MR JUSTICE WARBY
Approved Judgment
Monroe v Hopkins [2017] EWHC 433 (QB)
44.
These conclusions about meaning are not substantially affected by the further matters
relied on by the defence which I regard as, and shall refer to, as “the innuendo facts”.
The vast majority of those who read the First Tweet will have seen it on Ms Hopkins’
homepage, where it was the first item for the 2 hours and more that it was up. I would
not accept that all these readers will have been aware that 9 days earlier, on 9 May,
the war memorial had been vandalised, @PennyRed had posted her controversial
tweet, and Ms Hopkins had posted her condemnation of it. Ms Hopkins’ homepage
had 10 times as many views each month as she had followers. The extent of the
overlap is not disclosed by the evidence. It is not likely to be 100%. The press
coverage of 10 May was mainly in the liberal press. I can infer, on the basis of general
knowledge, that there is not likely to be much of an overlap between readers of The
Independent and Daily Star and those who follow Ms Hopkins or read her homepage.
45.
I would accept however that many readers of Ms Hopkins’ home page will have been
aware of the innuendo facts. It is likely that there are many who are regular readers.
But it does not follow, and I do not accept, that the hypothetical reasonable reader of
Ms Hopkins’ homepage, with that knowledge, would have taken away from the First
Tweet a meaning very different from its natural and ordinary meaning. The innuendo
meaning, to the reasonable reader, would be that Ms Monroe “condoned and approved
of the fact that in the course of an anti-government protest there had been
vandalisation by obscene graffiti of the women’s war memorial in Whitehall, a
monument to those who fought for her freedom.” This is a more specific and targeted
version of the natural and ordinary meaning. The same meaning will have been
conveyed to any others who read the First Tweet, and knew the further things relied
on by the defence.
46.
The innuendo meaning is not one of which Ms Monroe complains, though it is not
very different. I note that the natural and ordinary meaning I have found is not in the
end very different from the meaning for which Ms Hopkins herself contends. The
main difference is the word “politically” which does not seem to me to add much, but
is a rhetorical flourish that is not part of the meaning in my view.
47.
Read in isolation, the Second Tweet will have conveyed Ms Hopkins’ contempt for
Ms Monroe, and suggested to the reader that she was poisonous, worse than the
irritating @PennyRed. But there is no complaint of any natural and ordinary meaning.
The claim is based entirely on an innuendo. The argument is that “a proportion of”
those who read the Second Tweet “will have read it in the context of” the innuendo
facts. The Particulars of Claim also refer to and rely by way of innuendo on the fact
that the First Tweet had been published only shortly beforehand. I accept these points.
As to the First Tweet, it had been deleted before the Second Tweet was posted, but I
find that happened only very shortly beforehand.
48.
I find that the reasonable reader, knowing these innuendo facts, would have
understood the Second Tweet to mean that Ms Monroe “condoned and approved of
the fact that in the course of an anti-government protest there had been vandalisation
by obscene graffiti of the women’s war memorial in Whitehall, a monument to those
who fought for her freedom.” In other words, it bore the same innuendo meaning as
the First Tweet.
49.
The reader with knowledge of the facts relied on will have understood Ms Hopkins to
be acknowledging that when she sent the First Tweet she had mixed up Ms Monroe
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