CABINET MINISTER’S RELATIONSHIP WITH A DOMINATRIX – NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN by Donal Kennedy

…Or  with THE TIMES, or the BBC this Wednesday morning as the integrity of the Culture Secretary, John Whittingdale, comes under scrutiny. For he is supposedly responsible for  setting standards for media and sport.

One morning in February 1982 I turned on BBC  Radio 4 News and was intrigued to find the  that the Press Council featured so prominently. The Council had been called in because a newspaper had published a photograph of a healthy and pretty  pregnant married woman in a bikini. No scandal was suggested and the photo was neither indecent nor unflattering. But the young lady was married to the heir to the British throne. Within a couple of days the Press Council, like a pack of Royal corgis, obediently rebuked the newspaper.

The Press Council had for the previous nine months  done its damnedest to avoid censuring THE TIMES for its front page report on the funeral of Bobby Sands by Christopher Thomas, which falsely asserted that the IRA had killed 2,000 Protestants. I had written the paper politely asking it to correct its story and been sent a lying letter by its Managing Editor defending the report. Leading Unionist spokesmen, such as MP James Kilfedder and the leading Dominatrix, Margaret Thatcher had been spreading the lie for some time. THE TIMES Editor, when the untruth was published and when the Press Council adjudication, condemning the paper was published was Mr Harold Evans.

The Press Council had informed me, and the media, of its adjudication, and the embargo on its publication until the very morning that the BBC rabbitted on about Princess Diana’s bikini. The BBC never mentioned the Press Council’s censure of THE TIMES and except for THE TIMES itself, the rest was silence.

I turned on the TV, GRANADA, (I think ) that evening to see Harold Evans garlanded with the title “EDITOR OF THE YEAR” by his fellow British editors. About three months later, all on the one morning, in an apparently co-ordinated attack on Ken Livingstone, THE DAILY EXPRESS, THE DAILY STAR and THE DAILY MAIL repeated the untruth for which THE TIMES had been censured. Another nine months elapsed before the PRESS COUNCIL deigned to condemn the EXPRESS and the STAR, following a complaint by a Mr Conlan in Birmingham. I complained about THE DAILY MAIL but The PRESS COUNCIL arranged a combination of weasel words to evade its duty of exposing Sir Humphrey Atkins as a liar.

The public in Britain never trusted THE PRESS COUNCIl so it carried on, unreformed and changed its name to THE PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION. Sir Humphrey Atkins also carried on, unreformed, and was elevated to the Peerage, where he also changed his name and was appointed to the PRESS COMPLAINTS COMMISSION. A nice little earner. Neither Chicago in the era of Al Capone, nor New York in the grip of Tammany Hall under Boss Croker could have been quite as corrupt as London under the Dominatrix Madam, Thatcher.

Twelve years after THE TIMES got its reprimand, in pursuit of peace, Taoiseach Albert Reynolds sought an American visa  for Gerry Adams, who holds an Irish passport. Simon Jenkins, then a former Editor of THE TIMES, was sent or took himself off to Washington to tell porkies to White House Staff. In those twelve years about another one thousand people were killed in the troubles. So Jenkins told his hearers that the IRA had  killed 3,000 Britons. And he was dumb enough to boast about his porkies in the paper some years ago.

Aliens from the Planet Zog should be advised that the nub of Unionist propaganda is that British, Unionists and Protestants never so much ruffled Irish, or Republican, or Catholic hair, but that the Irish, republicans and Catholics, killed 3,000 British Protestants. An Assistant Editor of the Belfast Newsletter, writing in THE IRISH TIMES this week, seems largely supportive of that propaganda.

Anyhow, some of the liars I mentioned have passed on and I’ll not speculate on the temperature of their new abodes. The distinguished ex-Editors of THE TIMES seem to be still prospering and both of them were dubbed Knights on the same day.

Andrew Marr, in his book “My Trade” singles out Evans and Jenkins as models for emulation. But beyond the bounds of paid hackery I do believe that there will always be some who dare to kick against the Pricks.