Randolph's Resignation

The editor of London's biggest Sunday newspaper was quite definite about it. Said Stafford Somerfield of the News of the World (circ. 6,484,445): "Neither Mr. Churchill nor any other writer decides where in the paper a story shall go. That is the editor's responsibility." But Randolph Frederick Edward Spencer Churchill, 52, the World's political columnist, was definite too. He did not want his interview with Britain's new Prime Minister, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, to get second billing to a story on traffic problems. Result of the argument: Randolph's resignation.

Thus last week the son of Winston Churchill propelled himself past yet another turning in his tempestuous journalistic career. The cause seemed trivial, but then, Randolph Churchill has habitually splintered his freelance over trifles. And anyway, it was only a matter of time until the News of the World joined the long list of newspapers where Churchill had previously found working conditions intolerable.

"He cannot resist biting the hand that feeds him," the London Observer once wrote. "There is scarcely a Press lord in Fleet Street who has not a finger or two missing to prove it." In 1936, five years after setting foot on Fleet Street, Journalist Churchill quit two papers at once--the Daily Mail and the Sunday Dispatch--because both refused to print one of his contributions. By nature mettlesome, he did not spare even his employers; he wrote of the "rivers of pornography" flowing from Fleet Street, attacked publishers as easily as Prime Ministers. When Fleet Street hit back, Churchill sued. In 1956 he recovered $14,000 in damages from The People, a Sunday paper that had called him a "paid hack." Five years later, Churchill, by then appearing in the News of the World, implied that much the same could be said of the Daily Express' political editor. The World settled that suit out of court.

Even after this unwelcome expense, the News of the World was anxious to keep Churchill, if only for sentimental reasons: back in the 1930s, Randolph's father had been a frequent and fiery contributor to the paper. But Randolph is not very keepable. Only last month, when the World refused to publish an intemperate Churchill attack on Labor Party Leader Harold Wilson--whom Churchill described as "a barefoot dog"--Churchill had to pay a left-wing Labor weekly to carry the column as an ad.

Having been set adrift by the News of the World, Churchill will probably land on another London paper. It is not likely to be the Daily Mail, though, or the Daily Telegraph or the Evening Standard. Randolph has already been there.

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