The Guardian

By Alan Travis

August 2, 2005

The wartime home secretary and grandfather of Peter Mandelson, Herbert Morrison, was so incensed by the Daily Mirror's constant criticism of the war effort that he not only threatened to ban the paper but also ordered the security services to investigate if its owners were closet communists.

Police Special Branch files released at the National Archives yesterday show that the threat to suppress the Daily Mirror in March 1942 was sparked by its publication of the most famous British newspaper cartoon of the second world war.

The cartoon by Donald Zec featured a torpedoed merchant seaman clinging to raft with the caption "The price of petrol has been increased by one penny - Official" and was accompanied by an editorial headed Weed Them Out, which attacked the "brass-buttoned boneheads" of the British army high command. The leader also accused those who "aspired to mislead others in war" of being Colonel Blimps who were "socially prejudiced, arrogant and fussy".

Morrison was under pressure from Winston Churchill to close the paper because of its repeated criticism of a lack of vigour in the prosecution of the war.

The Labour home secretary summoned Mirror chiefs to the Home Office and told them he could not tolerate their "sneering attacks, mischievous misrepresentations and the sort of thing inspired by a desire for reckless sensation".

In terms not unfamiliar to present day journalists who have been dressed down by his grandson, he said they were "pursuing a line of denunciation and vituperation". The Mirror's campaign encouraged defeatism and induced people to believe that "if everybody was incompetent and all was muddle, it was useless to attempt to carry on the war".

Morrison said that if the Mirror persisted with that line he would have to close it without warning, under emergency regulation 2D, like the communist Daily Worker.

The threat to ban the Mirror triggered an outcry across Fleet Street and a Commons debate but behind the scenes Morrison had initiated a Special Branch investigation into any communist links of the Mirror's owners and an inquiry into Zec's background. The security services combed through the Mirror's shareholders and concentrated their inquiries on Cecil King, a director and future chairman. King was a nephew of Lord Rothermere, the original owner, and Special Branch had a hard time finding any dirt.

He lived in isolated splendour near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, and had a house in Aberdeenshire.

Despite living for nine years in Henley he was not well known in local society and had "never been on intimate terms with any of the county families".

He had travelled back from Russia to London in 1932 on a Soviet ship, the Sibier. The worst officers could find was that he chaired a well-attended meeting at Henley town hall in February 1942.

Charlotte Haldane, wife of the eminent scientist and communist sympathiser Professor JBS Haldane, had spoken on Russia's contribution to the postwar world. King made a speech praising the Soviet war effort.

The Special Branch inspector said he had sounded out several reliable contacts in the newspaper world, including a sub-editor on the Mirror, but nothing suggested that King was directly connected with the communist party. Morrison was frustrated by the lack of evidence but the Special Branch file reveals that editorial policy at the Mirror had "drastically changed".

"Until then it had been determined exclusively by the editorial staff conference of editor, subs and feature writers but now Guy Bartholomew, the editorial director, exercised strict control over the paper's make-up and literally every item has to be approved by him or his deputy," it reported.

Although no communist moles were found at the Mirror, one other explanation is offered by the file for the source of Morrison's ire.

It shows that the security services later established that King was very close to Sir Stafford Cripps, a leftwing Labour cabinet rival who Morrison hated. Not so different from today's Labour party.