I'm going to say something rather shocking: Bill Deedes was a coward. It now emerges that his lordship, as many of us suspected, was outraged by the way in which the Barclay brothers ran the Telegraph group. Yet he waited until his death to reveal his true feelings, thereby failing to offer leadership to a beleaguered staff and allowing the public to believe that he was supportive of the owners.
In a series of critical diary entries, and in a memo passed to his biographer "with instructions for disclosure only after his funeral", Deedes revealed the depth of his hostility to the Barclays. He even spoke of their regime as "a stinking mob". The revelation appears in Stephen Robinson's excellent biography, The Remarkable Lives of Bill Deedes, which will be published in two weeks' time.
We discover that Deedes came "to doubt whether the Telegraph and the Barclays were compatible". He was cast down by the change of culture under the chief executive, Murdoch MacLennan, who had been recruited from the Daily Mail group, heralding the hiring of several former Mail executives. Deedes wrote in his memo:
This was a newspaper they [the Barclays] were ready to pay £660m for, but it was being produced by an unsatisfactory staff. Not a word of encouragement or praise came the way of the journalists who produced this high-value newspaper, though reason suggested they must have had something to do with what the Barclays had paid.
It struck me that what the Barclays saw in the Telegraph was an asset that in the right hands could be turned into a more profitable business... The intention to change the nature of the Telegraph into something more profitable had to be shielded from readers who loved it most for its unprofitable qualities which they saw as a stand against the vulgarity of the red tops.
But this is the part that really shows Deedes's cowardice and, incidentally, his misreading of his own status. By refusing to speak out he bolstered nervous Telegraph readers (and an even more nervous staff) and therefore knew he was helping the Barclays, despite distrusting them:
I was called on to play a minor role, which I accepted. As a somewhat shabby Daily Telegraph mascot with an excessive number of years with the newspaper, I offered a certain reassurance to readers in doubt about the Telegraph's future intentions.
On the face of it, it was ridiculous to keep a 92-year-old man employed... But he served as part of the cover plan.
Exactly. That was the point of the Telegraph management keeping him on board. As Robinson records, MacLennan was desperate to keep Deedes on side, realising that any hostile public statement by the paper's beloved iconic former editor might lead to a stampede by readers. Instead, Deedes preferred to be "loyal". But loyal to whom? Loyal to himself through his continued employment?
Though he confided his real thoughts to friends he refused to go public, despite being offered a first-class opportunity by the British Journalism Review's editor, Bill Hagerty, who interviewed him as rumours emerged of his genuine feelings.
Hagerty did his level best to get Deedes to say what he felt. He refused to say anything even mildly critical. No wonder Hagerty wrote of Deedes's "admirable and largely successful display of stonewalling". The "loyal" Deedes preferred to strike out from beyond the grave instead.
Unsurprisingly, none of the Robinson chapter entitled "A stinking mob" appeared in the Daily Telegraph's serialisation of his book, a point noted by Richard Ingrams in his Independent column.
So the end result is that Deedes, by keeping his counsel, immeasurably helped the Barclays. His silence ensured that there was no rallying point for staff and readers who opposed the change of culture. Was that not cowardice?
