They dined together on a regular basis. Their conversations were long, loud and rambling. One lunch-time conversation was recorded:
SHAW: I’m a likeable old rascal you know — but you really must stop poisoning my mind with all these heresies about God. Otherwise I shall really have to go for you.
GILBERT: It’s your intellectual magnanimity which destroys me. If only you were a nasty fellow who lost his temper.
SHAW: Have you ever lost yours?
GILBERT: I’ve searched hard and long. It just doesn’t seem to be there.
SHAW: Then for God’s sake cultivate one. You’ll never win an argument with me until you’re raving — plain, mad, bull-at-a-gate raving — with temper.
They argued about the war, with no tangible result. Shaw thought it useless for anybody to argue with him about 1914: “You might as well differ from the Almighty about the orbit of the sun.” Their clash over the war, combined with Gilbert’s illness in the early months of it, placed a strain on the relationship. Both men were too busy working and writing on other matters to spend very much time on each other. Contact resumed in the 1920s, and in 1927 came the famous and long-awaited debate at Kingsway Hall. Gilbert was editor of G. K.’s Weekly, Shaw was at the pinnacle of his reputation as writer and provocateur. Shaw was concerned that the meeting be properly organised, aware that The Distributist League was notoriously inefficient at such arrangements. “Nothing must be left to well intentioned Godforsaken idiots who have no experience or organising power,” he wrote, “and to believe that public meetings are a national phenomena that look after themselves.” Gilbert’s Distributists and Shaw’s Fabian socialists began their propaganda onslaught, encouraging members and supporters to attend the meeting and offer vocal and moral support. This was to be a clash of champions.
It is difficult in today’s society of immediate gratification and the electronic media to properly comprehend the atmosphere of anticipation which existed in the weeks before the “Great Debate.” Radio had only existed for a relatively short period of time; moving pictures were similarly immature. Politicians could still attract thousands to their meetings — a little over a generation earlier, British Prime Minister William Gladstone had spoken to hundreds of thousands during an election tour — and the author fulfilled the role of intellectual, star, entertainer and politician. Not all of London prepared itself for the event, but all of London that cared about ideas and ideals most certainly did. Shaw would proclaim at the beginning of the debate that “Some of you might reasonably wonder, if we agree, what we are going to talk about, but I suspect that you do not really care much what we debate … provided we entertain you by talking in our characteristic manners.” There was an element of truth in the statement. What the two men said was interesting, the way they said it was intriguing.
William Titterton, knight-in-waiting of Distributism and its journals, had actively pursued the debate for months. He believed that Gilbert’s triumph would be the triumph of Distributism over socialism, whereas Shaw always thought that Distributism was merely an aspect of socialism. The debate’s title was Titterton’s idea, with a little help from Gilbert. Because of Titterton’s earlier involvement and inherent partiality, it was agreed that another should do most of the organisation. The task was given to Gregory Macdonald. He was a young man. Shaw was a massively forward man. Shaw took over virtually everything. It was Macdonald who had the inspired idea of asking the BBC to broadcast the debate, making it the first important aired debate in history. Shaw insisted on the BBC paying a large fee — he wanted at least one hundred pounds — and took control of advertising and ticket sales. The demand for tickets was unexpectedly high, and as they were not numbered Shaw rather pettily placed stewards at the doors to check each entrant. His action bore fruit; such was the passion and the numbers of those seeking to witness the debate that the doors had to be locked and guarded, and some windows were smashed as the unfortunate outsiders shouted “Stop the debate!” By the time the debate began, with the BBC listening in and the crowd busily arguing amongst itself and hoping that the doors of the building would take the weight of dozens of zealous intellectuals, the scene resembled a gladiatorial carnival more than a gentle weighing of concepts.
Shaw had very reasonably agreed that Hilaire Belloc chair the meeting, partly to demonstrate his trust in Gilbert, partly to display his confidence in victory. Gilbert was at ease, complacent rather than confident. He insisted on enjoying such events, always seeing the humour in two grown men arguing with each other in public. During one contest he laughed so hard and for so long that he gave himself chronic hiccups for the entire evening. Both men, however, were influenced by the tension present, and it took the sardonic Belloc to diffuse the situation. “I am here to take the chair in the debate between two men whom you desire to hear more than you could possibly desire to hear me,” he announced in his portentous but authoritative tones, still sitting in his chair. “They will debate whether they agree or do not agree … There is a prospect of a very pretty fight … You are about to listen, I am about to sneer.” Shaw quickly took the initiative, asking Gilbert about the distribution of wealth. “If you take two shillings as your share and another man wants two shillings and sixpence, kill him … If a man accepts two shillings when you have two shillings and sixpence, kill him. Do you agree?” Gilbert paused, smiled, turned toward the audience and said, “The answer is in the negative.” The crowd laughed. The debate had truly begun.
Shaw decided to lead with the socialist case. He dismissed any discussion of nationalisation, of state control over production and exchange; instead he concentrated on the distribution of wealth. “The other day a man died and the Government took four and a half million pounds as death duty on his property. That man made all his money by the labour of men who received twenty-six shillings a week after years of qualifying for their work. Was that a reasonable distribution of wealth? We are all coming to the opinion that it was not reasonable.” Gilbert agreed, but wondered why Shaw avoided the consequential question: who should then own the wealth? If the state owned it, the state benefited. The state did not mean the people; it could mean many things, but not the people. He preferred that the “Commons” own wealth and the means of production. “It is not my fault if Mr Shaw has remained young, while I have grown in comparison wrinkled and haggard, old and experienced and acquainted with the elementary facts of life,” he humourously stated, employing his notes as a stage prop. He emphasised that a centralised machine owning the means of production and distribution was a potential danger, and in a typically Chestertonian example of forward thinking anticipated the obscenities of social engineering, be they in Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia or Communist Cambodia. Shaw’s mind was set on narrow collectivism, Gilbert’s on liberating devolution.
The two men pounced on the issue of power. Shaw defined it, Gilbert dissected it. Shaw used his umbrella as an example of the limitations of power. “I cannot do as I like with it,” he explained with a gesture full of mischief. “For instance certain passages in Mr Chesterton’s speech tempted me to get and smite him over the head with my umbrella.” He would not, and could not, he said, because there were restrictions upon individual actions, in this case possibly “Mr Belloc’s fist.” A landlord, on the other hand, could do whatever he liked whenever he liked with his land. Gilbert accused Shaw of propagating fallacies. The real reason why Shaw did not hit him over the head was not because his ownership of the umbrella had certain limitations, but because he did not “own my head.” The audience broke into long applause and laughter.
Halfway through the evening Gilbert began to tire. He had lost some of the verve and sheer effervescence which he possessed so abundantly in earlier years. Belloc was aware of this, and his frequent interpolations were in part attempts to rescue his friend and ally. When Belloc was not abusing Shaw or altering the theme of the discussion, he offered penetrating remarks, brilliant in their clarity and incisiveness. He was, however, the neutral chai
rman of the meeting, and had to be reminded of the fact. Gilbert went on, refusing to lose a round to his nimble opponent. The audience were by now partisan to a man, and cheered their doyens with gusto.
The subject became coal, coal mines, and the nationalisation of the coal industry. Then, as now, the question held both political and emotional value. The coal miners were seen as the vanguard of the working classes, the toil of the miner as the hardest and most proletarian of all trades. Again — then as now — there was a considerable amount of mythology and romanticism about the entire issue. Shaw alleged that Gilbert and his Distributists had called for the nationalisation of coal. This, he purported, was where their argument about socialism and Distributism being separate and distinct dissolved. Could they advocate that the miner’s means of production be made his own property? Of course not. It would not be possible, and it would not be required by the miners themselves. He continued: “Under the present capitalistic system the owner has to surrender control to the manager. Under socialism he would have to surrender control to the manager appointed by the Coal Master General. That would not prevent the product of the mine being equally distributed among the people.”
Gilbert prepared to make his reply, but in the middle of taking a breath Shaw interrupted him, and continued with his own invective. “Now that Mr Chesterton agrees that the coal mines will have to be nationalised he will be led by the same pressure of facts to the nationalisation of everything else.” Gilbert smiled, the audience followed his example. Shaw argued that coal could not be an exception to the general argument, and was essential to both the socialist and the Distributist case. Gilbert waited for Shaw to finish his piece, glanced at him, turned to his supporters in the crowd, and with a gesture indicating inevitable acceptance explained that of course the coal industry was an exception, and that the Distributists were pragmatic in their approach and understood that intransigence was an enemy to progress, not a friend. They would bring coal into state ownership in the same way as they would centralise the design, production and distribution of postage stamps.
Shaw again asked the rhetorical question of why the coal mines were an exception, and again rushed through to his peroration before Gilbert had an opportunity to make his point. The mines were not equally productive, yet people were charged the price of coal according to the cost of mining in the most difficult areas. In the northeast of England coal was relatively cheap to produce, yet in pits in other areas, long, deep tunnels had to be painstakingly and dangerously constructed, making the coal extremely expensive. “Mr Chesterton in arriving at the necessity for the nationalisation of the coal mines has started on his journey towards the nationalisation of all industries,” Shaw claimed. “If he goes on to the land and from the land to the factory and from there to every other industrial department, he will find that every successive case is an exception.”
He then tackled Gilbert’s theory that the British people possessed an instinctive desire to own their own property and live in their own homes. Gilbert’s theory was in fact just that. His experience of the “people” was limited, even though he was ostentatiously proud of empathising with their will. He was, however, correct in assuming that home ownership was a natural and inevitable aspiration, as policy and events have demonstrated in Britain. Gilbert’s instincts were often reliable. His biographies relied more on inner feelings than intricate research, and were much the better for it. Shaw based his ideas on the experience of looking down upon to learn, rather than trying to stand alongside with and be taught. “People are content to live in houses they do not own,” he said. “When they possess them they often find them a great nuisance.” And even if they did hang on to such a notion, they could be educated into not wanting property. It was an ominous statement, and would be put into practice with horrible and futile results in generations to come.
Gilbert was annoyed at the idea, outraged by its communal and non-human implications. “We are trying to deal with human beings,” he argued, “creatures quite outside the purview of Mr Shaw and his political philosophy. We know town people are different from country people. We know man’s irrepressible desire to own property and because some landlords have been cruel, it is no use talking of abolishing, denying, and destroying property.” He concluded his contribution to the debate with: “Mr Shaw said that men and women are the only means of production … I quite accept the parallel. His proposition is that the government, the officials, of the State, should own the men and women, in other words that the men and women should become slaves.” And so the evening ended. The standing ovation which the two men received was genuine and spontaneous, the newspaper reports following the meeting told of a cathartic, important collision of politics, philosophy and religion. Who was the winner? If anyone won the contest it was Hilaire Belloc, with his impromptu remarks and out-of-place but stimulating and penetrating comments. Gilbert and Shaw shook hands, laughed at something they whispered to each other, and left the stage.
Their friendship continued right up until the end, until Gilbert’s death. They met regularly during the 1930s, and maintained a healthy correspondence. After 1936 Shaw remained in contact with Frances, offering her financial and moral support, and visiting Top Meadow to dine and even pay homage. Shaw would mention and refer to Gilbert for many years to come, lamenting his friend’s passing as late as the year of his own death, 1950. In Heretics Gilbert wrote that Shaw’s friends “depict him as a strenuous man of action; his opponents depict him as a coarse man of business; when, as a fact, he is neither one nor the other, but an admirable romantic orator and romantic actor …” It was the romantic in Shaw which Gilbert always drew forth, and it was for that reason that Shaw was so grateful to his contemporary. Romance was as deep in his socialistic, atheistic soul as it was in Gilbert’s; it simply took a kindred spirit to release it.
XI - But We Will End with a Bang
The Britain to which he returned was in dire need of a new spirit, a new dynamism and a new leader. To Gilbert’s friends Distributism would provide the first two qualities, and would certainly produce the third given time. His own experiences in Poland had only strengthened his belief in the philosophy. He failed to see that apart from the early fathers of the movement, few people were remaining faithful to the League and its purpose. A great many people passed through the ranks, and left after a relatively short period of commitment. In terms of numbers there was no dramatic change in support from beginning to end, and a danger signal was noticed in that a large proportion of eccentrics were becoming attracted. As an “alternative” to the mainstream idea in society, Distributism, like any movement of its kind, would inevitably appeal to the isolated and the searcher. The difference with the League was that this type of person was welcomed, and encouraged. Another problem was that by its very essence the movement opposed too much central authority, resulting in a divergence of views from north to south, east to west. There are many ideologies hiding under the cloak of Distributism.
Gilbert was still writing busily, enjoying the cut and thrust of the debates which went on, and revelling in the camaraderie of the organisation. He was worshipped, and modest as he was that still pleased him to a large degree. It took his mind away from the absurd arguments which were so common inside the League, mostly concerned with tedious matters of intricate policy or bureaucracy. Interviewed by the Observer after the appearance of the 500th number of G.K.’s Weekly, he was still as enthusiastic as ever
We look like a crank paper … when, as a matter of fact, ours is the only paper which isn’t cranky. The great papers, like The Observer and The Times, are the faintest little bit cranky — that is to say, they go off on some modern notion and get a little bit out of proportion; as for the ordinary vulgar Press, it is not only cranky but crazy. It has got completely out of touch with reality.
Heaven knows why, but I am an editor. I am a very bad editor, I was never meant to be an editor; but I am the editor of the only paper in England which is devoted to what is a perfectly nor
mal idea — private property.
Most modern property isn’t private, and ordinary capitalism makes it even less private if possible than ordinary communism. The system under which we live today is one of huge commercial combinations in which property isn’t private, and the system under which we may live tomorrow — God forbid, still it may happen — will be one of Bolshevik organisation in which also property would not be private. What we mean by private property is that as many people as possible should own the means of production; the ground in which to dig, the spade with which to dig, the roof under which to sleep at night, the tools and machinery of production should belong to as many separate individuals as possible.
There is a case for communism; there is even a case for capitalism; but they are both cases against private property. They both mean that it is not a good thing that separate men should own separate farms, and separate shops, but that all should be linked together in one great machine, whether it be a communist State or capitalist business.
Within a certain limited area a man should possess something by which he asserts the difference between man and matter, that man is the master of matter; not mankind, but man. Within that area individual man should decide, and not the manager or the commissar.
And there is no other paper representing that ordinary point of view. You cannot take away from the ordinary man the sense that he is more dignified when he is free, when he has no master but God. And what we complain of is that in England — it is different in other countries — no one is given even a glimpse of that idea.
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