Anarchist freedom fighters will obviously do their bit. I would be doing myself a disservice if they didn't.
I feel like I probably need to dig out a suitable musical number for when he goes, Ding Dong style. Maybe that will be my next task…
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Anarchist freedom fighters will obviously do their bit. I would be doing myself a disservice if they didn't.
I feel like I probably need to dig out a suitable musical number for when he goes, Ding Dong style. Maybe that will be my next task…
Still lives at Whitechapel
WHITECHAPEL
SEPTEMBER 1956
The gallery was not large. Coming in from the street on an unseasonably cool evening, Will and Cord were hailed enthusiastically.
“Ah – Will, Cord! You found us alright, then? Good, good.” John, his usual affable self in a fisherman’s jumper and corduroy trousers, gave a broad smile and greeted the new arrivals.
“Good to see you , John.” Cord and John hugged. Will took off his coat, then extended a hand.
“John.” The two men shook hands in warm greeting. “Not many in tonight?” John’s face lit up with an impish grin.
“No, no. I said this was to be a private viewing, and I have kept my word. You won’t be bothered by unwelcome crowds this evening.” He gave Will a knowing look. “Now! Let me introduce you to our friends.” The three of them drifted over towards the centre of the room, where a table had been set up decked out with wine and bread, as well as a few black and white pamphlets. Stood next to the table in a loose circle, two men and a woman were engaged in easy conversation. They turned towards John and he approached with Will and Cord.
“Felicity, Ben, Max. Allow me to introduce Will and Cord.” Easy salutations were exchanged all round. “Will is going to write something for the Review. I thought I’d invite him along tonight to get a better look at everything.” John addressed this elaboration to Ben, who out of the three was visibly the most bemused by the presence of the couple.
“We’re very big admirers, Mr Nicholson.” Cord added this detail, quite sincerely. “In fact, we both visited your show on the South Bank last year. Wonderful, wasn’t it Will?”
“Yes, absolutely.” Will agreed, before shifting to address the artist himself. “It’s an honour to make your acquaintance.” Ben accepted the compliment with a smile and shook Will’s hand.
“I hope you enjoy this little display. Not as wide ranging as what you will have seen at the South Bank, but some good work all the same. Or I think so, anyway. You may have your own opinions.” Ben laughed at his own quip before becoming more serious. “John seems to think you will find it very useful, coming this evening. I hope you get out of it everything you wish.” Cord replied:
“Thank you, that’s very kind. I’m sure it will be a lovely evening.”
“It’s Max you should be thanking,” said Ben, turning to the younger man on his right. “This is his place, after all. He did all the hard work!” Max smiled, at once deflecting and accepting the artist’s praise.
“It’d just ben empty room without you, Ben.” It was clear that the two men enjoyed a familiar relationship. “I’m only a humble facilitator.” Ben nodded and raised his hands in concession. He did not notice the look that Max directed towards John as he spoke, although even if he had he would not have known its significance.
At this point, Felicity spoke for the first time since their party had been completed:
“I’m sure our guests didn’t come here just to hear us all trade complements. Would you like me to show you the work?”
“That would be lovely, thank you.” Cord replied on both her and Will’s behalf, after which Felicity freed herself from the circle and led the couple over towards a series of small paintings along the gallery’s back wall. The three of them took a moment to contemplate the work before anyone spoke. Behind them, Max and John had picked up the thread of some lively discussion, Ben interjecting with a laugh every now and then. Art world talk, perfectly innocuous.
At their end of the room, Felicity was the first to break the silence:
“Still lives, these ones. Ben’s most recent work, completed after the show last year.” Will stepped closer to the painting to read the caption. It read: ‘Green Chisel’, oil on board (1955). He stepped back and regarded the work in renewed contemplation.
'Green Chisel', oil on board (1955).
Felicity continued her commentary:
“A lot of people presume that his work is all abstract, but that’s not the case at all; it’s all figurative, somehow. Of course,” she paused, “abstraction isn’t always the most welcome in the current climate. The younger generation like collage, which is its own sort of abstraction, but they’re far more into images than they are forms and figures. Some of it’s hardly distinguishable from advertising!
Will and Cord made gestures of agreement. Only last month they had been to an exhibition in Piccadilly that had seemed to celebrate images of ‘things’ for their own sake. It was wildly popular, of course – particularly in the current climate; after the crisis in Bessarabia at the start of the year, Mosley’s programme had been given a shot in the arm by favourable comparisons against the dour Soviet regime. Neither Will nor Cord felt that this was particularly well deserved, but even five years on the memory of the Festival of the Commonwealth was strong enough to give the impression of Britain as a paradise of modern technology and consumer goods.
Felicity led the two of them over towards the next wall, on which hung a pair of paintings far sooner recognised as still lives.
“I can’t help but think that the ‘Pop’ lot are doing the work of the Zhdanovites for Mosley’s Britain,” Felicity said remarkably casually, and not without a hint of dismissal.
“You keep up with Soviet politics do you, Felicity?” Cord asked.
“Oh yes – did John not tell you? That’s how we met. We were both involved with the AIA.” That explains it, Cord thought. John was always hanging around with the CPGB lot, even if he wasn’t a member himself. Not that he would ever deny it if you suggested he were. “A few years ago, John wanted to write a piece for the Realist about some of Ben’s landscapes, so I introduced the two of them. The storm it provoked within the Party, I tell you! Of course, Ben never gets involved with any of it. Politics isn’t his thing.”
“I remember John’s article well,” Will remarked. “Very good title, I thought: ‘The Art of Revolt’. Did an excellent job of co-opting Mr Nicholson’s compositions into the struggle.”
“You read the Realist do you, Will?”
“Not out of habit, I admit. Nor allegiance, I should say; I haven’t been a member of the Party for about twenty years. But on this occasion I happened to be in the same cafe as John as he was writing it, and he showed me his drafts. You certainly can’t fault his courage for going up against the hardliners.”
“Yes, quite. I suppose it’s just his way of seeing things: you can’t divide up the world nearly as neatly as the Stalinists want to believe. Or the Mosleyites, I suppose.”
As if having sensed the topic of conversation, John approached.
“Ben and Max are talking shop,” he explained. “Thought I’d join you and get another look at the paintings.” He turned to Will and Cord. “Fantastic, aren’t they? So much freedom. They follow all the best European traditions of figurative work.”
“I was just telling Felicity how much I enjoyed your article, John.”
“Ah, yes, well. Thank you. It can be a thankless task, railing against the Stalinist lot. You’d be surprised how intransigent some of them remain.” Will was not surprised. He had first-hand experience on that front. “In any case, at least they’re on the retreat, generally speaking.”
“From what I’ve heard,” Cord interjected, “the Party looks to be as good as collapsing at the moment! Not that Comrade Pollitt would admit so much.” It was never easy determining the exact strength of the Communist movement in Britain, nor separating the fact from the fiction where their published output was concerned. Either way, anecdotal evidence suggested that a large number of people had defected in the months following the Soviet invasion of Romania in January. For many who had hoped that change was coming after Stalin’s death three years earlier, the Bessarabian crisis had been a crushing disappointment.
“I admit, I only tore up my card in February.” This was Felicity, with a hint of embarrassment.
“Well, either way it’s a challenge.” Will picked up the conversation. “We may have had our disagreements, but credit to them the Communists could always be relied upon to see through Mosley’s act. Even if it has become increasingly difficult for them to get their message across.” The group knew what Will was insinuating: the Domestic Bureau had been cracking down on anything remotely anti-Commonwealth or pro-Soviet in the aftermath of Bucharest.
“It’s a shame poor old Fenner Brockway isn’t in more of a position to capitalise on the Communist collapse.” Cord changed the subject slightly. “It seems to me that the Front would be well positioned to take in a lot of the more dejected fellow travellers, but we still haven’t recovered from the campaign against Socialist Youth. Everything’s still too underground… its makes coordinating things a nightmare.” John’s eyes lit up.
“Actually, Cordelia, that’s something I was hoping to be able to speak to you about. You too, Will. Felicity, would you mind giving us a minute?”
“Not at all. I’ll go and see if Ben’s alright. It was nice meeting you both.” Felicity smiled at Will and Cord, before returning to Ben and Max at the refreshment table.
'Four Pears', pencil and watercolour (1955).
“I had a feeling it wasn’t just a love for Ben’s painting that led you to invite us this evening,” Cord teased John once the three of them were alone.
“Well, we have to take every chance we get at the moment.” John said playfully, before switching into a low voice. “It’s not every day that we can talk in private like this.” Will and Cord both nodded in agreement.
“You see,” John moved onto the business at hand. “Max over there has quite a few friends who see things more or less as we do. There is a group of people who have started to think about bringing together all the various parts of the underground left – in particular the need for a suitable location. Somewhere discreet, somewhere that is ‘our own’.” Will and Cord could see the appeal at once. There weren’t many places in London where people of their disposition could meet to talk business without worrying about conversations being overheard by the wrong people. John continued:
“After making a few inquiries, Max reckons he’s found just the place: an old cafe over on Carlisle Street. It’s a little run down, but with a bit of work it could quite easily function as a coffee house. It’s in a trendy part of town, so that shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows.”
“Who are these friends, John? Old Party people?” Will asked, wondering who exactly the unassuming gallery owner associated with.
“Broadly speaking, yes. I don’t know all of them, but Max tends to mix in intellectual circles. They’re mostly writers, teachers… Your sort of people, to be honest Will. Not the sort you might expect to go around investing in coffee houses, I’ll admit, but all concerned by—” John paused a second as he searched for the right phrase, “the state of things, let’s say.”
“So where do we come in?” Cord got straight to the point.
“Two places, as I see it.” John replied unfazed. “The first, unfortunately, is a question of funding. Max mentioned the scheme to me as he wanted to know if I’d invest. I plan to, but we still need to raise more money. The building isn’t expensive, but it’s more than we can stretch to as it stands.” Will and Cord nodded. Receiving no objections, John carried on:
“The second question is more interesting. So far, everyone involved comes from the Communist groups – and academic groups at that. Clever people, but no organisers. And no one to bring in other elements of the opposition. You two on the other hand fill in the blanks perfectly: writers and organisers. I’m sure the underground Front networks would be very interested in a place to meet and plan safely, and they would be very welcome to it. We just need to get the word out.”
“How much money do you need?” Will asked.
“About five-hundred pounds. Ideally before the end of the year.” Will considered the proposal. It was not an impossible task by any means, given the right sort of attention. He turned to Cord, who replied with an assenting look.
“Alright, we’ll see what we can come up with. In the meantime, you can put us down for fifty quid. I like the sound of this, John. I think it’s a very good idea.” John held his hands up.
“Yes, I think so too. But then I’m only the messenger. I expect you’ll want to meet the other investors. We can talk to Max about that a little later on. In the meantime… well, I know I did drag you out here under slightly false pretences, but I am glad you got to see the show. Anyone up for rejoining the others and picking up a glass of wine?”
“Absolutely,” replied Cord eagerly. The three of them left the still lives and returned to the middle of the room, and turning their backs on the paintings all talk of underground opposition vanished. For the rest of the evening, the small party spoke no more of politics.
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Something something inmates something something asylum…
Bit of a change of pace this one, but it did let me talk about two of my favourite things (covert leftist organisation and Ben Nicholson paintings) so you’ll have to humour me.
Mr Tweedy actually does look a bit like John Strachey, now I think about it. If only Mrs Tweedy wore black turtlenecks, then we'd have ourselves a real party…
All this talk of chickens. I prefer a mental image courtesy of the late great Sir Terry Pratchett, of grass organising against the lawnmower.
I see the modern (con-)art is just atrocious as ever in the 1960s as today.
I see the modern (con-)art is just atrocious as ever in the 1960s as today.
The most uncanny thing about all of these metaphors is that I’ve just got new chickens who are refusing to lay in their house (obviously autonomists), and yesterday the mower went off to the workshop because it packed up in the middle of doing a patch of particul long grass.
Have I been the counterrevolutionary all along?
Oh come now. Mr Nicholson with his lovely little still lives is hardly the worst offender. I will admit in a heartbeat that the world of postwar Western art is staffed with more than its fair share of grifters and charlatans, but in my book Ben is not one of them. (
)It may or may not reassure you to know that the implication of this vignette is also that Nicholson’s work isn’t exactly mainstream, so I’ll leave you to imagine for yourselves what wonders Mosley’s Zhdanovites have concocted for the masses.
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Housekeeping note to say that I’m going to bring this thread kicking and screaming into the new century and update all the threadmarks. Not something I’ve used before, being wedded to the ancient system of a contents page, but I reckon it’s probably helpful now we’re 20+ pages in.
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Excellent job setting the scene for what lies ahead - the coded language, the gentle prodding to see where one's sympathies lie.
I have to admit it took me until the chapter from Socialist Youth to realize just how far Mosley's Britain has drifted from the Commonwealth's roots. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will all come crashing down. Nothing like a group of avant-garde intellectuals to topple a regime!
I have to admit it took me until the chapter from Socialist Youth to realize just how far Mosley's Britain has drifted from the Commonwealth's roots. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will all come crashing down. Nothing like a group of avant-garde intellectuals to topple a regime!
It's still a pretty good place to be working class, just with a pretty right wing authority atop a very left wing system. But if the YS can be brought out into the open again and the goverment liberlises a touch (freedom of press etc), then the syndicalists should be alright for the century to come. The second wave revolutionaries are going to be more internationally focused, so the actual oppuration of the gov will probably not chnage all that much, just mosley will be gone.
Thanks. Everyone’s amongst friends here, but still always safer just to stick to what needs to be said.
The change is quite sudden, and on one level fairly unnoticeable. It’s basically all happening at the top of government, and in a sense the rallying cry of the anti-Mosleyite movement is just a liberal movement that doesn’t actually have much to do with the working classes. The grievances are, for now, to do with political rights and a few social and international causes. This will naturally have repercussions down the line.
The kicker is going to be how much the actual vehicles of working class organisation can ride the second wave, and how much is left to the liberal humanist tendency. The Seventies was full of Trots and other fellow travellers decrying how the New Left was a conservative that turned Marxism into an academic tool and just wanted a return to the leftism of the interwar years. Even as the fundamental socialism of the Commonwealth system endures, this is going to spark its fair share of fights along the way.
I finally caught up after nearly 1 whole year of lagging behind
This latest chapter was absolutely fantastic and legit my most favourite one
It describes the higher middle class of the nation so perfectly
Also I especially love to see the art and culture of any nation. That is a feature that the game itself fails to provide on detail!
I wonder if such abstract line paintings will ever become mainstream and popular
Supercool
This latest chapter was absolutely fantastic and legit my most favourite one
It describes the higher middle class of the nation so perfectly
Also I especially love to see the art and culture of any nation. That is a feature that the game itself fails to provide on detail!
I wonder if such abstract line paintings will ever become mainstream and popular
Supercool
Congratulations on making it, @mad orc and thanks for persevering! Hope you enjoyed the ride.
I'm glad the last chapter got a decent reception. I'm always conscious that these sort of scenes don't really present that much of an opportunity for particularly 'literary' writing, but I'm relieved that something manages to come across with just dialogue and a little bit of staging. Of course, the question of whether this is the higher middle class is an awkward one in a 'classless' society. Undeniably they are the intelligentsia. And the fact that the intelligentsia are so heavily involved in the opposition rather than the broader working classes, will evidently have repercussions a little further down the line.
I always do enjoy fleshing out the cultural side, as I'm sure is obvious by now. Vicky 2 vanilla does of course give a little bit with the cultural movement part of the tech tree, but it's still quite abstract (as is true of all of Vicky) and more than a little bit deterministic. Much more fun to ignore it and go from your own plot line!
I would love to think, even if not widespread popularity, they do at least end up less disparaged than in our own world. As so many revolutionary writers have remarked, building the new world requires a new conception of everything from economics right through to artistic production. Has Mosley achieved this? Well… no, not really. Will our young dissidents try again? Very probably.
Thanks for taking the time to catch up and comment!
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Next up is a look at how one obscure attempt at social reform can nearly bring down a government from within, then we have a look at what's going on in the Autonomous Commonwealth of Kenya before coming back around to the start of the general crisis we like to call "1956". After that we're into Part Four, which (pending a final decision on how to structure the ending of this 'book') will take us all the way through the 1960s. Exciting times ahead.
I may well move towards slightly more frequent updating, just because the reality of finishing a degree and being unemployed is starting to hit so the schedule/reliable dopamine hit of writing and posting is something fun to keep me occupied. Probably nothing too drastic, maybe just every five days instead of every seven.
Wait what - you're doing narrative now?
I really enjoyed this update, quite a lot explored in a very chatty, accessible way.
Doesn't that sum up quite a few revolutions - the mad idealists have the spark, the bureaucrats know how to get stuff done. Put 'em together, boom...
I really enjoyed this update, quite a lot explored in a very chatty, accessible way.
Doesn't that sum up quite a few revolutions - the mad idealists have the spark, the bureaucrats know how to get stuff done. Put 'em together, boom...
I do like to whip it out every now and then, usually when I really don't think it would work as a third-party account. If you look closely you'll see that the narrative updates all tend to involve the same people, too…
Thank you. As I say, never certain how well this sort of 'dry' narrative style hits, so happy to hear it does the job. FWIW, I hold up your own work as something of a gold standard in working with a lot of dialogue and economically applied descriptive scenes.
Absolutely. Then you just hope your hardest that everyone gets along as well after the event as they do in the lead up.
Which is exactly what I've been doing with more than a few of my classes and readings into my AAR.
Wait, people have stopped doing Contents posts?! Am I doing it wrong?
Quite right too!
I think the highlight was probably last summer when I opened up AutoCAD to make some maps for the storming of the Cliveden Parliament. Just be glad I haven't done a lengthy illustrated essay on the intricacies of Commonwealth urban planning.
I still swear by them, but the threadmark system seems to be de rigueur. Personally I just like being able to mess around with formatting on a contents page, which I don't think is entirely possible with threadmarks. That may just be because I don't know how to use them, however.
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The essay would be (almost) @El Pip levels of commitment to one's craft, I'd imagine... a worthy diversion, honestly!Quite right too!
I think the highlight was probably last summer when I opened up AutoCAD to make some maps for the storming of the Cliveden Parliament. Just be glad I haven't done a lengthy illustrated essay on the intricacies of Commonwealth urban planning.
As to my class, the title was "Europe in the Age of Total War: 1914 - 1945" and it was awesome. Much of my interbellum and early years came out of that class. I wish I had still been a student and could have taken his class on Nazi Germany... unfortunately I was graduated by the fall and needed to get a proper job... or something.
I've been working with updating my Table of Contents page, almost every chance I get... I also like that it makes my work look a bit more... rigourous? Perhaps? I also hope that it teases the readers now and again.
The essay would be (almost) @El Pip levels of commitment to one's craft, I'd imagine... a worthy diversion, honestly!
In that case, I’ll have to see what I can do! Probably best suited for the fabled “book two” when we get some nice garden cities and fun things like that.
It’s such a pivotal period of history, and one that honestly I don’t really know well enough. Sounds like a cool class indeed. Thinking about it, 99% of my history knowledge comes from having spent my entire teenage years on here reading stories by people who weave bits of their own knowledge into what they do. So I’m always grateful when people are up for sharing the benefit of their learning.
I have more than one spreadsheet that this project lives across, and I update them all religiously just like the contents page. Maybe that’s a tad extreme, but I fully agree: having a nice contents page and preamble and so on just feels right somehow. And it’s always super cool in my book to get a hint of what’s coming even if I’m coming to a project late on. So yeah, I like the whole teaser thing too.
Obligatory post to make sure the next update isn't hidden at the bottom of the page. It's another piece in the Talking Point format that gets us a little closer to Mosley's downfall, and I'll probably have it up tonight/tomorrow morning. In the mean time I've been getting to work on Bevan's first couple of years in power, and most of the Sixties is now planned out, which is exciting. I've also decided on a few more characters to introduce before the end of this part, which I hope will spice things up a bit. (Bevan's glasnost will bring a slightly greater diversity of viewpoints out into the open, probably to his peril.)
In a fun turn of events, now that I'm writing the Sixties I've been able to scoop a whole load of alt-historical flavour from a "Prime Minister Gaitskell" project I did on here and abandoned after the prologue about five years ago. (Also slightly ironically, considering the whole Gaitskell/Bevan thing.) Always nice when you think a project is dead and buried and then bits of it turn up in an entirely different context years later.
TL;DR: update out within 24 hours.
In a fun turn of events, now that I'm writing the Sixties I've been able to scoop a whole load of alt-historical flavour from a "Prime Minister Gaitskell" project I did on here and abandoned after the prologue about five years ago. (Also slightly ironically, considering the whole Gaitskell/Bevan thing.) Always nice when you think a project is dead and buried and then bits of it turn up in an entirely different context years later.
TL;DR: update out within 24 hours.
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