The History of the Times

by Graham Stewart

  That he should want the Sunday Times was hardly surprising. If its troubled industrial relations could be sorted out it would quickly return to great profitability. And buying it certainly seemed less risky than Associated’s other plan – launching the Mail on Sunday. But the notion that The Times could survive as some sort of specialist interest publication with a tiny readership and minimal investment was, from a business perspective, without logic. Ultimately it would not even satisfy its core market: if it was starved of the money necessary to retain experts reporting from home and abroad, why would even an elite turn to it as a reliable source of information? When Brunton asked Rothermere if he could guarantee that he would not close down The Times if he bought it, Rothermere admitted he could make no such undertaking.51

  Rothermere was a victim of his own honesty since, once the deal had gone through, he would have got his hands on the prize of the Sunday Times and could have shut The Times down almost immediately, pausing only to transfer its better features and journalists to the Sunday title along the way. That he told the truth may well have been what saved The Times from the scrap heap. Brunton’s insistence that he would not sell TNL to anyone who did not intend to invest in The Times’s future meant that there remained only one other press magnate on the Thomson chief executive’s list. But could Rupert Murdoch’s motives be trusted?

  Murdoch had delayed asking for a prospectus until early December. But once he had decided to move he did so with speed. Two key players were brought in. One was his banker friend Lord Catto, chairman of Morgan Grenfell, who organized a meeting at his flat with Brunton to discuss the deal. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Catto was the son of the Governor of the Bank of England during its ‘nationalization’ by the Attlee Government. He had been on the board of Murdoch’s News International Ltd since 1969, having played a decisive part in securing Murdoch’s first foothold in Fleet Street: ownership of the News of the World (by convincing its owners, the Carr family, that their paper would remain safe in their hands if the young Australian became a major shareholder). Catto now had to convince Brunton that The Times would be safe in the Murdoch grip. Murdoch’s other lieutenant in the operation was his old boarding-school friend, Richard Searby. As boys they had been roommates together at Geelong Grammar School before following one another up to Oxford. A politically well-connected QC in Australia, Searby was sufficiently impressed by Murdoch’s seriousness about purchasing The Times that, over the course of a telephone call, he offered his services and flew in to London in order to be in the closest position to offer legal advice on the deal.52

  With Catto and Searby at his side, Murdoch’s clear display of interest contrasted favourably with the more languid approach to negotiation displayed by Rothermere who, cocooned in his Parisian tax haven, left most of the negotiating to Associated Newspapers’ managing director, Mick Shields. But the crucial difference was that Murdoch stated categorically that he was bidding for all of TNL and fully intended to keep The Times as a going concern. He told Harold Evans that Rees-Mogg was mistaken if he had come away from his meeting at the New York Post with the impression that Murdoch’s interest was in the Sunday Times alone.53 Importantly, Murdoch had Sir Denis Hamilton’s support. On 9 January 1981 Hamilton wrote a memo to Brunton giving his views, and those of the national directors of Times Newspapers, that Murdoch was their preferred choice. It was true he had had a ‘deteriorating effect’ on tabloid standards but this had to be balanced by the fact that he had created a quality broadsheet in The Australian. If binding guarantees could be secured regarding editorial independence and quality, then there were no objections to his purchasing Times Newspapers. Hamilton and the directors were much less enthusiastic about Rothermere’s bid, suspecting that ‘property potential is greater motivation than the development of these papers’. Furthermore, the ‘strong and consistent bias towards the Conservative Party’ displayed in Rothermere’s newspapers was ‘incompatible with the independent role of The Times’.54 This contrasted with Murdoch who was ‘neither greatly to the left or greatly to the right’.55 In this last respect, opponents of the political orientation of Murdoch’s newspapers in the 1980s might be forgiven for delivering a mirthless laugh.

  Initially Harold Evans at the Sunday Times had been taken aback by the speed with which Hamilton had come round to seeing Murdoch as a saviour.56 Yet, while continuing to press the claims of his own Sunday Times consortium, Evans wrote to Brunton on 20 January passing on the views of Sunday Times staff: ‘between Murdoch and Rothermere, it is Murdoch who is preferred by a wide margin’. Subject to the appropriate safeguards, Evans also conceded, ‘I myself would choose Murdoch’.57

  Brunton’s task was to keep Murdoch interested without giving him the impression he was the only horse in the race. This was not just because the hint of competition would encourage Murdoch to raise his offer price. Closing down The Times would cost its owner £35 million in redundancy payouts. Thomson would have to foot this bill if the paper’s ownership was not transferred before the 15 March deadline. If Murdoch believed none of his rivals could secure a deal before that date, he could sit it out and wait for The Times to fold, allowing Thomson to pay the costs. After a seemly pause, there was nothing to stop Murdoch then starting a new paper called The Times (after all, in Fleet Street’s history there had been a number of newspapers of varying longevity called the Sun). For this ‘new’ Times he could hire whoever he liked on whatever terms (subject to employment law) fitted in with his own business strategy, including possible adoption of the Rees-Mogg plan of freeing himself from Fleet Street’s costs and militancy by printing from a provincial location.

  In fact, there was nothing in Murdoch’s negotiating stance that suggested this ethically doubtful option formed any part of his strategy. Indeed, the more Hamilton and the Times Newspapers directors contemplated the ‘ruthless operator’ the more they believed he had ‘a personality which probably could relate to The Times’.58 Rees-Mogg was now firmly of the view that Murdoch, rather than his own consortium, was the newspaper’s saviour-in-waiting. All that remained was for an appropriate price to be agreed together with his assent to a number of safeguards that would stop him interfering in the paper’s editorial content in the way in which he was known to do with the Sun.

  The negotiations came to a head on 21 January at the elegant Thomson headquarters in Stratford Place, off Oxford Street. The Thomson team refused Murdoch’s demand that they should give a written guarantee that the company’s assets were worth £17.9 million and that the current losses would be no greater than £14.5 million. There was, Brunton later admitted, ‘some blood on the walls’. Murdoch then went downstairs to face the vetting committee that had been drawn up to assess his personal suitability. ‘These dignified gentlemen probably thought I was quaking with fear,’ he recalled; ‘actually I was shaking with anger’.59 Despite this, he made a favourable impression. The vetting committee consisted of Sir Denis Hamilton together with the two editors, Rees-Mogg and Harold Evans, and the national directors, Lords Roll, Dacre, Greene and Astor (Lord Robens, who was in America, kept in touch by telephone). Murdoch made several assurances: that he would abide by the editorial safeguards drawn up and would not seek to direct editors, even when they pursued views contrary to those expressed in his other titles; that he hoped Harold Evans would continue to edit the Sunday Times; that he did not have the resources of Lord Thomson at his disposal. He said that he saw the role of the independent national directors as that of a court of appeal for an editor who felt himself in conflict with his proprietor. Murdoch guaranteed to increase the number of independent directors sitting on the board of Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd. This board alone would have the power to appoint or remove an editor, voting by majority decision. It would also take a majority vote of the directors to approve any subsequent sale of The Times or Sunday Times.60

  Harold Evans took great care to ensure the wording of the guarantees. Rees-Mogg took a less legalistic view, believing that, once ensconce
d, the power of a proprietor was such that little could realistically be done to bind him to guarantees he had chosen, for whatever reason, to disobey. Rees-Mogg maintained, ‘I thought therefore a judgment of character had to be made’, and in his opinion Murdoch ‘would in fact honour the agreements’. Thus the precise wording was not really crucial.61 The Spectator’s press columnist later took a yet more robust view, maintaining that The Times would never have seen the light of day if John Walter, the ex-bankrupt who founded it in 1785 with the intention of making money for himself, had been subjected to the proprietorial guarantees forced upon Murdoch.62 In fact, the Australian was in some respects treated with less condescension than had been Roy Thomson. When he had bought The Times in 1966 he had to agree not only to abstain from editorial interference (which was, in any case, never his style) but also that he would not even sit on the newspaper’s board (from where, with de haut en bas condescension and despite having sold the business, Gavin Astor managed to ensure his appointments continued to exercise a guardian role). Murdoch fully intended to sit on the board of his own company into which he would be pouring money.

  The vetting committee voted unanimously in favour of Murdoch. The deal was eventually done after the midnight hour had struck. Subject to securing agreement for job cuts with the unions and that the Government would not refer the purchase to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, The Times and the other TNL titles would become the property of News International. The press releases went out on 22 January. Brunton expressed the hope that the unions would agree with him that Murdoch represented the best hope of keeping TNL together. Murdoch sought to concentrate on the guarantees he had given with regard to independent national directors, to his faith in Harold Evans as ‘one of the world’s great editors’ and to his own intentions:

  I am not seeking to acquire these papers in order to change them into something entirely different. I have operated and launched newspapers all over the world. This new undertaking I regard as the most exciting challenge of my life.63

  The first major newspaper to carry the news was Rothermere’s London Evening Standard. The banner headline roared out ‘MURDOCH BUYS THE THUNDERER’.64

  Thomson’s asking price for Times Newspapers was £55 million. Murdoch’s final offer of £12 million was £8 million less than the bid Rothermere had made and £13 million less than Rothermere had proffered for the Sunday Times alone. That Brunton nonetheless favoured Murdoch’s bid was proof that Thomson was philanthropically more interested in the long-term future of The Times than in making money from its sale.

  What remained to be seen was whether Murdoch was equally highminded. True, TNL was making a loss, but such losses could be set against the tax payable on the profits of News International’s other press division, News Group Newspapers (the Sun and the News of the World). NGN had recorded a £20.3 million pre-tax profit in the second half of 1980. In return for the £12 million Murdoch had paid for TNL, he had gained the freehold of the Sunday Times building on Gray’s Inn Road (said to be worth at least £8 million) together with other assets such as vehicles and machinery that were roughly computed to be worth nearly £18 million. Of the £12 million paid to Thomson, £8 million was for the Gray’s Inn Road property and only £4 million for the shares in Times Newspapers. By keeping the property assets of TNL separate from the publishing subsidiary, News International could shut down the papers with minimal redundancy payouts to the employees and yet liquidate the property assets separately.65 Brunton believed Murdoch was a man of his word. If he was not, Thomson had sold out to someone who could make a quick profit as an asset stripper.

  IV

  Murdoch’s purchase of Times Newspapers was conditional. If he could not negotiate sufficient job cuts with the unions before 15 March the deal would be off. In this eventuality, the Thomson board would find themselves scrapping around at the last minute for an alternative purchaser in whatever days remained before the official shut-down of the company. In that eventuality it would be a buyer’s market and the papers might have to be sold to a proprietor who fell short of Brunton’s ideals (although he remained adamant that he would rather see The Times put to sleep than handed into the bear hug of Robert Maxwell).66 There was also a second hurdle. Newspaper takeovers were subject to referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Purchasing TNL gave News International more than a quarter of the market share in dailies. The Government might block the purchase on these grounds alone. At any rate, there was no prospect of the Monopolies Commission issuing its report before the 15 March deadline for transferral of ownership.

  On 19 January, the Times’s NUJ chapel had carried overwhelmingly (there was only one vote in opposition and four abstentions) a motion stating that ‘any further concentration of ownership of national newspapers in Britain would be against the public interest’ and that a potential purchaser should be referred to the Monopolies Commission.67 Since the newspaper’s purchase by either of the major bidders could not do other than concentrated ownership, the union activists appeared to be endangering any future for their paper unless it was from a consortium like that proposed by Rees-Mogg (who was, in any case, now in the pro-Murdoch camp). This stance fortified efforts to block Murdoch’s purchase in the House of Commons. The Labour MP Phillip Whitehead was attracting names for an Early Day Motion as opposition, particularly although not exclusively on the left, mounted to the deal.

  On the first Saturday after he had made his provisional agreement with Thomson and the TNL directors, Murdoch was shown around the Sunday Times’s composing room. Stopping to look at the proof of the paper’s leader article on the sale, he spotted a factual omission (the Daily Star had not been added to the list of titles owned by Express Newspapers). Instinctively, Murdoch reached for his pen and marked on the proof where the words ‘Daily Star’ should be inserted. This was his first error. Word soon got around that the proprietor designate had already broken his guarantees and was interfering in the editorial policy of the Sunday Times. Had he not had the gall to change a leader article in the full view of the composing room? Evans sent him a note of rebuke. Murdoch quickly apologized, but the incident was a gift to his detractors.

  Given the attitude expressed by the NUJ chapel, reassuring the journalists was an immediate priority. With Rees-Mogg standing supportively at his side, Murdoch addressed the editorial staff of The Times on 26 January. He had ‘great respect’ for the paper and reaffirmed his intention not to alter its essential character. There would be more of interest for women with extra sections to make it ‘of greater value and appeal at home rather than being taken off to work by commuters’ but there would be no sudden attempt to become a mass-market paper. Murdoch repeated that he would stand by his editorial guarantees and that while he would ‘complain if the facts are wrong’ he had ‘no intention of interfering with any opinions in the paper’. He believed that any attempt by him to tear up the guarantees would create ‘a terrible public stink’ that ‘would destroy the paper’. On the paper’s financial future he was resolute. It was ‘unhealthy’ for it to be dependent on a proprietor. Profitability was the best guarantor of independence. But it was the ‘biggest challenge in the world’ to make The Times viable and it would take at least three to four years for it to make a profit. It would not move to his currently idle print works at Wapping. He thought the Guardian and Daily Telegraph were equal rivals. He apologized for previously calling The Times a ‘dead duck’. He had meant to say ‘sick duck’.68

  Although the union activists in the paper’s NUJ chapel remained sceptical or hostile, opinion was sharply divided and immediately after Murdoch had made his address to them, one hundred journalists on the paper quickly signed a statement supporting his purchase. On the same day, Jake Ecclestone passed on the view of the NUJ meeting to John Biffen, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, demanding a referral to the Monopolies Commission.69

  Looked at at face value, the case for referring the Murdoch bid to the Monopolies Commission was overwh
elming. In 1966 Harold Wilson’s Government had referred Roy Thomson’s purchase of The Times even although it would give him control of a mere 6.5 per cent of the national and provincial dailies’ circulation. In 1981, The Times had only 1.9 per cent of the market share in national daily newspapers but the Sun enjoyed a 25.3 per cent share. Together this meant that News International’s papers would account for 27.2 per cent. Concentration was yet higher in the Sundays market where the 7.7 per cent share of the Sunday Times, when added to that of the News of the World, gave News International a 31 per cent share.70

  On the other hand, such was the relative smallness of their sale, the addition of the Times titles made only marginal difference to News International’s total market share, especially in the dailies market. In any case, adding the Sun’s circulation to The Times produced a figure of limited practical meaning since the proportion of readers who regularly bought both a daily tabloid and a broadsheet was tiny. But even if the sales were all added together and treated as one, the company would still not be the market leader. Adding the sales of The Times gave News International 4,120,493 daily sales. The Mirror Group had 4,380,000 sales a day. London would still have less of a monopoly newspaper structure than existed in New York, Paris, Bonn or Frankfurt.71

  Whatever the spin put on the statistics, the 1973 Fair Trade Act stipulated that all major newspaper takeovers should be referred to the Monopolies Commission. But the Secretary of State could overrule this stipulation if the paper concerned was unprofitable and in danger of closing down without a quick transferral of ownership. This section, 58(3) of the Act, was the Thomson-Murdoch ‘get out of jail’ card and one they were determined to play.

  Thomson’s submission to the Secretary of State, John Biffen, left little room for ambiguity. On no account would the seller extend the deadline in order to facilitate the Monopolies Commission to undertake its report (which was expected to take a minimum of eight weeks to compile). The proposed agreement with Murdoch rested on consent from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) being granted by 12 February otherwise the deal was off. A new potential proprietor would then have to be approached in the time remaining. This would not be easy since ‘there is little likelihood that a suitable alternative buyer for TNL as a whole will be identified. There are no signs that any other potential buyer for TNL as a whole has as strong a commitment as NIL [News International Limited] to preserving The Times on a long-term basis.’ Indeed, if a new serious bidder came forward he would probably be another owner of a media empire, necessitating a fresh Monopolies Commission report to be put in motion and causing yet further delay. The process could last for months with each serious bidder eventually being ruled out in turn until someone sufficiently minor could be found to take on the paper’s elephantine problems. Rather than continue losing money while this merry-go-round proceeded at its own leisurely pace, Thomson were not prepared to relent on their decision to close down The Times and its sisters, with or without a sale, by 15 March.72 In other words, the Government could agree to the sale and secure the papers future, or it could demand a referral and risk their destruction.