ROB NEWMAN’S HISTORY OF OIL (script 14/11/05)
PART ONE
Chapter 1
(PICS) SCRIPT
FILM OPENING TITLES - ROB CYCLES.
HE PASSES PAVEMENT ARTIST DRAWING MAPS.
HE PASSES CCTV CAMERA.
CYCLES THROUGH ARCHIVE,
AND MAKES IT TO HOXTON HALL.
OPENING TITLES
GRAPHIC ON STAGE TITLE CARD
‘ROB NEWMAN’S HISTORY OF OIL’
TITLE ‘ROB NEWMAN’S HISTORY OF OIL’
GRAPHIC. STILL/ FOOTAGE OF OGONI CYCLIST PASSING SHELL’S FIERY OIL STACKS. (See ‘REMEMBER SARO WIWA LEAFLET)
ROBERT (V/0): The Petrol Bubble is about to burst. We have lived inside the Petrol Bubble for a hundred years. To see what we are about to lose we need to recognize what we have had.
British history tends to under-estimate just how central oil has been. But you can’t understand the wars and politics of the last hundred years without placing oil centre stage.
AUDIO SAMPLE: PLANES TAKING OFF FROM BRIZE NORTON
COPYRIGHT-FREE AUDIO SAMPLE OF NOAM CHOMSKY: The main reason for popular anger in the Middle East is that people in the region have simply never accepted that they shold get nothing from their one natural resource.
ROBERT (V/O): This is rarely done. Why? A curious, fashionable taboo nowadays dismisses any reckoning of the strategic and economic reasons for war as ‘conspiracy.’ At other times and in other places it has been well understood that states go to war to secure access to vital strategc commodities and raw materials. It was understood by Tacitus and Thucydides, and they didn’t even know how to tell the time or flush the toilet, so why not here and now?
ROB ONTO STAGE GREETED BY AUDIENCE.
ROB (PERFORMANCE)
I found this book in a skip in Kentish Town.
ROSTRUM OF BOOK ‘Marching..’, As Edwardian drawings of men with guns
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
The book was a military history called Marching To The Drums - From The Kabul Massacre To The Siege Of Mafeking, it was a gung-ho military history full of stirring tales of the British Empires Colonial campaigns 1860 – 1900.
Marching To The Drums has chapters on Gordon of Kartoum, Omdurman, the Boer War.
ROSTRUM
Edwardian drawings of men with guns from ‘Marching..’ book
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
At the top of each chapter there’s a short single paragraph introduction explaining just what the British Army in the 1880's was doing in Egypt or Sudan or Afghanistan.
Now, because the people who read gung-ho military histories are really only interested in one thing:
weapons,
weapons and tactics,but above all weapons.
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
There was refreshing honesty, lack of cadre, and lack of hypocrisy about this little stand alone introductory paragraph…
ROB READS FROM ‘Marching…BOOK
“In 1886 the Suez Canal became the most direct route to India, the most valuable possession of the Empire.
Thus it was necessary for Britain to control all traffic through the Suez Canal, which therefore meant crushing the indigenous independent movement of Egypt and the Sudan.Now! The Wembley Automatic Gattling Gun was able to fire 500 rounds per minute which proved more than a match for the scimitar swords and wicker breastplates of the Mahdi Army.”
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
This bald stating of geo-political facts of life struck me like a revelation, like an epiphany.
MARCHING TO DRUMS BIT THEN
ROBERT : ...‘An American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East’. The reason the news-media can foist such phrases upon us DAILY is because the British are unique among nations in their naivete about geo-politics and the economic caues for war, and that’s because we are unique among nations in our ignorance of our own history.
How curious for example that the First World War is never taught in schools as an invasion of Iraq.
Okay. You’re not c
*People who fly short-haul should be ASBO’d.
*Train carriages should no longer be divided by class but by ethos. So you got one carriage that’s the Ibiza Foam Party Carriage. Then the next carriage is the Eminent Victorian Scientists’ Carriage: burgundy leather armchairs, an open fire and glass-topped display cabinets full of entomological specimens. Then there’s the Hobo Carriage which is full of straw with a big sliding barn door and you have to hop on when the train slows at a corner.
*Carbon ration of 40 kilograms per person per annum. (Which is why, incidentally, this series doesn’t have me flying to distant locations, but instead uses people who live nearby. We’re trying t
THE STAGE DIMS AND ROBERT SAYS WE NEED FRESH LEGS PLEASE.WE SEE NEW AUDIENCE MEMBERS TAKE TO CYCLES AND TENT LIGHTENS UP AGAIN.
*People who eat fruit out of season get 100 hours community service.
*AND...
*World War One should be taught in our schools for the invasion of Iraq it was.
Okay, now here’s where we were and you weren’t buying it. But let’s start from where there is consensus and build out from there. Now I suspect that many of you, like me, have never been entirely convinced by the standard explanation which were given at secondary school for the origins and causes of the First World War: the asassination of Archduke Ferdinand... I mean, no-one’s that popular.
MONTAGE: FAMOUS ASSASSINATION FOOTAGE OF ARCHDUKE FERDINAND IN PLUMED WHITE HAT IN LANDAU IS FOLLOWED BY DOCTORED STILLS OF FERDINAND IN PLUMED WHIT
ROBERET V/O: People all over Europe saying ‘I loved that guy. I really loved him.
BACK TO TENT A rather more efficient cause might be the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.
ARCHIVE: ROUTE MAP OF BBR
ROBERT V/O: The Berlin-Baghdad Railway begins construction in the years leading up to the First World War. What happens is that Admiral Jackie Fisher converts the British navy from coal-fired to oil-powered ships.
BACK TO TENT
ROBERT: The German navy follows suit but they don’t have any oil-producing colonies, no place in the sun. Thus begins the ‘Drang Nach Osten’, the ‘drive to the east.’ The spine of this policy is the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.
ROBERT: But there’s huge opposition to this plan among all the European powers Russia, France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands of Royal Dutch Shell. Britain has a special reason, over and above all the other allies, for opposing the railway. In engineering terms we cannot compete because we know that people will simply not accept the Sarajevo-to-Basra replacement bus service. And like the other powers we know that once the track is laid, there’s nothing to stop a Munich businessman alighting at the Baghdad terminus with a Deutschebank chequebook, undercutting our concession and smashing the cartel.
War breaks out, and because it’s a war to defend plucky Belgian neutrality -
ARCHIVE: STILL PHOTO OF BELGIAN OVERSEER HERDING CONGOLESE RUBBER WORKERS CHAINED AT THE NECK
ROBERT V/O: while Belgium was defending Congolese rubber and ivory
ARCHIVE: POIROT REACTION SHOT. (PERPLEXED/RAISED EYEBROW/ PENSIVE.)
BACK TO ROBERT IN ECO-TENT
- because of this the first British regiment to be deployed in the First World War - the Dorset Regiment - goes to Basra 1914. Where it is joined by 51 other Britsh divisions.
The Ist Battalion of the Dorsets fought in Mons in August 1914. The 2nd Battalion of the Dorset regiment fought the the grandmother of all battles for Basra, occupying the city from November 22nd 1914.
MP3: IRAQI STANDING IN BRITISH FIRST WORLD WAR CEMETRY IN BASRA READS THE FOLLOWING SCRIPT (IN EITHER ENGLISH OR ARABIC WITH SUBTITLES).
GRAPHIC: [SMALL BOX, BOTTOM RIGHT OF SCREEN]
MODE OF TRANSPORT TO LOCATION: BUS.
DURATION OF RIDE. 1 HOUR.
FUEL: DIESEL.
ESTIMATED CARBON EMISSION: 500 GRAMS
IRAQI: In July 1915 the 2nd Battalion of the Dorset Regiment were helped in their search for WMD by the Royal West Kents’s arriva buried their dead.
BACK TO ROBERT IN ECO-TENT
Now if you look on the Dorset regiment’s web-site (Man, have I got too much time on my hands), there’s plenty about the Ist Battalion’s exploits in Mons, but nothing, not a word on the 2nd Battalion shooting their way into Basra in 1914. If Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfrid Owen had fought by the Tigris or Euphrates instead of the Somme we would never have heard of them. Even if, in the First World War, truck-loads full of nothing but poets had been sent to Iraq we would never had heard of a single one of them. I’ll go you one further
“If the Special Poets’ Battalion decides to pitch camp here they cut our supply lines in two, have access to the strongest partisan militias, all under a rocky canpoy providing a natural defence from air bombardment. Fortunately, however, they have decided t came here, where dappled shade falls on rusted farm equipment entwined with bougainvillea, near an almond grove where walks a young shepherd boy of unblemished complexion.”
BACK TO IRAQI INDYMEDIA BUT THIS TIME IN A CEMETERY OF RECENT IRAQI DEAD.
GRAPHIC: [CARBON COUNTER BOX AS ABOVE SHOWING MODE OF TRANSP
IRAQI: In 1914 secretary of the War Cabinet Sir Maurice Hankey wrote to Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour that ‘control of Middle Eastern oil supplies’ has become ‘a first-class British war aim.’ But even if you don’t remember World War One as an invasion of Iraq, the locals do. The security wing of Islamic Response which held a US Marine Corps corporal hostage on the day of the 2004 so-called ‘handover’ were called The 1920 Revolution Brigades, named after the year of a great uprising against the British occupation which began in 1914.
CUT TO VHS OF IN-HOUSE CCTV OF ENTRANCE TO DINGY CLUB. ROBERT TALKING INTO CCTV CAMERA:
ROBERT: But Baghdad, Basra, Mosul and oil are defintely NOT part of the World War One story. They do not feature in the Great War Them
BACK TO ROBERT IN ECO-TENT
Now, the reason why World War 1 ain’t taught in our shools for the invasion of Iraq it was, is because a good war always has to be presented to us as a one-off, a discrete event, no more related to other wars than two consecutive plays in the same theatre. Each war must have its own wardrobe, backdrop and moral purpose.
And that’s because all the justness-of-our-cause arguments fall down if ever a war is seen to be part of a continuous foreign policy which has been consistent for decades. In the 95 years since Messopotamian oil was discovered the UK has been at war with or occupying Iraq
Now if you’re a mainstream broadcaster and you’re looking to objectively describe that reality in an impartial, forensic way free of ideological bias, then the phrase you want to use will be British and American plans to bring democracy to the Middle East.
ROBERT: Okay, cycle slower so we can dim the lights for a sombre, moody effect as I get into the .... Too dark... faster... bit slower... just right. Perfect. Now...
ALI HAMDANI - CAMCORDISTA REEL ABOUT 1920 REVOLUTION BRIGADES
In 1920, Miss Gertrude Bell, who worked in the Foreign Office was commissioned to draw the border because she was good at art.
CAPTION: MATISSE-STYLE MAP OF IRAQ AS RECLINING WOMAN DONE BY RASHMI CHAVDA
Now the Great War ends on 11,11,1918, and a continuous ten-year bombing campaign of Iraq begins in its stead. In the 1920’s nine thousand Iraqis died under RAF Middle East Command’s bombing campaign. Arthur ‘Bomber’ Harris demanded ‘A bomb in every village that speaks out of turn’ as the best way of crushing Kurds - similar to Sadaam’s policy.
SKETCH cgi
VIET-CONG ROB HIDING IN SHELTER LISTENING TO RADIO FREEDOM
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
As witness, I was listening to the Today programme on Radio 4, and there was a phrase they kept repeating, on the half hour, every half hour:
‘The G8 has today endorsed an American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East.’
CAMCORDISTA HOLDS UP CARD DECLARING ‘AN AMERICAN PLAN TO BRING DEMOCRACY TO THE MIDDLE EAST’
CAMCORDISTA HOLDS CARD
‘An American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East.’
rob (PERF)
The level of naivety necessary before you can talk about an American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East.
You will not find that level of naivety anywhere outside of 1970’s porn, “Gee mister you mean the time machine only works when I take off all my clothes.”
ARCHIVE 1970’S OIL RIG.
(CHEESY MUSAK)
SKETCH
1970’S SPOOF PORN
ROB THE OIL-RIGGER DOES OIL-RIG/ SEXUAL INNUENDO GAGS WITH PORN STARLET
SKETCH
ROB (OIL-RIGGER) AND ACTRESS (AS PORN STARLET. (Dialogue TBA)
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
‘An American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East’.
Chapter 2
(PICS) SCRIPT
STILL OF CAESAR-LIKE, JOHN D ROCKEFELLER
STILL/ARCHIVE EARLY STANDARD OIL
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
STILL OF LIEUTENANT WILSON
ARCHIVE OF CAVALRY RIDER
CAPTION SPELLS OUT ‘See Psalm 104, Verse 15, third sentence’).
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
The first Middle Eastern commercial oil-well had been struck, and in the 97 years since, Britain has been at war with or occupying Iraq for 44 of them.
CAMCORDISTA IRAQI STARES AT CAMERA
Chapter 3
(PICS) SCRIPT
GRAPHIC
CHAPTER 3: BERLIN-BAGDHAD RAILWAY
ROB (PERFORMANCE)
‘An American plan to bring democracy to the Middle East’.
The reason the news-media can foist such phrases upon us DAILY is because the British are unique among nations in their naivety about geo-politics and the economic causes for war, and that’s because we are unique among nations in our ignorance of our own history.
ARCHIVE 1ST WORLD WARFARE
ROB (V/O)
How curious for example that the First World War is never taught in schools as an invasion of Iraq.
Okay you’re nt all coming with me but no pressure. I will say plenty of things in the course of tonight’s show that we won’t agree with each other about, that’s cool, like
People who fly short-haul should be ASBO’d.
People who eat food out of season should do 100 hours community service.
Train carriages should no longer be divided by class but by ethos. So you got one carriage that’s the Ibiza Foam Party Carriage. Then the next carriage is the Eminent Victorian Scientists’ Carriage: burgundy leather armchairs, an open fire and glass-topped display cabinets full of entomological specimens. The next carriage is the hobo carriage, ain’t nothing in there but a big load of straw and there’s a big sliding barn door, and you have to hop on when the train slows at a corner.
Carbon ration of 40 kilograms per person per annum.
(Which is why, incidentally, this show doesn’t have me flying to distant locations, but instead uses local camcordistas. We’re trying to do a carbon-neutral show about oil.) There they are…
And also why we’ve got people on bikes fuelling the show.
THE ROOM GOES DARK AND ROBERT CALLS FOR MORE POWER PLEASE. ROB GOES TO ROOM WITH AUDIENCE MEMBERS ON CYCLES. THEY CYCLE FASTER ROOM LIGHTENS UP AGAIN. THEN DARK
ROB (PERFORMANCE)
AND... World War One should be taught in our schools for the invasion of Iraq it was.
Okay, now here’s where we were and you weren’t buying it. But let’s start from where there is consensus and build out from there. Cos I’m not going to take you with me straight away, OK.
ARCHIVE ASSASSINATION OF ARCHDUKE FERDINAND (IN PLUMED WHITE HAT IN LANDAU) IS FOLLOWED BY…
ROBERT [V/O]
People all over Europe saying “I loved that guy. I really loved him.”
SKETCH
(GRAPHIC-STILL) ARCHDUKE FERDINAND (ROB) HELPING PEOPLE PUSH CAR
SKETCH
(GRAPHIC-STILL) ARCHDUKE FERDINAND (ROB) DJ-ING AT VILLAGE HALL WEDDING RECEPTION IN THE 1980’S
SKETCH
(GRAPHIC-STILL) ARCHDUKE FERDINAND (ROB) REFEREEING DISABLED BASKETBALL
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
A rather more efficient cause might be the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.
PAVEMENT ARTIST DRAWS ROUTE MAP OF BERLIN-BAGHDAD RAILWAY
GRAPHIC RED-LINE ON MAP TO SHOW ROUTE
STILL/ OR COPY OF STIL DONE BY PAVEMENT ARTIST ADMIRAL JACKIE FISHER
ROBERT [V/O]
The Berlin-Baghdad Railway begins construction in the years leading up to the First World War.
What happens is that Admiral Jackie Fisher converts the British navy from coal-fired to oil-powered ships.
ROBERT (PERFORMANCE)
The German navy follows suit but they don’t have any oil-producing colonies, no place in the sun. Thus begins the ‘Drang Nach Osten’, the ‘drive to the east’. The spine of this policy is the Berlin-Baghdad Railway.
ARCHIVE RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION
ARCHIVE 1914 STEAM TRAIN TRAVELLING. TRAIN COMES TO A HALT
ROBERT (V/O)
Now there’s already track laid from Berlin to Constantinople. It’s called the Orient Express. The Germans just need to build that last 900-kilometre extension that will bring them clear into Baghdad.
PAVEMENT ARTIST DRAWS IN THE ROUTE OF THE RAILWAY
ARCHIVE OLD BUSES CIRCA 1914