• • •
The Observer’s finances fluctuated in the 1980s, sometimes in profit, sometimes at a loss, but nothing like the massive multi-million-pound losses that were to be run up later under The Guardian’s ownership. Whenever the figures came out, the board would look at me as if they were a judgment on editorial quality, when in fact it was the extravagant payments to the printers that distorted the company’s balance sheet, just as they distorted the accounts of every paper in Fleet Street.
On one occasion I was summoned, along with Terry Robinson and Nick Morrell, to fly out to join Tiny on his yacht off Corfu. The Observer’s losses had risen that year and I assumed that was the reason for our trip. News of it somehow leaked out to the staff and thence to some other papers. Was Trelford finally getting the chop? We travelled in the company jet; unfortunately, Terry insisted on watching an Eddie Murphy film. Just before we were due to land at Corfu, the pilot was instructed to divert to the Turkish coast, to where Tiny’s boat, the Hanse, had moved while we were in mid-air.
When we landed in Turkey, we were met by some men in smart white uniforms with peaked caps who saluted us and then steered us out on a small boat to the Hanse while standing up. No passport formalities seemed to be required. It felt as though we were in a James Bond movie. As always, Tiny was on the telephone when we went aboard, talking to Kenyan President Moi, with his back to the most wonderful view in the Mediterranean.
I had prepared an editorial plan for the coming year, but when I produced it Tiny waved it away. ‘Do you think I care about The Observer’s losses?’ he said. ‘They are nothing in the whole scheme of things. The Observer’s value to Lonrho cannot be measured in money.’ He explained that he had summoned us to the boat to create a bit of drama, so that Sir Edward du Cann and his board would think he was telling me off, which is what he wanted them to think. So we swam round the boat, had an excellent supper, slept comfortably on board and returned to London the next morning. Mission – whatever it was – accomplished.
When I got into the office, Tony Howard came in with a grave expression. ‘How were things with Tiny?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Excellent,’ I replied. ‘Couldn’t be better.’ Surely that wasn’t a look of disappointment I detected on his face?
• • •
Any editor spends more time on legal issues than he would like – not just libel, but contempt of court, official secrets, breaches of copyright or privacy. During the course of my editorship, I must have appeared in almost every kind of court in the land, from a magistrate’s court to the House of Lords. Three of the best-known cases were also the most ridiculous.
Spycatcher, the book by a former MI5 agent, Peter Wright, described how the agency had tried to unseat Harold Wilson as Prime Minister because a Soviet defector had claimed that he was a Russian spy. The British government tried to stop the book being published in Australia. When The Observer and The Guardian gave a brief report of these court proceedings, both papers were banned from saying any more. Our appeal against this decision went all the way to the European Court.
I spent two days in the witness box during the High Court hearing under Mr (later Lord) Justice Scott, from whom, I am pretty sure, I had once taken a beating at scrum-half in a Cuppers game at Cambridge, where he had won a blue as a marauding open-side wing forward. We watched each other warily during the hearing.
On the evening between my two days in the witness box, I returned to my old school in Coventry to hand out the speech day prizes. One of them, which I presented to a young woman, was a copy of the Spycatcher book, which was already on sale in bookshops while we argued in court over whether The Observer had been entitled to publish, long before, a brief report of the court proceedings in Australia. As ever, the law was being an ass, assisted in this case by a boneheaded approach to the matter by the Thatcher government.
In another bizarre case, The Observer and Lonrho were charged with contempt of court by a law lord who had been offended by receiving a copy of one of Tiny’s anti-Fayed missives when he was about to deliver a judgement on an aspect of the long-running feud. The booklet had been sent to all MPs; as a member of the House of Lords, the law lord had received one. Every director of Lonrho and every director of The Observer had to be defended by a separate QC, which must have cost the earth (I heard a figure of half a million pounds being mentioned).
It was soon established that there had been no contempt, because a judge is incapable, by definition, of being prejudiced by what someone else says or writes. The whole business had been a waste of time and money – but whose money? The law lords said they had no money to pay the costs and they didn’t think it would be right to charge them to the government. So Lonrho would have to pay, even though the law lords had just established that they had committed no offence.
The nearest I came to jail was when the paper paid some expenses to a civil servant for information about a weapons programme in Bath, where a torpedo had landed on a golf course in a trial. The evidence had been kept from the MoD in London because the MoD staff in Bath feared for their jobs. We had only paid the man’s expenses because the civil servant told us he had left government service, when it transpired that he was on his last day of terminal leave.
It was a ridiculous and vindictive case for the Attorney-General, Sir Michael Havers, to bring under the Prevention of Corruption Act 1906. In the Garrick Club bar, he talked across a group of members and guests to yell at me: ‘I’m having you arrested!’ Later, in a quieter mood, the garrulous Havers said the charges were being laid against the newspaper, rather than me personally, because he couldn’t bring himself to charge a fellow member of the club, even though mine was the signature on the cheque. In the event, the jury dismissed the charges against The Observer anyway. Our informant, however, went to jail.
Michael Havers and I had ‘previous’ at the Garrick Club. I had been seated next to him at lunch during the Falklands War. I told him I thought the government had missed a publicity trick in failing to give a VC to Colonel H, who had been killed in a daring assault. Havers reacted as if he had been shot. ‘How on earth could you know that?’ he gasped. ‘I’ve just come from a Cabinet committee that recommended it.’
I said no more, but slipped a suggestion into the Pendennis diary column that Colonel H might be so honoured. Havers reported the matter to the Garrick Club committee as a breach of club rules, but no action was taken. Kingsley Amis, then on the house committee, was quoted as saying: ‘The committee took the view that Michael shouts, and if Michael shouts he shouldn’t be surprised if non-members overhear what he says.’
We won one famous libel action, brought by Labour politician Michael Meacher against Alan Watkins for saying he had pretended to be from a poor background when in fact his family were middle class. Alan, a qualified barrister, won that case for himself, charming the judge with his wit and his knowledge of the law. He wrote an entertaining book about it: A Slight Case of Libel, Meacher versus Trelford and Others.
We lost a libel case to the former Conservative minister, Edwina Currie, because she was inadvertently named in a magazine article about a film featuring a female politician who murdered her husband. It should never have come to court and even in court we might have won if our counsel, the legendary George Carman, hadn’t gone over the top in his cross-examination of the former minister, annoying the judge by showing a Sunday Mirror feature of the lady in her underwear. He summed up against The Observer and the jury took the hint. I wished afterwards that I had allowed Michael Beloff to handle the case, as he had offered to do.
During her time in the witness box, Edwina had asserted that she was a faithful wife to her husband. Later, of course, she revealed her affair with John Major while he was in Downing Street. I had left The Observer by then. The paper rang to ask if they should revisit the case in the light of her admission, which appeared to contradict the evidence she had given under oath. I advised against it, since it would only line the lawyers’ pockets and give her more pub
licity.
• • •
My last two overseas tasks for The Observer involved trips to Uzbekistan and to South Africa – one for Dieter Bock, who was gradually taking over the reins at Lonrho, and one for Rowland. I accompanied Bock to Tashkent, where Lonrho was planning mineral developments, because he hated public speaking. So, I had to do the honours. In return, Uzbekistan’s dictatorial President, Islam Karimov, presented me with the country’s traditional dress. The only possible caption to the comical picture taken of this ceremony would be: ‘Prat in a hat.’
The other, more serious assignment, came as a result of a request made by Nelson Mandela to Tiny that Lonrho should fund a new ANC national daily paper. I was introduced to the great man by Tiny at a hotel in Piccadilly. I was disappointed that all they could talk about, apart from the newspaper project, was Gaddafi, both saying he was much misunderstood.
Tiny asked me to prepare a feasibility study, making it clear that Lonrho had no interest in funding the venture and would therefore welcome a report that offered them a way out. That wasn’t a problem for me because – apart from the massive investment involved, with no guarantee of any early (or indeed any) financial return – I didn’t think an ANC Pravda, pushing party propaganda and presumably protecting the ANC itself from criticism, was a good idea for a country that urgently needed uniting.
Nonetheless, it was a fascinating assignment, providing me with access to all the ANC leaders. I advised strongly against the project, but picked out Zwelakhe Sisulu, son of one of Mandela’s companions on Robben Island, as a man capable of undertaking a major leadership assignment in the media. I was gratified to see that before long he was made head of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. The idea of an ANC daily was quietly dropped.
• • •
I later went to Pakistan to interview President Musharraf. This was not for The Observer, but was to appear in a supplement in the New York Herald Tribune and shown on a Washington TV news channel. Security was such at the time that no one left the hotel who could avoid it and I was never without a bodyguard. I travelled with the camera crew to Islamabad, where we struggled through layers of security to reach the President, who was also head of the army.
He and I sat a few feet away from each other while the crew set up their cameras and sound system. I felt obliged to say something. Finally, I said: ‘Mr President, my country owes you an apology.’
‘What for?’ he replied. ‘For colonialism?’
‘No, sir,’ I said, ‘for the bad umpiring decision yesterday that gave your captain out.’
‘That wasn’t the only bad decision,’ he said, eager to talk about the cricket. And so we broke the ice – so much so, in fact, that he must have been off his guard when I put the first question: ‘Has Pakistan ever been a democracy?’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘though it has had some civilian governments.’
When I returned to our hotel, I felt like a drink. I said this to an American businessman I met. He replied: ‘There’s only one way to get a drink here. You have to say that you are a registered alcoholic and that your doctor says you will be ill if you don’t have a drink.’ I thought I would try this and asked the hotel manager to come to my room.
He looked impassive as I went through this phoney alcoholic routine, then produced a form for me to complete and sign, having brought it with him.
When he asked, with a conspiratorial smile, what I wanted, I asked for five large gin and tonics. When these appeared, I rang the camera crew and invited them to my room. They were suitably astonished and grateful for my apparently magical achievement. They asked no questions about it, assuming, I suppose, that I had simply used bribery, the Open Sesame to most things on the sub-continent.
• • •
My last meeting with Sir Edward du Cann, long after I had left The Observer, was over lunch at Harry’s Bar in London (I paid). He made a bizarre proposal that we should jointly write a biography of Mohamed Fayed. I said I doubted whether any reader or reviewer would regard such a book as – shall we say – wholly objective. I also told him I’d had rather more than enough of Fayed in my life already, thank you very much.
Challenging the secret state. The Thatcher years were grim for press freedom.
CHAPTER 13
TONY
Soon after the Lonrho takeover, John Cole came up to me with a serious look on his face and asked if we could have lunch together. In the car to the Garrick Club he was unusually quiet and seemed a bit jumpy, which wasn’t like him at all. As we reached the club he told the doorman he was expecting a telephone call and would be in the bar. He remained restless until the call came and he went down to take it. When he returned he was more relaxed and said: ‘Let’s go in to lunch and I’ll explain what this mystery is about.’
The call had been from Richard Francis, head of news and current affairs at the BBC, who had confirmed that the governors had approved John’s appointment as political editor. I was delighted for John – and of course he went on to be an outstanding success, one of the BBC’s most popular figures, affectionately satirised for his strangulated Northern Irish accent and his ubiquitous tweed overcoat.
For me, however, it presented an urgent problem. I didn’t want Tiny Rowland or anyone else from Lonrho to be involved in the choice of his successor. I feared they might press for a deputy they found congenial and that, in due course – if the paper’s circulation fell sharply or its losses mounted, or my damaging evidence against Tiny at the MMC should come to light – he might drift into my editorial chair.
Some editors like a weak deputy who poses no threat. I took the view that strong editors want strong deputies. I certainly wanted a figure of some public standing who could not be brushed aside easily in the event that I had to leave – which, at that time, seemed more likely than not.
As luck would have it, the day following my lunch with Cole, 29 July 1981, was a public holiday to celebrate the ill-fated wedding of Prince Charles to Princess Diana. It gave me a day away from the office to think about John’s successor. I consulted two people: Terry Kilmartin, the literary editor, and Alan Watkins, the political columnist. My then wife, Kate, commented on my choice of confidants: ‘You’ve chosen the only two people in the country who won’t be watching the royal wedding.’
I had a shortlist of three people, two from The Observer – Michael Davie (whose job as deputy editor I had taken twelve years before) and Adam Raphael – and one outsider, Anthony Howard. Howard was then editing The Listener, having had a successful spell as editor of the New Statesman, collecting around him a brilliant team of writers, such as Martin Amis, Julian Barnes and Christopher Hitchens – the first two of whom went on to write for The Observer.
I had first come across Tony Howard through his political column in the New Statesman in the early 1960s. One of my co-trainees on the Sheffield Telegraph, John Barry, later of the Sunday Times, had urged me to read it as one of the best things in British journalism. It was a beautifully crafted column, with many subsidiary clauses, reminding one of an elegant eighteenth-century essay, but with sharp observation of the current political scene and a refreshingly irreverent approach to the personalities on stage.
The Sunday Times had then hired him as Whitehall correspondent, giving him the daunting task of getting inside the civil service (‘the people who really run Britain’). The appointment was blazoned so loudly, however, that Harold Wilson sent out an order forbidding civil servants to talk to him, thereby destroying his new job at a stroke. He moved onto The Observer as Washington correspondent and was doing that when I first joined the paper in 1966.
He blotted his copybook by being absent without leave (in Britain making a TV programme) when President Lyndon Johnson made an historic announcement on a Friday that he was seeking peace in Vietnam and would not be standing for a second term. KPO thought Howard should have been sacked, and on a less tolerant paper he would have been.
Kilmartin supported Howard as my deputy, though h
e had a hankering for Davie (who didn’t want his old job back anyway, having settled into writing). Watkins, who was separated from Howard’s sister, also favoured him, though he said he could panic in a crisis, and then added his cryptic warning: ‘He’ll be after your job.’
I rang Howard and arranged to meet him for breakfast the following morning at Sagne’s, then a trendy café in Marylebone High Street, across the road from The Listener’s office. Howard almost snapped my hand off, as I knew he would, since The Listener was clearly living on borrowed time. I insisted on total secrecy and for all formalities to be completed within the day.
• • •
Then I turned my attention to Rowland, determined to present him with a fait accompli. He was in Africa, so I sent him a Telex message saying Howard was being appointed deputy editor unless there were any objections. According to Dick Hall, Tiny called him on his return and said bitterly: ‘What could I do? I had to send back my approval. But I had never heard of Howard until that moment. Who is he?’
I had won my first battle without landing a blow. I had what I wanted: a deputy of some public standing who couldn’t be brushed aside if I were to leave. Looking back now, however, I can understand why an owner might feel piqued at being ignored over such a senior appointment.
I was surprised that so many people assumed I would be leaving the paper, now that the dreaded Rowland had won the bitter fight to get it. One commentator suggested I should leave ‘in a blaze of idealism’. Abandoning The Observer and leaving my colleagues to Lonrho’s tender mercies struck me as cowardly rather than idealistic, even though I was offered a couple of tempting jobs if I decided to make the big break – one from my friend Brian Wenham, then head of BBC Two, and one from Harold Evans.
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