by J. T. Marsh
After the arrests, it seems to Sean Morrison there’s nowhere safe from the police raids. In truth, the failing of the student groups is their uncertainty over why they must strike. At the student hall, the room buzzes with the chatter of the polytechnic’s students who’ve assembled in response to the mass arrests. All eyes turn to a short, slender man who takes the stage and gives his speech. He uses terms they’ve heard before and know of in only the vaguest of ways, terms like ‘class warfare’ and ‘industrial democracy,’ Sean listening intently with all the others. In the wake of the arrests, they are more receptive than they’d have been. It’s as though a dark cloud, a noxious gas has seeped into the hall and expanded to fill every space within, lending a surreal sense to the scene. Men like Sean are caught in a trance, enraptured by this new speaker, from within the shadows emerging a presence that compels them all to this way of thinking they’ve all heard of before yet which seems so new and exciting nevertheless. It doesn’t take long. After Valeri storms off, he’s found by the managers, with a pair of muscular guards. “This is serious,” says Harpal. “I’m aware of that,” Valeri says. “I hope you are,” says Harpal, before making past him and down the floor towards the next returnee. She stops at every one. But she’s only discharging her duties, carried out on behalf and under the orders of men vastly more powerful and important than her. Valeri returns home that afternoon, the power of a pittance to sustain and to restrain him lost. “It’s not over,” says Murray, approaching from behind to rest a hand on Valeri’s shoulder. “Of course not,” says Valeri. “We must be relentless if we’re to succeed,” says Murray. They exchange nods, then part ways, for the rest of the day this exchange leading only to the next, and then the next, and the next. Murray speaks, from time to time, with a knowing look in his eyes assuring Valeri he must know more. It seems everyone knows, in some instinctive way, every person has their role to play and must play it through to its logical end in search of a meaning that was never there. But herein lies the problem. Any search for meaning inevitably leads to a confused and disoriented understanding of our difficult and tumultuous times, which only induces every player to keep on playing their roles. In the streets and on the factory floors across the country an increasingly desperate energy takes root, infusing itself into the teeming masses who act out impulsively, sometimes dangerously, not provoked but elicited nonetheless. In the morning the smoking, burnt-out remains of a working class apartment block collapses of its own accord into a pile of debris, the wreckage left to smoulder while the fires of liberation burn.
Not long after, news breaks of the impending closure of a factory not altogether far from the shop Valeri was recently fired from, a brief note made on the screens of the hundreds of men put out of work. Left unannounced but widely understood is the factory’s new home half a world away, to be manned not by men but by children, as so many factories already moved are manned, paid a fraction the wages British workers were paid. But the game’s afoot. In the morning a new gathering takes place, occupying the square around Victory Monument as all the others have, only this time the gathering fills the air with singing and shouting of slogans in one voice. It’s as though someone has begun to manipulate these people like a skilled conductor slowly teasing a symphony from his orchestra. And he’s almost got it. In this advanced stage of historical development, the way of things seems strong as ever, the wealthy man’s power so firmly entrenched that it seems as though it’s always been. As the storm troopers take their positions it becomes lost in the moment that they’re wearing the insignia of a forbidden army, one thought lost to the pages of a long-dead history. As these storm troopers look on, the working man assails himself against an imaginary foe, never more confident in his own assured tomorrow, losing sight of another’s today.
10. Days of Rage
There’s trouble in the streets. The sound of horns braying and of men angrily shouting slogans fills the air among the crowd gathered not far from the city centre. There’s always trouble in the streets, but today those troubles have surged to the forefront, if only for a short time. The face of our common enemy appears calm, dispassionate as he methodically contains the anger venting in the streets. He’s done this before, many, many times. Standing in front of the crowd, he adopts a wide stance and readies his truncheon and shield. But it’s more for show than anything else. His is a routine well-rehearsed, his nerves steady and his motions smooth, rhythmic, his work a ritual requiring him only to allow his body to re-enact from memory. After the speaker at the hall filled the polytechnic’s students with old ways of thinking, Sean Morrison has joined the crowd. To him, this is their occupation, a moment when they have seized control of the streets and deprived the enemy of the control they’ve had for too long. But when the end comes, they will yield control back to the enemy, having won little for their cause. It’s a frustrating cycle, and in the streets Sean can’t foresee an end to it, looking into the future revealing only still more occupations to end in yielding control all the same. Little does he know the mysterious speaker at the hall has this in mind; it’s important the pressure is kept unrelenting in the mounting struggle against the way of things.
This time, at first, it’s no different. This time, the crowd of some thousands gathers, then disperses, in the aftermath the smoke-filled streets to be cleared in the days to come, the police withdrawing to their stations and the usual troublemakers who’d made up this particular crowd returning to the universities, the pubs, the union halls and the churches, to return when next the occasion calls for it. But Valeri doesn’t take part in this mass action, having taken in with the crowds of day labourers who turn up at every construction site, every factory, every shop left open looking for a day’s wages, most turned away. Today he’s among those chosen, working with a burly, bearded man named Michael on one side and a short, thin, red-head named Samantha on the other. Between the three of them, the ninety-pound girl works the hardest and the fastest. On the floor it’s cold, but Samantha wears thin pants and a short-sleeved shirt and never complains about the cold. “Do you ever think we should just stop doing this?” asks Michael. “All the time,” Valeri says, “every day, in fact.” But Samantha says, “we should never stop. This is the only thing that’s made the years bearable.” She speaks of her work with a passion admirable if misguided. Although Valeri has come to know his labour is sold for the benefit of his bosses, he can still only articulate his knowledge in the sort-of basic, instinctive way he can. In this state of despair, only instinct can be relied on to guide men like Valeri through. At the underground church, the rogue priest urges his new flock to join in, his gospel of sedition taking a new turn. Darren remembers his dead family, those cast out of work like disposable tools only so the wealthy man might profit, and his heart hardens against the way of things. He feels his pulse quicken and his fist clench whenever the rogue priest calls forth the faithful to take to the streets; his friend Sheila stands with him, one look into her eyes proving she’s as committed as he is. But their time is not yet come. “I don’t know what will come of this,” he says to her as they sit in the pews together, “but I will never forget what’s been done. This is not the Britain I’ve ever wanted to live in, and it’s not the Britain I want to leave for the next generation to live in. it’s a certainty that God is on our side.” They sit not in the underground church but in the pews of the Anglican church, surrounded by opulence and ritualism, their surroundings dead but either of them alive once more. “I place my faith in the liberation of Christ,” says Sheila, “and we will be delivered from the evils of poverty and deprivation only through him.” But theirs is belief sincere and steadfast, as is the beliefs of the rogue priest, he one of many rogue priests across Britain preaching this new gospel. This is not merely the product of worsening poverty but a spiritual awakening, the essence of liberation making itself felt like the warmth of a tired man coming in from the bitter cold. As it is written in Proverbs 31:9 says, ‘Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the caus
e of the poor and needy.’ Men like Darren intend to fulfill this commandment, and in so filling will play their role in the coming revolution.
As yet, the revolution is a young child, still learning to walk and talk, but surely destined for greatness. They leave behind broken windows, smashed-in storefronts, and burnt-out cars. But there’s one thing that’s made a difference, one little change, a young woman, a young mother struck in the face by a canister of gas fired haphazardly into the crowd, her death so sudden, so violent, leaving behind a young child with no father to be raised by a rotating cast of characters and in so leaving a young child alone setting off a chain of events rooted in the common history we all share. In the midst of a simmering crisis, a calm emerges. At times, it may seem like there’s no greater purpose at play, no higher cause to ennoble the weakest and most pathetic among us, but it’s not true. In the night, an agreement is struck, in the morning news breaking across the screens of a new pact signed between countries, a corollary to the agreements already in place. Not a military alliance, this pact commits all parties involved to the removal of all impediments on the flow of capital across their borders, making it easier than ever for the wealthy criminals to abscond with their ill-gotten gains. Valeri reads this, and it inspires in him a quixotic mix of fatalism and rage. From his mother-in-law’s flat in Surrey, Garrett Walker reads this news as well, inspiring in him that same mix of emotions. “This can’t stand,” he says, assembled with a small crowd of angry, out-of-work men at the office of their member of parliament. The MP isn’t a conservative but a member of the so-called Labour Party. “This won’t stand,” says another man. In the moment there’s that dark essence coursing through the working man’s veins, nestling in the hearts of every unemployed worker there and in the hearts of every unemployed worker not there, the announcement of this new treaty ill-timed.
But with his step through this time, men like Valeri seem preoccupied with their own selves; but there are times when, in the midst of all this struggle, he sees beauty in the arms and in the heart of his former co-worker and current lover, the half-Asian woman named Sydney. “There’s a rumour going around,” she says to him over the phone, “a rumour there’s something big about to go down.” Though Valeri can only imagine what this means, he still looks out his window while half-listening to her. Having stayed away from the mass action, Valeri sees at the end of the day only the same walls that’ve towered over him for so many years. Still he’s in his little apartment, lying wide awake in bed and staring at the darkened ceiling when the arrests begin. A man named Neal Clarke works every day not in the streets but alongside them, putting up the beams and trusses that are to make up the skeletons of the next set of glass and steel towers. Neal’s not caught up in these arrests simply because he’s not at home when the troopers go from door to door. Valeri escapes by virtue of not being targeted. But Samantha’s taken. In truth, this wave of arrests are random, little more than names drawn from a pool. The point isn’t to arrest the troublemakers but to sow fear. At the range, Private Craig Thompson hears of the new trade deal. “How is it parliament signs treaties to put our own people out of work?” he asks. The troops stand at their stations, a moment of calm amid the frenetic, unending drills. “All this will do is close more factories and mills,” says another trooper. “And they’ll send our livelihoods elsewhere leaving us with nothing but more poverty,” says a third. All the men seem to have arrived at an unspoken agreement, the dark essence coursing through them like a drug through their veins. The act of voicing their agreement is a formality, not the means by which consensus is arrived at but the manner in which their consensus is expressed. Theirs is a consensus hundreds of years in the making, still lurking in the shadows but edging closer every day to moving into the light.
But for every one of Valeri’s brothers and sisters who’re disappeared in the night, there’s ten more to take their place on the front lines of the war for work. Every day Neal is acutely aware the fruits of his labour are to be sold off by foreign investors, the wealthy men of the world for profit, each tower erected a monument to the boundless greed and exploitation that’ve come to mark the current order. Every day he arrives at some work site and every evening he returns home, cash in hand, paid under the table by a foreman who doesn’t know where the money comes from. Neal’s been nursing a broken hand for a week, lucky as he thinks himself to have broken it without the foreman seeing it, allowing him to keep working through the pain. When his partner, an older man named Artem notices him wincing slightly as the two pick up a fifty-kilo bag of cement together, the two exchange a half-nervous glance, Neal’s colleague nodding slightly in a silent understanding. They work in the day after the mass arrests, a few of the workers at their site having been disappeared in the night only to be replaced by new faces. Some are old, some are young, all are hungry. “You were meant to be watching him!” says the foreman, a man named Max Kelly. He’s berating a subordinate for inattentiveness when one of the temporary workers made off with some power tools. Across the way, Stanislaw Czerkawski watches the exchange. He’s working at another police station, putting up the same fortifications as at the first. The foreman’s voice can be heard clearly despite the distance. “I’ve warned you before,” says a voice, belonging to the boss, “and I won’t warn you again. Get back to work!” This time, Stanislaw considers, for a moment, standing up to the boss, his jaw instinctively clenching and his fist tightening, only for a moment before the urge passes. The sound of gears whirring and hydraulics smoothly contracting and expanding like muscles overpowers the scene, making it hard for Stanislaw to think. But he manages all the same, years of hard labour having taught him how to practice the art of seditious thought while still working steadfastly at his task. He’ll be among the last of the working men to give in to their seditious fantasies, but when the time comes he’ll make himself counted among the righteous the same as anyone else.
Industry lies decayed, buildings sit as dark, empty concrete shells, caged in by chain-link fences with wires twisting off their poles. Ghosts of families pushed into obscurity still lurk around every corner, in every alley, behind every door. It’s not their fault. It’s never their fault. You can read, sometimes, about some mill somewhere that’s been sold off and closed up, and there’s always a momentary outcry for the working men who’ll be made destitute, perhaps even mention of the vast swathes of our province that’ll be plunged into despair. Even as he’s done what’s been asked of him, still yet it’s not enough, it’s never enough, for no matter how he works the wealthy man still demands of him the elimination of every possible redundancy, the straining of every resource to the breaking point. Men like Valeri are only beginning to see this even as they’ve known it all along, forced as they are by near-starvation to contend with affairs too petty to amount to much. “Go and live with her, then,” says an older worker named Lyle Carson, “see if I care!” He’s on his phone, and it’s not immediately clear to the others who he’s talking with. “It’s always trouble with him,” says Artem, and Neal nods his agreement. “Back to work!” says foreman Kelly. The workers snap to it. In the aftermath of the mass arrests, the day’s work must go on, the workers enslaved by the daily pittance they’re handed. Through the noise of the construction, the hammering of nails into wooden planks and the chattering of a distant jackhammer hardly obscuring the truth.
And then, the outcry will fade, bleeding into silence, the world writ large carrying on as it should without concern for all the lives destroyed and the families torn apart by the need of a few at the top to grow themselves fatter off the sweat of the rest of us. Sydney brings news. “Are you caught up in all this?” she asks. “You must already know the answer to that,” Valeri says. “You still have a job to lose,” she says, “you shouldn’t risk it by joining the gangs.” He winces at hearing her use the word ‘gangs’ to describe the rebels, be they real or imagined. But he can’t dispute her reasoning. Neal is something of an oddity in this day and age, like Valeri unmar
ried, childless, but unlike Valeri has not yet given up on all hope for his own personal future. At the end of the day, one day, Neal leaves his work behind and makes down the road for an old pub, its owner’s stubborn refusal to sell to the wealthy developers leaving at least one spot for working men to feel at home. He steps inside and muscles his way to the bar, the bartender handing him a pint and shooting him a look that seems to half-ask, half-tell there isn’t to be any trouble tonight. It’s only been a few weeks since the owner of the place had that window near the door fixed, and a few days since Neal paid for it in full. “I want to be there when you get what’s coming to you,” says his neighbour, Hugh Turner, “for all the good it’s going to do me.” But Neal says, “learn your place, old man,” and muscles a scowl onto his face.
It’s summertime, it’s that late-summer time when the heat’s thick and oppressive, when the heat comes in waves and when the air’s filled with a swampy musk. This summer, after so many years of stagnation, the stench of so much lavishness and opulence has become overpowering. Down the streets of yesteryear, we look on the spaces once left open, now filled with empty shells, with monuments built to a way of life that’d never been, that we’d only ever convinced ourselves had been. In the midst of a simmering crisis, we’ve all taken too long to arrive at this proto-revolutionary epoch. For one day, the working men of this city have ceased their work and have taken to the streets, the latest measure enacted by law having been aimed at enslaving them further to their wages but in fact having served only to enrage them further. “What’s in that bag and why are you hiding it here?” asks Graham Russell, the old man who manages the building Valeri lives in. It’s only been a week, maybe two since that latest wave of arrests, and the old man’s suspicion seems to overpower his good sense. “What could I possibly be hiding?” Valeri asks. “Don’t be frightened,” says Graham, “I just need to be sure.” “Then be sure,” Valeri says, and turns away, walking down the hall and leaving the old man to his business. Though Valeri doesn’t know Neal, and Neal has never heard of Valeri, they will share their fate. You see, Neal is, like the others, emblematic of the general oppression and prostitution meted out upon the working class; with the fires of liberation burning in England and across Europe brighter with each passing day, they will soon have their vengeance.
