by James Curran
38. Younge, ‘Death’, p. 332.
39. It needs to be pointed out here that the endlessly rehearsed argument that, without the Mail calling the five men accused of killing Stephen Lawrence murderers on its front page on 14 February 1997, the Inquiry would never have taken place, simply will not wash. As Brian Cathcart notes in ‘The Daily Mail and the Stephen Lawrence murder’, Political Quarterly, 88(4), 2017:
The front page was intended as a challenge to an outrage against justice, but the scandal was not about the police or about race and the Lawrences were wrong to believe that it was. The paper’s wrath was directed at five white men who it complained had terrorised their white neighbours into silence and then raised two fingers to the white establishment.
(644)
In spite of what the Mail has claimed, the published record shows that
the Mail never sought a public inquiry. From the day of the famous front page in February 1997 to the day the inquiry was announced five months later, the Daily Mail did not once call for an inquiry in its pages. Even when the Lawrences publicly demanded an inquiry, the paper remained silent on the subject. More than that, it explicitly opposed an inquiry of the kind that came about.
(645)
Thus in an editorial on 25 June 1997, when it became clear that an inquiry of some sort would be held, the Mail made its view on what kind of inquiry very clear:
Of course police methods are open to criticism and claims of racism within the force will have to be investigated. But it would be tragic if such an inquiry were to turn into a witch-hunt against the police. It is not the police who should be on trial. The truth that cries out to be told is about a monstrous wall of silence which continues to shield the guilty.
(645)
It was personal pressure by Doreen Lawrence on Straw that ensured that the police investigation would be at the centre of the inquiry.
40. A. Campbell, Power & the People: 1997–1999: The Alastair Campbell Diaries: Volume Two (London: Arrow Books, 2011), p. 663.
41. Ibid., p. 664.
42. Ibid., p. 666.
43. Ibid., p. 667.
44. For further details see ‘Key points of the Race Relations Amendment Act implementation report’, Guardian, 22 February 2001, (www.theguardian.com/society/2001/feb/22/policy.raceequality)
45. A. Travis, ‘Stephen Lawrence: how his murder changed the legal landscape’, Guardian, 22 April 2013 (www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/apr/22/stephen-lawrence-murder-changed-legal-landscape).
46. The Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain: The Parekh Report (London: Profile Books, 2000), p. viii.
47. Ibid., p. ix
48. Ibid., p. xiii.
49. Ibid., p. 38.
50. Ibid., p. 47.
51. Ibid., p. 38.
52. Ibid., p. 15.
53. ‘Launching the report: responses from government’, Runnymede’s Quarterly Bulletin, 324, December 2000, pp. 2–4.
54. R. Richardson, ‘Children will be told lies’, Runnymede’s Quarterly Bulletin, 324, December 2000, p. 16.
55. E. McLaughlin and S. Neal, ‘Misrepresenting the multicultural nation’, Policy Studies, 25(3), 2004, pp. 165–6.
56. E. McLaughlin and S. Neal, ‘Assumptions of power subverted: media and emotions in the wake of the Parekh Report’, in S. Lefebvre and P. Brodeur (eds), Public Commissions on Cultural and Religious Diversity (London: Routledge, 2017), p. 53.
57. K. Malik, Multiculturalism and its Discontents (London: Seagull Books, 2013), p. 79.
58. A. Pilkington, ‘From institutional racism to community cohesion: the changing nature of racial discourse in Britain’, in Sociological Research Online, 13(3)6, May 2008, (www.socresonline.org.uk/13/3/6.html).
59. A point made at considerable length and great detail in M. Dean, Democracy under Attack: How the Media Distort Policy and Politics (Bristol: The Policy Press, 2012).
60. S. Hall, ‘Occupying Britishness and entrenching change’, Runnymede’s Quarterly Bulletin, March 2001, pp. 17–8; ‘A question of identity’, Observer, 15 October 2000.
11
ALL CHANGE AT THE TOP
Ivor Gaber
On 27 September 2013, the Daily Mail published a 2,000-word article about a left-wing academic at the London School of Economics who had died twenty years previously. The article was headlined ‘The Man Who Hated Britain’, and the reason why the newspaper devoted so much space to a relatively obscure academic was explained in the sub-heading – ‘Red Ed’s Pledge to Bring Back Socialism is a Homage to his Marxist Father. So what Did Miliband Senior Really Believe in? The Answer Should Disturb Everyone Who Loves This Country’. 1 But was it patriotic fervour, or an attempt to resurrect a crude political (and some would argue ethnic) stereotype that really lay behind, not just this article, but the newspaper’s campaign that preceded it, and followed in its wake? 2
Two days prior, the then Labour leader Ed Miliband had told the annual Labour Party conference that an incoming Labour Government would impose a price freeze on the energy companies (a policy later enthusiastically adopted by a subsequent Conservative Government). This, according to most commentators, appeared to turn the political tide and what looked like it was going to be a summer of warm triumph for the Conservatives (with the British economy seemingly in recovery mode) instantly became an autumn of uncertainty as Miliband’s initiative seemed to put new wind into the Labour Party sails. 3 But the Daily Mail, unlike the Conservative Party, appeared ready for the Labour assault. It had manifestly prepared its counter-blast in advance and that counter-blast was named Ralph Miliband – father of the Labour leader.
On the day of Ed Miliband’s address to the Labour conference, the newspaper’s ‘star’ political columnist, Richard Littlejohn, wrote ‘clearly some of his [Ralph Miliband’s] discredited ideas have rubbed off on his youngest son.’ In the article, Littlejohn reprises his own days as an industrial correspondent in the 1970s; painting a highly contentious picture of a Britain hobbled by high taxes, failing industries and dominated by ‘union barons’. And he warned that Miliband was planning ‘a re-run of the tax and spend disaster movie which got us into this mess in the first place. The modern face of socialism manifests itself in the shape of the same old “bash the rich” politics of resentment, a war on wealth creation and a shopping list of generous “giveaways” funded by reckless borrowing and higher taxes’. 4
The day after Miliband’s speech, the Mail published a lengthy article by the historian Dominic Sandbrook, headlined ‘Miliband’s Marxist Father and the Real Reason He Wants To Drag Us Back To The Nightmare 70s’. Sandbrook’s article, running to more than 1300 words, began: ‘At his peak in the Sixties and Seventies, Ed Miliband’s father was one of the best-known intellectuals in Britain’ – something of an exaggeration to put it at its kindest when comparing his obituary in The Times, which ran at 753 words, 5 compared with the 2,532 words the paper devoted to his fellow left-wing intellectual, Eric Hobsbawm. 6 Sandbrook concluded by re-playing Littlejohn’s theme of ‘Beware the Seventies:
What really matters to ordinary families, though, is not where Mr Miliband is coming from, but where he wants to take us. And on this evidence, his ideal society looks worryingly like the seedy, shabby, downbeat world of Britain in the mid-1970s. 7
On the following day came the real offensive (in both senses of the word) – an article headlined ‘The Man Who Hated Britain’. Running across two pages, journalist Geoffrey Levy fulminated, no other word quite captures the tone, against Red Ed and his ‘revolutionary’ father. Levy painted a picture of a bitter Marxist revolutionary who ‘hated Britain’. In the 2,000 words of the article, a mere ten are devoted to the fact that Ralph Miliband spent three years in the Royal Navy fighting for Britain, and the fact that he was a volunteer is entirely omitted. Instead, the reader is presented with a Svengali-like figure exercising an influence from beyond the grave over his son ‘Red Ed’; as Levy wrote ‘how passionately he would have approved today of his son’s sinister warning about
some of the policies he plans to follow if he ever becomes Prime Minister’. 8
The article caused a furore with both the leaders of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties distancing themselves from it, as did most other newspapers – with the notable exception of the Sun. But the disapproval only seemed to encourage the Daily Mail to new heights of vituperation. They did allow Ed Miliband a half-page response, but accompanied it with an editorial describing Miliband’s response to the attacks on his father as ‘tetchy and menacing’. 9 As the weight of political and public opinion gathered momentum the Mail started thrashing around for justifications for their attacks on Miliband’s father. At one point they linked their Miliband campaign to the proposals to reform press regulation that the Labour leader had supported, opining that, ‘If he (Miliband) crushes the freedom of the Press, no doubt his father will be proud of him from beyond the grave’. 10
The Mail’s fury around Miliband’s father continued for a number of weeks, involving the paper in some odd contortions. These contortions included reprinting the ‘Man Who Hated Britain’ article a few days later and also re-publishing their own editorial in support of their own stance – on consecutive days. The stream of abuse aimed at both Ed and Ralph Miliband was unceasing and, to most political observers, wildly out of touch with the reality. For example, under a leader article headlined ‘An Evil Legacy And Why We Won’t Apologise’ the paper wrote:
Indeed, his son’s own Marxist values can be seen all too clearly in his plans for state seizures of private land held by builders and for fixing energy prices by government diktat. More chillingly, the father’s disdain for freedom of expression can be seen in his son’s determination to place the British Press under statutory control’. 11
All of which begs the question: why did the Mail launch such a tirade? The obvious answer is that in terms of political positioning, the paper, always on the right of the political spectrum, was intent on doing ‘whatever was necessary’ to prevent Labour from winning the 2015 General Election. But there was another aspect of the campaign, a campaign largely driven by the Mail but with enthusiastic support from other sections of the press (the Sun in particular) whose principle narrative was to characterise Miliband Junior and the Labour Party, as having moved to the far left after the years of New Labour, which they sought to encapsulate in their constant repetition of the moniker ‘Red Ed’.
How successful it was is debateable. In calendar year 2013, the number of individual articles containing the phrase ‘Red Ed’ occurred as shown in Table 11.1.
TABLE 11.1 Articles referencing ‘Red Ed’, by newspaper groups, 2013
Newspaper Groups (All Sources)
Articles Referencing ‘Red Ed’ 2013
Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday
245
Sun
134
Daily Telegraph
113
Independent
91
The Times/Sunday Times
84
Guardian/Observer
53
Daily Express/Star
26
Financial Times
25
Daily Mirror/Sunday Mirror
23
Source: Factiva.
In 2013, the Mail featured an article referring to ‘Red Ed’, on average, five times a week, this compares to its sister mid-market tabloid the Daily Express, which ran just one such article every two weeks. Despite the ongoing decline in newspaper circulations the Daily Mail remains a hugely important newspaper. It has the largest readership of any newspaper in the UK with a combined print and online readership of over 31 million a month – in other words more than half the British adult population sees the newspaper at least once a month. 12 Perhaps more importantly, the Mail has an influence that outweighs even its impressive readership numbers; this is because it has come to occupy a unique space in the political and media landscapes of the UK. It has managed to convince journalists and politicians alike that somehow it represents the authentic voice of ‘middle England’. Former BBC news presenter, Robin Lustig, asked ‘Who cares what the Daily Mail thinks and does?’ and answered his own question thus:
Just about the entire political leadership of Britain, that’s who – because they believe that the paper somehow has a mystical insight into the deepest thoughts of British voters, that it taps into the veins of the national psyche, and that to ignore it is to ignore the instincts of the British people’. 13
However, the Mail’s ‘Red Ed’ campaign – which in fact preceded the attack on Ralph Miliband – never really gathered momentum in the British press (with the ‘honourable’ exception of the Sun). For, despite the Mail’s almost mantra-like repetition of the moniker, as the table below illustrates, the 2013 monthly usage figures, prior to the Ralph Miliband articles, would have made depressing reading for them (Table 11.2).
TABLE 11.2 Articles in national press mentioning ‘Red Ed’, by month, 2013
Month
Articles in national press mentioning ‘Red Ed’
January
12
February
6
March
23
April
30
May
17
June
13
July
49
August
33
September
190
October
160
November
38
December
72
Source: Factiva.
What the Red Ed campaign had in comment with the ‘loony left’ campaign was that they both represented attempts by sections of the press to frame both Miliband and the ‘loony left’ as the ‘other’. In the case of the ‘loony left’, this was based on their support for policies and groups that the right-wing press regarded as beyond the pale. Miliband’s othering framing was more personal. Primarily the Mail framed Miliband as the ‘other’ by seeking to represent him as ‘alien’, not quite British – as most dramatically illustrated by the paper’s ‘Ralph Miliband’ offensive. In the immediate weeks following publication of the article the Daily Mail carried seven articles that reminded readers that Ed Miliband was Jewish – echoing the newspaper’s historic anti-Semitism, which had included opposing the entry of Jewish refugees at the start of the last century and support for Hitler and his British acolyte Oswald Mosley in the 1930s.
As journalist Jonathan Freedland pointed out in an article in the Guardian, there was more than ‘a whiff of antisemitism’ about the Mail’s coverage. He wrote:
there are familiar tunes, some centuries old, which are played again and again. An especially hoary trope is the notion of divided allegiances or plain disloyalty, as if, whatever their outward presence, Jews really serve another master besides their country. Under Stalin, Jews, especially Jewish intellectuals, were condemned as ‘rootless cosmopolitans’ (another euphemism) lacking in sufficient patriotism. The Mail’s insistence that Miliband Sr. was not only disloyal but actively hated his country fits comfortably in that tradition. 14
Of course, the Daily Mail was careful to avoid this obvious bear trap – the article was written by a Jewish journalist and one of their senior Jewish executives was wheeled out on television to protest that he had found more anti-Semitism (albeit masquerading as criticism of Israel) when he worked at the Guardian than he ever had experienced at the Mail. Nonetheless, with the Mail identifying Harold Laski and Eric Hobsbawm – both Jewish – as particular friends and influencers of Ralph Miliband (and both described as defenders of Stalinism), it is not difficult to make the case that father and son were being framed as ‘alien’. And, as if to underline the point, in a leader column headlined ‘An Evil Legacy And Why We Won’t Apologise’, the Mail, commented, ‘We do not maintain, like the jealous God of Deuteronomy, that the iniquity of the fathers should be visited on the sons’ 15 – wording worryingly redolent of the an
cient accusations of the blood libels that have been levelled against Jews over the centuries
A related way that the Mail framed Miliband’s ‘otherness’ was to emphasise his background as the son of a Hampstead intellectual who lived a life very different from that enjoyed by the average Labour voter. In the weeks following the Ralph Miliband article, there were no fewer than seven references to the fact that Miliband grew up in Hampstead; emphasising that Miliband’s background was that of an intellectual and elitist. Even the fact that he went to the local comprehensive school (which incidentally was not in Hampstead but in far less fashionable Chalk Farm) was put into the mix with headlines such as ‘The Finishing School For Left-Wing Politicians’ 16 and ‘Hardly Bog Standard … Ed’s Days At The Eton For Lefties’ 17 But the Mail headline that captured both senses of the Ed Miliband ‘other’ was under a story written by historian Michael Burleigh that read: ‘In Hampstead Parlours, Intellectual Apologists For Stalin Like Ralph Miliband’s Great Friend Eric Hobsbawm And His Tutor Harold Laski Loved Talking In Abstractions As Millions Died In Horror’. 18
The second aspect of ‘otherness’ employed by the Mail was that of characterising Ed Miliband as a ‘Marxist’ throwback to the 1970s, wedded to a doctrine of state intervention and in hock to the ‘union barons’ who had helped get him elected. This frame was facilitated by the electoral arithmetic that saw Miliband winning the leadership of the Labour Party largely on the basis of the greater number of trade union votes he had secured against his brother, David. Hence. It was not difficult to characterise him as one who owed his position to the votes of the trade unions and this in turn provided an umbilical link to the notion that Ed Miliband was a left-winger who symbolised a return to the ‘bad old days of the seventies’; in the words of the Mail’s headline writers, ‘Revealed: How The Unions Got Red Ed In A Headlock, 19 The Spectre Of Red Ed’s Thought Police’ 20 and ‘Back To The Bad Old Days: Fixing Energy Prices. Grabbing Land From Property Firms. Boosting Minimum Wage ... Red Ed Revives 70s Socialism’. 21