THE resignation of Coulson yesterday as Prime Minister David Cameron’s Director of Communications, follows on, almost immediately, from the police being forced to re-open the criminal investigation into illegal phone tapping by the News of the World.
Ever since these illegal activities came to light in 2007 with the jailing of one NoW reporter and the private detective who carried out the tapping, the police have steadfastly insisted that the case was closed and only these two were guilty of any crime.
Coulson resigned as editor of the paper on the grounds that, although he had no knowledge of the activities of this ‘rogue’ reporter, he took responsibility.
David Cameron, then leader of the Tory opposition, immediately snapped him up as his Director of Communications, to play a vital role in shaping the class war policies of the coalition.
Despite the rising tide of evidence – that far from being the actions of a single ‘rogue’, the practice of illegal bugging and phone tapping was endemic and widely known throughout the paper – Cameron stood determinedly by Coulson while the police stood equally firmly behind their policy of hushing up evidence that might implicate other employees of the Murdoch press.
Both the denials and cover-ups have become completely untenable as News International has faced a flood of private prosecutions from public figures who believe they have been subject to the illegal practices of phone tapping and hacking, with more and more evidence emerging that cannot just be swept under the carpet.
Coulson clearly had a vital role to play for Cameron, one that far outweighed any embarrassment about his association with phone hacking.
He was very much Murdoch’s man in the government.
The domination of Murdoch over bourgeois politicians goes far beyond just having his placeman in situ as Vince Cable, the LibDem business secretary, found out to his cost.
Cable committed the unforgivable sin of being recorded by undercover reporters saying that he was at war with Murdoch and, even worse, boasting ‘I think we are going to win’ over the issue of News International buying out the broadcaster BSkyB and establishing a virtual monopoly position in British broadcasting.
He was publicly humiliated by Cameron and had his department stripped of what was one of its main functions, which was transferred to the Tory Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt.
Further proof, if any was required, of the closeness of the Tory leadership to Murdoch, has been furnished this week with the news that Cameron spent a very agreeable Christmas break at the home of Murdoch’s right-hand woman, Rebekah Brooks.
There could not have been a more public display of the fact that there is no possibility of a referral of Murdoch’s plans to the Competition Commission, and that nothing will stand in Murdoch’s path to dominate the media propaganda machine of the capitalist state, for the benefit of Cameron and the Tory Party.
Murdoch’s original move to dominate the press was similarly made easy back in 1981 by the then prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
His purchase of the Times and Sunday Times also went through on the nod without any referral to the Monopolies Commission, to the amazement of even Tory ministers. He repaid her with unstinting support, while she mobilised the police to support him at Wapping against the working class.
The loss of Coulson at the heart of government will undoubtedly be a blow for Murdoch, but he can rely on Cameron and he, no doubt, will provide a new Director of Communications.
The capitalist state, after all, exists only to serve the interests of the capitalist class against the working class, and the government role is to administer this state.
The Coulson scandal and the whole wretched subservience of parliament, the police and the bourgeois politicians to Murdoch and the ruling class points to one inescapable fact.
The whole corrupt, stinking cesspit of capitalism can only be cleansed by a socialist revolution.
