“Bedfellows” is a loaded term sometimes used in British left-wing politics. “Stablemates” is a useful word the media employs to describe two publications with the same ownership. There is also the concept of the “sister publication” to throw into the mix.
All of these terms are relevant when discussing the recent takeover of the Tribune magazine, the UK’s venerable journal of left-wing politics, by the owner of the TV station Islam Channel. For it is essentially a merger of two very different traditions within the media landscape. There is another well-known phrase in revolutionary politics – “the ends justify the means”. This is clearly the motivation behind the tie-up between the two organisations.
In one sense, this coming together has been more than two decades in the making – not just within the narrow confines of the British media landscape but in geopolitics. I say two decades because there was a moment of fusion before.
The former editor of Tribune, Mark Seddon, caused something of a sensation on Fleet Street in 2005 when he turned in his keys to the editor’s filing cabinet and signed up for the post of Al Jazeera English’s UN correspondent. Two world views came together with this appointment.
Seddon had been a thorn in the side of then-UK prime minister Tony Blair’s New Labour project. As he wrote at the time of his departure, Seddon had seen enough of the “control freakery” that characterised the high points of Mr Blair’s premiership. “A dissident journalist’s life on the inside of “new” Labour, I like to think, has given me all the training I need for what is to come,” he wrote as he went to New York to report amid the fallout from the US-led invasion of Iraq. “But for conflict, I think I prefer diplomacy.”
Indeed, Seddon went on to become a speechwriter for Ban Ki-moon after the latter took over as UN secretary general in 2007.
However, the meeting point in 2005 of the alternative coverage needed at a dedicated political journal and the launch of the international coverage that came on Al Jazeera English was no stretch. In the wake of the political divisions that came about in the UK over the Iraq war, there had been an apotheosis between radical protest politics and the European left on the one side, and communities that felt the need to define and then resist what they viewed as an overbearing West.
Such a fusion certainly existed during the career of erstwhile Labour MP George Galloway and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. One only has to look at how Iran’s revolutionary establishment and the Venezuelan leadership are conjoined on international politics to see the international aspect of this phenomenon. It is about fighting the hegemonic, traditional powers and scuppering their designs by mobilising with what is positioned as “the voice of the people”.
Tribune’s current leadership has welcomed the involvement of Islam Channel owner Mohamed Ali Harrath. For those unfamiliar with the broadcaster, it provides a rolling news and discussion format familiar around the world. Within the UK, it is available across the country and regulated by Ofcom, the government-approved independent regulator. Over the years, Ofcom has ruled several times on the channel’s output and even issued a fine of £40,000 (more than $52,000) in 2023.
Mr Harrath built his empire in the UK after fleeing Tunisia. He has spoken about his “very conservative” family background and that growing up, he was inspired by the Islamist uprising in Iran with its combination of religion and revolution. He said Islam Channel was set up after he spent time as an activist, printing leaflets and distributing clandestine magazines. He also published a magazine before the licence to broadcast became available. He has spoken of his involvement in various businesses. The sources of Islam Channel’s financial backing are unclear, with Mr Harrath attributing some of its funding from friends who were able to generate investment to keep the channel going.
Jon Trickett, a Labour MP and the chair of the Tribune advisory board, has backed the bailout. “The UK is crying out for an alternative to the establishment media,” he said. “Tribune aims to build on its historic socialist and internationalist legacy and speak with, and for, a new generation.”
Paul Anderson, a former editor of the title, says this interplay between domestic and international concerns has been a perpetual issue in editorial direction going back to the 1930s – and especially now, with Labour in power. The controversies out of the first year of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government now combines with the fracturing of the left and the rise of a set of Gaza-focused independents as a caucus in Parliament. “It’s definitely Corbynite and there is space for something like that,” Anderson said. “The question is, having missed the internet, if it can find an opening of that kind.”
At the same time, Anderson can’t help but observe that the new partnership is “most bizarre”. Yet contradictions between the differing audiences of the sister outlets will matter little. For one, the magazine’s staff are happy to keep going when failure was the only other option. As for the new ownership, it will gain access to a different political entry point. And keeping that access – for the two publications to push their shared antipathy towards western hegemony – will be the most important thing.
Politics in the UK is at a fork in the road. That’s what puts Tribune’s takeover by Islam Channel's owner in play. It’s about having a voice amid the potential fracturing of the progressive left that could well match the break-up of the right over the past year. This explains why these two very different stablemates have come together.
