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Regional secretary with the National Education Union
Media attacks on the left are nothing new
From the Chartists to left-wing councils in the ’80s to Tony Benn, all have received their share of vitriol from the right-wing press, says KEITH FLETT
Media attacks on leftwingers are nothing new. Tony Benn was often vilified in a similar manner to Jeremy Corbyn today

VICTOR SERGE, the anarchist turned Bolshevik, and later critic of the direction the Russian Revolution was to take, wrote towards the end of his life in the late 1940s: “On several occasions a press with a vast circulation has hurled filth at me because I spoke the truth.”

It is a reminder that attacks on left-wing activists and writers by media owned by the rich and powerful are nothing new.

Indeed in the 1840s the leaders of the Chartist movement were often to be found being vilified in the press. Particular attention was paid, by Punch for example, to caricaturing the black leader of London Chartism in 1848 William Cuffay.

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