Last night John Turney cornered me in my room as I was trying to read The Magus. I saw his eyes flit across my desk towards this journal, lying unconcealed. “What’s in that book?,” he asked me bluntly, as if he meant to put me on the spot. He said he’d been in and read it the other day, and teased me (“you’ll never get off with her”), before trying to pass it off as a joke.
I was left feeling very unsure. For better or for worse all my weaknesses and emotional excesses are exorcised on these pages. This is how I am.
But amazingly, it seems that he'd come into my room for advice, or rather to clear his mind by talking to someone, which he then did for several hours, a long monologue about his friend Martin who he’s fallen out with over the latter’s “sinister” attempts to undermine John in other peoples’ eyes—they had a disastrous holiday together in Greece and things came to a head in Holland where they stayed for six weeks—all the usual intrigue, romance, ‘eternal triangles’ etc., etc. John says he’s writing a play in order to purge himself of all his vindictiveness and anger.
He criticised the RCP too; he characterised its leading lights (people such as Pat Roberts and Carl Cotton) as “narrow,” perhaps even dull people, even though they're well suited to the RCP’s current party-building needs.
He described a quality in Carl that I’ve noticed before too, namely the way he never divorces himself from Party business. He comes across as someone who (in John’s words) “brings their office work home with them”; he’s cold and aloof around we students, alienating everyone with his impossible-to-escape RCP opinions. He judges on the basis of political commitment or the potential for such. Trevor said he’s praised Lindsey as the only person at Watermouth prepared to get herself involved in the mundane necessities of building a revolutionary Party.
I must rank with the worms in his eyes. I’m sure he finds the world of students thoroughly contemptible, but mockery, sarcasm, condescension and belittling people isn’t the way to win support. Friendly conversation is.
John sees himself as unsuited to this era of RCP history and firmly believes that the people involved now who are creating the “vanguard” who will become Party “heroes” when the Revolution eventually does triumph, as he’s certain it will. I’m sure if that day comes, there’ll be a lot of people who, having shunned the drudgery of six a.m. paper sales, will happily take up their unquestioning places behind the barricades. Stu is one of those people, and if The Revolution erupts in my lifetime, I know which side I’ll be on—and it won’t be that of the Government or the Police. Meanwhile, I don’t want to forsake the idle pleasures of capitalism just yet while they still have something to offer. Why can we still find refuge in capitalism? I wonder what Carl’s answer to this would be?
I don’t like the RCP. Secrecy, utter commitment and a quasi-military organisation might be necessary at this time, but will that tendency be reversible when the RCP becomes a mass party with nationwide support? Will this country’s much vaunted ‘democratic tradition’ come to the rescue and stop the British revolution going the way of the Russian? I often wonder if one day, the Carl Cotton’s of this world will have people such as I put up against a wall and shot.
I got a letter from Claire this morning. “Can you ever smell perfume on my letters?” she asks, which makes me wonder. . . I spent most of the day in an ill-temper. I tried to hitch in to campus but stood for ages with no luck, until finally a car put its indicator on as if to stop. I thought my patience had been rewarded, but the bastard drove off laughing. I gave up and stalked home moodily.
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