“The announcement about Ketwood brought a crowd to the Parish Meeting in March. Ketwood was then considered too small to have a Parish Council, so an elected chairman presided over our civil affairs assisted by a clerk. The previous year the parish meeting had been drowsy and poorly attended: a few desultory remarks about drains, an unhopeful question about electricity, and the re-election of the chairman had practically completed the business. It was the shadow of a lost autonomy. But in 1947 we had a topic, and all agreed that the school ought not to be closed. The Welsh fire of the schoolmistress’s husband had its rousing effect. He and I were selected to go into the matter. The meeting decided to send a protest to the Ladbrokeshire Education Authority, and to hold a parents’ meeting.”
For the documenting of this account of mine I have happily been able to avail myself of the log of the dissident young parson. And wherever I can with advantage use the authentic delivery of the central figure in this little drama I shall do so. The above extract shows us exactly how the storm broke. We see the official army of secretaries, in their Georgian mansion, on the one side, and the handful of villagers, and the ill-paid clergyman upon the other. For we cannot suppose that Matthew Laming received any very substantial support from his diocesan superiors, since his bishop advised the diocese in a speech that “the lion’s tail must not be twisted too hard”. The lion, of course, in this case, was Britannic socialism.
Let us now go back to the living-room of the embattled Vicar, where he sat curled up in a monstrous chair, like a squirrel in the bole of a tree, but unlike a squirrel surrounded, frame to frame, by a gallery of dismal Victorian portraits; there was not much in this poor Vicar’s living-room, except for the panelling of the portraits. Outside the windows swarmed all the cook-pot animals he has collected but refuses to kill—which is why there are so many. He will devour their eggs, but declines to murder them, which relates this Ladbrokeshire divine to St. Francis and I suppose the “Sons of Freedom” (Canadian Doukobors). Alas he is thin, very much too thin. As I gazed at this aesthetic, under-nourished figure I hoped that Providence would strike down a goose with lightning and his wife, pouncing on it with alacrity, carry it in triumph to the kitchen. In a lengthy circumstantial report of his struggle with the Government over the village school, he writes that he was “cleaning out the chickens” when I arrived. He was taken off guard, looking as present-day clergymen must always do except when wearing their Sunday suit. At first he was shy. When a little later he learned from me that I knew other clergymen he was more at ease, and ceased endeavouring to conceal a hole in the elbow of his shirt. He actually smiled with a flicker of mischief while I was narrating the sartorial plight of Rymer—not of course revealing my friend’s name nor the part of England where he has his vicarage.
“Are you proposing to go through with this?” I enquired.
He started as if I had awoken him by sticking a pin into his leg.
“With…? Yes. At—at least I hope I can, you know.”
Under similar circumstances what would be the attitude of a minister in the United States? It is, of course, not difficult to imagine the pugnacious poses, the jutting chin, the eyes narrowed to slits, the boastful words. He would “lick the pants off” the administration. This little Ladbrokeshire vicar had with great determination and considerable skill disputed the right of a well-nigh totalitarian government to start the work of liquidating the family in his village. But he allowed no trace of aggressiveness to appear in the deprecating angle of his head and the quietest, almost apologetic expression of his personality.
His wife came in to say that lunch was ready. Her beauty looks as if it had been rarefied in the atmosphere of some mountain valley. We (which includes one of their two delightful children) ate our spam, an egg, an apple, very simple fare, though I was ashamed of eating it as I was well aware how limited was the larder of a poor clergyman in the Crippsian Ice Age. Battalions of geese waddled around outside, while fat hens pecked around the kitchen door, and the cocks crowed at the tops of their voices. Food on two legs was triumphantly vocal. It was like a meal with St. Francis in a time of dearth, but haunted by edible birds, which one knew to be a mischievous device of Satan.
“So Cotton is your M.P.?”
We were on our way back to the sitting-room, and I remembered I had intended to ask him about this.
“Unfortunately, yes,” he said in a voice of resigned regret. “Cotton had a lot to do with framing the bill, in a pre-socialist administration, and with seeing that eventually it found its way into the statute book,” he told me mildly, and a little sadly.
“However, there are just as many socialists all of whose instincts are Tory, as there are conservatives who would change England into a quite different country.”
“I suppose so.”
“Have you seen this mis-cast King’s Man, this conservative with socialist leanings?” I asked.
“He came over here,” he told me.
Apparently as a member for the Halchester division he thought he would come over and find out exactly what was happening in Ketwood. One day Laming found him on his doorstep. The politician asked the vicar to step outside and have a talk. Laming answered no—you come inside if you wish to speak to me. The politician preferred outside. He beckoned the frowning clergyman (for the Laming that is shown to me is not what a man whose foolishness had opened the gates to Abstraction would see). For some moments this “you-come-out—no-you-come-in” continued and then the “great man” became a little less great and went inside. There Laming reminded him of the part he had played in the passing of the Bill which decreed the centralizing of the rural schools. But here Mr. Cotton protested that he had not intended schools for the younger children to be interfered with. Subsequently in all Ladbrokeshire papers Cotton published the following statement: “In my view it is most undesirable that children of ten years old and under should be removed from their villages for instruction in regional Schools. It is most important that in those earliest years they should remain in the neighbourhood of their families, and not be taken away to an abstract centre where they become alienated from parental disciplines. This has always been my view: and it was the intention of those of us who were responsible for the act decreeing the new organization of rural education that the village schools where children of ten years and under receive their instruction should remain intact. It is for me a matter of great regret to see these original plans overridden.”
Such was the defence of Mr. Cotton, and he repudiated any responsibility for the recent high-handed actions of the socialist government. This is what Mr. Cotton explained to the indignant young clergyman, standing outside the improvised class-room in the latter’s house—headquarters of the revolt against socialism—with which revolt, of course, this politician wished to have no contacts, though he did wish (on the time-honoured English principle of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds) to disinculpate himself of so socialist an intention as nationalizing small children.
“Hell is paved with good intentions,” I commented, and the Vicar of Ketwood agreed that the hell of totalitarian socialism must always be paved with Liberal altruism and Conservative attempts to steal the thunders of the Labour Opposition, or shall we say, as it is a question of a pavement, by planks stolen out of the socialists’ platform.
“Autocratic state-socialism, a monster with great ugly teeth in it you say, is undeniably one of the most repulsive forms of government! Is any sort of socialism acceptable?” I enquired. Laming digests leading questions—from a friend—uneasily. I have a parson friend who is painfully reminiscent of a Gilbert and Sullivan or a Du Maurier curate who would cry if a friend seemed displeased with him, but with non-friends, if need be, is as tough as a Hemingway hero (if you cut out the bloody climax). Laming is an intellectual: and the answer was obvious. He only looked surprised.
“Religious communities are instances of a type of socialism of a very good kind. Christian society in the Middle Ages offers many exa
mples of… yes, communism.”
“All true communisms are of a religious character. You come to a full stop when you try to think of any others. The communism existing in primitive societies is conditioned by supernatural pressures. I am aware that it might be said: ‘What is the difference between pressure by supernatural agency and compulsion by terrorist police methods? Do they not boil down to the same thing?’ The compulsion, however, is of an entirely different nature. Religion is as the communists say a drug. Men to whom this drug has been skilfully administered exist in a dream. They will live on bread and water gladly, anaesthetized by incantations and prayers. There is no substitute for some such drug. The artist, especially the musician would understand immediately what I mean. They administer drugs. Men die quite easily to the sound of the pipes. There are no spells and drugs in socialism of the same potency as a Bach Mass.”
My young host was naturally shy of this talk of drugs. He nodded politely and said:
“No communism works.”
His voice was full of decision. But we were approaching this question differently, it was plain.
“Only within the framework of a religion?” I sought his confirmation.
“That is so, I think. Yes.”
“Without the appropriate drug the rational faculty breaks down the solidarity in a very short time.”
“Not the reason, surely you do not mean that,” he protested politely.
“You must not scorn stupefying agents. The human reason is merely a nuisance without—without—”
“I think I see what you mean.”
I examined the massed portraits on the walls of nineteenth-century statesmen and soldiers. All of them might have been portraits of the same man—say a quick-change artist who disguised himself successively as some prominent general or politician. I rose and studied one carefully.
“My father painted all of them. When his army life was over—he was a soldier—he copied portraits as a hobby.”
This of course accounted for the curious likeness. They served rather to empty the room than to fill it. This vacant look suited the vicar. He is a man who is quite indifferent to his personal surroundings, and the dark anonymous portrait gallery, for heaven knows who these soldiers and politicians were, was an ideal setting for him. To have a parent weave a pattern of anonymity in his ruminative old age of decorated nobodies, was for Laming a good arrangement. He is unquestionably somebody. He sits symbolically ringed with painted mediocrity. Lightly he rests there, a squirrel that plans. His worried head propped upon his hand, he spoke of the duplicity of the state.
“All administrations,” I pointed out, “of Right as much as Left, lie deliberately, without stopping, in a democratic state. When Cripps solemnly announced that the pound would never be devalued, I knew that it must have been arranged to devalue it. And in a surprisingly short time devaluation occurred. In a similar way President Roosevelt in an election address solemnly declared American boys would
never again be asked to fight on foreign soil. He was elected, and soon afterwards American boys were fighting on foreign soil. How else can you rule a modern democracy? The newspapers in a two or more Party state make any other course impossible. No one is shocked that the diplomat practices every duplicity (and the skilfuller the liar the better the diplomat). The limitation imposed upon the democratic politician’s power-impulses is responsible for an ugly mood, and he would actually come to relish deceiving this ignorant multitude which possessed the right to strip him of power at the ballot-boxes.”
“I suppose so,” said Laming.
“Democracy confers much power but stops short at the real thing. It is like a woman who is a sexual tease. It wears out a man very greedy of power. He gets to hate in the end this jade democracy, who says, ‘Rule me—but I shall dismiss you at once if you take too many liberties.’ As you know all our Ministers are wrecks. The cause is the strain imposed on their temperament because of all the things they are not allowed to do.”
Laming laughed discreetly.
“Slyness develops to a terrible extent. For instance, nurses. Everyone hates nurses, and the Administration is no exception to the rule. But it was common knowledge that the payment nurses received was archaic: a quarter of a century ago it might have sufficed, but for some time it has been recognized to be scandalously small. In these circumstances it was suddenly announced in the Press that a New Deal for Nurses had been decreed by a benevolent Government.”
Laming nodded. “Yes. I read about that. I suppose they had to do something.”
“Well, listen. A shopkeeper in Rotting Hill with whom I gossip, and actually a socialist, has a sister who is a nurse at a large London hospital. This sister spent a week-end with him a fortnight ago. What she imparted on the subject of the New Deal for Nurses filled him with indignant astonishment. When the New Deal came into force, she was owed eighty pounds, of this she received only five or six. The new scheme was retroactive as much as twelve months. Another nurse who was owed forty or fifty pounds received nothing, but actually had to pay six pounds.”
“How extraordinary.”
“Yes. The explanation is that under the new ruling nurses have to pay for their own keep, there is an increase in income-tax payments, and so on. Consequently these nurses, earning four pounds instead of three a week are much worse off instead of better off, but the Government has had all the benefit of the ballyhoo.”
“Ho, ho, ho,” cheerlessly but expressively hooted Laming.
“That is, of course, frightfully sly,” I continued.
“I should think it is.”
“Do not let us blame Ministers for this, it must be the work of some malignant underling. I cannot see Bevin or Cripps or Attlee—much as they must dislike nurses, having spent considerable periods in their company—I cannot see any of them playing so scurvy a trick.”
“Oh!”
“No. I am not interested in Party. Only in a Party spirit could one suppose that a Minister could think up so vindictive a trick. And the same applies to many other disgraceful tricks, yes and major acts of legislation.”
“They are responsible, aren’t they?”
“But they are grey and old and full of sleep.”
“Oh, I see. I must remember that in future.”
“Whether it is the collective policy of the Cabinet or not, there are steps taken under their aegis leading in a direction I regard as humanly bad. Here is an example. What a National Health Act dentist receives for an entire dental plate, top and bottom, is nine pounds. He and his mechanic cannot be expected to turn out a very good plate for that money, and they in effect do not turn out an awfully good plate. But it is now planned to supersede the present old-world picture of thousands of little free-enterprise outfits, each making its own little dental plates and the same man doing a stopping as extracts a tooth. ‘Clinics’ are to be set up, where the little client of the Welfare State can have the mass extraction in one department and get his plate in another: a building where thousands of dental artisans will be emptying the gums of teeth and clapping little plastic plates into rows of little open mouths in assembly-line fashion. In the United States I have seen establishments given up to mass extraction of teeth. My own reaction to such methods is to find them degrading. If more and more of that is socialism I don’t like socialism. The men now in power seem to regard it as part of their sacred mission to create an assembly-line world and to reproduce the atmosphere of the factory in every part of human life, from the dentist’s chair to the marriage bed. This I am sure is nothing specifically to do with socialism. But it is inseparable from socialism as it is served up today.”
“To make everything in the image of a machine is an idiosyncrasy, yes, it is.” Laming nodded.
“Not only an idiosyncrasy of British socialism. But the trouble is that our socialists are inclined to think the more mechanistic a thing is the more socialist. This is referred to as planning. There was too little planning formerly: our chaotic cities bear witness t
o that. But an over-planned life is at least as bad as no plan at all. It is their rigour that is the worst thing about our new masters—not their socialism.”
“Socialism is always rigid,” Laming objected, “that is what is bad about Socialism, it is not something peculiar to these socialists. The collectivizing of society involves the tightening up of every control. No, I do not see how it can be otherwise than rigid.”
“Whether that be so or not, the intoxication of industrial techniques seems to impel men everywhere to transform any human process into a mechanical process. This is described by Toynbee as the Apathetic Fallacy. The sense of power obtained from the control of a machine must not be forgotten. Finally, infection from Russia is a big factor. Industry was made into a power-god there.”
“In a society predominantly agricultural socialism would be inhuman just the same,” Laming politely but firmly insisted. Socialism for him could only signify a reformatory for anti-social humanity, or a puritan austerity parching up the human world.
I lit a cigarette, and he courteously watched me.
“I might become a socialist,” I announced.
“Oh yes? Oh.”
“As an obscure member in that racket I should be scrupulous about several things. For instance, I should make no objection to the closing of the village schools!”
“Oh yes?”
“No. That would be ridiculous. But I should set a limit, in my mind, beyond which mechanization should not go. Also I should propose, for those taking office, a thorough overhaul; with a view to checking up on power-complexes, latent as well as in flower.”
Rotting Hill Page 27
