A Different View From the Foothills

When Chris Mullin was Labour’s Minister for Africa we had a passionate, if brief encounter. Admittedly Chris didn’t reciprocate my fervor but I clung to the hope that the fateful afternoon we spent together meant something to him.

It didn’t. I’ve just finished his Westminster diaries, “A View from the Foothills”, and I don’t even feature as a footnote at the bottom of the foothills for goodness sake. In fact, according to his diary, nothing happened on that day at all. Fortunately, I captured the moment in my diary, albeit that of a nobody.

Wednesday 9th February 2005

9.00a.m. I was forwarded an invitation from Chris Mullin's office (minister for Africa) to attend a parliamentary briefing on Sudan. Concerned about his failure to stem the genocidal campaign in Darfur, I frantically trawled the internet, seeking something I could like about this man. What I found unnerved me. A formidable campaigning journalist once, he was instrumental in the release of The Birmingham six. I wondered whether high office had distorted his moral compass.

1.20p.m. Emerging from Westminster station, the Evening Standard headline caught my eye: “PM to Apologise to Guildford Four”. It was eerily serendipitous. I’d been dealt a powerful hand. I had to play it wisely.

On entering parliament, I saw a camera crew and a crowd huddled around someone. It was Ian Paisley. To get in, I had to squeeze past him as he pontificated loquaciously. I resisted the temptation to slice my 5 inch heel into the ankle of the man who made the repression of Catholics his life’s endeavour. My head still reeling, I entered Westminster hall, only to find myself face to face with Gerry Conlon. There was a group of people with him, standing in the centre of the imposing hall. Mr. Conlon was talking on his mobile. The atmosphere was charged but I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad energy. Had Blair reneged? Had the irascible Paisley stolen their thunder? I hung around trying to glean what was happening. I wanted to reach out to Conlon and say…what? “Congratulations on finally having your name cleared after 30 years of wrongful incarceration and living purgatory”? Words escaped me, so I just hovered, and stared. I noticed them looking at me awkwardly then moving on.

I realized later how I must have appeared. Looking down on them, vexed at their raised, Irish voices. No doubt donning my default furrowed brow, dressed in power clothes and brief case, ceremonial armour for my dance with the devil. Being an Irish (ex) catholic myself I was racked with guilt. Not only had I failed to communicate my sorrow and anger at the injustice they endured, I had inadvertently driven them on and made them feel they had no right to be there.

1.55p.m. We were granted admittance to committee room 24. Great mahogany tables joined together in a large rectangle. There were rows of seats at the back also. On entering, I didn’t know if I should take a seat at the table or at the rear. Fellow gatherers procrastinated too. Not one to stand on ceremony, I took a seat at the table. Despite being a campaigning novice, I had no intention of fading into the background. I asked the guy who sat next to me who he represented, “the SLA”, he said, cautiously. I nodded politely while I processed what the initials stood for, then, turning to him for confirmation…. “So, you’re a rebel”? I said, trying to sound unfazed. He was indeed a rebel leader of the Sudanese Liberation Army. He was a soft spoken doctor who had taken a year off to see if he could do something to save his people from “extinction”. Black faces (most of whom were Sudanese refugees or asylum seekers) far outnumbered white and although they had more right to be there than anyone else, there was an incongruity with the officiousness of the surroundings. The men in dowdy woolen jumpers and makeshift “suits”, handouts from a charity shop. The women, more inclined to take up seats at the back, resigned to being voiceless, yet hoping desperately to be heard.

2.00p.m. Mr. Mullin graced us with his presence. The chairman announced we would have 45 minutes. The Sudanese looked on helplessly as Mullin erroneously portrayed their plight as “a civil war”, wherein all sides were equally culpable. In desperation, they searched the room for someone to speak up on their behalf. Someone to say that assertions of moral equivalence had been disproved and that the Sudanese government, with sophisticated weaponry, was found to be responsible for 97% of the violence. There were only two NGO representatives present, neither of whom did anything to hold Mullin to account.

The pomposity and sterile politeness of the proceedings mocked the gravity of the crime we were there to discuss. The pain was palpable. A white politician continued reading and signing documents throughout. I wondered why she bothered coming. The room was full of people who had been tortured and tormented in a way that I can only imagine, for the crime of being black Africans. Now, in this their space, they were so intimidated by the portentousness of the occasion that they cowered silently, lest they inadvertently break the unwritten rules, thus being banished from the gathering. So grateful to be granted a seat at the same table as the man with the power to save them. Mr. Mullin.

2.30p.m. The Sudanese ambassador arrived. He took a seat at the top table. Despite the Sudanese government being accused of genocide, Mullin greeted him as though he was Nelson Mandela. The ambassador proceeded to hijack the proceedings by squandering the last precious moments of time with a propaganda speech, designed to intimidate. Furious, I held my hand up to speak. When ignored I spoke anyway, despite my stomach being tied in knots of barbed wire. The ambassador spoke over me, playing the status/bully card. Keeping my gaze firmly on Mullin, I ignored the ambassador and kept talking.

I reminded Mullin what a momentous day it was. That Tony Blair would apologise to the Guildford Four and the Maguire Seven (though lamentably, not the Birmingham Six). I told attendees that Mr. Mullin had played no small part in rectifying the injustices visited upon these people. I said that Mullin’s courageous and relentless campaign for the release of the Birmingham Six had influenced the other two cases. Desperate not to waste this opportunity I leant forward, stretched my hands across the table and beseeched Mullin not to let his admirable record be mired by the blood of black Africans in Darfur. For a moment there was a glimmer of compassion in his eyes, but it was fleeting. He smiled, thanked us and left. Exactly 45 minutes after he arrived.

Sometime in May 2005: Chris Mullin was sacked. I wondered whether he regretted selling his soul only to be unceremoniously dumped anyway.

July 2013: Ten years on and an estimated 500,000 Darfuris have been slaughtered and approximately 3m forced off their land into refugee camps. A decade later and the political elite, together with the media, still turn a blind eye to the genocide in Darfur. What Mr. Mullin et al don’t get is that their legacy is judged by what they did, or neglected to do, while holding the reins of power, not by the selective, deluded and oft fictitious “diaries” produced after the event.