New Statesman

:This article is about New Statesman magazine. For the Rik Mayall sitcom of the same name, see The New Statesman.

The Statesman under Kingsley Martin

At the same time as Martin became editor, the Statesman merged with the Liberal weekly the Nation, and changed its name to the New Statesman and Nation, which it remained until 1964. The chairman of the Nations board was the economist John Maynard Keynes, who came to be an important influence on the newly merged paper, which started with a circulation of just under 13,000.

Related Topics:
Nation - John Maynard Keynes

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

During the 1930s, Martin's Statesman moved markedly to the left politically. It became strongly anti-fascist and was generally critical of the government policy of appeasement of Mussolini and Hitler (though it did not back British rearmament). It was also, notoriously, an apologist for Stalin's Soviet Union. In 1934 it ran a famously deferential interview with Stalin by H. G. Wells. In 1938 came Martin's celebrated refusal to publish George Orwell's despatches from Barcelona during the Spanish civil war because they criticised the communists for suppressing the anarchists and the left-wing POUM. "It is an unfortunate fact," Martin wrote to Orwell, "that any hostile criticism of the present Russian regime is liable to be taken as propaganda against socialism."

Related Topics:
Stalin - H. G. Wells - George Orwell

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Statesmans circulation grew massively under Martin's editorship, reaching 70,000 by 1945, and it became a key player in Labour politics. The paper welcomed Labour's 1945 general election victory but took a critical line on the new government's foreign policy. The young Labour MP Richard Crossman, who had been an assistant editor before the war, was Martin's chief lieutenant in this period, and the Statesman published Keep Left, the pamphlet written by Crossman, Michael Foot and Ian Mikardo that most succinctly laid out the Labour left's proposals for a "third force" foreign policy rather than alliance with the United States.

Related Topics:
Richard Crossman - Keep Left - Michael Foot - Ian Mikardo

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

During the 1950s, the Statesman remained a left critic of British foreign and defence policy and of the Labour leadership of Hugh Gaitskell (though Martin never got on personally with Aneurin Bevan, the leader of the anti-Gaitskellite Labour left). It opposed the Korean war, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament grew directly out of an article in the Statesman by J. B. Priestly.

Related Topics:
Hugh Gaitskell - Aneurin Bevan - Korean war - Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament - J. B. Priestly

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~