The press
A true Scot
Paul Johnson
rr he Scottish presence in British journal- .1. ism, not least in Fleet Street, is power- ful and pervasive. It dates from at least the days of the Edinburgh Review, which had a huge impact on London and was probably the most influential periodical ever pub- lished in Britain. Even before that, in the 1770s and 1780s, James Boswell, for inst- ance, was a prolific contributor to London newspapers and magazines, and he was by no means the only Scot so employed. Today, I would guess that more influence in Fleet Street is exercised by journalists from Scotland than from any other race, even including Australians. Convinced as I am that it is perfectly correct to use `Scotch' as well as 'Scottish' as an adjective—and I have innumerable Scots authorities, from Sir Walter Scott himself downwards, on my side—I have yet to get this usage into a national newspaper. I write `Scotch' and at some stage in the sub-editorial process a firm hand from north of the Tweed takes it out and substitutes 'Scottish'. For a reason I don't understand, it is a matter of national pride—or pedantry.
But in addition to these anonymous editorial legions, Scotland sends us many outstanding individuals. Recently we lost one of them: James Cameron, for my money the greatest Scots journalist of his generation. Not that Cameron was in any sense a professional Scot. He began his journalism in Dundee, and would some- times talk or even write about it. But he placed no particular importance on his ancestry and background. He had no trace of a Scots accent that I could detect, he was educated in France, no preoccupation with things and causes Scottish–no tartan hag- gistry, still less nationalism; he hated nationalism in all its strident forms, as passionately as he loved freedom. The parade of Scots impedimenta, so dear to journalists like the late John Gordon or John Junor, was not for him.
Yet in a deeper sense he was very Scottish. We rightly associate with the Scots character, at its best, ascertain un- bending zeal for truth and justice, a firm- ness of character, a sense of integrity, an unwillingness to compromise in the last resort with the world, the flesh and the Devil. This spirit of the Covenanters, this firm Calvinistic distinction between right and wrong, is still a real phenomenon in Scotland even today, and James Cameron reflected it. It was in no sense self- conscious, even prominent, in his be- haviour. No man was less of a zealot. He was the most tolerant of creatures and any residual Calvinism in his nature was con- cealed by innumerable layers of civilised, easy-going urbanity acquired in his decades of world travel and long residence in the South.
Yet beneath it all Cameron was a stickler for rectitude, a man who would never compromise with what he felt to be wrong. His manner was mild, almost diffident, but in dealing with him you were never in any doubt that you faced a strong moral perso- nality. I think it is probably true that, for the last quarter-century, if Fleet Street journalists were asked to say which of their brethren best personified the highest ethic- al standards of their profession, most would have nominated James Cameron. This would have been equally true whether their views were of the Left or Right— Cameron's own were generally left of centre, but always open-minded and reasonable. I associate Cameron as a moral mentor with the cartoonist Vicky, who had the most infallible sense of right and wrong of any man I ever met. The two were close friends and for a time associates on the News Chronicle, that tainted and unreli- able refuge of idealists. When Vicky left the Chronicle to join the Daily Mirror, it was Cameron, I think, who inspired him to make his famous remark: `It is like leaving a lady with syphilis and taking up with an honest whore.' And when Vicky was bar- red from El Vino's, following a ludicrous episode involving the proprietor's bowler hat, Cameron insisted on joining him in exile. How we missed both!
Cameron was and is the archetype in Fleet Street legend of the individual writ- ing journalist who risks his job by defying his proprietor on a point of principle. This sprang from an incident at the time of the Korean war involving Sir Edward Hulton, owner of Picture Post, for which Cameron then worked. Cameron resigned, to pre- serve his honour, and Hulton was never allowed to forget it. Yet in a curious way I have always felt that journalists like Cameron function best in the proprietorial system of journalism. They like big, powerful personalities to Clash with, to measure themselves against. Proprietors are the grit in the oyster that produces the pearl. Vicky, I know, felt this strongly. He was never happier or more productive than when working for Lord Beaverbrook in the Evening Standard, and loved to quote the Beaver's mysterious injunction: `Carry oe annoying the readers, Mister Vicky. The readers have gotta be annoyed!' To pro- duce his best work, Vicky needed to be in a certain state of tension with the attitudes of the paper and its owner. Cameron was a similar type, the radical who requires a more authoritarian framework against which to protest and fight. For most of his life he got it, and responded with zest and brilliance. In his last years he found a safe haven in the Guardian, which of course , always allowed him to write exactly what he pleased. So the tension and the struggle were missing, and I sometimes detected an untharacteristic flatness in his work.
Cameron was always a radical but he never swallowed the Left's standard set of nostrums. He was much too truthful and honourable for that. In particular, be rejected the modern form of left-will anti-semitism which masquerades as ant!- Zionism. He remained to the end a firm, If sometimes bewildered and dismayed, friend of the Jewish state, whose birth he had celebrated and whose astonishing mo- ment of triumph, during the Six Day War in 1967, he had witnessed. Cameron had great affection for Israel which, at any rate until the 1970's, epitomised for him se many of the things he valued: courage, democracy, creativity and respect for the individual within an enveloping spirit of collective decency. He liked too its blend of rationality and romanticism, a combina- tion which also drew him to modern India, his other great love. Now where also do we find reason and romance sitting so com- fortably together? Why—Scotland, °I course! James Cameron was a true Scot.
'We could try for a Small Business Loan.'
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