Paul Bond | ukwatch.net

Policing of climate camp a major attack on democratic rights

tim — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:34:55 +0000

A week-long climate protest camp in north Kent has ended, amidst widespread claims of disproportionate and aggressive policing. Around 100 people were arrested over the course of the protest, 46 of whom have been charged, mostly with obstruction offences. The multimillion-pound policing of the camp marked a significant attack on democratic rights and civil liberties.

The camp was held to protest the building of a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth, on the Medway estuary. Energy company E.ON UK is proposing replacing the existing coal power station with a new one. This would be the first new coal power station built in Britain in more than 30 years. The proposal has yet to be agreed by John Hutton, whose portfolio as secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform includes energy security issues. The proposal has been passed to Hutton’s office following its agreement by the local authority, Medway Council.

Kingsnorth is the first of several new coal-fired power stations proposed for sites across the UK. The government has made these stations a key factor in ensuring energy supplies. Protestors argue that coal power stations, with their high CO2 emissions, are the most polluting means of producing electricity. Between 1,000 and 2,000 protestors came to the camp over the course of the week to protest at the development of Kingsnorth. Aside from their direct protest activities, the camp also staged workshop and discussion events.

Assistant Chief Constable Gary Beautridge of Kent Police acknowledged in a press conference that the police had been planning their response to the camp since April of this year. That response saw 1,400 officers, from 26 different forces across Britain, being brought into the area. They were supported by constant air surveillance. The Medway Ports Authority also authorised the police to “enforce” sections of their bylaws to prevent protestors approaching the power station from the river.

The final cost of the policing operation is not yet known, but has been estimated variously between £1 million and £8 million. It is understood the Kent Police are considering applying to the Home Office for financial support in footing the bill.

There has been a noticeable trend in recent years for the police to underreport numbers of demonstrators and protestors. In the case of Kingsnorth, the police set the attendance at 1,000. According to their own figures, therefore, they had provided a level of policing intended to overwhelm the protestors. The organisers’ own estimate of attendance was 1,500, giving a 1:1 ratio of police to protestors. Even the highest estimate only put attendance at 2,000.

That the police levels were aimed at discouraging protest was reinforced when Beautridge said he regarded “the majority of the protestors” as “law-abiding people there for a legitimate reason.” He justified the policing levels as a response to “a small hard core of people…prepared to use criminal tactics and criminal activity.” According to one report, this “small hard core” was set at just 150 people. As the camp’s legal spokesman Kevin Smith noted, “Every year police use the supposed existence of a hardcore minority as justification for the heavy-handedness and every year this hardcore minority fails to materialise.”

It is quite evident that the policing was aimed at deterring any form of protest. Protestors at the camp have described the constant attention of police helicopters, which served to disrupt meetings and speeches. There are also reports of police impounding vehicles being used by protestors to bring supplies into the camp.

In particular, protestors drew attention to the aggressive tactics of the riot police, who used batons and shields in making arrests. Several protestors were injured when police baton-charged them as they tried to enter a cornfield. Beautridge maintained that such a response was “proportionate…. Because of the level of resistance, officers were authorised to carry batons during two days of the protest. There are strict legal standards for their use and we gave clear warnings when any specialist team was deployed.”

Green MEP Caroline Lucas, who visited the camp, said she was “horrified that [the] police…have used pepper spray, riot gear, [and] physical intimidation.” The police controlled demonstrators with horses, dogs and trail bikes, as well as with constant helicopter coverage.

To sustain this level of intimidation and intrusion, the police sought extraordinary powers to stop and search protestors. Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act was implemented to authorise this. Initially, the Section 60 provisions were applied only to the immediate area of the camp. They were subsequently extended to cover the whole of the Hoo peninsula. The provision allows police to stop and search a suspect if an officer of superintendent rank or above believes there may be incidents of serious violence.

At Kingsnorth, Section 60 was used to monitor all visitors to the camp. One eyewitness describes joining a queue to be searched. The searching officer did not know who had authorised the searches. Having been frisked and had his bag searched, the witness was then issued with a pink slip. He had to show this to another three officers before he actually reached the camp. He was searched again when he tried to leave the camp. There were also reports of protestors being threatened with strip searches. Elsewhere there were reports of police attempting to use Section 60 to justify destruction of homemade rafts.

Lucas, along with Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker and Labour MP Colin Challen, wrote to Kent Police to express concern about such use of discretionary powers. Lucas warned that this was “undermining our civil liberties.”

Lucas, amongst others, has also drawn attention to a booklet apparently dropped by an officer policing the camp. The booklet, “Policing Protest,” is produced by the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit and offers “tactical advice and guidance on policing single-issue domestic extremism.”

Police mounted a systematic programme of confiscation from the protestors during the searches. The police told press that they had confiscated many knives, although demonstrators described this as a smear tactic. Police also showed journalists a satirical board game (“War on Terror”) they had confiscated. There seems to have been a policy of making life as uncomfortable and awkward as possible for protestors. Other items confiscated included glue, soap, a clown costume, bits of carpet, toilet paper, disabled ramps, marker pens, blackboard paint, nuts and bolts for toilet cubicles, and banners.

They also confiscated demonstrators’ emergency radios and lifejackets. One demonstrator involved in the river-borne protest described a meeting with a local coast guard crew. The coast guards were complimentary about the demonstrators’ attention to safety, but criticised the police confiscations of lifejackets, saying, “It was irresponsible and could have put lives at risk.”

Such tactics were clearly designed to stifle any form of dissent and deter any future protests. Of particular concern in this regard is the complaint by the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) that its members were also subject to the same searches, manhandling, and observation. The NUJ is looking at legal challenges against “this unwarranted conduct by the police.” According to the NUJ, journalists were searched as they entered and left the camp. Searches continued after police were shown press cards. Journalists were also “pushed and shoved” by police, and filmed whilst using WiFi facilities at a local McDonalds.

Such developments indicate a determination to clamp down on any form of legitimate protest, and should be taken as a very serious attack on democratic rights.

Queen’s Speech Signals Attack on Civil Liberties

Tim Holmes — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:25:40 +0000

When Gordon Brown became Prime Minister five months ago, he sought to distance himself from the unpopularity of his predecessor Tony Blair by pledging “a new kind of politics.” On counter-terrorism legislation, he talked of a consultation period of “good will” rather than an immediate rush to pursue Blair’s repressive legislative agenda. Sections of the liberal establishment gave credence to Brown’s claims that he would “strengthen our liberties,” even though Home Secretary Jacqui Smith made it clear that new anti-terror legislation would be presented later in the year.

The first Queen’s Speech of Brown’s premiership last week made clear his government’s intent to deepen the assault on democratic rights and civil liberties. The Queen’s Speech presents the legislation a government will debate and seek to bring forward over the forthcoming parliamentary session.

Among the bills proposed by Brown is anti-terror legislation, centring on two main proposals. The first is to extend the period terror suspects can be detained without charge. The second is to extend the right to question suspects after they have been charged.

At present, suspects can be detained without charge for 28 days, longer than in any other major European country. In 1997, when Labour came to power, suspects could be detained for just 4 days. Home Office ministers have confirmed that their preferred option would be to extend the period to 56 days.

Two years ago, Blair lost a vote to extend the period of detention without charge from 14 to 90 days. This was when the limit was raised to 28 days. Smith is anxious not to repeat the experience of having government bills amended in this way. She therefore refused to state what the government’s preferred extension period would be when challenged on the BBC’s “Today” radio programme, and told the House of Commons that she was “seeking to gain consensus.”

The Conservatives have claimed to oppose this extension. But they do not oppose extending detention without charge. Their preferred method would be the use of the Civil Contingencies Act, which would authorise an additional 30 days’ detention on top of the 28 provided by counter-terrorism legislation.

The civil liberties group Liberty, which opposed the 90-day limit and opposes the current proposed extension, also favours use of existing legislation. It argues in favour of removing restrictions on using wiretap evidence in court, and also agrees with the suggestion that suspects should be arrested for minor charges and then interviewed further as new evidence emerges.

Liberty’s Shami Chakrabarti has been among those most willing to see the supposedly positive aspects of Brown’s attitude to civil liberties. Shortly before the Queen’s Speech, she praised the government’s willingness “to consult widely, to adopt a listening tone and a less combative tone, in relation to anti-terror laws.” She expressed concern that Brown himself might be compromised by extending detention: “All this will matter little if effective internment is returned to this country.”

The police have been campaigning for an extension. The Association of Chief Police Officers stated that they could envisage circumstances in which a 28-day limit could be insufficient. They cite as justification the increasing complexity and scale of terrorism.

That this is a smokescreen can be seen from the number of recent convictions for terrorist offences that have not required 28 days of detention. In July, Brown claimed that six suspects had been held for 27 or 28 days, implying that the police were at their time limits. But commentators have noted that the police will simply use the whole time limit available to them, regardless of how long that is.

The proposals have caused some anxiety among Labour Members of Parliament who would have to justify the extension to a sceptical and opposed electorate. Andrew Dismore, of the joint parliamentary human rights committee, said that Smith had not yet made a case for the extension, and that there was no evidence of the inadequacy of the present legislation. The same stance was taken by David Winnick, who said that if the detention period was to be extended, they must have “compelling evidence that it’s absolutely essential.”

The extension of detention has been the main focus of media attention. The other proposal, to continue questioning after charging, reveals even more clearly the wider attacks on civil liberties of the Brown government. The proposal has been advanced by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats as an alternative to detention without charge. The Tories claim that it was one of their policies originally.

Smith told the BBC that the proposal would effectively continue the police caution after charges had been brought. She said she saw it as “an important condition” that would provide prosecutors with “more of the tools they need” to counter terrorism.

Under the proposals, juries could be instructed to view negatively a suspect’s refusal to cooperate after being charged. Barristers have noted that after charge there is little to be gained by a suspect in commenting further. As they are already charged, their next recourse will be to explain before a jury. Some terrorist cases have taken years to come to trial.

Instructing a jury to draw negative conclusions from failure to cooperate with police efforts to build a prosecution case over a lengthy period is clearly a further attack on the presumption of innocence that is the basis for English law. Smith also suggested on the “Today” programme that such a measure might be applied more widely than just terror cases.

Liberty has been arguing for such a measure in terrorism cases, “provided that the initial charge is legitimate and there is no judicial oversight,” thus allowing “for a charge to be replaced with a more appropriate offence at a later stage.” Advocating what amounts to a legal sleight-of-hand—someone could legitimately be held on a host of lesser offences—shows that the group is in fact acting as an adviser to the government in how best to get away with its attacks on civil liberties.

The government’s legislative programme was boosted by statements from the head of the secret service MI5 the day before it was revealed. Jonathan Evans, giving his first speech the day before the legislative programme was unveiled, claimed that at least 2,000 people are currently believed to pose a threat to national security.

Whipping up an atmosphere of right-wing hysteria to justify his appeals for further resources, he spoke of Al Qaeda targeting young teenagers in particular.

Writing in the Guardian, Simon Jenkins pondered, “Why has General Musharraf not telephoned Gordon Brown to express his ‘deep concern’ over yesterday’s Queen’s speech? Or Vladimir Putin or Mahmoud Ahmedinejad?

“Here is a government unpopular and in trouble over terrorism. Its civil rights lawyers are up in arms. Its leader postpones a general election and summarily arrests anyone he sees as a danger to his state. He butters up the military by promising them more nuclear weapons. He announces changes to the constitution without consultation, imposes central rule over dissident local districts and extends imprisonment without trial. To soften up the public, he even gets his head of security to make a blood-curdling speech depicting every child as a potential suicide bomber.”

Describing Evans’s remarks as “pure Musharraf,” he warned that “Scaremongering by ministers, the police and security officials has bordered on the hysterical.”

But Evans was clearly appealing to the government when he said, “Every decision by the security service to investigate someone entails a decision not to investigate someone else.” The Queen’s Speech has indicated that the Brown government will listen and respond favourably to any appeal to further undermine democratic rights.

See Also:
British government accessing telephone records
[18 October 2007]
Police ban London antiwar march
[6 October 2007]

Friendly Fire Video

Alex Doherty — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:21:56 +0000

The scandal surrounding the release of video evidence of a British serviceman’s death by “friendly fire” underscores that the lies and deceit surrounding the illegal invasion of Iraq continue.

An inquest has opened into the death of Lance Corporal Matty Hull, who was killed on March 28, 2003, when his convoy of light armoured vehicles near Basra was attacked by a US A-10 aircraft. Hull died of multiple injuries after his colleagues were unable to rescue him from his burning tank and their radio appeals for the planes to cease firing went unheeded. Four other soldiers were also wounded in the attack.

Hull’s widow, Susan, has described the inquest as her “one and only chance to hear how and why Matty died.”

Furore erupted, though, over video recordings made in the cockpits of the A-10s as they repeatedly attacked the convoy. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) initially denied the existence of these recordings.

The video evidence came to light only last week, when it was leaked to the Sun newspaper.

The video shows the pilots, reservists from the Idaho National Guard who had not been in action before, making a series of errors.

Some 12,000 feet up in the air, they saw the British convoy and tried to ascertain whether they were Iraqi vehicles. When a pilot told air controllers that he saw orange markings on the vehicles—signifying coalition troops—and asked whether there were friendly vehicles in the area, he gave vague coordinates and was told that “there are no friendlies this far north on the ground.”

One of the pilots is heard to say, “I want to get that first one before he gets into town.” The other replies, “Get him, get him.” The planes then attacked the convoy twice before receiving the message from base that their targets were British troops. “Abort your mission. It looks like we have a blue-on-blue situation,” is the urgent warning, and then a British voice, “Abort, abort.”

Realising what they had done, one of the pilots says, “I’m going to be sick,” and then, “We’re in jail, dude.” Another is heard weeping, “I’m dead.”

Attention had initially focused on the role of the US authorities in suppressing details of the events leading to Hull’s death. But developments over the last week have made clear that the British authorities were fully complicit in this attempted cover-up.

At the time of the incident, Mrs. Hull said, the MoD told her that cockpit recordings of the attack did not exist. When the tapes finally became public knowledge after almost four years, the MoD claimed rather that they had simply not told Mrs. Hull about their existence. She described it as an “absolute disgrace” that this “vital evidence” should have taken so long to emerge.

In fact, the MoD knew about the existence of the videos immediately after the event. It now emerges that British military liaison officers participated in an investigation into the incident conducted in 2003 by the US Central Command. Arguing that the pilots “believed they were engaging enemy targets based on the best information they had at the time,” the investigation concluded that the two National Guardsmen were not culpable. The incident, they concluded, was accidental. No disciplinary action was taken.

The Sun reported that one of the pilots has subsequently been promoted to colonel with the Air National Guard’s A10 tankbuster training wing, teaching “novices how to dive and strafe targets.”

Faced with the killing and wounding of its own soldiers by its ally, the first response of the MoD was to lie, denying the existence of the recordings even as it participated in exonerating the pilots involved behind closed doors. More was involved than one incident. At issue was the insistence of the US and Britain that their forces must not be held accountable for any of the crimes they committed, even if that meant enabling them to go scot-free when involved in incidences involving one another.

To this end, even when the MoD was unable to deny the existence of the recordings any longer, it attempted to restrict their use.

Matters came to a head last week when Assistant Deputy Coroner Andrew Walker angrily adjourned the inquest for a month, following the MoD’s refusal to release the tape to the court. The MoD said that they did not have the authority for the video to be played in court. Their lawyer said that “high-level diplomacy between US and UK governments” was needed for this agreement.

The Pentagon had said that the video could be seen in court, but only by the coroner and the Hull family under MoD supervision. The press was not to be allowed to see the footage.

After the leak, though, the recordings were in the public domain. (Transcripts and the video itself are widely available online.) As such, the coroner argued that they should be seen in court and the Pentagon agreed. Susan Hull expressed satisfaction that the inquest would be able to use them.

American sources remain angry. A US embassy official in London said that the video had been leaked before the US military authorities had had a chance to make a decision on releasing it. A spokesman for US Central Command, Major David Small, said that as the US and UK shared so much classified information there was simply no need to declassify most of it. As the inquest was at such an early stage, “the process for declassifying the video was never given the opportunity to unfold,” he said. One spokesman described it as “regrettable” that the video was now in the public domain.

The whole incident exposes a military structure that is completely unaccountable.

Once the videos were leaked, government figures sought to minimise the damage by appearing as the champions of openness. The announcement that the video would be released to the court was made through Downing Street. Des Browne, the defence secretary, called the release “the right thing to do.” Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urged “as complete an inquest as possible.”

When Conservative Party leader David Cameron went through the motions of asking Prime Minister Tony Blair if he was sure the MoD had not misled the family over the existence of the video, he replied, “I do believe the MoD did act in good faith throughout.”

Susan Hull has indicated that she would have liked to hear the pilots give testimony in person to the inquest. However, her lawyer said, because of the immunity offered to US military personnel they could only be invited to give evidence. “They cannot be compelled to come,” said Mrs. Hull.

The Trial of Tony Blair

Alex Doherty — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 17:32:35 +0000

At one point in Alistair Beaton’s latest political satire, The Trial of Tony Blair, Cherie Blair (Phoebe Nicholls) rounds on husband Tony (Robert Lindsay) saying, “The world’s changed and you don’t get it.” Where Beaton falls down is in his depiction of how this change manifests itself and leads to Blair standing in the dock facing war crimes charges.

It is 2010. Blair, having stayed in office longer than promised, has finally stepped down before the general election. His last days in office take place as the US and Israel target Iranian nuclear facilities.

Chancellor Gordon Brown finally gets his chance at the head of both the Labour Party and the government, but he is left facing the massive disaffection left from the Blair years. The film shows an upsurge in Labour support after Blair’s departure, but Brown being reelected as prime minister with his majority reduced to just two seats. Hillary Clinton, the new president of the United States, is attempting to deal with popular hostility to the Iraq war and the foreign policy of George W. Bush, who we are told “is back in rehab.”

Trying to distance themselves from their predecessors, neither new head of state uses his or her veto at the United Nations to prevent the setting up of a Tribunal on War Crimes in Iraq as part of the International Criminal Court at The Hague. Blair, who unlike the US had supported the ICC when it was founded, is extradited to face trial as a war criminal.

The programme was first aired on one of Channel 4’s digital channels, and repeated shortly afterwards on the terrestrial channel.

The significance of a mainstream channel producing a programme depicting the incumbent prime minister as a war criminal should not be underestimated. And it should be noted that The Trial of Tony Blair has been produced by figures once close to the Labour leadership—Beaton was for a time a speechwriter for Gordon Brown.

The programme-makers (writer Beaton, executive producer David Aukin, and director Simon Cellan Jones) developed it as a satire. But its central contention would not be shocking to the majority of people in Britain. Nor is it the only such piece in production. North London’s Tricycle Theatre is calling legal teams and witnesses to argue whether there is a case for trying Blair as a war criminal. They will then produce a condensed version of events entitled The Indictment of Anthony Charles Lynton Blair for the Crime of Aggression Against Iraq—A Hearing.

Talking about Blair in the Guardian, Robert Lindsay, who supports Labour, commented, “Tony’s been found out. We all know he’s a fraud, so it’s curtains for him.” Iraq, despite all of Blair’s protestations throughout the film, is most definitely his “legacy.”

Further, the drama indicts others for their role in Iraq, including Brown (Peter Mullan). He voted for the war, Blair points out, but kept quiet about it. As pressure mounts for the establishment of a war crimes tribunal at The Hague, Brown throws his hated rival to the wolves by instructing the British ambassador to the UN to stay in the toilet during the UN vote. Even his attempts to draw a line under the Blair era are based on lies. “The public don’t want charisma any more,” he tells Blair, “they want honesty.”

“And they got you,” comes Blair’s reply.

Cherie Blair mainly worries about the family income, while being more acutely aware of the dangers Blair faces. Conservative leader David Cameron (Alexander Armstrong) is merely a buffoon.

Blair is portrayed as somewhat delusional—a man who believed that he was doing the right thing in Iraq and is now plagued by self-doubt, even remorse. On the surface of things, he is only interested in his memoirs, establishing a Blair Foundation and becoming an advisor in Washington rather than in the political realities he has helped create. He switches off the television when British troops’ deaths are reported from Iraq. The publisher of his memoirs laughs at his 29 uses of the phrase, “I felt history’s hand upon my shoulder.”

But Blair becomes increasingly haunted by Iraq. He sees a coffin draped in a British flag, and has visions of dead Iraqi children. In echoes of Lady Macbeth, he scrubs at his hands obsessively to remove stains. Having converted to Catholicism as soon as he left office, he is seen trying to confess what he says are “mortal sins.”

The Trial of Tony Blair expresses, if only partially and in a distorted way, the depth of public sentiment against the war and its authors. It is this that earned the ire of Gerard Baker in the Sunday Times.

“It’s hardly even controversial these days to talk of the Prime Minister in this way,” he complains. Baker berated the “liberal establishment” for their criticisms of Blair over Iraq, describing them significantly as “the educated opinion-formers of our times.”

“Imagine the raucous, triumphant, mocking Shia at Saddam Hussein’s execution—minus the beards—and you have a sense of what most of these people feel about the Prime Minister,” he continues, calling their treatment of Blair, “their Nuremberg.”

However, for all their criticisms of figures within the Labour Party, and indeed the political establishment generally, the response of those involved in producing the drama is an example of liberal wishful thinking. They are clearly angry over the carnage Blair and Bush have wrought in Iraq—Cellan Jones called the piece “an act of fury”—but they never get beyond that. They cannot understand how Bush can act as he does, so they put him back in rehab. They cannot understand why Blair does not feel remorse, so they create a scenario where he does.

Their approach must also be understood within another context. Some at least within the establishment would like Blair to be made to carry the can in some way, in an effort to exculpate their own “sins” and restore some confidence in the democratic process: If not over Iraq, with its attendant dangers, then perhaps over the cash-for-peerages allegations.

In reality, to portray Blair facing trial over Iraq as the product of such a combination of personal and electoral considerations, particularly a turn by the Democrats in the US and a Brown-led Labour government to appease antiwar sentiment, can be politically disorienting. And the same is true for the depiction of the role of the UN.

No explanation is ever offered by Beaton’s piece as to why the recent bombing of Iran has given way to efforts to project a more peaceful foreign policy. The assumption is that the pressure of the electorate has, despite the political corruption of the elites, restored sanity to official politics on both sides of the Atlantic. Iraq and Iran are essentially portrayed as the awful product of bad leaders. Lindsay, in the Guardian, blamed Bush for the invasion of Iraq and asked plaintively, “Why didn’t Blair stand up to him?”

In reality, the rise of the Republicans in the US and New Labour in Britain was a response to the escalating crisis of world imperialism. The invasion of Iraq was not accidental, or a “mistake” by individual leaders. It was a calculated and planned action, part of the drive by the US to resolve its crisis by establishing its hegemony militarily over strategic resources and markets.

Britain confronted a global challenge to its interests, particularly from its main rivals in Europe. Seeking to preserve its position against German and French dominance of the European Union, the British ruling elite saw its way forward as riding on the coattails of US military adventures.

The devastation of Iraq that they unleashed was a monstrous crime of imperialism, but appealing to the supposed basic humanity of the ruling elite will not resolve that, nor will it miraculously restabilise capitalism. However much Blair should be haunted by images of the Iraqi dead, there is no evidence that he is. A week before the broadcast, he was at a public meeting in Plymouth insisting that Britain must continue to be prepared to play a global military role alongside the US. Immediately following its broadcast, Britain’s senior representative in Iraq, Army Lt. Gen. Graeme Lamb, told reporters that British forces will remain in Iraq through 2007 and 2008 if necessary.

It is simply wrong to suggest that Blair might be brought to justice by Brown or the Democrats, who are committed to the same essential aims and policies for addressing the crisis of imperialism. Brown, as Beaton states, supported the war. And rather than offering any outlet for the mass antiwar sentiments, the Democrats have shown their continued commitment to securing US hegemony over oil resources even as the war against Iraq threatens to spill over into a wider war against Iran.

If the leaders of British and US imperialism are to be brought to justice for their crimes, this requires the development of a politically independent movement of the working class, not illusions in a return to “sanity” by the ruling class. Nevertheless, the criticisms emanating from Britain’s “opinion formers” are an indication that this is a very real possibility.

The Road to Guantánamo

Alex Doherty — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:07:10 +0000

Two actors in a new documentary film on the US prison camp at Guantánamo Bay and two former Guantánamo prisoners were detained and interrogated by the Special Branch on February 16.

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul were part of the Tipton Three (the other was Asif Iqbal), British citizens who were held at the base in Cuba for more than two years before they were released in March of 2004. They were never charged by their American jailers with any crime. The young men were all from Tipton in the West Midlands.

Ruhal Ahmed and Shafiq Rasul were returning from the Berlin Film Festival with Rizwan Ahmed and Farhad Harun, two actors who play them in a new documentary The Road to Guantánamo, when they were stopped and questioned for more than an hour at Londons Luton Airport.

The documentary by director Michael Winterbottom had won the prestigious Silver Bear award at the festival.

The detention of the four men was a flagrant violation of democratic rights, underscoring the extent to which Prime Minister Tony Blairs anti-terror laws are leading in the direction of a police state.

The detaining officer told the actor Rizwan Ahmed that he and the others had been stopped at immigration because anyone with terror links had to be questioned. But the two ex-Guantánamo prisoners have never been charged, let alone convicted, of any terrorist-related crime, and must therefore be considered, as a legal matter, to have no more terror links than any other person entering the country.

The fact that the actors were also detained is especially chilling, since their only terror link was being in the company of the two former Guantánamo prisoners. This indicates that, in the eyes of British immigration and police authorities, anyone in any way associated with those illegally detained as enemy combatants by the US are automatically suspect and subject to detention and interrogationor worse.

Winterbottoms film shows how the three youths from Tipton set off for Pakistan in September 2001 to attend Iqbals wedding and subsequently volunteered for aid work in neighbouring Afghanistan. When the US assault on Afghanistan began, the three were captured by Northern Alliance soldiers, who handed them over to American forces. They ended up at the Guantánamo prison camp.

After they were released they gave interviews detailing their torture and abuse at the hands of their American captors. Rasul explained, for example, that he was not allowed out of his cell for the first six weeks he was at the camp. He said, There was a hook on the floor and leg irons attached to the hook, and they put your hands between your ankles on the floor and chained you to the hook on the floor as well. Theyd keep you there for five hours, six hoursyou couldnt go to the toilet, youd have to urinate, defecate where you are.

Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of the human rights organisation Reprieve, denounced the detention of the four at Luton Airport. He said the Special Branch was adding insult to injury by harassing innocent men who suffered for two long years in Guantánamo Bay before being released without charge. He added, As if that were not enough, the Special Branch then detains the actors who portray them in a film.

According to a press report, on the arrival of the four back in Britain, Shafiq Rasul was stopped at the immigration desk. Shortly afterwards, Rizwan Ahmed (who plays Rasul in the film) was questioned by a Special Branch officer in the baggage claim area. She took notes of his answers and made notations from his passport. When the young actor asked why he was being questioned, he was taken to an interview room.

The officer asked to examine the contents of Rizwan Ahmeds wallet, whereupon the actor asked to speak to a lawyer. He was told that he had no right to legal advice. The officer showed him a blank form with the heading Section 7 of the Terrorism Act Detention Form, which stated that a superintendent could order a person to be detained for up to 48 hours without any outside contact, not even with a lawyer.

The actor asked whether the officer was a superintendent, at which point he was told he was not being held under this form and would be denied access to a lawyer only for the first hour of questioning.

When the officer left the room, Ahmed used his mobile phone to call an academic lawyer friend, Ravinder Thukral. The latter then spoke to the officer directly. It was not clear whether any legal case was being made for refusing to allow Ahmed to make calls, or whether he was simply not being assisted by those holding him. Thukral contacted Reprieve, which has represented many of the Guantánamo detainees.

Before Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve could contact Ahmed, the actor, under the threat of continued detention, allowed the officer to go through his wallet. The officer noted down details of his bank card as well as business cards he was carrying.

The officer reportedly asked Ahmed whether he intended to make more films, and if he had become an actor to make films to publicise the struggles of Muslims. The actor was also asked about his political views, including his attitude to the Iraq war.

Ahmed said the officer then suggested he become an informant, asking whether he would mind being contacted regularly by officers, in case he overheard people discussing illegal activities.

At this point Stafford Smith contacted Ahmed on his mobile telephone. Under instruction, the actor told the officer that a solicitor from the office of human rights lawyer Gareth Peirce (who had represented the Tipton Three) would call in a few minutes. The officer replied that this would not be permitted, and called in a male colleague who took Ahmeds telephone and proceeded to examine the numbers stored in the phones memory.

A third officer then entered the room, and Ahmed was threatened with being taken to a police station. Ahmed said that the officer with his telephone called him a f**ker and, when he objected, accused him of making things up. Ahmed demanded he be allowed to call Gareth Peirces office.

The female officer granted this, but warned Ahmed that if he asked about anything other than his right of legal access, the telephone would be taken away from him. As soon as he got through to the lawyers office, those holding him told him he was free to go. The officer said he was prolonging his own detention by insisting on talking to lawyers.

Ahmed was denied both the names of the interviewing officers and copies of any notes from the interview. He was, however, handed a search record sheet, which stated that the purpose of the detention was intelligence. The second page of the record sheet, under the heading Officers Must Also Complete, was blank.

Afterwards, Ahmed described the incident as humiliating and intimidating, and expressed concern that being tagged as some kind of political activist could jeopardise his employment prospects.

Clive Stafford Smith condemned Ahmeds detention as patently illegal when it happened. He warned that under recent legislation passed by the Blair government against glorifying acts of terrorism, an actor involved in a production that put an opposing side of the story to the official government line could well face the threat of detention.

Whos next? he asked. Is Ken Stott going to be detained because he played… Adolf Hitler?

The Road to Guantánamo will be shown on British television on March 9.

Police Censor

Alex Doherty — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 09:46:02 +0000

Police officers have visited an art gallery in south London requesting the removal of a painting from an exhibition. The Bettie Morton Gallery in Brixton is hosting an exhibition, Fall/Uprising, which consists of seven new paintings by artist Kimathi Donkor. These mark the twentieth anniversary of riots in Brixton and Tottenham, when widespread alienation and disaffection erupted in violence in predominantly black working class estates.

Donkor specialises in paintings of historical scenes. His last major show, which is currently on tour, consisted of paintings about Toussaint lOuverture and the Haitian slave revolt.

The two officers, in plain clothes, arrived at the gallery at 5.30 p.m. on November 4 while gallery owner Bettie Morton and volunteer Rab MacGibbon were hanging the paintings for the opening of the show the next day. The officers showed their badges and identified themselves as Sergeants Turner and McGarry. They said they were responding to complaints from the public about nudity in the painting Helping With Enquiries 1984, which shows a naked man being beaten by police officers. They requested that the painting be removed from display. Morton refused.

Bettie Morton told the World Socialist Web Site that Helping With Enquiries 1984 was barely visible from the windows of the gallery. She wanted to know how this painting had been drawn to the polices attention, pointing out that the exhibition had not even opened when the officers visited. In fact, she said, Donkor had only just finished some of the pictures and it was too late to photograph them for inclusion on the gallerys web site.

In a statement, the police said they had received a complaint on November 3 from a member of the public about a work on display in a glass-fronted gallery that could be seen from the street. The officers were from the Brixton Town Centre Team, which deals with community issues. During their visit they talked a lot about responsibility to the community.

This encouragement of self-censorship in the guise of responsibility is a line increasingly being pursued within the arts, as witness responses to Behzti, Jerry Springerthe Opera, and the recent decision by Tate Modern to withdraw John Lathams God is Great. Morton, pointing out that she too is part of that community, said, Ive done nothing wrong.

The exhibition was promoted on the galleys web site http://www.bettiemortongallery.co.uk and on the artists web site http://www.kimathidonkor.net, with details from other paintings, which also depicted the police as well as the anger felt at the time. Madonna Metropolitan shows a black woman surrounded by officers, one of whom is gesticulating angrily at her, while in Under Fire an officer with a handgun is firing at a woman at point-blank range. In Coldharbour Lane 1985, youths with their faces masked hurl stones at officers.

Immediately after the police visit, Morton put up a sign indicating that some of the images in the exhibition may cause offence. However, during the course of the discussion the officers had suggested that the artist had an agenda about the policeindicating that the nudity was not their main concern. They were keen to emphasise how different community policing is now from 20 years ago. This is in the context of attempts to give the British police unprecedented repressive powers.

Morton has refused to withdraw any paintings from the exhibition, saying that it marks the twentieth anniversary of nationally important events, represented by an artist committed to works representing historical events accurately. The true artist, she said, will have to depict events truthfully.

Donkor himself has also expressed scepticism about the complaint against the nudity, pointing to Marc Quinns huge female nude statue currently on display in Trafalgar Square. Instead, he told the web site artdaily.com that underlying this encounter there is a more fundamental issue about human rights and freedom of expression.

The riots of 1985 were sparked by repressive policing, resulting in the deaths of two elderly women in working class housing estates in London. Donkor said he was amazed that the police were now prepared to engage in such a clear act of self parody.

When Morton refused to withdraw any paintings, Sergeants Turner and McGarry left the gallery. They said they expected to make a return visit. If that is the case, both the gallery and the artist have said they will seek legal advice. The police have not said whether they intend to pursue the matter further.

At a period when the powers of the British police are being broadened, any work of art that deals with such questions is likely to come under official scrutiny and attempted censorship. It is vital that any such attempt is opposed.

Censorship at the Tate

Alex Doherty — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:18:17 +0000

The Tate gallery in London has withdrawn the work God Is Great from an exhibition dedicated to the conceptual artist John Latham. Referring to the London bombings carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, the Tate explained that in the sensitive climate, post-July 7 the work might offend some Muslims.

Neither Latham nor his curator, Paul Moorhouse, was consulted about the removal of the work. The Tates director Stephen Deuchar said the difficult decision had been made in the light of opinions that we value regarding religious sensitivities.

The Tates actions underline the developing climate of intimidation and censorship of artists that is being fostered in Britain. The piece was to be shown alongside 11 other works by the 84-year-old artist in a retrospective at Tate Britain. It is a part of the Tates permanent collection, and can be seen on the Tates web site.

The artist has accused the Tate of cowardice, saying they had misunderstood the work. He has demanded its return to him from the permanent collection. He also accused the gallery of having played into the hands of Islamic militants.

Many critics have condemned the decision. Richard Cork noted that religion has become the flashpoint for censorship and warned that this could develop further: When you start thinking about that, then the sky is the limit.

The civil liberties group Liberty has also defended Latham. Libertys Shami Chakrabarti criticized legislators and … lobby groups whove allowed free speech to be put in such peril.

Latham created the first work of this name in 1990. The Tate piece was created a year later. It consists of a large vertical sheet of thick glass in which are embedded the Bible, the Koran and the Talmud, the central texts of the monotheistic religions Christianity, Islam and Judaism. In the latest version of the piece, made earlier this year and displayed at the Venice Bienniale, the three books are contained within a field of broken glass.

There have been no complaints about the pieces, which have also been shown at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art and the Lisson Gallery in London. According to Latham, one school in Oxford had disapproved of the piece but had decided not to take their pupils to see it.

Latham denies that the piece is anti-Muslim, and the Muslim Council of Britain told the BBC that they had received no complaints. However, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary of the Muslim Council, said that they would respect the Tates decision to withdraw the piece. The Muslim Councils main concern was that they would have preferred to be consulted before the decision was taken to remove the piece.

In fact, what is striking about God is Great is its evident sympathy with religious modes of thoughta philosophy Latham has been elaborating since the 1950s. In 1990 Latham explained that, in his cosmology, the three monotheistic religions formed a single belief system from which all cultures have sprung. Further, he said, this provided a point of reference for discussing any unresolved questions, if not actually resolving them.

He aims at the unification of the world based on a shared religiosity, asking, Is it so impossible that the world should add up to one? His emphasis on the three monotheistic religions (the people of the book) is a distant echo of the viewpoint that reached its height during the period of the Crusades. It should also be noted that Prime Minister Tony Blair has made use of such rhetoric on occasionspecifically in order to deny accusations against him of anti-Islamic intent in the war against Iraq and on anti-terror legislation.

The fact that Lathams work is far removed from a critical approach to Islam or any religion gives the Tates removal of God is Great added significance. Such actions clearly set a dangerous precedent for many other artists.

Increasingly artistic freedom is under attack due to demands that artists conform to politically motivated and antidemocratic legislation, such as that proposed by the Labour government criminalizing anti-religious expression, and even more overt right-wing prejudice. And if direct censorship were not enough, an intellectual and political climate is being created that encourages self-censorship by artists.

The Tate, for example, has announced their intention to hold a public debate on arts claim to cultural independence and promise a panel of leading figures on art, ethics and religion. After Sikh protestors forced the closure of the play Behzti earlier this year, a similar debate on the future of theatre was used to encourage restraint and self-censorship among critical artists.

The success of the Sikh protestors encouraged a similar but less successful protest by fundamentalist Christians against the BBC screening Jerry SpringerThe Opera, which was denounced as blasphemous.

The direction of this latest debate has been indicated by a Tate spokesman, who explained, In a time of increasingly political and social anxiety, Lathams work, with direct reference to canonical texts, brings to the fore the fraught relationship between the artists practice and contemporary society.

Under conditions where the Tate has already withdrawn Lathams artwork, it has made clear that its own approach to this fraught relationship is to adapt to the regressive atmosphere created by the government. The Tates comment also reveals broader anxieties about any art that engages with any form of social and political reality and not merely religion.

A spokeswoman for the Tate told the September 29 edition of the Washington Times that this was the first time the gallery had withdrawn an exhibit over religious concerns. But in future the gallery would judge things on a case-by-case basis.

The De Menezes Campaign

Alex Doherty — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 11:14:28 +0000

Nearly 200 people packed a lecture theatre at the London School of Economics (LSE) for the official launch of the Jean Charles de Menezes Family Campaign on October 10. De Menezes, a young Brazilian worker, was shot dead by police at Stockwell underground station on July 22, the victim of a shoot-to-kill policy instigated in secret by the police and sanctioned by the British government.

The Family Campaign is calling for an investigation into the circumstances of Jean Charless death, both to ensure justice and to prevent similar deaths in future. The meeting heard the harrowing words of Maria Ambrosia da Silva, de Menezes mother, speaking publicly for the first time since the killing of her son, when she said that justice must and will be done. I do not want, she said, any other mother to suffer as I have done.

In the immediate aftermath of the murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, there was a systematic campaign of disinformation aimed at justifying the policy of summary execution. Although the police denied feeding false information to compliant sections of the media, many of the stories that circulated could only have come from official sources.

It was claimed that de Menezes had been identified leaving the house of a suspected terrorist, wearing an unseasonably heavy overcoat. On his arrival at Stockwell Underground rail station, he supposedly vaulted the ticket barrier and attempted to flee police. Police identified themselves and shot him because of fears that he was carrying a bomb. Some witnesses claimed to have seen wires sticking out of his clothes.

All of these stories were proved to be lies.

In fact, de Menezes had left his communal block of flats wearing a denim jacket. He took a 20-minute bus ride to the station, where he picked up a free paper and entered by using his season ticket. He went slowly down the escalator. At no point did he run from police, because the officers were in plain clothes and never identified themselves. He was not even aware that he was being followed. When he reached the platform he entered the train and sat down. At this point he was shot seven times in the head, and once in the shoulder, at point-blank range with no prior warning. Three other shots missed.

On the basis of false stories, press reports stated definitively that de Menezes was a suicide bomber implicated in the bomb attempts of July 21. The police only informed the family of his death some 30 hours later. His cousins, who lived with Jean Charles, were corralled in a hotel room by police and interrogated. The telephone was not working, so they were unable to ring their family in Brazil.

As it became clear that de Menezes was an innocent man, the police worked overtime to limit the political fallout from their murderous actions.

Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, stalled an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) for five days. Instead, he promised an internal investigation by the Metropolitan Police. The IPCC has a statutory duty to investigate. The Metropolitan Police also announced that CCTV footage from Stockwell station was missing.

A deputation, led by Deputy Assistance Commissioner John Yates, went to Brazil to visit de Menezes family and offer them a £15,000 ex gratia payment. The police insisted that the meeting had to take place without the family lawyer being present. When the family said they would be happy to discuss with the police, but were waiting for the arrival of their lawyer, the deputation left.

The Family Campaign is demanding to know the full facts of what happened on July 22. Its central demands are for a swift conclusion to the IPCC investigation, with the publication of its findings, and for appropriate criminal charges being brought against those responsible. The family is also calling for a full judicial public inquiry to investigate the police operation that culminated in the murder of de Menezes, police actions following his death, and the shoot-to-kill policy itself.

Gareth Peirce, the familys lawyer, told the meeting that de Menezes family had been asking from the outset all the relevant questions that the police still needed to answer. How could Jean Charles have been identified as a suspect? If he was a suspect, how could he have been allowed to take a bus and enter the station? How could his execution have been lawful?

She pointed to the new waves of anti-terrorist legislation being promulgated by the government, and said that the country already has more than it needs. She asked whether the police use the existing legislation properly, and whether new legislation was being proposed for propaganda purposes? At the same time, she said, there is an extra-parliamentary culture of police policy, as witnessed in the shoot-to-kill policy.

Peirce noted that Sir John Stevens, former Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, had boasted in his newspaper column of introducing the policy when he had previously been employed investigating shoot-to-kill operations in Northern Ireland. She also drew attention to the forthcoming debate in the House of Lords on the use of evidence extracted by torture, and the deliberate policy of returning people to countries that employ torture.

The most far-reaching historical overview came from Amnesty Internationals Livio Zilli, who noted that Britain has a long history of allegations of unlawful killings that have never been resolved. Amnesty is demanding a mechanism for independent investigations: it expressed particular concern over police attempts to block the IPCCs investigation. The fact that the IPCC had not opposed the actions of the police towards the IPCC raised concerns that it was susceptible to pressure from the Metropolitan Police, and possibly the Home Office.

Matthew Taylor MP, former chair of the Liberal Democrats, was most concerned that repressive legislation had been introduced without Parliament providing it with a fig leaf of legitimacy. He justified shoot-to-kill operations, stating, Of course, we all understand that under certain circumstances it may be … reasonable to use lethal force.

He regretted, however, the lack of parliamentary debate on the shoot-to-kill policy. Had it been debated in Parliament, he said, he would have opposed it. If it had then gone through Parliament, though, it would have had some kind of legitimacy, however unpalatable.

Several speakers drew attention to other victims of police killings and repression. Susan Alexander, the mother of Azelle Rodney, compared her sons case to that of Jean Charles de Menezes. Rodney, an innocent man, was also smeared in the press after he was shot in the head by police in April this year. The postmortem was rushed and the family was not notified. Ms. Alexander expressed her lack of confidence in the IPCC, noting that the officer involved in the death of her son had still not been interviewed.

The human rights campaigner Bianca Jagger drew attention to Prime Minister Tony Blairs demands for more draconian legislation on the grounds that the rules of engagement with terrorists have changed. Jagger noted that this marked a reintroduction of the death penalty by the back door, as the British government had rejected political debate.

In the debate that followed, a speaker from the floor argued that all the police commissioners involved should be prosecuted for conspiracy to murder, along with Home Secretary Charles Clarke. A friend of the de Menezes family said that it was impossible for them to have any dealings with the police because of the lies and obstruction. One speaker, who had been in Tavistock Square on July 7 when a bomb exploded on a bus, said that not all victims of terrorism supported the shoot-to-kill policy or were uncritical of it.

A question was asked about the intervention of two Brazilian government representatives.

It was pointed out that the representatives had made no effort to contact the de Menezes family. They were, said one speaker, pursuing their own political agenda. There has been much discussion of the British government having adopted a shoot-to-kill policy already practiced in Brazil. It was noted by a local politician from Sao Paulo that some 500 to 800 people are shot dead each year in that city alone.

Selfridge's Censor Installation

eddie — Mon, 05 Sep 2005 14:19:53 +0000

Selfridges department store in London last month removed from its window an art installation dealing with the climate of fear being fostered in the aftermath of the July 7 subway bombings and the police murder of Jean Charles de Menezes.

Eleven young professional artists from the Drawing Year programme at The Princes Drawing School were each given a window at Selfridges for five days. Controversy arose over Dora Wades installation, Fear on the Streets, which was first mounted on August 21. A developing installation, the work took as its starting point what it was like to be in the streets after the bombings.

The work, which predominantly used stark black-and-white elements, sought to address a number of social issues in the aftermath of the bombings, particularly the officially encouraged atmosphere of alarm. A wooden cage represented the Anti-Social Behaviour Orders (ASBOs), while meter-wide linocut £20 notes bore the serial number ASBO2005; a cordon of mannequins in police uniforms stood in front of a woman pushing a pram; closed-circuit television cameras looked on the scene, and the whole piece was illustrated with stanzas from W. S. Gilberts poem My Dream:

The other night, from cares exempt,/I sleptand what dyou think I dreamt?/I dreamt that somehow I had come/To dwell in Topsy-Turveydom!

Where vice is virtuevirtue, vice:/Where nice is nasty nasty, nice/
Where right is wrong and wrong is right/
Where white is black and black is white.

The intention, the artist has written on her website, was to highlight the gulf that exists between bland commercial shop window displays and external fearful reality.

As an evolving installation, other elements were added over the course of the show. Most controversially, a Brazilian man was placed in a prone position at the centre of the installation, in an invocation of the police killing of Jean Charles de Menezes. De Menezes, an innocent man, was shot dead by armed police under a governmental shoot-to-kill policy on July 22

For half an hour on August 22, the body of the man in the installation was draped in a Brazilian flag. The artist herself, dressed as a policewoman, stood behind him reading a paper with the headline New Order: Shoot To Kill.

It was this explicit statement that first attracted the attention of Selfridges. The company requested that the flag and the newspaper be removed from the display. This was done, but when Wade arrived on the following morning, she was told that the installation had been closed and she was told to remove it.

Selfridgess press release tried to play down the political implications of this act of censorship, referring instead to their long and meaningful collaboration with the arts. The company claimed that the inappropriate installation was, in fact, withdrawn because it had failed to meet the original brief, which was for drawing. Dora Wade, though, has told the World Socialist Web Site that extensive use of linocuts was always part of her proposal for the installation. The company only raised the medium used as a problem when they saw the content of the piece.

The companys website trumpets the stores arts sponsorship over the last eight years. The store has hosted and sponsored many works of art, including one of Spencer Tunicks mass naked photographs, and boasts of its collaboration with artists. This latest move suggests that this sponsorship is bought at an artistic price. Selfridges on this occasion has, as Dora Wade puts it, decided to stop or censor an artist whose work falls outside its own opinions. Significantly, Selfridges appears to have received no complaints about the display.

As important as the act of closing down an art installation has been the media response to this event. There has not been any effort on the part of the media to defend Dora Wades artistic freedom, much less to draw conclusions about a general threat to freedom of expression. Rather, as was seen with the coverage of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes, the press has acted to play down and conceal such threats. TV and newspaper coverage has stressed instead the question of whether, as the BBC programme Newsnight put it, art should have to defend itself from the accusation that it is…tasteless.

Joan Smith, writing in the Independent, found it a little surprising that Selfridges showed the piece in the first place, given the sensitivities surrounding the death of de Menezes.

For its part, the Guardian merely ran a captioned photo noting that the installation had been removed.

Britains newspapers clearly find an artistic depiction meant to express a degree of outrage at de Menezess death more distasteful than the fact that he was murdered as part of a shoot-to-kill policy they have almost all endorsed, under the leadership of a police chief, Sir Ian Blair, whom they defend and a government most of them back.

Dora Wade spoke to the World Socialist Web Site about her thinking behind Fear on the Streets, and the responses of Selfridges and the media.

She had been considering Gilberts Topsy-Turveydom in the aftermath of the London bombings and the shooting of de Menezes. There is a situation in London, she said, where innocent men are killed under the guise of protecting the innocent and state executions are said to be just. However, only the depiction of such events in shop windows is censored.

There is, said Wade, a pervading silly idea that people are not aware of whats going on around them, pointing to the generally positive and serious response from passers-by to her installation. In contrast, within the media, All of the serious points it addresses have been brushed under the carpet.

Veteran British Surrealist Dies

Alex Doherty — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 22:28:51 +0000

Conroy Maddox, who died aged 92 on January 14, occupies an important place in the history of surrealism in Britain. He was the last survivor of the surrealist group that formed before the Second World War. More significantly, he remained fiercely loyal to surrealism throughout his life. He was described by Silvano Levy, the author of a recent monograph on him, as Britains most committed, energetic, and enduring exponent of surrealism.

Maddox was born in 1912 in Herefordshire where his father ran the family agricultural seed business and was educated at a local elementary school, before going to grammar school. He did not go to art school, and had no formal training, although he was interested in painting from an early age. He was also already coming under some crucial early influences. His father, for example, loved to fill the house with artefacts bought at country auctions, beginning Maddoxs long fascination with the object, and also with the inspiring quality of the glimpse of something new. As he later wrote about Louis Aragons book, Paris Peasant, [Aragon] waited for something to happen, something strange or abnormal, so as to permit him a glimpse of a new order of things. Such experiences were conducive to Surrealisms attraction to the marvellous.

From his father Maddox also learned the deep and abiding hostility to religion which inspired so much of his later work. (No longer do I allow myself to see religion as anything but a brutal insignia of a slow moral decomposition, he was to write later).

The recollection of a hospital visit to his father, who was wounded in the First World War, inspired his anti-militarism. It was also significant later in driving him to look for forms of expression opposed to a militaristic world. (At the same time as this experience, recently demobbed artists from across Europe were converging on Paris, where they sought to express their disgust at the nationalist slaughter they had just survived. It was these artistsAragon, Hans Arp, Paul Eluard, for examplewho turned the outrage of Dada towards the revolutionary potential of surrealism). Witnessing a woman having an hysterical fit inspired in him a deep and lasting fascination with hysteria and psychological disorders.

In 1929, during the Depression, the family moved to Chipping Norton, where they ran a hotel. Increasingly interested in painting, Maddox converted a stable into a studio. In his free time he painted still life and landscapes. Several years later the family moved again, this time to the Birmingham suburb of Erdington, where his father started a company importing wine and spirits. Maddox also moved to Birmingham, which offered greater employment prospects than the Welsh marches. He worked through several clerical posts, and by 1935 was designing trade-fair exhibition stands.

Birmingham also offered him a wide range of cultural resources, and he continued to educate himself in art. He spent much time in the citys art galleries, although he was not much impressed. (This was reciprocated: Birmingham City Art Gallery only recently acquired any of his work). He spent longer in the citys public libraries, seeking out the available material on modern art. His modernism was self-taught; having found a copy of R.H. Wilenskis The Modern Movement in Art (1927), he copied the illustrations. It was during this period, studying library books, that he first came across surrealism. He later described it as a turning point, one of those doors that suddenly swings open to reveal a totally new direction. From this point on he was committed to surrealism.

Alongside the commitment, though, Maddoxs life was a demonstration that surrealism is a collective endeavour. His isolation ended in 1935, when he met the brothers John and Robert Melville, both active in the Birmingham avant-garde scene. John was a painter, Robert (later art critic of the New Statesman) a writer with an extensive knowledge of the work of Picasso. The Melvilles introduced Maddox to others interested in surrealism in Britain. Their collaboration was also the basis for the later formation of a Birmingham surrealist group.

The first major exhibition of surrealist work in Britain took place in 1936, with the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries. Neither Maddox nor Melville sent paintings. Instead, they criticised many of the established artists whose works were exhibited. The works of artists like Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and Herbert Read were not, they argued, surrealist, nor indeed were they informed by surrealist thinking. (Both Moore and Read were on the organising committee of the exhibition). Maddox attacked some as simply presenting the acceptably picturesque.

Some of the artists they criticised quite obviously had only the most marginal connection with surrealism: Maddoxs criticisms are more acute in the case of Read, who at this stage was prominent among British artists claiming to be surrealists. Read was sympathetic to some aspects of surrealism, but Maddox opposed to his parochialism a firm commitment to the internationalism of the movement.

At the 1936 exhibition Maddox met André Breton, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. Through them he received introductions to artists in Paris. He made his first trip in 1937. Over the next two years he made several visits to Paris, where he collaborated closely with the surrealist group including Man Ray and (particularly) Georges Hugnet. Back in London, he joined the English Surrealist Group in 1938, again with the Melvilles.

This was a period of sustained assault on surrealism, orchestrated internationally by the Stalinist Communist Parties. They accused it of being anti-revolutionary art, advocating instead socialist realism. After Guernica was shown in London, for example, Picasso was criticised for coming under the bad influence of surrealists. The painting itself was criticised for expressing disillusionment.

Against this, E.L.T. Mesens organised the Living Art in England exhibition early in 1939 at the London Gallery. His intention was to show surrealism as a movement capable of standing at the head of opposition to reaction. Of the non-surrealist artists displayed, many were constructivists already coming into exile from Europe. Alongside them were the works of British surrealists, including Maddox.

Maddox returned to Paris, but left for Britain again with war imminent. (Seeing all the sandbags going up around the monuments, I decided it was time to get out). He returned to Birmingham, where he was employed by the Ministry of Defence researching and designing parts for film projectors. He was also the focus for a predominantly surrealist group involving the Melvilles and Emmy Bridgwater.

The war years were among his most vital and productive, producing some of his finest works. He contributed an article on The Object in Surrealism to the 1940 triple issue of the London Bulletin, pursuing André Bretons prediction of the crisis of the object. In the same year he produced Onanistic Typewriteron each key a tack is fixed, point upwards, while the roller is streaked with blood. He was looking for the disturbance and demoralisation against the commonplace and the rational. He also pioneered the technique of ecremage, where paper is dragged over oil paint floating in a tray of water.

Although the surrealists were credited in the press with having foreseen the political crisis in some way, and having been critical of the society that produced it, there was a vigorous onslaught against any notion that their resistance was an option. The Manchester Guardian, for example, wrote of the 1940 Surrealism Today exhibition that at a moment like this surrealism seems unnecessarysurrealism can be a good psychological cocktail, but cocktail time is over.

Under cover of pulling together for a national war effort, the revolutionary aims of surrealism were under fire, yet the surrealists themselves continued to voice them. The first page of the 1940 London Bulletin stated that the enemies of desire and hope have risen in violence, and called for a fight against Hitlers ideology wherever it appears.

However, the political pressures continued, and the betrayals within the ranks of social democracy and Stalinism continued to disorient. As weaknesses became apparent within the London surrealist group, Maddox worked closely with Toni del Renzio, an Italian who had fought for the POUM in Spain. Del Renzio provided a valuable fillip to British surrealism, and enabled Maddox to continue his work. In 1945 several of his collages, along with works by other surrealists, were seized by Special Branch on suspicion of undermining the war effort.

The political disorientation of the war years pushed Maddox in a more libertarian direction as an expression of indifference to the pettifogging activities of politicians and art merchants; to quote Michel Remys authoritative Surrealism in Britain (1999). It is to Maddoxs credit, though, that he continued to pursue his quest for a transformed world, even though he acknowledged that it might not happen during his lifetime. The work of Surrealism can never be conclusive. It is more of an exploration, a journey, and a struggle. Paintings are signposts. To find where they lead I will have to carry on following them despite the continual obstacles that block the way. For that reason I will remain on my quest for surrealism until my last breath.

He continued to return to the same subjects. His extraordinary collage-painting Warehouses of Convulsion (1946), for example, shows panic-stricken women rising from coffin shaped boxes. (Although lost, the piece is reproduced in Remy, p.288). He also began staging pieces involving seducing a woman dressed as a nun. (Birmingham City Council deterred him from staging the pieces in shop windows).

In the early 1960s he moved to London. Solo shows became regular occurrences after 1963. They brought him a little money, but the main thrust of his work was to defend the legacy of surrealism, both in his new work and also in retrospectives. In 1978, for example, he was so angry at the misrepresentation of surrealism in the Hayward Gallerys Dada and Surrealism Reviewed exhibition that he launched a counter-exhibition as a corrective.

One obituarist suggested that His surrealist convictions kept Maddox apart from the London art worldyoung artists annoyed him. This is to misunderstand the nature of surrealism, and his ongoing commitment to it. He was generous of his time for those who were trying to develop surrealism and adhere to it. Michel Remy, for example, stayed with him during the writing of Surrealism in Britain. Maddox remained hostile, though, to those whose work had nothing to do with surrealist transformation.

Surrealism, he once said, is a difficult outlook to propose, but it offers a way out of the type of society in which we live. He deserves tribute for his continued belief that society will change one day and we will escape from our incessant monotony, from this kind of life where we dont link our dreams to reality.

Three of Conroy Maddoxs pictures can be seen at the Tate Gallery: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/WorksList?searchid=18956&page=1\\