Omega

by Stewart Farrar

  Some liberal opinion did make itself heard, condemning the violence, but even this current of feeling could, it seemed, be exploited. It so happened that a parliamentary by-election was to be held on 20 July in the constituency which included Bell Beacon and an Independent candidate, Quentin White, who had been standing on a rather vague combination of local issues, came out with a new demand – that public pagan festivals be made illegal, in the interests of civic order. White had been expected, indeed, had himself expected, to lose his deposit, but local revulsion at the Bell Beacon shambles was given a new outlet by his switched campaign, and his meetings, which had drawn handfuls, were now attracting hundreds. The constituency bordered on Staines, and Moira's group watched the campaign apprehensively.

  'He can't get in, though, surely,' Dan said. 'This ban-the-Festivals thing of his – it's too bloody woolly. He doesn't say how it could be made law. Probably unconstitutional, in any case.'

  'Come off it, Dan,' Greg protested. 'Voters aren't legalistic, they go for causes. And there's no such thing as the British Constitution. If an Act of Parliament says Tuesday is Wednesday, that's the law. The Constitution's only all the laws in force as of now, added together. And a State of Emergency could suspend even that.'

  ‘You're over-simplifying…'

  'Sure I am and so's Quentin White. So will the voters, come polling day. I don't like it, mate.'

  None of them liked it, and they liked it even less as the days went by. Parliament, the Prime Minister announced, was being recalled from its summer recess to debate an Emergency Powers Bill. This, he explained, would be merely a contingency measure to enable the Cabinet to act without delay in the event of any further natural disaster. Once passed, it would be held in reserve, only to be put into force by Order in Council, 'if and when a national emergency should make it necessary'. With his gift for making circumlocution sound earthily forthright, the Prime Minister managed to convey the simultaneous impression that earth tremors could strike again at any moment and that there was nothing at all to worry about.

  On the face of it, they all agreed, there was nothing about ^ the Emergency Powers Bill to which any reasonable person could object. It was the Government's clear duty to be fully prepared to deal with the effects of any future earth tremors, and with the localized wreckage of the Midsummer tremors still to be seen, no one could pretend that the danger did not exist. But they could not help noticing that the Prime Minister had avoided too precise a definition of 'national emergency'. Once the Bill became an Act, it could be an all-purpose weapon.

  None the less, the Bill was necessary and everybody knew it, so it had the nation's support. It did, however, create a climate favourable to firm government, and even in many minds (whether consciously or not) to the authorities' cutting red tape, taking short cuts and not being too squeamish about traditional liberties. So the effect on the by-election was marked; after the Prime Minister's statement, Quentin White had to begin hiring larger halls for his campaign meetings and the funds seemed to be forthcoming.

  It was at this strategic moment that Ben Stoddart stepped in. Two days after the statement, Stoddart publicly threw the whole weight of his Anti-Pagan Crusade behind White's candidature. Two days after that, he appeared with White on the same platform. The meeting was packed out and had nation-wide TV coverage. There was little trouble from hecklers, both because the rest of the audience was hostile to the few who raised their voices and because two coachloads of visibly tough young Crusader arrived at the hall an hour in advance 'to give a hand with the stewarding’.

  Next morning the 'stewards' were still in the constituency and reported for duty to White's committee rooms. They were sent out canvassing and within days the nickname 'stormtroopers' was being bandied about – not always, as Dan sourly observed, with disapproval.

  Only once did the unspoken threat of their presence manifest in actual violence. A fiery young man who was well known locally as an active witch heckled persistently at one of the open-air Crusader meetings and was set upon by the stewards. The hospital had to put five stitches in his left cheek and four dangerously high inside his right thigh. Ben Stoddart issued a public reprimand to the stewards for 'over-enthusiasm' – a reprimand so mild that it was virtually an endorsement. After that there was no more trouble from hecklers.

  The by-election remained national news, a focus for the whole anti-witch controversy. One side-effect was to introduce controversy, for the first time, into the Emergency Powers debate in the Commons. A group of members who had already declared their support for White's campaign introduced an amendment which would empower the Government to ban public religious gatherings of a pagan nature. The amendment, legally imprecise, was patently unacceptable as it stood, and the Government was able to secure its withdrawal by pointing out that the Bill in any case would give them all the necessary powers to forbid gatherings of any category that seemed undesirable in the context of any given crisis; but the tone of the debate had already changed. A small minority of MPs of various parties now began to voice criticisms of the Bill, on the grounds that the powers it gave would be open to abuse. What had looked like a quick and easy passage suddenly became hotly argued. The Government were worried; they had no doubt of a majority, but the debate was prolonging itself and they had hoped to avoid the imposing of a guillotine which would be psychologically regrettable.

  On 24 July, Quentin White was returned with a 1832 majority over his nearest opponent in a four-cornered fight. The Liberal candidate lost his deposit. While the other two had hedged, he had been the only one to condemn the witch-hunt unequivocally. An hour after the result was declared, all his front windows were smashed.

  Felicity Holroyd was not a brave woman. Barely one metre fifty-five tall, and very thin, she had to rely on quick wits and a sense of humour to control her classes; even so she had to put up with a certain amount of what her more awe-inspiring colleagues would have called gross impertinence. Her small face with it unnaturally large eyes gave her an air of vulnerability which simply invited teasing. What saved her from complete indiscipline was her gift of communicating her passionate love of her subject – English literature – to the most unpromising children. It might take her five minutes to get a class settled and reasonably quiet; but once launched, she held them, till the bell surprised them and her. She had had a chance, a year or two back, of a post with a distinguished grammar school in the South, but to her friends' surprise she had preferred to stay with very run-of-the-mill Wolverhampton comprehensive where she had started teaching nine years earlier. 'Any fool can stuff Shakespeare into a bright kid's head,' she had explained. 'But get these semi-literate telly-addicts enjoying him and life's worth while.'

  That she had a remarkable proportion of them enjoying him – and enjoying many others from Austen to Yeats -she knew from the gratifying exam results; but more personally, for her, from her daily hour at the desk of the school library. The library was in her charge, and no one knew better than she who borrowed what and what they said about it when they brought it back.

  But this evening she sat at that desk in a white rage, glad for once that a fine hot evening had thinned out her customers. Her anger was as much against herself as against the headmaster. She remembered the interview that afternoon with shame. She had stammered a protest, it was true; and given a few minutes she might have pulled herself together and made that protest a reasoned one. But the headmaster's phone had rung even as he brushed the protest aside and she had been left standing there, not knowing what to do, while he became involved in what was obviously going to be a long conversation. After a while he had put his hand over the mouthpiece, given her a quick lofty smile, said, 'See to it, will you, Felicity?', and returned to his conversation without waiting for an answer or even looking for her reaction.

  And she (oh, you bloody coward) had stood for another second or two indecisively, before walking out and shutting the door behind her, the list in her hand. It lay on the desk before her now. All wor
ks by T. C. Lethbridge, Gerald Gardner, C. G. Leland, C. A. Burland, Doreen Valiente, Israel Regardie… ‘Miss?'

  She forced her attention to the boy standing waiting at the desk; she had not even noticed him arrive. 'Sorry, Don, I was dreaming What is it?'

  The lanky sixth-former put a book on the desk. 'I brought back The Sea Priestess – I didn't quite get all of it but it was terrific. Have we got the other one, Moon Magic?… Claire say it's not quite as good but I'd like to read it anyway.'

  Felicity answered before thinking: 'By all means – I agree with Claire, actually, but if you liked The Sea Priestess it's still…' She broke off, suddenly realizing.

  'Miss – you all right?'

  The irrelevant thought came to her, unreasonably inflaming her anger: He couldn't even take the trouble to put them in alphabetical order… She picked up the list, so fiercely that she almost tore it. 'I'm sorry, Don. You can't have Moon Magic. Or anything else by Dion Fortune.'

  'But, miss-why?'

  Claire Evans joined Don, drawn away from her shelf-browsing by the unwonted sharpness in the teacher's tone. Felicity looked up at them. Don, Claire, the inseparables – two of her favourites; she had been midwife to their blossoming minds, their probing intelligence; even indirectly to their love.

  'Are you two busy for an hour?'

  Surprised by the question, they glanced at each other and said, 'No, miss,' together.

  Felicity knew she was breaking the rules by involving them in her own anger against the headmaster but she could not help herself. 'You see this list? It contains all the authors the headmaster considers to be dangerously pagan-oriented. I've go to remove them all from the school library shelves and lock them in a cupboard. I suppose I'm lucky I haven't got to make a bonfire of them in the playground…Will you give me a hand?'

  They stared at her and then they stared at the list.

  'Miss Holroyd – you can't do it!'

  'Are you asking me to disobey the head, Claire?'

  'I…' The girl changed her tack, asking suddenly: 'Miss, are you a pagan?'

  'I'm a Quaker.'

  'I don't know much about Quakers, but I know you, miss. And I know what you've always told us. People got a right to say what they believe and write about it – and we ought to look at 'em all, an' then decide what we believe. Not have anyone tell us what to believe or think. Right?'

  Felicity sighed. 'Right.'

  Don held out the list to her and asked almost shyly: 'Well?'

  Claire followed up immediately with: 'You want us to help you with that thing?'

  There was a long moment while anger, love, and professional habit struggled within Felicity Holroyd. Then something broke. She took the list calmly from the boy's fingers and tore it in two. 'Will you please take a note to the head for me? It won't take me a minute to write it.'

  'You're not resigning, are you?'

  The alarm in Claire's eyes strengthened her, overcoming the instant of panic her decision had sparked in her. 'No, Claire. I'm going to lock myself in this library and refuse to budge. And I'm not removing a single book. You can tell the others – Miss Holroyd's staging a protest sit-in.'

  'We'll stay here with you!'

  'You will not. Thanks for offering but no. A sit-in's one thing – inciting pupils to join it's another. Put me in the wrong straight away. Just take the note for me – and remember you don't know what's in it if he asks you.'

  Claire hesitated, then nodded. 'All right. But while you're writing it, I'm going to get you some sandwiches and a bottle of coke. Two or three bottles. No point in making it a hunger-strike.'

  'And a sleeping bag,' Don said. 'Don't lock up till we're back, will you?'

  'I don't like it, Mr Barker,' the police sergeant said. 'There must be about a hundred and fifty kids out there picketing and another hundred blocking the corridor to the library. We've tried reasoning with them but they just start chanting and drown us. The library door's very solid and she's got heavy steel filing cabinets jammed against it – we can see that through the window. The windows are all steel-barred, too. What is this place, Fort Knox?'

  'My predecessor put them in, during the vandalism wave in the eighties,' the headmaster told him. 'Look, Sergeant, I want that woman out. She's been there all last night and this morning. I gave her an ultimatum for eight o'clock this morning to come out or be dismissed. She said she would stay there till my instructions about the books were withdrawn. There was no question of that, of course, so at eight-fifteen I told tier she was dismissed and pushed her formal letter of dismissal under the door. That was while I could still reach the door. A few minutes later the pupils started arriving – with banners, Sergeant! The whole thing's a conspiracy. She must have told them what she was going to do and they got ready for this – this outrage, overnight.'

  'You're their headmaster, sir. Surely they'd listen to you before they'd listen to the police?'

  'Do you think I haven't tried, damn it? And my staff? – or most of them, anyway. I strongly suspect that one or two of the other teachers are in sympathy with her though none of them have said so to my face… First I reasoned with the pickets, and all they said was, "Sorry, sir, but we think Miss Holroyd's right." They simply refused to move. So then I threatened them. I had no alternative.'

  'Threatened them with what exactly, sir?'

  With you, Sergeant. I told them they had one hour to clear the corridor and the playground and assemble in their classrooms. After that I would call in the police to clear them.'

  'Did any obey you?'

  The headmaster snorted. 'About a dozen. Out of two or three hundred. So, you see, my threat has to be made good. Otherwise we face total breakdown of discipline – how permanent, God alone knows.'

  'Have you called on parents for help?'

  'Sergeant, this is a working weekday and our pupils come from an area of about forty square kilometres… I've managed to contact a few and get them here. One father persuaded his son to go home and that's all.' The headmaster frowned nervously. 'Another unfortunate factor -Miss Holroyd is popular with parents… One husband and wife arrived together and told me flatly that if Miss Holroyd had felt driven to this extraordinary action there must be something wrong with my attitude. They refused to help. In fact, they smiled and waved at the children in the playground on the way out – and the children cheered them. It was intolerable.'

  The sergeant seemed to be about to ask something, and then to think better of it. After a moment or two he said, 'Look, Mr Barker, you're asking me to take my men and clear a way through those kids – boys and girls – by force, and then to smash down the door, or do the same thing from outside and cut through the window-bars. And then to bring their heroine out under arrest, right through the middle of them. The mood they're in, we'd have little chance of doing all that without kids getting hurt. If you ask me, no chance… Why don't we just play it cool? Keep my lads in sight and let the kids wonder what we mean to do. By this evening, they'll start being hungry and bored…'

  'Sergeant, there are reporters outside. They've been pestering me all morning. Television news have been on the phone – BBC and ITN – and if this thing isn't cleared up pretty dam' quick there'll be cameras in the street. And you think those youngsters will drift away through boredom?'

  The sergeant said, cxpressionlessly: 'I think I'd better call in my superiors, sir.'

  'Yes,' the headmaster told him. 'I think you'd better.'

  Few newly elected Members of Parliament can have had such heaven-sent material for a maiden speech as Quentin White. House of Commons etiquette decrees that maiden speeches be received with special sympathy and tolerance whether one agrees with them or not, but in the present climate of the House White commanded even closer attention than that laid down by parliamentary good manners.

  Virtually every member, of course, had read the Evening News edition which White brandished in his hand as he spoke, and those who had not were hurriedly scanning copies borrowed from their neighbou
rs.

  The page 1 splash read:

  SCHOOL BLAZE ENDS LIBRARY LOCK-OUT 15 children, 27 others injured

  Six children were hospitalized with bone fractures, nine with lesser injuries, and five policemen and 22 adult civilians were also admitted following the rioting and arson which climaxed Wolverhampton schoolteacher Felicity Holroyd's protest lock-out this afternoon.

  The fire, which broke out in or near the school library minutes before police cut through a steel-barred window to arrest Miss Holroyd, was still raging an hour later. Firemen's work was hampered by the crowd of anxious parents, escaping children, and onlookers -some vociferously protesting for or against Miss Holroyd – who packed the narrow streets around the school.

  Miss Holroyd was arrested on a charge of causing a breach of the peace, and a police spokesman said other charges might be preferred against her when the incident had been fully investigated.

  Twelve adult demonstrators and twenty-three children had been arrested at the time of going to press.

  Cause of the fire and the exact point of outbreak were still unknown, and the police spokesman refused to speculate. He agreed, however, that in addition to aggravating panic, the fire had incited some demonstrators to shout that Miss Holroyd had started it, and others to insist that it was the work of a provocateur. From this, street fighting had broken out.

  Miss Holroyd locked herself in the library at about 5.30 pm yesterday in protest against the headmaster's order to remove certain pagan-oriented books from the shelves.

  'She did it quite without warning,' headmaster William Barker told our reporter. 'She did not even ask me to reconsider my order – merely barricaded herself in and sent one of the pupils to me with a note.