Under the creative editorship of Paul Barker there was certainly a lot of intellectual excitement to be found in the magazine New Society. But it also displayed an extraordinary graphic range, built up by the designer, Richard Hollis. And there was also the bedrock of social policy and social work, with ads that kept the magazine in being.
In the late 1990s, when I arrived at the London School of Economics to do a PhD 25 years after being New Societty’s education correspondent, it was gratifying to be met by senior professors asking if I was “the” Anne Corbett. But then those professors were among the magazine’s first champions: as the students reading the regular contributions of those of us writing the social policy notes and doing the reportage, and themselves contributing their first articles.
Anne Corbett
It was a mark of New Society’s national importance under the editorship of Paul Barker that it was the chosen medium for the leak of Cabinet papers in 1976 which revealed that the prime minister, James Callaghan, was trying to reverse Labour’s manifesto pledge to introduce universal child benefit.
The leaker, revealed in 2014 to be Malcolm Wicks, then a Home Office civil servant, passed the papers to the then head of the Child Poverty Action Group, Frank Field, who broke the story in an exclusive article for the magazine.
The resulting furore helped to ensure the safe introduction of child benefit in 1977. Paul rightly regarded the story as one of the greatest achievements of his long editorship since, without it, child benefit might never have been introduced.
Many journalists, including Melanie Phillips, David Lipsey, Caroline St John Brooks, Steve Bell and myself also have reason to honour Paul’s memory, for giving us some of our first opportunities in national journalism at this much missed magazine.
Martin Kettle
