Thomas Bleakley McDowell

Thomas Bleakley McDowell, often called T. B. McDowell, or simply "the Major" (18 May 1923 – 9 September 2009), was an officer in the British Army, an MI5 agent and subsequently chief executive of The Irish Times for nearly 40 years.

Early life Born in Belfast on 18 May 1923, Thomas Bleakley McDowell was the only child of Thomas McDowell, a clerk originally based on the Antrim Road and later of Upper Jordanstown, and his wife Violet (née Hardy) from Dundalk, County Louth. The family were Protestant members of the Church of Ireland and identified politically as unionists. His upbringing was financially constrained due to his father's chronic lung condition, the result of being gassed in the first World War; his father died in 1944.

McDowell attended a local primary school on the Antrim Road before winning a scholarship to the Royal Belfast Academical Institution, where he completed his education in 1941 as the Second World War continued. Although he initially wished to enlist in the British army, he respected his parents' wishes and postponed doing so. He spent a year studying commerce at Queen's University but remained uncertain about his long-term direction. McDowell strongly denied the charge when Gilchrist's letter was published in 2003: "I never used that phrase, nor would I have thought of using it, about Gageby," he said in last year's interview. "Other people (in Belfast) called him a renegade, but I never thought he was a renegade. Douglas never made any secret of what he was. There could be no doubt about him turning or changing or anything like that."

The Irish Times Trust

By the early 1970s, the circulation of The Irish Times had almost doubled in a decade to 60,000, and it was making money. Some of the directors indicated an interest in selling the company, and McDowell proposed instead that it be turned into a trust. It was a period when several newspapers in Ireland and Britain had changed hands or were seen as being vulnerable to takeovers.

He aimed to protect the newspaper's independence, make it as difficult as possible for anyone to take over, and formalise its aims in a guiding trust.

McDowell's primary interest in the arrangements was in drawing up the terms of the trust, using his legal expertise and drawing on a wide range of media models including the Guardian, the Observer, the Economist magazine, and the New York Times as well as other documents ranging from the Constitution to the American Declaration of Independence.

He worked on the trust document for many months, going through 28 drafts before he was satisfied with the result. Among the issues he had to consider was the mechanism for appointing trustees: various options which would allow public bodies or interests to name members were considered but ruled out because of fears that the appointments would become politicised.

He eventually opted to appoint them himself, with the help of each one selected to appoint others. When he had finished the draft trust document, he showed it to Gageby, who suggested that a proviso requiring the newspaper to reflect minority views be included, which it was.

The five directors of the company, including McDowell and Gageby, transferred their shares in the company to a solicitor in the autumn of 1973 in anticipation of announcing the trust at the end of that year.

Further delays in finalising the trust terms resulted in its announcement in April 1974, on the eve of the introduction of capital gains tax.

The timing gave rise to suggestions that the directors were taking their cash (£325,000 each) out of the company before the new tax took effect.

McDowell always denied that this was the case, maintaining that the timing was coincidental: he was also adamant that the motivation behind the formation of the trust itself was altruistic. The formation of the trust left the newspaper with a large bank debt, used to buy out the directors/shareholders, at what turned out to be a difficult economic period after the first oil crisis hit the Western world in the autumn of 1974. McDowell successfully guided The Irish Times' financial fortunes through the subsequent recession and into further periods of growth throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

He stood down as chief executive of the company in 1997 and retired from the chairmanship of The Irish Times Trust in 2001: he was given the title President for Life in recognition of his huge contribution to the newspaper.;

During his visit to the new Irish Times offices on Tara Street in June 2008 for the unveiling of a portrait of him by Andrew Festing, he described the newspaper and his family as the two loves of his life.

Personal life

His wife, Margaret, died in 1992.