Will Hutton

Journalist and economics guru Will Hutton tells George Frew how Britain and Oxfordshire should be shaping up for the future.

Will Hutton is descended from an ancient Anglo-Saxon family who were farming 70 acres and mowing Yarnton Meadow near Woodstock long before William, Duke of Normandy, launched his little expansionist programme back in 1066.

In many ways, the Conqueror was a pro-European - well, he certainly thought England should be part of his personal sector of the Continent, at any rate.

And today, in his role of chief executive of the Industrial Society, Will Hutton is as pro-European as you can get, with a passionate belief that the future is bright, the future is Euro.

At 49, Hutton's life has changed completely. From working as a journalist on radio and on Panorama and Newsnight, he went on to climb the greasy pole of print journalism, first at the Guardian and then as editor of the Observer. There, the National Union of Journalists chapel came to regard him as the Lord High Executioner, whose speciality was wielding the redundancy axe with as much enthusiasm as one of his Saxon ancestors might have applied a similar instrument to an invading Norman.

With hindsight this was, according to the present Observer editor Roger Alton, "most unfair. Will did everything in his power to protect jobs at the Observer."

Hutton becomes visibly agitated when you ask him about this difficult period in 1998. You get to meet him by strolling across the original 18th century marbled floor of the reception area at the Industrial Society's West End HQ and following his charming PA down what used to be the butler's spiral staircase. While the society's staff and clients occupy the elegant upstairs rooms of this Georgian edifice, the boss himself works from the basement.

His office is nothing fancy - a desk, a sofa, an armchair and a couple of framed dummy newspaper front pages, the sort of things journalists give to each other as parting gifts. Will Hutton is a bear of a man - tall, and built like a second-row rugby forward.

So the mind is prepared to boggle somewhat when he tells you: "We fought like tigers to save jobs, to keep the redundancy numbers down at the Observer. And everyone who was made redundant got very good terms - I made sure of that.

"But redundancies are hateful. No-one goes into journalism to make journalists redundant, it's something that no-one wants to do, but editors all have to go through it, and it's bloody. But if you are a loss-maker and still need investment, you are not in a strong position to bargain when it comes to redundancy."

He thinks about every word before he says it, sifting his thoughts and phrases like a prospector panning for gold, which makes a refreshing change in this age of psychobabble and sound- bites. He speaks actively, moving around his sofa like a man trying to settle down for the night in front of the telly; at one point, he has his considerable feet on the small coffee table, at another, he's almost lying full-length on his side. But he's always weighing the words.

The words he wrote in his book The State We're In had far-reaching consequences. From its original print run of 3,500, this socio-economic polemic went on to sell 200,000 copies. A few criticised Hutton for being too full of admiration for Japanese and German corporatisim, but more paid attention to what he had written - and agreed with it.

"I think The State We're In changed my life," he says. "People started telling me that there was more to all this than journalism. I'd been editor of the Observer for two and a half years and editor-in-chief for 18 months. But as I approached 50, I wanted to do different things."

Hutton read economics and sociology at Bristol university, subjects that clearly stand him in good stead for his present professional role.

When the Industrial Society approached him, it insisted it was a job offer he could not refuse - and he agreed. "I should stress, however, that I haven't left journalism," he says. "But the society exists to revitalise and change things, in a research and policy capacity, to influence business. "We will be the leading thinker in workplace issues in the UK and will influence at all levels, by argument, by publishing and by our training courses. We are entirely self-funded and don't have to pay dividends to shareholders."

Politically, Will Hutton describes himself as a Liberal Social Democrat. "And I like to think that's what the majority of Brits are, too," he says.

With his Oxfordshire connections, he is convinced that the county is destined to become an economic and business Mecca. "Whether we like it or not, Oxfordshire is going to be one of the European hot-spots. There will be further economic growth and Oxford will be a major player," he predicts.

"It's inevitable. We need some high-density towns to be built - and to reinvent the Georgian parts of Oxford, such as Beaumont Street.

"We need to think in terms of how we can come up with decisions that are economical for the city. In my view, I'd love to see Oxfordshire pioneer new conceptions of land use.

"And I am passionately European - our destiny is European. The world has changed and all the anti-Europe sceptics' arguments are based on the world that was, not on the world that is.

"Sterling is more volatile than it used to be and in this new world, everyone is in favour of keeping the pound as it used to be.

"And so we have partial closures at Longbridge, Harland & Wolff and a migration of steel jobs to Europe. The sceptics are not being real - they're like Lord Raglan's 600 riding into the valley of death and it's terrible to watch.

"It's all very glorious and noble and I can understand the romance of it all - but who would now go into battle on a horse?" Will Hutton is the father of three children - two girls aged 17 and 14 and a boy of 10. His wife Jane runs a company that assesses and develops sites for social use.

(Hutton usually gets into trouble with his wife for inaccurately describing what she does, so here's hoping that between us we've got this bit right.)

He would be the last person to claim undue influence with those who run the country, but it is well known that he has access to the highest in the land.

Nick Cohen is a columnist on the Observer who was hired by Hutton.

"Will is just a genuinely Liberal intellectual," he says. "He can also be quite funny. I write a column that is fairly hard-hitting about all those New Labour people - and they're his friends. Philip Gould demanded that Hutton fire me.

"I laid into Derry Irvine in another column - on the day when he was coming to lunch with Will and his wife, yet Hutton never said a word or changed anything in my piece. Liberalism is in his blood. He's just a very decent man."

Cohen laughs: "He's hopeless at organising things, but very good at motivating people."

"I am who I am," says Hutton. "Without sounding pompous, I want to serve society, to say what's right and to enjoy being the one who says it. I have access to televison and my column in the Observer. And it's a free media out there. But I have to earn my profiles."

He does that, all right.

By sheer Will power.

Story date: Thursday 06 April

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.