When I first saw this phrase, on a newsagent’s window in Liverpool, I wondered when this astronomical event was going to occur and if it would be visible in Morecambe.

However, after a second look, I saw the words ‘we don’t sell the Sun’ and I realised that the desired ‘total eclipse’ was of the heinous, so called ‘newspaper’.

I often refer to the Sun as a comic masquerading as a newspaper, however, this undermines the power this vile rag has. Although its sales are shrinking, along with every other newspaper in Britain, it is still a powerful source of misleading information and, often downright lies.

In Liverpool and the surrounding area, you would find it difficult to buy a copy, and you would certainly be taken to task if you were seen reading it. A bench in the city’s St. Johns Gardens bears a plaque saying, ‘This bench is designated a Sun free zone. Anybody found reading the Sun will have it confiscated and will be escorted from the city.’

Liverpool’s hatred of the Sun started in 1989 after the paper printed malicious lies about the conduct of Liverpool Football Club fans during the Hillsborough disaster, on 15th April that year,where 96 people were crushed to death. Under a Headline ‘THE TRUTH’ the Sun claimed that Liverpool fans had looted the bodies of the dead, urinated on police officers and ‘beat up brave cops who were trying to help’.

Twenty-seven years later, at the second inquest into the 96 deaths,the paper admitted that it had lied. However, twenty-seven years is a very long time to have such an accusation hanging over you or your loved ones. I would suggest that twenty-seven minutes would be too long.

My utter contempt of the Sun dates back to 1982. During the Falklands war an Argentine ship, the Belgrano was sunk by the British navy. Next day on the front page of this horrid tabloid was a picture of the sinking vessel, underneath the headline ‘GOTTCHA’. The story went on to say that we had killed 1000 ‘Argies’. How disgusting is that, to rejoice in the deaths of so many men and boys? What kind of a paper can print something like that?

To come almost up to date, Election Day 2017, the Sun ran the headline ‘Don’t Chuck Britain In The COR-BIN’ it went on to malign Jeremy Corbyn, accusing him of being a ‘terrorist’s friend’, ‘a puppet of the unions’ and a ‘Marxist extremist’, to name but a few.

I am proud of the fact that Morecambe and Lunesdale CLP has declared our opposition to the sale of this right wing propaganda machine, purporting to be a newspaper and although I am a fervent believer in free speech and the freedom of the press, I urge all our members to boycott The Sun and persuade others to do so too.

Let us see a ‘Total Eclipse of the Sun’ in Morecambe and Lunesdale.

Jean Withers