they seem to like i mean my experience would be that the irish seem to like europe more than. the british i think money has got a lot to do with it because ireland gets more money from the e.u. and it pays into the e.u. well let alone ireland where the yellow vest movement is now taking hold governments are arguably also in chaos both here in the u.k. and in the us i'm now joined by the b.b.c.'s former chief washington correspondent and once independent member of the u.k. parliament martin bell his new book war in the death of news from battlefield the newsroom which recounts his time as a war reporter in vietnam the middle east. and northern ireland is out now martin thanks for coming back on you begin the book on the fields of occupied cyprus this week turkey saying brics it may affect the u.k.'s role as a guarantor power maybe some people may not even realize it is where u.k. troops are right now stationed you or your books as u.k. strategy in cyprus was a disaster i know this from personal experience i was a squaddie a long corporal in cyprus in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine hundred fifty nine and on record as

a colonial power was disastrous and i think in nine hundred seventy four when the turks invaded we were gallant tools of the independence agreement then what did we do we retreated to the soldier in base areas so i think it was a national disgrace and so you foot it was the governor of cyprus and i was a squaddie later lot keratin agreed it was a national disgrace we have nothing to be in all of the court in cyprus but one thing even then as a sporty you say you learned to disobey orders from above in the army and you say that that's a skill essential to journalists sometimes the skill is not to hear orders you have to say a lot from it and i've put a lot of that in the book. i'm part of that learning to disobey orders relevant to the fact that you say you quote if i quote democratic governments cannot be relied upon to be truthful or even competent. well we know i'm living in the united

kingdom in this century in an ungoverned country and i spent four years as a member of parliament about twenty years ago and we had a government country then and we were able to change our governments every four or five years now we seem to be stuck in a state of total immersion in a. remain who believe in the european ideal complete i'm completely flabbergasted and actually last words i don't know where to turn but no one's saying it's not democratic other the. the referendum was an experiment in democracy we don't often have a referendum in this country now the point about our parliamentary system is that if you don't like the people you've got in the house of commons then you have a chance to change them the thing about a referendum is you were stuck with it and i think we're now in the darkness predicament since the second world war as

a result but you can't understand what caused usually to resume feels despite one of the biggest defeats even the biggest ever defeat of a prime minister she doesn't need to call a general election there she doesn't need to call a general election but if she's going to take us over the precipice then i think we have a right to take a vote on the deal that's been negotiated to do we like it tend to like it and the palm and should be sovereign i'm hoping now the parliament is just beginning to take control. well i will be with her it will be anything like inquiries because you talk about. i mean there was there were have been inquiries into cyprus oh yes you know which you have looked at what your recusing british governments of and we had former un official says if the rural lists are saying five thirty five million may be killed in india by the british is it predictable that inquiry is a whitewash is not predictable and not inevitable are right and not by book about

and in. a particular death of a number of greek cypriots killed by turks in which there was an inquiry conducted is the lord chief justice of cyprus. and he criticized the military he criticized while horse guards and i went back to the documents they have now been declassified and he then agreed criticisms were taken out of his public report so there is a clear case when there was a whitewash yes so you can sympathize with journalists who then cover these inquiries of their. source information is redacted. i do sympathize with journalists i was one for thirty three years. i think they're in a peculiarly difficult position at the moment with the attacks on the press national international even local it's harder to be

a journalist now than it ever was before and wrong the points i make in the book because i've done something like eighty eight wars is the sort of journalism we did in which you went out and found things out and reported them is not a longer possible try to cover the conflict in syria you have a very high chance of being kidnapped ransomed and executed likewise afghanistan because some people also say it's already difficult because of the violence it's difficult financially i spent a lot of my career in africa from nigeria to angola somalia wherever there are very few correspondents in africa now not only because it's too dangerous in the ungoverned states across the belt of sub-saharan africa because editors don't care anymore there are there's there's no interest people people switch off so there was now carrying on with the conflicts you've seen what happened in in kenya what's

happening in somalia the six year war in south sudan and the continuing conflict in the democratic republic of congo we had nothing of it it's all design hundred years since paris nine hundred nineteen the paris peace conference the war to end all wars of the in the treaty of versailles i tend to regard versailles an hour's as looking back on the on the map changing decisions that were taken there with the collapse of empires the autumn and the longer of day austria-hungary it sounded more like the the the war to begin or wars where you see a straight line drawn on a map shall we. it's a look at the borders of iraq it was drawn by the british and the french likewise in africa and some of the conflicts that we have dealt with recently the iraq war was one of the wars in africa and other diffuse was lit way back invest

in the one nine hundred ninety well i think most b.b.c. journalists mainstream media journalists so-called would say part of respecting these international tribunals respecting all these things is about impartiality mother guillot and probably not mentioning much these days you have a great deal of. support for her in this respect yes martha gellhorn was the public first and preeminent woman war reporter unfortunately she's remembered mostly these days for having marriage only seven way she should be remembered in a right as a as a as a an independent and fearless journalist what she had no time for on the one hand this on the other hand that in the time of tell i but i was trained in this in the b.b.c. you give equal time time by the stopwatch to troops in full suit i don't believe in

it anymore in this book i set out the case for what i call the journalism of attachment which i warmly recommend to you on r.t. it's journalism that cares as well as and i was and will not be neutral but twain the victim and the aggressor because was actually regulated as broke as it was by off the hook as you were by the i.b.a. and other institutions is we could do it you just well actually we can so long as it is fact based and i think what happened to us in the referendum campaign is that true some false would but balanced by the stop watch it. so the full senate has had a clear run i think there are lessons that we can just learn from the. well. we divide so from. now we want to add to divide and that you say clearly that the b.b.c. is history shows it's independent of government control only until such time as

it's not whilst you do celebrate so you green house the mill and greg dyke those three very good directors general i think greg was a best we ever had and he left over there in iraq or he was forced out. it shows that the independence of the b.b.c. as i point out in the book is independence only up for point and any direction journal news if he ever steps a particular line he's going to use his job the b.b.c. as a broad church as i hope that he is as well and inside it a lot of those a degree of independence to flourish and you see i never tried being a political correspondent since by early days and i could really i was given a wonderful freedom beyond the rim of the civilized world everywhere from angola to viet nam but if i'd been the political editor in westminster i would have had to be

much more careful what i said freddy forsyth you name chicken little he's been on this are talking about biafra better known as a thriller writer but it was a he was a journalist he resigned and as you say in the book it's difficult for people to resign when they're being told. no well told not to save lives is what you seem to be thirty four size cases absolutely fascinating index to how the b.b.c. was he was sent as a young reporter in never done a war before he'd never been in africa before he went to be africa in one thousand nine hundred seventy the his reports from there was hotly contested by the british high commissioner in lagos on the other side who required to. to be withdrawn and the b.b.c. was so pathetic then they did withdraw him he was reduced to the rank of a journal reporter which is what rank i held and a very bravely resigned he and i didn't agree politically on anything but i do solutions coverage but on one particular war you your bosses

told you that you couldn't tell you couldn't call people catholics in northern ireland even when the homes being burnt. they were being burnt out of that they were catholics this was the early days of the reorganization of the troubles in northern ireland i'm speaking here of organized one nine hundred sixty nine that was thirty one years old like i should have known what i was doing we filmed the catholics taking their possessions out of burned out how things which have been checked attacked by protestants overnight and i felt the presence of the b.b.c.'s control in northern ireland behind me in the end it for me said martin you can't call them six they got to be refugees but i wrote it down because it was one of the few occasions in which i've actually been censored did my own network and in my own

country and i i thought to disclose for the time what is a clear disgraceful course is accepted the censorship i didn't resign i wanted to live to fight another day martin i'll stop you there more from martin bell after this break. i am. what politicians do something illegal. they put themselves on the line and they get accepted or rejected. so when you want to be president or injury. or something i want to be honest i. have to i would be interested to see why the for the three of them all can't be good i'm interested always in the waters in the house last. question. i've been saying the

numbers mean something they matter the u.s. has over one trillion dollars in debt more than ten white collar crimes happen each dish. eighty five percent of global wealth you longs to be rich eight point six percent market saw a thirty percent rise last year some with four hundred to five hundred trade per second per second and bitcoin rose to twenty thousand dollars. china is building a two point one billion dollar a i industrial park but don't let the numbers overwhelm. the only numbers you need remember one one business shows you can afford to miss the one and only. one else so small seemed wrong but all were all just all. to me lol that is yet to say proud disdain for the country as

a kid and in danger many because of the trail. when so many find themselves worlds apart. just to look for common ground. welcome back i'm still here with celebrated war reporter martin belmont's in the advent of twenty four hour news you go through it in the new book see it in b b c i have always hated twenty four hour news because it shows more than these numbers started when i was in washington with c.n.n. in about one thousand nine hundred eighty two i didn't like it then i don't like it now. it's mostly correspondents being interviewed by all

knowing and people in new york atlanta london moscow wherever but my case has been extraordinarily we couldn't play it because my daughter melissa is now the c.n.n. correspondent in paris so i'd be careful what i say and she had to go really well on your own a twenty four hour network and i'm on one of the on sort of tertiary but i didn't catch that i do have to ask you one thing about jump ill jerry does appear on this show you say he's shrill as pre-cooked reporting. surely everything's pre-cooked there's no innocent when you come to a story there is no innocent but i think it is possible to go into a situation shall we say a conflict like the one in vietnam not knowing what you are going to find when you get there now john i nearly got jump ilja killed one day i'm sure he remembers it you say you saved his life i say you saw it we were. beyond the front line and you

know you'll be on the front lines this is a highway one in vietnam when you find a village with a new people in it and no chickens so i did a shot. and we got out there's a photographer who was. on a side topic separately got got killed and that night in a bar in saigon i got the big knot by one of his mates in this melbourne herald was all going to stroll about the valley about i mean one of the extraordinary anecdotes in here is when it comes to embedding you talk about a bagel sebastian rich calling in the us a just as strike to me about i was with sebastian only three nights ago he defected from. to join us he works with me in bosnia wonderful self starting guy he worked for n.b.c. news in the invasion of iraq in two thousand and three one point if with the bunch

of us marines on a bridge over the euphrates and they come under fire but he's got more experience a warfare than anybody alongside and so it's actually suppressed who calls in the air strike into very dodgy moral tertiary with embedding very very dodgy and you reproduce an entire. report by tom newton dunn of the. selling newspaper in this country the sun embedded in iraq why did you. i don't attack many people in this book i certainly didn't attack tom newton don but it just happened when the beep when the british forces up to disappeared from their bases in basra it was three am one day in two thousand and six the only embedded reporter was tom newton don and i can be repeats his report without comment he regards it as some kind of a triumph for the western allies will judge himself but embedded journalism as

a whole it's got to be done the it came out of the fiasco of media relations in the falklands war in one thousand nine hundred two they had to be a better way of doing things the newspaper owners the t.v. bus. and the enmity came up with the idea of attaching a small number of british troops a british journalist in the next war the next war was even see this is a conspiracy in response to vietnam because the vietnamese the reporting of vietnam so did destroyed people's beliefs in the vietnam war in the united states i think the americans had a different experience viet nam's the first full day of the last and then later conflicts the invasion of grenada and panama which happened more or less the same time they kept the process completely so as a leader a commonwealth country off heads of states of magic made by the united states. so

we had to come up with something different and it gives us a degree of freedom embedding but it also gives them a degree of control it's not perfect either the first world i actually have and no i gave the from. an accreditation card to the serial number of which is zero zero one so i was in at the start a government employee no journalist journalist operating under censorship but actually the censorship in that case was never applied so i kind of have to fend it it's better to have that the new alternative which is nothing at all because you reported earlier agent orange in vietnam this is i've got enormous amount of stuff in my book to my discredit one of which was going on an agent orange mission this is the poisonous chemicals i mean babies being born in south viet nam to this day with birth defects as a result of it i should have reported it as

a war crime but i didn't and ma's the advantages of writing a book of the kind that i've written you've got to be honest with yourself and i made a terrible mistake and i made others i was a witness i knew the israeli. one thousand nine hundred sixty eight were destroying the biblical village of him else did i report it now because if i had i would have had by a critic taishan withdrawn and beat friend out of the country so if you're the sharp end you do sometimes make compromises but towards the end of your days you have to admit the mistakes you made what do you think of big multinationals like microsoft introducing software into computers that will tell you whether the news your source you're looking at is real or not so it'll stop it'll say don't trust r.t. trust fox news trust voice of america don't trust wiki leaks. i'm not a big brother sort of person but i don't want someone from

a multinational corporation telling me to watch fox news but not r.t.u. or the other way around on a pair of gods and solves that alter i think people can be relied on to judge for themselves by common sense where but at the same time the spread of fake news does worry me enormously and i don't think we'd be where we are but for the internet and where we are where the internet worries me a lot it's like a sluice gate putting all kinds of false it into the into the public domain that's good too perhaps happier times less control the department of preconceived notions washington correspondent there you have ron reagan the difficulty i had with the b.b.c. from the eight years of his. presidency was to convince them my clever editors there's a man who'd one starred opposite

a chimpanzee on television could be an effective president of the united states he was a wonderful communicate he surrounded himself with smart people and better design people butchering salvatore's look or people mistakes but i think let me quote barack obama barack obama when he was president said he supports reagan more to alter the trajectory of american public life more the nixon move more than clerical obama who destroyed libya well and the things happened things happened then go on me. he said us t.v. reporting was much more tightly controlled than anything that you would have to say about criticism of the b.b.c. which i think our u.s. colleagues it's a what a real. you call it the road at zero the foreign correspondents and if you'd worked as

a war reporter against or into collaboration with the americans. so he said i could say what i liked what it was in my head to say that they i would watch them do it which have to email or actually they phoned in the scripts to atlanta on your york it was called script control in order to get them approved they had no feet they were paid ten times as much as on those we had learned freedom whatsoever when you became an m.p. because you're left broke during the what has been written about how you ended up becoming an m.p. . since you were a former independent m.p. you've got to tell me what is the speaker's role in the house of commons you say as he boothroyd the speaker was helpful to you today to raise a may is looking very poorly above. the speaker is the most important member of parliament and he's always or she is always

a member of parliament. i was very lucky for a mess of my time betty boothroyd when michel martin came in i was completely silenced the speaker has the power to reduce any member of parliament to silence but one of the speak because functions is to allow the backbench of a voice and i think vocal for this force has been doing this she certainly did it given that power it's no surprise in the way resumes is not amused by giving that voice to backbenchers the an amendment to break that goes ation deals i think there has to be some check on the power of the prime minister and it has to be institutionally in the commons i'm not a huge fan of john bercow i think he's overstayed his leave by a few years but i think he's he's right to challenge the power of the fund industry

yes and going back to your days as an m.p. jeremy corbyn you. be there speaking in the behind you didn't you had no suspicions he was going to cause a bit of those terrible eyes to sit on my little prospectors there's no independent bench you can speak from it there is one seat facing the speaker below the sergeant to tom's i look start look up top left and there behind the paneling was jeremy corbin i mean he was involved in me that he was rebelling against his government i was a free voter anyway but nobody pays it but blind bit of attention and i was amazed when he later became leader of the labor party i have never foreseen. well if bracks it is one argument going through society corben be the first to say it one of the biggest issues really facing this side is because twenty zero eight sterritt . what do you say to the accusation that you let george osborne in there of david cameron's johnson to bring in the austerity was a blight across this land going into the i actually have i should explain he took

over your career took over the top and constituency which i had previously represented. around the country from much in the book during military charities whatever the only hall style question i ever get is why did you ever know that. britain house of commons well i didn't what happened was i promised the features of thompson in one thousand nine hundred seven i've been so them for one tub and one time in the so i need to get twelve thousand tories on my side and of course i kept my my promise and then he applied for the seat but if he hadn't got that even if it was in the second cd applied for even any he was a new trend which at the time now he's the color member of parliament anyway there's no it will fall just finally lots of advice to journalists at the end of the book at the end of the biographical piece is what has been the reaction from should i say mainstream media type journalists i think the young journalists understand that it makes sense of them from time to time to lift up their eyes from

the little screens in front of them because the wider world and i give them useful advice never read off a computer and you talk about what you're now about never believe atrocities stories it's mostly common sense i say and i recommend it to michael bell thank you that's over the show we're back on wednesday just speak to one of the new famous us democratic intake from the november's us elections is trying to tell boil it continues until the dutch by social media will see on wednesday twenty one years of the day that pope john paul the second condemned the u.s. embargo against cuba. if like there's someone else living inside of me like controlling my body.

the byproduct of that drug is because like some fear of pressure. because it will need him into a zombie it's crazy. you know we don't have to do anything it's not our fault since crazy and all that. the fears traumatic takes a long time to get rid of. buckle up and brace for impact trump introduces star wars two point zero and calls for impeachment russia gate morphs into treason. in twenty four to you know bloody revolution to to crush the demonstrations going

from being relatively peaceful political protests to be increasingly violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it still oil here i mean you are liz put the video through to me in the new bill is that i do explain you to the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen. of those who took vote invested over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. i . hope the closer and. closer.

house has expressed headline stories this time for a plan b. the u.k.'s embattled prime minister to return to parliament with a revised e.u. divorce deal as a top cabinet minister warns the old brakes that process is no risk of being told. what's coming up on the program this hour the news buzz feed donald trump haters smelling blood for ports implicates the u.s. president in a serious crime but unlikely source rejects if the authors are forced to defend their article on primetime t.v. .