"During the lifetime of Churchill's Government a number of conversations, some heated, were to take place in Downing Street between the Prime Minister and Cecil H. King representing the newspaper." The paper was the Daily Mirror. The source for this quote is "Publish and be Damned" the book published by Mirror journalist Hugh Cudlipp, in 1953. The Daily Mirror had long campaigned for Churchill to be brought into power because of the threat from Nazi Germany.


Cecil King kept diary notes of the meetings. At the first, held at the height of the war in June 194o, King explained that he had come to find out exactly what Churchill wanted the Mirror to do. The Prime Minister gave him a lengthy rundown, according to the diary, of his problems with the political situation and then the first eight months of the war. "He said we didn't attack because we couldn't attack...." He thought the Germans would try an invasion. He asked King if he knew how ghastly the situation was. Was this, asked the Prime Minister, the time for political bickering?
So we know that the closeness of a national newspaper to a Prime Minister is nothing new. Cameron and Blair know they have an historical precedent for Murdoch popping into No. 10 to link up with the leader.


Evelyn Waugh, once a Fleet Street journalist, in his novel "Scoop" has a line about a Lord Rothermere figure telling the journalist to send in the little man waiting outside to see him. The little man was the Prime Minister. Waugh had no illusions about who was the most important - the Press barons or the Prime Ministers.


Though the story of political leaders relying on the press has a long history, Murdoch is probably the first to be dethroned, after a long reporting campaign by the Guardian, led by a determined editor and reporter, Nick Davies. (Murdoch can't be called a Press baron, like the others, because he has no title.)


But we may have witnessed a revolution against the power of politically-managed newspapers, in turn brought about by the digital revolution and greater amount of information given to the public.


New laws are being called for and new restrictions. In fact, if the present laws were obeyed - which include heavy penalties for criminal libel, defamation of character and contempt of court - and the police prevented from having chummy relations and cash handouts from the press, the ones we already have would be sufficient.
The facing down of the National Union of Journalists has in itself brought a collapse of ethics. In the Thatcher years, reporters were being fired for belonging to the Union and persecution of Union activists in newspaper offices is still going on. Many years ago, as a trainee reporter in Yorkshire I was threatened with the sack if I joined the union. I did, and wasn't sacked.

The NUJ had its own rules for members - they had to have been trained for two years before joining and not allowed to work in before then. It also had its own rules on ethics which members were supposed to keep.
Now journalists can join national papers without the hard slog of learning the basic rules of reporting (though the parlous state of many regional newspapers and their corporate ownership and lack of independence makes this less likely now).


The Camden New Journal in London, one which is proud of its independence and has a healthy sense of newsgathering, was set up by two journalists in 1982. It claims that the staff as a whole play "a significant, determinant part in the life of the paper."


In the 'nineties, the national press was rocked for a time by "Scallywag" a small paper started in north London by two journalists - one who had worked on the News of the World. They carried the stories no one else dared carry, including one about Establishment figures using rent boys raised without rights in children's homes.


The starting of small newspapers by those with a mission to see the truth in print goes back a long way. The founding of the Manchester Guardian followed the Battle of Peterloo in 1819 and the need to give a true account of the massacre.


The best reporters have been those determined to get into print what they feel to be an important story, and we have not lost those because of the digital press. Often they have to fight to get a story past an editor who wants it to go away for his own reasons, political or financial. But good reporters will struggle until they get their own way, exemplified brilliantly in the American film of "All the President's Men."


The hallmark of a good reporter is the refusal to give up on a story, which they will succeed in getting into the light of day one way or another. They are the ones on whom the future of a free press depends.


At least it is easier to do that now than in the distant past. The "bold and faithful" journalist Joshua Hobson, born in 1810, started a long career as a radical journalist by building his own printing machine in the yard of the Pack Horse pub in Huddersfield, then writing and printing and distributing his story locally about the shocking conditions in the Huddersfield poorhouses. He was sent to Wakefield prison in 1833 for publishing an "unstamped" newspaper and again, for the same reason, in 1835 and 1836.


There are many restrictive ideas around now, including the idea of licensing newspapers. We don't need them - all we need are more "bold and faithful" journalists.


ends

back to the past?

phone tapping

While I was covering Scotland for the Guardian, the clicks and disturbances on my phone suggested it was being bugged. In the Cold War days, if you filed from the Soviet Union or wrote on nuclear weapons, or lived near the Faslane nuclear submarine base, which I did, then it was likely it was happening.
My phone wasn't being tapped, just suffering from high winds. I knew that because I had hired an inquiry agent to do a scan. Then I used the opportunity to find out what else he could do.
I can't understand why Gordon Brown didn't use a normal "sweep" and scan to make sure his phone was safe - but then he probably left that sort of thing to his staff.
The inquiry agent in Scotland explained exactly how they worked - and I tested his device from my friendly neighbour's house. It worked, and I could hear all the conversation being carried on in my own office next door.
For anyone interested in finding out how to hack a phone, it seemed there was plenty of help around. Then, a firm based in the East End sold widely and in large quantities to private inquiry agents as well as to individuals all over the country. They had catalogues from which equipment could be purchased, without any reason having to be given for ordering them.
There were over 40 different types of bugging devices and transmitters in the catalogue, many of them simple to use. Among the more popular were bugs inside a pen, in a quartz wall clock, a table lamp, a calculator and a bugged ashtray costing £150.
John Ayton, director of a Glasgow security firm expert at de-bugging told me then: "The growth of these devices has been enormous and there are virtually no legal safeguards against their use. We are concerned about the way their use is increased. There is a legal grey area which surrounds them."
There had been concern about this, from a committee on privacy set up by the Edward Heath Tory government which recommended that unlawful use of the surveillance devices should be a criminal offence, a Law Commision report, and a Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure which recommended that surveillance devices should only be used on the authority of a magistrate's warrant. These had obviously had little effect and at the time of my suspected bugging we were now living in the Thatcher years, and, according to some, on edge of civil war during the miners' strike. North Sea oil companies were seeing an outbreak of industrial espionage and one was holding meetings to discuss tenders in a sealed room with no electric plugs or phones.
Revelations over hacking had started long before, when news of a scandal about leaked information broke in the Guardian,in the early days of the Ted Heath government in the 'seventies. Peter Harvey, an Australian reporter, tracked down an inquiry agent, Ian Withers. He took him to the Gay Hussar restaurant and over a long lunch, got him to tell him everything he could do. He said that it was "easy and very common" for his companies to obtain information from government departments, including the Inland Revenue, social services, trade and industry and the Home Office, where security was breached regularly. It was done by two main methods - either by former employees of government departments knowing the ropes, getting the information and then selling it on, or what he called "conning", using a cover story and pretending to be someone in another branch of the same department. It worked well with local authorities. "We find that time and time again we can obtain detailed information over the telephone from government departments that really should not be divulged to anyone at all." Withers proved his point by using the Gay Hussar phone (no mobiles in those days) to get Peter Harvey's address and an annual bill by pretending to be a council officer.
This seems to have been the method used by blaggers to get private information on Gordon Brown,and the method is still running.
The Guardian editor, Alastair Hetherington, would not believe this story unless his own income tax returns could be discovered - an extra test, because he did them himself. But he was soon provided with this proof and the story was carried.
It created a sensation, with questions and a statement from Ted Heath in the House. The clomp of burglary squad detectives down the Guardian corridors heralded a ruthless search for our source and Alastair was threatened with prison by Ted Heath over a cup of tea in the garden at No.10 unless he revealed the source. He didn't but the detectives discovered it from Withers' invoice to the Guardian.
The upshot was that Peter Harvey, later Channel 9's political editor in Australia, became the British Press Awards Journalist of the Year, and Ian Withers went to prison. History is again repeating itself. Privacy laws continue to be weak. It is not just against journalist ethics, but criminal, to use inquiry agents - unless it is being done to expose them, not to pay them for illegal work as Murdoch's papers have done.

ends

back on blogs

I've been unable to get on the blog for so long that now I'm back I'd better write something quickly. I'm back thanks to the fabulous TimTech in Cornwall - Tim sorted it out so that I have a dashboard again here in London.
There's so much to write about - the revelations about Iraq from the American-released documents, the scandals about the new housing policies, the revelations about the barbaric factory farming and slaughterhouse practices - none of it cheerful, but all of it needing our attention and help in trying to change things.
So I'll be back. And meanwhile, I must go off and try to find my Twitter place which I seem to have lost!

tonga

Do I really live in a country where four men use a battering ram to break down the door of a hard-working woman, married in this country to a lawyer, to search her property for proof that she is an illegal immigrant from a Commonwealth country?
It is a very long time since many of us on the Guardian opposed the new immigration laws which stopped Commonwealth citizens coming freely to this country. The tales of wrongdoing to "illegal" immigrants are so numerous that they are not reported anymore, not since one woman flung herself out of the window of her home to escape immigration officers and was killed.
But this one, Mrs. Tapui, worked as housekeeper for the Attorney General, Baroness Scotland. So there were political motives for the break-in by the immigration officials.
Which makes me ask again whether I am really living in a country that does this, as well as helping to pay the taxes to make this possible. The taxes are also paying for nuclear weapons defence whose power is the equivalent of 1000 Hiroshimas, and for the mistaken and unwinnable war in Afghanistan, as well as the one in Iraq.
Yes, I am existing in this country and am a Brit, but it is not a life.

More laughter in church

At the Lizard in Cornwall, on the very tip of England, a joint Anglican and Methodist church service was held this morning. It was in a small marquee flying the black and white flags of Cornwall in the centre of a rally for veteran steam engines and cars. The rally had opened at the same time as the normal church services, so the ministers moved their service to the rally.Sylvia, the Methodist minister, wore highly coloured patterned Wellington boots with her dog collar. Bill, the Anglican rector, brought a small kettle to demonstrate on a camp stove how a head of steam could be brought to personal faith as well as to the steam engines outside. There were guitars and wind instruments to accompany the hymns. The kettle took a very long time to boil. One of the guitarists gave a whistle which seemed to come from the kettle - but it hadn't. When it did, there was applause. The mike broke out with an explosive noise just as Sylvia was talking about powerful expression of faith.The result was laughter. Instead of the usual small group of Sunday worshippers, at least 100 were crammed into the tent and more came in as the service went on. They sang and laughed until the tears ran down their faces. They stayed totally silent for prayers and personal thoughts.So why can't Church services often be like this? How about holding question times instead of giving sermons so that people can ask about their doubts and dilemmas? And why, in most churches, is there no laughter? This is may seem all Revivalist in concept, but laughter and music and participation in church could be the solution to bringing back the congregations.

Are Icelanders Terrorists?

So Gordon Brown has said he is willing to use anti-terrorism legislation to freeze the assets of Icelandic companies operating in Britain. He wants to recoup money lost by public bodies and charities here who invested in the Icelandic banks.Which confirms the suspicions of the sceptical among us that the "anti-terrorist laws" are seen as a useful tool more easily to control the already over-controlled population. It's already been used for local offences against parents and people careless about their litter. What next? The proposal to bring in 42-day detention without trial? (Now, happily, that has been defeated!)Pity, in that case, that Gordon didn't use the handy anti-terrorism laws to bring those reckless speculators in the City into line. It might have helped to avoid the crash?