On Thursday, January 26th, a delegation of the NRPTT travelled to London to meet with two significant Members of the House of Commons and an Iranian director currently working on a documentary of the February 2003 protests against the war in Iraq, a project featuring Sir Richard Branson. The NRPTT delegation was composed of Marco Pannella, Matteo Mecacci (Member of the OSCE Parliament and President of the OSCE Committee on Human Rights), Matteo Angioli (Member of the NRPTT General Council and political researcher to Marco Pannella and Emma Bonino), and Stefano Marrella (Radio Radicale).

The first meeting, at 9.30 AM, with Tony Lloyd (Labour Member for Manchester Central, long time parliamentarian, President of the Labour Members of Parliament and Head of the UK Parliamentary Delegation to OSCE) lasted well about an hour. It took place in the grand hall cafeteria of the building next to Westminster where most of the deputies’ offices and parliamentary committees can be found.

Pannella initiated by presenting the Party, the election of Demba Traoré and the ongoing international campaigns on FGM and for the reinforcement of the moratorium on death penalty at the UN with NPWJ and Hands off Cain. We then moved on to the Iraq initiative, explaining our particular interest in the “Right to Truth”. Lloyd, who spoke in French with Marco, gave us his opinion on the Chilcot inquiry: i twill not have any significant impact on British politics, both because these are events that happened 10 years ago and because of the limited availability of Chilcot himself and the Cameron Government to seriously consider the most sensitive elements in this matter. According to him the final report will contain some judgments that might be disturbing to some of the former Members of the Blair Government, but nothing really compromising.

Noting the second meeting on our agenda, Lloyd advised us to have a selection of the material we collected over the years circulate among the Members of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Matteo Mecacci and Tony Lloyd also discussed some initiatives at OSCE, following up to the visit in Italy of Petros Efthimiou, Greek President of the Parliamentary Assembly and PASOK’s Group Leader in the Chamber.  During his stay in Rome Efthimiou met with Pannella and Bonino. Moreover Mecacci informed Lloyd, President of the Socialist Group at OSCE, of his proposal as President of the Human Rights Committee to organize a debate on the situation in prisons and judicial systems in the OSCE area –with a particular emphasis on the issue of preventive detention measures- during the Winter Session (February 23-24) of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. The program for the debate is being finalized and will cover both authoritarian and “democratic” states in the OSCE area.

Before we parted we had a short break in the Parliament’s courtyard to allow for Marco to smoke. As we were talking, a group of passers-by from the adjacent street elevated about 60-70meters above us, attracted the attention by calling for Marco through the grates, screaming “Pannella, we’re Italians and we love you!”. Lloyd and his assistant who had joined us in the meantime were rather surprised.

At 11.30 we met with Richard Ottaway, conservative Member for Croydon South and President of the Foreign Affairs Committee, and his Labour predecessor, former President Mike Gapes (Ilford South). After briefly introducing the Party, we reentered into the discussion on our dossier, higlighting certain parliamentary events, in particular by ex Labour Minister Clare Short and the official denunciation of certain events by Conservative Member Peter Lilley. Peter Lilley raised a point of order during the debate on the 10^th of March in which former Foreign Minister Jack Straw deceived the House of Commons by stating false information to allow for the support of the House in siding with Bush in the upcoming invasion.

President Ottaway replied that the Chilcot Commission being an independent commission, Parliament would not take a stand before the publication of the final report next summer. They have no intention of influencing Chilcot’s work because over the course of their work in the past two years, the evidence has been gathered according to strict criteria of independence established by the Commission itself upon its creation. President Ottaway however showed his availability to receive our documentation and pass it on to Chilcot, even though he believes it too late to be taken into serious consideration.  

Finally, after Matteo Mecacci left for voting in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, Pannella and Angioli met with Iranian director Amir Amirani, who is working on the production of the documentary “We are many”. The meeting, which was attended by co-producer Frances Saunders who speaks an excellent Italian, pointed out that Amirani intends to focus his film on the grand opposition between the pacifist anti-war mobilization (according to the director ‘without precedent in the world’ as to the reassembled masses) and the work of governments and power to pursue an opposite agenda.

Amirani was among the supporters of the February 15 – 2003 manifestation, participating in Berlin. An important element for us that Sir Richard Branson is also involved in his project, given that he took personal action to convince Saddam Hussein to retreat into exile.

We thus remain in contact with Amirani and will continue to work together. In addition to Branson, the film will also be featuring Tony Benn, Jesse Jackson, Noam Chomsky and Ken Loach. Some of them will be critical for the lack of organization and the extemporaneous character of the protest.