There was a time when Labour stood for public ownership of the means of
production, distribution and exchange. The new Clause IV put paid to that.
Now New Labour craves business approval for whatever new policy turn is
proposed. This is nowhere more true than in government relations with media
tycoons.
Many in the Party were rightly suspicious when Tony Blair was the guest
speaker at Rupert Murdoch's world executives' conference in Australia in
1996. The spin was that it was leadership being clever - as if this were a
justification. the Sun supported New Labour but as ever, being even
cleverer, the Times didn't. Since May 1997, when not involved with a
hugely expensive and tasteless circulation war with The Mirror, the Murdoch
papers have been supportive of the more right wing moves of the Government,
but drawn a line over the Euro. The trip by Gordon Brown to the
executives' world gathering in the US this year is seen as a confirmation
of the relationship between Government and Murdoch who has sought and
gained the same kind of relationship in Australia, South Asia and China.
This is a corporation whose ambitions are boundless and quickly gobbles up
the entire political establishment wherever it wishes to go. Compared to
Murdoch, William Randolph Hearst and "Citizen Kane" were men of modest
ambition.
The Murdoch empire has grown from its Australian base to cover huge areas
of South Asia, North America and Europe. The pattern has been a familiar
one. To Murdoch, sport is the battering ram of widening influence and
market share, and together with political influence and the creation of
satellite channels, the media regime is thus fixed. No government has ever
really stood up to Murdoch or sought to encourage either quality newspapers
or television. He gets television rights for popular sports, then forces
people into buying subscriptions. He then forces a bidding war - with
publicly owned television being either unable to pay enough or having to
make huge cuts elsewhere to compete.
The plan by Sky TV to buy Manchester United, and with it a huge access to
TV and golden chips in the Euro sports TV stakes, gives Murdoch control of
the product (football), the marketing and distribution systems. This is a
monopoly if ever there was one and it has to be stopped. There was a time
when the Party was firmly of the view that Murdoch was an over-powerful,
anti-union press baron who had to be stopped. Some of us have never
forgotten the brutal sacking of 5,000 print workers at Wapping. That
defeat lost thousands of print and media jobs, and created a regime of
unstable short-term employment for those who remain. Murdoch's influence
has been a malevolent one with job losses and anti-union activity being the
norm, and the production of appalling "popular" newspapers and tabloid
television. Now Rupert has bought his way into millions of homes as he
takes squillions of dollars out of them. Concern for newspaper quality
led to a policy of ending cross ownership of different outlets. If
implemented, Murdoch would have been forced to settle for some titles and
no television or vice versa. Hardly revolutionary stuff but at least a
recognition of the need for diversity in the media. All of this was dropped
ahead of the election and after Blair's long weekend in Australia, and
since the election there has been no real pressure on the empire at all.
There seemed to be a clear attempt to drive the Independent out of
existence by underpricing the Times and even this was not challenged.
This time a new area has been entered with football clubs (created with
working class supporters' money) being the target. The supporters will pay
the price in tickets, shirts and Sky subscriptions. Football supporters
will find that in the long term there will be a dumbing down of all media
to the
level of Rupert - and you don't get much lower. The decisions that will
have to be taken by Peter Mandelson will have enormous consequences. To
cave in to Murdoch will be seen as payback time
and will increase the monopoly power of News International. The question of
sport will not matter.
