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 ensconced, 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