EXCLUSIVE – Lord McAlpine Admits to Chip Abuse
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This headline is entirely true.
On his own admission Lord McAlpine used to subsist on a diet of egg and chips.
Many people think if something is true, under UK law it can’t be libellous – despite any other implications there may or may not be.
Wrong.
Under UK libel law, if a judge thinks that a statement could mislead someone into believing something damaging, it could be libellous – even if the statement is true.
Sally Bercow didn’t actually write anything untrue about Lord McAlpine – she asked why Lord McAlpine was trending on Twitter – which he was. However, the court decided her now famous tweet implied something much more serious and damaging to Lord McAlpine’s reputation.
In the UK, not even the truth is protection from any wealthy person who may want to stop someone with less money than they have from saying something they don’t like.
And as a result, in the UK just the threat of libel from someone richer than they are will shut most people up.
In fact, UK libel law is such a laughing stock around the world that the US government passed an act specifically to protect US citizens from it, mainly as a result of a case in which US journalist Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld wrote a book uncovering financing of terrorist organisations and was sued by a Saudi businessman in Britain – despite the book never having even been published in the UK and the businessman not being a UK citizen.
The coalition government claims it has put a stop to this so-called ‘libel tourism’. However, the small reforms of the libel law they introduced didn’t include a crucial ‘public interest’ exception and does nothing to protect UK citizens from anyone rich and powerful bullying them into silence – regardless of the truth.
In fact, UK law only gives protection to rich and powerful people like Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith, who both used UK libel laws to prevent anyone even investigating their evil abuse of helpless, parentless children.
So be warned – if you live in the UK – sharing this blogpost could well be libellous.
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If you want to see first hand a US libel lawyer’s opinion of the ridiculousness of UK libel laws – read this devastating blogpost:
In Which A London Solicitor Threatens Me
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You can see my original 2011 Lord McAlpine satirical article about his abuse of chips here.
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Related articles by Tom Pride:
How Lord McAlpine is exploiting the same libel laws Savile used to cover up his crimes
Savile wasn’t ‘hiding in plain sight’. It was a cover-up.
Justice? McAlpine gets hundreds of thousands in compensation while child victims get next to nothing
Are McAlpine’s lawyers breaking the solicitors’ code of practice?
Lord McAlpine in his own damning words – The New Machiavelli?
It was the police – not the BBC – who wrongly named Lord McAlpine in abuse allegations
How did Cyril Smith get away with paedophilia? By threatening tweeters and bloggers with libel!
Child abuse scandal can of worms – just who is Daily Mail reporter David Rose?
High level child abuse cover-up? Why has Theresa May barred a US journalist from the UK?
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Please feel free to comment.
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Pride's Purge 
Ya, don’t say? One particular Yank got a nasty shock when things didn’t quite go according to plan in the High Court http://shrink4men.tk
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I do so wish that we as a nation were not so apathetic and just allow all these ridiculous and outdated laws to exist. I do not in any way condone violence but it really is time for the people to speak out loudly and bring Britian and it’s attitudes to class and money into the 21st century.
Did you know that by law a taxi must keep a bale of hay in its boot? Thats how outdated we are.
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” bring Britian and it’s attitudes to class and money into the 21st century.”
I’d have thought that the rich elites in the uk are very much on and in the money in 21st century – sue me if you want!! the British constitution, such as it is, is built entirely on ridiculous and outdated case law and bears no relation to a 21st century living , breathing legal framework of rights and responsibilities for all
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right that’s it im going to sue.
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Are there any laws in this country that are just never mind up to date? They appear to be made by the establishment for the establishment.
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Thanks for writing this. The British libel laws are indeed a joke and badly need reform. It is a disgrace that their abuse in the case you mentioned was so gross that the Americans were moved to pass legislation rendering the libel decisions of British courts inapplicable in America. I am certainly not a supporter of the American political system, but in this instance it really is the Land of the Free compared to us.
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Reblogged this on Beastrabban’s Weblog and commented:
Tom Pride here discusses another threat to freedom of speech in this country. He points out with the examples of Sally Bercow’s tweet about Lord McAlpine, and the case where a Saudi billionaire sued an American academic for discussing the way Islamic terrorist groups were funded through his banking network, the truth is no defence against prosecution for libel. In the case of Dr Rachel Ehrenfeld, the author of the book ‘Funding Terror’, the Saudi prince and his lawyers accepted that what she said about the way Islamists terrorists were channelling money through the bank accounts set up by the Prince for Islamic religious was true. Dr Ehrenfeldt also made it clear in her book that the Saudi prince himself was unaware of the pernicious uses to which his financial network was being put, and had nothing to do with funding the terrorists. Instead, the prince and his lawyers prosecuted her on the grounds that her inclusion of the awkward facts about the sheikh’s charitable financial accounts were damaging to his reputation as a gentleman. ‘Private Eye’, in their article on the case, pointed out that this aspect of British libel law goes right back to the 19th century, and the Victorians’ belief in the inviolability of a gentleman’s honour. This itself seems to me to be a hangover from medieval chivalry and its codes. They also stated that libel tourism by wealthy foreigners also began in the 19th century, with the use of the British courts by a German prince to prosecute his enemies. The Saudi prince in the Ehrenfeldt case, in the Eye’s opinion, had absolutely no honour. He was partly responsible for the fall of BCCI in the late 1980s, a bank he had helped to set up, with his withdrawal of £20 million. BCCI was notoriously corrupt, to the point where it was nicknamed ‘the Bank of Crooks and Conmen International’ or ‘the Bank of Crooks and Cocaine International. It was, so it has been alleged, one of the conduits through which the CIA moved money to finance cocaine deals. And this hasn’t been the only case where British libel legislation has been used by the wealthy and corrupt to silence their critics and opponents. The Eye has covered another case, in which high-ranking Ukrainian politicians attempted to sue a Ukrainian newspaper for libel, on the grounds that its on-line edition was available and may have been read by people in Britain. That also repeats one of the most notorious abuses of the British libel law in the 19th century. William Cobbett was prosecuted for ‘seditious libel’ in the 1820s for describing the Tsar as a tyrant who was ‘grotesque to his people, and a laughing stock to the rest of the world’. It’s a fairly accurate description, as the Tsars were an absolute monarchy that severely persecuted any, even mild, criticism. It was during the 1820s that the Tsars executed the Decembrists, a group of liberal army officers, for attempting to start an uprising that would give the country a freer, constitutional government. Cobbett suffered frequent prosecution from the British government for his defence of liberty, and at one point emigrated to America to enjoy the far greater political freedom there. Pride’s absolutely right in that the British libel laws desperately need reforming. It’s a grotesque travesty of justice when someone can be successfully prosecuted for it when every word they have written is true. And it should be a matter of national shame that the Americans felt so strongly about Dr Ehrenfeldt’s prosecution by the Saudi prince, that they passed legislation declaring that British legal decisions had no validity under their judicial system, at least in this regard. And its not only Left-wing political bloggers, who have attacked the libel laws. The Ufologist, Jenny Randles, in one of her books declared that the British libel laws you were guilty until proven rich. As for the two other cases he cites, where Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith also successfully used the law to stifle accusations of their abuse of children, the Eye also stated that Smith was so notorious that one police force used him as an example of a high profile, well-connected paedophile, whom it was impossible to prosecute. There have been murmurs by the various political parties that they want to relax or reform the libel laws over the years, but this seems to come to nothing when those parties are in power. It seems to be far too useful an instrument for the parties to suppress their own critics, or those of the wealthy donors, on whose behalf they really work, for them really to consider reforming them. And as long as this continues, such disgusting miscarriages of justice as the cases of Dr Ehrenfeldt, Savile and Cyril Smith will carry on.
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Well phrased comment in terms of content and logic. But:
Have you heard of the invention of the paragraph? They have been found to be quite useful by many writers, and I would commend, in sporting fashion of course, their use to you.
I was quite out of mental breath well before the end and had to stop, regroup and have a nice cup of tea before facing the final mile to the summit.
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What interests me is the whole area of libel / slander / defamation, law; would I be wrong in thinking that the origin of this area of the law, as well as its perpetuation / continuance, is mostly if not entirely to do with affording protecting for the criminals, I’m speaking of that ruling elite in our midst, that make these and other laws?
It’s as though the ancient world master – slave system never really went away, it merely morphed over time into the social set up we enjoy today. It seems to me that today’s slaves, the masses, are not free to criticise their masters.
If libel law were abolished all those who now hold high positions in society would find themselves behind bars and most if not all of those now behind bars would be released as innocent victims of a corrupt and depraved legal system.
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Clearly the deepest springs of this branch of the law lie hidden from view but for our intents and purposes it can safely be said that the Romans, with their love of all things legal and all things belligeral (forgive the neologism) are to be blamed for inventing yet another law that protects the rich and powerful Roman and his modern-day heirs from prosecution for crimes they commit against the people.
Libel, slander, defamation, and other forms of legal slime, crawled out of the Lex Majestatis pond onto terra firma, thanks mostly it seems to Tiberius.
Tacitus writes: Deeds were challenged words went immune. The first to take cognizance of written libel under the statute was Augustus; who was provoked to the step by the effrontery with which Cassius Severus had blackened the characters of men and women of repute in his scandalous effusions: then Tiberius, to an inquiry put by the praetor, Pompeius Macer, whether process should still be granted on this statute, replied that “the law ought to take its course.” He, too, had been ruffled by verses of unknown authorship satirizing his cruelty, his arrogance, and his estrangement from his mother. [Annals, 1. 72.]
Where are the Cassius Severus’ of today?
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Do anyone really believe that this nonce infected coalition government will ever be named as a paedophile government if it was to happen then it would bring this joke of a government down in an instant and that being so they will do anything to stop this from coming out at any cost . Makes me sick that they will never be named and brought down ong with the government .
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