Inside Story: Politics, Intrigue and Treachery from Thatcher to Brexit. Philip Webster

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       A Horse, A Horse – My Paper for a Horse

      Charles Wilson, my fourth editor at The Times, faced a staff crisis when The Independent was launched amid great fanfare in October 1986. Today The Indy is only with us in online format, the paper version having ended in March 2016. But back then, the appearance of a brand-new paper committed to being what it said on its masthead was a threat to The Times and presented serious competition for other papers as well.

      It produced a dilemma for many reporters on The Times, who were worn down by the length and sheer unpleasantness of the Wapping dispute. The Independent’s founders – Andreas Whittam Smith, Matthew Symonds and Stephen Glover – judged there was a market for a fresh, objective source of news, and journalists across the national titles were excited by the prospect. They also liked the name.

      By then, after our shock move in January 1986, The Times had settled into its new premises not far from the Thames east of Tower Bridge. The Times’s political staff, of which I was then the number three, was in some disarray. Julian Haviland, political editor and my boss since 1981, had announced his intention to leave journalism. Anthony Bevins, political correspondent and the number two, was – along with many other Times names – approached by The Independent. Tony, a dear colleague who died suddenly in 2001 from pneumonia, had never been happy since the move to Wapping and decided to take the job of the new paper’s first political editor. He had famously said at a union meeting: ‘I will go to Wapping with ashes in my mouth.’

      He approached me and another colleague on the team, Richard Evans – who is one of my closest friends and responsible for encouraging me to play golf, and therefore indirectly responsible for many of the chapters in this book. We discussed the approaches to move together and with Tony. A couple of years earlier, I had turned down an offer to join the Daily Mail when Paul Dacre, acting on behalf of the Mail’s then editor David English, spent the whole of a May Day weekend (starting with an interview at a hotel by the Thames, and then on the phone several times later) trying to coax me across with promises of better treatment for my exclusive stories (a file of which he brought with him) and more money. I resisted his charming and flattering approach. Now I did not want to go through another bout of soul-searching.

      Before either of us had given our decisions to Tony, a story leaked in Private Eye that the whole of the Times political staff was going to move across to The Independent. Charles Wilson had by then received resignation letters from several other prominent members of staff and a mood of crisis enveloped the top of The Times. It was already clear that labour editor Don Macintyre and colleagues Dave Felton and Barrie Clement – who had declined to move to Wapping on conscience grounds and became known among others as the refuseniks – would go to The Independent, as did Colin Hughes, an excellent young reporter who was to go on to be deputy editor of his new paper.

      Both Richard and I felt a personal loyalty to Charlie, of whom we were very fond. Our shared interest with Charlie in horse racing helped. When Charlie joined The Times as executive editor under Charles Douglas-Home, he had sought me out at the Commons and demanded to be taken to the bars. We were friends from then on.

      The news that the whole Lobby team might be doing a bunk reached Charlie when he was having a brief break on the island of Lanzarote. I was up in Yorkshire covering the Ryedale by-election, which resulted in a stunning loss by the Conservatives to the Lib-SDP Alliance. Charlie phoned me and told me he was flying home and asked whether we could meet – outside the office. I drove back that night and agreed to meet him in the Tower Hotel on Tower Bridge, a few hundred yards from the Wapping plant.

      It was one of the most astonishing meetings of my life and the one that put me on the path to the top reporting job in political journalism. Charlie asked for my help in saving the paper, as he dramatically put it. I told him that Tony was beyond recall and would be going. ‘What about you?’ he asked. I told him I would be staying but would obviously need to be promoted. I suggested the title of chief political correspondent. Amazingly, yet it is true, I turned down his suggestion that I should take over as political editor.

      I told him I needed a few more years in the Lobby before rising to that august post. He replied that if I didn’t take it, I might be off in a few months. I told him that I would not. So he asked me who should be the political editor. I suggested Robin Oakley, who was then a senior political journalist at the Mail. Ironically, it was Robin who had earlier put me in touch with Paul Dacre over the Mail job. Charlie promised to see Robin and it was not long before he was appointed.

      At our meeting Charlie had then asked: ‘What about Richard?’ I suggested that Evans was a brilliant Lobby journalist and that we could not afford to let him go. Indeed, the team would be me and him for the time being. Charlie agreed he would see Richard straightaway. I rang Richard and told him not to sign anything yet. Evans was in Scotland covering a political conference when the call from Wilson came. According to Richard, it went something like this:

      ‘Where are you?’ Wilson asked.

      ‘In Scotland, Charlie.’

      ‘When do you get back?’

      ‘Tomorrow [Saturday] morning, on the sleeper.’

      ‘Go home, clean your teeth … and come and see me – at home.’

      Evans went to Charlie’s Holland Park home, where he was wooed with a big increase in salary and Charlie’s paeans of praise. Richard stayed. After covering Neil Kinnock’s travels in the 1987 election, Evans became media editor. By now, after a visit to Paddy Mullins’s stables in Ireland, he had become obsessed with horse racing. Charlie told him that he could become racing correspondent when the incumbent, Michael Seeley, retired. Charlie’s promise was honoured by Simon Jenkins when he took over as editor.

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