Mare's Nest

"The foulest piece of journalism perpetrated in [Britain] for many a long year--and that is certainly saying something . . ." The caustic editorialist was Michael Foot, 37, wiry, wily Laborite M.P., co-editor of the Socialist weekly Tribune (circ. 20,000) and onetime acting editor of Lord Beaverbrook's Tory London Evening Standard. What had roused Foot's wrath was the way the Standard (circ. 871,000) had handled John Strachey's appointment as Secretary of State for War (TIME, March 13).

Strachey's promotion was announced the same day Communist Spy Klaus Fuchs was convicted. The Standard linked the two stories together in one scare headline: FUCHS AND STRACHEY: A GREAT NEW CRISIS. WAR MINISTER HAS NEVER DISAVOWED COMMUNISM. The Standard's "proofs" were Strachey quotations, from twelve to 18 years old, expressing a sympathy for Russian Communism that Strachey had long since repudiated. "Spreading what [Beaverbrook & Co.] knew to be a lie," said the Tribune, was the kind of journalism that was "lower than [Lord] Kemsley" (the Tory publisher of four London Sunday papers, one London daily and 37 other papers, with a combined circulation of 10,000,000). In characteristically milder fashion, the Manchester Guardian also took Publisher Beaverbrook to task for "the Evening Standard's mare's nest about [Strachey]." Last week, a new attack on the Beaver came from within his own journalistic family. James Cameron, 39, who has averaged 100,000 miles a year as chief roving correspondent for Beaverbrook's Daily Express, quit his well-paid (-L-3,000 a year) job. In a letter to the London Times, Cameron said: "We have now set the precedent for the purge-by-Press, which [can only end] in a race of people talking behind their hands, knowing that the words they said yesterday, in a very different world mood, are the words they may swing for tomorrow."

At week's end, War Minister Strachey seemed content to rest on his own and Downing Street's denials. But Lord Kemsley, an innocent bystander in the whole Strachey business, sued the Tribune for libel in calling the Standard's actions "lower than Kemsley."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.