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BRITAIN

THE PRESS AND POLITICAL DIS-
SENT. By Mark Hollingsworth. London,
Pluto Press, 1986. $14.95

If most Canadians had little reason to
pay any attention to the British newspap-
ers before, that changed substantially in
1984 with the opening of the long and
bitter strike by members of the British
National Union of Mineworkers against
the planned closure of hundreds of coal
mines.

Suddenly, Canadians were getting
dozens of reports in their own newspapers,
brought to them via such Fleet Street pap-
ers as the Observer and the Sun — andall
of them with the same sensational, anti-
labor slant that has come to typify most of
the British press. Throughout the year that
the strike continued, the British press con-
tiued to pump out stories that told of a
strike that would have collapsed were it
not for the “roving bands of picket thugs”
who travelled from coal village to coal
village clashing with police and acting
under direct orders from their leader,
Arthur Scargill. One paper, the British
Daily Express, called them “‘Scargill’s Red
Army.”

The coverage of the British miners’
strike is only one of several examples of
one-sided, distorted reporting that is com-
ing from British newspapers, according to
Mark Hollingsworth in his book, The
Press and Political Dissent. Almost with-
out exception whenever Fleet Street deals
with movements on the left, with activism

by immigrants and unemployed, with the
peace movement and key strikes by the
trade union movement, it does so from a
right wing point of view, ridiculing and
even attacking those movements while
confirming the values of Thatcher’s Tory
government.

Ironically, even one of the practitioners
of that right wing journalism, Hugo
Young, former political editor of the Sun-
day Times, acknowledged its existence, in
a 1984 speech cited by Hollingsworth:

“Taken as a whole,” he said, “the press
is massively biased in one direction... At
the very time when politics is becoming

the Greenham common women against
deployment of cruise missiles in Britain,

the riots in Brixton and the miners’ strike. .
Throughout, he is meticulous in dealing *

with the specific newspapers and reports,
many of which are backed up by detailed
interviews with reporters who covered a
story one way only to have it transformed
by an editor into something with the
proper editorial bias.

He also links the right wing Conserva-
tive grip on Fleet Street to the increasing
monopolization of the press in Britain
which has led to a situation in which “five
multi-millionaires control 84 per cent of
the daily and 96 per cent of the Sunday

more open ..
-narrow, monolithic and doctrinaire ...
While political life, from the far Left to the
middle of the Tory party teems with uncer-
tainty and debate, it is to the remaining
fragment of the spectrum, on the heavy
Right, that most papers of all qualities are
now unflinchingly committed ....”
Hollingsworth’s highly readable book
examines that coverage in detail by look-
ing at various events and personalties,
including the press treatment of left Labor
leader Tony Benn, the Greater London
Council (which was disbanded by Thatcher
and its left leader Ken Livingstone fired),
the 1983 general election, the campaign by

. the press becomes more

newspaper circulation in Britain.” And
that circulation is vast: the Sun puts more
than 4.2 million papers on the street every
day while the Daily Mirror and the Daily
Express are close behind with three million
and two million respectively. *

Together with the concentration of the
press, the last several years have seen
growing unemployment in Britain, to
growing strike movement against layoffs
and closures as well as an emerging
influential peace movement. But for British
newspapers, “the coverage of groups of
protesters, workers, individuals and politi-
cal parties has produced one theme which
has colored the judgement of Fleet Street’s

executives, editors and sub-editors,” Hol-
lingsworth emphasizes. “‘It is that people
who take a critical view of the capitalist
economy and propose radical alternatives,
or who challenge the decision to install
cruise missiles in Britain ... are not politi-
cally legitimate.”

He does pose some suggestions for deal-
ing with the press domination, including
legislation to guarantee the right of reply
and government action to break up the
monopolies, although he acknowledges
that neither holds much prospect in the
face of a Tory majority which the papers
are determined to uphold. His book is
more intended as a comprehensive outline
of the problem and an urgent call for
change. :

Still, there is much of value for Canadi-
ans in his book. We don’t yet confront the
as distorted a mirror in our press, in part
because of the political alignments and
different traditions in the press in this
country. But there are danger signs, in the
coverage of papers like the Toronto and
Edmonton Suns and The Province and in
the increasing media concentration that
threatens to involve such British press
barons as Rupert Murdoch.

In the polarized politics of the next
decade, the questions of the press — its
ownership and its reflection of society
— will be questions no progressive Cana-
dians can ignore. A read through The
Press and Political Dissent provides a
good beginning to an emerging debate.

— Sean Griffin

Brigade vets vital part of labor tradition

If another -election victory for British
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has
given the British tabloids’ headline writers
yet another reason to trumpet the virtues of
British Toryism, it hasn’t changed the deep,
abiding traditions of the British labor
movement.

_And one of the enduring of those tradi-
tions is that created by the British Battalion
veterans from the Spanish Civil War, whose
battle against fascism and reaction more
than 50 years ago still holds valuable lessons
for today, says a leading brigade veteran.

Bill Alexander, one of ten commanding
officers with the 2,100-member British Bat-
talion and the author of a book on the -
battalion, was in Vancouver for a week last
month following his participation in a
seminar at the University of Regina on the
International Brigades.

It is perhaps one of the ironies of history
that although the Canadian contingent of
International Brigade volunteers in Spain
was the second largest, relative to popula-
tion, of any country in the world, the vete-
rans of the Canadian Mackenzie-Papineau
Battalion have received scant attention in
their own country.

But in Britain, despite Tory rule, the vete-
rans are a respected part of the country’s
history and traditions. And the “‘volunteers
for liberty” as they have been called in one
account, have been remembered in more
than two dozen monuments around the
country, many of them erected by city
councils.

The most recent of those,-a specially-
commissioned work created by one of the
country’s leading sculptors, went up in 1986
to mark the 50th anniversary of the out-
break of the Spanish Civil War and the
creation of the International Brigades.

Actually, the realities of British politics
compelled organizers to move the com-
memoration date up to October, 1985. The
land for the monument site was donated by
the then Greater London Council and the
International Brigade Association had to
race against time to erect the monument

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 17, 1987

‘The lesson from Spain is that if you don’t
fight, you'll never achieve victory’
— Bill Alexander

before the Thatcher government could
force through its now-infamous legislation
abolishing the Greater London Council, for
many years a Labor stronghold.

The commemoration itself was a testim-
ony to the esteem in which the veterans are
held in the labor movement. “It was
unveiled before 10,000 people by Michael
Foot, then leader of the Labor Party,”
Alexander notes. “Norman Willis, secretary
of the Trades Union Congress, spoke and it
was received on behalf of the Greater Lon-
don Council by GLC chairman Tony
Banks.” :

A national campaign to raise money for
the commissioning brought far more than
the $30,000 required for the sculpture,
Alexander says, and the surplus has now
gone into creating a comprehensive battal-
ion archives, housed in the historic Marx
Library on Clerkenwell Street in London.

The monument itself, cast in bronze,
shows four stylized figures, their fists
upraised to the sky. “It attracts a lot of
attention from people,”’says Alexander.
“It’s on a popular path — many people
walk by and stop and many of them ask
questions. It’s really taken its place in the
history of the British people.”

And if Thatcher was successful in dis-
banding the GLC, the monument cannot
help but be a reminder to her of the endu-
rance of the labor movement — the site
donated by the council is right opposite the
Houses of Parliament. “We joke that when
Mrs. Thatcher walks in front of the Houses
of Parliament, if she looks across the
Thames, she can see our memorial.”

Around the country, there are some 25
different memorials to the battalion vete-
rans, including those commemorated by the

councils in Greater Manchester and Strath-
clyde, which takes in the Scottish city of
Glasgow. In Sheffield, the town council
organized a month of events to mark the
50th anniversary last year.

But the veterans are more than just a part
of history — they are still a vital part of the
labor movement, Alexander emphasizes.
Although only two of the 130-odd veterans
are under 70, most are still active in a variety
of organizations, many in leading positions.

And the message they carried during the
50th anniversary has a new resonance in a
Britain dominated by the policies of
Thatcher and Reagan, Alexander says.

“We set out to talk about the war not as
history but to bring out the lessons from
then for today,” he emphasizes.

“In 1936-39, the issue was Spain. Today
it is countries such as Nicaragua. The solid-
arity takes a different form — the veterans
are assisting to raise money for ambu-
lances, for example, — but the need for
solidarity is even greater today, I think, than
it was then,” Alexander says.

“We also pointed out that, yes we had
lost the battle in Spain. But if we hadn’t
fought that battle, the outcome of World
War II might have been different. And the
lesson for today is — if you don’t fight, you
can never achieve victory,” he emphasizes.

For the British labor movement, particu-_

larly for trade unionists in Britain’s basic
industries, the years of Thatcher have meant
a constant fight — for union rights, for
social services, for basic job security, Alex-
ander emphasizes.

He notes that the epic struggle waged by
the National Union of Mineworkers and the
efforts by print workers to prevent press
baron Rupert Murdoch setting up his scab

plant at Wapping were both unsuccessful.

But he rejects any idea that the labor
movement has been beaten. ‘We've had
setbacks — the British miners, the Wap--
ping dispute — but there is still a willing-
ness to-fight. The problem is that unions
have been fighting as isolated groups.

“The fighting spirit that is still there
hasn’t yet been drawn together,” he
emphasizes.

He points out that there have been 4
whole series of strikes and stoppages;
involving civil servants, teachers and others,
some of which have been successful. British
nurses recently won a 10 per cent increas¢
after threatening to begin widespread indus-
trial action.

Missing, still, however, is co-ordination
by the top leadership of the Trades Union
Congress. “But the pressure is mounting for
that,” he says.

A reflection of the problem is the division
on the left in Britain and particularly the
divisions within the once-influential Com-
munist Party of Great Britain which has
been weakened by a recent series of debilt-
tating expulsions — including the entire —
branch of which Alexander has been along- —
time member — carried out by the Euro-
communist leadership. Among those
expelled were many leading trade unionists.

“The problems of the Communist Party —
are really the problems of the labor mov —
ment,” he says, adding that re-establishin8
unity and a united strategy is vital.

Alexander also notes that his brief visit t
Canada has demonstrated some strikin8. —
parallels between the Mulroney and Vander —
Zalm governments and that of Maggi¢
Thatcher.

“J don’t profess to be an expert on Cana-
dian affairs but the things that are happe?”
ing here are the things that are happenine
over there. There’s acommon agenda anda

common fight,” he says.
oe — 80"