Chapter Eight
15:00 PM, 13th August 1995
Tenth Day of the Revolution
Norman St John-Stevas, Baron St John of Fawsley, was a Tory. You could tell by the name.
He wasn't using his real name at this clandestine meeting, though. He wasn't sure exactly why, since he was very familiar indeed with the other two, but 'Simpson' had said that Intelligence might be listening in, or some claptrap. At any rate, it made the whole enterprise deliciously sneaky, which appealed to Lord St John's more secretive side, which had been finely honed during his youth. Simpson had decided to call him 'Simon', which was apparently a reference to a famous Saint, although Lord St John was damned if he could remember where he came on the Calendar of Saints. The other man, just as old as Lord St John, was to be known as 'Stony', which was a bit obvious, really. A sight more obvious than Lord St John's inscrutable appellation, to be sure.
Simpson was speaking. "...and Boyson is completely out of touch. All he achieved by sending the troops in to Coventry was to kill and maim a bunch of civilians and destroy a Cathedral - I'm sure you were very sad to see it go, Simon - while the situation in Liverpool has just stagnated over the past few days, with the Peacekeepers keeping the rebels alive and the Army bored and restless. There has been no Leadership for about a week now, and I can confirm that the Kitchen Cabinet are at a standstill as to how to deal with the current situation. It is time to make Peace, not only between the major Parties, but with Militant as well. I'm sure that moderate men such as ourselves can bring Peace to this country and guard it in the immediate aftermath of the Emergency."
"The General Strike is, of course, an embarrassment," replied Stony. "It took me three hours to get here today because all the roads were blocked by ex-miners and ex-hippies. We need to make sure the TUC doesn't excercise any influence over the resolution of the crisis, let alone turn violent."
"Perhaps if Militant were to deal with us, their acolytes would acquiesce." suggested Simpson. "I have made a preliminary extension of the hand of friendship to a certain gentleman from Coventry, who shall, of course, remain nameless." Simpson evidently enjoyed the sneakiness of their little conspiracy as well, but it was all hogwash. It was plainly Nellist that he was talking about. Simon rolled his eyes.
"A settlement with Militant and the TUC is a sine qua non of our Unity Programme as I understand it," he said, adjusting his purple tie, "but we must be firm as regards the rule of law and, more importantly, the protocol of government. As Bagehot opined, the English are stupid - we need not throw the banana of novelty to the apes of public opinion, merely to present ourselves as the guardians of the status quo ante. Fundamentally, this so-called Revolution is an aberration from the English psyche, and, like all Revolutions, it will end at the same place as it began."
"Let us hope that some good can be gained from the exit of Sir Rhodes, at least. I ...
heard he threatened some strikers with a cane when they surrounded his car outside Downing Street the other day. He's caned children, he's bombed Coventry, and he's threatened to cane grown men. How is he any better than a common thug?" offered Simpson.
"Well, he's certainly common, isn't he?" said Stony in a voice dripping with mock-pugilistic sarcasm.
So that was it. Lord St John didn't enjoy being involved in coups, but even he could see that Boyson wasn't accountable to the Party. He wasn't aware of Cabinet being summoned in full for more than half an hour at a time over the last week or so, and while needs must when the Devil drives, well... the chants of the demonstrators in Parliament Square were only getting louder. Lord St John was ready to do things that the oak-beams of the British Constitution would never bear. But Select Committees had been introduced after his long campaign back in '89, and that had been pretty bloody revolutionary on its own. A Government really ought to be accountable to its backbenchers, especially at a time when unity was needed more than ever.
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10:22 AM, 16th August 1995
Thirteenth Day of the Revolution
It had been supposed to be a public execution, but fear had gotten the better of the Committee for Public Safety. After the first raids on the Community Food Banks by counter-revolutionary wreckers (and starving Scousers) some of the more moderate members had become slowly resigned to the idea that they wouldn't be cast as the good guys if there was ever a film made of this True Story. This wasn't going to be
Battleship Potemkin all over again.
Councillor Lesley Mahmood had been rather dispirited recently. As well as being on the CPS, she was also a member of local government - the only effective Government available to the Liverpudlians at the moment, since their five Militant MPs were disqualified due to Parliamentary elections having no democratic legitimacy for various reasons that made perfect sense for about forty seconds after Degsy had explained them to you. They were meeting in the Liver Building every day, calling themselves the Quorum and having interminable conversations about national matters. Many of the protesters were listening to them, and if the Quorum ever came out against the City Council and the Committee, well... there would be trouble.
Neither faction wanted to be responsible for the lack of food. This was the only resource which was drastically short, but it was a major one. The UN Peacekeepers did their bit, of course, but what with the no-fly zone and the one-ship blockade of the Mersey by the Royal Navy, precious little was getting in by other means. Lesley didn't know how much longer they could hold out, materially. Probably longer than they could hold out with regard to morale. At least they'd managed to smuggle in Ringo Starr from Birkenhead in a dinghy. That was something.
So this execution - the only one in the Red Terror, for after Lesley's hyperbolic outburst, nobody had been stupid enough to mention the death penalty in any trial - was going to be a private entertainment for the pleasure of the Committee for Public Safety and select members of the Council. The Quorum were specifically barred, for fear they'd leap to the defence of their former colleague. Kilfoyle wasn't a fundamentally bad man. Yes, he'd stockpiled a few tins of beans, but who in their right minds wouldn't? What his crime was, thought Lesley, was to prove by his very existence that the Militant Party's dominant position was no longer electorally tenable. He'd defeated Lesley in the by-election after Eric Heffer's death, turning Liverpool from a one-party state to a competitive area. Meanwhile, this Proportional Representation farce would prove that Militant were never going to get more than 40% of the vote generally in the City, and would lose control of the Council in '96. Kilfoyle was, when all was said and done, a memento mori for Degsy's big project. The ego boost from killing a reminder of your own doom was not an appropriate occasion to be drinking champagne.
The makeshift gallows in Conference Room F had a few bottles of the stuff dotted around the ledges. You could pour it yourself, which made it more of a party for all concerned - comparatively speaking, of course. Those who didn't want to be there at all were drinking heavily and grimly. This cohort formed most of the people who had been invited, but Degsy was swishing round in his bloody fitted suit, almost forcing an espresso shot of confidence down the throats of his carefully targeted victims. Lesley couldn't believe she had ever liked the man.
She found herself standing next to John Hamilton, the Protector, in a corner which was home to a table covered with cucumber sandwiches and about fifteen doilies (each of a subtly different design) provided by the ladies of the local Methodist Church. "Enjoying the refreshments, John?"
He was more worried than she'd ever seen him, she realised - even worse than when they'd blackmailed Healey into subsidising their budget deficit back in '85. He whispered: "I don't think I'll get out of this alive, you know."
Lesley remained silent. She looked around to see if any of Derek's minions, or any of the more rabid Taaffeites (who were now in the ascendancy over Grant's drier Trots, who themselves were rather unsuited to enthusing an embattled populace) were listening in.
"They'll do me just like
we're doing Peter Kilfoyle, you know. I can feel it. Derek's gone too far and the country hasn't followed our lead. He
promised the country would follow our lead! The Three Days of Coventry do not a mass popular uprising make!" There tears in his eyes now; he was pleading for a friend. Lesley knew that Tony Byrne, his fellow Labourite, was getting very close to the Quorum group, presumably out of cynicism. If so, he was playing the long game. "You don't happen to have any cyanide pills, do you?"
"No, John. Hang in there, won't you? We're going to need you... afterwards. To rebuild. Whatever happens." Lesley paused. It was almost impossible to say this to a person who had dedicated his life to a Party of the bourgeoisie, leaving workers in the lurch ever since Bevan died, but... "I
do regard you as a friend, John. You know that, don't you?" The old, idealistic man gave a wan yet warm smile. Lesley couldn't bear to look at his eyes.
Just then, a couple of People's Volunteers dragged Kilfoyle into Conference Room F. He let out a gasp at the surprisingly well-built gallows that Degsy had apparently spent the night constructing with the help of two of his carpenter pets. This gasp wasn't the first thing Lesley noticed about him, though. First came the uneven growth in his beard, then the horrific state of his nails. And then the fact that he had no thumbs. Lesley was pretty sure that he'd had thumbs last time. It was the kind of thing people tended to notice.
Peter Kilfoyle MP seemed very unwilling to climb up, and then he bucked his head like nobody's business while the Volunteers tried to get the rope around his neck. Degsy had managed to acquire a black hood, somehow. Maybe he'd found a particularly morbid Methodist to make it for him.
"I, Derek Hatton, Deputy Protector of the workers' State of Liverpool, am charged with carrying out the sentence of death by hanging that the Committee for Public Safety have handed down.You're a traitor, Pete, and a counter-revolutionary. Hanging's too good for you. The worse thing is, you wouldn't even tell us about your conspiracies against the proletariat of this fine city! Do you have
anything to say for yourself?"
"I do, actually." The condemned man drew himself up. "You're not going to get away with this. You're guilty of treason already, and now you're all complicit in the murder of a democratically elected Member of Parliament. You won't last long. You'll starve to death, or they'll send the troops in, or something. But the point is, you've got no prospects; no hope. And you'll be arrested, not for trumped-up political nonsense, like me, but for actual crimes, those of you who survive - at best, some of you will escape to Havana or Pyongyang, and then you'll be all alone, with no direction home, as the good bard said. So if I've done wrong, and I hope I haven't, well... I'll see you all in Hell. Will you do the honours and join me, Derek?"
Clunk! Snap! Creak!
It wasn't a pretty sight at all, not least because Degsy hadn't got round to actually putting the hood on yet.
Derek Hatton gave a theatrical yawn. "What a boring bastard! Now, who's for more champagne?"
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11:47 PM, 18th August 1995
Fifteenth Day of the Revolution
"Come on, yer bastard, sell me some fuckin' fish! My stock's proper anwacky, like! Yer can't serve people with off fish when they're feelin' jarg about the whole political shite!"
Bert spat. He had been down these docks every night for the past week, trying to cajole any fisherman who would listen to keep his chippie going for another day. All he had left was a cod which was, truth be told, more bogey than batter as it stood. Bert's cold still hadn't subsided.
There was only one fisherman down the docks that night. To be honest, none of them were even going out now that half of the Royal Navy was camped outside the harbour. They'd arrived that morning to support HMS Lancaster and immediately began bombarding the city for all they were worth.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Bert didn't even flinch anymore. It was surprising how easy you just adapted to it, by raising your voice and stoically expecting that this next one would have your name on it. It wasn't even a distraction anymore - just a nuisance. This must have been what it was like in the war. Most of the spare people - principally the dockers and fishermen - had been levied up to fight fires and pull people from the rubble and heroic shite like that. They were used to it, of course. It was ridiculous to think back to how shocked everyone was by the terrorist attack on the Municipal Annexe, and how heartwarming it was that the first people on the scene formed a bucket chain out of sheer good-person-ness. Now, it was the Hallmark of Workers' Co-operation, and it was a grudging matter of course whenever a bomb fell.
Mate, don't piss yer kecks," said the fisherman, Carl, "all us sons of the sea have jibbed off from fishing since the fuckin' Navy arrived to blow us sky high. Haven't you seen how flat the old city's looking this evenin'?"
"Why're you here then, on yer bill?"
"What's it look like? Nickin' tackle."
The sound of singing came over on the breeze. It was some high-pitched Southern bloke doing a duet with Craig Charles. Bert had had a look in at the big Solidarity concert on the way down, but everyone said the Beatles hadn't been on yet, so there wasn't much point in waiting about. Bert had seen them first time round, anyway. He'd rather sleep at this point.
"What we call freedom in the North
means our freedom to use you
and if you don't co-operate
we'll cut off your supply lines.
But you'll be free to re-connect
if you beg our forgiveness."
Bert turned round, despondently. He wouldn't open the chippie tomorrow - nothing to sell. Might as well get a bit of kip. He still had to creosote the garden fence - that'd do as a job for tomorrow. And, wrapped up in his own head, Bert trudged off.
Snap! Splash! "Fuck!"
Bert was rudely snapped back into the real world by the sound of the fisherman's neck being wrung and his corpse dropped into the sea. However, he only worked this out after having spun around and caught sight of at least forty figures in wetsuits. Most of them were carrying blunt instruments, and the others, some of whom had long, wet hair which they were teasing out of their eyes, were in karate poses.
One of the figures stepped forward, spinning a pair of nunchuks lackadaisaically. "The name's Thatcher. Mar - "
Bert had a very decent turn of speed, for someone who literally breathed saturated fat for a solid proportion of the day.
