We all laughed, but continued with the discussion. The humorous note he used absolved him, as it were, from the necessity of a serious answer.

Afterwards I thought about it. Long ago I decided that at a political meeting the truth usually comes out in just such a speech or a remark ignored at the time because its tone is not that of the meeting. Humorous, or satirical, or even angry or bitter — yet it’s the truth, and all the long speeches and contributions are nonsense.

I’ve just read what I wrote on the 13th November last year. I am amazed at our naivety. Yet I was really inspired by a belief in the possibility of a new honest CP. I really did believe it was possible.

20th September, 1956

Have been to no more meetings. The idea in the air, so I’m told, is to start a new ‘really British CP’ as an example and an alternative to the existing CP. People are contemplating, apparently without misgivings, the existence of two rival CPs. Yet it’s obvious what would happen. The energies of both would be occupied by throwing insults at each other and denying each other’s right to be communist at all. A recipe for farce. But it’s no more stupid than the idea of ‘throwing out’ the old guard by democratic means and reforming the Party ‘from within’. Stupid. Yet I was wrapped up in it for months, like hundreds of other normally intelligent people who have been involved in politics for years. Sometimes I think the one form of experience people are incapable of learning from is the political experience.

People are reeling off from the CP in dozens, broken-hearted. The irony is that they are broken-hearted and cynical to the degree that they were loyal and innocent before. People like myself who had few illusions (we all had some illusions — mine was that anti-semitism was ‘impossible’) remain calm and ready to start again, accepting the fact that the British CP will probably slowly degenerate into a tiny little sect. The new phrase in the air is ‘re-think the socialist position’.

Today Molly rang me. Tommy is involved with the new group of young socialists. Molly said she had sat in a corner listening while they talked. She felt as if ‘she had gone back a hundred years to her own youth’ when she was first in the CP. ‘Anna, it was extraordinary! It was really so odd. Here they are, with no time for the CP, and quite right too, and no time for the Labour Party, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they weren’t right about that, there are a few hundred of them, scattered up and down Britain, yet they all talk as if Britain will be socialist in about ten years at the latest, and through their efforts of course. You know, as if they will be running the new beautiful socialist Britain that will be born on Tuesday week. I felt as if they were mad, or as if I were mad … but the point is, Anna, it’s just like us, isn’t it? Well? And even using that awful jargon we’ve been making fun of for years and years, just as if they’d just thought it all up for themselves.’ I said: ‘But surely, Molly, you’re pleased he’s become a socialist and not some sort of career-type?’ ‘But, of course. Naturally. The point is, oughtn’t they to be more intelligent than we were, Anna?’