My Life

My Life - Oswald Mosleyunemployment, George Lansbury and Tom Johnston, had even less access toMacDonald, and in any case were usually too occupied with their own departmentseven to attend our weekly meetings at the Treasury. They appeared to realise quicklythat with Thomas we should get nowhere at all, but they always gave me loyal supportin my efforts; particularly Lansbury, who was the less busy of the two.Eventually I saw no more of Thomas than was necessary, and got on with the job ofworking out, within the departments, what seemed to me the real policy necessary todeal with unemployment. Contact with Thomas merely brought further difficulty andembarrassment. For instance, on one occasion he suddenly asked me to announce inthe House of Commons that he had just approved expenditure of £70,000,000 toprovide employment. I queried the figure, which had appeared in no discussion andno minute, but was informed it was an urgent instruction to announce it from theCabinet, which had approved it and required the publicity to ease the parliamentarysituation. It was the only time in my life I ever gave to the House of Commons a factor figure which was not valid, or could even be challenged, and I did not forgive thedeception. My relations with Thomas deteriorated.I summarised my series of proposals for dealing with unemployment in a documentwhich became known as the Mosley Memorandum. It was circulated to Thomas andthe Cabinet. If I recollect rightly, I notified him in proper form that I intended to dothis, but he complained that I should first have discussed it with him. I had done thisfor the best part of a year without result and the time had come for action; also, I wason strong and legitimate ground. An unfortunate incident then occurred for which Iwas not responsible, but which gave my enemies a weapon to use against me withinthe Government. John Strachey took the Memorandum home, and an unauthorisedperson was reputed to have seen it lying about. The gist of it got into the Press, andThomas was quick, with some support from Snowden, to accuse me of leaking it. Thiswas a lucky chance for the old gang, of which they took full advantage.They could ride off in high tantrum on an issue of ministerial propriety and thus avoidall discussion of the real subject in which their incompetence, indecision andprocrastination were to destroy the Government little more than a year later.MacDonald was always superb in the injured role of the old queen suffering an attackof lese majeste, and Thomas in a dispute on the level of who pinched the beer moneyin a local trade union branch was as clever as a monkey getting away with a coconut.We had a lot of trouble but escaped unscathed, except for poor John, whose invariablefailure to conceal his intellectual contempt had already got him in badly with the lotof them.John Strachey was an adumbration of later difficulties between the trade union side ofthe labour movement and those who were called intellectuals; sometimes a misnomer,as the pretentfon to intellect is often in inverse ratio to the fact. A real intellectual, ofrobust constitution and with goodwill in all human relations, is perfectly capable ofacquiring the equipment necessary to success in a mass movement. He must reallylike people, and have the physique to stand the racket of learning to know well aconsiderable diversity of human beings. He must be at home everywhere; in everysphere of British life in those days, and also of European life in these days. In manyintellectuals the fine but delicate motor of the intellect lacks a chassis sufficientlysturdy to carry it far on the rough road of experience; the machine soon breaks, or is196 of 424