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Catégorie : English

Stop the coup – Guardian

A civil war state of mind now threatens our democracy

by Polly Toynbee

An “outrage”, a “coup”, an “abomination”, a country tumbling into “failed state status”, Britain a “banana republic”, Boris Johnson a “dictator”. Parliamentarians stretch the limits of their vocabulary to express disbelief that this could happen in Britain, the “cradle of democracy”. Rewrite the history books, tear up Bagehot’s The English Constitution, as the Queen and privy council sign the prorogation, neither the “dignified parts” not the “efficient parts” function any longer.

This country that self-identified so smugly as stable, tolerant and moderate, with a crown to symbolise traditions honed down the centuries, is revealed as fissile, fragile and ferociously divided. A constitution that relied on gentlemanly governments’ willingness to bow to parliament has evaporated, blown away now it’s led by a man who doesn’t give a damn for parliamentary sovereignty: taking back control is for him alone. He is ready to destroy anything that threatens his ambition.

MPs will try to stop him proroguing them. Astonishingly, this unelected prime minister has so far only spent one day in the Commons under their scrutiny, and now, after five weeks away, he will face them for just one week before banishing them for an unprecedented further five weeks. They get just one tight week to rise up and rebel, when surely they will vote in great numbers against the prorogation the Speaker calls “a constitutional outrage … an offence against the democratic process and the rights of parliamentarians as the people’s elected representatives”. Johnson’s riposte will be, “So what?” Their vote has no legal standing. But as he sends MPs on their way with a flea in their ear, what will the public think of his insolent defiance of parliament? They will decide in the end – and they may not stand for it.

The sense of violation of democracy reverberates everywhere. But what should civil servants do when power is seized in front of their eyes? Do they carry on obeying orders to drive the country into a no-deal Brexit disaster when they see parliament barred from that nation-changing decision? I asked Bob Kerslake, former head of the civil service, where their duty lies in this unprecedented situation.

“We are reaching the point where the civil service must consider putting its stewardship of the country ahead of service to the government of the day,” he said. That is a devastating verdict.

Mark Sedwill, the current head, should, along with all other senior civil servants indeed consider the democratic validity of any instruction to facilitate a no-deal Brexit without parliamentary assent. A no-deal Brexit was never proposed in the referendum, three-quarters of the public are against it, along with the overwhelming majority of MPs. Johnson has not been elected, commands no majority, avoids interviews and now sends parliament away. Consider, in her favour, how many times Theresa May was willing to stand in parliament taking the pain on Brexit statements for hour after hour, out of respect for parliament.

What prompted Johnson was Jeremy Corbyn convening opposition parties to agree a strategy against a no-deal Brexit. Their unwanted amicable solidarity looked suddenly threatening: they would agree a legislative procedure and call a vote of no confidence – which only the leader of the opposition can do – only if all else failed. That was the trigger. Johnson was hoping for a vote of no confidence so he could call an instant election. He could present himself as the martyr, forced to go the country by MPs hostile to the will of the people. All is ready to go for his election campaign. Next Wednesday brings the chancellor’s spending review, a cornucopia of promises on all those things the public notice, and none to repay the decade-long stripping out of benefits or to repair the services unseen by voters, where people suffer silently and the social fabric frays. Expect spending of an unmatched electoral cynicism.

Dominic Cummings, who runs Johnson as an iron puppet master, has a grid of people-pleasers to announce every day until election day. He told last Friday’s weekly advisers’ meeting that “there will be billions and billions and billions of pounds” for the Treasury to splash, reported the Sunday Times. He imitated Donald Trump: “It’s going to be the most beautiful spending round you’ve ever seen.” Then he boasted: “After this meeting I’m going to go and meet billionaire hedge fund managers and get a giant pot of cash from them” to build an election war chest of unfathomable depth.

Presumably these “private” briefings are leaked weekly to terrify the enemy, perhaps to warn off Corbyn from precipitating an election with a no-confidence vote. But insiders say that in the war room there is no such arrogant certainty that Johnson would win. Electoral calculations flash danger from the Brexit party if they take no more than 10% of the vote. But any electoral pact with hard-right Nigel Farage pledging a no-deal Brexit would risk horrifying moderate Tories, driving remaining anti-Brexiters into Liberal Democrat arms. Squeezed on two sides, seats may not fall according to the polls’ modest Boris bounce.

This aggressive provocation of parliament widens the great Brexit divide into a civil war state of mind. This is the battleground Johnson seeks – himself as roguish, freewheeling representative of the people’s will, defender of the referendum versus the Westminster establishment and the elite, as represented by MPs elected to parliament. Explosive, dangerous, unresolvable, David Cameron’s reckless, Tory-pleasing referendum cut right through the constitution, and now it lies badly damaged.

This assault on parliament is galvanising those soft Tory opponents who were prevaricating, the ones who preferred to wait until late October to give Johnson a chance to strike a new EU deal. Now, say Dominic Grieve and others, they all realise the one week before prorogation must be used to legislate against a no-deal Brexit. There is just time, there are manoeuvres, from seizing the timetable to a humble address and other ingenious devices murmured sotto voce lest the government hear their plans. It can be done, must be done, double quick, it’s too late to wait until they return in October.

The war for public hearts and minds has hardly begun. Which side will people lean, towards a sense their constitution and their parliament has been outraged by a revolutionary rightwinger? Or will they go with Johnson as the true representative of the people, leading angry Brexiters to their hearts’ desire? He has the advantage of the great claque of the 80% Tory press urging him on. This is only step one of Johnson’s “by any means necessary” threat. Expect more such “means” yet to come.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

2019-08-28
Astrophysics on YouTube

Among the millions of channels on YouTube is ‘Dr Becky’, an astrophysicist who is trying to encourage others into STEM careers (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). As a research fellow at the University of Oxford, Dr Becky Smethurst specialises in black holes, but outside the day job she posts videos on all sorts of space-themed questions. Her aim is to be someone in the world of scientific research that people can have a connection with. Text & video courtesy BBC – Journalists: Adam Paylor and Emily Ford

2019-08-22
Britain’s role in Europe – Guardian

Article in the Guardian
Thee Conservative party’s choice of a new leader will also impact on Britain’s influence in the world. Friendship, not showmanship, is valued by foreign governments. Bluster at home diminishes lustre abroad.
Over many years, Brexiters constructed a fable that presents the UK as the helpless victim of an unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels. Their version of history has become ever more at odds with reality. Brave Britannia is increasingly portrayed as a heroic underdog determined to fight for its independence from Europe. It matters not a jot that the organisation from which the UK is purportedly seeking to escape is a decent grouping of democratic nations that the UK willingly joined, which it helped significantly to shape and of which at least half the British people now very much wish their country to remain a member.
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It is probably impossible to break the link between the fantastical tale and its fanatical followers. However, in the hope that rational argument still has some role to play in British public debate, the record should be set straight regarding the reality of the influence that Britain has brought to bear in shaping EU decisions and indeed the European project as a whole.
I was in a social setting recently with a group of British people with differing views on Brexit. The issue was simmering below the surface when one of them proclaimed that the UK was leaving the EU because “we don’t like France telling us what to do”. This nonsensical, but not untypical, interpretation of relative French and British influence in Europe will come as a surprise to many; not least to generations of French negotiators for whom frustration with the impact of “perfidious Albion” was a familiar EU experience. There is, of course, a fundamental contradiction between asserting that the EU is run by bureaucrats and that it is subject to excessive influence by other governments.
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For three decades I sat around the European negotiating table, worked the Brussels corridors and networked in EU capitals. The truth is that, throughout the years of its membership, the UK has been particularly effective in the pursuit of its interests.
Like other member states, the UK has been represented around every EU negotiating table at every level as the decisions have been thrashed out. Sadly, many British people are not even aware that there were such tables to sit around. The UK also elected its members to the European parliament. Its EU commissioners helped to shape EU legislation. British nationals have held key positions in all the EU institutions.
But British influence in the EU went well beyond that available to most member states. The UK’s impact was exceptional due to several factors. The quality of its civil servants. The effectiveness of its coordination mechanisms. The reach of its diplomacy. The potency of its networking. The admiration for its pragmatism. The predominance of the English language.

The UK’s decision to opt out of some key policy areas diminished British influence in other areas
British influence in Europe, it is true, was hamstrung in self-inflicted ways. The UK’s decision to opt out of some key policy areas diminished British influence in other areas. London governments, partly driven by a jingoistic media, often favoured short-term tactics over long-term strategy. If the UK had put as much heart as it did head into its European policy, its influence would have been much greater. David Cameron’s decision to pull the Conservatives out of the EPP Group in the European parliament diminished British influence there; a development compounded by extreme British Eurosceptic MEPs more interested in throwing shapes rather than in shaping policy.
Every member state has its strengths and weaknesses. But there is a wide measure of consensus across Europe that British influence on the EU has been exceptional and immense. The EU today looks more like the one the UK wanted a quarter of a century ago than the one France had in mind.
Brexit will change all that. Europe will be the poorer for the loss of British influence. But Britain itself will be diminished even more. It is important that our British friends understand the influence they once had in Europe so that they also know what they are giving up. As an EU, without the UK, continues to shape the legislation and regulatory standards that will affect British business, France will be delighted to find that it has more scope to “tell the UK what to do” than was ever possible when the UK significantly influenced every decision.
• Bobby McDonagh was Ireland’s ambassador to the UK from 2009-2013

2019-07-22
Boris and Johnny Rotten

Boris Johnson is channelling a punk ethos to force through Brexit. It could work

“How can wealth persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power? Here lies the whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century.”

Those words were written by the Labour hero Aneurin Bevan, seven years after the end of the second world war and a decade before the arrival of the Beatles, but their power endures. Indeed, the imminence of Brexit and the entry into Downing Street of yet another moneyed Old Etonian prompts much the same question, though Britain’s current circumstances demand that it should be slightly rephrased. So, let us turn to the Irish writer Fintan O’Toole’s book Heroic Failure, which updates Bevan’s point.

“The great mystery of Brexit is the bond it created between working-class revolt on the one side and upper-class self-indulgence on the other,” writes O’Toole. What, he wonders, could have possibly glued together “stockbroker superciliousness” and “the raw two-fingered defiance of working-class patriotism”?

The answer is the spirit of punk, or something like it. “One great binding agent was Anarchy in the UK, the sheer joy of being able to fuck everything up,” he writes. As Boris Johnson proves, the Brexit instinct is at least partly about outrage for outrage’s sake – the kind of sensibility whose most vivid cultural manifestation was in the brazen provocations of punk rock (appropriately enough John Lydon – AKA Johnny Rotten – supports our exit from the EU). Led by a serial smasher-upper and self-publicist, we are on our way out of the EU because of a collective set of desires akin to the punk-era urge to break things, along with a connected inability to channel resentment into anything more than gestures of self-harm.

To go much further back into English history, it could be argued that Johnson is also channelling a kind of cavalier spirit. Popular history recalls those 17th-century defenders of monarchy and privilege as – to quote the Encyclopedia Britannica – “swashbuckling” and “overbearing”. Like them, Johnson wants us to think of him as an opponent of dour Puritanism and the bringer of the kind of joy that one supportive newspaper groaningly calls “Johnsun”. Many of the new prime minister’s past stunts and outbursts have served the cause of contrasting himself with supposedly grey, technocratic, orthodox politicians, and thereby feeding his own romantic myth (a myth is all it is, of course: there is no more dull and conventional path to power in this country than one that begins at Eton, passes through Oxford, and then ends at Westminster).

Myth-making and politics as performance are now delivering the keys to high office across western democracies. If politics has long intersected with the world of showbusiness, the 21st century has so blurred the two that they often seem to be one and the same. The president of the United States of America, as you may have noticed, does not derive his popularity from any conventional notion of substantive achievement, but instead from a daily pantomime of boasting and nastiness that keeps his supporters in the required state of excitement. Italy and now Ukraine have seen the rise of politicians who actually used to be comedians; in the latter, the latest development is the launch of a new anti-establishment party led by a rock star.

‘John Lydon – AKA Johnny Rotten – supports our exit from the EU.’ Photograph: Michael Tullberg/Getty Images

These developments seem to me to be rooted in two things: the fact that post-1979 neoliberalism has stripped traditional politicians of much of their power, often threatening to reduce politics and statecraft to mere gesture; and that governments have largely failed to tackle most of the issues of our age, from the climate emergency to the drastic challenges of automation.

An opening has thus appeared for people who at least affect – and with Johnson, affectation is all – to reject the basic norms of politics as usual. As the Trump experience has proved, even questions of deceit can bounce off them: if lying is part of a nihilistic, provocative persona, then having a distant relationship with the truth is all part of the act. This, perhaps, is how you end up with a prime minister who will not confirm how many children he has, who serially makes things up about the EU, and who does not just have a reputation for barely being able to tie his own shoelaces, but actively trades on it.

When the Labour party attacks him because he “has no plan” to deal with Britain’s fundamental problems, it speaks a self-evident truth. But a lack of prudence, coherence and basic seriousness seems to be the basis of Johnson’s personal brand. Besides, is his apparent policy platform – money splurged here and there and free-market business as usual – any less credible that the programmes offered by just about every UK government this century?

Then there is his taste for ugly rhetoric designed to ensure that “the plaster comes off the ceiling”.

This is an increasingly familiar populist trick: encouraging a set of voters to relish taboo-busting as a kind of surrogate for a lost sense of economic agency and power. This version of taking back control is not to do with jobs, wages or houses, but the licence to say anything you want, whatever the consequences. Anyone who is offended is dismissed as a puritanical defender of joyless political correctness.

Punk spirit, cavalier style and wilful provocation will all inform the manner in which Johnson and his allies frame their greatest challenge of all: how on earth to deal with the very real crisis of Brexit and honour the Halloween deadline that the Tory party has so stupidly fetishised. And they look set to play a crucial role in gaining consent from those who have most to lose from crashing out of the EU. Faced with a set of impossible challenges, Johnson will present himself as the flamboyant, verbose, rule-breaking Englishman, positioned against the washed-out logicians of the EU machine, who were never going to help in the first place.

Whether this approach could survive the sudden appearance of expensive food, empty shelves and queues of lorries is an interesting question. It would take an amazingly mould-breaking politician to ride this out, and Johnson is a lot less mould-breaking than he would like us to think. But in the midst of all that talk about a quickfire election and given deep-rooted English cultural traits and the strange, hallucinatory times in which we live, I would not underestimate his appeal. Nor the enduring romantic power of a philosophy mewled out by Johnny Rotten 42 years ago, which is now seemingly being taken to Brussels by our new leader: “Don’t know what I want, but I know how to get it.”

• John Harris is a Guardian columnist

2019-07-20
In conversation… with Jon Snow

Journalist and television presenter Jon Snow went from Washington correspondent for ITN to becoming one of the most experienced and trusted broadcasters in Britain in a career spanning four decades which has seen him preside over some of the most defining events of the 20th and 21st century. Born in Ardingly, Sussex to parents George D’Oyly Snow, Bishop of Whitby, and Joan, a pianist who studied at the Royal College of Music Jon enjoyed a happy childhood at Ardingly college where his father was headmaster. After leaving St Edward’s school in Oxford at the age of eighteen, Jon took the brave decision to spend a year as a teaching volunteer in Uganda: an experience which would completely change his life when he came face to face with the notorious dictator Idi Amin who had fallen asleep whilst his gun lay invitingly on the ground. This left Jon with an ethical dilemma: did he shoot this man, potentially saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people? Or did he maintain self control and not be arrested for murdering one of the most prolific dictators in world history? In hindsight the Ugandan prison service’s loss was definitely British broadcasting’s gain and promptly laid the foundations for Jon’s life in politics and current affairs.

Joining ITN in 1976, this was the first time Jon had appeared on television and was very nervous as to how he would come over to the audience. As a natural broadcaster, he had no problem in perfecting his delivery yet was constantly paranoid about his appearance through fear of an impromptu bogey hanging out of his nose in the middle of a very serious and emotive piece to camera…fortunately this has yet to happen but the fear has never gone away. In November 1978 he was seconded to Vietnam to report on the plight of the boat people which gained him recognition within his field and brought him to the attention of senior management who liked what they saw.

By 1983 Jon had risen to ITN’s Washington correspondent and it was here that he learned the true meaning of Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US. This was the era of Reagan and Thatcher and whilst on the outside it looked like the two leaders opted into an open and healthy understanding, the USA always had the power to flex its political muscle to make things work for them. So according to many journalists this special relationship may not be that special after all. America has forever been jealous of Britain’s rich cultural heritage and this has become a strong incentive to keep us as their most prized ally. Even now with the slightly awkward rapport between Trump and May, this understanding is still mutually beneficial for both nations but speculation remains as to how ‘special’ this relationship actually is.

A born reporter and communicator, Jon never saw himself leaving the fast paced world of front line journalism. Yet in 1989 following persuasion from executives, he was lured into the safe confines of the television studio to present the new look Channel Four News. Still a relatively fresh news outlet, Jon was able to use his expertise as a reporter to hone his skills as a presenter in a relaxed and casual setting but still managing to convey the biggest stories of the day in a clear and unbiased manner. Learning from his journalistic predecessors including Alistair Burnett and Robin Day, Jon was quickly able to perfect his own style which has kept him at the very top of his profession for over three decades.

In 1992 Jon replaced the retiring Alistair Burnett as the main anchor of ITN’s election night coverage. Such a mammoth event requires an extensive production team along with countless reporters who periodically appear in the major constituencies as they await the results, spin experts who analyse the events as they unfold and studio guests who provide insight into the unfolding action. Therefore as anchor Jon was very glad of the unrivalled expertise of the people around him who helped the broadcast come together. As history tells us, the 1992 general election was won by John Major’s Tory government with 336 seats, the largest victory in modern political history. Such a momentous night proved to be Snow’s one and only occasion in the hot seat on election night but it’s still a great experience in a career with so many accolades.

Having tackled election night, Jon returned to Channel Four News where he was now part of the television establishment. By this time Jon was slowly becoming an elder statesman of TV news and believed that the audience should see a more human side to his personality. He gave some thought as to how he would accomplish this without risking devaluing the content which he was presenting and finally decided upon wearing colourful ties to add some dynamism to proceedings. This is just the perfect amount of pizazz in order to find the perfect balance between serious and yet informal. Walking into the Channel Four News studio one is taken aback by just how small it is, yet Jon’s authoritative tone naturally makes it feel like a palace.

In 2011 Jon launched the new look Channel Four Nightly News alongside former BBC reporter Krishnan Guru-Murthy as the programme updated from a solo anchor to a dual presenting team. This has been a successful format and eight years later the nightly programme is still greatly received by the television audience. This popularity has assisted Jon in obtaining cult status and got the attention of comedians and writers for his straight delivery. In 2005 Jon appeared on The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year giving fake news stories based on song lyrics, with “I Predict A Riot” and “Crazy Chick”. Unbeknown to all concerned including Jon, this would be the start of a long standing slot which would see him reading the lyrics to some of the year’s biggest tune. Most of the time Jon has no idea what he’s reading but if it illustrates that the serious news broadcaster has a brighter side to his personality, this can only be a good thing.

In 2018 Jon volunteered to take a pay cut to help to highlight the gender inequalities within the media. This was something that he felt hugely passionate about as he doesn’t see any difference in ability between male and female broadcasters and therefore sees absolutely no reason why men should be paid more. A man of strong morals, this was an issue which Jon felt needed highlighting and if that meant taking a pay cut then it was a worthwhile sacrifice. Such a gesture may be the perfect way to sum him up: an intelligent, principled broadcaster with a twinkle in his eye. It was a great pleasure to meet and interview the great Jon Snow and looking forward to seeing the next instalment of his remarkable career.
[Article found on the Internet, Jon Snow’s Twitter or FB, author ?]

2019-05-19
Ron Onions & IRN – Tim Crook

Ron Onions- remembering a lost generation of inspirational editors in UK Broadcasting

by Tim Crook, Published 2012

(Original link : https://comparativemedialawandethics.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/ron-onions-remembering-a-lost-generation-of-inspirational-editors-in-uk-broadcasting/amp/)

Ron Onions OBE before the microphone during LBC’s heyday in Gough Square, behind London’s Fleet Street. Copyright estate of Ron Onions.

An impressive and significant generation of editors in UK broadcast journalism who originated and pioneered key developments in the media industry during the 1970s and 1980s has been passing away- largely unnoticed.

But the death (May 27) and well-attended funeral of Ron Onions (Kingston-on-Thames June 12) recently indicates that their contribution to British culture is beginning to be recognised and those who benefited from their leadership and inspiration are rightly publishing their thanks and appreciation.

I was but a speck of dust in the cloud of talent, and I hope quality, that hummed and buzzed from LBC/IRN’s Gough Square. But however little and small I was in the shape of programming, news, radio/audio journalism and entertainment, it was certainly the making of me.

Entrance to ‘Communications House’ at LBC IRN in 1985- the HQ from October 1973 to 1989. For most of its early years you could actually park in Gough Square and not get a ticket. Dr Johnson’s house was to the left.

I do not believe any other newspaper or media organisation would have given me the equality of opportunity, support, encouragement and guidance, and a living that was fulfilling, educational, exciting, professional, and challenging.

Exactly who Ron Onions was, where

The first frequencies for LBC and a livery branding that was on its first radio car.

he came from before he established himself as one of the key leaders and developers of IRN/LBC journalism and broadcasting, and what he did afterwards, has been eloquently written and published in the Telegraph, Independent, Press Gazette, and a later station he was the first programme director of- Jazz FM.

Essentially he was recruited from Capital Radio to nurture and professionally stabilise a chaotic and financially vulnerable beginning to independent radio journalism.

Ron Onions had a distinguished career in journalism at the BBC before risking his career going into the new world of commercial radio news in 1973. Here he is leaving for the iconic ‘Tonight’ programme- also features Tony Crabb,Peter Marshall, Terry Hughes, & Gordon Randall. Photo: Estate of Ron Onions.

The first book written on UK independent radio by Mike Baron in 1975 reported that at Capital Ron Onions originated a system whereby ‘Newscasts were presented on the hour, twenty-four hours a day with separate newscasts on the half hour through the breakfast programme.

Under News Editor Ron Onions, a team of eighteen newscasters, producers, editors and reporters compiled the bulletins from information coming from Independent Radio News and from its own local news-gathering sources backed by Local News of London Limited, shareholders in Capital Radio Limited and representing twenty-two newspaper groups in the London area.’ (Baron 1975:102)

IRN’s shaky start was due to the fact UK independent radio was developed on a local licence basis and Independent Radio News began with only one radio station (LBC), Capital started a week later, but the others were months and years away.

When IRN started in October, its ‘network’ consisted of 1 station- LBC, until Capital started a week later. It took more than a year before anything resembling a network was established. The first editor, Fred Hunter, discovered that he was a staff of one.

Of Ron’s move to LBC/IRN Baron wrote: ‘IRN first got itself together in its own right at the General Election in February (1974), and moved into a position where it was supplying news to LBC, and the other stations to use as they thought fit. The news area at LBC was rebuilt with IRN working from a hexagonal control desk in the middle of the room. A similar shaped desk used by LBC for London news gathering was nearby. Ron Onions, Head of News at Capital Radio, became Editor of Independent Radio News, succeeding Fred Hunter who went on to work on ITN’s General Election coverage and pioneer education and training of broadcast journalism.

Throughout most of 1974, “LBC 417” as it had

LBC/IRN’s first radio car- a yellow Hilman Hunter from British Leyland and the expensive LBC ‘AM’ traffic helicopter hired for live reports on London’s morning rush hours.

become known, showed general signs of improvement. A traffic helicopter was introduced in April. From 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. every weekday morning in LBC’s AM show, the ‘copter hovered over the capital reporting live the up-to-date situation. The Hughes 300C helicopter cost LBC £32 per flying hour. ‘ (ibid 96)

An early LBC producer, Paul Easton, who coincidentally was the first man to commission a package from me, recorded an interview with Ron, in which he recalled those heart murmuring early days.

The family and personal dimension, that people in work usually never get to see or hear about, is elegantly and powerfully documented in the book ‘Don’t Bring Lulu,’ that he co-wrote with his wife Doris and daughter Sarah.

‘Don’t Bring Lulu’ by Ron, Doris and Sarah Onions. Book Guild Publishing, Pavilion View, 19 New Road, Brighton BN1 1UF, UK, £17.99 plus £3 P&P, cheques to THE BOOK GUILD LTD.

I could not give justice to all the talented, and I may say brilliant people, I was privileged enough to work with at LBC/IRN between 1978 and 2002. But I was lucky enough to join the community when Ron Onions was there. He was on the panel that offered me a coveted IRN reporting job while other members of the editorial management team also wanted me to continue as the legal affairs specialist covering the Old Bailey, Royal Courts of Justice and other parts of the legal system.

I have written about the development of UK independent radio journalism elsewhere. A later editor and MD of IRN, John Perkins, and its last head of news information Charlie Rose and Bournemouth University rescued its sound archive– sadly after thousands of reels had been thrown away in cost-cutting space storage decisions.

If you put ‘Ron Onions’ into the search engine for the archive, two fascinating reports from 1982 emerge. They reveal how Ron masterminded LBC’s successful regaining of its IBA license. He did so with progressive ideas, policies and changes to programming. He believed it was important not to ghettoise any part of London’s cosmopolitan and multi-cultural population. Ethnic communities had to be part of mainstream news and programming. He also instituted thoughtful documentary and discussion programmes on health and social issues.

In order not to duplicate fine and relevant points in the other obituaries, I wanted to focus on a few reasons why the professional journalism culture nurtured by Ron Onions during the Gough Square time was historically of great value and personally remembered with such affection by those who were a part of it.

What impressed me from the first day I walked into Gough Square was the quality and talent of the women journalists- producers, reporters, presenters and editors. Therese Birch and her producer Paul Easton were the first to pay me for my reports. It started with a magnificent interview with flamenco guitarist Paco Peña during which he improvised beautifully for several minutes. This was as good as anything you could hear on BBC Radio Four’s Kaleidoscope or what is now Front Row.

Therese Birch (Theresa?), a leading LBC presenter during the 1980s in LBC editorial on the ground floor of ‘Communications House.’ Note the typewriters to her left. She is facing ‘News Information’ This is where the famous ‘AM’ show was produced.

At LBC/IRN there was a climate of equality, fairness and meritocracy that I have never experienced anywhere else. The women IRN reporters were unbeatable and front-line long before Kate Adie at the BBC: Barbara Groom, Antonia Higgs, Margaret Gilmore etc. There were specialist correspondents; Carol Allen on film, and Sue Jameson on drama and theatre, Jo Andrews at the GLC, and Judith Dawson and the IRN Parliamentary unit. Vivienne Fowles was in charge of intelligence gathering or ‘News Information’- a combined library, cuttings, audio archive centre- one of the best in Britain’s news industry. She was later joined and succeeded by Charlie Rose.

LBC & IRN on air studio 1985, Mark Smith (right) reading the news handing over to Andrew Gidley (left) about to read the sports. Scripts were typed up on triplicate paper pads. The yellow top was for the presenter. Mark Smith presented an evening ‘book’ programme and interviewed the world’s leading writers, including the late James Baldwin.

And I also remember the women producers and sequence editors who were very much at the heart of LBC’s journalistic depth and vibrancy. I remember the late Linda Gage, married to a civil rights lawyer and immigration judge. Within weeks of my starting as IRN/LBC’s crime cases reporter, we sat down and discussed how we could remove the awful objectification of women and demeaning vocabulary present in the mainstream crime and court reporting journalism of the time.

Other impressive journalists I remember from Gough Square days include Barbara Long, Diane Stradling, Sue Forster, Lise Hampele, and many others who I have to say were very tolerant and easy going with the torrent of ghastly crime narratives I would be peddling down Ludgate Hill and up Fleet Street from the Central Criminal Court.

LBC’s second radio car parked in Gough Square during the late 1980s- in fact it was a converted Ford Transit and also operated as an outside broadcast studio.

I may add that I was also surrounded at the Central Criminal Court by outstanding women reporters- Pat Clarke of the Press Association, Sue Clough- also of PA and then the Telegraph and Heather Mills, PA and then the Independent and Observer.

IRN/LBC developed an award-winning and high ratings successful breakfast news and current affairs programme AM with Bob Holness and Douglas Cameron as the co-presenters. Long into the night, I seem to remember it was mainly women producers who set up the guests and commissioned the reports. People like Marie Adams and Martha Kearney.

LBC’s ‘AM’ breakfast show presented by Douglas Cameron (left) and the late Bob Holness (right) was so successful it was well ahead of BBC Radio Four’s’Today’ programme in the greater London area for many years.

Gill Pyrah was another example of the independent-minded and awe-inspiring women broadcasters on the station. Intellectually she was a power-house. That was combined with charm and wit. She and her

A good luck teleprinter message from IRN to Radio Clyde to mark the beginning of their transmissions

producer thought it would be amusing to bring in their Old Bailey correspondent (I was 24 at the time!) to debate with a leading QC and conservative politician the motion “Journalists are entitled to break the law if it is in the public interest in order to exercise their conscience.”

The listeners voted. I won by a whisker. That’s not something you’ll hear about at the Leveson Inquiry. Other enormously impressive and distinctive women presenters included Lesley Judd, Jenny Lacey, Janet Street-Porter, Anna Raeburn, and in earlier times Joan Thirkettle, and Carol Barnes who went on to have distinguished careers at ITN. Yes, I do remember Carol Thatcher. In fact I was in Gough Square on the night of her first LBC broadcast. She was presenting ‘Nightline’- a very successful phone-in programme that ran from 9 p.m. to midnight.

Second IRN/LBC newsroom in the basement of Gough Square in 1989. Digitisation meant the replacement of typewriters with word processing computers (set into the wooden desk panels) but sound was still recorded on reel to reel tape and ‘cartridges’ that contained a continuous reel of reusable magnetic tape.

In 1978-9, while being trained at the London College of Printing, I was told to join a local radio station to gain experience and a track record before seeking anything more longer term at IRN/LBC. This was a rule applied by the NUJ chapels and employers in Fleet Street- which was the centre of the country’s journalism industry until Rupert Murdoch’s notorious operation to close down his Fleet Street newspaper operations, sack printers, and move News Group newspapers to Wapping in 1986.

I think it was a rule and career structure

The age of recording tape- high quality and robust machines used for ‘splice’ editing. You actually cut the tape to edit out sound and used white plastic joining tape to stick it together.

that made sense. In the North East of England I gained confidence and experience covering disasters, strikes, redundancy, human tragedy, triumph and despair. I learned how to be the only reporter/presenter for 3 large counties on a Sunday and Saturday shift lasting up to 14 hours.

Two years later I was deemed ready for the IRN/LBC infrastructure, which added further mentoring and career development- a situation that sadly no longer exists in the industry.

A lunch-time, or even a briefing from the likes of Ron Onions, Peter Thornton, and Keith Belcher was worth a hundred degrees in journalism. You were a part of history. I remember the diplomatic correspondent, the late David Spanier, returning from the Foreign Office having been briefed on the Argentine invasion of the Falklands.

The Gough Square culture of journalism and broadcasting has seeded and endured throughout the media and public life in this country and abroad. A former London bulletin editor, Angie Bray, became a London MP and served in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition government.

In the decades since, the people I worked with there continue to achieve and blossom everywhere. Adrian Scott, who commissioned my first AM programme piece went into digital media technologies. I bumped into him years later at a high-powered exhibition at Earls Court. Malcolm Brabant became the oracle of Athens via a Sony Reporter of the Year for being the BBC’s man in the Balkans during the ugly war in the former Yugoslavia.

Rory McLeod seemed to have done everything entrepreneurial, educational and editorially innovative in broadcasting and was eventually MD of a succeeding generation of LBC stations. Keith Belcher who commissioned my first investigative radio documentary (into punishment regimes for children in care) returned as a future LBC programme controller. Martha Kearney, Mark Mardell, Mark Easton, Dave Loyn, Ben Brown, Tim Marshall, Peter Spencer, Simon Israel, Peter Allen- we are talking about the leading journalists and correspondents of our age. In addition to being great journalists, IRN/LBC reporters and correspondents are and were consistently great and gifted writers.

This was very true of the political journalism. Every voice-report, package and Q & A by Peter Murphy had style, wit and authority and could capture the zeitgeist without being pretentious, pompous or indeed partial in anyway.

Watching a professional newsroom resource the coverage of a desperately dangerous war, is something you never forget. I recall the anxiety and quiet professionalism of the intake editors Nigel Charters, John Greenwood, Vince McGarry despatching and managing young reporters such as Kim Sabido, who risked his life in battle, and Antonia Higgs, the only British woman reporter assigned to the ‘enemy’s’ capital Buenos Aires.

My eagerness to promote a background report on corruption in the Metropolitan Police was met with the delightful rebuff from Nigel- “No- don’t you realise there’s a war on?”

A classic example of an IRN script provided by Paul Easton. Very often it had to be read and presented live- in the sense that the news-reader may not have seen it before presenting live to the listeners.

A key factor in the IRN network success was the disciplined and highly skilled team of bulletin editors and network editors. They did not suffer fools gladly and this was especially true of Jim Keltz who became a legend in ILR newsrooms around the country; not only for his uncanny ability to know about stories breaking in their areas they were unaware of, but the wit and sharpness of his judgement on high or low standards.

The clarity of style, razor edge writing and to the second deadline precision would be fashioned by editors such as John Sutton, David Wilsworth, (later an IRN editor himself), Rick Thomas, Colin Parkes, Chris Shaw, and of course many others I neglect to mention at this stage (through dysfunctional memory I am afraid). There was a legend that Douglas Cameron was so skilled as a news-caster that when a last minute insertion of a breaking story led to the bulletin editor falling to the floor in the studio and scattering scripts moments before the on-air network news taken by all ILR stations to millions of listeners, Douglas calmly ad-libbed all the cues around the cuts and finished the 3 minute bulletin on the second: “Independent Radio News it’s three minutes past twelve.”

The LBC/IRN sports desk of journalists repeatedly challenged the BBC’s hegemony and vast resources of sports broadcasting. It repeatedly secured prestigious Sony awards and many others. It also recruited and advanced the careers of the country’s leading sports journalists. Jeff Stelling had been sports editor at Radio Tees before joining the IRN/LBC team in London. He left to develop, what most people would agree, a rather noteworthy career at Sky. BBC R4’s The World Tonight Editor, Penny Murphy, began her career as a runner on the LBC/IRN sports desk.

LBC/IRN sports desk 1980s. Image supplied by Paul Easton.

This was in a situation when LBC/IRN could never match the huge budgets and rights acquisition advantages that the BBC had, but the flair, speed, creativity and journalistic ability to improvise and recognise ‘the story’ often gave the independent radio broadcasters the edge. The first Gough Square sports editors were Ian Marshall, Mervyn Hall, Mike Lewis, David Brenner, and Mike Porter.

The reporter/correspondents, such as Derek Mitchell, Steve Tongue, the late Dominic Allen, Colin Turner, Andrew Gidley and others would each have specialist sports knowledge, but at the same time be able to turn their professionalism to any other sport whether it was rugby, darts, snooker, horse racing or athletics.

Dominic Allen’s legendary specialism was cricket. He was LBC’s original Saturday ‘Sportswatch’ presenter, before it became a two-hander with David Brenner and Jeff Stelling.

Steve Tongue went onto work as football correspondent for quality national newspapers such as the Sunday Times and Daily Telegraph. Steve Rider moved to Anglia and then BBC Sport. Andrew Gidley runs his own sport news agency in Kent. Colin Turner is still working in sports television broadcasting in south east Asia. David Brenner moved into TV sports commentary; then latterly worked for 15 years as Sports Editor/Presenter of BBC World TV News.

The IRN News bulletin desk in 1982. The Network desk editor, Jim Keltz is in the foreground.

There was a culture of professional trust and confidence- so much so that as a young reporter myself coming out of the number one court at the Old Bailey thirty seconds to the hour with the highest sentence given to an espionage defendant since George Blake, Vince McGarry handed me over to Colin Parkes on the phone- “Tell me the sentence- thank you. We’ll do the cue, you’re the lead and going live.” Then I was switched to the on-air studio. Then silence. The talkback had gone down. I imagined how long an IRN cue would be and ad-libbed- luckily the Lord Chief Justice’s sentencing words were in shorthand on my notebook. Cold sweat running down my face. Did they get it? I rang in. Vince was on the

LBC’s promotional newspaper from 1973 archived by Paul Easton

phone. “Great Tim, LBC want you for programmes.” By luck and divine inspiration I had started my ad-libbed report with the words: “The Lord Chief Justice, Lord Geoffrey Lane told Geoffrey Prime…” and the LBC/IRN engineer had faded me up on “Lord Geoffrey Lane” after Douglas Cameron had a read a cue which ended with “Tim Crook reports from the Old Bailey on the sentencing from the Lord Chief Justice.”

I really cannot emphasize the skill and art of the live IRN presenters. Some names immediately come to mind, apart from Douglas Cameron and Bob Holness, and they include Steve Crozier, Billy Bingham, Mike Lewis, Peter Deeley (a great IRN reporter) Mark Smith, and Paul Woodley. IRN/LBC presenters were multi-tasking, flexible radio communicators across all genres of hard and soft programming.

Those I remember well in terms of switching with aplomb between phone-in, news bulletin, and light entertainment include Steve Jones, Clive Bull, Mike Allen, and Brian Hayes. They were not dependent on scripts, which meant they could fill time with their thinking followed by speech that would inform a constant flux of varying time frames set within the locks of bulletin schedules and commercial spots.

As a young man, you were supported and counselled by generations of experienced and established journalists who knew about life and could talk to you in ways your parents, if they were still alive, could not. I remember David Spanier telling me of the greatest joy in his life when being there to see the births of his sons, Dickie Arbiter (Royal Correspondent) challenging my inability to appreciate being nominated for a reporter of a year award- ‘That’s a great achievement and something you should always be proud of,” he said kindly as I tried to hide it in my bag from embarrassment.

Robin Malcolm, a leading sequence editor of ‘AM’, later a programme controller of LBC. Innovative and ready to take risks. He asked me to do provocative editorials on the legal system (High Court judges would ring up to complain) and then supported my adventures in radio drama with Richard Shannon.

Keith Belcher was later understandably cross that I returned from New York in 1993 without telling the management that I had picked up a New York Festival Grand Award achievement for an LBC radio drama. He pretended to strangle me in mirth.

One of IRN/LBC’s most challenging days was the Great Storm of 1987. The AM programme had to be presented from the radio car in Gough Square. Power and telephone lines were down all over the country. I was living in Manningtree, Essex at the time. I got through to the newsroom on one of the first cellphones and filed a report about rumours of people being trapped in a collapsed building in Clacton, a converted ferry accommodating Tamil refugees being washed aground at Harwich, and a fuel tanker dangerously snapping its mooring at Felixstowe. Later that morning I actually escorted an army rescue team from Colchester barracks to Clacton because I knew the back roads and was one of few people venturing out to find out what had happened.

One of the News Production booths at Gough Square (known as NPs)- an image familiar to the reporters and producers who worked there. Creative news features were fashioned by self-drive mixing carts with sound bites with voice to microphone and recording onto reel to reel tape or another cartridge.

There are hundreds of people I have had the joy and pleasure of working with and I give brief and cursory mention to just a few and unfairly neglect to reference the many- perhaps there can be another time and place should people be interested.

Why was IRN/LBC so successful in this period between 1974 and 1989? I think being part of a plural and dynamic journalistic industrial centre that was Fleet Street was significant. Gough Square was journalist intensive and the editors and managing directors were journalists first. This was true of later editors and programme controllers such as Phillip Bacon and Robin Malcolm.

The IBA, the first regulator, insisted on public service and qualitative values and criteria. Engineering was invested in and ring-fenced as a regulatory condition. Roger Francis headed an impressive and reliable team of sound engineers and equipment and studios that took a beating 24 hours a day, but worked and delivered.

There was not over-licensing in the London market. So the economies of scale maintained and supported high quality programming and content creation. The prevailing economic and political ideology encouraged investment in media as a public service and not asset-stripping or high profit exploitation for shareholders.

The IRN intake news desk in 1982. This was the pre-digitalisation and Internet age. Sound would be recorded on cassette, edited on reel to reel spools, and news reports would be recorded on tape loops in plastic cartridges.

There was a strong partnership between management and professional trade unions that was more mutually supportive of business objectives than destructive. Quality content, properly remunerated and loyal staff and freelances meant high audiences, strong advertising and viability. I remember people enjoying their work, being encouraged to take the initiative, generate ideas, creativity and follow their ambition.

An IRN newsreader from the early 1980s- featured in an IBA Yearbook from the time.

The regulation even had a quality return on profit taxation- it was called secondary rental. LBC could hold onto the secondary rental profit if it spent the money on ‘cultural programming,’ or training. We got to produce Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in modern English. How cool is that?

LBC and IRN was also well ahead of its time in the nature and flexibility of its contracts with freelance specialists. In the early 1980s editors realised that I could expand and enhance my coverage of the legal system by running my own news agency, securing arrangements with other publishers and broadcasters as long as the news came to LBC and IRN first. This meant that for several years I was able to successfully work with Tim Knight and we shared the coverage between the Old Bailey and Royal Courts of Justice.

LBC and IRN worked together, shared resources, and its journalists had interesting, creative and inventive career paths. Obviously instead of being bought by an incompetent foreign company in 1989, forced to split its AM and FM frequencies into two new stations, leave Fleet Street for West Kensington, it should have stayed where it was, been run by a business in media for the long-term and been awarded a national FM or AM frequency.

I have to say it is difficult to find anybody who does not remember the

Early LBC branding from 1973-4 cigarette matches- yes we have left behind the smoking in newsrooms which is without doubt a very good thing.

IRN/ LBC of this period with affection, respect, admiration and nostalgia. All of the best innovations, ideas, pioneering techniques and the talent bubbling out of Gough Square in the magic that is radio was stolen, bought, or hired elsewhere.

All I can say is thank you Ron and all the other wonderful spirits no longer with us in this mortal world. I am told by physicists that everything IRN/LBC broadcast in those years is still travelling through time and space. Perhaps we will all be catching up with it eventually!

Rolling Radio Stars – compiled by John Greenwood

Magic Moments, compilation of contributions from staff who once worked at LBC / IRN compiled by John Greenwood

Useful and source LBC links

Web page for more information and ordering of ‘Don’t Bring Lulu’

BBC Radio 4’s ‘Last Word’ obituary programme remembers Ron Onions through interviews with Brian Hayes and Martha Kearney

35 years of LBC jingles

Happy Birthday LBC (35 years) from current LBC site

4 part film on Youtube of visit to Gough Square in 1989, before the move to Hammersmith and after the move of the editorial floor of the basement west after the expansion of studio facilities. Featuring Clive Bull, Mike Allen and a guided tour from Clive’s producer Jonathan Perry

The Guardian on LBC’s 35th year birthday

LBC in 1985- a montage

IRN/LBC sound archive at Bournemouth University

Developing archive of radio drama on LBC produced by Independent Radio Drama Productions

Ron Onions obituaries on the Web

Ron Onions remembered by the Independent

Ron Onions remembered by the Telegraph

Ron Onions remembered by Press Gazette

Ron Onions remembered by Jazz FM

Categories: Obituary

Tags: AM show, Anna Raeburn, Antonia Higgs, Barbara Groom, Bob Holness, Bournemouth University, Canterbury Tales, Capital Radio, Carol Allen, Carol Barnes, Charlie Rose, David Spanier, Dickie Arbiter, Doris Onions, Falklands War, Fleet Street, Gill Pyrah, Gough Square, Heather Mills, IBA, Independent, Independent Radio News, IRN, Janet Street-Poter, Jazz FM, Jenny Lacy, Jo Andrews, Joan Thirkettle, John Perkins, Judith Dawson, Keith Belcher, Kim Sabido, LBC, LBC 417, Lesley Judd, Linda Gage, Local News of London Ltd, London Broadcasting Company, London College of Printing, Margaret Gilmore, Marie Adams, Martha Kearney, Mike Baron, Nigel Charters, Old Bailey, Paco Pena, Pat Clarke, Paul Easton, Peter Thornton, Phillip Bacon, Press Gazette, Robin Malcolm, Ron Onions, Royal Courts of Justice, Sarah Onions, secondary rental, Sue Clough, Sue Jameson, Telegraph, Therese Birch, UK Independent Radio, Vince McGarry, Wapping

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2019-04-06
Message to Anna Soubry

I am a retired British journalist, of French and English parentage. I grew up in the UK, worked in the two countries, and now live in France with multi-national grandchildren. Our values and culture have always been first and foremost European. I have worked in sectors combining the strengths of many nations (Airbus, European Space, multi-national companies.)

The 2016 Brexit referendum was a catastrophic decision, with people voting on the basis of prejudices and lies. Two years on, all the difficulties of leaving are so obvious. Those who voted Brexit will be hit hardest. The facts are clear.

But we have a stubborn gouvernent leadership and a pitiful opposition. I follow the debates at Westminster, and admire the few still-level headed MPs like you who constantly denounce the folly that is taking place.

Continue your fight to obtain a second refendum, in which the full facts will be taken into consideration, to reverse the tide, or at very least avoid a no-deal exit. Our country has a great history. I am deeply British at heart, but today I look at my British passport with shame. Regards.

2019-02-17
Reply to Theresa May – Mike Harding

We all know Theresa May is not a fan of a people’s vote. Yet that didn’t stop her, this Saturday, from writing a letter to the British people begging for them to “come together as one people,” and “get behind this deal.”

Needless to say, her fanciful aim of uniting the nation around her disastrous Brexit deal has met a far from favourable response. But perhaps the best reply we have seen so far comes from veteran folk singer Mike Harding.

Mike Harding’s epic monologue has, at time of writing, been shared nearly 26, 864 times so far on Facebook…at least 24 000 times more than May’s effort. To see why it’s done so well, check it out —in full — below.

Dear Mrs May

I am in France having a break having come here on the train all the way from Settle. I just read your letter to me and the rest of Britain wanting us all to unite behind the damp squib you call a deal. Unite? I laughed so much the mouthful of frogs legs I was eating ended up dancing all over the bald head of the bloke on the opposite table.

Your party’s little civil war has divided this country irreparably. The last time this happened Cromwell discontinued the custom of kings wearing their heads on their shoulders.

I had a mother who was of Irish descent, an English father who lies in a Dutch graveyard in the village where his Lancaster bomber fell in flames. I had a Polish stepfather who drove a tank for us in WW2 and I have two half Polish sisters and a half Polish brother who is married to a girl from Donegal.

My two uncles of Irish descent fought for Britain in N Africa and in Burma.

So far you have called us Citizens Of Nowhere and Queue Jumpers. You have now taken away our children and grandchildren’s freedom to travel, settle, live and work in mainland Europe.

You have made this country a vicious and much diminished place. You as Home Sec sent a van round telling foreigners to go home. You said “ illegal” but that was bollocks as the legally here people of the Windrush generation soon discovered.

Your party has sold off our railways, water, electricity, gas, telecoms, Royal Mail etc until all we have left is the NHS and that is lined up for the US to have as soon as Hannon and Hunt can arrange it

You have lied to the people of this country. You voted Remain yet changed your tune when the chance to grab the job of PM came. You should have sacked those lying bastards Gove and Bojo but daren’t because you haven’t the actual power.

You have no answer to the British border on the island of Ireland nor do you know how the Gib border with Spain will work once we are out

Mrs May you have helped to divide this country to such an extent that families and friends are now no longer talking to each other, you have managed to negotiate a deal far worse than the one we had and all to keep together a party of millionaires, Eton Bullingdon boys, spivs and WI harridans. Your party conserves nothing. It has sold everything off in the name of the free market.

You could have kept our industries going with investment and development – Germany managed it. But no – The Free Market won so Sunderland, Barnsley, Hamilton etc could all go to the devil

So Mrs May my answer to your plea for unity is firstly that it is ridiculous.

48% of us will never forgive you for Brexit and secondly, of the 52% that voted for it many will not forgive you for not giving them what your lying comrades like Rees Mogg and Fox promised them.

There are no unicorns, there is no £350 million extra for the NHS. The economy will tank and there will be less taxes to help out the poor. We have 350,000 homeless (not rough sleepers – homeless) in one of the richest countries on Earth and you are about to increase that number with your damn fool Brexit.

The bald man has wiped the frogs legs of his head, I’ve bought him a glass of wine to say sorry; I’m typing this with one finger on my phone in France and I’m tired now and want to stop before my finger gets too tired to join the other one in a sailors salute to you and your squalid Brexit, your shabby xenophobia and Little Englander mentality.

Two fingers to you and your unity from this proud citizen of nowhere. I and roughly half the country will never forgive you or your party.

2018-12-30
Rewire Your Brain for Inner Peace

Five Meditation Techniques for Living in the Present

Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment. Fully alive, fully aware. – Thich Nhat Hanh

To become successful and joyful, you must succeed in generating inner peace. But when our lives are full of chaos, it can be difficult to work out exactly how to go about it.

One of the best and most consistent ways is through meditation techniques. Meditation is a great practice that helps us relax and find inner peace.

The problem is it can be hard to figure out how to practice meditation properly if you haven’t got access to an expert.

So below, we’re going to go over meditation techniques from none other than the Zen Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh.

1) Mindful Breathing

According to Thich Nhat Hanh, this is the most simple and basic meditation technique, but also the most useful. Why? Because we’re always breathing. You can literally practice this anywhere, anytime, even if it’s for 15 seconds.

Meditation is a great practice that helps us relax and find inner peace.

The main crux of this technique is that you simply focus on your breath.

Here is Thich Nhat Hanh explaining how to go about it:

Please, when you breathe in, do not make an effort of breathing in. You just allow yourself to breathe in. Even if you don’t breathe in it will breathe in by itself. So don’t say, “My breath, come, so that I tell you how to do.” Don’t try to force anything, don’t try to intervene, just allow the breathing in to take place….What you have to do is be aware of the fact that the breathing in is taking place. And you have more chance to enjoy your in-breath. Don’t struggle with your breath, that is what I recommend. Realize that your in breath is a wonder. When someone is dead, no matter what we do, the person will not breathe in again. So we are breathing in, that is a wonderful thing….

Meditation brings you back to the present by being there with your breath.

This is the first recommendation on breathing that the Buddha made: When breathing in, I know this is the in-breath. When breathing out, I know this is the out-breath. When the in-breath is long, I know it is long. When it is short, I know it is short. Just recognition, mere recognition, simple recognition of the presence of the in-breath and out-breath. When you do that, suddenly you become entirely present. What a miracle, because to meditate means to be there. To be there with yourself, to be there with your in‑breath.

2) Concentration

According to Thich Nhat Hanh, concentration is a great source of happiness. Concentration simply means focusing on something, whether it’s your breath, a flower or a body part. You could literally point your focus on anything, and as long as you keep that focus, you are practising mindfulness.

It’s recommended that you choose an object where you don’t have to scan your eyes. Buddhist monks tend to use a candle flame. If you get distracted by your thoughts, simply return your focus back to the object. You can start this for one minute and then keep on increasing the time as you get more practice.

Concentration means focusing on something so that you can practice mindfulness.

Thich Nhat Hanh explains why this is so powerful:

Anything can be the object of your meditation, and with the powerful energy of concentration, you can make a breakthrough and develop insight. It’s like a magnifying glass concentrating the light of the sun. If you put the point of concentrated light on a piece of paper, it will burn. Similarly, when your mindfulness and concentration are powerful, your insight will liberate you from fear, anger, and despair, and bring you true joy, true peace, and true happiness.

3) Awareness of Your Body

This is the technique Thich Nhat Hanh recommends to use to get in touch with your body. All it involves is a body scan where you turn your focus to each of your body parts one by one. As you’re going through your body, release any tension and simply try to relax. Thich Nhat Hanh says that this is powerful because we rarely experience this in daily existence. Our body is there but our mind is elsewhere.

A body scan is where you turn your focus to each of your body parts one by one.

Thich Nhat Han recommends to use this mantra:

Breathing in, I’m aware of my body. When you practice mindful breathing, the quality of your in-breath and out-breath will be improved. There is more peace and harmony in your breathing, and if you continue to practice like that, the peace and the harmony will penetrate into the body, and the body will profit.

4) Release Tension

The next exercise is to release tension in the body. When you start becoming aware of your body, you’ll notice tension in different parts of your body. Therefore, it is very important to learn how to release the tension in the body.

Thich Nhat Hanh explains how:

So next time you’re stopped at a red light, you might like to sit back and practice the fourth exercise: “Breathing in, I’m aware of my body. Breathing out, I release the tension in my body.” Peace is possible at that moment, and it can be practiced many times a day — in the workplace, while you are driving, while you are cooking, while you are doing the dishes, while you are watering the vegetable garden. It is always possible to practice releasing the tension in yourself.

Mindful walking is effortless and brings the mind and body together.

5) Mindful Walking

Remember the first technique? When you practice mindful breathing you let breathing take place without effort. You simply enjoy it. The same thing is true with mindful walking. Thich Nhat Hanh says it best:

You don’t have to make any effort during walking meditation, because it is enjoyable. You are there, body and mind together. You are fully alive, fully present in the here and the now. With every step, you touch the wonders of life that are in you and around you. When you walk like that, every step brings healing. Every step brings peace and joy, because every step is a miracle.

The real miracle is not to fly or walk on fire. The real miracle is to walk on the Earth, and you can perform that miracle at any time.

2018-12-28
“Where is Thay?” A Christmas message from Plum Village

23rd December, 2018

Dear Beloved Community,

Our dear Teacher has been at Từ Hiếu Root Temple now for two months, with many of our elders, including Sister Chan Khong, Brother Phap An and a team of monastic attendants. Thay is doing well, his eyes as bright and lucid as ever. Even in the heavy rains, Thay visits the tomb of his teacher everyday, sometimes three times in the day. He has been coming out to enjoy the grounds of the Root Temple, visiting the Half Moon Pond, along all the paths past the bamboo groves, and the well where he would wash his feet as a young novice after attending the buffaloes. It has been lovely to see so many people visiting Hue to be near Thay, to enjoy the Root Temple and to pay tribute to our spiritual ancestors.

Thay’s return to Từ Hiếu has been a bell of mindfulness reminding us all of how precious it is to belong to a spiritual lineage with deep roots. Whether we have attended a retreat; or simply read one of Thay’s books or watched a talk, and have been touched by his teachings—we are all connected to this ancestral stream of wisdom and compassion. Throughout his teaching career, Thay has opened the Dharma door of connecting with our ancestors, as a way to tangibly practice the Buddha’s teachings on no-self, and to see ourselves as a continuation and not a separate self-entity.

Connecting to our true home
In this holiday season, we have a chance to return home to our roots, to be with our loved ones, and to take time to come back to ourselves. With our mindful breath and steps, with our awareness and care for our physical body, and with our connection to our community of fellow practitioners, we know that, wherever we are, we can have a true spiritual home to take refuge in.

As Thay would often remind us, the greatest gift we can offer to others—and ourselves—is our true presence. To return home is to be present. Breathing in and out with the energy of mindfulness is enough to establish ourselves in the present moment, right where we are, with whoever is around us; whether they are joyful and festive, or facing challenges, loneliness and sorrow. With our mindful breathing we can truly be there with whatever is coming up, in ourselves and in our loved ones. Simply being present with compassion, care and deep listening is enough to make a difference and bring relief.

Where is Thay?
Looking deeply with the eyes of signlessness, we can see that Thay is not only in Vietnam. Thay is fully present in us as we enjoy a meal with our loved ones, knowing it is a precious moment. Thay is sitting at our side as we breathe relaxingly and wait in our car at a stop light. Whether we are in a city, a remote village or out in the field of action for climate and social justice, wherever the practice is, our teacher is there too. Thay is there when we can pause and enjoy the simple wonders of life and when we can resist the rush, confusion and noise of modern society. Thay is there in our community wherever any of his students, lay and monastic, are practicing mindful walking, breathing, listening and engaging.

We know that our planet is facing great challenges, in terms of environmental destruction, climate change and species extinction. Our human family is experiencing profound political instability, social turmoil, continued violence and displacement. When we reflect on the past year as practitioners, we are asking ourselves, What can we do to help? What’s the best we can contribute as individuals and as mindful communities to the collective awakening? Where can we find a true refuge for ourself and for others?

Thay’s words of guidance are clear:

To take refuge, first of all, is to take refuge in the island of ourselves and then in the island of a
Sangha. These islands are communities of resistance. “Resistance” does not mean to oppose others. It means to protect ourselves, like staying inside the house to protect ourselves from the weather. We resist being destroyed by society’s pollution, noise, unhappiness, harsh words, and negative behavior. If we do not know how to take care of ourselves, we may get wounded and be unable to help others. If we join with others to build a sangha that can nourish and protect us and resist society’s destructiveness, we will be able to return home. Many years ago, I suggested that peace activists in the West establish communities of resistance. A true sangha is always therapeutic. To return to our own body and mind is already to return to our roots, to our true home, to our true person. With the support of a sangha, we can do it.

—Thich Nhat Hanh (« Finding our True Heritage »)

The power of communities
Internationally, our community of resistance is growing stronger and becoming a stable refuge for many people from all walks of life. As a sangha we are practicing to go forward one breath at a time, one step at a time, one person at a time, beginning with ourselves. With the support of the collective we can recognize, embrace and transform whatever is coming up inside us, so we can see clearly what to do and what not to do to help the situation. We now have over 1,500 local sanghas, and every week new sanghas are forming around the world. We have the Earth Holder Sangha, the ARISE Sangha, the Wake Up movement of young people and the Wake Up Schools network cultivating mindfulness in education. Each year, dozens of young men and women from many different nationalities are ordaining as monastic brothers and sisters; our growing community now reaches over 100,000 people per year worldwide, joining us for retreats, public talks and mindfulness workshops. Our new Healing Spring Monastery outside Paris opened in November and will be offering a peaceful refuge for many Parisians this holiday season. This autumn, our monastic brothers and sisters in Plum Village came together to deepen our chanting in English and French, the fruit of which is the new CD Chanting as a River. We will “resist” together as a spiritual family by bringing freshness to pollution, serenity to noise, kindness to places of harshness, and seeds of peace to the fields of hate.

Will your New Year be new?
The New Year 2019 is an opportunity to reflect on what ways we can resist to ensure a better path forward for ourselves, our community and our planet. It will require us to be courageous in making changes in our life to ensure the New Year will truly be “new”. We can resist by making a clear, compassionate resolution in terms of daily mindfulness practice, transforming habit energies, or taking our life in a new direction, even in small ways.

In October, new scientific research called for a change in diet away from meat and dairy towards less resource-intensive plant-based foods. We can commit to a number of plant-based food days per week. We can find ways to eat local, seasonal and organic foods; and maybe ask our local restaurant to offer more vegan or vegetarian choices. We can make other consumption choices that reduce damage to our planet. For example, making a commitment not to buy any more clothing items for this coming year by looking into our closet and asking, Do we really need another sweater or pair of shoes? In this kind of resistance there is no corporation, no politician and no policy to oppose or to rebel against. It all comes down to our own free conscious choice to change the way we consume whether that is food, fuel, energy or other items from around the world. We can make these choices in the spirit of the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings, with compassion and joy, and without judging others or imposing our views.

Collective insight
Changing the collective consciousness will require us to gather, discuss action and exchange ideas in our local sanghas to find ways to inspire and propel change. As a 15-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg reminded us at the recent Poland climate conference, we do not want to steal the future from our children. Sacrifices must be made, conveniences reduced, and habits changed. Looking deeply together we can continue our Teacher and find skilful ways to support new frontiers of healing and compassion for our planet.

Dear beloved community, as we write this message, the days are getting longer as more light shines on the northern hemisphere. It is a great happiness to have each other and a beautiful path to walk together. Wherever we are this holiday season, we are not alone. We have a path of practice, we have a community.

We wish you a peaceful and warm holiday season,

The brothers and sisters of Plum Village

2018-12-25