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For our Editor, Welshman Phil Parry fierce rivalries have always loomed large in his reporting, not least in Wales, but now comes news that one of the fiercest of all (between Israel and Saudi Arabia) could be on the verge of ending.
Earlier he described how he was assisted in breaking into the South Wales Echo office car when he was a cub reporter, recalled his early career as a journalist, the importance of experience in the job, and making clear that the‘calls’ to emergency services as well as court cases are central to any media operation.
He has also explored how poorly paid most journalism is when trainee reporters had to live in squalid flats, the vital role of expenses, and about one of his most important stories on the now-scrapped 53 year-old BBC Wales TV Current Affairs series, Week In Week Out (WIWO), which won an award even after it was axed, long after his career really took off.
Phil has explained too how crucial it is actually to speak to people, the virtue of speed as well as accuracy, why knowledge of ‘history’ is vital, how certain material was removed from TV Current Affairs programmes when secret cameras had to be used, and some of those he has interviewed.
He has disclosed as well why investigative journalism is needed now more than ever although others have different opinions, how the current coronavirus (Covid-19) lockdown is playing havoc with media schedules, and the importance of the hugely lower average age of some political leaders compared with when he started reporting.
Things change – but what could be about to happen is nothing short of INCREDIBLE!
Hostilities (both real and imagined) have always played a central role in reporting (perhaps more so in Wales than in most parts of the UK), but the longest-running hostility of them all (between Israel and Saudi Arabia) may be about to be declared at an end.
For the Saudi Arabian leader, Muhammad bin Salman, an agreement between his country and Israel, would be “the biggest historical deal since the Cold War”.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister also used grand language to stress the importance of it all.
The countries were “at the cusp” of a pact, and it would, he said, be a “quantum leap”.
Nothing I have covered in Wales is in this league, nevertheless parallels can be drawn.
There has, for example, long been huge enmity between those who see Wales as subject to a bullying imperial state (England), so they want more powers or even an independent country, and those who believe that many in Wales have an English heritage, and that it would be wrong to confront a highly-successful friendly neighbour with more barriers.
This antagonism has resulted in criminal damage being caused, using ‘non-violent direct action’.
The former Welsh Office was, for instance, daubed with slogans calling for a new Welsh language act (which I explained in a BBC Wales Today [WT] report at the time), and an EXTREMELY narrow victory for devolution was secured in Wales (which I also covered).
People only voted for devolution by 50.38 per cent against 49.70 per cent, when there had been a thumping majority opposing virtually identical terms just 18 years before, and this shows how deep the fissures in Welsh society ran at the time.
The plans were defeated by a majority of 4:1 (with only 20.3 per cent voting for, and 79.7 per cent against) in 1979.
In fact it was such a narrow victory in 1997, that I didn’t know it had been won (I was stationed at one of the counts, in the South Wales valleys) until I returned to my home in Cardiff, and I conducted my recorded interview for the next day on the basis that it had been LOST!
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair has admitted that he had to “steamroller” the policy through, overriding objections from many within his own party, he told BBC Cymru Wales (BBC CW): “There were real worries about it (devolution)“.
This closely-fought referendum came just twelve years after the end of another bitter dispute revealing, again, how things alter which you think are unchangeable!
The anger and division during the miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985 (which had particular relevance in Wales), was something to behold.
The strike effectively ended in Porthcawl at a conference there, when South Wales miners (who until that point had been virtually rock solid in favour of coming out) voted to go back, and then it was all over.
I was there, too, reporting on it as a trainee on the South Wales Echo (SWE).
These were major events, but they could pale into insignificance if there is an understanding between Israel and Saudi Arabia!
The memories of Phil’s extraordinary decades long award-winning career in journalism (including some of the historic events in Wales he has covered) as he was gripped by the rare neurological disabling condition Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSP), have been released in a major book ‘A Good Story’. Order it now.
Another book, though, has not been published, because it was to have included names.
Tomorrow – he looks on with incredulity at other major events in the news – the extraordinary revelations about Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish National Party (SNP), as well as now the abrupt disappearance of key politicians on the other side of the world.
