Authors: Emily Herbert
‘John Pilger will have his pound of flesh this week,’ he continued. ‘If we get it wrong, then I will receive the traditional Fleet Street invitation to depart from my office on the twenty-second floor at Canary Wharf, head first. One thing’s for sure, you won’t get me turning on the
Mirror
when I leave. I have too much respect for the journalists who give their hearts and souls to making this paper a success to round on them in such a sad, sour way.’
And he was as good as his word. But the
Mirror
did have an ace up its sleeve, albeit one that owed more to circumstance than anything else: in 1997, an election was called. Since 1979, the Tories had been in power and even their biggest supporters were now acknowledging that it was time for change. The Major Government had been hanging on by the skin of its teeth (helped, some would say, by Piers’ decision not to publish details of the Budget), but a massive change was in the air and the
Mirror
was a Labour-supporting paper. Time to take centre stage again.
In actual fact, when Labour won its historic victory in May 1997, by a bizarre coincidence, the
Mirror
and its great rival the
Sun
ran exactly the same front page. Both featured a huge picture of Cherie Blair kissing her husband Tony, the new British Prime Minister, with exactly the same headline:
SEALED WITH A X.
So similar were the front pages that the two editors were accused of acting in collusion or at least that there was a leak in one camp. Both hotly denied any such thing and poured bile on the other. ‘The
Sun
dropped first and obviously the
Mirror
waited to see what our inspirational headline would be and copied it,’ declared Stuart Higgins, ‘but it was the
Sun
wot got it.’
Naturally, Piers did not take this lying down. ‘They have had the most disastrous election in newspaper history and have finally come up with a good idea, which we had earlier in the day,’ he snorted.
Certainly, the
Mirror
seemed to be doing well. The
Sun
saw a sharp drop in sales during the April leading up to the election, while the
Mirror
witnessed a rise. Piers himself put this down to the
Sun
’s sudden decision to change tack and back New Labour just six weeks before the election and he may well have been right. The
Mirror
had once sold more copies than the
Sun
, and now there were real hopes that the paper might return to the glory days of old.
Along with Stuart Higgins, Piers was summoned to Number 10 to do an interview with the new Prime Minister and, for the first time, he too was beginning to be recognised as something of a celebrity in his own right. He was certainly the pundit that everyone talked to when they
wanted a quote about Fleet Street, but there was more to it than that: he was starting to stand out from the crowd in a way that he hadn’t done before. Piers had certainly long been recognised among his peers for what he had achieved, but now he was reaching a wider audience – although a new career as a media personality was still some way off.
Certainly, he was completely in command of his paper now. In the summer of 1997, the country became obsessed with the relationship between Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed and there was intense competition to get the first picture of the couple kissing. The
Mirror
appeared to have done so, although, on closer inspection, it looked as if it had taken an image run by the
Mirror
’s sister paper the
People
of the couple gazing at each other on a boat and had digitally moved their positions so they seemed much closer together. It seemed the other sister paper, the
Sunday Mirror,
had acquired genuine snaps and was refusing to share them. There were rumours of shouting matches between Piers and
Sunday Mirror
editor Bridget Rowe, not least because Piers used his pictures the day before hers were due to run. The readers didn’t care, though; they just wanted as much of Diana as the media could provide.
The rest of Fleet Street were more concerned, however, as Piers appeared to have stolen a march on them. There were accusations of picture manipulation and another row broke out, but Piers fought back in trademark style. Everyone did it, he claimed, pointing out there had been no complaints from readers – and, of course, this proved the
case. Most hadn’t even been aware of what had been done and, while the two appeared to be much closer together, there was no actual kiss as such.
If restrictions were brought in, warned Piers, ‘every picture editor I know is going to have to look deep into their soul and ask themselves have they ever cropped a picture closer? Have they ever removed people from a background? Everyone does it. It doesn’t change the news value or integrity of a picture. If we had had Dodi Fayed kissing Diana when they hadn’t been kissing, that would have changed the integrity of that picture. We haven’t had a single complaint from any reader. Why would they feel conned? I totally deny we changed the image integrity in that picture. It was quite clear, twenty-four hours later, that those two heads had been considerably closer than our picture.’
Alas, only two weeks later, HRH Princess Diana was dead. After she was killed in a car crash in Paris with Dodi on 31 August 1997, Piers suddenly discovered that he was in the midst of the biggest story in years and the papers went into overdrive, reporting on each sensational development of the case and at times actually bringing the royal family to book.
In the immediate pandemonium surrounding Diana’s death, it quickly became apparent that everyone – the royal family, the political establishment and the media – was in a totally new world, making it up as they went along. As far as the media was concerned, the brutal reality was that such a huge story involving such a popular figure sold newspapers. Every newspaper competed with its peers
to bring out daily supplements about the late Princess’s life and a whole industry grew up not just in the days following the shocking news but for years afterwards.
But the media also reflected what the public themselves wanted to say. Most of the royal family had been at Balmoral, their castle in Scotland, when the news broke, and that, perhaps unwisely, is where they stayed. As Diana’s body lay in London and preparations for the funeral began, mourners began to gather in the streets, many sobbing quite openly. New Prime Minister Tony Blair perfectly summed up the situation in a speech in which he referred to Diana as ‘The People’s Princess’. The nation’s mood was such that it required a connection between Monarch and people, but, in a rare moment in her long reign, Queen Elizabeth II actually got it wrong.
As the royal family sheltered in Balmoral, the mood in the capital turned ugly. There had been no public message from the royals and, much in contrast to what the people wanted, there was no flag at half-mast over Buckingham Palace. The reason for this was protocol: no flag ever flew over Buckingham Palace, only the Monarch’s standard, and if the Queen herself had died it wouldn’t have been done. However, the people required a symbolic gesture – and no one had ever proved to be better at this than Diana herself – but the royal family simply didn’t seem to understand that, at times, it is best to ignore protocol and give the people what they want.
The media is often accused of manipulating events to its own advantage; the reality is that the best papers reflect
what the rest of the country feels and wants. This was an absolute case in point. As the royals appeared indifferent to the fate of the woman who had at times brought them to the brink of disaster, anger grew. And the papers, rather than whipping up indignation, merely reflected what the rest of the country thought. The headlines started to appear and the
Mirror
pictured two grieving subjects:
YOUR PEOPLE ARE SUFFERING. SPEAK TO US, MA’AM
ran the headline. Inside, the editorial went on, ‘Now at this time, more than ever, the Queen must show she has learnt from Diana. That she understands how we are feeling.’ Many of the other papers came out in similar vein.
This was new territory: while most royals had to put up with a certain degree of criticism at some point in their lives (indeed, some had to suffer a great deal), the Queen herself had been untouchable. Such was the respect and affection in which she was held that, under normal circumstances, none would have dared to criticise the Monarch. Circumstances were anything but normal now. And, to cap all that, the media suddenly found itself in the dock: Diana had been killed in a car crash as she was being chased by the paparazzi and, as her brother Earl Spencer (who had, by this time, developed a loathing for the newspapers) put it, many now believed that some sections of the media had ‘blood on their hands’.
No one seemed to know what to do. In an editorial, the
Mirror
admitted it had not ‘always been innocent’. Meanwhile, the
Sun
begged its readers not to cast blame. It was an extraordinary situation to be in: on the one hand, the
papers were benefiting from Diana’s death because people were buying them for the daily supplements and to keep up with the story; on the other, they themselves were being blamed for having had a hand in the Princess’s demise.
It was announced that Diana’s funeral would be held at Westminster Abbey. Most of the editors, including Piers, were invited to attend – only to be uninvited shortly afterwards by the vengeful Lord Spencer. They accepted the ruling and without attempting much of a fight back (on that point, at least) decided to stay away. Bowing to pressure, the Queen finally made a public broadcast and the family came down from Balmoral to London; they went out to inspect the numerous floral tributes left by a devoted public. Public anger towards the royals was beginning to lessen, although fury about the role of the press lingered.
When Lord Spencer spoke at his sister’s funeral at Westminster Abbey, fuel was added to the flames. It was a huge affair and Spencer used the occasion to lay the blame at every door he could think of, including the royal family and the press. The Windsors were castigated for removing her HRH – she ‘needed no royal title’ to generate her magic, he said – before turning his attention to the press. ‘She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment she received at the hands of the newspapers,’ he spat. Wisely, the newspapers themselves held their counsel, although ultimately the funeral oration was seen by some as a mark of bad judgement on Spencer’s part. What should have been a time of healing instead seemed to turn into an all-out war.
Piers – and the others – kept quiet on the matter but, perhaps understandably, it wasn’t long before they had finally had enough. Princess Diana certainly had her fair share of media attention but, as everyone involved in the press knew at the time, she had also been an active participant. Both she and Charles had used the media in the ‘War of the Waleses’ and, overall, the press had been pretty much on her side. Many editors were hesitant about saying so, however, until Piers finally had his say in the
Guardian.
He cited hypocrisy, and understandably so.
‘First up, with almost laughable predictability, was David Mellor, who arrived on my TV screen with indecent haste, breathlessly blaming the British tabloid press directly for the accident,’ he wrote. ‘Never mind the fact that we had just lost perhaps the greatest icon of our lifetime – it was far more important to have a crack at the “gutter press” than actually wait for any true details to emerge. The fact that no representation of any British tabloid was anywhere near the place at the time didn’t stem his indignant rage. It was cringe-making stuff from a man with a very obvious reason for disliking newspapers that quite correctly exposed his serial adultery for the hypocrisy it was.’
Piers had put his finger on it: Earl Spencer, David Mellor and the rest all had their own issues with the press, and so, given this marvellous opportunity to blame the tabloids, they lost no time in doing so. Other sections of the press came in for equal lambasting on the grounds that they were trying to have their cake and eat it – reporting everything in salacious detail, yet criticising other papers.
It was perfectly fair comment, although the saga was to run further still.
And, indeed, Earl Spencer might have reflected on the wisdom of his posturing just two months later when, back in Cape Town (where he was then resident), he went through his first divorce. The man who had attacked just about everyone for their treatment of his sister, with her eating disorders and general unhappiness, was revealed to have been an appalling husband. Victoria Lockwood, his first wife, not only had to endure repeated infidelity on his part, but was summoned to the Earl lying in his bath, whereupon he told her that he wanted a divorce and, for good measure, added that she should stay away from Diana’s funeral, too.
It also emerged that Spencer first made and then withdrew an offer to shelter his sister in a property on the Althorp Estate. This was a very different picture indeed of the man who had denounced the royal family with righteous fury for its cruelty and the press had no hesitation in reporting every detail of the story.
Countess Spencer had wanted divorce proceedings to take place in London, but, no doubt thinking he would have to pay out a lower settlement, Lord Spencer insisted on Cape Town. He was probably right, in that he didn’t have to pay quite as much, but had the case been heard in London then the couple’s intimate details would not have been made public. His reputation never really recovered, while his sister Diana is now viewed as one of the great icons of the twentieth century.
It was poetic justice, albeit of a tragic kind.
A
s the year drew to an end and the shock over the death of Diana began to fade, Piers turned his attention to other stories. The brief was as it had always been: keep the
Mirror
in the spotlight, keep the circulation moving upwards and take on the
Sun
. Any editor is only as good as the last issue and Piers knew that, to keep ahead, he would constantly have to come up with good stories to keep the
Mirror
in the limelight – which is just what he did.
In truth, his next agenda-setting triumph pretty much dropped into his lap. In December 1997, an anonymous caller rang the
Mirror
and gave it a very strong lead. ‘Watch this pub, watch this bloke,’ the caller advised. ‘Not only will you be amazed at what he’s doing, but you will also be surprised at who his parents are.’
Piers had always been aware of the advantages of sending attractive young women out on a story – indeed, he was to capitalise on this in the future with his ‘3am
girls’ – and so he duly dispatched Dawn Alford and Tanith Carey to investigate. They called in at the pub, spotted their target and shortly afterwards were deep in conversation with him, the subject moving swiftly to celebrities taking drugs. And so the target swallowed their bait, hook, line and sinker: would the girls like some drugs? On receiving an affirmative, he supplied them with what was later identified in a laboratory as £10 worth of hash.
Today, more than a decade later, there is no problem in identifying the man in question and the reason why the transaction, identical to many taking place in thousands of pubs across the country, proved such big news was that the boy in question was Will Straw, son of the then Home Secretary Jack Straw. But he was seventeen at the time, technically a juvenile, and so could not be immediately identified and was merely referred to as ‘the son of a prominent Cabinet minister’. Given the sensitivities of the case, the
Mirror
had to be careful what it did next. Piers informed Straw that they had to talk about a ‘private matter’. He further advised him that, if he ‘came clean’ and ‘went public’, the story would soon die down. Straw then alerted Downing Street and subsequently marched the hapless Will down to the police station, having alerted the police in advance, whereupon his son made a statement. It was agreed that everyone was acting in the correct manner – everyone except Will, who had landed himself in something of a mess.
If ever there was a good illustration of the way in which politicians (or anyone in the public eye) interrelate, this
was it. Once Straw learned that the
Mirror
had the story, he won two days’ reprieve before it was published, in return for which he gave the paper the information that Will had confessed to the police. The story was duly published on Christmas Eve and caused a sensation; almost immediately Will’s identity became common knowledge in Fleet Street and was published in papers abroad, but he could not be identified in the UK. Meanwhile, his father – who was widely respected for his handling of the situation – made it plain to the papers that he would actually like his son to be identified in order to put an end to the speculation, but even he could do nothing for now.
In a situation where a paper can run a story, but not the identity of the person at the centre, it will do as much as it can to allow the readers to know what is really going on. And so it was that Jack Straw was time and again pictured with the pieces, ostensibly because he was the British Home Secretary and, as such, had views on drugs (his opinion was that they should not be legalised) – and actually, of course, to hint that he was the cabinet minister in question. Fuel was added to the flames when Dawn Alford was arrested for buying drugs, leading to widespread condemnation and fears that ‘pressure from high places’ was behind the move. Never one to flinch from battle, Piers ran the headline
IS IT FAIR, MR STRAW
?
Still, the reality could not be reported but the paper was going as far as it could:
OUR REPORTER IS ARRESTED IN MINISTER’S SON’S DRUG INQUIRY,
it boomed in a front page featuring pictures of both Dawn Alford and Jack Straw.
Certainly, this was a worrying development; it was thought no journalist had been arrested in such circumstances before. Alford had gone to the police to make a statement and pass on information; to be apprehended went against the grain but by this time the full extent of New Labour’s control-freak tendencies was becoming apparent. The party was developing a reputation for coming down hard on anyone who dared to cross it, and for a journalist and newspaper to expose a senior New Labour figure’s son was clearly beyond the pale. There was an unpleasant smack of authoritarianism about it, especially given that everyone concerned had bent over backwards to behave in the correct manner.
But, if this was an attempt to dampen the story down, it didn’t work. And it wasn’t just the
Mirror
who reacted with fury; correctly sensing an attack on a free press, so too did everyone else. ‘Is Britain’s elite suppressing the truth once again?’ asked one paper. ‘Shameful bid to gag press,’ roared another. Indeed, the story, which had by now dominated the papers for over a week and once seemed in danger of fizzling out altogether, went straight back on to all the front pages, with Piers adopting a ‘more-in
sadness-than
-in-anger’ position.
‘I can’t imagine in a million years they will charge her,’ he said, ‘it would be totally ridiculous. But I didn’t imagine in a million years they would arrest her. I don’t think Labour have handled it very well. My advice from the start was that, if they came clean, it would go away. I think now, perhaps with hindsight, they wish they had.’
The matter had now become such an open secret as to who was at the centre of the story that soon there would be no further need for discretion, he believed. ‘Within a week, everybody will know who this cabinet minister is,’ he continued. ‘It does seem rather absurd to carry on the pretence that it can remain secret.’
In the event, the
Mirror
would not be the first to name the family at the centre of the case. In early January 1998, it was obvious that the farce couldn’t go on. One of the problems was that the
Sun
had been on the verge of naming the family but had been prevented from doing so after the Attorney General John Morris took out an injunction. This was now overturned – behind the scenes, Jack Straw himself had been briefing journalists that he would like to come out in the open – and, finally, the family was named. Will Straw’s identity was such common knowledge that it was said London taxi drivers had been letting their passengers in on the secret. Now, at last, it was no longer a secret.
It was clearly a relief for Jack Straw to be able to talk openly about it: he’d found the situation as ludicrous as everyone else. ‘I felt the same emotions as any parents would in such circumstances – those of shock and concern,’ he said, in a prepared statement. ‘Being a parent means giving love and support, and, when it’s necessary, confronting children with their wrongdoing. When a child does wrong, I believe it to be the duty of a parent to act promptly. That is what I sought to do. My son went voluntarily with me to the police. He did not, and should
not, expect any favours from the legal process. He will accept and suffer any sanctions that arise, though, like any parents, we stand by him. But I hope that everyone who reports this story will agree that he should not suffer additionally from being my son.’
In the event, Straw junior received a caution and the matter was then closed – except that it wasn’t entirely. There was some sanctimonious comment from certain quarters as to how the story should never have been run at all and this despite the fact that it was the son of the Home Secretary: very nearly an adult and a boy who had put his parents in a terrible position.
And while all the charges against Dawn Alford were dropped, she was still livid about the comment from various quarters that it was one step away from entrapment and she had been put on the story because she was a pretty girl. ‘Despite the enormous contribution women make to newspapers, we are still being dismissed as mere dollies with Dictaphones,’ she snapped.
Piers, too was irritated. ‘Dawn Alford has been the subject of some pretty unseemly smears in other sections of the media because of the way she looks,’ he said. ‘People have forgotten she has been doing this for five years. She’s not just somebody we picked for the newsroom because we thought she’d look good to send down to ensnare William Straw. She is a very experienced investigative journalist.
‘I think it’s very sexist and insulting that she’s had to be singled out just because of the way she looks. I think there is a lot of jealousy and envy in certain areas. My
experience of these things is eventually the story dies a natural death and that’s the time the press get a kicking. At the end of the day, where would the broadsheets have been without this story for the last three weeks?’
Whatever the truth behind the sniping, Piers had once more set the news agenda. It was an opportune moment for his old friend and mentor Kelvin MacKenzie to step forward again; he was appointed deputy chief executive and group managing director at the Mirror Group, thus effectively taking charge of three newspapers: the
Mirror, Sunday Mirror
and the
People.
Piers’ critics (and there were a lot of them) cited this as proof that he wasn’t up to the job and MacKenzie had been brought in over his head, but the truth was different: Piers had proved himself over and over, while his mentor had been away from the industry he knew best and in which he was most successful: newspapers. This was just a way of harnessing his expertise in a very difficult market. Kelvin himself had been partially responsible for Piers’ appointment and was hardly going to step in to sabotage his protégé.
And Piers was having no difficulties with setting the agenda on his own. In early 1998, Mohamed al-Fayed (father of Dodi al-Fayed, Princess Diana’s lover who was killed with her in the Paris car crash) voiced his suspicions in the pages of the
Mirror
that the two had been murdered. As it transpired, those suspicions would continue to make the front pages of newspapers for many years to come.
Indeed, Princess Diana was proving to be just as fascinating in death as she had been in life. There had
been only one survivor of the Paris car crash – Dodi’s bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones – and he gave his first ever interview to the
Mirror
, boosting sales by 400,000, or 20 per cent. He said that he vaguely remembered a woman crying out – ‘I have had flashes of a female voice calling out in the back of the car, then Dodi’s name is called. It can only have been Princess Diana.’ He also said there was no sign that the driver of the car, Henri Paul, was drunk. The interview was carried out by Piers himself and took place at Harrods, then owned by Mohamed al-Fayed, amid widespread suspicions that al-Fayed was pulling strings behind the interview, although this was hotly denied by everyone involved.
Rees-Jones was upset enough by the reaction to issue a statement in which he made it clear that he had not been paid for the interview and had gone public entirely independently of al-Fayed simply because of the huge public interest in the case. But this was not to be the end of the matter; some years later, he wrote a book about his experiences and, a full decade after the interview, he was to appear at Diana’s inquest. One of the problems was that the crash had been so traumatic that it had impaired his memory: he was the only survivor and yet he had no recollection of what really happened, although in later years he was to put it on record that he thought the crash had been an accident and nothing more.
Piers was expert at knowing what would sell newspapers, but so, too, it turned out, was the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. A very canny operator when it came to the media,
Blair had launched a full-on charm offensive when first elected Leader of the Labour Party in 1994 and was continuing with it now that he was in office. The
Mirror
was a Labour-supporting paper anyway, and so he could be pretty sure of backing, but he was taking no chances. Piers was fast becoming a regular visitor to 10 Downing Street (although, as he later admitted, there was no love lost between himself and Cherie) and also on occasion interviewed the PM.
As the controversy continued over Diana’s death, Blair gave an emotional interview about how he still missed her personally. ‘Diana had an enormous amount to contribute to this country and, indeed, she was contributing an enormous amount to this country,’ he said. ‘I am convinced she would have contributed an awful lot more if it had not been for the accident. It was, and remains, a tragedy for everyone.’
Piers observed then that Blair’s ‘hold on the populist pulse is truly remarkable’ and he was right: at the time, the new Prime Minister was an enormously popular figure, with the chaos of his later years still almost inconceivable. He was widely credited for having all but saved the Monarchy from itself when it appeared not to understand the depth of public feeling in the wake of Diana’s death but was careful to play this down. ‘We had to keep our focus on the royal family itself, which was going through enormous difficulty and grief at the time,’ he said. ‘We had to make sure they were properly supported. We had to keep our nerve. In a situation like that there are no
rules and no training. You do what you think is right by instinct. I was very proud of the work my team did, but I want to stress very strongly that the royal family, and in particular the Queen, was very sensitive to how people felt.’
In those far-off days, Blair’s instinct was faultless: he knew exactly how to connect to the British people – as did Piers. Of course, it’s impossible to compare a newspaper editor and a prime minister (although editors have a good deal more power than all but the most senior politicians), but Piers’ own instinct for what made the British tick was unerring – it was rare for him to misjudge the public mood, although, like Blair, he was to do so when it came to the War in Iraq. But he could just tell what the readers and the wider public wanted and this was one of the reasons why he was to do so well in later years as an interviewer and a judge on reality TV.