BOOKS

The trouble with Welch

Colin Welch

THE HOUSE THE BERRYS BUILT: INSIDE THE TELEGRAPH 1928-1986 by Duff Hart-Davis Hodder & Stoughton, £16.95, pp.368 You will understand how difficult it is for me to do impartial justice to this book. In the House the Berrys Built I spent some 30 years, three-quarters of my working life. To its prosperity I devoted such talent and industry as I had, with results mixed, half successful and appreciated, half not. All, I suppose, was in the outcome ephemeral, swept away to Hastings in the Black Knight, though Perry Worsthorne — bless him — maintains on the Sunday Telegraph a shadowy existence, waxing and waning amidst the chaos. They were years crowded mostly with happiness, interest and struggle, mirth and friendship, though ending in frustration and despair. For this I blame in large part myself, about whom I belatedly learnt much, not all creditable.

I was on the Daily Telegraph in succes- sion a leader writer, the first — though never the complete or best — Peter Sim- ple, a parliamentary sketch writer (which I am now again for the blessed Daily Mail), then deputy editor, then, well, still deputy editor, the road ahead blocked, then no- thing. Ideally qualified then by experience at least, the very chap to review this book? Well, yes and no. Knows a lot, true, perhaps too much, especially about mat- ters which directly concerned him. Chip on his shoulder? Can't see the wood for the trees? You'll inevitably get more I, I and I than is proper about a book in which he, Duff, tells us about them, the Berrys. I can't do it any other way, and I hope that something about him and them will emerge en route.

I know too about scandalous matters drink problems, adulteries and so on which Duff has prudently or charitably suppressed or shrouded in nameless gener- alities. He was trying, he explains, to write a public chronicle, not a long gossipy column emanating from behind the bar curtains or from under the bed. Fair enough, and well in the Telegraph tradition of public propriety and private peccancy. But who on earth, for instance, was the leader writer who was once dead drunk in the gutter outside the Kings and Keys at 2.45 p.m.? Editor Sir Colin Coote did indeed make some weird appointments and his great successor Maurice Green was not always lucky. But wasn't 2.45 a bit early or late, with the leader writers' conference due in an hour?

Within his chosen limits, Duff has done an absolutely first-class reporter's job fair, comprehensive, thorough, to me fasci- nating. Don't get any idea that humour has been austerely excluded — the book is full of good and illuminating stories. And don't get the idea that the book told me nothing, Michael Berry that I knew it all already. On the contrary, it told me lots, explained much that was obscure or hidden from me, much that happened before I came or after I went, much in particular about the deeds and misdeeds of the heroic and intelligent 'sycophants' — not my word — of the paper's management. These harassed men we respected, at times pitied, liked and trusted, but did not know as well as we should have done. They had little time for journalists. It was all spent in hopeless wrestling with the print unions. What a shock it was when the final catastrophe mercilessly revealed among them some clay feet! Why, even Michael Berry, Lord Hartwell, that is, the proprietor, was shown up, inadequate where we had least expected it. We might grumble and quarrel with him about journalistic matters, but at least we thought that the money side of the show was in safe hands. As journalists often are, we were wrong.

Michael Berry was, according to Duff, `honest, decent, fair and self-effacing and about how many other Fleet Street proprietors could that be said?' Duff is dead right there. Michael was indeed one of the straightest men I've ever met, and I'd like this to be remembered throughout whatever I have to say about him.

Towards the close of my Telegraph days I laboured foolishly under grievances im- posed upon me by this man, more wound- ing precisely because he was liked, re- spected and fatherly. I felt like, say, a child-molester sent down for embezzle- ment, or vice versa. Resentful, nothing much really to grumble about, but wasn't there something wrong? Weren't my real crimes and shortcomings quite different from what Michael thought or, alternative- ly, I concede, quite different from what he for charitable or other reasons ever said? Upon this long and baffling misunder- standing Duff throws much light, presum- bly derived mostly from Michael Berry himself — who else?

The trouble with Welch, Duff reveals, `was that he was far too funny'. Instead of soberly dealing with facts a la Telegraph, `his mind piled castles of fantasy high into the air'. 'A fount of merriment', he was apparently 'perplexed only by the problem of what joke to tell next'. Talent is not altogether denied to this odious creature, but he had Michael worried. 'Marvellous' in descriptive writing (really?), his style was 'quite unsuitable for serious leaders'. Such misgivings engendered Peter Simple, not so much a device to keep Welch out of mischief as a small oasis in which mischief was licensed, smiled on.

This picture of the young Welch seems now to its ageing sitter a high-piled castle of fantasy. Others may hotly disagree; who after all knows himself perfectly? I was probably funnier then than now, and then as now I would defend humour's place in rational discourse. But I was also, like Matthew Arnold in the Beerbohm draw- ing, perfectly serious and solemn, po-faced or even pompous, didactic and theory- ridden, the respectful if unworthy follower of Burke, de Tocqueville, Hayek, and other seminal savants. Even what I wrote for Peter Simple, before it acquired that Whartonian perfection, seems mostly now to err on the sententious rather than the frivolous side.

If this priggish youth seemed perplexed only about what joke to tell next, perhaps that is because of the acute difficulty of communicating with Michael Berry. Perry Worsthorne superbly describes the long chilly silences, luring the unwary further and further into error: 'Incapable of argu- ment himself, he gives others enough rope to hang themselves', transforming 'his own inarticulateness into a dialectical skill'.

Without theory, said Hayek, the facts are dumb. Michael utterly disagreed. He was impatient of theory and ideas, though without them factual leaders are dumb. Facts he adored, nor was his appetite over-fastidious: he was hospitable enough to nonsense if it could be arrayed as hard news. Where philosophic discussion is peri- lous, or found boring and irritating, the temptation to take refuge in jokes is irresistible. Yes, Michael did have a mar- vellous sense of humour, which made good or even belied his philosophic philistinism: for is not humour itself based on some theory or idea of what is normal and what Is laughable? Anyway, we laughed often as all unknowing I dug my own grave. The difficulties we had with leaders and the Berrys are well illustrated by an anec- dote of my own which Duff gets slightly wrong: my fault doubtless. I wrote a leader attacking (no, not defending) Richard Neville and the hippy magazine Oz. Michael's wife Pamela did shriek at me before some outsiders at lunch, 'A dreadful leader, Colin — quite dreadful!' To suggest that she thought 'dreadful' a leader defend- ing Neville, or that I could ever have written one, is to put us in the wrong boxes. She was more friendly to novel notoriety than I was. In self-defence I mentioned that I'd had a record number of Pproving letters. 'Oh, yes', she jeered, from retired colonels in Cheltenham!' — a class of persons dear to me and, I'd have thought, to the Telegraph. Loyally silent during lunch, Michael attacked later. I had pointed out that some of the Oz gang, though noisily contemp- tuous of rational calculation and meticu- lous craftsmanship, wore spectacles, thus indicating their dependence on the hum- drum world they despised. Michael was Completely baffled. 'Why ridicule them for wearing specs? You wear specs. Robes- pierre and other revolutionaries probably wore specs. Why shouldn't Oz wear specs?' I can imagine him puzzling over my remark above about embezzlers and child- Molesters, wondering to which crime I had Confessed and kindly doubting whether I'd actually committed either. I had never realised before reading Duff, I must admit, that my appointment as deputy editor to Maurice Green was made by the departing editor Coote without consulting anyone (what, not even Maurice Green?). It also much put out Michael Berry, who, however, did not feel he could countermand the appointment. Had I known all this, I might have refused, thus resolving the difficulty. It was Coote, too, who promised Perry Worsthorne the depu- ty editorship of the new Sunday Telegraph, which greatly annoyed the new editor, Donald McLachlan, whom Coote disliked. It is astonishing what a high and careless hand can achieve against seemingly im- movable obstacles.

Already suspicious of me as 'too clever and too imaginative by half, Michael's reservations increased. I was 'incurably frivolous, incapable of keeping jokes and fantastical notions out of serious articles.' Worse was to follow. I had, it seems, 'a habit of changing [my] stance on important political matters', so that one leader was contradicted a few weeks later by another. Good gracious! 'A habit'? Did I ever do such a thing? I can't remember doing so; but then a chap who forgets a whole leader in a few weeks may forget everything else too. Yet the cautions and admonitions which Michael says he piled on me — to look back, to be consistent, to change slowly if at all — were precisely those which I piled on the leader writers and on myself. They were part of our Weltans-

Colin Welch

chauung. The cast of my own mind, moreover, was also perhaps to a fault rigid, over-principled, even doctrinaire, inclined to apply stiff unchanging opinions to ever- changing new facts, changing results. These last may have offended Michael. On the other hand, he may have disliked the opinions which produced them. Perhaps what he really meant is that the opinions themselves ought to have changed, slowly, indeed, but more.

I must not give any vaunting impression that I alone incurred Michael's displeasure. `Warning', wrote Peter Utley to Bill Deedes after I'd gone, 'Lord H thought Charles [Moore]'s leader on hereditary peers "perfectly frightful".' You and I may doubt whether it really was. Nor must I suggest that once a leader had appeared in the paper, for whatever reason, its senti- ments became holy writ, never to be questioned or varied. Sir Colin Coote's anti-Americanism once tempted him into writing late at night what I and others thought disgraceful nonsense about Ken- nedy and Cuba. The consequent effective row did produce a marked and rapid change, which may of course have annoyed Michael Berry.

This abrupt change was really from the abnormal back to the norm. It was not achieved by any succession of jokes. Any perplexity I felt was about how to persuade Coote, a charming man to whom I owed so much, of the enormity, as it seemed then, of what he had hastily written — to persuade without discourtesy or disrespect. Nor was it only with jokes that, under Maurice Green's editorship, as Duff re- cords, the late Peter Utley and I and others `sharpened the paper's traditional stance and — often to the considerable disquiet of the proprietor — set about redefining Tory ideas'. Did we achieve gradually a quiet conservative revolution? When Peter was around, indeed, humour was never far away; but it was either incidental or deployed purposefully to illuminate or clarify complex and difficult political and philosophical truths.

Over all the work of intellectual recon- struction Maurice presided benignly, pro- tectively, cautiously, helpfully, indulgent- ly, loyally, dare I say humorously? The responsibility after all was his. When Ed- ward Heath executed his famous economic U-turn, we were all shocked. The paper, which had supported him till then loyally throughout, criticised him strongly. Mr Heath (`that horrible man', Maurice called him once, the worst I ever heard from this restrained source about Heath or anyone else) bitterly accused the paper of letting him down, though we saw it all exactly the other way round. Leaders, some written by me though all commissioned and approved by the cautious Maurice if he was there, drew mumbles of Keynesian disapproval from Michael. Yes, Keynesian, for Keynes' economic ideas had put down roots in Michael's youthful mind when he was a brilliant student, had survived there and had perhaps kept others out. But it was not, I suspect, the mind-blowing theor- ist Keynes who appealed to Michael. Rather was it the prestigious (old meaning) and beguiling man of affairs, effortlessly telling us all how to manage our country's business successfully without cost or thrift, without tears or pain.

On one particularly strained occasion, Maurice demanded of Michael, 'Are you asking for my resignation?' Startled, Michael stammered that er, yes, er, he supposed he was or rather, smiling, no, of course not. And an uneasy peace was restored.

My own position and prospects grew increasingly uncertain. In the end I asked Michael what his plans for me were. Was there a black ball, so to speak, against my succession to the editorship? If so, I ought to reconsider. Awkwardly honest as ever, hideously embarrassed, more than usually incoherent, Michael blurted out that there was indeed a black ball. He muttered something about 'lack of gravitas'. I swal- lowed this 'insult' (as a friend called it) as well as I could — not very well actually and sloped off after a bit to do something unrewarding but rewarded for a Dutch oil tycoon — the Mail came later.

The fortunes and vicissitudes of the Telegraph remained inevitably my con- cern. I detected myself still editing it, applauding this, protesting at that, just as I had done for years while Maurice and later Bill Deedes were away. In their absences I wonder how Michael ever dared to commit his beloved paper to such frivolous and unworthy hands as my own. For he cannot have known how much I loved that paper too, and did not seem to notice that my editorial stints passed without any of the disasters he should logically have pre- dicted.

Eventually, the dreadful crash came. Michael, according to Ivan Fallon, once city editor of the Sunday Telegraph, gave away 'nearly £900 million, and what he had worked for, [in] one of the great financial as well as personal tragedies of the age'.

After an interval I rallied round, offering sympathy, perhaps some sort of help, about as welcome perhaps as a man selling comic souvenir hats at the scene of an

awful motorway pile-up. Michael wrote to me in terms familiar, flattering and defen- sive. I went to see him. I got the ghastly impression then — I hope by now totally misleading — that this great man, once so shrewd and illusion free, had no perfect idea of what had happened, of what had hit him and with what consequences. He seemed to be under at least two mis- apprehensions: one, that I still wanted or even expected to be editor of the trans- formed Daily Telegraph and, two, that he still had the power to prevent any such catastrophe. The consequent conversation was friendly and halting, confusing and negative. I left in perplexity, unable to summon up an appropriate joke.

About the new Conrad Black Daily Telegraph I can say little or nothing now from inside knowledge. It has jewels in its crown: Deedes, for instance, Mount, Hef- fer, Booker — until recently a different Peter Simple, but what a good one. Many of the new paper's opinions and stances, its appointments and dismissals have seemed to me alien, precipitate or in- explicable. Never mind: it is no longer in any sense my paper nor Michael's, alas, and financial success silences many doubts and reservations.

I must confess and you must believe that I read the last part of Duff's book with tears. Duff is not at all an over-emotional or lachrymose writer, yet deeply moving is his account of the simple and honourable functional creed which governed Michael's life's work, a creed indeed which I was always mindful of even when we disagreed. Deeply moving, too, is his account of Michael's final eclipse.

Still nominally Editor-in-Chief, he sup- posed (as I divined) that he still had the right to appoint or at least to approve of new editors. He still fired off memos, gave orders on the intercom. Subordinates asked the new bosses, should they obey them, and were told not to. Senior mana- gers still reported to him as a matter of course. The new Chief Executive, Knight, told them to discuss nothing with Michael and to take no instructions. He and the Sunday city staff actually invaded the Berrys' sanctuary on the fifth floor. New editors, Max Hastings and Perry Wors- thorne, were chosen behind Michael's

Now all we add is a house.'

'That's the costly part done.

back.

Michael 'blew his top' (his own words), unprecedently lost his self-control. 'Surely if I'm still Editor-in-Chief, I control these appointments?', he cried. 'Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?"Well', replied Knight with cool effrontery, 'I didn't think you'd agree'.

Worse was to follow. It was Worsthorne who Michael really couldn't stomach: 'He couldn't edit his school magazine, let alone a national newspaper! He's a brilliant writer but terrible with people. It would be a disaster. You're mad.' He brought up again Perry's fateful gaffe, when he blurted out 'f—' on television. Michael fought and fought, lost and finally capitulated with dignity. (Perry has since admitted that he was wrong to say Michael has since admitted that he was wrong about Perry's editorial abilities. When will the new regime admit it was wrong later to demote Perry?)

I read of Michael's final humiliations with appalled horror. Others too will do so. To their lips as to mine will spring unbidden questions, How could they have done it to him? How could they?

Why are we all so shocked? Michael had made some mistakes: we all have. He was struggling to make another, as I see it, at the very moment he went under. By some of these mistakes and misjudgments some of us had suffered, or thought we had, or thought the paper had. We are as shocked as any. Why?

Oh well, we remember many other things: Duff tells you all about them, triumphs as well as disasters, the losing struggle against the unions which, if not finally victorious (it nearly was), was at least resolute, courageous and honourable. We remember a great bourgeois institu- tion, which justly commanded the loyalty of many intelligent and decent people, staff and readers alike. It commanded the abso- lute loyalty of one man in particular, a man whose actions and judgment might at rare times be open to question but whose motives and probity never were.

Most of us remember, too, little silly things which bring a lump to the throat. I recall Pamela and Michael at a modest supper party, not in their own house. She was an absolutely charming guest. I saw him sitting happily on a sofa, chatting, gargling, chuckling and chortling away to some lady who obviously mattered to her hosts but not perhaps to him at all. They were gassing away not about great public affairs but about some dear though re- latively trivial pursuit which engrossed them both — trees and shrubs, perhaps, which he adored, or some interest of her own. On his lap, shedding white hairs all over his immaculate dark suit, reposed contentedly a little dog. He stroked it lovingly, chattering on regardless. I thought then, what a decent unaffected man. I think so still. He commanded not only respect and loyalty but deep affection.