More dirt unearthed in Fox-Werritty scandal

A senior Tory MP hid support he received from Liam Fox's dodgy Atlantic Bridge charity for over four years, the Morning Star can reveal.

Fox's friend Adam Werritty was the UK executive director of Atlantic Bridge and the former defence secretary used Atlantic Bridge to bring together US neocons and British Conservatives.

Fox and Werritty then ran secretive, parallel foreign policy initiatives. Fox had to resign from the Cabinet over the affair and Atlantic Bridge was closed after a Charity Commission investigation.

But the fallout from the scandal is still hitting the ground. In the latest register of MPs' interests, Croydon Conservative MP Richard Ottaway has admitted he got financial support from Fox's Atlantic Bridge - but registered the payment over four years late.

Ottoway now says he flew to the US for three days in July 2007 "to attend seminars and meetings with elected US officials and policy forums."

Ottoway said that his "return flight and accommodation were financed by Atlantic Bridge," which presumably also organised the meetings.

However, while the trip took place in 2007, in an apparent breach of House of Commons rules, Ottaway only registered it on October 20 2011.

Funding of the Atlantic Bridge was one of the central issues in the Fox scandal, with corporations like Pfizer and rich individuals like Michael Hintze paying for the charity, so helping to fund the foreign policy manoeuvres that Fox and Werritty ran in parallel to the government's official stance.

Atlantic Bridge was actually run from Fox's office in Parliament, with top Tories like William Hague, Michael Gove, George Osborne and Chris Grayling on its advisory panel.

Ottaway was a shadow defence minister and is currently chairman of the powerful foreign affairs select committee.

Between 2005 and 2010 he sat on the intelligence and security committee, overseeing the work of the intelligence services.

According to parliamentary records, Wimbledon Tory MP Stephen Hammond also went on the same Atlantic Bridge-funded trip with Ottoway.

Hammond did the right thing and registered the event in July 2007, when he was supposed to.

Hammond, who is now Eric Pickles's parliamentary private secretary, also gave a Commons security pass to Kara Watt - the operations director of Atlantic Bridge.

While Hammond got Watt the House of Commons pass, she actually worked out of Fox's office, according to Atlantic Bridge's own paperwork.

Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell's report into the Fox-Werritty affair was supposed to be a thorough investigation.

However O'Donnell clearly did not leave "no stone unturned" because new things keep wriggling out from under the rocks - Ottoway's trip is just one more revelation.

Week by week there are more stories about Fox and Werritty's links to oil men, former mercenaries and the Israeli ambassador.

The truth that we know came out thanks to a mix of bloggers and journalists, not government officials, so we all clearly need to keep digging.

nMultimillionaire New York mayor Michael Bloomberg understands the significance of the Occupy movement.

The Corporation of London, representing the most powerful financial interests, understands the significance of the Occupy movement.

Oakland mayor Jean Quan understands the significance of the Occupy movement - and she may have had a little bit of help from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to come to that understanding.

But I wonder if our own side understands Occupy as well as Bloomberg, the Corporation of London, Quan and the FBI.

There is a transatlantic push to get the protesters off the streets.

The people doing the pushing all know that there is a big struggle over who pays for the financial crisis.

Bloomberg and the Corporation of London want to push the cost from the banks and financial institutions onto ordinary people.

They don't want the corporations to pay the price, so the cost has to be paid by lower pensions, lower wages, job cuts and lower social spending.

So having people permanently encamped under slogans that say "Wall Street is to blame" or "The City should pay" just isn't helpful.

Bloomberg, the City and their friends know that they will face individual and sometimes powerful fights over pensions or wages or cuts.

But as long as all these fights stay separate, they can hope to win some, buy a few off and face the odd draw.

But the central battle of shifting costs from banks to people can go on.

The problem they face with the Occupy movement is it raises the fundamental, basic question of who pays for the crisis.

And put like that, the question is too hard to answer.

Which is why there is a concerted, international attempt to sweep away the occupiers' tents.

It is being co-ordinated across the US - quite possibly with federal, FBI and Homeland Security help.

And it is being co-ordinated across the Atlantic, with the latest legal steps to evict the Occupy the London Stock Exchange protest at St Paul's.

Our task should be quite simple - we need to unite the individual struggles over pensions, wages and cuts with the big question about the banks raised by the Occupy movement.

In the US the movement became very powerful, rising above the normally right-wing US politics, when unions backed the occupiers.

The union support for Occupy Wall Street and the strike in support of Occupy Oakland took the protest to a new level.

If the St Paul's occupiers and the Occupy camps up and down the country, from Exeter to Edinburgh, can hold out, we have a perfect opportunity to unite like never before on November 30.

On that day millions of public-sector workers will be on strike. There will be post-picket rallies in all cities, including London.

If loads of the people on these rallies make an effort to visit their nearest Occupy sites, the strikers will be able to clearly show the link between the justice of our cause and the injustice of the bankers.