Rotten Boroughs: Censoring News in Tameside?

We recently drew attention to the difficulty that some people were having in getting their letters published in Tameside's only weekly newspaper, the Tameside Reporter & Chroncile, that is owned by the registered social landlord New Charter Housing Trust, via 'Quest Media Network Ltd'. The CEO of New Charter Housing, Ian Hamilton Munro, is a Director of 'Quest' and was a Director, when it went under the name of 'Piccolo Communications Ltd', which had the same registered address as New Charter. The Trust, has very close links with the Labour controlled council in Tameside and also owns and controls Tameside Radio. 

There is evidence, that Tameside Council have been involved in censoring the local news.  In Autumn 2008, 'Private Eye', revealed that agents acting on behalf the council, had been holding regular meetings with local newspaper editors to suppress news stories.

The following (insert) was written for the document 'Guidance for local authorities on community cohesion contingency planning and tension monitoring' by the then Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) in May 2008, and was written and signed-off, by the then assistant chief executive of the council, Steven Pleasant.

We are publishing below, in full, a letter that was sent to the newspaper from the trade union body, Tameside Trades Union Council, in August 2016, which wasn't published. We would be interested to hear from anyone who has experienced similar problems in getting letters published in this newspaper, as we are investigating what could amount to a potential conflict of interest and duty and are considering making a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO).


14th August 2016

The Editor,
Tameside Reporter,
Cavendish Mill,
Ashton-under-Lyne.

Dear Sir,

In last weeks Tameside Reporter, you reported upon the weekly protest that is taking place outside Ashton Jobcentre, which has just completed its second year.

We would wish to point out that this protest, which began in August 2014, was launched to highlight how benefit sanctions are being used in what many consider to be an unfair and unjust way by Jobcentre staff. We know from speaking to many claimants who use Ashton Jobcentre that people have been sanctioned for the most petty and trivial of reasons:

For example, a young jobseeker was told by Ashton Jobcentre that he would lose his benefits if he continued to protest with us, outside Ashton Jobcentre. Another was sanctioned for three months, when he arrived 2 minutes late for an interview, and a man was given a 3-month benefit sanction, by Ashton Jobcentre, for making a spelling mistake.

A nineteen-year-old lad from Ashton, recently told us that he'd been sanctioned for one-month, because he'd applied for too many jobs and hadn't received enough interviews. As a result, this young man lost his home and finished up on the streets.

In the case of Tameside Trades Council delegate, Charlotte Hughes, her 19-year-old daughter, had her benefit stopped by Ashton Jobcentre when she told a prospective employer - who was offering her an unpaid work placement - that she was 23-weeks pregnant. This case was the catalyst that led to this weekly protest outside Ashton Jobcentre.

Although the Department of Work & Pensions (DWP), claim that they are making work pay, some 40% of Jobcentre workers, according to their own trade union the PCS, qualify for the state benefit Universal Credit, because they are "fantastically low paid." Some Jobcentre staff that are in receipt of Universal Credit, are now signing-on, and are facing possible benefit sanctions, because of the requirement to satisfy "in-work conditionality" which is currently being piloted at Ashton Jobcentre as part of the roll-out of Universal Credit.

The Government deny that Jobcentre staff set people up for sanctioning or have national targets for sanctions. But this is refuted by the PCS union that represents Jobcentre workers. They say that staff come under pressure to sanction jobseekers or face disciplinary action. Alan Davis, a former Jobcentre worker from Leicester, told a recent Channel 4 'Dispatches Programme', broadcast on 2nd March 2015 -

"The pressure was enormous. I just felt what they were asking me to do, was totally wrong - they were asking me to 'hammer people' who in their own way were doing their best to get a job."

Yours faithfully
Brian Bamford,
Secretary Tameside TUC

Matthew Baker Word-Retailer Retreats

MATTHEW Baker, political aide to Simon Danczuk M.P. for Rochdale for the last eight-years, is about to leave his master.  This move follows a series of hectic events involving Simon Danczuk and his wife Karen, culminating last week in Mrs. Danczuk being taken to Court for rent arrears owed to a landlord of a property on The Walk, and a embarrassing interview with Mr. & Mrs. Danczuk for The Sunday Times.   

Yesterday, Rochdale Online described Matthew Baker as follows:

'Mr. Baker's  methods have at times been controversial, during the 2010 election campaign he was exposed as having a number of accounts on internet forums and using those accounts to support Mr. Danczuk and attack his opponents and critics.' 

There have been claims for months that he used a number of aliases together with various addresses to attack local enemies of Danczuk in letters to papers like the Rochdale Observer.  Suggestions exist that Danczuk has visited Kashmir financed by the Azad-Kashmir Government to the tune of over £3,000, and a local Bangladeshi has told Northern Voices that Mr. Danczuk visited Bangladesh to see the opposition leader before the U.K. General Election. 

Speaking this week to Rochdale Online, Baker said:

'I've worked with Simon since 2007, and am very proud of what we've achieved together.  I was delighted to have played a part in helping him gain a massively increased majority last month.  But after eight years I feel ready for a new challenge and am looking forward to doing something different.' 

Mr. Baker worked for the Channel Four Dispatches program entitled 'The Paedophile M.P.: How Cyril Smith got away with it' in 2013, and at the same time did leg-work for the book that he later published with Simon Danczuk titled 'Smile for the Camera:  The Double Life of Cyril Smith'.  In the end, according to Rochdale Online 'it was in fact Mr. Baker who researched and wrote the book'.   

And yet, both Baker and Danczuk have been incredible shy about how the research for the book was accumulated, documented and recorded.  Rochdale Online says above that 'Mr Baker's methods have at times been controversial'.  In the writing of the book the methodology has been mysterious in the extreme, and Northern Voices was told Mr. Baker was taken aback when a victim of Smith at Cambridge House, Eddie Sharrock, told him in 2014 following a BBC interview they did together, that he found aspects of the Danczuk and Baker's book on Smith somewhat incredible. 

Neither Simon Danczuk or Matthew Baker attempted to enlighten the audience, when they had the opportunity while addressing the gathering at a book reading last Autumn at the Rochdale Arts and Literature Festival.  Instead, when asked for details about their research and methodology for the book, Mr. Danczuk and Mr. Baker had Karen Danczuk usher the questioner out of the now defunct Danczuk's Deli.  (For more see  www.demotix.com/news/6093696/simon-danczuk-and-matt-baker )

Just over a week ago my son was in his car stuck at the traffic lights near Gordon Riggs' Garden Centre in Newbold, when he glimpsed in the corner of his eye a baseball-cap and beneath it a vaguely familiar plump body with his little legs jogging on the spot waiting for the lights to change to 'GO'.  Unmistakably, it was the M.P. for Rochdale, Simon Danczuk, straining at the leash to get away. 

Matthew Baker has now got away from the seeming eternally lively melodrama that envelopes and drowns the Danczuk family on a daily basis, and even, or so it seems, the endless extended family of Burkes and Taylors et al.   No one is safe in this frenzied folly of allegations and accusations.  A Labour leader of the Council falls and is replaced.  Others are defamed amid allegations of cover-ups.  A black politician is harangued in the Courts for 'homophobia'.   Trash the Trolls!  Blame your brother!  Call for an over-arching enquiry here!  Tease an apology from Theresa May there!   Sink your teeth in a bacon butty!  Take a Selfie or two of Karen's 'Ding Dongs'!  Swig some Cava by the pool on the Costa Blanca while demanding Lord Janner be disrobed in disgrace.   So much righteousness and flowery flannel in this belated demand for justice from Simon Danczuk and Matthew Baker, one wonders if it has all become too much for Mr. Baker to keep a straight face.

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in his autobiography 'Chronicles of Wasted Time' in 1972, that the 'quest for justice continues, and the weapons of hatred pile up; but truth was an early casualty.... the lies of advertising, of news, of salesmanship, of politics!  The lies of the priest in his pulpit, the professor at his podium, the journalist at his typewriter!  The lie stuck like a fish-bone in the throat of the microphone, the hand-held lies of the prowling cameraman!'   

Ultimately, I suppose the struggle may become all too much for all of us, even for men with the thickest skins.

"Okey cokey pig in a pokey" - Ashton Jobcentre gets uppity over protesters placard!

The weekly protests outside Ashton-under-Lyne Jobcentre, have attracted the attention of various media organisations, but not the local press in Tameside. The only local newspaper now in business in Tameside, the Reporter and Chronicle, is owned by the housing company, New Charter Housing Trust Ltd under the guise of 'Piccolo Communications'. The housing company, which has close links to Tameside Council, also owns Tameside Radio and are involved in delivering the 'Troubled Families' agenda with the council. Under this initiative, the Conservative Government have identified 120,000 'persistently anti-social families'. However, it later emerged that this figure was actually a measure of social deprivation and not behaviour. Unemployed single-parents, have been designated 'troubled families' by Ashton Jobcentre and referred to the scheme because they were not considered to be doing enough to look for work.

On Thursday, researchers from NINELIVES.media.co.uk, called at Ashton Jobcentre and spoke to protesters. They are making a television documentary for Channel 4's 'Dispatches', about welfare and benefit reforms and want to speak to people in receipt of in-work state benefits about how reforms are affecting them. Anyone who is receiving JSA, Universal Credit or Working Tax Credits, and wishes to speak to 'Dispatches' on a 'confidential basis', should contact - Jessica Bell or Jane Drinkwater directly on 0161 832 2007 or jessica.bell@ninelivesmedia.co.uk and jane.drinkwater@ninelivesmedia.co.uk

Many people are often unaware of the extent to which state welfare is being used to subsidise poverty pay in Britain. Today, only one-in-eight people who are receiving housing benefit, are not in work. In other words, people who are in work, are often unable to pay their rent because they are not paid enough. State benefits have become the prop for the failure of capitalism to deliver decent jobs and wages. Since 1980, unemployment has averaged more than three-times the post-war rate, while the proportion of those in low-paid jobs, has doubled to over 20%. Britain is the only country in the G7 group of leading economies where inequality has increased this century. (Credit Suisse - annual global wealth report - October 2014, P.33). Yet, while many of us have got poorer, this has coincided with a boom in the number of rich and super-rich in Britain. Those people who can least afford it, have paid the price for the man-made financial crisis caused by the bankers and politicians.

Even people who work in the Jobcentre are not immune from poverty pay. According to Mark Serwotka, the General Secretary of the PCS trade union, some 40% of his members who work in the Jobcentre, do qualify for the state handout Universal Credit, because they are "fantastically low-paid." Yet these very same people who are in receipt of state benefits, are often the ones, who vilify claimants and stop their benefits in order to meet government sanction targets.

With the introduction of the Tories 'Universal Credit' (UC), things are likely to get a lot worse in terms of personal scrutiny, regulation, and control.  One aspect of Universal Credit, is what is termed 'conditionality', and this will have implications for anyone who is in work and is claiming Universal Credit, JSA, or Working Tax Credits. As with the unemployed, people in receipt of in-work benefits, will be required to attend regular Jobcentre interviews and could face sanctions (loss of benefits), if they fail to carry out directions given to them by the Jobcentre, such as being required to look for better paid work or to increase the hours that they already work.

Some Jobcentre staff in other areas of the country, have been disciplined for not sanctioning enough people on benefits and opposition to the Government's harsh sanctioning regime is growing. At the last PCS conference, it was agreed that PCS members would be encouraged to support local groups campaigning against sanctions and would support initiatives that sought to undermine and expose, the draconian sanction regime that exists in Jobcentres. However, this is unlikely to make much of an impression on staff working at Ashton Jobcentre, who have been heard boasting in the local Caledonian pub in Ashton, about the number of 'dole-ites', they have sanctioned that week.  On Thursday, one diminutive and stroppy female member of staff, came out of Ashton Jobcentre accompanied by a G4S security guard and admonished a demonstrator, for carrying a PCS placard, which she objected to. "I know who your are" she told the burly protester. With hardening attitudes like this, it seems likely that these protesters are in it for the long haul. 

Continued cover-up and denial about Smith in Rochdale

MORE sanctimonious piffle pours out of Rochdale, and self-delusion abounds, following the excellent Dispatches programme: "Paedophile MP: How Cyril Smith got away with it", a couple of weeks ago.

The town's establishment and local newspaper, the Rochdale Observer, continue to avoid uncomfortable truths, or face their complicity in his prolonged sexual abuse of children.

The late night TV documentary guided viewers through the years of Smith's predatory behaviour, in which he systematically took advantage of his positions of authority, to prey on vulnerable boys in care homes and special schools, and others, who were over-awed by his public standing.  Victims gave moving testimony to their humiliation and suffering at Smith's hands.

Rochdale's public authorities and local newspaper were, and remain, culpable of neglect and complicity in this sorry Smith saga. 

As the programme showed, many in power knew, or were highly suspicious of, Smith's predatory behaviour - during his reign of paedophilia in the town -  and turned a blind eye, or did not intervene, - to permit his prolonged and damaging abuse to continue.

Cambridge House, scene of his first known wave of child abuse, was closed down in the mid 1960's, following concerns expressed by some in Rochdale Council's children's services department about his inappropriate activities with its young residents.

Yet, months later, the same public authority permitted the same paedophile to use his position as chair of the education committee to establish a "Special school", for vulnerable boys, with which he was closely associated for the 25 years of its existence. His sexual advances to damaged youngsters continued - and those in authority, with a responsibility to protect the young and defenceless, looked the other way as the monster carried on harming and destroying vulnerable lives.

When suspicions and firm testimony of sexual abuse at Knowl View emerged, in the mid 1990's, rather than pursue the perpetrators - Smith among them - Rochdale Council moved against those drawing attention to them, closed the school down and ensured that all files about the school were to hidden from public scrutiny for 100 years!

Doesn't say too much for the Council's duty of care to the vulnerable, does it?

What did the authorities have to hide in going to such lengths to make the records so inaccessible, apart from their own shame, guilt and acknowledgement of their betrayal of those in their care?

This head in the sand, look the other way, attitude by Rochdale Council continues to this day. A week after the Dispatches programme, the culpable local authority hosted BBC's Question Time in "The Cyril Smith Room" of the Town Hall, and film cameras breezed past a photograph of the paedophile, as they swept into action!

Is there no shame in that Town Hall?

How disgraceful does Smith's behaviour have to demonstrated to have been before these flattering references and his freemanship of the borough become expunged?

How stomach-churning for the abused to continue see the monster lauded by those who were paid to protect them from his predatory behaviour? The suffering of the defenceless and the voiceless are still drowned out by the bluster of the now deceased domineering bully, who still casts a long dark shadow over Rochdale.

As readers of this blog will recall, Rochdale's Alternative Paper, of which I was co-editor in the 1970's, published a well-sourced, considered and authoritative 2,000 word article, cleared by three sets of highly reputable lawyers, in May 1979, outlining Smith's abuse at Cambridge House - with harrowing sworn testimony quotes from some of the victims.

It was read by everyone in a position of authority in Rochdale, at the time. And ignored. Emboldened, Smith continued to abuse.

Among those who ignored the story were the cheerleaders of the Cyril Smith fan club, the Rochdale Observer, under its awe-struck editor Norman "Nifty" Thornton. Not only did the Ob ignore the story, it went out of its way to deny the very existence of the paper which published it - for the dozen or so years of its existence.

Their failure to publish, or even investigate, the cast iron story of Smith's sexual exploits, would have further encouraged Smith in his abuse of the vulnerable, and was probably responsible for the damage done to dozens more  young victims - he was fire-proof. Had they chased the story, they could have stopped him in his tracks and ended, or at least very seriously disrupted, the reign of tyranny of the defenceless.

But they sat on their hands.  They did nothing, except continue to lead the Smith cheer-leading pack. In short, they were a disgrace to anything that could call itself a free press, with public interest at its core.

And now? Rather than apologise to the victims whom Smith damaged, after they turned a blind eye, last week's Rochdale Observer sought to bask in the sunshine of their "disclosures and investigations", last year - 35 years after they knew of the story!!

Such unctuous self delusion! 

The ownership of the newspaper may have changed in the last 35 years, but their ability to spout cant clearly hasn't.

At last, the abused have had their suffering publicly exposed, and the Smith nailed for his crimes. 

It's such a shame that Rochdale's establishment and local rag have yet to come to terms with their own complicity in this story, which still shames the whole town.

They could start with a very firm public apology to Smith's victims, as a first step in acknowledging their negligence and culpability in his later crimes.

But, don't hold your breath.
__________________________________________________

The current printed issue of NORTHERN VOICES No.14, is now available for sale - see below. This issue N.V.14 has an in-depth and exclusive report by John Walker, a former editor of the Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP) on the full history of Cyril Smith's antics with young lads. RAP was the first publication to go public on this in May 1979. You can obtain a copy by writing or contacting the people whose details are below:
Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included). Cheques made payable to 'Northern Voices' should be sent c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com