"None of that now," he said quietly. "No filthy language in my yard! And no loiterin eether!—Off you go or I send for the police. The country's got something better to think of than you and your likes, I reckon, just now."
He stood in the gate of the yard with the cold domineering air of the warder in charge of convicts.
The cleaners shambled away like a herd of mangy donkeys past work and turned out on waste land to die at their leisure.
They were broken men all, old and infirm, drawn from the dregs of that Reserve of Labour on which the capitalist system has been built. They belonged to no Union; they were incapable of organisation and therefore of defence against the predatory class ...
"We got no bloody country, men like us ain't."
"Nor no bloody Christ."
"The rich got Him too."
"Same as they got everythink else" ...
The last of them gone, Alf skipped up the steps into his office. He was not afraid of them, was not even depressed by their uncalled-for consideration of themselves.
Indeed he was extraordinarily uplifted.