Lessons from the Carter-Ruck kerfuffle

Silly old Carter-Ruck
Went for a superinjunction
Thought it was clever
Till they found they had never
Spotted the internet’s function.

There’s a new word for the compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary. Will it be “word of the year”?

The first lesson — and last — is not to discount the power of the many against the few. The traditional media are few and centralised; and therefore controllable. The new medium is hydra-headed and dispersed; and cannot be suborned or cowed.

There’s the nature, strength and persistence of an international internet. As far as Malcolm knows, that infamous membership list of BNP members is still on-line at some North American site, well away from any local nay-saying. Short of Chinese walls of security, unpalatable materials, some of them truths-to-be-told, are now always out there — somewhere. Search engines help us to dig for them.

Similarly, all those books which are unavailable in the UK, either because of legal actions or — more sinister — because the publisher fears such constraint, are readily got through a quick Googling and the wonders of mail-order. Short of Customs opening every package, the way the Irish Inquisition once undertook, the truth (or a loose approximation thereof) will get through.

Even when things turn really nasty, light shines through the gaps. Did “Lord” Trimble manage to suppress those allegations that he was associated with the “The Committee”? Although Sean McPhilemy’s book has been suppressed both sides of the Atlantic, it doesn’t take much effort to name names and make connections. There was even one second-hand copy, going remarkably cheaply, in a “well-known” New York book repository, the last time Malcolm went looking.

Malcolm’s memory reaches back to Spies for Peace, in the early ’60s. The Government had decided the ordinary Joe Soap could not be trusted; and so suppressed all reference to the “Regional Seats of Government”. Thanks to four thousand copies of a pamphlet distributed on an Aldermaston march, and the periodical Anarchy, every university campus knew where to go looking. And did. All RSGs were unofficially signposted: doubtless to the great distress and dudgeon of the securocrats.

Today’s little business tells us something else about the local cybersphere; and how it is maturing into something powerful and integrated. What needed four thousand pamphlets in 1963 today needs a few internet postings. Despite the shrill partisan nonsense, currently mainly concentrated on the Right, there is a community of interest which covers matters of personal freedom and freedom of information. This surged to the fore overnight and this morning. While Paul Staines poses as a “libertarian”, he is no more liberal or open than dozens, if not hundreds of other political bloggers. Today, they all mustered against a common enemy.

What happened was, in a small way, heroic and reminiscent of:



A forbidden topic: so pass it on

David Leigh in today’s Guardian:

The Guardian has been prevented from reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds which appear to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights.

Today’s published Commons order papers contain a question to be answered by a minister later this week. The Guardian is prevented from identifying the MP who has asked the question, what the question is, which minister might answer it, or where the question is to be found.

The Guardian is also forbidden from telling its readers why the paper is prevented – for the first time in memory – from reporting parliament. Legal obstacles, which cannot be identified, involve proceedings, which cannot be mentioned, on behalf of a client who must remain secret.

The only fact the Guardian can report is that the case involves the London solicitors Carter-Ruck …

And concludes his piece:

The right to report parliament was the subject of many struggles in the 18th century, with the MP and journalist John Wilkes fighting every authority – up to the king – over the right to keep the public informed. After Wilkes’s battle, wrote the historian Robert Hargreaves, “it gradually became accepted that the public had a constitutional right to know what their elected representatives were up to”.

Malcolm believes that all this may be connected with one or more of the following, on Part Two of the Commons Order Book:

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the Court of Appeal judgment in May 2009 in the case of Michael Napier and Irwin Mitchell v Pressdram Limited in respect of press freedom to report proceedings in court.

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, if he will (a) collect and (b) publish statistics on the number of non-reportable injunctions issued by the High Court in each of the last five years.

Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what mechanisms HM Court Service uses to draw up rosters of duty judges for the purpose of considering time of the essence applications for the issuing of injunctions by the High Court.

This is an opportunity for every blogger, of any political persuasion, to have an “I am Spartacus” moment.