Watchmojo on the Most Evil British Tabloids

WatchMojo is a YouTube channel that specialises in lists of the most (insert adjective) of whatever subject they’re covering. This is usually popular culture, like films, TV programmes and comics. But in this video from their British offshoot they delve into the very murky world of British tabloid and red top newspapers to discuss the six worst of them. And so, imagine if you will, this run down of the very worst of British journalism accompanied by the old style Top of the Pops theme as that sadly missed programme went down the music charts.

Coming last at No. 6 is the Daily Star for its coverage of weird paranormal stories like black-eyed ghost children, their libelling of the Liverpool fans at the Hillsborough disaster and getting sued by the McCanns for its malign take on the disappearance of their daughter. They also blamed video games for Raoul Moat’s shooting spree, despite the entire lack of evidence showing that video games are responsible for real world violence, and for making up an interview with Duane ‘the Rock’ Johnson.

Coming in at no. 5, pop-pickers, is the Mirror, showing that it’s also left-wing papers that can have appalling low journalistic standards. This is there because of its owner, Robert Maxwell, raiding his employees’ pension funds, and Piers Morgan publishing fake photographs of alleged atrocities by British troops in Iraq. This part of the video shows some of the other headlines from the paper, such as its ‘Achtung! Surrender’ to the Germans at the 1996 World Cup as other illustrations of its lack of taste and anything resembling decent attitudes.

At No. 4 in this chart of journalistic infamy is the Daily Mail, as illustrated by its article ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts’ praising Mosley’s BUF and its owner, Lord Rothermere’s trip to Germany and praise of the Nazi regime. The video also states that it’s been suggested that the paper’s pro-appeasement stance convinced Hitler that Britain would not retaliate if he invaded Poland, thus causing World War II. More recently the paper has also been sued for libel or inaccurate reporting by celebs such as Melania Trump, Alan Sugar and Elton John. The video also shows some of its racist headlines opposing the decolonisation of mathematics and opposition to non-White immigration.

The Daily Express is at No. 3, again because of such low points as being sued by the McCanns, scaremongering stories about the world being wiped out by aliens or killer asteroids, and its weird fixation on conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and her death, often at the expense of more current and important stories. In 2010 its editor said that he was appalled by some of the stories it ran, and was going to reign in its islamophobia.

No. 2, the late, unlamented News of the Screws. This was always controversial, but lasted 150 years, even claiming at one time to be the world’s best newspaper. That was until it was brought down by the phone-tapping scandal, whose victims not only included celebrities, royalty like Princes William and Harry, but also murder victims and dead soldiers. It was forced to fold after all its advertisers deserted it.

But the top slot in this catalogue of filth and sleaze merchants is the Scum. This rag’s viciously low reporting has made it notorious around the world, but what foreign viewers may not know is that it’s particularly hated in Britain for its smearing of the Liverpool fans at Hillsborough, like its fellow tabloid the Depress. Instead of the Liverpool fans being responsible for the carnage, it was found that the police were responsible for the 96 deaths. This anti-Liverpool venom is the reason it’s still banned in the city, despite the paper having made some half-hearted apologies afterwards. It also claimed the Birmingham 6, a group of Irish men wrongly imprisoned for an IRA terrorist atrocity, were guilty. On top of this it was also sued for libel by Wayne Rooney. But what makes it especially hated is its staunch support of Margaret Thatcher, the infamous ‘Gotcha!’ headline for the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War, and its claim that it was responsible for Thatcher’s electoral victories with its headline ‘It was the Scum Wot won it’.

Of course this list leaves out some other instances of tabloid wrongdoing. The Scum has had any number of complaints for racism upheld by the former Press Complaints Commission, including one in which it compared Arabs to pigs. Piers Morgan has also been involved in the phone hacking scandal, though it’s possible the video mentions this and I’ve just forgotten it did. And I’d say the worst British tabloid was the Sport in its various editions for its mixture of sleaze, stories about freaks and daft stories following the Weekly World News style of journalism, like its claim that there was a B52 bomber on the Moon. The Sport was set up by David ‘the Slug’ Sullivan, according to Private Eye, a pornographer with convictions for running girls. But the paper has a low circulation compared to the others here, and so is far less influential.

As for the Scum coming first as Britain’s worst tabloid, I agree entirely, although I doubt this is an accolade the Scum would want to boast about on its front page. But when it comes to malign, biased reporting and racism, it is indeed the Scum wot wins it.

Hooray! Murdoch’s Sun Is Now Worthless

The Sage of Crewe at Zelo Street posted a very encouraging piece yesterday about the value of the Scum as a going financial concern. The good news is, it doesn’t have one. It’s worth priceless nada, zip, zero. News Corp Holdings UK and Ireland, which oversees Newsgroup newspapers has posted its annual accounts up to June last year. And the company made a massive £201 million loss, despite cutting sales and marketing costs by forty per cent, and purging staff from 605 to 546. More than 80 per cent of the loss were one-off payments made to the phone hacking victims to stop their cases coming to court and costing Dirty Rupe and his gang even more. The wretched newspaper also made a payment to the Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes last Thursday, who felt he had been illegally targeted by reporters wishing to out his sexuality.

The Groan, reporting on the Scum’s parlous accounts, as quoted and amended by Zelo Street, also said that

“[News Group Newspapers] wrote down [the Sun and Sun on Sunday’s] value to zero. The £84m non-cash ‘impairment of publishing rights’ essentially means the publisher does not believe the titles will return to positive growth”.

Zelo Street commented

The Sun is no longer worth even publishing. Its continuing presence on news stands serves only as clickbait for other Murdoch group enterprises, and as a right-wing propaganda sheet. Many of those 546 staff are not receiving the obscenely inflated remuneration enjoyed by those at the top. But all are now candidates for the dole queue.

He also concludes that it raises questions about the viability of the rest of Fleet Street, as many of them were also involved in the phone hacking. He states that it may not signal the end of Britain’s free and fearless press, but you can see it from here.

See: Zelo Street: The Sun Is Worthless (zelo-street.blogspot.com)

This follows what Lobster and others have said about Murdoch’s other British title, the Times. It’s readership has fallen far beyond the figure at which any other paper would have been wound up. But because it’s Britain’s paper of record, it allows the grubby smut merchant a place at the cabinet table with our politicos. And so he keeps it going. I also suspect that the Scum and the Times will be kept going as tax losses for the rest of the Murdoch empire.

But this is highly encouraging, if alarming for the old media and the lamestream reporters, who lament the passage of the days when they could form public opinion and who are now complaining that public opinion is more fragmented and polarised than ever. Yes, there’s a problem there, but the lamestream media is responsible for maintaining a corrupt and highly exploitative neoliberal economic system which is ruining our country and driving its people further into poverty and despair. And there has been no greater supporter of the Thatcherite consensus than the Scum. It’s run, written and edited by post boys pretending to be working class to get Britain’s working people to vote against their interests. And it has always been extremely racist. About two decades or so ago Private Eye carried a piece about yet another judgement by the Press Complaints Commission as was about the wretched paper’s racism, that said that there had been 19 such judgements against it. And this is quite apart from the attacks on Scargill and the miners’ during the miners’ strike and the smearing of the Liverpool fans after the Hillsborough stadium disaster.

The Scum always was morally worthless. Now we know its financially worthless too. If you want real news, start looking at Novara Media, the Canary, the Skwawkbox and other left-wing news sites. And if you want informed comment, then it’s Zelo Street and Mike’s blog over at Vox Political, as well as Another Angry Voice. You know, all the people the Scum and its mates would describe as evil Commies or anti-Semites because they supported Corbyn or otherwise challenge virtuous capitalism. They’re worth reading.

But the Scum is worthless. It’s time it was wound up, and the rest of the right-wing press likewise.

See: Zelo Street: The Sun Is Worthless (zelo-street.blogspot.com)

Private Eye on Luciana Berger

It was Luciana Berger, who found that comment by Jeremy Corbyn from 2012, commiserating with the graffiti artist, whose picture had been censored because of anti-Semitism. This was the picture, you remember, that showed six white bankers dealing over a table resting on the bodies of Blacks. The comment formed the basis of the renewed attacks on Jeremy Corbyn for anti-Semitism two weeks ago, despite the fact that Corbyn has said he hadn’t properly looked at the painting and didn’t really know what was going on. But it’s also moot how anti-Semitic the painting actually was. Only two of the bankers portrayed were Jewish. These included Rothschild, obviously, but the other four were gentiles, and included Rockefeller. At the time, the Jewish Chronicle only said that the painting had an ‘anti-Semitic undertone’. Now, six years later, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council worked themselves up into a bug-eyed frenzy to denounce the mural and Corbyn as anti-Semitic. It’s entirely faux outrage. The BDJ and Jewish Leadership Council hate Corbyn, not because he is anti-Semitic – he isn’t, and they probably know it – but because he is genuinely anti-racist and supports the Palestinians from his commitment to fighting racial injustice. Israel was founded on massacre, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, and its policies towards the Palestinians are indefensible, except by attacking the country’s critics as anti-Semites. And so that’s what the Israel lobby – the Board, Jewish Leadership Council, Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, Labour Friends of Israel, Jewish Labour Movement – has done.

I found this brief description of Berger and her political career in Private Eye for 18th – 31st March 2011, in the ‘New Boys and Girls’ column. This is the column that gives brief descriptions of the careers and activities of new members of parliament, who have recently been elected. Here’s what the Eye had to say about Berger.

She may recently have been voted the most fanciable member of parliament, and since being elected as Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree last year she has developed a drooling fan club of sad, middle-aged men in the Commons – but looks deceive.

Twenty-eight year old Lucian Berger is what the comrades used to describe as “right operator” . Within a few months of her arrival, Ed Miliband had already promoted her to the frontbench as a shadow minister for energy and climate change.

Her swift climb up the greasy pole began soon after she left the Haberdasher Aske’s School for Girls and went to Birmingham University, where she became an executive member of the National Union of Students, convening national anti-racism campaigns. She resigned in 2005, accusing the NUS of taking a lax attitude to anti-Semitism on university campuses.

She later took up a “public affairs” post at Accenture and went on to advise the NHS Confederation, but not before the rumour mill had come alive with talk of a relationship with Euan Blair after the pair were pictured at a party. Denials came thick and fast, not only from Blair but also from the Labour party, which took it upon itself to issue an official statement saying that young Luciana “was not, and had never been” romantically linked with Euan Blair.

One of her predecessors in the Liverpool Wavertree seat, the late Terry Fields, might have doffed his fireman’s helmet to her for the at she managed to get selected in the first place, for it came straight out of the old Militant Tendency’s instruction manual. While Labour was choosing its candidate, Berger lived for about a month at the home of Jane Kennedy, then the sitting MP, whose partner was the Labour official who ran the selection process, Peter Dowling. The completed ballot papers were then returned to Kennedy’s home address for counting.

A furious Frank Hont, secretary of the regional branch of the Unison trade union, lodged protests with party bosses, to no avail. Although veteran Liverpool Walton MP Peter Kilfoyle branded her a “student politician” who lacked the experience to do the job, Berger went on to beat Liverpool councillors Wendy Simon and Joyce Still by a margin of around 2-1 to win the candidacy on an “all-wimmin” shortlist. By this time, Berger was in a relationship with the MP and journalist Sion Simon, who was shortly to stand down from parliament to devote his energies to becoming mayor of Birmingham. The pair were talked of as a new “power couple”.

Berger didn’t improve her stock with incandescent Scousers by committing a series of gaffes that would have sunk a less shameless candidate. In January 2010, the Liverpool Echo tested Berger with a four minute quiz on Liverpool live and history. She scored two out of four, not knowing who performed “Ferry Cross the Mersey” and not recognising the name of former Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly.

In her defence, Berger said that “you can’t ask a girl a football question” and added: “I’m not new to the city. I’ve been coming here for the past decade through all different jobs.” It is difficult to know what caused more offence, Berger’s failure to have heard of Shankly or her reference to coming to the city “through all different jobs” – jobs, after all, being a commodity in short supply in Merseyside.

For a while it looked as though she would be given a run for her money at the election by Scouse actor and former union activist Ricky Tomlinson, who announced that he would stand for the Socialist Labour Party under the election slogan “Berger-my arse!” – but then wimped out because of “personal and contractual obligations”.

Once in parliament, Berger’s ability to upset local sensitivities continued. Last October she infuriated Liverpudlians by appearing on a Radio Five Live show with Kelvin MacKenzie, who was editor of the Sun at the time of the Hillsborough disaster and whose coverage of the story led to a boycott of the paper on Merseyside that lasts to this day. Berger’s lame defence was that she “didn’t know who the other guests were”.

With yet another little local difficulty somehow shrugged off, Luciana has also shrugged off Sion Simon and is now romantically involved with an equally ambitious Chuka Umunna, who has been dubbed “the British Obama”. With the pair already being talked of as a new “power couple”, let’s hope the Labour party doesn’t go and spoil things again by issuing a denial.
(p. 9).

She comes across very much as a typical New Labour politico – young, fiercely ambitious, very middle class and with a signal lack of interest in her constituency. Remember how Blair had various Tory defectors parachuted into safe Labour seats, ordering the sitting MPs to give way for them. The Tory defectors were immensely wealthy people, with very grand houses in London, and absolutely no connection to the constituencies they were given.

She sounds genuinely concerned about attacking anti-Semitism, but that doesn’t change the fact that the allegations against Corbyn and his supporters are grossly fraudulent and libellous. It just means she’s either very cynical as well, or that she really does believe that criticism of Israel equals Jew hatred.

And the circumstances of her selection as the official Labour candidate is so, er, irregular, that it could come from Stalin himself. ‘It’s not who votes that counts,’ said the old thug, ‘it’s who counts the votes.’ Quite.

It’s also highly ironic that she was propelled to the front bench by Ed Miliband. This is the Labour leader Maureen Lipman denounced as an anti-Semite, and claimed his election as leader forced her to leave the party. Miliband is of Jewish heritage, and in any case, anti-Semites don’t promote Jews to leading positions in politics. Lipman’s talking nonsense, but I’m sure you knew that already.

Her background with Accenture, formerly Anderson Consulting, shows that she is very definitely New Labour, with its orientation to the aspirational middle class and ideology focussed on privatisation and cutting welfare benefits. When Blair came to power, he did so with a plan prepared by Anderson Consulting, which the Tories had just thrown in the bin. She manifestly does not represent the working class, who New Labour ignored and took for granted. When Gordon Brown didn’t attack them as ‘feckless’ and responsible for their own problems, of course.

Her attack on Corbyn is all about undermining the Labour leader and preventing a return of real socialism, while advancing her own career as a leading Blairite in parliament.

Change.Org Petition to Have Boris Johnson Step Down as Foreign Secretary

There is now a petition on Change.Org for Boris Johnson to step down as Foreign Secretary because of his colossal, glaring ineptitude. The most recent example saw a women of dual British-Iranian nationality visiting friends for Nowruz, the Iranian New Year holiday, being arrested and threatened with imprisonment.

The explanation for the petition runs as follows

Boris Johnson has hit the headlines again for yet another gaffe.

Only this time in his muddle he said that British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been in Iran to train journalists last year when she was imprisoned at Evin Prison. Her family and workplace say this is wrong, that she is not a journalist, but was visiting family on holiday.

Because of Boris’ mistake, Nazanin’s time in prison could be doubled by Iranian officials. She is there for allegedly plotting to topple the government in Tehran, although official charges were never made public. Nazanin suffers depression from being separated from her husband and three year old daughter. I’ve heard first-hand of the physical and psychological torture as one of my own family members served a term there. Evin is Iran’s main holding place for political prisoners.

Our government should be working day and night get Nazanin back home to her family.

As a British citizen, I want to make sure we have a Foreign Secretary that supports us. Instead we have someone who is unfit for the job. Because he lobs grenades at sensitive situations. He lacks attention to detail. And in doing so, is a threat to British people and damaging overseas relations. That’s why I’m calling for Boris to step down from his role as Foreign Secretary.

This is not the only mistake Boris has made. Just last month he made jokes about clearing away dead bodies in Libya to turn Sirte into the next Dubai. And in the past, he ran a magazine which accused Liverpool fans of ‘wallowing in it’ after the Hillsborough disaster.

Boris must apologise, Boris must repair the damage he has done to Nazanin and her case but most importantly Boris must go.

I’ve signed it, as I’m heartily sick of his incompetence embarrassing us as a nation. And I’m sick and angry that an innocent woman, who has already suffered five years in Evin prison, has been interrogated and threatened with further imprisonment by the Iranian authorities, thanks to Boris shooting his mouth off.

Iran is a fascinating country with a rich, ancient culture. But it is a repressive theocracy with an intense suspicion of Britain and the West dating from the days of British imperialism, our ownership of its oil industry, and support for the Shah’s brutal autocracy. In the 1990s there was a thaw in diplomatic relations between our two countries, and there have been significant cultural exchanges since. For example, the YBAs a few years ago hosted a show in Iran, and the British Museum leant the Iranians the Cyrus Cylinder, which dates from the period of the Persian Empire and records the conquests of the emperor Cyrus the Great. One of these was the conquest of Babylonia and the Holy Land.

Yet relations are still very delicate. Mrs. Zaghari-Ratcliffe isn’t the only one, whose safety could be placed in jeopardy by this buffoon saying the wrong thing. The Iranians have in the past arrested other British travellers in Iran on suspicion of spying, and our diplomatic people have had to work hard getting them out.

And it’s not just Iran. There are many other similar societies, where British imperialism and its memory are very sensitive subjects. It’s all too easy to imagine something similar happening elsewhere due to Boris talking uninformed nonsense.

Johnson has refused to apologise for this dangerous mistake, preferring to place the blame on the Iranian authorities. I completely agree that they should not have acted as they did. But considering the nature of the Iranian regime, which is pretty well notorious, it is very incumbent on Boris to make sure that he avoids giving unnecessary offence, or a pretext for the Iranian authorities to act in this fashion.

I’m also heartily sick of Johnson trying to present himself as some kind of loveable buffoon, who means well despite everything he says and does. He isn’t. He’s a scheming intriguer, who’s fiercely ambitious. He obviously feels that as an Old Etonian he is entitled to a seat, if not the highest seat, in British government. And I’m fed up with his attitude that he can go one and do whatever he likes, regardless of the consequence for this nation, and the ordinary people, he puts in danger.

If you want to sign it yourself, it’s at

https://www.change.org/p/boris-step-down-as-foreign-secretary?j=178294&sfmc_sub=269081008&l=32_HTML&u=33184044&mid=7259809&jb=3072&utm_medium=email&utm_source=aa_sign&utm_campaign=178294&sfmc_tk=qsSqDg4%2f%2bpD798KvauUzwd3ZfiuUegHU43mVbCYO0kKXOxvG9SYpXypwHbII5UEv&j=178294&sfmc_sub=269081008&l=32_HTML&u=33184044&mid=7259809&jb=3072

Definitely Not Unpopular: Liverpool Football Supporters Show Support for Corbyn

According to this piece by Guy Debord’s Cat, Liverpool was going to unveil a special banner yesterday at Anfield showing Jeremy Corbyn and Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell. This was to celebrate Labour’s success in the city’s metro mayoral election. The banner will also show support for the Justice for Hillsborough campaign.

The Cat notes that this comes after the Beeb claimed on Saturday’s 6 O’clock news that support for Labour was ‘crumbling’ in the city.

See: https://buddyhell.wordpress.com/2017/05/06/thats-my-club/

In other words, more rubbish about how unpopular and unelectable Corbyn is, has been shown to be wrong by people at the grassroots.

We can expect more right-wing propaganda from the Beeb as the general election approaches, and they get increasingly desperate to ensure a Tory victory.

Nuttall Claims to be Hillsborough Survivor, But No-One Remembers Him Being There

Eddie Hitler-alike Paul Nuttall has gone on the offensive after people have questioned his claim to have been a survivor of the Hillsborough disaster. He claims to have been present at the disaster which killed 96 football fans, along with his father and two uncles.

The Hillsborough Families Support Group have asked the perfectly reasonable question why, if this was the case, he has never offered them his support. And others who were there, have said that they simply don’t remember him ever being there.

So what’s Eddie’s response? He has claimed he doesn’t like talking about it, and called anybody who questioned the fact that he was there ‘scum of the earth’.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2017/02/11/nuttalls-claim-to-have-been-at-the-hillsborough-disaster-falls-apart-under-examination/

Now it’s possible that he was there, but that the trauma of the event robbed others of the memory of his presence. Just as the many of the survivors of genuinely traumatic events don’t like talking about their experiences. But it seems much more likely that Nuttall is fibbing, to use highly unparliamentary language. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time the Kippers have lied, and it probably won’t be the last. Their lying is now so pernicious that one gentleman from Stoke, interviewed by Chunky Mark on a video that was reblogged by Mike, described Nuttall’s office as ‘a lie shop’.

Murdoch Wants US To Leave EU, But Why Listen to that Lying Foreigner?

Mike over at Vox Political has put up a piece reporting that the Scum, owned by foreigner Rupert Murdoch, has told its readers that they should support the ‘Leave’ campaign. Mike points out that this is the same newspaper, whose reputation for truthful reporting has been shown by its claims that the Hillsborough disaster was due to appalling behaviour by the Liverpool fans. There’s also a very interesting quote from Anthony Hilton of the Evening Standard. He asked the Dirty Digger why he hated the EU. The Chunder from Down Under replied that it’s because, when he goes to Downing Street, they all do what he says. When he goes to Brussels, they don’t.

See: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/06/14/eu-referendum-are-you-stupid-enough-to-do-what-the-sun-tells-you/

This comes from Rupert Murdoch, whose own manifest love for his homeland was such was that his endorsement effectively scuppered the Ozzie campaign to become a republic. The campaign to remove the Queen as the Australian head of state was going well, until Murdoch decided to voice his support. Murdoch is, of course, notorious for loving his country so much, that he renounced the land of his birth to become an American citizen, as otherwise he wouldn’t be allowed to own media in the Land of the Free. Patriotic Australians took exception to being told what to do by this foreigner, and so voted to keep Her Maj.

And Dirty Rupe’s reputation for high journalistic integrity and standards is, I think, as high over there as it is over here. Back in the 1970s, the staff of one of the national papers he owned went on strike, complaining that Murdoch’s political bias was so overt and extreme that it was making the paper a laughing stock. And the journos and hacks on one of his papers in New York did the same. The Digger had decided to throw his journalistic weight behind Ed Koch in his campaign against Andrew Cuomo to be mayor of New York. When someone asked Murdoch why, he answered simply, ‘There are 2 1/2 million Jews in New York, and only a million Italians.’ In other words, it was all about who was the biggest demographic he sell newspapers to. It’s an entirely mercenary attitude. And as for Fox News and its claim to represent ‘fair and balanced journalism’, a study found a few years ago that actually, it only told the truth 30 per cent of the time, a much lower proportion than other news outlets. It’s the Pravda of the American capitalists.

And News International is so patriotic over here, that they use offshore bank accounts to dodge paying taxes. But they ‘BeLeave’ in Britain. Yeah, right.

And Murdoch doesn’t believe in the British working class, either. Murdoch’s own politics are consistently extremely right-wing. He’s pro-privatisation, hates the unions, and wants the welfare state, including the NHS, dismantled. Basically, if you’re poor or sick, he has no time for you, except if he thinks he can make money somehow from your poverty, like making you accept any job, no matter how crappy or exploitative, and forcing you to pay for your medical treatment. He has never been on the side of working people, and is laughing at them for buying his cruddy rag and the lies it prints. Of course he wants us to leave Europe. If we go, we’ll lose even more legal protection than have already been lost through the Tories’ assault on the justice system. He despises the Social Charter and the protection it gives European workers and employees. This is about Murdoch supporting the multinational corporations in their quest to find more ways to exploit their workers. He isn’t backing Britain, just supporting yet more ways to grind its people down behind his usual ultra-patriotic mouthings and hypocrisy.

The Press’ Censorship of Violence against the Strikers during the Miner’s Strike

Mark Hollingworth in his book on the press attacks on the Labour party and trade unions in the 1980s, The Press and Political Dissent: A Question of Censorship, also notes the way the press suppressed and ignored stories about violence against the strikers during the miners’ strike. He discusses in particular the press’ refusal to print a photograph of a policeman beating a women with a baton, police agents provocateurs, and how the fourth estate very rapidly lost interest in an arson attack on a miner’s car when they found out that the victim was a striking miner. Hollingworth writes

On a direct level there were dozens of examples of news stories and photographs involving intimidation of striking miners. Yet, in contrast to the almost blanket coverage of violence by pickets, the vast majority of allegations concerning police actions on the picket line were ignored. Perhaps the most notorious example was the photograph of a young woman, Lesley Boulton, being attacked by a truncheon-wielding mounted policeman at Orgreave coking plant on Monday 18 June 1983. She had been shouting at the police to ‘get an ambulance’ for a middle-aged injured miner. John Harris, a photographer with the International Freelance Library, managed to take two frames of film of the police attack and then ran off. Later that Monday afternoon his agency offered the pictures to the Daily Mirror who rejected them because they had ‘got all they wanted’. Harris’ photographs were freely available to Fleet Street later that week, but of Britain’s 17 national newspapers only the Observer published the picture of Boulton the following Sunday. Instead, it was left to some European papers like Stern magazine to print it. However, the public display of the photograph at the 1984 Labour party conference in Blackpool forced an interest from Fleet Street. Their response was to suggest that perhaps the camera angel or depth of field gave a misleading impression.

Detailed allegations of police harassment were also carefully documented. On 7 June 1984, a Nottinghamshire miner claimed he had recognised two plain-clothes policemen posing as pickets and inciting other miners to throw stones. But perhaps the most remarkable incident occurred on 15th June 1984 when two more plain clothes policemen were caught red-handed posing as miners at the Cresswell Strike Centre in Derbyshire. The police officers, P.C. Stevens and Sergeant Monk, were even identified by local reporter Carmel O’Toole, whose paper, the Worksop Guardian, carried the story on its front page. O’Toole then phoned through the story to the Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. They spiked the story. Names, addresses, telephone numbers and sworn statements concerning several alleged incidents were compiled by Tribune for any inquiring journalist or editor. Fleet Street turned a blind eye.

Discrimination by the press between violence against working and striking miners, particularly in the Midland’s coalfields, was starkly exposed by the case of Derbyshire miner Pete Neelan. In January 1985 his car was set on fire, his garage burned down and the word ‘Revenge’ spray-painted on to his house. As soon as it was announced that he was a miner at Worksop Main, Derbyshire, several Fleet Street correspondents and an ITN team flocked to his house to record the details for publication. However, when Neelan told them he was on stroke there was suddenly a loss of interest in the news story. ‘Everyone seemed terribly disappointed,’ said Neelan. The questions stopped and the journalists went home. The next day there was no sign of the story in the press. (p. 264-5).

Mike reported in Vox Political last week that there were calls after the release of the report in the Hillsborough disaster, which exonerated the Liverpool fans, that a similar inquiry should be held into the miners’ strike. Mike doubted that we’d ever get the truth about the strike from Theresa May, the Home Secretary. Considering how massively implicated nearly all of the press in the gross distortion of the news, I doubt very much that we can expect any truth about the strike, either from May nor from the press. There are too many high-ranking Conservative former editors with careers and reputations at stake. Besides, it might cause Rupert Murdoch to have palpitations.

Vox Political on the Silence of the Hillsborough Liars

Mike over at Vox Political has posted up a piece giving credit for the Metro laying out today’s cover, so it looked like that of the notorious issue of the Scum which lied about the Hillsborough disaster and the behaviour of the Liverpool fans. He also states that the revelations have been greeted with silence by the Scum and Bernard Ingham, Maggie’s press secretary, who made some of the appalling smears.

See Mike’s article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/04/27/silence-wont-save-the-liars-who-defamed-the-football-fans-at-hillsborough/

I think the Scum has made an apology about the disaster, but only after it changed its editor. The editor of the paper at the time was Kelvin MacKenzie, who has never apologised. Unfortunately, his mendacity hasn’t harmed his career one bit. The last time I saw him on TV, he was a regular, along with Nick Ferrari, another right-wing hack, on the Alan Titchmarsh show on daytime TV.

As for Bernard Ingham, he was nicknamed ‘Thatcher’s Rotweiler’, and had the same hatreds and political instincts as his mistress. He resents being described as a ‘spin doctor’, but as he was her press secretary, that was more or less what he was, and that’s where the rot started, although I’ve no doubt that No. 10 was managing the content of news stories long before then.

Ingham was, along with another of other celebs, caught out on ’90s TV by the edgy funster Chris Morris in his spoof news programme, Brass Eye. This had a section where various celebrities and personalities read out fake messages warning people of some imaginary threat, or campaigning for a very spurious good cause. Like Paul Daniels telling the world about ‘elephant tipping’ in Libya, and the elephant that had got its trunk caught up its bottom. In Ingham’s case, he was made to look very stupid along with his parliamentary colleague, David Amess, the MP for Basildon, and a whole host of TV personalities including Jimmy Greaves, Noel Edmonds, Bernard Manning and Rolf Harris, by reading out a warning about a fake synthetic drug, Cake. Cake was ‘a made-up drug’. One pill was the size of a dinner plate, and it had to be swallowed all in one gulp. It worked by affecting part of the brain called ‘Shatner’s Bassoon’, and was responsible for terrible physical side effects. It was made in Czechoslovakia, and so the goitres it produced on the necks of its addicts were known as ‘Czech neck’. And one girl was so sick with it, she threw up her own hip bone. This is, as you doctor should tell you, physically impossible. And the statement ‘Cake is a made-up drug’ should have alerted Ingham, as it alerted the viewers, that what was coming was a load of rubbish. But Morris and his crew were so persuasive, and Ingham so blinded with his own ego, that he failed to get the joke.

Well, twenty years or so ago, Ingham and MacKenzie lied about the deaths of 96 innocent people, and smeared them and a great British city. And that’s no joke. Their silence about the matter suggests that they are completely unrepentant. Their only remorse is over the fact that they got caught.

Here’s that section from Brass Eye, so you can share some of Morris’ ‘disgusting bliss’.

Vox Political on Hillsborough Victims’ Legal Victory

Mike over at Vox Political put up two pieces yesterday reporting the judgment that the 96 football fans, who died in the Hillsborough disaster, were the victims of unlawful killing. In the first article, he notes particularly that the victims and people of Liverpool were smeared, and the people of Britain deceived, by three people in particular: the head of the police, Margaret Thatcher, and the Sun under its editor, Kelvin MacKenzie. And he posted up this mock-up of how the sun’s cover should have looked in 2012 to make the point.

See Mike’s article at: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/04/26/fans-were-unlawfully-killed-in-the-hillsborough-disaster-and-we-were-all-deceived/

Mike’s second article also reported that the Crown Prosecution Service is considering pressing charges after the decision of the jury. They ruled that the police, Sheffield Wednesday, and Eastwood and Partners, the construction company that built the Hillsborough Stadium, were at fault and made the serious errors that led to the deaths of the 96 fans. Crucially, the fans Thatcher and co blamed for the disaster, weren’t responsible.

CPS to consider criminal charges over the unlawful killing of 96 people at Hillsborough

It isn’t remotely surprising that Maggie, the police chief and Kelvin MacKenzie all lied about the fans’ behaviour. Maggie had a visceral hatred of the Left and the working class, and Liverpool was a thorn in her side because of the Labour council led by the controversial Derek Hatton. The Tories wasted much taxpayers’ money launching pointless inquiry after pointless inquiry trying to prove Hatton was a crook. There was corruption on Merseyside. Merseyside council was so dodgy that it used to appear in Private Eye’s ‘Rotten Boroughs’ column as ‘Murkyside’. But to my knowledge nothing was proved against Hatton.

As for Kelvin MacKenzie, he shared the political animosity of the Leaderene to Liverpool, along with the peculiar hatred of the city common to Fleet Street. For some strange reason, a large number of hacks of the time had little but contempt for the town and its people. This even extended to some of the hacks writing for the liberal papers, like the Graoniad and the Absurder. The Scum’s smears led to the paper being publicly burnt in the city, and wiped out its circulation there. In more recent years, it has apologised and tried to put the record straight. But only after Kelvin MacKenzie had departed. He hadn’t changed, and took his bile and hatred of the town to whichever rag he started editing after he left the Sun.