WHEN THE MIRROR WAS KING
discusses the Cecil King era in Fleet Street
ALTHOUGH Cecil King never had se- rious money and was not, strictly speaking, a proprietor at all, he was the archetype newspaper tycoon of his era. He made the other major figure of his time, Roy Thom- son, look very mousy by comparison. King was the connecting link between the age of Northcliffe, Rothermere and Beaver- brook, the first great phase of popular newspapers, and the modern free-market age of Murdoch. His heyday, the Forties, Fifties and Sixties, was marked first by newsprint rationing, which in effect froze the ownership and circulation pattern, and then by ultra-restrictive union power, which prevented any kind of entrepreneu- rial initiative in the national newspaper field.
In this monopolistic atmosphere, King, who was a high-powered capitalist bureaucrat rather than an innovator, was at home. It was no accident he supported the Labour Party, with its close union links, for most of his working life. Indeed Labour policies, especially its backing for closed-shop industrial relations, were actually of commercial benefit to the Mir- ror Group. For once Guy Bartholomew and Hugh Cudlipp had pushed the Daily Mirror into the leading position in the Popular daily field, it was to the advantage of the group to use the high wage-structure and restrictive practices of Fleet Street to weaken competitors and repel intruders. In King's time it was virtually impossible for anyone (at least outside the existing empires) to start a new national daily. The advantage of this closed market system, as King saw it, was that he could maintain the Mirror as a decent, responsi- ble newspaper. Relieved of any fear of down-market competition, it could handle the news conscientiously and play a major role in political affairs. In his time the Mirror spent lavishly on politics, employed many highly-paid political experts and commentators, the senior of whom became Labour lifepeers, and was in turn taken seriously at Westminster, at any rate in the Labour Party, which accepted the myth that the Mirror had been the main factor in the 1945 landslide. It was then a good newspaper by any standards and King himself moved majestically through the London political and media scene, seemingly invincible. He was 6' 4" and looked even bigger. He had cold blue eyes and one of the most glacial and disconcert- ing stares I have ever come across. In business meetings he employed words, and still more silence, with devastating power. He frightened the multitude and impressed even the hard-boiled few. His successful takeover of Odhams enabled him to build up the combined group, re-named the International Publishing Corporation, into what for a time was the world's largest print empire. It looked tremendously solid so long as King was running it. But as often happens with such artificial constructs, its troubles began when it built itself grandiose new offices on Holborn Circus. King found that his own ninth-floor suite had no provision for a coal fire, on which he insisted, and had one installed at enormous cost. This was a symbol of rising megalomania. King prided himself on his judgment, which had often been excellent, and claimed his sense of timing was 'geological'. But in 1968 he misjudged his power as a print tycoon at a time when television (which he rarely watched) was already replacing it in politic- al impact. He thought he could use his position as chairman of IPC to change the Government. His mistake was multiple. He forgot history. Neither his Uncle Northcliffe, in 1916-20, nor Beaverbrook and Rothermere in 1930, had been able to achieve results by direct intervention, even when print power was at its zenith. He forgot that Britain was a parliamentary democracy, and made little attempt to canvas MPs or even party leaders. Not least, he forgot that the Mirror was not a proprietorial but a collegiate newspaper. He believed he could use it to express his personal policies, as Northcliffe and Beaverbrook had done, without owning the equity. He did not confide in his colleagues or carry them with him: The chief of them, Cudlipp, decided to mount a boardroom coup and used his knowledge of King's psychology, acutely observed over many years, to execute it.
Nothing now remains of King's empire. Cudlipp could oust but could not replace him. Once King's awe-inspiring presence departed, the cracks in IPC soon began to show. It was, in effect, taken over by its own paper-suppliers, then split up. The old TUC-Labour Daily Herald, acquired by King as part of the Odhams deal, was relaunched as a popular broadsheet, the Sun, but did not flourish. Cudlipp, anxious to be rid of the responsibility, virtually gave it to the young Rupert Murdoch, already owner of the News of the World. Thus the Mirror Group unthinkingly forged the weapon which was to do it so much damage and handed it to its mortal enemy.
Transformed into a tabloid, the Sun gave the Mirror what it had been spared throughout the King era — intense, down- market competition. With the shaken and ill-led Mirror still committed to responsible political journalism, there could be only one outcome. That, in turn, made the Mirror commercially vulnerable. It had enormous journalistic overheads and union restrictive practices acquired when it was the protected market leader. Once over- taken and humiliated by Murdoch's Sun, it became itself a prey, and in due course fell to Robert Maxwell. He, like King, decided to turn it into a proprietor's newspaper. But, unlike King, he held the equity. So a proprietor's newspaper it became. It now has little influence. But then there is little to influence, since the Labour Party has declined, pari passu, with the Mirror Group.
King's career is an excellent moral tale of hubris and nemesis. I greatly regretted his departure from the scene because he was the last media tycoon who knew how to play the part. He gave Fleet Street a certain dignified drama it has since lacked. He himself believed he was no ordinary mortal. He thought he had the power to make himself invisible, so that he could walk up and down Fleet Street observing but unobserved. There may have been something in this. Once, at a party in the American ambassador's house, I was dis- cussing him with the wife of a Labour leader, in one corner of the room. Sudden- ly, we both found ourselves chilled. Glanc- ing around, we found King standing behind us, alone, not apparently listening but glancing high above our heads into the distance. There was no way in which he could have got behind us except by leaping over a large sofa, an improbable procedure at his age. Neither of us had any explana- tion for this epiphany.
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