The 'star' speaker for debates and big-hall meetings was Robert Reynolds, who also wrote as 'Robertus' in the Socialist Standard. Small and sharp and savage-tongued, Reynolds illustrated perfectly the mixture of high passion and gritty erudition that was the Party. He was indeed, over-typical: the Party's other attribute of fierce independence was too strongly developed for him ever to be a good Party man, and his individuality was a source of continual conflict with other members. To an extent Reynolds despised most of his comrades, and did not conceal it.
His posture of intellectual superiority was by no means unjustified, but it caused irritation and more. The SPGB's arguments and attitudes rested on the assumption that all people were mental equals, differing only in class-consciousness or the lack of it. The answer to critics who could not envisage the working class en masse taking up socialist logic was always to point to the Party membership. And among the members differences in ability were not considered: it was often claimed even that there were no good or bad speakers but only speakers.
But for this, Reynolds might have stepped into Fitzgerald's shoes, He had admired Fitz; he was an outstanding writer and speaker, respected for his knowledge of theory, and had run Party classes for a number of years. But he was suspect for his unwillingness to identify himself absolutely with the Party, and it was Hardy instead who slipped into the shoes and in the nineteen-thirties became the undisputed eminence. In the early 'twenties Hardy had become one of the editors of the Socialist Standard and began to show his capacity — greater probably than Fitzgerald's — for marshalling statistics and facts in support of the socialist case. Under him, the control of the Standard became the key-point in the Party, until eventually policies and doctrines appeared to rest almost wholly with the editorial committe.
There was much about Hardy that should not have been acceptable to the Party as it was. He had been to a minor public school and had a degree in economics, qualifications which were wholeheartedly deprecated in the Party. He was well-spoken and restrained in manner Frank Dawe, possessor of a gift for descriptive epithets, called him 'the man of gentle nurture'. These things were made insignificant, however, by Hardy's complete dedication to the cause. The son of one of the Party's founders, he said once that he had always known what what he was going to do. At eighteen, in the war, he had left an exempted occupation to submit voluntarily to a conscientious objector's punishment and spent a year and a half in military prisons. The war over, he committed himself to the Party with almost religious intensity. During the second world war he debated in London with Mrs Barbara Wootton, and was asked by the chairman about his position in the Party. 'A nondescript member', Hardy replied. The Party liked that.
