Students and lecturers from Coventry University have shed light on a government cover-up and a human rights campaign against secret monitoring through various forms of media artefacts.
Media production lecturer Ken Fero premièred his documentary at the West Midlands Human Rights Festival, while Theatre and Professional Practice students performed an original play in Birmingham.
Co-founders of the ‘Bear Foot Theatre Company’, Rosie Kemp and Gareth Price-Baghurts, wrote the original play ‘White Stock’, telling the true story of Margaret Humphreys' battle against the British government. The events, described by Margaret in her book 'Empty Cradles', deal with the child migration scheme in 1950s Britain - under which up to 150,000 children were resettled.
Rosie and Gareth not only used the book as a source of research, but took a trip to Liverpool’s Maritime Museum and spoke regularly with Margaret's husband, Mervyn.
“I think, with a situation like this one, Margaret's actions were totally justified”, Rosie said. “The governments and all those who were involved tried really hard to keep everything covered up, and it was something that people needed to know about.
“In the same way that Margaret brought the scheme to the public's attention, we brought it to the attention of those that had maybe missed it.”
‘Defeat of the Champion’, a documentary by Media Production lecturer Ken Fero, also aimed to bring attention to the issue of human rights violations. The film, directed together with Tariq Mahmood and produced with the help of university media students, looks at the successful campaign to oppose the programme ‘Project Champion’; under the initiative, 169 CCTV cameras were installed in specific areas in Birmingham, forming a ‘ring of steel’.
“The local police decided to put hundreds of CCTV cameras around certain areas and these areas were predominantly where mostly Muslim people live”, explained Ken. “In fact it wasn't the local police who had authorised that, it was the anti-terrorism branch in London.”
What had been presented to the community as a programme to help cut crime was later discovered to be a programme to 'monitor' the Muslim community in what was called the 'ring of steel'. “When people started looking around, they realised they [the cameras] were in a particular place”, added Ken.
Along with being a film-maker, Ken is an active campaigner for several causes. In ‘Defeat of the Champion’, he attempts to not only bring attention to the issue, but share the point of view of the campaigners.
“Human rights wasn't really used as a term until around 8-9 years ago, and because of the Human Rights Act coming into force later, it became part of legislation and part of culture”, he added.
“Before that you couldn't really talk about human rights abuses in Britain, because this is a country where apparently human rights violations didn't exist.
“Now it's become part of culture and people accept it. The work that I've done has always been around these issues not just of the violations, but of the resistance against them. Unless you show that people are actually organising and resisting against it, nothing will ever get better.”
*Image by Kay KempLabels: 332mc |
