New Statesman

The ''New Statesman'' is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director.

Today, the magazine is a print–digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a liberal and progressive political position. Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the ''New Statesman'' as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magazine" with "sceptical" politics.

The magazine was founded by members of the Fabian Society as a weekly review of politics and literature. The longest-serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–1960), and the current editor is Jason Cowley, who assumed the post in 2008.

The magazine has recognised and published new writers and critics, as well as encouraged major careers. Its contributors have included John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Hitchens, and Paul Johnson. Historically, the magazine was affectionately referred to as "The Staggers" because of its crises of funding, ownership, and circulation. The nickname is now used as the title of its politics blog.

Circulation was at its highest in the mid-1960s at 93,000. The magazine encountered substantial difficulties in the following decades as readership fell, but it was growing again by the mid-2010s. In 2020, the certified average circulation was 36,591. Traffic to the magazine's website that year reached a new high with 27 million page views and four million distinct users. Associated websites are CityMetric, Spotlight and NewStatesman Tech. In 2018, ''New Statesman America'' was launched.

History

Early years

The ''New Statesman'' was founded in 1913 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb with the support of George Bernard Shaw and other prominent members of the Fabian Society. The Fabians previously had supported ''The New Age'' but that journal by 1912 had moved away from supporting Fabian politics and issues such as women's suffrage. The first editor of the ''New Statesman'' was Clifford Sharp, who remained editor until 1928. Desmond MacCarthy joined the paper in 1913 and became literary editor, recruiting Cyril Connolly to the staff in 1928. J.C. Squire edited the magazine when Sharp was on wartime duties during the First World War.

In November 1914, three months after the beginning of the war, the ''New Statesmen'' published a lengthy anti-war supplement by Shaw, "Common Sense About The War", a scathing dissection of its causes, which castigated all nations involved but particularly savaged the British. It sold a phenomenal 75,000 copies by the end of the year and created an international sensation. ''The New York Times'' reprinted it as America began its lengthy debate on entering what was then called "the European War".

During Sharp's last two years in the post, from around 1926, he was debilitated by chronic alcoholism and the paper was actually edited by his deputy Charles Mostyn Lloyd. Although the Webbs and most Fabians were closely associated with the Labour Party, Sharp was drawn increasingly to the Asquith Liberals.

Lloyd stood in after Sharp's departure until the appointment of Kingsley Martin as editor in 1930 – a position Martin was to hold for 30 years.

1931–1960: Kingsley Martin

In 1931 the ''New Statesman'' merged with the Liberal weekly ''The Nation and Athenaeum'' and changed its name to the ''New Statesman and Nation'', which it kept until 1964. The chairman of ''The Nation and Athenaeum''s board was the economist John Maynard Keynes, who came to be an important influence on the newly merged paper, which started with a circulation of just under 13,000. It also absorbed ''The Week-end Review'' in 1934 (one element of which survives in the shape of the ''New Statesman''s Weekly Competition, and the other the "This England" feature). The Competition feature, in which readers submitted jokes and often parodies and pastiches of the work of famous authors, became one of the most famous parts of the magazine. Most famously, Graham Greene won second prize in a challenge to parody his own work.

During the 1930s, Martin's ''New Statesman'' moved markedly to the left politically. It became strongly anti- fascist and pacifist, opposing British rearmament. After the 1938 ''Anschluss'', Martin wrote: "Today if Mr. Chamberlain would come forward and tell us that his policy was really one not only of isolation but also of Little Englandism in which the Empire was to be given up because it could not be defended and in which military defence was to be abandoned because war would totally end civilization, we for our part would wholeheartedly support him."

The magazine provoked further controversy with its coverage of Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union. In 1932, Keynes reviewed Martin's book on the Soviet Union, ''Low's Russian Sketchbook''. Keynes argued that Martin was "a little too full perhaps of good will" towards Stalin, and that any doubts about Stalin's rule had "been swallowed down if possible". Martin was irritated by Keynes's article but still allowed it to be printed. In a 17 September 1932 editorial, the magazine accused the British Conservative press of misrepresenting the Soviet Union's agricultural policy but added that "the serious nature of the food situation is no secret and no invention". The magazine defended the Soviet collectivisation policy, but also said the policy had "proceeded far too quickly and lost the cooperation of farmers". In 1934 it ran an interview with Stalin by H. G. Wells