Charles Snow - Last Things

He had no irony, such as Charles in private couldn’t suppress. Irony would have been a crippling disqualification for Olly’s kind of leadership, and probably for any other. When he heard a battalion of his followers, mobilised and drilled according to plan, chanting Dinshaw-out (Dinshaw was the principal of the college), Johnson-out, Wilson-out, Brezhnev-out, any other disyllable-out, Olly was at one with them, all he wanted was to join in. Charles and others like him might have forced themselves to join in, but they would have felt the discomfort of simultaneously watching performing animals and being performing animals themselves.

In a similar manner, Olly didn’t suffer from intellectual reserves. Quite sensibly, he believed that student protests could, before too long, exact their own demands from universities. Equally sensibly, he believed that student protests would end where they began, unless they were supported by, and finally submerged in, the working class. The working class, with students acting as catalysts, was the only force which could break the old order – as an article of faith, Olly believed that that would happen. Gordon Bestwick argued that it was intellectually untenable. Gordon, still living among the English working class, didn’t dramatise them. Olly, more prosperous, did. His faith was untouched. Once the working class took over, he was willing not to lead anything or anyone again.

That Christmas, Olly and his London lieutenants met a number of times at Chester Row. They weren’t trying to hasten the revolt – the current word was blast-off – at the college. That wasn’t necessary, it was coming anyway, they judged it good tactics to let it start, as it were, out of the ruck, with no leaders at all. What they wanted was to be ready with plans and take control just before the countdown.

It was the kind of preparation and patient waiting which would have been familiar enough to any politician, public or private. Their planning of the phases of the revolt, so it appeared in the event, was excellent. Here Gordon, Charles and others who were let into their confidence had nothing to give. They were beginners, and Olly’s staff were experienced professionals. Some of them were first-class organisers. It was a mistake to think that young men in their early twenties (most of the London group were round Muriel’s age) had much to learn about organisation. That didn’t require experience, but energy and some clear minds. These did their job as briskly and unfussily as Hector Rose in middle age might have done it. Where they could still have learned something from Hector Rose was, not in primary organisation, but in foreseeing consequences.

Under the cover of those plans, which the Cambridge cell imbibed lessons from, they were also devising one of their own. It was not clear (or at least I never knew) who had the first conception, but Gordon and Charles passed it on to Olly, and Muriel used persuasion on him too. Not that he made difficulties about others’ ideas; he was ready to give these bright outsiders a run: that showed one of his strengths. All the evidence suggested that he was quick and active in getting their plan worked out. He thought it valuable enough to call it top secret (they had adopted many of the official forms). A number of followers had to receive logistic instructions, but the only persons Olly informed about the inner purpose were his numbers two and three.

The plan was, in essence, quite simple. The revolt, when under full control, was designed to occupy the main block of college buildings. Food, drink, bedding, new style chemical closets, even books, were already being stored in a warehouse close by, enough for a stay of one month. As a result of American experience, the principal’s office and the administrative floors were to be seized also, in the first hour – which was pencilled in as 4.30 a.m. (shortly before dawn on a summer morning). All that would have been arranged, in precisely the same fashion, without a minute’s change in timetable, if the Cambridge cell had not existed. The only addition that they and their sub-plan had brought about seemed innocuous enough. It was that there should be a side foray, needing perhaps a dozen men, to take possession of two offices in the biochemistry department.

That was not so innocuous as it seemed. Almost everyone concerned with secrets, particularly military secrets, lived under the illusion that they are better kept than ever happened. We had learned that in the war. Heads of State rested happily in the conviction that their own ministers were totally ignorant of the manufacture of nuclear bombs. They probably were: but there were thousands, including humble and entirely unexpected people, who weren’t.

Through an identical process, which was set going by words slipping out, occasionally in fits of conscience, but more often because of self-importance or even the sheer excitement and ebullience of living, friends of Gordon and Charles had picked up what to officials would have been a horrifying amount of knowledge about government work on biological warfare. Second-year science students such as Guy Grenfell could make a fairly sharp guess about the operations at the Microbiological Research Establishment at Porton: they could have written out a list of the viruses which were being cultivated, and the diseases which were available as weapons of war.

Further, they wouldn’t have had to guess, they knew, which pieces of the work had been subcontracted to university departments. Here their intelligence was often precise. They knew, for instance, that research upon psittacosis was being carried out, under Ministry of Defence subsidy, at this London college. They knew it. The difficulty was to prove it. That was the point of the sub-plan, which someone had christened Asclepius. Two professors were known – one of the best intelligence contacts was an obscure laboratory assistant – to be in charge. It occurred to Gordon and Charles that, if their offices could be ransacked, there might with good luck be some evidence. They didn’t expect much. They had consulted some acquaintances in the Civil Service and had learned how secret contracts were drawn up. Probably not so much through delicacy as through prudence, they didn’t come to me, who if I had chosen could have told them more. They had considered employing a professional safe-breaker. They had made up their minds to look for ‘indications’. Even a hint about biological war would be enough, Olly had become vociferous in proclaiming, to ‘blow the roof off’. They could get their hands on nothing so useful. There was no propaganda equal to this.

That sounded cynical, just as their operations sounded, because they were thought out. It would be a mistake, however, to imagine that any of them, facing the prospect of biological war, were in the remotest degree cynical. Young men like Gordon and Charles – it is worth remembering, that during this period of planning Gordon was not yet twenty, and Charles a year younger – knew a good deal about power politics. Other states might possess both ultimate weapons and the will to use them. Charles was an amateur of military history, and knowledgeable about it. Nevertheless, when it came to the manufacture of disease, they felt exactly like the simplest of the young people around them. They felt a sheer horror, not in the least sophisticated, naive if you like, that this should be done. That it was done in their own country didn’t soften the horror, but added anger to it.

THROUGH the spring they were still waiting for their time. While I remained in total ignorance of any of their plans. When I saw Charles, which wasn’t often, he was in good spirits, composed and lively, interesting on books he had read. He gave no sign of strain that I perceived. When, months later, I heard something of the story, I wondered how much I had missed or whether he had become a good actor.