She says: ‘The lady who came last week left a book.’ (A pamphlet.) Finally she says: ‘But we’ve always voted Labour, dear.’ I mark the card Labour, crossing out the ‘doubtful’, and go on. The next, a Cypriot. This house even poorer, a young man looking harassed, a pretty dark girl, a new baby. Scarcely any furniture. New in England. It emerges that the point they are ‘doubtful’ about is whether they are entitled to the vote at all. I explain that they are. Both very good-natured, but wanting me to leave, the baby is crying, an atmosphere of pressure and harassment. The man says he doesn’t mind the communists but he doesn’t like the Russians. My feeling is they won’t trouble to vote, but I leave the card ‘doubtful’ and go on to the next. A well-kept house, with a crowd of teddy-boys outside. Wolf-whistles and friendly jibes as I arrive. I disturb the housewife, who is pregnant and has been lying down. Before letting me in, she complains to her son that he said he was going to the shops for her. He says he will go later: a nice-looking, tough, well-dressed boy of sixteen or so — all the children in the area well-dressed, even when their parents are not. ‘What do you want?’ she says to me. ‘I’m from the CP’ — and explain. She says: ‘Yes, we’ve had you before.’ Polite, but indifferent. After a discussion during which it’s hard to get her to agree or disagree with anything, she says her husband has always voted Labour, and she does what her husband says. As I leave she shouts at her son, but he drifts off with a group of his friends, grinning. She yells at him. But this scene has a feeling of good-nature about it: she doesn’t really expect him to go shopping for her, but shouts at him on principle, while he expects her to shout at him, and doesn’t really mind. At the next house, the woman at once and eagerly offers a cup of tea, says she likes elections, ‘people keep dropping in for a bit of a talk.’ In short, she’s lonely. She talks on and on about her personal problems on a dragging, listless harassed note. (Of the houses I visited this was the one which seemed to me to contain the real trouble, real misery.) She said she had three small children, was bored, wanted to go back to work, her husband wouldn’t let her. She talked and talked and talked, obsessively, I was there nearly three hours, couldn’t leave. When I finally asked her if she was voting for the CP, she said: ‘Yes, if you like, dear’ — which I’m sure she had said to all the canvassers. She added that her husband always voted Labour. I changed the ‘doubtful’ to Labour, and went on. At about ten that night I went back, with all the cards but three changed to Labour, and handed them in to Comrade Bill. I said: ‘We have some pretty optimistic canvassers.’ He flicked the cards over, without comment, replaced them in their boxes, and remarked loudly for the benefit of other canvassers coming in: ‘There’s real support for our policy, we’ll get our candidate in yet.’ I canvassed three afternoons in all, the other two not ‘doubtfuls’ but going into houses for the first time. Found two CP voters, both Party members, the rest all Labour. Five lonely women going mad quietly by themselves, in spite of husband and children or rather because of them. The quality they all had: self-doubt. A guilt because they were not happy. The phrase they all used: ‘There must be something wrong with me.’ Back in the campaign HQ I mentioned these women to the woman in charge for the afternoon. She said: ‘Yes, wherever I go canvassing, I get the heeby-jeebies. This country’s full of women going mad all by themselves.’ A pause, then she added, with a slight aggressiveness, the other side of the self-doubt, the guilt shown by the women I’d talked to: ‘Well, I used to be the same until I joined the Party and got myself a purpose in life.’ I’ve been thinking about this — the truth is, these women interest me much more than the election campaign. Election Day: Labour in, reduced majority. Communist Candidate loses deposit. Joke. (In campaign HQ Maker of joke, Comrade Bill.) ‘If we’d got another two thousand votes, the Labour majority would have been on a knife-edge. Every cloud has a silver lining.’