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PM and deputy back Miliband over Daily Mail 'smear'

David Cameron and Nick Clegg defend Ed Miliband as he becomes embroiled in a row with the Daily Mail over its depiction of his father.

The Conservative-supporting newspaper said on Tuesday that it stood by an article it published about Mr Miliband's late father Ralph, headlined "The man who hated Britain".

The Mail also carried an article by Mr Miliband refuting journalist Geoffrey Levy's claim on Saturday that the views of Ralph Miliband, a Marxist academic who died in 1994, "should disturb everyone who loves this country".

Ed Miliband said Mr Levy's argument was based on a diary entry written by his father when he was 17, the year after he fled Belgium to escape the Nazis.

The Labour party is angry that the Mail decided to reprint Mr Levy's piece, and write a leader column defending it, on the same day it published Mr Miliband's article.

'Smear'


A senior party source said: "Ed Miliband wrote his right to reply article because he wanted to state clearly that his father loved Britain.

"He wanted the Daily Mail to treat his late father's reputation fairly. Rather than acknowledge it has smeared his father, tonight the newspaper has repeated its original claim. This simply diminishes the Daily Mail further.

"It will be for people to judge whether this newspaper's treatment of a world war II veteran, Jewish refugee from the Nazis and distinguished academic reflects the values and decency we should all expect in our political debate."

In 2010, More 4 broadcast a docu-drama about the Miliband family.

David Cameron and Nick Clegg defend Ed Miliband as he becomes embroiled in a row with the Daily Mail over its depiction of his father (Reuters)

Prime Minister and Conservative party leader David Cameron said he had not read the Mail article or Mr Miliband's response. But he added: "All I know is that if anyone had a go at my father, I would want to respond very vigorously.

"There's not a day goes by that you don't think about your dad and all that he meant to you, so I completely understand why Ed would want to get his own point of view across."

Nick Clegg, his deputy and Liberal Democrat leader, tweeted: "I support @Ed--Miliband defending his dad. Politics should be about playing the ball, not the man, certainly not the man's family."

But Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt also questioned Ralph Miliband's beliefs, saying he was "no friend of the free market economy, he thought that was wrong, and I have never heard Ed Miliband say he supports the free market economy".

'Rabid nationalist'


Mr Levy quoted Ralph Miliband as saying in his diary: "The Englishman is a rabid nationalist. They are perhaps the most nationalist people in the world... you sometimes want them almost to lose (the war) to show them how things are.

"They have the greatest contempt for the continent... To lose their empire would be the worst possible humiliation."

But Mr Miliband said his father loved Britain and fought in the Royal Navy during the second world war.

He wrote: "Like most refugees, the security of our country was really important to him. And like some refugees, he owed his life to it.

"So my Dad loved Britain, he served Britain, and he taught both (brother) David and me to do the same. I know they say 'you can't libel the dead' but you can smear them.

'Character assassination'


"Fierce debate about politics does not justify character assassination of my father, questioning the patriotism of a man who risked his life for our country in the second world war or publishing a picture of his gravestone with a tasteless pun about him being a 'grave socialist'."

Mr Levy said in his article that Ralph Miliband's "adolescent distaste for the British character certainly didn't stop him availing himself of the fine education that was on offer in this country, or spending the rest of his life here".

The newspaper's comment piece printed alongside Mr Miliband's response said: "We stand by every word we published on Saturday."

"Yes, as his son argues, Mr Miliband Snr may have felt gratitude for the security, freedom and comfort he enjoyed in Britain.

"But what is blindingly clear from everything that he wrote throughout his life is that he had nothing but hatred for the values, traditions and institutions - including our great schools, the church, the army and even the Sunday papers - that made Britain the safe and free nation in which he and his family flourished."

http://www.channel4.com/news/ed-miliban ... our-leader

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

The Daily Mail during the 1930's supported blackshirts and Nazis

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Zac Goldsmith Attacks Daily Mail's '****' Links, Defends Ed Miliband

Conservative MP Zac Goldsmith has launched an outspoken attack on the Daily Mail for its founder's support for "the **** cause", in the wake of the newspaper’s relentlessly hostile coverage of Ed Miliband’s late father.

Speaking at the Huffington Post UK’s fringe event at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester on Tuesday, the Tory backbencher defended the Labour leader's 'right of reply' article in Tuesday’s Mail, in which he accused the paper of a “character assassination” against his father, the Marxist thinker Ralph Miliband, who passed away in 1994.

Goldsmith said Miliband had a "reason to react" to the Mail’s "appalling article" on Saturday – headlined 'The Man Who Hated Britain' - and accused the Mail and its owners, the Rothermere family, of doing "more to pursue the **** cause prewar" than any other publication.

The Conservative MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston echoed the views of countless Twitter users by raising the Mail’s past associations with fascism and Nazism.

He said it was "odd for a newspaper to judge a man on the basis of the history of his family when that newspaper is owned by a family that did more to pursue the **** cause prewar than any other [publication]".

Referencing Harold Harmsworth, the first Viscount Rothermere and proprietor of the Mail, who lavished praise on the Nazis in the run-up to the Second World War, Goldsmith remarked:

"[Joseph] Goebbels himself wrote endless documents about Rothermere, describing him as being a strong ally and strongly against the Jews. Those are the words he used. ‘Strongly against the Jews’. Has Rothermere aplogised? Have we ever had an apology from the Mail, or the Mail group, in relation to their history."

The current Viscount Rothermere, Jonathan Harmsworth, is the chairman of DMGT, the publisher of the Daily Mail.

Goldsmith continued:

"Maybe they’ll say it doesn’t matter don’t judge a paper or current person on the back of their history. In which case. Leave the guy alone."

The MP’s comments are the strongest condemnation of the Mail so far from a Conservative Party figure. Speaking on the Today programme on Tuesday morning, David Cameron said he understood Miliband’s anger about his father but wouldn’t criticise the Mail, saying he had not read the original piece. Health secretary Jeremy Hunt refused to condemn the Mail as well, preferring to highlight Ralph Miliband’s opposition to free markets in an interview with the BBC News Channel.

Speaking at the fringe event, the Tory backbencher also recalled the Mail’s attacks on his own late father, Sir James Goldsmith, the billionaire businessman and founder of the Referendum Party.

“The Daily Mail are always going for my father who died in 1997,” he told the 100-strong audience in Manchester. “So I am used to that aspect of it.”

In December 2011, the Mail's Ephraim Hardcastle column accused Goldsmith Snr of having claim that the victims of the Holocaust "lacked the initiative to get out" and the paper was forced to later "clarify he said no such thing".

Goldsmith Jnr revealed that he "waged war against the Daily Mail, not with lawyers, but using my sister [Jemima] and her army of Twitter followers, and, within 24 hours we got a grovelling letter of apology from [Mail editor Paul] Dacre himself, which is now up on the wall in my loo. It’s something I’m very proud of."

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/10 ... 23045.html

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

I wonder why many of those slagging off the mail for saying what they are also slagged off Thatcher when she was dead?

And I wonder if Milliband made a big thing of saying they were wrong in slagging off Maggie?

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IDFIMH

I think I kept a silence on Thatcher

Of course, Millibands father didn't run the country - he only fought for it.

_________________
Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

Thatcher was a public figure who courted popularity/notoriety, depending on your point of view. Milliband's father was not. There is no comparison.

The millionaires' mouthpiece are bang out of order.

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

Got to agree with you on this one, There was no need to print all that crap about the man.

They still do don't they?

I doubt the Millibands are skint, dad married into money and the kids own property, maybe someone upset someone somewhere?

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

Whatever their reason, the mail are still out of order.

They don't like Milliband? Fine, have a go at him - Not his father.

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

well at least its out the way well before the next elections, papers usually like to hold these stories till the votings just about to start

presumably ed knew his dads political views but he's now calling the paper a liar, this could be where he comes undone if its all true

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Of all the things ive lost, i miss my mind the most

I'm glad that I don't read newspapers.

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Grandad,

I wouldnt call the Mail a newspaper.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/oct/02/thatcher-ally-daily-mail-ralph-miliband-lies?CMP=twt_gu

A former member of Margaret Thatcher's cabinet has accused the Daily Mail of "telling lies" about Ralph Miliband after the newspaper claimed that the Marxist writings of the late father of the Labour party leader meant that he hated Britain.

In the biggest blow yet to the Mail editor, Paul Dacre, who has launched a strong defence of his paper's decision to claim that Ralph Miliband had left an "evil legacy", Lord Moore of Lower Marsh said his former tutor was a good man who never had a bad word to say about Britain.

Moore, who served in Thatcher's cabinet between 1986 and 1989 and was briefly tipped as a potential successor to Thatcher, said it "beggars belief" that the Mail could impugn the patriotism of Miliband, who taught him at the London School of Economics.

Praising Miliband as a "great academic" and an inspiring teacher, Moore said: "Ralph Miliband taught me and I can say he was one of the most inspiring and objective teachers I had. Of course, we had different political opinions but he never treated me with anything less than complete courtesy and I had profound respect for his integrity."

In a statement issued to the Press Association Moore added: "He had come here as a refugee, done his duty to his adopted country by serving in our Royal Navy during the war, become a great academic and raised a good family.

"I saw him week after week and it beggars belief that the Daily Mail can accuse him of lacking patriotism. I never heard him ever say one word which was negative about Britain – our country.

"The Daily Mail is telling lies about a good man who I knew. The people of this country are good and decent too. They do not want the Daily Mail attacking the dead relatives of politicians to make political points."

The intervention by Moore came after Lord Heseltine, the former Tory deputy prime minister, accused the Mail of demeaning the political process with its attack on Ralph Miliband.

In remarks that went further than the careful response of Tory ministers, Heseltine said there was no justification for the headline on the Miliband piece which said he hated Britain.

Heseltine told The Daily Politics on BBC2: "This is carrying politics to an extent that is just demeaning, frankly. The headline isn't justified. It is completely out of context. As everybody knows the guy fought for this country and we now live in a totally different world to the clash between communism and fascism."

The former deputy prime minister addressed the Mail's claim that Marxists such as Ralph Miliband deserved to be condemned because of the repression of the Soviet Union. He said: "Let us be frank. Stalin did some of the most appalling things but the Russians turned the second world war."

Heseltine also said the Mail had published "hatchet jobs" on Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg.

William Hague had earlier said the Mail's attack had no implications for the future regulation of the press in Britain. The foreign secretary said it was understandable that the Labour leader had decided to defend his father.

Hague declined to say whether the newspaper had carried out a hatchet job as he said: "These things do happen."

Many ministers believe in private that the Mail made a serious error in saying that Ralph Miliband, who fought for Britain in the second world war after escaping the Holocaust, hated the country. But they are declining to criticise the Mail because they do not want to fuel the row, which has overshadowed the past 48 hours of the Conservative conference, ahead of negotiations over the future of press regulation.

But a member of the prime minister's No 10 policy board criticised the Mail. Margot James, MP for Stourbridge, tweeted: "Crass and cruel to condemn Ralph M'band for his Marxist views when they were formed in 40/50s, deeply misguided maybe but not unpatriotic."

Hague simply supported Ed Miliband's decision to defend his father, though he acknowledged that the Daily Mail's deputy editor, John Steafel, had said the Mail Online had been wrong to run a picture of Ralph Miliband's gravestone with the words "grave socialist".

The foreign secretary told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4: "I think it is very understandable that a son in any walk of life, not just a politician, comes to the defence of a parent. That is what we would expect to happen and that is clearly what is happening here. We should understand and respect that. I am in no position to judge myself about it and he will have known his father far better than any of us could have possibly have done."

The London mayor, Boris Johnson, told LBC 97.3 he understood Ed Miliband's reaction. "What I actually feel, I've got ancestry that doesn't come from this country and I think people do feel very sensitive, particularly if the patriotism of those relatives is impugned," he said.

"I can imagine that being a very, very hurtful thing and I would definitely want to fire back if it was me."

Charles Moore, the former editor of the Daily Telegraph, meanwhile, accused the Daily Mail of offending against taste and decency on "multiple fronts".

Moore, who is the official biographer of Thatcher, writes in this week's Spectator magazine: "The Mail managed to offend against taste and decency on multiple counts – attacking a man for his deceased father's views, misrepresenting those views, attacking a Jew, attacking a refugee from Hitler."

Downing Street is working hard to ensure that ministers keep out of the Labour row with the Mail. Ministers have been told to make a simple argument that any child would rightly want to defend a parent.

David Cameron said in his interview on the Today programme on Tuesday, which took place at 8.10am, that he had not read the Daily Mail piece. He said the same thing three hours later in separate interviews with the main television news programmes. By early afternoon, by which time he would be facing no more interviews until after the conference, Tory sources let it be known that the prime minister had read the Mail article.

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

This is what the owner of the Daily Mail wrote about Hitler's Germany, writing in an Australian newspaper. A eulogy to fascism.

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/printAr ... /3?print=n

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!