by James Philip
“I believe that we have reached a latter day ‘Narvik’ moment,” Enoch Powell said. He knew his strength was failing him, as did everybody in the House of Commons. The quietness had settled around the man whom admirers and detractors alike regarded as one of the last of the great, pre-October War parliamentarians. It was as if everybody recognised that now was a time of listening before the failing of the light. “I do not believe, in my heart,” the dying man continued, “that this is a time for grandiloquent rhetorical excess. I think that this is a time for us to look into our hearts and to speak plainly to each other.”
The man’s laboured breath was audible in every corner of the great Hall of King’s College.
“Our armed forces are fighting three wars; in the Mediterranean, in the South Atlantic, and if not already, then soon, in the Persian Gulf. We are strong nowhere; in the Mediterranean we may, or may not be able to rely on the United States for support and succour, and in the Gulf the brave men from distant lands of the Commonwealth. But make no mistake, we are very nearly alone. We are at the limits of our endurance. Now we find ourselves the object of the scorn of the President of the United States of America; forced to go cap in hand to the global bullyboy to ask for charity, crumbs from Jack Kennedy’s table, a beggar’s dole and like Oliver Twist, chastised for asking for ‘more’! Are we not entitled to ask how our great nation has stumbled into this mess?”
Margaret Thatcher was buffeted by a rising groundswell of muttered, rumbling discontent that seemed to swirl around her as if she was in the eye of a vortex of rage pent up too long to be safely defused.
“In the course of the Narvik Debate my late colleague in this House, Leo Amery,” Enoch Powell continued, struggling to be heard, “spoke of Oliver Cromwell’s words to that renowned parliamentarian and roundhead captain John Hampden, of the need to find new men to confound their foes. The fault is not in our people or in our way of life, there is nothing written in our stars that inevitably infers our downfall. As Cromwell said to Hampden, ‘we are fighting to-day for our life, for our liberty, for our all; we cannot go on being led as we are.’
Margaret Thatcher sat rigidly still on the hard front bench pew.
She knew what was coming and there was nothing she could do about it.
“It is with sadness that I must repeat what Cromwell said to the Long Parliament,” Enoch Powell hissed, his ruined voice betraying him, “when he decided that it had outlived its usefulness.”
Margaret Thatcher looked up, braving the gaze of her nemesis.
Enoch Powell returned her gaze; but without triumphalism, only regret.
“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing, madam.” He sighed hurtfully, swayed unsteadily prompting several members nearby to flinch towards him lest he fell before he straightened, brokenly to deliver the coup de grace. “Depart,” he whispered, exhausted now, “depart I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go...”
Chapter 63
Friday 5th June 1964
Damman, Saudi Arabia
It was as if the air itself was being torn apart. The livid flash of the great explosion lit up the night beyond the port. There was one great explosion and then a roiling, rolling expanding accompaniment of smaller, secondary detonations spreading out across the desert and into the suburbs of the Damman-Dhahran port conurbation stretching along the shore of the Persian Gulf.
Rear Admiral Nicholas Davey had been enjoying a cigarette at the stern rail of his flagship, HMS Tiger as the cruiser prepared to anchor in the shallow waters off Ras Tanura beach. The presence of so many ‘foreigners’ in Damman had been causing friction with the locals and two days ago he had taken every seaworthy vessel under his command to sea. Most of the flotilla was still some way off shore, learning to work as ‘a flotilla’; Tiger had brought him back towards Damman as evening fell.
In the morning the flagship was entertaining dignitaries from the Saudi government onboard and the plan was for the cruiser to sail into port with flags flying, and her decks dressed fit for a Royal Review. However, as he looked landward the Flag Officer ABNZ – Australian, British and New Zealand – Squadron, Persian Gulf, suspected that the plans for tomorrow morning had just been torn up.
His first thought was that it had been a tactical, Hiroshima-scale nuclear strike.
But that was wrong; he would have been blind by now if it had been.
What had happened was that the US War Stores Deport in the dessert east of Damman had blown up; and was continuing the blow up as the flashover of big explosions set in motion a chain reaction in adjacent stores.
Nick Davey threw his half-smoked cigarette over the side as the cruiser’s klaxons blared; ordering the crew to battle stations.
Suddenly men were running everywhere and the ship was alive like a hornet’s nest inadvisably prodded with a stick. Under his feet he felt the screws bite the water and the deck heel one, two, three degrees as Tiger’s rudder went hard over.
Sea room!
Until it was established what was going on the priorities were to find sea room; and clear the main battery ‘A’ arcs so that Tiger’s whole broadside could be brought to bear on a potential threat. Farther out to sea the ship’s radars would be uncluttered with ground returns from the nearby shore; better able to identify and track potential threats and to direct Tiger’s automatic quick firing six-inch and three-inch guns.
By the time Nick Davey climbed up to the bridge most of the windows had been covered with steel shutters; standard drill to prevent nearby nuclear strikes blinding the ship’s command team.
Assuming that the air base at Dhahran remained operational the aircraft kept on permanent QRA ought to be airborne by now. The big explosions might be the result of sloppy munitions handling or storage, sabotage or direct enemy action.
“RAF Dhahran has activated emergency response Alpha-Alpha, sir,” Nick Davey was informed calmly.
That meant a Gloster Meteor night fighter, one of the two Avro Vulcans – each armed with a four hundred kiloton Yellow Sun bomb – and two Hawker Hunter interceptors had been scrambled and the four Bristol Bloodhound long-range surface-to-air missiles sited on the air base had been spooled up ready for launch.
“CIC reports the threat board is clear, sir.”
“The Centaur Battle Group is maintaining Air Defence Condition One, sir.” Forty miles away the bulk of the ABNZ fleet was exercising as a battle, or support group for the aircraft carrier Centaur. Tiger’s heightened state of alert had automatically been passed onto the carrier’s CIC, mandating the upgrading of the whole Battle Group’s state of readiness.
By now the alarms would have sounded in Abadan and in other headquarters in the region from Oman to Aden.
“Tell everybody that the Damman War Stores Depot has blown up. Categorise the event as sabotage-related. Broadcast that now please,” Nick Davey instructed the cruisers communications officer.
Tiger’s Captain, forty-six year old Hardress Llewellyn ‘Harpy’ Lloyd, a cheerful, solidly professional officer who had earned a Distinguished Service Cross commanding MTB 34 in a fight with German E-Boats in the North Sea in August 1942, joined Davey as he studied the navigation plot.
The two men had got on famously from the moment Nick Davey had hoisted his flag on Tiger.
“Ten miles out should be enough to give us unrestricted all round eyes on the sky and surrounding seas, sir,” the younger man suggested quietly.
“Very good.”
The two men regularly dined together and yarned about past battles, the idiocies of the peace time navy and any number of mutual friends and acquaintances, living and dead.
“It’ll give us time to start detailing off parties to go on shore to assist the civilian authorities,” Nick Davey thought out aloud. “Assuming the locals don’t start blaming us for their misfortunes, that is.”
“Triumph is reporting minor topside damage, sir!”
The old aircraft carrier, converted to the role of hea
vy repair ship – a mobile workshop in lieu of ports with suitable dry-docking or maintenance yards – was tied up alongside at Damman.
“What about Retainer?”
The fourteen thousand ton Royal Fleet Auxiliary armament support ship the Retainer had offloaded munitions for ABNZ ground forces and set up a naval ordnance dump outside Kuwait City at the head of the Gulf, delivered ammunition for the guns of the Centurions and the Royal Artillery units guarding Abadan, and returned to Damman only two days ago. In the coming week the ships of the ABNZ Squadron would come alongside the Retainer to top off their magazines depleted in the last fortnight’s ‘battle exercises’.
RFA Retainer was presently moored Tarout Bay.
“No word yet from Retainer, sir.”
Nick Davey shrugged.
“She’d have been several hundred yards further from the big bang than Triumph,” he observed.
That was when the flash from the second huge explosion lit up the entire bridge despite the fact that practically every window was blanked by a steel scuttle.
Chapter 64
Friday 5th June 1964
Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire
Parliament had spoken. It had not spoken with a united voice but its mood had been unambiguously expressed in the tally of the votes.
Immediately after the vote her friends and colleagues had advised Margaret Thatcher to delay her visit to the Palace to the morning, to reflect overnight on the ‘possibilities’ of the situation and to consider her ‘options’ with a fresh mind after having ‘slept on matters’. However, as the armoured Prime Ministerial Bentley cruised through the darkened country lanes, the Prime Minister understood that nothing would change overnight; and that the brutal arithmetic of the House of Commons permitted her no leeway.
Lady Patricia Harding-Grayson had offered her a stiff drink before they set out on the short drive to Blenheim Palace; Margaret Thatcher had declined it. Her thoughts were hamstrung by weariness and despair; alcohol would have further blurred her perspectives and that risked doing Her Majesty a disservice in their forthcoming interview.
The House had divided two hundred and seventy-four against two hundred and six; voting by a majority of sixty-eight that it had lost confidence in her Unity Administration of the United Kingdom. She had survived three previous votes of confidence; today’s battle had been a battle too far.
All political careers end in failure; everybody knew that.
In the next hour she would be presenting her resignation to the Queen.
“Thank you for coming with me at such short notice, Pat.”
The older woman forced a smile. Normally a Prime Minister might expect to be accompanied on such desultory journeys by a spouse, or a partner; Margaret Thatcher had lost both, her husband on the night of the October War and a man who could have been her soul mate, Julian Christopher, in the Battle of Malta.
Both women knew that in the coming hours and days the UAUK was likely to tear itself to pieces, as Tory grandees who had never really been comfortable having to account for their actions to a mere woman, manoeuvred and connived - cheered on by Michael Foot’s irresponsible, pacifist and defeatist Independent Labour Party - to replace her as first among equals.
Had there ever been a more unholy alliance in British politics than that of the country ‘gentlemen’ faction of the Tory Party and the socialist hardcore of the Labour Party?
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world, Margaret,” Pat Harding-Grayson assured her friend.
The Prime Minister shook her head, and smiled a rueful smile. Earlier in the year re-calling Parliament had been her idea. Her friends and ministers had thought she was mad and who was to say that in strictly political parlance, they were wrong? But she had followed her instincts, done what she thought was right. If they wrote that on her gravestone she could have no complaints.
Yes, it was a little galling to be hoist by one’s own petard.
But no, actually she would not have changed a single thing.
“No,” she concurred, “neither would I...”
[The End]
Author’s Endnote
‘A Line in the Sand: The Gulf War of 1964 – Part 1’ is Book 7 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62. I hope you enjoyed it - or if you did not, sorry - but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. Remember, civilization depends on people like you.
In ‘The Mountains of the Moon: The Gulf War of 1964 – Part 2’ Anglo-American relations plumb new lows and the stakes in the Middle East become ever deadlier as the World lurches towards a second global catastrophe.
Britain and her Commonwealth allies have drawn a line in the sands of the Middle East. Here we stand and here, if it comes to it, here we shall die.
The British Government had always assumed the Kennedy Administration would ‘do the right thing in the end’ but as events spiral out of control and the final battle of the Gulf War reaches its terrible climax, one monstrous final betrayal threatens to poison the well of international affair for all time.
‘The Mountains of the Moon: The Gulf War of 1964 – Part 2’, Book 8 of the alternative history series Timeline 10/27/62, is published on 27th October 2016.
* * *
As a rule I let my books speak for themselves. I hope it does not sound fuddy-duddy or old-fashioned, but broadly speaking I tend towards the view that a book should speak for itself.
However, with your indulgence I would like briefly – well, as briefly as is possible without being overly terse – to share a few personal thoughts with you, the reader about the Timeline 10/27/62 World.
I was not yet seven-and-a-half years old in October 1962 when I realised my parents were paying an awful lot of attention to the radio, devouring every line of print in the daily newspaper and were not quite themselves, a little distracted in fact, now that I think about it. I heard the word ‘Cuba’ bandied about but did not know until much later that the most dangerous moment of my life had come and gone without my ever, as a child, knowing it.
I was not yet eight-and-a-half years old when one day in November 1963 the World around me came, momentarily, to a juddering halt. I had heard the name of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and I even knew that he was the President of something called the United States of America. I did not know then that he was a womanising, drug addicted and deeply conflicted man who had lied to the American people about his chronic, periodically disabling illness which in any rational age ought to have disqualified him from the Presidency; but I did know that he was a charismatic, talismanic figure in whom even I, as a child more interested in soccer, model trains and riding my new bicycle, had invested a nameless hope for the future. And then one day he was gone and I shared my parents’ shock and horror. It was not as if a mortal man had been murdered; JFK had become a mythic figure long before then. It was as if the modern day analogue of King Menelaus of Sparta - hero of the Trojan Wars and the husband of Helen, she of the legendary face that launched a thousand ships - had been gunned down that day in Dallas.
The Cuban Missiles crisis and the death of a President taught a young boy in England in 1962 and 1963 that the World is a very dangerous place.
Many years later we learned how close we all came to the abyss in October 1962. Often we look back on how deeply Jack Kennedy’s death scarred hearts and minds in the years after his assassination.
There is no certainty, no one profound insight into what ‘might have happened’ had the Cold War turned Hot in the fall of 1962, or if JFK had survived that day in Dallas. History is not a systematic, explicable march from one event to another that inevitably reaches some readily predictable outcome. History only works that way in hindsight; very little is obvious either to the major or the minor players at the time history is actually being made. One does not have to be a fully paid up chaos theoretician to know that apparently inconsequential small events can have massive unforeseen and unforeseeable impacts in subsequent historical develop
ments.
I do not pretend to know what would have happened if the USA and the USSR had gone to war over Cuba in October 1962. One imagines this scenario has been the object of countless staff college war games in America and elsewhere in the intervening fifty-three years; I suspect that few of those war games would have played out the way the participants expected, and that no two games would have resolved themselves in exactly the same way as any other. That is the beauty and the fascination of historical counterfactuals, or as those of us who make no pretence at being emeritus professors of history say, alternative history.
Nobody can claim ‘this is the way it would have been’ after the Cuban Missiles Crisis ‘went wrong’. This author only speculates that the Timeline 10/27/62 Series reflects one of the many ways ‘things might have gone’ in the aftermath of Armageddon.
The thing one can be reasonably confident about is that if the Cuban Missiles Crisis had turned into a shooting war the World in which we live today would, probably, not be the one with which we are familiar.
A work of fiction is a journey of imagination. I hope it does not sound corny but I am genuinely a little humbled by the number of people who have already bought into what I am trying to do with Timeline 10/27/62.
Like any author, this author would prefer everybody to enjoy his books – if I disappoint, I am truly sorry – but either way, thank you for reading and helping to keep the printed word alive. I really do believe that civilization depends on people like you.