When I had been at the pub for three months the publican decided to hire a pop-group for the week-ends, and within a matter of weeks the trouble had passed. The type of customer change noticeably.
Instead of the older drinker, set in his ways and dogmatically opinionated, the pub began to attract a younger element. Members of the minority groups no longer came, and within a couple of months almost every customer at the pub was aged less than thirty.
The clothing fashions at the time tended to be colourful and casual, but these were not common at the pub. I learned in time that this was an outward manifestation of an innate conservatism that is widespread in this part of London.
The publican’s first name was Harry; I never learned his surname. He had once been an all-in wrestler, and on the wall of the bar behind the counter there were several photographs of him in satin dressing-gowns and with a long pigtail. I never heard Harry talk about his experiences in the ring, though his wife once told me that he had earned enough money from it to enable him to buy the pub outright.
Towards the end of the evenings several of Harry’s friends, who were in general around his own age, would come into the bar. Often after closing-time, Harry would invite them to stay behind and have a few drinks with him. On these occasions he would offer me a few extra shillings to stay later and serve them. As a result of this I overheard many of their conversations and came to learn that their prejudices and information on subjects such as race and politics were as conservative as those attitudes implied by the dress of the other customers.
Several years later, John Tregarth and his party were to gain a substantial electoral backing from areas in which different races were mixed freely.
We stayed a few more days at the encampment. Each of us was undecided what should be done. Most of the men had lost a wife or a sleeping-partner in the abduction, and though we knew from what had happened to Willen that it would serve no purpose to approach the Afrims directly, it was instinctive to stay in the place from where they had been taken. I felt restless, and worried continually for the safety of Sally. Isobel I was less concerned for. It was with relief, then, that I heard at the end of the week the rumour that we were to go to Augustin’s.
Though I had no personal wish to visit the place, it did at least mean that we were to move and with apparent purpose.
As we loaded our possessions on to the handcarts and preparations were made for the move, Lateef came over to me and confirmed that we were going to Augustin’s. It would, he said, be good for the morale of the men.
He appeared to be right, as within a couple of hours the mood had changed, and in spite of a sharp fall in temperature we walked the first few miles in a spirit of cavalier good humour.
“You do have a name?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to tell me?”
“No.”
“Do you have a reason for withholding this information?”
“Yes. That is, no.”
“Well, tell it to me then.”
“No.”
That is the first conversation I had with my wife. Her name was Isobel.
As the full scale of the forthcoming disaster made itself apparent to the British public, there descended on the country the kind of stalwart resolution and directed confusion that my parents had sometimes told me about when recounting their experiences of the early months of the second world war.
In line with a major part of the intellectual element of the country, our college formed a society which professed to be sympathetic to the plight of the Africans. Our motives were principally humanitarian, though there were a few members — mainly those who had earlier reflected a more conservative view, and who joined the society for policy reasons — who adopted a more academic attitude. It was people such as these who first discredited the movement, as they were unable to answer the charges in the press and other media that the pro-Afrim groups were left-wing revolutionaries.
It was undeniably true that the African immigrants were forming themselves into armed groups, that they were being supplied with weapons from abroad and that they were moving into cities on a large scale and occupying houses and displacing the former white inhabitants.
Most people had seen for themselves that these charges were true, but the belief of our college society was that the fault lay with the government. If a more charitable attitude had been adopted from the outset, the Africans’ plight would have been lessened, and political opportunists would not have been able to exploit the situation. But extreme policies induce extreme reactions, and the tight conservatism of Tregarth and his government — approved of by a sizeable percentage of the country — allowed for little liberalism towards the illegal coloured immigrants.
In the remaining weeks of the college term my colleagues and I did what we could to pass our beliefs on to our students. When the end of term arrived, the period of our influence passed. I felt apprehensive as I delivered the last of my own lectures, and even before I left the college grounds I was censuring myself for not having expended more energy in this direction.
In the weeks that followed, as industrial unrest spread and public demonstrations in the streets became an everyday event, I saw that we had been wrong to believe that our attempts to arouse sympathy for the Afrims would do much good. There was a small and vociferous section of the community which adhered to its moral principles, but more and more ordinary people were coming into direct conflict with the Afrims as the armed insurgence went on.
At one of the largest demonstrations in London I saw some of the students from the college carrying a large banner emblazoned with the name of our society. I had not intended to join the march, but I abandoned my intended errand and followed the demonstration to its noisy and violent conclusion.
In the event, the doors of the college were never opened for the following term.
We were told by the two police-officers that we were in restricted territory and that we must move at once. There were reports, they said, that there had been a mutiny in a near-by army-camp, and that the entire neighbourhood was being sealed off by government forces.
I told the police that our car had broken down and that though we were not disputing what they told us, we had come into the vicinity without any warning from the authorities.
The policemen appeared to be incapable of listening to reason.
Their instructions were repeated and we were told to leave the area immediately. Sally began to cry at this point, as one of the policemen had opened the door of the car and dragged her out. I protested at once and was hit hard across my face with the back of a hand.
I was pressed up against the side of the car and my pockets were searched. When they looked in my wallet and saw that I had once been a lecturer at the college, my identity-card was confiscated. Again I protested, but was ignored.
Isobel and Sally were similarly searched.
When this was completed our belongings were taken from the car and put in the road. Our reserve petrol cans were taken from the boot and placed inside the police-car. I remembered what I had heard on the radio earlier, and asked to see the warrant-cards of the police. I was again ignored.
We were told that the police-car would be returning along this road in half an hour. We were to be gone by then. Otherwise, they said, we would be responsible for the consequences.
As they turned to get back into their car, I moved forward quickly and kicked the man who had hit me. I got my shoe hard against his coccyx, throwing him forward on to the ground. The other man turned round and dived at me. I swung my fist at his face, but missed. He threw an arm around my neck, pulled me to the ground and held me there with my arm twisted up against my back and my face pressed painfully into the dirt. The man I had attacked had climbed to his feet, and now he came over and placed three hard kicks into my side.