Opinion: Prince Harry conspired to destroy the Daily Mail

Readers of the Mail titles, and the journalists working for them, have cause for great celebration following Mr Justice Nicklin’s judgment yesterday in the High Court.

Every claim against the Daily Mail and The Mail on Sunday – including extremely damaging ones made in the full glare of publicity by Prince Harry – was dismissed. There were no caveats. No exceptions. This was a triumph for both newspapers, and their journalists.

For the case against Associated Newspapers, publisher of the two titles, amounted to nothing less than a conspiracy to blacken the papers on the altar of public opinion – and if possible to close them down.

The 436-page written judgment is therefore also a triumph for the entire free Press and the right of newspapers to report on the goings-on of the rich and powerful, so long as they do so within the law.

The human and financial toll 

Those who challenge that right – as well as those who bend the rules or indulge in illegality – will sleep a little less easily in their beds as a result of what happened yesterday.

The whole printed Press has suffered from circulation decline over the past two decades, and some titles have found it difficult to adjust to the digital age. This judgment will give every newspaper, and all the journalists who work for them, a hugely welcome boost.

But, triumph though it undoubtedly is, no one should think that it has been easily achieved. For one thing, the cost of the case on both sides has been enormous – more than £50million, of which Associated Newspapers has so far paid over half. The judge is yet to make a determination over costs.

No less serious has been the stress which the case has brought to almost everyone who works for Associated. Particularly under the cosh were the 40-odd journalists required to give an account of themselves in court.

 Honest Mail journalists vindicated

It is cheering, of course, that Mr Justice Nicklin should have been impressed by the integrity of these witnesses, a number of whom were singled out by him for being ‘honest’ and ‘impressive’ during the 11-week court hearing. This was a tribute to the quality of the journalists who have worked, and still work, for the Mail titles.

Among the seven claimants, by contrast, while the Judge accepted that the individual claimants were honest, they were found to have limited direct evidence in support of the claims. Only one witness – David Furnish, husband of Sir Elton John – was deemed impressive.

In fact, after the claimants’ key witness, former private investigator Gavin Burrows, withdrew an earlier statement, they had no credible evidence at all, and were reduced to making unsubstantiated allegations.

But the paucity of the evidence did not dispel the anxiety consuming many Mail journalists. They were falsely accused of career-destroying activities. Reputations were at stake.

 The intolerable strain on Paul Dacre

The journalist who had most to lose, and whose considerable achievements were called into question, was Paul Dacre, the Mail’s editor from 1992 until 2018.

Along with others, Mr Dacre was accused by the claimants of having lied to the Leveson Inquiry in 2012 when he stated that the Mail titles had never taken part in phone hacking. The judge found no truth in these baseless allegations.

Probably more painful to Mr Dacre were the accusations of Doreen Lawrence, whose son, Stephen, was murdered by thugs in south London in 1993. Almost four years later, after police attempts to charge the culprits had foundered, the Mail ran its famous front page with the single headline: ‘Murderers’.

Most of the political establishment and several newspapers immediately criticised the Mail, though Lord Denning, the legendary former Master of the Rolls, described it as a ‘marvellous piece of journalism’.

It was a measure of Denning’s greatness that he could grasp that the Mail was fighting for truth and justice by standing up for a murdered black teenager whose unprivileged parents had been failed by the police and the prosecuting authorities.

So it was a bitter pill when, for reasons that are still not clear, Baroness Lawrence joined the ranks of the claimants, accusing the Mail of targeting her with unlawful information-gathering techniques. These allegations were entirely dismissed by the judge.

All this shows the intolerable strain under which many Mail journalists, past and present, have been living as they were subjected to groundless – and also potentially ruinous – claims.

Max Mosley’s funded vendetta 

These claims did not appear out of a clear blue sky – which is why I can confidently speak of a conspiracy. A number of individuals consciously set out to damage – and preferably destroy – the Mail.

One of them was Press-hating Max Mosley, famous for winning a libel case in 2008 against the now defunct News of the World, which had accused him of orchestrating a ‘Nazi-themed orgy.’ They were right about the orgy, where blood was shed, but couldn’t prove the Nazi bit.

In 2018 the Mail was able to prove that Mosley was the publisher of a squalid racist election pamphlet used by his father, the fascist Oswald Mosley, in 1961. This revelation only increased Mosley’s determination to damage the Mail.

Suffering from terminal cancer, he shot himself in May 2021, but not before he had used some of his enormous fortune (much of it inherited from his obnoxious father) to benefit Hacked Off – the group that campaigns for state oversight of the Press.

One of the beneficiaries was Graham Johnson, to whom Mosley gave at least £565,000, some of which was used to pay witnesses against the Mail. Another was Professor Brian Cathcart, a founder member of Hacked Off, who received generous funding from Mosley to write a book.

A decisive victory for the free press 

The exact role of Hacked Off in the campaign to bring down the Mail is for another day. Suffice to say now that one of those giving evidence on behalf of the claimants, the ex-Lib Dem MP Dr Evan Harris, was once an executive director of the group. He was described by the judge as having been ‘particularly prone to reconstruction’.

The Daily Mail has triumphantly seen off its enemies in this case, but let no one suppose that they will creep away from the battlefield never to cause trouble again.

Prince Harry, who has waged a seven-year war against the Press, admittedly winning against the publishers of the Sun and Daily Mirror, is likely now to desist, although he showed remarkable ill grace yesterday in describing the judgment as an ‘obvious whitewash‘.

But Hacked Off, and sympathetic voices on the Labour benches, won’t stop calling for so-called ‘Leveson Part Two’, whose objective, they hope, would be to curtail a free Press and institute some form of state control.

Indeed, Hacked Off responded to yesterday’s judgment by calling for a public inquiry. That takes some brass neck in the circumstances. However discredited the organisation and its cause may be, they won’t give up.

So vigilance should be our watchword. A decisive battle for a free Press has been won but the war will never be over. There will be other rich chancers such as Max Mosley who will want to muzzle the Press, and more celebrities who will make false accusations.

But for the moment let us be thankful to Mr Justice Nicklin for his good sense, and congratulate this newspaper’s journalists for holding the line in such trying circumstances. I am proud to be their colleague.

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