The press
The Big Read
Paul Johnson
What would journalists do without Michael Foot? Not even his best friends would rate him as a great leader of the Labour Party. But as a provider of good copy he has few rivals. As Alan Watkins pointed out in this week's Observer, he has always been a funny speaker, but since his elevation he has emerges as a `fine, natural knockabout comedian as well, wearing funny clothes, leading a shaggy dog around and falling downstairs or into holes in the stage'. And lo! He was at it again on Friday, aboard a British Airways flight from Oslo. Accor- ding to the Sunday Telegraph, he twice launched 'into impromptu political oratory over the plane's public address system', de- nounced Mrs Thatcher, referred to 'my friend' Ray Buckton, engaged in 'good humoured bantering', coped with 'some heckling' and 'shouting', and promised `to arrange more drinks for the passengers'. Well; these politicians will promise anything, won't they? His behaviour did not meet with the approval of a certain Mr Desmond Nears-Crouch, described as an architect, who took it upon himself to apologise to two Norwegian passengers, 'saying that not all Englishmen behave in this way'. But then Mr Foot is a Cor- nishman and sits for a Welsh constituency. British Airways evidently thought themselves lucky to get this natural knockabout comedian gratis. They said that `tempers were running high' and Mr Foot's turn 'may have helped relax the at- mosphere'.
But there is a serious side to Mr Foot too; indeed a desperately serious side. The 'Old Bibliophile', as Mr Watkins calls him, rightly sees British politics today as part of a long historical continuum, a noble stage on which a long succession of actors, from (say) Wat Tyler onwards have briefly com- manded the public's attention, a cast he has been privileged to join. He adds to the nor- mal politician's calculations of profit and loss an entire historical dimension, in which he clearly sees himself as having respon- sibilities not merely to his party but to the spirit of our history. That is an excellent ap- proach. Moreover, Mr Foot is not stuffy. He does not share with most top politicians the belief that his thoughts should await his memoirs. He gives them to us now. Best of all, Mr Foot has a reckless streak when he gets behind a typewriter. Unlike Roy Jenkins or Shirley Williams, who tend to play it safe when dealing with current topics in the press — unlike even Tony Benn Mr Foot uses colourful language and piles on the adjectives. There is nothing anaemic about his prose. He is always a good read.
Hence it was something of a coup for the Observer to get from him the lengthy analysis of his dispute with the Bennites which it has just published in two parts. This is the kind of serious socialist think- piece which, in the good old days, would have been a natural for the New Statesman. Its appearance in the Observer is ironic. `Tiny' Rowlands's acquisition of that can turn at will into this really aggressive investigative journalist.' newspaper, it was generally thought, would mean its surrendering its prized status of political independence for a perch somewhere on the Right. Once the details of the terms imposed by Mr John Biffen became known, however, a drift to the Left seemed more likely. Why Mr Biffen, who is emerging as one of the oddest members of the Thatcher government, should wish to bring about this result is baffling. But there it is. I suspect that the question now is not whether the Observer retains its indepen- dent status, but whether it moves to .Labour or the Social Democrats. The fact that it should agree to Michael Foot's request to provide him with an enormously valuable platform for his views is significant. Not that I criticise the Observer for prin" ting the pieces. Quite the contrary. They served two valuable purposes. First they re" mind us that Mr Foot is an essentially mud' died political philosopher who does not see, or who cannot face, the real choice a socialist has to make. In his historical analysis, he glosses over the Lenin bit, and this is fatal. For it is Leninism which Made Stalinism not only possible but inevitable, and the praise Foot lavishes on Trotsky (who was identified with Lenin in all his worst and most corrupting measures, and who never apologised for them) makes Me think that he does not grasp the fundarnen" tats of the present argument about socialists and democracy. For it was Lenin's belief that he and his party had a special mission from history to interpret the will of the pro- letariat which ultimately led to all the hor- rors. And the Bennite movement is Leninist in inspiration in that its members (perhaps not including Benn himself) feel they have a similar mission, which exempts them front `counting heads' democracy. Indeed they even have a name for it: 'the democracy of the committed'. Foot is ambivalent about the role of 'vanguard elites', because he once subscribed to the 'democracy of the committed' theory himself, by exalting the role of the constituency parties. What he is now discovering is that there is really no halfway house, in logic, between Bennisrn and the Social Democrats. His heart and his past pull him towards Bennery; his reason and his future pull him towards the HealeYs and the Hattersleys, who are Social Democrats in essentials. That is why Foot s articles were so fascinating. They convey the sense of impending misfortune sYln bolised by a pantomime horse. A coup for the Observer then. And the pieces reminded one of an important jour- nalistic truth often overlooked nowadaYs• i The real strength of the posh Sunday lies n its capacity to deliver what Denis Hamilton used to call 'the big read' ( and not only the newsprint sections: in the past the Sunday Times Magazine has run articles of 1.1P to 15,000 words, and I hope will do so again), The Foot articles owed their impact 10 argumentative detail and that is something television cannot supply. It's no fun living through the bingo recession but Fleet Weet can keep its self-respect so long as enough executives on 'the qualities' remember, the beginning was the word . .
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