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BEN WHITAKER OBITUARY
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
Former Labour MP for Hampstead who made important contributions to
civil liberties in the UK and abroad
Geoffrey Robertson The Guardian, Sunday 15 June 2014 16.28 BST
Ben Whitaker enthused that his Hampstead electorate was 'full of
argumentative idealists' like himself
The former Labour MP for Hampstead, north London, Ben Whitaker, who
has died aged 79, was the embodiment of the liberal values associated
with the area. At the 1966 election he won the Hampstead seat, for
81 years a Tory fiefdom, from the reactionary former home secretary
Henry Brooke, and championed the progressive social reforms of the
Harold Wilson government, in which he held a number of posts.
Subsequently, as a human rights lawyer long before this was a
fashionable career, he made distinguished contributions to civil
liberties in Britain, and especially abroad, through his leadership
of the Minority Rights Group and then of the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation and as a UN rapporteur.
Ben was born in Nottinghamshire, the son of Major General Sir John
Whitaker and his wife, Pamela (nee Snowden), who were not modern enough
to avoid sending him to Eton. He subsequently did national service in
the Coldstream Guards, before graduating from New College, Oxford,
to the bar. After what he described as this "Victorian education",
he lectured in law at London University and became outraged at the
conduct of the police, who at the time were framing Stephen Ward,
planting bricks on political protesters and, in Sheffield, had been
caught beating suspects with rhino whips. His first book, The Police
(1964), was written with the object of restricting their powers.
His concern for human rights took him on Amnesty International
missions, most daringly in 1965 to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), at the
repressive height of Ian Smith's UDI. His heavily pregnant wife, Janet,
accompanied him, hiding banned anti-UDI literature under her dress:
they reckoned (correctly) that the sexist chivalry of the Rhodesian
police would preclude a body search.
They managed to enter one of Smith's secret detention camps,
and afterwards Ben arranged to be interviewed live on the heavily
censored Rhodesian Television Service (now the Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation). After 10 minutes during which he condemned "an illegal
police state afraid of the truth", the police raided the studio,
claiming he had broken laws against bringing Smith into disrepute
and revealing the secret detentions. He had to exit the studio by
the back door, collect Janet, and make a quick escape to the airport.
Back in Hampstead - an electorate, he enthused, that was "full
of argumentative idealists" like himself - his opposition to US
involvement in Vietnam and to a new white paper on immigration,
made him popular with what the Guardian described as "a horde of
militant Labour helpers". Many keen youthful canvassers made their
way to Hampstead and Ben sensibly put them to work on things that
really mattered to residents: campaigning against parking meters and
a one-way traffic scheme. His victory was assured.
As a Labour MP, he served as parliamentary private secretary to the
minister for overseas development and then to the minister for housing,
finding time to write Crime and Society (1967), Participation and
Poverty (1968) and Parks for People (1971). He helped to organise
support within the Labour party for the progressive objectives of
Roy Jenkins and Gerald Gardiner: abolishing theatre censorship,
ending the death penalty and the "matrimonial crime" of adultery,
and decriminalising homosexuality and abortion.
Although sometimes humorously sardonic about Wilson, he respected
his stand against apartheid and UDI, and refused to join in the plots
against him.
Ben remained a great champion of life's losers - hence his continuing
support for Nottingham Forest FC. In 1971 he became executive director
of the Minority Rights Group, writing and publishing well-researched
reports on communities - some that had never been mentioned before
by the media - that were being subjected to physical and cultural
destruction by their states or through the actions of multinational
corporations. "Indigenous rights" was a little-known concept at
the time.
In 1975, David Owen appointed him as British representative on a
UN sub-committee on the rights of minorities, and in 1985 it handed
him the hottest of hot potatoes: to investigate whether the Turkish
atrocities against the Armenians amounted to genocide. He concluded
emphatically that they did, and refused to withdraw his report despite
a furious response from Turkey. In recent years he was particularly
critical of "genocide equivocation" by the UK government, which refused
to mention his report and claimed that the evidence for Turkish guilt
was "not sufficiently unequivocal". He was pleased when this misleading
formula, devised by the Foreign Office to avoid political and economic
reprisals from Turkey, was finally exposed and dropped in 2010.
Ben maintained strong and combative interests both in defending culture
from political philistines and in encouraging new forms of art that
governments were not prepared to subsidise. The anti-censorship group
the Defence of Literature and the Arts Society, of which he was chair,
out-lobbied Mary Whitehouse in her attacks on the BBC and the National
Theatre. Later, as executive director of the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, he took great pleasure in encouraging competition between
museums and in backing art that was too experimental or "political"
for government funders to contemplate.
His work for the foundation, which was established in Portugal,
earned him a Portuguese Order of Merit.
In his last years, this most sociable of socialists took pleasure in
his wife's performances in the Lords (she was raised to the peerage
in 1999), his daughter Quincy's courtroom accomplishments and in his
other children and grandchildren. He became a dab hand at painting
and flower arranging, and not even the pain from a broken ankle that
refused to heal could stop him furiously agitating and fundraising
almost single-handedly for a statue of George Orwell to be placed
outside BBC Broadcasting House. He will not now be present for the
unveiling of the Martin Jennings sculpture, but he would have wished it
inscribed with his favourite aphorism, from the censored introduction
to Animal Farm, which states the principle for which his own life stood
and for which he wanted the BBC to stand: "If liberty means anything at
all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".
He is survived by Janet, their children, Quincy, Dan and Rasaq,
and six grandchildren.
* Benjamin Charles George Whitaker, author, campaigner
and politician, born 15 September 1934; died 9 June 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/15/ben-whitaker
From: A. Papazian
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
Former Labour MP for Hampstead who made important contributions to
civil liberties in the UK and abroad
Geoffrey Robertson The Guardian, Sunday 15 June 2014 16.28 BST
Ben Whitaker enthused that his Hampstead electorate was 'full of
argumentative idealists' like himself
The former Labour MP for Hampstead, north London, Ben Whitaker, who
has died aged 79, was the embodiment of the liberal values associated
with the area. At the 1966 election he won the Hampstead seat, for
81 years a Tory fiefdom, from the reactionary former home secretary
Henry Brooke, and championed the progressive social reforms of the
Harold Wilson government, in which he held a number of posts.
Subsequently, as a human rights lawyer long before this was a
fashionable career, he made distinguished contributions to civil
liberties in Britain, and especially abroad, through his leadership
of the Minority Rights Group and then of the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation and as a UN rapporteur.
Ben was born in Nottinghamshire, the son of Major General Sir John
Whitaker and his wife, Pamela (nee Snowden), who were not modern enough
to avoid sending him to Eton. He subsequently did national service in
the Coldstream Guards, before graduating from New College, Oxford,
to the bar. After what he described as this "Victorian education",
he lectured in law at London University and became outraged at the
conduct of the police, who at the time were framing Stephen Ward,
planting bricks on political protesters and, in Sheffield, had been
caught beating suspects with rhino whips. His first book, The Police
(1964), was written with the object of restricting their powers.
His concern for human rights took him on Amnesty International
missions, most daringly in 1965 to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), at the
repressive height of Ian Smith's UDI. His heavily pregnant wife, Janet,
accompanied him, hiding banned anti-UDI literature under her dress:
they reckoned (correctly) that the sexist chivalry of the Rhodesian
police would preclude a body search.
They managed to enter one of Smith's secret detention camps,
and afterwards Ben arranged to be interviewed live on the heavily
censored Rhodesian Television Service (now the Zimbabwe Broadcasting
Corporation). After 10 minutes during which he condemned "an illegal
police state afraid of the truth", the police raided the studio,
claiming he had broken laws against bringing Smith into disrepute
and revealing the secret detentions. He had to exit the studio by
the back door, collect Janet, and make a quick escape to the airport.
Back in Hampstead - an electorate, he enthused, that was "full
of argumentative idealists" like himself - his opposition to US
involvement in Vietnam and to a new white paper on immigration,
made him popular with what the Guardian described as "a horde of
militant Labour helpers". Many keen youthful canvassers made their
way to Hampstead and Ben sensibly put them to work on things that
really mattered to residents: campaigning against parking meters and
a one-way traffic scheme. His victory was assured.
As a Labour MP, he served as parliamentary private secretary to the
minister for overseas development and then to the minister for housing,
finding time to write Crime and Society (1967), Participation and
Poverty (1968) and Parks for People (1971). He helped to organise
support within the Labour party for the progressive objectives of
Roy Jenkins and Gerald Gardiner: abolishing theatre censorship,
ending the death penalty and the "matrimonial crime" of adultery,
and decriminalising homosexuality and abortion.
Although sometimes humorously sardonic about Wilson, he respected
his stand against apartheid and UDI, and refused to join in the plots
against him.
Ben remained a great champion of life's losers - hence his continuing
support for Nottingham Forest FC. In 1971 he became executive director
of the Minority Rights Group, writing and publishing well-researched
reports on communities - some that had never been mentioned before
by the media - that were being subjected to physical and cultural
destruction by their states or through the actions of multinational
corporations. "Indigenous rights" was a little-known concept at
the time.
In 1975, David Owen appointed him as British representative on a
UN sub-committee on the rights of minorities, and in 1985 it handed
him the hottest of hot potatoes: to investigate whether the Turkish
atrocities against the Armenians amounted to genocide. He concluded
emphatically that they did, and refused to withdraw his report despite
a furious response from Turkey. In recent years he was particularly
critical of "genocide equivocation" by the UK government, which refused
to mention his report and claimed that the evidence for Turkish guilt
was "not sufficiently unequivocal". He was pleased when this misleading
formula, devised by the Foreign Office to avoid political and economic
reprisals from Turkey, was finally exposed and dropped in 2010.
Ben maintained strong and combative interests both in defending culture
from political philistines and in encouraging new forms of art that
governments were not prepared to subsidise. The anti-censorship group
the Defence of Literature and the Arts Society, of which he was chair,
out-lobbied Mary Whitehouse in her attacks on the BBC and the National
Theatre. Later, as executive director of the Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation, he took great pleasure in encouraging competition between
museums and in backing art that was too experimental or "political"
for government funders to contemplate.
His work for the foundation, which was established in Portugal,
earned him a Portuguese Order of Merit.
In his last years, this most sociable of socialists took pleasure in
his wife's performances in the Lords (she was raised to the peerage
in 1999), his daughter Quincy's courtroom accomplishments and in his
other children and grandchildren. He became a dab hand at painting
and flower arranging, and not even the pain from a broken ankle that
refused to heal could stop him furiously agitating and fundraising
almost single-handedly for a statue of George Orwell to be placed
outside BBC Broadcasting House. He will not now be present for the
unveiling of the Martin Jennings sculpture, but he would have wished it
inscribed with his favourite aphorism, from the censored introduction
to Animal Farm, which states the principle for which his own life stood
and for which he wanted the BBC to stand: "If liberty means anything at
all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear".
He is survived by Janet, their children, Quincy, Dan and Rasaq,
and six grandchildren.
* Benjamin Charles George Whitaker, author, campaigner
and politician, born 15 September 1934; died 9 June 2014
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jun/15/ben-whitaker
From: A. Papazian