Good morning. This is Tom McTague, editor-in-chief of the New Statesman.
London has long been called “the libel capital of the world”. The Aga Khan, Kremlin insiders and Kazakhstan’s one-time dictator Nursultan Nazarbayev have all availed themselves of Britain’s relatively strict libel laws, as have myriad well-heeled Britons. It’s not just journalists who have been targeted. Environmental campaigners, online reviewers, even victims of sexual assault have been hit with libel suits.
But in March 2022, soon after Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine, London’s libel lawyers became international news. MPs lined up to accuse claimant-friendly law firms of abusing the legal process to intimidate critics into silence.
Boris Johnson announced a clampdown on “the oligarchs and super-rich” who use the threat of legal action as “a new kind of lawfare”. The Conservative prime minister said his government would introduce legislation that would stop “strategic lawsuits against public participation” – commonly known as “Slapp” litigation. These are generally defined as cases designed to intimidate, harass and financially exhaust critics and to silence free speech.
Four years later, however, comprehensive anti-Slapp legislation is yet to materialise. In our latest issue, Peter Geoghegan, the editor of Democracy for Sale newsletter, and investigative reporter Jenna Corderoy dig into the battle over Britain’s libel industry – and why hopes for reform are fading. You can read an extract of their piece down below, or you can click through here to read it in full.
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The battle for Britain’s libel industry
London’s libel gold rush long predates the city’s “Londongrad” days. In the Second World War, a young lawyer named Peter Carter-Ruck came back from duty as a gunner in the Royal Artillery and set about turning the then almost moribund Libel Act of 1843 into the basis for a lucrative business. His trademark was aggressive suits on behalf of wealthy clients. In 1963, Randolph Churchill, Winston’s son, instructed Carter-Ruck to sue “every single person connected with Private Eye, right down to the girls in the office” over a story that suggested an official biography of his father would gloss over incidents such as Churchill sending the army to tackle striking Welsh miners. Carter-Ruck secured all the top libel barristers for his client to prevent them acting for the magazine – which swiftly apologised and paid Churchill’s legal costs. Private Eye also had to publish a full-page retraction and apology in the Evening Standard.
After this, a charabanc of colourful characters used libel threats, primarily against publishers, throughout the 1970s and 1980s. James Goldsmith settled a notorious libel case with Private Eye on the steps of the Old Bailey. Robert Maxwell and Mohamed al-Fayed had an army of lawyers on retainer. Soon, rich claimants with far less obvious ties to the UK were filing defamation cases in London.