SWITCHED: The man who lost his body but kept his mind.

by Bernard Gallivan

  It took the receptionist just a moment to connect Zak to Mr Wragg.

  ‘Bill Wragg. Can I help you?’

  Zak was not sure of his relationship with Bill Wragg and not knowing whether he should address him as Mr or as Bill, he did neither.

  ‘Good morning, this is Zak Storie.’

  ‘Hello Zachary. Is everything still OK for our meeting?’

  That was the clue Zak needed. ‘Yes, everything’s fine, Bill. I’m just finishing breakfast and I’ll be with you shortly. I just wanted to check that you were all right and that you are still expecting me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m expecting you all right and I suppose I’m bearing up considering the circumstances. But the sooner we get this business over and done with, the happier I’ll be.’

  Even to Zak’s untutored ear, this was a somewhat discouraging response. The man sounded depressed, he thought.

  Bill Wragg continued. ‘In different circumstances I’d have appreciated your views on the new Malaga that Ford is thinking of putting into production. I suppose it’s an exciting prospect but I’m not sure my customers are ready for it. Anyway, I should worry. I’ll have coffee waiting for you.’

  The man was definitely depressed, Zak decided. ‘Thanks, Bill. I’ll see you shortly.’

  When he got back to his car, Zak spent a frantic ten minutes hunting through his luggage for information about the business Bill Wragg was expecting to discuss but he found nothing of a business nature. He did, however, find a small file with the picture of a rather ugly looking car together with information about its specification. At least he had found the new Ford Malaga. It was to be a triple-fuel town car running on LPG, petrol and electricity. The planned retail price seemed ridiculously cheap but he realized he needed to adjust his ideas about prices in this dimension. Probably, they were closely coupled to the cost of living and wage levels in the Britain of which he was now a part. He knew nothing about cars and their economics except what he had seen on television or read about in the more popular car magazines. Nevertheless, it was his intention to try to bluff his way through the next hour or so and hope he would not make too big a fool of himself.

  Ibbotson’s proved to be a large, prestigious Ford agency just off the main road and with a confidence he did not feel, Zak entered the shining chrome double doors and approached the reception desk.

  ‘Good morning Mr Storie,’ the charming receptionist greeted him even before he opened his mouth. ‘It’s nice to see you again. I’ll give Mr Wragg a ring to let him know you've arrived. He won’t be a moment.’

  ‘Good morning, Zachary. Punctual to the second as usual I see.’ A large, florid-faced man came hurrying up with outstretched hand.

  Zak smiled and shook the man’s hand. ‘It’s good to see you, Bill.’

  Bill Wragg turned to the receptionist. ‘I don’t want to be disturbed for the rest of the morning, Debbie. Just take messages, will you.’

  Turning back to Zak, he ushered him towards his office. As he went through the door, Zak noticed that Bill Wragg was either the Managing Director of Ibbotson’s or was someone with free access to the Managing Director’s office.

  The man appeared to have shaken off his earlier depression and seemed determined to be hospitable. So much so, after pouring the coffee and after exchanging the usual civilities, he began talking about the Malaga.

  ‘Tell me, in all honesty, what’s your opinion of the new Malaga?’

  It occurred to Zak that, coming as he did from such a different background, and if he kept away from the detailed economics of the subject, his opinion might well be of interest.

  ‘Strictly between us, Bill, I think it’s an ugly bugger.’ Even as the expletive left his lips, he noticed Bill’s eyebrows rise in surprise and he realized he would have to moderate his language. Coughing to hide his embarrassment, he continued. ‘As a concept it’s great, of course, but I wonder whether the designers have gone overboard in making it a triple fuel vehicle instead of sticking with a duel fuel concept car.’

  ‘The shape doesn’t grab me either,’ Bill Wragg said. ‘But what else could they do? Vehicles like this are always a compromise and that’s the sort of thing you get when you compromise, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not necessarily, Bill. Zak now drew on his more recent past experience. He had never been able to afford one himself but town cars were becoming popular in his dimension as well. Picturing one or two designs he remembered seeing, Zak drew a composite of them on the pad in front of him. His one talent in school had been his ability to draw well, not that it had ever done him any good, and Bill’s eyes opened in astonishment as he finished his sketch.

  ‘That’s amazing, Zachary. You should be designing cars, not selling them. Have you shown this design to Ford?’

  Zak smiled deprecatingly. ‘No, I haven’t, Bill and I’m pleased you like it because I reckon it’s a design we might well see a lot more of in the future. But, as I said, going for triple-fuel capability in a vehicle designed just for town use is really going over the top, added to which, it increases costs unnecessarily. Most of the time, electric will do but if you want to get more mileage out of your vehicle, add LPG or petrol, but certainly not both.’

  Zak was amazed how ideas that were commonplace in his own dimension could sound interesting and spontaneous when repeated in this new dimension. He had clearly impressed Bill and they spent the next hour discussing the car market in general. For his part, Zak was intrigued to discover that British manufacturers still made most cars sold in Britain. Hearing that firms like Austin and Morris, names he remembered from his youth, were still in business gave him real pleasure. What really made him gape was his discovery that Japanese manufacturers like Nissan, Honda and Toyota were very much restricted to niche sectors.

  It wasn't until just before they went off for lunch that Bill Wragg finally revealed Zak’s reason for being in Carlisle.

  ‘They warned me you could be a canny negotiator, and we’ve talked about everything under the sun bar my business. We went through all the figures last time you were here and today I was expecting you to tell me you agree to the terms of the takeover. So, are you going to buy me out or not?’

  Zak was taken aback by this new discovery and even as Bill went on to extol the virtues of his business and how well it would harmonise with Zak’s Edinburgh operation, Zak was trying desperately to make yet more readjustments to his situation. He was not used to success and until moments before had been convinced he was one of the minions at Galviston Ford, a seller of cars rather than the seller of financial products he once was. He assumed there was a Mr Galviston at his place of work but, as seemed to be the case at Ibbotsons where Bill Wragg was the owner, it was becoming clearer by the minute that he owned Galviston Ford. He wondered what quirk of fate could have brought about such a change in his fortunes.

  All through lunch, Bill Wragg kept pushing him to make a decision and appeared to interpret Zak’s indecision as a cooling of interest. This appeared to unsettle the man and he grew agitated and even reduced the price a notch. Still, Zak was unable to make a decision. Indeed, since he had no idea of the price of anything in his current dimension, how could he? All he could do was promise to let Bill know his decision in the next few days. Then, after thanking his host for a delicious lunch, they shook hands and parted company. But, instead of heading straight back to Edinburgh, Zak made tracks for Carlisle’s central library. He needed lots more information.

  What he discovered that afternoon, truly amazed him. He had been born in 1963 and the history of Britain and the rest of the world that he discovered in the various reference books he examined that afternoon seemed to follow what he recalled reading about in his school history books; that is, until 1975 when a change he could not understand took place. His knowledge of British politics was thin at the best of times but he could distinctly recall James Callaghan becoming Prime Minister when Harold Wilson mysteriously and suddenly stood down. He had been 12 years old at the time; a young boy ce
rtainly, but still old enough to know what was going on around him.

  He remembered his father, Leonard, commenting in 1976 about the poisoned chalice Wilson had just passed to Callaghan. Then, exactly as his father predicted, strikes and civil unrest followed. These eventually culminated in the infamous winter of discontent, which finally put paid to Callaghan’s and to the Labour Party’s period in office. Margaret Thatcher subsequently swept the Conservatives to victory in 1979 to become the longest serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century. She had never lost an election but, eventually, was forced to stand down by her own parliamentary associates.

  In the history books Zak scanned through that afternoon, the names of Callaghan, Thatcher, Major and Blair were not mentioned. Instead, in 1975 someone called Henry Shore became Prime Minister after Wilson, but, unlike Callaghan, Shore had managed to control the unions and to talk sense into their leaders. He eventually went on to serve for three full terms of office, giving the Labour Party its longest period of continuous government since its foundation. He had slowed down and eventually reversed the change to Comprehensive Schools initiated by Harold Wilson in the mid-sixties and he even persuaded his party to accept changes to the funding of the National Health Service. Shore also insisted that the North Sea Oil bonanza should not be frittered away on social service benefits but, instead, should be used to pay off Britain’s crippling debts and then to create an Oil Fund to help the country grow. It became increasingly clear to Zak that Shore’s elevation to office not only had far-reaching consequences for Britain in general, it had, somehow, also affected him personally. How and why his life should have changed so dramatically was still a mystery but at least he now had some background information to build on.

  As he read more deeply, it gradually emerged that instead of allowing British workers to argue among themselves and to embark on one damaging industrial dispute after another while the rest of the world left Britain behind, Shore’s three terms of office united the British workforce and its industrialists in a way no Prime Minister before him, or since for that matter, was able to do. He was a man who could knock heads together and who could persuade bitter enemies to see reason and listen to common sense. He also made sensible, long-term decisions to protect Britain’s oil wealth, which was why, under his leadership, Britain went from strength to strength. He encouraged and supported Britain’s traditional home industries and he helped them to compete with the best in the world. He provided State subsidies to new-start businesses when private subsidies were unavailable and by giving massive tax incentives to capitalists, he encouraged them to sponsor British entrepreneurs. This resulted in British inventions being developed in Britain, which ensured that the highly desirable end products could then be sold to the rest of the world at a profit. His methods contrasted markedly with the system Zak had grown up with where our oil wealth paid for ill-considered social issues and where brilliant British inventors sold their ideas cheaply or even gave them away to foreign investors who had the finance and business acumen to develop them. To deepen the tragedy still further, those foreign investors would then sell the finished products back to Britain, but always with a considerable mark up in the price.

  Shore applied the same common sense to the British car industry. He made certain that quality and efficiency linked to price and reliability were the four cornerstones of the industry. Instead of supplying expensive, poor quality, low specification, unreliable cars to the buying public, British cars became the standard other manufacturers in the rest of the world tried to emulate. Exported British cars as well as British methods could be found right across the world. Built-in obsolescence, such a feature of post-war British products in Zak's old dimension was unknown in this dimension, and all thanks to Henry Shore, it seemed. Nor was Shore a one-industry wonder. He applied the same methods used in the car industry to the British computer industry which, at the time, had been hovering on the brink of extinction. His intervention finally secured Britain’s position as a world leader in information technology.

  Shore’s success stemmed from his determination to tell it as it was, warts and all. At the same time, he had the ability to chart an acceptable pathway to the sort of wealth and happiness all working people desired. Even though he was a socialist, he did not shrink from telling the working class, his bedrock supporters, unpalatable truths about themselves. He often claimed that his moment of enlightenment came when he noticed the way refuse collectors worked. They seemed to work at high speed and even ran between bins in order to save time. Further investigation revealed that their apparent enthusiasm was not because they wanted to give their employers, Local Councils up and down the land, the very best value for money, it was simply because once they had finished their rounds they could clock off on full pay and the rest of the day would be their own. Shore wondered how he might be able to encourage workers across the land to be similarly enthused with their work for the greater good of the country while not adversely affecting their own interests. He wanted everyone to achieve a high standard of living for themselves and their families and realized that to achieve it, everyone had to work hard. He developed his idea further when he arranged to give targets to all workers involved in repetitive or set tasks. To receive full pay, each worker had to achieve a target like those refuse workers. Once achieved the rest of the day was their own. They could relax with their families, play sports, or do something creative. They could even do another job. He further demanded that all targets should be achievable in half a day but only if the workers worked hard and were determined to give fair value for their labour. This was wonderful news for workers who were delighted to learn that they would only be required to work at a high level for half a day to receive a full day’s pay. Likewise, employers were overjoyed when their workers achieved the same targets as earlier, but now in half the time. This meant they could now double the output of their businesses by employing a new set of workers for the second half of the day but without having to double the size of their premises or the number of their machines. In addition, only the same number of managers were needed but, because of the new style of work they were overseeing, these were paid on a much more generous scale than before. It was a win, win solution. Even the Government, was ecstatic because, at a stroke, Shore had brought about full employment. Nor did he spare the captains of industry and their managers. Their greed and incompetence had cost Britain dear, he told them, and as a Prime Minister who was accountable to all, if they wished to succeed in his Britain, they would have to treat their workers with the same humanity and generosity as they treated themselves. He was prepared to use public funds to help British companies that applied such principles to its business practices, but he was also prepared to use whatever sanctions he had available to him to close down businesses that did not. A cartoon caption of the man saying, “You can be sure of Shore” encapsulated the man and his work. And, it seemed the maxims he had espoused all those years ago were still current to the present day.

  That those maxims worked and that everyone gained was plain for all to see. Britain was now completely solvent. Indeed, per capita, it was the wealthiest country in the world. It was also a much happier and more successful country than ever before in its entire history. The workforce was among the best educated and contented in the world and productivity was at record levels; and it was all down to one man inculcating the right values in people’s minds. Of course, those living in the Britain Zak was now part of had no idea what might have happened to the country had Shore not been made Prime Minister. They knew no other alternative and so there were many who still foolishly regarded Shore as a traitor to the cause of the working man.

  Shore and his team of realists, had kept their eyes firmly fixed on the ball. They were aware, more than most, that after two disastrous world wars in which Britain had played so central a role, by 1975 she was still very weak. Needing to protect their country, they refused to bow to the pressure that came from all sides demanding that Britain should cont
inue in its efforts to police the world. Better than anyone, they knew that taking on such a task would delay by at least another generation Britain’s ability to heal herself and they were more than happy when the USA assumed the mantle Britain had carried for so many years. Instead, they concentrated all their efforts on the task of rebuilding their nation from the ground up.

  With breathing space for the first time in sixty years, Britain reorganised and regrouped. They repaired and improved essential services and allowed the rest of the world to clear up its own mess. Shore refused to interfere in the affairs of other countries and ignored those who claimed Britain was turning its back on the rest of the world. He knew he would also be criticised for interfering in the politics of other nations and early realized it was better and far less costly for Britain to be criticised for not interfering than it was to interfere, to still be criticised for interfering and then have to pay to clear up the mess that inevitably occurs after a conflict. With a rapidity that surprised many, inward investment increased as investors around the world saw Britain as a country determined to succeed. The logo, ‘Made in Britain’ once again became a sure sign of quality or, as one cartoonist put it ‘A Shore sign of quality’.

  Nor did Britain bow to pressures from counties in the former Empire who demanded aid and British citizenship for their citizens. Instead, over a period of years, what remained of the Empire was dismantled and essential aid was provided only to countries new to self-government and, even then, expressly to help them to organize themselves along democratic lines; and that was as far as aid was allowed to go. Not until Britain was once again strong, with all her old vigour restored, did she even begin to contemplate a world role for herself. And this selfish attitude had worked. The USA, single-handedly, had assumed the thankless task of world policeman and all the jealousies and hate that once were directed at Britain were re-directed at the USA. All the while Britain rebuilt and became competitive way beyond her size.