Another Country (1984)

In The Thirties by Edward Upward (Heinemann 1962)

Most of the others, when all of the group had arrived here, sat on the tree-trunks, but Alan and Elsie chose the grass, which was warm and thistle free and had been grazed by rabbits till it was as short as the grass of a lawn. Alan had been carrying his and her lunch in a small rucksack that he now removed from his back and handed to Elsie, who had prepared the food and knew which of the greaseproof-paper-covered packets contained what. She grinned as she gave him the three hard-boiled eggs that he had told her he would want when she had asked him in the flat how many. And he did want them. The walking he had done gave relish to his eating, made it a pleasure so keen that it was like an aesthetic experience. With the eggs there were brown bread-and-butter sandwiches and afterwards he ate a banana and an apple, and he drank hot coffee which she poured out for him from a vacuum flask into a plastic cup. And the pleasure did not end when his appetite was satisfied: it changed, evolved, became a happiness deriving not just from food but also from the presence of the comrades eating and talking around him.

‘How fine they are,’ he thought. ‘How devoted and honest, how different from what anti-Communists say that Communists are, how much better as human beings than their traducers.’ He looked at Lamont, conqueror of dreadful disabilities, and at Lamont’s wife, whose self-sacrifice for her husband had made possible his outstanding work for the cause; at Len Whiscop, born in a slum, mainly self-educated, who was among the Party’s most effective economics tutors and who once, when trespassing on principle, had led a group of ramblers including Alan and Elsie past a gamekeeper holding a shotgun; at Sammy Pentire and his Polish wife Rosa, both of them nearer seventy than sixty but slim and fit, who were vegetarians and had been active for socialism since their twenties; at George Farmer, an Old Etonian who could have made a bourgeois career for himself if he hadn’t chosen the Party; at Enid and Bertha, teachers, who had remained loyal to the working class into which they had been born and whose scrupulous intellectual honesty would allow them to accept nothing on faith, not even from the Party leaders. He thought of other comrades who were not here on this ramble: of Wally first of all, and of Eddie Freans, and of Jimmy Anders. Then he thought of people opposed to the Party: of Mrs Greensedge, who cheated at whist drives and who had once said that her husband would be furious if he thought she was getting mixed up with Communists; of a university don who had alluded to Marx and Engels with complacent contempt and in words revealing that he had not bothered to study their writings; of Christian imperialists paying lip-service to the Sermon on the Mount and expressing horror at the Marxist view that the use of force was in certain temporary revolutionary circumstances justifiable; of young careerists despising the working class they had risen from and abhorring Communism because it contradicted the only principle that made sense to them – their own advancement. Such people were of the class which Alan himself had belonged to, but which he had broken with. ‘I have cleansed myself of their customs,’ he thought, remembering Dante’s line: ‘da’ lor costumi fa che tu ti forbi.’ He belonged at last, without reservation, among these comrades he was sitting with here. They accepted him as one of them, and he knew that in spite of, or perhaps partly because of, his diffidence, they liked him. He loved them, and he would never again allow himself to repine because of the amount of work the Party expected from him, or to hanker back after what he had been fond of in his bourgeois days.

The In Between Time by Alexander Baron (Panther 1971)

And so he listened to all the street-corner politicians. He was most drawn to the saddest of them all, the Independent Labour Party, the diehard remnant of a force once great in Britain. He had a mind split without discomfort between commonsense and fantasy, and he knew that they talked nonsense. But their nonsense set him on fire because it corresponded with his fantasies. He knew they were a hopeless little sect but they appealed to a quixotic streak in him. They were the most fiery, dirty and hairy among an array of groups by no mean deficient in these qualities, and he, the neat schoolboy, was a secret romantic who knew Murger's Scènes de la Vie de Bohème almost by heart. 

Yet he did not join them. For the real force that impelled him to the meetings, of which he was at least vaguely aware, must be revealed. Among the I.L.P. fanatics he saw only one woman, and she was of advanced years: at least thirty-five. She wore a sort of floral nightgown, very dirty, down to her ankles and sandals upon dirty feet. She looked out from a tangle of tarnished, unshorn hair that spread upon her shoulders. There was no place for her in Victor's dreams. The truth was that although his frowning attention to social problems was sincere, he was looking for something more attainable than the millennium. He was looking for girls.

In this there was nothing remarkable. It has been true for the last hundred years, and it applies as much to the notoriously wild youth of today as it did in Victor's time, that the most powerful of all the magnets drawing young men to radical politics is not the Oedipus Complex but the idea of radical girls.

Bloody Bolsheviks on your hands

There's something to this 1930s ad for Scot Tissue Towels:

If your eyesight is as bad as mine, the text reads:

“Try wiping your hands six days a week on harsh, cheap paper towels or awkward, unsanitary roller towels — and maybe you, too, would grumble. Towel service is just one of those small, but important courtesies — such as proper air and lighting — that help build up the goodwill of your employees. That’s why you’ll find clothlike Scot-Tissue Towels in the washrooms of large, well-run organizations such as R.C.A. Victor Co., Inc., National Lead Co. and Campbell Soup Co.”

Hat tip to 'RF' over at Facebook.

The Gilt Kid by James Curtis (Penguin Books 1936)

He was walking along Gerrard Street, shaking his head in solemn negation at all the prostitutes, when a man stopped him.

'Hallo, comrade.'

'Blimey, this seems to be my night for meeting people. Who the hell are you, mate?'

He looked at the other closely. He was short, pale and looked scared. Paleface! That was the key-word. Paleface. The man must have met him in prison. Good God, he thought, with a kind of mock comicality, the place is getting infested with gaol-birds.

The man was talking. The Gilt Kid listened with impatience. He hardly wanted to listen. Talking was more his line.

'Don't you remember me, comrade? I'm the man what sold you a copy of the Daily Worker on the day of the anti-war demo last week.' His voice had a kind of whine in it as though he was begging.

'That's right.' The Gilt Kid's manner was condescending. 'Come and have a drink.'

'Well,' said the communist, hopefully, 'I haven't any money.'

'I'm not asking you if you've got any money,' he said loftily. 'I'm asking you to have a drink.'

They went to Teddy Bear's at the corner of Gerrard Street.

'What are you going to have?'

'A bitter, please.'

'A bitter please, and a large Scotch and soda.'

With four fizzy bottles of beer already inside him, the Gilt Kid knew that he could not stomach any more beer. He carried the drinks across to where the communist was sitting.

'Good luck.'

'Good luck.'

They tasted their drinks. The Gilt Kid turned to his guest.

'So you're a communist, are you?'

'Yes.' The monosyllable was defiant.

'Well, I want to talk to you about joining.'

'About joining the C.P.?'

A smile of joy wreathed the Red's face. He felt that by using such initials as the E.C.C.I. and the N.U.W.M., not to mention barbarous composite words like Agitprop and Politburo, he would be certain to tie his opponent up in knots if an argument started. He drank a little more beer and cleared his husky throat.

'It's quite simple, really,' he began. 'You see, we Marxists believe first of all in the materialist conception of history, by which we mean  . . . '

This was too much. The Gilt Kid interrupted him.

'Yes I know all about that. I know all about the Materialist Conception of History, and the Class War, and the Theory of Surplus Value. And don't for God's sake try to tell me about Economic Determinism.' With a wave of his hand he dismissed all such theories as idle trifles, unworthy of the attention of two intelligent men. 'What I want to know is when are you getting on with the job.'

'We are getting on with the job.' The little communist was indignant. 'We are disseminating our propaganda among the masses.'

'Yes, Yes, Yes.' It seemed inevitable that the communist be interrupted. 'That's not what I mean. When's the revolution coming? That's your job.'

'Yes, comrade, but we got to await the revolutionary situation.'

'Why wait for the revolutionary situation? Why in the name of God don't you go out and make one.'

'Yes, comrade, but . . . '

'Don't "yes comrade but" me. Have another drink?'

The poor communist knew that he was on difficult ground. The other was paying for the drinks and, therefore, had the right to direct the conversation.

The Gilt Kid, having come back with the glasses recharged, plunged straight into the argument without any of the toasts or salutations customary among the drinking classes.

'Listen, you hold demonstrations,' he began, 'meetings, hunger-marches and all that bull. What the hell good does it do? Just a few mugs get nicked and a few more have sore heads where the slops have bashed them with their batons. You can't tell me that brings the revolution any nearer.'

'We hold those demonstrations and that for the purpose of spreading our propaganda and keeping the name of the party before the masses. And when the inevitable breakdown of capitalism occurs the workers will turn to the people who have led them in the past.'

'Not likely,' retorted the Gilt Kid, 'when that breakdown of yours happens, the blokes who're coming out on top are the strong-arm guys who can grab all they want for themselves and freeze on to it when they've got it. You can bet on that, china.'

"But you're advocating individualism. The workers are only to be saved by mass action.'

'I'm not advocating nothing. I'm just telling you what's going to happen. Look, here if you want people to follow you you got to give them something. Blokes are going to stick by someone who gets them dough, ain't they?'

'Naturally.'

'Well, instead of messing about with dopey meetings why don't you give the boys something? Start a riot. Lead a row in Bond Street and loot all the shops. Collect all the bums in London and take them into one of the flash hotels and let them demand to be fed. You hear about hunger-marchers making rows and demanding grub. Where'd they go? To the Ritz, to Lyons' Corner House, even? No! The workhouse. That's just about your mark, kicking up a shine at the spike.'

'Yes, but if we did all that the leaders of the party'd get pinched and the movement'd be all bust up. Anyhow that's not communism. It's just plain hooliganism.'

'Call it what you like, mate. It's getting something for the bloke on the floor and that's what you reckon to be out for. Communists are all against production for profit, and don't believe in creating more surplus value for the sole benefit of the bosses.'

'Sure.'

'Well, there's only two types of blokes who don't create surplus value. Crooks and bums. Crooks nick the capitalist's dough and bums just don't graft and make any. And now, good-bye, pal, I got to get along.'

The Gilt Kid had grown fed up with arguing the toss, and besides, it had struck him as a good plan to leave the argument as it was, with himself on top.

The door swung to behind him, leaving the communist speechless and with a three-parts empty beer glass in his hand.

Wigs on the Green by Nancy Mitford (Vintage Books 1935)

'The Union Jack Movement is a youth movement,'  Eugenia cried passionately, 'we are tired of the old. We see things through their eyes no longer. We see nothing admirable in that debating society of aged and corrupt men called Parliament which muddles our great Empire into wars or treaties, dropping one by one the jewels from its crown, casting away its glorious Colonies, its hitherto undenied supremacy at sea, its prestige abroad, its prosperity at home, and all according to each vacillating whim of some octogenarian statesman's mistress -'

At this point a very old lady came up to the crowd, pushed her way through it and began twitching at Eugenia's shirt. 'Eugenia, my child,' she said brokenly, 'do get off that tub, pray, please get down at once. Oh! when her ladyship hears of this I don't know what will happen.'

'Go away Nanny,' said Eugenia, who in the rising tide of oratory seemed scarcely aware that she had been interrupted. 'How could anyone,' she continued, 'feel loyalty for these ignoble dotards, how can the sacred fire of patriotism glow in any breast for a State which is guided by such apathetic nonentities? Britons, I beseech you to take action. Oh! British lion, shake off the nets that bind you.' Here the old lady again plucked Eugenia's skirt. This time however, Eugenia turned round and roared at her, 'Get out you filthy Pacifist, get out I say, and take your yellow razor gang with you. I will have free speech at my meetings. Now will you go of your own accord or must I tell the Comrades to fling you out? Where are my Union Jackshirts?' Two hobbledehoys also dressed in red, white and blue shirts here came forward, saluted Eugenia and each taking one of the Nanny's hands they led her to a neighbouring bench where she sat rather sadly but unresistingly during the rest of the speech.

'We Union Jackshirts,' remarked Eugenia to the company at large, 'insist upon the right to be heard without interruption at our own meetings. Let the Pacifists' - here she gave her Nanny a very nasty look - 'hold their own meetings, we shall not interfere with them at all, but if they try to break up our meetings they do so at their own risk . . .'

Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse (Arrow Books 1934)

'Who are you?'

'Sergeant Voules, sir.'

I opened the door. It was pretty dark outside, but I could recognize the arm of the Law all right. This Voules was a bird built rather on the lines of the Albert Hall, round in the middle and not much above. He always looked to me as if Nature had really intended to make two police sergeants and had forgotten to split them up.

Scarface (1932)

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)

The Merry Frinks (1934)

A word from our sponsor . . .

One for the Party archives?

Abstract propaganda front and centre in The Merry Frinks, a madcap comedy from 1934.

And there was you thinking that the Hays Code was enforced in 1934 because of Mae West's single entendres and Joan Blondell showing a bit of thigh. How wrong you were. Jack, Harry and Daryl apparently viewed Utopian Socialism as more dangerous than Upton Sinclair during this time period.

The commie curmudgeon in the clip is Allen Jenkins, who some of the more infantile older readers of the blog will recognise as the voice of Officer Dibble in Top Cat. A worker in uniform.

Of course I'd love to claim Allen Jenkins's Emmett Frink as one of us, but how do I explain away the earlier scene in the film where he's carrying under his arm a portrait painting of Joe Stalin? Despite my best efforts, I can't.

More Comintern Third Period than Great Dover Street Impossibilism, but a very funny film, nonetheless. It's worth hunting down.

Another Country (1984)

As We Saw the Thirties edited by Rita James Simon (University of Illinois Press 1967)

Another thing to remember about the twenties is that, after a brief postwar depression, it was a decade of unusual prosperity. Big business and we thought of as its government seemed absolutely impregnable. And most of us were in one way or another beneficiaries of national prosperity. How was H. L. Mencken able to publish a glossy journal such as the American Mercury? Because the publishing business of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., was flourishing. How were the expatriates able to live abroad? Because they were taking advantage of a favorable rate of exchange. Why did I get a raise in salary at Smith College? Because papas were able to pay increased tuition fees.

Then the depression came. It began, of course, with the stock market crash of October, 1929, but our awareness of it did not begin then. I had started teaching that fall at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and one or two of my colleagues got squeezed, but I thought it served them right for playing the market. After all, they still had their jobs, and their families would not starve. Some of the big operators had been badly hurt, and a few committed suicide, but we had no great sympathy for the men of Wall Street. This, we said to ourselves, was what a business civilization was like.

But as 1930 went by, we began to wonder what was happening, and in 1932 it seemed clear to some of us that this business civilization that we had been belaboring on cultural and moral grounds had collapsed. The machines - those wonderful machines that had given so many of us a high standard of living - had stopped running. And more and more people were out of jobs. By 1932 some economists said that as many as 17 million people were unemployed, and that meant that every fourth person we met was jobless . . . [From ' Writers in the Thirties' by Granville Hicks.]