Onward and Upward

I was enjoying reading Britain’s Communists the Untold Story by John Green where he seeks to correct the malign mainstream account of the contribution that Communists have made to British life.  At one point he talks about how authors who where members of the party are now remembered despite their party affiliation or because of their subsequent anti-communism.

In the latter category he places Edward Upward. Now Edward was a member of the party for sixteen years from 1932 until 1948 but left because he felt it no longer to be a Marxist Party and irretrievably reformist.

You may disagree with Edwards’s assessment but this does not make him an anti-communist. Edward was a very distinguished author who mingles surrealism with realism to create incredibly vibrant novels and short-stories.

He had an extraordinarily long life living until he was 105. In his youth he began a life long friendship with Christopher Isherwood knew Auden and Virginia Wolf with his early work being published by the Hogarth Press.

In 2009 that “drink soaked former Trotskyist popinjay” (according to George Galloway anyway), Christopher Hitchens went in search of Edward who was hiding in plain sight on the Isle of Wight after his retirement as a school teacher. During his teaching life he remained politically engaged undertaking editorial work for Ploughshare, the journal of the Teachers' Anti-War Movement.

The encounter between Edward and Hitchens was published in Atlantic Monthly on appropriately the 1^st May, 2009.

“In a vicarage-style house not far from the railway station in the small town of Sandown, Upward received me and led me to a side room. He explained without loss of time that the main rooms of the little home were out of bounds because his wife, Hilda, was in the process of dying there. “I shall miss Hilda,” he said with the brisk matter-of-factness of the materialist, “but I have promised her that I shall go on writing.” Attired in gray flannel trousers, a corduroy jacket, and a V-neck jersey, he reminded me of something so obvious that I didn’t immediately recognize it. On a table lay the Morning Star, the daily newspaper of the Stalinist rump organization that survived the British Communist Party’s decision to dissolve itself after the implosion of the Soviet Union. It is entirely possible that Upward was the paper’s sole subscriber on this islet of thatched cottages and stained glass and theme-park rural Englishness. Seeing me notice the old rag, he said, rather defensively, “Yes I still take it, though there doesn’t seem much hope these days.” When I asked him if there was anyone on the left he still admired, he cited Arthur Scargill, the coal miners’ thuggish leader, who was known to connoisseurs as the most ouvriériste and sectarian and demagogic of the anti-Blair forces in the Labour movement. Yet to this alarming opinion he appended the shy and disarming news that the last review he had had in the Morning Star had been a good one, precisely because it stressed that not all his work was strictly political. “It particularly mentioned my story ‘The White-Pinafored Black Cat.’” I inquired if he was working on a story at that moment. “Yes I am.” “And may one know the title?” “It’s to be called ‘The World Revolution.’” At this point and in this context, I began to find the word surreal recurring to my mind.”

I think Edward comes out of this encounter rather well whilst Hitchens confirms George Galloway’s assessment. Edward does not sound anything like an anti-communist although Hitchins most certainly does and one wonders what the true purpose of his journey was.

In recent years Edwards work has been published by Enitharmon press who have issued a series of critically acclaimed stories as well as memoirs of Isherwood and Auden.

Probably his greatest work was the trilogy, The Spiral Ascent, (In the Thirties, The Rotten Elements and No Home But the Struggle) described by the Guardian as, “without doubt Upward's central work; unfortunately it is also the most misunderstood, and today it languishes out of print.” It is a indeed a remarkable work and fortunately it is relatively easy to get second hand copies.

One of his characters in the short story, A Ship in the Sky (from the Unmentionable Man, Enitharmon, 1994) has an encounter with a fellow passenger on a ship,

“And why do you think you are lucky to meet me?”

“Because my closest friends and I have always admired you as one of the very few left-wing imaginative writers of literary ability who have not betrayed their principles.”

Sounds like the perfect epitaph to me.