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@docrussjackson
Nov 9, 2021 • 13 tweets • 6 min read • Read on X
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Keep Calm & Carry On was part of a motivational poster campaign designed by the Ministry of Information in 1939. Intended to raise the morale of the British public, the campaign was cancelled following criticism: people regarded the message as 'patronising & divisive'.👇
2.5million copies were printed but only a handful ever appeared in public. In 1940 stocks were pulped. Design historian Susannah Walker regards the Keep Calm campaign as "a resounding failure" & reflective of a misjudgement by upper-class civil servants of the mood of the people.
'Keep Calm & Carry On' is evocative of the antiquated & largely mythical upper class Victorian belief in long departed British stoicism – the "stiff upper lip", self-discipline, fortitude, & remaining calm in adversity – a cliché of British sensibility.

Then, in 2000, a co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick, was sorting through a box of second-hand books bought at auction when he uncovered an original poster.

It was framed & hung up by the cash register, & it attracted so much interest that they began to produce & sell copies.
In early 2012, Stuart & Mary Manley of Barter Books debuted an informational short film, 'The Story of Keep Calm and Carry On', providing visual insight into the modernisation and commercialisation of the design and the phrase.

In late 2005, a Guardian journalist featured the replica posters as a Christmas gift suggestion, raising their profile further.

It was thought that only two original copies survived until a collection of 15 was brought in to the Antiques Roadshow in 2012.
huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/antiques…
In August 2011, it was reported that a UK-based company called 'Keep Calm and Carry On' Ltd had registered the slogan as a community trade mark in the EU & USA, after failing to obtain its registration as a trademark in the United Kingdom.
The company issued a take-down request against a seller of Keep Calm & Carry On products, but their right to claim the trademark was questioned, as the slogan was used before registration & was not recognisable as indicating trade origin.

bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-150…
An application was submitted to cancel the registration on the grounds that the words were too widely used for one person to own the exclusive rights, but the request for cancellation was rejected & the trade mark is still protected in all EU countries.

Sunlit uplands!
Political critic Owen Hatherley, author of The Ministry of Nostalgia: “It is a nostalgia for the state of being repressed.”

What bewilders him is why so many evince a dewy-eyed nostalgia for a time that they’ve not experienced, if it ever existed at all.
lareviewofbooks.org/article/keep-c…
It's a story of failed wartime propaganda, a mythical British identity constructed by repressive elites & corporate power.

Facing the multiple crises of corruption, COVID & climate change, the phrase resonates, but the LAST thing we should be do response is keep calm & carry on.
As Britain lurches from crisis to crisis, the press have a predictable response. This is post-war propaganda on an unprecedented scale.

But let's NOT keep calm & carry on: let's get angry & fight for a fairer, safer, greener, less divided, more peaceful & better governed future.

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More from @docrussjackson

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Sep 8
🧵

Boris Johnson appears to have had a secret meeting with billionaire Peter Thiel - perhaps the most fanatical of the libertarian Oligarchs and co-founder of the controversial US data firm Palantir, the year before it was given a role at the heart of the UK’s pandemic response. Image
A month after entering No 10, Johnson and his senior adviser Dominic Cummings had a meeting with Thiel, leaked files suggest.

Johnson is now likely to face questions about whether the non-disclosure amounts to a breach of the ministerial code.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/s…
The hour-long afternoon meeting on 28 August 2019 was marked “private” in a log of Johnson’s activities that day and was not subsequently disclosed on the government’s public log of meetings.

Read 12 tweets
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Aug 31
🧵

Elon Musk has been amplifying far-right accounts again, including Tommy Robinson, Rupert Lowe, and numerous anonynmous known #disinformation superspreader accounts like 'End Wokeness'.

Let's examine the context for yesterday's march in Richard Tice's constituency, #Skegness. Image
After decades of neglect, Skegness (pop 20K), stands out on key socio-economic markers on national averages: residents are older; whiter; lower full-time employment; higher rates of few/no qualifications; and concentrated deprivation - it's far-more deprived than most of England. Image
History repeatedly teaches us that burdening already struggling communities is a recipe for disaster.

These communities have been crying out for help for DECADES, but successive UK Govts have largely ignored their pleas, and continued to increase inequality, which harms us all. Image
Read 60 tweets
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Aug 28
🧵 @Rylan Asylum seekers coming here aren’t technically "illegal." International law (the 1951 Refugee Convention) allows people to seek asylum in any country regardless of how they arrive or how many countries they pass through, as long as they're fleeing persecution or danger.
Allow me to explain why asylum seekers aren’t “illegal”, and how misinformation and nasty demonising and scapegoating rhetoric by certain politicians and media, including news media, has made some British people less welcoming of asylum seeekers.

@Rylan
People fleeing war, torture, or persecution have the legal right to seek asylum.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, which the UK helped write, says anyone escaping danger can apply for asylum in another country no matter how they arrive: claiming asylum isn't a crime.

@Rylan
Read 23 tweets
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Aug 27
Farage's illiberal, immoral, & unworkable authoritarian plan involves ripping up human rights laws forged after WWII, which protect British people, & wasting £billions of UK taxpayers' money, giving some of it to corrupt misogynistic totalitarian regimes.
theguardian.com/politics/2025/…Image
Image
Leaving the #ECHR, repealing the Human Rights Act and disapplying international conventions

The UK would be an outlier among European democracies, in the company of only Russia and Belarus, if it were to leave the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

Opting out of treaties such as the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, the UN Convention against torture and the Council of Europe Anti-Trafficking Convention would also be likely to do serious harm to the UK’s international reputation.

It could also undermine current return deals, including with France, and other cooperation agreements on people-smuggling with European nations such as Germany.

The Society of Labour Lawyers said the plan would “in all likelihood preclude further cooperation and law enforcement in dealing with small boats coming from the continent and so increase, rather than reduce, the numbers reaching our shores”. 

Farage said he would legislate to remove the “Hardial Singh” safeguards – a reference to a legal precedent that sets limits on the Home Office’s immigration detention powers – to allow indefinite detention for immigration purposes. This would be highly vulnerable to legal challenge.

Many of the rights protected by the ECHR and the Human Rights Act are rooted in British case law, so judges would still be able to prevent deportations, even without international conventions.

x.com/docrussjackson…
Reform UK’s grotesque far-right mass deportation plan is not just economically and socially illiterate (Britain an ageing population and low birth rate) rely on striking “returns agreements” with countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Eritrea and Sudan, offering financial incentives to secure these deals, alongside visa restrictions and potential sanctions on countries that refuse.

These are countries where the Home Office’s risk reports warn of widespread torture and persecution.

It would risk the scenario of making payments to countries such as Iran, whose regime the UK government has accused of plotting terror attacks on British soil.

The Liberal Democrats called the payments “a Taliban tax”, saying the plan would entail sending billions “to an oppressive regime that British soldiers fought and died to defeat”. They said: “Not a penny of taxpayers’ money should go to a group so closely linked to terrorist organisations proscribed by the UK.”
Read 13 tweets
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Aug 25
🧵

The internet never forgets.

A thread of tweets posted by Lucy Connolly.

A reminder of the one, viewed 310,000 times, for which she was jailed, which urged people to burn down asylum seeker hotels after the #Southport attack - which had nothing to do with asylum seekers. Image
While all these tweets of Connolly's were made before her incendiary post, they don't say which year they were posted.

They can be accessed here, via The Wayback Machine, which has archived more than 916 billion web pages.

Draw your own conclusions.

web.archive.org/web/2024080616…
Connolly's tweet (top right) was in response to the tweet on the left, which criticised Laurence Fox for posting an upskirt photograph of Narinder Kaur.

The next one (right centre) was Connolly asking Kaur if she had 'flashed her gash'.

The third discusses a teenage experience. Image
Read 16 tweets
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Aug 22
🧵

Trump’s Fake Washington DC Emergency: Power Grab Exposed (in 2 Minutes).

Excellent explainer of an age-old strategy.

It's being deployed in Britain NOW, and would become a feature of UK life if Reform ever won a general election.

Watch and share.

It involves Trump, JD Vance, Robert Jenrick, Nigel Farage, and Farage's "friend", billionaire Peter Thiel.

The asylum backlog is coming down, and the number of hotels housing asylum seekers has been halved since Labour came to power.

Aided by the billionaire-owned UK news media (Mail, Sun, Times, Metro, TalkTV and GB "News"), populist politicians push a cynical, divisive, and dangerously irresponsible false narrative that Britain is 'lawless'.

Here's why it's a shameless lie.

Image
Read 6 tweets

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