Ernest Burrington

Shrewd newspaperman who took charge of the Mirror Group after the death at sea of Robert Maxwell

ERNEST BURRINGTON, who has died aged 91, was a Fleet Street editor who reluctantly became deputy chairman of Robert Maxwell’s Mirror Group, then took charge of MGN after the tycoon’s death in November 1991.

For six months Burrington steadied the ship, aiming to sort out MGN’S finances so that it could be relisted on the stock market. However, a faction on the board felt that a fresh start was essential, and in June 1992 he made way for his former deputy

Sir Robert Clark. Burrington was editor of the Sunday

People when Maxwell moved him upstairs. He was a shrewd newspaperman, a witty headline writer and good at handling his staff. He was noted for being a keen smoker but (after many years of heroic consumption) a non-drinker. His suit was permanently rumpled, typically with shirt hanging out and tie askew.

He also possessed enormous tact. His larger-than-life proprietor, who always called him “Bernie”, relied heavily on Burrington, often ringing him at home for advice on handling stories for the next day’s Daily Mirror.

But he never became a propagandist or sycophant; their relationship was always wary.

In the final weeks of Maxwell’s life, Burrington was backing MGN’S finance director Lawrence Guest in demanding answers as it became evident that millions of pounds had disappeared into Maxwell’s private empire.

Burrington said later: “If we were deceived, then there were others, including the City, who were deceived even more and were in a much better position much earlier to question Maxwell’s solvency and style. We came close to blowing the whistle in October when he failed to return £47 million He likened working for Maxwell to operating in a South American dictatorship he said he had invested for the company.

“He knew there was no escape from his troubles and could not face returning [from his yacht] to humiliation, disgrace and, who knows, jail. But there were no outward signs. No one outside his family knew.”

On Maxwell’s death, his son Ian took over the chair of MGN. Then came the disclosures that Maxwell had looted his public companies, and the MGN pension fund, of almost £800 million.

On December 3 1991 Ian Maxwell resigned as chairman of MGN, and his brother Kevin from the board. Burrington took over as chairman, saying: “Mirror Group is a great newspaper organisation with a sound track record. It will survive this crisis.”

Insolvency experts found that rent apparently owing to the landlord of the office pub, the “Stab in the Back”, had actually been collected by Maxwell in cash. They also, bizarrely, found that he had taken out a subscription to Banbury Sub-aqua Club.

Management offered the unions equal representation on the MGN pension trustees, with Burrington as chairman. Staff were not keen to give managers who had yet to account for a “lack of vigilance” a say; an independent chairman was offered, but wider changes were eventually made.

Weeks later, Burrington told the Social Services Select Committee that working for Maxwell had been like operating in a South American dictatorship, “because people as well as money went missing”.

His departure from the board coincided with the discovery by

Mirror journalists that on being promoted to chairman and chief executive, Burrington and Vic Horwood had received pay increases of 14 per cent and 56 per cent respectively. The hacks had been restricted to a mere 3 per cent.

Ernest Burrington was born on December 13 1926, the son of Harold and Laura Burrington. He left school at 15 to become a reporter on the

Oldham Chronicle, his four years on the paper punctuated by three years’ service in the Army.

He switched from reporting to sub-editing, and in 1950 moved first to the Bristol Evening World and then to the Daily Herald in Manchester. He became the paper’s night editor in 1955 and two years later moved to Fleet Street in the same capacity; he reckoned this job his happiest.

Burrington stayed with the Herald when IPC relaunched it in 1964 as the

Sun, and again when Rupert Murdoch acquired it and went tabloid. But in 1970 he moved to the Daily Mirror as deputy night editor.

The next year he moved to the

People as its deputy editor – the start of 17 years with the paper. He was passed over when first Nick Lloyd and then Richard Stott were appointed editor. But his turn came in 1985 when Stott moved to the Daily Mirror. In March 1988 Burrington agreed to become Maxwell’s assistant and deputy chairman of MGN.

That November he made a rare public appearance, in the High Court. Koo Stark was suing the People for libel over two stories carried on his watch. She claimed that they suggested that she had deceived her husband, the Green Shield stamp heir Timothy Jefferies, to meet clandestinely with the Duke of York; the stories had appeared before Prince Andrew’s marriage to Sarah Ferguson.

When Burrington said the words “secret dating” did not suggest anything improper, the judge remarked: “Not if she was going to look at his stamp collection.”

A year later he was brought back as editor after Wendy Henry was sacked. The People had published photos of Princes William and Harry condemned by Prince Charles and Princess Diana as “intrusive and irresponsible”; Maxwell himself branded them “unacceptable”. One was captioned “William’s sly pee in park”.

After leaving MGN he worked in America with Globe Publications and as president of Atlantic Media for three years, settling in Florida. He finally returned to Britain in 2011.

Although during his Fleet Street years Burrington had lived in Orpington, he was proud to be named an honorary Red Devil by Manchester United in 1985.

Ernest Burrington married, in 1950, Nancy Crossley, who survives him with a daughter, Jill; their son, Peter, died in 2008.

Ernest Burrington, born December 13 1926, died March 23 2018