I always said a row with the queen would do Mrs
Thatcher a lot of good.
You fought a civil war about this once.
Rupert Murdoch, to Woodrow Wyatt
As the British Establishment continued to turn up its nose at the grocer’s daughter, Margaret Thatcher formed a powerful alliance with Rupert Murdoch, who loathed the British monarchy as deeply as any radical left-winger. Thatcher handed Rupert unprecedented control of the nation’s media, and in return she got his newspaper editors’ unwavering political support during three general elections. The republican press tycoon devised a commercially successful formula of royal gossip, anti-royal attacks, pro-Thatcherite articles and jingoism which he applied throughout his vast media empire. It undermined the queen, helped keep Thatcher in political office and made him very rich.
Throughout her ‘reign’ as prime minister, Thatcher’s anxiety and determination to keep the Murdoch media empire on side was, in the words of her biographer, John Campbell, the ‘grubbiest face of Thatcherism’.1 Although Rupert shared the prime minister’s sense of being an outsider, a dissident bent on smashing archaic vested interest and viscerally hostile to the liberal elite, theirs was largely a pragmatic alliance.
These two radicals were never fully in harmony. Murdoch disliked being shouted down by a mere woman. Mrs Thatcher, who never once mentioned him in her memoirs,2 thought the News of the World ‘such a filthy paper’.3 Unlike subsequent prime ministers, including Tony Blair and David Cameron, she was careful not to be too beholden to him. Cecil Parkinson believed Thatcher was ‘too much of a Methodist, if you like, to get indebted to people’.4 ‘Governments are rather pathetic if they allow the media to dictate their actions. Blair was often pathetic,’ suggested Sir Bernard Ingham.5
Murdoch, nevertheless, enjoyed a powerful place in her inner circle, not as a courtier, but an influential independent ally rather like US President Ronald Reagan. Like Reagan, Murdoch had direct access to her whenever he sought it. He was the only newspaper proprietor asked to the Downing Street lunch to mark her tenth anniversary in 1989, and was several times invited to spend Christmas with the Thatcher family at Chequers. He was one of the privileged few given access to the back door of Number 10, which he kept using long after she had resigned. ‘She and Rupert Murdoch believed in exactly the same things,’ argues Tim Bell:
They both believed in work creation. They both believed in no taxation. They both believed in international free trade. They both believed in the person. They believed in the same things. If you saw Murdoch’s first Thatcher lecture at the Centre for Policy Studies, he could have been her standing there speaking.6
Edwina Curries feels for Thatcher, ‘Murdoch was all about free speech. His satellite television stations would have been broadcasting into the Eastern bloc. She saw him as a force for democracy.’7
Today, Murdoch is probably the most powerful anti-monarchist in the world. Everything about the British royal family annoys, repels and nauseates him. In his view, they’re a symbol of an outdated class system which is unproductive, unearned and the ‘apex of snobbery’.8 Like the trade unions, they are the ultimate closed shop. Murdoch saw an opportunity to scrutinise the behaviour of the royal family and expose them if they misbehaved. To him this represented the double delight of chipping away at the monarch’s standing and driving up his newspaper profits. The Murdoch empire came to rely on royal stories to the point of dependency. ‘Diana mania’ fuelled the great roaring bull market for newspapers in 1980s and 1990s Britain.9 Stories of the Windsors sold copy, vast quantities of it, and the Sun’s profits jumped, throwing off $50 million a year in free cash flow. This meant the Sun could finance upward of $500 million in new acquisitions.10
When Murdoch bought the News of the World in 1968 he was only 37 years old, and was still referred to in his own country as the ‘boy publisher’. To the British, Murdoch appeared to be an unsophisticated colonial, brash and without respect for the Establishment or royalty. He seemed completely without pretensions or social aspirations. Indeed, he carefully nurtured this image as an outsider who was willing to defend the hard-working common man and uphold democracy through the medium of his newspapers. When Murdoch appeared before Parliament at Westminster in July 2011, he stated incredulously that his father wasn’t a wealthy man. This wasn’t just him being disingenuous, it was a bizarre denial.
Murdoch was a posh boy who had been born into incredible privilege, had inherited wealth, influence and a first-class pedigree among the Australian elite. If he ever fought with governments, the battleground was more likely to be over regulation and fiscal controls than human rights or championing the underdog. Young Rupert was sent to Geelong Grammar, an independent school whose alumni included Prince Charles, the King of Malaysia, and John Gorton, a former Australian prime minister. He later completed his education at Oxford University, where he could afford the best rooms, his own car and a generous allowance from his father, Sir Keith Murdoch.
Daddy had been head of the Melbourne Herald group of newspapers, and owned the Adelaide News (inherited by Rupert on his death) and the Brisbane Courier Mail. Murdoch’s mother was Dame Elizabeth, who had been honoured by the queen for her charity work. The family lived in the wealthy suburb of Toorak and owned a country estate. Sir Keith wielded considerable political influence and was the ideal person to instruct his son on how to harness the power that could come from ownership of the press and to understand its interaction with politics. When Rupert was barely 30 years old, photographs of him appeared in the press standing beside US President John Kennedy. He was in every sense a member of an elite Australian aristocracy.
Although Rupert Murdoch enjoyed Oxford as a young man, he was critical of English values, and he displayed contempt for the English class system. He even had a bust of Lenin in his room at university.11 Curiously, it did not prevent him from enjoying to the full a Brideshead lifestyle as an undergraduate. Few 21 year olds can blag a new Rolls-Royce for a weekend, or drive a new car around Europe, wreck it and then send it home to his father. Few are able to stay in the best hotels in Deauville, lose money at the gaming tables and then cable the ‘not wealthy’ family back home for more funds.12
While not an entirely self-made man, Rupert’s Aussie roots meant he honestly favoured a more egalitarian spirit, and he refused to be held back by social convention or conservatism. Murdoch’s first step on the path to political power in Britain was in buying the News of the World for a knockdown price from Sir William Carr. He would later describe this acquisition as the ‘biggest steal since the Great Train Robbery’.13 Carr represented everything Rupert hated about the decadent British upper class, he was a ‘two bottles of scotch a day man’, and said to be a brilliant mathematician before lunch. He would invite his staff to his palatial stately home in Sussex where they played croquet, and flunkies served champagne.14 From their point of view, the Carrs were equally horrified by the arrival of the coarse colonial, and Rupert upset Lady Carr by lighting up a cigar before lunch. They took his money despite their misgivings and, although Rupert promised Sir William that he would remain as chairman, he later broke his word, claiming the British baronet had allowed the newspaper to decline into an even more parlous state than he had realised.15
At the News of the World, Murdoch lowered the tabloid’s tone further with a formula of naughty vicars, knickers, sex and a sports section unrivalled by the competition. Rupert was reviled as a smut merchant and treated like a social pariah by London’s elite, but the paper’s circulation climbed to 6 million.16
Then he made the mistake of paying £21,000 to Christine Keeler for her memoirs of the Profumo Affair, six years after the event, thus reopening old wounds within the Establishment. Profumo had been rehabilitating himself following his resignation from the government by working for a charity helping drug addicts and ex-offenders in the East End of London, and Murdoch’s conduct was viewed as ungentlemanly. The Australian outsider was invited to defend himself on David Frost’s television chat show. In front of a studio audience, Frost ripped into him and accused him of attempting to destroy the newly reformed Profumo. Murdoch was badly shaken17 and blamed the Establishment for whipping up the row. Frost ridiculed this as a conspiracy theory based on the anachronistic assumption that Britain was still governed by an old boy network scheming to resist change.18
However, the debacle only added to Murdoch’s tarnished image as a coarse barrow boy, ignorant about the subtlety of British fair play. The satirical magazine Private Eye nicknamed him the ‘dirty digger’, an alias that he hated but it has now stuck for decades.19
Fleet Street in the 1960s and 1970s was a brutal place to work. Rupert clearly didn’t know the rules, so he rewrote them. At first, the popular wisdom was that ‘Rupert’s Shit-Sheet’ or ‘The News of the Screws’, as it was nicknamed, would last no longer than six months. When, a year later, Murdoch bought the Sun, the hacks on the street also felt that the Aussie had been sold a pup. However, at a more informed level, City analysts and newspaper boardrooms showed a patronising admiration for his success in the backwater that was Australia, and they felt his British papers suited his inherent vulgarity.
Murdoch now made the Sun snappy and sexy; choosing as its editor a talented Yorkshireman and former communist, Larry Lamb. Lamb drove to work in a company Mercedes sports car bearing the number plate SUN 120 and introduced topless models, the infamous ‘Page Three Girls’, into the mix. There was another sea change: from the moment Murdoch took power in Fleet Street he wanted the royals to be reported as any normal story would be, with no special favours. Tim Bell said:
Rupert was a republican; he’s a republican. He doesn’t believe in the concept of monarchy. So, he considers that they can be talked about, in the same way that anybody else can be talked about. He doesn’t think they have any privilege that should entitle them to do bad things and then not be commented on.21
Harry Arnold, one of the journalists who caused Buckingham Palace a large number of headaches, says he believes the queen’s reign saw a revolution in attitudes. Asked what caused this, his reply echoes that of another colleague, Ann Leslie. They both answered in two words, ‘Rupert Murdoch’.22 Despite the fact that the National Union of Journalists censured Murdoch for debasing the standards of their profession, the Sun tripled its circulation to 3 million in four years, making it the most profitable unit in his growing empire.23
Once upon a time, in what must have seemed to the queen as the golden days, respectful court correspondents covered royal affairs virtually as dictated by the press office at Buckingham Palace.24 Prurient interest in the royal family’s private lives were off-limits, and the newspapers would be expected to obsequiously attend royal events and file servile copy that tiptoed around protocol.25 Even when they knew a great deal about stories such as Edward VII’s affair with Mrs Simpson, which led to the abdication crisis, they never broke ranks. It was a cosy little world that Murdoch blew apart.26
The queen and her family obviously do not want complete silence to reign. Otherwise, there might be no cheers for them when they ride out in their carriages and cut ribbons to open shopping centres. Invisibility can foster unpopularity, as the later years of the reign of Queen Victoria proved. The queen’s old press secretary, Sir Richard Colville, always believed that no news was good news. His replacement, William Heseltine, believed that the queen must be seen to be believed.27 In fact, the royals want it both ways, coverage of their public office, with the privacy that an ordinary person might expect. This is impossible, as the private lives of public figures are seen as a legitimate subject for press attention. The royal family don’t accept this argument, and its members complain about intrusion with arguments such as ‘the monarchy cannot answer back’.28
Over the years, the queen was repeatedly stung as she discovered that Murdoch’s brand of cheque book journalism carried far more clout than the meagre wages she paid members of her household. His impertinent publications magnified the flaws in the royal family as they printed scurrilous stories and candid photos. Without the protective blanket of reverence, the royals and their advisors found themselves in a fluster. The queen attempted to lecture editors, obtained injunctions and went to court to stop servants selling secrets. The floodgates were opened as Murdoch declared it open season on the Windsors.29
One of the first victims of this new era was the queen’s sister, Princess Margaret. In February 1976, a photographer snapped a picture of her with her toy boy, Roddy Llewellyn, on the island of Mustique. The News of the World published the photo and the princess’s husband, Lord Snowdon, asked for a divorce. He then held a press conference in which he wished his wife well, asked for their children’s understanding and professed his undying admiration for the royal family.30
The queen’s second son, Prince Andrew, was soon identified as another potential target for stories by the red top hacks. The prince fulfilled his tabloid potential by earning himself the nickname, ‘Randy Andy’. His girlfriend Koo Stark had even appeared in a British soft porn movie called Emily which showed her taking part in a lesbian shower scene. Andrew did himself no favours either, when pictures were published of him skinny-dipping in Canada under the byline, ‘it’s strip ahoy as naked Prince Andrew larks about in the river’.
Next came breakfast-in-bed details about Andrew’s entertaining women in his private apartments at Buckingham Palace. ‘The women were always young and fanciable,’ a former palace kitchen aid told the Sun, ‘and Andrew was always so sure of his chances, so cheeky, that he would order double bacon and eggs the night before.’ In selling his story, the former kitchen helper violated the confidentiality agreement he had signed as a condition of employment. The queen was more incensed by his breach of contract than she was by his revelations, and she sued.
The Sun had paid the servant more than half a year’s wages, so it wasn’t that surprising that he had spilled the beans. His story made great reading, with much delicious tabloid detail that became a signature of the paper. Andrew’s lover, Koo Stark, had romped through the palace kitchen in short skirts and skimpy T-shirts, wearing bright red dog tags that Andrew had given her after the Falklands War. The actress ordered the staff around and helped herself to the queen’s favourite chocolates. The story ended with the promising teaser about the Princess of Wales: ‘Tomorrow. When Barefoot Di Buttered My Toast.’31
The queen’s lawyers obtained an injunction and the Sun responded with the headline, ‘Queen Gags the Sun’.32 She then sued for damages, deciding that a line must be drawn between legitimate public interest and salacious intrusion into their private lives. Her Majesty’s press secretary issued the following terse statement:
The servant had breached an undertaking of confidence which all palace employees sign. In this declaration, they agree not to make any disclosures about their work at the palace. It is a legally binding document under civil law.33
Her Majesty was awarded damages which the Sun agreed to donate to the Newspaper Press Fund, plus payment of her legal costs. Koo Stark departed gracefully and maintained a discreet silence, but she could never shake off her identification with the queen’s son.34
Her Majesty was further incensed after a photo appeared of her 6-year-old grandson, Peter Philips, twirling a dead pheasant by the neck during a bird shoot. She ordered reporters and photographers off the estate at Sandringham and barred them from Windsor. She tried, to no avail, to keep them away from all family events, including royal christenings.
Margaret Thatcher had also been an early victim of Murdoch’s brutal brand of popularism, but she reacted very differently. As the new education secretary in 1970, the Sun had given her the infamous tag of ‘Margaret Thatcher – Milk Snatcher’. It was an epithet that almost derailed her career, and Margaret had been in tears over the perceived cruelty of the Sun’s left-wing editor ‘Red Larry’, as he was known on the street. ‘Why don’t you chuck it in?’ Denis sympathised when the family were together at Christmas. She responded with her now familiar steely glare and rasped, ‘I’ll see them in hell first. I will never be driven anywhere against my will.’35
The Sun had, at one point, even gone as far as to call her the most ‘unpopular woman in the country’. In her autobiography, Thatcher wrote how she learned a valuable lesson from the experience. ‘I had incurred the maximum of political odium for the minimum of political benefit.’36 Five years later, she would manage to transform the Sun’s view of her. Its editorial staff would become ‘her boys’ and its editor her important political ally.37
The success of the Sun, particularly with its younger readership, made Murdoch a political power in Britain and Thatcher needed his support if she was ever going to become prime minister. As Conservative leader, Margaret knew she could rely on the support of papers such as the Mail and Express in the mass market. Both papers were already preaching to her existing supporters. The Mail did amazing work amongst the loyal Tories with its circulation of 1.5 million. However, during the 1970s the Express was more important, with a circulation of 3 million. Unfortunately, it had an aging readership and its circulation had fallen by half from 1970. When Thatcher won the leadership contest in 1975, she made every effort to woo both Rupert Murdoch and Larry Lamb.
The Thatcher-Murdoch alliance started to be forged when Thatcher sent key advisors like Geoffrey Howe and Nicholas Ridley round to Red Larry’s office for ‘chewing the fat’ sessions in the evening. Margaret seemed, to Lamb, a more inspiring figure than either Ted Health or Harold Wilson and he saw real potential in her leadership. However, Murdoch was initially unenthusiastic about Margaret Thatcher, worrying that Larry Lamb’s support for her would alienate the paper’s working-class readership. He would telephone Lamb, asking with exasperation, ‘Are you still pushing that bloody woman?’38 However, when Murdoch began scenting her success he changed his anti-Thatcher position.39
Margaret, or ‘Maggie’, as the hacks liked to call her, also began to pay court with visits of her own. Sessions would begin with the new Leader of the Opposition being offered a glass of whisky, something she wasn’t used to, which made her eyes water and her skin turn pink. She swallowed it to show she could be one of the boys. As the meetings warmed up, she would cross her legs demurely, flex her ankle and allow her shoe to dangle from the tip of her toe. She could play the girl card better than most, when needs must.
Lamb assumed a commanding but relaxed position, informally resting his backside on the desk. When the hacks asked Mrs Thatcher questions, she would coyly turn to Larry and in a quiet voice ask, ‘What do you think Larry?’ Lamb would puff himself up with pride and lecture on the solutions to the country’s problems. ‘You know that’s marvellous,’ she would say. ‘If I only had people like you who really know how to communicate. Absolutely marvellous.’
An important political partnership was thus forged between the ex-communist and the lady with the pearls. Mrs Thatcher’s courtship was so effective that Lamb decided that she had become the ‘tool’ for causing a Sun-led political sea-change for the country. However, the switch to supporting the Tories was unpopular with many of the Sun’s journalists. Roger Carroll, the Labour-supporting political editor, left and was replaced by the ultra-Tory Walter Terry from the Daily Express. Murdoch further strengthened input by ‘suggesting’ Lamb should hire leader writer Ronnie Sparks to write, ‘The Sun Says’ column that always adopted an uncompromising Thatcherite line about everything.
Lamb became a regular visitor to the Thatcher family home in Flood Street, Chelsea, while the election strategy was being planned. Lamb was given freedom to lecture at great length about his own and his paper’s merits in communicating with his readers. Thatcher was particularly grateful for headlines such as ‘The Winter of Discontent’ and ‘Crisis, What Crisis?’ Lamb also provided help in speech writing and, in return, Thatcher gave the Sun the inside track on the Tory campaign, carefully briefing the paper on the party’s star performers.
Both Lamb and Murdoch realised the 1979 election wasn’t about politics, but about personalities, in line with the growing influence of television. The Tory manifesto was tailored to the Sun readers’ preoccupations with housing, the cost of living and immigration, including the sensational offer of selling off council houses at a discount to their tenants. On polling day, Lamb weighed in with his biggest single contribution, a 1,700 word leader, by far the longest political piece ever written in the Sun, or any other Fleet Street paper on election day:
This is D-day, ‘D’ for decision. The first day of the rest of our lives. The Sun today wishes particularly to address itself to the traditional supporters of the Labour Party … The Sun is not a Tory newspaper … The Sun is, above all, a RADICAL newspaper. And we believe that this time the only radical proposals being put to you are being put by Maggie Thatcher and her Tory team … The choice you have today is quite simply the choice between freedom and the shackles.
The leader went on to attack the Labour Party. ‘The party has become the refuge of militants, Marxists, bullies and class war warriors it … has all but destroyed the spirit of Britain … That is the heaviest charge to lay against this government. That it has contrived to destroy Britain’s belief in itself.’
Mrs Thatcher was cast in the role of national savior: ‘With Jim (What Crisis?) Callaghan we look into the abyss. With Margaret Thatcher, there is a chance for us to look again to the skies … The Sun says: Vote Tory. Stop the Rot. There may not be another chance.’
It worked. Margaret Thatcher won the election with 43.9 per cent of the vote against 36.9 per cent for Labour, giving her a comfortable majority of fifty-seven seats in the House of Commons. Courtship of the Sun’s working-class readership paid Thatcher large dividends. The 9 per cent swing among this demographic was almost double the national average of 5.1 per cent, and it delivered into the Conservative Party’s hands a string of marginal seats in the midlands and north-west.40
The press and media went wild with excitement at the election of Britain’s first female prime minister. The only major paper not to mention the election of Margaret Thatcher was The Times, still closed in the midst of an epic industrial dispute. The strike was symbolic of the crisis, and many speculated that it would never open again. The fact that two years later it was bought by Rupert Murdoch was symbolic of the 1980s triumph of meritocracy over Establishment.41
Mrs Thatcher was very, very grateful to the Sun. Larry Lamb was sent a letter thanking him for his help, and Margaret stated that she would strive to be worthy of his readers’ support. The Sun’s offices were decorated in blue bunting, rosettes, union jacks and portraits of the new prime minister to mark her regal attendance at the paper’s victory celebrations.42 Larry Lamb also found himself knighted, and after his investiture he insisted on being called ‘Sir Larry’, which only caused hilarity amongst the journalists on the paper.43
Sir Larry wasn’t the only useful left-wing convert to Thatcherism. Another was former Labour MP, Woodrow Wyatt, who lost his seat in 1970 and became head of the Tote – the office that governs horse racing in the United Kingdom. Wyatt moved to the far-right of politics with such astonishing speed that he became persona non grata amongst his former Labour colleagues. Never shy of the spotlight, he became a flamboyant television personality best remembered for his floppy bow tie and preaching right-wing opinions.44 Woodrow Wyatt became a paid lobbyist and go-between for Murdoch and Thatcher, part of a network that made up Britain’s powerful political elite.45
Wyatt, an inveterate social climber who knew everyone who was anyone in the capital, met Murdoch just at the point that the Australian needed a guide to show him around the city. Wyatt was considered a snobbish eccentric, with several former wives, but he was astute enough to spot a man on the rise and offered the newcomer friendship. The Wyatts and the Murdochs holidayed and socialised together.46 Rupert was schooled by Wyatt in the belief that the real cause of rot and decay in British life was the ungovernable trade unions and the real hope for Britain in the future was Margaret Thatcher.
Murdoch embraced Wyatt’s credo wholeheartedly, and Wyatt became something of a go-between for Thatcher and Murdoch. Bernard Ingham, Thatcher’s press secretary, spent a great deal of his time attempting to fend Wyatt off, and referred to him as ‘a bloody menace. He thought he was running the country by ringing her up at eight in the morning. Poisonous little twerp, he was.’ Similarly, inside Murdoch’s News Corp, no one except Rupert had any time for him. However, Thatcher’s victory in 1979 was a massive promotion for Wyatt inside the Murdoch business machine, and he found himself rewarded with columns both in The Times and the News of the World. Amidst the stories of randy vicars and spanked school girls, Wyatt’s column, named without any trace of irony, ‘The Voice of Reason’, advocated the virtues of free market economics. It gave a forum for Wyatt to write political love letters eulogising Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. They were also reportedly Margaret’s first read of the day and, some say, her only news read of the day.47
Although Wyatt was annoying and had a sometimes comic persona he was a key influence on Murdoch’s anti-union position, bringing moderate union leaders to meet him who were willing to supplant the more radical ones. It was through Wyatt that Murdoch was introduced to Frank Chapple, head of the electrician’s union, who agreed to undermine the printers union by allowing members of his union to be drafted in to keep the presses running.48 (Chapple would be created a life peer in 1985.) Wyatt not only became the ultimate courtier to Murdoch’s Sun king, but he was also vital in shaping his pro-Thatcher stance.
Murdoch’s first deal in the 1980s was his acquisition of The Times and the Sunday Times in 1981 for £12 million.49 Thatcher did all she could to help him snap it up.50 The prospect of the ‘Dirty Digger’ taking over such an institution as The Times caused enormous disquiet, not just in Establishment circles51 but throughout Fleet Street. People were horrified that the ‘top people’s paper’, known around the world as the Times of London, would be sold to a brash Australian whose reputation had been sullied by his antics at the News of the World and the Sun. However, these two national institutions were being put up for sale by a disillusioned Lord Thomson, who had lost his battle with the print unions following a strike that had kept both papers out of circulation for a year.52 Thomson, a Canadian, had inherited both his newspapers from his father who had made Thomson Newspapers Canada’s most powerful media group, and his family the richest in Canada. He now moved the family business away from newspapers and towards new technology-based communications.53
While the Sunday Times made a profit (even in the depths of a recession it was turning away advertising), the daily edition lost millions every year. Eager to avoid the severance costs of more than £53 million associated with closing the paper, this was officially a distress sale. None of the potential buyers except Murdoch would agree not to close the daily Times, but despite this fact, bitter controversy broke out over Margaret Thatcher’s failure to refer the purchase to the Monopolies & Mergers Commission.
Murdoch got what was seen as his political reward when the government put on a three-line whip in the Commons and decisively defeated the motion for referral. Thatcher was clearly bending the rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to purchase both papers, ‘it illustrated her political dependence on his newspapers,’ said Jonathan Aitken.54
‘I think they should have applied the Mergers & Monopolies policy much more rigorously,’ states Tim Bell.55
The loyal Bernard Ingham points out, ‘I think before we say she gave Murdoch too much power, we have to ask what would have been the fate of The Times and Sunday Times without him.’56
Woodrow Wyatt had been instrumental in the abandonment of the inquiry. In his diary he wrote, ‘At [Murdoch’s] request and at my instigation [Margaret Thatcher] had stopped The Times acquisition being referred to the Monopolies Commission though the Sunday Times was not really losing money and the pair together were not.’57 In 1987, Woodrow again urged Thatcher to prevent another inquiry by the commission, this time into Murdoch’s purchase of the Today newspaper. And two years later, Wyatt spoke to Thatcher and helped Murdoch to avoid further inquiry into his media dominance. Murdock told Wyatt, ‘I am very grateful to you.’
Wyatt continued to prove crucial after Murdoch moved into Sky TV, telling him, ‘Margaret is very keen on preserving your position. She knows how much she depends on your support. Likewise, you depend on hers in this matter.’58
Although Murdoch gave assurances of editorial independence and elaborate safeguards were erected, in practice they turned out to be worthless.59 The so-called independent directors were docile and acquiescent, although one of them, Lord Dacre, denounced Murdoch as a ‘megalomaniac twister’.60 Rupert Murdoch, the upstart Aussie, was now the world’s most famous newspaper proprietor, and arguably the most important private citizen (or actually, non-citizen) in the United Kingdom.61
Like Thatcher, Murdoch often used the royal ‘we’ to disguise the absolutist nature of his authority.62 At the offices of his latest acquisition Murdoch slashed staff, who were either abruptly sacked or made redundant. Murdoch called the place a ‘graveyard’.63 He was scornful of high-minded broadsheet newspapers and the self-important journalists who worked on them. He was especially vehement about any articles that failed wholeheartedly to support either Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan. In the words of Hugo Young, the deputy editor, Murdoch ‘didn’t believe in neutrality’.
It was also time for a changing of the old guard at the Sun. Sir Larry Lamb, who had done himself no favours in Murdoch’s eyes by accepting a knighthood, was replaced with Kelvin MacKenzie, who enthusiastically embraced the macho two-fingers-to-society, ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mentality Rupert now wanted. Throughout his ‘reign of terror’ he abused ‘darkies’, ‘poofters’, students, royals, ‘krauts’, ‘royal krauts’, ‘frogs’, gypsies and celebrities. He transformed news into the greatest vaudeville show in town with memorable headlines such as ‘Freddie Star Ate my Hamster’. He delighted in lewd and titillating stories, but made gargantuan mistakes in the process. He wrongly blamed drunken Liverpool fans for the fatal crush at Hillsborough football stadium and alleged that Elton John had sex with underage rent boys, a libel that cost the paper £1 million in damages. Murdoch called him ‘my little Hitler’ and encourage his worst excesses.64
MacKenzie conveniently arrived at his post when Princess Diana was injecting new glamour and drama into the otherwise stuffy house of Windsor.65 The arrival of a fairy tale princess transformed the Windsors into an entire industry, neatly segueing into the national obsession with American soaps such as Dallas and Dynasty, driven by the fantasy of enormous wealth and glamour.66 Royal stories became essential to the success of Murdoch’s business empire, but the pressure it placed on the new Princess of Wales was enormous. Although Diana behaved flawlessly in public, she found herself exhausted by each performance. At home, she started to throw tantrums that fell outside Prince Charles’s realm of experience. Not knowing how to handle his wife’s fluctuating emotions, he called his mistress Camilla Parker Bowles for advice and played more polo. The more elusive Charles grew, the more upset Diana became. Frustrated by an absent husband and tabloid intrusion, Diana protested to the queen.67
Her Majesty summoned Fleet Street editors to the palace68 and her press secretary, Michael Shea, told them to rein back stating that the princess felt ‘totally beleaguered’.69 Later the queen entered the room and told photographers it was unfair to hide in the bushes tracking the princess without her knowledge. The queen citied a picture published the day before of Diana with her arms around her husband’s neck, smiling affectionately at him as they stood outside their private country home, Highgrove, in Gloucester. Most editors agreed to back off except Kelvin MacKenzie, who failed to attend. He sent a note informing the palace that he had a meeting with Murdoch, which he deemed more important.70
The truce between Buckingham Palace and the rest of the press pack lasted about six weeks. Then Diana threatened to kill herself. Shortly after the Christmas holiday at Sandringham, which the princess always hated, she warned Charles that if he left her alone again to go riding she would make an attempt on her life. As he stormed out, she threw herself down a flight of stairs. The queen mother, then 81, heard the uproar and found the pregnant princess in a heap sobbing. Except for a slight bruising around her abdomen, she was fine. However, hours later a footman sold the information about the princess’s fall to Murdoch’s Sun, proving nothing weighs as heavy as a royal secret worth money. The tabloid ran the story on the next day’s front page, but did not say it was an apparent suicide attempt.71
The queen proposed that Diana and Charles should take a trip, feeling that they needed to get away together to sort things out.72 After the New Year, a break was set up in the Caribbean in the hope that the princess would find some respite from the media attention.73 As the Prince and Princess of Wales left for the island of Windermere in the Bahamas, they were only setting themselves up for yet another Murdoch front page. On the island, royal reporter Harry Arnold secured one of the biggest scoops of his career: photographs of the five months’ pregnant princess wearing only a bikini. The pictures appeared on the Sun’s front page. The palace, caught on the hop, reacted with an angry statement that Charles and Diana were shocked at the tastelessness of the pictures. The next day, using the row as a pretext, MacKenzie ran the pictures again, this time describing the new rules according to the Sun. The paper was ‘deeply sorry’ if it had caused offence but, a ‘Sun Says’ editorial proclaimed, the pictures had, ‘brought back a breath of summer into the lives of millions of readers back in chilly Britain’. The Sun was exercising ‘a legitimate interest in the royal family not merely as symbols, but as breathing people’.
The royal pursuit continued undiminished. Every Monday the Sun had a policy of running a royal story, as it was traditionally a slow day for news. Many journalists saw the royals living a lifestyle that had lasted for centuries virtually unaltered, and regarded them as fair game.74 For the ‘New Thatcherite Tories’, Her Majesty reflected the unchanging, aristocratic mentality that Mrs Thatcher had made it her mission to attack. For many, the monarch embodied the glamour of a lost age and was the upholder, not of capitalism, but of tradition.75
Mockery and intrusive reporting sold newspapers because the public mood had grown coarser and less deferential. While the queen was lampooned for not paying taxes, it was her family that suffered. They were now downgraded to the status of mere ‘celebrities’ and they were sucked into the tabloids’ favourite game of ‘set them up, knock them down’, a pastime which also chewed up and spat out footballers, rock stars and famous actors.76 MacKenzie treated the royal family like dumb animals, creatures to be kept healthy so they could be shooting targets. The paper’s photographers rudely called them ‘the Germans’ and described taking their pictures as ‘whacking the Germans’.77
However, the attack on the royals didn’t just come from Murdoch’s down-market tabloids. Beyond the red tops, there was also a north London intellectual debate raging, stoked by Murdoch’s ‘quality’ newspapers. The Times, once the backbone of the Establishment, now did a volte-face. Together with Charter 88, a left-of-centre reform group, the paper organised a conference on the monarchy. The event took place at the Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster and gathered legal brains, journalists, theatrical and literary personalities from across the spectrum. It mostly consisted of outspoken republicans, with a few token defenders like Charles Moore of the Daily Telegraph debating such topics as cutting the Civil List and removing the queen’s constitutional powers.
The left-wing playwright David Hare stated, ‘Newspapers led by the Murdoch group have begun a project of putting the royal family in such a state of tension that their lives will become unlivable … We shall mock them until they wish they had never been born.’78 This, he recognised, gave no one any kudos, but it was, as he saw it, the only practical stratagem against a royal family which the nation was reluctant to tackle head on.
Murdoch made it possible for the first time to be anti-royal, but still pro-Britain, and the greatest shared Murdoch-Maggie triumph was the Falkland’s War. MacKenzie’s Sun quickly moved from whacking Germans to whacking Argentinians. The paper had been fortunate enough to have sent reporter David Graves to the islands before the invasion. He was there covering a humorous story based on Foreign Office statistics that the population was made up of three women to every man, the highest imbalance in the world. Think what that meant to the forty-two marines garrisoned there, sniggered the Sun.
MacKenzie never had a flicker of doubt as to where his loyalty lay – Maggie Thatcher. His mindless jingoism and patriotic fervor were typical of most tabloids during a war, but the Sun took it to a new level. ‘The Sun Says Knickers to Argentina!’ the paper informed readers on page three. ‘Britain’s secret weapon in the Falklands dispute was revealed last night … it’s undercover warfare.’ According to the Sun, thousands of women were sporting ‘specially made underwear embroidered across the front with the proud name of the ship on which a husband or boyfriend is serving’. This was followed by the equally comic, ‘Stick It up Your Junta’ and the infamous ‘Gotcha!’ when the General Belgrano was sunk by a British torpedo. For many people, it summed up the crass bloodlust of the popular press. For others, it identified that the public were getting fed up with the lack of action, and the brash headline encapsulated what many readers would have felt on hearing the news.
The paper cruelly lampooned Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington as a mouse against Churchill’s bulldog, along with a splash of ‘We’ll Smash Em!’ The ‘Sun Says’ column castigated the Foreign Office as a ‘safe haven for appeasers’ while Murdoch’s newly acquired Times followed the same line by denouncing Argentina’s action as ‘naked aggression’ without equal since the days of Hitler. Carrington resigned.
While the BBC maintained its tradition of impartiality and the Guardian newspaper cast doubt on the official British versions of the sea battle with the General Belgrano, the Sun dutifully turned its big-gun leader writer Ronald Spark on these two ‘enemies within’. Spark came up with the line ‘Dare Call it Treason’. He continued, ‘There are traitors in our midst. The prime minister did not speak of treason. The Sun does not hesitate to use the word …’ He specifically named the BBC’s defence correspondent, Peter Snow, and the ‘pygmy Guardian’.
On the eve of the Falklands War, the Conservatives’ opinion rating had fallen to 25 per cent, a drop of twenty points in two years. After the Falklands, the 1979 election-winning figure of 45 per cent miraculously returned. The paper was now selling 4,224,000 copies a day and had increased its lead over the Mirror by 900,000. MacKenzie’s extraordinary barnstorming style seemed to be working. Maggie had regained her popularity and the Sun’s deification of her knew no bounds. MacKenzie, along with Murdoch, felt an affinity with Margaret, as they were all outsiders amongst the Establishment. They would forgive her anything because of her firm convictions and unshakeable beliefs. Even when MacKenzie disagreed with her, he would always say, ‘she’s wrong, but she’s strong’. As the Murdoch press saw it, Maggie had saved the country from the soggy ‘wets’ and the unproductive public school boys.
Murdoch had been repaid for supporting Thatcher in the 1979 election with ownership of The Times and the Sunday Times. Now his support for her during the Falklands conflict would pay dividends as he declared war on his workers, the print unions. In 1984, the Thatcher Government had passed the Trade Union Act which made strike ballots mandatory and outlawed secondary picketing, triggering a major shake-up of the newspaper industry.
Murdoch knew that to make his UK newspapers profitable he had to break the power of the print unions, and their restrictive practices known as ‘old Spanish customs’. This phrase originated during the first Elizabethan period, when anti-Spanish feeling was strong as a result of an attempted invasion by the Spanish Armada in 1588, and was used to describe ‘deceitful, perfidious and treacherous’ practices. Originally designed to protect print jobs in the industry, these customs were now out of control, causing grotesque overmanning and wildcat strikes that amounted to little more than systematic fraud, extortion and sabotage.79 One technique was to hold up production of the Sunday Times on Saturday nights by complaining of a bad smell in the foundry that could only be wafted away with £5 notes. Union ‘chapels’ run by quasi-independent shop stewards known as ‘fathers’ ensured that their members received, according to Rupert, ‘the most pay for the least work of anyone else in Britain’.80 Thatcher’s union reforms now handed newspaper proprietors a chance to change the status quo if they dared to, and Murdoch did.
Both Murdoch and Wyatt were invited to an intimate lunch with Thatcher and her husband Denis at the prime minister’s official country house, Chequers. On the way back to London, Murdoch gave Wyatt a tour of the new printing works in London’s docklands, which looked as if they had come straight out of George Orwell’s 1984, a real life ‘Ministry of Truth’, guarded by CCTV camera, searchlights, electronic gates, 12ft fences and razor wire.
Murdoch struck a secret deal with the maverick electricians’ union to enable journalists to type their copy directly from desktop computers, making the role of the print-worker entirely redundant. This was all done under the secret pretence of launching a new evening paper from Wapping. His next step was to provoke a strike; as Wyatt explained, he wanted the printers to go on strike so he could ‘sack the lot’. Murdoch thus fired 5,500 employees without compensation, saving £40 million in redundancy payments.
He then moved his entire newspaper operations to Wapping,81 which was immediately besieged in one of the longest, ugliest and most violent strikes in British history. Murdoch tried to pay the workers off, even offering them the Gray’s Inn Road premises to start their own paper, but the offer was rejected. He relied on Margaret Thatcher’s measures outlawing secondary picketing and making trade unions liable for damages. She supported him to the hilt, as he had done for her in the 1979 election and Falklands War.
Thatcher’s support for Murdoch’s new plant was key, and not only through the restrictive trade union laws that her government had introduced, but also the nightly presence of police at the gates of Wapping.82 His delivery trucks were protected by British police, who met the picketers’ violence with violence and sometimes got their aggression in first.83 They became known as ‘Murdoch’s paperboys’.84
The streets around ‘Fortress Wapping’ became a nightly battleground. Margaret decided to treat the strike as a law-and-order issue which had to be won. This was, however, an intensely political confrontation and a vital test of the Thatcher revolution at a ground level.85 According to Andrew Neil, editor of the Sunday Times during this period, Murdoch obtained Mrs Thatcher’s personal assurance before the dispute began that enough police would be available to allow the papers to continue.86 As with the National Union of Miners, she wanted victory, not compromise.87 While the strikers loathed Murdoch and declared him bad news,88 the prime minister trumpeted ‘Rupert is marvellous’.89
The year 1986 went down in newspaper history as the year of the ‘Wapping Revolution’ and the printers’ strike finally collapsed after a brutal fifty-four weeks. Other press barons embraced the new technology, moving to Docklands and consigning the bygone, inky world of Fleet Street to the dustbin of history. For ideological as well as commercial reasons, Murdoch’s papers became even more stridently Thatcherite after the move to Wapping. When Labour MP Ken Livingstone said on television that his party’s defeat in the 1987 general election had been caused by media lies and smears, Murdoch cried out delightedly, ‘That’s me!’90
Murdoch’s early teenage flirtation with left-wing politics soon changed to espousing the hard right-wing views common among the super-rich: strong leadership, low taxation and light regulations, and against trade unions, the European Union and global warming science. His newspapers would sabotage defiant politicians and advance his own political and business agenda, especially if it led to getting favours in the heavily regulated TV industry.
In 1986 The Times editor, Charles Douglas-Home, was reported to have said, ‘Rupert and Mrs Thatcher consult regularly on every important matter of policy especially as they relate to his economic and political interests.’91 News Corporation, the company that controlled Murdoch’s media interests, was deeply involved in the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank which played a vital role in laying the intellectual foundation on which Thatcherism was built, shaping the policies on free markets, deregulation and privatisation. Murdoch’s Sunday Times and the institute co-published a series of pamphlets attacking the welfare state for producing an intractable ‘underclass’. From 1988 to 2001 the founder and director of the institute, Lord Harris, was a director of the Times Newspapers Holdings Ltd, Murdoch’s holding company for both The Times and the Sunday Times.92
In the 1987 election, Thatcher said of Murdoch privately, ‘We depend on him to fight for us. The Sun is marvellous.’93 That year, Murdoch travelled to London to personally oversee his newspapers for the month before the election. According to Wyatt, Thatcher ‘was delighted that Rupert had promised to come over especially for the election to keep in touch with me and to have an input of advice’.94 His advice was that the Tories should tell the public that they stood for low tax.
‘Appeal to their greed,’ Murdoch said.
‘Rupert is marvellous,’ repeated Margaret.95
The Sunday Times veteran and Thatcher biographer, Hugo Young, argued that Murdoch ‘did not believe in neutrality. Indeed, rather like politicians themselves, he had difficulty in comprehending it. As far as he was concerned, journalistic detachment was a mask for anti-Thatcherism. If we were not for the government, we were quite plainly against it.’96
Thatcher turned a blind eye to his crucifixion of the royals. Of course, she knew all about it, but she ignored Murdoch’s diet of sleaze, sex and royal bashing in exchange for his determined support. Thatcher biographer, John Campbell, claims she rationalised it as ‘the price of freedom’, without saying whose freedom. The public mood was ready for change and Murdoch fuelled it. Reform of the monarchy, in particular the Civil List, was placed firmly on the prime minister’s ‘to do’ list, although not as high up as the unions or the nationalised industries.
In unpicking the relationship between Thatcher, Murdoch and the royal family, we witness how his empire came to exert such a poisonous influence on public life and how he used his vast power to bully, intimidate and cover up.97
Thatcher herself didn’t always escape totally unscathed. While the Sunday Times under Andrew Neil supported the Conservatives at election time and during the worst moments of the miners’ strike, it also revealed how the queen was distressed at Thatcher’s social policies and exposed the business dealings of her son, Mark. Other newspapers in the Murdoch empire supported the Thatcher Government unconditionally, but the Sunday Times was distinguished by being prepared to be critical of the Tory leader.98 Murdoch had changed the economics of the press by breaking the print unions. His media empire, swollen by the enormous power Mrs Thatcher had given him, could now make the politicians dance to his tune.
By contrast, while Mrs Thatcher was embracing Murdoch’s growing empire, her relationship with that other media tycoon of the 1980s, Robert Maxwell, was very different. Maxwell created for himself an image as one of Britain’s richest men with a fortune of £1.1 billion. However, his debts were almost twice that, and he survived by moving money around his companies, ‘borrowing’ from the pension fund and dreaming up new schemes. Maxwell, an ex-Labour MP, was endlessly litigious and reeked of the sulphurous aroma of financial scandal. He was dubbed the ‘bouncing Czech’ by Prime Minister Harold Wilson, under whom he served during the 1960s. The full extent of Maxwell’s fraudulent dealings was only revealed after he died in 1991, when his body was found in the sea near his luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, off the Canaries.
Mrs Thatcher kept him at arm’s length. At one stage, Maxwell tried to get Margaret Thatcher and her Conservative Government to back him in a barter deal with the Soviet Union worth up to $20 billion (£11.2 billion). Maxwell talked his way into meeting her at 10 Downing Street in 1990, the year before his death, to reveal details of the scheme. Maxwell’s percentage as fixer could have given him enough money to stay afloat, and would have prevented his £450 million raid on the Mirror Group Newspapers pension fund ever becoming known. Thatcher sent him away. She developed the means of deflating Maxwell, by saying he looked ill whenever they met.
Charles Powell explained:
Margaret Thatcher rather reluctantly saw him, but she had a marvellous technique. He would come and sit down, and she would look at him and say, ‘How are you?’
He would say, ‘Very well.’
She would say, ‘You don’t really look too good.’ He would feel anxious and start to sweat. ‘Are you sure your wife is looking after you?’ she would say.
By now he would be reaching for his handkerchief and dabbing his brow and wishing he had never come in.99
1 The Iron Lady, John Campbell (Penguin, 2009).
2 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
3 Interview, Cecil Parkinson, 2013.
4 Author’s correspondence with Sir Bernard Ingham, 2013.
5 Interview, Tim Bell, 2013.
6 Interview, Edwina Currie, 2013.
7 Elizabeth, the Queen, Sally Bedell Smith (Penguin Books, 2012).
8 The Man Who Owns the News, Michael Wolff (Bodley Head, 2008).
9 Ibid.
10 Dial M for Murdoch, by Tom Watson and Martin Hickman (Allen Lane, 2012).
11 The Rise and Fall of the Murdoch Empire, John Lisners (John Blake, 2012).
12 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
13 ‘The News of the World History: All Human Life Was There’, Roy Stockdill, Guardian, 10 July 2011.
14 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
15 Ibid.
16 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
17 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
18 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
19 Ibid.
20 Interview, Tim Bell, 2013.
21 The Diamond Queen, Andrew Marr (Macmillan, 2011).
22 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
23 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
24 Queen Elizabeth II: Her Life in Our Times, Sarah Bradford (Viking, 2012).
25 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
26 Our Own Dear Queen, Piers Brendon (Secker & Warburg, 1986).
27 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
28 Elizabeth: The Woman and Queen, Graham Turner (Macmillan/Daily Telegraph, 24 May 2002).
29 The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy, Ben Pimlott (HarperCollins, 1996).
30 Ibid.
31 Elizabeth: Behind Palace Doors, Nicholas Davies (Mainstream Publishing, 2000).
32 The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy, Ben Pimlott (HarperCollins, 1996).
33 ‘Queen Obtains Ban on Gossip Articles’, R.W. Apple Jr, New York Times, 24 February 1983.
34 The Royals, Kitty Kelly (H.B. Productions Inc., 1997).
35 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
36 The Path to Power, Margaret Thatcher (HarperCollins, 2012).
37 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
38 Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics, James Thomas (Routledge, 2005).
39 Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality, Jonathan Aitken (Bloomsbury, 2013).
40 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
41 Rejoice! Rejoice! Britain in the 1980s, Alwyn W. Turner (Aurum Press, 2010).
42 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
43 Ibid.
44 The Man Who Owns the News, Michael Wolff (Bodley Head, 2008).
45 Murdoch’s Politics, David McKnight (Pluto Press, 2013).
46 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
47 The Man Who Owns the News, Michael Wolff (Bodley Head, 2008).
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid.
50 The Iron Lady, John Campbell (Penguin, 2009).
51 The Man Who Owns the News, Michael Wolff (Bodley Head, 2008).
52 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
53 Obituary, Lord Thomas of Fleet, 12 June 2006.
54 Margaret Thatcher: Power and Personality, Jonathan Aitken (Bloomsbury, 2013).
55 Interview, Tim Bell, 2013.
56 Author’s correspondence with Sir Bernard Ingham, 2013.
57 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Sarah Curtis (Ed.) (Macmillan, 1999).
58 Ibid.
59 The Iron Lady, John Campbell (Penguin, 2009).
60 Hugh Trevor-Roper: The Biography, Adam Sisman (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2010).
61 The Man Who Owns the News, Michael Wolff (Bodley Head, 2008).
62 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
66 Ibid.
67 The Royals, Kitty Kelly (H.B. Productions Inc., 1997).
68 Ibid.
69 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
70 The Royals, Kitty Kelly (H.B. Productions Inc., 1997).
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid.
73 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
74 Ibid.
75 The Queen: Elizabeth II and the Monarchy, Ben Pimlott (HarperCollins, 1996).
76 The Diamond Queen, Andrew Marr (Macmillan, 2011).
77 Stick it Up Your Punter, Peter Chippindale and Chris Horrie (William Heinemann, 1990).
78 The Windsors, Piers Brendon and Phillip Whitehead (Pimlico, 2000).
79 The Wapping Dispute, S.M. Littleton (Avebury, 1992).
80 Ibid.
81 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
82 Murdoch’s Politics, David McKnight (Pluto Press, 2013).
83 Eminent Elizabethans, Piers Brendon (Jonathan Cape, 2012).
84 The End of the Street, L. Melvern (Methuen, 1986).
85 The Iron Lady, John Campbell (Penguin, 2009).
86 Full Disclosure, Andrew Neil (Macmillan, 1996).
87 The Iron Lady, John Campbell (Penguin, 2009).
88 The Wapping Dispute, S.M. Littleton (Avebury, 1992).
89 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Sarah Curtis (Ed.) (Macmillan, 1999).
90 Ibid.
91 Citizen Murdoch, Thomas Kiernan (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1986).
92 Murdoch’s Politics, David McKnight (Pluto Press, 2013).
93 The Journals of Woodrow Wyatt, Sarah Curtis (Ed.) (Macmillan, 1999).
94 Ibid.
95 Ibid.
96 ‘Rupert Murdoch and the Sunday Times: A Lamp Goes Out’, Hugo Young, Political Quarterly, October–December 1984.
97 Dial M for Murdoch, by Tom Watson and Martin Hickman (Allen Lane, 2012).
98 Murdoch’s Politics, David McKnight (Pluto Press, 2013).
99 ‘Maxwell Tried to get Thatcher to Bail Him Out’, Maurice Chittenden, Sunday Times, 29 January 2006.