"It's just an absolute mess"
The Guide, May 2004
TERRY WAITE answers the door in his socks, not only his socks obviously; he’s wearing a fluffy woolly cardigan with llamas on it as well. He is, it has to be said, the personification of the word 'avuncular'. Large and friendly he fills the hallway as he leads the way upstairs to an elegantly furnished sitting room.
He is just back from the States where he was campaigning on the issue of the Guantanamo detainees. The morning we meet five British detainees who have spent two years in the US detention facility in Cuba set up in the wake of Afghanistan, have been released without charge after 24 hours in British custody. Max Clifford the publicist has been retained to represent one of the ex-detainees, The Sunday papers are about to be full of it. Indeed, Mr Waite has written a piece for that weekend's Sunday Times.
"Obviously, clearly l have no truck with terrorism, and I don't believe in violence on innocent people," he says immediately. "But l don't believe for one moment that you should behave in this particular way.”
Due process should be followed he says. "These men are returned and all of them instantly released - well what does that say? Those men have had two years of their life taken away, by the state. You can understand it if it was a terrorist group doing it, but this is the state doing it.” He has been vocal about the injustice of Guantanamo Bay since the beginning. "If they're going to pick people up on suspicion they can come into your backyard and take you."
Terry Waite is famous for being held hostage in the 80s. In fact he gave a seemingly off-the-cuff speech of astonishing clarity and calmness to the world's media which had gathered to record his return. That moment merits about two lines in his autobiography, Taken on Trust, and is perhaps best understood when you consider that part of his youthful Church Army training in the early 60s was to spend Saturday evenings speaking at Speakers’ Corner: "As time passed, this became easier," is how he puts it in his book.
In 1980 he was recruited by the archbishop of Canterbury as his advisor. It was in that role in the early 80s that he developed his reputation as a hostage negotiator and attracted public attention, successfully securing the release of several hostages from Iran. In 1984 he again successfully negotiated for the release of hostages, this time from Colonel Gaddafi's Libya. In 1985 he first visited Beirut, Lebanon, to work towards the release of US hostages held there.
The Iran Contra affair
The historical setting for this is the Iran-Iraq war from 1980-1988. Saddam Hussein's Iraq - supported by the USA - had invaded Iran. Pro-Iranian factions were holding Western hostages to use as bargaining chips with the USA. They wanted to secure the release of pro-lranian prisoners being held in US-aligned Kuwait.
However, in 1984 the US Reagan administration secretly started selling arms to Iran as well as backing Iraq. They did that for two reasons: as ransom to secure the release of American hostages held by the pro-Iranian groups in Lebanon; and to use the profits from the Iranian arms deals to fund the Nicaraguan contra rebels who were waging guerrilla war against the leftist Sandinista government.
Terry Waite, peace envoy and churchman, was used like a puppet by the US administration which let it be believed it was Mr Waite's negotiations - and not their own arms dealing - which was responsible for some of the hostages' release in the mid-80s.
When the Iran-Contra affair, as it was known, started to unravel and was publicly exposed in November 1986, the S hit the proverbial fan. Mr Waite, by his own admission fired up by pride and anger at how he had been used and in an honestly-motivated last-ditch effort to secure the release of further hostages,then made his final visit to Beirut in January 1987. There he was taken hostage, going alone to meet his contact who then betrayed him.
Mr Waite has written about that time: ''The next night I went back … I was driven across town … I was told to get out of the van and there in the floor was a trapdoor. He said, ‘Jump down.’ I jumped down, was pushed across the room and the door closed behind me and when I took my blindfold off I was in a tiled cell. Then I realised that was it: I was a hostage.”
Hostage
He was a hostage for five years, four of them in solitary, most of it in the dark. He was kept chained to a radiator 24 hours a day, with five minutes to go to the bathroom. The rest of the time he used a bottle. There was no natural light, intermittent electricity, he had to beg for books and heard no news from 1987-1990. His family, at home in Blackheath, didn't know if he was alive or dead. When his captors moved him, they would squash him into car boots (he is six foot four), or on one terrifying occasion, into a fridge. "They push me inside and force the door shut,” he writes in Taken on Trust. "I push the blindfold and tape up so I can see. Its pitch black. So the light does go out after all!”
His humour is legendary, as is his strength of character. Reading his book, his three principals of captivity are writ large throughout: No regrets. No sentimentality. No self-pity, He kept himself sane by “living from within,” and by writing his autobiography in his head. He read voraciously when he was given a book; teasing out a romance novel but finding it weak like wet wallpaper and embracing M to Mexico City of the Encyclopedia Americana when it came his way.
He drew on his faith, and struggled with what it meant to him and his relationship with God; how the ego always seems to get in the way. But most of the time, he struggled through the day, just surviving by coping with the elemental: hot and cold; Iight and dark; comfort and fear. He survived, and he survived miraculously well, but he survived because of who he already was, not because of what the experience made him.
Home
Born in 1939 in Henbury, Cheshire, he still has his Cheshire accent today, sounding occasionally bluff like a Peak District climber. His father was a policeman and when Terry was still small they moved to Styal, a village 11 miles south of Manchester. Styal sits in the flight path of Manchester Airport now and was “devastated” by it when it was built he says.
“I’ve been through all that,” he says. “All the promises: ‘We won't disturb the environment,’ and of course it does. ‘It’ll create thousands of jobs,' and of course it never does.” It is why Mr Waite campaigned against the airport's expansion in the 90s and is now vocally against the expansion of Stansted airport as well.
In fact, despite his reputation as an international humanitarian, he is a keen defender of the local too. He lives in the very heart of Blackheath Village, a stone’s throw from the railway station. “Twenty six years in this house,” he says, patting his hair. He and his family moved here in 1978 after two years in Italy, which followed several years in Africa. “It seemed a nice spot. There was the primary school at the end of the road,” he says, adding about his children, “They're all grown and graduated now with children of their own.”
It’s changed of course –“a lot more restaurants” - but you are more likely to find him in a bookshop than dining out. “I’m out so much I prefer to stay at home when I’m at home.” When he writes he works from his office in Suffolk, a sort of second home cum office bolt hole where an assistant helps manage his workload.
In Blackheath his wife, Frances, is active in village affairs, most recently supporting the efforts to stop pubs opening until 1am. “We ought to campaign against that,” he agrees, “this is, actually, still a residential area.”
It was after moving to Blackheath that he was recruited by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie. The job meant a great deal of travelling with the Archbishop: Africa, China, Australasia, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Canada and the Caribbean. His humourous book, Travels with a Primate, recounts their adventures in an eloquent, always patient way.
Nowadays he writes and talks for a living - his fourth book is well over deadline - donating any spare time to his charities Y Care, the international development wing of the British YMCA, and Emmaus Int
Palestine
“I’ve just come back from the Middle East,” he says. He had always said he wouldn't go back to Beirut unless he had a good reason: “The good reason was because l founded Y Care 20 years ago and it works largely with underprivileged children around the world. We have projects in the refugee camps in Lebanon and also in the Occupied Territories.” He explains: “You've got third generation refugees - 50 years those camps have been there.”
He went to see those camps, and meet the children Y Care helps. It was difficult: the children are being educated by Y Care but when he asked them about the future, “They said ‘well, we don't have much hope’”. He asks, choosing his words with care but at full Newsnight flow, “Now is it surprising - and I don't condone this - but is it surprising that kids in that situation seek identity and security in an extreme religious movement and out of sheer frustration engage in terrorist actions? It doesn't surprise me at all.
“And that's why I say if you're going to deal with terrorism deal with some of the chronic problems in the world that are the root of it.”
Like?
“The inability of the world to deal with the Palestinian problem. The total chaos there is in the Occupied Territories as a result of the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians.” Speak out about that problem, he says, “And you're accused of being anti-Jewish, which is nonsense … But you've got to say it. I have great sympathy for the Jews in Israel who have been innocent victims of these terrorist attacks. But when you look at what they've done in Palestine, when you see for instance great settlements on the hill occupied by people who have recently gone to Israel - from Russia or wherever - and then you look and there's a big fence and on the other side there are the Arabs who'll been there for generations … who are denied water in their village because the water has gone to the settlement, you say, ‘I'm reminded of apartheid in South Africa’. Is it any wonder people get angry?”
The phone rings and interrupts. Bizarrely it is Thames Water, asking about his own water supply.
Future
“I never expected to see, in my lifetime, apartheid come to an end,” he says picking up his thread. “And it did because South Africa somehow threw up characters who stood for peace.” He means people like his friend Archbishop Desmond Tutu (who, he adds, was a curate round the corner 30 years ago). “Rather different than the Palestinian characters thrown up. Arafat's gun-toting image somehow doesn't stand for peace, it stands for violence. That's the image. You didn't see that with Desmond and you didn't see that with Nelson.” He pauses.
“That's what's needed around the world, people who will stand up and not be afraid to confront the issue but will always seek a peaceful resolution.” He is, he says, hopeful because there is always hope: “If you have a number of people who maintain hope there's always the possibility of change. And you know, politicians don't last forever, they do change, this administration in America won't last forever, it'll change. But there's a lot to be done in the Middle East and it's just a mess an absolute mess.”
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