Going Home - Doris May Lessing [44]
Note that the Useful Rebel does not consider himself part of government; he disapproves utterly of it, although he has probably been of it for years. He consents to work with it because he thinks that by doing so he keeps a bad reactionary out. Thus, at every crisis, when he has to do something against his conscience, he never resigns because he thinks: ‘No, I must stay, I am at least a Progressive.’
In the meantime he modifies a law slightly here, puts in an oar there, uses his influence somewhere else; but he is never responsible for the wicked things his Government does. And as for the Government, he is a feather in their cap; because if such a well-known Progressive consents to work with them, they can’t be so bad, after all.
The Useful Rebel always plays another role, which is that of the Respectable Patron. In any particularly repressive society there are always half a dozen small organizations of people who are an angry minority of critics, but who have to adjust their criticism just this side of the line which will lose them their jobs or get them deported. The Useful Rebel is on the committee or is chairman of these societies. He is necessary, because they have to be respectable. To his Government reactionary friends he says, half-laughing, but showing his integrity: ‘No, no, they have some very good people, you are wrong. I think they should be supported.’ A pause. ‘Besides, one should keep an eye on them in case the hotheads take over.’ Whenever the society wants to go too far, to pass a forthright resolution, or write a letter to the newspaper which is strongly worded, the Respectable Patron threatens to resign. Now the society is in a difficult position: if their Patron resigns, it means they will be branded in the eyes of the citizens as dangerous and irresponsible. On the other hand, if they continue to give in to their Patron’s threats of resignation, then there might just as well not be a society; it is a society without teeth.
In this situation the Patron always wins, and the society either becomes so respectable it has no force at all; or it simply dwindles and dies.
A classic example of this is what happened in an interracial club recently. When the interracial club was started it was considered very advanced and dangerous, but now it is tolerated by the white citizens as perhaps rather eccentric.
People in Britain are shocked because the new University in Salisbury will be segregated. But even more shocking is that, unique among the universities of the world, there is provision that the Government of the day, through the Minister of the Interior, can dismiss any African student at any time without giving reasons for doing so. This provision is expressly and openly for the purpose of getting rid of any agitators that the University might inadvertently produce.
The interracial society wished to pass a resolution against this law; but a Useful Rebel, in his other role of Respectable Patron, said no; the time was not ripe. Of course it was a shocking outrage against liberty and freedom, but if the society pressed on with this resolution, it would get into disrepute with the white citizens which it wished to educate into liberalism. Therefore it was his regrettable duty to resign if the resolution was passed. So the resolution was not passed.
I have known now a good many Useful Rebels. The end of such a man—that is, if he does not by some political development which makes him particularly useful become Prime Minister—is always a sad one. For the white citizens he remains that Red, that Socialist, that extremist; and when a scapegoat is needed, there he is, ready to be cast out. And cast out he is—if he does not have the sense to resign in good time—bitterly conscious of ingratitude, and rightly so, for without him white supremacy would never last