A Very British Coup

by Chris Mullin

  He had put his arm around her and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “Just imagine if you’d married one of those awful Hooray Henrys from the Cavalry Club.”

  “Do shut up, Fred,” she had said half in anger, but she knew he was right. In her mind there suddenly loomed a vision of the awful Roger Norton and his tales of “bopping wogs” in Oman.

  “Think about it,” Fred had continued, “by now you might have been living in the Shires breeding a new generation of Hooray Henrys to run our country for us.”

  With that they had both burst out laughing. She had kissed him. “Yes,” she admitted, “I had a very narrow escape.”

  By now they were more or less living together. Elizabeth had taken a job in an oriental bookshop near the British Museum, and during the week she would stay at Thompson’s flat in Camden Town. At weekends Thompson went to her house near Sloane Square.

  This was the first demonstration they had ever attended together. “I can’t imagine what my father would say, if he could see me now.”

  “He’d probably disinherit you.”

  “Probably.” She squeezed his hand.

  They were nearing Speakers’ Corner now. A stream of people, some clutching banners headed in the same direction. In the park itself the crowd was so dense that it stretched as far as the cafeteria on the corner of the Serpentine. A policeman said he had not seen anything like it since the firework display the night before Prince Charles got married.

  Stewards were trying to marshal the throng into some sort of order. “North-East region to the front, South Wales in the middle, trade unionists in the third column,” a man with a loudspeaker was shouting. By a miracle, Thompson spotted the Holborn Labour party banner and he and Elizabeth fell in behind that.

  All around there were people selling magazines and newspapers. Obscure journals with names that Elizabeth had never heard of before: Tribune, Militant, Sanity, New Socialist. To pass the time while they waited Thompson bought a copy of a paper called Socialist Worker. The front page led with a story about a police plot to sabotage the demonstration with an outbreak of violence. It said secret instructions had been given to units of the Special Patrol Group, but offered no clue as to the source of this information. “That’s the trouble with all these Trot journals,” said Thompson, “high on hysteria, low on facts.”

  Far away the head of the demonstration, led by a brass band of Yorkshire miners, was now moving off into Park Lane. Through a gap in the railing they could see wave after wave of banners passing, but still the numbers in the park seemed to grow no smaller.

  In the centre of the crowd the speeches had begun. The speakers were crowded on to the back of a lorry with a hydraulic platform normally used to repair street lights, and one by one they were elevated above the crowd. Thompson and Elizabeth were too far away to recognise the speakers by sight, but their voices came over clearly on the carefully placed amplifiers: Labour politicians, a Church of England bishop, and even a well meaning brigadier who was received politely, but without enthusiasm. The biggest cheer of all was reserved for a Methodist peer in his late eighties. And all the while a police helicopter, with huge zoom lens cameras on either side, whirred above the great throng.

  Thompson and Elizabeth waited more than two hours before their section of the crowd started to file out of the park. Even then more than half the crowd still remained to follow. “At this rate,” said Thompson, looking at his watch, “we are going to miss Harry’s contribution.” The Prime Minister was scheduled to speak at 3.30 pm, the first time anyone could remember a serving Prime Minister addressing a demonstration in Trafalgar Square. The private office had come out strongly against, sending memos all week advising him not to speak. First they gave security as the reason. Then they tried to persuade him to entertain the Irish Prime Minister to lunch at Chequers instead. Finally, they said it demeaned the dignity of his office. “Nonsense,” Perkins had replied, “the only thing that demeans this office is the long list of broken promises by successive Prime Ministers.”

  The demonstrators moved briskly to Hyde Park Corner shepherded between a thin line of policemen. The demonstration was a good-natured affair, with some singing, some chanting of inane slogans such as “Yanks out,” and “Americans go home.” It was only as they moved into Piccadilly that the police lines thickened. Behind the railings in Green Park, clearly visible from the road, stood uniformed police in helmets with visors, riot shields and truncheons at the ready.

  “Expecting trouble, are we?” said Thompson quietly. Elizabeth held his hand tighter. Above, the police helicopter whirred. The air of goodwill began to evaporate. “Aren’t our police wonderful?” shouted someone behind.

  They passed the Ritz. St James’s was cordoned off. Behind the cordon Thompson caught sight of half a dozen identical mustard coloured vans with rear windows blacked out parked in a convoy. “The Special Patrol Group,” he whispered to Elizabeth.

  Twenty yards further on, outside Fortnum and Mason, a group of heavy young men in plimsolls and green anoraks stood smoking nervously. Just before Thompson and Elizabeth reached them, the police cordon parted and four of the men slipped through to mingle with the demonstrators about five yards ahead of Thompson. The other demonstrators gave them a wide berth. Thompson was not the only one who noticed what was happening.

  The strangers marched in step with the demonstrators. Thompson saw that two of them were carrying plastic bags that appeared to contain something heavy. They passed Hatchards and the Church of St James’s, crossed Piccadilly Circus and moved into the Haymarket. By the time they reached the American Express office beyond the Haymarket Theatre, Thompson had almost forgotten them. It was then that he heard the sound of breaking glass.

  He looked round in time to see one of the plate glass windows on the American Express office splinter inwards. Instantly a burglar alarm began to ring. As he watched a half brick arched up from the crowd just ahead of him and smashed through another window. He looked around for the four strangers, and identified them trying to push their way out of the crowd on to the pavement on the opposite side of the road from the American Express office. One man was still clutching a half brick.

  “Fred, look out.” It was Elizabeth, holding his hand tighter than ever. The crowd around them began to scatter. Everyone was shouting. From distant amplifiers came the sound of the speeches in Trafalgar Square. To judge by the applause it sounded as though Perkins was speaking. The original burglar alarm had now been joined by others. Above the din Thompson could hear clearly the sound of horses’ hooves. “Look out,” Elizabeth screamed again. The crowd around them parted to reveal police, scores of them on horseback, pouring out of Charles II Street wielding batons to right and left.

  The first of the horsemen had already overtaken them. Wailing police sirens now vied with the burglar alarm. So did the screaming. The noise drowned the whir of the police helicopter directly above. No one even looked up.

  They were running as fast as they could now. Elizabeth had still managed to keep hold of Thompson’s hand. The horsemen were in hot pursuit clubbing to the right and left. Banners were trampled underfoot. They passed one boy with blood pouring down his face from a wound in his forehead. Ahead of them a girl was screaming.

  The panic spread in both directions. It passed up the Haymarket in waves and back towards Trafalgar Square which was already jammed with people. For some reason the section of the crowd in the north part of the Haymarket, instead of retreating, continued to press forward forcing those at the front into the path of the horsemen. This may have been because, as Thompson later learned, both ends of the demonstration had come under attack. At almost exactly the moment the bricks went through the window of the American Express building, the police with riot shields had emerged from behind the railings in Green Park and started to lay into the demonstrators. Those in the middle had at first been unaware of what was happening.

  Thompson and Elizabeth continued running until they reached the bottom of the step
s at Carlton House Terrace where, they reasoned, the horsemen could no longer follow. It was here that they again caught sight of the four strangers jogging along the edge of St James’s Park that borders the Horse Guards Parade. Following them was easy. By the time they drew level with the end of Downing Street they were walking. Two of the men paused to light cigarettes. They were laughing and joking as they climbed over the low rail at the edge of the park, crossed the Horse Guards Road and made for the steps leading into Downing Street.

  Two uniformed policemen were on duty at the end of Downing Street. The men spoke briefly to them and then disappeared up the steps. When Thompson and Elizabeth arrived one of the policemen held out his arm to bar the way. “Not today, thank you, sir.” He pointed in the general direction of Piccadilly. “A bit of bother up the road, you see.”

  “I work here,” said Thompson flashing his plastic laminated Number Ten pass under the policeman’s nose.

  The policeman stood aside without another word. The four strangers were almost at the top of Downing Street by the time Thompson and Elizabeth entered and they had to run to catch up. Whitehall was practically deserted, having been sealed off to keep the demonstrators away from the government buildings. The men had crossed Whitehall and were passing up the side of the Ministry of Defence. Thompson and Elizabeth ran to catch up. As they closed in, the men turned right and disappeared through an entrance just before the Embankment.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Three guesses.”

  A convoy of mustard coloured vans overtook them and turned in behind the men. A uniformed policeman closed the gates. Thompson and Elizabeth arrived just in time to glimpse the four strangers greeting the occupants of the mustard coloured vans.

  They seemed to be congratulating each other.

  “Cannon Row Police Station,” said Thompson.

  “Oh,” said Elizabeth quietly, “aren’t our police wonderful?”

  The next day’s newspapers were full of it. Perkins had the early editions delivered to his flat in Kennington that evening. He continued to spend weekends there in preference to the flat at Downing Street.

  “Anti-Bomb mob on rampage,” screamed the Sun front page headline over a picture of the American Express building with its two broken windows. The inside pages displayed pictures of an injured policeman and a crowd charging helter-skelter down the Haymarket. The caption said they were running wild, but in fact they were fleeing the police horsemen. “Mob attacks American Express – 400 arrested,” said the Telegraph headline. All the other papers carried similar reports and pictures. There was scarcely any mention of the size of the demonstration or its purpose. Perkins’ speech was referred to only in passing.

  The only comment that was reported with any prominence was a statement from Reg Smith in his capacity as chairman of Trade Unionists for Multilateral Nuclear Disarmament. The riot, he said, proved what he had always argued. Namely, that CND was run by a number of irresponsible hotheads who were motivated more by hatred of the United States than by a desire for nuclear disarmament. He appealed to all decent, sensible people who may have allowed themselves to be misled into supporting CND to reconsider their position.

  “Bastard,” said Perkins as he flung the papers in a heap on the floor. For weeks he had been looking forward to today as a chance to get the case for removing the bases across to the public in a way that not even Sir George Fison’s papers could ignore. He was sure the disruption was organised, but proving it was going to be another matter.

  Thompson had telephoned soon after Perkins arrived home and described what he and Elizabeth had seen. Perkins had rung the Metropolitan Commissioner immediately and demanded an explanation. “But I don’t suppose I’ll get one,” he had said to himself as he replaced the receiver. “After all, I’m only the bleeding Prime Minister.”

  Sure enough, an hour later the Metropolitan Commissioner rang back to say that he had personally checked with Cannon Row police station and no men answering the description given by Thompson had been seen on the premises.

  Meanwhile Thompson, on the advice of Perkins, had contacted the BBC and ITN offering them his eyewitness account of what had happened. The BBC Television news desk referred him at once to a senior executive, Jonathan Alford. Mr Alford was courteous, but sceptical. He said he would ring back, but did not. ITN, on the other hand, immediately whisked Thompson to its Wells Street studio. But the recorded interview was not shown. “You know how it is,” said an embarrassed news editor when Thompson rang to enquire what had happened, “you were crowded out, not enough time.”

  But both BBC and ITN did find time to show the demonstration leaving Hyde Park. They used near identical clips in both of which a Communist Party banner stood out clearly.

  Perkins switched the television off and poured himself a whisky. He had not felt so depressed at any time since he became Prime Minister. The other side were winning the propaganda war and he was almost powerless to hit back. For a moment he caught himself wishing he ran a dictatorship where he could simply order the newspapers to print what he said.

  When he climbed into bed that night he felt lonelier than for a long time. As he drifted to sleep he found himself thinking of Molly Spence. It was getting on for thirteen years since she had passed out of his life. She was the last woman he had slept with. She would be getting on for forty now. He wondered whom she had married. How many children she had. Whether she had voted for him in the election. He did not suppose he would ever find out.

  How wrong he was.

  16

  Molly Spence had married her boss, the managing director of British Insulated Industries. They had two children, a girl aged twelve and a boy aged ten, and lived in a converted mill in the Peak District of Derbyshire. Her husband commuted each day to British Insulated’s twelve-storey head office in the centre of Manchester.

  The mill, which could not be seen from the road and was approached by a winding drive of grey stone chippings, was on the floor of a valley and overlooked on three sides by sloping bare hills which were green, grey or purple depending on the time of year or the disposition of the sun. The highest of the plateaux, Kinder Scout, was a favourite place in the summer for parties of campers and ramblers.

  Despite its isolation the mill was never a silent place, what with the sheep on the hillside and the running water from the nearby stream. Only when the wind howled too loudly or the rain beat too hard upon the windows could the water not be heard. And every hour or so there was the rattle of a one-coach diesel railcar that ran along the floor of the valley. It was one of those lines that British Rail was always threatening to close, but never did.

  Molly’s husband, Michael Jarvis, was fifteen years older. Even by Molly’s standards that was pushing it a bit. She had thought hard before accepting his persistent offers of marriage. He had two children by his first wife and she did not get on with them. He drove a Jensen, though that was neither here nor there. He was powerful and, if Molly was honest with herself, she did have a soft spot for powerful men. In the end she said “Yes” because it seemed less trouble than saying “No”. Off and on she had been going with Michael Jarvis for four years. Everyone in British Insulated knew. She did not want to devote the best years of her life to being someone’s mistress and then end up being dumped in favour of a woman younger and prettier.

  She had not told Michael about the affair with Harry Perkins. It had only been possible because he had based himself in London to negotiate the reactor deal. Although she had told Perkins that she shared a flat in Kensington with another girl, she in fact lived with Jarvis in an apartment owned by British Insulated. On Thursday nights Jarvis usually returned to Manchester to deal with business at head office. He would stay the weekend in Manchester and always spent Sunday with his children. It was these weekly visits to Manchester that made Molly available for Harry Perkins at weekends.

  She had never loved Harry Perkins though she was as fond of him as she had been of anyone. She had liked him for
being different. She liked his sense of humour. She liked him because he was famous. She liked him because he was interesting. But she always knew there was no future in the affair. Every Sunday when she caught the tube to the Oval she wondered whether to tell him it was the end. As the tube sped under the river, and through Kennington, she would sit composing her opening lines. But when she arrived, she could not bring herself to do it. There was Harry as warm and witty and optimistic as ever. There was the Handel organ concerto on the stereo. The bottle of Côte du Rhône on the table. She knew that deep down Harry Perkins was a lonely man. She knew that behind his façade of self-assurance, behind his steely willpower and his crammed appointments diary, there was an area of emptiness which she filled. She could tell by the way he clung to her. By the way he closed his eyes so tightly when they made love. By the way he lay with his head on her breasts.

  So when the time came she had not the heart to tell him. She had carried on seeing him right up to the end. Right up to the Saturday before the wedding. The nearer the day came, the harder it got to tell him. In the end she had written him a long letter explaining about Michael and going into all sorts of unnecessary detail about her feelings. Then she had torn up the letter and substituted a simple statement of fact: On Saturday I’m getting married so we’ll have to call it a day. Please understand. Good luck. Molly. She told herself that this was the sort of memorandum Cabinet ministers liked. Short and to the point.

  Even so, she had not forgotten Harry Perkins. How could she? There he was in the newspapers every day. There he was every time she turned on the television. Not the Harry Perkins she knew. This was a much harder man, tough talking and belligerent. All the same, she felt a pang of guilt every time she saw him. She thought how much older he looked and wondered if the daily barrage of vilification was getting him down. She noticed too that the optimistic twinkle had disappeared from his eyes.