4

The talks in the Steenhold flat had benefited considerably by the accession of Chiffan. He had returned rejoicing to London, having got a job as printer–editor of a small suburban newspaper, and he brought with him much precise information about the gathering unrest in the North. "They despise and hate the government more and more, but they don't know how to set about changing it. The country is dying for some sort of lead, and so far all it is getting is a crowd of fresh professional leaders. Who never get anywhere. Who do not seem to be aiming anywhere. We are living in world of jaded politics. Poverty increases, prices rise, unemployment spreads, mines, factories stagnate, and nothing is done."

At first Chiffan was wary and a little jealous of Rud's Popular Socialist friends, and also, quite inadvertently, he developed an earnest and sympathetic friendship with a frizzy–haired, amber–eyed young woman who had been regarding Rud very earnestly for some weeks. (They began by talking about Rud, his gifts, his character, his possibilities, and their devotion to him brought them closer and closer together, and at last so close that Rud became a benediction over their liaison. Chiffan made a sort of party sacrament of it, but for all that he was rather ashamed of himself. The relationship excited and occupied him for a week or so, and then it bored him, and when Rogers smote his knees and said "B.M.G.", he lit up and became a fount of shrewd suggestions. )

"B.M.G. Great!" said Chiffan.

"B.M.G. Great idea!" said Steenhold.

"I am not so sure of B.M.G.," said Rud, nursing his knee in his corner. "I agree that the Popular Socialist organisation has to be given a new start and a new programme—it's what I've been saying all along—and as things are, it is probably the only organisation in the country on which you could base a real efficiency campaign outside the party machines. There it is. It is the only quasi–voluntary organisation just now that could take liberties and not be suppressed at once. The left organisations now, if it came to a scrap, could be shut up in a week. It's the Popular Socialists for us or nothing. But why shouldn't one keep Bohun as the nominal head and work through him?"

"You don't know him yet," said Bodisham.

"I've got to see him. We join up to–morrow, Chiffan and I. I told you. When I see him I shall know better about him. What is there impossible about him?"

"Wait till you see him," said Irwell.

"He has personal contacts with the West End and the City." "Had," said Bodisham.

"The sort of immunity this Party has had—it certainly has had an immunity—may vanish if we chuck out Bohun."

"That depends on the opinion the authorities have of us," said Bodisham.

"There are three reasons why B.M.G.," said Chiffan, "so far as I understand the situation. Firstly he will never let any sort of initiative exist in the party except his own, so long as he remains the leader. And he has no initiative of his own. Secondly, the only way the public can be made to realise that the Popular Socialist Party is now going to mean something else, is by not simply making Bohun go—but by chucking him. And thirdly we have to publicise Rud. That is the most important. We have to stage a first–class row, so that Rud's restatement of our ideas will be on the front page. We've got to put him there and keep him there. What do you think, Bodisham?"

"Couldn't be sounder," said Bodisham.

"I'd like to hear more suggestions," said Rud. "We've talked to–night. We've talked before. We can't always be talking. Now if this Real Ginger Group of yours is to go beyond talking it has to define itself much more plainly than it has done. We must know what we really mean to do and we must have some ideas of the roles we have to play. It is no good, for example, for Rogers to yield to his burning desire to go right out now and hit somebody, unless the Group is prepared for the situation that will arise out of the hitting. If I am any sort of leader—

"But you are!"

"Then the first thing is that nothing must be done until the word Go—Nothing. For ten days or so at least we have got to meet here and draw up almost detailed particulars of what we mean to do. We have to sound everybody concerned. Now we happen to be alone here to–night, but generally speaking this room is too public, Steenhold. On Saturdays it's half Bloomsbury and stage here, in the small hours. Anyone may come in at any time."

"Well, make a planning–room of my room upstairs," said Steenhold.

"And definitely plan," said Bodisham, and took off and wiped his spectacles with an air of preparing for work.

So they definitely planned and became an organised conspiracy. They elected themselves and were chary of introducing fresh blood. They drew up certain articles of association beginning: "The object of the R.G.G. (Real Ginger Group) is to resuscitate, revise, enlarge and invigorate the Popular Socialist movement and make it a Living Power in the Land." Their imaginative organisation of the group proceeded apace, and everybody weighed everybody's character and capabilities and limitations with the utmost solicitude. Chiffan ticked them off with semi–official titles. Rud was the Master Director or "Chief" for short, Rogers was the Fighting Chief, Bodisham was the Organiser General or the Head Strategist, Irwell was the Financial Reorganiser, Dreed was the Chief of Propaganda and Education.

"Everything has to be stated," said Rud.

"Of course! Of course!" said Dreed. "It's all as plain as daylight."

"Times change," said Rud, "and nowadays they change very rapidly. Propaganda becomes more and more a primary thing. One reason why the majority everywhere is so indecisive is because it is becoming intelligent. It is mobile but sceptical. It won't jump at a name or a nickname now. It wants—definition. Compared with ten years ago it is critical. It has to be given things straight and clear. But if you give it things straight and clear—it can take them and it will take them." ("I do so agree," said Bodisham. "I do so heartily agree.") "The primary need in order to get and keep power is bright plain publicity. And more publicity. And then publicity. There never has been a time when ideas are as fluid as they are now. If only one can get publicity, if only one can get the ear of the crowd, anything could be put before it—anything—and given sufficient explicitness almost anything can be put over it. If you put over nonsense it will fall to pieces later, but there is no limit now to the changes of opinion that can be affected in the modern masses. Choose good slogans. Speak loud, speak wide, speak plain and the thing is done."

(Approval from Bodisham, nodding his head so that his glasses flashed.)

"Just consider the fluctuation of the popular intelligence in Britain during the last few years. You had absolute changes in a year or so. Not changes of shade, mind you, but changes of colour. Black to white. There was that Peace Ballot business. When was it? In '36? You had ten or twelve million adults in Great Britain voting against any sort of war. You would have said that a majority of the British people and certainly all the left side of British life would never fight in any war again. And by '37 the whole country was boiling for a show–down with Italy about Abyssinia, and by the middle of '38 you got the feeling that the selfsame mass of people, the same crowd of individuals, was beginning to want a war with Germany! Really want a war. Getting dangerous to Germany! Spoiling for it. And now the current slogan is 'Settlement'. The government says settlement, but the people mean it. What will they mean next year if they are still being bored to hell, drilling and arming and paying taxes?

"In Germany too, how many Nazis were Liberals and Social Democrats ten years ago. Yet in '37 and '38 if you woke up a German in the night he said 'Heil Hitler' automatically, and felt it. Then they slacked on Hitler. How easily they slacked on him! How rapidly they developed resistances to the tension, the incessant tension, he made.

"Look at the way people have swung through Communism, Toryism, Liberalism—in vast blocks. In my father's boyhood you were either a Liberal or a Conservative in England, and there you stuck, and in America you were a sturdy individualist Democrat or Republican from the cradle to the grave. But now the Voice does it—the pervading voice. And just now it's come to a point when a Voice—putting it straight and clear. Straight and clear…"

"There speaks the Voice," said Chiffan. "You make pictures in the mind, Rud. I see the mind of the world like Chaos—a whirling Chaos, and suddenly comes the Logos—the Word. In fact you, Rud."

"You aren't jeering by any chance?" asked Steenhold, always anxious to know exactly where he stood.

"Perhaps I am decorating a little. It's my vice, Steenhold…Let us plan."

"Yes," said Bodisham. "Let us plan. Now just where do we begin operations? Where do we first confront the Boss with the unpleasant fact that the movement no longer considers itself properly led? And proposes to give him a push? And what exactly will it do when he splutters and hectors?"

So the conclave in Steenhold's upper room began its deliberations, began to figure out the definite seizure of the party for Rud. It was necessarily highly imaginative work.

At times it was entirely indeterminate whether they were really making plans for definite action or merely indulging in a collective reverie, that might at any time evaporate back into nothingness—as ten thousand other conspiracies have done.

"We now know," said Bodisham, summing up one night, "practically everything we mean to do. We mean to insist upon a general meeting of the party and then we mean to challenge Bohun fairly and squarely. What we have to do now is to fix times and dates, determine numbers and places."

"Wait!" said Chiffan.

"What for?"

"The Hour. The Moment. Rud's instinct and the word Go."

"Wait, but be ready," said Rud. "Wait for the word. It will be like shooting a gun and killing a man. After that there is no turning back. I've seen the Boss once. H'm! I want to give him one more chance. I want to start with a speech on this mess the government is making about the American situation. Somehow I must make that speech."