The New Thunderer

The message was hard to find, as messages often are in that uncompromising typographical thicket, the London Times. But when Conservative Party leaders found it, their faces turned the angry red of rare roast beef. "There come moments in the life of every party when it needs to wash off the last application of humbug and start fresh," said the Times. "Such a moment has come for the Conservative Party." For three straight days, the Times continued to dwell on Tory sins and shortcomings. It was a cruel birching from any quarter. What hurt most was that this one came from an old friend.

Predictably, the Times's series blew up a lively political storm. "The papers are all against us," cried an anguished Tory Cabinet minister. Then he sputtered-"The Times is the worst of them all. That damned fellow Haley can't wait until he has put a Labor government in Commons." That damned fellow has no such aim.

But Sir William John Haley, 62, ninth editor of the Times and a loyal Tory to boot, is determined to show that his paper is harnessed to no party. He is even more determined to restore the Times's reputation as the "Thunderer." In the process, he has succeeded in making the Times the most controversial and talked-about paper in Britain today.

Privy to Everything. The Times's title of Thunderer was won in the last century when it was the biggest and most influential daily in the world. "I don't know of anything which has more power, except perhaps the Mississippi," said Abraham Lincoln to a Times correspondent sent over to report the Civil War. Disraeli was only half joking when he said that there were two British ambassadors in every foreign capital, one appointed by the Queen and one appointed by the Times. Its newsgathering apparatus seemed to be privy to everything. On Jan. 17, 1856, for example, the British government had to read the Times to discover that Russia had accepted the peace proposals ending the Crimean War.

A more urgent century, however, seemed to have beached the paper, like Britain itself, in the glorious past. Once the Times commanded more readers than all other national dailies combined; today it is the least of them, with 254,000 circulation: 2% of total newspaper readership and less than 5% of the circulation of that popular giant, the Daily Mirror (4,647,000).

In an era of hot copy and banner headlines, the Times even looks and sounds like an anachronism. Its patient reader must plod through the frontpage classified ads, the sporting section, the Appointments and Situations columns, the parliamentary reports and the dry-as-dust Law Reports before reaching the Bill Page, which is the Times's Victorian name for the news.

Once arrived, the reader is not likely to be surfeited. Even Sir William confesses that the Times is guilty of "blatant omissions," as when, a few years ago, it reported the resignation of the Spanish Ambassador to Britain without mentioning the adultery case that caused it.

No Man's Pocket. When Sir William became editor twelve years ago, the Times's image stood in sore need of burnishing. Competitors derided the paper as the "Whimperer." Its circulation had fallen to 230,000 and was to fall even farther. Sir William himself seemed an improbable choice as savior: a shy, austere man who, after twelve years as director of the British Broadcasting Corp., was irreverently remembered as "the man with two glass eyes."

Behind the Times lay the most ignoble chapters in its 179-year history. Under Editor John Thadeus Delane (1841-77), Prime Ministers had good reason to feel they had the Times tucked into their pockets. When World War II loomed, the Times obediently joined Whitehall's chorus of appeasement. "I did my utmost," said Editor Geoffrey Dawson of Hitler and his crew, "to keep out of the paper anything that might hurt their susceptibilities."

Sir William has devoted himself to producing a paper that swears allegiance to nothing but the truth, and to Britain. Last summer's Profumo scandal was reported so explicitly in the Times in the Law Reports, where the racy testimony ran verbatim--that Daily Mirror Tycoon Cecil King was moved to envy: "The Times gets away with legal pornography." But the Times also found a moral lesson that the rest of Fleet Street missed: "Eleven years of Conservative rule have brought the nation spiritually to a low ebb."

Total Anonymity. Even though the Times has moved into a $13.5 million new plant, its 300 editorial staffers still work in a cathedral atmosphere where everyone whispers, coats stay on, the copy glides overhead in miniature tram-cars and the library is called the Intelligence Room. Times newsmen also work in anonymity. On the ground that only the Times, and none of its members, should make thunder, the paper has never used a byline.

The Times also remains a newspaper thoroughly conscious of its stature and firmly rooted in Britain's Establishment: the government, the nobility, the ruling class. A recent survey showed that 70% of the names in Who's Who read the Times, as against only 43% for the second-ranking Daily Telegraph. "The Times is a record," said Sir William in a recent policy statement. "It has a duty not only to its readers of today but to those a century hence." And under Sir William, to resume thundering.

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