April 4, 2006

No excesses of Washington and Whitehall spin could disguise the fact that the visit of US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice with UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, to his Blackburn constituency and 2008 European City of Culture, Liverpool, bombed. On the scale of PR disasters, it was Titanic. She was welcomed, wrote Mary Riddell in the Guardian : '... as if she were General Pinochet in Ferragamo shoes.'

The woman whose administration make even the actions of that murderous old tyrant pale by comparison - he disappeared people, they disappear entire sovereign nations as well - appropriately first visited the BAE weapons factory, manufacturer of the quaintly named 'Charm 111' depleted uranium (DU) missiles fired by the Challenger 11 tanks used the in the US/UK's joint 'Crusades'. Unconfirmed reports state the shop floor was deserted and also unconfirmed are claims by a former senior government official, that BAE contributed generously last year, to Jack Straw's election expenses. Confirmed by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, however and listed in both the Parliamentary Register of Members Interests and that of the House of Lords, is that Lord Taylor whose Consultancy advises BAE, donated twenty five percent of Jack Straw's 2001 election expenses. ( www.caat.org.uk : 'Who calls the Shots'.)

Blackburn Rovers football club was also empty. A match had been cancelled due, reportedly to the strictures of Sky tv's schedule, to be played instead the following Monday. Apparently a visit by the world's most powerful woman was insufficient draw. A photo-opportunity was a grinning Straw presenting her with a Blackburn Rovers' T-shirt emblazoned '10' and cozily holding it up against her for size. A football shirt (known as a strip - got another politician in to trouble when he allegedly took it literally, entertaining a lady, wearing nothing else.)

Reciprocating Ms Rice's invitation to accompany her on her first visit since childhood, to her birthplace of Birmingham, Alabama (in a twenty one vehicle motorcade) Blackburn's ethnic diversity, Mr Straw clearly deemed a shining example of integrated welcome. For the woman who grew up in segregated America having to sit at the back of the bus because she was black, with four school friends killed in the racist Sunday school church bombing, a visit to the local Mosque was a centrepice. Sadly many Imams, with Iraq and Afganistan's illegally invaded people, seemingly for ever figuratively doomed to not even catch a bus or go to any school under the invaders - children and families being routinely bombed, raided, segregated, by occupying forces in their Mosques and Churches - firmly closed their doors to the potential 44th President of the United States.

The people of Blackburn and Liverpool, however were united in their anger at the visit. Others travelled from across the country to join in. Luci Carolan, councillor, activist, home educator, travelled from Somerset with Abu Bakr, brother of Omar Deghayes from Brighton, possibly still on hunger strike in Guantanamo where, according to renowned human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, he has a crushed finger and lost sight in an eye. Arrested in a hotel room in Pakistan, with his subsequently released wife and baby, his family have not heard from him since last August. Carolan took a supply of hoods and orange jump suits.

Ms Rice was greeted leaving Blackburn Town Hall by chants of 'Chapatis not Rice' ; placards reading : 'BAE back Straw; 'Yanks go Home', 'Make politics History', 'Hit the Road Jack', 'Get rid of US Words of Mass Deception ...' and hooded figures in orange jump suits. Ironically, Craig Murray, former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who ran against Jack Straw in last May's General Election, was fired by Straw for reporting back to him, forcefully, that prisoners flown there, with the alleged collusion of Britain, were being horrendously tortured, including one being boiled to death. Straw and Murray are due to meet in Court,over the Foreign Office's attempts to prevent publication of Murray's forthcoming memoirs : 'Murder in Samarkand'. Murray recently told the Bookseller : ' ..the government has been obtaining intelligence from torture and ...Jack Straw approved it ... If they want to send me to prison, I am prepared.' (www.craigmurray.co.uk) Orange jump suits and shufflers in shackles can hardly be what either of the happy couple wished to see.

What they cannot have wanted to hear was the crowd spontaneously erupting in to a continuous, pointing, electric, furious chant of : 'Shame on you ...' repeated throughout the visit. In through the front door of a munitions factory, but through the back door of a school, where many pupils, parents and teachers were demonstrating outside. At Liverpool Cathederal, the demonstrators for peace were kept well away and the warmongers were ushered in. The crowd singing :'Give Peace a Chance' could be heard from so far that those unfamiliar with the city simply headed towards the soaring musicalplea. Rice, a fundamentalist Christian, has been described as one who regards herself as: 'a select Christian few' to bring the US message to the world. Other faith believers of little or no consequence. Her message from Merseyside (encapsulated by the Financial Times) was that the US would bring democrocy to the people of :' Baghdad, Beirut, Cairo and yes, Tehran ' and they would realise their 'impossible dreams', like the people of Birmingham, Alabama and Blackburn. Was she told when she visited the Maritime Museum, that Liverpool's first slave ship (trade on which 18th and 19th century wealth was built) was named :'Blessed'?

At the Liverpool Centre of Performing Arts, sponsored by former Beatles Sir Paul McCartney, students hung banners from windows decrying the visit there, poet Roger McGough withdrew as compere (and possibly in retaliation Parliament has withdrawn an invitation to him to perform there by videolink.) One performer sang John Lennon's haunting : ' Imagine' - and then dedicated it to the protestors outside. Speakers including Abu Bakr and journalist Yvonne Ridley, kidnapped in Afghanistan (' ... thank Heaven it was by the Taliban and not the Americans ..') Stop the War's Lindsey German and many memorables marked the visit.Luci Carolan captured the mood when to applause, she told Sky News, for the global anti-war movement : ' Where ever they go, whatever they do, we will follow them to the end of time.'

Perhaps Reg Keys, who ran against Prime Minister Blair in last May's election, encapsulated the all, in a message read on his behalf, by a diminutive dynamo of an organiser, Jasmin Shah. Commending the 'peaceful actions' in Blackburn and Liverpool at 'this April foolishness' of the visit, he wrote:

'After visiting BAE's factory which manufactures depleted uranium weapons used in Iraq which poison the earth and those who live on it, for four and a half BILLION years (Ms Rice) referred to the 'thousands of mistakes' the illegal invasion of Iraq has generated.

As she was admitting to this, I was in Oxford Coroners Court, hearing the verdict on six of those 'mistakes'. All, British, American and countless thousands of Iraqi dead are 'mistakes' - with names, ages, dreams, families.

My 'mistake' was my beloved son Tom Keys, who believed in Western values and died for a war based on lies, at Al Majar, eastern Iraq, with :

Seargeant Simon Hamilton Jewell,

Corporal Russ Aston

Corporal Paul Long

Corporal Simon Miller

and Lance Corporal Ben Hyde

The Coroner returned a verdict of 'unlawful killing' .

"We will track down those responsible",is a frequent patter of the American and British administrations. For our children, American children, Iraqi and other children dying for lies, we know who is responsible : J'accuse : Mr Straw and Ms. Rice.

Reg Keys, father of Tom, died Al Majar 24th June 2003, aged 21.'

On leaving Merseyside, the couple flew straight to Baghdad on a 'surprise visit'. He wore a flack jacket and military hard hat, the iron haired iron lady wore neither. Perhaps they thought Baghdad would offer a warmer welcome.