Notes of the WEEK
British Prime Minister Tony Blair looked forward to an era of full employment, announcing another fall in the UK unemployment figures - Britain though is not exempt from the gloom that has swept stock markets in Tokyo, Washington and London alike. Rather the falling value of technology stocks and rising numbers in work are both symptomatic of the labour intensive growth that has characterised the market system since the defeat of organised labour.
Un-elected officials like Parliamentary Standards Officer Elizabeth Filkin and the Comission for Racial Equality's Herman Ousely, not the voters, will decide the outcome of British election in May. Minister Keith Vaz has been found guilty of no crime but refusing to pay fealty to Filkin's commission. Ousely's demand that politicians desist from playing the race card would be laudable if it was an argument that he was willing to take to the people.
The British policy of preventive culling of farm stock may well make sense for the control of foot and mouth disease, but it is also the mechanism for the restructuring of the livestock industry on the terms of agri-business. Ironically, environmentalist protests against farming practices are being turned to the greater consolidation of the industry in the hands of factory farming. The document Our Countryside promises cash-strapped small farmers 'we will support new opportunities to diversify', i.e. get out of farming (HMSO, November 2000, p.91).
Western aid agencies and Non-Governmental Organisations briefed the press against Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni, challenged for the first time in elections. Museveni has been the West's most loyal ally playing a key role in installing the Kagame regime in Rwanda and overthrowing Mobutu in Zaire. The criticisms emanating from organisations like Human Rights Watch - which often anticipates policy changes in Washington and London - are a sign that the West is preparing to rein in their African puppet.
With friends like these, free speech needs no enemies
Last week ended with the intelligentsia denouncing another heavy-handed attack on freedom of expression. Police threatened the fashionable Saatchi Gallery in London with prosecution if it did not take down two photographs of naked children included in its current 'I Am a Camera' exhibition. The great and the good from the art world were quick to condemn the police action. The Guardian, in particular, gave the story full coverage. In an editorial the paper called on culture minister Chris Smith to write to the Home Secretary asking him to send out instructions that 'pictures on the wall should be inviolate as far as artistic judgements by policemen are concerned'.
Sure enough by Tuesday Chris Smith had described the affair as silly and the Met had backed off, describing the Saatchi Gallery as a 'respectable institution'. Another reassuring victory for freedom of expression then. Well no, not at all, in fact. On the very same day as the Met's retreat over Saatchi's pictures the Guardian reported a far more profound threat to freedom of expression. The paper also struck a very different attitude to it.
The Guardian revealed that a London court had allowed an action for harassment to go ahead against the Sun newspaper. Harassment is a new form of civil legal action (and a new criminal offence) established by parliament in the 1997 Protection from Harassment Act. The act was ostensibly aimed at dealing with so-called stalkers, but its terms are extraordinarily vague and potentially the law has very broad scope indeed.
To be liable for court action for harassment it is only necessary to do or say something at least twice which a in the view of a court a reasonable person ought to know would cause alarm and distress to the person who claims they were harassed. Indeed it is not even necessary to do anything a person may sue for harassment if they 'apprehend' that someone is going to do or say something at least twice which would amount to harassment. Moreover a defendant can be found to have harassed someone despite having no intention of doing so. A finding of harassment can result in damages or an injunction preventing repetition of whatever was done or said. (For a critique of the act see www.flawsite.demon.co.u k/flawsite/pfhabrief.html)
The High Court has ruled that whatever the original purpose of the act 'it can cover any harassment of any sort'. The act has been invoked successfully by private businesses to gain court injunctions against animal rights protesters whose demonstrations were otherwise legal and did not contravene the stringent public order laws. Its potential chilling effect on free speech is already being felt by political campaigns who consult their lawyers anxiously about possible liability for 'alarm and distress' that may be caused to members of the public exposed to any graphic publicity materials the campaigns might use.
Now a former police clerk has sued the Sun for harassment following a series of articles criticising her for reporting four police officers for racism. The cops had made sarcastic remarks to each other about a Somali asylum-seeker who had asked the police for help after reporting a theft. They also failed to comply with an order from a senior officer to take the asylum seeker to a centre for refugees. They were subsequently fined and demoted by an internal disciplinary hearing. The Sun articles criticised the incident as 'political correctness gone mad', identified the police station where the clerk worked, and invited readers to express their disgust and contribute to a fund to pay the fines imposed on the police officers by a police disciplinary hearing. The clerk subsequently received hate mail at the police station.
It seems that the Sun's story was largely accurate, although it omitted to mention some significant details. Certainly, but for the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 the clerk would have had no legal cause of action; as her solicitor put it when he was asked what had given him the idea of an action for harassment: 'It was just a moment of inspiration. Sometimes when you're desperate to find a remedy for your client things just pop into your head.' (Guardian, 13 March 2001)
The Sun's lawyers asked the court to throw the case out before hearing it. They argued that, under the 1997 act, a person might be harassed by a doorstepping journalist, but could not possibly be harassed by articles published in a newspaper, and that in any case free speech should trump any interest of the clerk. The judge ruled that harassment could be perpetrated by the mere publication of the articles and that the clerk's interest in not being harassed might indeed outwiegh the newspaper's freedom of expression. Both sides agree that the implication of the ruling would be that many more people who don't like strident press criticism of their actions may have potential recourse to the courts.
This is a case that will probably be appealed up to the House of Lords and, given the vague nature of the harassment laws, it may well prove to be a major legal battleground for freedom of expression. By comparison, a police visit to an upmarket art gallery is not even a skirmish. No true supporter of free speech could fail to sound the alarm concerning the very censorious precedent that may be set by this case. The Guardian, however, despite its much-trumpeted opposition to art censorship of three days previously, preferred to look down its nose at the tabloid Sun.
The paper did not seek out the great and the good of journalism to weigh in for the cause of liberty in the first round of the struggle to come and perhaps even to persuade the censorious claimant to back off. Instead the Guardian reported the court's ruling and ran a feature by its Legal Correspondent, which amounted to a long criticism of the Sun's reporting as biased, unreasonable and motivated by racism, and emphasising the anxiety experienced by the police clerk now named by the Guardian as one Esther Thomas. The article's introduction crowed that the judgement had put 'the tabloids in a tizzy' and their correspondent noted favourably that it threatened 'to change the face of tabloid journalism'.
Is the Guardian saying that it is unacceptable for policemen to judge art, but unobjectionable for judges to decide what is unreasonable and biased political criticism and what is responsible and objective? Or perhaps it is just that the freedom of expression of Charles Saatchi's clients is precious while that of those who criticise anti-racist policies is not.
Whatever the Guardian's editorial intentions, the effect of its reporting has certainly been to encourage the attempt to expand the judges' power over political reporting. On Thursday Ms Thomas's solicitor, Lawrence Davies, wrote to the Guardian thanking the paper for its supportive articles which have resulted in vital donations to her legal campaign which is ineligible for legal aid. Mr Davies concluded his letter: 'Your support means a lot to Esther and to us. It was a joy to know that we are not alone.' -- James Heartfield