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Back in the North

John Brown — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:22:58 GMT

The level of deprivation in northern industrial parts of England during the 1930s is often downplayed by historians today. But this sobering account of life on the dole in the region, written for the New Statesman by a former coal miner, offers a different, more personal perspective. He presents a complex picture � of stoicism, apathy and a lack of radicalism, and a very human focus on the solace of pastimes in a harsh economic climate.

The New Statesman

25 May 1935

In spite of the pundits of Tabernacle Street, prolonged unemployment has not bred Bolsheviks in this country. That it has produced a small lumpen-proletariat class is undeniable. I met men of twenty-eight and thirty on Tyneside who have never worked in their lives and hope that they never will. Married �on the Guardians,� they have reared families in squalor and wretchedness. They have [...]

Ordinary people

Doris Lessing — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 09:52:02 GMT

As a young woman, the novelist and recent Nobel Prize-winner for literature Doris Lessing wrote occasional articles for the New Statesman. In this piece she describes going in search of what D H Lawrence called �ordinary people� during a holiday in Paris, perhaps her favourite city after London. In a few waspish sentences, she conveys vivid and personal impressions of some of those she encountered during her journey and on the Left Bank in 1960

The New Statesman

25 June 1960

Living in London I meet no-one who is not vertiginously interesting, so it can�t be the craving for novelty which drives me out of England, pursued by every devil of claustrophobia. When short of a hair shirt, the puritan conscience torments itself because one is not meeting ordinary people, but it would be better occupied wondering why one has spent relentless years levering oneself [...]

Short talk with a Fascist beast

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:11:59 GMT

The Notting Hill race riots, which took place 50 years ago, were the first significant outburst in London against unrestricted black immigration. The American Clancy Sigal, then a young journalist, wrote a revealing account of a casual encounter with a handful of the white youths involved in the attacks. He portrays a group of frustrated young men, the most prominent of whom confesses to being both a Fascist admirer and a fan of the Communist Party.

The New Statesman

4 October 1958

It is a normal evening at the coffee-bar where I'm in the habit of dropping by. The kids are jiving around in the juke-box room, an amateur rock-and-roll session is in violent practice upstairs somewhere, and some of us are gathered at the counter sucking Pepsi-Cola through straws.

Len buys Ginger and Dave and me Pepsis. He's on casual work now, he says, after [...]

The Czech crisis and the New Statesman

Kingsley Martin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 09:22:49 GMT

Throughout the 1930s, the New Statesman upheld a principled resistance to Nazi Germany. It was therefore all the more dismaying to many readers when, in an August 1938 editorial, Kingsley Martin argued that Czechoslovakia's frontiers might have to be redrawn to enable a German minority to join the Third Reich. Martin admitted that the editorial "pursued" him for many years, even though, the following month, he denounced the betrayal of the Czechs to Hitler

The New Statesman and Nation

27 August 1938

The situation in Central Europe grows worse and the gravest fears are now entertained about Germany's intentions. In a complicated, desperate situation there are two outstanding factors. First, few people in Germany, and perhaps not even the Nazi leaders themselves, believe that an attack on Czechoslovakia would be the signal for a world war. Hitler would like to crush the Czechs, but [...]

Dubcek's terrible bargain

Andrew Kopkind — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:28:48 GMT

The Warsaw Pact's occupation of Czechoslovakia from 21 August 1968 shocked many in the west who had hoped that the country was developing a more market-oriented socialism acceptable to the Soviet Union. This report from Prague by Kopkind, an American correspondent on the NS, reflected the ambiguities of its aftermath. It took many months before the Kremlin was able to consolidate its rule through a new, hardline communist regime.

The New Statesman

6 September 1968

In their optimistic moments, the people of Prague believe that the Russian invasion of their country has been a colossal mistake, and that victory now belongs to the Czechs. But Slav optimism has a quality such as would count for pessimism anywhere else, and in the next moment they begin packing their things for the last trip to Vienna. "Wait until the students return," [...]

Youth

Anonymous — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 10:03:48 GMT

Moral panic about Britain�s juvenile delinquents is nothing new. Nor are suggestions of what should be done to deal with them. Even during the Second World War both the government and the general public were alarmed by what they saw as the growing problem of unruly youth. This New Statesman article argued that the answer must be much more training and education for the young, and that a reoriented national service scheme, even in peacetime, could also help.

The New Statesman

25 July 1942

Very nearly the most depressing of all the social documents of recent years have been those which have set out to describe the situation of adolescents and young adults in the depressed areas or, indeed, in any areas in which poverty is common. These accounts of things as they were presented a picture of boys and girls, but especially boys, flung out of blind [...]

Trains and classes

J B Priestley — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 09:21:28 GMT

During the Second World War, the novelist J B Priestley was seen as the national voice of common sense. A regular contributor to the New Statesman, he wrote perceptively about the British popular mood. In this wartime article, Priestley identified a growing resentment among railway users over the distinction between first- and third-class seats. In their irritation, he saw an expression of changing attitudes towards the concept of �class�

The New Statesman

25 July 1942

During the last two years I have made an enormous number of train journeys all over the country. Except on short journeys, I usually travel first-class, not because I think of myself as belonging to a section of society that needs special carriages, but for the following reasons. I am a fairly bulky man and find the space allotted to me in a [...]

Behind Serb lines

Paul Hockenos — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:07:34 GMT

The recent capture of the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in Belgrade has revived memories of the terrible events that took place in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Karadzic has been charged with genocide and crimes against humanity for his policy of ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats. With this eyewitness report, published by the New Statesman in summer 1995, Paul Hockenos provided a vivid picture of life in Dr Karadzic's Republika Srpska.

The New Statesman

2 June 1995

For a war-drained city in an internationally isolated statelet, Banja Luka keeps an upbeat face. Nestled between two gentle mountain ranges, its broad, tree-lined streets and pastel facades have a prosperous, distinctly central European flair. Perhaps a bit snobbishly, Banja Lukans always emphasised their affinity to the cultural sphere of Mitteleuropa rather than the Balkans.

But today in the Bosnian Serbs' self-styled Republika Srpska [...]

Ours is a laager

James Stephenson — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 09:18:40 GMT

For more than a hundred years, the Durham Miners' Gala was a firm fixture in the calendar of the British Labour movement. But in July 1988 the miners gathered together at their annual festival for the last time. In future the gala was to be organised for all the manual working class of north-east England. James Stephenson describes that historic event in the City of Durham as a ceremony of remembrance, a requiem for a lost world before the new Labour project's arrival.

The New Statesman

22 July 1988

At 9.15, the Shotton Colliery Band, in burgundy and black jackets complete with braid, drew to a halt outside Durham's Royal County Hotel and started to play. First, "Gresford", a mournful hymn to miners killed in the pits. Next, the jaunty "Puppet on a String", and the band was off again with the lodge banner behind, leading the way to the site of the [...]

Michael Foot v the New Statesman

Christopher Hitchens — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:22:07 GMT

In 1978 Bruce Page, the editor of the New Statesman, reprinted extracts from a stirring speech made by Michael Foot as a Labour rebel in 1968. Foot's criticisms contrasted starkly with his position a decade later - as a leading member of the Labour government - on its economic policy. Foot sent a vituperative letter in his own defence, printed the following week. It ended with a flick of contempt at a staff journalist, Christopher Hitchens, who responded similarly.

The New Statesman

6 October 1978

Extracts from a speech by Mr Michael Foot, MP at the Labour party conference in 1968:

"The best socialist way to pay this country's debts, to make us independent, is to plan for full national production, and we are not doing that now. The deliberate policy of the Government is not to plan for full national production, and that is why the unemployment figures [...]