Did Mr Mandelson and Mr Blair conspire to get rid of a troublesome editor?
STEPHEN GLOVER
0 ur old friend Peter Mandelson is alleged to have engineered the removal of Harry Blackwood, editor of the Hartlepool Mail, a newspaper in Mr Mandelson's constituency. Tony Blair is supposed to have made a telephone call on Mr Mandelson's behalf which may have been instrumental in Mr Blackwood's suspension. These and other allegations have been raised by Simon Walters in two fascinating articles in the Mail on Sunday. As is often the case on these occasions, the plot is a complicated one: smoke swirls around the battlefield, and after a time it becomes difficult to discern the key figures as they slog it out with claim and counterclaim. I therefore intend to concentrate on the undisputed facts, which in themselves appear to show Mr Mandelson in a very poor light.
It is a fact that Mr Mandelson has on at least three occasions complained about Mr Blackwood's editorship to his bosses at the Edinburgh-based Johnston Press. It is a fact that in each instance Johnston Press conducted inquiries which exonerated Mr Blackwood. It is a fact that on at least one occasion Mr Mandelson complained about Mr Blackwood to Roger Parry, non-executive chairman of Johnston Press. It is a fact that last November Mr Mandelson had a lengthy meeting with Tim Bowdler, chief executive of Johnston Press, in which he suggested that Mr Blackwood was trying to destroy him. It is a fact that three days after this meeting Mr Bowdler sent a letter to Mr Mandelson in which he referred to 'a threat' which Mr Mandelson had made. It is a fact that sources I have spoken to in Hartlepool dispute Mr Mandelson's contention that the Hartlepool Mail's coverage of the 2001 general election, and of the mayoral election last year, was biased. It is fact that Mr Blackwood is now on sick leave and that he has told me that he is so disenchanted with Johnston Press that he will never be able to work for the company again.
All this we know for sure. It is fact. What we cannot be certain of is whether Mr Blair really did telephone Roger Parry on Mr Mandelson's behalf. Mr Blackwood says he was told this by a senior manager in Johnston Press; the company denies the call took place. We have to treat with caution the suggestion that Mr Parry may have been anxious to assist Mr Mandelson because he happens also to be UK chief executive of the American media company Clear Chan riel which stands to gain a great deal from the Communications Bill that received its third reading this week in the Commons. We also cannot prove that Mr Mandelson has actually brought about Mr Blackwood's downfall. In response to the suggestion that he has, he told the journalist's magazine Press Gazette somewhat smugly: 'I would like to say "Yes" and that the inimitable style in which he [Mr Blackwood] edits the paper has caught up with him. But I fear not. There is another problem.What might this be? Sources say that the most damning charge which Johnston Press has been able to come up with is that a television reviewer used the expression 'old farts'.
Let us set aside all these unproven allegations, alluring though they may be, and return to what has been established. Is it not damning, of both Mr Mandelson and Johnston Press? Mr Mandelson has mounted a campaign against Mr Blackwood whose coverage. while obviously not favourable to the member for Hartlepool, has been in the opinion of many observers even-handed. Ile has attempted to convince Mr Blackwood's bosses that their editor has been deficient, and they have mounted three inquiries which found no fault with him. What dimwitted and weak-willed fellows they must be to allow themselves to be cowed by Mr Mandelson not once, not twice, but three times. After the first occasion, any self-respecting newspaper group would have told Mr Mandelson to take his threats and complaints elsewhere, and stood by its editor.
Proprietors and editors on the national stage may recall Mr Mandelson applying pressure and sometimes issuing threats. In his heyday, when he was a member of the Cabinet and the government's chief spin doctor, many great men were flattered by the gossamer touch of Mr Mandelson's hand on the arm, or discomfited by a menacing telephone call. Readers may recall the famous case in November 1998 when the Express on Sunday (as it then was) carried a photograph of Mr Mandelson's partner, Reinaldo Avila da Silva. When he learnt that the paper was intending to publish the picture, Mr Mandelson tore into Rosie Boycott, the editor-inchief. Its proprietor, Lord Hollick, was soon on the telephone to the deputy editor, who was none other than Simon Walters, the author of the two pieces in the Mail on Sunday. Within a week or two, the job of the editor of the Express on Sunday, Amanda Plate11. was being offered around, and within months Amanda was sent packing.
Plus ca change. Thank God, though, for men like Mr Blackwood. His journalists believe in him, and every one of them has signed a letter of protest to Johnston Press. He joined the Hartlepool Mail at the age of 17 as a compositor and leaves it 30 years later as the editor, in which job he served for three and a half years. Johnston Press is attempting to insinuate that he was not up to the job, but few in Hartlepool appear to believe this. and Mr Blackwood has just been paid a bonus of £4,000. He seems a cussed, stubborn and principled man, someone who could neither be flattered nor intimidated by the likes of Mr Mandelson. He doesn't want any government favours. He simply believes that editors and journalists should stand up to politicians, which is what he did. Now, thanks to Peter Mandelson and Johnston Press, he is gone.
Iusually dislike newspaper redesigns. so I was not expecting to be thrilled by the Daily Telegraph's latest makeover. Actually very little furniture has been moved around, though a few pieces have been added. I think it is a mistake to place regular columnists beneath transient writers on the op-ed page. And what is the point of hiring Irvine Welsh, the iconoclastic Scottish novelist? Presumably the hope is that he may pull in younger readers, but the older ones may not be too happy. His first piece was surprisingly tame, and tended to confirm my prejudice that novelists who did not start out as journalists do not normally make natural columnists. (Discuss.)
One complaint. The gossip columnist Peterborough has been renamed London Spy. Why? I read somewhere that the powers that be thought that no one realised that Peterborough was named after Peterborough Court, a small courtyard in the Daily Telegraph's old offices in Fleet Street. So what? Is everything to have a justification in the Telegraph's new world? If anyone could be counted on to defend old customs whose origins are lost in the mists of time, it was the Daily Telegraph. Now it seeks to be trendy, and throws out the mysterious accretions of history. Of course I should feel exactly the same way if the column had always been called London Spy and was now being renamed Peterborough.
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