Robert Maxwell

Robert Maxwell (10 June 1923 - 5 November 1991) was British publisher and newspaper proprietor.

Early Life

Maxwell was born as Jan Ludvik Hoch into a an orthodox Jewish family in Slatinske Doly in Czechoslovakia in 1923.

Maxwell lost his family in the holocaust. He escaped to Britain in 1940.

Intelligence Work

In November 1945, Maxwell was employed as an interrogation officer at the Bad Salzuflen HQ of the Intelligence Corps in the British Zone in Germany, where he was involved in interrogating German scientists. Maxwell's work sometimes took him into the Russian sector, a fact which, according to Robin Ramsay and Stephen Dorril, exposed him to rumours about his loyalty.

Maxwell later moved to the Press and Publicity Branch of the British Information Service in Berlin, where he met former SOE officer Hugh Quennell, and also during 1946 with Dr Ferdinand Springer, owner of Springer Verlag, Europe's leading pre-war scientific publisher.

Seumas Milne cites two former Soviet intelligence officers as stating that Maxwell signed a document in Berlin during the early Cold War promising to assist the KGB.

Pergamon Press

In April 1949, Maxwell was appointed Managing Director of Butterworth-Springer a joint venture between Springer Verlag and Butterworth Scientific Publications In May 1951, following negotiations led by Count Frederick Vanden Heuvel, Butterworth agreed to sell its stake in what became Pergamon Press to Maxwell for £13,000. Maxwell obtained the money after a meeting with Sir Charles Hambro. The cash had in fact been arranged by MI6, according to Stephen Dorril, who interviewed Desmond Bristow one of the officers involved.

Dorril goes on to state that Maxwell was being run at the time as an agent by George Kennedy Young, who apparently used him to maintain contact with Czech sources while based in Vienna.

In early 1952, was MI6 officer John Whitlock introduced Maxwell to Dr Kurt Waller, an East-West trader who seems to have felt that Maxwell's patronage would square his activities with the intelligence world.

Political Career and MI5 troubles

In 1954, MI5 asked Maxwell's secretary Anne Dove, a former SOE employee, to vouch for his loyalty, which she did.

Shortly after this, Maxwell was approached by Dickie Franks, then head of MI6's DP4 section, in charge of recruiting visitors to the Eastern Bloc. Maxwell agreed to brief Franks on his visits.

During the 1959 general election, Maxwell was the target of a whispering campaign directed at his Jewish origins and his trips to Eastern Europe. This was repeated in 1964. David Leigh describes Maxwell as one of a number of prominent Jewish Labour supporters who were vilified by the intelligence services.

MI5 officer Peter Wright wrote of Maxwell:

Other people who were associating with Harold Wilson right from before he became PM in 1964 were Sternberg and his East European friends and Maxwell of Pergamon. We were very suspicious about these people and warned Wilson repeatedly about the risks.

Maxwell was elected a Labour MP in 1964 and held his seat until 1970.

Soviet links

In 1968, Maxwell travelled to Moscow and secretly met KGB head Yuri Andropov. Seamus Milne records that he was 'notably conciliatory' in Parliament about the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that year.

For much of the 1970s and 1980s, Maxwell was heavily involved in publishing eastern bloc scientific literature and his own biographies of communist leaders. According to Milne, these were subsidised by the Soviet Union through secret payments to Pergamon's French office.

KGB defector Oleg Gordievsky believed that at one point Maxwell was being manipulated as a Soviet 'publicity agent', but admitted that he was widely regarded in Soviet intelligence as a British spy. The former head of the KGB's British desk, Mikhail Lyubimov believed that MI6 used Maxwell to get at the International Department of the Communist Party Central Committee, which was responsible for covert political operations in the West.

It is notable that Pergamon published a 1984 book on Soviet covert action, Dezinformatsia which featured an extensive discussion of the International Department's role. Its authors praised Maxwell's son Kevin, Pergamon's director of publishing, for "his enthusiasm, encouragement and support" and for his attention to the subject "in this book and other projected volumes on Soviet "active measures"."

Later Business career

In 1969, Maxwell was the subject of a DTI enquiry, after a takeover of Pergamon by the US group Leasco fell through. The DTI report said:

"We regret having to conclude that, notwithstanding Mr Maxwell's acknowledged abilities and energy, he is not in our opinion a person who can be relied on to exercise proper stewardship of a publicly quoted company."

In 1980, Maxwell took over British Printing Corporation, renaming it Maxwell Communications Corporation.

Mirror Group Proprietor

In 1984, Maxwell bought Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) from Reed International.

In 1991, in attempt to cover hidden debts of over £2 billion. Maxwell floated MGN as a public company.

Miner's Strike

Maxwell's takeover of the Mirror came in the fourth month of the miners' strike and led to a shift in the paper's coverage of the dispute. He personally edited a piece by the paper's industrial editor, Geoffrey Goodman, which appeared on 26 July 1984, retitling it with Thatcher's phrase, 'The Enemy Within'.

In the summer of 1984, Maxwell put himself forward as a mediator, meeting with the chairman of the National Coal Board, Ian McGregor, and the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers, Arthur Scargill. Maxwell asked Mirror journalist John Pilger to arrange one meeting with Scargill at the Hallam Tower Hotel in Sheffield. according ot Pilger, Maxwell accused Scargill of "bringing bloody revolution to the streets of Britain."

McGregor claimed that he agreed a deal to work with Maxwell for an end to the strike, in return for an end to hostile coverage of the NCB.

On 10 September 1984, the Mirror published a false story under the byline of industrial correspondent Terry Pattinson, stating that Scargill was about to ballot the miners' on a final offer. The order to run the story had come in an unsigned telex from Pergamon Press's Maxwell House building.

Job losses

In late 1985, Maxwell sacked the entire Mirror Group staff, in a manouevre which got the unions to accept 2,000 job losses. The NUJ Father of the Chapel, Terry Pattinson recommended acceptance of Maxwell's terms. Maxwell later promoted Pattinson to industrial editor, acting over the head of editor Richard Stott.

Mordechai Vanunu story

On 28 September 1986, the Sunday Mirror published a story debunking the Israeli nuclear scientist Mordechai Vanunu. According to Seymour Hersh, Maxwell personally co-ordinated the paper's approach with Nicholas Davies and Israeli agent Ari Ben-Menashe:

At one point, Ben Menashe said, Davies set up a meeting for Maxwell with Ben-Menashe at his ninth-floor office. Maxwell made it clear at the brief session, Ben-Menashe recalled, that he understood what was to be done about the Vanunu story. "I know what has to happen," Maxwell told Ben-Menashe. "I have already spoken to your bosses."

Sunday Mirror editor Michael Molloy told Hersh that photographs supplied to the paper by Vanunu's agent Oscar E. Guerrero were handed over to the Israeli Embassy on Maxwell's instructions.

Both Maxwell and Davies sued following publication of Hersh's book The Samson Option. Hersh's claims were repeated by MPs Rupert Allason and George Galloway in Parliament allowing the media to report them. One key allegation, that Davies had visited Ohio in 1985 to negotiate an arms deal, was supported with documents provided by Davies' ex-wife. The Mirror rubbished these as forgeries and Davies denied ever having visited the state. However, the Daily Mail published a photograph of Davies in Ohio in 1985 with the wife of an arms-dealer.

Operation Cyclops

At the TUC conference in September 1989, Mirror journalist Terry Pattinson briefed Maxwell on the findings of 'Operation Cyclops', the paper's investigation of miners' leader Arthur Scargill. After asking if Pattinson was sure of the facts, Maxwell told him to run with it. However, editor Richard Stott held the story for further investigation.

Maxwell personally authorised payment of £80,000 to Roger Windsor and £50,000 to Jim Parker for their testimony against Scargill.

In the week of 4-10 March 1990, Maxwell presided over what he described as "the scoop of the decade" - a series of stories attacking NUM leader Arthur Scargill in the Sunday Mirror and the Daily Mirror. He personally signed an editorial attacking what he described as the "shady manoeuvres" of the NUM. The paper's central allegation was that Scargill had sued Libyan money donated to the minsrs' to pay his own mortgage.

In an interview with Hugo Young that week, Maxwell cited "Arthur Scargill and the Mirror's part in the defeat of the 1984 miners' strike", as an example of the megaphone power of newspaper prorietorship:

There was, however, a greater example of the power of this newspaper publisher whose voice was now at its most sonorous. 'I take delight and some pride in having got rid of the militants out of the Labour movement.'

In this process, he had fulfilled a prescient prophecy. 'When I took over the Mirror in 1984,' he recalled, 'it is said on good authority that Benn and Heffer went for a pee at a meeting of the Labour Party National Executive, and Benn said to Heffer, 'I hear Bob's got the Mirror. That'll be the end of the Left of the kind we represent in the Labour movement'.'

The Mirror's Ombudsman, Peter Archer, was made redundant in 1991 while he was investigating the paper's conduct of the Scargill story. He had been set to conclude that the central claim, that Scargill had used Libyan money to pay his own mortgage, was false.

After Maxwell's death, stolen NUM documents were found in a safe at his flat.

Death

Maxwell died in mysterious circumstances in November 1991. His body was found in the sea off the Canary Islands, after he had been reported missing from his private yacht.

Maxwell was buried in Jerusalem on the Mount of Olives. The Israeli establishment was strongly represented at the ceremony, with President Chaim Herzog giving an oration.

Affiliations

• Pergamon Press - publisher 1949-1991
• Maxwell Communications Corporation - chairman and chief executive 1981-1991
• Mirror Group Newspapers - chairman 1984-1991
• Macmillan - chairman and chief executive 1988-1991
• Maariv - Former owner
• Scitex Corporation - Former owner
• Coopers and Lybrand - Accountants to Maxwell and several of his companies

External Resources

• NameBase MAXWELL ROBERT (PUBLISHER)