On Tuesday, conservative author Douglas Murray won a libel claim against the Guardian Media Group, whose subsidiary The Observer ran an article last August that accused him of “supporting violent racist attacks” against migrants during anti-immigration protests in 2024. The Observer is the Sunday edition of The Guardian.
Those protests followed three young girls at a Taylor Swift–themed dance lesson in Southport, a town in northwest England, being stabbed by Axel Rudakubana. The original article quoted Murray about another issue in 2023 but made it seem as though he was talking about the 2024 riots.
“In late 2023 the Claimant was interviewed by John Anderson, the former Deputy Australian Prime Minister about Israel, immigration and Islam,” Murray’s statement to the court noted. “A video of the interview was published on Mr. Anderson’s website and YouTube on 8 November 2023. In the interview Mr.Murray expressed his outrage that a demonstration had been organised by Muslim groups, Palestinian groups and pro-Hamas groups to take place on Remembrance Sunday in London. He stated that: ‘the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing.’”
The statement continued:
On 6 August 2024, in the immediate aftermath of the riots, an edited version of the interview was, for a short period, uploaded on Mr. Anderson’s website and YouTube, which gave the misleading impression that Mr. Murray was encouraging the riots. On 11 August 2024, The Observer published an article by the journalist Kenan Malik called The roots of this unrest lie in the warping of genuine working-class grievances. The article repeated the words spoken by Mr. Murray to John Anderson, that “the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing,” however, the article wrongly reported that Mr. Murray had made this statement in connection with the riots, which in fact took place over 6 months after Mr. Murray’s interview took place.
Furthermore, the article stated that Mr. Murray’s reference to “these people” during his interview with Mr Anderson had been to the migrants who had been attacked during the riots. The article stated that Mr. Murray was angry towards the migrants who were inside mosques and hotels during the riots who were “fearing for their lives, worshippers seeking refuge, those trying to ward off racist attackers on the streets.” The article therefore accused Mr. Murray of supporting the violent racist attacks made against migrants which took place during the riots of the summer of 2024.
The Guardian later corrected the August 11, 2024, article by The Observer’s Kenan Malik. The corrected version stated:
“The British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing,” the Spectator’s Douglas Murray told former Australian deputy prime minister John Anderson. The comment might sound like a response to the recent riots, but was actually recorded last year (the edited clip of the old interview was uploaded on Anderson’s website last week, but has since been taken down).
After Murray won the case in court, he wrote on X:
Legal update: Today I won a major libel claim against Guardian Media/Observer (@guardian ) for its lazy journalism. Last year the paper made very serious and false accusations against me, based on unchecked claims on social media. On 11th August 2024 The Observer published an article by Kenan Malik ( @kenanmalik ) in connection with the riots in the UK. Mr. Malik falsely accused me of supporting violent attacks against migrants. This was not true and did not make it to the online edition.
Nevertheless such baseless accusations have to be stopped before other careless ‘journalists’ take fake news from the internet and repeat such damaging allegations. Today in Court in London a statement was read out by Guardian media recording the absolute falsity of the allegations and recording payment to me of substantial damages and my legal costs.
