Graham Stewart - The History of the Times - The Murdoch Years

The recession was reflected in the fortunes of the business pages of The Times . Confronted with the necessity of finding economies, the axe fell on The Times business news. Anthony Hilton was appointed City editor but the once large supporting staff was decimated. The journalistic range contracted accordingly. Even great culls present opportunities for those who remained and this was the attitude of the new financial editor, Graham Searjeant, who came over from the Sunday Times in 1983. Douglas-Home greeted him with words of advice that could have served well many a new boy: ‘Never attempt to be definitive, because you will have to write again tomorrow.’ [440] Graham Searjeant to the author, interview, 11 January 2005. Searjeant proved to be one of the most accomplished business commentators of the next two decades, contributing not only in the business pages but also, anonymously, as a leader writer. For the paper as a whole, though, the comprehensive filleting of The Times business news – the section the old Thomson ownership had once imagined would rival the FT in its coverage – represented a major contraction. It left the FT with an almost unassailable advantage in this vital sector of the market for the next decade.

It was thus surprising that The Times was endorsing the Thatcherite vision of the enterprise economy while simultaneously cutting back on its own business coverage. The transformation to Thatcherite cheerleader was not swift or unquestioning, however. The bulk of the Government’s privatization campaign to roll back the frontiers of the nationalized economy lay ahead in a second term of office. The first attempt, in 1982, left The Times noticeably underwhelmed. The privatization of a majority stake in ‘Britoil’, as the British National Oil Corporation was renamed, was, as its author Nigel Lawson put it, ‘the largest privatization the world had ever known’. [441] Lawson, The View From No. 11 , p. 208. But with Labour immediately pledging to renationalize the oil assets at the sale price, investors were cautious. This, together with a flotation in November 1982 that badly coincided with gloomy predictions about future oil prices, ensured it was embarrassingly undersubscribed. Neither Adrian Hamilton in the business news section nor The Times leader writers were surprised, concluding that ‘a decent interval before the next major sale would be judicious’. [442] ‘The Pains of Privatisation’, leading article, The Times , 22 November 1982. What was more, the paper still had to be convinced that ‘selling assets at a discount’ and ‘transferring ownership from twenty million taxpayers to a few hundred thousand shareholders, simply to raise a relatively small amount of money’ made sense. [443] ‘Selling at a Discount’, leading article, The Times , 28 October 1982. This was one tune that time and experience would later change.

Whatever the battles over the opinion pieces in the paper, there was still enough of the journal of record spirit within The Times to ensure straight, unbiased reporting on the news pages. The political editor was Julian Haviland, whom Harold Evans had appointed after he had spent more than twenty years at ITN. Haviland was reinforced by Tony Bevins, the chief political correspondent, and a team of four journalists working from the House of Commons to report British political news. In any case, despite the claims that it was now a bastion of right-wing prejudices, it was hard to discern too much enthusiasm for the Conservative Party even on the comment pages of The Times as the 1983 general election approached. ‘Only the conquest of inflation and of the Falklands were measureable successes,’ the leader column conceded, ‘with the rest having to be taken on trust from a not very eloquent band of ministers.’ [444] ‘The Love that Labour Lost’, leading article, The Times , 6 June 1983. But the Labour Party manifesto, immortalized by Gerald Kaufman as ‘the longest suicide note in history’, put beyond the slightest doubt which party the paper would endorse. Labour’s manifesto called not only for the scrapping of Trident, unilateral nuclear disarmament and withdrawal from the EEC, but for the reimposition of exchange controls and the threat to the major clearing banks that if they refused to ‘cooperate with us fully … we shall stand ready to take one or more of them into public ownership’. Nationalization would be extended over electronics and pharmaceutical companies, on all tenanted land and on any private property ‘held empty without justification’. Private schools would lose charitable status and were to be ‘integrated’ into the local authority sector ‘where necessary’. [445] The New Hope for Britain , Labour Party 1983 general election manifesto. There was scarcely a word in the entire manifesto with which The Times columnists and leader writers did not take issue. Claiming to feel sympathy for his predicament, Bernard Levin described Michael Foot as ‘lurching between disaster and calamity with all the skill and aplomb of a one-legged tightrope-walker’. He was, Levin maintained, a man ‘unable to make his own Shadow Cabinet appointments or indeed to blow his nose in public without his trousers falling down’. [446] The Times , 1 December 1982.

The paper was also critical of the Liberal-SDP Alliance’s offering which was ‘a worthy compilation of much that has been tried, half-tried or at least seriously considered over the last political generation’. [447] ‘All Their Tomorrows’, leading article, The Times , 8 June 1983. Editorially, the switch from Harold Evans to Douglas-Home probably made little difference to the paper’s hostility to Michael Foot’s Labour Party, but it ensured a less charitable attitude towards the centre-left alternative. Despite this, subsequent estimates suggested that a third of Times readers voted for the Alliance. With the exception of the Guardian (41 per cent), this was the highest proportion for any national newspaper’s readership. [448] Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party , p. 498.

Due to the 1978–9 shutdown, the 1983 general election was the first that The Times had covered since 1974. There was a last minute danger that it would miss out again when Fleet Street was hit by a fresh wave of strikes. A nine-week dispute with its print workers ensured the Financial Times missed the general election. Two hundred thousand copies of the Observer ’s final edition before election day were lost when the NGA decided to punish the newspaper’s editor, Donald Trelford, for not allowing the NGA space in his paper to attack a Conservative Party advertisement. Since the Observer supported Labour, it was hard to see what the NGA’s action was intended to achieve. The following night, the NGA members took exception to the main leader in the Daily Express and refused to print it. Early editions of the paper appeared with a blank space where the offending leader should have appeared. In these circumstances, The Times could consider itself lucky to escape the unions’ ad hoc attempt at press censorship.

Nor, happily, did the paper have to contend with any political direction from the proprietor’s office. Although Murdoch was in London on polling day, he had not felt the need to be in the country during the election campaign. He did not interfere with The Times ’s stance (not that he would have felt the need to) and the same was true at the less resolute Sunday Times whose editor, Frank Giles, later made clear that ‘at no period had Murdoch raised with me the question of our political line. Nor had [Sir Edward] Pickering.’ [449] Giles, Sundry Times , p. 230.