Better watch out if Rupert’s about

When I was working in Australia in the late 70s early 80s there was a joke doing the rounds about Rupert Murdoch – a joke which had an undertone of reality.

“Rupert Murdoch arrived in (insert town or city name) and booked into a hotel. The following morning he sent his secretary out to buy a newspaper. He bought ours – lock, stock and barrel.

The underlying fear was that Murdoch was buying up newspapers all over Australia. He had plans for a central hub for newspaper design with a few changes for local news and for finalised instructions to be sent to printing centres throughout the country.

Not so much a dream as a nightmare. One day that nightmare joke came true when the Murdoch group swallowed up the paper I worked for.

More about that later.

It wasn’t the first time I found myself involved in a newspaper takeover.

One day in early 1969 while I was at Oswestry with Peter Leaney, my boss, he told me I was needed at a meeting in the board room.

I went with him but had a feeling of trepidation. I was under indentures but was afraid they might still be getting rid of me.

Robbie Thomas, the MD, and Tom Roberts were there as was Brian Barratt, the editor of our farming publication.

It was Peter who explained everything. North Wales Newspapers had bought up a North Wales newspaper company called Pugh and Rowlands which produced three newspapers – the Rhyl Journal and Advertiser, Prestatyn Weekly and the Denbighshire Free Press.

Brian Barratt was to be the new editor based at Rhyl, which was why he was at the meeting.

Peter then said: “You’ve worked well for me on the Leader but we wondered if, as you are from Rhyl, whether you would like to transfer to the Journal as a junior reporter.

“As a local boy you might be able to help Brian out and also get some training from a new group of seniors. You would be working with them all the time rather than just one day a week at Mold.”

I was, I admit, taken aback, but at least it had not been the news I was anticipating.

I had a strong loyalty to Peter and had enjoyed our drives over to Oswestry. This was a good move, however, and I would be working almost literally on my doorstep.

I knew the Rhyl Journal building on Russell Road. It was less than 10 minutes walk from my home in Water Street. A big reddish brick building almost opposite St Thomas’ parish church.

It didn’t have the width of the Oswestry building frontage but it ran back a long way because the presses were housed at the rear.

I had no hesitation in accepting the transfer as it was to my advantage all round.

Nobody said it but it was obvious that there was a feeling that the people at the Rhyl office would need time to adjust to working for new bosses.

The Journal was a proper local newspaper. The editorial and advertising staff were at the front of the building and the reporters could literally file last minute copy without having to phone it over.

I could understand that the editorial, advertising and printers would have felt almost like a family group.

The point is I saw NWN in the same way and viewed this as a growth in the family. My role would be as a junior reporter. I wasn’t there as a spy but it might help Brian to have a friendly face around while everyone adjusted to the new situation.

I finished at Holywell on the Friday and my pieces in the Leader that week included a big story on the sports page about local youngsters doing well in a county athletics meeting; and a Holywell pop group Ohm’s Law seeking rehearsal space as they were doing well on the local pop scene.

On the Monday I started work at the Journal and came face to face with my new colleagues.

At least one was almost a familiar face, Bill Prandle who I think was sports editor and might possibly have been chief reporter or deputy editor as well. The face was familiar because I had been at school with his son, David Prandle.

I wasn’t really sure about the hierarchy at the time but I did know I was still at the bottom of the pack.

The others who spring to mind from that first day were Denise Hodgkinson, Elwyn Edwards and Trixie Vorderman. Yes I did say Vorderman and yes she was Carol Vorderman’s sister but Carol was still at primary school at this time.

Then there was Glyn Roberts, the photographer. I have known a lot of press photographers over the decades and some, like Glyn, are imprinted on my mind because of their ability.

Unfortunately Glyn is no longer with us.

At this time the staff were still based at the old works and it was sad to realise that the building would never shake to the thunder of the presses again.

My first stories in my new role included the piece to go with a front page picture showing a car being pulled out of the river by firemen and police officers; and a three-par story about a local lad, Roger Jennings, who had been present at the maiden flight of the Concorde. He was an apprentice at the Rolls Royce works in Bristol.

Roger was another old school friend who had also been a member of the Rhyl Yacht Club.

Contacts come in handy.

We moved quite soon afterwards to more modern offices just down the road.

I had some good years to come working in Rhyl.

NB: if any of my “old” colleagues from Rhyl spot any errors in my memory I hope the will let me know – that’s you Elwyn, and Denise.

The old gods

by Dannie Abse

The gods, old as night, don’t trouble us.

Poor weeping Venus! Her pubic hairs are grey,

and her magic love girdle has lost its spring.

Neptune wonders where he has put his trident.

Mars is gaga – illusory vultures on the wing.

Pluto, exhumed, blinks. My kind of world, he thinks.

Kidnapping and rape, like my Front Page exploits

adroitly brutal – but he looks out of sorts when

Other unmanned gods shake their heads tut tut,

respond boastingly, boringly anecdotal.

Diana has done a bunk, fearing astronauts,

Saturn, Time on his hands, stares at nothing and

nothing stares back. Glum Bacchus talks ad nauseum

of cirrhosis, and small bald Cupid, fiddling

with arrows, can’t recall which side the heart is.

All the old gods have become enfeebled

mere playthings for poets. Few doze or daft,

frolic on Parnassian clover. True sometimes

summer light dies in a room – but only

a bearded profile in a cloud floats over.

Finding my place within the pack

There are hierarchies within journalism and the cub reporter, like the wolf cub, is at the bottom of the pack.

Above this you get a junior reporter, then a senior, then a chief reporter. Sometimes the chief reporter might also be the deputy editor – then you get the head honcho, the editor.

Somewhere in the middle of all this you will find that strange beast – the sub-editor, neither flesh, fish nor fowl.

On a newspaper which is not part of a group the sub-editing might be carried out by the chief reporter or deputy editor in conjunction with the editor.

When newspapers form part of a group the subbing is usually done at a central point.

The editor of each paper would decide on the layout and content of the front page and possibly two or three other important pages; a sports editor might do the same for the sports pages.

For the rest the chief sub and deputies on the top table would work on layouts and put copy instructions with the appropriate story to be worked on by downtable subs.

This was the way North Wales Newspapers operated and the subs were based at Oswestry.

Peter Leaney let me spend some time shadowing the subs on our weekly trips to head office. This was part of my training, and I cannot think of a more effective way of instilling a young reporter with the necessary fear and respect for the gods on the subs table.

At least the fear and respect they thought they were entitled to.

One good thing that came out of these sessions was that the chief sub told me I should get hold of a book called The Simple Subs Book by Leslie Sellers who worked at the Daily Mail.

He wasn’t suggesting I become a sub-editor, I was still on the lower end of the newspaper ladder. He did believe that an understanding of the sub-editor’s craft would make me a better reporter.

He was probably right.

I’ve still got the book, more than 50 years later.

It made interesting reading and certainly gave me an insight into the role of the sub-editor.

At that time, however, I was only interested in being a first-class reporter.

As it happened big changes were ahead of me as 1969 dawned.

I was about to say goodbye to my mentor Peter Leaney (although he still had a major part to play in my life in the 1970s); goodbye to my little fiefdom; and hello to a new role nearer home – much nearer home.

First we take Manhattan

by Leonard Cohen

They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom

For trying to change the system from within

I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens

I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin

I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I’d really like to live beside you, baby

I love your body and your spirit and your clothes

But you see that line there moving through the station?

I told you, I told you, told you I was one of those

Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you’re worried that I

just might win

You know the way to stop me but you don’t have the

discipline

How many nights I prayed for this, now let my work begin

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I don’t like your fashion business mister

And I don’t like these drugs that keep you thin

I don’t like what happened to my sister

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

I’d really like to live beside you, baby

I love your body and your spirit and your clothes

But you see that line there moving through the station?

I told you, I told you, told you I was one of those

And I thank you for the items that you sent me

The monkey and the plywood violin

I practiced every night and now I’m ready

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

Remember me? I used to live for music

Remember me? I brought your groceries in

Well it’s Father’s Day and everybody’s wounded

First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.

Ahaka he iti pounamu Although it is small it is greenstone

by Louise Wallace

I choose pounamu

it is a river stone

she was of the earth

she was orchids in the hothouse

less difficult than her husband

fruit trees

their hard graft

plums

nectarines

a child we never spoke of

another a castaway

I choose to plant my legs

to ground them

I am the child of which we won’t speak

I am the castaway

I am orchids

fruit trees

I can bear more than you think

I am a river stone

and I choose a ring made of pounamu

to remind me

We Are Going

by Oodgeroo Noonuccal

They came into the little town

A semi-naked band subdued and silent

All that remained of their tribe.

They came here to the place of their old bora ground

Where now the many white men hurry about like ants.

Notice of the estate agent reads: ‘Rubbish May Be Tipped Here’.

Now it half covers the traces of the old bora ring.

‘We are as strangers here now, but the white tribe are the strangers.

We belong here, we are of the old ways.

We are of the corroboree and the bora ground,

We are the old ceremonies, the laws of the elders.

We are the wonder tales of Dream Time, the tribal elders told.

We are the past, the hunts and the laughing games, the wandering camp fires.

We are the lightening bolt over Gaphemba Hill

Quick and terrible,

And the Thunderer after him, that loud fellow.

We are shadow ghosts creeping back as the camp fires burn low.

We are nature and the past, all the old ways

Gone now and scattered.

The scrubs are gone, the hunting and the laughter.

The eagle is gone, the emu and the kangaroo are gone from this place.

The bora ring is gone.

The corroboree is gone.

And we are going.’

Unto us . . .

by Spike Milligan

Somewhere at some time

They committed themselves to me

And so, I was!

Small, but I WAS!

Tiny, in shape

Lusting to live

I hung in my pulsing cave.

Soon they knew of me

My mother – my father.

I had no say in my being

I lived on trust

And love

Tho’ I couldn’t think

Each part of me was saying

A silent ‘Wait for me

I will bring you love!’

I was taken

Blind, naked, defenseless

By the hand of one

Whose good name

Was graven on a brass plate

in Wimpole Street,

and dropped on the sterile floor

of a foot operated plastic waste bucket.

There was no Queens Counsel

To take my brief.

The cot I might have warmed

Stood in Harrod’s shop window.

When my passing was told

My father smiled.

No grief filled my empty space.

My death was celebrated

With tickets to see Danny la Rue

Who was pretending to be a woman

Like my mother was.

Back at work and the pressure’s on

Working alone at the Holywell office of the Flintshire Leader had its good points and its bad points.

In many ways I have always had an independent streak. I prefer to control my own life.

Take transport, for instance. I hate going anywhere by train or bus because it makes me reliant on other people: the driver and whoever sets the timetable.

In a perfect world there should be a timetable that gets me from A at the time I want to leave and gets me to B at the time I want to be there.

If the taxi driver who would take me to A (train station) is late then it only works if the train driver is also late. That, of course, provides its own problems as I wouldn’t get to B at the time I need to be there.

I prefer, and have always preferred, to rely on my own transport. That way if I am late the only one to blame is myself.

It might sound paranoid but it does make sense.

I know how long, under normal conditions, it takes to get from A to B. I then allow for any adverse conditions on the way and am reasonably certain I will arrive at B in plenty of time to park, unwind and then get to ny final destination at the given time.

It has tended to work over the years apart from the occasional glitch but I put that down to old age these days.

When I was at school a frequent comment on my term reports was: Robin needs a deadline to work to and if he doesn’t have one he tends to create an artificial one.

They made it sound like a bad thing – but it wasn’t.

My time spent working out of the Mold office with a senior reporter began as a weekly event but then fell to every other week; one week in three; and eventually just an occasional trip over if there was something happening which would benefit my journalistic training.

The trips to head office and the printing works remained on a regular basis, however. The only times I didn’t go while working for Peter Leaney were when I was on holiday or Peter was on holiday. Graham, his deputy, preferred to go alone when he was in charge.

It was no skin off my nose.

Those visits to Oswestry broadened my knowledge beyond the realms of the district office. It also gave me an opportunity to meet people from other parts of the company’s area.

Naturally I used to see the directors around, mainly Eric and his cousin Robbie, and they would sometimes stop to chat. It was, after all, a family firm and at times “Pater and Mater” would talk to the younger children.

I did get on very well with a senior director, Tom, I think his surname was Roberts, and years later that friendship paid off (yet another story).

What was good that I met journalists from some of the other papers, such as the Border Counties Advertizer, as well as the weekly sub-editors who were based at Oswestry. I also met Brian Barratt, who edited a farming newspaper, and he was to play a major part in my life very soon.

Being on my own at Holywell this infrequent contact with journalists meant I didn’t know much about the way our union, the NUJ, worked within the company.

I did at times meet people on other papers, not ours, with the odd Daily Post reporter popping over if there was a good story going on.

This meant my best source for unionism was with one or two of the subs who showed a keener interest and, of course, the print unions, they were a good source of union rights and the working man.

In all honesty, at that time I found the provincial NUJ to be a little bit socialist and a little bit more liberal. I think some of them might have preferred a National Association of Journalists to a union.

With little in the way of direct sources for considering the working men’s rights (in all honesty it was more men than women in those days) I turned to my old friends – books.

Nowadays they tell you that if you want to find something out then hit the internet.

As it happens reading an easily selected number of books on the subject you are interested in is often less time-consuming than wading through the 10 million hits you get when you type in “labour” or “workers’ rights” on Google.

I soon realised the best place to start was the first half of the 19th century at the time of the Chartists, the Rebecca Riots, Captain Swing and Peterloo.

Clearly much of this was at a time when workers in this country were often treated little better than the slaves who had only recently gained their freedom.

Very soon my research went in two directions – both, as it happened, linked to Engels and Marx.

One stream followed the Chartists and the early working men’s associations and the route taken by suffragists (one arm of the women’s suffrage movement); the other took the path of the Rebecca Rioters and the followers of Captain Swing, a path preferred by Pankhurst’s more militant suffragettes.

Frierich Engels made a study of the conditions of the working class in England and later, in collaboration with Karl Marx produced an outline manifesto for the Communist Party.

Although it was revolutionary at the time it was not like much of Marx’s later works which appeared to indicate that a mass revolt by the working classes throughout the world was the only way to gain workers’rights.

Engels was more interested in other ways of workers getting involved in the ownership of that produced by their own hands.

If you only picked one line of thought you have to wonder which of the two you would follow.

I know I had a lot more reading to do. At the time I didn’t really know how little time I had before I would have to decide which path to take.

The Poison Tree

by William Blake

I was angry with my friend:

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe:

I told it not, and it did grow.

And I watered it in fears,

Night and morning with my tears;

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft, deceitful wiles.

And it grew both day and night,

Till it bore an apple bright.

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine,

And into my garden stole

When the night had veiled the pole;

In the morning glad I see

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

Digging

by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests, snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clear rasping sound

When the spade sinks in to gravelly ground:

My father digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds

Bends low, comes up twenty years away

Stooping in rhythm through potato drills

Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft

Against the inside knee was levered firmly.

He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep

To scatter new potatoes that we picked,

Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.

Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day

Than any other man in Toner’s bog.

Once I carried him milk in a bottle

Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up

To drink it, then fell to right away

Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods

Over his shoulder, going down and down

For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head.

But I’ve no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb

The squat pen rests.

I’ll dig with it.