A creeping intolerance

From labelling judges ‘Enemies of the People’, to calling MPs ‘collaborators’ and ‘mutineers’, public discourse through the press is fast deteriorating, writes Raymond Snoddy

Careful choice of language has never been more important, particularly on the part of those who would aspire to set and maintain standards in an increasingly bad-tempered and abusive world.

In the typically restrained language of senior judges, Sir Ian Burnett, Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales, in his first interview, warned against “creeping intolerance” in society and displayed in both newspapers and social media.

“Impartial” judges who found in favour of a prisoner in a claim for damages, or a detained immigrant in a false imprisonment claim attracted immediate expressions of outrage.

“Yet we don’t have outlaws in this country. The rule of law applies to everyone,” Sir Ian said in an interview with BBC Radio 4’s Law in Action.

Criticism of judicial decisions is one thing, he argued – ill-informed abuse threatened the rule of law. Fewer people wanted to become judges and the confidence of the public in the judiciary was undermined.

The Lord Chief Justice might just also have been thinking of the infamous Daily Mail headline denouncing senior judges as ‘Enemies of the People’.

In a way we are all inured to the Daily Mail and only raise an eyebrow when they appear to overstep even their own marks by directly echoing the stance of pro-Nazi newspapers in 1930s Germany.

Despite all the criticism the Daily Mail is still at it. The 15 Conservative MPs prepared to vote against enshrining a Leave date in law were described as “collaborators”.

Again there is the use of Second World War language from occupied France to smear MPs prepared to exercise their judgment in what is still a representative democracy.

You really would think that given the Daily Mail’s historical record there would be at, the very least, a sensitivity over using Second World War terminology.

As James O’Brien pointed out on LBC, the use of the term “collaborators” was chilling for another reason: It was the term used by the killer of Labour MP Jo Cox.

But then comes Sir Ian’s “creeping intolerance,” or in this case intolerance and abuse that creeps up the newspaper food chain to a publication that would like to call itself a “quality” newspaper – the Daily Telegraph.

Words do not just have meaning but also context. It is therefore significant when the tactics, layout and terminology – “Mutineers” and the front-page pictures of the “Mutineers” – that would not have looked out of place on the Daily Mail find their way into a supposedly thoughtful broadsheet newspaper.

Articles move so fast to online that lapses of taste and errors of judgment are probably inevitable.

Yet one of the merits of a newspaper is there is time for consideration and reflection – just – and such an extravagant display could not have happened without the knowledge and approval of Telegraph editor Chris Evans.

When he took such a decision Evans was fresh from noting the advantages conferred on existing newspapers by perceptions of trust and the importance of quality journalism at last week’s Society of Editors conference.

Instead we are treated to an example of creeping intolerance in a place where it should not have been found.

One of the 15 “Brexit mutineers,” former Conservative minister and prominent Remain supporter Anna Soubry, has blamed the Daily Telegraph front page for the 13 death threats she has subsequently received – two taken so seriously that they have been passed to prosecutors.
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Earlier the MP had described the headline as a “blatant piece of bullying.”

It must have been very galling to the Daily Telegraph to have to report that Prime Minister Theresa May was poised to bow to the demands of the Brexit “mutineers” by dropping Britain’s EU exit date from the legislation governing the UK’s withdrawal.

Justice Minister David Lidington noted that “various constructive suggestions” had been made to the Prime Minister with the clear indication that they would be accepted.

Time for a pause for thought by the Daily Telegraph as the branch it had crawled along was being sawn off?

Of course not.

It was back on the attack on Saturday with a long leading article under the headline: “Mutineers can’t fight poll and Parliament,” but mixed in with generous helpings of abuse there were notes of defensiveness.

The paper said the headline was “arresting and intended to be” and argued that as public figures in a free society there is nothing wrong with identifying MPs’ likely voting intentions and call them mutineers rather than rebels if the paper wanted to.

Then came the attack on the Financial Times whose editor Lionel Barber at the self-same Society of Editors conference had spoken of “the general climate of intolerance in public life.”

Barber didn’t say creeping intolerance though he might have done.

The FT was criticised for describing the referendum decision as “a populist outrage” which was part of a broader trend threatening to undermine representative democracy.

The Telegraph leader went on to say how “the sniffy, supercilious elitism” on display in the FT on a daily basis showed how remote and out of touch these “so called opinion formers” were from the lives of ordinary people.

Then the paper noted: “We appreciate that some of our own readers might have felt uncomfortable with the photographs of MPs being used on the front page.”

Naturally, the Telegraph argued they were not shrinking violets and could live with the notoriety and it was all simply part of the cut-and-thrust of one of the most contentious political debates in the UK for half a century.

Cut-and thrust indeed – 13 death threats.

“It is just a shame they have such bombastic champions in the media” – champions who accuse the Daily Telegraph of creeping intolerance.

But at last a 16th century word unearthed from the midden of discarded language by researchers at the University of York around which we can all coalesce.

The word is “betrump” and, joyously it means to deceive or cheat.

The lost word could have a great future, even if it is alongside terms such as collaborator and mutineer.