Prison is, in my view, one of the few places where you’ll find true diversity. It is generally the case that, from birth, the less privileged follow a similar, modest path to one another, whereas the rich and powerful can retreat into a lifestyle of luxury and ‘private’ schools, roads, jets, etc. But once a criminal sentence is passed, all of that changes and the individual is stripped to only their basic resources. They lose the superiority they once yielded over others and rarely have any choice but to associate with people from every background. Prison doesn’t discriminate and the case of Lord Conrad Black, which has been consistently newsworthy for the last decade, and is now even more relevant due to the involvement of the President of the United States, demonstrates this rather clearly. Lord Black would not have crossed paths with hundreds, if not thousands, of underprivileged prisoners had he not received a criminal sentence twelve years ago.
Conrad Black was born into a life of privilege in Montreal, Quebec in August 1944, the son of a wealthy brewery executive. He was educated at the prestigious Upper Canada College in Toronto. Black was far from a model student and was expelled from school for selling stolen exam papers, a serious matter, and for insubordinate behaviour. He eventually finished his education, graduating from Carlton University with a degree in History. Lord Black’s early business ventures began when he was at university, starting with the purchase of a local newspaper. When his parents died in 1976, just ten days apart, Black and his brother found themselves with significant stakes in five major corporations. Over time, Black focused on the newspaper publishing industry and gained control of Britain’s Telegraph Group for a mere £30 million. Conrad Black’s newspaper chain, Hollinger, once had a revenue of $2 billion and was the world’s third largest English-language newspaper company. He had a reputation for making deep cuts in order to turn a profit, and also hated journalists, describing them as ‘inadequately supervised hacks’.
In 1999, Conservative Party leader William Hague recommended Conrad Black for a life peerage with the title Baron Black of Crossharbour. His sponsors included Lady Margaret Thatcher, the former Prime Minister of the UK. After a two-year battle with the Canadian government, who had attempted to block Black’s peerage due to his dual citizenship, Black took his seat on the Conservative benches of the House of Lords where he remained until 2007, voting on matters including education, crime and security and employment equality.
In 2007, Black was convicted of defrauding shareholders of Hollinger, his own company, out of £4.7 million by paying himself a tax-free bonus from the sale of newspaper assets without the approval of the company’s board. He had been forced out of the company by shareholders in 2003. David Radler, Black’s business partner for more than 30 years, had pleaded guilty to a single fraud charge and was a key witness for the prosecution. Black did not testify in his defence saying, through his lawyer, that he had done nothing wrong and was instead the victim.
Following his conviction for fraud and obstruction of justice, the disgraced Lord Black swapped a £17.5 million mansion for a cell in federal prison. He arrived at Coleman Prison in 2008 to start a six-year eight-month sentence, possessing only a pair of glasses. He had been optimistic about his appeal, hoping his stay would prove a short one, but this was soon rejected, with his business conduct described as ‘ridiculous’. In prison he was known as ‘Lordy’ and organised his cellmate to act as his butler and cleaner; and later found himself a job in the library. For nine years he penned a regular column in an American newspaper, the National Post, which he founded in 1998, writing about political issues amongst other topics. He famously stated that prison was ‘better than expected’ and in describing it used the metaphor of a ‘sociological laboratory’.
In the end, it wasn’t an appeal that caused Lord Black to be officially pardoned. According to many news outlets it was a glowing book he had written about Donald Trump; the man who issued this pardon. The book, entitled ‘A President Like No Other’, analysed Trump’s political rise and spoke highly of ‘his friend’. Conrad Black, who unbelievably compared himself to the revolutionary Nelson Mandela, has stated that he will return to the House of Lords in due course.
Elliot Tyler 