Dear Editors,

I begin my letter just after the dissolution of the Comintern, and before the full effects of this have become clear. Of course the immediate results in Britain are easy to foretell. Obviously the Communists will make fresh efforts to affiliate with the Labour Party (this has already been refused by the L.P. Executive), obviously they will be told that they must dissolve and join as individuals, and obviously, once inside the Labour Party, they will try to act as an organized faction, whatever promises they may have given beforehand. The real interest lies in trying to foresee the long-term effects of the dissolution on a Communist Party of the British type.

Weighing up the probabilities, I think the Russian gesture should be taken at its face-value – that is, Stalin is genuinely aiming at a closer tie-up with the U.S.A. and Britain and not merely ‘deceiving the bourgeoisie’ as his followers like to believe. But that would not of itself alter the behaviour of the British Communists. For after all, their subservience to Moscow during the last fifteen years did not rest on any real authority. The British Communists could not be shot or exiled if they chose to disobey, and so far as I know they have not even had any money from Moscow in recent years. Moreover the Russians made it reasonably clear that they despised them. Their obedience depended on the mystique of the Revolution, which had gradually changed itself into a nationalistic loyalty to the Russian state. The English left-wing intelligentsia worship Stalin because they have lost their patriotism and their religious belief without losing the need for a god and a fatherland. I have always held that many of them would transfer their allegiance to Hitler if Germany won. So long as ‘Communism’ merely means furthering the interests of the Russian Foreign Office, it is hard to see that the disappearance of the Comintern makes any difference. Nearly always one can see at a glance what policy is needed, even if there is no central organization to hand out directives.

However, one has got to consider the effect on the working-class membership, who have a different outlook from the salaried hacks at the top of the Party. To these people the open declaration that the International is dead must make a difference, although it was in fact a ghost already. And even in the central committee of the Party there are differences in outlook which might widen if after a while the British Communist Party came to think of itself as an independent party. One must allow here for the effects of self-deception. Even long-term Communists often won’t admit to themselves that they are merely Russian agents, and therefore don’t necessarily see what move is required until the instructions arrive from Moscow. Thus, as soon as the Franco-Russian military pact was signed, it was obvious that the French and British Communists must go all patriotic, but to my knowledge some of them failed to grasp this. Or again, after the signing of the Russo-German Pact several leading members refused to accept the anti-war line and had to do some belly-crawling before their mutiny was forgiven. In the months that followed the two chief publicists of the Party became extremely sympathetic to the Nazi Weltanschauung, evidently to the dismay of some of the others. The line of division is between deracinated intellectuals like Palme Dutt and trade-union men like Pollitt and Hannington. After all the years they have had on the job none of these men can imagine any occupation except boosting Soviet Russia, but they might differ as to the best way of doing it if Russian leadership has really been withdrawn. All in all, I should expect the dissolution of the Comintern to produce appreciable results, but not immediately. I should say that for six months, perhaps more, the British Communists will carry on as always, but that thereafter rifts will appear and the Party will either wither away or develop into a looser, less russophile organization under more up-to-date leadership.

There remains the bigger puzzle of why the Comintern was dissolved. If I am right and the Russians did it to inspire confidence, one must assume that the rulers of Britain and the U.S.A. wanted the dissolution and perhaps demanded it as part of the price of a Second Front. But in Britain at any rate there has been little sign in the past dozen years that the ruling class seriously objected to the existence of the Communist Party. Even during the People’s Convention period they showed it an astonishing amount of tolerance. At all other times from 1935 onwards it has had powerful support from one or other section of the capitalist press. A thing that it is difficult to be sure about is where the Communists get their money from. It is not likely that they get all of it from their declared supporters, and I believe they tell the truth in saying that they get nothing from Moscow. The difference is that they are ‘helped’ from time to time by wealthy English people who see the value of an organization which acts as an eel-trap for active Socialists. Beaverbrook for instance is credited, rightly or wrongly, with having financed the Communist Party during the past year or two. This is perhaps not less significant as a rumour than it would be as a fact. When one thinks of the history of the past twenty years it is hard not to feel that the Comintern has been one of the worst enemies the working class has had. Yet the Upper Crust is evidently pleased to see it disappear – a fact which I record but cannot readily explain.

The other important political development during these past months has been the growth of Common Wealth, Sir Richard Acland’s party. I mentioned this in earlier letters but underrated its importance. It is now a movement to be seriously reckoned with and is hated by all the other parties alike.

Acland’s programme, which is set forth almost in baby language in many leaflets and pamphlets, could be described as Socialism minus the class war and with the emphasis on the moral instead of the economic motive. It calls for nationalization of all major resources, immediate independence (not Dominion status) for India, pooling of raw materials as between ‘have’ and ‘have not’ countries, international administration of backward areas, and a composite army drawn from as many countries as possible to keep the peace after the war is done. All in all this programme is not less drastic than that of the extremist parties of the Left, but it has some unusual features which are worth noticing, since they explain the advance Common Wealth has made during the past few months.

In the first place the whole class-war ideology is scrapped. Though all property-owners are to be expropriated, they are to receive fractional compensation – in effect, the bourgeois is to be given a small life-pension instead of a firing-squad. The idea of ‘proletarian dictatorship’ is specifically condemned: the middle class and the working class are to amalgamate instead of fighting one another. The Party’s literature is aimed chiefly at winning over the middle class, both the technical middle class and the ‘little man’ (farmers, shopkeepers, etc.). Secondly, the economic side of the programme lays the emphasis on increasing production rather than equalizing consumption. Thirdly, an effort is made to synthesize patriotism with an internationalist outlook. Stress is laid on the importance of following British tradition and ‘doing things in our own way’. Parliament, apparently, is to be preserved in much its present form, and nothing is said against the Monarchy. Fourthly, Common Wealth does not describe itself as ‘Socialist’ and carefully avoids Marxist phraseology. It declares itself willing to collaborate with any other party whose aims are sufficiently similar. (With the Labour Party the test is that the L.P. shall break the electoral truce.) Fifthly – and perhaps most important of all – Common Wealth propaganda has a strong ethical tinge. Its best-known poster consists simply of the words ‘Is it expedient?’ crossed out and replaced by ‘Is it right?’ Anglican priests are much to the fore in the movement though the Catholics seem to be opposing it.

Whether this movement has a future I am still uncertain, but its growth since I last wrote to you has been very striking. Acland’s candidates are fighting by-elections all over the country. Although they have only won two so far, they have effected a big turn-over of votes against Government candidates, and what is perhaps more significant, the whole poll seems to rise wherever a Common Wealth candidate appears. The I.L.P. has been conducting a distant flirtation with Common Wealth, but the other Left parties are hostile and perhaps frightened. The usual criticism is that Common Wealth is only making progress because of the electoral truce – in other words, because the Labour Party is what it is. In addition it is said that the membership of the party is wholly middle class. Acland himself claims to have a good nucleus of followers in the factories and still more in the forces. The Communists, of course, have labelled Common Wealth as Fascist. They and the Conservatives now work together at by-elections.

The programme I have roughly outlined has elements both of demagogy and of Utopianism, but it takes very much better account of the actual balance of forces than any of the older Left parties have done. It might have a chance of power if another revolutionary situation arises, either through military disaster or at the end of the war. Some who know Acland declare that he has a ‘fuehrer complex’ and that if he saw the movement growing beyond his control he would split it sooner than share authority. I don’t believe this to be so, but neither do I believe that Acland by himself could bring a nation-wide movement into being. He is not a big enough figure, and not in any way a man of the people. Although of aristocratic and agricultural background (he is a fifteenth baronet) he has the manners and appearance of a civil servant, with a typical upper-class accent. For a popular leader in England it is a serious disability to be a gentleman, which Churchill, for instance, is not. Cripps is a gentleman, but to offset this he has his notorious ‘austerity’, the Gandhi touch, which Acland just misses, in spite of his ethical and religious slant. I think this movement should be watched with attention. It might develop into the new Socialist party we have all been hoping for, or into something very sinister: it has some rather doubtful followers already.

Finally a word about antisemitism, which could not be said to have reached the stature of a ‘problem’. I said in my last letter that it was not increasing, but I now think it is. The danger signal, which is also a safeguard, is that everyone is very conscious of it and it is discussed interminably in the press.

Although Jews in England have always been socially looked down on and debarred from a few professions (I doubt whether a Jew would be accepted as an officer in the navy, for instance), antisemitism is primarily a working-class thing, and strongest among Irish labourers. I have had some glimpses of working-class antisemitism through being three years in the Home Guard – which gives a good cross-section of society – in a district where there are a lot of Jews. My experience is that middle-class people will laugh at Jews and discriminate against them to some extent, but only among working people do you find the full-blown belief in the Jews as a cunning and sinister race who live by exploiting the Gentiles. After all that has happened in the last ten years it is a fearful thing to hear a working man saying, ‘Well, I reckon ’Itler done a good job when ’e turned ’em all out,’ but I have heard just that, and more than once. These people never seem to be aware that Hitler has done anything to the Jews except ‘turned ’em all out’; the pogroms, the deportations, etc. have simply escaped their notice. It is questionable, however, whether the Jew is objected to as a Jew or simply as a foreigner. No religious consideration enters. The English Jew, who is often strictly orthodox but entirely anglicized in his habits, is less disliked than the European refugee who has probably not been near a synagogue for thirty years. Some people actually object to the Jews on the ground that Jews are Germans!

But in somewhat different forms antisemitism is now spreading among the middle class as well. The usual formula is ‘Of course I don’t want you to think I’m antisemitic, but –’ – and here follows a catalogue of Jewish misdeeds. Jews are accused of evading military service, infringing the food laws, pushing their way to the front of queues, etc. etc. More thoughtful people point out that the Jewish refugees use this country as a temporary asylum but show no loyalty towards it. Objectively this is true, and the tactlessness of some of the refugees is almost incredible. (For example, a remark by a German Jewess overheard during the Battle of France: ‘These English police are not nearly so smart as our S.S. men.’) But arguments of this kind are obviously rationalizations of prejudice. People dislike the Jews so much that they do not want to remember their sufferings, and when you mention the horrors that are happening in Germany or Poland, the answer is always ‘Oh yes, of course that’s dreadful, but –’ – and out comes the familiar list of grievances. Not all of the intelligentsia are immune from this kind of thing. Here the get-out is usually that the refugees are all ‘petty bourgeois’; and so the abuse of Jews can proceed under a respectable disguise. Pacifists and others who are anti-war sometimes find themselves forced into antisemitism.

One should not exaggerate the danger of this kind of thing. To begin with, there is probably less antisemitism in England now than there was thirty years ago. In the minor novels of that date you find it taken for granted far oftener than you would nowadays that a Jew is an inferior or a figure of fun. The ‘Jew joke’ has disappeared from the stage, the radio and the comic papers since 1934. Secondly, there is a great awareness of the prevalence of antisemitism and a conscious effort to struggle against it. But the thing remains, and perhaps it is one of the inevitable neuroses of war. I am not particularly impressed by the fact that it does not take violent forms. It is true that no one wants to have pogroms and throw elderly Jewish professors into cesspools, but then there is very little crime or violence in England anyway. The milder form of antisemitism prevailing here can be just as cruel in an indirect way, because it causes people to avert their eyes from the whole refugee problem and remain uninterested in the fate of the surviving Jews of Europe. Because two days ago a fat Jewess grabbed your place on the bus, you switch off the wireless when the announcer begins talking about the ghettoes of Warsaw; that’s how people’s minds work nowadays.

That is all the political news I have. Life goes on much as before. I don’t notice that our food is any different, but the food situation is generally considered to be worse. The war hits one a succession of blows in unexpected places. For a long time razor blades were unobtainable, now it is boot polish. Books are being printed on the most villainous paper and in tiny print, very trying to the eyes. A few people are wearing wooden-soled shoes. There is an alarming amount of drunkenness in London. The American soldiers seem to be getting on better terms with the locals, perhaps having become more resigned to the climate etc. Air raids continue, but on a pitiful scale. I notice that many people feel sympathy for the Germans now that it is they who are being bombed – a change from 1940, when people saw their houses tumbling about them and wanted to see Berlin scraped off the map.

George Orwell