A Clerk's Tyranny

Who wins a battle: head-office or the soldiers? Both sides have their view. Yet how many times do we hear this: HQ is the enemy? Death not the great beast, but our own officials, and their orders; these kill the soul; take out, eradicate, our independence. The attraction of war, especially on its wildest shores: it allows those with a talent for freedom to be free. Paul Scott, Johnnie Sahib. When bureaucrats invade, arrest, imprison, execute….

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The army: organisation or tribe? This novel isn’t sure, tacking, as it does, between the charisma of individuals and the impersonal workings of the machine. As always in such cases size is crucial. The decision to amalgamate the platoons into a company, under the overall guidance of a central department, removes power from individuals and gives it to the bureaucracy, to those remote figures whose reality is not flesh and blood but ink and paper. No need to read Weber - though we guess the author has - to see what is happening here.

As he lit a cigarette he knew he was exaggerating the importance of what he had to tell them. He, and other commanders in the field had often submitted plans to increase efficiency; any plans, put into action by higher authority, should be welcomed. But one clings to what one creates. Now one must learn to relinquish; to grow. 

They were waiting for him to begin, and knowing he must adopt a lighter note, he felt half-angry and irritated because the only way he could do it was not his way, not his personal, friendly way. And so, he thought, I change already; I become the automaton delivering the pep-talk to sugar the pill that should, in reason, not be bitter; that nevertheless, because one has possessed and possesses no longer, is.

He began, ‘There’s a thing called evolution.’

The others looked uncomfortable and his anger grew because he had never seen his officers look like men in a lecture hall, except perhaps that very first time when, so many months ago, he had assumed command of them.

‘Like all new things,’ he went on, ‘once they’re proved successful, once they’ve paid their way and proved worthy of their salt…’ he stopped and looked away from Parrish whose eyes, usually clear, were puzzled.

He plunged on. ‘What it boils down to is this. For a year or more we, and the companies like us, have run our own show. We have made it that way and we liked it that way, and the way worked. We’ve proved that an army can move with the air as its only line of communication.’

Parrish nodded and Scottie shifted his position. The old school. They rally round. He looked at them gratefully.

‘Well,’ he was suddenly hoarse and cleared his throat. ‘What comes now is to prove that what we’ve done isn’t just a flash in the pan. That it can be harnessed. That if need be we can supply men by air right the way from Imphal to Rangoon. If we don’t I can’t see how we’ll hope to get home for another five years.’ He stopped, and reached for his handkerchief to wipe the sweat from his neck and forehead.

Parrish said, ‘What’s up, Major? Don’t hang back on us.’

Scottie said, ‘We’re going back to train other chaps?’

‘What’s up then, Major?’ Bill repeated.

‘This is what’s up.’ The Major drew in smoke, then blew it in a long jet upwards. When he looked down again he knew how to say it.

‘What has been comparatively small is going to be big. Bigger I suppose than we’ve ever imagined, although if we’d stopped twice to think we’d have realised it would be.’

They were all chaining cigarettes, stamping the old ones into the rush floor.

‘Well, to make it big, we’ve got to lose a certain amount of our freedom. We’ll find,’ he went on, trying to convince himself, ‘that it’ll work to our advantage. We’ll have more time to do the sort of things we should, more time to fly, more time to…well at three in the morning to work out sums to see how many planes loads are wanted to drop an emergency demand. In short, we’re going to be subordinated to a staff organisation. Things like Deputy Assistant Directors of Supplies and Transport and Staff Captains.’ He grinned. ‘Some of us might even get promotion, you never know.’

The others were silent, but he thought Johns looked interested. The Major couldn’t blame him.

He went on. ‘Getting promotion’d mean leaving the company of course. On the other hand, staying in the company means more time to be with the men, less time in the office.’

Suddenly he felt closed in. He wanted to get up and go out because even as he said these things he knew they were not true; he knew that a staff organisation would mean more paper work; more returns; less individuality; less proximity to the things that had been good to be close to.

‘That’s really all there is to it. Sorry if I made you feel something big was happening.’

They were silent.

‘Let’s drink up, shall we?’

Parrish moved. In the silence he said, ‘It doesn't make sense to me,’ and then they were all talking at once. The Major sat back, leaning on his elbows, watching them. They went on talking together. He remained as he was, without speaking. They seemed to have forgotten that he was there.

It is a machine that stutters into action: that burst of clichés, at the beginning of the Major’s speech, showing that to give up even the thought of one’s liberty is hard. It makes us think, this speech (having heard so many similar ones, in corporate offices and on the TV screen). Those clichés, the emphasis on efficiency, the claptrap about more freedom not less, how’s there’s always more time to do the things we want to do, are good at doing…. Yes, the Major certainly makes us think. What if. What if all that radical talk of the 20th century was…camouflage; a means, alas, of destroying an individual’s liberty, which thrives in small groups with tolerant or charismatic headmen? The tyranny of the clerk, is this what our progressives sought (and what they have achieved) in the last 100 years? 

Baxter’s arrival on the first page is a portent. Flying in from central office his job is turn these irregulars into bureaucrats. It is the end of men like Johnnie Sahib; those mavericks who thrive on war’s frontier; a place where character, courage and the ability to improvise - Johnnie has integrated planes with ground troops in jungle warfare - flourish and prevail. Our man has been lucky in his leader - the Major - who in recognising his ability, and the dedication of his men, has given him free reign. Close to the ground, near to the men, it is easier for a leader to be tolerant and wise: you cannot treat a man as a machine-tool if you know him intimately. Fortunate too that this is a new kind of war, the fighting requiring tactics and working methods outside the army’s usual run; such unexplored territory encouraging the adventurer and daredevil. Different kinds of war attract different types of personality; this one suiting Johnnie Sahib - to use the Major’s idiom - down to a tee. These men are on the border in so many ways: North East India, jungle battlefields, methods of operation, a guerrilla mentality. Very hard for the centre to control, especially when so far away. Success helps.… In such places a certain kind of character comes to the fore; someone who can take risks and jumps into the unknown, without the parachute of a back-office to soften his fall.1 Johnnie Sahib to always surround himself with a band of dedicated disciples.

Johnnie was a man who looked at you out of strange clear blue eyes in such a way that you could never tell the lie you had rehearsed. A quick substitute had to be found, but he saw through it immediately. You had first known that frank and overpowering stare months and months ago at the Depot during the parade of volunteers for Three Section which was destined to go with the company eastward into Bengal.

He had come along the ranks, and as he approached you were afraid he would pass you by, and that, in a way, would be a matter for shame. Then he had stood in front of you and you could feel how he measured you as a man and made his five foot eight seem inches taller than you own five foot nine. His hand with its short, thick fingers, had reached out and grasped you firmly by the shoulder.

‘Nam?’

‘Dass, Sahib.’

‘Mera Section. This hai?’

‘Thik hai, Sahib.’

Then he had gone to the next man, and past him and past several more until you had heard, further away, the clipped English voice say, with what you had later heard called a ‘cockerney’ accent, ‘Nam?’

…

And if the life he had promised had turned our differently, if, instead of flying, you worked more like a coolie, at least the spirit of the promise was still alive, because Johnnie made it stay alive with his look of caring about you, with the comradeship that was never too familiar, but familiar in the right way, at the right time, so that your own integrity and stature remained. It was Johnnie’s talking and leading, his standing up for you against the least threat of outside interference that made the back-breaking routine sparkle somehow, that made Bengal bearable, that made you unhappy this morning because you knew someone Johnnie liked was going away.

The early days of experiment and exploration are gone. The Japs are on retreat, the size of the army is increasing, and central command, growing fat on victories, which they did not believe possible, want to run this show for themselves. They’ll turn it into a vast bureaucracy; thus that initial reaction to what they wrongly perceive as anarchy is to play the hardline clerk. Orders! Orders! Quick march on the double, and the pen stamps across the paper’s parade ground. Johnnie Sahib will not submit to such authority, for it doesn't recognise the talents of individuals. The clerk will not relent. He steps up his efforts - those memorandums no longer seductive sentences but barking commands. Soon a character like Johnnie are in Mr Clerk’s way. Our hero wants too much control; he needs to do it his way; relies too much on his relations with his subordinates; will not follow the rigid procedures of a regular army, its totemic hierarchy. He’ll not take an order simply because it is an order…. The Major uses the word ‘evolution’ in its common sense way - that life changes from the small to the large, the primitive to the complex and sophisticated; tribe to Organisation Man. In a word: Progress. We’ll use the term more precisely: a character like Johnnie Sahib was perfectly adapted to his environment, that is why he thrived; but now that the environment is changing - the Wild West has become Washington - he is a too perfect fit with the old place so cannot adapt to the new. Change or die! Natural selection insists he become extinct.

Throughout there is a much talk about the army and the war, seen as impersonal forces to which each man bends his will. This is the rhetoric. In reality the relations between the men are extremely close. A sense of the small human group and one’s own contribution to it are very strong indeed; and given that even Baxter takes pride in his team and his men, we easily imagine what characters like Johnnie and the Major must feel…. For Johnnie his platoon is a tribe and he their chief; these soldiers not fighting for the army but for Johnnie Sahib. The emotional relationships are intense.

Nimu hesitated, then with a little gesture that included Dass, he said, ‘We were all thinking he was angry with us, sir. All thinking he had forgotten us.’

Then they were silent and after a while Jim said, ‘You were all very fond of him, weren’t you, Nimu?’

‘He was our good friend.’

Johnnie resists the bureaucrats. He refuses two preemptory orders, arguing that in his judgment the loading can be done in the morning. He will not be pushed around by HQ;  this is his platoon, nobody is to interfere. In this period of transformation two mentalities and ways of life are in conflict (it is the only battle we see); therefore no compromise, as the pressure to turn these men into obedient employees slams up against the force that tries retain a soldier’s individuality and freedom. Resistance is hopeless. The army is too big now. HQ, having moved into the vicinity, too close. It is the clerks who run things. Johnnie forces the Major to sack him.

The theme is clear: the changing nature of this war. The longer it goes on, the bigger and more successful it becomes, the bureaucracy increases control; middle managers taking charge of warriors. But this is a novel, not a social science tract which draws out the obvious and misses the little local details. The nature of war - its intensity, its need of discipline, its ritualised behaviour, those ever present dangers - generates strong emotions that disfigure, even melt down, bureaucratic routine. Central office may give the orders, but success depends on the platoons that carry them out, and in circumstances fraught with risk and chaos. No clerk to tell a soldier how to behave in a crisis…. The quality of both men and their leader remain crucial. A platoon’s camaraderie critical to success. A corporation has planted itself in the jungle, but its roots are thousands of tiny tribes. Leaders are still needed. They rely on the trust of their men, which requires the personal touch. Nobody wants characters like Shelley around.

‘They’re primitive, Colonel. Damned well primitive. Give me British troops every time. The wogs look as if they’ve just fall off trees.’

This horrible bit of prejudice confirms Shelley’s incompetence. Baxter decides to by-pass this office bureaucrat: in future orders will be sent direct to the Major, who’ll decide with his platoon leaders how to organise tasks. A distant, impersonal, rigid managerial system does not work in the jungle. Officers must be able to think for themselves, and so gain the respect of the men, nearly all of them Indian. 

There are secrets the social scientist misses: this new regime isn’t as impersonal as it appears. Geoff Smith, an old colleague, has been giving Jim undue favours. When Jim finds out he rages and returns them. The warrior has a code of honour; he believes in justice and equality within the ranks; and this overrides any simple friendship. Feelings and mystic pride dominate here. Central command too distant and alienated to comprehend the dynamics of these relationships; the culture of this section as foreign them as a native village. So HQ will also have to adapt. It is going to learn that a platoon has its own life and identity, that it is a living thing, which, like all living things, needs nurturing.

On the frontier between Bengal and Burma there is a tension between organisation and tribe, which is resolved in a compromise: Jim Taylor, an officer midway between the maverick Johnnie Sahib and the careerist Baxter. An ideal man for such changing times: this environment perfect for him. Here is a man who, belonging to both worlds, is able to negotiate between them (an impossibility for Johnnie). However, it takes a long time for Taylor to see this truth, overawed, as he is, by the influence of his former chief, whom he believes has left a permanent mark on the men. Months after leaving Johnnie’s influence is all pervasive; when men disagree with Taylor’s orders, or when something goes wrong, a ghost hovers in the air: Johnnie Sahib. He would have done it differently, is the unspoken refrain. Taylor’s inability to remove this influence is getting him down. In a rash attempt to break this ghostly hold he forces Jan Mohammed - who suffers from flight sickness - to fly. Taylor is acting the impersonal, cold, rigid, bureaucrat. A bad mistake. There is an accident and the plane crashes. Taylor watches a burning crucifix stumble out of the crash.… It is a sign. He has failed. He decides to resign.

By chance he meets Nina, Johnnie’s old lover. She gives him different view: Johnnie is more vulnerable, also cooler, than he perceives. She goes on: towards the end he stopped loving me; and one day, with time, he will fade out of my life, and when he does I will write him a letter. She is smart. She is telling Taylor that Johnnie’s recent correspondence to the platoon was not a means of keeping hold of them, but his way of saying goodbye: his love for them had lost its passion. Taylor is also smart. He knows a metaphor when he hears one. He decides to stay. It will be his platoon now, although he will be obeying the orders of the Major. A compromise has been secured. It has been a long, winding, difficult trek; but after many months climbing these mountains and their passes our hero has reached a plateau: there is an equilibrium at last, between past and present, local command and head-office. Jim Taylor has freed himself. He is in charge. He is content.

Review: Johnnie Sahib

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1.  For a similar character in peacetime: David Litvinoff. Keiron Pim, Jumpin’ Jack Flash: David Litvinoff and the Rock’n’Roll Underground.