Friday 18 May 2012

2286 Leveson Sir Harold Evans destroys Murdoch over Times acquisition

The process of the Leveson Inquiry is having a powerful immediate chilling effect on the role of the print media on British Society, and in particular on the relationship between politicians and the Newspapers editors and newspaper owners. Lord Leveson is covering much of the history of these relationships over the past fifty years although as he and his team have been at pains to point put, it is neither within their remit, or practical for him to adjudicate on historical controversies and disputes.

The same applies for the allegations and counter allegations regarding the role the role of Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, Prime Minister David Cameron in wanting to maintain good relations with Rupert Murdoch and his entourage because of the power they and their opponents believed he possessed in changing governments at the times of General Elections. These two issues one past and one present will I believe become the focus of his eventual recommendations on the relationship between the body politic and the fourth estate,

I begin with the past, and the story of how Mr Murdoch came to acquire Times and Sunday Times and which led his building his empire in the UK with the Sun and the News of the World and B Sky B. The information made available so far provides insight and aids understanding of the real nature of political power in the UK over the past fifty years.  There are indeed some dark and powerful forces at work and lend to the conspiracy theory of secret meetings and private associations between international capitalists and the political leaders of the leading capitalist economies.

How else does one explain the rise of Thompson family and its continuing affect on economies and jobs across the world where the first of the dynasty, Roy Thompson, who controlled the Sunday Times and then the Times, The Scotsman and Scottish Television from the 1950’s?
Roy Thompson who controlled only one newspaper to begin with created a half a billion company but his son Kenneth who was given no choice but to take over the company from his father in 1976 moved into world wide business wheeling and dealing on a grader scale leading to his son inheriting a 30 billion dollar concern which according to latest figures employees some 38000 individuals with annual profits of over one billion. The grandfather created a family holding company which tied his descendants so that they effectively have had no choice but to undertake the roles he determined for them. Roy was the Machiavellian controller who it can be said Rupert wanted to become for his own family and which appears to now be ending in failure.

It is worth noting that Thompson’s, now Thompson Reuteurs, operate through five divisions Financial, Healthcare, Legal, scientific, Tax and accounting, such has been the move away from newspaper ownership and the ramifications of their worldwide power.

To understand the what happened in relation to the sale of the Times to Rupert Murdoch when the Prime Minister under one presumes the influence of Thompson and Murdoch combined reject the management buy out bid led by its editor Sir Harold Evans, one has to understand the significance of the paper  on British  political life for the past 220 years(1885) and that it supported the Conservative Party throughout the 20th century under the ownership of Lord Northcliffe  and the Astor Family(1922-1966 and then Thompson until the sale to Murdoch in 1981). The only time the paper supported the Labour Party government was between 2001 and 2006.  It was not until 1966 that the paper printed news on its front page for the first time previous covered in notices.

The paper had been closed by industrial action for a year and the power of the then print union threatened to destroy the print media industry in the UK by the refusal to adapt to modern production methods. Several individuals  and groups expressed  an interest to acquire the Times  when the Thompson’s decided to cut their loses,  Robert Maxell( I have Joe Haines biography), Tiny Rowland and Lord Rothermere in additional to the buy out group where there was in fact no question of their bid succeeding because of the unanimity between Thompson, Thatcher and the rest of the British establishment together with the intelligentsia of the Labour party that  someone was needed who had the means to smash the union dictatorship once and for all. Had Murdoch not succeeded New Labour would never have been created let alone been elected to power for longer than the reign of Thatcher. This was no different when at the time of Miners strike in the mid eighties the Labour Leadership at national and local level stood square with the miners on the picket line while letting it be known to anyone who cared to listen that Arthur Scargill could not be allowed to win.

Before reviewing the evidence given to Leveson by Sir Harold Evans appointed as part of the deal to success William Rees-Mogg whose son was elected to the House of Commons for North Somerset in 2010 as a known euro sceptic, it is important to mention that negotiations took place with trade union leaders who agreed to the introduction of new printing methods as a consequence of which the staff of the Times and the Sundays were reduced by half. It is also important to mention that the Times and the Sunday Times were previously separate enterprises and have remained so since despite the joint ownership and proximity of newsrooms. Another perspective is that while Murdoch attempted to control the political line of all his British newspapers, he was constrained by the terms of the deal with the Times Foundation Directors and concentrated on the biggest circulation and profitable Sun whose readership possessed the greatest number of floating voters.
Under Murdoch the Times changed its format from broadsheet to compact size in 2004 and then divided its printing between London, Merseyside and Glasgow, enabling colour printing on each page, started to publish supplements on Saturday and the introduction of Times Two and took a great swipe at British Church of England and Catholic orthodoxy becoming the first national media enterprise to promote same sex marriages two months ago! The Times has an estimated readership of 400000 of whom only 40% are said to vote Conservative and 29% Liberal Democrats with Labour 26%

Sir Harold Evans is well known for his antipathy to Rupert Murdoch since resigning from the Editorship of the Times a year after his appointment. He had established himself as an important respected editor with the Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. Previously he was editor of the Northern Echo during which time he was instrumental in their campaign for a national programme for the detection of cervical cancer.

As mentioned the Sunday Times has a different history to that of the Times. The paper was launched in 1821 and for 50 years was owned by Alfred Harmsworth. It was acquired by Thompson in 1959 when he took over the Kemsley group rather than a specific acquisition. Under Harold Evans the paper became known for its campaigning investigative journalism and which led me to become one of its regular readers. In fact with the development of the supplements the Sunday Times could fill the day along with Sunday Roast and Sunday evening TV.

Sir Harold established his reputation by challenging the drug company responsible for the use of Thalidomide which resulted in a ruling in the European Court of Human Rights which brought compensation to the families and forced the British Government to change the law which prevented the reporting of civil cases. He was also responsible for the exposure of the spy Kim Philby and the publication of the Crossman Diaries (I have 700 pages edited by Anthony Howard). Following an affair with a journalist 25 years his junior Evans divorced his first wife and was married in New York where he moved in 1984 where he established himself as one of the World’s 50 press heroes, becoming a citizen in 1993. He is most well known for the books on the American Century and They Made America. He has held a number of editorships and management positions including that of President and publisher of Random House.

For some reason Sir Harold’s two statements and an exhibit have not been published, nor was his willingness to take a plane to give his evidence in person. Neither the BBC nor ITV carried his evidence on the News Channels or attention given by the Guardian Independent and Telegraph whose focus is on the heavyweight politicians giving evidence next week together with Adam Smith political adviser to Jeremy Hunt and Frederic Michel the Murdock PR guru. Others giving evidence include Andrew Marr and Jeremy Paxman and Lord Mandelson.

Because of the failure to publish the submissions and that national media has ignored his evidence I am proposing to submit some of his statements without comment.

Thompson kept a card in his pocket which said “I swear I will never interfere with the editorial policy of a newspaper.” Evans made reference to three occasions when a wire was used to surreptitiously record conversations The first  in the time of William Rees Mogg in 1967 was to capture a policeman taking bribes and which led to the complete reform of  Scotland Yard. The second was in relation to antique dealers who were defrauding members of the public and the third in his time after the police failed to identify criminals who were defrauding over franchises and they were identified by the paper and exposed. Commenting on the Sun and News of the World he said he thought they were vigorous newspapers but he deplored these invasions of privacy. “We have seen the full efflorescence of this appalling cancer in the hacking stuff. That started to grow in the 1970’s and it was always appalling. “

“The growth of corporate power and the growth of government was not sufficiently matched by a responsible press and by a law which I called it a lecture I gave as the half free press.”

He was then asked to focus on the 1981 Murdoch take over of the Times and Sunday Times which paved the way for his control of BSkyB. He said it was an astonishing piece of news not disclosed until March of this year that Mr Murdoch had met Baroness Thatcher on January 4th 1981. “Mr Murdoch kept it secret to the point of telling the official historian of the time, Mr Graham Stewart no such meetings took place whatsoever during the period. And this had to be accepted although it as a falsehood until the Cambridge archives of Mrs Thatcher were released and the minute of Bernard Ingham, now Sir Bernard, was there, and also a letter of thanks in his own handwriting from Murdoch thanking Mrs Thatcher for a lunch he said had never taken place.

Mr Evans then explained that on January 16th Senior journalists of the Times met with Sir Denis Hamilton and returned absolutely boiling mad because having told him they wanted the management buy out to go ahead he told them he was very much against it. He went on to explain why Sir Denis had changed his mind about Rupert Murdoch despite his vehement condemnation because he thought he was lowering the standards of the British Press. He changed his position because he thought Murdoch was the man to deal with the Trade Unions. Sir Harold said he agreed with this aspect as shown with what happened at Wapping. Sir Dennis has disclosed to him that he was to be made the Chairman of Times Newspapers under the deal and this was the background to his own meeting with Hamilton and Murdoch on January 20th that year.

He said that the note correctly confirmed that he had reported that 37 of the Journalists in the chapel had preferred Mr Murdoch, 32 Mr Rowlands and 11 for Lonrho of the seven interested parties. What the note does not say is that he had emphasised that he had wanted the Sunday Times Management group bid to succeed.  He thought the Murdoch bid would be referred and stopped by the Monopolies Commission. Sir Dennis was then sacked by Murdoch as chairman a few months later. He was denied a lunch tray at his desk and humiliated and when he passed his bound copies of he History of the Times to Harold who proposed to keep them in his office he was told,” No, get them out of here. Sir Dennis had become heart broken by the print unions destroying he paper he had largely created.”

On the 21st January 1981 he attended a meeting known as the vetting committee and about which he had taken a shorthand note. He noted and has reported on every word said by Mr Murdoch about guarantees of editorial independence. Mr Evans disclosed that they had investigated Mr Murdoch’s control of the papers in Australia and the entire staff opposed his take over because they believed he could not be trusted. They believed the take over would stopped by the Monopolies Commission because they were unaware of the secret meeting and deal between Mr Murdoch and Mrs Thatcher.

Mr Evans was asked if he was aware that Thompson had stated by letter that if the matter was referred to the Monopolies Commission the deal was off. A pistol was put at the head as quoted in the House of Commons Debate replied Sir Harold. He also agreed that there no direct evidence of collusion between Thomas and Murdoch. He also agreed that Mr Murdoch had no role in fiddling the Thomson accounts.

Sir Harold then described the way the government investigated the accounts of the Sunday Times was akin to some kind of Polish War Grave. There were so many bad things undetected for years and years and years. It was a disgrace to the standards of the British government that the Civil Service was so lax.

He revealed he had been to dinner with Woodrow Wyatt who acted as a go between Mrs Thatcher and Mr Murdoch. Woodrow recorded his diaries that they tried to get another pro Margaret newspaper by getting the Today Newspaper for Mr Murdoch without reference to the Monopolies Commission. They had avoided the reference of the Times and Sunday Times because they were both reported to be making a loss. Wyatt recorded that he had told Thatcher that although the Times was losing money, the Sunday Times was not and that both together there was no overall loss. There could have been something of an exaggeration about his personal role of Wyatt stated in the diaries but he was close to Mrs Thatcher and everything else he said in his diaries, the Westland Affair for example,  had been checked out as accurate.

Sir Harold reiterated that he was horrified by what happened, £400 million of revenue income had been omitted from the submitted accounts. That the take over went through in three days on a falsehood, false figures was an extraordinary event.  Mr Biffen had dropped from his statement to the Commons all mention of the Times  Management buy out group. He described Mr Biffen and Mrs Thatcher’s poodle. When Mr Jay queried some of Sir Harold’s statements he responded by suggesting the Cabinet Secretary should be asked to give evidence, Mr Leveson explained that while the matter was important in showing  issues  about the relationship between  politicians and the press he was not going to resolve issues of controversy. Sir Harold argued that it was a  seminal event from which all else subsequently flowed.  The excessive concentration of power in a  single media corporation.

Sir Harold then confirmed that he had written that in the first six months Murdoch was an electric presence, vivid and amusing, direct and fast in his decisions and a good ally against the old guard, “as I worked to sharpen the paper’s news values while retaining every element of its traditional coverage.”

Then things started to go wrong. Mr Murdoch suggested an attack on the Royal Family at the time of a proposed increase in the civil list but after investigating the figures given he found them completely wrong and told the editor of the Sun and he told Mr Murdoch but the Sun continued  the false story.

Mr Murdoch insisted that he continued to support the Thatcher government despite his editorial board agreeing that this was wrong. He was told not to correct the lie told by Geoffrey Howe to the Commons that that that the recession was over when the figures pointed to the contrary and   was down by a further 6.5% by the end of the year. He had two page letter from Murdoch telling him off about his approach, He was told his editorials were too long and complex and he should be attacking the Russians more. He was criticised for turning over more pages to sport. He explained  how those around Mr Murdoch changed position according to how their boss  changed his.

Murdoch and then tried to intervened in the coverage of what was happening in Poland after a two page story based on information got out of Poland in people’s shoes. He was shown by Murdoch what the Sun had written and told this is what he should have done.

Murdoch then went behind his back approaching individual journalists and sub editors with his commands. At the outset he was told he would have a new budget but a  budget never appeared. The accountant had been told not to give the figures to anyone and they had no budget for the 12 months he was there. Everyone of the five guarantees given were broken. The two papers were moved  to control by News International which was an illegal move and where the minutes of the meeting were falsified.

Mr Jay attempted to introduce statements  by others that Sir Harold was being florid in his views about what happened. You are quoted as referring to Mr Murdoch as evil incarnate/ “ He has had his heart removed long ago together with all his moral faculties and human sensibility.”  The questioning went on for another half hour with many interesting insights on more recent events.  But I  have made all the points which I believe Sir Harold and through him My Jay for the Inquiry wanted to make give the selective amnesia  of Mr Murdoch when he appeared before the Committee and  his orchestrated responses to the matters raised with him. My Vote is for Tom Watson’s view who appears at the Inquiry on Tuesday.

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