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CND IN THE NEWS
20-27 November 2003
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1 The spying dame
The Scotsman, 27 November 2003
http://www.news.scotsman.com/features.cfm?id=1305542003
Long ago, in another country, I lived along the road from a notorious
mole. At least, the industrial secret she leaked was notorious; the mole
kept her cover despite strenuous efforts to unearth her. We regularly
passed on the street and once ate at the same table but, betweentimes,
I could never remember what she looked like. She was the perfect spy.
I hadn’t thought of her for 20 years, until the day I met Dame Stella
Rimington.
For operational reasons I am not at liberty to disclose that I interviewed
the former director general of MI5 before I read her comprehensively unrevealing
autobiography. But I had read the flurry of disappointed press coverage
that accompanied its publication two years ago and was expecting a nervous
woman, mousy and unimpressive. Nothing could be further from the truth,
that much is obvious. But beyond that ... think of the myriad verbal and
visual clues we all put out, allowing others to read us: Stella Rimington
has jammed most of those signals.
She’s 68 but seems much younger, dressed in a jacket that looks
like suede but turns out to be corduroy, black trousers, fashionably pointy
boots. Her hair is short and chic and dyed pale blonde. She has a way
of occupying her skin. Comfortable in it, to borrow the French phrase;
calm and focused; and something else … Impregnable: that’s
the word. She seems impregnable in her own skin.
In 1992, when she became the first director general to have her identity
made public, the tabloids dubbed her the Housewife Superspy. It was the
best they could do under the circumstances, though clearly they would
have preferred someone more exotic, a Mata Hari or a Rosa Klebb.
"There’s a rather artificial romanticism attached to the intelligence
services," she says wearily. We’re a nation of spy story readers:
we want to believe in James Bond and George Smiley.
"People who work in the intelligence services are ever such normal
people. They’re not these twisted John le Carré characters
really. They live normal lives, they have normal families." But for
80 years the head of MI5 had been a figure shrouded in secrecy. "When
you realise what they are is a fairly down-to-earth person trying to balance
complex issues, there may indeed be a sense of disappointment."
So speaks Rimington the manager, the professional who steered an old-fashioned
organisation through a period of necessary change. The new world order
required a new kind of security service and a new personality-type to
staff it. No longer the ex-military or colonial chaps on their second
career, but fresh thinkers straight out of university. "Fighting
espionage in the Cold War was a completely different thing from fighting
terrorism. Fighting espionage was much more slow: don’t move until
you’re certain. It generated very closed organisations. You didn’t
need self-confident people who could present themselves to the outside
world. Then came terrorism, which grew to be far and away the most important
threat to the country. You need a different kind of people for that, people
who are prepared to balance risks and gains, and take risks, and move
quickly."
Sitting opposite her, watching her almost anonymous face, listening to
her virtually featureless idiolect, it’s tempting to take her on
her own terms: as an executive who confronted much the same challenges
as the leader of any other large organisation. But then you remember this
is a woman whose stock-in-trade included dead letter boxes in hollowed-out
trees, chalk marks on lampposts, documents left behind loose bricks in
walls … After her name was released to the press, a newspaper published
a photograph of her house. She and her younger daughter spent the next
few years living underground, using false names. Not part of the job description
of your average executive.
Was there ever a threat to her life? Her expression loses its composure
and for a moment I glimpse another Stella Rimington. She tries to fob
me off with the assertion that anyone associated with the British state
was at risk from the IRA. But was there ever a specific threat to her
personally? "I don’t hugely like to talk about those sorts
of security angles, but yes, I was regarded by somebody who would have
been an interested party as a target for those who wished us ill."
So here we are, Dame Stella and I, in the oddly intimate setting of a
half-lit hotel room and, frankly, it all feels a little unreal. As we’re
so cosy, I confess my difficulty: had I met her in the 1980s, when she
was assistant director of counter-subversion, investigating figures in
the anti-nuclear, trade union and Labour movements, I would have regarded
her as … "Your social enemy?" she suggests.
Twenty years ago many on the Channel 4-watching, Guardian-reading Left
believed MI5 was a much greater threat to democracy than a few street-corner
Trots in leather jackets. There was a widespread view that, far from protecting
national security, Rimington’s department was infringing civil liberties
to further the political agenda of Mrs Thatcher and the Conservative Party.
As late as 1994, after publication of Seumas Milne’s The Enemy Within,
50 MPs signed a House of Commons motion stating that, if the book’s
allegations were well-founded, "Stella Rimington is not a fit person
to run the security service and should be dismissed"
She has repeated her denials in interview after interview: MI5 has never
been subject to political direction and did not run agents or pay informers
in the NUM during the Miners’ Strike (though she can’t answer
for the police or Special Branch). It was, however, legitimate to investigate
those who had declared that they were using the strike to try to bring
down the elected government. Likewise, MI5 limited its investigation of
the peace movement to Soviet-encouraged attempts to infiltrate CND
at key strategic levels.
There seems little point in wasting precious minutes of a half-hour interview
listening to her make this speech again. It may be truthful, as far as
it goes, but were it not, she’d say exactly the same thing.
Stella Rimington’s father was a draughtsman, her mother a midwife.
Her first job was as an assistant archivist at the Worcestershire County
Record Office. It’s not the most obvious launching pad for the top
job in the secret state. What did she have that took her so far?
"Common sense I would say is the biggest thing. A kind of directness,
which I think is often a female quality, a tendency to say things as I
think they are instead of beating about the bush."
In 1989 the Security Service Act was passed, giving MI5’s powers
a statutory basis and introducing a degree of ministerial and judicial
scrutiny. It was part of a wider move towards openness that required careful
handling. "It’s about balancing pressures, balancing risks
and rewards, which I enjoy and I think I’m quite good at. I think
it’s those sort of things which fitted the moment as the world started
to change: I think I was in the right place at the right time."
Hmm. She can’t have been the only MI5 employee possessed of common
sense. She certainly wasn’t the only woman. And the chances are
she wasn’t the only staffer who saw the way the wind was blowing,
globally and domestically, and realised it was time for a culture-shift.
But to be so steeped in, and successfully associated with, a workplace
culture that you rise almost to the top and then to embrace its antithesis:
that may be more unusual. She seems to have had a knack of "fitting
the moment" again and again.
Every life is a bundle of inconsistencies but Rimington’s seems
more contradictory than most. Time after time she found herself in situations
where she was an outsider, yet she was able to pass. As a Protestant convent
schoolgirl. As a parvenu diplomatic Memsahib in Delhi. As a fun-seeking
dilettante joining the tweedy monocled afternoon-drinkers who staffed
MI5 in the late-1960s; a state-educated feminist promoted despite a sexually
discriminatory career structure dominated by former public schoolboys.
As an Islington single parent whose neighbours never guessed her professional
identity. And now, as an ex-spymistress-turned-public speaker. It comes
as no great surprise to learn that in the 1960s, when she accompanied
her husband to a diplomatic posting in India, one of her hobbies was acting.
Some years later MI5 sent her on an agent-running course designed to teach
the skill of merging into the background. I doubt that she had much to
learn. As for who she really is, behind all the roleplaying: your guess
is as good as mine.
Her autobiography, Open Secret, ought to provide an answer but she remains
as opaque on the final page as on the first. The dedicated reader will
find references to the nights she spent hand-washing her daughter’s
nappies, the stress of running the Delhi Diplomatic Wives’ jumble
sale, even the breakdown of her marriage. But the personal revelations
feel like so many decoys, there to draw attention away from exactly which
peace protesters she kept under surveillance, which IRA operations she
did - or did not - foil, which Soviet agents she caught and turned: all
questions left firmly unanswered.
It is possible Rimington herself did not truly understand who - or what
- she was until after her retirement in 1996. For most of her career she
had lived undercover. Only her best friends knew how she earned her living.
She told acquaintances she bought boots for the army. Once she found herself
at a dinner party with a judge in whose court she’d given evidence,
disguised in a wig and ageing make-up. He didn’t recognise her.
Even once her name was released to the press and the veil of secrecy began
to lift, there was a hundred times more that had to remain hidden. Living
like that takes its toll, she says.
"Having worked so long in that world I think it makes you more inward,
not isolated quite, but certainly relying on yourself more. It’s
very difficult to know how you would have turned out if you hadn’t
been in that world. When you’re at the top of any organisation it’s
quite a lonely job; if you’ve learned to be quite self-contained
that can be a help." On the other hand, she adds with one of her
sudden, disarming, gummy smiles: "I’m sure the psychologists
would say it’s not the ideal personality."
Leaving such a sealed environment was a big step. "It’s hard
to make that transition. Working in the intelligence services sort of
takes over your life, because of the requirements of security and not
talking about what you do. Because you can’t have a normal direct
relationship with the outside world, they become your sort of family.
I should think it took me a year to try to extract my life and to feel
that I was an individual again."
Even after that first year, there were shocks in store. She decided to
write an autobiography and, anxious to abide by the rules, she informed
the authorities. The surprising thing about the reaction to this news
- the dressing-down from Cabinet secretary Sir Richard Wilson, the whispering
campaign in the press, the unknown civil servant who put a copy of the
book in a taxi and sent it round to the Sun - is not that it happened,
but that Rimington was astounded by it. "Having what was, in fact,
a black propaganda campaign conducted against you is quite upsetting,"
she says. "When every time you open a newspaper you’re accused
of doing X, Y and Z."
At the time she spoke of feeling persecuted and, in what seems to have
been something of a blinding revelation, drew parallels between her own
bewildered emotions and the experiences of people targeted by MI5. Now
she insists it’s all water under the bridge. It was stirred-up by
a certain part of Whitehall. The Ministry of Defence, wasn’t it?
She takes a deep breath: "It was the Ministry of Defence." At
the time they were prosecuting a former SAS man for revealing potentially
damaging details of operations and methods. Although there were no such
details in her book, and she handed the manuscript over for vetting, she
was tarred with the same brush. It’s recognised now that the fuss
was overdone. "It hasn’t in any longstanding sense affected
my relations with my former colleagues."
Though she doesn’t say so, I get the impression that she doesn’t
much care either way. That ever-flexible personality has adapted itself
to a new set of circumstances. She’s a writer now. Her debut novel,
a thriller about an intelligence officer and a terrorist operation, is
due out in July: the first of a series with the same heroine. Along with
the writing, she speaks at dinners and annual conferences, and sits on
various boards: a school, a cancer charity, a couple of big companies.
"I do lots and lots of different things, I find myself in lots of
different situations, meeting lots of different people, and I love it."
What do these people want from her, I wonder: are they fascinated by
her former power, seeking the lingering thrill of that shadowy world?
"I’m on the board of Marks & Spencer now," she says.
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2 Letters of the week
The Guardian, November 27, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/editor/story/0,12900,1093882,00.html
The death sentence for John Allen Muhammad represents the failure, not
success, of a system that focuses on punishment. The case took a year
to bring to trial and a month to present. The sentencing hearing lasted
a week. Scores of witnesses, experts and the families and friends of victims
testified... [But] all this effort failed to answer the question put to
Mr Muhammad by his 10-year-old daughter: "Why did you do all those
shootings?"
Malcolm Young
Washington Post, November 25
Perhaps the solution to the China/Taiwan issue is for the mainland Chinese
to recognise... that the people of Taiwan have forged the superior society,
starting from the same situation as the people on the mainland in 1950...
China remains a developing nation in comparison to Taiwan in economic
terms and is even further behind in terms of socio-political development...
The world would be a better place if the mainland just agreed to be a
province of Taiwan.
Ken Niemi
Financial Times, November 24
In criticising CND and others who protested against President
George Bush you said: "Never mind that the Iraqi dictator was a mass
murderer, using chemical weapons against his own people." It was
CND and the peace movement that protested against the
use of these weapons in Halabja in 1988. The British and American governments
preferred to look the other way. Why? Because of the Baghdad arms fair
the following year. No talk about freedom and democracy for the Iraqi
people then. And didn't they know what Saddam Hussein was like when they
helped consolidate his position after his coup in 1979?
Michael Ayris
Sunday Times, November 23
Why are Englishmen and Australians, or people from any "western"
country, who move abroad called expats, while others are immigrants? We
never seem to hear about the influx of illegal Albanian or Romanian expats
to the UK.
I am an Irishman living happily in the UK. We used to be immigrants as
well, but recently we seem to have become expats. Could it be that at
a certain level or wealth or status, immigrant becomes a dirty word?
John Maxwell
Independent, November 26
The elections of Dan Quayle, Bill Clinton, George Bush and Dick Cheney
illustrate the diminishing importance of military service as a prerequisite
for high office. Questions about the medical deferment that Howard Dean
received during the Vietnam war have no bearing on his ability to serve
as president, even during a time of war.
Serving in the military does not prepare one for dealing with the important
domestic issues that our country faces, such as education, health care,
job loss, income disparity and the alarming state and federal budget deficits.
To imply that it does underestimates the complexity of the job.
Terry Hamblin
New York Times, November 26
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3 Lots of bemoaning
The Guardian, November 28, 2003
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/columnist/story/0,9321,1095414,00.html
Kevin Maguire reports on a week of carping and comedy in his round-up
of the latest union news
• Concerned colleagues of the other Matthew Taylor - the policy
wonk rather than the Liberal Democrat chap - fear he is not enjoying his
time in Downing Street as much as they hoped. Drafted into No 10 to join
the 1,001 people claiming to be helping write Labour's manifesto, Taylor's
friends are worried that his style is being cramped. He built up the Institute
for Public Policy Research into a successful business but is said to find
Downing Street's corridors too crowded. Taylor been heard bemoaning his
lot and questioning whether it was a good idea to rejoin his former Labour
party comrades in government.
• One former minister certainly not bemoaning his lot is Lord Robertson
of Port Ellen, who is poised to make a lot by stepping down from Nato's
top job. The former CND activist and defence secretary
(positions separated by some three decades when he was plain George Robertson)
has lined up a series of nice little earners and I'm grateful for David
Osler, author of "Labour Party PLC", for bringing the Labour
peer's interests to my attention. There is the 30k as a non-exec at Smiths
Group, manufacturer of bits for military aircraft. Plus another job with
Weir in Glasgow, a company with defence interests. Then the executive
deputy chair at Cable & Wireless. And in February he becomes strategic
adviser to Royal Bank of Canada's European operation. What is RBC up to?
Raising £500m for a private finance deal to rebuild Colchester army
barracks and win other Ministry of Defence contracts. An ex-defence secretary
and former Nato chief on the headed notepaper will come in very handy
for the companies - and for Robertson.
• Another who is bemoaning her lot is Helen Clark, the deeply unhappy
Labour MP for Peterborough who faces deselection on January 17 when constituency
activists, fed up with her antics, meet to decide who should be their
standard bearer at the next election. Not that Ms Clark (nee Brinton)
intends to go quietly. An incredulous Labour whip reports that Ms Clark
threatened to defect to the Tories if she was dumped. Equally incredulous
Peterborough Tories say they are "full up" and will wait until
the election when, if Clark stands again, they are confident of winning
the seat.
• Carry On up the Union, the show that is Aslef head office in Hampstead,
is in danger of becoming a pantomime as Christmas approaches. The main
characters are being booed on and off stage with cries of "look out,
he's behind you", often too late. New general secretary Shaun Brady
wanted the train drivers' union to nominate a director of the Strategic
Rail Authority and consultant to several companies to sit on a British
Transport Police consultative body. The £14,500 for 30 days toil
would have been nice work if Lew Adams had got it, but Aslef president
Martin Samways put his size 10 down. Adams, a former Aslef general secretary,
made it to Hampstead on the first Saturday in November to present Brady
with a badge he himself had received from Ray Buckton. Knocks on the door
have been received by staff at home sick to tell them to get back to work.
Sounds just like Connex.
• Amicus is on track to overtake Unison as Britain's biggest union
after the GPMU printers opted to seek a merger with Derek Simpson's manufacturing
bods rather than Tony Woodley's T&G transport workers. Meanwhile at
the T&G, assistant general secretary Jimmy Elsby may be regretting
a joke he made at the Labour conference. The party treasurer quipped that
he was happy to have stayed out of jail. Alas, the electoral commission
has launched an inquiry into Labour's late registration of donations,
with the party certain to be found guilty of lax book keeping.
• And thank you to the mischief-maker in one Britain's most prominent
unions for the following assessment unearthed as part of his research
into the titans of organised labour. "The trade union movement has
become, with the hereditary peerage," said Beatrice Webb in 1917,
"an avenue to political power through which stupid untrained persons
may pass up to the highest office." No names, no writs.
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4 From Aldermaston to Iraq: 45 years of protest
The Guardian , December 1, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1096816,00.html
Easter weekend 1958 saw the birth of a symbol that was to become one of
the most widely recognised in the world. The sea of cardboard lollipops
bearing the distinctive black logo as thousands marched on Aldermaston
in Berkshire marked the beginning of a movement which would endure through
the decades.
A handful of small organisations had in the preceding years galvanised
themselves to fight against the proliferation of the atomic bomb. But
it was not until 13 years after the first bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima
that a cohesive mass movement was formed.
Within five years of Hiroshima, the US, Russia and Britain were involved
in a race for technological supremacy, fuelling fears of an all-out nuclear
war and concerns that atomic tests were causing irreversible environmental
damage.
In February 1958, several small organisations, including the Direct Action
Committee Against Nuclear War, came together to host a public meeting
at the Central Hall, Westminster.
The hall was packed to overflowing. Within months, as local groups sprang
up across the country, CND was established as a mass political protest
movement.
The organisation has seen its fortunes wax and wane over the past 40 years,
reaching the height of its popularity in the 1980s during the Greenham
Common cruise missile protests. In 1979 the decision to deploy American
Cruise and Pershing missiles in Britain brought the nuclear issue back
to the fore after a period when it was eclipsed by the Vietnam war.
As fears about the arms race between east and west increased so did its
membership. By 1985 the organisation had become the largest protest movement
to emerge since the war, with its national membership rising from 9,000
in 1980 to 111,000 under the stewardship of Bruce Kent.
Alongside the marches was a new element - all-women's activities. Although
the Greenham women were independent of CND, many female members of CND
joined the camp.
The end of the cold war saw the organisation's membership decline as people
began to feel safer again. Treaties covering nuclear proliferation and
nuclear testing helped to reinforce the feeling that the immediate danger
of nuclear war was fading away.
The Gulf war in 1991 and the French renewal of testing at Moruroa in 1995
again helped to raise CND's profile.
Since the war with Iraq it has reported a significant increase in applications
and membership now stands at about 32,000
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5 Marching in their millions: but far left has hijacked peace
group, says CND veteran
The Guardian , Monday December 1, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1096815,00.htm
Campaign rejects claims of Trotskyist takeover
The peace movement could be destroyed by the takeover of the Campaign
for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War coalition by Trotskyist groups
and the Communist party, according to allegations circulated by a leading
campaigner.
The claims have been made by Jimmy Barnes, the veteran leftwing secretary
of the trade union CND movement. He has warned in a paper sent to the
campaign's national council and the trade union CND executive that "CND
itself is now a small divided group with little future, unless there is
a change".
It has been well known that the anti-war groups have always been heavily
influenced by the far left, but the internal divisions have reached a
startling degree of animosity. Mr Barnes claims that the last CND annual
conference saw a bitter fight for the chairmanship, ending with officer
positions being captured by the Communist party and Socialist Action faction.
He adds that the way CND was taken over in the autumn will "lead
to a long-running faction struggle which could neutralise, or possibly
destroy the peace movement at a time when it is most needed".
His stance was condemned as "divisive and destructive" by the
current chairwoman, Kate Hudson, who last night dismissed any suggestion
that the organisation had been taken over by a cabal of like-minded political
campaigners as "ridiculous".
Other key supporters last night also expressed their continuing support
for the group. Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour MP and member of CND's national
council, said Mr Barnes had been predicting the imminent demise of CND
for a long time.
"He was nominated as one of three vice-chairs in an unopposed ballot
at the conference and was not endorsed. He then presented a long paper
that was circulated within CND which made all the allegations he has now
chosen to make public.
"It seems that losing the ballot has affected his judgment and behaviour.
It is complete nonsense. What we still have is all the wide and varied
traditions that make up CND."
The former Labour party leader, Michael Foot, said: "There is nothing
that is going to put us on our last legs until we get rid of the bombs.
We still have got that work to do. "I am sorry about some of the
arguments that have gone on within CND but throughout this the movement
has been right to say that the fundamental concern is weapons of mass
destruction. The organisation is still saying that and doing it well.
Anyone who interferes with this or questions its worth I think is entirely
wrong."
Bruce Kent, the campaign's chairman in the 1980s, said: "CND has
always had tensions in its political make-up. It includes such a wide
spectrum of opinions and views I think it is immensely relevant at the
moment.
"One of the major problems for CND is that it gets pulled into every
campaign and that sometimes dissipates the impact. It has got an older
membership than it did in the 80s but it is still going strong."
CND has been frequently unsettled by disputes on the extent to which it
should extend its campaigning work beyond opposition to nuclear weapons
to a wider critique of western militarism.
Ms Hudson, who is a Communist party member, has advocated a move away
from the purist idea of retaining a narrow focus on nuclear weapons in
favour of the more pragmatic approach of taking anti-nuclear issues into
the wider political debate on pre-emptive war and weapons of mass destruction.
Mr Barnes claims the Communist party and Socialist Action sought control
of CND in order to use the campaign as a base from which to exert influence
over the Stop the War coalition, the loose body which organised the massive
protests against the war in Iraq. Mr Barnes asserts the coalition is increasingly
dominated by another Trotskyist group, the Socialist Workers party.
Referring to the last CND conference, he claimed "the antagonism
we saw at the conference is derivative of the aggressive and sectarian
behaviour of those involved in the Stop the War coalition who strove hard
to control and dominate the anti-war protest movement".
He claims CND officer positions are "now dominated by people associated
with these two political groups, although in practice the groups act as
one". The new leadership were so polarised from the membership that
the campaign could no longer function as a forum for debate. He claims
both CND and the Stop the War movement believe the political opposition
to the Iraq war is "generalisable into a political reaction against
the New Labour project overall". Mr Barnes partially agrees with
that position, but warns that the million plus anti-Iraq war marchers
"have not been asked about this alternative political project and
are unlikely to feel much affinity for it".
He also alleges that some in the Stop the War coalition have compromised
on issues such as gay rights and even anti-semitism to retain the support
of some British Muslims. Revealing the average age of CND member is 63,
he argues that other voluntary groups such as the National Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, or Breast Cancer Awareness have
managed to grow by effective campaign work. CND by contrast has failed
to expand, leaving a vacuum to be filled by other groups. Whether those
groups will manage to be any more cohesive and harmonious than this one
remains to be seen.
6. Letters : CND's nuclear defence
The Guardian , Tuesday December 2, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1097719,00.html
It's a shame Jimmy Barnes does not put his imaginative talents (Far left
has hijacked peace group, December 1) to use in furthering the cause of
peace and nuclear disarmament in the trade union movement, rather than
wasting his time writing nonsense about the organisations that have helped
mobilise millions in peace protests over the last year.
If he had come to CND's public meeting in parliament last week on the
dangers of the development of new nuclear weapons, he would have heard
from Labour and Plaid Cymru MPs, together with the Green party deputy
mayor of London. A far cry fromhis fantasies about hard-left domination.
He is also wrong to suggest CND is pursuing an anti-New Labour position.
CND takes no position for or against political parties. Our concern is
simply to change government - and party - policies, to secure the abolition
of nuclear weapons and achieve a foreign policy based on respect for international
law - rejecting illegal notions of pre-emptive war and nuclear first strike.
We believe this approach has overwhelming support among the British population,
as shown by the size of recent peace protests, and the rise in applications
to CND - from all age ranges and walks of life.
Kate Hudson
Chair, CND
The average age of CND members is no longer 63. That figure is several
years old, collected before our campaigns aimed at students and young
people. The under-25s represent the fastest growing section of our membership.
Linda Hugl
Treasurer, CND
Less than two weeks ago, reporting on the protests against George Bush,
you referred to the Stop the War Coalition as the "fastest growing
political movement in Britain". Stop the War has, along with CND
and the Muslim Association of Britain, organised six major demonstrations
in just over a year. These have all shown the breadth and diversity for
which our movement is noted. None of this could have been achieved by
a tiny group of Trotskyists or communists. All the demonstrations have
contained people of every religion and none, of different races and nationalities,
and of different sexual orientation. Jimmy Barnes claims to speak authoritatively
on the Stop the War Coalition, yet he has had, to the best of our knowledge,
no involvement in it at any stage.
Lindsey German
Convenor, Stop the War Coalition
Is Jimmy Barnes suggesting the peace movement should say nothing about
the world situation? Nuclear weapons are not the central focus of the
Bush doctrine, but their use is not ruled out. CND's chair was democratically
elected and CND's council has voted overwhelmingly to work with Stop the
War. Many more people are able to make the connection between Britain's
possession of nuclear weapons and its role as the steadfast ally of the
US. We have been here before, not just when I was chair, but also during
the Vietnam war.
Marjorie Thompson
CND chair 1990-93
Bush is pushing ahead with the development of a new generation of "mini-nukes"
- to penetrate underground bunkers. The targets are third world countries
the Bush administration chooses to link to terrorism. And defence secretary
Geoff Hoon told me in a parliamentary answer last year: "The UK would,
in the right conditions, in extreme circumstances of self-defence, be
prepared to use nuclear weapons." The campaign to remove nuclear
weapons of mass destruction from the British arsenal is as important as
ever.
Llew Smith MP
Lab, Blaenau Gwent
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7 The Secret Rapture, Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, London
The Independent, 28 November 2003
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/theatre/reviews/story.jsp?story=467859
Nothing feels as dated as the recent past. So you might think that it
would not be a kindness to David Hare to revive, now, his 1988 play The
Secret Rapture and to judge from Guy Retallack's dismal production at
the Lyric, Shaftesbury Avenue, you'd be absolutely right. This is all
the sadder because Hare is now rightly basking in the universal acclaim
for his latest piece, The Permanent Way, a deeply incisive documentary
drama about the criminal lunacy of rail privatization.
At its premiere, The Secret Rapture was hailed as a searching study of
the way Thatcherism corrupted human relationships and as a powerful depiction
of the conflict between the ethics of business success and the principles
of personal loyalty. The original director, Howard Davies, must have done
an even more brilliant job than he was credited for at the time. He gave,
as I recall, a Chekhovian, elegiac dimension to the piece, haunting it
with a stricken nostalgia for the more honourable world that had fallen
to the acquisitive, asset-stripping barbarians. When, however, the play
is presented in such an unsubtle and drably designed revival as this,
its crudeness is, I'm afraid, horribly exposed.
Two overtly contrasted sisters are brought together by their CND-supporting
father's death and they come to grief over what should be done for their
youthful, wayward and alcoholic stepmother. For the play to work, we should
feel ambivalent about both siblings. But the Tory junior minister, Marion
(Belinda Lang) comes across as a shrill caricature of thrusting tidy-mindedness,
shrieking lines like: "God, how I hate all this human stuff"
- a fact which reminds you that one of Thatcher's malign effects was to
drag oppositional art down to her own simplified level. As the virtuous
sister, Isobel, a partner in a small design firm, Jenny Seagrove makes
you reckon that a night on the tiles with Shakespeare's priggish Cordelia
would be vastly more fun than a flirtation with this grimly righteous
paragon of non-compromise.
Peter Egan is such a fine actor that he manages to hint at a sympathetic
side to Marion's husband, Tom, the president of Christians in Business
("We try to do business the way Jesus would have done it").
The play, though, keeps descending into smugly triumphant point-scoring
that might have felt elating in 1988, but makes you cringe with its cheapness
now. Even the saintly Isobel gets in on the act. Describing how the stepmother
plunged a steak-knife at an obstructive managing director's heart, she
says: "It's fine. It's not a problem. He's an ad-man. His heart presents
a very small target."
It's hard to credit any of the turning points in the plot, not least the
sudden spiritual conversion of the Tory Marion after Isobel's murder.
Maybe one day the time will be ripe again for this work. Meanwhile, if
you want to take in a David Hare play this winter, make it The Permanent
Way.
Booking to 21 February (0870 890 1107)
……………………………………………..
8 No cancer risk' from base
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/north_yorkshire/3244206.stm
BBC News, 30 November, 2003
There is no evidence of an increased risk of cancer for people living
near the RAF Fylingdales radar base in North Yorkshire, according to a
report. The Scarborough, Whitby and Ryedale primary care trust (PCT) study
found no difference between cancer rates in villages around the site and
the wider area. But it recommends further monitoring of the early warning
base and says long-term research is needed to discount any possible link
to human health problems.
Critics of RAF Fylingdales welcomed the conclusion but said the report
only scratched the surface of the issue.
They argue that it will be a number of years before the health effects
of low radio frequency radiation from the base showed up in statistics
after its last technology upgrade in the late 1980s. The PCT launched
the study in response to a BBC documentary which reported possible cancer
clusters near a similar early warning base at Cape Cod in the US.
Dr Jeffrie Strang, the PCT's Director of Public Health, told BBC News
Online that local people should be reassured by his findings.
"What we have done in the look back exercise shows that Fylingdales
is as safe - if not safer - than the primary care trust area as a whole,"
he said. "I am pleased to be able to say that this retrospective
study does not provide evidence of a link between RAF Fylingdales and
cancer registrations. "We do take it seriously because it's important
to people in the area and we feel we can totally reassure the population
they are safe."
Dr Strang looked at cancer registrations in the wards of Derwent, Ebberston,
Eskdaleside, Fylingdales, Pickering and Thornton-le-Dale between 1991
and 1999. Figures showed that rates were either statistically lower or
similar to Scarborough and the PCT as a whole during the period after
the last technology upgrade at the RAF base.
While the report recommends long-term research, Dr Strang has doubts as
to whether this is feasible because of emissions from other sources such
as mobile phones, televisions and computers.
He argued: "The best way forward is to carry on monitoring the cancer
rates to reassure the population around Fylingdales. "There is a
wealth of epidemiological studies into low level frequency radiation and
no-one has come up with any substantive evidence of a link to cancer."
Delayed effects
But campaign group Fylingdales Action Network said this was exactly the
kind of study that should be carried out at the base. Spokesman Keith
Morrison said: "There should be continuous monitoring of radiation
at agreed points so we know what is coming out and when. "The real
problem is not RAF Fylingdales during its total time, but with the radar
that has only been in ten years. "Research shows that this radiation
takes a period of time for these health effects to show up." "We
have talked to people who have done work on electromagnetic radiation
and although in theory they can see the various ways it can effect humans,
they are not entirely sure how it manifests itself."
Further investigation
Yorkshire CND also expressed reservations about the scope
of the PCT's report. Its development worker, Neil Kingsnorth, welcomed
the study but said it should be just the first step to a further investigation.
"Fylingdales poses a potential threat to health through the rare
type of pulsed radiation and through the long-term effects of the radar's
beam," he said. "The government has a responsibility to fully
investigate the whole spectrum of potential health effects of his type
of radar. This report has not done that." Work will shortly begin
on another technology upgrade at the base to bring it into line with the
US missile defence programme, dubbed "Son of Star Wars".
An MoD spokesman said: "The Ministry of Defence welcomes the results
of the study, which found that there was no significant difference between
the rates of cancer in the areas around RAF Fylingdales and the rates
in either the Primary Care Trust catchment area or in the Northern and
Yorkshire region including South Humber.
"The study does not provide evidence of a link between RAF Fylingdales
and cancer registrations.
"The MoD will co-operate with the Primary Care Trust in seeking to
establish the feasibility of any further study."
……………………………………………..
9 Risibly smug dud that's had its day
The Daily Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2003/11/28/btchas28.xml&sSheet=/arts/2003/11/28/ixartright.html
Charles Spencer reviews The Secret Rapture at the Lyric Theatre
Back in 1989, the year after The Secret Rapture had opened at the National
Theatre and been hailed as the definitive drama about Thatcher's Britain,
David Hare gave an interview to a Canadian newspaper. "It's either
the Great Play or a load of old tosh," he ruminated. I wouldn't have
put it quite so starkly myself, but, since these were Hare's own terms,
it seems only courteous to go along with him. The Secret Rapture is indeed
a load of old tosh.
As so often with this writer, the ideas are interesting but the execution
is inept. Hare wanted to write a play about goodness and the way that
good people have the unhappy knack of bringing out the worst in others.
He also wanted to write a piece about "the psychology of Thatcherism"
and to discover whether it were still possible to write a tragedy in late-20th-century
England.
Commendable aims indeed, but his ambition so exceeds his grasp that the
effect is at times downright risible. Far from writing a modern tragedy,
he has written a combination of crude political satire and obnoxiously
sentimental melodrama that left this viewer seething with a mixture of
fury and vague nausea. The play is alarmingly schematic, concerning a
pair of sisters, one good, the other bad, who come together for the funeral
of their father, an unworldly CND-supporting bookseller.
Marion (Belinda Lang) is a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's government,
all power suits and sneers, who makes Edwina Currie seem like a model
of delicacy and tact. Her sister, Isobel (Jenny Seagrove), meanwhile,
glows with kindness and concern, qualities that inflame Marion to snarling
rage. It is naturally Isobel who takes over the care of their father's
much younger widow, an hysterical alcoholic, and before long Marion and
her born-again Christian husband are busy asset-stripping Isobel's once
flourishing commercial design business. Oh, and there is also Isobel's
besotted lover, who precipitates the play's bloody but - wouldn't you
just guess it - redemptive climax, when Marion finally discovers humanity
in her grief.
I don't know what's more sickening here - the crude jibes at Conservatism
and Christianity (Tory ministers can't make their wives come; Christians
are cheats at business), or the play's sanctimonious sentimentality. Nor
has Hare achieved his aim of making goodness interesting. Isobel is so
priggishly disapproving of the values of those around her - she even ditches
her boyfriend simply because he seizes the chance of making a bit of money
- and so wrapped up in her own moral righteousness that you readily understand
why she gets up people's noses. I felt like strangling the bloody woman
myself.
I'm also baffled by the decision to revive the piece 15 years on. Back
in the 1980s, The Secret Rapture at least had the virtue of topicality
in its sarky satire of the "greed is good" mentality. Seen in
Blair's brave new Britain, the play seems like something unearthed at
an archaeological dig, a glimpse of the customs and values of an impossibly
distant society. Great art transcends its period. It is a mark of this
play's weakness that it so dismally fails to do so.
In Guy Retallack's production, drably designed by Robert Jones, the cast
do what they can to kick the piece into a semblance of life. Lang comes
on like Cruella De Vil as the terrible Tory and is entertaining as caricatured
stage villains often are, though the mawkish soppy ending defeats even
this fine actress; Seagrove is huskily earnest and sincere as Isobel;
Peter Egan brings admirable subtlety and humour to Hare's one-dimensional
study of the born-again Christian, while Liza Walker is memorably intense
as the flaky, self-centred widow.
Their valiant efforts, however, can't conceal the fact that The Secret
Rapture is a smug dud that has had its day.
……………………………………………..
10 Letters : CND and the unions
The Guardian , Wednesday December 3, 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,3604,1098427,00.html
The briefing paper produced for TUCND (Far left has hijacked peace group,
December 1; Letters, December 2) is accurate and based on fact. If it
wasn't, then CND wouldn't be losing money and members at the rate it is
and it wouldn't have been negotiating with us to merge.
The peace movement, with Stop the War and CND as they are now, isn't going
to achieve what its supporters want to see. That will take a campaign,
rather than a protest movement, and to gather the resources needed, it's
got to be democratic. It was a good thing the Socialist Workers party
took the initiative in opposing the war - no one else would have. In the
long term, however, we need something different.
CND needed to move away from being an exclusively anti-nuclear group,
but its last conference has made change more difficult. You can't do this
by packing meetings and simply repeating that CND is still relevant. CND
needs to break out of the comfortable middle-class enclave it has traditionally
depended on - and that means involving unions. This document was the inevitable
result of the leadership's refusal to handle debate democratically. You
can't launch a coup and hope no one will notice. Some critics haven't
even read the document (available from us).
Jim Barnes
Secretary, Trade Union CND
tuworks@btinternet.com
As an American against Bush, I was interviewed with others by the BBC
before the recent demo, while near the head of the procession with the
Muslim organisations and CND leaders. Our arguments were broadcast on
TV immediately. So far, so effective. By the time we left Malet Street
to begin our march, we had been bypassed by masses of demonstrators pushing
through us carrying SWP placards, thus diluting an effective presence
which had caught the attention of the American press. The SWP, as before,
worked very hard for this demo, but in this case has been shown to either
lack priorities or discipline.
Nick Jeffrey
London
I worked at the STW campaign earlier this year, before the historic February
march. During a brainstorming session, when the question of why people
thought we were a front for the SWP came up, I volunteered that because
we weren't, we had no need to worry about attacks over that issue. The
STWC volunteer chairing the meeting rather sheepishly admitted that the
organisation was actually funded and supported by the SWP. The end of
a short affair followed.
Seth Jacobson
London
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