George tells all
THE PRESS DONALD McLACHLAN
Once upon a time it could be assumed—I am writing on the Twelfth—that a tidy number of politicians would naw be waiting their turn at the grouse. Those were the Tory days, when to offer good shooting—or just to be a good shot —was a way of getting minor office. Now in these Labour days, so I am told, a tidy number of politicians are at their desks writing up their diaries. Whether this sport offers ways into office and helps or hinders a political career my informants prefer not to say. Wait, they urge, and see how the memoirs of George Brown are greeted, for which (British and Commonwealth rights hardback only) Gollancz is paying well over £20,000.
The issues raised are delicate—and nothing I am going to say should be read as affecting only Labour Members of Parliament. The aver- age Tory Member, it is true, has less need of the money that diaries-turned-into-memoirs- turned-into-serials-turned-into-books are likely to yield. On the other hand, those socialists who are most assiduous with their diaries are not among the neediest of their kind. The motives for this activity are obviously mixed: when Barbara Castle is quoted in the Daily Mirror as saying that her diaries are intended to provide for her old age, she is probably only half-serious. Likewise, no one believes that Richard Crossman's diaries are needed to pro- vide a pittance. He is far too successful a farmer to have worries on that score. Nor does every- one expect to get from a newspaper what was paid a week or two ago to George Brown by the Sunday Times—said to be £5,000.
No, the non-financial motives are com- pounded of the wish to justify oneself, the excitement of revealing the unknown (which is the inspiration of all gossip), the hope of in- fluencing historians, and the sheer pleasure of putting one's day by day thoughts and expen- ences through a strainer. If this was not so— and here I am coming to the point—the news- papers and the publishers would not be inter- ested in paying for diaries and memoirs the big sums that politicians now expect. Whatever academics and high-minded editors may say
about the importance of getting the historical record right at the time, the hope in the news-
paper office is always of scandal, self-exposure, malice, and the controversy provoked by any one of them, or by all three in company. The
classic and most recent example was the diary of Chips Channon, serialised in the Sunday Telegraph and then published as a book which has sold 10,000 copies.
Fortunately for the market in diaries and serials very few politicians have 'style' and many aspire to seriousness. Lord Avon's
memoirs, for which The Times paid a price which at the time was a record, were less read-
able than they might have been had he not wished to make 'a contribution to history.' Mr Selwyn Lloyd and Mr Shinwell disappointed Fleet Street by being resolutely discreet—which did them more gOod morally than financially. Both men hoped for a political future—which, indeed, they have had—and did not wish to in- cur the enmities and suspicions that frankness calls up. It seems unlikely, therefore, that some of the diaries now being kept by Cabinet Ministers will be worth the money that has been or will be offered for them—simply be- cause the authors will not want to lose their friends or their votes. The Brown memoirs will not be published until after the next election.
There are other reasons, I fancy, for regard- ing the diary and memoir market as due for a slump from the Brown peak. I doubt whether Mr Wilson. or for that matter his Tory suc- cessor, will accept without protest the systematic and lengthy recording by privy councillors of the state's affairs with a view to publication at the writer's will. The Cabinet Office, which is responsible for maintaining the thirty year rule about use of official documents, can hardly fail to remind ministers that the change from fifty to thirty years was accepted on conditions that the new rules were strictly enforced. Under the Official Secrets Act, too, ministers would be obliged to submit the text of what they wished to publish and might well find the plums taken out and pickled until the next century. The Act in its present form is, admittedly, hard to apply; and the spectacle of Regina trying to prevent publication by bringing the Rt Hon
A. B. to court would not be edifying. None the less, the pressures that can be brought on ministers are considerable.
So newspapers on the look-out for political memoirs have to make careful long-term cal- culations. Will there be a flood of memoirs once socialist ministers are back in opposition? If so, they might become a bore in the 'seventies as the memoirs of generals became a bore in the 'fifties. If articles by the Rt Hon Mrs. W. are advertised in advance, may they not pro- voke counter-attack from rival papers which have engaged her most bitchy colleague to see her off? If diary specimens promising thrills have been shown in the course of negotiations between literary agent and editor, and are then taken out when the Cabinet Office hears about them, there is the danger of wasting one's money.
If I were a minister and without journalistic experience I would fear most the caprices of taste. At the moment the fashion on Sundays is for exposure. The confessions of a single minister are hardly enough. What is required is the stripping down of a whole Whitehall de- partment: this will satisfy the curiosity of the vulgar as well as the more recondite palates of the numerous students of contemporary govern- ment (in my experience the greatest gossip- lovers of all). If old-fashioned journalism re- quired the revelation of human weakness, the new fashion demands the kind of hatchet-job on institutions that was done in the earlier parts of the Fulton Report on the Civil Service.
To young and go-ahead editors, therefore, I would offer this advice. Book your ministers in advance by all means, but not on account of their memoirs, which in nine cases out of ten will be badly written. Book them to advise you on the exposure of our institutions: insist on chapter and verse of what is wrong and what the new government is failing to put right. Use your politicians anonymously, then there will be no question of Whitehall interfering in its own defence—if it dares! By this use of politi- cal material you will not only maintain circula- tion, but also perform a service to democracy. No one can ask more of you than this.
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