Most rambling speech ever made?

Two depressing sights/sites in Harare

About twenty years ago, I went to Zimbabwe to run a presentation skills course for an American company with branches in almost every country in Africa. One of their managers met me at Harare airport. When he asked "Is this your first time in Africa?", I said "Yes."

"Well just be thankful you've come to Zimbabwe, because they haven't had time to really mess things  up yet. Most of the things you take for granted - like phones that work, banks with cash, buses and cabs more or  less work - unlike in some of the other African countries where we work. That's why we all opt to hold our meetings here whenever we can."

In this 'popular; country, Mugabe and ZANU-PF had already been in power for quite a while, but they'd yet to set about the country's agriculture and currency was reasonably stable. It also had a flourishing tourist industry, with easy access to world famous sights like the Zambezi and Victoria Falls.

But there were two sites which, even then, before there had been any hint of rampant hyperinflation or the hardline dictatorship of Mugabe, there were two buildings in Harare that I found rather depressing and, in retrospect, realise were totally prophetic of what lay in store for Zimbabweans.

The tower block above had just been finished and is still the highest building in town. It was and is the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, standing at 120 metres tall and located (appropriately?) on Rotten Row. Even then, before hyperinflation, the country hardly seemed wealthy enough to spend so much on such a lavish building to house its central bank.

At the same time, there was another large  building still under construction: the new headquarters of Mugabe's ruling political party, ZANU PF, now completed (left).

What worried me then and worries me now is the way that post-colonial Zimbabwe has been so inextricably linked with Mugabe, the Shona-speaking majority and ZANU-PF.

Who now remembers the Lancaster House negotiations, Joshua Nkomo, ZANU, and the Ndebele-speaking minority?

In the last few days we've been reminded of the massacres around Bulawayo and other horrors committed by Mugabe and his cronies in ZANU-PF (not to mention rigged elections, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats).

A political party may at last have seen the error of its ways and ousted Mr and Mrs Mugabe.

ZANU-PF has fired its leader and his wife, but let's not forget that ZANU-PF is a wealthy political party (see the building above) that's both controlled and benefited from running Mugabe's one party state.

Until the party reforms itself, there's little likelihood of free and fair elections in the country.

If Mugabe goes, will Dr Sentamu get a new dog-collar?

Back in September 2008, Dr John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, took off his dog collar during an interview with Andrew Marr, and then proceeded to cut it into small pieces to illustrate what Mugabe was doing to the identity of the Zimbabwean people, ending by promising not to wear it again until Mugabe was gone.

Eleven years later, news that time may at last be up for President Mugabe presumably means that the Archbishop of York may be about to start wearing his dog-collar - providing what no happens in Zimbabwe is something rather better than dictatorship by the Mugabes and their cronies in ZANU-PF.

If you've read any of my books or been on any of my courses, you'll know that one type of visual aid that tends to go down very well with audiences is the use of objects or props to make a point.

These two examples show that things as apparently unpromising as cutting a clerical collar up or brushing items of clothing can be very effective.

The first clip shows Dr Sentamu in action in a live TV interview and the second one, Barack Obama (then yet to win the Democrat nomination as their presidential candidate), dismisses criticism from Hillary Clinton's camp by brushing invisible dust from his jacket - and the more he brushed, the more the audience applauded.

You can see both these examples by clicking below - and more on objects as visual aids in my books Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches and Presentations, London: Vermilion, 2004 & New York: Oxford University Press, 2005, and Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy: Seven Essential Steps to Success, London: Vemilion, 2008.

Max Atkinson becomes an FAcSS

2 March 2016

Dear Dr Atkinson

Conferment of the Award of Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

Following the recent nominations process, I an delighted to advise you that, by order of Council, the Award of Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS) has been conferred on you for your contribution to social science. Congratulations on this significant achievement. I attach a list showing all the new Fellows conferred in the Spring 2016 round.

There is an opportunity to be welcomed formally to the Academy and to have your framed certificate presented to you by the president, Professor Sir Ivor Crewe FAcSS at the forthcoming AGM and annual lecture, which will be held on the afternoon of Thursday 30th June 2016  in London....

welcome to the Academy. I hope it will not be long before we see each other at one of our events. Look out for regularmreports on the latest news and events via out website, www.acss.org.uk and in our monthly eBulletin.

Yours sincerely

Stephen Anderson

Executive Director

Can rhetorical excellence be inherited? PART II

When I first started studying political speeches (as published in Our Masters' Voices) one of the most impressive public speakers of the day was the late Tony Benn. Last night's House of Commons debate on Syria ended with a fine speech by his son, Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn.

Perhaps not quite as good as his Dad, but applause is extremely rare in the House of Commons. And most of the commentators in the media last night (and today) attributed the government's majority of 10x the Conservative's overall majority to his speech.

Looking at the number and names of Labour MPs who voted for the government's motion, one cannot help wondering how long it will be that Jeremy Corbyn can survive as leader - or how long the Labour party can survive without another breakaway party emerging like the SDP of the mid 1980s.

On yesterday's evidence, such a party would be considerably bigger than a gang of 4....!!!

_____________________________________________________________________________

Hilary Benn M.P:

Thank you very much Mr Speaker. Before I respond to the debate, I would like to say this directly to the Prime Minister: Although my right honourable friend the Leader of the Opposition and I will walk into different division lobbies tonight, I am proud to speak from the same Despatch Box as him. My right honourable friend is not a terrorist sympathiser, he is an honest, a principled, a decent and a good man and I think the Prime Minister must now regret what he said yesterday and his failure to do what he should have done today, which is simply to say ‘I am sorry’.

Now Mr Speaker, we have had an intense and impassioned debate and rightly so, given the clear and present threat from Daesh, the gravity of the decision that rests upon the shoulders and the conscience of every single one of us and the lives we hold in our hands tonight. And whatever we decision we reach, I hope we will treat one another with respect.

 

Now we have heard a number of outstanding speeches and sadly time will prevent me from acknowledging them all. But I would just like to single out the contributions both for and against the motion from my honourable and right honourable friends the members for Derby South, Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle, Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, Barnsley Central, Wakefield, Wolverhampton South East, Brent North, Liverpool, West Derby, Wirral West, Stoke-on-Trent North, Birmingham Ladywood and the honourable members for Reigate, South West Wiltshire, Tonbridge and Malling, Winchester and Wells.

The question which confronts us in a very, very complex conflict is at its heart very simple. What should we do with others to confront this threat to our citizens, our nation, other nations and the people who suffer under the yoke, the cruel yoke, of Daesh? The carnage in Paris brought home to us the clear and present danger we face from them. It could have just as easily been London, or Glasgow, or Leeds or Birmingham and it could still be. And I believe that we have a moral and a practical duty to extend the action we are already taking in Iraq to Syria. And I am also clear, and I say this to my colleagues, that the conditions set out in the emergency resolution passed at the Labour party conference in September have been met.

We now have a clear and unambiguous UN Security Council Resolution 2249, paragraph 5 of which specifically calls on member states to take all necessary measures to redouble and co-ordinate their efforts to prevent and suppress terrorist acts committed specifically by Isil, and to eradicate the safe haven they have established over significant parts of Iraq and Syria.

So the United Nations is asking us to do something. It is asking us to do something now. It is asking us to act in Syria as well as in Iraq. And it was a Labour government that helped to found the United Nations at the end of the Second World War. And why did we do so? Because we wanted the nations of the world, working together, to deal with threats to international peace and security – and Daesh is unquestionably that.

So given that the United Nations has passed this resolution, given that such action would be lawful under Article 51 of the UN Charter – because every state has the right to defend itself – why would we not uphold the settled will of the United Nations, particularly when there is such support from within the region including from Iraq. We are part of a coalition of over 60 countries, standing together shoulder-to-shoulder to oppose their ideology and their brutality.

Now Mr Speaker, all of us understand the importance of bringing an end to the Syrian civil war and there is now some progress on a peace plan because of the Vienna talks. They are the best hope we have of achieving a cease-fire. That would bring an end to Assad’s bombing, leading to a transitional government and elections. And why is that vital? Both because it will help in the defeat of Daesh, and because it would enable millions of Syrians, who have been forced to flee, to do what every refugee dreams of: they just want to be able to go home.

Now Mr Speaker, no-one in this debate doubts the deadly serious threat we face from Daesh and what they do, although sometimes we find it hard to live with the reality. We know that in June four gay men were thrown off the fifth storey of a building in the Syrian city of Deir ez-Zor. We know that in August the 82-year-old guardian of the antiquities of Palmyra, Professor Khaled al-Assad, was beheaded, and his headless body was hung from a traffic light. And we know that in recent weeks there has been the discovery of mass graves in Sinjar, one said to contain the bodies of older Yazidi women murdered by Daesh because they were judged too old to be sold for sex.

We know they have killed 30 British tourists in Tunisia, 224 Russian holidaymakers on a plane, 178 people in suicide bombings in Beirut, Ankara and Suruc. 130 people in Paris including those young people in the Bataclan whom Daesh – in trying to justify their bloody slaughter – called ‘apostates engaged in prostitution and vice’. If it had happened here, they could have been our children. And we know that they are plotting more attacks.

So the question for each of us – and for our national security – is this: given that we know what they are doing, can we really stand aside and refuse to act fully in our self-defence against those who are planning these attacks? Can we really leave to others the responsibility for defending our national security when it is our responsibility? And if we do not act, what message would that send about our solidarity with those countries that have suffered so much – including Iraq and our ally, France.

Now, France wants us to stand with them and President Hollande – the leader of our sister socialist party – has asked for our assistance and help. And as we are undertaking airstrikes in Iraq where Daesh’s hold has been reduced and we are already doing everything but engage in airstrikes in Syria – should we not play our full part?

It has been argued in the debate that airstrikes achieve nothing. Not so. Look at how Daesh’s forward march has been halted in Iraq. The House will remember that, 14 months ago, people were saying: ‘they are almost at the gates of Baghdad’. And that is why we voted to respond to the Iraqi government’s request for help to defeat them. Look at how their military capacity and their freedom of movement has been put under pressure. Ask the Kurds about Sinjar and Kobani. Now of course, air strikes alone will not defeat Daesh – but they make a difference. Because they are giving them a hard time – and it is making it more difficult for them to expand their territory.

Now, I share the concerns that have been expressed this evening about potential civilian casualties. However, unlike Daesh, none of us today act with the intent to harm civilians. Rather, we act to protect civilians from Daesh – who target innocent people.

Now on the subject of ground troops to defeat Daesh, there’s been much debate about the figure of 70,000 and the government must, I think, better explain that. But we know that most of them are currently engaged in fighting President Assad. But I’ll tell you what else we know, is whatever the number – 70,000, 40,000, 80,000 – the current size of the opposition forces mean the longer we leave taking action, the longer Daesh will have to decrease that number. And so to suggest, Mr Speaker, that airstrikes should not take place until the Syrian civil war has come to an end is, I think, to miss the urgency of the terrorist threat that Daesh poses to us and others, and I think misunderstands the nature and objectives of the extension to airstrikes that is being proposed. And of course we should take action. It is not a contradiction between the two to cut off Daesh’s support in the form of money and fighters and weapons, and of course we should give humanitarian aid, and of course we should offer shelter to more refugees including in this country and yes we should commit to play our full part in helping to rebuild Syria when the war is over.

Now I accept that there are legitimate arguments, and we have heard them in the debate, for not taking this form of action now. And it is also clear that many members have wrestled, and who knows, in the time that is left, may still be wrestling, with what the right thing to do is. But I say the threat is now, and there are rarely, if ever, perfect circumstances in which to deploy military forces. Now we heard very powerful testimony from the honorable member for Eddisbury earlier when she quoted that passage, and I just want to read what Karwan Jamal Tahir, the Kurdistan regional government high representative in London, said last week and I quote: ‘Last June, Daesh captured one third of Iraq over night and a few months later attacked the Kurdistan region. Swift airstrikes by Britain, America and France, and the actions of our own Peshmerga, saved us. We now have a border of 650 miles with Daesh. We’ve pushed them back, and recently captured Sinjar. Again, Western airstrikes were vital. But the old border between Iraq and Syria does not exist. Daesh fighters come and go across this fictional boundary.’ And that is the argument Mr Speaker, for treating the two countries as one, if we are serious about defeating Daesh.

Now Mr Speaker, I hope the house will bear with me if I direct my closing remarks to my Labour friends and colleagues on this side of the House. As a party we have always been defined by our internationalism. We believe we have a responsibility one to another. We never have – and we never should – walk by on the other side of the road.

And we are here faced by fascists. Not just their calculated brutality, but their belief that they are superior to every single one of us in this chamber tonight, and all of the people that we represent. They hold us in contempt. They hold our values in contempt. They hold our belief in tolerance and decency in contempt. They hold our democracy, the means by which we will make our decision tonight, in contempt. And what we know about fascists is that they need to be defeated. And it is why, as we have heard tonight, socialists and trade unionists and others joined the International Brigade in the 1930s to fight against Franco. It’s why this entire House stood up against Hitler and Mussolini. It is why our party has always stood up against the denial of human rights and for justice. And my view, Mr Speaker, is that we must now confront this evil. It is now time for us to do our bit in Syria. And that is why I ask my colleagues to vote for the motion tonight.