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She hated her government, fought in every way she knew how against their policies. Her brother had disappeared after speaking publicly about his views and her sister imprisoned. She was determined to overthrow what she thought of as an evil regime.
She fled her home, took on another name and helped to organise the escape of her friends to safe areas. She lied, smuggled messages, looked after escapees, liaised with foreign governments who also opposed her ruler’s policies.
And risked her life every day.
Her government called her a terrorist.
She was my friend Helene, a member of the French Resistance during the second world war. She was honoured with a medal, a lifetime of respect, and a place in the history books on what we now think of as the right side of history.
Her sister survived Auschwitz, her brother was never found.
In the sixties I met Enos, a supply teacher at the school where I was teaching, eking out his study grant by working while he wrote his PhD thesis on international politics. He was kind and funny and popular. We became friends.
He was African and through him I became aware of the racism that was rife in the sixties around black people. It didn’t bother him. He was from Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He had more on his mind than the odd bit of name calling.
I asked if he wanted to settle in Britain. His answer shocked me: “no, I’ll go back with a gun in my hand!” He knew that armed struggle was coming in his country to gain power for the black majority.
He left the UK in 1974 and I never heard from him again. But I’m pretty certain that for a while he would have been classed as a terrorist.
In the 1980s I was helping to make an educational film about Ireland, looking at films that the government had banned from being broadcast on Channel 4 and the BBC.
It was the days when Irish Republican politicians could be seen but not heard on TV – they were given subtitles or voiced over. It seemed very silly to most people.
Our film was about history and free speech, called The Irish Question.
In the course of making it we came across Pat (not his real name) who’d made a film about the IRA. He seemed really nice. He had a charming baby, overworked British wife and made wonderful spaghetti bolognese. Was Frank a terrorist? I have no idea.
Mrs Thatcher would have thought so. Believe it or not, she thought Nelson Mandela was a terrorist at one time.
Our government is now clamping down on protesters supporting Palestine as potential terrorists.
A dear friend of mine who came to live in Thanet many years ago, was clapped in jail last week for holding a placard and sitting under the statue of Nelson Mandela in London.
The police were quite nice to him, he says, unlike with some of the other protesters. He’s in his late seventies, quite frail, and been very law abiding all his life. They did the finger prints and the mug shots (“no, you can’t have a copy”), promised to get his medication to him, put him in a cell, eventually brought him a curry (“not bad”), let him have a much needed snooze and chucked him out at 2am, a long way from home.
He’s not the first and he won’t be the last of the people here who will be arrested for the same reasons. Could I be arrested for wearing my Palestinian scarf?
We know that locally our police are overstretched, and our peaceful towns are suffering petty crime and teenage misbehaviour as a result.
How can we tolerate a definition of terrorism that involves locking up pensioners for holding a placard? Isn’t that a colossal waste of police time? And if it isn’t, tell me what it is.
Christine Tongue
is a retired film-maker and lecturer. She lives in Broadstairs and was, until expelled on October 26 2020, the secretary of South Thanet constituency Labour Party. She is an activist in Save Our NHS in Kent and disability campaign group Access Thanet. She was, and is, a committed supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, and an active member of Thanet4Palestine. She has written for a number of publications including the Guardian and the Times Educational Supplement.
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