Columnist Peter Hitchens

Technical Hitchens
rebuffs leader’s
invitation

We mentioned last Friday - and again on Sunday - the reaction of Boston Borough Council leader Peter Bedford to the four-page feature in the Mail on Sunday by their controversial columnist Peter Hitchens – which was dismissed in an uncharacteristically fluent statement as “clichéd, jaundiced, inaccurate and one-sided” - before the respected and beloved leader then invited Mr Hitchens to revisit Boston to meet people working to make the town a better place to live.
We had also been critical of Peter Hitchens’s piece – though not in such strong terms - and were surprised to receive an e-mail from him after “a friend” drew his attention to Boston Eye.
We’ll spare you the details, but we debated various issues over a number of hours before reaching something of a truce.
On the charge of lack of balance, he told us: “I specifically and rather pointedly don’t attack the local authorities for what has happened, or for their handling of the matter. I don’t say nobody is doing anything about it. I say that the local people have virtually no say, for or against, over what has happened to them, which results from decisions taken elsewhere. I really cannot see what rule, moral or journalistic, obliges me to seek boilerplate on-the-record self-serving quotes from people I haven’t even mentioned, let alone attacked ... such things take up valuable space better used for reporting the truth.”
Whilst we were in contact, we mentioned our view that Mr Hitchens would be unlikely to take up Councillor Bedford’s invitation to come back to Boston.
“I’m working on it." he told us. "I like Boston and would happily visit it at any time, but I feel I have written as much as I wish to say about it for some time, and am more than happy with its accuracy and truth.
“But I am slightly baffled as to what right or authority he has to ‘invite’ me anywhere.
“I am also puzzled as to what authority he has to make these comments.
“Does he - on this or any other matter - speak for the people of the town? 
"Did they elect him to behave in this fashion?
"Do they wish him to continue to do so?
“On the first point, we still have freedom of movement in this country, and it seems to me that I can come and go to Boston whenever I fancy.
“I reject his implication that I didn’t do a proper job the first time I came, and can produce correspondence from Bostonians who think that I got it dead right.
“He plainly doesn’t speak for them.
“Perhaps I should invite him to take a proper look at the town of which he is council leader, before loudly denouncing perfectly accurate and truthful articles on the Lincolnshire airwaves and in the local papers.
“I never said anything about him or his council in my article. But he has chosen to have a spat with me, which I didn’t seek but cannot wholly ignore.
"The BBC says he called my article ‘disgusting’.
“If this is so – and he hasn’t yet taken the opportunity to deny it – then it is hard for me to treat his ‘invitation’ as the friendly and helpful action it purports to be.”
In a later e-mail, Mr Hitchens added: “By the way, councillor whatshisname has now told me he has found an inaccuracy in my article. The explosion in the illegal distillery couldn’t be heard five miles away. Bang to rights! It’s a fair cop! I got it out of The Independent. The whole article collapses as a result. I have ‘invited’ him to read my article properly, as he doesn’t seem to have done it properly the first time.
“I thought, and continue to think, that the article was highly sympathetic to the plight of all involved. I defy anyone to show otherwise …

Mail on Sunday's Review feature of 18th September

“That is why I am so exasperated by this silly carping. "What these people object to is that it was written at all.”
Peter Hitchens’s article also appears on the Mail Online website in the Rightminds section, with this note attached: “The following article was published on Sunday 18th September in the Mail on Sunday. It has aroused a certain amount of controversy in Boston itself. The leader of the Borough Council has attacked it as 'clichéd, jaundiced, inaccurate and one-sided'. I have also received messages from Boston residents endorsing its message. Obviously it has a wider application, as many parts of Britain are now experiencing very large scale migration. I have posted it here so that it can be more easily found by those who are interested in discussing this important subject.”
You can read it by clicking here   and you can also read comments left by others.
Finally, we note with amusement that the “friend” who alerted Mr Hitchens to our blog was local landlady and former Boston Borough Councillor Anne Dorrian.
As a one time councillor she may  presumably have thought that this keeps her in some sort of “loop” – although we have to say that if this was the case, the idea seems more loopy than anything else!

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