We still have great political cartoonists, but where is the younger talent?
he leader writers' conference at the DaiIv Telegraph 25 years ago was an eccentric occasion. It took place at quarter to four in the – afternoon, and participants were not required to turn up at the newspaper until that time, Even so, one or two would sometimes be delayed by a prolonged lunch. Some of the leader writers declaimed their views noisily, others barely said a thing. Indeed, there was one person, certainly a prolonged luncher, who did not write a single word for six months, and seldom uttered one. At the back of the conference there was a man in early middle age who spent most of his time apparently doodling on a large notepad, throwing out a very occasional comment, and chuckling to himself whenever some particularly outrageous view was expressed. He usually left without excusing himself before the meeting was over. In this comic and disorderly world I assumed that he was merely one of the more work-shy leader writers. It was only after several weeks that I learnt that this person was in fact Nicholas Garland, the famous political cartoonist.
This story seems to me to offer an explanation for the decline of that peculiarly British institution, the political cartoon. I say 'decline' though there are still several political cartoonists producing excellent and sometimes brilliant work. None of them, though, is in the first flush of youth. Nick Garland must be in his middle sixties, though he still looks about 25. Our own Michael Heath is of similar vintage. Peter Brookes of the Times is not as young as he was. Nor is the great Wally Fawkes — Trog. Even that angry rebel Steve Bell of the Guardian must be getting on a bit. All these men are still at the height of their powers. What is astonishing is that there are few, if any, young political cartoonists who are making a mark. Matt of the Daily Telegraph is still of a tender age but he is a pocket cartoonist — an absolutely brilliant one — rather than a political cartoonist. The absence of younger talent is perfectly illustrated by the predicament of the London Evening Standard, whose political cartoonist Marf has this week become the paper's pocket cartoonist. There seems to be no very active search for a replacement The newspaper is running a photograph where once Jak, and before him the legendary Vicky (Victor Weisz), and before him the even more legendary David Low, displayed their wares, Without new blood the political cartoon will die. Fresh young columnists, each amazingly confident and seemingly well qualified for the
task, roll off the production line almost every day, but one could wait ten years before seeing anyone who had the makings of a political cartoonist. The explanation may be quite straightforward. A political cartoonist must be an able draughtsman, and have a grounding in politics. There seem to be very few young people who can both draw and think politically — an unusual combination of qualities. Perhaps our art schools do not teach the art of drawing, or perhaps young people do not wish to master it. David Low, though he briefly attended art school in New Zealand (where, like Nicholas Garland, he was born), was largely self-taught. But artistic skill by itself is not enough. Churchill thought Low the greatest political cartoonist because he combined 'a grand technique of draughtsmanship' with 'the vividness of his political conceptions'. Low was as politically sophisticated as any of the leading columnists of his day. After Vicky arrived in Britain, a refugee from Nazi Germany, he immersed himself in British culture, from Gilbert and Sullivan to the football terraces, and studied his adopted country's history and political institutions. Interestingly, both Low and Vicky were more radical than the newspapers they mostly worked for. The same could be said of the Daily Telegraph's Nicholas Garland.
A great political cartoon is more memorable and more powerful than even the best column, because it conveys one striking, and possibly devastating, political thought, A friend told me the other day how he remembered a cartoon drawn by Vicky at the time of the Republican convention in San Francisco that nominated Barry Goldwater. It showed Goldwater at the controls of a tram plunging downhill, with horrified party members on board. The caption was 'A Streetcar Named Disaster'. Who remembers a column after 40 years? Low's cartoons caricaturing the Nazis led to the Evening Standard being banned in Germany. When Halifax visited Berlin in 1937, Goebbels grumbled to him about Low's caricatures of Hitler, who appeared in his cartoons as a militant pigmy strutting across the page. Halifax conveyed these remarks to Low. It is difficult to imagine Hitler or Goebbels being quite so wounded by a foreign newspaper column.
You may say that we live in a post-ideological age in which young people are cynical and detached and lack political commitment. Is this really true? There are young political columnists who are happy to lay down the law with conviction. The problem seems to be a skills shortage — an absence of artists who know, and care, about politics. Hence the gaping hole in the Evening Standard. My advice to young aspiring political cartoonists, if there are any, is to immerse themselves in politics, to learn about the parties and the political figures, and to set that knowledge in the wider perspective of British history, just as an aspiring political columnist would. My advice to editors on the lookout for a new political cartoonist is to find an artist with political commitment who wants to be politically educated, and to place him, or her, at the very centre of the newspaper. That is why Nicholas Garland was sitting in those leader conferences all those years ago.
Here is an infuriating example of American self-centredness, from Monday's International Herald Tribune, now entirely owned by the New York Times. In a story about D-Day, a reporter referred to the 'American and other foreign troops . . coming by sea and air to the Normandy beaches on July 6, 1944'. The writer is not only one month out, She evidently does not know that British and Commonwealth troops formed some 40 per cent of the invasion force, and arguably had the harder time over the following days and weeks. In the hands even of the respectable American media, history is American history.
nmy column last week I wrote that the German publisher Axel Springer seemed to be 'the most likely victor' in the battle for the Telegraph Group, and suggested that the Sunday Times was mistaken in believing that Springer's bid had been rejected because it was too low. I was wrong. About five hours after I had written this, Springer withdrew — or so it seems; nothing is absolutely certain in this affair. Having made a prediction that was so quickly confounded, I have decided not to make any more forecasts until a winner is officially confirmed, even though, at the time of writing, the Barclay brothers would seem to be a short nose ahead. .
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