The Storyteller
Banned
Never thought I'd see a timeline where one of the Sugababes becomes a suicide bomber.
Also, Rhodes fucking Boyson as PM? Terrifying thought.
Also, Rhodes fucking Boyson as PM? Terrifying thought.
TLIAW: To Hell With Hatton
- Thread starter Uhura's Mazda
- Start date
This is horrifying. Compelling and wonderfully written, but horrifying all the same.
I actually went to school with Peter Kilfoyle's son; it all adds an extra sense of shock to proceedings.
Out of interest, how big an area does the Worker's State of Liverpool cover? Does it extend out into any of the outlying areas (I imagine there'd probably be fifth columns in Huyton and Bootle, at the very least) or is it just the city itself (or not even that - I can see a whole swathe of the city around Woollen and Aigburth being rife with counter-revolutionaries...)?
I actually went to school with Peter Kilfoyle's son; it all adds an extra sense of shock to proceedings.
Out of interest, how big an area does the Worker's State of Liverpool cover? Does it extend out into any of the outlying areas (I imagine there'd probably be fifth columns in Huyton and Bootle, at the very least) or is it just the city itself (or not even that - I can see a whole swathe of the city around Woollen and Aigburth being rife with counter-revolutionaries...)?
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Mark Thatcher in that teaser penultimate line? Mum will presumably be down the pier selling "99"s.
I know that its an idiot's task to draw conclusions about an author's stances based on their alt-historical fictional portrayal of politicians, but whereas you're sympathetic to Nellist I'm assuming that you really don't like Hatton. That hanging scene was chilling - so matter-of-fact, carried out with the banality of any other local government meeting.
I'm also enjoying our nostril-mining batter merchant. Is this the genesis of another breakout character who actually does nothing? A Chipshop Powell?
Wonder what Al Bore is doing in this universe...
Keep going
I hope I'm not making this too partisan, but you're right. I have a lot of respect for Dave, not least for keeping the home-fires burning after his expulsion from Labour. Hatton strikes me as a rather cynical man, since he seemingly immediately went from 'well-heeled Leftist insurgent' to 'Cypriot Tory property developer' with no grace period whatsoever. Whatever one's views on Socialism, you can see which of those two was legitimately principled.
Bert was originally going to be a sounding-board for Lesley in one scene, but he's developed a bit since then.
FINALLY someone noticed!
The WSL has nominal control over the area covered by the City Council, and this is where the UN Peacekeepers have set up their cordon sanitaire on the Mainland. However, some areas within this are not under effective day-to-day WSL authority. Outside the City limits, sympathy demonstrations occurred on various scales in various locations, but only Coventry turned violent. These died down until the General Strike was announced, but most people are using this as a holiday rather than get involved in a fight in which both sides are the baddies. The exception to this is London.
This is going to sound awful, but I'm quite proud of being able to horrify you. However, had I known you had a connection to Kilfoyle, I'd have chosen another victim.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Chapter Nine
2:09 AM, 19th August 1995
Sixteenth Day of the Revolution
2:09 AM, 19th August 1995
Sixteenth Day of the Revolution
The unit known as the 'Merseybeaters' didn't care about a single eyewitness. Their objective was simply to get into Liverpool, cause trouble and try to bring down the fractious Workers' State in the process. Survival was not part of these objectives. Mark Thatcher had first suggested this idea to Sir Rhodes a week or two ago, and had got in touch with a few of his arms trader friends to supply men and women desperate enough to sign up for this forlorn hope.
The Wirral Temporary Army Camp had been their home for the last eight days. The regular soldiers - thousands of them, all in tents, preparing for the lightning assault which would surely pull the rug from under the traitors - looked down on the volunteers with the air of proud professionals. This sort of thing was deemed unsportsmanlike, but to be fair, so was smuggling Ringo Starr into a supposedly besieged city inside a crate of UN-mandated bananas.
Mark Thatcher had seen the maps, not only on the trestle tables with which the staff officers made do in the camp outside Birkenhead, but also splashed across BBC News every bulletim. To the North, East and South, Liverpool was surrounded by a string of Frenchmen and Americans and assorted others, and they in turn were surrounded by Regiment upon Regiment of what The Sun insisted upon calling 'our boys'. To the West of the City, though, lay the Mersey, and as much of the Navy as could be brought to bear. On the other side, on the Wirral, rested the brunt of the Army - the ones who were going to get stuck in ASAP. The only thing preventing the final assault was the fact that the Queensway Tunnel, which burrowed from Birkenhead to the middle of Liverpool, was out of commission: blocked by concrete and earth shaken from the roof during the terrorist attack on the Municipal Annexe, which was almost on top of the Tunnel. Rumour had it, there were still people trapped down there, unable to get out of their cars. Some said they could hear faint screams in their dreams. It couldn't be true.
But there was no point in thinking about such matters now. By sheer luck, they'd rowed across the Mersey on a night when every man and his dog were at this concert thing, and even the dockside whores were nowhere to be seen.
The downside of this was that the Merseybeaters would have to try harder than espected to be noticed over the sight of the reunion of the Beatles. There was no propaganda value in being relegated to page 4.
"We need to get on stage." said Thatcher, "Zilvinas, you go after that bloke who stank of fish. Don't want to lose the element of surprise."
---
Bert had, eventually, run out of steam. Perhaps he ought to start taking - what was it called? - cod liver oil. Nah, he'd never seen a cod with a liver. Not by the time they reached him, anyway. Bloody stupid idea, fish having livers. They didn't even drink.
So he'd hid. There was a cruise ship in the dock at the time - docked at the wrong place at the wrong time, really - Barry had said that the holidaymakers had been repatriated one the Peacekeepers had turned up, but Barry was usually full of jarg. The upshot was, though, that there was an empty, dark cruise ship in the offing, and Bert needed a place to hide. Luckily, most of the locks had been snapped open when the Volunteers had raided it. Bert found a decent-ish cabin and lay down on the floor, with the bed blocking the line of sight from the closed door, just in case one of those bastard ninjas had tailed him there.
After a few minutes, Bert pulled the duvet cover off the bed and spread it on the bit of floor he was cowering on. It was surprising how much wear it took on your joints, cowering.
All of a sudden, there were voices in the hallway.
"Are you sure there aren't any bugs, Eddie?"
"It's P&O, Ted. They've got certain standards of cleanliness."
"Hmmph. You know what I mean."
"As if anybody's going to care, afterwards. You can hear the guns, can't you? Whole city'll be flat by the end of the week. Nowhere to hide then."
"We shall have to ensure our mutual security in that event. This one's as good as any, I suppose." The door clicked open, the voices got louder and the door clicked shut once more, implying that Three was very much a Crowd.
"Haha! Oh, Ted. Surely the fate of the Revolution is worth more than the personal safety of the individual!" This twat was getting on Bert's nerves, the fucking smartarse. Even worse, the duvet wasn't particularly thick, and Bert's elbows were digging through to the carpet below. He was ropable.
"We can do much more to advance the cause of Socialism outside Liverpool than within, Eddie. Now, I'm not going to start doing activism for activism's sake like Peter Bloody Taaffe, but, well, Rob Sewell supports the... the 'Grantite' tendency, as do the majority of the Party. We need to rebuild by educating workers and bringing about a Revolutionary Situation, not by grandstanding on a stage with Elvis Costello and the bloody Beatles, like Degsy's doing tonight. We need time, and we need experienced men to make this possible a generation from now. The USSR has fallen, Eddie - as you well know - and in twenty years, maybe our project won't be so tainted, and we won't need bastards like Degsy and his cronies anymore."
"His cronies?" asked the voice belonging to Eddie.
"You know, them on the City Council. Degsy's creatures. The ones who'll lead a bunch of activists on mad errands just so as to look like they're doing something. And his yes-men and -women, like that Lesley Mahmood. She's his stooge. He obviously put her up to proposing we hang poor Peter, for instance."
"Poor Peter. He didn't deserve what those bastards did to him. The Committee for Public Safety is an unjust body - I know you're on it, and all, but - "
"We agree there, Eddie."
"So what do you want from the Quorum?"
The Quorum. Fucking weird word. Bert had only heard it before when Lesley (who these blokes seemed not to like as much has he did) explained that the local Militant MPs had declared themselves to be the legitimate organ on democracy in Liverpool, as opposed to the City Council. Bert had zoned out at this point, but the explanation had gone on a while longer. He tried to dig a globule of wax out of his earhole without making the usual sucking sound, but failed. Interestingly, the men standing not four feet away from him didn't react, which might mean that the noise was just really amplified inside his own ear and silent at a distance, and he could start cleaning his ears when he had customers in from now on.
"I want you to contact Boyson's Government and the TUC, and say we're ready to discuss terms. If we make peace, we can throw the more disappointing amongst our number under the bus, so to speak. Not in a bad way, just to prune the bush so it can flower next spring, you know what I mean?"
"You know, Ted, Peter and everyone always go on about how you're senile and you've got your head in the clouds and you spend all your time discursing on Das Kapital and all that. But you're really a sneaky little shit, aren't you?"
"For the Greater Good." There must be a wink going on up there.
"I like it. Agreed on the plan."
"Let's shake on it first. We can't sign an agreement, for reasons which I hope are obvious, but let's just say that we seal our agreement with the wax of friendship." Bert frowned at his finger and brushed the earwax which clung to it onto the duvet.
"Wait! Did you hear that, Ted?" Bert froze as Eddie's normally sardonic voice took on a keen edge.
"Hear what?"
"It was a kind of... rustling sound. Listen..." And they did, all three of them. Ted Grant with a relaxed kind of interest in what sort of capers might eventuate, if any; Eddie Loyden MP with the mindset of a rabbit in a lorry's headlights, totally unsuited to clandestine operations yet well-versed enough in the adventures of James Bond to know that something was going to go splat; Bert just listening to his own monstrous heartbeat and hoping neither of these aging politicos was carrying a weapon. Not a muscle moved for twenty seconds... thirty... nobody wanted to take a chance.
The door was kicked open by a tall figure clad in a black wetsuit, goggles and a blond moustache. He had two tine knives in his hands, one of which he used to slit the throat of Eddie Loyden, who was so taken aback by the apparition that he forgot to die for a full ten seconds. Ted Grant was frozen to the spot even more firmly than he had been: "P-please..."
Bert knew he was trapped between a rock and a hard place. This person was looking for him, obviously, but on the other hand... Actually, qualms could go to hell. He had to try to save this Ted plazzy. His fingers found their grip around a reassuringly blunt instrument. Bert heaved himself up with sudden agility and brought the implement down on the assailant's head. No effect. He did it again, and again, and again, until the implement snapped in his hand and the mattress of the bed was covered in blood and bits of matter.
"Who... Wh... Did you really just bludgeon a ninja to death with a loofah?"
---
He was vulnerable. Derek Hatton was vulnerable. Lost in the empty back-streets of the Baltic Triangle, still wearing his immaculately tailored suit... there was nobody there!
"Help! Somebody!" Some daft bastard had stabbed him in the leg in the confusion. At the very least, Degsy needed somebody to give him directions to an all-night drycleaner's.
How had it happened?
He'd been standing backstage at the open-air concert by the Pier Head, watching the Beatles play together for the first time in twenty-five years, and thinking about how it was all his doing that they'd reunited - for free, as well - to support him, personally. Well, they'd talked about the People of the World uniting together, but it was obvious what they meant.
"I'm back in the USSR
Don't know how lucky - "
Don't know how lucky - "
And then a load of people in wetsuits had come up from stage left and physically killed John and George. At least. Degsy hadn't stayed to see whether Paul and Ringo would manage to get away, but Ringo had got his foot stuck under a kick pedal, so he wasn't off to a great start. While fleeing, Degsy had periodically looked back, like Lot's wife admiring the sunset of her greatest days, to see the People of Liverpool mobbing the stage and physically ripping some of the bastards limb from limb. They certainly had the advantage of numbers.
And just as he was turning the corner of Brunswick Street (with shells dropping everywhere from the ships in the Estuary) which would take him away from those sanguinary sights, someone had grabbed his collar.
"Degsy! Pull yourself together!"
"Mmmf. M-m-mf. Unghf."
"It's me - Peter."
"Nnnng." He got a slap across the face, but even so, he couldn't find his words. He couldn't find his words!
"Look, Degsy. You're the boss. You've got to act like it. Go back and repel the scabs!"
"Mummy!" And Peter Taaffe just looked him. Disappointed, more than anything. He slackened his grip on Degsy's collar; let him go. Decades of respect, gone in an instant. A coward. Degsy had just collapsed into a heap, and looked on, dead-eyed, as Peter Taaffe had trudged slowly towards the brou-ha-ha. All that fire which had made him so formidable as a campaigner and so lovable to his - not friends, exactly, but... adherents - was gone. The spark of Militancy guttered.
And, when a shell fell directly on top of him, it was extinguished. Degsy would never forget that last, pitiful look they had shared, for as long as he lived. Neither would he forget the bits of Peter which had been scattered all over the Strand. If he'd followed him, he'd have died there and then.
"It's a fucking war now, bitch!" He was taken aback by his outburst, there in the Baltic triangle - Brick Lane, according to one of the signs he had passed, not that that meant anything to him. He'd been wandering for what felt like hours, just shell-shocked. Perhaps it would have been better - more honourable, at least - to have gone back to the crowd, and fought for Liverpool.
It had always been a war, but now it was serious. The Workers' State of Liverpool, he now realised, was an actual Thing, not just a historical event which happened to be happening in the present. It wasn't a game of Risk, or a theoretical utopia put forward by a Marxist academic who had never ventured outside Watford for the first eighteen years of his life. The success of this experiment mattered to the lab rats just as much as the scientists. Shit.
Brick Lane turned out to be a dead end. He turned around and noticed a woman.
"Degsy, you cunt!" It was Lesley. She'd been one of Taaffe's people when she took on Peter Kilfoyle, and he'd made her into one of his people. This new outburst suggested that a new state of affairs was in place. she must have been tailing him.
"I know this is a long shot, but do you have any bandages?"
"Don't try to be clever with me, Degsy! You - you've gone too far, now. Fuck, you don't deserve to live!" She cringed. Presumably images of Kilfoyle's bulging face had risen to her mind - the result of the last time she had said something like that.
"I know." said Derek Hatton, calmly and quietly. He couldn't feel the pain in his leg any more.
"I mean, first you - what?" Incredulity battled with scorn on her (already naturally over-expressive) face.
"That little girl. I used her as a building block for the Revolution I was hungry for. Peter Kilfoyle. I was after vengeance. And you've got to have a Red Terror. It's the Done Thing. And all those dead people - too many to count. Dave Nellist, rotting away in a cell somewhere, waiting for us to join him on trial. If we're lucky. I thought I was building the future, but what's the point of a future when - when..." He choked back the first tears he'd shed since he was seven. "I did it all because I wanted to be remembered. I wanted to be a character. And you can't be a character in the history books unless they notice you. I - "
"Oh, spare me the fucking crocodile tears! Every time someone calls you out, you trot out the same manipulative bollocks. I'm tired of this, Degsy. This isn't about what's happened in the last few months; this is you, as a person, being a complete div. It's obvious you can't redeem yourself."
That stung.
"Please. Forgive..." Derek Hatton fell to his knees as Lesley Mahmood strode off into the dark, forever. It must be nearly dawn. He hoped it was. Perhaps the screams and the bangs had died down now. As his head swam groggily from side to side, a figure in black disengaged from a vaguely upright brick wall, against which he would, at any other time, have looked glaringly obvious.
"The name's Thatcher. Mark Thatcher." He must think that made him sound cool. It didn't.
"Help me, Mark Thatcher."
"Give me your leg, you traitorous dog." This didn't sound like the start of a great and enduring friendship.
Tovarich
Banned
Oh, is that who that comes from?
Turns out that Kahing bloke http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/offtopic/kahing wasn't so completely hatstand as we all thought at the time ('cos we're not so well-read as UM)
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Oh, is that who that comes from?
Turns out that Kahing bloke http://wiki.alternatehistory.com/doku.php/offtopic/kahing wasn't so completely hatstand as we all thought at the time ('cos we're not so well-read as UM)
Alas, that bit was a joke.
Bagehot did base most of his big book on how dull and stupid English people were, and how they needed people like Bagehot to tell them what their fundamental rules were. St John wrote a biography of Bagehot IOTL, and could plausibly have come up with the banana bon mot.
However, the real reason that's in there was because I needed to keep myself awake to finish the update. On that point, there may be another one by 2 AM, but I may have company soon. In which case... probably closer to three.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Chapter Ten
08:31 AM, 19th August 1995
Sixteenth Day of the Revolution
08:31 AM, 19th August 1995
Sixteenth Day of the Revolution
Derek Hatton woke up to an immense pain in his left shin and a general intense discomfort all over his body. His suit was clammy and his head was resting on something knobbly and hard. Situation report: he'd been in the Baltic Triangle on that dead-end lane between two decrepit factories, and then there had been Lesley, and then this Thatcher person had given him a fireman's lift, and he'd fallen unconscious. Where had he heard the name Thatcher before? It didn't matter - it wasn't exactly unusual.
"Hello?" His voice echoed unpleasantly into the distance, duelling with the plinking of water dripping from what was presumably the ceiling, and also with the engines. Maybe they were near a motorway - but nobody really used those anymore. There wasn't anywhere to go.
"Good morning, Mr Hatton. Did you sleep well?" This was a bit of a turnaround from the verbal abuse of the previous night, but Degsy wasn't going to call him out.
"Evidently."
Have you worked out where we are yet?"
Hatton looked around himself. There really wasn't much point. It was pitch-black. "I don't know. Abandoned mineshaft? Disused warehouse? Secret volcano lair?"
"You don't recognise these broken slabs of concrete, Mr Hatton?"
"Go on, then."
"They're all that remain of a certain section of the Queensway Tunnel, directly below central Liverpool. This damage was caused by the explosion at the Municipal Annexe, and has only partly been cleared up by your gangs. It turns out establishing supply lines is less fun than harrying the good people of Aigburth for spare cash for your average Scouser."
"If you say so. Why are we here, then?"
"Well, as I said before, my name's Mark Thatcher. I'm Margaret Thatcher's son - "
"Oh, wasn't she the Tory leader in the late '70s? She was a bit crap, all told."
"The very same. So, when I heard you were betraying our country with your foolish publicity stunt, I had to get involved. I started up the Merseybeaters - a cohort of arms dealers, mercenaries and intense young men with Sonic the Hedgehog keyrings. We did an eight-day hand-to-hand fighting course with the Territorials and came over here under cover of darkness to cause as much damage and confusion to you as possible before the real soldiers get over here."
"So you're cannon fodder."
"Essentially, yes. I expect I'm the only survivor on our side from the Concert Skirmish. So it goes. At least I can say I killed John Lennon."
"You bastard."
"Steady on, Mr Hatton, remember who bandaged up your leg."
"Point taken. So why didn't you kill me as well? Am I not famous or talented enough to deserve to be slaughtered by you?"
"I heard you apologise to that woman last night. I thought you were genuine, even if she didn't. So if you have any remorse, you'll deliver Liverpool's unconditional surrender to the powers that be."
"I'm only Deputy Leader - "
"Everybody knows Hamilton is powerless. You're the dictator. You can dictate to your people that they should lay down their arms. You would be a redeemed anti-hero in the History books. Future generations won't think you were entirely despicable. You could grow old on the beaches of Cyprus, completely safe from retribution. What do you say, Mr Hatton?"
It was tempting. All Degsy had ever wanted was a good write-up. But... he'd be remembered as a traitor by both sides if he bargained with this odd man. He couldn't even be sure whether Thatcher had the power to make deals. "And what if I don't?"
A pause. "Well, in that case I won't radio my C/O and to say we're here. So when they pummel through this mound of debris with the tank shells, they won't even notice our bodies. How does that sound, eh? If you surrender, the tanks stope where they are, and no more blood will be spilled."
"I've done some despicable shit in my time. I'm coming round to the opinion that I'm a despicable person. Sometimes I think I'm not actually a Socialist, and all I really want is to be seen to be a Socialist. But damn it, I've come this far. People have died for me and my project. I - I'm not going to betray them, Mr Thatcher. I'd rather be a martyr to a cause I didn't believe in than a... than a fucking expat! As far as I'm concerned, we wait."
They waited in silence, as the humming of the tank engines grew louder. Degsy was almost entirely sure that he was doing the right thing.
It occurred to him that there wouldn't be any witnesses to his noble act of valour apart from Thatcher, who, he assumed, as perfectly happy to die with him. His son, Ben, would never know that his old man had died for his borrowed principles - and dying for them would kind of make them his own and therefore worth dying for. Wouldn't it?
In many ways, it was bit late to start pondering about stuff like that.
---
Denzil was drinking to forget. The events of the previous night had scarred his brain. The Beatles - all killed, apparently. It was a disgrace. And he'd heard that one of the Peacemakers had lost an arm. That was nothing to the feeling in his heart that came from the death of Gazza, It was like a... fucking... like a gap that would never be filled. Gazza had been a fucking good mate.
This was why Denzil was drinking Carlsberg on the central reservation of the Haymarket roundabout.
There was another reason, too. Denzil knew that some little girl had bombed the Municipal Annexe, not a Tory in a double-breasted suit. He'd seen the ragged remains of the backpack, and the vast expanse of blood that was smeared over a solid proportion of the rubble from the explosion, just down the road. But nobody ever believed him when he told them down the pub.
Explosions were ten a penny now. Denzil remembered the collective shock when the Municipal Annexe was done, and the blitz spirit when they'd started that bucket chain. That was one of those times when you felt, for good or for ill, that you were part of a Human Race. Now, the Navy was knocking masonry all over the place and nobody seemed to care. You just skirted round the stuff that had fallen on the pavement and got on with it.
There was a taxi going round the roundabout. Suddenly , it screeched to a stop and a woman screamed at Denzil out of the window. Who was she? Fuck, it was the woman who'd uncovered the girl at the Municipal Annexe! "You! You're the man! Listen: if you come with me we can prove - Rosa Fucking Luxemburg!"
This last exclamations was in reaction to a large Challenger tank (with red-stained caterpillar tracks on one side) which had just climbed out of the entrance to the Queensway Tunnel, which connected the Haymarket roundabout to the Wirral - or rather, it had done so, until the unpleasantness. Immediately, it began firing on all and sundry, and moved forwards to allow another, and another, and yet another to join it in the open air, while Marines and Regulars filled out into open space. The invasion had begun, and the combined might of the British Army was fixed on a single point in central Liverpool.
It was only when Denzil looked down to check if his zipper was undone that he noticed the bullet-holes peppering his abdomen and the more obvious fact that his t-shirt was shitting ruined. The woman was screaming in an annoyingly high-pitched voice. "Sorry I couldn't help you, Miss." said Denzil, keeling over onto the welcoming (yet fume-coarsened) grass of the central reservation. You had to be a gentleman to that kind of chick. Seriously, this grass felt like a billion duvets, without a sharp feather to be seen.
As he lost consciousness for the final time and cushioned his head against an anthill, Denzil heard the distorted voice of the woman: "Aziz! Aziz, fucking floor it! Ditch the emmenthaler. Come on!" Maybe she thought he couldn't hear her desert him, but he could. He could. That put him in a really bad mood for his final seconds, which sort of leaves a bad taste in the mouth, to be honest.
Last edited:
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Thanks!
This last Chapter is about half as long as I wanted it to be, but I'm too tired to write. The second half will come in the morning, followed by the final chapter the next day. And then a substantially less grimdark epilogue as a palette-cleanser.
However to quote Scroobius Pip - "The Beatles - were just a band"
I thought they were over rated myself, but hey ho.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Chapter Eleven
09:17 AM, 19th August 1995
Sixteenth Day of the Revolution
09:17 AM, 19th August 1995
Sixteenth Day of the Revolution
Bert and Ted had hid in the cruise ship for several hours, unable to sleep. Bert had never killed a man before - there hadn't been much opportunity while he was in the Army, not that he was in it for that side of things. You couldn't beat a man to death and then immediately start making bad puns like James Bond. You needed to have a good long look inside yourself, almost as tribute to the... the mess which they'd left in that cabin. This Ted plazzy had been very understanding once he'd made sure Bert wasn't a spy.
So now they were making their way down the waterfront to the Liver Building in the fresh morning air. It was sunny but brisk, not that anyone was paying much attention to the weather at this point: the big guns had stopped, but squads of Tommy Atkinses in khaki were jogging through the streets, periodically clashing with thuggish Volunteers or clearing out a specific building in search of Big Fish, and almost always coming out disappointed. Periodical tanks were inching fearfully up hostile streets lined with dull-faced bystanders. Nobody really cared either way, not anymore. They just wanted Peace and Bread, their Land could go hang.
It was in this context that a middle-aged chippie proprietor with spatters of what a particularly innocent observer would say was spag bol down his front was leading a vaguely crumpled-looking, 80-odd-year-old, Trotskyist intellectual by the hand, hiding behind patches of cover while gaggles of Marines ran about like headless chickens, gabbling about 'securing the area' and trying to remember all the lectures they'd dozed off in during Advanced Training.
"Is it really so important that you get to the Liver Building now?" whispered Bert.
"Vitally. If I don't get to the Quorum before the surrender, the bloody Taaffeites will take over the Militant Party when I'm gone!" hissed Ted Grant.
"It's really fantastic that you're keeping a practical view on this situation. This is exactly the kind of long-term planning that's needed when we're crouching behind a blow-up fucking dinghy!" That had been a bit too loud. Luckily, none of the men in uniform seemed to have heard. They were too busy buzzing on their radios about how secure the area was.
The two fugitives crawled, jogged and sidled their way past coolers full of bait and general marine equipment. For all that he spent his life with fish, Bert didn't really know what they got up to before they got delivered, and he preferred it that way. Besides, the sea air made his nose run.
"Do you mind, Bert."
"Oh, sorry, Ted."
Presently they were within striking distance of the Liver Building, that great edifice of social conscience. It had been built to house the Royal Liver Assurance, a friendly society which provided for funeral costs and so on, but that hadn't been profitable, so now it was sublet to a load of other companies - or rather, it had been until it had been nationalised by the Workers' State for unclear purposes. Perhaps the idea had been to strike at the den of capitalism or something. Anyway, it was now home to the Quorum, a group of five - well, four now, since Eddie Loyden had been killed in the cruise ship - Militant MPs who weren't officially against the Committee for Public Safety, but were certainly angling to be recognised as the official legislature of the State, in competition with the City Council. On the one hand, Councillors were elected under a form of Proportional Representation, which made them more democratic, but on the other hand, they weren't all Militant.No direct opposition had emerged, but there was definitely a frostiness in the air.
Pressed into a doorway of the ornate building was Councillor Lesley Mahmood. Bert and Ted scurried over to her and squeezed into the wide frame of the door, one to either side.
"Ted! Thank Lenin you're alive! Have you seen Derek? Tony? John? Felicity? Anybody?"
"No - they should be in the emergency hideout. Good luck to 'em, I say. We've evidently had the same flash of inspiration, haven't we, Lesley?"
"We need to end this madness with enough grace to keep the movement going into the 21st century, Ted. We need peace."
"I thought you were one of Degsy's creatures."
"Not anymore. I need to tell someone - the only other eyewitness was killed about an hour ago. The Municipal Annexe bombing wasn't a false flag operation. It was done by some kid - whether it was Degsy who put her up to it, I don't know, but he was pretty bloody quick to take the advantage and pull out the red flag. We've been fighting for a sham, Ted."
"Bloody disgrace!"
"Oh, and hello, Bert! How's the ma?"
---
Tick, tock. Tick, tock.
John Hamilton sat in the Chair of the Emergency Committee Meeting Room. It was underground, in the cellar of a sympathetic pub. There was a Bakelite telephone in front of him which had, out of deference to the look of the thing, been haphazardly painted red. He looked around at the rest of the table. It was completely empty, apart from Felicity Dowling. She had been selected as a seat-filler, really. A woman, and a Taaffeite-Hattonist, or whatever those bloody Militants had split into this week. As a Labour member, faction-fighting was anathema to John. He ventured to start a conversation.
"Shame about Tony. He was a good man to have at your back. He was the brains behind the whole plan to wrangle a subsidy out of Whitehall back in the eighties."
"Yes."
"You were on the Council at the time, weren't you? Obviously." This was the longest they'd been in the same room alone in over a decade, and the only time Hamilton had ever had to pursue a conversation in order to stop himself going stir-crazy. If only Tony hadn't run afoul of that Marine in their hurried escape from the proper Council offices.
"I was, yes."
"Where do you reckon the others are? You don't think they've gone to the City Hall, do you?"
"They'll sort themselves out." Hamilton sighed. There was only one was to proceed.
"Very well, then. Apolgies not received from Derek Hatton, Peter Taaffe, Ted Grant, Lesley Mahmood and Ton - well, we can excuse Tony. Now: the minutes of the last meeting of the Committee for Public Safety..."
---
On the eighth floor of the People's Liver Building, the seven people who were fast or desperate enough to outrun the soldiers who were assaulting the building stood about on the landing. These were Tony Mulhearn, MP, Terry Fields, MP, Bob Parry, MP, Bob Wareing, MP, Councillor Lesley Mahmood, CPS, Ted Grant, CPS and Bert, who was just there because he'd got a bit too excited downstairs, and didn't fancy facing all the gunfire which he could hear amongst the screams. There was also the distant throb of aeroplane engines.
"So here's the plan," Mulhearn was saying, "when they come up here, we'll shout down that we want to surrender on certain conditions..."
"Bodily safety, total amnesty, reinstitution of labour relations laws..." supplied Fields.
"...an end to corporal punishment in schools..." said Lesley Mahmood.
"...and the re-admission of Militant MPs into Parliament." finished Parry. The MPs all nodded ferociously at this one.
"Is that everything? I'd hate to remember one just as were being bundled off to our cells." asked Bob Wareing.
"As a programme, that's a decent basis for a dialogue, I'd say. We can come up with more stuff later." said Mulhearn.
Terry Fields spoke up again: "In hindsight, we probably ought o have come up with a list of demands sometime before the Army forced their way into the building."
"On that point..." Everyone glared at Bert as if he was some sort of proletarian scum. "...They're taking their time coming up here." They all looked at each other, mumbling.
Eventually, Ted leaned gingerly over the bannister and shouted down into the abyss. "Hey! We're up here!" He was answered with gunshots and the sound of booted feet sprinting up the stairs.
"What the fuck did you do that for?"
"It's alright! We're surrendering!" shouted Mulhearn. "You can stop running, just relax! We surrender!" The echoing feet didn't abate. "Oh, shit. Get upstairs, quick!" This took them into the clock-tower. Mulhearn motioned to stop, and gestured with his fingers like a conductor. "All together now. One, two, three..."
"WE SURRENDER!"
They listened. Nope, they were still coming.
Bert looked out of a window. "Oh God, it's the RAF!" He was right. A whole squadron of bombers were flying over the Mersey. And as, they reached the shore, they unleashed their load.
One of the bombs hit the clock tower, sending masonry dust flying and causing a coughing fit. The roof had been blown clean off - they were exposed to the open air and there was nowhere else to run. Bert watched the massive copper cormorant which graced the summit of the clock tower fall weightlessly away... and then splash into the water with less grace than a goose on a frozen pond. Legend had it that if one of the Liver Birds ever flew away, Liverpool would be doomed.
Bert wondered whether a Liver Bird falling off its perch was a good omen or a bad one. On balance, nothing looked particularly encouraging about the whole state of affairs.
Tony Mulhearn gave one final bellow with his eyes screwed up: "We surrender, you bastards!". When he opened them, a squad of spittle-flecked Marines were cowering before him, a few steps down. They were completely taken aback with his ferocity. He smiled. "On certain conditions."
---
John Hamilton was too tired for this. He just wanted to go home to his nice, comfy bed and have a plate of crumpets all to himself. He was tired of this Hellish adventure. Hatton had played him, and now he was all alone, doomed to be thrown in gaol for treason and, even worse, kicked out of Labour. He was done.
"First item on the agenda: my resignation from all my roles on the Committee for Public Safety, effective immediately. Don't worry, Felicity. The phone number for Downing Street is on the bottom of the Mostly Red Telephone. Just tell them we've surrendered, tidy up and give the key to the landlord on your way out. See you at the war crimes trial!" he added chirpily as he leaped upstairs and out of the pub door.
For one glorious moment, he was free. Free from politics; free from those bloody Trots; free from the pressures of technically being in charge of a Revolution. John Hamilton breathed deeply of the summer air and smiled. He didn't even care that he was surrounded by what seemed like a whole battalion of khaki-clad commandos.
For the moment, he was free.
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Heavy
Banned
This continue to be very engaging - I am keen to see how it ends. How many more parts are left to come?
I suppose there's been no peace process in Northern Ireland ITTL? Boyson, based on my limited knowledge of him (i.e. Google), seems like the sort who'd get on with Paisley, but secretly sneer at him for being a working class upstart when his back's turned.p)
I suppose there's been no peace process in Northern Ireland ITTL? Boyson, based on my limited knowledge of him (i.e. Google), seems like the sort who'd get on with Paisley, but secretly sneer at him for being a working class upstart when his back's turned.
p)
Tovarich
Banned
Boyson wasn't especially posh himself, more like one of the 'Four Yorkshiremen' from not-quite-'Python.This continue to be very engaging - I am keen to see how it ends. How many more parts are left to come?
I suppose there's been no peace process in Northern Ireland ITTL? Boyson, based on my limited knowledge of him (i.e. Google), seems like the sort who'd get on with Paisley, but secretly sneer at him for being a working class upstart when his back's turned.
He and Paisley actually had very similar backgrounds, but whether they'd have gotten on would depend on how well Methodist preachers (Boyson) get on with the Bible-literalist Baptist preachers (Paisley).
They were both keen and observant homophobes, but that alone is rarely the sound basis of a relationship.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
This continue to be very engaging - I am keen to see how it ends. How many more parts are left to come?
I suppose there's been no peace process in Northern Ireland ITTL? Boyson, based on my limited knowledge of him (i.e. Google), seems like the sort who'd get on with Paisley, but secretly sneer at him for being a working class upstart when his back's turned.
Just one more, to be posted tomorrow. Then there's an epilogue which I'll do at some point, but isn't integral to the story. I appreciate that this has gone on for far longer than was advertised.
Being ignorant of Fleggish politics, I've tried to steer clear of all that stuff. I really wouldn't know where to start. But FWIW, Boyson was fairly working-class as well, and they had similar views.
As the son of a Methodist minister, I can assure you that there's a fair amount of eye-rolling where Biblical literalists come in.
Haha, I see. It's the sideburns that confused me.
(BTW, Paisley was a Presbyterian.
He was brought up and ordained as a Baptist, but was originally essentially a freelance preacher until he was able to take advantage of a split in a Presbyterian congregation in rural Down (Trotskyites are not the only ones into factional splits) and turned it into the "Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster". He was never a mainstream Presbyterian.
Alex Richards
Donor
Finally got around to reading this, and I've got to say it's brilliant.
Though I should point out that the only border changes Long Eaton Urban District Council went through were in 1909 and the early 20s, Derby Road East wasn't created until the 1976 review of Erewash and the boundary changes for 1999 and 2015 for that ward are not particularly mystifying
EDIT: Though I suppose it might have changed with the switch to STV, though you wouldn't need old newspapers for that...
Though I should point out that the only border changes Long Eaton Urban District Council went through were in 1909 and the early 20s, Derby Road East wasn't created until the 1976 review of Erewash and the boundary changes for 1999 and 2015 for that ward are not particularly mystifying
EDIT: Though I suppose it might have changed with the switch to STV, though you wouldn't need old newspapers for that...
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Sulemain
Banned
Sorry, I know it's been a while but I've just finished re-reading this and it's amazing, just amazing. Starts all Very British but due to the personalities involved rapidly becomes a shit storm. I don't really know much of the people involved, but it's an engrossing tale none the less.