National and International Politics

Abstract

To economize, Greene and his wife Vivien left London on 2 March 1931 and rented a dilapidated thatched Cotswold cottage, ‘Little Orchard’, in Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire. He regarded it at first as a ‘pastoral Georgian dream of the industrial twenties’ but he also experienced there at first hand the dire social conditions generated by the Great Depression, following the Wall Street Crash of October 1929.¹ In August 1931 Ramsay MacDonald formed a coalition emergency National Government which included Conservatives, with Labour expelling all of its members (including MacDonald) who supported it. An emergency bill instituted increases in income tax, 10 per cent cuts in the pay of government employees and unemployment benefits and the leaving of the gold standard, resulting in a 30 per cent drop in sterling. Unemployment escalated by about 130 per cent and extreme poverty among the urban and rural working classes became commonplace. In September 1931 Greene angrily denounced all politicians, regarding Conservatives and Socialists as equally responsible for this ‘criminal muddle’ which meant that in a few years’ time the country would be in a ‘worse hole than ever’.²

Greene’s first outstandingly creative period was marked by a visionary inwardness, a turning in on the self in order to make a fictional examination of spiritual issues. His second phase involved a move outwards to the public world of international politics.

Smith, Achievement, 181