Roger Alton’s move from the Observer to edit the Independent is as shocking as Tony Blair’s appointment as Middle East envoy, and marks a set-back for the anti-war movement. To understand why, we must look at the Indie’s stance on Iraq, why Blair hated the paper, Alton’s politics and what he did at the Observer.
Alton was a crusader for the invasion of Iraq. As Johann Hari, who himself backed the invasion at the time, put it on the eve of the war: “There is now a considerable school of British centre-left thinkers and commentators who are lobbying hard for war, so that the Iraqi people can be freed: Christopher Hitchens, Nick Cohen, John Lloyd, Julie Burchill, Roger Alton and David Aaronovitch.”
In other words, Alton was up there with the worst of British journalists in terms of craven support of Bush and Blair and contempt for the anti-war case.
Hari’s observation is backed up by Nick Davies, who discovered that Alton had an intimate lunch with Blair in autumn 2002 “from which, according to colleagues, Alton returned full of determined support for the campaign against Saddam”. With the Observer’s home affairs correspondent David Rose being fed “sheer disinformation” by MI6, and its political editor Kamal Ahmed deep in Alastair Campbell’s pocket, readers of Alton’s newspaper were, as Davies catalogues in some detail, “slowly soaked in disinformation” about Iraq.
Yet Alton carried on with his support for the invasion. When columnist Richard Ingrams quit the paper in 2005, he insisted that the Observer’s stance on Iraq was damaging the paper: “It’s particularly noticeable on the whole Iraq issue. In the Indie, you had a very strong attack on the whole thing from the beginning. But The Observer’s got it wrong about Iraq, which goes on and on, and you’re clobbered by that unless you get up and say: ‘We got it wrong’.”
Ingrams was right that the gap between the Observer and the Independent was huge.
On the day after the Hutton report came out in January 2004, the Independent produced a totally white front page with a one-word headline: “WHITEWASH”. In Blair’s last major public speech as prime minister, he attacked the Independent, after which the paper splashed with: “Would you be saying this, Mr Blair, if we supported your war in Iraq?” Beneath that headline, the paper’s editor Simon Kelner hit back brilliantly at Blair:
“After 10 years of the Blair administration, a decade of spin and counter-spin, of dodgy dossiers, of 45-minute warnings, of burying bad news, of manipulation and misinformation, we feel that the need to interpret and comment upon the official version of events is more important than ever.”
Kelner saw it as a “badge of honour” to be singled out by Blair.
Will Alton take a similarly brave and principled stand against Gordon Brown and George Bush? It is enough just to ask the question to see what an absurd proposition that is. But if you need more proof, here it is from the horse’s mouth.
Alton on Blair: “Blair is fucking good.“
And again: “I think he’s a very good prime minister and an exceptional politician who will be much missed when he’s gone. Some of the hostility to him is quite baffling. I just can’t understand it. It doesn’t logically relate to things.”
Alton on editorial priorities: “Absolutely have your environmental horrors in Sudan, but you might put it on page four. On page three you might well have, as we did, inside Sven’s five-star England football World Cup love nest — just because it’s more visual.”
On the prosecution of BNP leader Nick Griffin: “ludicrous… should never have been brought”.
On Kamal Ahmed: “Kamal is one of the best journalists I have ever worked with and of the highest integrity, so if anybody impinges his integrity I’ll go and punch his fucking face in.”
What Alton’s editorship of the Independent means is this.
Every pro-war editor will feel safer in his or her job, and more confident in their editorial line. Piers Morgan and Greg Dyke, sacked over Iraq, are still in the news media wilderness. But Alton has taken over the Indie. The message couldn’t be clearer.
Every other editor will feel under even more pressure to give in to the dominant pro-war assumptions: our leaders’ intentions in the “war on terror” are noble; Iraq is yesterday’s story and our audience doesn’t want to hear about it; the anti-war movement is beyond the pale, an unrepresentative rump that is stuck in a rut.
Every journalist will feel it that more difficult to stand out against the notion that the Iraq WMD fiasco is behind us, we can carry on as if nothing had happened.
Alton’s appointment at the Indie is a disgrace. The anti-war movement should watch closely what happens to the paper and be ready to mobilise against Alton in support of the Indie journalists who have made their paper the conscience of the British media.
