CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
COLLAPSE OF AN EMPIRE

. . . his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic roll on under the night.

F. Scott Fitgerald, The Great Gatsby

As 1982 progressed, an investor prepared to buy into the casinos failed to materialise. Greg Farrell was putting all he had into keeping the Federal Group afloat. With Barton trying to do the same with IPEC Europe, tension between the pair heightened.

By the middle of the year, with John Konstas gone, Ed Wagemans fired, Freddie Van Gaever sidelined and Hugh O’Neill’s confidence in IPEC Europe fading, Barton needed another friendly ally. He asked DAC managing director Rod Maclure to find a replacement and to relocate to Holland with his family.

Maclure agreed and rented out his house in suburban Sydney. His wife started taking language lessons. Rod had some idle time before leaving, and spent it at Bligh Street head office looking over the group’s overall position. With his accounting background, he did a cash flow analysis to check the status of assets and liabilities.

The recession was getting worse and worse and Australian interest rates had soared to over 17 per cent; they had been 11 per cent just eighteen months before. Given IPEC was at maximal expansion, the timing of the rate increase could not have been worse. Wrest Point occupancy rates and gambling revenue were falling way under forecast. Over $50 million had been spent acquiring the three new casino sites Since embarking on the $30-odd million construction program, costs had doubled—and most of the money had been borrowed. The Wrest Point convention centre had cost $20 million. In May the Launceston country club and casino had opened. Two months later, Federal opened its $12 million Alice Springs casino resort. Five hundred guests had enjoyed a lavish $10,000 fireworks display with Rolf Harris as the master of ceremonies. The new Darwin casino was still under construction. Given the recession, it would be some five years at least before any of these turned a profit.

To his horror, Maclure calculated the company was dramatically overgeared. It was effectively insolvent. The Southlands debt had crystallised into an outrageous sum, and there were massive loans about to fall due. Financial and management resources were stretched to breaking point. Worse, the Australian express freight pricing cartel had broken down, leading to a price war. The group’s cash cow, IPEC Transport, was for the first time unmilkable. The group was going to be short something like $20 million in the coming few months alone. Unless major assets were offloaded, the whole empire was about to collapse.

Rod Maclure cancelled his move to Europe and wrote to Barton frankly spelling out this unpleasant truth. Financial controller Derek Bimson thinks Maclure’s detailed letter frightened Barton for the first time into recognising the cold reality of his group’s financial position.

In early September, Barton again requested from all IPEC Europe offices a massive cost-cutting exercise. The business had just spent around $5 million expanding into Italy and Sweden as well as rolling out domestic express services throughout Germany and the UK. The expansion was forced to go into a holding pattern. Nonetheless, interviewed by the US Journal of Commerce a month or two later, Barton refused to be pessimistic, estimating annual profits of some US$43 million within five years. Worldwide, the IPEC beast had now grown to some 6000 staff and was showing a turnover of A$400 million.

Not until 18 November did the Australian media sniff out the escalating crisis, making public Barton’s attempt to put a one-third stake in Federal’s four casinos on the international market for $20 million. When serious offers failed to materialise, the price was slashed—$17 million for a 50 per cent interest.

Survival tactics were needed. On Christmas Eve 1982 IPEC closed its Jetaway Express division without notice. In Sydney and Melbourne 140 staff were told not to return in the New Year. Staff numbers at Federal Hotels were slashed. Even Barton’s beloved National Trust-listed Sydney headquarters in Bligh Street was put on the market.

The hugely successful Skypak document courier business—now the second largest worldwide—was one part of the empire that could be jettisoned without collateral damage. Barton took charge of the negotiations. It was with these sorts of deals that Barton excelled—his whippet-cunning manner gave nothing away. Competitors such as TNT’s David Mortimer learnt a lot from seeing Barton in action.

Barton contacted Peter Abeles to let him know the Skypak business was on the market—no strings attached. DHL was also approached.

Given it was still in its growth phase, Skypak had racked up a $500,000 loss in the previous six months. The operation was difficult to value. With very few hard assets, it was in the worldwide brand equity where the real value lay. Abeles apparently looked at how much it would cost him to establish such a business and then increase market share, calculating a value on that basis. With the Middle East oil boom at its peak, Skypak’s jewel was its hugely profitable Saudi Arabian business.

Rod Maclure remembers being called to an extraordinary Saturday board meeting at Bligh Street. Barton was downstairs negotiating with DHL representatives for the Skypak sale while the rest of board waited upstairs. Barton eventually came up to the boardroom and announced proudly that DHL had offered $15 million—for a business acquired a few years earlier for just $3 million. The offer was well over the board’s expectations. Their smiles quickly faded, however, as Barton added, ‘I rejected their offer’. He wanted to talk to TNT. Maclure couldn’t believe Barton was turning DHL down. When Freddie Gardiner got wind of the impending Skypak sale, he resigned as its US head, this time for good.

Little more than a week later—early on Friday 4 February 1983—a red-eyed Barton jetted back into Sydney. In the previous two weeks he had been in Australia, back to London, over to Holland, across to the US and back to Australia. A chauffeur-driven Mercedes took him directly to Bligh Street for an all-day board meeting. Unless he signed off a delayed half-year Ipec Holdings report that day, shares in the public company would be suspended. The problem was an operating loss of close to $4.5 million, as well as a staggering interest bill of $12.1 million. The operating loss would be concealed from incurious shareholders through Barton’s talent for smoke-and-mirrors accounting; it morphed into a consolidated loss of just $191,000—a process Barton likened to ‘magically pulling rabbits out of a hat’. The whitewash was the cover story of that week’s Business Review Weekly.

Interviewed the same Friday he had arrived in Sydney, Barton acknowledged that the hotel expansion and its ‘frightening’ cost overruns were the main reason for the crisis, he also admitted, ‘by the time we realised . . . it was too late to stop’.

When in February 1983 Barton announced Skypak had been sold to TNT for $20 million—$5 million over DHL’s offer—Rod Maclure was astounded. TNT executive Colin Green admitted that to set up a better courier business would have required ‘a lot of blood on the floor’ to ensure profitability. Skypak provided a ready-to-go framework.

Still, Barton’s Skypak deal was cunning and showed a lot of nerve. He had secretly negotiated for TNT to sell 20 per cent back to him for $4 million, assuring him a share of Skypak profits. Rather than Barton putting forward the entire $4 million, it was agreed that TNT would ‘loan’ him just over $3 million. His dividends would then be retained by TNT to pay off this debt. Once paid off, the dividends were intended as his legacy to his family. However, one of the agreement’s conditions was that losses from prior years were cumulative—carried over to the calculation of the next year’s profits. Barton’s accountant Bob Miller says it was the worst deal Barton ever did.

Given its huge debts and the recent alarmist press reports, the $20 million IPEC received didn’t last long. Lenders wanted much of the cash back in order to release mortgaged assets. While the sale reduced IPEC’s borrowings, it was left with only $2 million. An enormous cash shortfall remained. More assets needed to go.

Through the turmoil, Barton had somehow managed to keep negotiating on expanding IPEC’s express service to the US in a partnership with FedEx. On Friday, 4 February he flew from Sydney to the United States to try to finalise negotiations. From there he would jet directly to Saudi Arabia for a Skypak board meeting.

Within months, another financial forecast showed that despite the Skypak sale, Ipec Holdings was still many millions short of liquidity. Its 80 per cent stake in DAC was on the market for $10 million. As yet there were no buyers and, as no-one wanted the casinos, IPEC Europe remained the key saleable asset.

Barton had, over the previous twelve months, maintained a regular dialogue with TNT chief general manager Ross Cribb and Sir Peter Abeles, Cribb recalls. Barton had invited them for dinner on perhaps half a dozen of their monthly trips to London. The contact had ensured TNT was up to speed on IPEC Europe’s progress. With about 1700 staff and having captured about 7 per cent of the European airfreight market, it had become the continent’s largest international express freight operator. They could see it would eventually become profitable.

While a sale had never been mentioned, Cribb recalls Peter Abeles saying to him on the flight home after one meeting, ‘Ross, I’m certain Barton is having dinner with us because he wants us to buy IPEC over there’. Abeles’ instincts told him Barton was too cunning to admit he wanted to sell. Sure enough, early in 1983, as Barton and Abeles dined in London alone, Barton confessed he was getting tired; there were other things he’d like to do. Abeles quickly admitted TNT would be very interested in IPEC Europe.

After inspecting the books and operations, Ross Cribb’s recommendation was to buy, although only if Barton sold the entire European operation. Neither Peter Abeles nor Ross Cribb realised that he had little choice. However, as he had done with Skypak, Barton ensured he had more than one keen bidder. The long-courted KLM and the US-based DHL were also invited to bid.

Barton continued to meet secretly with Peter Abeles and Ross Cribb, keeping his senior executives in the dark, although when it was announced that Sir Peter was about to fly to Holland to have a look around, the reality was difficult to hide. Getting wind of the negotiations, finance director Jon Sedgwick would jot in his diary in the second week of April: ‘I must admit that after the last frustrating year working directly with Barton and seeing the company sliding sideways instead of forward I think a sale offers the best hope of bringing some sanity into the management structure.’

On Tuesday 12 April senior TNT personnel suddenly descended on IPEC UK to look at the company’s books. Staff began to panic. As TNT already had a UK operation, in the event of a takeover they would be the first to go. Morale, poor already, worsened.

Country manager for IPEC UK, Mick Egan, called together drivers and managers to put a proposal together to try to stop the sale. UK staff were willing to take a 20 per cent salary cut. Managers were prepared to forgo 30 per cent. While Barton was touched, the gesture was not going to curb the cash crisis.

A week later Barton telexed all staff with a formal announcement of the TNT negotiations. By Sunday TNT had made a provisional offer. Back in Sydney, the Ipec Holdings board was ready to sell its European jewel. TNT asked Barton to continue in IPEC Europe as ‘a sort of executive chairman’ although the catch was he had to cut all ties with the sinking ship he had founded—Ipec Holdings. Barton’s accountant Bob Miller explains, ‘As long as Abeles was running TNT, Gordon had an advisory role there’.

In a letter to Hugh O’Neill that same Sunday, Barton wrote: ‘It’s all very traumatic and I wish I could believe it wasn’t happening—but it is . . . I only wish I’d taken a harder line on the hotel projects over the last few years. But that’s spilt milk.’ While Barton would rather not have become an employee of IPEC’s key rival, it seems he had come to feel betrayed by his Ipec Holdings board and its failure to support the European operation. The massive Southlands claims had reached $30 million with no end in sight. ‘At the moment,’ Barton admitted to O’Neill, ‘I’m considerably depressed’.

Rumours had begun to circulate that Barton and Farrell were each blaming the other for the crisis. Barton was faced with either returning to Australia, to the headaches of Ipec Holdings, or wiping his hands of the conglomerate he had fought so hard to build and remain in London to oversee IPEC Europe, albeit as a surrogate father. At a crossroads in his life, and convinced the Australian businesses had no future but sale or liquidation, he chose the latter.

On Wednesday 30 March, Barton met Greg Farrell for lunch at a Sydney Eastern Suburbs restaurant. Barton admitted he wanted to walk away, giving Farrell nearly everything in exchange for wiping his hands of the huge debts still hanging over Southlands and the casinos.

According to his accountant Bob Miller, Barton pulled out a piece of paper on which he’d scrawled his terms. All he wanted was control over the IPEC Europe sale (and any resulting profit share); unencumbered ownership of the Loch Maree Vaucluse mansion (loan repayments of which IPEC had been funding); and an undeveloped block of 85 hectares at Berkeley Vale on the Central Coast north of Sydney. Barton was also keen to keep the Bligh Street headquarters, having put his heart and soul into its restoration. However, it was an asset of the publicly listed Ipec Holdings. Separating it out was not legally viable without complicated and time-consuming restructuring. Greg Farrell would be left with the debt-ridden casinos and the Australian transport business. With a partner unwilling to fight on, Farrell had little choice but to accept.

No doubt it was partly Barton’s exit that prompted Graham Cooke to tender his own resignation as an Ipec Holdings director that same April, although others recall Cooke was also worried that if the group collapsed while he was a director his reputation as a senior partner at Allens would be tarnished. He and Rod Maclure were growing increasingly uncomfortable as Barton and Farrell asked them to accede to some legally dubious manoeuvres to claw some value from the sinking ship, a move which they resisted. To Barton there was often no clear demarcation between private and publicly listed assets. ‘It was very disappointing for me that after all the years . . . I’d always supported them and tried to raise money . . . and then to have to disagree . . . It was hard.’

On 28 April 1983 Barton signed over his share of IPEC, farewelling a business and a partner who had been so much a part of his life over the previous 25 years. A week later the Sydney Morning Herald reported: ‘In an extraordinary and unexplained announcement . . . the founder and major stockholder of Ipec Holdings Ltd, Mr Gordon Barton said he had sold his controlling interest in the group for $564.’ Greg Farrell had simultaneously increased his, becoming the majority shareholder.

Barton had already returned to Europe by the time the announcement was made. After four years away from Australia, he admitted he felt ‘a bit of an alien there’. Nevertheless, he and Mary Ellen planned to return to settle in Australia, perhaps the following year.

In Arnhem, panic regarding the imminent TNT purchase had set in. Some senior executives were desperate to grab what they could. Many, including Hugh O’Neill and Ian Sayer, who had operated under Barton’s gentleman’s agreements, now ensured they had signed contracts guaranteeing job security. For deputy chairman O’Neill and Sayer, these specified new luxury cars. Barton was perhaps too upset to notice.

Meanwhile on 10 May, Barton telexed IPEC Europe country managers. While he was unable to say whether TNT or KLM was buying, he wanted to reassure them that the interested buyers ‘have firmly indicated that they wish the present management, including myself, to remain, and indeed have insisted on this. For my part I am happy to do this because I see ipec [sic] as a company with a long, interesting and successful future ahead of it, because I am proud of my connection with it, and because I enjoy the challenge it offers and the opportunity to work with colleagues I like and respect . . . Your help is needed also in this difficult time.’

By now TNT had in fact missed its deadline for signing the formal takeover agreement. Barton increased the pressure, turning again to KLM’s 70 million Dutch florin (A$171 million) offer.

Another month passed with no sale. IPEC Europe’s lenders were jittery and baying for money. Staff motivation sank further—the best began to be poached, and recruitment was frozen. Frustrated, IPEC’s senior managers wrote to Barton and his fellow board members that ‘the “let-it-go” mentality . . . leads to disaster fast. We strongly advise you to take steps to restore effective management.’

Hugh O’Neill and Rien van Marjwick Kooy were worried. There had been no IPEC Europe board meetings for over ten weeks. O’Neill’s faith in Barton was at its lowest ebb. Van Marjwick Kooy had always taken responsibility for staff conditions, so he bypassed Barton, going straight to Sydney head office with his concerns. The next day Barton doused the fires of discontent, writing to IPEC Europe staff to assure them a sale figure had been reached with TNT. The price—A$30 million. After discharging debts, Barton would be left with over $11 million from the sale.

Hugh O’Neill recalls his last IPEC Europe board meeting at which Don Dick was present. Freddie van Gaever had taken out his diary to clarify the date of the next board meeting. Sayer and O’Neill burst out laughing. The pair knew Don Dick would not be retaining their services.

With Barton’s marriage to TNT came a profit-share deal, soon nicknamed the Henry Morgan agreement—a reference to Barton’s Caribbean-registered holding company, named after the famous pirate. This offshore account had in fact been set up for Barton in the 1970s. Intended as a tax haven for Tjuringa profits that had never eventuated, the account had lain fairly bare for years. The TNT profit-share deal meant 15 per cent of IPEC Europe net profits went to Barton, though three years on, this was slashed by half. In the first two years that deal and Barton’s Skypak dividends would earn him some A$1.35 million annually.

Nick Street, a nephew of Mary Ellen’s first husband and later a business partner of Geoffrey Barton, was a frequent weekend guest of the Bartons at Thurloe Square for over a year from 1985 while he was at university in Cambridge. At the time, Nick recalls, the three children of the household had very generous private trust incomes. He recalls life at Thurloe Square as: ‘. . . the epitome of how, if you’ve got money, you live in an energetic city like Manhattan or Central London. It was always busy, it was open door policy . . . it was a house that was always comfortable ’cause there was no protected area, so you wouldn’t have to constantly worry about whether you needed to plump up the cushions . . . It was a serious working house. There were people coming and going all the time . . . Mary Ellen would make sure every week or every other day that there were nice flowers in the house.’ Street was aware running such a household was horrendously expensive. There was a housekeeper and a secretary (often kept busy paying household bills).

When it came to his two children, Barton had an old-world view that daughters should be looked after. This meant the bulk of his personal efforts and concerns lay with Cindie, although when Geoffrey wanted advice his father was always there. With Kate Ayrton, Barton would sometimes sit at the kitchen table long after dinner had concluded, debating religion, politics or the everyday problems of life. Mary Ellen recalls he had a great respect for her daughter’s fearless efforts to absorb his vast knowledge. To Barton, one of the greatest assets was ‘a well-furnished mind’. And he enjoyed encouraging all three children in this pursuit.

‘He would always feed you with ideas,’ says Nick Street. ‘Particularly when Geoffrey was beginning to think of what he would do.’

Nothing would fluster him. Street remembers. ‘He was like an actor who is very comfortable with [himself ]’. Even if he had asked for a drink an hour ago and it hadn’t turned up, he would be happy to wait. When the family took long driving trips in Europe, everybody was allowed to choose one tape to play. When Barton’s turn came, he’d put on a two-hour blank tape to provide peace and quiet.

When it came to news, Barton preferred factual papers such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and International Herald Tribune. Street recalls that Barton could be making a cup of tea, reading a fax and the paper all at the same time, but never was there a sense of haste. Everything about him had a sense of calm.

In contrast, Mary Ellen’s pace was frenetic, managing a constant stream of visitors and telephone calls. Even late at night the telex would clatter away, the fax would rattle and beep, the phone would ring. Barton liked to be on the periphery of all this action. If friends of Mary Ellen’s came for coffee, he might involve himself by inviting everybody for lunch at a restaurant around the corner. ‘His antennae was always quite keenly tuned to what was happening . . .’ Street observed. ‘He absorbed a tremendous amount. He might meet some friend of Mary Ellen’s that day and at dinner that night he would make quite sharp observations about that person.’

The best way to finish off a meal out for Barton would be allowing him to pay. It would give him immense satisfaction. Many, however, simply expected him to pay on every occasion.

While Barton enjoyed imparting his knowledge to other people, he also wanted other people to speculate, to contribute to his thoughts. He would often judge newcomers on how quickly they picked up his remarks. He built rapport very quickly if he felt someone was on his wavelength. At the dinner table with a group, if he felt they were convivial he might introduce something about the history of London. ‘He’d want to see how the conversation would progress and whether he was going to enjoy it,’ explains Nick Street. At other times he would sit pensively, not participating at all.

Barton and Mary Ellen had exchanged their Oxfordshire country house for a folly in the grounds of a Hampshire estate, near the village of Alton. With its swimming pool, tennis court and croquet lawn it was a luxurious retreat. Croquet games could become quite vicious if Barton was playing. Sometimes Barton would bring down kites to fly. Of course he would purchase 3000 feet of twine instead of the usual 1000 feet. Nick Street recalls that by time the string was out, the kite was in aviation space.

Barton’s role now involved watching briefs over TNT’s acquired businesses—first as chairman and later as ‘adviser’. He negotiated an annual consultancy fee for his advice as well as secretarial support in London, travel expenses and a generous allowance covering rent on the grand Thurloe Square residence. His now complicated financial marriage to TNT meant that if he required additional funds for major spending, he was often able to obtain an advance directly from Peter Abeles. Several times he received a few hundred thousand dollars. Abeles simply added it to his debt.

New managing director Don Dick asked Barton to concentrate on ‘the snakes rather than the ladders of TNT–Skypak’s environment’. Advising on opportunities was off limits. Barton would regularly write to Peter Abeles or TNT vice-chairman Fred Millar with his observations. Just twelve months into his consultancy he wrote a damning report on Skypak’s performance, illustrating how far-fetched were Don Dick’s glowing profit projections. ‘We’ve moved from optimistic projections into cloud cuckoo land,’ he wrote.

However, Barton now felt just as sidelined by TNT as Hugh O’Neill had felt under Barton. His complaints to Sir Peter mirrored those of his former deputy chairman: no priority given to board meetings; inadequate lead time and meeting lengths; little achieved at a time when Skypak badly needed board input.

By the early 1980s, continental Europe was the only western continent where courier organisations had not achieved legal reforms to allow them to operate in competition with postal monopolies in handling ‘time-sensitive’ goods. The problem was that many European countries had centuries-old laws that awarded a monopoly over the transport of certain items to their postal services. These historical precedents meant that within the European Community, postal administrations believed couriers should be prohibited. Private courier organisations such as Skypak and DHL were finding themselves intimidated and handicapped by a spider’s web of administrative restraints enforced by postal monopolies.

The most aggressive tactics were adopted by La Poste in France. There, courier companies were variously warned, on pain of prosecution, to cease operations, to stop advertising or to inform customers they were breaking the law by not using La Poste. News stories questioned the legitimacy of private couriers. Ministerial speeches condemned them. Courier offices saw dramatic raids. Customs officials regularly searched their bags. Necessary permits and licences were delayed or denied. Major customers were warned off. In an attempt to make their services prohibitively expensive, from 1980 courier companies were also made to sign an agreement obligating them to pay an informal tax for each shipment made. Many of these tactics were employed in other European Community countries as well. In Italy and Switzerland, they could only operate by paying to the postal service an amount equal to the domestic first-class postage by way of compensation. The battle even extended to Malaysia, where four Skypak couriers were convicted in December 1983 on charges of contravening the postal monopoly. In Egypt, commercial couriers were warned to close down, in Lebanon their business was restricted. Even the Japanese post office was sending DHL threatening letters.

Mention the word ‘monopoly’ to Gordon Barton and his eyes would twitch. This was a David versus Goliath battle with the sort of ingredients he loved: private industry trying to provide a better service in the face of administrative and legal opposition; the challenge of bringing together competitors; cultural differences to overcome; modern treaties and archaic laws requiring new interpretation.

In the fiercely competitive courier industry, the principals rarely spoke and hardly knew each other. And because they were small, unknown, and largely overseas-based, courier organisations prior to 1983 had no ability to lobby government ministers, be heard at chambers of commerce, nor generate media interest. Previous attempts at industry cooperation had been limited to single-issue, national-level policy campaigns. Efforts to ensure fair competition would necessitate a much higher degree of cooperation over a longer period. DHL—the largest European operator—was keenest to establish such a mechanism. In Geneva in late August 1983 it initiated a meeting with its competitors, forming a trade group—the International Couriers Conference. This later became the International Express Carriers Conference (IECC).

Highly regarded by both DHL and Federal Express, Barton was elected its chairman. He would be paid a handsome salary by TNT for this work and provided with free air travel. In exchange he was to champion TNT’s interests as well as keep Peter Abeles and Fred Millar up to date on legislative and regulatory changes to inform ongoing business strategy. As rumours were rife by that time Abeles had cut deals to allow international gun-smuggling via Skypak couriers, a high-level industry source such as Barton would have been essential to managing the risk.

An executive committee met, often fortnightly, for long planning sessions rotating mostly between London, New York, Paris, Washington, Amsterdam or Brussels. Its primary aim—to ratchet up pressure on the European Community to reform postal policy and allow competition against government postal services. To lead such a project required someone with an understanding of law, economics, politics and commercial detail. Barton had a superb understanding of each of these. He was able to demonstrate the value of a good strategic plan and the importance of clearly communicating the benefits of policy change in a manner sensitive to the economic and political needs of the target market.

At the start of nearly every battle IECC undertook against European postal monopolies, it was warned by experts that the policy change sought would be impossible. ‘Impossible’ was just the kind of word that Barton liked to hear. It always spurred him on to prove the pessimists wrong. In his record of this struggle, DHL executive and lawyer Jim Campbell, who served as the IECC’s secretary and sat on its executive committee with Barton, would write: ‘In the face of fierce opposition from without and (often) grave doubts from within, Mr. Barton’s wisdom, patience, optimism, dedication, courtesy, courage, and good humour proved the sine qua non of our collective progress.’

The group’s first concern was to limit the possibility of its clients being prosecuted for using private couriers. Barton’s committee employed lawyers to research centuries of statutes and judicial decisions, until they knew so much of the legal weaknesses of postal monopolies that the European postal organisations were reluctant to risk a confrontation in court. While private courier customers could still be intimidated, at least they were safe from prosecution.

The crucial legal principle under contest, however, would be whether couriers could offer unrestricted international delivery. It was on this principle that IECC would become one of the most effective legal lobbying exercises Europe had seen.

The Treaty of Rome, signed in 1957, would become a key weapon used in the battle against the centuries-old European postal monopoly laws. Like the Australian Constitution’s Section 92, it was a document Barton would come to know well. It established the constitutional framework for the European Community, guaranteeing the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital among member states.

Other important principles in the debate would be fair pricing— the ability of postal administrations to use their profits from monopoly services to subsidise those offered in competition with private couriers— and whether couriers should be allowed to collect bulk international mail from a customer, sort it and re-inject it into the postal network of another country—a service known as ‘remail’. The catalyst for the European postal administrations to stop this growing competition was the October 1986 instruction by the US Postal Service that private remail operators had a legal right to provide an international service out of the US. In Europe they were determined to kill remail once and for all.

At an emergency meeting of eight European postal services, a battle strategy was developed. They agreed to not only lower the price and improve the quality of their own international post services, but make it harder for private operators to use their network. Barton would lead the IECC in its fight against this united opposition, culminating in a formal complaint to the European Commission. Ultimately Barton’s and the IECC’s efforts would ensure couriers won the right to provide cross-border express services in Europe and the right to extend this express capability to bulk remail.