DAVID LOW IN LONDON

Press, Volume XCIV, Issue 28158, 22 December 1956, Page 13

DAVID LOW IN LONDON

Contract With The “Evening Standard”

INDEPENDENCE CONFIRMED BY LORD BEAVERBROOK (V) I spent sleepless nights before making mv debut on the “Evening Standard. ’ What had I let myself in for?

The technical conditions promised to be grand, but I felt I was sticking my immortal soul into the lion’s mouth.. The “Evening Standard” advertised my coming lavishly. No one took seriously the announcements that I was to express independent views. That was a novel idea, except for an occasional series of signed articles by some big name. Free and regular expression by the staff cartoonist was unheard of and incredible. Newspaper comments made it only too depressingly evident that in the general view I had sold out to the highest bidder.

Friends began to give me peculiar looks. I became suddenly popular with strangers who pumped my hand with sickening congratulations and assurances that, after all. prostitution was quite respectable if the pay were high enough. In my perturbation I grew exaggeratedly defensive. To the smooth friendliness of my associates-to-be I returned boorish rudeness. I determined to see that the crucial clause in my contract was observed to the letter or bust. Any jiggery-pokery and I would wreck the joint.

In a conservative newspaper one expected to find Conservative cartoonists. As time passed and it became evident that I was not a Conservative cartoonist, the circumstance took on the appearance of a betrayal. Betrayal by whom? By Lord Beaverbrook, of course. This was a question which ranged beyond mere letters from readers. This was news itself. What lay behind the introduction of a wooden horse into the Tory Troy? Motives Were Sought Motives were sought and the various deep thinkers came up with answers according to their occupational complexities. My apprehensions about Beaverbrook had been groundless and I was gratified to find that the alleged Prince of Darkness was scrupulous in observing my Charter of Independence and even defended it against his friends. That was something to say when one considered that very soon he was being accused by his Rightwing Tory critics of “blackguardly bolshevism” for having opened his pages to me at. all. Even sober foreign newspapers like the “New York Times” were scenting plots and writing, on my account, of his “swing to the left.” The “Manchester Guardian” thought the innocent explanation was that Lord B. had no particular party policy at all. but was not quite so sure a few days later. Maybe Lord B. was changing his party: These rumours also declared that this newspaper magnate was moving with a Left-turn . . . and colour was even to this by the recent cartoons a the “Evening Standard” which were quite unsympathetic to the present Government—indeed, went as far as anything the caricaturist had done in his “Star” days.

Damn it! I said to myself. For a world always yawping so much about the freedom of its press, the idea of one man’s independence seems to take a lot of swallowing.

Opposition to Fascism It wasn’t long before I was attending diplomatic functions and inside the Embassies. Naturally I was most readily received by the representatives of countries who found in my cartoons some hint of sympathy to the policies being followed by their Governments. My opposition to fascism barred Italy. I had been constantly advocating resumption of trade with the U.S.S.R., believing in the good old principle of keeping people from fighting by making them mutually profitable. That made me persona grata to the Russians when, through my amiable colleague Bruce Lockhart, I met a few of them in 1931. ♦ In the early thirties the U.S.S.R. was still the experiment, not yet the highly polished centre of an empire. Its representatives were eager and wore chips on their shoulders. Members of an Embassy were not where they were for fun. but to work for their countries, and I was never fool enough to forget. But over and above that, their merits as human beings could be appreciated. I had met Krassin when he had come over in 1920 to negotiate the first trade treaty, but only for a word; and after him several lesser officials. With only one could I ever talk politics, and then inconclusively as a sceptic might discuss Genesis with a fundamentalist. There was a procession of charming fellows passing through the Soviet Embassy in those days. Ambassador Sokolnikov, who always looked like Banquoski’s ghost, had a sort of sad humour. His account of the exile’s return journey from Siberia was rich. According to him—and he had the experience—in prerevolutionary days the blundering incompetence of the Tsarist police was such that there was a regular return traffic with fixed routes, code signposts. aid stations and all . . . By Sokolnikov’s account one walked into some chap in Moscow who should by rights have been in Siberia, and one just said: “Hello, Joe! Back again?” The unexpected, told with such authenticity and verisimilitude, made me laugh so much that I spilt my Russian champagne into the Ambassadors lap. That was a memorable

party. Most of the company were recalled to Russia during the purge and I never saw them again. Sokolnikov was sent to Siberia. When Litvinov came to town for a few days he impressed me as a likeable snuffling old chap with a good sense of humour who enjoyed nothing so much as putting his opponents on toast with an unexpected turn of argument. It was pleasant to see his big face perspiring and his big stomach shaking with Russian mirth. The company had been talking about a surprising production of gold in Russia during the year. “What does a self-contained Socialist economy want gold for? What are you going to do with it?” asks innocent Low.

“Make public lavatories out of it. says Litvinov.

Coming to the fateful thirties. I must sketch briefly my own viewpoint. Of the various systems of order yet tried, I saw democracy, with all its lamentable imperfections, as having the best blend of stability and dignity. Democracy, that is to say, in the Lincolnian sense of government of the people, for the people, by the people through elected representatives; rather than in the Eastern sense of government for some of the people by fortuitous leaders. And if there had to be a choice, as some held, of priorities between political democracy (the right to lift up one’s voice and utter one’s opinion) and economic democracy (the right to an adequate share in the ownership and production of the common wealth), for one at the expense of the other, I placed political democracy before economic democracy; because, wishing both. I could imagine the second proceeding from the first, but not the first proceeding from the second —indeed I feared that the suppression of the first would eventually be the death of the second, too. British General Election Personification of the prevailing confusion and the difficulty of readjustment to changing conditions was the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, then about to face the general elections of 1935. Torn by a wish to lose neither the favour of the pacifist masses nor the chance one day, with a change of wind, to begin a programme of rearmament, Baldwin could not bring himself to trust the people with the full facts of the national position. “My lips are sealed,” he said. Whereupon I labelled him “Old Sealed Lips” and drew him regularly with gum-tape across his mouth. The nickname spread and I heard that his staff used it at Downing Street. (To be concluded)