I vividly remember the first time I met Geoffrey Goodman. As greenhorn editor of Tribune in the early 1990s, one of the longer serving members of staff suggested it was time that I not only learned to edit, but organised occasional lunches for prominent supporters of Tribune, probably in the hope that one of them might lead us in the direction of that mythical pot of gold. It was suggested that Geoffrey should be invited, and he duly turned up at the Spaghetti House at the top of Gray’s Inn Road sporting a belted mackintosh and black beret. This, as I was to learn, was very much the favoured attire of the Bevanites, and Geoffrey was – and remains – a committed Bevanite. Which explains why From Bevan to Blair, his recently updated autobiography, is thus titled. And what a rich seam of real gold is contained within its pages!
Aneurin Bevan’s last words to Geoffrey during the general election of 1959 were: “We are moving into a world in which smaller and smaller men are strutting across narrower and narrower stages.” We shall come to Tony Blair later, but for the world of politics read also the world of journalism.
For there is a spectre which hangs over the later chapters as the Labour governments of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan begin to teeter, along with Geoffrey’s once monumental Daily Mirror. It is the arrival of Rupert Murdoch and his acquisition of The Sun. The cheerleading and raucous aggression of this newspaper, which was set to eclipse his own, helped herald the new era of Thatcherism and the end of the post-war Butskellite consensus.
At one level Geoffrey rejoices in his position occupying a ringside seat on history being made, which is why he states the case at least twice that “journalism is largely a career in self education.” And what a seat! Here, for instance, is Dora Gaitskell, speaking to him shortly after her husband’s death: “You know, I never believed that Hugh was the natural leader of the Labour Party – the really natural leader was Nye. He ought to have been leader, not Hugh, but Nye threw away his chance.” And here is Geoffrey being led, by his late friend Leo Abse, to a bewitching evening with the great Welsh bard Dylan Thomas: “He composed as he drank and drank as he composed. It was uncanny to listen to him sliding into a kind of poetic trance.”
There are many great vignettes such as these, as one might expect from someone who has had the good fortune to walk with the greats, because Geoffrey Goodman reported at a time when the bond between the Labour Party and the Daily Mirror was so powerful it was quite possible for a journalist of rare integrity to straddle both without being accused of being a posturing propagandist.
In fact, Labour leaders periodically turned to him for unleavened advice and received it, which proved to be something of a mixed bag, because for a year he became poacher turned game keeper, effectively running a special press unit for Harold Wilson to sell the idea of a prices and incomes policy to the masses. How ironic that it was Wilson who first hit upon outsourcing, and that the man he picked to do the job was the utterly unbiddable Geoffrey Goodman.
There are so many gems it is difficult to know where to start. I don’t have to thumb through the pages to remind myself of Harold Wilson, preparing to go to Buckingham Palace to be sworn in, wearing a pair of tatty red braces that had to be swapped for a smart black pair. Or the beleaguered Denis Healey seemingly at bay in the House of Commons at the hands of his own backbenchers over public spending cuts, when he turned to them and above the clamour bellowed: “And you can go and fuck yourselves!”
But my favourite has to be his depiction of Edward Heath, whom he clearly came to know and like – much as Heath in return ended up preferring the company of trade union leaders such as Jack Jones and Hugh Scanlon to many of those in his own Cabinet. It probably also explains why the nascent Tory right came to dislike Heath so much, even if they may never have heard the tale of Heath, surrounded by union leaders at the piano, bashing out the Red Flag at their request.
Geoffrey provides another remarkable cameo of Heath, having been invited to “look around the place,” the place being 10 Downing Street, and listen to a little Mozart. “He stood, as if militarily to attention, transfixed by the music and looking into the middle distance. At that moment he seemed to me a deeply vulnerable figure, albeit quite relaxed and at peace, set apart from the strange, tense, competitive, anguished world in which he spent most of his life.”
It would be entirely wrong to suggest that From Bevan to Blair simply comprises a string of interlinking reminiscences, observations and opinion. There is a narrative that runs from Geoffrey’s childhood days in a tough working class area of Stockport to his war time experiences over Germany in a Lancaster bomber, and throughout much of his reporting from the British political frontline, if not the Chinese during the Cultural Revolution; and it is that of a principled man of conviction. At his own admittance, and at Hugh Cudlipp’s insistence, he could have been but did not become a Labour MP. A fortunate escape methinks because, if he had become an MP, then this rumbustious but deeply serious book might have ended with a whimper sometime during the mid 1970s.
I mentioned that this is a second edition, and that we would come to Tony Blair. The only addition is a short postscript in which Geoffrey generously reflects that Blair “was not a serious politician.” Enough said.
And here, for what it is worth, is my beef. Such is the general public distaste for anything vaguely political, I can’t help but think that the self-deprecation of the author should be forced aside and this book be simply re-titled Geoffrey Goodman: Fifty Years Reporting from the Political Front Line.
