My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyphrase: 'To think that I was once a carriage councillor and am now a privy cleaner'.But in the unemployment problem he was faced every day with the necessity ofdecision on a fresh set of facts whose mastery would have given an able K.C. a hardnight's work; and Jimmy's nights were differently occupied. He had a job in which hesimply did not know if he was going or coming. All the little tricks of personality andbonhomie availed him no longer—Beatrice Webb used to say he dropped his aitchesas carefully as a beautiful woman puts on her make-up—he was really up against thefacts of life at last.Every week he and I used to meet the heads of all departments in the Civil Service toreview progress with the unemployment problem. These admirable people listenedwith patience to the trivial absurdities with which J. H. Thomas sought to mask hiscomplete failure to understand the real subject. They turned down his more grotesquesuggestions as gently as possible, but his reverses incensed him and he wascontinually seeking outside evidence with which to confound them. One morning Iwent into his room as usual to accompany him to our weekly meeting, and also to tryto make him understand a rather complicated point at issue between me and the ablechief of one of the ministries which was on the agenda for the meeting. He was sittingat his table with his head on his hands, and, on my entry complained: 'Oh Tom, I'vethe 'ell of an 'ead this morning'. My ambition to clarify a difficult subject was clearlyout of place. After desultory conversation on the bitterness of the morning after thenight before, he brightened a little to say that he really was going to show up the PostOffice this time—the gentle sarcasms of its gifted chief had sometimes rankled—butthe messenger entered to say the meeting was waiting before we got far with thepending exposure.As the Lord Privy Seal preceded me down the passage I observed with curiosity thathe held one hand behind his back and that his coat tails bulged ominously. He enteredthe room still in the same posture and seated himself with care at the head of the table,only one hand available for the free gesticulation which usually accompanied hiseloquence. He said at once that he had a subject of urgency and importance to discusswhich must take precedence over the whole agenda; that was good-bye to any hope ofa real discussion of the serious subject I had set down. Turning at once to the PostOffice he enquired with a minatory glare: 'Did you tell me that box cost fifteenshillings to make?'—and he pointed an accusing finger at the small wooden containeron the wall below the telephone, which in those days held its works. The answer wasin the affirmative, and at once the mystery was revealed. With a triumphant flourish,out from beneath his coat tails came a precisely similar box which he banged proudlyon the table. 'There you are, made of tin, and our boys did it here in Britain; none ofyour mahogany imported from abroad, and'—he surveyed the table with a rovingglance of triumph— 'it cost four bob'. We then had some minutes of the best oneconomy in general and the time-honoured theme of buy British and be proud of it. Atthe first pause in the flow of his robust oratory, there came a still, small voice fromthe Post Office: the actual box on the wall cost only three shillings, it is the thingsinside which cost the other twelve.Those were the days indeed, with the Post Office usually the object of hot pursuit.Much departmental time was occupied with the Lord Privy Seal's insistence thatwooden telegraph poles should be replaced by concrete poles made in Britain. Reamsof paper were circulated from the department to prove what a disaster this would be,194 of 424