Another voice

The Jumbo that landed

Auberon Waugh

In moments of distress, when England seems to have surrendered to split logic, half-think and vulgar simplemindedness, my own thoughts always turn to Lord Goodman. His name itself is a reassurance, With its implied antithesis to Mr Average Briton. In the country of the common man Lord Goodman is king, I reply jauntily to those of my friends who argue that no man of woman born (his mother was called Bertha) can have so many fingers in so many pies without getting at least a few of them dirty. It is very easy — is it not? — for People in the media to draw attention to a Jumbo jet which has crashed at Tenerife airport, killing all 799 people on board including a British holidaymaker from Hartlepool, without mentioning the many hundreds of Jumbo jets which land without Mishap all over the world every day. Lord Goodman is surely an excellent example of a Jumbo which has landed successfully. Do We not have a certain duty to draw attention to those of his fingers which are manifestly Clean?

In a stock exchange lecture on `The Media and Business' delivered at Cardiff Castle last year, but only recently made available, Lord Goodman pooh-poohed the idea that England was sinking into com munism. Piffle', he said. This is a com forting response, even if his reason for it seems a trifle ingenuous — that there are only three or four constituencies in the Brit ish Isles where a communist candidate could retain his deposit. It made me wonder a little nervously what he thought about the neutron bomb, which is as good an issue as any for dividing the sheep from the goats. But I am not sure that Goodie has lent his great mind to the problem. He may be right. Such speculations always seems to belong to the world of science fiction. Goodie addresses himself most particularly to the home front, and I do not think that it is just

because I am a journalist that I agree with hint wholeheartedly when he argues that

freedom of the press is the one essential freedom which guarantees all the rest. The startling thing about this perception is how little it is shared. Scarcely an Englishman outside Fleet Street — and terrifingly few inside — give a fig for the freedom of the Press. They would like to see it muzzled on nearly every score — forbidden to write about people's private lives, forbidden to

inquire into their private business affairs, forbidden to inquire into the running of

Public affairs where such inquiry threatens

anYthing that might be called the 'public interest and forbidden, even, in many

cases, to pass any comment which does not coincide with the speaker's own con clusions.

Yet Britain has a greater variety of national newspapers and reads more of them per head of the population than any country in the world. Our attitude towards the press is as schizoid as the Russian attitude to the neutron bomb. Even on such an innocuous and life-enhancing titbit as Princess 'Margaret's involvement with her young adventurer, which has been read with enormous enjoyment by the whole country, we find it necessary to add a reservation that the press is behaving abominably. And every bloody fool in the country has to nod his head and pronounce that a person's private life is her own affair. Goodie sounds the trumpet for freedom on nearly all of these points, and the important thing about his particular voluntary is that it is being heard by the Stock Exchange: `I believe that however often I regard newspaper features as improper and wounding and even damaging, I think it would be more improper and more wounding and more damaging if you had a society where anyone could suppress what was being said, and where the freedom to write anything was in danger.'

There is no need here for us to inquire exactly how well the noble Lord lives up to the nobility of this sentiment — he admits to one attempt, as chairman of the NPA, to stop a story about someone who `had succumbed to a rather awful illness', and uses his failure on that occasion to illustrate how the press refuses to be muzzled. I don't suppose we can be thinking about the same story — surely the most confirmed bachelor would hesitate to describe pregnancy as 'rather an awful illness' — and I would be interested to hear of other episodes where he has been more successful.

Later, he adopts an even higher and more admirable line. Communist societies take the view, he says, `that the welfare of their entire community is more important than the advancement of individual thought. Our view is that there is no consideration that is more important than the advancement of individual thought, and if you depart from that view then you depart from my society.' However, even the great Lord Goodman has reservations. Information must be `respectably' acquired, he says. Confidentiality must be respected. Worst of all, he feels that our libel laws are `almost exemplary' because 'if what you say is true then you have a total defence'.

Never mind that this simply isn't true. Truth is an insufficient defence in criminal libel, and in a libel action brought under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act it is no defence at all. It may be thought strange that such bad legal advice should be given

by such an eminent lawyer, and moreover one who first made his name, as I remember, as a junior partner in Rubenstein, Nash during a famous libel action: Bevan and others v Spectator (1957). The greatest injustice of our libel laws, and what makes them more repressive than any in the world, is ' that the burden of establishing truth falls upon the defendant. One would have thought it an elementary principle that a plaintfiff complaining of injurious falsehood, and demanding damages for it, should be required to prove that the injury had occurred and the statement was false. Instead, the defendant must prove that he is innocent, that the statement is true. Bevan and others v Spectator was a classic miscarriage of justice for that reason, as Lord Goodman must know if ever he discussed it with R. H. S. Crossman (another of the plaintiffs) afterwards. The Spectator had described Aneurin Bevin, Dick Crossman and another as being drunk at some conference or other in Italy, and they won very substantial damages for the time. Fifteen years later, Dick Crossman was happy to boast to a party of journalists in my hearing that he and Bevan had both been as pissed as newts.

Does Lord Goodman really think our libel laws are `almost exemplary', or are his fingers getting a little sticky here?

Never mind. One could also point to a certain inconsistency where he argues that whereas the more newspapers there are the better it is for everyone, a fourth television channel would be a great mistake because there is not enough talent to support it and more means worse. But he has made two important discoveries. In the first place, `newspapers do not exist principally to advance the interests of the human race. . . ithey] are there to regale their readers with items of interest that will keep them as readers'. If only the hypocritical, puritanical English could get used to the idea of being regaled! If only certain journalists could accept this humbler interpretation of their role.

Goodie's second discovery, made during his unsuccessful campaign against a certain closed shop in the newspaper industry, is that newspapers have a great many enemies. People do not rally to them, and nobody will lift a finger if they are threatened. The closed shop is clearly an abomination, meaning that a handful of Comrades with names like Ron, Pete and Ken can choose who shall be allowed to be employed anywhere in the country and who shall not — powers that no Beaverbrook or Rothermere ever contemplated. Last week they chose to expel an unfortunate Scots man called Donny MacLeod. Next week . . . Lord Goodman's fingers may not always be visible for all the pies around and he cer tainly won't help us over things like libel, but so far as he goes he is the only friend we have got. He also speaks more sense, for all his transparent interest, than anyone I have heard on behalf of proprietors, editors or journalists inside the industry.