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

Having skimmed down the list, Brunton and Hamilton were left with what they considered were just two serious offers. One was from Rupert Murdoch, the other from Vere Harmsworth, third Viscount Rothermere. Besides its regional papers, Lord Rothermere’s Associated Newspapers owned the Daily Mail and part-owned the London Evening Standard . His great-uncle, Lord Northcliffe, as well as founding the Daily Mail , had owned The Times between 1908 and 1922, saving it from bankruptcy. But future profit rather than family pietàs appeared to be Rothermere’s motivation now. He offered Thomson £25 million for the Sunday Times but would knock £5 million off if the price of closing the deal meant that he had to buy The Times as well. [49] Sir Gordon Brunton to the author, interview, 8 April 2003. This was ominous. Rothermere later stated:

I didn’t want The Times . I wanted the Sunday Times . What we wanted to do was somehow shunt off The Times where it would survive as a parish newspaper of the elite. So it would remain that way at a minimum loss situation because none of us could see how it could ever be made commercially viable. [50] Quoted in S. J. Taylor, An Unlikely Hero , p. 180.

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] Sir Gordon Brunton to the author, interview, 8 April 2003.

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] Richard Searby to the author, interview, 11 June 2002.

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] Evans, Good Times, Bad Times , p. 122. 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] Sir Denis Hamilton to Sir Gordon Brunton, 9 January 1980, Brunton Papers. This contrasted with Murdoch who was ‘neither greatly to the left or greatly to the right’. [55] Sir Denis Hamilton to the Directors of TNHL, 16 January 1981. Hamilton Papers. 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] Evans, Good Times, Bad Times , pp. 106–7. 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] Harold Evans to Sir Gordon Brunton, 20 January 1981, (underlining as in original), Brunton Papers.

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.