Centrepiece There, there, James

Colin Welch

1. had a great-uncle James (my first name itoo) who, when playing bridge, had to be soothed and restrained by the eirenic ministrations of his wife standing behind him as he groaned, raved, choked and swore, spluttered and roared against the injustice of the deal and the perversity of partners and opponents. 'Now, now, James. . . Now, now. . . There, there. . . It's only a game, James: only a game.' How often at the recent socialist conference did I feel the need for some constant sedative presence. Indeed, much of what was said there might have been designed to terrify, affront and enrage us Jameses. Our oaths and ravings could therefore be taken as fitting and encouraging, a compliment and sure sign that the grim inchoate message was surging triumphantly through the beards. Yet, even when socialists seek more rarely to please, amuse, beguile, reassure and win assent, I gasp and strug- gle for breath.

The attractive Ms Joan Ruddock, for instance, recently declared on television that we can't defend ourselves from inva- sion by nuclear weapons: we should have conventional forces. 'If they were defeated and we were overrun (as we would be), 'I (Ms Ruddock) would be in the resistance movement and I would fight, but the fact is I would be alive.' Ms Ruddock in other words will end up on the right side, or so she says. Why then do I splutter and roar? 'Now, now, James, compose yourself. Ms Ruddock is a lady, or at least a person". Mind your manners.' I will try, but really . . .

Now, first: what gives Ms Ruddock her conviction that she will be 'alive'? Not all Frenchmen and Germans survived the conquest by conventional means of their countries in 1940 and 1945. Even of those (not a few in both countries, though of strikingly different character and motiva- tion) friendly to their invaders, many perished in the cruel and indiscriminate though wholly 'conventional' horrors of those times. Their survival could by no means be taken for granted as a 'fact'.

Granted, Mrs Ruddock might be alive, and would then, she says, 'be in the resistance movement'. But how? And Why? The Russians, often ungrateful, might clap her and her lefty friends into labour camps, from which it would be difficult to join the resistance movement. (I refer to the 'Russians' as seeming more likely to invade us than the Americans, Chileans, South Africans and others' Perhaps less congenial to her.) Alter- natively, they might more appropriately load such seasoned peace strugglers with

honours, rewards and posts of power and influence in the new British People's Democratic Republic. These chalices she might indeed honourably refuse as poisoned. But the mere offer would be an embarrassment, might make her mis- trusted. Would the resistance have her? You can't just turn up and join a properly run resistance movement. You have to be vetted, tested, proved sound, reliable and dedicated. Ms Ruddock in particular would have to make it very clear whose side she is on, and precisely what it is about a Russian occupation or 'liberation' which renders it to her so much more objection- able than our present 'system' (so hated by her friends) that it must be resisted.

Sir Oswald Mosley, after all, was always volubly protesting his patriotic readiness to take up arms in defence of our country against his Nazi friends. Few took him at his word, and Ms Ruddock might, however unjustly, face a similar 'credibility gap'.

And what sort of a resistance will it be which Ms Ruddock aspires to join? Its prospects would be infinitely grimmer than those faced by the French maquis and the 1944 German plotters against Hitler. These brave men and women lived in hope. They had powerful friends abroad who, in the French case, helped them with arms and equipment and who could be expected in due course to invade and liberate Europe and consign its oppressors to the dustbin. Would any future resistance be comforted by such hopes? Would America rush to aid it, and finally to accomplish its purposes for it? The enslaved countries of Eastern Europe have waited 40 years in vain for any such assistance, without which they can accomplish nothing. Their resistance, if often heroic, has been accordingly spas- modic, feeble, so far fruitless.

If any future British resistance were to have the very slightest chance of even minor or local success, the time to organise would be in advance, now. If Ms Ruddock had the slightest genuine interest in it, which I doubt, she would be conferring and planning with people like Colonel Butler, Norris McWhirter and General Sir Walter Walker, whom in fact she probably regards as mad, bad and dangerous to know. She might even organise demonstrations to impress on a slothful Defence Ministry the need to plan and set up now, at least in embryo, the resistance she will finally honour with her presence. Yet the resist- ance seems for her, if anything, only a self-exculpatory afterthought, her prattle about joining it pure hypocrisy. Choke, splutter . . .

'Now, now, James, there, there. Look, here is an amusing article by that nice Mr Kaufman. It deplores with mock indigna- tion the ubiquity of UHT. He proposes a mass resistance campaign against it, with badges, "I Reject UHT". Here is socialism with a human or at least acceptable face. It cannot but have a calming effect.' Alas, tranquillity eludes us Jameses.

Mr Kaufman in a garden restaurant at Lucerne was offered excellent coffee with a 'heavy aroma'. However, the loathsome brown container of UHT which 'squatted evilly' on the saucer drew from him 'a howl of anger and dismay'. After a brief and civil exchange, the waitress brought him fresh cream; and there perhaps the matter could have been left to rest. The sovereign- ty of the consumer in a free market had, after a hiccup, been boldly reasserted and willingly conceded. We may wonder only at the spectacle of a serious man; in a world

so full of sorrow, making such a fuss about milk. Such lack of proportion can only diminish the effect of the foolish attacks on the police with which at Blackpool he strove to propitiate the enrage majority.

A nasty black fly, however, struggles in Mr Kaufman's fresh cream. Does not Mr Kaufman still favour, however lukewarmly and 'moderately', with whatever reserva- tions and imminent risk of rebuff, a system which is ceaselessly at war against the consumer, which seeks always to diminish or abolish his power and choice, and under which, wherever it has fulfilled itself, his complaints go unheeded or unheard as if he were imprisoned in a sound-proof room, and under which he may be lucky,

after long queuing, to get any milk at all? The senior Russian apparatchik's wife who in vain begged the callous and facetious G. B. Shaw for milk for her starving baby did not specify what sort of milk: UHT would probably have done quite well.

Of Harold Laski it was often affec- tionately said, as if to mitigate his grim views and render him in some way human, that he was a great connoisseur of wines, I think of food too. These characteristics, as inconguous as a gaily-coloured paper hat clapped on the stone head of a KGB colonel, rendered him to me only more inexplicable, Janus-faced and terrifying.

Very few eat and drink well in Moscow. Was Laski confident, mutatis mutandis, of

remaining always one of those few, the rest of us left to drown our sorrows in crude spirits, to eat pulses or starve?

• The thought of socialist gourmets at the trough, Laskis, Dribergs, Cyril Rays, Post-

gates etc, to a lesser extent Jenkinses and Hattersleys, picking over with lip-dripping relish the rich and luxurious products of a system they can't wait to destroy, is very

bad for us.Jameses. We roar and swear, and think Mr Kaufman's 'resistance' as futile and phoney in its way as Ms Ruddock's. We

would design for him a badge proclaiming that, as socialist MP for Gorton, he will drink the People's Democratic Milk Pow- der, and think himself lucky.