Danny Lockwood

Danny Lockwood, born 15 December 1958, is the publisher of the Rugby League newspaper League Weekly,^[1] former amateur Rugby league player. He is also the owner and publisher of The Press,^[2] a weekly local newspaper based in Batley, West Yorkshire.

As an amateur Rugby league player Lockwood was selected to represent Yorkshire and Great Britain (BARLA). His main clubs were Dewsbury Celtic and Bradford Dudley Hill. He played several seasons of rugby union in the USA and one season of semi-professional rugby league in Australia.

As a journalist Lockwood has worked on the Yorkshire Post, West Australian and Yorkshire Evening Post among other titles. In 1993 he became editor of the (now) Johnston Press weekly local Dewsbury Reporter and, later, their Lancaster Guardian title.

Lockwood launched The Press in 2002 and continued as editor and columnist through several apparent ownership changes. In 2011 Lockwood claimed that he "saved" the publication after serious financial problems.^[3]

In 2007 Lockwood was the subject of a high profile libel trial initiated by the then Dewbury MP Shahid Malik, which ended in a hung jury after a two-week trial at the Royal Courts of Justice in London. ^[4] The case was subsequently dropped after the men agreed to publish a joint statement and to meet their own costs.^[5][6]

In 2010 a large-scale protest outside Dewsbury police station was organised by left-wing activists and friends of ousted MP Shahid Malik after Lockwood wrote about the recent Cumbrian mass murderer Derrick Bird saying “If Derrick Bird had been carrying a Koran he would have been celebrated as a hero by tens of thousands, possibly more of so called “British” Muslims”.^[7]

In December 2011 Lockwood self-published a book called The Islamic Republic of Dewsbury. It is descried as "the story of a cultural revolution and social decay in the once-proud Yorkshire mill town of Dewsbury" and "a chronicle of more than 20 years of failed multi-culturalism."^[8]

In 2014, Lockwood was found guilty at Kirklees Magistrates Court of common assault following an incident outside a public house in April 2013. The conviction was overturned by Judge James Spencer sitting at Leeds Crown Court on Friday June 13, 2014 after he described prosecution witnesses as "unreliable" and ruled that the publisher acted lawfully and in self defence. ^[9]

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