THE PRESS
Mirror on the Wall
By JOHN WELLS
MR. QUINTIN HOGG sits gloomily in a char- acteristic pose, jowls sunk in his hands, the famous handbell silent at his elbow, and stares miserably into the distance. The photo- graph occupies most of the front page of the Daily Mirror. Beneath is the headline: Hailsham Worried About 'Secret' Weapons. 'Here he is,' we are told, `the Tory party's slap-happy, yap- happy chief propagandist'; speaking at a press conference in York with a week to go to the election, and 'wearing black boots with laces tied in a big bow at the back,' he says that the secret weapon he is worried about is the campaign about to be launched by the Mirror Group.
Not that the Mirror Group had unveiled their secret weapon all that discreetly. On the day be- fore, October 2, 1959, they had printed the huge slogan on their front page: 'The Time Has Come For the Tories to GO.' The word GO was two and a half inches high and the letters were half an inch thick. But in the week that followed the secret weapon came cracking down on the Tories' heads and slapping about their tender parts with all the vigorous journalistic abandon that we have learned to associate with that paper. A man was shown, in bed for some reason, clutching his head in horror as he drowned in a flood of newspaper-cuttings about The Big Squeeze, Unemployment, Suez and Cyprus. The Don't Knows were told that they were swinging to Labour: dithering housewives were reminded that 'The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that writes the decisive X.'. The Tories' Black Record was laid out-on the centre pages, and even Mr. Ian Gilmour was quoted on the dishonour of the past four years. The next day a debonair Mr. Macmillan said he thought the election had 'gone off rather well' and the Mirror summed up with No`Sotir Grapes:1 —the Mirror batted on the losing side.'
But in October, 1964, they were pulling on their batting gloves again and loosely grasping their secret weapon in preparation for one of their best battles ever. 'Yes, it is time for a change'; 'Why should Britain be run by "chaps" still in mourn- ing for George III? He died (mad as a hatter) in 1820, aged eighty-one, five years after Water- loo.' The Black Record was dragged out once again, and best of all a brilliant piece of eve-of- election pamphleteering called 'Is this the PROMISED LAND?' with great ugly pictures of squalor set over quotations from Tory election promises. 'Prosperity with a purpose,' beneath black, dripping slums: 'an enormous growth in the variety and richness of leisure,' underneath an equally enormous picture of an urchin squat- ting over a bit of rotten wood in a dank back alley. The Labour party clambered home by the skin of their teeth, and those searching through the columns of the paper might have been sur- prised at the sudden dearth of self-congratulatory celebration.
Whatever the cause may be, since then certain conflicts of loyalty seem to have arisen in the camp. For one thing Mr. Cecil King has become a director of the Bank of England. This job Mr. King obviously takes very seriously, and when it comes to defending the £ the secret weapon is going to come thumping down on friend and foe alike on 'Wilson or Heath, Labour or Tory— for God's sake and yours,' we were told last August. Then again on December 3 of Iasi year we read the cautionary headline, 'Watch It Harold': no more monkeying about in Rhodesia when the £ was in danger here at home. Imme- diately after this John Beavan of the Mirror went to 10 Downing Street, and on December 6, three days later, the paper printed an interview with the Prime Minister. Harold had clearly been stung: the interview was not a very interesting or original one, but it was exclusive. Also we had Sir Cassandra on January 1. In fact, the irony of Mr Hogg's. original -definition of the Mirror's offensives as in any way 'secret' lies in the fact that all Mr. King's battles appear to be fought out on the front page of his newspaper.
But despite more recent effusions on the notably the reprinting of The Times leader— Wilson seems safe on that score at least for the moment: he was not the Mirror's Man of the Year on December 31 for nothing. He also seems assured of the Mirror's support on bashing the unions, a long and dearly-held policy of the paper. Where the real threat comes from is the possibly illusory Common Market Issue.
Ever since the door was slammed in January 1963, by 'General Charles Andre Joseph Marie de Gaulle, who believes he can halt the tide of his- tory,' the Mirror seems to have espoused the European Ideal as its one positive and unshak- able belief. It backed Heath against Maudling. More recently Mr. King held a lavish conference in London for European editors in preparation apparently for the move into Europe. As long ago as January 1963 the Mirror said that 'only the ignorant, or the opportunist will wish to make the Common Market a political issue at the next General Election,' but nevertheless the Mirror was clearly furious with Wilson for his references to Mr. Heath 'rolling over on his back like a spaniel.'
The Daily Mirror is always intolerant of the Don't Knows, as it has said itself so often before. But -whereas it is unthinkable that the Daily Express, for example, for all its senile anti- Market shilly-shallying, will not get down on the side of the fence we expect of it, it seems it is going to be a much more painful operation for the Mirror next week to get down off the wall and clout Mr. Heath—for all his scaly old- Etonian crew, already taking their daily drubbing —with quite the same vigour as before. There might even be something in it for the Liberals. Once again we piously await the unveiling of the secret weapon.
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