Universities & Left Review 7 Autumn 1959

editorial
ULR TO NEW LEFT REVIEW

HIS is the last issue of ULR in its present form. As soon as this issue has been distributed, we shall merge with the New Reasoner and prepare for the joint journal, the New Left Review. For some time our Editorial Boards have been meeting, and we held two conferences on joint problems and the merger with close friends and contributors to both journals. It is over a year since we put out a joint subscription, and during the last few months, we have undertaken several joint projectsthe HughesAlexander pamphlet on A Socialist Wages Plan, an industrial conference in Yorkshire at Easter, and the sponsorship of several new provincial clubs. As soon as we have made one or two deals about expense accounts for the Editorial staff, we shall establish an '"economic" price for the new journal (probably 3s. 6d. rather than 4s.) and compensate our subscribers with a "fair deal" (say 1 ULR worth about 15 NLR's?). The New Left Review will be slightly less weighty (72 pages), slightly less forbidding (quarto size instead of wall-sheet spread, as at present), slightly less wordy per page (more illustrations and drawings if we can afford them), slightly nearer the ground, than ULR. We shall try to extend our coverage, but maintain the character and flavour of the two original publications. We feel about the end of ULR what Dr. Johnson is said to have felt about hanging: it concentrates 'the mind wonderfully. ULR came into being, largely, to serve a need amongst socialist university students: our first issues very much bore the imprint of the circumstances in which they were produced. They reflected a tone, a mood rather than a clearly defined policy. We have been finding our way since then. But the remarkable thing all along has been the way this mood has grown, well beyond our original rather narrow contacts, and the sympathetic support which the journal has attracted. What we felt needed to be expressed and discussed amongst university students in 1955 and 1956 were the same questions about socialismcontent, theory and practicewhich agitated many other people. Some of our readers had been through university or technical colleges in the worst days of the Cold War, and had never heard politics taken seriously or discussed: many belonged to the "scholarship boy" generation, who felt that, without the serious stimulus of socialism they would lose their way for good in the lower reaches of Mr. Macmillan's Opportunity State. Many others had given long years of service to the Labour Movement: to them, ULR must often have sounded a brash and discordant note. Nevertheless, the very fact of the journal, and the discussions which grew up around it, appeared to give heart to many who might otherwise have slipped away from politics altogether. Perhaps, in a very rough-and-ready way, ULR has provided something of a bridge between audiences. ULR and the New Reasoner had quite different beginnings. But during the last eighteen months, the two journals have been steadily drawing closer together. In our

first issue, we carried an advert for the Reasoner, which ran, rebelliously, "Is There Room for the New Reasoner As Well?" By NR 9, we had softened relations to the point where we were able to get "The Other Journal of Socialist Humanism" into our exchange ad without incurring heavy Yorkshire editorial irony. At the moment, nearly 30 people are concerned with the publication of the two journals. From the beginning we have shared contributors and exchanged articles: it has become difficult to know just who is who. Yet, separate publication has meant separate editorial organisation, and duplication of effortwithout the rewards of either frequency or regularity. NR was stuck at four times a year, ULR at three times (most people couldn't believe that, and kept calling us a "quarterly")without hope of increasing our rate of production. The whole job of editing, distribution, advertising and sales promotion was being maintainedat both endson a spare-time basis. Yet the journals continued to expand (ULR pushing now towards 8,000 sales, and the NR to 3,000), and, based on the journals, the call for a great deal of other work: ULR/ New Reasoner Left Clubs, the crying need for pamphlets, books, schools and conferences, to develop our educational work and to extend our contacts. It is impossible to finance and maintain socialist journals in a capitalist way. They are never wooed by the bigcirculation advertisers, or saved from creditors by "amalgamations" and timely take-overs. National distributors are wary, and take a good nibble out of each subscription (one-third) before we get our hands on it. No, socialist journals rely upon the political support and sympathy of individuals: they have their roots in politics, or they wither and wilt. They live or fall depending on whether or not they grow up with a movement, whether or not they give voice to a point of view, represent or strengthen political attitudes shared by a greater number of people, than can be counted in an Editorial Board. Sometimes, their job is to help clear the ground: for example, to try to see socialism as a living thing without the encrustations of "social democracy" or Stalinism. Sometimes, they link directly with a movement: with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, for instance, trying to draw out the political implications of the fight for a sane nuclear and foreign policy. Sometimes, their job is to name and analyse the enemyas we tried to do in The Insiders and other work on the British power elite, to help socialists develop a sound picture of capitalism and its culture. Sometimes, their main task is to make connections clearfor example, between the sense of outrage following the Hola Camp disclosures and the struggles of colonial people in Nyasaland, Kenya or Algeria. Continually, socialist journals feed in to politics. Although they may never take on the job directly of organising movements and campaigns, if they lose this connection, they lose their pointand go under. The phrase "New Left" in our new title is not intended to be pretentious. It is not a claim staked out on a piece of territory which we believe belongs exclusively to us. It is a loose phrase which, we believe, represents a new current of feeling which has entered politics in Britain since the thaw in 1956. This current is, if you like, socialist and humanist, though it may not have any distinct and developed ideology behind it. It has made its impact in several related fields, and the overlap is more often in terms of people rather than in strategy or doctrine. If any event has transformed the course, tempo and tone of politics since the crucial dates of Suez and Hungary, it is the formation of CND, and the development of a body of

people drawn into politics (many for the first time in their lives) around the fight against nuclear stupidity. Here is a movement of people drawn from very different backgrounds, tired of the two-way shuffle of the political party bureaucracies, fed up with the Cold War slogans of "massive retaliation" and the "Two Camps" cast of mind, terrified by what C. Wright Mills calls the "drift and thrust" to World War III. We cannot claim credit for the vigour and success of this movement, but we have been proud to contribute to it, and, through the journals and the Clubs, to develop some of its socialist implications. Similarly with the movements of protest against the Hola atrocities and the Nyasaland "crisis". Such groups of people find a common cause with us , not merely because of the individual issues which bring them out, but because, by doing so, they are helping to establish the only basis upon which socialism can be built: the principle that whatever kind of world we want, we are going to have to make it ourselves, and the sooner we stand up, say what it is, and fight for it, the quicker it will be coming. If the New Left Review has any political roots, they will be there. Without CND supporters, Anti-Ugly protesters, African demonstrators, Free Cinema and the Society For The Abolition of the Death Penalty, we would be nowhere. It is possible that, before the first issue of NLR comes off the press, Labour will have fought and lost its third election to the Tories. Not certain, but certainly possible. It is the kind of possibility that fills us with horror. Fifteen years of Tory rule? Mr. Selwyn Lloyd's finger on the Bomb? Mr. Lennox Boyd's rifles over Africa? Mr. Macmillan's face on TV? Again? But then, consider the alternative. The story of Labour in the 1950's is a depressing one which both reviews have tried to spell out over the months. But if Labour won, how much would be gained? The question, at least, would still remain: what is there here for socialism? How far have we to go? It would be simplethough tragicif Labour, like the French Socialists, had lost touch with their supporters as quickly as they have lost touch with socialism and humanism. But one of the problems is that the Party is still, in the hearts of many and the lives of countless more who are never counted in Transport House, the repository of their socialist hopes. There isn't a clear organisational answer: and either possibilitiesthe loss of the Election or the break-up and factionalising of the Labour Party itselfgives us nightmares rather than relief. The fight then is for socialism: but it has to be waged in a rather unorthodox fashionoften by amateurs rather than by professional revolutionaries, often in small groups roused to protest and action by particular incidents or monstrosities, and forced, in that way, to broaden out their demands and to make connections. We are not in a situation where the words "join this" or "break with that" provide the answers for difficult problems. The real growing points of socialism are going to be found, increasingly, in groups and movements which, whether formally linked together or not, share something of the same revulsion, say, about the ditching of the Devlin Report, something of the same spirit which moved people from Aldermaston to London last Easter, something of the anger at Hungary and the execution of Imre Nagy, something of the outrage of Trafalgar Square, Suez Day. As Edward Thompson put it in the last issue of the Reasoner, our hope is that although "the bureaucracy will hold the machine," . . . "the New Left will hold the passes between it and the younger generation". 2

We need, then, to organise our own initiative. A journal of our own, books and pamphlets to help develop our analysis and educational work, clubs and conferences where contacts can be made and ideas sorted out and developed. There will never be socialism without socialists. If the cultural and economic Establishment has absorbed the official lines of communication and contact between people, then socialists must rebuild and repair these lines themselves. One of the most depressing features of the Age of Apathy has been the apparent helplessness of people in face of their problems. Yet, gradually, the Age of Apathy like the Cold War before itbegins to break up. One of the factors which counted in that thawa little one, perhaps, but important to ushas been the support which ULR and NR have commanded during the last three years. What we have done, with the new review and the other projects we are taking in hand, has been to prepare ourselves to cope with a job of socialist education, analysis and propaganda. This is a need which is felt throughout the different movements to which we have referred, and we shall try to answer it as best we can. Our resources are slender: but we came into existence in response to a need, which has changed and developed over the months. We have to try to meet it again, and to deploy our forces as we draw more people into our work. We have in hand a series of books, a socialist Library, which has been a gap in the Labour Movement since the collapse of the Left Book Club. In these books, and in pamphlets, we shall try to develop at greater depth some of the themes which have been opened up for discussion in the reviews. At the same time, the Left Clubs, based on readers of the journals in each area, are beginning to spring upsometimes faster than we can cope with. The Clubs, and any schools and conferences on political or industrial or cultural matters which we may organise with them, are the really new and encouraging signs of the growth of a "new left" in this country. Slowly. One or two steps at a time. The New Left Review is the spearhead of this programme of work. It cannot succeed unless its costs are carefully counted. We shall be coming out once every two months, and have therefore had to set up a skeleton editorial and distribution staff. We want to plan in advance, and to extend the range of topics covered regularly. We need to develop other methodsillustration, drawings, satirical portraits and creative workwhich we have had to neglect so far. We need to extend our attention to scientific matters, so badly skimped in the journals, to include more material of an international interest, and to develop our comment and work upon trade union and industrial matters. We shall try to develop in detail our critique of the different aspects of capitalist culture which we have discussed often in too general a way. We regard this as an investment in the future of the movement of which we are a part. But these efforts will collapse if they lack political support. There are no Fleet Street battalions behind us. Only those who volunteer for work, take on particular jobs for us, make us new contacts and friends, contribute time and money to our different activities can give us life. More or less, we are in your hands.

The photographs used for "Absolute Beginnings" are the work of Roger Mayne. Other blocks have been kindly lent by "Tribune", "Reynolds News" and "Peace News".