Clapham Correspondent
Julian Hall meets the controversial journalist, documentary filmmaker and Clapham resident John Pilger
Above: John Pilger
It’s a double-take moment when you see a local celebrity in the street. Spotting John Pilger walking down Venn Street in Clapham is, I can report, every bit as odd as seeing one of the many actors who live in the area. It’s perhaps because Pilger’s career as a campaigning journalist has spanned over forty years, including his work on World In Action and on ground-breaking documentaries, and afforded him a cult status every bit as intriguing as a soap or sitcom actor.
Australian-born Pilger’s last work, the film The War on Democracy, has done even more to cement his reputation as a leading commentator on world affairs and its creator is delighted with the reaction: “Typical was the Canadian premiere in Montreal where many of 800 people stood and clapped,” he recalls. “I think people appreciated a film that drew together the record of great power.” The great power in question was, of course, the US and in particular its involvement in Latin American affairs.
The film enjoyed an extensive run in the UK (including The Clapham Picturehouse where Pilger introduced the film and took questions after) meanwhile in the US itself it provoked a number of interesting responses: “There were conservatives in the United States, people who are on the right but believe in the libertarian principles of the US constitution and see Bush shredding them, who supported the film. On the other hand when it was offered to the movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s organisation, the response was: ‘Sure, we’re interested in distributing this movie, as long as someone like Sean Penn replaces Pilger.’ They also wanted cuts that diminish its ‘provocative’ content. They got a two-letter reply!”
This kind of frank-talking is undoubtedly a factor in why Pilger is so impressed with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, whose bullish attitude towards the US struck a chord with his electorate and the wider world and who is heavily featured in the film. Since the film was made Chavez narrowly lost a referendum on widespread, and extremely controversial, changes to the constitution but that hasn’t diminished his importance or relevance in Pilger’s eyes’ “The narrow referendum defeat was a victory for the original democracy that Venezuela is. You wouldn’t know that reading the Western media, which has done its best to distort the genuine hope that has taken root in Venezuela. Here is a country whose government has won eleven straight democratic victories and survived a coup and yet continues to offer hope to the majority of its people, and “we” in the west subject it to the kind of microscopic examination that would find our own system wanting,” says Pilger.
It’s the person as well as the politics that also impress Pilger. “Being with Hugo Chavez was a new experience; he’s unlike any other politician I know. He appears on stage carrying a pile of books; Dickens, Victor Hugo, Chomsky, the Bible, and reads at length from them, relating what the classics say to ordinary people’s lives. Then he’ll stop suddenly and discuss the local mango crop, then recall his own childhood. His audiences love it,” he says.
As well as getting to the nub of political issues, travel is something that plays an obvious and important part in Pilger’s life, The War on Democracy saw him promoting the film in the US, Canada and his native Australia and that’s not to mention the travel throughout Latin America that the filming itself entailed. Though Clapham-based for a quarter of a century now, every January the journalist still migrates to Sydney, where he grew up: “For me, Australia remains a physical paradise. That said, after a while, I yearn for the pleasures of London and its great diversity, which is a sort of ordered anarchy.”
Topping the list of ways to escape the anarchy Pilger loves to run, walk and swim: “My local heated pool is a gem: the Clapham Manor Leisure Centre.” Clapham Common, in particular, is close to Pilger’s heart. “When I arrived in Clapham it wasn’t fashionable as it seems to be now but I liked it because the common was an urban oasis I never tire of.”
Never tiring is the key to Pilger’s career and as well as doing laps in the leisure centre pool Pilger will be turning his attention to some new projects that are likely to raise eyebrows and catch attention: “I have in mind a television interview series with a ‘wish-list’ of subjects who might not want to be interviewed by me! It will be a challenge and also I have one idea that comes from the filming of The War on Democracy which I can’t speak about at the moment; it involves a famous, or infamous, Latin American leader. I’ll let you know.” l
The War on Democracy comes out on DVD
on 4th February.