[page 29]
William
The Power Of News - The History Of Reuters (1849-1989)
By Donald Read
Published by Oxford University Press, 1994, £9-99
Reviewed by Colin Fox
F YOU HAVE ever skimmec
through the international news
pages of your morning paper
you will have no doubt seen arti-
cles signed simply Reuters'. But
who are Reuters and why have
they become so successful? Donald
Read's The Power Of News tries to
explain.
The international news agency
Reuters is one of perhaps only
three British successes in world
media terms, alongside The Econo-
mist and The Financial Times.
The 1980's boom in communica-
tions technology made them an
ever-present fixture in the finance
houses of Europe. The company in-
vested heavily in real-time technology and its fortunes lept remarkably. In 1980 pre-tax profits were £3.9m; in 1989 £283m. Employment grew fourfold.
Julius Reuter, the company's founder, was born in Germany in 1816. He began his service by sending messages to subscribers via carrier pigeon, linking the two ends of the existing telegraph services between Brussels and Germany. He literally found a gap in the market for news.
In June 1851 he moved to London to follow the European telegraph system which was extended across the channel. This opened up the massive British empire and its links with Africa, India and the Far East. This was the making of him.
Reuter emerged as E
28 • Book Reviews
Reuters Pacific newsdesk, 1952.
leading news gatherer at the dawn
of a new era in communications.
The company catered for personal
messages as well as news, but it's
main income came chiefly from the business world through the com-
munication of information on stocks, shares and markets.
Queen Victoria was paying nearly £20 for a six-month supply of Reuter telegrams. In 1871 Victoria's brother in law, Duke Ernst II, had made Julius Reuter, Baron de Reuter of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The title was awarded in recognition of Rueter's services to the public.
"This was entirely proper, but in a sense Reuter bought his title. It cost Reuter £300 to obtain the necessary landed qualification in Coburg". Here Read exposes, albeit naively, the relationship between the emerging industrialist classes and the aristocracy.
Reuter felt the company would thrive if it built up a reputation for impartiality and accuracy as well as speed. The Power of News
gives this reputation a good airing
and uses many famous examples
of Reuter scoop's. These are inter-
esting, but I must say I enjoyed
far more the occasions when they
got it wrong.
No-one would expect an organisation's 150-year history to be without a few blemishes and Reuters certainly got in a spot or two in its time. Consider the news it sent on the sinking of the Titanic: "The Titanic sank at 2.20 this morning. No lives were lost". Or the Battle of the Somme: "At about half past seven this morning a vigorous attack was launched by the British Army... British troops have already occupied the German front line.
"Many prisoners have fallen into our hands and as far as can be ascertained our casualties have not been heavy. So far the day is going well for Great Britain and France".
But my
e telegr
stomers
favourite gaff aphic message upon the out
has to
sent break
be to
[page 30]
AMERICA.
ASSASSINATI
10
PRESIDENT LINCOLN.)
in the latest nications a techniques.
Throughout its history the company was determined to keep to the fore in developing these innovations. Whether that meant sending a small boat out to meet the incoming packet ships from America or cultivating links with eminent politicians, they assiduously sought each new story.
Real-time links to the world stock exchanges may as yet be beyond Militant's needs, but they have become essential to finance houses throughout the world as 'Black Wednesday' and other crashes testify. From a virtual monoploy in this service Reuters stole a march on competitors and dramatically turned round it's historically precarious finances.
The most captivating features of the book are those highlighting the cosy relationship between Reuters and her majesty's government. Generous financial state support, dual employment of British intelligence agents as Reuters' foreign correspondents and secret reports written exclusively for the British government form less honourable parts of the Reuters history.
technologi nd news
cal
ga
commuthering
Reuter's
reporters led
up as
agents
Bri
for tish
intelligence
Lea
act
historian of the English revolution of 1640-1660. This is an important understanding for historians - after all, where do they get much of their information from?
Some historians have claimed that there was little discontent in England before the revolution because the official records don't show any strong opposition Hill in
head of Reuters could always rely on being accommodated at British diplomatic residences abroad and overlook as a temporary commercial deal the £276,000 the government gave Reuters in 1866 as compensation for lost trade, the case for cronyism becomes difficult for Reuters to dismiss. Especially considering that the Foreign Office owned 500 of the 999 shares which Reuters issued in the early 1900s, and held a directorship with a veto.
Mure seriously than all this even is the accusation, backed up frequently in Read's book, that Reuter's reporters doubled up as agents for British intelligence. The case of Jimmy Cox, chief Reuters correspondent in Tokyo in 1941, is particularly devastating to a reputation for impartiality. "Japanese secret police believed him (Cox) to be an intelligence gatherer.
"Reuters did not reveal that at this very period the salaries of several of its correspondents in the Far East were being supplemented by payments from the Foreign office". It certainly makes you wonder whether the roles played by the Brian Hanarahans and Kate Adies of this world are all that they seem.
The Power of News is a well researched book. It is sometimes a little bit gushing about the company's performance over the years, perhaps too often in awe of the history and achievements.
Nonetheless it gives a valuable insight into the history of one of its most successful modern companies, one certainly at the cutting edge of mass communications and one which could not have got where it is today without the assistance of the British government.
contrast points to the need to beyond the official records and other sources, such as private ries, literature and songs.
Official records are written by the ruling class. They are not objective records but are aimed to persuade or even hide the truth. As the poet William Blake put it, "only scoundrel believes public
ook use lia-
iews
29
ATTEMPT ON MR. SEW DEATH OF HIS ARRIVAL, OP THE NOVA
(BRUTER'S TELZORAMR.)
Precident Lincola was ebot by so semin last | An ettempt tree likewise made to usaminata lir.,
At 1.30 thin morning Mr. Stanton reportod as follows:- 9.30, Prmideol Lincoln, *na etting in a privata box at Ford's Theatre
-in who ruddenly
World War One: "Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was assassinated at Sarajevo on June 28".
The first message communicated to Reuters reported tersely "Sarajevo Ferdinand Deste assassine". That was all. The sub-editor who took down the message was awaiting the result of the Paris Grand Prix horse race. He took this to be it and prepared the story! "The result of the Grand Prix at Paris this afternoon was 1: Sarajevo 2: Ferdinand 3: Assassine". Within a month Europe was slipping into war. Oops!
What Reuters did get right however was its ability to foresee the way mass communications were developing. The concept of real-time communications boggles my imagination, both technically in the transmission of information from say Rwanda or Bosnia to say the Rhondha or Bognor, and in the immense profits to be made from the same. Reuters saw the way the wind was blowing so to speak and invested heavily in the 1980s
of Change
Novelty
By Christopher Hill blished by Bookmarks, 1993,
£10-95 eviewed by Bill Hopwood
ALL their pher
GOVERNMENTS peoples," states
Hill well
LIE
Christ know
[page 31]
To him pu del records to be true".
This is much the case today as 300 years ago.
Imagine writing a history of the present Tory government based on their economical with the truth' statements. Just consider the Tories' record on arms sales to Iraq, aid to Malaysia, or the gerrymandering of Westminister council? How then, in an era of censorship, such as England before 1640, can official documents be considered the only valid sources? If the rulers feel the need to impose censorship surely there must discontent and other points of view to be suppressed. Milton, the great poet who supported the revolution, wrote: "If it come to prohibiting there is not aught more likely to be prohibited than truth itself". He was aware of the danger of censorship as at the end of revolution he was lucky to escape being hanged.
Hill also considers how criticism is often veiled in religious or historic comparisons. In recent times Tory critics of Thatcher talked of a 'One Nation' Conservative Party in a politely disguised her brutal pro-capitalist policies. Dissidents often criticise a policy indirectly by criticising the advisors or its presentation. century much thought was expressed in religious terms. Consequently, some historians claim that the revolution 30 • Book Reviews Bis him y COLD solely about religion. Hill however shows that the religious arguments were based on social tensions. As Cromwell, the leader of the revostated, "religion was the thing first contested for". One example of political views expressed in religious form are the lines from the peasants rebellion of 1381, led by early socialists John Ball and Wat Tyler: "When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was the gentleman?"
creation Adam and Eve worked at farming (delve) and spinning (span) and there was no ruling why should there be one now, is the argument.
Hill's book also defends the revolution and its long-term historical impact. The popular image is of a conflict between happy, laughing Cavaliers in support of the King and the miserable, dull Puritans. Hill shows within the revolutionary movement there was diversity of views and social movements.
There were the early socialists such as Winstanley who attacked the privileges of property, arguing that there could equality, democracy and when wealth.
and land was evenly distributed. He argued for economic equality, saying "in the beginning of time the great Creator Reason made the earth to be a common treasury". It is interest- Winstanley talks reason, not God as the creator. There Were many religious trends in the revolution, including powerful movements against the established church and clergy. The revolution also generated early arguments for women's rights. Winstanley said: "Not one word was spoken in the beginning, that one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the reason is this, every man, male and female, is a perfect creature of himself". In a religious group called the Ranters women had much equality. Milton argued for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. The parliament of 1653 established civil marriage. The literature of the revolution had a worldwide impact.
The literature of the revolution had a worldwide impact. The most published book in 19th century Russia was Milton's Paradise Lost, and for many years the world's best seller after the bible was Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, who spent a third of his life in jail for refusing to stop preaching. An interesting point in book is on the word revolution. Some historians argue that as the word in its modern usage didn't exist then how could there be a revolution? One Professor Pocock "men cannot do what they have no means of saying they have done". Hill makes point that things exist before they The book then is a defence the importance of the revolution. It uses a method of history based a wide-ranging analysis of society and its development. He argues against a recent popular trend of historians who claim history is a of accidents. One such cent claim was that the French revolution was caused by erupting volcanoes. Hill shows the growing tensions in society including the
[page 32]
lovely phrase of an ordinary Essex man of the time:
"By not a turd neither for the King nor his laws". A truer view of Essex man than the recent Tory hype. England was changed forever by the revolution.
Hill's book, alongside his earlier books - The English Revolution, Englishmen and The World Turned Upside Down : help to answer the Witness Against the Beast: Blake and the Moral Law By EP Thompson Published by Cambridge University Press, 1993, £17-95 Reviewed by Victor Paananen IP THOMPSON, THE SOknown for The Making of the English i Working Class, acknowledged two sources of inspiration for his own work ('my own pan- Karl Marx Thompson finished Witness Against the Beast, opposition to the morality, science and social values of his age, the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Thompson places Blake's protests opinions that had been voiced by the Ranters and other sects in the English revolution of 1640-1660 and were still heard from dissenting groups in Blake's own time. The Marxist historian AL Morton was the between Blake's ideas and language and those "The Ranters", Morthe Ranters.
left-wing of the sects which came into prominence during the English revolution, both question of why England was the first capitalist country. As well as God, I care economic change there were found changes in society. Many of the ideas that shaped the modern world were influenced by the Eng lish science of Newton and Boyle, the politics of Hobbes, Locke and the 1640, God's early socialists, or the literature of Milton and Bunyan.
and politically... The Ranters, they alone at this date, merged elements of the population, the slum dwellers of London and Ranters, p70).
best emphasised by other Christian to Morton, in his objections to his aspiration for demonstrate as 'all things common'
Thompson theologically writings of the Muggletonians, hands what will revolution, whether in the sent to act.
and to the most wretched and subother cities". (The World of the the Ranters believed God to be literally in every human being, they advocated the radical equality of all people, rejected the to adhere to the moral law denounced the rich while calling for ownership in com- 1649, for about year, the Ranters appear, according mass following, especially among the London poor". William Blake, a Londoner born in Soho in 1757, more than 100 years after the high point of Ranter activity, seems to echo the Ranters in his assertions of the divinity in every individual, the conventional morality of his age, and in a society based principle defined by Blake acknowledges Morton's pioneering research but also finds a significant degree of correspondance in content and language between Blake's work and the The English revolutionaries believed in action. One said, "I am not in the mind we should put our and wait in our pockets come".
changed They history. For Marxists, history helps us to understand the preand shape the future. By understanding we are better able Christian tendency made up of admirers of the preacher and Ludowick writer Muggleton, that originated around 1652 immediately afthe period of ter Ranter successes.
Muggletonian doctrines were similar to Ranter doctrines and influenced by them.
Thompson offers some evidence that Blake's mother may have been a member of the Muggletonians. Although not himself a Christian, Thompson, feeling the influence of both Blake and Marx, had from the time that he started to do research on the Mug. gletonians, been amused to call himself a 'Muggletonian Marxist'. Blake's religious vocabulary embodied the opposition of ordinary people to the ruling powers of the age.
The context provided by Morton and Thompson greatly assists the reader of Blake who moves at all beyond the usual anthology pieces and enters the bewildering maze of myth, radical politics and visionary Christianity that Blake creates in Book Reviews • 31
[page 33]
such major works as Jerusalem. Thompson convincingly shows that Blake's religious vocabulary less eccentric than we might think: it was in fact a language that emthe opposition people to the ruling powers of the "It struck very precisely at criticulture, the 'common sense' of the ruling groups, which today can be seen to be intellectually unsound and sometimes to be no more than ideological apologetics, writes (p110).
taught in childhood to place critical distance between himself and the rich and great", Thompson explains, and Blake absorbed from the "pockets of radical dissent among the trades... a stubborn lack of deference, both social and intellectual" (pp111- 112). Thompson's expert knowledge of the vocabulary and attitudes of the powerful new readings even of Blake's best-known works. Blake's London Thompson shows to be "an indictment of the acquisitive ethic, endorsed by the institutions of the which divides man and "brings him into mental and moral bondage" (p191). Thompson's book is not meant to provide everything that a beginning reader of Blake's works would need. Blake's self-generated mythic system, one of the vehicles for both his political and religious insights, is not explained, so standard works like Northrop Fearful Symmetry remain necessary. The book does however in its demonstration Blake's emergence of growing opposition to the new commercial and industrial civilisaof England communicates Thompson's passionate advocacy of Blake ancestor of all militant protest against this economy and culture. There is however a further step that Thompson has not taken that would have allowed him to more of the "Marxist' in the Muggletonian'. In his opposition to what he called 'natural religion', Blake objected to the efforts of his understand the external world rather than to change it, acknowledges Blake's Marx-like emphasis on 'ac- 32 • Book Reviews than contemplation.
that Blake calls humanity to perform is the physical as well as cultural transformation of a recognisable modern London into 'Jerusalem'. Blake's religious vocabulary - a voice of protest in his own age, as Thompson shows - is also able to carry Blake's attempt both to redefine the human relationship to nature and to insist the centrality of labour: such an enterprise clearly points toward the achievement of Marx. Yet, despite Blake's understanding of the world in terms of dynamic "contraries', Thompson unwilling to accept Blake premature practitioner of Marxist dialectic" (p226). For the Marxist Thompson to come so close to a recognition of Blake and Marx as co-workers, and then back-off, must, I think, be a disappointment to the reader familiar with Blake and Marx. But Thompson has nonetheless done us that Blake's work is like Marx's, "a plank in the floor upon which the future must walk" Deep within his demanding epic Blake offers count of the human consequences of the industrial revolution: And all the Arts of Life they chang'd into the Arts of Death in The hour-glass contemn'd cause its simple workmanship Was like the workmanship of the plowman, and the water wheel That raises water into cisterns, broken and burned with fire Because its workmanship was like the workmanship of the And, in their stead, intricate wheels invented, wheel without wheel, To perplex youth in their outgoings and to bind to labours in Albion Of day and night the myriads of eternity: that they may grind And polish brass and iron hour after hour, laborious task, Kept ignorant of its use: that they might spend the days of wis- In sorrowful drudgery to obtain a scant pittance of bread, In ignorance to view a small portion and think that All, And call it Demonstration, blind to all the simple rules of life. (Jerusalem, Chapter three, Plate In Blake's objection to Demonstration' is heard his objection to the categories of bourgeois, dialectical thought. His recognition that the industrial worker is permitted knowledge of only a narrow of the production of the commodity certainly foreshadows the explanations by Marx Engels of the effects of the division of labour with the resulting aliena- London, a living symbol for the triumph of capital, has, in Blake's Ranter or Muggletonian language, been turned into Babylon'. But, in lines that are among the most widely known in speaking world, Blake announces his own total commitment to the labour that will transform London into 'Jerusalem', and he asks us to join in the work:
I shall not cease from mental Nor shall my sword sleep in my Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant Socialists could do worse than to accept EP Thompson's recommendation of both Blake and Marx as interpreters and prophets: both from their London perspectives the damage to humanity that capitalism was wreaking and both called upon us not simply to understand this system but to change Subscription rates Subscribe to the Militant International Review for £7-50 for six issues, UK/Ireland, or £9 overseas. Write to us with your name and address and a cheque or postal order made payable to World Socialist_Books at 3/13 Hepscott Road, London E9 5HB.
[page 34]
Available from World Socialist Books A World In Crisis. In December 1993, representatives from Militant Labour met with delegates from Marxist organisations throughout the world in a conference organised by the Committee for a Workers' International. Twenty-five countries were represented, with a further six Now, the conclusions of the conference have been published in a 134-page book. With sections on world relations following the collapse of Stalinism; the former colonial world; racism, fascism and the prospects for reaction; the traditional workers' parties; and the world economy; this book is a The book costs £4.50; £3 to Militant Labour members. To get your copy, send off now, adding 50p per copy for post and packing (orders of 5 or more post free), to World Socialist Books, 3/13 A Marxist Analysis For unable to attend.
Hepscott Road, London, E9 5HB. A -WORLD IN CRISIS The 1990s