"Use Your Loaf!"

[Lord Roem]

The Chamberlain Dynasty represents one of the most influential in British Parliamentary history. In contrast with 'Radical Joe' and his heirs, the Brothers Miliband, the Sisters Eagle and the Cooper-Balls seem dour and insignificant. It is hard indeed to imagine what it would have been like to see the former Foreign Secretary lead his Party and be succeeded fifteen years later by his brother, Peace Prize in hand. However, Austin and Neville both managed it in a way that Ralph's sons seem fated not to.

Yet Joseph Chamberlain never quite lived up to the promise he showed as Mayor of Birmingham. Leaving the Liberal Party owing to his vehement support for a system of Imperial Tariffs as opposed to free trade, his followers joined with the Conservative Party in a coalition that remains effective even to this day. Sadly, despite holding a number of senior positions, including a brief stint as Leader of the Opposition, Chamberlain was never to attain the office that many felt him capable, even destined, to hold.

It could all have been very different.

Readers, starting in the next few weeks, I urge you to read and enjoy;

[Biggles]

Oh my god. I can't wait to read this.

I'd been toying with the idea of a TL based around Joe Chamberlain but I'm sure you'll do a much better job of it than I would even be able to attempt.

Best of luck with what I am sure will be another excellent TL.

[tonsofun]

Sounds interesting.
I love the title.

[B_Munro]

A TL where the Chamberlain name does not have OTL's unfortunate connotations for Americans (not to mention Czechs)? I am interested!

Bruce

[Faeelin]

I would read this, but my paleo diet doesn't let me read any timelines with grain in them.

[Blackadder mk 2]

Oh this is going to be fun,

[My Username is Inigo Montoya]

Why do I have to go to a place that has no internet this summer

[Julius Vogel]

Hurrah! I am very pleased to see a ATL based on JC!

[Lord Roem]

"Use Your Loaf!"

or

"The Powers of Progress"

Prologue

“By doing so, we shall in course of time,
Regenerate completely our entire land”

-------------------------------

Birmingham: At the Center of Britain's Economic Rebuilding
by Gabe Capell

22nd February 1954

Joseph Chamberlain Memorial Aerodrome is a unique structure in many ways. Quite apart from it being it the main aerial transport hub for fights into Great Britain, it also the only equivalent structure in the entire country to be named after a politician.

Britons don’t tend to idealize even their most successful mediaeval kings with in such a way, so it is a mark of Birmingham’s high regard for their former Mayor that they have commemorated his name in their largest building project of the post-war period.

The aerodrome is a world away from the shabby ones that I remember landing at on my previous visits to the country. Arriving at Northolt, some hundred or so miles to the southeast, fifteen years ago, I was greeted by herd of stray cattle that had wondered onto the landing strip.

There is little sign of such bovine misdemeanours happening in the sleek surroundings of the newly inaugurated terminal building. With the crescent-moon shaped roof stretching hundreds of feet above and behind me, I feel as if I am standing in a technocratic cathedral to the New Britain.

Of course, I muse as my bespectacled handler walks towards me, that is quite obviously the intention.

Merry Rees, as the young civil servant introduces himself, requests that I follow him to the waiting automobile. I am disappointed, readers will no doubt be aware of the ‘Linmo’ connecting the aerodrome building to the city centre. Having wanted to take the journey for some time now, I enquire as to the possibility of us using it instead.

Mr Rees smiles and shakes his head. It isn’t a suitable way for the government to treat an honored reporter, he tells me. Besides, he continues, the aesthetics of the sleek dual-track of the line is better appreciated from the highway.

Disappointed, I follow my new colleague through the cavernous arrivals hall. We are waved through customs, much to the chagrin of my fellow passengers, who must endure a bureaucracy that seems pleasantly resistant to mechanization.

An enveloping canopy covers the freeway outside the terminal proper, so I pay little heed to the rain that has been pursuing our flight since the mid-Atlantic. Mr Rees holds the automobile’s door for me, and we are soon speeding towards the City of Birmingham. Typically, the steel track above us immediately snakes away at a perpendicular angle to the road and it is soon out of my sight. I get the impression that this is one of Mr Rees’ small personal victories, something to break the monotony of chauffeuring around foreign reporters.

The journey is a rapid one, rather unimpeded by traffic, but it still leaves me enough time to see the way in which the municipal planners are attempting to transform the urban landscape into one befitting a European capital.

Because Birmingham is a capital, despite all attempts by the government to insist on prefixing everything with “interim’” in vain attempt to plaster over the actual reason for it being the new seat of power. Were one not aware of recent and not-so-recent political matters, one would be forgiven for thinking that London was simply beset by a bad case of Bavarian Measles.

The architects do seem to be doing well though, despite the nominally short-lived nature of their remit. Wide boulevards have replaced the meandering chaos that the old layout of the city, thousands of commuters travel underneath us in the new Metro, carelessly avoiding looking at the monuments and ministries that have replaced the industrial plants that used to dominate this part of the country.

We rejoin the Linmo as it enters Queensway Station, the main railroad artery to the rest of the country. The nearby terminus at St Martin’s Square is hardly used by the general public. Asking where the incoming locomotive has come from, Mr Rees reels off one of the unpronounceable gurgles that is a substitute for a proper place name in that part of the world.

I am informed that St Martin’s is on the mainline for the locomotives bringing back coffins from Gwynedd, Brittany and the other occupation areas that seem to be a perpetual drain for this nation’s demographics. I clam up for the next couple of minutes, I get the feeling that Rees has a personal connection to this.

A short while longer, after passing the official memorial to ‘Radical Joe’ opposite the Municipal Hall, we come to a halt outside the austere edifice of the Ministry for National Reconstruction, one of the many vast new structures that have begun to dominate the Birmingham skyline. Certain readers may be aware of the recent humiliation in the Georgia Senate last month, when designs for the new British Interior Ministry Complex were mistakenly used in place of plans for the new State Congress. Chuckling to myself at the recent memory, I hardly notice as we drive into the vast underground autopark.

An hour later, I am in the clinical office of Earl Slim, the new Minister. The patrician gentleman, one of a handful of peers in the new administration, actually seems the first person who is happy to see me since the Sommelier presented me with an overpriced glass of Merlot somewhere over Iceland.

Slim is a Birmingham native himself, and seems only happy to answer my questions about the rebuilding of the capital. I sense that he would be only too happy to have the city retain that position for the foreseeable future. Many citizens still talk in begrudging terms about “the South’s War” and the resulting chaos and expense that has resulted.

Yet the cynic in me feels that the same people would be downcast if they lacked the prestige that the conflict has awarded them. Back in the 1870s, Joseph Chamberlain transformed the city that now deifies him, taking unity firms into public ownership, clearing away slum housing and promoting a radical program of urban renewal that still seems to be unmatched by his political heirs in the City Council Chambers across the road.

Slim talks with the easy confidence of a man confident that his career has peaked at just the right time, a former army officer turned politician, reconstruction seems a natural home for a figure who prides himself on organizational skills and mass mobilization of human capital.

It is all terribly socialist of course, but Slim’s idol, whose statue stares impassively across the square outside, could quite easily fit such a description as well. Handing me a proposal plan of the new Birmingham, he encourages me to “get it framed” before, eyes twinkling, he beckons me to leave him as we make to to leave his generously apportioned office.

We spend the rest of the day touring construction projects. Slim is eager to point out the developing landmarks; the new “interim” Parliament building, a vast new concert hall and St Vincent’s Soccer Stadium where the final game of next year’s World Series is to be held. Everything seems endemic of a system finding a new purpose for a city that used to be entirely regional in outlook.

Perhaps most impressive, certainly for someone like myself raised near shipyards, is the complex system of canal docks that has already gained the colloquial term “Spaghetti Basin” from the locals. Watching the huge cranes unload their various wares from across the ocean, I feel I could make my way to my next stop by just walking across the roofs of the many cargo barges waiting for their turn in line.

We end the day atop ‘Old Joe,’ the clock tower that dominates the original university campus. Like anything of a certain age in this city, it owes a heritage to Joseph Chamberlain, a man responsible for establishing the college as a seat of learning at the start of the century.

It’s a pleasant evening, despite the February cold, and I am quite content to stay there for the duration, marvelling in the illustrious capabilities of Birmingham’s population. Slim leaves me with an apologetic wave, leaving to meet an Ambassador, and Mr Rees, for once, keeps his distance.

Soon enough however, the winds pick up enough to force me from my windswept perch by the clock-face, and we take the reassuringly smooth elevator back down to ground level.

Tomorrow, I am supposed to be heading off towards Powys in order to interview the regional army commander, but according to my handler, the security situation there seems to have worsened. Rees again seems reassured by this, hoping against hope that I’ll bid an early farewell to this uneasy country, but I politely inform him that I am not be dissuaded. To my surprise, he nods at me and I feel that I have passed some sort of challenge.

We head back into Birmingham, my luggage having been delivered to one of the few hotels deemed “suitable” for foreigners. Crossing back over one of the city’s many canals, I note another train gliding silently into St Martin’s Station.

This time, I don’t ask where it’s come from.

[Blackadder mk 2]

So something has gone horribly wrong if there is talk of moving the capital and a 'South's War' is being talked about but maybe other things are much better in Britain ITTL, as the optimist in me would say.

I wonder who exactly Earl Slim is supposed to be or what the Point of Divergence will be but I imagine we will soon discover that.

Good TL so far, Roem, hope to see more of this.

[Thande]

Something very, very big must have gone wrong for a capital shift like that...

Also, EdT can now join Jared in the "definitive style-stealing club"

[Lord Roem]

Originally Posted by Thande

Something very, very big must have gone wrong for a capital shift like that...

Also, EdT can now join Jared in the "definitive style-stealing club"

Hey, initiation/flattery and all that.

A load of this was stolen from Meadow as well, so I am at least an all-party plagiarist.

[The Red]

Originally Posted by B_Munro

A TL where the Chamberlain name does not have OTL's unfortunate connotations for Americans (not to mention Czechs)? I am interested!

Bruce

Back home however, the cornsequences of his policies may be far worse for the British people than Neville's.

[Thande]

Originally Posted by Lord Roem

Hey, initiation/flattery and all that.

A load of this was stolen from Meadow as well, so I am at least an all-party plagiarist.

I keep getting PMs from people saying "Can I steal your TL style?" and I always reply "What, you mean the one I stole from Jared?"

[Faeelin]

Hrm. So Britain was bombed enough to lose London, but not badly enough to be unable to rebuild?

[Ed Costello]

...Bloody hell, Roem - what have you done?!

Very intriguing introduction; I have to admit the EdT comparisons amuse me, since I was pondering earlier how this might compare to "Fight and Be Right" with its Chancellor Chamberlain...

[Meadow]

Originally Posted by Lord Roem

Hey, initiation/flattery and all that.

A load of this was stolen from Meadow as well, so I am at least an all-party plagiarist.

Colour me flattered! It's ever so good. Apart from 'aerodrome' still being the popular term, what else did you get off me?

Occupying Gwynedd and Brittany... something smells of a Celtic uprising, but with an 1870s POD? Blimey.

[Winston Smith]

I am so reading this, M'Lord. Most spiffing!

[Biggles]

As I recall, Joe Chamberlain was always dead set on alliance with Germany and made several attempts at building one during his life time.

Assuming that Joe avoided his stroke, which is what I guess this TL is based around, then the world war(s?) would probably have involved Britain and Germany fighting France and various other powers. That would explain a) how London might be in such a bad state and b) why Britain is occupying parts of France.

EDIT: my guess is that London either a) got nuked, b) got Dresden'd or c) suffered an attempted revolution or uprising and is currently undergoing some equivalent of the Troubles.

[Lord Roem]

Originally Posted by Thande

I keep getting PMs from people saying "Can I steal your TL style?" and I always reply "What, you mean the one I stole from Jared?"

I get the feeling that there is some Ouroboros system at play here and that some time traveller from the AH.com of 2267 is going to travel back and give the original layout two hours before the first DoD thread.

Originally Posted by Faeelin

Hrm. So Britain was bombed enough to lose London, but not badly enough to be unable to rebuild?

You are making the assumption that people want all the resources to go down there. Consider it payback for the cancellation of Leeds Supertram.

Originally Posted by Ed Costello

...Bloody hell, Roem - what have you done?!

Very intriguing introduction; I have to admit the EdT comparisons amuse me, since I was pondering earlier how this might compare to "Fight and Be Right" with its Chancellor Chamberlain...

I went back and read FaBR shortly after I originally had this idea about four months ago. I think that it is different enough to avoid seeming like plagiarism, but I am still worried that poor old Ed is going to come around and stare in appalled horror at it.

Originally Posted by Meadow

Colour me flattered! It's ever so good. Apart from 'aerodrome' still being the popular term, what else did you get off me?

Occupying Gwynedd and Brittany... something smells of a Celtic uprising, but with an 1870s POD? Blimey.

I think the basic length of the posts and the use of bolded text is fairly similar, but the idea of manipulated mastheads, a common theme to the quotes and the use of sources is entirely EdT based.

The Celts, well, what sort of wizardry could encourage them into rebellion?

I have a few plans for some of your public domain characters though, which I think is a common factor to both of you. I think "Gabe Capell" is just close enough to the original name to give people a fighting chance of guessing it before too long.

Originally Posted by Winston Smith

I am so reading this, M'Lord. Most spiffing!

Your readership, as ever, is much appreciated.

Originally Posted by Biggles

As I recall, Joe Chamberlain was always dead set on alliance with Germany and made several attempts at building one during his life time.

Assuming that Joe avoided his stroke, which is what I guess this TL is based around, then the world war(s?) would probably have involved Britain and Germany fighting France and various other powers. That would explain a) how London might be in such a bad state and b) why Britain is occupying parts of France.

EDIT: my guess is that London either a) got nuked, b) got Dresden'd or c) suffered an attempted revolution or uprising and is currently undergoing some equivalent of the Troubles.

Joe's ticker may become a plot point later on, but the PoD is going to involve another statesman's health, the offer of a Peerage and a Irish émigré deciding to settle with his widowed sister and toddler nephew in New York.