London, 14 November 1972
Confidential
Daily Express
1. ROY BLACKMAN of the Daily Express told me today that Sir Max Aitken1 had had a meeting of all departments of the Daily Express today at which he ordered that a campaign be launched straight away and continued until the end of the year, about the ‘rough treatment’ being meted out to people from the old Commonwealth under the new Immigration Regulations.
2. Roy Blackman said that the Daily Express proposed to batter on the door of Sir Alec Douglas-Home until he realised how strongly Australians, New Zealanders and Canadians felt about this. When I pointed out that it would be more appropriate to batter on the door of the Home Secretary whose Department administers the Immigration Regulations, Roy Blackman said that while this was realised, Sir Max Aitken still felt that Sir Alec Douglas-Home should stand for the interests of Commonwealth countries and he wished the Express to urge this in a sustained publicity campaign.
3. Roy Blackman also said that Sir Max is the holder of a Canadian passport. He mentioned that Lord Thomson2 was also a Canadian passport holder and that Sir [sic] Rupert Murdoch3 is an Australian passport holder. It might be, therefore, that there would be a combined effort by these influential figures to urge action in this matter.
[ matter omitted ]
1 Sir John William Maxwell ‘Max’ Aitken, Chairman, Beaverbrook Newspapers.
2 Kenneth Thomson, 2nd Lord Thomson of Fleet, head of the Thomson Corporation media empire, which included the Times , the Sunday Times , and the Toronto Globe and Mail.
3 Proprietor of the Sun and the News of the World. Murdoch was not a knight.
[UKNA: FCO 68/442]