CLEANED ANY GOOD LOOS LATELY?
The media: Paul Johnson examines the growing paranoia of the intellectual Left
AN entertaining piece by Valerie Grove in this week's Sunday Times gives an illumi- nating insight into the level of discourse among British intellectuals. Margaret Drabble, whom Mrs Grove was interview- ing, had argued that high payments for work were unnecessary since it should he its own reward (1 am simplifying of course). Brian Walden, from the quasi- Right, replied that Miss Drabble should try telling that to the kind of people who have to clean public lavatories. Miss Drabble, indignant, came back with the assertion that she was sure she had a good deal more experience of lavatory-cleaning than Wal- den. To which Walden replied that he had done time in the army on 'jankers' and knew all about washing out latrines and, for that matter, polishing coal. At this point Miss Drabble challenged Walden to what she called 'a competition for speed and efficiency' in lavatory-cleaning; she was ready to meet him 'any day' and threatened to use 'spirit of salt' ('It's extraordinarily powerful stuff). The thought struck me: could one imagine Simone de Beauvoir and Raymond Aron in the Brasserie Lipp arguing hotly over their respective merits as a janitors. Is Mary McCarthy likely to debate with Sidney Hook on which of them is better at scrubbing lino? Would Bertolt Brecht and Martin Heidegger have clashed over their skills at charring?
Miss Drabble's challenge was made in the first issue of a new Left-wing journal called Samizdat. It reached me through the post and has no price marked, but you can find out all about it by writing to 18 Victoria Park Square, London E2. It is edited by Ben Pimlott, one of the new breed of Labour court historians, and it has many of the names you would expect: Eric Hobsbawm, Mary Kaldor, Anthony Bar- nett, Clive Ponting etc, though to empha- sise its anti-Thatcher ecumenism it includes others, such as Anne Sofer and Michael Young. I enjoyed two of the articles: John Lloyd, the most valuable writing talent the Left possesses, reporting from Moscow, and John Rentoul, another clever young man, on trade unions, which touchingly reminded me of the kind of piece I used to write in 1959-60. Unfortunately most of the rest were all on the same subject, which might be collectively entitled What, Then, Must the Left Do? It made for dull and repetitive reading. 1 suppose it will just about pass muster for the first issue but clearly the next one will have to do better.
What struck me about this publication, however, was its title, with its implication that Britian is now a censored society where the view of the Left can only be published in a clandestine newspaper. I won't repeat the case against this view elegantly deployed by Ferdinand Mount in last Friday's Daily Telegraph. But I stress two points. First, the use of the title Samizdat by writers whose views are con- stantly, one might say wearisomly, display- ed all over the press and endlessly heard on radio and television, is an insult to those behind the Iron Curtain, especially in Russia, who have no other means of speaking to readers except through under- ground sheets and who have, in many cases, suffered imprisonment, 'psychiatric treatment', exile and forced labour for criticising their governments. I would like to know, for instance, what the playwright Vaclav Havel, now in hiding from the Czech secret police, thinks of this purloin- ing of an honourable title to make a cheap debating point.
Secondly, it is clear that the thinkers of the Left are unlikely to make much prog- ress in recovering the ideological initiative if they continue to indulge in this kind of self-deception, indeed self-pity. Whether they really believe they are being perse- cuted or whether it is just an act I cannot say. But I have been struck, for instance, by the frenzied over-reaction of members of the new left-wing 'June 20th Group' to the criticism, much of it teasing, of their up-market doings in Campden Hill Square. Some of this circle constantly express their 'You're lucky, there's never been a better time to be blind and toothless.' anxieties about a mysterious entity they call the Thought Police. This evil force turns out, on closer inspection, to consist of Peregrine Worsthorne and his Political Jokes Editor, Frank Johnson. It is all very worrying. How one wishes that old chums like Nancy Mitford and Pam Hartwell were still around to enjoy the fun.
It is worth re-stating, in this world of fantasy-terrors and left-wing persecution mania, that in the whole of our history writers have never been more free to express their views than they are in Britain today. Just in the area of Official Secrets alone the change has been enormous. When I published my first book on the Suez War early in 1957, I was obliged to remove, on the urgent and no doubt prudent advice of Lord Goodman, entire passages which he insisted — and I am sure he was right — would expose myself and the publishers to certain prosecution. At one point I remember him saying, '1 greatly fear that the entire book is a breach of the Official Secrets Act.' That book could have been published now, in its original form, without the slighest risk. So to those 'investigative journalists' who are whining today, I say baloney.
As for the notion of left-wing writers finding it difficult to get their voices heard, that too is humbug. Writing in the current New Statesman, John Mortimer complains of 'the flood of right-wing domination of comment and opinion'. What more does the fellow want? It is hard to pick up a publication in which he is not disporting himself. He is handsomely rewarded for his views by both those right-wing monsters, Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black, as well as by such organs of the Left as are willing to pay his brief. His works, and his portly person, are hardly ever off the box. You may say: yes, because he is talented. Exactly. The simple truth is that, in Britain today, all you need to get exposure is talent. I know of no case where a writer of the Left has required anything else to find an audience. Indeed one gets the impress- ion that a little bit of left-wing talent seems to go further than any other kind. The Left controls most of the subsidised theatres. Channel Four is their private empire. On the BBC and ITV they are paramount on every current-affairs, discussion, arts and books programme that matters. They award each other the prizes. They are always on the plug for fellow-toilers in the radical vineyards. Would the National Theatre go to enormous trouble and ex- pense to provide a star-studded production of a 17-minute play if it pointed a right- wing moral? I do not grumble about this state of affairs. It is part of the natural inequality of a free society where privilege is unevenly distributed. But when those who enjoy the privileges complain they are being hunted, the time has come to remind them of people like Havel, a real victim of censorship, whose enforced silence points accusingly at their frivolous hypocrisy.
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