THE RESTRAINT OF ROYALIST MURDOCH

Andrew Knight claims that the Sunday Times's exposure of the Wales's marital difficulties is in the royal family's interest

LET US suppose that the Daily Mail had won the auction for the Morton book about the Princess of Wales's troubles. It nearly did. Until late in the bidding, the Mail was the only horse in the race. Indeed the Sunday Times entered the affair with much agonising only after several of Princess Diana's famous 'friends' had urged the paper to do so. So the Mail wins a one-horse race at £200,000, and serialises this slim bombshell for a fortnight with huge increases in circulation on which unlike the Sunday Times* — it makes money.

Sir David English, with the Greatest Liv- ing Englishman at his side, appears on every box in the land, making a more urbane though no more authoritative fist of it than did Andrew Neil, one of those inconvenient Britons who believe the truth needs no syrup to wash it down. Now: question. Would the world be accusing the Mail's owner, Lord Rothermere, and his `servile republican editor' of trying to destroy the monarchy — as Rupert Mur- doch and Andrew Neil are being accused? Indeed, why has the world not done so as a result of the rapaciously successful Mail spoilers which gave the story such super- charged horsepower in the days before Mr Morton's book first appeared in the Sunday Times? If a republican plot was behind the Sunday Times's decision to bid, what on earth could have been behind the Daily Mail's?

In their coverage of the controversy, the *Extra cover price revenue alone does not cover the cost of each extra copy printed of the Sunday Times. Mail on Sunday, the Daily Mail itself and their stable-mate, the Evening Standard, have justified our serialisation of the Mor- ton book and the right to know the royal revelations contained in it. They called Andrew Neil 'brave' to run it. If the stink of republicanism surrounded the Sunday Times, should not a whiff of it cling to the Daily Mail?

Let's address the issue of Wapping republicanism face first, starting with me. My colleagues from my Economist days probably recall a somewhat gooey monar- chist as their editor. I never lost an occa- sion, with brilliant help from Mr Norman Macrae and Mrs Sarah Hogg, to lay out the full Bagehot catalogue of lapidary phrases praising the dignified monarchy at the apex of Britain's efficient state. I'm sorry to say, but I hold those warm pro-monarchy views to this day, confirmed not weakened by the events of the past three weeks.

Turn then to the more significant figure of Rupert Murdoch. He may have 'been a republican' in youth, as people say he was. I don't know, I wasn't there. What I do know is that over the past two years during the countless times I have talked to him when our first family has been in the news, he has argued for restraint. Long before Diana's lunar month hit us, he was consis- tently arguing with me and others that, for all his explicit horror of English upper-class snobbery, his suspicion of the British `establishment', he believes strongly in the institution of the monarchy here. It might not work elsewhere, he says, but since the institution seems to work well in Britain, leave well alone, at least until it doesn't any more (long after we all are gone.)

If this is a conversion since Rupert Mur- doch's youth, I guess it has come about from two sources: listening to the readers of the Sun and the News of the World, and recognising (as many of us did) from Watergate in America and the risks to sta- bility in our country in the late 1970s, that the monarch here holds a crucial reserve power in her hands such as no elected or retired geriatric politico could possibly hold.

In internal discussion, Rupert Murdoch puts a damper on any story that might harm the royal institution. The royal insti- tution, not the royal people. Our two big tabloid newspapers have sat for years on documented stories that could only have harmed the institution of the monarchy. Andrew Neil as editor of the Sunday Times gives many royals (particularly the fringe ones) a hard editorial time individually, and has led the charge against the periph- eral Civil Listers. Andrew Neil's dislike of the unmeriting British establishment is leg- endary. But he will tell you very plainly that he is no republican. The Sunday Times said as much in plain terms in its strong, unre- pentant leader three Sundays ago: the Sun- day Times 'is not a republican newspaper'.

As for the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie will allow his contempt for snobbery to lash its chief totem in Britain, the Crown. But when I asked him a fortnight ago for his view of Wapping's and his own alleged republicanism, he said: 'Anybody who thinks Rupert is republican is telling an absolute bloody lie, and the more I see of President Mitterrand on television the more it makes me yearn for the Queen.' Any prospect of President Jim Callaghan or President Geoffrey Howe would appal Kelvin MacKenzie, as it would any of the tabloid editors in his shadow. As for the editors of the Times and the News of the World, they have carried more comment rubbishing their sister paper's scoop than the other way round. Today's attitude to the royal family is uncomplicatedly pro.

Worriers about the survival of our monarchy rest their case on its fragility as an institution. Its authority is primarily moral, its standing is wrapped in its mys- tery, and its little appreciated, and under- estimated, power to provide political stability in a crisis in this country would evaporate if it were ever overexposed. Prince Charles himself has argued this, so have my former colleagues at the Tele- graph, Max Hastings and Lord Deedes, and ardent monarchists like Nicholas Soames MP. They say It is not possible to uphold belief in our monarchy unless you show much more restraint. You under- mine the monarchy and Britain itself when you intrude into the family and moral lives of the royal firm, when you strip away the mystery of Princess Diana and the family surrounding her, when you harm the inner sanctum of the Queen herself.'

These men are Canute's courtiers. They believe with a genuine, unmistakable, heartfelt patriotism that King Canute will save the foot of his throne from damp by ordering the sea to go back. Canute, of course, knew better, and I side with him in believing the complete opposite. The tide comes in. But it also goes out again, not because Prince Charles, Mr Hastings or Mr Soames shouts at it (Lord Deedes never shouts). They may not believe it, but I and Mr Neil and Mr MacKenzie and, yes, Mr Murdoch are just as patriotic as they are, just as sure that the institutions of this sceptred isle need to survive.

How do institutions survive? They adapt — they constantly adapt. That is a process which, like the evolution of a successful newspaper, never ends. Nothing whatever can be served for the monarchy in Britain by retailing a marital fairy story once every newsroom in Fleet Street and 3,000 other elite London chatterers know for a fact that it is a marital nightmare. That would be 1936 again, but worse.

Was the right way to end this personal fairy tale to prolong the journalistic pro- cess of a thousand cuts — the botched post-polo kiss in India, the separate travel logs, the lonely garden at Highgrove, soli- tary poses before the Sphinx and Taj Mahal? Or should we have published the documented stories of regal infidelities which we hold, deliberately unused, in our safes — and in some cases have actually paid for so that our tabloid competitors may not use them either?

Or was it better to serialise a book that, whatever special pleading (plenty, I sus- pect) and errors it proves to contain, clear- ly carried the stamp of being authentic and, at only one remove, sanctioned by Princess Diana herself?

`Sanctioned?' I hear you ask. Let me quote from an undoubted member of the Prince's party (no name: this is not Ameri- can journalism school). 'What is wrong with this book is that it is just one side of

the story. But it is clearly well sourced, yes its sources are excellent, I don't think even Buckingham Palace is bothering to deny that.'

The only crime against any family — our royal one most of all — is the risking of a happy marriage, not the acknowledgement of an unhappy one. 'Where there is a cut there is growth.' My belief is that this fam- ily and this institution can grow in stand- ing if they react as a fallible but loving family to Mr Morton's book. Whether serialised in the Mail or the Sunday Times, the book is a fact. It tells facts of a kind which have afflicted virtually every family in the kingdom, directly or at little dis- tance. People now recognise the family they see. After the years of fairy tale that grew up artificially round George VI's lit- tle girls this is a new situation, but not nec- essarily a bad one.

Why, then, the fuss? Of course because it is Diana, it is Charles, it is 'the royals'. But also, of course, because the story has involved, once again, 'Murdoch'. The neu- rosis of the London liberal intelligentsia (intelligent but far from liberal ) about Mr Murdoch is the subject for another article one day. Enough to say here that for any- body who works for him, as I do, the demonology round his name is weird when it is not laughable.

Mr Murdoch has a long history of offending one after the other of Britain's entrenched establishments. And, now, one of his characteristically strong, individualist editors has serialised a book which, despite its all too obvious partisanship and distor- tions, contains a 'true story' and 'ends the speculation'. That, as history will relate, was the right thing to do.

Andrew Knight is chairman of News Interna- tional.