Mark Thomas | ukwatch.net

Help Me Put Gordon in Jail

Tim Holmes — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:33:10 +0000

Rarely do first lines have the potential to cost thousands of pounds (outside of libel), and rarely do I get to write words quite like those that follow, so forgive me an over-dramatic opening sentence, but yesterday lawyers acting for me started an attempt to get Gordon Brown into the dock.

With lawyers and police working on the ongoing Donorgate inquiries, Downing Street can be quite crowded if you are trying to bring a legal action. Nonetheless, my lawyers delivered a letter to the director of public prosecutions on Wednesday afternoon calling for an urgent investigation into allegations that the prime minister broke the law by demonstrating unlawfully in Parliament Square last summer. If found guilty he could face 50 weeks in prison – though, after serving 10 years at No 11, he should do his bird with ease.

This is partly Mr Brown’s own fault. It began when MPs rushed the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 through, forcing anyone wishing to demonstrate within an area around parliament to get police approval. This is the law that Maya Evans was arrested and convicted under, for reading out the names of the British and Iraqi war dead.

In the past 18 months I have legally demonstrated in every corner of the area this law covers, from Hungerford Bridge (demanding more trolls) to the Mall (demanding human rights in Saudi Arabia). The definition of what constitutes a protest is such that I had to apply for permission to wear a red nose in Parliament Square on Red Nose Day. Not to do so would have risked arrest. Last month I had to get police approval to hold a banner saying, “Support the Poppy Appeal”.

If the wearing of a brightly coloured proboscis constitutes a protest, then the unveiling of Nelson Mandela’s statue must do so too. After all, it celebrated the collapse of apartheid (a political cause), honoured a man who organised the armed struggle in South Africa (definitely political and quite possibly glorifying terrorism) and pledged to fight poverty.

So, being civic-minded, I wrote to the police asking if I needed permission for a gathering at the statue. My event had speeches – in fact, they were extracts from the original speeches made on the day by Mr Brown and Mr Mandela. Yes, the police informed me, I did need permission to demonstrate – which I duly applied for and received. Unfortunately for the prime minister, it seems no one bothered to get police approval at the event he spoke at.

Mr Brown, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. One person can constitute a demonstration, but what exactly is a demonstration? In law, there is little to go by, but for various dictionary definitions, such as “an expression of opinion”. It is my duty as a law-abiding citizen, therefore, to add to the legal letter served the names of MPs seen holding forth on political issues on College Green, urging the DPP to investigate them for breaking the law and demonstrating without permission. It does not matter that they are being interviewed for news programmes – the law allows no exceptions or exemptions. In fact, the news organisations could be guilty of organising unlawful demonstrations by asking MPs to speak, so I have reported them as well.

All of this may seem ridiculous, but hey, they started it, and making a crap law does not exempt you from its provisions. So I am calling on all fair-minded citizens to report any MPs seen giving interviews on College Green or in Parliament Square. You can do so by photographing the offending MP and posting it to www.shopanmp.com.

Mark Thomas is a comedian and political activist; to support the action, you can buy an “I put Gordon Brown in the dock” badge for £2 at www.markthomasinfo.com. Any money not used in the legal challenge will be donated to Index on Censorship

Martin and Me

Tim Holmes — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 18:01:05 +0000

If I were to count the cuts that killed my friendship with a man called Martin Hogbin then the thousandth came within a solitary line of a legal document. This document, dated October 2007, had a dull, dry title: “A Consent Order”. And when I read it, years of trust and love slipped away.

But first I had better go back to the beginning.

A sizeable chunk of my work, be it writing, performing or making TV shows, has been about the arms trade, and I met Martin shortly after he joined the peace group I was involved with, the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). Martin was 45 when he joined CAAT as a volunteer in 1997; in 2000, he became a member of staff as the group’s national campaign and events coordinator.

We hit it off: Martin was a breath of fresh air in a world that can sometimes become a tad pious and self-congratulatory. Unlike the mass of anti-arms-trade activists, he played golf and wore Pringle sweaters – you don’t tend to see many Pringle sweaters on protests against international merchants of death.

I wasn’t the only one to like and trust him, and to be impressed by his work. One of those close to Martin was Steve, who says now that, “for the younger activists, Martin was like a father figure”. Martin always seemed to be the last one to leave the police station if a protester was arrested. He always made sure they got home safely – and normally with a drink inside them. He was rude, warm and had a wonderful sense of mischief. He would often come along to my live stand-up shows to help run the stalls, handing out leaflets and flogging books. I would sometimes even refer to him in the shows.

This is one of the stories I told about him. I phoned him one morning to hear his Kent twang bark: “Can’t talk, I’m chained to a petrol pump!”

“What?”

“Protest to shut down Esso stations!” he replied.

Whether the cause was climate change or Iraq mattered less than the vision of his ruddy frame strapped to a pump.

“What have the cops done?” I giggled.

“Two of them came over and asked us how long we would be here. I said probably all day. They said, ‘All right then, as long as you don’t do anything illegal, we’ll leave you to it,’ and then fucked off!”

“Bloody hell, mate! They could have had you on aggravated trespass.”

“I know, I know, but I thought if they weren’t going to say anything, neither was I!”

There was a pause before he continued in a matter-of-fact tone: “They did get a bit narky when I tried to light a fag.”

Above all else, Martin would always turn up and lend a hand. He seemed to be everywhere: getting kicked out of a company annual general meeting, helping to run a mock fire sale of the Iraqi national bank in the City, dressed as a devil on May Day or organising press conferences at the start of the London Arms Fair. We were friends; I knew his family. He became an integral part of my life.

Then, in September 2003, the Sunday Times exposed a “spy network” run by a woman called Evelyn Le Chêne on behalf of BAE Systems, the giant, multinational arms manufacturer. The story claimed that Le Chêne had a database of more than 148,000 names and addresses of activists, peace campaigners, environmentalists and union members, and that she was running spies who posed as activists to obtain confidential information from pressure groups. According to the story, reports on CAAT were at one point being sent daily to BAE’s security group from within the organisation.

Martin phoned that morning: “Fucking hell! Have you seen the papers? There’s a spy! Who do you reckon it is?”

“I’ve got no idea, mate, no idea,” I replied.

A week later, however, Martin was suspended from CAAT. An inspection of his computer by staff at the CAAT office had shown he had forwarded emails to a strange email address that no one recognised, with no surname or company name, and he had fallen under suspicion.

His closest friends were furious: not at Martin, but at CAAT. “How could they get it so wrong?” we thought. “How could they think Martin was a spy? Martin is our mate and a great campaigner.”

But amid the bar-room bluster lurked a few tiny doubts. I phoned Martin during the first days of the furore.

“You have got to take legal action,” I said. “You have been slandered. Take them on.”

“Nah, fuck ‘em,” he rasped back.

“You have to, Martin. Is it the money? We can do benefits – we can raise the money.” I wanted him to fight, to prove them wrong.

“Nah, it ain’t worth it, if that’s what they want to believe, there’s nothing I can do about it. Fuck ‘em.”

I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to fight the allegations. Later, in the same phone call, I asked him directly.

“Martin, did you do it?”

“Fuck off! Course I didn’t.”

“I have to ask, you understand.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

I took his word for it. Martin had said the accusations were bollocks, so even to look at the file of evidence people said they had on him would be to suspect a friend and that would be an act of treachery on my part. For more than a year, in fact, I defended him and once again, when it was time to tour with my stand-up show, Martin came along. Touring the country, sharing hotel rooms and kipping on the floor in a sleeping bag, Martin helped raise thousands of pounds that funded anti-arms-trade groups and trade unionists visits to Colombia.

But still I had doubts. There were the logical worries, such as: why had he not gone to the CAAT inquiry to clear his name? And there were the instinctive: had his voice sounded weird when he asked: “Who do you reckon it is then?”

The questions never left me. So in 2005 I climbed the narrow stairs to an empty room at the top of CAAT offices in London and sat alone at a wooden table reading the confidential and internal emails Martin had forwarded to a mystery address while working at CAAT. He had always admitted forwarding them, insisting they were to go to an ex-CAAT volunteer. How had they been sent to this mystery address, then – an address unrelated to the ex-volunteer?

Martin has said it was by mistake. But when I looked at the file, I wondered how anyone could make this many “mistakes”. I was shaking my head – I don’t know if it was an attempt to clear it or a register of disbelief. There were hundreds of emails sent “by mistake”. And slowly I became aware that I actually wanted to vomit with the fear that my friend might be a spy.

Shortly afterwards, CAAT revealed that the government’s independent information commissioner, Richard Thomas, had investigated the case and found that “a former member” had been forwarding information to an email at a company with links to Le Chêne. He refused to name Martin, stating there was insufficient evidence to do so.

Then last year, CAAT – alongside the environmental and human rights NGO, the Corner House – opted to bring a judicial review of the Serious Fraud Office’s decision to drop the investigation into the allegations of bribery between BAE Systems and Saudi Arabia. A month later, in January this year and out of the blue, BAE Systems lawyers contacted CAAT’s lawyers and said words to the effect of: “Terribly sorry, old bean, but we appear to have your confidential legal strategy for the judicial review.” For non-legal laymen, having possession of the other side’s legal work is considered exceptionally bad form, akin to a doctor groping a patient. It’s the kind of thing that can get lawyers kicked out of their profession.

The peaceniks at CAAT, not unreasonably, wanted to know how a multinational arms dealer had come by their confidential documents. The company refused to tell them. So CAAT took BAE Systems to court, and there the company was forced to admit that the document had been sent to them, unsolicited, by Paul Mercer, whose company, LigneDeux Associates, was paid by BAE Systems to provide “media and internet monitoring” on CAAT. In essence, they admitted that they had been paying for CAAT to be spied on – an extraordinary admission. Normally, campaigners’ tales of being infiltrated by corporations are seen as the imaginings of paranoid conspiracy theorists. The company’s admission has changed that. (Mercer claims CAAT’s confidential documents were sent to him anonymously in a brown paper envelope. CAAT are continuing legal proceedings against him.)

What makes this even more unprecedented, though, is the company’s legal promise not to spy on CAAT in the future. BAE Systems has undertaken “not to intercept by any unlawful means … [and] not to solicit, voluntarily receive or procure any confidential communication or document” belonging to CAAT. The big picture is that a multimillion-pound arms firm has been humiliated, it has been caught and forced to admit to paying for spying on a peace group comprised primarily of students and Quakers, and has promised not to do it again.

And in the corner of the big picture is my friendship with Martin. Amid all the legalese, in that document marked “A Consent Order”, BAE Systems admitted to hiring two people in particular, Paul Mercer and Evelyn Le Chêne. Those were the three words, the name “Evelyn Le Chêne” – they were the 1,000th cut. Le Chêne was a spy organiser living in Kent. Martin Hogbin, my trusted friend, was passing information “by mistake” to a company linked to her. Those were the facts.

Now, four years after the allegations against Martin emerged, I stand on the platform at Paddock Wood waiting for the Maidstone connection. I am heading to Martin’s home. I want him to tell me the truth.

Some CAAT supporters believe Martin joined the group with the aim, right from the start, of passing on information – a view I find strangely comforting. This interpretation of events means he befriended us to do his job, and get information, ergo there was no betrayal, as there was no real friendship. But life is messier than that. “It’s not black and white, Mark,” says Em. She has been one of the key organisers for the protests and direct action against the arms fair in London; Martin Hogbin is the godfather of her son. “I have not spoken to him in nearly two years,” she says. “But whatever happened, there were moments in our friendship that are genuine.”

Another activist, Gideon, was particularly good friends with Hogbin. In 1999, they spent an afternoon in the Houses of Parliament “dungeon” after they hurled photocopied money covered in fake blood at MPs from the public gallery. “To this day I would still call him a mate,” says Gideon, even though he too suspects Martin. “I don’t think he did it out of sympathy to the arms dealers,” he says. “Maybe it was power.”

As I stand in front of Martin’s front door, I realise I am scared. Not of the truth, but scared he will open the door and I’ll see him as a friend again. I’m scared I’ll let him off the hook. I want to ask, if he was a spy, how much we were worth? How much did he get paid for us? I want to know if it was ideological or if it was about the money, or just the thrill of betrayal? Waiting on the concrete patch by his front door, I run through the questions one more time, determined rational fact should triumph over latent affection.

Martin’s wife opens the door. “Mark!” she blurts out. “Come in, come in.”

“Is Martin in?” I struggle to keep it business-like.

“No, he is at work. Come on in.”

There is barely room for us to keep a proper distance as we stand facing each other.

“I’m writing about Martin,” I say. “He needs to read this letter.” I hand her my letter, in which I outline what I’m going to say about him in this article and ask him to respond. She looks pained, as if expecting the worst.

“I wish this was under different circumstances. I really don’t want to drag you into this,” I say.

Her hands are held up to her neck, and in a torn voice she exclaims, “I can’t say anything, Mark, I daren’t say anything.”

Awkward and incapable of offering comfort, I say: “How is he?”

“Not good,” she says. “He lost all his friends, you, everyone … We have to make ends meet. You can see …” She gestures around the tiny house.

If Martin was a spy, his circumstances suggest he got considerably less than 30 pieces of silver. Maybe he is just another victim of the arms trade.

Six days later I get a text from Martin. He accuses me of threatening his wife and then says: “I hope and wish all my old friends health, success and happiness. I miss you all and cherish our achievements and time together. Please do not try to continue to contact me.”

And with that text the tale comes to an abrupt end. Martin is the only person who can tell me what he did, if anything, and why, but he doesn’t want to talk. I suspect he was a spy and until he decides to speak I can never know the truth about that, or about our relationship. But sometimes when a memory of him emerges unheeded or I catch a glimpse of him in an old photo, I remember that once upon a time a man called Martin Hogbin was my friend … then I shake my head and get back to work.

The gnat and the elephant

How a tiny peace group irritated Europe’s biggest arms company

It seems curious that BAE Systems, Europe’s biggest arms company with sales of £13bn a year, should have felt the need to spy on the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), a small peace group with a budget of less of £250,000 a year. BAE Systems (formerly British Aerospace) is enormously influential within the highest reaches of government; so much so that Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary, once said he never knew Downing Street make any decision that displeased BAE.

CAAT, meanwhile – with its seven paid staff and a limited number of activists – does its best to influence those in power by organising demonstrations and vigils outside the offices of government departments and arms companies. If one is an elephant, the other is a gnat.

But it would appear that gnats can irritate elephants, because in 2003 it was alleged that BAE Systems was paying out £120,000 a year to spy on the peace group. The alleged spy organiser, a woman in her 60s called Evelyn Le Chêne, was understood to have been hired in the mid-1990s, when CAAT was intensifying its campaign against BAE’s plans to sell Hawk fighter jets to the repressive regime in Indonesia.

As well as demonstrations, CAAT was writing letters to ministers and MPs, and it was alleged that Le Chêne obtained copies of some of these letters from inside CAAT and passed them to BAE Systems. Her reports were also alleged to contain details of how the activists were seeking to recruit celebrities such as Helen Mirren to their cause.

BAE Systems has in the past refused to comment on the allegations, but it has made clear that it considers anti-arms trade groups such as CAAT a “threat to the company’s security”. In a recent court document, Mike McGinty, BAE’s security director, said: “Some of these groups have, as a result of direct action, caused significant damage to the company’s property, put the employees of the company in fear and at risk and disrupted the company’s business.”

He cited, as examples, activists who caused £1.5m of damage to a warplane and the occupation of an airfield by 60 protestors, which forced it to be closed for a day.

Rob Evans

Why Vote?

Tim Holmes — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 10:50:59 +0000

The problem with democracy is that politicians give it such a bad name, and the problem with voting is that it encourages them.

I have, on occasion, refused to vote in elections; even, at one stage, contemplating a picket line at the local polling station, complete with fold-up chairs, braziers and placards declaring ANGRY NOT APATHETIC. On declaring my intention not to vote to liberal-minded friends, I was greeted with howls of disbelief.

“People died for your right to vote, so you have to vote,” they would say. Well, people also died in the Falklands war, the Boer war and the opium wars; this does not mean I have to like Margaret Thatcher, hate the Dutch and take heroin. It was the Chartists, in the mid 19th century, who campaigned, fought and often died for the right to vote. In fact, they rioted too – and frankly, if the Chartists could take a look at today’s MPs, I have a feeling they would go straight back to rioting again.

Not voting is not to be equated with not having the right to vote. The suppression of democracy is a vile and often violent thing. It goes hand-in-hand with the worst corruption and abuse of human rights. Even with the faults of parliamentary democracy, its most basic function is to make politicians and those in power more accountable. But the desperate need and long struggle for democracy in Burma doesn’t compel anyone of us to vote in a UK election. Everyone has a right to vote, to choose their representatives – it is a right we can use or not.

The simple fact is that if people felt there were something worth voting for, they would do so in greater numbers. If you can find no party or politician that reflects your views, why should you vote? Why should you vote for something you disagree with? Democracy cannot be the process of choosing a politician on the grounds that they are the least distasteful of the two major parties on offer. That is not democracy; that is the Coke-Pepsi challenge.

Surely, those who vote on the basis of backing “the lesser of two evils” are, in fact, undermining the very principle of democracy, because it undervalues and undermines our power and worth in the political process. Ultimately, it is an act of self-censorship and more damaging to democracy than not voting in the first place.

Some pundits are in favour of a section on a ballot paper where voters can tick “none of the above” as a means of registering dissent. I favour a “comments page”, whereby voters can write their opinions on the ballot. These would then be compiled into a massive leatherbound volume, and at the start and end of parliamentary business each day, MPs would publicly read from pages chosen at random. As the speaker tucks his black garb beneath his legs and sits in collared splendor, an MP would stand at the dispatch box, intoning like a vicar running through the marriage bands on Sunday, ‘We don’t want a bypass in West Flitwick.” They turn the page, flick, flick.

“Why was no one sacked over the Northern Rock scandal – the regulatory process of the globalised financial service industry must be accountable and transparent.” Flick, flick. “Who ate all the pies? Who ate all the pies? You fat bastard, you fat bastard. Who ate all the pies? I declare this House in session.” At least, this way, we could be sure of our voice in parliament.

These days, I do vote simply because my politics changed to the point where I actually wanted to support the Green party. There was no great Damascus moment; I simply happened to find myself agreeing with a political party.

I still think it is civil movements that create change: from the abolition of slavery to the cancellation of developing world debt, it has been grassroot movements that have led the charge. Parliament has merely been the end point of the campaign, a rubberstamp for progress.

Having said that, it seems a tad churlish not to spend five minutes of my life deciding what style of rubberstamp I want.

Criminally Confident

Tim Holmes — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 11:45:40 +0000

The demonstration against the arms fair in London’s Docklands on Tuesday saw the usual gathering of pensioners, Quakers, anarchists, peaceniks and tutting liberals (my category), waving banners in blood-red paint. From a distance it looked like Sesame Street was doing a show-and-tell special on imperialism. Closer inspection would reveal a cop-to-demonstrator ratio of 1:1; this wasn’t crowd control, it was more like mentoring.

I had been asked along by Campaign Against Arms Trade as a speaker, which entailed being backed up against a brick wall and addressing a crowd penned in by metal barriers, via a megaphone held above the phalanx of the Met’s fluorescent jackets. Everything went swimmingly: local residents’ speeches were met with particular appreciation, news teams scribbled notes, and peace songs were faintly sung. I thanked the organisers and headed for the Docklands light railway to go home.

As I walked up the entrance ramp I was stopped by police. “I am afraid I can’t let you past me until I have searched you, as I have reason to believe that you could have articles intended for criminal damage,” said an officer.

“What good reason?” I asked.

“We watched you address the crowd.”

“I am being stopped for what I said in a speech?” I spluttered.

“Oh no. Not because of what you said. It is because you look overconfident.”

That was the official reason, I was “overconfident”; bless them, they even wrote it on the stop-and-search slip the police have to provide. Under the title “Grounds for Search”, the officer wrote: “overconfident attitude of Mr Thomas”.

How can I walk past the police in an overconfident manner that might indicate criminality on my part, I thought, short of wearing a black-and-white stripy jumper, with a bag marked “SWAG”, shouting: “Do your worst, flatfoot!” How do the police differentiate between “confidence” and “overconfidence”? Maybe there is a training programme at Hendon, perhaps an ID line-up room for the overconfident full of the Tory frontbench, where new recruits point at Michael Gove shouting: “That one! Definitely that one!”

Perhaps there are briefing sessions where the significance of “overconfidence” is explained by Sir Ian Blair with the aid of a Venn diagram: “Circle one is Osama bin Laden, circle two Ronnie Biggs, and finally drug dealer Howard Marks is circle three. What is in the shaded area where the circles coincide? Cockiness. They all cock a snook at authority. That and a cavalier attitude towards health and safety.”

Surely, if overconfidence is now part of the police’s forensic arsenal, Jeremy Clarkson could never leave his house. He would be over the car bonnet with the cops rifling through his manbag before you could say “He’s just Richard Littlejohn with a copy of Motor Sport magazine”. And if the cops were really after the overconfident, they would have a wagon permanently stationed outside Peter Jones in Sloane Square.

There is a definite sense among campaigners that the police conduct stop and search for no other reason than that they can. I recently saw police search a clown in central London. She was wearing a colander on her head and dressed in rainbow tights. I am not an expert but I believe Raffles preferred black slacks. And I would guess that most criminals avoid wearing a colander; it not only draws attention to them, but it tends to put the balaclava out of shape.

I could be wrong, it could be a double bluff; maybe clowns have pulled off a multitude of heists. The late Charlie Caroli might have done the Brinks Mat job, shoving the bullion down his baggy pants before wandering off to shove shaving foam into someone’s face.

Bizarrely, I have worked quite a bit with the authorities on arms issues, finding and reporting three companies offering illegal torture equipment at the last Docklands arms fair, then appearing before a parliamentary select committee on arms dealing. Last May I cooperated with police after I found electroshock torture equipment being demonstrated at the police and security trade fair in Birmingham.

In fact customs were even tipped off on these pages only weeks ago about possible breaches at this Docklands fair: a warning that proved accurate as two arms companies were thrown out of the fair for allegedly offering leg irons – an offence under the Export Control Act, as reported in the Guardian yesterday. Perhaps those arms dealers slipped past the police by being underconfident, possibly dressed as Dickensian clerks, wringing their hands and muttering “Good day t’yer, guv’nor” when they touch their caps.

Torturer's Bazaar

Tim Holmes — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 00:20:57 +0000

One of the quirky tools at the disposal of a British bureaucrat is the licence. We seem to license everything from watching television and fishing to parking in front of our houses. So it is entirely in keeping that if you wish to sell missiles to dictators in the developing world, you will need a licence. Unfortunately, these licences are numbered (ML 6, for instance, is a military vehicle), so civil servants will never be heard inquiring of their colleagues, “Anyone got a spare Guns for Despots licence form? I’ve run out.”

So it was that when New Labour outlawed the sale of torture equipment from the UK, they did so via a licence. Electro-shock batons, called the torturer’s tool of choice by Amnesty, are now classified as “restricted” and are legally on a par with nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. You can apply for a licence to sell all of these, but it is unlikely you will get one – though the image of someone from al-Qaida stuck in a post office queue clutching a nuke application form is a captivating one.

The UK law is strict: it is illegal to do “any act calculated to promote the supply or delivery” of electro-shock. New Labour have done for the arms trade what the black rat did for the plague, but “restricting” the sale of torture equipment is one of the few decent things they have done. The problem is getting Customs to take this law seriously.

The 2005 Defence Systems and Equipment International arms fair in London’s Docklands was described as the “hi-tech” end by the organisers, Reed Elsevier. “It is all very different,” observed the Telegraph, “from the bad old days when electric-shock batons were quietly flogged to men in sunglasses from repressive third world regimes.” Except it wasn’t. I found three companies offering electro-shock torture equipment. One, Tar Ideal, was even offering an electro-shock spray.

Being a civic-minded sort of a chap, I contacted the Guardian, which ran the headline: “Banned stun guns and leg irons advertised at arms fair.” I reported it to Customs and ended up giving evidence at a parliamentary select committee. The committee asked: Why did a comic find this stuff? Why didn’t Customs spot them? Why didn’t the police, or other officials, or the fair organisers?

The select committee’s report yesterday, like the earlier report in 2006, urged Customs and arms fair organisers to pay more attention to torture weapons being offered for sale. Unfortunately, the organisers of the 2007 Birmingham police and security fair weren’t paying much attention. In the middle of the hall was Mr Xia, a Chinese man with three electro-shock weapons on display for all to see. He demonstrated them for me while I filmed him. A bargain at £3.25 each. At least, I thought, it shouldn’t be hard to find a cop at the police and security fair. How foolishly naive. The Association of Chief of Police Officers had a stall around the corner from Mr Xia, but with no one there. The nearest Customs officer, I was told, was at the airport. The closest thing I found to an on-duty officer were two life-size cardboard cutout cops, on sale as a deterrent to thieves. Eventually, I found the fair organiser’s office.

Mr Xia was arrested, and two weeks later I got a phone call from Solihull CID. “Mr Xia has pleaded guilty to the possession of prohibited firearms,” said the voice, “but I think it is illegal to try and sell these weapons.”

“You would be right.”

“And I think Mr Xia was trying to sell them.”

“He was at a trade fair.”

“Would you give us a statement and let us see the film you shot at the fair?”

“Yes, I would be happy to.”

“And one more thing – if you wouldn’t mind, could you bring up copies of the relevant legislation?”

Despite seeing the film of Mr Xia offering to sell these weapons, the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to press charges and he was deported. So what does it take to get Customs, the CPS and the cops to take this seriously? I’m not sure, but as a favour to Customs I am going to give it the heads up on a bit of naughtiness it could spot at the arms fair in London in September. If everyone who says they are coming to the fair does turn up, it looks as if, once again, we could have a UK citizen involved in electro-shock torture equipment. Someone Customs would have a legal right to nab. So let’s see if Customs spots them. Let’s see if this time they can do their job. Happy hunting, folks.

· Mark Thomas is a comedian and political activist, and author of As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade

“You would be right.”

“And I think Mr Xia was trying to sell them.”

“He was at a trade fair.”

“Would you give us a statement and let us see the film you shot at the fair?”

“Yes, I would be happy to.”

“And one more thing – if you wouldn’t mind, could you bring up copies of the relevant legislation?”

· Mark Thomas is a comedian and political activist, and author of As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela: Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade

www.markthomasinfo.com”>www.markthomasinfo.com

Demonstrations of Victory

Tim Holmes — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:21:50 +0000

In August 2005 it became illegal to demonstrate in parliament and the surrounding environs without first gaining permission from the police, six days in advance. On June 24 2007 Maya Evans, the first person to be convicted of the criminal offence of “participating in an unauthorised demonstration” (for the heinous act of reading out the names of the Iraqi and British war dead at the Cenotaph), sent a text to friends and supporters: “Brown promises to allow peaceful protest around parliament”. Less than two years after its arrival onto the statute books and the law looked like it is to be scrapped.

The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (Socpa) was introduced by David Blunkett to get rid of Brian Haw, the peace campaigner from Parliament Square. As you might expect of a piece of legislation that was bought in specifically to target one man, the end results were spiteful and farcical in equal measure. The police decided that one person with a banner counted as a demonstration; in fact, one person with a badge was deemed to be a demonstration. A friend of mine was threatened with arrest while having a picnic on Parliament Square as she had the word “peace” iced onto her cakes, this was deemed to be an “unauthorised demonstration”. I had to get permission from the police specifically to wear a red nose, on Red Nose Day in Parliament Square, just in case it was mistaken for an illegal protest that could have led to my arrest. The implementation of the law became so absurd that a group of breast-feeding mums had to apply for permission to gather in Parliament Square to feed their children, as this was seen as a political protest that had to be controlled by the law.

To many this law, which would have us get permission to wear a badge or a T-shirt within a 1km radius of parliament, became the epitome of New Labour’s control-freak tendencies. Socpa typified the Kafkaesque reach of a government determined to make the citizen more accountable to the state than the state was accountable to the citizen.

Some opposed the law by refusing to cooperate with it, like Maya, and held demonstrations without permission, like the Sack Parliament demo, calling for MPs to resign. Other less brave souls, like myself, decided to take on the law by organising mass lone demonstrations, where individuals applied for lone protests but en mass, swamping the police with paperwork. Each month people would arrive demanding everything from “an end to aggression in Palestine” to “free chocolate for the unemployed”. In the process I became the Guinness World Record holder for “most political demonstrations in 24 hours” – I have a framed certificate – and in April this year we applied for 2,500 individual demonstrations around the Socpa zone in the space of a week, giving the police about three years’ worth of work in seven days.

That Brown wants to scrap this law is good news. Though, frankly, it was an obvious and easy choice for him. The law is unpopular and there are few who will defend it. The GLA voted to recommend its abolition. Lady Sue Miller was pushing a private members’ bill in the Lords to repeal it. Police officers sent me private emails saying: “we don’t need this [law] and it makes us look stupid.” I have even been in discussion with some folk within parliament about how they might organise their own illegal protest and force the police to arrest the very people the law was introduced to protect.

By repealing an unpopular law Brown not only appears to be listening to the British people, but emphasises the differences between himself and Blair, a vital task if he is to win back Middle England’s trust, fractured by Iraq, loans for peerages and Blair’s liberty grabbing tendencies. It also gives him a bit more room to promote ID cards, while rebutting the charges of being illiberal.

However, the devil is in the detail and while his comments are welcome I suspect that Brown is likely to keep parts of Socpa that make protest on various military bases (like the US spy base at Menwith Hill or RAF Fairford) illegal. Under trespass laws Quakers and peaceniks protesting on these bases would break the law if they refused to leave the property, under Socpa they can be arrested just for being on the property. It also remains unclear if he will repeal the law directly or tinker with it.

But while we might have to wait to find out exactly what kind of victory we have won, it is none the less a victory. And it has been a victory for protesters, for people who read names out at the Cenotaph, for people who pitched tents in Parliament Square and for people who waved banners at the mass lone demonstrations. This is a victory for the people who stood with hand-scrawled signs demanding “End the war in Iraq!”, for those who made banners demanding the government ban Robbie Williams and for demonstrators who stood with papier mache boots demanding “Bigger shoe sizes for women!”, it is a peculiarly British victory.

Arms, Farts, and Bribe Fairies

Alex Doherty — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 20:20:22 +0000

John Entwhistle, the now dead bass player for The Who, once said that liking heavy metal music was akin to passing wind; you didn’t mind the smell of your own farts but object to everyone else’s. Given Entwhistle’s proclivity for cocaine it is a small miracle that he could smell anything. However, in the world of government and big business nowhere is this analogy truer than with regard to bribery and corruption. For some reason governments cannot stomach bribery unless their companies are involved in it, when its rancid stench is sweet rose petals to their nostrils.

Cast your mind back to the 2005 G8 summit at Gleneagles and all that rich world concern about ‘corruption in Africa’. You could be forgiven for thinking that bribery was a practice that involved only one party. Had anyone approached the British government delegation at Gleneagles and asked ‘What of the companies that pay the bribes?’, civil servants and Whitehall mandarins would have looked aghast: ‘People pay bribes? Good Lord, I thought it was the bribe fairies.’ It was almost as if African leaders went to bed at night, leaving entire nationalized industries under their pillows and woke up with Swiss bank accounts full of money.

So let us consider Britain’s endeavours to combat multinational corruption and the most bribe-licious of industrial sectors: the arms trade.

Britain didn’t get a law making the bribing of a foreign official illegal until 2002. That’s right folks, up until that point companies like BAE Systems – Britain’s largest arms manufacturer – would get caught making payments into Jersey bank accounts owned by the Sheik Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, Foreign Minister of Qatar at a time when BAE was negotiating an arms sale with… guess which country… Qatar. In keeping with past precedents of the ruling class looking after its own, the British authorities decided that no investigation would take place into those payments as it was not in the public interest. Meanwhile BAE announced that they had done nothing that broke the law, which is kind of true as there was no law at that time.

Back in 2001, I spoke to Mark Peith, chair of the Working Group on Bribery in Business Transactions at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Britain had signed up to an OECD treaty to introduce laws and effective measures to fight bribery but was just not doing it. I asked Mark Peith how the other members of the OECD saw Britain?

‘They no longer regard Britain as a peer,’ he replied.

‘When it comes to fighting corruption and bribery, who are Britain’s peers now?’ I asked. Without hesitation he replied: ‘Brazil, Turkey and Argentina’.

None of which seems a particularly firm platform from which to criticize others. During a massive rearmament programme in South Africa involving arms companies from all over the world and nigh constant allegations of corruption, BAE Systems had secured a piece of the pie. The deal was supported by the Export Credit Guarantee Department – the department that underwrites British business abroad, so if someone fails to pay their bills the British taxpayer steps in and stumps up to cover the losses. Amidst the investigations and court cases involving government officials it emerged that BAE Systems had paid commission amounting to millions of pounds. ‘Commission payments’ is one of those phrases that attempts to normalize the unpalatable in a similar fashion to the phrase ‘adult entertainment’. Commission payments normally go to people who help secure the deal and are notorious conduits for bribes. Trade minister Patricia Hewitt defended the BAE payment, admitting it amounted to ‘millions’, but refused to say just how many. Just that it was ‘within acceptable limits’.

Britain’s fight against corruption is just window dressing with little political will to take on the issue in a serious way.

Consider the case of The Corner House, a human-and environmental-rights organization and the Government’s Export Credit Guarantee Department (ECGD). In March 2004 the ECGD announced new guidelines to combat bribery and corruption. Given that most of the deals that it is involved with are for medium to high risk markets (ie slightly dodgy places to very dodgy places) like Indonesia or Nigeria, there was a real need to start clearing the stables of bent deals.

The new guidelines included some simple rules: provide details of commission payments, who was getting the money, where they live and what relationship the commission agents have with the deal. The ECGD extolled their new measures as a ‘balanced package… to the ultimate benefit of all UK companies’.

Sure. This measure would have been invaluable for a company like Alvis (now owned by BAE Systems) when they were selling tanks to Indonesia; the ECGD would have known then that the commission being paid for the deal was going to the President of Indonesia’s daughter Tutut Suharto.

Such a measure would have been useful for Rolls Royce when they were working on another ECGD-backed deal in India, the Godavari power station. In this case the commission paid for the deal was going to Towanda Services, a company in the British Virgin Islands, owned by the managing director of the Godavari power station, responsible for awarding the contract.

In May 2004 the ECGD Advisory Committee noted that the new anti-corruption guidelines were not proving popular with its ‘major customers’. Who were the major customers upset by the quest to stamp out bribery? BAE Systems, Airbus (then 20 per cent owned by BAE Systems) and Rolls Royce, to name a few. They promptly held a series of meetings with the ECGD and proceeded to whittle the anti-corruption measures into something more palatable, effectively submitting the anti-corruption guidelines to death by a thousand cuts. The British government had watered down its anti-bribery work.

It was Nick Hildyard and Sue Hawley from The Corner House who spotted that this had occurred and threatened to take the Government to court. Facing up to the might of a government which was working at the behest of BAE Systems and Rolls Royce, not to mention the Confederation of British Industry, is a pretty big deal. But that is exactly what Sue and Nick did. And they won. They forced the Government into one of its most humiliating climb-downs, leading to the revival of the anti-corruption guidelines. Which isn’t bad going.

Britain is being forced slowly to change its ways. But it will be the work of activists and campaigners and academics that get us there and certainly not government or its allies in the arms trade and other dodgy businesses. •

Deadly Serious

Tim Holmes — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 16:32:43 +0000

It is not every day of your life that
you hear the phrase, When
Nicholas Parsons comes out,
Nottingham will be waiting for you.
And, once heard, it is a difficult
phrase to forget. How could anyone
forget anything involving the
prospect of Nicholas Parsons coming
out? Let me explain.

Having written a book about the
arms trade, it seemed only natural
that I should want people to read it,
so, at the publishers request, I spent
two days at the BBCs Broadcasting
House. Within the bowels of this
august organisation is a unit with
four studios, a reception area, a sofa
and a coffee machine. The studios
link to BBC regional stations all
across the country, where promoting
books is the sturdy fair of
programming. Its here that a handful
of folk wait to go into one of the
studios to sit at a desk with a
microphone on it until suddenly,
through headphones, comes a voice:
Hi its Sue here from Radio Jersey;
well be with you straight after the
travel.

After a couple of interviews I
begin to get the hang of this
promotion lark. So, says an
incredulous presenters voice from
Wales, whats a comedian doing
writing about the arms trade?, I
should say the book is called As
Used on the Famous Nelson
Mandela and the title comes from
an arms dealers website; he was
advertising South African-made leg
irons and this was the advertising
strap line: As used on the famous
Nelson Mandela.

Good Lord, I hear the Welsh
voice say and carry on: And this is
at the heart of the book. Arms
dealers really do not see themselves
as others see them. Most decent folk
see the arms industry as distasteful at
best, even Daily Mail readers; it is
not something they want their
children to do. One arms company I
phoned in South Africa to talk to
about electroshock stun batons put
me on hold (Wait while I get the
expert the clipped Africaans voice
had said) and I had music piped
down the phone at me. Thus far
fairly normal, except that the music
they played was Love me tender
and this was an electroshock
manufacturer.

The more astute reader has
noticed that I didnt answer the
interviewers question. I sort of gave
up doing that after I managed to do
an entire interview without getting to
mention that Id written a book on
the arms trade. Almost all the
presenters I spoke to started from a
position of This gun selling is a bit
off, isnt it? but what
eventually seemed to
fascinate them was the scale
of the UKs subsidy to the
arms industry. Using the work
of Paul Ingrams (BASIC) and
Roy Isbister (Saferworld), I
came up with the rough figure
that the UK subsidises each job
in arms exports to the tune of about
£13,000 per year.

So it isnt even good for the
economy! was a phrase I heard in
various regional accents over the two
days. It seemed the presenters were
most shocked not by the 640 million
small arms at large in the world, but
by the fact that selling them didnt
even benefit the British economy.

Back on the sofa the receptionist
nods at me. Nicholas Parsons has
just walked past so its my turn
again. I gulp a final mouthful of
coffee and mentally run through a
story Im going to tell the radio
listeners about working with school
children to buy torture equipment
and expose the UK governments
loopholes in the law. Remember to
mention the 13 grand, I say out
loud as I head into the studio, and
the title: As Used on the Famous
Nelson Mandela.

__As Used on the
Famous Nelson
Mandela__ was
published by Ebury
Press in July. Details
of Marks book
readings and tour
can be found at
www.markthomasinfo.com

Torture For Sale

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 09:15:14 +0000

The more eagle-eyed among you will have noted that the sale of stun batons from the UK was banned in 1997. You get full marks for legislative awareness if you knew that brokering – that is, acting as a middleman and arranging deals for goods that don’t touch UK soil – became illegal without a licence on 1 May last year. Previously, if a UK broker moved guns directly from Thailand to Sudan, say, there was nothing that the UK authorities could do about it.

Now a New Statesman investigation has found a British company selling torture equipment: TLT International, which is run by Tony Lee in south London and sells electro-shock weapons. Last year, I wrote in the 6 December issue of the NS about the company’s website, which advertised stun batons and stun guns. “Only by Bulk [sic] purchasing,” it said.

What is so bad about stun batons, you might ask, although you would get points deducted if you did. Stun batons, according to Amnesty International, are “the universal tool of the torturer”. When used for torture they cause extreme pain while leaving no marks on the body – and they have a habit of ending up discharging shocks in the vicinity of people’s genitals.

The Department of Trade and Industry states “that a person may not [without licence] . . . do any act calculated to promote [their] supply or delivery”. So merely advertising the batons on a website would be illegal – though there have been no test cases so far for the new brokering legislation.

Lee’s website had pictures and brief descriptions of the weapons, which are manufactured in South Korea by Hanseung Electronics Inc. They range from the 18-inch stun baton at 300,000 volts to the mini stun gun, at just over four inches long with 100,000 volts. The website encourages those who are interested to “please make enquiries”.

I accepted this polite invitation. Posing as arms buyers, I and a Kurdish colleague from Belgium, Osman Kilic, e-mailed TLTi asking to be put in contact with someone who could provide the batons. The reply was swift.

On 2 December, three days after our initial contact, Lee quoted to provide 500 stun batons at a price of $29.10 each, with an optional holster ($2 extra), which is a disturbingly low price for an electro-shock weapon – although it was not until we had exchanged some 14 e-mails, made four phone calls and had one meeting that Lee wrote that he had “forgotten to mention batteries are not included in all sales”. So any torturer getting one for Christmas will have to beg their dad to nip down to the 7-Eleven for a pack of double As.

The stun batons come with a year’s warranty on the equipment. This must be a comfort to purchasers, knowing that their statutory and consumer rights are not affected just because they happen to be torturers. Indeed, the stun batons even carry a CE mark, the European Economic Area’s Kitemark. Lee is so confident of the quality of the product that he wrote: “The stun baton do not need much persuasions and explanations, it speaks by itself. Once Your [sic] clients buy it they would love it.”

Ah! The clients! Where, you might ask, did Lee think he was exporting the electro-shock equipment? The answer is Zimbabwe. We warned him on 3 December that “the client is from Zimbabwe”. Asked if he was happy for the goods to go there, he replied: “Yes I will sort it out . . . We will ship directly from Korea.” The next day, he quoted the $29.10 price. He was prepared not just to break brokering laws on torture equipment, but to break EU arms sanctions into the bargain.

Lee is hardly an arms dealer of international notoriety, merrily pouring small arms into African conflict zones by the ton. In response to these allegations, he took down the website and said: “I was truly not aware of any legislation or licensing on this products [sic].” However, he did take measures to ensure that the UK authorities remained in the dark. “All shipment documents,” he wrote, “will be done directly from Korea but all communications should be done through TLTi.” In effect, this meant that there was to be no paper trail of the deal in the UK. At a meeting on 22 December in London, Lee passed over details of his private bank account number in Korea into which we were to pay the money. He would pay the company from that account. So the UK banking authorities wouldn’t spot it either. In fact, Lee was quite happy to discuss how we would avoid detection by the UK authorities and even suggested that we sign the deal in Korea to make sure.

Although he described the batons as “personal protection products”, he was made well aware that they were for “interrogations”. Which shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise, as Hanseung Electronics has, according to Lee, exported to a range of countries including Egypt, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines, none of them noted for their kindly approach to imprisonment. The Amnesty International Report of 2003 states that in Egypt, “torture continued to be systematic and widespread in detention centres throughout the country . . . The most common methods reported were electric shocks.”

That list of countries would soon expand if Lee had his way. In an e-mail dated 6 December, he wrote: “I have given a Nigerian company a sole sales agreement in Nigeria and West Africa. A large volume of order over the next three years would be expected soon.” In another e-mail, he wrote: “This year [2004] in May and June, I went with two Nigerian officials and two members of the Nigerian company [Ovaltek] for Military kits supply, ie, Stun baton, Stun guns.”

Nevertheless, when we put our allegations to him, Lee told us: “I’ve not made any single transaction or any penny from it. If I knew the relevant rules, I would not have tried . . . I would not do anything illegal . . . Now everything with these items have been removed.”

Well, if he didn’t make any money, it wasn’t, as far as we can see, through lack of trying. The Nigerian authorities might be interested to know that Lee said he didn’t think the senators’ trip to Korea was an official visit and that “they will get a commission. You know what the system is like in Nigeria.”

In the food chain of arms dealers, Lee is a bottom feeder. But if the authorities can’t find and prosecute a man who openly advertised what he does on the web, what hope is there of taking on the bigger fish? Quite simply, new Labour cares more about arms sales than arms control. The Defence Export Services Organisation, working out of the Ministry of Defence, exists to promote UK arms sales. It has 161 people servicing deals for Saudi Arabia alone. This is one more than the entire staff of the DTI’s Export Control Organisation, which licenses and controls every arms export from Britain. And its 160 staff are due to be cut to 120. In other words, there will soon be 33 per cent more government employees helping sell arms to Saudi Arabia than there are trying to control UK sales of arms across the world.

Until the government take arms control seriously, Lee and his like will continue unchallenged, BAE Systems will remain unprosecuted for alleged bribery and the Ministry of Defence will remain incapable of buying a helicopter that works.