Keith Mothersson helped me more than anyone else with this ToT book. He died catastrophically on the 3rd July 2009, synchronising with its launch, in a psychiatric hospital, his memory wiped. His heart just stopped beating: well fancy that. He had seemed fit enough before that, as someone who worked as a gardener and pedalled around on his bicycle. His grandfather had founded the Tavistock Clinic, and he was looking into certain stories about this institution, when he suddenly lost his memory. I guess nobody will ever know what happened. I carry on without him, but his guiding words are greatly missed.
He founded ‘All Faiths for 911 Truth’, and was the lynchpin of the Scottish 911 movement. He was one character who could get on with the diverse ‘7/7 truth’ factions which otherwise tends to be rather splintered and aggrieved. If perchance one believes he was ‘taken out’ then quite a lot ceased to function after this act.
I knew Keith for about thirty years. He was a socialist Buddhist visionary. I’d say he kept asking himself the question, under what conditions could people live in peace, and why does that not ever seem to happen? He and I and some legal enthusiasts co-founded the little known group Inlap (the Institute for Law and Peace) in the late 1980s, concerned with legal defences used by peace activists and with the concept of mass destruction technology being inherently unlawful. His was basically a feminist vision, about our common Motherland. His vision of what ought to be sacred concerned the immunity of noncombatant civilians, in time of war: that women and children not participating in a war, ought to be safe.
My earliest memory of him, is at a CND conference, where he was distributing leaflets about some international-law arguments.
Maybe it was because of his grandfather being the founder of the Tavistock Clinic, but in the new millennium he became deeply involved in the 9/11 and 7/7 truth movements. Lightly and quickly, he would come out with shafts of insight over what was really going on. He could grasp the psychologically strange manipulation, whereby the public were being given an image of something that had not happened, but only seemed to be: whereby our reality is being manipulated. That is something outside the traditional socialist agenda, so that normal peace groups do not grapple with the matter. Up in Scotland he worked as a gardener and I always supposed this would assist and maintain his peace of mind. Keith and I share happy memories of being present at the early July 7 truth campaign meetings (he had just donated to them his URL www.julyseventh.co.uk which they still use).
Nobody helped me so much in producing my ‘Terror on the Tube’ book, both in the text and evaluation of the difficult central issues, than Keith. Gently he guided me, to avoid all sorts of blunders. I cannot hope to write something as good as that book again, in any political context, because Keith is no longer around for help. But also, Keith was a guide and helpmate for me, through the puzzling paths of life. It’s hard to think who else I’d say that of! Shortly before his passing he sent out a swathe of e-mails to various editors of papers and journals about the forthcoming publication of my book, eg:
‘A trusted colleague and friend has written a very fine book which I was privileged to read and comment on in draft, and which sets out the case that the supposed perpetrators of July 7th were almost certainly entrapped and framed. The attachments set out the cover pages and contents pages of ‘Terror on the Tube’ by Dr Nick Kollerstrom, to be published shortly by US based progressive Press…. this handsomely produced book (30th April).’
– the main discernable effect of which was that Rachel North started blogging about the forthcoming opus, presumably someone sent it to her. But, I worried, could this have had some adverse effect upon him, which he did not anticipate?
As Scotland’s main 9/11 activist, he was founder of ‘All faiths for 9/11 Truth’ which was concerned to heal the millenia-old ‘war’ between Muslims and Christian civilizations, being reactivated in our time. As such he had quite a lot to do with MUJCA – Muslims, Jews and Christians for 9/11 Truth – founded in the US by Kevin Barrett. Kevin was planning to come over to London on July 7th for his first major UK 9/11 meeting, so they would have met. He had written the foreword to my book and this was the time of its launch. Keith was also expected at a 7/7 meeting at the Birmingham Mosque on 5th July two days earlier. Here again his unique peace-building and liasing skills would have been of value. He would have been good at the building of bridges of understanding with the Muslims there. So this was quite an important period for him – had he lived.
Sudden, terminal amnesia
Abruptly, his memory was gone, one evening (June 4th) and soon after he was shipped into Scotland’s Murray Royal psychiatric clinic. A week after he had arrived, the nurse there whom I asked did not know what was wrong with him, or at least how he had got into that condition. It’s a kind of dementia, she told me, but the staff had not seen so sudden an onset of this condition before. His mind had sort of gone. The evening before he had gone to his Buddhist society as usual, and before that he had paid his usual weekly visit to a prison inmate. Had he been having troubles with his memory? If so, I believe that none of us lot noticed anything. Soon after arriving at the hospital he was sedated by a heavy, anti-psychotic drug, because of an attempt he made to leave, and did not remember a great deal. His friend Daphne who visited him has described his memories of being in a van where a terrible struggle took place and where his mind may have been tampered with.
For what little it may be worth, here is my record of phone calls with his close friend Daphne, taken on June 17th .
Wed 3rd KM went to his Buddhist group as usual, in evening.
Thurs 4th 7pm Daphne arrived, saw him lying in bed dishevelled, he had forgotten the day and even the year – all he had done over last few months was a ‘horrible jumble’. He had no idea of what they had intended to do that evening – she thought maybe he was ill, and took him to the doctor.
Friday 5th ‘My mind has totally collapsed hasn’t it?’ He kept repeating. He mentioned the van to Daphne as he was going, 4th- 8th June – there had been a horrible row in a van he kept saying, over this period; he went in hospital on Friday. Into a Psychiatric hospital, but not under section. He forgot 911 and sequence of time, with an immediate amnesia of past events.
Murray Royal Hospital, Moridan b wing. He looks dreadful. He tried to escape, and from Mon 15th, he was given Haliperodal – 1 mg three times a day –an anti psychotic drug. This slows him down. 5 mg is max, turns one into vegetable. Dr Praetorius was his consultant psychiatrist. The hospital staff were confused – the nurse Tyrone said this was very unusual, because dementia does not usually arrive by a ‘sudden disintegration’ like this and he had never seen a case like this.
Then on june 16th, Keith told Daphne, ‘I’ve been in a van with some people and they messed with my head.’ I phoned her the next day, and wrote this sentence down as she said it. She was very positive about it. A ‘health advocate’ came to argue case, but could not really communicate at all with him
His brother, sister and daughter do not approve of 911. Their grandfather founded Tavistock clinic, Keith was trying to ask his sister and brother about this, but they would not talk. They viewed his conspiracy beliefs as evidence of mental derangement.
A further note on the 19th June, after I phoned both KM and the staff nurse. The nurse doesn’t know what his condition is, it is still being assessed, MRI scan etc, they will have an answer next week.
I talked to Keith and found that his memory and self-identity had rather faded away. He asked me if he was staying with me (as if he did not recall that I was way down in London hundreds of miles away) adding ‘Sorry, I can’t remember.’A couple of weeks after entering the hospital his heart stopped beating. He was a very strong man, he worked as a gardener. I phoned the nurse one more time to ask if they knew why and again she had no idea. They were waiting for the inquest…
That was it – his heart just stopped beating, in a loony bin. Aged 60, he was a grandfather and had certainly lived a good life. But, Keith! We needed you!
Keith’s Inlap books
From Hiroshima to the Hague, a Guide to the World Court project
Plus he co-authored The Pax Legalis papers, nuclear conspiracy and the Law.
His work on 9/11 and 7/7 was mainly in the form of leaflets and it might be worth collecting some of these together. The orbituaries which appeared, eg here and here ignored the strange manner of his passing.
There is a group concerned with the manner of his passing, and in due time we may get to hear of any progress they make.
7.3.2010