Something I came up with a couple of days ago...

So, I've been thinking a lot about the radio over the last few days. In the age of television it can seem to be something of a relic of the past, better suited to a pipe-smoking, slipper-clad American father in the 1950's than a item of relevance in the modern world. It might not be very flashy, it might get interrupted by static and make us all think of Thomas Edison but this strange little box can and continues to play a significant role in global politics.

Yesterday, in what the press love to call a 'historic' meeting between President Sarkozy and our PM Cameron (a concept I'm still not used to), Britain and France marked 70 years since General De Gaulle's broadcast from the UK to occupied France. www.youtube.com/watch Political oratory has changed significantly in the last seven decades (I for one cannot imagine Obama giving such a speech) but there is no doubt that to this day it makes compelling listening. At the time the BBC was less impressed and did not in fact record the speech which members of the Cabinet were reluctant to allow the little-known French general to make. Despite Churchill's difficult relationship with De Gaulle he allowed it to go ahead and, especially after a second airing (this time recorded) the speech made it into the ears, and we must assume the hearts and minds, of the not-so-free French. De Gaulle responded to Petain's acceptance of the so-called armistice the day before by calling it an 'enslavement' which the French were honour-bound to resist.

Honour, common sense and patriotism.

Three strange buzz-words to hit in a speech but the general returns to them repeatedly. But these essential attributes of 1940s politics, these core notions that would have appealed so much to the weary soldiers and
defeated political elite. Calm as he is, it was at this moment in 1940 that, we could argue, the war was going to be lost or won. I needn't repeat Edmund Burke's cliche which tell us so patronisingly "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" in order to express how crucial this juncture was for the future of
France and, Euphile that I am, therefore the rest of Europe if not even the world.

I have always been a fan of the BBC- and Radio Four in particular- and agree whole heartedly with Jeremy Hunt, our new Culture Secretary, who calls it a 'crown jewel'. At the risk of hyperbole it's worth taking this phrase into consideration. If the significance of crown jewels is their denotation of a country's autonomous government, the sign in the modern world that we have an independent head of state who works with the government for the betterment of the country despite their personal constitutional power, historical influence and immense personal wealth, then Hunt is correct to use this term. Independent press- for us the BBC- is what advocates, demonstrates and protects our political (and thus personal) freedoms and autonomy. By allowing De Gaulle to speak on the radio the UK was doing much more than helping him stir up resistance, they were recognising his country's right to a voice, to the basic freedoms that make a nation.

This brings me onto the key point I wish to make. Today is the 65th birthday of the wonderful, beautiful, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. It's probably not a very happy day for her, having been under house arrest for fourteen of the last seventeen years, she will probably spend the day as she spends every other in that bleak
house, listening to the radio (she normally listens for about six hours a day). It is so poignant to me to have learnt this about her on the same day we celebrated the power of radio in defeating dictatorship. When we listen to the radio is we have access, almost magically, to voices from all over the world. What is it they say in Firefly? You can't stop the signal. [/ I know I'm a geek] You can censor the internet, as we sadly saw with Google in China recently. You can censor the press. You can shoot protestors and storm aid ships. You can broadcast propaganda on the radio. You can't stop the voices, the many different competing views and narratives that are
transmitted across the world on radiowaves. This is the power of radio- that a tiny, cheap box brings you intimately to the voice of freedom. Some of those voices are disgusting, some you might want to censor, but
they're there. If you have a radio you can hear those who are anathema to your country's ideology as though they were in the room with you.

Aung San Suu Kyi's passive protest of listening to the radio is not in vain; it is a silently powerful plea for the freedom Burma is denied. I just hope that anyone who reads this visits the following link and at least thinks about buying a radio for the Burmese so that they, like their democratically-elected but incarcerated leader, can be part of the worldwide movement for free speech, the first, foremost and most powerful human right.

http://blog.protectthehuman.com/break-the-silence-beat-the-junta-2&...