Tiny may not have helped himself with his public-school accent, parading his money and his many visiting girlfriends in front of uneducated private soldiers, who would be only too ready to label him a Nazi. Knowing his tendency to cause mischief and the emotional turmoil he must have been going through, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he sometimes played up to the image of an unreconstructed Hun.
He remained in internment until almost the end of the war, even though others were released earlier, prompting the suggestion in some quarters that this showed the authorities still doubted his loyalty to Britain. I have another theory about that, based on a hint he once gave me about serving British intelligence while he was interned. Even though he was turned down for MI6, the intelligence service would have known him and could see that such a strong character, speaking perfect German and English, could be useful to them in watching German prisoners or Oswald Mosley’s detained British fascists.
I have also wondered about the excessively brutal treatment he received, serving in at least four British prisons during the war as well as one in Berlin – in Barlinnie, Saughton, Walton and Peel on the Isle of Man. Is it possible that this was a cover to give him ‘street cred’ as a British spy in the internment camp? An unproven thesis, I agree, but at least as plausible as some of the pro-Nazi stories published about him.
After being released from the Isle of Man, Tiny was briefly sent to work as a porter at Paddington station, where he concentrated on the first-class carriages because they gave bigger tips. Later he became what would then have been called a ‘spiv’, moving around shops in the luxury-starved West End selling fridges and nylon stockings. He told me that he wore a British Warm overcoat with plenty of inside pockets to carry the old white five-pound notes. Sometimes, at the end of the day, he said he could hardly walk for the weight of the money he was carrying.
Eventually he realised that there was even more money to be made from owning the factories that produced the products in short supply. As a result he got to know an engineer called Lionel Taylor, who was brilliant at mending old machines. One day Taylor called on Tiny at the Mayfair apartment he was now rich enough to live in, but said he couldn’t stay because his baby daughter was in the car. Tiny went down with him to say goodbye and to meet the child. The baby’s name was Josie, and twenty-four years later, dear reader, Tiny married her.
• • •
Lonrho was the creation of a powerful City businessman, Harley Drayton, and it was he who brought Rowland, Alan Ball and Angus Ogilvy together to run the re-activated company, holding the reins while keeping out of the limelight himself. He was a major formative influence on Tiny before his early death in 1966.
Ogilvy and his wife, Princess Alexandra, became close friends with the Rowlands, living in adjacent apartments for a time in Park Lane. It was a severe blow to Tiny personally when Ogilvy eventually resigned from the Lonrho board. Tiny always believed that Prince Philip had insisted on Ogilvy quitting.
It was interesting, therefore, when The Observer’s futuristic new building on Chelsea Bridge was opened, that Tiny should have invited the Princess to perform the opening ceremony – presumably with a substantial gift attached – and interesting that she accepted. When I met her on this occasion, she asked in a conspiratorial tone: ‘How do you find Mr Rowland?’ In reply, I said: ‘He’s rather charming.’ She looked at me for a moment and whispered: ‘I’d watch that charm if I were you.’
Lonrho’s rapid expansion throughout Africa, and Tiny’s friendships with African leaders, must have brought him to the attention of MI6, if only to discover if his activities were serving British interests. In the early 1990s, both the security and the intelligence services began to open themselves up, revealing publicly for the first time the names of the heads of the two services. Editors were invited to meet them at their headquarters.
When I met Sir Colin McColl, who was ‘C’, Tiny’s name came up in the conversation very quickly. Everyone round the table laughed when one of them said: ‘Tiny knows more about Africa than we do. He’s a hard man to keep up with.’ Another man said: ‘He has been useful to the service in the past.’ He gave no particulars, and it didn’t seem polite to ask.
I had lunch at MI5 with Dame Stella Rimington, and soon afterwards came across her at a drinks party in Islington. As we were leaving I said to my then wife: ‘Do you see that tall woman over there?’
‘Do you mean the one in the houswifey floral dress?’ she replied. ‘What about her?’
‘She’s the director-general of MI5.’
Her astonished silence at this news lasted all the way home.
I had a special interest in the opening up of the security services, for some years before I had been invited to address a joint meeting of MI5 and MI6 somewhere in the Home Counties. My name was the only one used that evening; I was introduced to people called ‘Northern Ireland’ or ‘Counter-Terrorism’. I had been asked to advise them on their public image and so I told them that they had a choice: to be more open about their work voluntarily or to be overcome by a democratic tide like the one that was then engulfing the CIA in America.
While the spooks analysed my speech and prepared to cross-examine me about it, I was taken off for a drink by the then head of MI5, Sir John Jones. This was too good a chance for a journalist to miss. I asked him about the sudden resignation of Harold Wilson as Prime Minister. There had been rumours that he had got close to the Russians while president of the Board of Trade in the post-war Labour government. A Soviet defector, Anatoliy Golitsyn, had said Wilson was targeted by the KGB at that time, but had no evidence that he had actually been recruited.
‘M’ was dismissive about this. ‘We have no reason to suspect Wilson of espionage. I don’t know why he resigned. It may have been a private matter.’ He hesitated, then added:
Marcia Williams [later Lady Falkender, Wilson’s powerful political secretary] – now that’s a different matter. We have nothing against her, except that she is close to some people we know who do dubious business in Eastern Europe. I’m sure she knows nothing about that, but she may be introducing these people to Wilson, which troubles us a bit.
Later he got on to a subject that seemed to be obsessing him – Communist skulduggery on the factory floor. It struck me that if he really believed this posed a threat to Britain’s security he must have placed some spies inside the factories and within the trade unions. When the spooks returned, they tore my thesis to shreds. It amused me to know that some years later events had obliged them to follow my unwelcome advice.
• • •
I got to know Lady Forkbender, as Private Eye called her, when she wrote some articles for The Observer about her time with Wilson in Downing Street. She was very difficult to get to, but on Lord Barnetson’s advice I had turned up on her doorstep bearing a huge bunch of red roses, and that did the trick.
I once asked her to explain her powerful hold over Wilson if she hadn’t been, as some papers slyly hinted, his mistress. She replied:
It was because, throughout his career and at all levels and among many conflicting voices, he had heard one voice telling him, not necessarily what was best for Britain or even for the Labour Party, but what was best for Harold Wilson. He learned to trust that voice and that voice belonged to me.
• • •
Although we had failed to persuade the MMC to ban Lonrho’s ownership of The Observer, enough doubts had been raised about potential conflicts of interest, especially in Africa, that we were able to press for tough editorial safeguards. We were helped by the sole voice against Lonrho on the MMC, a trade unionist called Robert Marshall, who had worked in Africa. He said safeguards would be useless against Tiny Rowland and that he shouldn’t be allowed to have the paper. I decided to seek the toughest safeguards for editorial independence that any newspaper had hitherto achieved.
As a blueprint, I chose the wording of the safeguards imposed on Rupert Murdoch when he was allowed to take over The Times and Sunday Times without a re
ference to the MMC. On paper, they gave The Observer’s editor and journalists all the protection they could possibly need. I chose existing wording, rather than inventing some new formula, because I thought the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) could hardly object if they had approved the same wording before. I sent a stream of letters to civil servants at the DTI demanding the same protection as Murdoch had been forced to give.
Looking back, I think that achieving these written safeguards, to be incorporated into the company’s articles of association, was the greatest service I gave to The Observer at that time, managing to keep Tiny at arm’s length without a confrontation. In addition to giving me total control over content, policy and staffing, it was stipulated that the editor could not be dismissed without the approval of a majority of five independent directors; nor could a new editor be appointed without their approval.
Dick Hall, often a harsh critic of my relationship with Rowland, was forced to admit in his book: ‘The last convulsive phase of Rowland’s takeover saw Trelford at his most brilliant, showing all those characteristics which made Harold Evans call him a “master politician”.’ He referred to my love of snooker, about which I was to write a book, saying: ‘He delights in the soft, artful shot, leaving his opponent in a hopeless quandary. Trelford’s intention was to get Rowland well and truly snookered.’
When these safeguards were made public, I was amused to hear Derek Jameson, a former editor of the Daily Express and the News of the World, say on his radio programme: ‘It’s well known that Tiny Rowland can’t go to the lavatory without Donald Trelford’s permission.’
Even so, I knew that the safeguards alone would not offer adequate protection unless they were properly policed. A year later, Murdoch was able to ride roughshod over the editorial safeguards at The Times by dismissing Harold Evans, not because the safeguards were weakly worded, but because the national directors charged with enforcing them were not up to the job. The journalists on Times Newspapers had had no say in their appointment, since the directors were a carry-over from the Thomson regime and had been appointed in different circumstances. Murdoch was able to ignore them with impunity.
I was determined that this would not happen at The Observer and prepared a list of suitably tough independent directors who could be relied upon to stand up to Rowland if it came to a fight. The setting for the negotiations was the gloomy premises of the DTI in Victoria Street, where Lonrho’s case was presented by the formidable lawyer Lord Shawcross, who applied the same forensic skills he had employed when prosecuting the Nazi leaders at Nuremburg, the acid bath murderer John George Haigh, and the atom spy Klaus Fuchs. Shawcross later joined the Observer board and was a constant pain in my side.
Against him that evening stood John Cole and myself, armed with no legal skills but a determination to see that the paper’s independence would be protected. Rowland himself, looking as always like a million dollars in a dark suit and tie and immaculate white shirt with gold cufflinks, looked down at us with what felt like disdain. Shawcross read out his list of six candidates and we began debating their merits while Tiny looked visibly bored as the DTI clock moved on.
Eventually John and I said we were happy to accept two of the names on the list – Lord Windlesham, a decent man who had worked in television and been a junior minister under Edward Heath, and Sir Geoffrey Cox, a former war correspondent who had been the first editor of ITN and was widely admired in the media world. There was a palpable sigh of relief from the other side, shared by the late-working civil servants, that we finally appeared to be making some progress.
Shawcross said Lonrho would now choose two more directors from their list. There was general surprise when I objected to this, saying that the next two independent directors should be chosen from our list. I thought I was on thin ground over this and doubted if I could win, since as journalists we would be effectively appointing directors they hadn’t chosen to the board of a Lonrho company, which they might have regarded as a bit of a cheek. Shawcross asked what right the journalists had to propose such appointments.
Eventually Rowland asked for an adjournment so that he could talk to me in private. As we walked down a dark DTI corridor, I was surprised when he took my hand in the African way. After a while he said: ‘You’re not making this very easy for me, Mr Trelford.’ After another pause I replied: ‘Well, Mr Rowland, how would you feel if somebody had taken over your company without your say-so?’ He looked at me and said: ‘I’d be fighting it just like you,’ then, after another pause: ‘I think we’ll get on.’
After that everything went through on the nod. Two further independent directors were chosen: David Chipp, former editor-in-chief of the Press Association, and William Clark, a former Observer journalist who had resigned as Anthony Eden’s press secretary over the Suez adventure, and later became a senior figure at the World Bank in Washington. The civil servants suggested that the four chosen directors should choose the fifth, subject to agreement on both sides. This turned out to be Sir Derek Mitchell, a former Treasury mandarin who had worked with Harold Wilson in Downing Street.
I had achieved everything I had sought in the way of editorial safeguards and strong independent directors. Even so, I still had some apprehensions: in a crisis, Rowland might very well tear up paper safeguards, and a newspaper that was losing money could never be truly safe. The fact was that Rowland had an editor he didn’t want and I had an owner I didn’t want. Somehow, for The Observer’s sake, we had to find a way of getting on.
The early signs were not encouraging. There was a lunch at the Savoy Hotel for the Lonrho directors to meet the Observer directors. Tiny appeared clutching a copy of the previous Sunday’s Observer, folded over at the leader page, on which Colin Legum had written an article about the Sudan that was highly critical of Tiny’s favourite rebel, the southern breakaway leader Jonas Savimbi.
Tiny was apoplectic about it and couldn’t talk about anything else, which put a serious damper on the occasion. He brooded throughout the lunch and left early. I tried to smooth things over by suggesting an interview with Savimbi, which Tiny agreed to arrange, but with bad grace.
Lord Duncan-Sandys, the chairman of Lonrho, invited me to his house in Vincent Square, Westminster, where we were served tea and cakes by his delightfully chatty Chilean wife. Securing Duncan-Sandys, a former Defence and Commonwealth Secretary and Churchill’s ex-son-in-law, had been quite a coup for Rowland, though the secret payments he received through the Cayman Islands were to be described memorably by Edward Heath in the House of Commons as ‘the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism’, a phrase that attached itself to Rowland for the rest of his life – rather unfairly, I think, given the massive illicit payments made by many other corporations.
As we looked out on the cricket square in front of his French windows, I remembered playing there a number of times against the Old Westminsters for the Adastrians, a club of past and present RAF officers. When I mentioned this to Duncan-Sandys, he pressed me to tell him more. So I told him that I was an opening batsman and had previously been out for forty-four and forty-six at the ground. The next year I was standing on forty-nine and was determined to reach my half-century.
Unfortunately, I was batting with an old flight lieutenant who had a permanent leg wound and hated running, especially for someone else’s runs. Eventually, after he had declined some easy singles, I just set off for the other end. My partner was unperturbed, resting on his bat handle, refusing to move. So I had to scamper back, where I was run out diving for the crease, covering my whites in grass stains.
When I got to the pavilion, thinking there was nobody else in the dressing room, I hurled my bat, pads and gloves on the floor, along with various bitter imprecations. I hadn’t noticed that a very tall Air Vice-Marshal, a former head of RAF cricket, was watching my childish antics with some amusement. I told him what had happened. I’ll never forget his reply: ‘You’ll get over it. The Japs tried to cut my balls off in the war. I got over th
at. You’ll get over this.’ I have to say that I remember this little story whenever life’s petty frustrations begin to get on top of me.
Duncan-Sandys was highly amused by the tale. He ended our meeting by saying: ‘I’m the chairman and you’re welcome to come and see me whenever you want. But Tiny Rowland calls all the shots.’ This advice was echoed by another Lonrho director, Sir Peter Youens, whom I had known in Malawi when he worked closely with Dr Banda as a colonial civil servant. After sharing some memories about our time in Africa, he took me firmly by the arm and said: ‘Tiny Rowland is the boss here and heaven help anyone who doesn’t remember that.’
Relations with Rowland fell eventually into a settled routine. He would ring me on a Saturday wherever he was in the world and discuss the latest news. Sometimes he would confide a secret deal he was about to pull off in Africa. I used to write down some of his comments on a scrap of paper and put them on a spike on my desk for my secretary to file later. I found one just recently that said: ‘Today the future of the Sudan lies in the palm of my hand.’
He had a habit of calling me, then saying: ‘I have a friend here who would like a word with you,’ and I would find myself talking, or, rather, stumbling for something to say, to President Moi of Kenya or the deputy head of Mossad. Tiny had an impish sense of humour, as anyone who has read his stream of pamphlets about Mohamed Fayed or the Sultan of Brunei could readily confirm.
I can never remember without laughing an occasion when Tiny and I went to meet an Indian guru, called the Mamadji, who claimed to have useful information for the paper. He insisted on blessing us, so Tiny and I had to kneel down next to each other while benedictions were poured over our heads in a language neither of us could understand. We dared not look at each other for fear of laughing out loud – which we did with some gusto after the guru had left.
I was told about another occasion when a legal conference in the Lonrho boardroom, attended by several prominent QCs, was interrupted by the arrival of India’s most famous Swami, standing about 6 ft 9 in. in height and weighing over twenty stone, wrapped in a white garment. Tiny startled the assembled lawyers by prostrating himself at the Swami’s feet.
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