Charles Snow - Corridors of Power

At last. Roger stood up, heavy, moving untidily but without strain. He was much the biggest man on either front bench. Once again, as when I first met him in his clumsy, powerful, formidable presence, he gave me a reminder of Pierre Bezukhov. There was loyal applause behind him.

He looked relaxed, abnormally so, troublingly so, for a man in his chief trial. He began with taunts. He had been accused of so many things, he said. Some of them were contradictory, they could not all be valid. Of course, wise persons remarked that, if you wanted to hear the truth about yourself, you listened to what your enemies said. Splendid. But that principle didn’t apply only to him. It applied to everyone. Even, believe it or not, to other Honourable Members, in some cases Honourable and Gallant Members, who had so reluctantly volunteered their character — sketches of himself. He listed four of the ultra-Conservatives. He did not refer, even by an intonation, to Trafford. It might be a good idea if each of us accepted just what his enemies said; it might make us better, and the world too. It would certainly rub into us that we were all miserable sinners.

It was good-natured. The House was laughing. Once or twice a barb darted out. Suddenly one heard him, not so Pierre-like, but clear, hard, piercing. Though his friends cheered, I was not easy. It might be too light a beginning. In a sense, it seemed too much above the battle. I looked at Hector Rose. Almost imperceptibly, he gave a shake of the head. In the House, in the galleries, people were saying that this was the speech of the debate. As he got down to the arguments, he was using the idiom of a late-twentieth-century man. He had thrown away the old style of parliamentary rhetoric altogether. Compared with the other speeches from both the front benches, this might have come from a man a generation younger. It was the speech of one used to broadcasting studios, television cameras, the exposure of the machine. He didn’t declaim: he spoke about war, weapons, the meaning of a peaceful future, in his own voice. This was how, observers said later, parliamentarians would be speaking in ten years’ time.

I scarcely noticed. I was thinking, was this the time that he might choose to break loose? Once or twice he had threatened to cut the tangle of these arguments, and to try to touch something deeper. Would it help him? We were all children of our time and class, conditioned to think of these decisions (Were they decisions? Were we just driven?) in forms we couldn’t break. Could anyone break them? Were there forces which Roger or anyone in that house, or any of the rest of us, could release?

If he had thought of trying, he put the idea behind him. He was talking only to the House. And yet, within ten minutes, I knew that he wasn’t withdrawing, that he had forgotten temptations, ambiguities and tricks. He was saying what he had often concealed, but all along believed. Now that he had to speak, he gave an account, lucid and sharp, of the kind of thinking Getliffe and his colleagues had made their own. He gave it with more force than they could have done. He gave it with the authority of one who would grip the power. But it was only right at the end that he said something which dropped, quietly, unofficially, into the late night air. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘The problems we’re trying to handle are very difficult. So difficult that most people in this country — people who are by and large at least as intelligent as we are — can’t begin to understand them. Simply because they haven’t had the information, and hadn’t been taught to come to terms with them. I’m not sure how many of us can comprehend what our world is like, now that we’re living with the bomb. Perhaps very few, or none. But I’m certain that the overwhelming majority of people who are, I repeat, at least as intelligent as we are, don’t have any idea. We are trying to speak for them. We have taken a great deal upon ourselves. We never ought to forget it.’

I was feeling admiration, anxiety, the exhilaration of anxiety. Now it had come to it, did I wish that he had compromised? His colleagues could get rid of him now: the bargains and balances of the White Paper didn’t allow for this. The chance, the only chance, was that he might take the House with him.

‘It has been said in this house, these last two nights, that I want to take risks. Let me tell you this. All choices involve risks. In our world, all the serious choices involve grave ones. But there are two kinds of risk. One is to go on mindlessly, as though our world were the old world. I believe, as completely as I believe anything, that if this country and all countries go on making these bombs, testing these bombs — just as though they were so many battleships — then before too long a time, the worst will happen. Perhaps through no one’s fault — just because we’re all men, liable to make mistakes, go mad, or have bad luck. If that happens, our descendants, if we have any, will curse us. And every curse will be justified.

‘This country can’t be a super-power any longer. I should be happier if it could. Though it is possible that being a super-power is in itself an illusion, now that science has caught up with us. Anyway, we can’t be one. But I am certain that we can help — by example, by good judgement, by talking sense, and acting sense — we can help swing the balance between a good future and a bad future, or between a good future and none at all. We can’t contract out. The future is firmly poised. Our influence upon it is finite, but it exists.

‘That is why I want to take one kind of risk. It is, in fact, a small risk, which may do good, as opposed to a great risk which would certainly do harm. That is still the choice. That is all.’

Roger sat down, heavy-faced, hands in his pockets. For an instant, a long instant, there was silence. Then applause behind him. How solid was it? Was it uncomfortable? There were one or two cheers from the back benches on the other side. Ritual took over. The lobby bells rang. I noticed Sammikins stand up, head high and wild, in the middle of his friends, going out defiantly to vote against them. Half a dozen members sat obstinately on the Government benches, most of them with arms crossed, parading their determination to abstain. That told us nothing. There might be others, not so forthright, who would go out and not pass through the lobby.

The members returned. Some were talking, but the noise level was low. There was a crowd, excited, tense, at the sides of the Speaker’s Chair. Before the tellers had passed the dispatch box, a hush had fallen. It was a hush but not a high-spirited one. The voice came: ‘Ayes on the right, 186.’ (There had been more Labour abstentions than Rose had allowed for.)

The voice came again.

‘Noes on the left, 271.’

Rose looked at me with cold sympathy. He said, precisely: ‘I consider this unfortunate.’

In the chamber, it took longer for the result to sink in. The Chairman repeated the numbers in a sonorous bass, and announced that the Noes had it.

Seconds later, half a minute later, a chant opened up from the Opposition. ‘Resign! Resign!’

Without fuss, the Government front bench began to empty. The Prime Minister, Collingwood, Monty Cave, went out of the House together, passing close by us in the box. Cries followed them, but the shouts were focused on Roger. He was sitting back, one arm stretched out behind him, talking, with apparent casualness, to the First Lord and Leverett-Smith.

‘Resign! Resign!’

The yells broke on him. Once, he gave a wave across the gangway, like a Wimbledon player acknowledging the existence of the crowd.

Taking his time, he got up. He didn’t look either at his own back-benchers or at the others. ‘Resign! Resign!’ The shouts grew louder. His great back moved slowly down the aisle, away from us. At the Bar he turned and made his bow to the Chair. Then he walked on. When he was out of sight, the shouts still crashed behind him.