society, for it infects all classes with a horror of what may happen if the present organization of society is overturned.”
“I just don’t like it.”
“Besides,” Lloyd George went on, “if we throw them out we may have to explain how we know what they’re up to; and the news that we’re spying on them may inflame working-class opinion against us more effectively than all their turgid speeches.”
Fitz did not like being lectured on political realities, even by the prime minister, but he persisted with his argument because he felt so angry. “But surely we don’t have to trade with the Bolsheviks!”
“If we refused to do business with all those who use their embassies here for propaganda, we wouldn’t have many trading partners left. Come, come, Fitz, we trade with cannibals in the Solomon Islands!”
Fitz was not sure that was true-the cannibals of the Solomon Islands did not have much to offer, after all-but he let it pass. “Are we so badly off that we have to sell to these murderers?”
“I fear we are. I have talked to a good many businessmen, and they have rather frightened me about the next eighteen months. There are no orders coming in. Customers won’t buy. We may be in for the worst period of unemployment that any of us have ever known. But the Russians want to buy-and they pay in gold.”
“I would not take their gold!”
“Ah, but Fitz,” said Lloyd George, “you have so much of your own.”
There was a party in Wellington Row when Billy took his bride home to Aberowen.
It was a summer Saturday, and for once there was no rain. At three o’clock in the afternoon Billy and Mildred arrived at the station with Mildred’s children, Billy’s new stepdaughters, Enid and Lillian, aged eight and seven. By then the miners had come up from the pit, taken their weekly baths, and put on their Sunday suits.
Billy’s parents were waiting at the station. They were older and seemed diminished, no longer dominating those around them. Da shook Billy’s hand and said: “I’m proud of you, son. You stood up to them, just like I taught you to.” Billy was glad, although he did not see himself as just another of Da’s achievements in life.
They had met Mildred once before, at Ethel’s wedding. Da shook Mildred’s hand and Mam kissed her.
Mildred said: “It’s lovely to see you again, Mrs. Williams. Should I call you Mam now?”
It was the best thing she could have said, and Mam was delighted. Billy felt sure Da would come to love her, provided she could keep from swearing.
Persistent questions by M.P.s in the House of Commons-fed with information by Ethel-had forced the government to announce reduced sentences for a number of soldiers and sailors court-martialed in Russia for mutiny and other offenses. Billy’s prison term had been reduced to a year and he had been released and demobilized. He had married Mildred as quickly as possible after that.
Aberowen seemed strange to him. The place had not changed much, but his feelings were different. It was small and drab, and the mountains all around seemed like walls to keep the people in. He was no longer sure this was his home. As when he had put on his prewar suit, he found that, even though it still fit, he no longer felt right in it. Nothing that happened here would change the world, he thought.
They walked up the hill to Wellington Row to find the houses decorated with bunting: the Union Jack, the Welsh dragon, and the red flag. A banner across the street said WELCOME HOME, BILLY TWICE. All the neighbors were out in the street. There were tables with jugs of beer and urns of tea, and plates loaded with pies, cakes, and sandwiches. When they saw Billy they sang “We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillsides.”
It made Billy cry.
He was handed a pint of beer. A crowd of admiring young men gathered around Mildred. To them she was an exotic creature, with her London clothes and her cockney accent and a hat with a huge brim that she had trimmed herself with silk flowers. Even when she was on her best behavior she could not help saying risque things like “I had to get it off my chest, if you’ll pardon the expression.”
Gramper looked older, and could hardly stand up straight, but mentally he was still all right. He took charge of Enid and Lillian, producing sweets out of his waistcoat pockets and showing them how he could make a penny disappear.
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.”
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
