From: mabjo@pacbell.net   
      
   A couple of days ago there was a mention of Orwell's   
   attitudes toward *Tribune*, the paper for which he wrote the   
   "As I Please" columns. This is from "As I Pleased," 31   
   January 1947, a column in *Tribune* that seems to be for its   
   tenth anniversary. His writing makes quite clear that   
   *Tribune*, like Orwell himself, was firmly on the   
   independent British left.   
      
   Comments include these:   
      
   "...Raymond Postgate, who was then editor, had asked me to   
   do the novel reviews from time to time. I was not paid   
   (until recently it was unusual for contributors to left-wing   
   papers to be paid), and I only saw the paper on the somewhat   
   rare occasions when I went up to London and visited Postgate   
   in a bare and dusty office near London Wall. *Tribune*   
   (until a good deal later everyone called it "the" *Tribune*)   
   was at that time in difficulties. It was still a threepenny   
   paper aimed primarily at the industrial workers and   
   following more or less the Popular Front line which had been   
   associated with the Left Book Club and the Socialist League.   
   With the outbreak of war its circulation had taken a severe   
   knock, because the Communists and near-Communists who had   
   been among its warmest supporters now refused to help in   
   distributing it. Some of them went on writing for it,   
   however, and the futile controversy between 'supporters' and   
   'opposers' of the war continued to rumble in its columns   
   while the German armies gathered for the spring   
   offensive..."   
      
   "...Early in 1945 I went to Paris as correspondent for the   
   *Observer*. In Paris *Tribune* had a prestige which was   
   somewhat astonishing and which dated from before the   
   liberation. It was impossible to buy it, and the ten copies   
   which the British Embassy received weekly did not, I   
   believe, get outside the walls of the building. Yet all the   
   French journalists I met seemed to have heard of it and to   
   know that it was the one paper in England which had neither   
   supported the Government uncritically, nor opposed the war,   
   nor swallowed the Russian myth. At that time there was -- I   
   should like to be sure that it still exists -- a weekly   
   paper named *Libertes*, which was roughly speaking the   
   opposite number of *Tribune* and which during the occupation   
   had been clandestinely produced on the same machines as   
   printed the *Pariser Zeitung*.   
   *Libertes*, which was opposed to the Gaullists on one side   
   and the Communists on the other, had almost no money and was   
   distributed by groups of volunteers on bicycles. On some   
   weeks it was mangled out of recognition by the censorship;   
   often nothing would be left of an article except some such   
   title as 'The Truth About Indo-China,' and a completely   
   blank column beneath it. A day or two after I reached Paris   
   I was taken to a semi-public meeting of the supporters of   
   *Libertes*, and was amazed to find that about half of them   
   knew all about me and about *Tribune*. A large workingman in   
   black corduroy breeches came up to me, exclaimed 'Ah, vous   
   etes Georges Orrvell!' and crushed the bones of my hand   
   almost to pulp. He had heard of me because *Libertes* made a   
   practice of translating extracts from *Tribune*. I believe   
   one of the editors used to go to the British Embassy every   
   week and demand to see a copy. It seemed to me somehow   
   touching that one could have acquired, without knowing it, a   
   public among people like this: whereas among the huge tribe   
   of American journalists at the Hotel Scribe, with their   
   glittering uniforms and their stupendous salaries, I never   
   encountered one who had heard of *Tribune*.   
   For six months during the summer of 1946 I gave up being a   
   writer in *Tribune* and became merely a reader, and no doubt   
   from time to time I shall do the same again; but I hope that   
   my association with it may long continue, and I hope that in   
   1957 I shall be writing another anniversary article. I do   
   not even hope that by that time *Tribune* will have   
   slaughtered all its rivals. It takes all sorts to make a   
   world, and if one could work these things out one might   
   discover that even the ____ [sic] serves a useful purpose.   
   Nor is *Tribune* itself perfect, as I should know, having   
   seen it from the inside. But I do think that it is the only   
   existing weekly paper that makes a genuine effort to be both   
   progressive and humane -- that is, to combine a radical   
   Socialist policy with a respect for freedom of speech and a   
   civilised attitude towards literature and the arts: and I   
   think that its relative popularity, and even its survival in   
   its present form for five years or more, is a hopeful   
   symptom."   
      
   c/o M   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)