one in three of those in poverty. one hundred two thousand are in paid employment lone parents are one of the groups most at risk of poverty of one parent families experience deprivation so is it time for ireland to join the u.k. and leave the e.u. trust business t.v. to cover the story here's david cameron's former adviser steve hilton on whether i should leave the e.u. i think they should i was a great greatly in favor of. felt that it was important for a country like the u.k. . it's just not in the culture and they seem to like my experience with the irish seem to like europe more than. the british i think money has got a lot to do with it because island gets more money from the e.u. and it pays into the 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 are your books as u.k. strategy in cyprus was a disaster i know this from personal experience i was a squaddie along in cyprus of one thousand nine hundred seventy nine hundred fifty nine and. colonial was disastrous and i think in one thousand seven hundred four when the turks invaded we were gallant tools of the independence agreement then what did we do we were treated to the soldiers. so i think it was a national disgrace and so you felt it was the governor of cyprus arrives later lord carrington agreed it was a national disgrace. we have nothing to be proud of in all 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 journalism sometimes the skill is not to hear orders you have to see a lot from it and i put a lot of that in the book and part of that learning to disobey orders. relevant to the fact that you say you quote if i court 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. remainer 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 dark as 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 there with 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

parliament 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. and 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 u.n. official says he threw a listers saying five thirty five million maybe 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 an inquiry into a particular death of a number of greek cypriots killed by in which there was an inquiry conducted its by the lord chief justice of cyprus burke and he criticised the military he criticized the wild horse and i went back to the documents they've 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 then sympathise 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 hard to be a journalist now than it ever was before and one of 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 say it's very difficult because of the violence it's difficult financially i spent a lot of my career. africa from nigeria the governor of 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 but because editors don't care anymore there are 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 in the in the treaty of versailles i tend to regard vets sign hours

as looking back on the on the map changing decisions that were taken there with the collapse of empires the autumn and the longer they are stronger and it sounded more like the the the war to begin wars where you see a straight line drawn on a map so we say 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 probably first and preeminent woman or reporter unfortunately she is remembered mostly these days for having marriage only. similarly she should be remembered in a right. as a as a independent and fearless journalist what she had no time for on the one hand this on the other hand that only time will tell i've almost 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 a nurse and will not be neutral but twain the victim and the aggressor but the cause was actually regulated as broke as it is by off the hook as you were by the i.b.a. and other institutions is we could do it as well actually we can so

long as it is fact based and i think what happened to us in the referendum campaign is that truth and false would but balanced by the stopwatch equally 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 if. we want to add to divide and that you say daily 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 out of the mill and greg dyke those three very good directions gentle i think greg was the best we ever had and he left over there iraq war he was forced out. it shows that the independence of the b.b.c. as i point out in the book is independents only up for point and any direction

journal i was if he oversteps 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 eat a lot as a degree of independence to flourish but 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 your namesake in the book he's been on this show 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 is difficult for people to resign when they're being told. no well told not to save lives is what you seem to be saying thirty four size case is 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 him to be withdrawn and the b.b.c. was so pathetic then they did withdraw him he was reduced to the rank of a general reporter richard what rank i held and a very bravely resigned he and i did great 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 and speaking have organised one nine hundred sixty nine about

thirty one years old like i should have known what i was doing we filmed the catholics. taking their possessions out of burned out house which had been attacked attacked by protestants overnight and i felt the presence of the b.b.c.'s control in northern ireland behind me and they had it from me said martin you can't call them catholics they got to be refugees but i wrote it down because it was one of the few occasions in which i've actually been said did my own network and in my own country and i i thought to disclose full of the time was equally disgraceful of course is accepted the censorship by i didn't resign i wanted to live to fight another day. be that wolf or mother bell off of this bright.

perfect there's someone else living inside of me like controlling my body. the byproduct of that drug is the cause like severe depression. 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 you know since crazy and all that. here's a traumatic takes a long time to get rid of. in twenty forty you know bloody revolution to to correct the demonstrations going from being relatively peaceful political protests to be creasing the violent revolution is always spontaneous or is it still loyal i mean your list put video and put him

in the new bill is that i do split needle the former ukrainian president recalls the events of twenty fourteen. those who took part in this to do over five billion dollars to assist ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic. you know world of big partners through a lot and conspiracy it's time to wake up to dig deeper to hit the stories that mainstream media refuses to tell more than ever we need to be smarter we need to stop. the door. and shouting past each other it's time for critical thinking it's time to fight for the middle for the truth the time is now for watching closely watching the hawks.

welcome back i'm still here with celebrated war reporter mohsin 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 a nose 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 morning one of the. tertiary but i didn't. i do have to

ask you one thing about john pilger he 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 his life we will. be on 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 chop. and we got out but a photographer who was alongside us talking separately got got killed and that night in a bar in saigon i got beaten not by one of his mates in this melbourne herald also

we're 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 cell 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 him so it's actually suppressed and calls in the air strike into very dodgy moral tertiary with embedding they're very dodgy and you reproduce an entire. report by tom newton dunn of the best 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 just feel so but embedded journalism as a whole it's got to be done the it came out of the fiasco of media relations in. in the falklands war in one thousand nine hundred two they had to be a better way of doing things the newspaper and as the t.v. bosses and the energy 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 commonwealth country our head of state said madge invaded 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 your reporter lage dorrans 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 evangelists of writing a book of the kind that i've written you've got to be honest with yourself and i made a. on the stake i made others i was a witness i knew the israelis in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight were destroying the biblical village of a males 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. or the other way around on a pair god solves. 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 wrong 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 with 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 of people butchering salvatore's look or people stakes but i think let me quote barack obama barack obama when he was president said he supports reagan and more to

alter the trajectory of american public life more than nixon moved more than cleric obama who destroyed libya well one of the things happened things happened then go on me. he said us t.v. reporting was much more tightly controlled than anything that you might have to say about criticism of the b.b.c. which i think our u.s. colleagues it's a whatever it. you call it the road at zero the. foreign correspondents and if you'd worked as a war reporter again store into collaboration with the americans so we say i could say what i liked what it was in my head to say they i would watch them do it which have to email or exit they phoned in their 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 no freedom whatsoever when you became an m.p. because you're left broke us 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 to speak it was helpful to you today to raise a may is looking very poorly about. 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 most 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 broker for these fools has been doing this

she certainly did it given that power it's no surprise in the way to resumes not amused by giving that voice to backbenchers the an amendment to breaks it 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'd be there speaking he'd be behind you didn't you have no suspicions he was going to. just sit on my little prospectors there's no independent bench you can speak for me there is one seat facing the speaker below the sergeant at arms i look start look up top left and there behind the paneling was jeremy corbin i mean he was all to 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 is because twenty zero eight sterrett. what do you say to the accusation that you let george osborne in there of david cameron's chancellor to bring in the austerity to the blight across this land going . and to that i say have i just explained he took over your career took over the top and constituency which i had previously represented as i go around the country from much in the book during minute she charities whatever the only hall style question i ever get is why did you ever that juggles for the 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 so i mean 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 he was then the second city 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 the content 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 watch 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 plus this and continues until then you touch my 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 or controlling my body. the byproduct of that drug is the cause like severe depression. because it will only need him into a zombie it's crazy. you know we don't have to do anything it's not our fault the shoes crazy and all that. here's

traumatic things 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 to. law. the globe under. load. load. that will go. to.

headline stories this hour the taliban say it is behind on attack on a military training base in afghanistan has reportedly killed one hundred and twenty six military personnel. monday the. u.k.'s embattled prime minister at home the message in the past hour that the best way to avoid a no deal is to vote for her we've got the latest from westminster coming up. the u.s. led coalition acknowledges a suicide car bomb attack on an american kurdish convoy. which killed for us.