Alastair Hetherington
Alastair Hetherington | |
---|---|
Born | Hector Alastair Hetherington 31 October 1919 Glamorgan, Wales |
Died | 3 October 1999 Bannockburn, Stirling, Scotland | (aged 79)
Education | Corpus Christi College, Oxford |
Occupation(s) | Journalist and editor |
Spouse(s) | Miranda Oliver (1957–1978) Sheila Janet Cameron (1979–1999) |
Children | 4 |
Family | Sir Hector Hetherington (father) |
Hector Alastair Hetherington (31 October 1919 – 3 October 1999) was a British journalist, newspaper editor and academic. For nearly twenty years he was the editor of The Guardian, and is regarded as one of the leading editors of the second half of the twentieth century.[1]
Early life and career
Hetherington was the son of
Based on three months as a trainee sub-editor for the Glasgow Herald, Hetherington was offered a posting after his demobilisation as managing editor of Die Welt, the first German national newspaper to be produced in the British zone after the war. The experience confirmed his decision to pursue a career in journalism rather than academia, and he rejoined the Glasgow Herald a year later as a sub-editor and writer of articles on defence matters.
Editor of The Guardian
In 1950, Hetherington moved to Manchester Guardian. There he caught the eye of the paper's editor, A. P. Wadsworth, who helped him win a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship and named him as foreign editor in 1953. When Wadsworth fell terminally ill three years later, the chairman of the paper, Laurence Scott, named Hetherington as Wadsworth's successor. Though there were three more senior journalists on staff, Scott wanted to transform The Guardian into a national newspaper, and wanted a younger man capable of overseeing the effort.[2]
Within weeks of taking over as editor, Hetherington faced the question of how to respond to the
Becoming a national newspaper
During this time, Hetherington also was busy overseeing the evolution of the Manchester Guardian into a national newspaper. After dropping the word "Manchester" from the masthead in 1959, the paper opened a London headquarters two years later. The transition proved difficult, however, as sales dropped and advertising revenue failed to fill the gap. Hetherington himself was commuting by train between London and Manchester twice or three times weekly. Twice Scott sought to alleviate the problem by selling the paper to The Times, but was rebuffed the first time and stopped by Hetherington's unyielding opposition to the proposal in the second. Ultimately, thanks to the profits from The Guardian's sister publication, the Manchester Evening News, the paper weathered the move.
As The Guardian's immediate prospects slowly improved, Hetherington focused on the task on turning the paper into one capable of competing on a national level. He pushed for expanded features, including special supplements and the first op-ed page in a British daily. Such was his success by this point that Hetherington won Journalist of the Year at the National Press Awards in 1971. Politically the paper benefited from careful cultivation by Harold Wilson, though Hetherington's closest political friend was Jo Grimond. For more than twenty years Hetherington wrote leading articles which sought to promote Liberal-Labour co-operation to defeat the Conservatives. Though initially against America's involvement in Vietnam, after meeting with American military commanders on a trip to Saigon he changed the paper's stance opposing the conflict, a move that generated much internal staff dissent.[5]
Departure
By the early 1970s The Guardian enjoyed a healthy circulation approaching 350,000;[6] nevertheless the paper continued to face financial challenges that exhausted Hetherington. As he approached the end of his second decade as editor, he considered the possibility of moving on to a less-demanding field such as academia. In 1975, however, he accepted an offer from his friend Michael Swann, the chairman of the BBC, to assume the vacant position of Controller of BBC Scotland.
Later career
Hetherington's time as Controller of BBC Scotland was not a happy one. He did much to invigorate programme output and appointed a number of specialist News correspondents including
Personal life
Hetherington was married twice. His first marriage was in 1957 to Miranda Oliver, a librarian who worked in the cuttings library at the Manchester Guardian. Together they had four children. After their divorce in 1978, Hetherington met Sheila Janet Cameron, a political consultant, in 1979 and married her later that year.
Death and memorials
Hetherington died on 3 October 1999 and is buried next to his parents in the cemetery in Tillicoultry, just south-east of the war memorial.
The Institute of Contemporary Scotland's Academy of Merit makes an annual Alastair Hetherington Award for Humanitarian Service. In 1999,
Publications
- Guardian Years (London: Chatto & Windus, 1981) ISBN 978-0-7011-2552-3
- News, Newspapers and Television (Macmillan, London, 1985) ISBN 978-0-333-38606-4
- News in the Regions: Plymouth Sound to Moray Firth (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989) ISBN 0-333-48231-X
- Highlands and Islands: A Generation of Progress (Aberdeen University Press, 1990) ISBN 0-08-037980-X
- Inside BBC Scotland 1975–80 A Personal View(Whitewater, Edinburgh 1992) ISBN 0-9519619-0-X
- A Walker's Guide to Arran (1995)
Honours
- Honorary Fellow, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1971
- Named Journalist of the Year in the National Press Awards, 1971.
References
- ^ "David Astor". The Independent. London. 8 December 2001. Archived from the original on 10 March 2009. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
- ^ Peter Preston, "Hetherington, (Hector) Alastair" in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 26, p. 889.
- ^ Taylor, Geoffrey (4 October 1999). "Alastair Hetherington". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 23 April 2010.
- ^ What we got wrong: the Guardian’s worst errors of judgment over 200 years, by Randeep Ramesh, at The Guardian; published May 7, 2021; retrieved May 14, 2021
- ^ Preston, op cit.
- ^ David Butler and Gareth Butler, British Political Facts 1900–1985 (London: St. Martin's Press, 1986), p. 493
- ^ Taylor, Geoffrey (4 October 1999). "Alastair Hetherington". the Guardian. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
- ^ Taylor, Geoffrey (4 October 1999). "Alastair Hetherington". the Guardian. Retrieved 6 May 2022.
Further reading
- Ayerst, David (1971). The Guardian: Biography of a Newspaper. Collins. ISBN 0-00-211329-5.
- Taylor, Geoffrey (1993). Changing Faces: A History of the "Guardian", 1956–88. Fourth Estate. ISBN 1-85702-100-2.
External links
- Alastair Hetherington obituary at The Guardian alternate link
- The Hetherington Memorial Lecture
- Papers, 1958–75 Archived 10 February 2007 at the Dr Thomas Nossiter
- Catalogue of the papers of Alastair Hetherington held at LSE Archives
- Alastair Hetheringtion collection at the University of Stirling Archives