A little under ten years ago, soon after becoming editor of the New Statesman, I received through the post-in a plain brown envelope, naturally-a document entitled: "The Twots." There was no covering note; it had been professionally typed and was 25 pages long. It was signed by Anthony Barnett.
Barnett, a founding member of Charter 88, had been a candidate for the editorship of the NS; his defeat had prompted him to write "The Twots." (The curious title derived from a comment by Peter Preston, then editor of the Guardian; Barnett had shown Preston his plans for the NS, which had just been rejected, "at which point Preston drew breath and said: 'the twots.'" What did it mean? Twits? Sots?) The document was a long whine about the fact that he had been passed over. I was enraged by his comments on me-his condescension about my reporting job at the Financial Times and his distortion of my work on the miners' strike-written in a manner which set every chip on my shoulder jumping.
But his real target was "the system," which had denied him the prize. The "system" consisted essentially of the leadership of the Labour party (Neil Kinnock was then party leader); Phillip Whitehead, the chairman of the NS board; and an NS staff too frightened to vote for the radical candidate-him. Barnett felt he had been turned down by a conservative culture which infected everything. "Labour is playing it safe and so are its organs (even those that shouldn't even be its organs). The asphyxiating influence of Labourist and Stalinist culture mingles with the suffocating self-importance of traditional institutions," the document concluded.
Re-reading "The Twots" today, as the NS is about to be given another chance of revival (with my assistance), I feel the same anger-undiminished by the reflection that Barnett was in one respect right. He had been kept out of the job by the Labour hierarchy, even though he had prepared for it much more carefully than I had. His first presentation to the NS board was so good, compared to my scepticism, that I was rung up by Kinnock and told-amiably but unmistakably-to pull my socks up in the second interview.
I had not realised-as Barnett had-how closely the party leaders were involved in the decision, and how much they wished the NS to be controlled by someone who would reflect their desire to shift Labour on to the centre ground. Barnett was right about how far his brand of socialism-a Marxism that has not for some time spoken its name and can turn into a kaleidoscope of positions-got up their noses.
The powers turned out to be wrong about me. I got up their noses by being too right wing (or too right wing too early). I wrote an editorial condemning Labour's policy of renunciation of nuclear weapons, and, for a few days, opened wounds which had been pinned shut for the sake of the coming general election. (I remember Mary Kaldor coming to see me about it. With a condescension even more magnificent than Barnett's, she asked: "Were you aware of what you were doing?") But, worst of all, I made a muck of the magazine and left it: unlike Barnett, I had not wanted it badly enough. The social democratic takeover of the NS failed. It might have been better with Barnett.
The other impression that re-reading "The Twots" left on me was a confirmation of my belief that much of "left" journalism is fuelled by an ersatz passion. Barnett's belief in himself and in the transforming power of his ideas was couched in a prose which posited a choice between a liberated, open, democratic, radical, talented, creative and successful journal and one which "belongs... to the sahibs of Whitehall." It is a style which has lasted: in an interesting piece on constitutional reform in the NS (5th April), Barnett writes that the arms to Iraq and mad cow affairs have shown us "a glimpse of the heart of darkness of British power-darkness because nothing is planned, no one is responsible and the innocent die or are sent to trial."
It is not that-in this as in much else-there is no case to answer. But if the fumbles and evasions of these affairs are described as a "heart of darkness," what words are we to use of the Italian state? Or, in another league altogether, the Russian? Or the North Korean? On leaving the NS, I wrote an article for the Independent on Sunday criticising a piece by Jeanette Winterson in the NS, in which Margaret Thatcher had been likened to a Nazi. Winterson counter-attacked by saying that she could not be inhibited by those whose imaginations were too wizened to grasp the truth of her description. I haven't been able to read her (no doubt interesting) novels since.
This remains a fundamental problem for "left" journalism; it has been an important element in its decline. Belief in radical outrage has faltered, thanks in part to the 20th century's most radical politicians: the Bolsheviks. The view that if only we adopted the idea (or set of ideas) proposed by radical thinkers, a hopeless situation would be turned into a gorgeous one, no longer commands much assent.
But what is left? The Fabianism of well thought-through reform? The endorsement of pressure group agendas? The sentimentalism of caring, micro-observed reportage? A good question for the new NS.
