Martin Sixsmith
|
|
Martin Sixsmith (born 1954) is a British journalist and writer.
Sixsmith was educated at Oxford, Harvard, the Sorbonne and in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad). He joined the BBC in 1980 where he worked as a foreign correspondent, most notably reporting from Moscow during the end of the Cold War. He left the broadcasting corporation in 1997 to become a press officer at the Department of Social Security, working for Harriet Harman, for Alistair Darling and later for Marconi plc, where he had to handle coverage of a massive fall in the company's share price.
In December 2001, he joined the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions as Director of Communications in time to become embroiled in the second act of the scandal over Jo Moore. Moore was special adviser to the transport secretary Stephen Byers and had been the subject of much public condemnation for suggesting that a controversial announcement should be "buried" during the media coverage of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In February 2002 the row flared up again when a leak to the press alleged that Moore had made further attempts to "bury" bad news on the day of a major event. It was backed up by a copy of an email from Sixsmith saying "Princess Margaret is being buried [on Friday]. I will absolutely not allow anything else to be". The leak was made on Wednesday 13 February and the story broke that evening as the Daily Express and Daily Mirror went to press. Moore said the email was a fabrication, and on Thursday 14 February the prime minister's official spokesman Godric Smith said that no such email existed, an assertion which was repeated in the House of Commons by Leader of the House Robin Cook. Later that day, however, transport department officials started to brief the press that an email had been sent from Sixsmith to Byers and copied to Moore - the "fabrication" was merely that the leaked version been edited to make it more damaging to Moore. This turn of events contradicted Downing Street's claims, and a strongly-worded letter was sent to Sixsmith reminding him of the responsibilities of civil servants to serve, not embarrass, the government.
On Friday 15 February the department's Permanent Secretary told Sixsmith that his position was untenable. Officials in the press office had acted to undermine the government. Byers announced the resignations of both Moore and Sixsmith that afternoon. A week later Sixsmith gave an interview in which he said that he had not agreed to resign; he had suspended his meeting with the permanent secretary in order to go to a hospital appointment, and had first heard about his "resignation" on the radio. Furthermore, he claimed that Byers had insisted on his departure as the price for losing the services of Moore.
On 7 May the DTLR announced his resignation, admitting that he had not resigned on 15 February and that the announcement had been based on a misunderstanding. This statement also said that "no blame is being apportioned" for the "unfortunate events" of February, a position which a House of Commons committee noted as being incompatible with the department's earlier view that Sixsmith's position had been untenable.
Sixsmith was widely expected to write a memoir or autobiography in the wake of his departure; instead he produced a novel about near-future politics called Spin.
External links
- BBC News profile of Sixsmith (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1822221.stm)
- "These Unfortunate Events" (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200102/cmselect/cmpubadm/303/30302.htm) - report of the House of Commons Select Committee on Public Administration