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November 20, 2003
An all-too British rubbing of hands
Wall Street Journal Europe, 20 November 2003 The fall of Conrad Black is being received in Britain with almost as much glee as the defeat of his hero Napoleon at Waterloo. Acres of newspaper columns have been devoted not only to a detailed analysis of the imbroglio at his company Hollinger regarding non-compete payments that were not disclosed to Hollinger’s board, but also a gloating rehearsal of his personal history, character, sayings and lifestyle. Of course, it is natural that a story about possible substantial corporate error or (for those who want to believe the worst) corruption should be a big news event. And there are other obvious reasons why the British media has got over-excited about this one. The possible sale of the Conservative-supporting Daily and Sunday Telegraph (not to mention the Spectator magazine) has serious implications for the balance of political support across the media spectrum. Papers in rival newspaper empires – some of whose proprietors are licking their lips over the prospect of the Hollinger-owned Telegraph group falling into their laps – have an obvious vested interest in such a story. What all this reflects is a combination of prejudices: old-fashioned British snobbery, resentment at a perceived ‘foreign’ carpet-bagger, and the perception that Lord Black used his newspapers to push political views which were themselves viewed as ‘foreign’ or in other ways suspect by a media dominated by what Donald Rumsfeld might call ‘old Europe’ attitudes. Snobbery and suspicion of ‘foreigners’ are intimately linked in a country where the notion of Britishness is still bound up with breeding. It has surfaced in headlines such as ‘Newspaper mogul who loved the life of a lord’ in the Times, over a picture of Lord Black and his wife, the journalist Barbara Amiel, arriving at a fancy-dress party attired as Cardinal Richelieu and Marie-Antoinette. That, along with the gleeful descriptions of his many mansions, his executive jets and his fleet of limousines, just about says it all. For Lord Black is seen as the foreign parvenu, the jumped-up vulgarian whose elevation to the peerage was the storming of the innermost citadel of the British establishment, the House of Lords, or an alien invader who had ideas far above his station. His way of life, globe-hopping between his various residences in different continents, made him easy to portray as someone with no investment in or commitment to Britain. The fact that he was already a British citizen cut no ice with those for whom his very desire to be accepted into the establishment served as proof of his unfitness to be a member. Not only did he control an important slice of British culture; he committed the far greater sin of presuming to become a player in the political scene, using his newspaper ownership to gain access to politicians, intellectuals and others of influence in order to give wide currency to his opinions. The forcefulness of his views, moreover, fuelled the further charge that he tells his editors what line to take. Of course, none of us can know what actually takes place in the private conversations between a proprietor and his editors. Much of this charge, however, is clearly fuelled by a visceral hostility towards the actual position the Telegraph papers have taken – strongly pro-America, supportive of the war on terror and of regime change in Iraq, pro-Israel and against the European Union. Both Charles Moore – until very recently the Daily Telegraph editor – and Dominic Lawson, editor of the Sunday Telegraph, share these views. There would have been no need for Lord Black to have imposed this agenda upon them. True, Sir Max Hastings, a former Daily Telegraph editor, did not endorse this vision and has recorded an uncomfortable, adversarial relationship with a proprietor who was often on his back. But the fact remains that Sir Max edited the Telegraph for no fewer than ten years before he voluntarily stepped down. Since then, Lord Black has continued to disagree from time to time with what his publications have printed. But his style is to bring the argument out into the open by – somewhat comically – firing off letters to his own papers to take issue with what they have said. In doing so, he actually tries to observe some kind of proprietorial distance – for which he has received no credit. On the other hand, after one such letter savaging the BBC following the affair of the dead weapons scientist David Kelly, the Telegraph editorial line – which previously had been much harder on the government than on the BBC – changed perceptibly. For journalists, however, the only proper proprietorial behaviour is never to express a view on any political matter at all, since any such utterance constitutes a degree of pressure. To that extent, Lord Black – with his pugnacious approach – is certainly far from ideal. Nevertheless, the claim that he somehow forced the Telegraph titles to embrace a set of wildly extreme positions mainly reflects the now widespread and immensely troubling perception within Britain that a robust defence of western values is somehow ‘extreme’. This view was summed up by the former Sunday Telegraph editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, who wrote that the Telegraph has become an ‘American-propaganda and Israel-propaganda sheet’, reflecting a ‘neo-conservative, right-wing philosophy which is very much an American phenomenon’. Indeed, it is his papers’ staunch defence of Israel which has perhaps given the hostility to Lord Black its most distasteful edge – not least through the frequent attacks upon Barbara Amiel for writing in the Telegraph about Israel’s predicament, which is considered intolerable not just because she is the proprietor’s wife but, far worse, because she is a Jew. That kind of snobbish, disdainful, anti-American, anti-Israel and even anti-Jewish philosophy lying behind the general triumphalism over the humbling of Lord Black is -- distressingly -- very much a British phenomenon.
Posted by melanie at November 20, 2003
Comments
Perry obviously wants to get back to the good old days at the Telegraph when a guy whose wife had had her foot trodden on by an Orthodox Jew could complain about the Jews not having learned their lesson from the Holocaust. Oh to be able to call a spade a spade. From a speech given by David Irving: Peregrine Worsthorne, that great editor of the Sunday Telegraph, made so bold, a year or two ago now, as to draw attention to the fact that every single defendant in the Guinness Shares Scandal was of a certain, uh, type. (Laughter) I am not going to go into more detail than that. He mentioned in an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph that every single defendant was of a particular religion. This of course is entirely immaterial to us. We don't mind what religion people are. It makes no difference if Gerald Ronson and Ernest Saunders and the rest of them are not really called that at all; that "Tiny" Rowland's real name is something completely different is a matter of complete indifference to me. But what does worry me is that apart from the SundayTelegraph the English press for some reason found it necessary not to mention this — that this was an obvious unifying factor which for some reason or other had not to be mentioned. http://www.fpp.co.uk/speeches/DestinySpeech1990.html
The WSJ is always good for a laugh. Those whom it sees as persecuted victims are usually the fallen wealthy; and those it treats with contempt are those born poor. Conrad Black has an awful reputation in Canada, and made a mess of Massey Ferguson I believe. Thomson came to Britain and ran tThe Times with none of this chicanery; and Max Beaverbrook made his fortune in dubious share brokerage and cement if I recall. Yet, not filing proper SEC accounts and having the "Christmas-tree decorations " like Richard Perle and Henry Kissinger unable to see shareholders funds being siphoned off; perhaps the WSJ should shed a tear for poor victimised Dennis Kozlowski at Tyco, or Bernie Ebbers at Worldcom......or perhaps those 48 'entrepreneurial' brokers arrested by the FBI yesterday. The WSJ is hilarious, I sometimes wonder if the Editor used to work for Mad magazine. Posted by: Peter Williamson at November 20, 2003 05:32 PMBlack, for the most part, had a reputation as a brilliant entrepreneur in Canada. He was despised for pretty much the same reasons he is hated in the UK: he sticks up for capitalism, Jews and the US. This did not go down well at all in Canada which has always had a reputation as a virulently anti-Semitic country (as a matter of deliberate policy it let it only 160 Jews between 1933 and 1945) which also isn't too fond of its protector, the U.S., or indeed free markets. It's his defence of the Jews which really sticks in people's craws though. Most British and Canadian gentiles would far rather that the genocide of Jews went unhindered and with as little protest as possible. Williamson's comment about the "dubious" Lord Beaverbrook is at once both utterly wrong and contemptible. Besides being almost sans pareil in the business world, Max Aitken supported Britain magnificently in two world wars, not just with his money but with his brilliant administrative skills. A fat lot the Williamson's of this world care about that though. As with the Jewish contribution to Britain it was yet one more case of casting pearls before swine. Posted by: Pooh at November 20, 2003 06:31 PMThe CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) also has been almost obscene in its crowing about Black's troubles with the Hollinger Board. It gave considerable air-time to interviewing the professional mischief-maker from New York who's been stirring things up for the minority shareholders. It brought a harpy called Maude Barlow (who created the "Council of Canadians" as a handy fund-rasiing vehicle to pay her way to anti-globalisation protests and fund her own lifestyle) on to comment on Black---Barlow has absolutely no connection with him, or expertise on newspapers, and is a profound anti-capitalist leftist, but she got scads of air-time from the CBC. An interesting question that none of the media lemmings have bothered to ask is: these were non-competition payments to individuals (a dubious, but not illegal practice) made when CanWest Global and others bought Hollinger titles; should they be repaid to the original purchasers now? If so, would that free Black et al to start titles in competition? Posted by: Patrick Bramwell at November 20, 2003 07:53 PM"Williamson's comment about the "dubious" Lord Beaverbrook is at once both utterly wrong and contemptible. Besides being almost sans pareil in the business world, Max Aitken supported Britain magnificently in two world wars, not just with his money but with his brilliant administrative skills. A fat lot the Williamson's of this world care about that though. As with the Jewish contribution to Britain it was yet one more case of casting pearls before swine"
You might lift your blinkers and read up on Max Beaverbrook's asset-stripping intentions towards Rolls-Royce Ltd and sold his stake to J B Duke, the tobacco man. Royal Securities Corporation, Aitken's vehicle in Canada engaged in some practices that were not quite above board. "A kind of Gorden Gecko, the amoral corporate raider portrayed in Oliver Stone’s award-winning 1989 movie Wall Street, Aitken was a mergers and acquisitions man in the Canadian market. His controversial transactions dogged him, like an evil twin. There he made a series of lightning fast, spectacular moves, including buying and selling Montreal Trust for a $200,000 profit. With this profit, he took over Royal Securities, facilitating a frenetic, profitable, international binge of acquisitions and mergers. He also started Calgary Power, but his most heavily rewarded talent was that of a “corporate bundler.” He was to the 1920s and St. James Street what Michael Miliken was to the 1980s and Wall Street, except he was Miliken in reverse By 1910, there was the widespread suspicion that Max Aitken had misappropriated more than $13 million in a 1909 merger which he engineered for Canada’s three largest cement companies. Instead of the three he was asked to integrate, however, he merged 13 cement companies into Canada Cement. Skillfully and arguably illegally, he excluded one of the original three which he knew to be debt-ridden and unprofitable. The case was eventually settled out of court, with Aitken making what to him by then was a nickel-and-dime rebate of $20,000 to the Bank of Montreal"
Wouldn't it be a scream if Richard Peter Williamson: Who is the Michael Miliken you mention above? Do you perhaps mean Michael Milkin the junk bond dealer? Posted by: Frank Pulley at November 21, 2003 01:48 AMIn the quotation I posted the name is mis-spelled, it should be MILKEN, though I tend to think the analogy is overrated. The point was that Aitken was a conglomerateur rather like Jimmy Ling, or in UK terms Slater-Walker. Posted by: Peter Williamson at November 21, 2003 06:31 AMI had also noticed particularly glib leftist reporting on Hollinger's future. Melanie Phillips is spot on. Clearly not all critics of Lord Black are anti-American, anti-Israel or anti Jew. But unless there's been a problem with your eyes and ears for several years, a good many definitely are, and crawling out of the woodwork fast now. Posted by: 20 at November 21, 2003 10:24 PMBlack's just another crooked The problem with Barbara Amiel is that she's a bit of a single-issue columnist. Constantly banging on about Israel doesn't make for an entertaining read. Would she be writing for the Telegraph if Black wasn't the owner? I think not. M Wilkins, The same can be said for Ms Phillips. Always banging on about the same thing. If only she broadened her outlook a little, perhaps not everything she writes would come across as so bug-eyed and shortsighted (if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor). Posted by: lgfwatch at November 27, 2003 12:09 AM$100m in NON-compete payments. So that's how the free-market works! Posted by: JT at November 27, 2003 12:17 PM"$100m in NON-compete payments. So that's how the free-market works!" Kind of ties his hands when he loses his newspapers !! Posted by: Red_Baron at November 28, 2003 07:16 AM"Peregrine Worsthorne, that great editor of the Sunday Telegraph, made so bold, a year or two ago now, as to draw attention to the fact that every single defendant in the Guinness Shares Scandal was of a certain, uh, type. (Laughter) I am not going to go into more detail than that. He mentioned in an editorial in the Sunday Telegraph that every single defendant was of a particular religion. This of course is entirely immaterial to us. We don't mind what religion people are. It makes no difference if Gerald Ronson and Ernest Saunders and the rest of them are not really called that at all; that "Tiny" Rowland's real name is something completely different is a matter of complete indifference to me. But what does worry me is that apart from the SundayTelegraph the English press for some reason found it necessary not to mention this — that this was an obvious unifying factor which for some reason or other had not to be mentioned." http://media.guardian.co.uk/israel/story/0,11876,813652,00.html http://fermat.ups-tlse.fr/~mcshane/peregrine.htm Walter Fuhrhop naturalised British Peregrine Koch de Gooreynd changed name by deed poll in 1921
The fear of death is the beginning of slavery. Posted by: Primack Gretchen at December 10, 2003 09:54 PM"Indeed, it is his papers’ staunch defence of Israel which has perhaps given the hostility to Lord Black its most distasteful edge – not least through the frequent attacks upon Barbara Amiel for writing in the Telegraph about Israel’s predicament, which is considered intolerable not just because she is the proprietor’s wife but, far worse, because she is a Jew."
Ahh so there you go complaining in one article about the victim culture at wife beating. Yet know you are complaing about the attack on Conrad Black. Perceptions do not limit reality. Posted by: Allocco Kate at December 21, 2003 02:16 AMNature is not anthropomorphic. Posted by: Bachrach Amy at January 9, 2004 05:48 PM |
