My Interview with Riverside Radio’s Andy Bungay About the Horrors of the Truss Government, Guantánamo, and the Plight of Julian Assange
12.10.22
Please support my work as a reader-funded journalist! I’m currently trying to raise $2500 (£2000) to support my writing and campaigning on Guantánamo and related issues over the next three months. If you can help, please click on the button below to donate via PayPal.
On Friday I was delighted to be interviewed by Riverside Radio’s Andy Bungay, for the last hour of an extended podcast of his Saturday night show, The Chiminea, for which, once a month, he is joined by Colin Crilly for the Colin Crilly Takeover Show.
The three-hour show is here, on Mixcloud, and our interview takes up most of the last hour, with some musical interludes.
For the first 20 minutes, from 2:02 to 2:22, we discussed the current collapse of the UK under Liz Truss, an unprecedented disaster that no one could quite have foreseen, even though it was clear — in that long summer of the campaign for a new Tory leader to replace the disgraced Boris Johnson — that she was a dangerous far-right ‘libertarian’ ideologue, heavily influenced by the unaccountable think-tanks in Tufton Street, who are obsessed with shrinking the state, and enriching the rich, and who are also ferociously pro-Brexit, and prominent players in the deranged world of climate change denial.
Fortunately, the efforts by Truss and Kwarteng to usher in this horrible new world, without a General Election, have backfired, and their opening salvo — a package of uncosted and unjustifiable tax cuts for the rich — so appalled the markets, at a time of rampant inflation and an energy bills crisis, that the pound collapsed, the entire UK economy seems to be on the edge of a precipice, and the Tories have sunk to hitherto unknown depths of unpopularity in the polls.
I can only hope that there is some way of getting rid of Truss and her clown Cabinet soon, because, on every single issue that we face — from the environment to Brexit, from immigration to tax, and on every other front imaginable — the position taken by them is the exact opposite of what we need.
From 2:22 to just before 2:28, we discussed the latest news from Guantánamo, and the hope that, with just 36 men held, and with over half of those men approved for release, we might finally get to see the prison’s closure under President Biden.
I also spoke about the activities of the UK Guantánamo Network, of which I’m a part. The network includes various Amnesty International groups, Freedom From Torture, Close Guantánamo, the Guantánamo Justice Campaign and the London Guantánamo Campaign, and in September we began holding monthly vigils in Parliament Square, from 1-3pm on the first Wednesday of every month, to encourage British MPs to remember that Guantánamo is still open.
As I explained to Andy, next month, on Wednesday November 2, we’ll be holding our vigil outside the US Embassy in Nine Elms, and we encourage anyone who is interested and able to join us, to send a message to President Biden, a week before the US’s crucial midterm elections, about how the ongoing injustice of Guantánamo hasn’t been forgotten.
Just before 2:28, Andy played ‘Forever Prisoner’ by The Four Fathers, which I wrote about Guantánamo prisoner Khaled Qassim — the live version recorded at home with my son Tyler (beatboxer The Wiz-RD) standing in for our drummer Bren — although you can check out the studio recording here.
Our interview resumed at 2:31, with a discussion of policing — and whether or not Priti Patel’s efforts to criminalise all protest when she was home secretary will lead to violent clampdowns — followed by a discussion of how it struck me in summer that, when widespread strikes began in the UK, one of the main drivers — as it was in the ‘70s, in my childhood — was rampant inflation, because, when meagre pay rises fail to keep up with the rising cost of living, people get much more motivated to challenge their employers than they do when inflation is low.
We also spoke about the plight of WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, with whom I worked in 2011 on the release of classified military files from Guantánamo, and how monstrously unjust it is that he has been held in HMP Belmarsh for over three years, fighting extradition to the US to face espionage charges related to his work as a journalist and a publisher, when that should not be regarded as a crime, and when, in addition, none of the other publishers he worked with — including the Guardian, the New York Times, the Daily Telegraph and many more — are facing any charges, even though they were all responsible for publishing the classified material that was first leaked by Chelsea Manning.
I hope that you have time to listen to the show, and that you’ll share it if you find it useful.
* * * * *
Andy Worthington is a freelance investigative journalist, activist, author, photographer (of an ongoing photo-journalism project, ‘The State of London’), film-maker and singer-songwriter (the lead singer and main songwriter for the London-based band The Four Fathers, whose music is available via Bandcamp). He is the co-founder of the Close Guantánamo campaign (and see the latest photo campaign here) and the successful We Stand With Shaker campaign of 2014-15, and the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. He is also the co-director (with Polly Nash) of the documentary film, “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo” (available on DVD here, or you can watch it online here, via the production company Spectacle, for £2.50).
In 2017, Andy became very involved in housing issues. He is the narrator of the documentary film, ‘Concrete Soldiers UK’, about the destruction of council estates, and the inspiring resistance of residents, he wrote a song ‘Grenfell’, in the aftermath of the entirely preventable fire in June 2017 that killed over 70 people, and he also set up ‘No Social Cleansing in Lewisham’ as a focal point for resistance to estate destruction and the loss of community space in his home borough in south east London. For two months, from August to October 2018, he was part of the occupation of the Old Tidemill Wildlife Garden in Deptford, to prevent its destruction — and that of 16 structurally sound council flats next door — by Lewisham Council and Peabody. Although the garden was violently evicted by bailiffs on October 29, 2018, and the trees were cut down on February 27, 2019, the struggle for housing justice — and against environmental destruction — continues.
To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Andy’s RSS feed — and he can also be found on Facebook (and here), Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. Also see the six-part definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, The Complete Guantánamo Files, the definitive Guantánamo habeas list, the full military commissions list, and the chronological list of all Andy’s articles.
Please also consider joining the Close Guantánamo campaign, and, if you appreciate Andy’s work, feel free to make a donation.
Who's still at Guantánamo?
11 Responses
Andy Worthington says...
Here’s my latest article, linking to, and discussing my interview with Andy Bungay of Riverside Radio in Wandsworth, during the last hour of a three-hour show, in which we discussed the woefully inept government of Liz Truss, Guantanamo and the prospects of its closure, and the plight of Julian Assange, still in Belmarsh challenging his extradition, and Andy also played ‘Forever Prisoner’ by my band The Four Fathers.
...on October 12th, 2022 at 10:41 pm
Anna says...
Hi Andy, haven’t had time to listen yet, just read it. In the background ‘that woman’s first scape goat sacrificed (not that he did not deserve to go, but not in order to whitewash her own top responsibility in the drama). Wonder who will be the next one to be axed. Will Hunt be any better considering that she clearly is not someone willing to listen to reason from anyone outside her own circle ? No idea what his economic acumen or lack thereof amounts to anyway.
And just watched the third part of the Labour Papers, after having seen only snippets of the previous ones. If you still have not watched any of it, this one might be worth your while. Were it only because it confirms your lack of enthusiasm – to put it mildly – for its present party leader. Much about racial purges in I think Newham.
Its double standards in tackling anti-semitism and islamophobia is indeed shocking. Maybe not the best time to air this document as it may favour the even worse Conservatives, but on the other hand could this opening of the festering wound possibly allow for some serious restructuring before the next election ?
At any rate, I do hope that AJE will also go after islamophobia and generally racism in the Conservatives.
Now I will make an effort to overcome my distaste of that woman and try to listen at her in front of Nbr 10. Just how will she shift the whole responsibility onto Kwarteng who was naive enough to think that he was appointed for his own value and not just to serve her own purposes. Or will she just ignore it and continue her phoney ‘success’ story ?
...on October 14th, 2022 at 1:36 pm
Anna says...
So she just repeated her own over-the-top mantra and ignored the content of any questions. A true disciple of Johnson’s. No wonder there were few questions – all very hostile – as the press knew none of them would be answered anyway.
So now I wonder whether she herself will be the next victim of her axe. All it needs is taking too forceful a swing and she’ll sever her own neck instead of another scape goat’s one.
She looks like someone who, when the pressure will overwhelm her, might start crying.
...on October 14th, 2022 at 2:12 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Good to hear from you, Anna. It’s obviously time for the Tories to go, and I’m hoping that a General Election will be unavoidable when they get rid of Truss – and soon – as I’m expecting they’ll have to do. Every time she opens her mouth the markets react badly – as happened immediately after her risible press conference.
I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Kwarteng, though. They were both absolutely in it together, planning that deadly mini-budget without, it seems, consulting anyone outside of their immediate circle of crazed neoliberal ideologues. Hopefully their colossal misreading of the current economic situation will actually help to usher in a new post-neoliberal Britain, as is so urgently required, with a focus, instead, on how to dismantle capitalism to save the planet. That, it seems reasonable to assume, will now fall to Labour, but I do wonder if they’ll have the vision and courage to break with their own tendency to accept that ‘the markets’ are too powerful argue with, even if they wanted to.
As for ‘The Labour Files’, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch it, although I know I should. Sadly, control freakery has long been a part of the Parliamentary Labour Party, and I can’t see that changing under the current leadership, but realistically they are the only hope for getting the Tories out, because we apparentlyaren’t grown-up enough in the UK to accept proportional representation instead of the idiotic first-past-the-post system.
...on October 15th, 2022 at 12:17 am
Andy Worthington says...
That press conference spelled the end for her, I think, Anna. Lots of insider commentary seems to suggest that she’ll be gone by next week, as, behind the scenes, the less far-right Tories try to work out how to come up with a replacement without accepting that they’ve run out of road, and there has to be a General Election. The wiser Tories have already realised that the only way to save the economy is for them to be put out of their misery and for the Conservative Party to spend some time in the wilderness.
Jeremy Hunt, by the way, isn’t at all a trustworthy character. He was in charge of the NHS for some time pre-Brexit, and is therefore very much part of the plans to sell it off to US healthcare companies. In general, though, since Brexit gave us first Johnson and now Truss, he has ended up appearing much more moderate and centrist.
If the Tories can cling on, while removing Truss and everything to do with her, it will be interesting to see how they approach Brexit, as it’s becoming more and more obvious that, for those MPs who want to maintain any connection to the real world, rather than the ‘sunlit uplands’ fantasy, it’s a disaster, and it’s no longer feasible to pretend otherwise.
...on October 15th, 2022 at 12:25 am
Anna says...
That woman ‘apologised’, so what ?!
The lamest duck in history but as hard to remove as her predecessor it would seem.
So they backtracked some tax cuts for the rich but not even the 1 % tax cut for the poorest Brits … And no word about a windfall tax, which the EU as far as I know does plan for and which might have helped to finance that 1 % cut for those who need it most.
Zero irony here, I sincerely wish you all the very best trying to survive the ‘eyewatering’ cuts to basic services including health care and your heating bills.
This is one of these baffling cases where you can follow all the seemingly logical steps from A – a prosperous, democratic UK – to Z – the current mess – yet they cannot really explain the current situation. Even if it is clear when the rot set in on a major scale, explaining why after that there apparently was no way to redress the situation before it was too late, is much harder.
On a brighter note, yesterday when searching old escapist movies on YouTube I came across a guy who somehow complements your efforts to document London in pictures. He engagingly tells about the background of puzzling street names in London, with illustrations. Thought you might like it, even if you probably have no time to watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLjPk99iR9s
...on October 18th, 2022 at 3:20 pm
Andy Worthington says...
It’s such a mess now, Anna. It feels worse than when it was just Truss and Kwarteng and their crazed ‘mini-budget’,crashing the economy Now we have some semblance of order, calming the markets, but Jeremy Hunt as a de facto leader, this time elected by precisely nobody – not even the 81,000+ old white Tory Party members who voted for Truss – and pledging to deliver Austerity Mk. II, even though there’s really nothing left to cut in our public services.
I’m hoping that pressure will continue to be exerted regarding a windfall tax on the energy companies – £18bn by my reckoning, to match the EU’s windfall tax – and I’d also like to hear more about restructuring energy costs, but what I’ve been reading about recently that should be much better known is Modern Monetary Theory, which I discovered via an economist called Richard Murphy. This post on his website – actually featuring a Twitter thread by another econonomic commentator, Andrew Levi – explains it all rather well: https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2022/10/16/now-is-the-time-for-more-qe-its-the-way-to-keep-the-economy-going/
Is MMT something you’ve come across?
...on October 18th, 2022 at 10:28 pm
Anna says...
Hi Andy, I tried the link but gave up pretty quickly. I’ve never understood macro-economics, hedge funds, future markets and other speculative investments. Not to mention Krypto currencies which to my common sense look like a spectacular piramid scheme.
I know that borrowing – also on a household scale – is considered wise, as interest rates on borrowing supposedly are lower than inflation on your savings, but I’ve always opted for the latter in order to avoid what now is such a nightmare for countless people : having been lured by banks’ ‘why wait until you will have saved enough for whatever you dream of, if you can have it now and pay later’ mantra. I’ve always adapted my needs & wishes to my financial capacity and thus have spared myself at least debt nightmares.
As for countries, I’m willing to accept that debt can be useful, but would think that it should at all times be limited to a certain percentage of the budget – as is required for aspiring EU members before they can apply for membership.
It seems to me, that with politics increasingly becoming four-year election-to-election matters rather than long-term policies & strategies, sky-high debt, bottomless holes in national budgets, printing money without cover, are becoming the norm. The current government pleases the electorate – and fills its own pockets, whether in cash or future corporate/think tank etc rewards – the dramatic consequences will be for the next government which will inherit the mess. Provided it is serious & decent enough to try and fix it, rather than turning a blind eye and just continuing the depletion of the country’s coffers.
We have that also in Poland right now. The populist government is acting as a Santa Claus in order to cement its political popularity while the national debt is growing exponentially. In addition we are forfeiting billions on EU support for Covid mitigation as we refuse to readjust our legal system back to EU norms.
It seems to me that reason for the sudden gigantic war reparations claim to Germany is not only populist propaganda but also a futile attempt to cover that huge budget gap.
The reparations which we got after the war probably were indeed inadequate considering the immense losses in life, property and infrastructure, but that should never be a reason to rekindle for populist reasons animosities which had finally been laid to rest …
Just watched that woman live in parliament Q&A. In addition to her inadequacy, stupidity, hubris, arrogance, she also is plain vulgar. I don’t expect all of them to be stuffed ‘upper class’ pre-historic specimens like Rees-Mogg, but not the level of a medieval screaming fish seller either. No offense ment to ladies selling fish in markets :-).
As for UK austerity, I remember the one in early 1970s. My father on a minimal pension after a meagre salary, had two studying children without a grant – as we were stateless and did not have Dutch nationality. My London-based uncle decided to co-fund at least my studies, but legally could not do so as there was a ban on transferring funds out of the UK. So the Dutch company in which my father had worked and which had some assets in the UK, agreed on a subterfuge: my uncle delivered his contribution to them in London and they paid it out to us in Holland.
In Holland too there was in the 1950s a period of governmental ‘bestedings beperking’ = spending limitation.
On the other hand, in much more recent times they had a huge budget surplus which they invested in a guarantee fund for the governmental pension fund which in principle is funded by current tax payers, whose number is decreasing as opposed to that of pensioners, so this additional guarantee fund was critical. I now enjoy its fruits :-).
And the Norwegian government wisely did a similar thing with their North sea gas windfall.
So how am I to understand the intricacies of national macro-economics … ?
...on October 19th, 2022 at 12:47 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Hi Anna,
I share your concern about personal debt, which I have also avoided. One of the great lies about our societies seems to be the way in which, when people enter into a huge, decades-long loan to buy a home, the position everyone is encouraged to take is that they’ve ‘bought’ that home rather than having just made the first payment in what will be many hundreds of monthly payments.
I’m not readily able to understand the bigger economic picture either, but it does appear that the analogy used by governments – that we should regard nations as households, and which, since 2010, has been used in the UK to justify savage cuts to public services – is based on a profound economic misunderstanding, but one which almost everyone – politicians, the media, ordinary people – have bought into.
Essentially, the argument is that we can print money, and that the only constraint is the threat of inflation. However, at a time of crisis, like the recession we’re currently entering, that downside isn’t relevant.
It’s an interesting theory, and it surprises me how it’s so thoroughly ignored by mainstream economists and those who parrot their opinions, even though they clearly don’t know what they’re doing.
...on October 20th, 2022 at 12:02 pm
Anna says...
I was wrong, she did not cry, on the contrary. There was a great and long interview with John Bercow on AJE and one of the things he said was, the complete lack of any emotion in her speech, not a word of contrition or apology about the disaster she caused and presided over. So now one week of potentially even bigger chaos to chose a replacement, who then will be chosen about four days before the 31 October deadline for the revised budget ? Seems like a general election really is the only way out, no matter how disruptive that also would be, but at least could lead to some radical change ?
Hang in there …
...on October 20th, 2022 at 1:39 pm
Andy Worthington says...
Another extraordinary day, Anna. At least she’s gone now, but now we’re supposed to endure another PM who hasn’t been elected by the people? Do they think we won’t remember what happened the last time that happened? (i.e. less than two months ago)? Perhaps amnesia is all we have left. After all, we’re now hearing about calls for Boris Johnson to return, as though he wasn’t kicked out after being disgraced less than four months ago.
...on October 20th, 2022 at 10:35 pm