Harold Evans provides much detail – and some conjecture – in building his case that in 1981 Margaret Thatcher acted improperly to ensure that there was no referral to the Monopolies Commission for Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of Times Newspapers (How the press was won, Long read, 28 April). Convinced of a political stitch-up, Evans dismisses as “credulous” the alternative view that commercial imperatives guided the approval of Murdoch’s purchase.
While Sir Harold rightly emphasises the Sunday Times’s underlying profitability – which should ordinarily have made a referral necessary – his account avoids a pertinent fact. The Thomson Organisation (owner of the Sunday Times) refused to sell that paper unless the purchaser also bought its stable-mate, the Times. This was because the loss-making Times was deemed unsustainable on its own and Thomson creditably wanted to secure its survival. By the eve of the referral decision, Murdoch remained the only serious contender prepared to buy both newspapers together; the journalists’ consortium would have separated the papers’ ownership and the one alternative possible proprietor, Lord Rothermere, did not promise to keep the Times as a going concern if forced to purchase it alongside his offer for the Sunday Times.
Thomson refused to postpone the sale date to allow for a referral, making a successful sale of the Times to any other viable proprietor all but impossible. This was indeed a stitch-up, but a commercial rather than a political one. In view of it, the government’s action saved the Times from extinction. More outrageous and no less politically opportune would have been the alternative – for Thatcher to let the Times die and help the Daily Mail’s owner, Lord Rothermere, buy the Sunday Times.
Graham Stewart
Author, The History of the Times, volume VII
• It is hardly news that Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch were conspirators in the agreement that permitted the latter to take over a too-large share of British media, but the grubby details are enlightening. It should be remembered that more recently, the Conservatives, and especially Jeremy Hunt, were blithely ready to agree to a Murdoch takeover of the remaining shares of BSkyB and Britain was spared a virtual monopoly of news outlets only by exposure of the corruption at the heart of News International which led to its implosion. As the article states: “The abuse of the law on media would disgrace a banana republic.” When one looks at the current attempts of Murdoch to bolster the Conservatives, it is horrifying to think what this election campaign would be like had he succeeded.
Larry Johnston
Brecon, Powys
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