PART I: ENGLAND YOUR ENGLAND
I
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying
to kill me.
They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against
them. They are Īonly doing their dutyā, as the saying goes. Most of them,
I have no doubt, are kind-hearted law-abiding men who would never dream
of committing murder in private life. On the other hand, if one of them
succeeds in blowing me to pieces with a well-placed bomb, he will never
sleep any the worse for it. He is serving his country, which has the power
to absolve him from evil.
One cannot see the modern world as it is unless one recognizes the overwhelming
strength of patriotism, national loyalty. In certain circumstances it can
break down, at certain levels of civilization it does not exist, but as
a
positive force there is nothing to set beside it. Christianity
and international Socialism are as weak as straw in comparison with it.
Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in their own countries very largely
because they could grasp this fact and their opponents could not.
Also, one must admit that the divisions between nation and nation are
founded on real differences of outlook. Till recently it was thought proper
to pretend that all human beings are very much alike, but in fact anyone
able to use his eyes knows that the average of human behaviour differs
enormously from country to country. Things that could happen in one country
could not happen in another. Hitlerās June purge, for instance, could not
have happened in England. And, as western peoples go, the English are very
highly differentiated. There is a sort of back-handed admission of this
in the dislike which nearly all foreigners feel for our national way of
life. Few Europeans can endure living in England, and even Americans often
feel more at home in Europe.
When you come back to England from any foreign country, you have immediately
the sensation of breathing a different air. Even in the first few minutes
dozens of small things conspire to give you this feeling. The beer is bitterer,
the coins are heavier, the grass is greener, the advertisements are more
blatant. The crowds in the big towns, with their mild knobby faces, their
bad teeth and gentle manners, are different from a European crowd. Then
the vastness of England swallows you up, and you lose for a while your
feeling that the whole nation has a single identifiable character. Are
there really such things as nations? Are we not forty-six million individuals,
all different? And the diversity of it, the chaos! The clatter of clogs
in the Lancashire mill towns, the to-and-fro of the lorries on the Great
North Road, the queues outside the Labour Exchanges, the rattle of pin-tables
in the Soho pubs, the old maids hiking to Holy Communion through the mists
of the autumn morning - all these are not only fragments, but characteristic
fragments, of the English scene. How can one make a pattern out of this
muddle?
But talk to foreigners, read foreign books or newspapers, and you are
brought back to the same thought. Yes, there is something distinctive
and recognizable in English civilization. It is a culture as individual
as that of Spain. It is somehow bound up with solid breakfasts and gloomy
Sundays, smoky towns and winding roads, green fields and red pillar-boxes.
It has a flavour of its own. Moreover it is continuous, it stretches into
the future and the past, there is something in it that persists, as in
a living creature. What can the England of 1940 have in common with the
England of 1840? But then, what have you in common with the child of five
whose photograph your mother keeps on the mantelpiece? Nothing, except
that you happen to be the same person.
And above all, it is your civilization, it is you. However
much you hate it or laugh at it, you will never be happy away from it for
any length of time. The suet puddings and the red pillar-boxes have entered
into your soul. Good or evil, it is yours, you belong to it, and this side
the grave you will never get away from the marks that it has given you.
Meanwhile England, together with the rest of the world, is changing.
And like everything else it can change only in certain directions, which
up to a point can be foreseen. That is not to say that the future is fixed,
merely that certain alternatives are possible and others not. A seed may
grow or not grow, but at any rate a turnip seed never grows into a parsnip.
It is therefore of the deepest importance to try and determine what England
is,
before guessing what part England can play in the huge events that
are happening.
II
National characteristics are not easy to pin down, and when pinned down
they often turn out to be trivialities or seem to have no connexion with
one another. Spaniards are cruel to animals, Italians can do nothing without
making a deafening noise, the Chinese are addicted to gambling. Obviously
such things donāt matter in themselves. Nevertheless, nothing is causeless,
and even the fact that Englishmen have bad teeth can tell something about
the realities of English life.
Here are a couple of generalizations about England that would be accepted
by almost all observers. One is that the English are not gifted artistically.
They are not as musical as the Germans or Italians, painting and sculpture
have never flourished in England as they have in France. Another is that,
as Europeans go, the English are not intellectual. They have a horror of
abstract thought, they feel no need for any philosophy or systematic Īworld-viewā.
Nor is this because they are Īpracticalā, as they are so fond of claiming
for themselves. One has only to look at their methods of town planning
and water supply, their obstinate clinging to everything that is out of
date and a nuisance, a spelling system that defies analysis, and a system
of weights and measures that is intelligible only to the compilers of arithmetic
books, to see how little they care about mere efficiency. But they have
a certain power of acting without taking thought. Their world-famed hypocrisy
- their double-faced attitude towards the Empire, for instance - is bound
up with this. Also, in moments of supreme crisis the whole nation can suddenly
draw together and act upon a species of instinct, really a code of conduct
which is understood by almost everyone, though never formulated. The phrase
that Hitler coined for the Germans, Īa sleep-walking peopleā, would have
been better applied to the English. Not that there is anything to be proud
of in being called a sleep-walker.
But here it is worth noting a minor English trait which is extremely
well marked though not often commented on, and that is a love of flowers.
This is one of the first things that one notices when one reaches England
from abroad, especially if one is coming from southern Europe. Does it
not contradict the English indifference to the arts? Not really, because
it is found in people who have no aesthetic feelings whatever. What it
does link up with, however, is another English characteristic which is
so much a part of us that we barely notice it, and that is the addiction
to hobbies and spare-time occupations, the privateness of English
life. We are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors,
pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle
fans. All the culture that is most truly native centres round things which
even when they are communal are not official - the pub, the football match,
the back garden, the fireside and the Īnice cup of teaā. The liberty of
the individual is still believed in, almost as in the nineteenth century.
But this has nothing to do with economic liberty, the right to exploit
others for profit. It is the liberty to have a home of your own, to do
what you like in your spare time, to choose your own amusements instead
of having them chosen for you from above. The most hateful of all names
in an English ear is Nosey Parker. It is obvious, of course, that even
this purely private liberty is a lost cause. Like all other modern people,
the English are in process of being numbered, labelled, conscripted, Īco-ordinatedā.
But the pull of their impulses is in the other direction, and the kind
of regimentation that can be imposed on them will be modified in consequence.
No party rallies, no Youth Movements, no coloured shirts, no Jew-baiting
or Īspontaneousā demonstrations. No Gestapo either, in all probability.
But in all societies the common people must live to some extent against
the existing order. The genuinely popular culture of England is something
that goes on beneath the surface, unofficially and more or less frowned
on by the authorities. One thing one notices if one looks directly at the
common people, especially in the big towns, is that they are not puritanical.
They are inveterate gamblers, drink as much beer as their wages will permit,
are devoted to bawdy jokes, and use probably the foulest language in the
world. They have to satisfy these tastes in the face of astonishing, hypocritical
laws (licensing laws, lottery acts, etc. etc.) which are designed to interfere
with everybody but in practice allow everything to happen. Also, the common
people are without definite religious belief, and have been so for centuries.
The Anglican Church never had a real hold on them, it was simply a preserve
of the landed gentry, and the Nonconformist sects only influenced minorities.
And yet they have retained a deep tinge of Christian feeling, while almost
forgetting the name of Christ. The power-worship which is the new religion
of Europe, and which has infected the English intelligentsia, has never
touched the common people. They have never caught up with power politics.
The Īrealismā which is preached in Japanese and Italian newspapers would
horrify them. One can learn a good deal about the spirit of England from
the comic coloured postcards that you see in the windows of cheap stationersā
shops. These things are a sort of diary upon which the English people have
unconsciously recorded themselves. Their old-fashioned outlook, their graded
snobberies, their mixture of bawdiness and hypocrisy, their extreme gentleness,
their deeply moral attitude to life, are all mirrored there.
The gentleness of the English civilization is perhaps its most marked
characteristic. You notice it the instant you set foot on English soil.
It is a land where the bus conductors are good-tempered and the policemen
carry no revolvers. In no country inhabited by white men is it easier to
shove people off the pavement. And with this goes something that is always
written off by European observers as Īdecadenceā or hypocrisy, the English
hatred of war and militarism. It is rooted deep in history, and it is strong
in the lower-middle class as well as the working class. Successive wars
have shaken it but not destroyed it. Well within living memory it was common
for Īthe redcoatsā to be booed at in the streets and for the landlords
of respectable public houses to refuse to allow soldiers on the premises.
In peace time, even when there are two million unemployed, it is difficult
to fill the ranks of the tiny standing army, which is officered by the
country gentry and a specialized stratum of the middle class, and manned
by farm labourers and slum proletarians. The mass of the people are without
military knowledge or tradition, and their attitude towards war is invariably
defensive. No politician could rise to power by promising them conquests
or military Īgloryā, no Hymn of Hate has ever made any appeal to them.
In the last war the songs which the soldiers made up and sang of their
own accord were not vengeful but humorous and mock-defeatist [Note
1] The only enemy they ever named was the sergeant-major.
In England all the boasting and flag-wagging, the ĪRule Britanniaā stuff,
is done by small minorities. The patriotism of the common people is not
vocal or even conscious. They do not retain among their historical memories
the name of a single military victory. English literature, like other literatures,
is full of battle-poems, but it is worth noticing that the ones that have
won for themselves a kind of popularity are always a tale of disasters
and retreats. There is no popular poem about Trafalgar or Waterloo, for
instance. Sir John Mooreās army at Corunna, fighting a desperate rearguard
action before escaping overseas (just like Dunkirk!) has more appeal than
a brilliant victory. The most stirring battle-poem in English is about
a brigade of cavalry which charged in the wrong direction. And of the last
war, the four names which have really engraved themselves on the popular
memory are Mons, Ypres, Gallipoli and Passchendaele, every time a disaster.
The names of the great battles that finally broke the German armies are
simply unknown to the general public.
The reason why the English anti-militarism disgusts foreign observers
is that it ignores the existence of the British Empire. It looks like sheer
hypocrisy. After all, the English have absorbed a quarter of the earth
and held on to it by means of a huge navy. How dare they then turn round
and say that war is wicked?
It is quite true that the English are hypocritical about their Empire.
In the working class this hypocrisy takes the form of not knowing that
the Empire exists. But their dislike of standing armies is a perfectly
sound instinct. A navy employs comparatively few people, and it is an external
weapon which cannot affect home politics directly. Military dictatorships
exist everywhere, but there is no such thing as a naval dictatorship. What
English people of nearly all classes loathe from the bottom of their hearts
is the swaggering officer type, the jingle of spurs and the crash of boots.
Decades before Hitler was ever heard of, the word ĪPrussianā had much the
same significance in England as ĪNaziā has today. So deep does this feeling
go that for a hundred years past the officers of the British army, in peace
time, have always worn civilian clothes when off duty.
One rapid but fairly sure guide to the social atmosphere of a country
is the parade-step of its army. A military parade is really a kind of ritual
dance, something like a ballet, expressing a certain philosophy of life.
The goose-step, for instance, is one of the most horrible sights in the
world, far more terrifying than a dive-bomber. It is simply an affirmation
of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is
the vision of a boot crashing down on a face. Its ugliness is part of its
essence, for what it is saying is ĪYes, I am ugly, and you darenāt
laugh at meā, like the bully who makes faces at his victim. Why is the
goose-step not used in England? There are, heaven knows, plenty of army
officers who would be only too glad to introduce some such thing. It is
not used because the people in the street would laugh. Beyond a certain
point, military display is only possible in countries where the common
people dare not laugh at the army. The Italians adopted the goose-step
at about the time when Italy passed definitely under German control, and,
as one would expect, they do it less well than the Germans. The Vichy government,
if it survives, is bound to introduce a stiffer parade-ground discipline
into what is left of the French army. In the British army the drill is
rigid and complicated, full of memories of the eighteenth century, but
without definite swagger; the march is merely a formalized walk. It belongs
to a society which is ruled by the sword, no doubt, but a sword which must
never be taken out of the scabbard.
And yet the gentleness of English civilization is mixed up with barbarities
and anachronisms. Our criminal law is as out-of-date as the muskets in
the Tower. Over against the Nazi Storm Trooper you have got to set that
typically English figure, the hanging judge, some gouty old bully with
his mind rooted in the nineteenth century, handing out savage sentences.
In England people are still hanged by the neck and flogged with the cat
oā nine tails. Both of these punishments are obscene as well as cruel,
but there has never been any genuinely popular outcry against them. People
accept them (and Dartmoor, and Borstal) almost as they accept the weather.
They are part of Īthe lawā, which is assumed to be unalterable.
Here one comes upon an all-important English trait: the respect for
constitutionalism and legality, the belief in Īthe lawā as something above
the State and above the individual, something which is cruel and stupid,
of course, but at any rate incorruptible.
It is not that anyone imagines the law to be just. Everyone knows that
there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But no one accepts
the implications of this, everyone takes it for granted that the law, such
as it is, will be respected, and feels a sense of outrage when it is not.
Remarks like ĪThey canāt run me in; I havenāt done anything wrongā, or
āThey canāt do that; itās against the lawā, are part of the atmosphere
of England. The professed enemies of society have this feeling as strongly
as anyone else. One sees it in prison-books like Wilfred Macartneyās Walls
Have Mouths or Jim Phelanās Jail Journey, in the solemn idiocies
that take place at the trials of conscientious objectors, in letters to
the papers from eminent Marxist professors, pointing out that this or that
is a Īmiscarriage of British justiceā. Everyone believes in his heart that
the law can be, ought to be, and, on the whole, will be impartially administered.
The totalitarian idea that there is no such thing as law, there is only
power, has never taken root. Even the intelligentsia have only accepted
it in theory.
An illusion can become a half-truth, a mask can alter the expression
of a face. The familiar arguments to the effect that democracy is Ījust
the same asā or Ījust as bad asā totalitarianism never take account of
this fact. All such arguments boil down to saying that half a loaf is the
same as no bread. In England such concepts as justice, liberty and objective
truth are still believed in. They may be illusions, but they are very powerful
illusions. The belief in them influences conduct, national life is different
because of them. In proof of which, look about you. Where are the rubber
truncheons, where is the castor oil? The sword is still in the scabbard,
and while it stays there corruption cannot go beyond a certain point. The
English electoral system, for instance, is an all but open fraud. In a
dozen obvious ways it is gerrymandered in the interest of the moneyed class.
But until some deep change has occurred in the public mind, it cannot become
completely
corrupt. You do not arrive at the polling booth to find men with revolvers
telling you which way to vote, nor are the votes miscounted, nor is there
any direct bribery. Even hypocrisy is a powerful safeguard. The hanging
judge, that evil old man in scarlet robe and horse-hair wig, whom nothing
short of dynamite will ever teach what century he is living in, but who
will at any rate interpret the law according to the books and will in no
circumstances take a money bribe, is one of the symbolic figures of England.
He is a symbol of the strange mixture of reality and illusion, democracy
and privilege, humbug and decency, the subtle network of compromises, by
which the nation keeps itself in its familiar shape.
III
I have spoken all the while of Īthe nationā, ĪEnglandā, ĪBritainā, as
though forty-five million souls could somehow be treated as a unit. But
is not England notoriously two nations, the rich and the poor? Dare one
pretend that there is anything in common between people with £100,000
a year and people with £1 a week? And even Welsh and Scottish readers
are likely to have been offended because I have used the word ĪEnglandā
oftener than ĪBritainā, as though the whole population dwelt in London
and the Home Counties and neither north nor west possessed a culture of
its own.
One gets a better view of this question if one considers the minor point
first. It is quite true that the so-called races of Britain feel themselves
to be very different from one another. A Scotsman, for instance, does not
thank you if you call him an Englishman. You can see the hesitation we
feel on this point by the fact that we call our islands by no less than
six different names, England, Britain, Great Britain, the British Isles,
the United Kingdom and, in very exalted moments, Albion. Even the differences
between north and south England loom large in our own eyes. But somehow
these differences fade away the moment that any two Britons are confronted
by a European. It is very rare to meet a foreigner, other than an American,
who can distinguish between English and Scots or even English and Irish.
To a Frenchman, the Breton and the Auvergnat seem very different beings,
and the accent of Marseilles is a stock joke in Paris. Yet we speak of
ĪFranceā and Īthe Frenchā, recognizing France as an entity, a single civilization,
which in fact it is. So also with ourselves. Looked at from the outsider
even the cockney and the Yorkshireman have a strong family resemblance.
And even the distinction between rich and poor dwindles somewhat when
one regards the nation from the outside. There is no question about the
inequality of wealth in England. It is grosser than in any European country,
and you have only to look down the nearest street to see it. Economically,
England is certainly two nations, if not three or four. But at the same
time the vast majority of the people feel themselves to be a single
nation and are conscious of resembling one another more than they resemble
foreigners. Patriotism is usually stronger than class-hatred, and always
stronger than any kind of internationalism. Except for a brief moment in
1920 (the ĪHands off Russiaā movement) the British working class have never
thought or acted internationally. For two and a half years they watched
their comrades in Spain slowly strangled, and never aided them by even
a single strike. [Note
2] But when their own country (the country of Lord Nuffield and Mr
Montagu Norman) was in danger, their attitude was very different. At the
moment when it seemed likely that England might be invaded, Anthony Eden
appealed over the radio for Local Defence Volunteers. He got a quarter
of a million men in the first twenty-four hours, and another million in
the subsequent month. One has only to compare these figures with, for instance,
the number of conscientious objectors to see how vast is the strength of
traditional loyalties compared with new ones.
In England patriotism takes different forms in different classes, but
it runs like a connecting thread through nearly all of them. Only the Europeanized
intelligentsia are really immune to it. As a positive emotion it is stronger
in the middle class than in the upper class - the cheap public schools,
for instance, are more given to patriotic demonstrations than the expensive
ones - but the number of definitely treacherous rich men, the Laval-Quisling
type, is probably very small. In the working class patriotism is profound,
but it is unconscious. The working manās heart does not leap when he sees
a Union Jack. But the famous Īinsularityā and Īxenophobiaā of the English
is far stronger in the working class than in the bourgeoisie. In all countries
the poor are more national than the rich, but the English working class
are outstanding in their abhorrence of foreign habits. Even when they are
obliged to live abroad for years they refuse either to accustom themselves
to foreign food or to learn foreign languages. Nearly every Englishman
of working-class origin considers it effeminate to pronounce a foreign
word correctly. During the war of 1914-18 the English working class were
in contact with foreigners to an extent that is rarely possible. The sole
result was that they brought back a hatred of all Europeans, except the
Germans, whose courage they admired. In four years on French soil they
did not even acquire a liking for wine. The insularity of the English,
their refusal to take foreigners seriously, is a folly that has to be paid
for very heavily from time to time. But it plays its part in the English
mystique, and the intellectuals who have tried to break it down have generally
done more harm than good. At bottom it is the same quality in the English
character that repels the tourist and keeps out the invader.
Here one comes back to two English characteristics that I pointed out,
seemingly at random, at the beginning of the last chapter. One is the lack
of artistic ability. This is perhaps another way of saying that the English
are outside the European culture. For there is one art in which they have
shown plenty of talent, namely literature. But this is also the only art
that cannot cross frontiers. Literature, especially poetry, and lyric poetry
most of all, is a kind of family joke, with little or no value outside
its own language-group. Except for Shakespeare, the best English poets
are barely known in Europe, even as names. The only poets who are widely
read are Byron, who is admired for the wrong reasons, and Oscar Wilde,
who is pitied as a victim of English hypocrisy. And linked up with this,
though not very obviously, is the lack of philosophical faculty, the absence
in nearly all Englishmen of any need for an ordered system of thought or
even for the use of logic.
Up to a point, the sense of national unity is a substitute for a Īworld-viewā.
Just because patriotism is all but universal and not even the rich are
uninfluenced by it, there can be moments when the whole nation suddenly
swings together and does the same thing, like a herd of cattle facing a
wolf. There was such a moment, unmistakably, at the time of the disaster
in France. After eight months of vaguely wondering what the war was about,
the people suddenly knew what they had got to do: first, to get the army
away from Dunkirk, and secondly to prevent invasion. It was like the awakening
of a giant. Quick! Danger! The Philistines be upon thee, Samson! And then
the swift unanimous action - and, then, alas, the prompt relapse into sleep.
In a divided nation that would have been exactly the moment for a big peace
movement to arise. But does this mean that the instinct of the English
will always tell them to do the right thing? Not at all, merely that it
will tell them to do the same thing. In the 1931 General Election, for
instance, we all did the wrong thing in perfect unison. We were as single-minded
as the Gadarene swine. But I honestly doubt whether we can say that we
were shoved down the slope against our will.
It follows that British democracy is less of a fraud than it sometimes
appears. A foreign observer sees only the huge inequality of wealth, the
unfair electoral system, the governing-class control over the press, the
radio and education, and concludes that democracy is simply a polite name
for dictatorship. But this ignores the considerable agreement that does
unfortunately exist between the leaders and the led. However much one may
hate to admit it, it is almost certain that between 1931 and 1940 the National
Government represented the will of the mass of the people. It tolerated
slums, unemployment and a cowardly foreign policy. Yes, but so did public
opinion. It was a stagnant period, and its natural leaders were mediocrities.
In spite of the campaigns of a few thousand left-wingers, it is fairly
certain that the bulk of the English people were behind Chamberlainās foreign
policy. More, it is fairly certain that the same struggle was going on
in Chamberlainās mind as in the minds of ordinary people. His opponents
professed to see in him a dark and wily schemer, plotting to sell England
to Hitler, but it is far likelier that he was merely a stupid old man doing
his best according to his very dim lights. It is difficult otherwise to
explain the contradictions of his policy, his failure to grasp any of the
courses that were open to him. Like the mass of the people, he did not
want to pay the price either of peace or of war. And public opinion was
behind him all the while, in policies that were completely incompatible
with one another. It was behind him when he went to Munich, when he tried
to come to an understanding with Russia, when he gave the guarantee to
Poland, when he honoured it, and when he prosecuted the war half-heartedly.
Only when the results of his policy became apparent did it turn against
him; which is to say that it turned against its own lethargy of the past
seven years. Thereupon the people picked a leader nearer to their mood,
Churchill, who was at any rate able to grasp that wars are not won without
fighting. Later, perhaps, they will pick another leader who can grasp that
only Socialist nations can fight effectively.
Do I mean by all this that England is a genuine democracy? No, not even
a reader of the Daily Telegraph could quite swallow that.
England is the most class-ridden country under the sun. It is a land
of snobbery and privilege, ruled largely by the old and silly. But in any
calculation about it one has got to take into account its emotional unity,
the tendency of nearly all its inhabitants to feel alike and act together
in moments of supreme crisis. It is the only great country in Europe that
is not obliged to drive hundreds of thousands of its nationals into exile
or the concentration camp. At this moment, after a year of war, newspapers
and pamphlets abusing the Government, praising the enemy and clamouring
for surrender are being sold on the streets, almost without interference.
And this is less from a respect for freedom of speech than from a simple
perception that these things donāt matter. It is safe to let a paper like
Peace
News be sold, because it is certain that ninety-five per cent of the
population will never want to read it. The nation is bound together by
an invisible chain. At any normal time the ruling class will rob, mismanage,
sabotage, lead us into the muck; but let popular opinion really make itself
heard, let them get a tug from below that they cannot avoid feeling, and
it is difficult for them not to respond. The left-wing writers who denounce
the whole of the ruling class as Īpro-Fascistā are grossly over-simplifying.
Even among the inner clique of politicians who brought us to our present
pass, it is doubtful whether there were any conscious traitors.
The corruption that happens in England is seldom of that kind. Nearly always
it is more in the nature of self-deception, of the right hand not knowing
what the left hand doeth. And being unconscious, it is limited. One sees
this at its most obvious in the English press. Is the English press honest
or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that
matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect
censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England
that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the
Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be
bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese. Public life in England
has never been openly scandalous. It has not reached the pitch of
disintegration at which humbug can be dropped.
England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeareās much-quoted message,
nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles
a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in
it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations
who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon,
and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family
income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most
of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts.
Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories,
and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the
wrong members in control - that, perhaps, is as near as one can come to
describing England in a phrase.
IV
Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields
of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost
there. One of the dominant facts in English life during the past three
quarters of a century has been the decay of ability in the ruling class.
In the years between 1920 and 1940 it was happening with the speed of
a chemical reaction. Yet at the moment of writing it is still possible
to speak of a ruling class. Like the knife which has had two new blades
and three new handles, the upper fringe of English society is still almost
what it was in the mid nineteenth century. After 1832 the old land-owning
aristocracy steadily lost power, but instead of disappearing or becoming
a fossil they simply intermarried with the merchants, manufacturers and
financiers who had replaced them, and soon turned them into accurate copies
of themselves. The wealthy shipowner or cotton-miller set up for himself
an alibi as a country gentleman, while his sons learned the right mannerisms
at public schools which had been designed for just that purpose. England
was ruled by an aristocracy constantly recruited from parvenus. And considering
what energy the self-made men possessed, and considering that they were
buying their way into a class which at any rate had a tradition of public
service, one might have expected that able rulers could be produced in
some such way.
And yet somehow the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring,
finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like
Eden or Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for Baldwin,
one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply
a hole in the air. The mishandling of Englandās domestic problems during
the nineteen-twenties had been bad enough, but British foreign policy between
1931 and 1939 is one of the wonders of the world. Why? What had happened?
What was it that at every decisive moment made every British statesman
do the wrong thing with so unerring an instinct?
The underlying fact was that the whole position of the moneyed class
had long ceased to be justifiable. There they sat, at the centre of a vast
empire and a world-wide financial network, drawing interest and profits
and spending them - on what? It was fair to say that life within the British
Empire was in many ways better than life outside it. Still, the Empire
was underdeveloped, India slept in the Middle Ages, the Dominions lay empty,
with foreigners jealously barred out, and even England was full of slums
and unemployment. Only half a million people, the people in the country
houses, definitely benefited from the existing system. Moreover, the tendency
of small businesses to merge together into large ones robbed more and more
of the moneyed class of their function and turned them into mere owners,
their work being done for them by salaried managers and technicians. For
long past there had been in England an entirely functionless class, living
on money that was invested they hardly knew where, the āidle richā, the
people whose photographs you can look at in the Tatler and the Bystander,
always supposing that you want to. The existence of these people was by
any standard unjustifiable. They were simply parasites, less useful to
society than his fleas are to a dog.
By 1920 there were many people who were aware of all this. By 1930 millions
were aware of it. But the British ruling class obviously could not admit
to themselves that their usefulness was at an end. Had they done that they
would have had to abdicate. For it was not possible for them to turn themselves
into mere bandits, like the American millionaires, consciously clinging
to unjust privileges and beating down opposition by bribery and tear-gas
bombs. After all, they belonged to a class with a certain tradition, they
had been to public schools where the duty of dying for your country, if
necessary, is laid down as the first and greatest of the Commandments.
They had to feel themselves true patriots, even while they plundered
their countrymen. Clearly there was only one escape for them - into stupidity.
They could keep society in its existing shape only by being unable
to grasp that any improvement was possible. Difficult though this was,
they achieved it, largely by fixing their eyes on the past and refusing
to notice the changes that were going on round them.
There is much in England that this explains. It explains the decay of
country life, due to the keeping-up of a sham feudalism which drives the
more spirited workers off the land. It explains the immobility of the public
schools, which have barely altered since the eighties of the last century.
It explains the military incompetence which has again and again startled
the world. Since the fifties every war in which England has engaged has
started off with a series of disasters, after which the situation has been
saved by people comparatively low in the social scale. The higher commanders,
drawn from the aristocracy, could never prepare for modern war, because
in order to do so they would have had to admit to themselves that the world
was changing. They have always clung to obsolete methods and weapons, because
they inevitably saw each war as a repetition of the last. Before the Boer
War they prepared for the Zulu War, before the 1914 for the Boer War, and
before the present war for 1914. Even at this moment hundreds of thousands
of men in England are being trained with the bayonet, a weapon entirely
useless except for opening tins. It is worth noticing that the navy and,
latterly, the air force, have always been more efficient than the regular
army. But the navy is only partially, and the air force hardly at all,
within the ruling-class orbit.
It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods
of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly
tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at
any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire
was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its
vast extent, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men
than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. As people to live
under, and looking at them merely from a liberal, negative standpoint,
the British ruling class had their points. They were preferable to the
truly modern men, the Nazis and Fascists. But it had long been obvious
that they would be helpless against any serious attack from the outside.
They could not struggle against Nazism or Fascism, because they could
not understand them. Neither could they have struggled against Communism,
if Communism had been a serious force in western Europe. To understand
Fascism they would have had to study the theory of Socialism, which would
have forced them to realize that the economic system by which they lived
was unjust, inefficient and out-of-date. But it was exactly this fact that
they had trained themselves never to face. They dealt with Fascism as the
cavalry generals of 1914 dealt with the machine-guns - by ignoring it.
After years of aggression and massacres, they had grasped only one fact,
that Hitler and Mussolini were hostile to Communism. Therefore, it was
argued, they must be friendly to the British dividend-drawer. Hence
the truly frightening spectacle of Conservative M.P.s wildly cheering the
news that British ships, bringing food to the Spanish Republican government,
had been bombed by Italian aeroplanes. Even when they had begun to grasp
that Fascism was dangerous, its essentially revolutionary nature, the huge
military effort it was capable of making, the sort of tactics it would
use, were quite beyond their comprehension. At the time of the Spanish
Civil War, anyone with as much political knowledge as can be acquired from
a sixpenny pamphlet on Socialism knew that, if Franco won, the result would
be strategically disastrous for England; and yet generals and admirals
who had given their lives to the study of war were unable to grasp this
fact. This vein of political ignorance runs right through English official
life, through Cabinet ministers, ambassadors, consuls, judges, magistrates,
policemen. The policeman who arrests the Īredā does not understand the
theories the Īredā is preaching; if he did his own position as bodyguard
of the moneyed class might seem less pleasant to him. There is reason to
think that even military espionage is hopelessly hampered by ignorance
of the new economic doctrines and the ramifications of the underground
parties.
The British ruling class were not altogether wrong in thinking that
Fascism was on their side. It is a fact that any rich man, unless he is
a Jew, has less to fear from Fascism than from either Communism or democratic
Socialism. One ought never to forget this, for nearly the whole of German
and Italian propaganda is designed to cover it up. The natural instinct
of men like Simon, Hoare, Chamberlain etc. was to come to an agreement
with Hitler. But - and here the peculiar feature of English life that I
have spoken of, the deep sense of national solidarity, comes in - they
could only do so by breaking up the Empire and selling their own people
into semi-slavery. A truly corrupt class would have done this without hesitation,
as in France. But things had not gone that distance in England. Politicians
who would make cringing speeches about Īthe duty of loyalty to our conquerorsā
are hardly to be found in English public life. Tossed to and fro between
their incomes and their principles, it was impossible that men like Chamberlain
should do anything but make the worst of both worlds.
One thing that has always shown that the English ruling class are morally
fairly sound, is that in time of war they are ready enough to get themselves
killed. Several dukes, earls and what nots were killed in the recent campaign
in Flanders. That could not happen if these people were the cynical scoundrels
that they are sometimes declared to be. It is important not to misunderstand
their motives, or one cannot predict their actions. What is to be expected
of them is not treachery, or physical cowardice, but stupidity, unconscious
sabotage, an infallible instinct for doing the wrong thing. They are not
wicked, or not altogether wicked; they are merely unteachable. Only when
their money and power are gone will the younger among them begin to grasp
what century they are living in.
V
The stagnation of the Empire in the between-war years affected everyone
in England, but it had an especially direct effect upon two important sub-sections
of the middle class. One was the military and imperialist middle class,
generally nicknamed the Blimps, and the other the left-wing intelligentsia.
These two seemingly hostile types, symbolic opposites - the half-pay colonel
with his bull neck and diminutive brain, like a dinosaur, the highbrow
with his domed forehead and stalk-like neck - are mentally linked together
and constantly interact upon one another; in any case they are born to
a considerable extent into the same families.
Thirty years ago the Blimp class was already losing its vitality. The
middle-class families celebrated by Kipling, the prolific lowbrow families
whose sons officered the army and navy and swarmed over all the waste places
of the earth from the Yukon to the Irrawaddy, were dwindling before 1914.
The thing that had killed them was the telegraph. In a narrowing world,
more and more governed from Whitehall, there was every year less room for
individual initiative. Men like Clive, Nelson, Nicholson, Gordon would
find no place for themselves in the modern British Empire. By 1920 nearly
every inch of the colonial empire was in the grip of Whitehall. Well-meaning,
over-civilized men, in dark suits and black felt hats, with neatly rolled
umbrellas crooked over the left forearm, were imposing their constipated
view of life on Malaya and Nigeria, Mombasa and Mandalay. The one-time
empire builders were reduced to the status of clerks, buried deeper and
deeper under mounds of paper and red tape. In the early twenties one could
see, all over the Empire, the older officials, who had known more spacious
days, writhing impotently under the changes that were happening. From that
time onwards it has been next door to impossible to induce young men of
spirit to take any part in imperial administration. And what was true of
the official world was true also of the commercial. The great monopoly
companies swallowed up hosts of petty traders. Instead of going out to
trade adventurously in the Indies one went to an office stool in Bombay
or Singapore. And life in Bombay or Singapore was actually duller and safer
than life in London. Imperialist sentiment remained strong in the middle
class, chiefly owing to family tradition, but the job of administering
the Empire had ceased to appeal. Few able men went east of Suez if there
was any way of avoiding it.
But the general weakening of imperialism, and to some extent of the
whole British morale, that took place during the nineteen-thirties, was
partly the work of the left-wing intelligentsia, itself a kind of growth
that had sprouted from the stagnation of the Empire.
It should be noted that there is now no intelligentsia that is not in
some sense Īleftā. Perhaps the last right-wing intellectual was T. E. Lawrence.
Since about 1930 everyone describable as an Īintellectualā has lived in
a state of chronic discontent with the existing order. Necessarily so,
because society as it was constituted had no room for him. In an Empire
that was simply stagnant, neither being developed nor falling to pieces,
and in an England ruled by people whose chief asset was their stupidity,
to be Īcleverā was to be suspect. If you had the kind of brain that could
understand the poems of T. S. Eliot or the theories of Karl Marx, the higher-ups
would see to it that you were kept out of any important job. The intellectuals
could find a function for themselves only in the literary reviews and the
left-wing political parties.
The mentality of the English left-wing intelligentsia can be studied
in half a dozen weekly and monthly papers. The immediately striking thing
about all these papers is their generally negative, querulous attitude,
their complete lack at all times of any constructive suggestion. There
is little in them except the irresponsible carping of people who have never
been and never expect to be in a position of power. Another marked characteristic
is the emotional shallowness of people who live in a world of ideas and
have little contact with physical reality. Many intellectuals of the Left
were flabbily pacifist up to 1935, shrieked for war against Germany in
the years 1935-9, and then promptly cooled off when the war started. It
is broadly though not precisely true that the people who were most Īanti-Fascistā
during the Spanish Civil War are most defeatist now. And underlying this
is the really important fact about so many of the English intelligentsia
- their severance from the common culture of the country.
In intention, at any rate, the English intelligentsia are Europeanized.
They take their cookery from Paris and their opinions from Moscow. In the
general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident
thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals
are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always
felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman
and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution, from horse
racing to suet puddings. It is a strange fact, but it is unquestionably
true that almost any English intellectual would feel more ashamed of standing
to attention during ĪGod save the Kingā than of stealing from a poor box.
All through the critical years many left-wingers were chipping away at
English morale, trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily
pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. It
is questionable how much effect this had, but it certainly had some. If
the English people suffered for several years a real weakening of morale,
so that the Fascist nations judged that they were Īdecadentā and that it
was safe to plunge into war, the intellectual sabotage from the Left was
partly responsible. Both the New Statesman and the News Chronicle
cried out against the Munich settlement, but even they had done something
to make it possible. Ten years of systematic Blimp-baiting affected even
the Blimps themselves and made it harder than it had been before to get
intelligent young men to enter the armed forces. Given the stagnation of
the Empire, the military middle class must have decayed in any case, but
the spread of a shallow Leftism hastened the process.
It is clear that the special position of the English intellectuals during
the past ten years, as purely negative creatures, mere anti-Blimps,
was a by-product of ruling-class stupidity. Society could not use them,
and they had not got it in them to see that devotion to oneās country implies
Īfor better, for worseā. Both Blimps and highbrows took for granted, as
though it were a law of nature, the divorce between patriotism and intelligence.
If you were a patriot you read Blackwoodās Magazine and publicly
thanked God that you were Īnot brainyā. If you were an intellectual you
sniggered at the Union Jack and regarded physical courage as barbarous.
It is obvious that this preposterous convention cannot continue. The Bloomsbury
highbrow, with his mechanical snigger, is as out-of-date as the cavalry
colonel. A modern nation cannot afford either of them. Patriotism and intelligence
will have to come together again. It is the fact that we are fighting a
war, and a very peculiar kind of war, that may make this possible.
VI
One of the most important developments in England during the past twenty
years has been the upward and downward extension of the middle class. It
has happened on such a scale as to make the old classification of society
into capitalists, proletarians and petit bourgeois (small property-owners)
almost obsolete.
England is a country in which property and financial power are concentrated
in very few hands. Few people in modern England own anything at
all, except clothes, furniture and possibly a house. The peasantry have
long since disappeared, the independent shopkeeper is being destroyed,
the small businessman is diminishing in numbers. But at the same time modern
industry is so complicated that it cannot get along without great numbers
of managers, salesmen, engineers, chemists and technicians of all kinds,
drawing fairly large salaries. And these in turn call into being a professional
class of doctors, lawyers, teachers, artists, etc. etc. The tendency of
advanced capitalism has therefore been to enlarge the middle class and
not to wipe it out as it once seemed likely to do.
But much more important than this is the spread of middle-class ideas
and habits among the working class. The British working class are now better
off in almost all ways than they were thirty years ago. This is partly
due to the efforts of the trade unions, but partly to the mere advance
of physical science. It is not always realized that within rather narrow
limits the standard of life of a country can rise without a corresponding
rise in real wages. Up to a point, civilization can lift itself up by its
boot-tags. However unjustly society is organized, certain technical advances
are bound to benefit the whole community, because certain kinds of goods
are necessarily held in common. A millionaire cannot, for example, light
the streets for himself while darkening them for other people. Nearly all
citizens of civilized countries now enjoy the use of good roads, germ-free
water, police protection, free libraries and probably free education of
a kind. Public education in England has been meanly starved of money, but
it has nevertheless improved, largely owing to the devoted efforts of the
teachers, and the habit of reading has become enormously more widespread.
To an increasing extent the rich and the poor read the same books, and
they also see the same films and listen to the same radio programmes. And
the differences in their way of life have been diminished by the mass-production
of cheap clothes and improvements in housing. So far as outward appearance
goes, the clothes of rich and poor, especially in the case of women, differ
far less than they did thirty or even fifteen years ago. As to housing,
England still has slums which are a blot on civilization, but much building
has been done during the past ten years, largely by the local authorities.
The modern council house, with its bathroom and electric light, is smaller
than the stockbrokerās villa, but it is recognizably the same kind of house,
which the farm labourerās cottage is not. A person who has grown up in
a council housing estate is likely to be - indeed, visibly is -
more middle class in outlook than a person who has grown up in a slum.
The effect of all this is a general softening of manners. It is enhanced
by the fact that modern industrial methods tend always to demand less muscular
effort and therefore to leave people with more energy when their dayās
work is done. Many workers in the light industries are less truly manual
labourers than is a doctor or a grocer. In tastes, habits, manners and
outlook the working class and the middle class are drawing together. The
unjust distinctions remain, but the real differences diminish. The old-style
Īproletarianā - collarless, unshaven and with muscles warped by heavy labour
- still exists, but he is constantly decreasing in numbers; he only predominates
in the heavy-industry areas of the north of England.
After 1918 there began to appear something that had never existed in
England before: people of indeterminate social class. In 1910 every human
being in these islands could be Īplacedā in an instant by his clothes,
manners and accent. That is no longer the case. Above all, it is not the
case in the new townships that have developed as a result of cheap motor
cars and the southward shift of industry. The place to look for the germs
of the future England is in light-industry areas and along the arterial
roads. In Slough, Dagenham, Barnet, Letchworth, Hayes - everywhere, indeed,
on the outskirts of great towns - the old pattern is gradually changing
into something new. In those vast new wildernesses of glass and brick the
sharp distinctions of the older kind of town, with its slums and mansions,
or of the country, with its manor-houses and squalid cottages, no longer
exist. There are wide gradations of income, but it is the same kind of
life that is being lived at different levels, in labour-saving flats or
council houses, along the concrete roads and in the naked democracy of
the swimming-pools. It is a rather restless, cultureless life, centring
round tinned food, Picture Post, the radio and the internal combustion
engine. It is a civilization in which children grow up with an intimate
knowledge of magnetoes and in complete ignorance of the Bible. To that
civilization belong the people who are most at home in and most definitely
of
the modern world, the technicians and the higher-paid skilled workers,
the airmen and their mechanics, the radio experts, film producers, popular
journalists and industrial chemists. They are the indeterminate stratum
at which the older class distinctions are beginning to break down.
This war, unless we are defeated, will wipe out most of the existing
class privileges. There are every day fewer people who wish them to continue.
Nor need we fear that as the pattern changes life in England will lose
its peculiar flavour. The new red cities of Greater London are crude enough,
but these things are only the rash that accompanies a change. In whatever
shape England emerges from the war it will be deeply tinged with the characteristics
that I have spoken of earlier. The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianized
or Germanized will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the
thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will
remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some
very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy,
to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down,
the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will
be turned into childrenās holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will
be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal
stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having
the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.
PART II: SHOPKEEPERS AT WAR
I
I began this book to the tune of German bombs, and I begin this second
chapter in the added racket of the barrage. The yellow gun-flashes are
lighting the sky, the splinters are rattling on the housetops, and London
Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down. Anyone able to read
a map knows that we are in deadly danger. I do not mean that we are beaten
or need be beaten. Almost certainly the outcome depends on our own will.
But at this moment we are in the soup, full fathom five, and we have been
brought there by follies which we are still committing and which will drown
us altogether if we do not mend our ways quickly.
What this war has demonstrated is that private capitalism - that is,
an economic system in which land, factories, mines and transport are owned
privately and operated solely for profit - does not work. It cannot
deliver the goods. This fact had been known to millions of people for years
past, but nothing ever came of it, because there was no real urge from
below to alter the system, and those at the top had trained themselves
to be impenetrably stupid on just this point. Argument and propaganda got
one nowhere. The lords of property simply sat on their bottoms and proclaimed
that all was for the best. Hitlerās conquest of Europe, however, was a
physical
debunking of capitalism. War, for all its evil, is at any rate an unanswerable
test of strength, like a try-your-grip machine. Great strength returns
the penny, and there is no way of faking the result.
When the nautical screw was first invented, there was a controversy
that lasted for years as to whether screw-steamers or paddle-steamers were
better. The paddle-steamers, like all obsolete things, had their champions,
who supported them by ingenious arguments. Finally, however, a distinguished
admiral tied a screw-steamer and a paddle-steamer of equal horsepower stern
to stern and set their engines running. That settled the question once
and for all. And it was something similar that happened on the fields of
Norway and of Flanders. Once and for all it was proved that a planned economy
is stronger than a planless one. But it is necessary here to give some
kind of definition to those much-abused words, Socialism and Fascism.
Socialism is usually defined as Īcommon ownership of the means of production.ā
Crudely: the State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and
everyone is a State employee. This does not mean that people are
stripped of private possessions such as clothes and furniture, but it
does
mean that all productive goods, such as land, mines, ships and machinery,
are the property of the State. The State is the sole large-scale producer.
It is not certain that Socialism is in all ways superior to capitalism,
but it is certain that, unlike capitalism, it can solve the problems of
production and consumption. At normal times a capitalist economy can never
consume all that it produces, so that there is always a wasted surplus
(wheat burned in furnaces, herrings dumped back into the sea etc. etc.)
and always unemployment. In time of war, on the other hand, it has difficulty
in producing all that it needs, because nothing is produced unless someone
sees his way to making a profit out of it.
In a Socialist economy these problems do not exist. The State simply
calculates what goods will be needed and does its best to produce them.
Production is only limited by the amount of labour and raw materials. Money,
for internal purposes, ceases to be a mysterious all-powerful thing and
becomes a sort of coupon or ration-ticket, issued in sufficient quantities
to buy up such consumption goods as may be available at the moment.
However, it has become clear in the last few years that Īcommon ownership
of the means of productionā is not in itself a sufficient definition of
Socialism. One must also add the following: approximate equality of incomes
(it need be no more than approximate), political democracy, and abolition
of all hereditary privilege, especially in education. These are simply
the necessary safeguards against the reappearance of a class-system. Centralized
ownership has very little meaning unless the mass of the people are living
roughly upon an equal level, and have some kind of control over the government.
ĪThe Stateā may come to mean no more than a self-elected political party,
and oligarchy and privilege can return, based on power rather than on money.
But what then is Fascism?
Fascism, at any rate the German version, is a form of capitalism that
borrows from Socialism just such features as will make it efficient for
war purposes. Internally, Germany has a good deal in common with a Socialist
state. Ownership has never been abolished, there are still capitalists
and workers, and - this is the important point, and the real reason why
rich men all over the world tend to sympathize with Fascism - generally
speaking the same people are capitalists and the same people workers as
before the Nazi revolution. But at the same time the State, which is simply
the Nazi Party, is in control of everything. It controls investment, raw
materials, rates of interest, working hours, wages. The factory owner still
owns his factory, but he is for practical purposes reduced to the status
of a manager. Everyone is in effect a State employee, though the salaries
vary very greatly. The mere efficiency of such a system, the elimination
of waste and obstruction, is obvious. In seven years it has built up the
most powerful war machine the world has ever seen.
But the idea underlying Fascism is irreconcilably different from that
which underlies Socialism. Socialism aims, ultimately, at a world-state
of free and equal human beings. It takes the equality of human rights for
granted. Nazism assumes just the opposite. The driving force behind the
Nazi movement is the belief in human inequality, the superiority
of Germans to all other races, the right of Germany to rule the world.
Outside the German Reich it does not recognize any obligations. Eminent
Nazi professors have Īprovedā over and over again that only nordic man
is fully human, have even mooted the idea that non-nordic peoples (such
as ourselves) can interbreed with gorillas! Therefore, while a species
of war-Socialism exists within the German state, its attitude towards conquered
nations is frankly that of an exploiter. The function of the Czechs, Poles,
French, etc. is simply to produce such goods as Germany may need, and get
in return just as little as will keep them from open rebellion. If we are
conquered, our job will probably be to manufacture weapons for Hitlerās
forthcoming wars with Russia and America. The Nazis aim, in effect, at
setting up a kind of caste system, with four main castes corresponding
rather closely to those of the Hindu religion. At the top comes the Nazi
party, second come the mass of the German people, third come the conquered
European populations. Fourth and last are to come the coloured peoples,
the Īsemi-apesā as Hitler calls them, who are to be reduced quite openly
to slavery.
However horrible this system may seem to us, it works. It works
because it is a planned system geared to a definite purpose, world-conquest,
and not allowing any private interest, either of capitalist or worker,
to stand in its way. British capitalism does not work, because it is a
competitive system in which private profit is and must be the main objective.
It is a system in which all the forces are pulling in opposite directions
and the interests of the individual are as often as not totally opposed
to those of the State.
All through the critical years British capitalism, with its immense
industrial plant and its unrivalled supply of skilled labour, was unequal
to the strain of preparing for war. To prepare for war on the modern scale
you have got to divert the greater part of your national income to armaments,
which means cutting down on consumption goods. A bombing plane, for instance,
is equivalent in price to fifty small motor cars, or eight thousand pairs
of silk stockings, or a million loaves of bread. Clearly you canāt have
many
bombing planes without lowering the national standard of life. It is guns
or butter, as Marshal Goering remarked. But in Chamberlainās England the
transition could not be made. The rich would not face the necessary taxation,
and while the rich are still visibly rich it is not possible to tax the
poor very heavily either. Moreover, so long as profit was the main
object the manufacturer had no incentive to change over from consumption
goods to armaments. A businessmanās first duty is to his shareholders.
Perhaps England needs tanks, but perhaps it pays better to manufacture
motor cars. To prevent war material from reaching the enemy is common sense,
but to sell in the highest market is a business duty. Right at the end
of August 1939 the British dealers were tumbling over one another in their
eagerness to sell Germany tin, rubber, copper and shellac - and this in
the clear, certain knowledge that war was going to break out in a week
or two. It was about as sensible as selling somebody a razor to cut your
throat with. But it was Īgood businessā.
And now look at the results. After 1934 it was known that Germany was
rearming. After 1936 everyone with eyes in his head knew that war was coming.
After Munich it was merely a question of how soon the war would begin.
In September 1939 war broke out. Eight months later it was discovered
that, so far as equipment went, the British army was barely beyond the
standard of 1918. We saw our soldiers fighting their way desperately to
the coast, with one aeroplane against three, with rifles against tanks,
with bayonets against tommy-guns. There were not even enough revolvers
to supply all the officers. After a year of war the regular army was still
short of 300,000 tin hats. There had even, previously, been a shortage
of uniforms - this in one of the greatest woollen-goods producing countries
in the world!
What had happened was that the whole moneyed class, unwilling to face
a change in their way of life, had shut their eyes to the nature of Fascism
and modern war. And false optimism was fed to the general public by the
gutter press, which lives on its advertisements and is therefore interested
in keeping trade conditions normal. Year after year the Beaverbrook press
assured us in huge headlines that THERE WILL BE NO WAR, and as late as
the beginning of 1939 Lord Rothermere was describing Hitler as Īa great
gentlemanā. And while England in the moment of disaster proved to be short
of every war material except ships, it is not recorded that there was any
shortage of motor cars, fur coats, gramophones, lipstick, chocolates or
silk stockings. And dare anyone pretend that the same tug-of-war between
private profit and public necessity is not still continuing? England fights
for her life, but business must fight for profits. You can hardly open
a newspaper without seeing the two contradictory processes happening side
by side. On the very same page you will find the Government urging you
to save and the seller of some useless luxury urging you to spend. Lend
to Defend, but Guinness is Good for You. Buy a Spitfire, but also buy Haig
and Haig, Pondās Face Cream and Black Magic Chocolates.
But one thing gives hope - the visible swing in public opinion. If we
can survive this war, the defeat in Flanders will turn out to have been
one of the great turning-points in English history. In that spectacular
disaster the working class, the middle class and even a section of the
business community could see the utter rottenness of private capitalism.
Before that the case against capitalism had never been proved. Russia,
the only definitely Socialist country, was backward and far away. All criticism
broke itself against the rat-trap faces of bankers and the brassy laughter
of stockbrokers. Socialism? Ha! ha! ha! Whereās the money to come from?
Ha! ha! ha! The lords of property were firm in their seats, and they knew
it. But after the French collapse there came something that could not be
laughed away, something that neither cheque-books nor policemen were any
use against - the bombing. Zweee - BOOM! Whatās that? Oh, only a bomb on
the Stock Exchange. Zweee - BOOM! Another acre of somebodyās valuable slum-property
gone west. Hitler will at any rate go down in history as the man who made
the City of London laugh on the wrong side of its face. For the first time
in their lives the comfortable were uncomfortable, the professional optimists
had to admit that there was something wrong. It was a great step forward.
From that time onwards the ghastly job of trying to convince artificially
stupefied people that a planned economy might be better than a free-for-all
in which the worst man wins - that job will never be quite so ghastly again.
II
The difference between Socialism and capitalism is not primarily a difference
of technique. One cannot simply change from one system to the other as
one might install a new piece of machinery in a factory, and then carry
on as before, with the same people in positions of control. Obviously there
is also needed a complete shift of power. New blood, new men, new ideas
- in the true sense of the word, a revolution.
I have spoken earlier of the soundness and homogeneity of England, the
patriotism that runs like a connecting thread through almost all classes.
After Dunkirk anyone who had eyes in his head could see this. But it is
absurd to pretend that the promise of that moment has been fulfilled. Almost
certainly the mass of the people are now ready for the vast changes that
are necessary; but those changes have not even begun to happen.
England is a family with the wrong members in control. Almost entirely
we are governed by the rich, and by people who step into positions of command
by right of birth. Few if any of these people are consciously treacherous,
some of them are not even fools, but as a class they are quite incapable
of leading us to victory. They could not do it, even if their material
interests did not constantly trip them up. As I pointed out earlier, they
have been artificially stupefied. Quite apart from anything else, the rule
of money sees to it that we shall be governed largely by the old - that
is, by people utterly unable to grasp what age they are living in or what
enemy they are fighting. Nothing was more desolating at the beginning of
this war than the way in which the whole of the older generation conspired
to pretend that it was the war of 1914-18 over again. All the old duds
were back on the job, twenty years older, with the skull plainer in their
faces. Ian Hay was cheering up the troops, Belloc was writing articles
on strategy, Maurois doing broadcasts, Bairnsfather drawing cartoons. It
was like a tea-party of ghosts. And that state of affairs has barely altered.
The shock of disaster brought a few able men like Bevin to the front, but
in general we are still commanded by people who managed to live through
the years 1931-9 without even discovering that Hitler was dangerous. A
generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.
As soon as one considers any problem of this war - and it does not matter
whether it is the widest aspect of strategy or the tiniest detail of home
organization - one sees that the necessary moves cannot be made while the
social structure of England remains what it is. Inevitably, because of
their position and upbringing, the ruling class are fighting for their
own privileges, which cannot possibly be reconciled with the public interest.
It is a mistake to imagine that war aims, strategy, propaganda and industrial
organization exist in watertight compartments. All are interconnected.
Every strategic plan, every tactical method, even every weapon will bear
the stamp of the social system that produced it. The British ruling class
are fighting against Hitler, whom they have always regarded and whom some
of them still regard as their protector against Bolshevism. That does not
mean that they will deliberately sell out; but it does mean that at every
decisive moment they are likely to falter, pull their punches, do the wrong
thing.
Until the Churchill Government called some sort of halt to the process,
they have done the wrong thing with an unerring instinct ever since 1931.
They helped Franco to overthrow the Spanish Government, although anyone
not an imbecile could have told them that a Fascist Spain would be hostile
to England. They fed Italy with war materials all through the winter of
1939-40, although it was obvious to the whole world that the Italians were
going to attack us in the spring. For the sake of a few hundred thousand
dividend-drawers they are turning India from an ally into an enemy. Moreover,
so long as the moneyed classes remain in control, we cannot develop any
but a defensive strategy. Every victory means a change in the status
quo. How can we drive the Italians out of Abyssinia without rousing
echoes among the coloured peoples of our own Empire? How can we even smash
Hitler without the risk of bringing the German Socialists and Communists
into power? The left-wingers who wail that Īthis is a capitalist warā and
that ĪBritish Imperialismā is fighting for loot have got their heads screwed
on backwards. The last thing the British moneyed class wish for is to acquire
fresh territory. It would simply be an embarrassment. Their war aim (both
unattainable and unmentionable) is simply to hang on to what they have
got.
Internally, England is still the rich manās Paradise. All talk of Īequality
of sacrificeā is nonsense. At the same time as factory-workers are asked
to put up with longer hours, advertisements for ĪButler. One in family,
eight in staff Ī are appearing in the press. The bombed-out populations
of the East End go hungry and homeless while wealthier victims simply step
into their cars and flee to comfortable country houses. The Home Guard
swells to a million men in a few weeks, and is deliberately organized from
above in such a way that only people with private incomes can hold positions
of command. Even the rationing system is so arranged that it hits the poor
all the time, while people with over £2,000 a year are practically
unaffected by it. Everywhere privilege is squandering good will. In such
circumstances even propaganda becomes almost impossible. As attempts to
stir up patriotic feeling, the red posters issued by the Chamberlain Government
at the beginning of the war broke all depth-records. Yet they could not
have been much other than they were, for how could Chamberlain and his
followers take the risk of rousing strong popular feeling againstFascism?
Anyone who was genuinely hostile to Fascism must also be opposed to Chamberlain
himself and to all the others who had helped Hitler into power. So also
with external propaganda. In all Lord Halifaxās speeches there is not one
concrete proposal for which a single inhabitant of Europe would risk the
top joint of his little finger. For what war aim can Halifax, or anyone
like him, conceivably have, except to put the clock back to 1933?
It is only by revolution that the native genius of the English people
can be set free. Revolution does not mean red flags and street fighting,
it means a fundamental shift of power. Whether it happens with or without
bloodshed is largely an accident of time and place. Nor does it mean the
dictatorship of a single class. The people in England who grasp what changes
are needed and are capable of carrying them through are not confined to
any one class, though it is true that very few people with over £2,000
a year are among them. What is wanted is a conscious open revolt by ordinary
people against inefficiency, class privilege and the rule of the old. It
is not primarily a question of change of government. British governments
do, broadly speaking, represent the will of the people, and if we alter
our structure from below we shall get the government we need. Ambassadors,
generals, officials and colonial administrators who are senile or pro-Fascist
are more dangerous than Cabinet ministers whose follies have to be committed
in public. Right through our national life we have got to fight against
privilege, against the notion that a half-witted public-schoolboy is better
for command than an intelligent mechanic. Although there are gifted and
honest individuals among them, we have got to break the grip of
the moneyed class as a whole. England has got to assume its real shape.
The England that is only just beneath the surface, in the factories and
the newspaper offices, in the aeroplanes and the submarines, has got to
take charge of its own destiny.
In the short run, equality of sacrifice, Īwar-Communismā, is even more
important than radical economic changes. It is very necessary that industry
should be nationalized, but it is more urgently necessary that such monstrosities
as butlers and Īprivate incomesā should disappear forthwith. Almost certainly
the main reason why the Spanish Republic could keep up the fight for two
and a half years against impossible odds was that there were no gross contrasts
of wealth. The people suffered horribly, but they all suffered alike. When
the private soldier had not a cigarette, the general had not one either.
Given equality of sacrifice, the morale of a country like England would
probably be unbreakable. But at present we have nothing to appeal to except
traditional patriotism, which is deeper here than elsewhere, but is not
necessarily bottomless. At some point or another you have got to deal with
the man who says ĪI should be no worse off under Hitler.ā But what answer
can you give him - that is, what answer that you can expect him to listen
to - while common soldiers risk their lives for two and sixpence a day,
and fat women ride about in Rolls-Royce cars, nursing pekineses?
It is quite likely that this war will last three years. It will mean
cruel overwork, cold dull winters, uninteresting food, lack of amusements,
prolonged bombing. It cannot but lower the general standard of living,
because the essential act of war is to manufacture armaments instead of
consumable goods. The working class will have to suffer terrible things.
And they will suffer them, almost indefinitely, provided that they
know what they are fighting for. They are not cowards, and they are not
even internationally minded. They can stand all that the Spanish workers
stood, and more. But they will want some kind of proof that a better life
is ahead for themselves and their children. The one sure earnest of that
is that when they are taxed and overworked they shall see that the rich
are being hit even harder. And if the rich squeal audibly, so much the
better.
We can bring these things about, if we really want to. It is not true
that public opinion has no power in England. It never makes itself heard
without achieving something; it has been responsible for most of the changes
for the better during the past six months. But we have moved with glacier-like
slowness, and we have learned only from disasters. It took the fall of
Paris to get rid of Chamberlain and the unnecessary suffering of scores
of thousands of people in the East End to get rid or partially rid of Sir
John Anderson. It is not worth losing a battle in order to bury a corpse.
For we are fighting against swift evil intelligences, and time presses,
and
history to the defeated
May say Alas! but cannot alter or pardon.
III
During the last six months there has been much talk of Īthe Fifth Columnā.
From time to time obscure lunatics have been jailed for making speeches
in favour of Hitler, and large numbers of German refugees have been interned,
a thing which has almost certainly done us great harm in Europe. It is
of course obvious that the idea of a large, organized army of Fifth Columnists
suddenly appearing on the streets with weapons in their hands, as in Holland
and Belgium, is ridiculous. Nevertheless a Fifth Column danger does exist.
One can only consider it if one also considers in what way England might
be defeated.
It does not seem probable that air bombing can settle a major war. England
might well be invaded and conquered, but the invasion would be a dangerous
gamble, and if it happened and failed it would probably leave us more united
and less Blimp-ridden than before. Moreover, if England were overrun by
foreign troops the English people would know that they had been beaten
and would continue the struggle. It is doubtful whether they could be held
down permanently, or whether Hitler wishes to keep an army of a million
men stationed in these islands. A government of -, - and - (you can fill
in the names) would suit him better. The English can probably not be bullied
into surrender, but they might quite easily be bored, cajoled or cheated
into it, provided that, as at Munich, they did not know that they were
surrendering. It could happen most easily when the war seemed to be going
well rather than badly. The threatening tone of so much of the German and
Italian propaganda is a psychological mistake. It only gets home on intellectuals.
With the general public the proper approach would be ĪLetās call it a drawā.
It is when a peace-offer along those lines is made that the pro-Fascists
will raise their voices.
But who are the pro-Fascists? The idea of a Hitler victory appeals to
the very rich, to the Communists, to Mosleyās followers, to the pacifists,
and to certain sections among the Catholics. Also, if things went badly
enough on the Home Front, the whole of the poorer section of the working
class might swing round to a position that was defeatist though not actively
pro-Hitler.
In this motley list one can see the daring of German propaganda, its
willingness to offer everything to everybody. But the various pro-Fascist
forces are not consciously acting together, and they operate in different
ways.
The Communists must certainly be regarded as pro-Hitler, and are bound
to remain so unless Russian policy changes, but they have not very much
influence. Mosleyās Blackshirts, though now lying very low, are a more
serious danger, because of the footing they probably possess in the armed
forces. Still, even in its palmiest days Mosleyās following can hardly
have numbered 50,000. Pacifism is a psychological curiosity rather than
a political movement. Some of the extremer pacifists, starting out with
a complete renunciation of violence, have ended by warmly championing Hitler
and even toying with antisemitism. This is interesting, but it is not important.
ĪPureā pacifism, which is a by-product of naval power, can only appeal
to people in very sheltered positions. Moreover, being negative and irresponsible,
it does not inspire much devotion. Of the membership of the Peace Pledge
Union, less than fifteen per cent even pay their annual subscriptions.
None of these bodies of people, pacifists, Communists or Blackshirts, could
bring a large-scale stop-the-war movement into being by their own efforts.
But they might help to make things very much easier for a treacherous government
negotiating surrender. Like the French Communists, they might become the
half-conscious agents of millionaires.
The real danger is from above. One ought not to pay any attention to
Hitlerās recent line of talk about being the friend of the poor man, the
enemy of plutocracy, etc. etc. Hitlerās real self is in Mein Kampf,
and in his actions. He has never persecuted the rich, except when they
were Jews or when they tried actively to oppose him. He stands for a centralized
economy which robs the capitalist of most of his power but leaves the structure
of society much as before. The State controls industry, but there are still
rich and poor, masters and men. Therefore, as against genuine Socialism,
the moneyed class have always been on his side. This was crystal clear
at the time of the Spanish Civil War, and clear again at the time when
France surrendered. Hitlerās puppet government are not working men, but
a gang of bankers, gaga generals and corrupt right-wing politicians.
That kind of spectacular, conscious treachery is less likely
to succeed in England, indeed is far less likely even to be tried. Nevertheless,
to many payers of supertax this war is simply an insane family squabble
which ought to be stopped at all costs. One need not doubt that a Īpeaceā
movement is on foot somewhere in high places; probably a shadow Cabinet
has already been formed. These people will get their chance not in the
moment of defeat but in some stagnant period when boredom is reinforced
by discontent. They will not talk about surrender, only about peace; and
doubtless they will persuade themselves, and perhaps other people, that
they are acting for the best. An army of unemployed led by millionaires
quoting the Sermon on the Mount - that is our danger. But it cannot arise
when we have once introduced a reasonable degree of social justice. The
lady in the Rolls-Royce car is more damaging to morale than a fleet of
Goeringās bombing planes.
PART THREE: THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION
I
The English revolution started several years ago, and it began to gather
momentum when the troops came back from Dunkirk. Like all else in England,
it happens in a sleepy, unwilling way, but it is happening. The war has
speeded it up, but it has also increased, and desperately, the necessity
for speed.
Progress and reaction are ceasing to have anything to do with party
labels. If one wishes to name a particular moment, one can say that the
old distinction between Right and Left broke down when Picture Post
was first published. What are the politics of Picture Post? Or of
Cavalcade,
or Priestleyās broadcasts, or the leading articles in the Evening Standard?
None of the old classifications will fit them. They merely point to the
existence of multitudes of unlabelled people who have grasped within the
last year or two that something is wrong. But since a classless, ownerless
society is generally spoken of as ĪSocialismā, we can give that name to
the society towards which we are now moving. The war and the revolution
are inseparable. We cannot establish anything that a western nation would
regard as Socialism without defeating Hitler; on the hand we cannot defeat
Hitler while we remain economically and socially in the nineteenth century.
The past is fighting the future and we have two years, a year, possibly
only a few months, to see to it that the future wins.
We cannot look to this or to any similar government to put through the
necessary changes of its own accord. The initiative will have to come from
below. That means that there will have to arise something that has never
existed in England, a Socialist movement that actually has the mass of
the people behind it. But one must start by recognizing why it is that
English Socialism has failed.
In England there is only one Socialist party that has ever seriously
mattered, the Labour Party. It has never been able to achieve any major
change, because except in purely domestic matters it has never possessed
a genuinely independent policy. It was and is primarily a party of the
trade unions, devoted to raising wages and improving working conditions.
This meant that all through the critical years it was directly interested
in the prosperity of British capitalism. In particular it was interested
in the maintenance of the British Empire, for the wealth of England was
drawn largely from Asia and Africa. The standard of living of the trade-union
workers, whom the Labour Party represented, depended indirectly on the
sweating of Indian coolies. At the same time the Labour Party was a Socialist
party, using Socialist phraseology, thinking in terms of an old-fashioned
anti-imperialism and more or less pledged to make restitution to the coloured
races. It had to stand for the Īindependenceā of India, just as it had
to stand for disarmament and Īprogressā generally. Nevertheless everyone
was aware that this was nonsense. In the age of the tank and the bombing
plane, backward agricultural countries like India and the African colonies
can no more be independent than can a cat or a dog. Had any Labour government
come into office with a clear majority and then proceeded to grant India
anything that could truly be called independence, India would simply have
been absorbed by Japan, or divided between Japan and Russia.
To a Labour government in power, three imperial policies would have
been open. One was to continue administering the Empire exactly as before,
which meant dropping all pretensions to Socialism. Another was to set the
subject peoples Īfreeā, which meant in practice handing them over to Japan,
Italy and other predatory powers, and incidentally causing a catastrophic
drop in the British standard of living. The third was to develop a positive
imperial policy, and aim at transforming the Empire into a federation of
Socialist states, like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet
Republics. But the Labour Partyās history and background made this impossible.
It was a party of the trade unions, hopelessly parochial in outlook, with
little interest in imperial affairs and no contacts among the men who actually
held the Empire together. It would have had to hand the administration
of India and Africa and the whole job of imperial defence to men drawn
from a different class and traditionally hostile to Socialism. Overshadowing
everything was the doubt whether a Labour government which meant business
could make itself obeyed. For all the size of its following, the Labour
Party had no footing in the navy, fleet or none in the army or air force,
none whatever in the Colonial Services, and not even a sure footing in
the Home Civil Service. In England its position was strong but not unchallengeable,
and outside England all the points were in the hands of its enemies. Once
in power, the same dilemma would always have faced it: carry out your promises,
and risk revolt, or continue with the same policy as the Conservatives,
and stop talking about Socialism. The Labour leaders never found a solution,
and from 1935 onwards it was very doubtful whether they had any wish to
take office. They had degenerated into a Permanent Opposition.
Outside the Labour Party there existed several extremist parties, of
whom the Communists were the strongest. The Communists had considerable
influence in the Labour Party in the years 1920-26 and 1935-9. Their chief
importance, and that of the whole left wing of the Labour movement, was
the part they played in alienating the middle classes from Socialism.
The history of the past seven years has made it perfectly clear that
Communism has no chance in western Europe. The appeal of Fascism is enormously
greater. In one country after another the Communists have been rooted out
by their more up-to-date enemies, the Nazis. In the English-speaking countries
they never had a serious footing. The creed they were spreading could appeal
only to a rather rare type of person, found chiefly in the middle-class
intelligentsia, the type who has ceased to love his own country but still
feels the need of patriotism, and therefore develops patriotic sentiments
towards Russia. By 1940, after working for twenty years and spending a
great deal a money, the British Communists had barely 20,000 members, actually
a smaller number than they had started out with in 1920. The other Marxist
parties were of even less importance. They had not the Russian money and
prestige behind them, and even more than the Communists they were tied
to the nineteenth-century doctrine of the class war. They continued year
after year to preach this out-of-date gospel, and never drew any inference
from the fact that it got them no followers.
Nor did any strong native Fascist movement grow up. Material conditions
were not bad enough, and no leader who could be taken seriously was forthcoming.
One would have had to look a long time to find a man more barren of ideas
than Sir Oswald Mosley. He was as hollow as a jug. Even the elementary
fact that Fascism must not offend national sentiment had escaped him. His
entire movement was imitated slavishly from abroad, the uniform and the
party programme from Italy and the salute from Germany, with the Jew-baiting
tacked on as an afterthought, Mosley having actually started his movement
with Jews among his most prominent followers. A man of the stamp of Bottomley
or Lloyd George could perhaps have brought a real British Fascist movement
into existence. But such leaders only appear when the psychological need
for them exists.
After twenty years of stagnation and unemployment, the entire English
Socialist movement was unable to produce a version of Socialism which the
mass of the people could even find desirable. The Labour Party stood for
a timid reformism, the Marxists were looking at the modern world through
nineteenth-century spectacles. Both ignored agriculture and imperial problems,
and both antagonized the middle classes. The suffocating stupidity of left-wing
propaganda had frightened away whole classes of necessary people, factory
managers, airmen, naval officers, farmers, white-collar workers, shopkeepers,
policemen. All of these people had been taught to think of Socialism as
something which menaced their livelihood, or as something seditious, alien,
Īanti-Britishā as they would have called it. Only the intellectuals, the
least useful section of the middle class, gravitated towards the movement.
A Socialist Party which genuinely wished to achieve anything would have
started by facing several facts which to this day are considered unmentionable
in left-wing circles. It would have recognized that England is more united
than most countries, that the British workers have a great deal to lose
besides their chains, and that the differences in outlook and habits between
class and class are rapidly diminishing. In general, it would have recognized
that the old-fashioned Īproletarian revolutionā is an impossibility. But
all through the between-war years no Socialist programme that was both
revolutionary and workable ever appeared; basically, no doubt, because
no one genuinely wanted any major change to happen. The Labour leaders
wanted to go on and on, drawing their salaries and periodically swapping
jobs with the Conservatives. The Communists wanted to go on and on, suffering
a comfortable martyrdom, meeting with endless defeats and afterwards putting
the blame on other people. The left-wing intelligentsia wanted to go on
and on, sniggering at the Blimps, sapping away at middle-class morale,
but still keeping their favoured position as hangers-on of the dividend-drawers.
Labour Party politics had become a variant of Conservatism, Īrevolutionaryā
politics had become a game of make-believe.
Now however, the circumstances have changed, the drowsy years have ended.
Being a Socialist no longer means kicking theoretically against a system
which in practice you are fairly well satisfied with. This time our predicament
is real. It is Īthe Philistines be upon thee, Samsonā. We have got to make
our words take physical shape, or perish. We know very well that with its
present social structure England cannot survive, and we have got to make
other people see that fact and act upon it. We cannot win the war without
introducing Socialism, nor establish Socialism without winning the war.
At such a time it is possible, as it was not in the peaceful years, to
be both revolutionary and realistic. A Socialist movement which can swing
the mass of the people behind it, drive the pro-Fascists out of positions
of control, wipe out the grosser injustices and let the working class see
that they have something to fight for, win over the middle classes instead
of antagonizing them, produce a workable imperial policy instead of a mixture
of humbug and Utopianism, bring patriotism and intelligence into partnership
- for the first time, a movement of such a kind becomes possible.
II
The fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a text-book word
into a realizable policy.
The inefficiency of private capitalism has been proved all over Europe.
Its injustice has been proved in the East End of London. Patriotism, against
which the Socialists fought so long, has become a tremendous lever in their
hands. People who at any other time would cling like glue to their miserable
scraps of privilege, will surrender them fast enough when their country
is in danger. War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up
all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface.
Above all, war brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether
an individual. It is only because they are aware of this that men will
die on the field of battle. At this moment it is not so much a question
of surrendering life as of surrendering leisure, comfort, economic liberty,
social prestige. There are very few people England who really want to see
their country conquered by Germany. If it can be made clear that defeating
Hitler means wiping out class privilege, the great mass of middling people,
the £6 a week to £2,000 a year class, will probably be on our
side. These people are quite indispensable, because they include most of
the technical experts. Obviously the snobbishness and political ignorance
of people like airmen and naval officers will be a very great difficulty.
But without those airmen, destroyer commanders, etc. etc. we could not
survive for a week. The only approach to them is through their patriotism.
An intelligent Socialist movement will use their patriotism, instead
of merely insulting it, as hitherto.
But do I mean that there will no opposition? Of course not. It would
be childish to expect anything of the kind.
There will be a bitter political struggle, and there will be unconscious
and half-conscious sabotage everywhere. At some point or other it may be
necessary to use violence. It is easy to imagine a pro-Fascist rebellion
breaking out in, for instance, India. We shall have to fight against bribery,
ignorance and snobbery. The bankers and the larger businessmen, the landowners
and dividend-drawers, the officials with their prehensile bottoms, will
obstruct for all they are worth. Even the middle class will writhe when
their accustomed way of life is menaced. But just because the English sense
of national unity has never disintegrated because patriotism is finally
stronger than class-hatred, the chances are that the will of the majority
will prevail. It is no use imagining that one can make fundamental changes
without causing a split in the nation; but the treacherous minority will
be far smaller in time of war than it would be at any other time.
The swing of opinion is visibly happening, but it cannot be counted
on to happen fast enough of its own accord. This war is a race between
the consolidation of Hitlerās empire and the growth of democratic consciousness.
Everywhere in England you can see a ding-dong battle ranging to and fro
- in Parliament and in the Government, in the factories and the armed forces,
in the pubs and the air-raid shelters, in the newspapers and on the radio.
Every day there are tiny defeats, tiny victories. Morrison for Home Secretary
- a few yards forward, Priestley shoved off the air - a few yards back.
It is a struggle between the groping and the unteachable, between the young
and the old, between the living and the dead. But it is very necessary
that the discontent which undoubtedly exists should take a purposeful and
not merely obstructive form. It is time for the people to define
their war aims. What is wanted is a simple, concrete programme of action,
which can be given all possible publicity, and round which public opinion
can group itself.
I suggest that the following six-point programme is the kind of thing
we need. The first three points deal with Englandās internal policy, the
other three with the Empire and the world:
1. Nationalization of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries.
2. Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free
income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one.
3. Reform of the educational system along democratic lines.
4. Immediate Dominion status for India, with power to secede when the
war is over.
5. Formation of an Imperial General Council, in which the coloured peoples
are to be represented.
6. Declaration of formal alliance with China, Abyssinia and all other
victims of the Fascist powers.
The general tendency of this programme is unmistakable. It aims quite
frankly at turning this war into a revolutionary war and England into a
Socialist democracy. I have deliberately included in it nothing that the
simplest person could not understand and see the reason for. In the form
in which I have put it, it could be printed on the front page of the Daily
Mirror. But for the purposes of this book a certain amount of amplification
is needed.
l. Nationalization. One can Īnationalizeā industry by the stroke
of a pen, but the actual process is slow and complicated. What is needed
is that the ownership of all major industry shall be formally vested in
the State, representing the common people. Once that is done it becomes
possible to eliminate the class of mere owners who live not by virtue
of anything they produce but by the possession of title-deeds and share
certificates. State-ownership implies, therefore, that nobody shall live
without working. How sudden a change in the conduct of industry it implies
is less certain. In a country like England we cannot rip down the whole
structure and build again from the bottom, least of all in time of war.
Inevitably the majority of industrial concerns will continue with much
the same personnel as before, the one-time owners or managing directors
carrying on with their jobs as State employees. There is reason to think
that many of the smaller capitalists would actually welcome some such arrangement.
The resistance will come from the big capitalists, the bankers, the landlords
and the idle rich, roughly speaking the class with over £2,000 a
year - and even if one counts in all their dependants there are not more
than half a million of these people in England. Nationalization of agricultural
land implies cutting out the landlord and the tithe drawer, but not necessarily
interfering with the farmer. It is difficult to imagine any reorganization
of English agriculture that would not retain most of the existing farms
as units, at any rate at the beginning. The farmer, when he is competent,
will continue as a salaried manager. He is virtually that already, with
the added disadvantage of having to make a profit and being permanently
in debt to the bank. With certain kinds of petty trading, and even the
small-scale ownership of land, the State will probably not interfere at
all. It would be a great mistake to start by victimizing the smallholder
class, for instance. These people are necessary, on the whole they are
competent, and the amount of work they do depends on the feeling that they
are Ītheir own mastersā. But the State will certainly impose an upward
limit to the ownership of land (probably fifteen acres at the very most),
and will never permit any ownership of land in town areas.
From the moment that all productive goods have been declared the property
of the State, the common people will feel, as they cannot feel now, that
the State isthemselves. They will be ready then to endure the sacrifices
that are ahead of us, war or no war. And even if the face of England hardly
seems to change, on the day that our main industries are formally nationalized
the dominance of a single class will have been broken. From then onwards
the emphasis will be shifted from ownership to management, from privilege
to competence. It is quite possible that State-ownership will in itself
bring about less social change than will be forced upon us by the common
hardships of war. But it is the necessary first step without any real
reconstruction is impossible.
2. Incomes. Limitation of incomes implies the fixing of a minimum
wage, which implies a managed internal currency based simply on the amount
of consumption goods available. And this again implies a stricter rationing
scheme than is now in operation. It is no use at this stage of the worldās
history to suggest that all human beings should have exactly equal
incomes. It has been shown over and over again that without some kind of
money reward there is no incentive to undertake certain jobs. On the other
hand the money reward need not be very large. In practice it is impossible
that earnings should be limited quite as rigidly as I have suggested. There
will always be anomalies and evasions. But there is no reason why ten to
one should not be the maximum normal variation. And within those limits
some sense of equality is possible. A man with £3 a week and a man
with £1,500 a year can feel themselves fellow creatures, which the
Duke of Westminster and the sleepers on the Embankment benches cannot.
3. Education. In wartime, educational reform must necessarily
be promise rather than performance. At the moment we are not in a position
to raise the school-leaving age or increase the teaching staffs of the
elementary schools. But there are certain immediate steps that we could
take towards a democratic educational system. We could start by abolishing
the autonomy of the public schools and the older universities and flooding
them with State-aided pupils chosen simply on grounds of ability. At present,
public-school education is partly a training in class prejudice and partly
a sort of tax that the middle classes pay to the upper class in return
for the right to enter certain professions. It is true that that state
of affairs is altering. The middle classes have begun to rebel against
the expensiveness of education, and the war will bankrupt the majority
of the public schools if it continues for another year or two. The evacuation
is also producing certain minor changes. But there is a danger that some
of the older schools, which will be able to weather the financial storm
longest, will survive in some form or another as festering centres of snobbery.
As for the 10,000 Īprivateā schools that England possesses, the vast majority
of them deserve nothing except suppression. They are simply commercial
undertakings, and in many cases their educational level is actually lower
than that of the elementary schools. They merely exist because of a widespread
idea that there is something disgraceful in being educated by the public
authorities. The State could quell this idea by declaring itself responsible
for all education, even if at the start this were no more than a
gesture. We need gestures as well as actions. It is all too obvious that
our talk of Īdefending democracyā is nonsense while it is a mere accident
of birth that decides whether a gifted child shall or shall not get the
education it deserves.
4. India. What we must offer India is not Īfreedomā, which, I
have said earlier, is impossible, but alliance, partnership - in a word,
equality. But we must also tell the Indians that they are free to secede,
if they want to. Without that there can be no equality of partnership,
and our claim to be defending the coloured peoples against Fascism will
never be believed. But it is a mistake to imagine that if the Indians were
free to cut themselves adrift they would immediately do so. When a British
government offers them unconditional independence, they will refuse
it. For as soon as they have the power to secede the chief reasons for
doing so will have disappeared.
A complete severance of the two countries would be a disaster for India
no less than for England. Intelligent Indians know this. As things are
at present, India not only cannot defend itself, it is hardly even capable
of feeding itself. The whole administration of the country depends on a
framework of experts (engineers, forest officers, railwaymen, soldiers,
doctors) who are predominantly English and could not be replaced within
five or ten years. Moreover, English is the chief lingua franca and nearly
the whole of the Indian intelligentsia is deeply anglicized. Any transference
to foreign rule - for if the British marched out of India the Japanese
and other powers would immediately march in - would mean an immense dislocation.
Neither the Japanese, the Russians, the Germans nor the Italians would
be capable of administering India even at the low level of efficiency that
is attained by the British. They do not possess the necessary supplies
of technical experts or the knowledge of languages and local conditions,
and they probably could not win the confidence of indispensable go-betweens
such as the Eurasians. If India were simply Īliberatedā, i.e. deprived
of British military protection, the first result would be a fresh foreign
conquest, and the second a series of enormous famines which would kill
millions of people within a few years.
What India needs is the power to work out its own constitution without
British interference, but in some kind of partnership that ensures its
military protection and technical advice. This is unthinkable until there
is a Socialist government in England. For at least eighty years England
has artificially prevented the development of India, partly from fear of
trade competition if India industries were too highly developed, partly
because backward peoples are more easily governed than civilized ones.
It is a commonplace that the average Indian suffers far more from his own
countrymen than from the British. The petty Indian capitalist exploits
the town worker with the utmost ruthlessness, the peasant lives from birth
to death in the grip of the money-lender. But all this is an indirect result
of the British rule, which aims half-consciously at keeping India as backward
as possible. The classes most loyal to Britain are the princes, the landowners
and the business community - in general, the reactionary classes who are
doing fairly well out of the status quo. The moment that England
ceased to stand towards India in the relation of an exploiter, the balance
of forces would be altered. No need then for the British to flatter the
ridiculous Indian princes, with their gilded elephants and cardboard armies,
to prevent the growth of the Indian trade unions, to play off Moslem against
Hindu, to protect the worthless life of the money-lender, to receive the
salaams of toadying minor officials, to prefer the half-barbarous Gurkha
to the educated Bengali. Once check that stream of dividends that flows
from the bodies of Indian coolies to the banking accounts of old ladies
in Cheltenham, and the whole sahib-native nexus, with its haughty ignorance
on one side and envy and servility on the other, can come to an end. Englishmen
and Indians can work side by side for the development of India, and for
the training of Indians in all the arts which, so far, they have been systematically
prevented from learning. How many of the existing British personnel in
India, commercial or official, would fall in with such an arrangement -
which would mean ceasing once and for to be Īsahibsā - is a different question.
But, broadly speaking, more is to be hoped from the younger men and from
those officials (civil engineers, forestry and agriculture experts, doctors,
educationists) who have been scientifically educated. The higher officials,
the provincial governors, commissioners, judges, etc. are hopeless; but
they are also the most easily replaceable.
That, roughly, is what would be meant by Dominion status if it were
offered to India by a Socialist government. It is an offer of partnership
on equal terms until such time as the world has ceased to be ruled by bombing
planes. But we must add to it the unconditional right to secede. It is
the only way of proving that we mean what we say. And what applies to India
applies, mutatis mutandis, to Burma, Malaya and most of our African
possessions.
5 and 6 explain themselves. They are the necessary preliminary to any
claim that we are fighting this war for the protection of peaceful peoples
against Fascist aggression.
Is it impossibly hopeful to think that such a policy as this could get
a following in England? A year ago, even six months ago, it would have
been, but not now. Moreover - and this is the peculiar opportunity of this
moment - it could be given the necessary publicity. There is now a considerable
weekly press, with a circulation of millions, which would be ready to popularize
- if not exactly the programme I have sketched above, at any rate
some
policy along those lines. There are even three or four daily papers which
would be prepared to give it a sympathetic hearing. That is the distance
we have travelled in the last six months.
But is such a policy realizable? That depends entirely on ourselves.
Some of the points I have suggested are of the kind that could be carried
out immediately, others would take years or decades and even then would
not be perfectly achieved. No political programme is ever carried out in
its entirety. But what matters is that that or something like it should
be our declared policy. It is always the direction that counts.
It is of course quite hopeless to expect the present Government to pledge
itself to any policy that implies turning this war into a revolutionary
war. It is at best a government of compromise, with Churchill ridingtwo
horses like a circus acrobat. Before such measures as limitation of incomes
become even thinkable, there will have to be complete shift of power away
from the old ruling class. If during this winter the war settles into another
stagnant period, we ought in my opinion to agitate for a General Election,
a thing which the Tory Party machine will make frantic efforts to prevent.
But even without an election we can get the government we want, provided
that we want it urgently enough. A real shove from below will accomplish
it. As to who will be in that government when it comes, I make no guess.
I only know that the right men will be there when the people really want
them, for it is movements that make leaders and not leaders movements.
Within a year, perhaps even within six months, if we are still unconquered,
we shall see the rise of something that has never existed before, a specifically
English Socialist movement. Hitherto there has been only the Labour
Party, which was the creation of the working class but did not aim at any
fundamental change, and Marxism, which was a German theory interpreted
by Russians and unsuccessfully transplanted to England. There was nothing
that really touched the heart of the English people. Throughout its entire
history the English Socialist movement has never produced a song with a
catchy tune - nothing like La Marseillaise or La Cucaracha,
for instance. When a Socialist movement native to England appears, the
Marxists, like all others with a vested interest in the past, will be its
bitter enemies. Inevitably they will denounce it as āFascismā. Already
it is customary among the more soft-boiled intellectuals of the Left to
declare that if we fight against Nazis we shall āgo Naziā ourselves. They
might almost equally well say that if we fight Negroes we shall turn black.
To Īgo Naziā we should have to have the history of Germany behind us. Nations
do not escape from their past merely by making a revolution. An English
Socialist government will transform the nation from top to bottom, but
it will still bear all over it the unmistakable marks of our own civilization,
the peculiar civilization which I discussed earlier in this book.
It will not be doctrinaire, nor even logical. It will abolish the House
of Lords, but quite probably will not abolish the Monarchy. It will leave
anachronisms and loose ends everywhere, the judge in his ridiculous horsehair
wig and the lion and the unicorn on the soldierās cap-buttons. It will
not set up any explicit class dictatorship. It will group itself round
the old Labour Party and its mass following will be in the trade unions,
but it will draw into it most of the middle class and many of the younger
sons of the bourgeoisie. Most of its directing brains will come from the
new indeterminate class of skilled workers, technical experts, airmen,
scientists, architects and journalists, the people who feel at home in
the radio and ferro-concrete age. But it will never lose touch with the
tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State.
It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand
and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly
and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written
word. Political parties with different names will still exist, revolutionary
sects will still be publishing their newspapers and making as little impression
as ever. It will disestablish the Church, but will not persecute religion.
It will retain a vague reverence for the Christian moral code, and from
time to time will refer to England as Īa Christian countryā. The Catholic
Church will war against it, but the Nonconformist sects and the bulk of
the Anglican Church will be able to come to terms with it. It will show
a power of assimilating the past which will shock foreign observers and
sometimes make them doubt whether any revolution has happened.
But all the same it will have done the essential thing. It will have
nationalized industry, scaled down incomes, set up a classless educational
system. Its real nature will be apparent from the hatred which the surviving
rich men of the world will feel for it. It will aim not at disintegrating
the Empire but at turning it into a federation of Socialist states, freed
not so much from the British flag as from the money-lender, the dividend-drawer
and the wooden-headed British official. Its war strategy will be totally
different from that of any property-ruled state, because it will not be
afraid of the revolutionary after-effects when any existing régime
is brought down. It will not have the smallest scruple about attacking
hostile neutrals or stirring up native rebellion in enemy colonies. It
will fight in such a way that even if it is beaten its memory will be dangerous
to the victor, as the memory of the French Revolution was dangerous to
Metternichās Europe. The dictators will fear it as they could not fear
the existing British régime, even if its military strength were
ten times what it is.
But at this moment, when the drowsy life of England has barely altered,
and the offensive contrast of wealth and poverty still exists everywhere,
even amid the bombs, why do I dare to say that all these things Īwillā
happen?
Because the time has come when one can predict the future in terms of
an Īeither - orā. Either we turn this war into a revolutionary war (I do
not say that our policy will be exactly what I have indicated above
- merely that it will be along those general lines) or we lose it, and
much more besides. Quite soon it will be possible to say definitely that
our feet are set upon one path or the other. But at any rate it is certain
that with our present social structure we cannot win. Our real forces,
physical, moral or intellectual, cannot be mobilized.
III
Patriotism has nothing to do with Conservatism. It is actually the opposite
of Conservatism, since it is a devotion to something that is always changing
and yet is felt to be mystically the same. It is the bridge between the
future and the past. No real revolutionary has ever been an internationalist.
During the past twenty years the negative, fainéant outlook
which has been fashionable among English left-wingers, the sniggering of
the intellectuals at patriotism and physical courage, the persistent effort
to chip away English morale and spread a hedonistic, what-do-I-get-out-of-it
attitude to life, has done nothing but harm. It would have been harmful
even if we had been living in the squashy League of Nations universe that
these people imagined. In an age of fuehrers and bombing planes it was
a disaster. However little we may like it, toughness is the price of survival.
A nation trained to think hedonistically cannot survive amid peoples who
work like slaves and breed like rabbits, and whose chief national industry
is war. English Socialists of nearly all colours have wanted to make a
stand against Fascism, but at the same time they have aimed at making their
own countrymen unwarlike. They have failed, because in England traditional
loyalties are stronger than new ones. But in spite of all the Īanti-Fascistā
heroics of the left-wing press, what chance should we have stood when the
real struggle with Fascism came, if the average Englishman had been the
kind of creature that the New Statesman, the Daily Worker
or even the News Chronicle wished to make him?
Up to 1935 virtually all English left-wingers were vaguely pacifist.
After 1935 the more vocal of them flung themselves eagerly into the Popular
Front movement, which was simply an evasion of the whole problem posed
by Fascism. It set out to be Īanti-Fascistā in a purely negative way -
Īagainstā Fascism without being Īforā any discoverable policy - and underneath
it lay the flabby idea that when the time came the Russians would do our
fighting for us. It is astonishing how this illusion fails to die. Every
week sees its spate of letters to the press, pointing out that if we had
a government with no Tories in it the Russians could hardly avoid coming
round to our side. Or we are to publish high-sounding war aims (vide
books like Unser Kampf, A Hundred Million Allies - If We Choose,
etc.), whereupon the European populations will infallibly rise on our behalf.
It is the same idea all the time - look abroad for your inspiration, get
someone else to do your fighting for you. Underneath it lies the frightful
inferiority complex of the English intellectual, the belief that the English
are no longer a martial race, no longer capable of enduring.
In truth there is no reason to think that anyone will do our fighting
for us yet awhile, except the Chinese, who have been doing it for three
years already. [Note
3] The Russians may be driven to fight on our side by the fact of a
direct attack, but they have made it clear enough that they will not stand
up to the German army if there is any way of avoiding it. In any case they
are not likely to be attracted by the spectacle of a left-wing government
in England. The present Russian régime must almost certainly be
hostile to any revolution in the West. The subject peoples of Europe will
rebel when Hitler begins to totter, but not earlier. Our potential allies
are not the Europeans but on the one hand the Americans, who will need
a year to mobilize their resources even if Big Business can be brought
to heel, and on the other hand the coloured peoples, who cannot be even
sentimentally on our side till our own revolution has started. For a long
time, a year, two years, possibly three years, England has got to be the
shock-absorber of the world. We have got to face bombing, hunger, overwork,
influenza, boredom and treacherous peace offers. Manifestly it is a time
to stiffen morale, not to weaken it. Instead of taking the mechanically
anti-British attitude which is usual on the Left, it is better to consider
what the world would really be like if the English-speaking culture perished.
For it is childish to suppose that the other English-speaking countries,
even the U.S.A., will be unaffected if Britain is conquered.
Lord Halifax, and all his tribe, believe that when the war is over things
will be exactly as they were before. Back to the crazy pavement of Versailles,
back to Īdemocracyā, i.e. capitalism, back to dole queues and the Rolls-Royce
cars, back to the grey top hats and the sponge-bag trousers, insaecula
saeculorum. It is of course obvious that nothing of the kind is going
to happen. A feeble imitation of it might just possibly happen in the case
of a negotiated peace, but only for a short while. Laissez-faire
capitalism is dead. [Note
4] The choice lies between the kind of collective society that Hitler
will set up and the kind that can arise if he is defeated.
If Hitler wins this war he will consolidate his rule over Europe, Africa
and the Middle East, and if his armies have not been too greatly exhausted
beforehand, he will wrench vast territories from Soviet Russia. He will
set up a graded caste-society in which the German Herrenvolk (Īmaster
raceā or Īaristocratic raceā) will rule over Slavs and other lesser peoples
whose job it will be to produce low-priced agricultural products. He will
reduce the coloured peoples once and for all to outright slavery. The real
quarrel of the Fascist powers with British imperialism is that they know
that it is disintegrating. Another twenty years along the present line
of development, and India will be a peasant republic linked with England
only by voluntary alliance. The Īsemi-apesā of whom Hitler speaks with
such loathing will be flying aeroplanes and manufacturing machine-guns.
The Fascist dream of a slave empire will be at an end. On the other hand,
if we are defeated we simply hand over our own victims to new masters who
come fresh to the job and have not developed any scruples.
But more is involved than the fate of the coloured peoples. Two incompatible
visions of life are fighting one another. ĪBetween democracy and totalitarianism,ā
says Mussolini, Īthere can be no compromise.ā The two creeds cannot even,
for any length of time, live side by side. So long as democracy exists,
even in its very imperfect English form, totalitarianism is in deadly danger.
The whole English-speaking world is haunted by the idea of human equality,
and though it would be simply a lie to say that either we or the Americans
have ever acted up to our professions, still, the idea is there,
and it is capable of one day becoming a reality. From the English-speaking
culture, if it does not perish, a society of free and equal human beings
will ultimately arise. But it is precisely the idea of human equality -
the ĪJewishā or ĪJudaeo-Christianā idea of equality - that Hitler came
into the world to destroy. He has, heaven knows, said so often enough.
The thought of a world in which black men would be as good as white men
and Jews treated as human beings brings him the same horror and despair
as the thought of endless slavery brings to us.
It is important to keep in mind how irreconcilable these two viewpoints
are. Some time within the next year a pro-Hitler reaction within the left-wing
intelligentsia is likely enough. There are premonitory signs of it already.
Hitlerās positive achievement appeals to the emptiness of these people,
and, in the case of those with pacifist leanings, to their masochism. One
knows in advance more or less what they will say. They will start by refusing
to admit that British capitalism is evolving into something different,
or that the defeat of Hitler can mean any more than a victory for the British
and American millionaires. And from that they will proceed to argue that,
after all, democracy is Ījust the same asā or Ījust as bad asā totalitarianism.
There is not much freedom of speech in England; therefore there
is no more than exists in Germany. To be on the dole is a horrible
experience; therefore it is no worse to be in the torture-chambers
of the Gestapo. In general, two blacks make a white, half a loaf is the
same as no bread.
But in reality, whatever may be true about democracy and totalitarianism,
it is not true that they are the same. It would not be true, even if British
democracy were incapable of evolving beyond its present stage. The whole
conception of the militarized continental state, with its secret police,
its censored literature and its conscript labour, is utterly different
from that of the loose maritime democracy, with its slums and unemployment,
its strikes and party politics. It is the difference between land power
and sea power, between cruelty and inefficiency, between lying and self-deception,
between the S.S. man and the rent-collector. And in choosing between them
one chooses not so much on the strength of what they now are as of what
they are capable of becoming. But in a sense it is irrelevant whether democracy,
at its highest or at its lowest, is Ībetterā than totalitarianism. To decide
that one would have to have access to absolute standards. The only question
that matters is where oneās real sympathies will lie when the pinch comes.
The intellectuals who are so fond of balancing democracy against totalitarianism
and Īprovingā that one is as bad as the other are simply frivolous people
who have never been shoved up against realities. They show the same shallow
misunderstanding of Fascism now, when they are beginning to flirt with
it, as a year or two ago, when they were squealing against it. The question
is not, ĪCan you make out a debating-society "case" in favour of Hitler?ā
The question is, ĪDo you genuinely accept that case? Are you willing to
submit to Hitlerās rule? Do you want to see England conquered, or donāt
you?ā It would be better to be sure on that point before frivolously siding
with the enemy. For there is no such thing as neutrality in war; in practice
one must help one side or the other.
When the pinch comes, no one bred in the western tradition can accept
the Fascist vision of life. It is important to realize that now,
and to grasp what it entails. With all its sloth, hypocrisy and injustice,
the English-speaking civilization is the only large obstacle in Hitlerās
path. It is a living contradiction of all the Īinfallibleā dogmas of Fascism.
That is why all Fascist writers for years past have agreed that Englandās
power must be destroyed. England must be Īexterminatedā, must be Īannihilatedā,
must Īcease to existā. Strategically it would be possible for this war
to end with Hitler in secure possession of Europe, and with the British
Empire intact and British sea-power barely affected. But ideologically
it is not possible; were Hitler to make an offer along those lines, it
could only be treacherously, with a view to conquering England indirectly
or renewing the attack at some more favourable moment. England cannot possibly
be allowed to remain as a sort of funnel through which deadly ideas from
beyond the Atlantic flow into the police states of Europe. And turning
it round to our point of view, we see the vastness of the issue before
us, the all-importance of preserving our democracy more or less as we have
known it. But to preserve is always to extend. The choice
before us is not so much between victory and defeat as between revolution
and apathy. If the thing we are fighting for is altogether destroyed, it
will have been destroyed partly by our own act.
It could happen that England could introduce the beginnings of Socialism,
turn this war into a revolutionary war, and still be defeated. That is
at any rate thinkable. But, terrible as it would be for anyone who is now
adult, it would be far less deadly than the Īcompromise peaceā which a
few rich men and their hired liars are hoping for. The final ruin of England
could only be accomplished by an English government acting under orders
from Berlin. But that cannot happen if England has awakened beforehand.
For in that case the defeat would be unmistakable, the struggle would continue,
the idea would survive. The difference between going down fighting,
and surrendering without a fight, is by no means a question of Īhonourā
and schoolboy heroics. Hitler said once that to accept defeat destroys
the soul of a nation. This sounds like a piece of claptrap, but it is strictly
true. The defeat of 1870 did not lessen the world-influence of France.
The Third Republic had more influence, intellectually, than the France
of Napoleon III. But the sort of peace that Pétain, Laval and Co.
have accepted can only be purchased by deliberately wiping out the national
culture. The Vichy Government will enjoy a spurious independence only on
condition that it destroys the distinctive marks of French culture: republicanism,
secularism, respect for the intellect, absence of colour prejudice. We
cannot be utterly defeated if we have made our revolution beforehand.
We may see German troops marching down Whitehall, but another process,
ultimately deadly to the German power-dream, will have been started. The
Spanish people were defeated, but the things they learned during those
two and a half memorable years will one day come back upon the Spanish
Fascists like a boomerang.
A piece of Shakespearean bombast was much quoted at the beginning of
the war. Even Mr Chamberlain quoted it once, if my memory does not deceive
me :
Come the four corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them: naught shall make us rue
If England to herself do rest but true.
It is right enough, if you interpret it rightly. But England has got to
be true to herself. She is not being true to herself while the refugees
who have sought our shores are penned up in concentration camps, and company
directors work out subtle schemes to dodge their Excess Profits Tax. It
is goodbye to the Tatler and the Bystander, and farewell
to the lady in the Rolls-Royce car. The heirs of Nelson and of Cromwell
are not in the House of Lords. They are in the fields and the streets,
in the factories and the armed forces, in the four-ale bar and the suburban
back garden; and at present they are still kept under by a generation of
ghosts. Compared with the task of bringing the real England to the surface,
even the winning of the war, necessary though it is, is secondary. By revolution
we become more ourselves, not less. There is no question of stopping short,
striking a compromise, salvaging Īdemocracyā, standing still. Nothing ever
stands still. We must add to our heritage or lose it, we must grow greater
or grow less, we must go forward or backward. I believe in England, and
I believe that we shall go forward.
Note
1: For example:
ĪI donāt want to join
the bloody Army,
I donāt want to go
unto the war;
I want no more to
roam,
Iād rather stay at
home,
Living on the earnings
of a whore.ā
But it was not in that
spirit that they fought. [Authorās footnote.]
Note
2: :It is true that they aided them to a certain extent with money.
Still, the sums raised for the various aid-Spain funds would not equal
five per cent of the turnover of the football pools during the same period.
[Authorās footnote.]
Note
3: Written before the outbreak of the war in Greece. [Authorās footnote.]
Note
4: It is interesting to notice that Mr Kennedy, U.S.A. Ambassador in
London, remarked on his return to New York in October 1940 that as a result
of the war Īdemocracy is finishedā. By Īdemocracyā, of course, he meant
private capitalism. [Authorās footnote.].
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