Sir: Some time in the 1970s when I was associate
editor of the Daily Mail, Mr Robert Dunlop, then a main board director of Lonhro's with whom I often lunched, gave me some wonderful detail about a titanic battle for the control of Lonhro which was then being fought out over the City pages of the newspapers.
I went back to the office and successfully persuaded the editor that this was a story which we ought to be doing on our main news and feature pages. Many people at the time, including Tiny Rowland, thought that the Daily Mail, because of the legion of small investors among its readers, had been crucial in securing victory for him. I was instrumental (God help me!) in presenting Tiny as a symbol of the new entrepreneuri- al Britain, as compared to his stick-in-the- mud Establishment adversary, Sir Basil Smallpeace.
After it was all over, Tiny rang and said, if I remember the words correctly, 'Stewart, I shall always be grateful.' I, of course, knew this to be tycoon-speak for, 'I will be grateful for five minutes', but I had no com- plaints whatsoever. Indeed, I told him that any expressions of gratitude were wholly inappropriate. The Daily Mail campaigned on his behalf because we believed in the cause and thought it one worth fighting for.
Twenty years later we find ourselves on the opposite sides of a dispute. Because he has forgotten our previous meetings he has no reason to remember from firsthand what it is that motivates me. He therefore cannot stop himself from imputing the foulest of motives. He writes to The Specta- tor (Letters, 19 October) implying that I have been bought. In a personal letter to me he writes I should be glad — no surprised — to see documentary evidence that you were a great partisan of Mr Fayed before you were employed by him.'
Strangely Mr Neil, see you in court or on the other hand perhaps not, Hamilton pro- vides precisely the evidence which Mr Row- land seeks. He refers, rather unflatteringly, to my 'fawning' pro-Fayed editorials in the Evening Standard on 4 January and 10 November 1995. 'And perhaps there were others' — there were indeed.
What am I to do now? If I had not sup- ported Mr Al Fayed when I was not employed by him, Mr Rowland would, as he makes plain, see this as evidence that my pen has been purchased. But I did support Mr Al Fayed from a different place, so Mr Hamilton is able to present my present employment as a 'pay-off.
To tell you the truth, it all makes me laugh. But a friend (who is also a friend of Mr Hamilton's) tells me the charges are serious and need to be addressed. I sup- pose that is right. I was a Fleet Street editor for 15 years and accused of many things and, on the whole, rightly so. But no one until now has queried my integrity.
Mr Al Fayed does pay me as chairman of Liberty Publishing. But I invite the editor of The Spectator, as a neutral observer, to have a look at the payslips from my various sources of income. He will discover, and I am sure will be able to confirm to his read- ers, that of my various emoluments the least important are those coming from Lib- erty or Mr Al Fayed.
So when I wrote in The Spectator a fort- night ago that I am these days a truly inde- pendent man, I both meant it and can prove it. Nobody in the past has ever bought me or thought they could, no one today does or attempts to do so. And because of the way I have managed to organise my affairs down the years, no one in future will ever be able to do so. Those are not boasts, they are facts.
Stewart Steven
Liberty Publishing, 100 Brompton Road, London SW3
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