Every Picture Tells a Story...

...Although that story is not always the one the storytellers who have a vested interest in the Tories winning the election want to tell properly.

Take this picture for example. It's a photograph that is certainly doing the rounds now that The S*n and various other Tory papers want to push the idea that Jeremy Corbyn sympathised with and supported the IRA. 

Now, seeing that photo alongside the words 'Corbyn' and 'IRA' does seem pretty damning doesn't it?

But let's look at the facts here. Because, if you are to damn Corbyn for this, then you must damn the people in the following pictures too

Because that Corbyn and Adams photograph was taken, just like the photos of Adams with Blair and with Prince Charles, AFTER the ceasefire.

You see, what The S*n etc do is very clever; they source a photo of both men looking quite young and implicitly use that to suggest to their readers the picture is damning evidence that it must have been taken during The Troubles. It wasn't; it was taken in 1995, after the ceasefire and the Downing Street declaration. Hell, it was taken in the House of Commons!

Are these facts reported? No.

I'm not disputing that Corbyn met with Adams whilst The Troubles were ongoing either. Corbyn has always said that to achieve peace you must negotiate and enter into a dialogue with the other side, and it is through that relationship that Corbyn played a special part in achieving peace, having worked alongside Mo Mowlam in the run up to the Good Friday agreement.

But The S*n are now claiming that Jeremy Corbyn did no such thing. Indeed, they've even spoken with terrorists who claim never to have seen him involved in any such talk or perform any such work. One of these is Sean O'Callaghan. But what The S*n refuse to report is that O'Callaghan was a double agent for the British security services who was paid handsomely to report on the activities of the IRA. It's clear he's being paid handsomely now too, to discredit Jeremy Corbyn for the establishment with his lies.

Let's use the old prosecution lawyer argument here, are we really supposed to take the word of a self confessed liar and criminal over the word of a respectable man who has held the honourable position of a Member of Parliament for over thirty years?

It's also worth remembering that Gerry Adams has always maintained he was never a member of the IRA, and has never conclusively been proven otherwise. He is a member of Sinn Fein, and there is a difference - so that's another lie in the message of Corbyn and the IRA.

Lastly, this photo doesn't do the rounds much these days does it?

Strange that.

Spooks: The Greater Good (2015)

"Do good or do well"

Ah Spooks. I loved Spooks. Or to be clear, I loved the first two seasons of Spooks. Three tops. Created by David Wolstencroft, and using such quality writers as the acclaimed left wing playwright Howard Brenton (though you'd have to look online or some such to find that out, as Spooks revelled in never having any opening or closing credits) Spooks was truly innovative British television...right up until its original stars Matthew Macfadyen, Keeley Hawes and David Oyelowo (whatever happened to him?) departed. The show - also known as MI5 for a US market that delights in the blindingly obvious - ran for ten seasons from 2002 to 2011 but, once the original central characters had gone, replaced by the likes of Rupert Penry-Ponce and Hermione Norris, I quickly lost interest. The only good thing to come out of those later episodes was the rising prominence of Peter Firth as spymaster Harry Pearce. Here was a character who had something like two scenes in the very first episode, but by the time the curtain fell on the TV series he was undoubtedly its star and the show's biggest draw. This stature is rightly carried across for this spin-off movie, Spooks: The Greater Good.

(It's worth mentioning there was another spin-off entitled Spooks: Code 9 on BBC3 in 2008. Aimed at the 16-24 year old market it was risible nonsense set sometime after 2012 when London, hosting the Olympic Games, was hit by a nuclear attack. The series was such a flop, Spooks quickly chose to disown and ignore it from its canon - as seen here.)

Now, because I'd bailed on the series I was initially a bit hesitant about watching Spooks: The Greater Good, but I needn't have worried. The film works perfectly well as a stand-alone and an introduction to the world of the series that preceded it for new audiences, whilst at the same time drawing on much that made the series great for its long-established fans - principally the return of some characters from the show, the aforementioned Pearce (Firth) the dependable former analyst Malcolm (Hugh Simon) the reptilian Oliver Mace played by Tim McInnerny, whose cold blooded and charismatic ambiguity makes for a very welcome reappearance here, and two others from the tenth series of the show who were new to me; Geoffrey Streatfeild as IT expert Calum Reed and Lara Pulver as Erin Watts.

I was also hesitant in case the storytelling style of the movie was essentially the same as the later episodes of the series, those that proved such a turn-off for me. Granted they maintain the same kind of riffs, with the intelligence that the likes of Howard Brenton brought in the early years being AWOL, but the film is nevertheless a very proficient spy thriller with some genuinely tense and well-shot moments from director Bharat Nalluri and cinematographer Hubert Taczanowski which make particularly good use of its London and Berlin locations. It's always refreshing to see a homegrown action movie I guess.

The cast is also excellent. Firth is once again truly impressive as Harry Pearce, the skinny latte generation's George Smiley. Providing much of the film's legwork and attracting a younger audience however is Game of Thrones star Kit Harington as Will Holloway, a former MI5 operative who feels betrayed by his former father figure Harry Pearce but who forms an uneasy alliance for the titular 'greater good'. Rounding out the cast are performances from the divine Tuppence Middleton and the foxy Eleanor Matsuura, Homeland's David Harewood and Pride and Prejudice's Jennifer Ehle. In the pivotal role of the villain of the piece, we have Elyes Gabel an actor who has carved a career out for himself in the US to my complete and utter bemusement. He was dead-eyed, drippy and wooden in a string of British TV programmes like Casualty before relocating and finding fame Stateside, and he continues to be the weakest link here too. The Wiki entry for the film describes his character as a 'charismatic terrorist leader' but there's no sign of any charisma as far as I'm concerned. Or indeed much threat.

The script by Jonathan Brackley and Sam Vincent is proficient enough though it can't escape a tendency for a cliched clunker, especially in the peculiar relationship between Pearce and Holloway which centres on the former being linked to the death of the latter's father when an op in Berlin went horribly wrong. Brackley and Vincent wrote several episodes of the original series which means the same kind of themes return here, including its fondness for shadow conspiracies. It's a real shame because the shadow conspiracy at the centre of their plot here is a treasonous plot to discredit MI5 from within so the Americans can absorb the service into their own CIA, a threat that doesn't really bear scrutiny and one whose perpetrator I predicted right from the off. Seriously, you don't have to be George Smiley to work this one out.

Despite the odd flaw or faltering element though, Spooks: The Greater Good remains a solidly watchable and fun experience for both newcomers and fans alike.

Last Night's Tele : The Game, BBC2

Being Human creator Toby Whithouse turns his attention to the world of MI5 in the early 1970s when The Cold War was at its hottest with BBC2's new six part drama series The Game and after last night's debut episode it's safe to say I shall be hooked.

This is right up my strasse actually, given my love for the likes of Len Deighton and John Le Carre and much of The Game seems to have been heavily influenced by the latter, specifically Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The period detail here; the set and costume design is just superb, suggesting a bleakly beautiful London of 1972 (in reality The Game was filmed in Birmingham) full of cigarette smoke, drizzle and power saving blackouts. 

Our hero is Joe Lambe played by the ineffably cool Tom Hughes with his icy stare and a soft Chester accent reminiscent of Paul McGann's posh Scouse. Lambe is something of an enigma, he's our central focus but, like an iceberg, we're not privy to what lies beneath the surface as yet. The opening pre-title sequence prologue showed Lambe offering to defect alongside Yulia, a beautiful Polish chef he fell in love with and recruited...it ended in bloodshed, but we're still not sure if his attempted defection was genuine or an attempt to infiltrate the KGB.

Whichever it is, it's clear he owes a lot to Daddy (Brian Cox) MI5's paternalistic chief whose position seems increasingly untenable with the snide machinations of one Bobby Waterhouse (Friday Night Dinner's Paul Ritter) who is clearly determined to usurp him. Ritter's flamboyant and caustic Waterhouse proved to be the BIGGEST of the ensemble; a closeted homosexual who lives at home with a domineering grand old mother (Judy Parfitt) permanently wreathed in smoke and offering glib, scoffing remarks.

The rest of the MI5 team was just as well drawn; Jonathan Aris played a delightfully sympathetic eccentric techie with zero conversational skills whose wife has to offer him tips on small talk which he inevitably messes up and is forced to cross out on his little list with a heavy sigh.

His wife played by the brilliant Victoria Hamilton is a staunchly loyal 'Daddy's Girl' and seems to be the real brains of the group but seems forced to be overlooked or taken for granted in what is ostensibly an intelligence service which is basically a boy's network, operating in a man's world. The tiniest roll of her eyes at Waterhouse's grander gestures tells us all we need to know and it's a joy to watch.

Shaun Dooley delivers yet another likeable everyman role to play a no-nonsense Special Branch officer assigned to the team as they attempt to uncover the truth of the KGB's Operation Glass, and what kind of a threat to our nation it actually is. Lastly there's young Scottish actress Chloe Pirrie, star of the bleak indie Scottish film Shell, as a timid little mouse of a secretary who didn't have an awful lot to do in last night's opener but whom, one suspects, will be a character soon showing us her hidden depths. 

 100% wasn't perfect TV; there were a few hoary old cliches and silly moments such as a forced introduction scene around the table in Daddy's office and a foot chase down the London backstreets to a deserted funfair culminating in a Mexican stand off, but it was still a bloody good hour of entertainment that fair rattled along. Do yourself a favour, switch your mobiles off every Thursday night at 9pm and sit tight with a glass of something nice at your side for this absorbing classy thriller. 

Shadow Dancer (2013)

Shadow Dancer starts out as a potentially very interesting and realistic thriller concerning the IRA in the early 90s. Unfortunately it's not too exciting or tense and ultimately the potential the film had is somewhat squandered and mired in a rather unbelievable - though frankly brief - unrequited love story between Clive Owen's MI5 agent Mac and Andrea Riseborough's IRA mole Colette.

That said, there is still much to quietly enjoy from this; the acting on the whole is relatively good (though the usually reliable Aidan Gillen surprises in giving a very blank and uninterested performance) Riseborough gives the film its heart and secures another step towards her inevitable position as a national treasure. The all too often unfairly maligned Owen (why is that by the way? He had quite a buzz about him in the early 00s and has got an impressive body of work including Inside Man and Children Of Men as well as a strong record in British TV)  having once been knocked back from the Broccoli's, finally gets to play an intelligence operative -  but this is no Bond. This is a realistic depiction of the secret war during The Troubles and Owen equips himself very well.

The film is set in 1993 and actually feels like it was made in 1993 (ie its good) thanks to grainy murky cinematography. Each scene looks faded, like its been shot through denier. It's a trick that the director, James Marsh, had used to great effect in the excellent and equally dour and set in recent history mini series Red Riding and adds perfectly to the atmosphere here too.

Ultimately however its the story that lets it down, though there is a good twist near the end I have to say.

Christine Keeler : The Truth At Last?

Though I've long since been fascinated by what has become known as The Profumo Affair, the story of a nineteen year old 'party girl' and model who brought down Macmillan's Tory government by sleeping with both the Minister for War John Profumo and a Soviet naval attache Eugene Ivanov, I hadn't ever actually read Keeler's version of events, My Story - The Truth At Last, which was co-written by Douglas Thompson and released thirteen years ago and recently re-released and updated as Secrets and Lies. 

Hadn't ever actually read until now that is. 

Keeler's story is fascinating and an engrossing read. It is markedly different to the perceived wisdom people may be familiar with from the 1989 feature film Scandal or the various newspaper reports, or even The Denning Report, the official enquiry commissioned shortly after the affair broke. Perceived wisdom has it that Stephen Ward the society osteopath and Christine's sometime flatmate and benefactor, was a pimp who ran a stable of girls including Christine and Mandy Rice Davies for his friends who formed the rich, elite and famous establishment of the land. The story was sex and nothing more. Just sex in high places; the stuff the News Of The World was made for. 

It was only Scandal and Ludovic Kennedy's book The Trial Of Stephen Ward that suggested the notion of Stephen pimping was absurd (Kennedy pointing out how if anything Ward gave more money to girls like Keeler than he ever took from them) and that he was in fact a scapegoat.

Whilst Keeler's story also supports the notion that Ward was never her pimp, she adds another layer by stating that he was in fact a soviet agent who procured secrets and sexual gossip with the help of girls like herself which he then fed back to his superiors at Moscow Centre. It's not the first time I've heard Ward being suggested as a Soviet mole; in a biography of Ruth Ellis by her sister, Muriel Jakubait (and Monica Weller) in 2005, it's claimed that Ward groomed the club hostess Ruth Ellis for spying purposes also. But for the past fifty years any notion of spying or interest from Moscow in the affair tended to be levelled at the Russian Ivanov. Keeler claims that it was Ward, not Ivanov who she says was always Ward's patsy, who asked her to ask Profumo about the Allied Forces strategic weapons in Berlin. She claims Ivanov only slept with her once on Stephen's orders, a rainy day policy to muddy the waters should the scandal break. She believes that Stephen's constant visits from the likes of Anthony Blunt (of the Cambridge spy ring) and Roger Hollis (head of MI5 who many claim was himself a Soviet agent) as well as her belief that he was in the know about many things during The Cold War, proves that he was a mole trading on secrets when his friends had their gaurds down, at orgies and sex parties all over London.

It's fascinating stuff. Do I believe it? I'm not sure. I do feel Ward was a scapegoat and not the pimp the press and law suggested at the time, but a plant? Regardless it's well told and clearthat Keeler utterly believes it.  

There's a whole host of great stories that link so many names; the FBI interest in Keeler, with numerous transcripts naming her heading to and from J Edgar Hoover's desk. The infamous 'man without a head' photo featuring a nude male (face/head obscured) getting oral sex from the Duchess of Argyll, whom Keeler believes was Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, the Hollywood actor who always had a camera handy for his sexual adventures. Diana Dors and her husband who had a penchant for two way mirrors in the guest bedrooms. Mariella Novotny, dominatrix extrordinaire, married to an unassuming antique dealer and hostess of many wild parties including one with 'the man in the mask' serving, an aristocrat who liked to be punished. Novoty, it's claimed was an international escort, having bedded both Jack and Bobby Kennedy and being pimped out by film maker Harry Alan Towers in America. Keeler claims Novotny's 'misadventurous' death in the early 80s, choking on her own vomit face down in a bowl of jelly in her bed, was a sanctioned kill by the security services. Her little black book of contacts and secrets has never been found.

Unfortunately despite the engrossing entertainment value, the book is still a frustrating experience principally because one feels that Christine, for all her desire for the truth to be finally told can't seem to face the truth herself. It's filled with concrete statements of intent before being utterly discredited on the next page. For example when Christine says "My life has been cursed by sex I didn't particularly want" you can't help but laugh, given that she describes how actively she sought sex from a whole host of men, using them for money and yes, even accepting payment for sex, she finally admits to that.It's a surprising brazen promiscuity even when she's pledging undying love to whoever was flavour of the month. She will profess such an emotion about someone and then on the next page explain how a day later, still hung up on him, she was bedding someone else.

"Profumo was all over me and there wasn't much I could do about it. He was a much older man, not someone I wanted to be with" Um, how about saying no? Why have several assignations and dates with him then? Likewise, one person she is vehement about not ever having wanted is Lucky Gordon, the West Indian with a short fuse who, she describes kept her prisoner as his sex slave at his flat for a day until she escaped. The way in which such a passage is written naturally gets the reader on side and Gordon sounds absolutely horrific, so why did she continue to ensure she was seen at clubs she knew he'd be frequenting, seemingly goading him to react? She claims Gordon 'played the race card' whenever she turned down his advances and she admits that a white girl dating a black man was taboo at the time, and how she would be ostracised by friends and family. So why is it we read of her assignations with other West Indians including Johnnie Edgecombe, Clarence Commachio and Rudolph Fenton? All of whom would go on to have dates in court thanks to their association with Christine Keeler. It's passages like this that utterly mystify the reader and seriously weakens any sympathy one feels towards her, because ultimately she does come across as both someone who did very stupid things and couldn't care for the ramifications and someone following a certain amount of notoriety was keen to get what she felt owed; ie cold hard cash. The latter is later discredited by her claims that by the late 60s she wanted nothing more than a quiet private life and married a man in secret and away from the spotlight just for that...yet a page later she reveals that their marital ups and downs led to numerous break ups all of which she reported in the press! Like jelly to the wall, it's hard to pin down Ms Keeler, even now.

Mandy

Some of the book's most amusing (and bitchy) moments are in Keeler's description of Mandy Rice Davies "I thought Mandy was a true tart. There was always shock on her face when she thought she might have to do more than lie on her back to make a living" Keeler later points out how Mandy's reaction to news of the death of her sugar daddy, the notorious Peter Rachman, was "Did he leave a will?" And one can understand her bitterness, Mandy - who was often linked to events that Christine swears never involved her, it was all part of the cover up to pin pimping charges on Ward - made a good life from her moment in the scandelous spotlight. Her naturally cheeky demeanour played well with the press, they knew she was a tart and she knew she was a tart, so everyone was happy, whereas Keeler was harder to define and always to them and the public 'the scarlet woman' or plainly 'the bitch'

Ultimately for all the contrasting hypocrises inherent in the tale and in Keeler herself one cannot help but feel sympathy for her. She did what she did and has never stopped paying the price. She lives her life as quietly as possible, alone, often in disguise and with a new surname by deed poll, yet she has never been allowed an existence. Just under forty years later she was sacked from her job as a school dinner lady because the headmaster found out she was Christine Keeler. Her first born son and her mother (who brought him up) refuse to have any contact with her, and her second son Seymour who at the time of the 2001 publication was very close to her now lives abroad and they are seemingly estranged. 

Christine today, bewigged

Christine Keeler it seems has no one. Is it any wonder then that her life even now at the age of 70 is all about the events of the early 60s when she was still just a teenager? Unfortunately I feel that Keeler needs to face up to the lies inside herself, rather than the lies that have been told about her for fifty years now. Only then will she get the peaceful life she seems to crave.

Hidden Agenda

With its rather polished air, it comes as something of a surprise that this is a film from the realism favouring Ken Loach, then you see the politics and you realise it isn't very surprising at all.

I do like this, though naturally it's a divisive subject; a film about Northern Ireland that instead of focusing on the atrocities performed by the IRA, looks to the actions of the British establishment and the RUC - the infamous 'Shoot to Kill' policy that was investigated in real life by John Stalker in the 80s. A fictional version of Stalker appears in this film played by Brian Cox, opposite Frances McDormand as an American civil rights lawyer conducting research into The Troubles.

It's still a deeply contentious subject, the recent inquiry into the 1989 murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane and the complicit nature the British security services had proves it so, but Loach does himself no favours in presenting a largely one sided debate that boils down to Irish terrorism - good, British 'terrorism' - bad. Sure, the allegations of the IRA taking innocent lives are made several times in the film, but on each occasion the spokesmen are allowed the freedom fighter excuse, citing that even George Washington was once branded a terrorist. The innocent victims of Enniskillen, Birmigham, Warrington, Manchester and many other cities are swept under the carpet. It's simply not an argument Loach wants to get involved in.

However he does throw quite a few interesting theories into the pot including trying to draw a comparison between Britain in Ireland and Chile, and a network of right wing establishment ensuring Thatcher's rise to power because she was willing to be hard line, unlike Heath or Wilson (even the ludicrous notion of Peter Wright and James Jesus Angleton that Wilson was a Soviet puppet is mentioned as is the more real fear that Mountbatten and his cronies considered a coup against Wilson during the austere 70s) These are theories that I imagine would cause the less politically aware and many outside of the UK a headache. 

Hidden Agenda is a very interesting film, nicely shot with a bleakly beautiful ambience that forces the viewer to consider one injustice over another. Something that I - and I consider myself largely left wing - struggled with at times. If you can separate your own feelings, it's an enjoyable thriller in as much as one can 'enjoy' a dramatisation of such a tragic part of our history. 

It could do without some of Stuart Copeland's score though, I mean it's fine enough but much of it is so heavily redolent of his work on The Equalizer that it feels in poor taste with such a serious depiction of the horrors committed by the security services.