The politics vs the press
Tom Lamont rightly emphasises the need for agreed limits on intrusive information gathering by journalists. Voicemail interception by tabloids in the early 2000s was wrong and beyond acceptable limits. Journalist Dan Evans describes these crimes as “act one” of the phone hacking drama. Act two has been the criminal and civil hacking proceedings, and the Leveson inquiry into press culture and practices.
But we need to keep this unhappy episode in proportion and consider act three properly. I do not believe act three to be “about Britain getting the media it deserves”, as Evans suggests.
We already have this. There is vastly more high-quality journalism in this country—including sometimes justifiably intrusive reporting in the public interest—than there is bad journalism of the kind underlying the tabloid stories pored over in the hacking cases and at Leveson. Nick Davies’s reporting for the Guardian is a classic example of the good investigative work that takes place.
The real act three is the political legacy of phone hacking. Politicians have been cowed, with a few honourable exceptions, and are now reluctant to be seen protecting journalistic freedom of expression. That’s one reason why statutory protection is needed.
We have no general, less constitutional, right of journalistic public interest speech in our law. We have only limited defences in a handful of statutes, like section four of the Defamation Act 2013. And our defamation law remains weighted towards rich and powerful claimants. The intended protection for public interest journalism in the Human Rights Act 1998 has been eroded by judges giving equal weighting to privacy.
Campaigns for additional protections—like a US-style law to protect against the egregious phenomenon of “strategic lawsuits against public participation” (SLAPPs)—melt away, because legislators fear appearing to favour journalists. The story is the same for the defences for journalists and whistleblowers in the National Security Bill that is currently going through parliament.
The discredit that hacking brought upon British journalism should be recognised. But our politicians now need to recognise its strengths, and protect them.
Gavin Millar, Matrix Chambers
I am particularly struck by the quote in Lamont’s piece: “Don’t get angry, get even.” I think Prince Harry, Elton John and the others are at the “get even” stage, and I hope that we—the public—will learn to contain our curiosity about the lives of the famous and notorious, because, in the end, this is all our fault.
Michael Cowtan, via the website
Contrary to Dan Evans’s suggestion that no British royal has ever given evidence in person at a British civil trial, Edward VII, when Prince of Wales, was a witness in two civil trials. The occasions were in 1870, during the Mordaunt divorce case, when Lady Harriet Mordaunt falsely alleged that the heir to the throne was one of her lovers; and in 1891, during the case relating to the Tranby Croft gambling scandal.
Patrick Wallace, Isle of Dogs
Coast of living
Madeleine Bunting’s vividly written and thoughtful seaside excursion shines a bright light on what is happening in English coastal towns and villages. It’s a story that is alarming but not new. For decades now, the data has been clear. The life chances of someone born on the edges are significantly less good than those of someone born further inland.
Of course, the deficit is structural—the schools are worse, housing is hard to find, work is seasonal and unreliable. But it is also circumstantial. Living by the coast is for some an escape and for others a trap, but many face deprivation and an attenuation of prospects that is too often overlooked due to picturesque sea views.
The electoral impact has been huge. The referendum of 2016 highlighted the deep divide between the core and the periphery. Just as towns and villages voted differently from the cities they encircle, so too did seaside areas show their dissatisfaction with, and disengagement from, the core of the country. Long term, these divides threaten our stability.
As Bunting points out, the familiar solutions that characterise today’s regeneration efforts too often shift people to even more neglected parts of the periphery. For every brilliant art gallery and café development, there is a further move to caravan sites and more desperate villages a few miles down the coast.
We need to address the poverty afflicting coastal communities, not only for their sake but for the sake of the rest of the country, too. As Yeats so nearly said, when the periphery is weakened, the centre cannot hold.
Julia Unwin, former CEO, Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Foreign correspondence
Lizzie Porter’s vivid description of her journalist’s life in Baghdad stressed how much safer and even mundane life in Baghdad has become (Diary, June). The thrust of her piece was that fear and personal insecurity had made way for more everyday concerns about the city’s neglected infrastructure, including the traffic jams.
Porter, as an experienced Middle East correspondent currently with Iraq Oil Report, who has worked in the region for the best part of a decade and speaks proficient Arabic, will know how to take care of herself. Inevitably, journalists who come to Iraq on short assignments and have less familiarity with conditions in Baghdad may be anxious about security when coaxing interesting stories out of a country beset with feuding politicians, corruption and criminality.
Not that fear deters journalists from working in dangerous places. I admire the remarkable women reporters who are readily going to war zones in Ukraine or deep into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Think of the BBC’s Lyse Doucet or the Guardian’s Emma Graham-Harrison. My own role model at the Guardian, where I worked from the early 1960s, was Clare Hollingworth, of whom it was always said she was happiest sitting on a tank. Her reward was to spot the first German troop movements into Poland that marked the outbreak of the Second World War.
In her time, she was almost unique as a war reporter. It was only during the Vietnam War that editors began to send any real number of women journalists into war zones. Personally, I confess to cowardice and turned down a promotion to a posting in Vietnam while the war was raging. I would certainly not have wanted to cover the war in Iraq. Porter may be braver than I am, but she and I both share one common experience: for hard-working journalists, foreign postings are not always conducive to sustaining personal relationships.
Hella Pick, journalist
Our dismal inheritance
As always, Rachel Sylvester makes a lot of sense. But the problem for Labour is that Brexit has severely damaged the economy and the government now has a lot less money available to invest in making things better.
The only honest message to send to the British people is that they prioritised sovereignty over the economy and now they have to accept they’re poorer—meaning lower wages in real terms, higher taxes and reduced public services. No government-in-waiting can deliver that message, so instead all we can expect is obfuscation.
I really hope Keir Starmer does get elected, because at least it will bring an end to Tory incompetence and dishonesty, but I don’t envy him the job.
Andrew Greaves, via the website
I must protest
What an impressive statement from Marcus Decker. I wish I could share his words with anyone and everyone who has yet to understand why Extinction Rebellion and the rest do what we do.
Thank you, Marcus, for being willing to carry out such a brave and risky action, and for doing all you can to spread the most important messages. I’m so sorry you’re in prison.
Karen Leigh, via the website
Making a living
The conversation between Ann Pettifor and Nick Macpherson understates both the economic value of innovation and the subsequent growth it offers to the UK manufacturing base. I note that both the car industry and HS2 get little support during the discussion, and yet manufacturing and engineering output contribute hundreds of billions towards the growth of the economy.
It is not unusual for economists to concentrate more on borrowing and spending than on innovation and creativity, but the moving of money will always remain a subordinate activity to that of making.
Peter Mucci, via email
I lived the consequences of austerity, and still do. My wages remained the same for 10 years and we lived with ever-tighter budgets at home. We shed anything that made life fun—holidays, eating out—and bought everything secondhand. All this while watching the UK’s wealthiest get richer. I am left bitter and jaded by cuts to public services. The next generation will pay the price of austerity.
Nicola Blacker, via the website
State of the nation
Julian Baggini asks “What is a nation?”. In his talk at the Sorbonne in 1882, the French historian Ernest Renan asked the same question—and answered that it is “the common possession of a rich legacy of memories” as well as “an actual agreement, the wish to live together, the will to continue to value the heritage that we have jointly received.”
It was also, from the 19th century on, the framework within which the citizen received his or her rights. Moreover—and more relevant to our time—Renan affirmed an absolute bar on one country “annexing or possessing another country against its wish. The wish of the countries themselves is, in reality, the sole legitimate criterion, to which we must always return.”
I’m with Renan on this. I thought, from the first paragraphs of Baggini’s column, that he was not—“history and geography tell us that there is nothing natural about nations”—but he checked himself and, dismissing the objection often made that nations are “just social constructs”, he let us hear it for social constructs, just as Renan had. Social constructs such as love, friendship, tolerance, neighbourliness.
Baggini writes that “shared values matter: a national identity cannot be truly inclusive if it is no more than a collection of mutually exclusive sub-identities”. It is this fact that has brought the European Union’s forward march to a halt, unable to progress with its founders’—and many of its present officials’—desire to pursue ever-closer union. Limitless integration would be seen (and not just by the Brexiting British) as an attempt “to possess countries against their wish”. The nation state remains the locus of rights, law, meaningful and comprehensible democratic institutions—and emotional attachment.
People will continue, as Baggini says, to “embrace the languages, histories, traditions, cuisines, sports and traditional pursuits of their nation”. Renan would have approved.
John Lloyd, former editor of the New Statesman, is writing a book about the rise of the new far right in Europe
Out of touch
It’s weird how Matthew Goodwin treats the “white working class” as a homogenous group that must agree with him.
Might they not want the same things as many other people: a decent job, a nice house, good schools and affordable university education for their children, safe neighbourhoods, fewer potholes? The idea they are all obsessed with their own whiteness or maleness—or the lack of it in neighbours—is simply insulting to the many tolerant people in our country.
Hugh Sayer, via the website
All points east
Katja Hoyer’s book sounds authentic and interesting, and I have already ordered it (and not from that online retailer whose name begins with “A”).
I am old enough, at 70, to know the name of Erich Honecker. He was the new-ish kid on the block when I was lucky enough to spend a semester in the north of what used to be the GDR as part of my European languages degree course. It was an excellent experience for my young self, helping to develop my limited understanding of politics but making me neither a convinced communist nor a committed capitalist.
I still enjoy my memories of that time and of many other visits to the GDR, and to the western half of the country too.
Dawn, via the website
Celebrate celery
I write to acknowledge Emile Richman’s helpful response (Letters, May) to Emma John’s potentially misleading comment on the effect of celery on the alimentary canal, and to say that this kind of content is exactly why I love Prospect.
Mollie Bickerstaff, London
Write to us...
Email letters@prospectmagazine.co.uk. Letters require a full name and address and may be edited
