David Astor

Francis David Langhorne Astor CH (5 March 1912 – 7 December 2001) was an English newspaper publisher and member of the Astor family.

Early life

David Astor was born in London, England, the third child of American-born English parents, Waldorf Astor (1879–1952) and Nancy Witcher Langhorne (1879–1964). The product of an immensely wealthy business dynasty, and raised in the grandeur of a great country estate where the political and intellectual elite gathered, he nevertheless showed compassion for the poor and those who were victims of destructive socioeconomic policies.^[1]

An extremely shy man, David Astor was greatly influenced by his father but as a young man he rebelled against his strong-willed mother.^[2] After an education at West Downs School in Winchester in Hampshire, followed by Eton College in Berkshire, he attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he suffered a nervous breakdown and left in 1933 without graduating.^[2] He was psycho-analysed by Anna Freud and during World War II he served with distinction as a Royal Marines officer and was wounded in France. While at Balliol in 1931 he met a young anti-fascist German, named Adam von Trott zu Solz, who was to become the most influential figure in his life.^[3] Von Trott's involvement in the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler led to his execution.^[4]

Career

In 1936, Astor joined the Yorkshire Post newspaper where he worked for a year before joining his father's newspaper, The Observer which he would edit for 27 years.^[3] With his father's advancing age, and high inheritance taxes in England, in 1945 David Astor and his brother transferred ownership of the paper to a board of trustees. The trust contained restrictions so that the paper could not be subject to a hostile takeover but also stipulated that its profits go towards improving the newspaper, promoting high journalistic standards, and required a portion of the profits to be donated to charitable causes.^[5]

In 1945 Astor purchased the Manor House at Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire, living there and restoring the nearby Abbey in the village.^[6]

Observer editor

By the mid-1950s, David Astor had made The Observer a successful and influential paper that published points of view from the right and left.^[2] Astor's policies were passionate about the plight of black Africans and the violation of human rights. He wrote against the death penalty and opposed all censorship. But, he took a more conservative view on the economic problems caused by high taxes and believed British trades unions had become too powerful and were hindering economic progress. He warned of the dangers of big government and of big business, influenced by his friend and employee of The Observer, George Orwell.^[5][1]

In 1956, David Astor and his newspaper came under fire when it accused Prime Minister Anthony Eden of lying to the people about important matters in Suez Crisis. Although he ultimately was shown to have been right, the situation harmed the paper's image and its circulation and advertising revenue began to decline. Astor's causes included playing a main role in establishing Amnesty International in 1961 after his paper published "The Forgotten Prisoners" by Peter Benenson. He also voiced strong opposition to the apartheid policy of the white South African government and supported the African National Congress (ANC). Nelson Mandela would refer to Astor as one of the best and most loyal of friends who had supported the ANC when other newspapers ignored them.^[5]

Despite his great wealth, David Astor lived modestly, putting his money to good use through a network of benefactions and charities. Although he proved a brilliant editor, he lacked the drive for profits like other newcomers to the business who took advantage to increase rapidly both their advertising and circulation at the expense of The Observer. When The Daily Telegraph launched a Sunday edition in 1961 it changed what had been a staid industry and the ensuing battles for advertising changed the character of how and what newspapers were all about. The aggressive marketing by The Sunday Times under Canadian newspaper tycoon Roy Thomson hurt circulation while the paper's unions were making repeated demands that drove costs to a point where the operation became an unsustainable business.^[5]

In April 1962, Astor gave a speech about the roots of political extremism, which led to the formation of the Columbus Centre, led by Professor Norman Cohn, and which became a research centre at the University of Sussex.^[7]

Later life

In 1975, Astor resigned as editor of The Observer but continued as a trustee. In 1977 the paper was sold by his family to Robert O. Anderson, the American owner of the Atlantic Richfield Oil Company.^[3] In his retirement, Astor continued to support a number of charities and to finance pressure groups for causes that he strongly believed in. For his contributions to British society, he was made a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 1994. In 1995 David Astor was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Plymouth University.^[5]

Campaign for Myra Hindley

During the 1980s and 1990s, he campaigned alongside likes of Lord Longford to try and gain parole for the Moors Murderer Myra Hindley, claiming that she was a reformed character and no threat to society, and had therefore qualified for parole from the life sentence imposed on her in 1966 for the role while Ian Brady in the murder of three children. He continued his campaign even after Hindley admitted taking part in two more murders in 1986. In September 1990, he even claimed that her continued imprisonment was comparable to that of Nelson Mandela, who had just been released from prison in South Africa after serving 27 years of a life sentence for his part in the battle against the oppression of black people under that country's apartheid regime. Astor had also been a supporter of the campaign for Mandela's release from prison. Along with the likes of Longford, he claimed that she was being kept in prison to serve the interests of successive Home Secretaries and their governments (who had the power to decide on minimum terms for life sentence prisoners from 1983 until 2002); these politicians gradually increased Hindley's original minimum of 25 years to 30 years and from 1990 to a whole life tariff. The campaign to win parole for Myra Hindley was unsuccessful, with her appeal against the whole life tariff being rejected three times by the High Court, and she remained in prison until her death in November 2002, almost a year after Astor's own death. Longford had died earlier in 2001.

14 years after Astor's death, his son Richard claimed in the Observer that his father had been right to campaign for Hindley to be released from prison.

Astor had been a supporter of Nelson Mandela and an opponent of South Africa's apartheid regime since shortly after he was jailed in 1964.^[3] He continued to support the campaign for Mandela's release until he was finally set free from prison in February 1990, and continued to oppose the apartheid regime until it was finally completely abolished four years later, just before Mandela became the prime minister of South Africa. In September 1990, he controversially compared Myra Hindley's continuing imprisonment to the long sentence that Nelson Mandela served for his part in the anti-Apartheid activities of black South Africans, claiming that Myra Hindley was being kept in prison longer than necessary to serve the interests of successive Home Secretaries and their governments. Lord Longford and others who campaigned for Hindley's release would also go on to claim that Hindley was kept in prison for this reason.^[8]

Personal life

In 1945, he married for the first time to Melanie Hauser, with whom he had one child:^[3]

• Frances Christine Langhorne Astor (b. 1947)

After his divorce from Melanie in 1951, he married Bridget Aphra Wreford in 1952.^[3] David and Bridget had five children:^[5]

• Alice Margaret Frances Astor (b. 1953)
• Richard David Langhorne Astor (b. 1955)
• Lucy Aphra Nancy Astor (b. 1958)
• Nancy Bridget Elizabeth Astor (b. 1960)
• Thomas Robert Langhorne Astor (b. 1962)

David Astor died in December 2001 at the age of 89,^[3] and is buried in All Saints' Churchyard, Sutton Courtenay, Oxfordshire, in a grave with a simple headstone bearing only his name. In the grave next to Astor's is buried his friend Eric Arthur Blair, better known under his pen name George Orwell.^[9] Astor bought both burial plots when he learned that Orwell had asked to be buried in an English country churchyard.

Bibliography

• David Astor and The Observer by Richard Cockett. Has endpapers that are facsimiles of The Observer newspaper, with other black-and-white photographic plates of personnel linked to newspaper. 294 pages with an index. London: Andre Deutsch (1990). ISBN 0-233-98735-5
• David Astor by Jeremy Lewis (Jonathan Cape, 2016). Reviewed The Economist February 27, 2016, p. 74.

References

External links

• David Astor on IMDb
• Works by or about David Astor in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• "David Astor collected news and commentary". The Guardian.