DEEPLY moving accounts of the beliefs, triumphs and betrayals of British socialism as refracted through a single family and their various friends and comrades are personified in Joe Butler, a likeable and principled lecturer, in this novel.

It’s 1956 and Butler and his comrades are coming to terms not only with the Suez crisis but also the much-needed but sadly divisive Soviet intervention in Hungary and the first stirrings of the anti-nuclear movement in Britain.

More experienced and longstanding Morning Star readers will probably recognise parts of themselves in Butler, a child of Communist Party activists adjusting to the schisms on the left in the 1950s and the daily betrayals of former comrades who decide to put self before class.

But he remains true to an uncompromisingly vivid belief in an egalitarian society run by and for workers.

His family are not Jewish but they sound, in the intensity of their arguments over contemporary issues and their resonances with earlier struggles in the 1930s, as if they were related to the redoubtable Sara Kahn in Arnold Wesker’s play Chicken Soup with Barley.

Moore also effectively recalls the wider political nature of the era with its casual racism, meaningless national service and fist-fights with empire loyalists and other fascists.

Yet, the hole in this novel is a significant one, making it something of a literary doughnut.

Having infiltrated a secret underground government nuclear bunker under the Cotswolds, Joe unconvincingly metamorphs into a cross between a red Richard Hannay and a flesh-and-blood Tintin. He sees the Israeli prime minister meeting British military chiefs and overhears discussion about helping Tel Aviv develop its nuclear capability. He knows he must expose this dangerous duplicity.

Communists may be among the most versatile and courageous human beings but Butler’s transformation into an incredibly hardened and steely adversary against the might of the British state doesn’t convince.

To account for the length and success of Joe’s evasion from capture, Moore offers a string of improbable coincidences, with help coming from an old national service chum, a kind and sympathetic priest, a rag-and-bone man and one of his Chinese students. One piece of good fortune is surely permissible in such a short period, but four?

The dialogue is at times stilted and unconvincing and it’s frequently unclear who is speaking to whom. And the carousel of Joe’s affairs confuse with Julie, Jacky and Jenny seemingly cast from the same personality template.

John Moore should continue to craft novels but I hope that he focuses on the substance of day-to-day struggles and defiance of ordinary people and leaves the derring-do fantasy to others.

Review by Paul Simon