A kind of freedom
Sir: Alexander Chancellor (Notebook, 17 November) rightly castigates the misnamed Campaign for Press Freedom, with its declared aims of challenging 'the myth that only private ownership of the newspaper industry provides genuine freedom' and encouraging the creation of 'alternative' newspapers owned by independent trusts and co-operatives (especially one or more 'sympathetic to the Labour movement') and a 'public sector' in the printing industry for new publications — and encouraging 'industrial democracy', which no doubt would be Tony Benn's grand idea of the liftman having a say in editorial matters.
What Mr Chancellor omitted to mention was that these aims are in line with the policies of the National Union of Journalists, or so the NUJ central London branch meeting on 14 November was assured by Jake Ecclestone, who, as well as being father of the Times NUJ chapel, is this year's president of the whole union.
This may well be the case, because there is apparently no limit to the lunacies which have been approved over the years by the sort of people who pack the NUJ annual delegate meeting. Both Ecclestone and the NUJ general secretary Ken Ashton are on the CPF's list of sponsors along with Labour MPs, left-wing academics and print union bosses.
Nevertheless it must come as a shock to the thousands of NUJ members, perhaps a majority, who believe that privately-owned newspapers operating in a predominantly capitalist economy have offered and continue to offer the best hope of maintaining a tradition of free inquiry and free comment.
There is no place for softness towards the wretched CPF. Many journalists would go along with the last of its seven aims, `to work for a reduction in legal restrictions on freedom of publication', but that cannot excuse the poison in the other six.
Incidentally, at the central London branch meeting it was decided to donate LI 0 to the CPF, after it was pointed out that formal affiliation —which would have cost a similar amount — would have to be approved by a ballot of all the branch's members. Hardly an example of democracy at its most elevated!
John Allard
(editor of the NUJ central London branch bulletin) 17 Jacksons Lane, Bi Ile ricay, Essex
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