leading lights include: Baroness Caroline Cox, Deputy Speaker of the U.K. House of the Lords and the non-executive director of the Andrei Sakharov Foundation (I wonder what Sakharov, who spent his whole life upholding human rights, would think of that!); Sam Brownback, Republican U.S. Senator from Kansas; Prof. Moshe Kaveh, President of Bar-Ilan University; Prof. Daniel Pipes, Board Member, United States Institute of Peace; Director of the Middle East Forum; Initiator of CampusWatch; Dr. Yuri Shtern, Knesset Member, National Union; a leader of the Russian community and a member of the extreme right.

While attending the Summit, Cox said that a 2007 proposal by British academics to enforce a boycott of Israel "is an outrageous and blatant violation of the most fundamental freedom of democracy, reminiscent of totalitarian regimes."For Cox academic staff "should be the guardians of academic freedom" and the proponents of the Israel boycott had the "extra dimension of bias and partiality." The report also noted "the disturbing alliance between the Islamists and the Left in the UK:"

"This very unnatural alliance is part of the present ethos and culture of political correctness which some of the media defer to and which shapes the emotions and understandings behind the proposals for such a boycott [...] Unless we realize that our fundamental freedoms are under threat, we could find ourselves in an irreversible situation," Cox said. "The question is, is it too late?"

This is something of a convoluted modulation of Cox's views and yet oddly similar: back in 1990, The Guardian reported on events at a conference in Prague organised by the Conservative Council of Eastern Europe in 1990, when Cox joined the IEDSS, and the network outlined their concerns at just how effective Communists had been in destroying the very fabric of British society:

Baroness Cox explains how ‘the moral legitimacy of British society has been undermined by Marxists in key institutions, particularly educational establishments’. Universities, schools and training colleges have all suffered, she says. The social sciences and history have been ‘particularly infected’. The church, too, is suspect. ‘Many of our church leaders have been infected by liberation theology’. John Marks adds that the British know well ‘how much wrecking power Communist parties can have, even when small’. We can teach you, he told the Czechs. Scruton and Cargill for their part, talk of the dangers of ‘institutionalised leftism, particularly in the media and the universities’.

The report notes that the response to this totalitarian nightmare was surprisingly muted and that the British ambassador was profusely apologetic and that many of the available Czechs on the cocktail circuit have deserted him to go to a party at the American Embassy where Shirley Temple (Black) was entertaining 15 Congressmen.

At the Jerusalem Summit in 2004 Cox “stepped up to receive the Scoop Jackson Award for Vision and Values awarded annually by Summit organizers” according to Judy Lash Balint’s 'A Brit Who Gets It', in FrontPageMagazine.com (Richard Perle was the recipient of the first Jerusalem Summit Scoop Jackson Award in 2003)) this again expressed her new concerns about politics and universities and she is again accompanied by Marks:

Baroness Cox explained that as in many European countries, the demographic reality means that many members of Parliament are now “deferential” to the growing numbers of Moslem constituents. British Foreign Minister Jack Straw has 8,000 Moslems in his district, noted Dr. Marks. Dr. Marks, with advanced degrees from both Cambridge and London Universities, says groups like the Islamic Foundation speak openly about creating an Islamic state in the United Kingdom. “We know they have links in British universities,” he claims.

Cox is a member of One Jerusalem (which has connections to the IEDSS’ New Atlantic Initiative) which protests against proposals of shared sovereignity over Jerusalem and according to their site promotes “Israel’s humanitarian treatment of Arabs caught in the crossfire.” A Jerusalem Summit London was held January 27-30,2007 with a view to:

"Attempting to stem the tide of rising Islamic fundamentalism in Europe [and] to rekindle the faded force of Christian Zionism in the United Kingdom.

Intelligence connections

In 2005 Cox was appointed as Special Representative for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Freedom of Religion Panel and this open connection with government comes along with more covert ones. In April 2008 she took part in a symposium organised by Norfolk State University’s Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC-CAE), designed to discuss critical issues, which are germane to 'America’s understanding of both the language and culture of Islam and how they relate to intelligence studies and intelligence gathering.'The symposium "preparing leaders for America’s Global Markets,” ranged over various aspects of intelligence gathering: "military, government; corporate and university; culture and language". Cox's contribution was to give the opening keynote address, prior to Ambassador Kenneth C. Brill (Director of the National Counterproliferation Center) who: 'mentioned WMD’s (i.e., weapon of mass destruction), the major portion of his presentation was on the national effort to include broad participation from non-traditional areas of studies as important in shaping the role of educational programs.' Other contributors included: Dr. James Piscatori (Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies), Brigadier Gen, James Poss (ACC Director of Intelligence "on the role of universities in helping the military to professionalize its personnel"). The press release adds:

A recruiting fair was held after the student symposium. It was opened to the public and included recruiters from the federal government intelligence agencies, national organization and local businesses.

Committee for a Free Britain

She was a Council member of the far-right Freedom Association and The Committee for a Free Britain (CFB) — a right-wing political pressure-group involving former Downing Street Policy Unit member Christopher Monckton, and David Hart. According to Richard Norton-Taylor and David Pallister in the Guardian, the CFB placed 'anonymously published savage advertisements against Labour' and the CFB has also stated that it paid the legal costs of groups taking on left-wing councils, and it invited Adolfo Calero, the Nicaraguan Contra leader, to visit Britain. The CFB also published British Briefing of which Colin Wallace has commented that: ‘Many of the smears in British Briefing are exactly the same sort of thing I was being asked by MI5 to spread in the 1970s. Some of the politicians…are the very same people I was being asked to smear.’

Human Rights role

Kirsten Sellars in her book, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights, (pp. 173–174) has this to say about Caroline Cox:

In fact, the scope and nature of slavery in Sudan is hotly disputed. Not only that, but the modus operandi of the Christian human rights groups engaged in 'slave redemption' – buying slaves to set them free – is the source of great controversy. Their legions of critics, ranging from Unicef and Human Rights Watch to Anti-Slavery International and Save The Children, accuse them of adopting methods which perpetuate rather than eliminate the practice.

This criticism is based on how Cox ran the British section of Christian Solidarity International, and then helped to form the Surrey-based breakaway, Christian Solidarity Worldwide. And adds:

In the late nineties, Cox made numerous forays to Sudan to 'redeem' slaves. Her supporters see her as a latter-day saviour, but her detractors argue that buying slaves encourages an abominable practice. Sir Robert Ffolkes, Sudan programme director of the Save The Children Fund, says that it 'condone[s] the practice of purchasing human beings', while Mike Dotteridge of Anti-Slavery International says that it allows it 'potentially to flourish'. Patrick McCormick, spokesman for Unicef, makes the same point: 'We find it hard to believe that it hasn't encouraged . . . slave traders to increase their business.' As Christopher Beese of Merlin, the British medical charity, says of Cox: 'She's not the most popular person in Sudan among the humanitarian aid people . . . some of them feel she is not well-enough informed.' These are valid criticisms – albeit criticisms that raise important (and largely unanswered) questions about the distorting effects of all humanitarian efforts in Sudan.

Sellars also observes that Anti-Slavery International used a 1999 report to the UN's Working Party on Slavery to challenge some of the claims being advanced about the scale of the problem. It said:

A representative of Christian Solidarity International spoke at the beginning of this year of 'tens of thousands' of people in slavery in Sudan, and of 'concentration camps' for slaves. At Anti-Slavery International, we know of no evidence to justify an assertion that 20,000 people or more are currently held as captives and slaves in these areas of Sudan. We know that abductions have continued to be reported . . . but realise that a number as large as 20,000 would be more visible than the smaller group which we understand is actually held, of hundreds or several thousand individuals scattered around separate households.

One possible explanation of events comes from a (2002) press release from The European-Sudanese Public Affairs Council, which drew on reports from 'The Irish Times', 'Independent on Sunday', 'The Washington Post' and the 'International Herald Tribune', which it states, chose to publish, or republish, articles exposing the deep fraud and corruption at the heart of claims of "slave redemption" in Sudan.The jist of this is that people (mostly children) pose as slaves to obtain the money offered to buy them from western organisations and that this has been orchestrated to fund the SPLA who use it to fund their fight against the Moslem government.

One key figure in this type of version of events is repentant Iran/Contra sinner Elliott Abrams — "He’s the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human rights abusers,” The Nation’s David Corn wrote upon Abrams’ 2001 return to government, in reference to Abrams defence of the U.S.-backed military regime in El Salvador even after evidence emerged of regime-sponsored massacres. The point here is that Abrams used his time out of government to develop the new specialty that paved his path back: religion and the Middle East, but also work on Sudan.

In 1996 he became president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a Washington outfit dedicated to applying faith-based morality to public policy. To boost support for Israel, Abrams urged a new kinship between observant Jews and evangelical Christians. He promoted a strongly pro-Israel stance toward peace negotiations with the Palestinians, criticizing the 1993 Oslo accords as too demanding of Israel.

Abrams was also chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. According to Rightweb The Ethics and Public Policy Center is one of several institutes and programs established by neoconservatives to promote an increased role of religion in public policy. This argues that Abrams used an instrumentalist position on human rights, saying that human rights should be a “policy tool” of the U.S. government. The Center was previously run by Ernest Lefever, one of the founding members of the 1970s version of the anti-communist Committee on the Present Danger.

Francis Mading Deng and J. Stephen Morrison's (2001) Report of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Task Force on U.S.-Sudan Policylists Elliott Abrams (then Chair of U.S. Committee on International Religious Freedom, and Ethics and Public Policy Center) and L. Paul Bremer (then with Kissinger Associates, Inc.) as two of its presenters. Cox, and Deng (and Dan Eiffe of Norwegian People's Aid who smuggled arms to the SPLA under the guise of religious aid both made contributions at a February 14, 2000: Hearing on Religious Persecution in Sudan of which Abrams was Commissioner.

Abrams' (2001) The Influence of Faith: Religious Groups and U.S. Foreign Policy, draws its inspiration from Samuel Huntington and was funded by the Smith Richardson Foundation drawing on the center’s work, it set out a long-standing use of religion in this manner:

“…some missionaries became what we would now call lobbyists and their “interest group” often allied with less devout expansionists.”

The book also mentions “premillenial dispensationalism,” whereby the British promise of a “Jewish homeland in Palestine as evidence of Jesus’ imminent return” was used as propaganda or “attuned” as Abrams puts it. Premillenial dispensationalism” is still put about by Michael Ledeen and his wife. Abrams also speaks of Father Edmund Walsh, an American Jesuit priest, and founder of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, in 1919, the man who reputedly encouraged Senator McCarthy to use anti-Communism as a stepping stone. And it also mentions that Reagan’s presidential aides worked Pope John Paul “to crack open the Eastern Bloc”.

Affiliations

• One Jerusalem Co-founder (2001)
• Freedom Association Council member and management committee (1985 -) | Galton Institute, adviser
• Parental Alliance for Choice in Education (1985 -)
• Committee for a Free Britain Founder (1987)
• Jerusalem Summit Co-President (2005)
• Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust Chief Executive and founder (2003)
• Centre for Social Cohesion (2007-)
• Christian Solidarity Worldwide (1997)
• Christian Solidarity International
• Andrei Sakharov Foundation Non-executive director
• Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies, Advisor (1990) and author
• Medical Emergency Relief International MERLIN trustee
• Siberian Medical University, Tomsk
• Trusthouse Charitable Foundation Trustee
• International Islamic Christian Organisation for Reconciliation and Reconstruction (IICORR) Chairman
• Educational Research Trust Co-Director
• Chernobyl Relief Foundation Trustee
• Institute for the Study of Terrorism Presiding Council (1985)
• Centre for Policy Studies Director (1983-85)
• Academic Council for Peace and Freedom Chairman (1984 -)
• Jagiellonian Trust (1984 - 1993)
• Social Affairs Unit Board Member (circa 1987)
• Sharia Watch UK - hosted launch in House of Lords, April 2014

Contact, References and Resources

Contact

Humanitarian Aid Relief Trust

1&3 Arnellan House

144-146 Slough Lane

Kingsbury

London NW9 8XJ

Tel: +44 (0)20 8204 7336

Fax: +44 (0)20 8204 5661

Email: ccox@ertnet.demon.co.uk

Website: ww.hart-uk.org

Resources

• House of Lords Register of Lords' Interests
• Freedom Assocation Baroness Cox of Queensbury
• Lady Cox Joins Summit’s Presidium, Jerusalem Summit Press Release, 24 January 2005.

Books

• Andrew Boyd, Baroness Cox, a Voice for the Voiceless, Lion Books,1998.
• Lela Gilbert, Baroness Cox, Eyewitness to a Broken World, Monarch Books, 2007.

Publications

• With Roger Scruton, Peace Studies: A Critical Survey, Institute for European Defence & Strategic Studies, 1984.

References

[[Category:House of Lords|Cox, Caroline]