Revealed: Murdoch's secret meeting with Mrs Thatcher before he bought The Times

[Jan Klimkowski]

On 12 February 1981, Mr Murdoch was allowed to double the number of national newspapers he owned, by adding The Times and The Sunday Times to The Sun and the News of the World. It was normal practice for any bid for a national newspaper to be held up while the Monopolies Commission investigated, but in this case Margaret Thatcher's government overrode objections from Labour and waved it through. Mrs Thatcher reaped the political rewards for the remainder of her time in office.
It could have been embarrassing for the Prime Minister if there had been any suggestion she had privately colluded with Mr Murdoch to ease his bid but that was specifically denied in The History of the Times: the Murdoch Years, written by a Times journalist, Graham Stewart, and published in 2005 by Mr Murdoch's company, HarperCollins.
There was it was asserted: "In 1981, Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch scarcely knew one another and had no communication whatsoever during the period in which The Times bid and referral was up for discussion."
Documents being released on Monday by the Margaret Thatcher Archive demonstrate that they did indeed meet.

In other words, a Murdoch organ and a Murdoch tool wrote the Official History which was that Don Rupert never met PM Maggie.

This is now revealed by publication of Thatcher's papers as a complete and utter lie.

Still, since I've never believed a single word uttered by Murdoch organs and Murdoch tools, I'm not surprized.

The main implication is that Murdoch's takeover of The Times and Sunday Times was illegal because it should have been referred to the Monopolies Commission by Thatcher's government, and wasn't.

In other words, his empire was built on illegality.