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Radical Middle | 45<br />
registration of a newspaper called Post, which looked extremely<br />
like World in every way except its masthead.<br />
I hope I never need choose between ditching a person and<br />
saving many jobs, and I hope that if any agency tells me who<br />
to employ and who not I will invite it to perform an anatomical<br />
impossibility. But that’s not to say that John or Mr Slater (creepy,<br />
saying “Slater” of a guy who you knew as “Mr” all his life) were<br />
wrong. They kept food on 200 tables. I’m not complaining.<br />
Well, now I’m not. as I went downstairs with John’s axe fresh<br />
in my head, I wasn’t quite so detachedly philosophical.<br />
a person was in my office. Lo, John Miskelly, its previous<br />
occupant. Ten months ago John had reluctantly vacated this<br />
room to join the thundering herd of assistant editors of The<br />
Star, making way for new thinking as represented by me. Now<br />
the old wave moved in while the new wave moved onto the<br />
street. There was poetry in this, and a lesson, cousin of the hare<br />
and the tortoise.<br />
I cleared out while he moved in. The atmosphere was a touch<br />
frosty. My crew of right-wing english sub-editors dropped in<br />
one by one to give me paternalistic lectures about staying out<br />
of trouble, and to give Miskelly furtive thumbs-ups.<br />
Post launched on the Sunday with John Miskelly as acting<br />
editor (and no weekend leader-pages). Most of the banned<br />
organisations were eventually reborn with different names.<br />
Percy came back in March, a hero with genuine prison<br />
credentials and ten times more “politicised” than before, and<br />
took over Post, which became more political than World.<br />
In the meantime, John Miskelly had troubles in the subs room.<br />
The old crop left, for diverse reasons, and the new applicants<br />
were mainly people who thought the revolution should break<br />
out tomorrow if not this afternoon. It was perverse. I’d been<br />
a “political” editor with a subs team who would fill the paper<br />
with soccer if they could. John the “non-political” editor was<br />
blessed with a bunch who would fill the paper with subversion<br />
if they could.<br />
On the afternoon of October 26 I felt rancorous as I drove
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