James Whale (JW) - My next guest is a man called Spartacus R. I will mention this. He won't like it but he was connected with a band I used to love in the 70s called Osibisa - and that's the last we'll talk about it. He's moved on from there, we've all moved on but they were brilliant. He has written a book. The book is called Violation and it's about relationships and about the violence that often is in relationships - not only physical violence but probably a sort of violence - the mental cruelty and violence that a lot of us perpetrate on people we actually quite like and oftentimes love - which sometimes we are not aware of doing are we really?

Spartacus R. (SR) - No. It is something that is an integral part of our society, the society is based on violence and we are always - every day - suffering forms of violence that is not physical, not kicking, punching, stabbing, shooting and stuff but very, very destructive.

JW - Why did you - Spartacus I know you had a problem with violence and I don't know whether you want to share that with us or not - but that prompted you to write the book? Was that a sort of healing process for yourself?

SR No. It did help, it helped me while I was writing the book but the reason why I decided to write the book is because I wanted to introduce a different perspective on the so-called "Domestic Violence" debate, so that the people out there can have a new way of looking at violence not just man being physically violent against woman but man and woman, group and group, individual and group, group and individual, groups to groups, nation to nation being violent in non-physical ways.

JW - Do you think that this sort of violence is more destructive many times than physical violence which perhaps is quicker and over sooner?

SR - Well, it is more destructive and it's more difficult to deal with. Most of the researchers who I have quoted in the book have actually accepted that non-physical violence is many, many times more destructive because it can cause people to destroy themselves. You can actually cause someone to commit suicide not by touching - by never touching them.

JW - Are you saying ? Some people will read this and will say "Oh man, Spartacus he's just, he's saying it's OK beat up on your woman, it's OK."

SR- No. He's not saying that at all. In fact, I saw a recent television programme where they had an experiment where they were trying to get men - again men - to stop using physical violence. And someone on the programme actually admitted that 60% of the men stopped using physical violence but found a better way to violate their partners.

JW- Is it always men? I mean you're basing it that men are the most violent don't you? Sometimes you're leading us to believe - anyway I thought - I think we have to remember that when we read books, we all read them and we all come to a different conclusion - whatever that may be in many cases. I was lead to believe that you were saying quite often women deserve the sort of treatment they got.

SR- No. Nobody deserves to be violated. And I am not saying in the book that it's always men, I'm saying that the ethos in the industry, in the "violence industry" is that men are violent and women are victims. I'm-

JW - But you're looking for an excuse aren't you

SR - One moment, one moment. Men are violent, that is accepted; women are violent. Men are victims and women are victims and we are all responsible for the violence that happens in our relationships that's basically what the book is about: responsibility, power, harmony, balance, that's what I'm trying to put across.

JW - What do you hope that by reading this book people will achieve?

SR - They will achieve - they will find ways of preventing violence in their relationships whether it be in their personal relationships or in their relationships with groups on a social level. They will find ways of preventing violence; they will find ways of reducing the amount of violence and I mean non-physical violence as well as physical violence.

JW - You blame the media I know, for a lot of this saying that we, the media, portray violence as only a physical thing. It's quite difficult, isn't it, if you are making a play or something, it's quite difficult, I think, to actually portray mental violence?

SR - It's difficult but it is not impossible because you can show the result of violence that is social, psychological, spiritual, emotional, you can show the result of it, you can show how a person becomes a wreck, how a person becomes self-destructive because of the violence that is unleashed upon them.

JW - Are we all violent?

SR - Yes

JW - Without a doubt!?

SR - Without a doubt because we are existing in a violent society, a society that's based on violence. And it's not just the media that is perpetuating this idea that violence is just physical: the authorities who are violating us every single day, making laws against us and punishing us physically and non-physically if we don't obey these laws, these are the laws that are violating us. Yes? And because of those violent actions against us we then transfer it onto other people who are less powerful than we are.

JW - Have you stopped being violent now? Have you stopped yourself - I mean all the sort of day-to-day violence that we all participate in whether it's yelling abuse at a traffic warden or whatever. Have you stopped this, have you managed to contain this?

SR - I am practising. I'm learning. I'm learning to be constructively violent. What I mean by constructively violent is that I'm learning to find ways of preventing others from violating me. And when you are living in a violent society there is no way of being non-violent. In a violent society you have to meet violence with greater violence in order to stop it.

JW - Spartacus, thank you very much indeed. I'm going to read the book again now having met you because you do get a different perspective on it. It's certainly worth looking at. Thank you very much indeed. Congratulations, thanks again.

SR - OK. Thank you.

JW - And we're gonna change tack completely now but think about it, I mean, how often today were you violent to somebody, whether it was mentally or physically or just nasty? Same thing and maybe that's why we live in the sort of society that we do live in.