March 28th, 1951
Dear Comrade Pollitt,
Thank you very much for the promptness of your reply. I would like to point out that the letter “from a comrade whose opinion on poetry is greatly valued” never raised the question of my poetry possessing some sort of “danger” to the class from which I spring, the working class. This person–but why is he anonymous?–merely voiced his dislike to my poetry, and he was quite entitled to do. It is the Editor of the Daily Worker, J. R. Campbell who added the remark that my poetry was “dangerous” to the working class. You have that letter about my poetry, why not read it–if you haven’t it Campbell has retained a copy of his remarks. I feel I have every right to demand an answer to Campbell’s assertion. But when I asked Campbell he dodged the answer–as he dodged the fact that I had queried Varga’s theories before the Moscow Conference. I have been harsh indeed in some of my judgments of certain people, but it can never be said that I took refuge behind the back of some intellectual.
I don’t think my imagination is running away from me when I state my belief that certain comrades are attempting to–to say the least–“discipline Evans.” When I find comrades who are in charge of the Welsh Division of our Party refusing to acknowledge even having received copies of my books, coupled to the fact that other comrades, like the Poetry Group, have dropped me like a hot coal, it ceases to be a rather strange coincidence.
I can furnish you with enthusiastic comment of comrades who are complete strangers to me, then a sudden and absolute silence on their part. As an example I enclose a letter from the Secretary of the Poetry Group, Comrade Oscar Thomson. It is not reasonable that the writer of such a letter should be content to drop all contact with me, or that the Poetry Group as a whole would have remained silent. I am convinced that certain people got in touch with Oscar Thomson and the Poetry Group, people who hate my guts because of my pamphlet. These people’s opinions are as the word of God to lesser mortals in the Party.
Unfortunate but true.
And I must say that I think two months a very long time for the Party to collect the opinion of a dozen comrades. Surely, if such a comrade as yourself finds the time to answer, and take up my queries–and I wish to thank you–then those comrades of the Group could have handed in their opinion long ago. To say they are too busy to read a short volume of poetry and comment on it is plain daft, it doesn’t make much sense. But what does make sense is the group meeting collectively to discuss what is to be done about Evans, when the views of certain people in high places can be persuasively brought to bear and the comrades be induced to get over their first high enthusiasm for Evans’s poetry. In my opinion that is exactly what took place. I would like Comrade Thomson’s letter returned, it is fresh and honest.