“It wasn’t. This was serious stuff.”
“When were these pictures taken?”
“Between 1974 and 1975. The hope was that the Conservatives would win the election and act against the unions and other wreckers, but Labour won the October election by a small majority. When that happened the training intensified as everyone knew what was going to happen.”
“What training? I mean, what’s going on here?”
“We were based at this old disused army camp to practise military manoeuvres and do some rifle practice. They trained us hard for quite some time.”
“I’ve also got documents alongside these pictures,” I interrupted him. “If I’ve understood correctly, this was some small private army being put together by a few Colonel Blimp types who didn’t like what was happening at the time. Am I near the mark?”
“Oh, it was much more serious than that,” he replied instantly, fixing me with a nasty glare. His face looked as though he’d bitten into something bitter. “Please don’t patronise the brave men in the picture, Officer. These men here were training for something that, had it come off, would have changed the entire destiny of this country, and for the better.”
“Pray tell.” I gestured for him to continue.
He looked me up and down then sat back and folded his arms.
“Someone as young as you couldn’t possibly comprehend the political situation as it was in the seventies,” he said slowly and deliberately. “This country was going downhill fast. We were a laughing stock in the eyes of the world. Political impotence, Government led by a Communist, trade unions running the country, most of them adherents to the hammer and sickle. Inflation up in the twenties per cent, strikes all the time. If it wasn’t dockers, it was car workers or the bloody miners. Sometimes there was more than one union striking at the same time in solidarity with their comrades.” He spat the word out. “We even had to demean ourselves and go cap in hand to a Jew-run body like the IMF to be bailed out, did you know that?”
I said I did and I was aware of what the mid-seventies had been like.
“Probably read about it in some book, no doubt written by some leftie academic trying to convince anyone who wasn’t there that the situation wasn’t nearly as bad as was made out to be. Well, it was. Trust me, it was a dreadful time to be a patriot and an even worse time to be English. It was clear things couldn’t go on as they were. Did you know people couldn’t even bury their dead at one time because of a strike by council workers?” His voice rose as he said this.
I remembered my granddad telling me something similar and saying that conscription should be reintroduced for all the long-haired layabouts. But he’d not said it with as much vitriol as George Selwood had managed to incorporate into his words.
“So, certain people decided that if Government was incapable of taking action and getting the country out of the mess it was in, they’d do it for them.”
“And that someone was Christian Perkins,” I stated.
“Not just him. There were others like him. Perkins had just left the army, which is where I’d first come across him, as he wanted to enter public life. He was asked to help with setting up and training a squadron of men who were ready to go to war to rescue the country. In this picture,” he held one up, “Perkins is explaining why it was essential that everyone works and trains as hard as they can because this was a deadly serious enterprise and prisoners were not going to be taken.”
“What did he mean by that?”
“That they weren’t playing games. This was to be a noble enterprise aimed at winning back our nation from Communist saboteurs and they were determined to win.”
“Who else was involved in this? Perkins wasn’t in overall charge, was he?”
“Good Lord, no,” he snapped back. “Perkins was well down the pecking order. There were several people ahead of Perkins, mainly in the armed forces.”
“In the armed forces?” I repeated. “Actual serving military personnel were helping out?”
“They most certainly were.” The pride he took in that fact was evident in the way he sat upright and thrust out his chest. “Yes, I know; you’re going to tell me they had a sworn duty to the Crown and what they were doing was tantamount to treason. But these officers were patriots, one and all. Men who’d fought in the Second World War, fought the Mau Mau in Kenya, given their blood and their lives for their country. Men who marched past the Cenotaph every Remembrance Sunday with tears in their eyes as they remembered their fallen comrades. These were men of the highest principle, committed to rescuing their country from the Communist threat.”
“So they weren’t just playing soldiers.” I wanted to get him riled and angry.
“They were not,” he snapped. “As I said, the mission to rescue the United Kingdom was a deadly serious one. These men were being trained for a very serious, almost sacred task, which was to rescue the country they all loved, and would die for, from the enemies of democracy.”
“How were they recruited? You couldn’t just place an advert saying you wanted men ready to take part in a putsch against a democratically elected Government, could you?” I smiled.
“Recruitment was easy.” From his expression, my flippancy hadn’t impressed him. “Do you know there were so many volunteers wanting to do this, people ended up being turned away? How were they recruited? Word gets around. People know people who know other people, you know how things work, and gradually a small army was assembled and got ready for active service.”
“How small was small?”
“Probably no more than a couple of thousand in the front line, I’d guess. Though of course others were ready to pitch in and help out when the time came. Many people wanting to help never had to wear uniforms at all, you know.”
“How much training did these people have?”
“A couple of months. Basic military training – how to use weapons, how to think like a soldier, act like a soldier, that kind of thing. They were also subject to military discipline. One man was shot because it was suspected he talked to the leftwing press and warned them about what was happening.”
“You mean like this?” I showed him the photograph of a firing squad.
“Yes, just like that. This really happened, it wasn’t posed for.”
“Who was this man? What was his name?”
“I believe it was someone called Eric Biggins, I think that was his name.”
“You think he deserved this?” I nodded at the picture.
“I didn’t disagree, if that’s what you’re implying. Disci- pline is discipline, whatever army you’re in.”
“So the soldiers took it as serious as those at the top did?” “Every last one of them.” He said this with a proud inflection in his voice.
“They knew what the aims of this mission were,” I stated. “Oh, really, Officer. Of course they did. They’d volunteered for it.” He sounded proud.
“So, who was in charge of this escapade?”
“It wasn’t an escapade. It was deadly serious. Who was in charge? You’d be surprised if you knew some of the people involved in this proposed action.” He touched his nose almost conspiratorially.
“Men who were determined to rid this country of the scourge of Communism once and for all.”
“From the uniforms and weaponry, there must have been someone financing it. Revolution doesn’t come cheap. That’s what Che Guevara said. Was it the same people?”
“That I don’t know. I know some of the people who were behind the scenes organising, but I’m afraid I know none of the money men.”
“Do you know the names of any of these people?”
“Quite a few of them, but their identities will die with me, I’m afraid.”
I believed him. There was no point pressing him on this. I moved on.
“What was the significance of Auspicium Melioris Aevi? Did I pronounce that right?”
“Close enough. Do you know what it means?”
“Isn’t it somet
hing like ‘token of a better age’?”
“Yes, it is. The connection is with the Order of St George. My father named me George after him, you know. As he’s the patron saint of England, and we were proposing to herald in a new and most decidedly better age, it seemed appropriate to use it to show people we were patriots, not counter revolutionaries.”
“We? You were involved in this?” I wasn’t sure why I was surprised at hearing this.
“Yes, indeed.” He gave a kind of salute. “I’m one of those soldiers in the picture. That’s why I asked where you got them from.”
He picked up the picture of men marching across a parade ground holding rifles across their shoulders.
“There. That’s me.” He pointed to a man who looked to be around thirty.
I took the picture. Now he’d pointed it out, I could see that the man in the picture was indeed a younger George Selwood.
“How did you get tied up in this group?”
“I found out about it from Christian Perkins and I volunteered, like any good patriot in my position would do.”
I mused about what I’d heard. Any scepticism I thought I had about this venture when I first saw the pictures had been removed. They were serious. I hadn’t known that George Selwood had been involved, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised.
“So, how was this going to work? You were just going to go along to Downing Street and ask the Prime Minister to stand down and hand over power to some small army led by patriots with a gleam in their eyes, were you?”
“You’re being facetious, aren’t you, Detective?” He was not amused. “It would have been nothing like that. The aim was to wait until there was some major degree of social dislocation caused by yet another major strike and then call on the Prime Minister to take some kind of decisive action. There were to be trained men placed at key installations like power stations and communications centres to ensure that essential services could continue. If the Government refused to respond, the intent was to go to Parliament whilst it was in session, go to the floor of the House of Commons and announce that we were stepping in and taking over. The Prime Minister and his Cabinet would be taken prisoner and held under lock and key somewhere whilst we formed an interim Government. There was someone ready to step forward and be the nation’s leader until such time as a new Prime Minister could be appointed.”
“Appointed. No elections for a new one?”
“In the short term, no. Democracy would have been suspended until the situation returned to normal. Once it was viable to have elections again, then suffrage would return.”
“You’re talking martial law.”
“Yes, quite probably.”
“What would the army be doing in all this? Were the armed forces just going to sit back and let the Government be overthrown from within?”
“As I said earlier, you would be astonished if you knew just how much support this action had at the very top of the armed services. Trust me, they would not have interceded with the actions taken. If anything, they’d have stopped anyone trying to stop us. We’d also had assurances from several top editors that we’d be portrayed as heroes for attempting to uphold the British way of life. The Bank of England was going to act to calm the nerves of the money markets. If union sympathisers at power stations or anywhere else tried to prevent us carrying out our plans, they’d be arrested. We had people trained to take over their positions and keep the lights on and the trains moving and the telephones ringing.”
“Was this going to involve bloodshed?”
“Hopefully not. The hope was the Prime Minister would see sense and step down when he realised the range of forces against him. Our leaders would then inform the Palace a new Government was going to be formed as soon as democratically possible but, until then, an interim leader would be in place.”
“And what was going to happen to members of the Government who had been deposed?”
I was curious to see if the answer was the same as the one I’d read in the recommendations part of the manifesto.
“They’d probably have been placed under arrest and held somewhere. Same with militant trade union leaders. They’d have been rounded up and put into custody.”
“No plans for summary executions? That’s what the military did in Chile in 1973 when they threw out the Government they didn’t like.”
“This is England, you know. We don’t do that kind of thing here.” He looked horrified. “The plan called for keeping the populace on our side, and you can’t do that when you’re killing people.”
“What, like Eric Biggins here?” I nodded towards the picture.
Selwood said nothing.
“You think the people would have supported your actions?”
“Yes, I think they would,” he said carefully after thinking for a few seconds. “Once they knew what we were doing and why, they’d have been fully behind us. But to be perfectly honest, though, I rather suspect most of them wouldn’t care either way. So long as they have their new colour televisions and new cars and foreign holidays, most of the sheep out there aren’t really that concerned with what’s happening all around them. Look at the scum that lives around here; you really think they care about the heritage of this country? Our once proud nation is gradually becoming mongrelised. Damned miscegenation.” He sounded angry and bitter.
“Sheep? You’re supposed to have been doing this in their name. Isn’t that a rather condescending attitude towards them?”
“Possibly. Possibly not,” he said airily. “Actually it was being done for them, not in their name. They were going to be shown what strong leadership and decisive action could do. This country was not going to be allowed to go to the dogs.”
“So, what happened? Why didn’t the revolution take place?”
“That I never knew. We were all returned to units and the mission stood down. I did hear, though, that Mosley was too unwell to take the role offered to him. In the end we missed our moment and gradually, by 1976, the thing rather petered out.”
“Mosley? As in Oswald?”
“Indeed. Perkins sounded him out but he was too ill by that time.”
Mosley installed as Prime Minister? Perkins sounding him out? This was heady stuff.
“What surprises me is that there seemed to be no monitoring of this by the security services. I was looking for who this person was earlier,” I nodded towards Christian Perkins’ picture, “and I could find no evidence that security knew of the existence of this proposed action.”
“Quite likely they didn’t. I was told the secret services would not be too concerned if the Labour Government was swept away for the right reasons. So it’s entirely possible a lid was kept on this situation. Many members of the security services were convinced the Labour Government of the time was a nest of Communists and would have enjoyed seeing them flushed away. You should read Peter Wright’s book, Spycatcher. Tells you about his belief Labour were all commies. ”
I thought about all I’d heard. George Selwood was not a person for small talk so I was sure what he’d told me was the truth. Mosley for Prime Minister. Is that what Phipps had discovered and was trying to blackmail about?
“So, there really was a plot to overthrow the Government in the mid-seventies?”
“Oh yes, there truly was. I wish it had happened and the swines had been thrown out on their ears, but in true British cock-up fashion, it never materialised. As a matter of interest, where did you find these pictures?”
“A long story. They came up in a case I’m investigating. I wanted to know if they were garbage or whether there was any substance to them. But you say there is.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Did you ever seriously believe this enterprise could be successful?”
“Certainly,” he said confidently. “It was well planned, well funded and everyone knew exactly what was expected of them and was trained to do so. No, it would have been successful had it been put into practice.”
�
��And the part in the manifesto calling for the execution of leading politicians and trade union leaders. That would have happened as well?”
“That wouldn’t have occurred, Officer. Like I said, we’re not a banana republic here. That wouldn’t be our style at all.”
It was now after six and I was back in the office writing up an account of my conversation and my impressions of what I’d learned so far. Before doing that, I entered the name Eric Biggins into the databank to see what was listed. An Eric Biggins, soldier of the Crown, had died early in 1975 after being accidentally shot whilst on a training exercise using ‘live’ ammunition. The usual words of condolences were expressed by an officer in his regiment. Such subterfuge could only occur if someone higher up was willing to cover it up. Selwood had been telling the truth.
I was beginning to reach the unpleasant conclusion that, somehow, Louis Phipps had stumbled into the centre of something and been shot to keep him and his brother quiet. That would explain the presence of a ubiquitous element like Gant. But who’d hired him?
My musing was curtailed by the phone. It was Mullins calling from West End Central.
“You heard?”
“Heard what?”
“We’re just going down to Brixton. Someone’s been found dead. You were asking about that case with Louis Phipps the other day, weren’t you?”
I agreed that I had been.
“We’ve just been informed that the victim in this case was someone called Simeon Adaka. He’s listed as a friend of Louis Phipps. You know him?”
“I know of him certainly. What’s happened?”
“We’ve only just had the tip. He’s been found dead at home.” Holy shit. “I’m on my way.”
Using the siren to clear the way, I reached Brixton remarkably quickly. When I pulled up outside Simeon’s house, I saw a number of police cars with flashing lights and a pair of uniforms keeping the onlookers back whilst two others unravelled scene of crime tape to attach to the fence. I showed my ID to the constable at the door and entered.
I went along to the main front room where I’d spoken to Simeon only yesterday. Someone was taking pictures of the crime scene and a man with a white coat was writing something on a notepad. A man I assumed was in charge of the crime scene saw me, came over and identified himself as DI Pierce. He asked me who I was.
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