I had a need to learn and to write as soon as it was reported that the Metropolitan police disclosed to the parents of murdered school girl Millie Dowler, to victims and families of the July 7th terrorist bombing in London and to the families of British Service men killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the News of the World had employed private investigators to use illegal methods to violate their privacy and listen in to their expressions of loss, pain, distress, guilt, despair and fear. This was bad enough; the lowest of the low, but worse was to come, when it was revealed that some of the particulars of individuals and their families appeared to have been obtained from members of the metropolitan police who had been paid as much as £5000 to £10000 for information which provided a single unique story.
I have no words, although I spend most of my time these days, reading, listening and using words, to express the outrage, the pain, the sense of violation and anger, and I don’t do anger, about those directly responsible, those who authorised, those who knew and those who covered up, successfully, until recent days, when we all came to know. Damn them, they deserve not just be punished, but to endure similar treatment. For once I see no mitigation and I cannot forgive.
I have felt distressed before, gripped and overwhelmed, having had a capacity to put myself into the feelings of others since childhood, then unable to fully understand or communicate what I was feeling and why, especially after reading the official reports of the trials and investigations of those involved in the Auschwitz and (Bergen)Belsen concentration camps when I was about fourteen years of age after a Jesuit priest history teacher had told the class we should learn what happened if we wanted to understand what the second world war was all about. I went on to learn that the cruelty and depravity involved was not unique and had occurred in different forms throughout history and that it was to continue through my life time.
I have started to write the book I have always felt within me about my birth and care mothers and their families and the amazing father, I never knew, and who became the Vicar General of Gibraltar; deciding to place the major events in our respective lives in the context of all the wars, the genocide and the significant natural disasters, including the floods and the famines that occurred during our respective times, so that I now have a sense of the scale of human suffering and depravity that has occurred and continues.
I therefore understand that it is impossible to know as one becomes engulfed in any event of magnitude, especially since the creation of 24/7 news media, the Internet and communication networking sites, which happening is going to have lasting significance in terms of ones individual future, one’s family and surrounding society, the country one inhabits and the world at large. I can say that two events of recent decades produced a feeling of fundamental change, of never being able to go back to the way that things were: the death of Princess Diana, which altered people’s perception of UK royalty and the bombing and destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 of which the London bombings were an anticipated consequence.
Last week the accumulative triple impact of the information about what had happened to the Dowler family so soon after the conviction of the murderer and the way the media reported what appeared to be a trial of the family particularly the girl’s father which I found nauseating and despicable given the circumstances, followed by the revelation that victims and their families of the London bombings were also in the list, and then the close relatives, the parents, the partners of those who had sacrificed their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan for the greater good made me want to cry out and do something. I have to say that whatever his political motives, the Leader of the Opposition got it, Mr Cameron appeared not to do so and I thought back to the reaction of the Palace to the death of Princes Diana and that of Tony Blair, together with his reaction to 9/11.
I debated doing something, standing with a placard at the supermarket on Sunday suggesting that no one should buy the News of the World or buying up all the available copies and burning them. When Mr Murdoch announced he was closing the paper, I said great, and when the editor with his staff around him declared you are great and we do not deserve this this, I shouted to my television, “bastards” and “damn you all“, you still do not get it. I feel this about Ms Brooks, Mr Murdoch Junior and senior, and Mr Cameron needs to do better to prove that he has not misjudged beyond political and public redemption. He needs to show greater contrition.
I have continued to write and rewrite over several days as revelation and admission, denial and prevarication on revelation, admission, denial and prevarication has mounted. I have tried to set my feelings aside and look at what has happened objectively, to evaluate and to understand.
I have kept one eye and ear to the 24/7 media Sky and BBC, the Prime Minister‘s Question Time on Wednesday, the subsequent Emergency Debate in the House of Commons and studied the text, the short Questions and answer session in the House of Lords on Thursday, having also watched developments as they unfolded ITV news and Channel 4 together with BBC Newsnight, Question Time and the Daily Politics and Late Night Politics Show.
I also saw the Prime Minister’s statement and question answering on Friday and the Andrew Marr show on Sunday, the Sunday newspapers were read on line and Wikipedia consulted. I still need to put down the process to make sense and judgement.
At Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday July 6th 2011 in response to the first question from the Labour Opposition Party Leader, Edward Miliband, Mr Cameron accepted the need for an Inquiry or Inquiries but would not commit himself that they would be Judicial led, held in public and set up immediately. He tried to placate those who said he was wrong by calling for a meeting with the opposition leader on the morning of the next and last Prime Minister’s Question Time before the Summer recess. He said he wished to first consult the Cabinet Secretary and the Attorney General.
On Friday July 8th in a hastily arranged media briefing, the Prime Minister announced in advance of the proposed meeting with the Opposition Leader, that he and the Liberal Democrat, Deputy Leader had agreed that there would be two inquiries: On the ethics and regulation of news media and a statutory public inquiry, led by a judge with the power to secure documentation and compel witnesses to be questioned under oath.
Yesterday, Saturday July 8th, under further pressure from the Deputy Labour Leader, Ms Harman, a spokesman disclosed that the Lord Chancellor had been requested to find an appropriate member of the Judiciary for the Inquiry and the plan remained to agree the terms of reference and associated matters at the Wednesday meeting.
The second issue which the Opposition Leader raised was the position of the application by Mr Murdoch to gain full control of BSkyB with the appointed Minister due to give his decision in relation to the Competition issue shortly after the consultation period closed on Friday July 8th. At that time it was reported that the Minister had signalled that he was satisfied with the assurances given on the proposed independence of Sky News Broadcasting and was minded to give permission without reference to the statutory body concerned with monopolies and mergers. It will be remembered that the original responsible Minister, Vince Cable, had been caught in a media organised sting admitting that he would stop the merger and that he had an Exocet in his back pocket to ensure that the application was rejected. Mr Cameron switched the decision taking to a Minister subsequently reported to be sympathetic to Mr Murdoch and his corporate interests.
Last Wednesday Mr Cameron again prevaricated, correctly drawing attention that the Minister was required to act in as quasi judicial role and that it was Of Com, the independent statutory body which had to make a recommendation about a fit and proper person. Mr Miliband pressed the Prime Minister that on behalf of the government and millions of outraged citizens he should take the initiative and refer the matter immediately to the proper authorities. A few hours later during the Emergency debate on the national scandal, the leading and respected High Tory Member of Parliament, Christopher Soames called for a pause before any decision was announced by the Culture Minister, and he was supported by other Tory and Liberal Democrat Members and by all the Labour Members who addressed this aspect. The following day the Opposition Leader in House of Lords put down a question which led to a similar demand for a pause before any Ministerial decision is announced. The Government spokesperson intimated that the Culture Minister would need to assess the consultation submission which we later learned had risen from 40000 earlier in the week to over 160000 by Friday lunchtime and by which time it had also been announced that the Minister was not now in a position to come to a decision until the autumn.
This has not satisfied anyone. Under pressure from a wide range of interests Of Com has also announced that it has contacted the Metropolitan Police to enquire if there is information in relation to the Fit and Proper person requirement. Again this development had been countered by those arguing that only if there is evidence against the principals of the holding company could Of Com intervene in a negative way.
On Saturday it was announced that the Opposition is to use one of its Parliamentary debate days to consider this question on Wednesday of next week and that it is the intention to force a vote on the matter in which all Members would be given the opportunity to indicate their position. This initiative is as much aimed at the Liberal and Democratic members declaring their position as anticipating that Tory back benchers will support the Opposition or abstain from voting on this issue. I assume Mr Miliband will argue, “we understand the legal aspects but tell us what you really think? So much for your new politics if you do not.”
No sooner had I written this did energy minister Chris Hulne state on the Andrew Marr Show that he and his colleagues would need to see the terms of the motion before deciding how they would vote. Mr Miliband then explained later in the programme that he would not press a vote if the Prime Minister announced that there would be no Take Over decision until the conclusion of the police investigations. He added that Mr Murdoch should withdraw the current bid until the criminal and other investigations had been completed. I go further Mr Murdoch and his family including Ms Brooks needs to feel the full force of British anger and contempt. They should be politically and socially ostracised until they demonstrate genuine contrition.
Last Wednesday Mr Miliband also raised the position of Mr Murdoch’s Chief Executive, the amazingly personal publicity shy Rebekah Brooks, who was previously Mrs Ross Kemp. There is the briefest information on her family and early background and her subsequent dramatic rise to position as the youngest editor of a national newspaper at the News of the World, about how she came to be promoted to News International Chief Executive and became regarded as a family friend of Rupert Murdoch.
Ms Brooks was Editor when the voice mail of already dead Millie Dowler was hacked into and messages deleted in order for the latest to be listened to. An illegal and horrific act which led the family to believe she was still alive and can be said to have perverted the course of justice. Ms Brooks is said to have written to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee at which she previously appeared to say she had no knowledge at the time of this event or of other criminal activities of her staff at that time.
At the original appearance before the Commons Committee Ms Brooks answered a question in the affirmative that the News of the World had paid individual police officers for information. Mr Coulson intervened to explain that any payments made were within the law and later on recall Ms Brooks explained that she had been talking in general terms about the past and was not being specific. Ms Brooks who is reputed to be frank and engaging in conversation, but not expert in thinking on her feet, and it must be assumed that she was got at by the legal counsel for the Murdoch corporation after her admission. The Home Affairs Committee is to hold a further public hearing on Tuesday at which the police officer in charge of present inquiries will be interviewed.
During the past few days it has been reported that among papers handed to the police are copies of memoranda in which Mr Coulson authorised payment to the police. During to day it emerged that the documents had been passed to a legal firm by News International and only retrieved to be sent to the police. These are said to reveal that News International was aware of widespread illegal activities at the time and consequently mislead a number of enquirers.
I did see a interview with a former News of the World employee who explained how the system worked in that for information about the ownership of a vehicle seen at the premises of say a known sex trade worker, a payment of £200 would be made and covered by a general story expenses claim which an editor would need to authorise. For information which led to a major feature of several pages as much as £5000 and £10000 would be paid and for this purpose the police officer would in effect be placed on the pay roll of the Newspaper as an information source. The cash money would be handed over at somewhere like a fast food drive in. As Mr Coulson has now been arrested and police bailed on suspicion of being involved in bribing the police and in the criminal use of technology to obtain private information, it is not appropriate to comment on the details of these revelations, except in relation to another private investigation firm mentioned later.
Because Ms Brooks was editor at the time of the Millie Dowler criminal violation and subsequently in her role as Chief Executive and therefore accountable for the work of all the Editors, Mr Miliband, a chorus of politicians, people in the news industry and in other areas of public life, called on her resign. Mr Coulson had resigned following disclosure and successful criminal prosecution involving phone hacking leading to the short term imprisonment of the journalist and a private detective. Mr Coulson has remained vehement that he had no knowledge but he resigned because the criminal activity occurred during his time as Editor. It was therefore argued that Ms Brooks should now do the same. Mr Miliband repeated his demand on the Andrew Marr programme today.
Later during the Emergency debate last Wednesday, Mr Watson, the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East used Parliamentary privilege to refer to a meeting with the police at which Ms Brooks was said to be present which raised further questions and which appeared to shock a Tory Member and former lawyer who subsequently spoke in the debate. Columns 1557 and 1558 Hansard.
On Wednesday Mr Cameron refused to respond to Mr Miliband’s request for support in pressing for Ms Brooks to consider her position and about which he was asked again. It was later disclosed that she had offered her resignation which had been refused by the News International Board. On Friday an obviously reluctant Mr Cameron changed his mind and said that if he had been in the same position as Rupert Murdoch he would have accepted her resignation. This will not have been easy for Mr Cameron as he and his wife had accepted an invitation to attend the Christmas Day Party held at the home of Ms Brooks and he is known to have gone out riding with her on more than one occasion as she spends weekends at her home which is also located in his constituency. Facts which have been considered unusual on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr Murdoch’s son has gone on public record to speak on her behalf although what he said appeared to me to be half hearted and emotionless. Mr Murdoch senior was his usual pithy and blunt self. He had full confidence in Ms Brooks and had no intention of “throwing her under a bus.”
Over the weekend there are reports the police would be interviewing Ms Brooks next week. It also understood that a substantial number of News of the World journalists have expressed the view that had Ms Brooks resigned, the boycott by advertisers would not have taken place and the paper would not have been closed. There are not free to speak out now, but they will in time. The latest put out by News International media is that Ms Brooks has volunteered to be interviewed as a witness, My God she was a witness but what did she do? Ring 999 or did she help in the cover up? A Statutory Public Inquiry may reveal the answer
On Wednesday Mr Miliband only made passing reference to the decision of Mr Cameron to appoint Mr Coulson as his head of communications during his time as leader of the Opposition and then confirming that appointment as his head communication adviser on becoming Prime Minister. This brought Mr Coulson into daily contact with the Prime Minister and to having access to confidential government business and its presentation to the public via international media.
The Prime Minister has stuck to his guns, stating that he alone was responsible for the appointment and would remain answerable for having made it, although there is the reported suggestion that it was Chancellor George Osborn who first put the idea to him. This in turn begs the question who suggested the idea to Mr Osborn or did one of them suddenly wake up in the night with the idea?
Mr Cameron will be required to detail the steps taken at any Public Inquiry under oath and judicial questioning, including whether Government sources were used for the standard background checks required for public appointments at a national level.
Mr Cameron said that he had first made the appointment because he was satisfied with the assurance that had been given to him by Mr Coulson and believed he should be given a second chance. He reminded that Mr Coulson had made an excellent contribution over the past four years to the acclaim of those with whom he worked and that during that time he had come to regard Mr Coulson as a personal friend and was not proposing to pretend otherwise because it appeared expedient to do so. I wonder what contact Mr Cameron has had with Mr Coulson, Ms Brooks, and the Murdoch’s since then, or others have had had contact on his behalf?
Mr Cameron has also said that while he was advised not to appoint Mr Coulson to the Downing Street post no one had produced evidence to back up that concern. Among those who have said or are reported to have said they advised the Prime Minister not to make the appointment are the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Paddy Ashdown, and Lord John Prescot who has produced a copy of the letter he sent and the Editor of the Guardian Newspaper. No doubt others will come forward or be questioned about what they advised and why at the judicial inquiry. This morning Chris Hulne explained that when Mr Clegg and other Lib Dem members of the Coalition advised Mr Cameron against making the appointment, Mr Cameron said the appointment was for him to make and was not subject to Coalition or other views. So be it.
My impression is that there is already concern on Tory backbenchers about the judgement of Mr Cameron in this respect, admittedly there will those who see personal advantage in threatening his position or replacing him by another, while Mr Miliband and his Labour colleagues see immediate political advantage in using the situation to question the judgement of the Prime Minister, especially now that Mr Coulson has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of having committed such serious offences. According to the police the particulars of some 4000 individuals and their families were found in the possession of one private detective while another source reported that the individual had indexed over 9000 names. In my judgement his position as Tory Leader, and therefore Prime Minister is now in question.
The approach of Mr Cameron has been to seek a political consensus as was achieved in relation to the scandal of Member expenses and in relation to the British campaign in Afghanistan and on a number of other issues. He and some of his colleagues aided by the media have drawn attention that Mr Blair and Mr Brown courted the approval of Mr Murdoch and his senior colleagues. On Saturday I listened to a radio exchange in which Mr Straw denied that Labour had done a deal with Mr Murdoch to consult in advance on any changes in their stated position on Europe and that at one point his papers had called for a referendum on a European Community development which the government had then announced within a matter of days. Mr Straw said he had privately advised Mr Blair against supporting greater European integration and had pressed him to agree the referendum and done so without reference to any position of Mr Murdoch and his newspapers. Mr Miliband did his best to explain why Mr Blair and Mr Brown have courted the support of Mr Murdoch. He admitted that he had strengthened his concerns about the nature of contact because of the emerging evidence and the weight of public opinion over the past days.
Mr Cameron has admitted there will need to be a different kind of relationship with the news media than developed over the past decades, a statement which has been greeted with horror by several news industry men fearing the kind of statutory control which exists in France and some other European countries and which leads the government to control and suppress some legitimate media investigations into the abuses of power. However this important but separate issue from the cosy relationship which evolved in the UK and which according to commentators from the USA and the rest of Europe does not exist elsewhere. It is part of the small society of the London political, the powerful and the wealthy elite which made New Labour unpopular in the North.
Given the widespread public reaction which cuts across individual political allegiances, clearly evident during the Question Time Programme the time is right to re-establish the authority of Government and Parliament over the media. Mr Cameron is right and is to be admired for admitting on Friday that as a consequence of the need of Government and senior politicians of all the parties to maintain good relationships with the media and seek endorsement for their polices, programmes and positions, they had come to overlook or not give appropriate attention to claims and information on the abuses of media power. He may have had in mind the official report which stated that several hundred journalists employed by the majority of national, regional and local newspapers had been involved in the illegal acquisition of confidential information. Mr Hulne on Sunday said there was talk of the Sun and the Sunday Times, also part of the Murdoch Empire having used similar methods to those which has closed the News of the World. This is likely to emerge in the Commons debate on Wednesday. I am yet to establish if there is to be a debate in the House of Lords.
It is noteworthy that in recordings of the speech made by Ms Brooks to the News of the World staff before they set to produce the final edition of the Newspaper, she stated that worse revelations were to come and that in a year’s time the staff would appreciate why the decision to close the paper had been taken.
The decision to close the paper taken corporately by the News International Board came as advertiser after advertiser said they were suspending involvement and the public indicated their intention to boycott the paper. The decision to close the paper presently appears a creative master stroke with twice the usual number of 2.5 million copies printed in the expectation that people will want to buy the final edition after 165 years. The paper is reported to say thank you to its loyal readers and to quote messages of support as well as reminding of the various exposure it has made. The Editor and individual Journalists, no doubt seeking new appointments within the Murdoch empire or with other news media on recommendations from Murdoch, have come to the fore over the past 24 hours saying what an amazingly brilliant creative and professional workforce they have been.
My criticism of the News of the World and the Sun Newspaper is not their investigations and exposures but their style and methodology. The Guardian as the Daily Telegraph over Members misuse of expenses demonstrates how to hold those who abuse power to account. My problem with the News of the World and the Sun is the way they appealed to the criminal and social underclass and the moronic and basest elements of society, pandering to the gutter passions and voyeuristic tendencies of people in general. I say good riddance to the News of the World and hope the day of reckoning will also come to the Sun but I appreciate millions of people disagree.
I also shed no tears for the journalists collectively involved compared to the scale of job losses caused by banking crisis and recession and the loss of industrial and manufacturing production employment opportunities since the end of World War II.
It has already been pointed out that the News of the World has remained the most lucrative and profit making paper in the Western World and while the other Sundays hope to cash in the expectation is that much of the readership and advertising revenue will be lost. From its heyday of 8 million copies, the News of the World has progressively lost sales, primarily because of the development of 24 hour news broadcasting pioneered by satellite and cable TV and more recently the development of Internet news publishing, Blog writing and social networking.
It has been reported that the Internet domain the Sun on Sunday has been registered and not to be confused with the regional Sunday paper in the North of England called the Sunday Sun. With all the hype over the final edition of the News of the World it can be argued that Mr Murdoch is creating the market for a new Sunday tabloid whether to be called the Sun on Sunday or some other title. While the journalists and printers have a vested interest in a new product, the owners and shareholders of competitors do not.
The greater circulation of their individual newspaper the higher advertising rates can be charged and therefore the less loss making and better chance of ongoing profitability. The reason why some papers are now circulated free such as London Evening Standard is that with a large circulation the paper has made more money through advertising income than it made from charging and reducing circulation.
In fact profit is the main reason why Mr Murdoch and in particular his son, want to gain 100% control of the profit making BskyB which they already de facto control by being the largest shareholders. There is a case for abandoning printed news all together and concentrating on TV, the Internet, the mobile phone and the portable news readers. This would not be a bad thing in principal
There is one other issue of major significance: This is the way the matter has been handled by the Metropolitan Police.
In 2007 Mr Clive Goodman, a journalist covering the UK Royals was prosecuted and imprisoned together with Private Investigator Glenn Mulcaire who Mr Goodman had employed. The police investigation had commenced the previous year. It is now known that the police acquired eleven thousand pages of notes from Mr Mulcaire detailing information gained illegally, information to be investigated further, together with the names of individuals of interest. This information was not processed and statements were made by the police to the public, to Parliament and to individual inquiries that the scale of the illegality was very limited.
Why officers lied, misled or exercised such bad judgement is being investigated alongside the allegation that individual police officers took substantial and ongoing payments for information from News International. Heads should roll and be seen to roll.
After two years of continued allegation and criticism Assistant Commissioner John Yates declared on behalf of the Metropolitan Police in July 2009 that there was no new evidence. This was accurate in the sense that that the evidence already existed stored bin bags; Mr Yates has expressed massive regret for the inadequacy of the police investigation in 2006 and his failure in 2009. His speaking out prior to being called before the Home Affairs Committee has been questioned. He is an individual being called upon to resign.
Andy Hayman Assistant Police Commissioner who had been responsible for overseeing the police investigation had been recruited by News International as a columnist.
It has also emerged that the former Director of Public Prosecutions is now employed by Mr Murdoch providing legal advice on the handling of current claims by those known to have been illegally investigated. Eight claims have been settled privately on the understanding that the details remain confidential
· Sienna Miller, actress
· Kelly Hoppen, interior designer and Miller's stepmother
· Tessa Jowell, Labour MP
· David Mills, lawyer and Jowell's former husband
· Andy Gray, former footballer and sports commentator
· Joan Hammell, aide to the former deputy prime minister John Prescott
· Sky Andrew, sports talent agent
· Nicola Phillips, assistant to the publicist Max Clifford
At least twenty other cases are pending and said to likely cost the corporation £40 million. News International is contesting these claims.
Other public figures known to have been advised by the Police or mobile phone companies that their particulars were held in the Mulcaire files are Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks of News International; Iain Blair former Commissioner of Police, Ali Dizaei Metropolitan Police Commander, and Brian Paddick Deputy assistant Police Commissioner together with Former Assistant Police Commissioner Mike Fuller; Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Chris Bryant MP Campaigner had to approach the police who confirmed, Lord Prescott and who had to approach Scotland Yard, Simon Hughes MP former MP George Galloway: Prince William Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry of Wales, Prince Charles Communication Secretary Paddy Harveson, Aide to Prince Charles Helen Asprey, Jamie Lowther Pinkerton private Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry: Max Clifford Agent: Steve Coogan Actor and Elle McPherson Actor; Chris Tarrant TV presenter, Urika Jonsson TV presenter, Wayne Rooney Footballer, Paul Gascoigne, former footballer, Gordon Taylor Former Chief Executive professional Footballers Association and Jon Armstrong Legal adviser to Gordon Taylor, David Davies Executive Director Football Association, Kieren Fallon Jockey; The Rape victim Miss X approached the police and Tommy Sheridan Leader of Solidarity given two sets of hacking notes; Brendan Montegue Investigative Journalist via mobile phone company and Colin Stagg. Three others where the police had not confirmed are included in the Wikipedia report, Actor Leslie Ash, Alistair Campbell, and Bob Crow RMT
It was not until 26th January 2011 that the Metropolitan Police announced that it was beginning a new investigation, Operating Weeting, to investigate the evidence regarding the conduct of News International Employees which would run alongside the review of phone hacking evidence held by the Crown Prosecution Service. All those who have been in contact with the 50 officers from the new investigation have been impressed and expressed confidence. News International said they were fully cooperating with the inquiry in the provision of additional documentation and this aspect was being led by Ms Brookes until this weekend when she relinquished this role. The extent of cooperation is questioned.
News International has sacked one of its senior Executives- Ian Edmonson and he along with chief Reporter Neville Thurlebck were arrested on April 5th together with journalist James Weathrup on 14th April on suspicion of being involved in the interception of voice mails.
There is also another earlier series of inquiries to be mentioned. In 1987 Daniel Morgan a private investigator was murdered in London and was said to have been close to exposing corruption in the Metropolitan Police. The Detective assigned to case did not reveal that he had been working unofficially for the agency. Six men including two police officers were arrested on suspicion of murder but were released without charge. The Metropolitan police has since conducted five inquiries into the murder, police corruption, drug trafficking and robbery.
In 2000 following a secret investigation the former partner of Daniel Morgan, called Rees was found guilty of conspiring to plant cocaine on an innocent woman and was sentenced to seven years. There were 36 police officers involved in the fifth investigation but by 2006 there was no progress in solving the murder until a criminal prosecution in 2009 when the defence lawyers expressed concern at having to review 750000 pages of documentation and eventually the prosecution of three men including Rees was abandoned in March 2011. It emerged at the trial that Rees had been paid £150000 by the News of the World a year for supplying illegally obtained information about people in the public eye. According to the Guardian newspaper material gained in relation to Rees is excluded from the Weeting inquiry although presumably it is under secured official control.
Over the weekend in addition to Coulson the former News of the World Royal Reporter was arrested once more and bailed. An unnamed former private investigator aged 63 was also arrested. There is a report that further arrests are anticipated over the coming days.
This concludes my attempt to summarise developments and information todate.
I commence the second part of this first report with the admission that as an opportunistic, albeit creative, self publicist, I have maintained a love and hate relationship with British news and information media. I considered providing a summary of my own efforts as an amateur journalist and diarist over fifty years, including editing the first 100 editions of Parliament and Social Work, having published some hundred articles prior to 2003 and since then over 2000 pieces of writing similar to this. Instead I am mentioning some experience of direct relevance.
There have been several occasions when I have been the subject of media interview and inquiry. The first of these was as a young man aged 21 years before participating in college education and university based professional training. I spent a month in Scotland working on a temporary basis for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War in making preparations for what became a Committee 100 supporting Direct Action protest against the use of Holy Loch as a base for Polaris submarines. I met with unexpected and at times amazing support from the police, local authorities and community interests on the south bank of Clyde and hostility and rejection on the north which eventually led to the cancellation of the northern route march. I was invited to meet with a Scottish representative of a national newspaper, the Daily Express I believe, as the Daily Mail had a reporter embedded in the 6 week March action programme which had commenced from the end of the Aldermaston march in Trafalgar Square and where I had been the chief marshal as far as Bedford before going on to Holy Loch,
I met the Journalist at an office in Dumbarton and I talked freely answering all his questions at length. He stated at the outset that he was under editorial instruction and that all that I said would be slanted towards the editorial approach to the project. What he wrote would be critical of the mission and unflattering to me. He accurately reflected my half baked uneducated zeal and personal limitations. However he provided major advance publicity which I remain convinced helped to swell the number of sightseers as well as participants on the day. The event was successful in being a world wide spectacle and getting millions of people discussing if it was a good or bad thing for weapons of mass destruction to be delivered by underwater rockets anywhere in the seas of the world 24/7.
About fifteen years ago I was the subject of an investigation and subsequent article in the Guardian newspaper which has pursued the News of the World situation persistently since it first emerged. The Journalist who investigated my involvement in a matter is the same journalist at the forefront of the News of the World Investigation, Mr Nick Davis. Fortunately prior to publication I had been accepted for legal advice and help on a pro bono basis by one of the largest international law firms in the world and a former Chairman of the Bar Council, an international Civil Rights specialist was providing Counsel’s opinion and by coincidence the law firm also acted for the Guardian Newspaper. The published article was excellent in many respects although I would have preferred less emphasis on my role and to have had been in a position to respond to several aspects of what was reported with additional information, but the difference between the two articles over the four decade period reflected the ability to be represented and the level of that representation.
I have had only one personal insight into the way individual journalists on the News of the World worked. I was approached in my then official capacity by a journalist who had been contacted for help by someone with whom my department was in contact. I explained that I might not be able to make a comment but would investigate and contact back. I spoke to staff directly involved and advised the journalist we were attempting to help the individual within our powers and resources. I explained the appeal and complaint systems in operation and which the individual had been advised if they were not satisfied with our efforts. The journalist asked if I thought publicity would help and I said that until the process was completed publicity could prove counter productive. The journalist accepted my advice and I was impressed by the contact.
I can add that I cannot recall any situation of being approached by the media, mainly at a local and regional level, but occasionally nationally, about the circumstances of individuals when the journalist did not enquire in an open and professional way and respected the sensitivity and confidentiality of the situation and accepted the best advice I was able to assemble in the interests of the subjects, even this was only by saying “I am not in a position at present to comment.”
Fifty years ago while undergoing professional training at a university where my place had been arranged and paid for by the Home Office, I was contacted late one evening through the phone of my landlady who had told me it was someone from the Home Office. It was not so but a journalist from the local evening newspaper.
Several years before this I met Frank Allaun the Labour Member of Parliament for Salford. He had sat next to me on a private bus to Aldermaston for the start of a four day CND march to Trafalgar Square and we had got into conversation and kept regularly in touch especially after I had spent two months working in Salford on behalf of the Manchester Family Service Unit.
I had written to Frank sometime before the telephone call about a situation which had come to my attention in Birmingham of excessive overcrowding in an appalling standard of privately rented accommodation and used to him the expression families living in a twilight zone where their children were at risk and their futures in question. I had referred to the circumstances of one family and that there was no immediate solution given the number of others in similar situations on the local authority social housing waiting list. I had not revealed names or identifying location.
Frank, without my prior knowledge, had then quoted from the letter in a House of Commons debate and his speech and my letter was quoted extensively in the national media, although I only learned of this after the phone call. The local journalist had obtained the telephone number from Frank on the understanding that my involvement was kept confidential unless I agreed to the contrary. I was able to say that appropriate action had been taken to help the individual family who were only one of many. When faced with questions about my then role I answered factually but did not press confidentiality although immediately after the call ended I knew this had been a mistake. I waited anxiously to see what happened and was relieved when only a small piece was included in a back page of the paper on the following Saturday.
However the couple of sentences has been seen by the wife of the deputy chief officer who reported up the chain of command to the politicians and the following Monday morning I was summoned to the office of the course principal and told that my position on the course was in question subject to the reaction of the Chief Officer of the local authority with whom I had been placed for practical work training. In fact I was gob smacked by the reception which greeted me, especially when he said he had been authorised at a political level to offer me a job at the end of my training. The family in question also accepted my apology for the publicity without their prior permission. The family had to wait their place in the queue for rehousing and for several years later the incident was discussed by subsequent students in a course arranged seminar on the role of the social worker, the media and political action. Frank became Chairman of the National Labour Party and I a local authority chief officer but it could have worked out very differently.
In my previous writing on attending an International Management course for senior executives being considered for general Management in 1984, I mentioned that the experience had proved important in several respects, changing my life in several respect. One aspect not covered was the extent to which some of us quickly understood the potential significance of the development of fibre optical digital communications and management information systems and one of my claims to originality fame, but not alas to fortune, was to have identified that people would pay to watch other human beings go about their everyday lives because of the basic curiosity we have about how others behave and live, heralding Internet and reality TV. I did not appreciate then just how right I was or how society would change in terms of the ability of people to self expose coupled with the insatiable appetite of people to enjoy the exposure of others. I had cited the News of the World as the then bench mark.
This morning in one discussion programme a kiss and tell tabloid journalist said that he was often shocked by the willingness of young women to recount in vivid terms the most intimate of experiences with others, if the price was right. Over the past weeks there has been considerable controversy in the region over an MTV show called Geordie Shore in which several young people lived in a house from where they exchanged partners, got drunk and went about on the Toon in a party mood day and night. The programme horrified many although the behaviour of young people from all over the world on the Spanish Costa, helped to transform Tyneside nightlife twenty five years ago, every weekend Winter through to Winter. Last weekend the Sunday Sun which is freely available in quantity in the Members Lounge at Durham Cricket Club carried an editorial and several pages of pictures and print about an attempt to prevent a USA style programme coming to the region in which young women in particular are persuaded through gifts and payments to strip on camera and engage in simulated sexual activity. While in no way defending the activities of some journalists and their editorial managers, digital media had changed society.
Nor is the influence of digital media all negative with the development of self publishing and social communication sites such as AOL Community, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and other Instant messaging services, including video-cam communications. In my instance I have used the services creatively and positively and since 2002 in terms of contemporary art, performance art and its digital applications. Earlier in the year we witnessed on 24 hour news television the impact of the use of social networking to bring about a revolution in Egypt and we all saw the power of government to turn off all digital communication as well as to censor and use if for their own purposes when under threat.
Had I the resources and nerve in 2003 I would have immediately created an online site not only to publish all the completed artwork project sets but installed cameras to make myself available 24/7. This idea was not original as I later found out that Tracy Emin had been filmed 24/7 in an art studio environment as well as turning one of her homes into a contemporary performance access space. In that year I digested the Baltic Contemporary Art centre publication on Creative New Media following its 2001 International Seminar, and argued that we had reached the point when everything that we do and say can be viewed, recorded and altered with the available technology.
I suggested that those in the public eye or public position should assume they are under constant scrutiny, from governments, the media and competitors in a way which previous generations could only speculate about, notably Aldous Huxley’s in his 1931 Brave New World. It is generally accepted that Government intelligent services, civil and military should be able to use all available methods to stop terrorism and catch criminals and these days the work if often out sourced to specialist firms of investigators and security provision.
The problem is the extent to which everyone is watching everyone else. A positive example is the use of private closed circuit TV at large crowd sporting events and as a one time share holder of Newcastle United I visited their close circuit TV crowd control unit at the 50000 sweater stadium where it was possible to focus on any individual seat and record any aspect of crowd behaviour in close up. Cameras could also monitor public behaviour outside the stadium but only within a limited area.
Local authorities, Transport authorities and specialist firms also manage more closed circuit cameras than anywhere else in Western Europe. I am not sure that putting cameras in refuse bins or watching difficult tenants by using anti Terrorist legislation is a good idea and strictly legal.
15 years ago I was shown around one private firm who monitored sites, including car parks for local authorities and private bodies 24/7. They also undertook work for the police. Staff had to be prepared; in the sense of being warned about how people behaved despite being aware they are on camera.
I also want to say something about inquiries and the need to secure documentation as early as possible. Thirty years ago, my employers agreed that I could become a panel member in a judicial led inquiry where despite twenty volumes of records, witness statements, verbatim witness recording and report drafts, the most important record was missing and because there was no power to compel witnesses it was not possible to press the individual who had managed the record to explain how it disappeared coinciding with their departure from the organisation. The organisation was then culpable for asking staff to take responsibility without attempting to recreate the lost information and despite a high profile media case, a court case and then the inquiry being organised, managers, from ignorance and incompetence had failed to check a separate record within the organisation which then revealed significant new information. It is vital that all documentation whether it appears immediately relevant or not is secured and that those appointed to undertake the task have relevant knowledge and expertise. None of colleagues or the 50 lawyers and assistants involved was aware of the particular record which authorities were required to maintain.
A second lesson from this experience is the importance of not just settling the terms of reference but the way the Inquiry is to be conducted. Under the original plan witnesses were to be questioned by Counsel for the inquiry Panel and then each of the standing legal teams was to be given the opportunity to question and only then the Chairman of the Inquiry panel and other panel Members. This was a blatant attempt to limit the influence of non lawyers in panel and skew the inquiry in favour of the organisations and senior managers who were legally represented whereas the complainants and other “lay” witnesses were not. My colleagues on the panel rebelled and threatened to leave which led to a new agreement in which a panel member led the questioning with other panel members following if they wished, similar to what happened in the Iraq statutory inquiry. However unlike the Iraq inquiry because there was no compulsion to representatives of each witness could go through with their client what happened at length from their viewpoint and then the other lawyers and then the Inquiry Counsel. This was not the situation at the Iraq inquiries where witnesses were not allowed to have their lawyers involved during their testimony.
By the time I had become involved in the inquiry I had also learned one of the golden rules of management that those who write reports and minute summaries and decision wield the power. The format of any report. the extent that panel members will have a say and how the recommendations are to be formed need to be discussed and agreed in advance
I anticipate next week will produced further revelations, arrests and other developments
I have no words, although I spend most of my time these days, reading, listening and using words, to express the outrage, the pain, the sense of violation and anger, and I don’t do anger, about those directly responsible, those who authorised, those who knew and those who covered up, successfully, until recent days, when we all came to know. Damn them, they deserve not just be punished, but to endure similar treatment. For once I see no mitigation and I cannot forgive.
I have felt distressed before, gripped and overwhelmed, having had a capacity to put myself into the feelings of others since childhood, then unable to fully understand or communicate what I was feeling and why, especially after reading the official reports of the trials and investigations of those involved in the Auschwitz and (Bergen)Belsen concentration camps when I was about fourteen years of age after a Jesuit priest history teacher had told the class we should learn what happened if we wanted to understand what the second world war was all about. I went on to learn that the cruelty and depravity involved was not unique and had occurred in different forms throughout history and that it was to continue through my life time.
I have started to write the book I have always felt within me about my birth and care mothers and their families and the amazing father, I never knew, and who became the Vicar General of Gibraltar; deciding to place the major events in our respective lives in the context of all the wars, the genocide and the significant natural disasters, including the floods and the famines that occurred during our respective times, so that I now have a sense of the scale of human suffering and depravity that has occurred and continues.
I therefore understand that it is impossible to know as one becomes engulfed in any event of magnitude, especially since the creation of 24/7 news media, the Internet and communication networking sites, which happening is going to have lasting significance in terms of ones individual future, one’s family and surrounding society, the country one inhabits and the world at large. I can say that two events of recent decades produced a feeling of fundamental change, of never being able to go back to the way that things were: the death of Princess Diana, which altered people’s perception of UK royalty and the bombing and destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 of which the London bombings were an anticipated consequence.
Last week the accumulative triple impact of the information about what had happened to the Dowler family so soon after the conviction of the murderer and the way the media reported what appeared to be a trial of the family particularly the girl’s father which I found nauseating and despicable given the circumstances, followed by the revelation that victims and their families of the London bombings were also in the list, and then the close relatives, the parents, the partners of those who had sacrificed their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan for the greater good made me want to cry out and do something. I have to say that whatever his political motives, the Leader of the Opposition got it, Mr Cameron appeared not to do so and I thought back to the reaction of the Palace to the death of Princes Diana and that of Tony Blair, together with his reaction to 9/11.
I debated doing something, standing with a placard at the supermarket on Sunday suggesting that no one should buy the News of the World or buying up all the available copies and burning them. When Mr Murdoch announced he was closing the paper, I said great, and when the editor with his staff around him declared you are great and we do not deserve this this, I shouted to my television, “bastards” and “damn you all“, you still do not get it. I feel this about Ms Brooks, Mr Murdoch Junior and senior, and Mr Cameron needs to do better to prove that he has not misjudged beyond political and public redemption. He needs to show greater contrition.
I have continued to write and rewrite over several days as revelation and admission, denial and prevarication on revelation, admission, denial and prevarication has mounted. I have tried to set my feelings aside and look at what has happened objectively, to evaluate and to understand.
I have kept one eye and ear to the 24/7 media Sky and BBC, the Prime Minister‘s Question Time on Wednesday, the subsequent Emergency Debate in the House of Commons and studied the text, the short Questions and answer session in the House of Lords on Thursday, having also watched developments as they unfolded ITV news and Channel 4 together with BBC Newsnight, Question Time and the Daily Politics and Late Night Politics Show.
I also saw the Prime Minister’s statement and question answering on Friday and the Andrew Marr show on Sunday, the Sunday newspapers were read on line and Wikipedia consulted. I still need to put down the process to make sense and judgement.
At Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday July 6th 2011 in response to the first question from the Labour Opposition Party Leader, Edward Miliband, Mr Cameron accepted the need for an Inquiry or Inquiries but would not commit himself that they would be Judicial led, held in public and set up immediately. He tried to placate those who said he was wrong by calling for a meeting with the opposition leader on the morning of the next and last Prime Minister’s Question Time before the Summer recess. He said he wished to first consult the Cabinet Secretary and the Attorney General.
On Friday July 8th in a hastily arranged media briefing, the Prime Minister announced in advance of the proposed meeting with the Opposition Leader, that he and the Liberal Democrat, Deputy Leader had agreed that there would be two inquiries: On the ethics and regulation of news media and a statutory public inquiry, led by a judge with the power to secure documentation and compel witnesses to be questioned under oath.
Yesterday, Saturday July 8th, under further pressure from the Deputy Labour Leader, Ms Harman, a spokesman disclosed that the Lord Chancellor had been requested to find an appropriate member of the Judiciary for the Inquiry and the plan remained to agree the terms of reference and associated matters at the Wednesday meeting.
The second issue which the Opposition Leader raised was the position of the application by Mr Murdoch to gain full control of BSkyB with the appointed Minister due to give his decision in relation to the Competition issue shortly after the consultation period closed on Friday July 8th. At that time it was reported that the Minister had signalled that he was satisfied with the assurances given on the proposed independence of Sky News Broadcasting and was minded to give permission without reference to the statutory body concerned with monopolies and mergers. It will be remembered that the original responsible Minister, Vince Cable, had been caught in a media organised sting admitting that he would stop the merger and that he had an Exocet in his back pocket to ensure that the application was rejected. Mr Cameron switched the decision taking to a Minister subsequently reported to be sympathetic to Mr Murdoch and his corporate interests.
Last Wednesday Mr Cameron again prevaricated, correctly drawing attention that the Minister was required to act in as quasi judicial role and that it was Of Com, the independent statutory body which had to make a recommendation about a fit and proper person. Mr Miliband pressed the Prime Minister that on behalf of the government and millions of outraged citizens he should take the initiative and refer the matter immediately to the proper authorities. A few hours later during the Emergency debate on the national scandal, the leading and respected High Tory Member of Parliament, Christopher Soames called for a pause before any decision was announced by the Culture Minister, and he was supported by other Tory and Liberal Democrat Members and by all the Labour Members who addressed this aspect. The following day the Opposition Leader in House of Lords put down a question which led to a similar demand for a pause before any Ministerial decision is announced. The Government spokesperson intimated that the Culture Minister would need to assess the consultation submission which we later learned had risen from 40000 earlier in the week to over 160000 by Friday lunchtime and by which time it had also been announced that the Minister was not now in a position to come to a decision until the autumn.
This has not satisfied anyone. Under pressure from a wide range of interests Of Com has also announced that it has contacted the Metropolitan Police to enquire if there is information in relation to the Fit and Proper person requirement. Again this development had been countered by those arguing that only if there is evidence against the principals of the holding company could Of Com intervene in a negative way.
On Saturday it was announced that the Opposition is to use one of its Parliamentary debate days to consider this question on Wednesday of next week and that it is the intention to force a vote on the matter in which all Members would be given the opportunity to indicate their position. This initiative is as much aimed at the Liberal and Democratic members declaring their position as anticipating that Tory back benchers will support the Opposition or abstain from voting on this issue. I assume Mr Miliband will argue, “we understand the legal aspects but tell us what you really think? So much for your new politics if you do not.”
No sooner had I written this did energy minister Chris Hulne state on the Andrew Marr Show that he and his colleagues would need to see the terms of the motion before deciding how they would vote. Mr Miliband then explained later in the programme that he would not press a vote if the Prime Minister announced that there would be no Take Over decision until the conclusion of the police investigations. He added that Mr Murdoch should withdraw the current bid until the criminal and other investigations had been completed. I go further Mr Murdoch and his family including Ms Brooks needs to feel the full force of British anger and contempt. They should be politically and socially ostracised until they demonstrate genuine contrition.
Last Wednesday Mr Miliband also raised the position of Mr Murdoch’s Chief Executive, the amazingly personal publicity shy Rebekah Brooks, who was previously Mrs Ross Kemp. There is the briefest information on her family and early background and her subsequent dramatic rise to position as the youngest editor of a national newspaper at the News of the World, about how she came to be promoted to News International Chief Executive and became regarded as a family friend of Rupert Murdoch.
Ms Brooks was Editor when the voice mail of already dead Millie Dowler was hacked into and messages deleted in order for the latest to be listened to. An illegal and horrific act which led the family to believe she was still alive and can be said to have perverted the course of justice. Ms Brooks is said to have written to the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee at which she previously appeared to say she had no knowledge at the time of this event or of other criminal activities of her staff at that time.
At the original appearance before the Commons Committee Ms Brooks answered a question in the affirmative that the News of the World had paid individual police officers for information. Mr Coulson intervened to explain that any payments made were within the law and later on recall Ms Brooks explained that she had been talking in general terms about the past and was not being specific. Ms Brooks who is reputed to be frank and engaging in conversation, but not expert in thinking on her feet, and it must be assumed that she was got at by the legal counsel for the Murdoch corporation after her admission. The Home Affairs Committee is to hold a further public hearing on Tuesday at which the police officer in charge of present inquiries will be interviewed.
During the past few days it has been reported that among papers handed to the police are copies of memoranda in which Mr Coulson authorised payment to the police. During to day it emerged that the documents had been passed to a legal firm by News International and only retrieved to be sent to the police. These are said to reveal that News International was aware of widespread illegal activities at the time and consequently mislead a number of enquirers.
I did see a interview with a former News of the World employee who explained how the system worked in that for information about the ownership of a vehicle seen at the premises of say a known sex trade worker, a payment of £200 would be made and covered by a general story expenses claim which an editor would need to authorise. For information which led to a major feature of several pages as much as £5000 and £10000 would be paid and for this purpose the police officer would in effect be placed on the pay roll of the Newspaper as an information source. The cash money would be handed over at somewhere like a fast food drive in. As Mr Coulson has now been arrested and police bailed on suspicion of being involved in bribing the police and in the criminal use of technology to obtain private information, it is not appropriate to comment on the details of these revelations, except in relation to another private investigation firm mentioned later.
Because Ms Brooks was editor at the time of the Millie Dowler criminal violation and subsequently in her role as Chief Executive and therefore accountable for the work of all the Editors, Mr Miliband, a chorus of politicians, people in the news industry and in other areas of public life, called on her resign. Mr Coulson had resigned following disclosure and successful criminal prosecution involving phone hacking leading to the short term imprisonment of the journalist and a private detective. Mr Coulson has remained vehement that he had no knowledge but he resigned because the criminal activity occurred during his time as Editor. It was therefore argued that Ms Brooks should now do the same. Mr Miliband repeated his demand on the Andrew Marr programme today.
Later during the Emergency debate last Wednesday, Mr Watson, the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East used Parliamentary privilege to refer to a meeting with the police at which Ms Brooks was said to be present which raised further questions and which appeared to shock a Tory Member and former lawyer who subsequently spoke in the debate. Columns 1557 and 1558 Hansard.
On Wednesday Mr Cameron refused to respond to Mr Miliband’s request for support in pressing for Ms Brooks to consider her position and about which he was asked again. It was later disclosed that she had offered her resignation which had been refused by the News International Board. On Friday an obviously reluctant Mr Cameron changed his mind and said that if he had been in the same position as Rupert Murdoch he would have accepted her resignation. This will not have been easy for Mr Cameron as he and his wife had accepted an invitation to attend the Christmas Day Party held at the home of Ms Brooks and he is known to have gone out riding with her on more than one occasion as she spends weekends at her home which is also located in his constituency. Facts which have been considered unusual on both sides of the Atlantic.
Mr Murdoch’s son has gone on public record to speak on her behalf although what he said appeared to me to be half hearted and emotionless. Mr Murdoch senior was his usual pithy and blunt self. He had full confidence in Ms Brooks and had no intention of “throwing her under a bus.”
Over the weekend there are reports the police would be interviewing Ms Brooks next week. It also understood that a substantial number of News of the World journalists have expressed the view that had Ms Brooks resigned, the boycott by advertisers would not have taken place and the paper would not have been closed. There are not free to speak out now, but they will in time. The latest put out by News International media is that Ms Brooks has volunteered to be interviewed as a witness, My God she was a witness but what did she do? Ring 999 or did she help in the cover up? A Statutory Public Inquiry may reveal the answer
On Wednesday Mr Miliband only made passing reference to the decision of Mr Cameron to appoint Mr Coulson as his head of communications during his time as leader of the Opposition and then confirming that appointment as his head communication adviser on becoming Prime Minister. This brought Mr Coulson into daily contact with the Prime Minister and to having access to confidential government business and its presentation to the public via international media.
The Prime Minister has stuck to his guns, stating that he alone was responsible for the appointment and would remain answerable for having made it, although there is the reported suggestion that it was Chancellor George Osborn who first put the idea to him. This in turn begs the question who suggested the idea to Mr Osborn or did one of them suddenly wake up in the night with the idea?
Mr Cameron will be required to detail the steps taken at any Public Inquiry under oath and judicial questioning, including whether Government sources were used for the standard background checks required for public appointments at a national level.
Mr Cameron said that he had first made the appointment because he was satisfied with the assurance that had been given to him by Mr Coulson and believed he should be given a second chance. He reminded that Mr Coulson had made an excellent contribution over the past four years to the acclaim of those with whom he worked and that during that time he had come to regard Mr Coulson as a personal friend and was not proposing to pretend otherwise because it appeared expedient to do so. I wonder what contact Mr Cameron has had with Mr Coulson, Ms Brooks, and the Murdoch’s since then, or others have had had contact on his behalf?
Mr Cameron has also said that while he was advised not to appoint Mr Coulson to the Downing Street post no one had produced evidence to back up that concern. Among those who have said or are reported to have said they advised the Prime Minister not to make the appointment are the Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Paddy Ashdown, and Lord John Prescot who has produced a copy of the letter he sent and the Editor of the Guardian Newspaper. No doubt others will come forward or be questioned about what they advised and why at the judicial inquiry. This morning Chris Hulne explained that when Mr Clegg and other Lib Dem members of the Coalition advised Mr Cameron against making the appointment, Mr Cameron said the appointment was for him to make and was not subject to Coalition or other views. So be it.
My impression is that there is already concern on Tory backbenchers about the judgement of Mr Cameron in this respect, admittedly there will those who see personal advantage in threatening his position or replacing him by another, while Mr Miliband and his Labour colleagues see immediate political advantage in using the situation to question the judgement of the Prime Minister, especially now that Mr Coulson has been arrested and bailed on suspicion of having committed such serious offences. According to the police the particulars of some 4000 individuals and their families were found in the possession of one private detective while another source reported that the individual had indexed over 9000 names. In my judgement his position as Tory Leader, and therefore Prime Minister is now in question.
The approach of Mr Cameron has been to seek a political consensus as was achieved in relation to the scandal of Member expenses and in relation to the British campaign in Afghanistan and on a number of other issues. He and some of his colleagues aided by the media have drawn attention that Mr Blair and Mr Brown courted the approval of Mr Murdoch and his senior colleagues. On Saturday I listened to a radio exchange in which Mr Straw denied that Labour had done a deal with Mr Murdoch to consult in advance on any changes in their stated position on Europe and that at one point his papers had called for a referendum on a European Community development which the government had then announced within a matter of days. Mr Straw said he had privately advised Mr Blair against supporting greater European integration and had pressed him to agree the referendum and done so without reference to any position of Mr Murdoch and his newspapers. Mr Miliband did his best to explain why Mr Blair and Mr Brown have courted the support of Mr Murdoch. He admitted that he had strengthened his concerns about the nature of contact because of the emerging evidence and the weight of public opinion over the past days.
Mr Cameron has admitted there will need to be a different kind of relationship with the news media than developed over the past decades, a statement which has been greeted with horror by several news industry men fearing the kind of statutory control which exists in France and some other European countries and which leads the government to control and suppress some legitimate media investigations into the abuses of power. However this important but separate issue from the cosy relationship which evolved in the UK and which according to commentators from the USA and the rest of Europe does not exist elsewhere. It is part of the small society of the London political, the powerful and the wealthy elite which made New Labour unpopular in the North.
Given the widespread public reaction which cuts across individual political allegiances, clearly evident during the Question Time Programme the time is right to re-establish the authority of Government and Parliament over the media. Mr Cameron is right and is to be admired for admitting on Friday that as a consequence of the need of Government and senior politicians of all the parties to maintain good relationships with the media and seek endorsement for their polices, programmes and positions, they had come to overlook or not give appropriate attention to claims and information on the abuses of media power. He may have had in mind the official report which stated that several hundred journalists employed by the majority of national, regional and local newspapers had been involved in the illegal acquisition of confidential information. Mr Hulne on Sunday said there was talk of the Sun and the Sunday Times, also part of the Murdoch Empire having used similar methods to those which has closed the News of the World. This is likely to emerge in the Commons debate on Wednesday. I am yet to establish if there is to be a debate in the House of Lords.
It is noteworthy that in recordings of the speech made by Ms Brooks to the News of the World staff before they set to produce the final edition of the Newspaper, she stated that worse revelations were to come and that in a year’s time the staff would appreciate why the decision to close the paper had been taken.
The decision to close the paper taken corporately by the News International Board came as advertiser after advertiser said they were suspending involvement and the public indicated their intention to boycott the paper. The decision to close the paper presently appears a creative master stroke with twice the usual number of 2.5 million copies printed in the expectation that people will want to buy the final edition after 165 years. The paper is reported to say thank you to its loyal readers and to quote messages of support as well as reminding of the various exposure it has made. The Editor and individual Journalists, no doubt seeking new appointments within the Murdoch empire or with other news media on recommendations from Murdoch, have come to the fore over the past 24 hours saying what an amazingly brilliant creative and professional workforce they have been.
My criticism of the News of the World and the Sun Newspaper is not their investigations and exposures but their style and methodology. The Guardian as the Daily Telegraph over Members misuse of expenses demonstrates how to hold those who abuse power to account. My problem with the News of the World and the Sun is the way they appealed to the criminal and social underclass and the moronic and basest elements of society, pandering to the gutter passions and voyeuristic tendencies of people in general. I say good riddance to the News of the World and hope the day of reckoning will also come to the Sun but I appreciate millions of people disagree.
I also shed no tears for the journalists collectively involved compared to the scale of job losses caused by banking crisis and recession and the loss of industrial and manufacturing production employment opportunities since the end of World War II.
It has already been pointed out that the News of the World has remained the most lucrative and profit making paper in the Western World and while the other Sundays hope to cash in the expectation is that much of the readership and advertising revenue will be lost. From its heyday of 8 million copies, the News of the World has progressively lost sales, primarily because of the development of 24 hour news broadcasting pioneered by satellite and cable TV and more recently the development of Internet news publishing, Blog writing and social networking.
It has been reported that the Internet domain the Sun on Sunday has been registered and not to be confused with the regional Sunday paper in the North of England called the Sunday Sun. With all the hype over the final edition of the News of the World it can be argued that Mr Murdoch is creating the market for a new Sunday tabloid whether to be called the Sun on Sunday or some other title. While the journalists and printers have a vested interest in a new product, the owners and shareholders of competitors do not.
The greater circulation of their individual newspaper the higher advertising rates can be charged and therefore the less loss making and better chance of ongoing profitability. The reason why some papers are now circulated free such as London Evening Standard is that with a large circulation the paper has made more money through advertising income than it made from charging and reducing circulation.
In fact profit is the main reason why Mr Murdoch and in particular his son, want to gain 100% control of the profit making BskyB which they already de facto control by being the largest shareholders. There is a case for abandoning printed news all together and concentrating on TV, the Internet, the mobile phone and the portable news readers. This would not be a bad thing in principal
There is one other issue of major significance: This is the way the matter has been handled by the Metropolitan Police.
In 2007 Mr Clive Goodman, a journalist covering the UK Royals was prosecuted and imprisoned together with Private Investigator Glenn Mulcaire who Mr Goodman had employed. The police investigation had commenced the previous year. It is now known that the police acquired eleven thousand pages of notes from Mr Mulcaire detailing information gained illegally, information to be investigated further, together with the names of individuals of interest. This information was not processed and statements were made by the police to the public, to Parliament and to individual inquiries that the scale of the illegality was very limited.
Why officers lied, misled or exercised such bad judgement is being investigated alongside the allegation that individual police officers took substantial and ongoing payments for information from News International. Heads should roll and be seen to roll.
After two years of continued allegation and criticism Assistant Commissioner John Yates declared on behalf of the Metropolitan Police in July 2009 that there was no new evidence. This was accurate in the sense that that the evidence already existed stored bin bags; Mr Yates has expressed massive regret for the inadequacy of the police investigation in 2006 and his failure in 2009. His speaking out prior to being called before the Home Affairs Committee has been questioned. He is an individual being called upon to resign.
Andy Hayman Assistant Police Commissioner who had been responsible for overseeing the police investigation had been recruited by News International as a columnist.
It has also emerged that the former Director of Public Prosecutions is now employed by Mr Murdoch providing legal advice on the handling of current claims by those known to have been illegally investigated. Eight claims have been settled privately on the understanding that the details remain confidential
· Sienna Miller, actress
· Kelly Hoppen, interior designer and Miller's stepmother
· Tessa Jowell, Labour MP
· David Mills, lawyer and Jowell's former husband
· Andy Gray, former footballer and sports commentator
· Joan Hammell, aide to the former deputy prime minister John Prescott
· Sky Andrew, sports talent agent
· Nicola Phillips, assistant to the publicist Max Clifford
At least twenty other cases are pending and said to likely cost the corporation £40 million. News International is contesting these claims.
Other public figures known to have been advised by the Police or mobile phone companies that their particulars were held in the Mulcaire files are Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks of News International; Iain Blair former Commissioner of Police, Ali Dizaei Metropolitan Police Commander, and Brian Paddick Deputy assistant Police Commissioner together with Former Assistant Police Commissioner Mike Fuller; Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Chris Bryant MP Campaigner had to approach the police who confirmed, Lord Prescott and who had to approach Scotland Yard, Simon Hughes MP former MP George Galloway: Prince William Duke of Cambridge, Prince Harry of Wales, Prince Charles Communication Secretary Paddy Harveson, Aide to Prince Charles Helen Asprey, Jamie Lowther Pinkerton private Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry: Max Clifford Agent: Steve Coogan Actor and Elle McPherson Actor; Chris Tarrant TV presenter, Urika Jonsson TV presenter, Wayne Rooney Footballer, Paul Gascoigne, former footballer, Gordon Taylor Former Chief Executive professional Footballers Association and Jon Armstrong Legal adviser to Gordon Taylor, David Davies Executive Director Football Association, Kieren Fallon Jockey; The Rape victim Miss X approached the police and Tommy Sheridan Leader of Solidarity given two sets of hacking notes; Brendan Montegue Investigative Journalist via mobile phone company and Colin Stagg. Three others where the police had not confirmed are included in the Wikipedia report, Actor Leslie Ash, Alistair Campbell, and Bob Crow RMT
It was not until 26th January 2011 that the Metropolitan Police announced that it was beginning a new investigation, Operating Weeting, to investigate the evidence regarding the conduct of News International Employees which would run alongside the review of phone hacking evidence held by the Crown Prosecution Service. All those who have been in contact with the 50 officers from the new investigation have been impressed and expressed confidence. News International said they were fully cooperating with the inquiry in the provision of additional documentation and this aspect was being led by Ms Brookes until this weekend when she relinquished this role. The extent of cooperation is questioned.
News International has sacked one of its senior Executives- Ian Edmonson and he along with chief Reporter Neville Thurlebck were arrested on April 5th together with journalist James Weathrup on 14th April on suspicion of being involved in the interception of voice mails.
There is also another earlier series of inquiries to be mentioned. In 1987 Daniel Morgan a private investigator was murdered in London and was said to have been close to exposing corruption in the Metropolitan Police. The Detective assigned to case did not reveal that he had been working unofficially for the agency. Six men including two police officers were arrested on suspicion of murder but were released without charge. The Metropolitan police has since conducted five inquiries into the murder, police corruption, drug trafficking and robbery.
In 2000 following a secret investigation the former partner of Daniel Morgan, called Rees was found guilty of conspiring to plant cocaine on an innocent woman and was sentenced to seven years. There were 36 police officers involved in the fifth investigation but by 2006 there was no progress in solving the murder until a criminal prosecution in 2009 when the defence lawyers expressed concern at having to review 750000 pages of documentation and eventually the prosecution of three men including Rees was abandoned in March 2011. It emerged at the trial that Rees had been paid £150000 by the News of the World a year for supplying illegally obtained information about people in the public eye. According to the Guardian newspaper material gained in relation to Rees is excluded from the Weeting inquiry although presumably it is under secured official control.
Over the weekend in addition to Coulson the former News of the World Royal Reporter was arrested once more and bailed. An unnamed former private investigator aged 63 was also arrested. There is a report that further arrests are anticipated over the coming days.
This concludes my attempt to summarise developments and information todate.
I commence the second part of this first report with the admission that as an opportunistic, albeit creative, self publicist, I have maintained a love and hate relationship with British news and information media. I considered providing a summary of my own efforts as an amateur journalist and diarist over fifty years, including editing the first 100 editions of Parliament and Social Work, having published some hundred articles prior to 2003 and since then over 2000 pieces of writing similar to this. Instead I am mentioning some experience of direct relevance.
There have been several occasions when I have been the subject of media interview and inquiry. The first of these was as a young man aged 21 years before participating in college education and university based professional training. I spent a month in Scotland working on a temporary basis for the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War in making preparations for what became a Committee 100 supporting Direct Action protest against the use of Holy Loch as a base for Polaris submarines. I met with unexpected and at times amazing support from the police, local authorities and community interests on the south bank of Clyde and hostility and rejection on the north which eventually led to the cancellation of the northern route march. I was invited to meet with a Scottish representative of a national newspaper, the Daily Express I believe, as the Daily Mail had a reporter embedded in the 6 week March action programme which had commenced from the end of the Aldermaston march in Trafalgar Square and where I had been the chief marshal as far as Bedford before going on to Holy Loch,
I met the Journalist at an office in Dumbarton and I talked freely answering all his questions at length. He stated at the outset that he was under editorial instruction and that all that I said would be slanted towards the editorial approach to the project. What he wrote would be critical of the mission and unflattering to me. He accurately reflected my half baked uneducated zeal and personal limitations. However he provided major advance publicity which I remain convinced helped to swell the number of sightseers as well as participants on the day. The event was successful in being a world wide spectacle and getting millions of people discussing if it was a good or bad thing for weapons of mass destruction to be delivered by underwater rockets anywhere in the seas of the world 24/7.
About fifteen years ago I was the subject of an investigation and subsequent article in the Guardian newspaper which has pursued the News of the World situation persistently since it first emerged. The Journalist who investigated my involvement in a matter is the same journalist at the forefront of the News of the World Investigation, Mr Nick Davis. Fortunately prior to publication I had been accepted for legal advice and help on a pro bono basis by one of the largest international law firms in the world and a former Chairman of the Bar Council, an international Civil Rights specialist was providing Counsel’s opinion and by coincidence the law firm also acted for the Guardian Newspaper. The published article was excellent in many respects although I would have preferred less emphasis on my role and to have had been in a position to respond to several aspects of what was reported with additional information, but the difference between the two articles over the four decade period reflected the ability to be represented and the level of that representation.
I have had only one personal insight into the way individual journalists on the News of the World worked. I was approached in my then official capacity by a journalist who had been contacted for help by someone with whom my department was in contact. I explained that I might not be able to make a comment but would investigate and contact back. I spoke to staff directly involved and advised the journalist we were attempting to help the individual within our powers and resources. I explained the appeal and complaint systems in operation and which the individual had been advised if they were not satisfied with our efforts. The journalist asked if I thought publicity would help and I said that until the process was completed publicity could prove counter productive. The journalist accepted my advice and I was impressed by the contact.
I can add that I cannot recall any situation of being approached by the media, mainly at a local and regional level, but occasionally nationally, about the circumstances of individuals when the journalist did not enquire in an open and professional way and respected the sensitivity and confidentiality of the situation and accepted the best advice I was able to assemble in the interests of the subjects, even this was only by saying “I am not in a position at present to comment.”
Fifty years ago while undergoing professional training at a university where my place had been arranged and paid for by the Home Office, I was contacted late one evening through the phone of my landlady who had told me it was someone from the Home Office. It was not so but a journalist from the local evening newspaper.
Several years before this I met Frank Allaun the Labour Member of Parliament for Salford. He had sat next to me on a private bus to Aldermaston for the start of a four day CND march to Trafalgar Square and we had got into conversation and kept regularly in touch especially after I had spent two months working in Salford on behalf of the Manchester Family Service Unit.
I had written to Frank sometime before the telephone call about a situation which had come to my attention in Birmingham of excessive overcrowding in an appalling standard of privately rented accommodation and used to him the expression families living in a twilight zone where their children were at risk and their futures in question. I had referred to the circumstances of one family and that there was no immediate solution given the number of others in similar situations on the local authority social housing waiting list. I had not revealed names or identifying location.
Frank, without my prior knowledge, had then quoted from the letter in a House of Commons debate and his speech and my letter was quoted extensively in the national media, although I only learned of this after the phone call. The local journalist had obtained the telephone number from Frank on the understanding that my involvement was kept confidential unless I agreed to the contrary. I was able to say that appropriate action had been taken to help the individual family who were only one of many. When faced with questions about my then role I answered factually but did not press confidentiality although immediately after the call ended I knew this had been a mistake. I waited anxiously to see what happened and was relieved when only a small piece was included in a back page of the paper on the following Saturday.
However the couple of sentences has been seen by the wife of the deputy chief officer who reported up the chain of command to the politicians and the following Monday morning I was summoned to the office of the course principal and told that my position on the course was in question subject to the reaction of the Chief Officer of the local authority with whom I had been placed for practical work training. In fact I was gob smacked by the reception which greeted me, especially when he said he had been authorised at a political level to offer me a job at the end of my training. The family in question also accepted my apology for the publicity without their prior permission. The family had to wait their place in the queue for rehousing and for several years later the incident was discussed by subsequent students in a course arranged seminar on the role of the social worker, the media and political action. Frank became Chairman of the National Labour Party and I a local authority chief officer but it could have worked out very differently.
In my previous writing on attending an International Management course for senior executives being considered for general Management in 1984, I mentioned that the experience had proved important in several respects, changing my life in several respect. One aspect not covered was the extent to which some of us quickly understood the potential significance of the development of fibre optical digital communications and management information systems and one of my claims to originality fame, but not alas to fortune, was to have identified that people would pay to watch other human beings go about their everyday lives because of the basic curiosity we have about how others behave and live, heralding Internet and reality TV. I did not appreciate then just how right I was or how society would change in terms of the ability of people to self expose coupled with the insatiable appetite of people to enjoy the exposure of others. I had cited the News of the World as the then bench mark.
This morning in one discussion programme a kiss and tell tabloid journalist said that he was often shocked by the willingness of young women to recount in vivid terms the most intimate of experiences with others, if the price was right. Over the past weeks there has been considerable controversy in the region over an MTV show called Geordie Shore in which several young people lived in a house from where they exchanged partners, got drunk and went about on the Toon in a party mood day and night. The programme horrified many although the behaviour of young people from all over the world on the Spanish Costa, helped to transform Tyneside nightlife twenty five years ago, every weekend Winter through to Winter. Last weekend the Sunday Sun which is freely available in quantity in the Members Lounge at Durham Cricket Club carried an editorial and several pages of pictures and print about an attempt to prevent a USA style programme coming to the region in which young women in particular are persuaded through gifts and payments to strip on camera and engage in simulated sexual activity. While in no way defending the activities of some journalists and their editorial managers, digital media had changed society.
Nor is the influence of digital media all negative with the development of self publishing and social communication sites such as AOL Community, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and other Instant messaging services, including video-cam communications. In my instance I have used the services creatively and positively and since 2002 in terms of contemporary art, performance art and its digital applications. Earlier in the year we witnessed on 24 hour news television the impact of the use of social networking to bring about a revolution in Egypt and we all saw the power of government to turn off all digital communication as well as to censor and use if for their own purposes when under threat.
Had I the resources and nerve in 2003 I would have immediately created an online site not only to publish all the completed artwork project sets but installed cameras to make myself available 24/7. This idea was not original as I later found out that Tracy Emin had been filmed 24/7 in an art studio environment as well as turning one of her homes into a contemporary performance access space. In that year I digested the Baltic Contemporary Art centre publication on Creative New Media following its 2001 International Seminar, and argued that we had reached the point when everything that we do and say can be viewed, recorded and altered with the available technology.
I suggested that those in the public eye or public position should assume they are under constant scrutiny, from governments, the media and competitors in a way which previous generations could only speculate about, notably Aldous Huxley’s in his 1931 Brave New World. It is generally accepted that Government intelligent services, civil and military should be able to use all available methods to stop terrorism and catch criminals and these days the work if often out sourced to specialist firms of investigators and security provision.
The problem is the extent to which everyone is watching everyone else. A positive example is the use of private closed circuit TV at large crowd sporting events and as a one time share holder of Newcastle United I visited their close circuit TV crowd control unit at the 50000 sweater stadium where it was possible to focus on any individual seat and record any aspect of crowd behaviour in close up. Cameras could also monitor public behaviour outside the stadium but only within a limited area.
Local authorities, Transport authorities and specialist firms also manage more closed circuit cameras than anywhere else in Western Europe. I am not sure that putting cameras in refuse bins or watching difficult tenants by using anti Terrorist legislation is a good idea and strictly legal.
15 years ago I was shown around one private firm who monitored sites, including car parks for local authorities and private bodies 24/7. They also undertook work for the police. Staff had to be prepared; in the sense of being warned about how people behaved despite being aware they are on camera.
I also want to say something about inquiries and the need to secure documentation as early as possible. Thirty years ago, my employers agreed that I could become a panel member in a judicial led inquiry where despite twenty volumes of records, witness statements, verbatim witness recording and report drafts, the most important record was missing and because there was no power to compel witnesses it was not possible to press the individual who had managed the record to explain how it disappeared coinciding with their departure from the organisation. The organisation was then culpable for asking staff to take responsibility without attempting to recreate the lost information and despite a high profile media case, a court case and then the inquiry being organised, managers, from ignorance and incompetence had failed to check a separate record within the organisation which then revealed significant new information. It is vital that all documentation whether it appears immediately relevant or not is secured and that those appointed to undertake the task have relevant knowledge and expertise. None of colleagues or the 50 lawyers and assistants involved was aware of the particular record which authorities were required to maintain.
A second lesson from this experience is the importance of not just settling the terms of reference but the way the Inquiry is to be conducted. Under the original plan witnesses were to be questioned by Counsel for the inquiry Panel and then each of the standing legal teams was to be given the opportunity to question and only then the Chairman of the Inquiry panel and other panel Members. This was a blatant attempt to limit the influence of non lawyers in panel and skew the inquiry in favour of the organisations and senior managers who were legally represented whereas the complainants and other “lay” witnesses were not. My colleagues on the panel rebelled and threatened to leave which led to a new agreement in which a panel member led the questioning with other panel members following if they wished, similar to what happened in the Iraq statutory inquiry. However unlike the Iraq inquiry because there was no compulsion to representatives of each witness could go through with their client what happened at length from their viewpoint and then the other lawyers and then the Inquiry Counsel. This was not the situation at the Iraq inquiries where witnesses were not allowed to have their lawyers involved during their testimony.
By the time I had become involved in the inquiry I had also learned one of the golden rules of management that those who write reports and minute summaries and decision wield the power. The format of any report. the extent that panel members will have a say and how the recommendations are to be formed need to be discussed and agreed in advance
I anticipate next week will produced further revelations, arrests and other developments
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