20.07.2011

Look to our own strength

Michael Copstake demands the break up of Murdoch's media empire

The continuing turmoil around News International and the phone-hacking scandal has brought into sharp relief the attitudes of the different sections of the labour movement to the media - as things stand, they are machines for making money, tools for propagating the views of owners and enhancing their power and influence.

In addition, of course, we have seen the character assassination of ‘troublemakers’ - not least working class militants, such as Tommy Sheridan - in order to directly intervene in the politics of our class.

The response of the Labour Party and Ed Miliband to the hacking scandal has been entirely forced by the strength of public feeling. He did not plan to turn on Rupert Murdoch and News International. Indeed he would have been happy to restore the sort of relationship enjoyed by Tony Blair. In return for the backing of The Sun, New Labour did Murdoch’s bidding. But now Miliband has come out with ever more bold demands and proposals. First, Rebekah Brooks should be sacked, then there should be a public enquiry and now there is even the suggestion of legislation to break up the Murdoch empire and establish a threshold for media ownership to curb monopolisation and the influence by one person or organisation. That is excellent. What the comrades of the Socialist Workers Party were saying only a couple of weeks ago is now coming from the lips of the Labour leader.

David Cameron is on the ropes. Till the last day of the parliamentary session Cameron was telling all and sundry that Andy Coulson remained a personal friend and that it was right to have given him a second chance. Only after he returned from his South African trip did he hold out the possibility that he might have been lied to. That “with hindsight” he regretted hiring him. However, in all two dozen or so meetings Cameron had with Murdoch he claims there have been no “inappropriate conversations”. Believe that and you’ll believe anything.

Meanwhile, new revelations, resignations and arrests are announced almost daily. This situation can only be welcomed by communists. The ruling class is showing all the signs of weakness and disarray. So what should be our response to what is a crisis of legitimacy?

The Labour right continues to use the excuse that, since the capitalist press is the only game in town, it is necessary to bow to its agenda. We do not accept that argument. The labour movement needs its own media, through which Labour Party, the TUC, unions and workers’ cooperatives, as well as the left groups can express and develop our politics and culture.

Here we can learn from history, not least the Daily Herald. Today there is no mass-circulation working class paper - the Herald met its demise in 1964, when it was renamed The Sun and then finally sold to one Rupert Murdoch in 1969.

It began life modestly, as a daily strike bulletin put out by the London Society of Compositors in 1910. The idea of an independent working class press of one sort or another - something entirely lacking in Britain, as opposed to, say, the media presence of the SPD in Germany, which got its ideas to millions of workers through numerous papers - was compelling enough to move a number of militants, such as Ben Tillett, the dockers’ leader, to raise funds to make the Herald a permanent fixture.

Reliant on donations from its readers and local supporters groups, in the early years the Herald was a scourge to reactionary thought and featured class-conscious journalism and many a telling headline and cartoon. The paper briefly advocated revolution, together with syndicalist forms of workers’ organisation, and consistently supported the struggles of women and suffragettes, striking workers and those fighting for Irish independence. Labour and the TUC remained vacillating between confused support and hostility, as the Herald pulled few punches in attacking backsliding and reformist labour politicians and trade union leaders.

To its credit the paper took an anti-war stance, but this had the effect of cutting off much of its support from the official movement. Forced to go weekly, it supported conscientious objectors and campaigned against conscription - a position that owed more to pacifism than socialism. In 1917 the Russian Revolution was welcomed. Circulation at this point was audited at 329,869 and its role was critical in combating bourgeois ideas and British military intervention at such a crucial historical juncture.

Today, however, instead of looking to our own strength, what we mostly find on the left is the demand that the capitalist state step in to nationalise the press and media. For example, The Socialist calls for the “democratic nationalisation of the printing presses, television and radio under democratic, popular management and control - beginning with the state takeover of the resources of News Corporation”. Right and proper under socialism and the rule of the working class. But under capitalism? Surely not. The paper keeps repeating the word “democratic” and accepts that the “state monopoly of news and information that existed in Stalinist states” was undesirable, but it proposes instead “access to the media in proportion to political support” (July 14). And, of course, this overlooks the possibility that the state, even if fronted by elected representatives, might decide to deny the Socialist Party in England and Wales the oxygen of publicity. After all it has no noticeable popular support.

The CPGB favours the break-up of the News Corp empire, but we place no faith whatsoever in the democratic credentials of the coalition government. In the current situation, in the absence of working class mass media and the domination of bourgeois ideas, we certainly welcome any action taken by workers in the industry to inhibit the anti-working class agendas of the media owners - during the miners’ Great Strike workers at The Sun refused to print a mock-up of Arthur Scargill giving a Hitler salute under the headline, “Mine fuhrer” (sic). Instead the paper’s front page published in large type: “Members of all The Sun production chapels refused to handle the Arthur Scargill picture and major headline on our lead story. The Sun has decided, reluctantly, to print the paper without either” (May 15 1984).

But, while we support workers exercising as much control as they can, it is utopian to believe that universal nationalisation would be some kind of panacea under capitalism. In point of fact it could prove to be a gift to those bent on rolling back democracy and silencing dissenting voices. We favour demands for banning private/corporate advertising in the media and the democratising of the BBC, etc. But, above all, we say the Labour movement must build its own media in order to fight the battle of ideas - a battle best conducted in the open.