LONDON LETTER
THE NEW BRITISH LEFT
I wish I knew enough about Britain to be able to say
with any confidence what is really happening here. The difficulty,
as usual, is that too much is being said by too few people. The
English literary world is supposed to have broken up since the
war, but I know of at least some efficient if shallow channels,
along which the best opinion of the time is supposed to flow, and
I know one or two places where you can sit and watch it flowing.
As I hardly ever do this, though, I can't be certain that I know
what is supposed to be going on. I could, like somebody living
outside Britain, get my sense of movement from print, but apart
from the fact that this is always likely to be misleading--circula–
tion still follows capital, and capital ownership in Britain is still
certainly unrepresentative-I find that even the little I know
about cultural groups here modifies the value of the evidence to
such an extent that any plain reading is difficult. I get most of
my evidence from discussions with audiences to whom I lecture,
and from what can
be
generalized from the indisputable public facts.
I think the essential factor in any reading of contemporary
British opinion is one of generation.
If
the average age of con–
tributors were printed on newspapers and journals, it would clarify
many things. It is important, for example, that the
Guardian
(which used to be the
Manchester Guardian)
seems now to be
mainly run by youngish men, and I know when I read its book
page I find it nearer, in tone and opinion, to people I actually
meet than any other British paper. The
Spectator,
also, seems to
belong to this generation. In other papers and magazines, few are
untouched by the manner and opinions of the generation now
under forty, but the mixture takes place in different ways, from
modification to absorption. The
New Statesman
seems to fluctuate
