[THE drive for a right of reply against…]

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THE drive for a right of reply against lies and witch hunts in the press, is a demand which has already gained wide support among victinis of such attacks.

The Campaign for Press Freedom has built its most concerted pressure around the Right of Reply and called a 500-strong audience at the weekend to discuss how it should be taken forward.

The demand has been shown at its best by the ASLEF and NUR members who blacked the Sun and other Murdoch papers during the rail strike after the paper turned its pages over to an attack on the train dirvers in an open attempt to break the strike.

The blackings forced a right of reply of some sort in the Sun and caused fear and consternation to ripple throughout Fleet Street. But while the "reply" (accompanied by a further attack) was the token concession, it was the removal Murdoch's papers from large areas of the country which provided the real power and force of the action.

But now the Labour Party Executive has voted for a commitment to a legal right of reply to be included in the next manifesto. Frank Allaun has already sponsored private member's bill which would give the courts the power to fine newspapers which refused to grant it.

Allaun supported the ASLEF action but presented his bill as an improvement and refinement. *It shouldn't require industrial action" , he told the conference.

Yet speaker after speaker correctly identified the root of the witch hunt as being the class interests of the press owners which are of course the same class interests that the courts uphold.

Moreover, the attacks are not always based on identifiable "inaccuracies" but rather on a whole onslaught of smear. To identify the problem as one of inaccurate reporting is to miss the point by a mile.

legal right of reply would give an occasional platform to Len Murray or Tonv Benn to wrile a piec in the centre pages of the Daily • Mail or the Daily Express.

If they were to take up that right its effect would be to increase the smugness of the press without altering its coverage.

Fleet Street would not only be able to attack the left but would have official credence for a policy of fairness.

(In f: Allaun's Bill a naive simplicity which conjures up some strange images.

He calls for the right of reply to be given equal space and the same position in the paper as the original attack. This conjures up the vision of the Daily Mail running some extremely odd front pages, probably every other day.

This would include headlines screaming out messages such as "Red Ken loves peace and freedom"

But then the Right of Reply Campaign has already produced some macabre oddities.

The main victim of the campaign so far has in fact been the New. Statesman which has been inundated with demands for a right of reply from Frank Chapple.

A legal right of reply already exists in Germany and in France but has not stopped a single witch hunt.

Denis MacShane, former president of the NUJ who supports the right of reply campaign, admitted frankly in a paper he wrote for the conference that in Europe "people do not bother with the right of reply because, in the end, it does not add up to very much."

Fig-leaf

Even the fig leaf of the right of reply would not have been available.

In fact, experience in France suggests that a more powerful democratic demand would be the duty of national distribution centres such as W.H. Smith 10 stock the left press.

The Allaun Bill is not a partial gain. It will foster illusions in the fairness" of the press and will tend 1o demobilise direct action against its grossest hunts.

A Right of Reply Campaign does have a progressive role to play but it is not in sponsoring Bills; rather it is in urging unequivocal support from the Labour Party and from the trade union leadership for direct action such as that taken by the ASLEF members.

In practice, the leaders of the labour movement could be guaranteed to capitulate under prolonged pressure and call off any such action to defend "press freedom"

Tony Benn, winding up the conference made a speech well to the left of the Allaun bill, in which he identified the ownership of the press and the structure of the IBA and the BBC as the problem to be directly attacked.

"It is not enough to say go on printing lies and then establish a right of reply. The question is why such lies are being printed."

He called for the NUJ to affiliate to the Labour Party - an embryonic campaign has already started within the union.

The question is not to uphold some abstract concept of accuracy but to recognise that all campaigns should be directed at a political battle against capitalist ownership of the press which is not a separate problem but just part of capitalist exploitation of the working class.

Benn called for NUJ affiliation to the Labour Party