Sinister stance
GORONWY REES
Editor Kingsley Martin (Hutchinson 42s) The Left Review : October 1934-May 1938 (Cass, eight volumes, £48) I greatly enjoyed Father Figures, the first volume of Kingsley Martin's autobiography, which covered the first thirty-three years of his life. I wish I could say the same of this second volume, but it seems to me to have nothing of the freshness and spontaneity, the sense of a young man absorbed in the search for an iden- tity, which characterised its predecessor. Perhaps this is simply because here, at last, the young man has found himself and is so evidently pleased with the result.
In 1931, Mr Martin came to London from Manchester looking for a job, not an easy thing to find at that moment, and was unexpectedly appointed to the one post for which he was ideally suited, the editorship of the New States- man and Nation. It was only natural that he Vhould have been brilliantly successful. Between 1931 and 1945, he raised the paper's circulation from under 20,000 to over 90,000, and not only turned it into a commercial success but also made it the most influential journal of the left this country has ever known. His work, more- over, brought him into close contact with some of the most brilliant men and women of his time, with Shaw and Wells, the two Webbs, and particularly Maynard Keynes, an active director of the New Statesman, whose corres- pondence provides some of the most interesting pages of this book; and these friendships Mr Martin rightly values as one of the greatest privileges conferred on him by his position.
So Editor should be, in every sense, a success story and Mr Martin seems to have no doubt that it is one. Yet it is also the story of a failure, and perhaps, it is because Mr Martin largely ignores this aspect, that his book is so dis- appointing. The New Statesman in his time rightly and courageously attacked all the forces which were dragging Europe and Britain to destruction, in particular the triumph of con- servatism at home and the growth of fascism and national socialism abroad. Mr Martin en- joyed writing the attacks and many thousands of readers enjoyed reading them. But they made not the slightest dent in the self-confidence of the British ruling class, and not the slightest dif- ference to the trend of events; indeed, they may even be said to have accelerated it.
How does one explain •this? Was the left in any case doomed to failure in the 'thirties, both in Britain and in Europe? Or was there some- thing particular to the New Statesman and to Mr Martin, which made their efforts ineffec- tual? It is, of course, impossible to answer such questions with certainty, but it is clear from a reading of Editor that in his long campaign against reaction at home and dictatorship abroad, and especially against the policy of appeasement, Mr Martin had certain deep seated reservations which tended to reduce its effectiveness, indeed made it an instrument of intellectual and political confusion rather than enlightenment.
The first of these rose from the conviction that the Treaty of Versailles was a huge his- torical injustice; on this point, Mr Martin's feelings were as intense as; and identical with, Hitler's, and it followed that, at moments of crisis, however much Mr Martin condemned Hitler's methods, he could not help conceding a certain moral justification to his objectives. The second reservation rose from the convic- tion that the Bolshevik revolution constituted an immense step forward in the history of man- kind, and therefore gave the Soviet Union a kind of moral sanction, denied to any of the capitalist powers, for all its actions and policies, even when, to the less politically sophisticated, these might seem quite obviously cruel and de- praved. These two beliefs, held so profoundly as hardly to be rational, continually clouded and befuddled Mr Martin's judgment, so that at moments of great crisis it showed symptoms of schizophrenia. The most notorious instance, of course, is the editorial note in which, in August 1938, he advocated revision of the Czech frontiers in preference to resisting Hitler. A few days later, Geoffrey Dawson in The Times advocated precisely the same policy, and at Munich Chamberlain put it into effect.
Looking back, Mr Martin now admits that his article may have been wrong, but only, he says, in its timing, not its content. This is reveal- ing enough; what is even more so is the fact that he justifies his views as the expression of a consistent policy of opposing war with Hitler except in alliance with' the Soviet Union. In this claim can be read all the confusions and illu- sions which beset New Statesman policy under Mr Martin's editorship. One might say that the New Statesman was influential precisely because these illusions and confusions were common to the intellectual left as a whole, and because the New Statesman reflected them with such unfailing accuracy.
It is not surprising that, given the inadequacies of its most popular journal, the intellectual left should have sought ways of making up for them. One such was' the Left Review, now available in a collected facsimile edition in eight volumes. It did not make much of a job of it. It was specifically marxist, where the New Statesman was merely marxisant, and its commitment to the Soviet Union was absolute. It was dull, while the New Statesman was eminently read- able, and its literary contributions had none of the brilliance of some of the New Statesman's; an exception should be made for Edgell Rick- ward, one of its editors, who was among the' most gifted and underrated writers of his time. Today it makes sad reading and these volumes will be of small interest to anyone except the historian.
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