The last years were the worst
Paul Foot
MAXWELL: THE FINAL VERDICT by Tom Bower HarperCollins, f16.99, pp. 478 Wy did the Maxwells get off? The question is still being asked all over the country with a feverish incredulity. The answers are in Tom Bower's book, but not in his long section on the brothers' trial. So plainly does Bower believe that the evi- dence pointed inexorably to the brothers' guilt, that he does not gives us a clue as to why a dedicated and careful jury thought otherwise. There are two answers which emerge quite clearly from the rest of the book. The first is Robert Maxwell. When he published his first book on Maxwell in 1988, Tom Bower asked me whether I thought there was any good in Maxwell. When I said no, none whatever, he remon- strated with me. There was, he said, 'some- thing to be said' for the monster, though I can't remember what that was.
Certainly there is no trace of that 'some- thing' in this second volume. Everything that was vile in Robert Maxwell became viler as he got older and faced the horror of his mortality. What was often described as his charm became more obviously the false flattery it always was. Some sort of order in his affairs turned into chaos. He lost the antennae which occasionally warned him when he was going too far. He bullied and barged his way through his last years in cruel contempt for the feelings of everyone else. For the six years I worked at the Daily Mirror I would marvel daily at the degree to which forthright editors, excel- lent journalists, expert printers and brilliant computer programmers would throw them- selves at the feet of a man who had no recognisable ability whatsoever.
All this got steadily worse in the three years covered by this book — during which Maxwell launched his bid for world media domination, overreached himself by many hundreds of millions of pounds, and then, in a desperate attempt to pay the interest on his ludicrous loans, plundered the pension funds into which thousands of workers had faithfully placed their monthly contributions. As this 'obese tyrant' (Bower's phrase, not mine) swaggered his posthumous way through the interminable trial of his sons, no doubt the jury adjudged it irrelevant to convict the monkeys when the foul old organ-grinder had been so obviously responsible for any tune they were told to sing.
This was the most common explanation for the surprise verdict. But there is another one, more unpopular, but far more persuasive. The jury were confronted day after day not only with the monster Maxwell but with the economic and political system which created him, cosset- ted him and fawned on him. At the head of this cavalcade came the bankers from the big clearers, the Nat West, Barclays and Midland, whose chiefs recklessly threw money at him whenever he asked for it. Then, either in person or in documents, came the merchant banks, Samuel Mon- tagu, Robert Fraser, Goldman Sachs, the stockbrokers Smith New Court, the audi- tors Coopers and Lybrand, the City lawyers Titmuss Sainer, Nicholson Graham and Jones, Mishcon de Reya. These are not small or sleazy firms on the sidelines. They stand at the very centre of the economic system which has made this country what it is today.
The bulk of Tom Bower's book reports the endless meetings and deals struck between Maxwell and these experts. Some- how, either by shouting or wheedling or — most commonly — by paying huge fees and salaries, Maxwell always got the better of the well-bred and well-educated slickers who thought they understood him. He had studied the capitalist system well enough to understand its susceptibility to the activities at which he excelled: bribing and bullying. He bribed his fellow capitalists and he bul- lied his suppliers and his workers. When he rescued the British Printing Corporation from certain bankruptcy by the time- honoured method of sacking half the work- force, the banks clasped him to their bosom and very quickly joined him in denouncing the verdict of their own inspec- tors: that Maxwell was not fit to run a pub- lic company. Not fit to run a public company! Why? Because he lied and cheat- ed, massaged figures, inflated profits? What nonsense! That sort of thing goes on in the City of London all the time! And who cared about a propensity to lie and cheat in a man who had the guts to sack trade unionists by the thousand, the generosity to throw magnificent champagne parties at Claridges and the publicity-gorging vanity to ruin Labour's most influential newspaper, the Daily Mirror.
Many days at the trial were devoted to the intricacies of pension funds. Perhaps there were some members of the jury who believed when the trial started that occupa- tional pension funds were ring-fenced, utterly safe from the commercial greed of an employer. If so, they were quickly disil- lusioned. Pension funds, they learned, are treated by employers as a reserve pool of money which can be used as• security for loans. Moreover, the funds can be owned by private companies which the employer can control absolutely. So when Maxwell's empire needed hundreds of millions to sur- vive, his natural reaction was to borrow maniacally on the security of the pension fund companies. Such borrowing was stan- dard practice — so why penalise these wretched boys for something which they saw happening all around them? Why should two young men be punished for what was common practice not just in Maxwell companies but everywhere else as well? Why kill the flies for being ensnared in the web?
After drawing up this mighty indictment of modern British capitalism, Tom Bower shies away from the ideological conclu- sions. He ends with a call for more 'inde- pendent spirits', but the main enemy of independence of spirit is not a natural ten- dency to grovel, but the enormous unchecked power of a few moguls who owe that power not to any ability, still less to any choice by their fellow human beings, but solely to their wealth. Tom Bower would agree, I suspect, but his relentless research has produced something much more than an exposé of a single rogue: proof positive of the old adage that the only real guarantee of liberty or fraternity is equality.
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