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A few quotes and references highlighting some of the successes and failings of the original REBECCA magazine of the '70s and 80s. BRICKBATS... “Listen, mates, I don’t know what the hell you want but just bugger off and leave me alone …” JOE GORMLEY, then NUM President, in 1978 when confronted about his
directorship in a Canadian company and land deals in the North East of
England. He had agreed to be interviewed but having refused to go
through with it, he was “doorstepped” at the TUC Congress in Brighton. “My life has been absolute hell for six weeks because of these rumours. The cause of this embarrassment comes from the Rebecca article which was full of innuendo." DAN JONES, then Labour MP for Burnley, in 1974
after REBECCA revealed his links with a South Wales father and son later
gaoled for corruption. “I wish to inform you that, unless I receive from you within the next fourteen days a full withdrawal of the allegations made against me in your … Eisteddfod issue … I shall take further action." GERAINT MORGAN, then Tory MP for
Denbigh and Crown Court Recorder, in 1975. REBECCA refused to withdraw
the allegations about his treatment of a constituent. Morgan took no
further action… “The relevance of the request is that Mr Abse wishes to have clearly identified the legal responsibility of the writers, publishers and printers of the magazine… The
secretary of LEO ABSE, then Labour MP for Pontypool, in 1980 in answer
to a REBECCA telegram asking for answers about his secret and extensive
land deals in the constituency. Abse didn’t sue… “The magazine Rebecca has been confiscated on the advice of the Security Officer as it contains matter about the Medical Officer in Swansea." R
A DALTON, Assistant Governor at Cardiff Prison, in 1976. “I thought you would be intrigued by [Rebecca] Wales’ own Private Eye, a copy of which was sent to me recently. I don’t expect it will stay in publication long." PAUL WILKINSON, a politics
lecturer, in a 1974 memo to his boss Bill Bevan, the Principal of
University College, Cardiff. Bevan replied “Many thanks. Very
interesting.” “…the plain meaning from the excerpt reproduced is that Dr Bevan corruptly spends huge amounts of money on himself.” Solicitor
acting for CECIL BEVAN, Principal of University College Cardiff,
following a 1976 Corruption Supplement article detailing the amount of
college funds diverted to his own creature comforts. No action was taken
against REBECCA. “If a man of your education and background is so easily taken in by the scurrilous mendacity of a paper like Rebecca, there seems little hope of the ordinary man in the street getting any kind of immunity from other pernicious propaganda that penetrates and undermines our society today.” SIR JULIAN HODGE, September
1979, replying to a letter from the Rev Roger Brown asking about REBECCA attacks on the Welsh merchant banker. “It was confidential information that only the police knew and deliberately leaked to an underground magazine called Rebecca. That information was printed and circulated. Only the police had such information." GERALD
MURPHY, former Labour leader of Swansea City Council in 1977, talking
nonsense when he appeared in court facing corruption charges. He was
eventually gaoled for two years. “Who says God does not look after his own?" Anonymous telegram after REBECCA ceased publication in 1982.  … AND FAINT PRAISEIt wasn’t all criticism, though. In 1976 Sir Tasker Watkins VC, a High Court judge, was presiding at the beginning of the first major corruption trial in Cardiff. Councillor Ernest Westwood, the bent planning chairman of Glamorgan County Council, was in the dock along with a group of businessmen who’d made money from his planning permissions. Before the jury was sworn in, defence barrister Michael Gibbon asked Sir Tasker to ban anyone who was a REBECCA reader from serving on the jury. Sir Tasker accepted this and then called in the entire panel of jurors who’d been called up for that session of the Crown Court. Over a hundred men and women filed into the body of the court. Sir Tasker showed them a copy of the magazine and asked them if any of them had read REBECCA. The REBECCA coverage of Westwood and his cronies had been savage. One article called him “One Arm Bandit”, picking up on the nickname opponents in the Rhondda used. He had a withered arm but, of course, it was also because he was a crook. After Sir Tasker’s question, not a single soul raised their hand. Sir Tasker then said: "I don’t want you to think there is any disgrace in having read
Rebecca.” Westwood was gaoled for four and a half years. |