June 16, 2009 - By Northwest News

Since Nick Griffin’s election to the European Parliament, the correspondence column of the Manchester Evening News (MEN) has been full to the brim with readers’ letters, angrily blaming the MEN (locally referred to as the “Manchester Evening Lies”) for the British National Party’s electoral breakthrough.   These angry MEN readers have a point.  The Manchester Evening News’ overt campaign against Nick Griffin and the British National Party has indeed backfired spectacularly against the bargain basement rag.

There was nothing subtle, nuanced or sophisticated about the MEN’s pre-election assault on the BNP.   It opened two weeks before the Euro poll with a full front page picture of Nick Griffin, complete with BNP logo and a headline which rather implausibly trumpeted “The Truth about the BNP”.

As the British National Party’s election campaign gathered momentum, so the Manchester Evening News’ risible rants against the BNP grew increasingly wild and desperate.

The MEN wheeled out a bizarre list of “stars” to abuse the BNP.  The line up of anti-BNP “celebrities” included such notable worthies as former Stone Roses “legend” Ian Brown, who was once jailed for four months for threatening to chop off the hands of an airline stewardess.

Lurid letters appeared in the MEN’s letters column reprising hoary old discredited lies about the BNP, and any balancing letters from BNP supporters were rigorously excluded.

Day after day, the MEN newspaper patronised, hectored and lectured its dwindling band of long-suffering readers, loftily ordering them not to vote for Nick Griffin.

At first it seemed that the MEN’s extraordinary onslaught might be having an effect, but during the last week of the election campaign, it became clear that something quite remarkable was happening.

In small groups at first, but in increasing numbers and with growing vociferousness, voters on the doorsteps of Manchester started to declare that they would vote BNP precisely because of the Manchester Evening News’ behaviour.   The admirable and cussed bulldog spirit of the British people had at last started to assert itself.  Mancunians strongly resent being lectured to and told what do, especially by a tatty rag with cheap, smeared print which is tolerated only because it includes a convenient TV listing.

The Manchester Evening News’ essential problem is that it purports to serve the whole of Greater Manchester, including pro-BNP white working class estates, but the editorial values of the MEN reflect the lentil and bean-eating multicult lifestyle of the media glitterati who infest the gleaming ivory towers of Manchester city centre.

That basic contradiction is at the root of the Manchester Evening News’ descending spiral of failure.   Once upon a time, readers were prepared to pay good money for their copy of the MEN, now vast numbers of MEN comics can scarcely be given away.  Indeed, the MEN’s parent company, GMG Regional Media, have recently been forced to cut hundreds of local newspaper jobs in Greater Manchester.

Ironically, the journalistic job cuts aroused the ire of local NUJ Union Official and “UAF” activist Jenny Lennox, who summarised GMG’s behaviour admirably “They are showing total contempt for the communities that have been the heartland of their business“, said Ms Lennox, in a sentiment wholeheartedly endorsed by local BNP activists.

Paul Horrocks, the editor of the Manchester Evening News has now been forced to respond to the avalanche of hostile correspondence with a hand-wringing defence of his failed anti-BNP campaign. “We thought long and hard about taking the stand we did and we knew we would be accused of telling people how to vote.   We thought it was a risk worth taking…“, he protested to his irate readers.

Of course, the editor of the Manchester Evening News ill-deserves our sympathy, but following the BNP’s famous victory in the North-West, it really is hard not to feel sorry for the poor chap!