2

The park was vastly crowded that afternoon, but over it hung a peculiar effect of inconsequence. It had less the quality of a popular forum than of an aimless promenade of useless people. It was a fermenting crowd, uneasy, and with no perceptible direction. There was something of the quality of one of those heavily clouded, brooding days on which there falls no single drop of rain. The processions had been swallowed up in a shapeless swarm of listeners and mockers and lookers–on. Over it all hummed a plane from which an officer was directing the movements of an unobtrusive but numerous police force by wireless. This plane and two little fleets of police vans were a recent and provocative innovation by the new Police Commissioner, but this afternoon it hummed above a stormless, quaking marsh of people. No need to move them on. They kept moving on.

The B.M.G.s converged. Rud made his way, silent but determined, among the platforms, towards his particular objective.

The air was full of voices; the nearer ones patchily audible, saying stereotyped things, the further ones a felt of raucous sounds. All the speakers seemed bored. Everybody seemed bored and dissatisfied. It was all politics and no reality. There was a big Labour Party demonstration, to show once again and for all time that no considerations of human welfare could shake for one moment the stern resolve of the established British trade union leaders to have no truck with Liberal politicians, men of science, men of ideas, Communists, Americans or anyone who might attempt to share the honours and emoluments that come at last to the implacably obstructive in political life. There was a dissentient Labour platform concerning itself with defining the fine differences in organisation that justified its dissent. There was a Liberal platform trying to steal Labour votes by its insistence upon the trouble in the Ukraine and the Mysore prison scandal. There was a Free Indian group and a platform of miscellaneous people pinning their faith to the South Welsh prison scandals as a means of raising a useful indignation. General objectives had long since vanished in the intricacies of party strategy. At every Socialist and Liberal platform the common man was being warned and incited against every other Socialist or Liberal group—probably with justice. One gathering charged the government with responsibility for the recent outbreak of measles. The Ministry of Health had done or not done this, that and the other thing, and at another point the Ministry of Agriculture was being challenged very manfully about some intricate manurial technicality. Isolationist platforms clashed with demands for intervention in Spain, China, Siam, the West Indies and Lithuania. Amidst the confusion religion reared its head to reply to infidelity, and anti–vivisection called on all mankind to end the greatest horror in the world. Communists in alliance with Catholics, Communists of the Trotsky heresy, Pro–Mexican Communists, New Communists and True Blue Communists, beat upon the air and warned the common man against deleterious imitations. It was less of a forum than a fair with every platform trying to sell some monopoly of its own.

Overhead bumbled the plane, directing the unobtrusive movements of the police, mindful of nothing said provided that nothing was done. It was a very symbol of the invincible determination of the government and institutions of Britain to yield to nothing less than blasting operations in their obstruction to any conceivable world reconstruction. And not to argue about it. They did not need to divide and rule. They ruled a fissiparous Opposition. That pervasive, soft droning gave the exactest expression to the aimless, gentle firmness of the British constitution at home and to its incalculable persistence in vaguely Imperialist assertion abroad.

The recent happenings in South Carolina played a minor role in that crowd's confusion of thought and feeling. The press had tempered the facts of the American social war to the mentality of the British public, and the general ignorance of American geography in England had prevented any realisation of the steady extension of the conflict from state to state. The loss of confidence in the remedial powers of Congress and the lapse of the whole South and Middle West first towards sporadic lawlessness and then towards an organised insurrectionary movement, had been masked by the fragmentary nature of the news and overshadowed by the de facto war in the Ukraine and the Balkans. No one had yet drawn a working analogy between the Transatlantic and the European situations.

The informal powers that worked through the forms of the British constitution, however, were from their own point of view more alert to the realities of the American situation; they had always had close associations, financial and social as well as political, with the reactionary Republicanism of Big Business, and they were in the closest sympathy with the methods of obstruction, non–co–operation and counter–attack that had defeated Franklin Roosevelt's well–meant but not always well–balanced efforts to adapt the traditions of private capitalism to the economic and social stresses of a new age. They shared the same disregard of the warnings of the times, the same uncompromising conservatism of heart. They both wanted to pull the community back to the happy eighties, and they were quite prepared for just as much repression of the uneasy masses, repression direct or indirect, legal or informal, and as unobtrusively violent, as possible.

Things were rather larger, more obvious and rougher on the American side, but the issues were essentially the same. The general public voted and demonstrated, but its voting seemed to lead to nothing. It felt that things were done behind its back and over its head but it could never understand clearly how. It never seemed able to get sound news out of its newspapers nor good faith out of its politicians. It resisted, it fumbled, it was becoming more and more suspicious and sceptical, but it was profoundly confused and ill–informed.

Rud's quick realisation that something profoundly significant was happening across the Atlantic, or at least something that could be presented as being profoundly significant, was well ahead of the popular intelligence, but not so much ahead of it as to be out of touch with its latent possibilities.

Spectators far outnumbered demonstrators in the park that Sunday, and never had they found the flow of eloquence so trite. They drifted from platform to platform. For anything fresh they heard they might as well have been at Matins or Evensong. The Popular Socialist platform had as usual contrived to get itself within irritation length of the main Communist gathering. That was now its established place. It was within irritation length, but it had long since ceased to irritate. Its normal function in the past had been to provoke violence and be rescued by the police in a scrimmage which justified the arrest of what the authorities, for the obscurest reasons, regarded as undesirable characters. But now that worked no more.

The orthodox Communist bunch was not taking much notice of the little band of purple shirts that afternoon. From 1937 onward an almost genteel discretion had permeated the Communists. They had found long since that indignation and violence were far less effective against Lord Horatio's once–dreaded following than ridicule. They would kill his trained speakers by listening to them in a speudo–awestricken silence—in which they stumbled and fell—or they would disconcert them by sudden baffling interruptions. But this afternoon, because of the general vague dissatisfaction, even the sport of ragging the Popular Socialists was providing a poor draw.

Three or four dingy young Reds were attempting to get capital out of the absence of Lord Horatio at Liverpool.

"Where's Horry to–day? Taking a day off with his girl? Hi Jeams! Long Jeams there! Where's his Ludship?…"

Rud contemplated the scene.

"Well?" said Rogers.

"All our men are here?"

"Yes. And now?"

"We go on to the platform. Which way up?"

"Those trained speakers of Horry's are no good at all," said Irwell, leading the way round the crowd. "Sheer waste of money. Listen to that fool—a chick of three days old could heckle him down."

"I'll speak," said Rud.

"This way," said Bodisham.

A tall young man wearing one of the prohibited purple shirts (But one costume does not make an indictable uniform.) seemed to recognise Rogers. He was acting as the day's usher of the ineffective Popular Socialist eloquence. Rud found himself hoisted to the platform by his henchmen. He elbowed his way towards the front of the platform.

"You're not going to speak?" said the tall man.

"I am going to speak."

"I've heard nothing about it from Hoggin."

"Change of plan at the last moment."

The tall young man turned to Rogers and asked in an audible aside: "Who is this fellow?"

"He's all right," said Rogers. "You hear him." "But what are you going to say, Mister?"

"You listen," said Rogers.

"When?"

"Right now," said Rud. "Don't you bother me." And he pushed his way to the forefront of the platform and stood glaring. The audience had been having a routine time with the trained "Bowlers" and they hailed a new face as a pleasant variation of the afternoon's proceedings. "Ullo Beethoven!" said a red–faced, frizzy–haired little man, giving a name that was not unhelpful to Rud on later occasions. "Ullo Bottle–imp! The Things old Bohun catches!"

Rud faced the interrupter with an outstretched hand. "Here Gollywog," he said, "listen to me."

"Gollywog" fitted. Shouting and pushing subsided. This might be worth listening to.

"Listen to me, brother Gollywog," said Rud intensely, "And thank God for those very big ears he's given you…No! Don't start talking till you've heard what I'm going to say to you. For if there's a platform worth listening to, today here, it's this platform I'm on. You don't know what this Popular Socialism means. You never have known. You're going to know now."

"We know right enough," said the Gollywog. "Anti–Red and all that balderdash! We've heard it a hundred times from your trained purple parrots."

"You've heard nothing. You've just bawled as you're bawling now. Listen, I tell you."

"Listen to him," said a bystander, and an expert in anti–Bohun tactics said, "Freeze him out."

But there was no freezing out for Rud. "Good!" he said. "Now don't make mistakes about me, and don't make mistakes about what's on the platform this afternoon. You think I'm one of Lord Horry's paid men. I'm not. You think I'm some sort of Anti—. I'd rather be dead."

"Horry said—" began the Gollywog.

"I don't care a rap what Horry said. When Horry talks to you, you answer Horry. But when I talk to you, you listen to me."

"But how about—"

Rud raised his voice. "Listen!" he shouted.

"Look around and listen. Here's a score of platforms and scores of speakers and what are they talking? Anti! They want to stop somebody doing something, but what they want to do themselves, Heaven only knows. They don't know. Turn out somebody from government, from direction, from ownership, and put them in, and they'll show you. Open your mouth and shut your eyes. That's the dream of all these gentry who are shouting themselves hoarse on these platforms. They want to set you against something. They're all against something. Up against something. But what they're Torah! Wait and see. They want you to clean up the men in possession, and then they will be the men in possession. And a hell of a lot of difference that will make to you! Like your blessed old Labour Party which started out for Socialism in Our Time and ended in the House of Lords. You've had that game played on you often enough. Do you want it played again?"

"Well, wot's yer difference? You and your Lord 'Orry!" "Who's talking of Bohun here?" said Rud.

"Well! What are you?"

"The common–sense of politics; that's what we are!" "And what's that?"

"Unity! Not twenty platforms all shouting away through the afternoon to advertise twenty different gangs of political pushers and Welshers, but One Common Platform to ask for the things that every man needs. In spite of that noisy buzzer overhead. Augh! Shut up—up there! We want one great popular movement for social justice wherever the English language is spoken. That's what Popular Socialism means. Certain things are as plain as a pikestaff."

"But Lordorry—

"Oh damn Lord Horry!" said Rud.

"Here!" said the tall man. "You can't say that!" "Shut up," said Rogers with his beefy shoulder against the chest of the tall man. "Let our man speak!"

"But this is his Lordship's platform. Confound it, man!"

"Does it look like that to you? Go on, Rud, never mind this."

"But, boys!" said the tall man, appealing to his stalwarts. He made a move towards Rud, but he found Rogers, Steen–hold, Bodisham, Figgis and Redwood intervening. Swift and venomous undertones passed. "Let the man speak!" said the crowd. "Leave him alone Jeams. Damn Lord Horry! Right you are. Go on, Mister. What next?"

"Well, I get sick of all this raking–up of what Mr. Gladstone said fifty years ago, or what Lord Horatio said last spring. Damn this allusive style, anyhow. Do let us talk, for once, about what all of us want and all of us want said now. NOW!"

"You hear?" said Rogers, still leaning slightly against the tall man.

"Don't you know us?" said Irwell. "You've seen us times enough. Can't you trust your own men?"

"But this new chap!"

"Let him go on," said Steenhold at the tall man's ear.

It seemed the easiest thing to do. The crowd about the platform was taking notice and growing. "Let him speak," they shouted. "The little chap with the big face!"

"He's got to talk our stuff, mind you," said the tall man, yielding. "I'm in charge here."

"Obviously," said Rogers, still fending him off. "Go ahead, Rud."

And Rud went ahead.

"We've been christened Popular Socialists, and I suppose every movement must wear a label, but if I'd been in at the christening, boys, I should have said the Party of the Common Man, the Party of the Common Man, here in England, away in America, in Africa, Australia, China and all over the earth."

"But Horry is a nationalist out and out!"

Rud did not even answer that comment. He waved it away as if it was a fly.

"The Party of the Common Man—everywhere. The Plain Needs of Common–sense! First he wants peace and security, and what stands in the way of that? All these damned localised governments that divide us up and set us fighting—set us fighting against our own brothers. Think of it—English guns being lent to the Old Gang in America to shoot English–speaking strikers! We want one government everywhere, not all these governments, one common–sense government for our common needs."

"But that's Internationalism! That's Communism!"

"Augh! Never mind those words!" said Rud. "Do we want one law in the world or many, you crowd of cannon–fodder, you bombees of to–morrow? Isn't it plain as a pikestaff that one government means peace, and many war? Well, let's get that one government. It's these old national governments out of the past that stand in the way and won't let go. Do we want them? Not a bit. But they want themselves! That's one thing we want. One government keeping the peace everywhere.

"And next we want Plenty. Everyone who knows says we can have Plenty to–day for everyone. All the men of science say that. Why don't we have it? Because a few people won't let us get at the earth and get at the work. They've appropriated it, they squat in on it just as they squat in on Power, and they have to be expropriated—expropriated by the sheer common–sense of everyone. They string a net of private property about our futile paralysed world, and they trick us with this false money that they keep on changing and increasing and diminishing so that you don't know from day to day what a shilling is worth to you. They pretend they can't help it. Do you believe that? Do you believe they can't help the boat rocking? Do you believe they can't help supplies being locked up? Do you think they don't know what they're doing? They want Power over us. And do you think you don't know that? In your bones you do. They'd rather see the world wrecked than give up their Power game. And we are the pawns!

"It doesn't take ten years of study, you don't need to go to the University, to find out that this is a damned good world gone wrong. Gone wrong, because it is being monkeyed with by people too greedy and mean and wrong–hearted altogether to do the right thing by our common world. They've grabbed it and they won't let go. They might lose their importance; they might lose their pull. Everywhere it's the same. Beware of the men you make your masters. Beware of the men you trust.

"We've only got to be clear–headed to sing the same song and play the same game all over the world, we common men. We don't want Power monkeyed with, we don't want Work and Goods monkeyed with, and, above all, we don't want Money monkeyed with. That's the elements of politics everywhere. When these things go wrong, we go wrong. That's how people begin to feel it and see it in America. That's how we feel it here—when we look into our minds. That's what common people feel everywhere. That's what our brother whites—'poor whites' they call them—in those towns in South Carolina are fighting for now. Fighting our battle. Why aren't we with them? We speak the same language; we share the same blood. Who has been keeping us apart from them for a hundred and fifty–odd years? Ruling classes. Politicians. Dear old flag and all that stuff!

"Our school–books never tell us a word about the American common man; and his school–books never tell him a word about us. They flutter flags between us to keep us apart. Split us up for a century and a half because of some fuss about taxing tea. And what are our wonderful Labour and Socialist and Communist leaders doing to change that? What are they doing to unite us English–speaking common men together and give us our plain desire? Are they doing anything more for us than the land barons and the factory barons and the money barons? Not a bit of it! These labour leaders of to–day mean to be lords to–morrow. They are just a fresh set of dishonest trustees. Look at these twenty–odd platforms here! Mark their needless contradictions! Their marvellous differences on minor issues. 'Manoeuvres!' 'Intrigue.' 'Personalities.' 'Monkeying.' 'Don't trust him, trust me!' All of them at it. Mark how we common men are distracted, how we are set hunting first after one red herring and then after another, for the want of simple, honest interpretation…"

And so on.

The tall young man listened in a state of great perplexity. He was determined to intervene and shut Rud up when it was necessary, but how was he to determine when it was necessary? This was queer stuff, but it was holding a gathering crowd. It was stealing more and more people from the communist accumulation. Perhaps "Simple, honest interpretation" meant Lord Horatio. Perhaps this stranger would come round to that presently. And always if the man went too far, afterwards it would be possible to say a few words, chairman fashion, and put things right again. If these unaccountably menacing fellows on each side of him had the sense to let him, that is.

Rud unfolded the Chiffan–Whitlow scheme of world salvation in broad outline as the two of them had hammered it out in their early discussions; its insistence on a common Anglo–American basis at any cost—at the cost of "every institution, crown, constitution or what–not, however old, however venerable," that might stand in the way; its bold proposal to reorganise and control the whole financial apparatus of the world; its assurances of the hope in science of a universal plenty; its wide development of Huey Long's almost fanatic educationalism. "This is what we are for!" he bawled. "Anti– be damned! We are Pro–Pax–Mundi. We stand for Mankind to–day and I tell you Mankind will stand for us to–morrow."

He became aware of a change in the situation, a lull to the left of him. The communist platform had gone out of business, and a little knot of their supporters were pushing their way towards him. He welcomed this intervention. He threw them phrases and sentences to provoke an argument.

"This is what Communism stands for?" he answered them. "Stealing your thunder? Nonsense! Your old Marx prophesied the Revolution, but he never saw an inch beyond it. He knew nothing of modern scientific production. He never distinguished between financial and material property. He knew nothing about money, not a thing. Why don't you put him back in Highgate Cemetery and forget about him?…Well, put a great, lying, flattering monument over him if you must, and then forget about him."

The ascendancy of the platform was an immense advantage to Rud. They had made a mistake in coming down from their own platform to get near him. They had to shout from below at him. He caught up what they had to say at the point when it gave him the most effective reply. He delivered every sentence as though he scored a point against them.

The two officials and the little American–born countess they had with them in the observation plane, noted the increasing accumulation of hearers about the Popular Socialist nucleus, but they heard nothing of the immense subversiveness of Rud's restatement of Popular Socialist aims. A gentle infiltration of the growing assemblage by the forces of law and order was set going. The observers overhead heard nothing of the steady attack upon the American policy of the government, linked with a systematic depreciation of Lord Horatio, upon which Rud was launched.

"Leaders are nothing," said Rud. "Parties are nothing. Governments are nothing. Look at the thing with plain common–sense. Nothing matters but the common man."

"But !" spluttered the tall young man. "Steady on!" and "Wait a moment."

"Shut it," said Rogers.

"We Popular Socialists stand for plain common–sense, put in order and kept clear," said Rud. "Just as Science does. We stand for that and nothing else. We want no dogmas and we want no dictators and leaders…No. We here are the party of the common man—common one and all. Our only theory is to keep our eyes open—your eyes open. And to hell with all this strategy and party discipline and leadership and the climbers and the stand–patters who obstruct and divide us." (Futile cry of "But how about Horry?") "What I am telling you is simply and plainly what you think. It's your natural stuff. I'm no leader setting myself up here to know better than anyone, what ought to be done and what his to be done to bring it about. I don't ask you to open your mouths and shut your eyes and see what I will give you. I'm not leader number six hundred and fifty–nine, to start a new divergence. I'm just a common man who knows how to put it, and nothing more. I'm your megaphone. That's the Popular Socialist way…

"Yes, that's democracy. That's what you Communists have forgotten. You tied yourselves up in a rigid organisation. You put on Stalin and Stalinism like a gag and a straightjacket." (Uproar.)

"Lord Horry? Popular Socialism made him, I tell you, and Popular Socialism can break him. He's our figure–head to–day—but only in the service of common sense. As long as he cares to serve common sense. And work hard for us. Our reality is in you all, all of you. All of us. He'll be the first to admit it. Fall in with us. Simplify! Unite! Commonsense! Now do you get me? Now do you understand where we are?"

He paused for his applause and he got it. The tall young man appeared to be saying something, but nobody heard what he had to say.

Rud had fired his shot. He stood without an idea in the world about the next step to take. Left to himself he would probably have got down from the platform and gone home.

"We can march back on this," said Bodisham suddenly at his elbow.

"March back?"

"To headquarters. While we're on the crest."

"But where?"

"To headquarters!" cried Steenhold, gleefully grasping the idea. "Oh, great!"

"Headquarters!" said Dreed. "Of course!"

"Your meeting's a thundering success," said Irwell to the tall young man. "Now's the time for the triumphant exit…No. They don't want to hear you."

Rud had got it in an instant. He was already gesticulating to the crowd. He had made Bodisham's inspiration his own. Mastery returned to him. Of course! Now was the moment to strike. He shouted:

"Now that I've explained things to you, perhaps you'll fall in with us. March with us to the Purple House! We don't mind a red banner or two. Facts, not flags, is our motto. Put down your names with us. Never mind your party or your party wire–pullers. Never mind your leaders! Or ours for that matter. Come and give a cheer for the common–sense man, the good old common man, who's the real backbone of all of us. (Let's get a move on, Bodisham.)"

The re–formation of the homeward march was a thing of routine. Rud saw two manifest newspaper men making notes. "The shorthand reporter?" he said to Chiffan.

"O.K." said Chiffan. "I looked after that."

"Where's the band? Where's the other banners?" said Bodisham, taking complete control of the tall young man.

"There's one banner about the Jews," said Rud in a quick undertone over his shoulder. "Furl that. We don't want that stuff to–day—anyhow. Furl all the banners. We'll alter those rotten inscriptions later."

"Hustle round, boys," said the tall young man to his posse of stalwarts. "Keep together," said Rogers, close behind him…

And how was the official observer in the air above to know that the Popular Socialist procession that was reforming itself and making a departure so much more spirited and substantial than its arrival, was really a captured procession? All that he remarked was that it seemed to be exercising a suctorial influence on the accumulating crowd round about it. It seemed to be taking three–quarters of the communist crowd with it. That was odd. There might be some sort of trouble presently. So the radio got to work and the police drifted towards the purple banners, to see that law and order kept pace with the swelling crowd.

Rud was borne along with his particular adherents in the midst of the column. He carried himself now in a grave and preoccupied manner. At moments he felt like a mighty commander with everything obedient to his hand; at moments he felt like a cork in a stream. But his prevailing feeling was confidence and exaltation. Everything was going easily. There had been no fighting. The crowd was driving along in a state of indeterminate appreciation. Someone had started shouts of "Common–sense Party. Not too soon." And "Commonsense at last." One voice even cried "Good old Horry," and another tried the old slogan: "We want Bohun." But no one took that up. The Popular Socialist band, of two kettledrums and half a dozen fifes, sustained the Popular Socialist marching tune:

"One, two; one, two, three, Horry Bohun is the man for me."

But a number of men and lads and one or two young women were pressing in on the central group to get a nearer view of Rud. "What's your name, mate? What's his name, Mister?"

"Rud," said Rogers.

"Rud what?"

"Just Rud."

"Rud. Rud—His name's Just Rud."

Presently they were repeating:

"One, two; one, two, three, Just Rud is the man for me."

Rud exchanged rapid opinions with Steenhold and Chiffan. "Nothing more doing to–day," he said. "A few words from the window?"

"And then take possession," said Bodisham.

"If the crowds hang about?"

"It's going to rain," said Chiffan. "And the police will keep them moving. All that about enrolling them will evaporate quietly. You'll see. The pubs open at seven and the cinemas will be opening now."

"One, two; one, two, three, Just Rud is the man for me."