AUGUST FOR THE PEOPLE: TREASON AND THE INTELECTUAL

August is not meant to be spent in land locked cities. There is a languor about the month that requires the presence of the sea.

London feels bored with itself, only the tourists think it spontaneous and fresh. When I open the window to relieve the tedium I only let in the bored stale air.

Auden understood this need to get away

 August for the people and their favourite islands.

Daily the steamers sidle up to meet
The effusive welcome of the pier, and soon
The luxuriant life of the steep stone valleys
The sallow oval faces of the city
Begot in passion or good-natured habit
Are caught by waiting coaches, or laid bare
Beside the undiscriminating sea.

There is more than a hint of snobbishness in Auden’s observations; it is the suspicion and dislike of the working classes that is imbibed while attending any British public school. It took Orwell a lifetime to shake off the prejudice, few even bother to try.

This prejudice currently manifests itself in the regular caricature of the working class ‘chav.’ Grotesque caricatures of working class life that betray a level of ill disguised hatred and bigotry that it would be nigh on impossible to demonstrate towards any other group.[1]

I have just finished reading ‘Climate of Treason,’ Andrew Boyle’s account of the Cambridge spies, Philby, Burgess and Maclean. Reading it you are fully exposed to the Harrow/Eton/Oxbridge world view, the view of a narrow little coterie who attended elite public schools, usually Eton, Harrow or Westminster, going on to Oxbridge who imagined that they were the world; the lives of the other 99% of the population being of no real account.

Indeed given that the infamous trio were supposedly working toward a proletarian dominated paradise they seem to have had very little to do with the actual working class, unless of course you count the ‘bits of rough’ whom  Burgess routinely picked up and took back to his bond Street apartment. Indeed Burgess seems to have positively revelled in aristocratic decadence. Having ones cake and eating it at the same time Burgess seems to have regarded as a birth right.

I suppose I should confess that I once had a sneaking admiration for the Cambridge spies, whilst not wholly approving of them, I felt that they did what they did through idealism and a hatred for the British class system, not for financial reward. Always an anti-Stalinist I could not though forgive the aid and comfort they provided to Stalin. Any sneaking admiration I may have had has long gone, dissipated long before I picked up this book.

Kim Philby

Philby’s own account, ‘My Secret War’ is pungent enough to disabuse anyone who might previously suspected an idealist, with its smug self satisfied air, presenting deceit, treachery and indeed murder as a parlour game. It is worth pausing for a moment to consider the fate of the Armenian dissidents whose hands he shook on the Turkish border, having already sealed their fate by notifying the Soviet guards of their pending arrival. To look into the eyes and shake the hands of men you are sending to be tortured and shot takes a particular brand of cold blooded cynicism, it is in fact impossible to avoid the word evil.[2]

Donald Maclean at Cambridge

Though Philby’s ice cold cynicism and Maclean’s shaky Calvinist conscience are threads running through this book, it is Burgess who bursts out of the pages. The drunken homosexual predator, old Etonian bon viveur, wit, gossip addicted charmer, wild card, semi house trained entertainer for whom the rather tired cliché ‘larger than life,’ was never very far away. In truth life is too large for anybody to really outgrow it. Burgess though like many an amusing drunk, was also a sadist and a bully, - he seems to have particularly enjoyed torturing the conflicted Maclean.

It is worth bearing in mind that the most fruitful period of their spying, from a Soviet point of view, was the period from 1945 to 1950, when the trio, with Blunt as bag carrier, were acting against the interests of the post war socialist administration of Clement Atlee. They would have torpedoed a vital American loan if they could. Thus they were acting most ruthlessly, of course in line with Soviet policy, against the ‘real enemy,’ democratic socialism. From a working class perspective the Cambridge spies truly represented a class enemy.

Guy Burgess in Moscow

The book received a great many plaudits when it came out in 1979, and of course it was the book that exposed Sir Anthony Blunt, keeper of the Queen’s pictures, as the fourth man. However I found the tone priggish and Boyle’s constant ponderous editorialising tiresome. Hence we get that ‘Maclean was introduced to the sad pleasures of sodomy.’ [My italics]. Why sad, has Mr Boyle’s experience of sodomy proved sad, does he have information that Maclean found it so? This silly intrusion is extremely irritating. Would he, for example, write ‘and so Churchill took up the sad pastime of landscape painting?’ He also consistently makes the basic undergraduate error of placing himself inside the heads of the protagonists providing them with thoughts or motivations, often without a shred of evidence to support his assertions. Similarly he makes some startling claims, without supporting evidence, most interestingly:-

‘…since Burgess and Maclean remained in some danger of liquidation while the dictator [Stalin] lived…’ [3]

Wow, if true this is extremely interesting. How would Philby have dealt with the murder of his erstwhile comrades? Given the cynicism of the man it is certainly possible that he could have ‘lived with it.’ We can but speculate. I was left feeling like an irritated history don scribbling ‘evidence?’ in the margin.

Though of course it is not academic history, nor was intended to be, but a work of reportage. As such, despite all the faults outlined above, it remains highly readable. It should also be required reading for anyone interested in Anglo American relations after 1945. Those peddling the special relationship line have a lot of explaining to do in examining the events described here. The sheer vindictiveness and stupidity of the US administration in pulling the plug on lend lease even as hostilities were being played out in the Far East, was not a friendly act, let alone the act of a close ally; nor was it intended to be. If Britain was going to experiment with democratic Socialism it was going to have to do so in the teeth of hostility and bullying from the US.

 To the lasting credit of Atlee and Bevin they refused to be bullied, though were forced to accept a loan on draconian terms. One suspects that the hard headed Atlee, whilst disappointed, was not altogether surprised.

Set against this both Atlee and Bevin knew, as the dust settled over Europe, that a clear choice had to be made as to which side of the divide you stood, with Stalin’s soviet Union or with the extremely imperfect but relatively open democracy of the US. In reality there really was no choice, and the heterogeneous beast of NATO solidarity was born.

Whilst Philby and company had long ago thrown in their lot with the Communism of Joseph Stalin, the show trials, the Stalin Hitler pact and the crushing of all opposition throughout Eastern Europe did not sway them.

It is all of course a long time ago. Anyone under thirty five cannot understand the atmosphere of the cold war let alone the fevered atmosphere of the 1930’s. In their defence it is argued that the real choice then was between Fascism/Nazism and Communism and that seen in that light they made the morally correct choice. This argument has some small merit, certainly when seen against the treachery of the pro Hitler Cliveden set. Though in the years 1933/34 when they became card carrying members the Commintern policy was fatally to divide the left, accusing Social Democrats of being ‘Social Fascists,’ allowing Hitler in through the front door. This policy soon changed, but by then it was too late.[4]

Does any of this now matter, beyond historical curiosity? Well there is one way in which the 1930’s bears some resemblance to our own troubled age. We also live in an age of recession and ideological struggle, as revolution sweeps the Middle East a new/very old messianic totalitarian ideology, hostile to democracy and liberalism fights for domination. As I write this The Muslim Brotherhood is fighting it out on the streets of Cairo. In some university dormitory somewhere it is likely that groups of highly intelligent Muslims will be gripped by this messianic struggle. The attractions of all embracing ideology, allied to violence, will always remain for  inadequate intellectuals in search of meaning and a home.

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[1] It is worth noting that the particularly unpleasant and spiteful creations of Little Britain have been produced by David Williams and Matt Lucas, both hailing from the lower middle class, contempt and fear of the lower orders always being strongest in this social group; the working classes being always a little to close for comfort.

[2] He described agents being parachuted into a trap he had set for them in Ukraine, as” barely descended from the trees.”

[3] The Climate of Treason p446.

[4] When reading this book I was often reminded of Orwell’s remark, ‘Something so stupid only an intellectual could believe it.

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