In a Land of Plenty

by Tim Pears

  James resumed his friendship with Lewis – he left the club more often with Lewis than with a woman and went back to his house on the small, modern estate by the northern ring road, where they wound down with cups of tea, ignoring both the fact that James had to go to work in the morning and also the occasional girlfriend awaiting Lewis upstairs.

  ‘I better be off, then, Lew,’ James volunteered when he’d drained his mug.

  ‘Relax, man,’ Lewis told him. ‘Stick around. Women like to be kept waiting, it does them good. They shouldn’t feel they’re too much in charge.’

  Lewis’s house was a bachelor pad. Apart from a small kitchen (whose only oven was a microwave) the whole of the ground floor consisted of a large, sprawling sitting-room with a thick-pile carpet and a sofa and armchairs of such inviting absorbency that people’s pulse rate and sense of purpose subsided as soon as they sat down: in Lewis’s pad people hung out for hours, and there were always some there, men of various nationalities and races he’d met in the club and who had time on their hands. Lewis seemed to speak most of their languages. Many of them barely said anything, in any language, but were happy to lounge around, listening to music and watching TV.

  Lewis was one of the first in the town to have a satellite dish attached to the outside of his house, and the only thing he watched was one of thirty channels of sport from around the world; and the only sport Lewis liked was football. At any time of day or night he could sink into an armchair and channel-hop with the remote control from one game to another: James realized that it was through football that his friend had become a polyglot.

  Lewis was still a leader, though of what sort James wasn’t sure. He was like a priest of an invisible religion. Visitors had to remove their shoes at the door, so as not to scuff the carpets; smoking was forbidden; and although alcohol wasn’t, neither was it available, since Lewis rarely touched it himself. James liked it there – for brief, occasional visits, respites from his own energetic but, he reckoned, equally aimless life.

  ‘There’s time for everything that needs it,’ Lewis told him. ‘You wear yourself out if you want to, I don’t intend to. Look at my old man, poor sod, frazzled by his responsibilities. It’s not worth it.’

  ‘You’re probably right,’ James agreed. ‘I’m not arguing.’

  ‘You were always a dreamer, Jay. I admired you, you know.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Sure. I still do. But when are you going to show me some of your pictures? I don’t mean the newspaper ones – your own.’

  ‘I’ll bring some round, really.’

  ‘Don’t forget.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Running a manufacturing company that employed three hundred workers was an incredibly demanding operation, especially for a man who thought delegating responsibility was, as he told Simon, ‘just another word for shirking it’.

  ‘Once you let other people make decisions for you,’ Charles advised his son, ‘they’ll end up deciding they don’t need you.’

  Simon was in awe of his father’s leadership, of the forthright way in which he made light of the countless aspects of business that had to be studied, predicted, weighed against each other and somehow balanced: profit and loss, market forces, research and development, salaries, insurance, raw materials, transport, new plant, wear and tear, redundancies, retirements and measures for the prevention of accidents in the workplace.

  Having completed his management apprenticeship of six-month stints in each department, Simon had stayed – at his own request – in the smallest, Personnel, which, being the son of the man-in-charge, would have been risible, except that, Bullshit Simon being the sympathetic man he was, no one thought it too odd. So there he stayed, assistant director of personnel. He listened to employees’ work-related grievances and personal concerns, had monthly meetings with department heads and shop stewards, and ironed out as many awkward wrinkles as he could without recourse to the boss, his father.

  Simon hoped that one day he’d succeed Rupert Sproat as director of personnel and that would be that. He had a passable understanding of the workings of each department; but how they meshed together in a functioning – indeed thriving – whole was beyond him. He had his father’s physical frame, his gregariousness, and the same blithe self-confidence; the difference was that with Simon that last quality was a front, his own modus operandi, whereas with Charles it was the rock from which he was hewn.

  That, of course, was the secret of Charles’ leadership. He did weigh up the mass of imponderables involved before coming to any major decision, and he did listen to advice. Sometimes he came to a decision based on a finely detailed study of sales projections, research and statistics; sometimes he relied on gut instinct. Sometimes he was right, sometimes he was wrong. But whatever he decided he did so with such conviction that his decisions carried a preternatural authority.

  This was the reason it took people at the Freeman Company a little longer than elsewhere to realize that, by then, the summer of 1985, a conversion had taken place at the top. Or perhaps it was a revelation. It took people a while longer to realize what was happening because Charles’ leadership had always been tyrannical, but had produced wealth and wellbeing for the benefit of all (and if that benefit had been somewhat unequally distributed, it was only the odd dotty Communist – unskilled shop-floor workers all – who’d ever complained; the union was as committed to differentials as management was). And by the time they did realize what was happening, it was too late. Perhaps it would have been anyway.

  Not even Simon realized, despite being the one person apart from Judith Peach with whom Charles shared his revelation.

  ‘I never quite understood how simple it is,’ Charles confided. ‘It’s about money, Simon; it’s about profit.’

  ‘Of course it is, Father,’ Simon replied. ‘You’ve told me that a hundred times. I was listening, I promise you.’

  ‘No, you bloody fool,’ Charles told him. ‘I mean that’s all it’s about. It has to be the basis of every single decision, at all times. Everything else has to find its own place in the scheme of things.’

  ‘Of course it does, Father,’ Simon agreed. ‘I know.’

  ‘You don’t know a bloody thing, you idiot!’ Charles roared, and stomped out of the study.

  * * *

  Unemployment was rising every month. ‘Good,’ Charles told the chief accountant. ‘Cut the wages.’

  ‘No more apprentices,’ he told the recruitment officer. ‘Unsound investment in times like these.’

  The head of research was summoned to his office. ‘Your assistants are fired,’ Charles told him. ‘Oh, yes, and you are too,’ he added.

  A group of machinists were being retrained in computer skills. ‘We’ll have to let them go,’ Charles ordered. ‘Offer the jobs to their wives instead. Part-timers. Women. Lower hourly rates. Less national insurance. No sick pay.’

  He marched over to the transport bay. ‘Inform the drivers,’ he told the supervisor, ‘as from the first of next month they’re self-employed. They can buy their lorries off the company through a hire-purchase scheme; we’ll take the payments out of their wages … I mean, their fees.’

  ‘What’s all this overtime nonsense?’ Charles asked the shop-floor manager. ‘Time and a half after six o’clock?’ he enquired. ‘Double time after midnight?’ he demanded. ‘Treble time on Sundays and bank holidays and a ruddy day in lieu?’ Charles smiled. ‘No, no,’ he stated calmly. ‘No more overtime around here. Standard rates at all times throughout the works. There’s plenty of people prefer to work at night. And plenty more who’d leap at the chance of a Sunday job.’

  The shop-floor manager and his five equally senior colleagues besieged Charles’ office.

  ‘These are unheard-of measures,’ they cried. ‘They’re ruthless.’

  ‘Not ruthless but radical, yes, gentlemen. They’re economically justifiable and therefore necessary.’

  ‘But what are we going to tell the workforce?�
� they wailed.

  ‘You can tell them any ruddy thing you like,’ Charles replied. ‘That’s your job.’

  ‘They won’t stand for it, Charles,’ his accountant – the eldest among them – warned.

  Charles laughed out loud. ‘Not only will they stand for it, Peter,’ Charles told him, ‘in a year’s time, when they see the bonus in their pay-packets, they’ll queue up outside that door to thank us.’

  ‘The ones that are left,’ muttered David Canning, the young head of sales, quietly.

  The others’ heads all turned towards him and, in the silence, back to Charles. The veins in his face began to fill and turn his complexion a familiar shade of purple and they awaited the explosion with sick anticipation, pitying their impetuous colleague.

  Instead, though, Charles restrained himself, the red mist in his eyes receded, and he smiled. ‘Quite so, young man. But it can’t be helped, you see. Good day, gentlemen.’

  Less than twenty-four hours later it was the turn of the chief shop steward of the union to pay a call to the office of the man-in-charge.

  Garfield Roberts had never had much of either political ambition or ideological conviction. Some five years earlier his name had been put forward as a candidate in the ballot for the union position, which had fallen vacant with the retirement of the then incumbent – a radical Welshman who long ago had walked to the town from South Wales in search of work. The other three candidates were all politically motivated idealists belonging to a different party – a Communist, a Workers’ Revolutionary and a Socialist Worker – and Garfield was nominated by workers who thought the politicos would be better left arguing with each other than with the boss.

  Having worked there over twenty years already, Garfield was known to everyone. After ten years on the assembly line he’d become the safety officer (a full-time post specially created, on Charles’ orders) and his job took him all over the works. He had the uncanny ability to remember every one of his three hundred colleagues’ names, addressing the most junior apprentice or secretary by their first name without a moment’s hesitation, just as he did the senior managers, and indeed the boss himself. It was a feat rendered possible by the fact that Garfield made no attempt whatsoever to remember anyone’s surname (the only surnames Garfield knew were those of his fellow players in the cricket team, of which he was opening bat, captain and secretary).

  Even the most racially prejudiced workers were unable to find a bad word to say against Garfield. The word that was used most often was solid. It described both his build and his nature. He combined a first-name-terms friendliness with a certain aloof dignity. Three hundred colleagues regarded Garfield as a comrade – and could rely on him to get a faulty machine-cover or fuse-box fixed exactly when he said he would – without any of them being his buddy. Most men had one or two particularly close friends, men they worked alongside, with whom they also went drinking, watching football, and on holiday with their wives.

  ‘You know Alan,’ someone would say, ‘he’s Danny’s mate,’ which identified him. No one ever said: ‘Garfield? He’s my mate.’ But everyone could say: ‘Garfield? He’s all right. He’s solid.’ And so five years earlier Garfield had been elected shop steward in an open ballot by an unprecedented show-of-hands majority. In fact the only hands raised for each of his far-left rivals belonged to their mates.

  Now Garfield came into Charles’ office and sat down across the wide desk. They got on well, and always began, whatever their business, with asking after each other’s families.

  ‘Well, Charles,’ Garfield said, once the pleasantries were over. ‘I have to tell you you’re stirring up a hornets’ nest this time. I’d appreciate it if you’d explain to me what it is you’re doing.’

  Charles went through the various radical measures he’d come up with, ending with the imposition of pay cuts.

  ‘Labour’s a commodity like any other,’ he proclaimed, ‘and right now there’s a large surplus. If there’s a surplus of any kind of goods or services on the market, the price comes down. It’s the same with wages. Logical, is it not? If we’re to beat our competitors all our costs have to be kept down.’

  Garfield never answered (other than a greeting) instantaneously. Whatever was said to him he pondered a moment before giving his reply. He did so now, and then responded: ‘I can see your logic, Charles, but you must also see that I can’t possibly sanction a cut in my members’ wages. You’ve always agreed that the very minimum we’d accept is a rise in line with inflation.’

  ‘Quite so, Garfield,’ Charles agreed, ‘but surely you see that’s all in the past? These are hard times, man, with new conditions. We all have to adapt or go under.’

  ‘Well, I’ll put what you propose to my members, but I’m telling you now they won’t like it,’ Garfield told him gravely. ‘And neither do I, Charles,’ he added.

  There followed the most heated meeting of union officials since the imposition of a three-day-week over ten years earlier. Garfield, who’d had nothing remotely like it during his tenure, tried to restore order.

  ‘I hear what you say, brothers, and I’ll take your points back to the chairman. I’m sure he’ll be reasonable.’

  ‘He’s taking the piss,’ cried Steven Innes, Garfield’s deputy steward. He was a young electrician and was known as the Wire, both because of his profession and because of his skinny build and jagged temperament. He was also a militant trade unionist. ‘A bastard like that doesn’t listen to reason, he only understands force. It’s about time we showed him some.’

  ‘I believe you’re wrong,’ Garfield maintained. ‘We’ve always reasoned things out before.’

  There followed days of negotiation between Charles and his two most senior managers on one side and Garfield, the Wire and their branch secretary on the other, with the director of personnel, Rupert Sproat, perched unconvincingly in between.

  Charles Freeman was at his most implacable, stonewalling worst, but in contrast to his furious days of old he conducted these negotiations in an unnatural state of calm, because things were so much clearer to him now. To every objection to his plans he smiled: ‘If any of you gentlemen can come up with better ways to save money, I’d be only too pleased to hear them.’

  Negotiations carried on into the night, neither side able to glimpse a possibility of compromise. Eventually Garfield persuaded his colleagues to accept the reclassification of HGV drivers as freelance instead of salaried employees, only to find no equivalent concession forthcoming from the management. He could feel the Wire seething with indignation and nervous energy beside him; he sometimes demanded a toilet break and dragged Garfield into the Gents with him, where he kicked the cubicle doors in his anger.

  ‘He’s taking the piss, man, I’m telling you,’ the Wire exclaimed. ‘We’ve got to go out,’ he declared. ‘We’ve got to go out.’

  Garfield struggled to restrain his colleague, retain his dignity, and keep the negotiations going. No one really knew how much he suffered at the time, because he had no real confidants at work, and he didn’t want to bother Pauline at home; it was bad enough that they saw so little of each other. Garfield kept his feelings to himself, bottled up inside, placating his secret stomach ulcer with surreptitious pills, while on the surface his black African hair turned greyer by the day.

  The last thing Garfield wanted was a strike. He abhorred the idea that justice could be achieved by force. Maybe once, long ago, it was the only way, but surely no longer. He’d brought up his children, Lewis and Gloria, in the belief that the basic human values of respect for your elders, hospitality to strangers, care of the weak, self-respect and faith in God would bring about a better world; it would change through courtesy and good manners.

  The day the research and training department closed down – with the loss of twenty white-collar workers – they’d still made no headway. That evening during negotiations the Wire called for a toilet break and instead of nudging Garfield he dragged the branch secretary – an old, almost retirement
-age fitter – off to the Gents instead. After a few minutes Garfield realized he actually did need to empty his bladder. Approaching the toilets he heard the Wire’s overheated voice: ‘We’ve got to call a strike ballot tomorrow. You can see that, can’t you? He’s going to give us nothing. Uncle’s too soft, he can’t see it. The bastard’s rolling him over and tickling his tummy.’

  ‘Yes,’ the old secretary agreed. ‘We have to stand up now. You’re right. Just one thing, Steven,’ he added. ‘Don’t let me hear you call him uncle again. You’re a mean little runt, but I’m not too old to box your ears.’

  Garfield slipped into the unoccupied Ladies next door to relieve himself. He leaned forward and rested his head against the wall above the cistern as he peed. He felt weary.

  ‘You should have carried on to America,’ he told himself.

  The open ballot in the canteen produced a clear majority in favour of an all-out strike, with immediate effect. The Wire addressed the workforce from his table-platform with rousing words, led them in a tuneless rendition of ‘There is Power in Our Union,’ and finished by holding his fist high in the air and proclaiming: ‘Solidarity, brothers and sisters!’

  There was a loud cheer, and clapping. Followed by silence. ‘What do we do now?’ a lone voice piped up, articulating the question of many, because only a very few people could remember the last time they’d gone on strike and no one was quite sure of the procedure: did they turn their machines off, tidy up paperwork, put tools in racks and switch off the lights, as if it was the end of a normal working day? Or simply walk out of the gates there and then? Eventually Garfield climbed onto the table, and explained to them that the working class was not a rabble: he designated lines of communication for the strike, and the factory was closed down in an orderly fashion.