When parliament changed the law on defamation in 2013, it thought it had solved the problem of libel tourism. It hadn’t, it merely moved it underground. The world’s richest people may now find it harder to win cases in British courts, but that doesn’t matter: it is sufficient for them merely to threaten proceedings. Even if media organisations are confident they would win in court, the prospect of a lengthy and expensive court case is enough to make even well-resourced companies back down. This has stifled British coverage of Putin’s kleptocracy, of sub-Saharan African theft, and of the looting of Malaysia in the 1MDB scandal. Hosted as usual by investigative journalist Oliver Bullough, the Frontline Club’s kleptoscope evening will look into how this happens, what it means, and how it affects individual journalists.

Chair

Oliver Bullough chairs our Kleptoscope series that investigates corruption and dirty money in London. Bullough is an award-winning journalist and the author of two books about Russian history and politics, The Last Man in Russia and Let Our Fame be Great and now Moneyland, why thieves and crooks now rule the world and how to take it back. He is also an expert guide for the Kleptocracy Tours initiative, which exposes money laundering via property in London.

Speakers

Clare Rewcastle Brown‘s reporting for her web site The Sarawak Report was instrumental in exposing the 1MDB scandal, perhaps the biggest single act of kleptocracy the world has ever known. She has been threatened by more lawyers than most of us will ever meet.

Bradley Hope works for the Wall Street Journal, and has also broken important aspects of the 1MDB scandal. His excellent book on the subject — Billion Dollar Whale — was published to rave reviews in the United States, but is yet to be published in the UK: for legal reasons.

Rupert Cowper-Coles is a solicitor who specialises in defending journalists against defamation claims, and who helped keep The Sarawak Report in business despite all the legal threats against it.

  Watch the video stream of Kleptoscope 12

With representatives from France, Germany, Italy and Ireland, Ian Dunt will be chairing a panel to leave this shores and look at the UK’s messy breakup with the European Union from beyond our borders – and find out what our neighbours really think of Britain in these turbulent times.

Chair:

Ian Dunt is editor of politics.co.uk. He specialises in issues around immigration, civil liberties, democracy, free speech and social justice and appears regularly on the BBC, Sky and Al-Jazeera as well as a variety of radio stations. He also writes lifestyle columns for other publications and websites.

Speakers:

Stefanie Bolzen is the UK and Ireland Correspondent for German WELT and Sunday edition WELT am Sonntag. Since 2016, a lot of her reporting has focused on Brexit and its economic implications for the European Union. Until 2013, she worked as WELT’s Europe Correspondent in Brussels, covering EU and NATO affairs. Previously, she was a foreign news reporter and editor for Die Welt in Berlin covering issues including EU enlargement, the Balkan conflicts, and energy policy.

Antonello Guerrera is UK & Ireland Correspondent for La Repubblica, a leading Italian newspaper and the most read news website in Italy. He works at La Repubblica since 2012: before becoming Ireland and UK Correspondent, he was journalist on the foreign desk. During his career, he has reported from the United States, England, Ireland, continental Europe, Chile and South Africa, covering everything from the 2017 Manchester attack to the funerals of Winnie Mandela. Before joining La Repubblica, he held positions at Il Post, Internazionale, Il Riformista and La Gazzetta dello Sport, the leading sport newspaper in Italy.

Marion Van Renterghem is a multi-award winning French reporter, very much focused on European countries. Now a free-lance journalist and an author, she worked at the daily Le Monde for some 30 years. She just finished a book on the rise of populism in Europe, to be out on May 6 in France. Her latest book, a profile of Angela Merkel, has won one of the Simone Veil Awards (dedicated to the memory of the former French minister and President of the European Parliament).

photograph courtesy of T Smith, Flickr, via Creative Commons.

  Watch the video stream of Brexit The Outsiders – The Empire’s New Clothes

This special two-part series explores the interwoven history of the European project and the far right in postwar Europe – both East and West. Beginning with the establishment of the European Coal and Steel Community from the ashes of World War II, we chart the trajectory of European integration, in tandem with the story of the European far right, recounting the series of shifts that have led to today’s critical juncture: a post-Brexit EU and a stark rise in support for far right parties across Europe.

We also trace the way in which far right politics has increasingly crept into the mainstream, setting the political agenda on issues such as the EU and immigration. Combining documentary storytelling with panel discussion, the series comprises both historical interpretation and incisive analysis on the history and future of Europe.

Runtime: 48′
Produced by: Al Jazeera English

Laurence Lee joined Al Jazeera in 2007 as Delhi correspondent and has also worked as Europe correspondent for the channel. A lifelong reporter, he began his career at the BBC before moving to Sky News. Laurence has reported from more than 40 countries around the world, covering the second Palestinian intifada and the Iraq war. He spent several years in Moscow covering Russia and the former Soviet bloc. Laurence’s work has won several RTS awards in the UK and he won the ‘Golden Verb’ prize for international correspondents in Moscow.

Sanjiev Johal first joined Al Jazeera in 2008 and has worked on projects covering current affairs and global geopolitics across various formats. He is part of a team currently working on special projects including an exploration of post-World War Two US political history.

When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher announced on 6 March 1984 that she would close 20 coal mines, there was little clue it would spark the country’s longest strike and leave Britain’s trade unions sorely diminished decades later.

For a year roughly 160,000 coal miners from across the UK walked off the job as the government declared war on the unions. Thirty years on, “there’s a huge battle for interpretation about it,” said Owen Gower, director of Still the Enemy Within, at its Frontline Club screening on Friday 3 October.

With first-hand accounts from members of the National Union of Mineworkers who manned the strike’s front lines, the documentary digs deep into archival footage – much never seen before and shot by the miners themselves – to give voice to the men and women who Thatcher labeled ‘the enemy within’.

“There’s documents that just came out today about Margaret Thatcher’s involvement in the strike,” said Gower, referencing recent revelations about the controversial Ridley Plan to crush the powerful unions and Thatcher’s comments in an interview that the miner’s struck at the heart of democracy.

In Their Own Words
“We felt that the story from the miner’s point of view of the strike hadn’t really been told,” said Gower, sitting in conversation with the film’s producer Mark Lacey. To remain neutral, the two crowd-funded the film after meeting several miners.

“It was meeting the miners themselves and them just being such amazing characters,” Gower said, “that it felt like it was something that had to be a lot bigger and reach a much broader audience.”

To tell the miners’ story without the aid of voice over, their small team waded “through something like 2,000 news clips, and then films on top of that, and then another 2,000 photos,” Gower said. “To introduce any outside voice at all would have felt completely wrong,” he added. “Even when there’s a montage . . . they’re still all based on the interviews of the miners.”

A History Lesson for Today
For the miners, the film isn’t just a history lesson, but an ongoing fight that has shaped Britain and the argument over privatising the NHS – a struggle many of the miners in the film are involved in resisting today. “It’s important to recognise that some of these people are still labeled ‘the enemy within’. That conclusion about crazy militants led by a mad communist leader, if you like, is still there,” said Gower. The argument about it being ordinary people has not been won at all.”

From Victory to Defeat
Cabinet papers that emerged in January 2014 confirm government plans to use the army to break the strike after a vote by the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) to strike in solidarity with the miners pushed them to the edge of victory. “What’s interesting is that when we shot those interviews [with the miners] in August and September last year, and then the cabinet papers came out in January after that,” said Gower, “every single thing the miners had said was then confirmed in those papers.”

Absence of Labour
Tellingly absent in the film is the voice of the Labour Party, Gower said. “It’s a such a complicated and complex issue that you want to manage to tell the story in a way that people can relate to it and access it if they didn’t know a lot about the strike,” Lacey added.

Taking it to the People
Gower and Lacey are embarking on a cross-country, 48-screening tour of the film, which already scooped up the audience award at the 2014 Sheffield Doc Fest. They are working especially with communities in Wales, the North East and Scotland affected by the strike to educate young people about their community’s living history. “It’s something that is dying out around those areas,” said Gower. So I think it’s really important to get it to as many places as possible.”

In 1984, a Conservative government under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher declared war on Britain’s unions, including the National Union of Mineworkers. The closure of coal mines was announced, not only threatening an industry, but whole communities.

The government used all means available to fight the 160,000 coal miners that took to the street. Those who stood on the front line of the strike for an entire year were labelled ‘the Enemy Within’ by Thatcher. These miners became part of a battle that has shaped Britain today

Still the Enemy Within is a unique insight into the 1984–85 British Miners’ Strike, told through unique archive footage and the raw first-hand experiences of those who lived through Britain’s longest strike.

Directed by Owen Gower
Duration: 112
Year: 2014

David Cameron has subsequently agreed to EU sanctions and travel bans have been imposed on Russian officials. But would our response have been stronger were it not for the importance of Russian money to London?

Russians are granted more investor visas than any other nationality; Russians buy London property, send their children to British schools and hire British lawyers and bankers. For some, Britain has become a shamelessly mercenary country, putting financial gain before morality.

Others argue that the government is right to put growth first; its obligations are to the British people, who are interested in their livelihoods, not the legality of a referendum in Crimea. Are sanctions even the best approach? With them comes the risk of isolating Putin, making a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis less likely.

Standpoint magazine brings together a distinguished panel to debate Britain’s response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

Chaired by Daniel Johnson, the founding editor of Standpoint. He covered the end of the Cold War for The Daily Telegraph and is the author of White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War was Fought on a Chess Board.

The panel:

Ben Judah has reported for Standpoint from Russia and Ukraine. He is the author of Fragile Empire: How Russian Fell In And Out Of Love With Vladimir Putin.

Tony Brenton worked for 30 years for the Foreign Office and was British Ambassador in Russia from 2004 to 2008. In 2007 he was awarded a KCMG. He is now extraordinary fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Roger Boyes is diplomatic editor at The Times. Previously he has worked as a foreign correspondent in Eastern Europe, Berlin and Rome.

Peter Hitchens is a journalist, broadcaster and author. He is a columnist on the Mail on Sunday and has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and Washington.

Your ticket will include a copy of Standpoint magazine.

Edward (David Oyelowo) is an MI5 officer convinced that home-grown terror suspect Waleed (Arsher Ali) is plotting an atrocity on British soil. His investigations lead him to Egypt, where he finds himself entering into an uncomfortable alliance with the local security services who are prepared to secure the proof he needs by whatever means necessary.

Confronted by the key moral dilemma of our time, the MI5 officer Edward is forced into choosing between two morally devastating outcomes. Complicit explores the moral compromises surrounding the use of torture in fighting the ‘War on Terror’ and offers a penetrating insight into the dangerous world of counter- terrorism.

Commissioned by Channel 4, Complicit is written by Guy Hibbert (Blood and Oil, Five Minutes of Heaven, Omagh), directed by Niall McCormick (The Long Walk To Finchley) and produced by Jolyon Symonds (Mrs Mandela) and Kevin Toolis (Cult of the Suicide Bomber).

Duration: 93′
Year: 2012

From the Second World War to the War on Terror, via Kenya and Northern Ireland award-winning investigative journalist Ian Cobain‘s new book Cruel Britannia explores Britain’s role in the development and use of torture. Drawing on previously unseen official documents, and the accounts of witnesses, victims and experts Cobain reveals some stark truths.

With the High Court judgement that a group of Kenyans can claim damages from British government for abuses suffered during the Mau Mau rebellion, and on-going enquiries into the abuse of terror suspects, we will be joined by Cobain and a panel of experts to discuss Britain’s record on involvement in the use of torture. We will be asking whether it is to time to challenge the official line that the UK does not ‘participate in, solicit, encourage or condone’ torture.

Chaired by Humphrey Hawksley, leading BBC foreign correspondent, author and commentator on world affairs.

With:

Ian Cobain, an investigative journalist with the Guardian and author of Cruel Britannia: A Secret History of Torture. His inquiries into the UK’s involvement with torture since 9/11 have won the Martha Gellhorn Prize and the Paul Foot Award for investigative journalism, and has been shortlisted for the Orwell Prize. He has also won several Amnesty International Media awards and a Liberty award.

Clive Baldwin, the Senior Legal Advisor for the Legal and Policy office at Human Rights Watch, where he has been working on issues of international law since 2007. His areas of focus include the Middle East, north and west Africa and discrimination law.

Rt Hon David Davis MP, Member of Parliament for Haltemprice and Howden since 1997 and former Shadow Home Secretary. As a Minister in the last Conservative government he served in the Cabinet Office and the Foreign Office. In the latter, he was responsible for Security Policy and European Policy, overseeing the majority of the country’s international negotiations.

Dr Ruth Blakeley, a senior lecturer in International Relations at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on state violence and terrorism, particularly by liberal democratic states. Her current project, funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, focuses on analysing the global system of rendition and secret detention. She is the author of State Terrorism and Neoliberalism, and she has published widely on state violence and torture.

By Sara Elizabeth Williams

The West’s reaction to 9/11 was excessive and misguided, wrongly influenced by hubris, hysteria and ignorance. Ten years on, we are still mired in a mess largely of our own making.

Last night’s First Wednesday Special: Changing world – conflict, culture and terrorism in the 21st century, which was in association with BBC Arabic, looked at how the decade post-9/11 has reshaped our world. Chaired by presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House, the discussion at the Royal Institution of Great Britain turned to the question of what we learned – and how could we have done things differently?

For all their differences of opinion, the five members of the panel – journalists Mehdi Hasan, Isabel Hilton and Michael Goldfarb, ex British diplomat and founder of Independent Diplomat Carne Ross, and co-Founder and executive director of Quilliam and Founder of Khudi, Maajid Nawaz were in agreement on the most critical point: the reaction to 9/11 was a wrong one.

The response to non-state terrorist action should no be a declaration of war against individual states, but action against the non-state organisations.

The state-directed violence employed has destabilised entire populations and brought about some of the very things it sought to eradicate. Homegrown radicalisation comes at a devastating cost, and it is one we are becoming all too familiar with in the Islamic world and in the US and Europe.

Nawaz, who was formerly on the UK national leadership for the global Islamist party Hizb ut-Tahrir, reminded the audience that the process of radicalisation is the result of a political awakening, not a religious experience. For this reason, the right reaction would have been to support democratisation. But this wasn’t on the policy agenda:

“For decades we have been following a policy of sponsoring dictatorships and human rights abusers, and we ended up with a choice: support dictators or terrorists. But there was a third way: we could have supported civil society.”

While terrorism undermines the rule of law, Ross and Hasan pointed out that the West’s reaction did the same: we failed ourselves and the communities we sought to reach. The price of this mistake, according to Hilton, who is editor of chinadialogue.net.

“Now we have no moral standing to talk about human rights. In the course of the war on terror, we threw away everything that was worth defending. The damage we did to ourselves was greater than that which was done to us.”

Hilton also brought up the language of fear and safety – the American rhetoric over the last ten years. This, again, was the wrong invocation: ten years on, Americans still don’t feel safe. But is the mistake reversible? Hasan, who is senior political editor at the New Statesman, described a “fear industry grown our of control”.

Another cost is financial. Being at war has become normal for Americans. This affects policy: few politicians are willing to question Homeland Security spending. But for how long? Goldfarb, who is an author, journalist, broadcaster and GlobalPost’s London correspondent, answered:

“‘The war on terror’ is the worst phrase ever concocted. It’s a forever concept that can never end.”

The panel also looked at how the West’s misreaction to 9/11 may have paved the way for China’s global advance. Hilton, an expert on the subject, pointed out that China is seeking economic power by securing food, resources and access to water while letting other states get on with the international security agenda. In another ten years, we may consider this anniversary the beginning of a second turning point in the geopolitical landscape.  One of the evening’s most-tweeted comments was made by Hilton, who noted:

“Wars have very, very long tails… they don’t end when the whistle blows.”

For those at tonight’s event, it would seem that the end of these wars will be a long time coming, indeed.

The hashtag for this event was #fcbbca

Some of the violence that erupted in Iraq could have been avoided if the British commanders had listened to what people were saying about the growing violence of militia groups in Basra.

Frank Ledwidge, author of Losing Small Wars, a book examining British failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, said during a discussion about counterinsurgency at the Frontline Club on Wednesday that he had not felt “particularly seriously threatened” during his first few months in Basra in 2003 .

But having been welcomed by people who threw roses at him and his colleagues, the former military officer who served in Bosnia, Kosovo as well as in Iraq, said the base was under attack "pretty much every night" by the time he left in 2004 : 

“Shootings were regular and IEDs were a real problem,” said Ledwidge, who went to Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction as part of the Iraq Survey Group.

At the heart of the failure of “counterinsurgency” strategies was the inability of British commanders to listen to what Basrawis or British soldiers on the ground were saying about the need to protect people from the violence of militia groups that were beginning to form.

“The trouble was that our commanders weren’t listening to what the people of Basra were saying, they were looking for an enemy that essentially didn’t exist, looking for foreign fighters when the only ones in Basra were us, we were looking for an al-Quaeda shiboleth that wasn’t there.

"But what was there was a growing serious threat of militia violence against the people of Basra and they were constantly asking British soldiers ‘please do something about this, protect us from them’ and we didn’t and we reaped the whirlwind of that harvest three years later,” said Ledwidge.

During the discussion that was chaired by the BBC’s international development correspondent, David Loyn, Ledwidge said part of the problem was the presumption by the British army that because of its experience in Northern Ireland it was equipped to deal with Afghanistan and Iraq:

"What we forget is, most soldiers who served in Helmand and Iraq, never served in Northern Ireland. You may get a Battallion commander who served as a junior commander in Northern Ireland right at the end of the campaign, but that experience is now a long way gone.

"There was a presumption in our military that these skills came with the clouds in the rain, that they were genetically endowed, which is complete rubbish and has been proven to be time and again."