MAXWELL WRIT LARGE
The press: Paul Johnson takes a cool look at Cap'n Bob's apotheosis
ROBERT Maxwell must be feeling pleased with himself this week. He has done rather well with his flurry of writs. How so? you ask. My answer is that you must always bear clearly in mind what it is Maxwell wishes to achieve by his activities. He is not really interested in court verdicts. I doubt if any of his suits will ever go to judgment. Of course he enjoys the exhil- aration of sending posses of lawyers scur- rying around with bits of menacing parch- ment; it is a game he loves and can afford to play. But that is not the point. Nor is he seriously concerned to stop hostile biog- raphies of him being sold. He knows perfectly well it is impossible. Still less is he trying to block rival books to promote the sales of Joe Haines's hagiography. He will doubtless be left with many copies of it on his hands but he knows they can always be sold in bulk or given away behind the Iron Curtain. And finally he does not care a damn if people say he is a sinister would-be dictator imposing censorship etc, or, alter- natively, that he is a self-obsessed, power- crazed monomaniac who is making a com- plete idiot of himself.
What, then, does he want? I am re- minded of an occasion in the 1950s when I paid a visit to Yugoslavia. I went every- where. The authorities were very helpful. I came back and wrote a long, detailed and highly critical report. When it was pub- lished I thought: well, that is the end of my relations with those fellows. However, shortly afterwards I was asked to lunch by their ambassador. He was friendly, indeed jovial, as Yugoslays usually are. At length, and somewhat nervously, I said what was on my mind: I was surprised my article had not caused more offence. He replied: 'Mr Johnson, your article was mischievous, wrong-headed and altogether disgraceful. But, above all, it was long. Yugoslavia is, in English eyes, an obscure Balkan coun- try, not worth noticing. You have noticed us. We Yugoslays want to be talked about.'
Maxwell wants to be talked about. With stiff competition from Prince Charles, Nigel Lawson and others, he is being talked about this week; the amount of column inches he occupied in Sunday's papers, not all of them his own, must have been gratifying. Bob Edwards, who gives a lively, fair and true portrait of Maxwell in his newly-published autobiography, relates that when he urged Maxwell, shortly after he had acquired the Mirror Group, to take a lower personal profile in his papers, Maxwell said reproachfully: 'Bob, you are trying to spoil my fun.' He meant it. Why had he worked, calculated, schemed, wheeled and dealed to make all that money, then manoeuvred, intrigued, wangled and machinated to get the Mirror papers, if not to adopt a high profile in them? That was the chief object of the operation. A low-profile Maxwell is a contradiction in terms, like a silent Thatch- er or a steely Steel or a concise Kinnock.
Personally I do not object to Maxwell having his fun. It does no great harm if proprietors put a lot of nonsense about themselves in their papers; they might be doing far worse things with their power. Among the high and mighty, vanity is not the worst sin: one of the most sinister aspects of Lenin, Hitler and Stalin, the three most evil men of the century, was their curious lack of it. I can see that it is very irritating for Mirror Group editors to have to accommodate Maxwell's self- promotion in their pages; it offends their sense of professional rectitude. But at least he does not pursue vendettas, as Beaver- brook did and as the Observer's Tiny Rowland does.
Of course it would be better if Maxwell left the editorial content of his newspapers alone. That is something on which every- one in the trade, except himself, agrees. Unlike Beaverbrook he seems to have no journalistic flair at all. All his major interventions on content have been mis- taken. But that does not mean that his career as an important newspaper owner has been disastrous, as some argue. On the contrary: it has been good for newspapers as a whole.
Consider even the case of the London Daily News. Maxwell's meddling in its content, publication times and commercial policy is usually blamed for its failure. It certainly contributed. But then the paper never had much chance in the first place. Maxwell was brave to have a go, something Rupert Murdoch, with all his skill and resources, has dodged. Moreover, the net effect of the venture was enormously to improve the Evening Standard by its com- petition and to revive the moribund Lon- don evening market. Londoners are better served in consequence.
The Mirror Group papers have also on balance benefited from Maxwell's own- ership. He has perhaps accelerated their circulation decline. On the other hand he has restored their commercial viability. When he took over, the group was poised to slip over the financial precipice. The unions did what they pleased. The journal- ists troughed and sluiced. Management looked on in demoralised despair. All that has been cleaned up.
The firm is now a tidy ship, albeit a one-man ship. Moreover, in transforming the way the Mirror Group is run, Maxwell has performed a service for the whole trade, and the public. It must not be forgotten that the deal Maxwell forced on the group's print unions was the second in the critical chain of events which broke their power. The first was Eddie Shah's imminent publication of Today. But it was Maxwell's deal which finally obliged Mur- doch to take the colossal risk of the Wapping solution, the third and decisive event. All three men should share the credit for the revolution which has trans- formed the British newspaper scene.
Finally, Maxwell is as a press proprietor ought to be: a little larger than life. I like Bob Edwards's story of his habit of dunk- ing his cigars in the wine-glasses of his editors' wives. I also like, though I'm not sure I believe it, the tale of his getting revenge on the Winslow Hotel in New York by releasing thousands of fleas in its elevator shaft. Maxwell appears to share with the late Cecil King certain meta- physical gifts. King claimed he could make himself invisible, then materialise again; and I once witnessed what appeared to be an epiphany of his. Maxwell seems able to alter his size and shape: some days he seems taller and wider than on others. To osmotic power he adds mysterious agility. Once, at a Labour Party conference, .1 found him approaching me down a corn- dor and hastily went off in the opposite direction: he was waiting round the next corner. I do not altogether object if press barons are wilful and arbitrary, and emit a strong whiff of sulphur when you lift their lids. Journalists dispose of a great deal of irresponsible power which they often misuse. It is right that providence should set above them disconcerting crea- tures to make their lives difficult. Maxwell may be an immigrant once variously called Jan Ludwig Hoch, Ian Jones and Leslie du Maurier, but he has the true Northcliffe stamp. It is good that he likes to be a topic of conversation, for he is sure to remain one, thus adding, as Dr Johnson said of Garrick, to the common stock of harmless pleasure.
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