Capitalistic Invasion

"Mr. Roy Thomson," reported London's Sunday Express stiffly, had been to Moscow and had talked to the Soviet Premier. That was about all Lord Beaver-brook's Express cared to report. The Sunday Observer and the Sunday Telegraph were equally vague, identifying Thomson merely as "the Canadian newspaper proprietor." Only in the London Sunday Times did Thomson get the full treatment, and a little more besides. No wonder. The Sunday Times is Roy Thomson's own paper.

Intermural jealousy kept Thomson's competitors from reporting a good story. It was typical of the man who owns more papers than anyone else in the world that when he decided to go to Russia, it did not occur to him to go alone; he dreamed up a mass flight of British capitalists. And it was typical of Thomson, too, that he talked the Russians into supplying the plane -- a TU-114 turboprop with a seating capacity of 200, the largest passenger plane now flying. That was just the ship for Thomson, a collection of Thomson aides and 138 guests, all from the upper registers of British business: John Bedford of Debenhams (department stores), H. E. Darvill of Barclays Bank, Whitney Straight of Rolls-Royce, Henry Lazell of Beecham, along with representatives of Crosse & Blackwell, Unilever, Dunlop Rubber, Guinness, Cunard.

Flashy Journalism. The whole trip was nothing short of smashing: a reception by the Foreign Trade Ministry, a lunch with the Union of Soviet Journalists, rubberneck tours of the Kremlin and the Pravda newspaper plant, and finally an audience with Khrushchev himself.

For two hours, the Communist host and his capitalist guest exchanged good-natured gibes, hitting it off quickly when they discovered that they were born a few weeks apart in 1894. Five times, Thomson suggested vainly that the Premier hold free elections in East Germany, and once Khrushchev called his guest "an exploiter." When Thomson presented Khrushchev with battery-driven watches, his host was suspicious: "Are you sure it is not an infernal machine put together by capitalists to blow up Communism? I will tell my wife to try them on first." Said Thomson: "We don't need any infernal machines to blow up Communism. It will turn into capitalism in due course." Then the two men shook hands, and, after paying the impressive tab at Moscow's Hotel Metropole. Thomson herded his party home to London.

Almost overlooked in the fast weekend transit was the ostensible purpose of the Thomson junket: to celebrate the first anniversary of the Sunday Times's color supplement. This flashy bit of New World journalism had drawn only derogatory cracks and a small hello when Thomson introduced it last year to an England used to tight little Sunday papers. "Roy Thomson has taught us something new in journalism," sneered Beaverbrook: "How we may have color without advertisements or alternately advertisements with color." The first issues were an arty mishmash, and the color supplement staggered along almost exclusively on Roy Thomson's money--$2,000,000 of it.

But by its first birthday, a junket to Moscow was scarcely needed to call attention to Roy Thomson's magazine section. It is now a brightly edited supplement, featuring such bylines as Ian Fleming and Lord Attlee, and the photography of Henri Carder-Bresson and Princess Margaret's Lord Snowdon. The Sunday Times circulation is up 150,000 to 1,166,000, making it by far the largest quality Sunday newspaper in London.

Sprawling Empire. Fleet Street's second Canadian invasion is not so drastic as Lord Beaverbrook's arrival from Mont real 52 years ago. But Thomson's takeover is even more impressive. His empire now sprawls across three continents and at least half a dozen countries. Besides his newspapers, it includes radio and TV stations, book publishing houses, and so many magazines and trade journals that Thomson himself has lost track and can only guess at the total. His best guess is "over 80." The week he left for Moscow, Thomson rounded his newspaper collection off to an even 100 by acquiring the Bangkok Post.

If Thomson is after a title, as some say he is, that ambition got a significant boost last fall when he peeled $14 million from his pile to endow a charitable foundation in his name. The money is earmarked for the sort of things that might well help to land a man in Burke's Peerage: the training of journalists and the improvement of communications media in underdeveloped countries, chiefly Africa. Thomson does not deny the ambition, but neither does he profess it. He has told inquirers that he once traced his ancestry back to 1540, "when two of them were hanged for sheep stealing."

He has also told inquirers that he buys more newspapers simply to make more money so that he can buy more newspapers. And that is probably closer to the secret of what makes Roy Thomson run. "The greatest requirement for success is a great determination to succeed," says Thomson. "I decided that I had to work harder than any other man. I think the results have been well worth the effort."

After last week, Fleet Street, for all the stingy press notices that it gave Roy Thomson, could only agree.

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