The Daily Mail: Love, Nazis and Taxes (video)

The Daily Mail Ralph Miliband hatchet job is the gift that keeps on giving. For example, Viscount Rothermere and the Daily Mail’s association with Fascism goes far beyond the “Hurrah for the Blackshirts” headline of which we have all been reminded in the last week, as this excerpt from the Futile Democracy blog neatly demonstrates:

In fact as early as 1926, the Mail was known throughout Europe as a Fascist publication. In that year, Benito Mussolini wrote to the new Chief Correspondent at the Mail, G. Ward Price:

“My dear Price, I am glad you have become a director of the Daily Mail, and I am sure that your very popular and widely circulated newspaper will continue to be a sincere friend of fascist Italy. With best wishes and greetings, Mussolini.”

A few years after a delighted Mussolini congratulated the Mail’s new Chief Correspondent on his position on the Fascist supporting paper, the proprietor of The Daily Mail, Harold Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere in 1933 took that support one step further:

“I urge all British young men and women to study closely the progress of the Nazi regime in Germany. They must not be misled by the misrepresentations of its opponents. The most spiteful detractors of the Nazis are to be found in precisely the same sections of the British public and press as are most vehement in their praises of the Soviet regime in Russia. They have started a clamorous campaign of denunciation against what they call “Nazi atrocities” which, as anyone who visits Germany quickly discovers for himself, consists merely of a few isolated acts of violence such as are inevitable among a nation half as big again as ours, but which have been generalized, multiplied and exaggerated to give the impression that Nazi rule is a bloodthirsty tyranny.”

Source: Futile Democracy (Blog)

Not content with their fascist and, judging by the headline about the holocaust published in June last year, anti-Semitic proclivities, the proprietor of the Daily Mail has sought to demonstrate his and his family’s ‘love’ for Britain by apparently structuring his ownership of the Daily Mail in a manner consistent with minimising tax liabilities in the UK.

Investigations by the Observer have revealed that all of the voting shares in the DMGT, the floated company that owns both the papers, have been acquired by a financial vehicle called Rothermere Continuation Limited. RCL, which operates for the benefit of Viscount Rothermere, DMGT chairman, recently bought the remaining 11% of voting shares in the trust that it did not already own. According to a declaration made to the stock exchange in August, RCL “is a holding company incorporated in Bermuda”.

The declaration reveals that “RCL is owned by a trust which is held for the benefit of Viscount Rothermere (the chairman of the DMGT) and his immediate family. Both RCL and the trust are administered in Jersey, in the Channel Islands”.

Both Bermuda and Jersey are tax havens which, as the  Mail explained in a recent article, are a “scourge” which “costs Britain billions”. While there is no suggestion of any impropriety, the complicated offshore ownership structure sits uncomfortably with the paper’s reputation for being the voice of Middle England.

A spokesman for the  Mail, which has defended its coverage and rejected any claims of antisemitism, declined to comment on whether DMGT, Rothermere or RCL enjoyed any advantages as a result of their links to tax havens.

Like the team at the BBC’s Have I Got News For You, I think that Britain can usefully do without the sort of ‘love’ that The Daily Mail and its owner have shown for our country!

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