Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography--1949-1962

  There was a crucial first meeting of the Committee of a Hundred. Three kinds of people were there. First, a few people like me, who had been communists, were no longer, and wanted to find out if our worst suspicions were in fact correct. Then, people who might be disenchanted with communism but not yet with the idea of revolution and violence as a ‘weapon’. And there were some innocents, tasting their first blood. I asked one of them recently—he was prominent in the Committee of a Hundred for years—what he now thought of all that sound and fury, what in his opinion had been achieved. His reply: We politicised a whole generation. In other words, he saw the long-term boon and benefit of the Committee of a Hundred as the creation of more people like himself.

  It was a large room, crammed full, and the conspiratorial atmosphere was only too familiar. Here again was the potent and charismatic leader, this time Ralph Schoenman, a young American. It was he who spoke, in that style perfected by History itself, combining idealism with a cold, clipped precision, and full of contempt for opponents, who were by definition cowards, poltroons, and morally defective, for the people in this room had on their shoulders the responsibility for the future of all humankind.

  The old guard sat and listened, and left early. It happened that I was with Michael Ayrton, the sculptor. I had not met him before, nor would I meet him again, but our rapport was that of cynical old soldiers. As we parted in the street, he said, ‘I think we could say we’ve been here before. Well, it’s a pity.’

  The Committee of a Hundred, formed as a result of that meeting, promoted itself vigorously as the healthy, honest, and good part of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and its guiding star was—for the purposes of propaganda—Bertrand Russell.

  A great deal of proselytising went on among the branches and groups, and attempts were made to get the support of people like myself, for an Old Guard is valuable to provide names to go on letterheads and—not least—money.

  In a book called The Protest Makers, something like an official history of these movements, I am described as a platform speaker for CND and the Committee of a Hundred. I was not. I am described as an active demonstrator. I was not. Unless going on the Aldermaston Marches counts as actively demonstrating. Of course Ralph Schoenman claimed me as a supporter of the Committee of a Hundred.

  Ralph dominated the Committee of a Hundred. He had no formal position, but then there were no officeholders, partly because this was considered ‘old politics’, partly so that the police would not know whom to arrest.

  Ralph Schoenman came to see me. This sounds a simple event, but it was preceded by reports from people to whom he had applied for information on the best way to approach me. There we sat in that ugly little room, where the cries from the street market below and the din of the traffic made us shut the window so we could hear ourselves speak. Rather, Ralph, with a severe nod and a soldierly air, said, ‘I think it would be advisable…,’ and smartly got up to shut the window. He sat down to lean forward and engage my eyes with a stern gaze that was reminding me of previous avatars of Lenin, liars on principle; but that gave rise to interesting questions, which I was debating with myself as I listened amiably to his polemics. Now, he knew that I knew exactly what was going on. Was he not running around London boasting that he not only signed Bertrand Russell’s letters but often dictated them? ‘He does what I tell him.’ (There are plenty of people left who remember this.) Did we not know that if you said to Russell, ‘Can I fetch you that file…get you a glass of water…answer that telephone?’ he would reply, ‘No, Ralph will do it for me.’ Ralph had Russell in his pocket and boasted about it. And yet here sat Ralph in front of me, painting a lurid picture of Canon Collins, the chairman of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, who he said was intriguing to undo Russell by means of dirty tricks and ruses that were in fact part of the armoury of communist tactics—Leninist tactics. Ralph knew that I must know that what he said was untrue, and yet he was radiating sincerity.

  Which brings me—and brought me then—to the question: Does it count as lying when the liar knows perfectly well his listener knows he is lying? When both speaker and auditor are familiar with the Leninist ‘style of work’, which enjoins lying and every kind of dirty trick?

  I sat listening, smiling, brooding inwardly about this and associated questions, while Ralph held forth.

  Real lying, pure and perfect lying, seems to me to be embodied in the following tale: In the seventies, a certain successful woman television executive decides to marry, having reached the age when it is now or never, if she wants to have children. She meets—at last—the right man, a good man. She is so happy, she blossoms and blooms. She marvels, too, at achieving so easily what had seemed impossible. Suddenly she telephones, in shock, all tears. During all the period of courtship, some months, there had been an agreement she would not telephone him at his place of work or at his flat. He would telephone her. But there is a crisis, and, she rings his place of work, but they have never heard of him. She rings the block of flats where he lives; he is not known there. She confronts him. He is furious. ‘We had an agreement you would never ring me.’ She is in the wrong. It turns out that he does have a job, just as prestigious and well paid as he has told her, but in a different firm from the one he said employs him. He does live in a good flat, in a good part of London, but not where he said. His life, his achievements, are as he told her, but in parallel. She is frantic with incomprehension, with betrayal, with shock. ‘Why, but why?’

  ‘I don’t want you knowing what I do and where I live,’ says this shortly to be married man, presumably with plans for a shared life, and he actually threatens to sue her for breach of promise. This, surely, is as perfect an example of a pure lie as one is likely to find.

  For months the anti Canon Collins campaign all bubbled and boiled, a nasty brew, and rumours proliferated and slanders flew about. The Committee of a Hundred was achieving the most satisfactory notoriety.

  I went to a meeting at Canon Collins’s house, to discuss the tactics of the Committee. I am not saying there was no one there who understood they were up against Stalinist tactics under a different name, for in any gathering of political people then there were bound to be those who had been in or near the Party, probably a majority. But I was struck by a kind of baffled and helpless innocence. And perhaps that was a fair enough reaction, for in fact there was not much they could do. Canon Collins’s team were playing by nice democratic rules, fair play, honest reporting, and so forth, but the Committee of a Hundred were from a very different tradition and playing by different rules. The Old Guard were dismayed, because meanwhile the masses of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament were ignorant of what was going on, but that couldn’t last for long

  I was telephoned by Mervyn Jones, then working on The Observer. Ralph Schoenman had persuaded Bertrand Russell to sign a statement—drafted by him, Ralph—that would be in the Observer newspaper next Sunday, accusing Canon Collins of every sort of nastiness. Possibly Russell had never seen it. It was known that he was being kept in the dark about a great many things, and it was thought that Lady Russell was not being informed either. The other possibility was that Ralph Schoenman and Lady Russell together were keeping Russell in the dark, for she—amazingly—admired Ralph too.

  Meanwhile Canon Collins and his supporters were framing a statement describing the activities of Bertrand Russell—rather, Ralph Schoenman—but in a much cooler style and based on fact.

  Would I go up to North Wales and see Bertrand Russell and beg him not to issue this statement? Because the one thing that should be avoided was a public confrontation between the two stars of the movement, for—and this was the point—the people who cared passionately about nuclear disarmament, some of them very young, did not care at all about these stars, these personalities, these prima donnas. This was a democratic movement, and they would be disgusted at the news that the leaders were engaged in personal battles. At least some of them—or their parents—had just behind them the terrible per
sonality struggles of communism and would be saying, ‘Oh, not again,’ as they drifted off, disillusioned. For what was the most wonderful thing about these new, mostly youthful, hundreds of thousands was that where there had been cynicism and disillusion was now a fresh bright interest and faith in themselves. It simply must not happen, this public brawl. But the difficulty was that the two combatants and their followers had long ago forgotten about the innocent hundreds of thousands, because this is what happens when you are immersed in day by day, indeed minute by minute, preoccupations with the misdeeds of your opponents.

  In those days I was more easily flattered than I am now. And even now my disapproval of myself is tempered: I was genuinely and passionately concerned about all those youthful innocents—who, of course, are now all middle-aged and long ago lost their illusions about politics. But at the time it seemed important to preserve their innocence for as long as possible. I said I would go. I did not have a car—would not have my own car for four years yet. A young woman from Australia, Janet Hase, who was from the New Left Review crowd, said she would drive me up. That was not a pleasant journey. She had a small car, did not know the route, and it was raining all the way, that grey, steady, cold rain that England knows so well how to sadden you with. The windscreen wipers steadily pushed loads of dirty cold water back and forth across the windscreen, and we two colonials were in that mood when we could not imagine why we had ever come here. The big, fast roads had not been built. Janet was complaining all the way that the men of this new revolutionary movement treated the women as dogs-bodies and she was sick of it. She had wanted to review The Golden Notebook for them, but they wouldn’t let her. They were interested only in theories and academic ideas.

  We kept getting lost. It was late when we reached North Wales and Plas Penrhyn—hours later than we had said. Bertrand Russell and Lady Russell met us with cold formality. Of course they had consulted with Schoenman and been told not to trust us. At once Russell began remarking spitefully about how he did that journey from London in a couple of hours and he was surprised we were so incompetent. We went to the drawing room. Lady Russell was watching us as if we might be assassins or poisoners. Russell was like a vigorous old gnome. In fact, this old warhorse from a thousand political battles recognised me as another, and at once a certain joky polemical style imposed itself. My job, after all, was a pretty impossible one. The one thing I could not say was: ‘You are being made use of by an unscrupulous young politico who is telling everyone in London that you do as he tells you.’ I could not say, ‘You are not being told the truth about what goes on.’ And I did not know where Lady Russell was in all this. I could not say, ‘There are people who think that your wife (sitting over there with that angry smile) conspires with Schoenman to keep you in the dark, but others think she is being manipulated too. Some believe she is like many younger wives with old husbands, trying to protect them.’ I tried to make a joke of it all, saying that all those ignorant young neophytes out there in the Unilateral Nuclear Disarmament branches scarcely knew about Canon Collins or himself, and they were full of foolish idealism, just as we were, too, when young and unused to politics, and it would not do them any good to hear about all these fights going on between the Committee of a Hundred and its parent organisation. I dared, to say that both he and Canon Collins were misreading the mood, or tone, or style of the new movement, which did not care about who led the thing, did not care about leaders.

  And now I reached the main point: If his—Bertrand Russell’s—statement accusing Canon Collins did come out in next Sunday’s Observer, it would do great damage, it would disillusion hundreds of thousands of CND supporters, most of them very young. I had driven up to beg him to withdraw it, to make sure it would not be in the Observer. At once Russell became very rude and said I was misinformed, there was no statement, he knew nothing of any statement. Lady Russell also said there was no statement planned or drafted but she believed that at some point Collins should be exposed for what he was.

  While this was going on we were being served sandwiches and coffee. Russell said he saw no point in continuing the discussion and that he was sure we must be tired. He would not be seeing us in the morning, but he would instruct the housekeeper to give us breakfast. Lady Russell and he escorted us to the bedroom, and the atmosphere was such that we would not have been surprised to find we were locked in. It was nine o’clock.

  Poor Janet Hase did not deserve this unpleasantness, for after all, she had offered to drive me up out of kindness of heart. She was, I am sure, pretty depressed by it all, and if the nasty little trip contributed to her decision to leave Britain as soon as she could, then I didn’t blame her.

  Back we crawled to London next day, and I reported to Mervyn Jones that my attempt had been a failure. By then I was angry with myself for doing it all, for in fact it achieved nothing.

  Next Sunday the Observer was due to come out with the two statements, Bertrand Russell accusing Canon Collins, Collins accusing Russell. That, at least, was how they would be read by the innocent masses. But this did not happen. The statements got lost, disappeared. And so the innocents never knew of all this dirty work and the competing of their leaders. Such is the nastiness left in my mind that even now I feel nervous for fear of arousing ancient sleeping dogs when I say I think Canon Collins was very much more sinned against than sinning and the faults on his side were not double-dealing and dirty tricks but—quite simply—not understanding how little interested were the rank and file in leaders and leadership. I was sorry for him.

  The Committee of a Hundred flourished, attracted to itself people with a liking for ‘direct action’ or, in other words, confrontations with the police, and the parent organisation, CND, was weakened. The Aldermaston Marches continued, grew, became unwieldy, and dwindled. But while it is easy to say that a great popular movement weakens and fades because of this and that, I don’t think we really understand the dynamics or know why a mass movement grows, does well, then fades. If now you say to people who supported the Committee of a Hundred that you think its influences were bad, the reply often comes: ‘But it gave birth to the anti-Vietnam riots and marches in America.’ It is true that one influenced the other, but to suggest that the Americans were not capable of giving birth to their own anti-war movements seems to me absurd.

  Sometimes I meet people from the Direct Action days and ask how they saw Ralph Schoenman. Some say they admired him, others that he made them feel uneasy. The admirers on the whole were those for whom he was their first experience of politics. Yet surely the man was crazy; or if he was not, then his behaviour was. An important distinction, one that has to be made in politics, with such inspirational characters.* The thing is, people who are indeed frothing mad, if they are in political or religious contexts are not seen as mad. Yet if the same people were in a different context, it would be seen at once. But some people who are crazy drift towards political or religious movements where their craziness will not be seen, and whether they do this consciously or not surely doesn’t matter. Some people know exactly what they do—Hitler, Stalin. Others, I think, find deep inclinations and tendencies they are hardly aware of blossoming in sympathetic atmospheres and are even terrified: I am pretty sure that many of the youngsters who went into the Committee of a Hundred for idealistic reasons were later appalled by what they found—in themselves as well as in others. We have forgotten the poisonous airs and atmospheres of then—just as we have forgotten the powerful idealism. This happens to be a mild, fairly nonpartisan, comparatively sane interregnum in the human story. To judge the fevers and accusations that then proliferated in and around the Committee of a Hundred means trying to revive that time: impossible.

  How can one account for the fact that Bertrand Russell, a man who had been engaged in politics all his life, beginning with his brave stand against the militarism of the First World War, an experienced man, one who had known a hundred different types of politico, failed to see through a Ralph Schoenman? And refused to see th
e truth even when people were warning him, telling him exactly what was happening and how he was being used? Russell simply would not listen, not for a long time, and by then it was too late. People all this time were asking, was Ralph Schoenman in the pay of the CIA? The KGB? This was because of the damage he was doing. Now this seems pretty mad, but it wasn’t then. Almost anyone could be accused of being in the pay of the CIA or the KGB, and of course some pretty unlikely people were.

  There are all kinds of hazards and dangers associated with old age, but the one I think may be the worst of all is hardly noticed. It is what happens when an old person is confronted with a simulacrum of a youthful self, a mocking shadow, an echo of lost possibilities—and loses all moral independence.

  Tolstoy lost his pride and his balance to Chertkov, a second-rate person who called himself the old man’s disciple and told him what to think, whom to keep in his life, and whom to exclude.

  Maxim Gorky allowed Pyotr Krychkov to run his life for him for years. He was paid by the KGB and was probably involved in Gorky’s death. It seems that Gorky did in the end have his suspicions, but the question is, why surrender to such a man at all?

  Jean-Paul Sartre gave himself up to Pierre Victor (or Benny Levy) at the end of his life, a young man who caricatured all his qualities so that even the good ones became monstrous. Meanwhile the French were saying, Our great Sartre is going the way of Bertrand Russell with Ralph Schoenman; it must be prevented. It wasn’t.

  There is an exception to this sad rule, but perhaps it is because here are not two men, an old one and a young man, but an old woman and a young man. The actress Louise Brooks, at the end of her life, was visited by young Kenneth Tynan, and there followed the most charming of friendships, tender, self-consciously whimsical, full of nostalgia for impossible loves.