People and Power
The project published as The Great British in 1979, was developed jointly by The Sunday Times and the National Portrait Gallery. Newman was invited to come to the UK to photograph 75 or so ‘celebrities’ who would, in the opinion of those making the selection, be remembered 50 years hence. Most of the shots were taken over a six-week period in the spring of 1978. (There is a first hand and detailed account of the process of the project in George Perry’s introduction to The Great British.) Many of the shots are again of well-known cultural figures (actors such as Alec Guinness and Judi Dench; sportsmen or entertainers such as Geoff Boycott and Vera Lynn) and there are some ‘captains of industry’ (such as Freddie Laker and Lord Grade).
That only six of the published portraits are of women is perhaps the first comment that the collection makes on the Great Britain of the period. Every portrait is of white person. But it is when one looks at those who hold political power, either as elected representatives or as members of the two first estates of the realm that Newman’s portraits constitute an important document of the period.
The photograph of Lord Mountbatten, taken in Admiral of The Fleet’s uniform at his home, Broadlands, in Hampshire, exudes patrician confidence. Around his neck is the Order of Merit, a gift of the sovereign, who, incidentally spent her honeymoon at Broadlands – as did her son Prince Charles and Lady Diana. Mountbatten was Prince Phillip’s uncle. Below that is the Order of the Star of India, an order founded by Mountbatten’s godmother, Queen Victoria who also instituted the Royal Victorian Order, worn just below the insignia of a Knight of the Garter, the origins of which go back to the 14th century. Mountbatten was the last Viceroy of India. The photograph is taken in the Wedgwood Room at Broadlands, with its ‘empire seating’ and its pallid, very British understanding of the classical style. Mountbatten is framed by the bookcase, apparently ordered and undisturbed, solid, stable, enduring. Just like the court paintings of Holbein and Van Eyck, the image is one of settled, enduring authority. Militarism, wealth, conquest and tradition constitute the environment of a man, and a class, that was still sovereign only a generation ago.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home was Prime Minister (1963-64) and Foreign Secretary (1960-63 and 1970-74). He is unique amongst modern Prime Ministers to have taken up office as a member of the House of Lords, having succeeded to the title of 14th Earl of Home in 1951. Educated at Eton and Oxford (Third Class BA in Modern History), he had entered politics in the 1930’s and was MP for Lanark between 1931 and 1945, and between 1950-51, prior to his accession to the Earldom. Throughout his political career, Home was described, by his opponents as aristocratic and out of touch and Newman’s photograph catches something of this. Home is seated, very much alone, in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords, which is lined with the portraits of kings and queens but also of paintings of the Napoleonic Wars. Seated with all of this gilded history behind him, Home shares the calm assurance of Mountbatten although he holds a slightly incongruous red ballpoint in his hand and not a ceremonial sword – a man who, if he did not know how to command, could at least be trusted to administer.
The portrait of James Callaghan was taken in the Cabinet Room of No. 10 Downing Street, a ‘working’ part of the building. In a parliamentary career that spanned over 40 years (1945-87), he held, uniquely, every major Office of State. As Prime Minister (1976-79), he faced the challenge of governing without a House of Commons majority during a period of deep economic uncertainty, with high inflation and rising unemployment, which culminated in the ‘winter of discontent’ (1978-79). Throughout this turbulent period, he remained “The Keeper of the Cloth Cap” within the Labour Movement, reflecting his poor, working class origins and his lifetime commitment to trade unionism. On the centenary of his birth, the Guardian noted of his period as Prime Minister that:
He was notably unpresidential. His style was collective, with cabinet government protected and a collegiate approach encouraging openness and trust.
I came to know Callaghan as a member of his constituency General Management Committee in the late 1970’s, shortly after his premiership came to an end. I was impressed by his iron-willed gentleness and his warm, open and relaxed approach to the minutiae of constituency politics. With one hand in his pocket and another resting on the chair beside him, ‘Big Jim’, in Newman’s portrait, appears at home in his office, literally and metaphorically, he does not use personal adornment to make any claims to power; he appears typically ready to shake hands and to get on with the business in hand.
Len Murray was General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress from 1973-1984, the period spanning the governments of Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher and the period that marked the highest and lowest points of trade union influence on British politics. He was widely regarded as an ‘honest broker’ and a believer in constructive dialogue whilst protecting the independence of the trade union movement, especially from government. He was a ‘shirt-sleeve’ negotiator and an astute and skilful operator in the ‘smoke filled rooms’ where much of the politics of the period was conducted.
In Newman’s portrait, it is although Murray had just looked up from his desk and would shortly be returning to his work. He is perhaps less relaxed than he would like to appear (Murray was never comfortable in the spotlight, despite his office)
The portraits of Callaghan and Murray seem to capture a very different kind of political power than that projected by Mountbatten and Douglas-Home. The gilded portraits (clearly shot in colour with a purpose) of the latter contrast with the more approachable poses of Callaghan and Murray. Altogether different in tone is the political power captured in Newman’s picture of Enoch Powell.
Powell was a man of fearsome intellectual ability. A classics scholar, he was appointed to his first professorial position aged 24. During the Second World War, he rose through the ranks in the army from private to brigadier. After his election to Parliament in 1947, he held junior ministerial posts and became a Cabinet Member (as Minister for Health) in 1962. In 1968, possibly as part of a misguided bid for the leadership of the Conservative Party, he made his infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech in opposition to the introduction of the Race Relations Act. He was sacked from his position as Shadow Secretary for Defence the following day and never held a senior appointment in government from that point on although he was never without influence on the far right of British politics.
Newman’s portrait, taken in Powell’s study at his Belgravia home, places Powell on the far right, against a background of donnish organised clutter, suggestive of his academic credentials and a desire for everything to be in the right place. Shot slightly from above and lit so that the light fades to black behind him, he looks as though he is expecting an answer to a difficult question put to an undergraduate. There is a menace to the portrait as there was to his politics.
The last two portraits I want to comment on are those representing the power of the academy and the established church. It is important to note that the influence of both two has considerably waned in British political life since the 1970’s but at the time of the Great British they were still regarded as sufficiently important to be included.
The portrait of Donald Coggan, Archbishop of Canterbury, Stanley Turl, the Moderator of the Free Church Council and Cardinal Hume, Archbishop of Westminster (the heads of the main Christian communities in the UK) was taken in a corridor of Lambeth Palace and compositionally might have been painted, other than in relation to the ecumenicalism on display, in the mid 16th century. Solidly echoing the trinity, there is a serenity and an ‘otherworldliness’ to the portrait that echoes the apparent timelessness of the truths they tell and the power they hold. There is a similar renaissance confidence and balance to the picture of the Oxford University Regius Professors, taken in the library of Christ Church. In each face there is the same benign expression that gives no hint of any awareness of the world (other than a mild irritation) beyond the quiet, peaceful existence of the study and the dining hall; of a world where the industrial structure of post-War Britain is being transformed; where race and gender are becoming political and where the neo-liberalism of the Thatcher government will within a few years bring people onto the streets.
Each portrait in the Great British has merit in its own right and each reveals more than a mere likeness. Newman exploits his understanding of the sitter’s workplace ‘environment’ to reflect not just their personality but also their position in the structure of political power. Taken together, they are an important document of that structure of power operating a generation after the end of the Second World War. It is a structure of power that is rooted in gilded monarchical and aristocratic tradition, supported by an established hierarchy of religious belief and regimes of knowledge. There are hints of a resistance, mediated by the democratic structures of parliament and collective action but they seem rather weak, even homely, by comparison.
Irrespective of the analysis, the collection is a remarkable document of the political forms and culture of the time that is all the more important for being relatively ignored by other photographers of the period. Indeed, portraits of the powerful remain relatively absent from the portfolios of documentary photographers today. Turning the lens onto those who are the causes rather than the consequences of the uses and abuses of political power may be a more useful contribution.
I intend to borrow from Newman’s practice as part of my current project which will involve a number of portraits being taken of people in their workplaces.
