THE PRESS

Mirror Images

By CHRISTOPHER BOOKER

MR. CECIL HARMSWORTH KING, SiXty-four, and Mr. Hugh Cudlipp, fifty-two, are, as everyone knows, the most important figures in the largest publishing company in the world. Between them they control more magazines than anyone else• in the world, two Sunday news- papers with circulations of over five million apiece and the largest-selling daily newspaper outside the Communist bloc. They atie also given to fearless and outspoken public com- ment, and, as men of such obvious stature in our community, their word is clearly one to be heeded.

On November 1, 1961, the Daily Mirror pub- lished an editorial, presumably under the inspira- tion of Mr. Cudlipp, on the occasion of the Conservative government's publication of its Immigration Bill. It read, in part, as follows: DON'T SLAM THE DOOR

The Tory Government's plan to control im- migration . . . threatens to go too far.

It must be fundamentally WRONG to restrict' the right of Commonwealth citizens—white or coloured—to live and work here.

The finest achievement of the British people is to have created a world-wide Commonwealth in which EVERYONE can proudly say 'I am a free and equal British citizen.' Any legal limit on immigration must cut right across this great principle.

Although the number of coloured immigrants has grown rapidly, their total is STILL smaller than one in a hundred of our whole population. The overwhelming majority do useful work.

Certainly immigrants cause housing problems. The remedy is to build more homesNor barriers.

The following day the Daily Mirror gave over almost the whole of its front page to yet another editorial, also presumably produced under the direction of Mr. Hugh Cudlipp The following day the Daily Mirror gave over almost the whole of its front page to yet another editorial, also presumably produced under the direction of Mr. Hugh Cudlipp

BRITAIN'S RACE LAW

This Is An Outrage

The Tory Plan to cut down immigration is a slap in the face of everything the Common- wealth stands for.

No matter what cover-up arguments are used, every Commonwealth citizen will inter- pret this plan as Britain's Race Law.

THEY WILL BE RIGHT.

It does not need the mind of a mouse to see who will suffer. The Government's proposals are an attack on coloured people.

On Monday of this week, on the eve of the Labour government's Blackpool conference, the Daily Mirror published yet another editorial on this subject, once again presumably under the inspiration of Mr. Cudlipp:

• IMMIGRATION: THE TRUTH IN BLACK AND WHITE

Somebody has got to talk sonic sense quickly about immigration. The straight question is: Can Britain, with all her social and economic problems, afford to permit unlimited immigra- tion? The Government have said NO and the Mirror considers that the Government are right.

The Mirror has always opposed colour dis- crimination and always will. . .

The critics [of the Labour Government's White Paper] wear haloes and make high-toned speeches. The Mirror, which never seeks haloes, looks at the facts which the critics ignore.... Maybe the whole population of Barbados could be absorbed here with only marginal difficulties. But what if, over the years, the floodgates were opened for MILLIONS of immigrants from India and Pakistan?

All that unrestricted immigration would do would be to create . . . a housing problem . . . which every sensible person wants to avoid.

Mr. Hugh Cudlipp was once, of course, the author of a book entitled Publish and Be Damned. He was also, just over a year ago, much in the headlines as the major inspiration behind a new publishing venture, the creation of the Sun newspaper. But Mr. Cudlipp has many other interests beside merely the Sun and the Daily Mirror. Since the Mirror Group, with its 130

magazines and periodicals, took over Odharn's, with its 150 (not to say 200-odd trade directories and • so forth), in March 1961, and particularly since the organisation, with its brand-new sky- scraping headquarters, changed its name to the International Publishing Corporation in 1963, the impression has somehow got about that any organisation so huge and powerful must neces- sarily be 'dynamic,' progressive and efficient.

This would, of course, have been to forget the

reason why so many of the smaller magazine empires which now comprise the King-Cudlipp

empire were so easily taken over in the first place: that, in many ways, although they each contained flourishing and prosperous elements, they also contained a great deal of dead wood and dying formulae. At last, however, after four years, a really serious attempt is being made to sort out the plunder. The dynamic Mr. Clive

Irving has been moved in to the IPC's fourth. floor to oversee the great magazine empire and, in close liaison with Mr. Cudlipp, progress is at last being made. 'Our latest move,' said Mr. Cudlipp in a recent

interview with World's Press News, 'is a monthly

dinner discussion where nothing is discussed ex- cept the creative side of magazine production.

New trends and new approaches will be tested in the cut and thrust of monthly debate.' Par-

ticularly singled out as marks of progress in the same article, which also included an 'exclusive' interview with Mr. Irving, were a series of pictures from Woman's Mirror show- ing the human foetus in various stages of de- velopment (which had already been published some months before by Life magazine) and an article in Nova, 'the new kind of magazine for the new kind of woman,' on the royal marriages. 'There is also,' said Mr. Irving, 'a long study of the marriages of Princess Margaret and Prin-

cess Alexandra in the modern depth reporting style which will change the whole idea of how women's magazines will report royalty.' Gone are the days of Crawfie I Here is how the new kind of woman's magazine takes a long, hard look at the royalty of today: Princess Margaret has always been fascinated by the professional entertainers and the pro- fessional communicators. When she was still in her early twenties she once visited a BBC Television Studio at Lime Grove . . ; within a minute of being conducted to her gilt chair she had slipped past the official who pointed out the dangers of the cluttered floor and swing- ing cameras [and] was snapping her fingers to the music. . . .

Lord Snowdon . . . has many of the qualities of the successful Glossy Renaissance Man. He lives his life at a fantastic pace . . . he loves any kind of gadgetry and with-itry and he also has the New Man's genius for welding all his gifts and achievements and opportunities into a vehicle for survival.

Publish and be damned. Let us hope at Black- pool this week, at least, Mr. Wilson is proud of his oldest allies. On Wednesday the Mirror editorial proclaimed: During the Thirteen Lost Years of Tory rule in this country the Mirror frequently exposed the Ugly Mug of Toryism. The. Suez fiasco. The so-called Aflluent Age. MacWonderism. And all the apathy of Hume Sweet Home....

But, alas, there is a lethal dose of ugly- muggism about some aspects of Mr. Wilson's

Government . . . the Ugly Mug of the war in Vietnam ... the Ugly Mug of Labour's nostalgic illusions of power East of Suez ... the not-very- pretty mug on the Home Front—the delusion that exhortation is a substitute for legislation, the pipe-dream that a survey is a Plan for Action . . . the Labour Party's evasion over Britain's entry into the European Common Market. . . . At least they didn't let the Government down over immigration.