The press
Brother Blue Pencil
Paul Johnson
The attempted censorship of four British newspapers by members of ASLEF raises a number of interesting points. In the first place it ought to persuade some if not all Fleet Street managements to re-do their sums and consider whether there is not a better way of getting newspapers to the pro- vinces than by the old-fashioned newspaper trains. For, quite apart from selective blacking for political reasons, a newspaper which has to take on one or more of its own unions always faces the threat that BR men will not handle it. If it is at all financially possible, a paper ought to be in control of its own distribution process. That is how, for instance, Mrs Graham beat the mechanical unions at the Washington Post.
Secondly, it is worth remembering that censorship by trade unionists is not new. It has happened on a number of occasions within Fleet Street in recent years, and it was of course the detonator for the General Strike in 1926. It has also happened on television. If the so-called 'Campaign for Press Freedom', or at any rate some of its more vocal supporters, get their way, the use of union muscle-power to stop the ap- pearance of news items the Left does not like, or to enforce the publication of material it does like, will become the nor- mal pattern in Britain. It is not difficult to envisage a time when every issue of every newspaper will have to be 'passed' by a `representative' committee of trade union officials before being allowed on to the streets. And no doubt the same committee would daily present each editor with a list of items for compulsory insertion.
With this prospect in view, the lack of outraged public reaction to the ASLEF men's blatant interference with the freedom of the press was sadly significant. It must have struck many people that the fury aroused among BR workers by the Sun story was caused not by the fact that it was untrue but precisely because it was true. The Sun was blacked becaused it was doing its job. It was a punishment, inflicted not only on the Sun but on other papers in the group, and was presumably intended as a warning that it would suffer financial penalties if journalists employed by it in- vestigated such abuses too closely. It was also intended as a deterrent to other newspaper groups. Since fiddles in BR cost the nation a great deal of money, as a recent court case indicates, it would be difficult to conceive of an instance of press censorship operating more obviously against the public interest. Yet it seems to have aroused little interest in government or Parliament and not much hullabaloo even in Fleet Street itself; further evidence, to my mind, that we are a deeply demoralised community, watching apathetically as the candles of freedom burn low.
It was characteristic that such an upright figure of the progressive establishment as
Spectator 6 February 1982 Lord Hunt should write to The rinses deploring the unionists' action (of cOUrSei, but, still more, the decision of the Sun tel give 'front-page, banner-headline treat. ment' to train-drivers' malpractices' dur ing a strike or, as he put it 'at a time of sue, sensitivity'. He does not seem to ON; appreciated that low productivity by 13" train-crews, caused by — among othel, things — 'malpractices', is at the very hear ; of the present dispute, and indeed of al' BR's growing financial problems, and that by printing the story with appropriate nitY minence the Sun was doing exactly what. ,3‘. newspaper is supposed to do — given readers the real explanation of events which impinge on their lives. While rejeetthg union censorship, Lord Hunt was asking for something even worse: self-censorslaP The principle he seemed to be laying Bowe was that, in any industrial dispute' newspapers should tuck away into„ spicuously news likely to upset the `se,"i sitivity' of any of the parties. No ci°11.v,, plenty of lofty-minded worthies agreed Wit'' Hunt, especially in that acropolis of al)" peasement, the House of Lords. There are many important people in Britain cost who want a quiet life at almost any e°5`,,' That is why, for instance, there is such widespread, high-placed support for the closed shop. Significant, too, was Tony Benn's en dorsement of the censorship action. Hitheri; to I have always given Benn (as opnoseti,e most of his followers) the benefit of 1-0 doubt in establishing the reality of his corm, mitment to domocracy and freedom. ,1"%ti° it seems to me he has crossed a Rubicon' ,i The right to publish is always the litprius-test of totalitarianism. Curbing the press waks Lenin's first decisive act when he Mil% power in 1917; it came even before he killed parliament or set up the Cheka. If Bea„ wants wants the unions to censor the press, 1' " just as well we should know now rather than later. Many people must have been disturbed I was, at the difficulty the hlack,id newspapers experienced in getting anY of legal redress. Tebbit's new Bill will illa'e things much easier, for it will allow the union itself to be made a party to the fie tion, an important and long overdid reform. But this may not be enough if, "''t fear, the Left is now determined to g0 °cif the press. The absence of a legal 'right wci reply' in Britain is a genuine grievance Of ought to be remedied. A number gC s democratic countries have it and it will. • - perfectly well. But the same press statute, ,,11! my view, should contain a provision Mat", ing malicious interference with the free'% ' of the press an offence. Press freedom ',e. sh public benefit of such importance that attempt to deny it by force ought to be t made a matter, not of civil proceedings, h.115 of public prosecution. No doubt de-111,1, `press freedom' would raise immense ficulties. The very act of exploring theta would illuminate a critical issue which 5Yr dicalist adventurism has thrust under ou noses.
Previous page
