Lorac, ECR - Crime Counter Crime

E C R Lorac's CRIME COUNTER CRIME (Collins Crime Club 1936) is set in a poor northern constituency, among the candidates standing on the day of the election itself, during the General Election of 1935.

The Background

The 1935 election is important in British history as it was the last before the Second World War, and the sitting “National” government was re - elected. The original “National” government had been elected under the Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1929, but it was Conservative dominated, and by 1935 the PM was the Conservative Stanley Baldwin - although the motto of the government had been “A steady pair of hands” the government did almost nothing, either to deal with the continuing slump at home, nor the rise of the fascist powers in Europe. Some parts of the Labour and Liberal parties stood as an opposition, but there were also “National Labour” and “National Liberal” MPs. The two other forces in the country were the Communist Party which managed two or three MPs and the British Union Fascists (Sir Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts) who never entered Parliament. In Wales and Scotland the nationalist parties were small and of little significance until after WWII.

Story

In Wilbury in the Blackstone constituency, one of the miserable industrial and mining towns on the Lancashire side of the Penine hills, in a bitter November, the Conservative agent is waiting for his candidate, Nick Trenchard, to appear at a last rally. He is frightened that an agitator named Carston will appear to speak first, turning the last vote against his candidate. Carston is called a Communist, but he is not a member of the Party, and seems simply to be a radical. There is no Liberal candidate, but there is a Labour candidate, Stephen Boyles (he is called a Socialist. In the 'thirties this was used as a term of abuse by the right - wing press, notably the Daily Express, but Lorac may be using this to mean that he is not a “National Labour” candidate). And then there is a third candidate, Richard Dunne - a fascist or imperialist, standing on behalf of his own party. Carston fails to appear, Trenchard turns up late, but makes a good speech, and later that evening discovers that he has been re - elected. Later Carston's body is discovered buried under a road being re - built - the same route on which Trenchard had made a difficult journey to his political rally. Lorac's detective Chief Inspector Macdonald is sent by Scotland Yard to investigate, while Dunne the defeated ultra - imperialist insists on using his organisation to make a parallel investigation. So the story becomes an analysis of time - tables and possible routes taken.

As a Comment on Contemporary Society

Blackstone is a working class area in which the economy never appears to have been good, and now many men are out of work. Carston's revelation, which might have swung the election, would have been that Trenchard closed one of the mines which made the local unemployment worse. Trenchard's admits that he was responsible, though he kept quiet about it at the time, and that it was done to protect the company's shareholders (few of whom were likely to have been his constituents). Trenchard comes from the upper or officer class (his surname is that of the former head of the Royal Air Force who became Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police in the ‘thirties), while his fiancee, Cara, is the daughter of Lady Allison Lang. Dunne, his imperialist rival, comes from the same background - they share the same London clubs. Physically Trenchard is a tall, attractive man (possibly inspired by the real figure of Anthony Eden). Contemporary readers would have realised the physical differences there would have been between the well - brought up and well - fed Trenchard and the workers who lived in Blackstone - due to the social problems and malnourishment common in the “distressed areas” Trenchard would tower over his working class constituents. Trenchard has served in the Diplomatic Corps, while Dunne has been an explorer, a Lawrence of Arabia figure, now returned to bring the same leadership to his native country. While Captain Vance, Trenchard's agent, complains about Carston, it is Cara Lang who criticises the lower classes themselves. In this she is unwittingly commenting on something nearly unique, which distinguishes British socialism from socialism on the continent or in North America. In the phrase of Harold Wilson (Labour Prime Minister in the 'sixties), the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than to Marx. Contrarily, it is sometimes said that the established Church of England is the Conservative Party at prayer. As the story starts the Conservative agent is waiting in the “Congregational Hall in Wilbury”. Trenchard eventually arrives, dirty, but his fiancee's father says “These Methody (sic) shops don't run to over much in the way of soap and water”. (The OED defines “Methody” as a “vulgar or dialectal perversion of Methodist”).

After a rousing speech Trenchard and his party leave, whereupon Wilson, an ex - serviceman assisting Captain Vance, protests “Methody shop indeed! Doesn't even know the difference between Congregationalists and Methodists... But they're Tories, and that's all that matters” (ellipsis in original). Later on, when Trenchard explains to Cara why Carston's murder might delay their marriage or his career she protests against what she perceives to be his inactivity, and she does it again in sectarian terms: “the man who killed the Communist!... If you're going to be mealy - mouthed over this and sport a nonconformist conscience, you'd better find some bread and butter miss to hold hands with”. The first meaning of “Nonconformist” in British english means the protestant churches which do not conform to the standards of the Church of England (Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists etc), and in the nineteenth century the Liberal Party had been strongly associated with nonconformism and with political progress. Unlike France or Spain, for example, religion was not regarded as in opposition to political progress. However, the conservative and Conservative Lang family treat the opposite as true - nonconformism is the religious face of anti - Conservatism. Cara Lang goes onto criticize Trenchard's political policies generally - his inactivity in dealing with Carston is typical of his party's inactivity in dealing with Communists, India, and Ireland. The Imperialist Dunne is a man who knows that action is required. Though they have been happy to use the Congregational Hall for their rally, perhaps the Langs feel that organised religion is something for other people, since they seem to do little to support the local rector (Church of England clergyman): when Macdonald visits the rectory he discovers a house as bleak as anything in the town, subsisting on cheese and fruit given by local farmers in lieu of tithes for meals; whose curtains have been given away for blankets. Significantly, there is no Conservative Club in the constituency, there is no Town Hall where meetings might be held, there is no Parish Hall. There has been no social investment and no free capital in the constituency for what must be fifty to seventy - five years when the non - conformist halls were built. Trenchard's business has invested nothing - there are no businesses being set up to use the available labour. There is no mention of government schemes.

When Macdonald arrives we start to see the reasons why there is an opposition to Trenchard and the National Conservative government. At the first public meeting, though, readers saw that the Conservative had a large working class following - the hall was full of miners and the agent thought that 75% of them were sympathetic. Again another feature of British political life was that, unlike some continental right - wing parties which found their followers among peasants, small - shopkeepers etc, the Conservative Party has always received a large working class vote. Macdonald is told that “There aren't many Communists about here, but they make up in energy what they haven't got in numbers; they're always spouting all over the place and they can't keep their damned noses out of things. They interrupted all the meetings, but they were more of a nuisance to Trenchard than to the others”. When Macdonald visits Len Hardy the communist in his cottage Lorac describes it. “The room door opened straight on to the street... brick floor... a couch which did service as a bed. A tiny fire smoked... the room was dank and cold... while the whitewashed walls were stained with patches of damp.” Hardy himself is described as thin and “as pallid as the stained walls”. So Superintendent Dawkin's remark to Macdonald, “Conditions in these areas breed Communism like stagnant water breeds mosquitoes” is understandable. Rejecting any forelock tugging and any undue deference to his “betters”, Hardy is a plain - speaking man, whose contemptuous remarks for the Tories Dawkins reprimands with “Not so free with your bastards, and anyhow bastardy's feature of Communism, isn't it?” Illegitimacy has little to do with communism, Dawkins is lumping in the free love movement which had started in the 1890s with alternate political policies, whereby anything from modern art through sociology to alternative living might be labelled “Bolshie” or “Communist”, but indicating how difficult it was for even a professional person such as a police officer to think clearly in the ideologies of the time.

Although neither Dawkins nor Macdonald mention it to Hardy, they are investigating a possible murder in Carston's background - a deserted girlfriend, who was either drowned or drowned herself. The drowning of the ruined woman is a cliche from the nineteenth century melodramas and the song “She was poor but she was honest”, but had at least an example in the past, in the life of the radical poet Shelley. Dunne, the ultra - imperialist, has a program similar to the fascists and Nazis, but is not a portrayal of Oswald Mosley. He would happily see the Communists exterminated (he does not use the word, he would deport them into the arctic). On the other hand, as he uses his party machine to trace Carston's journey from London to Blackstone, he demonstrates how his modern centralised organisation can work efficiently, and by implication how he would apply himself to running the country. Cara Lang wishes that Conservatives such as her fiance would take up action to the same degree. Nevertheless the electors of Blackstone fail to see the attractions offered by Mr Dunne and he loses his deposit (fails to obtain more than 5% of the total vote. This was Mosley's experience, too, when his candidates stood). After revelations of skullduggery, impersonation, and housebreaking - and in spite of offers of false alibis from one respectable character to another among other red herrings - Macdonald captures Carston's murderer. The motive: political. In this novel the politics had not been a scaffold on which the plot was hung, but the skeleton on which all else was the living flesh. This makes it rare though not exceptional. It is, though, a good example of how crime writers in the golden age of the thirties were able to use any circumstance on which to build their plots.

Conclusion

E C R Lorac's novel CRIME COUNTER CRIME demonstates many of the problems in the British distressed areas, and through her portrayal of the characters reveals many of the weaknesses of contemporary politics, and of personality and ideology that meant those areas did not improve. This novel demonstrates well how a golden age novel could take place outside of the Vicarages of England and apart from the struggles for inheritances in dismal families, exploring social problems, even if the novel never suggests how conditions can be ameliorated. It is probably not alone among golden age stories in this. Lorac must have been writing at the same time that George Orwell was in Lancashire researching THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER. No clear party political bias appears in her book, yet the detail is almost identical when describing working class life. The one thing Orwell could not do was describe life among the gentry who supplied the Member of Parliament - which Lorac (whether based on personal experience or not I don't know) does supply in this novel. Orwell, from his own experience in a bookshop and lending library knew the enormous numbers of readers of crime fiction there were at this time. More people probably read about the problems of the distresses areas in a ‘tec such as this than ever read Orwell's own account. Orwell would have smiled ruefully.

LJ Hurst