A Messiah of the Last Days

by C. J. Driver

  Even if you don’t believe that, the idea still matters, because John Buckleson without the idea was just another demagogue in a uniform—a splendid one perhaps, but no more than that. Which is not to say you must accept the idea; you need not believe in the perfectibility of man to believe in John Buckleson. When I was with my family, or in Wealdridge, or in a court, or in the Temple, it was easy to see how foolish the idea was. But when I was with John Buckleson, the idea was alive, not only in the mainly small minds around me, but in my imagination, and I was that man again who had walked away into the park because he thought he knew where the end of history was.

  PART II

  3

  I did not meet John Buckleson for nearly a year after I had first seen him, although I found out more about him.

  The head of our chambers is Matthew Wynstanley, the Labour M.P. A socialist of the Winchester and Balliol kind, he represents one of the West Midlands constituencies, though he is a Southerner in every other way. He is very busy, what with his practice and with his politics, and so I do not see him very much; but two days after the demonstration I happened to run into him just outside the Temple. He was waiting for a cab impatiently as the traffic flowed past, but he waved to me and I dodged across the road to talk to him. After a couple of pleasantries—Had I been doing interesting work? Had he been up all night?—I thought to ask him if he knew anything about Buckleson or the Free People; he is the kind of man who tends to have some information on almost anything to do with English politics.

  “Well,” he answered, “what I’ve read in the papers; Buckleson’s that chap who got slung out of Johnson’s College a couple of years ago after one of those interminable demonstrations. What’s your interest in him? Defending him?”

  “No,” I answered. “Idle curiosity, really. I happened to walk past a demonstration he was talking to in the park.”

  “He’s a Trot, isn’t he? Or anarchist, I suppose; can’t tell the difference any more these days, I can’t. I suppose the Free People are one of the splinter groups …”

  “Splintered from what?” I asked.

  “God knows,” he said cheerfully. “The I.L.L. or the S.Y.L. or the X.Y.Z.—one of those initialled jobs with seven members and an Executive Committee of ten.” He had all the professional politician’s scorn for an organisation with much theory and little power. “You really interested?”

  “Quite,” I said.

  “I’ll see if I can find out some more for you.” There was a free cab in sight at last, and he was waving for it and beginning to walk away. “Remind me,” he called out as he got into the cab.

  “All right,” I called back, though I had no intention of doing so; I did not want anyone to think my interest was more than cursory.

  But, since he is a nice man, there was no need for him to be reminded. A couple of days later he came into my room where I was sitting mulling over the next day’s brief, and handed me a brown file. “I got this from Herford,” he said. “You remember, you asked me about Buckleson and his so-called Free People. Herford keeps tabs on these left-wing groups for the rest of us, and he’s got some press-cuttings and a note or two. Keep it under your hat, will you?” It was very like Matthew, all that; ask him a question and he will appear at first to be brushing it off brusquely, but he’ll remember the question and give you a better answer when he can.

  I thanked him and we talked for a while. At the door, he threw over his shoulder, “Didn’t think I’d find you taking an interest in the irrational Left.”

  “It’s me’ working-class roots,” I parried. He grinned at me from the door.

  “Fine,” he said. “As long as you remember them, because I want you in the Labour movement before you’re too old for politics.”

  That wasn’t a joke, though I grinned at Matthew as he went out on his punch line. I knew he had hopes I would involve myself in his kind of politics; a working-class boy with a father who’d been in local politics, a good degree and a legal reputation was just the kind of man Wynstanley would want in the Labour Party, and I fancy he had taken me into chambers in the first place because he thought I was bound to want to be a politician as well as a lawyer. Once or twice he had said things which showed a certain disappointment. Perhaps if I had not met Buckleson I might have risked the icy disbelief of neighbours and in-laws and put myself forward as one of Wynstanley’s bright young men; that would have taken my emigration of the spirit nicely forward!

  There was not in fact much in Herford’s file, seven or eight press-cuttings and a couple of pages of hand-written notes on foolscap. The press-cuttings were nothing much, just brief accounts of demonstrations and exercises in street theatre. The Free People obviously made much of what we usually call slum-clearance in this country; they called it urban renewal, as Americans do. Buckleson was mentioned in the reports a couple of times, and was quoted once, but there was nothing of substance I had not already gathered myself.

  The foolscap notes were much more interesting; since they were signed E.H. I assumed they were by Herford himself. What was perhaps most interesting about them was an obvious change of direction half-way through the notes; they started as sarcastic comments on the revolutionary anarchism which formed the basis of the Free People’s policy (if policy is not too grand a word for that muddle), but when they came to Buckleson himself they were much more sympathetic. I remember a phrase or two Herford used. “Buckleson”, he wrote, “is the leading light of the group; they don’t call him President, or Secretary, or even spokesman, but he is the real leader and in fact the spokesman. He is a most compelling public speaker and a young man of considerable intelligence. His first degree is in English, he did some kind of diploma at Berkeley on urban sociology, and is now officially working on a doctorate in town-planning, though I think he’s so much an activist he can’t be doing much work. I think the emphasis on opposing slum-clearance in favour of slum-renewal is his brainchild (and not at all a bad one. The P.L.P. should, I think, be thinking along the same lines—see my paper to the Shadow Minister of Housing, dated …),” whenever it was dated; I can’t remember now.

  Herford’s notes went on to fill in a couple of details of Buckleson’s background: his expulsion from Johnson’s after the sit-in (again Herford seemed sympathetic; he mentioned Reston, who had been Principal of Johnson’s at the time, with considerable antipathy); his year in the U.S.A.; his return to London. But there was nothing at all about Buckleson’s family background, which I wanted to know about, and not very much about his particular opinions as opposed to the general opinions of the Free People. There was also a list of some of the other leading figures of the Free People—I think Lester’s and O’Brien’s names were mentioned, though I cannot remember clearly. I was not really interested in them.

  I returned the file to Wynstanley a couple of days later. “Find anything of interest?” he asked me.

  “Yes,” said I. “Odd mixture, revolutionary anarchists spoken for by a literature student turned town-planner.”

  “Buckleson?” said Matthew. “A town-planner? Must be a mistake there.”

  “No,” I answered. “Quite clear, if somewhat odd. When I heard him in the park, he talked a bit about Le Corbusier—and that Fuller man too. He’s working for a doctorate in town-planning, in between demonstrations.”

  “Idiotic,” said Matthew. “But then the whole thing is pretty much idiotic, isn’t it?”

  “Not the slum-clearance thing.”

  Matthew laughed. “That’s Herford’s line at the moment. Did he get it from that absurd crew? Good old Herford; he’s a brilliant scavenger.”

  “I think he has a point,” I said carefully.

  “Probably has,” Wynstanley said dismissively. “Must be left to local authorities as far as possible, all the same. It’s one of the few areas where decentralisation can work.” He was back in his guise as a politician, and I could almost have been a public meeting; but after a moment he looked up at me again—he had been paging through the fil
e. “Would you like to meet Herford? I could lay on lunch some time.”

  “That would be very pleasant.”

  “Herford will enjoy the chance of an audience; he’s a bit far to the left of most of us in the P.L.P.” Wynstanley made a note on his appointments pad, then said, “Must get back to my brief; the work goes on, even for M.P.s. I’ll let you know about Herford.”

  Dismissed, I left. I like Wynstanley; and I admire his ruthlessness about time. He runs a big practice well, he’s a capable M.P., and he hasn’t been divorced. There’s a great deal he misses, but within his limitations he knows what’s going on.

  I lunched with Wynstanley and Herford about a month later; in the meantime the Free People had been in the news again, this time for an invasion of the G.L.C. offices, where they did a bit of instant theatre which must have upset the bureaucrats a great deal.

  Apparently they took a huge box of children’s bricks into the central foyer, and proceeded to build two play towns; one was an ‘organic’ town, higgledy-piggledy, bright, cheerful; the other was a ‘tower hamlet’, great piles of grey and brown wooden playbricks piled up into towers. When both towns were finished, one of the Free People, dressed in morning suit and topper, with black gloves and a devil’s mask, stormed in, broke up the ‘free’ town, and gloated over the town of towers. Then a group of Free People, dressed in their white uniforms and masks, came dancing in, ‘captured’ the mock-official, mourned over their destroyed town, and tore up the towers and hurled the blocks around the foyer. It was then that some windows were broken, and a couple of G.L.C. secretaries were hit by flying wooden blocks; I suppose one of the actors got carried away in his destruction. The police arrested half-a-dozen of the demonstrators; Buckleson was not one of them, though he was mentioned as leading another demonstration outside the police-station which the arrested Free People had been taken to. But there was no trouble there, and no more arrests; when the police released four of the six, the demonstration dispersed. A couple of weeks later the remaining demonstrators were fined for ‘disturbing the police’.

  The lunch with Wynstanley and Herford didn’t at first add much information to what I already had from the file. It soon appeared that Wynstanley’s purpose was less to provide me with information about the Free People and John Buckleson than it was to persuade me to be more enthusiastic about the Labour Party, and Herford wanted only to argue with Wynstanley. I did not want to upset Matthew by showing my boredom with the intricacies of electoral politics, since I had—and have—much to be grateful for to him. In the end, I said that, until my children were a little older, I thought my primary duties were to them and to building up a practice; I hated using the children as an excuse, though what I said was at any rate partly true.

  Finally, however, I got something from the two men, almost by chance; Matthew had given me up, and they were arguing about the police, as lawyers often seem to do, but gave the argument a parliamentary twist since they disagreed about the police’s role in matters of political security. Herford, for all his rumoured radicalism, was taking what seemed more like the old-fashioned liberal line; Wynstanley was being what he calls ‘rational’, what the Free People called ‘fascist’. Neither word is any better than the other; but their conjunction explains better than anything else the kind of socialist Wynstanley is. I was not paying very much attention, concentrating rather on the food—M.P.S. feed their promising young men well—than on the argument, which I seemed to have heard a good many times in various guises. But when the argument left theory for practice, I was interested.

  “Well, take this demonstration coming up next Sunday,” said Herford.

  “I’ve heard there’s trouble expected.”

  “I’ve heard too; I hope to hell not, because I’m on the platform.”

  I butted in. “What demonstration is this?” They looked at me as if they had forgotten I was there; I resolved to keep silent.

  “It’s the big anti-apartheid demonstration, mainly on political prisoners there,” said Wynstanley. “Damn silly show, if you don’t mind my saying so, Herford; what good could anything of the kind possibly do?”

  “Of course I mind; and of course I think it may do some good. But where do all these rumours come from? That’s what I want to know.”

  “Well, I got it from someone close to the Home Secretary.”

  “And the Home Secretary got it from the police?”

  “I suppose so; where else? That’s what I’m trying to say.”

  “And what I’m trying to say is the police got it from informers, and informers have a stake in predicting trouble. Don’t you see, Matthew? So the police draft in two hundred extra men, including mounted police—that’s what they’re doing, isn’t it?” Wynstanley shrugged. “Well, say two hundred; it may even be three. But that’s what will cause the trouble, really, if there is going to be trouble.”

  “Oh, come now, Herford,” Wynstanley said, irked. “I don’t think the police are paragons of virtue, but they won’t actually start anything.”

  “Perhaps not; but they’ll be there—and the single fact of their presence will provoke the wilder elements …”

  “And so you should call the whole thing off; or at least be very cautious about lending it your prestige.”

  “My prestige? Oh, come now, Matthew …”

  And so on; you know the kind of argument it was. I suppose I was instinctively on Herford’s side, though I liked him considerably less than Wynstanley. What did interest me was the implicit statement that the police had informers planted in organisations like the Free People. I wasn’t worried about the morality—what are policemen for after all? Matthew was perfectly right in that—but I was interested that the police might think the Free People important enough to get information on.

  Of course I did not go to the demonstration; however interested I was in the Free People, I was not going to leave my children on a Sunday, especially to go to a demonstration at which trouble was predicted. But I kept the information in my mind, and on Sunday evening, almost without meaning to, I found myself watching the news; and so, without any particular effort on my part, began the second stage of my involvement with John Buckleson.

  The news confirmed what Wynstanley had heard rumoured; a group of what the commentator called ‘students’ had attacked the police after one of their number had been arrested. Marbles had been thrown under the police-horses’ hooves, pepper had been thrown in policemen’s faces, home-made smoke-grenades had been thrown, and there had been some straightforward fighting with fists and boots, until the police had baton-charged the trouble-making demonstrators and had dispersed them. This had of course led to larger and more confused trouble, apparently with groups of demonstrators fighting each other as well as the police. The police had made nearly fifty arrests, mainly of young people, and although some had been released, a number were being held in custody and were being charged with various offences. Although the purpose of the demonstration was mentioned, the various organisations involved were not, nor were the names of any of those who had been arrested.

  On Monday I was out of town, doing a committal case in Brighton. I got home late and weary; Alison made me a meal and I sat in front of the TV until 9.45. At half past ten Wynstanley phoned me. He asked me about my case, asked if I’d seen the news, and then said, abruptly, “I’ve just had Peale on the phone, you know, of Peale and Randall.” I did know; they are one of the biggest and busiest sets of solicitors in London; Randall himself had died years before, but old Mr. Peale had a crew of very bright young solicitors with him. “He wanted me to appear for Buckleson; did you know he’d been charged?” I didn’t. “A whole string of offences; the police are obviously trying to fix most of the blame on him and that bunch of his; ranging from inciting violence to possessing offensive weapons. There’s being some trouble about bail; the police opposed it, the magistrate turned it down, and Peale wants me to go to a judge in chambers tomorrow to sort it out.”

  “Are you going
to do it?” I asked, knowing perfectly well that Wynstanley would not remotely risk his political career for his professional interests.

  “No, that’s why I’m phoning you, of course. I’m in the middle of something else, and anyway I don’t want to get tied up in this business. The clerks said you only had a smallish case for tomorrow. So I wondered if you would be prepared to hand that on to one of the youngsters, and take this brief for Peale; it will be the whole thing, not just the bail application, of course.”

  “What’s the urgency, Matthew?” It was puzzling; senior barristers don’t usually phone their underlings about bail applications.

  “Peale was a bit mysterious about it; but he was insistent about having someone good there—he said he’d be happy to have you if I wasn’t free. I assume you’ve met Peale?”

  I had; I had done a couple of cases for Peale and Randall, and had met the old man during the second, which was a tricky one we had been considered fortunate to get an acquittal on. I was glad he remembered me. “Of course I’ll do it, Matthew; it sounds very interesting, the mysterious part especially. I don’t suppose there’ll be a full brief by tomorrow morning?”

  “Peale has promised to get some notes on to your desk by 8.30 tomorrow morning—that’s how seriously he’s treating this, Tom—and the brief will be ready by tomorrow evening. Peale has spent a couple of hours with Buckleson this afternoon.”

  “Peale himself?” I was surprised. Peale does not usually do work like that himself.