Open Arms

by Vince Cable

  ‘Mmm…’

  ‘OK, agreed. I will set it up.’

  Kate’s readmission to the fold by the leadership of the party was quickly followed by reaffirmation of her status at local level. The motion to be put before a meeting of association members to proceed with deselection became, at the stroke of a pen, a motion to support reselection. The Chairman’s Damascene conversion was quickly followed by the rest of the party executive whose moments of blinding light consisted, variously, of a promise by the Foreign Secretary to speak at the association’s annual dinner, an offer by the Prime Minister of the unbeatable prize of ‘tea at No. 10’ for the fundraising auction and a generous financial contribution from Mr, the future Lord, Thompson: all predicated on the assumption that the current MP remained the party’s candidate.

  Although the better part of Kate winced inwardly at the party’s unerring instinct for the baser qualities of human nature, she also enjoyed the benefits. Being chauffeured around in a political Rolls-Royce undoubtedly had its attractions and she lacked the streak of self-denying Puritanism required to decline the ride. The only bump felt through the suspension was the announcement by Stella that she was resigning from the party to join UKIP because of ‘a decline in traditional moral values’. Her resignation was made more significant by the fact that she also took with her twenty years of membership and canvass records and minutes of party meetings including the recent executive no confidence vote in the MP.

  The political Trabant that was the modern Labour Party offered a much less comfortable ride, as Steve Grant discovered when he put forward his name for selection as prospective parliamentary candidate for the town’s safe Labour seat. It had been assumed for most of the last decade that he was the Dauphin waiting only to be anointed at the coronation. That assumption was soon shown to be dangerously wide of the mark.

  Local party membership had more than doubled since the 2015 general election and as rumours spread of an impending selection, numbers surged again in a spasm of socialist zeal. As a former champion recruiter, Steve was no shrinking violet and he signed up many of his union colleagues at Pulsar who, in recent years, had allowed their membership to lapse. To his delight, Ikram, one of Mo’s friends he had met at the mosque, had now joined the party. He had emerged as a brilliant organiser, doing prodigious work boosting membership among young Muslims. And, despite the family’s preoccupation with the missing Mo, Shaida had joined in too, enlisting the Three Witches and a dozen of her other girlfriends.

  But when Steve sat down with the membership list, once closed, it became clear that he was in trouble. John Gray, the council group leader, had taken on the role of coordinating his campaign and, as they sat together in Gray’s council office, analysing the numbers, they found it difficult to identify solid support from more than a third of potential voters. They had conducted a quick telephone canvass of new members and were shocked by the findings: a substantial majority had joined to elect and support the national leadership; few had a party background and many were former Greens or Socialist Workers; their issues reflected the concerns of university staff and students rather than the shop floor; and few had heard of Steve or, if they had, thought favourably of him. Most spontaneously expressed support for Steve’s main opponent, Dr Liz Cook, a lecturer in the Social Anthropology Department of a new university in North London where she lived. Ms Cook was head of a university research unit specialising in War, Capitalism and Women and her expertise in this field had led to her becoming one of the architects of the party’s new defence policy. She had also been a Paulina and Oxford contemporary of Kate Thompson but these inconvenient facts were kept well away from her CV.

  Councillor Gray didn’t beat about the bush. ‘You’ve got a problem, lad. If you want to win, you are going to have to fight. No more Mr Nice Guy.’ He raised the possibility of resurrecting the local party’s Attack Unit, which was established to fight off a Lib Dem offensive several years earlier. Its task was to destroy opponents using every tactic known to political man, short of those that would lead the candidate to be disqualified, the agent imprisoned and the party bankrupted by libel damages. That still left quite a lot of scope.

  Any qualms Steve might have had were swiftly removed when Ms Cook’s supporters struck the first blow with a social media blitz attacking the ‘Establishment Candidate’ for ‘lobbying on behalf of multinational companies in the arms trade’. They had also unearthed a grainy but recognisable photo of Steve shaking hands with the then Secretary of State, Peter Mandelson, which told its own grim story of spin and betrayal. Councillor Bill Daniels’s complaint about Steve’s advocacy of tactical cooperation with the Lib Dems was further proof of unreliable SDP tendencies.

  The Attack Unit was soon at work preparing a counteroffensive. One of their young researchers – a student intern – unearthed a copy of the British Journal of Social Anthropology with an article summarising Ms Cook’s PhD thesis: ‘Manifestations of Penile Aggression in the Military Industrial Complex: A Multi-Disciplinary and Multi-Cultural Perspective’. ‘Boys toys’, in other words, giggled the young woman who had excavated this gem. But after a round of laughter the team agreed that humour was likely to be counter-productive. Some of the membership might be impressed by the long words and a candidate who wrote learned articles about an Ology.

  Gray had concluded that a better tack would be to work on two key power brokers: Councillors Les Harking and Mirza. Both had been hostile at the aborted disciplinary hearing but that issue had gone away and both had worked well with Steve in the past. They each had a solid block of support that might, together, get Steve over the finishing line. But they were old pros whose support would come at a price.

  Councillor Mirza was the easier nut to crack. He had no real disagreements with Steve, merely a badly wounded ego that required tender massage. Steve was capable of the necessary dissimulation, much as he disliked it. And as he piled on compliments about the Mirza clan’s stellar contribution to civic life, he had echoing in the back of his mind the jibes from Brian Castle and others in the works canteen about ‘your corrupt Paki friend on the council’ whose family was ‘ripping off the council with those horrible, squalid, care homes’. The coup de grâce, however, was delivered by the Attack Unit, which sent to Councillor Mirza and his supporters a YouTube recording of a radical feminist rally at which Liz Cook had been a – not very prominent – speaker. Someone in the crowd waved a placard with a cartoon of the Prophet and the words ‘male chauvinist pig’. It mattered little that the rally was a long time ago, pre-Charlie Hebdo, and that the organisers including Liz Cook issued a cringing apology. The verdict was: guilt by association. Steve pocketed the Muslim vote almost to a man and woman.

  Councillor Harking held court in the Red Lion, savouring every second of his political courtship.

  Steve sat down at his table with a pint of beer. ‘Evening, Les, how are you?’

  Les made it clear he was not impressed. He had a copy of the Morning Star in front of him and pointedly ignored Steve as he studiously worked his way through it. Steve tried again.

  ‘Sorry, Les, you must know why I want to talk to you. I hope I can count on your support in the selection.’

  ‘Not so fast, young man. Why do you think I would do that?’ He was already into his second pint and looking forward to a long evening of drinks ‘on the house’.

  ‘We have worked together a long time. Speaking up for the local working class.’

  ‘Sometimes. Anyway you’re slow off the mark. This Liz Cook has already been in touch. Impressive. Said I would think about supporting her.’

  ‘You know she isn’t your cup of tea. Never been near the town before. A carpet bagger.’

  ‘But I like the politics. For the first time since Michael Foot was leader we are calling ourselves socialists without being ashamed.’

  ‘A fat lot of good that did us at the last election.’

  ‘Maybe different next time. The young people are with us.’

 
; ‘Some of them. And they don’t vote. You know the story.’

  ‘I’ve been around the block a lot longer than you. I was part of the struggle when you were in nappies. We need our principles back – which your friends in New Labour trashed.’

  ‘You know as well as I do that all this academic waffle from Liz Cook and her ilk isn’t taking us anywhere. Working class people are completely turned off. We’ll be stuck with the Tories for ever.’

  ‘Don’t talk us down, lad. That’s all the right-wing media. Can’t give in to Murdoch, the Mail and the rest of ’em. Stick up for what we believe in.’

  They had been round the houses, exhausting these arguments many times before. Les was in no hurry. He was in his element: power broker, career maker and breaker; the grizzled veteran of The Struggle passing on the wisdom of the tribe. He knew, and Steve knew deep down, that as fellow alumni of the University of Life and fully qualified operators of the town’s political machine they had far more in common with each other than with the newly ascendant leadership in the party. But before consummating the relationship Les would have to extract serious political concessions. He was willing to be bought but only at a suitably high price. Before the end of the evening, Steve had refused to endorse UK withdrawal from NATO and the restoration of free tuition for students, but had signed up to full nationalisation of the banks and support for a campaign of civil disobedience against the new trade union legislation. His wallet was also lighter after meeting the bar bill.

  Steve now had a somewhat incongruous – and fragile – alliance, but an alliance nonetheless, between the party’s Muslim supporters and the traditional working class members. And at the public hustings he was at his eloquent best, speaking without notes, and skilfully used his local and working class credentials. But he sensed, from the audience reaction, a bristling anger and rejection of who he was and what he stood for. He was jeered and heckled. By contrast, his opponent read, badly, a tedious script full of clichés and jargon and she was seemingly unaware of which town she was in. But the audience was mostly on her side and whenever she used words like ‘neoliberalism’, which were not part of Steve’s vocabulary, there was fervent applause.

  When the votes were counted things looked bleak for Steve, until the postal vote arrived, which he won hands down. There had clearly been some successful exhumation of the dead in Councillor Mirza’s kitchen. Steve was home by two votes, in the overall count. It wasn’t a glorious victory but he had won. Quite what victory meant in a changed and hostile party only time would tell. For the time being victory was enough. He was still a player.

  Shaida introduced herself to Susan in Caffè Nero in the town centre. She was dressed traditionally and modestly and had taken to wearing the hijab when she was on view in public places, demonstrating conformity if not piety. Susan had tried to dress down, in sweater and jeans, but her demeanour was that of the smart, tidy, official that she was.

  ‘Kate has asked me to liaise with you,’ Susan explained. ‘I do need to stress that I am a civil servant. There are rules. I am not political and here essentially as a messenger. But I know something about the background and my line manager is comfortable with my being a conduit. Kate’s message is that any inside information you have on Pulsar, under the new owners, would be very helpful. As you know she believes something seriously irregular is going on there. Any evidence would be better used than when you last approached her.’

  ‘I already got a message indirectly through Steve and my other government contact who I want to help,’ Shaida acknowledged. ‘I don’t like what I’ve seen of the new owners one little bit. But I need to be careful. They’re very security conscious. But in a very mechanical, box-ticking, kind of way. I get to see a lot of email traffic between senior managers that even Calum, the CEO, is excluded from and, to do my job, I see the important money flows. I am also quite good at finding my way around security protocols and passwords. They don’t yet seem to have cottoned on to the fact of my brother going missing or my joint activities with Steve and your Minister. But they will, and then doors will close.’

  Shaida reached into her bag and brought out a file of documents, which she handed to Susan. ‘I’ve brought along a few copies of interesting-looking financial transactions and I’ve highlighted a few names – Kate will recognise their significance. There is a lot more. This is just a sample. But, as I said, I am on borrowed time.’

  ‘Kate will be very pleased. Thanks for these. Let me know when you have more.’

  ‘One more thing,’ Shaida added. ‘There has been some talk of a big exhibition in London in the next month. They want me to be on the company stand. One of the new people – an American – wasn’t very subtle: they think a brown female face will help to present the right kind of inclusive image. And the top brass will be coming over and holding a board meeting to coincide with the exhibition.’

  ‘Ah yes. I know all about this event. Every two years Britain hosts the world’s biggest arms bazaar. It is theoretically private but the government is heavily involved. We’re gearing up for it: lots of VIPs from the defence sales world. A kind of Davos for arms dealers. I imagine Kate will be on parade with the Secretary of State. Useful info about your company; I’ll feed it back.’

  CHAPTER 16

  THE TRAINEE

  Dawn (Lahore), 20 September 2019:

  It is reported from sources in the Pakistan military that the mooted nuclear test has been postponed and that efforts are being made through intermediaries to deescalate the ‘war of words’ between India and Pakistan. Senior figures in the Pakistan army are reported to have expressed alarm at the way civilian ‘hotheads’ have been allowed to set the agenda.

  He had little idea where he was. The van had no windows and his companions didn’t wish to talk. When he asked where they were going the answer was ‘Better you don’t know.’ The night journey by motorway – he assumed the M1 – had lasted about an hour. Then ten minutes on a side road and, briefly, a rutted track. Now, a big house surrounded by trees. There was a distinctive smell – pigs, silage? He was too much of a town boy to tell. And there was the occasional distant sound of aircraft far overhead. He could be anywhere.

  When they arrived, three bearded men – Asian or Arab, they didn’t introduce themselves – provided hot soup and bread and spelled out the rules: no one to leave the house except under supervision; no attempt to communicate with friends or family (mobiles were collected in – ‘secure’ phones would be issued in due course); and a daily roster of duties, education and prayer. Then into the room came the man who had inspired him, Tariq Ahmed, and who was clearly in charge of this operation. Tariq Ahmed gave him a short nod of acknowledgement.

  Mo was allocated a room in the attic and spent the rest of the night awake, wondering whether he had made the right decision when he had said yes to the friend who challenged him to say if he was ready and sufficiently committed to fight for the cause. There was a Holy Quran by the bedside but he didn’t open it.

  He discovered the following morning that there were six of them: a couple of Asians from Bradford, one from Stoke, a white convert from Birmingham and an African who was from the same town though they had never met. It soon became clear that he and the African had a different motivation from the others who were totally devout; assiduous in the rituals; seemingly entranced by the prayer. Mo’s family had pride in their Muslim identity but religion played only a minor and occasional part in their life. As with his Christian school friends, religion surfaced at weddings and funerals and was experienced through feasting rather than fasting.

  Mo was more engaged by the political sessions that Tariq Ahmed led and particularly the videos that dramatised the hurt and discrimination suffered by fellow Muslims: the suffering of helpless children during the siege of Aleppo; footage of the Iraq war; the men of Srebrenica being led off to execution; the humiliation of Palestinians at Israeli checkpoints and the bombing of Gaza; the burnt bodies lying beside a rail track after a massacre in Guj
arat; torture victims in profusion; Guantanamo. Mo’s beating by a group of racist thugs and several experiences of ‘stop and search’ didn’t quite match those horrors but a shared sense of victimhood reminded him why he was there.

  Mo felt confident enough to air his doubts: his lack of religious conviction; his disquiet at some of the gruesome practices of ISIL; and his secular views on the role of women. Tariq Ahmed was not fazed. His branch of fighters was comfortable with intelligent doubt; respected ISIL’s achievements but not their methods. Mo would be called on to show courage but there was also a role in less demanding work: providing safe houses or storage for weapons; organising protests in support of the cause; disciplining informers; collecting information on potential targets; recruiting in colleges and universities: part of the penumbra of terrorism rather than its core.

  But the recruiters had spotted in Mo some spark – created from anger, intelligence, determination – that was the basis of a good fighter. The next big mission did not require suicide from its perpetrators but basic competence and discipline with careful planning and skilful execution using firearms.

  Mo was taken to an outbuilding, perhaps once a barn, where a shooting range had been constructed. The structure was well insulated for sound and no one passing nearby would be aware of its purpose. There, Mo was taught to use semi-automatic weapons and small arms as a back-up. He had never handled guns before, but, once he had learnt to suppress the rush of adrenalin and master the action, proved to be the most adept of the group.

  Mo also bonded better with the others and joined in the prayers with more conviction. Too much conversation and intimacy was, however, not encouraged. The instructors revealed little about themselves and kept discussion at a general and practical level. If the recruits were interrogated at some point in the future, the information they gave up would be of dubious value.