SOUTHEND: Martin Bell talks sleaze & corruption

Distinguished journalist and one time independent MP, Martin Bell, takes to the stage at Southend Library to promote his new book ‘A Very British Revolution’.

The ex-BBC News foreign correspondent takes to the floor to give a talk and answer questions on 29th September at the Central Library on Victoria Avenue at 7.30pm.

At a time when the country faces harsh economic decisions, the MP expenses scandal still casts its shadow.

Martin’s career places him in a unique position to uncover issues of corruption and sleaze.

As an ambassador for UNICEF his work now takes on a new direction, but his interest in journalism and politics continues.

Martin Bell joined the BBC as a reporter in Norwich in 1962 as a twenty-four year-old, following his graduation.

He moved to London three years later, beginning a distinguished career as a foreign affairs correspondent with his first assignment in Ghana. Over the next thirty years, he covered eleven conflicts and reported from eighty countries, making his name with reports from wars and conflicts in Vietnam, Middle East, Nigeria, Angola, and in Northern Ireland.

He won the Royal Television Society’s Reporter of the Year award in 1977 and 1993, and was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1992. That same year, whilst covering the war in Bosnia Bell was seriously wounded by shrapnel while recording a report. The grenade was fired by Serbian forces.

From his long experience, Bell came to believe that the tradition of neutral reporting of armed conflicts did a disservice to the viewers where it was clear that one side was committing atrocities, and wrote a book outlining his belief. He remained an official BBC correspondent, although from the mid-1990s he filed relatively few reports, and became disillusioned with the BBC.

In 1997, twenty-four days before that year’s British General Election, Martin Bell announced that he was leaving the BBC to stand as an independent candidate in the Tatton constituency in Cheshire. Tatton was one of the safest Tory seats in the country, where the sitting Conservative Member of Parliament, Neil Hamilton, was embroiled in “sleaze” allegations. The Labour and Lib Dem parties withdrew their candidates in Bell’s favour in a plan masterminded by Alistair Campbell, Tony Blair”s press secretary.

Hamilton was trounced, and Martin Bell was elected an MP with a majority of 11,077 votes– overturning a Conservative majority of over 22,000 – and thus became the first successful independent parliamentary candidate since 1951.

More recently, He announced that he was considering standing against a third Conservative MP, Sir Nicholas Winterton, the MP for Macclesfield in the 2010 General Election, but following the latter’s announcement that he was not going to seek re-election, did not do so.  He indicated that he might stand against Hazel Blears in Salford (the first sitting MP of a party other than the Conservative party against whom he expressed an interest in standing) although in the end he did not stand in any constituency.

In 2001, Martin was appointed UNICEF UK Ambassador for Humanitarian Emergencies.

Tickets for the talk at Southend Library are priced at £9 – call the ticket hotline on 01702 534147.