by Bruce Page
Reuters had long lived – usually breaking even – as a trust handling world news on behalf of the British and Commonwealth newspapers which controlled it. But in 1980 it was commencing a profit explosion driven by the boom in financial data, and Brunton was among the directors wishing to split the trust and market Reuters. The Mail group (Associated Newspapers), also a big shareholder, sought to keep Reuters as an asset for the general news industry rather than as equity for institutional portfolios. (They were accused then of obstruction, though Reuters’ operations today suggest a certain prescience.) Murdoch was on Brunton’s side – and eventually matters turned out the way they desired, though not until after the Times deal had been consummated.
Pre-Reuters, the two had been in contact over Newspaper Proprietors business, and Brunton suggested Rupert would be ‘tough and straight’ at TNL. Of course Brunton’s adjective selection would look somewhat exotic within months of the handover, but he probably meant only that he was doing business happily with Murdoch and fancied doing more. Underneath the adjectives, it went rather further: Associated Newspapers could well compete for one or both Times papers. And besides disrupting arrangements at Reuters, that could inflict severe collateral damage on Brunton.
Any bidders seriously analysing TNL could see an argument that two newspaper businesses had been bodged together in such a way as to breed a sickness affecting them differentially. The Sunday Times was ailing, but still robust. The Times was catastrophically sick – it needed to be sold separately as a title, closed, and restarted on a new basis. Few likely Times buyers really disagreed. Associated’s Lord Rothermere said bluntly that simple continuance of The Times would be insane. Unhappily, Brunton required a madman. The papers had to go (and surely Brunton himself would if the papers didn’t). Deadline March. But The Times had to be sold in running order, to someone reckless enough to keep it running.
Ken Thomson did not want a reputation as ‘the man who closed The Times of London’, and he believed that sale to anyone intending closure however temporary in plan – would have that effect. So, if no one saved him, he would close it anyway. This irrational precondition exploded all the nonsense about a ‘responsible’ sale. But it had a kind of logic if one took The Times to be not a real newspaper, but a symbol, a vial of reputation-concentrate. If reorganised, it would be something else – perhaps nothing like the reputable Times of London, and Thomson would get blamed all the more. (He had of course intended no permanent closure in 1978, only Augean laundering.)
Reputation is a peculiar commodity. If Thomson could sell some, there would be more for him to keep. It seems to have been Denis Hamilton’s hunch that Murdoch might be a buyer – might take The Times as an extra with the Sunday Times, which he visibly desired. Even before the sale announcement Hamilton had discussed the papers with Murdoch in some detail when they flew together to the Reuters October board meeting in Bahrain.
At this time, Murdoch’s public character was in transition. It inspired loathing very widely – most intensely, perhaps, in New York (see Chapter 7 above), with London a close second. Outside Australia it did not much inspire fear, or project an aura of invincibility. But outside Australia, Murdoch had not yet shown his ability to alter the rules of the state. Fox, Wapping and Sky were scenarios still unwritten. To be sure, he ran some bullying newspapers, and the Sun seemed to be a rising political force. But people who take themselves seriously often know too little about popular newspapers to judge them. There is something lawyers call the ‘boys will be boys’ defence, and eminent folk in business or politics often thought Murdoch’s sins fell within it. Murdoch expressed a similar thought more aggressively: anyone agreeing that his New York Post was ‘a force for evil’ must be a ‘snob’.
Of course publishers and journalists, like the Times Newspapers people, had no need to believe this. They could easily learn the truth, and even had a duty to do so. In a few hours one reporter with a notebook and a telephone could list the items of concern: Murdoch’s cowardly removal of Rohan Rivett; his tergiversating over over television licences; his McMahon smear; his callous Profumo rehash (and its paranoid justification); Adrian Deamer’s arbitrary ejection from the Australian; the raid on London Weekend; the gross political campaigns of 1972 and 1975 (first fawning, then dumping on Labor); the (literally) incredible Son of Sam escapade in 1977. And there was a live study available: Ronald Reagan’s 1980 bandwagon was on the home turn, and of its partisan outriders none whooped and hollered like the New York Post.
This was a clouded reputation by any standard – and darker in the Australian case, where fears existed that News Ltd’s disregard for ordinary corporate restraints might be untameable. On 26 September 1980 the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal disallowed an attempt by News to obtain clandestine participation in ATV-10 Melbourne. Murdoch’s company had operated through a subsidiary of his friend Peter Abeles’ Ansett transport group. Judicial review had to be invoked to frustrate the attempt. The High Court of Australia then ordered the Tribunal to look behind the corporate mask.
Shortly before that, in seeking control of TEN-10 Sydney, Murdoch had given the Tribunal a famous battery of assurances which had turned out little better than those offered by the wolf to Little Red Riding Hood: the two instances gave News a look of frightening ruthlessness. As damage-reduction, News was preparing a case for the Administrative Tribunals Appeals system during 1981. It occurred to Murdoch, or to one of his advisers, that it would be a good moment to acquire some high-quality assets. As he was to say in his appeal next year, nobody would be allowed to buy The Times who had anything wrong with him. Brunton, Hamilton and their colleagues were not offering The Times and Sunday Times to Murdoch because his record was that of a suitable owner. Rather, he was a totally unsuitable owner who would look a bit better with The Times in his stable. This of course is not what they told themselves, but they weren’t investigating animals.
At the end of November, Thanksgiving weekend, Murdoch decided to to go for both papers. He called Richard Searby QC in Melbourne, his contemporary at school and Oxford, now counsel to News Ltd, and in London Lord Catto of Morgan Grenfell, veteran of the News of the World and Sun campaigns. They would be the negotiating team. On 8 December Brunton arrived at Catto’s apartment talent and was pleased to hear they were offering for both papers, with The Times as a going concern. Next day the board of Reuters met, and contemplated its glorious profit growth – some 800 per cent on the year – after which Murdoch asked Gerald Long, Reuters chief executive and the man considered the genius of the bonanza, to move over to TNL once it was secured. Reuters, apparently, had solved the industrial problems of electronic data-entry and Long was the man to transfer this feat to newspapers.
Here were golden prospects, with Reuters heading for a flotation – that had become Denis Hamilton’s retirement ambition, to compensate for several years’ disappointment – and Times Newspapers being restored to profit by Long’s technical–industrial expertise. There could even be provision in the deal for Thomsons to share in the prosperity which had thus far been frustrated. December and early January were busy with exchanges between Murdoch and Thomson interests – but privately. Publicly, it was an open race.
Competitive offers were arriving, of course. But the only thing with real potential to unravel the package was the prospective bid for the Sunday Times by Harry Evans, to which threats and contempt were therefore applied. The power, Brunton explained to the editor, was wholly in his, Brunton’s, hands. Was there no question of the Monopolies Commission? asked Evans. No, a loss-making company would be exempt, said Brunton with sincerity – showing that Shawcross had foreseen just how his mind would work. Brunton may not have wanted Murdoch exposed to any real test of just how ‘straight’ he was.
Harold Matthew Evans, then fifty-two, usually called Harry, had made the Sunday Times into one of the most admired papers in the world. An editor, said Adrian Deamer in an earlier chapter, needs ‘a good eye’, and this was a gift strong in Evans,
combined with a vivid textual style and narrative sense. Some of his staff knew more about production minutiae, but his estimate of what risk could be taken with an edition was matchless on the big occasions. The type of journalist (not rare on The Times) to whom technical skill implied cultural poverty sometimes patronised him. He was working class by birth, and began his career without a degree. But he went back to get his MA from a good university, and few tried to patronise him twice.
His chief distinction was proven readiness to face challenges capable of denting or smashing an editorial career (a small selection has been cited). This requires not just courage – which in the plain sort humanity hardly lacks – but the scarcer alloy of courage with skill, sometimes labelled moral courage. Weber identified the accidental quality of journalism; skill is required to steer a paper regularly to where the accidents are, and not incontinently wreck it.
After many successful years the connection between Evans, the staff of the paper and the Sunday Times itself was so close that disposing of it against his resistance was scarcely practical. But, more than that, it had developed as the best available instrument for penetrating the armour around vehicles like News and drivers such as Murdoch. The unique opportunity Evans had – and let slip – was to interrupt Murdoch’s progress, not just by denying him possession of the Sunday Times, but by denying him the freedom from its scrutiny consequential on possession. Evans has judged himself harshly in this respect. But before canvassing other judgments we should see how the odds stood against him and reach the endpoint of his fourteen-month interaction with Murdoch.
As 1981 started, and Britain’s political and legal systems began to engage with the fate of two Times titles, the ‘responsible’ sale developed farcical qualities. These derived from confusion over the law and undulations in the worth of the goods offered. To achieve Brunton’s aim, the Sunday Times had to be both profitable and not profitable. The October announcement had displayed no doubt: it was ‘very, very rare for a paper as profitable as the Sunday Times to come on the market’. Naturally a decent price must be obtained for a major asset. The Thomson Organisation, though family controlled, had many public shareholders. On the other hand, huge losses were the justification for sale, and for evasion of Monopolies Commission scrutiny. Subsequent reports referred to annual losses of about £15 million (£47 million today) and by the New Year the public had not been told how all this fitted together.
However, the prospectus developed by Warburgs (now SBC Warburg), investment bankers to Thomson, was more specific, and of some quality. Its basis was a series of trading analyses for both papers, made by Don Cruickshank, who was both TNL finance director and Sunday Times general manager. His McKinsey experience gave him comparative skills unusual in the industry – he was a chartered accountant as well as a Manchester MBA, and his appointments since indicate ability (board level at Virgin, Pearson and the NHS; chairman of the government’s banking inquiry, the Year 2000 project, and Scottish Media; chairman of the London Stock Exchange).
Ian Clubb, the Thomson group finance director, another chartered accountant with an impressive subsequent career (chairman of First Choice), examined all the work before it went to Warburgs. Clubb was sure of its precision: most of it came from audited years. It showed that the Sunday Times had traded profitably for fifteen of the past seventeen years, often in a feeble economy; only those years touched by the shutdown had actually been loss-making ones, and the shutdown had left its marketplace vitality untouched. The picture was of a nearly unkillable business, which in decent trading circumstances could keep TNL in the black even if The Times’ steady record of trading loss persisted. Warburgs projected that TNL could make £8 million trading profit in its next financial year, and £16 million by 1983.
The prospectus was completed in November 1980. Assiduous efforts were made to keep it secret. When prospective purchasers had access, they had to guard its contents with zeal from any employees of Times Newspapers, and Evans obtained one only by insisting. ‘Commercial confidence’ was ritually invoked, but the document contained little which needed to be confidential or which should have been so in an ‘open’ disposal of nationally important properties. The primary message was that some stretch was involved in calling TNL unprofitable; to lose serious money, strategic misjudgment had to be applied (as indeed it had been). And that calling the Sunday Times ‘profitable’ was a great understatement.
But a secondary message undermined the entire basis of the Brunton–Murdoch deal, by showing that bidders who sought to separate the two papers had logic on their side. Warburgs had quite naturally sought analysis considering the two newspaper businesses separately and this, Cruickshank says,
was something we had not really done before, because the whole assumption had been joint management. What it showed us was that the Sunday Times was far more profitable if separated from The Times, and was a very different business with a different readership. It was possible to run them together, but certainly more profitable to run the Sunday Times without The Times.
In the relationship between the two papers as it stood, The Times’ contribution to overheads did not make up for the losses it contributed to TNL. The implication was that both papers would be stronger with The Times operating separately on a smaller scale.
Of fifty bids on the table at the start of 1981 just a handful demanded serious attention. Associated Newspapers and the Sea Containers transport group both had substantial proposals to buy, close and relaunch The Times, and the consortium Journalists On the Times (JOTT) wanted to buy the title for a nominal sum and start afresh. All, essentially, were sighting shots, including Murdoch’s – the only one ready to maintain the dubious TNL edifice. The bid entered by ‘Mr Harold Evans … and his close associates on the staff of the Sunday Times’ was the one Thomson and News most needed to neutralise, and in January Murdoch applied his personality to the task. The large, bearlike Brunton had been minatory with Evans, to little effect. Murdoch was effusive, attentive, flattering, enthusiastic, gossipy and (finally) effective. When he looked back at their relationship, over a period of acute distress, Evans recalled that in Murdoch’s presence it was barely possible to believe he would break his word and ‘away from him it was barely possible to believe he would keep it’. The courting display was of a kind customary with Murdoch, and Evans was ill equipped to resist. He has written that he did not have ‘a settled view’ of Murdoch’s character; the analysis here suggests that Murdoch has little in the way of settled character.
In his years at the Sunday Times Evans had usually been slow to settle his own estimate where issues of character occurred. This was more than proper distaste for denunciations based on a half-dozen clippings: he was not quick in making use of others’ experience. Evans had been a close friend of Rivett’s; he was acquainted with the Deamer example, and in general with the Murdoch record. But the fluid switch of mode he had not personally encountered.
A reporter or investigator learns to trust at least some stories of wrongdoing where he was not personally on the receiving end; if he doesn’t, the practitioner soon becomes another victim. But in his long service as editor this had not been Evans’ specialist activity. He had been a friend, supporter and impresario of investigators, but not one himself. In the case of Robert Maxwell, Evans needed several opportunities to settle, by personal experiment, what witnesses had already proved – that every promise was worthless. Maxwell did little harm, because his furious threats against Evans activated other defences in a basically resolute character. Murdoch, far from threatening, asked effusively for trust – for cooperation, for aid. And Evans scarcely weighed the evidence showing that in this game there would be no supplementary chances.
Both Brunton and Gerald Long had floated the idea that Evans’ duty was not to protect the Sunday Times from Murdoch, but to join him in resurrecting The Times. Murdoch made it a proposition over lunch at his apartment in Eaton Square on 15 January, and elaborated at dinner two days later, with Anna Murdoc
h and Evans’ partner Tina Brown present. Brown thought life with Rupert might be ‘enormous fun’ (admittedly, by comparison with the later Thomson era). The tactics were gross. They worked – they subtracted urgency from Evans’ own bid – by acting on his entirely genuine qualifications to become pre-eminent in the record of his profession: author of the Sunday Times, and saviour of The Times. Murdoch let him draw the picture himself.
In design, the Evans bid had never matched its potential. Its constructor was Bernard Donoughue, who had advised Harold Wilson in Downing Street and later investment banks in the City; at this point he was writing leaders for the Sunday Times and working for the Economist Intelligence Unit. Lord Donoughue’s performance in the retrospective-occupation test suggests an uncertain guide to the kind of moral jungle enclosing Evans: later in the 1980s he prospered as a colleague of Robert Maxwell’s, and even working for the paper which eventually disclosed it didn’t enable him to grasp the man’s dishonesty. But on the grounds that he ‘knew his way around the City’ Evans asked him to find a bank to handle the bid, and Donoughue found Morgan Grenfell, who were willing to work unpaid.
Using Murdoch’s investment bank was almost as inept as it sounds. Theoretically, conflict couldn’t arise because the Evans bid was meant to come to life when Murdoch’s reached the Monopolies Commission – and Evans, like many politicians and commentators, still thought that that must transpire. Morgan Grenfell would then swap the Jolly Roger for the White Ensign, while Murdoch demurely walked the plank. Realistically, it was absurd. Thomson and News clearly intended to beat off referral if it became a threat, and Morgan Grenfell would be joined in the battle. Meanwhile it made Evans and Associates look unreliable.
The prospective Times editorship having taken effect, another classic Murdoch display further eroded the barriers he faced. This was produced for the Vetting Procedure, a sad burlesque of a Monopolies Commission inquiry, which Thomsons mounted to reduce public demand for the real thing. It utilised the ‘national directors’ of Times Newspapers, the eminent non-executives appointed to impress the Commission in 1966. Assembled with the TNL editorial brass, they were to study Murdoch’s character and – should it pass – negotiate with him a constitution for TNL under which they would get enhanced power to guarantee the independence of its editors. On the chosen date, 21 January, only three were available: Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre by this time); Eric (Lord) Roll, economist, mandarin and banker; Sidney (Lord) Greene, a trade unionist. Evans and Rees-Mogg joined the panel, with Denis Hamilton as chairman.