The next day.

Interview at King Street, a warren of little offices behind a façade of iron-protected glass. Had not really noticed the place before though I’ve been past it often enough. The protected glass gave me two feelings — one of fear; the world of violence. The other, a feeling of protectiveness — the need to protect an organization that people throw stones at. I went up the narrow stairs thinking of the first feeling: how many people have joined the British CP because, in England, it is difficult to remember the realities of power, of violence; the CP represents to them the realities of naked power that are cloaked in England itself? Comrade Bill turned out to be a very young man, Jewish, spectacled, intelligent, working-class. His attitude towards me brisk and wary, his voice cool, brisk, tinged with contempt. I was interested that, at the contempt, which he was not aware he was showing, I felt in myself the beginnings of a need to apologize, almost a need to stammer. Interview very efficient; he had been told I was ready to join, and although I went to tell him I would not, I found myself accepting the situation. I felt (probably because of his attitude of contempt), well, he’s right, they’re getting on with the job, and I sit around dithering with my conscience. (Though of course, I don’t think he’s right.) Before I left, he remarked, out of the blue, ‘In five years’ time, I suppose you’ll be writing articles in the capitalist press exposing us as monsters, just like all the rest.’ He meant, of course, by ‘all the rest’ — intellectuals. Because of the myth in the Party that it’s the intellectuals who drift in and out, when the truth is the turnover is the same in all the classes and groups. I was angry. I was also, and that disarmed me, hurt. I said to him: ‘It’s lucky that I’m an old hand. If I were a raw recruit, I might be disillusioned by your attitude.’ He gave me a long, cool, shrewd look which said: Well, of course I wouldn’t have made that remark if you hadn’t been an old hand. This both pleased me — being back in the fold, so to speak, already entitled to the elaborate ironies and complicities of the initiated; and made me suddenly exhausted. I’d forgotten of course, having been out of the atmosphere so long, the tight, defensive, sarcastic atmosphere of the inner circles. But at the moments when I’ve wanted to join it’s been with a full understanding of the nature of the inner circles. All the communists I know — that is, the ones of any intelligence, have the same attitude towards ‘the centre’ — that the Party has been saddled with a group of dead bureaucrats who run it, and that the real work gets done in spite of the centre. Comrade John’s remark for instance, when I first told him I might join: ‘You’re mad. They hate and despise writers who join the Party. They only respect those who don’t.’ ‘They’ being the centre. It was a joke of course, but fairly typical. On the underground, read the evening newspaper. Attack on Soviet Union. What they said about it seemed to me true enough, but the tone — malicious, gloating, triumphant, sickened me, and I felt glad I had joined the Party. Came home to find Molly. She was out, and I spent some hours despondent, wondering why I had joined. She came in and I told her, and said: ‘The funny thing is I was going to say I wouldn’t join but I did.’ She gave her small sourish smile (and this smile is only for politics, never for anything else, there is nothing sour in her nature): ‘I joined in spite of myself too.’ She had never given any hint of this before, was always such a loyalist, that I must have looked surprised. She said: ‘Well now you’re in, I’ll tell you.’ Meaning that to an outsider the truth could not be told. ‘I’ve been around Party circles so long that …’ But even now she couldn’t say straight out ‘that I knew too much to want to join’. She smiled, or grimaced instead. ‘I began working in the Peace thing, because I believed in it. All the rest were members. One day that bitch Ellen asked me why I wasn’t a member. I was flippant about it — a mistake, she was angry. A couple of days later she told me there was a rumour I was an agent, because I wasn’t a member. I suppose she started the rumour. The funny thing is, obviously if I was an agent I’d have joined — but I was so upset, I went off and signed on the dotted line …’ She sat smoking and looking unhappy. Then said again: ‘All very odd, isn’t it?’ And went off to bed.