![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The first, rough, draft of history
Book Review: As It Seemed To Me, by John Cole
I first read this book in the 1990s; it seemed due for revisiting. Anyone who watched political news in the UK in the 1980s would know John Cole, with his impartial-yet-critical analysis of the trials and tribulations of the Thatcher regime. (As I recall, there was even a Spitting Image puppet of Cole, featuring in a sketch with the BBC questioning his overtime claims after the Westland affair). Nonetheless, Cole self-deprecatingly recalls being mistaken for Ian McCaskill on the streets of Britain (both sporting prominent glasses and distinctly non-BBC English accents).
Cole began his journalistic career in Belfast; his memoirs don't give much insight into that era, starting with his move to the Guardian, then based in Manchester, in 1956. He reported firstly on labour and industrial stories, working his way to News Editor and Deputy Editor; this was a troubled period for the paper, and he recalls internal issues as well as the wider stories of the day. Cole is far more positive than Dominic Sandbrook, in his assessment of Harold Wilson: perhaps it's the virtue of actually being there, though perhaps the (then recent) despair of Labour in the 1980s also elevates Wilson as a leader who was electorally successful and held his party together, though pragmatism was not enough, and neither party could sustain economic growth and control inflation. Cole credits Callaghan too, though he does not go quite as far as Sandbrook, who described Callaghan's as the first monetarist government in Britain.
Cole goes into detail on many issues after the 1979 election: Michael Foot as Labour leader, the formation of the SDP, the Thatcher regime, and the parlous state of unemployment and inflation. It's clear that he belonged to the generation that regarded full employment as a given objective, and like many, he was taken aback that the government - and also evidently, in time, the electorate - were prepared to tolerate such high unemployment.
In 1981, Cole moved to the BBC and became the face of political reporting for a decade. There's little overt opinion in his writing; it focuses on events and offers perspectives, but he avoids judgements. My recollection of earlier reading of this book had been that Cole tended to a rather simplistic view of Thatcherism, but the re-read doesn't bear that out (beyond, perhaps, ascribing that simplicity to some of her backbenchers). Later chapters cover the poll tax, resignations over Europe, the leadership challenges of 1989 and 1990, and the unexpected Conservative victory in 1992. His observation that a political party can become populated with ideologues just as that ideology is falling from favour may resonate with our own times.
I first read this book in the 1990s; it seemed due for revisiting. Anyone who watched political news in the UK in the 1980s would know John Cole, with his impartial-yet-critical analysis of the trials and tribulations of the Thatcher regime. (As I recall, there was even a Spitting Image puppet of Cole, featuring in a sketch with the BBC questioning his overtime claims after the Westland affair). Nonetheless, Cole self-deprecatingly recalls being mistaken for Ian McCaskill on the streets of Britain (both sporting prominent glasses and distinctly non-BBC English accents).
Cole began his journalistic career in Belfast; his memoirs don't give much insight into that era, starting with his move to the Guardian, then based in Manchester, in 1956. He reported firstly on labour and industrial stories, working his way to News Editor and Deputy Editor; this was a troubled period for the paper, and he recalls internal issues as well as the wider stories of the day. Cole is far more positive than Dominic Sandbrook, in his assessment of Harold Wilson: perhaps it's the virtue of actually being there, though perhaps the (then recent) despair of Labour in the 1980s also elevates Wilson as a leader who was electorally successful and held his party together, though pragmatism was not enough, and neither party could sustain economic growth and control inflation. Cole credits Callaghan too, though he does not go quite as far as Sandbrook, who described Callaghan's as the first monetarist government in Britain.
Cole goes into detail on many issues after the 1979 election: Michael Foot as Labour leader, the formation of the SDP, the Thatcher regime, and the parlous state of unemployment and inflation. It's clear that he belonged to the generation that regarded full employment as a given objective, and like many, he was taken aback that the government - and also evidently, in time, the electorate - were prepared to tolerate such high unemployment.
In 1981, Cole moved to the BBC and became the face of political reporting for a decade. There's little overt opinion in his writing; it focuses on events and offers perspectives, but he avoids judgements. My recollection of earlier reading of this book had been that Cole tended to a rather simplistic view of Thatcherism, but the re-read doesn't bear that out (beyond, perhaps, ascribing that simplicity to some of her backbenchers). Later chapters cover the poll tax, resignations over Europe, the leadership challenges of 1989 and 1990, and the unexpected Conservative victory in 1992. His observation that a political party can become populated with ideologues just as that ideology is falling from favour may resonate with our own times.