He stood in the pub as if covered by a sandwich board made from the four bearded folk singers, knowing he was in friction with yet another of the town’s dog-like prejudices. He teaches our children.
‘It’ll get the young people in,’ he said. What young people? Milkbar greasy heads. He saw the beer guts of twenty-year-olds. The young people.
‘You reckon we’ll have an audience then?’ the leader with the beard and the tight striped trousers and waistcoat and riding boots said.
‘Apathy,’ he said, ‘but this is something new – folk-singing – that’s something new.’
‘You reckon Labor’ll win?’
‘Affluence – Labor needs a crisis to win.’
‘In the city we’re packing them in.’
‘Political songs?’
‘Sort of – Dylan and all that.’
He nodded. If the songs could be sung through loudspeaker systems into shops and streets and factories. There were no factories. Into the farms. The farms. He saw the muddy cow bails, heard the suck and release of the pulsator, the flies. Christ, how could you build a socialist society on flies and mud and the smell of milk? Marx wanted grand pianos in the fields. That was right. Music was propaganda. Great propaganda. The workers didn’t sing, though. That was the trouble. Seeger could get them to sing. The workers in Woolworths, the waterside workers, the lot. But he saw the main street of this town, the Greek cafes, the fish-and-chip shops, the rubber stamps in banks and insurance branches – would they sing ‘We Shall Overcome’ with Seeger? Hardly. It was all frigging hopeless.
‘Did you hear Seeger when he was out here?’
‘He’s all right,’ said the Leader.
‘Didn’t hear Robeson.’
‘We requested “Joe Hill” – Robeson asked for requests and we wrote it on a piece of paper and passed it down to him. He sang it. You going to sing “Joe Hill”?’
‘Don’t know it.’
‘Don’t know it? I have a record of him singing it to the British dockers. I’ll play it to you.’
‘Like to hear it.’ The folk-singers shuffled around.
‘We’ve booked you at the Memorial Hall – you’ll be staying at the Commercial.’
‘The Commercial – there’s one in every town.’
‘The local radio station will interview you – we’ve got spots for you too.’
‘Great.’
‘Some of the older members of the Party opposed it, you know.’
‘Having folk-singers?’
‘They say it’s too much like show business.’
‘If you’re going to get young people you’ve got to appeal to them.’
‘That’s what I said.’
The hall was nearly empty. A few children, sons and daughters of branch members, the branch stalwarts, a few kids he hadn’t seen. The hall was practically empty.
How could you ask them to join in singing when most of the seats were empty? How could you sing ‘We Shall Overcome’? No one joined in. He and Sylvia did but it was no use. Alan, the CP organiser, did. ‘We Shall Overcome’ was no good unless there was a lot to sing it.
What could you do with a town like this? It would have to be dragged into line. A few platoons of worker militia would run the town. Perhaps the farm workers. The teachers would be OK. Would the Rotarians have to be eliminated? The Lions?
As he stacked the chairs he thought, well, so much for revolution. Tomorrow the hall would be used for a flower show.
At the party afterwards he said he was sorry there hadn’t been a crowd.
‘That’s show business,’ the Leader of the group said.
‘That’s politics,’ he said, ‘in this country,’ looking around at the few schoolteachers and branch members in their ties and suits.
‘It’s all hopeless,’ Sylvia said.
‘Where are all the birds?’ the young singer Phillip asked.
‘There just aren’t any girls in the branch,’ he said.
‘Except me,’ Sylvia said, poking out her tongue at him, ‘sometimes he forgets I’m a girl.’
Grins.
‘How do you stand it – the town I mean?’
‘Teachers don’t have any choice,’ Sylvia said, ‘we go where we’re told. We came from the city.’
He asked the folk-singers if they knew the song ‘Which Side Are You On?’
‘How’s it go?’
‘Come all you good workers,
Good news to you I’ll tell,
Of how the good old union,
Has come in here to dwell,
Which side are you on
Which side are you on?’
‘No, I don’t,’ said the Leader.
‘No,’ said the others.
‘It’s from the Kentucky miners’ battles – against armed deputies – class warfare.’
The folk-singers looked at him with polite attention.
‘Here in the town the Young Liberals don’t even bother to tear down the posters,’ Sylvia said hopelessly.
‘Bloody Harlan –’ he persisted, whether they were interested or not, ‘the miners and deputies fought it out – with guns – they used to go around beating the union leaders up.’
Sylvia said, ‘We’re going to the city to demonstrate against the President, are you?’
‘I don’t know,’ the folk-singers’ Leader said, ‘not much of a man for demonstrations myself.’
It was the largest he’d been in. He’d been in a few when at university but this was the biggest he’d been in. Thousands. Probably – twenty thousand. They could swamp the police if they wanted. Perhaps today they would. Perhaps they would carry the day.
Yelling, the crowd moved forward and he moved with it. There was no alternative. He was one with the crowd.
But he wanted to wield the crowd; he pushed when it went forward and resisted when it went back. He wanted to wield the crowd.
He couldn’t see Sylvia. It was good to be back with radicals again. He took off his watch for safe keeping. The town had been stifling him. It was good to be back with real radicals.
When the crowd pushed forward he pushed.
He found it hard to keep balance. Like being in a strong undertow. The police moved them back and then the crowd pushed forward. Indian wrestling. He saw the back of a policeman and found himself against the barriers. The police trying to force them back. ‘We Shall Not Be Moved.’
The President’s car came along. The bubble top. The perched security men. The crowd hoarse. He moved against the policemen in the swell of the crowd. The police tried to hold it. It went. Boiling. He was swept past. Twisting in the boil, freeing his arm, lunging, twisting he managed to punch the policeman in the kidney.
The policeman groaned and bent to one side and turned around shouting, ‘Who did that?’ Two other constables tried to bash their way through to him.
The policeman grabbed someone but was in pain and couldn’t hold.
The crowd swept over the barricade. All on the road.
More police horses. Linked police arms, punches and gradually the crowd was cowed and rammed back.
The car went by. It was all over. One punch, he thought, and it’s all over.
In the hotel he told Sylvia and Carl and the American Paul Jonson and others how he’d punched the policeman in the kidney.
‘I punched him right in the kidney,’ he said, hitting his fist with his hand.
‘I didn’t even see the President,’ Sylvia said tiredly.