The Scheme for Full Employment

by Magnus Mills

  “Are these all swervers?” asked George, as we worked our way through the crowd.

  “Suppose so,” I replied. “Hello, looks like they’re starting.”

  We could now see that Billy’s platform was actually a large empty crate. He stood talking to his companion, nodding his head in apparent agreement over something, and then taking a loud-hailer that had been handed up to him. There was a widespread stir of anticipation, followed by polite silence.

  “Well, everyone,” he began, in a voice loud yet fuzzy. “Thank you for coming along today. I think you all know how important this issue is, and why it’s necessary to make a stand.”

  This brought a murmur of assent from the onlookers, which in turn boosted Billy’s confidence so that he no longer felt the need to shout into the loud-hailer. When he resumed, the fuzziness had lessened.

  “At the outset of the campaign we decided to hold a general meeting, and invite someone who could fully articulate our concerns; to put them into perspective, so to speak. I’m sure you’ll agree that Les Prentice was by far the best choice. Les is going to share one or two thoughts with us, and hopefully point us in the right direction. He’s journeyed here especially from Royal Pond, and needs to be back there fairly sharp this afternoon, so, without further ado, could you join me in welcoming Les Prentice! A big hand please! Les.”

  A cheer rose up as Billy passed the loud-hailer to the other man, before stepping down off the platform. A quick glance around told me that the gathering had swollen somewhat during the past few minutes, with new arrivals turning up all the time. I also noticed John Jones watching proceedings from the privacy of his gatehouse. There was no sign, though, of any supers or other Scheme officials. Clearly they’d decided to maintain a low profile.

  Everyone’s attention was now on Les Prentice, who had a very relaxed look about him. As far as I could see he had no notes to read from, but nevertheless it soon became obvious that he was quite used to public speaking.

  “Eight hours,” he said, addressing the space above our heads. “Doesn’t sound a lot, does it?” He paused with a quizzical expression on his face, as if examining the thought. Then he continued. “Oh no, eight hours doesn’t seem anything at all. Not until you consider that it’s a third of a day. Yes, my friends, one third of your life spent behind the wheel of a UniVan, or perched on a forklift truck!”

  As this fact sunk in, a sort of groan of recognition spread through the crowd, and I realized all at once that Les had his audience captivated.

  “Think about it,” he went on. “We’re expected to rise from our beds at seven in the morning in order to arrive at work on time, which means we’re getting up in darkness during the winter months. And it’s almost dark again when we go home! Toiling from dawn until dusk! What other industry would demand that of a loyal workforce? What other industry has men going round and round, as if they were on a treadmill, for eight consecutive hours? Only our glorious Scheme could come up with something like that! Only our glorious, glorious Scheme!”

  Les paused again.

  “Not that we’ve ever held a grievance, of course. We know as well as anyone that we need to do a reasonable day’s work for a reasonable day’s pay. But that’s the key word, isn’t it? Reasonable. We’re reasonable men, and for the most part we turn up, week in, week out, and do eight full hours without demur. And all we ask in return is the odd glimmer of gold amongst the chaff; the occasional day in clover. My friends, let me say this to you: we’re not demanding a life of ease; we’re not even against the principle of the flat day. We simply want what’s fair. That signature at the bottom of a card can turn a relentless slog into an enjoyable excursion, but just lately it’s become a positive rarity! No one can deny that the incidence of early swerves has been greatly reduced over the past few weeks. What we’re witnessing here is the gradual erosion of our established customs and practices. And if we continue to tolerate such a process, then how long before the spectre of compulsory overtime raises its head?!”

  The roar of agreement that went up when Les said this made me think he was about to be swept aloft by the multitude. Instead, he raised a hand for silence, and spoke again.

  “The ice we’re on is thinner than it looks. We should make known our misgivings before it’s too late, and there are any number of options open to us. Perhaps, for example, we could consider implementing a go-slow strategy.”

  “Well, no one could go much slower than you, Les!” This bit of good-natured heckling, which came from someone over at the right-hand side, produced a ripple of laughter and made Les himself smile broadly. When he tried to resume, however, there was a second interruption.

  “Where’s Mr Gosling in your hour of need?!” Such a deliberate taunt could only have come from a flat-dayer, and I peered about me in an attempt to see who it was. The comment had obviously rattled a few members of the crowd, who raised their voices in objection, but then someone else began shouting, “We want eight!” over and over again. Quickly this was taken up by several other people, all chanting in unison, and I realized that the meeting had been infiltrated. The chants grew louder and louder, while the early swervers tried their very best to drown them out with jeers and whistles.

  “You can shout all you like!” declared a high-pitched voice behind me. “But you’ll soon be hoarse!”

  Turning round I saw Martin from Eden Lacy.

  “Hello, Martin!” I said, struggling to make myself heard above the din. “What are you doing here?”

  “Well, I thought I’d better come and find out what all the fuss was about.”

  Quickly I introduced him to George, who seemed untroubled by the turn of events. Then Martin told us that the flat-dayers had disrupted a number of other meetings he’d attended.

  “The extremists are the worst,” he said. “They’ve forsworn their ten-off-the-eight, and now they think everyone else should do the same. Caused pandemonium at Riverhead depot, by all accounts.”

  “Blimey,” I remarked. “You’re certainly well-informed.”

  “You have to be, don’t you, the way things have been going lately?”

  “So which way do your sympathies lie?”

  “Neither way,” said Martin. “I’m a strictly neutral observer.”

  Our conversation went no further, because at this point a UniVan came into the yard and began nosing its way through the margins of the crowd in a very obstinate manner. Above it fluttered a huge flag emblazoned with an enclosed figure eight, and the driver kept sounding his horn to make people move aside. Then he insisted on reversing onto the bay, where his assistant got out, opened the roller door and stood waiting to be unloaded. I looked at my watch. It was now one thirty. Right on cue, a couple of superintendents approached from the direction of the main offices. Not long after that the meeting broke up and the swervers began drifting slowly back to work. We could hear them complaining to one another about the outrageous audacity of the flat-dayers. The dozen or so interlopers had slipped away during the confusion caused by the arrival of the rogue UniVan, and now Billy Barker, Les Prentice and their associates stood holding a postmortem. Whether the gathering had been a success or a failure was impossible to know. True, Les was a gifted orator and he’d succeeded in putting the main points across, but beyond that the outcome was indecisive.

  As George and I wandered back to our vehicle there appeared to be only one absolute certainty: The Scheme for Full Employment was on the verge of a schism.

  11

  On Friday morning I found a note attached to the windscreen of UV55. It was from George, asking me to collect all remaining cakes from the engineers’ workshop, and then pick him up outside the depot gates. Some things never changed. I left Chris Peachment loading the van and went over to see Rob Marshall.

  “I’ll be glad to see the back of this lot,” he said, leading me inside. “We haven’t been able to use our workbench for weeks.”

  The bench in question was piled with about fifteen cake boxes, and when w
e began moving them we found several slips of paper hidden underneath. These comprised unused worksheets, collision damage reports and order forms for vehicle spare parts. Also an internal memorandum. It was printed in red letters and said:

  NOTICE TO LONG REACH ENGINEERS

  PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS YEAR’S WEIGHT TEST WILL TAKE PLACE AT LONG REACH PUBLIC WEIGHBRIDGE ON JUNE 1ST AT 11.00 AM PLEASE MAKE A VEHICLE AVAILABLE FOR THAT DAY

  SIGNED C.D. SCAPENS

  DEPARTMENT OF SUPERINTENDENTS

  Rob glanced at the memo.

  “Ah, yes,” he said. “I wondered where that had gone.”

  “What’s a weight test?” I asked.

  “Well, I thought you of all people would know,” he replied. “Being a bit of an enthusiast, like.”

  “What are you talking about? I’m not an enthusiast. Never have been. They’re all barmy, that lot.”

  “Alright, but you can’t say you’re not interested in UniVans.”

  “Only for professional reasons,” I insisted. “Now what’s all this about a weight test?”

  “It all goes back to when The Scheme first started up,” Rob explained. “They’d already built about two thousand vans when they realized the unladen weight wasn’t compatible with the axles they were using.”

  “Dear oh dear. I bet Sir Ronald Thompson wasn’t very pleased about that.”

  “I’ll say he wasn’t. And to be honest I think that’s what finished him. You know: all the worry.”

  “So did they go back and start again?”

  “Ooh no, they couldn’t do that. There was too much at stake. Don’t forget, The Scheme had been put forward as the great panacea: everything depended on its success. They needed a quick solution, and they came up with this provisional arrangement where they’d continue using the axles as long as they didn’t break. That was almost thirty years ago, and so far they’ve been alright, but the other part of the compromise was they had to weigh a vehicle at random, once a year.”

  “I thought they all weighed the same.”

  “They do,” said Rob. “It’s just a formality really: a sort of ritual to demonstrate they’re keeping their eye on the job.”

  “And the honour falls to Long Reach this year?”

  “Yep,” he nodded. “Blinking nuisance. It means we’ve got to set a UniVan to one side just so it can be weighed.”

  That wasn’t for another few weeks, of course. In the meantime, I had to transfer fifteen cakes to our van without anyone noticing. While Rob watched to make sure the coast was clear, I made three journeys with my arms full and placed the boxes in the cab. Then, quietly cursing George, I went back up onto the loading bay.

  I knew Chris had finished putting the goods on board because I could see him at the far end of the depot, dealing with another vehicle. He’d left the van’s roller door open, however, and when I glanced inside I was surprised to see Joyce standing there. She was gazing at one of the crates and seemed to be totally preoccupied, as if its contents held a great significance. What, I wondered, was she thinking about? In the gloom of the van’s interior she appeared somehow different, the dim half-light having softened her features considerably. This made her seem quite approachable, vulnerable even, and it was with a certain tenderness that I broke the silence and spoke:

  “You lost something?”

  Joyce peered at me briefly, then returned her gaze to the crate. “No,” she replied. “I was just looking to see what was going to Merry Park today. According to the labels you’re taking four hundred windscreen wipers and five gross of rear reflectors.”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” I said. “A substantial cargo of indispensable goods, all winging their way from depot to depot.”

  “Ridiculous, isn’t it?” said Joyce, now turning to face me. “This Scheme’s a complete sham.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. “But it’s the centrepin of our economic system!”

  “Nonsense!” she snapped. “It’s nothing more than a sideshow! A relic from some bygone age when people didn’t know any better, dreamt up by do-gooders in their ivory towers! It’s inefficient, expensive and wasteful, and what it needs is a thorough shake-up! These vans should be made to earn their keep instead of going round and round full of unwanted spare parts. The depots should be put to proper commercial use, and the staff paid by results. Otherwise this entire outfit will go exactly the same way as all those other failed social experiments, like public transport, school dinners and municipal orchestras!”

  When she’d ceased speaking Joyce stood looking at me with a challenging expression on her face, as if daring me to contradict her.

  “Don’t they serve school dinners any more then?” I asked.

  She shook her head slowly. “Not if I had my way, they wouldn’t.”

  Without another word she stalked past me and approached her office, leaving me to recover from the onslaught. Obviously she saw The Scheme very differently from me, but at the same time she seemed quite passionate about its future wellbeing. This suggested I could look forward to further conversations on the subject.

  The time now being eight fifteen, I closed the roller door, jumped in the van and got going. At the first corner after the gate I saw George. He was waiting beside a low wall, on top of which rested a large wooden tray laden with cakes. I pulled up, and between us we loaded them into the cab.

  “How many’s that altogether?” I asked.

  “Twenty-six,” he replied. “All bound for Sandro’s.”

  “How come there’s so many all of a sudden?”

  “It’s not all of a sudden. It’s just a gradual expansion of business.”

  “So what are you going to do when there’s no more room in the cab?”

  “Well,” said George. “I’ll have to think of an alternative arrangement, won’t I?”

  He spent the entire journey to Merry Park looking very uncomfortable, perched amongst the pile of boxes.

  “Don’t forget you promised a cake for John Jones,” I reminded him, as we passed beneath the gatehouse.

  “No, alright,” he said. “But not today: these are all spoken for.”

  After Merry Park he was forced to remain under the teetering stack all the way to Blackwell, then a further two miles along the Ring Road. Only when we pulled up outside Sandro’s Bakery was his ordeal over. For a moment I was tempted to let him carry them all in on his own, but in the end I relented and gave him a hand. Even so, it took several journeys just to get the boxes into the kitchen, and then Sandro had to find somewhere to store them all.

  “Maybe I should get bigger premises,” he remarked. “For all this extra trade you’re bringing.”

  As a matter of fact, Sandro already seemed to be preparing for expansion. Since our previous visit his staff had been augmented by a new assistant, a man in a white apron and cap who was busy removing loaves of bread from the oven. He appeared unused to the work and was sweating heavily, but nonetheless he continued his labours while George and I stood talking to Sandro. Only when he’d completed his task and closed the oven door did he finally turn round. It was Gosling.

  The moment he saw us he wilted visibly, and we had to dash over and sit him down on a chair. Then we made him put his head between his legs, while Sandro fetched a glass of water. Not until another minute had elapsed did he recover sufficiently to speak.

  “Sorry about that,” he said. “I’ll be alright now, thanks.”

  “What are you doing here?” I asked. “I thought you were suspended on full pay.”

  “I was,” he replied. “But to tell the truth, once Nesbitt’s enquiry had started my position became untenable. I more or less had to leave. Then Sandro kindly offered me employment, and I accepted.”

  “But you’re not a trained baker,” said George. “It’ll kill you.”

  “He’s only learning the ropes for a few days,” Sandro assured us. “Then I’m going to have him icing the cakes. He has a very artistic hand.”

  “Really?”
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  “Oh yes. Even his signature is elegant.” The innocent way in which Sandro made this last remark suggested he had no idea of the tumult that Gosling’s signature had caused over the past few weeks. Indeed, to most outsiders The Scheme probably looked much the same as ever, with hordes of UniVans going about their normal daily business. The public knew nothing of the division and strife that was threatening to tear it apart. Some passers-by may have been vaguely curious about the mass meetings that had taken place of late, but such events were usually over within an hour and for the most part attracted scant attention. The same went for the rival insignias which were now being displayed on virtually every vehicle. In the eyes of the opposing factions these represented highly important principles, yet they must have been completely meaningless to the casual observer.

  Closer scrutiny, however, would have revealed further signs of internal conflict. Many Scheme employees had recently taken to wearing lapel badges which indicated at a glance whether they were flat-dayers or swervers (the “early” having been dropped from everyday use). Some of the latter group took their allegiance a little further, and went round with duty cards sticking out of their breast pockets. This earned the derision of the flat-dayers, who were all rather strait-laced and not given to such vulgar ostentation. They preferred a low-key approach, going about their duties in strict accordance with the rule book, then clocking off in solemn silence at the end of the working day.

  And, of course, neither side spoke to the other. The time for judicious debate and mutual understanding had passed. Instead, there now existed a stony silence between two parties that each believed in the correctness of its purpose. Which made the smooth running of The Scheme increasingly difficult. Again and again there were instances of flat-day warehousemen refusing to unload drivers they suspected of being “swerve-minded”. Such action invariably had a knock-on effect, causing further delays throughout the network. Yet if you were to talk to anyone directly involved in these disputes, they could present any number of plausible arguments to prove their case. Taken in isolation, both schools of thought appeared to possess a reasoned and balanced outlook. It was only when they were set against one another that their intransigence was exposed.