by Laura Bray
It was about now that William and Gomer’s paths diverged. Possibly because it could not be assumed that the harmony the brothers had built would pass to William’s two, and Gomer’s six, sons, or possibly because Gomer, who was now in his 50s, no longer wanted to be the “junior partner”, the brothers and Iliffe divided up their newspaper empire.
Gomer retained the “Sunday Express,” the “Sunday Chronicle,” the “Sunday Graphic,” the “Empire News,” and “Daily Sketch” and all the provincial papers.
He therefore had the lion’s share with 18 newspapers (five of them national). He became chairman of Allied Newspapers (in 1943 he changed the name to Kemsley Press). He was now the largest newspaper owner in the UK and underlined this by inserting, under the title block of each publication, the words “A Kemsley Newspaper”.
This was the 1930s however, war was coming, and politically Gomer was quite naive. He encouraged Chamberlain in his dealings with Hitler, and indeed in 1939, met Hitler in person, advising him that there was little appetite for Churchill in Britain, who should not be taken seriously. There was clearly a good deal of trust between Gomer and Chamberlain, and therefore it came as a shock in 1940 when Chamberlain was replaced by Churchill. It took some months for Gomer, and his newspapers, to absorb this cataclysmic change, but as time passed he became increasingly pro-Churchill and his loyalty was repaid in 1945 when Churchill made him Viscount Kemsley in his resignation honours list.
During the 1940s and 50s, Gomer’s flagship paper was the “Sunday Times”, the circulation of which he trebled, to over 800,000 by 1959. He does not appear to have William’s flair but he did make sound decisions, including the appointment of Ian Fleming as Foreign Editor and Harry Hobson as Theatre Critic, and was capable of bold action which made even his children blink, but by the end of the 50s, Gomer’s reign was ending – the lifting of wartime restrictions had left the newspaper industry facing a harsher, more competitive climate.
As the decade progressed, his stifling formality and relentlessly autocratic style of management appeared increasingly outmoded. The stiff manner and equally stiff collars, the bespoke suits and silk ties, the private lift to the top floor, the chauffeured limousine, and the white-gloved flunkeys all signalled a creaking, old-fashioned newspaper operation, encapsulated perhaps in the purchase of his Rolls Royce Silver Wraith Touring Limousine, specially designed so Gomer could wear his top hat inside the car.
Faced by dwindling profits, reduced reserves and an inability to move with the times – in 1955 he withdrew from the consortium awarded the first ITA franchise for weekend television in the Midlands and the North – Gomer sold up, and in 1959 Kemsleys newspapers passed to the ownership of Roy Thompson, the Canadian newspaper and television proprietor, for £5m. Gomer spent most of the 1960s living abroad and died in Monte Carlo on 6 February 1968. He was 84.
So what of his legacy? To the publishing industry, Gomer is best remembered for the foundation, in 1947, of the Kemsley Editorial Plan, for the training of journalists; the Kemsley Empire Journalists scheme which was aimed at giving Commonwealth journalists experience of British affairs; and the “Kemsley Manual of Journalism” is still a standard text to this day. In Merthyr, he succeeded his eldest brother, Seymour, as president of Merthyr General Hospital 1928-49, and gave £3000 p.a. for 2 years so that his brother’s trust fund could start work immediately. In conjunction with Lady Buckland, William and Gomer presented to the town the Lord Buckland Memorial Extension to the General Hospital which cost £40,000, and provided it with an endowment fund of £20,000, and in 1936 William and Gomer presented a new clock tower to the parish church. Gomer received the freedom of the town in 1955, by which time both Seymour and William had died.
Gomer never forgot where he came from, and we end with a quote from him made when opening the 1947 Fete and Gala: “Never a week has passed in the 46 years that fate ordained that I should make my life elsewhere, without my scanning the pages of the Merthyr Express.”
In 1870, members of Libanus Chapel, Quakers Yard started a Sunday School in Trelewis, firstly at Penygroesheol and then at Pontsquire.
War was bedroom walls plastered with posters calling for ‘Aid to Russia’, glamorous Generals, newspaper cuttings on plane recognition and uniforms. Uniforms…everywhere uniforms. Men in uniform, women in uniform. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, wardens, firemen, home-guards. To belong, one had to be in uniform. I joined the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. I don’t remember learning much first-aid, but I do remember receiving a parcel from America sent by schoolchildren. Mine came from a ‘Barbara Babitt’. It contained a bar of scented toilet soap, which was too precious to ever use, and, amongst other forgotten things, a pair of hair-clips with bows of red ribbon and white stars. They were kept for that special occasion which never came. I would take them out of the drawer in my bedroom and look at them, and wonder about the little girl who had sent them to me.
School (Twynyrodyn) had still not started as the building was being used as a distribution centre for gas-masks. When it did re-open, I was one of the ‘honoured’ girls chosen to knit khaki socks and gloves for our soldiers fighting the war. I became quite skilful at knitting socks on three needles, turning heels with aplomb and completing the complicated procedure of knitting glove fingers. We chosen few were expected to carry out these tasks during story-telling sessions, assembly and play-times. The less able were conscripted to wind wool into balls from the prickly drab-coloured skeins, of which our teacher seemed to have an endless supply.
At this time, I noticed that all the insignificant little men in Twynyrodyn acquired navy uniforms and wore black tin hats with ARP written on them. They developed voices that boomed in the darkness ‘Mind that light’. They seemed to have gained a mysterious power over the neighbourhood and what was described by my granny as the ‘goings on in the black-out’.
down to get the pressure going, no mean task as the pump as nearly as tall as me. My father would direct the thin erratic stream of water onto an imaginary fire. On certain days he would insist we wore our gas-masks, but as the visor misted over with condensation from our sweat, I never did see the point. He called these gas-mask drills at such odd times as when we were laying the table for supper or listening to the wireless. My father was very conscientious!!!