COURT POLITICS
The Westminster political village has been captivated by the struggle between the Prime Minister's press secretary Alastair Campbell and BBC Correspondent Andrew Gilligan. Gilligan reported that the Prime Minister's office 'sexed-up' a dossier on Iraq's supposed 'Weapons of Mass Destruction' to galvanise the country into war. Summoned to appear before Parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee Campbell retaliated by accusing the BBC of bias and false reports, and demanded an apology. The BBC in turn says that it has been subject to 'unprecedented' pressure from the government.
The striking thing about the fight is that it is all carried on far away from the 'masses' who were supposed to be at risk. The Parliamentary chamber itself is no longer the place that politics happens. Instead the action is all people sitting down in committee rooms in shirtsleeves, or banging the plywood desks of television news studios.
The important players are un-elected: the press officer, the BBC correspondent. Some are also un-named: the chairs of the Joint Intelligence Committee, Gilligan's source.
The resolution of the debate will take place behind doors, away from the destruction-prone masses. The Foreign Affairs Committee will exonerate Campbell or damn him. The Prime Minister's Office will extract an apology from the BBC or not.
The BBC is wrong to say that the pressure is unprecedented. Director General Alasdair Milne was summoned personally to face a barracking from the Conservative parliamentary party, unhappy with his coverage of the conflicts in the Falklands and in Ireland.
The difference between the Tories campaign against the BBC in the 80s and Alastair Campbell's today is that the Tories believed in something that they thought that the BBC ought to reflect: patriotism. The current government betrays no sign of believing in anything more profound that its own survival. Consequently its pressure looks like it comes from sheer self-interest.
The exercise in sixteenth century court politics taking place in the Foreign Affairs Committee is a sign that the conduct of the war never won popular support. The government would like to treat the question as a technical one that can be resolved by invoking the authority of the Joint Intelligence Committee.
But behind the continuing doubts is the failure of the government to involve the wider public in a debate about the war. Consequently the masses never identified with the war aims, however much they feared terrorist attacks. That is a problem that neither the Foreign Affairs Committee nor the Joint Intelligence Committee can resolve.
-- James Heartfield