TO ALL PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUFFERED INJUSTICE AT THE HANDS OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA (ESPECIALLY THE BBC)
HOW THE BBC REACTS WHEN IT’S CAUGHT BROADCASTING DELIBERATE LIES, DISTORTIONS AND BOLSHEVIK PROPAGANDA AND IS PRESENTED WITH IRREFUTABLE PROOF OF ITS WRONGDOING
Martin Webster
Download a free PDF version of this page from https://anglo-celtic.org/downloads/bbc/Call-To-Action.pdf
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First published 10th February 2023
INTRODUCTION
From 1969 to late 1983 I was the National Activities Organiser of a political party known as the National Front (the ‘NF’). In the first ten years of this period, this party developed from a tiny group of activists with a semi-democratic, rather authoritarian constitution to a household name which regularly contested elections at local and national level, and which had a democratic constitution. At the 1977 Greater London Council elections the party polled over 119,000 votes, and at the 1979 General Election it fielded over 300 candidates and polled over 191,000 votes .
It did this in the face of an unremitting campaign of lies, smears, denial of lawful rights (e.g. denial of the use of council-owned property to hold election and candidate-adoption meetings) and violence. Violence was directed both against individual members and as mass violence used to disrupt our marches and meetings and associate the party, in the public mind, with violence and disorder.
Since 1983 I have not pursued any political role other than publishing in a private capacity occasional comments and commentaries on matters of interest to those of similar political views to myself.
I have, from time to time, been approached by journalists and reporters, including some on behalf of the BBC, for interviews and comments relating to topics on which I have a specialised knowledge owing to my former role. Such interviews and remarks have, on occasion, been included in radio and television programmes and podcasts covering events and activities in which the National Front played a part and in which I myself played a key role. I can therefore claim to be a valid and acknowledged “authority” on such events.
In October 2020 it was drawn to my attention that BBC Radio were intending to broadcast a programme/podcast about an event known as the “Battle of Lewisham”. This was indeed broadcast on 9th and 10th October 2020 and has since been available for download as a podcast (details inside this document).
In February and March 2021 a three-part radio series called, “Britain’s Fascist Thread” was broadcast and has also been available since that time for download as a podcast. I am concerned, in this document, with Parts 2 and 3 of that series.
All these broadcasts (which are now podcasts available for listening to and/or download) were made from an exclusively left-wing point of view, and contained numerous examples of lies, bias, and distortion of facts, so as to place the National Front and its supporters in a grossly unfair and contemptuous light.
I complained to the BBC, following the required procedure as set out in their BBC Complaints Framework. I and my two assistants (a lawyer and a historian) gathered all the evidence, mainly in the form of contemporary news reports from The Sunday Times and the Jewish Chronicle, transcribed each of the programmes, and drafted the complaints. There were 90 specific complaints contained in the three general complaints (i.e. one for each broadcast) plus three further complaints relating to the description of each programme/podcast on the BBC’s web site. The BBC and, later, Ofcom all refused to address my complaints without offering any satisfactory explanation.
In observing the chronology of events that I relate here, you may well be wondering about the length of time it took me to lodge these complaints and follow them up. Please bear in mind here that each broadcast contained so many lies that they had to be listened to several times and transcribed. Each example of a lie, distortion, misrepresentation of fact, and failure to introduce any opposing viewpoint had to be noted down. All this then had to be incorporated into the appropriate complaint.
In addition, the documentary evidence had to be searched for and collated into a logical order. Remember that many of the events, such as the so-called “Battle of Lewisham”, took place around 45 years ago.
In soliciting your support for my proposed actions against the BBC, I am NOT on any account asking you to form any opinion or make any statement or take any action that would constitute support for or agreement with any policies advocated by the NF at any time. My argument with the BBC is NOT about the airing of opinions with which I, as a patriot and British Nationalist, disagree. But it IS about the denial of the right of people such as myself to have a right of reply when untrue accusations are made over the airwaves against us. It applies to us whether as individuals or as part of a political movement. Either way, we should have a right of reply, the right to put across, in equal measure, our opinions and accounts of events covered in the programmes concerned.
In other words, this is about the right of everyone in this country to freedom of speech and a fair hearing when accused of unlawful or socially unacceptable activities. This is a matter of concern to us all.
What I AM suggesting that you may like to do, therefore, is to refer to this account in any article or broadcast that you may engage in at any time concerning the BBC, in whatever manner you like. Full licence is granted to all concerned to copy or reproduce the whole or any part or parts of this document. No acknowledgement is necessary.
In light of the fact that the BBC has become well-known as an extreme left-wing propaganda outlet, and has an ever-increasing volume of complaints to deal with as a result, I have written this account of my experiences as part of a Call-To-Action to all other people, of whatever political persuasion, who have suffered similarly.
THE PROGRAMMES COMPLAINED ABOUT
1. ‘The Battle of Lewisham’, presented by Nacheal Catnott, broadcast on the BBC World Service/podcast released on Friday, 9th October 2020 at 8:50am, 12:50pm and 6:50pm and on Saturday, 10th October at 3:50am and available thereafter for listening and/or download at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3cszmvj. A transcription of this broadcast is available here.
2. “Britain’s Fascist Thread”, Episode 2, presented by Camilla Schofield, and broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday, 26th February 2021 at 11:00am.A transcription of this broadcast is available here.
3. “Britain’s Fascist Thread”, Episode 3, presented by Camilla Schofield, and broadcast on Radio 4 on Friday, 5th March 2021 at 11:00am.A transcription of this broadcast is available here.
Programmes nos. 2 and 3 above are available for listening and/or download at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000sbdx
THE COMPLAINTS THEMSELVES
All three programmes complained about are in breach of the BBC Charter (2016), paragraph 6 (1) and the BBC Agreement (2016), Schedule 3, paragraphs 2, 3 and 4.
The duties of fairness and impartiality imposed on the BBC by these instruments demand that, in such programmes, representatives from both sides of the debate be interviewed and allowed to give their accounts of the events and points of view of the matters under discussion.
In none of the broadcasts complained about was this allowed to happen.
No effort was made by any of the programme makers to contact myself, or, to the best of my knowledge, any other former officer of the NF. Had I (or such other person) been contacted, then I could have not only given the NF’s viewpoint on the numerous allegations levelled at it by the presenters and interviewees but also given further, crucial, information concerning the subject matter of these programmes. This would have enlightened listeners and provided them with a fairer, more complete account of the NF and what it stood for. I am still alive, easily contactable, and have been so contacted by BBC TV and radio producers on several occasions in the years after the NF lapsed out of existence (circa 1986).
The tone of all the programmes complained about implied, contrary to fact, that the NF was a “fascist” organisation, and that it encouraged and practised violence and intimidation to achieve its objectives. This insinuation is completely false, and could have been easily rebutted had I been interviewed. Further, the NF was a democratic party that had a comprehensive Constitution which provided for control of the party by its members through voting at regular local and general meetings. This fact was ignored by all three programmes.
All the programmes also contained numerous factual errors that reflected badly on the NF and which could have been easily avoided if a reasonable amount of research and fact-checking had been carried out, and had a representative from the NF such as myself been interviewed as well.
Finally in this section, I would like to illustrate how, not only that the NF, its members and supporters, were not the instigators of violence or intimidation, but that the forces of the Left were often themselves the instigators of violence. Please click here to download a PDF of a report published in The Times of 22nd October 1980, concerning the jailing of three people for their part in a plot to explode a bomb during the NF march in Lewisham in August 1977. Needless to say, no mention of this was made in either of the first two programmes complained about, which were supposed to give us an unbiased account of this activity.
EACH PROGRAMME IN A NUTSHELL
1. “The Battle of Lewisham”
This programme was in the “Witness to History” series, and therefore was 10 minutes long and restricted to the presenter interviewing just one person (the “witness”). This format was wholly inappropriate for a programme covering an event that was as controversial and complex as this one. It just gave the producer and presenter an excuse for excluding anyone with an opinion on the subject matter that differed from their own.
The presenter, who was openly “anti-fascist”, interviewed one Lez Henry, an extreme left wing activist who was present at the event as one of those opposing it. The “battle” took place on 13th August 1977, when the NF held a march through Lewisham to draw attention to the serious problem of muggings of elderly, mostly White, women by mostly young black men. This march was opposed by various factions of the extreme left, who engaged in mass violence and intimidation, which in turn led to intensive media interest and to the event acquiring its name.
As an example of the BBC’s distortion of history in covering this event, in the blurb on the web page that hosts this podcast it is claimed that “anti-racists stopped a far-right march in South London in 1977, preventing the National Front from entering the British political mainstream”. This is nonsense. The “anti-racists” were a motley collection of communists, marxists and leftists intent on using violence to stop people they disagreed with from expressing their views and concerns on an important issue. And it didn’t stop the NF from doing anything. We still had our march, and we further developed the party after 1977, so that in 1979 we fielded over 300 candidates and polled over 191,000 votes in the General Election of that year.
The interviewee made serious and unsubstantiated allegations against the NF, its members and supporters, including allegations of violence, intimidation and other unlawful activities, which were unchallenged by the presenter.
These unsubstantiated allegations were fully rebutted in advance by David Helm, at the time the Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner in charge of Operations and a holder of the Queen’s Police Medal, who was in overall charge of the policing of the event and who was interviewed after the event by a Jewish Chronicle reporter.
A JPEG of that report can be downloaded from here. Note that Mr Helm says,
“There is no difficulty in policing a Front demonstration on its own – it’s only when there is opposition that you get violence.”
The event was also covered by The Sunday Times, whose report of the following day can be downloaded from here.
A full transcript of the broadcast can be downloaded from here.
The full text of this complaint can be downloaded as a PDF document from https://anglo-celtic.org/downloads/bbc/Complaint-No-1.pdf.
2. Britain’s Fascist Thread – Episode 2
Much of what I have said above under “The Battle of Lewisham” applies also to this broadcast, as the subject matter was the same. The only relevant voices heard were those of the presenter, who again was openly “anti-fascist” and left wing, and interviewees whose opinions were, without exception, left wing or extreme left wing. No other opinions or viewpoints were expressed by anybody on this programme.
When I heard that this series of programmes, of which this episode is one, was about to be broadcast, I contacted someone who had been involved with a previous interview of myself by the BBC to establish how I might make contact with the producer/s of the programme about which I am complaining. That person contacted the BBC producer and was told that,
“…the whole series is a historical one and they only spoke to or interviewed academics and used archive. They didn’t interview anyone around who was there.”
That statement, noted and sent to me by a BBC journalistic employee — which I have archived — constitutes an amazingly frank admission of bias and journalistic incompetence. It is a lame excuse for excluding the voices of people likely to contradict the opinions of the producer and presenter. Not all the interviewees were academics (e.g. Lord Hain) — and some of them were not even introduced by name or occupation — but all of them were left wing or what is referred to as “the far left”. Why “academics” were considered by these BBC programme-makers to be truthful, unbiased, objective, etc., was not explained. Their declared presumption is clearly inane and/or cynical. The producer’s statement and the biased way in which the programme was produced constitutes irrefutable evidence of grave breaches of the BBC Charter.
A full transcript of the broadcast can be downloaded from here.
The full text of this complaint can be downloaded as a PDF document from https://anglo-celtic.org/downloads/bbc/Complaint-No-2.pdf.
3. Britain’s Fascist Thread – Episode 3
Again, the only relevant voices heard were those of the presenter, who was openly “anti-fascist” and left wing, and interviewees whose opinions were, without exception, left wing or extreme left wing.
This programme, like the other two covered above, contained numerous factual errors and implied that the NF was a “fascist” organisation, and that it encouraged and practised violence and intimidation to achieve its objectives.
As with the other two programmes, the interviewees made serious and unsubstantiated allegations against the NF, its members and supporters, including allegations of violence, intimidation and other unlawful activities, which were unchallenged by the presenter. The duties of the BBC with regard to fairness and impartiality imposed on it by Paragraph 6(1) of its Charter were completely ignored.
A full transcript of the broadcast can be downloaded from here.
The full text of this complaint can be downloaded as a PDF document from https://anglo-celtic.org/downloads/bbc/Complaint-No-3.pdf.
HOW THE BBC HANDLED MY COMPLAINTS
On 12th April 2021 I sent an email to the BBC giving notice of my intention to complain about these three programmes/podcasts. This was acknowledged by email from the BBC Complaints Team on 20th April 2021. It was suggested here that I follow the guide lines set out in the BBC Complaints Framework, and a link to that document was given.
In this document the BBC purport to give themselves the power to impose restrictive rules concerning the way in which complaints must be structured. For example, any complaint has to be made within 30 days of the programme concerned having been first broadcast (though longer is “allowed” in exceptional circumstances and subject to conditions), and the number of words in each complaint is limited to one thousand (1,000) (though longer complaints are accepted “in exceptional circumstances” and subject to conditions).
On 29th April 2021 I sent a letter to the BBC Complaints Team at Darlington informing them that I could not be constrained by the limitations of the web page which complainants are encouraged to use. This web page has the above mentioned word limitation, and has no facility for varying font sizes and types (such as bold and italic), nor for indented paragraphs and suchlike to aid readability. There is also no allowance for attachments. Two of my three complaints had a number of attachments in support.
I also requested, in view of the controversial nature of the subject matter of each programme I was proposing to complain about, the name or names of the person(s) who would be handling my complaints. Apart from two auto-acknowledgements from the BBC Complaints Team and one personal acknowledgement from the Audience Services Department, I have received no reply to this letter.
My first complaint (concerning programme numbered 1 above) was posted on 28th July 2021, my second complaint (concerning programme numbered 2 above) was posted on 28th October 2021 and my third complaint (concerning programme numbered 3 above) was posted on 14th April 2022. I kept date-stamped proof of posting for all three complaints. I received a letter dated 18th November 2021 from the BBC Complaints Team rejecting my complaint that had the reference number CAS-6947702-H1G1R4. Was this a reference to my first complaint or to my second complaint, or to both? Who knows?
The complication arose because a different number – CAS-6686338-M7T8X8 – had been allocated to my preliminary notice of intention to complain, and to both programmes numbered 1 and 2 above. Yet another number – CAS-6566992-X3Q7F3 – was allocated to my complaint about programme number 2 above.
I believe the issuing of multiple case numbers (at this stage there were two complaints, but three case numbers) in this gung-ho manner was a deliberate ploy by the BBC to create confusion and despair, as the people concerned realised the potentially disastrous outcome these complaints would have for the BBC if justice were to eventually triumph.
As a further example of this lack of sincerity on the part of the BBC, I have an email dated 1st December 2021 from the BBC Complaints Team confirming that they are investigating my second complaint and that my first complaint is being investigated by “another department” (though it does not say which department or give any contact details). Note that this email is dated after their letter dated 18th November 2021, referred to above, in which they rejected one or both of these first two complaints.
Then, on 21st December 2021, I received another email from the Complaints Team referring to case number CAS-6686338-M7T8X8, apologising for the delay, and suggesting I take my complaints to Ofcom. The next day I received a letter dated 22nd December from the Executive Complaints Unit informing me that the rejection of my second complaint (case number CAS-6947702-H1G1R4) was justified.
With regard to my third complaint, which was posted on 14th April 2022, I have not as of this date received any acknowledgement at all.
In view of all these facts I decided to make a further complaint about the way in which the BBC and its relevant departments have treated me and these complaints. No other organisation has the power to impose time and word-length limitations on people who have cause to complain about them, and there’s no reason why the BBC should be a special exception to this common-sense rule.
The BBC have refused to take these complaints seriously, let alone investigate them by interviewing those responsible for producing the programmes complained about. Each of them have been met initially by complete silence.
There’s yet more to come. When the BBC notified me that one or both of these complaints (I am still uncertain as to which) were rejected and I was advised to take them to Ofcom, they failed to return the complaint(s) and enclosures.
These complaints are long and take up several pages of printed material, and both are supported by exhibits in the form of further printed material. To produce fresh copies would have strained my limited resources. I therefore had to ask the BBC’s Executive Complaints Unit, in an email to them dated 25th November 2021, to obtain copies of all the paperwork from their Darlington office and forward it all to me so I could in turn forward it to Ofcom. I am still awaiting a response to this request. Nevertheless, I did eventually manage to send my complaints, with the documentation, to Ofcom, which eventually rejected them without addressing any of the 93 points I made in these three complaints.
The BBC and Ofcom have treated me and these complaints with disdain and hostility. It is clear that these organisations are politically biased to the extreme left from top to bottom. This is in breach of the BBC’s obligation to be fair and impartial in political (and all other) matters, and to treat all listeners, viewers and complainants fairly and with respect.
CALL TO ACTION
There is a groundswell of opinion forming throughout the Western World. This has manifested in recent years in the form of the Brexit Victory at the UK 2016 referendum on the country’s continued membership of the European Union, and in the 2016 US Presidential Election victory for Donald Trump.
Countries on the European mainland are turning against the prevailing Globalist monopoly. Sweden and Italy are the latest countries to vote in “Far Right” parties to government. Other countries, such as Hungary and Poland, have a large majority of voters who are rejecting Globalist policies and politicians. France is increasingly voting, at each Presidential Election, for Marine Le Pen and her political colleagues. And the Russian Federation is actually engaged in a proxy war with what has become known as the “Global Elite”.
The United States seems to be set for a similar rejection of politicians who embrace Globalism, woke-ism, and all the other failed policies of their Establishment.
The one major obstacle in the way of a genuine national revival here in Britain, as elsewhere, is the monopoly that the Left and woke-ism has on the mainstream media. This is nowhere more evident than at the BBC.
The decision by the BBC to
1) broadcast these programmes,
2) continue to have them available for listening to and/or download as podcasts in spite of my detailed complaints, and
3) refuse to properly consider my complaints concerning them
could be the catalyst, the last straw, that brings about its downfall.
And the decision of Ofcom to endorse those actions could well be its downfall as well.
But nothing will happen if we cannot take effective action against them. And the only thing preventing that is lack of money.
The BBC and Ofcom have made it perfectly clear that they will do nothing to put right the injustices and tyranny resulting from the broadcast of these programmes unless they are forced to by a court of law. But legal actions cost money. And if someone like myself were to issue court proceedings calling for justice, one of the first actions their lawyers would take would be to ask the court for an order requiring me (or whoever the plaintiff may be) to pay into court thousands of pounds as “security for costs”. That means that if the plaintiff (whether myself or someone else) were to lose the case, the BBC could recover its legal costs from the money paid into court.
I’m not asking anyone for any money. But what I do urge everyone who has suffered from injustice at the hands of the mainstream media to do is to respond by completing this short online form at https://anglo-celtic.org/register-your-interest. Please indicate your willingness to support
1) any lawful action that can be taken against the mainstream media generally and any key part of it (such as the BBC) in particular, and
2) the formation and maintenance of a new organisation whose purpose will be to agitate for the overhaul of the BBC to purge it of all left-wing and marxist personel and re-establish it as a truly patriotic institution that supports the founding principles of its founder and first Director-General, Sir John Reith, to “inform, educate and entertain”.
All this means playing a part, whether by way of financial support, or doing something that you have a particular skill in (legal expertise, IT skills, etc) to aid this enterprise.
By doing so you will be helping to build a movement that history may show to be instrumental in halting the slide into globalism, chaos and the end of civilisation for our country, and perhaps the whole world.
Martin Webster
10th February 2023
Don’t forget, you can download a free PDF version of this page from https://anglo-celtic.org/downloads/bbc/Call-To-Action.pdf