Incidentally ( gentleman that he was ) my brother had never said a word to me about our friend's involvement with Diana .sx I suppose he felt it to be beyond my comprehension when I was younger and none of my business when I was older .sx I have said that we met " on our own " .sx In fact we were surrounded by tens of thousands of people .sx By chance we were pushed together .sx A glance , a recoil , a laugh , and a pleased exchange of greetings inevitably followed .sx This was in Trafalgar Square , at a rally of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament .sx I was there because I believed in campaigning for nuclear disarmament .sx He was there because he had promised his boss to attend the meeting and to report informally to him on it .sx His boss , he told me over a cup of coffee some minutes later , was the Minister of State - i.e. the Number Two - at the Home Office .sx " You mean you're a spy !sx " I exclaimed , aghast at what he had revealed , and yet at the same moment feeling my participation in the rally to have been utterly vindicated .sx " You see !sx " I might have said to him , but did not .sx " That's what we're up against !sx " .sx He smiled .sx " Not really a spy , no .sx I'm not going to report on anyone in particular , I promise you .sx Not even on you .sx No , old - was curious .sx He asked me to come along and tell him what I thought about it all .sx 'Atmosphere' is what he wants from me .sx " .sx " There must be two thousand policemen here .sx Can't they give him all the information he needs ?sx " .sx " Yes , of course .sx But he wants something fancier .sx More subtle .sx More sensitive .sx That's because he thinks of himself as such a subtle and sensitive soul too .sx So .sx .. me .sx " He pointed with a thumb at his chest .sx Though he had spoken rapidly enough , his voice sounded strained , careful , somehow rusty in timbre , as if it cost him more of a physical effort to bring out his words than it did for most other people .sx He was , after all , a foreigner by birth :sx I had never fully realised this until that moment , until I had heard him claim to work in the Home Office , of all ill-chosen places .sx The thought occurred to me :sx he could be a spy not for the Home Office but in it .sx He could be working for someone else .sx The Americans ?sx The Russians ?sx The South Africans ?sx " I honestly don't know if I should believe you .sx " .sx His reply was no more than an ironic pursing of the lips and something between a nod and shake of his head .sx For some reason this made me believe him .sx I too shook my head , at myself rather than at him , dismissing ( with a little regret ) the idea of his being a double-agent .sx " So what kind of report are you going to carry back to him ?sx " .sx " I'll tell him what he knows anyway :sx that the people here are mostly well-meaning , middle-class dupes , led by a smaller band of dupes , some of whom are well-meaning and some of whom are not .sx " .sx " Dupes ?sx What do you mean , dupes ?sx Whose dupes do you think we are ?sx " .sx " Moscow's , ultimately .sx " .sx " You really believe that ?sx " .sx " Yes , I do .sx " .sx " Just because I don't want to be irradiated and incinerated at the whim of some American president or general - that makes me Moscow's dupe ?sx " .sx " Oh please !sx " he said .sx " I don't want to be incinerated either .sx Nor do I want to lose the war we're already fighting ; the one we've found ourselves in .sx " He hesitated , as if reluctant to go on ; then took the plunge .sx " People aren't supposed to say that kind of thing , I know ; but the hell with it .sx We're finished if a real war breaks out , that's for sure .sx But to surrender , to chuck our weapons away because we're so afraid of a real , shooting war breaking out ?sx That would be another way of finishing ourselves off .sx What you and your friends - the well-meaning ones - are doing is to make one of those things more likely to happen ; the latter especially .sx Your ill-meaning friends know it , of course ; that's why they're so keen on what you're doing .sx And that's why the Russians support them so eagerly .sx " .sx " Yeah-yeah .sx Them evil Commies coming to get us .sx " .sx " That's just childishness .sx I'm not interested in Commun ists , only in Commun ism .sx There is a difference .sx People are pretty much the same everywhere - obviously .sx The real issue is what their system permits them to do if they're in positions of power , or what it compels them to do if they're not .sx At bottom old - in the Home Office is the same human type as his counterpart in the Kremlin :sx I have no doubt of it .sx Neither of them would be sitting in his office if that weren't so .sx The same would probably be true of their counterparts in Nazi Germany - let alone the people at this demo compared with your average crowd in Red Square , say .sx The difference between them lies in the systems they live under , only there , nowhere else .sx " .sx " And what our system does in Vietnam isn't evil ?sx Or in South Africa ?sx Or in the Argentine ?sx " .sx " Look , there might be a thousand things I loathe about our side - right here in England , never mind what goes on in other parts of the world .sx But there's nothing to love or admire or believe to be of any human value whatever in the kind of Communism that's in power in Russia and Eastern Europe .sx The entire apparatus is based on nothing but lies and fear :sx not partially , mind you , as any system is bound to be ; but wholly , indivisibly .sx The result is exactly what you'd expect .sx If there were peace in Vietnam tomorrow , or if the South African blacks got the vote , or if the military had been kicked out of the Argentine last week , we , us , the West , Nato , etcetera , would actually be stronger than we are now .sx But if the people of Poland or Czechoslovakia could go the way they wanted to go , Communism would be finished .sx Dead .sx The Kremlin knows it , so do the people in Eastern Europe .sx That's why the Russians are trying so hard not to let them do it .sx And why the Kremlin values so much the help that you people here are giving them .sx " .sx Ancient arguments , I admit ; now settled pretty much in his favour too , I must also admit ; though he never lived to see it .sx At the time I was greatly taken aback to hear such sentiments from an old acquaintance , a friend of the family ; a man who did not look or talk like the parodic , reactionary dope I would have wished him to be .sx We left the coffee-room in the National Gallery to which we had retreated , and stood in the raised portico of the building , looking down on the shabby , vainglorious square below , and on the throngs of people now beginning to disperse from it .sx The speakers' platform had been built up in front of the plinth of Nelson's Column , between the attendant lions ; it still bristled with loudspeakers and was bedraped with banners , but was now silent and deserted .sx It looked all the more dramatic , somehow , for having just been abandoned .sx A multitude of banners and posters , red and white , black and white , moved sluggishly above the demonstrators who held them ; some fluttered , yawned , tilted , collapsed suddenly as they were lowered and furled .sx At ever corner people were streaming away ; with each pace they took they seemed visibly to transform themselves from a shifting , drifting , collective entity into so many disparate individuals , under the clouded sky .sx There was only one segment of blue above the dusky roof-line of buildings to the west :sx it was as if the world breathed through that blue space , so serene and empty it looked .sx On one side it was edged with a smouldering ruddiness ; there the entire cloud would eventually ignite .sx Watching the crowd make off , I was filled with pride at having been one of their number .sx It was indistinguishable , this pride , from the conviction of being utterly ignorant of what was going to happen to me and caring not at all what that might turn out to be .sx The feeling was so intense I could only feel sorry for anyone who did not share it .sx Him , for instance .sx This man , met by chance , who had been a figure of awe in my childhood , and whom I now saw to be nothing more than a plump , solitary person entering middle - age ( to my eyes , at least ) , wearing his weekend sports jacket and open-necked shirt .sx Once again , glancing at him , with his grand-sounding and yet underhand reason for being there , I wondered if he was nothing more than an idle fantasist .sx It was easy enough to feel sorry for him , anyway :sx for being old , for looking forlorn , for not being one of us , for cherishing such backward political views .sx " I don't suppose there's any chance I'll find my friends again , " I said , looking at the people so full of movement ; the buildings so hard and inert ; the skies so indifferent .sx " I'm sorry I took you from them .sx " .sx " No - no - it doesn't matter .sx " .sx Anyway , shortly afterwards I did find them .sx There they were , on the pavement below us :sx Andy among them - Andy who was and sometimes was not my boyfriend in those days .sx Looking at him in the throng I thought :sx he would stand out anywhere .sx Even his skin , let alone his tousled hair and pale brown eyes , seemed to me to shine with golden glints .sx Like the others , he was a fellow-student of mine at Edinburgh University .sx We had come down together for the demonstration ; among them I was the foreigner , for they were all Scots .sx I introduced them to my mature friend .sx I was longing to tell them what he was doing there - partly to discomfit him , partly in order to impress them - but restrained myself from doing so .sx Then off he went .sx When they asked me who he was , this chap I had sloped off with , I answered , " Oh , nobody .sx An old friend of my brother's .sx " .sx Still , I wrote him a letter a few days later .sx I addressed it to him care of the Home Office , Whitehall , London SW1 .sx If he had been telling me the truth , it would find him there ; if he had not , he did not deserve to get my letter anyway .sx The letter was an attempt to make up for what had later seemed to me my cowardly silence in the face of the attack he had made on me and my fellow-demonstrators .sx Also an attempt , of course , to make him take notice of me ; to make him see what a serious and thoughtful young person I was .sx I wrote that I did not want him to think I was simply following the crowd in supporting unilateral disarmament .sx Nor was I foolishly optimistic , as he seemed to think , about human beings and how they behaved .sx Nor was it that talking about incineration and radiation gave me an illicit , unadmitted thrill , as it certainly did to some of the people at the demonstration , both in the audience and on the platform .sx Nothing of the kind .sx It was the thought of the last war , the one that had ended years before I had been born , that had made a unilateralist of me .sx And it was not even my feelings about the direct suffering it had caused - the devastation of Europe , the destruction of the Jews , the slaughters in Russia and China and Japan , the bombs falling around the house in which I had grown up - that had bewildered me as a child , and bewildered me still .sx It was , rather , the belief that all of it had been preventable .sx None of it , not the sufferings of one mutilated soldier or murdered civilian , had been inevitable .sx None of it needed to have happened .sx Hitler and Mussolini could have been stopped long before .sx The Japanese too .sx If different decisions had been taken at this stage and at that , in this place and in that ; if different conclusions had been drawn from events and spoken words ; if - !sx if - !sx if - !sx .sx