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Manifest Destiny and the 'glorification' of terrorism
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According to reports over the weekend on Channel 4 News and BBC’s Today programme, Aberaeron playwright Dic Edwards could, theoretically, find himself facing prosecution under the government’s new “Glorification of Terrorism” Bill for his opera Manifest Destiny, co-written with composer Keith Burstein. The opera received its premier at last year’s Edinburgh Festival and tells the story of Palestinian suicide bomber Leila, torn between her duty, as she sees it, to the Palestinian cause and her love for London-based Jewish composer Daniel.
Says Edwards: “Leila is clearly our heroine and we praise her both as a fighter for freedom and, subsequently, for her courage to finally renounce violence.”
At the time of the Edinburgh performances, reviews in The London Evening Standard and Scotland on Sunday came close to claiming that the opera was in fact glorifying terrorism. “A legal case is proceeding against The Standard”, says Edwards.
“The law is absurd. It can’t work. In the first place you have to define terrorism which, as we know, means different things to different people. It could be argued under the broadest definition that George Washington’s guerrilla army which resisted the legal government of the British in what was to become the United States, was a terrorist organisation and that Independence Day sees the whole of America glorifying terrorism. Similarly, support for the state of Israel, founded on terrorism led by the Stern Gang which included future Prime Minister Menachim Begin, which murdered hundreds of British soldiers, could be seen as glorification of terrorism. And how convenient for Blair and his ministers to overlook the acts of State terrorism perpetrated or sanctioned by Israel, such as the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian women and children in southern Lebanon when Prime Minister Sharon was overlord there.
“What this is, is a mean piece of legislation designed to enshrine in law a prejudice and worthy of fascist regimes. If it ever succeeds in being put into practice, it will create the kind of illiberal state that Bin Laden would love to see imposed here”.
Edwards play about serial killer Gary Gilmore Utah Blue was recently performed at the National Institute for Dramatic Art in Sydney, Australia and his new play The Pimp about the life of controversial French poet Baudelaire, will open in London on April 18th.
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Sunday, February 19, 2006 |
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