LIES, DAMNED LIES AND THE SUN

10 RMT helpline 0800 3763706 :: november/december 2010 :: RMTnews R UPERT MURDOCH’S union- bashing tabloid, The Sun, has apologised, paid £5,000 into the RMT Widows’ and Orphans’ fund and covered the union’s legal costs after making fabricated claims that general secretary Bob Crow had a luxury car and lived in a union- subsidised home. The paper acknowledged that there was no truth in the allegations, made by its veteran political commentator Trevor Kavanagh in an anti-union article printed during the TUC Congress in September. It also accepted that, far from even owning a car, Bob uses and champions public transport – as it would have known with only the most cursory research, not least in its own archive. Only a year or so before, the same newspaper boasted that it had harassed Bob while he was on his way to work – by Tube. “It’s no surprise that when there is talk of unions taking action to defend the jobs, pay, conditions and pensions of working people, right-wing newspapers like The Sun take cheap pot-shots at unions and their leaders,” Bob said. “I have always thought that if the right-wing press weren’t attacking me I would probably not be doing my job properly, but if they tell outright lies they need to be brought to book.” V-SIGN OF THE TIMES The Sun is the second Murdoch newspaper to have to eat humble pie after telling untruths about the union: in June 2005 The Times paid damages and costs after alleging that Bob had interfered in the union’s presidential election by launching an attack on one of the candidates. The reality was that the union, acting on legal advice, had included an explanatory letter in a ballot mailing correcting factual errors in one of the candidate’s statements – the wording of which the law did not permit the union to alter. The Times at first denied that its article was defamatory, but when the Independent Certification Officer of Trade Unions ruled 18 months later that Bob and the union had acted lawfully throughout it settled the libel proceedings out of court. THE PAY RISE THAT NEVER WAS In the run-up to this year’s Trade Union Congress, at which delegates agreed to fight public- spending cuts with co-ordinated industrial action, the right-wing media went into overdrive against the unions. A number of right-wing newspapers, including the The Sun, The Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, the Express, ran stories about supposedly ‘fat-cat’ union leaders – disingenuously including pension contributions and out- of-pocket expenses to their actual salaries in order to distort the picture. Some also claimed that Bob Crow had been given a 12 per cent pay increase – but the truth was rather different: because the first pay-day of the new year fell on a bank holiday, Bob – like other members of RMT staff – was paid a few days early. But that early payment had to be included in the previous year’s figures, artificially inflating the salary declared to the Certification Officer. That of course means that next year’s figures will show a pay CUT – but it remains to be seen if that will be reported as keenly – or at all. LOW STANDARDS On the day of the second 24- hour strike against Tube staff cuts by 11,000 RMT and TSSA members the London Evening Standard had no room for a single word from either union about the strike itself. It did, however, find room for a full-page opinion piece by Simon Jenkins which stated baldly that the union’s safety concerns over massive jobs cull were “rubbish”. It also had room for an editorial which accused the unions of dishonesty and refusal to negotiate and, perhaps nastiest of all, a page of reports which included an anonymous ‘tweet’ wishing Bob would be run over by a bus. When the union submitted an article by Bob Crow of similar length to the Jenkins piece to exercise his right of reply it took the Standard two weeks to say that it would not “be able” to print it. It was only when the union threatened to go to the Press Complaints Commission that the paper relented, and finally printed a heavily edited and far shorter piece – alongside another by a London Underground boss. The paper couldn’t bring itself to print Bob’s words that to suggest that 11,000 Tube workers had been duped into striking was an insult to the workforce, or even that the Standard had itself campaigned for adequately staffed ‘safer stations’. Lies, damned lies and the Sun There’s nothing new in right-wing media barons launching attacks on the unions – but when their distortions become lies it’s time to draw a line in the sand BANK OF MURDOCH £ For and on behalf of News International Date Pay Authorised signatory “12344” 22”236789 4100098765’44 20-90-34 12343678 Bank of Murdoch Account payee Isle of Dogs branch RMT Orphans Fund five thousand pounds 5,000 18-11-2010