If the Labour Party and Government are to any
extent being treated unfairly by the Media, they have some nerve in
looking for public sympathy, particularly from Nationalist voters who
have long been accustomed to see their Party misrepresented and
slandered by the Labour Party and its Press cheerleaders. We can
surely be forgiven for taking some grim pleasure in seeing a proven
and habitual bully getting something of a hammering. One defence which
they offer, as their sneaky plottings and dubious sharp practices are
increasingly exposed, is that the Tories were at it too. Probably so,
though that excuse suggests that Labour is setting itself a very
modest standard of probity.In any case,
both they and the Tories are missing the main point about the Press
attacks which they have been suffering — the charges have in general
been well-founded. Most alarming of all; to the rest of us, has to be
the discovery that to Labour’s leaders the shameful behaviour of at
least one Department is seen only as a "mistake" to be regretted,
whereas it should been seen as proof that unpleasant personalities and
moral blindness prevail in the recesses of Britain’s addministration.
However, cheer up, Labour. The
worst of the tabloids will soon find other victims to harry, and not
necessarily by exposing blunders or wrongdoing but rather by laziness,
carelessness and indifference to facts on the part of less reputable
editors. The SNP has, over the years, suffered adverse Media comment
because proprietors and editors didn’t want it to succeed in a purpose
which they bitterly opposed. There has never been anything wrong in
their doing all they can to make the voters shy away from us as long
as their motive is genuine dislike of our policies. What we should
have been entitled to expect was a properly informed understanding of
our aims and actions.
Instead the Media have never
managed to get right even simple things like the names of the
positions in our structure. Vice-convener and Vice-presidents are
titles thrown about with no attempt at precision, and any
comprehension of terms like "fundamentalist" is not to be hoped for.
The lie that Robert McIntyre refused to take the oath; required of him
on taking his seat, has been allowed to run and run uncorrected by any
political journalist, the humblest of whom is perfectly well aware of
the difference between taking the oath and submitting, under House of
Commons rules, to the acceptance of sponsors from among existing MPs.
Carelessness towards facts can
do more than damage our Party; it can also impede public understanding
of political issues. Mr Dalyell’s West Lothian question, as he posed
it, was a genuine anomaly but, as reported, it was a question of
absurd simplicity. Labour’s one-time proposed Social Compact
was misheard by some reporter who, most commendably, remembered some
school history, and thought he heard Social Contract, and the
mistake became permanent in the Press.
And in recent times, when there
is much fear and worry over racist prejudices, the Media could help by
publishing some features on what political asylum really means. In a
world, ruled to a great extent, as Conor Cruise O’Brien has pointed
out, by torturers and murderers, there will be desperate fugitives
from torment and death, and doors and borders must be kept open, and
generously so, for them.
Hostility to those who
successfully seek asylum as properly understood, is shameful and
demeaning, but many who display hostility, could be helped to kinder
attitudes if the Press stopped using the term asylum-seekers as
if it applied to all who aspire to a new place of residence.
Applications from potential immigrants are a perfectly normal, orderly
and well understood feature of life in any state, and the forms and
interviews ought to be capable of processing without hysteria.
Fugitives need haste, and must be dealt with differently. It would be
helpful if our Press could make the difference clear.
