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Penguin Books and Political Change Britain’s Meritocratic Moment, 1937-1988
Dean
Blackburn
Manchester:
University Press, 2020 Hardback,
ix + 281 pp. ISBN 978-1526129284. £20
Reviewed by Hugh Clout University College London
Penguin Books was founded in the
mid-1930s by Allen Lane (1902-1970) as an imprint of The Bodley Head publishing
house. Allen and his brothers Richard and John were disillusioned with many of
the assumptions then governing the publishing and bookselling trades in the
United Kingdom which privileged hardback books over paperback editions. The
latter were considered appropriate only for light-weight titles, especially
works of fiction, typically on sale at station bookstalls. By contrast, Allen
Lane believed that there was a ‘a vast audience of readers who would be
prepared to buy quality literature if it were made available to them at an
affordable price’ [13]. He argued that the gradual expansion of formal
education in Britain, together with a steady increase in leisure time, had
created a new cohort of potential readers who were not satisfied by works of fiction
and had a genuine appetite for serious, thought-provoking titles. His gamble
paid off and high street stores, such as Woolworth, brought high-quality Penguin
paperbacks to a mass market for as little as sixpence per book. Indeed, the
purchase of 63,000 Penguin books by Woolworth confirmed the worth of the Penguin
brand and enabled Allen Lane to establish his venture as a separate company in
1936. The Penguin enterprise, together with its related Pelican imprint, duly flourished
and brought out an enormous range of serious works. The company deposited
its archive at the University of Bristol, where a team of researchers obtained
funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council in 2008 to enable the
Penguin Archive Project to begin. Its triple aim involved producing an on-line
catalogue of the entire Penguin collection, bringing aspects of Penguin
publishing to the general public through exhibitions and events, and
stimulating original research using material housed in the unique archive in
Bristol. Penguin Books and Political Change is one outcome from the
third objective, being a revised version of historian Dean Blackburn’s doctoral
thesis, defended in Bristol in 2012. Rather than sampling from the entire range
of non-fiction titles, it focuses on a distinct collection known as ‘Penguin
Specials’ whose publication Allen Lane considered to be the most interesting
thing his company did. These books were ‘important vehicles for political
ideas. Some generated considerable debate among the intelligentsia and
political elites’, while others ‘were produced in such quantities that they
were able to frame the way in which ordinary readers understood important phenomena
and events’ [2]. Allen Lane and his
editorial colleagues were ‘committed to removing the material and social
barriers that stood between the reader and good literature’ [13]. However, they
‘were not willing to sanction all forms of reading. Rather, they sought to
encourage kinds of literature that were deemed to be conducive to cultural
enlightenment’ [16]. Early Specials offered analyses of current affairs that
provided an immediate response to Victor Gollancz’s Left Book Club (founded in
1936), which delivered a book each month to its members. Penguin’s editorial
team expressed no political preference but many of its authors were men and
women on the left wing of the ideological spectrum. Allen Lane was
instinctively egalitarian and ‘did not describe himself as a socialist’ but was
rather ‘an old-fashioned liberal’ [22]. The company’s publishing philosophy was
‘rooted in a set of liberal concerns about the autonomy and potential of the
individual’ [19]. Democratic values coloured the composition of its non-fiction
list. Regular readers of Penguin non-fiction were more intellectually and
socially active than non-Penguin readers, spending ‘a greater proportion of
their free time reading and watching films’, belonging to cultural and
intellectual organisations, and were ‘much more likely to vote Labour’ [21]. The
company’s commercial policy in early decades was not especially preoccupied
with profit. Dean Blackburn argues
that ‘Penguin Specials provide a particularly useful lens through which to view
the history of British politics’ [3]. More specifically, they help to map the
ideological terrain of the nation, to elucidate conditions from which political
change emerged, and to assist in tracing ‘the relationship between Britain’s
political elite and the wider social milieu in which they operated’ [3]. Attention is first directed to the response
of Penguin’s editors and authors to the socio-economic and political crises
affecting Europe in the late 1930s, notably the rise of fascism. The first Special
to appear was Edgar Mower, Germany Puts the Clock Back (November 1937).
This was followed immediately by G.D.H. Cole, Practical Economics, and
J.B.S. Haldane, The Inequality of Man (both 1937). In the following
year, Specials dealt with Socialism, Mussolini’s Roman Empire, Europe and the
Czechs, Liberty and the Modern State, and the Press. Geneviève Tabouis’s
anti-appeasement text, Blackmail or War? (1938) sold over 200,000
copies. In all, thirty-five Penguin Specials were published before the outbreak
of World War II. Following this event,
Allen Lane commissioned such titles as Science in War, Hitler’s War,
The Cost of War, and Christianity and Social Order. He also redefined
the role of the Specials, since readers were ‘demanding books that were
discussing the possibility of a new world order’ [27]. Hence, an array of
titles was launched relating to questions of post-war reconstruction and
opportunities for change offered thereby. This theme, of course, was also
covered by the Left Book Club. Blackburn insists that, with the restoration of
peace, Britain entered its Meritocratic moment… Ability and
expertise, not inherited social status or entrepreneurship, were the principal
criteria employed to determine social status, and the notion that all
individuals should have an equal opportunity to develop their abilities was
accepted across the political spectrum [but] that is not to say that Britain
became a meritocratic society or that meritocratic values dissolved older
ideological conflicts [6]. Conservative
political success in 1945 and the emergence of the Cold War appeared ‘to narrow
the boundaries of political contestation’ for a while and sales of current
affairs titles declined [27]. Richard Lane advised his brother to put coverage
of such themes on hold. Penguin’s response was to reduce its engagement with
political issues. The Specials series was suspended temporarily and the
political titles that Penguin did publish at this time generated much less
attention than their predecessors. During the 1960s,
Blackburn argues, ‘the legitimising ideology of Britain’s post-war settlement
was renegotiated’ [28], but meritocratic ideas were not abandoned totally. ‘Rather
than anticipating a future in which social harmony and economic efficiency
would resolve political conflict, intellectuals and policy makers became
increasingly preoccupied with exploring and identifying solutions to Britain’s
apparent social and economic decline’ [133]. Penguin Books, which had been
regarded as ‘a benign instrument of cultural democracy in the preceding two
decades, became implicated within broader patterns of ideological conflict that
were driven by the collapse of post-war consensus, and its books gave rise to
ideas that were difficult to reconcile with the status quo’ [29]. The
Specials list that had lain dormant for some time was revived and many new
titles, including ‘Election Specials’ and volumes on deprivation and homelessness,
generated ‘significant debate, such that the publisher once again became an
important agent of political opinion’ [135]. Penguin Books contributed to the
funds that established Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall at the Centre for
Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in 1964. As Britain became
affected by economic and social crises in the 1970s, many contemporary thinkers
and politicians came to doubt the assumptions behind the logic of meritocracy.
Indeed, Blackburn argues, the ‘meritocratic moment’ was eclipsed [207]. Penguin
Books experienced falling sales and financial problems. Sir Allen Lane died on
7 July 1970 and six weeks later Penguin was acquired by Pearson PLC. (It is now
an imprint of Penguin Random House formed by a merger with Random House, a
subsidiary of the German Bertelsmann corporation). In the early 1970s, new
managers arrived at ‘the conclusion that Penguin could only remain viable if it
were able to acquire best-selling books and market them to a global audience of
readers’ [210]. As a result, the firm abandoned ‘its commitment to progressive
ideas that had informed Allen Lane’s approach to publishing’ [211]. New titles
covered such themes as civil liberties, environmentalism, feminism, and
industrial relations, but in 1988, Penguin terminated its Specials series. The
precise reasoning that ‘informed the decision is not recorded by the Penguin
archive’ [246], but it was clear that the increase in serious current affairs
problems on television provided a new source of political information for many
members of the general public. The final Special was Keith Thompson’s Under
Siege : Racism and Violence in Britain Today (1988). Now at the University
of Nottingham, Dean Blackburn has provided a richly detailed analysis of the
complex relationship between one strand of publishing output and Britain’s
evolving socio-political milieu across half a century. Penguin Specials
reflected changing conditions but also encouraged further debate and
innovation. To quote Richard Hoggart: ‘The Penguin enterprise ranks as a
remarkable expression of important aspects of our recent cultural history, and
an important contributor to the process of social change’ [1]. As befits a
‘book of the thesis’, Penguin Books and Political Change draws on an
extremely wide range of published sources (over 400 items are listed) as well
as manuscript materials lodged in the Penguin Books Archive in Bristol and in
repositories of five other universities. Rather surprisingly, only three
interviews are acknowledged. Apart from reproductions of the front covers of
four Penguin Specials – H.G. Wells, The Common Sense of War and Peace :
World Revolution or War Unending (1940); Michael Young, The Rise of the
Meritocracy (1961); Michael Shanks, The Stagnant Society (1961), and
Shirley Williams, Politics is for People (1980) – the volume is
unadorned by visual illustration. A useful list of 150 Specials is provided by
alphabetical order of author; a complementary list, arranged by date of
publication, would have assisted appreciation of the evolution of themes
through time. Penguin Books casts fresh light of the role of one
crusading publishing house in informing popular opinion and shaping political
debate. It will be welcomed by academics and students and by members of the
general public with a serious interest in twentieth-century British history and
politics. Manchester University Press is to be congratulated for making it
available at a very reasonable price, a fact that would certainly have gained
Allen Lane’s approval.
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