Lobby lads
Hugh Macpherson
In 1970 a worthy academic, Jeremy Tunstall, published a solemn work on The Westminster Lobby Correspondents. It was quite useful in its way, but clearly out of the sociological genus that tells us that on average we are all married to ladies with 34 inch busts who produce 2.4 children and with whom we enjoy 1.35 orgasms weekly.
Of course Mr Tunstall gravely reported everything that everyone told him, and no less than thirty-nine lobby correspondents told all, from their humble origins to whether their approach to politicians involved 'deference', 'caution' or 'toughness'. However, there was some wry amusement when it was observed that he had sociologically determined that his average lobby correspondent spent just as much time talking to other lobby correspondents as to MPs. It even sparked off a review from Mr Benn, who was just in the process of becoming less radioactive from the Wilson White Hot Technological Revolution, in which he lamented the fact that the restrictive practices of lobby correspondents had meant that the 'major story of the gas centrifuge' was delayed for a year. At least that was an original complaint, although the cosmic significance of the gas centrifuge unfortunately still eludes the worthy tradesman of Westminster.
The usual attack on the Lobby, mostly from other journalists, is that they are elitist lickspittles, manipulated and castrated by politicians, a secret society compared with which masonic lodges are like Quaker meeting houses and so on.
The complaints are so ill-informed and misdirected that very serious questions about the nature of the Parliamentary Lobby system are missed, and that is really a great pity when a Royal Commission on the Press is now sitting. Indeed an excellent bit of work for Mr Tunstall when next he feels a burst of sociological fervour would be to determine why other journalists can exhibit such incredible hostility towards lobby correspondents when most of their practices are exactly the same as those of any other hard-working specialist.
For example Mr Anthony Howard, editor of the New Statesnten, has compared the lobby correspondents to prostitutes soliciting in the street. Now I do not know whether he would apply that judgment to his own excellent correspondent, but I do know that he, like the editors of other periodicals, regularly has people to lunch when their conversation is as unattributable as any in the members' lobby of the House of Cornmons.
Private Eye, of course, takes the security of its unattributable lunches with deadly earnest. The squeals of indignation from the Eye offices when the Sunday Times began to publish accounts of their unattributable activities in a column called Private Ear could be heard in the magazine's rest home in the Dordogne, where weary iconoclasts take their ease on the proceeds of fearless exposure.
The practice of meeting 'customers' on an unattributable basis is common to the whole of journalism. Unattributable group briefings are a commonplace of every speciality—educational, industrial, diplomatic and the rest. Indeed diplomatic correspondents are officially segregated into smaller groups for separate briefings according to their importance—a practice which the Lobby would not tolerate. Further, the idea that the Lobby is an easy tool of government propaganda is not one shared by the last two administrations. Both Prime Ministers complained bitterly about the Lobby. Sir Harold Wilson's faithful retainer Joe Haines announced from No 10 that Lobby briefings would end, such was the Prime Minister's displeasure. Mr Heath let it be known that he had 'difficulty in putting across the Government's views'—a difficulty that he might perhaps have solved by placing them on a clean sheet of paper and issuing them to the Press Association. Instead he organised vast gatherings in Lancaster House where, amidst scenes of pomp and splendour, attendants walked around with stick microphones and invited any of the five or six hundred journalists present to ask a question. If Mr Heath had chosen to enter on a white horse it could have been organised by Mussolini himself. Of course the size of the gathering precluded vigorous questioning.
It is perfectly true that the Lobby can sometimes be absurdly pompous and reveal traces of Luddism. There have been times when the office holders have seemed to think that they were running an exclusive society and not simply an association of journalists working in the same place. This seemed to have its zenith in the 1950s, when David Wood, the Political Editor of the Times, was once threatened with being called before the Lobby Committee because he wrote a piece saying that the Prime Minister was thinking of moving Selwyn Lloyd, which the lobby bosses, in their wisdom, deemed improper. Just how idiotic this would have been was demonstrated by David Wood quite recently, when he revealed that the source was Harold Macmillan himself.
Fortunately some of the elder Lobby cardinals have gone. For that matter the postwar development of the Lobby was in sharp contrast to the earlier traditions. When J. T. Kirk, the Lobby Correspondent of the News Chronicle, wrote in 1930 that the government were thinking of arresting Gandhi it was not the Lobby committee he enraged but the Special Branch of Scotland Yard. Comically enough his source was the Home Secretary himself, J. R. Clynes, but the Lobby showed its teeth and extracted an
undertaking from the government that such police activities would be curtailed.
If the present Lobby system should collie under scrutiny it is not for the superficial, and often petulant, reasons advanced bY some of its critics. Some light should be shed on its activities because it is much more powerful than many people realise—and that includes editors and proprietors. As the first filter of the vast amount of information which comes through the press gallery', lobby correspondents can stamp it with their own interpretation. Proprietors and editors perhaps imagine that this is to their own good. Ambitious journalists find their' selves in the Lobby only when deemed 'suitable' or 'reliable'. Promotion may fiid" low in the same way. This may be all acceptable system if the lobby correspondent's views are in accord with the nevi's' paper's policy, but that cannot always be the case since the spread of newspaPer, ownership does not cover the full political spectrum. During the debates on EEC entrY one major lobby correspondent said wistt fully to me that he wished he worked for an anti-EEC paper. In fact there was virtualbl none apart from the Morning Star and inter' mittently the Daily Express. But most lobby correspondents managed to carry on. Some Westminster correspondents work for others besides their own papers. Often this is immediate and obvious. Equally ofte.n it is not. In the final analysis most radio stations, most serious magazines, most tele' vision programmes of a political nature, will be influenced by somebody in th! Lobby. And, apart from the normal lobbY correspondents accredited to newspaPers' there are a couple of freelance agencies, ell' joying the most exclusive offices in London. at nowhere near the commercial rent. There is no reason at all why lobby corresciplldents should not declare their interests, like, MPs, so that when they write any interestea. party can know the full range of their act!' vities. Perhaps the most damaging attael( ever made on lobby correspondents was tbe suggestion that they act, at times, in a Pub lie relations capacity. There is seldom arlY proof advanced for this, and the only tulle that any such activity has come to light 041', a few years ago when a lobby correspond for a London evening paper was found Ids be carrying out some PR work. He vial„ immediately dismissed by his editor—a', though subsequently given a Lobby ticke." in one of the freelance agencies, presumab'? on the recommendation, or with the aci:101 escence of, the Lobby Committee. At a time when the business activities.0, MPs are coming under increased scrutirlb).,j there is equally good reason why the Lob, s with its access to Ministers and MI's, 4, well as its influence in the dissemination ri.) )1 political information, should be similar.111 examined. What better time to startv considerations than when a Royal "Tito mission on the Press is in session '? It is uP d the Commission to call for full evidence a1 to examine the possibility of an annli register of lobby correspondents' interests'
Previous page
