[A-List] The lingering legacy of Robert Maxwell

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Cap'n Bob? We won't hear a bad word said against him
Robert Maxwell lives on in the memory as a bully, a buffoon, a boardroom
crook. But, 10 years after his death, he still casts a spell on many who
should know better.
By Sonia Purnell
The Independent, 03 November 2001

Ten years ago Robert Maxwell disappeared. One of the most enigmatic public
figures of the time, Maxwell ­ publisher, politician, businessman and, it
emerged, crook ­ was missing, presumed dead, having fallen out of his yacht
into the sea off the Canaries. Shortly after the discovery of his body and
his burial on the Mount of Olives came the revelation that he had embezzled
some £450m from his employees' pension funds in a cynical attempt to prop up
his ailing business empire.

That this almost comical figure of buffoonery and bullying had at last been
proved a crook merely confirmed the long-held suspicions of his many
critics. But it appeared to be a total surprise to the ranks of Maxwell
courtiers who hailed him as a hero and idolised him after his death. To this
day many have failed to condemn his greed and dishonesty, preferring either
to remain silent about his misdeeds or continue to praise his "good side".
Yet far from being tainted by the sordid spectre of Cap'n Bob, some of his
most ardent fans have, a decade later, slid effortlessly into the most
powerful jobs in the land. None more so than Alastair Campbell, who was
political editor of the Daily Mirror at the time of Maxwell's death in 1991
and who is now credited with being the second most important man in Britain
after the Prime Minister.

As Tony Blair's gatekeeper and chief adviser he has transferred his
allegiance to one more worthy of it, but he was previously notorious for his
fanatical support for Maxwell, who was then his newspaper's proprietor. On
the day of Maxwell's death he even exchanged fisticuffs with a rival
political editor who had failed to display sufficient reverence to his boss
and idol. Even Anne Robinson, waspish quizmaster of The Weakest Link and the
highest-paid TV presenter in Britain, fell under his spell. Her eulogies on
his death demonstrated only too well how he worked his magic on the people
he sought to influence. "He left me reeling from his charm," she said, "his
amazing panache and the sheer speed at which his brain worked. He was my
inspiration and my hero."

Ten years on Ms Robinson has had second thoughts, noting in her
autobiography, Memoirs of an Unfit Mother, that it was "lamentable" that so
many people "who should have known better" trusted him. But her lack of
judgement has certainly not held her back.

Joe Haines, Harold Wilson's former press secretary and a Mirror columnist
when Maxwell took over, had known better. He warned all and sundry not "to
touch that man with a bargepole", but Maxwell soon charmed him into a state
of uncritical worship. He frequently used the same technique to win
detractors over: pinpointing their price and winning their sympathy.

In Mr Haines's case this took the form of offering promotion and a glowing
future on the one hand, and a promise of non-interference in his work and
continued Mirror support for the Labour Party on the other. The results were
nothing short of miraculous. From arch-critic he became one of the tycoon's
closest lieutenants and idolator-in-chief ­ he even wrote the official
hagiography of his boss.

Even now Mr Haines cannot conceal his admiration. "Not everything about him
was bad," he says from his home in Tunbridge Wells. "He broke the union
stronghold at the Mirror before Murdoch did the same, he introduced colour
when Murdoch still thought it a mistake and he gave editors greater freedom.
It's also easy to forget his many kindnesses."

Mr Haines now concedes at least that Maxwell was a bully and a rogue. But he
places almost as much blame for the pensions scandal on the City slickers
who financed him, failed to restrain him and gave him credibility again
after he had been denounced by government inspectors in the 1970s as unfit
to run a company.

Maxwell was brilliant at spotting vulnerable but useful people ­ and winning
their eternal gratitude. Peter Jay, recently retired BBC economics editor,
had not worked for two years after being sacked by Mrs Thatcher from his job
as Britain's US ambassador. Maxwell presented him with a solution, offering
him the job of chief of staff ­ or as the Mirror shop floor put it, chief of
paperclips. Mr Jay has continued to be thankful, even now refusing to
denounce him despite the ritual humiliations he suffered at his hands.

Maxwell, he says, was "like a woolly mammoth stomping through primeval
forest ­ not immoral so much as pre-moral. You could at moments feel
something bordering on pity and affection for him".

His comments must go down well with the thousands of Maxwell pensioners who
spent years in fear of retiring into penury. Thanks only to the headbashing
abilities of Lord Cuckney, the City eventually stomped up compensation for
the plundered pension funds but not until after several hundred pensioners
had died.

Ironically, another protégée became the minister responsible for pensions
before rising to her current job of Scottish Secretary. Helen Liddell tried
to distance herself from her past by claiming that she had never worked for
Maxwell. In fact she was his director of corporate affairs in Scotland for
several years, working with him on foreign trips and the Mirror Group
flotation.

Two other old Maxwell hands have also served as ministers under New Labour.
Geoffrey Robinson's Maxwell links did not stop him from becoming Paymaster
General and close adviser to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown (who himself
bought a flat cheaply from the administrators of a Maxwell company).

But Mr Robinson is one former associate whose past has come back to haunt
him. He has just been suspended from the House of Commons for three weeks
for misleading MPs over a £200,000 payment from a Maxwell company. By
contrast, Lord Donoghue served successfully as a junior agriculture
minister, untarnished by his stint as a £180,000-a-year director of a
company used by Maxwell to siphon off shares from the pension funds.

The raft of well-paid advisers surrounding Maxwell and his companies have
also continued to prosper. Vanni Treves, a City lawyer who advised a group
of Maxwell directors against voicing concerns over their chairman, has, for
instance, landed two jobs: chairman of Channel 4, and another, somewhat
ironically, as chairman of beleaguered insurers Equitable Life.

Finally, no one has been convicted of any crime connected to one of the
biggest frauds ever seen in this country. Maxwell's sons Kevin and Ian, and
their former associate Larry Trachtenberg, were tried but all acquitted by a
jury after one of the most expensive trials in history. Since then the
Maxwell heritage has not prevented Kevin and Ian from pursuing their
business careers or their society sister Ghislaine from hobnobbing with
royalty.