Respect - Galloway challenges editor over Nazi propaganda

Galloway challenges editor over Nazi propaganda

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Galloway challenges editor over Nazi propaganda

George Galloway this morning wrote to the "Ham and High" newspaper editor following an extraordinary response from the latter to Respect's call on the Archant Group not to carry further BNP adverts.

George will be going through Camden and on to Swiss Cottage and Finchley Road with the Respect Battle Bus this afternoon. He intends to take a slight detour at around 1.30pm to take his anti Nazi message to the offices of the Ham and High in The Avenue, Swiss Cottage.

Here is the full text of the correspondence between George Galloway and Archant.

Letter to Ham and High Editor, 15th April 2008

Dear Mr Martin,

I have yet to receive the courtesy of a reply from the Archant chief executive John Fry, so I am taking this somewhat illiterate and incoherent response from you to the Respect press office to represent what passes for the current thinking of the powers that be on this issue. I therefore also assume the Archant Group will be carrying further adverts from the Nazi British National Party.

The analogy you draw with the broadcast media is entirely spurious. The broadcast media are not permitted by the Advertising Standards Authority to take paid adverts promoting political parties. I have little doubt this is a good thing given the dominance of those with the most money in US elections where there is no such restriction.

Instead promotion of parties is restricted to Party Election Broadcasts provided free to parties which meet certain criteria. Those criteria reflect the levels of support for those parties as indicated either by previous performance or current opinion poll standing and also by the number of candidates the party is standing.

In the case of the London elections a minimum qualification for a PEB is that the party should be standing for the mayoralty, the top up list and in every constituency in the London Assembly. The Nazi BNP has never qualified for a London PEB as it has not stood for the constituency section in the past and is only standing in one constituency this time round. I repeat the Nazi BNP will not be qualifying for a PEB in the London elections 2008.

The Archant Group is a privately owned company with no legal or moral obligation to carry adverts from any organisation promoting any cause or product. The Newspaper Society has made this absolutely clear.

You yourself have written an editorial showing you are well aware of the abhorrent nature of the BNP, so you cannot seek an excuse in your own ignorance. There is no question either of organisations being "excluded" by one media organisation or another in the run-up to elections, although I disagree with your implicit take on this issue.

The fact is the BNP receives election coverage in the reporting of the newspaper media where editors deem this to be appropriate.

Newspaper editors can influence the question of "balance" and freedom of expression where this is felt to be a moral obligation on a paper.

I have to say that your concept of "balance" and freedom of expression seems in fairly short supply amongst the so-called Fleet Street editors, especially of the red tops and I would question whether it is observed even amongst many local papers. However this concept of "balance" cannot possibly apply to advertising.

Advertising is, by definition, not subject to "balance" as it is entirely dependent on who has the resources or the desire to pay you to carry adverts. Does the Archant Group really want to become known as the paid purveyors of Nazi propaganda.

Moreover, local papers operate a policy of covering issues which have a "local" angle. On this criterion, it would be strange indeed if the Ham and High were to give the BNP coverage as you have no local BNP candidates standing and I would have thought you could count the number of BNP voters on one hand in the area you cover, at least until you decided to carry adverts on their behalf.

You say that commercial considerations have not played any role in this extraordinary decision of the Archant Group to carry Nazi adverts. If this is the case, I would have thought Archant's shareholders will have something to say about it because the one thing that is certain is that the decision to carry these adverts is likely to be commercially disastrous for the group.

It will be particularly disastrous for those titles where there is considerable racial harmony, a very low or non-existent BNP presence and where the titles have overcome their previous reputation, earned or unearned, of pandering to the racial prejudices of some of their readers.

I think particularly of the East London Advertiser, my local paper, in this regard which has positioned itself as the paper of record in Tower Hamlets against its previous unsavoury reputation.

The fact is that people of goodwill wholly opposed to the BNP's message of racial hatred will now be strongly inclined to boycott co-operation with or purchase of the papers in the Archant Group and will call on others also to boycott your titles. Perhaps even more importantly for the Archant Group shareholders is the fact that many who might have advertised in the papers in the group will not now do so. I certainly intend to raise with your principal advertisers the desirability of advertising alongside Nazi propaganda.

It is not too late for the Archant Group to acknowledge its intellectual error over issues of free speech in relation to the BNP and for it to make the sensible commercial decision to abandon these adverts and return to the BNP the money it has raised out of its message of race hatred. I trust Mr Fry and his fellow board members will now see through your absurd arguments and analogies and do the right thing.

Yours sincerely,

George Galloway MP

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