TLS
THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
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Parris Marr: A New Statesman
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It had been five years since I had first met Parris Marr when I sat down to interview him for a second time earlier this week. Five years ago, we had met in the doggedly fashionable, if perhaps somewhat faded, dining rooms of the Oxford and Cambridge Club, where Marr is an active member. It speaks highly of what has changed in his life since that we met not in a dining club but in his office at the headquarters of the New Statesman in Blackfriars. Five years, as the platitude reminds us constantly, is an eternity in politics. This is true of no one more than Parris Marr.
Before the last election, when we met last, Marr, then only a former colonial secretary, was a respected figure in his party and a formidably passionate parliamentary figure. His vision for the Empire had, in many ways, dictated British imperial policy even after he had left office along with Attlee in 1949. His unwavering commitment to his vision of liberty was a thorn in the side of both governments that followed. After the election, he was thrust into the foreign office and tasked with finding Britain's place in the world whilst the Americans and the Soviets ramped up their own cold war.
What followed were five years of struggles to assert Britain's place in the face of Washington's will. In Spain, Marr's opposition to the bilateral Anglo–American blockade was eventually worn down by Russian obstinacy and NATO approval. In Washington, President Barkley's worrying over everything from the independence of British policy to communist links in her colonies chilled the so-called ‘special relationship’ to the point where the Treasury was forced to pay off outstanding wartime loans early as proof of Britain's continued commitment to the fight against Soviet encroachment in Europe. Only Barkley's death and subsequent succession by Adlai Stevenson, a natural Anglophile, prevented further fallings out.
In mentioning this episode I touch a nerve. ‘I was very angry at the time that the President's policy essentially amounted to blackmailing America's closest ally,’ Marr explained. ‘I lost a great deal of respect for him after that, I must say.’ And what about his dealings with Barkley's successor? ‘Oh, Adlai was much more reasonable. I enjoyed working with him much more [than working with Barkley].’
Ultimately, the Americans were mollified by a mixture of money, mortality and strategic quiescence. After this, Marr's final year in the foreign office was, by the standards against which modern diplomacy is judged, uncontroversial. The Spanish blockade looks to be weakening Moscow's resolve to shoulder its ally's economy and optimists looks forward to an impending détente. Marr is amongst their number. ‘I don't think Mr Khrushchev is stupid. He will know when enough is enough.’
The greatest mystery in this period comes much more recently, when Marr orchestrated one of the most spectacular voltes-faces in recent political history and left both Whitehall and Westminster, almost without warning. Sat in front of the man shrewd commentators had spoken of with certainty as a future prime minister, I had to ask why. Marr was unusually gnomic. ‘I certainly didn't leave in a rage or anything like that. There was nothing that pushed me. Really, I was pulled by the offer of the New Statesman job. It wasn't something I thought I could turn down – not at a time like this.’
That Marr's family, his wife and three children, live in York might also have been a consideration. The former minister made no secret of his dislike of being away in London so often – but then he still works in the capital, so perhaps this was not such a stumbling block after all. ‘The hours are more sociable. The problem with being foreign secretary is that ‘foreign’ never really sleeps.’ So is Marr burnt out, tired of the cut and thrust of the Commons? ‘Not at all. I imagine I'll be back one day – it seems an inevitability, really – but I realised when I was offered the job [at the New Statesman] that what I enjoyed the most about being an MP was not the decision making or the power of it, mingling with presidents and princes, but being able to actually make life a little bit better in this country.’
Marr has common cause here with many friends in the Labour Party, on whose NEC he still sits. Together, the Marrites (as they are occasionally known) are often placed on the modernising right of the party, but this is a categorisation Marr himself rejects. ‘I think the whole left–right thing going on in the party is still rooted in the 1930s. Those on what is called the hard-left of the party are really just those who believe in a sort of Co-Operative Movement, old-Fabian strain of socialism that is perhaps a bit less rooted in the specifics of improving society as in the grander ambitions of completely remodelling it. There is plenty that is very worthy about this approach, but I would much rather see socialism as a means to an end rather than an end in itself. I don't think this is any less left-wing than other schools of thought; it's just a less idealistic one.’
When Marr and I last met, he spoke often of ‘meritocracy’ as being the way forward. Is it still? ‘Without a doubt, yes. Meritocracy to me means a society in which class is made redundant rather than abolished. It is a liberal, socially libertarian society where everybody is entitled to economic security, but where talent can succeed.’ That Labour are Britain's defenders of liberty has been one of Marr's great insistences over the past few years. Whether denouncing punitive censorship laws at home or working towards the downfall of Stalinist dictatorships abroad, it is quite clear that liberty is something Marr is intent on winning for those he serves. I ask him if how he thinks his new position will affect his ability to fight the good fight.
‘The irony about being in Parliament is that aside from those who regularly read Hansard, what one says is not heard by al that many people. Now I actually think I have a louder voice than I did as a minister, although this is probably just egotism. Certainly, I have more license to talk about things other than foreign affairs without fear of treading on someone's toes. For the last twenty years or so my life and career has followed a fairly internationalist path. I think now is the time to focus on other things.
‘A friend of mine [Middle Temple barrister Jeremy Hutchinson] was the party candidate in Westminster in 1945. He had been called to the Bar before the war, but he contested the seat anyway – and duly lost. I think this was a lucky escape, in a way. He has done far more for English liberalism as an advocate than I think he ever would have been able to as an MP.’
From all this one would be forgiven for thinking that Marr had left politics for good. His energetic correspondence with friends and allies still in Parliament, as well as his continued presence on the Labour NEC, tells a different story. When I ask him about the future, he smiles conspiratorially and suddenly I am no longer sat in front of a forty-year-old privy councillor. Before me in this modern office, complete with an original piece by Richard Hamilton and soundtracked before my arrival by an Eddie Cochran song, is a man transformed into a Cambridge undergraduate on the threshold of adulthood. ‘Who can say?’, he offers knowingly. Who can say indeed.
