The Slow Death of an Institution

by ‘Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’

A COUPLE of years ago the Rochdale Observer published a report of a march by one of those three initial right wing groups ostensibly protesting about the grooming of teenage girls by a gang of Asian men.  The then leader of Rochdale Council, Richard Farnell, castigated the paper because he objected to the prominence given to the report. He wanted powers to ban such marches in future ostensibly on the grounds that they ‘scapegoated an entire community’. In other words he did not think that the people of Rochdale had any right to know what was going on in their town if he did not approve of it.

A week later the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper devoted to letters sent in by readers carried a contribution praising the report and objecting to both Farnell’s attempt to prevent legitimate protest and his attempt to keep residents from knowing about it.

In 2014, Simon Danczuk published a book about the town’s former MP, Cyril Smith, who had died four years earlier. I will be charitable and say that the book was not very good.   It contained material taken from Smiths ghosted autobiography, material that was clearly derivative from a 1979 piece in Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) about Smith unsavoury antics at Cambridge House hostel, material that was later shown to be demonstrably wrong and a lot of assertions for which there was no evidence produced, but which had the effect of making any further claims about Smith’s behaviour unreliable.

Throughout the summer of 2014 the Rochdale Observer carried material, thought by some people to have been placed by an associate of Mr Danczuk, which tried to implicate the local Lib-Dems in a ‘cover up’ designed to ensure that other things about Smith did not become known.

Also throughout the summer the ‘Your Views’ section of the paper regularly carried letters pointing out the deficiencies in Danczuk’s book and why it was not a reliable record.

If Richard Farnell had been allowed to get away with his objection to the original report it might just have had the effect of making the editor a bit more cautious next time.  It wasn’t the Home Affairs Select Committee which challenged Danczuk’s fanciful stories about Smith’s supposed antics being covered up by Special Branch and of Westminster paedophile rings, it was letters in the ‘Your Views’ columns of the Rochdale Observer.

In recent years there’s been a competitor to the Observer in the shape of the web based media outlet Rochdale Online which included a vibrant ‘Letters’ section.  Whichever of these news outlets a letter writer chose one thing was certain its contents would be scrutinised by local politicians.

Sadly that is a thing of the past. The Rochdale Observer first cut down the space devoted to letters from readers, then reduced the frequency of the column to the point where some things are out of date by the time they appear. Rochdale Online went the whole hog and got rid its letters pages completely.

A liberal democracy like ours needs these self correcting mechanisms.  Politicians need close scrutiny. Ideas need to be challenged.   We are moving to a time when politicians and journalists will have a monopoly on the dissemination of ideas. Twitter and Facebook are no substitute for a vibrant ‘Letters’ page in a newspaper or its web based equivalent.   With both Twitter and Facebook it is easy to become locked into a world in which we only hear the views of people we agree with.

Contributions to ‘Letters’ pages in newspapers aren’t perfect.  They can be badly written, erudite, bigoted, idealistic, trivial, important, liberal, conservative, revolutionary or reactionary.   But in local newspapers they give people a sense of belonging because they allow them to have their voice heard.  Our society will be all the worse for their loss.