Fit, Fifty and Fired Up by Nigel Marsh

Author:Nigel Marsh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000, book
ISBN: 9781742699981
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2012-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

22

Yvonne Fletcher

To be fair to the bank that sends me The Letter, I am a bit of a harsh judge. I’ve long been fascinated by people’s ethics. How they behave individually and collectively – whether it’s as a company or as a government. Ethics was one of the subjects I majored in at university all those years ago as a young theology student. My decision to study ethics was confirmed by two events in London during the 1980s – the first in 1980, the second in 1984.

In 1980 I was a callow sixteen-year-old at boarding school in Oxfordshire when the news broke that a group of armed Iranian Arab separatists had taken over the Iranian embassy in central London and were holding over twenty hostages at gunpoint. This was huge news. Not only was it happening barely thirty miles away, but it was happening slap-bang in the middle of England’s capital city. It was headline news around the world and at school it became the only topic of conversation.

The terrorists wanted autonomy for Iran’s Khuzestan Province and were insisting on the release of Arab prisoners held in Khuzestan’s jails. Irrespective of the merits of this cause, their demand did reveal they had rather a loose grip on reality when it came to the British government’s sphere of control. The government did the best they could in impossible circumstances. The safety of the hostages and the general public at large was the key concern. Professional negotiators were brought in; food, drink and telecommunications were supplied to the terrorists; respectful discussions urged a peaceful conclusion. As negotiations continued over the ensuing days, however, the terrorists became increasingly strident and threatening until on day six they announced that unless their demands were met immediately they would start shooting a hostage at regular intervals until they got what they wanted. The drama, tension and suspense were more intense than anything Hollywood could dream up. And this was real, not some Bruce Willis movie. To a sixteen-year-old schoolboy with a keen sense of right and wrong it was all-consuming. What the hell was going to happen?

On the sixth day of the siege I walked from my school to the local chip shop to buy my regular revoltingly unhealthy dinner of curry sauce and chips. As with every other shop, restaurant and pub in the country at the time, live coverage of the siege was showing on the TV behind the counter. As I queued to place my order the terrorists shot one of their hostages in cold blood and rolled his dead body down the embassy steps. I stared at the screen in stunned disbelief. I still remember the burning anger I felt and thinking, ‘You murderous fuckers, you don’t get away with that shit in Britain.’

As if in answer to my thoughts, just twenty-three minutes later soldiers from the SAS stormed the embassy. I watched the whole thing from start to finish on live TV in a high street chip shop with six strangers who were similarly transfixed.

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