UK Column Radio
Tax Resistance And A Declaration Of Sovereignty With Chris Coverdale
Chris Coverdale tells Charles Malet what led him to withhold tax from the British Government, in the name of peace, and how the state will no longer contest his legal position on the matter. Read the write-up at: https://www.ukcolumn.org/video/tax-resistance-and-a-declaration-of-sovereignty-with-chris-coverdale
- Broadcast on:
- 10 Oct 2024
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What I'd like to do for the benefit of those that both know you and don't know you is just to go back a little bit to the time where, in effect, you were campaigning on the basis of the pursuit of peace, but the element of tax resistance had not yet been introduced. How, as a peace campaigner in that state, would you hope to achieve the desired effect? Good point. All right. It really started for me in 2002 when the Afghanistan war was on by about six, seven months, and I started to get very concerned about the legality of what was going on. So I investigated. I was investigating fraud and corruption in the Foreign Commonwealth office and discovered to my horror that we had been deceived, the whole British public and everybody had been deceived for 70 years or 70 years or so over the illegality of war. It was quite illegal, and our leaders, Tony Blair at the time and Lord Gil Smith, were saying the upcoming war with Iraq would be legal and the war with Afghanistan was legal and I was appalled by this and so started to see what actions we could take to get our government to uphold and enforce the law. So we started an injunction against the high court, in the high court against the government to try and prevent the upcoming war with Iraq. It didn't work. So unfortunately, we lost and the war went ahead in March 2003. So that was my introduction to trying to stop the government breaking international law. Now then later, as part of that, I started to really look at the criminal offenses that have been introduced into Britain in 2001 in the International Criminal Court Act 2001. Now this was a, it had started off as an international statute and the world had agreed in Rome in 1998 to set up the law enforcement authority in the hay to prosecute leaders who took us to war and committed the worst crimes, no to mankind, mainly war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. So it was starting to look at that in detail. I realized that the criminal offense our leaders were committing was not actually genocide but conduct and celery to genocide and I started to look at that in detail and realized after a while that aiding in a betting genocide was the crime that I was committing by paying tax. It struck me then and still totally committed to the issue that if you pay tax to a government which uses the money for a criminal purpose, you are complicit in the crime. You are aiding in the betting the crime and that's when I first started to realize that I must withhold taxes on the ground that it is a criminal offense to hand them over knowing some of it be used to murder men, women and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now in Gaza and the Yemen and the Ukraine. That's an excellent summary of how you've got into some of the areas that you all know fully immersed. What I'd like to do though is just to go back because obviously a lot of what we're talking about concerns, law and treaty but you refer to the injunction in 2002. In your eyes if the process had been conducted properly, might be the right word to use, how would it have turned out on what basis was your challenge made? Well, basically it's on the laws of war, the UN Charter, the main law governing relationships between states are international statutes, agreed mainly in the UN Charter and it's very important in a sense to understand that when we signed and ratified the UN Charter, we agree, quite clearly, with the rest of the world and all the people of the world through their governments, never to threaten or to use force and to settle all disputes peacefully. Those are the two primary agreements in the UN Charter which is the law underpinning the activities of the United Nations and nobody in Britain seem to be upholding it and enforcing it. So it became clear to me that we needed to not only educate our MPs and others but everybody in the country and one of the best ways of doing that was by taking it to course and asking the judges to define the law. What does it mean, to my mind, never threaten or use force and settle all disputes peacefully is a very clear statement that we have been breaking for 60 years or whatever it was at that time. And by what mechanism did the High Court dismiss your... Well, it's a judicial review. We started and tried to get an injunction myself and three colleagues, tried to get an injunction forcing or compelling Tony Blair and the Cabinet to not start a war with Iraq. But unfortunately, the judges, they always find a way around this and they say, "Well, it won't be genocide, it cannot possibly be genocide," and our other argument at the time was that we were likely to get attacked in Britain and the judge said, "No, that is most unlikely, it will not happen," and therefore I dismissed this application. So, I mean, I didn't know much about that, processes of law at the time. We were just doing our best to try to get somebody to uphold and enforce the law as we saw it. And in particular, the law under the International Criminal Report Act of 2001, which had been introduced just two years before and which introduced six crimes into English law and those crimes were important to remember. They were war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and conduct ancillary to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Those six crimes are the most important criminal offenses the world has ever agreed. And it was quite clear to me that we were not only not upholding them, we weren't violating them and breaking them and committing the worst offenses known to mankind. And that not only was our government, but our taxpayers and tax collectors were doing the same. So, we tried to persuade the court to do this. I then tried to get a judicial review of the Attorney General's advice to Parliament and to the government because it was totally wrong and completely ignored the laws of war that we were signed up to as a nation. So, there are a number of things there that started to ball rolling for me and started to realize that I just needed to take action, personal action to stop paying, contributing money to, it's only a small amount, but obviously, every small amount that we pay to the government, we give our tacit consent to how the money is being used by the government and we have to stop that. So, that's how it happened then. But of course, the courts themselves, I have to say, the courts in this country are so corrupt. They don't abide by the law. Oh, indeed, and I think that's been made abundantly clear over the course of this year, in particular. I mean, it seems to be a problem that's worsening and worsening. Just to clarify, because of course, what you've talked about is the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq and things effectively following the Rome Statute of 1998. Just in the wider context, let's say going back to the Second World War and the interventions that the United Kingdom has been involved in, is there a case that may be made at all for any of the overseas engagements that the United Kingdom has been involved in since the Second World War? To your mind? There is one example. As I understand it, certainly declassified UK, you reckon that there's been 83 military conflicts up until last year. After the Second World War, Britain has initiated and taken part in 83 military conflicts. That's a horrendous number of wars, many wars, small wars, but they are wars. And the only one, as far as I can find out, that may have been partly lawful was the Falklands War when we were attacked by Argentina. And Article 51 of the UN Charter doesn't allow a nation to use armed force on the sole occasion if it is attacked by another state and by the use of armed forces of another state. So that would be the only occasion that it may have been partly lawful, however, the way Mississatra approached it and the sinking of the Belgrano outside of the 200-mile exclusions was a horrendous war crime. So there was only partly lawful in what we did during the Falklands War. Absolutely. We've given some background now and you've talked about the way in which you became aware of your, actually your belief that you were breaking the law in sponsoring such activities. Will you just provide a bit more detail as to the legislative background to that position? Yes, yes indeed. It is important to understand the legislation. And in this particular case, I've started to read through the whole of the International Criminal Court Act 2001. By the way, there are two legal systems in Britain. The legal system that applies to England and Wales is separate from the legal system that applies in Scotland. And so we had two acts of Parliament. One was the International Criminal Court Act 2001 for England and Wales and Northern Ireland. And the second one was the International Criminal Court Scotland Act 2001. Now, both of those really say the same thing, but it's slightly different wording in the Scottish thing from the England and Wales legislation. And the important sections in the England and Wales legislation are sections 51 and 52. Now, just before I go into detail on those, the purpose of the act was not only to set up for the first time in history and international law enforcement authority in the Hague, but also to agree the criminal offences for which that court in the Hague would have jurisdiction. And I'm sorry to say that for the first time in 1600 years our government signed up to an external legal lawful jurisdiction. And so gave away jurisdiction over those crimes to every member, every resident of Britain, including the Queen and the Prime Minister and everybody else. For the first time since we had the Romans around, we are subject to an outside legal jurisdiction. So it is important to keep that in mind. That was signed and agreed in 2001, but nobody in Britain seems to know that, which is extraordinary, really. However, the crimes included, as I've mentioned, were six war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide and aiding and abetting those crimes. And those crimes are laid out in the International Statute in Article 25(3) of the International Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and they are translated into and ratified by the British government in articles 50 and 51, sorry, 50, 51 and 52. The main ones are 51 of the International Criminal Court Act and 52. Section 51 says it's a crime to commit genocide crimes against humanity in war crimes. And Section 52 says it's a crime to engage in conduct and celery to genocide crimes against humanity and war crimes. And those are the two most important laws this country has ever signed up to. When you look at the detail and celery offense is laid out in the legislation, and it is aiding and abetting the crime in the same way that we have in the Accessories and Abettas Act in 1861. We've always had this aiding and abetting crimes is a crime itself. And that is repeated in Article 52 of the International Criminal Court Act. Absolutely. I think a point to note, and I should say at this point, there's a lot of technical detail coming out, all of which will be referenced in the notes attached to this interview. So don't worry if you've got your notepad and pen at the ready, this will be provided later. But I think something worth saying, first of all, who is a signatory to this and who has ratified the Rome Statute, notable in light of current circumstances that the United States have not ratified it, Israel has not ratified it. And also, and I'd like your comment on this, the ICC itself has only achieved 10 convictions in the past 20 something years. So I suppose the question is, to what degree do you think that its establishment was sincere? I think in the eyes of the world, its establishment was sincere, and they have been working for nearly 60 years. It took nearly 60 years to get a law enforcement authority set up. So most of the nations of the world and most of the signatories to the Rome Statute were very keen to have it around, and still are. And it's only one or two who are operating behind the scenes to ensure it doesn't work effectively, and Britain and America and Israel are primary examples of that. So it is our leaders who are making sure that the International Criminal Court only convicts people in Africa and maybe others, you know, one or two, but unfortunately, although the law applies to all of us, we haven't yet to get one of our leaders into the international criminal court in the Hague. And I think this could be a difficult one to knock into a condensed answer, but what factors do you attribute that to in terms of external influences? Oh, gosh, I mean, it's very difficult. The more I have investigated what goes on in the British government, the more I realize that we are all manipulated all the time by forces behind the scenes. And that includes our justice system. I have been investigating fraud in corruption and corruption, corrupt practice in the justice system ever since I was first turned down in 2003. And everywhere I look, I find it quite incredible that our judges and lawyers and prosecutors and everyone involved with the justice system are just not following the law, but following instructions from somewhere, and I don't quite know where, to rake in the money, regardless of the criminal offenses that are being committed and to ignore the crimes, it is horrendous. I even discovered it in the Supreme Court. It's extraordinary that it's openly out in the open, corrupt practice in the Supreme Court, in the case of Regina v. Ghul, Mohammed Ghul, was imprisoned for posting a video on the internet, taken by the Taliban, of a successful attack on British soldiers, for which he was given five years prison sentence, but the case went right up to the Supreme Court. And it was all about the definition of terrorism, what do we mean by the definition of terrorism? And so the Supreme Court had it, now in most Supreme Court cases, where it is questioning the meaning of the law, they will go through the definition of the law in the statute, in this case, the International, the Terrorism Act 2000. And their definition, they sort of said, okay, in paragraph four, I think it was, they said, well, what the definition is, is as follows, and it said, section one, one, section one, two, section one, four, and section one, five. Now I found that incredible, they left out section one, three, and if they kept it in, they could not have made the argument that they were making to keep Mohammed Ghul in prison, and on the definition of terrorism, that is right out in the open, and nobody in the justice system pointed in that, I mean, it's incredible. So that's the sort of thing, and it happens at every level, and you know, magistrates court, county courts, the high court, the court of appeal, and the Supreme Court, they're all in this together, and it's just unbelievable. Unbelievable, I think is exactly the right word, and we see it time again, not just in this area, but the cherry picking that is effectively conducted, and of course, now with regard to what you've been speaking about, particularly the use of the UN Charter, and of course, with reference to, let's say, Israel at the moment, the use of the phrase self-defense, because of course, that is an enormous justification of untoward acts. What I'd like to do, you've talked about the Terrorism Act, just to go on, to continue the thread of having established that there is, in effect, no basis for war, and that the government and those that are supporting these activities are effectively in contravention of the International Criminal Courts Act 2001, sections 51 and 52, but going back to how that pertains to you or I, the individual, in terms of paying tax, and the terrorism. Where does that get us to? Right. It is important, thank you, Charles, for raising that, in 1999, after, again, many, many years of attempting to get it agreed, there was an International Convention agreed called the Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism. This is probably the second most important International Convention or statute that we've got. It's now ratified by 188 nations. Ratification means bringing an international statute into domestic law, so domestic law of England and Wales on the domestic law of Scotland. Yes, we ratified that International Convention with the Terrorism Act 2000 in this country and that applies throughout Britain. Part of these is it makes a criminal offence for one person to ask for money, to collect money or to transfer money to another person or organisation. If you suspect it may be used for the purposes of terrorism, and it defines terrorism as the use of firearms or explosives in danger in life for a political or ideological cause. So that was the law brought into this country, and what I realised straight away was that any tax collector who was asking for money, demanding council tax or demanding income tax, whatever it was, inheritance tax, it was committing a criminal offence. If they collected the money, that was the second criminal offence, and if I handed the money over or if they having collected it, handed it to the revenue and customs, then that was a third criminal offence. So it was not only a criminal offence for me to pay the tax, but a criminal offence for them to ask for it. And it was when I started to realise and go through the detail of that legislation, I realised how important it was that we use this legislation to ensure that our government uses all our money for lawful legitimate purposes that never involve the use of firearms or explosives in danger in life. Now there was a very useful case, which I just referred to earlier, which was Mohammed Gul, Rajinova's Gul, in which the Supreme Court said, looking at the definition of terrorism, this appears to apply to the military and quasi-military activities of the British government. This is the Supreme Court saying, basically, the British government is committing acts of terrorism and funding terrorism, when it gives orders to its military forces or the police to use armed force against anybody else. I don't want to derail where we're going with it, but that does bring a very interesting issue to the fore, which causes the payment for and procurement of weaponry for the Ministry of Defence and everything that comes underneath it, and indeed, the police forces of England Wales, Scotland, the whole of the United Kingdom, is that something that has been challenged either by you or elsewhere? I'd try to bring it to the attention of the courts, I'm not very effective, I have just going back over, once we started to realise what was going on with the legal back in 2003, we started reporting crimes to the police. We started with Lord Stevens and then Sir Ian Blair in the Metropolitan Police, and then we approached every police force in the country, all 44, I think there were at that time, saying, "Look, these are criminal offences, and would you please investigate local people who are breaking the law under these acts of Parliament, including the International Criminal Court Act and the Terrorism Act?" We reported these crimes more than 300 times, I suppose, in Parliament, in police stations, by letters to chief constables and so on. Out of those five attempts, sorry, of those 330 attempts, five of them got as far as the war crimes and crimes against humanity unit at Scotland Yard. Now, initially, I didn't know about that unit, but they are the police unit as part of the SO15, the Terrorism Act in Scotland Yard, who are responsible for investigating war crimes against humanity and genocide under the International Criminal Court Act. We did get material to them, and as a result of a lucky incident in the Maraben police station, two of my colleagues had gone in to report crimes, war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide, and the desk officer in Maraben was a Danish woman who was over here for a year on a transfer deal. She said, "Okay," and he went on with it, and passed it on to her inspector who had just come on duty, and he was an Irishman who was just about to retire from the Metropolitan Police, but was delighted to have the opportunity to pass this forward, so he put it to the war crimes and crimes against humanity unit, which is the process that most police forces are supposed to operate when you report serious crimes of this nature. Anyway, that happened, and I was calling to Belgravia police station, and I went there on five occasions for three hours and went through all the detailed evidence we had of our leaders, 25 of our leaders, committing these crimes in detail, and went through the law, the international UN charter, the International Criminal Court Act, Geneva Conventions and all the rest of it, and the terrorism act in 2000, and eventually the police officers in that unit were quite convinced they understood, "This is what the law says, this is what is happening, this is quite obviously a criminal offense," and so they put it to the Crown Prosecution Service, and they had it for about a month, and the woman who was dealing with it, a senior prosecutor, was moved to a North Lancashire, or somewhere like that, and promoted, and they gave the job to one of the most junior people in the office, that lad get ill, and six weeks later, we got a letter from them saying that the Crown Prosecution Service would not be going ahead with the prosecution of Tony Blair, Jack Straw, Jeff Hoon, Lord Gell Smith, and all the rest of them, on the grounds that we had not provided evidence of intent to commit war crimes, evidence of intent to commit crimes against humanity, or evidence of intent to commit genocide. Now in fact, we had provided masses of evidence, and I'm happy to go through some examples of it in a minute or two, but we've provided all this evidence to them, and they just ignored it completely, and the strange thing is that it's not up to the witnesses, to the ordinary public, to prove intent, that is for the Crown Prosecution Service to prove to a jury in court, they have to gather the police, gather the information that proves intent to commit genocide. So anyway, we've had a number of attempts at trying to get this in front of the police, the MPs, and others, and so on, but always unsuccessful. So we will keep trying, because the important thing about a crime of genocide is that there's no time restraint to it at all, restriction, and until the day Tony Blair passes on to another place, we can try and charge him in front of a jury of crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, along with all his colleagues. So we'll keep trying at that. There was just one thing to extend and extrapolate from that, and I don't have the sections in front of me, but I think I'm right in saying that on that specific point of law within articles, sorry, sections 51 and 52 of the International Criminal Courts Act, but actually intent does not form part of the offense, or rather the offense is complete without intent needing to be demonstrated. So in terms of liability, it's an actual fact whether or not the act took place regardless of whether there was intent or indeed recklessness. And so again, I think we might have an instance where the law is not being adhered to in the way that you would have expected. Well, I'm not quite sure about that, Charles. I've been into this in some depth and first of all, I think it's section 55 or 66 of the International Criminal Court Act, which does define intent. And you must have intent and knowledge in order to convict the person of a crime of genocide. Now, the second bit of information that's important is that a statutory instrument is finding all the criteria that have to be met in order to convict anybody of these crimes. We're all laid out in the International Criminal Court Act Elements of Crimes Regulations 2001. Now, that is important, it does specify quite clearly the elements of the crime of genocide by killing that have to be proved in court and therefore of them. If you are to convict anybody of the crime of genocide, similarly, you have to prove all four of those if you are to convict a person of conduct and cidery the genocide. So it is all laid out in the legislation, but nobody pays any attention to it, unfortunately. The genocide by killing has got four very clear criteria. The first thing is that the perpetrator, whoever you are accusing of perpetrating the crime, killed or caused the death of one or more persons. And that's very clear. The second one is that the victims, the persons killed were members of a national ethnic, racial or religious group. The third one is that you intended to kill them because of their membership of that group. And the fourth one is that it all occurred as part of a widespread policy or a widespread policy. So if you can prove all four of those things in court, then you can convict someone of genocide. Now, the important bit about genocide is that the people who can be convicted of genocide are the people who actually drop the bombs or fire the missiles and not the people who order them to do so. So it's the RAF pilot or the submarine commander who can be convicted of genocide if the fire accrues missile that causes death or injury to one or more persons because of their nationality, who they are basically. And so that's it. Now, conduct and similar to genocide is to do with everything that goes up to that command. So as a person who commands the submarine commander to take that action, eventually the commander in chief actually commits a crime of conduct and silary genocide and not the crime of genocide. So we need to keep that in mind when prosecuting our leaders. And of course, the queen who was commander in chief at the time and authorized our troops to go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and so on, committed crimes of conduct and silary to genocide by signing the order, taking our troops to war because she knew and everybody knew that deaths were occurring and would occur and injuries and destruction and everything else, all of which is laid out in the legislation under genocide comes against humanity or war crimes. So going back to just the difficult one to prove in court is the intent, as you pointed out. Now, a good example of intent to commit genocide was by Jack Straw in the debate in parliament on March the 18th, 2003, which is all laid out in Hansard, and there was a debate six or seven hours, something like that, a lot of people spoke and it was started by, initiated by Tony Blair and closed by Jack Straw, who was the foreign secretary at the time. And he said in his closing speech, well, we've had a good debate tonight, the decision we take tonight will have consequences, there will be consequences to our decision. Some of our troops will be killed, so too will innocent Iraqi civilians. I urge you to vote with the government tonight. Now that statement proves intent to commit genocide. He was killing innocent Iraqi civilians, not because of anything they'd done to us, any crimes they had committed or anything else. We were just killing them because they were Iraqis living in Iraq. That is the crime of genocide. So that's an example of proof of intent to commit genocide. I think the worst one was Tony Blair in 2007. He was about to hand over to Gordon Brown, the premiership, and he did a trip around Afghanistan in Iraq to thank the troops. He was talking to a group of officers and men in Basra, and they were complaining about the deaths and injuries and lack of them to their own people as well as to local people, local civilians. And Tony Blair, he probably didn't know what to say, but what he said was very instructive. He said, "We're killing more of them than they are killing us. You're getting back out there after them." That's brilliant actually. Now, for Tony Blair to say that four years after he had started the killing with the war in Iraq, four years later he was still urging the troops to go out there and kill. That is a crime of genocide by killing and proof of intent to commit genocide by killing. Now, there's lots of examples of what people say and do that can be brought up in court to prove genocide, and that's where we're at, and we need to carry on giving those examples to the police, to the crime prosecution service, to ensure that at some point in the near future one or more of our leaders gets convicted of genocide for what they're doing overseas, and that's really where I'm working at it all the time to try and see if we can get somebody convicted of a crime, because if a leader or major taxpayer is convicted of a crime of genocide or conduct and celery to genocide, that will have reverberations around the world. I hope stop our involvement in warfare and mass murder and genocide. Indeed, it would be an extraordinary precedent, and I think just to continue from what you were saying, specifically when we consider the individuals mentioned Blair, Tony Blair in particular, and Jack Straw, I think I'm right in saying that when we're talking about the crime prosecution service, that the holder of the poster, director of public prosecutions at the time is extremely relevant. You're so right. It was Keir Stone. He was the one who organized that they would not be prosecuted for these crimes, even though the evidence was absolutely clear. He turned it down. He was the DPP at the time. What interested me was that three or four years ago, when he was in the Labour Party, he said he knew at the time that the war of whether art was illegal, but he was the one person in the country that could have started the prosecution and stopped it all, and it's just appalling. As you say, it really is appalling and a stain that, of course, continues to blight the landscape with Stalin, of course, now Prime Minister and Blair very much on his shoulder. But as you say, fortunately, there is no time limit on such prosecutions being brought. We do have to remain hopeful. Now, what I'd like to do, Chris, is to take you into the area of what you have been doing and are doing with regard to the specifics of your tax resistance and how that has played out. Right. Thanks. Yes. Very briefly. When I started in 2003 to not pay council tax, which was the biggest personal cash payment that I was making at time. And for the next 10 years, I, around South London, I was living in London, and I went to court in a number of places, but they never paid any attention to my argument, and I didn't pay any money, and that was really where it rested until 2013, when I moved to rye and Sussex, and things changed. When I went to rye, I joined a small group looking into what was going on in rye, and at a public meeting, pointed some of these things out. I did a short report on some of the crimes I was identifying in and around the rather district council, right-hand council, our MP, who at that time was Amber Rudd and so on. And within a few days of making that report, I was taken to court and put in prison really for non-payment council tax. That's exactly the same argument I had been using all the time, was that it's a criminal offence to hand over money, knowing that it would be used for mass murder and genocide, but the courts pay no attention to that at all. So they put me in prison. I was released that year very quickly within the day, or at the end of the day, then the following year, they put me in prison for 42 days, and the third year, they put me in prison for eight days before I was released by someone paying my bill. So I thought that that time, I can't go on like this, this is ridiculous. I know that it's a criminal offence to hand the money over, so I've got to find another way of ensuring that I don't get sent to prison and somebody pays attention to the law. So what I did was to look at the whole issue of how our leaders get away with spending maybe hundreds of thousands of their money, millions sometimes, they put it in trusts overseas and escape taxation as a result of that. Now when you put money in trust, it no longer belongs to you. So you can ask your trustees to do what you like with the money. It's an escape route really for the rich and powerful they've been using for many years. And I thought, well, okay, let's use this for ordinary taxpayers. What we need to do is to put all our taxes in trust in a conditional trust until the end of the financial year for the government on condition that they use the money for local purposes only and never a penny of it goes for crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. So I started to do that in 2016 and then 2017 was the first year I set up my own taxation trust and I've been doing it ever since then on a personal basis saying, of course, you can have my money if you prove to me and to the international criminal court and to the high court and to others that none of the money is or will be used for purposes of terrorism, warfare, crimes against humanity, genocide, so on. But of course they've never been able to prove that because we know that 10 to 15% of all our taxes goes for that every year. We have now murdered somewhere around 2.4, 2.5 million people, which includes 3/4 of a million, even 800,000 children in the last 20 years. Yes, indeed, I mean, absolutely terrible outcome and a continuation really. We don't see any change in policy, despite all your efforts and the campaigning of others. One grey area I think would be really helpful to have clarification on, specifically with regard to council tax, but also all taxes is where it goes and this idea that things may or may not be centralized and how it is that you can be sure that action taken is effectively having the effect that you would desire. Right, yeah, good point. It's important to realize that we have a system in Britain that has been in place since 1787 and that is called the Consolidated Fund and so what they've been doing since then is to put all income into one pot, which is called the Consolidated Fund, out of which comes all expenditure. So what we do know, and if you look at the Office for Budget Responsibility website, you can see all the different types of money that are going in there and we know that for instance last year, 44 billion of council tax went into the Consolidated Fund. We also know that out of the Consolidated Fund, the Ministry of Defence, so-called Defence in the fact of the Ministry of War takes very large sums of money and both for its operating expenses and for capital expenses and so you can reckon that perhaps 10% of our money every year has been devoted to warfare of one sort or another, either fighting a war, fighting somebody else's wars or preparing for the next war, buying weapons and ships and aircrafts and everything else, so but it's a very large sum of money that we know goes automatically every year because of the boat by Parliament who put money in every year into so-called defence and the work worries me is that it hasn't been defensive except that one occasion with the Falklands War, all of it is offensive and a criminal offence in international law. Quite so and now to continue in terms of your personal actions, what you've done is to consolidate all that we've talked about so far and all that you've explained into a declaration of sovereignty which I'd like you to just describe and then we can take a look at various bits of it. Yeah, lovely. Well, basically what I realised was that by putting money in trust, it no longer belongs to me and that's why our leaders, 100,000 people put all their money overseas or nearly all of it in taxation, in trusts. So when one sets up a trust, you are declaring your right, your deed of trust to hand the money to somebody else, your trustee, to act on your behalf and so we have, I've set up a declaration of sovereignty and a deed of revocable, conditional trust and withdrawal of consent to mandatory taxation and this is for England and Wales as a separate one for Scotland. So basically what this does is it does the equivalent of what many people do when making a will. They say after I die, I want my money to go to my grandchildren or to some charity, whatever it is and you can put conditions on that and some people put it on. So I could make a will out for my grandson saying, okay, well, he can have my 100,000 pounds of my money if he doesn't marry Sally and if he joins the family firm by the age of 25. Now, if you put conditions on a trust, then your trustees have to meet those conditions and they will check that Charlie Boy didn't marry Sally and has joined the family firm and in that case he gets the money. If he doesn't and he marries Sally and he doesn't join the family firm, then the money will go to somebody else that you have written into your declaration and deed. That would be the secondary beneficiary or other beneficiaries of your choice. So what I've done here is to say, right, I'm going to put all my taxes, whatever they are, I'm going to pay them and I will pay them into trust on condition the government uses the money solely for lawful purposes and that government includes councils, includes the energy companies and virtually every organization and institution in this country that passes money to the revenue and customs. So, I agree to pay the money to them during this financial year if they can prove to me it will be used lawfully. On the last day of the financial year, my trustee has to revoke their right to the money on the grounds that they have been using it for criminal purposes and I do not at any point want to take part in their crimes. And so on the 6th of April, the first day of the next financial year, then my trustee and pass the money to the secondary beneficiary. The secondary beneficiary is you. So, in a sense, you get the money back and it can be anybody you want, but in this case, it is you so that you take total charge of the money going to the government in relation to taxes of all sorts. And it's not just those things that are called tax, but it is all the other types of money that go to the government like repayment of student loans for instance. It is a criminal offence for students to repay the loan that they were given for their education because we know that some of it will go to the government and be used for criminal purposes. So, do not repay your student loans, do not repay council tax, do not pay inheritance tax or stamp duty or any of the 230 sources of money that the government has from the general public in this country. So, that is the overall process and it is a very powerful document. What we found is that the deed of trust is actually the highest form of law in this country, equity, law and trusts in equity are fundamental that have been operating in this country for hundreds of years. Absolutely. I mean, it is a very thorough and comprehensive document and again, for the audience, this will be linked to in the notes for this interview, I will just go through a little bit of it just to draw out some of the clauses so that people get a flavour of it and it begins by saying this document is my formal declaration of sovereignty and deed of conditional, revocable trust and withdrawal of consent to mandatory taxation and then not long after you state that I know that if I pay money, brackets, taxes, closed brackets to parliament, the UK government, public authorities, institutions, corporations or their agents, knowing that some of it may be used for the purposes of war, terrorism or genocide, I will be personally liable for arrest, prosecution and imprisonment under the Terrorism Act 2000 and the International Criminal Court Act 2001 for the criminal offences of fundraising for purposes of terrorism and conduct and celery to war crimes and genocide. So it's very clear in so far as what you're setting out to preface your position by explaining exactly what laws are being contravened and I think I'm right in saying that as a result of this, you have not faced a challenge to what you've written. Is that a fair summary or? Yes. I think the important bit is that they can't take it to court because if they do, they will lose. I mean, it's based on the most important laws Britain has ever signed up to both internationally and domestically and they know they're breaking them and so if they take it to court and challenge the illegality of it or legality of the deed, then they will lose and therefore they can't afford to do that so they don't take it to court. They find all sorts of other things to do. They try and send around the bailiffs and they tell us that this doesn't apply and so on. But of course it applies. It's the fundamental law both internationally and in this country. Absolutely. And I think this brings us to the multi-faceted aspect of it. First of all, you've got the issue of your individual withholding of tax. But obviously your position as you set out at the start is to campaign for peace and to prevent war. Now on the one hand, you're not going to, well, you're unlikely to and have not faced a challenge on the basis of your declaration of sovereignty. But clearly to affect change in so far as war is regarded, it would require a greater number of people to take the same or similar action. What's your view of that as a likely outcome? I totally agree with you, Charles. It's fundamental that a lot of us start to realize that we have a legal duty to act by not paying for what's going on. And now, unfortunately in this country, although 5 or 6% of our taxes are paid by every individual, the majority of taxes come through corporations, VAT and income tax, PAY and national insurance and things like that are taken from people before they know it and passed straight to the government. So what we've got to do is to start some corporate taxation trusts as well as individual taxation trusts. And on our website on probityco.com, there is a corporate trust that people can download and they can write to their employer saying, look, we've discovered it's a criminal offense. I don't want to participate in these crimes and I don't want you to take my money or to magically pass it on to the revenue and customs. Therefore, I suggest that you, the directors of the company, set up a trust on behalf of all employees. We can put the money in trust for the government or the council or the other bodies raising the money until the end of our financial year. And when you take my PAY and national insurance payments, don't pay them to the revenue and customs, but put them into our corporate trust. And at the end of the year, if the government hasn't met the conditions of the trust, which are exactly the same as in the individual deed, then the trustees, the independent trustees, must pass the money to the secondary beneficiaries. And the secondary beneficiaries are all the employees who have the money deducted from them in the first place. One benefit, of course, is that on top of getting back their own national insurance contribution and the PAYE, they should also perhaps get back the 12 and a half percent that the company has to pay in addition to the individual. So you may get more back at the end of the year than you started out in the first place. So there are lots of benefits to it. And the important thing to remember is that the directors are employees as well. And so they will benefit from doing this, and they will not have to commit criminal offenses. It's a very clear criminal offense for a director to hand the money to the government of the revenue and customs. And some of our companies are, I mean, there's a hospitality company I've been having a look at that pays £760 million in tax last year. And that's an incredible amount of money. And what we know is that 76 million of that, at least 10% and maybe 100 million of it, will be used for mass murder and genocide. And the directors of that hospitality company need to start taking action on behalf of all of us to stop the money going to the revenue and customs and from there to parliament and from there to the MOD and from there to murder men, women and children. And I think we talk about people's ignorance of law in general, but specifically you spoke earlier about people being ignorant of the provisions within the International Criminal Courts Act specifically. However, of course, we live in a world where corporations are not shy about coming out with political views or specifically campaign issues. And I think this is something that absolutely would be put forward. But with ignorance in mind, how is it that we go about communicating this message, particularly to younger people who should be in a position to influence the future? Well, I think there's two or three ways of doing it. One is we've got a lot of letters on the website that go along with the deed to various organizations like Jim Harrah, who is the chief executive of the HMRC or to other individuals in councils around the country in companies and others. So download a few of those or one or two of them and write your own version of it along with a copy of the corporate deed. And we need to get our leaders to understand that. Now, another thing we can do is to start by giving examples. So there are already one or two small companies, several small companies who are doing this and are withholding PAY and national insurance from the revenue and customs until the end of their financial year or to the end of the tax year. And hopefully, so far, they haven't been prosecuted. They've been trying various things together, their money. But again, if the revenue and customs takes them to court, then they will lose on the basis that the revenue and customs are committing the worst crimes known to mankind. And they don't want that in court. So a good example is we need to get one or two largest companies to start the ball rolling. We've got the small companies starting. So now let's get a few of the bigger ones doing. And of course, it may be quite possible for us, say, for UK column members to have a corporate trust for UK column members, and all of you join. And then the risk is less and the power is greater. So it's that sort of thing. So for different organisations can set up corporate trusts on behalf of their members, their employees, shareholders, whoever. So I think there's lots of ways of doing it. And we just need to keep trying all of them. It does indeed. And I think that will deserve an enormous amount of consideration for the UK column audience. And I think this will be sent far and wide. Chris, we have covered an awful lot of ground with a huge amount of detail. And I know people will want to research further. So please tell us where exactly people can go, which, as I say, will be written in the notes and also how can people get in touch with you? Right. Yes. At the moment, we have got a website called probertico.com. That's P-R-O-B-I-T-Y-C-O.com. Go to that website. And on that website, there are videos explaining things. There are forms and deeds to download both individual and corporate and letters to go along with them. And we have a fortnightly Q&A for members to ask any questions so that we can answer it as best we can and share successes. And there are successes, so it's important to know about those. The particular one that I've been keen on is that since 2017, I have not paid council tax since 2003. But since 2017, they have not semi-depressant. They can't do that anymore because I have paid the tax. And that's a great advantage of paying it into a trust is you have paid it. And you can't get it back until the trust terminates on the last day of the financial year. So there are lots of ways and keep going. And that's the best place to go for it. We're also setting up a website called Make Wars History, but that's not quite up and running just yet. It will be by the time soon anyway in the next three or four weeks. Good. Excellent. Well, keep in touch on that score. And as I say, all the notes and all the links will be posted alongside this interview at ukcolumn.org. I must just add that if you are in a position to support uk column financially, then please do consider doing so either via a membership or indeed a donation. And it just remains for me to thank Chris Coverdale very much indeed for what's been a completely enlightening and inspiring interview. Chris, thanks very much indeed. Thank you, Charles. Hey, Amazon Prime members. Why pay more for groceries when you can save big on thousands of items at Amazon Fresh. Shop Prime exclusive deals and save up to 50% on weekly grocery favorites. Plus save 10% on Amazon brands, like our new brand Amazon Saver, 365 by Whole Foods Market, a plenty and more. Come back for new deals rotating every week. Don't miss out on savings. Shop Prime exclusive deals at Amazon Fresh. Select varieties. (upbeat music)