An Accidental MP Cassette

Clinging firmly to his halo, Martin Bell relates how and why he left the BBC after 30 dangerous war-zone years which had earned him an OBE and the title of Royal Television Society Reporter of the Year. He had grown tired of the BBC's relentless retreat from serious reporting and its obsession with sport and royalty; he was also sick of bloodshed. Then the opportunity arose to stand as an independent candidate for what he affectionately terms Planet Tatton, being Neil Hamilton's parliamentary constituency in Cheshire. To his amazement, Bell won by 11,000 votes, thereby provoking the tabloids into a frantic hunt for dirt: they sent reporters round the world, and dug through his dustbin, but to no avail. Whiter than white, he makes a wooden and sanctimonious narrator, but his soldierly integrity is refreshing in a world where untold millions are squandered by a government apparently without shame. Bell realises he is a political nobody, but his basic stance is wise and humane. As an ex-military man, he was revolted by the slaughter he saw in the second Gulf War, and he mercilessly pillories Blair's sloganising postures, which take no account of war's realities. If the Prime Minister had even once seen a man killed, Bell muses, his approach might have been very different. Bell's odd career move has aligned him, he thinks, with the 2000 independent councillors in local government. He sees Downing Street as an autocratic power-base, which conspires with Brussels, Strasburg, and the judiciary to wield power. Independent MPs are an endangered but precious breed: in his modest way, Martin Bell is helping to keep their flag flying. --Betty TadmanRead More