Tribune (magazine)
Encyclopedia
Tribune is a democratic socialist weekly, founded in 1937 published in London. It is independent but supports the Labour Party from the left. It is currently a newspaper, as it has been for most of its life, but was published in magazine format in the first decade of the 21st century.
Members of Parliament
(MPs), Stafford Cripps
and George Strauss
, to back the Unity Campaign, an attempt to secure an anti-fascist and anti-appeasement United Front
between the Labour Party and socialist parties to its left which involved Cripps's (Labour-affiliated) Socialist League
, the Independent Labour Party
and the Communist Party of Great Britain
(CP).
The paper's first editor was William Mellor
, and its journalists included Michael Foot
and Barbara Betts (later Barbara Castle
). As well as Cripps and Strauss, its board comprised the Labour MPs Aneurin Bevan
and Ellen Wilkinson
, Harold Laski
of the Left Book Club
and the veteran left-wing journalist and former-ILPer H. N. Brailsford
.
Mellor was fired in 1938 for refusing to adopt a new CP policy — which was supported by Cripps — of backing a Popular Front
, including non-socialist parties, against fascism and appeasement; Foot resigned in solidarity. Mellor was succeeded by H. J. Hartshorn, a secret member of the Communist Party, and Victor Gollancz
, the Left Book Club's publisher, joined the board of directors. For the next year, the paper was little more than an appendage of the Left Book Club, taking an uncritical line on the Popular Front and the Soviet Union.
. Strauss fired him in February 1940, replacing him as editor with Raymond Postgate
. From then on the paper became the voice of the pro-war democratic left in the Labour Party, taking a position similar to that adopted by Gollancz in his famous edited volume attacking the communists for backing the Nazi-Soviet pact, Betrayal of the Left
.
Bevan ousted Postgate after a series of personality clashes in 1941, assuming the role of editor himself, though the day-to-day running of the paper was done by Jon Kimche
. The Bevan-Kimche Tribune is revered as one of the greatest left-wing papers in British history. It campaigned vigorously for the opening of a second front against Adolf Hitler
's Germany, was consistently critical of the Churchill
government's failings and argued that only a democratic socialist post-war settlement in Britain (and Europe as a whole) was viable.
George Orwell
was hired in 1943 as literary editor. In this role, as well as commissioning and writing reviews, he wrote a series of columns, most of them under the title "As I Please
", that have become touchstones of the opinion journalist's craft. Orwell left the Tribune staff in early 1945 to become a war correspondent for The Observer
— he was replaced as literary editor by his friend Tosco Fyvel — but remained a regular contributor until March 1947.
Orwell's most famous contributions to Tribune as a columnist include "You and the atom bomb", "The sporting spirit", "Book v cigarettes", "Decline of the English murder" and "Some thoughts on the common toad", all of which have appeared in dozens of anthologies.
Kimche left Tribune to join Reuters in 1945, his place being taken by Frederic Mullally
. After the Labour landslide election victory of 1945
, Bevan joined Clement Attlee
's government and formally left the paper, leaving Mullally and Evelyn Anderson
as joint editors, with Foot playing Bevan's role of political director. Over the next five years, Tribune was critically involved in every key political event in the life of the Labour government and reached its highest-ever circulation, of some 40,000. Foot persuaded Kimche to return as joint editor in 1946 (after Mulally's departure to the Sunday Pictorial) and eventually himself became joint editor with Anderson in 1948 after Kimche was fired for disappearing from the office to Istanbul to negotiate the safe passage of two Jewish refugee ships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles.
In the first few years of the Attlee administration, Tribune became the focus for the Labour left's attempts to persuade Ernest Bevin
, the Foreign Secretary, to adopt a "third force" democratic socialist foreign policy, with Europe acting independently from the US and the Soviet Union, most coherently advanced in the pamphlet Keep Left
(which was published by the rival New Statesman
).
In 1948, however, after the Soviet rejection of Marshall Aid and the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia
, Tribune endorsed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and took a strongly anti-communist line. "The major threat to democratic socialism and the major danger of war in Europe arises from Soviet policy and not from American policy", declared the editors in November 1948. "It is not the Americans who have imposed a blockade on Berlin. It is not the Americans who have used conspiratorial methods to destroy democratic socialist parties in one country after another. It is not the Americans who have blocked effective action through one United Nations agency after another."
took over, but returned after losing his parliamentary seat in Plymouth in 1955. During the early 1950s, Tribune became the organ of the Bevanite left opposition to the Labour Party
leadership, turning against America over its handling of the Korean War then arguing strongly against West German rearmament and nuclear arms. Tribune remained critical of the Soviet Union, however: it denounced Stalin on his death in 1953, and, in 1956, opposed the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the British government's Suez
adventure. The paper and Bevan parted company after his "naked into the conference chamber" speech at the 1957 Labour Party conference: for the next five years Tribune was at the forefront of the campaign to commit Labour to a non-nuclear defence policy, "the official weekly of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
" (CND) as the direct actionists in the peace movement put it. CND's general secretary, Peggy Duff, had been Tribune general manager. Among journalists on Tribune in the 1950s were Richard Clements, Ian Aitken
and Mervyn Jones, who related his experience on the paper in his autobiography Chances.
, Richard Clements became editor. During the 1960s and 1970s the paper faithfully expressed the ideas of the parliamentary Labour left and allied itself with the new generation of left-wing trade union leaders that emerged on the back of a wave of workplace militancy from the early 1960s onwards.
As such, it played a massive role in the politics of the time. Although it welcomed the election of Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1964 – "Tribune takes over from Eton in the cabinet", exclaimed a headline – the paper became rapidly disillusioned. It denounced the Wilson government's timidity on nationalisation and devaluation, opposed its moves to join the European Economic Community
(EEC) and attacked it for failing to take a principled position against the Vietnam War. It also backed the unions' campaigns against the government's prices-and-incomes policies and against In Place of Strife
, Barbara Castle's 1969 package of trade union law reforms.
The paper continued in the same vein after Edward Heath
won the 1970 general election, opposing his Tory government's trade union legislation between 1970 and 1974 and placing itself at the head of opposition to Heath's negotiations for Britain to join the EEC. After Labour regained power in 1974, Tribune played a central part in the "no" campaign in the 1975 referendum on British EEC membership.
But Tribune in this period did not speak to, let alone represent, the concerns of the younger generation of leftists who were at the centre of the campaign against the Vietnam War and the post-1968 student revolt, who found the paper's reformism and commitment to Labour tame and old-fashioned. Circulation, around 20,000 in 1960, declined to around 10,000 in 1980.
. Clements was succeeded in the Tribune chair by Chris Mullin
, who steered the paper into the supporting of Tony Benn
(then just past the peak of his influence on the Labour left) and attempted to turn it into a workers' co-operative
, much to the consternation of the old Bevanite shareholders, most prominent among them John Silkin
and Donald Bruce
, who dominated the paper's board. A protracted dispute ensued that at one point seemed likely to close the paper.
(editor 1984-87), who surprised everyone by arguing for a 'realignment of the left' and took the paper into the 'soft left
' camp, supporting Kinnock, a long-time Tribune contributor and onetime board member, as Labour leader against the Bennites. The next two editors, Phil Kelly
(editor 1987-91), and Paul Anderson
(editor 1991-93), took much the same line though both clashed with Kinnock, particularly over his decision to abandon Labour's non-nuclear defence policy.
Under Kelly, Tribune supported John Prescott
's challenge to Roy Hattersley
as Labour Deputy leader in 1988 and came close to going bust, a fate averted by an emergency appeal launched by a front page exclaiming "Don't let this be the last issue of Tribune". Under Anderson, the paper took a strongly pro-European stance, supported electoral reform and argued for military intervention against Serbian aggression in Croatia and Bosnia. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Tribune acted as a clearing house for arguments inside the Labour Party, with contributions from all major players.
became Labour leader in 1994. The paper strongly opposed Blair's abandonment of Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution and resisted his rebranding of the party as 'New Labour'.
After Labour won the 1997 general election
, the paper maintained an oppositionist stance, objecting to the Blair government's military interventions and its reliance on spin-doctors. In 2001, Tribune opposed the US-led invasion of Afghanistan
, and it was outspoken against the invasion of Iraq
in 2003. The paper under Seddon also reverted to an anti-European position very similar to that it adopted in the 1970s and early 1980s and campaigned for Gordon Brown to replace Blair as Labour leader and prime minister.
Tribune changed format from newspaper to magazine in 2001, but remained plagued by financial uncertainty, coming close to folding again in 2002. But Seddon and Chairman of Tribune Publications, the Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle
led a team of pro-bono advisers who organised a rescue package with a consortium of trade unions (Unison
, Amicus
, Aslef
, Communication Workers Union
, Community
, T&GWU), who became majority shareholders in return for a significant investment in the magazine in early 2004.
While editor, Seddon was elected several times to the Labour Party National Executive Committee
as a candidate of the Grassroots Alliance
coalition of left-wing activists. Seddon resigned as editor in summer 2004 and was succeeded by Chris McLaughlin, former political editor of the Sunday Mirror
.
During 2007, Tribune spawned two offshoot websites, a Tribune Cartoons blog, put together by cartoonists who draw for the magazine, and a Tribune History blog.
In September 2008, the magazine's future was again in doubt thanks to problems with its trade union funding. An attempt by the Unite
trade union to render Tribune its wholly owned subsidiary had a mixed response, but on 9 October it was announced that the magazine would close on the 31 October if a buyer could not be found. The uncertainty continued until early December 2008 when it emerged that a 51% stake was being sold to an unnamed Labour Party activist for £1 with an undertaking to support the magazine for £40,000 per annum and debts written off by the now former trade union owners.
Tribune's cartoonists are Alex Hughes
, Matthew Buck (Hack), Jon Jensen and Martin Rowson
.
, through a new company Tribune Publications 2009 Limited, with the intention of keeping Tribune a left-of-centre publication though broadening the readership.
In late October 2011, the future of Tribune looked bleak once again when McGrath warned of possible closure as circulation and advertising income had not risen as had been hoped. Unless a buyer could be found or a cooperative established, the last edition would have been published on 4 November. McGrath committed to paying off the magazine's debts. A rescue plan, with the magazine owned by staff and readers, looked like saving the magazine by the end of October.
, but it split over Tony Benn
's bid for the deputy leadership of the party in 1981, with Benn's supporters forming the Socialist Campaign Group
. During the 1980s, the Tribune Group was the Labour soft left's political caucus, but its closeness to the leadership of Neil Kinnock
and subsequently Gordon Brown
and Tony Blair
meant that it had lost any real raison d'etre by the early 1990s.
The group was reformed in 2005, led by Eltham's Clive Efford
. Invitations to join the newly reformed group were extended to backbench Labour MPs only.
Origins
Tribune was set up in early 1937 by two left-wing Labour PartyLabour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
Members of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(MPs), Stafford Cripps
Stafford Cripps
Sir Richard Stafford Cripps was a British Labour politician of the first half of the 20th century. During World War II he served in a number of positions in the wartime coalition, including Ambassador to the Soviet Union and Minister of Aircraft Production...
and George Strauss
George Strauss
George Russell Strauss, Baron Strauss PC was a long-serving British Labour Party politician, who was a Member of Parliament for 46 years and was Father of the House of Commons from 1974 to 1979....
, to back the Unity Campaign, an attempt to secure an anti-fascist and anti-appeasement United Front
United front
The united front is a form of struggle that may be pursued by revolutionaries. The basic theory of the united front tactic was first developed by the Comintern, an international communist organisation created by revolutionaries in the wake of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.According to the theses of...
between the Labour Party and socialist parties to its left which involved Cripps's (Labour-affiliated) Socialist League
Socialist League (UK, 1932)
The Socialist League was a socialist organisation in the United Kingdom.It formed in the 1932 as a split from the Independent Labour Party, opposed to that organisation disaffiliating from the Labour Party. It was led by Stafford Cripps. The League argued for drastic action to be taken by a future...
, the Independent Labour Party
Independent Labour Party
The Independent Labour Party was a socialist political party in Britain established in 1893. The ILP was affiliated to the Labour Party from 1906 to 1932, when it voted to leave...
and the Communist Party of Great Britain
Communist Party of Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain was the largest communist party in Great Britain, although it never became a mass party like those in France and Italy. It existed from 1920 to 1991.-Formation:...
(CP).
The paper's first editor was William Mellor
William Mellor
William Mellor was a left-wing British journalist.Mellor joined the Daily Herald in 1913 as a journalist, and was imprisoned during the First World War as a conscientious objector, returning to the Herald on his release. A Guild Socialist during the 1910s, he worked closely with G. D. H. Cole,...
, and its journalists included Michael Foot
Michael Foot
Michael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
and Barbara Betts (later Barbara Castle
Barbara Castle
Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn , PC, GCOT was a British Labour Party politician....
). As well as Cripps and Strauss, its board comprised the Labour MPs Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin Bevan
Aneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...
and Ellen Wilkinson
Ellen Wilkinson
Ellen Cicely Wilkinson was the Labour Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough and later for Jarrow on Tyneside. She was one of the first women in Britain to be elected as a Member of Parliament .- History :...
, Harold Laski
Harold Laski
Harold Joseph Laski was a British Marxist, political theorist, economist, author, and lecturer, who served as the chairman of the Labour Party during 1945-1946, and was a professor at the LSE from 1926 to 1950....
of the Left Book Club
Left Book Club
The Left Book Club, founded in 1936, was a key left-wing institution of the late 1930s and 1940s in the United Kingdom set up by Stafford Cripps, Victor Gollancz and John Strachey to revitalise and educate the British Left. The Club's aim was to "help in the struggle For world peace and against...
and the veteran left-wing journalist and former-ILPer H. N. Brailsford
H. N. Brailsford
Henry Noel Brailsford was the most prolific British left-wing journalist of the first half of the 20th century.The son of a Methodist preacher, he was born in Yorkshire and educated in Scotland, at the High School of Dundee...
.
Mellor was fired in 1938 for refusing to adopt a new CP policy — which was supported by Cripps — of backing a Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
, including non-socialist parties, against fascism and appeasement; Foot resigned in solidarity. Mellor was succeeded by H. J. Hartshorn, a secret member of the Communist Party, and Victor Gollancz
Victor Gollancz
Sir Victor Gollancz was a British publisher, socialist, and humanitarian.-Early life:Born in Maida Vale, London, he was the son of a wholesale jeweller and nephew of Rabbi Professor Sir Hermann Gollancz and Professor Sir Israel Gollancz; after being educated at St Paul's School, London and taking...
, the Left Book Club's publisher, joined the board of directors. For the next year, the paper was little more than an appendage of the Left Book Club, taking an uncritical line on the Popular Front and the Soviet Union.
Tribune in the 1940s
In 1939, after the Nazi-Soviet pact and the outbreak of the second world war, Tribune initially adopted the CP's position of denouncing the war as imperialist. But after the Soviet invasion of Finland, with Cripps off on a world tour, Strauss and Bevan became increasingly impatient at Hartshorn's unrelenting StalinismStalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
. Strauss fired him in February 1940, replacing him as editor with Raymond Postgate
Raymond Postgate
Raymond William Postgate was an English socialist, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet.-Early life:...
. From then on the paper became the voice of the pro-war democratic left in the Labour Party, taking a position similar to that adopted by Gollancz in his famous edited volume attacking the communists for backing the Nazi-Soviet pact, Betrayal of the Left
Betrayal of the Left
Betrayal of the Left was a book of essays published in 3 March 1941 by the Left Book Club, edited and largely written by Victor Gollancz.Other contributions included two essays by...
.
Jon Kimche
Jon Kimche was a journalist and historian . A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35...
. The Bevan-Kimche Tribune is revered as one of the greatest left-wing papers in British history. It campaigned vigorously for the opening of a second front against Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's Germany, was consistently critical of the Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
government's failings and argued that only a democratic socialist post-war settlement in Britain (and Europe as a whole) was viable.
George Orwell
George Orwell
Eric Arthur Blair , better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist...
was hired in 1943 as literary editor. In this role, as well as commissioning and writing reviews, he wrote a series of columns, most of them under the title "As I Please
As I Please
"As I Please" was a series of articles written for the British left-wing newspaper Tribune by author and journalist George Orwell.On resigning from his job at the BBC in November 1943, Orwell joined Tribune as literary editor...
", that have become touchstones of the opinion journalist's craft. Orwell left the Tribune staff in early 1945 to become a war correspondent for The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
— he was replaced as literary editor by his friend Tosco Fyvel — but remained a regular contributor until March 1947.
Orwell's most famous contributions to Tribune as a columnist include "You and the atom bomb", "The sporting spirit", "Book v cigarettes", "Decline of the English murder" and "Some thoughts on the common toad", all of which have appeared in dozens of anthologies.
Kimche left Tribune to join Reuters in 1945, his place being taken by Frederic Mullally
Frederic Mullally
Frederic Mullally is an English journalist, public relations executive, and novelist.-Career:Mullally's journalism carer began in India where, from 1937 to 1949, he was sub-editor on The Statesman of Calcutta, then editor of the Sunday Standard of Bombay...
. After the Labour landslide election victory of 1945
United Kingdom general election, 1945
The United Kingdom general election of 1945 was a general election held on 5 July 1945, with polls in some constituencies delayed until 12 July and in Nelson and Colne until 19 July, due to local wakes weeks. The results were counted and declared on 26 July, due in part to the time it took to...
, Bevan joined Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee
Clement Richard Attlee, 1st Earl Attlee, KG, OM, CH, PC, FRS was a British Labour politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1945 to 1951, and as the Leader of the Labour Party from 1935 to 1955...
's government and formally left the paper, leaving Mullally and Evelyn Anderson
Evelyn Anderson
Evelyn Anderson , was a journalist in the UK. Born Lore Seligmann to a German Jewish family, she joined the Communist Party of Germany while a student in Frankfurt in 1927...
as joint editors, with Foot playing Bevan's role of political director. Over the next five years, Tribune was critically involved in every key political event in the life of the Labour government and reached its highest-ever circulation, of some 40,000. Foot persuaded Kimche to return as joint editor in 1946 (after Mulally's departure to the Sunday Pictorial) and eventually himself became joint editor with Anderson in 1948 after Kimche was fired for disappearing from the office to Istanbul to negotiate the safe passage of two Jewish refugee ships through the Bosporus and Dardanelles.
In the first few years of the Attlee administration, Tribune became the focus for the Labour left's attempts to persuade Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin
Ernest Bevin was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. He served as general secretary of the powerful Transport and General Workers' Union from 1922 to 1945, as Minister of Labour in the war-time coalition government, and as Foreign Secretary in the post-war Labour Government.-Early...
, the Foreign Secretary, to adopt a "third force" democratic socialist foreign policy, with Europe acting independently from the US and the Soviet Union, most coherently advanced in the pamphlet Keep Left
Keep Left (pamphlet)
Keep Left was a pamphlet published in the United Kingdom in 1947 by the New Statesman, written by Michael Foot, Richard Crossman and Ian Mikardo that advocated a democratic socialist "third force" foreign policy – a socialist Europe acting independently from either the United States or the Soviet...
(which was published by the rival New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
).
In 1948, however, after the Soviet rejection of Marshall Aid and the communist takeover of Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
, Tribune endorsed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and took a strongly anti-communist line. "The major threat to democratic socialism and the major danger of war in Europe arises from Soviet policy and not from American policy", declared the editors in November 1948. "It is not the Americans who have imposed a blockade on Berlin. It is not the Americans who have used conspiratorial methods to destroy democratic socialist parties in one country after another. It is not the Americans who have blocked effective action through one United Nations agency after another."
Bevanism and CND
Foot remained in the editorial chair until 1952, when Bob EdwardsBob Edwards (UK journalist)
Robert Edwards is a British journalist.Edwards was editor of Tribune , a feature writer on the Evening Standard , deputy editor of the Sunday Express , managing editor of the Daily Express then its editor , editor of the Glasgow Evening Citizen , editor of the Daily Express again , editor of...
took over, but returned after losing his parliamentary seat in Plymouth in 1955. During the early 1950s, Tribune became the organ of the Bevanite left opposition to the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
leadership, turning against America over its handling of the Korean War then arguing strongly against West German rearmament and nuclear arms. Tribune remained critical of the Soviet Union, however: it denounced Stalin on his death in 1953, and, in 1956, opposed the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian Revolution and the British government's Suez
Suez
Suez is a seaport city in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez , near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same boundaries as Suez governorate. It has three harbors, Adabya, Ain Sokhna and Port Tawfiq, and extensive port facilities...
adventure. The paper and Bevan parted company after his "naked into the conference chamber" speech at the 1957 Labour Party conference: for the next five years Tribune was at the forefront of the campaign to commit Labour to a non-nuclear defence policy, "the official weekly of the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
" (CND) as the direct actionists in the peace movement put it. CND's general secretary, Peggy Duff, had been Tribune general manager. Among journalists on Tribune in the 1950s were Richard Clements, Ian Aitken
Ian Aitken
Ian Aitken is a British journalist and political commentator. He was educated at the King Alfred School, Hampstead, Lincoln College, Oxford and the LSE. He served in the Fleet Air Arm from 1945-48....
and Mervyn Jones, who related his experience on the paper in his autobiography Chances.
The 1960s and 1970s
After Foot was re-elected to Parliament in 1960 for Bevan's old seat of Ebbw ValeEbbw Vale
Ebbw Vale is a town at the head of the valley formed by the Ebbw Fawr tributary of the Ebbw River, south Wales. It is the largest town and the administrative centre of Blaenau Gwent county borough...
, Richard Clements became editor. During the 1960s and 1970s the paper faithfully expressed the ideas of the parliamentary Labour left and allied itself with the new generation of left-wing trade union leaders that emerged on the back of a wave of workplace militancy from the early 1960s onwards.
As such, it played a massive role in the politics of the time. Although it welcomed the election of Harold Wilson's Labour government in 1964 – "Tribune takes over from Eton in the cabinet", exclaimed a headline – the paper became rapidly disillusioned. It denounced the Wilson government's timidity on nationalisation and devaluation, opposed its moves to join the European Economic Community
European Economic Community
The European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) The European Economic Community (EEC) (also known as the Common Market in the English-speaking world, renamed the European Community (EC) in 1993The information in this article primarily covers the EEC's time as an independent...
(EEC) and attacked it for failing to take a principled position against the Vietnam War. It also backed the unions' campaigns against the government's prices-and-incomes policies and against In Place of Strife
In Place of Strife
In Place of Strife was a UK Government white paper written in 1969. It was a proposed act to alter the functionality of trade unions in the United Kingdom, but was never passed into law....
, Barbara Castle's 1969 package of trade union law reforms.
The paper continued in the same vein after Edward Heath
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George "Ted" Heath, KG, MBE, PC was a British Conservative politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and as Leader of the Conservative Party ....
won the 1970 general election, opposing his Tory government's trade union legislation between 1970 and 1974 and placing itself at the head of opposition to Heath's negotiations for Britain to join the EEC. After Labour regained power in 1974, Tribune played a central part in the "no" campaign in the 1975 referendum on British EEC membership.
But Tribune in this period did not speak to, let alone represent, the concerns of the younger generation of leftists who were at the centre of the campaign against the Vietnam War and the post-1968 student revolt, who found the paper's reformism and commitment to Labour tame and old-fashioned. Circulation, around 20,000 in 1960, declined to around 10,000 in 1980.
Supports Tony Benn for an instant
Clements resigned as editor in 1982 to become a political adviser to Foot (by now Labour leader), a role he continued under Foot's successor as Labour leader, Neil KinnockNeil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
. Clements was succeeded in the Tribune chair by Chris Mullin
Chris Mullin (politician)
Christopher John Mullin is a British Labour Party politician and diarist who was the Member of Parliament for Sunderland South from 1987 to 2010...
, who steered the paper into the supporting of Tony Benn
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC is a British Labour Party politician and a former MP and Cabinet Minister.His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963...
(then just past the peak of his influence on the Labour left) and attempted to turn it into a workers' co-operative
Worker cooperative
A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and democratically managed by its worker-owners. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which...
, much to the consternation of the old Bevanite shareholders, most prominent among them John Silkin
John Silkin
John Ernest Silkin, PC was an English Labour politician and solicitor.He was the third son of Lewis Silkin, 1st Baron Silkin, and a younger brother of Samuel Silkin, Baron Silkin of Dulwich. He was educated at Dulwich College, the University of Wales, and Trinity Hall at the University of...
and Donald Bruce
Donald Bruce, Baron Bruce of Donington
Donald William Trevor Bruce, Baron Bruce of Donington was a British soldier, businessman and politician....
, who dominated the paper's board. A protracted dispute ensued that at one point seemed likely to close the paper.
Paper of the 'soft left'
Mullin left in 1984, with circulation at around 6,000 (at which level it roughly remained for the next 10 years). He was replaced by his equally Bennite protege Nigel WilliamsonNigel Williamson (UK journalist)
Nigel Williamson is a British journalist.- Biography :Educated at University College London, Williamson worked as a reporter on Tribune and was then briefly its literary editor before becoming editor as successor to Chris Mullin...
(editor 1984-87), who surprised everyone by arguing for a 'realignment of the left' and took the paper into the 'soft left
Soft left
The soft left was the name given to the more moderate left wing forces in the British Labour Party in the 1980s. They were first seen as a distinct movement when many previous left wingers such as Neil Kinnock refused to support Tony Benn in the election for the deputy leadership of the Labour...
' camp, supporting Kinnock, a long-time Tribune contributor and onetime board member, as Labour leader against the Bennites. The next two editors, Phil Kelly
Phil Kelly (UK journalist)
Phil Kelly is an English journalist.Born in Wigan and educated at St Mary's College Crosby and Leeds University, Kelly worked on Time Out and the Leveller in the 1970s and joined Tribune in the mid-1980s, working as a reporter and then news editor before becoming editor .Kelly subsequently worked...
(editor 1987-91), and Paul Anderson
Paul Anderson (UK journalist)
Paul Anderson is a British journalist and academic.Educated at Oxford University and the London College of Printing, Anderson was deputy editor of European Nuclear Disarmament Journal , reviews editor of Tribune , editor of Tribune , deputy editor of the New Statesman , co-author with Nyta Mann...
(editor 1991-93), took much the same line though both clashed with Kinnock, particularly over his decision to abandon Labour's non-nuclear defence policy.
Under Kelly, Tribune supported John Prescott
John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescott is a British politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour Member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010...
's challenge to Roy Hattersley
Roy Hattersley
Roy Sydney George Hattersley, Baron Hattersley is a British Labour politician, author and journalist from Sheffield. He served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1983 to 1992.-Early life:...
as Labour Deputy leader in 1988 and came close to going bust, a fate averted by an emergency appeal launched by a front page exclaiming "Don't let this be the last issue of Tribune". Under Anderson, the paper took a strongly pro-European stance, supported electoral reform and argued for military intervention against Serbian aggression in Croatia and Bosnia. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Tribune acted as a clearing house for arguments inside the Labour Party, with contributions from all major players.
Back to basics
From 1993, Mark Seddon (editor 1993-2004) shifted Tribune several degrees back to the left, particularly after Tony BlairTony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
became Labour leader in 1994. The paper strongly opposed Blair's abandonment of Clause Four of the Labour Party constitution and resisted his rebranding of the party as 'New Labour'.
After Labour won the 1997 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1997
The United Kingdom general election, 1997 was held on 1 May 1997, more than five years after the previous election on 9 April 1992, to elect 659 members to the British House of Commons. The Labour Party ended its 18 years in opposition under the leadership of Tony Blair, and won the general...
, the paper maintained an oppositionist stance, objecting to the Blair government's military interventions and its reliance on spin-doctors. In 2001, Tribune opposed the US-led invasion of Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
, and it was outspoken against the invasion of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
in 2003. The paper under Seddon also reverted to an anti-European position very similar to that it adopted in the 1970s and early 1980s and campaigned for Gordon Brown to replace Blair as Labour leader and prime minister.
Tribune changed format from newspaper to magazine in 2001, but remained plagued by financial uncertainty, coming close to folding again in 2002. But Seddon and Chairman of Tribune Publications, the Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle
Peter Kilfoyle
Peter Kilfoyle is a British Labour Party politician who was the Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 1991 to 2010.-Early life:...
led a team of pro-bono advisers who organised a rescue package with a consortium of trade unions (Unison
UNISON
UNISON is the largest trade union in the United Kingdom with over 1.3 million members.The union was formed in 1993 when three public sector trade unions, the National and Local Government Officers Association , the National Union of Public Employees and the Confederation of Health Service...
, Amicus
Amicus
Amicus was the United Kingdom's second-largest trade union, and the largest private sector union, formed by the merger of Manufacturing Science and Finance, the AEEU agreed in 2001, and two smaller unions, UNIFI and the GPMU...
, Aslef
Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen
The Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen is the trade union representing railway workers in Great Britain who are train drivers or in the line of promotion to train driver....
, Communication Workers Union
Communication Workers Union (UK)
The Communication Workers Union is the main trade union in the United Kingdom for people working for telephone, cable, DSL and postal delivery companies, with 215,000 members....
, Community
Community (trade union)
Community is a UK trade union representing workers in the iron and steel, domestic appliance manufacturing, clothing, textiles, footwear and betting industries as well as workers in voluntary organisations, workshops for visually impaired and disabled people, community-care providers and housing...
, T&GWU), who became majority shareholders in return for a significant investment in the magazine in early 2004.
While editor, Seddon was elected several times to the Labour Party National Executive Committee
National Executive Committee
The National Executive Committee or NEC is the chief administrative body of the UK Labour Party. Its composition has changed over the years, and includes representatives of affiliated trade unions, the Parliamentary Labour Party and European Parliamentary Labour Party, Constituency Labour Parties,...
as a candidate of the Grassroots Alliance
Grassroots Alliance
The centre-left Grassroots Alliance is a group of elected members on the British Labour Party National Executive Committee, founded in 1998. They represent members from a broad spectrum of the Labour membership, ranging from centrists to left wingers...
coalition of left-wing activists. Seddon resigned as editor in summer 2004 and was succeeded by Chris McLaughlin, former political editor of the Sunday Mirror
Sunday Mirror
The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. Trinity Mirror also owns The People...
.
During 2007, Tribune spawned two offshoot websites, a Tribune Cartoons blog, put together by cartoonists who draw for the magazine, and a Tribune History blog.
In September 2008, the magazine's future was again in doubt thanks to problems with its trade union funding. An attempt by the Unite
Unite the Union
Unite – the Union, known as Unite, is a British and Irish trade union, formed on 1 May 2007, by the merger of Amicus and the Transport and General Workers' Union...
trade union to render Tribune its wholly owned subsidiary had a mixed response, but on 9 October it was announced that the magazine would close on the 31 October if a buyer could not be found. The uncertainty continued until early December 2008 when it emerged that a 51% stake was being sold to an unnamed Labour Party activist for £1 with an undertaking to support the magazine for £40,000 per annum and debts written off by the now former trade union owners.
Tribune's cartoonists are Alex Hughes
Alex Hughes
Alex Hughes is an English freelance cartoonist, caricaturist and illustrator, whose work is published in Tribune and has been used in PC Pro, Red Pepper and by the BBC's The Midlands at Westminster and Five's Live With Christian O'Connell...
, Matthew Buck (Hack), Jon Jensen and Martin Rowson
Martin Rowson
Martin George Edmund Rowson is a British cartoonist and novelist. His genre is political satire and his style is scathing and graphic. His work frequently appears in The Guardian and The Independent...
.
Changes of ownership
In March 2009 100% ownership of the magazine passed to Kevin McGrathKevin McGrath (financier)
Kevin McGrath is the High Sheriff of the County of Greater London in Nomination for 2014/2015 .McGrath is the Senior Adviser to F&C REIT Asset Management, an investment management company with a global property investment portfolio of over £8.5 billion and has offices in London, Dublin, Munich,...
, through a new company Tribune Publications 2009 Limited, with the intention of keeping Tribune a left-of-centre publication though broadening the readership.
In late October 2011, the future of Tribune looked bleak once again when McGrath warned of possible closure as circulation and advertising income had not risen as had been hoped. Unless a buyer could be found or a cooperative established, the last edition would have been published on 4 November. McGrath committed to paying off the magazine's debts. A rescue plan, with the magazine owned by staff and readers, looked like saving the magazine by the end of October.
The Tribune Group
The Tribune Group of Labour MPs was formed as a support group for the newspaper in 1964. During the 1960s and 1970s it was the main forum for the left in the Parliamentary Labour PartyParliamentary Labour Party
In UK politics, the Parliamentary Labour Party is the parliamentary party of the Labour Party in Parliament: Labour MPs as a collective body....
, but it split over Tony Benn
Tony Benn
Anthony Neil Wedgwood "Tony" Benn, PC is a British Labour Party politician and a former MP and Cabinet Minister.His successful campaign to renounce his hereditary peerage was instrumental in the creation of the Peerage Act 1963...
's bid for the deputy leadership of the party in 1981, with Benn's supporters forming the Socialist Campaign Group
Socialist Campaign Group
The Socialist Campaign Group is a left-wing democratic socialist grouping of Labour Party Members of Parliament in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. It was formed in December 1982 as an alternative Parliamentary left-wing group to the Tribune Group...
. During the 1980s, the Tribune Group was the Labour soft left's political caucus, but its closeness to the leadership of Neil Kinnock
Neil Kinnock
Neil Gordon Kinnock, Baron Kinnock is a Welsh politician belonging to the Labour Party. He served as a Member of Parliament from 1970 until 1995 and as Labour Leader and Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition from 1983 until 1992 - his leadership of the party during nearly nine years making him...
and subsequently Gordon Brown
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown is a British Labour Party politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 until 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Labour Government from 1997 to 2007...
and Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
meant that it had lost any real raison d'etre by the early 1990s.
The group was reformed in 2005, led by Eltham's Clive Efford
Clive Efford
Clive Stanley Efford is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament for Eltham since 1997.-Early life:...
. Invitations to join the newly reformed group were extended to backbench Labour MPs only.
List of editors
- William MellorWilliam MellorWilliam Mellor was a left-wing British journalist.Mellor joined the Daily Herald in 1913 as a journalist, and was imprisoned during the First World War as a conscientious objector, returning to the Herald on his release. A Guild Socialist during the 1910s, he worked closely with G. D. H. Cole,...
(1937–38) - H. J. Hartshorn (1938–1940)
- Raymond PostgateRaymond PostgateRaymond William Postgate was an English socialist, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet.-Early life:...
(1940–41) - Aneurin BevanAneurin BevanAneurin "Nye" Bevan was a British Labour Party politician who was the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 1959 until his death in 1960. The son of a coal miner, Bevan was a lifelong champion of social justice and the rights of working people...
and Jon KimcheJon KimcheJon Kimche was a journalist and historian . A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35...
(1941–45) - Frederic MullallyFrederic MullallyFrederic Mullally is an English journalist, public relations executive, and novelist.-Career:Mullally's journalism carer began in India where, from 1937 to 1949, he was sub-editor on The Statesman of Calcutta, then editor of the Sunday Standard of Bombay...
and Evelyn AndersonEvelyn AndersonEvelyn Anderson , was a journalist in the UK. Born Lore Seligmann to a German Jewish family, she joined the Communist Party of Germany while a student in Frankfurt in 1927...
(1945–46) - Jon KimcheJon KimcheJon Kimche was a journalist and historian . A Swiss Jew, he arrived in England at the age of 12, becoming involved in the Independent Labour Party as a young man. In 1934–35, he worked with George Orwell in a Hampstead bookshop, Booklover’s Corner, and he later managed the ILP's bookshop at 35...
and Evelyn AndersonEvelyn AndersonEvelyn Anderson , was a journalist in the UK. Born Lore Seligmann to a German Jewish family, she joined the Communist Party of Germany while a student in Frankfurt in 1927...
(1946–48) - Michael FootMichael FootMichael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
and Evelyn AndersonEvelyn AndersonEvelyn Anderson , was a journalist in the UK. Born Lore Seligmann to a German Jewish family, she joined the Communist Party of Germany while a student in Frankfurt in 1927...
(1948–52) - Bob EdwardsBob Edwards (UK journalist)Robert Edwards is a British journalist.Edwards was editor of Tribune , a feature writer on the Evening Standard , deputy editor of the Sunday Express , managing editor of the Daily Express then its editor , editor of the Glasgow Evening Citizen , editor of the Daily Express again , editor of...
(1952–55) - Michael FootMichael FootMichael Mackintosh Foot, FRSL, PC was a British Labour Party politician, journalist and author, who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1955 and from 1960 until 1992...
(1955–60) - Richard Clements (1960–82)
- Chris MullinChris Mullin (politician)Christopher John Mullin is a British Labour Party politician and diarist who was the Member of Parliament for Sunderland South from 1987 to 2010...
(1982–84) - Nigel WilliamsonNigel Williamson (UK journalist)Nigel Williamson is a British journalist.- Biography :Educated at University College London, Williamson worked as a reporter on Tribune and was then briefly its literary editor before becoming editor as successor to Chris Mullin...
(1984–87) - Phil KellyPhil Kelly (UK journalist)Phil Kelly is an English journalist.Born in Wigan and educated at St Mary's College Crosby and Leeds University, Kelly worked on Time Out and the Leveller in the 1970s and joined Tribune in the mid-1980s, working as a reporter and then news editor before becoming editor .Kelly subsequently worked...
(1987–91) - Paul AndersonPaul Anderson (UK journalist)Paul Anderson is a British journalist and academic.Educated at Oxford University and the London College of Printing, Anderson was deputy editor of European Nuclear Disarmament Journal , reviews editor of Tribune , editor of Tribune , deputy editor of the New Statesman , co-author with Nyta Mann...
(1991–93) - Mark SeddonMark Seddon-Education:Seddon was educated at Dauntsey's School, an independent school , in the village of West Lavingdon in Wiltshire.-Life and career:...
(1993–2004) - Chris McLaughlin (2004–present)