The Press: Attlee's Early

• Share

The traditional hush of No. 10 Downing Street was broken last week by the sound of a precedent being shattered. Clement Attlee got himself a press secretary.

The Prime Minister's new Steve Early is one of the bright boys of British Socialism: chunky, rumpled, pipe-smoking Francis Williams. Reporters from many nations had applauded Francis Williams' deft handling of British publicity at the San Francisco conference. He convinced Tory Anthony Eden that Britain stood to gain by letting the press in on what went on; consequently, the correspondents' behind-the-scenes picture came to them mostly through British eyes.

Newsman's Education. Francis Williams, 42—he looks younger—is a Shropshire lad and a farmer's son, says he was educated "at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School and on the staffs of various newspapers." The first of these was the Bootle Times in Lancashire. When he tried Fleet Street, he couldn't get a job. So he bought a horse and greengrocer's cart, started to tour England, writing free-lance stories. These led eventually to a job on the Sunday Express. A piece he wrote about Sculptor Jacob Epstein caught Beaverbrook's eye. With typical Beaver whimsey, the boss made Williams a financial writer.

"I Knew As Much . . ." In 1929, when the Laborite Daily Herald was reorganized, Ernest Bevin picked Francis Williams for his City (i.e., financial) Editor. Says Williams: "I have always felt that a specialist journalist should know as much as, say, the bankers and stockbrokers. . . or whatever department of journalism he is working in. . . . I put myself in a position in which I knew as much as they did, if not a bit more."

At 33, Francis Williams became editor of the Herald. He built its circulation to 2,000,000, second only to Beaverbrook's Daily Express. He put statistics together to prove that Hitler was rearming—and soon Conservative Winston Churchill was quoting Williams to the bumbling Baldwin government.

"The Novels Can Wait. . . ." In 1940, Williams broke with the Herald because he felt it was wrong to be so Right, and in 1941, became press and censorship officer in the Ministry of Information.

Between times he wrote socialist tomes (War By Revolution). This year he published an Upton Sinclairish first novel, No Man Is An Island, whose title came from the same John Donne sermon as Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. He wants to write more novels, but "if you're asked by a Prime Minister and a friend to take on a job, the novels can wait."