Theresa May Must Face Down Right-Wing Press On Foreign Aid, Says Ex-BBC War Correspondent<\/b>
\nPoliticians have a moral responsibility to face down right-wing newspapers campaigning for the Government to slash the UK foreign aid budget, Martin Bell has said.<\/p>\n
The veteran war correspondent, former independent MP and one-time soldier said the Tory government risked paying \u201ctoo much attention to the headlines in the Daily Mail\u201d while war and poverty gripped huge swathes of the globe.<\/p>\n
The Daily Mail, the Daily Express and The Sun are leading critics of the UK spending around\u00a0\u00a313bn on foreign aid last year and want Theresa May to take an axe to the budget.<\/p>\n
Bell said the UK should be spending more, up to 5% of GDP (around\u00a0\u00a396bn), and voiced fears Brexit will diminish the UK\u2019s role as a global power.<\/p>\n
Speaking to HuffPost UK as part of our Christmas appeal with Unicef to help children in war-torn Syria, the former Tatton MP said: \u201cThe continent of Europe is overflowing with refugees. We cannot close our borders and we cannot close our hearts, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think foreign aid is at least as important outside of Europe as it is inside of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a politician. I know how vulnerable they are to pressures, especially the pressures of the populist press, but this is a time to hold firm.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added:\u00a0\u201cThere is a danger, especially with Conservative Governments though the last Labour Government became the same way, that MPs pay too much attention to the headlines in The Daily Mail.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has been almost seven years since the war in Syria broke out. The UN estimates around 400,000 have died and more than 13m Syrians have been displaced.<\/p>\n
Bell, who had a long and distinguished career as a foreign affairs reporter, said the media was failing to provide any in-depth and desperately-needed coverage of global conflicts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m concerned that we are pulling up the drawbridge,\u201d he said. \u201cI am absolutely horrified at this Britain first attitude. It doesn\u2019t sound good for us, one of the great imperialist powers of history now retreating into our little island.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the people can still be convinced but the journalism has to be improved. We have to get our act together. We need to pay more attention to what is going on outside our borders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe foreign news component in our newspapers has reduced considerably \u2013 or even become celebrity driven.\u201d<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump plans to slash up to 40% of US voluntary contributions to the UN, a move which would directly affect the children\u2019s agency Unicef, an organisation for which Bell is an ambassador.<\/p>\n
Bell has deep concerns about the right-winger\u2019s presidency and his attacks on journalists.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe term \u2018fake news\u2019 is very dangerous,\u201d he said. \u201cGoebbels would have had a ball these days. All he had to work on was the cinema, radio and newspapers. Imagine what he could have done with clickbait and rolling news.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople will cease to believe in fact-based reports and news-gathering. They will stop believing that the news is what the facts are.<\/p>\n
\u201cTrump began his presidency with a flagrant fallacy about the size of the crowd at his inauguration and he hasn\u2019t stopped since.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the dangers of the internet, also, is that people will only go to the sites that reinforce their beliefs, so it contributes to a closing of the mind and the closing of the heart, and you get \u2018America first\u2019, \u2018Britain first\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe consequence of that is that it becomes harder and harder to fund the necessary programmes. Syria has become an invisible emergency and I think the answer is a different kind of journalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is will among the people as long as the plight of people in Syria is presented to them. We need more journalists to go to these camps because money follows the cameras<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell hit out at the \u201cMurdochisation\u201d of BBC News 24 when he left to stand for office in George Osborne\u2019s former constituency of Tatton.<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump would never have been elected without the engines of the internet and the rolling news channels,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m appalled by rolling news. I started off in Alexandra Palace, the origin of television.<\/p>\n \u201cRolling news knows more than it shows. Speculation begins as soon as they have pictures. What you used to do is go and find things out and put them together and tell the full story.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell says it is \u201centirely possible\u201d the war in Syria could rage on for another seven years, despite the so-called Islamic State being largely beaten as rebels continue to fight pro-government forces.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI don\u2019t even know what the British policy should be now. If I was the Foreign Secretary I wouldn\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have not been influential and we may be even less influential outside of Europe than we were in it.\u201d<\/p>\n The former soldier added that the British Government does not have the capacity to intervene.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cI don\u2019t think the military intervention is an option. We tried military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t think we have got a big enough army. The military I served in was 400,000-strong and now it is coming down to 80,000.<\/p>\n \u201cIf it is below the level of a critical mass, you are not much more than an armed border policing service.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can run a short campaign for a limited period but we would find it extremely difficult to put a division in the field, as we did in 1991 and 2003. We don\u2019t have the means.\u201d<\/p>\n He added:\u00a0\u201cWe can support our aid agencies but we can\u2019t influence the outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to fight the tendency of any people to ignore a war that they don\u2019t see on their television sets.\u201d<\/p>\n HuffPost UK spent a week in Jordan, visiting Azraq, Mafraq and Unicef projects supporting Syrian refugee children.<\/p>\n \u201cThese children, who are just seven, speak of Syria as home, even though they have never been there,\u201d said Bell, who recently visited Syrian refugee camps in Lebanon.\u00a0\u201cThey are almost in denial that the war is still going on. It is so hard to hear.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe biggest problem facing refugee children is education. You will find nine and ten-year-olds who are barely literate.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Lebanese schools are amazing. Many are working double shifts.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the danger is that you lose your childhood and you grow up ignorant and illiterate.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe only difference is PTSD, and I have been to many Combat Stress centres here in the UK, we used to being concerned about its effect on soldiers,\u201d said Bell.\u00a0\u201cBut the only difference with a child is that the effects of PTSD will last a lot longer. It\u2019s quite an important difference.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat these children have seen will haunt them all their days.\u201d<\/p>\n Bell called on as many people as possible to donate money to Unicef to help Syrian children.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter this campaign is over, don\u2019t forget them,\u201d he said. Theresa May Must Face Down Right-Wing Press On Foreign Aid, Says Ex-BBC War Correspondent Politicians have a moral responsibility to face down right-wing newspapers campaigning for the Government to slash the UK foreign aid budget, Martin Bell has said. The veteran war correspondent, former independent MP and one-time soldier said the Tory government risked paying … Continue reading Theresa May Must Face Down Right-Wing Press On Foreign Aid, Says Ex-BBC War Correspondent<\/span>
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\nwww.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/entry\/syria-martin-bell-unicef_uk_5a464c05e4b06d1621b831a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"