Red is not one Colour: Vignettes from A Thousand Shades of Red

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    Major Crimson

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    It Waved Above Our Infant Might

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    The bus conductor turned back “Now arriving, Whitehall.”

    Artie glanced up briefly and, shaking out his copy of the Tribune, joined the rest of the shuffling commuters making their way out into the London street. As the bus pulled away he exhaled and glanced up at the mess of steel and glass in front of him. He’d never really understood “revolutionary Architecture” or architecture of any sort really. No-one seemed to have decided on a specific meaning, for the Russians it was the blocky, dull cylinders of “Socialist Realism”, for the Americans it was expressed in colour; with red rooves and rainbow murals on every wall, for the French it seemed to be the hyper-symmetrical lanes and cubes of Nouveau Paris, where Artie had once spent an evening very lost indeed. The British, in typical fashion, had returned to a somewhat more refined but acceptably sleek new style for their vision of the future. Art deco statues, metal murals and skyscrapers that avoided the ‘reactionary chains’ of symmetry with one great tower leaning at a somewhat alarming 75 degree angle, another one with a series of different sized pyramids poking out from each of its four sides and, of course, the great behemoth in front of him; the New Tower of London.

    More than a thousand feet up with crimson-stained glass smoothed off to hide its inner metalwork, it pierced the London skyline like a shard of ruby. Tapering in from all four sides into a jagged tip from which flew the flag of the Commonwealth, it was probably 300 feet square at its base and grew thinner toward the top in regular fashion. About three-quarters of the way up there was a great, semicircular disc, sticking out about 200 feet and probably double that across. Props from all around the face of the tower fanned upwards to support the unwieldy protrusion and from them hung various banners, nearly all of them red. The three major unions (Service, Defence and Mines/Metalworkers) look the left spokes, the three nations (England, Wales and Scotland) the right and in the middle a massive 50 by 25 foot flag, the red-white-blue and roundel shining out over London. The Tower had always reminded Artie of the tower of Babylon puzzle he’d received for his 10th birthday but stretched out, squared off and with one of the larger pieces out of place. The thing had taken bloody years to build and Artie wasn’t the first to wonder if the few hundred million pounds spent on its construction might have been better spent feeding the proletariat it was meant to be a monument to. Nevertheless, it was sure as hell inspiring and it didn’t half capture the national mood; grand, confident and a strong shade of red, what more could you ask for? After all, the Witan had to meet somewhere.

    As the hussle and bussle of the London street stormed around him, he plucked a somewhat plastic red rose from the inner pocket of his waistcoat and affixed it to his breast. As he did so, he noticed the rather round, bearded figure standing on the steps of the tower, clad in his own waistcoat with a matching flower. Artie smiled and the two men met in each other in a warm hug.

    “Good Morning Brother Arthur!”

    “Aye,” Artie replied, shielding his eyes from the sun as he looked about, “‘Tis nae a bad one, how’ve you been Brother George?”

    “Not bad, not bad. We’re making some progress on the Germans and the Mediterraneans but the Russians are giving us no end of trouble.”

    Both men sighed, despite the best efforts of the British state things were, as usual, spiralling out of control.

    “And the French?” The Scotsman asked with some hesitation in his voice.

    “HA!” George’s response came as a single, deafening burst of laughter. “Wouldn’t even talk to me after they heard my surname, something about the ‘Genetic Taint of Aristocracy’.”

    Artie smiled back, “Windsor is an awfully posh name George. Just be glad you’re not called Rothschild.” They laughed but inside Arthur winced at his own joke; even the English branch had changed their names after what happened across the channel. Weren't many Goldsteins left either, or 'steins' in general.

    Checking his watch George nodded and gestured towards the Tower. “We’d best be heading inside, the session begins in half an hour and I want to run through the specifics of your speech on the Public Transportation Bill.”

    The two men walked up the steps together, chatting amiably and optimistically about the future. Throughout the city and the country, people woke and worked just as they always had. They read the news, took their kids to school and grumbled about work. They had always done so under the King and now they did so for the people. Around the world, people lived under red flags but in Britain, they did so happily, proudly. Many were not half so lucky; red, after all, is not one colour.


     
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