January 21, 2019

In the 2015 UK general election, the Bristol branch of UKIP used the Twitter account @BristolUKIP for campaigning.

On 4 May 2015 the Vice Chairman of the Bristol branch, John Langley, posted a Tweet on the account consisting of a photograph of Sarah Champion, the Labour Member of Parliament for Rotherham, together with two men. One of those men was Zahir Monir, the claimant. The text of the 4 May Tweet, referring to the photograph, read:

“Sarah champion labour candidate for Rotherham stood with 2 suspended child grooming taxi drivers DO NOT VOTE LABOUR”.

Mr Monir was not a taxi driver, and no one suggested that he had been involved in any “child grooming”. The allegation was false.

Mr Monir issued defamation proceedings against Stephen Wood, the then Chairman of the Bristol UKIP branch, contending that he was libelled in the Tweet and that Mr Wood was legally responsible for it. Initially, the claim form also named Mr Langley as a defendant, but Mr Monir chose not to serve the proceedings on Mr Langley.

In terms of the meaning of the Tweet, Mr Justice Nicklin found that the ordinary reasonable reader would understand it to mean that the two men were involved in the sexual abuse of children.

Further, there was evidence that the Tweet had been published to ten identifiable individuals who understood the Tweet to refer to Mr Monir. There was also an unquantifiable number of further publishees who were members of WhatsApp groups and who were likely to have been able to identify Mr Monir because of the connection of the groups to the Rotherham area.

The key issue was whether Mr Wood was responsible for publishing the Tweet, despite not being the person who actually wrote it and posted it.

The facts were that the Twitter account was set up by Mr Wood on 1 April 2013 and it was registered using his email address. At that point, Mr Wood had effective and sole control of the Twitter account. At all times, ultimate control remained vested in Mr Wood because his email was registered to the account and he could reclaim sole control of the account by resetting the password.

However, responsibility for operating the account was given to Mr Langley in May 2014. He was provided with the login details and, as Campaign Manager, was given and assumed responsibility for posting material on behalf of Bristol UKIP. Mr Wood did not, therefore, have any direct participation in publication of the Tweet, nor did he authorise it. He did not write it and had no knowledge of its contents before it was published by Mr Langley. Mr Langley was the only person who participated directly in its original publication.

However, Nicklin J found that Mr Langley had acted as Mr Wood’s agent and that therefore Mr Wood was responsible for publication of the Tweet.

Mr Wood had entrusted the campaigning function to Mr Langley. Mr Wood gave instructions to Mr Langley (which Mr Langley accepted) to submit any content he proposed posting for approval, but that system was never observed in practice. He also instructed him not to post any racist or xenophobic material. However, Mr Wood did not monitor Mr Langley’s social media output. Mr Wood could have chosen to regain personal control over the posting of material on social media channels, but he was content to delegate the task entirely to Mr Langley. Essentially, the Tweet was posted by Mr Langley in the course of, and for the purpose of, executing the task that had been delegated to him by Mr Wood, i.e. as Campaign Manager. Mr Wood could not escape liability because Mr Langley acted against the general prohibition on publication of material that was an attack on others. He was acting within the scope of the job that had been specifically delegated to him by Mr Wood.

Nicklin J also found that Mr Wood had subsequently ratified the publication. The fundamental question was whether, on the particular facts, the defendant’s knowledge of the defamatory publication was sufficient to draw the inference that he had authorised and should be liable for its continued publication. In Nicklin J’s view, the evidence of Mr Wood’s knowledge of the Tweet was sufficient to draw the inference that he had acquiesced in and thereby authorised its continued publication. Mr Monir had complained about the Tweet, at which point Mr Wood knew of its gist and substantive content, even if he had not looked at its particular wording. If he had chosen to take the complaint seriously, rather than dismissing it, it would have been a simple matter for him to locate the Tweet and delete it. The process of removing it was not onerous in the slightest.

Given that the Twitter account was registered in Mr Wood’s name and he retained control over it, and because he was the Chairman of Bristol UKIP, it was his responsibility (if not his duty) to take the complaint he received seriously and, if he was in any doubt about to what the complaint related, to investigate it properly. In Nicklin J’s judgment, Mr Wood had all the information he needed to know full well the nature of Mr Monir’s complaint. Therefore, Nicklin J found that Mr Wood was also liable for the continued publication of the Tweet after he was put on notice of its publication by Mr Monir’s complaint.

Given the serious nature of the allegation made in the Tweet, Nicklin J had no hesitation in drawing the inference that the publication caused serious harm to Mr Monir’s reputation under s 1 of the Defamation Act 2013.

As for damages, Nicklin J noted that Mr Wood had refused to apologise to Mr Monir or to withdraw the allegation. Nicklin J said that had the libel been published in a national newspaper, an award of £250,000 or more could easily have been justified. However, he had to ensure that the award was proportionate to the limited scale of publication and it also had to take proper account of the difficulties of causation. Taking all these matters into account, Nicklin J considered the appropriate award to be £40,000. (Zahir Monir v Steve Wood [2018] EWHC 3525 (QB) (19 December 2018) — to read the judgment in full, click here).