by Ken MacLeod
Deirdre’s voice cut across Hope’s reverie. She let her attention snap back, and put the glasses away.
‘Now, we’ve all heard what Louella, our sister here from Unite, has been saying,’ Deirdre announced, with a sisterly backward wave to the previous speaker, ‘and I find it hard really to add anything to what she’s so eloquently told us, so I just want to reiterate and emphasise how important this Safe Work for Women campaign is for all of us. More and more women are finding it difficult to work outside the home because of health hazards in the workplace. So we need to ensure that workplaces are safe for women – and that means safe for men, too, as well as safe for children. And if they’re safe for children, we could even have workplace crèches! And why not? Our mother’s generation had crèches –in a borough like ours, at least. We should build on that and take it forward again.
‘But really, the main thing I want to say is that Safe Work for Women won’t get passed without legislative action, and no amount of pressure is going to work unless we have MPs who are on our side, and I’m proud to introduce someone who of course needs no introduction, an MP who is and always has been on our side, Jack Crow.’
Everyone clapped, even Hope.
‘Thank you, Deirdre,’ Crow murmured, then went on in a raised, booming, platform voice: ‘Madam Mayor, councillors, brothers and sisters, it’s a tremendous privilege for me to speak to this splendid rally, which as you know if you’ve been checking the news is part of a magnificent mobilisation of tens of millions, all around the world.’
Yeah, yeah, thought Hope. Get on with it.
Get on with it he did. He outlined the Government’s and the Council’s achievements. He pointed out where the Government had back-slided from election promises, and proclaimed his intent to hold them to their commitments, if not in this parliament, then in the next, where he was sure the Party would have an even stronger majority. (Applause.) Then he leaned forward, clutching the mike and speaking quietly, so that people strained a little, listening.
‘But, brothers and sisters, comrades, this is no time for complacency. No time for smug triumphalism. No time for sitting back with our thumbs in our lapels and our feet on the table. The New Society, the free and social market, is under attack as never before. Not a military attack. Not a physical attack. Personally, as you all know, I have never aligned myself with those, even within our movement, whose first and last answer to any international problem is military action. Yes. The Russian imperialists, the Indian chauvinists, the Naxal nihilists – yes, these are all threats, and we all know about them. And we know how our brothers and sisters from Delhi to St Petersburg have been bludgeoned on the streets today, for exercising exactly the same rights as we are now, for celebrating the same May Day as we do here.
‘We stand with them. Shoulder to shoulder. But what they need from us is not military threats to their governments. It’s our solidarity itself. It’s what we’re doing here. Standing together. All of us, young and old. Peacefully and freely.
‘And in doing that, we are also dealing with the real threat, the serious threat, to all we’ve fought for. The insidious threat, the threat from within. The Conservative and Liberal Party…’
Crow paused. The expected roar of laughter came. He waited.
‘The Conservative and Liberal Party,’ he went on, smiling, ‘is not that threat. It merely gives a voice to it. That threat, my friends, is the stupidity, the short-sightedness, the greed of the business class, big and small. Let’s hear no nonsense about class conflict. No governments in history have done as much for free enterprise and honest profit as the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States – and, let me say, perhaps controversially, but in all fairness, the People’s Republic of China – over the past ten years. We have underwritten risky ventures with trillions in public money. And these ventures have paid off – in clean air, in a safe environment, in abundant energy, in vast, exciting new fields of endeavour, and – I need hardly say – in very healthy profits indeed. All we have asked from business in return is that they pay their taxes and co-operate with the government in its social policies.
‘Have they done anything of the sort? No! They’ve responded to tax reform by working through shell companies in India and Russia. And they fight tooth and nail against every tiny step forward on health and safety and regulation. The sort of opposition that Safe Work for Women faces from these quarters is astonishing, and frankly disappointing. I’ve even been lobbied myself, by the usual suspects claiming that it’ll put people out of work, like the same usual suspects have said about every piece of progressive legislation since the Factories Act and the Ten Hours Bill.
‘I need to be able to stand up in the House of Commons and show how this lobbying is outweighed by a deluge of support, and I know I can count on you to deliver that deluge of support, just as you know you can count on me. Thank you.’
Applause. Crow acknowledged it with a smile and a wave, and stepped back. Deirdre said a few closing words. Music, this time recorded, started thumping out. The speakers chatted to each other and began to leave the platform.
Hope made her way to the side of the stage to intercept Jack Crow as he came off the steps.
‘Uh, Brother Crow? Could I have a word?’
Crow stopped and moved aside, out of the way of others stepping down, and gave her a friendly but wary smile.
‘Yes?’
‘Interesting speech,’ she said. ‘Inspiring.’
‘Thanks.’ He still looked slightly puzzled. Hope imagined that she must cut a strange figure. She’d meant to ask Crow why he hadn’t replied to her letter, but when it came to it, she hesitated. She wasn’t sure how quickly MPs were expected to answer letters, and as she was hoping to get some help from him, she was wary of starting off on the wrong foot. Instead she found herself saying the first thing that came into her head – something that had genuinely puzzled her for weeks.
‘I’ve only recently joined the Party,’ she said, ‘and I’m not too clear on everything, how the ideas fit together, you know?’
Crow laughed. ‘Me neither!’ he said. ‘Don’t worry about it. The Party’s, you know, a broad church, as the cliché goes. What do you want to know?’
He had his head cocked to one side, beard clasped between thumb and forefinger, elbow clutched in the other hand. A slight frown, barely more than a crinkle around the eyes, made him look like a teacher waiting to hear a question from a precocious child.
‘I was just wondering,’ Hope said, ‘how the Safe Work for Women campaign sort of fits into the “free and social market” you talked about?’
‘Ah!’ Crow’s expression cleared, and brightened. ‘That’s pretty straightforward. Glad you asked. The free and social market is one of our most successful and useful ideas, one I think the Government has got right. The economics are quite technical, there’s stacks of literature debating it – you know what academic economists are like, and if you don’t, ha-ha, count yourself lucky – but the basic idea is very simple, really. The neoclassical… uh, the standard model of a truly free market assumes that everyone in the market has perfect information. They must know what choices they’re making, otherwise it isn’t a free and rational choice, right?’ He raised a didactic finger, half-smiling in acknowledgement that he was about to forestall a sensible but predictable objection. ‘Now obviously,’ he went on, ‘this doesn’t actually obtain in the real world. Nobody really has perfect information. In fact, even if we make it a bit more realistic, they don’t have all or even most of the relevant information. So for the market to be really free, it has to work as if everyone involved had perfect information, or at least as if they had all the relevant information. This is where the social side comes from – the state, of course along with civil society, the unions and campaigns and so on, steps in to allow people to make the choices they would have made if they’d had that information. Because these are the really free choices.’
‘Not the ones they actually chose, t
hen?’
‘Exactly!’ said Crow. ‘Because they’re not the choices they would have made if they’d known all the facts, which would have been the rational choices, so society helps them to make those choices. And that’s your free and social market, right?’
‘But it doesn’t feel very free,’ Hope said, ‘having other people make your choices for you.’
‘It feels a lot freer than making the wrong choices,’ said Crow. He pinched his lower lip for a moment, thinking. ‘Suppose you were a mother, right?’
‘Well, I am actually,’ said Hope.
‘Oh! Great!’ He gave her an up-and-down look, and met her eyes again with a wry glance. ‘And… if you don’t mind me saying… with another one on the way, yeah?’
‘That’s right,’ said Hope.
‘Congratulations!’ Crow beamed. ‘Perfect examples, then. When you buy a toy for your little…’
‘Boy,’ said Hope.
‘… you wouldn’t feel you’d made a very free choice if it turned out to be painted with lead paint that could be chewed off, or its head, say, was stuck on with a sharp spike that could injure the child if he pulled it off. Which they do, don’t they? Pull the heads off. Mine always did. Or if you were buying milk powder for the baby and it turned out to be contaminated with poison. These things did happen, and not so long ago. Tragic stories. The reason they don’t happen any more – well, hardly at all, because something will always slip through – is because the state – here, in China, and so on – makes regulations and employs inspectors to enforce them, and locks up and fines and even expropriates people who break them. Now, you wouldn’t feel very free if you had to do all that checking yourself, would you? Or if you couldn’t do that because it wasn’t practical, and just had to trust to luck, and you could never be sure, you’d always have a nagging doubt, and the effort of putting that doubt out of your mind. Whereas now, you can buy toys and milk and clothes and so on for the kids and feel free from all that worry. Not to mention free from the regret over making the wrong choice.’
Hope felt baffled. ‘But lead paint on toys and contamination in food is… something like fraud, isn’t it? It seems a long way from that to saying that everything needs to be controlled that way. And a long way from saying the government has to make choices for women about where they work.’
‘It’s the same principle,’ said Crow. By now he was beginning to look a little impatient. ‘The government isn’t making choices for anyone. Like I said, it’s enabling people to make the choices they would make for themselves if they knew all the consequences of those choices.’
‘But…’
‘I mean, would you want pregnant women to have the “choice”’ – he waggle-fingered the quotes – ‘to work down coal mines?’
‘Well, no,’ Hope conceded. ‘But working in offices where people once smoked thirty years ago doesn’t seem quite so risky.’
‘Oh, it isn’t,’ said Crow. ‘But it’s still risky. That foul stuff leaks out of the walls and floors for decades.’
‘Only in tiny amounts,’ said Hope.
‘Yes!’ said Crow. ‘That means it’s actually riskier than smoking itself, because the amounts are so tiny. I mean, we’re talking about femtograms per cubic metre. You know how small that is? It’s smaller than a subatomic particle! When you had actual smoke particles in the air, you could at least cough, you had some natural protection – not enough, of course, but some – whereas these nano- and femto-particles can slip right between the molecules and into your lungs and bloodstream. Not to mention your foetus’s lungs and bloodstream.’
‘Yes, well I do understand that,’ said Hope. ‘But what I don’t get is, this just excludes women from more workplaces.’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Crow. ‘The law will mandate that employers of women between the ages of blah-blah, et cetera, will have to strip out or cover with sheet diamond any surfaces that—’
‘But I work from home,’ said Hope. ‘Our house is over a hundred years old, and I’m pretty sure somebody must have once smoked in it. Does that mean we’re going to have to—’
‘Ah!’ Enlightenment dawned on Crow’s face. ‘That’s what you’re worried about. I’m so sorry, I was beginning to wonder if you were some kind of Tory infiltrator!’ He laughed. ‘No, you needn’t worry about that at all. Applying this law to home working would be going too far. It’s specifically excluded from the draft bill. Here, let me show you…’
He reached inside his jacket and pulled out glasses.
‘Honestly,’ he said, half to himself, ‘you’d think the branch would have made a better fist of explaining all this to our own members.’
He slipped the glasses on. Hope could see his eyes blink rapidly. A surprised look came over his face.
‘Oh!’ he said. ‘You’re Hope Morrison!’
‘Yes,’ said Hope. ‘Pleased to meet you, too.’
‘Why didn’t you say so in the first place?’ Crow gave a rueful laugh. ‘Mind you, if I’d known… you’ve no idea of the trouble you’ve caused me. Nearly got yourself into, too.’
‘How?’ asked Hope, taken aback.
Crow passed a hand across his eyebrows. ‘That letter you hand-delivered.’
‘What?’ Hope had that sick feeling of having done something she hadn’t known was wrong, and feeling guilty about it.
‘Nobody hand-delivers letters. Look, you could have written to me at the Commons, written to my office, heck, you could have posted the letter to the house. If you’d looked me up, you would have seen how to book an appointment – there’s even my personal phone number.’ He tapped the earpiece of his glasses. ‘You’d have got a message, but I’d have got back to you. But hand-delivering a letter without a stamp… we have to treat that as a terrorist attempt. Like the anthrax letters, way back before you or I were born. Standing regulation – I had to call the police, and they had to scan it and analyse it. Wasted a good couple of hours.’
‘Surely a bit of common sense…’
‘Out of my hands,’ said Crow. ‘It’s the rules. It’s the law, come to that. I admit it’s a nuisance, but still…’
‘It makes you feel free, does it?’ Hope asked, tartly.
Crow grimaced. ‘Well, again… freer than being blown up or poisoned. Anyway… I have to admit I was a bit annoyed. I’m afraid that’s why I haven’t got around to replying.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ Hope said. ‘But now that we’re here, maybe you could tell me what you think.’
‘About your problem?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well…’ Crow took a deep breath, then let his shoulders slump. ‘I don’t agree with your stance, as I understand it, but I can certainly help you with practical matters – finding legal advice, dealing with the Health Centre, that sort of thing.’
‘I’d be very grateful for that,’ said Hope. ‘But I was kind of hoping you could, I don’t know, raise the matter in the House, or something? Because all it would take would be a tiny little tweak to the law, just to make a conscientious objection something that doesn’t need to be justified in terms of belief.’
‘Can’t help you there, I’m afraid,’ Crow said. ‘Personally, I think the exemptions go far too far as it is. And we can’t be seen to pass a law just to get around a judge’s ruling; it’d be interpreted as interference with the independence of the judiciary and the family courts. It would take a complete redraft of the relevant section of the Act, and to be honest, there’s not the slightest chance of any parliamentary time being allotted for that.’
‘You could put down an Early Day Motion,’ Hope persisted. ‘It wouldn’t have to be a law or anything, just… an expression of the sense of the House, isn’t that what it’s called?’
Crow took a step back, frowning. ‘You seem to have this worked out.’
‘I’ve been reading up on parliamentary procedure.’
‘Admirable,’ said Crow, still frowning. ‘So I’m sure you understand the practicalities. T
here’s no chance of anything getting through before – to be blunt – the matter becomes moot as far as you’re concerned, and in any case, quite frankly, as I said I don’t agree with your objection, and I have a great deal on my plate as it is. So, practical help, as your MP, yes, of course, but otherwise, sorry, no.’
‘Why don’t you agree with it?’ Hope demanded. She rapped a thumbnail on her badge. ‘Doesn’t “Liberty” on that mean anything?’
‘Yes, it does,’ said Crow. ‘As I’ve been trying to explain. Genuine liberty, based on informed choice.’
‘What about my choice?’
‘If you want that sort of choice,’ said Crow, sounding as if he’d lost patience, ‘you can go to Russia.’
Hope stared at him, open-mouthed. ‘That’s totally uncalled for!’
‘I’m not sure it is,’ said Crow, frowning again and blinking rapidly. ‘If you look at the sources of a lot of this sort of so-called libertarian rhetoric, you’ll often find a stack of Russian money behind it. Not to mention Naxal ideological diversionary operations.’
‘Naxal?’ Hope cried, in such a dismayed tone that nearby heads turned.
Crow nodded, then took his glasses off and put them away, with a sudden self-satisfied smile. ‘In any case, I have to go. Do please contact my office for any help we can give you.’
Then, taking her by surprise, he shook her hand, smiled artificially, nodded vigorously, and turned away. He’d disappeared into the crowd, nodding and chatting and glad-handing, before she could gather her wits.
So much for that. Unexpectedly hungry for a snack, Hope wandered over to the stalls. She bought a sugar-free spun-sugar-like confection and chomped into it as she drifted down the line. At one stall she found Fingal, the guy she’d carried the banner with, in earnest conversation with Louise, the young woman who’d joined the flash mob to support her.
‘This is completely insane,’ Louise was saying. ‘There’s no way the unions have enough power to pressurise employers to take on women rather than just declare their workplaces unsafe, so all we’re doing is just pushing women further back into the home or into small-business employment, where they don’t have any union representation at all!’
