by Andrew Brown
The USSR, with justification, saw itself as the potential target of this rapidly growing American nuclear arsenal. Until the Soviets achieved an adequate parity of atomic weapons, there was a necessity for them to discourage any American attack by any means possible. The burgeoning peace movement in Western Europe was seen as their top priority, and the Cominform declared soon after the Paris Congress that ‘The struggle… for the organization and consolidation of the forces of peace against the forces of war should now become the pivot of the entire activity of the Communist parties and democratic organization.’59 The Cominform wanted the Partisans of Peace to be reinforced by recruits from the proletariat, trades unions, youth and women’s organizations as well as scientists, writers and political figures. The Soviets wanted active peace efforts, grounded in Marxist philosophy. An international peace campaign led by communists might reduce the risk of a US attack, and also mollify the war-weary masses in the newly subjugated states of Eastern Europe.
In October 1949, Bernal addressed a meeting of the British–Soviet Society in London. He referred to ‘the state of war hysteria and panic which had been spread in the countries of the West’60 during the two weeks since the announcement of the Soviet bomb test. This reaction was particularly acute in the US, a country he characterized as ‘under the domination of a very small but very effective set of people’. He estimated the American expenditure on nuclear weapons to be $13 billion, with large private corporations having a double interest in the programme – one economic, the other political. By contrast, the USSR was applying the major part of its scientificeffort to ‘the enormous task of building up the country’, (implying the military portion of its research budget was tiny). The ‘sharp increase in international tension and in demands for further armaments’ that followed the news of the Soviet bomb made ‘the strongest case for the policy, steadily advocated by the Soviet Union, of abolishing all weapons of mass destruction and of general disarmament’.
The Partisans of Peace next convened under Joliot-Curie’s leadership on 15th March 1950 in Stockholm. The major achievement of this meeting was the launching of the Stockholm Peace Appeal, a document drawn up by the Soviet writer Ilya Ehrenburg that was palatable to ‘all men of goodwill throughout the world’ (who were expected to sign it) without displeasing Stalin. The short text called for ‘the absolute banning of the atomic bomb’, ‘strict international control to ensure implementation of this ban’, and the recognition that first use of the weapon would be ‘a crime against humanity’ for which the government responsible would face punishment befitting a war criminal.61 Joliot-Curie was the first to sign the Appeal. On his return to France, he gave an impassioned speech at the Communist Party Congress, promoting the Stockholm Appeal as a means to avoid the ‘war of aggression which is being prepared against the Soviet Union’ and pledging that ‘Communist scientists [like him] would never give a scrap of their science to make war against the Soviet Union’.62 By the end of the month, the French government now committed to developing its own bomb, dismissed him from his post as High Commissioner for atomic energy.
In January 1950, Stalin sent a telegram to his ambassador in Pyongyang informing Kim Il Sung, the communist leader of North Korea, that he would ‘assist’ in the reunification of Korea by military means. In May, Mao Zedong added his encouragement, saying that unification by peaceful means was not possible and that Kim Il Sung should not be afraid of the Americans who ‘will not enter a third world war for such a small territory’.63 On Sunday 25th June, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and quickly captured Seoul. President Truman immediately pledged US forces to defend the South, as did the UK and France in turn. Undaunted, the Partisans of Peace continued to make arrangements for their next gathering, scheduled for Sheffield in November.
The British Peace Committee (chairman, Ivor Montagu) was in charge of making arrangements. They depended on volunteers to find accommodation for the large numbers expected to attend. Ully Harris, Martin Bernal’s old nanny, was recruited through the Holborn branch of CPGB and spent four weeks working hard in Sheffield. While the official delegates would stay in hotels, their support staff would need to be billeted in homes. Adverts were placed in local newspapers; food rationing was still in force, and Ully had to ask prospective hosts ‘whether they would give them some supper – some cocoa and a bit of bread and cheese’.64
The communist partisanship of the Partisans of Peace had been the source of unease amongst some intellectuals since the Wroclow conference. Patrick Blackett had written to Joliot-Curie before the Paris Congress pointing out that the danger of the ‘Western Powers waging a preventative war, relying on the supposed decisive character of atomic bombs’65 had lessened since the height of the Berlin crisis the previous year. He urged the peace movement to adopt Fabian tactics and play for time to encourage military realism to take hold rather than expend energy on distant problems. Einstein, who had sent a message to Wroclow that was subsequently doctored by the organizers, now informed Joliot-Curie that he would not be attending the Sheffield conference. ‘I must confess frankly’, he said, ‘that I cannot believe in the present situation manifestations of such kind will help to bring genuine peace nearer.’66 There was also some fierce criticism in the Sheffield Telegraph.
The Sheffield Congress is the last place for peace lovers to find themselves. It is not concerned with peace at all. We got a clue to its real purpose by studying the records of the small group of communists and fellow travellers who direct it. These include people who urge the Greek guerillas to fight their elected government; who urge the Malayan bandits to attack our troops and murder our civilians; who justify the aggression of North Korea against South Korea. They are surely the most bloodthirsty peace lovers in history. The campaigns which they support have only one thing in common. Common to them all is the fact, that, if successful, they would increase the power of the Soviet Union relative to the power of the free world.67
The author of this hard-hitting article had, until a few months earlier, been a junior minister at the Foreign Office (he lost his seat in the 1950 general election). His name was Christopher Mayhew and he was a particular favourite of Attlee’s. It was Mayhew who first persuaded Bevin (after the Foreign Secretary had been publicly humiliated by Molotov at the UN in 1947) to set up an agency within the Foreign Office to counter the Cominform by producing anti-communist propaganda. The resultant Information Research Department (IRD) was initially intended to spread material about communist misdeeds abroad, but was soon drawn into a more defensive, domestic role as well; it attempted to block CPGB members from infiltrating trade unions, youth organizations and the BBC. The Information Research Department made use of the writing talents of Malcolm Muggeridge and George Orwell, and subsidized the publication of Animal Farm internationally.68 In 1949, the cachectic Orwell passed a blacklist of three dozen or so ‘crypto-communists and fellow travellers’ to the IRD. One entry read: Bernal, Professor J.D. (Irish extraction): Scientist (physicist), Birkbeck College, London University. Scientific staff of Combined Operations during the war. ‘Science and Society.’ Qy. open C.P.? Very gifted. Said to have been educated for R.C. priesthood. I am pretty sure he is an open member.69 It was probably the IRD who persuaded the Home Office to refuse visas for the permanent officers, like Joliot-Curie, and many other delegates two days before the Sheffield Congress was due to start.
Bernal heard the news of the bans from Ivor Montagu on Saturday morning, 11th November. They spent the rest of the day trying to sort out the tremendous confusion and held a lively press conference. This had two advantages: to instruct those delegates who were in Britain to proceed to Sheffield as originally planned, and to give the Congress maximum publicity. Bernal was back in his office early on the Sunday morning and spent the day sending telegrams and exploring alternatives. He asked Stan Lenton to organize drinks for a party in his Torrington Square flat that evening. Late in the afternoon he broke away from the office to meet an important foreign deleg
ate, who was arriving in London – Pablo Picasso. Picasso was already in England because the Arts Council was sponsoring an exhibition of his paintings in London and they had obtained his visa. Bernal had dinner with Picasso and a few French delegates who had made it into the country. Picasso felt rather chagrined that he been allowed into England, when Joliot-Curie had not. On returning to Torrington Square, they found a handful of Soviets waiting for them, including Vsevolod Pudovkin the film director; others drifted in and the party started. Bernal’s main anxiety soon became whether the drink would hold out!70
Sage slipped away from the party with Picasso and Pudovkin to give them a tour of the crystallography laboratory downstairs. ‘Both were interested in quite different ways. Pudovkin as a scientist, and Picasso by the form and colours of the crystals. He was struck by the resemblance of his pictures to some of our Fourier diagrams and wondered if he put them [his pictures] through the machine backwards, they would come out as crystals.’71 They returned upstairs to find that the flat was packed and Lenton’s bar in the kitchen was under considerable strain. Sage asked Picasso whether he would scribble something for him on the wall. They were in the living room, which was divided from the kitchen by a thin partition wall; the only light came from a small, naked, bulb suspended from the low ceiling. Picasso stood on a chair so that he could draw on the wall space above the bookshelves. He took a multicolour grease pencil from his pocket and ‘began with a swish of line that immediately became a real face, but had a devil’s horns, closed, blind eyes and a shut little mouth’.72
The artist climbed down from the chair and stepped back into the throng to look at his work. He ‘shook his head, pounced on the wall and turned the horns into a laurel wreath, opened the devil’s eyes and widened his mouth until he looked like an anxious god’.
On reflection he said sympathetically, ‘Il a l’air solitaire’ and started to draw him a friend. This time there were no changes, no hesitation – a long undistorted face, free of tricks such as double profiles.
He stepped down again, and somebody shouted out, ‘What’s it got to do with peace?’, so he added a pair of angel’s wings.
© Succession Picasso/DACS 2005
A few days later, some decorators arrived from the university and had to be firmly persuaded by Lenton not to paint over the only Picasso mural in England. Sage wrote in confessional tones to the Director of the National Gallery, ‘I have acquired, almost accidentally, on my wall a large drawing by Picasso which I would very much like you to see.’73
Early in the morning after the great party, Bernal, Picasso and Montagu took the train to Sheffield. It was a beautiful, bright, day in London and Picasso talked about his father painting doves. The idyllic mood was rather spoiled by arriving in Sheffield, which looked ‘grim’ in the pelting rain. There was no reception committee, and small groups made their own way to the vast, empty conference hall. Some members of the press turned up to take photographs. Bernal was approached by a city official, who showed him a warrant giving permission for Special Branch policemen to be present at the private meeting. Sage informed him ‘we were under no obligation to be there ourselves’.74 Thanks to the press coverage, several hundred people came to the hall, with Bernal now taking Joliot-Curie’s role as chairman. When he asked, ‘Who would like to fly to Warsaw for this world peace conference?’ (this is what he and Montagu had arranged with Soviet contacts), ‘a forest of hands shot up’. There were then ‘very good speeches’ which went on until 10.30 pm, and Bernal felt heartened by the spirit of the meeting. At the end he auctioned a dove that Picasso had drawn. It was knocked down for twenty guineas – ‘the maximum appreciation of the industrial north’.75
Arriving back in London the following afternoon, Sage took Picasso on a tour of London in his small car. It was Picasso’s first visit since 1919. That evening there was a reception organized by the Arts Council at Topolski’s studio, where Sage found artists, critics, filmmakers – ‘the greatest congregation of British intellectuals ever’ – though Picasso did not arrive until most guests were leaving.
Bernal was up at 5.30 am the next day to fly with a small group to Warsaw. Their flight to Prague via Frankfurt was delayed so that they did not get to Germany until early afternoon. After refuelling, the plane was taxiing to take off when the tail wheel slipped off the runway into deep mud. They walked back to the terminal, feeling ‘slight anxiety because we were in American territory’.76 Any concern was dispelled by a very agreeable lunch, when Sage struck up a conversation with a cockney bricklayer, who had been elected as a delegate to the conference by his trade union. Sage ranged over the history of bricks, construction methods through antiquity, and the great efficiency of Soviet building methods. When they were walking back to the plane, the bricklayer sidled up to Francis Aprahamian, a communist Cambridge student of the 1930s and now Bernal’s personal research assistant at Birkbeck, to ask, ‘Who did yer say he was?’ ‘Professor Bernal.’ ‘’as he bin a Brickie?’77
They flew into Prague at dusk, where they were greeted by a large contingent of singing boys and girls. The final leg of the journey to Warsaw was an extremely bumpy flight in an unheated Polish plane. On arrival, Sage was whisked away in a limousine to the city centre. At midnight, he found himself being ushered through grand anterooms with fine paintings, finally coming to a dining room ‘where Joliot was a third of the way through an extremely good dinner. It was the Belvedere Palace, the President’s residence.’78 Sage sat down to what would be the only proper meal he would eat in Warsaw, and they plunged into discussions about the conference. They were soon joined by Chinese and Soviet representatives and finished at 4 am local time. After a short sleep, Sage was driven by chauffeur through the devastated city and was naturally interested to see what reconstruction was taking place. The hall for the Congress was a factory shed that had been rapidly converted in the previous few days by 1,500 workers. It was impossible to see from one end to the other; side rooms were partitioned by cloth and Sage was worried about the fire hazard. There was a ‘massive Chinese delegation’, others from Europe he had never met, as well as old friends. Sage discovered a buffet behind the platform with tea, cold meat and fish, open all hours; he lived exclusively off this for the remainder of his stay.
The two thousand Partisans of Peace renamed themselves the World Peace Council (WPC) and elected Joliot-Curie their first president by acclamation. Bernal was to be one of the vice presidents. Fadeyev treated the crowd to his trademark vitriol, accusing the Americans of turning Korea ‘into a desert of ruins and ashes, flooding the country with the blood of children, and performing all sorts of fascist bestialities, similar to those that led to the Nuremberg Trial’.79 The fact that the simultaneous translation service was not working properly did little to dampen enthusiasm. That evening, Bernal and Joliot-Curie were guests in the President’s box at the theatre, where they watched a visiting troupe of amateur Russian dancers performing to the music of two accordians. They used the long periods of inactivity on the stage to discuss the strategy for the WPC and the restoration of intellectual life.
The next morning, Sage got up very early to prepare his speech. The second day of the conference opened with a procession of Polish mothers who had lost sons in the war, farm workers, youth organizations, and finally industrial workers. Most of the British delegates arrived in Warsaw that afternoon, and immediately complained about the makeshift arrangements, which rather annoyed Sage. In the evening, he made the mistake of going to the theatre again – a tedious 1870 Polish light opera, which he abandoned after the second act at 2 am.
Word reached Warsaw University that Sage was at the conference and he was invited to address the students. He agreed to do this on Sunday morning, before the conference started, explaining that he needed to keep to a tight schedule. He was taken to a covered courtyard, where there was an audience he estimated to be six to eight thousand. They were ‘in every possible aperture, hanging on the pillars and crawling over the rafters of the roof
so it appeared to me that they might drop on us at any moment’.80 He then endured an official welcome ‘in fluent Polish’ that lasted for an hour and when he rose to speak, he lost further time because of the students’ enthusiastic applause. He spoke to them on the theme of rebuilding.
He arrived at the conference an hour-and-a-half late to find that it had still not started, so he decided to go on a tour of Warsaw to see the reconstruction for himself. In the face of tremendous destruction, he could see that there was very little steel or heavy equipment available – far less than in the UK or the USSR. Most of the work was done using wood and small machines; there were some concrete blocks for larger buildings. Despite the obstacles, he judged the results ‘magnificent’ and was particularly impressed with cooperative housing estates that incorporated shops and laundries. Although there was central heating (a rarity in British buildings) he was told that it was turned on only for a few hours a day because of fuel shortages.
He returned to the conference hall to find that the new draft of his speech, left with a typist in the morning, had not been touched. The level of chaos reminded him of the Duchess’s croquet party in Alice: there were no interpreters and the few typewriters available had Polish keyboards. Things were no better the next morning when he returned to deliver the speech; even his handwritten version could not be found. Just as he was being introduced and starting to walk to the podium, Francis Aprahamian saw it on the translator’s desk – she had denied having it. He grabbed it and gave it to Sage who was then heard in dead silence – most of the delegates could not understand English and the British delegation, still sulking, showed no interest: ‘There was a slightly staggered kind of clapping at the end but I felt really that all the effort had been completely wasted.’81
On Monday afternoon, he talked to some Polish intellectuals about Copernicus, about whom most of them knew nothing. He then returned to the Congress to supervise the drafting of the final resolution, which took until 3 am. A ten-point statement was issued with the first priority being a termination of the Korean War and the withdrawal of foreign armies from Korean soil. The strategic goal of ‘the unconditional banning of all means of atomic, bacteriological and chemical weapons, poisonous gases, radio-active and all other means of mass extermination’82 ranked no higher than point seven. In his writings, Bernal was plainer: ‘The effective prohibition of the atom bomb is the first and absolutely necessary condition for any serious move to peace.’83 In spite of ‘the enormous extent of propaganda for the “cold war”, especially in the United States’, Bernal believed that ‘negotiation on the basis of mutual respect, leading to a peaceful co-existence of the economic systems of capitalism and socialism, could proceed free from the threat of sudden destruction by the atom bombs’. The deadlock between world leaders could be broken by the massive demonstration of the popular will embodied in the simple language of the Stockholm Appeal. The people had come to see that ‘the preparations for atomic warfare had ceased to be merely criminal; they were becoming suicidal’. If the issue could be restricted to a ban on atomic weapons, there was an opportunity to unite ‘those who take one side or the other in the Korean struggle, those who support and those who deplore the war in Malaya, those who think of the U.S. as a probable aggressor and those who fear aggression from the Soviet Union, those who believe in free enterprise, the welfare state or socialism’.
