SHARED OPINION
On being hounded by the Independent
FRANK JOHNSON
Iwas thinking this week how much more like a newspaper — rather than the menu of a modish new restaurant — the redesigned Independent, which has a new editor, now looks. Whereupon, the paper libelled me.
On the second day of the redesign, it had a useful article telling people who do not like football what they could do over the next month to take their minds off the sub- ject. For example, what countries to visit which had not qualified for the World Cup (Ireland, Russia, Thailand etc.), as well as that unique country which had qualified but whose population was largely uninterested (the United States). There was also a sec- tion which began: 'Perhaps you are a peo- ple person. . . . ' There followed a list of people with whom the paper's anti-football readers should try to become acquainted over the period in question. They included the Queen. More importantly, from my point of view, they included me. I was listed among 'Tory pundits . . . all of whom have publicly expressed their loathing of football'.
I could not imagine, in the present inflamed climate, a more serious libel. A libel is an untrue published statement which might cause someone to be brought into, as the law puts it, 'hatred, ridicule or contempt or cause him to be shunned or avoided'. It would be hard to think of a statement more likely to make me hated, ridiculed, held in contempt, or cause me to be shunned or avoided over the next month, than that I loathe football. The only people who would seek my company during these four weeks would be Independent readers. The unkind might retort that there are not many of them, but the new editor is presumably working on that, and I like to think that he will have some success.
Were I one of those self-important liber- al editors or former editors, such as Mr Harold Evans, I would send the Indepen- dent a letter of colossal length listing my life's achievements, and qualifications to comment on the national game (`far from my being an ignoramus, successive propri- etors have complimented me on my ency- clopaedic knowledge of the Vauxhall Con- ference'). It would be accompanied by a letter from an expensive solicitor demand- ing damages; costs; an apology by the paper, the wording to be approved by me; and an undertaking not to repeat the words complained of, or make any further refer- ence — without my or their prior approval — to me, my wife, my next of kin or my dog.
The alert reader, or potential member of the libel jury, might now ask: 'Yes, yes, but is what the Independent said about you actually true?' That, if I may say so, is a separate issue. Libel cases usually have nothing to do with truth. They are about proof. The defendant must prove that the words complained of are true. I wonder if the Independent could prove that I 'loathe' football. I cannot remember ever having `publicly expressed' such a 'loathing'.
It is, however, the job of us columnists to run opinions just as it is the job of others to run trains or aeroplanes. I run hundreds of opinions a year. The amazing thing is that there are so few crashes. It is possible that a rogue anti-football column went out one day when I couldn't think of anything else. But on the whole my safety record is sec- ond to none.
Still, it may be persisted, this does not answer the question: do I loathe football? The answer is that I tend to loathe foot- ballers and football fans, but not football. I would submit that this is the position of most of the middle classes. I feel more or less the same way about the theatre, tend- ing to loathe the actors and the audiences, but not the plays, at least when they are not new plays. In recent days, there have been several articles deploring the relatively new middle-class enthusiasm for football and romanticising the old proletarian fan. These articles have of course been written `Oh no, the poverty trap!' entirely by middle-class authors, or authors who have now attained the middle classes, (`gone are the days on the Kop when inY grandad used to relieve himself into his rolled-up copy of the Liverpool Echo. It's all seating now. It's not the same'). My own, unromantic view is that the middle classes improve every proletarian activity in which they take an interest. They did so with the 1980s Labour party. They did so with English literature — all our greatest writers being middle-class, from Shakespeare downwards, except for Byron, whose inclu- sion among the greatest is, in any case, largely the doing of Continentals. They are doing so with football, or at least the following of football. But they tend to overdo it. Or at least, to do in who- ever disagrees with them. By the time one of their number, Mr Blair, gained control of the Labour party, they had not just civilised socialism, they had killed it. The middle classes when they go to war are 3 frightening, unbeatable force. That is why am scared that one of their newspapers should make them think I am unsound on football. At the earliest opportunity, I shall raise a lager can to the World Cup and, lust to show I am a true football fan, throw it.
The Commission for Racial Equality is reported to have sent the Home Secretary a paper urging, among other things, a 'new formulation' which would 'allow actors t° be selected on racial grounds where the race or colour of the character to be por- trayed is central to the portrayal — example to select a black actor to appear t° appear in a drama about Nelson Mandela — but would not enable only white actors to be recruited for Hamlet'. I can almost hear, say, Lord Tebbit, for his Mail on Sunday column, preparing t° put bludgeon to paper. But before anyone does so, they should ponder the following proposition: there is no evidence that the characters in Hamlet are of any special race. Certainly not Danish: otherwise they would not include people named Marcellns or Barnard°. Hamlet is so big, in every waY' that it transcends mere locality. In any case, I suspect that most of the people who mock the idea of blacks in Elsinore seldoal go to a Shakespeare performance. If theY did, they will nowadays find a lot of things odder than a black Barnardo.
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