Richard Harry "Dick" Clements (11 October 1928 – 23 November 2006) was an English journalist and was editor of the left-wing weekly Tribune from 1961 to 1982.
His American uncle lobbied Congress on behalf of a trade union, his mother was a Tolstoyan anarchist and follower of Peter Kropotkin,[2] and his father was a pacifist who had been imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the First World War.
His parents then sent him to live with his uncle in the United States, where he was enrolled at Western High School in Washington, DC.
[5] There Clements gained experience in a number of areas in addition to straight reporting including page layout and copy editing.
[3] He would, however, publish pieces on party policy written from viewpoints with which he did not personally agree a fact which Tam Dalyell said had impressed him.
Foot's predecessor, James Callaghan, had offered Clements the chance to stand for Labour in a safe seat in East London in the 1979 general election.
[1][3] After Foot's resignation following Labour's landslide defeat in the 1983 general election, Clements continued in a similar role for the new leader, Neil Kinnock, although his title was officially that of "executive officer".
[4] He retired from the position in 1987, although Geoffrey Goodman has speculated that he might have agreed to become "Kinnock's Alastair Campbell" had Labour won the 1992 general election.
[3] Basing its story on documents from the Mitrokhin Archive, the paper alleged that Moscow regarded Clements, operating under the code-name of "Dan", as "its most reliable propaganda tool in Britain".
[3] Although Clements acknowledged meeting Russian officials,[4] he denied being a spy, pointing to the large number of anti-Soviet articles published by Tribune under his editorship.