HISTORY OF A FRONT-ORGANISATION, 1966
The Suppressed Encounter Article
No doubt I should never have joined SACU. Even in the egg the chick should have been obvious. In retrospect, the whole history is something of a farce. It is a tale, as Oliver Cromwell once observed, when he too had been deceived by virtuous professions and unctuous Welsh saints, ‘of my own simplicity and folly’.1 But perhaps it is also a moral, a cautionary tale. So why should I not tell it? It is also, I suspect, a classic tale: a standard history of a Front-Organisation.
Of course I always knew that there was a risk. Any society which aims at ‘Anglo-Chinese understanding’ is bound, in the nature of things, to contain many members whose loyalty is to a political system rather than to ‘understanding’. And of course I knew that Dr Needham, the Chairman and Founder of the Society, who first solicited my support, is himself … well, I said to myself, politically somewhat naïve. I was prepared, at that time, to be charitable: to suppose that it was mere naïveté that had caused him to expose himself so incautiously during the Korean War. But in spite of this, the risk, it seemed, was worth taking. Dr Needham is a great scholar: I venerate his work. The Fellows of a Cambridge College have since elected him as their head. My own relations with him had previously been good. Indeed, I had been fortunate enough, a few years ago, to be of some service to him. So, on the whole, I decided to take the risk. Not only had Dr Needham, in his letter of invitation, promised that SACU was a ‘new’ society, dedicated solely to the supply of ‘accurate information’ about China, undistorted by the ‘misconceptions’ and ‘misrepresentations’ of politics. Human vanity, complacency over his previous indebtedness to me, confidence that we belonged to the same academic fraternity combined to sway me. ‘This time’, I said to myself, ‘as Neville Chamberlain said of Munich, ‘he has promised to me’.2
So I accepted Dr Needham’s invitation and agreed to be a ‘sponsor’ of his society. In sponsoring it, my own mind at least was clear. I was sponsoring what Dr Needham had so exactly defined to me: a new society devoted to objective understanding of modern China. And by ‘understanding’ I meant, of course, understanding with the mind, the sympathetic but independent critical mind. Surely, I said to myself, this is a worthy purpose: to cross the frontiers of ideology, to accept the difference of social systems, to recognise that each system, theirs and ours, is legitimate within its own context, to admit objective (even objectionable) facts on both sides, but to resist those who, on account of those facts, misled by detachable circumstances or ideological prejudice, would repudiate understanding altogether, sacrificing it either to bigoted opposition or slavish adulation. This was my interpretation of ‘understanding’, and I think it is that of many honest persons who have agreed to sponsor or join the Society.
To Dr Needham, however, as I afterwards learned, the word ‘understanding’ evidently has a somewhat different meaning: a meaning which, unfortunately, he has never made quite so clear. There were other things also which he did not make clear when inviting my support. With a stringent economy of language, he omitted to mention that the Society was ‘new’ only in a somewhat refined sense of the word: that it was in fact the continuation, under another name, of the old British-China Friendship Society of which he had also been Chairman. As long as the Communist Party of Great Britain was united, this old society had been happily united under his control: but when rifts had opened between China and Russia, that society had been riven too and Dr Needham and his party had found themselves outvoted by the ‘Russian revisionists’. That, I afterwards discovered, was the real origin of Dr Needham’s ‘new’ society. No doubt Dr Needham thought that a new name and a new official address made it new, and that this old history was irrelevant. All the same, I wish that I had been allowed to decide its relevance or irrelevance for myself.
Thus I found myself a sponsor of the Society. So far, I was no more than a sponsor. But can one stop at being a sponsor? Sponsorship is a public act, and although many of my fellow-sponsors seem to take a different view, I interpret it as entailing continuous responsibility. I cannot understand the happy-go-lucky attitude of those public men who give away their names effortlessly, permanently and unconditionally. I am not, by nature, what the Americans call ‘a joiner’. I am reluctant to sign corporate letters. I like to define my own views and take personal responsibility for them. Consequently, having given my name, I was determined to watch the Society, and I was glad when Dr Needham gave me an opportunity of doing so at close quarters by inviting me to serve on its Council of Management, or governing body. I accepted this further connexion with the Society in the summer of 1965. Soon I discovered that I was to stop not even there. I was to go further.
For in September 1965, when I had just returned to my home in Scotland from a congress of historians in Vienna, the telephone rang and the Secretary of SACU, Mr Derek Bryan, asked me whether I would go, in four days’ time, to China. The invitation was rather sudden, – it was due to a sudden cancellation. The time was not very convenient for me. Still, it was an opportunity. What were the conditions? I asked. There were none, he assured me, none at all. I would go as a sponsor, with three other sponsors; but in Peking we would all be separated and taken separately to pursue our separate interests. We would be shown whatever and whoever we wished to see.3 The time would certainly not be wasted. The visa? That would present no difficulty. It would be arranged within twenty-four hours. Such speed seemed to me remarkable and required similar speed from me. I took twenty-four hours too, secured confirmation of the various promises, and then decided to go.
Two days later, I was in London and the Secretary took me to call on the Chinese chargé d’affaires in London, for tea and a little propaganda before starting on the long journey. On the way back, I asked the Secretary who was the British chargé d’affaires in Peking. He replied that he did not know, which struck me as odd, and then changed the subject. ‘You will be received on a very high level’, he assured me. ‘You will probably meet Chou En-lai’. I got the impression that the British Legation in Peking was not popular in SACU.4
At London Airport the four ‘delegates’ assembled. First of all, there was the Vice-Chairman of the Society, an elderly but vigorous lady who, it soon transpired, knew everybody in public life by their Christian names: as well she might, for it seemed that she was not only Vice-Chairman of SACU but Chairman or Vice-Chairman of fifty-seven other committees, councils, authorities: the Independent Television Authority, the Council of Industrial Design, the Consumer’s Association, the Patients’ Association, the Telephone-users’ Association, the Lavatory-users’ Association, the Joiners’ Association5 … Her views were advanced (or had been in 1920) and her energy commanded respect: she had just been to Morocco to advise the Queen of Morocco on female education6 and was fitting in her visit to China between lecturing in London on contraception and in Prague (extempore) on industrial design. Naturally, with all these interests, she occasionally became confused and sometimes seemed to mistake her audience. Her eloquent little discourse on the ‘Yellow Peril’ and her informal chat on Mongol babies, for instance, had no doubt gone down very well with the Kensington Telephone-users. They would be less well received when she gave them (extempore) to the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations.
Then there was the Trades Unionist, a man of remarkable dialectical ingenuity (provided he was assured of the last word). He represented the A.E.U., but I think it was some time since he had touched an engine. Although conscious of his fellowship with the oppressed workers of the world, and always ready to emphasise the modesty of his cash income and the narrow capacity of his ‘worker’s stomach’, I am glad to say that his material hardships now seemed over: he would tell us, with natural pride, of his expensive cameras, his Lancia car (bought from a declining peer), and other benefits conferred by a grateful Union. He was also by far the best-dressed of our party. I particularly admired his costly suits and tasteful ties, his natty suitings (especially his elegant hacking-suit with vent and sloping pockets). He too was a great traveller, at least in Eastern Europe, on fraternal visits. Thanks to these visits, he had risen above vulgar prejudice: he was, he once told us, ‘a citizen of the world’, and like the Apostle he had an enviable gift of being all things to all men, congratulating the Chinese on their liberalism in Tibet and explaining that the Berlin Wall had been built to prevent the otherwise uncontrollable influx of hungry west-Berliners into the Schlaraffenland7 of the East Zone.
Finally, there was the dramatist. He was also, like me, a substitute. Suffice it here to say that in those three ghastly weeks in China his company saved my sanity. But for it, I often reflect, I would doubtless have ended in a Peking lunatic asylum, being exhibited to the Vice-Chairman and the Trades Unionist to show the excellence of the People’s lunatic asylums; and they would have believed it.
These formed the rest of the party of Sponsors. But others had kindly accompanied us to the airport, to see us off. There was the Secretary, Mr Bryan, a former diplomatist whose skill in the diplomatic art of polite evasion I was afterwards to have many opportunities of admiring. No man more skilful at skating round a difficult point, sliding over a difference, disappearing in clouds of courteous ambiguity and leaving his hearer momentarily satisfied, ultimately none the wiser. With him was another character whose position was not explained to me. He was not a Sponsor, or a member of the Council, or an official. He was evidently a businessman, who knew China well. He was officious, helpful, suave. His name was Roland Berger.
‘I think’, said the Secretary, as we waited for our plane, ‘that you would find it useful to elect a “leader” of the delegation. Of course it is a pure formality …’ Obediently we elected the Vice-Chairman. ‘And I think’, he added, as a photographer appeared, ‘that you had better not exhibit the title of that newspaper’. Obediently, the Trades Unionist hid his copy of The Daily Worker.8 Then the formalities were over, and we were off, via Copenhagen and Moscow, to Peking.
In Copenhagen, as we waited, I was suddenly called to the telephone. It was the editor of an English Sunday newspaper, who had heard that I was going to China. Would I write something on my return? he asked. I was cautious. I was a guest, I explained: perhaps civility would inhibit me from public expression. Perhaps I would have nothing to say. So I would promise nothing, at least as yet. Ten days later, after due deliberation, I would change my mind.
I am writing about SACU, not about China, and therefore I shall not dwell upon our experiences in China. Indeed, even if it were relevant, there is no room here: my China diary – necessarily reserved for posthumous publication – fills 150 quarto pages. But some things I must say, for it was in China that my eyes were opened – not about China itself, although I contrived (I think) to see a good deal even through those prison-bars, and to hear something even through the twittered banalities of remorselessly circumscribed conversation, but about SACU.
How shall I ever forget the horror of those three weeks? From the moment of our arrival, when we were greeted with a set propaganda speech by a delegation from the People’s Association for Foreign Cultural Contacts, to the moment when, with a great sigh of relief, the dramatist and I waved goodbye to the same delegation from the window of the airliner that was to take us to Moscow, the four of us were prisoners. Prisoners of each other – for all the promises made in England were quickly forgotten; prisoners of our ‘guides’ and their interpreters, whose conversation never rose above the iterated conformity of an infant Sunday school.
It was a prison-routine too: we were never told in advance what was to happen to us. Only at night, when we were released in our hotel, were we told when to parade next morning. Only at that parade were we told how we were to spend our day. And how we spent it! Passed off from parrot-cage to parrot-cage, hearing the same endless tabloid monologue; cut off, as it seemed, for ever from the world of dialogue and sense; kept waiting whole mornings, or whole evenings, in slow filling rooms, to hear the same gramophone-record played by a larger or louder human gramophone, or to be photographed in the presence of a slab-faced Vice-chairman … Horresco referens.9 However, there were occasional escapes. I must admit that, once I had learned the system, I contrived to play truant a good deal. To that truancy I owe whatever of pleasure and information I gained during three weeks in China.
The very first night, during dinner, we had a warning dose. The war between India and Pakistan was in progress. ‘On this subject’, said our gaoler-guide, after a long preliminary expectoration, ‘I wish to say a few words’; and he said them, slowly and at great length: for he had an impediment in his speech. They were deferentially and literally translated. There were two moral concepts in the world, said our gaoler as he tossed the half-chewed detritus of his dinner on the floor around him: Right and Wrong. Pakistan was right, India was wrong. China always supported what was right. Ergo … At that time we had not yet realised our position and some of us even ventured to comment. We soon learned that commentary was not expected. It was impertinent. It was also useless. We never repeated our error.
For the next three weeks that phrase, ‘On this subject I wish to say a few words’, would strike a chill to our hearts. Together with the expectoration, it was the invariable sign that we must be silent and listen to a monologue from our gaoler. And what a gaoler! ‘Cement-Head’ we familiarly called him: it had taken 4000 years of docility in the paddy-fields to produce that abject, earth-bound, inarticulate obstinacy. But there was no escape from it, no alternative contact, no possibility of emancipation.
For of course we had not been fetched to China to ‘understand’. Our Chinese hosts – it was clear – did not for a minute suppose that we might have any independence of mind. We had been fetched, not to examine or discuss, but to offer fraternal greetings on a political anniversary. On 1st October the new Son of Heaven, ‘Chairman Mao’, was to receive the acclamation of the whole Celestial Kingdom and the tribute of those Outer Barbarians who submitted to his rule. To swell the tribute and show the extent of the rule, we too had been fetched, and while paying our respects might enjoy, at a proper level, the imperial hospitality. We were like a party of devout Irish peasants for whom the local nuncio had very decently arranged a jaunt to Rome on the occasion of some Feast of the Church. On arrival, a very low-grade capuchin had been deputed to show us a few churches, relics, processions and to exaggerate, for our benefit, a few puerile miracles. We might even, from a great distance, see the Holy Father receiving the homage of the Faithful. But of course we were not to argue, or expect to meet anyone above the rank of a sub-prior, or run loose in the Holy City. We must remember our place. Viewed from Peking, England is remote and small; the communist party of England is insignificant even there; its pro-Chinese fraction is a minority even of it; and we, its delegates, must not give ourselves airs.
I must admit that some of my colleagues were more tolerant of our fate than I was. The Vice-President seemed not to mind in what direction she was being carried, provided she was in the swim, or at least afloat; and she was happily endowed with a flow of light conversation which, being equally useful as a background continuo on any of her 57 committees, did not need adjustment even for China. The Trades Unionist basked in his sense of cosmopolitan identity with the Toiling Masses, and from the sloping pockets of his hacking-jacket extracted A.E.U. badges for all comers.10 But the Dramatist and I found the pressure, in the end, quite intolerable, and after three weeks we left our colleagues in Sian and took the train to Peking to return to England.
Arriving back in Peking, close on midnight, we were met by the usual group of officials. But with them, this time, was a familiar face from England. It was the assiduous Mr Roland Berger, who had so kindly seen us off from London and was now, with equal kindness, eager to set us off from Peking. He escorted us back to our hotel, insisted on accompanying us to our bedrooms, questioned us about our experiences. Since we were due to rise at 5.0 a.m.to catch our plane, we would have preferred to sleep, but we answered his questions. We admitted that, in some ways, our experiences had been deceptive. He seemed most concerned. This was not at all typical, he assured us; and he was profuse in bewildered sympathy. I afterwards learned that, next day, he had sent a telegram to Headquarters advising that the public meeting at which we were to describe these experiences, and which had been arranged by the Council of SACU, should be cancelled. It surprised me, at first, that a mere private member of SACU should think that the Secretary, on his advice, should overrule a decision of the Governing Body of the Society. But I soon got used to such surprises.
By the time when I left China my mind was made up on two matters. First, I had decided to write, and to write freely, on my experiences. No feelings as a guest now inhibited me. Hosts, I said to myself, have duties as well as guests. If a host organisation, prompted by considerations of its own interests, invites busy people to give up a month of their time and to travel thousands of miles, that organisation incurs obligations which are not met by merely paying the expenses of such dislocation. Therefore I would write about China, objectively I hoped, but without artificial restraint. Secondly, I had decided to look more closely into the organisation that sent me to China.
For after all, if the Chinese has treated us as an uncritical delegation of half-baked tributaries, that was not to be charged to them. They are a highly intelligent people and other visitors have had other experiences. I am not disposed to judge China by my personal contact with Cement-Head but by my wider reading, and by the intelligent conversation which I discovered, and discover, outside the mental prison-house of the People’s Association and SACU. Our treatment clearly resulted from the account of us, and of our organisation, that the Chinese received from the central office of SACU: for it was that central office which had made all the arrangements. Clearly, if the Chinese had misunderstood our position and purpose, SACU could be accused of misleading them. Or perhaps it was not the Chinese whom SACU had misled. Perhaps it was we. In any case it seemed that SACU spoke with two voices. While one voice was assuring us that it was a ‘new’ society seeking ‘accurate information’ on China, another voice was assuring the Chinese government that it was a docile instrument of official Chinese propaganda.
I duly wrote my article, which appeared in the Sunday Times of 31 October 1965. Unfortunately an improper and indeed offensive headline was put upon it.11 This was a great shock to me and I protested at once, in writing. I also informed SACU of my protests. Apart from that, I believe that the article was fair. A fellow member of the Council of SACU, and a distinguished orientalist, described it in writing as ‘an important contribution to the cause of Anglo-Chinese understanding’. However, I soon realised that, whatever its title, the masters of SACU would anyway have been enraged by it. It is enough to glance at the monthly periodical which they began to issue at this time. This periodical is called SACU News; it is characterised by abject mindless conformity, and is edited by Mrs. Roland Berger. Several correspondents, having read my article, warned me of my impending fate. ‘You have understood China only too well’, one of them wrote: ‘they will SACU’.
The first sign of such reaction occurred at the public meeting which Mr Berger had not succeeded in cancelling. This took place at Church House, Westminster, on 16 November 1965. When I arrived, fortified for the ordeal with half-a-bottle of champagne, I found my three fellow-travellers in a committee-room together with Professor Joan Robinson, the Deputy Chairman of the Society, Professor Wedderburn as chairman of the meeting, and the Secretary. Also, in an indefinable capacity, there was the ubiquitous Mr Roland Berger. The subject under discussion was the order of speaking. Most of those concerned were in favour of alphabetical order (which incidentally would have put me last), but the Trades Unionist declared that he had something to say which, by its very nature, must come last. However, as he could not explain this necessity, he made no converts. Only Mrs Robinson supported him: ‘the alphabet’, she declared magisterially, ‘is a very artificial thing’, thus implying that God or Nature had obviously intended the Trades Unionist to have the last word. My arrival gave one more vote to the majority, which was overwhelming. Seeing her cause sinking, Mrs Robinson tried the effect of surprise attack: her father had not been Director of Military Operations in World War I for nothing. ‘Well, we can’t go on arguing’, she said (for already the hall had filled up and the audience was waiting) ‘I see that the general sense of the meeting is that our Trades Union member should speak last’. I could not but admire the boldness of her attempt; but she did not quite get away with it. The voice of dissent rose again. Then, suddenly, the hitherto silent Mr Berger spoke up. But it was not now the suave Mr Berger of London Airport and Peking railway station. The old insinuating voice had changed. The persuasive, emollient oil had dried up. The mask of affability had fallen. His eyes flashed and he spoke en maître. ‘Mr Roberts must speak last!’ he rapped. At that moment I began to realise where real power in the Society lay.
The Trades Unionist did not speak last. In the end, the deadlock had to be solved by the casting of lots. The lot fell on the Dramatist. Then we filed, somewhat exhausted by this preliminary debate, into the hall.
It was a strenuous meeting. Every time my name was mentioned – and it seemed to mentioned deliberately for this purpose – boos and hisses rose from the Hall. My wife, by an unfortunate chance, had placed herself in the middle of the Opposition and found herself painfully exposed. Safe on the daïs, I was determined to be very uncontroversial. I placed before myself a warning card inscribed ‘Prudence! Prudence! Moderation! Moderation!’ I spoke briefly and, I believe, very moderately. During question-time the fatal name of Trevor-Roper continued to recur. So did the unflattering accompaniment. Finally, two minutes before closing-time, a crisis was precipitated. Someone delivered a challenge to me from the floor. I was meditating whether to accept it when the Directrix of Operations rose purposively to her feet and in the name of the whole society apologised to all China for ‘Mr Trevor-Roper’s bad manners’.12
At that moment hubbub broke loose in the hall. For the first time in the evening, I found that I had supporters. At the same time I felt the fatal symptom. The strain of moderation had been too great. The was a sudden, curious snap in the aorta, an outward rush of blood, a failing of the sight, a delicious flushing sensation of champagne circulating in the veins. I found myself on my feet. I felt the taste of words rolling out of my mouth. What words they were I do not know, but I doubt if they erred on the side of moderation. I think I told them the terms on which I would continue to sponsor the Society. Then I escaped from the noise and tumult. Only fragmentary memories survive in my mind. Two people came up to support me. They were Lord King-Hall and Mr Isaac Deutscher. I took this as a good omen, a sign of my own objectivity.13 A newspaper correspondent asked if I would resign. ‘Never resign: always wait till you’re kicked out!’ I replied summarily, quoting someone, I forget who – Disraeli perhaps, or Salisbury. Then I left.
In the Savoy Grill, dining late that night with the Dramatist, we considered the future. He decided to have nothing further to do with the Society. Its character was clear, only too clear, and he was bored with it, bored stiff. After the horrors of that Chinese visit, surely one had drunk the cup of Tedium to its dregs: why should one go on? Perhaps he was right. But my fundamental puritanism rebelled against this easy escape. Had we not accepted a public position as sponsors? Perhaps members had been drawn to the Society by our patronage of it. Could we now, having been to China as its representatives, slide quietly out? For him it was easy, and fair: he was not on the Council: there was nothing he could do. But I was on the Council. I decided that as long as I held a position of responsibility I would work to keep the Society to its proper course. Only if I should be plainly defeated would I throw in my hand and then, as I legally must, disown the Society as publicly as I had owned it.
Two days later I wrote a grave letter to Dr Needham. I explained my position. I explained the terms on which I had agreed to sponsor, and would still sponsor, his society. But I also told him my reservation, and I suggested – perhaps too charitably – that I had some fears that ‘both your and my good faith may have been abused’. Dr Needham’s reply was somewhat testy. ‘I am glad’, he wrote, ‘that you intend to remain a member of SACU; I only hope that this will not lead other people to leave it … I am satisfied that the original purpose of the movement has been well served. Nobody’s good faith has been abused in any way’.
So what next? I asked myself; and I decided that my first duty was to examine closely the body of which I was a member, a governor, and a patron. How was it financed? Where was the centre of power, of decision, of policy? While looking into these matters, I would be constant in my duties and seek to forward the original aims of the Society.
First, I looked at the finances. Five months ago, a ‘budget’ had been issued. I had not, at that time, scrutinised it. Now I did. I found it a very strange document. In the first year, I noted, a very large income was expected from sources which, as far as I could see, could not conceivably yield a penny within that period. How could a ‘Special Appeal’ yield £4250 by 30 April 1966 when even now, in November 1965, no proposal for such an appeal had yet come before the Council? How could ‘advertising in journal’ yield £1500 when there were no advertisements whatever in the journal and no proposals to include them? And what was the meaning of £400 ‘anticipated profit on October 3rd [sic; October 1st] China National Day Celebration’ when in fact October 3rd [sic] had now passed and there had been no such celebration in England? Perplexed by these entries, I wrote for enlightenment to the Hon. Treasurer elected by the Council, Sir Gordon Sutherland. Sir Gordon replied that he was no longer Treasurer. Immediately after seeing ‘that ridiculous budget’, which had been drawn up without reference to him, he had sent in his resignation. That had been on 29th June, five months ago …
I looked at the Council papers. The Council had met since 29th June – in September. But the resignation of the Treasurer had not been reported. The Council was to meet again soon, on 13th December; but the agenda, when it appeared, contained no reference to the vacancy of the Treasurership. In documents and in conversation the Secretary allowed us all to assume that Sir Gordon was still Treasurer. Meanwhile, who was in fact handling the finances: the mythical Appeal, the mythical advertisements, the mythical profits from National Day? It all seemed very odd, and I decided, at the next Council meeting, to raise the matter.
Meanwhile, what of the real centre of power? More and more, as I looked into the matter, I found that the Council of Management was used, if at all, as a mere rubber-stamp for decisions taken elsewhere and carried out by committees which seemed to have formed themselves in the dark and whose membership and proceedings were not communicated to the Council. The most important of these committees was the General Purposes Committee. One day I tackled the Secretary on the subject. Was not the General Purposes Committee subject to the Council? He agreed that it was. Then should not the minutes of its meetings be sent to the Council? He agreed that, constitutionally, they should. The minutes were then produced and one of the first thing I noticed was that the Committee had discussed a proposal for my expulsion from the Society. Constitutionally, the committee had no right even to discuss such a matter and it should, of course, have been ruled out of order by the chairman. The Chairman was my old travelling-companion, the Trades Unionist. The proposal was made by Mr Ash, the American author of Marxism and Moral Concepts.14
This experience caused me to look a little closer into the structure of the Society. First, of course, there was the Council. Its members were largely public figures. The Council, naturally, overlapped with the General Purposes Committee; but I noticed that it was mainly the leftward end of the Council which extended into the Committee. Mrs Robinson was there; so was the Trades Unionist; and so, incidentally, was the Vice-President; but then she could never be kept off any committee. But the most interesting members of the General Purposes Committee, I soon found, were those who sat in its shadows, outside the sunlit Council. It was in this darkened penumbra that the ubiquitous Mr Berger had his seat. Beside him there were Mrs Berger, Mr Ash (who had proposed my expulsion), Mr Perry, and the Society’s accountant Mr Tallon, who incidentally was married to Mr Perry’s daughter.15 Mrs Tallon herself also worked in SACU Headquarters.
The more I examined the working of SACU, the clearer it became to me that the centre of power lay not in the Council but in the General Purposes Committee, and that the real managers of SACU – those who secretly organised the finances and maintained the link with the Chinese government – were in the ‘inner ring’ of the General Purposes Committee: Mr Berger and his friends. Between the well-advertised public figures who sat on the Council but not on the Committee, and the well-concealed operators who sat on the Committee but not on the Council, there was little, if any, contact. The right hand did not know what the left hand was doing.
I decided that it was my business, as a governor, to know what I was governing, and as a sponsor to know what I was sponsoring. I therefore made discreet enquiries; and what I learned soon convinced me that the structural faults of SACU did not arise merely from the natural difficulties of an amateur organisation in its first year. I also observed that my enquiries did not seem welcome to the occupants of 24 Warren Street. The Secretary, indeed, was always courteous and diplomatic – although somehow, at the end of our conversations, I found that we had hovered around or away from the point on which I had meant to alight. But the Directrix of Operations – a lady whom, in spite of everything, I can still respect: for her opposition, if blunt and graceless, was at least open – made no concessions to the enemy, and Mr Berger, who was often to be found at a well-covered desk in G.H.Q., would give me, on these occasions, a baleful Levantine glare. However, I was not deterred. SACU, after all, was not a secret society: in seeking to understand its workings, and to keep it to its original purpose, I was only performing my duty. So, when the Council next met, on 13th December 1965, I was prepared to open up two questions: first the question of the various committees which seemed to have escaped from control, and especially the General Purposes Committee; and secondly, the finances.
We had a well-attended meeting on 13th December – the fullest Council meeting that I ever attended. I contrived to raise the question of the Treasurership, and after some evasion, it had to be admitted that for the last six months there had been no Treasurer. This was a surprise to most of those present. There were also some surprises about the finances. The provisions of the old budget, it was now admitted, were unreal. But as the expenses remained real, the question had to be faced, where was the missing £6000 coming from? With all other sources abandoned, there only remained ‘donations’. The question was, whence were these donations to come?
We agreed to touch the Sponsors. But would the sponsors fill so large a deficit? It seemed unlikely. Those who are most prompt to give their names to a cause often regard their names as gift enough. However, said the Directrix of Operations, there was another possible source. Certain friendly businessmen might well contribute – provided they were protected by anonymity: otherwise they might be blacklisted. Some of us did not like the anonymity and were not convinced by the argument. Businessmen who trade to China are well-known (I have never had any difficulty in identifying them), and mere anonymity of private donations will not conceal them. We insisted that from the Council there must be no secrecy: the governors of the Society at least must be able to know the sources of its finance.
The issue was strongly contested. Above the general murmur a high, querulous lilt could be heard: ‘I’m a democrat! I don’t like privilege!’ it was saying, and I recognised at once the unctuous tones of my old friend the Trades Unionist. ‘If 19 members of the Council are to know, I say that every member of the Society must know. Either everyone or no-one’. Of course he meant ‘no-one’, he meant only those anonymous persons who already handled the finances. Such was the meaning, to him, of ‘democracy’, freedom from ‘privilege’.
We prevailed. The details of all donations, we insisted, must be available to all members of the Council. It was objected that some donors had already received guarantees of anonymity. Such guarantees were of course invalid, since the Council had never authorised them. We insisted that the Secretary write to such donors and ask for a release.16 Then we insisted that the constitution of the Society provide for the proper definition of its committees, limitation of their powers, subordination to the Council.
It seemed a victory; but the last victory in always with those who execute, not those who decide. Between that Council Meeting and the next (which was thinly attended, for it occurred during the General Election campaign) the Secretary had contrived to re-write the constitution, omitting some of our provisions, and the new text – 21 printed foolscap pages – first appeared on the table of the meeting itself, so that no one had time to read it. When I afterwards sent for the financial books, I was shown an exercise-book into which an unknown hand had transcribed a few names and sums. Nothing before December 1965 was recorded; nothing that was recorded was authenticated. All that could be deduced, by comparing all available documents, was that in December a spring had been touched and within two months £3000 had flowed in, of which two-thirds came in the names of 21 persons.
Meanwhile SACU was founding its local branches. Energetic persons were active in Hampstead, Barnet and elsewhere;17 groups were formed, lectures and films shown, week-end courses organised. At every turn, the list of ‘sponsors’ was shown, and before so impressive a list, local authorities surrendered, facilities were granted. But who were the organisers, who supplied the basic membership? Who chose the films and the lectures? It was fairly clear that, in general, and naturally, the local activists would be the survivors of the old China Friendship Society, the already mobilised pro-Chinese fraction of the local communist party or those persons who, through support of China, had drifted into that position. Friends in the various branches kept me informed of events and I was amused to see the same pattern constantly repeating itself. As for the lectures, films and week-ends, they were pure political propaganda: Chinese films on Tibet, or on the great callisthenic display ‘in Praise of the Revolution’.18 I had actually witnessed this last display in Peking: it was there that my neighbour, the Dramatist, had turned to me and said, ‘Doesn’t it remind you of Germany in the 1930s?’ All these lectures, films and week-ends were organised, centrally, by the ubiquitous Mr Berger.
However, there was one local branch which differed from the others; and as it was by the events in this eccentric branch that my own history was determined, I shall turn, with some relief, from the conformists to the nonconformist. The non-conformist branch was that which was founded at Oxford; and it was non-conformist, basically, for one reason. Whereas other branches, inevitably, were based on the relics of a local political organisation, the Oxford branch was based on the resident Orientalists of the university.19
At first, it seems, attempts had been made to begin on a different basis. At least, my old fellow-traveller, the Trades Unionist, had paid an unpublicised visit to the university and spoken to students there. But this had led to nothing. When the branch had been founded, the Central Office had tried again, and had sent down a well-chosen pair of lecturers, with slides, to give us a start. But this also had been a failure. The lecturers were a Dutch medical couple who had spent three weeks in China and had swallowed everything. While his wife operated the projector, Dr de Haas regurgitated what he had swallowed. I could recognise the very sentences of the People’s Association as they came up, crude, undigested gobbets from his too receptive stomach. His message was, in his own words, that ‘China is Heaven, the rest of Asia is Hell’. After that we decided that we could do better ourselves, whereupon the Secretary at Headquarters decided that we were unsound and must be watched. I noticed him watching in person one evening, sitting secretly at the back of the hall in which I was speaking.
But the event which precipitated the crisis was the proposed Oxford week-end school. Our Oxford chairman had taken great trouble to organise this school, and to procure well-qualified speakers for it; but when the details were reported to headquarters so that they might be announced in SACU News, the reaction was imperious. The arrangements, we were told, were not satisfactory. Our subjects were unsuitable, our speakers too highly educated, and we would do better to accept speakers and subjects from headquarters. Why had two Fellows of St. Antony’s College been invited to speak?20 Why were Russo-Chinese relations to be discussed? Why had we not chosen speakers who had been to China? (In fact, eight out of the nine had been to China) … The writer of this authoritative letter was Mr Roland Berger.
Naturally when Mr Berger’s letter was read in the Oxford Committee, on 25 April, there was an outcry. Who was Mr Berger? Was he a member of the Council? He was not. Then what was his position? And what was the authority of the Council? As a member of the Council it was clearly my duty to reply; and so, as question followed question, I gave the answers. Some members found them dismaying. What, they asked, was one to do? ‘That depends,’ I answered, ‘on your position in the Society. I have a particular position. I am a Sponsor. My sponsorship has been public. If the Society betrays its promises, I cannot slip out privately. I must disown it as publicly as I owned it. But that would be an extreme act. Before contemplating such an act, one must make an effort to correct the Society, to bring it back to its original avowed purpose. For that reason I shall stand for re-election to the Council at the Annual General Meeting next month, on 21st May’.
Of course, knowing my SACU, I took it for granted that there would be a spy in our midst, so I was not surprised to learn, soon afterwards, that on the very next day one Mr Nicholas Bateson21 had given a full and highly coloured oral report to his Masters.22 I felt sure also that, even without such a report, those Masters would already have settled to get rid of me, if they could, when the elections took place: for naturally I had expressed my views to them too. And I did not doubt that, from their central position, they could achieve this result: 21 May, the date of the Annual General Meeting, was a Saturday, and whereas the Faithful of Hampstead and Barnet might be persuaded to spend a summer Saturday afternoon in London, more rural members, I thought, would not. However, no battle is lost until it has been fought, and in spite of these discouragements I decided to fight. So did my friends, whose genially and freely given support greatly encouraged me. Then, on 15 May, only six days before the election, Fate intervened. A well-informed article about the Society appeared in the Sunday Times.23
I confess that, when I saw the article, I had misgivings. It would, I thought, alarm the Bonzen24 and cause them to call up their reserves: and their reserves were more accessible, and perhaps more disciplined, than mine. Nor did the article take me completely by surprise: the author had telephoned me (among others) before and had told me some of the facts which he had discovered. Whatever my reservations, it was no part of my business either to persuade or dissuade an enterprising journalist who had made interesting discoveries, and I had contented myself with referring him to the Secretary. What the Secretary had told him, I do not know. What I do know – for all has since been leaked or dragged into light – is the reaction of the Bonzen. Without seeking for evidence or confirmation, either of Mr Bateson’s letter or of their own fancies, or stopping for self-criticism as prescribed by Chairman Mao, they decided that I had written the article – or at least they decided to fix it on me and thereby force me off the Council.
Their first plan was evidently to denounce me at the Annual General Meeting. For this purpose they asked Mr Bateson to send in a written account of my Oxford statements, reiterating his previous oral report, suggesting that I had written the article in the Sunday Times, and giving them explicit authority to use his letter in public. Mr Bateson complied with zeal.25 Indeed he excelled himself; for when the letter was afterwards revealed (much against his will),26 every other member of the Oxford Committee independently declared it a gross falsification or distortion of the facts. The letter ended by stating that there was no point in ‘appeasing Mr Trevor-Roper’: the only safety lay in his expulsion. At the same time the Secretary approached an old friend of his on the Oxford committee27 and asked her for a similar letter ‘to be read at the Annual General Meeting’. She however refused. As she afterwards explained, she did not think ‘for a moment’ that the statements which she was asked to make were true. The Bonzen were thus left with Mr Bateson’s letter, which, in the end, they decided not to use. Perhaps it was too extreme. Perhaps they thought that I might attend the meeting (as I did) and might refute the document (as I certainly would have done). So foolish a letter might prove a boomerang, and rather than risk disaster, the Bonzen decided to adopt a subtler and more devious method of assassination.
The article in the Sunday Times had suggested that the Council, as the result of the elections, would now move to the Left. The Bonzen decided to prevent any public appearance of such a move. For this purpose, certain steps had to be taken. The faithful must be urged to vote for two Opposition MPs (Dame Joan Vickers and Jeremy Thorpe) whose names inspired confidence but who, inevitably, had been unable to give attention to the Council’s business. At the same time the well-known communist Mr Reg Birch,28 for whom the entire Barnet branch had been urged to vote (I possess the leaflet) was prevailed upon to stand down. This would give the necessary ‘moderate’ look to the elections. That done, Trevor-Roper could be isolated and detached, and who would notice the real, positive result of the election: the quiet election to the Council of such relatively unknown figures as Mr William Ash and Mr Roland Berger.
But how was Trevor-Roper to be isolated? The chosen method was simple; it was to be by secret denunciation. On 19 May the Chairman (Dr Needham), the Deputy Chairman (the Directrix), and the Vice-Chairman (who could not be left off even this little committee) signed and sent out a hastily stencilled letter in all directions but one.29 It informed the recipients that the article in the Sunday Times could be presumed to be by me, deplored ‘this introduction of McCarthyism into the Society’s affairs’, and urged the recipients not to extend their just detestation of me to the useful Opposition MPs who were also candidates for re-election to the Council. How many copies of this letter were sent out, I do not know. All that I know is that it was sent out in haste, in order to influence the election: as the Directrix afterwards wrote, it was essential to get it out ‘before Saturday’. But at the same time it was apparently necessary that I should not know about it until after Saturday, and my own copy was therefore skilfully held up, so that I only received it on my return to Oxford from the annual general meeting. Thus although I spent the whole of that day, Saturday 21 May, in the company of the three signatories – in the morning at a Council meeting, in the afternoon at the Annual General Meeting – not one of these three colleagues even hinted that they had issued a defamatory document behind my back.
Such was the plan of the Bonzen of SACU. It succeeded – at least in the short run. At the Annual General Meeting the myth of a ‘broad base’ (or at least a broad face) was carefully preserved. In speeches from the Throne, the Deputy-Chairman carefully emphasised the importance of re-electing the Opposition members of parliament, and the Trades Unionist no less carefully deplored the views of ‘Professor So-an-So’. I think they must have been surprised when I was found to have secured 63 votes – only three too few for re-election. But I know pretty well whence all those votes came. They were not the votes of the Faithful but of the independent spirits who had joined the Society for the election only, or had travelled from Oxford or elsewhere on a summer Saturday afternoon in the vain hope of bringing SACU back to its avowed purpose.30 I must also admit that the margin was, in strict honesty, by one vote too favourable to me. This does not in the least reduce my sense of gratitude to the enterprising lady who, being well trained in the politics of Northern Ireland, and finding a spare voting-paper on the floor, showed her zeal in the cause by voting for me twice.31
I must admit that I enjoyed the Annual General Meeting. I enjoyed it as part of the comédie humaine. I enjoyed the unpredictable episodes – the Trotskyite leaflets which were thrust into my hands denouncing impartially the unholy trinity of Needham, Bryan and Trevor-Roper. I also enjoyed the predictable episodes: the impotence of the Chair in that tumultuary gathering; the high canting voice of the Trades Unionist, dripping with double-think; the dry, military bark of the Directrix. ‘And who is that?’ asked a young friend from Scotland who had turned up to vote,32 looking towards the back of the hall where a confident, vigilant figure stood, erect against the wall, and through the disorderly files darted his experienced eye. It was of course Major-General Roland Berger.
When I got back to Oxford that night, I found a copy of the circular letter in which Dr Needham and his two lady friends had denounced me as a McCarthyite.33 At first I was amazed by such an action. I wrote at once to all three, pointing out that their facts were untrue and their statements defamatory; and I asked to whom the circular had been sent. After six days, having received no explanation, apology or information from any of them, I decided that from now on all relations and obligations between me and the three signatories were broken. They had sinned against the most elementary rules of human behaviour. They could expect no mercy, and I, for my part, could no longer be a member of a society of which they were the principal officers. I therefore used my right of reply and sent to the Sponsors of SACU a documented statement of my reasons for dissatisfaction with the Society. At the same time I sent a formal letter of resignation to Dr Needham. Like so many other letters on serious matters, it has remained, to this day, unacknowledged.
My resignation from SACU did not pass without some repercussions. The Bonzen found themselves, for a time, on the defensive. In order to justify themselves, they were reduced to reading out, to the new Council, the denunciatory letter sent by Mr Bateson. But this did them no good, for the two Oxford representatives,34 who alone knew the facts, were able to state that Mr Bateson’s letter was a gross travesty, and the three signatories were ordered by the Council to send a letter of apology to me. This they have never done, and the Secretary, by judicious misrecording the order in the minutes, has sought to save them from that embarrassment. In an attempt to shore up the blasted credit of Mr Bateson, the Secretary also tried to persuade his old friend on the Oxford committee to write, or to say that she had written, an ‘independent’ letter confirming his allegation. But once again, as she writes, ‘I naturally refused’. This refusal did not stop the Secretary from writing an official document stating that she had sent precisely such a letter.
So much for the history of my relations with SACU. From now on, I have no interest in it. I regard it with contempt: a squalid, dishonest society which thrives by public fraud and private denunciation. But the larger question remains. How far can such organisations do good or harm? What function do they perform, good or bad, in the cause in which I, for one, still believe: Anglo-Chinese understanding? In order to consider this question, it is necessary to look at SACU as an organisation: to see the structure, the function, the real purpose of the society which so many people have innocently, and from the best motives, joined, supported and served.
The basic fact about SACU is that, like all front-organisations, it has a double structure. There is a public front – the list of Sponsors, the Council – and a private core: Mr Berger, Mr Bryan, and their friends. It is a private core which alone knows the facts, alone controls the machine. This is apparent to any mere councillor who attempts to penetrate the arcana imperii.35 A straight question is put: at once the secret alarm-bells ring, the defensive smoke-clouds are discharged. It is just like China itself. In China, whenever we asked an innocent question, we could sense the immediate reaction. ‘What is he after?’ they seemed to be saying: ‘how can we evade the question? What is the minimum we can say without committing ourselves to anything?’ When the Dramatist and I arrived in Amsterdam on our way home, and received, from an airport official, a straight answer to a straight question about flight-schedules, we felt that we were in another world. For the last month we had known nothing like this: we had almost forgotten that straight answers existed. Since then, I have often felt the same emotion on emerging from 24 Warren Street.
And what are the arcana imperii of SACU? Basically they are two: finance and contact with the Chinese government. It is perfectly clear that contact between SACU and the Chinese government is close: SACU can obtain a visa by return of post. But no ordinary member of the Council knows how this contact is maintained. No documents are ever shown, no facts ever stated, no questions fairly answered. Equally, no ordinary member of the Council – not even the Treasurer – knows how the £6000 worth of donations is raised, what letters are written, in what terms, to whom; who responds, and why. The Council may demand information, but none is given. Elaborate delaying actions are fought; half-revealed truths are quickly covered up; time, oblivion, bureaucratic muddle are called in to help. In the end, the questioner wearies or allows himself to be fobbed off with general assurances, and the particular details remain a close secret in unidentified hands.
Whose hands? For myself, I have no doubt. SACU is controlled – inevitably – by whoever raises the £6000 p.a. which saves it from bankruptcy. Theoretically this £6000 comes in by voluntary donations; but even voluntary donations do not flow in spontaneously. They have to be solicited, and not everyone can solicit them. In this case it requires no great acumen to discover the immediate source: Dr Needham himself, under pressure, has revealed it. The Society, he has said, is supported by ‘donations from business firms who are eager to make a thank-offering for trade with China’. This answer naturally provokes another question: why should such a thank-offering take the form of donations to SACU? Once again, the answer suggests itself. The thank-offering is not made to SACU or to the Council of SACU – that mere list of names from Who’s Who: it is made to a far more important figure: Mr Roland Berger.
The secret of Mr Berger’s power is that he is the executive director of a private organisation: the British Council for the Promotion of International Trade. Through this organisation, small British exporting firms find their way to the rich Chinese market, and they find it the more readily because Mr Berger, though (alas) unpopular with successive British governments, holds views which endear him to the Chinese government. Naturally his business friends are grateful for his help and will show their gratitude in concrete form. In making ‘donations’ to SACU they are not necessarily supporting the declared aims of the Council of Management: they are gratifying Mr Berger. Inevitably this gives Mr Berger great authority in the Society. Whatever the Sponsors, the Council, the Annual General Meeting may think or decide, it is he who, secretly, pays the piper and therefore he who, secretly, calls the tune.
What tune does he call? For answer, we only have to look at the instructions which he sends out, the Chinese films which he shows, the lecturers whom he chooses, the week-ends which he organises. One only has to look at Mrs Berger’s poor broadsheet, SACU News: that distant echo of the rasping mendacities of Peking Daily News36 and the Hsinhua News Agency,37 softened and trivialised for English ears. In Mr Berger’s hands, SACU is an organ of Chinese propaganda in England. No wonder the Chinese government is delighted with it and opens its carefully controlled market to his friends.
What good does this do to Anglo-Chinese understanding? In my opinion it does none: it only does harm. And since I believe Anglo-Chinese cultural relations should and could be improved, on a basis of mutual respect, I end by explaining why I believe that the destruction of SACU, as at present organised, is a necessary stage in such improvement.
When two societies are as different as our own and Chinese, ‘understanding’ can be based either on independence or on servility; but when one of these societies is apprehensive and aggressive, it will always prefer to deal with a servile fifth-column rather than with an independent body. The Russians, whose revolution has been matured by time and events, how recognise that good relations, in cultural matters, are better achieved by independence and mutual respect. But the Chinese have not yet reached that stage of development. Their society is Stalinist at home, Leninist abroad. Real achievements are masked not only by foreign misrepresentation, but also by a gross cult of personality in China and by shrill, blundering, self-defeating intervention in the rest of the world. In these circumstances, so long as there is an uncritical organisation, like SACU, the Chinese government will prefer to invest in it. And the more they invest in it, the more it will acquire a monopoly of interpretation, and the more difficult it will be to place Anglo-Chinese understanding on a proper basis.
A good instance of this process is the matter of visas. Every serious student of China naturally wishes to visit the country. But visas are not granted easily. Indeed, the more serious the student, the more likely the refusal. SACU, on the other hand, seems to have no difficulty of this kind. Therefore it is natural for orientalists to join SACU, not in order to learn about China but in order to get there. Unfortunately, once in SACU, such members will soon discover the price they must pay. Any independence of mind will put them, and may well put their visa, at the mercy of that private denunciation which seems an essential part of communist social life. Thus the result of their action will have been merely to build up an organisation which makes access to China dependent upon political subservience and thereby to reduce the chance of any rival organisation which may aim at understanding on the basis of mutual respect.
For this reason – because I believe in real understanding of and with China – I now believe that it is essential for such an alternative body to be set up, and for those persons who, like myself, trusting the promises of Dr Needham, originally gave their support to SACU, to withdraw that support and give it to some other body: a body which does not rely upon secret funds, dishonest methods and private denunciation.
1 Cromwell described as ‘a story of my own weakness and folly’ the summoning in 1653 of the assembly of eager Puritans derisively known as Barebones’ Parliament, in which Welsh zealots were conspicuous.
2 ‘Of course, I knew from the start that I must walk warily. I knew my Needham. But I am afraid I did think, vainly, like Chamberlain at Munich, that “this time he has promised to me.” For not only had I good personal relations with Needham, but I had, a few years ago, raised no less than a thousand pounds for him in order to sustain Science and Civilisation in China. So I thought he would hardly try openly to cheat me, and that I could rely on his assurances’ (T-R to Geoffrey Hudson, 31 May 1966).
3 Bryan told T-R that he would meet two veteran Marxist historians, Hou Wai-lu and Chien Po-tsan [Jian Bozan] (1898–1968). Chien had studied at the University of California in the 1920s. He was chairman of the department of history at Peking University from 1954, and the university’s deputy president from 1962. While accepting that historians must interpret their material according to Marxist-Leninist methodology, he criticized the dogmatic categorizations of Marxist historiography. He might have interested T-R, even if their exchanges were sanitized by official translators; but they were kept from meeting, despite Bryan’s promise. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Chien was so venomously persecuted that he and his wife killed themselves.
4 Members of the British legation, like the rest of the diplomatic corps in Peking, were forbidden to venture more than 30 kilometres beyond the city without a special permit. Reciprocal restrictions were imposed on the Chinese Minister and his staff in London. This was a less onerous confinement, as Chinese diplomatists seemed ‘indifferent to the British scene outside the Legation in Portland Place, apart from regular Sunday visits to Margate to sit on the sands in summer’ (Gelder, Memories for a Chinese Grand-daughter, p. 210).
5 Adams was chairman of the Telephone Users Association, deputy chairman of the Consumers’ Association, and an activist in the National Council for the Unmarried Mother and her Child, the Women’s Group on Public Welfare and (as the author of a book on heredity) the Galton Foundation.
6 Adams had probably met Princess Lalla Aicha (1931–2011), president of the Union Nationale des Femmes Marocaines, sister of the ruling King Hassan II of Morocco, and her brother’s ambassador in London, 1965–69.
7 German: the land of Cockaigne.
8 The Daily Worker was founded by the CPGB in 1930, and renamed Morning Star in 1966.
9 Latin: I shudder to relate.
10 ‘I know old double-think Ernie well, having had three weeks of him in China,’ T-R wrote to Kurti, 25 December 1965. ‘I regard him as a sinister, crooked, narrow-minded, sanctimonious, hypocritical petty politician. He has no interest in China at all: only in harnessing all communist and fellow-travelling votes in the AEU & in the Trade Unions to his own little bandwagon’ (Kurti papers H936).
11 Roberts tried to make quick amends for the Sunday Times article ‘The Sick Mind of China’. On 8 November he wrote to the General Secretary of the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries: ‘The opportunity to see for myself the very great problems that you inherited from past destruction by imperial powers, by the centuries of neglect from your own feudal lords and capitalists and other reactionary elements in your country prior to 1949 was greatly appreciated. There is ample evidence of the better, more secure and happier life of the people of China. They are now both well-fed and well-clothed. The problem of education, housing, health and cultural development is being tackled by your Government in a most energetic and successful way.’ Countering T-R’s complaints, he declared: ‘every opportunity was given to me to visit any place that I was interested in. Information I asked for was made readily available by the guides and interpreters that you so kindly arranged for me to have’ (Roberts papers; cf. Roberts, Strike Back, p. 180).
12 One of the questioners who spoke against ‘The Sick Mind of China’ was Jack Perry’s son Graham. T-R’s myopia probably prevented him from recognizing the Cambridge undergraduate whom he had recently met and liked in Peking. Graham Perry no longer remembers the substance of his remarks: conceivably he delivered the challenge that brought Joan Robinson into action.
13 ‘I was pleased at the end when two men came up and congratulated me. One was the rogue Communist Isaac Deutscher, the other the rogue Conservative Commander Stephen King-Hall. Swamped by the orthodox, I like to be in the company of rogues’ (T-R, ‘Myth of Chinese Utopia’, Independent, 3 June 1989).
14 Ash wrote that he learnt the theoretical application of Marxism to morality from George Thomson, and the practical application of Marxist morality to working-class conditions from Reg Birch.
15 David Tallon (b. 1940), then an accountant at Deloitte’s, had married Jack Perry’s daughter Jillian in 1964. He was far from Maoist sympathies, and as respectable as his father Claude Tallon, who served on the Corporation of London’s Court of Common Council, and as chairman of the Gresham Club in Abchurch Lane. David Tallon was senior editor of Inland Revenue Practices and Concessions (1984), and became senior partner of an accountancy firm specializing in private client tax planning.
16 ‘The insistence that a record of donations should be maintained seems to have restricted SACU’s fund-raising activities’ (Thistlethwaite to T-R, 25 March 1966).
17 Valerie Pearl, who reported on the Barnet branch to T-R, thought that Berger and Ash were even ‘bigger crooks’ than Bryan. ‘The more I see of our local branch the more I feel it resembles the American Communist party, in consisting of no-one but agents and counter-agents!’ she wrote on 18 May 1966. ‘As for the rest of SACU, I have never met an organisation with so many committees and so little democracy. The rank and file is never consulted at any level’ (Dacre 13/3).
18 At the second National Games held at Peking in September 1965, the mass callisthenics was called ‘A Song in Praise of the Revolution’, and included such songs as ‘Tightly grip the gun in your hand’.
19 Its members included the quantum chemist Charles Coulson, Fellow of Wadham, then Rouse Ball Professor of Applied Mathematics at Oxford and Chairman of Oxfam; Sir Noel Hall, previously Director of the Administrative Staff College at Henley, the earliest business school in England, and currently Principal of Brasenose; the Nobel laureate Dorothy Hodgkin; Sir Harold Thompson, Fellow of St John’s, Professor of Chemistry and later Chairman of the Football Association.
20 These were Geoffrey Hudson (1903–1974) and Evan Luard (1926–1991). Hudson won the Davis exhibition in Chinese in 1923 while an undergraduate working towards a first in Greats. He was a fellow of All Souls, 1926–54, and thereafter of St Antony’s, where he directed the Far East Centre. His first book was Europe and China: a survey of their relations in history before 1800 (1931). Hudson was wartime head of the Far Eastern section of the Foreign Office’s research department. After the war he was a luminary of the China Quarterly, and contributed articles on Sino-Soviet relations to Foreign Affairs (1957–60). Luard was a former diplomat in Peking, author of Britain and China (1962) and Labour MP for Oxford 1966–70 and 1974–79.
21 Nicholas Bateson (b. 1935) was son of F. W. Bateson, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, former agricultural correspondent of the New Statesman, and author of the Fabian Society study Towards a Socialist Agriculture. He was an undergraduate at St Catherine’s College, Oxford until 1958, and then a graduate student at the University of North Carolina until his support of Castro in Cuba led to the cancelling of his stipend. See Introduction, pp. 44–6, for his revolutionary activism at LSE. Later he became a civil servant.
22 Correspondingly, on 27 April, the Security Service received ‘a fascinating report’ of the meeting from a source who had attended (Dacre papers 13/3, Thistlethwaite to T-R, 28 April 1966). Bateson telephoned Needham in Cambridge on 26 April, and at Needham’s suggestion sent a written report to Bryan: SOAS, Bryan papers 99/1/5/4, Bateson to Bryan, 28 April 1966.
23 The article entitled ‘Battle to Control China Society’ was by John Barry, who had read PPE at the Queen’s College, Oxford. He stated that ‘a powerful group in SACU is trying to run it wholly as a pro-Communist organisation’, and that their machinations were based on ‘standard Communist-style committeeship’. Barry was a persistent and ingenious ferreter of secrets. As a pillar of the Sunday Times ‘Insight’ Team, he was threatened with prosecution by Lord Chief Justice Widgery if the findings of journalistic research into Parachute Regiment misconduct at the time of the Londonderry shootings were published in 1972. He went to Washington DC as National Security of Newsweek in 1985.
24 German: bigwigs.
25 SOAS, Bryan papers 99/1/5/4, Bateson to Needham, 18 May 1966.
26 Bateson was forced to read aloud his letter at an Oxford branch meeting at the insistence of Kurt Mendelssohn (1906–1980), Reader in Physics at Oxford from 1955.
27 Margaret (‘Peggy’) Garland (1903–1998). She and her physician husband were ‘proselytising Reds’ until they left the CPGB in 1947. Thereafter, so her cousin Patrick White, the Nobel prize-winning Australian novelist, recalled, ‘Peggy switched from this to that: from Marx to Mao, to the I Ching, even British Liberalism.’ Her interest in Anglo-Chinese understanding ensued from her visit to the PRC for a peace conference in 1952. ‘The conference itself was very well-arranged and ran on the principle that only unanimous agreement was good enough,’ Garland recorded. ‘If a delegate disagreed with a proposal or even one word of a resolution, the Conference was held up until either the delegate or the entire Conference changed its mind.’ She did not mind this coercion. ‘There was absolutely nothing that any human being with the slightest feelings of goodwill towards his fellow man would not have agreed with.’
28 Reg Birch (1914–1994) was associated with Ernie Roberts as a divisional organizer of the AEU. He had been elected to the CPGB national executive in 1956, but was expelled some ten years later as punishment for his preference for Albania and China over the Soviet Union. After meeting Bill Ash at the Chinese Legation, they founded the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) in 1968. Birch was the only Maoist ever to serve on the general council of the Trades Union Congress, 1975–79. He was a wily fomenter of strikes which he intended as sabotage of capitalism. He disliked democracy, saying that the use of ballot-boxes made workers lazy. In order to avoid being understood by his enemies, he was deliberately incomprehensible and incoherent.
29 CC, Dacre 13/3, Joseph Needham, Joan Robinson and Mary Adams to Sponsors of SACU, 19 May 1966.
30 In gratitude for a hilarious 26-page letter from T-R describing the SACU meeting of 16 November, Sheridan Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 5th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava (1938–1988), art dealer and gallery trustee, brought fifteen friends whom he had induced to join SACU in support of T-R. These included the Evening Standard journalist Maureen Cleave (b. 1941), whom John Lennon had recently told in an interview that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. In addition, Valerie Pearl assembled a voting party of ten. The Oxford contingent included Conrad Asquith (b. 1945), then a Christ Church undergraduate, subsequently a television and film actor.
31 Serena (‘Lindy’) Guinness, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (b. 1941), artist and chatelaine of Clandeboye.
32 John Baillie-Hamilton, Lord Binning, afterwards 13th Earl of Haddington (1941–2016), Patron of the Centre for Crop Circle Studies, student of the paranormal and editor-publisher of a periodical, Bird Table, dedicated to preserving small songbirds from cats.
33 ‘I suspect that Robinson’s was the master hand: the rough, rude, graceless manner is hers; but Needham is the chairman and has signed’ (T-R to Kurti, 26 May 1966).
34 Dawson and Kurti.
35 Latin: state secrets, literally secrets of the empire.
36 This had been founded in 1909 as an English-language newspaper under American inspiration. T-R may have meant the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published in Peking since 1949, and with numerous foreign language editions.
37 The Red China News Agency had been founded by the communists in 1931, but in 1937 changed its name to the Hsinhua [Xinhua] News Agency, or New China News Agency.