Hugh Cudlipp, Baron Cudlipp

Hubert Kinsman "Hugh" Cudlipp, Baron Cudlipp (born August 28, 1913 in Cardiff , † May 17, 1998 in Chichester , West Sussex ) was a British journalist and publishing manager and life peer .

Life

Family and early years

Hubert Kinsman Cudlipp was the third of four children and the youngest of the three sons of William Christopher Cudlipp, a grocery salesman, and his wife, Bessie Amelia, née Kinsman. Just like him, the two brothers later became editors-in-chief of London newspapers, Percy Cudlipp of the Evening Standard and the Daily Herald and Reginald Cudlipp of the News of the World . Allegedly, the clever and very strong-willed mother who inspired the sons' ambition had already chosen their first names so that they would go well with a title of nobility. However, the youngest son took the first name Hugh while he was still at school, because it sounded better to him than Hubert.

The three brothers attended Gladstone Elementary School and Howard Gardens Secondary School in Cardiff. Like Percy and Reginald before him, Hugh dropped out of school early (at fourteen) to begin an apprenticeship with a newspaper. He followed Reginald to the Penarth News , a weekly newspaper that appeared in the tranquil town of Penarth a few miles southwest of Cardiff. The two formed the entire editorial team - practically without getting paid. The newspaper died in Hugh's first year there. He then managed to get a job as a reporter for the second largest evening newspaper Cardiff, but after a few months this was taken over by the competition and he found himself again without employment. After this experience he decided to seek his fortune as a journalist outside of Wales and at the age of fifteen he moved to Manchester , at that time the main newspaper location in the United Kingdom after London. There he worked for four years for the Manchester Evening Chronicle , a newspaper of the Welsh publisher Gomer Berry, 1st Viscount Kemsley , for which his eldest brother Percy had also written a few years earlier, while Reginald stayed in Cardiff until 1938. As a local reporter in Blackpool and as an editorial secretary, Hugh learned about different aspects of newspaper making. At the age of 19 he took the decisive step in his career in 1932 and sought his fortune in Fleet Street in London, where he got a job as arts editor for the Sunday Chronicle , another of Lord Kemsley's newspapers.

Promotion to the Daily Mirror publishing house

Early successes and military service (1935–1947)

Encouraged by Percy - at that time already editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard - Cudlipp responded to a newspaper advertisement in 1935, in which a "bright-headed deputy arts editor with ideas, ready to take over the command" was wanted, without naming the newspaper in question. When he learned that the position was advertised by the ailing mass newspaper Daily Mirror , Cudlipp almost withdrew his application. However, he could not negotiate a better salary at the Sunday Chronicle and so he moved to the Daily Mirror in August 1935 . There, 22-year-old Cudlipp was promoted from deputy to senior culture editor within six months.

In 1937 he was poached by Cecil Harmsworth King , the newly appointed editorial director of the Sunday Pictorial , the better-off sister paper of the Daily Mirror , which was located in the same building. Cudlipp became editor-in-chief of the Sunday Pictorial . This had two important consequences that were to determine the progress of his career: On the one hand, a close professional partnership developed with King, which would last for over thirty years, although both were of extremely different natures - Cudlipp was a humorous and communicative, but academically illiterate practitioner , who knew how to convince people in personal contact, the 13 years older King was a taciturn and human aloof intellectual who had enjoyed an excellent university education, saw himself primarily as a strategic thinker and businessman and whose self-confidence arose not least from the fact that he The nephew of the two publishers Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere , the founders of the Daily Mirror . On the other hand, both made the Daily Mirror's editorial director Harry Guy Bartholomew, angry about the change , a permanent enemy. Cudlipp and King transformed the Sunday Pictorial into a modern, mass-produced paper that was based on American models with the use of large-format images and contemporary typography and at the same time satisfied intellectual demands. In the years that followed, the Sunday Pictorial took a stance against Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain 's policies of appeasement , part of a realignment of the Mirror publishing house in which the previously conservative stance gave way to support for the Labor Party . The articles attacking Chamberlain were written by Cudlipp himself, albeit under the pseudonym Charles Wilberforce.

As the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, after the outbreak of World War II , Cudlipp was actually considered “indispensable” on the home front ; however, he sought to join the British Army and contribute to the UK's war effort. After the fact that he was of military age - he was only 27 at the time - not serving in the army, even in the House of Commons , he joined the Royal Sussex Regiment as a volunteer in December 1940 . Soon after, he was sent to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst . His first war effort took place in North Africa , where he arrived shortly before the second battle of El Alamein . From 1943 to 1946 he headed the British Army's newspaper unit for the entire Mediterranean region and in this role founded the Union Jack , the newspaper of the British armed forces, the title being intended as a reference to the sister paper The Stars and Stripes of the US armed forces. Cudlipp received the OBE in 1945 and experienced his demobilization in the following year with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel .

Close partnership with King (1946–1968)

Cudlipp returned to his post as editor-in-chief of the Sunday Pictorial , but had to leave it in 1949 under the influence of his old opponent Bartholomew (King had previously been delegated by the publisher to Nigeria and was unable to assist him in the dispute) and switched to the Sunday Express as editor-in-chief , the Sunday edition of the Daily Express , and thus to another publisher. After King's return to London and his rise to chairman of the Mirror group, the situation turned and Bartholomew had to leave, while Cudlipp returned, now as the editorial director of both the Sunday Pictorial and the Daily Mirror .

Under the close partnership of Cudlipp and King, the newspaper publisher flourished over the next 17 years and the Daily Mirror , the largest-circulation daily newspaper in Great Britain since the late 1940s, was able to further expand its supremacy. King concentrated on business issues and brought two other publishers, the Amalgamated Press (1958) and the Odhams Press (1962), under the control of the Mirror Group (renamed International Publishing Corporation / IPC in 1963 ), while Cudlipp did the actual newspaper production controlled. In 1953 Reginald Cudlipp took the position of editor-in-chief at the News of the World and the three Cudlipps celebrated the situation, which is unique in British newspaper history, with three brothers running the editorial offices of national newspapers at the same time, with a banquet. Percy lost his position as editor-in-chief of the dwindling Daily Herald, however, just ten days later.

In the general election of 1955 , the Daily Mirror only half-heartedly supported the Labor Party, as Cudlipp was aware that the party had no chance of seizing power. In the following year there was a dispute over the Suez crisis between Cudlipp and King. While King, with a view to the patriotic orientation of the British working class, believed that its own newspapers should support Prime Minister Anthony Eden's tough course , Cudlipp prevailed with the argument that the Daily Mirror was using such a line to establish its relationship with the Labor Party and its reputation with progressive political forces at risk. Before the general election in 1959 , Cudlipp bet on a Labor victory and the Daily Mirror gave the party full support. However, the Tories were able to hold their positions while the Labor Party suffered losses. Cudlipp, who was convinced that he had misinterpreted the mood of the population, was so disappointed that he announced the Daily Mirror "Vacation from politics" and the newspaper cut back its political profile for a while. Relations with Labor deteriorated in the following years, as Cudlipp supported Harold Macmillan's government as it moved closer to the European Communities , while the Labor Party, under the leadership of Hugh Gaitskell , spoke out against UK membership. After the death of Gaitskell in 1963 and the subsequent change of course of the party under Harold Wilson , the disagreements were put aside and in the 1964 elections the Daily Mirror again supported the Labor Party as much as it could - this time with success.

With the purchase of the Odhams Group, the Daily Herald , which was still the highest-circulation daily newspaper in the world in the early 1930s, came under the control of the IPC. The now flagging paper was discontinued in 1964 and the IPC used the election campaign that year to launch a replacement with The Sun. The newspaper was unsuccessful, which was one of the few professional failures of Cudlipp and kept him busy for a long time. Concerned that the Sun might compete with the Daily Mirror , he had opted for the traditional large format rather than the tabloid format that would allow the newspaper to prosper in later years.

In the years after the Wilson administration came to power, Cecil King's behavior became increasingly unpredictable, which was not without influence on Cudlipp's work. King had relied on being a powerful influence on Wilson and receiving a high government post and hereditary title in gratitude for the IPC newspapers' support for Labour in the 1964 election. When these hopes were dashed (Wilson only offered King the post of Secretary of State in the Department of Commerce and a life peerage, both of which King rejected) and the government's economic policy did not achieve the expected results, King rallied dissatisfied workers from the Labor Party and worked, after poor Labor results in local elections, and ultimately even towards the overthrow of Wilson. At a meeting in the private house of Earl Mountbatten , who was chief of the British General Staff until 1965 , King tried in vain on May 8, 1968 to persuade him to stand ready for the post of head of an emergency government, since he firmly expected the military to overthrow Wilson . Cudlipp, like Mountbatten and Solly Zuckerman , another participant in the meeting, shocked by the insanity of the proposal, then persuaded King, instead of covertly working towards a coup , to openly attack the Wilson administration through the Daily Mirror - without the implication of high treason , apparently in the expectation that this would lead to the replacement of Kings. This calculation worked. King's editorial "Enough Is Enough" of May 10, 1968, led within three weeks to the replacement of Kings by the IPC shareholders and Cudlipp took his post as CEO.

Publishing manager (1968–1973)

The new role was not for Cudlipp, as he saw himself more as a journalist than a businessman. In this regard, King's condescending prognosis that Cudlipp was "a first violin, not a conductor" came true. In 1969, Cudlipp decided to sell the still ailing Sun to the Australian publisher Rupert Murdoch , a decision that he later regretted when the newspaper in the new publisher and with a new format actually rose to compete with the Daily Mirror , which was eventually named in 1978 replaced the British newspaper with the highest circulation. After seeing the first issue of Sun in the new format, Cudlipp predicted that it would end soon. In 1969 he also organized the merger of IPC with Reed International and the new publishing structure, in which IPC played a subordinate role, allowed him to concentrate largely on his strengths as a newspaper maker. He held this position for another four years, but announced as early as 1971 that he would retire when he reached the age of 60. His departure took place at the end of 1973.

For his support of the accession of Britain to the EC, he was in 1973 at the suggestion of Prime Minister Edward Heath in the knighthood raised and in 1974 was followed after Wilson in the 10 Downing Street had returned, he was appointed Life peer as Baron Cudlipp of Aldingbourne in the County of Sussex .

Later years

Hugh Cudlipp spent the later years of his life in Chichester , West Sussex , where he became involved in the city's cultural life and, among other things, co-founded and subsequently headed an annual cultural festival in 1975. He has published two books, the memoir Walking on the Water (1976) and Reflections on the Great Age of Fleet Street under the title The Prerogative of the Harlot (1980).

In the House of Lords, he initially took over the post of Whip of the Labor Party and made occasional speeches in the House of Lords in later years. In 1981 he joined the Social Democratic Party .

He stayed away from the press world for the most part, but was persuaded by the publisher Robert Maxwell to take on an advisory post after Maxwell had taken over the Mirror group in 1984. Given Maxwell's business practices, Cudlipp soon regretted his decision and resigned from the consultancy position after a year.

Hubert Kinsman "Hugh" Cudlipp, Baron Cudlipp died of lung cancer on May 17, 1998 at the age of 84 in his Chichester home .

Private

Hugh Cudlipp was married three times. All three wives also worked in journalism and all marriages were childless.

His first marriage was in 1936 with Edith Elizabeth Gertrude "Bunny" Parnell. The connection quickly broke up, and she died in 1938 giving birth to a child she had not conceived from her husband. Cudlipp remained silent about the relationship in later years.

In 1945 he married Eileen Mary Ashcroft, a former Daily Mirror employee whom he had met before the war began, at a time when she was still married to the film director Alexander Mackendrick . She later worked as a columnist for the Evening Standard . She died in 1962 as a result of drug poisoning at the Cudlipp's home in Strand-on-the-Green, Chiswick, London .

The following year he married Joan Latimer "Jodi" Hyland, editor-in-chief of Woman's Mirror , an offshoot of the Daily Mirror , to whom he was married until his death.

Publications

• Publish and Be Damned! The Astonishing Story of the Daily Mirror . Dakers, London 1953.
• At your Peril. A Mid-Century View of the Exciting Changes of the Press in Britain, and a Press View of the Exciting Changes of Mid-Century . Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1962.
• Walking on Water . The Bodley Head, London 1976, ISBN 0-370-11313-6 .
• The Prerogative of the Harlot. Press Barons and Power . Bodley Head, London 1980, ISBN 0-370-30238-9 .

literature

• Ruth Dudley Edwards: Newspapermen. Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street . Pimlico, London 2004, ISBN 1-84413-420-2 .
• Anthony Howard: Cudlipp, Hubert Kinsman [Hugh], Baron Cudlipp (1913-1998) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, online January 2009. Accessed April 24, 2013.
• Alan Watkins: A Short Walk down Fleet Street. From Beaverbrook to Boycott . Duckworth, London 2000, ISBN 0-7156-2910-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Anthony Howard: Cudlipp, Hubert Kinsman [Hugh], Baron Cudlipp (1913-1998) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, online January 2009. Accessed April 24, 2013.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} G. M. Thomson: Cudlipp, Percival Thomas James [Percy] (1905–1962) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, Online Edition, January 2011. Accessed April 24, 2013.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q} Michael Leapman: Cudlipp, Reginald William (1910–2005) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, online January 2009. Accessed April 24, 2013.
4. ^ ^{A b} Ruth Dudley Edwards: Newspapermen. Hugh Cudlipp, Cecil Harmsworth King and the Glory Days of Fleet Street . Pimlico, London 2004, ISBN 1-84413-420-2 , Chapter 1.
5. ^ In the original: "bright assistant features editor with ideas, able to take charge". Quoted from: Howard: Cudlipp, Hubert Kinsman [Hugh], Baron Cudlipp (1913–1998) . In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography .