Former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie has been slammed for his comments on the number of non-white people he spotted on the tube.
Mackenzie was the editor who ran the infamous Hillsborough story, after 97 Liverpool fans died in a tragedy inside the stadium
Three days after the disaster, The Sun published an editorial which accused people of “scapegoating” the police, saying that the disaster occurred “because thousands of fans, many without tickets tried to get into the ground just before kick-off – either by forcing their way in or by blackmailing the police into opening the gates”.
The next day, The Sun had the front-page headline, “The Truth”, and accused Liverpool fans of theft, and of urinating on and attacking police officers and emergency services.
In their book about the history of The Sun, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie wrote: “As MacKenzie’s layout was seen by more and more people, a collective shudder ran through the office [but] MacKenzie’s dominance was so total there was nobody left in the organisation who could rein him in except Murdoch. [Everyone] seemed paralysed, “looking like rabbits in the headlights”, as one hack described them. The error staring them in the face was too glaring. It obviously wasn’t a silly mistake; nor was it a simple oversight. Nobody really had any comment on it, they just took one look and went away shaking their heads in wonder at the enormity of it. It was a classic smear.”
‘Passengers of colour’
Fast forward to present day, and he had some thoughts on his recent tube journey.
MacKenzie wrote: “At around 7pm last night I took the Jubilee line from Waterloo to Westminster. In my carriage all 14 seats were taken up by passengers of colour. I was the minority. Is this a sign of multi-cultural London working or our capital being quietly taken over? Or best unsaid? You decide.”
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