by J. T. Marsh
Election day arrives, on a cold and rainy day in the middle of January. In these, the strongest moments of our winter’s discontent, the ashes of fires of liberation long burnt out now coat the surface of the streets like a very fine, powdered snow. In the distance, gunfire rattles off like a lit firecracker, the thud of a bomb exploding followed by more rattling, the light gunfire of the rebel’s attacks soon meeting with the heavier cracking of the trooper’s fire. But by then the rebel has withdrawn and the troopers are shooting at shadows and dust. It’s part of this latest provocation, this latest attack, the storm troopers no longer sure of what they’re doing or why they’re doing it, the moment having become lost amid their forays into the working man’s home by way of habit. On election day, this is but one of many attacks the popular front’s guerrillas stage not on police stations or army bases but on voting places, here and there going so far as to break in and set fire to boxes stuffed with ballots. The new government forms shortly thereafter, a loose coalition cobbled together from fifteen different parties granted their mandate from fewer than twenty percent of permitted voters. Hobbled by their greed and their petty concerns, this new government cannot act. “I know of nothing that can be done for you,” says Murray, “it’s impossible to find anyone work in this climate. But I think you don’t want to do work right now, not paid wage labour work that is.” Valeri’s speaking with him at the union hall, the first time he’s been back there in months. “It’s hard to say how much time has passed,” Valeri says. “You’re telling me?” asks Murray, incredulous. “But this is all a confusing time,” Valeri says, “for all of us.” “You speak as if you know something the rest of us don’t,” says Murray. “I know nothing,” Valeri says, “except what’s wrong, when I see it.” Both know this is already beyond what happened fifteen years ago. Valeri counts himself lucky to be alive. On election day, the polytechnic’s students demonstrate against the proceedings, staging their protest too close to a polling place. Amid the carnage of the popular front’s campaign, the police stage a counterattack, moving on the students assembled with clubs in hand and guns at the ready. Sean takes a blow, tumbling to the ground, only to rise again and have at the black-clad troopers. But he doesn’t take the worst of it. There’s gunshots, no one knows who shoots first, bodies falling dead in the street. By the time Sean finds his feet, he’s staggering in a daze, the blood spilled again marring the election and dashing the government’s hopes for a fresh mandate to see Britain through this still-escalating crisis. For all the screaming and all the raising of fists in defiance, the student seizes the chance to put theory into practice, Sean among those who would seek to burn it all down. By the time it’s over, the street is littered with broken bodies, the worst yet to come.
At the hospital, Hannah has seen deaths and blood like she’d never imagined. Her hospital can’t afford basic medicines; women and children die on the waiting room’s floor. “You’re not what you think,” says Whitney, as they watch another patient die helplessly for wont of a common medicine. “You think that’s news to me?” Hannah asks. But it’s not the rebel’s fault; this is a time of crisis in which shortages abound from the wealthy man’s greed. “Don’t talk about obligations then,” says Whitney. “I’ll talk about what I please,” Hannah says. Another attack, the rebel’s gunmen opening fire on a crowded street, in a hail of lead some innocent bystanders cut down along with the few troopers who’d braved the challenge of the day. All those caught in the open flee, scrambling over one another to escape the carnage, leaving the bodies of the dead where they’ve fallen. But before even the last of the people have hit the ground running, the rebel’s gunmen themselves withdraw, fleeing the scene hardly some seconds after they’ve struck. By the time the troopers have gathered their reinforcements and ready their arms to return fire, the rebel’s attack having accomplished its aim. The parishioners of the underground church again mass, Bibles in hand, holding prayers in the street. Darren Wright stands and calls for justice, proclaiming loudly the infinite power and love of God for His people, the hopelessly poor and the irredeemable among us. This time, though, the police don’t let them be, instead advancing on the parishioners with clubs drawn. “Stand firm,” says Darren, “and never relent!” They don’t know the police have come to suspect gunmen in every crowd, even church-goers armed only with the Word of God. Blood spills and bones fracture, but the parishioner never breaks, the moment won by his resolve.
No more than a few days pass before the rebel mounts another attack, a group of gunmen taking refuge from within a church so offered to them by their sympathizer the parishioner, firing onto a crowd, striking down several bystanders while the rest flee in terror. But this time, there’s no policemen on the scene, and the rebel’s gunmen never stop to make themselves known, but for the cracking of their gunfire and the falling of bodies to the ground leaving no evidence of their presence, no record of their deeds. As with the others, by the time the troopers can muster in strength for a counter-attack, the rebel’s gunmen are gone, vanishing into the day. “But what will we do?” asks Hannah. “Just stay out of harm’s way,” Valeri says. “I can’t do that,” says Hannah. “Why can’t you?” Valeri asks. “I’m needed at the hospital,” says Hannah, “what if someone dies?” Valeri asks. “I know you’re mixed up in this,” Hannah says, “and it’s a miracle you haven’t been arrested yet.” Little does she know that Valeri has, in fact, been in jail already, broken out in the time it took one day to give way to the next. But it’s not all so simple. In the working-class slums the fires of liberation burn with every stone thrown and every burst of violence. For Garrett Walker, the loss of his two daughters to the rampaging police has meant the eruption of an intensely bright flame that can never be extinguished. Leaving his wife in the care of her mother, he travels into the streets of London and casts his lot in with the Worker’s Party, committing himself irrevocably to the political struggle. Eager for the chance for vengeance, he asks to be among the gunmen attacking the instruments of the wealthy man’s oppression. In the back of an abandoned shop repurposed by the popular front as a meeting place, he says to the party functionary, “let me make war on them directly!” But the functionary looks him up and down and flatly denies his request, instead sending him to the streets to join the ordinary workers massed in protest, to spend his spare moments studying to be among the next generation of functionaries. His journey won’t be complete for a long time, but when it is the working man will finally realize his potential.
There may be that temptation to look back on the way things were just some years ago, before even that revolution which failed not only to overthrow the way of things but which failed also to prompt in the way of things any lasting change. But whatever happens, whatever the cost of pushing through to our shared future, we must always remember there was never a time of peace, never a time of hope and change, the insidious power of the wealthy man’s order lying in its ability to reach through the pages of history to convince us it was ever something besides what it’s always been. A bang, a snap, a scream, then sirens wailing into the night, the fires casting a sickly orange and red glow onto the undersides of the clouds. The sirens aren’t the sharp, piercing shrieks of the storm troopers rushing to put down an impassioned outburst but the thick, full howls of the fireman on their way to douse another flame. They head for a spot on the street almost exactly where the working class part of town bleeds into the wealthy, as they draw nearer and nearer to their target an apprehension setting into their nerves. This isn’t the first time firemen have been called to this part of town recently, nor is it the second or the third. “I can’t believe this is happening,” says a young mother living a floor down from Valeri. “All it took is some faulty wiring,” says another tenant. But then a third tenant, Tonya Goodall, says, “I bet this is set deliberately,” before turning to Valeri and saying, “and we’re next.” Valeri only nods. At the prison, Private Craig Thompson and the rest of the troops manning the blockade look on with a muted u
ncertainty, the summer’s heat pooling sweat on their brows and backs. Looking down the road at the criminals opposing them, it occurs to Craig these men ought to have given in by now. “These are no ordinary criminals,” he says, the troops silently realizing the truth. After election day has come and gone, the troops remain, their orders to starve the rebellious inmates out. But Craig and the others have already begun to come up with another plan, one to replace their previous agreements to mutiny in case of deployment abroad. Forced by circumstance, they’ll get the chance to put their plan into practice sooner than they think.
And when the firemen arrive, the sight greets them of an apartment block set alight, flames pouring from its windows and doors, outside its residents gathered on the sidewalk across the street, some looking on their burning homes while others hold phones to the sides of their faces and call out to someone, anyone at all. The firemen work to put out the fire, but can’t save the building, in the morning the wreckage still smoldering even after the last flames have been fully extinguished. But Valeri is now completely unemployed, even the minimal earnings of a day labourer no longer available to him. It’s a perverse irony that as he’s lost his livelihood so have many others, the apartment blocks in the working class part of town now so filled with the unemployed and the rent-delinquent that the police can’t but evict them all. In their desperation, they have found their salvation in solidarity and in unity. In solidarity, the remaining prisoners’ commitment has only hardened. In the night, still more prisoners have defected, choosing to abandon their positions in favour of the amnesty offered by the troops staring them down. Stanislaw Czerkawski mans the prison’s defences with the rest, looking down the road. In the meanwhile, Stanislaw has heard from his wife; she’s safe, living in the basement shelter of a church repurposed to house the many who’ve lost their homes in the war spiralling out of control. For the migrant, his is a life made of being forced to endure as the other, deprived of the solidarity with the rest of the working class which he is rightfully entitled to. In rising, his is assuming his place, denied him for so long. When the troops opposing Stanislaw and the rest of the inmates move in, all will be lost. In losing all they have to lose, Stanislaw and the inmates will have a release.
It happens in the night; such things always happen in the night. In the midst of an all-night session, members of recently-formed parliamentary coalition find themselves caught in the midst of an orgy of hatred and self-recrimination when one lone member votes one way when he’s expected to vote another, sending the whole thing collapsing in on itself. Fractures form, individual members turning on one another, one petty squabble in an instant becoming a hundred, the parties breaking with each other, then each party breaking within itself. Alliances, so carefully negotiated, now collapse as a vote is held which brings this still-new government down, the vote passing not by the slimmest of margins but by an overwhelming majority. Even members of the governing coalition vote mostly in favour of bringing it down. This latest failure, this latest inability to proceed through these difficult times does not bode well for they who would seek to lead us through. In the morning, when news breaks of this latest government’s collapse, the working man and his allies the student and the parishioner disregard their duties and take to the streets again, filling the open spaces in this city and in cities across the country with their rage. The rebel, though, does nothing but watch and wait, knowing this is his time not to act. While a new caretaker assumes the reins of power, the last of the power there is to assume gradually slips away, lost the midst of a sea of rage in the streets and a world of hostile powers jockeying for control of such limited and petty things as land; the rebel, standing over a map in his hidden headquarters, can only smile as his moment draws nearer by the day.
21. Hidden Terrors
After the collapse of the old government, the old parties have fragmented into a dozen factions, each with their own competing interests, each with their own competing ideas on what how to proceed. But within each faction there are a dozen more, with each more a dozen more still, out of the chaos emerging something unlike what we’ve ever seen before. In the night, a new government comes to power, a caretaker government made up of chosen representatives from each of the old parties, so chosen by one another because of their willingness to compromise. Compromise, it’s believed, is the key to a peaceful resolution to the current crisis that’s so rapidly spiralling out of control. Announcing their grand coalition on the steps outside in front of the national assembly, the leaders of the old parties share embraces, give speeches in turn, make a good show for the screens broadcasting their day across the country and around the world. But it’s a fraud. In the night, suddenly, there’s the bursting of gunfire outside the prison, Stanislaw roused from his sleep by the stampeding of feet along the floor and by the shouting of voices surprised and scared. He reaches the front barricade, rifle clutched close to his chest, and looks confusedly down the road. But it’s not the troops who’ve opened fire. By now, this, the migrant’s fate has been sealed, cast as his lot is in with the others in the working class, but still it’ll take every agonizing step forward for him to reach out and seize his destiny. Though Stanislaw may not be able to articulate it as such, he’s come to know the truth so long expounded by the rebel’s apparatchiks: the future may be inevitable, but it is never assured.
Huddled around his screens, the working man and his allies, the student and the parishioner, and the rebel, too, all see through the fraud, knowing their struggle has not yet begun. But there are others who see themselves as delivering the nation from evil, that tight-knit group of officers loyal not to the law but to the land, not to words printed on the page or scrolled across a screen but to ideas in their hearts. These loyal officers soon secretly commit themselves to exerting their influence over this grand coalition, and in so committing themselves they change the course of our common history in their own way. Hidden from the working man’s view, these loyal officers work to put their plan into action, aware as they are of the need to look past the day and into the future with patience, the working man not yet able to see them but soon enough to feel the effects of their secret actions. It’s almost time. Manning the army’s roadblock, Private Craig Thompson hears the thunder of nearby gunfire and dives for cover. In the confusion, there’s little that can be done, little to be seen, the rebel’s gunmen attacking only for a moment, just long enough to inspire in the troopers a bitter resentment. This has become a routine, still never losing its power to draw down the strength and the interest of the finer points of mind. Spiralling out of control, the men of the artillery brigade can’t see a way forward under the banner of the King. In time, when the rockets shoot across the sky and when the darkness of the night lights up with thunderous explosions, not all will be as it seems. The order comes in, squawking over the radio, to fire. But the troops refuse. Private Thompson leads his gun crew in standing down, acting according to no plan, under the influence of nothing but the passion of the working man, one for another, he for his brother. It’s a sweltering heat, the summer’s sun beating down on their backs, as the others stand down, refusing to fire. What happens next, none of them could’ve foreseen.
The rebel’s attacks draw down. After a burst of initial offensives, Elijah orders a conservation of strength once more. It’s enough, he decrees, that their presence has been felt. After Garrett Walker has committed himself to the revolutionary path, still he must walk it, like the thirsty man must walk to water. The Worker’s Party has use for men like him, for the ragged and the haggard masses of workers cast out of work for so long. In the darkness of the night, Garrett leans on his instincts, receiving from the apparatchiks in the Worker’s Party a firearm, to be used, they’ve told him, when the time’s right. It’s a strange thing, to so hold the power of death in his hands, knowing he could mete it out at any moment, rhythmically and methodically dispensing justice. Standing in that disused shop, he comes to work, seeing the ranks of the unemployed swell as the current
crisis spirals out of control into full-scale war. The concerns of the working man remain fixated on the ordinary, the mundane, the troubles in day-to-day life. His eyes ache from all the hours of sleep yet unslept, and his stomach growls from all the meals missed. But still Garrett is the working man, and his determination to see through the current crisis and avenge the deaths of his daughters and the deaths of so many men’s daughters grows stronger with each pang of hunger he feels.
Still the concerns of the working man limit his actions, in the meanwhile at least, to scrounging what meagre resources he can to ensure his own survival in these times. He works, receiving his cash in hand, still going home at the end of the day with his pittance in hand but without knowing whether he’ll be called in again the next day. His wages seem to fall every day, while the price of simple things like a loaf of bread or a piece of fruit climb. Still yet the way of things remains confident, steadfastly so, in itself, in the impermanence of its way. After the parishioners leave their underground church for the final time, it’s bulldozed in the night, the police having waited deliberately until this moment to move in. Darren Wright’s among the last to leave, and when he hears of the demolition of their church he arrives back in time to see it all brought down in a cloud of dust and debris. If this is meant by the Father Bennett as intimidation, it fails. Armed with Word of God as they are, no weapon can strike them down, no force arrayed against them can arrest their the inexorable advance towards their destiny. This is the rogue preacher’s forbidden gospel, forbidden not by force of law but by the faith of man misplaced.