Who could forget Nye, naked in the conference chamber? The Guardian
We older Old Labour folk were more amused than saddened by this, in today's Guardian Corrections column:
In a front-page sketch, Remember Nye Bevan's warning …, December 5, we mistook, both in the heading and text, Mr Bevan (1897-1960) for his contemporary Ernest Bevin (1884-1951). It was Ernest Bevin, when foreign secretary, who pleaded with colleagues not to send him naked to the conference table.
They're all so young on the Guardian, apart from Jonathan Steele, and he's generally in
Ramallah or Nasiriyah or Helmand or some other such hellhole, so we should forgive them. And they can take some small comfort from the fact that one Mr Peter Mullen of the Northern Echo thinks it was Clem Attlee who said it. Come back, Nye, all is forgiven — not that there's anything to forgive…. (He was right at the time about the British nuclear deterrent, but if he was here today he'd think the decision to renew Trident totally crazy.)
Oh, and incidentally it was the conference chamber, not table, wasn't it?
Brian [former and still unrepentant Bevanite]
They're getting there:
The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday December 8 2006
We mistakenly attributed to Ernest Bevin remarks made by Nye Bevan on nuclear arms in corrections yesterday. This original article and headline were correct. Nye Bevan was shadow foreign secretary at the time. Apologies.
Brian writes: Yes, finally! I wonder how many exasperated messages they received about yesterday's little slip? I can't believe that anyone there reads Ephems, although you never know… And they still haven't corrected the misquotation ('table' instead of 'chamber').
The Guardian's a joke these days. Did you read Polly's little paeon to Gordon today? It was like listening to a North Korean child sing songs of praise to the Glorious Leader.
Brian comments: It really is an extraordinary piece. Even where Polly finds something she thinks has been omitted from the Wise Leader's speech, it must be because he's saving it up for the budget:
For a moment I wondered whether the whole thing was a spoof. But I don't think self-mockery is in Polly's armoury. Perhaps she's hoping for a job in Gordon's government.