Letters
Do something!
Sir: For the past fortnight Mr Geoffrey Wheatcroft has been giving your readers his views on the National Union of Journalists, of which he and I are both members. If I may summarise his case in a few words Which I think he will agree are fair, he argues that the NUJ is at present incompetently and perversely led, that its policies (and particularly their political complexion) are grossly unrepresentative of the wishes and needs of the majority of its members, that it wastes time, effort and resources on matters that are no concern of journalists as journalists, that the members' interests suffer as a result, and that, for good measure, the union's official paper, the Journalists, is a disgrace to the profession. Mr Auberon Waugh has recently expressed similar views in your columns, not for the first time.
With the case as made I entirely agree. The question arises, however: what is to be done about it? Mr Wheatcroft hints at a solution, but promptly recoils from it in fastidious disdain: he suggests that he (and, by implication, other members) might 'do a Levin'. As the Levin referred to, I should explain that by this is meant doing what I and a group of colleagues have clone in the Past few years in our Branch (the London Freelance); to wit, organising the moderates who comprise the overwhelming majority of the members to resist take-over by the tiny group of Trotskyite and similar fanatics among us. This task involves attending the monthly Branch meetings, doing a little liaison and information work in between, and occasionally standing for Branch office.
Not very difficult; not very 'painful; not very expensive; not even dangerous yet. But Messrs Wheatcroft and Waugh tell us that they wouldn't dream of doing anything similar: Mr Waugh cannot bring himself to associate with such common people as are found at NUJ meetings, and Mr Wheatcroft felt bored at the only one he has ever attended and has therefore never gone to another.
Now it so happens that the Branch to Which both of them presumably belong (Magazine) is (a) under the control of the Trotsky ities, and (b) ripe — nay, over-ripe — for just such a campaign as we have been running among the London Freelances, Which could sweep the extremists out of Office. But they will not undertake the work.
So now would one or the other of them, or both, please say clearly how else the state of affairs which all three of uS deplore in the NI-JJ is to be put right? The solution adopted by my colleagues and me is to organise those of like mind. It seems that the Wheatcroft-Waugh technique consists of sitting on their bums, writing more or less elegantly about the Union's condition, flapping a limp wrist with a murmur of 'My dear, the noise — and the people', and leaving the work to others.
In that case, perhaps they would go one step further, and leave the advice to others, too. The malignity of our enemies we can bear with fortitude; but we can do without the patronising encouragement of those of our friends who prefer to sit snug in the columns of the Spectator and deplore that which they are too lazy to help remedy. Bernard Levin London wi
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