We still called ourselves socialists, but had become dissatisfied with Parliamentary socialism. We had greater sympathy with communism, though not members of the Communist Party. None the less, when a branch of the Parliamentary Labour Party was formed in the village, we gave the use of the cottage for its weekly meetings throughout the winter months. Islip was a rich agricultural area; but with a reputation for slut-farming. It did not pay the tenant farmers to farm too well. Mr. Wise, one of our members, once heckled a speaker in the Conservative interest about a protective duty imposed by the Conservative Government on dried currants. The speaker answered patronizingly: ‘Well, surely a duty on Greek currants won’t hurt you working men here at Islip? You don’t grow currants in these parts, do you?’ ‘No, sir,’ replied Mr Wise, ‘the farmers main crop hereabouts is squitch.’ I was persuaded to stand for the parish council, and was a member for a year. I wish I had taken records of the smothered antagonism of the council meetings. There were seven members of the council, with three representatives of labour and three representatives of the farmers and gentry; the chairman was a farmer, a Liberal who had Labour support as being a generous employer and the only farmer in the neighbourhood who had had a training at an agricultural college. He held the balance very fairly. We contended over a proposed application to the district council for the building of new cottages. Many returned ex-soldiers who wished to marry had nowhere to live with their wives. The Conservative members opposed this because it would mean a penny on the rates. Then there was the question of procuring a recreation ground for the village. The football team did not wish to be dependent on the generosity of one of the big farmers who rented it to us at a nominal rate. The Conservatives opposed this again in the interest of the rates, and pointed out that shortly after the Armistice the village had turned down a recreation ground scheme, preferring to spend the memorial subscription money on a cenotaph. The Labour members pointed out that the vote was taken, as at the 1918 General Election, before the soldiers had returned to express their view. Nasty innuendoes were made about farmers who had stayed at home and made their pile, while their labourers fought and bled. The chairman calmed the antagonists. Another caricature scene: myself in corduroys and a rough frieze coat, sitting in the village schoolroom (this time with no ‘evils of alcoholism’ around the wall, but with nature-drawings and mounted natural history specimens to take their place), debating as an Oxfordshire village elder whether or not Farmer So-and-so was justified in using a footpath across the allotments as a bridle-path, disregarding the decayed stile which, I urged, disproved his right.