"i Did Not Write a Single Word of That

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The Workers Revolutionary Party paper Newsline has been conducting a campaign against Oxford journalist Peter Melntyre, accusing him of helping the police with their swoop on homeless claimants. Peter McIntyr AVEARD MAIL explains why he will be pursuing a complaint against Newsline under the NUJ rule book.

How Mail reporter unearthed a benefits fiddle 7: 5 a 0 MOE SCHOOL. IMPURRY SENTIT OFFICE RAS MOON OPBRED AT alleged benefits swindle - the Big Newsline's "evidence": two front pages of a Tory newspaper! sectarian hysteria might claimants articles which berins by syacie smears. above paragraph are not Deer Editor. have thought it important Are i Septembe ne red harass the the second paragraph and met i will initiate a com HE day after the police raid on social security claimants in Oxford the Oxford Mail published a front page story under the headline 'our part in the big sting - How Mail reporter unearthed a benefits fiddle' That reporter was me.

The story, written by the Oxford Mail editor, said DHSS officials were police informer. SO readers need not feel defensive on my behalf.

Newsline will be the subject of a complaint through the NUJ rule book and I am confident it will apologise or be forced to make its brand of smear outside the union.

That does not mean the Oxford Mail article does not require explanation, nor does it mean that 1 am beyond criticism.

I have replayed the events leading up to the raid in my head a thousand times over the past three weeks. It is like a slow motion tape of a car-crash. I certainly feel as though 1 had been hit by a truck.

First a word about working as a reporter on an evening newspaper. Newsline might claim it is a through some fault on my part I failed to get an exemption clause in my contract which would allow me only to work on stories considered ideologically sound.

I cannot go to the editor and ask to be excused interviewing conservatives. as a police officer without being under arrest had better give up the thought of being a journalist on a provincial newspaper.

My title as social services reporter sounds grander than reality. Until last year it would have included health coverage. I was removed from that reporting for entirely political reasons and the health coverage is now done by one of only two non union reporters in head office.

Like other reporters I arrive in the morning • to find a slip of paper listing my jobs for the day. The level of personal choice over this job or that is extemely low.

Your Comment column ment or asy ober sach laborated in that harass. colThe 'Oxford the police However, the sharp rise in homelessness over the past 18 months in Oxford led to me writing a number of stories about the plight of people left without a roof over their heads. A Salvation Army hostel was forced to close when a church withdrew its building and attempts to move it elsewhere foundered on opposition from •Last year I had already written a feature comparing the charges and conditions t single people In bed an reaktag to those with tenancy agreements with the same landlords (identical rooms; charges more than doubled).

But now I was hearing about more and more people being crammed into small rooms, and serious allegations about landlords or their agents taking money off claimants in return for supplying letters saying they were staying there.

These were the 'startling facts' I was trying to collect evidence about — not fraud by claimants.

And trying was the operative word. It was much easier to discover authoritative second hand reports of what was happening than to find people who would talk dirtitly about what had happened to them. The editor says he decided not to publish the articles. There were no articles which could have passed any legal test for publication.

Stages

As one of the routine stages in this inquiry I went to see the manager of the local DHSS supplementary benefits office. I had a list of questions aimed at trying to discover how much was being spent on bed and breakfast aust Contre ost replacemars Estouel oe moel popular males #t Way. Ortord Ton. 49946 dmits looting Belfast olitician E Irish National LibArmy har Bon shooting Belfast cit!

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f the her 12 Be TH int roo Hedges No. 16,273 SPECIAL NOICE YOU SHOULD KITBOO S Oxford Mail.

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payments and how much of that money was going to individual landlords. (The city council which has an obligation to house families, publishes figures on how much it spends on bed and breakfast. The DHSS does not.)

My questions met a blank response. And when I mentioned a particular landlord, the manager said that I had called at a bad time, that there was an investigation going on and that the ponce woula De li mold la in touch with my editor.

A tew days later ine editor told me that two senior poicemen had been to tell him that my enquiries were cutting across an investigation they were doing. The editor asked me to go to see Det. Inspector Roy Payne.

I took with me another reporter, precisely as insurance against being pumped for information. Payne, who met us in a bare upstairs room at St. Aldates' police station, asked whether I had any information to give him and I said I did not. He knew better than to push the point. The outrageous suggestion that I gave the police any information at all is completely without foundation. No. 16,274 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, tyre uncovered startling facts about bed Payne said fraud investigations had grown as a side issue out of a murder inquiry and he said that they had reports of landlords or their agents taking money in return for official I asked whether the investigation was into landlords or claimants, and he said that it was into the activities of landlords and their agents.

I had no illusions that the police were sympathetic to animonto It was alst clear that since some of ine aueganuns anuuuuu w 1haallarntinna amerintaita a form of blackmail that in some cases there had to be some "fraud' by claimants for the trafficers in homelessness to be able to work their alleged extortion.

But I knew that several groups working with the homeless had complained to the DHSS about the money they were handing over to landlords and the few facts Payne had given (he spontaneously mentioned two landlords whose names had also been given to me) made it plausible that the operation really was directed where he said it was.

I knew nothing of course about the phony DHSS office and the Sting' '. I Price 14p Hundreds of policemen Thames clly is believed that as much as fim ol • of Health and Social SeMAIL - up in part he invoived •ameless men 1982 HORN Price 12p stars 60471 LON TO Mi wasn't even aware that investigation was • by Serious Crime Sq The prospect of 280 cl ants being arrested wa far from my mind that allegations against landlords seemed to be only justification fo! special operation.

When I returned to office the editor said had agreed that the pi would not question cli ants or landlords about allegations I had he which offertivelv hrni my inquiries to a halt.

I WUL• PICUCHU unn't nratand th fought the editor's cision. It seemed to unlikely that I could n the allegations stand without a major impu resources by the pape and there was no sig those.

It is a poor analogy I don't wish to com homelessness with addiction, but I felt e I had been told that police were planning a bust against major he pushers. For there tr pushers there have to users. Operation M of course turned out ti an operation against equivalent of the f user. But who would : any tears if the pus were going to be busted polici t to b iddle. : the the uad. aimIS 80 . the the • the the I he aper aim: the ard, noht.

at T deme nake up it of of pare drug is if the , big eroin ) be , be lajor o be •the retty shed hers I had no further contact with the police. On the day of the raid I sat in court watching one defendant after another being remanded in custody without even being offered a lawyer, and heard that more than 50 places at the overcrowded Oxford prison had been specially cleared for the mass jailings.

The real purpose of the operation sunk on me like a lead weight. That day a grinning picture of me appeared over the report of the raid. I had not in fact written a single word of the story lexcept for Claimant's Union comment in a late edition). But that was just a taste of what was to come.

That night I collected the reactions of people who had been freed without charge, probation officers, lawyers and civil liberty campaigners and wrote a story about their anger. It appeared (heavily cut) on Friday in the Oxford Mail If there is a Nobel prize for sucker punches I deserve a nomination. But whatever am guilty of it is not "grassing' or 'helping the police to harrass the homeless' I have been freed to give this account of the events leading up to the raid by my NUJ chapel, who are raising the issues with the editor.

An almost full meeting expressed its contempt for the Newsline articles and said it would protest.

The support of those members means something to me.

The issue was discussed at a meeting on the eve of the Day of Action when the chapel came out on 24 hour strike 100 per cent. These people are not police spies and neither am I. The problems we as journalists face in gaining any real control over what is published - sometimes in our name — is immense.

Smear

But it is a problem which I live with day in day out. It is not one which reporters on Newsline face.

They presumably have been in full control of their actions as they set out to smear my name. Once my NUJ complaint is laid I will not make further public comment on their articles until the NEC arrives at its verdict.

I look forward to hearing their defence.

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