ANOTHER VOICE
Moyle and toil: the price label on our libel laws
AUBERON WAU GH
the account of a curious libel action brought by a resident in one of those new Docklands developments against his neigh- bour, Mrs Ffion Moyle. It appears that Mrs Moyle called on Mr and Mrs Roy Knight, of Portland Square El to discuss a metal sign in the square, and also complaints that the Moyle children, Harry, seven, and Edward, nine, played football near the Knights' home. During the conversation, a scuffle broke out in the course of which Mrs Moyle was locked in a cloakroom and Mr Moyle was called to bring his wife home.
Next, the Moyles went to the local police, who refused to become involved, so Mrs Moyle wrote a circular letter to 37 other residents in the square, claiming she had been attacked. Knight sent a solicitor's letter, followed by a libel writ, and last week won what was described by the Mail on Sunday as 'a £50,000 libel case', although this description does not make it plain whether the sum represents damages alone or whether it includes costs.
For the Moyles' sake, one hopes it is the latter, since they are already reported as being unsure whether to put their Dock- lands home up for sale, or whether to sell their French house first, and whether they can even afford to send their children back to private school next term. Possibly as the result of a very British reluctance to apologise or retract in the face of threats (we journalists overcome such feelings at a very early stage) the Moyles' future pros- pects are somewhat parlous.
Mrs Knight explained that money was not the important thing. It was the princi- ple involved. Presumably the Moyles, cal- led upon to stake a minimum of £50,000 (possibly much more) to defend the action, with no prospect of winning a farthing, felt the same. This case may illustrate only one aspect of the disreputable state of our libel laws, the aspect which is designed to enrich lawyers rather than protect rich crooks, but it is a useful case to cite because it involves private citizens rather than a private citizen versus a newspaper. Hatred of newspapers is so widespread and so virulent nowadays that it is hard to persuade anyone to discuss the matter of press freedom intelligently. I am not saying that people are wrong to wish to punish the new popular press in whatever ways are available. In our part of Somerset, a young man with a serious skin affliction was being hounded by one of the new mould-breaking newspapers wishing to photograph him as a `werewolf, and committed suicide. I do not suppose that particular newspaper would do very well in any local tribunal, whatever the merits of its case. But there is no law of privacy, and so no redress on the main point.
But the Moyles' case is different. The principle involved could have been estab- lished at a quarter the cost in the County Court, but the avarice of lawyers prevents any recourse to the lower courts. Citizens wishing to establish a point of principle in libel must be prepared to gamble their entire livelihoods in the High Court. Un- less they are prepared to take such a suicidal gamble, they are denied any red- ress. It is an example of how the libel law is designed to enrich lawyers without giving citizens protection either in their practice of free speech or against calumny.
On Sunday also, Richard Ingrams de- scribed how he was 'moderately sickened' by the £10,000 settlement of a libel action brought by our own columnist Jeffrey Bernard against the Evening Standard, which had alleged bad behaviour at a race meeting. I was not sickened so much as saddened and made apprehensive. Such easy money never did any one any good. After Sonia Sutcliffe's £600,000 award against the Eye no newspaper or magazine will defend another libel action in court ever again. Ingrams's point was more elevated: that journalists should not sue because they have a platform from which to hit back — a luxury which is denied to bank managers and prostitutes — and that journalists should not avail themselves of laws which constitute a serious threat to press freedom.
The answer to the second point is surely that it is the existence of these laws which threatens press freedom, not journalists availing themselves of them; the answer to the first is that courts are quite capable of taking it into account, if they choose to do so.
No journalist has ever won large damages, I think, although dozens and dozens have sued. However, I have always inclined to follow the Ingrams line that journalists should not sue, while reserving the right to sue those newspapers who have actually paid for their employees to sue me — the Sunday Times, the Mirror and Murdoch's stinking News of the World — if ever I get the chance.
A more serious example of how libel laws distort the news may be found in the incident of Birkbeck College and the Ministry of Defence. An MoD spokesman assured the Sunday Times and Mail on Sunday, in what many saw as an example of MI5's new smear tactics, that defence research papers had been withdrawn from Birkbeck College on security grounds be- cause a member of the staff had been associating with Sinn Fein leaders. Both papers printed it. Lady Blackstone, Master of the College, threatened legal proceed- ings, the Secretary for Defence denied that there was any truth in the story, and both newspapers printed statements this Sunday assuring the world that the story was untrue. How did they know the story was untrue? Because the Ministry of Defence had told them so. But the Ministry of Defence had also assured them that there was substance in the story. Which version represented the truth?
Personally, I have not the faintest idea but neither, I imagine, did the newspapers. They printed a retraction because their lawyers told them they could not prove the truth of the original story. The proper reaction would have been to ask which version was true. The law prevented them from doing that. Quite possibly they ar- rived at the truth by this curious route, but if so it was entirely by accident.
The laws of libel undoubtedly restrict the free flow of information and on occasion falsify the news. But the reason, I suspect, for their present draconian effect, after Sutcliffe vs Pressdram, is quite different. The press is detested because of its repe- ated and inexcusable invasions of privacy: its denunciation of errant husbands and wives and purchase of prostitutes' and toyboys' stories. The terrible fate of Japan's Prime Minister could never befall a French president simply because they have a law against it. The very survival of the world's oldest profession is threatened since newspapers can always pay more than clients. Perhaps this will not sway squeaky-clean Ingrams. But until we have an effective law on privacy, the libel laws will remain the citizen's revenge. No news- paper can survive the present tendency indefinitely.
Paul Johnson and Michael Heath are abroad.
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