SOMETHING ROTTEN IN THE STATE OF BRITAIN

Hack Attack, Nick Davies, Chatto and Windus 2014.

Famously we live in the age of ‘celebrity’, which the Oxford English dictionary describes as: ‘the state of being well known.’ That about sums up the current phenomenon of celebrity, you do not have to be particularly proficient at anything, needing no particular talent, – it can be an advantage though is not essential, – you merely have to be well known, famous, the possessor of ‘well-knowness.’  Famous for being famous will do to have the tabloid tag ‘celebrity’ hung around your neck. For the tabloids need a constant supply of celebrities from which to produce ‘news,’ - preferably disasters, - crimes and misdemeanours, sexual scandal, drug taking or just plain bad luck, to feed the appetite of a public that had lost all sense of what it was appropriate to consume in a newspaper. The parents of dead children, a soap star who had an abortion, the parents of ‘celebrities,’ the aging singer with Alzheimer’s, nothing was off limits if it sold newspapers. If some members of the great British public want know who is responsible for the prurient pornography and descent into criminality of the tabloid press, they need only look in the mirror.

Kelvin MacKenzie and the infamous
Hillsborough edition of The Sun

Of course that there was something rotten in the British press was evident to anyone with a normal moral compass and sense of smell long before the hacking crisis broke. You only had to read, if that is the correct term, a copy of Kelvin MacKenzie’s The Sun, to see how poisonous British journalism had become. [1] What no one could have possibly guessed was the scale of corruption, venality, and criminality at the heart of Britain’s newspaper industry in general and the Murdoch Empire in particular. The scale of this corruption of British political and civil society, with the complicity of the Metropolitan Police is the subject of Nick Davies book. For it was Davies who broke the scandal open in the pages of The Guardian, edited by the impressive Alan Rusbridger.

Alan Rusbridger

The book reads like a detective story or dystopian novel, and like the plots of such novels the sheer enormity of the forces faced by Davies and the Guardian newspaper, forces that had co-opted the Met, cowed politicians of all political parties and which were prepared to stop at nothing to stop the truth from coming out, it is amazing that Davies and the Guardian finally exposed the truth at all. That they did was testimony to the fact that they were not alone in this fight. This book is testament to the extraordinary courage of a number of individuals determined that News International and the rest of the poison press would not get away with it. Some paid a very high price, as their private lives were exposed, their marriages placed under intolerable strain and their human frailty was assaulted. Still they refused to be deterred, the most tenacious need mentioning, the Labour MP’s Tom Watson, Chris Bryant, Tom Farellery, a number of truly courageous, and in some cases literally fearless, lawyers. In this latter category Charlotte Harris, and Mark Lewis need particular mention. 

A number of ‘celebrities who were prepared to place their heads above the

Sienna Miller giving evidence
at the Leveson Inquiry 

parapet, many didn’t, Sienna Miller, Steve Coogan, Hugh Grant. Whilst a great many cowards flinched and innumerable traitors sneered all these people held fast and refused to be intimidated.[2]  Essential though to the whole story is the grit, determination and courage of Davis, backed to the hilt by Alan Rusbridger.

What Davies exposes here however goes way beyond journalism, he exposes the profound moral corruption at the heart of the British establishment, demonstrating that there is something truly rotten in the state of Britain.

I would be hard pressed to say who comes out of this grotesque tale worse, the press, the politicians or the police. Certainly a good case could be made for saying that the behaviour of the Metropolitan Police throughout this saga was its very worst aspect. In the person of Andy Hayman, in charge of the initial hacking enquiry, we have a character so repellent that even a member of the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee investigating phone hacking described him as “a dodgy geezer.” If you made him up as a fictional character you would stretch credibility. Whilst Assistant Commissioner John Yates told so many lies that I suspect he lost track of what was true and what false.

"A dodgy geezer."

As to the politicians their cowardice over three decades reduced politics to a glove puppet show, with Rupert Murdoch’s bony hand stuck up Blair, Brown or Cameron’s ass. Blair and Cameron share joint billing for the title most pusillanimous politicians, though when it comes to sheer lack of moral compass Blair’s decision to continue to support Rebekah Brookes, even after the revelation that the dead schoolgirl, Milly Dowler’s phone had been hacked, takes some beating. In supporting Brookes he was also supporting someone seeking to destroy the Labour Party, the party that had given him all the breaks and the platform from which he became a world statesman. His reputation is now in the gutter.

Nick Davies at Leveson

Of course the culture of impunity enjoyed by the Murdoch press did not exist in a vacuum, as Davies points out in the end it was part of a wider culture of laissez-faire, of minimum or no touch regulation, unfettered free markets and the destruction of collective ethos institutions from Trade Unions to the old locally based building societies. The world we find ourselves in now, zero hours contracts, workfare, trade unions shackled by ever more draconian laws, privatised health provision, the BBC cowed and reduced in size, is to a great extent a world created by Rupert Murdoch, who found in Thatcher an ally who had the same dreams of an unregulated world. Welcome to Murdoch-Land.

The idea that post Leveson, the war is won, is however quickly dismissed by Davies. Already the toxic press is back with a vengeance, as if nothing had happened, with politicians like Cameron and Boris Johnson still seeking to keep the Murdoch papers onside.[3] Whilst Ed Miliband is already being ‘monstered’ by the Mail, the Sun and the Times.

Meanwhile the police have used the excuse of the revelations of inappropriate contact with the Murdoch press revealed by Leveson to further restrict and punish whistle-blowing. As I write this the Metropolitan police continue to fight against women abused by its undercover officers.  

In the last few years we have witnessed MP’s double standards and venality revealed in the expenses scandal, police corruption from Hillsborough to the Lawrence case and the use of undercover cops to smear innocent people, recently they have sought to entrap a leading member of the cabinet. The widespread sexual abuse by a range of ‘celebrities’,[4] has been belatedly exposed along with industrial scale spying on UK citizens by GHHQ. In the midst of all this came the grotesque tale of the hacking of a dead schoolgirl’s phone and the keeping of information gained from this criminal act from the police. As I say there is something truly rotten in the state of Britain.

Boris Johnson with special friend Rupert Murdoch at the
London Olympic Games

Postscript

There was of course a trial, and there will soon be many more, some will have to face justice, though the biggest fish have dodged it. Rebekah Brookes was acquitted, her defence being that she was too naive, stupid and incurious to know how the stories she published were being sourced. As she was acquitted we must take her at her word.

Coulson was found guilty and faces a prison sentence, he also faces another trial, this time for perjury. That’s one great thing about the justice system. One way of getting acquitted is to lie under oath, only if you do this you live under a shadow for the rest of your life. In some cases you must rely on others to remain silent. For this to provide peace of mind you need a culture which places a high value on friendship and trust. In short you have to trust people. Now therein lies a tale.  

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[1] I was going to write tabloid journalism, however reading about the antics at the Times during this period it is clear that all journalism is now tainted.

[2] Paul Dacre continued his hate campaign long after the antics of his ‘trade’ were exposed, i.e. even whilst the Leveson hearings were being held. Indeed what is telling in this story is the number of crooks imagined that they were journalists; of course News International did not blur the line, they abolished it.

[3] Johnson has held a number of meeting with Murdoch, though initially sought to keep these meetings private, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-21229449

[4] For all Brookes’ grandstanding at Leveson about fighting paedophilia and standing up for the interests of Sun readers none of her reporters nailed Jimmy Saville or Cyril Smith. Perhaps they were too busy finding out about Siena Millers private life.