Craig Murray Quotes

Scottish author, human rights campaigner, journalist and diplomat

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(born 17 October 1958) is a Scottish former diplomat for the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office who was the ambassador to Uzbekistan between 2002 and 2004, a post from which he was removed. In later years, he has been known for his defence of Julian Assange, and for contentious claims published on his blog and X, formerly known as Twitter. He was the Workers Party of Britain candidate in Blackburn at the 2024 general election coming third with 18.3% of votes.

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Alternative Names: Craig John Murray

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There is worse: we believe there to be between 7,000 and 10,000 people in detention whom we would consider as political and/or religious prisoners. In many cases they have been falsely convicted of crimes with which there appears to be no credible evidence they had any connection.

I am now happily in the Outer Hebrides. This makes it much harder to send the police to intimidate me because a) they will have to find me b) I shall be too drunk to notice.

[First sentence refers to George Galloway] At least the Respect MP refrained from naming Assange's alleged victims. No such restraint for Craig Murray, a former British diplomat, who denounced one of them by name on Newsnight, violating the British legal scruple that holds that a woman who may have suffered the trauma of rape should at least be granted basic privacy.

I didn't really volunteer to fight the British police state, it came after me.
But here we are, and here I am, in Switzerland seeking the protection of the United Nations.

The petitioner [Murray] is an intelligent person whose actions were deliberate and calculated.
They clearly showed contempt for the court's order and for the rule of law.
They created serious risks for the complainers' mental and physical health [from paragraph 82 of the original source].

Her body invited sex while her eyes screamed, 'Save me.'

I have obtained access to all of Stewart McDonald's emails, after approaching a number of people to find out who might have them.
I had no hand in obtaining the emails nor prior knowledge. I am grateful they have been so generously shared.

One of our slogans has been "British Bulldog, not Bush's Poodle", which has the advantage of confusing people entirely about the political direction we are coming from. This at least gets them to open the leaflet and read more. It was devised by Edward, who used to work for Saatchi and Saatchi. He claims it appeals to both left and right. It could, of course, alienate both instead. I suppose we'll soon know.

The only possible explanations are: 1. One of the two is travelling faster than Usain Bolt can sprint. 2. Scotland Yard has issued doctored CCTV images/timeline. I am going with the Met issuing doctored images.

A conspiracy to attack the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, perhaps. If you think I was accusing them of being part of a conspiracy to kill Skripal, you are daft.

Blackburn was a very difficult place to campaign – 37% of votes were cast by postal ballot. It's a rotten borough and I don't come from the area and yet I secured 5% of the vote – which was second or third highest for an independent in the election

The Paston was an old-fashioned grammar [school] that was trying its best to be an independent school [...] It felt as if the teachers were still fighting the second world war, and once a week we were all made to dress up in military uniform and become cadets. Either I skipped school or refused to take part, so I was frequently suspended.

[On his early diplomatic career.] You have to realise I never set out to be a hero [...] I was never a great campaigner for human rights. In many ways, I'd always been just as compromised as any other diplomat. When I was working on the South African desk of the London office I had had to send out letters saying we believed that the African National Congress was a terrorist organisation. I didn't think that for a second and nor did anyone else I was working with, but we did it because it was the price of an impartial, depoliticised civil service. The closest I had ever got to any form of stand was by refusing to implement a government directive to persuade the Poles to reduce the size of the health warnings on cigarette packets to conform with EU law.

I want to reassure Mr McDonald that his hysterical ranting about being hacked by a state intelligence service, when he appears by his own account to have fallen for a phishing scam the average 12-year-old would see through, is hilariously wide of the mark.

[The emails indicate] the toxic relationships within the SNP group at Westminster, where McDonald regards himself as in a very small minority of Sturgeon loyalists.