The last laugh (Update and further updated)
On Saturday last week, a Guardian article from 1986 was circulated amongst a group of bloggers which related to what Paul Staines, AKA Guido Fawkes, may or may not have got up to whilst a right-wing political activist at Hull University.
Being something of a night-owl, Sunny Hundal at Pickled Politics beat the rest of us to the punch and published the article. Early Sunday morning, Tim Ireland, Labour MP Tom Watson and I followed suit.
Shortly after, emails arrived from Paul Staines stating that he considered the publication of the article as defamatory. He demanded its removal from our blogs, stating he had a ‘retraction’ of the article which he would let us see. In a show of good faith, I removed the article from Chicken Yoghurt, as did the others from their blogs.
Paul Staines posted on his blog saying that the post that had appeared on Tom Watson’s blog (and only Tom Watson’s blog) was now gone and bragging that legal notices had been issued. You can no longer read that post because the next day (Monday), it was deleted. You’ll have to draw your own conclusion as to why he might do that.
I have now seen the ‘retraction’ that Paul Staines referred to. I am unfortunately not permitted to publish it. I am not allowed to print the ‘bane’ of the original 1986 article, nor am I allowed to print the ‘antidote’, a personal letter - written four years later - from the journalist who wrote the article, which Staines claims exonerates him. Read that again. The Guardian newspaper did not retract the article. That is why it is still available in the Lexis-Nexis database.
I will leave others to draw conclusions as to the behaviour of a person whose own blog is registered off-shore (in Nevis) in an attempt to avoid British libel laws.
Guido has a mini-corporation behind him, Global & General Nominees LLC of Nevis. If you want to sue the publishers go ahead, the office for service is properly registered in accordance with the law. The laws of the island require that the plaintiff first deposits US$25,000 with the court before commencing action. Guido will defend himself vigorously.
Or the behaviour of a self-confessed libertarian drawing on the power of the state when threatened. Or the behaviour of a gossip-peddler happy to smear with innuendo and the help of anonymous commenters on his blog. Or the behaviour of a person who claims to have evidence exonerating him from allegations but refusing to allow that evidence to be published. Or why he chose to ’serve notice’ on four bloggers and not the Guardian.
At the end of the day, this boils down to money. The libel laws in the UK are a plaything of the monied - you can’t get legal aid to fight a libel action. It’s often said that ‘it’s not libel if it’s true’. That is incorrect. It is, actually, ‘it’s not libel if it’s provable‘. To fight my case would take more resources than I have.
I will take this opportunity to say that, since his attempt to claim some credit in the outing of Mark Oaten last year, I have regarded Paul Staines AKA Guido Fawkes as little more than scum. That he is held as some exemplar of blogging by those who should know better has always struck me as a sick joke. This is not a matter of ‘ideological differences’ or a ‘Brownite-plot’ (you have to laugh) as the witless have tried to make out. This is pest control motivated by disgust.
This blog is now taking a break. I don’t know how long that break will be but hopefully it won’t be a permanent one. I’ll continue to publish my The Friday Thing columns here for those who are interested. They’re my best stuff anyway. I’m also honoured to have been asked to play a small role in the launch of National Service.
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Update 15/2: Paul Staines emails…
Lexis Nexis’ legal department confirmed this morning that the defamatory article is being removed from their archive immediately.
Sending the email with a footer exhorting the recipient to ‘Whisper Vicious Rumours’ and ‘Leak Secret Documents’ was the classy part.
Update 15/2 @ 7.30PM: For those seeking further information and context, I would urge you to read this from Sunny and follow his links.
Posted on February 14th, 2007 at 10:35 am