A female journalist not the easiest profession to break into and in the 1980 s. But you became an editor one of the 1st female editors of of thomson regional newspapers or behind how did that work ive been working as a journalist for quite a few years and then i progressed up the career ladder and this opportunity came to just wales on sunday and i absolutely enjoyed it you know it it was a great opportunity we put on circulation. And won awards and we did incredibly well but at that time the signs of the decline in the print industry were on the horizon the accountants were taking over the newspapers. From there i moved on to fleet street and that was a pretty hard drinking masculine male dominated culture. Move them hell jordan you went through a range of of newspapers what king for the express group and thats what you faithfully to afghanistan the after 911. 00 the invasion and the airstrikes were a boat to be lost there you were listening vest a good of journalist in an afghanistan framing know what the taliban was all a boat and then kind of disaster happened what you were for a donkey yes thats right well there was 3000 journalists from around the world waiting for the war to start and we were all in pakistan and i decided that i would try and sneak into afghanistan it worked very well for 2 days but coming back i was done for by a rogue donkey i was wearing the all enveloping blue. The only piece of equipment that i had taken in to afghanistan was a camera and when this donkey bolted the camera fell out of the folds of my right in front of a taliban soldier i just remember going up in the air and crashing to the ground and having this very angry taliban soldier screaming and shouting at me i took the the camera off my neck and handed it to this young soldier who continued screaming and shouting and then i stood back and closed my eyes waiting to be shot and about 10 seconds later i opened my eyes again and he god he didnt realize i was a westerner he wanted to find out who is in charge of this woman and then well get to the bottom of this crime because cameras were forbidden under the taliban so then for followed was the most extraordinary 11 days which basically. Shaped your life you are defaming 11 days in your life but what happened to you after the started to tell to get you trying to find out who you were probably trying to do what to do when they thought i was an american spy they thought i was some sort of g. I. Jane character and i kept telling them that i was british and they said well youve got this accent that we dont understand that majority from from the tribal areas and they quite like that idea. We use preaching to the milingo assured you picked up some past so. I spoke to them in english and and this young man. Who spoke to me and english and he acted as the translator so then we were taken to court a person or an encampment or what happened i was taken to the Intelligence Headquarters and in truth i just thought this is the end they will kill me i believed all of the propaganda. Attached to them and so i just thought pointless kissing the hand that slaps you. Lets just accelerated and beat the prisoner from hell and i was hoping. That they would just take me out and shoot me and that would be the end of it and so i was the prisoner from hell so were you being interrogated with the trying to find out where were you subjected to torture me what was happening yes somehow i mean every day half a dozen of the scariest looking men. Been brought down from kabul to interview me and they all had these massive big black b. Its in these huge black turbans the more pious the person the larger the. Turpin and they were very scary to to look at. It turned out that we had a real clash of culture i was ignorant of their coach they were ignorant of mine and in the end there was one incident where they just got up and walked out they couldnt deal with me they said to me through the translator you have light and i said everything ive told you is the truth and one of them said that you have a daughter and i said well you didnt ask me if i had a daughter and he said but you said youre not married just that im not married and he threw his arms in the air and screamed at me how can you have a daughter if youre not married as a present from concert and. As i said have you got the concept of divorce in this crazy world youre living in. So i explained you know about the father and was still in touch but we were divorced and then he said why havent you got another husband and i looked in and said i have my own job i have my own car i have my own home i have my own salary why would i need a man and the translators started this out to the rest and they just got up and had to go and they looked at me as though they found something bad on the bottom of their shoe they just couldnt deal with it this point youll employers expressed newspapers are running up a new car rescue mission or that we start. A Diplomatic Mission and i think it was widely assumed youd die theyll be tortured or killed or or ransom as a hostage be a human shield or Something Like that. Both the strain the the bombing was about to start so youre right in the middle of the the on set of a huge bombardment in reality the what the tough plan were trying to do business to have you wear the deed journalist in the end against all the arts they did let me go my newspaper i know richard desmond. He was the publisher and people are you know hes a very marmite character but as soon as. I was arrested he sent out a team to sit down and negotiate with the taliban and. Friends who were involved in. P. R. The crown took my mother to give press conferences they went right. Against all government advice to say nothing keep quiet keep your head down and in the end the taliban said we are releasing the english woman on humanitarian grounds shes a very bad woman with a very bad mouth. And so i was released. While i wouldnt be critical of the Foreign Office what i would say is to anybody who finds themselves or a Family Member in my situation is dont listen to the government dont think that doing anything when they say were working behind the scenes just go out there and do it for you know for yourself i mean there are times where governments cannot be seen to be sitting down. With the enemy or with terrorists and negotiating but theres nothing to stop families theres nothing to stop companies of employees doing this and keeping it in. Public eye because the think that publicists he is all important because of the activities of your family and your company you shot to International Stardom moment had you any concept whatsoever as you were still being held and. That your name was star who told them the world the job or any concept at all that you were an International Celebrity because of your confinement no idea at all no idea i was i was horrified actually because my job in london was as you said just an investigative journalist and involving a lot of undercover work and to be suddenly find that my photograph was in every single newspaper around the world. Was not what i wanted you know no journalist wants to become the story lets get to the pros or how to be really sure they would listen less the english woman with the bad mouth the so how did the how did to go both to the Point Charlie of what happened in the end the diplomats who was in charge of me just. Decided that it was safer for my security just to hand me over and so i was handed over to the pakistan authorities questioned by them because they wanted to know the identity of the 2 guides whod taken me in. Which you know again i didnt say and my guide state eventually got released as well and weve been and so eventually by the time. The i was handed over to the british authorities in. Our i was given a lecture by a man from the Foreign Office saying you know you were so badly behaved. And chris and he said we were hearing these tales about you throwing things at the taliban and shouting and spitting up them and he said dont you know how to behave in prison and i said i call believe this and thats that. There are 8 of the west in this and im. Using superset of plates and both. Released from the hands of the after the most extraordinary 11 days in captivity but time to experience took a life in a totally different direction join us after the break to find out what that was. 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Welcome back Yvonne Ridley was captured in 2001 by the taliban i trust already caught the public imagination since her release her life has taken some surprising turns with her dedicated campaign against western policy towards the muslim world now shes back with a new book the caledonians and once again its subject matter if its something of a surprise yvonne released from the hands of the taliban but this your life the sullivan days in a totally different direction well the day before i was released the war started and ive covered wars before but ive never been bombed by britain and america and its a truly terrifying experience and i dont know why i hadnt thought of it before i just realized bombs dont discriminate these bombs that are coming down dont know im british they dont know civilian and you can hear a Cruise Missile from 20 miles away these were coming within half a mile of the prison and i just thought. I am going to be killed but not by the taliban but by my own country and i sort of made a pact with the big fella upstairs and said if i get out of here on going to commit myself to the Antiwar Movement which i did. And. In the november of 2001 i was speaking 260000 people in the. Intro fog a square talking them to them about the futility of wall and how bombs and missiles. Dont serve any real purpose for peace at all so the Antiwar Movement against the action afghanistan was strong but nothing like the antiwar protest that was to rise 2 years later the invasion of iraq so you your involvement in the Antiwar Movement your conversion to islam came just about the time that the the war in iraq the war against terror was being and loves george bush and tony blair to invade iraq so should activities in the in the protests around the i went right across. Germany talking about my experiences. Other European Countries and i was in scotland when the war began and i remember the students and schoolchildren in scotland were absolutely magnificent they just left their classrooms and held protests and they stopped the traffic on the 4th bridge it was there was a vast march in glasgow of course at the time of us i remember the Labor Party Conference was being held and theres this huge march with it which convened the polling to the Labor Party Conference with the Prime Minister who was for and council and his own person in the in the Conference Hall with those hundreds of thousands of people outside the bonding that shouldnt be in name that a right be invaded so you were part of that protest or i. Yes i told so been to iraq a few months earlier and which was obviously end of the control of the saddam regime but it was quite clear then that there were no weapons of mass destruction it was quite clear speaking to ordinary iraqis that this was not going to play well there was a lot of hostility towards the west because of the sanctions which had destroyed again entire middle class of iraq at the time and it was clear that the last thing that the iraqis wanted was to go to war with britain and america so from your own personal perspective this time in 20032004 i just completed journey your journey from being a vessel of journalist a professional journalist one of the the leading female journalists in the country into being an antiwar activist and that was a journey that you had that you had taken and carried forward after your experience of captivity. I was still working as a journalist i was the 1st journalist into into janine in palestine in 2002 after the massacre there and thats when i began to realize again probably not if this sounds naive but thats when i began to realize that powerful people in powerful places will lie and i listened to. Colin powell standing at the King David Hotel in jerusalem saying i saw no evidence of a massacre in janine and that was because he never left the King David Hotel in jerusalem i went and i could smell the rotting corpses under the rubble. Before i even saw those who say that evil colin powell. Who most people would regard as a normal man was pressurised by the position of office to mislead and to give a false impression i dont know what sort of pressure would make you tell such a blatant lie or better hospital american secretary of state and the exegesis of american state craft and Foreign Policy well yes previous for it i mean this is the man who was in vietnam when he said i saw no evidence of a massacre over my life i was only a paying my orders now where did we hear that one you want position when you would engage the integrating contributing your position ironically as a captive of the taliban and giving you an International Profile and you had decided even in your journalism to translate that into political activism and that led you directly into Party Politics because you became not just a member and not just a kind of the convenor of the respect party which was a rising as an Antiwar Party at that time yes well the i. I had been in the labor party as a teenager and in 2003 i tore up my labor Party Membership card and said i cant remain in this party i spoke to the wonderful tony band he said at the time dont leave there are far too many good socialists out there with no home to go to and he was right but then the respect party was created after the war people often get confused over that and so all of those homeless socialists gravitated around the respect party you saw the respect party as a as a home for the last saw as the yes yes and it became a leading figure under of course or a candidate because youve actually got just european elections where you fought a parliamentary by election and rather of the learning of number correctly there was a bit of that experience well the. Vast was. Quite a tough gig the. Labor m. P. Tennis mcshane had. Been charged with expense for italy no at the some Something Like that and he had to stand down. The climate felt right George Galloway had just been elected in bradford west so we would try and emulate that in. The reason so this was about 2009201201 extension 0. It was a very tough campaign and you could see the rise of the the far right in politics which has been normalized today but shows a tough campaign but i mean you perform got a bill you save your deposit which is always you know a great test for minority parties and such contests satiate your desire for parliamentary contests to do say ok ive tried up done that and the like so much has the respect party it was was 5 years old and difficulties and turmoil yes. I was becoming quite disillusioned and then i heard whispers of the scots are going for independence and this really excited me because you know i lived in westminster i used to have a lot the past i could see up close and personal. The corruption and the shenanigans that were going on in westminster which made it was difficult to separate the tories from the labor party so the thought of independence really excited me in this as the s. N. P. On the rise into government led by somebody whose name escapes me at the moment so there is a lot of them Straight Party leading man will move to the borders of scotlands orders the debatable lots yes i i moved 2011 i voted with my feet i resigned from the respect party which at that point i think was going nowhere. And. And i was reinvigorated. By this desire for independence so youve been active in the us of the in the borders of your activities on big just confined to the political activism youve been taking up your tail again you know youve contributed to a number of books and obviously books and journalism but books about your time of the taliban but your latest book is quite different its entitled the color duty and so we can have a look at the front piece no but this is this is i was expecting a political novel and what it is is a titan traveling adventure story would that be a reasonable description it is but there are politics in there in fact theres an incident recounting margaret thatchers last day as Prime Minister in which the main character sneaks into downing street and gets the keys into her private office on the day that she leaves to remove a document which is. To secure the Galloway Hills because at that she died and to fight them at one point is a great place to store Nuclear Waste out of member be on the demonstrations but it did occur to me as i was reading the description of this which is laced with Scottish History and as you say a bit of politics but the landscape of scotland time travel that you know if it becomes a film or Television Series or cycle David Tennant who came to that into such a rule of across cuba i think the book would make a great. T. V. Or film using the amazing backdrop of scotland is a amazing backdrop indeed of all Yvonne Ridley the editor campaigning journalist captive of the taliban political activists and no Science Fiction author or for. A listing of politics and history of many success and didnt thank you so much for being on the alex imus show and to send you on your way titled the queer as you well know the over for loving cup thank you very much. Thats wonderful i certainly treasure this. Thank you pleasure the lord thank you. What sort of markable interview then your death experience had been captured by the taliban could have impacted on hard bitten journalists upon ridley in a variety of ways few would have expected her life journey a convert to islam and an ancient into the vatican site of u. K. Politics now a campaigner for Scottish Independence and a Science Fiction writer and volatile except to surprise us for some time to come next week we focused on Northern Ireland the storm and to simply has now been reconvened and has united to condemn Boris Johnsons brix. After shin fein stunning victories in the elections and the public is either shoot a teen i was closer than it any time since partition for not if im alex myself and all of the team we hope to see you next to. My. Good clothes from our eyes time hero once said that compound interest is the 8th wonder of the world he who understands it turns it he who doesnt paste this is a remarkable quote from einstein and it has so much to do with todays stock market volatility and the coronavirus all working at the same time and showing what compound interest is all about. The not ones up. On the fly is often not done one might have seen a top of the definitions and im buying. One seeking out a new south. And. Taking the equal to the south just. To get the gun and then youre going to bring the only thing im. Going to know will not be. Such as out. Just get feeling if one means a leftist i. E. Not be deep but learn this numb tokio find it to. Keep going to him. To lay. Out. His work was because did it because it didnt seem quite a cultural thing i pulled the premise. Just to tempe on this thursday night here in moscow good evening in the headlines former Army Intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning in hospital tonight after attempting suicide in jail shes been refusing to testify further in the u. S. Wiki leaks government telling all about the latest with elsewhere no idea leaders allowed president Donald Trumps decision to suspend all air travel to the u. S. From 26 European Countries stressing that the coronavirus pandemic requires a coordinated international response. Europe struggles to find a common approach to tackle the Virus Outbreak with italy now confirming over 15000 people infected we speak to the merger