The Daily Novel

The article about why computers are such a pain to all of us will have to wait. I was going to deal with the way the big companies, and particularly American companies, have dictated the way that computing has developed. But I then realised that to make it clear where I was coming from (American language, I am afraid) I would have to do yet another long blog first articulating my position on the influence of big companies generally on the way we live our lives. And that requires explaining how my political position has changed through my lifetime which has led me to believe that ‘American cultural imperialism’, as Tony Benn likes to call it, is not the main enemy in relation to business (though it certainly is in relation to the Iraq war).

I was brought up with the Daily Mail and the Wolverhampton Express & Star coming through the letter box. Their political stance was remarkably similar. (It remains the same today and, also interestingly enough has remained the same throughout the history of both papers. Both papers are still under the control of the Harmsworth and Graham families which founded them.)

What I read in those papers certainly influenced me in my school days. And in the history classes my favourite Prime Minister was Disraeli. Outside the classroom I became a huge admirer of Enoch Powell and canvassed for him when he became the candidate for Wolverhampton in 1950. (This was long before the ‘rivers of blood speech’).

My university career reinforced, rather than changed, my political position. I was, amongst other things, the Vice-Chairman of the Conservative Association and invited Rab Butler to speak. I respected his views and I was grateful to him because it was his 1944 Education Act which was passed just in time for me to go to grammar school for free. Otherwise I could not have gone because our family budget would not have stretched to paying for two children and I was the second son.

What has gradually shifted my political position to the left was not my education but what I discovered as a by-product of my work as a journalist. I began as a City journalist where my job was to talk to stockbrokers, merchant bankers and the bosses of large companies. The more I learnt about the way large companies behaved the more I began to doubt the views of my youth.

That period of my life climaxed in the late 1960s when I wrote, with Oliver Marriott, a colleague at The Times, a book about the history of the British electrical industry. What our researches into some original documents revealed was that by the late 1920s American companies had acquired a much bigger hold on that industry than was generally known.

But what those researches also showed was that in Britain, and in much of the world, the electrical industry, and several other important industries, were controlled by cartels; agreements between the major companies to divide up the world into areas of operation, and, in effect, to work together to stifle new competition.

This was not a solely American phenomenon. The other leading players included Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Spain and the Dutch amongst others. Cartels, of course, have long since been made illegal but the spirit of cartels is still very much alive. It was alive and well in 1970, when we went up in the lift at Stanhope Gate, the headquarters of the Late Lord Weinstock, with the boss of one of GEC’s biggest competitors, the Dutch giant Philips. We were there for a quick chat with Arnie. He was early for a private lunch with Lord Weinstock during which I am sure they talked about many matters of mutual interest.

Before I go on I need to make it clear that my trajectory to the left has not taken me into the arms of Tony Benn. My political position is that it is healthy to have a world in which powerful governments have to take into account the power of large companies, whose budgets exceed those of small countries. I would not enjoy living in a country where the government controlled all places in which people worked and decided what products should be produced for me to consume.

Where the problems arise is when governments and big companies work too closely together. This has, and does, cause problems in journalism, because most of the world’s media is dominated by large companies, of which the Murdoch empire is only one example. And the same thing is now happening in the wonderful new world of the web. Google is getting far too lovey dovey with the government of China which is limiting freedom of expression and stifling dissent.

The old cartels were able to exercise their power because governments allowed them to. Today some governments have a much too cosy relationship with big companies which is what I mean when I say that the spirit of the cartels lives on.

This is definitely a plug for Anatomy of a Merger, (Cape 1970,, Pan 1972) which is still worth reading because it reveals quite a lot about the old cartels and the way that the Labour government helped Arnold Weinstock to get control of most of the heavy electrical industry in the late 1960s. (And come to think of it dear old Tony Benn was a minister in that government.)

Unhappily Anatomy is long since out of print. But you might find a copy in the library or on a second hand bookstall. Look out for it.

(Actually this is only 949 words. Not too bad for such a big and complex subject.)