ANOTHER VOICE
Press freedom: how the latest threat can, with luck, be averted
AUBERON WAUGH
0 nly the Ukrainians and Byelorussians who welcomed the invading German arm- ies in the summer of 1941 with garlands of flowers and dancing on every village green can have had greater reason to regret their actions than we journalists who welcomed Rupert Murdoch's splendid, swashbuckling move to Wapping in January 1986.
In the Spectator of 1 February of that year three writers — Paul Johnson, Peter Paterson and I — welcomed the long- delayed arrival of the new technology in national journalism which had been halt- ingly introduced a little earlier by Eddie Shah in his rotten Today. I went further than the others, urging that Murdoch should be made a duke, but Mrs Thatcher was already too pigheaded in her conceit to take advice from outside her own circle of sycophants — how different things would be if she had followed it.
The first signal that Murdoch was not quite the conquering saviour we had imag- ined, was when he decreed that the Wap- ping site - hemmed in by barbed wire, secu- rity guards and dog patrols - should be dry: no alcohol would be served there by day or by night. If Murdoch had been some sort of Wee Free fanatic - even a Scots Presbyter- ian teetotaller — this would have been understandable, however odious and detri- mental to the newspapers concerned. But he is neither of these things. He serves drink in his various homes, even drinks a little himself. Brooding about the matter, I decided that the most probable explanation was that Murdoch is a sadist.
To deny alcohol to a British journalist is to humiliate him in a peculiarly unpleasant way, denying him not only one of the great pleasures which life has to offer and the social comfort it brings, but also the respect of his colleagues on other newspapers and, ultimately, his self-respect. Brigadier Gen- eral Reginald Dyer, after the massacre at Amritsar in 1919, made all Indians who wished to pass the site crawl on their stom- achs. This was Murdoch's equivalent.
Of course we all have our oddities, and newspaper proprietors are seldom more normal than the rest of us. If Murdoch has a touch of sadism, it might explain how such an apparently straightforward, plain- speaking, even charming man can be responsible for so much mean-minded, hypocritical filth in three continents, day after day, seven days a week. I might have guessed there was something odd about him when I was told in Adelaide some years ago that he always has an enema before flying long-haul — a large part of his life is spent flying between the two coasts of America, Australia and England. A need for colonic irrigation is no pointer to sadis- tic tendencies, but it is certainly odd.
Be that as it may, the real disappoint- ment arising from the great Murdoch revo- lution is not that his hacks are denied alco- hol but that after freeing his newspapers from the stranglehold of the print unions, he should set a course to destroy the same liberal, humane, bourgeois society he might have saved from the proletarian bullies who were threatening its survival. Having de- proletarianised the production side of the newspaper industry, he proletarianises the editorial. Whether his motive for this is revenge — that he feels rejected by an English establishment which failed to make him a duke — or from the more obscure well-springs of human behaviour at which we can only guess, the result is the same a movement towards the degradation of our culture and the glorification of its grosser aspects, which is worse than any- thing the printers could have achieved.
Murdoch controls only a part of the British press, even if it is a fairly substantial part. Since Wapping, all the newspapers have shaken off the stranglehold of the printing unions to a greater or lesser extent, and nearly all have had to move out of Fleet Street to do it. One advantage of the old system, whereby journalists had to min- gle with printers, was that the journalist could see for himself how horrible they were, although this did not stop the Nation- al Union of Journalists from supporting the printers, in its own, peculiarly suicidal way. Perhaps it is the removal of the malignant presence of the printers which explains the rapid proletarianisation of the Daily Express in recent months, moving down-market as fast as Today since Murdoch acquired it.
At least the printers smoked and drank, and nobody would have dared stop them. Two weeks ago, a vote was held in the Tele- graph's offices on the point of whether or not the new offices at Canary Wharf should be a smoke-restricted area. Several people refused to vote, reckoning the vote had been rigged and the management had already signed a no-smoking contract. Of those who did vote — 71 per cent of those entitled to do so — 35 per cent voted for no change, 65 per cent for restrictions. Perhaps on the Guardian a majority of journalists would have voted for a no- smoking policy, although I doubt it. But it is absolutely inconceivable that any group of proper journalists, such as you find on the Telegraph, would have produced such a result, any more than they would vote to be denied alcohol. The obvious explanation is that the vote was swung by secretaries, computer technicians, 'design experts', ad- vertising sales staff and other non-writing employees. The oddest thing is that the journalists should have allowed the vote to be taken — as I say, printers never would have allowed such an impertinence. Even if the NUJ does not support no-smoking poli- cies, as it supports most daft and destruc- tive ideas, it is obviously in no position to achieve anything. There is to be no creche in Canary Wharf, nor any of the things it holds sacred. Journalists have substituted one form of oppression for another.
We have seen what teetotalism has done to the Times and Sunday Times, Sun, News of the World and Today. Goodness knows what the no-smoking rule will do to our two best surviving newspapers. Presumably journalists will increasingly avoid the new offices — they take an hour and a half to reach from Central London — leaving them to the technicians, advertising staff and design experts, communicating only by fax and other machines.
Journalists are not much liked outside their profession. The diaspora from Fleet Street was sad enough. If they cannot even congregate in newspaper offices, a whole way of life will disappear. Whatever the critics may say, Britain has the best and widest choice of newspapers in the world. It is not just a sub-culture which is threat- ened, but a major aspect of our national culture. If newspaper proprietors are too mean to put their editorial offices in West London, as the Mail has done — South Kensington or Hammersmith would be best — then someone must provide a gigantic Press Centre, with telephones, desks, type- writers and all the paraphernalia of modern journalism, as well as enormous bars, tobacco kiosks and luxury restaurants, for the outcasts to congregate. We do not want a modern, purpose-built edifice. Something like Leconfield House, the old MI5 head- quarters in Curzon Street, would be per- fect. There is a fortune to be made. Nobody spends so much money as a proper journal- ist on expenses.
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