• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

British Politician John Smith Murdered?

A

Anonymous

Guest
Someone told me the other day that they were sure that the Labour leader John Smith (who died at the age of 55 in 1994) was murdered for political reasons. His death of course led to Tony Blair becoming Labour leader, then PM...

I just wondered if anyone else had heard this theory? It's not something I've heard before.
 
He died of a coronary, IIRC.

To be brutally frank, as conspiracy theories go this one's a non-starter. Why would anyone murder him? He was respected, intelligent, articulate and highly principled - to bump him off just in order to set in motion a chain of variables that might lead to Blair being elected leader, that might then lead to his reform of the party, that might then lead to an election victory is just too wild, for me at least. If he was PM, then maybe it would hold a little more water (but not a lot), but why kill the leader of the opposition?

Is there any actual evidence that he was murdered? Anything that didn't quite add up about it? Diana's death is fishy, yes: Kennedy was murdered (but by whom is the question), but John Smith?
 
Beany said:
Someone told me the other day that they were sure that the Labour leader John Smith (who died at the age of 55 in 1994) was murdered for political reasons. His death of course led to Tony Blair becoming Labour leader, then PM...

I just wondered if anyone else had heard this theory? It's not something I've heard before.
Alright, so John Smith had a heart condition.

He died at a public dinner function, didn't he? Was it the soup, fish, or dessert course? I'm certainly not going to start pointing the finger at Peter Mandelson. Then the young and ambitious Blair made his play to be leader, all very Macbeth.
 
Deep into Conspiracy Land here folks,

The World Of The Strange, Microwave Weapons.

Lot's of stuff on Marconi, GCHQ, Police microwave communications networks, mind control, suicide beam weapons and this:

Neil Kinnocks' Labour Government was allegedly cheated out of an election victory by postal vote rigging in twenty key marginal seats. When a new even more electable Labour leader was found, it is rumoured that John Smith, the then Labour leader, was prompted to have a fatal heart attack, while walking in the country with his family, by means of a concealed microwave device which operated on the Vagus nerve to bring about a massive heart attack. Since MI5 have a long history of naked hatred towards the Labour party, there may be some truth in the above, though no hard evidence had yet been found.
...Queue 'Twighlight Zone' theme tune.
 
Smith suffered a massive heart attack having a morning bath, and died minutes afterwards.

Not sure about a conspiracy theory that can't even get the basic facts about circumstances of death right, and for something that happened only nine years ago.
 
He didn't have a heart attack "walking in the country". He had a heart attack while he was staying at a flat in the Barbican Estate in London. He was pronounced dead at St Bartholomew's Hospital, which was very nearby at around 9.30am.
Let's put this one to rest.
 
That jhon Smith died of natural causes may have not been the conspiricy though, Mandelson and blair had been trying to make labour right wing for years and had some very powerful friends behind the sceanes. With the torys on a pritty obvious slide even before smiths death it's posible that someone possibly the dark powers (or dark actors as dr Kelly put it a few days before his death) wanted the country to remain in the hands of a right wing capitalist party, so probably couldn't belive their luck when Smith died and they rigged it so blair would win the leadership election...
Expect to see the lib dems suddenly becomeing more right wing should they ever make become popular ;)
 
I think that politicians are too busy trying to promote their own interests to have time to establish right-wing cabals that have the goal of keeping power in the hands of a centrist administration.

What's more likely: that Mandelson, Blair etc. turned their back on the socialist principles of their youth because the were part of a shadowy group that was trying to maintain the status quo, and was preapred to bump people off to achieve this, or that they got greedy, wealthy and ambitious. Combine this with the natural slide towards conservatism as one gets older, and voila! New Labour.
 
Conners_76 said:
I think that politicians are too busy trying to promote their own interests to have time to establish right-wing cabals that have the goal of keeping power in the hands of a centrist administration.

What's more likely: that Mandelson, Blair etc. turned their back on the socialist principles of their youth because the were part of a shadowy group that was trying to maintain the status quo, and was preapred to bump people off to achieve this, or that they got greedy, wealthy and ambitious. Combine this with the natural slide towards conservatism as one gets older, and voila! New Labour.

Ah but I never said that it might not have been natural causes ;) and nither did i say that it was politicians that might enginear rigging elections, it was the Dark forces that the queen refered to in her conversation with Paul Burrell and seamingly david kelly refered to in an email shortly before his death.

If they do exist and are not just the product of burrel and kellys imagination it's unlikly theyd be mps (more likely civil servants or the inteligence agencys) as I doubt most MP's would have the mental capacity to see past where their next bribe was coming from or which of their friends they could employ in their latest quango.

If you're a socialist fealing like you want to be a capitalist (or vice versa) the usual corse of action to take is to join the other party so they get good press and the party you were coming from gets bad press (ie "that must be a crap party if it can't hang onto that idiot" style headlines) in return you get parachuted into a safe seat that only a big blob of earwax with green berret and a hitlar tash could hope to loose (and then only just). If blair and mandelson hadn't finally got their chance to remodel the party in their own image then they'd have jumped ship by now.

so my modifyed vertion of the theory makes sence you see ;)

Getting more conservative as you grow older is not natural progression, it only happens if you get disolusuined with left wing politics, if we all shift to the right the older we get Imagine what Tony Benn must have been like in his youth and Marx and Lenin
 
Lord_Flashheart said:
Ah but I never said that it might not have been natural causes ;) and nither did i say that it was politicians that might enginear rigging elections, it was the Dark forces that the queen refered to in her conversation with Paul Burrell and seamingly david kelly refered to in an email shortly before his death. so my modifyed vertion of the theory makes sence you see ;)

Getting more conservative as you grow older is not natural progression, it only happens if you get disolusuined with left wing politics, if we all shift to the right the older we get Imagine what Tony Benn must have been like in his youth and Marx and Lenin

I agree LF, I wasn't having a go at your theory, I was just indulging in a spot of scarcely-relevant pondering.....
 
Thanks for all the replies.

It didn't strike me as a particularly likely theory, but the idea of Mandelson & Blair plotting to kill the leader of their party does have a certain appeal. Mandelson was known as 'The Prince of Darkness' at one time...

Of course, if it had been MI5 trying to keep Labour out of power, as AndroMan's quote suggested, it would have been a pretty spectacular failure...
 
Beany said:
Of course, if it had been MI5 trying to keep Labour out of power, as AndroMan's quote suggested, it would have been a pretty spectacular failure...
'Twas not I who suggested it. I merely put forward the 'microwave beam weapons,' conspiracy piece, for your consideration, in light of your enquiry.

One might add that, had such a Machiavellian MI5 been at work, then they certainly got the sort of 'Labour' Government, they might have wished for, in the end.
 
Marconi

Now there's a name to give you nightmares. I've heard working for them can be pretty harmful to your health. Electronic Warfare, tut tut, whatever will they think of next?
 
AndroMan said:
'Twas not I who suggested it. I merely put forward the 'microwave beam weapons,' conspiracy piece, for your consideration, in light of your enquiry.

One might add that, had such a Machiavellian MI5 been at work, then they certainly got the sort of 'Labour' Government, they might have wished for, in the end.

Yes, I realise you didn't suggest it, I obviously wasn't being as clear as I thought.

If MI5 were trying to keep Labour out of power, then they obviously failed, but if they were trying to keep the tories in power, then it could be said that they succeeded...
 
Blair, in the early years, was only carrying on what John Smith had started.

Any conspiricy should focus on the way almost the whole left wing was thrown out of a suposidly democratic party.

But then that wasn't so much a conspiricy as plian old politics. Sometimes is hard to tell the difrence.
 
He didn't have a heart attack "walking in the country". He had a heart attack while he was staying at a flat in the Barbican Estate in London.

This is interesting from a Fortean perspective, though. John Smith was well known for enjoying walks in the hills. Robin Cook, another prominent Labour politician also died suddenly, and he was walking in the hills at the moment of his death. It is possible the two unrelated stories have been conflated in some people's minds: two prominent Labour politicians, contemporary with each other, both born in Scotland, both enjoyed hill walking, both died suddenly of heart attacks. The circumstances of one person's heart attack have become attached to the other person's.

If this conflation of idea can happen so quickly in the modern world where information is widely publicised in the news media, and is readily available via Google/Wikipedia, then is it any wonder that (see another thread on Jesus) the dates and details for Jesus' early life don't add up historically — the connection with Herod, the doubt about the accuracy of the datum for BC/AD, and so on?

When sceptics point to factual errors of this kind, they should always remember that an "embedded error" does not invalidate the whole story.

Back to the original post: I have never heard a conspiracy theory about John Smith's death. The only theoretical motive for killing him would be the Tories seeing that they were, for the first time in a long time, faced with a credible, respected and widely loved leader of the opposition. However I do not believe for one minute that he was murdered.
 
Do you mean the “pasafist” JFK who first sent US combat troops to Vietnam and took the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis?
I’d be fascinated to learn more about Diana’s efforts as a “pasafist” if you’d care to share.
maximus otter

It's unkind to mock another poster's spelling error. Their meaning was clear.

JFK was not only a Lieutenant (a relatively low rank for an officer) but served with some distinction in the 2nd world war. As President, he was Commander in Chief of the US armed services.

Diana's position as Colonel in Chief was purely ceremonial.

Was it JFK or Khrushchev who took the world to the brink of war in the Cuban Missile Crisis? Opinions may differ. Fact is, neither of them pressed the button, and war was avoided. Heads of state have to make tough decisions for what they consider to be the national interest, even if this may sometimes conflict with their personal feelings or preferences. They work in the real world, not an ideal one.

I don't see either JFK or Diana as being conspicuously pro-war, although JFK authorised the Bay of Pigs invasion. Diana campaigned against land mines and was kind to small children and kittens.

I think both individuals were generally in favour of peace, as most of us are. Whether that made them pacifists depends on what definition of pacifist you choose to use. If you take the tough line of saying a pacifist is someone who refuses to fight in any circumstances, then JFK was not, and we have no evidence about Diana as she was never called to fight.
 
the 'almost'.
3cpAS6L.jpg
 
Back
Top