Political journalism

Communication and Political Power, by Lord Windlesham, published by Jonathan Cape. London (U966): (UK price 45/-) is not an academic assessment of the subject.

Windlesham is the Deputy General Manager of Independent Television and a director of Rediffusion Television. Since 1957 he's been intimately involved in television and political broadcasting, as well as being tied up with the Conservative Party as Chairman of the Bow Group and a candidate.

With this record I hoped for a detailed analysis of methods of communication and their political effects in Britain. Although the book gives interesting insights into the distribution of power in the Labour and Conservative Parties, and the efforts of groups (such as the Common Market Campaign, the anti-Common Market League and the Campaign for Democratic Socialism) to influence public opinion, it goes no further.

There's no attempt at an overall analysis: and although there are attempts to comment "on the working of the political system in Britain and America and make some suggestions on the direction in which democratic societies might develop in this communications age." there are no new or revealing conclusions.

Indeed, before Lord Windlesham wrote his book he should have checked the latest research on political communications, especially that of Marshall McLuhan. Without this his book is outdated even before publication.

Another collection of articles, essentially non-political, is Scan, by Kenneth Alsop published by Hodder and Stoughton (1966) (NZ price 31/-).

Alsop calls these 50 articles, written over a 20-year period in journalism, "Conversations, Considerations, and Perambulations."

They run from interviews with Brendan Behan, Ionescu, Ignazione Silone, C. P. Snow and Raymond Chandler to trivial and superficial short stories and childhood memories.

The best are interviews, mainly with writers, novelists and dramatists. Here Alsop has something to say. He knows the people he's interviewing and he knows their work. Although the book is essentially light entertainment it adds something to general knowledge about famous people. One is left with a feeling of disappointment only because the pieces are too short.

When The Dynamics of Communism in Eastern Europe, by R. V. Burks, was published six years ago it was the first attempt to examine the actual make-up of Communist movements in Eastern Europe, to state what social and ethnic groups the leaders and rank and file members have come from, and what their motivation in politics has been.

The book has now been republished (1966) by the Princeton University Press (USA price 2.95 dollars) in a substantially revised form.

This revision has been possible by drawing on three important works published since 1961 on Communist Party organisation and developments in Greece. Rumania and Yugoslavia: written by D. G. Kousoulas, Ghita Ionesco and Ivan Avakumovic respectively.

Burks has relied heavily on the interview technique, and in many cases says he's been unable to disclose the source of information.

Even so, this lack of disclosure doesn't generally detract from some of the useful information obtained in the book.

As well there's a useful glossary and an impressive collection of statistical data. but the book suffers from the lack of a bibliography, and from curious gaps in the references.

There are, too. old biases in his analysis of the Greek situation and his curt examination of Western Communist parties and movements is far too superficial, even as an addendum.

In some areas, Burks also tends to rely almost exclusively on other research, for instance, Gabriel Almond's work on guerilla movements in Malaya, but doesn't draw the conclusions which spring from it.

The bias, the interviewing technique, the patchy examination may all be due to Burk's long association with Radio Free Europe (an American-financed radio station which broadcasts propaganda to East European countries) and an insufficient expansion of the (revised) work after much other original research has been done in the intervening six years, Raht.