AS I SAW IT

The men on the Clapham omnibus

SALLY VINCENT

SATURDAY EVENINGS at 52 Clapham High St, 5W4. 31 Oct. 'Spotlight on Aircraft Industry'. Open discussion. 7.30. Buffet at 9.30. The Socialist Party of Great Britain. (New Statesman.)

The impossible hood of the railway budge and black girls in pastel dresses going to dances. Great hangars of stores offering items for the home at high prices; chipped crockery with odd lids, jelly-mould suites and knocked-down ironing boards, second- hand sideboards and biscuit barrels and plastic buckets. Clapham High Street has accepted no favours.

Whoever is inside number fifty-two is going to change all this. Revolutionaries have their meetings in this box, members of the Socialist Party of Great Britain. They are against a lot of things. Against capital- ism, against frontiers, against all other polit- ical parties, against all leadership, against racialism and against war. They believe in happiness and in the pursuit of happiness, rather as we did in the fifth form before we lost sight of the possibility that our little philosophies were right, or if not right then good, or if not good then at least innocent.

Between grey walls and beneath daylight strips chains are arranged as an audience to a red-clothed table accommodating a tape recorder, two glasses, a jug of water and a bell. Seven people are present and one man, perhaps because of his authoritative situ- ation behind the table, perhaps because there is something in the way he handles his pipe and combs his hair that reminds of Harold Wilson, seems at once to be dom.. inant. A young man with fierce eyes and an anorak is conversing with an older woman, she sitting twisted to face him because her chair is looking the other way. They are discussing advertising techniques, their voices raised so that their argument may be coherent to the rest of the assembly, which gives no sign of involvement.

'You decide', he says, 'how much money you've got to spend. If you decide £20 you start from that and you make the best use of it. Then you decide the leaflet is going to be so big and it's going to be red'. OK.

'Now look, nobody in this country's worried about a ha'penny or a penny any more'. Certainly not.

'Now look, how many adults in Britain? Forty million? Thirty million?' They settle for twenty-five. They also settle for the suggestion that more than one adult tends to . live in any one house at any one time.

'We find', says the lady, crooked in her chair, 'wherever we go that nobody gives a straight answer to a straight question. From Land's End to John o' Groats it's the same: There are only about two hundred people in any area who are reasonably responsive', Three more people come in, settling them- selves away from the others, but only on one side of the room, like the pieces in an exhausted chess game. They appear not to hear the conversation in progress. 'Capital4 ism works for us. It actually helps our pro- paganda to work because it makes people so unhappy', We have swollen to some fifteen souls, not counting three behind the table replacing the Harold Wilson gentleman who has retired to the back row.

Our chairman has a neat grey suit and a short-back-and-sides and he bids comrades and friends good evening. He introduces Comrade Ken who is going to talk for twenty minutes about the aircraft industry, a sub- ject of great interest and information, not to mention controversy but most of all interest, Comrade Ken wonders if we mind if he remains seated as he is a little weak in the knees and a young man in a maroon hand- knitted jumper starts the tape-recorder, Comrade Ken laments that he has only twenty minutes to describe for us just a few of the many interesting and informative as- pects of the aircraft industry. A brief out- line of its history, he promises, followed by a brief (alas for the restricting twenty tnin. utes) word on the situation as it stands today,

A fellow with a football crowd face and a tartan scarf falls asleep, but Comrade Chairman is alert, nodding with infinite generosity when Comrade Ken's voice rises to the end of a sentence. A similarly warm.

hearted man in the audience smiles when. ever the phrase 'you know' is uttered, as though it was a great intimacy.

We learn that the pre-war aircraft industry was a simple business compared with the

complexity and sophistication of the post- war industry. We learn that it takes longer to make an aircraft today than it did years ago. We hear about vertical take-off and variable geometry and a thousand intolerably boring and accurate facts about aeroplanes. An old man has placed himself in the front row,

directly in front of Comrade Ken. Through- out the lecture, which lasts, despite apologies,

far more than twenty minutes, he sits in en- viable relaxation, the controls of his deaf- aid in his placidly lapped hands, an expres- sion of sweet tolerance on his face. He has suffered the promise and the disappointment of Ramsay MacDonald and he still knows who his friends are.

At question time we realise nobody has been bored. Statements, thinly disguised as questions, spring to all the Comrades' lips. The dominant fellow at the back has to see to it that everybody gets a chance. Everybody knows something about aeroplanes and everybody wants to prove it.

Comrade Chairman thanks Comrade Ken and grieves again for the inappropriate

time span, but the dominant Comrade has made his decision. A few words, he says. Capitalism has not been cursed, in fact, for all anyone might have gathered it might as well be an acceptable condition. The Social- ist point of view has not been stressed. Flying is not a civilised and happy way to get from point A to point B. It is altogether nicer to traverse the Atlantic in the 'Queen Elizabeth' than to sit all cramped up in a jet and what is more the food is better. Furthermore it is better to go from London to Manchester in a train than to fly there. And still further- more. all those jumbo-jets are coming In half-empty. The whole point is that the capitalists are wasting money on prestige projects instead of concerning themselves with human happiness. So there we go, and in case that's not enough we want you to know that a good Socialist system could produce a non-stick frying pan without send- ing men to the moon.

Somebody says 'hear hear' quite clearly. A fellow who has frowned all evening selects a match from his box and circulates it in his left ear. Mr Chairman announces buffet time unless someone has something pressing. Someone has. If only the customs would let the people through there would be less con- gestion in the air, leis congestion all round. They could let the people through and keep moving like on the buses. No, no, its the congestion of the traffic in the air. Yes, but if the customs let you through. A cup of tea, Comrades. And many thanks for the £2 9s 6d raised in the collection. The comrades drift singly behind a serge curtain, from which they emerge holding a cup of tea and a plate with sandwich, mince tart and slice of sponge. They replace them- selves in the seats they have vacated, each with his own space around himself. Not a chair is disturbed. The comrades contort themselves to face each other but never, ever, move a piece of furniture.

'Even the old Duke of Edinburgh is com- plaining about the noise'.

'He'd have to, wouldn't he, living a,t Windsor Castle just where they come over• 'They used to be able to get away from the workers, but they can't any more,

'We're all in it together now'.