REBECCA ARCHIVEBETWEEN 1973 and 1982 REBECCA produced some influential journalism that was picked up by some of the most powerful media in Britain, including the Sunday Times, Thames Television’s This Week programme and the BBC series Man Alive.
Part of the magazine’s reputation came from a four year investigation into the business interests of James Callaghan who was Prime Minister for three years in the late 1970s. These articles are republished here to make them available on the internet.
REBECCA versus the Prime Minister
AS THE 2010 general election approaches, Labour is paying a high price for having trusted Britain’s bankers.
The global financial crisis plunged the world economy into a deep depression and almost saw a repeat of what happened in the 1930s and 1940s.
After a decade of praising their abilities as Chancellor, Gordon Brown finds his premiership threatened by the aftermath of a massive economic storm created by profligate financiers.
But he’s not the first Labour prime minister who had a liking for bankers.
James Callaghan, premier from 1976 to 1979, was especially fond of them. The one he liked best was the Cardiff-based financier Sir Julian Hodge.
Hodge made a great deal of money out of giving second mortgages to poor people who couldn’t afford the high interest payments – a bit like the sub-prime racket in the USA.
When these unfortunate folk – many from immigrant communities – couldn’t keep up with the payments, Hodge didn’t worry. He’d made sure there was enough value in the properties and simply repossessed them.
Hodge’s second mortgage business caused misery for thousands of families.
Both Callaghan and Hodge are now dead. Lord Callaghan – he was made a life peer in 1987 – died in 2005. Hodge died the previous year, having lived to the ripe old age of 99.
The two main articles in this Archive tell the story of the battle REBECCA had with Callaghan and Hodge.
The first – The Secret Career of James Callaghan – tracks Callaghan’s connections with Hodge in the 1960s and 1970s.
When Callaghan became
Chancellor in 1964, his decisions directly impacted Hodge’s activities,
especially the 1967 Budget which gave a tax break to the makers of
three-wheeled vehicles.
The market leader was Reliant
Motors, part of Hodge’s empire. Private Eye famously called one of its
articles Jules et Jim after a successful
French film of the time.The Eye, more savagely, branded Hodge “the usurer of the valleys” for his moneylending activities.
Cheque Mates:
The Selling of the Commercial Bank of Wales, the second major article,
is an investigation of how Hodge conned the establishment into allowing
him to set up the bank in 1971.Callaghan – and George Thomas, a Welsh Secretary, later Mr Speaker – were instrumental in getting this pathetic little bank off the ground.
Hodge managed to get the name Commercial dropped in 1986 but the bank lost its independence when it was taken over by the Bank of Scotland a few years later. The Bank of Scotland stopped using the name in 2002.
When James Callaghan came to write his memoirs, he couldn’t bring himself to mention the REBECCA investigation into his activities.
His biographer, Kenneth O Morgan, who became a Labour peer in 2000, included it in these terms:
“Hodge contemplated a libel
action against a radical journal, Rebecca, in 1974, but the case fell
through partly because Callaghan, who would have been a key witness, was
Foreign Secretary at the time.”“In reality, the charges against Callaghan were insubstantial. His only crime, such as it was, was to know Hodge personally.”
Julian Hodge never wrote an autobiography but there was a book on his life written, with his “full and amiable co-operation”, by Timothy O’Sullivan in 1981 called Julian Hodge – A Biography.
This is what O’Sullivan reported Hodge as saying about REBECCA:
“On several occasions in his
career Hodge’s business interests were very materially damaged by
newspaper articles. (In one instance the libel was so gross that the
late Lord Thomson told him he would be able to get ownership of the
national daily newspaper in question by way of damages, if he so
wished.)”“He had at several times considered legal action, especially in respect of a sustained campaign against him by the Cardiff magazine Rebecca … which began after Callaghan resigned from the Commercial Bank of Wales to return to Office.”
“In this case he was advised that he had a good cause for action, and that he could expect substantial – possibly exemplary – damages, and effectively have Rebecca silenced for ever.”
“He was also told that in view of the nature of the allegations Callaghan would inevitably be called to give evidence in any court hearing.”
"For that reason, in order
not to embarrass Callaghan, who was then Foreign Secretary and who he
was confident would shortly be a candidate for Prime Minister, he
decided not to proceed.”Callaghan wasn’t the only Labour grandee to support the Commercial Bank of Wales. George Thomas lobbied enthusiastically for it when he was Secretary of State for Wales between 1968 and 1970.
He described the creation of the bank as “the biggest event for Wales in my lifetime”.
He described Hodge in these reverential terms: “I believe Sir Julian has done more for Wales than all of us politicians together. I see this as an act of faith in the future of Wales.”
So much for the National Health Service...
When Thomas came to write his autobiography, George Thomas, Mr Speaker (Century Publishing, 1985) the “biggest event for Wales in my lifetime” didn’t get a mention.
The REBECCA critique of his support for the bank, of course, was ignored.
Such was the fawning humbuggery of George Thomas, later created Viscount Tonypandy – a charming but wily and ruthless old phoney. He died in 1997.
There was another book that dealt with the REBECCA campaign against Callaghan and Co.
During the 1970s REBECCA
articles were taken up by the Sunday Times, then edited by Harold Evans.One of the journalists working on the paper in those days was the political commentator Peter Kellner – he’s now the millionaire President of the polling organisation YouGov.
It was 1975 and Callaghan was soon to become Prime Minister. Kellner was writing a book about Callaghan’s journey to Downing Street with Christopher Hitchens.
It was agreed that they could use the core material from the Callaghan articles provided they credited REBECCA as the source.
When Callaghan: The Road to No 10 was published (Cassell, 1976) there was no mention of REBECCA…