At the black tie banquet to celebrate Paul Dacre’s 25 years as editor of the Daily Mail in 2017, Doreen Lawrence sat at the editor’s side. In 1997, the paper’s front page had pictured five men under the headline “Murderers”. Later that year Jack Straw, as home secretary, set up the Macpherson inquiry into the handling of her son Stephen Lawrence’s murder, bringing in legal changes that would go on to allow the prosecution and conviction of two suspects.
It was considered the essence of public service journalism. But more than that, it became a shield with which Dacre and the Mail were able to defend themselves from accusations that his paper deployed racism and discriminatory attitudes as part of the main title’s USP. It was also used by industry figures who cited the Mail’s stance on behalf of the Lawrences as evidence that the mainstream media is a force for harmonious good.
It must be embarrassing then that five years on from that banquet, the now Lady Lawrence is one of six people to launch legal action against Associated Newspapers – publishers of the Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday and the Mail Online – alleging wrongful activity during Dacre’s time in charge.
The allegations, which include phone tapping and the use of private investigators to secretly place listening devices inside people’s cars and homes, have been strenuously denied by the Mail as “preposterous smears”.
But news of the legal action, broken by Byline Investigates, and the subsequent revelation that the former Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes has filed a case accusing Associated Newspapers, the owner of the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, of phone hacking have done little so far to dent expectations of Dacre’s imminent elevation to the House of Lords. Theresa May’s successor, Boris Johnson, is understood to have put Dacre forward in his resignation honours list for services to journalism. Many will continue to wonder about the true value of those “services”. The paper’s support for Johnson’s Brexit undoubtedly sowed division across the UK.
The Mail branded appeal court judges “enemies of the people” and parliament’s second house the “House of Unelected Wreckers”.
Chris Bryant, the Labour MP and standards chair who has accused Dacre of “poisoning the well of British politics”, has called for any potential peerage to be delayed during the legal action. He admits that there isn’t much he or anyone else in parliament can do to stop this final act of the Johnson administration. Instead, the decision is up to the Lords Appointments Commission, chaired by Lord Bew. But surely a pause button must be pushed, at least until the truth or otherwise of the allegations is run to ground.
This requires the utmost formal scrutiny, not least because there has been relatively little coverage of the case so far, despite the seriousness of the allegations filed by Lawrence and the others, who include Elton John and Prince Harry (dismissed by the Mail as “having already pursued cases elsewhere”).
The Mail itself issued a remarkable denial last week, suggesting rogue actors were at work and accusing campaigners of persuading Lawrence to believe someone it called a liar. Standing four-square behind their man, Dacre’s supporters echo the rogue investigator line, which was originally used by Rupert Murdoch’s News group at the start of the phone hacking scandal. For his part, Dacre has consistently and categorically denied any Mail involvement in hacking, calling, in his evidence to the Leveson inquiry in 2012, Hugh Grant’s suspicions that the paper had hacked his phone “mendacious smears”.
Much is at stake for the newspaper group, of course, whose owner Lord Rothermere doubled down on his longstanding and profitable support of Dacre a year ago by ousting his successor, Geordie Greig, and bringing Dacre back into the fold. Greig had gone out of his way to “detoxify” the brand, as he put it, working with Stop Funding Hate after his appointment in 2018. Following his departure, that campaign group renewed its call for advertisers to drop the Mail in April this year. It seems that Lawrence – whose experiences with the Mail were previously said to have shown the title at its best – may now have joined its critics.
It may be that eventually Dacre dons ermine and takes a place in the Lords: that would be bad enough. But for him to go to a place of public service without clarity about claims that allege a great deal of public harm would be a travesty.
Jane Martinson is a Guardian columnist
