Paul Johnson (writer) - Shift To The Right

Shift To The Right

During the 1970s Johnson became increasingly conservative in his outlook, and has largely remained so. In his Enemies of Society (1977), following a series of articles in the British press, he opposed the trade union movement, perceiving it as violent and intolerant, terming trade unionists "fascists". As Britain’s economy faltered, Johnson began to advocate the future British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s message of less government and less taxation. He was eventually won over to the Right and became one of Thatcher's closest advisers. “In the 1970s Britain was on its knees. The Left had no answers. I became disgusted by the over-powerful trade unions which were destroying Britain,” he recalled in 2004. After Thatcher's victory in the general election of 1979 Johnson advised on changes to legislation concerning trade unions, and was also one of Thatcher's speechwriters.

“I was instantly drawn to her," he recalls. "I’d known Margaret at Oxford. She was not a party person. She was an individual who made up her own mind. People would say that she was much influenced by Karl Popper or Frederick Hayek. The result was that Thatcher followed three guiding principles: truthfulness, honesty and never borrowing money,” Johnson said in 2004.

From 1981 to 2009, Johnson wrote a column for the conservative British weekly magazine The Spectator; initially focusing on media developments, it subsequently acquired the title "And Another Thing". In his journalism, Johnson generally deals with issues and events which he sees as indicative of a general social decline, whether in art, education, religious observance or personal conduct. He has continued to contribute to the magazine, though less frequently than before. During the same period he contributed a column to the Daily Mail until 2001. In a Daily Telegraph interview in November 2003, he criticised the Mail for having a pernicious impact: "I came to the conclusion that that kind of journalism is bad for the country, bad for society, bad for the newspaper".

Johnson is a regular contributor to The Daily Telegraph, mainly as a book reviewer, and in the United States to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, and the National Review. He also writes for Forbes magazine. For a time in the early 1980s he wrote for The Sun.

Johnson is a critic of modernity because of what he sees as its moral relativism, and finds objectionable those who use Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to justify their atheism or use it to promote biotechnological experimentation. As a result of Johnson's views on evolution, Richard Dawkins has been a target of Johnson's pen in the past. As a conservative Catholic, Johnson regards liberation theology as a heresy and defends clerical celibacy, but departs from others in seeing many good reasons for ordination of women as priests.

Admired by conservatives in the United States and elsewhere, he is strongly anti-communist. Johnson has defended Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, finding his cover-up considerably less heinous than Bill Clinton's perjury, and Oliver North's involvement in the Iran-Contra Affair. In his Spectator column, Johnson defended his friend Jonathan Aitken, has expressed qualified admiration for General Franco, and expressed admiration for General Augusto Pinochet.

Johnson was active in the campaign, led by Norman Lamont, to prevent General Pinochet's extradition to Spain, following the General's arrest in London. "There have been countless attempts to link him to human rights atrocities, but nobody has provided a single scrap of evidence," Johnson was reported as saying in 1999. In Heroes (2008), Johnson returned to his longstanding claim that criticism of Pinochet's regime (on human rights grounds) came from "the Soviet Union, whose propaganda machine successfully demonised among the chattering classes all over the world. It was the last triumph of the KGB before it vanished into history's dustbin." On the other hand he has criticised European countries, in particular France, for being undemocratic.

He served on the Royal Commission on the Press (1974–77) and was a member of the Cable Authority (regulator) from 1984 to 1990.

In 2006 Johnson was honoured with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by U.S. President George W. Bush. On the BBC programme Desert Island Discs in January 2012, Johnson professed himself unimpressed by Nelson Mandela.