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Murdoch phone hacking scandal engulfs all Britain’s major parties

By Jean Shaoul
22 September 2010

World Socialist Website

A desperate damage control operation is underway as further allegations emerge about the extent of the illegal phone hacking at the Rupert Murdoch-owned News of the World. The paper’s royal editor and a private investigator were found guilty of hacking into the voice mail of members of the Royal family and their aides in 2007.

It is now alleged that the practice was much more prevalent than was revealed at the time and that the Metropolitan Police failed to investigate all the cases known to them.

Journalist Clive Goodman and private investigator Glenn Mulcaire were found guilty at the Old Bailey in January 2007 after they admitted hacking into phones. Goodman was jailed for four months and Mulcaire for six months.News of the World editor Andy Coulson resigned following the case. He denied knowing about the hacking, but he accepted ultimate responsibility as editor of the paper. Prime Minister Gordon Brown immediately phoned to offer his commiserations. He assured the journalist that he had acted honourably in resigning and expressed his confidence that Coulson would soon have another job.

Coulson is now Prime Minister David Cameron’s director of communications and at the centre of the new allegations. His presence in the new Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition administration implicates all three major political parties in the affair. It is now suggested that under the previous Labour government, the police and parliamentary investigations were cut short. The Liberal Democrats, who challenged Coulson’s claims that he was ignorant of the phone hacking, are now part of an administration in which Coulson plays a key role and must, as deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg did in the House of Commons earlier this month, defend him.

A network of relationships has been exposed which reveal the incestuous nature of the British political elite and its ties to global corporate interests, in particular to Rupert Murdoch’s News International Corporation. A coalition government has just come to power that supposedly represents a new chapter in British political life after 13 years of Labour rule. But the Murdoch empire has slipped seamlessly from one government to the next. Even if Coulson is never charged with any crime and never found guilty of any crime, this affair will have demonstrated beyond a shadow of doubt that official politics in Britain is entirely divorced from the interests of ordinary people and in the hands of a criminal oligarchy who act outside the law.

Real political power lies with this plutocratic layer and not with elected representatives in Parliament. Allegations have emerged this month that the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee held back from pursuing its investigation into phone hacking at the News of the World. Adam Price, a former Plaid Cymru MP who retired from Parliament in May, claims that MPs were afraid that their private lives would come under investigation if they called on News International Chief Executive Rebekah Brooks to testify. Members of the committee discussed getting the sergeant-at-arms to issue a subpoena for Mrs. Brooks.

“We could have used the nuclear option. We decided not to, I think to some extent because of what I was told at the time by a senior Conservative member of the committee, who I know was in direct contact with NI execs, that if we went for her, called her back, subpoenaed her, they would go for us—which meant effectively that they would delve into our personal lives in order to punish them and I think that’s part of the reason we didn’t do it. In retrospect I think that’s regrettable.” Price told Channel 4 News.

Price made his claim as the Standards and Privileges Committee, which is the most powerful of the cross-party parliamentary committees, considered launching its own inquiry into the phone hacking allegations. Speaking in support of an emergency motion backing the call for an inquiry, Tom Watson MP, who is often regarded as a left, although he was a loyal supporter of Tony Blair until recently, set out the situation in rather too candid terms.

“The truth is that all of us in this House, in our own way, are scared of the Rebekah Brooks of this world. If you fear passing this resolution, think of this: it’s almost laughable, here we sit in Parliament, the central institution of our sacred democracy, between us some of the most powerful people in the land and we are scared of the power she wields without a jot of responsibility or accountability. They, the barons of the media, with their red topped assassins, are the biggest beasts in the modern jungle. They have no predators.”

Watson’s words proved to be rather more correct than he might have imagined. The emergency motion was passed, but the Standards and Privileges Committee immediately made it clear that their investigation was not about to take on News International. The committee hurriedly issued a statement pointing out that it was only authorised to act in cases of contempt of Parliament and it was not sure if hacking into phones could be regarded as contempt.

“The Committee has agreed to start its inquiry by seeking evidence from the Clerk of the House and from outside experts on the law of Parliament on whether, and if so in what circumstances, hacking of MPs’ phones could be a contempt of Parliament.”

So not only are the front benches of the parliamentary parties powerless to act against News International, but the backbenchers are equally caught up in Murdoch’s trawls. The British Parliament is entirely subservient to Murdoch.

Nor do matters stop with Parliament. Many of the most recent allegations have been published in the New York Times, which is involved in a circulation battle with the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. It suits the New York Times to expose the alleged misdeeds of its competitor in London, since across the Atlantic it is safe from both the notorious English libel laws and the political repercussions. Journalists at the Times have spoken to more than a dozen former reporters and editors of News of the World who have painted a picture of widespread hacking.

“Scotland Yard’s narrow focus has allowed News of the World and its parent company, News International, to continue to assert that the hacking was limited to one reporter,” the New York Times wrote.

“Scotland Yard had chosen to notify only a fraction of the hundreds of people whose messages may have been illegally accessed—effectively shieldingNews of the World from a barrage of civil lawsuits.”

That barrage is now being unleashed. As a result of the Times’s revelations, a growing number of prominent public figures have decided to bring lawsuits against News International and, in the case of former Labour Party deputy leader Lord John Prescott, against the Metropolitan Police. The response of the police has been to intimidate possible witnesses by interviewing them under caution as suspects and warning them that anything they say may be used as evidence against them in court.

Former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan has alleged that Andy Coulson must have known about phone hacking as editor. Sean Hoare, who worked as a reporter for the paper, has claimed that Coulson encouraged him to engage in phone hacking. The Metropolitan Police have interviewed both men under caution.

“All this seems very strange. I can well understand that those who thought they could put their part of what happened, may now say to themselves they do not want to find themselves being questioned by police under caution,” Labour MP David Winnick commented.

Close relations exist between the Metropolitan Police and the British-based Murdoch papers. Andy Hayman, who, as Assistant Commissioner for Specialist Operations, led the investigation into phone hacking at News of the World, is now a columnist for the Murdoch-owned Times of London. A practice of collaboration has been developed between the Metropolitan Police and the News of the World in the investigation of high-profile criminal cases. Journalists and police made their careers in this way and in the process boosted the circulation of the paper, which is Britain’s top-selling Sunday and the second-largest-selling English language newspaper in the world.

Assistant Metropolitan Commissioner John Yates has opened a new police inquiry following the recent allegations. Yates has stuck firmly to the line that the phone hacking was small scale. He told the Home Affairs Select committee earlier this month that he thought there might be “10 to 12” cases involved at the maximum. He denied that there was any evidence that any other phones had been hacked. Scotland Yard would interview Andy Coulson, Yates said. The prime minister’s director of communications issued a statement saying that he would talk to the police. An unnamed Whitehall source told reporters that this should “put the matter to bed, once and for all”.

The political establishment has pulled out all the stops in an attempt to draw a line under the phone hacking affair, but the coalition government is becoming increasingly unstable, and it may not be possible for them to prevent more damaging revelations from coming out.

The title of my column is somewhat misleading, I think it’s best to state that right away. Intrigued by the press briefings that RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) offices hold every so often where `criminals’ are displayed alongwith crime artefacts laid out on long rows of tables—guns, machettes, grenade-making equipment, stolen cash—as evidence of their criminality, images which are served up on the news of all private TV channels, which are printed a day later in the newspapers, I had thought of conducting research on these photo op sessions. I had wanted to examine these as `sites’ that are organised and arranged by the organs of the state, by the functionaries of the state, ones that construct criminality through visual means, i.e., still photos and video recordings of criminals, their tools, the loot. RAB, for the few who may not know, falls under the jurisdiction of the ministry of home affairs, its members are seconded to the battalion from the army, navy, air force and police, a measure which, according to its critics, eases in the carry-over of its culture of gross abuses and impunity to other parts of the security forces.

RAB Photo Session

My interest in RAB and its activities, as many of my readers probably know, is not new. It re-surfaced recently, however, because of several incidents which gave rise to thoughts, ones that not only refused to go away but dug deep into the soil and grew shoots.

It surfaced as I poured water over a waterproof camera that Shahidul Alam, my partner, held underneath. He was working on re-creating images of water-boarding for his upcoming photo exhibition on torture. I concentrated on carrying out his instructions, on not thinking about how I would have felt if an actual head had been in the bucket. It surfaced languidly as I heard Nurul  Kabir ask third year students of photography—he is currently teaching a course on Media and Politics at Pathshala—to reflect on how the Bangladeshi media participates in non-violent means of ruling. On how it seeks and gains people’s consent to ideas which work against their interests. Drawing instances from how the media had significantly contributed to making Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia, women with no political experience, into `national’ leaders, on how intellectuals, writers and journalists gratuitously offer the view that the nation’s problems would be solved if only the two women would meet and talk to each other, Kabir moved on to a discussion of ideological state apparatuses (the ISA’s, as those familiar with the French Marxist theorist Louis Althusser’s ideas, know). While listening to him, I thought of RAB’s crossfire deaths and how it had simultaneously constructed, and cashed in on an idea of meting out instant justice in a situation of deteriorating law-and-order and a failing criminal justice system, a situation for which the government, of course, was ultimately responsible. I then thought of how it was increasingly becoming difficult for crossfire deaths to garner public support, even of people who supported the government on all other counts. But what about RAB’s press briefings? What did they construct, and what did we consume by watching images of these on television, or through seeing printed pictures?

Mug shots, or photographic portraits of arrested people, taken by police photographers at the police station is not something that is practised in Bangladesh. The genre of photography and framing that has developed since RAB (inaugurated in March 2004) began its press briefings seems unique to Bangladesh, and to its visual history. Through my network of photographer friends I got hold of about sixty photographs, and sat looking through these, scribbling notes while I did: RAB officials conducting security searches on buses. Squad dogs snarling at each other. A pair of startled eyes of a young man, the alleged criminal, in front of whom lay a table full of machettes. He seemed to have been hauled up and planted in front of the table. Three young men, guarded on either side by two RAB officials, but although they seemed to be in the middle of a forest, strangely enough, they had A-4 sheets with their names, computer-composed and printed, hanging on their shirt fronts.

I then turned to dozens of photographs of press briefing sessions. These invariably, with one or two slight variations, had `criminals’ standing behind a long table, covered with a white table cloth, a banner behind announcing the number of the battalion (twelve in all), the alleged criminal or criminals guarded by armed RAB members on either side, criminal artefacts in front. The names of those caught, `Mohd Rafiqul Islam, illegal woman trafficker,’ a meticulous description of what was recovered, `125 bhori gold ornaments,’ `ten thousand US dollars,’ often neatly affixed. To the person. To the object. Reminiscent of colonial inventories.

I spoke to a photographer who has covered nearly a hundred RAB events in the last 4 years. He spoke to me on condition of anonymity. So what happens, I asked. Well, the press, from the channels, from the dailies, we all go at the appointed time. We go to a large room, a hall room. There are chairs for us. It takes about half an hour, the criminals are brought, we are briefed on the crime, what happened, who was caught, with what. We take photographs. I prodded and he said, well, what the RAB official says, and what the alleged criminal says seem to be based on the same script. Does anything ever untoward happen? Have you seen any such thing happen? Oh no, he replied. It’s all very neat, very well-organised. No ruffles, none whatsoever. So, why do they do it? Why do they go to the trouble? I think because they get free publicity. I wondered to myself whether it had made crime reporters and investigative journalists lazy. So, you mean, it’s a package? Yes, his eyes lit up. It’s all pre-packaged, you get everything all at once. Sometimes, he said, I think, it is arranged to divert attention. Whose? Well, the media’s, and thereby that of the public. For instance? If you remember the whole Yaba thing, when it blew up, most of those who were paraded before us were Yaba addicts, there was such a big circus over it but none of the really big fish were caught. So, what makes you think it’s stage-managed? Well, two things. If we see something happening on the street, and RAB is there, in action, and we go up to take photographs, they behave very badly. They’ll snarl and say, `Do you have any permission?’ They beat up a Jugantor photographer once. But then the next thing you know, they’ll organise this elaborate press briefing at their offices and parade these so-called criminals with ten-or-so Phensedyl bottles laid out on the table. And they also offer us tea, snacks. We don’t want their nasta, we want to work, I want to take photographs because I think I am accountable to the public. As he spoke I thought to myself, surely, these staged photo ops violate constitutional rights? What does one call them, a sort of media trial, held in what, RAB’s court? Aloud, I asked, what strikes you as most odd about these sessions? Well, when they put on their sunglasses, I mean we are inside the building, inside a room, there’s no sunlight but these guys put on their dark glasses just before we start taking photos.

I return to examining the photographs. There is one set missing, I think. A set that none of us will probably ever get to see. Those that RAB officials are said to have taken of New Age’s crime reporter F Masum after they beat him up outside his house for failing to open the gate with alacrity. According to him, they later dragged him into his bedroom, placed six Phensedyl bottles in his pillow case, stood him beside it. The camera clicked.

First published in New Age on Monday 16th November 2009.

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