The Fala Factor by Stuart M. Kaminsky (Mysterious Press 1984)

The little black dog on my desk wanted to play, but with a corpse sitting in the corner and a murderer on the way up to my office on the elevator I just wasn’t in the mood. I patted his head, tried not to smell his breath, and said, “Maybe later.”

This didn’t please him. The Scottie lay down, covering the letter telling me where I was to pick up my sugar ration stamp book, put his head on his front paws, and looked up at me sadly. I checked my .38 automatic to be sure it was loaded, aimed it tentatively at the door to my office and hoped that I wouldn’t have to use it,  and, if I did, that it would work. It had never proved particularly reliable in the past.

Loose Connections by Maggie Brooks (Abacus 1984)

Harry was twenty minutes early. He located the ICA in an unlikely spot amongst some blind government buildings in the Mall. It was a white, low-lying block, like a slab of impenetrable wedding cake. He walked up and down in front of it a few times, uneasy and uncomfortable in the borrowed suit. The shadows were black and geometric in the overhead sun. He fancied the building had an Egyptian flavour to it. A parched palm tree would have looked at home.

His spirits soared momentarily. Perhaps next week he’d be in a foreign country under a foreign sun. The suit was lightweight seersucker, white with blue stripes. This morning it had seemed just the thing - rather casual and devil-may-care, a suit for someone used to travelling, crisp and cool and effortlessly elegant. Now he was not so sure. The sweat was trickling down his back and running a stream into the bunched fabric of the outsize waistband and he was increasingly aware of the way the trousers ballooned out at the knees and ended up lapping unwanted over his glistening brogues. An image of Andy Pandy in a white and blue one-piece kept humping into his mind unasked and he scowled as he felt his confidence ebbing. He swerved into the doorway before he could think better of it and lurched into the bookshop with a purposeful air. The assistants had the air of people who’d agreed to lower themselves to the task as a short-term favour and who found each contact with a customer unspeakably droll. They sparred roguishly with one another, letting out occasional hoots whilst keeping a weather eye on Harry’s spade fingers as he leafed through creamy pages of text looking for pictures. Harry turned on his heels and made for the gents, his confidence ebbing to rock bottom.

George Orwell was right, he told himself bitterly as he quarrelled with the towel roller, it’s something you give off in your pores and people have an infallible nose for it. He jutted his jaw at himself in the mirror. I may not have class, he told himself defiantly, but what I do have is boyish charm. At thirty-three this was a rare and useful tool to have in the kit. It had always served him well before and in this instance it was his only card. He had never been so determined about anything. He was going to Munich.

Morbid Symptoms by Gillian Slovo (Dembner Books 1984)

Sam and I had originally been matchmade by some shared friends and had spent a pleasant enough evening flirting over a laden dinner table. Nothing else might have happened if we hadn't bumped into each other at one of those CSE conferences where half the people are there to catch up on a year's theory and the other half to recuperate from a year's monogamy. I'd been trying to escape from an over-zealous and badly informed acquaintance, who was giving me a lecture on the mistakes of the Portuguese left. Sam had been so busy choosing between two workshops on widely differing subjects that he'd missed them both. Indecision seemed an underlying theme in Sam's life. A mathematician on the point of getting his PhD he'd got side-tracked down an alley of algebraic topology and couldn't figure out what to do about it. His solution had been - still was - to spend more time in writing poetry than in finishing his thesis.

The Busconductor Hines by James Kelman (Phoenix 1984)

On the platform the two entertainers in red trousers, tartan waistcoats and red bowties, singing a song and accompanying themselves on accordion and rhythm guitar. At the next table Sandra was smiling at something being said by McCulloch's wife; and she smiled at Hines when she noticed him watching. He prised the lid off the tin. The waitress had arrived again, her face perspired; quickly she transferred the drinks from tray to table and collected the empties. Why don't you join the Foreign Legion, he grinned. Either she failed to hear or she ignored him. He reached for the water jug and added a measure to his whisky.

Reilly was talking. He was saying. No chance, they'll never give in without a fight. Look at that last bother we had over the rise; I mean after the autumn agreement it was supposed to be a formality, but was it? was it fuck?

Aye and we're still waiting for the backpay, said Colin.

What they'll do is toss it into us at Christmas week then every cunt'll think they've had a bonus!

Hines laughed with the others.

McCulloch shook his head at Stewart. You're just encouraging them.

Ah you cant escape politics.

Dead right Stewart, but it's no good telling this yin.

What you want to do is get a transfer down to our garage, said Hines, then you'll find out: bunch of fucking houdinis so they are.

They laughed again. Rab's right but, continued Reilly. It's murder polis. You've just got to mention the word strike and no cunt'll speak to you for six months.

No wonder. Union union union, muttered McCulloch.

See what I mean?

Aye well fuck sake if I started talking about the job yous mob'd soon be shooting me down in flames.

Hines frowned. That's actually true.

I know it's fucking true!

Scully and Mooey by Alan Bleasdale (Corgi Books 1984)

I had to put Hovis to bed in the end. There was no one else to do it. Our Arthur was at the Cubs, Gran had a promise, Henry was in the cockloft playing with his train set, my Mam was painting her face and my dad had slipped down the Boundary for half a dozen quick ones before they went out. I wouldn’t mind if they were going to Alcoholics Anonymous or something, but they were only going down town on the ale.

After I’d told Hovis ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ and threatened him a couple of times, he seemed to go asleep and I came downstairs. My Mam had followed after my dad, but she’d left thirty pence on the mantelpiece for me. That wouldn’t get much these days, no more than a bag of chips, but it’d still be twenty pence more than the rest of the gang’d have when I saw them, now that their old fellers were on the Social Security. At least mine had still kept his job painting and decorating on the Corporation.

Longest my dad has ever kept in work by all accounts, but he had to after what happened last year when my Mam threw him out and almost got a fancy feller for herself. He’s only back on probation now and there’s no sign of that ending. My Mam makes sure of that. One word out of place and she’s asking him if his bags are packed. She’s alright though, my Mam. She’s dead fair, she’s got no favourites — she’s rotten to the lot of us.

Things are a lot better than they were though. I think our Vera and Tony leaving home made the difference. I was glad to see the back of both of them.

Scully by Alan Bleasdale (Arrow Books 1984)

'I wrote SCULLY on the bus shelter as we walked back past the prefabs. I put SCULLY where I can. It's everywhere on our estate. It's me name, see? Coppers see us writing on the walls sometimes. And usually they don't bother. They're just like us, you know - they don't care neither. Most times they just shout at us, or get in their car and pretend to phone for reinforcements or the Marines or something.'

A Very Profitable War by Didier Daeninckx (Melville International Crime 1984)

Sorinet and Goyon were first in the pile, followed by a show-case of militant anarchism: men with bald heads, with beards, with glasses, with the expression of hallucinating poets, hair sweeping their shoulders, civil servants in evening dress with bow ties and top hats  . . . the owner of the Carden was hiding at the bottom of the pile between a young woman who specialized in revolutionary abortions and a forger.

My Sorinet-Goyon was in fact called Francis Ménard, born at Ivry-sur-Seine, a librarian by profession. He wasn't wanted for much before '17: a few illegal occupations of private property, taking part ina few demonstrations that ended badly . . . Now they were looking for him for 'desertion in the face of the enemy in May '17'.

Nowadays the penalty wouldn't be much more than three to five years in prison near Toulon; before the armistice, he would have faced the firing squad.

He could count himself lucky, he'd managed to save his skin. Those who were no longer here to say the same thing could be counted in platoons.

Walking back to the car, I decided to follow the trail leading to the appropriation of apartments. Francis Ménard and the friends whose identity he had taken over were at the time part of the 'Tenants' Trade Union', an anarchist group that had had its moments of glory in the two years preceding the war.

The whole of Paris used to follow the exploits of their spokesman, Georges Cochon, and his confrontations, which always included a large dose of humour, for the rehousing of working-class families.

Paris high society followed as well, although its laughter was nervous.

I remembered certain episodes such as the day of action 'Against the Tyranny of the Concierges' during which the Cochonnards' commandos put fleas, bugs and cockroaches through the keyholes of the concierges' doors! One day, I had also come across a procession of the 'badly housed' who were going up to take over the barracks at Château d'Eau from the soldiers. They were marching in serried ranks behind their band, 'The Cacophony of Saint Copy-Cat', a heterogeneous group with music scored for saucepans, ladles, billy-cans, tins . . . 

The Socialist Party flags fluttered in the middle of the procession, mixed in with the black standards, and it wasn't unusual to come across the happy face of a Member of Parliament from that party. The party paper gave inflammatory accounts of the events and blamed everything on their bête noire, the Prefect Lépine.

Stalker by Liza Cody (Bantam Books 1984)

Later, Anna dreamt of a flood. A body floated by, turning lazily, until one arm rose above the surface. The hand had fingers like the antlers of a stag. Olsen said, 'He isn't dead, he's only in love,' and she flew effortlessly up above the water and sailed away over green fields and under warm sunshine all the way to London.

It only became a nightmare when she found she could not land. Selwyn said, 'Stop messing around up there with your head in the clouds. Supper's on the table.' But try as she would, Anna could not get her feet on the ground. Just as she was about to touch earth an upcurrent took her soaring away again. 'Come back,' Selwyn shouted. 'The air's too rich for you.' It grew colder and colder. Anna woke up with all the blankets on the floor. A dog was barking.

Orwell Remembered by Audrey Coppard and Bernard Crick (Facts On File Publications 1984)

A bit of a departure from the usual business of cutting and pasting a paragraph to give you a flavour of the book just read.

As it's Orwell, and as it's a book given over to reminiscences, I've decided to cut and paste three passages which give you both a sense of the book and of the man . . . and of where I'm coming from now that I come to think about it.
And that was typical of him. I remember his comment when I told him of an experience of mine in the early 1920s. In those days the Communist Party enjoyed very little prestige in England and was still affiliated to the Labour Party. One day I was at a Labour Club in north London and someone said: 'You must meet our Communist poet.' I was then introduced to a dishevelled looking man whose name, to my astonishment, I recognised as that of a distinguished member of the Symbolist group. When I told Orwell about this many years later he said: 'Ah, but in those days, you see, it didn't pay to be a Communist; and it's a pretty safe rule to say about anything that as long as it doesn't pay it's all right.' Justice, in other words, is always with the weaker side because it does not pay to join it. But he certainly sometimes carried the principle to absurd lengths, and this aspect of him was wittily described by Mr V. S. Pritchett in an account of how Orwell once advised him that he ought to keep goats. The chief point being, so Mr Pritchett gathered, that it would put him to a lot of trouble and he would be certain to lose a lot of money; and Orwell got quite carried away with enthusiasm as he expounded the 'alluring disadvantages' of the scheme.

(Sir Richard Rees, pages 120-121)

Let this point be made clear: Orwell did cope with the baby. It may have been romanticism, but, if so, it was romanticism that found practical expression. This was characteristic of him in all he did. His idiosyncrasies were based in guts.
He would still go out at night to address protest meetings - 'probably a blackguard, but it was unjust to lock him up' - and the baby would be left to sleep for an hour or two at our house while Orwell was haranguing his audience.
'What was the meeting like?' one would ask on his return.
'Oh, the usual people.'
'Always the same?'
'There must be about two hundred of them altogether. They go round to everything of this sort. About forty or fifty turned up tonight, which is quite good.'
This down-to-earth scepticism, seasoned with a dash of self-dramatisation, supplied a contradictory element in Orwell's character. With all his honesty and ability to face disagreeable facts, there was always about him, too, the air of acting a part . . .

(Anthony Powell, page 245)

While he was attacking the bullies on the right he nearly starved to death. Once he turned to the bullies on the left, the right having been temporarily beaten, he made his fortune. This was due to no lack of integrity on his part. For he never fell for Communism for a moment although he was more deeply concerned with social justice than most men, and more unselfishly so than some. It had cost him plenty in the thirties and on the left to be so uncompromisingly anti-Communist, yet he liked reading Trotsky and even more reading Rosa Luxemburg. For all his masculineness the fact that it was a woman who had such a good mind, a better one than Lenin's, did attract him.
As for the British anarchists and near-anarchists, vegetarians and sex reformers, he found them the most disappointing of all. As they never had the slightest chance of getting into power anyway he thought that they might as well have stuck to their principles, whereas all they seemed to do was get bogged down in the mess of their doctrines. About their principles, they chopped and changed, like a Christian Brother on a debating platform with a lot of non-conformists. He loved Bartolomeo Vanzetti, however, as much as I do; whose hands were smelly with the smell of the fish he peddled, but to whom all the poor of the whole world were what Beatrice was to that great Florentine, his countryman. Because of him, Piedmont can stand unashamed in front of Tuscany. At the trial of the anarchists during the war, the British judge, Sir Norman Birkett, as he then was, behaved better in his role than did the prisoners in the dock in theirs, which of course was a better role.

(Paul Potts, pages 253-254)

Powerplays: Trevor Griffiths in Television by Mike Poole and John Wyver (BFI Books 1984)

Although utterly unconvinced by his father’s attempt to make shabby pragmatism in office seem heroic, William none the less decides to defer to him on the grounds that he is ill and that he is, after all, his father. But buoyed up by his own rhetoric, Waite insists that they continue, and like any family row - and Griffiths clearly intends us to see the broad coalition that is the Labour Party as an unhappy ‘family’ - the confrontation proceeds to get more and more bitter. William, played with a dishevelled intensity by jack Shepherd, immediately resumes his attack, condemning the seemingly fatal desire of Labour leaders to ‘prove the papers wrong’, to show that they are ‘responsible’ men. And being ‘responsible’ generally amounts, of course, to not rocking the boat. Thus, ‘in the likes of MacDonald and Snowden the capitalist system found two of its ablest and most orthodox defenders in this century’. Pursuing a line of argument that suggests a fairly close acquaintance with Parliamentary Socialism, Ralph Miliband’s classic study of Labourism (which had been reissued in [973 with an appended postscript on the Wilson years), William continues by accusing successive Labour leaderships of a purely rhetorical commitment to socialism that has very little to do with what in practice they set out to achieve in government:

. . . the rhetoric you never lost. So that you can describe the Attlee legislation as a .social revolution as though what happened during that time was what socialism is all about. A real social revolution would have committed you to the destruction of capitalism and the social order formed and maintained by it . . . It wasn’t a social revolution you achieved, it was a- as it turned out- minimal social adjustment. You drew a section of the working class into the grammar schools, and allowed the public schools to continue training upper and middle~class elites . . . You created a national health service and allowed doctors to practise privately. You created municipal housing and left the building industry in the hands of the capitalists. You nationalised ailing industries and services and allowed the strong to be run privately, for private profit. (Pause) You didn’t create a new social order, you merely humanised an old one.

In a typically dialectical piece of writing, Grifhths allows Waite to come back with some accusations of his own: such as that his son’s socialism is the product ofa theoretical ‘ivory tower’, remote from anything resembling a political base. ‘You read your Marx and your Trotsky’ he tells him, ‘and you get your slide rule out and do a couple of simple calculations and you have your blueprint. Revolution. Total change. Overnight. Bang. Especially bang. You have to have your bit of theatre as well, don’t you? Reality isn’t like that. Reality is . . . taking people with you, Arguing with people who disagree, passionately.'

Scully and Mooey by Alan Bleasdale (Corgi Books 1984)

'A little blasphemy won't send you packin' t'Hell, Mrs Scully.'
"If it does, there's a lot of people who've done us down I'd like t'meet there. We were brought up in the Depression, me an' his dad, an' then through the blitz an' bloody ration books, an' that joker with his 'y've never had it so good'; aye f'them what's always had it. An' then a few good years just t'trick yer into thinkin' things're goin' t'work out alright, before the world turns around an' hits y'kids in the face. It's never them at the top what suffer though, it's us down here what have t'go through it, as far as I can see. An' whatever the politicians say, it's always goin' t'be the same. It all comes back t'those that can least afford it.'

Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker (Picador USA 1984)

You do a lot of walking in this job. More than you might think. In fact, when I get to the end of a busy Saturday night, it's me feet that ache. There, that surprised you, didn't it?

I work on me own now. Nobody else fancies this place, because they've all got it worked out that he must've picked Kath up from here. I've got the whole viaduct to meself some nights. Except for Kath, who's still here in a way, stuck up there on her billboard. Hiya, Kath.

I watched them putting that up and it was very strange if you knew Kath, because it was too big to go up all at once. I watched them pasting across first one eye and then the other and I thought, My God. Because her eyes, they follow you. They do, they follow you everywhere. I can be walking along with me back to her, and I still feel them. And they've got such a funny look. You'd just think they'd taken that photo after she was dead - that's the effect it has on you. Which is mad, because you can see she's alive, and anyway dead people's eyes close.

Loose Connections by Maggie Brooks (Abacus 1984)

Sally nodded vigorously. There was nothing more exhilarating than arguing a thesis among intelligent people who were all in total agreement. There was a heady self-righteousness about it that went to the head like champagne.
'Quality of life, economic survival, these are the issues. They can't be tackled from the old narrow base. The parties have to face this . . .'
Sally was just about to launch on a favourite theory of wealth redistribution when the chandelier tinkled out a warning note, stirred by the rising heat of the silver candelabra. She had a strange, disorientating sensation, sitting in this Homes and Gardens interior discussing socialism. She examined it. What was it she wanted them to do? Give all their money away and then discuss it?