The Fourth Estate (45 page)

“That would not
influence my decision,” said Hahn.

“But the
contract stipulates that you must give me ninety days’notice in writing,” said
Armstrong, remembering one of the clauses Stephen Hallet had emphasized
recently.

“We have done so
on eleven separate occasions,” replied Hahn.

“I am not aware
of having received any such notice,” said Armstrong.

‘Therefore I...”

“The last three
of which,” continued Hahn, “were sent to this office, recorded delivery.”

“That doesn’t
mean we ever received them.”

“Each of them
was signed for by your secretary or Colonel Oakshott. Our final demand was
hand-delivered to your solicitor, Stephen Hallet, who I understand drew Lip the
original agreement.”

Once again
Armstrong was silenced.

Hahn opened his
battered briefcase, that Armstrong remembered so well, and removed copies of
three documents which he placed on the desk in front of his former partner. He
then took out a fourth document.

“I am now
serving you with a month’s notice, requesting that you return any publications,
plates or documents in your possession which have been supplied by us during
the past two years, along with a check for C 170,000 to cover the royalties due
to us. Our accountants consider this a conservative estimate.”

“Surely you’ll
give me one more chance, after all I’ve done for you?” pleaded Armstrong.

“We have given
you far too many chances already,” said Hahn, “and neither of us,” he nodded
toward his colleague, “is at an age when we can waste any more time hoping you
will honor your agreements.”

“But how can you
hope to survive without me?” demanded Armstrong, “Quite simply,” said Hahn. “We
have already signed an agreement this morning to be represented by the
distinguished publishing house of Macmillan, with whom I’m sure you are
familiar. We will be making an announcement to that effect in next Friday’s
Bookseller, so that our clients in Britain, the United States and the rest of
the world are aware that you no longer represent us.”

Hahn rose from
his chair, and Armstrong watched as he and Schultz turned to leave without
another word. Before they reached the door, he shouted after them, “You’ll be
hearing from my lawyers!”

Once the door
had been closed, he walked slowly over to the window behind his desk. He stared
down at the pavement, and didn’t move until he’d seen them climb into a taxi.
As they drove away he returned to his chair, picked up the nearest phone and
dialed a number. A familiar voice answered. “For the next seven days, buy every
Macmillan share you can lay your hands on.”

He slammed the
phone down, then made a second call.

Stephen Hallet
listened carefully as his client gave him a full report of his meeting with
Hahn and Schultz. Hallet wasn’t surprised by their attitude, because he’d
recently informed Armstrong about the tennination order he’d received from
Hahn’s London solicitors. When Armstrong had finished his version of the
meeting, he only had one question: “How long do you think I can string it out
for, I’m due to collect several large payments in the next few weeks.”

“A year,
eighteen months perhaps, if you’re willing to issue a writ and take them all
the way to court.”

Two years later,
after Armstrong had exhausted everyone, including Stephen Hallet, he settled
with Hahn on the courtroom steps.

Hallet drew up a
lengthy document in which Armstrong agreed to return all of Hahn’s property,
including publishing material, plates, rights agreements, contracts and over a
quarter of a million books from his warehouse in Watford. He also had to pay
out C75,000 as a full and final settlement for profits made during the previous
five years.

‘Thank God we’re
finally rid of the man,” was all Hahn said as he walked away from the High
Court in the Strand.

The day after
the settlement had been signed, Colonel Oakshott resigned from the board of
Armstrong Communications without explanation. He died of a heart attack three
weeks later. Armstrong couldn’t find the time to attend the funeral, so he sent
Peter Wakeham, the new deputy chairman, to represent him.

Armstrong was in
Oxford on the day of Oakshott’s funeral, signing a long lease on a large
building on the outskirts of the city.

During the next
two years Armstrong almost spent more time in the air than he did on the
ground, as he traveled around the world visiting author after author contracted
to Hahn, and trying to persuade them that they should break their agreements
and join Armstrong Communications. He realized he might not be able to convince
some of the German scientists to come across to him, but that had been more
than compensated for by the exclusive entr6e into Russia which Colonel Ti
ilpanov had made possible, and the many contacts Armstrong had made in America
during the years when Hahn had been unable to travel abroad.

Many of the
scientists, who rarely ventured outside their laboratories, were flattered by
Armstrong’s personal approach and the promise of exposure to a vast new
readership around the world. They often had no idea of the true commercial
value of their research, and happily signed the proffered contract. Later they
would dispatch their life’s works to Headley Hall, Oxford, often assuming that
it was in some way connected to the university.

Once they had
signed an agreement, usually cornmitting all their future works to Armstrong in
exchange for a derisory advance, they never heard from him again. These tactics
made it possible for Armstrong Communications to declare a profit of £90,000
the year after he and Hahn had parted, and a year later the Mancliester
Guardian named Richard Armstrong Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Charlotte
reminded him that he was nearer forty than thirty.

“True,” lie
replied, “but never forget that all my rivals had a twenty-year start on me.”

Once they had
settled into Headley Hall, their Oxford home, Dick found that he received many
invitations to attend university events. He turned most of them down, beCause
he knew all they wanted was his money. But then Allan Walker wrote. Walker was
the president of the Oxford University Labor Club, and he wanted to know if
Captain Armstrong would sponsor a dinner to be given by the committee in honor
of Hugh Gaitskell, the leader of the opposition. “Accept it,” said Dick. “On
one condition: that I can sit next to him.” After that he sponsored every visit
to the university by a front-bench Labor spokesman, and within a Couple of
years he had met every member of the shadow cabinet and several foreign
dignitaries, including the prime ministerof Israel, David Ben-Gurion, who
invited him to Tel Aviv, and suggested he take an interest in the plight of
Jews who had not been quite as fortunate as him.

After Allan
Walker had taken his degree, his first job application was to Armstrong
Communications. The chairman immediately took him onto his personal staff so he
could advise him on how he should go about extending his political influence.
Walker’s first suggestion was for him to take over the ailing university
magazine Isis, which was, as usual, in financial trouble. For a small
investment Armstrong became a hero of the university left, and shamelessly used
the magazine to promote his own cause. His face appeared on the cover at least
once a term, but as the magazine’s editors only ever lasted for a year, and
doubted if they would find another source of income, none of them objected.

When Harold
Wilson became leader of the Labor Party, Armstrong began to make public
statements in his supporti cynics suggested it was only because the Tories
would have nothing to do with him. He never failed to let visiting front-bench
Labor spokesmen know that he was happy to bear any losses on Isis, as long as
it could in some way encourage the next generation of Oxford students to
support the Labor Party. Some politicians found this approach fairly crude. But
Armstrong began to believe that if the Labor Party were to form the next
government, he would be able to use his influence and wealth to fulfill his new
dream-to be the proprietor of a national newspaper.

In fact, he
began to wonder just who would be able to stop him.

THE TimEs 16
OCTOBER 1964

K
hrushchev Gives
Up – -2’Old and Ill.”

Brezhnev and
Kosygin to Rule Russia K[~ITH ToWNSEND UNFASTENEt) his seatbelt a few minutes
after the Comet took off, flicked open his briefcase and removed a bundle of papers.
He glanced across at Kate, who was already engrossed in the latest novel by
Patrick White.

He began to
check through the file on the West Riding Group. Was this his best chance yet
of securing a foothold in Britain? After all, his first purchase in Sydney had
been a small group of papers, which in time had made it possible for him to buy
the Sydney Cbronicle. He was convinced that once he controlled a regional
newspaper group in Britain, he would be in a far stronger position to make a
takeover bid for a national paper.

Harry
Shuttleworth, he read, was the man who had founded the group at the turn of the
century. He had first published an evening paper in Huddersfield as an adjunct
to his highly successful textile mill. Townsend recognized the pattern of a
local paper being controlled by the biggest employer in the area-that was how
he had ended up with a hotel and two coalmines. Each time Shuttleworth opened a
factory in a new town, a newspaper would follow a couple of years later. By the
time he retired, he had four mills and four newspapers in the West Riding.

Shuttleworth’s
eldest son, Frank, took over the firm when he returned from the First World
War, and although his primary interest remained in textiles, he...

“Would you like
a drink, sir?”

Townsend nodded.
“A whiskey and a little water please.”

... he also
added local papers to the three factories he built in Doncaster, Bradford and
Leeds. At various times these had attracted friendly approaches from
Beaverbrook, Northcliffe and Rothermere. Frank had apparently given all three
of them the oft-quoted reply: ‘There’s nowt here for thee, lad.”

But it seemed
that the third generation of Shuttleworths were not of the same mettle. A
combination of cheap imported textiles from India and an only son who had
always wanted to be a botanist meant that though Frank died leaving eight
mills, seven dailies, five weeklies and a county magazine, the profits of his
company began falling within days of his coffin being lowered into the ground.
The mills finally went into liquidation in the late 1940s, and since then the
newspaper group had barely broken even. It seemed now to be surviving only on
the loyalty of its readers, but the latest figures showed that even that
couldn’t be sustained much longer.

Townsend looked
up as a table was fitted into his armrest and a small linen cloth placed over
it. When the stewardess did the same for Kate she put down Riders in (be
Cbariot but remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her boss’s concentration.

“I’d like you to
read this,” he said, passing her the first few pages of the report. “Then
you’ll understand why I’m making this trip to England.”

Townsend opened
a second file, prepared by Henry Wolstenholme, a contemporary of his at Oxford
and now a solicitor in Leeds. He could remember very little about Wolstenholme,
except that after a few drinks in the buttery he became unusually loquacious.
He would not have been Townsend’s first choice to do business with, but as his
firm had represented the West Riding Group since its foundation, there wasn’t
an alternative. It had been Wolstenholme who had first alerted him to the
group’s potential: he had written to him in Sydney suggesting that although WRG
was not on the rnarket-certainly its current chairman would deny it should he be
approached-he knew that if John Shuttleworth were ever to consider a sale, he
would want the purchaser to come from as far away from Yorkshire as possible.
Townsend smiled as a bowl of turtle soup was placed in front of him. As the
proprietor of the Hobart Mail, he had to be the best-qualified candidate in the
world.

Once Townsend
had written expressing interest, Wolstenholme had suggested that they meet to
discuss terms. Townsend’s first stipulation was that he needed to see the
group’s presses. “Not a hope,” came back the immediate reply. “Shuttleworth
doesn’t want to be the subject of his own front pages until the deal is
closed.” Townsend accepted that no negotiations through a third party were ever
easy, but with this one he was going to have to rely on Wolstenholme to answer
even more questions than usual.

With a fork in
one hand, and the next page in the other, he began to go over the figures Clive
Jervis had prepared for him. Clive estimated that the company was worth about a
hundred to a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, but pointed out that having
seen nothing except the balance sheet, he was in no position to commit
himselfclearly he wanted a get-out clause in case anything went wrong at a
later stage, thought Townsend.

“It’s more
exciting than Riders in the Cbariot,” Kate said after she had put down the
first file. “But what part am I expected to play?”