The New Statesman is a British left-wing political magazine published weekly in London. The current editor is Jason Cowley, whose appointment was announced on 16 May 2008. The magazine is committed to "development, human rights and the environment, global issues the mainstream press often ignores".

In the issue dated 29 May 2006, then editor John Kampfner stated that the New Statesman remained "true to its heritage of radical politics".

The magazine is sometimes affectionately referred to as "The Staggers", in reference to its frequent crises.

Origins

The New Statesman was founded in 1913 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb with the support of George Bernard Shaw and other prominent members of the Fabian Society . Its first editor was Clifford Sharp. Sharp remained editor until 1928, though during his last two years in post he was debilitated by chronic alcoholism and the paper was actually edited by his deputy Charles Mostyn Lloyd, who stood in after Sharp's departure until the appointment of Kingsley Martin as editor in 1930 – a position Martin was to hold for 30 years. Although the Webbs and most Fabians were closely associated with the Labour Party, Sharp was drawn increasingly to the Asquith Liberals.

The Statesman under Kingsley Martin

In 1931 the Statesman merged with the Liberal weekly the Nation, and changed its name to the New Statesman and Nation, under which title it remained until 1964. The chairman of the Nation's board was the economist John Maynard Keynes, who came to be an important influence on the newly merged paper, which started with a circulation of just under 13,000.

During the 1930s, Martin's Statesman moved markedly to the left politically. It became strongly anti-fascist and was generally critical of the government policy of appeasement of Mussolini and Hitler (though it did not back British rearmament). It was also, notoriously, an apologist for Stalin's Soviet Union. In 1934 it ran a famously deferential interview with Stalin by H. G. Wells. In 1938 came Martin's refusal to publish George Orwell's celebrated despatches from Barcelona during the Spanish civil war because they criticised the communists for suppressing the anarchists and the left-wing POUM. "It is an unfortunate fact," Martin wrote to Orwell, "that any hostile criticism of the present Russian regime is liable to be taken as propaganda against socialism."

The Statesman's circulation grew enormously under Martin's editorship, reaching 70,000 by 1945, and it became a key player in Labour politics. The paper welcomed Labour's 1945 general election victory but took a critical line on the new government's foreign policy. The young Labour MP Richard Crossman, who had been an assistant editor before the war, was Martin's chief lieutenant in this period, and the Statesman published Keep Left, the pamphlet written by Crossman, Michael Foot and Ian Mikardo that most succinctly laid out the Labour left's proposals for a "third force" foreign policy rather than alliance with the United States.

During the 1950s, the Statesman remained a left critic of British foreign and defence policy and of the Labour leadership of Hugh Gaitskell (though Martin never got on personally with Aneurin Bevan, the leader of the anti-Gaitskellite Labour left). It opposed the Korean war, and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament grew directly out of an article in the Statesman by J. B. Priestley.

After Kingsley

Martin retired in 1960 and was replaced as editor by John Freeman, a politician-journalist who had resigned from the Labour government in 1951 with Bevan and Harold Wilson. Freeman left in 1965 and was followed in the chair by Paul Johnson, then on the left, under whose editorship the Statesman reached its highest ever circulation of 90,000. For some, even enemies of Johnson such as Richard Ingrams, this was a strong period for the magazine editorially.

Decline and crisis

After Johnson's departure in 1970, the Statesman went into a long period of declining circulation under successive editors: Richard Crossman (1970–72), who tried to edit it at the same time as playing a major role in Labour politics; Anthony Howard (1972–78), whose recruits to the paper included Christopher Hitchens, Martin Amis and James Fenton (surprisingly, the arch anti-Socialist Auberon Waugh was writing for the Statesman at this time before returning to his more natural home of The Spectator); Bruce Page (1978–82), who moved the paper towards specialising in investigative journalism, sacking Arthur Marshall, who had been writing for the Statesman on and off since 1935, as a columnist, allegedly because of the latter's support for Margaret Thatcher; Hugh Stephenson (1982–86), under whom it took a strong position again for unilateral nuclear disarmament; John Lloyd (1986–87), who swung the paper's politics back to the centre; Stuart Weir (1987–90), under whose editorship the Statesman founded the Charter 88 constitutional reform pressure group; and Steve Platt (1990–96). By 1996 it was selling 23,000 copies a week. The New Statesman was the first periodical to go online, hosted by the www.cleanroom.co.uk, in 1995.

The Statesman acquired the weekly New Society in 1988 and merged with it, becoming New Statesman and Society for the next eight years, then reverting to the old title. In 1993, the Statesman was sued by the prime minister, John Major, after it published an article that discussed rumours that Major was having an extramarital affair with a Downing Street caterer. Although the action was settled out of court for a minimal sum, the paper's legal costs came close to bankrupting it.

Since 1996

The New Statesman was rescued from this near-bankruptcy by a takeover from the businessman Philip Jeffrey but in 1996, after prolonged boardroom wrangling over Jeffrey's plans, it was sold to Geoffrey Robinson, the Labour MP and businessman.

The Statesman's circulation difficulties persisted under Robinson's sole ownership, despite a number of editorial make-overs. Robinson sacked Steve Platt, and appointed Ian Hargreaves, formerly editor The Independent newspaper, as editor, on an (until then) unprecedentedly high salary, who in turn fired most of the left-wingers on the staff and turned the Statesman into a strong supporter of Tony Blair as Labour leader.

Hargreaves was succeeded by Peter Wilby also from the Independent stable, who had previously been the Statesman's books editor, in 1998. Wilby attempted to reposition the paper back 'on the left', but Wilby's initiatives created controversy. In 2002, for example, the Statesman was accused of anti-Semitism when it published an investigative cover story on the power of the "Zionist lobby" in Britain, which it called the "Kosher Conspiracy". The cover was illustrated with a gold Star of David piercing the Union Jack, reminiscent of propaganda by the German Nazi party.

John Kampfner, Wilby's political editor, succeeded him as editor in May 2005 following considerable internal conflict. Under Kampfner's editorship, a relaunch in 2006 initially saw headline circulation climb to over 30,000. However, over 5,000 of these were apparently monitored free copies , and Kampfner failed to maintain the 30,000 circulation he had pledged. In February 2008, Audit Bureau Circulation figures showed that circulation had plunged nearly 13% in 2007. Kampfner resigned on February 13, 2008, the day before the ABC figures were made public, reportedly due to conflicts with Robinson over the magazine's marketing budget (which Robinson had apparently slashed in reaction to the fall in circulation).

In April 2008 Geoffrey Robinson sold 50% of the business to Michael Danson. The appointment of the new editor Jason Cowley was announced on 16 May 2008.

References

• Hyams, Edward. The New Statesman: the history of the first fifty years 1913-63, Longman, 1963.
• Rolph, C. H (ed) Kingsley: the life, letters and diaries of Kingsley Martin Victor Gollancz, 1973, ISBN 0-575-01636-1
• Howe, Stephen (ed) Lines of Dissent: writing from the New Statesman 1913 to 1988, Verso, 1988, ISBN 0860912078
• Smith, Adrian The New Statesman: portrait of a political weekly, Frank Cass, 1996, ISBN 0-7146-4645-8

List of editors

Clifford Sharp (1913–1928) Charles Mostyn Lloyd (1928–1930) Kingsley Martin (1930–1960) John Freeman (1960–65) Paul Johnson (1965–70) Richard Crossman (1970–72) Anthony Howard (1972–78) Bruce Page (1978–82)	Hugh Stephenson (1982–86) John Lloyd (1986–87) Stuart Weir (1987–91) Steve Platt (1991–96) Ian Hargreaves (1996–98) Peter Wilby (1998–2005) John Kampfner (2005–2008) Sue Matthias (acting editor 2008) Jason Cowley (2008))

External links

• New Statesman

References