Harold Pinter was dedicated to helping persecuted writers
Harold Pinter, the renowned playwright who died on Christmas Eve,
should be remembered for his commitment to oppressed writers across the
world.
By Carole Seymour-Jones
Daily Telegraph/UK
Last Updated: 1:20PM GMT 01 Jan 2009
Harold Pinter ‘s association with PEN , the world association of
writers, went back a long way. He felt a powerful sense of solidarity
with other writers tortured, detained and even killed for their
beliefs, and gave the Writers in Prison Committee of English PEN, of
which his wife Antonia was a former chair, his unwavering support.
Perhaps this connection was rooted in his own experience of persecution
as a Jewish boy growing up in Hackney, which I sometimes felt had
developed into an almost personal identification with that inviolable
core which some writers are able to preserve in jail, despite long
sentences under threat of death.
Certainly Pinter had a fierce and abiding passion for justice and
freedom that often brought him out onto the streets of London to join
English PEN demonstrations. Bearing homemade placards, he and Antonia
stood outside the Nigerian High Commission in London, to protest the
imprisonment of Ken Saro-Wiwa in 1995. Earlier, in 1985, Pinter had
joined Arthur Miller in an historic PEN mission to Turkey to
investigate the plight of writers in prison, and Orhan Pamuk was their
guide. Twenty years later, in December 2005, when Pamuk himself was
arrested for comments about the massacres of Armenians in the First
World War, Pinter was one of the first to sign the English PEN petition
calling for the charges to be dropped.
When, however, in October 2004 I wrote to Harold asking whether he
would agree to be a reader at the annual PEN service on the Day of the
Imprisoned Writer at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street, I did not expect
him to accept. He was a busy man. But a charming e-mail arrived,
accepting our invitation.
There was a little difficulty over the wording of the flyer. I got a
ticking off for ascribing the wrong decoration to Harold, CBE instead
of CH; he also insisted that the font for his name was the same size as
that for Dillie Keane of `Fascinating Aida’. There was to be no star
billing for the famous playwright.
On the day of the service, 14 November, the acoustics were checked.
Everything appeared to be in working order. I had submitted the script
in advance, a letter from Uzbek writer and activist, Mamadali
Makhmudov, one of the longest-serving prisoners in Uzbekistan, relating
his ill-treatment in Jaslyk death camp.
The service began without incident. But when Harold walked to the
lectern and began reading, his words were suddenly scrambled and
distorted. He stopped and began again. Same result: gobbledegook.
No-one could understand a word he was saying. The congregation shifted
uneasily in its seats. Had the mike failed? Or were the Uzbeks sitting
outside the church in a radio van blocking this evidence of torture in
their jails?
Calmly Pinter switched off the mike, and, like the consummate actor he
was, spoke his lines. His words resonated through the darkened church.
It was a moment I shall never forget.
In his final years, Harold still attended the service. He sat at the
back, humble, steadfast, committed. We shall miss him.