JOHN STRACHEY

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24907, 21 June 1946, Page 6

JOHN STRACHEY

MINISTRY OF FOOD

(From the Profiles series in the “Ob«rver."J (Published by, Arrangement.)

One day in 1923 Lord Ponsonby—h® was then plain Arthur—entered the impressive offices of the Independent Labour Party, which was still the most powerful force inside the Labour movement. With Ponsonby was a very tall young man with a gentle cultured voice, xvho appeared to Mr Brockway, secretary of the 1.L.P., as “a vast overgrown boy.” Ponsonby explained. This was John Strachey, son of St. Loe Strachey, famous editor of the “Spectator.” He had been to Eton and at Magdalen. While at Oxford he became a convert to Socialism; he wanted to serve the movement; could Mr Brockway find him a niche somewhere?

John Evelyn St. Loe Strachey had begun on the road which was to lead him to the Ministry of Food 23 years later, at the age of 45. It was not an easy road; Strachey had much to learn. Mr Brockwsy thought the new recruit was sincere in his desire to help, but that he understood little about Socialism. To-day Strachey might claim that he has converted more members of the British middle classes to Socialism than any other man. It was Strfchey who popularised the miners’ cause in the long strike of 1926; who did the same for Mosley’s financial proposals when Mosley was still the hope of the Labour Party; and the same, during a period, for the Communist solution. He has helped greatly to make 1 the Labour Party a really popular institution.

The Housewife's Hope? He now has to do the same for the Ministry of Food and restore tit to that status of a "daftlin’ crature” to which Lord Woolton first raised it. Sir Ben Smith failed to achieve Woolton’s avuncular popularity. Is Strachey to be the Housewife’s Hope, the Nation’s Uncle John? Strachey had his minor handicaps to overcome. His handwriting Was so bad that a typist had to be specially trained to read it, and his colleagues avowed that his spelling would have disgraced a boy of 10. It .has been claimed that these two shortcomings are essentials to the making of a good journalist; Strachey once more confirmed this theory. If it be also true that authors can neither spell nor Write, Strachey is in the right spot 2gain. For he has been, and is, a fln£ chairman of the management committee of the Society of Authors, therein he rivals Sir Osbert Sitwell in the stylish and forcible handling of recalcitrant publishers.

After two years’ apprenticeship he took Over the editorship of the “Miner,” organ of the Miners’ Federation.' The great feature of the “Miner” was the filming weekly editorial by A. J. Cook, the miners’ leader. Cook never wrote it. He would talk to Strachey for hours; then Strachey would put Cook on paper, with considerable flair. About the same time young Strachey had also become associated with Oswald Mosley, and it was not a connexion of which he need be ashamed. Mosley was a rising star of the Labour Party, and many pinned their hopes on him against the deadening leadership. of MscDonald, Snowden, and Thomas.

After Mosley, Bevan Strachey threw himself into the fight for the soul of the Labour Party with whole-hearted abandon. He stood by Oswald Mosley and coined for him the battle-cry of ’‘Revolution by Reason?* In 1929 Strachey joined Mosley ss a Labour M.P. for the Aston Division of Birmingham. He became Mosley’s secretary and lieutenant. Mosley’s proposals swept the Labour Conference of 1930 and the triumph went to his head. He carried the battle, into Parliament, and when he lost, he lost also his faith in Parliament and the people. Strachey was still loyal to his leader. He re-< signed his seat and failed to regain it as a membei of Mosley’s New Party. In Parliament, however. Strachey had come under a new influence; his contacts with the.present Minister of Health. Aneurin Bevan, became particularly frequent, and they brought a balancing factor into Strachey’s life.

Bevsn’s passionate belief in p m^l a fd d h e £ O d^ y kn O cialist literature and theory, begs-, ■« counter the growing personal arm gance and contempt for the maw which were becoming Mosley’s eh?/ acteristics. It was not long bWoS Strachey realised where Mosley wm going. His talks with Bevan and y-h. others had led him into new ways ife now followed them with the same ta * tensity he had devoted to Mosley hi began the intellectual fight agiuM Fascism. Flaying the Professors ... J Strachey’s most fruitful period educator of the middle classes now began. His enthusiasm was devoted to the popularisation of Marx’s funda. mental economic teaching. "The k,.., ture of the Capitalist Crisis’’ wa« brilliant and also readable. StrScfe, had been infused, however, wlthSomZ ' thing of the arrogance of the believ«?F The London School Professors, Hmc bins, Hayek, and others such as Doug-/ las and Fisher, were flayed. But ths sharpest barbs were reserved for fn» : Social-Democrats, G. D. H. Cole ana" Barbara Wootton, and for the leaders 1 of the Labour party. He helped Gollancz and Laski "life launching the "Left Book Club." The level of the books chosen was not/ unduly meritorious, but tens of thou-' sands of middle-class readers who had 1 . never bought Left political books began to buy and read them every month. ,

When the war broke out Strachey’ abandoned the Communists and joined with Gollancz and Laski in a bitter denunciation of his late colleagues for their "Betrayal ot the> Left.” He endured the London biite as an air-raid warden, and wrote an excellent short book of his human ex- - periences, entitled “Post D.” He then joined the R.A.F. as Public Relation* Officer, and once more emerged as tM expert publicist. In handling the press he was sweetly reasonable. It was not long before that master of suave publicity, Air Marshal Peck, now a Gover* nor of the 8.8. C., recognised Strachey’s real ability. >™cneya A critical moment was reached ia the development of our bombing policy. Heavy raids on German eili« caused heavy civilian casualties among German women and children. ThCss concentrated raids might rouse the British public to objection, Strachey was put on the air. His weekly broadcasts gently took the public mind ot the receiving end of the bombing U tacks, and fixed it on the courage of the crews and the master plans behind the attacks. So the outcry . which Bomber Harris feared never came. Strachey believed in bombing and developed Bomber Command faith with the same Invincible logic that had gone before to “Revolution by Reason.’’ the Communist Party, and the Popular Ffcnt. Bread and Bricks In 1843, 20 years after that first visit to the 1.L.P., Strachey returned to the fold as a Labour candidate. It was a different and wiser Strachey. As Under-Secretary of State for Air he showed industry and acumen and immediately had the favour of the House. Now the two young men of argument and theory, Strachey and Bevam are up against the real fundamentals of life, bread and bricks. And by their supply of. these the public will judge them. Underfed and overcrowded folk will not patiently askSir bread and be given a nice slice of octrine. Strachey has a family to tell hint about the larder. They will doubtleab" let him know when his Ministryfi' issues those infuriating recipes that make the housewife groan at su&® waste ot public money. He rusticates, in Essex always the fashionable shifiS® for intellectual “Leftists," and coMi? fesses to such bourgeois pleasures Sfc" cricket and lawn tennis. He has evifet been seen, dark, benign, and immen®»? functioning as a full-back in the Jokdian hockey teams on Hampstead'/Heath. He moved somewhat slowH at hockey: far more nimbly on the ' path to a portfolio which a hungry nation will trust him to carry with success.