R.W. Murray

Richard William ("RW") Murray Snr. (1819-1908) was a journalist, editor, newspaper proprietor and politician of the Cape Colony.

He was a lifelong supporter of British imperial expansion, and used the name "Limner" in most of his writings.

Murray was born in London in 1819. In his youth, Murray worked for several newspapers in London, before he arrived in Cape Town in 1854 and immediately began work as editor of the reactionary Cape Monitor.

In this capacity, he attended and reported on the early sessions of the new Cape Parliament as one of two observer newspapers (the other being the liberal Commercial Advertiser and Mail). He quickly acquired a reputation for enormous personal and political bias, predominantly against any form of local government. In a strange turn of affairs, the editor of the competing Commercial Advertiser and Mail was also an elected MP in the parliament and Murray's reporting on Fairbairn was notorious for its vitriol. He was also one of the leading journalistic attackers of the speaker Christoffel Brand and the MP Saul Solomon. He compiled a large number of sketches and reminiscences that provide a large portion of the early history of the Cape Parliament.

He founded the Cape Argus, with Bryan Henry Darnell and Saul Solomon, in 1856. However he and Darnell swiftly became relatively unpopular, as their fiercely pro-imperialist political views antagonised the Cape public, who were predominantly supportive of "Responsible Government" (locally elected democracy) and its leader John Molteno. Darnell and Murray therefore left the Cape Argus (in 1859 and 1862 respectively), with Saul Solomon taking over and bringing the paper into accord with public opinion and into a period of enormous growth.

The Eastern part of the Cape Colony was traditionally far more pro-imperialist in its politics, and the British Governor Philip Wodehouse moved there to garner support against the growing Responsible Government movement. He took Murray with him for media support, and Murray started the Great Eastern newspaper to support the pro-imperialist party accordingly.

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