Lines of communication re-opened with Oxford Mail
At the beginning of November 2003 the IWCA publicly announced its intention to boycott the Oxford Mail. This decision was not taken lightly considering the paper’s monopoly on Oxfordshire’s print
media. However, it was felt that the Mail had gone too far by endangering a Blackbird Leys family, who had been victims of a teenage gang, with its decision to report their details in spite of a request by
IWCA councillor Stuart Craft on the family’s behalf not to do so.
Prior to this relations between the Oxford Mail and the IWCA had been strained. The IWCA was being written out of local political reports on a regular basis and what little coverage there was of the
organisation was increasingly hostile.
Eight months on, however, the Oxford Mail has a new editor and local government reporter. More importantly, the Blackbird Leys correspondent responsible for the article that put the local family in
danger has left the paper. These changes at the Mail appear to have resulted in a more balanced approach towards the IWCA, with a number of unbiased articles on the organisation appearing following
the recent elections.
In light of this the IWCA has discussed lifting the boycott with the family on whose behalf we took the action. While we still feel the Oxford Mail should have the decency to apologise, privately
at least, to the family, it was agreed that this should not be a sticking point.
Accordingly, we have now decided to re-open communications with the paper. For this reason, when Reg Little of the Oxford Times—the Mail’s sister paper—contacted Stuart Craft to interview
him as part of a feature on the IWCA, we decided to agree to the interview as a stepping stone to resuming relations with the Oxford Mail.
The resulting article: ‘A party that stands a class apart’, appeared in the 9 July edition of the Oxford Times.
14 July 2004
| 
