It was shortly after the end of the Second World War, circa 1946, when I returned to Fleet Street to join that once great liberal daily newspaper, News Chronicle as a reporter. And it was also my first introduction as a contributor to Tribune. Sometime later, Michael Foot took over as editor from Jon Kimche and Evelyn Anderson, and the paper was celebrating its tenth anniversary when I wrote my first piece as a freelance – no by-line, since I was a staff man on the News Chronicle and my link with Tribune needed to be a private arrangement.
It was also the early stages of Clement Attlee’s Government after the 1945 social revolution with Labour in power, not merely in office, for the first time in the party’s history. The declared post-war role of that Government was to transform Britain’s deeply class-ridden and unequal society. That was no easy task, as we were to discover. Yet people were looking for post-war leadership on a completely new scale—and the remarkable Attlee Government provided that.
The part played by Tribune in those critical and testing days was unique in radical popular journalism and indeed political life in general. Aneurin Bevan, who had edited the paper during the war years, was in his prime, creating the National Health Service. Michael Foot, who won his first House of Commons seat in Plymouth at the 1945 general election, was already storming the backbenches, as well as editing Tribune. George Orwell was still contributing to the paper—while also writing his classics. Sir Stafford Cripps, who had financed the paper’s launch in 1937 (helped by George Strauss), was, sadly, a seriously ill member of the Attlee Cabinet and soon to die – but remaining, to the end, a loyal supporter of Tribune.
It was sheer political excitement as well as journalistic good fortune to be among them, however trivial my own role. No other newspaper, daily or weekly, then matched the quality, dedication and force of Tribune’s broad left radicalism; nor better reflected the hopes of a working class that returned from a world war with dreams of a “different society”. The economic, political and social reforms were already under way – the nationalisation of coal, gas, electricity, railways and the Bank of England, with steel being prepared for public ownership while Bevan revolutionised the health system.
In all this fervour, Tribune played a massive role. It was – I must repeat – unique in radical journalism, let alone the political life of the left. No other newspaper – not even my own fine News Chronicle with its long liberal tradition and great journalism with people such as James Cameron on its payroll; nor Labour’s own national newspaper, the Daily Herald, nor the Hugh Cudlipp Daily Mirror, then heading for a
four million daily sale, nor even that prince of the provinces, the Manchester Guardian (the modern Guardian was yet to be launched) came close. None of them, despite their qualities, occupied the same rallying force for change as Tribune of Foot, Bevan and company.
I know because I worked on all I have listed.
Those were remarkable days in the fight to change Britain and move toward a better society. And this has remained the focus and tradition of Tribune throughout the tremendous changes that have occurred in the political and journalistic landscape over the past half century. All of this is now in danger by the threat hanging over the paper’s future—at the very moment when its role as an inspiration for the left is needed more than ever.
Why do I make this claim amid so much tumult and depression across the whole of our media trade? Because there is now a gap wider than ever in trying to communicate the message and reasoning behind the concept of socialism and an alternative to a crisis-ridden capitalism. There is a massive absence of clear, balanced and even objective writing on this theme at a time when such thinking and writing is more necessary than it has ever been. Where indeed are we now to search for a compelling case that can and should be made for a modern relevant democratic and socialist answer to the global crisis in market capitalism – a crisis that is now widely accepted to be without parallel?
As Primo Levi would have put it: “If not now, when?”
It is in fact almost laughably insane that a paper like Tribune should be under threat at this crucial moment – at the very time when even the most right-wing Conservative newspapers and their writers are daily confessing the bankruptcy of the market system and even admitting to the virtue of “reconsidering Marx’s prophecies”. Amid all this, it is even more astonishing that a weekly paper such as Tribune is not attracting a new mass younger readership.
Of course, an enormous challenge faces the left. In Britain, as elsewhere, a credible agenda has yet to be produced and offered to the voters – no easy task, since the absence of profound and workable socialist options have not yet been pieced together. In his Labour conference speech, Ed Milband began to set out an attractive new vision, but it is evident that much more thinking and processing needs to be done. Above all, there is a desperate requirement for the Labour Party leadership to bang the drum of an alternative socialist-style agenda to combat the flatulent obscurities of a miserable Tory-led coalition Government which has no compass for the future. It is not inconceivable that the current crisis, especially with the continuing problems of Europe still unresolved, could lead to a general election in Britain earlier than expected. There could hardly be a more powerful reason for keeping Tribune afloat and prospering.
Most of us are sadly aware of the absence of strong practical ideas and inspiring vision across the entire left, both in the United Kingdom and across the globe. We note the existence of an astonishing political anomaly – a communist regime in China struggling to come to terms with international capitalism in what has become an extraordinary amalgam of state capitalism, central economic control and planning, alongside an absence of democratic institutions such as trade unions with an undertone of growing social discontent. China has been phenomenally successful in economic growth and has, so far at least, avoided the disasters that crippled the Soviet Union.
Now, with Europe and the United States in economic disarray, it is staggering to witness the entire market system, the “religion” of the so-called Western powers in thrall as well as in debt to China’s economic growth and self-confidence. Yet the Beijing leadership, for all China’s success story, has yet to develop an answer to the crucial question of how to sustain its revolution and introduce greater democracy. It is my belief that the British Labour Party could and should now open a huge debate on this very issue of democracy and socialism and how best to combine the two. Ed Miliband and this frontbench colleagues have an unparalleled opportunity to launch such a debate – and to reflect again the words and philosophy of Aneurin Bevan whose political ideas and vision remain as powerfully relevant as ever. Labour’s leaders should remember that Nye’s great belief was that his National Health Service was just a beginning, a foundation stone, in the building of a democratic socialist Britain – which, of course, is why the Tories want to destroy it.
Moreover, no better platform exists for banging this drum than a successful and restored-to-health Tribune; this is the moment for the Left to lead such a compelling debate. Indeed, it is the moment to start the great counter-offensive to explain the merits of the socialist idea and not for surrender.
