Omnia Omnibus Ubique

My ongoing Adam Curtis re-watch arrived at The Mayfair Set last night. I remembered very little of this series on account of there being too many names, places, muddled timelines and financial shenanigans to be coherent. It could do with a linear re-edit. The Mayfair Set attempts to show how four terrible men, distraught at Britain’s post-Empire decline, pursued a new strategy for global power. “But in reality” their vision for the nation only made them rich while leading directly to the asset-stripping of industry, greed-over-growth, mass unemployment, deregulated markets, and the never-ending wars that still dominate the news cycle. But in doing so David Stirling, Jim Slater, James Goldsmith, and Tiny Rowland inadvertently exposed the corruption at the heart of British politics and our government’s total inability to control the economy. Underneath the façade of order and respectability was chaos and crime.

One terrible man in particular features heavily in the final episode of The Mayfair Set: Mohammed Al-Fayed. Al-Fayed was an Egyptian sewing machine salesman and irredeemable piece of shit who quickly infiltrated then exploited/stole from businesses and industries associated with the King of Saudi Arabia, François Duvalier the autocratic president of Haiti, and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum the Emir of Dubai (a great bunch of lads). After moving to Mayfair in the 1960s he began a lifelong dirty-tricks rivalry with irredeemable piece of shit Roland “Tiny” Rowland (yes, his parents named him Roland Rowland). Tiny had made his fortune in Southern Rhodesia as chief executive of the mining and land company Lonrho and was once described by the Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath as, “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.” Rowland longed to be part of the British Establishment and to achieve this pathetic ambition set his sights on owning the department store Harrods, but he was repeatedly refused permission.

In 1984, Al-Fayed and his brothers succeeded in buying Rowland’s 30% stake in the House of Fraser group that owns Harrods. Meanwhile the British government had lost control of the pound and the world’s worst people were buying up dollars in a frenzy. The Prime Minister and irredeemable piece of shit Margaret Thatcher was informed that the nation of Brunei intended to move billions out of the UK and into the US, and she looked for ways to persuade them not to. The way she chose was to ask Mohammed Al-Fayed to facilitate a meeting with his friend Hassanal Bolkiah Muiz’zaddin Wad’daulah, the Sultan of Brunei. The meeting was a success, and as a reward Al-Fayed was granted permission to buy the remaining 70% stake in Harrods.

An enraged Rowland then spent millions attempting to prove that the acquisition of Harrods had been unlawful. And in 1989 he was vindicated by a DTI report that found Al-Fayed’s purchase of the Fraser group had indeed been fraudulent, concluding poetically with the words: “Lies became the truth and the truth became a lie.” Despite outrage on both sides of the House, the government took no action.

Two years ago, BBC News reported that the now-dead Mohammed Al-Fayed had been accused of rape and sexual assault by 20 former Harrods employees. By the end of the year over 400 survivors or witnesses of Al-Fayed’s sexual violence had contacted lawyers, with the youngest victim aged 13. And it was revealed that the Met (who’d claimed no allegation was made until 2005) had failed to follow up a complaint by Samantha Ramsay in 1995, telling her, “We’ve added it to a pile of other female names that we’ve got that have made the same complaint against Mohamed Al-Fayed.” A subsequent investigation revealed that he’d employed scouts to systematically recruit young women to work at Harrods, solely for him to abuse.

You might argue that Mrs Thatcher couldn’t possibly have known that gifting Al-Fayed the prestigious store would directly enable her friend to become the most prolific rapist in recorded British history. But since she also maintained a close friendship with Jimmy Savile, whose elevated position in society allowed him to become the most prolific paedophile in recorded British history, it looks less a case of poor judgement and more like wilful collusion.

And that’s before we get into the fact that (were it not for drunk driving and Parisian pillars) Mohammed Al-Fayed would’ve become step-grandfather to the future King, since his son Dodi was very much in love and definitely not scamming the heir’s mother Diana, the Princess of Wales and close personal friend of Jimmy Savile.

When we read the recently released redacted emails that the richest, most powerful, most socially embarrassing dorks exchanged with the convicted trafficker and abuser Jeffrey Epstein (“Wazup Jeff any secks happening tooday? Nice I likeit. On a island wiht peoplelooking. naughtyIf any1 foond out”) are we not simply seeing what has always gone on, and what these same types of people have always participated in or facilitated since the class system began? After all, what’s the point of wealth and power if it doesn’t allow you to do things no serf can (or would want to)? The only difference is that this generation of vile, protected, predators can’t resist taking selfies; the trouble with despicable deviants today is they have no decorum.