We are posting these two articles from bella caledonia about the Johnson’s Tory government’s attempt to suppress any voices of opposition to their plans.
1. Threats to Free Speech
2. A Corporate Media Takeover for the Brexitland Era
____________
1. Threats to Free Speech
The stranglehold of Brexitland’s new right is tightening. As we explored the other day the establishment media is fighting back against independent autonomous incursions and to enforce the new regime’s priorities. Now the war takes on two new fronts. Simon Heffer explains in the Telegraph that something called a ‘heritage summit’ will be “British culture’s last stand against woke zealotry” – explaining that among the 25 heritage bodies whose leaders will meet Oliver Dowden, “too many are possessed by a Left-wing spirit that the public reviles”.
It’s Political Correctness Gone Mad!
The “war on woke” or the “culture wars” are the latest attempt to maintain order, to quash those posing questions to the powerful and the latest iteration of a battle that is about both gender and generation, race and sexuality.
So far so Tory.
We can expect tired and traditional heritage bodies trying desperately to reflect contemporary liberal sensibilities to be chastised into a reactionary framework under the paranoid state of Johnson’s regime and much wheezing and foaming at the mouth in the right wing news-sheets.
Far more worrying is the news that the UK government is to introduce legislation that will enable academics, students or visiting speakers who are no-platformed to sue universities for compensation where they feel they have suffered because of free speech infringements.
Announcing the measures, the education secretary Gavin Williamson said:
“Free speech underpins our democratic society and our universities have a long and proud history of being places where students and academics can express themselves freely, challenge views and cultivate an open mind. But I am deeply worried about the chilling effect on campuses of unacceptable silencing and censoring. That is why we must strengthen free speech in higher education, by bolstering the existing legal duties and ensuring strong, robust action is taken if these are breached.”
These measures are restricted to English universities.
The proposal is one of a range of legal measures put forward by the education secretary. Other measures include: the Department for Education will appoint a “free-speech champion” for higher education; a new free speech condition will be placed on universities in order to access public funding, and the higher education regulator in England, the Office for Students (OfS), will have the power to impose fines in the case of breaches.
This is weird and chilling and effectively imposes the possibility of the hard-right, racists and homophobes to impose their views directly into campus life against the will of the student body. It’s an extraordinary departure based on a wholly misplaced sense of crisis.
This is the culmination of years of narrative-framing by Toby Young’s Free Speech Union, Spiked!, James Delingpole and the panoply of libertarian campaigners railing against contemporary political culture. As has been pointed out by Universities UK: “There are already significant legal duties placed on universities to uphold freedom of speech and universities are required to have a code of practice on free speech and to update this regularly.”
A 2018 report by the parliamentary human rights committee reported, “We did not find the wholesale censorship of debate in universities which media coverage has suggested”. The cross-party group noted that student groups were not obliged to invite particular speakers, or to never cancel previously planned events, and that speakers were free to decide they did not want to share a platform with others. “None of these is an interference on free speech rights.”
The University and College Union (UCU) general secretary, Jo Grady, has stated: “It is extraordinary that in the midst of a global pandemic the government appears more interested in fighting phantom threats to free speech than taking action to contain the real and present danger which the virus poses to staff and students.”
Instead we have a hysterical and paranoid cabal of people imposing dangerous and misguided legislation that poses a real threat to democracy on campus. Many of the people who complain of ‘cancel culture’ do so from positions of considerable power and the dark irony is that these advocates of “free speech” will be crushing democracy in English universities. This is about power.
As Mic Wright puts it (‘Beaker in the bunker: The paranoid style in British right-wing journalism’):
“The gulf between what Heffer says and what he means is so vast that not even Boris Johnson would propose digging a tunnel under it. It as a variant of the now daily call by right-wing columnists that “free speech be defended”, which actually means that they want their speech defended from all criticism and are very relaxed about the silencing of people not from their political tradition.”
“Even as he rails about the prescriptiveness and intolerance of others, Heffer exhibits both traits by the bucketful. He is offended by other people’s opinions and wants state power to censure them. He wants the version of history that he finds cosy and comfortable to prevail over one that would honestly reckon with Britain’s bloody and brutal conduct over centuries.”
This article was first posted at:- Imagined Repression, the Phantom Threats to Free Speech
_____
2. A Corporate Media Takeover for the Brexitland Era
Despite the efforts of this parish and many others (Double Down News, Open Democracy, Byline Times, The Ferret) the attempt to democratise the media is under assault. Three recent examples spring to mind: the imminent launch of Andrew Neil’s GB News, the appointment of Paul Dacre as the Chairman of Ofcom and the appointment of Richard Sharp – a man who has openly donated £400,000 to the Conservative party – as the new chair of the BBC.
For an example of Dacre’s editorial qualities see the cartoon from 2015 published in the Daily Mail under Mr. Dacre’s editorship.
These appointments have a synergy to them. Andrew Neil has assured us that GB News will be bound by Ofcom, but with Dacre at the helm that assurance holds little weight. It seems clear that Neil’s model is a Fox-style highly-partisan news to give platform to himself and kindred spirits. Neil has declared it will serve the “vast number of British people who feel undeserved and unheard”, arguing that “the direction of news debate in Britain is increasingly woke and out of touch with the majority of its people”.
That’s not my experience of broadcast news but I don’t inhabit the same reality as the former UK Editor of the Economist, the Sunday Times, Executive Chairman of Sky Television, publisher of the Scotsman and supporter of the Adam Smith Institute, who somehow manages to frame himself as Edgelord Outsider and champion of the little people.
Neil’s litany of media blunders and interventions is too long to cover, but here’s a few gems from his back-catalogue.
In 2018 he claimed one in five Scottish children were illiterate. The BBC executive complaints unit said the figure had originally been put forward by a spokesperson for the Scottish Conservatives as being based on the 2009 Scottish Survey for Literacy and Numeracy. But the unit said the survey “contained no reference to ‘functional illiteracy’, and added that there was”no data which would have justified the claim in question”. The unit said: “The Sunday Politics team has been reminded of the need to establish the evidential basis of claims that are quoted in its questions.”
Not long after joining the BBC Neil made a speech praising the rightwing radical Friedrich Hayek. He called for a “radical programme to liberalise the British economy; a radical reduction in tax and public spending as a share of the economy” as well as a flat tax “and the injection of choice and competition into the public sector on a scale not yet contemplated”. It was astonishing for expressing radical views and riding roughshod over BBC guidelines as he continued to do unrestrained over his time at the corporation.
Neil’s entry to the Register of Journalists’ Interests makes for interesting reading too.
Whilst most journalists have a simple one line, Neil has this:
“Chairman, Press Holdings Media Group (The Spectator, Spectator Health, Life, Money & Australia; and Apollo, the international arts magazine). Chairman, ITP Magazine Group (Dubai). Chairman, The Addison Club (London). Director, Glenburn Enterprises Limited (provides media and consultancy services). Fees for speaking at, hosting or chairing an event were received from the following organisations: Mergermarket (publication covering mergers); Investment Fund Managers (umbrella for investment managers); Standard Life Aberdeen (global asset managers); The British Security Industry Association (trade body representing the UK’s private security industry); BNY Mellon (global bank); Brewin Dolphin (fund managers); IBC Amsterdam (annual trade fair for global broadcasters); Step (association of Financial Planners); Parliamentary Review (publication for business and politics); Weil, Gotshal (law firm); British Retail Consortium (association for retailers); Clyde & Co (law firm); Tudor Capital (hedge fund); Goodacre (financial services specialists); Retail Motor Industry association (vehicle dealers); London Metal Exchange; IIR (Association of senior investment managers); AON (professional services firm); HSBC (bank); EY (professional services); Construction News (publication for UK construction industry); National House Building Council; PARC (professional services); Lloyds Bank; Christie & Co (property advisory service); Premier (asset management advisers); Zurich Insurance (global insurance company); NBC News executives (US news network); ABI (association of insolvency experts); SES (European satellite providers); Publishers Association (of British book publishers); Stonehenge (property developers); Landmark (association of small retailers); RBS (bank); Belfast Chamber of Commerce; GAIM, Global Alternative Investment Managers Conference; Dairy UK (association of dairy producers) (registered July 2018).”
This is the apogee of corporate media. We got a glimpse of the tone of GB News this week when Andrew Neil and Douglas Ross discuss arresting Scottish Government ministers for enacting the will of the parliament and Neil interviewed his own employees about their rancid views:
The narrative is a Trumpian ‘Stop the Vote’ one, with a smarter veneer.
GB news is the TV for our truthiness era, the ideal station for Brexitland Britain a safe-haven for Generation Gammon – appalled by everything they see in a world they rule over in selective outrage. We live in a world of middle-aged grievance fantasy, an orgy of paranoia which manifests itself in a splatter-ground of disastrous long-term consequences: the No Vote, Brexit and climate denialism.
The “problem” that Neil proposes is to create an alternative to a news culture in Britain from which he himself trousered a salary of more than £550,000 – more (he admitted) than the Prime Minister. In fact documents filed at Companies House show that shareholders’ funds at Neil’s company, Glenburn Enterprises, stood at £7.27 million ($9.45 million) from 2016.
As Owen Jones has written:
“Imagine this. The BBC appoints a prominent radical leftist, a lifelong Bennite, the chairman of the publisher of a prominent leftwing publication no less, as its flagship political presenter and interviewer. This person has made speeches in homage of Karl Marx calling for the establishment of full-blooded socialism in Britain, including a massive increase in public ownership, hiking taxes on the rich to fund a huge public investment programme, and reversing anti-union laws. They appear on our “impartial” Auntie Beeb wearing a tie emblazoned with the logo of a hardline leftist thinktank. Their BBC editor is a former Labour staffer who moves to become Jeremy Corbyn’s communications chief. They use their Twitter feed – where they have amassed hundreds of thousands of followers thanks to a platform handed to them by the BBC – to promote radical leftist causes. This would never happen. It is unthinkable.”
That’s the media he is railing against. That’s the problem he is fixing.
This is Gaslighting on a massive scale. This is a direct attack on democratic standards.
We’ve seen in the US the result of a media landscape that feeds disinformation and propaganda into the public consciousness, drip-feeding the message of the far-right and re-shaping the narrative into more and more extreme and previously unconscionable views. It’s not that it couldn’t happen here, it already has.
The grotesque media landscape is a mirror of corporate interests and a generational warzone. It magnifies what Mark Fisher called “the solitary urinal of male subjectivity” and will leave us more and more vulnerable to the predatory instincts of Britannia Unchained.
14th February 2021
_________________
This was first posted at:- A Corporate Media Takeover for the Brexitland Era
____________