Here we go again. According to the surprisingly reliable Gudio Fawkes, the New Statesman has forced Dan Hodges, a lively young writer, whom you actually want to read, to resign for being a lively young writer, you actually want to read. Specifically, he had done what free journalists in a free society are meant to do and criticised a leading politician – Ed Miliband in Hodges’ cases.
As a parting snub, the Statesman failed to publish Hodges’ piece from the Labour party conference (but thanks to Iain Dale you can read it here). I was forced out of the New Statesman for departing from left orthodoxy, Martin Bright was forced out for upsetting Gordon Brown, a veritable football team of reporters and subs were forced out for asking for trade union rights – On a left wing magazine? Were they mad?
From George Orwell’s confrontations with Kingsley Martin in the 1930s on, the New Statesman has had an unenviable and unsurpassed reputation for preferring conformism to free thought; censorship to intellectual honesty.
The question no one asks is what are we meant to make of all who are carrying on working for Jason Cowley, the editor? Can we assume that they dare not speak their minds for fear of the sack? Or should we stop caring and stop reading? I know that editors censor the world over because they are frightened of the secret police, authoritarian government, megalomaniac proprietors, corporate paymasters, terrorist militias and the like. But what can one say about a magazine that censors because it is frightened of Ed Miliband?
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