Michael Crick
 Michael Crick     | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Michael Lawrence Crick 21 May 1958 |
| Alma mater | New College, Oxford |
Michael Crick (born 21 May 1958) is an English broadcaster, journalist and author. He was a founding member of the Channel 4 News team in 1982 and remained there until joining the BBC in 1990. He started work on the BBC's Newsnight programme in 1992, serving as political editor from 2007 until his departure from the BBC in 2011. Crick then returned to Channel 4 News, as political correspondent.[1]
Labour inclined
Michael Crick studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at New College, Oxford and graduated with a first class honours BA degree. At Oxford, he was editor of the student newspaper, Cherwell; founded both the Oxford Handbook and the Oxbridge Careers Handbook; chaired the Democratic Labour Club and the Young Fabians; and was president of the Oxford Union in Michaelmas Term 1979, succeeding Theresa May's future husband Philip.[2]
After university, Crick started work at ITN as a trainee journalist in 1980. He was a founding member of the Channel 4 News team when the programme was launched in November 1982. During his period as their Washington correspondent (1988–1990) Crick won an award from the Royal Television Society for his coverage of the 1988 Presidential election between George Bush senior and Michael Dukakis.[3]
Militant tendency
Michael Crick first published Militant in 1984, when the still-infamous leftwing sect was approaching the peak of its notoriety. In 1986 he produced an updated version, with the reds-under-the-bed title "The March of Militant". Thirty years on, he has updated it again, with a foreword and afterword that seek to connect the sometimes startling, often caricatured history of Militant to Jeremy Corbyn, both back in the 80s and now.
The connections feel a bit oversold. “This is the story,” writes Crick, “of the Marxist, Trotskyist group whose presence inside the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn tried to defend.” Yet Crick has to concede early on that “Corbyn was never anywhere near being a member of Militant." What’s more, his 80s opposition to what he called an anti-Militant “witch-hunt” was widely shared on the Labour left. In the divided, feuding party of the time, purges and stopping purges were a preoccupation for many factions, as they sought to build useful alliances or weaken those of their enemies.[4]
Books
- The March of Militant (Faber 1984, 1986, 2016)
- Scargill And The Miners (1985)
- Manchester United: The Betrayal of a Legend (with David Smith, 1989)
- Jeffrey Archer : Stranger Than Fiction (1995)
- Manchester United: The Complete Fact Book (1999)
- Michael Heseltine : A Biography (1997)
- The Boss: The Many Sides of Alex Ferguson (2002)
- In Search of Michael Howard (2005)
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Dear Tom, about this Trotsky thing….. | article | 11 August 2016 | Jeff Goulding | Tom Watson, Corbyn’s deputy, has launched an astonishing and utterly ridiculous attack on his leader’s supporters. In it he claimed that “Trotskyists are twisting the arms of young Labour members”. |
References
- ↑ Ian Burrell "Michael Crick: 'Cuts are hurting Newsnight. The BBC lacks can-do spirit'", The Independent website, 19 September 2011. Retrieved on 24 September 2011.
- ↑ Hibbert, Christopher, ed. (1988). "Presidents of the Union since 1900". The Encyclopaedia of Oxford. Macmillan Publishers. pp. 527–532. ISBN 0-333-39917-X.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Tom Beardsworth "Interview: Michael Crick", Cherwell, 18 November 2012
- ↑ "Militant by Michael Crick review – Britain’s successful leftwing sect"
