19 Jan 11 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost, News and features
Britain’s top civil servant, Sir Gus O’Donnell, has refused permission for notes between former prime minister Tony Blair and former US president George Bush to be published by the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war.
Head of the Inquiry, Sir John Chilcot, has said the notes — which he has seen — are “central to his work”. But civil servants say their publication could harm Britain’s relations with the US.
Read more here
12 Oct 10 | Uncategorized
If you wanted to know what really went on in the run-up to the Iraq war, Matthew Rycroft would be the person to ask. He was Tony Blair’s private secretary for foreign affairs from 2002-4 and saw just about everything that happened at first hand. No doubt that is why the Iraq inquiry has just seen him in secret.
The inquiry has just published an update on what it has been doing since public hearings ended in July. It visited Iraq, as promised, and has published the names of some of the people it spoke to, but not what they said. It has also revealed that it saw two witnesses in what it insists on calling “private hearings”. Of the two, Rycroft is undoubtedly the more significant.
What is intriguing about Rycroft’s secret session is that we are not told why. The inquiry coyly points to its protocol on witness evidence, which states that most witnesses will be seen in public but sets out reasons for secret hearings. These include the usual issues of “national security” and “vital national interests” but also “to protect any [junior official] who may wish to give evidence that runs counter to others”.
This is the Iraq inquiry in a nutshell. Are they trying to sit on sensitive information to protect the British state from embarrassment? Or trying to make it easier for people to blow the whistle? We won’t know until the report is published — early next year — and even then we won’t know what, if anything, we are not being told.
What we do know is that Rycroft would be the perfect whistleblower. He wrote many of the documents that the inquiry has failed to publish and was at Blair’s side at virtually all of the key meetings. He was, for example, the author of the notorious Downing Street memo, which recorded a crucial meeting at No 10 in July 2002, and was present at the White House six months later when Blair told George Bush, that Britain was solidly behind the war, whatever the outcome of UN inspections. He saw the very unwelcome advice from attorney general Lord Goldsmith a day earlier — that war would be illegal without a new UN resolution — and apparently wrote on the memo: “specifically said we did not need further advice [on] this matter.”
But if Rycroft has spilled the beans, it is far from clear whether his evidence will see the light of day. The inquiry is still dithering about whether to call back key witnesses, like Blair, to go through any gaps and contradictions — which could now include what Rycroft has said. And in its press release today, it claims that its protocol “sets out the approach the Inquiry will take to considering how best to draw on and explain in public what was covered in private”. Except that all the protocol says is that the inquiry will “careful consideration” as to how best to do this.
If Rycroft’s evidence does not feature, we’ll have to draw our own conclusions.
09 Sep 10 | Uncategorized
The argument that mob censorship is what stopped Tony Blair from going ahead with his London book signing and subsequent private shindig at Tate Modern holds no water. A much larger mob of millions marched against the invasion of Iraq in 800 cities around the world. But in those days Blair ran Britain. And his mate George ran the United States.
These days Tony Blair cuts a tragicomic figure who embodies the oxymoron. He’s charged with bringing about Middle East peace when his actions fuelled fires in those deserts. He’s pulled out of public events due to “threats of protest” from a gaggle of anti-war activists yet was cloth-eared to the millions shouting against an Iraq invasion before a single shock had been awed.
The demonstrations in Dublin set a precedent but would you have expected anything less? Hundreds of thousands of war dead may have been wiped off this earth but the violence that brought those deaths have scarred the skin of our humanity. The world was screaming “stop” but the men who held the guns still shot. We’ll never forgive Blair or Bush for that.
By publishing his book, he’s exercised his right to speak. He’s sated his ego by ensuring he won’t be forgotten. The people who planned to demonstrate at Waterstone’s and Tate Modern would’ve been exercising their right to protest. Both are freedoms of expression we should fight to protect. Both are freedoms the dead do not have.
Blair is having a crisis of conscience. He’s not having second thoughts about causing the deaths of soldiers and civilians and upsetting the balance of the Middle East for generations. Ever the considerate host, he feared a thousand people with placards calling him a war criminal would “hassle” his guests. Perhaps cancelling his events is muzzling him. But it’s not censorship that stopped him. It’s cowardice.
06 Sep 10 | Uncategorized
A while back, representatives of Index and other organisations and individuals signed a letter in response to what was seen as a censorious attempt to stop bookshops hosting signings of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s new autobiography, A Journey.
The letter said:
When it comes to literature, drama, journalism, artistic expression and scientific publication we must be consistent in our support for free speech. How can we defend the right of the Birmingham Repertory to put on and advertise a play like Behzti, despite it being deemed offensive to some Sikhs, and then call on a bookseller not to promote one of its books – or a library not to stock it — on the grounds of offence? The answer, in a liberal society, is to not read the book if it offends you, and to not buy a copy if you don’t wish royalties to go to the author.
Since then, things have changed. On Saturday, Blair’s signing in Dublin was the subject of a rowdy protest by members of the anti-Iraq war Socialist Workers Party and Republican group Eirigi, who objected to Blair’s role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
The signing went ahead, but under a massive security operation.
Today, it’s been announced that Blair will not be signing books in London. Blair said:
I have decided not to go ahead with the signing as I don’t want the public to be inconvenienced by the inevitable hassle caused by protestors
This seems practical, but hardly ideal. Clearly the violent scenes in Dublin have made Mr Blair think again. But would things in London inevitably have turned out the same? I’m not sure. An equivalent group to Eirigi does not exist, and the groups that have previously protested against Blair have not, to be fair, turned violent.
Then again, they might have decided to follow the example of the Dublin crowds.
In which case, a literary event has been closed down due to fear of violence.
Which, to me, sounds like mob censorship.
(And no, I am not for a moment questioning the right to peaceful protest.)
