George Palmer, renowned FM editor 1925-2018
● George Palmer, who has died in Palm Springs, California, at the age of 92, was a legendary editor of the Financial Mail in its earliest days.
It had a circulation of only about 20 000 but the people who read it were South Africa’s movers and shakers in the government and business.
It also became required reading among the elite of the anti-apartheid resistance movement on Robben Island. Not only because it was one of the few publications they had access to, but because of its quality and reliability. Palmer assembled a top team, most of them specialists in their fields, and for the most part once stories were approved let them get on with it.
Story proposals were rigorously interrogated and debated at editorial meetings. Of little or no concern was how the government or business might react.
Palmer was a dynamic individual with a low boredom threshold, which was why he left his job as a merchant banker to become a journalist.
Once he decided a story was worth doing he backed his writers all the way.
When his chairman instructed him to spike an article to which a cabinet minister had objected, Palmer ignored him. When the chairman threatened to stop the printing press to stop the article appearing, Palmer instructed his staff to do whatever it took to make sure the FM came out the next day with the offending article intact.
It duly appeared.
Although business reporting was the FM’s bread and butter, Palmer understood how interdependent business and politics were, particularly in South Africa.
It wasn’t just that he found apartheid morally indefensible: it made no business sense.
The FM’s job, as he saw it, was to expose “the inherent conflict between economics and politics, between an apartheid state based on a destructive racial discrimination and a business-driven private sector whose future depended on ever-closer inter-racial co-operation to increase productivity and sharpen competitive ability”.
And so the FM wrote about pass laws and forced removals, and campaigned for the government to grant the same trade union rights to black workers that white workers enjoyed. In editorials Palmer criticised business for being so quiet about politics and black rights.
When Soweto erupted in June 1976, he put a photograph of the township in flames on the cover, and wrote a tough editorial: “The fruits of the policy of apartheid are frustration, injustice, and hatred. Among its latest consequences are arson, rioting, and slaughter. If it is continued, the end result may well be revolution.”
By this time prime minister John Vorster had had enough. In a stormy three-hour meeting in his office he told Palmer he was “a traitor to the country”.
Palmer, according to two senior FM staffers who were there, looked the glowering Vorster in the eye and said: “No, sir, it is you who is the traitor.”
Soon afterwards the security police arrived at the FM. By the time they left Palmer believed that the safety of his three young children was at risk.
He resigned and left the country.
Palmer was born in London on February 7 1925. During World War 2 he was a navigator in the Royal Air Force and flew sorties over Germany.
In 1944 he was sent to South Africa for training. He fell in love with Cape Town and signed on at the University of Cape Town, hoping this would bring him luck and help him survive the war.
He started there in 1946 and graduated with a BA honours in economics (magna cum laude). He lectured there briefly, ran Helen Suzman’s classes for her at the University of the Witwatersrand when she was busy with politics, and worked as an economist at an investment bank.
He decided there must be more to life. When John Marvin, the assistant editor of The Economist who was the founding editor of the FM in 1959, invited him to become his deputy, Palmer wasted no time.
Marvin gave him a crash course in journalism and two years later Palmer took over as editor.
Palmer was a charismatic, articulate and affable extrovert. “Palmer the Charmer”, as he was called, was glamorous and successful. This helped him get away with things like openly defying his chairman and telling powerful business leaders where to get off in the nicest possible way. Less charming editors might not have survived.
After leaving South Africa Palmer went to New York as international editor of
Business Week. He remained active as a journalist, lecturer and business consultant until, at 92, he became too deaf.
He collapsed on a tennis court shortly after telling his coach: “You know, Andy, regarding my backhand, I think I’ve finally got it.”
He is survived by three daughters and his second wife, Hazel Shore. — Chris Barron