It’s 4 p.m. on a Thursday and I am talking with an MP on the House of Commons terrace. My mobile phone rings. It’s my colleague Keith Gladdis, the northern correspondent for the News of the World. I tell him I’ll call him back: I’m with a contact, working on a story — thousands of jobs have been lost because civil servants fixed a deal with a German company. There’s not much point, he tells me. ‘We’ve all been fired. They are closing the paper.’ I make my excuses and leave.
Papers normally fold after running out of money or readers. The News of the World had plenty of both: still profitable, still the largest Sunday sale on the planet. But we were sunk by appalling activities carried out in secret. In 12 years, I never laid eyes on Glenn Mulcaire, the ‘detective’ whose actions destroyed the paper. His very existence was known only to a handful of now-departed executives. Like my colleagues, I only learned how to hack a phone by reading about it in the Guardian.
I get a taxi from the House of Commons to Wapping with my team. The taxi driver makes a quip about whether we are going to hack his phone. ‘We’ve just lost our jobs, mate.’ That shuts him up. At our offices, the televisions show the cameras outside the wrong building: Fortress Wapping, from which we moved a year ago.
Our editor, Colin Myler, gathers the staff and tells us the decision was made in New York. He lays out the terms: we will be offered 90 days’ gardening leave then probably made redundant. Questions from the staff start. ‘Is it true Rebekah Brooks offered to resign?’ one colleague asks. ‘Tell her we accept.’ We go to the pub, and a tab that will run for three days is opened.
Shortly afterwards, I head to The Spectator’s summer party. I see the Low Life columnist, Jeremy Clarke, with a bottle of absinthe, pouring lethal blue cocktails. Later, I see the bottle lying empty — and Clarke lying in the bushes. The Mayor of London is having his photograph taken next to George Osborne. ‘I warned you about Coulson!’ Boris had shouted at him earlier. ‘But you wouldn’t listen.’ It was not clear he was joking. I must get back to my colleagues, still drinking quietly in the pub.
On Friday, we return to the newsroom to find our emails blocked. Andy Coulson, our former editor, is arrested. Brooks, his predecessor, comes to explain things to the staff — and take questions. Someone tells her that News Corporation is guilty of ‘staggering corporate arrogance’. She hits back: ‘If you could see what is coming, which is much worse, you would understand.’ But none of us do. What could it mean? By accident I leave in the lift with her: perhaps I should feel angry, but I wish her luck. We’re all leaving for good on Saturday, but she will be dealing with this for years to come.
On Saturday morning, hundreds of us watch as the final front page is designed. When it’s done, Colin stands on a desk and gives his farewell speech. There had been rumours, he said, that we would not turn up for this final day and that staff from the Sun would have to produce the newspaper. ‘Never in a million years would that have happened,’ he says. ‘You are the best professionals I have ever worked with.’ It is a Fleet Street tradition for a respected journalist to be ‘banged out’ – a old printers’ ceremony where colleagues make a slow beat, thumping the desk. This time, Myler inverts the role. ‘I’ll bang you out, on my own,’ he says. He takes a ruler, and starts hitting the desk, to a ceremonial slow march. As he does so, we file out of the newsroom — some of us failing to hold back tears. We wait for him in reception, where he leads us out of the office and shows the first — the last — edition to the waiting cameras. ‘And in another fine tradition of Fleet Street,’ he says, ‘we’re off to the pub.’ After a while I stumble into a taxi and on to a friend’s party. It’s my turn to fall into a bush.
Sunday morning at the newsagent. ‘The News of the World, please.’ I read our final leader column: ‘There is no justification for this appalling wrong-doing. Yet when this outrage has been atoned, we hope history will eventually judge us on all our years.’ Tears finally fall. At home later, I help my wife fix a leaking tap. Gardening leave has begun.
Ian Kirby was political editor of the News of the World from 1999 to 2011.
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