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Current Affairs

A View of British Government From the Inside w/ former Labour MP Chris Mullin

Current Affairs

Current Affairs

Comedy, Government, News, Culture, Politics

4.4645 Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I'm the editor-in-chief of Current Affairs magazine.

0:19.0

My guest today is Chris Mullen. Chris Mullen has had a most unusual life

0:26.0

in British politics. He began as a journalist and became well known for leading the campaign

0:34.8

for the release of the Birmingham Six, who were victims of a serious

0:39.9

miscarriage of justice when they were falsely accused of a major IRA bombing in the 70s.

0:46.4

That case is still in the news because Chris Mullen led a multi-decade effort to keep from having to disclose his sources for the story,

0:59.3

and the police are still trying to get him to reveal the names of those who were involved in the bombing,

1:05.6

and Chris Mullen has long been a campaigner for journalistic independence.

1:10.5

Chris Mullen was a member of Parliament for Sunderland South from 1987 to 2010,

1:15.6

where he became known as part of the Labour Left, but an eclectic part of the Labour Left.

1:20.6

He served in Tony Blair's government, but he was the only member of that government

1:25.6

to vote against the Iraq war. He became known

1:30.5

for his political diaries, which document his time in power and were acclaimed as an essential

1:37.5

document for understanding the new labor era in British politics. He is also a novelist having written the novel, a very British

1:48.2

coup in the 1980s, and most recently its sequel, The Friends of Harry Perkins. There's a lot to

1:55.2

Chris Mullen. I want to just read this description from The Guardian who say,

2:01.3

Chris Mullen is a bit of a mystery, a left-wing troublemaker who managed to serve in the Blair government,

2:06.7

a weedy-looking operator who took on the police in the IRA to free the Birmingham 6,

2:11.2

an idealistic socialist reporter who freeloads for the Sun and Telegraph,

2:15.4

a dedicated parliamentarian who did not enter the Commons until he was 39,

2:19.3

a writer of conspiratorial novels who reinvented himself

2:22.3

as a self-deprecating, almost cozy political diarist.

...

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