by John Pilger
Shortly before Christmas 1993 Parliament passed the Native Title Bill, described by Keating as an ‘ungrudging and unambiguous recognition of native title’ as defined by the High Court.49 Opponents of the bill believe it fails to guarantee more for the Aboriginal people than it takes away from them and that its ‘other aim’ is to ‘re-stabilise’ the economic positions of the mining and pastoral industries, which represented the Mabo decision as a threat.
‘The base line for Aborigines’, wrote Pat O’Shane, an Aboriginal magistrate, ‘is control of their land. Yet the purpose of the act is to protect and preserve big capitalist interests, with only some token gesture of recognition of the moral issues underlying the High Court’s decision. Its primary provisions are designed to validate (read: protect and preserve) any land grants that may be invalid because of native title. These provisions legitimise the dispossession which has continued from January 26, 1788 to this day.’50
Aboriginal supporters of the legislation echo a guarded optimism not dissimilar to that expressed by many Palestinians following the signing of the accords with Israel. They say that this is the ‘best offer’ to date from white Australia and that only by testing it will it demonstrate value, or not.
Certainly, we white Australians are finding out that, until we finally give back to black Australians their nationhood, we can never claim our own. ‘Only those’, wrote Kevin Gilbert, ‘who love the land and love justice will ultimately hold the land.’51 His words, wrought from such pain and struggle, deserve a just reply.
March 1992 to January 1994
NOTES
Introduction
1 Heroes, published originally by Jonathan Cape, London in 1986, has since been reissued by Pan in two editions (1987 and 1989).
2 The Guardian, February 12, 1990.
3 The Late Show, BBC Television, June 6, 1991.
4 The Observer, May 3, 1991.
5 Clive James on 1991, BBC Television, December 31, 1991.
6 The Guardian, October 23, 1991.
7 Ibid., September 23, 1991.
8 Ibid., October 23, 1991.
9 Z Magazine, April 1991.
10 The Guardian, May 6, 1992.
11 Ibid., May 18, 1992.
12 The Australian, May 28, 1992.
13 Heroes, p. 532.
14 Liz Curtis, Ireland, the Propaganda War: The British Media and the ‘battle for hearts and minds’, Pluto Press, London, 1984, pp. 279–90.
15 The Guardian, March 9, 1991.
16 Socialist, March 25–April 2, 1991.
17 The Sunday Telegraph, March 18, 1990.
18 The Guardian, April 4, 1992.
19 John Pilger, A Secret Country, Vintage Books, London, 1992, pp. 286, 290.
20 Ibid., pp. 4–5.
21 Ibid., p. 320; OECD figures researched by Carole Sklan for The Last Dream, Central Television, 1988; Radio 2UE Sydney economic analysis, February 4, 1992.
22 Analysis by David Bowman, former editor-in-chief of the Sydney Morning Herald, March 1994.
23 A Secret Country, pp. 239–326.
24 Private communication.
25 The Guardian, July 4, 1991.
26 The Truth Game, Central Television, 1988.
27 Johnson’s remark quoted by Stanley Karnow in Vietnam: A History, Viking Press, New York, 1983. See also International Herald Tribune, November 21, 1991.
28 Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, Pantheon, New York, 1988, p. 184.
29 The Independent, March 1, 1991; also, commentators on the BBC FM’s war report noted the ‘light casualties’.
30 International Herald Tribune, June 4, 1992; also Denis McShane, Peace and Democracy News, winter 1992.
31 Los Angeles Times, February 18, 1991.
32 The Nation, March 5, 1990, cited by Noam Chomsky in Deterring Democracy, Vintage Books, London, 1992, pp. 355–6.
33 The Guardian, May 16 and July 2, 1992.
34 State of the World’s Children, UNICEF, New York, 1989, p. 1.
35 Human Development Report, United Nations Development Programme and Oxford University Press, 1992.
36 Poor Britain: Poverty, inequality and low pay in the nineties, Low Pay Unit, March 30, 1992; the Guardian, July 16, 1992.
37 The Guardian, August 12, 1988.
38 As told to Karl Jacobson, ‘The Studs you like’, Weekend Guardian, May 9–10, 1992.
39 War by Other Means, Central Television, 1992.
40 Cited in New Statesman and Society, October 11, 1991, from Nicaragua: A Decade of Revolution, edited by Lou Dematteis, W. W. Norton, London.
I INVISIBLE BRITAIN
1 Rough Sleepers Report, London Housing Unit, May 17, 1991. See also London Housing News, May 1992.
2 The Guardian, June 4, 1991.
3 The Guardian, June 12, 1991.
4 ‘Inner City Deprivation and Premature Deaths in Greater Manchester’, Tameside Metropolitan Borough Policy Research Unit, 1988.
5 As confirmed to the author.
6 Poor Britain: Poverty, inequality and low pay in the nineties, Low Pay Unit, March 1992. See also LPU reports 1991.
7 The Guardian, September 11, 1991.
8 The Daily Mirror, September 13, 1991.
9 Cited by Brian Simon in Marxism Today, September 1984. It comes from Stewart Benson’s ‘Towards a Tertiary Tripartism: new codes of Social Control and the 17+’, in Patricia Broadfoot (ed.), Selection, Certification and Control, Falmer Press, London, 1984.
10 Cited by Shelter, 1990.
11 Analysis by Michael Meacher of government statistics supplied in a parliamentary written answer, Hansard, March 6, 1991; also Poor Britain, Low Pay Unit, 1992.
12 The Guardian, September 13, 1991.
13 Hansard, March 29, 1983.
14 World in Action, Granada Television, 1978.
15 Race Attacks, Home Office report, 1981.
16 The Sunday Telegraph, October 6, 1991.
17 The Daily Telegraph, July 2, 1991.
18 The Daily Mail, July 10, 1991.
19 The Daily Star, May 24, 25, 27, 29 and 31, 1991; June 15, 1991.
20 The Daily Mail, October 3, 1991.
21 The Sun, October 3, 1991.
22 The Guardian, May 15, 1982.
23 Commentary on London Broadcasting (LBC).
24 The Independent, December 14, 1991.
25 Cited in CARF, Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, no. 8, May–June 1992.
26 The Evening Standard, March 26, 1992; the Daily Mail, April 2, 1992.
27 The Sun, April 7, 1992.
28 Cited by Michael Ignatieff, the Observer, October 13, 1991.
29 Letter from Julian Nettel to Harriet Harman, MP, September 23, 1991.
30 As told to the author.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Camberwell Community Health Council ‘Casualty watch’ report, May 1991.
34 South London Press, March 13, 1992.
35 As told to the author.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Today, April 22 and 23, 1991.
39 The Guardian, April 7, 1990.
40 Letter from Malcolm Alexander to William Waldegrave, December 20, 1990; radio interview with Malcolm Alexander, LBC, January 3, 1991.
41 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier, Penguin, London, 1989.
42 Report of Department of Health and Social Security appeals tribunal, cited in the Daily Mirror, July 31, 1984.
43 The Sunderland Echo, October 17, 1992.
44 Correspondence with the National Union of Mineworkers.
45 Cited by Easington District Council, correspondence, February 11, 1993.
46 Easington Colliery, a brochure produced by North East Coal, Sunderland.
47 The advertisements, featuring several miners, appeared in the national press in January, February and March, 1992. Arnie Makinson’s photograph was published in the northern editions of the Daily Mirror.
&nbs
p; 48 ‘Safety of British Nuclear Weapons Designs: US Nuclear Weapon Safety: The implications for the United Kingdom?’ BASIC Report 91.2, 1991.
49 Washington Post 1990 report, cited in the Guardian, April 22, 1992.
50 The Guardian, April 23, 1991.
51 The Problems of the Trident Programme, Greenpeace, July 1991.
52 With thanks to John Ross.
53 Poll carried out by On-Line Telephone Surveys, London, between February 24 and March 1, 1992. 1,405 people were asked: ‘Currently the UK is proposing to increase its sea-based nuclear weapons capabilities with the Trident nuclear missile system, at a cost of £10.5 billion. How strongly do you agree with this proposal?’ Agreed: 28%. Neither agreed nor disagreed: 8%. Disagreed: 56%. Didn’t know: 8%.
II DISTANT VOICES OF DISSENT
1 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1921; cited by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, New York, 1988, p. xi. See also Manufacturing Consent for Chomsky’s analysis, repeated and amplified in his many other works.
2 John Pilger, Heroes, Jonathan Cape, London, 1986, p. xv.
3 Paul Gordon and David Rosenburg, Daily Racism: The Press and Black People in Britain, Runnymede Trust, London, 1989, p. 69.
4 Independent on Sunday, February 4, 1990.
5 The Observer, February 4, 1990.
6 Channel 4 News, London, during the week January 28–February 4, 1990.
7 Edwin R. Bayley, Joe McCarthy and the Press, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1981.
8 Cited in the Independent, October 28, 1988.
9 Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Penguin, London, 1983, p. 5.
10 The Guardian, November 8, 1991.
11 John Clark, For Richer for Poorer, Oxfam, Oxford, 1986, Appendix 1, pp. 90–1.
12 Third World Resurgence, published by Third World network, Penang, Malaysia, Issue no. 12, ‘Manufacturing Truth. The Western Media and the Third World’.
13 Study cited in Third World Resurgence, Issue no. 12.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid.
18 See Heroes, Chapter 15, ‘History as Illusion’.
19 Cited by Michael Albert, Z Magazine, April 1991.
20 Third World Resurgence, Issue no. 12.
21 The Daily Mail, July 15, 1984.
22 Maurice Edelman, The Mirror: a political history, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1966, p. 1.
23 This account is from Heroes, Chapter 42, ‘You Write. We Publish’.
24 Audit Bureau of Circulation figures cited in Media Week, July 19, 1985; and the Guardian, October 28, 1985 and January 27, 1986.
25 Marketing Week, January 31, 1986.
26 Richard Belfield, Christopher Hird and Sharon Kelly, Murdoch: The Decline of an Empire, Macdonald, London.
27 The Sunday Mirror, December 5, 1991.
28 See Roger Bolton, Death on the Rock and other stories, W. H. Allen, London, 1990.
29 The Guardian, September 5, 1990.
30 The Independent on Sunday, March 4, 1990.
31 See Heroes, pp. 535–7.
32 Ibid., pp. 526–31.
33 Ibid., pp. 517–20.
34 Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, Chatto & Windus, London, 1993.
35 Letter from Deirdre English, editor of Mother Jones, cited by Christopher Hitchens, New Statesman Diary, April 17, 1981.
36 Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues, South End Press, Boston, 1993.
37 The Independent, May 15, 1989.
38 Letter to the Guardian, 1987.
39 Reagan used this term many times, perhaps for the first time at a veterans’ rally during the election campaign in 1979. Bush used the second term on the eve of the Gulf War, January 1991.
40 Susan George, The Debt Boomerang, Pluto Press, London, 1993.
III THE QUIET DEATH OF THE LABOUR PARTY
1 Labour Party, Breaches of Constitutional Rules III (4); also Constituency Rules Clause IV (5).
2 Letters from Jean Calder to the author and the New Statesman, August 1, 1992 and September 28, 1992.
3 Ibid.; also Report by Joyce Gould to the NEC on The Friends of Brighton, September 25, 1991.
4 Letter from Jean Calder to John Smith, August 21, 1992.
5 Report cited in the Guardian and correspondence with the author.
6 Correspondence with the author.
7 Richard Heffernan and Mike Marqusee, Defeat from the Jaws of Victory, Verso, London, 1993.
8 Ibid.
9 The Socialist Worker (from the Financial Times), September 1993.
10 The Green Left Weekly, Sydney, November 17, 1993.
11 The Independent on Sunday, March 28, 1993.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 I am grateful to Chris Lamb for this analysis in the Guardian (letters), March 31, 1994.
15 The New Statesman and Society, January 21, 1994.
16 The Daily Telegraph, February 4, 1994.
17 Panorama, BBC Television, September 20, 1993.
18 The Guardian, October 1, 1993.
19 Ibid., January 28, 1993.
IV MYTHMAKERS OF THE GULF WAR
1 Cited by Phillip Knightley, The First Casualty: From the Crimea to the Falklands: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist and Myth Maker, Pan Books, London, 1989, p. 109.
2 Ibid., p. 81.
3 BBC Radio 4, December 30, 1990.
4 These press comments appeared during the second half of December, 1990.
5 The Observer, November 30, 1990.
6 Ian Lee, War in the Gulf: A Medical, Environmental and Psychological Assessment, Medical Campaign Against Nuclear Weapons, December 14, 1990.
7 As told to the author.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 The Independent, December 28, 1991.
11 Michael Klare, the Nation, June 8 and October 15, 1990 and February 11, 1991; United States Army, A Strategic Force for 1990/2 and Beyond, January 1990.
12 Christopher Hitchens, Harpers Magazine, January 1991.
13 Ralph Schoenman, Iraq and Kuwait: A History Suppressed, October 1990, p. 12.
14 Santa Barbara News-Press, September 24, 1990 and Philip Agee, Z Magazine, November 1990.
15 Philip Agee, as above.
16 New York Daily News, September 29, 1990.
17 Ralph Schoenman, Iraq and Kuwait, p. 13.
18 See Knut Royce, Newsday, August 29 and 30, 1990 and January 3 and 21, 1991.
19 The Observer, December 30, 1990.
20 Cited by Phillip Knightley, p. 7.
21 The Guardian, January 24, 1991.
22 Arming Saddam: The Supply of British Military Equipment to Iraq 1979–1990, Campaign Against the Arms Trade, February 1991.
23 The Guardian, January 24, 1991.
24 See Ropes of Sand, by former CIA operations officer Wilbur Crane Evelard, cited by Jeff McConnell, Boston Sunday Globe, September 9, 1990.
25 The Independent, February 6, 1991.
26 The Independent, February 11, 1991.
27 The Observer, February 10, 1991.
28 BBC Television News, February 11, 1991.
29 Ibid.
30 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Gulf Digest, February 1991.
31 The Guardian, February 5, 1991.
32 John Pilger, Heroes, p. 263.
33 The Daily Mirror, February 8, 1991.
34 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Gulf Digest, February 1991.
35 As told to the author.
36 The Weekend Guardian, January 12–13, 1991.
37 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Gulf Digest, February 1991.
38 Ibid.
39 The Observer, February 10, 1991.
40 Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation Gulf Digest, February 1991.
41 Heroes, pp. 113–14.
42 As told to the author.
43 Martha Gellhorn, The Face of War, Virago, London, 1986, p
. 254.
44 ‘The South Supplement’, New Statesman and Society, October 11, 1991.
45 Ibid. I am grateful to Carlos Gabetta for his analysis.
46 The Independent, February 28, 1991.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 The Guardian, March 1, 1991; The Times and Daily Telegraph, March 1, 1991.
51 The Daily Telegraph, March 2, 1991.
52 The Daily Mirror, March 2, 1991.
53 BBC Radio 4, FM ‘Gulf reports’ frequency, March 1, 1991.
54 BBC Television News, March 1, 1991.
55 Jeremy Bowen was questioned by Peter Sissons on BBC Television News, February 14, 1991.
56 The Observer, March 3, 1991.
57 The Sunday Times, March 3, 1991. Robert Harris subsequently wrote to me, enclosing what he described as ‘a letter of apology’ to be forwarded to Bobby Muller. Muller found no apology; Harris merely regretted not using his words differently.
58 The Guardian, February 21, 1991.
59 Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History, Viking Press, New York, 1983. Cited by Noam Chomsky in Manifesto: Vietnam Retrospectives, April 21, 1985.
60 Neal Acherson, the Independent on Sunday, March 10, 1991.
61 The Observer, March 10, 1991.
62 The International Herald Tribune, February 23–24, 1991.
63 Into the Media War, a study by the Glasgow University Media Group: Greg Philo, Frank Masson, Greg McLaughlin, March 1991.
64 BBC and Independent Television News, January 15, 1991.
65 BBC Television Gulf War coverage, January 18, 1991.
66 Michael Ignatieff, the Observer, March 31, 1991.
67 The Independent, March 28, 1991.
68 See William Blum, The CIA, A Forgotten History, pp. 275–8.
69 The Guardian, May 16, 1991.
70 The New York Times, March 26, 1991.
71 BBC and ITN, March 13, 1991.
72 The Boston Globe, January 18, 1991.
73 The International Herald Tribune, February 23–24, 1991 and the Washington Post, March 18, 1981, cited in the Independent the following day.