Adam Lang’s ghostwriter discovers that his employer, the former Prime Minister of England, whose memoirs he has been commissioned to write, was a war criminal and should appear before the International Criminal Court. The war crimes had allegedly been committed as a subservient junior partner of George W. Bush in connection with the war in Iraq. Adam Lang is the thinly disguised Tony Blair. The public seeing Roman Polanski’s excellent film, Ghostwriter, is left with the clear impression that Tony Blair is a war criminal.
The law of defamation is designed to protect people from being publicly described as war criminals when they aren’t. In parliamentary hearings in the U.K. since the film was made, Tony Blair was confronted with a list of accusations in connection with the war in Iraq, He denied any wrongdoing and insisted that everything he has done as prime minister has served the country’s best interests.
“Libel chill” intimidates publishers, writers and filmmakers and makes them super-sensitive. Forty years ago Jack McClelland, the legendary Canadian publisher, withdrew a novel during its launch party in Toronto’s Windsor Hotel, after it had been distributed to the bookstores, because his lawyers had suddenly discovered, as a result of a misprint, that there was reason to fear a lawsuit by the premier of Quebec. A sentence in the novel had playfully cast aspersions on the honour of his young daughter. The misprint had lifted the thin disguise by naming him. But there had never been any doubt who the premier was, whose daughter the playful author had in mind. Jack McClelland’s decision, on the advice of his lawyers, was, to put it mildly, excessively cautious. At the time he was already being sued by Judy LaMarsh.
The novel was released a month later, after the page containing the misprint had been torn out of each copy and a corrected one inserted. It is highly unlikely that the premier of Quebec ever heard of the incident, or paid attention to the novel once it came out. Nor, likely, did the daughter.
Tony Blair’s friends must have got wind of Polanski’s intentions long before the film was finished. What prevented them from chilling him?
It seems inconceivable that Tony Blair felt vulnerable. He was deeply convinced of his innocence. The explanation must be that he did not want to appear to be an ogre and that he believed he could not prevent the film from being made anyway, considering the state of public opinion. In a showdown, in or out of court, he was sure his adversaries would receive better publicity than he would.
Have you a better explanation?
Eric Koch’s book, The Weimar Triangle, is available at Indigo-Chapters and in your local bookstore. 
A couple of points might, I think, usefully be made about “libel chill”.
First, given the evil that easy defamation can and does create, and the difficulty and unlikelihood of effective action to prevent it or get meaningful compensation for it, any restraining or “chilling” influence is no bad thing. The law of England, and derivatively of Canada, has historically recognized this.
Second, it’s not possible for one’s friends, or oneself, to definitively apply “chill” in advance. Having got wind that some defamatory publication is in the works, about all one may do is to try to warn off the potential defamer. After that it’s a complex and (from the victim’s point of view) uncontrollable process, governed largely by the defamer’s assessment of possible profit against the uncertainty and sometimes unintended consequences of litigation. The defamer will have put up elaborate legal defences in advance, and may well decide that expected profit outweighs a dubious future risk of being sued. Only the lawyers involved have any reasonable assurance of coming out ahead.
Of course you are right.
Conrad Black, in his day, successfully chilled off people who wanted to criticize him. And so do many other men and women in power who deserve criticism.
The author to whom I so playfully referred was Eric Koch and the novel (my first), The French Kiss. The Quebec Premier was Daniel Johnson. A few years ago I met his son (Jean Marc?) at Couchiching and gave him a copy of the book. He pretended to be interested. (After all, I had defamed his sister of whose existence I did not know.) I never heard from him again. The subject of the novel was de Gaulle in Quebec. The fear of a libel suit was totally hysterical.
Pierre-Marc Johnson.
Given the very negligeable flow of English Canadian books in francophone Quebec and vice versa – even today, and far less 40 years ago! – the chances of the potential plaintiff noticing were slim indeed. I have never heard of Daniel J having a daughter – he couldn’t sue if she were defamed, anyway.
The playful author, of course, was Eric Koch. Jack McClelland withdraw his first novel THE FRENCH KISS because he was afraid Daniel Johnson might sue. I wish you had been EK’s lawyer! The subject of the novel was de Gaulle. EK found the answer to the question why he made the VIVE LE QUEBED LIBRE speech in a plot Napoelon lll had made hundred years earlier in connection with the liberation of Italy, a plot which involved the young daughter of King Victor Emanuel of Savoy, who played the same role as Daniel Johnson did in the Quebec Liberation drama. I gave the novel to Daniel Johnson’s son at Couchiching app. ten years ago but I doubt whether he read it or told his sister about it.
I am pleased, in a way, to find that the Toronto Public Library reports it holds one copy of this fine literary work … in the Merrill Collection of Science Fiction!
http://catalogue7.torontopubliclibrary.ca/uhtbin/cgisirsi/JkOfUQ83RO/TPL/110760260/9
(On further research, it turns out that that is only for ‘record 1′ – there are a few other copies elsewhere in the system, one even on the open shelf where anyone, even a susceptible minor, could find it.)
That URL got cut off. It ends TPL/110760260/9
http://catalogue7.torontopubliclibrary.ca/uhtbin/cgisirsi/4aoodrtkgh/TPL/110760260/9
“Science fiction” is perfectly alright with me. I played with Time. So did Goethe and Marlowe in Faust.
My recollection is that Faust got an attractive woman as one of his rewards for playing with Time. How did you do?
Neither Wikipedia nor the National Assembly’s web biography of Daniel Johnson mention his having a daughter. So the chance of your defaming this person seems particularly remote, even if it had not been 40 years ago (and you can’t defame the dead, as a matter of law, so Mr. Johnson would have disqualified himself from suing, at least in common-law Canada, by his death in September of 2008. OTOH the publisher and its lawyers can’t really be faulted for not foreseeing that event, given that the man was only 53 at the time.)
He DID have a daughter. A convent girl. I can’t imagine Jack’s lawyers invented her….
And yes, I DID make a pact with the devil. My reward was this blog.