TLIAW: To Hell With Hatton

A makeshift stage had been erected on the Pier Head, and at the moment, a fat old bearded bloke in a wheelchair was crooning into a microphone, to the seething distaste of the thousands of people who had, at the beginning of the night, crammed themselves into nooks and crannies in the human wall that gathered around the stage. Now, though, most were lolling about with their weary heads resting on the elbows of total strangers.

A distant smattering of gunfire woke up a few of the lighter sleepers, who had been lulled by a wash of high-pitched Kentish singing.


"Oh, for fuck's sake! Is that auld bastard really going to do another twenty minutes of fucking scat?" Gazza was, needless to say, getting quite impatient for the headliners to make their appearance. His mate Denzil roused himself at this outburst, and gently pushed a pair of legs off his abdomen, running his hand through his mohawk in the process.

"Go easy, Gaz - look at him sitting there in in his wheelchair. They've probably put him up there as a favour to someone. Jimmy Savile's gonna jump out of a van in a minute, just you watch!"

"Oh Christ, I fucking knew he'd have a trumpet up his sleeve somewhere!" The only people dancing were a gaggle of about eight hippies, who seemed to be under the impression that their heads were enveloped in massive balls of yarn.

"I reckon it's a cornet, actually. I know cuz of that time I ran into Jona Lewie in the pisser and - " Denzil loved telling this story a lot more than Gazza enjoyed hearing it. To tell the truth, Gazza was starting to - if not enjoy - then at least tolerate the lilting noises coming from the stage, but his sanity demanded that he cut off his mate's reminiscence with manufactured ire.

"Same cunting difference! Just let me stick that piece of bloody brass up his paralysed cock-hole - "

An explosion sent tremors through the crowd, and led to the collapse of a tower of amps and a hell of a lot of feedback. The cornet fell silent. Among the sleepy groans, Denzil could be heard giving in to the common resentment: "Oh, don't tell me he's lost his place again!"

Within minutes, the bearded singer had sped off the ramp stage left, to a smattering of polite applause. This applause stopped as soon as the MC bounded up and started spraying phlegm on the first dozen rows.

"That was Robert Wyatt, ladies and gentlemen, playing his first public performance since the Seventies! He's still got it, hasn't he? Now, a lot of people ask me: Alexei, why do you - " This story looked like it was going to go on for a while, so the hippies returned to their bongs and the skinheads to their moaning.

"He's not doing another joke, is he?" asked Gazza, fingering his nose-piercing, "Doesn't he know that no-one gives a shit about the emcee when the headliners are just about to come on?"

"Hey, shut the fuck up, Gazza! I like Alexei Sayle."

"He's been shit today though."

"True."

"...and I said, 'Tell that to Rudolf Hess!' And now, the moment you've all been waiting for! The reunion, for one night only, in this free Concert of Solidarity, the best band that's ever been... THE BEATLES!"

Thunderous applause rang out as John, Paul, George and Ringo filed out to their marks. As they swung their guitar straps over their shoulders in perfect unison, Lennon and McCartney shared a short, professional smile with one another, and began to play. After a few exploratory jangles reverberated around central Liverpool, the Beatles kicked into gear for the first time in a decade and a half. It was magic.

"Oh, flew in from Miami Beach B.O.A.C.
Didn't get to bed last night
On the way the paper bag was on my knee
Man I had a dreadful flight
I'm back in the U.S.S.R."​

Gazza and Denzil didn't know how lucky they were.

Hello, this is Uhura's Mazda from the Alternate History News Channel -

Sod off.

Well, we've got a 24-hour rolling news channel, so I've got to fill up the time somehow.

This is a stupid conceit. Even the ironic 'Ha, look at me, I'm actually doing a self-interview, look how omnipresent this is' variations are wearing a bit thin.

Like this, you mean?

Watcha gonna do?

So, er... the Beatles. Obviously, Lennon is still alive, which means a pre-1980 PoD...

Well done. Basically, James Callaghan calls a general election in 1978, before the Winter of Discontent, and wins a razor-thin majority. The Wets gain control of the Conservative Party due to Thatcher being discredited by electoral failure, while the Right of the Labour Party remains in control under Healey and Eric Varley as PMs, and David Owen and Peter Shore as Leaders of the Opposition. A Right-wing putsch gets rid of PM Ian Gilmour in 1993, in favour of Rhodes Boyson. We pick up the story in 1995...

This sounds familiar...

I did it as an Alt-PM list the other day, just to get it straight in my head, but don't look at that if you don't want spoilers.

Fine. Get on with it then.

Steady on, you of all people should know I've got to go to work now!

Cocktease.

Very interesting, please do continue!

The chippie was one of those dingy shacks you always get in the rough end of a seaside city. A row of limp objects enveloped in batter that looked like fag-paper were arrayed under a stained sneezeguard, while scrawny old Bert Hackett lazily dragged on his thirtieth roll-up of the day. He was good at smoking. A solid inch of ash clung impossibly to the end of his ciggy as he prodded a piece of something that claimed to be cod with his spatula. Bert's eyes darted back and forth, making sure that kid with the cone of batter bits wasn't staring, and he smiled sneakily to himself - not too much, so as not to disturb the lance of ash that he'd amassed.

Bert slowly raised the spatula to his dripping nose, and invaded a hairy, bunged up nostril with the corner. There was a small 'pop' and the spatula descended - carefully, carefully - back down to the sneezeguard, scraping, millimetre by millimetre, the various bits of matter that clung to it against the edge.

Ding-ding! Ding-ding!

Bert positively jumped out of his skin, the spatula flying out of his hand and into the deep-fat fryer. He'd become so engrossed with his personal hygiene regimen that the entrance of customer - a woman, no less - was temporarily a foreign country on his mental map.

He squinted - bastard fag had dropped its head onto a haddock.

"Alright, Lesley?" he sniffed, retrieving his spatula with some tongs.

"I'm boss, Bertie. How's the ma?"

"She's bevvied up tonight, for Christ's sakes. With her heart n' all, she's givin' us worries. You political lot over at Degsy's house again?"

Lesley Mahmood hummed a wordless commiseration, and replied: "S'right. Did you vote for us the other day?"

Bert shrugged his shoulders. "I was here all day, like. Can't shut shop when there's kidders wantin' batter bits. Right, Ed?" The boy squeaked something to the affirmative. "He's a good lad."

"Wish you 'ad. Oh, eight cod, four haddock, three plaice and 9 portions of chips, by the way. You always do a bit too much chips. Yeah, these new election rules are jarg for us at Militant."

"What rules?"

"Y'know when we had that vote a couple of years back on Europe? Well, the other question on that ballot was over something called STV for the local authorities, which should have been put in place last year, but the divs couldn't be arsed to do it properly. Anyway, the council wards we were winning up to now with, say, 40% of the vote, are no good to us now 'cause 60% want anyone but the Militant Party and they all end up accumulating for Labour or the Tories because they get counted differently to how it used to be. Bloody calamity last night. One more year of this system and we'll have lost control of Liverpool City Council. We already lost Haringey and Bradford the other night."

"You want mushy peas?"




Bert made sure, when everything was vaguely warm, to wrap everything up in the older newspapers. He was savvy enough to know that the Militants wouldn't have much of an appetite for his fish if it ran into newsprint concerning their failure at the election which had apparently happened the other day. He hadn't heard anything about it, but then he didn't actually read the papers. He would have heard if it had been one of the ones deciding who was Prime Minister, though. Everyone seemed to get excited about those ones, but to be honest, Lesley (who'd been trying to educate him on most Friday nights) sounded as if she was keener on the other type - the boring type.

So Bert used the yellowing papers at the bottom of the pile, with greyed-off newsprint and snipped-off coupons. And on one particular page, caressing a metric tonne of chips, was to be found these words:


And, soaking up the juices of a lukewarm plaice, this scrap would have been legible to any observer who was prepared to keep up with the striding figure of Councillor Lesley Mahmood and stare down at the packages under the crook of her elbow:

I don't think that man has a Food Hygiene qualification.

Very, very good sir.

It was the summer holidays, and in 1995, the summer holidays were more welcome than usual.

For Heidi, Year Seven had been a big step up. Sometime, it felt as if the teachers were just as adrift as the kids were, what with all the new rules, but Heidi had only had sympathy at the start. When the Prime Minister had stroked his muttonchop whiskers on Blue Peter and explained the Back to Basics Education Policy, patiently and thoroughly, it had all seemed like harmless fun, especially when Tim Vincent had sprayed Mr Boyson with slime, like on American TV. Put that was a year ago, and school didn't seem as fun anymore.

The first thing Heidi had noticed was the dullness of the lessons, compared to primary school. After the first week of settling in, there was a real expectation that kids should learn everything they were told, which Heidi didn't think was fair. She remembered when Mr Walton, the kindly old History teacher who wore sweater-vests in the height of summer, had interrupted one of his first droning lectures with a question:

"...and so, the Domesday Book was never satisfactorily extended North of the Humber. Miss, ah, Range, could you tell me in which year William the Conqueror completed the survey?"

"Er... 1066?" Heidi replied. She hadn't paid much attention since the lesson on the Battle of Hastings, and was mainly concerned with chatting about music with anyone who would listen.

Mr Walton furrowed his brow and gripped the bridge of his nose. "I am, ah, afraid that that is an incorrect answer. Please pay attention in fut - " he trailed off, noticing the apparition of the Headmaster, looking in through the window in the door. "Now, Miss, ah, Range: I'm going to have to, ah, do this to you now." He gingerly picked up a beaten-up half-metre ruler from the whiteboard and shuffled towards Heidi's desk at the back of the class, tripping up on a stray backpack in the process. Nobody laughed or said a word. Perhaps a few of them saw a tear poke through the corner of Mr Walton's left eye - nobody was certain afterwards. What was certain was that Mr Walton stood stiffly beside Heidi's desk, weighing the ruler in his hand, and, with a glance towards the window, brought it down on the back of her hand.

She cried quite loudly that first time. Neither Mr Walton nor the Headmaster were able to look her in the eye for a full week after the incident, but by then everybody had had a taste.

By Easter, no teacher thought twice about using violence. A clip round the earhole could do wonders for concentration, for instance, while very few truants missed a class after that first caning. Sir Rhodes Boyson had been on Blue Peter again saying how proud he was of all the little boys and girls, and how they ought to show proper British respect to all adults, not just teachers. He talked about "the good old days" quite a lot, that time, but as far as Heidi was concerned, the last good day had been the one when Sir Rhodes Boyson has been covered in bright green slime.

At least she'd learnt a lot that year. As well as learning to speak when spoken to, and not to bleach her hair, and what year William the Conqueror wrote his book, she also learnt Chemistry and Home Economics. Mr Peake said they were just two ways of learning the same things, and proved by cooking an egg with a bunsen burner, but the Home Ec teachers were very sniffy about this 'modern' take on their domain. But at least, when she saw Anthony Worrall Thompson drizzle half a bottle of brandy on some lamb shanks on Ready Steady Cook, she began to feel a lot more affinity to the Sciences.


"Holy fucking shit! What the fuck was that?" cried Gazza as his rusty, bonnetless Ford Cortina was thrown two feet into the air immediately above Dale Street and crashed back down again.

"An explosion, you gobshite!" screamed Denzil. He yanked open the passenger door, just like everyone else in the interminable queue, and joined the throng pressing towards the pillar of smoke rising from just down the road. Gazza, pausing only to close the padlock on the driver's side door, dashed after his mate.

"Suspension's fucked." he muttered angrily to himself. Screams were to be heard emanating from the other side of this fucking crowd, the gawping d - "Oh, fuck! The fucking building's fucking rubble, man!"

It was true. There was just a massive pile of masonry where once had been a large Victorian emblem of stability. Several people had shards of glass lodged in awkward places, and there were groans coming from under the debris. Already, an impromptu bucket chain had been established to put out the small fires that had taken root, while some of the burlier onlookers were beginning to madly claw at tiles and bits of stone with their bare hands. Those who were unable to fight their way to the front kept up a running commentary.
"What's this building?"
"Is it the IRA?"
"It's the Municipal Annexe. As was."
"What's a Municipal Annexe?"
"Mainly a Conservative Club, I reckon. I've only been in - "
"They had the local education department in it as well - "
"But I think it was going to be sold - "
" - they do a delicious roast venison - "
" - I came here to do some forms for our Molly - "
" - Saudi businessmen - "
" - lizard men - "
" - into a Hotel, I heard - "
"It's almost directly over the Queensway Tunnel, for Christ's sake!"
"Won't somebody please think of the children?"

Denzil had fought his way to the coalface. He wasn't a tall man, but he was stocky, and he'd been handy in a fair few bar brawls in his time. But now he was picking up pieces of dressed stone that weighed half as much as he did in an animal frenzy, chucking them over his shoulder as if they were pinches of salt. He wasn't even thinking.

But then he turned the stone that he'd sream about every night for the rest of his life. It was wet underneath.


Councillor Lesley Mahmood left the meeting in the Municipal Annexe as miserable as she'd entered it. She was nominally in charge of Education in the City of Liverpool, and as a member not only of the local Militant Party Executive Committee, but also of the Council Cabinet, she felt that she ought to at least be able to impress upon the local Headmasters and Headmistresses that corporal punishment wasn't mandatory. But this time, as always, they'd frowned and talked of the National Behavioural Standards Authority checking up on their records and how they'd be sacked if they didn't keep up certain quotas. It was a complete joke.

She'd let the Educational Department go home ten minutes early, and switched all the lights off and everything herself, as a simple gesture of solidarity. Education had the first floor, and everything above was the Conservative club, which was, thought Lesley, a bit of a metaphor for local government - the Tories were always on top, whoever was elected by the people of Liverpool.

Still, she left the light on in the main vestibule for the old codgers to dodder upstairs by.

"Lesley!" It was Derek Hatton, Leader of the Council for the past few years.

"Degsy! How did the rally go?" They had a quick handshake and sauntered out of the front door. As they left, a small girl with newly bleached blonde hair stepped timidly into the main vestibule. She had a large backpack with her. Neither Militant gave her a second thought.

"Poor. Nobody listens anymore. Mark my words, Lesley, we'll have a Labour Council come 1996. And that's no better than having Sir Rhodes Bloody Boyson down here himself! If something drastic doesn't happen, the British Road to Socialism will be a cul-de-sac - "

That was when the world exploded. Before Lesley could remember her own name again, she'd somehow organised a bucket chain and saved the lived of three Conservatives in dinner jackets. Turn, take, pour; turn, take, pour. That's how you stayed on top of it. A skinhead was clearing the rubble like nobody's business - a proper hero. She found herself staring at his bleached-blonde hair, trying to remember something important...

She tripped on a piece of stone that the squat skinhead had lobbed her way and lobbed the bucket of water all over him on the way down. She landed in something wet.

It was the girl with the backpack. Except she now covered a much wider area than she did before. Lesley's eyes locked with the skinhead's, both petrified by sheer disgust. Nothing moved for what seemed like several hours.

And then there came a ringing voice from the top of the mound of debris. "Friends, Scousers, Countrymen!"

Somehow Degsy had found himself an actual red flag.

The Red said:

Very interesting, please do continue!

Click to expand...

Mumby said:

I don't think that man has a Food Hygiene qualification.

Very, very good sir.

Click to expand...

Thank you, phhhhhhriends.

Oh God, Degsy as leader of Liverpool City Council. This will be very interesting.

This is looking interesting. Very good.

"What do you call this, Sir Rhodes?" asked Leon Brittan, licking his lips.

"It's called a bacon butty where I come from." replied the Prime Minister. "by the way, you've got HP sauce on your chin, Nigel."

In some parliamentary democracies (and other regimes), the centralisation of effective power is so extreme that government by Cabinet is more of a hindrance than a help. In situations such as these, an informal body springs into being involving the main players, and some of the droller political commentators have begun to call this system 'the Kitchen Cabinet' for reason of its size and ad hoc nature.

This particular Kitchen Cabinet meeting (un-minuted, of course) was taking place in the actual kitchen of 10 Downing Street, and the Prime Minister had treated his good friends Leon, Nigel, Neil and George to a midnight feast in prime Northern tradition to keep them going through the hours of speculation . To be honest, none of them had any great affection for their Prime Minister - it was doubtful that more than five or six people in the entire country had been pleased that Sir Rhodes Boyson, or all people, had blagged himself the command of one of the World's Great Powers by hammering down Her Maj's bedroom door in the middle of the night. But Conservatives are creatures of tradition, and as soon as Sir Rhodes was Prime Minister, it had always been the intention to replace Gilmour with a man of such... strength of character. To be sure, some of his more reactionary views had had to be moderated by wiser heads, but surely that was the whole point of Cabinet? In the end, as long as Boyson was allowed Education as his own personal fiefdom, he was inclined to allow free reign to the Treasury and so forth.

"Is it gone now?" asked Chancellor Lawson through a sickening gurn.

"Surely your daughter has taught you some basic table manners over the years!" Four middle-aged men laughed at the Prime Minister's little joke for just long enough to make it seem genuine.

"Sr Rhodes, let us consider the facts," said Sir George Young, who, despite not holding a Great Office of State, was always present at these little gatherings by dint of being the only person everybody in the Conservative Party respected. Naturally, he was Chief Whip. "A bomb has gone off in central Liverpool. It goes without saying that this is a terrorist attack perpetrated by... persons unknown."

"The IRA." nodded Neil Hamilton.

"Well, there's been no evidence suggesting an IRA link as yet. But the target was a Conservative Club attached to some municipal offices, so we can be sure that whoever did this isn't too fond of the Tories."

"We're dealing with somebody clever here:" said Boyson, "They placed the bomb to interfere with transport links across the Mersey as well as to destroy the main target. The, er, Queensway Tunnel to Birkenhead is out of commission, which is obviously adding to the furore." Boyson was the only who hadn't finished his butty, which he was nibbling at thoughtfully as he spoke.

Leon Brittan had begun pacing about the - frankly, cramped - kitchen while this post-prandial discussion had been going on. Those words had been said in various combinations over the past several hours, only enlivened by periodic reports from MI-5 or Uniform, basically saying that nothing was certain. "Am I the only person here who cares more about the riots than bloody commuter links to the Wirral? What news we've had indicates that there's been rioting, looting and all manner of civil disturbance in Liverpool - and we need to do something about it. Why don't we call Portillo and tell him to send the Army in?"

"That's exactly what these terrorists want us to do, though!" Neil Hamilton banged his fist on the table for emphasis, but not too loudly, for the sake of the servants. "If they see khakhi next to the, the Liver Building, we'll be called fascists and all manner of things. Best to leave well alone and clear up the mess when it all dies down."

Lawson piped up: "That's just irreverent, Neil. Look, we're all tired. Let's get some sleep and make some forthright statements in the morning, accompanied by firm actions to restore security to Merseyside."

A long pause ensued, during which Sir George Young nodded off, as per orders. It was nearly midnight. Perhaps MPs should be paid for overtime...?

"We should probably just leave it to the locals for the time being." continued Lawson, stifling a yawn. "Although I don't like the sound of this Derek Hatton chap - "

"Oh, to hell with Hatton! I'm going to bed. Nigel - Nigel, get back next door with you."


The beginning of the Liverpool Revolution had been almost embarrassingly easy. In fact, Derek Hatton wondered why he hadn't done any of it before. His second mass public speech of the evening had gone well. It almost hadn't mattered what he'd said. What mattered was that the People saw that their elected representatives cared about them. He had been flamboyant, robust and opinionated. He had implied blame for the attack on the National Front, the CIA, the Original IRA, Mossad and, in what even he would admit was a bit of a leap of faith, the 1922 Committee - all in the space of around ten minutes. What mattered, in the end, was that panic was averted, and that the Scousers trusted Militant to deliver them from their nightmare.

What really warmed the cockles of Degsy's heart was that, when he had bit the bullet and declared the Workers' State of Liverpool at the climax, there were thundering cheers. This was happening. Joe Devaney and Alan Fogg were leading crack squads of Working Volunteers to confiscate the food monopolies of profit-making supermarkets - the Co-Op wasn't to be touched - and stockpile food for the coming siege. The local Militant MPs were touring their constituencies with loudhailers, explaining the situation and the new regime to housewives in nighties. The Committee for Public Safety was assembling in the main Council building. This was happening!

He had to make a decision about who to blame for the bomb before morning.

"Comrades. You all know each other, I assume. Good. Well, I think it would be best if we were the people responsible for the safety and personal security of the people of Liverpool for the duration of this period of national Revolution. I'll be General Secretary - just to keep everyone doing what they're supposed to be doing and organising the basic stuff. The ideology will come from those two behemoths overt here - Ted Grant and Peter Taaffe, Trotskyite theorists and organisers both, and founding members of the Militant Party ever since 1981. It was just good luck you were both in the area in the midst of all this national ferment." Taaffe and Grant exchanged a sceptical glance but remained silent. "Meanwhile, Councillors Felicity Dowling and Lesley Mahmood will show us lads how to best represent Liverpudlians in co-operation with the Revolutionary programme. It is no longer time for electioneering, my friends! The country is ripe for Socialism! But we cannot leave behind those who are too slow to see the future for what it is. that is why you two - Tony Byrne and John Hamilton - will join us from the Labour party, to represent the many diverse tendencies of Liverpool and the Labour movement. Tony, you can be in charge of the finances, like you were during the Mil-Lab coalition of 1984-8, yes? Excellent! And John, as an elder statesman in local politics, not to mention the kindly uncle of the City, you shall be the Protector of the Workers' State - head of state, if you will. You'll be our relatively moderate face to the rest of the country, so as we can try to spread the next stage in History out from its womb beside the Mersey.

"Comrades, we face a bright future, starting tomorrow. It will be difficult, yes. We will have to win over any opponents in Liverpool; we'll have to win over the local bobbies and prevent any military force from attacking us and killing our flower of Socialism in its precarious hanging basket; we'll have to incite strikes, demonstrations, sympathy marches and collections wherever Militant is organised. But we can do this. For the first time since the Soviets atrophied into State Capitalism and then Late Capitalism, we can change the world for the better. Who's with me?"

The sleepy cheers made Degsy's day. That was two successful bits of demagoguery out of three, which wasn't a bad innings. To tell the truth, he'd had that speech planned out since h was seventeen, with minor variations - mainly concerning personnel. It was an unimaginable weight off his mind simply to be able to give it to anyone other than a mirror. To top it all off, Peter Taaffe immediately took out a shopping bag full of Spitfires from somewhere and shared them round. Derek moved closer to Lesley, who'd been a bit distant that evening. For obvious reasons, of course.

"Do you think the chippie will still be open?"

"I don't fancy it - I feel sick."

"I'm not too chipper myself, Lesley. That false flag operation by the 1922! Hell's teeth!"

"I - I saw the girl, Degsy." They looked into each other's eyes for a moment, and a flicker of shame passed over Hatton's face. Not for long, though. "She wasn't IRA, or Tory, or American. She was a girl. With scars on her wrists."

"Whyever she did it, it is done. We owe it to her that Mike and all the Education people had gone home by the time she plucked up the courage to... I - I do feel sorry for her, stranger though she was. But her actions have given us an unmissable opportunity. We can fight for girls like her - whatever 'girls like her' are like - but only by making her a victim, rather than a bomber. From now on, the Municipal Annexe Conspiracy was a false flag plot by subversive conservatives. Small-c, big-C - it doesn't matter. This is the only chance we'll get to shape the future."

That sounded quite good, too, for saying he hadn't slept in forever.

---

As the little gathering died down, and the Committee for Public Safety retreated to their respective homes and hotels, Protector John Hamilton turned to Lesley with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his lips, and said "I don't know whether Hatton's right about this ideological aspect, but damn it - I always said, when I die, I'll go to Hell with Hatton, because he will make it seem like Heaven. Be seeing you, Lesley."

I am very interested in seeing where this goes - but what in the hell have you done to my city?!

Just read the first two chapters: very interesting, and you're clearly an extremely talented writer. Your evocation of scouse banter seemed spot on to me: "bevvied" indeed!

Ed Costello said:

I am very interested in seeing where this goes - but what in the hell have you done to my city?!

Click to expand...

It's just a little exploded! It's OK! It's OK!

Basileus Giorgios said:

Just read the first two chapters: very interesting, and you're clearly an extremely talented writer. Your evocation of scouse banter seemed spot on to me: "bevvied" indeed!

Click to expand...

This, and all the other compliments, really do mean a lot. Especially as I've not been to Liverpool in ages and I've got a Scouse phrasebook and Google Maps up on other tabs.

I really should have started on the next update about six hours ago, but an impeccable nut roast and some bad news regarding family have delayed me a bit. I'll try to crank out a couple of updates tonight, though. The schedule must be maintained!

[Excerpt from the morning edition of The Times]



John Hamilton, Protector of the Workers' State, had only just woken up.

That wasn't true, actually. He had only just hauled himself out of bed and put some crumpets on the grill (three, today - he felt like being rebellious, before realising for the eighth time that morning that he was technically taking part in an actual rebellion), but he had been awake for several hours. He'd been reminiscing about the 'eighties. Of necessity, his memories were political in nature. He'd been a City Councillor since '58, and Leader of the Council from '78 - no, '76 - until 1992. Or '93. Roy Gladden had defected to Militant over Christmas, so he wasn't sure exactly when Labour's minority had become a no-confidence situation. It had all been far too exciting, at any rate.

He'd always been on the Left of the Labour Party, but he was old enough to find the idea of leaving it distasteful, even as the centrist ministries of Callaghan and Healey had dragged on, buoyed by economic growth funded by North Sea oil, but with little hope of more workplace democracy. Eric Varley had dusted off the old In Place of Strife proposals in - when was it? It might have been late 1987, because Healey had only stepped down that year, and Ian Gilmour had only won so convincingly in '88 when he promised not to scrap it, like his backbenchers were so keen to do. But anyway, he saw himself as a Labour man, through and through.

Even when Labour wanted nothing to do with him. The Gang of Eight had split off, ooh, fourteen years ago, and founded the Militant Party, attracting a whole smorgasbord of aging Trots and youngsters who'd skimmed Naked Lunch and The Motorcycle Diaries and come out with the delusion that they were the Future. They lost most of their Commons seats in '83, but they got that Scargill troublemaker to bring round the NUM leadership to their side, and the dominoes kept falling. Councillors were elected across the country - Hamilton had to give them credit for their focus on local issues; it really paid dividends - and in '84 they'd blown Liverpool City Council wide open. The obvious thing to do was to co-operate with them. Degsy had become Deputy Leader, but Hamilton just let him get on with it. all those marches and protests. They'd got Healey to give them a massive subsidy in the end, which Degsy had said was owed them - in fact, they'd already spent it - but he hadn't explained why. Either way, those had been interesting times. Militant had lost a bit of momentum towards the end of the Long Labour Government, and lost enough seats to allow Hamilton to administrate without the radicals, but it hadn't been the same since.

So then Ian Gilmour had become the first Tory PM since... yes, Heath. Decent sort, Heath. Bit odd. Not that there was anything wrong with being a bachelor... Anyway, Gilmour wasn't all that bad. He was almost indistinguishable from Healey, when all was said and done, but his Moderate faction couldn't hold off the Monetarists forever, and as he weakened, Militant grew. They'd held a few of the London Boroughs forever, now. And then there was Bradford, and Glasgow, and even Newcastle for a couple of years. The last round of election hadn't been good for them, though.

So '93 had come round, and the Monetarists - all fans of that bastard Milton Friedman - had forced Gilmour to hold a referendum on Europe, and he'd agreed on condition that there be a second question about STV for local councils, and he'd won both. The Monetarists weren't happy, to say the least, and they'd rebelled against Clarke's budget in the November, and everything had been a bit interesting, in the Chinese sense, until Boyson had somehow made himself PM. Not even his own faction liked him, and it was hard to see how he'd win the next election, what with his privatisation of BT and BA, and his repeal of Varley's industrial reforms, and his old-shool education policies. But the Tories had closed ranks around him because he'd slobbered on the Queen's hand while she was in her nightie, and that was that.

And that, more or less, was what had brought John Hamilton - a Quaker and a magistrate who had never so much as read The Communist Manifesto, let alone Das Kapital - to the strange position of nominally leading a Socialist Revolution.

He adjusted his dressing gown and devoured his first crumpet of the day. He probably ought to check if anything had happened since he'd gone to bed.

13:02 PM​

Michael Buerk was living a nightmare. He was sitting at the newsreader's desk in Broadcasting House, talking about bombings and protests and Revolution on the one o'clock news bulletin. This was - he chuckled grimly - a bit of a moral maze. It all came down to this. Should the BBC simply report the facts, or should it decry the senselessness of what the people of Liverpool had gotten themselves into, and thus run the risk of pro-Government bias? Luckily, he was interrupted before he could venture too far down that route.

"... seceded from the United Kingdom overnight. We, ah, oh. We go live to Downing Street, where the Prime Minister is making an unscheduled announcement." Finally he could relax. The cameras weren't looking at him anymore. This unbearable heat under the studio lights!

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that those who treat the laws of their land with contempt should be taught a firm lesson. In fact, we require only the re-legalisation of capital punishment in order to hold those responsible to account with, as I believe the common phrase runs, a 'short, sharp shock'. I speak not only of the terrorists who let off the bomb in the Municipal Annexe in Liverpool yesterday afternoon, killing over thirty people, but also of the traitors who have taken the law into their own hands in that fine city. In fact, they may even be the very same individuals. I say to Councillors Hamilton and Hatton and their cronies that their behaviour will not stand! Their foul calumnies against the Conservative Party - some vague and base spoutings about a false flag operation - they will be shown to be completely baseless.

"Now, it was my original intention to send in the fine men and, regrettably, women of the British Army to extinguish this petty rebellion before it even started, but the American President and certain advisors, whom I trust deeply," he said this with gritted teeth, "have prevailed upon me to be lenient, and give the rabble-rousers of Merseyside twenty-four hours to retract all statements and actions made since yesterday. In return, they will be given an... amnesty. I sincerely hope that the traitors will see sense and return to their homes without further disruption to the good people of Somerfield's." The assorted press laughed. Sir Rhodes Boyson turned away from his podium as if to retreat back into Number 10, and Michael Buerk hurriedly gulped from his glass of water, struggling frantically to think of a sufficiently non-partisan comment to make on the speech. But the BBC camera picked up a short flicker in Boyson's eyes, and he span back round slowly to the podium with what Buerk would, if he wasn't at work, have called a shit-eating grin.

"Oh, and by the way," said Boyson, "since this is evidently a state of emergency, we the Government have every reason to ban the traitorous Militant Party and exclude all of its members from the House of Commons for the duration of this crisis."


The Kitchen Cabinet were watching this spectacle on a small portable television mounted on an actual kitchen cabinet.

"Did he really just say that?" asked Leon Brittan, with a Hindenburg-sized hint of incredulity.

"This wasn't discussed!" cried Nigel Lawson. "I thought we resolved to remain calm and act like disappointed schoolmasters! A State of Emergency is not the line!"

Neil Hamilton shook his head and spoke quietly. "Be that as it may, he's just turned himself into Literally Charles I. There's going to be a backlash from Militant, not only in Liverpool but across the bits of the country where left-wing people live. For God's sake let's hope they don't have an Oliver Cromwell up their sleeve."

"It says here in the paper that somebody called Councillor John Hamilton has been named Lord Protector - sorry, just Protector. No relation to Neil, I hope." said Brittan.

"Oh, he's all right. I met him while I was Minister for Local Government." contributed Neil Hamilton, now Foreign Secretary. "He's no Cromwell - he's probably having a nice leisurely carvery as we speak."

"Lucky bastard."

[Extract from the autobiography Maps of my Life, by Dr Alexander Richards]



Dave Nellist MP was terrified. He wasn't even a proper Revolutionary, just a fellow traveller who had been ejected from Labour and welcomed into the loving arms of Militant a couple of years before. And now, forced by yesterday's State of Emergency to do his best impression of John Pym, he was leading a mob through the streets of Coventry.

And it had all gone to shit. What had started as a positive and peaceful rally in solidarity with the Scousers had become progressively uglier. It had begun when Arthur Scargill and his merry men had crashed the party - they must have hired a coach together, by the looks of it - and started grandstanding and chaining themselves to things. This tended to piss off the Police. Then an intense young man with a ponytail had thrown a Molotov Cocktail and everything had gone a bit Homage to Catalonia.

Now, a bunch of strong men holding big stick with nails in them were asking him what to do, and Dave didn't have a fucking clue.

"Should we go and set fire to the Police station, Mr Nellist?"

"Call me Dave."

"Should we?"

"Um, fine. Absolutely. They're the... enforcers of a capitalist ideology. We must sweep them aside if the working classes are to be truly free."

Another one ran up to the MP for Coventry North East. "Hey, Dave, we've found a load of old guns in the Museum! I say we stock up and make a dash for old St Michael's Cathedral, the one that got its roof blown off in the War. There's a lot of cover there. It'd be just like Perfect Dark!

"I have no idea what that is. But it sounds like a decent idea. You, Jim, lead a squad to the Police station. Bring Frank, so he can pull his Molotov Cocktail stunt again. Harry, get some men together and bring all the old weapons to the Cathedral - not just the guns - we might need some halberds if we run out of ammo. And check if the guns are actually operational before you start hauling them around the place, please. Arthur - oh, Christ, where the hell did you find a red flag in a shopping centre?"

"A true socialist always keeps one about his person, just in case." replied Arthur Scargill. Dave Nellist ignored the jibe. He assumed Scargill was playing silly buggers, but he couldn't resist staring at the sleeves of some of the tankies that had congregated in the Upper Precinct, just in case.

"Well, let's fly it from the Cathedral, then! Everyone follow me!"

He could get used to this 'being in charge' lark.

18:04 PM​

Peter Shore, Leader of the Opposition, was really a bit too old to be going on BBC News - and, indeed, to be Leader of the Opposition. But ever since David Owen had mucked up the 1991 election, Shore had been the last, best hope for a unity candidate. That was four long years ago, and it was generally acknowledged that it was too late to hold a leadership election now that there could be a general election any minute, and Shore was going to have to put retirement on hold until he'd become Prime Minister. That was the plan, anyway. Now, none of this was certain. Would Labour's poll ratings implode in an anti-left frenzy? Would Boyson get a bounce for being the face of Order against Chaos? Would there even be an election at all?

All that was certain was that Martyn Lewis was asking him questions he'd never expected to have to answer.

"Does the Labour Party have sympathy with the cause of the Revolutionaries in Liverpool and Coventry?"

"I can state categorically that the Party, and most of all, I myself, do not support the violent and reprehensible actions of these rabble-rousers, and I would add my plea to that of Mr Boyson that they set down their weapons and return to their hom - "

"But surely, two members of the so-called Committee for Public Safety in Liverpool are long-standing members of the Labour Party, including the head of state."

"Uh, these individual members do not represent the Party. As a Party, we are committed to Democratic Socialism, with the emphasis on the 'Democratic' part. By betraying this principle, Mr Hamilton and Mr Byrne have shown themselves to be phony members of our Party, and will be ejected from it as soon as the bureaucratic niceties have been dealt with."

"But this merely demonstrates that your procedures are not adequate to weed out members who would support the Liverpool rebels..."

"Just as many Tories would be more at home in the Liberal Part - "

"...such as Tony Benn, for instance."

"You would have to ask Mr Benn for his own views on the matter, but I can assure that, having known him for as long as I have, he is no closet tankie. This cruel misappropriation of his image by the media does nothing to help the credibility of the BBC. Mr Benn is motivated purely by loyalty and passion for the Labour movement and the Labour Party, and any assertion otherwise would be slanderous in the extreme."

"So, having condemned the violent measures taken in Liverpool and Coventry, would you also disavow the anti-Government protesters in Glasgow, Nottingham and, indeed, here in London?"

"Um... It would be wise to restrain ourselves from dissent this weekend, while the crisis is so febrile. Who knows when peaceful protest will overflow into armed Revolution, as in Coventry? On the whole, while many of their complaints are legitimate, we in the Labour Party entreat well-meaning demonstrators to go about their daily business until order is restored throughout the nation."

"Mr Shore, thank you very much. Now, in Hereford, a seagull has brained a seven-year-old child - who remains un-named - with its powerful beak. We have an expert in the studio to discuss the safety implications of the new bird-muzzles which have been issued to West Mercia Police..."

THE SEAGULL RISES

Mumby said:

THE SEAGULL RISES

Click to expand...

What, you guys thought the Leftie takeover of Liverpool was the main plot of this TLIAW? Huh. I see it really as the backdrop to the start of the Laridaean Revolution, which inevitably ends up with a puffin defecating on the Stone of Scone.

On the plus side, you've actually managed to create a semi-plausible Liverpudlian declaration of independence.

On the other hand, it's ruled by Derek Hatton.

Please understand that this leaves me deeply conflicted.

I'm fascinated to see just where this ends up.

Ed Costello said:

On the plus side, you've actually managed to create a semi-plausible Liverpudlian declaration of independence.

On the other hand, it's ruled by Derek Hatton.

Please understand that this leaves me deeply conflicted.

I'm fascinated to see just where this ends up.

Click to expand...

I'm afraid the negative side of the ledger is going to mount over the next few days.

Still, in order to maintain your ambivalence for as long as possible, the next update will centre on Coventry.

Dave Nellist MP hadn't slept in three nights. At first, this had been due to excitement and business, but now - well, let's just say the screams of agony and the loud bangs had been getting progressively closer. But he was so, so exhausted. The olive-green wallpaper of the front room of Number 12, Charterhouse Road was closing in on him. Dave closed his eyes and tried to think of where it had all gone wrong...

On the Saturday evening, everything had seemed pretty hopeful. Dave was leading a flipping Revolution and, what's more, he was making sure that future filmmakers would have some fantastic set design, even if they were a bit crap at action scenes. There were spluttering wood-fires in braziers throughout the ruined Cathdral, illuminating groups of women and children, and the table of the High Command, just where the altar ought to have been. The Cathedral had been half-destroyed by a German bombing raid back in World War Two, and never rebuilt, as a gesture of something or other. They probably just couldn't afford the lead to put the roof back on. Still, it made for an atmospheric - perhaps a little too atmospheric, given that many of the non-combatants were huddling in shivering herds in the nave - HQ for the People's Republic of Coventry.

Dave Nellist, though, had spent quite a lot of the time when he wasn't supposed to give orders looking out of the paneless windows of the Cathedral at the scurrying mobs of the City. Unlike what he had been told of Liverpool, the people of Coventry had taken it upon themselves to nick as many TVs as they could fit in their hot hatchbacks. "Fill your boots, lads." Dave had muttered to himself early on, but now that the flames were mounting ever higher, he was less sure that leniency had been the best option.

"L’homme, l'homme, l'homme armé
L'homme armé
L'homme armé doibt on doubter
Doibt on doubter.
On a fait partout crier
Que chascun se viegne armer
D’un haubregon de fer.
L’homme, l'homme, l'homme armé
L'homme armé
L'homme armé doibt on doubter."​

Did Jim think he was in Les fucking Miserables? His detail had formed up in decent rows and were striking their butts against the ground as they marched. One of them was carrying a blunderbuss. At least they'd mostly got sharp bits of medieval metal under their arms as well.

When Harry and his crew arrived in the Sanctuary, they spilled the beans: "They're all deactivated, but they look pretty scary and you could still crush a man's skull with one of them."

"Might as well keep carrying them then, just for the looks of things." Dave had replied. "Why don't you send a few people out to fend off the looters and make a few of them join us?"

"And put out the fires."

"That too, yeah. But don't be too enthusiastic about saving John Lewis."

And then it was the next day, the Sunday, when the soldiers had come.

Boyson hadn't sent them to Liverpool, but Coventry was manageable, and it had excellent transport links to the rest of the country - including the Army bases. He had to be seen to be doing something, Dave supposed. But whereas, in the morning, the People's Republic of Coventry had covered pretty much all of the territory it claimed, and hardly anywhere was on fire anymore, and the corpses in the street were covered with old bedsheets; by evening there was precious little left.

The Army had quickly cottoned on to fact that the Militants had no firepower (although the blunderbuss had gone off at one point, to the immense surprise of its owner, and sprayed an aggregation of walnuts, nails and bits of string across a squad of be-khaki'd men from the Royal Welch Fusiliers) and street fighting had begun. It was occasionally hand to hand stuff when the press of numbers carried as far as the Boysonite positions - very exciting, from time to time. But the general trend had been against the rebels. Frank, the Hero of the Coventry Revolution, had been shot in the spine while dropping a bottle of Caol Isla with a burning hanky stuffed down the neck into the manhole cover of a tank. He died doing what he loved.

Afterwards, in the afternoon, the command centre in the Cathedral had been bombed for the first time in fifty years. This time, it was the jolly old RAF who were raining fire on the innocent people of Coventry, and even those fighters who had been less eager hitherto were in agreement that this was, as they called it, a 'dick move'. Dave had looked upon his beloved Coventry at the time, as the walls of the Cathedral (which had withstood a bunch of foreign fascists but not the home-grown ones) crumbled into piles of red brick. The charred cross, that symbol of Coventry's resilience against aggressors, was just a scattering of twigs. They'd had to retreat to a safer area.

And then it was suddenly Monday morning - the 7th of August, the day which everyone thought would be their last. The People's Rebuplic had been reduced to a few terraced streets just East of the Inner Ring Road: there was a barricade at the junction of Terry Street and Humber Avenue; and another on Northfield Road, just before it met St George's Road outside the school; and two more on Gulson Road - one long diagonal one blocking off Charterhouse Road and Bramble Street, and another further down, just below where it met St Margaret Road.

"We can slow them down with these barricades, Dave. Everyone's getting really into it. One woman was dragging a Welsh Dresser out of her front door without any help - she was only 4 foot 6!"

"They can still come up from the River - the Sherbourne. And through the gardens. It's only a matter of time before the Bosses come and spring their oppression back on us." Dave was so tired...

"Let's hope they don't realise that. Because if they dooooo..."

Jim's voice deepened and turned into the roar of a bomber engine, punctuated with explosions. In the little corner of Coventry which was all that was left of the PRC, not many houses still had all their walls intact. All these worried, unwashed people... They were asking him for orders, and he hadn't got any ideas.

"Just keep fending off the infantry on the barricades. Every Fascist who dies on top of that Welsh Dresser is an addition to our defensive system. The lucky thing is, they can't fit their tanks down these narrow streets, even if they could get through our Wall of Steel." It was a Wall of Pine Furniture, really, but Dave didn't want to get too technical. It was the middle of the night.

And there was Arthur Scargill, that radical trade unionist, an example to them all, sitting in Number 31, David Road and telling them of his days on the picket lines. His one regret, he said, was that he'd never become the leader of the NUM, but he was a household name all the same, though the Establishment mocked him at every opportunity. A tear welled to his eye, and he told his gathered acolytes of his idyllic childhood days in Worborough Dale, and led them all in a singalong.

"Lonely rivers flow
To the sea, to the sea
To the open arms of the sea
Lonely rivers sigh
"Wait for me, wait for me"
I'll be coming home, wait for me"​

It was, in fact, just like Les Miserables, until Number 12 was flattened half an hour later by a British bomb. Dave had dashed off to hit troops over the head with a dented musket on Northfield Road at the time, but he still heard the change on the wind. One moment there was a belting rendition of 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life', the next... it wasn't tuneful.

Now, in the small hours of Tuesday morning, Dave had had enough. He stepped out of the front door of Number 12, and saw the piles of bodies on Charterhouse Road. They'd run out of bedsheets long ago. He recognised most of them, and had even wasted valuable synapses on memorising some of their names. He looked around. He saw that the barricades had been physically pushed back, so that there was one at either end of Charterhouse Road. Perhaps there were other pockets of resistance a few streets away, or even in other neighbourhoods of Coventry. But probably not. Dave just hoped that Liverpool wasn't getting this treatment. There weren't many people at the barricades, and those that were, were gaunt and shell-shocked, blackened by dust. Bullets buried themselves on the other side, - not many were getting though, but the Partisans would be sitting on sawdust by breakfast time.

There was only one thing for a Leader to do. If he were a Roman, he might have fallen on his sword, or brought the tradition up to date and shot himself, but he didn't have a sword, or a gun, or the courage. There was an antique halberd lying on the ground next to half of a twelve-year-old child, but Dave, gripping the shaft, suddenly didn't fancy it. He looked around. A few yards away, there was a body covered with a sheet that was still basically white in most places. To ensure that his intentions were clear, he ripped off the wet, red bits. With a flash of inspiration, he poked the halberd through the sheet in two places. It actually looked quite good.

They'd make paintings of this scene, thought Dave. He strode towards the Northern barricade, and climbed to the top. The remaining Partisans didn't stop him - they merely nodded. He held the white flag aloft with a buccaneering pose, illuminated by the fires burning behind him, and the massed ranks of the British Army ceased fire.

"We, the people of Coventry," cried Dave Nellist MP as fatigue finally overtook him, "hereby make our surrender. Unconditiononononally."

He collapsed groggily, but observers later declared it to be a 'picturesque' piece of physical punctuation.

The Coventry Revolution was over.