TRUTH – THE FIRST CASUALTY OF WAR by Donal Kennedy

Phillip Knightley, an acclaimed journalist and the author of a book on war correspondents –The First Casualty –  died recently and had a full page Obituary in THE TIMES. Its first paragraph I found ironic:

“It was said that if a libel writ had not landed on his desk by Tuesday, Harold Evans, the Sunday Times editor, felt that the paper was not doing its job. The  journalist Phillip Knightley consistently kept him happy, and the paper’s lawyers busy, with some of the most powerful investigative journalism of his generation”.

I think Knightley probably deserves a great reputation which an honest journalist would prize above a knighthood or other Establishment “gong.”

Harold Evans transferred to THE TIMES for about a year as Editor, and later got a Knighthood. During his time there that paper published a Damned Great Lie on its front page and its Managing Editor John Grant in a lying letter to me defended it and the paper sought to defend it before the British Press Council for many months. I can now say what I like about John Grant, a supposed scholar and gentleman, educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and once the holder of a British Army Commission from King George VI, for he cannot sue me for libel, and is most probably shovelling coal. So I have no compunction in describing Grant as a  lying cad, a rotter, a scoundrel a scumbag, a toe-rag, whilst postponing broadcasting my opinion of  Sir  Harold Evans for happier times.

The TIMES reported in May 1981 : “The Roman Catholics buried Robert Sands yesterday as Protestants lamented  their 2,000 dead from 12 years of terrorism”  and went on to refer to “2,000 victims of Sands’ collaborators”.

Ulster Unionist MP James Kilfedder and Prime Minister Margaret  Thatcher were also on record  of imputing all homicides during those years to republicans,with the implication that the many hundreds of persons killed by Crown Forces and Ulster Loyalists had been killed by Republicans.

Kilfedder and Thatcher, I can safely tell you, were lying scoundrels.

The PRESS COUNCIL did its damnedest to dodge adjudicating on my complaint to them, but nine months later upheld it, whereupon, all on the one morning, the Daily Express, the Daily Star and the Daily Mail, in a co-ordinated attack on Ken Livinstone ,reprinted the same lie.

Another nine months passed before the Press Council upheld a complaint by a Mr Conlan in Birmingham against The Daily Express and The Daily Star. But it dodged condemning the publication by the Daily Mail of the same lie, though I had complained about it. The Daily Mail had published the lie over the name of Sir Humphrey Atkins.

Atkins was rewarded with a nice little earner as a member of the Press Complaints Commission, the successor to the Press Council ,before  moving on to a more permanent occupation shovelling coal.

I do hope Kilfedder, Thatcher and Atkins have a spare shovel between them, just in case Sir Harold Evans hasn’t got one of his own.

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