Bad reflection

A grim campaign targeting shoplifters over corporate criminals is a reminder that The Mirror is no less reactionary than The Sun.

Previously: Scary monsters and super-spies
The British press looks under trucks for terrifying terrorists and in parliament's crumbling cupboards to find super-spies. Reality is rather less-overheated.

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Vivienne Jeffreys is a sign of the times. She was banned from her local supermarket — without any explanation from the manager. 

She is just one of 38,000 British shoppers who are being kept out of stores merely on suspicion of shoplifting. 

Shop managers say they have to act as judge and jury because it’s the only way to deal with the rising tide of petty thefts. 

Vivienne was outside her local KwikSave in Abergavenny when she was approached by the manager and told not to use the store. 

— ‘Left off the shelf’, The Daily Mirror, 09 Aug 1993

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Mark Twain didn’t say, “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes,” despite the many web pages that claim he did. His more complicated line — from a commentary on his own 1865 story ‘The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’ — was triggered by his discovery a Greek version of the frog tale was not, in fact, ancient but created by the English academic Arthur Sidgwick… based on the Twain story:

NOTE. November, 1903. When I became convinced that the “Jumping Frog” was a Greek story two or three thousand years old, I was sincerely happy, for apparently here was a most striking and satisfactory justification of a favorite theory of mine—to wit, that no occurrence is sole and solitary, but is merely a repetition of a thing which has happened before, and perhaps often.

My version of the rhyme is: Tabloid journalism is merely a repetition of cheap tricks and scares. Some repetitions turn up in a single week, and others can take months or years to come around again.

The Mirror’s front page story today was depressingly familiar:

YEAR OF THE SHOPLIFTER

» Thefts soar but where are the prosecutions?
» We demand law change to stop ‘epidemic’
» Send us pix & CCTV… we’ll publish them

Despite the paper having published hundreds of stories on the cost of living crisis, hunger, and the explosion in food bank usage, today’s splash dismissed any connection between increased shoplifting and poverty:

Workers say some crooks pull items from shelves in front of them and return to steal more – as they believe they can get away with it. The Mirror is today joining calls for action with a list of demands to stop the scourge. And we will publish your pictures and CCTV of shoplifting to shame the culprits.

While some people believe the cost-of-living crisis and soaring prices is partially behind the rise in shoplifting, retail expert Scott Dixon said the problem is mainly down to shoplifters becoming more shameless. 

He said: “It is worse than ever. Shoplifters know the odds are stacked in their favour and are becoming bolder. Shoplifting has effectively been decriminalised. More must be done to protect retailers and staff. We need tougher laws backed up by the police and courts. Smaller retailers cannot afford to take the hit and are giving up their livelihoods, which has repercussions on communities. We may also see larger retailers closing stores in key locations.”

The Mirror is vague about the background and qualifications of its “retail expert” because Scott Dixon is not an independent voice. He’s a consultant who previously worked at a consultancy focused on “investing in, transforming, and managing retail and town centre spaces” and has now founded his own outfit focused on “employee wellness” aka helping employers to extract more from staff.

On any other day, the Mirror might speak to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation or The Trussell Trust, but it knows both organisations would off ‘inconvenient’ quotes here. Instead, it speaks only to managers, the Association of Convenience Stores — the trade body — and Shadow Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, who has never met a ‘crackdown’ she didn’t like. The latter says:

Shoplifting, antisocial behaviour, vandalism and town centre crime have shot up. Yet the gangs and vandals are getting away with crime with no consequences at all. That kind of lawlessness is a total disgrace.

The Trussell Trust’s Hunger In The UK report — published in June — says one in seven people in Britain experienced hunger over the last year due to lack of money (approximately 11.3 million people). Meanwhile, the Food Foundation’s Broken Plate report into the state of the nation’s food system reveals that the poorest fifth of the population have to spend 50% of their income to meet the cost of a healthy diet, while the richest fifth need only spend 11%.

As well as hunger, shoplifting is often driven by substance abuse issues. How do the Mirror and Labour want to solve that? By demanding more prison sentences. Prison mental health services in England, 2023, a report commissioned by NHS England and prepared by the Centre for Mental Health, found that nine out of ten prisoners have at least one mental health or substance misuse problem.

Even if you put aside the moral horror of incarcerating some of the most damaged and traumatised members of society — and Labour and the tabloid absolutely will — you might imagine that Keir Starmer’s cuts-obsessed party might consider the cost of imprisonment (approximately £65,000 to reach conviction, then £42,670, a year once someone is jailed, according to Ministry of Justice figures)

Then again, as Director of Public Prosecutions, Starmer oversaw the response to the 2011 riots when a student with no previous convictions was jailed for 6 months for stealing bottles of water worth £3.50 and saw a Portugese man deported over the theft of a single scoop of ice cream. Lord Macdonald, former head of the prosecution service in England and Wales, said at the time that the sentences represented a “collective loss of proportion” and lacked “humanity or justice”.

Starmer and Labour have form, and the Mirror has often been an accomplice.

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CRIME THREAT TO CITY SHOPS

Britain’s bosses have appealed to the Government to help reverse the rising tide of crime. A shock report from the British Chambers of Commerce warns that crime and vandalism is hurting business and threatening to destroy Britain’s city shopping centres. It says: 

“From shoplifting to ramraiding, graffiti to criminal damage, crime is fraying the fabric of Britain’s towns and cities.” 

— The Daily Mirror, 3 January 1994

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The Mirror could have dedicated its front page to wage theft, food price inflation, the rampant price gouging by retailers, or the reality of hunger and addiction in the UK. Instead, it chose to target desperate people and encouraged its readers to join in with a campaign to “shame the crooks”.

It could be different. In his 1973 review of the documentary Cudlipp And Be Damned, about Hugh Cudlipp — The Mirror’s most legendary editor — Clive James writes:

A lawyer, Mr Ellis Birk, set the general tone of the programme, and the specific intensity of his own future contributions to it, by leading off with the ringing assertion that Cudlipp was ‘the greatest tabloid journalist of all time.’ It was hard to still a wicked interior voice which insisted on pointing out that this was tantamount to calling a man the greatest manufacturer of potato-pistols who had ever lived, or the greatest salesman of sticky sweets in the history of dentistry. Nevertheless such a naughty itch required ruthlessly to be suppressed. Anyone aware of what tabloid journalism has become since the Mirror’s heyday, and of what tabloid journalism generally consisted of during the Mirror’s heyday, will hasten to assert that Cudlipp ran an outstanding newspaper of its type — he backed good causes and appealed to the best side of the common people.

The Mirror, before it was sold Cudlipp and Cecil King, was owned by Lord Northcliffe and part of the same stable as The Daily Mail and as culpable in admiration of Hitler and promotion of Oswald Moseley (In 1934, it ran the headline "Give the Blackshirts a helping hand" urging readers to join the British Union of Fascists and gave the address to send applications).

Since Cudlipp retired in 1973, the Mirror has been on a long decline, one that has seen it owned by Robert Maxwell, edited by Piers Morgan, and now a limp sibling to The Daily Express and an army of awful local news websites that split at the seams with clickbait and pop-ups. Headlines like YEAR OF THE SHOPLIFTER are just a reminder that the Mirror is as reactionary as The Sun, just not as successful.

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