Press
Freedom and the NUJ
Robert Ashley
Freedom is a word I distrust. I experience an immediate need, when I hear it, to, ask "Freedom from what?" Wh;ch is why I've had a feeling, all through the long and repetitive debate about the Trade Unions and Labour Relations (Amendments) Bill, that it was time to call a halt and wonder if we were all talking about freedom from the same thing. I don't think we were.
I mean, were we talking about the freedom of journalists to bring their papers out, without the sort of let or hindrance the engineers inflicted on them last week (something discussed more fully by Dennis Hackett elsewhere in this journal)? Were we talking about the freedom of journalists to report what is happening, without proprietorial idiosyncrasies getting in the way? Or were we talking about the freedom of editors to choose not to be members of the National Union of Journalists and to invite contributions from whomsoever they please, regardless of whether they, too, are members of the NUJ or not? Were we talking about the right of people like Nigel Dempster and Paul Callan to print whatever they hear about the private lives of public people? Were we talking about the right of boring chaps like the editor of the Times to attack them for doing just that? Were we talking about the right of people like me to call the editor of the Times a boring chap?
As I think you will see, freedom, as philosophers have discovered over the centuries, is a pretty complicated concept. Because I am myself fairly simple-minded, I wish to talk about one aspect of it only and that aspect, as I think you will have guessed if you are fool enough to read this column regularly, is editorial freedom. Mr Michael Foot has once again been saying, with an innocence unusual in one so old and washed-up, that when the Bill ' was introduced to repeal the 1971 Industrial Relations Act "nothing was further from my thoughts than the idea that this was going to involve a great argument about the freedom of the press". Well, there are two things to say about that. The first is that governments ought not to introduce legislation which has consequences they never dreamed of. I am aware that this would put the kibosh on about 99 per cent of legislation, but that doesn't worry me: if the remaining
one per cent has been thoroughly thought out, instead of being rushed through at breakneck speed so that Harold Wilson can boast about the amount of work h'is government has got through, so much the better. Our Harold should be told that in legislation, as in love-Making, it's quality, not quantity, that counts. The second thing to say about Mr Foot's remark is that I suspect very strongly that his refusal to yield an inch, despite dozens of delegations of editors, and the publicly-expressed views of hundreds of working journalists, is due largely to the fact that he was caught completely unawares by the strength of feeling his Bill has produced: there are few so obstinate as the stupid.
Mr Foot has said that he sees no reason for making an exception for the National Union of Journalists. All I can do is to laugh despairingly. Because the NUJ is an exceptional union. It is unique. The closed shop may be an admirable thing in some industries: I doubt it, but I'm prepared to admit the possibility. But in journalism I am absolutely certain it would be a disaster. The thought of an editor being subject to the instructions of his chapel, since he is a member of that chapel and its instructions are therefore binding on him, makes me want to throw up, preferably over Mr Foot. The fact that the NUJ chose to abolish the category of associate membership, by which editors could be NUJ members without having to attend mandatory meetings and without having to do what the rank and file decide to do, merely goes to prove what is known to many — that the National Union of Journalists is a as daft as a brush.
Do not try and tell me there is no such thing as editorial freedom, since all editors are proprietorial poodles. If you do, I shall call.you a fool. Is that boring chap, William Rees-Mogg, a proprietor's poodle? Boring he may be, poodle he most certainly is not. And whose poodle, pray, is Mr Peter Preston of the Guardian? You've only got to ask the question to see how foolish it is. And, while we're at it, who precisely is the Mirror's proprietor? The fact is that, with one or two exceptions, the villainous proprietor, standing over his editor with a dog-whip to make sure that only stuff he approves of appears in the paper, is a figment of the fevered imaginations of those jargon-ridden men of the left whose mouthings I have long tired of listening to_ Perhaps I could remind them that Lord Northcliffe, Lord Rothermere, and Lord Beaverbrook have been dead many a long year?
But even if they were alive and well and overseeing every column inch of copy in their papers. what reason is that for making editors subject to yet one more restriction on their freedom?
I know that Mr Foot will say that his Bill does not seek to make the closed shop compulsory: "It is absolutely neutral on whether a closed shop should be established or not" But just as Mr Foot couldn't see why his Bill "was going to involve a great argument about the freedom of the press", so he can't see what the consequences will be if the Bill becomes an Act. He may still be a dab hand when it comes to carrying himself away with his own oratory at Conference, but he seems a bit short when it comes to knowing what it is all about. So I will tell him. It is absolutely essential that editors be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they should join the National Union of Journalists. It is absolutely essential that editors should decide who is going to write in their papers. Got it now? Good. Then shut up, will you, there's a good fellow?
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