Nobody has yet proposed a state funeral for the London whale, but give it time. Confronted by the death of a vulnerable creature - which, as well as a whale or other animal such as a donkey, may be a baby or a beautiful princess - a newspaper must meet three requirements.
First, it must show that it cares. Second, it must suggest suitable commemoration. Third, it must find someone to blame.
The Sunday Express cared enough to give us a poem, which praised "The Ocean's Own Ambassador/Come limping to our city" until it went entirely off the rails with "Parliament implacable/Dignified and formal/Nodded no acknowledgement/Carried on as normal." The Sunday Mirror reporter tried to save the whale: "I felt the quivering skin . . . beneath the palms of my hands. . . I was close to tears." He carried on in the same vein until ordered out of the water,
allegedly because he was in danger of hypothermia.
The papers couldn't agree on the whale's name - Pete, Willy, Wally, Whaley and, when it was discovered to be female, Wilma, were among the candidates - but agreed that something had to be done. The Sun launched a £10,000 appeal to save Wally's bones for the nation. The Daily Mirror, in honour of Whaley, "adopted" a North Atlantic humpback called Big Ben "who by chance has a best mate called Mirror". The London Evening Standard published a four-page souvenir.
But who to blame? The idea that the beast itself had got its communications in a tangle - that it was a sort of John Prescott of the whale community - didn't seem to occur to anybody. The prime suspect was the Ministry of Defence which, according to the Mirror, had been letting off explosions at the mouth of the Thames all week.
The Daily Express blamed the Royal Navy for testing a new sonar system but patriotically pointed out that "the Navy can hardly be seen to sacrifice the quest for robust sea defences on the altar of giving marine mammals quieter waters". The Guardian reported both suspects but also pointed the finger at deep-sea trawling and global warming.
Everybody missed the obvious explanation: the shock of being handled by a Sunday Mirror hack.
This is the 20th anniversary of probably the most important moment in post-1945 press history: Rupert Murdoch's summary dismissal of all his printers and his transfer of the Times, Sun, Sunday Times and News of the World from Fleet Street to Wapping. Alas, I cannot claim an honourable role. Though they have kindly invited me to their anniversary dinner, I was not truly a refusenik.
The refuseniks were those journalists who, on pain of dismissal, declined to follow Murdoch to Wapping. They included Paul Routledge, until recently an NS columnist and then the Times's south-east Asia correspondent. He had just watched the Filipinos overthrow the dictator Ferdinand Marcos and memorably said that, if those poor people could overthrow a tyrant with their bare hands, he could defy Murdoch by refusing to cable his copy over the Wapping barbed wire. Routledge was summoned back to meet the fierce Glaswegian Charles Wilson, the editor. "I have not come back as the prodigal son," Routledge said. "In that case, you're not getting the coat of many colours," replied Wilson, showing a weak grasp of biblical text.
The refuseniks also included Claire Tomalin, the Whitbread Prizewinning biographer of Pepys, who was then the Sunday Times literary editor; and Sean French, her deputy, another who became an NS columnist, as well as co-author (with his wife Nicci Gerrard) of cerebral thrillers under the name Nicci French. With an Old Etonian business journalist, they formed what I believe to be the most upmarket picket line in history.
I was never sure refusenik was the right name, since it was originally the term, not for those who refused to enter a place, but for people who weren't allowed to leave the Soviet Union. It certainly wasn't right for me. I was just a confusenik. First, I didn't go to Wapping, then I did, then I became a singularly ineffective leader of an underground internal resistance (we literally met underground in a cellar near Fleet Street), and then I finally left for the gestating Independent. I was "severely reprimanded and censured" by the journalists' union for this indecisive conduct. Quite right, too.
But I treasure one badge of honour. Carrying out resistance instructions, I led a delegation to implore Murdoch to sack Andrew Neil from the Sunday Times editorship. This, we thought, would sow confusion and division among the enemy. To our surprise, Murdoch received us courteously, serving coffee and biscuits. He described Neil as "an insensitive sort of chap" and, with a skilfully implied nod and wink, said he couldn't do anything "immediately". We carried back the glad news: Neil's days were numbered. Well, sort of. Neil left the Sunday Times eight years later.
