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CND IN THE NEWS
25 September-1 October 2003
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1 Anti-war campaigners to march
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3139006.stm
Anti-war rallies earlier this year attracted thousands
Organisers of a demonstration against the war in Iraq say they expect
about 100,000 people to attend a march in central London on Saturday.
It will be the fifth major protest against Britain's role in the conflict,
with one demonstration in February attracting a million people.
But the Metropolitan Police anticipates a lower turnout and expects disruption
for people coming into London on the weekend to be minimal.
The Stop The War Coalition's said coaches have been booked in towns and
cities across the UK to ferry people into the city.
They will be gathering at Hyde Park at noon and marching to Trafalgar
Square.
Full public inquiry
Coalition chairman Andrew Murray said there was growing public support
for the group's demand that UK and United States troops should pull out
of Iraq immediately.
He also called for a full public inquiry into the UK's involvement in
the conflict and said it was becoming increasingly clear that the war
was "unjust and illegal".
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) said a big
demonstration would send a strong message to the government that the public
did not condone the "lies" used to justify the war.
Chairwoman Kate Hudson told a London news conference: "The British
people have the right to know the truth about the events leading to the
illegal war on Iraq which is causing untold suffering to the people of
that country."
George Galloway, the Labour MP who has been suspended from the party following
his outspoken comments against the war, said that if the Iraqi conflict
was not discussed at next week's Labour Party conference it would make
a "mockery" of the annual gathering and reduce its credibility.
He will be among speakers addressing the rally in Trafalgar Square on
Saturday.
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2 Up to 100,000 expected at London Iraq protest
The Guardian, September 25, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1049655,00.html
Tens of thousands of people are expected to join a protest calling for
the withdrawal of British and US troops from Iraq and the end of the Israeli
occupation of Palestinian territories in London this weekend.
Organisers today predicted a huge turnout because of mounting public anger
over government "lies" about the war in Iraq.
That view has been backed by a new poll showing that Tony Blair's political
reputation has been seriously damaged by the Hutton inquiry.
The march, which will be from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, is advertised
as a "protest against the occupation in Iraq and for freedom in Palestine",
and will be the fifth such demonstration this year.
The Stop the War Coalition (SWC), which is organising the event along
with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the
Muslim Association of Britain, said that it expected at least 100,000
to attend.
Coaches have been booked to ferry demonstrators to the capital from towns
and cities across the UK.
The organisers acknowledged that the turnout will not be as big as that
for February's protest, when more than 1 million people marched through
the capital before the bombing of Iraq began.
However, they expressed confidence that it would nevertheless be a "another
landmark in the history of the British people's resolve against injustice
and tyranny".
SWC chairman Andrew Murray said there was growing public support for the
group's demand that British and US troops should pull out of Iraq immediately.
Mr Murray called for a full public inquiry into the UK's involvement in
the conflict, and said it was becoming increasingly clear that the war
was "unjust and illegal".
CND, which is helping to organise the march, said that
a big demonstration would send a strong message to the government that
the public did not condone the "lies" used to justify the war.
Chair Kate Hudson said today: "The British people have the right
to know the truth about the events leading to the illegal war on Iraq,
which is causing untold suffering to the people of that country."
George Galloway, the Labour MP who was suspended from the party following
his outspoken comments against the war, said that, if the Iraqi conflict
was not discussed at next week's Labour Party conference, it would make
a "mockery" of the annual gathering and reduce its credibility.
"If this is fixed so that the most important event is not debated,
the leadership would make itself a laughing stock," he said.
Mr Galloway will be among speakers addressing a rally in Trafalgar Square
at the end of the march.
A statement issued by the Muslim Association of Britain said: "Marking
the third anniversary of the Palestinian uprising and on the eve of the
Labour party conference, MAB, along with Stop the War Coalition and CND,
will once again be calling the country to demonstrate against the government's
unethical stand on these issues.
"Early indications show that this will be another landmark in the
history of the British people's resolve against injustice and tyranny,
and that hundreds of organisations, associations and groups will be joining
efforts to make September 27 a day to remember and one that will truly
influence events at home and abroad."
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3 Labour conference 2003
The Guardian, September 25, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics/story/0,3605,1049138,00.html
Policies that conference wants overthrown
Iraq
The biggest challenge of all for the prime minister. Opponents of the
war, led by Labour CND, are pushing a model resolution
calling for "an end to Britain's participation in the US-led occupation
of Iraq" - arguing that no WMDs have been found, and submissions
to Hutton reveal that intelligence on which government based its case
for war cannot be relied upon.
The government still hopes a vote can be avoided.
• Alice Mahon, MP for Halifax, says: "There will be absolute
clamour for a vote on this. A lot of MPs who voted for a war will feel
very badly let down by what is coming out of the Iraq Survery Group."
Student top-up fees
Tony Blair risks a defeat on the issue in parliament this autumn, but
may avoid a conference vote next week. The government has created a rift
with backbenchers, activists and students who fear the emergence of an
expensive and elitist "two-tier" system.
Ministers argue that allowing universities to charge a varied fee of up
to £3,000 a year from 2006 will boost academic pay and research
funds.
Critics retort that the funding gap should be filled through a graduate
tax or, as it has been for 50 years, via general taxation, Gordon Brown's
preference, defeated by No 10 and Charles Clarke.
• Paul Farrelly, MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, says: Tony Blair should
"get rid of variable fees that would allow universities to charge
different prices for different courses. We want a proper debate about
the alternatives, and a proper balance between the state and the individual
that does not deter people from going to university. Poorer people having
to choose cheaper courses runs counter to equality of opportunity."
Foundation hospitals
Downing Street is resigned to a conference defeat over the government's
determination to generate greater competition within the NHS by letting
top-flight hospitals acquire "foundation trust" status giving
them far more freedom from Whitehall control.
The bill allowing this is in the Lords, after prompting more than 60 Labour
MPs to rebel against it in the Commons. What bothers critics and unions
representing NHS staff is the fear that creating hospitals, with their
legal ownership separated from NHS for the first time since the latter's
founding 1948, will be Trojan horses for future privatisation.
• Frank Dobson, ex-health secretary and MP for Holborn and St Pancras,
says: "It's simply got to be stopped. Taken together with franchising
those private sector diagnostic and treatment centres, it means the end
of the NHS. The whole basis of the government approach now is competition,
which is wholly alien to the NHS - it will cease to be the NHS as hospitals
have to compete with one another. Competition was disastrous under the
Tories and there is no reason to believe Labour competition will be any
better."
Labour party reform
A big talking point at Brighton next week. Some National Policy Forum
members and Unison want a commitment to reshape the party's policy making
structure to release Downing Street's grip on shaping the next election
manifesto.
Ian McCartney, the Labour chairman , has promised a review in 2004. Reform
advocates would like opposing positions on key issues to be put to conference
for a vote, instead of documents presented on a take it or leave it basis.
• Ann Black, NEC member, says: Tony Blair should "start providing
evidence that ordinary members can indeed make a difference. Egging constituencies
on to hold more forums will simply widen the gap between what members
expect and what the party can deliver."
Workers' rights
Also certain to cause friction with unions next week. The Transport and
General Workers Union is demanding that workers no longer be deemed fairly
dismissed if sacked simply for striking for longer than eight weeks. The
public service union Unison wants a code designed to end the so-called
two tier workforce in local government to be extended throughout the public
sector.
• Sir Bill Morris, outgoing TGWU general secretary says: "The
weak and ineffectual eight week rule provides no protection against dismissal
for anyone taking lawful industrial action, and must be changed"
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4 Comment: Do mention the war
The Guardian, September 27, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1050761,00.html
Tony Blair has lost the argument over Iraq, and now seeks to evade the
issue. But today's protest will hold him to accountToday the voice of
Britain's anti-war majority will be heard on the streets of London once
more. Next week in Bournemouth it will be muffled if Labour party conference
organisers get their way and prevent a debate on Iraq.
There is the nub of Tony Blair's crisis. He has lost the argument over
the lawless attack on Iraq and with it the confidence of the country,
as this week's opinion poll shows, and can now only seek to evade it.
The Iraq issue has become a rock Blair cannot crawl from under, leaving
him entirely bereft of the command of the agenda that a premier with a
vast parliamentary majority should enjoy. "Don't mention the war"
may seem to him like the only plausible policy, but it is a curious start
for the prime minister's new "listening" strategy and it will
not calm the vast movement of opposition to the war and to the lies which
have attended it.
That movement, marching again today, has proved remarkably robust and
resilient. Trade unionists, Muslims, socialists, pacifists, liberals,
school students and many others will be there, representing the views
of the majority of the country.
Will another demonstration make a difference? Around 2 million marched
in February, only to be ignored by a prime minister who placed a higher
value on his private pact with George Bush than on the views of the people
he represents. However, British politics still lives in the shadow of
that movement.
Without the mobilisation of public opinion against the war, there would
have been no Hutton inquiry - Dr Kelly's tragic death would have been
a matter for the local coroner's court alone. Alastair Campbell would
still be at his desk, Geoff Hoon would not be a household name and Blair
himself would not be having to endure the daily exposure of Downing Street's
inner workings. The mass movement of February and March made evasion of
the consequences of the war impossible.
The intensity of opposition to the conflict articulated through the Stop
the War Coalition and its allies (primarily CND and the
Muslim Association of Britain) has also rendered it almost - although
not quite - inconceivable that Britain could again be committed to join
in the next US-led war over a prayer meeting on a Texas ranch. If following
Bush to Iraq was a near-death experience for the prime minister, a repeat
performance over Iran or North Korea would finish him off.
The US president faces growing domestic discontent because of the occupation
of Iraq, which is costing hundreds of US lives without any end in sight.
This - rather than any conversion to multilateralism - drives his desire
to embroil the UN in the occupation. Indian soldiers dying in blue helmets
under US command would not put swing states in the midwest at risk in
the same way.
Blair's problem is somewhat different. It stems from the perception that
he deliberately misled the country about the reasons for attacking Iraq,
dragging us into a war few supported. Every bit of news this week has
reinforced that view. It is now semi-acknowledged that the fabled "weapons
of mass destruction" are not going to be found in Iraq. Instead,
the justification for the war has shrivelled to a search for a plan to
begin a programme to develop the absent weapons.
We are told that Downing Street's defence will hinge on the argument that
just because WMDs are nowhere to be seen, it does not mean they are not
there - a logic familiar to any parent who has tried to maintain a toddler's
belief in Father Christmas.
Meanwhile, the Hutton inquiry has finally prised out of Downing Street
the truth that intelligence head John Scarlett rewrote parts of the dossier
on those weapons to bump up the threat from Saddam on orders from Blair's
chief of staff, Jonathan Powell.
All this cries out for the government to be held to account in a way that
Lord Hutton alone, with his narrow focus on the death of Dr Kelly, is
unlikely to be able to do. Perhaps those MPs who supported the war, but
pledged they would think again if no WMDs were discovered, will indeed
find their voice. The Brent East byelection result may have helped concentrate
a few minds. Not only is direct opposition to the war policy a growing
factor in voting intentions, but Blair's inability to put the issue behind
him makes it doubly difficult for the government to grapple with any other
issue.
What should be done? A change in policy is more important than any change
in personnel, but if every British prime minister were henceforward aware
that embarking on an illegal aggressive war in defiance of public opinion
would cost them their job, that would not be such a bad thing.
• Andrew Murray is chairman of the Stop the War Coalition and one
of the organisers of today's "No more War, No more Lies" demonstration
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5 Anti-war protest deals blow to Blair
The Guardian , September 27, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1050738,00.html
Common cause against 'lies and spin' mobilises diverse group
It has a mailing list that Karl Rove, the man credited with making George
Bush presidential, would kill for. It has a power to mobilise greater
than top-up fees, the Countryside Alliance or even the poll tax. And it
will be there today at the barricaded entrance to Downing Street, reminding
its occupant how disliked he has become.
If the prime minster is there, he will see himself depicted as the ace
of spades in a new political pack of cards - Clare Short is the joker
- along with his name, misspelled to read: B Liar.
In two years the Stop the War Coalition has been the fastest growing political
movement in Britain. It has spawned 500 affiliated groups. There is Dover
and Deal Stop the War, and Salisbury Stop the War. Almost every national
trade union is affiliated. It is also Britain's most diverse movement.
From schoolchild to pensioner, Muslim to Jew, religious to secular, communist
to conservative, from shire to inner city, this single issue campaign
has a demographic reach political campaigners could only lust after.
Except it is not a political party. The coalition has resisted the pressure
to field candidates at byelections or recommend one anti-war candidate
over another. To do so, would be to destroy the coalition, which runs
from the far left (its two leading lights, Andrew Murray and Lindsey German,
are communist and SWP respectively) to the centre right.
Foolish
This is both its strength and its weakness. "At the Brent East byelection,
the Socialist Alliance tried to get unity between the candidates. Unfortunately,
we still ended up with 18 candidates, six of whom were anti-war, and everybody
should recognise this is a very foolish situation," said Ms German,
speaking as a member of the SWP. Socialist Alliance only got 1.5% of the
vote.
Diversity is also a strength. "When Tessa Jowell told us we could
not hold a demonstration in Hyde Park, because it might mean people walking
on the grass, we had monarchists so incensed that they told us to use
the Mall, because if the Queen can use it, anyone can," said Ghada
Razuki, national officer of the coalition, whose family fled Iraq when
the Ba'athists took over.
Robin Beste characterises the group he runs in Muswell Hill, north London
- he has an email newsletter that goes out to 1,300 people - as broadly
progressive. People who don't like privatisation, foundation hospitals,
the way their children's schools are going; well meaning, without being
ideological. "All of these people feel disenfranchised. It's as if
the issue of the war has filled a vacuum created by the convergence of
mainstream parties."
Communication is mostly by email, creating an informed group. "If
a pro-war Labour MP came to our group he would be eaten alive, because
we know who said what to whom and when, better than he does," said
one member.
For many it is their first experience of political activity. "Someone
asked me how much it costs to go on a demonstration," said Ms Razuki.
Ingrid Dodd, a 57-year-old GP from Dover who is still heady from the elation,
said: "I just felt so outraged that I felt we had to do something.
We got three cars and drove them at five miles an hour to the docks. It
brought the whole place to a halt. It is nothing to do with party politics.
It's to do with lies and spin and things not being done in our name."
For Anas Altikriti, of the Muslim Association of Britain, the coalition
has brought Muslims "out of their nutshell". "In the aftermath
of 9/11, there was a danger of the Muslim community going into a siege
mentality. My mosque stopped the final prayer of the day, because they
did not want Muslims walking the streets at night. After the demonstrations
it was quite clear that the Muslim community had shaken off that kind
of fear."
The cause can even transcend the faith. In Preston Muslims backed a Socialist
Alliance man for a council seat, even though he was a Scottish atheist,
in preference to Labour's candidate, who was a Muslim.
Uncomfortable
The reaction of secular Jews, whose place on the British liberal left
has been challenged by events in Israeli, is more complex. Today's demonstration
is taking place on the Jewish new year, giving some an uncomfortable choice.
While Labour party membership continues to haemorrhage an intransigently
anti-war message is seen as a political boon to Paul Mackney, when seeking
re-election as general secretary of the National Association of Teachers
in Further Education. "The message is that if the government can
find money for an illegal war, they can find money for the colleges and
they can fund the proper expansion of the sector. If I had said that 10
years ago I would have been accused of making political statements."
How the anti-war movement continues is anyone's guess. There have been
the ructions traditionally associated with the British left. For commentators
such as Nick Cohen only the British left can take a genuine movement and
mess it up. "Here you have a massive movement against Blair and who
do you have as one of its leaders? Someone [Andrew Murray] who celebrates
Stalin's birthday. If you have a leadership of that calibre, they are
losers."
For Ms German none of these personal attacks matter. "The anti-war
movement and the war itself has hit the whole lot, politics, civil society
with a huge whack on the head. I don't believe we would have had Alastair
Campbell going, or the Hutton inquiry, if there had been no anti-war movement.
"I don't believe the TUC would have voted unanimously to support
a resolution to end the occupation. I don't believe we or anyone else
know how to channel this level of radicalisation. Who knows what is going
to happen with the war and what is going to happen politically?"
• Peace process
• Today's march has been organised by the Stop the War Coalition,
CND and the Muslim Association of Britain
• The route is: Marble Arch, Park Lane, Piccadilly, Piccadilly Circus,
Haymarket; ending in Trafalgar Square
• There will be demonstrations this weekend in Algeria, Australia,
Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland,
France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Japan, Jordan, Lebanon,
Macedonia, Mexico, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Palestine,
Poland, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sudan, Syria, Thailand,
the UAE, and the United States
• At least 100,000 people are expected in London today. More than
80 groups from around the country have booked coaches and trains
• Speeches will be made by Ken Loach, Ken Livingstone, suspended
Labour MP George Galloway, and Dima Tahboub, wife of the al-Jazeera journalist
Tariq Ayub, who was killed in Iraq
• More than 5 million people around the world took part in the anti-war
march on February 15. It was London's biggest ever demonstration, with
2 million taking part.
Mo Mowlam, Jesse Jackson, Charles Kennedy and Bianca Jagger made anti-war
speeches
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6 Locals join Iraq protest
Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, 1 October 2003
http://www.redbridgeindependent.co.uk/news/localnews/display.var.418688.0.locals_join_iraq_protest.php
REDBRIDGE anti-war groups joined thousands of protesters in central London
to demonstrate against the occupation of Iraq.
The mass march on Saturday organised by Stop the War Coalition, the Muslim
Association of Britain and Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament (CND) included members of Redbridge Against the War
and the Green Party.
Redbridge protestors said that although the numbers were not as strong
as the last rally in March, feelings were as strong as ever.
Ashley Gunstock, from Beechwood Park, Wanstead, who is next year's Green
Party GLA candidate for Havering and Redbridge, estimated there were around
100,000 anti-war demonstrators.
Mr Gunstock said: "I was pleasantly surprised at the numbers of people
who turned up and the number of people who were not just annoyed but very
angry about the fact that we are still in Iraq and things still haven't
been resolved.
"This time it was a pretty subdued atmosphere, it was a case of "here
we go again. We told you so and you didn't listen and you're not likely
to listen".
He added: "The whole threat of terrorist attacks in London is not
going to happen, not because of what has been done in Iraq, but because
of the actions of the people that are marching against such action.
"You wouldn't expect a terrorist to attack a patch where many of
the people are opposed to the actions that are happening."
Mr Gunstock, 46, a professional actor and supply teacher, who starred
as PC Robin Frank in The Bill, stressed that the Green Party will continue
campaigning against the occupation of Iraq.
"I think George Bush has got an awful bear-faced cheek in going to
the UN and asking for assistance, but saying America still want to be
in charge," he added.
Redbridge Against the War spokesman Dave Rosengarten, from The Drive in
Ilford said: "It was a huge turnout. I was really heartened by the
solidarity and togetherness. Everybody was so upbeat and positive and
there were some great speakers. "Tony Blair is living in some kind
of dream world by continuing with this occupation. He has to go if the
Labour Party is to show any credibility. "If we continue showing
really strong anti-war and Blair feeling when George Bush comes over to
visit then that will be the final nail in the coffin for Tony Blair. We've
got to have socialism."
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7 Cherie's bagging sweeties
Daily Mirror, Oct 1 2003
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/content_objectid=13465891_method=full_siteid=50143_headline=-Cherie-s-bagging-sweeties-name_page.html
A FEW LINES OF CHARLIE
Charles Whelan
THE first bag lady Cherie Blair has been at it again.
Following my exclusive revelation that she sailed off with a £2
union mug from the Aslef stall without paying, I can reveal that yesterday
she had her hand in the Hull City Council stand's sweetie jar.
Grumpy Hull MP John Prescott was not impressed.
THE best selling tome at Politico's book stall this week is Mirror columnist
Paul Routledge's The Bumper Book of British Lefties.
Among those featured are Sir Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough and, yes, Tony
Blair who, believe it or not has leftie leanings in the cupboard. He was
in CND. More militant Cherie even used to flog Ban the
Bomb badges to Labour delegates.
PINK-shirted Peter Mandelson was seen preening himself as he chatted to
a delegate sporting a Bring Back Mandy lapel badge. He thought it was
for real. Mandy doesn't do irony.
SPORTS Minister Richard Caborn has found the conference so boring he's
accepted my invitation to play golf today.
I hope he was listening to the speech by Education Secretary Charles Clarke
who praised the improvement in numeracy tests. When we played last year
I'd swear he fiddled the score!
FORTUNATELY Tony Blair did not set the hall alight with his leader's speech.
Why? Because members of the firefighters' union, still bitter about their
recent strike, found something better to do.
BEARDED Northern Ireland minister John Spellar could face a ticking off
from on high. He took part in an anti-government march for manufacturing
jobs during Gordon Brown's barnstorming speech.
MOBILE phone giant O2, who sponsor Arsenal, held a special showing of
their Champions League game last night. Being a Spurs fan I opted for
a fringe meeting on road cones.
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8 More comment | Special report: Labour conference 2003
The Guardian, 30 September 2003
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour2003/comment/0,13803,1052894,00.html
Sketch
After all I've done for you ...
With dashing Gordon so perilously close to wooing the partly faithful
away from Tony, Ros Taylor simply had to eavesdrop on a make-or-break
conference encounter
Six-and-a-half years is a long time to stay faithful. At times yesterday
it seemed as though Gordon Brown - who has always had the ability to make
the Labour party go a little weak at the knees - was on the point of tempting
her away. It was a rough patch. It was time for Tony and the party to
talk.
The hall was a sell-out, of course; your correspondent only managed to
secure a decent view of the BBC screen by giving the stewards the slip
and sneaking in through a door marked Private, Strictly No Entry. But
who wouldn't want to eavesdrop on the make-or-break session of a couple
whose relationship was so perilous? It was the Six-and-a-Half-Year Itch,
with Gordon looking straight up the party's skirt.
Cruelly, the BBC kept panning away from the auditorium and towards the
man trying to tempt Labour away. Just as Tony was reminding her of how
long they'd been together and talking about a third term, Gordon stuck
his tongue in his cheek. The BBC audience roared with laughter.
"So what shall we do?" Tony said, brutally. "Give up on
it? Or get on with it?" He waited. The audience hesitated. Would
it be a rhetorical question? Of course it would. It had to be. How could
they throw all this away? The house? The mortgage? The health plan? Just
for a few principles and a bit of a dalliance with the bank manager?
"Exactly," he replied. "That's what we do." You're
staying. Thank God. I knew you would; after all, without me, you'd still
be stuck in that rented basement flat in Peckham, photocopying
CND leaflets, reading the Socialist Worker, eating brown rice.
And I'm going to tell you why you're doing the right thing.
But first, I'm going to tell you what I'm not budging on. You know that
bust-up with the guy over the road? I thought he was keeping dodgy fertiliser
in his shed? Well, I had perfectly good reason to think that, and I don't
regret taking the decision to demolish it one bit. And the fact it was
George from the cul-de-sac who had the idea in the first place isn't the
point. We're going to clean the mess up, don't you worry about that.
I'm not going to rule out the option of buying a holiday home on the continent,
either. That would be madness. We need to spend a bit of a time over there
or we'll never broaden our horizons. That's my other sticking point. Still,
I know you're probably going to disagree with me, and I respect that.
So I promise to listen to you in future. "That old top-down approach
didn't work. I know I can't say I'm yer leader - follow me. Not that that
was your strong point anyway." See, I can still make you laugh, can't
I? We know each other, we know our failings. It's not that long ago, is
it, that we've both forgotten what it was like to be single? Of course,
you still whinge, but that's because you can't remember those lonely Old
Labour nights in with just Arthur Scargill for company.
I know I haven't redone the kitchen yet. It's taken ages to clear out
all the old souvenirs in there. I haven't come up with anything better
than an appointed chamber to replace it, I know, but I promise I'll get
rid of the really offensive stuff.
You never thought I'd bring in a decent wage for you, did I? And here
I am bringing home £4.50 an hour. There was a time when you thought
that was just a dream.
Frankly, there have been times when I've had my own doubts, you know.
It's not all one-way. It's tough living together for so long. But I really
believe we have a future.
It was the old Tony, the charming Tony, the man who made Labour feel so
good about herself. She felt as though he was parting the Red Sea for
her. And you know what? She fell for it. Pity she'll hate herself tomorrow
morning
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9 Street Protests Against Conflict
Northern Ireland News, Sep 29 2003
http://icnorthernireland.icnetwork.co.uk/news/local/content_objectid=13459448_method=full_siteid=91603_headline=-Street-Protests-Against-Conflict-name_page.html
ANTI-WAR protestors across Britain, including Belfast, took to the streets
in their thousands on Saturday to hold the first major demonstration since
the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Protestors gathered at the Art College in York Street for the march and
rally.
The organisers of the event called for British troops to be pulled out
of Iraq.
The day of protest was organised nationally by the Stop the War Coalition,
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Muslim
Association of Britain.
In Northern Ireland, it was the Belfast Anti-War Movement which organised
the event.
Ann Fitzpatrick, one of the organisers, said: ''It is clear from the information
being presented at the Hutton Inquiry that the Government lied to the
people about the need to go to war.
"There were no weapons of mass destruction, they knew that, but they
went to war anyway.''
She added: ''When two million people marched in London, and thousands
marched in Belfast, we knew that the Government had no case for war.
"The situation a few months on looks very bleak indeed.
"The troops should be withdrawn, and the Iraqi people should be given
control over their own country.
"The Belfast Anti-War Movement would also back up the major trade
union figures who have called for Tony Blair's resignation.''
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10 Still angry after all these marches
The Observer, September 28, 2003
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1051306,00.html
Mis-spelling it out...
Amelia Hill
Harvey's cries became a squeal of protest: 'Why do I have to hold the
banner again?' the 12-year-old cried piteously. 'I always have to hold
it. Why can't you take it for a change?'
Harvey, his younger sister Terri and Layla, his mother, have lost count
of the number of anti-war rallies they've been on since the invasion of
Iraq, but Harvey has had enough.
'It's not even my sign any more,' he whined as Layla tried to persuade
an equally reluctant Terri to take over their handmade banner. 'You made
me change it.'
Now Iraq has been invaded, protesters taking to the streets of London
yesterday have changed their calls to demand an end to the country's occupation.
In a triumph of recycling, banners have been altered to squeeze the new
demand into the old space; cramming the word Occupation into the space
that previously shouted War.
Up to 100,000 people - depending on whether you asked the police, CND
or the Stop the War Coalition - retrod the familiar pavement from Speakers'
Corner to Trafalgar Square, where rousing speeches awaited. 'The good
thing to come out of all these marches is that we've become dab hands
at it,' said Benny Norram, from Chippenham. 'The ease with which we slip
into it now is pretty empowering.'
He was right: the drums were beat perfect, the ululations from women's
groups were in tune and the range of outfits had clearly been painstakingly
constructed over some time.
But the crowd were quieter than on previous marches, as though they weren't
sure what to ask for any more. 'I'm not really against the occupation;
I don't think we should pull out,' said Laura Parry, from Leeds. 'I'm
here because Tony Blair sneered at us after the 15 February march. I want
to show him we haven't forgotten that,' she added. 'This is more an expression
of muted anger.'
She was right; the mood of the march yesterday was muted. The anger of
the marchers, however, was no less fresh for being well-fermented. 'I'm
not in a shouting mood; I don't have anything specific to say other than,
"Damn you, Blair. Damn you for this mess",' Umoja Barry said.
……………………………………………..
11
28 September 2003
http://www.news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1074132003
Time running out for Tony?
Brian Brady
THE Prime Minister, looking strained, sat down at Chequers to plot the
way back from a series of troubles that had left the government in an
unprecedented morass and threatened its grip on power.
Days before the rank and file were to gather for their annual conference
in Bournemouth, their revered leader was facing up to the problems in
isolation.
It could be Tony Blair this weekend, but it was in fact Margaret Thatcher
as she faced up to her toughest conference as Prime Minister. "The
weekend before conference different speech sections were laid out and
put together along the table in the Great Parlour at Chequers," she
recalled of the preparations for the challenge of the 1986 Tory conference.
"Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when we had a speech of some
sort."
It was less of a speech than a manifesto for carrying on regardless;
it was about boldness, not retrenchment. Michael Brown, then almost halfway
through 18 years as a Tory MP, recalled only depressing portents. "Earlier
in the year we had the Westland affair, and we had lost two cabinet ministers
because of it," he said. "It looked like we could be in trouble.
But what the party leadership did was to send people off into dark rooms
to work on policies to get us out."
Thatcher and her advertising gurus, Saatchi and Saatchi, had, in fact,
commissioned detailed research among floating voters and disgruntled Tories
and discovered that the party had to give a much sharper focus to its
vision of the future to recapture support that had ebbed away since the
1983 triumph.
The result was that a conference that had threatened to become a requiem
for a moribund leadership became the springboard for Thatcher’s
third election victory. Rather than pander to the faint-hearted, Thatcher
and her cabinet paraded their new ideas under the blunt slogan ‘The
Next Move Forward’. The Conservatives emerged from the week committed
to a radical programme of major privatisation and far-reaching changes
in housing and education that would ultimately deliver victory in the
general election seven months later.
Tony Blair finds himself in a similar precarious position as he prepares
for Labour’s conference in Bournemouth, which starts today. Although
New Labour have clung on to their lead in the opinion polls, while the
Tories in 1986 were still in second place, the full sweep of forces ranged
against Blair is as wide and intimidating.
Halfway through his historic second term in government, the relentless
hype is finally justified: Blair is truly facing his most torrid Labour
Party conference. "The reason people are predicting his most difficult
conference is because everyone knows it is true this time," said
David Clark, former adviser to Robin Cook, the ex-minister who is fast
becoming a focus for discontent with the Labour leader. "The big
thing in the past has been that Blair always manages to turn it round
and come out of the week well. People will be watching closely to see
whether he can do it this time, but there is serious talk about the party
booing his big speech. "That would be unprecedented but this year
it could well happen. People are that unhappy."
These are bewildering days for Tony Blair - when the respected international
magazine Newsweek acknowledges that he is virtually immovable, yet adjudges
the time ripe to declare he is entering the final throes of his useful
life at the coalface.
"Thanks partly to the Tories’ disarray, he’s all but
certain to occupy Downing Street for years to come," the magazine’s
veteran correspondent Stryker McGuire said, amid the fall-out from the
humiliating defeat at the Brent East by-election. "Yet just as clearly,
he has crossed the Rubicon, closing the finest chapters of his story and
entering what may be a lacklustre or even sad denouement to an otherwise
spectacular career." Even worse, "to a very real degree, Blair’s
loss is the world’s loss".
Such flattering, albeit backhanded assessments of his global value are
of little interest today as he prepares to roll up his sleeves and pitch
into the parochial difficulties that await him in Bournemouth. Indeed,
the Prime Minister last week passed up the chance of joining 85 fellow
heads of government in New York to thrash out the United Nations’
role in rebuilding Iraq. Amid growing poll evidence that voters felt he
spent too much time abroad, Blair stayed at home, visiting a London hospital,
while Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was given his job back and allowed
to make the trip. The conflicting dates in the prime ministerial diary
encapsulate the most troubling elements of Blair’s quandary: international
affairs and domestic issues; Iraq and public services. All of them will
feature prominently among Blair’s living nightmares in Bournemouth.
Iraq is the barely disguised elephant trap. Since 139 Labour MPs voted
against military action in March, the war has come and gone, coalition
forces are still bogged down in restoring order and the party faithful
have yet to give their official verdict on the campaign. The death of
David Kelly, the Hutton Inquiry and the fruitless search for the weapons
used as a justification for war have had a corrosive effect on the government’s
standing. Public support for the war has slumped from 63% in April to
38% today. On Wednesday, a day after Blair has said his piece, his party
will adjudicate during the debate on international issues. Halifax MP
Alice Mahon predicted "an absolute clamour" for a vote on the
simmering controversy, which will be given greater prominence by the appearance
of Cook at no fewer than seven fringe events during the week.
"Even those of us who didn’t want the war would prefer to
be able to accept that it is over and done with and we can move on,"
one sceptical Labour MP said last night. "But this just won’t
go away. We should be talking about rebuilding Iraq in a lasting and just
way but you just can’t ignore the questions about the reasons why
we went to war in the first place."
These are questions that, nevertheless, the party hierarchy would prefer
to ignore, and while anti-war groups including Labour CND
want a vote on pulling out of Iraq, only a fragile arrangement with the
biggest unions will keep a motion against the conflict off the agenda.
‘Beneath the fog of doubt over Tony Blair is a sense that his government
is drifting’
Kevan Jones, a New Labour MP who, like Blair, has a constituency in Durham,
rejects the notion that the whole Iraq imbroglio is a vote loser in itself.
But he acknowledged the wider damage it could do to Blair and his faltering
project.
"People shouldn’t get the idea that this is a big issue on
the streets - I’ve been doing constituency surgeries all over the
summer and the Hutton Inquiry hasn’t been mentioned there once,"
the Durham North MP said. "The only way this can cause damage is
if it is allowed to affect the trust people have in the government."
The trust of the Labour movement is, unusually, Blair’s priority
this week, but he shows few signs of overcoming the mutual suspicion that
has built up over his six years in power. The trade unions enter conference
week having mounted a court challenge against government regulations they
claim could allow pension schemes and religious groups to continue discriminating
against lesbians and gays. It is merely the continuation of a war of attrition,
chiefly over the increasing involvement of private firms in public services.
Blair is braced for defeat on the conference floor over the foundation
hospitals blueprint that even his former Health Secretary, Frank Dobson,
warns spells "the end of the NHS". Even if the inflammatory
proposal to impose tuition fees on undergraduates escapes a vote, it is
expected to be consigned to defeat by Labour rebels when it returns to
parliament in the autumn.
The unprecedented weight of concerns provoked a flurry of advice from
Blair’s friends and foes alike as he endured the tortuous process
of compiling his speech in the same Chequers retreat where Thatcher composed
her own conference showstopper in 1986. Peter Mandelson somewhat stated
the obvious when he observed that Blair was in "politically choppy
water", but the admission was a concession nonetheless, while Stephen
Byers, and former Health Secretary Alan Milburn added to the sense of
urgency. "Labour is at a crossroads," said Milburn, who had
been curiously silent since he resigned in June. "Beneath the fog
of doubt overhanging Tony Blair in the wake of Iraq is a sense that his
government is drifting."
Collectively, these were taken as a warning that the government needed
to change tack; Milburn even presuming to suggest that Blair had to "shift
the centre" of gravity of his government to the left. The agenda
they had intervened to defend, however, was a New Labour one - unsurprising
from a trio who will be deeply involved in the next election campaign
and the manifesto upon which it will be fought. Milburn’s suggestion
came with an exhortation not to "retreat into an old Labour ghetto".
The rhetoric echoed the response of Downing Street, post-Brent East,
when the conversion to a ‘listening Prime Minister’ was deemed
adequate. "The public won’t accept politicians just telling
them ‘here’s the answer’," a senior member of Blair’s
inner circle told Scotland on Sunday. "People say there is disengagement
and disinterest in politics. People want a kind of more adult conversation
instead of just talking about a policy, be it tuition fees or foundation
hospitals or whatever."
In 1986, Michael Dobbs, co-architect of the Tory recovery, said: "What
we have got to do is to show that we are a government and a party that
has not only achieved a lot but still has a lot to do and knows what it
wants to do."
Blair’s speech will not, therefore, amount to an act of contrition
for his perceived mistakes, nor a list of promises to return to a ‘Real
Labour’ agenda. There will be more communication on policies, with
the cabinet, the party and the people, but Blair will not ditch his most
controversial reforms. There will be extra help for poorer students, but
there will be tuition fees - and foundation hospitals.
David Hill, Blair’s incoming director of communications, was refreshingly
blunt on his debut, admitting that "it is undoubtedly going to be
a difficult week". But the new wave of humility effectively ended
there. The real cause of the government’s woes is, it seems, not
the work it is doing but the failure of the rest of the population to
realise how good it is.
The conference theme, ‘The Fairness Test’, is an evocative
hark back to the social justice agenda pursued by John Smith. But it is
also an illustration of the government’s indignation about its treatment
in recent months. Fairness for pensioners, students, workers and hospital
patients but, above all, let’s be fair to Tony. It adds up to a
‘No Regrets’ performance by a leader who shows no signs of
changing any of the problems that infuriate his party the most. Where
Thatcher promised the next steps in 1986, Blair will admit to nothing
but the same old thing. No apologies, no regrets.
"I wouldn’t say it was about saying sorry," Hill said.
"It is a question of saying that we recognise there has been a bit
of a disconnect between what the government has been doing and what people
think it has been doing."
A year ago, Blair mounted the podium in Blackpool under great pressure
and told his party: "We are at our best when we are at our boldest",
and warned them that "the monolithic provision of services must depart
from the public sector" . Then, with the help of a show-stopping
cameo from Bill Clinton, he survived the experience.
This time, the issues are the same but Blair’s control over them
has deteriorated further. He and his loyalists respect Thatcher’s
achievement in recovering, but they must be aware that her subsequent
electoral victory merely prolonged the agony of her eventual decline.
A buoyant return from Bournemouth may similarly turn out to be a Pyrrhic
victory. Newsweek fears the worst. "As he attempts to climb back
from the depths - if he can - he will from now on be damaged goods."
……………………………………………..
12 Reparations for Iraq
27 September 2003
http://www.news.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1071102003
The occupation of Iraq is not working, and more "coalition"
forces will provoke more violence. We need a commitment to free and open,
independently-supervised elections within six months.
There should also be immediate supervision by the United Nations of the
transition period until an Iraqi government is elected.
The United States and the United Kingdom should pay reparations for damage
to civilian infrastructure which they have caused.
BRIAN QUAIL, ALISON HUNTER, OSAMA SAEED, FRANCES MILDMAY
c/o Scottish CND
Hyndland Avenue
Glasgow
……………………………………………..
13 Look at this one…
September 28, 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-523-833505,00.html
How the woman at No 27 ran spy network for an arms firm
THE INSIGHT TEAM
THE cul-de-sac on the outskirts of Gravesend, a Thames-side town in
north Kent, is lined with spacious bungalows. The elderly owner of number
27, Evelyn Le Chene, was not at home on Friday. The man who answered her
door described her as “a woman of secrets”.
Secrets, indeed: despite her age, Le Chene has been named as the mastermind
of a vast private intelligence-gathering network that collated the identities
and confidential details of nearly 150,000 left-wing activists and offered
them at a price to British industrial companies.
Among her clients was the defence giant British Aerospace, now known as
BAE Systems, according to a source intimate with the company’s security
operations.
BAE, which has close links to Whitehall, paid Le Chene for at least four
years to spy on opponents of the arms trade, according to the source.
Insight has seen computer files and thousands of pages of reports from
the widespread spying operation carried out for BAE. Bank accounts were
accessed, computer files downloaded and private correspondence with members
of parliament and ministers secretly copied and passed on.
When samples were shown last week to members of the Campaign Against the
Arms Trade (CAAT), a key target, one of them collapsed with shock at the
extent of the personal detail they contained.
BAE said yesterday it was unable to comment on the specific allegations
but would never encourage anyone to do anything illegal.
Le Chene did not respond to requests for an interview about her activities.
So who is she, and how did an elegant 67-year-old living in Kent get into
such business? She is certainly no Melita Norwood, the elderly widow in
nearby Bexleyheath, unmasked in 1999 as a former Soviet spy. On the contrary,
Le Chene is a member of the exclusive Special Forces Club and has campaigned
as a dedicated anti-communist. She was previously the director of an organisation
called the West European Defence Association, which warned of Soviet infiltration
during the cold war.
She is now on the board of Threat Response International, a company that
advises corporations on security threats. Also on the board is Barrie
Gane, who has been identified in the media as a former deputy head of
MI6.
As a young woman, she married Pierre Le Chene, a former British agent
in Nazi-occupied France who survived the Mauthausen concentration camp
and was awarded the Legion d’Honneur and MBE. She wrote books about
his life.
In the past she has not avoided publicity. In 1987, eight years after
her husband’s death, she attracted news headlines by confronting
his former torturer, Klaus Barbie, the “Butcher of Lyons”,
who was on trial.
Nine years ago she wrote an acclaimed book about animal “heroes”
of warfare, including a cat called Simon and a pigeon called Winkie. But
it was at about this time that she was also developing her hidden life
as a “woman of secrets”.
She was first approached by the security office at BAE to carry out surveillance
work in the mid-1990s, according to a source. At the time, she had been
running a company innocuously named R&CA Publications from an office
in an industrial estate in Rochester, Kent. Both the company and the office
have since closed. Le Chene was chosen by BAE because she specialised
in “human” intelligence. “She wasn’t very good
at tapping phones or doing dustbins, but she was very good at running
agents,” one source close to BAE said last week.
At the time CAAT, a respected Quaker and Christian-based pacifist group
which believes in non-violent protest, was stepping up a campaign against
the £500m sale of BAE jets to Indonesia. The campaigners protested
that the aircraft would be used to crush resistance in East Timor, which
was seeking independence.
Le Chene recruited at least half a dozen agents to infiltrate CAAT’s
headquarters at Finsbury Park, north London, and a number of regional
offices.
She was to become an expert on the burgeoning pressure group sector. Documents
seen by The Sunday Times indicate that she ran an agent in the World Development
Movement, an anti-poverty charity which campaigns against the arms trade
to third world countries, and targeted more hardline groups such as Earth
First and Reclaim the Streets.
The close connections and mixed membership of such groups meant she acquired
information on Friends of the Earth, the Greens, the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and animal rights
charities.
By late 1996, when John Major’s Conservative government was deciding
whether to grant licences for the Hawk contract, the intelligence reports
on CAAT’s activities started flowing into BAE’s offices at
Farnborough, Hampshire, almost every day.
Calling herself “Source P”, Le Chene initially sent over her
briefings on an encrypted fax to the BAE security offices on the ground
floor of Lancaster House at the airfield.
Later BAE set up software on her office computer so that the company could
access the reports directly from her database, according to a source,
who said the firm paid her £120,000 a year.
Thousands of pages of reports were made by Le Chene to BAE. They poked
fun at the protesters: one had “revolting habits”, another
was “seriously into saving the tortoise”. But they enabled
BAE to build a large file of activists’ names, addresses and telephone
numbers as well as always keeping fully briefed on their meetings, demonstrations
and political contacts.
Le Chene herself boasted a database of 148,000 “known names”
of CND, trades unions, activists and environmentalists
which she would sell for £2.25 each. She offered full biographies
including national insurance numbers and criminal records where possible.
“Putting together profiles is not an overnight job,” she notes
in one report. “It takes time to get to know people, their nick-names,
habits etc.”
Even links with celebrities were passed on. References are made in reports
to the actresses Helen Mirren and Prunella Scales and their opposition
to certain arms companies and the “torture trade”. One agent
had obtained a letter addressed to Anita Roddick, owner of the Body Shop,
from the Clean Investment Campaign, which promoted ethical investments.
The report notes: “This is a very important document. The request
is for the Body Shop to have declarations in their shop windows against
the arms trade. If this is granted by the shops, then the Clean Investment
Campaign’s first success will be notched up.”
Often the reports detailed forthcoming plans for demonstrations by activists
outside BAE’s 60 UK sites. The information was used to ambush trespassers
and then serve injunctions preventing them from returning.
Some of the information was gleaned simply by attending CAAT meetings.
However, one agent downloaded the entire contents of a CAAT headquarters
computer including a membership list, personal folders and details of
private donations. Bank account details were also passed on, according
to a source, and Agent P’s reports to BAE discuss sending computer
discs and tapes obtained from CAAT.
Names and addresses of activists were routinely run through the BAE computers
to check if any were shareholders. The BAE switchboard was configured
to flag up any calls from telephone numbers associated with the activists.
Desks were rifled, diaries were read and address books photocopied so
that the information could then be transferred to BAE. CAAT members were
often followed.
One such target was Jenneth Parker, described in one report as a “good-looking”
25-year-old, who was a key activist and networker for CAAT and student
groups.
A tape recording of a phone conversation between Le Chene and a senior
officer in BAE group security reveals that they discussed having Parker
followed. Reports on Parker give details of her addresses, housemates,
hairstyles, the contents of her diary and her alleged habit of smoking
marijuana in the corridor.
During the intense surveillance the pressure groups began to suspect that
they had been infiltrated. One report relays fears amongst CAAT activists
that a meeting would be “full of BAE spies”.
They were not far off the mark. According to a source, Le Chene infiltrated
an agent known as “Brough” into a Humberside offshoot of CAAT
called Hull Against Hawks.
The group was important within CAAT as it is on the doorstep of BAE’s
Brough plant where the Hawk bodies are manufactured.
BAE’s security had a photograph of “Brough” and added
to his credibility within CAAT by ensuring that he was manhandled during
protests at BAE’s annual meeting at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in
London in 1997.
Le Chene invoiced BAE for the £280 a month rent for Brough’s
flat in Hull, and there is evidence that he was the secretary of the Hull
group and used the name Alan Fossey.
He had become secretary of the Hull group shortly after moving to the
town. He proved very useful, driving his fellow campaigners — a
mixture of students and pacifists — to marches in his van and holding
the group’s meetings in his small flat in a new development by the
marina.
His sound counsel was valued by other members of the group. When, at one
meeting, a campaigner had suggested leaping over a fence to “occupy”
an arms fair, Fossey had cut the subject dead by claiming he had heard
the event was being guarded by paratroopers.
Quite how he knew, nobody asked. But then nobody knew the truth about
who really paid the rent on his fully furnished flat, where they met,
or who was really picking up the bill for the phone he used to arrange
all the group’s business.
Le Chene’s agents were instructed to take particular interest in
connections between anti-arms trade pressure groups and the House of Commons.
Meetings and correspondence with MPs of all three parties was closely
monitored and advance warning of any parliamentary events was always reported.
According to a source, the agents collected a series of letters, many
private, which were sent through to BAE to read. They included correspondence
to or from a number of leading Labour politicians such as David Clark,
then shadow defence secretary, Ann Clywd, the MP, and Jack Straw, then
home secretary.
When CAAT and two other pressure groups hired solicitors Bindman and Partners
to seek a judicial review against the granting of export licences for
arms companies, BAE was alerted to the contents of a letter sent by the
firm to the then trade minister, Ian Lang.
A letter sent to CAAT in October 1996 by Jeremy Hanley, the Foreign Office
minister, discussing British policy on the sale of arms to Indonesia,
also found its way to BAE.
BAE’s security department filtered the information and passed it
on to their in-house government relations teams so that they could be
one step ahead of the campaigners when lobbying in parliament.
Dick Evans, BAE’s then chief executive, would also receive regular
verbal briefings on the contents of Le Chene’s reports from Mike
McGinty, an ex-RAF officer who headed security.
The operation went on for at last four years until the end of the 1990s.
A BAE spokesman said last night: “The company cannot comment on
anything that may relate to the physical security of our plant sites in
the UK. The security of our people and places is paramount.”
Asked about the alleged theft of computer files from CAAT, the spokesman
added: “We would never encourage anyone to do anything illegal.”
……………………………………………..
14 Lighting up the darkness
The Times, September 27, 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-8086-831633,00.html
Nick Dear talks to Brian Case about recreating the Byronic Man, a poet
who was mad, bad and difficult to know
Jonny Lee Miller as the troubled poet
“Everyone in the world adored Byron and so do they still, with the
exception of here,” says Nick Dear, the writer of the BBC’s
two-part biopic starring Jonny Lee Miller. “If you go to Italy or
Greece there are statues to him everywhere. I believe he is very hot in
South America. As a figure of the artist who joins the revolution, he
is an iconic figure that is still very current.” At home, however,
he was denied burial in Westminster Abbey. His poetry was divine, but
scandal and contumely attended his life.
Dear started work on the idea of bringing the “real” Byron
to life several years ago — in the meantime his adaptation of Persuasion
went from TV into a successful film, his plays were performed on stage
(Power is currently running at the National in London) and he found time
to pen a drama involving Beethoven entitled Eroica (showing on BBC Two
in October). Luckily, he is a patient man, having learnt to be so perhaps
in Paris, where he tried to write to order for Peter Brook over a two-year
period.
“One of the difficulties in writing about Byron,” explains
Dear, “was retaining sympathy for him. His behaviour to his wife
was despicable. I wasn’t trying to look for a topical reference
to today. There is no clear contemporary parallel. He is unique. I don’t
think that every piece of work set in the past has to refer to Tony Blair
and Gordon Brown. One of the reasons that I was tempted to write about
him was that he was so un-PC. He was a mass of contradictions. He was
a major poet. His was not the celebrity of a pop star who was not actually
much good.”
Those who miss the poetry in Dear’s drama can console themselves
that the creative process is unfilmable. “The poetry is difficult
in some respects because it is rooted in contemporary and classical references
that are unavailable to most of us. I took an early decision that it wasn’t
going to be a lit-crit exercise. It was going to be the life story.”
Indeed, there has been no life of Byron on television since the early
Seventies, around the time that Richard Chamberlain played him in the
film, Lady Caroline Lamb. Dennis Price was the protagonist of The Bad
Lord Byron in 1949 when the same question was posed — rake, martyr
or both?
These days, Byronic comes up more than Byron, though Michael Foot once
beefed up the CND cause by quoting from Darkness, which
does indeed foresee a global winter as a result of war. The screenplay
opens on the burning of Byron’s memoirs by his publisher John Murray,
after which we cut to Dear’s version that sticks to the known facts.
After a snapshot of his youthful Grand Tour that involved embracing boys
in Greece, we follow him home to where Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage
has made him the toast of Regency London. “I awoke one morning and
found myself famous.” He presents a tortoise to his publisher, the
first of the many animals, the foxes, geese and monkeys with which he
surrounded himself, reinforcing — as if he needed it — his
image as a poet connected to the physicality of things. When his mother
dies he boxes. At the beach cremation of the drowned Shelley he plunges
into the sea. Byron seems Russian rather than English, and it’s
no surprise that Pushkin idolised him. He is the template for dissolute
poets.
Fame brought out the poseur in him, the spread white collars, the unruly
locks. “For a man to be a poet, he must be in love or miserable,”
he declares, lounging about at soirées. The worldly Lady Melbourne
(played by Vanessa Redgrave) becomes his confidante, and loopy Lady Caroline
Lamb (Camilla Power) his mistress. “Are we to be lovers?”
she cries during a social gathering. “Mad, bad, and dangerous to
know” is her celebrated verdict on the noble Lord, to which the
modern rejoinder would be, “She can shout.” Byron tires of
her tantrums, declares himself through with love — prematurely,
for he gives his heart to his married half-sister, Augusta.
“True love,” Dear insists. A sequence follows of togetherness
on horseback, riverbank and bed, blue-eyed close-ups for two. Byron confesses
that he collects locks of pubic hair from his conquests and recalls that
his Calvinist nanny initiated him into masturbation when he was nine.
“It’s critical to our understanding of him that he was sexually
abused by his nanny. It is a commonplace now to say that children who
suffer sexual abuse very often find it difficult to maintain stable relationships
as adults. Cod psychology perhaps.” Whatever, Augusta has his baby.
This and his debt-ridden inheritance, Newstead Abbey, combine in impending
crisis. He takes his problem to Lady Melbourne.
“We’re not in Ancient Greece. We’re in Mayfair,”
she pronounces, counselling a sensible marriage to money. In 1815 he marries
Annabella Milbanke, who hopes to reform him. She is a devout holdover
from the Age of Reason, and dowdy. He views her as a Jane Austen heroine,
but dutifully consummates, albeit from the back, a trailer for subsequent
sodomy. It is a miserable marriage. He drinks, wanders the house with
horse-pistols, aches for Augusta. While Annabella bears his child below,
he destroys the glassware above. They separate. With the scandal of divorce
and rumours of incest, Byron flees for Europe never to return.
On a BBC budget of around £4 million, they shot in Malta for Greece
and on a sound stage of Venice built for a movie in Luxembourg. The script
was reduced. One deliberate omission was the famous evening of ghost stories
at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland attended by Byron, Shelley and his
wife, Mary, from which she emerged with the plot for Frankenstein. The
incident has attracted film-makers’ attention all the way back to
James Whale.
“I had nothing to say about it,” says Dear. “It has
been done so often. Byron’s presence was clearly instrumental in
the inception of one of the major works of literature in the 19th century,
but it was more important to him that he was being chased by Claire Clairmont.”
Who also bore him a child.
In Venice he boasted of 200 women, bobbing in gondolas, but nevertheless
applied himself to his greatest work, Don Juan. We see him reading while
receiving fellatio, watched by a monkey. His fiery Italian mistress —
“Illiterate, thank Christ!” — dramatically defenestrates
herself, splashing down in time for Byron’s oldest friend, the liberal
Whig John Hobhouse, to arrive and shake his head over such habitual goings-on.
That Byron! He swam in the canal at night, clad as usual to avoid revealing
his club-foot. Certainly Blair and Gordon Brown do not leap readily to
mind in the context.
The famously non-swimming Shelley turned up and they debated. Byron scorned
the Romantics, referring to Keats as “Johnny Pissabed”, and
sneered at Wordsworth and Coleridge. Solitude and the sublime were not
for him. But he approved of Shelley’s womanising, and enjoyed listening
to his radical political programme. His own social conscience was intermittent,
and he did not share Shelley’s belief in the perfectibility of man.
“His position was essentially fatalistic,” says Dear. “Some
are saved and some are damned and there’s nothing you can do about
it. He identifies himself with the damned, and to an extent uses that
to excuse his behaviour.” And how he loved to shock. “What
I get by my brain,” declared Byron, “I will spend on my bollocks.”
After Italy he gave his all to the Greek War of Independence against the
Ottoman Empire, dying of fever in 1824 at Missolonghi before he could
fire a shot. He was 36. “I felt it was a quest story,” Dear
concludes. “‘What am I meant to do with my life?’ He
tries poetry and this isn’t it. He tries celebrity, marriage, debauchery,
and none of them are it either. He ends up doing the thing that many artists
dream of but few actually do, which is to lay down the pen and pick up
the sword. ‘I’m going to do something real’.”
• Byron, BBC Two, Saturday, 10.05pm, and Sunday, 10pm; Jonny Lee
Miller is interviewed in The Magazine
……………………………………………..
15 Thousands demand Iraq pull-out
September 28 2003
http://icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200national/content_objectid=13456717_method=full_siteid=50081_headline=-Thousands-demand-Iraq-pull-out-name_page.html
An estimated 10,000 anti-war protesters took to the streets of London
for the first major demonstration since the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The organisers of the event have called for British troops to be pulled
out of Iraq, and, as the crowd snaked into Trafalgar Square, a spokesman
for the Stop The War Coalition claimed the number of protesters stood
at 100,000.
The Metropolitan police claimed the figure was closer to 10,000.
The day of protest has been organised by the Stop the War Coalition, the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Muslim
Association of Britain.
Kate Hudson, chairman of CND, said: "This has been
organised to send a very strong message to the Government that the British
population doesn't approve of us taking part in a war based on lies, which
has led to the illegal occupation of a country, or any other pre-emptive
war on trumped up charges."
She said that following the Hutton Inquiry the demonstration was also
"a popular revolt against the lies and misinformation of the Government".
As the protesters marched along Hyde Park, en route to the rally in Trafalgar
Square, many carried banners with slogans like 'Blair must go' and 'UK
troops out of Iraq'. The event also had a carnival atmosphere as a singer
with a mobile sound system sang political songs and troops of drummers
beat out samba-style rhythms.
But the event has been criticised by some groups, with the Iraqi Prospect
Organisation (IPO) launching its Democracy for Iraq campaign in opposition
to the march.
Ahmed Shames, chairman of the IPO, said: "These anti-war groups don't
really care about Iraq, or for the opinions of Iraqis, who don't want
the coalition to abandon them like they did in 1991, they want the world
to help them achieve democracy. What Iraq and Iraqis need are productive
measures that will help them achieve democracy and sovereignty."
In Edinburgh, police estimated that around 1,500 demonstrators had gathered
in the city centre for a march and rally. The event was organised by the
Scottish Coalition for Justice not War to draw attention to what it called
the lies told by the Government and the lives being lost in Iraq and Palestine.
……………………………………………..
16 100,000 IN PEACE DEMO
Sunday Mail, 27 September 2003
http://www.sundaymail.co.uk/news/content_objectid=13456317_method=full_siteid=86024_headline=-100-000-IN-PEACE-DEMO-name_page.html
AN estimated 100,000 antiwar protestors took to the streets of London
yesterday.
In Edinburgh, around 1500 demonstrators gathered for a peaceful protest.
Both demos featured calls for British troops to be pulled out of Iraq.
And many banners carried slogans like: ``Blair must go.''
The London protest was organised by the Stop the War Coalition, the CND
and the Muslim Association of Britain.
CND chairman Kate Hudson said: ``This has been organised
to send a very strong message to the Government that the British population
doesn't approve of us taking part in a war based on lies, which has led
to the illegal occupation of a country, or any other pre-emptive war on
trumped-up charges.''
She said that, following the Hutton Inquiry, the demo was also ``a popular
revolt against the lies and misinformation of the Government''.
The event had a carnival atmosphere as political songs were belted out
over a sound sytem and drummers played samba beats.
Speakers included the suspended Glasgow MP George Galloway and London's
Mayor, Ken Livingstone.
……………………………………………..
17 DEMO PLAN TO DESTROY BUSH'S VISIT
Sunday People, 27 Sept 2003
http://www.people.co.uk/homepage/news/page.cfm?objectid=13456149&method=thepeople_full&siteid=79490
THOUSANDS of angry anti-war protesters are plotting to confront President
George Bush when he arrives in Britain on a state visit.
The Stop the War Coalition began drawing up plans for massive demos after
The People exclusively revealed last week that Mr Bush has accepted an
invitation from Premier Tony Blair .
Campaign leader John Rees said: "We will mobilise protests that will
rival our largest demonstrations in the past.
"The Blair government is adding insult to injury by extending this
invitation to George Bush."
The US leader's full state visit will take place over four days in November.
But the anti-war Coalition's first protest, backed by CND
and the Muslim Association of Great Britain, took place in London yesterday.
Veteran Labour rebel Tony Benn said: "President Bush will not be
welcome in Britain. I hope public opinion will express itself."
……………………………………………..
18 'Troops out' protests in Europe
September 27, 2003
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/09/27/sprj.irq.demonstration/
LONDON, England -- Chanting "Troops out of Iraq and Blair out of
Number 10," thousands of anti-war protesters took to the streets
of London to demonstrate against Britain's continued military involvement
in Iraq.
Coordinated protests in Berlin and other European cities also called for
an end to the U.S.-led occupation and Israel's hold on Palestinian territory,
but the small turnout was a faint shadow of huge pre-war peace rallies.
Marches were later due in New York and San Francisco.
In the first major protest in Britain since the war ended in April, demonstrators
-- some 10,000, by police estimates -- vented their anger at the invasion
and the reasons given for it.
The turnout was a small fraction of the estimated million people in Britain
who marched in February to protest moves to war.
The Stop The War Coalition, which was organizing the British event with
the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association
of Britain, had said it expected at least 100,000 people to take part.
Coalition chairman Andrew Murray had told the UK Press Association beforehand:
"We are looking forward to a very large and angry demonstration."
Nonetheless the march adds to the political pressure on Prime Minister
Tony Blair, whose popularity and trust ratings have plummeted in the aftermath
of the Iraq conflict.
The failure to unearth any weapons of mass destruction -- the main justification
for war -- and the public inquiry into the apparent suicide of government
weapons expert David Kelly have plunged Blair into the worst political
crisis of his six-year tenure.
"It was all lies," protester Peter Mason, 45, told Reuters.
"The millions who demonstrated before the war were right."
In February, around a million people marched through London trying to
prevent the war in the biggest political protest march in British history.
Organizers of Saturday's protest, a day before Blair's Labour Party holds
its annual conference, say they plan more rallies when U.S. President
George Bush visits Britain in November.
In Spain, which gave Bush political but not military support in the war,
protesters planned to march in the evening but were unlikely to match
the hundreds of thousands who rallied before and during the war.
About 2,000 protesters gathered in the Greek capital Athens carrying placards
such as "Stop imperialist intervention" and "Occupiers
out of Iraq."
In Berlin, police said only about 400 people turned up near the Reichstag
parliament building to oppose the occupation of Iraq and support Palestinians,
whose latest uprising against Israeli occupation is three years old.
"We shouldn't help the Americans with money for reconstruction when
they bombed Iraq," Carlotta Wendt, 14, told Reuters.
Daniel Compart, a 19-year-old apprentice at a petrol station, painted
his hands red to symbolize the blood he said was on U.S. hands over Iraq.
"It is important that ordinary people still say they are against
the war even though it is over," he told Reuters.
In a counter-demonstration about 80 people waved Israeli and U.S. flags.
"We support Israel and America because they are fighting Islamist
and Baathist fascism," said Thomas Mueller.
In Vienna, about 200 anti-U.S. protesters gathered on the central square.
……………………………………………..
19 Anti-war protesters take to the streets
27 September 2003
http://www.itv.com/news/1826366.html
Speakers in Trafalgar Square included ex-MP Tony Benn, suspended Labour
MP George Galloway and London Mayor Ken Livingstone
Antiwar protesters have held the first major demonstration in the UK since
the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The organisers of the event called for British troops to be pulled out
of Iraq.
They claimed that 100,000 were on the march. Police put the figure at
around 20,000.
While the event did not match the million-strong march of last February,
it had a carnival atmosphere as troops of drummers beat out samba-style
rhythms.
Speakers in Trafalgar Square included ex-MP Tony Benn, suspended Labour
MP George Galloway and London Mayor Ken Livingstone.
Mr Benn was greeted with cheers when he walked onto the stage.
He told the crowd: "The war has been a disaster and what has happened
in Iraq is the armed robbery of Iraq.
"America went in and stole the oil and is now trying to sell all
the other Iraqi companies and properties."
Mr Galloway said: "Tony Blair has decided that he doesn't want to
discuss Iraq at the Labour Party Conference next week.
"It's like having an elephant sitting in the corner of your living
room and not being prepared to mention it."
Mr Livingstone said the war was about war, not liberation. "It's
always been about oil and always cost the lives of innocent Arab men,
women and children."
The march was was organised by the Stop the War Coalition, the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament and the Muslim Association of Britain.
Kate Hudson, chairman of CND, said: "This has been
organised to send a very strong message to the Government that the British
population doesn't approve of us taking part in a war based on lies, which
has led to the illegal occupation of a country, or any other pre-emptive
war on trumped up charges."
Tony Blair - who was not in London - was heckled and called a war criminal
by bystanders when he visited a housing estate In Southampton.
……………………………………………..
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