Afterthought
By ALAN BRIEN
LAST week Michael Frayn (otherwise Agent 001—the zeroes signifying that he is authorised, when neces- sary, to write two blank columns for each loaded one) broke security to re- veal some details about the military structure of Our
Side. Unlike the books of Ferranti Ltd., our regi-
mental roils are always open to inspection, even by the hatchet-men of Their Side. There is little point in recruiting Fighters for Progress who are too shy to report to GHQ when the siren sounds. We Musketeers of the Lilac Establishment are, if anything. too fond of ceremonial parades, lining up beneath letters to The Times, numbering off on platforms in Trafalgar Square, and drilling in front of the television cameras. But until 001's indiscretion in the Observer (the RSG for Our Side in the Lon- don area) little authoritative information about the hierarchy of command had been permitted even in a house organ.
According to 001, 'Alan Brien, if Our Side were nut so strongly anti-militarist, would be roughly a divisional commander.' Penelope Gilliatt, he adds, dropping the pretence of speaking hypo- thetically, is 'adjutant-general of Our Side's women's corps.'. Naturally, I cannot confirm or deny the accuracy of these identifications. But I would recommend him to re-read his oath of allegiance to the cause. If he is still in any doubt about which way he is facing, he can always seek the advice of •the various resident members of Us on his newspaper such as Adjut—, I mean Mrs. Gilliatt or Psychiatric Officer Maurice Richardson.
Meanwhile I would like, for the benefit of our other agents who may be wondering whether we have been penetrated by several barbouzes, to state some general, principles of Our Sidism as understood by the older sweats amongst us. Age is, in fact, very relevant here. Agent 001 was recruited during the post-war, post-Bomb era when pacifism seemed the only alternative to extinction. But those of us who were old enough to read the New Statesman, join the Left Book Club and carry rolled newspapers at the ready in local elections in 1939, will remember that anti- militarism was never part of our outlook. Those were the days when young imaginations were set aflame with the ambition to imitate the street- fighters of the Spanish Civil War. Discipline was an attraction rather than a deterrent. We learned the need to organise by watching the organisa- tion of our opponents. To save democracy in Spain, to prevent Hitler overrunning Europe, to reduce unemployment, to obtain a national health service, to open up grammar schools and univer- sities to working-class children, to dispel the fog of hypocrisy and snobbery which choked Britain, it was essential that we should have our own newspapers, our own publishers, our own spokes- men on the air and in the House of Commons. And We were right while They were wrong.
It is easy now to see the crudities and over- simplifications in our arguments, the self-decep- tion and romanticism, the comical-tragical desire to whitewash Stalin as a counter-totem to the blackness of Hitler and the dirty-grey of his appeasers.
Our divisional commanders of those days be- haved in ways which now seem good for a pat- ronising laugh. I have always treasured the (pos- sibly apocryphal) story of Kingsley Martin's meeting with Claud Cockburn during a now for- gotten crisis of the Thirties. `Don't you think the' time may be at hand when we should seriously consider arming the workers?' General Martin is said to have asked—adding tentatively, `By the way, just how do you arm the workers?' Cer- tainly, Aneurin Bevan is on record as opposing the Tory Government's rearmament Bills because the troops might be used against the masses at home rather than the Nazis abroad. But 001 must remember that opinions are useless unless they can be translated into policies, and policies are toys unless they can be implemented. We have changed our world. Far more than many of us now care to remember. There was a time, around the age of fifteen, when it seemed to me that I and my friends and family and neighbours were condemned to slog along for- ever as minor characters in a Kafka novel, local colour in some endless Dickensian serial. The Great Author up above en the top floor simply wrote us into the background of the plot. Down in the basement, we conformed to type, unable to choose any other clothes, accents, ideas, jobs, houses. entertainment, food or future except those provided off-the-peg by the Good Land- lord. If They had painted us black we could not have appeared, or behaved, more like a separate race—aboriginal inhabitants of the territory now sunk into quaint apathy. occupied with weird customs and ceremonies designed to propitiate powers we could not understand.
When first I read novels by sensitive liberals
about bringing progress to :'ricans or Indians, I immediately recognised L's as the Natives In A Passage to India, I played Dr. Aziz to Fielding because I had accepted the role of the bright, irresponsible, cheeky monkey to many a middle- class minister of schoolmaster. Those friends and acquaintances On Our Side today, who have not shared this background, are indulgent towards what they regard as a kind of mild paranoia about the past. I know the past is dead—what I am fighting against is the myth that it never lived. It is not just my past but the past- of most of the British people. We have woken from our opium dream. We can now pass for white if we want to. If we still choose the lowest when we see it, at least we have a choice of evils.
We have learned to vote at last—not just as electors but as consumers too. We can make and break politicians and pop singers and telly pun- dits and actors and authors and manufacturers. Soon we may even be a democracy. But the change came from the outside, not the inside. R was the result of a war, literally and meta- phorically. Of course, 001 is right when he argues., that it is too easy to pretend that 'a great con- fusion of complex, interlocking, shifting struggles turns out after all to be nothing but one straight- forward battle with two sides, one right and one wrong.' But whoever thought that any war was fought between angels and devils? Nevertheless, no one ever stopped a war by pretending it did not exist. Because life cannot be apprehended in one blinding flash ,as a joust between goodies and baddies, it is defeatism to imagine that we can, not see any difference between the competitors.
001 is a little late in pointing out the large element of schoolboy day-dreaming among the: commando leaders of Our Side (see my Order of the Day—The Fogey and the Commissar'- Spectator, June 16, 1961). It is a profitable occu- pation nowadays to be a professional odd-man' cut. Not enough of our New Lefteers have nunv bered and analysed their own conflitional re' sponses—they react as automatically as the Nevi Righteers, only they slaver at a different belt Our Side needs training for commitment—which is simply another word for making a choice, Before we choose, we must know ourselves. It i9 not a matter of taking the right (or the wrong) road, but of taking your own road after study' ing the street map. We may be inconsistent• but conscious of our inconsistencies, prejudioee but aware of the reasons for those prejudice.
001 has grown a little flabby perhaps in his Tudor Street RSG, where it is the reactional/ who says 'No.' I have recommended to his local, control that a spell as an Evening Standar° leader-writer would improve his combat fitness.
Previous page
