The bust, that is life-size and made from bronze, is backed
by a Portland stone plinth with the bust resting on a ledge. An inscription, at
the base of the plinth, reads:
Northcliffe
MDCCCLXV
MCMXXII
The bust, that was unveiled in 1930 by Lord Riddell, shows
Northcliffe looking slightly to the left towards Fleet Street where he had his
empire.
The Spartacus Educational website [visit link]
tells us about Lord Northcliffe:
"Alfred Harmsworth, the son of an English barrister, was
born in Chapelizod near Dublin, on 15th July, 1865. An indifferent scholar he
was educated at St John's Wood, a small, private day school in London. He
developed an interest in journalism when he began editing the school
magazine.
After leaving school Harmsworth found work with Youth,
an illustrated magazine for boys, owned by the Illustrated London News. In 1886
he was employed by Edward Iliffe to edit his magazine, Bicycling
News.
The great publishing success at the time was Tit-Bits, a
magazine that was selling 900,000 copies a month. In 1888 Harmsworth decided to
join with his brother, Harold Harmsworth, to publish a similar type of magazine
called Answers to Correspondents. He told his readers that every question sent
in would be answered by post, and the answers of those of general interest would
be published in the magazine. Answers to Correspondents was a great success and
within four years he was selling over a million copies a week. This success
helped him finance the children's paper, Comic Cuts and a woman's magazine,
Forget-Me-Nots.
In 1894 decided to become involved in newspaper
publishing. The Evening News was nearly bankrupt when purchased by Harmsworth
for £25,000. With the help of Kennedy Jones, he dramatically changed the paper.
Although he retained the traditional seven column layout, advertisements were
reduced to a single column on the left. Six columns of news were presented in a
crisper style with eye-catching headlines such as Was it Suicide or Apoplexy?,
Another Battersea Scandal, Bones in Bishopgate, Hypnotism and Lunacy and Killed
by a Grindstone. Harmsworth also began to use illustrations to break-up the
text.
By 16th November the Evening News was able to state that
sales had now reached 394,447. Harmsworth claimed this as a world record for a
newspaper and added that sales would be over 500,000 if they owned more printing
presses. By 1896 circulation approached 800,000 with annual profits of
£50,000.
Harmsworth now decided to start a new paper based on the
style of newspapers published in the USA. By the time the first issue of the
Daily Mail appeared for the first time on 4th May, 1896, over 65 dummy runs had
taken place, at a cost of £40,000. When published for the first time, the eight
page newspaper cost only halfpenny. Slogans used to sell the newspaper included
'A Penny Newspaper for One Halfpenny' and 'The Busy Man's Daily
Newspaper'.
The Daily Mail was the first newspaper in Britain that
catered for a new reading public that needed something simpler, shorter and more
readable than those that had previously been available. One new innovation was
the banner headline that went right across the page. Considerable space was
given to sport and human interest stories. It was also the first newspaper to
include a woman's section that dealt with issues such as fashions and
cookery.
The Daily Mail was an immediate success and circulation
quickly achieved 500,000. With the strong interest in the Boer War in 1899 sales
went to over a million. Harmsworth encouraged people to buy the Daily Mail for
nationalistic reasons making it clear to his readers that his newspaper stood
"for the power, the supremacy and the greatness of the British
Empire".
Joseph Pulitzer, the newspaper magnate in the United
States was so impressed with Harmsworth's achievements that he invited him to
edit his New York World on the first day of the twentieth century. Harmsworth
accepted the challenge and decided to change its size for the occasion. He gave
this new small paper the name tabloid (compressed) that was later to become the
main size of newspapers in Britain.
In 1903 Harmsworth produced the first newspaper, The
Daily Mirror, aimed at women. Kennedy Jones was put in charge of the project and
spent £100,000 in publicity, including a gift scheme of gilt and enamel mirrors.
On its first day, the circulation of the Daily Mirror was 276,000. However,
sales dropped dramatically after the initial launch and by January, 1904,
circulation was down to 24,000 and the newspaper was losing £3,000 a
week.
Harmsworth decided to change his original plan. The
editor, Mary Howarth, was replaced by Hamilton Fyfe, who changed it to a picture
paper for men as well as women. As Harmsworth later recalled: "Some people say
that a woman never really knows what she wants. It is certain she knew what she
didn't want. She didn't want the Daily Mirror. I then changed the price to a
halfpenny, and filled it full of photographs and pictures to see how that would
do." Within a month sales had increased sevenfold.
Fyfe also experimented with using different types of
photographs on the front-page. On 2nd April, 1904, the Daily Mirror published a
whole page of pictures of Edward VII and his children, Henry, Albert and Mary.
This was a great success and Harmsworth now realised the British public had an
intense interest in photographs of the Royal Family.
Another successful innovation was the sponsorship of
special events. In June, 1904, the Daily Mirror paid D. M. Weigal to drive a
twenty-horse power Talbot on a 26,000 mile motor run. A month later the
newspaper offered a hundred guinea prize for the first person to swim the
Channel.
Harmsworth was offered a knighthood but turned it down
saying he wanted to become a baronet. This he received on 23rd June, 1904. The
following year he became the youngest ever peer of the realm when he took the
title Lord Northcliffe. As he had once said that "when I want a peerage I will
buy one" his enemies accused him of corruptly purchasing the
honour.
In August 1905, the Daily Mirror began to pioneer the
idea of the "exclusive". The first example was the "exclusive" interview with
Lord Minto, the new Viceroy of India. This approach was popular and later that
year the circulation of the newspaper had reached 350,000.
In 1905 Northcliffe obtained the Sunday Observer and
three years later he purchased The Times for £320,000. Circulation of the paper
had fallen to 38,000 and was losing money. Northcliffe re-equipped its outdated
printing plant, reduced the newspaper's price by a penny to twopence, and
appointed a new editor, Geoffrey Dawson. In March, 1914, Northcliffe reduced the
price even further and it was not long before the one penny Times was selling
278,000 copies a day.
Harmsworth was a great supporter of flying and in 1906
offered a prize of £1,000 for the first airman to cross the English Channel from
Calais to Dover and £10,000 prize for the first completed flight from London to
Manchester. The idea seemed so preposterous that Punch Magazine decided to poke
fun at Harmsworth by offering a prize of £10,000 for the first flight to Mars.
However, by June 1910, both of Harmsworth's prizes had been won by French
pilots.
Harmsworth was worried about the possible consequences
of aircraft for the defence of Britain. He realised that it would soon be
possible for foreign pilots to drop bombs on Britain. He wrote a letter warning
Richard Haldane, Secretary of War, about his concerns, but failed to persuade
the government that this danger existed.
Soon after the outbreak of the First World War the
editor of The Star newspaper claimed that: "Next to the Kaiser, Lord Northcliffe
has done more than any living man to bring about the war."
Northcliffe was determined to make the Daily Mail the
official newspaper of the British Army. Every day 10,000 copies of the paper
were delivered to the Western Front by military motor cars. He also had the
revolutionary idea of using front-line soldiers as news sources. In August 1914
he announced a scheme where he would pay soldiers for articles written about
their experiences.
During the early stages of the conflict Northcliffe
created a great deal of controversy by advocating conscription and criticizing
Lord Kitchener. In an article he wrote on 21st May, 1915, Northcliffe wrote a
blistering attack on the Secretary of State for War: "Lord Kitchener has starved
the army in France of high-explosive shells. The admitted fact is that Lord
Kitchener ordered the wrong kind of shell - the same kind of shell which he used
largely against the Boers in 1900. He persisted in sending shrapnel - a useless
weapon in trench warfare. He was warned repeatedly that the kind of shell
required was a violently explosive bomb which would dynamite its way through the
German trenches and entanglements and enable our brave men to advance in safety.
This kind of shell our poor soldiers have had has caused the death of thousands
of them."
Lord Kitchener was a national hero and Harmsworth's
attack on him upset a great number of readers. Overnight, the circulation of the
Daily Mail dropped from 1,386,000 to 238,000. A placard was hung across the
Daily Mail nameplate with the words "The Allies of the Huns". Over 1,500 members
of the Stock Exchange had a meeting where they passed a motion against the
"venomous attacks of the Hamsworth Press" and afterwards ceremoniously burnt
copies of the offending newspaper.
Although the leader of the government, Herbert Asquith,
accused Northcliffe and his newspapers of disloyalty, he privately accepted that
shell production was a real problem and he appointed David Lloyd George as the
new Munitions Minister.
Northcliffe also attacked the government for the failed
operation at Gallipoli. He wrote about the "forty thousand killed, missing or
drowned; three hundred millions of treasury thrown away" and argued that even if
the campaign had been successful "to win this war, the German line itself must
be broken" on the Western Front.
Northcliffe continued his attacks on Lord Kitchener and
when he heard he had been killed he remarked: "The British Empire has just had
the greatest stroke of luck in its history." After the death of Kitchener he
concentrated on having Herbert Asquith removed. Not only did he criticize
Asquith as a man of inaction but claimed that Germany was afraid that David
Lloyd George would become prime minister.
When Asquith resigned in December, 1916, the new prime
minister, David Lloyd George decided that it was be safer to have Northcliffe in
his government. However, Northcliffe refused an offer of a place in Lloyd
George's cabinet as he knew it would undermine his ability to criticize the
government.
Although David Lloyd George offered Northcliffe a
cabinet position he disliked the man intensely. In a confidential letter to his
Parliamentary Private Secretary he wrote at the time he claimed that:
"Northcliffe is one of the biggest intriguers and most unscrupulous people in
the country."
In March, 1918, Northcliffe was approached by Lord
Beaverbrook, the owner of the Daily Express and the government's new Minister of
Information. Northcliffe now agreed to join the cabinet and take charge of all
propaganda directed at enemy countries. Over the next few months Northcliffe
organised the dropping of four million leaflets behind enemy
lines.
On Armistice Day Northcliffe resigned from the
government. In the 1918 General Election Northcliffe refused to support David
Lloyd George after he refused to accept a list of people who should be in his
new government. During the election campaign Northcliffe called for Kaiser
Wilhelm to be hanged and the imposition of severe financial penalties on
Germany.
After the war Northcliffe retained his interest in new
technology. He began a campaign to promote wireless communication by arranging
for the Daily Mail to sponsor the world's first wireless concert. In an
editorial Northcliffe argued: "Once before the Daily Mail stirred the national
imagination to realise the vital importance of flying. It has now taken the lead
in private wireless experiments with the object of cultivating national
receptivity for the new science and of bringing minds in train for achievements
to come."
Northcliffe's health deteriorated rapidly in 1921. He
was suffering from streptococcus, an infection of the bloodstream, that damages
the valves of the heart and causes kidney malfunction. Alfred Harmsworth, Lord
Northcliffe, died in August, 1922. In his will he left three months' salary to
each of his six thousand employees, a sum of
£533,000.