by Tom Black
“Look, Harold,” Driberg said, leaning back in his chair and putting a deal of strain on his waistcoat, “we know what you did. The Service’s trap worked. They put the frighteners on the Reds to see if you’d respond to the ‘escape signal’ – all that fannying about with pocket squares, really quite ingenious. By the way, what was the plan before colour television came along?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about—”
“Let me light that for you,” interrupted Driberg, a lighter appearing from nowhere and a healthy flame emerging at first strike. For a split second, Harold considered tossing the damn thing back at Driberg’s pale blue suit and somehow using the distraction to escape. He was taken aback, however, by the realisation that he had apparently unconsciously taken a cigar from Tom, and was now holding it between two fingers.
“I do know what you’re doing, Tom,” Harold said without emotion, “and I had always expected better of you.” Driberg guffawed, but with less gusto. For the first time, Harold noticed how thin the former chairman of the Labour Party looked. He’d always been a relatively stout figure in person. In recent months he had clearly taken a turn for the worse.
“You expected better? Of me?” Driberg finished chuckling, “my, my, Harold. I’m surprised. I thought the rumours about my espionage connections were all over Westminster. Didn’t they reach you?”
“I always subscribed to the theory that you were utterly incapable of keeping a secret, and so completely unsuitable.”
Driberg grinned.
“Ah, don’t pretend you’ve never heard of putting on a front. You did it very well yourself for thirty years.”
“I’ve always behaved with utmost integrity.”
“‘We’ve got a job to do,’“ began Driberg in an atrocious Yorkshire accent, “‘we’re going to do it with the whole country behind us, and we’re going to go inside and do it now.’“
“You sound like Alan Bennett.”
“You said that outside Number 10 in February 1974. Oddly enough, it turns out you were being quite truthful. Only you didn’t specify which country would be behind you.”
Harold flexed his poker face muscles again.
“An amusing theory, Tom,” he said, “but weren’t we talking about your espionage connections?”
Driberg lit up with delight.
“Yes, of course. We were. Well, it’s a long story. But I’ll keep it short.”
“That’d be preferable,” Harold remarked drily, now quite enjoying the cigar.
“I was approached to be part of this thing we know you were part of – Operation Horticulture, or so they say. I wasn’t sure, you know, which was the first sign that I wouldn’t be up to it. When it became clear I’d have to betray dear old King George – and his lovely little girl, too – I was dead against it.”
Harold remained silent.
“But it seemed that someone had got wind of it. Probably the same chaps who caught up with you years later. The next thing I knew, I was in an office at Five – where Five really has its offices, I mean...”
He trailed off, and let his hand gestures tell the rest of the story. Harold was stunned.
“You… you became a double agent?”
“I believe that’s the technical term, yes, chum,” Driberg’s grin was becoming repulsive.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing too glamorous, I’m afraid. I didn’t have anything to do with Philby and that mess. But I passed on bits and pieces of information. The Soviets didn’t trust me with much more. Of course, as it turned out, it didn’t matter how many travelling salesmen we arrested in Portsmouth. And no matter how many ‘Polish dockers’ disappeared from their beds in Barrow, the Reds always seemed to be a few steps ahead of us. It actually got to me after a while. I felt terribly useless. Now, of course, I know where they were getting their information.”
Harold simply stared at him. Tom leant forward.
“I’m ever so glad that Five didn’t think it would be a good idea to tell you about me. You’d’ve told the Ruskies, and I’d’ve ended up at the bottom of the Thames within a fortnight.”
And rightly so, thought Wilson.
“Do you see now, Harold?” Driberg hissed, leaning even further forward, “we’re not so different after all. We’re both traitors, in our own way. I happened to side with the angels, you chose the devils. But I understand you. I understand you so much better than the rest of the idiots trying to have a word with you. So come on, old man. Why don’t we have another cigar, pour ourselves a whisky and talk about old times?”
Harold could feel the old man’s breath on his face. His lips curled.
“Piss off.”
Driberg simply laughed. This time, however, Harold was having none of it.
“I know exactly what you’re doing, and what you’ve been trying to do since you came in that door. I don’t know where the hell we are, but I know how a ‘soft interrogation’ works, Tom. To give a piece of scum like you the time of day is offensive to me. Why the hell would you expect me to talk about anything like what you think I can tell you?”
Tom was going pale. Harold pushed on.
“Because that’s what you are. Scum. You and I couldn’t be more different. My whole life, I’ve chosen a side and I’ve stuck with it, and I know what I believe. Even now, without a friend in the world, I know I’m still more of a man than you, you lecherous, perverted, lying, two-faced—”
Driberg had raised a hand, and was now clutching his chest.
“- little shit. I’m not proud of everything I’ve done, but by God, I stand by it. You? You’ve never believed in anything in your entire life. We are not even remotely similar. We are not the same.”
The former MP for Barking was panting furiously now, reaching desperately for the jug of water. Harold snarled and grabbed him by the lapels.
“I am so much worse.”
He let go. There was a thump as Driberg’s head hit the table.
As the doors flew open and the familiar, reassuring, sound of shouting and heavy boots resumed, Harold Wilson closed his eyes and began humming Auferstanden aus Ruinen.
The restaurant, Rules, claimed to be the oldest in London. Enoch Powell did not know if that was accurate, but they did decent enough lamb cutlets.
“...and I think that it will just have to be the Whitebait to start with, given that I am paying.”
Even when he was paying the bill, James Molyneaux tended to want people to know about it. Powell nodded at a sommelier that he vaguely knew from the Telegraph before addressing the third member of the group.
“Firstly,” he said, “my sincere thanks to James for so kindly offering to host us for lunch this afternoon.”
Molyneaux furrowed his brow, trying to identify any sarcasm.
“Of course, we should primarily be thanking you, Harry, for being behind the inception of this endeavour.”
Harry West smiled.
“Gentlemen,” the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party began, “it is I who should really be thanking you. We have the ability, now that the good Earl has decided that he cares more about wilful inaction than he does about the safety of his cousin’s subjects, of re-asserting the voice of true, traditional, respectable conservatism throughout these Isles.”
“I wouldn’t even call it ‘willful inaction’,” Molyneaux sniped, “many are of the opinion that he actually supports the ultimate aim of the Republicans!”
There was a silence that was only broken with the arrival of the wine. Molyneaux tried to feign indifference at West’s preferences for the more expensive of the available Burgundies. Powell grunted to himself, constantly amazed about how snobby Rules were about stocking anything from the New World. He closed his eyes, reminiscing about the wonderful case of Shiraz he had had shipped over from Melbourne at Christmas.
“…I won’t have anything to do with Paisley’s Mob!” Molyneaux was saying as Powell re-entered the conversation, “he would not be happy un
til he invested the entire organisation with his – if you will excuse the term – with his disciples.”
West guffawed.
“I doubt he would sign up,” Powell stated, “the good Reverend’s chief objective is nothing less than a Presbyterian Dominion in Ulster free from Whitehall oppression. I do not really think that he cares a jot for matters affecting the mainland. I think he would be happy if Everton and Roystonhill were both annexed by the Republic.”
Molyneaux made to speak as the waiter returned.
“Even if he does not, I would be conscious of the fact that Paisley has done an effective job of eating into our support in Belfast. If we are seen to be losing ties with our heartland for the sake of a couple of Shire Tories...” he trailed off.
“It would be worth it, in the long run,” Powell responded, “while I do entirely agree with you, James, that the principle of our party is the protection of the link between Ulster and the rest of the United Kingdom, this is a proposal that will certainly gain us more votes than it loses.”
Molyneaux had already grabbed a pen from the inside of his jacket and begun scribbling some numbers down. The plastic-coated paper did not seem to like the ink from the fountain pen and soon, a number of blue splotches had begun to appear on the tablecloth. The maître d’ glared as he walked past.
“Are you sure about that, Enoch?” Molyneaux said as he held up the spindly jottings. “Look, we already suffered a setback last time when Harry lost his seat. You don’t know the Province as well as I do. We cannot afford to alienate voters like we have done in the past: they have an alternative option now, much as we collectively despise them.”
Powell said nothing about the unspoken assumption that he was an outsider in his own party and should yield to the more experienced man. It had not worked when he had resigned over Sir Alec, it had not worked when he had made that infernal speech in Birmingham, and it was not going to happen over the future of the United Kingdom.
“Yes, I am sure.”
There was a pause. Molyneaux gave his best ‘for goodness’ sake, get on with it’ expression.
“Well, prior to Comrade Wilson’s unmasking, what was the major constitutional issue affecting this country?” he raised a hand as West tried to speak, “there is no need to reply, Harry. I am simply musing. The answer is secessionism. Look, who made the largest gains in ’74? The Celtic Nationalists. What is the other Liberal demand aside from the dread chimera of ‘electoral reform’? Home Rule. Where have Labour and the Conservatives been shedding support over the decades? Scotland and Wales. The Union is under threat like no point in our history and it would not do to build up in Belfast what we are seeking to put down in Bangor.”
Powell looked around, noticing that a few heads were turning at neighbouring tables. He lowered his voice.
“Whilst I am loath to do so, gentlemen, our party alone seem to know the value of the Union. If radicalism is called for and if a change of direction is required, we must be bold in our approach to the future. ‘Quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est.’”
There was a pause as the two men tried to remember their Virgil. Molyneaux was the first to recover.
“You really do think that we have to create some-sort of ‘National Unionist’ Party?”
Powell swallowed.
“I am not too convinced by the point of the ‘National’ – the Union is, by definition, a constitutional construct.”
“Not to mention that most people in the Shires would be content to vote for Enoch, but perhaps not if he was standing alongside something with the word ‘National’ in it,” Harry West noted with something resembling a wink. Enoch gave a tight-lipped smile.
“It’s no secret that I have a degree of support from The Freedom Association. What about British Unionist Freedom?”
“That would be ‘B-U-F’, Enoch.”
“Ah.”
“To be perfectly frank,” West said as the main course arrived, “I would personally desire no label other than that of ‘Unionist’. I see it as perfectly descriptive of our central aim and objective.”
“I have sent out some feelers to the Other Place,” Molyneaux added, “the Earl of Dundee, Viscount Dilhorne and Lord Blakenham have all informed me that they would be willing to join our grouping if we made it clear that we were moving to Great Britain proper.”
“Adding to that,” West continued, “if Enoch times his return to front-line politics correctly, we can certainly woo those in the Conservative Party who fell with Mrs Thatcher.”
The lunch continued and a list of likely defectors was taken down. Keith Joseph had been visibly fuming ever since he was booted out of Number 11, and he and his fellow monetarists were experiencing severe buyer’s remorse now that Mountbatten appeared to be hell-bent on building a social market.
“Neave will be a tough sell,” Molyneaux said, “I don’t think he’s been happy since Margaret went, but all the same, I don’t think he’ll jump ship.”
West eased out a copy of the Telegraph.
“I entirely agree,” he said, smoothing out the letters page, “but I’m fairly certain that Teddy Taylor would be happy to come over to us – and he would be perfectly suited to be our Scottish Spokesman.”
There were nods from the other two men. The new executive was taking shape. After the ninth ‘probable’ Thatcher-acolyte, Molyneaux decided to vocalise, in shaking voice, what had become an obvious question.
“What about... well, what about the good woman herself?”
Relishing a challenge in a way that he had not done for years. Powell beckoned the long-suffering waiter over.
“A large gin-and-tonic, I rather think.”
Chapter twenty-three
Tuesday 6th April 1976 – 2:35pm
From the Royal Opera House to the Thirsk and Malton Amateur Dramatics Society, the backstage of a theatre never seemed to differ from venue to venue. To be fair, Spike Milligan had never actually been behind the scenes at Covent Garden, but had a shrewd hunch that – the odd bits of Romanesque Cathedral notwithstanding – it would differ little from any of the theatres on Strand.
He was not on the Strand though – rather, he was one of the founding members of the so-called ‘Theatre of the Absurd’. A stage and PA system had been hurriedly hammered together in a guerilla fashion the previous evening on the South Bank. By the time the police had realised what had taken place, but before they had discussed what, if any, laws had been broken, the show had already begun.
Milligan looked through the underside of the stage towards the other ‘wing’, where Secombe was sharing a joke with John Cleese. The taller man caught Milligan’s eye and gave him a wink. Milligan nodded back, trying once again to convince himself that the idea of an ‘Anti-Fascist Revue’ had been a decent one. The concept had popped into being following a chance meeting between the two men shortly after the New Year. However, it had been a long, hard slog, and more than a couple of a couple of ‘informal chats’ with a haggard looking manager of the South Bank complex, to allow The Secret Policeman’s Ball; or, No Coups Please, We’re British to unofficially go ahead.
Underneath the bicorn, which he was wearing as part of a Roy-Jenkins-as-Napoleon act, Milligan sweated. From the makeshift ‘pit’ at the front, an out-of-tune piano started up again.
The rag-tag audience that had assembled was surprising as well. Milligan had naturally assumed that it would be a typical collection of Trotskyites, some bemused tourists and a few middling university lectures who didn’t want to admit to having voted for Ted Heath twice.
As it was, it seemed that half the Liberal Party had turned out, obviously going against Thorpe’s best intentions of putting on a United Front, a Cordon Sanitaire and Other Things With Capital Letters for the government. There were even a couple of Tory-looking faces in the crowd. Pleasingly, it wasn’t all establishment types. A fair few students, teenagers and people in work clothes were gleefully chuckling at Michael and Terry’s ‘The Military Life, Wi
th General Walter Walker’ sketch.
As Palin’s Walter Walker explained ‘the vital role played in the defence of the realm by England’s noble mallards’, Spike grinned. This, along with a few other of the pieces being performed, were specifically targeted at restoring British comedy’s good name in the wake of Bentine’s obscene weekly ‘broadcasts’. The other Goons had completely cut him off from contact after the first few, and when he followed a segment on ‘how to spot a Red’ with a list of people ‘decent folk ought to be wary of’, Spike had joined them. It was with a hint of sadness that he remembered the whole sorry affair now. Spike squinted in disbelief as an overweight young gentleman barged his way to the front wearing a t-shirt that read ‘HAROLD WAS RIGHT’. He hoped the poor boy didn’t run into any CA members on the way home.
Hugh now had the crowd in hysterics as he finished an impromptu monologue about the ‘indisputable virtue of the English trouser’ as a substitute for the ‘Teutonic jackboot’. Peter and Dudley were on next, having put on their usual cloth caps and jackets – but now Peter was wearing a CA armband and Dudley was clutching a copy of Das Kapital under his arm.
“I’ll tell you this, Dud,” Cook began as he staggered – involuntarily – towards the microphones.
There was a hearty belch from Moore. Ah, Milligan remembered, they were doing that double act that they had mentioned a while ago.
“Sorry, Pete...” Cook responded as the laughter subsided, “...but I suppose you had to check if the microphone was working.”
That was the British public in a nutshell, Milligan thought to himself. You give a satire of a quasi-military government, not a flicker. You present a couple of jokes about bodily fluids and about how General Walker is ‘clearly an omi-polone’, and you end up bringing the house down. Spike sighed to himself and looked at his watch.
“Anyway,” Cook continued, “I’ll tell you the worst job I ever ’ad was working for that Lord Mountbatten.”
“I don’t know vhy you are svaying zat – Tommy,” Moore began, giving a Roman Salute.
