Workers' Liberty

By Martin Thomas

The left-wing monthly Red Pepper, and weekly Tribune, have joined forces to promote a "charter for the minority press".


What stung them to action was a decision by W H Smith, who control most of the wholesale trade in periodicals in Britain, to cut back still further on the number of magazines it will take. Royal Mail has also announced that from September 2004 it will scrap its Newspaper Registration Service, under which registered newspapers can go by first-class post for a second-class stamp.

It is possible to plead with W H Smith to supply a new magazine on trial to a limited number of outlets. But, as Tribune editor Mark Seddon told a press conference on 13 May, the magazine has to pay heavily for the trial, and does not even get to choose which outlets it will appear in.

The charter demands:

• The right of all legal publications to be sold in newsagents;

• The reintroduction of the postal Newspaper Registration Service;
• Subscriptions to non-profit publications to be made tax-deductible.

In France and Italy, for example, the law still requires all newsagents to make available all legally-registered publications that request it. The market-driven alternative can be observed in Australia, for example, where most newspapers are sold at petrol stations which often make available only a couple of papers, so without special effort you can't even get the Sydney Morning Herald or the Melbourne Age. As Red Pepper editor Hilary Wainwright observed, the market here is the enemy of choice.

National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear noted that in Scandinavia there is a system of subsidised printing, and direct subsidies, to the minority press.

Reform of the libel law - which as it stands in Britain fundamentally permits rich publications to say what they like about poor people, and rich people to stop poor publications saying what they do not like - was also discussed at the press conference.

More on the charter for the minority press on their web site.