C T Isolani, CBE, LVO School House (Evens) 1931-1936
Historically I suppose that the main significance of the period is in the political decisions which caused the greatest conflagration the world had seen, and the end of the world as we knew it. And yet to most of us at the time it seemed relatively uneventful. Let us put it into context:
In Europe unemployment and misery caused by the War made it a fertile ground for revolutionary change. The 1917 October Revolution in Russia inspired Left Wing Marxist parties everywhere with increasing militancy, and simultaneously terrified governments and ruling classes into defending themselves by back forces of the extremist right. The consequent turbulence and unrest culminated in the establishment of dictatorships in Italy in 1922 and Germany in 1933, led to Civil War in Spain, and seriously weakened the surviving democracy in France.
In Britain however, though it caused a major shock, the Revolution had no such far reaching effects. The country was still reasonably prosperous, its democratic institutions strong, its Empire apparently stable. The Labour Party posed no threat, particularly after the collapse of the General Strike (1926) and the defection of its leader (Ramsey MacDonald) to form a coalition government with the Conservatives in 1931. Its roots were in Methodism, not Marxism, and it wanted reform, not revolution. There was consequently no significant party of the Extreme Left or Right. The Russian revolution did have one important effect however, and that was to cause the British Government and Establishment to regard the European dictatorships, however distasteful, as useful checks to the spread of communism. Hence their reluctance when first Mussolini and then Hitler flouted the rulings of both the Versaille Treaty and the League of Nations set up in 1920 to guarantee eternal peace to intervene energetically against them.
Another factor in this reluctance was Pacifism, a product of the same idealism as inspired the League of Nations and widespread, particularly in the Labour Party, which was one of the causes of disarmament. When, in the face of Hitler’s contravention of all agreements by his serial annexations of weaker countries, the Government finally decided to intervene, it was too late. Military forces were seriously depleted, and, after Chamberlain had been reduced to pleading ignominiously for peace at Munich, the country found itself at war, fighting for its life. If the Thirties have a message for us today, it is that countries can stand up for their principles, or be pacifist, but not both.
So what do I remember? Not much from the first decade since it was spent in Italy where I was born and brought up, the son of an English mother and Italian father. My memories are mostly pleasant but include occasions when Fascism, busily engaged in transforming the country into an aggressive Totalitarian state, intruded on our simple life at a country villa near Florence. However, they are not relevant here. In 1929, falling out of sympathy with the Fascist regime, my parents moved to England and, after two years at a Prep School I arrived at Aldenham in 1931. I was of course, and remained, more aware of events in Italy than might otherwise have been the case, but I found that my school friends virtually ignored them, and was glad to conform, and to banish them from my conversation if not from my mind.
At Aldenham we had little time or opportunity to consider events in the ‘outside world’. Our interests were focussed almost entirely on the life of the School (and to begin with on running errands and avoiding trouble). There was of course no radio and no TV. There were occasional lectures by visiting speakers or sermons In Chapel, and I remember visits to ‘Speakers Corner’ when I was sometimes ‘Taken out’ by a friend whose father lived near Marble Arch – the speakers being of course regarded merely as entertainers. The most stimulating occasions I remember were the wide-ranging discussions of ‘contemporary affairs’ organised during history periods by that excellent teacher R J Evans. Political and moral questions were discussed (even on one occasion the highly complex religious doctrine of grace!) and we participated eagerly. I learnt much from my reading of contemporary literature (it was an active and prolific period for writing) in which I was encouraged by my Housemaster, R C Clift (Evens), who would often lend me books of his own, and occasionally took two or three of us to London to listen to the Proms. There was a Debating Society, but above all the Library, a haven in which could be found papers, periodicals, bound collections of e.g. The Illustrated London News (which gives a good idea of the period) or Punch, but more importantly an excellent selection of books which we owe to the distinguished Librarian C.A. Stott.
I have the impression however that comparatively few Aldenhamians made use of the Library. Intellectual interests and pursuits were often derided at that time, and few were interested in politics, national or international or indeed in public life generally. In this Aldenhamians perhaps reflected the widespread indifference of a middle class whose main concern was to keep to its stability either at home or abroad. It was on the whole a carefree time – for those who were privileged.
There was of course a thriving intellectual and cultural life which was equally characteristic of the Thirties, but of which we at Aldenham were only conscious very marginally. Cambridge reflected the very essence of it, as I discovered when I arrived in 1931. The next three years opened my eyes, not only to the intellectual excitement of this life, but to the prospect of the ‘real world’ which lay beyond and which was decidedly less attractive. These years also coincided with the arrival of the crisis which had threatened for so long. My first year saw the abdication of Edward VIII, and then followed the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Kristallnacht and the full-scale persecution of the Jews, the re-occupation of the Rhineland, and the dismal series of events leading inexorably to war. While most of the undergraduate population got on with its work (or play since we all knew the war was coming and shared a feeling of ‘carpe diem’), it was politicised to an unprecedented degree, and the prevailing ethos was anti-fascist and left wing. The more extremist declared themselves Communists and Marxists, but I suspect that for some this was a pose designed to enable them to shine intellectually, for others the fruit of immature idealism – a very few went to further lengths and were to become known as the Cambridge spies. But all this only affected a small minority. What united almost all the undergraduate population was the feeling that war was inevitable, and that they were ready to face up to it. And, to their credit, they were among the first to volunteer to fight ‘for King and Country’ – contrary to what was declared in their name at that Oxford Union Debate.
As I remember then thinking it was a time when the future seemed almost as certain as the past, when change was slow and almost imperceptible. Though it was fashionable to deride the Victorians, life was more like them than like ours today. The monarch and aristocracy were held in high regard, the class system, based on a rigid hierarchy, unquestionable. Values were stable, the concepts of discipline, obedience, patriotism, duty, generally accepted and observed. A high standard of honesty, and morality generally, prevailed, and in consequence there was little crime (offences involving violence against the person totalled 1583 in 1938, 95000 in 1979), no drug culture, no permissiveness. The BBC under its first Governor Sir John Neith (“I do no pretend to give the public what it wants”) aimed to educate, not reflect society. Films, mainly American, and popular lyrics projected a romantic, not erotic conception of love. The press generally followed the same lines: when critical it was usually polite, and we were spared the squalor, itself a cause of corruption, of much contemporary reporting. In fact it was a deeply conventional, traditional society. Though churchgoing had declined it was still fairly general and the principles of the Christian religion a unifying influence on society.
In spite of the depression, or perhaps because of its deflationary effect, prices were very stable, in fact lower in 1938 than in 1922, and many sections of industry actually prospering (it might have done so even more had it not been for the snobbish tendency to look down on Trade and industry as occupations). The Empire was seldom visited (air travel was in its infancy) and attracted little interest, but was regarded as an added guarantee of Britain’s power and stability.
This rather complacent view was the one held, I think, by most people. But there was of course a darker side to the picture: slums, poverty, sickness, no NHS, no Social Security, little hope for those at the bottom of the pile – and this picture, one of all prevailing inequality, was the subject of constant debate in parliament, in left wing journals, on the intellectual fringe (and in fact some progress was made in the way of reform). Curiously enough however, few of those most directly concerned complained of their lot. It was, on the whole, a submissive population, lulled by the general sense of security, and content to believe, like one of Evelyn Waugh’s characters, that “those whose business it is have the matter well in hand!”
This passive readiness to accept assurances without question reveals, I think, a major flaw in the society of that time. Other, more serious and more debatable flaws are the Pacifism (to which I have already referred) and the readiness to come to terms with the dictators. This involved agreeing to the enslavement of whole peoples (Czechoslovakia), and turning a blind eye to the persecution which was to become the Holocaust. For how long can governments compromise before accepting that they are their brothers’ keepers? It is still an open question.