Interesting Times - Eric Hobsbawm [105]
In Britain things began to change, but in a relatively low-key, gentlemanly manner. There was no overt purge of Party members from the civil service, though, where known, they were removed from jobs with access to sensitive information. Those in the politically sensitive ‘administrative’ class were discreetly informed that there was no future for them in the service, but there would be no publicity, if they were to choose to leave of their own free will. One who chose to stay served the rest of his career in those remote corners which large bureaucracies reserve for those who can neither be sacked nor given any job of the slightest responsibility.
There was no actual purge in the universities. Birkbeck College, where I had just begun teaching, was exceptional – at least until the arrival of an ambitious new Master in 1951 – in showing no discernible signs of anti-communism among staff or students. Its students earned their living during the day, and such political tradition as it had was on the left. The mood in the small, crowded and friendly staff common room suggested that it was overwhelmingly composed of Labour voters. Such Tories as there were – I suppose my colleague and later boss Douglas Dakin was one – were hardly typical. He had been secretary of the local branch of the union, the Association of University Teachers, in the intervals of running the entire student side of the college as part-time Registrar (with one secretary), playing cricket and teaching, and handed the union job on to me as soon as I arrived. Moreover, by far the most prestigious member of the college staff was a communist, and employer of Party members in his department, a man closely identified with the USSR, J.D. Bernal, crystallographer and so universal a genius (but for a total blank in music) that he could never concentrate on any topic long enough to win a Nobel Prize, although he was the inspirer of several. Even those who had their doubts about his loyalty to Moscow could hardly forbear to admire this short, bushy-haired man who looked like the essential scientist in a strip-cartoon, walked like a sailor on shore or, as he said, ‘the pobble who had no toes’, and entertained the staff room with well-honed anecdotes about his extraordinarily distinguished time as scientific adviser to Combined Operations during the war. Picasso himself, prevented by the authorities from attending a Soviet-sponsored meeting in Sheffield, had drawn a spirited mural on the wall of Bernal’s flat in Torrington Place, which many years later was to become a sort of logo of Birkbeck. The great artist shared not only Bernal’s communism, but also his legendary polygamy; with the difference only that Bernal genuinely treated the women drawn to him as equal partners, both sexually and intellectually. This reputation for gender equality was what attracted the brilliant Rosalind Franklin to Birkbeck from King’s College, London, dissatisfied with her treatment by the other (male) workers – the ones who got the Nobel Prize – on the famous Double Helix. Though she was notoriously, and understandably, touchy about macho assumptions in colleagues, she was, at least when we talked, full of praise for Bernal as man and scientist, even when she made fun of the Party-line loyalists in his department.
I was lucky to teach at a college which provided a built-in, unforced protection against the pressures of the Cold War outside. Nevertheless, the academic situation was not good. To the best of my knowledge, all communists who had been appointed to academic posts before the summer of 1948 remained in their jobs, and no attempt was made to dismiss them, unless by the non-renewal of short-term contracts, which were extremely rare in those days. On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, no known communists were appointed to university posts for ten years or so from 1948, nor,