The night before the Minister of Fun finally quit, he posed the question: 'Who decides who should be a member of the British cabinet - the prime minister or the editor of the Daily Mail?' Paul Dacre 1, John With Mellor tittle tattle dominating the news-stands for the last three months, attention is again focused on Britains tabloid press.
Many Mellor revelations were unarguably in the public interest. Mellor had free use of a chauffeur driven car and a luxury love-nest, provided by a property developer he put onto lucrative busiress deals; accepted expensive holidays as gifts without declaring them to the register of members interests; and ideologically exploited his wife and kids in the promotion of phoney 'family values'.
Even protestations that his phone conversations were taped - 'one wondered whether one was living in Ceausescu's Romania rather than John Major's Britain' - are rich from a minister in a government that routinely taps 35,000 telephones.
The Fourth Estate But Mellor is not the only tabloid victim. Health secretary Virginia Bottomley, Liberal Democratleader Paddy Ashdown, Labour general secretary Larry Whitty, the Princess of Wales and the Duchess of York have all recently been done over by the Fourth Estate.
In the run-up to the general election, then Labour leader Neil Kinnock was linked with prostitution, the KGB, and a businessman on the run from the fraud squad. Presumably he was just too busy to fit any Devil worship in. Kinnock ultimately attributed blame for Labour's defeat on 'the Tory press' rather than his own disastrous political Colins Yet "Tory press' allegations are somehow acceptable as evidence in expulsion hearings, as two Lambeth councillors recently discovered.
From the 'exposure' of socialist carworkers at Cowley as red moles in 1983, to 1990's 'Scargill in Moscow/Tripoli Cash Shocker', to the hounding of individuals like Mandy Mudd, Rachel Webb, Linda Bellos, Peter Tatchell and 'IRA-loving, poof-loving, Marxist Page 10 10 Oct. 1992 No. 29 leader of the GLC Mr Ken Livingstone' himself (thank you, Sunday Express), the left is constantly under hack attack.
Libel laws let the rich and powerful sue. But defamation cases do not get legal aid, making action financially impossible even for the relatively well-off, let alone working class people.
Sir David Calcutt QC's inquiry into the press and privacy in 1990 led to the formation of the industry-based Press Complaints Commission (a reworked Press Council stripped of lay members and the brief to promote press freedom) asea final opportunity for newspapers to clean up their act voluntarily.
Criminal
The penalties for failure were to be stark, Calcutt warned. A powerful, government-imposed Press Tribunal and three new criminal offences stopping journalists' attempts to obtain personal information would be intro duced.
The advent of the PCC - whose 16 members include editors of the News of the World, Daily Telegraph and Daily Star, all deeply partisan Tory papers - occasioned Mellor's infamous remark that the popular press is drinking in the Last Chance Saloon. Ironically, his departure could hasten kicking out time.
Sir David is due to give a verdict at the end of this year. Major may use the shaming of his close friend as a pretext for tough new legislation.
Whatever the left has suffered from press harassment, it would be wrong to agree. Our starting point must be greater press freedom, not less. We are for the right to know.
The first amendment to the US constitution reads 'Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. In Britain, over 100 laws make disclosure of information a crime.
The mere existence of restrictive legislation is itself a massive deterrent to investigative journalism. Further measures would shut up the John Pilgers, Paul Foots and Duncan Campbells, not the anonymous young wannabes from the provincial press moonlighting on the nationals and ready to do anything for the big break.
As in so many other areas, Labour's last manifesto substantially concurred with the Tories' position on Calcutt. It also joined the Liberal Democrats in promising a Freedom of Information Thornande rentast Act. That much is essential, but not enough.
The left should demand that a Labour government scrap all repressive limitations on journalism, including the Official Secrets Act, the D-Notice system of voluntary self-censorship on defence questions and the Sinn Fein broadcasting ban.
Only socially desirable limitationson matters like identifying child sex abuse victims or publishing material which could prejudice jury trials should stay in place.
Much of present press bias is rooted in virtual monopoly ownership. Three groups control over 70 per cent of national daily circulation and 80 per cent of Sunday circulation, and are extending empires into broad cast media.
Expropriation
A socialist government would ensure diversity by expropriating the mass circulation press from its present capitalistowners, and use the resources to allow all legal political views access to print. Real diversity and democracy annot happen while the rich an owerful have a stranglehold o ownership.
Not only political parties, but mass organisations of all kinds would be given the resources to produce their own papers; such moves would haveto be backed up by democratising access to broadcast media, especially television.
In the here and now, the labour movement urgently needs to build its own mass circulatión press, making the basic socialist case in a professional, COLOUR NEWSPAPER OF THE YEAR 25 BATS LOVE? a Casin STAR herds his
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