Interview with Lord Deeds

politician and journalist

Q: Чем отличается современная журналистика от журналис­тки периода 1950-х годов (начала эпохи электронных CMИ)?

A: When television arrived in the 1950s everyone assured me that our days were numbered, mainly because television advertising would be so attractive. In my view, 40 years on, newspapers have done terribly well. When I began you had wealthy proprietors with strong political views who ran newspapers as a vehicle for (зд. рупор) their opinions. We are now selling a commodity. That's very different journalism from the journalism I was born into, when the printers earned so much money that no one worried about the reporters expenses, I find it very hard to say whether it's better or worse Journalism is also attracting the sort of talent that used to be attracted to Parliament: it offers a platform if there's something that you want to tell the world.

Q: Жалеете ли вы, что ушли из политики?

A: No. I did 25 years of it. It's an invaluable process if you are going to be a journalist. However cynical you become, you do learn what the problems are in what's been rightly called the endless adventure of governing men. Keeping everyone happy and telling the truth at the same time is an extraordinarily difficult art.

Q: Считаете ли вы, что годы правлении М. Тэтчер пошли на пользу Британии?

A: Emphatically I do. I always see it as a rebalancing which was overdue. In the Second World War we had to create an authoritarian state, which Labour inherited and its successor [governments] were very slow to dismantle. I am not saying she achieved the right balance, but it had gone too far the other way.

Q: Какие надежды вы возлагаете на консервативную пар­тию?

A: After 18 solid years in government, the Tories were crazy to expect any early return to power. There is one thing about politics which is the same as life itself: sooner or later we are all going to die — and sooner or later all governments lose public support, The great pendulum of politics is much more influential than anything that anyone says or does.

Q: Изменились ли ваши собственные политические воззрения за последние годы?

A: I'm a very typical Tory in that I'm very right-wing about some things, quite left-wing about others. I am very right-wing about hunting. To tell everyone that they are cruel because they follow fox hunting is very offensive. Legislators must never invoke the law to put down something which is harmless to other people.

Q: Вы играли видную роль в кампании по запрещению противопехотных мин. Как вы оцениваете шансы на ее успех?

A: Telling the world that there are “x” million mines that it will take a century to remove is no incentive. If we put our backs into it and a certain amount of money, we could clear every mine in the world that matters within 10 years. You must never make people despair. You must make them feel that if they put another five pounds in the kitty (копилка) we can do the whole thing in 10 years.

Q: 'Изменились ли ваши собственные взгляды после последних посещений горячих точек (зон боевых действий)?

A: If you are going to do any good in this field, you have to maintain a sense of proportion. I remind myself that the British suffered 60, 000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme

(But) what really shocks me when I travel around is the basic fact that man has not improved in any way at all. Sierra Leone is the crudest war I have ever seen anywhere. When you see children who have had their hands chopped off, you are plumbing the depths (зд. беспредел). Children of 8 or 9, hotted up with drugs or alcohol, are sent in to massacre. I don't know how much lower humanity can crawl (зд. как могло человечество так низко пасть). The only hope is that beyond my lifetime we may see an improvement when women — who don't like wars for biological reasons — start to gain ascendancy in public life.

Q: Вы никогда не задумывались об уходе на покой?

A: Writers are luckier than some people. It's not like golf where you have use your legs a lot. At my age, [a journalist is] useless if you are simply going to retire. My column attracts a fair amount of correspondence, much of it from people who felt I have missed the point (wrong), that the situation is really much worse than it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago. I am not saying that I am right and they are not, but if you are going to be any good as a journalist you have to try to see the world through the eyes of people who are going to be living long, long after you are dead.