Beware the threat of rule by Privy Council

The agreement of the three main parties to use the Privy Council to create a Royal Charter to impose controls over newspapers shows their utter contempt for the democratic process.

Fearful of the right-wing media they want to corral, and desperate to avoid an open debate in Parliament, they have instead turned to a secret body that meets at Buckingham Palace to do their bidding.

The Privy Council, which has its origins in the 13^th century as secret advisors to the monarch, hasn’t actually met in full for 25 years. This agency of feudalism instead has a “quorum” of three or four. No one actually knows, because there are no written rules.

All members of the cabinet, past and present, are members of the Privy Council. So are senior judges, archbishops and members of the royal family. Although there are over 600 members, only senior ministers ever get invited to meet the queen, who then signs Orders in Council (OIC).

Prerogative orders have the same force as legislation – but need not go before parliament for approval. So the Royal Charter on the press will come into force simply when the queen signs it. No wonder Index on Censorship and others have condemned the moves as a blow to democracy.

The Privy Council may seem quaint and a relic but has a sinister side to it. It is a vehicle for executive decisions by the government, formally issued under the name of the monarch.

The dissolution and summoning of Parliament are effected by royal proclamation; so are the declaration and termination of a state of war, and the declaration of a state of emergency.

A key role in the development the British empire was played by the Privy Council, which

developed into an instrument for colonial administration. Councils of Trade and of the Plantations were established in the late 17th century. The Honourable East India Company was granted its Royal Charter by Elizabeth I, and many followed, including the Hudson's Bay Company Canada and the Royal African Company  “They normally exploited trade and slaving monopolies and privileges,” says Patrick 0'Connor QC, author of a study of the Privy Council for the campaign group Justice.

Prerogative Orders in Council are not laid before parliament at any time. There is no need, for example, to explain their compatibility with the European Convention on Human Rights. When trade union rights were abolished at government communications centre GCHQ, this was achieved through an OIC. Chagos Islanders were removed from their location by an OIC. Connor warns:

The PC [Privy Council]  is a body imbued with undemocratic values and practices, under the illusion that it is above democracy on a higher plane. It is both institutionally as a whole, and severally by its individual membership, inherently remote from any democratic instinct.
“The lack of accessibility and transparency of the PC means that almost no one understands its processes. In a serious emergency, the British people would simply be presented with its products: proclamations and OICs having various formal legal effects upon the rights and duties of us all.  

A QC chooses his words carefully so when Connor warns that “in a real constitutional crisis, this country would be ruled by OICs”, we should take him seriously.

Parliament once resisted the Privy Council. As far back as 1353, there was a protest against “legislation by ordinance”, which claimed the Commons was being by-passed by the Privy Council for law-making purposes. In the reign of Charles I, the Petition of Right 1627 listed various abuses by the Privy Council.

Although Charles agreed to sign the petition, in practice he ignored parliament’s wishes. Civil war between crown and parliament was the result. The Privy Council found its feet again with the restoration of monarchy in 1660.

In 2013, parliament is a poodle of the executive, which in turn relies on the Privy Council for its dirty work. If there as ever a case for a sweeping, new democratic constitution embodied in an Agreement of the People, the unholy ConDemLab coalition deal on the press is it!

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

The press is neither free nor fair

The dispute over statutory (backed by Leveson, Miliband, Clegg) or non-statutory regulation of the press (Cameron) is really no dispute at all. Because regulated or not, the press will as a whole always remain hostile to the interests of ordinary people.

Phone hacking and paying off police officers for inside information was exposed at Leveson. But there was no way the report was going to stray into deeper issues. The report went soft on successive governments’ close ties to Murdoch’s empire. And the police were laughably more or less given a clean bill of health.

Some of Leveson’s proposals could even make it more difficult for investigative journalists to operate. In his proposals, the Leveson suggests major alterations to both the 1998 Data Protection Act and the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace).

Between them, journalists could become liable to prison sentences and their sources

be required to sign written agreements.

Ultimately, the press is neither free nor fair. The reasons are self-evident. Newspapers are owned by an assortment of Murdoch’s global corporation News International, Russian oligarchs (The Independent and the London Standard) or right-wing aristocrats like Viscount Rothermere.

He is chairman and controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail and General Trust PLCs, one of the largest media conglomerates with interests in newspapers, TV and radio in Europe, the United States and Australia.

Any regulatory system of the press will not make a jot of difference when it comes to the Daily Mail witch-hunting trade unionists, denying climate change is actually taking place (even though many of its readers are regularly flooded out by extreme weather) or scapegoating asylum seekers and migrant workers.

If we had had a regulatory system in place in 2003, would it have compelled the media to expose government lies in the run-up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq? Of course not. Newspapers lapped up the Blair government’s falsehoods and helped create the spurious grounds for an invasion.

Not even the liberal Guardian could bring itself to oppose the war, which by any standards was illegal under international law and did not have the backing of the United Nations.

During major strikes, the media is at one in siding with the employers and the government. Which paper supported the strikes in 2011 by public sector workers defending their pension rights?

Rail union RMT general Secretary Bob Crow, who gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry, said it had uncovered “the level of collusion between press, politicians and the state to do over anyone seen as a threat to their interests and that includes the trade union movement.

"From the miners to the firefighters and right up to date with our struggles today on transport and public services, no stone has been left unturned in vilifying and slandering those with the guts to stand up and fight back."

Crow’s reference to the miners’ strike of 1984-5 is compelling. Urged on by the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, papers like the Daily Mirror attacked miners’ leader Arthur Scargill throughout the dispute.

When it was over, the Mirror joined in a scurrilous denigration of Scargill over false allegations of misappropriation of funds. There was more than a little suspicion about the involvement of the dirty hand of the state in this infamous character assassination.

So when Miliband and Clegg urge on the very same state to get involved in “regulation” of the media, they are not proposing to remedy these kinds of wrongs.

In any case, what’s the use of an apology or a fine long after the event. The damage has already been done. In the hands of capitalist owners, the media can never be “free nor fair”. Always remember that.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor