MEDIA STUDIES
Now is the time for Hugo Young to sack the man who has compromised his paper's integrity
STEPHEN GLOVER
0 n the whole we should be glad that a number of very respectable businessmen are pouring millions of pounds into the pockets of New Labour. Far better the likes of Sir Maurice Hatter and John Ritblat than some of the rather dodgy characters who supported Harold Wilson. So long as the Blairites are dependent on big business, and therefore aware of its needs, we can probably all sleep comfortably in our beds in the knowledge that New Labour really has become a bourgeois party.
All the same, one donor should be rais- ing our hackles. According to the docu- ment leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, Lord Gavron, chairman of the Guardian Media Group, which publishes the Guardian, Observer, Manchester Evening News and a string of provincial papers, has just given £500,000 to New Labour. Of course, he used to be plain Mr Bob Gavron. In June
— by coincidence the same month that he signed that cheque to Tony Blair and Co — he was raised to the peerage as a work- ing Labour peer. Any connection between the two events is, of course, purely accidental.
Is it seemly for a senior newspaper execu- tive to bankroll a political party? I should say definitely not. Lord Gavron's political allegiances are no secret. The man who built up St Ives, Britain's largest indepen- dent printing company, was once a Thatcherite but jumped on board the New Labour bandwagon before the 1997 general election. In September 1996 it emerged that Mr Gavron had generously contributed £500,000 to New Labour. In January 1997 he became chairman of the Guardian Media Group. In other words, the publish- ing company knew where its new boss was coming from. That was bad enough, but if Mr Gavron had decided to stop giving money to New Labour, we might not have had too much to complain about.
The best way to test the irregularity of all this is to imagine the whole thing the other way around. Pretend that Conrad Black, chairman of the Telegraph Group, which publishes The Spectator, had been raised to the peerage after giving a million pounds to the Tories during the last government. There would have been an incredible hulla- baloo, and the Guardian would have pub- lished tub-thumping leaders about the cor- ruption of the press. You may say that the two situations are not strictly analogous, for Lord Gavron has no financial interest in the Guardian Media Group, which is whol- ly owned by the non-profit-making Scott Trust. But the principle is surely the same. Pace Lord Northcliffe and Lord Beaver- brook, it is preferable for someone running a newspaper company not to be seen to be in bed with the government.
The chief victim is the Guardian, which prides itself on not being an uncritical sup- porter of New Labour and is often on the rough end of Alastair Campbell's tongue. If I were a Guardian journalist I should be annoyed by this compromising of my news- paper. One of its executives says to me that Lord Gavron has no editorial power and so his bankrolling of New Labour doesn't mat- ter. But he may well have some influence, and even if he doesn't he is a sort of figure- head for the paper. The same executive asserts that there is nothing in the Scott Trust's 1936 deeds which prohibits mem- bers of the trust giving money to a political party. Even if this is true, it is hardly the point. What Lord Gavron has done offends the spirit of the newspaper. This is what its most famous editor, C.P. Scott, wrote in 1921: 'Perhaps the chief virtue of a newspa- per is its independence. Whatever its posi- tion or character, it should have a soul of its own.'
That independence has been tainted. Apart from a few Guardian journalists, no one seems to be making much of a fuss, which says a lot about the nature of these times. One way or another everything seems to lead back to New Labour, whose tentacles spread ever wider. Surely the moment has come for Hugo Young, the Olympian chairman of the Scott Trust, to incline his noble head and take an interest in the affairs of the mortals far beneath him. At the very least Lord Gavron should be told that the cheques to Mr Blair must stop. But if he has a proper sense of hon- our, and truly cares about the newspaper over which he presides, he should step down and devote all his time to being a working Labour peer, in which guise he can write out as many cheques as he wants. Will he do this? I shouldn't bet on it.
M any people will have been relieved to learn that the Mail on Sunday has decided not to serialise the memoirs of James 'Love
Rat' Hewitt about his relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales. I certainly was when I heard the news, but on reflection I am not so sure that the paper was right to give in to pressure from Earl Spencer.
It has been established that there is no legal impediment to Mr Hewitt drawing upon letters which his lover wrote to him. Why, then, can he not have his say? All the other parties have. The Princess herself used Andrew Morton to give her version of events, and indeed felt no compunction about admitting her liaison with Mr Hewitt. Prince Charles has enjoyed the services of both Jonathan Dimbleby and Penny Junor to get this story across. The only person who has not yet spilled the beans — apart from Camilla Parker Bowles — is Mr Hewitt himself.
And, of course, most of the outrage in the press is confected. The Sun has joined the Mirror in depicting Mr Hewitt as the nastiest creep and biggest cad of all time, yet it emerges that the paper's parent com- pany, News International, had itself bid for Mr Hewitt's memoirs. Most newspapers would have been happy to publish his book in some shape or form had they acquired it at the right price, and the moral disgust which they affect to feel for the author amounts to little more than the resentment of a disappointed suitor. The climate of dis- approval they have managed to create should have cut no ice with the Mail on Sunday, which reportedly finds itself in the unhappy position of having paid Mr Hewitt £350,000 for a serialisation that it will not run.
Lord Spencer would appear to have a point when he argues that the Princess's sons and family would have been hurt by revelations serialised by the paper. All one can say in reply is that the book is going to be published anyway, and its circulation may even be increased as a result of the brouhaha. I am afraid it is a fact that Diana, Princess of Wales had a six-year adulterous affair with Mr Hewitt and told the world about it. It is naive to suppose that once information like that has been divulged the flow can be turned off by a loyal brother. Mr Hewitt's story is bound to take its place alongside other people s accounts, and the whole affair will be sifted and judged by historians. What Diana, Princess of Wales did, she did; our acts fol- low us beyond the grave.
Previous page
