30 September 1935 – 6 October 1935

Yesterday we went to the L.P. meeting at Brighton and, of course, though I have refused to go again this morning, I am so thrown out of my stride that I can’t hitch on to The Years again. Why? The immersion in all that energy and all that striving for something that is quite oblivious of me; making me feel that I am oblivious of it. No, that’s not got it. It was very dramatic. Bevin’s attack on Lansbury. Tears came to my eyes as L. spoke. And yet he was posing I felt, acting, unconsciously, the battered Christian man. Then Bevin too acted I suppose. He sank his head in his vast shoulders till he looked like a tortoise. Told L. not to go hawking his conscience round. And what is my duty as a human being? The women delegates were very thin voiced and unsubstantial. On Monday one said It is time we gave up washing up. A thin frail protest but genuine. A little reed piping, but what chance against all this weight of roast beef and beer—which she must cook? All very vivid and interesting; but overlapping: too much rhetoric, and what a partial view: altering the structure of society; yes, but when it’s altered? Do I trust Bevin to produce a good world, when he has his equal rights? Had he been born a duke . . . My sympathies were with Salter who preached nonresistance. He’s quite right. That should be our view. But then if society is in its present state? Happily, uneducated and voteless, I am not responsible for the state of society. These are some of the murmurs that go round my head, and distract me from what is, after all, my work. A good thing to have a day of disturbance—two days even—but not three. So I didn’t go; and can’t really write. However I will make myself when I’ve done this. Odd the enormous susceptibility of my mind to surface impressions: how I suck them in and let them swirl about. And how far does anybody’s single mind or work matter? Ought we all to be engaged in altering the structure of society? Louie* said this morning she had quite enjoyed doing for us, was sorry we were going. That’s a piece of work too in its way. And yet I can’t deny my love of fashioning sentences. And yet . . . L. has gone there and I daresay I’ll discuss it with him. He says politics ought to be separate from art. We walked out in the cold over the marsh and discussed this. The fact is too my head easily tires. Yes, too tired to write.