The Rotters' Club

by Jonathan Coe

  15

  THE BILL BOARD

  Thursday, 28 April, 1977

  LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

  From Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE

  Dear Sirs,

  A recent article by your correspondent, Douglas Anderton, highlighted instances of what he describes as “anti-Irish sentiment” among the good people of Birmingham. Since 1974, the year of the pub bombings, he alleges a catalogue of firebomb attacks, lynchings and unprovoked assaults on Irish citizens, and describes these incidents as a “disgrace.”

  For once, I fully agree with Mr. Anderton. These incidents are indeed disgraceful. There have been far too few of them, for one thing, and they have not been nearly serious enough.

  Does Mr. Anderton not realize that we are fighting a war in Ireland—a war designed to protect legitimate British interests? In these circumstances, it is surely incumbent on every right-thinking British citizen to do everything in his (or her) power to support the government in its campaign against those forces of sedition that are massed against it on the other side of the Irish sea.

  There are a number of simple but effective measures which all of us can take in this respect. Take, for instance, the controversial (to some minds) British policy of “internment.” It was in fact Gladys, my good lady wife, who first found a way of putting this into practice at home. We had long nursed a suspicion that our next-door neighbour, Mr. O’Reilly, was—not to put too fine a point on it—Irish. Although we had no concrete proof, there were certain factors—his name, his choice of colour (emerald green) for the family car, his habit of whistling “Danny Boy” while mowing the lawn—which convinced us pretty firmly that he had Irish blood in him. It was the work of just a few hours for Gladys to set up a primitive booby trap across his front drive, and then, when he was dangling helplessly by his left ankle from the nearest lamp-post, to bind him securely and carry him kicking and screaming upstairs to the airing cupboard, where he is confined to this day. One less Paddy to contaminate the streets of this fair city, say I!

  My own approach, I might add, has been somewhat more radical. It has for some time been rumoured—although why there should be any secrecy about this, I can’t imagine—that the British army operates a “shoot to kill” policy in Northern Ireland. Despite having written numerous letters to No 10 Downing Street, I have been unable to obtain official confirmation of this fact, and yet I thought there was no particular reason why, as a patriotic Englishman, I should not attempt to instigate something similar in our own pleasant, tree-lined avenue. Accordingly I obtained a modest bank loan in order to purchase some ammunition and convert our loft into a small gun turret, and began to keep watch on the street outside. It wasn’t long before I noticed that the name on the local butcher’s van, which drove past our house every Tuesday and Thursday morning at 10 o’clock, was none other than “Murphy’s—Suppliers of Fine Meat and Poultry.” Could anything have been more blatant? The driver might just as well have spray-painted the words “Troops Out” on to his van in six-foot lettering. Right, I thought. Right, you little Provo bastard—I know what your game is. Accordingly, the very next time that he passed by, I let rip with a couple of rounds from my trusty Kalashnikov. Sadly, my aim is not quite what it was (my eyesight has been dicky ever since a trivial argument with Gladys, my good lady wife, over the correct position to adopt while singing the third verse of the National Anthem; tempers got a little frayed and our ornamental Burmese corkscrew was rather too close to hand) and the only target I managed to hit, on this occasion, was a dog belonging to an elderly passer-by—it was an Irish wolfhound, I’m pleased to say—while the cowardly blighter Murphy swerved as soon as he heard my fire and crashed into a nearby tree, sustaining what tragically turned out to be only minor external injuries. He then had the effrontery to report this incident to the police, and they, showing a lack of judgement and an absence of patriotic decency that can scarcely be credited, thereupon arrested both myself and Gladys, my good lady wife. Even now we find ourselves detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, but we remain confident that our names will be cleared at the forthcoming trial, which takes place on Wednesday next. The presence and support of all of your good readers on this historic occasion would be much appreciated.

  I remain, Sir, yours indefatigably,

  Arthur Pusey-Hamilton, MBE.

  SEALED with the ancient and noble Seal of the Pusey-Hamiltons.

  16

  CN: . . . this tape recorder, if that’s OK?

  BA: Certainly, certainly. Whatever suits you best.

  CN: I mean, obviously, I won’t use everything we say. I’ll edit it all down.

  BA: I’m in your hands, Claire. This new-fangled technology’s beyond me.

  CN: (laughs) Not that new-fangled, really . . . Anyway, here we go. Ready?

  BA: (laughs) Ready as I’ll ever be. Fire away then. Do your worst.

  CN: OK . . . Well . . . I’m not quite sure where to start. I’m talking to Bill Anderton, Convenor of the Works Committee at the British Leyland Longbridge plant, and a senior—senior shop steward?—

  BA: Senior, yes, that’s fair to say.

  CN: —in the Transport and General Workers’ Union. Perhaps you could begin by telling me why you think that the readers of this magazine should be interested in what happens at Longbridge.

  BA: Well, Claire, that’s a very interesting question, and I can think of two ways of answering it. One is simply to say that everyone who lives in Birmingham is affected by Longbridge. You can’t get away from that. The life of a factory this size has an impact on every part of the local community. From the dealers who sell the cars, the engineering firms who help supply the parts, the supermarkets where the men’s wives spend their money at the end of the week . . . The list goes on and on. I think everybody can agree about that. But the second thing I’m going to say is more contentious, if you like. There’s a struggle going on at Longbridge—a war, you might say. The struggle between labour and capital. This struggle is as old as history or at least as old as capitalism, but you don’t read about it much in the history books. I’ve looked at the books my son brings home from school and they’re the same as the books I used to read when I was a kid—the history of kings and princes and prime ministers. The history of the ruling class, in other words. But the ruling class is only a tiny part of history and over the centuries it’s been sustained and supported by the labour of the rest of the population, and those people have a history as well. So what I’m saying is that the kids at King William’s ought to be interested in Longbridge because it provides a—a microcosm, if you will, of society as a whole. The ruling class versus the labouring class. Management versus workers. That’s what history is all about and that’s what society is all about and that’s what life is all about, to be honest. I’m not sure . . . I don’t know whether I’ve put that very well.

  CN: You see the relationship between these two classes as a struggle, a war.

  BA: Essentially, yes.

  CN: Isn’t it just this attitude which has won you a reputation as a militant?

  BA: I reject that word. That word is an invention of the ruling class. It’s just a word they’ve invented to put down someone who is standing up for his Brothers’ interests. The ruling class owns the language, you see, as well as everything else. Words become corrupted that way.

  CN: Are you a Marxist?

  BA: Well, that’s a pretty . . . loaded question, Claire. Do you know what a Marxist is?

  CN: (laughs) Not really. Only Doug said that he thought you were one.

  BA: I’ve read Marx, obviously. I studied him at night school, and I agree with his interpretation of history. That doesn’t make me a Communist, of course.

  CN: But some of the shop stewards at Longbridge are Communists. Some of your colleagues.

  BA: Who told you that?

  CN: It’s been in the papers.

  BA: It’s not true. Think about it, Claire. The papers aren’t owned by the workers: they’re owned by the
bosses. That’s why every story they print is favourable to the management, told from the management’s point of view. Who owns your magazine?

  CN: Well, I don’t know if anybody owns it . . . The school, I suppose.

  BA: Exactly. And does the headmaster allow you to print anything you want?

  CN: Not anything, no.

  BA: It’s in the press barons’ interests to run damaging stories about the workers. Calling their elected representatives Communists is just one of the things they can do. I’m not a Communist, never have been. I’m a socialist. What they have in Russia isn’t real socialism anyway.

  CN: You say that as an elected representative, you’re just standing up for your members’ interests. But there’s a general perception that many of the strikes at Longbridge aren’t in anybody’s interest. That they’re bad for productivity and bad for the company’s image.

  BA: Well, I don’t know what you mean by a “general perception.”

  CN: I was thinking that we had a Debating Society meeting, where the motion was “This House believes that the unions have too much power,” and it was carried by about ten to one.

  BA: That tells you everything you need to know about your school, and very little about the feelings of the country as a whole.

  CN: What do you feel are the qualities needed to become a successful shop steward? Why, for instance, have people like you and Derek Robinson achieved such a high public profile, out of all the union figures at British Leyland?

  BA: Well, I’m glad you mentioned Derek, because that means I can talk about him, and it doesn’t sound like I’m blowing my own trumpet. (laughs) Obviously you need to be a good speaker, you need the gift of the gab. It takes guts to get up in front of 10,000 people in the middle of Cofton Park and make the kind of speech that’s going to carry them along with you. Derek’s fantastic at that. He’s a natural born orator. A lot of it comes back to language, you see—if you’ve got control of language, then you’ve got power. A sort of power. Then you need tenacity as well, you need the courage to stick with your beliefs and to carry on fighting even when things aren’t going your way. But there’s something else, too, which is what I’d call a sense of the . . . broader picture.

  CN: What do you mean by that, exactly?

  BA: Well, as I’ve been trying to explain—not very well, I dare say— the struggle at Longbridge isn’t an isolated thing. It’s been going on throughout history for centuries and it’s going on all the time in all the different parts of the world. The socialist movement is an international movement. It cuts across national borders and it cuts through the different races, as well. This is a very important point and it’s also one of the most difficult to get across to the workforce as a whole.

  CN: Why’s that, do you think?

  BA: Because racism is endemic. In this day and age a worker’s job is very vulnerable and his livelihood is very vulnerable and it’s very easy for someone to play on that and to sow discord among people who would otherwise be standing together in a common cause.

  CN: Are you thinking of anyone in particular?

  BA: There are lots of cases. A couple of years ago we had a shop steward—I won’t mention his name, he’s left the factory now— who was putting Nazi pamphlets around the shop floor. Disciplinary measures had to be taken. More recently, you’ve got that bastard—I’m sorry about the language, but this is just what I feel—you’ve got that bastard Enoch Powell making a speech to his Tory friends at the Monday Club suggesting that Africans and Asians should be given a thousand pounds each to go home. What he calls their home, anyway. I just find that sort of thing contemptible. That’s why the strike at Grunwick is so important.

  CN: Grunwick?

  BA: You do study . . . current affairs and so on, don’t you? I mean, there are special classes for that, at school?

  CN: It comes under General Studies, yes.

  BA: But no one’s told you about the Grunwick strike? Have you not seen it on the news?

  CN: Sorry, I . . .

  BA: All right then, in a nutshell, Grunwick is a film processing plant in Willesden, in West London. Maybe your dad’s sent some holiday snaps off in the post to be developed and they haven’t come back yet. Well, this is the reason. There’s a white collar union called APEX: the Association of Professional, Executive, Clerical and Computer Staffs. Grunwick employs a lot of Indian staff in its mail room and last summer they went on strike over working conditions, and then when they tried to join this union they were sacked. All hundred and forty of them. They’ve been picketing the plant ever since—risking life and limb half of the time, because the management cars drive right through the picket line and so do the buses they use to bring in the blacklegs—and one of the things I’ve been doing is trying to organize the members of my union to get down there and show support. Stand on the picket line with them. Now most of them show willing but when there’s a grumble it’s usually along the lines of “Why should we be helping out a lot of Pakis?”

  CN: And how do you try to counter that kind of prejudice?

  BA: Well, where do you begin? I’ve been in close contact with the shop steward down there—Jayaben Desai, her name is . . . (pause) Here, I’ll write it down for you—a wonderful woman, really tough, really inspiring. I’m trying to get her to come up to Longbridge, talk to my members, so they can see that . . . Well, when you actually meet someone like that, hear them speak and so on, you realize that you’re all on the same side. A lot of it’s to do with ignorance. Fear of the unfamiliar. Of course it’s not always the blacks or the Asians. After the pub bombings there was a lot of anti-Irish feeling on the shop floor. Some nasty things were being said, threats being made, that sort of thing. Oh, yes, nationalism’s a terrible scourge, in my view. That’s the real enemy. Get rid of nationalism and you’ve solved ninety per cent of the problems in the world. Anyone who tries to play the nationalist card and make political capital out of it is just beneath contempt. They’re just the scum of the earth, those bastards, if you’ll pardon my French.

  CN: To sum up, what sort of role do you see yourself having in the next few years? Do you think that despite all its recent problems, the future of British Leyland is safe?

  BA: The future of the company is safe because ultimately Longbridge is a good factory with a good workforce and a good product, so ultimately the bosses will find a way to make money out of it, by hook or by crook. How ruthless they are allowed to be in this pursuit is dependent on the skills and the fighting spirit of the union men, so if I have a small part to play in defending the jobs and the pay packets of the average car worker then I shall feel quite satisfied. I will have done my bit.

  CN: Mr. Anderton—thank you very much.

  BA: (laughs) Oh, I see, we’re being formal now, are we? Well, thank you very much, Miss, er . . .

  CN: Newman.

  BA: Newman?

  CN: Claire Newman.

  (An edited version of the preceding transcript appeared in The Bill Board, dated 5th May, 1977. The following section was never published.)

  CN: (continued) Are you all right, Mr. Anderton? Is something the matter?

  BA: No, I’m fine. Fine.

  CN: Didn’t you know my name before?

  BA: No, I don’t think Doug mentioned it.

  CN: I’m Miriam’s sister. (long silence) You do know who I mean by Miriam, don’t you? Miriam Newman?

  BA: No. No, I don’t. I don’t think I heard that name before.

  CN: I think you did. I think you must be mistaken. Miriam Newman?

  BA: No. Nothing.

  CN: You had an affair with her, three years ago. It started three years ago. She was a typist, in the Design Room. (long silence)

  BA: And?

  CN: And what?

  BA: What about it? What do you want?

  CN: I thought we might . . . talk about her.

  BA: (pause) Where is she?

  CN: I don’t know. We don’t know.

  BA: Did she come back?

>   CN: No. I was wondering . . . I was wondering if you might be able to shed some light on what happened to her.

  BA: Did your father send you to come and talk to me?

  CN: No. He doesn’t know I’m here. Anyway, I don’t think he . . . I don’t believe he thinks about it much any more.

  BA: I spoke to him, when she first went missing.

  CN: I know.

  BA: I told him everything I knew. After that, I was going to phone, ask if there’d been any news, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t bring myself to . . . (silence)

  CN: There was a note.

  BA: A note?

  CN: She sent us a letter.

  BA: When was this? What did it say?

  CN: A couple of weeks later. It said she’d gone away with another man.

  BA: That’s what I’d heard. I overheard someone in the canteen say something about that.

  CN: Did she ever talk to you about another man?

  BA: Yes. The last time I saw her . . . We went and stayed at a hotel in Stourbridge . . . A dreadful weekend . . . She was talking about him then. Said he wasn’t from around here.

  CN: The letter was postmarked Leicester. She also said—she said she was pregnant. (long silence) Is that possible, do you think?

  BA: Of course it’s possible.

  CN: Do you think it could have been your baby?

  BA: (pause) Yes, I suppose so. It could just as well have been his. The other guy’s.

  CN: I don’t believe there was another man.

  BA: Why not? Isn’t that what she said, in the letter?