The Intrigues of Jennie Lee Page 24

  * * *

  A week later, Frank made his budget speech, weathering the attacks by Churchill and Snowden as previous chancellors. But then he had to listen while Lloyd George withdrew his sixty MPs from the coalition, with a tirade about the sanctity of free trade. Mosley followed as leader of Labour, with a speech that began soberly but ended in a fusillade, delivered with such venomous effectiveness it had Labour members cheering for a combination of socialism and nationalism never before heard in the House of Commons. The party had found its firebrand.

  Amidst the cheering, Frank turned from front bench and scowled up at Jennie sitting as far behind the front benches as she could. His look spoke clearly. “You see the risk…”

  Sitting well back in the chamber, Jennie noticed. But like others she’d surrendered to the emotions Mosley was creating on his side. She revelled in the shocked, indeed cowed faces opposite on the Conservative benches. We’re going to win this election, suddenly she was sure.

  * * *

  The next day, parliament was dissolved, and the election campaign of 1932 commenced. As in 1929, Jennie was in demand as a speaker across the Labour seats of Scotland and the border constituencies. Meanwhile, Frank was the party’s sober statesman in the Home Counties round the capital.

  But, eclipsing them and all other speakers across the political firmament, Mosley swept like a shooting star, tracing a fiery path from one constituency to another. He spoke everywhere with an incandescent combination of anger against the old order, Conservative, Liberal and Labour; an order that had been completely ineffective against the decade-long labour slump. He combined the attack with a word picture of Britain’s Imperial future, binding its white dominions closer together, all protected from the rest of the world by a high tariff wall that guaranteed a job to every Briton who wanted to work. But the perorations of Mosley’s addresses were a series of threats against those who were not with him and his people in this crusade. These, the enemies of Britain, would themselves suffer for the suffering they had long imposed. At first, Mosley focused on finance capitalism, Wall Street, the City; those who had slaved Britain to the gold standard. But then, seeing how accusations of conspiracy stirred his listeners, he sought other enemies.

  Jennie followed the reports of his meetings, digesting the transcripts of the speeches, even as she crisscrossed the narrow waist between lowland Scotland down to the Ridings of Yorkshire, speaking at colliery pits and union halls. She searched for reports of other Labour speakers, especially Frank and Nye. But all were invisible in Mosley’s penumbra. Jennie was eager to draw her themes from her leader. She understood that inflammatory rhetoric would catch fire, and that it might even burn some.

  Others were reading Mosley’s speeches too, especially those who in the last year of MacDonald’s reign had joined the Communist Party out of anger and desperation. Now, a few were at Jennie’s events, always holding signs and placards, that began at the rear of the crowds but moved forward as her speeches reached climax, challenging her control of the meetings. Their signs and their interruptions condemned the Labour Party’s new leader as a Fascist. Jennie didn’t like the choice she faced of ignoring them or treating their charge as even worth refuting. She’d enough experience with Communist labels—Scab, Back leg, Trotskyite—however, to answer them back with some effect.

  One evening in Dundee, hecklers finally pushed Jennie too far.

  “That’s right, anyone who disagrees with you must be a Fascist, especially if what they are doing threatens to work! Threatens to make workers better off, to make’m see your lot for the sorry Stalin-stooges you are.”

  Some behind Jennie on the stand gasped at her red-baiting. Comrade Stalin was not an object of general obloquy on the left. In fact, the venom of her riposte had rather surprised herself. Her visit to the Soviet Union had had its effect after all. Her hecklers stunned into mute fury, Jennie carried on her address, condemning MacDonald’s failed attempt to thwart democracy, the failure of the Tory’s conventional nostrums, the promise of the new spending to put men in work again.

  But that evening, when she had a chance to glance at the London papers, Jennie saw that Mosley had begun to lend credence to the charges of the Communist hecklers, ones it would be hard to fob off the next time a heckler made the claim. There was an article on the front page of The Times, one of Harmsworth’s papers that had been kind to Mosley throughout out his career:

  Labour Leader Sees Vast Foreign Conspiracy in Opposition

  Facing an apparently well-organised body of Communist hecklers, Sir Oswald Mosley stunned a large meeting at London Olympia into silence tonight when he identified his opponents on the right and the left as part of a single conspiracy, organised by international Jewry. As he neared the end of his remarks, Sir Oswald said, “We know well the saying, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Well, the combined opposition we face from international finance and world communism is more than that. It’s not just that they both need us to fail in our quest to save Britain. It’s not merely that each will do well out of the failure of the Labour Party for its own reasons. No, we are dealing with the same invisible hand manipulating both the House of Morgan and the Comintern, whispering in the ear of both J.P. Morgan and Comrade Stalin. It is conspiracy of a powerful cabal of Jews that we must overcome if we are to build the New Jerusalem. Do not mistake my words or confuse what I say with the hysterical rot of Herr Hitler in Germany. It’s not all Jews, or most or even any British Jews who seek to defeat our movement, who would stand to gain from our failure. Jews in Britain have nothing to fear from a government I lead, from a Labour government. No, it’s the Baron Rothschild’s and the Comrade Radeks who have between them financed our enemies, crafted their strategies, demanded their loyalty, out of a deep plan to control everything.

  The article went on to identify Baron Rothschild as a well-known French banker and Karl Radek as one of the leading members of the Soviet Politburo.

  Jennie knew that linking capitalists to communists via the Jews had long been a common thread among nationalist politicians throughout Europe. But it was not a theme any politician had ever tried to exploit in Britain. Surely Mosley couldn’t sincerely credit the absurdity. But then why was he saying these things? Was it merely to excite credulous voters, to somehow add xenophobic ‘patriots’ to the Labour Party’s natural constituency?

  Jennie turned to the Labour Party paper, The Herald. There on the front page was another worrying story.

  Leader Calls For Party Security Teams

  The Labour Party leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, has called for volunteers to provide protection against Communist disturbances at Labour Party events. Citing repeated attempts to break up meetings round the country, and especially his own speeches, Mr Mosley has offered to provide training, uniforms and paid employment to suitable persons prepared to participate in units to be deployed at meetings round the country during the last three weeks of the parliamentary elections. The establishment of such a force he notes has been a common response in European countries to Communist provocations.

  She put the paper down. Then she reread both articles slowly. Had she missed something? She hadn’t expected disapproval in The Times. But there was no hint of dissent from Mosley’s remarks in The Herald; not in the reports, not in the leaders, nowhere. Who’s writing for the party’s favourite newspaper now, she wondered? The inescapable thought formed. There’s too much smoke here for there not to be a fire, or at least one smouldering. Only one thing to do. You’ve got to confront Tom Mosley. Jennie didn’t want to, but she had to come face to face with him, and demand answers to a half dozen questions. He might not answer, or answer truthfully, but she had to gauge his eyes, his voice, his demeanour. Then she’d know, or know enough to decide what to do herself.

  * * *

  The next morning, Jennie put a trunk call through to Labour Party Central Office in London. Mosley, she learned, was in the Midlands. He’d be in Newcastle that night, not so far from North Lanark. Jennie might mi
ss a meeting, but she had to see Mosley. By noon, she was on an express from Glasgow, thinking through the way she would have to confront him.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  There was only a single man, lounging in a chair, before the hotel room occupied by the leader of the Labour party. He rose and politely introduced himself as a detective inspector and asked Jennie’s business, then stood aside as she knocked.

  Mosley opened the door to his hotel room and she was greeted with the vision of a theatrical set for a play starring John Barrymore. He stood before her in a florid dressing gown over what looked like silk pyjamas. Over his shoulder, she could see a sitting area before a warm coal fire. Without a word, he allowed her to follow him in. He paused before a drinks tray and spoke.

  “I know it’s early, but would you like something?”

  She shook her head and looked round. The four-poster bed was turned down under subdued light, the curtains drawn against the sombre late afternoon light, the room smelled of Virginia tobacco as smoke curled from a lit cigarette in an ashtray between two padded armchairs ranged before the fireplace. Mosley poured a small whisky for himself, perhaps to encourage her to change her mind. Then he spoke.

  “I was about to take a nap. It will be a long evening—meeting, speech, dinner…”

  “Sorry to disturb you, Sir Oswald.”

  He frowned slightly. “I should think we’re still Tom and Jennie?”

  It was not the tone of a blackmailer. Jennie made herself recall their last meeting.

  “As you wish,” she replied and immediately began to worry about the slippery slope she always found herself on with Mosley. “I came on a matter of politics, Tom. I need some clarification.”

  He pointed to one of the chairs, and sat himself. “Very well. Tell me.”

  “I’ve read two accounts of your speeches in the papers. They’re…troubling. Look, I’ve never accepted other people’s criticisms of you.” Jennie felt a twinge, thinking of Frank. “But when you begin to sound like that beast in Germany, I worry they’re on to something.”

  “Beast in Germany? That Hitler fella? Clever blighter. I’m told he doesn’t take seriously half of what he says, but it works.” He paused. “Look Jennie, no one believes everything they put out in a political speech. You don’t yourself, do you?” He didn’t stop for an answer. “The papers probably quoted me accurately. But I’m trying to win an election…for us. If I have to engage in a little demagoguery to bring in voters who might not always support Labour or even vote at all, I’ve got to whip them up a bit, right?”

  He paused, waiting for her acquiescence. It did not come, so he continued.

  “Think about who we’re fighting. A Tory party that was perfectly willing to do much worse! These are the people who forged that letter supposed to be from the Soviets to defeat us in ’24.”

  He was right about that, Jennie had to admit. Two days before the 1924 election, The Daily Mail had published a letter it claimed to be from the Soviet government to the British Communist party ordering them to support Labour. By the time the forgery had become known, the Conservatives had swept Labour from its first government.

  “But, Tom, you’re giving opponents a stick to beat you with. They call you a Fascist and you are giving them the ammunition they need.”

  Mosley picked up his glass and downed the whiskey. “Fascism is a coming thing. Look at Mussolini’s success in Italy. There are half dozen fascist groups in England already. It does no harm to make them think the Labour Party is a home for their mixture of nationalism and socialism.”

  “I can’t agree, Tom.”

  “You have that luxury, Jennie. You’re not party leader. I’ve had to do a number of things I haven’t liked or wanted to do. All those MPs who were deselected in favour of exsoldiers, farmers, small holders. Do you think I liked it?” “I can tell you I didn’t like it. You packed a lot of local party constituency meetings and swamped people who’d been loyal to the party their whole lives.”

  “Yes, and it cost a pretty penny too. But without them we’d never have a chance of winning. Now we do. Don’t you see, Jennie? You can have clean hands and lose. Or you can do what it takes and really alleviate suffering.”

  There was an earnestness, a sincerity in his eyes that disarmed her, if it didn’t quite convince her.

  Jennie sighed. “So, my qualms are misplaced and I’m not to take what you have to say to win as what you really believe? Well, I suppose I can do that. But I can’t bring myself to say the same.”

  “I’m not asking you to, Jennie. You couldn’t dissimulate if you tried. And you don’t need to, to win those seats in the Scottish coal fields.”

  He leaned towards her, smiled, and put a hand on her knee. Jennie immediately knew he was wordlessly changing the subject, recalling to their memories his gesture the first time they met.

  She did not immediately move her knee but instead kept his gaze. It was all the encouragement he needed to lean forward and bring his mouth to hers, not aggressively but ardently enough to make her know his desire was strong. It was just what Jennie feared was going to happen. Or was it just what you hoped was going to happen? She could feel unmistakably what her body was telling her, and telling Mosley as her tongue responded to his kiss. Why not? Why should you hold back when he isn’t? It will be as good for you as for him, you know that. It was a secret, but an undeniable equality she shared only with this man, taking her pleasure as he did, without any question of further meaning. Then she stopped. It’s not why you came, but if you carry on, it will be!

  “No, Tom, not today, not this time.” She stood. “You’ve a speech to think about giving. I’ve got to go back to Scotland.”

  He rose in acquiescence, smiled gamely, led her to the door. There he brushed her cheek with his lips and squeezed her hand. He had understood that this part of their relationship was ever to be wordless.

  * * *

  Jennie was able to convince herself she’d been unnecessarily anxious, that Oswald Mosley had probably been right. In that late winter election of 1932, Labour had finally won a majority of seats in the House of Commons. It was a slim majority, 321 out of 615, but a real one. What’s more, Mosley as Prime Minister brought along almost all the cabinet ministers who had refused to accept MacDonald’s betrayal back the previous summer. True, the Liberals were no longer any part of the coalition. But Frank Wise, reappointed as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was still able to consult Keynes freely. And he did so in drafting a budget for the new government. Keynes had again broken ranks with the academic economists, acquiescing in a tariff, thus losing the ear of Lloyd George, but gaining influence with Mosley.

  Though consulted on the Speech from the Throne, that would open the new parliament, Frank was spending a well-earned post-election holiday. After a week in Bucks, where the press had found him preparing the garden with Dorothy and cycling with his daughters, he’d quietly come back to London. Slipping out of the rear of his Bloomsbury residence, he’d walked the back streets to Russell Square and Jennie’s flat. A few days with her and then he’d make a show of visiting Charlie Trevelyan for the early spring partridge shoot. Afterward, Jennie would arrive separately and, if possible, without notice.

  That first evening together after the election, Jennie and Frank had so much to say to each other they couldn’t stop even after turning out the lights. In the dark, they talked through the campaign for hours, staring up at the ceiling, sharing cigarettes, voices disembodied, freed from smiles and frowns, raised eyebrows and wrinkled brows. Unchecked, somehow their thoughts escaped into words before second thoughts could stifle them. Lying together for the first time in months, talking quietly side-by-side, they found desire over and over that night. The intimacy made Jennie and Frank both want to share everything. But they knew they couldn’t do that. Frank had secrets to keep, was sworn to them by his seat in the cabinet. Jennie too had to keep her secrets, just to be her own person, independent, autonomous, unchecked by the constraint of other
people’s permission, approval or consent.

  Watching the occasional headlight catch their cigarette smoke, forming iridescent columns that moved in arcs across the ceiling, Jennie came as close as she dared to the subject she had to avoid.

  “Frank, you’re still worried about Mosley, aren’t you?”

  She wanted to tell him about her meeting with Mosley. She knew what his answer would be but this was a way to bring it up.

  He made rather a show of pausing to consider. “I’m afraid so. You heard the campaign speeches.”

  “But that was only rhetoric, Frank.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  In the stillness and the quiet, the very words she’d used once before escaped, “Because he told me.”

  Frank was silent, but now, in the dark, somehow she could feel the twinge of jealousy crossing his face. He would not say anything. It was understood between them that she had the right to do as she pleased. She responded to the look on his face she could feel without seeing.

  “Yes, I went to see him, when he was in Newcastle.” She had to forestall Frank’s reaction. “But I didn’t stay the night. I hardly took off my coat. We spoke for less than an hour. I put it to him he was sounding like a Fascist, especially attacking Jews and organising a strong-arm squad.”

  Then she thought, You didn’t actually mention either one, did you, Jennie? She reproached herself. But he knew what I was taking about!

  Frank did not respond immediately. Then he spoke in a neutral tone. “What did he say?”

  Jennie repeated her conversation with Mosley. Frank’s deep breath announced his relief and Jennie took it for political vindication, until he spoke.

  “Can’t deny I’m glad you didn’t spend the night.” He went on. “But, Jennie, I fear he was just fobbing you off…keeping you on side.”

  “Why? He didn’t seem to repeat that stuff again, not that I read anyway.”