Ian Levack Aitken (19 September 1927 – 21 February 2018) was a British journalist and political commentator.

Early life

Aitken was born in Airdrie,

Lanarkshire Lanarkshire, also called the County of Lanark ( gd, Siorrachd Lannraig; sco, Lanrikshire), is a historic county, lieutenancy area and registration county in the central Lowlands of Scotland. Lanarkshire is the most populous county in Scotlan ...

. His father, George, a Lanarkshire infantryman radicalised by his experiences in the first world war trenches, fought with the Republican side in the

Spanish Civil War The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

.''"Neither my father – who had been badly wounded in the Great War and was not long back from fighting on the losing side in the Spanish Civil War – nor my mother were under any illusions about what lay ahead."'' Ian Aitken
Equal and opposite wartime shame for left and right in World War II
". Tribune Magazine, September 6th, 2009. Retrieved October 14th 2013. George Aitken was also a member of the

Communist Party of Great Britain The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) was the largest communist organisation in Britain and was founded in 1920 through a merger of several smaller Marxist groups. Many miners joined the CPGB in the 1926 general strike. In 1930, the CPG ...

; however, he resigned following the CPGB's support for the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Aitken was educated at the King Alfred School, Hampstead,

Lincoln College, Oxford Lincoln College (formally, The College of the Blessed Mary and All Saints, Lincoln) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford, situated on Turl Street in central Oxford. Lincoln was founded in 1427 by Richard Fleming, the ...

, and the

LSE LSE may refer to: Computing * LSE (programming language), a computer programming language * LSE, Latent sector error, a media assessment measure related to the hard disk drive storage technology * Language-Sensitive Editor, a text editor used ...

. At Oxford he befriended the future politicians

Shirley Williams Shirley Vivian Teresa Brittain Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, (' Catlin; 27 July 1930 – 12 April 2021) was a British politician and academic. Originally a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP), she served in the Labour cabinet from ...

and Bill Rodgers. Aitken served in the

Fleet Air Arm The Fleet Air Arm (FAA) is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy and is responsible for the delivery of naval air power both from land and at sea. The Fleet Air Arm operates the F-35 Lightning II for maritime strike, the AW159 Wil ...

from 1945 to 1948.

Dennis Griffiths Dennis Griffiths (8 December 1933 – 24 December 2015) was a British journalist and historian, regarded as the founding father of newspaper history from the earliest days of Fleet Street. His ''Encyclopedia of the British Press 1422–1992'' has ...

(ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press 1422–1992'', London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p.62

Career

Aitken entered journalism in 1953 as the industrial correspondent of the ''

Tribune Tribune () was the title of various elected officials in ancient Rome. The two most important were the tribunes of the plebs and the military tribunes. For most of Roman history, a college of ten tribunes of the plebs acted as a check on the ...

'' newspaper, after a spell as a HM inspector of factories and a trade union official. The following year (1954) he joined the ''

Daily Express The ''Daily Express'' is a national daily United Kingdom middle-market newspaper printed in tabloid format. Published in London, it is the flagship of Express Newspapers, owned by publisher Reach plc. It was first published as a broadsheet i ...

'' and filled a number of positions at the paper before joining ''The Guardian'' in 1964, where for 10 years he was political correspondent. From 1975 to 1990 he was ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

's'' political editor, succeeded by Michael White. He also wrote occasional unpaid columns for ''Tribune'', under the title "Rattling the Bars", and continued to write until the age of 87.

Political views

Politically Aitken was 'traditional' left-of-centre (sometimes called 'classic labour'), being against the

Iraq War {{Infobox military conflict , conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish) , partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...

, and accused

New Labour New Labour was a period in the history of the British Labour Party from the mid to late 1990s until 2010 under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The name dates from a conference slogan first used by the party in 1994, later seen ...

of having "hijacked" the Labour Party.

Personal life

Aitken lived the majority of his life in

Highgate Highgate ( ) is a suburban area of north London at the northeastern corner of Hampstead Heath, north-northwest of Charing Cross. Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has two active conservation organisati ...

North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshire. The term ''nort ...

. His wife Catherine died in 2006 after an almost fifty year marriage. Aitken died on 21 February 2018 and was survived by his two daughters and four grandchildren. Among those paying tribute to Aitken's life was the broadcaster

Iain Dale Iain Campbell Dale (born 15 July 1962) is a British broadcaster, author and political commentator, and a former publisher and book retailer. He has been a blogger since 2002. In 2005, he became the first openly gay Conservative candidate to c ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aitken, Ian 1927 births 2018 deaths English political journalists The Guardian journalists People educated at King Alfred School, London Alumni of Lincoln College, Oxford People from Airdrie, North Lanarkshire