Kelvin McFilth - Sun In Trouble

[Update at end of post]

After its disgraced and deeply unpleasant former editor Kelvin McFilth had once more made the name of the paper mud all over Merseyside, the Sun moved swiftly last night to suspend his column. His fellow inhabitants of 13th floor offices in the Baby Shard bunker distanced themselves from the vicious and racist attack on Everton footballer Ross Barkley. And Kel himself said he didn’t do it, honestly.

It won’t wash. The Murdoch goons cannot separate themselves from their former editor. Worse, they knew what he was like, his backstory, his attitudes, his antipathy towards the city of Liverpool for having the audacity to stand up to his bullying, bigotry and dishonesty. Whoever took the decision to re-hire him knew who they were hiring. And this wasn’t the first recent attack he’d made on the city and its people.

After Kel compared Barkley to a gorilla - the footballer has a Nigerian grandfather - the BBC report told “The Sun apologised ‘for the offence caused’ and added that it was ‘unaware of Barkley's heritage’ … In a statement of his own, MacKenzie reiterated the latter sentiment, adding that it was ‘beyond parody’ to describe the column as ‘racist’”.

The Sun’s sub-editors and other staff who saw that column and failed to raise any objection to it will hope that gets them off the hook, but Kel’s claim won’t save him. This, after all, is the thug who went after a Muslim woman for wearing a headscarf, who was one of the main demonisers of Winston Silcott, and whose attitude to those who are not white extended to referring to Mahatma Gandhi as an “overrated coon”.

MacKenzie’s attitude was encapsulated in his 1980s rant “You just don't understand the readers, do you, eh? He's the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he's afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (serious news)”. He wasn’t unaware of what he was doing.

And when the Telegraph tried - under the editorship of the equally unpleasant Tony Gallagher, now at the Sun - to engage Kel’s services as a pundit, a revolt by names such as Alan Hansen, who said basically that if Kel stayed, he went, that attempt at rehabilitation was swiftly ended. Kel was poisonous. Yet the Sun re-hired him.

Even after last year’s verdicts from the new Hillsborough inquests - that the 96 who died had been unlawfully killed - the Sun kept MacKenzie on. And he kept on sneering and snarking at Scousers, vindictive and unrepentant to the end (the offending column was published the day before the 28th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster).

Peter Wilby at the Staggers asked the question at that time: “If it took the justice system 27 years to reach the right verdicts, it is surely not too late for the Sun to sack MacKenzie in disgrace and for Murdoch to issue one of his ‘most humble day of my life’ apologies”.

Still the Sun kept him on. The paper’s management even gave him his own office on the 13th floor. And a £300,000 a year salary. And carte blanche to plug his piss-poor price comparison website. And that is why the Sun can’t escape the blowback today.

The Sun is in check. Whether it is in check mate will soon be determined.

[UPDATE 1215 hours: on the 28th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster, the Liverpool Echo has now revealed that Everton FC have banned the Sun from the club's premises. Kel's last column is believed to be the last straw that broke this particular camel's back.

The report tells "The publication, which has been reviled on Merseyside ever since its disgraceful coverage of the Hillsborough disaster in 1989, will no longer be able to send reporters to cover matches at Goodison Park or press conferences at Finch Farm".

That's another reason why Kelvin McFilth had his column pulled. The boycott of the Sun across Merseyside has been given fresh impetus, and rightly so]