My very dear friends, I am writing these lines to let you in the free world know what life is like for us here. Perhaps you will be able to do something for us, perhaps you will be able to bring pressure to bear on influential people in your country. Or perhaps you won't. Perhaps they don't want to know.
Still, I thought it was worth trying to give you an idea of our lives, to give you a few ordinary details — the sort of thing we are so used to that most of the time we don't question it, we don't imagine there is any other way of living.
What made me, for a moment, realise the absurdity of our position was when I decided to invite my dear friend Susanna to stay. Nothing extraordinary, you might think. She lives in District Y, which is under the jurisdiction of our Government, and only a few hundred miles from the Capital City, where I live as you know. Our cities are both on the national railway system.
But District Y is under martial law. As you will appreciate, this makes contact very difficult - especially as Susanna and her husband Michael are Dissidents. think perhaps Susanna will be able to get through th border checks. It would be easier of course i - that would and from all its problems, which include th problems of rearing children there Picture the border between District Y and Districts W, X, and Z. Granted they only do spot checks on the travellers, and there are only a handful of security personnel on the gates. But look harder and you see closed circuit TV cameras. Behind the wooden walls of the transit channels, guards are watching a row of screens, scanning each face as it passes, checking bodies and packages. Woe betide if you so much as have a political book showing in your pocket or your bag. Far worse if yours is one of the many faces the guards have committed to memory if yours is the face of a Suspect. (They wouldn't have any evidence against you, of course, or you wouldn't have got as far as the border but if you are a Suspect, they want to stop you travelling, they want to stop you going to W and Z and telling what you know about the abnormal conditions in District Y.)
Certainly Michael would never get through, though he needs a holiday as much as Susanna, Even if they don't know he is coming well, he if not more. wouldn't he get through? works on an underground paper, the main underground paper. In strict terms that is not illegal, but of course it's enough to make you a suspect. Your loyalty to the regime is definitely in question. And Michael was in jail for a long period, held without trial. They had to let him out in the end along with many others after international protests. But they know his face very well, and they are waiting to pounce. If they could find an excuse for jailing him again they would. And meantime they certainly won't let him out of District Y. Not because of what he would do, but t because of what he would say.
if they knew he was coming, there is not a chance that he would slip through the net. A hand would reach out and stop him as he passed through the security channels. •He would be taken into a back room where they would take his details, ask for identification. (Even though identity cards are not ssued, still you have to carry some kind of ID, or its absence is grounds for suspicion.) Then they would feed his details into the computer and in a few seconds back comes the information. 'Michael A. Dissident. Underground journalist. Jailed for so many years. And so on. They would keep him prisoner for several days, then issue him with a document forbidding him to leave District Y, and send him back to his city. They might ever try to trump up some charge to send him back jail. don't have to worry about evidence, as they did away with trial by jury contemplate a holiday is to contemplate going Michael to jail.
And if they didn't know he was coming?
Well, they might pick him up in the transit channels, and they might not. Probably they would. His is the kind of face the guards are told to memorise - because of who he is, mean. And if they hadn't memorised it, well, he is a young man, , he wears jeans - not a suit, he doesn't have the money for a suit, except for his wedding suit, because as you know it's hard for Dissidents to make a living even if they don't Socialist Challenge 20 December 1979 Page 10 underground papers pay nothing, people work on them for love, or idealism, or because they care about humanity, or whatever way you want to put it.
In a way it's an academic question, because how do you arrange for someone to come on holiday from District Y without the guards knowing? Tell me how it is possible. I would love to know. Life would be so much easier. You see, they will know Susanna is coming, and that might make them stop even her. She needs a holiday so much. She is so tired • She is only twenty but she looks much older. It's the strain.
But the mail goin into District monitored Millions of letters every day al scanned by machines, their contents photographed, fine needles spun to extract the contents and then replace them again so that you would not know they had been touched. Usually you never think about it. You take it for granted that the letters you write must innuendoes, hints suggestions, allusions, never facts or names or descriptions or analysis — or truth. But when for a brief Toulouse-Lautrec work on underground papers, and anyway | moment you think about it — well, it's terrible, devastating, to think that you cannot sit down and write what you really want to say. Even photographs — ! have no photographs of my beloved friends in District Y. I cannot carry with me a plastic folder full of photos of my dear ones, as other people do. Why? Because they dare not have their pictures taken. Ever wedding photos, christening photos, have been taken by the guards and put on file, and often never even returned - though with all their machinery you know they could copy them and return them if they had any heart.
I have a phone, of course. Susanna and Michael don't have a phone. They can't afford one. But they can always find one to use if they want to phone me up. But then, my phone is tapped. Yes, even though I live in the Capital City, not in District Y. At least, I think it's tapped, I'm pretty sure. This is one of the problems, never being able to find out for certain if your mail is read, your phone tapped, but always having to live with the likelihood, the near certainty, the logical probability, that I someone is listening, watching.
How do I know? Well, I have never hidden my feelings where Dissidents are concerned. I have always preferred to live with the unease of knowing you are being watched, of knowing that one day the knock may come at my door too, that my carpets may be ripped up and dear victures torn off the walls — rather that that ive with the unease of going against the dictate of my conscience, the dictates of humanity.
So I have shown my face at protests, I have had my name taken and been photographed many times. And mine are the sort of views that go on file on the Central Computer. That's what the guards are there for - didn't you realise — to monitor people like me. Though God knows they must have trouble keeping up, there many of us now Besides, I know for a fact that most of the details of my life are on file. My sister applied for a job with the State once. She is not at all a Dissident, as you know. Far from it. But they didn't give her the job because of my record Poor thing - she never asks any questions, she keeps her head right down, but still her name is on the Central Computer, because she is a relative of mine.
This has been going on too iong to think of it as a game. There is no fun in it, no glamour. I have been in it too long to enjoy subtertuge, coded messages, dodging the guards, worrying whether I will be allowed to keep my job. And for Susanna it's a thousand times worse. She has no job — how could she with two small children, even if there were any jobs for such as her, an outlaw in effect. Michael has hardly any money. Her father is nearly dead - he turned to drink from the strain. Three of her brothers are in jail, and the other two are only twelve and six years old. Her mother is old with worry. And on top of it all is the martial law, the guards, the surveillance, and worrying how lọng Michael will remain out of jail. You can understand why she needs a holiday.
I suppose i will have to write her, and disguise what I am saying about the plans for her holiday. It would be so lovely if she could come here, and rest, and walk in the park, and go to the pictures, and chat, and discuss, and analyse, and maybe meet a few people and tell them about District Y. Though that would be a small part of it - the main thing is for her to have a rest, and go back refreshed and full of the energy they need so much.
Then she will phone me, and we will finalise the arrangements, though without ever saying exactly which day she will come, or on which train. But then there is a problem. If I don't know when she is coming, how will I know if she has got through? How will.! know they haven't held her, that the guards are not interrogating her, suspecting her of being on a mission for the Dissidents!
I suppose Michael can phone to check if she is here. And if not, we can start phoning the guards - though it could be days before they admit they are holding her. So you see, there are always worries, always fears.
Well, my dear friends, 1 hope these lines have shown you a little of what life is like here, and most importantly, what life is like for Susanna Michael, and for so many in District Y. I have heard you talking about Dissidents with sympathy, but I'm not sure if you understand.
You will understand by now, I hope, where that district is that I call District Y. For you and I live in the same Capital City, indeed we live in the same street. I felt you might understand better if I wrote this down and posted it through your letterbox. It might make you spare a few minutes to think about it. You never bothered when I tried to talk to you.
You know that I am not talking about Eastern Europe. You will perhaps understand now when I say that your free world is our police state. And I hasten to add that this is not an essay on psychiatric disorder, or alienation, or la condition humaine. I am writing about the here and now, about reality. Reality that can be changed if only you will join us With hopeful best wishes from your friend. London 1979.
P.S. I hesitated for a few days before sending you this, and in the meantime I have heard that Michael has been taken to jail again. They have nothing on him, as he signed no confessior despite the torture, but they could hold him on remand for malay months. So there is no question of Susanna leaving Belfast just now, with food parcels to make for him and his laundry to collect, and less money than ever and the children to mind. So there we are. Maybe we'll try again next year.
The Monocied Mutineer William Allison and John Fairley Quartet Books $1.95.
ON THE eve of the Passchendaele offensive of September when hundreds thousands of soldiers appalling conditions, 100,000 British soldiers at the Allied base camp at great died in increase began. all-round improvement of conditions, the ending of punitive drill, and an In Eventually the authorities capitulated to most of the demands, moving out many of the army instructors and military police But when the men ended their revolt, the court martials and executions