He was now holding just over 4 ½ percent of the Star’s stock, and suspected that Townsend was in roughly the same position. But for the moment each was content to sit and wait for the other to make the first move. Armstrong knew that Townsend controlled more city and state newsprint in America than he did, despite his own recent acquisition of the Milwaukee Group and its eleven papers. Both knew that as the New York Times would never come up for sale, the ultimate prize in the Big Apple would be to take control of the tabloid market.
While Townsend remained in Sydney, going over his plans for the launching of the new Globe on an unsuspecting British public, Armstrong flew to Manhattan to prepare for his assault on the New York Star.
“But Bruce Kelly knew nothing about it,” said Townsend, as Sam drove him from Tullamarine airport into Melbourne.
“I wouldn’t expect him to,” said Sam. “He’s never even met the chairman’s driver.”
“Are you trying to tell me that a driver knows something that no one else in the newspaper world has heard about?”
“No. The deputy chairman also knows, because he was discussing it with the chairman in the back of the car.”
“And the driver told you that the board are meeting at ten o’clock this morning?”
“That’s right, chief. In fact he’s taking the chairman to the meeting right now.”
“And the agreed price was $12 a share?”
“That’s what the chairman and deputy chairman settled on in the back of the car,” said Sam as he drove into the center of the city.
Townsend couldn’t think of any more questions to ask Sam that could prevent him from making a complete fool of himself. “I don’t suppose you’d care to take a wager on it?” he said as the car turned into Flinders Street.
Sam thought about the proposition for some time before saying, “OK by me, chief.” He paused. “A hundred dollars says I’m right.”
“Oh no,” said Townsend. “Your wages for a month, or we turn round and go straight back to the airport.”
Sam ran through a red light and just managed to avoid hitting a tram. “You’re on,” he said finally. “But only if Arthur gets the same terms.”
“And who in hell’s name is Arthur?”
“The chairman’s driver.”
“You and Arthur have got yourselves a deal,” said Townsend, as the car drew up outside the Courier’s offices.
“How long do you want me to wait?” asked Sam.
“Just as long as it takes you to lose a month’s wages,” Townsend replied, slamming the car door behind him.
Townsend stared up at the building in which his father had begun his career as a reporter in the 1920s, and where he himself had carried out his first assignment as a trainee journalist while he was still at school, which his mother later told him she had sold to a rival without even letting him know. From the footpath he could pick out the room his father had worked in. Could the Courier really be up for sale without any of his professional advisers being aware of it? He had checked the share price that morning before taking the first flight out of Sydney: $8.40. Could he risk it all on the word of his driver? He began to wish Kate was with him, so that he could seek her opinion. Thanks to her, The Senator’s Mistress by Margaret Sherwood had spent two weeks at the bottom of the New York Times best-seller list, and the second million had been returned in full. To the surprise of both of them, the book had also received some reasonable reviews in the non-Townsend press. Keith had been amused to receive a letter from Mrs. Sherwood asking if he’d be interested in a three-book contract.
Townsend walked through the double doors and under the clock above the entrance to the foyer. He stood for a moment in front of a bronze bust of his father, remembering how as a child he had stretched up and tried to touch his hair. It only made him more nervous.
He turned and walked across the foyer, joining a group of people who stepped into the first available lift. They fell silent when they realized who it was. He pressed the button and the doors slid closed. He hadn’t been in the building for over thirty years, but he could still remember where the boardroom was—a few yards down the corridor from his father’s office.
The doors slid open on circulation, advertising and then editorial, until he was finally left alone in the lift. At the executive floor he stepped cautiously out into the corridor, and looked in both directions. He couldn’t see anyone. He turned to the right and walked toward the boardroom, his pace slowing as he passed his father’s old office. It then became slower and slower until he reached the boardroom door.
He was about to turn back, leave the building and tell Sam exactly what he thought of him, and his friend Arthur too, when he remembered the wager. If he hadn’t been such a bad loser, he might not have knocked on the door and, without waiting for a response, marched in.
Sixteen faces turned and stared up at him. He waited for the chairman to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing, but no one spoke. It was almost as if they had been anticipating his arrival. “Mr. Chairman,” he began, “I am willing to offer $12 a share for your stock in the Courier. As I leave for London tonight, we either close the deal right now or we don’t close it at all.”
Sam sat in the car waiting for his boss to return. During the third hour he rang Arthur to tell him to invest next month’s wages in Melbourne Courier shares, and to do it before the board made an official announcement.
* * *
When Townsend flew into London the following morning, he issued a press release to announce that Bruce Kelly would be taking over as editor of the Globe in its run-up to becoming a tabloid. Only a handful of insiders appreciated the significance of the appointment. During the next few days, profiles of Bruce appeared in several national newspapers. All of them reported that he had been editor of the Sydney Chronicle for twenty-five years, was divorced with two grown-up children, and though Keith Townsend was thought not to have any close friends, he was the nearest thing to it. The Citizen jeered when he wasn’t granted a work permit, and suggested that editing the Globe couldn’t be considered work. Beyond that there wasn’t a lot of information on the latest immigrant from Australia. Under the headline “R.I.P.,” the Citizen went on to inform its readers that Kelly was nothing more than an undertaker who had been brought in to bury something everyone else accepted had been dead for years. It went on to say that for every copy the Globe sold, the Citizen now sold three. The real figure was 2.3, but Townsend was becoming used to Armstrong’s exaggeration when it came to statistics. He had the leader framed, and hung it on the wall of Bruce’s new office to await his arrival.
As soon as Bruce landed in London, even before he’d found somewhere to live, he began poaching journalists from the tabloids. Most of them didn’t seem to be concerned by the Citizen’s warnings that the Globe was on a downward spiral, and might not even survive if Townsend was unable to come to terms with the unions. Bruce’s first appointment was Kevin Rushcliffe, who, he had been assured, was making a reputation as deputy editor on the People.
The first time Rushcliffe was left to edit the paper on Bruce’s day off, they received a writ from lawyers representing Mr. Mick Jagger. Rushcliffe casually shrugged his shoulders and said, “It was too good a story to check.” After substantial damages had been paid and an apology printed, the lawyers were instructed to check Mr. Rushcliffe’s copy more carefully in future.
Some seasoned journalists did sign up to join the editorial staff. When they were asked why they had left secure jobs to join the Globe, they pointed out that as they had been offered three-year contracts, they didn’t care much either way.
In the first few weeks under Kelly’s editorship sales continued to slide. The editor would have liked to have spent more time discussing the problem with Townsend, but the boss seemed to be continually locked into negotiations with the print unions.
On the day of the launch of the Globe as a tabloid, Bruce held a party in the offices to watch the new paper coming off the presses. He wa
s disappointed when many of the politicians and celebrities he had invited failed to turn up. He learned later that they were attending a party thrown by Armstrong to celebrate the Citizen’s seventy-fifth anniversary. A former employee of the Citizen, now working at the Globe, pointed out that it was actually only their seventy-second year. “Well then, we’ll just have to remind Armstrong in three years’ time,” said Townsend.
A few minutes after midnight, when the party was drawing to a close, a messenger strolled into the editor’s office to let him know that the presses had broken down. Townsend and Bruce ran down to the print room to find that the workforce had downed tools and already gone home. They rolled up their sleeves and set about the hopeless task of trying to get the presses started again, but they quickly discovered that a spanner had literally been thrown in the works. Only 131,000 copies of the paper appeared on the streets the following day, none of them delivered beyond Birmingham, as the train drivers had come out in support of their brothers in the print unions.
“NOT MANY PEOPLE INHABITING THE NEW GLOBE,” ran the headline in the Citizen the following morning. The paper went on to devote the whole of page five to suggesting that the time had come to bring back the old Globe. After all, the “illegal immigrant”—as they kept referring to Bruce—had promised new sales records, and had indeed achieved them: the Citizen now outsold the Globe by thirty to one. Yes, thirty to one!
On the opposite page, the Citizen offered its readers a hundred to one against the Globe surviving another six months. Townsend immediately wrote out a check for £1,000 and sent it round to Armstrong’s office by hand, but he received no acknowledgment. However, one call to the Press Association from Bruce made sure that the story was released to every other newspaper.
On the front page of the Citizen the following morning, Armstrong announced that he had banked Townsend’s check for £1,000, and that as the Globe had no hope of surviving for another six months, he would be giving a donation of £50,000 to the Press Benevolent Fund and a further £50,000 to any charity of Mr. Townsend’s choice. By the end of the week, Townsend had received over a hundred letters from leading charities explaining why he should select their particular cause.
During the next few weeks the Globe rarely managed to print more than 300,000 copies a day, and Armstrong never stopped reminding his readers of the fact. As the months passed, Townsend accepted that eventually he would have to take on the unions. But he knew it wouldn’t be possible while the Labor Party remained in power.
30.
The Globe
4 May 1979
MAGGIE VICTORIOUS!
Townsend left the television in his office on all night so he could watch the election results coming in from around the country. Once he was certain Margaret Thatcher would be moving in to 10 Downing Street, he hastily wrote a leader assuring readers that Britain was about to embark on an exciting new era. He ended with the words “Fasten your seatbelts.”
As he and Bruce staggered out of the building at four o’clock in the morning, Townsend’s parting words were, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
* * *
The following afternoon Townsend arranged a private meeting with Eric Harrison, the general secretary of the breakaway print union, at the Howard Hotel. When the meeting broke up, the head porter knocked on the door and asked if he could see him privately. He told Townsend what he had overheard his junior saying on the telephone when he had arrived back early from his tea break. Townsend didn’t need to be told who must have been on the other end of the line.
“I’ll sack him at once,” said the head porter. “You can be sure it will never happen again.”
“No, no,” said Townsend. “Leave him exactly where he is. I may no longer be able to meet people I don’t want Armstrong to know about here, but that doesn’t stop me from meeting those I do.”
* * *
At the monthly board meeting of Armstrong Communications, the finance director reported that he estimated the Globe must still be losing around £100,000 a week. However deep Townsend’s pockets were, that sort of negative cash-flow would soon empty them.
Armstrong smiled, but said nothing until Sir Paul Maitland moved on to the second item on the agenda, and called on him to brief the board on his latest American trip. Armstrong brought them up to date on his progress in New York, and went on to tell them that he intended to make a further trip across the Atlantic in the near future, as he believed it would not be long before the company was in a position to make a public bid for the New York Star.
Sir Paul said he was anxious about the sheer scale of such an acquisition, and asked that no commitments should be made without the board’s approval. Armstrong assured him that it had never crossed his mind to do otherwise.
Under Any Other Business, Peter Wakeham brought to the attention of the board an article in the Financial Times which reported that Keith Townsend had recently purchased a large block of warehouses on the Isle of Dogs, and that a fleet of unmarked lorries were regularly making late-night deliveries to it.
“Has anyone any idea what this is all about?” asked Sir Paul, his eyes sweeping the table.
“We know,” said Armstrong, “that Townsend got himself landed with a trucking company when he took over the Globe. As his papers are doing so badly, perhaps he’s having to diversify.”
Some members of the board laughed, but Sir Paul was not among them. “That wouldn’t explain why Townsend has set up such tight security around the site,” he said. “Security guards, dogs, electric gates, barbed wire along the tops of the walls—he’s up to something.”
Armstrong shrugged his shoulders and looked bored, so Sir Paul reluctantly brought the meeting to a close.
Three days later, Armstrong took a call from the Howard Hotel, and was told by the junior porter that Townsend had spent the whole afternoon and most of the evening locked in the Fitzalan Suite with three officials from one of the leading print unions, who were refusing to carry out any overtime. Armstrong assumed they were negotiating for improved pay and conditions in exchange for getting their members back to work.
The following Monday he flew to America, confident that as Townsend was preoccupied with his problems in London, there couldn’t be a better time to prepare a takeover bid for the New York Star.
* * *
When Townsend called a meeting of all the journalists who worked on the Globe, most of them assumed that the proprietor had finally reached a settlement with the print unions, and the get-together would be nothing more than a public relations exercise to prove he had got the better of them.
At four o’clock that afternoon, over seven hundred journalists crammed onto the editorial floor. They fell silent as Townsend and Bruce Kelly walked in, clearing a path to allow the proprietor to walk to the center of the room, where he climbed up onto a table. He looked down on the group of people who were about to decide his fate.
“For the past few months,” he began quietly, “Bruce Kelly and I have been involved in a plan which I believe will change all our lives, and possibly the whole face of journalism in this country. Newspapers cannot hope to survive in the future if they continue to be run as they have been for the past hundred years. Someone has to make a stand, and that person is me. And this is the time to do it. Starting at midnight on Sunday, I intend to transfer my entire printing and publishing operation to the Isle of Dogs.”
A small gasp was audible.
“I have recently come to an agreement,” Townsend continued, “with Eric Harrison, the general secretary of the Allied Printworkers, which will give us a chance once and for all to rid ourselves of the stranglehold of the closed shop.” Some people began to applaud. Others looked uncertain, and some downright angry.
The proprietor went on to explain to the journalists the logistics of such an immense operation. “The problem of distribution will be dealt with by our own fleet of trucks, making it unnecessary in future for us to rely on the rail unions, who will undoubted
ly come out on strike in support of their comrades in the print unions. I can only hope that you will all back me in this venture. Are there any questions?” Hands shot up all around the room. Townsend pointed to a man standing directly in front of him.
“Are you expecting the unions to picket the new building, and if so, what contingency measures have you put in place?”
“The answer to the first part of your question has to be yes,” said Townsend. “As far as the second part is concerned, the police have advised me not to divulge any details of what they have planned. But I can assure you that I have the backing of the prime minister and the Cabinet for this whole operation.”
Some groans could be heard around the room. Townsend turned and pointed to another raised hand.
“Will there be compensation for those of us who are unwilling to join this crazy scheme?”
That was one question Townsend had hoped someone would ask.
“I advise you to read your contracts carefully,” he said. “You’ll find in them exactly how much compensation you’ll get if I have to close the paper down.”
A buzz began all around him.
“Are you threatening us?” asked the same journalist.
Townsend swung back to him and said fiercely, “No, I’m not. But if you don’t back me on this one, you’ll be threatening the livelihood of everyone who works for the Globe.”
A sea of hands shot up. Townsend pointed to a woman standing at the back.
“How many other unions have agreed to back you?”
“None,” he replied. “In fact, I’m expecting the rest of them to come out on strike immediately following this meeting.” He pointed to someone else, and continued to answer questions for over an hour. When he finally stepped off the table, it was clear that the journalists were divided on whether to go along with his plan, or to join the other print unions and opt for an all-out strike.