Editorial Spring 2009

‘I cannot fiddle but I can make a great state out of a little city.’ Themistocles. Ferocious protests from the Left greeted the appearance of the Salisbury Review in 1982. Fury erupted at the audacity of publishing a journal which not only challenged the Left’s ‘smelly little orthodoxies’, but did so with intellectual brilliance and panache. High intelligence could never, in their view, be associated with the ‘stupid party’. In 1984 leftists saw their opportunity to brand us as a racist, fascist organ when the headmaster of Bradford Middle school, Ray Honeyford, wrote in our pages how multicultural educational policies were ghettoising thousands of immigrant school children in Bradford. Denied a traditional British education, they were being brought up without a knowledge of the history and traditions of their adopted country, and in consequence faced a lifetime as internal aliens. Honeyford was forced our of his job for writing the article, but the Salisbury Review put its finger on a growing political abscess the left has never been able to lance. How can uncontrolled immigration and multiculturalism be reconciled with a stable social fabric? Too late, but at last today pundits, including Trevor Phillips, admit that multiculturalism is not only unworkable but dangerous. In quieter times our lot is to be ignored rather than openly reviled by the Left-leaning intelligentsia. This is the reason why the Salisbury Review is still undeservedly unknown. Although for those readers who do know us the compensation for the Review’s small circulation is the quality of its contributors and subscribers. Famous names grace our pages but we keep an open house; the magazine benefits from writers who are not professional journalists but have a story to tell, an important argument to make and who often speak from the heart as well as the head. Modern magazine publishing requires a lot of money to reach a mass readership. To put a journal like the Salisbury Review into the shops would cost £13,000 a year and would require a minimum print run of 30,000. That is quite beyond us. Advertising is also too expensive. Instead, while some other magazines and think-tanks enjoy generous subventions, the Salisbury Review, which insists that there are other things in economic and political life apart from the free market, relies on subscriptions, occasional donations from generous friends and people discovering it by chance. It is these, and our loyal readers, who are the secret of our continuing existence. We rely on the dedicated, voluntary commitment of our editorial board who meet four times a year but email and telephone each other frequently. Distribution used to take place in the Managing Editor’s home with two or three helpers but this is now done more efficiently by the printer. This still leaves a great deal of work: maintaining the data base, chasing subscriptions and potential contributors, keeping accounts, preparing the magazine for publication and many other tasks, all of which take up more than half a working week. The Internet has been a valuable tool and we are grateful to our readers who have embraced it. It has halved the effort of putting the magazine together, facilitated subscriptions through Paypal and hopefully spread the word. This year will be a difficult one for us as for many others. New Labour has successfully engineered the destruction of Britain — and the country may now face not only bankruptcy, but internal unrest and the elimination of traditions which inspired the democratic world. Cameron’s Conservative Party appears to be no more than New Labour’s shadow, interested in power without principles not principles with power. The Salisbury Review must provide a platform for all those questions that people are afraid to ask. Why are the bankers who stole the nation’s savings being rewarded by the government rather than enjoying our jails? Why are millions of people who have no right to our social security funds being allowed to plunder them? Why have we lost the right of habeas corpus, and what new restrictions on free speech, even travel, are likely to be imposed on us. There are many battles ahead, some of them not for the faint hearted. How can you help? By maintaining your subscription, by paying on the internet, by giving your copy of the magazine to friends and by identifying and encouraging prospective subscribers, by asking your library, club or association to subscribe. Please e-mail or write to the Managing Editor and we will send copies. Remember together ‘we may not be able to fiddle but we can make a great state out of a little city.’