(c) www.lobster-magazine.co.uk (Issue 43)  | |||
| Summer 2002 |
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Issue 43 | |
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Branson
Tom Bower
London: Fourth Estate, 2001, £6.99
Simon Matthews
After tackling the Paperclip Conspiracy, Klaus Barbie, Nazi medical experiments, looted cash from holocaust victims in Swiss banks and various tycoons (Rowland, Maxwell, Fayed) the latest target for a thorough Tom Bower investigation is Sir Richard Branson, though this is a tale on a smaller scale than the author's previous works.
Unfortunately some bits are rather po-faced. The early hippy version of Branson - living in a communal house in Notting Hill with large numbers of young women etc. - laid the basis of his fortune by arranging the import and export of records without paying the appropriate excise duties. How terrible! Avoiding tax on all those dreadful 1970s prog-rock albums! If anything Bower actually does his case a disservice by understating the success of Virgin records. Although he says - perhaps accurately - that Virgin were not a good label to sign to, paying less royalties than its rivals, he skates over the extraordinary success it enjoyed from 'Tubular Bells' onward (including the whole punk explosion of the late 1970s) and concentrates instead on a gloomy analysis of the very real iniquities of the music industry. The reader, though, may conclude that this is not something for which Sir RB can be personally held responsible. Despite this, the point that the hippy businessmen of the 1968 generation often became the most ruthless capitalists is well made.
Having made his millions in music and become regarded as both a spokesman for youth and a great British entrepreneur Branson was duly courted by various UK politicians. The Tories liked him; later New Labour liked him, too. His astutely managed PR battles with British Airways made some think that Branson could (and would) provide cut price air travel. This never really materialized as far as most people were concerned and it would be Easyjet, a decade later, who finally provided such facilities for the British public.
Despite this by the early 1990s Branson laughably promoted Virgin as the saviour of the UK rail network. Bower's account of how railway privatisation was forced through by Major's tottering government shows accurately what a disgraceful piece of asset stripping this was and how, on this basis alone, renationalisation would be entirely justified. The reality? Branson got several juicy rail franchises......and six years on Virgin Trains have the least punctual services, some of the highest fares and use huge amounts of public subsidy (previously denied to British Rail) to lease, not buy, new trains. (11)
It says something about current British politics that despite paying poor or unexceptional wages, being inclined against trade unions and having his substantial profits in offshore accounts, Branson has continued to find favour at the highest level, culminating in his knighthood from the Blair government, something that he was not seriously considered for even under the Tories.
Bower also has a good account of the bungled attempt by the magnificently named Dame Helena Shovelton - possibly at the behest of no. 10 - to ensure the Virgin Group ran the National Lottery (an area in which they had no experience) and the subsequent back tracking from this by all concerned in the face of unfavourable PR. Branson's general standing remains undiminished by this. Even now his name appears on various short lists as a potential New Labour candidate for the London Mayor elections of 2005, despite his not actually being a Labour Party member - possibly a positive thing in the eyes of the PM and some of his advisers.
File under 'New Labour - business links'.
Notes
11 A bleakly comic footnote to this, though, is missed by Bower. In 1998 new Prime Minister Blair absurdly congratulated Branson at the opening of the Paddington/Heathrow express rail link (built with public funds and with the highest fares of its type in Europe) saying '........ it showed what private investment could achieve....' - i.e. presumably nothing.
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