Living Marxism was a British magazine, originally launched in 1988 as the journal of the British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP). It was later rebranded as LM and ceased publication in March 2000 following a successful libel lawsuit brought by the British Independent Television News (ITN). It was promptly resurrected as Spiked, an Internet magazine.
Contents
Living Marxism's Aims
Living Marxism's introduction summarised its outlook as:
We live in an age of caution and conformism, when critical opinions can be outlawed as 'extremism' and anything new can be rubbished as 'too risky'. Ours is an age of low expectations, when we are always being told what is bad for us, and life seems limited on all sides by restrictions, guidelines and regulations.
The spirit of LM is to go against the grain: to oppose all censorship, bans and codes of conduct; to stand up for social and scientific experimentation; to insist that we have the right to live as autonomous adults who take responsibility for our own affairs. These are basic human values that cannot be compromised if we are ever going to create a world fit for people.
Views
Views expounded with regularity in LM included 'Fear Culture', for example by questioning the then media coverage of AIDS as a predominantly homosexual disease in the West. Its critique covered media coverage in Africa and the developing world in the context of Western intervention, underdevelopment and poverty. It also debated environmentalist claims that limiting consumption was a progressive view. The magazine also raised concerns about the Left's rejection of scientific thought and critique, especially of medicine, biotechnology and nuclear physics. LM writers also critiqued the media portrayal of the civil wars in Rwanda and Bosnia by questioning the use of the term "genocide" to describe the conflicts.
It has been stated by environmentalists such as George Monbiot and Peter Melchett that the group of writers associated with LM continue to constitute a 'LM Network' pursuing an ideologically motivated 'anti-environmentalist' agenda under the guise of promoting Humanism. Writers who used to write for Living Marxism reject this as a 'McCarthyite' conspiracy theory.
ITN vs. LM
In the first issue where the journal was renamed LM, editor Mick Hume published an article by German journalist Thomas Deichmann which claimed that Independent Television News (ITN) had misrepresented the Bosnian war in its coverage in 1992. The publishers of LM, Informinc (LM) Ltd., were sued for libel by ITN. The case initially caused international condemnation of ITN, as one of LM's critics, the journalist George Monbiot, who wrote in Prospect magazine:
Some of the world's leading liberals leapt to the magazine's defence: Harold Evans, Doris Lessing, Paul Theroux, Fay Weldon and many others condemned ITN's "deplorable attack on press freedom". The Institute of Contemporary Arts, bulwark of progressive liberalism, enhanced LM's heroic profile by co-hosting a three-day conference with the magazine, called "Free Speech Wars". With the blessing of the liberal world, this puny iconoclastic David will go to war with the clanking orthodoxies of the multinational Goliath.
However, Monbiot continued:
This, at least, is how LM would like its struggle to be seen. But there is more to this David than first meets the eye. His may be less of the great liberal cause that his supporters would like to believe. For the closer one looks at LM, the weaker its link to the oppressed appears, and the stronger its links to the oppressor. It has, in other words, less in common with the left than with the fanatical right.
The article "The picture that fooled the world" argued that ITN's footage, in which an emaciated Bosnian Muslim man stood behind a barbed wire fence, was designed to portray a Nazi-style extermination camp, while Deichmann claimed "It was not a prison, and certainly not a 'concentration camp', but a collection centre for refugees, many of whom went there seeking safety and could leave again if they wished." However, an examination of the substance of this case by a professor of cultural and political geography at Durham University argues that the key claims made by Deichmann and LM are "erroneous and flawed".
The libel case went against LM, and in March 2000 the magazine was forced to close. Reporters Penny Marshall and Ian Williams were each awarded £150,000 over the LM story and the magazine was also ordered to pay £75,000 for libelling ITN in a February 1997 article.
Looking back Hume commented in The Times:
Would I do it again? We could have got out of the case by apologising, which seems to be the fashionable thing to do. But I believe in the unfashionable freedom to state what you understand to be true, even if it causes offence. I would do almost anything to avoid ever again setting foot in Court 14. But some things really are more important than a mortgage.
In contrast, Professor Campbell of Durham University summarised his study of the case as follows:
"...as strange as existing British libel law is, it had an important and surprisingly beneficial effect in the case of ITN vs LM. The LM defendants and Thomas Deichmann were properly represented at the trial and were able to lay out all the details of their claim that the ITN reporters had "deliberately misrepresented" the situation at Trnopolje. Having charged 'deliberate misrepresentation', they needed to prove 'deliberate misrepresentation'. To this end, the LM defendants were able to cross-examine Penny Marshall and Ian Williams, as well as every member of the ITN crews who were at the camps, along with other witnesses. (That they didn't take up the opportunity to cross-examine the Bosnian doctor imprisoned at Trnopolje, who featured in the ITN stories and was called to testify on the conditions he and others suffered, was perhaps the moment any remaining shred of credibility for LM's allegations evaporated). They were able to show the ITN reports to the court, including the rushes from which the final TV stories were edited, and conduct a forensic examination of the visuals they alleged were deceitful. And all of this took place in front of a jury of twelve citizens who they needed to convince about the truthfulness of their allegations.