Somebody Had to Do it

IF you’re looking for the archetypal villain in a tale of class hatred, they don’t come any more tailor-made than Christopher Pole-Carew. The roots of his aristocratic family tree are 32 generations deep and he exudes the aura of the upper class. So when, in the trades union dominated 1970s, he became the newspaper industry’s notorious ‘Union Buster’ his role required no embellishment. In the ’70s and ’80s, as the maverick boss of T. Bailey Forman Ltd, publishers of the Nottingham Evening Post, he tackled the enormous issues of union power and new technology a decade before anybody else dared to try. Then he went on to mastermind much of Press mogul Rupert Murdoch’s seismic move from Fleet Street to Wapping, smashing the national newspaper unions. The battles involving Pole-Carew were among the bloodiest industrial conflicts of the 20th Century. When the revolution he started had run its course, thousands of jobs had been wiped out. To this day, he is a hate figure in union folk-lore, despised as a callous capitalist ogre; an evil enemy of the working class; ruthless in crushing workers’rights;a name to be spat out with revulsion. Yet those, the comparative few, who have seen beyond the myth tell of Pole-Carew’s compassion and sensitivity; a kind, considerate, generous employer; a surprisingly multi-talented, creative and artistic man; a loyal, fun loving friend; a devoted and loving husband and father. ‘Somebody Had To Do It’ tells, for the first time, the full inside story of Christopher Pole-Carew’s hugely controversial business exploits and conflicts; highlights his great successes; examines his enlightened management techniques, from which lessons can still be learned today, and reveals the inspiring and moving human elements of a truly remarkable man’s extraordinary life story.