His first expedition was in the nature of a reconnaissance. After work one day he roamed the streets like a cat, first those around the Station, then further afield. The atmosphere of the area he was already prepared for. It lurked behind the greying net curtains, it rose like a steam from the shabby macs: an atmosphere of meanness and failure. And above all of loneliness, and the festering bitterness of loneliness. It was an area of fragments—each bedsitter held one, and the fragments nursed their solitudes and never came together.
Seedy was too kind to describe the neighbourhood: it was decayed. On the walls slogans were scrawled in white paint: KILL THE TORIES or FUCK WILSON. The racial slogans were similarly basic: WOGS OUT or CASTRATE ALL NIGS. Simon could imagine the slogan painters—sidling out, alone, after dark, viewing their work with secret satisfaction the next day. He went into a pub and started chatting to people—dispirited people, all of whom had moved there last year, or last week, who hoped to move out next year, next week, definitely before long. Paddington, for them, was not a community: it was streets, houses—or, more essentially, rooms. Some were even less permanent: Simon bought a pint for one old cadger who turned out to be a semi-derelict, on his way from Sidcup, and on his way back there, he said. Paddington’s present seemed a guttering, feeble flame; its past dead beyond recall.
Out in the streets again the area began to split itself up a little for him, to acquire individual characteristics. This one was mostly small hotels, this one bedsitters, this other one still precariously middle-class and residential. Here were Italian voices, rich Italian smells, while elsewhere were Indians, Indian smells, turbans. In one area, five or six streets away from Farrow Street, Simon noticed that the racial sloganizing was especially thick—violent, semi-literate, obsessive. Yet as he dawdled round it he could not see that it was a section with a high concentration of immigrants. Odd. Then he noticed that political activity of a kind seemed to flourish here. Small notices, crudely duplicated, were pasted on to the edge of hoardings, on empty houses, displayed in the windows of small shops. The League of Empire Loyalists summoned the citizens of Paddington from their bedsitters for AN EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC CONCERN at the Morton Hall—that was three days ago. The National Front announced a demonstration STOP IMMIGRATION NOW, starting at the Town Hall. They were preparing the ground with a rash of small stickers: IS IT WRONG TO WANT TO STAY WHITE? and DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN BRITAIN WAS BRITISH?
There was a third organization soliciting support from the people of Paddington—for the Right would not be the Right (any more than the Left would be the Left) if it did not split asunder into myriad groups, sniping at each other, proclaiming their own ideological purity, displaying all the self-righteousness of the politically unco’ guid. This group called itself The British Citizens’ Army. Its posters, small and messy as the rest, managed to include some article of military significance—a peaked cap, a rifle, even a black military boot. From the downward stroke of the initial B in their title a Union Jack fluttered. The wording of their posters and stickers was suitably aggressive: ‘fight’, ‘struggle’, ‘hit back’ featured prominently, usually capitalized. Some of the aggression and racial viciousness had a pathetic ring to it, like a child who mistreats his puppy because he himself is not getting enough attention. Many of the posters announced their next meeting—August 2nd, also at the Morton Hall (whose owners, presumably, were broad-minded, or something). Simon found one of their notices in the door of a newsagent/tobacconist that stayed open late. He pushed open the door and went in.
‘I saw your notice in the window,’ he said, as he slowly fished for the change for twenty Kensitas. ‘About the British Citizens’ Army meeting.’
‘Not my notice, mate. One of me customers.’
‘What sort of a bunch are they?’
‘Search me. Bloke who give it to me’s not much more’n a kid. He’s a bit of a nut, if you ask me, but he gets his fags here regular, so I couldn’t say no. The ’all’s round the corner, if you’re interested.’
‘Oh, I don’t know that I’d go that far.’
‘ ’Course, they’ve got a point . . .’
‘You think so, do you? Will you go to the meeting?’
‘Don’t be barmy. They’re a lot of weirdos.’
His combination of cynicism and sloth seemed a very British defence against political extremists.
In deciding on the Citizens’ Army as the first subject for his investigation of Paddington’s fringe Right, Simon was mainly influenced by the fact that they had a meeting coming up in a few days’ time. Perhaps men—and women, of course—of Len’s generation were more likely to let themselves be clasped in the semi-respectable embrace of The League of Empire Loyalists. Others, presumably had simply stayed loyal to Mosley, and many more, of course, would have joined the Conservative Party. But the Citizens’ Army, in addition to their forthcoming meeting, had a sort of showy nastiness about it, and Simon thought it might be not unlike the Mosley movement of thirty years before, and appeal to a rather similar mob.
In the interval before the night of the meeting he gave some thought as to how he should dress. He could well imagine the sort of pseudo-military gear that would be on display at the meeting, as well as the mothballed treasures of the war veterans. In the end he decided against any attempt to play along with that kind of performance: it would go too obviously against his whole personality. He compromised by having an unusually short haircut.
On the evening of August 2nd he did not go home after work, but had a meal in a little Italian restaurant in Baker Street, and then strolled along towards Paddington. It was a quarter to seven before he came to the area where the posters and stickers had proliferated, and he found the Morton Hall without difficulty. It was a square, drab building of no particular religious affiliation and no architectural distinction at all. He had time in hand, and he wandered round the adjacent streets, sniffing in vain for signs of approaching excitements. He bought a pineapple and pistachio concoction from an ice-cream van on the corner, and stood against a wall licking it and waiting for developments.
It wasn’t until a quarter past seven that first one motor-cycle, then another and another, zoomed up the road from the direction of the Station and swerved flashily in outside the hall, revving their engines several times as some kind of demonstration, then parking neatly in line. The machines were loud rather than powerful, and so were their riders. They took off their helmets, stood talking for a moment on the pavement, then in semi-unison they about-turned and marched shoulder to shoulder into the hall. The effect was both risible and sinister at the same time.
Now there were more coming: elderly people, almost all men, with a sort of seedy respectability—suits, collar and tie, raincoats over their arm, but almost all their clothing cheap, dubiously clean. More motor-cyclists arrived, and other teenagers who obviously hoped to graduate to motor-cycledom. The only young women were hangers-on of these, but there was the odd middle-aged woman of the sort who would complain about the smell of curries cooking, or proclaim their unwillingness to go out after dark.
It was now twenty-five past. An elderly Hillman Minx drove up and parked a hundred yards away. A podgy man in his thirties got out and bustled self-importantly round to the back of the hall. Simon swallowed the last of his cornet, wet his handkerchief to wipe his hands, then sauntered across the street and into the hall.
The first thing that happened was that a cyclostyled pamphlet was thrust into his hand by one of the motor-cycling youths, who was standing by the door.
‘Read this, mate, and see what we’re up against,’ the blotchy-faced young man said, with some relish.
It was not necessary to read the pamphlet to see that the posters in public places in fact represented the Citizens’ Army respectable face. The pamphlet was vile: the hoariest racial myths presented as news items, the silliest theories of racial purity reduced to tabloid form—the whole punctuated by triple exclamation marks, and disgracefully spelt. Simon refrained from crumplin
g it in his fist. He glanced at it with an appearance of interest, then put it in his pocket.
Surveying the audience from the back of the hall, it was easier to feel pity than anger. The young men in particular seemed anachronistic survivals from the era of depression: so many seemed undernourished, or the victims of the diseases of poverty, that they looked like Dotheboys Hall grown up. Tight jeans exposed pitifully thin flanks, matchstick arms protruded from T-shirts, the close-cut hair made them look wretched rather than manly. Some wore army tunics, all attempted a swagger, without the physical means that swaggers are built on.
But it was the older members of the audience that interested Simon. Most of the young men sitting in the body of the hall were sad, lonely individuals, each sitting apart, with shabby shoes, shiny flannel trousers and synthetic shirts. One guessed they would smell of underclothes washed in the handbasins of their bedsitters. Many of the older members of the audience looked to be their equivalents: they were there for somewhere to go, as in winter they would huddle in the reading rooms of public libraries. What Simon looked for was not someone sunk in apathy or isolation, but someone with commitment.
Half way down the hall his eyes rested on a man of fifty or so, seated forward in his chair, his shoulders tensed to expectancy. This man was not, like the rest, simply there: he was there and waiting to get something from it. Simon strolled down the centre aisle. When he got closer he read on the man’s face a certain hunger, an intense eagerness, that he seemed to recognize: he had seen it on Len Simmeter’s face at moments when they talked in the pub. There was a sense in this man of a craving for illicit excitements, and not the usual excitements craved by shabby men in their fifties. Simon suddenly made up his mind, and sat himself down on the gangway seat beside him.
The man first turned round, surprised, as if interrupted in the middle of some intense private meditation. But he was not hostile. On the contrary, he actually spoke.
‘Good evening, young man.’
‘Good evening.’
‘Never seen you at one of these meetings before. New to the area? It’s nice to see a respectable type here. There’s too many of these scruffies—’ he waved his arm in the direction of the motor-cycle boys—‘begging their pardon. They haven’t got a brain in their heads. They’re just here for the kicks.’
And was he, Simon wondered, here for the intellectual content? He sank into a predetermined pose of simple-minded, cliché-ridden enthusiasm.
‘It takes all sorts.’
‘Oh, right. Too right, young man. A movement can find uses for all manner of people. It’s not a bad audience, is it?’ He gazed around the Hall, which was half to two-thirds full. Not at all a bad turn-out, though a sad little assembly they looked. ‘Not bad at all. I don’t know about you, but I’ve sensed for a long time a change in the wind. You might say people are beginning to sense The Danger. It’s taken time. Ten years ago you’d have hardly got a soul to a meeting like this. But the message is getting through. Notting Hill made people think—and Sir Oswald, bless him, standing in Kensington. That did a power of good. We’re getting a lot of young folk, just as we used to, but we want the right sort, young men like yourself. What brought you tonight, I wonder?’
‘Oh—er—well—’ Simon, stammering, entered reluctantly that area between truth and lies—‘well, my father was always very interested. He . . . he didn’t live here, but he had contacts with people in the area. And as I’d just moved here . . .’
‘I see. Was it the British Union of Fascists by any chance?’
‘Yes, it was. Before the war. He mentioned a chap called Len Simmeter.’
‘That’s right. I knew Len. Very enthusiastic indeed, Len was.’
It was, frustratingly, at this point that the proceedings began to get under way. The first to speak was one of the older-looking of the motor-cycle mob—the only one with the bulk and muscle to look at all impressive. Simon soon realized that he was the warm-up man for The Leader, to whom he repeatedly referred. As oratory his style left almost everything to be desired, but it had a sort of gut-appeal: he was at one with his audience in his background, his deprivations, his obsessions. By the end of his speech, which Simon found so loathsome he felt as if cockroaches were crawling up his neck, he was getting little bursts of clapping, and elderly ‘hear, hears’.
‘Not a bad lad,’ opined Simon’s neighbour tolerantly. ‘Be useful in a barney. Just doesn’t have the style.’
When he had ranted to a halt, it was the turn of The Leader. The Leader had not until now graced the platform. His entry was the occasion for some embryonic ceremonial—should the movement flourish, Simon felt sure, the ceremonial would augment itself to keep pace with its prosperity. As it was, his coming on to the stage was marked by most of the younger members of the audience, and a few of the older ones, rising to their feet and saluting. The Leader was the pudgy man whom Simon had seen outside, now wearing some kind of simple shirt-tunic and breeches, and flanked on stage by two bovver-boys wearing the kind of army uniform that might have graced an amateur production of The Love of Four Colonels.
He was not physically impressive, this Leader. When he began speaking, however, it was clear that he was in a different league from the warm-up boy. His voice was richer, though still with a proletarian twang. His sentences cohered, were prepared and rehearsed. His oratorical style was patterned on Mussolini’s rather than Hitler’s, so it aroused fewer unhappy memories: the English have always had a slightly tender spot in their hearts for the Italian posturer, and while they would never have made him their leader, they might well have put him in charge of British Rail. If the content of the Leader’s speech was similar to the earlier one, here the rampant racism was refined, filled out with historical and philosophical references, making a more subtle and insidious appeal. His audience, he seemed to say, were intelligent and educated people like himself, and what they all believed had respectable intellectual roots.
To come to such a meeting (without any intention of breaking it up) was something few of Simon’s generation of intellectuals could expect to do. He found he could shut his ears to the content of the speech, and merely pay attention to the sound, to the shaping of the arguments, the oratorical tricks, the cunning of the allusions, the oblique flattery of the direct appeals. It was a technique of listening Simon later applied to Party Political Broadcasts, and that perhaps explains why he sometimes never bothered to vote at all in elections. Judged this way, the man had what it takes. The man in the seat next to Simon agreed.
‘He’s a man with a future,’ he whispered in Simon’s ear. ‘Next to Sir Oswald, you won’t find a speaker in England today to beat him.’
The meeting drew to a close with singing. The motor-cycle boys began it—a fine, surging, thrusting melody with stampings of the feet. Simon could well imagine the Wehrmacht singing it as they forged into Brussels or Athens. Later they interspersed such numbers with English songs, and the meeting ended with ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country.’
‘Well, that’s the sort of meeting that really makes you feel better,’ said Simon’s neighbour.
‘It certainly gave us plenty to think about,’ murmured Simon.
‘At last the message is getting through,’ said the older man, his voice betraying the same sort of desperation an ageing British Communist feels after decades of banging his head against a brick wall. ‘At last! People are beginning to sit up and think. Marvellous, i’n’t it, that we have to have half a million Aliens in our midst before the British will do that!’
The meeting was breaking up. The Leader had come off the platform, and was pretending to be an ordinary mortal. He was mingling with his audience, shaking their hands, and hoping they’d come again—very much in the manner of an Anglican clergyman. One or two ladies asked him questions beginning ‘What are you going to do about . . . ?’ He answered as if he expected to be in power tomorrow. Simon kept close to his new friend as they made for the door and out into the street. Outside dusk had gathere
d, lights were lit, and the shabby houses had acquired a sort of romance.
‘I feel a lot better for that,’ said the older man, as if he had swallowed a dose of patent medicine. ‘Feel like a cup of coffee, young man?’
‘I wouldn’t mind at all,’ said Simon, disguising his joy.
‘There’s a late night place just around the corner. My name’s Al Needham, by the way. I’m glad I met up with you. It’s a real tonic when a respectable young chap like yourself takes an interest, because we do get a few of the other kind, even in our set-up.’
‘Your set-up?’
‘I’m not a member of this bunch. I’ve stayed loyal to Sir Oswald, God bless him. But what I think is, we’re all in this together, all right-thinking citizens, all fighting shoulder to shoulder. So I come along and give them my support.’ He needs a frequent jab in the arm, Simon thought, and he goes to the meetings of any group that can give him one.
Al pushed open the door of a café and marched up to the counter. ‘Two coffees, please.’ It was the traditional greasy, dreary, uncaring British café—the sort of place that has given the British pub its reputation for cosiness. The coffee was boiling milk poured over coffee essence. Round the tables old men and women dallied over their dregs, some reading the evening paper for the third time, some gazing in front of them, unseeing. Simon and Al Needham collected their cups and made for a table by the window.
‘Yes, Mosley’s my man,’ said Al, stirring his coffee with all the appearance of expecting to enjoy it. ‘And I don’t doubt he’ll have worthy successors. I’ve spent my life recruiting Youth to the Union, and what we want now is a few more clean-limbed, thinking young people, like yourself.’
Simon thought he had never been made to sound more dreadful.
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