The History of the Times

by Graham Stewart

  A debt rescheduling package was worked out, but by bringing the various transactions together this was a temporary fix that failed to solve a problem: if one of the banks involved was determined to default from the agreement then the whole deal could fall apart. The overused pack of cards analogy was, in this case, all too apt. This was exactly the situation that almost destroyed News Corp. in the first week of December 1990. After much bargaining, the various creditors reached agreement with one small, but awkward, exception. The Pittsburgh National Bank owned 1 per cent of the debt in question and wanted its money back. With great independence of mind, it refused to play its part in the rollover plan even if it meant destroying News Corp. as a consequence. Murdoch’s empire, to say nothing of his ownership of The Times, was in the hands of a Pittsburgh loan officer who appeared blissfully immune to charm or intimidation down a telephone line. Murdoch assured him that if Pittsburgh National refused to roll over the debt then News Corp. would go out of business. ‘That’s right,’ replied the loan officer. Lest there be any misunderstanding, Murdoch sought qualification: ‘You’re telling us to liquidate our company?’ ‘Yes,’ came the unabashed reply.65 It was not clear where else the conversation could go, so, Murdoch attempted to speak to someone more senior. But Pittsburgh National’s chairman refused to take his call, referring him back to the loan officer. Only when John Reed, the chairman of Citibank, intervened, calling the Pittsburgh National chairman to assure him that allowing News Corp. to go under risked prompting an international financial crash, did the bank give way to Murdoch’s desperate pleas.

  This was a temporary respite. In the weeks ahead, News Corp. again appeared close to insolvency with crises breaking on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve overshadowing the expressions of yuletide felicitations within the Murdoch household. Yet, clinging on proved a sufficient tactic in the short term and by February 1991 the debt override agreement was in place that gave News Corp. three years in which to get its financial house in order. There were other glimmers of hope: the pressure was eased on Sky by its swallowing up of its competitor British Satellite Broadcasting and Murdoch’s film company, Twentieth Century-Fox, produced a highly lucrative hit at the box office, Home Alone (which Geoff Brown, The Times’s critic, not entirely helpfully described as being like fast food because it was ‘made to order, with relish but without finesse’).66 For most of the paper’s journalists pacing anxiously the length of the Wapping warehouse there was a feeling of helplessness, watching and observing news that, for once, directly affected them. It seemed to be especially hard luck at the very moment when an agreeable arrangement appeared to have been reached – an editor left to do what he liked to take the paper upmarket with a proprietor content to pay the bills. Jenkins was deeply alarmed and concerned and had strenuously to dissuade Clifford Longley from asking Murdoch if he would sell The Times to a consortium he was trying to cobble together. Longley saw Murdoch’s problems as The Times’s opportunity, believing that, freed from News International’s care, it could model a new ownership structure based on that which appeared to be suiting the Independent. In fact, Murdoch’s problems during the winter of 1990–91 were not of so minor a scale that floating off The Times would have solved the daunting arithmetic. The only chance of the paper having a new owner was if News Corp. went under. In that scenario it, like all the other parts of the once mighty media group, would be stripped down and sold in the conditions of a fire sale.

  Indeed, but for News Corp.’s financial troubles, The Times might have found itself with far more managerial autonomy. When Andrew Knight had arrived as executive chairman of News International in March 1990, he had been surprised to discover how complicated the command structure was at the senior levels of the paper compared to what he had experienced running the Telegraph Group for Conrad Black. It was necessary to descend to the fifth tier of management before one came to anyone primarily responsible for The Times. Such a layered hierarchy did not necessarily make for clear or responsive decision making. Part of the problem had been created by the specific troubles thrown up by the move to Wapping but the greater issue was that News International consisted of two newspaper groups (NGN for the tabloids and Times Newspapers Limited for the broadsheets) that catered for very different markets and also included Sky, the satellite television venture which was racking up such heavy losses that Knight found himself writing cheques for £2 million (and sometimes £4 million) a week. Within months of arriving at Wapping, Knight had begun to work on a plan that would effectively split NGN and Times Newspapers into separate companies, a solution that he believed would make the respective managements far more responsive to the titles over which they exercised control. Fate intervened. On holiday with the Murdoch family in Aspen, Colorado, Knight suffered a near fatal skiing accident that forced him to take a lengthy period of recuperation. By the time he recovered, the company was fighting for its life and was hardly seeking the managerial distraction of the kind Knight had envisaged. The moment passed.67

  The company’s attempt to rebuild itself necessarily involved retrenchment. Gus Fischer, News International’s managing director, issued the group’s editors with an edict demanding a 10 per cent across-the-board cut in budget. This was a crippling blow to Jenkins’s upmarket aspirations for The Times. He managed to whittle away Fischer’s initial recommendation that the paper lose 10 per cent of its staff but the economies when they emerged were still severe. Further investment in promotion was postponed and a redundancy package introduced. The cutback that had the most lasting significance came to the parliament page. Looking for somewhere to cut staff, Jenkins concluded that employing a team to sit in the House of Commons and copy down a transaction of the debates was no longer tenable. The Times’s was the only wholly independent newspaper report of parliamentary proceedings, a reporter from the paper always being present in the chamber whenever the Commons was sitting. Each day, an average of thirty-three excerpts from speeches would be printed. The survey evidence suggested it was popular with MPs but Jenkins doubted it was read anywhere much outside the Palace of Westminster’s precincts.68 So ended a famous tradition and, indeed, one of the paper’s principal claims to being the ‘journal of record’. This tag now largely rested with the continuation of the law reports. It was ironic that the passing of the parliamentary page had happened at the hands of Simon Jenkins rather than Charles Wilson, the supposed downmarket influence who, nonetheless, had not been inclined to take such a risk. Murdoch, too, thought the departure from tradition a mistake, believing it was an important ingredient of what made The Times special.69 On the other hand, he never interfered to tell Jenkins where the mandatory cuts ought to be made instead.

  VI

  While the Soviet Union and federal Yugoslavia fell apart (see Chapter Thirteen), the architects of the European Community worked to bring a federal union together. For more than thirty years, the Paris – Bonn axis had been the force at the heart of Europe – the place where John Major now stated he wanted Britain to be. Scrapping the impressively powerful Deutschmark in favour of a new single European currency was part of the bargain that Mitterrand extracted from Kohl as the price for acquiescence in unifying Germany.

  When John Major became Prime Minister his true views on European integration were unclear (which was one of the reasons why he was seen as the unity candidate). It was not long, however, before he would be called upon to show his hand. The intergovernmental conference called at the Dutch city of Maastricht in December 1991 would determined whether EMU was waffle or a reality. The United Kingdom had the power of veto. Using it risked demonstrating the country’s isolation from the rest of Europe, whose members might proceed with their own plans regardless, leaving Britain ‘behind’. On the other hand, acquiescing with the federal destiny risked political turmoil at home. This was the dilemma facing a Prime Minister about to go into an election year and still narrowly behind Labour in the opinion polls.

  The Times’s position was laid out in a leading article that st
retched down the entire page. It was uneasy about the headlong rush towards EMU. Indeed, the paper argued that EMU might actually hamper the fruition of European free trade because ‘there is no evidence that a diverse continental economy becomes more efficient within a framework of centralized decision-taking and fixed internal pricing than when its component parts can adjust costs, taxes and even exchange rates’. It also condemned the Social Chapter which he claimed was ‘centralization gone mad’ and ‘commercial suicide’. ‘In a democracy,’ The Times began it peroration, ‘everybody must know what is being delegated, to whom and why’ and a Maastricht treaty could perform an invaluable function in establishing the functions and limitations of the European Community’s legal competence. But Britain should ‘be outspoken in crying stop’ if, instead, its partners tried to overreach themselves. Indeed:

  If no such clarity emerges from Maastricht, the enthusiasm for European cooperation will vanish in dust by the end of the century. Too much power stripped from too many electorates and granted to too many international bodies will induce its own reaction: a nationalist upsurge which no amount of central policing will suppress. EMU and political union will collapse in bitterness and fascism. Then Maastricht will seem like a passing madness, a brief shout of concord choked by its own illusions.70

  The following morning The Times’s front-page headline boldly announced ‘Major wins all he asked for at Maastricht’ alongside the Prime Minister’s assessment that it was ‘Game, set and match for Britain’. The paper’s reporters from Maastricht – George Brock, Michael Binyon and Robin Oakley – adjudged it a triumph for Major who had won on the issues the press had been briefed he would take a stand on: national opt-outs on the Social Chapter and EMU as well as avoidance of a specific federal commitment in the wording. That the agreement fell short of what his continental partners, and in particular France, wanted only seemed to confirm the extent of the diplomatic victory. The leading article, entitled ‘A Sort of Triumph’ congratulated Major for forcing ‘Maastricht to be sensible’ and the following day went further, describing his diplomacy as ‘an emphatic success’ which kept key decision making with the intergovernmental Council of Ministers rather than ceding it to the Commission or any of the other institutions of doubtful accountability.71 Indeed, Major certainly appeared to have pulled off a short-term triumph, returning ‘from Maastricht to a hero’s welcome from Tory MPs [who were] in a state of near euphoria’ as Philip Webster reported the mood in Westminster. Peter Riddell was similarly impressed by the Prime Minister’s political and diplomatic skill.72 The growing number of Euro-sceptics were relieved that he had not irrevocably committed the country to the Social Chapter and EMU while others, most notably enthusiasts in the business community and the City, safely assumed – as Anatole Kaletsky pointed out – that, come the hour, be it in 1997 or 1999, Britain would sign up for EMU rather than risk being left out in the cold.73 Whether this would be the right course to take, The Times editorial, like the Prime Minister, remained equivocal.74

  In the meantime, one, or probably two, general elections would intrude. As the spring of 1992 approached, Major opted to go to the polls immediately after a coolly received Budget, with unemployment back up at 2.6 million – nearly one person in ten was now on the dole – and the lowest number of property transactions for a decade. While the recession of the early 1980s had hit hardest areas of Britain that traditionally voted Labour anyway, this time the downturn was affecting the Tory and swing-vote constituencies of London, the South and Southeast. It was not a propitious time for the Conservatives to go to the polls and, having been in power for thirteen years, they could no longer blame past Labour administrations for the country’s ills. For some, the feeling that it was time for a change was sufficient to motivate their desire to vote for it. After all, they reasoned, if Labour could not win now, in these favourable conditions, when could it win?

  With the salutary experience of three successive election defeats to point to, Neil Kinnock had pushed the Labour Party not only away from the policies that had contributed towards its humiliation in 1983 but even from the pledges with which he had led it to the polls in 1987. Most conspicuously, the commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament had been dropped though the apparent end of the Cold War downgraded the importance in which defence issues featured among voter concerns. Within a remarkably short period of time, the Labour Party had passed from wanting to withdraw from the European Community to mild Euro-scepticism and now onto positive Europhilia. Labour’s nationalization programme had also been dropped. The party’s emphasis was, instead, increasing the proportion of the national wealth spent by the public sector.

  When, halfway through the election campaign, John Smith, the Shadow Chancellor, unveiled his tax plans, the immediate response was broadly positive. Accompanying analysis from the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggested that it would make 80 per cent of the population better off, which was almost 50 per cent more than were set to prosper under the Tory plans. Some felt Smith had scored a knockout punch against his opposite number, Norman Lamont. Yet, while Lamont reeled, Anatole Kaletsky looked at the figures more closely and started landing some punches of his own. In a series of high-profile articles, he accused Smith of deliberately creating ‘a tax structure more punitive to the middle class than any previous Labour government’s’. The financial benefit Labour’s plans gave to the majority was paltry – often a matter of pence – but the compensating hit on the moderately affluent was enormous. ‘Mr Smith,’ Kaletsky thundered, ‘will ensure a collapse in demand for the goods, houses and services bought by the middle class.’ Nor was there even social equity in Labour’s proposals: earned income would be taxed at a higher level than unearned income; headteachers and doctors earning £40,000 a year would pay more tax (about £1700 a year more) than a millionaire living on a £100,000 private income. According to Kaletsky, Smith’s tax plan would hit hardest those in the south-east who ‘could have a crucial impact on the election’.75 Conservative Central Office seized upon this argument, hoping to woo back this group of disillusioned Tory voters by frightening them with the worse fate John Smith had in store for them. Billboards began to proclaim the new Tory message – ‘Labour’s Tax Bombshell’.

  A Labour victory was certainly not in the interests of News International. The party was committed to an enquiry into the concentration of media ownership in Britain and nobody at Wapping was in any doubt about where the concentration would be pinpointed. Jenkins gathered the leader writers and senior lobby journalists to Le Pont de la Tour restaurant and announced that The Times would be endorsing the Conservatives. He paused. Then he asked the assembled to tell him why.

  Unlike the two previous general election campaigns, the close nature of the 1992 contest gave added importance to the media coverage. Opinion polls suggested there was a far larger floating vote than had existed in 1987. Mid-campaign, around 80 per cent of readers of The Times and its broadsheet rivals were telling pollsters they were interested in the election compared with a little over half of tabloid readers.76 As the campaign entered its final phase with media pundits declaring that the Tory strategy was lacklustre, Labour appeared to be heading towards a narrow – but clear – win. Matthew Parris, however, wrote to the contrary. Dispatched to the Sheffield Arena to do a sketch for Kinnoch’s glitzy rally, he had to file before it had got properly underway. But he had seen enough in the ‘media pack’ to gain a reasonable idea of the hubris about to follow:

  It is at times of retreat that an army’s strengths can best be observed. It is in moments of triumphalism that we first see the seeds of its downfall. It was when Margaret Thatcher employed a train-bearer to carry her gown that we knew her day was gone. And it was in the slick, cynical image-manipulation of Labour’s spectacular at Sheffield last night that we first sensed the contempt into which they too must come.

  Parris listed the pop endorsements and the needless live broadcast of Kinnock’s helicopter touching down, before ending:

&n
bsp; Last night in Sheffield, image throttled intellect and a quiet voice in every reporter present whispered that there was something disgusting about the occasion. Those voices will grow. Peter Mandelson has created this Labour Party and, on last night’s showing, Peter Mandelson will destroy it. ‘We will govern,’ Neil Kinnock said opening his speech, ‘as we have campaigned.’

  Oh I do hope not.77

  Kinnock’s excitable performance at Sheffield compared poorly with the old-fashioned manner in which Major fought the campaign, trudging round town centres to stand on a soap box on a street corner. While polls continued to suggest a narrow lead for Labour, they showed that a majority preferred Major to Kinnock. Two days before the polling stations opened, Simon Jenkins wrote a signed article on the Op-Ed page contrasting the leadership styles of the two contenders. They had much in common: ‘Neither needed the help of Oxbridge or family or wealth. There was no apprenticeship in the patronage of a great union or the entourage of a Tory grandee. Grammar school and personal ambition looked after them both.’ Yet, for all his policy U-turns, ‘a search for substance in the verbosity of a Kinnock speech, reveals little more than the foggy egalitarianism that has moved him since he entered the Commons in 1970’. By contrast, Jenkins wrote approvingly that ‘Maastricht was John Major’s coming of age as a prime minister’ and what he lacked in popular appeal he more than made up for by being good at the ‘dull business’ of government.78 The full-page Times leading article endorsing the Tories concerned itself with issues rather than personalities, but it did conclude with a final observation that Major ‘has emerged during his brief reign as prime minister as a likeable, competent and honest leader of his country’.79

  On election morning, Oakley’s front-page report warned of a ‘cliffhanger’. MORI opinion polls suggested that the Tories were making a late comeback, from a seven-point deficit a week earlier to only 1 per cent behind on the eve of poll. A hung government appeared likely with Ashdown as the power broker. Having endorsed the Tories the previous day and with opinion polls suggesting a strengthening support for the Liberal Democrats, The Times editorial on election morning warned voters against doing anything that made a hung government or its adoption in perpetuity through proportional representation more likely.80