01/06/2016 Newsnight

Four decades after the Birmingham pub bombings, there are still

So will the announcement of a new inquest into the 21

deaths bring peace, truth and reconciliation at last?

..the most seismic day for all of us.

We'll ask what the new inquest is for and whether it

Also tonight, how to score points and control immigration.

We'll look at the attractions of an Australian-style scheme.

When does Photoshopping a photo become a lie,

It's THE debate among photojournalists.

Or should we call them visual storytellers?

And the former Chief Rabbi tell us what he thinks of mutliculturalism.

Multiculturalism did not promote tolerance or shared identity.

It said, you go off and do your own thing.

And that turns out to be very destructive.

It was a ghastly piece of our recent history,

but the events of November 1974 in Birmingham have not yet been

A senior coroner has determined that the unfinished

inquests into the two pub bombings should reopen.

They can answer, possibly, some awkward questions

about what happened, and what didn't.

Like other historic cases that have been reinvestigated,

this one goes back decades, and the actions of a police force

Or, the non-actions I should say, because a major question

is whether the West Midlands Police at the time failed to follow up

warnings that terror would strike the city.

The cases are very different - but comparisons are drawn.

John Sweeney has spent the day in Birmingham.

Birmingham City centre 2016 remains haunted by what happened here 41

years ago. It was the worst IRA atrocity on British soil. Two bombs

exploded in quick succession in two pubs, the Mulberry Bush and the

Tavern in the Town. The death toll, 21 dead and more than 200 injured.

The relatives of the dead have faced a 41 year struggle to get this far.

An inquest will finally take place. Julie Hambleton has led the fight

against the authorities. Today is... The most seismic day for all of us.

I hope that our fathers, brothers, sisters, mothers are looking down

and they are proud. She lost her 18-year-old sister. Tell me about

Maxine. Maxine was full of life. She was intelligent, clever, mum always

said not to put her on a pedestal, which is obviously very difficult to

do because she was our big sister. This is a tragedy made far worse by

the authorities. West Midlands Police arrested six Irish men the

next day, after the bombings. But the police got it horribly wrong.

The Birmingham six had been fitted up. The police told us from the

start they knew we had not done it. They told us they did not care who

had done it, they told us we were selected and they would frame us,

just to keep the people in their happy. That is what it is all about.

A quarter of a century on, Paddy Hill is still searching for the

truth. He pulled my head back and said read that you little Irish

bustard. These are the orders. The orders were to get convictions, to

use any means they had to obtain them and not to worry because they

were covered all the way to the top. They said, we did not pick you. He

pointed to the ceiling and said you have been selected by members of the

highest level of government. What about the real bombers, Sean Lee

they should tell us what happened. That is not up to me to say. As far

as the bombers are concerned, there was a statement made in 1982. I have

it in writing. He stated then the people who had done the Birmingham

pub bombings were walking about the streets of Dublin as free men. West

Midlands Police argued in court and inquest would be neither lawful nor

necessary. It was an argument they lost. So the coroner has ordered for

the first time a full inquest into the Birmingham pub bombings. What

the police did and maybe what the police did not do. Full suite of me

in the light of day. Now this could turn out for West Midlands Police to

be a real can of worms. How do you feel that your family has been

treated by West Midlands Police? Disgracefully. The senior management

of West Midlands Police have treated us with nothing but contempt. Give

me some evidence that. In 2009 I wrote to the then Chief Constable

asking him what he was prepared to do to look for the mass murderers of

the biggest atrocity of mainland Britain's peacetime history of the

20th century. And he did not have the courtesy to respond, he got his

inspector to respond, basically telling me in paragraph he was too

busy for the likes of us. Do you think it is possible the police are

not keen on having an because any enquiry right make them look not

very good? Yes I think they are afraid of their own history. Is that

sufficient reason not to have an inquest? Absolutely not. What are we

paying them for? Birmingham today is a different place from more than

four decades ago. The city and country faces a new terrorist threat

from a different quarter. But how prepared are we for the Terra

perhaps to come if we are not ready to learn lessons from the mistakes

of the past? Well joining me now in the studio

are Sean O'Callaghan, a Provisional Former Met Police

Commander Bob Milton. And from Birmingham,

we're joined by Julie Hambleton, whose sister Maxine was among the 21

victims in the bombings. Julie, what would success looks like

in this new inquest? What are you hoping will be achieved?

Fundamentally we want the truth. Because that is what we have been

fighting for, that is what has been hidden from us for the last four

decades and that is what the families want. Is that the truth

about who did it, or the truth about the behaviour of the police? Both

counts. Who did it and what the police did or did not do. If they

did not do the job they were meant to do, they need to put their hands

up and admit to it. We believe that is the case, the evidence is there,

so they might as well just come forward and be truthful, be

transparent. Let me talk about both sides of that to my guests. Do you

think an inquest will learn anything, reveal anything new about

the perpetrators, about what they meant to do, what elements went

wrong? I don't think we will learn anything about who did it because we

know who did it. It may be the case or information will come out about

either mismanagement, failings by the West Midlands Police, but I do

not believe we will learn any more than we know about who did it

because we know who did it. Do you think there is any chance they might

come out and say, look, we did it. Not all of them are actually alive,

the alleged perpetrators. It took the Provisional IRA in 11 years to

admit they carried out the Birmingham bombings. They denied it

for 11 years. People like Chris Mullins were eventually dragged to

admit it. The people who know... There were over 40 bomb explosions

before the Birmingham bombs in the West Midlands, a very active group

in the area. People who know what happened the leadership of the

Provisional IRA, some in public office today, they know what

happened and perhaps they should be asked to come forward because they

held enquiries, perhaps they should be asked to tell the family is

exactly what happened and they know better than anybody else. Julie, if

it was the case the people who did it could be induced to come and talk

about what had happened, on condition they were not arrested,

charged or convicted, would you accept that, that it became a truth

commission rather than an inquest, or a court into the perpetrators?

Absolutely not because what we would be effectively agreeing to is a get

out of jail free card which is pretty much what Tony Blair gave

them in the on the run letters. That is not what from my family's

perspective we would agree to. These men, well, these specimens, have

killed with impunity, without any fear of retribution. What future is

there for future generations if we do not fight the truth, justice and

accountability? Because all we are doing is giving a green light to

future terrorist organisations to come to our cities and kill without

fear of retribution. The justice is more important to you than the

truth? Because maybe you will not get the truth because if they think

they will be arrested they will not talk about it, so the two may be in

conflict. Everything is in conflict here. The conflict is we have laws

in England and the UK that nobody appears to want to implement. We

also belong to the European Union, who has the European arrest warrant.

Nobody wants to implement map. The fact that they claim, everyone

claims they know who did it, yet no one is prepared to go over and

extradite them to this country. You had this morning Kieron Conway

admitting he planted bombs, Radio 4, for goodness sake, where on earth

could you admit radio you planted bombs and could have killed people

from those bombs and get up and walk away free? I heard that exchange on

the radio, I understand. I will move on to the police side. We have

talked about the IRA side. Do you think the police will learn anything

from an inquest? What Julie Hambleton has said is absolutely

right. These people need to be brought to justice and if there is

any chance, any evidence that will bring these people to justice...

John says people know who they are, it is about time people come forward

to bring these people to justice and she is right. Is that realistic? I

think the reality is that two of the people directly responsible for

planting the Birmingham bombs are dead. One of the people who ordered

the bombs is dead. Two are still alive. The Provisional IRA carried

out enquiries into what happened in Birmingham. More than anybody else,

people in the Provisional IRA, senior in the movement at the time,

and are still senior Republicans today, know precisely what happened.

Where I lose the plot on this is that I agree completely, we tend to

lose sight of first principles. There were almost 50 bombs leading

up to the Birmingham bombings. The Provisional IRA carried out that

campaign of murder and destruction in the West Midlands. They are

responsible. The leadership carried it out. I want to get onto the

police side. Will the police learn anything into what they were doing?

The West Midlands Police, if what Julie Hambleton is saying is true,

they need to understand how to deal with victim is. In the present?

Absolutely. That is not the purpose of the inquest. I believe that the

West Midlands Police should be open, transparent about what happened on

that night. The standards we apply now are different to the standards

then. That is not an excuse, it is different. At the time we were

struggling to deal with the sophisticated terrorist

organisation, but there is no reason why we should not be open and honest

about what happened about the police response, and the intelligence

available. There are a sinister theories around

about moles in MI5 who would have known what was happening, do you

think there is any chance that this inquest would an cover or expose

something as, a scandal on the scale of that? I would be surprised. I

suspect what we are dealing with here is incompetence, systems

breaking down, not sharing intelligence. Because simply at the

time we were struggling to deal with the problem. I wish we could spend

longer on this but thank you all, particularly you Julie, I know you

have had a long day. And in Australia, they can also win

you the right to reside It's called a points-based

immigration system, and it's been dominating

the referendum campaign today. Has anyone been scoring

points in the campaign? If we have an Australian

points-based system, then we can You would get a race

to the bottom and that's exactly We can do it, June 23rd will be

Independence Day for Britain. Well, it's not up to

the Leave campaign to adopt a new immigration policy -

but the suggestion that a points-based system

would be our best option should I'm joined by John Longworth,

the former Director General of the British Chambers of Commerce

and now the chairman And by Kavita Oberoi,

the Remain-supporting founder Thank you both for coming in, to be

cleared John, you are in the business guy at Vote Leave, you are

happy with the line of coming out of the single market so we don't have

do have free movement? Absolutely. A lot of businesses think it's the

worst idea. It's nonsense, the single market is a Mirage. We can

trade perfectly well without it. The points -based system, we have that

her non-EU immigration at the moment don't we? Is it working? It is a

sort of points -based system, it might not be rigorous enough. The

whole thing about migration is not just a business issue, it is a

social issue and we have the worst possible of all worlds at the moment

because we have a system that allows and limited supply of cheap labour

from the EU and is creating a low-wage, low skill, low

productivity economy and at the same time we are unable to actually

access the skills we need from outside the EU where all the IT

engineers people are. It's the worst thing for business. It's a disaster

for working people. I am asked in that if you are going to control

immigration as Vote Leave want, you use points to do that. There is a

type of points -based system for external EU migration but the key

thing is you need a system based on economic need, flexible according to

economic need and is applied rigorous way. Kavita do you have

experience of trying to bring in foreign -based workers? Not bringing

migrants in, not applying the system, but I disagree with what you

are saying in terms of the economy. If we look at the points -based

system it doesn't take ability and attitude into consideration at all.

It can take attitude because how do you, you're not going to give them a

job interview and score them. Absolutely, my father was a migrant

who came over here in the 60s. On the points -based system he would

take age but not education or skills. He created a

third-generation business, successfully. You can look at a

better system which looks at skills and qualifications, I appreciate the

attitude point but you can create a system which takes other things into

account. It is difficult, if you look at a report in 2014 on the

whole points -based system, the impact on GDP, it's not really

there. Andrew Crean of migration watch who is not fond of high levels

of uncontrolled migration I think it's fair to say, is not a fan of

the Australian system because he thinks you need to apply some

judgment as to who you will let in and a points -based system, I think

I am putting it right, has a spurious precision to it, that a

computer can get the right answer. A points -based system would require

somebody to have a job before coming in, so you are combining the best of

both worlds. At the moment we have no incentive for employers to train

people, we have a national scandal of almost half a million and played

under 25s which is really bad news because employers are not training

people -- unemployed under 25s. It's been a disaster for working people

because in this cycle wages should be rising and they are not. Kavita

that is the criticism, that you don't have to train British people

to do the jobs you need filled because you just import them?

Absolutely not because apprenticeships are at the highest

they have ever been. As employers we do look at, I don't look at if

someone is a migrant or if they are from here, what I am looking at is

the best person for the job. That is what employers are interested in. I

can understand you will have some professions where you need extra

people, construction or bust riding whatever, IT. But it almost seems as

if we are importing workers for everything, as if we are making the

country bigger brother than filling the bottlenecks. Is what you are

describing strategic immigration or is it just making the country bigger

because we take skilled workers, unskilled workers, construction

workers, we take...? I don't know if we do, from my perspective as an

employer if we put out a job advert we want the best people to apply and

we will screen and look at that will stop sometimes we don't get that,

for some jobs it will be the migrants that are applying for those

jobs. Nobody is taking those jobs away from anyone else, those jobs

are there and it's an open market for everyone to apply. But some

economies are absolutely, some industries, the farmers in Norfolk

for example, the businesses would collapse tomorrow if we do and have

migrants. Health care and the key sector. We need to leave it there,

thank you. Let's take stock of the campaigning mood today.

Nick Watt is here to take the temperature of the campaigns.

It's been a week of shifting morale, let's start with the Leave campaign.

It's clear Vote Leave are making the running at the moment because we are

talking about what John's campaign is talking about but officially

Remain are confident because they say the most fundamental issue is

the economy which is with them. We have an appearance by Alistair

Darling and George Osborne ended early Telegraph saying the economic

plans of the Leave campaign are unworkable and uncosted. But I am

picking up nerves on the Remain side, I was talking to a well-placed

minister today who said he is nervous about the sour atmosphere on

immigration and highlighting two particular concerns, number one that

the Prime Minister has a day job, he was at the Jutland ceremony

yesterday and was not able to respond as Boris Johnson and Michael

Gove got going. Concern number two is the Labour campaign, Alan Johnson

is the head of that, he is nice and affable but not very much a

politician of today. Jeremy Corbyn will try to show tomorrow when he

comes back from his break that he is engaged in what the European Union

has done for workers' rights. What about the Leave campaign? They are a

bit more buoyant because there was a poll in The Guardian which was

better news for them. They are looking at drilling down into the

figures, one they are looking at was a Twitter message by the academic

Matthew Goodwin who highlighted the comparison between the Scottish

referendum and this referendum, bad news for the SNP in that referendum

is that they were always behind on voters thinking will you be worse

off in an independent Scotland. That same question in this referendum,

only a fifth of voters are according to YouGov believe that they would be

worse off if we left the EU and almost half say it would not make

any difference. They are also interested in the issue of security,

Vote Leave was concerned they could be vulnerable if we leave the EU,

more vulnerable to a terrorist attack but that YouGov poll shows

that as many as half of the voters believe that leaving the EU would

make no difference in that area. If we had polling guru seat they would

be saying that the fundamentals have not moved, it is even Stevens with

Remain perhaps even a little ahead. Thank you.

Is it a cause for celebration that the first aid for three

and a half years has today gone into the besieged Damascus

But, while that's help for about 4,000 people,

there's nothing to celebrate in the fact that nearly

most trapped by the Syrian government.

Secunder Kermani has been speaking to people in Darayya,

and to residents of a town that has not yet received help.

We don't even know how it all started.

The people in Darayya have been trying to capture the world's

The suburb of Darayya was one of the first places to rise up

been been under siege from his forces for

almost four years and until today, in that time, no aid has been

Activists sent us this video of a family eating

yesterday, what has become for many their only daily meal.

Darayya is one of a number of areas in Syria held by opposition forces

but being besieged by the President Assad regime. It is not only his

forces who used the tactic, two town 's head by regime loyalists are

being besieged by Islamist rebels in Idlib. But some aid has been able to

reach these areas. The world food programme has carried out air drops,

it's not considered particularly efficient but it's a last resort.

But there have been no air drops and virtually no aid to the majority of

pounds besieged by President Assad. The group of countries working the

Syria crisis had set today as the deadline to allow access to the

siege to towns and if it was not they would begin air drops. Today in

what the Foreign Secretary called a cynical move the regime allowed

limited aid into Darayya and another area. Other besieged areas are still

calling for air drops. Like Homs where you can hear the bombs

dropped. Besieged areas hit the headlines in

January with images of starving children in opposition held Medea

where dozens died before the regime allowed an aid convoy through. Some

say it is a deliberate ploy by President Assad to create and then

partially resolve crises. The regime likes to use this as a tactic to

divert discussion away from political tracts in Geneva and to

replace it more with you manage it questions. Particularly about

negotiations over humanitarian access. In this video from Darayya

children make a cake out of mud. The ambassador today described the aid

is too little too late. With almost 600,000 people living in areas

besieged mainly by the regime the International committee will meet on

Friday to discuss the possibility of air drops. Secunder Kermani there.

You may not have heard of the Templeton Prize -

it's sometimes characterised as a kind of Nobel for religion.

The prize honours a living person who has made "an exceptional

contribution to affirming life's spiritual dimension".

Given that spiritual objective, the prize is remarkably

materialistic in the sense that it pays out serious money to the winner

This year, that jackpot was won by the former Chief Rabbi,

Lord Jonathan Sacks, who has for decades been writing

and talking on themes of faith, tolerance and peace.

I sat down with Lord Sacks, on the day he received his prize.

His latest book is about religion and conflict - so I thought I'd

Not always, not inevitably, and every substitute

for religion leads to war, so the cause of war is not religion,

It's that nasty little thing called human impulse and anger.

So religion doesn't lead to violence, but it can very much

intensify it, or provide a justification.

I think no one expected this in the 21st century.

It is interesting you're making this point now because a lot

of people are saying the era in which we are living is one

in which there is a clamour, or a need, for people to find

identity - identity politics, nationalist politics

People feeling like their voice needs to be heard, they need

to shout more loudly because their tribe is not getting

We lost that in the welter of multiculturalism and said,

it is very impolite to have a national identity.

This gets to the heart of a very awkward dilemma about whether we all

should have a shared identity, or whether we should encourage

people to have their own identity in a multicultural England or Britain.

The real difference is this, if there is collective

If you have multiculturalism, society is a hotel.

It was supposed to lead to greater tolerance.

What it led to was what Trevor Phillips called

Multiculturalism did not promote tolerance or shared identity.

It said, you go off and do your own thing.

And that turns out to be very destructive.

Well, that brings us to a very timely topic, which

Many of the British Jewish community have said they have

noticed a step-change in the level of hostility.

Have you noticed that, does that worry you?

Well, I noticed it because our youngest daughter encountered this

I found this deeply shocking, because I have not,

had not and have not, experienced a single episode

I am not exactly low-profile - Chief Rabbis are fairly known to be

Of course it is always in a new form, because anti-Semitism

is so socially unacceptable that it can only survive

the way a virus survives, which is by mutating.

In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated for their religion.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, you were not allowed to hate anyone

for their religion, because this is post-Enlightenment Europe.

Today, you can't hate anyone for their race,

so you hate them for their nation state, and that is why anti-Zionism

This gets to the heart of a difficulty some people

are feeling about this whole chat about anti-Semitism because some

people feel incredibly strongly about the state of Israel and things

they don't like about it, particularly

They feel the charge of anti-Semitism is effectively

being used to kind of put a moral question over their

A group of school kids asked me that question a week ago.

I said, tell me, hands up which of you believes

it is legitimate to criticise the British Government?

I said, which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist?

I said, now you know the difference between criticism of the state

How surprised have you been about the problems the Labour Party has

been through with Ken Livingstone and charges of anti-Semitism?

How serious do you think a problem the party has?

I think the problem is so simple, just practice zero tolerance the way

you would to any other kind of unacceptable prejudice.

Just do it and the problem is solved.

Lord Sacks, Jonathan Sacks, thank you very much.

The television industry had its issues with fakery in years past.

The sexing up of material with misleading edits

The issues at stake were rather less black and white than many people

realised because every day we inevitably fake things

in television - usually innocuous things, like getting someone to walk

up a corridor a few times so we can get a variety of shots of them.

If we didn't do that, we wouldn't get you a programme.

But now photography is in the midst of its own debate about

One of the most celebrated photojournalists, Steve McCurry, has

been exposed as engaging in some digital enhancements.

as a photojournalist for eight years, but now works as an artist

This photograph is about the Zambian space programme.

Nicola Kurtz who won the Amnesty International Media Award

This is from her photo essay Texas dust bowl. Good evening. The Zambian

space programme, is this a piece of fantasy, fiction, journalism?

Explain what it is. It is an anecdote in African history that you

do not make it to the front page of a newspaper in 1964 but something

that really happened and I re-enacted the whole thing to

explain it. I recreated it. No mum would have been confused you have

not pictured the real thing or do you think they might have been? No,

because I was not publishing it in any newspaper. I made a photo book

and I have been showing missing galleries and magazines. Nicola, how

far do you go in doing anything other than showing the photograph

your camera takes? When you put it through Photoshop, which if you do

digital photography every photographer does, you might tweak

the colour balance because that is altered. Also you might sharpen the

image slightly and you might crop it and that is it. Why does that define

the boundary of what you are allowed to do? You might remove the child

with the gun if you want to show the people are peace-loving and crop

that out, so that is a bit phoney, is it? Yes, but you can also choose

not to take a photograph of the child with a gun. Any photography in

the field is an editorial process. Pushing the shutter is your

viewpoint, focusing on certain elements within that scenario,

removing the elements you don't wish to show in that, which often is used

to clarify the image. And then you have it on film or on memory stick.

You would not remove a rather distracting and ugly fire hydrant in

the bottom of the photo that slightly spoiled the composition?

No, because then to be the photograph has not worked. You move,

or you stand above the fire hydrant and then you don't have a fire

hydrant. You call yourself a visual storyteller, you are not a

photojournalist any more?. Any more. I used to be. When you were, would

you have removed a fire hydrant if it spoiled the photo? No, I would

never have done that. No, if you have time enough you move and take

the picture where the fire hydrant is not any more or you do not select

the picture in the end. What you refer to cropping and colour

enhancement, is what is acceptable for photojournalism, all the rest is

acceptable but not to be published and shared as a piece of truth, red

lines you cannot cross. Did you leave photojournalism and become a

visual storyteller because you found it constraining, the rules of

photojournalism? Yes, totally. I have nothing against photojournalism

but it is not giving a complete picture of the world we live in and

we need to use other tools like fiction, re-creation, imagination to

explain complicated world we live in stock we cannot just explain what is

happening right now in front of the camera we need analysis and opinion

to get the whole picture of it. Do you think visual storytelling is a

good art? It is if it is stated as being such. There is a famous

photographer called Sally Mann who took phenomenal images initially

people thought were photojournalism. They were not, they were set up with

her family and she always said they were, it was when you came to them

as an unwitting viewer you can misinterpret that. The biggest

problem with this Steve McCurry thing is that I watched a lot of his

statements about his work after he shot the last ever role of

Kodachrome. This is how much of a God he is in the colour photographic

repertoire, particularly in America. The problem is he said about the

subjects he photographed, how you should treat them as equals, say

hello to them, explain what you are doing, treat them with true respect,

and yet with this incidence in his blog, he does not seem to have

treated the viewer, consumer office work, with as much respect. I think

he said he regrets about not being clearer. He has now said he is not

going to do it at all. It is a mishap will stop it has brought a

huge amount of discussion into what is real and what isn't, which is

good for photography, but it does learn the lines between fact and

fiction. Bloodlines, always going to be some of those. Thanks.

I'll be back tomorrow, but we leave you with a rare foray

into wildlife documentary, without any fakery.

You might have seen that seven new species of spider

have been discovered, as they usually are, in Australia.

Arachnophobes fear not, they're called peacock spiders,

they're only a couple of millimetres long and - apparently -

# A little less conversation, a little more action.

Hello, so far this week the best in the