Was Frank Johnson a conservative?

This review is part of a series on books that might be of interest to those interested in conservative history.

Was Frank Johnson a conservative? He most certainly was not a Conservative with a capital C, being, as a journalist, of a somewhat anarchic nature. He was, however, one of those who promoted Margaret Thatcher’s free-market policies and being from an East End working class family (his father had been a baker) he had a natural affinity with many of the IEA’s ideas. But Frank would not have been Frank if that had interfered with his ability to see the funny side of everything, including Margaret Thatcher’s campaign in the chocolate factory.

The Times obituary said that he excelled in “a very English art form”, which would have pleased him as he was, despite his travels to European cities and capitals, a very English person.

A good parliamentary sketch can be high art, but art with a hard-nosed purpose. Sketch writers know they are an important arm of the democratic process. Unless we can laugh at our politicians we can never keep them in order.

The Telegraph obituary quoted a number of his witticisms about politicians of every hue and stripe. Though I followed his career with interest and read him whenever I could while he peregrinated through the right-wing press, I had not realized that he invented the term “chattering classes”. That alone will keep his name alive.

The Telegraph also gives the story of his last few days, which I read at the time and found funny, moving and absolutely typical all at once:

Johnson endured cancer with exemplary courage for seven years. He would say of his illness that he bore it "with the stoicism of the London working class from whence I came".

Last Sunday, just before he went into hospital for the final time, he attended the performance of Aida at La Scala in which the tenor Roberto Alagna (as Radames) walked off the stage in a fit of pique after being booed; Johnson immediately filed the story to The Daily Telegraph.

A journalist to the marrow of his bones and all attempts to be anything else, even editor, failed. But, really, who cares when we have those wonderful sketches, many of which were collected by his widow, Virginia Fraser, in a recently published volume, called Best Seat in the House? This might make a wonderful Christmas present though the potential giver ought to be warned that there is a strong chance that much of Christmas Day will be spent by people reading out various hilarious passages with younger members of the family wondering who all those people flitting through the articles are and why is everybody roaring with laughter.

There are the stories of his childhood and adolescence with the famous one about being clutched to Maria Callas’s bosom in “Norma” as well as my favourite of young Frank pretending to talk about football or cricket though he had actually been spening Saturday afternoon at the ballet; his early journalistic career and being hired by Maurice Green, then editor of the Daily Telegraph to write parliamentary sketches alternating with John O’Sullivan (though this last fact is not mentioned). Nor is there any mention of Colin Welch, then Deputy Editor and the man who more or less controlled the motley crew of political writers on the newspaper.

And so we get to the meat of the collection: those wonderfully funny and pointed stories about politicians in Parliament, on the hustings, at party conferences, anywhere and everywhere. Johnson’s way with words was entirely his own though one sees his influence among all sorts of political journalists.

Not all the pieces are good. Some of the later, supposedly more serious ones lack soul and wit. Sometimes the wit is misplaced in that it does not do what it should: illuminate the subject of the article.

I also have my doubts about some editorial decisions. The concept of having Frank Johnson’s victims comment on the articles about themselves must have seemed like a good one but after a while those insincere sentences written with teeth firmly clenched become tedious. The choice of photographs is tilted towards Frank the later grandee rather than Frank the journalist. That is what he was all his life – one of the best. A Fleet Street legend, indeed.

At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

Twenty years ago

November 9, 1989 Berlin - the Wall is destroyed by the People

Definitions

Sometimes one finds definitions of what history is in unexpected places. Well, not that unexpected, as Oleg Khlevnyuk's Master of the House: Stalin and his Inner Circle is a history book that describes the way Stalin gradually and often violently imposed his control on the Politburo while conducting a policy of terror against the population of the Soviet Union.

In his Introduction Dr Khlevniuk discusses the various theories of how Stalinism came about and whether it was inevitable given either/or Russian history and the character of Bolshevism. He clearly does not like the theory of historical inevitability:

But for the historian, it seems to me, the concept of the "iron march of history" is, at the very least, uninspiring. Chronicler of the inevitable - why would anyone wh has read and analyzed tens of thousands of pages of the most diverse documents, who has learned the fates of faceless millions, not to mention hudreds of flesh-and-blood individuals, many of who desperately fought
for their interests and ideals - why would such a person agree with such a characterization?

The idea of inevitability comes when we try to arrange history into some kind of orderly progression. Specific knowledge complicates the picture, revealing the diversity of factors involved in any human endeavour, the complex interplay between historical traditions and the logic governming events as they unfold, between political conflict at the top and social pressures at the bottom, and, in the end, the role of chance.

A long way from the soft Marxism favoured by so many of our academics.

Times do change (sometimes)

It is normally in one’s youth that one prefers rather pretentious novels, particularly if they are written in a beautiful and elaborate style, replete with quotations and abstruse references. How clever one thinks oneself to be in one’s late teens and early twenties, reading this sort of stuff before sneaking away for a quick perusal of thrillers or romances (to be disowned and despised). Later in life one finds those pretentious novels to be utterly dull and unworthy of attention.

The one exception to this rule, in Tory Historian’s experience is Michael Innes (though not in his J. I. M. Stewart persona – there the rule applies in full). What seemed utterly dull and pretentious in those halcyon days of intellectualism has, for the last few years, appeared to be amusing and entertaining with quite interesting apercus. Ha, Tory Historian can do pretentious as well.

A recently picked up novel is about the art world (they often are) and forgeries. Silence Observed is highly entertaining and has a remarkable summary of English life early on. John Appleby is now at the top of his profession in Scotland Yard as Commissioner of Metropolitan Police but still finds people approaching him informally about their problems in his club.

He muses on this extraordinary phenomenon:

There are levels of English society in which nearly all professional advice is picked up free. Cabinet ministers murmur their symptoms negligently into the ear of distinguished consultant physicians when the ladies have withdrawn from the dinner-table. Leading Queen’s Counsel know precisely what lies ahead of them when they find themselves on the right hand of brilliant and frequently dis-married hostesses. Top-ranking architects, summoned to indigestible feasts in ancient colleges, commonly take the precaution of bringing a junior staff with them and lodging them in an adjacent hotel.

Tory Historian cannot help wondering how much that has changed, if at all.

Clive of India

Tory Historian investigated the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum on Friday morning and a separate blog is called for that institution. However, while waiting for a friend and lulled by the beautiful autumnal weather TH took this picture of Clive silhouetted against the Foreign Office.

Next meeting of the Conservative History Group

The next meeting will take place on November 3, at 6.30 in the Grimond Room, Portcullis House (that's the one that looks like a giant crematorium on the embankment). The speaker will be Ion Trewin, author of Alan Clark: the Biography. All are welcome but you may be encouraged to join the CHG.