A kind of insurance

[sawyl]

From Hari Kunzru's interview with Michael Moorecock in Saturday's Guardian:

Violent second world war stories were a mainstay of Fleetway's output, featuring square-jawed Tommies bayoneting craven Germans while snarling xenophobic insults. When Moorcock refused to write for these titles, "they decided I was a communist. But the boss of my department wouldn't fire me, because he was convinced the Red Army was going to come marching up Fleet Street any minute, and there I'd be with my Makarov pistol and my rimless glasses, lining people up to be shot. They kept me on as a kind of insurance."