Truth about the rabble bringing fear to our streets: Working class warriors? No, middle class spongers and so-called academics

  • Age hasn't mellowed university graduate Ian Bone - he's full of resentment
  • Almost all his life has been devoted to waging war on the rich 
  • All the while he has been claiming benefits funded by their taxes 
  • So, what does the bitter graduate think of the cereal cafe protest?

Age has not mellowed university graduate Ian Bone. He may now be a 68-year-old grandfather, but he is full of burning resentment. Almost all his life has been devoted to waging war on the rich while claiming benefits funded by their taxes.

His father was butler to Sir Gerald Coke, grandson of the Earl of Leicester, and the family lived in a bonded cottage on a family estate in Hampshire. Young Ian hated the rich children ‘from the big house’ for calling his father ‘Bone’ and grew up with an abiding contempt for the upper classes.

After finishing a degree in politics from Swansea University, he announced to his horrified parents that his choice of ‘career’ was to be an anarchist, and that he would fund it by claiming the dole.

‘I thought I might as well be unemployed so that I could be a full-time radical revolutionary and the State would pay me to do it,’ he explained later. ‘I never thought about having a job or a career. Jobs and material possessions have never loomed large in my life.’

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Lisa McKenzie of Class War protests against a Jack the Ripper tourist attraction on Cable St which got planning permission by claiming to be a world class museum celebrating the women of the East End

Lisa McKenzie of Class War protests against a Jack the Ripper tourist attraction on Cable St which got planning permission by claiming to be a world class museum celebrating the women of the East End

He lived in Bristol, playing in a band, drinking heavily and staying in rented flats. He also became a founding member of Class War, a group dedicated to the violent overthrow of state structures, and published newspapers in support of the cause.

He moved to London in the 1990s, still claiming benefits, and now lives there in a £330,000 home with the mortgage paid off, which belongs to his partner Jane Nicholl, 64.

She, too, is an anarchist and was arrested last year for setting fire to an effigy of Boris Johnson on Guy Fawkes night. The charge was subsequently dropped. Ian’s anger about his childhood has not been eased by his immense good fortune and charmed life on benefits. Far from it, judging by the pictures and messages he has posted on social media.

When Baroness Thatcher died in 2013, he used his blog to summon an army of followers to celebratory street parties, and published an image of the former prime minister’s head being cut open with a meat cleaver. Next to the image he wrote: ‘The best cut of all.’

In other film clips posted on YouTube, he rails against the Royal Family and urges ‘violent action’ to achieve his aims.

More recently, Bone — who has five children with two former partners — posted pictures of himself angrily brandishing a walking stick during a protest against the so-called gentrification of London.

Last week, he was the key figure behind a vicious mob attack when riot police and helicopters were deployed after more than a thousand people descended on a fashionable part of East London to protest against a trendy cafe selling breakfast cereals from around the world for up to £4.40 a bowl.

The protest was organised by Bone’s Class War group, which urged followers of its Facebook page to join in.

Last week, he was the key figure behind a vicious mob attack when riot police and helicopters were deployed after more than a thousand people descended on a fashionable part of East London to protest against a trendy cafe selling breakfast cereals from around the world for up to £4.40 a bowl

Last week, he was the key figure behind a vicious mob attack when riot police and helicopters were deployed after more than a thousand people descended on a fashionable part of East London to protest against a trendy cafe selling breakfast cereals from around the world for up to £4.40 a bowl

‘Our communities are being ripped apart — by Russian oligarchs, Saudi sheiks, Israeli scumbag property developers, Texan oil-money twats and our own home-grown Eton toffs,’ went Class War’s cry.

‘We don’t want luxury flats that no one can afford, we want genuinely affordable housing. We don’t want pop-up gin bars or brioche buns, we want community.’

The community in the part of East London that Class War targeted on Saturday night was nothing short of terrified as the mob descended.

And what was striking is that it wasn’t just unemployed ne’er-do-wells such as Bone who responded to the call, but a motley crew which included well-dressed youngsters with iPhones as well as university academics — of whom more later.

With police helicopters buzzing overhead and dozens of riot officers deployed on the ground, the mob headed for an establishment called the Cereal Killer Cafe, which is run by 33-year-old twins from Belfast.

While cafe staff locked the doors and barricaded themselves inside, hundreds — many of them masked and carrying burning torches — gathered outside, threw paint at the premises and daubed the word ‘scum’ on the window.

As families with young children cowered, the protesters managed to break in and threw a smoke bomb.

Riot police rushed to the scene while the protesters chanted obscenities, burnt an effigy of a policeman and smashed the windows of a nearby estate agent.

‘They are violent bullies and we want them prosecuted,’ says Alan Keery, 33, who founded the cafe with Gerry, his brother, last year. ‘We’re a small business. We work hard. They see us as an easy target. They see us as the face of gentrification.’

The brothers describe themselves as ‘very working-class’ boys from Belfast, who left school at 16 and worked for years in shops, pubs and clubs before opening their own venture.

The protest was organised by Bone’s Class War group, which urged followers of its Facebook page to join in

The protest was organised by Bone’s Class War group, which urged followers of its Facebook page to join in

Jasiminne Yip, the owner of Regimental Vintage, a nearby boutique, was caught up in the violence, which began as she was closing for the night.

‘At first I thought it was a pub crawl,’ she told us. ‘I heard some of the group, most of them in their twenties, speaking very loudly in very posh accents and shouting general profanities in every direction.

‘I barricaded myself in my shop because the situation looked dangerous. I saw a small dog running past the group and some of them were attacking it — kicking at it. One person was trying to hit it with their skateboard.’

The attack on the cafe was just one of a series of violent incidents across London this year. Bottles and missiles were hurled at police, estate agents’ windows were smashed and flames leapt into the night sky during recent disturbances against luxury developments in Camden, North London.

Similar scenes took place in April in Brixton, South London, with violent protests against the ‘gentrification’ of the area. Tear gas had to be used as protesters stormed Brixton Town Hall.

The community in the part of East London that Class War targeted on Saturday night was nothing short of terrified as the mob descended

The community in the part of East London that Class War targeted on Saturday night was nothing short of terrified as the mob descended

That same month, the annual Property Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel in central London were disrupted by 200 demonstrators claiming to be angered by a lack of social housing, while branches of Foxtons estate agents have had their windows smashed because they are considered to represent the evil of gentrification.

Bone and his cronies are planning more anarchy tomorrow outside the Jack the Ripper Museum, a new tourist attraction on Cable Street, in the East End of London.

Class War has denounced the museum as being the work of ‘a rich businessman who glorifies the brutal murder of working-class sex workers. It is also a symbol of gentrification’.

But in fact this has nothing to do with ‘class war’. Besides Ian Bone, the other main agitators are also drawn from the ranks of the middle classes and the university-educated.

Perhaps the most preposterous of them is Dr Lisa Mckenzie, 47, a research fellow at the prestigious London School of Economics, where such academic posts attract salaries of about £40,000.

Denying that she is middle-class, she ludicrously compares the cereal protest to the struggles of the Suffragettes and Nelson Mandela.

This from a woman who lives in a £1,300-a-month flat in the achingly trendy Limehouse area of London and posts details on her Facebook page of holidays to far-flung destinations such as Barbados, Las Vegas and Jamaica as well as New York, Milan, Rome, Paris and Barcelona.

A mother of one with her hair dyed bright red, she studied sociology at Nottingham University and went on to gain funding for a Masters degree and a PhD.

She claims — without a hint of irony — that taking part in the riots is all part of her job. ‘I’m always on protests because I write about them,’ she says. ‘I’m there but this is research, too.’

Her research work for the LSE concerns ‘the precarious nature of particular groups in our society and the vulnerability they experience’. She is also looking into ‘social cleansing’ in East London.

The daughter and granddaughter of miners, she honed her hatred during the miners’ strike of 1984-85 in which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher crushed Arthur Scargill, leader of the National Union of Minerworkers.

‘Our community was absolutely decimated by the Conservative government,’ she told the BBC this week. ‘I am now an economic migrant to the South East. Social cleansing is happening in London.’

In her 2009 academic thesis, called Finding Value On A Council Estate, she complained that cases such as that of Baby P — the appalling torture and killing of a 17-month-old boy by his mother and boyfriend — were ‘used by the media and politicians to make way for a barrage of accusations, suspicions and stigmatisations regarding those who live on council estates, especially mothers’.

Riot police rushed to the scene while the protesters chanted obscenities, burnt an effigy of a policeman and smashed the windows of a nearby estate agent

Riot police rushed to the scene while the protesters chanted obscenities, burnt an effigy of a policeman and smashed the windows of a nearby estate agent

She stood as a Class War candidate in the General Election in May this year in Iain Duncan Smith’s Chingford and Woodford Green constituency, where she won just 53 votes.

The previous month, she had been charged with criminal damage and threatening behaviour after placing a notice bearing the slogan ‘New Homes For The Rich’ underneath a picture of a cemetery on the East London home of Taylor McWilliams, a wealthy American friend of Prince Harry. She posted on Facebook a smirking selfie of herself after her magistrates’ court hearing, at which she pleaded not guilty and urged ‘everyone’ to attend her next hearing for a ‘day out’ when it takes place later this month.

On the march against the Cereal Killer cafe, she carried a placard bearing the slogan ‘We must devastate the avenues where the wealthy live’.

She insists that not all the protesters that night were academics like herself. Yet they included Dr Simon Elmer, a former professor of art history, who wore a latex pig mask to hide his identity.

Dr Elmer describes himself as poet, writer, photographer and propagandist. He has worked as visiting professor at the University of Michigan, and has taught at the universities of London, Manchester, Reading and Roehampton.

He now lives in fashionable Stoke Newington in North London, where he runs an online publication called The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Poetry, Community, Sacrifice.

Class War has denounced the museum as being the work of ‘a rich businessman who glorifies the brutal murder of working-class sex workers. It is also a symbol of gentrification’

Class War has denounced the museum as being the work of ‘a rich businessman who glorifies the brutal murder of working-class sex workers. It is also a symbol of gentrification’

Asked about the aims of the protest, he was not amused. ‘Your idiotic attempts to bring the issues of gentrification and homelessness down to the supposed class origins of the protesters [are] worthy of the schoolyard at Eton.’

He added: ‘The cereal cafe wouldn’t be there if there weren’t people who could afford, and have the inclination, to spend £4 on a bowl of cereal. The cafe isn’t just a cultural symbol of gentrification, it’s an instrument of the economic colonisation of the area. The question is, will you write it? And I think we both know the answer to that.’ Another well-heeled supporter of the mob was Adam Barr, 23, who grew up in a four-bedroom house in the East Yorkshire village of Cottingham, where his father is a company director, and who now studies history and Chinese at the University of London.

Despite his privileged background and the opportunity to attend university away from home, Mr Barr was oblivious to the irony this week after he hit out at the ‘invading hordes’ who have taken over London, ‘driving up rents and driving out people who have lived here for years’. Anybody who dares to question the motives of Class War is abused, it seems. After someone asked how the group could justify saying it wanted ‘to see the rich dead’, an un-named anarchist on its Facebook page replied simply: ‘Hah! Hah! Hah!’ and called supporters of new businesses ‘maggots’ and ‘cxxxs’.

What, then, does Ian Bone, the bitter graduate son of Sir Gerald Coke’s butler, think of the cereal cafe protest? For a man who has never worked, he professes an unerring understanding of the working classes, but his overriding message seems to be one of self-congratulation.

Meanwhile, the cereal cafe brothers, who prefer the virtues of hard work and enterprise to living off the State, spent last week tidying up and trying to put their business back together

Meanwhile, the cereal cafe brothers, who prefer the virtues of hard work and enterprise to living off the State, spent last week tidying up and trying to put their business back together

Attacks on business premises, he said, were ‘fxxxxxx great. We will drive the fake elements out and repopulate with the proper working-class people rather than fxxxxxx yuppies and millionaires. They can go and fxxx themselves.

‘Our idea was to parachute behind enemy lines. Our aim was to seize control of the streets in Shoreditch for six hours and we effectively did. Look, we don’t like rich people. We’d like to drive them all out of London and repopulate with the proletariat. Got it?’

Confirming that he had never had a job — ‘Why would I want to work for a capitalist? Work is boring,’ he said — he added that he was delighted ‘shops are talking about closing down and moving out’ and that ‘people are scared of us coming to the area. That’s fxxxxxx brilliant’.

Meanwhile, the cereal cafe brothers, who prefer the virtues of hard work and enterprise to living off the State, spent last week tidying up and trying to put their business back together.