Frank Johnson (journalist, editor, columnist and all round newspaper man) has died at the age of 63.
Mr Johnson was of working class origins in the East End of London and left school at 16. However, he never viewed any of this as a reason why he should be hostile to high culture and from his boyhood was a great admirer of opera and ballet. Indeed Frank Johnson was fond of pointing out that many individuals among the working classes were once a lot more cultured than their self declared friends of more fortunate birth gave them credit for, with (for example) the biggest sales among early recordings of music being for serious works, and many men whose hands were hard often being also very well read.
Mr Johnson was no friend of the left – either in the Labour party, or of those in the Conservative party who were patronising statists (always out to ‘help’ the poor with more government spending, taxes and regulations).
Nor was Mr Johnson afraid to write unpopular things. For example he pointed out that for working men in the south of England and in the Midlands, the 1930’s were not a time of collapse, indeed that Britain did better in terms of the rise of real incomes in the 1930’s than National Socialist Germany – and vastly better than FDR’s vaunted ‘New Deal’ United States.
As for the sacred cow of British politics – the Welfare State, Frank Johnson pointed out that it is not a matter of it being “something designed in the 1940’s which must be adapted for changing times” (as cowardly people on the conservative side of British politics used to like to put it), but something that had a powerful negative side from day one, both collectivising hospitals that had been provided free for the poor by charitable effort and helping to destroy the tradition of self help and mutual aid that had once been the greatest aspect of the working classes (of course such things as the Friendly Society movement had been undermined by government activities all the way back to the early schemes of the ‘New Liberal’ government that was elected in 1906).
Even the supposed higher living standards of the 1940’s being an illusion – the war time “prosperity” (boasted of by upper class leftists like A.W. Benn) being a matter of American aid and eating our overseas investments. And the post war time being a matter of rigged stats (claiming that wages were higher than the 1930’s whilst ignoring real inflation – i.e. the black market price of rationed goods) and neglecting future investment. Although it is worth remembering that government spending on the Welfare State started off in a very small way (the real economic harm of the late 1940’s being nationalization, general high taxes and high government spending and the vast web of regulations by which the “educated” men in Whitehall told everyone else what to do and what to do). The real growth of the Welfare State and, more imporantly the changes it was making in the British character (as opposed to such things as the decline of the Friendly Societies and other voluntary associations), did not really even start to be seen till the 1960’s
Mr Johnson remembered the “stoicism of the London working class” (of course he accepted it was more than the London working class – but he was a Londoner), as to what there is now it is best to say nothing.
I will miss Frank Johnson.
Maybe a Frank Johnson Reader could be done, before he and his writings and his time is forgotten, or worse, distorted.
Nice article, Paul. I met Frank about half a dozen times and he was a pleasant fellow, rather shy, I thought. You are right to stress his relatively humble origins because, arguably, journalism has become a less meritocratic profession in some ways since Frank’s time. The days when a guy could start as a messenger boy and end up as a senior corro or editor are a long way gone. It is now dominated by people who had to enter as graduate trainees. The old apprenticeship route via your local paper, then a wire, then a national paper, are waning. Maybe the internet will have an effect on this, too.
Frank was a great opera and classical music buff, and his parliamentary sketches were excellent. This is a sad day for quality journalism. RIP.
I have only just learned of this sad news from reading this blog. Frank Johnson was a pleasure to read–back in the days when i used to read the print media. I would generally look out for the two Johnsons in spectator magazine and would read every word of Frank’s as a mirthful but–as time has proven–memorable aperitif to Paul and the other writers. I’m sorry to hear of his passing away.