people ?ocked about asking their questions. As soon as word came that themarchers had all become seated, Michael Scott and Schoenman and I took anotice that we had prepared and stuck it on the Ministry door. We learnedthat the Government had asked the Fire Department to use their hoses uponus. Luckily, the Fire Department refused. When six o’clock arrived, we calledtrafalgar square 585an end to the sit-down. A wave of exultation swept through the crowd. As wemarched back towards Whitehall in the dusk and lamplight, past the cheer-ing supporters, I felt very happy – we had accomplished what we set out todo that afternoon, and our serious purpose had been made manifest. I wasmoved, too, by the cheers that greeted me and by the burst of ‘for he’s a jollygood fellow’ as I passed.The demonstration was much more auspicious than we had any right toexpect. During the next months the fortunes of the Committee prospered.Branch Committees were established about the country and in some foreigncountries; and some countries developed their own Committees. All the cor-respondence entailed by this activity and by the necessary printing and dis-semination of ‘literature’ (lea?ets, statements, etc.) not to speak of the needto keep some kind of o?ce, cost a good deal. This, of course, as it always doesin any organisation without ?xed membership or dues, meant much timewasted in raising funds. Nevertheless, and owing to the generous and oftenself-sacri?cing voluntary e?orts of many people, the Committee grew instrength.To show my continued support of the ???, I spoke to the Youth ???of Birmingham in mid-March and again in mid-April. One of these speechescaused turmoil because of a remark that I made about our then PrimeMinister. The remark was widely quoted out of context by the press. Incontext, it is merely a ??? to the preceding argument. Unfortunately, by thetime the uproar had broken, I had fallen ill and was unable to defend myselffor some weeks, too late to cut any ice. I spoke, also, at the meeting inTrafalgar Square at the end of the Aldermaston March.Towards the end of March, I had arranged with Penguin Books, who, inturn, had arranged with my usual publisher, Sir Stanley Unwin, to write afurther book for them on nuclear matters and disarmament, carrying on myCommon Sense and Nuclear Warfare and expanding parts of it. The new book was tobe called Has Man a Future? and I began work on it at once. But it was inter-rupted by a series of recordings that I made in London and by the twoBirmingham meetings and then by a very bad bout of shingles which pre-vented my doing any work whatsoever for some time. But during my con-valescence I wrote a good deal of the new book, and it was ?nished in time tomeet its ?rst deadline. It was published in the autumn.On August 6th, ‘Hiroshima Day’, the Committee of 100 arranged to havetwo meetings: a ceremony in the morning of laying a wreath upon theCenotaph in Whitehall and, in the afternoon, a meeting for speeches to bemade at Marble Arch. The former was carried out with dignity. We wished toremind people of the circumstances of the nuclear bomb at Hiroshima. Wealso thought that, in commemorating the British dead, we might call atten-tion to the fact that it was up to the living to prevent their deaths from goingthe autobiography of bertrand russell 586for nothing. We hoped in the afternoon’s speeches to support this pointof view. To many people, however, to bracket the deaths at Hiroshima andNagasaki with the deaths of those who fought the Japanese in the Second Warwas blasphemous. It is doubtful if many of these same people object to thestatue of General Washington or of General Smuts being given places ofpublic honour.The meeting in Hyde Park was a lively one. The police had forbidden us touse microphones as their use was prohibited by Park rules. This ruling hadbeen overlooked in many previous cases, but was ?rmly held to in our case.We had determined to try to use microphones, partly because we knew thatthey would be necessary to make ourselves heard, and partly to expose theodd discrepancy in the enforcement of Park rules. We were, after all, anorganisation devoted to civil disobedience. I, therefore, started to speakthrough a microphone. A policeman quietly remonstrated. I persisted. Andthe microphone was removed by the police. We then adjourned the meeting,announcing that we would march to Trafalgar Square to continue it. All thiswe had planned, and the plan was carried out with some success. What wehad not counted on was a thunderstorm of majestic proportions which brokeas the crowd moved down Oxford Street and continued throughout most ofthe meeting in the Square.A month later, as we returned from an afternoon’s drive in North Wales,we found a pleasant, though much embarrassed, Police Sergeant astride hismotorcycle at our front door. He delivered summonses to my wife and me tobe at Bow Street on September 12th to be charged with inciting the public tocivil disobedience. The summons was said to be delivered to all the leaders ofthe Committee but, in fact, it was delivered only to some of them. Very fewwho were summoned refused to appear.We went up to London to take the advice of our solicitors and, even moreimportant, to confer with our colleagues. I had no wish to become a martyrto the cause, but I felt that I should make the most of any chance to publiciseour views. We were not so innocent as to fail to see that our imprisonmentwould cause a certain stir. We hoped that it might create enough sympathyfor some, at least, of our reasons for doing as we had done to break throughto minds hitherto untouched by them. We had obtained from our doctorsstatements of our recent serious illnesses which they thought would makelong imprisonment disastrous. These we handed over to the barrister whowas to watch our cases at Bow Street. No one we met seemed to believe thatwe should be condemned to gaol. They thought the Government would thinkthat it would not pay them. But we, ourselves, did not see how they could failto sentence us to gaol. For some time it had been evident that our doingsirked the Government, and the police had been raiding the Committee o?ceand doing a clumsy bit of spying upon various members who frequented it.trafalgar square 587The barrister thought that he could prevent my wife’s and my incarcerationentirely. But we did not wish either extreme. We instructed him to try toprevent our being let o? scot-free, but, equally, to try to have us sentencedto not longer than a fortnight in prison. In the event, we were each sentencedto two months in gaol, a sentence which, because of the doctor’s statements,was commuted to a week each.Bow Street seemed like a stage set as we walked down it with our col-leagues amid a mass of onlookers towards the Court at a little before 10.30 inthe morning. People were crowded into most of the windows, some of whichwere bright with boxes of ?owers. By contrast the scene in the courtroomlooked like a Daumier etching. When the sentence of two months was pro-nounced upon me cries of ‘Shame, shame, an old man of eighty-eight!’ arosefrom the onlookers. It angered me. I knew that it was well meant, but I haddeliberately incurred the punishment and, in any case, I could not see that agehad anything to do with guilt. If anything, it made me the more guilty. Themagistrate seemed to me nearer the mark in observing that, from his point ofview, I was old enough to know better. But on the whole both the Court andthe police behaved more gently to us all than I could have hoped. A police-man, before proceedings began, searched the building for a cushion for meto sit upon to mitigate the rigours of the narrow wooden bench upon whichwe perched. None could be found – for which I was thankful – but I took hise?ort kindly. I felt some of the sentences to be quite unduly harsh, but I wasoutraged only by the words of the magistrate to one of us who happened tobe a Jewish refugee from Germany. The police witness appeared to me to cuta poor ?gure in giving evidence. Our people, I thought, spoke well and withdignity and very tellingly. Neither of these observations surprised me. And Iwas pleased to be permitted to say most of what I had planned to say.By the end of the morning all our cases had been heard and we were givenan hour for lunch. My wife and I returned to Chelsea. We emerged from theCourt into cheering crowds, and to my confusion one lady rushed up andembraced me. But from the morning’s remarks of the magistrate and hisgeneral aspect, we were not hopeful of getting o? lightly when we returnedto receive our sentences in the afternoon. As each person in alphabeticalorder was sentenced, he or she was taken out to the cells where we behavedlike boys on holiday, singing and telling stories, the tension of incertituderelaxed, nothing more to try to do till we were carted away in our BlackMarias.It was my ?rst trip in a Black Maria as the last time I had been gaoled I hadbeen taken to Brixton in a taxi, but I was too tired to enjoy the novelty. I waspopped into the hospital wing of the prison and spent most of my week inbed, visited daily by the doctor who saw that I got the kind of liquid food thatI could consume. No one can pretend to a liking for being imprisoned,the autobiography of bertrand russell 588unless, possibly, for protective custody. It is a frightening experience. Thedread of particular, severe or ill treatment and of physical discomfort is per-haps the least of it. The worst is the general atmosphere, the sense of beingalways under observation, the dead cold and gloom and the always noted,unmistakable, prison smell – and the eyes of some of the other prisoners. Wehad all this for only a week. We were very conscious of the continuing factthat many of our friends were undergoing it for many weeks and that wewere spared only through special circumstances, not through less ‘guilt’, inso far as there was any guilt.Meantime the Committee of 100 had put out a lea?et with my messagefrom Brixton. On the back of the lea?et was its urgent appeal to all sym-pathisers to congregate in Trafalgar Square at 5 o’clock on Sunday, September17th, for a march to Parliament Square where a public assembly was to beheld and a sit-down. The Home Secretary had issued a Public Order againstour use of Trafalgar Square on that occasion, but the Committee had deter-mined that this would be no deterrent. Unfortunately for us, my wife andI were still in gaol and were not released till the following day. I sayunfortunately because it must have been a memorable and exhilaratingoccasion.We delighted in our reunion in freedom at home very early on Mondaymorning. But almost at once we were besieged by the press and radio and ??people who swarmed into Hasker Street. Our continued involvement withthem prevented us from learning for some time all that had been happeningsince the Bow Street session of the previous week. From what we had learnedfrom the papers that we had seen in prison, we knew that all sorts of meetingsand sit-downs had been held, not only in Britain, but also in many othercountries, protesting against our imprisonment. Moreover, my wife hadgathered from some of the prisoners at Holloway that the demonstration ofthe 17th was a success. They had listened to the radio and stood on thebalcony above their nets in the great hall of the prison making the sign ofthumbs-up to her and shouting excitedly that the sit-down was going splen-didly. We learned only gradually quite how unbelievably great a success ithad been.The full story of that demonstration I must leave to some historian orparticipant to tell. The important part is that unprecedented numbers tookpart. It augured well for an approach to the mass movement that we desired.By early evening the Square and the streets leading to it were packed withpeople sitting down and with people coming only to observe what was goingon who tried to force themselves into possible observation points. There wasno question of marching to Parliament Square. No one could get through,though attempts were made. There was no violence, no hullabaloo on thepart of the sitters-down. They were serious. And some of them were makingtrafalgar square 589what was individually an heroic gesture. For instance, Augustus John, an oldman, who had been, and was, very ill (it was a short time before his death)emerged from the National Gallery, walked into the Square and sat down. Noone knew of his plan to do so and few recognised him. I learned of his actiononly much later, but I record it with admiration. There were other cases ofwhat amounted to heroism in testifying to a profound belief. There were alsoa good many ludicrous happenings, particularly, I was told, later in theevening when various notabilities arrived to see how things were going andwere mistaken by the police for ardent upholders of the Committee and werepiled, protesting, into Black Marias. But the police could hardly be blamedfor such mistakes. In the vast crowd individual identities could not be dis-tinguished, even in a dogcollar. The police could, however, be very muchblamed for their not infrequent brutality. This could not be disputed,since there were many pictures taken which sometimes caught instances ofregrettable police action.Television and press accounts and pictures of this demonstration and of thepreceding gaolings appeared in countries throughout the world. They had anexcellent e?ect in setting people everywhere thinking about what we weredoing and attempting to do and why. That was what we had hoped wouldhappen, but we had not prepared su?ciently for the overwhelming publicityand interest that would be generated. From the beginning we had beencareful to arrange that only certain of our members would expose themselvesto possible imprisonment at any particular demonstration. There was alwaysto be a corps of leaders to carry on the work. But the Government, bysentencing a large number, not for any particular misdeed at any particulartime, but for the general charge of incitement, had managed to disrupt thisrota. Added to this, were the arrests made during the general scrum of theSeptember 17th sit-down when track could hardly be kept of who might bearrested and who not. The result was that there were very few experiencedmembers of the Committee left to deal with pressing matters and futureplans. I was tired and kept busy by matters that only I could deal with arisingchie?y from my imprisonment. All this was a grievous pity for we had beengiven a great chance which we were unable to avail ourselves of fully.At the end of the week after gaol we returned to North Wales but thebarrage of press and ?? interviews continued wherever we were and, ofcourse, there were daily visitors from all over – Italians, Japanese, French,Belgian, Singalese, Dutch, South and North Americans, etc., etc. It was allwearing, and when we could we drove o? into the country by ourselves. Wehad a number of adventures. One afternoon we walked along a sandy beachand around a rocky point to a cove. The rocks of the point were covered bydried seaweed. At ?rst we tested the solidity of the way, but we grew careless,and unexpectedly I, who was ahead, sank to my thighs. At each move, I sankthe autobiography of bertrand russell 590further. My wife was only at the edge of the bad patch. She managed to crawlto a rock and ?nally to haul me out. On other occasions, our car got stuck inthe sand or in the bog and had to be pulled out – once, to our amusedannoyance, by a nuclear station’s van.When we returned to London, too, we had adventures. One morning twoyoung men and a young woman appeared upon my doorstep and demandedto see me as, they said, they wished to discuss anti-nuclear work. I discussedmatters with them for some time and then intimated that it was time forthem to go. They refused to go. Nothing that I or my housekeeper – we werethe only people in the house – could say would budge them, and we were farfrom being strong enough to move them. They proceeded to stage a sit-downin my drawing-room. With some misgivings, I sent for the police. Theirbehaviour was impeccable. They did not even smile, much less jeer. And theyevicted the sitters-down. The latter were later discovered, I was told, to be ayoung actress who wanted publicity and two of her admirers wishing to helpher. They got the publicity and provided me with a good story and muchentertainment. Some of the Committee were rather annoyed by my havingcalled in the police.During the next months there were a number of Committee of 100 meet-ings, both public and private, at which I spoke, notably in Trafalgar Square onOctober 29th and in Cardi? on November 1st. Demonstrations had beenannounced for December 9th to be held at various ?? air and nuclear bases inthe country. But in planning this the Committee, in its inexperience of hold-ing large demonstrations not in London but in the country, were too opti-mistic, especially in matters relating to transportation. For instance, they feltsure that the buses that they hired to take demonstrators from London to oneof the targets, Wethers?eld, would turn up since the bus drivers themselveshad professed themselves sympathetic to the Committee’s views. But, as someof us had feared, the bus company refused its buses to the Committee at thelast minute. Some hardy and determined demonstrators made their way toWethers?eld by other means, but the loss of the buses and the lack of anyalternative arrangements meant that the numbers were very much less thanhad been expected. The further di?culties encountered were great: Themachinations of the police who had raided the Committee rooms and har-ried its members, and the opposition of the Government, which employed alarge number of its ground and air force, its guard dogs and ?re hoses toprotect the Committee’s targets from unarmed people pledged to non-violence. Nevertheless, the demonstration made a good showing. The Com-mittee had made a mistake, however, in announcing beforehand that it wouldmake a better showing than it could possibly hope to do and in not planningthoroughly for alternatives in foreseeable di?culties.The Committee had already begun to weaken itself in other ways. Longtrafalgar square 591discussions were beginning to be held amongst its members as to whetherthe Committee should devote itself only to nuclear and disarmament mattersor should begin to oppose all domestic, social and governmental injustice.This was a waste of time and a dispersal of energies. Such widespread oppos-ition, if to be indulged in at all, was obviously a matter for the far futurewhen the Committee’s power and capabilities were consolidated. By suchprojects consolidation could only be delayed. Again, this unfortunate ten-dency was the outcome, largely, of the practical political and administrativeinexperience of the Committee added to the over-estimation of the meaningof September 17th’s success. The latter should have been regarded as verygreat encouragement but not as, by any means, the certain promise of a masscivil disobedience movement. In proportion to the population of the coun-try, the movement was still small and too unproved to stand against deter-mined opposition. Unfortunately, the comparative failure of December 9thwas considered only as a discouragement, not as a lesson towards a period ofconsolidation. I tried in my public statements at the time to overcome thediscouragement and, privately, to inculcate the lesson. But in both attempts Ifailed.The immediate aftermath of the demonstration of December 9th was thecharging of ?ve leaders of the Committee under the O?cial Secrets Act of1911. It was, from a layman’s point of view, a curiously conducted trial. Theprosecution was allowed to present its case in full, resting on the question asto whether it was prejudicial to the safety of the nation for unauthorisedpeople to enter the Wethers?eld air ?eld with the intention of immobilisingand grounding the aircraft there. The defence’s case was that such stations asWethers?eld, like all the stations engaged in nuclear ‘defence’ of the country,were in themselves prejudicial to the safety of the country. Professor LinusPauling, the physicist, and Sir Robert Watson-Watt, the inventor of radar, whohad come from the United States to give evidence as to the dangers of thepresent nuclear policy of which Wethers?eld was a part, and I were kepthanging about for many hours. Then all our testimony, like that of otherdefence witnesses, of whom some, I believe, were not permitted to be calledat all, was declared irrelevant to the charges and ruled out. It was managedquite legally, but all loopholes were ruthlessly blocked against the defenceand made feasible for the prosecution. There were a few bright moments, tobe sure: when Air Commander MacGill, the prosecution’s chief witness wasasked how far it was from London to Wethers?eld, he replied, ‘in a fast plane,about ?fty miles’. The jury returned the verdict guilty, though, and this israther interesting, they were out for four and a half hours. No one hadbelieved any other verdict possible under the circumstances. The ?ve con-victed men were given gaol sentences of eighteen months apiece; the onewoman, the welfare secretary of the Committee, was given a year.the autobiography of bertrand russell 592I felt keenly that I, since I had encouraged the demonstration but had notbeen able to take part, was as guilty as the condemned and I managed when Iwas ?nally able to speak at the trial to say so. Many others felt likewise, and,after the trial, we repaired to the Cannon Street police station to declareourselves guilty. As was to be expected, no notice was taken of our declar-ations though they were received civilly by the police. The Committee held ameeting in Trafalgar Square to state the signi?cance of the trial and its ownattitude towards it. In snow and gale, Sir Robert Watson-Watt and I and anumber of others spoke to a not inconsiderable audience.For some time thereafter I had little to do in the way of public speaking forthe Committee. During that last week of July the Committee as well as the??? sent participants to the ‘World Disarmament Conference’ held inMoscow. Just as it was about to start, I received a request from ProfessorBernal pressing me to send a representative with a message to the conference.Christopher Farley, who had participated both in the planning and in theaction of the Committee, went on my behalf. While he was there, he, incompany with some other non-communists, held a public meeting in RedSquare and handed out lea?ets. This was illegal, and was vehementlyopposed, by a variety of means, by the chairman of the ??? who was there. Itwas also opposed by others, even some who at home, indulged in civildisobedience. They felt that they were guests of the Russians and should abideby the strict laws of hospitality. The meeting was dispersed, but its holderswere triumphant in the belief that they had pointed out the internationalcharacter of the civil disobedience movement and had been able to holdsomething of a debate before being dispersed. At the time, I received only hotobjections, but no reasons were given for the objections. When Farleyreturned and I heard what he had to say, I felt that he had done the right thingin backing the meeting, and that it had helped to establish the fact that wewere neutral and should invoke civil disobedience wherever we could in acause which was international.Towards the end of August the Committee began to put into e?ect its planfor a demonstration on September 9th. Taking warning from the previousDecember 9th, they decided to return to central London and to pledge peopleto take part. They announced that they would not hold the demonstration ifthey could not get 7,000 pledges. As September 9th drew near, it becameevident that they could not procure this number of pledges in time. I felt verystrongly that, in view of their public announcement, they should abandon thedemonstration, especially as to hold to their promise those who had pledgedwould be to ask them to attend the demonstration unprotected by the prom-ised number of co-participants. The secretary of the London Committee wasvery loath to give up and many members thought that it was unnecessary todo so. This ?outing of a given promise disgusted me, and added itself to mytrafalgar square 593growing belief that the Committee was disintegrating. In the end, the demon-stration was called o?.During the time since the Secrets trial many things had been happening tome unconnected with the Committee – lunches such as the one given me bythe foreign journalists in London, ?? broadcasts such as the long one forUnited States consumption at which the interlocutor was named Susskind,visits from travelling dignitaries such as that of the ?ve leading Russianjournalists who spent an afternoon with me in Wales. We also went on aholiday drive for somewhat over a fortnight at the end of March, a holidaywhich was a total failure since the weather was cold, raw, and dreary and wewere both ill throughout with raging colds. The most important events inrelation to my own life were those centring about my ninetieth birthday onMay 18th.I looked forward to my birthday celebrations, I confess, with considerabletrepidation, for I had been informed of their prospect though told nothing ofthe toil and anxiety that was going into their consummation. Only afterwardsdid I hear of the peculiar obstructions caused by impresarios and the man-agers of concert halls, or of the extreme kindness and generosity of con-ductors and orchestras and soloists. I only gradually learned of the immenseamount of time and energy, thought and sheer determination to give mepleasure expended by my friends for many weeks. The most active of thesewas Ralph Schoenman who was chie?y responsible for all aspects of theconcert, including the excellently arranged and, to me, most pleasing pro-gramme. When I did learn all this, I was deeply touched, as I was by theparties themselves. And to my surprise, I found that I enjoyed greatly beingthe centre of such unexpectedly friendly plaudits and encomiums.On my birthday itself, we had a jolly family teaparty with two of mygrandchildren and my London housekeeper Jean Redmond and, to celebrate,a ?ne cake topped appropriately by a small constable (donated by the baker)bearing one candle for good luck. In the evening, a dinner arranged by A. J.Ayer and Rupert Crawshay-Williams took place at the Café Royal. It seemed tome a happy occasion. Some of my friends made speeches: Ayer and JulianHuxley spoke most kindly of me and E. M. Forster recalled the earlyCambridge days and spoke delightfully about my old friend Bob Trevelyan.And I met for the ?rst time the Head of my family, the Duke of Bedfordand his wife. I admired his determination to keep Woburn a private estateat however great cost to himself and against great odds. I also liked hisunconventionality. I had been told that when asked to speak at the concertin my honour, he had accepted without hesitation. So I was prepared to likehim – and I was not disappointed. The evening was not less enjoyable for mein re-establishing connection with a number of old friends such as ArthurWaley and Miles Malleson as well as in making a few new ones.the autobiography of bertrand russell 594Of the celebration party at Festival Hall, under the kind aegis of its man-ager, T. E. Bean, that took place the next afternoon, I do not know what to sayor how to say it. I had been told that there would be music and presentationsto me, but I could not know beforehand how lovely the music would be,either the orchestral part under Colin Davis or the solo work by Lili Kraus.Nor could I know how touching and generous would be the presentationspeeches: by Ralph Schoenman, the Master of Ceremonies; Victor Purcell;Mrs Sonning of Denmark; Ernst Willi, the Swiss sculptor; Morley Nkosi ofAfrica; Vanessa Redgrave, the actress; and my cousin Ian Bedford. Some ofthose who could not be there had sent gifts which were presented to me – abust of Socrates from my cousin Flora Russell and an excellent portrait ofme from its painter Hans Erni. And many people had sent messages whichSchoenman read out or had printed in the ‘Tribute Programme’. It had aphotograph of me taken by T. E. Morris of Portmadoc on its cover. I have beentold that it has been sent to people all over the world. The Musicians Unionrefused to have the music recorded and the ??? refused to record any of theproceedings. The gifts, the programme, the record that was privately made of