Ban the Bomb!. Martin Levy

where people were discussing policy, and an English communist said, ‘We can’t say that. It would be a lie.’ And they all burst out in cynical laughter, as if to say, what’s the problem with that?

       Following your application for C.O. status you were interviewed at Fulham, in March 1952. You appeared before a certain Sir G.P. Hargreaves. and one or two others, including the Reverend Professor Edwin O. James. They sound like a pretty formidable bunch.

      I don’t remember feeling particularly nervous. I was so definite about it all. But I do remember that they asked me about my qualifications, and it came out that I had a distinction in School Certificate English. One of them said, ‘So that’s what this is about!’, meaning that’s what had fed into my lengthy statement as to why I was a conscientious objector. My mother gave evidence in support of me. She told them how I’d lain awake night after night, thinking about it all. And that probably had an effect as well. Anyway, my application was accepted.

       Now, Michael, by this time the family had moved out of Cheam to a much larger house in Reigate. Tell me a bit about that if you would.

      The house we moved to was called Little Gatton and, you’re right, it was in Reigate, which was about ten miles further south, not far from the Surrey Hills and Betchworth. It was quite an interesting building. This wasn’t because it was an old historic building; I think it was built in the thirties. It was interesting because of the people who’d lived there: first, the author Sax Rohmer, creator of the wicked Dr Fu Manchu, and then Sir Malcolm Campbell, the famous racing driver. My father bought it from Sir Malcolm’s estate—Sir Malcolm, I believe had died there. That said, I didn’t give two hoots about that aspect. From my point of view, it was simply a nice house. One of the reasons why my father was attracted to it was that there was a small farm attached to it. You see, the farming bug hadn’t left him.

       And what about you? Were you interested in farming too?

      Oh, yes. I really took to it. I started making compost heaps and so on. I remember we had three cows, which I hand-milked. I can still do that by the way. So, come the nuclear holocaust I might well be self-sufficient [laughs].

       How was the farm run? On idealistic lines?

      Not in the least as far as my father was concerned; it simply tied in with his lifelong interest in the land and in growing things. After all, he was still a businessman. Indeed, when he bought a 200-acre farm in Sussex in 1953, like a lot of farmers at that period he grubbed up most of the hedgerows to make what he called his prairies. I’m pleased to say my brother, John, put them back in again.

      I might also add that he was quite keen for me to take over the farm. So, I suppose that had it not been for Peace News and the whole direct action thing, that’s where I would have ended up, as a farmer I mean!

       I suppose you still discussed politics with your father.

      Yes, I did. We particularly discussed war and peace issues. He was still a decided pacifist, which was a bit of a contradiction in a way with his conservatism. But then, as I said before, he was a pacifist on moral grounds. Of course, at Douai I’d been taught the just war approach to international relations. But he’d have none of that: all wars were wrong and that was simply the end of the matter. Then I suppose that like most of us he’d been brought up to believe that lying was a sin and that warfare involved spying, and therefore deception and lying. He used to ask me, ‘How can you justify all of that?’ In fact, he hated every form of violence.

       You never saw him lose his temper then?

      Oh, Jesus. Of course, I did. On one occasion when we were still living in Burdon Lane he ripped up all the flowers in the front garden because he thought that one of the priests was having an affair with my mother, which was the last thing that would have happened. And then I remember another occasion: he got himself into such a rage that my mum actually left and spent the night with one of our Irish friends in the area.

      But I don’t want to end on a negative note regarding my relationship with my dad. I was hugely influenced by him, not only on the issue of peace and conscientious objection, but on a range of issues and interests. It was from him that I imbibed a love of classical music, and of J.S. Bach in particular. Dad was an excellent pianist and spent many hours at a time playing and practicing Bach’s preludes and fugues. He said that it was his ambition to be able to play all forty-eight of them before he died. Well, he didn’t quite manage that. But he had quite a few of them under his belt by the end, though in later years when his health was failing, he wasn’t able to play as much.

      He also had an extensive library, with quite a few first editions, some signed by the authors. They included books by G.K. Chesterton, James Stephens and Henry Williamson amongst others. Then he had many slim, limited edition books of poetry, printed on English hand-made paper with a single poem and illustration in each. Mostly they too were signed. I suppose they must be worth something now, but I wouldn’t part with them.

      Finally, he was also a great walker. When I was a teenager, I used to go on long walks with him of up to twenty miles in the Surrey countryside. We would discuss all sorts of topics.

       Let’s talk about Operation Gandhi now, the first non-violent direct action group with which you were associated. Am I right in saying that the group emerged out of the PPU’s decision in 1949 to set up a commission with the brief of looking into the relevance of Gandhi’s ideas to Britain?

      That’s right. The Commission met for a couple of years. Then a number of people, including Hugh Brock and Kathleen Rawlins, both Quakers, decided it was time to put some of the ideas into action. Hugh was then deputy editor of Peace News, becoming its editor in 1955.

       Gandhi’s ideas being what?

      Well, it’s not easy to describe them succinctly. At least it wasn’t then! But, in essence, Gandhi argued that war and violence were not inevitable; that there was an alternative method of struggle, of non-cooperation and non-violent direct action, which he called satyagraha, or truth force.

       How much did you know about Gandhi at that point?

      I certainly hadn’t any in-depth knowledge. But then, I suppose, neither did some of the others in Operation Gandhi. What I did have, however, was the enthusiasm of a convert, so I read as much about him as I could and talked to those who knew more about him than I did. I’ve already mentioned Richard Gregg’s book The Power of Non-Violence. Well, I read a lot about Gandhi in that and also in a book by Bart de Ligt called The Conquest of Violence, which has a short preface by Huxley. In fact, if you were to ask me which books influenced the members of Operation Gandhi the most, then I’d have to say that it was probably those two. Those two and another book, Krishnalal Shridharani’s War without Violence, were usually in the background to our discussions.

      Incidentally, while we’re on the subject of Gandhi, I remember one day at school being in the refectory with a boy who we nicknamed Gandhi because of his light brown skin, and the priest who was in charge saying, ‘Oh, Gandhi’s just been killed.’ Not surprisingly, we were both a bit shocked because he was such a well-known figure, even though we knew little about him.

       There’s a phrase which Gregg uses in his book when discussing non-violent direct action: moral jiu-jitsu. Can you say something about that?

      The idea in jiu-jitsu is that you use the force that your opponent is directing against you to throw them off balance by not reacting as they expect. In other words, he was saying that if someone attacks you, they’ll expect a certain sort of violent response, and if you don’t give them that then it will psychologically and morally throw them.

      After all, most people when they attack someone expect physical resistance. But the satyagrahi, to use Gandhi’s terminology, doesn’t respond with that. He or she accepts the blows. Not because they can’t fight back. But because they choose not to. That’s a different sort of resistance altogether.

       Near the front of his book, Gregg quotes a newspaper account of an