In the days when the Army understood the meaning of PR (press AND public relations), and in the days when Britain had something called ‘industry’ they – the Army – organised a conference for ‘foremen’. Nowadays they would call it a seminar. But, since nowadays it wouldn’t occur to them to organise it in the first place, that bit of incidental intelligence is irrelevant.
Perhaps I should explain for younger readers… ‘Industry’ is an old English expression, now lost to the vocabulary along with ‘manufacturing’ which, loosely, involved making things. Long before the UK hived, or ‘outsourced’, this responsibility to the third world, industry was what Britain did for a living.
I write of an era when Britons more or less made everything, from shoes to aeroplanes, and even cars. We actually made and sold refrigerators to Eskimos (even before they, the Eskimos not the refrigerators, were called Inuits) and prayer mats to Arabs. We sold instant curry to Hong Kong and ice (it was actually Scottish water – you had to freeze it yourself) to the Japanese to add to their Scotch whisky. I know, because I wrote stories about all those things.
This was all before we became a ‘service economy’ which, given a rapidly evolving language, I should also probably explain used to mean a system in which you could sort of at least half expect to get served.
A ‘foreman’, in those distant days, was the top man on the shop floor of a factory or mill. Perhaps, some other time, I should explain the meaning of the words ‘shop floor’, ‘factory’ and ‘mill’. Not part of management, but not exactly one of the workers, these people were most importantly the link between the executive and the workforce.
The foreman ran the industry from the bottom up; men in suits stayed in their offices and smoked cigars. The foreman was typically in a brown smock coat to distinguish him from the workforce that generally dressed in overalls or dungarees. He drank industrial-strength tea with three sugars, and usually smoked a pipe.
What had this to do with the Army? Well, they had foremen, too: they called them sergeant-majors. They had the brilliant idea that they could share knowledge of man-management with industry, each learning from the other, and discussing the pivotal role between management (officers, directors) and man-power (a word that included women, no argument).
What had this to do with newspapers? The Army, no slouch in those days, invited the press along. And I rolled up at Catterick Camp to listen, in case there was a story.
One came from an early speaker from ICI. It wasn’t where I’d been expecting it, in the stories about management versus man, or bosses against trades unions; rather – as happens most often at such events – it came when he wandered slightly off track.
It was this: ICI on Teesside had secured an impressively big export order, selling tons of chemical fertiliser to Chinese farmers. A triumph for British industry. This was the 1960s, and we were all Backing Britain in those days.
Just how much it was worth in sterling matters nothing now – but it was millions of pounds in today’s money.
In fact its sterling value mattered even less to the Chinese at the time, because they had no foreign currency with which to effect purchase.
They opted to pay ICI… in alarm clocks. And negotiation was not an option.
In the coffee break I interviewed the speaker, who told me the world’s biggest chemical empire now had more alarm clocks than it could find storage for. They couldn’t give them away, even to staff – for how many alarm clocks does a household need, at the end of the day? Or even at the start of one? They gave them away with every four gallons of ICI petrol. Then with every two gallons, and they still had clocks to spare.
So I did the story.
ICI’s press department, when asked for an official quote, asked me not to run it at all. They said it would damage international trade. I said trade seemed fairly pointless if it earned only alarm clocks. They said it would damage our relationship with China; I asked what sort of relationship was it that was repaid in bloody alarm clocks. Then I realised that I was arguing with a PRO, which was always a waste of time. I said I would pass on his message to my boss, but that we should expect to see the story in the Daily Mirror next morning.
The news desk told me it had duly ‘noted’ the misgivings of the PR guy in my attached note and that, thank-you, it was already an early page lead.
Oh no: it wasn’t.
The PR guy rang his chairman, Sir Paul Chambers, who immediately rang Hugh Cudlipp and convinced him that such a story would have an adverse effect on the industrial health of the nation.
Well, I was nobbut a kid then. I could not comprehend that the Mirror, of all papers, through Cudlipp of all journalists, could be so easily talked out of what anybody with a hole in his bum could see was a page lead.
If Cudlipp didn’t agree with that, how could I be so wrong?
It was the first story I’d had spiked, and – fairly obviously – it still rankles, 40-odd years later.
The second one followed fairly quickly.
For some reason I needed to ring George Brown (of immoral memory). We were still Backing Britain in those days and Our Harold, with his fortnight in the Scillies, was exhorting everybody to spend their holidays, and more importantly their holiday money, in the UK.
George, his office told me, was in Ibizia.
Well, that was a story. Wilson was telling everybody to stay home while his foreign secretary and deputy PM had gone off with the missus to Spain.
‘We can’t run this,’ said the news desk when my memo – did London want to handle this (and maybe check on the whereabouts of other members of Cabinet): if not, I would write it myself – bounced back up the line from London.
‘George Brown used to write for the Daily Mirror. Our policy is that we never attack our own.’
Bollocks, I argued. I knew George Brown quite well, I said. I had actually caught him when, pissed out of his brain, he’d tumbled down a full set of steps while disembarking from an aircraft. Many were the times I’d helped manhandle him into his official car. I could ring him and guarantee either a funny or a pompous quote to explain his choice of foreign holiday destination.
‘No,’ said the desk. ‘You’ve been told.’
This was the Daily Mirror, for God’s sake. We couldn’t attack any politician that used to write for us?
Barbara Castle, when she was Barbara Betts, had been our agony aunt and had married Ted Castle (who’d been our picture editor, before becoming editor of Picture Post).
Now she was Minister for Transport. We couldn’t criticise the Transport Minister because she used to be Marje Proops?
‘Put it that way and, no, we can’t,’ said the desk.
Staggering, because the so-called Cudlipp Edict, which every member of staff was required to read, and then sign in front of a witness to show that it had been read, said that we were even allowed to criticise the company that owned us – provided only that it was fair and accurate. But nowhere did it say we couldn’t censure politicians who used to write for us. Explain that, if you can.
I don’t know whether newspapers still have such loony loyalties.
But I suppose it’s unlikely that Boris Johnson lives in much fear of being panned by the Daily Telegraph when he becomes Lord Mayor of London.
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