by Mark Thomas
In the back seat is Sam a crustie of indeterminate origin, he looks like a Womble17 with a hard on and a can of Tennent’s.18
Sitting next to him is Martin, smoking cheap fags and moaning about the loud dub Sam insists on playing. Every now and again Sam thinks he is part of the sound system and will shout from nowhere, ‘Rewind Selector’ which is really annoying. We are driving in the narrow country lanes on the Yorkshire moors. Bobby is driving fast, the music is loud, outside the dry stone walls speed past and the sunlight flashes between the shadows of the hedgerows into the car – bright and shade, bright and shade, bright and shade.
‘Oi! There is a stone circle near here, pull over pull over.’
We pull over and leave Bobster in the car and Sam and Martin and I head off for the stone circle.19
SFX: MUSIC FADES DOWN
I can’t remember if we found the stone circle but I do remember the shape of the hills and the way the land slides across the skyline, the dips and folds of the earth, ridges and steps of collapsed soil. I remember the grass and the dark peaty brown earth and the pools of water collecting in hollows. And I remember Martin going, ‘Fucking hell look what I’ve found!’ and holding up a ram’s skull20 replete with horns.
We show it to Bobster and he says,
‘Chain it to the radiator grill of the Jag, fuck it. It’s a hire car.’
We tie the skull to the car, open the doors, turn the music up and pose for photos.
‘Oi! Oi! Oi! Oi!’
‘In the area!’
‘Come on!’
SFX: MUSIC CUTS
Martin spends half the time with me on tour and the other half working at Leeds Castle in Kent.
‘What you doing there?’
‘Cleaning out the gutters.’
‘How much do they pay you?’
‘£50 a day … two ducks and a pheasant. They don’t know about the ducks and the pheasant.’
Nick kept telling me I should see the file, ‘if only for your own peace of mind.’
And I am not at peace. Martin’s behaviour is sometimes awkward, defensive, and there are only a handful of us left who believe in him. But in truth it is the fear of betrayal, an unwillingness to consider deception, that rushes in to fill the space where loyalty once lay.
GB APPEARS SR MONITOR
GID: At the end when it was just you me and Emily defending him, it was fair to say we were pretty much deluded. Or we were allowing him to delude us.
SCENE 5
Now at this stage you may be asking yourselves a question. ‘Why would a multi-million pound, transnational corporation like BAE spy on a group of Quakers and Guardian readers?’
Now let’s be honest about this, it is the Festival,21 some of you have seen five shows already today, it’s warm and some of you have glazed over already. I am not judging, it’s just that I can see more of you than you think I can. Now this answer involves some facts and figures and frankly some of you are not going to make it over the hump.
So for those of you who are glazing over, here’s ‘The Girl from Ipanema’.
SFX: MUSIC PLAYS
Just regard it as being put on hold and we’ll be back in a minute.
For the rest of you, 1975 – Indonesia invades East Timor and kills one third of the population. BAE22 have a rolling contract to supply fighter jets to Indonesia.
In 1996, a group of women decide to break into BAE hangers in Lancashire. They find the jets that are destined for Indonesia, identifying the flags and serial number and smash up the cockpit with hammers. They then phone security to hand themselves in.
Four were arrested23 and put on remand, charged with conspiracy and criminal damage. In court the judge allows them to run a defence that says it is legal in English law to commit a small crime in order to prevent a greater crime from occurring, i.e. it is legal to break a plane in order to stop the plane killing civilians.
BAE are put in the dock. Witnesses are called from East Timor and human rights monitors testify.
The jury acquit the women.
BAE have the ignominy of having had £1.5 million worth of damage done to their state-of-the-art fighter plane, which ironically is not hammer proof, they then end up on trial, lose in the court of public opinion and the jury let the activists walk free.
And it is at this point that BAE decides to put Campaign Against Arms Trade on the radar.
OK ‘The Girl from Ipanema’ people … CLAPS … back in the room.
Nick kept saying see the file.
ANN APPEARS SL MONITOR
Ann, I remember phoning you and asking whether I could look at the file.
ANN: LISTENS After you’d spoken to Nick.
Yeah, I had spoken with Nick and he’d always said I should check out the file.
ANN: Yeah.
It was something else, Ann, that made me phone you too, not quite sure what. Were you surprised when I phoned you?
ANN: I was pleased, I always thought that the people closest to it needed to read it.
The CAAT office in north London is an old Georgian building. The staircases are long, narrow and dark. I touch the side of the wall, walking them and at the top, the very top floor is a box room, a couple of filing cabinets and a table, used for meetings and storage. On the table is the file.
I feel sick but I feel ready.
BLACKOUT SAVE ANGLEPOISE ON DESK
The main evidence against Martin.
The internal audit of CAAT’s computers reveal that Martin had been forwarding internal emails to a third party.
Hundreds and hundreds of them, year after year.
The email is linked to a company run by a woman called Evelyn Le Chene.
COMPANIES HOUSE DOCUMENTS FOR EVELYN LE CHENE PROJECTED ONTO MAIN SCREEN
Her company is called Threat Response Initiative. These are her company documents. She runs a spy company, collecting information on CND members, CAAT, trade unions and leftists. A company would pay a joining fee then you paid for information on an individual basis. You could get an individual’s name, address, phone number, NI number, known associates and political affiliations. And it cost £2.25 per person.
£2.25.
In court documents BAE Systems admit to spying on Campaign Against Arms Trade.
LEGAL CONSENT ORDER PROJECTED ONTO MAIN SCREEN
And admit to hiring Evelyn Le Chene …
LEGAL CONSENT ORDER HIGHLIGHTING LE CHENE NAME PROJECTED ONTO MAIN SCREEN.
… to spy on Campaign Against Arms Trade. The directors of Threat Response Initiative are interesting.
COMPANIES HOUSE DOCUMENTS FOR BARRIE GANE PROJECTED ONTO MAIN SCREEN
One is Barrie Charles Gane CMG, OBE – Barry Charles Gane CMG OBE – who is ex-deputy director of MI6.
To send email to the wrong address is commonplace, everyone in this room has done it, bar those still sending pigeons.
To send hundreds of emails to the wrong address is clumsy.
To send hundreds of emails by mistake to Threat Response Initiative … that’s un-fucking-believable!
I phone my friends.
MONTAGE PROJECTED ONTO MAIN SCREEN
EMILY: The absolute fucking betrayal.
LAURA: Complete betrayal of trust.
NICK: It was a shattering revelation for you.
ANN: I did think there had been betrayal but I had never been the closest to him.
GID: I asked him is there anything you want to say and he said there was no truth in it whatsoever. And a good friend would not have done that, a good friend would have said, OK, its over … And I can’t, I can’t come to terms with that.
This may sound incongruous but I think the phrase I am looking for is ‘revenge fuck’. What do you do when you get fucked over by an arms company? You fuck over an arms company back.
First of all you set up an arms company – it is easy to set one up.
ADDRESSING AUDIENCE
Can you give me the name of an English county?
ADDR
ESSING AUDIENCE
You, an item a Norman or Viking might have.
USES FIRST AND SECOND ANSWER
… is the name of our arms company.
ADDRESSING AUDIENCE
Can I ask the name of your first pet?
ADDRESSING AUDIENCE
Can you tell me your grandmother’s surname?
Right, the CEO of our company is Major General USES LAST TWO ANSWERS
Now we need a couple of mobile phones, one from overseas to make you international, some email addresses and a hot desk at a shared office, with a secretary who says, ‘I’m afraid he is not in. I will pass on your number and he will call as soon as possible.’
Now you can talk to arms dealers.
If I phone an arms company and say, ‘Hi I’m working at the Traverse Theatre24 and …’
SFX: PHONE GOING DEAD
If I phone up and say,
‘Hi it’s INSERTS NAME OF COMPANY AND CEO we’re an arms company and want to buy guns.’
They say,
‘Of course you are, why would you call us otherwise, what kind of guns would you like?’
‘Big ones.’
‘Would you like bullets?’
‘Yes please.’
‘Can I supersize you with a mortar round?’
‘Would you mind?’
If arms dealer talks to you they will explain what they are willing to do.
First one is a South London25 arms dealer offering to sell illegal electroshock torture equipment. But it wasn’t enough that he agreed to supply them, I asked,
‘Would you supply them to Zimbabwe and break UN sanctions?’
‘Yes’
I call HMRC and he is shut down.
Next, DSEi, the London arms fair. I find four companies selling illegal torture equipment. The Guardian runs with the story in enough time to see three of them kicked out of the fair.
Three, I find a dealer discharging an electroshock baton in the middle of a police and security fair in Birmingham. He stands there with the blue flashes and the electric cackle, cops are walking past not one of them seeming to realise that possession, advertising and discharging an electroshock baton is illegal.
I try and find a cop to arrest the guy, it is harder than you might think.
First cop says, ‘I’m off duty.’
Second says ‘I know you, you’re Mark Thomas, I like your programmes but I don’t want to be in them, fuck off.’
Third one is standing at the end of an aisle, full uniform and hi vis, he is a cardboard cut-out for Poundland.
It is impossible to find a cop at the police fair. I go to the organisers’ office and explain what is happening. The guy is arrested, he does four months in jail and is deported.
Next, I stop one of the UK’s largest arms companies exporting military equipment to Sudan.
Next I get asked to provide evidence for the House of Commons’ Select Committee,26 I write two reports and am asked to give oral evidence. I sit before the Committee and I blame HMRC for not enforcing the laws and doing the simple work I have done. HMRC get called before the Committee. HMRC are extremely pissed off.
Two weeks later I get a VAT inspection.
As revenge fucks go it’s not bad – doesn’t deal with the emotional turmoil but it did reclaim my dignity as an activist, it did make me feel better about myself and I was down to a size 12.
Twelve.
2007, three years since I last saw Martin I get off the train and walk to his house, rehearsing the questions I want to ask. He lives in a two-up two-down, there is no fence for the garden. He isn’t in but his wife answers the door and I know her and she instinctively says,
‘Oh come in Thommo, come in.’
She ushers me in to the hall and says,
‘I can’t say anything, I daren’t say anything.’
It has no wallpaper and a plastic laundry basket in the corner and we go into the living room and she repeats that she can’t say anything and that Martin has been depressed and he has lost all his friends. And I say I wish we were meeting under other circumstances and leave.
If Martin was working for BAE Systems he doesn’t seem to have been well paid. And it is odd that I am worried about a traitor’s terms and conditions. BAE Systems still expands in the financial military sphere and Evelyn Le Chene was voted president of the Rotary club, so accepted into, well not polite society but nearly. And it is hard to know who the villain is when there are no regulations controlling these companies and people who do this work. Not one law. Not even a register.
I found out where Evelyn Le Chene lives. I have her home address.
ADDRESSES AUDIENCE
Who would like to know where she lives?
This is a show about data theft, get a grip on yourself!
I write her a letter.
Dear Evelyn Le Chen,
You once collected data about me and I wondered if I could ask for like for like in return.
Did you employ Martin to spy on CAAT and myself?
How much did you pay him?
What data did he collect about me?
Hope you can help, I have enclosed £2.25 for your troubles.
I write the same letter to Barrie Gane,
Except I add the line,
‘As an ex-deputy director of MI6 you are probably wondering how I got your address …’
On the 23rd May I write to Martin asking him to talk to me.
Dear Martin, if you have your old mobile number you will have seen I texted you a while back. I am doing a show and it is about our relationship.
I want him to admit it what he has done. I want to know who paid him?
How much they paid him? How was he paid?
How was he recruited? When they recruited him? What was his remit?
How did he pass on information? What information?
About who? To whom?
Who else was involved?
What data of mine was passed on? Who saw it?
Why did they want it? Where is it now?
But most of all I want him to confess.
He sent me a letter back, undated,
‘I think to open, old, deep and still unhealed wounds can only be a negative.’
7th July 2014. It’s a beautiful early summer morning and the sun shines down the River Medway. I am running in a car park with a cameraman behind me, running towards Martin.
SLOW MOTION FOOTAGE ON MAIN PROJECTOR SCREEN OF MT APPROACHING MAN IN CAR PARK. MAN’S FACE IS DELIBERATELY BLURRED
Martin backs away from me, he is shorter than I remembered him, fatter and greyer too. He is still smoking and I recognise his smell.
He says,
‘What’s the camera for?’
I say,
‘It’s to record the event.’
He has noticed the camera, this is not covert filming and I tick a regulation box.
I say,
‘You need to talk to us mate, you need to admit what you have done.’
He says, ‘What does it matter one way or the other now?’
FILM CUTS
I made a decision not to show you Martin’s face, not to mention his surname within these walls, not to mention his family’s names, nor play you his voice, not to show or tell you where he lives.
So how do you know that what I’m about to tell you is true?
Trust. I ask you to trust me.
Martin says,
‘You don’t know the damage this has done to me. How this has affected my personal and family life. There is not a day goes by when I don’t think of you and Em, Gid, Laura. You were my best friends and I loved what we did together. I look back on that as the golden years of my life. Do you think I could do the things I did without believing it?’
I say,
‘That is not the issue. Will you admit to what you have done? You owe us, when everyone else left you we stayed. We defended you for a year. You owe us.’
FILM PLAYS AGAIN – MARTIN AND MT HUG
�
�I will talk to you, not now, let me sort things out.’
He says, ‘I will talk to you.’
We hug.
He has a Unite bag.
He is the trade union rep here.
FILM SHOWS SECURITY MEN STOPPING FILMING
It is a beautiful early summer’s day and we are driving back to London. I am on the ceiling. Full of adrenaline, caffeine, hope, trust, logic, friendship, disbelief, optimism, shock, memories good and bad, happiness.
The phone goes and it is Martin,
‘Thommo, sorry mate but your presence this morning has triggered a security alert and the police are here with me and want to contact you and I am phoning to ask is it OK for me to give them your telephone number?’
BUT he will talk. I am running for the tube, still full of caffeine and adrenaline down the steps at Kings Cross, hoodie up, thermos of coffee from the stake out ’cos we have been up since four in the morning. Still full of confusion, hope and elation, I dash for the tube and I bump into Hillary Benn and Ed Miliband.
Hillary says,
‘Hello Mark.’
Ed Miliband says,
‘Mark Thomas, what have you been up to?’
‘I have been staking out a corporate spy who has been infiltrating the democratic protest groups and you should have an investigation not just into him but a full public enquiry into blacklisting, undercover cops …’
‘We are going to have an inquiry.’
‘But not a public one, it needs to be public.’
And I bend his ear from Kings Cross to Green Park and I step back and see myself hoodie up, wide-eyed, ranting and waving a thermos into the face of the Leader of the Opposition.27
On the 9th July two days later I receive this text from Martin:
TEXT APPEARS ON MAIN PROJECTOR
I have carefully and with much soul searching considered your proposal to meet and talk I can not see any personal positives in re opening the whole issue. I therefore with respect decline to meet and would ask you please to cease with what is risking becoming intrusive. I hope your shows go well and wish you well for the future.
Emily says, ‘It is Martin keeping his last bit of power by not telling us. So we have to keep going back to him.’
Gideon says, ‘Mark, that’s twice you’ve held the door open for him and twice he’s walked away. Perhaps it’s time you did the same.’
