Fall of Giants

Billy had to talk to all the bereaved families about his dead comrades: Joey Ponti, Prophet Jones, Spotty Llewellyn, and the others. He was reunited with Tommy Griffiths, whom he had last seen in Ufa, Russia. Tommy’s father, Len, the atheist, was gaunt with cancer.

Billy was going to start down the pit again on Monday, and the miners all wanted to explain to him the changes underground since he had left: new roads driven deeper into the workings, more electric lights, better safety precautions.

Tommy stood on a chair and made a speech of welcome, then Billy had to respond. “The war has changed us all,” he said. “I remember when people used to say the rich were put on this earth by God to rule over us lesser people.” That was greeted by scornful laughs. “Many men were cured of that delusion by fighting under the command of upper-class officers who should not have been put in charge of a Sunday school outing.” The other veterans nodded knowingly. “The war was won by men like us, ordinary men, uneducated but not stupid.” They agreed, saying “Aye” and “Hear, hear.”

“We’ve got the vote now-and so have our women, though not all of them yet, as my sister, Eth, will tell you quick enough.” There was a little cheer from the women at that. “This is our country, and we must take control of it, just as the Bolsheviks have taken over in Russia and the Social Democrats in Germany.” The men cheered. “We’ve got a working-class party, the Labour Party, and we’ve got the numbers to put our party in government. Lloyd George pulled a fast one at the last election, but he won’t get away with that again.”

Someone shouted: “No!”

“So here’s what I’ve come home for. Perceval Jones’s days as M.P. for Aberowen are almost over.” There was a cheer. “I want to see a Labour man representing us in the House of Commons!” Billy caught his father’s eye: Da’s face was aglow. “Thank you for your wonderful welcome.” He got down from the chair, and they clapped enthusiastically.

“Nice speech, Billy,” said Tommy Griffiths. “But who’s going to be that Labour M.P.?”

“I tell you what, Tommy boy,” said Billy. “I’ll give you three guesses.”

{IV}

The philosopher Bertrand Russell visited Russia that year and wrote a short book called The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism. In the Leckwith family it almost caused a divorce.

Russell came out strongly against the Bolsheviks. Worse, he did so from a left-wing perspective. Unlike Conservative critics, he did not argue that the Russian people had no right to depose the tsar, share out the lands of the nobility among the peasants, and run their own factories. On the contrary, he approved of all that. He attacked the Bolsheviks not for having the wrong ideals, but for having the right ideals and failing to live up to them. So his conclusions could not be dismissed out of hand as propaganda.

Bernie read it first. He had a librarian’s horror of marking books, but in this case he made an exception, defacing the pages with angry comments, underlining sentences and writing “Rubbish!” or “Invalid argument!” with a pencil in the margins.

Ethel read it while nursing the baby, now just over a year old. She was named Mildred, but they always shortened it to Millie. The older Mildred had moved to Aberowen with Billy and was already pregnant with their first child. Ethel missed her, even though she was glad to have the use of the upstairs rooms in the house. Little Millie had curly hair and, already, a flirtatious twinkle in her eye that reminded everyone of Ethel.

Ethel enjoyed the book. Russell was a witty writer. With aristocratic insouciance, he had asked for an interview with Lenin, and had spent an hour with the great man. They had spoken English. Lenin had said that Lord Northcliffe was his best propagandist: the Daily Mail’s horror stories about Russians despoiling the aristocracy might terrify the bourgeoisie but they would have the opposite effect on the British working class, he thought.

But Russell made it clear that the Bolsheviks were completely undemocratic. The dictatorship of the proletariat was a real dictatorship, he said, but the rulers were middle-class intellectuals such as Lenin and Trotsky, assisted by only such proletarians who agreed with their views. “I think this is very worrying,” said Ethel when she put the book down.

“Bertrand Russell is an aristocrat!” Bernie said angrily. “He’s the third earl!”

“That doesn’t make him wrong.” Millie stopped sucking and went to sleep. Ethel stroked her soft cheek with a fingertip. “Russell is a socialist. His complaint is that the Bolsheviks are not implementing socialism.”

“How can he say such a thing? The nobility has been crushed.”

“But so has the opposition press.”

“A temporary necessity-”

“How temporary? The Russian revolution is three years old!”

“You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.”

“He says there are arbitrary arrests and executions, and the secret police are more powerful now than they were under the tsar.”