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Claud Cockburn

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Francis Claud Cockburn (/ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn; 12 April 1904 – 15 December 1981) was a British journalist. His saying "believe nothing until it has been officially denied" is widely quoted in journalistic studies,[1][2][3] but he did not claim credit for originating it.[4] He was the second cousin, once removed, of the novelists Alec Waugh and Evelyn Waugh. He lived at Brook Lodge, Youghal, County Cork, Ireland.[5]

Claud Cockburn
Claud Cockburn.jpg
Born
Francis Claud Cockburn

(1904-04-12)12 April 1904
Peking, Qing Empire
Died15 December 1981(1981-12-15) (aged 77)
Cork, County Cork, Ireland
OccupationJournalist
Spouse(s)Hope Hale Davis
Patricia Byron
PartnerJean Ross
ChildrenClaudia Cockburn
Sarah Caudwell
Alexander Cockburn
Andrew Cockburn
Patrick Cockburn
Parents
Relativesgranddaughters:
Laura Flanders
Stephanie Flanders
Daisy Cockburn
Olivia Wilde

In 1940 Cockburn's Security Service file said that "In 1939 he was a leading British Communist Party member and was said to be a leader of the Comintern in Western Europe".[6]

Early life

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Cockburn was born in Peking (present-day Beijing), China, on 12 April 1904, the son of Henry Cockburn, a British consul general, and wife Elizabeth Gordon (née Stevenson). His paternal great-grandfather was Scottish judge/biographer Henry Cockburn, Lord Cockburn.[7] Cockburn was educated at Berkhamsted School, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, and Keble College, Oxford, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts. At Oxford he was part of the Hypocrites' Club.[8]

Journalist

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He became a journalist with The Times and worked as a foreign correspondent in Germany and the United States before he resigned in 1933 to start his own newsletter, The Week. It has been said that during his spell as a sub-editor on The Times, Cockburn and colleagues competed (with a small prize for the winner) to write the dullest printed headline. Cockburn only once claimed[9] the honours, with "Small Earthquake in Chile, Not many dead". No copy of The Times featuring that headline has been located although it finally appeared decades after the recollection in Not the Times, a spoof version of the newspaper produced by several journalists at The Times in 1979 during the paper's year-long absence because of an industrial dispute.[10]

Spanish Civil War

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Under the alias Frank Pitcairn,[6] Cockburn contributed to the British communist newspaper, the Daily Worker. In 1936, Harry Pollitt, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, asked him to cover the Spanish Civil War. Cockburn joined the Fifth Regiment to report the war as a soldier. While in Spain, he published Reporter in Spain. According to the editor of a volume of his writings on Spain, Cockburn formed a personal relationship with Mikhail Koltsov, "then the foreign editor of Pravda and, in Cockburn's view, 'the confidant and mouthpiece and direct agent of Stalin in Spain'".

Cockburn's reporting in Spain, as "Frank Pitcairn", was heavily criticised by George Orwell in his 1938 memoir Homage to Catalonia.[11] Orwell accused Cockburn of being under the control of Stalinist handlers and was critical of Cockburn's depiction of the Barcelona May Days in which Orwell had taken part and during which anti-Stalinist communists and anarchists were caught and executed by operatives of the Soviet NKVD.[11] Specifically, to undermine anti-Stalinist factions on the Republican side, Cockburn falsely reported that the anti-Stalinist figurehead Andrés Nin, who had been tortured and executed by the NKVD,[12] was alive and well after escaping to fascist territory.[13]

According to writer Adam Hochschild, Cockburn functioned as Stalinist propagandist during the war "on [Communist] Party orders".[14] In one instance, Cockburn claimed to have been an eyewitness to a battle that he totally invented.[14] This hoax was intended to persuade the French prime minister that Francisco Franco's forces were weaker than they appeared and thus make the Republicans seem worthier candidates for help in obtaining arms. The ruse worked, and the French border was opened for a previously-stalled artillery shipment.[15]

Opposition to appeasement

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In the late 1930s Cockburn's The Week was highly critical of Neville Chamberlain.[16] Cockburn said in the 1960s that much of the information in The Week had been leaked to him by Sir Robert Vansittart, Permanent Under-Secretary at the Foreign Office.[16]

At the same time, Cockburn said that the Security Service (MI5) was spying on him because of The Week, but the British historian D. C. Watt argued that it was more likely that if anyone was spying on Cockburn, it was the police Special Branch, which was less experienced in that work than MI5.[16] However, a 1940 Security Service file on Cockburn was later made public,[6] and Claud's son Patrick Cockburn applied for his MI5 files and received 24 volumes of them.[17] Cockburn was an opponent of appeasement before the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In a 1937 article in The Week, Cockburn coined the term "Cliveden set" to describe what he alleged to be an upper-class pro-German group that exercised influence behind the scenes. The Week ceased publication shortly after the war began.

Watt alleges that the information printed in The Week included rumours, some of which suited Moscow's interests.[18] Watt used as an example the claim The Week made in February–March 1939 that German troops were concentrating in Klagenfurt for an invasion of Yugoslavia, which Watt says had no basis in reality.[18]

Postwar

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In 1947, Cockburn moved to Ireland and lived at Ardmore, County Waterford. He continued to contribute to newspapers and journals, including a weekly column for The Irish Times. There he famously stated, "Wherever there is a stink in international affairs, you will find that Henry Kissinger has recently visited".[citation needed]

Among his novels were Beat the Devil (originally under the pseudonym James Helvick), The Horses, Ballantyne's Folly,[19] and Jericho Road. Beat the Devil was made into a film in 1953 by the director John Huston, who paid Cockburn £3,000 for the rights to the book and screenplay. Cockburn collaborated with Huston on the early drafts of the script, but the credit went to Truman Capote.[20] The title was later used by Cockburn's son Alexander for his regular column in The Nation.

He published Bestseller, an exploration of English popular fiction, Aspects of English History (1957), The Devil's Decade (1973), his history of the 1930s and Union Power (1976).[citation needed]

His first volume of memoirs was published as In Time of Trouble (1956) in the United Kingdom and as A Discord of Trumpets in the United States. It was followed by Crossing the Line (1958), and A View from the West (1961). Revised, they were published by Penguin as I, Claud... in 1967. Again revised and shortened, with a new chapter, they were republished as Cockburn Sums Up shortly before he died.[citation needed]

He also wrote Mr. Mintoff Comes to Ireland. The book was published in 1975 but set in 1980 when Dom Mintoff was Malta's Prime Minister and leader of the Malta Labour Party. The cover description describes it as a "shrewd assessment of how a small independent nation may best stand up to the so-called Great Powers".

Personal life

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Marriages

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Claud Cockburn married twice, and all of his wives and partners were also journalists.

Domestic partners

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Descendants

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Cockburn's three sons are all journalists: Alexander, who moved to the US, wrote for Village Voice, the Nation and CounterPunch; Andrew became the Washington editor of Harper'; Patrick also published a biography of his father.[17]

Cockburn's granddaughters include RadioNation host Laura Flanders, ex-BBC Economics editor Stephanie Flanders, and actress Olivia Wilde.[23]

Biography

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Cockburn's son Patrick Cockburn published a biography of his father, Believe Nothing Until It Is Officially Denied: Claud Cockburn and the Invention of Guerrilla Journalism, in 2024.[17]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Article in wikiquotes
  2. ^ "Pilger's law: 'If it's been officially denied, then it's probably true'". The Independent. 12 October 2008.
  3. ^ "Claud Cockburn Quotes". BrainyQuote.
  4. ^ In his autobiography In Time of Trouble, he refers to the phrase as advice he had "often heard" (London, 1957) p. 168.
  5. ^ Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, US: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 120.
  6. ^ a b c "Francis Claud Cockburn". The National Archives, Subseries within KV 2 - COMMUNISTS AND SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS, INCLUDING RUSSIAN AND COMMUNIST SYMPATHISERS. The Security Service. 1940. KV 2/1553. Francis Claud Cockburn, alias Frank Pitcairn: British. In 1933 Cockburn, a former 'Times' journalist, started his own political publication The Week which gained a reputation for having inside sources of information. In 1936, under the name Frank Pitcairn, he reported on the Spanish Civil War for the Daily Worker, later becoming its Foreign Editor. In 1939 he was a leading British Communist Party member and was said to be a leader of the Comintern in Western Europe. Throughout the Second World War he remained an active Communist.
  7. ^ Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, US: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 120.
  8. ^ Pincher, Chapman (2009). Treachery: Betrayals, Blunders, and Cover-ups: Six Decades of Espionage Against America and Great Britain. Random House Publishing Group. p. 27. ISBN 9781588368591.
  9. ^ In his autobiography, "In Time of Trouble" (London, 1957), p.125.
  10. ^ See New York magazine, 30 July 1979, p. 8. New York
  11. ^ a b Orwell, George (2013) [1938]. Homage to Catalonia. Penguin Books. pp. 168, 236–250. ISBN 978-0-141-39302-5.
  12. ^ Preston, Paul; Mackenzie, Ann (1996). The Republic Besieged: Civil War in Spain 1936-1939. Edinburgh University Press. p. 267. ISBN 978-0-7486-0861-4.
  13. ^ Orwell 2013, p. 168.
  14. ^ a b Hochschild 2016, p. 71.
  15. ^ Hochschild, Adam (2016). Spain In Our Hearts: Americans In the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 71. ISBN 978-0-547-97318-0.
  16. ^ a b c Watt, Donald Cameron "Rumors as Evidence" pages 276-286 from Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy edited by Ljubica & Mark Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004 page 278.
  17. ^ a b c Campbell, Duncan (13 October 2024). "'A street-boy throwing stones at pompous windows': Claud Cockburn and the birth of guerrilla journalism". The Observer.
  18. ^ a b Watt, Donald Cameron "Rumors as Evidence" pages 276–286 from Russia War, Peace and Diplomacy edited by Ljubica & Mark Erickson, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004 page 283.
  19. ^ Cockburn, Claud (1985). Ballantyne's Folly. Hogarth. ISBN 9780701205812 – via google.bg.
  20. ^ Cockburn, Alexander (21 September 2012). "Beat the Devil". CounterPunch. Retrieved 6 January 2014.
  21. ^ Arbuthnot: Mrs. P. S-M. Arbuthnot, Memories of the Arbuthnots of Kincardineshire and Aberdeenshire (London, 1920), p. 311 Patricia married firstly on 10 October 1933 to Arthur Cecil Byron, son of Cecil Byron, divorcing in 1940,
  22. ^ Parker, Peter (23 September 2004). "Ross, Jean Iris (1911–1973)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/74425. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  23. ^ Charles Mosley, editor, Burke's Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage, 107th edition, 3 volumes (Wilmington, Delaware, U.S.A.: Burke's Peerage (Genealogical Books) Ltd, 2003), volume 1, page 120
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