By Patrick Spilling

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Code of Conduct, or the Campaign for Press Freedom.

There was a honeymoon period in which Murdoch deferred to Evans but it didn't last long.

Problems arose when Murdoch's deputy, Gerald Long, began referring to the editing of the Times as a job that 'we' would be undertaking. This was a cue for Evans to demolish him with the cast-iron promises of editorial freedom which had been given by Murdoch when he bought the paper. Instead, Evans contents himself with quoting CP Scott, a famous editor of the Manchester Guardian, 'The Editor and Business Manager should march hand in hand, the first, be it well understood, just an inch or two in advance.

Evans had the illusion that he remained 'an inch or two in advance' of Murdoch and his henchmen. But it was just an illusion. A series of petty humiliations were inflicted on the old Times management. Denis Hamilton, non-Executive Chairman under Murdoch, had given up his old prestigious office and moved to the seventh floor.

Evans visited him one lunchtime. I found his secretary near to tears. She had asked the kitchen for a lunch-tray for Hamilton, who wanted to work at his desk, and it had been retused or Long's orders: lunch-trays were again consoled himself with philosophy.

Evans recounts that he kept expecting some kind of discussion on the future of the Times with Murdoch. The meeting was indefinitely postponed. He pressed Long for financial figures, but was told that Murdoch was 'funny' about giving them. 'Murdoch's own board meetings were even more cursory than Long's. "Yeah, Yeah, Well, let's all get back to work, there's a lot to do."

The crunch came after six months. Murdoch sent for me, and when I came into his office he was gauging his ball-point pen through a report on page 2 by Lucie Hodges. "Why do you use these commies?" he said.' (The story was about the Brixton Residents Group, blaming police for the crime rate before the Brixton riots.)

I replied that it was a good story, and Hodges was a good reporter; in any event it was absurd to call her a communist.' This was the point in the movie where the Good Guy (Evans) was supposed to throw the Bad Guy (Murdoch) across the room accompanied by a speech about press freedom and interfering busybodies.

Instead, Evans defended himself by saying that Lucie Hodges was not a communist. One might ask what the position would have been if she had been? Or if Evans himself had not like the report?

The outburst over. the Brixton report was a prelude to a more general attack on the economic reporting of the Times.

At that time, although it's hard to remember it now, the Thatcher government had sunk to the lowest level that any government had faced in its mid point and was well behind Labour in the opinion polls.

Murdoch didn't like it and had made growling remarks to Evans about Thatcher being the only British politician that was any good and dubbing her wets in the Tory Party as 'those pissing Liberals.

Evans reports 'He lobbed newspaper clippings across the Atlantic mainly from the American new right. He asked me to note an article contributed to the Wall Street Journal which said there was no plausible alternative to Thatcherism and compared Mrs. Thatcher to war-time Churchill.' Gerard Long prepared a 2 page memorandum, presumably on Murdoch's orders, saying that the

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Socialist Organiser no.151 October 20 1983 Page 3

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