The last episode of this narrative introduced Douglas Gageby (born 1918) a Protestant from Belfast,graduate of Trinity College Dublin, a former Officer in the Irish Army where he specialised in Intelligence, and Editor of The Irish Times and champion of Civil Rights. Civil Rights, even for those who differed from him in religion and/or politics. He never used his military rank once he returned to civilian life.
The episode ended with a 1969 letter from the Andrew British Ambassador in Dublin writing to his bosses in London of an approach by one of Gageby’s colleagues, Major Thomas McDowell, who expressed alarm at the editorial line taken by Gageby. Mc Dowell wanted guidance on how to move the paper’s policies to serve British Government interests. Instead of telling the man to go boil his head, the Ambassador, a hard-headed, experienced operator, set about exploring with his London bosses how to exploit this bizarre development.
Major Thomas MacDowell (born 1923) had a similar background to Douglas Gageby’s. Brought up in Belfast and educated there. like Gageby he joined an Army in 1942, but it was the British Army. He stayed there for twelve years and got a Law Degree from QUB andand was was called to the Bar whilst still in the service, but never practised law. Like Gageby he was from the lower middle class, but unlike Gageby posed as a Toff. In his thirties wore three piece suits and a fob-watch and affected a monocle. His mother was from the South and he was involved in some large Protestant-owned businesses in Dublin. He retained links with the British Army through the Judge Advocates Department which handled Courts Martial. Cecil King, proprietor of THE DAILY MIRROR , lunched with McDowell on 23 January 1972 (one week before Derry’s Bloody Sunday) and in his diary tells us that McDowell had been in MI 5.
(King was himself a conspirator who later hope to overthrow Harold Wilson and establish an extra-Parliamentary Government.)
I’ve never met anyone wearing a monocle. In films I’ve seen the likes of Terry Thomas playing comedy spivs. Could McDowell have adopted a pose as a Chinless Wonder or a Hooray Henry, whom born Britons deride as fools, to conceal his abilities, or was it calculated to impress West Britons in Dublin? You may imagine a comic figure from the pen of Evelyn Waugh or Tom Sharpe, but the Monocled Major could not be dismissed as a joke or a joker.
He also had a picture of Queen Victoria in pride of place in his Irish Times office.
Though he had very few shares in the IRISH TIMES by 1974 he became its Dictator For Life. He established the IRISH TIMES TRUST LIMITED or perhaps had it established for him, by Lord Goodman, a legal “fixer” for Harold Wilson. Article 37.1 of its Articles of Associaton states –
“Notwithstanding anything to the contrary contained in Articles 36 or 38 to 48 or elsewhere in these Articles of Association, Thomas Bleakley McDowell shall be Governor for Life.”
Article 36, referred to, prohibited any member of the Trust from being an employee of the Irish TImes, but McDowell was an employee of the paper and its Chief Executive.
Another Clause of the Articles of Association allowed employees of the paper to be t members of the Trust but only with the approval of McDowell.
It seems McDowell appointed the original members of the Trust in 1974. He was its Supreme Governor for 27 years, until his death in 2001, when the Sunday Times reported – ” The Major has always tried to preserve its British essence.”
Since its inception in 1974 the IRISH TIMES TRUST LIMITED has been a secret society whose members annually renew their oaths of secrecy.
The Articles of Association of The Irish Times Limited (Art 80) state -“The editorial policy to be followed by The Irish Times shall be as decided by the Board of Directors from time.”
Conor Brady, Editor when Jack Lane discovered and publicised the “white nigger” letter, in his memoirs wrote – “One of my duties under my contract was to advise the chairman when anything was due to appear in the newspaper that concerned the newspaper itself or the company.”
In December 1999, under the 30 year rule, the British Government released (some) papers from 1969 to the Public Records Office.Irish journalists, including from the IRISH TIMES, the IRISH INDEPENDENT and the IRISH EXAMINER appear to have missed the “white nigger” letter from the British Ambassador,even though its author wrote that he was destroying his copy. You’d think that that would have alerted them to its news value, even if the main text wasn’t sensational. Imagine, for instance, the Russian or Chinese foreign services dictating the Editorial policy of THE TIMES of London.
In December 2002, three years after the British Government released the “white nigger” letter it was discovered by Jack Lane of the Aubane Historical Society. He distributed copies to Irish “National”) Newspapers . A journalist from the IRISH EXAMINER wanted to write about it but told Jack -“The Grey heads don’t like it.” Other papers didn’t think it newsworthy.
So Jack wrote to IRISH TIMES EDITOR (9 January 2003) Geraldine Kennedy who had been the paper’s Political Editor in 1999 when the Ambassador’s letter had been declassified by the British. She replied on 15th January 2003 querying the veracity of the document, though she had the photocopy.and the original was still available to inspect in Britain’s Public Record Office. Then, on 26 January 2003 Dublin’s SUNDAY INDEPENDENT’s early editions had the headline “Irish Times’ Major McDowell Called His Editor a “White Nigger”. The report did not stress the Major’s offer to put his paper under British State influence. The report did not appear in the later editions.
The following day an unnamed Irish Times Reporter reported the Major’s denial of the story. So we are expected to believe that a British Ambassador, writing, in strict confidence, to his superiors in London would invent a story about someone whose offer he intends to exploit for British interests would lie about him talking of a “renegade or white nigger.”
You’d imagine that responsible media would have questioned the Major, the Editor and ex-Editor of The Irish Times, and Jack Lane. It seems also that Independent Newspapers and the Irish Examiner need to explain how their reporters goofed in 1999 and missed an extraordinary story. The response of Irish Times Editor Geraldine Kennedy and ex-Editor Conor Brady do not inspire confidence.
SOURCE: “ The Irish Times: Past And Present.” by John Martin. Belfast Historical and Educational Society.
See also BLOG: SMYLLIE’S PEOPLE (9 April) 2016)
also NEWSPAPERS AND PAYING THE PIPER (15 November 2015)
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