Latest / UK Column Radio / A Thousand Words | Chris Coverdale (Part 1 of 3)

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A Thousand Words | Chris Coverdale (Part 1 of 3) · UK Column Radio

0:00
Speaker 1: How do we move from where we are now in
0:02
Speaker 1: a very difficult position in this country and elsewhere in
0:06
Speaker 1: other countries, to a proper decent through democracy. I was
0:12
Speaker 1: at school in a monastic boarding school for ten years,
0:17
Speaker 1: which ruined me forever really in a way. So no
0:21
Speaker 1: British service person can go on active service without an
0:26
Speaker 1: express command from the commander in chief. We should really
0:30
Speaker 1: have hung Winston Churchill, for instance, for what he did
0:36
Speaker 1: in the Second World War.
0:56
Speaker 2: Chris, Yes, thanks ever so much for coming. Well, actually
1:00
Speaker 2: suggested you know k from Hope.
1:02
Speaker 1: No, well, yeah, yeah, lovely woman.
1:04
Speaker 2: You got to Chris, and I was like, that's a
1:06
Speaker 2: great idea. But that was last year and then it
1:09
Speaker 2: didn't happen. But as I told you, we did cross
1:12
Speaker 2: paths about seventeen years ago in Brighton, Yes, when you
1:16
Speaker 2: handed a handed as me and Vicky a leaflet, right, yeah,
1:20
Speaker 2: and that was my first exposure to to what you
1:23
Speaker 2: what you were doing right at that time? Do you
1:28
Speaker 2: remember it was it was known as Freeman on the
1:29
Speaker 2: Land stuff. That was the kind of monika it was given,
1:32
Speaker 2: wasn't it, Freeman on the land. It's not really, we
1:35
Speaker 2: don't usually really, yeah, the freedom But then it was
1:39
Speaker 2: Freeman on the Land, and that was all all the
1:43
Speaker 2: lawful rebellion and all that kind of stuff. So that's
1:45
Speaker 2: going back about seventeen years, and that was roughly the
1:50
Speaker 2: start of the of your For anyone listening who doesn't know, essentially,
1:55
Speaker 2: in a road brief summary, your your main focus is
1:58
Speaker 2: on the legality of taxation, but not necessarily in and
2:04
Speaker 2: of itself, but because that money is used to fund
2:07
Speaker 2: illegal activities such as war, genocide, terrorism. Absolutely, okay, just
2:13
Speaker 2: for anyone listening, most people will know what you're about.
2:16
Speaker 2: I know you've been on the column and you've been
2:17
Speaker 2: interviewed a couple of times. But how did you get
2:21
Speaker 2: to that point to start that journey?
2:25
Speaker 1: Oh? God, before that, it started much earlier, back in
2:31
Speaker 1: the sixties, okay, when well even yes, nineteen sixty seven,
2:40
Speaker 1: around about then, I was part of the I was
2:45
Speaker 1: interested in the whole issue of conscientious objection, and so
2:50
Speaker 1: the Peace Pledge Union. I tried to sign a peace
2:54
Speaker 1: pledge thing at that time. And so really that's when
2:59
Speaker 1: I say started it. And then Vietnam at Vietnam War time,
3:05
Speaker 1: and yeah, and the demonstration was a big demonstration in
3:11
Speaker 1: hand of a square and not Hanniba Square, it's one
3:13
Speaker 1: of those big squares anyway that well, the American embassy
3:18
Speaker 1: is there, and so yeah, that's how I started to
3:23
Speaker 1: get interested and start to see that we've got to
3:27
Speaker 1: stop what's going on. And it's really been the motivating
3:33
Speaker 1: principle behind my actions for the last sixty years. Really,
3:38
Speaker 1: we have to stop mass murder and genocide, which is
3:42
Speaker 1: called war. Yeah, and you know that that was the
3:46
Speaker 1: underpending of it all.
3:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what do you? What do you This is
3:52
Speaker 2: a huge question. Obviously, war is an expression of our
3:56
Speaker 2: human condition. We have conflict and we try and all
4:00
Speaker 2: of it and often even on the on the micro scale,
4:04
Speaker 2: we end up with physical violence. How do we then
4:07
Speaker 2: talk about this big picture thing? How do we how
4:12
Speaker 2: do we how do we tackle it on that.
4:14
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, it's a very good question. The point is
4:18
Speaker 1: that war is a man made activity. It is nothing
4:21
Speaker 1: to do with nature, and it's natural to go to war.
4:27
Speaker 1: It's not natural to go to war, absolutely not. And
4:33
Speaker 1: it is that there are people in this world who
4:37
Speaker 1: benefit profit from war and take us to war when
4:42
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of the population. I don't want to
4:46
Speaker 1: go to war at all. And but this has been
4:49
Speaker 1: going on for one hundred, one hundred and fifty years.
4:51
Speaker 1: So the whole concept of war being a natural activity
4:58
Speaker 1: is totally wrong for me. It is man made and
5:01
Speaker 1: it comes about because of the decisions of maybe half
5:04
Speaker 1: a dozen people at the most. Yeah, and the fact
5:08
Speaker 1: that half a dozen human beings can take the whole
5:13
Speaker 1: nation to war against another nation is just horrifying to me.
5:18
Speaker 1: That's really what underpins my determination to try and stop it.
5:24
Speaker 1: So we've been setting up make war history, making war
5:28
Speaker 1: history for oh if I started some twenty something years ago, right, right,
5:35
Speaker 1: But I believe that it is quite possible to do so,
5:38
Speaker 1: and that's really what I am part of the freedom movement.
5:43
Speaker 2: I think you're completely right that in terms of the
5:47
Speaker 2: big conflicts, the majority of people aren't interested in it,
5:51
Speaker 2: and they only get propagandized into supporting them essentially. Yeah,
5:57
Speaker 2: it's a bit like that, you know, the old when
5:59
Speaker 2: we when we were at school and we'd see that
6:02
Speaker 2: the British propaganda posters of the of the marauding hun
6:08
Speaker 2: with baby monster with a baby sort of like ripping
6:12
Speaker 2: it in the First.
6:13
Speaker 1: World War, and that was disgraceful. But it's been going
6:18
Speaker 1: on ever since it's all propaganda, and it was the
6:21
Speaker 1: propaganda to promote the Afghanistan war on the Rat war
6:26
Speaker 1: that really got me changing my behavior and focusing on
6:31
Speaker 1: this full time.
6:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a deep question about human psychology and
6:39
Speaker 2: and and the whole why why we? Why we? Why
6:43
Speaker 2: we have conflicts? But if we sort of simplify it
6:46
Speaker 2: down to how to how to make some kind of
6:51
Speaker 2: structure which which legally makes it more difficult for nations
6:58
Speaker 2: to go to the war, I'm guessing that's yeah. Central
7:01
Speaker 2: part of.
7:01
Speaker 1: The world has been doing that for years. I mean,
7:04
Speaker 1: you know, way back to the seventeenth century or whatever.
7:08
Speaker 1: We must stop fighting wars, and the most recent one,
7:12
Speaker 1: I mean, most people have never heard of the Treaty
7:16
Speaker 1: for the Renunciation of War, which was set up in
7:20
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty eight. I haven't, You haven't, And in fact
7:26
Speaker 1: fifty or so. Initially seventeen nations said we will never
7:32
Speaker 1: wage war and we will settle all disputes peacefully, right,
7:37
Speaker 1: and Britain signed up to that straight away. You see,
7:40
Speaker 1: So we agreed in nineteen twenty eight never to wage war,
7:43
Speaker 1: to renounce war as a political in nineteen twenty nineteen,
7:47
Speaker 1: twenty eight. Yeah, after the First World War, it's often
7:51
Speaker 1: called the Kellogg brain packed you may have heard of, right, Okay,
7:57
Speaker 1: So that Frank Kellogg of a Marriag was persuaded by
8:03
Speaker 1: Aristide Briand of France who was really pushing for we've
8:07
Speaker 1: got to have an international law to stop war, and
8:13
Speaker 1: so it was set up and everybody got quite keen
8:16
Speaker 1: on it. Simultaneously there was the League of Nations operating,
8:21
Speaker 1: or supposedly operating, but that it didn't work very well.
8:26
Speaker 1: But anyway, the main law that was then set up
8:29
Speaker 1: after the Second World War and the whole thing had
8:31
Speaker 1: gone wrong was the UN Charter, and we agreed in
8:36
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five again never to wage war, never to
8:41
Speaker 1: threaten or to use force, and to settle all disputes peacefully. Now,
8:47
Speaker 1: what most people don't understand is that we have promised
8:50
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. We as the people of Britain,
8:55
Speaker 1: have promised the people of the world that we would
8:58
Speaker 1: never threaten or use force and settle all disputes peacefully. Now,
9:02
Speaker 1: our government did that on our behalf and we have
9:07
Speaker 1: never kept to it. We have fought eighty five eighty
9:11
Speaker 1: six wars since nineteen forty five murdering somewhere around ten
9:17
Speaker 1: million people, somewhere between nine and twelve million people, one
9:22
Speaker 1: third of whom were children, and nobody does anything about it.
9:28
Speaker 1: It is usterly So that's what keeps me going anyway.
9:33
Speaker 1: We have to do something about this and stop it
9:37
Speaker 1: because it's not part of human life.
9:40
Speaker 2: Really, there's definitely a well, I think what you would
9:48
Speaker 2: the work that you do is very practical, isn't it?
9:53
Speaker 2: But I think what comes with it is also a
9:58
Speaker 2: spreading of an awareness that something isn't right. It's not
10:02
Speaker 2: just practical steps, it's it's your You're you're facilitating a
10:07
Speaker 2: discussion about.
10:08
Speaker 1: About Britain and democracy. Yeah, how do we come to
10:13
Speaker 1: the decision to go to war and all that?
10:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's one of those things I wrote down so
10:17
Speaker 2: because I saw you mentioned democracy and one of them,
10:20
Speaker 2: and that's It's a tricky concept, isn't it, Because you
10:24
Speaker 2: know a lot of people might say that democracy itself
10:26
Speaker 2: is just mob rale. How do we determine what is
10:32
Speaker 2: democracy or or at least what benefits do we get
10:36
Speaker 2: from democracy?
10:37
Speaker 1: And it?
10:37
Speaker 2: Can we have a true democracy? Obviously?
10:40
Speaker 1: I believe that we can.
10:41
Speaker 2: You think we can? So how how would that what's
10:45
Speaker 2: your kind of vision of that, because obviously a lot
10:47
Speaker 2: of people will be watching this would be you know,
10:51
Speaker 2: we say that the whole system is rigged essentially, and
10:54
Speaker 2: I'm sure to some extent you.
10:56
Speaker 1: Would completely agree.
10:59
Speaker 2: So what what are the what are the steps that
11:03
Speaker 2: we need to take in your opinion, to get to
11:06
Speaker 2: it a new a new kind of paradigm.
11:09
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's a very big question. Well, I mean
11:12
Speaker 1: that's really what all my life's about, is trying to
11:17
Speaker 1: find solutions to the problems. So what is democracy? I
11:23
Speaker 1: think it goes back to the American Revolution and I
11:31
Speaker 1: think Thomas Jefferson, or one of the revolutionaries main signers
11:37
Speaker 1: of the Independent Declaration of Independence was Thomas Jefferson, and
11:43
Speaker 1: if I remember rightly, he was saying, it's government of
11:46
Speaker 1: the people, by the people, for the people, and that
11:50
Speaker 1: really is what I understand it to be about. In
11:53
Speaker 1: this country, we've gone so far away from that that
11:57
Speaker 1: we have government of the people by a small group
12:03
Speaker 1: of psychopaths or criminals supposedly in parliament, for the bankers,
12:10
Speaker 1: and it's got nothing to do with the government of
12:14
Speaker 1: the people for the people, by the people, and it's
12:18
Speaker 1: by the people that I'm particularly interested in because they
12:22
Speaker 1: keep telling us the authorities that when you vote, your
12:28
Speaker 1: MP is going to represent your views in parliament, and
12:31
Speaker 1: therefore this is a democracy. It's absolute rubbish. They never
12:36
Speaker 1: represent our views and it's for the people to make
12:40
Speaker 1: the decisions, not the parliament, and they seem to have
12:44
Speaker 1: forgotten that completely, and so they now think they're taking
12:48
Speaker 1: all decisions on our behalf and they tell us that,
12:54
Speaker 1: and we have to contribute to it by paying for it.
12:57
Speaker 1: And it's the taxation that really really gets up my
13:01
Speaker 1: nose in terms of supporting them. I realized many years
13:06
Speaker 1: ago that every time I paid tax, I'm supporting their
13:10
Speaker 1: criminal activities. And it's the warfare in particular. Anyway, that's
13:16
Speaker 1: the rather muddled way of putting it.
13:19
Speaker 2: But I don't think that's muddled. I think that's I
13:22
Speaker 2: think I think that's a good clarification. The link between
13:28
Speaker 2: the philosophical ground that this is coming from and then
13:33
Speaker 2: the solution, the practical part of the.
13:37
Speaker 1: Practical how do we make it? Yeah, that's the thing
13:39
Speaker 1: that really interests me is how do we move from
13:43
Speaker 1: where we are now in a very difficult position in
13:46
Speaker 1: this country and elsewhere in other countries to a proper
13:52
Speaker 1: decent through democracy where we are governed by ourselves. It
13:58
Speaker 1: is self governing government and of the people by other
14:01
Speaker 1: people for the people. We've got to look at the
14:05
Speaker 1: systems that will help us to bring that about. It's
14:10
Speaker 1: not just individual behavior of one or two bad people.
14:15
Speaker 1: It's the systems that we've been brought up into that
14:19
Speaker 1: are causing the problems. Yeah, and we have to have
14:23
Speaker 1: a look at the decent systems. That goes back to
14:26
Speaker 1: my early life where I spent twenty five years as
14:32
Speaker 1: a consultant if you like, running a consulting organization in
14:36
Speaker 1: the behavioral science field, helping people work together, learn how
14:42
Speaker 1: to work together.
14:44
Speaker 2: Effectivity is that in business?
14:46
Speaker 1: It was, Yes, we had a business I inherited from
14:51
Speaker 1: my father by almost by accident. I had been an
14:55
Speaker 1: antique dealer in the city. I left school and I
15:00
Speaker 1: thought I didn't go to university or anything like that,
15:04
Speaker 1: and love joy character almost Yeah, it was wrong like that.
15:09
Speaker 1: The sixties it was. It was a great time, great fun,
15:15
Speaker 1: it was. And so we had a shop in Hastings
15:18
Speaker 1: and Lennard's and then one in Paris and a store
15:23
Speaker 1: in Stockholm. And I was you know, just going around
15:26
Speaker 1: buying and selling in different places. So it was great fun. Anyway,
15:32
Speaker 1: my father asked me could I have Could I buy
15:35
Speaker 1: him some get him some off his furniture because he'd
15:39
Speaker 1: set up a business. I knew nothing about it. I'd
15:41
Speaker 1: been separated from him for years and just met him
15:44
Speaker 1: once for an hour a year, you know type of thing. Anyway,
15:48
Speaker 1: so I said, yeah, I can do that, got him
15:50
Speaker 1: some office furniture, and then he persuaded me to go
15:53
Speaker 1: on one of his courses. I thought, it's not really
15:56
Speaker 1: for an antique dealer, but I was you fed up
16:00
Speaker 1: with the antique business anyway, So I went on the
16:02
Speaker 1: course and it was fantastic eye opening understanding the issues
16:07
Speaker 1: between people. How do you interact effectively with other people
16:12
Speaker 1: in a team in order to get work done to
16:15
Speaker 1: a high quality to everybody's satisfaction. Okay, and anyway.
16:20
Speaker 2: So whatchnics for you?
16:23
Speaker 1: Well, it's very basic things. You know, listening to somebody else,
16:26
Speaker 1: how do you really hear what the other members of
16:29
Speaker 1: your team are suggesting? And so if you get a
16:34
Speaker 1: good team who are all listening to each other, you
16:37
Speaker 1: can solve problems as a speed. That is unbelievable. But
16:42
Speaker 1: most people come with their own agendas. They don't have
16:45
Speaker 1: a common goal. How do we get a common goal
16:49
Speaker 1: in a group of seven people? Things like that. It
16:51
Speaker 1: was very interesting business and the underpinning of all of
16:56
Speaker 1: it was observation, awareness of what's happened, of where you are,
17:01
Speaker 1: of who the people are, of what their skills and
17:05
Speaker 1: qualities are and how you can utilize them.
17:08
Speaker 2: You find people that you find people fascinating.
17:10
Speaker 1: Absolutely, It's what's life's all about. It's not about.
17:17
Speaker 2: Like people because I find them fascinating absolutely. So did
17:22
Speaker 2: you study psychology or on the job?
17:26
Speaker 1: On the job? And that was the great thing about it.
17:29
Speaker 1: I went on the course, I went on the second course,
17:31
Speaker 1: and then one of the directors of the company they
17:35
Speaker 1: had a big contract with c I, and said they
17:39
Speaker 1: need some consultants. And one of the directors said to
17:42
Speaker 1: my father, well, your son would make a good consultant, okay,
17:46
Speaker 1: And he was a bit you just because he's my son,
17:51
Speaker 1: we don't want him in there. They said he's got
17:54
Speaker 1: the skills we need. So I got into the firm
17:58
Speaker 1: and I was there learning the system and it was
18:01
Speaker 1: fantastic but very hard work. We were running courses. I
18:07
Speaker 1: was away from home and it, you know, for one
18:10
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty days a year and not good for
18:14
Speaker 1: my marriage.
18:15
Speaker 2: Oh you were married at the time.
18:17
Speaker 1: I got married a year after I joined the firm,
18:20
Speaker 1: So anyway.
18:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, so anyway, you're trying to brush this one out back.
18:25
Speaker 2: This is so what you were in your early twenties
18:27
Speaker 2: where you.
18:28
Speaker 1: Were saying, yeah, I was ye. I was born in
18:31
Speaker 1: forty six. I left school in sixty four, nineteen sixty four,
18:37
Speaker 1: So yeah, I got married when nineteen seventy I joined
18:43
Speaker 1: the firm. So yeah, seventy one I got married.
18:48
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah.
18:52
Speaker 1: That was the did you And then anyway, I was
18:54
Speaker 1: in the firm for three years, for nearly four years,
18:58
Speaker 1: and my father was taken with cancer and died shortly afterwards,
19:02
Speaker 1: and suddenly I found myself and my family owning this business.
19:08
Speaker 1: So I was, you know, sort of the only one
19:14
Speaker 1: in the business at the time. So I suddenly found
19:16
Speaker 1: myself running the business in a way with the other
19:19
Speaker 1: people there, the consultants, very good ones, but we built
19:25
Speaker 1: it up over twenty five years.
19:29
Speaker 2: You got brothers or sisters.
19:30
Speaker 1: I have one sister, and she wasn't involved in she
19:33
Speaker 1: wasn't that time. She had been shortly, but she wasn't then. Yeah, No,
19:41
Speaker 1: it's anyway, twenty over the twenty five years, we built
19:45
Speaker 1: it up into it started off as a training company
19:48
Speaker 1: in this country and then became management development and organization development,
19:56
Speaker 1: and we were eventually operating. We had eight companies in
20:01
Speaker 1: seven countries, and its expanded, you know, working with very
20:08
Speaker 1: bigger organizations like the World Bank and the International Military Fund,
20:12
Speaker 1: the United Nations Development Program and.
20:17
Speaker 2: At this point, so this was before you got involved
20:19
Speaker 2: with any kind.
20:20
Speaker 1: Of well, I had been in the background. I was
20:24
Speaker 1: at school in a monastic boarding school for ten years,
20:29
Speaker 1: which ruined me forever really in a way affect but yeah,
20:37
Speaker 1: that's anyway. The outcome it was that we had every
20:44
Speaker 1: in the senior part of the school for five years,
20:48
Speaker 1: twice a week we had this combined cadet force activity
20:53
Speaker 1: where we all had to march around and learn how
20:55
Speaker 1: to be soldiers and sailors and everything else. And it
21:01
Speaker 1: was part of that, I suppose, and I realized this
21:04
Speaker 1: is horrendous. You can get six hundred and fifty boys
21:08
Speaker 1: all dressed up as soldiers on the parade ground, all
21:15
Speaker 1: absolutely in unison following orders, and it made me realize
21:19
Speaker 1: that how we follow orders all the time, whether or
21:23
Speaker 1: not they'rrelevant. And it was because of the irrelevance of
21:27
Speaker 1: it that I got really pretty pistol for it. They
21:31
Speaker 1: were training us to join another war. And several other
21:37
Speaker 1: people there who you know, I was at school with
21:42
Speaker 1: did join the armed forces and in the Navy, or
21:46
Speaker 1: one of them became an admiral in the Navy, and
21:49
Speaker 1: another one was undercovering in Ireland, Bob Nairak, he was
21:58
Speaker 1: murdered by the ira and right, you know, it just
22:04
Speaker 1: I thought, oh god, this is really I've had ten
22:07
Speaker 1: years of this and I have to get out of it.
22:10
Speaker 2: So it just it's always a question, isn't it. Why
22:13
Speaker 2: do some people have that at a young age? Why
22:15
Speaker 2: do they just see through? Yeah? Yeah, but you just
22:22
Speaker 2: had that innate sense that something wasn't right. You didn't
22:25
Speaker 2: want to be told what to do.
22:27
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had been brought up. My grandfather was in
22:34
Speaker 1: the First World War army. He went up brigadier and
22:38
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time with him, and it
22:40
Speaker 1: was very army life and that sort of thing. And
22:43
Speaker 1: so right, it was the time of the sixties, and
22:48
Speaker 1: the rebellion, and so I became part of the rebellion
22:52
Speaker 1: in a way. I mean, I just I remember having it.
22:56
Speaker 1: I had a real problem with my grandparents because I
22:59
Speaker 1: wouldn't have my haircut a few days ago. Yeah. Anyway, Yeah,
23:10
Speaker 1: so that's strange sort of life. But that's really what
23:14
Speaker 1: stimulated me to say, we've got to do something about it.
23:17
Speaker 1: But linked to the business, I realized that all of
23:22
Speaker 1: these changes in behavior start with me. So I can't
23:28
Speaker 1: I can't change anything in this life unless I sort
23:34
Speaker 1: of focus on, well, what changes do I need to
23:37
Speaker 1: make in order to be more effective with other people
23:42
Speaker 1: in teams, and then be more effective as a company director,
23:48
Speaker 1: and then taking it further forward into different levels of
23:53
Speaker 1: the social system in a sense. And it was this
23:57
Speaker 1: background training and development in the personal and teamwork training
24:04
Speaker 1: and then organization management development or organization development that really
24:10
Speaker 1: got me into the systems that are underpin human behavior.
24:14
Speaker 1: All Right, that's what I've found most interesting. Yeah, that's
24:19
Speaker 1: really what led to the long term solutions that I've
24:23
Speaker 1: been pushing hard for the last time twenty years. Really.
24:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, last year I won the Sussex Portrait Artist of
24:31
Speaker 2: the Year competition. It's a timed event where you're four
24:34
Speaker 2: hours to complete a portrait, and this year I'll be
24:36
Speaker 2: taking part in a larger national competition and I've been
24:38
Speaker 2: practicing timed portraits from photographs sent by friends, mainly from
24:41
Speaker 2: the Hope, Sussex community. These portraits will be on display
24:44
Speaker 2: at the Hope Sussex Music Festival in August, so get
24:47
Speaker 2: your tickets, come along and support a brilliant homeschooling project.
24:50
Speaker 2: As a result of this, I've decided to offer what
24:52
Speaker 2: I'm calling day portraits alongside my standard portrait commission. Normally,
24:55
Speaker 2: I spend a week or two and a portrait, making
24:57
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Speaker 2: what you receive. How do you see some of those
25:20
Speaker 2: things operating at the moment. How well, give some examples
25:23
Speaker 2: of how you're you're.
25:25
Speaker 1: Into the system thing. Well, I think the one that
25:28
Speaker 1: I'm most well known for is we're two areas. One
25:32
Speaker 1: is that before the Iraq War started, I attended a
25:40
Speaker 1: meeting of the Stop the War Coalition and the war
25:43
Speaker 1: with Afghanistan had been going for about eight months and
25:50
Speaker 1: it was horrifying, and so I was becoming part of
25:53
Speaker 1: the sort of anti war group. And then someone stood
26:00
Speaker 1: up in a large meeting and said, we need to
26:02
Speaker 1: try and take a case against the government, and is
26:06
Speaker 1: anybody here interested? So I said, yes, I'll join that,
26:10
Speaker 1: and I with two or three others we got together
26:14
Speaker 1: and we started to see if we could get an
26:16
Speaker 1: injunction to stop the Iraq War which was coming up,
26:21
Speaker 1: and three four of us went to the High Court
26:28
Speaker 1: to try and obtain an injunction against Tony Blair and
26:31
Speaker 1: the government to stop the war. But it didn't It failed,
26:36
Speaker 1: It didn't work. But that was the first step when
26:41
Speaker 1: I realized there's something wrong here when the you know,
26:44
Speaker 1: we quote all the law saying wemen never go to
26:48
Speaker 1: war and the justice system and so called injustice system
26:58
Speaker 1: ignores it completely. So we went to war, and then
27:02
Speaker 1: we started reporting crimes to the police and everything that
27:11
Speaker 1: was going on, we realized that was a criminal offense
27:16
Speaker 1: in English law. Tony Blair's government brought in an Act
27:21
Speaker 1: of Parliament in two thousand and one called the International
27:24
Speaker 1: Criminal Court Act two thousand and one. Now it really
27:30
Speaker 1: should have been called it should have been two laws.
27:34
Speaker 1: It should have been called the War Crimes, Crimes against
27:37
Speaker 1: Humanity and Genocide Act and the International Criminal Court Act,
27:44
Speaker 1: and it should have been two separate ones, but they
27:47
Speaker 1: built it into one. And what it did was the
27:50
Speaker 1: International Criminal Court. For the first time in sixteen hundred years,
27:56
Speaker 1: Britain signed up to an outside legal jurisdic which means
28:02
Speaker 1: that every British citizen, all three of us here today,
28:08
Speaker 1: is bound by the Roman Statute of the International Criminal
28:13
Speaker 1: Court and can be held to account if we break
28:17
Speaker 1: it in the Hague, which is what has been trying
28:22
Speaker 1: to happen with us in Nyahoo and various others. But
28:25
Speaker 1: we brought this into English law in this country on
28:29
Speaker 1: the first of September two thousand and one, and on
28:32
Speaker 1: the seventh of October two thousand and one, Tony Blair
28:38
Speaker 1: took us to war with Afghanistan and broke and committeed
28:43
Speaker 1: the worst crimes known to mankind, started war, crimes, crimes
28:48
Speaker 1: against humanity, and genocide. And it was the realization that
28:55
Speaker 1: our leaders were not paying any attention to the law
28:59
Speaker 1: we had signed up to internationally, and even worse, to
29:03
Speaker 1: the laws that we had brought into domestic criminal law
29:07
Speaker 1: in this country. That's really what motivated me to keep going. Really,
29:14
Speaker 1: so I have been going on trying to find different
29:17
Speaker 1: ways of ensuring that we changed the system. So that
29:22
Speaker 1: at that time, it just took Tony Blair to say
29:26
Speaker 1: to agree with George Bush that we were going to
29:28
Speaker 1: go to war with Iraq, And all he had to
29:32
Speaker 1: do was to persuade the Queen in Parliament and in
29:38
Speaker 1: the Privy Council, which is about eight ten people perhaps
29:42
Speaker 1: at the most. Even though we have six hundred or
29:45
Speaker 1: seven hundred Privy councilors, they only have a very small
29:49
Speaker 1: group of Privy Councilors who take the real decisions in
29:53
Speaker 1: this country to take us to war. So Tony Blair
29:58
Speaker 1: wanted to do it, but he had to get the
30:00
Speaker 1: agreement of the Queen who was commander in chief.
30:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, you just told me about the command I didn't.
30:07
Speaker 2: I never really thought of the monarch being.
30:10
Speaker 1: All the changing of the guards things.
30:13
Speaker 2: Is a picture here of Charles. For anyone who's wondering
30:15
Speaker 2: why is there, they have to look closely at the
30:17
Speaker 2: detail here. So he's wearing a gym or fix it
30:21
Speaker 2: badge in case being misunderstood. So, yeah, so the monarch
30:29
Speaker 2: is the commander in chief of the armed forces.
30:32
Speaker 1: Absolutely, So no British service person can go on active
30:37
Speaker 1: service without an express command from the commander in chief.
30:43
Speaker 1: It's it's yeah.
30:44
Speaker 2: So if the anywhere, it has.
30:47
Speaker 1: To stop with the monarch.
30:49
Speaker 2: Yeah.
30:49
Speaker 1: That has been the case since about seventeen London and
30:53
Speaker 1: whatever it was. But so Tony Blair had to go
30:59
Speaker 1: to the Queen to get her authorization for the use
31:05
Speaker 1: of the armed forces because they are at that time
31:09
Speaker 1: they were Her Majesty's armed forces, not the Prime Ministers
31:14
Speaker 1: or Britain's armed forces. They are Her Majesty's armed forces
31:18
Speaker 1: and they are now His Majesty's armed forces, and so
31:22
Speaker 1: we can't go to war or support a war without
31:26
Speaker 1: the express authority of the Monarch. And unfortunately both his
31:33
Speaker 1: mother and he have been breaking the laws of war
31:38
Speaker 1: every day since they came to power and we have
31:44
Speaker 1: to do something about it. I'd like to see them
31:46
Speaker 1: answer in court for what they've done. You know, Germany's
31:51
Speaker 1: leaders had to answer in court in Nuremberg after the
31:55
Speaker 1: Second World War and a lot of them were hanged
31:58
Speaker 1: and some of the waged. No, we can't have hanging,
32:05
Speaker 1: of course.
32:06
Speaker 2: But someone disagree.
32:08
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think we should have. Yeah. It's because the
32:14
Speaker 1: queen is responsible during her reign for the murder of
32:18
Speaker 1: about seven to eight million people. I mean it is
32:22
Speaker 1: utterly horrendous, a third of whom with children. So the
32:27
Speaker 1: fact that she has eight million people's deaths on her conscience,
32:34
Speaker 1: or if she ever had a conscience, it's just horrendous.
32:38
Speaker 1: And the same with Charles. He needs to understand that
32:41
Speaker 1: every time he authorizes the use of armed force, he
32:46
Speaker 1: is personally responsible for deaths and injuries of hundreds of
32:50
Speaker 1: thousands of people. I mean, the thing that horrifies me
32:54
Speaker 1: now is that we went to war with Afghanistan in
32:58
Speaker 1: two thousand and one, five weeks after we'd agreed never
33:02
Speaker 1: to do it and that it would be a war
33:04
Speaker 1: crime if we did it, and then we have since
33:08
Speaker 1: then we fought ten fought or supported ten wars, murdering
33:14
Speaker 1: somewhere around three to three and a half million people,
33:18
Speaker 1: a third of whom we're children, and it's going on
33:21
Speaker 1: in Gaza right now. We are supporting the Israeli attacks
33:25
Speaker 1: and murders of what seventy million, seventy thousand Palestinians have
33:32
Speaker 1: been murdered since October the seventh ort of it was yeah,
33:37
Speaker 1: two years ago. Ah, so how do you It's just
33:43
Speaker 1: horrendous what's going on, and nobody's doing anything to stop it.
33:46
Speaker 1: And that's what really gets me is we have to
33:50
Speaker 1: find ways of stopping it, and we've got to change
33:53
Speaker 1: the system that causes one man to be able to
33:56
Speaker 1: take us to war.
33:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, but presumably you'd agree that that won't happen even
34:03
Speaker 2: if we even if we find the right strategy politically
34:07
Speaker 2: and legally, it's unlikely to happen until there's some kind
34:12
Speaker 2: of consciousness shift to, for example, for people to even
34:18
Speaker 2: entertain that idea. Partly that of presumably that's part of
34:23
Speaker 2: the educational aspect of.
34:25
Speaker 1: It's partly, but I think it's a mistake to say
34:29
Speaker 1: that we won't get a change until three million people
34:33
Speaker 1: decide sure change it, or there's a consciousness change amongst
34:39
Speaker 1: the general population, because that's not how decisions are taken
34:45
Speaker 1: and actions are implemented in this country. Let's just go
34:54
Speaker 1: back to the monarch and that decision to go to war.
34:58
Speaker 1: So if Tony Blaired took the decision to go to
35:01
Speaker 1: war with the agreement of the cabinet, and when most
35:05
Speaker 1: of the cabinet some of them resigned. But the real
35:13
Speaker 1: issue is that if that decision has to be is
35:19
Speaker 1: taken by the Prime Minister, he cannot implement it without
35:22
Speaker 1: the Monarch's consent and the consent of the chiefs of
35:26
Speaker 1: the Defense staff. So the Army, Navy, and Air Force
35:31
Speaker 1: all have one guy in charge, and the sas as well,
35:37
Speaker 1: and there are four military men. There have always been men,
35:43
Speaker 1: i think in this country who take the decision to
35:47
Speaker 1: implement the monarch's decision to go to war. So there
35:52
Speaker 1: are maybe half a dozen people plus the cabinet, maybe
35:57
Speaker 1: say twenty five people who take the decision to take
36:01
Speaker 1: us to war and then persuade the whole country and
36:04
Speaker 1: the armed forces and everybody else to start the mass
36:08
Speaker 1: murder and genocide of innocent people. And yet we all
36:13
Speaker 1: go along with it. So it's that decision taking process
36:17
Speaker 1: that needs to be changed now if we can change
36:19
Speaker 1: the consciousness of those twenty five people.
36:23
Speaker 2: But you said that we all go along with it,
36:27
Speaker 2: and well why do people go up because you mentioned
36:32
Speaker 2: Israel and Palestine? You know, And at the moment, what
36:37
Speaker 2: seems clear to me is that there's a hot a
36:42
Speaker 2: there's a push to to legitimize oh, you know, always
36:46
Speaker 2: always is isn't there There's always a push to legitimize conflict.
36:50
Speaker 2: And even within the so called truth movement, there's been
36:56
Speaker 2: a shift, at quite a noticeable shift, I think, over
36:58
Speaker 2: the last two or three years, into this kind of
37:03
Speaker 2: Christian Zionist mentality where the real truths are the one
37:08
Speaker 2: are been persuaded to support Israel. Whereas go back ten years,
37:13
Speaker 2: most people who were involved in kind of alternative political opinion,
37:17
Speaker 2: it was a no brainer that there was a problem
37:21
Speaker 2: with Israel. And yet now with the sort of engineered
37:29
Speaker 2: problem of immigration, which is clearly a decision made by
37:36
Speaker 2: the people at the top to create division and conflict,
37:44
Speaker 2: and that plays into the hands of this support for
37:49
Speaker 2: a regime which is clearly logically on. So there's a
37:54
Speaker 2: whole messy thing, isn't there. How going back to your
37:57
Speaker 2: behavioral psychology. How do we counter how do we counter propaganda?
38:04
Speaker 1: Gosh, that's another massive question in relation to the war
38:09
Speaker 1: issue and us supporting it. What most people people say, Well,
38:14
Speaker 1: I don't support the war. You know, I went on
38:17
Speaker 1: the march or whatever and so on, and there was
38:21
Speaker 1: a big movement in two thousand and three. We had
38:23
Speaker 1: the biggest march of all and quite a lot of
38:26
Speaker 1: your viewers will be would have been on that, and
38:30
Speaker 1: certainly I was. But the point is that marching, demonstrating, protesting, petitioning,
38:39
Speaker 1: they enabled people to feel, well, there's a lot of
38:42
Speaker 1: people on board, and it's you know, I'm pleased on
38:46
Speaker 1: them with these people. But it has absolutely zero effect
38:50
Speaker 1: on government policy. And so we have to find something
38:54
Speaker 1: that does have an effect on government policy. And so
38:58
Speaker 1: it was when I started to really look into that,
39:01
Speaker 1: I realized that the things that do have an effect
39:04
Speaker 1: on government policy are the decisions of top people. If
39:14
Speaker 1: you want to stop somebody, you can have a court case,
39:19
Speaker 1: either a civil case or a criminal case. And one
39:23
Speaker 1: way of stopping a murderer is to arrest them and
39:29
Speaker 1: take them to trial, convict them, and punish them. And
39:35
Speaker 1: that needs to happen to those people who are breaking
39:40
Speaker 1: the laws of war. It never has happened. Not a
39:44
Speaker 1: single one of our leaders has ever been held to
39:47
Speaker 1: account in court and punished with a prison sentence or
39:51
Speaker 1: hanging for what they did. We should really have hung
39:56
Speaker 1: Winston Churchill, for instance, for what he did in the
40:00
Speaker 1: Second World War. He took us to war Hitler. I'm
40:04
Speaker 1: told I had eight attempts peace attempts, with all of
40:10
Speaker 1: which were ignored and scrapped by orders of Churchill, and
40:18
Speaker 1: so we and he wanted to and he committed some
40:21
Speaker 1: of the worst crimes ever by the bombing of Dresden
40:25
Speaker 1: and other German cities, you know, murdering hundreds of thousands
40:30
Speaker 1: of people at the same time. But anyway, the point
40:32
Speaker 1: is that everybody now thinks, because he wrote the history
40:36
Speaker 1: of the Second World War, everybody now thinks that he
40:39
Speaker 1: is a marvelous character. He was one of the worst
40:41
Speaker 1: war criminals we've ever had. But so it's the propaganda,
40:46
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, that is persuading the majority of the
40:52
Speaker 1: British people to go along with government decisions, and we
40:56
Speaker 1: have to find a way of stopping that. And I
40:58
Speaker 1: think the best ways would be, for instance, to get
41:02
Speaker 1: Tony Blair convicted of war crimes, crimes against humanity and
41:08
Speaker 1: genocide or should I say conduct and celerity of genocide.
41:13
Speaker 1: People don't know the definition of genocide. And when we
41:16
Speaker 1: go to war and you kill a person because of
41:18
Speaker 1: the nationality, you are committing a crime of genocide.
41:23
Speaker 2: That's interesting because yeah, I had some American commentator getting
41:30
Speaker 2: into the nitty gritty of of the definition of genocide.
41:33
Speaker 2: That's that you're saying it was overused or it is
41:35
Speaker 2: wrongly used, but your your definition there is definition. Yeah, absolutely,
41:41
Speaker 2: so literally, it's not about numbers, it's just about the
41:45
Speaker 2: motive being ethnicity.
41:48
Speaker 1: Is that right, it's ethnicity. If you kill a person
41:52
Speaker 1: because of their nationality, race, religion, or ethnicity, that and
41:59
Speaker 1: you set out to destroy people a person or people
42:03
Speaker 1: because of that, that is a crime of genocide. And
42:06
Speaker 1: it is There's a piece of legislation that almost nobody
42:11
Speaker 1: knows but it's extremely important, which is called the International
42:17
Speaker 1: Criminal Court Act Elements of Crimes Regulations two thousand and one.
42:24
Speaker 1: Now this lays out the definitions of each of the
42:28
Speaker 1: war crimes. There are thirty three war crimes in the legislation.
42:31
Speaker 1: In the law and it describes how each one of
42:35
Speaker 1: those should be the criteria for proving somebody guilty of
42:43
Speaker 1: that crime in court. So one of the first ones
42:48
Speaker 1: is genocide by killing. How do we prove in court
42:53
Speaker 1: that a person is guilty of genocide by killing? And
42:57
Speaker 1: there are four criteria that have to be met. The
43:02
Speaker 1: first one is that the perpetrator, whoever it is, has
43:07
Speaker 1: killed or caused the death of one or more persons.
43:13
Speaker 1: That's very interesting, one more person. The second one is
43:17
Speaker 1: that they were of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Okay.
43:25
Speaker 1: The third one is that it was done intentionally, not
43:30
Speaker 1: accidentally basically, and the fourth one is that it is
43:34
Speaker 1: part of a widespread policy. Okay. So if those things
43:41
Speaker 1: can be proved in court, and then we can prove
43:46
Speaker 1: Tony Blair and his colleague Jack Straw and Gordon Brown
43:52
Speaker 1: and all the rest of them guilty of genocide. Well,
43:57
Speaker 1: actually the crime is conduct down ancillary to genocide and
44:02
Speaker 1: not genocide. And the reason for that is that it's
44:06
Speaker 1: rather like genocide. Is a perpetrator killed or caused the
44:12
Speaker 1: death of so killing somebody, it's the fault of the
44:19
Speaker 1: RAF the bomb or the army sergeant who files the
44:27
Speaker 1: gun or orders the firing of the gun. So most
44:31
Speaker 1: of our leaders, who are not directly involved, commit the
44:36
Speaker 1: crime of conduct ancillary to genocide for supporting it. So
44:43
Speaker 1: it is important to understand the law is very clear
44:46
Speaker 1: and so to my mind, I one of the things
44:50
Speaker 1: that really shocked me was quite how Parliament goes along
44:55
Speaker 1: with what they are told to do. So. So there
45:00
Speaker 1: was a debate in Parliament on March eighteenth, two thousand
45:04
Speaker 1: and three, in which opened by Tony Blair, in which
45:09
Speaker 1: the purpose of the debate was to say whether or
45:11
Speaker 1: not we were going to go to war with Iraq.
45:16
Speaker 1: It was about six seven hours something like that, and
45:20
Speaker 1: Tony Blair opened, the debate, started off and then Jack Straw,
45:25
Speaker 1: as Foreign Secretary, closed the debate. Now, when he was
45:30
Speaker 1: closing the debate, Jack Straw said quite clearly, we've had
45:36
Speaker 1: a good debate tonight. There will be consequences to our decision.
45:44
Speaker 1: Some of our troops will be killed, so too will
45:49
Speaker 1: innocent Iraqi civilians. I urge you to vote with the
45:55
Speaker 1: government tonight. Now, you couldn't have a clearer definition of
46:03
Speaker 1: intent to commit genocide. It was killing Iraqis because they
46:09
Speaker 1: were Iraqis, and apart from the fact of the crime
46:16
Speaker 1: against humanity for our soldiers and sailors who died as
46:20
Speaker 1: a result of the of the war. But anyway, that
46:24
Speaker 1: was clear. So it is quite clear. It was to
46:30
Speaker 1: me when we looked at the legislation that our leaders
46:35
Speaker 1: were committing genocide every time they took us to war.
46:38
Speaker 1: So we've had ten genocides since two thousand and one,
46:44
Speaker 1: and all of it has been funded by taxplayers. And
46:50
Speaker 1: it's that that.
46:51
Speaker 2: That's the meat and potatoes absolutely of what you're So
46:55
Speaker 2: that's perfect, and you're little.
46:57
Speaker 1: We'll move on and then we'll.
46:59
Speaker 2: Get into the method the whole we're going to the
47:01
Speaker 2: practical stuff.
47:09
Speaker 1: I did discovered in two thousand and three that it
47:13
Speaker 1: was not only a criminal offense to wage war, but
47:17
Speaker 1: it's a criminal offense to fund war. I discovered a
47:21
Speaker 1: whole lot of corrupt activities going on in Riot Town
47:25
Speaker 1: Council and Brother District Council. So I did a short
47:29
Speaker 1: report and ten days later they put me in prison.
47:33
Speaker 1: It's a lawful way of ensuring you never have to
47:37
Speaker 1: pay tax again until they meet all your conditions. When
47:44
Speaker 1: if we ever kept that, we make these promises and
47:47
Speaker 1: sign it and then break them. Every damn day,