europe LENSCAP / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO
Loyal Mail journalists took to wearing black shirts. It is not clear what colour shirt the modern Mail man and woman wears to show allegiance to their editor’s obsessive hatred of Europe. In the 1930s, the editor of The Times, who dined with Neville Chamberlain just as Theresa May breaks bread with Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, toed the Tory line of appeasing and accommodating the ultra-nationalist ideologues of the 1930s.
The reports from Norman Ebbutt, the Berlin correspondent of The Times, were regularly spiked if they contained any criticism of the xenophobic, nationalist politics of Germany’s rulers. Like a modern editor ensuring that only
anti-European propaganda appeared in his pages, Geoffrey Dawson, the editor of The Times, wrote about anti-Hitler copy filed for the paper: “I did my utmost, night after night, to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt [German] sensibilities.” At a conference in Switzerland on Brexit last
autumn, I held up the famous Daily Mail “Enemies of the people” front page. The German-speaking audience gasped. One spontaneously called out “Der Sturmür” – the title of a main pro-nationalist daily paper in Germany in the 1930s. Indeed, that is exactly how the Nazis branded their democratic opponents – as Volksfeinde – enemies of the people. Will Wainewright provides good mini- biographies of all the main journalists, editors and proprietors of the 1930s. As over the European question and Brexit, there was no uniform position. The (Manchester) Guardian was critical of
Hitler’s nationalism and xenophobia but, at the same time, it opposed rearmament or sending any clear message opposing German nation-first supremacy. So too today’s Guardian reserves key
comment slots for virulent anti-Europeans such as Sir Simon Jenkins or Giles Fraser. One Guardian columnist, Owen Jones, even invented the term Lexit to define a left-wing Brexit position. He later recanted and now sees breaking links with Europe as bad news for progressive politics in Britain. The Guardian’s estimable economics correspondent even wrote a book on the eve of the referendum dumping on the euro, a favourite sport of the Anglo-Saxon right-wing commentariat. The euro is public enemy number one for currency speculators, among whose number are the major financial backers of the Tory and Ukip campaigns against Europe since the 1990s.
There is nothing wrong with Euro-bashing nor
is it always wrong for the left to agree with age-old right-wing tropes. William Crozier, the editor of the Guardian in 1938, refused to publish reports critical of the nationalism of the Sudeten Germans. Now is not “the right time to describe the German plans for making war”, Crozier told his Berlin correspondent. In the 1930s, at least, there was endless fretting about the distortion of reporting and editorialising about what was happening in Europe. The Daily Telegraph’s German correspondent, Eric Gedye, was fired by the paper after he wrote a book telling the truth about European politics. Is it imaginable that any current Telegraph writer would dare write a book challenging the paper’s editorial line in favour of English nationalism and hostility to Europe? In the late 1930s, some younger journalists resigned from The Times in protest at its pro-appeasement line after the Tory government’s surrender to nationalism in Munich. They were able to find jobs elsewhere. But who today, with a London mortgage and
perhaps a young family, can dare stand against the relentless anti-European ideology emanating from many newspaper owners or celebrity editors? A dislike of Europe has developed into a
crusade for some journalists and editors. Allister Heath, the then deputy editor of the Daily Telegraph, a few months after 37 per cent of the electorate voted for Brexit, wrote a column under the headline “Why it’s time for a new campaign for Brexit”. He urged his fellow EU phobes to keep up the struggle and not assume the vote on 23 June 2016 was the end of the story. Today is not the 1930s and anti-European
nationalism and xenophobia, while often ugly, are not murderous or driving towards war. However, few can doubt that the reporting and editorialising on Europe have been partial, one-sided and closer to propaganda than fair, accurate reporting and balanced comment in line with the NUJ code of conduct. Perhaps, in some decades’ time, an as-yet unborn historian of journalism will produce a book on how British editors and journalists promoted anti-Europeanism. In the meantime, everyone who has written on the politics of Europe will enjoy Reporting Hitler and its vivid description of a decade of shame for the men who controlled our national press and dictated what the British people were allowed to know and not know.
Denis MacShane was NUJ president in 1978. He is a former Labour MP and minister. His new book Brexit. No Exit. Why Britain Won’t Really Leave Europe is published this month
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