by Gavin McCrea
—I’ll leave you to it, officer. Just don’t forget who you’s here to serve.
—Who’d that be, Mrs J? said Iris.
—Who? said Jackson as she set off down the path, the joints of the pram squeaking. The real people of this area, is who.
—My love to the real people, Iris called after her. Especially that lovely son of yours. Tell him we’ll have him in soon, to make some things, he does so enjoy it.
Iris waited until Jackson had turned the corner, before acknowledging the copper.
—Fine day, officer, she said.
Further down, amongst the rubbish which had not been cleared, a second copper was pasting bills onto the factory walls.
—Or officers.
—Do you live here, miss? said the first copper.
—Can I help you with something?
—Just answer the question.
—This building belongs to my mother. I’m here with her permission.
A burst of yells coming from the rooftop brought the copper to peer up, shielding his eyes against the brightness of the day.
—Having a party up there?
—Would it be a crime if we were?
—Would we find drugs, if we was to come in?
—Officer, I’m only twenty-two, my whole life ahead of me. I, too, have goals and ambitions. I wouldn’t want to ruin them by getting addicted to drugs.
—Goals and ambitions, you say?
—That’s right.
Iris scratched the burns on her bare upper arms, got from sitting out too long.
The copper consulted a paper on his black clipboard.
—You’ve been ignoring notices from the council. Been too busy with your goals and ambitions?
—We haven’t received anything.
—Course you haven’t. What’s your name?
—Iris.
—Iris what?
—Thurlow.
—Spell that.
She spelled it, and he wrote it down.
—Are you paying your mother rent to be here?
—It’s a family arrangement, officer. My mother has no use for the buildings. If we hadn’t moved in, they’d have been left neglected.
—You might’ve saved yourself the trouble. These two buildings, the factory and the old temperance house here, are scheduled for demolition.
Iris felt a strong emotion that was the sum of many:
—When?
He handed her a notice in red print.
She scanned it quickly and stuffed it into her pocket.
Now, from the black clipboard, came a second paper, an official form in pink.
—Just sign the bottom of that.
—I’m not signing anything.
—Prefer to go down the station and sign it there?
—We’ll apply for a reprieve.
—Too late for that. If you’d read the council notices, you might’ve had a chance.
She returned the pink form unsigned. Put her hands on her hips and glared down the road.
The copper shrugged and scribbled on the form himself:
—Don’t matter. It’s enough that I’s talked to you.
—How d’you live with yourself?
—Fairly well, I’d say, miss.
—What you’re doing is a cultural atrocity. An unjust seizure of artistic space.
—Best to take that up with your mum, I’d say.
—Soon there won’t be any places left in London for artists to vibe in.
—Vibe, miss?
—A London devoid of artists, is that what you want? Must profit always come first? Who’s the city for anyway?
The copper glanced up at the roof:
—For hardworking English people, I reckon.
—These buildings are already populated by hardworking people. This is their home. This is where they make their livelihoods.
—As I say, Miss—
He looked at his notes.
—Miss Thurlow, I’d take that up with your mother. Ten days to vacate. That’s one zero. You have a lovely day. Stay out the sun.
Back inside, she met Keith coming in from the outside toilet, carrying an old IT he used to wipe his arse.
—How’s it going up there?
He scratched his head:
—I’ve had enough.
She mounted the stairs:
—Come back up with me.
—I ain’t going back up there. Was thinking of going for a wander.
—Hold off.
She gave him the notice from her pocket.
He opened out the scrunched-up ball.
—You worried about this? he said. I thought you got these all the time.
—We do. But this one is different.
Every once in a while her mother would send word, through her father, that the building was to be put on the market and that the Wherehouse group should therefore not delay in looking for alternative accommodation, which for a time would generate much anxiety among the members and difficult discussions about the future. But then nothing would happen. No FOR SALE sign would go up. No eviction notice would be sent. The police would not come to order them out. And eventually her mother’s message would be written off as an empty threat, the turmoil would come to rest, and normal commune life would resume. Be that as it may, Iris never entirely dropped her guard. She knew her mother and what, in a critical moment, the woman was capable of. It was only a matter of time before she followed through on her warnings.
—This isn’t just another one of her threats. This is curtains. It’s happening.
—What’re you going to do?
—Fight back.
—How?
—Don’t know yet.
As they went up the lodging house stairs, Iris perceived the first pulsations of the Dexedrine in her nerves. Her legs were heavy despite a sudden feeling of energetic excess. Jumping over a cat shit on the third-floor landing sent needles up her legs, as if she had just come down from sitting on a high wall. In the bathroom on the top floor, standing on the edge of the bath to access the trapdoor in the ceiling, she thought herself lucid and coordinated, even though it took her several attempts to get through, and in the end she had to climb onto Keith’s shoulders and, for the last push, stand on his head.
Returning to the roof, the whack of reefer came with fresh force. Glen, Eggie, and Álvaro were sitting on the ground with their backs against the low wall at the rooftop edge.
—You faggots, Iris said, the Bill just came knocking. Didn’t you hear?
She came to stand in the clearing where everyone was throwing their joint-roaches and fag ends and used teabags and empty peanut packets.
—Where are the others?
Álvaro shrugged:
—Got too hot. Went back inside.
Iris took the joint from him but went off the idea as soon as it touched her lips. She was just coming up on the pills, and grass would take her back down or turn her green.
—Listen up, she said, handing the joint back. Get your minds together and come inside. Group meeting.
—Aw what?
—Come on. Some serious crap has come up. Anyone skips out, they’ll be thrown out.
One by one they slid back inside and searched around until they found the rest of the group in the old rehearsal studio. Eva, Doris, and the Maoists were congregated around her father’s directing table, which they had moved so that it sat under the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Per was sitting on a scrap of carpet, his back against the boards where the windows had once been, his legs crossed in the lotus position. Álvaro joined the Wherehouse members Rolo, Jay, and Stewie who were lounging on some foam rubber. Glen and Eggie went to sit on top of the broken piano, their feet resting on the closed fallboard. Keith hovere
d by the door.
—What’re you all doing in here? said Iris.
—Working, Eva said. This happening won’t plan itself.
Iris crossed the creaking floor to its sagging centre.
—Well, you’ll have to put that aside for now. There’s news. The bill has paid us a visit.
She unfurled the demolition notice and passed it around. Explained its significance as succinctly as she could. Time was short. A state of unity needed to be reached and a plan agreed, fast. Which would not be easy, given this combination of people.
—I want to fight this, she said, but I can’t do it alone. It has to be a group effort. A unified front. All of us signed up and pledged. We don’t have a lot of time. Ten days is tight. But we shouldn’t let that put us off.
—This certainly puts a new face on things, said Doris, flicking the ends of her shirt back in order to plant her hand on her hip. What kind of fight are you talking about? A picket?
—Maybe, said Iris. We could lie in front of the bulldozers or—
—No, said Eva, assuming an authoritative pose of her own by resting half her weight on the table edge. We’re a street theatre, but we’re against picketing and marching. Those tactics are for genteel ladies who only take the sort of action that’s guaranteed to be ineffective.
—We could take a legal case, said Rolo. How long have we been living here? We must have rights.
—No, said Eva, that’s not the route we should be taking either.
—Why not? said Álvaro.
—Because the legal system doesn’t exist. It’s what the landlords and the bosses say, that’s all.
As a sort of memento, Eva had kept her Paris cut, she had not been to the hairdresser to have it evened out, so when she shook her head now, clumps of different lengths moved on various parts of her head.
—If we go at this head-on, we’ll be crushed and will end up being punished ourselves, for the very good that we do. We have to find a smarter, stealthier way. The Mao way.
With a sweep of her arm, she invited the others to come to the table.
Doris and the Maoists shifted around to make room.
Iris, Álvaro, and the old Wherehouse members joined her; Keith, the Jamaicans and Per hung back, half in and half out.
Spread on the table was a map of London. Red circles had been drawn around the BBC Television Centre in White City, Broadcasting House in Portland Place, the LWT studios in Wembley, Alexandra Palace in Muswell Hill and the Riverside Studios in Hammersmith.
Eva passed a hand over the map to smooth the creases out.
—Can everyone see?
Iris was jammed between the corn-fed hulks of the American Maoists Tray and Joshua. Across from her, Doris was not looking at the map itself but at everyone looking at the map, which seemed to interest her more.
Eva pointed at one of the circles on the map: Broadcasting House.
—So far, all of our happenings have taken place in the streets. Person-to-person. We’ve attached special importance to human contact, the meeting of bodies. And that’s been great. But now, in this time of crisis—
—Global crisis, said Doris, but also local crisis. Your crisis.
—we need a change of tactics. We need to be more ambitious. Instead of trying to change the minds of a handful of people on the street, we should be thinking about changing popular opinion. And that means taking control of the media.
The Indian Maoist Sunny began to feel the chest of his military shirt with one hand and tap a red marker on the table with the other.
—That’s right, he said. The biggest mistake the Paris rebels made was to fail to take ownership of the most powerful weapon available in our society: the television. If they’d seized the television headquarters, they’d have been able to broadcast their messages right across the country, into the majority of homes. Instead they took over the university and the Odéon theatre, where they could only speak to the people gathered there, the already converted. Rather than spread their message far and wide, they created a ghetto, a bubble.
—Mao didn’t use the telly for his revolution, said Iris.
—You’re right, he didn’t, said Eva. But China is at a different stage of development than here. Think about how our society is now. We’re controlled by the telly. The telly tells us what to do and how to do it. What to buy and how much we’re all worth. We accept whatever the flashing images are saying. Mao’s word-of-mouth approach isn’t going to work in these circumstances. What we’ve got to do is find a way of transmitting Mao’s message in a way that is at least as powerful as the telly. And, really, the only thing as powerful as the telly is the telly itself.
Listening to her, Sunny assumed a mask of great seriousness.
—You see, he said, the television just obeys whoever’s in charge of it. In our control, the same television that today parrots the official capitalist line would be transformed into a tool of liberation.
Álvaro had rolled up the sleeves of his t-shirt to expose his upper arms and the black hairs on his shoulders. Arms folded, he was searching Sunny through:
—We need to get ourselves on TV, is that what you’re saying?
—It isn’t simply a question of getting on television, Sunny said. We couldn’t just join a panel show and expect to be taken seriously. It’d be naive to accept whatever slot the capitalist ringmasters would want to fit us into and answer whatever moronic questions they’d decide to ask us. They’d manipulate everything and make us look like clowns. The aim should be to control when and where we appear, and get our message across without interference. We ourselves should strive to create the conditions that’d make that possible.
—So your plan—
With a finger, Iris flicked the map where Broadcasting House was marked.
—is to take over all of these TV studios?
—Not take over, said Eva.
—What then? Break in?
—Infiltrate.
—Okay. So you want to infiltrate all of thh—
—Not all of them. We don’t have the resources for such a large operation. We’ll have to choose one. Scope each of them out and come to a decision, collectively, as to which would be the best location for our intervention.
Iris laughed a mocking laugh:
—You’re insane.
—Insane? said Sunny. No. Capitalism is insane.
—You’re on board with this gaga shit, Doris?
Doris’s features were still, her forehead quiet:
—Wherehouse is small, Iris. But sometimes the smallest things can change the course of history.
—Exactly, said Eva. Mao won the revolutionary war with a small peasant army. If we create disturbances, push the system, they’ll have to hit back. Once they do, then revolution starts.
—What has any of this, I mean any of it, got to do with saving Wherehouse? said Iris.
—The only way to stop the demolition of this place, said Doris, is to make it indestructible. Something becomes indestructible when enough people put a value on it. By getting on the telly, you’ll be convincing people that this place, and what you’s do here, has too much value to be torn down.
—Right, said Eva. If nothing else, it’ll give us a name. Once we have a name, and people are talking about us, they’ll think twice before making us homeless.
—A name? said Iris. Are you talking about a brand?
Iris enjoyed watching Eva’s face go puce and the rest of the Maoists squirm; it annoyed her, though, that Doris appeared unbothered.
—And TV studios? she went on. You don’t think that’s a bit, I don’t know, out of our league?
—If the enemy doesn’t hit back, said Sunny, there’s no revolution. So we’ve got to provoke it. We’re not going to do that with a picket. Or little bits of street theatre.
—Little bits of street the
atre?
Iris turned to Eva, incredulous:
—Are you listening to this blow-in? Aren’t you going to defend your collective?
—The point Sunny’s making is a valid one, said Eva. We’ve got to use the enemy’s own weapon against it.
—So that’s what you all learned in Paris?
—More or less, yeah.
Sunny began to say something but Iris cut him off:
—Look around, Sunny. Look at us. D’you really think that we, us here, would be able to plan and execute a break-in at one of the big TV studios? How is that even within the realm of possibility for you?
—I know it sounds ambitious, Sunny said, but you must remember England isn’t a country in open revolution. There are demonstrations, sure, but no one is expecting actions of the kind we’re talking about. The powers that be are off-guard. Security will be lax. I have a strong suspicion that, once we’ve accessed our chosen site, we’ll find sympathisers inside who’ll be willing to collaborate with us.
—Uhuhn, that’s true, said Eva. Coming back here after Paris, you can really feel the insularity of the place, the triviality. London is asleep.
—Asleep?
Iris whipped off her headband and clasped a hand over her overheating forehead.
—The filth aren’t asleep. Our friends, the Beecham’s Pill, are as awake as ever, and breaking up every party they can find. One phone call, one alarm bell, and they’ll be all over us like a rash.
—Have you given up wanting to defy the laws? said Eva.
—No. But I don’t want to be stupid about it. I’m not going to walk myself into the chokey.
—There’s nothing stupid about what we’re suggesting. Stupid would be to continue planning actions that make no impact.
—Try making an impact from a prison cell. Will Wherehouse survive if we’re all locked up? Will there be a revolution?
—Maybe, said the German Maoist Barbara. Getting incarcerated shouldn’t be our aim, but if it happened, it could be the spark that starts a movement.
—With respect, said Iris, what you’ve just said shows how little you know about England.
—Look, said Eva, if we really want to be noticed, we have to draw the fire of the authorities, which means performing acts that people get arrested for. When people hear about us, they should think, Is what they’re doing really a crime? Or is it in fact a rebellion against the injustice of an oppressive force? Being relevant, that’s what’ll save Wherehouse.