I HAVE enjoyed working for the BBC, most recently in Holby City and River City.
The BBC is one of the very few major employers of actors in television, radio and film. Now, along with my colleagues, Alison Peebles, Pauline Goldsmith and Peter Mullan, I have taken the decision never to work for the BBC again unless it backs down
in its refusal to broadcast the Disaster Emergency Committee's video appeal to help the people of Gaza.
Why would we take such a big decision that cuts out a major source of income for a conflict happening thousands of miles away? Like the vast majority of actors and directors, we generally make a pretty meagre living at it. We do it because we love it and we seek to produce work that will touch people's lives. My character in Holby City was dying of cancer, at a time when my mother was suffering from it, so it had a particular relevance for our family. Fortunately, my mother has recovered but at the time it did make me realise how you can be given a part to play that really connects with the lives of people.
That is what the decision to boycott the BBC on this issue felt like.
We don't buy for one second the BBC's excuses for not showing the appeal. Its claim of seeking to maintain impartiality is nonsense. It shows just how partial the BBC is being in this situation. There is no 'balance' to be found in this most 'unbalanced' of conflicts.
On one side is a poverty-stricken, defenceless people, with a very high percentage of them children, living in squalor and in makeshift camps. The land they have lived in for centuries has been stolen from them by force and occupied. They are packed into the most densely populated region on the planet, cut off from the outside world with their occupiers controlling all movement of goods and people in and out.
For the last two years they have suffered under the most stringent blockade, starving them of even the most basic medical supplies. They are utterly dependent on their oppressors for electricity since their power stations were bombed into the ground. They are utterly dependent on aid from abroad, and now they have suffered from weeks of an intensive bombing campaign, killing indiscriminately over 1300 people, a third of them children, injuring thousands and leaving tens, if not hundreds, of thousands homeless. If aid does not get there extremely quickly, there will be an enormous human catastrophe of disease and death.
On the other side, we see an occupying force armed to the teeth with the most sophisticated weaponry, funded directly by the biggest military power on the planet. This war machine protects a state which is racist to its very core, placing its own "chosen people" above those whose lands they have stolen.
They have a huge media machine defending their interests which relentlessly attacks any criticism of their war crimes and ethnic cleansing policies as 'anti-Semitic' attacks on themselves. They ruthlessly exploit the sympathy of the world for the suffering of their forefathers and mothers under Nazism to inflict the same suffering on those whose lands they occupy, and they most cynically chose to carry out their murderous operations in the 'window of opportunity' before their friend George W Bush left office.
They had to call a halt to these operations so as not to spoil the incoming Obama inauguration. Not that we can expect any substantial change of policy. Obama showed his concern for the Palestinian people's plight by carrying on with his golfing holiday in Hawaii. Israel feels confident in the friendship and support of almost all the major world powers, particularly the British state and its successive governments.
Just one example of this is that the first act of any incoming Prime Minister, including Gordon Brown, is to become a patron of the Jewish National Fund, which buys up land in Israel and the Occupied Territories for exclusive Israeli Jewish use. Any criticism of Israel by the British government and opposition is muted and never translates into any meaningful action.
The reason for the refusal to broadcast the DEC appeal is that they don't want people to really see the devastation in Gaza. They don't want people to feel that anything can be done except despair. Our action is an attempt to move beyond despair, into action. We have shown that active boycott based upon self-sacrifice in support of the Palestinian people is the way forward and has a part for everyone who seeks to understand and act. Israel will only change its reckless and ruthless policies when forced to do so by the combined actions of people across the world. We must take sides in this conflict. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu said, "If you remain neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."
The full article contains 833 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
