Martin Bell is a troublemaker. He says so himself: ‘I go and make trouble because I can speak up against abuses in the way MPs can’t.’ This may explain why politicians like Blair, Brown and their cronies become so agitated when they hear Martin Bell is around.

A BBC war correspondent for thirty years, he reported from the conflicts in Vietnam, the Middle East, Rwanda and Northern Ireland among many others. In a change of career, Bell was elected to Parliament in 1997 as an independent MP in the previously thought safe Conservative constituency of Tatton, in Cheshire. He stood against the Conservative MP Neil Hamilton, who was at the time embroiled in the ‘cash-for-questions’ sleaze; Bell won the seat, overturning Hamilton’s majority of more than 20,000.

Reading Bell’s latest book, The Truth that Sticks: New Labour’s Breach of Trust, reveals why unscrupulous politicians are right to be wary of him. Bell sets out in no-nonsense terms New Labour’s deceptions in taking us to war in Iraq, the sleaze now endemic in the House of Commons and a multitude of other betrayals of public trust.

In March 2003, Tony Blair reported to the British public on the threat we faced from Iraq, based on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), which he warned us that Saddam Hussein possessed and which could be deployed within 45 minutes. I ask Bell about this. ‘We were totally misled. I can think of no public argument in my lifetime in which one side has won and the other’s lost more absolutely than here. We were misled. I’d never accuse Mr Blair of being a liar on this, except I think he lied to himself… He wanted to believe for domestic reasons and his political imperative of not separating himself from the White House that these weapons existed. And lo and behold: Alistair Campbell and others came up with a dossier that showed him that they don’t. It was false from start to finish, and as I say in my book I do not think it was a bad government in any other respect, but it made the worst mistake of any British government in my lifetime, by far.’

I put it to Bell that perhaps the war was justified in that some argue that it liberated the Iraqi people, but he will not countenance the idea. ‘No, no, no,’ he says, ‘One side benefit is that it got rid of Saddam Hussein and his sons, but it was not waged, this war, on the basis of regime change. It was waged on the basis of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which didn’t exist. They were wrong. What liberation? We’ve had close to 200 British soldiers dead, and somewhere between 150,000 and 600,000 Iraqis. I mean, what a disaster.’ I ask whether we would have had a chance of winning the war in Afghanistan if it hadn’t been for Iraq. ‘There was a war that was just about winnable in Afghanistan in 2002, but already in 2002 we were holding back equipment from the troops in Afghanistan (for the forthcoming Iraq war)… We can lose both wars.’

On why the government seemed so eager to take us to war, Bell explains, ‘There’s nobody in government now, not a minister or junior minister, who’s ever seen warfare; who understands the nature of soldiering or the nature of warfare. They are therefore more inclined to get into these fiascos. It’s not their sons [on the front line], almost in no cases at all. It’s other people.’ Bell describes Britain’s lack of success in Afghanistan and Iraq as partly due to politicians’ ‘ignorance of history.’

War has its casualties, of course, and I ask how Iraq has affected demand for resources such as Combat Stress, the ex-services mental welfare society. ‘There’s a great cascade of these cases now coming through from the Falklands war, more than 20 years ago. It’s delayed. And of course our British forces now, especially in Afghanistan, are subject to conditions and intensity of fighting the army hasn’t known since the Korean War, in 1953. This is going to become more serious as time goes by.’ He says of the government, ‘To some extent they’re in denial, because they don’t want to talk about casualties….The government certainly doesn’t want to think about the unseen casualties, the people who seem to be normal but are not.’ Bell is dismissive of Britain’s so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US. ‘You’ll never hear the Americans talk about it; it’s entirely a British illusion. If the Mexican president came and visited, the Americans had a special relationship with him.’

I ask Bell whether he believes that Gordon Brown and the Conservatives are now committed to cleaner politics – particularly Labour, as they did after all run their 1997 election campaign on an anti-sleaze, ‘let’s clean up politics’ basis. ‘I thought that they were. I now see they’re not… We now know that corruption in the House of Commons is widespread and endemic. It was a useful slogan in 1997 (‘let’s clean up politics’), and to be fair to the Labour government they put in place the electoral reform, which required a degree of openness in the matter of party funding; so we know now, who gave what money to what party… but the more we see of it, the more deplorable it is… The people are in a state of real rebellion about this.’ Bell describes the situation regarding cash-for-peerages as ‘blatant and outrageous.’

For a man who graduated with a first from King’s College Cambridge and has had a distinguished career, ‘the man in the white suit’ (Bell is well-known for always wearing a white suit) is remarkably modest about his achievements. When I ask him why he first wanted to become a war correspondent – when the risks were so great that he was once almost killed by shrapnel – he shrugs. ‘I never sought it out, it happened to me… I did a few wars then realised I was being asked to do nothing else, but it’s all I was qualified to do, couldn’t get out of it. It happened to me, rather like being an MP.’

As we reach the end of our discussion, I ask Bell to summarise the importance of a new kind of politics. He ponders, ‘I think there has to be someone to speak up for the people against the old kind of politics. People are in politics for what they can get out of it. The abuse of allowances. Political careerism. People go into politics who’ve never had a life outside politics, and they therefore end up taking decisions such as to go to war in Iraq, which was fundamentally flawed and false. We need a better kind of people in politics.’

Then, finally, my curiosity gets the better of any desire I have not to seem rude, and I ask him why he always wears a white suit. ‘Because I’m superstitious. Keeps me alive in dangerous places. During the war in Croatia, in 1991, I had a white suit, it’s summer, all this stuff was flying through the air – none of it hit me, so I ascribe my survival to the white suit.’ This is the end of the interview. Bell has been lively, incredibly outspoken and frank throughout, and I can see why in the world of politics this would lead him to qualify as a ‘troublemaker.’ Troublemaker or not, this is a man on a mission. Politicians, beware.

Earlier this year, the international community was shocked as a former bastion of stability in eastern Africa descended into violence, leaving about 1,500 dead and 600,000 displaced. The final vote determined that Mwai Kibaki would remain the president of Kenya, a result that many supporters of the opposition saw as rigged.
Today, only three months later, the headlines are again dominated daily by fears for the region and fresh outbreaks of violence, as the relative silence concerning the elections in another former paragon of economic progress is almost deafening.

The results of the March 29 presidential election in Zimbabwe are yet to be released. The main candidates are Robert Mugabe of Zanu-PF, who has been in power since the country gained independence in 1980, and Morgan Tsvangirai, a former miner and trade unionist, of Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). A third candidate and former minister in Mugabe’s cabinet, Simba Makoni, failed to garner much support.

No matter the precise outcome, this election has already proved to be a landmark according to results released so far. Zanu-PF has lost its majority in the House of Assembly for the first time since independence, winning 97 seats against the MDC’s 99 in the 210-seat chamber. A smaller MDC faction has 10 seats. In the Senate, or upper house, Zanu-PF and the combined opposition have 30 seats each. In reaction to claims by human rights organisations and the MDC that Mugabe has unleashed a campaign of systematic violence against his political opponents, Gordon Brown said that he was ‘appalled by the signs that the regime is once again resorting to intimidation and violence.’ He also stated that he could not understand why it was taking so long to release the results of the presidential elections, and that ‘the international community’s patience with the regime is wearing thin.’

But international intervention has been tentative at best. The 14-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) held a summit in Lusaka, Zambia, over the weekend aimed at breaking the deadlock. It urged all parties to accept the election results and asked South African President Thabo Mbeki to continue his role as SADC’s ‘facilitator on Zimbabwe.’

Mugabe himself was conspicuously absent, sending a delegation of ministers instead. The 84-year-old is said to be unwilling to take advice from leaders a generation younger than himself. His pride is well documented and not unjustified, as he was hailed as a hero in his fight for independence and considered a highly educated leader. He has referred to Tsvangirai as an ‘ignoramus’ because of his humble origins and called Gordon Brown ‘a tiny dot on this world’ after the UK PM commented on this year’s elections.

Zimbabwe enjoyed a few years of accelerated economic progress during the 1980s under Mugabe’s leadership, but it soon became clear that he was on his way to building a ruthless dictatorship. The tenacious leader has boasted that he has a ‘degree in violence’ and he has certainly proved his credentials in this respect. From the campaign of repression in the province of Matabeleland in the ’80s, which aimed to stamp out opposition, to the invasions and forced evictions on white-owned farms in 2000, Mugabe has succeeded in maintaining a one-party state in which much of the foreign media, including the BBC, is banned.

Zimbabwe currently has the highest rate of inflation in the world, at 100,000%, with 80 per cent unemployment. Whilst many blame Mugabe’s corrupt government for draining the country of its economic resources and alienating the international community, Mugabe has consistently maintained that colonialism and former white supremacist rule are at the root of Zimbabwe’s problems. He justified the invasion of white farms and his land redistribution programme by saying the land belonged to African Zimbabweans, not white settlers. His decision might have been respected if some of this land had not later been found in the hands of his cronies, and if his loyalists were not consistently enriching themselves as his people starve in rural areas.

The results of this election have huge implications for Zimbabwe and the rest of the region (for instance, the exodus of refugees into South Africa is taking its toll), and it is difficult to be optimistic about the future of the former ‘breadbasket of Africa.’ Some say that the delay in the release of the results is a sign that Mugabe has lost and that Zanu-PF are now attempting to tamper with the results. MDC has already claimed that Tsvangirai has won the majority of votes, and many analysts believe he is set for success, if those who voted for Simba Makoni turn their support to Tsvangirai in the event of a run-off.

But Tsvangirai’s party, which split into two factions in 2005, has been beset by internal rifts as some of his closest allies accuse him of acting like a dictator. Tsvangirai, 56, has been brutally assaulted, charged with treason and routinely labelled a ‘traitor’ by Mugabe and his party. In March 2007, pictures of Tsvangirai’s battered and swollen face appeared in a number of Western newspapers after he spent two days in the hospital following an attack by Mugabe’s riot police. Nonetheless, Tsvangirai used to blame many of Zimbabwe’s economic woes on the IMF’s structural adjustment programme. Now, he is working closely with industrialists who argue that market forces should be left to solve Zimbabwe’s economic problems on their own.

In the latest developments as of April 13, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has ordered a recount of ballots in 23 constituencies. A change in the parliamentary result by nine seats could see Zanu-PF regain its lost majority in the assembly. The MDC claims that it will mount a legal challenge to the recount, as they believe accepting a recount would mean accepting rigged results. As tension and speculation mount about the political future of Zimbabwe, we can only hope that when the results are finally released, we won’t see the same sort of internal strife that followed the Kenyan elections. If the final results are believed to be rigged, one can only hope that the international community will not hesitate to intervene. No matter who is to blame for the current state of the country, only a democracy, not a dictatorship, will allow it to move forward.