The History of the Times

by Graham Stewart

  Daniel Johnson, who joined The Times in the new year, wondered whether a diminution of the ideological struggle between capitalism and Communism would topple the primacy of socio-economic historical interpretation in favour of biography and the theory of the ‘great man’. ‘Over the last decade,’ he noted, ‘several personalities have emerged in Eastern Europe who seem to possess that titanic quality which the Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt defined as historische Grösse: Gorbachev, Walesa, Havel.’42 Yet, not even the great men in the last decade of the century appeared able to contain all the tides that swelled around them. Nationalism was replacing Communism in Eastern Europe and was tearing apart the multi-ethnic Soviet Union. Communism in Eastern Europe, it now seemed, had only been sustained for so long by the acknowledged reality that there was a Soviet army of occupation ready to enforce it. It collapsed as soon as its citizens and leaders alike realized that the Brezhnev Doctrine was dead. Bernard Levin wrote, ‘the moment Mr Gorbachev made clear that whatever happened in the evil empire he would not lift a finger to help the colonial rulers, he had done the deed – the irreversible deed – that would put paid to communism not only in its colonies but in the mother country itself’.43 Conor Cruise O’Brien shared this analysis, but believed that these same forces would not triumph in China. There, the situation was different because the army, like the regime, was Chinese. Indeed, much of the armed forces personnel were drawn from the villages where 80 per cent of the population lived. They were far removed from the Western values of the chattering minority in the cities, let alone the students who had been to the fore in Tiananmen Square.44

  The world had been transformed in a matter of weeks. Reporting revolution on this scale was an enormous test for The Times, as for the other papers. Analysis was difficult and speculation about the future almost cavalierly hazardous. Some believed the Independent had provided the best coverage of European Communism’s collapse. David Walker, a Times dissident who defected to the Guardian, noted that ‘during German unification, for example, it was striking how Die Welt cited as a matter of habit not The Times but the Independent’s views’.45 Nonetheless, re-examining the paper during this period, The Times’s coverage appears impressive. Young and thoughtful reporters like Anne McElvoy provided excellent copy from Berlin. Mark Almond offered weighty analysis on the Op-Ed page. Naturally, the paper’s first task of analysis was to assess how the upheavals would shape Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the years ahead. It took longer to appreciate that the end of the Cold War would also dramatically change the nature of politics in Western Europe, Britain and the rest of the world. Political parties would have to adapt to new priorities among the voters and there was much (exaggerated) talk of a peace dividend in which huge savings from cutting defence spending could be redirected towards public services. For many in Britain, Margaret Thatcher’s unease about German reunification and opposition to deeper integration in the European Community jarred with the spirit of the moment, where European brotherhood animated those with hopes for a continent reborn. French political calculations were perhaps more cynical – the price for a reunited Germany was the abolition of the Deutschmark and the pressing ahead with European economic and monetary union. This ensured that the politics of Western Europe rather than those of the newly liberated Eastern European states would continue to dominate the news and comment pages of The Times in the 1990s. Whether a more deeply integrated European Community would facilitate reaching out across the shattered Iron Curtain to a wider Europe beyond remained to be seen.

  V

  While the editor made preparations for a new decade with his usual unflagging drive and enthusiasm, there was much he could look back upon in the past eighteen months with quiet satisfaction. In particular, the Saturday paper had undergone a remarkable expansion. The Times had long been a paper that serious-minded people took with them to work and this was reflected in the circulation figures. Sales had been much better during the weekdays than at the weekends. Enhancing Saturday’s sale would need significant investment but advertisers had traditionally been shy of investing in Saturday journalism, preferring the graphic-friendly glossy magazines of the Sunday papers or the daily certainties of the weekday offerings. The paper that did most to change this formula was the Financial Times. Although not naturally thought of as the journal with which to relax at the weekend, the FT successfully reinvented itself on Saturdays, pioneering the two-section format that emphasized lifestyle-focused journalism. In particular, it had a strong property section. So successful was this weekend edition that the paper began selling more on Saturdays than it did during the week. The Telegraph followed suit. Clearly there was a waiting market ripe to be explored and exploited. In Charles Wilson, The Times was fortunate to have an editor who understood the challenge.

  By the end of 1988, all the national broadsheets had additional weekend sections for the Saturday editions. The Independent was the last to do so, but the launch of its second section and a weekend magazine edited by Alexander Chancellor in September 1988 made an immediate impact. Wilson’s strategy was different. Rather than introduce a colour magazine he opted to produce a four-section, sixty-four-page edition for Saturdays, one section of which was gravure-printed in colour. There was more of virtually everything too. A family money section took the place of what, during the week, was devoted to company business news. Readers were guided through the proliferation of financial services designed to make every last drop of savings go further. Apart from anything else, this was popular with the advertisers. Where, previously, the ‘Saturday’ section had merely been tagged onto the main part of the paper, ‘Review’ became a distinct third section covering the arts, live performances and books. Previewing sporting events rather than just providing match reports for the Monday paper ensured that Saturday’s fourth section, covering sport and leisure, was also much more comprehensive than what had been offered in the past. Francesca Greenoak was given more room to tend her gardening column and the general layout was greatly enhanced with watercolour illustrations by Diana Ledbetter. It no longer looked like a grubby old piece of inky newsprint. Indeed, in the last two years of the 1980s, two areas of the paper’s Saturday journalism were especially developed: the property section (unfortunately just in time for the market downturn) and the travel pages. In the latter case, the transformation was especially remarkable. What had previously amounted to a couple of articles surrounded by a stamp album of small monochrome ads for weekends in Torquay or Le Touquet sprouted into several pages in which travel writers explored increasingly exotic locations. The quality of the accompanying photography also became more artistic and alluring. This expansion was overseen by the travel editor, Shona Crawford Poole, who had previously been The Times cookery writer. Providing the weekend recipes in her place had become Frances Bissell’s responsibility while Jane MacQuitty continued to write expertly every Saturday about wine, a task she had been performing without let or hindrance since 1982. Jonathan Meades wrote the restaurant reviews. An atheist of the militant variety, Meades had gone from a minor West Country public school (another bugbear) to RADA ‘at the fag end of the Sixties’. But waning aspirations towards the stage were quashed comprehensively by Hugh Cruttwell, RADA’s principal, who all too plausibly assured Meades that he had little future until he reached middle age, at which point he would make a good living as a character actor.46 At thirty-nine, Meades was still approaching this age when he was signed up by The Times in 1986, having spent the intervening fifteen years writing for various magazines including Time Out, Tatler and Harpers & Queen. Although Wilson regretted Meades’s ‘vituperative excesses’ and the amount of column inches he devoted to damning wherever he had been let loose upon,47 few could doubt that he was an acute critic of the choicest vintage and a writer of exceptional flair and originality. One pub in East Anglia erected a ‘Shrine of Hatred’ to Meades after a particularly excoriating review.

  The Times was broadening its appeal but, given the improving quality of th
e competition, it had to do this merely to stand still. Wilson’s choice as the editor of the Saturday features section, Richard Williams, decided that he preferred the look of the competition and departed for the newly launched (and short-lived) Sunday Correspondent. Wilson, who hated losing old comrades, tried to dissuade him and even got Murdoch to offer him a job at Sky, the satellite television company he had launched eight months earlier in February 1989. Williams declined. Indeed, Sky had been one of the contributing factors in Williams’s decision to leave The Times after thirteen years writing for the paper. In June, after only two months in his post as arts editor, Tim de Lisle had resigned over what he considered the misuse of the arts pages to promote Sky. He had spent an agreeable Bank Holiday Monday afternoon watching a one-day match at Lord’s only to discover on his return to Wapping that Mike Hoy had run an advertising puff for a competition across all eight columns of the top of the arts page. Tied in with Sky’s forthcoming televising of a popular opera production of Carmen, the prize was a satellite dish. De Lisle attempted a damage-limitation operation, cutting down the size of the Sky logo and subsequently demoting down the page the Carmen review. This sparked a shouting match with – or rather from – Wilson. De Lisle defended his action by saying he was attempting to save the credibility of the paper. Wilson interpreted this to mean he had used non-objective criteria in laying out the content of his page. De Lisle removed himself to the Telegraph and eventually became editor of Wisden. It was The Times’s loss. Yet the matter was a particularly unfortunate one. News Corp.’s finances were being stretched to the limit by the purchase of what would become the Fox network in the United States as well as by the launch of Sky in Britain. As the economy turned downwards and banks began calling in their loans, it became increasingly possible that News Corp. might go bankrupt. Some journalists were outraged that Wilson appeared to be compromising the integrity of The Times by providing Sky with what looked like free advertising. The Times’s NUJ chapel asked the board of independent directors to examine whether this constituted a breach of the 1981 undertakings Murdoch had made on preserving the paper’s editorial independence. Approaches were also made to the Department of Trade and Industry, the Monopolies Commission and the Office of Fair Trading. The independent directors refused to investigate, on the grounds that they only had a remit to do so if the editor asked for it. The editor did not ask for it. One of the directors, the Earl of Drogheda, attempted to calm tempers with the explanation, ‘the editor assures us there has been no such interference’. However, de Lisle’s self-sacrifice was not in vain. The Times was subsequently much more careful about how it covered Sky.48

  Those who left the chaos of the attempted Daily and Sunday Telegraph merger in 1989 were horrified by the atmosphere and low morale they encountered on arrival at the rum warehouse. Whenever there was breaking news, Wilson would become a galvanizing force, demonstrating his mastery of command. Journalists who came to him with personal problems were usually treated with sympathy and kindness.49 But on a day-to-day basis, working successfully with the editor necessitated an imperviousness to jibes and cutting comments. He took to perpetually calling one reporter ‘Fingertips’ – on the grounds that these were all he was hanging onto his job with. His standard rebuttal to any suggestion or idea he did not like was ‘the readers of The Times don’t want to read about … [followed by whatever had been proposed]’. The readers of The Times and Charles Wilson appeared to have a lot in common. Problematically, many of the more traditional Times hacks believed that this relationship existed only in the editor’s imagination. His habit of jabbing a finger at whomever he was addressing lacked insouciance. It was only after much experience that journalists realized his technique of invading their personal space during these dressing downs was only partly a form of intimidation; he was also attempting to discover if they had been drinking at lunchtime. It had certainly been a mistake in the early days of his editorship to inform the fashion editor, Suzy Menkes, that the actress Ali McGraw had an insufficient cleavage for the photographs lined up for the fashion page. This was not in the spirit of the journal of record. Indeed, women journalists particularly disliked his vernacular powers of expression. For a Scot, his use of the English language could be distinctly Anglo-Saxon.

  Wilson’s many private kindnesses, his vitality and drive, were being overlooked by those who had become tired of his brusque jocularity and his tendency to dismiss or ridicule ideas and propositions without appearing to weigh them properly first. His energy could also be a stimulant for those around him. While many previous editors could have waxed lyrical about what policies had to be enacted in some far-off part of the world they were easily thrown into confusion when confronted by a locked door. Wilson, however, was not the sort of man ineffectually to ask another member of staff if they could go and search somewhere for a key. When on one occasion he turned up for a meeting to find the conference room locked, he merely took a couple of steps back, sized up the narrow gap between the top of the wall and ceiling, leapt up and shinned over a ten-foot-high partition to get in and open the door from the inside. Those who missed this impressive display of their editor’s athleticism were at least left to admire its legacy – a series of footprint dents going up the wall. In all his years editing from a rocking chair, William Rees-Mogg never left such an impression.

  Wilson had hired some of the finest journalists on the paper, including Graham Paterson, a well-rounded and enthusiastic journalist brimming with ideas, and Mary Ann Sieghart, a young and energetic Op-Ed editor committed to dispelling the belief that the comment pages had fallen into the hands of a Margaret Thatcher support group. He was, however, hampered by the departure of Peter Stothard for Washington DC, in September 1989 when he took up the post of US editor. Stothard retained the somewhat honorary status as deputy editor of the paper, but his removal from Wapping was a handicap for Wilson. Although Murdoch only visited The Times five or six times a year, he was aware that there were rumblings of discontent. The two men would, however, speak once a week on the telephone. Wilson enjoyed these chats, which tended to be an opportunity to gossip about the national political scene rather than to map out the future of the paper. ‘We had a good relationship’ was how he later summed up his dealings with Murdoch, ‘and I would have walked on hot coals for him because I admired him then and admire him now.’50

  For his part, Murdoch considered Wilson ‘a hardworking, brilliant, technical journalist like Harry [Evans] but much more decisive’.51 He certainly owed Wilson a great deal as the lieutenant who had done so much to make the Wapping revolution possible and who had begged, cajoled and inspired Times journalists to be a part of it. Yet it was because so many of the older hands at The Times and in the industry at large regarded Wilson as one of Murdoch’s lieutenants that they wanted a new editor who was seen to be utterly removed from the corporate identity of News International. Even Murdoch came to accept some of the criticisms, later commenting that Wilson ‘didn’t have enough respect at the intellectual end of the paper. He was trying to recruit good people but couldn’t get them – which was the test.’52 If The Times had still been competing against its old rivals, the Telegraph and the Guardian, all might have been well. But it was Wilson’s misfortune that the Independent had arrived and was offering journalists who did not like being shouted at in Glaswegian an alternative and highly respectable berth. During 1989, the financial fate of News International and its parent company, the News Corporation, hung in the balance. Rumours that it was about to collapse were rife. Clifford Longley, Mary Ann Sieghart and (prior to his departure) Richard Williams decided that Murdoch’s problems were The Times’s opportunity. The three of them began holding private meetings, rather in the manner that Andreas Whittam Smith, Matthew Symonds and Stephen Glover had done in planning the Independent when they were still employed by the Telegraph. Longley had already talked the situation over with Sir Gordon Borrie, the director-general of the Office of Fair Trading. Together, Longley, Sieghart and Williams d
rew up proposals to buy The Times from News International with the intention of re-establishing it along the lines of the (profitable) business structure that had been adopted by the Independent. They approached John Nott, the chairman and chief executive of Lazard Brothers merchant bank, and took soundings from venture capitalists. The response was that the prospectus looked favourable, but it was dependent on Murdoch agreeing to sell. Bravely, Sieghart and Williams decided to go and see him. He listened carefully to their sales pitch, interjecting only with the occasional facial wince. Then he said ‘no’. He would not sell. He did, however, ask what they thought was wrong with the paper and was given a fulsome account of its deficiencies compared to the Independent and the feeling that it was time for a new editor.53 The points were noted.

  Wilson’s nemesis appeared shortly thereafter in the guise of Andrew Knight who Murdoch poached from the Telegraph Group as the new executive chairman of News International in March 1990. When Knight arrived for his first day at Wapping, Wilson telephoned his office at ten in the morning asking to speak to him. He wanted to welcome him and let him know how much he was looking forward to working with him. Knight’s secretary said he was ‘tied up’ and would return Wilson’s call when he was free. When he had heard nothing from his new chief executive by lunchtime, Wilson telephoned again and was met with the same reply. He tried again as soon as the afternoon conference was over. Again Knight was too busy to talk to the editor of his group’s flagship title. At about 6.30 p.m. Wilson received a call, but it was from Murdoch’s secretary. She informed him that he had flown into London and wanted to see him at his flat at 8.30 the following morning. ‘I said “fine”,’ Wilson recalled, ‘and I knew that my term was over.’ That night he dined for the first time with Neil Kinnock. The bitterness and division of the Wapping dispute had prevented the Leader of the Opposition from being seen breaking bread with the editor of The Times for four years. Fittingly, the occasion, long in the planning, had been organized by Brenda Dean’s husband. The dinner was à deux. The sons of miners got on extremely well, musing on how two men from the same background could have ended up with such different political views. Wilson said nothing about the great issue preying on his mind. It was, he rued, a ‘lovely evening’.54