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

[Magda Hassan]

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

Letters overturn official history and show that tycoon briefed PM at Chequers before he was allowed to expand his empire

ANDY MCSMITH

SATURDAY 17 MARCH 2012








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Rupert Murdoch has been on better terms with more prime ministers than anyone else alive. He had so much to offer by way of influence and contacts the world over at least until the hacking scandal flooded his empire and if a politician wanted to meet him in private he did not let his love of news get the better of discretion.

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 fact, Mr Murdoch secretly met Mrs Thatcher for lunch at Chequers, on Sunday, 4 January 1981, with the specific purpose of briefing her about The Times bids, at a time when other potential buyers were showing an interest and Times journalists were hoping to organise a staff buyout.
Mrs Thatcher's advisers were acutely aware that the meeting had to be secret. A formal record was kept, and submitted to Mrs Thatcher the next day with a note from her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, vouching that "in line with your wishes, the attached has not gone outside No 10."
The record notes that "the main purpose of Mr Murdoch's visit was to brief the Prime Minister on his bid for Times Newspapers." Mr Murdoch told her that it was "a firm bid" for all the titles, not just the potentially profitable Sunday Times. In a hint of the dispute that tore apart the East End of London five years later, when Mr Murdoch sacked 5,000 print and ancillary staff to facilitate the move to Wapping, he also told the Prime Minister that he was gambling on his ability "to crack a particularly tough nut" in the form of the highly organised print unions.
Mr Murdoch also speculated on who his rival bidders might be. They included the tycoon Robert Maxwell, who later bought the Daily Mirror, and Sir James Goldsmith, father of the current Tory MP Zac Goldsmith. The note records that Mrs Thatcher "thanked Mr Murdoch for keeping her posted" but "did no more than wish him well in his bid."
Mr Murdoch wrote to her on 15 January, to inform her that "The Times business is proceeding well", adding: "See you in New York on 28 February." By then, the deal had been clinched.
Mrs Thatcher needed the media mogul's support because she was so desperately unpopular. Her subsequent success has obscured the extent to which her government was peering over the abyss in 1981. Chris Collins, editor of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website, describes the documents, which will be accessible at margaretthatcher.org as "the personal archive of a person under great stress."
They include the findings of a private poll by the Conservative Party which for good reasons they kept under wraps. Support for the Conservatives was below 20 per cent, with 68 per cent of those polled saying that they disapproved of what Mrs Thatcher was doing, while only 27 per cent approved.
This was creating huge strains within the government and the party. The newly released documents reveal the existence of a "Group of 25", who wrote a collective letter to the Chief Whip threatening to vote against any economic measures that might increase unemployment. One of its leaders was Stephen Dorrell, then the youngest Tory MP and now chairman of the Commons Health committee.
Mrs Thatcher relied heavily on the Chancellor, Sir Geoffrey Howe, but even, they could not get on personally. That was noted by her advisor, Alan Walters, whose private diary is among the documents just released.
On 6 January 1981, he recorded: "Saw MT at 10.00. All affable and unflappable. What should she do about Geoffrey. Who else could she promote. No one."
The papers reinforce that impression that Margaret Thatcher kept her cool despite the immense pressure she was under, fortified no doubt by letters from admiring members of the public, such as one elderly survivor from the Titanic, living in St Ives, who hoped that Mrs Thatcher would be a survivor too.
The files also contain her handwritten note to a young girl who had written to Mrs Thatcher in distress about her parents' divorce. "My own children had a happy time," the Prime Minister claimed, "and I should like you to have the same. Perhaps you would let me know if you ever come to London and I could arrange for someone to take you to see Parliament."
There is also the text of a long interview she gave to a French journalist during which she reflected on what makes people happy.
"Sometimes I think things come too easily to people now and when that happens they get dissatisfied from having had far more than we had, which gave us great satisfaction," she mused. "A small treat, a small thing, a small gift, a small surprise, something like a half day out or going to tea, a small unexpected gift gave us enormous pleasure and these days they have so much money and it doesn't bring them pleasure."
No British politician did more than Mrs Thatcher to help the rich get richer, and yet all along she privately believes that money does not make anyone happy except Rupert Murdoch, presumably.
Swiped: All the President's doodled men
When leaders of the world's seven richest nations met in Ottawa in July 1981, President Ronald Reagan was new to the job, and nervous. Margaret Thatcher, sitting alongside him, noticed how he doodled to calm himself. When the summit ended, the President left his doodles on his desk, so she picked them up as a memento and squirrelled them away in the flat above Downing Street after writing a note on them to remind herself where she got them. They are published here for the first time.
Andy McSmith
Lady's not for laughing (not at herself, at least)
Lovers of satire were flocking 30 years ago to watch a stage play entitled Anyone for Denis, which took the mickey out of Margaret Thatcher and her husband. This did not affect the Prime Minister personally until the embarrassing day when she was invited to a special showing, the proceeds from which were to go to charity.
Mrs Thatcher did not want to go, but was warned that a refusal would be interpreted as proof that she had no sense of humour, so she reluctantly agreed. How she felt about it can be seen from a newly released letter, dated 29 May 1981, from Michael Dobbs, then a political adviser. The word "no" can be seen written in Mrs Thatcher's handwriting five times across the letter.
She was particularly determined not to accept a suggestion that she and Angela Thorne, who played her on stage, should be photographed in identical outfits.
Later she learnt that she was not the only person who had been dreading the evening. When it was over, she received a handwritten letter from Angela Thorne.
"Meeting you before the show made me feel so much more relaxed, especially as you had indicated that we would be going through it 'together'. It must have been two hours of agony for you," she wrote. Mrs Thatcher replied saying: "I thought we both got through rather well! And attending the performance got far more publicity than the other things I do."
Andyhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/...75910.html McSmith

[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.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Here's a fuller version:

Murdoch did meet Thatcher before Times takeover, memo reveals

The media mogul requested a meeting at Chequers to personally lobby the PM, and explicitly briefed her on his bid something long denied by both sides

Read the original documents here

Alan Travis, home affairs editor

The Guardian, Saturday 17 March 2012


A secret meeting between Rupert Murdoch and Margaret Thatcher cleared the way for News International to buy the Times and Sunday Times in 1981, Thatcher's private files reveal.

A long note marked by her press secretary, Bernard Ingham, as "commercial in confidence" of the Sunday lunch at Chequers on 4 January, three weeks before the first cabinet committee discussion of the Murdoch takeover, shows the meeting was held at his request.

Thatcher gave the meeting no publicity and instructed that the note should not leave No 10 Downing Street; the media tycoon later gave the impression in the newspaper's own history that he had no contact with the prime minister ahead of Conservative approval of the purchase.

The Ingham note makes clear that Murdoch first tried to establish some political empathy with Thatcher by praising Ronald Reagan's new administration before explicitly briefing her on his bid and future plans for Times Newspapers, including taking on the unions, introducing new technology and reducing the workforce by 25%.

Murdoch followed up the lunch with a handwritten "thank you" note two weeks later "My dear Prime Minister" telling her that "the field has contracted down to only two or three of us" and that the Times owners, the Thomson family, would "make up their minds in the next day or so".

This direct personal lobbying was critical, as the government had the power to block his acquisition by referring the bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission because Murdoch already owned the Sun and the News of the World. The government's subsequent refusal to do so paved the way for the creation of what is easily the largest newspaper group in Britain. Its market share was about 28% at the time, but its financial strength has helped it grow to the point where it accounts for about 37% of all newspaper copies sold.

The decision was one to be taken personally by the trade secretary, then John Biffen. However, when the matter was first discussed at the crucial cabinet economic strategy committee on 26 January, the recently released minutes show that Thatcher opened the discussion by highlighting the exemption under the Fair Trading Act 1973 that would allow Murdoch's bid to avoid a referral.

Thirty years later, the circumstances surrounding Murdoch's purchase of the Times titles came back into focus as his News Corporation bid for full control of BSkyB. Negotiations between News Corp and the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, led to a similar outcome with the minister proposing to approve the merger in lieu of a full referral to the Competition Commission, in return for an agreement to spin out Sky News.

But the deal collapsed in furore that followed the revelation that Milly Dowler's phone had been targeted by the News of the World.

David Cameron's first meeting with a media owner after he became prime minister in May 2010 was with Rupert Murdoch, who entered No 10 by the back door. Two months later Murdoch's News Corp launched its bid for Sky, and the proprietor met Cameron in July 2010. This meeting was not initially disclosed when Cameron first published a list of meetings with media owners and newspaper editors in July last year.

The disclosure of the secret Chequers lunch in the 1981 Thatcher papers held at the Churchill archives centre, Cambridge and now released after 30 years, flatly contradicts the account in the official history of the Times that says the two scarcely knew each other and "had no communication whatsoever during the period in which the Times bid and referral was up for discussion".

The author, Graham Stewart, sources this to an interview with Murdoch. The official history suggests that the newspaper tycoon relied instead on the columnist Woodrow Wyatt to plead his case.

The Ingham note says that Murdoch spent much of the Chequers lunch voicing his "favourable impressions" of the embryonic Reagan administration and offering to arrange a meeting for her with a group of "New Right" politicians during her impending visit to New York.

Ingham says that before the meeting he had tried to check with the trade department on the reported 10 bids but was told there was no further information beyond what had been in the papers because Times Newspapers were being very secretive.

Murdoch said he had made a "nominal bid" for all the Times titles, all of which would be retained, in return for which he would meet all staff redundancy costs on the condition there was a 25% cut in "overall manning levels". He added that he couldn't move to "optimum manning and use of new technology in one fell swoop" but foreshadowing the later move to Wapping stressed the "inevitability of progressing gradually".

He then listed his rival bidders. He dismissed Lonrho and Robert Maxwell as unlikely to impress either Thomson, unions or journalists. He said Sir James Goldsmith was only likely to bid for the Sunday Times, which had been profitable, but that he was in a stronger position as he was willing to buy the Times as well. The Times journalists' own bid was also dismissed as "unlikely to carry much conviction". He left out, however, the most significant rival, Lord Rothermere, owner of the Daily Mail.

Murdoch said that he was risking £50m of News Group's resources in the deal and that such an amount "could finish us".

Ingham claims that Thatcher did nothing more than "wish him well in his bid" and noted the need to improve Fleet Street staffing levels and to introduce new technology.

The later cabinet committee minutes confirm Thatcher's role in the discussion but also that the trade department's accountants had advised that only in the case of the Times was it "clear-cut" that it was not economic as a going concern.

Many people who wanted the MMC to block Murdoch's takeover believed that the Sunday Times would return to financial health, and the papers appear to confirm that view. Until recently the Sunday title was highly profitable.

[Jan Klimkowski]

So, it was a filthy fix for the military-multinational-intelligence complex

Of course, as part of the Shock Therapy agenda, Murdoch destroyed the print unions in the same fashion that Thatcher destroyed the mining unions.

For 30 years, we've been lied to.

As usual.

[Magda Hassan]

And he still gets to keep it all. Any chance of this being dealt with in the Leveson Inquiry? How is this going down in media circles in the UK Jan? I can only hear crickets here...

[Jan Klimkowski]

And he still gets to keep it all. Any chance of this being dealt with in the Leveson Inquiry? How is this going down in media circles in the UK Jan? I can only hear crickets here...

They're Murdoch crickets.

In Blighty, it's been received with the usual deafening silence.

If asked, I suspect PM Cameron will claim it's ancient history.

Maggie is even less compos mentis than when she was running the country, but I suspect her ventriloquist would suggest that, in the power elite's favourite phrase when caught with their trousers down: "We move on".

[Jan Klimkowski]

1980s: Thatcher and Murdoch.

Kleinian Shock Therapy inflicted on Britain via thinktanks. The Dirty Digger propagandist gets the gig of selling the crimes as "progress", whilst diverting and titillating the masses with sex, sport 'n celebs.

2010s: Cameron and the Murdoch Crime Family are still in bed together, with Leveson turned into an assault on investigative journalism with draconian restrictions on whistleblowing, whilst Rupert and James get away with a slap on the wrist.

Much of the 1982 Shock Therapy agenda presented as "extreme" in this Guardian piece on the British Cabinet papers revealed under the 30 Years Rule is now coming to pass with barely a murmur.

One of those who worked on the CPRS paper was David Cameron's current advisor on crime and policing, Lord Wasserman. The cabinet papers show Gordon Wasserman, who was on the thinktank's staff from 1981-83, proposed cutting 25% of state school teachers in a background paper for the education section.

Margaret Thatcher's role in plan to dismantle welfare state revealed

Newly released Downing Street documents show Tory cabinet considered compulsory charges for schooling and end to NHS


Alan Travis, home affairs editor
The Guardian, Friday 28 December 2012
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Margaret Thatcher receives applause after making her speech to the Conservative party conference in 1982. Photograph: Nils Jorgensen /Rex Features

Margaret Thatcher and her chancellor Sir Geoffrey Howe were behind a politically toxic plan in 1982 to dismantle the welfare state, newly released Downing Street documents show. She later attempted to distance herself from the plans after what was described as a "riot" in her cabinet.

The proposals considered by her cabinet included compulsory charges for schooling and a massive scaling back of other public services. "This would of course mean the end of the National Health Service," declared a confidential cabinet memorandum by the Central Policy Review Staff in September 1982, released by the National Archives on Friday under the 30-year rule.

Nigel Lawson, then the energy secretary, said the report by the official thinktank on long-term public spending options caused "the nearest thing to a cabinet riot in the history of the Thatcher administration".

In her memoirs, Thatcher said: "I was horrified when I saw this paper. I pointed out that it would almost certainly be leaked and give a totally false impression … It was all a total nonsense," claiming the proposals were never seriously considered by her or her ministers.

But the 1982 cabinet papers show the politically explosive paper was discussed at a special half-day extended cabinet discussion on 9 September that year. They show that Thatcher and Howe had been encouraging the CPRS thinktank to come up with such long-term radical options since February that year and that Howe continued to defend them even after the cabinet "riot" described by Lawson.

As part of that revolt a watered-down version of the CPRS paper was leaked to the press, provoking Labour accusations that Thatcher had a secret agenda to dismantle the postwar welfare state a charge that continues to echo down the years.

Thatcher responded by famously promising in her 1982 Conservative party conference speech in Brighton that the NHS was "safe with us" a claim that every Conservative leader since has felt compelled to repeat.

But the papers show the revised version of the CPRS paper that was leaked was mild in comparison with the original set of proposals and that Thatcher's horror had more to do with the prospect of a leak than with the nature of its contents.

The leaked version proposed introducing education vouchers, ending the state funding of higher education, freezing welfare benefits and an insurance-based health service.

But as John Sparrow, the merchant banker Thatcher had appointed to head the CPRS, complained to her when she demanded a more circumspect version, the revised paper "loses a large part of its punch".

The original version went a lot further, including compulsory charges for schooling alongside a "drastic reduction in resources going to the public sector", full-cost university tuition fees and breaking the link that then existed between welfare benefits and prices.

But the earlier version's most controversial privatisation proposal concerned the health service: "It is therefore worth considering aiming over a period to end the state provision of healthcare for the bulk of the population, so that medical facilities would be privately owned and run, and those seeking healthcare would be required to pay for it.

"Those who could not afford to pay would then have their charges met by the state, via some form of rebating or reimbursement."

The only exceptions might be the long-term institutional care of the "mentally handicapped, elderly" who "clearly could not afford to pay".

One of those who worked on the CPRS paper was David Cameron's current advisor on crime and policing, Lord Wasserman. The cabinet papers show Gordon Wasserman, who was on the thinktank's staff from 1981-83, proposed cutting 25% of state school teachers in a background paper for the education section.

The cabinet papers show that far from being some kind of surprise freelance operation, the CPRS report was encouraged and commissioned by Thatcher and Howe. As early as February, Howe was pressing for a wide-ranging discussion on the future size and shape of the public sector. On 28 July, the Downing Street papers show that he told Thatcher: "We should not be inhibited at this stage by such considerations as … the alleged impossibility of change. A discussion of this kind would pave the way for some major strategic decisions affecting our programmes as a government for the next parliament."

Howe proposed a Treasury paper also be discussed at the special cabinet meeting on 9 September: "The PM agrees too that it would be useful if there were a CPRS paper pointing up some of the longer-term options open to us." Thatcher said they should be "vigorously explored".

On the eve of the meeting, the cabinet secretary, Sir Robert Armstrong, told Thatcher that Howe had suggested "and you agreed" that the CPRS should be asked to prepare a paper outlining possible ways of making significant changes to the scale and pattern of public expenditure.

Armstrong said the value of the meeting lay in the chance for the cabinet to "lift its eyes from current preoccupations and to focus on what they like the shape of things in this country to be at the end of the decade.

"At the extreme end, some may argue that any of the radical proposals discussed by the CPRS would be even more unacceptable than the prospect of unchanged policies. But the meeting will have failed in its purpose if ministers are not willing at least to contemplate the possibility of radical action," said Armstrong, who went on to recommend that all options should be remitted for further study.