He likes to be known by the popular, friendly, the “good company” name of “ Bob.” The youngest and favourite son of respectable, godly parents, Bob, during his schooldays, was drawn into the boy scout movement. As a scout he learned how to tie a variety of knots, to fix up tents, to do wonders with a jack-knife, and to light fires without matches or lighters. He also learned the virtue of perpetual preparedness—of preparedness, in particular, for working hard and for defending one’s country in peril. For was not loyal and willing service, in peace or war, a right and bounden duty?
It cannot be said that there was much glory in the various occupations by which Bob sought a living in the years preceding the second World War. Each was marked by its particular brand of stultification— smelly, unhealthy surroundings; tedious mechanical operations; arduous back-aching toil. All were paid at the lowest possible rates. And, ironically enough, in all these loathsome occupations were ex-servicemen of World War One who, I no doubt, had grown tired of trying to reconcile their miserable conditions with the great “ fruits of victory ” that once they were promised.
Not that Bob saw anomalies in the scene—he had never dreamt of looking for them. Uppermost in his consciousness was a smugness that saw no need for questioning, for seeking to know things which in any case could not improve the serenity of outlook that already was his. Pleasing enough for him that he had once been a perfect “true blue” scout: that now, on the verge of manhood, he was helping in his own way to maintain the greatness of England.
The outbreak of war found Bob more than eager to give his services. Disdaining to wait for his calling-up papers, he hastened to enlist. He preferred, somehow, that his entry into the heroic arena should be through the Air Force—the Army and Navy, it was whispered, attracted the more common elements. And so Bob joined the R.A.F., to spend the following months learning to fly, to make parachute landings, and to drop bombs accurately on given targets. At last, fully trained, and raised to the rank of Flying Officer, he engaged in a number of ‘“ops” over Germany—most of them highly successful in the way of “enemy destruction.”
The war ended and he was demobilised. He had “done his bit.” Proud and self-assured, he came back to the daily hawking of his energies in order to live. But not for him now the grimy, sweating, low-paid toil of his pre-war years. The “la-de-dah” and practiced glibness of his fellow flying officers, the swanking discourse of the Officers’ Mess, the studied preservation of “superior” manners—these and other things had made of Bob an easy persuasive talker capable, in not too discerning company, of impressing and convincing. He became a commercial traveller with a salary of £1,000 a year.
He remains so today. But Bob is now a married man with three young children. His job demands that he should always be well-dressed and smart, that, he should have a handsome car and a reasonably “posh” residence. All this, and the hire-purchase payments by which he is still paying for his furniture, he finds just a little beyond the purchasing power of his present £1,500 per annum salary.
Bob has not completely severed his connection with the R.A.F. Besides regularly attending the annual Air Force reunion dinners, he is the commander in the local Air Training Corps. Through the latter he helps to make fliers, parachutists and air-bombers of the future.
This is the Bob of today. By nature he is, in his way, a man of integrity and goodwill. His trouble is that he has never looked into himself or into the world around him. He does not know, therefore, that despite his innate worthiness, his outlook and his conduct have made of him an anti-social being. He has never questioned, let alone discovered, the mockery of the “national glory” that had been part of his childhood teaching. Had he done so, he might have rejected the patriotic concepts that were later to lead him to a proud acceptance of atrocious working conditions.
He might also have suspected the capitalistic commercial nature of the war into which he eagerly rushed in the belief that, just as his masters said, here was a war of British right against German wrong; a war for “ our ” country’s survival; a war for the preservation of democracy. He may even have felt revulsion at the thought of teaching callow adolescents how best to engage in war from the air, how best to kill on a wholesale scale— and all on behalf of a privileged few whose competitive interests are war’s real cause.
One of the most deplorable features of Bob’s case is that he failed to learn from his own personal experience the fallacy of his national pride. There was nothing of which he could be proud in subservience, ill-pay, loathsome conditions, and a shackling to the treadmill by economic necessity. And even on his present £1,500 a year, Bob, were he logical, could feel no pride in the enforced daily pushing of travellers’ lines, the flowery representations, the “switched-on” charm and the many other humanly degrading devices of the commercial traveller. And this quite apart from the indignity and anxiety of a continued indebtedness to hire-purchase firms.
The tragedy of Bob is that he has allowed himself to be moulded exactly to the pattern desired by his capitalist masters, or, at least, by the various elements that represent capitalist interests. How thankful must be these people that the working class has so many like him!
Frank Hawkins
Blogger's Note:
Does this qualify as a short story? I'm not too sure, to be honest. Whatever the case, it's similar in tone and style to the 'People You Meet . . .' series of articles that 'Ronald' penned for the Socialist Standard in 1949/50.
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