BBC bans articles critical of anti-war movement

Nick Cohen writing in The New Statesman describes how The BBC (The Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation) banned reporters from writing articles critical of the anti-war movement.

Saddam's very own party
Nick Cohen
Monday 7th June 2004

D-Day for British politics - Respect, the alliance between the Muslim Association of Britain and the Socialist Workers Party, shows how ugly the far left in Britain has become, writes Nick Cohen

Just before the war against Iraq I began to receive strange calls from BBC journalists. Would I like information on how the leadership of the anti-war movement had been taken over by the Socialist Workers Party? Maybe, I replied. It was depressing that a totalitarian party was in the saddle, but that's where the SWP always tries to get. Why get excited?

Oh there are lots of reasons, said the BBC hacks. The anti-war movement wasn't a simple repetition of the old story of the politically naive being led by the nose by sly operators. The far left was becoming the far right. It had gone as close to supporting Ba'athist fascism as it dared and had formed a working alliance with the Muslim Association of Britain, which, along with the usual misogyny and homophobia of such organisations, also believed that Muslims who decided that there was no God deserved to die for the crime of free thought. In a few weeks hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, would allow themselves to be organised by the opponents of democracy and modernity and would march through the streets of London without a flicker of self-doubt. Wasn't this a story?

It's a great story, I cried. But why don't you broadcast it?

We can't, said the bitter hacks. Our editors won't let us.

Which also explains why they dont't run articles critical of Galloway.
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