AFTERTHOUGHT
This Blessed Plot
By ALAN BRIEN
It is a dodgy choice but I think by the thinness of a hair I would tip the balance to Mr Wilson in any competition for public candour with Mr Gollan. I hope there is a Red Plot. After all, there is every other colour and shape and kind of plot going on all the time—M RA Plots and Capitalist Plots and Bimetallist Plots and Plots of the Critics against John Osborne and CIA and BBC Plots. If we start outlawing one group's right to plot, then we automatically strengthen some other group's conspiracy. One thing we can be certain of with a Red Plot, at least one hatched by British Reds, is that it will be an extraordinary ham- handed, butter-fingered and heavy-footed one which will end up producing exactly the opposite result from what was intended.
The myth that the spiders of King Street control a sinister, sensitive web which spreads across British industry can only be cherished by those who have never had the opportunity of watching the Communist party at work. John Gollan is a good deal smarter and less blinkered operator than any of his predecessors in the post. He does not think of politics in terms of an old Daily Worker cartoon with the Working Class as a heroic, noble, stupid giant chiselled out of granite, one stony hand extended to help its little yellow brother in Vietnam, and another stretched to obtain support from its even bigger Soviet com- rade. He knows better than to think that he can solve a problem by publishing a pamphlet which no one will read and placing it on file in the vaults so that future Marxist historians will have proof that the 'correct' line was taken.
Twenty-five years ago, as a Sunderland school- boy, some, if not most, of my best friends were Communists. I remember the cosy. reassuring feel of nest-warmth which came from living twenty- four hours a day inside a closed system. Confident that what must be, would be, that we were surf- riding on a great wave of historical necessity, it seemed difficult to make a mistake. Even our sessions of self-criticism somehow ended up as orgies of self-congratulation. Thought and Action interpenetrated so thoroughly that it was easy to imagine that you had done something when you had only thought it. Your worst mistake might delay the synthesis of thesis and antithesis by a few weeks, at most a month, but to pretend that you personally had held up the march of the proletariat longer than that was coming danger- ously near to a cult of personality.
Comrade Gollan was one of our links with HQ in wartime London, in those days a train journey of Siberian duration and discomfort away. Many Party functionaries treated the local branch the way other men treated the local pub—as a place where they could escape from wife, children and others who might be inclined to argue with their opinions. And often they rolled home equally intoxicated, though usually only with words, and equally unfit to carry on a fruitful domestic life. John Gollan impressed me, indeed rather shocked me, by his insistence that there were other things that occasionally took precedence over passing resolutions and selling pamphlets at the factory gate, such as taking your wife to the pictures or meeting friends who weren't in the party. There were times when he too was whirled away into a thrilling, colourful fantasy world in pursuit of such weird monsters as the Trotskyist Plotters.
another group of 'politically motivated men' who were given to infiltrating decent organisations such as the CP in disguise and who must be 'unmasked.' None of us ever actually caught one but we enjoyed the chase, though, even at the time, I recall a twinge of scepticism when John Gollan assured us that to his certain knowledge these creatures were 'being paid pounds, shillings and pence by Fascism.'
His ability to see politics as real events involv- ing flesh-and-blood people was demonstrated the weekend Germany invaded Russia. This was a happening so far beyond the bounds of anything that our scientific study of world affairs had led us to expect that, at grass-roots level, some pundits were inclined to believe it was a Capitalist Lie put out by Whitehall as part of the Churchill Plot to stop us calling our People's Convention. Even days afterwards, it was still a toss-up whether. dialectically speaking, Hitler's bestial attack on the Socialist Sixth of the World was more signifi- cant than the possible decision of the AEU to support 'a People's Convention for a People's Peace NOW' John Gollan did not hesitate. While King Street havered. and D. N. Pritt still called on the Government to resign, he stood up in the Newcastle market-place, his Adam's apple bob- bing with passion and his high voice skirling like a bagpipe, and called off all strikes, go-slows, rent disputes, peace petitions and other Red Plots in favour of absolute and complete dedication to the war effort to save the Soviet Union.
Our youth auxiliary of rebellious intellectual schoolboys had just been involved in mastermind- ing a strike of apprentices. We made about every mistake possible but the strike did happen and the lads won a moderate victory. While it was being planned, we were divided in our tactics. I wanted us to proclaim our politics boldly. arguing that if we could not say we stood for less profits for the rich and more pay for the poor then we might as well give up. The official decision was to deny that we were Communist-inspired in case this put off• Labour supporters among the potential strikers.
The result was we got no credit for the in• crease in wages and improvement in conditions. The owners knew we had done it but couldn't prove it. The workers did not know who had done it and we weren't allowed to tell them. And when we turned up again soon, urging everybody to forget about selfish gains and give all against Hitler, we were regarded as some new breed of boss's men, agents of the Ship Builder's Plot. There is a lesson here for Comrade Gollan.
There can be no discredit to Communists in being accused of being behind even non-existent Red Plots. He and his conspirators should be in there. according to their own creed, secretly and openly. officially and unofficially, plotting away for politi cal and economic gains. Any Communist part} that believes it is an insult to be accused 0! fomenting strikes will surely be obliged to sue for libel when accused of planning a revolution.
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