Sir Geoffrey Syme

Missing History

One cannot but question the motive why a life that is very well documented has been eliminated from the history of The Age newspaper.

Sir Geoffrey Syme at "The Age" office a few days before his death.

"In September 2005 The Age web site describes Geoffrey Syme as an 'editorial manager.' Why not be precise and say Managing Editor? That is what he was, a journalist who became Managing Editor of The Age and The Leader. He, not his editors, Schuyler, Biggs and Campbell, had the power to direct the policy of The Age, and he was knighted for his services to journalism in Australia. The words 'editorial manager' are misleading with regard to Geoffrey Syme's career, and they indicate lack of research on the part of whoever wrote them."

An indication of the decision to forget about Geoffrey Syme came quite soon after his death in July 1942. His widow, Violet Syme, asked her brother-in-law Oswald Syme if one of the senior or retired members of the editorial staff could write a short memoir about him. She intended to pay the writer and all the expenses of publication. Oswald Syme refused her request, though he could easily have found someone. It was unkind of him, especially as he was one of the three trustees of his brother’s Estate as well as a trustee of the Estate of the late David Syme. Violet Syme was too upset to take the matter further, though she ought to have done so, and the other two trustees, Marjorie Haggard and Joan Hayne, either thought the matter unimportant or else were too in awe of their uncle to go against his wishes.

notice The Age’s notice of the death of Violet Syme is further evidence of the desire to remove Geoffrey Syme’s name from the history of the paper. She died on 30th July 1952, exactly ten years after her husband. Oswald Syme was alive, as was her husband’s niece Kathleen Syme, and H. A. M. Campbell may still have been the Editor of The Age. In 1952 many of the senior journalists would still remember Geoffrey Syme and be aware of his position as Managing Editor of both The Age and The Leader. The brief obituary notice is about his widow, so there was no need to detail Geoffrey Syme’s career, but he was not just one of the Trustees of the David Syme Estate. There is no excuse for failing to state his position correctly or to mention his lifelong work as an Age journalist. One sentence would have been enough.

So who is to blame for printing inadequate, misleading information about him? The text of this short notice might have been the work of an inexperienced young journalist who had never heard of Sir Geoffrey Syme. But his copy had to go further, to others in the Editorial department, to a sub-editor and perhaps even have been read by the editor. Campbell, or his successor, would certainly have known the description was at best inadequate. Campbell owed his position to Geoffrey Syme. He could not possibly have forgotten him.

Even a new young journalist would not have had to look far to find sources of information about Geoffrey Syme’s career. He could have looked at an old copy of Who’s Who. Or he could have looked up Geoffrey Syme’s death notices and the accounts of his funeral. His life is well documented, as is that of his wife. It would have been quite easy for that journalist to have gone to a senior member of the editorial department and asked for help from someone who had worked for Geoffrey Syme. He could have found someone who had known him, probably one of the journalists who went to Syme’s annual dinners for his Editorial Staff.

Geoffrey Syme’s career has been so carefully removed from the history of The Age that it suggests that it was not an inexperienced journalist who had written Violet Syme’s obituary. It seems more the work of a senior journalist, someone who knew quite well that Geoffrey Syme had worked as an Age journalist for almost fifty years and that he had succeeded his father as Managing Editor in 1908. More importantly, that he had had complete control of the editorial policy of the paper. In 1952 management control versus editorial control of policy was still a controversial subject, though by then the editor had more or less won the battle. There was no longer anyone who had the same undisputed editorial power as Geoffrey Syme. It was convenient to forget that such a power had existed.

Consider who would have wanted to forget about Geoffrey Syme. It is obvious that two or three groups of people, each with different motives, some of which interweave, did not want him to be remembered.

One group had political and/or ideological motives. This group includes those who wanted to pretend that The Age was originally a Labour rather than a Liberal paper. They wanted it to become a Labour paper and they wanted to re-create the long-dead David Syme into something he had never been. They also wanted personal power. At the time of Geoffrey Syme’s death, and for several decades before, it had been fashionable, at least for some, to be idealistic about Communism or at least lean toward left-wing Labour. Syme died when much of France was occupied by the Germans, war was raging on the Russian front and when the Japanese troops seemed on the point of invading Australia. It was also the period of spies; of people like Philby, Burgess and MacLean.

Geoffrey Syme was most unlikely to be re-created as a Labour hero. He was politically too middle-of-the-road, as well as being a friend of R. G. Menzies, and he usually tended to look at things from several angles rather than follow a party line. In the Dictionary of National Biography Geoffrey Serle criticized Syme’s editorial policy as being like that of a yacht, twisting and turning. But what experienced yachtsman doesn’t have to think again and change course if he sees that there are shoals, or reefs or cliffs ahead? A member of his family spoke to Serle about these comments, to be told that he, Serle, was not very interested in Syme. To which the questioner replied, “Why, then, if you were not interested in the subject, did you take on the task and get paid for it?”

People in another group were interested in their own personal power. With the death of Geoffrey Syme came the opportunity to alter editorial policy, slowly perhaps, and to ease power away from management. Campbell’s attitude towards Geoffrey Syme had always been sycophantic. He was a bit like Uriah Heep. Editorial power, never given to him during Geoffrey Syme’s lifetime, now belonged to him. His job was safe and in 1942 his expertise was needed to keep the paper going. There were plenty of local problems, notably the lack of newsprint and the need to replace and modernize the presses.

Campbell was born in Ballarat in 1892, but apparently had begun his journalistic career in Perth. He worked on The Herald about 1920, later moving to The Age and becoming a leader writer about 1928. Thus he had worked under Syme and the then Editor L. V. Biggs for about eleven years before Geoffrey Syme, rather surprisingly, appointed him editor over the head of a more senior leader writer, Matthew Macfarlane.

Campbell’s forgetfulness concerning Geoffrey Syme is a good indication of his character. He was one of the six signatories to a letter written to Syme on 2nd March 1933. It said “We who meet you daily in the work of The Age in some responsible capacity desire to extend felicitations and warm good wishes in connection with your 60th birthday. We trust you will be spared many long and happy years of labour with us in the publication of the paper, to give leadership and guidance to all who share with us big responsibilities. The spirit of mutual helpfulness and co-operation which you have always inculcated has a lasting influence on us all.” Campbell made one of the principal congratulatory speeches at the dinner for the Editorial Staff, which was given to celebrate Geoffrey Syme’s knighthood. He was also a pallbearer at Geoffrey Syme’s funeral. But he was quick to forget him.

In 1942 there was no one to replace Geoffrey Syme. He had no sons. His grandsons were young. Probably the most suitable person to follow him was David Farnell Syme, the second son of Herbert Syme, though he was not a journalist and was by then involved with his own Victorian broadcasting network. Oswald Syme, the last surviving son of David Syme, was a farmer, a trustee of the David Syme Estate, and had no personal experience of the running of the paper. However Oswald was now in a particularly strong position since David Syme’s Will had, rather strangely, allotted the final division of his Estate per stirpes instead of per capita, and, with the death of his daughter Margaret in 1948, his only surviving child, Nancy, eventually became the richest of David Syme’s grandchildren.

Yet another group of people who disliked Geoffrey Syme consisted of a few members of the Syme family. For example, Kathleen Syme, the unmarried daughter of another of Geoffrey’s older brothers, Dr. Arthur Syme, had been an Age journalist. On Geoffrey Syme’s death she returned to the paper in an executive position. She was not young. She had once been sacked by her uncle and probably never forgave him. Her new power went to her head, in much the same way as it had affected Oswald Syme. She became very grand, and was also very vindictive. She, together with Oswald Syme and C. E. Sayers, were the three people who sorted out the papers that were sent in for the book that Sayers was to write about David Syme, documents that eventually formed the basis of the Syme Papers given to the State Library of Victoria. Their deliberate omission of references to Geoffrey Syme is one of the main causes of his disappearance from the paper’s history. Poor historians go to the Syme Papers, find nothing about his career, and fail to investigate further.

The Age had become a public company in 1948 and the book was one of the first steps in preparation for the eventual formation of Syme Partners. David Syme’s grandchildren and other members of the family had been asked to send in their papers and documents relating to the family. Not everyone did so; if they had, many primary sources would have disappeared, especially if they had provided unwelcome information. It is true that a great amount of material was burnt, probably by Kathleen Syme. Several people never got back the papers they had lent. Luckily C. E. Sayer’s brusque and demanding manner of requesting them saved some of the collections of papers from being give to him. The destruction of staff records took place about 1964, before the move from Collins Street to the Spencer Street building. It is odd that there was no one who wanted to keep things like the Honour Boards that had lined the narrow passage on the left of the old building. They had recorded in letters of gold the names of those who had died or had fought for Australia in the Boer War and the First World War. Things like the records of The Age and The Leader golf competitions and, more importantly, the records of the staff and the wages books, also disappeared. The names of so many people were wiped away at this time. It was as if whoever was in charge wanted a completely new beginning and to forget everyone except David Syme and Oswald Syme. It was necessary to keep David Syme as a figurehead, especially when there was the difficult problem of trying to form Syme Partners. In the 1960’s no one really knew or cared very much about him, so he could be re-created into a suitable figurehead, acceptable to every Syme relation, however distant that relationship might be. Some members of the family still think that Kathleen Syme was the person responsible for this, and that Oswald Syme was “a nice old boy” who might not have noticed what was going on. That is most unlikely, though neither of them were clever enough to have planned such a thorough removal of records.

Geoffrey Hutton can hardly have had a lapse of memory about Geoffrey Syme’s position at The Age. He had been a senior member of Geoffrey Syme’s editorial staff. He had worked for him. So why did he leave him out of 125 years of Age? He and Les Tanner had collaborated in writing this book, which was published in 1979. Was he instructed to forget about him, or were his own political beliefs so at variance with those of his ex-boss that it pleased him not to include him?

In 1979 Ranald Macdonald, Geoffrey Syme’s great-nephew and the eldest grandson of Oswald Syme, was Managing Director of David Syme and Co. Did he have a lapse of memory, or just have poor knowledge of the history of the paper when he wrote the Foreword to 125 Years of Age? He refers to celebration of this anniversary with the comment “The main credit lies with a succession of dedicated editors. They were men of varying temperaments and talents who shared one common characteristic: the skill to make The Age relevant. These men sought to challenge and to comfort their readers. They sought to build a newspaper which annoyed, satisfied, amused, surprised and educated.” He doesn’t mention the names of these editors, nor does he mention that Geoffrey Syme had been the Managing Editor, the senior member of the Editorial Department of the paper for 34 years. He probably intended to ignore the long career of his grandfather’s elder brother, although it would have been easy for him to discuss his great-uncle’s job and the editorial power that went with it with his grandfather, Oswald Syme. Oswald still alive when this book was written, and jealousy was probably amongst the reasons for his failure to ensure that his older brother’s career was recorded. He had long been a farmer and was of some importance as trustee of the David Syme Estate, but he lacked the editorial power that had belonged to Geoffrey Syme. The key to the elimination of Geoffrey Syme’s name lies in the struggle for power between editor and management; this problem only surfaced when Geoffrey Syme died.

Geoffrey Blainey’s Introduction to 125 years of Age also omits Geoffrey Syme. Presumably he went along with the idea that the paper was run by editors and he was probably uninterested in its management. He said David Syme “sat in the editor’s chair,” but he did not say that Geoffrey Syme sat in that chair too. He didn’t bother to find that out. His remarks about the paper’s contents during the years of the Depression and the two World Wars are mostly concerned with trivia.

Steve Foley’s book Reflections. The Age, 150 years of history was published in 2004. On page viii there is a long list of the people and the organizations that had helped him in the preparation of the book. He is especially grateful to “the staff of The Age Research Library for their dedication and patience and to Michelle Stillman in particular”. It is rather funny that such an impressive number of people, plus the dozen journalists who had contributed to the book, failed to come up with the name of Geoffrey Syme. Poor John Herbert Syme, David Syme’s eldest son, does get mentioned, although only on page 24, where he is described as a companion to Alfred Deakin on an inspection of irrigation canals in India. Herbert, the Business Manager of David Syme and Company, was fourteen years older than Geoffrey. Both men were important figures in the history of the paper.

If one looks at the average age of the twelve journalists who have contributed to the book one might forgive them for not knowing much about the earlier history of the paper. Gawenda, Foley, Gordon, Ellingsen, Button, Rule, Sullivan, Burns, Carney, Tippet, Shmith and Baum deal with their own particular interests. The first part of the 20th century isn’t their subject. Middle-aged mostly, they either lack enquiring minds or are too well set in their political ideas and their own careers to care about the history of the editorial department and the people who had worked there. The events of the past twenty or so years were better known to them. Steve Foley says he is sorry about the omissions. At least one can pretend Geoffrey Syme is included on page viii, amongst the past journalists, editors, artists and photographers to whom the book is dedicated.

Is it really strange that Geoffrey Blainey should be forgetful? Actually, forgetful is the wrong word, because one can’t forget something one hasn’t bothered to learn. He had not mentioned Geoffrey Syme in his foreword to the earlier book, 125 Years of Age, so why would one expect to find his name in an article entitled “The cabbage patch that grew.”

It is difficult to judge Blainey’s precise area of historical expertise. It seems to be quite wide, since he has written 32 books, including “A short history of the World”. His article in Reflections is entitled “The cabbage patch that grew. 1854-2004. A history by Geoffrey Blainey”. It is 46 pages long, but the cabbage patch is Melbourne, so perhaps it is not surprising that he has not yet discovered the names of key figures in the earlier history of The Age. He makes a careless mistake on page 21 when he says that the Speight case was the first libel case against The Age. It would have been quite easy for him to send one of his researchers to check earlier volumes in the Victorian Law Reports in the State Library of Victoria.

He chooses a few examples of events and people from the period when Geoffrey Syme was Managing Editor. They seem rather a random selection from different issues of The Age. He mentions the First World War, There is a photograph of a page from The Age with a list of the casualties at the Dardanelles, and he singles out individuals such as a Mrs Hastie and two Privates, William Poynton and John Martin. He talks about “Viola” who edited the women’s’ page, the “Spare Corner”, in The Leader. But he fails to explain that The Leader was actually a rather serious paper, intended for the rural community of Victoria, which gave a great deal of useful information about sales and crops and husbandry and agricultural shows. No one would guess this from his comments on Viola. He does mention the Depression and the beginning of the Second World War, though we learn little about The Age and nothing about the appalling difficulties of running a paper when many of the younger staff had left to join the forces, when newsprint was rationed, and the paper itself was so limited in size that it could not print all the advertisements that provided its income. It is regrettable that these books, 125 years of Age, and the second book, Reflections, which commemorates 150 years of The Age’s history, will probably end up being regarded as reliable sources for that history. An unquestioning reader sometimes believes that if something has been printed it must be correct. Less trusting readers know that omissions can lead to mistakes or misunderstandings, and in these two books the omissions seem to have been deliberate. One does not expect to find deliberate distortion of facts - mistakes that are repeated and perpetuated - in books that are supposed to be reasonably well researched. So does one blame the researchers, the writers or the publisher of these books? Or does one blame historians who fail to look for primary sources for their subject?