RUPERT Murdoch has moved with great ruthlessness to try to make sure that he takes over BSkyB by shutting down the News of the World, and making the just-arrested Coulson the scapegoat for all of the illegal payments to the police and all of the illegal phone hacking.
At the same time, Murdoch has shown his absolute contempt for society by putting Rebekah Brooks – who was editor of the News of the World when Milly Dowler’s phone was being hacked into, and who admitted to a parliamentary committee that the Murdoch organisation paid the police and might do so in the future – in charge of the internal News International investigation into these practices. She is at work on this alongside the police, some of whose officers were paid tens of thousands of pounds for services rendered by News International.
Meanwhile, Murdoch is said to be preparing to bring out a News of the World replacement called the Sun on Sunday.
Millions of workers are however now up in arms at the conduct of the Murdoch media, its corrupt relations with the police, and its support for the Tory leader Cameron and vice versa.
The trade unions must now take the lead and must insist that there can be no Murdoch takeover of BSkyB, and that all those who organised the bribing of police officers and the phone hacking must face trial and jail. The trade unions must be ready to take industrial action on this issue to stop Murdoch monopolising the media.
Yesterday morning the spotlight turned on the Tory Prime Minister Cameron.
He was unable to explain just why he trusted Coulson, why he hired him after he resigned from the News of the World and why he resisted his removal as the Downing Street Communications Chief with such determination.
Cameron in fact is as close as he can get to News International and Murdoch. He lunched with Rebekah Brooks at Christmas, met her on numerous occasions, and until yesterday morning refused to say that he was in favour of her resignation.
In fact, the Tory party, the police and the Murdoch media empire have been in a very close alliance since the period of the 1984-85 Miners Strike, when Murdoch gave his full support to Thatcher’s war on the miners and the Met supplied the required brute force.
After that, in the printers’ struggle in 1986-7, Thatcher repaid Murdoch for his support by making sure that the Metropolitan police were fully mobilised to attack printers’ demonstrations and picket lines for the duration of the strike.
In these struggles the state, the Murdoch media and the Thatcher regime acted as one.
Today, the Murdoch press is in the frontline of support for the Coalition’s policy of taking on the working class to smash the Welfare State and its war in Libya.
It provided Cameron with Coulson, at the same time as it was providing police officers with additional sources of income.
With British capitalism in a great crisis, these forces cling together out of necessity in order to take on the working class.
This alliance of the state and the ruling class will not be ended by an inquiry or by legislation, that will be used to impose greater state control of the press and to cut back on press freedoms.
It can only be ended by a socialist revolution to smash the capitalist state and its corrupt forces of law and order, to bring in a workers government. This will expropriate the bosses and the bankers, break up the press and media monopolies and advance to socialism.