Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [60]
11 September 1986
Marched with Harold and members of the Solidarity Committee to mark the thirteenth anniversary of the Chilean anti-Allende coup. Sunlit day. Me to fellow marcher: ‘I like the architectural view of London you get walking slowly down the middle of a main road.’ Fellow member: ‘It makes a change from shouting “Maggie out! Maggie out!” ’ We are led by Chilean girls, black scarves over thick tumbling black hair: they are in mourning. We carry banners with photographs of the Disappeared on them. Policemen escort us from Portman Square to Devonshire Street and guard us from the traffic. I think what it must be like to march and know you will be attacked by the same policemen who are courteously guarding us.
Less satisfying – in that it is difficult in retrospect to see that it achieved anything at all except some hot-air balloons rising – was our experience with the so-called June 20 Group.
19 March 1988
Dinner at Kensington Place restaurant on the night of the Budget given by John and Penny Mortimer. A lot of discussion about the fall in the top rate of tax: John Mortimer as always speaks out where others don’t have his frankness. How he’ll benefit. I mutter that Nigel Lawson should have helped the Health Service as well, which is a sort of cop-out.
Out of this dinner came the idea of an Arts/Politics discussion group. I told John Mortimer, whose idea it was, that there has been just such a group, but High Tory, held at Campden Hill Square by Hugh. John Casey, who attended it, and adored Mrs Thatcher, told me of how she sat on the sofa (now my sofa again): ‘To think her hips sat on that sofa–’ Me: ‘And did those hips in ancient time?’ Our group became known as the June 20 Group after the date of the first meeting. In a move I subsequently came to regret, I offered our house for the first exploratory meeting – the regret was due to the fact that the group became inevitably identified with us, rather than the body of other writers it included, led by John Mortimer.
Monday 20 June
The dinner. We have decided to meet again in September. So that’s what came out of it. On the subject of censorship, personally I would have liked us to have made ourselves more of a philosophy group – for that’s what’s lacking – whereas pressure against censorship is almost universal and most of us present spend a great deal of time signing letters, etc. on the subject. But I noticed there was a division between those who wanted it to be a purely writers’ discussion group and those – particularly those who were not writers themselves – who thought we would be affiliated in some way to the Labour Party. Nevertheless the evening was very jolly: twenty-one people. Tony Howard addressed us for forty minutes – a bit long – and made one provocative statement: ‘How can any of you write for the Murdoch press?’ John Mortimer, leading reviewer for the Sunday Times, merely smiled. Germaine Greer, sotto voce, well, just about: ‘How can anyone employed by Tiny Rowland (i.e. the Observer) protest to us about writing for the TLS?’ Later when they had all gone, Harold read Shakespeare’s sonnets to me with the perfume of my regale lilies, especially strong this year, filling the drawing room. That was really the best part of the evening.
Later I record the last meeting in our house. I am convinced that proportionately we now have far too many journalists and political commentators, and too few real writers. After all, those commentators have plenty of outlets. The best intervention came from David Hare about the meaning of political action as he saw it, to help the working class to escape from restrictions. But that’s the end of it for us. Future meetings will be elsewhere. At least we ‘were the first that ever burst into that sunless sea; a Labour philosophy group as opposed to a Tory one. Even though it’s been a failure, I’m proud of that.
Looking back on it (and reading the Diary entries) I can see the fact that