The Phoenix Generation (18 page)

“Juden,” said Piers. “At least they haven’t got machine guns, as in Red Charlottenburg.”

Piers had recently returned from Germany. He had been writing scripts for a film company which had studios in the woods north of Berlin appropriately called Neubabelsberg, since films were made simultaneously in German, French, and English. The same star was used in all three versions since she was tri-lingual, but the dialogue was rewritten and the minor parts acted by nationals of each of the three countries. Piers had been writing the English dialogue, together with the English director. He had watched some of the nightly fights in Berlin between the
Communists
and the Brown-shirts of the N.S.D.A.P., or
National-
sozialistische
Deutsche Arbeiterpartei led by Hitler, of whom he partly approved, because the Brown-shirts were cleaning up the worst of the vice shops in the city; nearly all of them, he said, run by Polish profiteering Jews who had become rich during the inflation, when millions of marks could be bought for a few roubles.

“It was commonplace,” Piers told Phillip, “that any
film-struck
young girl coming from the country and prepared for a camera test, found herself told to strip off her garments, thinking she was to act in a ‘realistic’ play until she was finally raped before the camera. I must admit that as far as I could see, most of the audience in a private house watching one such film were nearly all Germans, bald and middle-aged and biting their cigars as though they were nipples.”

Phillip glanced at Melissa. “My cousin Willie told me about the destitution in Berlin after the war. I wish I’d been there to see it.”

“You must come over and be my guest,” said Piers.

“Thanks. My cousin told me that he saw in Hamburg small girls of six or seven offering themselves to sailors for a piece of soap. They must be clean, the Germans.”

“Sign of a guilt complex,” said Piers. “My father, a typical Etonian of this period, is always concerned to have clean hands. Believed in the birch as a good healthy corrective to lust between members of Pop and fresh-faced fags. Canes tied with pale blue riband hanging on the study walls of members of Pop. This mob here is out to kill.”

“I should say that, individually, each man here is struggling for a better life for his children.”

“Yes, with cosh, razor, and broken bottle. I’m afraid that most of your swans are geese.”

The two men and Melissa went down the gangway kept by the police and, to the jeers of the crowd, got inside the building. There they were scrutinised, but on Piers being recognised, were smilingly led the way to their seats.

*

Birkin was late. The van bringing him had been held up by the angry mob. Individual faces had threatened the uniformed figure sitting inside, ignoring them as police pushed their way around the van, amidst cries of
Scabs,
Blacklegs,
Bogies,
Bleeders.

An hour after the advertised time the lights were diminished, and a procession of stewards holding banners of the many branches of the I.S.P. moved up the central gangway, followed by Birkin.
As he thrust himself forward trying to minimise a Byronic limp, all within rose to their feet the better to see the pale but smiling figure, now being greeted by cheers from those with raised arms and open hands, and boos from sections of faces below clenched fists. Phillip thought how eager he looked, rather as Willie had looked, but Birkin seemed more compact, more head than spirit. He might have been limping out of the first battle of Ypres in 1914 with a spiritual translation of all that horror and chaos into clarity and order, he thought, as the tall spare figure reached the platform erected in the middle of the vast floor and climbed up.

“Fellow Britons——”

At once renewed din made inaudible what the speaker was saying. It was clear that organised groups, each over a hundred men, were occupying strategic points in the arena, and the galleries above. Birkin stood still while spot-lights moved on these points, and grey-shirted stewards moved in upon one or other of the groups. Chairs were lifted, brought down on their heads, dodged.
Comrades
in other parts of the arena moved in to help comrades. More chairs were used, stewards were carried out, with bloody faces; comrades were pushed, shoved, and knocked down. While the members of one scattered group were being put out of the doors, fights were being continued elsewhere.

“Birkin! We—want—Birkin” broke out in chants about the building. As soon as order was achieved in one place, by the use of fists and wrestling holds followed by expulsion from the hall, disorder started elsewhere. This went on for the first half-hour, Birkin seldom being able to speak for more than twenty seconds. It continued for an hour and then another hour. Phillip wandered about, as he had done on the battlefield, watching events on his own. Rooms prepared for casualties were being filled as soon as bandaged, bloody-headed men were led away. The St. John’s Ambulance volunteers were working continuously. One girl
wearing
a grey shirt was slashed from cheek to shoulder muscle by a razor. Motor cars outside were used as dressing stations, where broken noses, fingers and cheeks torn by barbed wire wrapped round chairlegs were patched and bandaged. One young
Greyshirt
lay deathly white on the floor; a great contusion on his
forehead
, his hair spikey with coagulated blood. Phillip moved down the hall. While he had been away Birkin had been speaking from the platform; to stop when his words, despite amplification by loudspeaker, could not be heard above the din. People were
standing up everywhere to see the fighting. One woman near Phillip stood up and shouted something at a steward who was dragging a smaller man along the gangway by his hair. She was told to shut up by another steward. Her companion then stood up and shouted something at this steward, who went to him and was hit first in the stomach then on the shin. While on the ground the steward was kicked in the stomach when he rolled over. Phillip put his arm round the neck of the kicker and held him until two other Greyshirts came up.

“Don’t hurt him,” he said.

“You’re telling us, guv’nor!”

The man was punched on the nose, he fell on one leg and held his face while blood streamed between his fingers.

“Damn you!” shouted Phillip. “We who wore army ‘grey backs’ in the war didn’t do that to German prisoners!”

Upstairs, from the galleries surrounding the arena, another kind of guerilla fighting was going on. Two men with anti-Birkin pamphlets were climbing up the curved lacework metal rafters of the glass roof, followed by four Greyshirts. Up they went, hand over hand, slowly, looking down for toe-grips on transverse metal struts. The two leading figures were apparently making for the ridge of the roof more than a hundred feet above the arena. It was hard-going, because they were hanging all the time by their arms, it being impossible to get on top of the curved girder, since it bore the purlins of the roof. There was comparative silence as thousands of faces stared upwards, the uplookers dreading a fall by any of the six men clinging there.

Birkin’s voice, powerful, controlled, and ironic was now audible.

“Now you can see for yourself what happens at our
meetings
. You can see how we try to break up our own meetings. You can see how we attempt to stop free speech, to prevent Britons from speaking for Britain, to tell you how Britons can create a greater Britain. You can see how we arrange sideshows to help keep you in your seats, such as the human spiders we train to crawl about over our heads, as a diversion. But enough of irony and sarcasm. Who are these people who come here to prevent the truth being clearly and simply told to you? I will tell you who are our hidden opponents. Funds for the buying of tickets have been traced to Jewish sources, and many of you have seen Jewish faces among our opponents today. We are not against Jews because they are Jews. We know many Jews are men of high achievement,
and loyal to this country, and fought brilliantly and bravely in the Great War for their adopted country. We are not against Jews for being Jews, far from it. Our Empire is composed of many races, castes, colours, and creeds, and one of the main reasons for this meeting today is to try to bring our fellow countrymen to realise that, as things are going now, this Empire of ours, won by our forefathers, is not only being neglected, but destroyed by the forces of International Usury, called High Finance, which cares nothing for the people of this country or the Empire. Money cares only for Money, which can be made in this country and then put out abroad to undercut our factories and industries by employing cheap sweated foreign labour and so to undercut and destroy the home industries——”

At this point shouts of
Leave
him
alone!
Stop
it!
Look
out,
mate!
arose urgently from the arena. Looking up, Phillip saw that one of the leading men had pushed his legs to the knees into a criss-cross of metal ties. By the way he was clinging, head bent, arms thrust through similar ties, he was dead tired.

“Usury, or International Finance, has credit organisations which cart round hired toughs in vans to cause uproar at our meetings. Why do these people, not of British stock, want to break up our meetings? Why do they want us to stop telling our fellow-
countrymen
the truth: that if the standard of living in this country is to be raised—if our unemployed are to be found work—if the Great Estate of Empire—one-fifth of the world—is to become truly great, our people educated after work has been found for them, and our vast resources of Empire opened up—then first the entire racket of the international financial system, largely controlled by Jewish banks, will have to be revealed for what it is, not only obsolete and inefficient, but unable, by its very nature of always seeking the greatest profit, to serve the will of the people awakened to a better life, to a state of welfare and service, to a Greater Britain where class prejudice based on money shall give way to a classless nation, where great talent and achievement in the service of our people alone shall receive great reward——”

The climbing Greyshirt, puffing with the clumsiness of his
jackboots
and heavy tunic belted by leather, and his voluminous riding breeches, was now very near the man above him. This exhausted individual was seen to thrust his head between the two V-struts to ease the ache of his arms.

“Our party has declared war on every kind of anti-social activity, from the jugglings of international finance on Bourse and
Exchange down to the organisations of vice trades in the great cities. In so far as the Jew is identified with any of these activities, so far but no further need he fear the advent of our party to power. The Jew who conducts himself as a decent citizen—obeying the laws of the Corporate State—paying in accordance with the
high-wage
system required by every employer—conforming to price regulations, and putting the interests of Britain above those of international finance, will not in any way be molested. Jews or Gentiles who refuse to observe these requirements will be treated exactly as other enemies of the people will be treated, absolutely without racial discrimination.”

Two nimbler Greyshirts were now almost up to the man clinging near the ridge of the roof. Suddenly a shower of pamphlets descended from the humped-up figure. Laughter rippled in the arena below.

“We have fought because we were challenged and because Britain was threatened. The Jew himself has created anti-Semitism, created it as he has always done through the ages, by letting people see him and his methods. Why, do you think, Edward the First banished the Jews from England, by Act of Parliament in the thirteenth century, the Commons playing a prominent part? Why did the King of France follow suit, and other rulers of Christian Europe? So grave did the situation for the Jews in Europe become, that the Sanhedrin in Constantinople was appealed to. The reply, in November fourteen eighty-nine, advised the Jews to adopt the tactics of the Trojan Horse: to make their sons Christian priests, lawyers and doctors, and so work to destroy the Christian heresy from within. And so on down the ages. But we are not against Jews who have served our country in the last war, or Jews who serve it well now. But we British will tolerate neither Jews nor Gentiles who put their own interests before Britain’s interests as a whole. No! We do not persecute Jews, but we shall not tolerate persecution by those Jews who are our own opponents out to
destroy
us. It was when they came out into the open, when they marched recently to Hyde Park and tried to drag this country into war with Germany, when fear made them less cunning, when they revealed what they were to the British people. That is when
anti-Semitism
was born. But now these war-mongers have found a force, a power, and a spirit in Britain resurgent which money cannot buy. And thus we march forward to a victory which is inevitable, not by small illegalities or petty violence unworthy of a great movement, but with an appeal to the whole of the British
people, by disciplined methods characteristic of a mighty nation, to give to our party power by verdict of an electorate which knows we shall use that power in the British way to challenge and break forever in Britain the power of International Money.”

A man more nimble had reached the two men clinging there. A third man with a rope arrived to help while cheers for the speaker filled the great hall. The exhausted Communist was lowered safely to the ground.

*

Most of the Sunday papers carried the same story: Birkin’s Greyshirts had aimed at suppression of free speech among members of the audience.

On the following Monday in Parliament honourable member after honourable member arose to protest that Birkin’s ‘thugs’ had ‘deliberately’ turned a peaceful meeting into a riot by
unprovoked
attacks on respectable, law-abiding citizens. And
although
these stewards, as Phillip had seen in his area, had used only their fists, they were accused of using knives, coshes, broken bottles and razor blades carried by their opponents as offensive weapons.