Fiction from Class War founder. Published circa 1999/2000.
'Without violent confrontation with the forces of the state the working class will never break through the deadly, stultifying condition which enmeshes it today.
The class becomes decadent without class violence.
Without a willingness to confront and attack capitalism physically, the state, authority, institutions will continue to flourish. This will mean the ever increasing subordination of every individual, not part of the ruling class, to every facet of the system'.
This book is dedicated to Darren Ryan
Ten more like you Darren and we will change the fuckin' world
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FULL STEAM AHEAD THROUGH THE SHIT
1.40 a.m. Salisbury station, Wiltshire, England Aboard the much delayed 9.15p.m. Alpha Line Service from London Waterloo to Bristol Temple Meads.
'We once again apologise for the delay to this service and for any inconvenience caused.....'
Fuckin' Shit! Three fuckin' hours fuckin' late! Any fuckin' inconvenience caused!
Steve Edwards banged his fist on the table, to no dramatic effect since his attempt to incite a full scale passenger insurrection on first hearing of the projected delay at Salisbury had failed miserably. Looking back, even from this close distance, he could see that calling the guard a 'fuckin' stupid cunt' had been tactically inept as well as ideologically incorrect.
No good blaming the fucking wage slave was it? Up till then he'd had popular support for liberating the booze from the buffet. The guard had admitted with mock respect that 'Yes, Sir, passengers are entitled to a free SOFT drink after an hour's delay but not an alcoholic one'.
'But you've no fuckin' soft drinks left - so what's the point of being fuckin' entitled to a soft drink if you haven't fuckin' got any left you fuckin' stupid cunt'.
This had been a counter productive remark evaporating his popular support and leading to a mass exodus from the carriage with hands clasped over little Josh's ears from scowling parents. Instead of the buffet's liberation remarks could now be heard from his erstwhile followers about the 'drunk' refusing to move out of first class.
'Look' said the drunk nutter, a.k.a. Mr. Steve Edwards, 'there's no fuckin' seats anywhere else so I'm entitled to a seat in first fuckin' class especially as we're three fuckin' hours fuckin' late'.
The jobsworth/proletarian wage slave was immune to this consumer led bollocks and had miraculously summoned up a British Transport Policeman from down the line at Andover to remove Mr. Edwards. How the fuck could a copper arrive from fuckin' Andover when they couldn't shift the fuckin' train an inch?
Mr. Edwards might have been well rat-arsed but he retained a fuddled sense of appropriate boundaries. The craned necks of the buffet lack of bottle merchants were devastated to have their entertainment denied them as Mr. Edwards, lamb like, left his unauthorised seat and moved meekly to stand with the docile non-complainers.
'The creative personality does not seek to shock or entertain the bourgeoisie' he thought to himself 'but seeks to destroy them'.
'Sense me pal', he slumped into the seat occupied by some yuppie scumbag's briefcase.
Fuckin' hell, what a fuckin' pantomime. What was he getting so fuckin' uptight about? He wasn't doing anything in Bristol anyway - it didn't matter to him if he stayed in Salisbury all fuckin' night FUCKIN' SHIT. He was becoming a fuckin' joke. A pantomime fuckin' villain. A fifty year old slaphead trying to kick it like a tyro hooligan - delusions of passenger revolts. Whatever happened to his aspirations to be a serious revolutionary?
He need look no further than his four cans of Bass: Ł2.20 a fuckin' can.
Bollocks, he'd have to do something to take his mind off his lack of drink problem. Back of a buffet car brown bag. Make a list of the 50 British scumbags he'd like to kill if he was ever diagnosed with terminal cancer.
A Communique has been received from THE CANCER LIBERATION FRONT - terminally illers with nothing to lose so why not take a few of the bastards with you. Hospice conspirators. Radiotherapy revolutionaries. Tumour terrorists. Chemotherapy cadres.
The HODGKINS LYMPHOMA wing of the CANCER LIBERATION FRONT has announced the following targets will be blown off the face of the earth. He doodled his list on the condensation of the window. He wondered what the yuppie fucker thought his death list might be.
PAUL DANIELS. FRANK BRUNO. THE QUEEN MOTHER. LORD ST. JOHN OF FAWSLEY. QUEEN MOTHER. MICHAEL HOWARD. TONY BLAIR. THATCHER. HAGUE. Fuckin' hell. Fuck it. It was a shit list...some Dave Spart fantasy. If Steve Edwards was really terminally fuckin' ill who would he really take out?
Maybe the stupid fuckin' wanker of a B.T. copper who was eyeballing him through the window......waiting for him to write FUCK OFF CUNT in the condensation so he could do his funky stuff for his captive audience. He peered at 'Frank Bruno' in reverse mirror writing but, despite an auspicious beginning it could not pass muster as 'Fuck Off. Steve Edwards liked 'FUCK OFF'. He'd once produced a magazine of that name. 'FUCK OFF' - the journal for Welsh Mutants, hippies, prostitutes, punks, hooligans. A manifesto for the taffy provotariat.
Still the copper stared at him in the yellow light. Fuck. Wiltshire Police. He remembered how much he hated the fuckers. STONEHENGE '85. THE BATTLE OF THE BEANFIELD. It still bugged him no one had got their own back on the cops directly involved. For sure a lot of travellers had kicked off the action at the Poll Tax riot in Trafalgar Square - but not on the fuckin' Beanfield Bobbies themselves.
He didn't know why it still bugged him so fuckin' much. He wasn't there. He didn't know anyone who was there. Back in '85 he'd had little time for that hunch of soap dodgers or the Stonehenge festival anyway. But when he saw the news pictures he was fuckin' annoyed - more annoyed than about the miners strike or the bombing of Vietnam.
When he saw the suppressed footage Kim Subido from I.R.N. had done he was even more annoyed - and, yes, he'd admit it to his tender self - more upset than he could remember. FUCKIN' WANKERS. SHOOT THE FUCKIN' LOT. SCUMBAGS.
He stared menacingly at the platform copper through the fluorescent condensation, mentally imaging blowing his head off. Fuck it - the one who really deserved it was the Chief Constable of Wiltshire who masterminded the whole fuckin' attack. Where was the fucker now? Free from retribution somewhere, retired on triple pension to some rural fuckin' idyll. He was the fucker who deserved to die.
His finger removed Frank Bruno from the condensation hit list and traced CHIEF CUNT OF WILTSHIRE there instead - but the whole thing smudged as the splendidly run Alpha fuckin' Line service finally jerked Bristol wards. No room left on the window. He got out his paper bag list again. The Retired Chief Constable of Wiltshire responsible for the Battle of the Beanfield went straight in at No.1 on the Edwards hit list. If he ever got cancer he would search the fuckin' scumbag out and ram a pitchfork through his neck. A suitably corny rural touch he smirked.
Had not his favourite anarchist Lucy Parsons advised those working class tramps who were drowning themselves in the icy waters of Lake Michigan to take a few of the ruling class with them.
'NOW IS THE TIME FOR EVERY DIRTY LOUSY TRAMP TO LIE IN WAIT OUTSIDE THE PALACES OF THE RICH AND SHOOT OR STAB THEM TO DEATH AS THEY COME OUT'.
Wham! Bam! Thank you Mam! People did fuck all for fear of retribution. But if you had a terminal cancer diagnosis hanging over you there was no fear of future retribution. He'd often thought you'd only be free after a terminal diagnosis unencumbered by the thought of future plans or consequences. The Cancer Liberation Front would be unstoppable. Fuckin' neat.
He ripped up his list of celebs into tiny bits and stuffed them down the side of the seat - fearing some observant ticket collector might piece it together and pass it on to Special Branch. A new list was now taking precedence.
TOP TEN COMMUNIQUE COMMANDO NAMES FOR CANCER TERRORISTS:
1. Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma Death Brigade. 2. The Leukaemia Luddites. 3. The Melanoma...........................
FUCK IT....The alcohol was slowing his fuckin' brain down to the pace of the non-sprinter train. The list was no fuckin' better than his Dave Spart list of celebs. He was seriously losing the plot. Got to stop the fuckin' drinking. Steve Edwards couldn't even write hilariously funny fuckin' lists any more.
LISTS! - the other bane of his fuckin' life. He was forever making fuckin' lists but never doing anything about them....dispersed with the dregs of last night's beer....waiting for the next list to arrive.
TEN THINGS STEVE EDWARDS MUST GIVE UP:
1. Drinking 2. Wanking 3. Talking bollocks to women 4. Making lists he never did anything about.......................................
STEVE EDWARDS' LAST TEN MONEY MAKING SCHEMES:
1. Open bookshop. 2. Start Listings magazine. 3. Open football museum. 4. Invent quiz boardgame. 5. Start Dating Service for marrieds/attacheds. 6. Write treatment for radical T.V. chat show 7. Make some tapes of his old band and send off to record companies. 8. Write a novel called 'TUMOUR' with a cancer tumour as the hero rather than the villain.
Now this one still had some mileage in it. The plucky fight of a cancer tumour to survive as a living thing despite all that modern medicine could throw at it. After a few pints this seemed a crackin' fuckin' idea but in the morning he started to worry that he might get cancer as some kind of retribution for praising the plucky tumour and every fucker would say it served him fuckin' right.
On his identity as the notorious author of 'TUMOUR' being revealed to the surgeon the consultant would stare into the brain x-rays saying.... 'Well Mr. Edwards - You've got a VERY PLUCKY resourceful tumour slap in the middle of your cerebellum and he's got an army of other fuckin' pluckers metastasising away in your spleen, stomach, duodenum, pancreas, biliary duct, rectum, bladder, bloodstream, retina, - and all brought on by the stress and guilt of writing your FUCKWIT NOVEL. Over and fuckin' out.
It had happened before. He'd once written a punky rant against the Queen Mother:
'God Bless You Queen Mum You saw us through the war But you ain't really nothing But a suppurating sore God Bless You Queen Mum Your daughter's just as bad Let's hope she dies of cancer Like her fuckin' dad'.
And then hassled his doctor for weeks thinking he'd got the symptoms of stomach cancer. Stomach cancer - the silent killer - often showing no symptoms till it was too late. Well he had no symptoms! So it must be unbeatable!
SHIT. Why was he so obsessed with cancer?
'I'll tell you fuckin' why' Steve Edwards answered back a bit smartish, surprising himself with his own vituperation. 'Because of all those middle class wankers who write books about getting cancer. When does anyone working class get a fuckin' cancer book written? FUCKIN' NEVER!'.
It's their gilded and cultivated lives, their designer lifestyle, their sense of having everything worthwhile snatched away, the cutting off of their precious talent, the time they won't now be able to spend with little Josh and his little sister. For fuck's sake - they weren't going to spend any time with little Josh anyway - the Norland fuckin' nanny would see to that.
The unfulfilled genius of a 'Marc' or a John Diamond and his lovely wife Nigella Lawson. Fuck it - imagine the horror if Julie fuckin' Birchill got cancer. Why don't the whole of the Groucho Club - especially including Keith Allen and Irving fuckin' Welsh and Sean Ryder and Damian fuckin' Hirst - and all the other scumbags go away and die quickly so we don't have to read about it.
What about the simpering Polly Toynbees of the world when Jill Tweedie got Motor Neurone Disease. As if their whole fuckin' world had imploded - passing off THEIR world as if it was OUR world like a Diana death double take.
What about our fuckin' factory ship wards with liver cancer proletarians coughing their bloody liver through their gobs while the agency nurse busts her guts over a rogue tumour break out from the fatty pancreas in the next bed.
Where's the witty cancer raconteurs fucked off to now then? Where's Dominic? Where's Nigella? You only sing when you're dying. Only middle class lives get counted by the Registrar of Tearjerk Emissions. Working class women bust their lumps with basal cell growths on their own at home in shit ridden middens. Where's the Booker prize winner on Mesothelioma, Pneumoconiosis, Asbestosis? Even in death these wankers get away with it.
Steve Edwards was pleased with himself again. The hatred, the passion, the anger was still fuckin' there - even the fuckin' idealism wasn't totally brain stem dead after thirty years of relentless alcohol infusion.
He was fuckin' fifty now, he wanted to get back to his old self. He was disgusted with the way he'd become - Citizen Smith with blackouts, indigestion, gaviscon addiction, on the verge of becoming a drunken sex pest. He couldn't even write a polemical rant longer than 200 words now because of his attenuated attention span.
The train jerked up at Temple Meads. He would do something about it, he fuckin' would. Tomorrow he'd start. Before the new list could begin.
'WHEN THE MODE OF THE MUSIC CHANGES THE WALLS OF THE CITY SHAKE!'
Fuckin' hangover from fuckin' hell. Fuckin' depression. Here he was a-fuckin'-gain in the identical fuckin' position he was in every fuckin' week. Fucked. Completely fuckin' fucked. The headache would be with him constantly for another twelve hours, digestion completely fucked up for the whole week, couldn't eat without burning gastritis - this time even drinking water burned like fuck.
Even sucking Gaviscon Advance out the bottle hurt his stomach lining. Shit, that'd never happened before. This time maybe he really had done it. No sympathy for himself though. It was his own fuckin' fault. The warning signs were there for years and he was too bright a boy not to have noticed them.
This time he couldn't even be bothered to convince himself that he was going to change. His stockpile hangover fantasy was that he was now at rock bottom but had needed to get there before he could claw his way back up again. Shit, more Gazza wanky T.V. therapist junk. Not going that way today.
Fuck it. For once he did remember his night before's resolution. Fuck it, he wasn't going to stop the boozing so why lie in bed all day fretting himself as if he was. As soon as the symptoms subsided he'd be back on the case - he could see himself lying in the same bed with the same hangover thinking the same thoughts in seven days' time. Fuck it.
He'd read somewhere that it wasn't physical pain that hurt you it was just feeling the pain. So he wouldn't feel it. He'd remove his head from feeling the pain like some Indian swami. One of Nixon's scumbag cronies had stuck his palm in a candle flame and told Nixon he could just ignore the feeling of the pain. So Steve Edwards would do the same.
Immediately he felt better as if there was some renewed mental toughness and rigour about him. It jerked back into his consciousness, his pleasure with his passionately angry thoughts of class hatred on the train. He'd always thought of himself as a mover and a shaker - as someone who was well capable of building up a revolutionary movement to at least have a proper pop at the ruling class. But now he had a sense that the moment had passed, that he was an under achiever who'd blown his last dog's chance.
'There is a time and tide in the affairs of man and if he does not take it he shall be forever in the shallows'.
And he could see clearly where his time and tide had been and he could see how and why he'd blown it. Since the early 80's he'd been part of an informal anarchist street fighting group who'd been in action at nearly every mainland riot or protest turned violent for the last twenty years.
For sure the first St. Pauls riot in Bristol in 1980 had taken him and nearly every other fucker - including the cops who got fuckin' well bricked out of the area - by surprise. But it had been an inspiration and the Brixton riot that followed had seen the group of nodding acquaintances - fresh from trashing the N.F. at Southall and Lewisham - coalesce into a useful street fighting unit.
The Summer of a Thousand Julys in 1981 with full on insurrections in Brixton, Toxteth, Moss Side, Handsworth and outbreaks of joyous looting everywhere from Cirencester to Knaresborough to fuckin' Tunbridge Wells had seen the group hard core expand to well over one hundred. There was no formal membership, no meetings, no papers, no theory, no nothing but fighting the fuckin' state whenever the opportunity arose. You didn't even know the names of half the fuckers who were fighting with you. They were just faces you'd seen behaving soundly in previous riots - torching cop cars, building barricades, not bottling it when the cops charged, being politically and tactically sussed and keeping their gobs shut afterwards. They'd get the word out about which pub to meet in before the next one kicked off. New faces came in, old ones dropped out and dropped back in again. Depending on what was going down out there the numbers in here were up and down.
Miners strike, Brixton '85, Wapping strike. Stop the City, Poll Tax riots, then the old faces would be back as if they'd never been away mixing in automatically to start the shit flying.
How it all worked he didn't fuckin' know, but it did fuckin' work and they'd never taken any severe casualties - either by way of deaths, injuries or gaol sentences longer than a couple of years.
Well, Steve Edwards did actually know how it worked. There was the little matter of the Bakuninist 'invisible leadership'. Himself, Gary, Phil, Norman, Spike, Mick, Jim, Steve L., and Paul were all class war anarchists who hated and detested leaders but over the years they knew they were the leadership of the group. They were more sussed than the others, could feel the pulse of the riot, spot the police moves before the fuckin' cops knew they were going to make them, make sure avenues of escape were kept open, eyes darting on permanent adrenaline rush.
When the riot's over it was heads down to avoid the police dragnet, hoping no one already lifted plea bargains you into the mainframe, and the local press photographer was too pissed to adjust his fuzz-focus on your petrol bomb photo opportunity. Leave the 'we hate the cops' quote to '12 year old riot ringleader' Dicky Dimwit down the road and polish up the alibi with the bouncers from Popeyes Nite-Club where you spent the entire evening in the company of 38 friends. Leaving the pencil book supergrasses to content themselves with sweet talking Dicky Dimwit into a lifetime at Her Majesty's Pleasure for conspiracy for admitting to picking up a bit of brick.
They weren't paranoid about the cops because they knew they could out-think them. They weren't paranoid lefties bleating on about clicks on the phone because they'd been on some fuckin' anti-apartheid march once. But there were times when the cops did take an interest - the miners strike of '85 and Brixton and Broadwater Farm of that hot autumn, the escalating poll tax riots in '92. Then the Invisible Leadership would be prudent. No talks on the phone, watch out for journalists or independent video makers or more obvious cop faces appearing suddenly on the scene.
Steve Edwards was crap at spotting infiltrators. After a couple of pints he thought any new face was a 'good lad'. Steve L. on the other hand could spot them before they came in the fuckin' pub. It was a sense of timing. He somehow fuckin' sensed WHEN the cops would try and move someone in. Once you knew when then it was a doddle to spot the new syndicalist on the block getting a fuckin' great round in at the bar.
WHEN SHIT BECOMES VALUABLE THE POOR WILL BE BORN WITHOUT ARSE'OLES
It was Steve L. who had coined the Invisible Leadership's working name - 'The Old Shackletonians' - like some fuckin' public school rugby team. Steve L. was a walking wad of information on polar exploration and a complete fuckin' bore on his favourite man - Sir Ernest fuckin' Shackleton. For fuck's sake, he'd been to South Georgia to see Shackleton's grave at Grytviken. Shackleton never lost a man on his explorations - 'though it was a close run thing' (Steve L.) - and the invisible leadership had never lost a man to the cops on any riot - 'though it was a fuckin' close run thing' (Steve L.). So the invisible leadership became The Old Shackletonians.
They would cease to be Old Shackletonians when a) one of them was killed like Blair Peach or Kevin Gateley b) had a serious injury like limb amputation, brain damage c) was sent down for longer than Shackleton took to rescue his men - 18 months or something fuckin' similar.
Steve L. had been to Easter Island, Pitcairn, and even Kerguelen - some wind blasted red cabbage ridden French island in the sub-antarctic no other fucker had ever even heard of. You'd not see him for years then that Michael Caine voice would come on the phone 'When's the next Old Shackletonians fixture?' and Steve L. was back for six months. Isolated from any fuckin' human being for years then battering the cops to fuck on Wapping Highway the minute he got fuckin' back.
What made the geezer tick? Autonomous zones. He'd been with Sid Rawle - king of the hippies, Hyde Park Digger Sid Rawle - on some barren rock off Ireland in the late 60's trying to make it into some self-sufficient anarchist independent island. He'd even fuckin' stuck it out when Sid and all the Sid Rawlettes had given up and fucked off. Eventually he was air-lifted off by the Irish Air Force suffering from acute hypothermia. He'd given Steve E. the germ of the terminal cancer idea. When the Big C. came a-knockin' on his immune system he was gonna take over Lundy Island, or Steepholm, or Flatholm or some other fuckin' rock in the Bristol Channel, declare it an autonomous anarchist zone and resist any fucker who tried to get him off.
He'd read all about the liberated zones of the past - the pirate communities in Madagascar and the Caribbean, the 'Gone to Croatan' settlers in America, the Maroons and Indians of the Great Dismal Swamp - but he was searching for one in the here and now.
If he'd arrived in Tristan Da Cunha fifty years earlier he reckoned he would have found it - no money, no state, no police, no laws. But now it was past with a governor and South African fishing bosses. He stayed there for three months and no fucker had spoken to him but it was the 'Nearest he'd ever got to it'.
For Steve L. the Autonomous Zone was the place where you were in control and they weren't! It might be Tristan Da Cunha in 1928, a barren rock off Ireland in the 60's or 300 yards of rioter controlled roadway in a stand-off with the cops. He was fascinated by the social dynamics that occurred in these few hours or even minutes of pure autonomy.
He was travelling to Norfolk Island off Australia when news of the Wapping strike reached him. He was back on Wapping Highway within 4 days directing barricade building and finding new ambush points for the print casuals to have a pop at the T.N.T. lorries. He wanted to understand the dynamics of why the few hundred yards of Highway with no cops in it felt so different - why people engaged with strangers and developed a unity of purpose and action with no apparent direction.
It was a mini-version of that feeling described in every revolutionary moment in history - Russia 1917, Germany 1919, Spain 1936, Hungary 1956, France 1968. Steve L. wanted to tease it out, refine it, finesse it, make it more enduring, play with it - he didn't want to miss out on any global second of life where you could inhale it in. He might miss out on the biggies - how he cursed missing out on 1968 being stuck incommunicado on his Irish island heaven - but he was going to suck in every other autonomous fragment and glue it into the biggest furball he could. 'Fuckin' better than the best fuckin' sex' he'd describe his autonomy adrenaline rush.
Steve Edwards respected Steve L. like no one else. Which was why his pounding head was unforgiving about that big moment in '92 when he had fucked up big time, pissed off Steve L. to leave England for four years and landed himself in the well deserved shit with the Old Shackletonians. Almost fuckin' ended the Old Shackletonians as an anarchist fighting force.
Still, now, seven years later several faces had yet to return and Steve E. knew the feeling of solidarity and self-confidence had never recovered. Steve Edwards had missed the time and tide in the affairs of man big fuckin' time and his failure gnawed away at his wretched alcoholic body that day. If his liver did pack up he was beginning to feel he couldn't give a toss.
ROY CASTLE WAS A FUCKIN' CUNT
Thoughts of B-List Cancer celebrities aggravated Steve E.'s cirrhotic, enervated, spunkless body that long day. THE ROY CASTLE CANCER TRAIN. The Ray Moore Story. Su Pollard's cancer scare. Tarby's rectal bleeding. Every cancerous fucker wanted their deaths to MEAN SOMETHING - some last grasp at existence beyond the grave. I dreamed I saw the Joe Hill Scanner Appeal last night. Don't Mourn - Organise the Joe Hill Trauma Unit. Sky pilot pie rations in the sky when you die bye and bye. The Steve Edwards Cyclotron Appeal Special Unit. The Steve Edwards/Dale Winton Cobalt Appeal. 'All fuckin' bollocks' he ranted inwardly.
He remembered his brilliant idea. In a boozer in downtown Whitstable he had tried to persuade a casual acquaintance - the sometime Big Issue journalist C.J.Stone - to write a regular column saying he had cancer and detailing his fight against it. He could just make it all up - it was truly a fuckin' brilliant idea. Then after a year or so when everyone thought he was near to death - he'd shave his fuckin' head and all that to look like chemotherapy - and he'd had thousands of letters and e-mails and profiles and pluckily written his own obituary and made eco-friendly green funeral arrangements to be buried in a bio-degradable cardboard coffin in some god-forsaken copse and chosen the appropriate words from Kahil Gibran to be spoken worded out - when he had done all this he would pull back the sheets and say 'FOOLED YOU FUCKERS - I NEVER HAD CANCER AT FUCKIN' ALL! HA! FUCKIN' HA! HA! WISE UP FUCKIN' MUGS!'
Just look at their betrayed, disappointed, swindled faces. 'We wos robbed! We want our money back!'. Phone fuckin' Watchdog to complain the fucker ain't dying. Instead of being happy that their prayers for dear C.J. had been answered they were now fuckin' gutted he was alive and in the fuckin' pink. What a fuckin' scam - it would kill cancer journalism stone fuckin' dead. C.J.Stone had thought it was not a good idea. Steve E. thought it still had a lot of legs left in it.
Fuck fuckin' cancer. He was fed up with thinking about fuckin' cancer. Now the hangover hormones had kicked in good and proper and he was thinking about sex. Whenever he had a hangover Steve E. wanted to fuck all day but his nausea and headache made softly wanking a more viable option. He'd return again and again to his favourite fantasy - he was getting worried it was his only fuckin' fantasy - at least the only one which enabled him to come within a reasonable passage of time. He was getting like people who could only come when standing in dustbins, or trussed up, or all those other only way to come one-offers.
Steve E. was truly worried about this state of affairs but ploughed on with the raddled wank regardless. The humdrum nature of the fantasy was also bothering him - it was a bit too commonplace to be cherished for its own sake. Alex Comfort, the anarcho-sexologist, had described it as the 'BUTTERED BUN' turn-on. Or at least he did in the very first edition of 'The Joy of Sex' but subsequently it seemed to be too down market to be repeated in future editions. Steve E. resented being turned on by a buttered fuckin' bun.
Steve E. liked fantasising about his girlfriends fucking other men - old men, young men, married men - there was ample scope for variation within the core fantasy itself. Oh, fuck it, Steve E. liked his girlfriends fucking other men - forget the fantasy bollocks. In fact Steve E. liked fucking his girlfriends as soon after they'd fucked someone else as possible - giving him a slow motion verbal talk through and physical action replay of the only just finished minutes ago fuck.
Steve E. had luckily run into two polyandrous woman friends who were happy to turn his fantasies into occasional realities. His hangover wake up call came just before he gave in to the urge for a last of the day wank. 'D'you wanna come over Steve? Bring some fuckin' booze with you'. Steve E. sucked on his Gaviscon dummy and made towards the off-licence.
FIGHT FOR THE RIOT TO WORK
The poll tax riot outside Hackney Town Hall in Mare Street had seen the Old Shackletonians out in full force. There was certain to be a riot with or without the invisible leadership - that was fuckin' obvious just looking at events elsewhere.
The question was this: How could the riot be extended away from just an hour's scrapping with the cops outside the town hall into a wider conflict bringing some of Hackney's smouldering estates into direct confrontation with the police. The invisible leadership didn't want two hours of push and shoving with the Socialist Wankers Party it wanted a full-on Broadwater Farm situation.
The Metropolitan Police's top twenty list of tension indicators - always eagerly pored over by the Old Shackletonians - pinpointed Hackney's Clapton Park estate as the one most likely to go up. Clapton Park was too fuckin' far away to get ignited from Mare Street The Pembury estate with its high squatter/class war/Hackney anarcho population was nearer and a better bet to kick off. If the Pembury went up then Nightingale would go and by then the Clapton Parkers would be streaming down the Lea Bridge Road anyway.
Word was got out to some of the Pembury Class War people to make sure there was plenty of builders' rubble and derelict cars conveniently placed. Veteran logistics experts from the siege of Stamford Hill were consulted. Crates of glass bottles and frequent trips to local garages went unnoticed.
The Invisible Leadership hard core met in the Three Sisters at 5p.m. Once the riot started the key would be to draw the cops up the Narrow Way from the Town Hall and then over to the Pembury estate where they'd be forced to fight on unfamiliar territory - then who knows what the fuck might happen. Smashing the shop windows and looting up the Narrow Way meant the cops would have to follow. Over and Out. Apart from one occasion the Old Shackletonians plans were never more sophisticated than that. Ignite the initial conflict then let the autonomous actions of the class let rip. Sorted.
6p.m. - over to the Pembury Tavern where the anarcho/class warriors would be drinking. Spread news of the impending action by side of the mouth whispers to familiar faces and move on down to the Samuel Pepys to suss out the cop tactics. Old Shackletonians turn out - fuckin' good - over 40, some faces not seen since Wapping. Steve L. diving in and out the pub with pieces of information, rumour, gossip, estimates of numbers - rioters, cops, and neutrals - while the rest of the Old Shackletonians went for the quick brain blitz that 4 pints in half an hour gives you. Steve Edwards leading the beer drinking charge and swapping anecdotes like no one had ever heard them before.
Perfect riot scenario. Plenty of SWPers and Militants to wave placards about, chant and get pushed into the cop lines. Lots of neutrals to get in the way of the snatch squads and squeal righteous indignation about police brutality. And fuckin' hundreds of Hackney anarchos, street gangs and the socially self-excluded from Holly Street to Kingsmead. The discerning could even spot the odd retired Angry Brigader lurking with intent.
The Old Shackletonians didn't need to lift an early finger - the light blue touch paper was well and truly fuckin' lit. Push and shove to start, light bits of wood and placard next, turf, empty beer cans, traffic bollards and the fuckin' pigs are running away like Keystone cops with shit in their pants. Every fucker is up for it and the cops have lost the fuckin' plot. They can't move any mobile units 'cos they're too closely hemmed in. Black flags on the Mare Street balcony - time to spread the action as planned.
First windows go in by the Hackney Empire and like dominoes all up Mare Street to the Narrow Way. Every fuckin' shop window's gone - but the fuckin' cops are too scared to fuckin' follow. Maybe they know what's planned for them but more likely they're just shitting it.
Leisurely evening's looting - televisions, clothes, booze, fags, electrical goods. Playing football with colour t.v.s all over Mare Street. Don't even wanna pinch the fuckin' stuff. Pile the televisions up and throw bricks at them like coconut shys. Steve L. in ecstasy at the Zone's rejection of consumer culture. THE URGE TO DESTROY IS A CREATIVE URGE. But the cops ain't going to follow - the Pembury stockpiles are gonna remain stockpiles.
Back to Plan B. Pile into the Pembury Tavern and watch the whole spectacle replayed on the News At Ten. Anarchos sitting on piles of looted televisions rather than seats at the bar. Fuck all arrests, maximum damage but no spreading of the flames. Steve Edwards well happy - back slapped for his wrecking spree up the Narrow Way. Steve L.'s had an idea - he'll be in touch.
THE PLOT TO DRAG THATCHER OUT OF N0.10 DURING THE POLL TAX RIOT AND BEAT HER TO DEATH
A week later the hard core was listening to Steve L. He's freeze framed a precious video moment for closer examination. Ceaucescu on the palace balcony, waving to the crowds in Bucharest, confident his imported loyalists can sort out his current local difficulties. He waits for the usual sounds of approbation to echo across the square to his plinth from the back of the crowd. Then there's a delicious pivotal moment when he first strains to realise it's not approbation but anger he's hearing. Personal, very fuckin' personal, pent up anger and resentment at him. THE VERY FIRST FRISSON OF FEAR CATCHES IN HIS EYE. The very word frisson was made up just for this moment in the eye of the dictator. He needs to leg it but the game's up.
Steve L. has freeze framed the eye and Printer Phil has blown it up into a huge fuckin' poster round the room. The eye is hugely magnified but the fear is right there in the middle of the fuckin' retina, fuckin' unmistakable, the essence of fear captured by the fuckin' camera. This kind of stuff would win you some arty-farty prize but it ain't the Whitbread that Steve L. is gunning for.
'That's fear in the eye of the ruling class' he begins his presentation. 'You very rarely have the chance to see it. That same look was in the eyes of the cops when they lost it in Mare Street the other night. The Poll Tax Movement has got far bigger than any of us ever expected. The march in London is going to be the biggest since the Chartist gatherings in 1830. Let us identify ourselves with the physical force Chartists. We all know that our class is well in advance of us revolutionaries. We may be getting 300,000 people and maybe 30,000 - 40,000 up for a fight. But this time we cannot let our horizons be limited into just a bigger and better riot. THIS TIME WE NEED TO GO ONE STEP BEYOND - ONE STEP FURTHER TO PUSH THINGS TO THE LIMIT - TO PUSH US ALL THROUGH THE POINT OF NO RETURN.
Enough of revolutionary hobbyism - this is our fuckin' chance to make fuckin' history. Thatcher's said she's going to stay in Downing Street. She won't be driven out. Well, in that case, we've got to go in and drag her out - just like Ceaucescu - and finish her off in the same fuckin' way.
There's the fuckin' door. Those who want to be piss artist revolutionaries all their fuckin' lives, and those who want to live off anecdotes of past fuckin' glories had better use it now - and don't bother fuckin' coming back. It's make your fuckin' mind up time!'
Silence! Steve Edwards could feel his heart clomping like fuck as he self-consciously lowered his beer can from his lips. He'd never heard Steve L. use the F-word before. Neither had he seen so many people avoiding eye contact with each other. Since his anecdotalism had just been rubbished Steve Edwards clicked his thought processes into anecdotal mode to avoid the tension of the silence.
He'd been here before and last time had fiasco stamped all over it. He had attended some early days Class War meetings at the Rosemary Branch pub in Islington. After a good ruck in Trafalgar Square with everyone motoring on adrenaline, booze and dope, a young class warrior had called the rebellious meeting to order.
'Look' he said 'we've taken some arrests today and a few injuries but we gave the cops a good hammering. Considering the lack of available ammunition in the Square those comrades who smashed up the paving stones with metal gratings did an excellent piece of improvisation. But don't forget they've got cameras on every building round the Square so they'll be sifting through the photos over the next few weeks and putting names to faces so be warned'.
Steve Edwards was impressed with the earnest young squash drinker - the boy had potential, a budding St. Just maybe. The revolutionary youth continued.
'But that's the way it's going to be from now on. If we're serious revolutionaries - which I take it we are (attempted menacing look round room) - then today saw a big escalation of the stakes. From now on we are going to face arrests and injury on a daily basis. Heavy prison terms, maybe life for killing a cop, even death - that's the future. Those who don't want to be part of it had better make their minds up and walk through that door now'.
Again there was silence. For a full minute everyone had the same thought bubble hovering above their heads - the agonisingly difficult choice between death/life imprisonment or a life of booze, dope and sex. Suddenly everyone got up and walked through the door. St. Just was lost to history.
But this didn't feel quite the same. Steve Edwards felt his stomach churn as the uncomfortable silence dragged on. Steve L. was no tyro revolutionary. It really felt like put up or shut up time.
THE DEBATE.......................................
THE PLOTTERS: Steve L., Steve Edwards, Gary H., Spike, Phil the Printer, Tim S., Oxford Jim, Norman S., Mick B, Paul S, A.L.F. Chris, Mad Pete, Crustie Trevor, Rob J, The Lunk, Martin P.
VENUE: Nightingale Estate, Hackney.
MINUTE TAKER: Ha! Fuckin' HA! HA!
APOLOGIES: No fuckin' apologies - ever!
THE PROPOSAL: 'We've got to go in and drag her out - just like Ceaucescu - and finish her off in the same fuckin' way.'
THE PROPOSER: Steve L.
THE RESPONSE: Silence.
Steve L.: 'Let's go round the fuckin' room. See who's in and who's fuckin' not'
Steve Edwards felt the pressure on his balding cranium as chief drinker and anecdotalist.
Steve Edwards: 'If you've got cancer ya cunt you'd better say so 'cos I ain't getting banged up for life for your fuckin' death wish. Taking you are serious you're off your fuckin' rocker. It's a full on Riot conspiracy charge just trashing into No.10 leave alone killing fuckin' Thatcher. Even suppose you thought out how to do it you ain't thought of any fuckin' way to get away with it. You've lost the fuckin' plot Steve.
PRINTER PHIL: Killing Thatcher live on t.v. has its rather beguiling attractions - I'll admit you got my pulse pumping Stevey. But the attraction wouldn't be so sodding beguiling when you had ten years to contemplate it. We've taken risks of getting nicked on heavy duty charges - conspiracy to riot, conspiracy to cause violent disorder - for years but this ain't a risk it's a fuckin' certainty. If you want to convince me just calling me an armchair hobbyist ain't going to guilt trip me. I ain't middle class guilt trip material Steve - I can't afford package holidays to Easter Island either mate and I ain't gonna leg it after the great event to live on some remote fuckin' shit'ole. If you've got a better case, fuckin' make it and I'll fuckin listen.
GARY H: Steve's right - we've got to push this one as far as it will go. There's a huge politicised social movement out there and March 30th is the big test. It won't get any bigger than that - you can't march the troops up the hill a second time - there won't be a second time - some concessions will be made and the thing will dribble away at the edges - disperse into different tactics - revert back to localism, get co-opted by the Labour Party. We have the biggest political demonstration - maybe 500,000 people - since 1830. We can't have such a poverty of expectation that all we can hope for is a bigger and better ruck for a few hours then read about it in the papers on Sunday morning while normality returns and everyone waits obediently to get nicked when the cops get around to launching Operation Riotsmasher. We've got to at least think about seizing and holding buildings and territory - not going home at night - we should be holding on to buildings and streets in central London for days - provoking a crisis in the government about how to regain control. Look at Paris '68. Who knows what might happen - it's our job to light the spark, we can't know with certainty what will follow. We must initiate seizures of buildings in other towns in solidarity. It'll be a crisis of 'Who rules Britain - the mobs or the government?' Once you ask the question you can never be sure what answer you'll get back. Heath did it with the miners in '74 and look what reply he got. We've absolutely got to go for it. Sweet as a nut.
CRUSTIE TREVOR: The Travellers are up for it. Most of 'em are coming tooled up anyway. This is payback time for the Beanfield and years of being fucked over. Most of 'em are fucking off abroad after this anyway if they haven't gone already. The Mutants are coming back from Berlin for one last pop. You revolutionaries with cosy deals with corporate building societies on your mortgages - one foot in the revolution, one in comfy day jobs accommodating the system you affect to despise - you ain't desperate any more. You're going through the fucking motions - you're like a tolerated violent sideshow the system needs - contained within limits you're too fucking scared to break out off. You've been fucking recuperated. Courses on the Old Shackletonians at Leicester Polytechnic Cultural Studies course, you've fucking reified into fucking Biff cartoons, radical chic wankers, everything you hated you've become. The biggest moment since 1830 and half of you are shitting it looking for a convenient ideological escape route. What did Nechaev say about the revolutionary being a doomed man if he still had ties and moral fucking scruples. YOU ARE FUCKING DOOMED IF YOU DON'T GO FOR THIS. You laugh at the fucking Trot fucking vanguardists but what difference are you if you're paralysed with fear to act when the moment you've allegedly been waiting for all your fucking life actually comes. I'm up for it and there's fucking hundreds of others who will be. Drag the fucking cow out and do her.
ROB J: We know some of the estates are ready to blow. The Class War lot at Salford are more or less running Ordsall estate anyway. Last week the Manchester cops unveiled their new super un-nickable Ford Cosworth super-cop car. The same fuckin' day the Salford mob nicked it from the cop shop car park, drove it round Ordsall for a couple of hours daring the cops to come on the estate. They set fire to the fuckin' car, videoed the whole fuckin' thing and sent it to Granada T.V. to show on the local fuckin' news. The cops were fuckin' fuming but still couldn't go on the fuckin' estate. Some of the Ordsall mob have just come out of Strangeways which they reckon is set to blow at any fuckin' minute. We know the way prison riots spread - if one fuckin' goes the lot fuckin' go. What's going on outside will get through inside. If Trafalgar Square goes up the prisons will go up. We'll never have a better time. We got the contacts in Yorkshire through the Hemsworth, Fitzwilliam and Hatfield Main boys - the People's Republic of South Yorkshire - they even linked up with your fuckin' crusties Trev at Nostell Priory. Yes, yes, and fuckin' yes again - count me in.
MAD PETE: I've never heard such deluded fuckin' bollocks - you all on pscilocybin or fuckin' what - get a fuckin' grip. 1,000 per cent wishful fuckin' thinking. There'll be a ruck, you'll all get rat-arsed, two day wonder in the papers and by Wednesday it'll be yesterday's news. That's it - full stop. You're old enough to know better Stevey L. You're supposed to be the fuckin' wise one and me the mad fucker! Agree or not I'll be the first fucker through the Downing Street Gates. Just don't tell me I didn't fuckin' tell ya.
DICK P: If we forget the personal slag offs, what are we actually arguing about. We always try and push things a bit further - except this time we'll have a load more people with us and the biggest Old Shackletonian turn out we've ever had. What's the point of planning to storm Downing Street when we don't know where or when it'll kick off. The idea you could drag Thatcher out is just ridiculous - come on Steve! You're playing to the gallery for the 'I'm more revolutionary than thou' brigade - you're fuckin' grandstanding. What's your problem today? Thatcher'll be guarded by cops with guns. Downing Street will be bristling with armed cops, maybe S.A.S., with contingency plans to get her out through tunnels or helicopter if necessary. It'll be a distraction and we'd take heavy casualties when we could be concentrating on seizing buildings less heavily defended and holding them for days like what was said. Push it to the limit and beyond. Let's get a coherent plan together here today - but forget the obsession with Thatcher.
THE LUNK: WHY? I am fuckin' obsessed with Thatcher. She's wreckin' my life and the lives of my class. I hate her fuckin' guts. I'd happily fuckin' hang, draw, and quarter her - on fuckin' T.V. if you like. What's wrong with class revenge or personal vengeance on our enemies? If we're gonna get even a possibility of a sniff of a chance to get her then let's plan now to take full advantage of it if it happens. If we get no chance then seize the buildings and the rest of it.
TIM S: You're a bunch of sad old limp misogynysts getting your rocks off about dragging a woman out in the streets and beating her to death. You wouldn't have been salivating on about dragging Callaghan or Heath out would you you saddo fuckers. Presumably she'll have all her clothes ripped off as well. Go on - have a collective wank, get yourselves well despunked then we can make some fuckin' progress. In the meantime... I'm up for it.
DON'T WAIT TO HIDE UNTIL YOU'RE CHASED
TOO DRUNK TO FUCK
He'd decided he was an anarchist at 15 and the decision had defined his life ever since. Now he was an anarchist at 51. But was he? Did he still really fuckin' believe it? Was Crustie Trevor right - was he just going through the fuckin' motions?
'Anarchist' was what defined him, what gave him his small town fame. Steve Edwards the anarchist who'd kept the faith - who'd never sold out - the '68 student rebel who was still battling in Grosvenor Square when everyone of his comrades had slunk off home years ago.
Steve who'd never done the long march through the institutions - who'd never been a teacher, a social worker, a community worker, who'd never had a job where he was an order giver, who'd always been an order taker by choice.
Steve who'd never had a mortgage, had brought up his three kids in ever shifting rented accommodation, who'd never bussed his kids to the better state schools, who'd never married, who'd never had more than two grand in his bank balance, never bought a car. Steve who on the break up of his many relationships could always get the totality of his possessions into three black bin bags:
(i) Clothes (ii) Odds'n sods (iii) Personal letters, photos, political pamphlets.
Steve who believed in unreconstructed class warfare, who hated rich scumbags with the same passion at 51 as he did at 15. But as a child he was scared of spiders and as an adult he had told everyone that he was scared of spiders. His children knew their dad was scared of spiders. But two years previously a huge house spider had scuttled across his legs and it had caused him no bother at all. But he had not told anyone that he was no longer scared of spiders. He still acted in public as if he was scared of spiders. Being scared of spiders was part of the perception of others of who Steve Edwards was. If he wasn't scared of spiders any more wasn't the rest of his life when he had been scared of spiders a waste of time, a sham. If he wasn't what he'd always been, what others had always thought he'd been, what he had always thought he'd been, didn't this make his first 51 years useless, redundant, invalid.
Didn't he have to keep on truckin' as an anarchist, keep on being scared of spiders, whether he was or not, just to validate his entire life in his own or other eyes. Had he just painted himself into a corner as a teenager and unlike everyone else not just walked through the paint to get out of it.
Why didn't he just fuckin' grow out of it?
Maybe he wasn't an anarchist anymore in the same way he wasn't scared of spiders anymore - but just had to go on acting as if he was. Wasn't there some old Situationist stuff about antagonists mouldering into each other - frozen into oppositional forms and gestures with no meaning in reality - a false opposition reified into a frozen posture.
Crustie Trevor had a fuckin' point. The travellers did act without fear - of losing a job, not being able to pay the rent, being broke, bad publicity with the neighbours, of going to gaol - all those mundane worries that revolutionaries scoffed at but which circumvented their every action, turning them into palsied, half-hearted rebels.
Now, in the odd fleeting moment, he'd despairingly caught himself wondering how he would manage when pension time came. Fuckin' hell, what was happening?
'Hope I die before I get old'. Roger Daltrey was a far bigger cunt - a cunt of a different dimension - than tumour ridden Roy Castle. Why didn't fuckin' Daltrey get cancer when he was almost gagging for it? Daltrey the Tory voting, countryside alliance supporting, harboured green wellied toff with the fuckin' trout farm. Ha, fuckin' Ha Ha!
A.L.F. Chris had told him about the ALFers who poured slurry into the stream feeding the trout farm by mistake when attempting some fish freeing liberation manoeuvre and poisoned all Daltrey's fuckin' fish. Daltrey had hilariously whined on television about his financial loss poor dab. Roger fuckin' Daltrey should've been paraquatted along with the innocent victims of the great trout slurry disaster.
'HOPE I DIE BEFORE I BECOME A TORY VOTING CUNT'
Steve E. pulled the crumpled brown Alpha Line buffet bag fragment from an unwashed pair of jeans by the bed:
CANCER LIBERATION FRONT HIT LIST:
1. Former Chief Constable of Wiltshire (1985). He added one new name. 2. Roger Daltrey
It would probably go the same way as all his other unconsummated lists but it would survive instant immolation for the present. He felt better anyway. He'd lifted up the edge of his 'don't look under here you'll end up like Syd Barrett' mental baggage carpet and no disabling somnambulist thoughts had leaped out and grabbed him by the throat.
Self-doubt, regret, depression, failure would co-habit with him till the cirrhotic liver he expected to come knocking on his door at any moment announced his arrival and kicked him into jaundiced oblivion. Last days full of drips and masks in a geriatric ward, 68 beds within pisspot sharing distance of each other - too late for regrets then. Now he could still do something about it - he would do something about it, this time he was fuckin' sure.
The phone. 'Steve, d'you fancy an all dayer?'. 'Course I do Donna, my liver's screaming 'fuck me, fuck me right up'. See you in half hour'.
THOSE WHO ONLY MAKE HALF A REVOLUTION DIG THEIR OWN GRAVES
Steve L. had won the fuckin' day. The Old Shackletonians, in alliance with Crusty Trev's hardcore Beanfield Avengers, would go for the Downing Street option. Dragging Thatcher out of No.10 was a 10,000-1 long shot but the DESIRE to drag Thatcher out was the unifying force, the pulse throbbing aim that could lead to the more pedestrian likely achievements - storming the gates, getting to No.10 itself - getting sorted.
You couldn't enthuse people on the day by saying 'Let's have a bit of push 'n shove with the cops by the Downing Street gates', BUT 'Let's get fuckin' Thatcher' with a three hundred hard core fired and tooled up to do it would send electricity coursing and raging through the crowd.
As soon as the gates were burst and the first fuckers got through all the 3,000 others who were up for it would steamin behind making the pressure irresistible. The rush of movement through Whitehall and Trafalgar Square would lead to the whole crowd of spectators and lefties (same thing!) pushing in that tlirection to see what was going on and blocking attempts by the cops to bring reinforcements through.
The cops would have to try and force a passage through to Downing Street inflaming the non-combatant sections of the crowd into fighting back themselves and providing useful T.V. footage of the 'cops started it first' variety.
The Old Shackletonians were determined to start the trouble first if nothing had kicked off in the meantime. Get your retaliation in first was taken as read. Unlike the Left the Old Shackletonians did not sob into their beer whining about cop brutality - that's what the cops were fuckin' paid for for fuck's sake!
KING MOB
Class War's 'Hospitalised Copper Calendar' was in every Old Shackletonian's Christmas stocking, along with the P.C. Blakelock Joke Book - 'What's the difference between P.C. Blakelock and an onion?' --- 'You cry when you chop up an onion'.
Plus the good old standby sing-a-long-a-Shackletonian karaoke faves ...... 'P.C. Blakelock, P.C. Blakelock - He ain't on the beat no more' and the standard classic 'Harry Roberts is our friend - he kills coppers'.
They were as well read in mob psychology as they were practically versed in mob rioting. The bookshelves - See M for Mob and R for Riot. 'The Mob in the Age of Revolution', 'The London Mob', 'The Role of Rumour in the French Revolution'. They saw themselves as the modern re-incarnation of the LONDON MOB. Echoes of KING MOB.
The three books Steve E. never leant out - an unbroken thread of proletarian English history. 'The World Turned Upside Down', 'Albion's Fatal Tree' and 'The Making of the English Working Class'.
The Old Shackletonians were the True Levellers, the New Model Army, the Gordon Rioters, the Mob battling the surgeons for corpses at Tyburn Tree, the Physical Force Chartists, the Luddites, the Men of No Property, the Captain Swingers, the Scotch Cattle. This was their blood line, their family tree, their proletarian pedigree.
Missing out on the surprise eruption at St.Pauls in '79 they'd since seen service at Brixton, Toxteth, Handsworth, Chapletown, Moss Side, Hartcliffe, South Shields - RENT-A-MOB ON PERMANENT FUCKING TOUR.
1981 Onwards - The Golden Age of The English Rioter. The Miners Strike - rucking at Mansfield and Orgreave - the battles of Wapping Highway and now the chance at last to push things that final bit further - the impending London Poll Tax Riot.
The key was to make the initial breakthrough the Downing Street gates. The cops would be expecting the traditional push and shove, a few cans of Special Brew arching through the air with the spit and gob, but not a well planned assault with the necessary hardware. Why should they - it had never happened on an English demonstration before. The Queensberry Rules were about to be seriously fuckin' broken.
Crusty Trev was the quartermaster. C.S. Gas sprays could be bought over the counter in France and 300 were stashed away for use on a site in Brighton. Tear Gas grenades were almost as easy to get and these were dispersed around the Hackney squats. Fifty gas masks were stitched together for use by the Old Shackletonians who would be the first to go over the top. When the cops were forced back by the tear gas and C.S. sprays, the Shackletonians could hold them off the gates long enough for the German heavyweight three person operated bolt cutters to cut through the gate locks and open the way up for the sacking of Downing Street and the seizing of the mad cow in residence.
Arrest and long prison sentences might seem certain but maximum confusion would mean at least some hope of some Shackletonians getting away with it - and anyway who knew what might happen if they could hold out for a few days, other towns went off and Strangeways kicked off the prison riots as expected.
The other key was anonymity. Everyone was to dress in black with hoods, ski-masks, black boots - no hint of dress sense individuality would make it more difficult for the cops to identify people later. As soon as the action was about to kick off the Class War crews would take out the static spy cameras and seize cameras and videos from journalists and T.V. crews.
The march assembly point at Kennington was to be avoided at all costs, full of cop surveillance, as would be the early stages of the march itself. Give them the minimum amount of material to sift trough in the subsequent Operation Ringleader Finder. Insinuate themselves into the inarch in ones and twos - 50 geezers all in black joining together might excite a little suspicion even among plod. Crusty Trevor's mob to come as they are, taking similar precautions.
Full on presence half way down the march as it got to Downing Street - then - BINGO! - fuckin' go for it. No backlift, just hit the fuckers before they knew what was coming. Gas grenades over the top, mace the nearest fuckers, boltcrack the gate within 60 seconds, crash through with a whoop then all out assault on No.10.
We only have to be lucky once: Stomp Thatcher's head to a pulp
Easy as fuck and an astonishing lack of detailed planning involved for something that might crack you a life sentence.
'Maybe we should stick Thatcher's head on a pole and parade it round the Square' enthused Gary H. 'JUST LIKE THE COPS MADE UP ABOUT BLAKELOCK'S HEAD AT BROADWATER FARM'.
'Let's just settle for a simple de-capitation, without posing for the photo opportunity Gary - don't wanna frighten the kids do ya?'.
Once the decision had been made Steve E. felt exhilaratingly liberated. There were no more arguments for or against, no backsliding, no thoughts of throwing a sickie - they were bonded together and the solidarity and total sense of commitment gave him an unexpected serenity.
Maybe it was the cancer sentence trick - no fear of consequences any more. He'd agreed to stop drinking for fear of blurting it out in some boozer - it was no problem. He listened to his heartbeat pumping, lying naked on his bed. He was stripped down to his essence, to the real him again. He was still an anarchist - his life wasn't a sham. The self-doubt was gone.
He looked into himself and his inner resources were still capable of fighting. He looked anew at familiar objects in his bedroom. They seemed to take on unfamiliar shapes and reveal formerly ignored detail. The ticking of his clock was capable of being broken down into separate sound components.
He could wank without recourse to his essential fantasies and luxuriate in the warm glistening of the come globs on his pulsing stomach. The life sentence gave him his life back again. This time he would make it count.
Steve E.'s job was different than he'd expected. He wasn't going over the top with the others. He was to transport some of the tear gas grenades to the front line then fuck off to avoid identification.
'Look like a fuckin' Yank tourist with a backpack. Sit in one of the Villiers Street boozers then Chris P. will give you the nod when they re getting near to Downing Street. Move down to Whitehall and drop the backpack when Chris P. eyeballs you again. Wear shades and a baseball cap. Destroy all clothes and keep away from any other fucker for a month. No phone, no letters, no contact. And if you gotta booze do it solo in the house, and no bragging to Donna or Jane. If the whole thing kicks off in a bigger way than we think - then fuck it, get stuck in and we'll all hang together'.
Steve L. laughed as his briefing to Steve E. finally brought a smile to the tear gas man's face.
Date: 3 p.m. March 31st 1990 Venue: The Griffin Pub, Villiers Street.
Steve E. buys a fizzy mineral water and looks down at his feet to check the rucksack of gas grenades. GONE. Nicked from under his feet in a second. Assault on No.10 aborted. Best chance for a generation fucked. Fucked by Steve E. FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK FUCKIN' WELL FUCKIN' FUCK FUCK FUCKED BY STEVE E.
Crusty Trevor will kill him but gets nicked throwing a fire extinguisher at the cops from a crane gantry. Strangeways goes up the next day. Chief Inspector Roy Ramm launches Operation Carnaby against the rioters. Crusty Trevor skips bail and fucks off abroad. Old Shackletonians fall apart.
Steve E. has missed his time and tide and would forever remain in the shadows.
EXILE.......
STEVE E. WAS EXILED. Given a month to fuck off out of London. After some consideration to Bradford - and endless nights politico-drinking in the 1 in 12 Club - he decided on Bristol. He knew a lot of the Class War crowd there and all sorts of odds 'n sods from his back catalogue had gravitated there since the 60's. Plus his on/off occasional lover Jane had a place in Montpelier where he could park his arse while looking for a job and his own place.
Steve E. packed his three bin bags, fucked off from London with remarkably little regret and by August 1990 was working as a postal sorter in Cattlemarket Row with a one bed flat in Bedminster.
His mate Grovesey gave him the political low-down on the City. South Bristol was where it was going to happen - Hartcliffe, Knowie West - forget all the politicos slumming it in St.Pauls or the Montpelier muesli belt, that was all middle class wanky shit. They didn't have a fuckin' nose for trouble at all - lifestylists running back to mummy and daddy when the funds run out. Middle class white radicals happy to get mugged by the St.Pauls boys - and served them fuckin' right said Grovesey - they'd all be captains of industry in ten years time so why not give them a kicking while you still had a chance.
Grovesey was straight outta Merrywood via the Venture Inn and the Parkside Social Club. His phenomenal pulling power at the Parkside meant his Merrywood mates could profitably freeload off his reflected charisma. Fuckin' or ruckin' Grovesey's Band of Merrywood Men knew the pulse of South Bristol.
Steve E. didn't altogether buy into Grovesey's ferrets and whippets class analysis, and dismissal of anyone with a body piercing as a middle class wanker, but the boy was sharp, funny, and reeked of class hatred as well as phenomerones. Grovesey was going to be there for the duration - Steve E. sensed that - and his proletarian drinking milieu provided warm comfort for himself in his early days of exile. The pubs of East Street weren't exactly a mirror image of Hackney's multi-culturalism, but what the fuck - after a few pints of Roughage at the Three Lamps on the Wells Road his weight of political failure did not bear down so heavily.
He could see what Grovesey was on about. St Pauls was the wrong way to be looking.....as spent a force as All Saints Road or Railton Road. The days of the black inner city front lines going up were well and truly fuckin' over. As Grovesey would admirably expound in the Barley Mow 'now it was the time of your peripheral council estates'.
No other fucker would listen to him but when the cops murdered Sean Starr in Hartcliffe the place went up like fuckin' bingo - along with Scotswood in Newcastle, Stoops in Burnley and a fucksight more examples of the rectitude of the Grovesey analysis.
The politicos had lost the fuckin' plot. Young white proletarians were rioting all over the country but the anarchists weren't even looking in the right fuckin' direction. Steve E. compensated for the lack of balance in his life by increasing the weight of the alcohol consumption to balance the lightness of the political intake.
He became a bit more adventurous in his explorations of the City than the Grovesey mob stuck in the fastness of their South Bristol redoubts. Zaney Janey showed him the late drinking attractions of the Plough and the Star and Garter and the blessing of memory blackouts protected him from his worst excesses.
YOU DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS...
By 1997 the summer riots of '92 could be seen from a different perspective - the last splurge of the urban convulsions beginning at St.Pauls in '79 and ending in some desultory skirmishing on a shithouse estate in Burnley.
The gravestone would read:
THE ENGLISH RIOTER BORN BRISTOL '79 DIED BURNLEY '92
R.I.P.
The expectation that the riots would go on and on was lost under a welter of regeneration schemes, community development quangos, collapse in the street price of crack and heroin, and the happy feeley smiley face of the Ecstasy Tab.
The confidently held belief that riot could be turned into insurrection was now a series of forlorn 'if onlys'.
If only......Brixton and Broadwater Farm had gone up during the miners strike rather than six months after it ended......then the Second Front in the inner cities might have come to King Arthur's rescue.
If only......the ferocity of the Toxteth riot had lasted a few more hours, had got the extra few hundred yards to the city centre.
If only.....the Scotswood mobs gathering at the brow of Westgate Hill all that late Friday afternoon, like a horde of Visigoths waiting to sack Rome, had descended as feared to loot and pillage the centre of Newcastle on a Friday night linking up with the Bigg Market drinking lads and lasses gathered from South Shields to Sea Houses.
If only.....IF ONLY HE HADN'T LOST THE FUCKIN' GAS GRENADES. It always nagged its way back into his head - would never leave him alone. Images of that late Sunday afternoon as Stangeways went up. It must have been linked to the riot. What might have happened if they had still been in control of parts of central London, if Downing Street had been seized and other towns gone up?
The daring, the imagination and resourcefulness of the Strangeways rioters with their mediaeval windswept masks silhouetted on the chimney stacked skyline stood starkly out against his own ineptitude. It was true - they didn't have any fear of consequences. Alan Lord and the rest of them clearly identified to the authorities on their rooftop autonomous zone - and they didn't give a fuck.
Huddled in slate throwing foaming venom around the Strangeways chimney heads they were freer than his own internal policeman stuck in his own fuckin' head had ever allowed him to be. It was the delirious promenade of the anteaters at the zoo, of the terminal cancer patients, of the travellers with tumours who'd one day do the former chief constable of Wiltshire.
As the Strangeways Days unfolded he had sat slumped in front of the t.v. news bulletins surrounded bv Special Brew cans and finger lickin' fragments. The frantic scrambling across the last few feet of slate roof space to avoid capture - to prolong the autonomous zone to the last brick of the last chimney stack. The clenched fists of the descent in the crane hoist.
STEVE E. cried for their bravery and his cowardice and struck off into his Bristol exile.
BABY, BABY, BABY YOU'RE OUT OF TIME
Steve E. felt not only like a man who had missed his main chance but one who was curiously out of sync with his times. Like an ageing Victorian in the first Edwardian decade who's values and beliefs no longer had any currency - struggling to make sense of a world of aeroplanes and motor cars.
Class struggle - the bedrock of his politics - had vanished with the end of history. The protestors, the activists, the oppositional elements that now surfaced did not have urban insurrection on their agendas.
Environmentalism and animal rights were sidetracks, cul-de-sacs, single issue blind alleys for him. He did not consent to Green Anarchist's by line 'for the destruction of civilisation' nor concur with Ronnie Lee's 'all sentient life has the same value'. Steve E.'s value judgement was that human life was more important than that of a rat, head louse or cuddly bunny.
Speciescentric it might be - but fuckin tough, that was it. Unshakeable. He ate meat unaccompanied by guilt pangs and was happy quaffing lager with gelatine from cows' nail clippings. Hunt Sabbing he could relate to 'cos it was having a pop at rich bastards on horses. Drag the fuckers off their horses and drown them in the fuckin ditches was a greater goal than helping the fox fuck off sharpish.
His one attempt at a hunt sab against the big daddy of them all - the Beaufort Hunt - had not met with conspicuous success. After a head rushing six pints of H.S.B. in some snobby boozer in Badminton he had leapt in front of a group of riders shouting 'TALLY FUCKIN HO, TALLY FUCKIN HO', windmilling his arms and causing the horses to start and rear up. Rather than being back slapped for his bravery where others merely onlooked he was roundly and humiliatingly lectured by a group of elderly women activists because he had 'frightened the horses'.
For sure he enjoyed watching the t.v. pictures of confrontations at Twyford Down, Newbury, M11 and Manchester airport but however hard he tried to mentally adjust he could not manufacture any enthusiasm for saving a few trees or the threatened habitat of the Marsh Watersnail.
The Earth First!ers were now the cutting edge of direct actionism where Class War had been a decade earlier - but his heart and head were still stuck in 1985. He wanted to feel he was with the animal export demonstrators at Shoreham and Brightlingsea but he knew he was not. Whether the animals were killed before they were exported or exported then killed did not seem to be worth Jill Phipps horrible death under the articulated wheels at Coventry airport.
The Rave scene. Ecstasy. Repetitive Beats. Warehouse parties. Well, he was just too fuckin old - he still had an iota of decorum. Paying for water seemed totally fuckin' bonkers, the ultimate capitalist pigfucker rip-off. But what the fuck did he know anyway. Castlemorton passed him by as did the opposition to the Criminal Justice Bill. He was tempted by the big Hyde Park demonstration which turned into a fierce little nicker - but his exile kept him away.
He worked the beer tents at Glastonbury but marvelled at the absence of political paper sellers or incendiary tract distributors. No one was fuckin' political anymore. He watched The Levellers headline to the swaying thousands but 'There's only one way of life and that's your own, your own, your own' just washed over them like any other good tune about any old banality. Liking the songs had no meaning - it didn't lead to any action apart from buying the album.
Why was he surprised? So fuckin' naive, so eternally optimistic - wasn't it ever thus in previous decades of political music - '77 Punk or '68 hippy revolution? Shit. He'd just have to admit he was too old, too fucked up and too fucked off. What did Chris Farlowe say 'Baby, baby, baby, you're out of time'.
'DO WHAT THOU FUCKING WILT'
He remembered the last days of THE BEAST. Aleister Crowley slugging out his allotted span in a genteel Hastings boarding house. 'Will that be the full English Mr.C.?'. The march of the century passing him by. The funeral pyre on the windswept beach attended by a handful of the illuminatti.
Steve E. had been born the same day Crowley died - only about 30 miles away in Hawkhurst, Kent. He often joked he was Crowley re-incarnated - sometimes in megalomaniac boozed up mode he believed he was. Hawkhurst the home of the infamous Hawkhurst smugglers gang. He'd seen the gravestone of one in the churchyard at Goudhurst with a skull and crossbones engraving just visible beneath the lichen. As a kid he'd walk home from school through the graveyard and stared admiringly at the headstone - scraping away the moss off the skull and crossbones so it stood out more. Secretly nicking flowers from the graves of the Goudhurst newly dead to place before the interred smuggler then watching the adults puzzlement as to who the illicit mourner might be.
Maybe he was the mutant cross breed of the Hawkhurst smuggler and Aleister Crowley. Whatever!
Smugglers, alchemists, anarchists had gone to join the ranks of the Muggletonians and Fifth Monarchy Men in the ranks of the failed and forgotten. If the GREAT BEAST couldn't do it what the fuck could Steve E. do? He traced 'our time will come' in beer foam on the table and watched it disappear like
LOVE LETTERS IN THE SAND
AUGUST '98
The telephone rings.
ONE FROM OUT OF THE BLUE..the blue
'Alright Steve'
'Who's that?'
'Steve L.'
'Fuckin' hell, I heard you was fighting with the Bougainville Revolutionary Army - you ain't reverse charging from fuckin' Port Moresby are ya?'
'No, ya cunt from Hackney'.
'What happened in Bougainville?'
'I'll tell ya Saturday'
'How d'you mean?'
'Bristol Reclaim The Streets mate - where you been hibernating - can we stay at your gaff?'
'Who's the fuckin we?'
'Me, Chris, Phil, The Lunk and Tim S..'
'What for?'
'Fuckin shit! I heard your brains were fuckin scrambled - total roughage overload or what! For the Reclaim the Streets Do. We were on the Brixton one - fucking livening up nicely. So are we in or fuckin' what?'
'Course you are ya cunt'.
YOU'RE GOING HOME LIKE SANDY RICHARDSON....
Steve E. knew he sometimes enjoyed the build up more than the event. Standing in the pub watching the door every time it opened - hoping for a familiar face - the beer warming the stomach, addling the brain, loosening the tongue, multiplying the 'fuckin'' word count, re-invigorating the anecdotes.
Today he'd had the briefest flirtation with the thought of not drinking but as soon as he entered the Reckless Engineer he'd got stuck in to handsome selection of their Fine Real Ales. The Engineer gave a clear view of the entrance to Temple Meads station which he eagerly scanned for the arrival of his comrades. And here they were ----- Swaggering down from the station like they were a Premiership Away Crew arriving in Vauxhall Conference Land.
Years ago he'd had his one day in the sun as a Swansea City North Bank bootboy when the Swans were drawn away to Minehead Town in the first round of the F.A. Cup. Oh how they'd accentuated their swagger as a couple of thousand Swansea Jacks put fear and loathing into the lunchtime shoppers in Minehead's main drag. Shitheap spotty proletarian youths from the estate wastelands of Blaen-y-maes and Townhill enjoying their moment in the fuckin' sun, the dispossessed Taffy losers having power for once putting the shits up the Minehead sheep shaggers.
'You're going home like Sandy Richardson' sending Minehead's finest rain-bonneted grannies scurrying into Woolworth's for sanctuary. Power. Power. They had it and we didn't. Maybe today would be a Minehead day.
The remnants of the Old Shackletonians had quickly seized the power of the Reckless Engineer's beer pumps. Hugs, handshakes - no mention of the past - tacitly agreed a no-go area all round.
Streams of riot visored cop vans edged past the pub windows - with the odd plain clothes spotter sticking his head round the door to clock the disposition of the Reclaim the Streeters. 'None in the Engineer' they could see him reporting in to his command centre as he exited the door. No cop would clock the Old Shackletonians for eco-warriors. They looked more like a bunch of Combat 18ers waiting to kick shit out of a few lefties to the politicised cop eye but a bunch of Bemmy boys on the piss to the untutored eyes of Bristol copworld.
The main body of the RTSers was to gather in Castle Park to keep the cops confused about which road they were going to hit. They'd be expecting the M24 at Newfoundland Road again a straight re-run of last year's tactics which had led to some uppity rucking in the city centre. The real target was the raised flyover - a rickety Heath Robinson airborne contraption but vital to avoid city centre gridlock. Block that and you'd fuck up the streets of the Westworld's Cartropolis for hours on peak Happy Shopper Day.
You could see the flyover from the Engineer's front door so a couple of hours extra drinking could be had before things kicked off, watching the cops disperse their forces to implement some totally ineffective containment plan. Avon's top cop had given a fine hostage to fortune by stating on the Evening Post's front page that he would not allow the streets of Bristol to be blocked again - a sure fire recipe for total gridlock! - after criticism of his force for last year's fiasco.
It was a racing certainty that a few hundred rave organisers, crusties and eco-warriors would give the cops with all their high-tech equipment, advance planning, million pounds a minute helicopter and stealthy plain clothes infiltrators the complete fuckin' run-around. The real fun would start when the cops tried to clear the flyover - then the Old Shackletonians would gird their loins, forsake the Reckless Engineer and wade in on the side of the just.
'The difference from five years ago' extrapolated Steve L. 'is all those arrogant flame resistant all black no number zombies with the fuckin zoom lens cameras. They just snap away all fuckin' afternoon with a couple of bodyguards - no attempt at hiding - then they nick you on the next fuckin action. They look through all the photos and their spotters pull you next time. They're the fuckers we should be concentrating on today. You'd never believe the numbers of punters who wear the same fuckin clothes on every fuckin action. The cops have got wall loads of pictures of the fuckers'. Cop vans went shooting past the windows, abruptly halting ruptured in the gridlock, spilling out their riot shielded passengers. Flashing movement and motion everywhere. Out of the windows they could see the bright blurs of colour on the flyover.
Congratulations! You have just been LUNKED!
'They've fuckin done it, fair play to them' laughed Steve E. A smudge of black appeared in the windowed porch of the pub. A zomboid fascist goon from the Planet Zarg a.k.a. the police photographer, temporarily dropping off his bodyguards, unaware of the enemy within.
He moved aside as the Old Shackletonians quietly exited, catching only the briefest blur of The Lunk's mighty cranium crashing down on him. A broken nose, hairline skull fracture, nausea, vomiting, piercing headache with no analgesic pain relief allowed, were the predictable follow up to a Lunk nutting. Camera, radio and I.D. were removed for future use into Phil's rucksack.
The cops had sealed off the occupied flyover but the Old Shackletonians passed through with practised ease gesticulating in the direction of Annabels' Casino. The flyover was completely seized from end to end with huge RTS banners draped across it. Part of the road on either side was also occupied but the cops were trying to push people on to the pavements to allow traffic free flow round. Music and drumming had started which Steve E. knew from experience to be a bad sign - inevitably leading to harmonious dancing in front of the cops and the triumph of pacifism.
He was badly out of touch though. Reclaim the Streets was a cut above fluffyism and the collective imagination had not stopped with the flyover seizure. Suddenly another 50 or so RTSers emerged from the huge property development site opposite blocking the four lanes beneath the flyover and dragging barricades of portakabins and scaffolding into the road.
YES! FUCKIN YES! Steve E.'s heart gave a spontaneous adrenaline whoop. For some reason the cops bad neither protected the huge Temple Gate site nor removed potential barricade building materials and ammunition from it. WISE UP MUGS! Steve L. and The Lunk were already hauling vast beam ends into the road, followed by cement mixers, generators, fencing, what looked like a dismantled watch tower, security kabins, gate posts, lintels, tarpaulins and any amount of general debris.
The mood was taking hold. Chain gangs ferried bricks, railings, cement fragments, hard core and rubble to build up stockpiles of throwable ammunition directly behind the barricades. The cops just stared and watched from a safe distance - more concerned with getting an ambulance through the jammed traffic to a prone figure in the doorway of the Reckless Engineer.
They had a back-up containment plan now that they had lost the initial battle to keep the roads open. Allow the RTSers to blow themselves out over a few hours and hope for a peaceful drifting away as the evening wore on. Other darker minds were at work however who did not have peaceful containment in mind. Bricks were being passed on to the airborne bridge. Steve L. looked up to the windows of the building directly overlooking the flyover, almost touching it, catching flashes of movement in its windows.
'What's that fuckin' place' he asked Steve E.
'The Grosvenor Hotel. Used to be a DHSS bed and breakfast but got closed down by Environmental Health 'cos it was such a shit'ole. It's empty now'.
'No it fuckin' ain't - it's where all the fuckin' cop cameras are.
'Fuck yeah, I remember it, we stayed there with Joe Strummer on the Rock Against the Rich tour. We was doing the merchandising - the Class War t-shirts with Thatcher with the axe stuck in her fuckin' head. Strummer asked the Bristol Class War lot to book us into a decent hotel - and that's what they fuckin' come up with - a filthy fuckin' rabbit warren shithole with a flyover two feet from your fuckin' bedroom. Strummer fucked off and slept on the bus.
The cops were standing well back out of ammunition range but any Dickie Dimwit could see they were preparing for a mounted charge to disperse the main barricades.
'Fuckin' great' enthused Steve E. 'a fuckin' mounted coconut shy about to get their fuckin' heads taken off'.
'Yeah, and hardly any fucker masked up and all filmed by some goonsman up there in Strummer's bedroom', Steve L. gesticulated towards two black clad figures on the Grosvenor roof. 'C'mon let's get the cunts, otherwise some poor fuckers are gonna be stitched up bigtime'.
From the tallest point of the flyover they could see no way to gain access to the building, surrounded as it was by the cops. They would have to be driven back first before any other option would open up.
Masked up, they ferried bits of brick, railings and steel meshing up the bridge. A mini-cairn of stockpiled ammunition took shape in the middle of the elevated highway. The helicopter spotters radioed down and the police retreated from two sides of the Grosvenor before the concrete confetti could be showered at them. It was one of those moments of collective will, so treasured by Steve L., when without verbal communication a rioting mob knows instinctively what tasks need to be done.
Two punky girls abseiled down the elevated stanchions, crashed a hole in a Grosvenor skylight and disappeared through like pink haired ferrets. A balcony door EXPLODED OPEN TO CRAZY COLOURED CLENCHED FIST MAYHEM. A whoop of ladders bridged the ice crevasse between bridge and balcony and the autonomous zoners added a squatted hotel to a squatted flyover. A squatted hotel with other squatters still clicking away in the Strummer Suite two floors up.
Down below the mounties were sallying forth in timid unconvincing forays towards the barricades. The flashes of hesitation and early halting pull-ups betrayed a fearful lack of confidence in their commanding officer's game plan. Fear and hesitancy communicated to the RTSers who charged at the retreating horses, turning the Bristol sky into a scrapman's dream.
THE IRONCLAD
A huge copper boiler was trundled towards the horses like a mediaeval battering ram, the noise alone causing one horse to rear up and throw its rider over the middle road railing dividers. Behind the Ironclad boiler ram - a creation for Isambard Kingdom Brunei to gaze wistfully at from his G.W.R. vantage point at Temple Meads - the first furious arcs of petrol bombs bounced among the backward edging horse bobbies.
As the flames scorched up their fetlocks the mounties abandoned any pretence of an orderly, disciplined retreat. Searing horseflesh kebab smells sent years of training to the middens of Redcliffe Caves. Panicked by the titanic boiler now itself coated in burning petrol and, the width of the dual carriageway, trundling inexorably towards them and the rain of petrol bombs in their midst the horses danced and pranced like an audition for the first battle of The Somme.
Mounted coppers hurled skywards - one catching a full on the face petrol bomb at the zenith of its upward trajectory - his flaming head bursting ablaze in a spectacularly beautiful tableau. Other beasts performed summersaults, their girths crushing down on their petrified former masters with heavy shods flailing skull cracking blows at those defenceless officers pinioned under great horse rumps. The back-up boys fluffed it - fluffed it bigtime. Shooting useless water jets at burning petrol driven cop heads, terrified, stricken by the sooty visages of their drinking pals flaking off before them.
The flaming ironclad rolling over the crushed limbs under the horses pulling napalm shards of face flesh onto its sticky flypaper rusting copper. One copper's whole face was ripped from his head appearing with a perplexed lop-sided grin on every huge roll of the Ironclad.
Steve L. and Steve E. were first across the ice ladder to the Grosvenor joining the flame-haired punkettes in aghast admiration at the carnage below.
'Fuckin', fuckin' hell, how the fuck did that fuckin' happen in five fuckin' seconds?'.
He could see The Lunk grinning through the smoke, the burning tyres, like a scarecrow on Acid, leaping, exhorting further attacks on limbless coppers with Belisha Beacon heads.
'Fuckin' Jesus' soft breathed Steve L. 'I've been all over the fuckin' world but it was gonna go off at the bottom of the fuckin' M4 after all.'
'You two, fuck off home', he addressed the ferret punks 'get rid of the hair and stick like fuckin' glue to the same fuckin alibi. This is a life sentence coming up for cop killing. Harry Roberts only killed three and he's never getting out so what the fuck knows are we gonna do for this? Go on, fuck off!'.
They did.
'I've got nothing to lose now mate', Steve L. fixed Steve E. in his gaze.' But you've gotta fuck off too'.
'No fuckin' way, I fucked up on the tear gas, now it's fuckin' redemption time'.
'Steve. I didn't have time to tell you, I went to Bougainville to fight with the Bougainville Revolutionary Army because I couldn't give a fuck anymore...... I wanted to die fighting the bastards, not on some fuckin' hospital blood drip with me white cells evaporating fast I can take out these bastards. There was a fuckin' ceasefire in Bougainville after I got there - yeah, fuckin' funny as fuck I know - so I came back to get Thatcher. Now it'll have to be this. It's no fuckin' good you fuckin' rotting in gaol 'cos of some fuckin' tear gas guilt trip'.
Steve L. gulped for air. 'Steve - you let me down once - fuckin badly down - don't fuckin' let me down now as well. Fuck off. Organise the resistance after this - God knows it'll need it. I want this Steve. I fuckin' want it. Don't fuckin' steal it from me like you did before you cunt'.
STEVE E. EXITED THE GROSVENOR, RAN THE RAGGED STREETS OF FLAMING BRISTOL WITH THE METASTASISING MOBS, PETROL BOMBED THE FINEST PARISH CHURCH IN ALL ENGLAND, PISSED ON HOLY RELICS, TORCHED THE MATTHEW AND PREPARED HIMSELF FOR THE FORTHCOMING NEMESIS IN FRONT OF 6 a.m. SUNDAY CEEFAX.
'7 POLICE DEAD IN BRISTOL RIOT HORROR'
'7 COPS DEAD, 2 TAKEN HOSTAGE'
'MURDER LUST MOB KILLS 7 COPS'
'MOB MANIAC STILL HOLDS 2 COPS..'
LIVE SHOCK HORROR PICS FROM THE SUNNY WESTCOUNTRY.
The now at rest Ironclad with the cop's face scraped off and now being sewn back live on his face by some pioneering Bristol heart surgeon moonlighting from the struck-off register. Weeping cop widows in front of Happy Family pics. Cabinet ministers in mourning mode. Half-mast Hags on Portishead Pig H.Q. Po-faced presenters - the full grieving facade of the State. Shades of the Queen Mother's death aged 143.
Steve E. longed with his whole heart for the Belgian pie-slappers to invade the studio to the strains of 'The Laughing Policeman'.
Then.......LIVE PICTURES SOME VIEWERS MAY FIND DISTURBING..................
Steve L. prowling the Grosvenor roof with the two goon zoom lensed cop zombies leashed to his wrists. Strangeways revisited. If Steve L. gets cartwheeled off the roof by the firepower of the whole fuckin' Avon Constabulary currently trained at him then the bound and gagged zomboids will also take a minor fatal tumbletoss.
He can sense the corpuscle count surging through Steve L.'s pumping veins and arteries. The man is ferociously alive, the adrenal gland twitching every muscle and synapse in spasm from his buttocks to his bottom lip. This is a man whose time has come and he fuckin' knows it and no time or tide is gonna wash him away from his rooftop fifteen fuckin' minutes. He's sought it all his life from the forests of the Chiapas and the autonomous zones of the Zapatistas to the island of Bougainville. He's sucking in every swoosh of air, a hundred contradictory thoughts contending to guide his next vital actions. His heart popping like a sky full of amyl nitrate, the proximity of his death with the exhilaration of the here and now triumphalising his whole life.
'What's he gonna do?' gasped Steve E., aware the same question was queuing up for a pressing answer from himself. He strained to catch the words Steve L. was shouting in full close-up on his T.V. screen.
THE HAT TRICK HERO
'Bring HARRY ROBERTS here from Dartmoor. You can have the two cops for fuckin' nothing - full on alive, I fuckin' promise - for fifteen minutes for Harry Roberts on this fuckin' roof. Fifteen fuckin' minutes. That's it or the cops fuckin' die with me'.
FLASH TO DARTMOOR PRISON, PRINCETOWN.
Roberts, the other hat trick hero of the summer of '66, clambering into a helicopter, looking skinnier than the fat boy face peering out from the Epping Forest fronds thirty years before. It was a fuckin' gamble. Roberts might have said no - clinging to some vain hope that the Police Federation would give the nod to some Home Secretary to let him out on his 87th birthday. But Mr. R never wailed. Never publicly recanted. Never said sorry. Like the ex-SWP geezer who shot the cop dead during the factory raid in Newcastle.
'How do you plead?' 'Guilty as fuck your Honour and proud of it' WAM, BAM SLAM THE GATES!
But now Mr. R was disinterred a living folk devil come to choke the punters with the ultimate Rocky Horror Breakfast Show. The Last Supper for the cop killer on the doss house roof.
Steve E. could hear Middle England gagging, knew that Steve L. could sense the convulsive welling up of the Daily Maildom gagging reflex - the ashen faced National Gagg-In.
Mr. R by limousine from Lulsgate Airport, waving regally as the outriders screeched the taut heart-strings of the Bristol burbs. Mr. R's first glimpses of the big beyond since Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick, and Tich. No shades for Mr. R. Collar askew to reveal two big, meaty, juicy lovebites, the product of a lifers long necking session with a murder groupie. Now she'll make a fuckin' packet, smiled Mr. R.
His time warped turn-ons - short black skirt, black boots, white skinny rib jumper - so antiquated even teen Bemmy gob-spitter wore them to salute the last parading of his carnal lasts.
Steve L. greeted Mr. R squinting into the epileptic flash of pop bulbs. SHERPA TENSING AND EDMUND HILARY ASTRIDE THE ROOF OF THE WORLD. The cop killers convention in the clouds. Look at us now, Ma! Every exchanged whisper under the eavesdropped by ravening cops desperate for a consolation killing.
Too desperate to allow an extended live-time T.V. photo opportunity for the cop slayers Love-In. The Home Sec., job squirming in his pants, needs an on-air result. Gives the nod. Each cop marksman mouths a personal kiss to the bullets aimed at Steve L.'s heart. The Avon and Somerset armed response unit opens up with the full firepower allowed by its much slashed budget. Mr. R's stomach spills red out from his prison shirt, belly clutching at lacerated intestines now sharpshot to external organs. P.C. Wombwell can laugh in his grave at last.
Steve L.'s eyes freeze framed to a milli-second's awareness of the acclamation that will greet the forthcoming disintegration of his cerebellum. The smiley, pearly teeth giving a FUCK-YOU encore by catching the bullets. This man's last act ain't gonna be salvation for the Home Secretary. His jaw shot separated from his skull as if still capable of autonomous speech - cut off mid sentence like Albert Parsons cruelly truncated valediction for Anarchy on the scaffold. The brain screams out its message to Steve E. through its malignant eyeball - its intentions manifest through the T.V. screen.
The brain keeps its subliminal word and hurls Steve L.'s corpse from the Grosvenor roof dragging the still leashed cops to crack out their skulls on the pavements below - two broken eggshell heads spilling out their bloody yellow yolks all over the Home Sec. and the Sunday Breakfast.
GIVE FLOWERS FOR THE REBELS FAILED
Yes, give flowers. Then run like fuck from the nemesis of the state.
The Old Shackletonians had never lost a man. Well now they were on a fuckin' steep learning curve. Steve L. gone bigtime live on the Big Breakfast and a police dragnet likely to get every fucker photographed anywhere near the Bristol action a 'Common Cause' life sentence for murder just for starters.
Steve E. fled from Bristol. A reluctant Weather-Underground fugitive but a complete fuckin' non-aspirant when it came to life sentences. The 'THIRTY MOST WANTED' photos splashed across the tabloids featured Steve E. in the guise of:
'THE MOST EVIL MAN IN BRITAIN' Daily Mirror
'KINKY SEX SECRETS OF MADMAN'S PSYCHO LIEUTENANT' The Sun
Both articles replete with some extremely unflattering references to his sexual performances and 'kinky tastes' by the ever faithless Donna. 'Well, she always did have an eye for the main chance' he smiled ruefully to himself.
The Lunk had been arrested at the scene in the process of stuffing a decapitated police head up a horse's arse but such a level of wicked depravity was too much even for the tabloids to mention. Whether out of respect for the decapitee's poor widow or the sensibilities of the horse was difficult to ascertain but the outcome was the same in that Steve E. had rather undeservedly shot past The Lunk to Crime Watch's:
'NO. 1 EVIL BASTARD ANARCHIST ON THE RUN'
A series of 'THE WAY MADMAN MIGHT LOOK NOW' photofits rather unflatteringly portrayed him as a crossbreed between Giant Haystacks and Homer Simpson.
Oh, God, he hoped his mum was sticking to 'Chat' AND 'T.V. Quick'.
Steve E. lacked the survival skills of a Harry Roberts or a Unabomber so unobtrusively booked himself into a 'Room Only' West Indian boarding house in Handsworth and set about keeping the proverbial head well fuckin' down. A kettle, a month's supply of Pot Noodle and a portable T.V. would sustain him.
All the Old Shackletonians present in Bristol were arrested and charged with seven counts of murder. Those Shackletonians not present were arrested in London and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Seventy eight RTSers were charged with murder on the Common Cause catch-all.
The two flame-haired punkettes, who were first through the Grosvenor door, in what they had thought would be the temporary opening of a squat and a bit of a laugh, also copped the murder rap.
Only Steve E. was free plus Crusty Trevor left in France. Steve L. was buried by his mum and dad. No Red and black flag draped the coffin. No message from Sub-Commandante Marcos. No 'Anarchy in the U.K.' as the crematoria grabbed his body and best tunes. A shame-faced family do. The anarchists all nicked or certain to be mug-shotted if they did turn up. You'll get autonomy in the sky when you die bye and bye.
ARMED LOVE
Don't get angry, get even. Steve E. struck off for the Romney Marshes to welcome Crusty Trevor back from exile in the silent long grasses of his youth. The conspiracy was born under the stringless hopfield poles of early winter in Kent Yuppified Oast Houses twinkled in the darkness as the Angry Brigade for the Millennium was born.
THE ANGRY BRIGADE IS THE PERSON SITTING NEXT TOYOU ON THE BUS THE CANCER LIBERATION FRONT IS THE TERMINAL DIAGNOSIS NEXT TO YOU IN THE CONSULTING ROOM DON'T GET ANGRY GET EVEN TAKE SOME OF THE BASTARDS WITH YOU YOU CAN DO A LOT OF DAMAGE IN SIX MONTHS
COMMUNIQUE NO. 1 CANCER LIBERATION FRONT
TO ALL TERMINALS
AFTER THE RADIOTHERAPY, CHEMOTHERAPY AND SURGERY COMES THE 'YOU'RE GOING TO DIE SOON' CONSULTATION PALLIATIVE CARE IS OFFERED. NOW IS THE TIME TO LIVE AS NEVER BEFORE. NO MORE FEAR OF CONSEQUENCES. IN DEATH THERE IS LIFE. HOSPICE DWELLERS OF THE WORLD UNITE AVENGE YOURSELVES. SHOOT THE BOSS. THE SOCIETY FOR ONCOLOGICAL ANARCHY LONG LIVE THE BATALLIONS OF DEATH STRIKE FEAR INTO THE BLOATED HEARTS OF THE RICH METASTASISE THE MOVEMENT SPREAD THE CELLS OF THE C.L.F. REVENGE YOURSELVES ON YOUR ENEMIES DO NOT GO FUCKIN' GENTLY INTO THAT DARK FUCKIN NIGHT NOT LIBERTY OR DEATH BUT LIBERTY AND DEATH VICTORY TO THE AUTONOMOUS CELLS OF THE C.L.F. TERMINALS OF THE WORLD UNITE STRIKE NOW!
Steve E. recalled a myriad lingering grudges to be settled but Crusty Trev pulled him back to the straight and narrow. Remember the gaoled punkettes. Spread The Terror till they were free. And when they were free increase The Terror. Those who only make half a revolution dig their own graves. The Exterminating Angels of the C.L.F. would alight silently on the tudor beamed eaves of the rich and famous at nightfall departing at dawn from a transmogrified charnel house. The Norland Nannies of Sunningdale would welcome the extra overtime cleaning the bloody 'Pigs Must Die' graffiti from the scullery walls. A job creation scheme for the Surrey underclass. The carpet bombing of Wentworth golf club. Ghost trains running a shuttle service to Brookwood Necropolis with the cadavers of the slaughtered from the Corporate hospitality tents. The return of The Great Fear. Gerard Winstanley atop St. Georges Hill again and the True Levellers of the C.L.F. scything their way in blood and gore through Virginia Water. The Committee Of Public Safety in permanent session, merciless, without compassion.
1999 - The inverted Year of the Beast
Words could only serve as the catalyst for actions. Their own actions would serve as the catalyst for others. The first three to match Harry Roberts' hat trick of '66 were selected with some comfort:
1. The retired Chief Constable of Wiltshire. The rural PIGRUNT must die. THE BEANFIELD AVENGED.
2. ROGER DALTREY. Hope I die before I get old would have his wished fulfilled a generation too late. The second feature in 'Who was Who?'. Drowned with a plastic trout in his mouth.
3. PAUL DANIELS. The desecrator of Old Mother Shipton's well and perpetrator of a thousand Crimes Against Humanity. The millionaire must die.
The C.L.F. Communique on the Internet - File under 'Crankology' but the Guest List would become the hottest backstage pass on the web.
'Think like the cops' said Crusty Trevor 'They'll trawl through the cancer files searching for terminal routes near the assassination sites, oncology outpatients, hospital cancer wards for overnight absences, hospice sign-in books, x-ray groupies, chemotherapy baldies, G.P.'s cancer lists, withdrawals from library medical sections, victims of medical negligence, grieving relatives. Everything will misdirect them - the forensic psychiatrists, the physiology profilers, the students of long distance lorry drivers and railway routes. The Cancer Liberation Front populated only by the cancer free. Untraceable'.
MOONRAKERVILLE
They moved across the rick burning leylines of Wessex to Old Sarum. They observed Edward Heath promenade along The Close of Salisbury Cathedral and imagined the drowning of the Tory boatman in the shallows of the Nadder, like Wilson drowning in his fat pants off The Scillies. To the villages beyond Salisbury, to Shaftesbury and Tisbury and to The Lamb at Hindon.
Hindon, only a generation before populated by cheery headscarved landgirls and Scots battalionsmen on their way to war in Africa farewell kissing among the whitened cabbage stalks and clucking bantams of long gardens. Now the post war council house proletarians returning on the Labour tide were long gone to trading estate drudgery in Warminster and Frome. Every alley now a Mews and a Bosun's Nest up even Mews. Untouched by the lone flickering of the Wessex Liberation Front's in its Wimpey burning Devizes attack of '85 Hindon dreamed that deep untroubled sleep of the gentry for centuries.
The rural ne'r do wells reduced to the forsaken flat of a summer holiday home, fetching firelighters on the Wilts and Dorset bus from a garage in Wilton, barred from The Lamb and prime suspects for a forthcoming fit-up.
'How the fuck are we going to get away with this?' quizzed Steve E. at long last questioning his confidence in Crusty Trevor's gameplan. 'I can imagine killing the fucker - I will kill the fucker - I want to kill the fucker.....'
'You sound like fuckin' Kinnock talking in threes' interrupted Trevor.
'We'll do it like this. I learned it from some Meibion Glyndwr people when I was in Dyfed with the Mutants in the 80's. They had problems getting away with burning holiday homes - being nicked before they were far enough away from the flames. So you spread paper, straw, any combustible material over the floor, paint thinner, whatever. Stick a candle in a bowl of paraffin, light the candle and let it burn down to the paraffin while you're long gone. Don't always work though - candle sometimes goes out - but if it does the house goes up with a whoosh while we're on our way to Daltreyland. If not we'll run amok with pitchforks in The Lamb. 'There are no innocents in Hindon''.
Some quietly effective sleuthing through Trevor's Beanfield scrapbooks had revealed that the officer in charge at the Beanfield was not the Chief Constable after all but a Deputy Commander who now lived on his police retirement pension in one such 'Bosun's Nest' by Hindon churchyard. Now supplementing the pork scratchings by freelancing with a few security companies' P.R. departments to persuade frightened pensioners to cough up Ł800 for the 'Complete Peace of Mind security Package'. His citations above the inglenook and Chairmanship of Hindon Parish Council made for a pig in rural clover.
His own 'peace of mind package' however was a trifle faulty as Steve E. and Crusty Trevor made their way through the open French windows from the honeysuckled walls of his shady arbour.
'Merryman, Merryman' the former deputy commander called out to the presumed padding across the floor of his golden labrador.
'Merry-fuckin-man! Here's one from the Beanfield'. Crusty Trevor slew his machete in a loose limbed slash across the back of the neck. It stuck, embedded in bone just behind the ear. Startled, Trevor let go of his only weapon. He'd foreseen a repeat slashing till decapitation, but now the machete had become a permanent part of the top cop's headgear.
The cop could not vocalise his pain or shock. A truly botched murder, only half executed - business unfinished. He slumped in a hessian fringed armchair facing the T.V. - the absurdity of a machete half cleaved through his skull like a pantomime attachment. Hammer House of Horror gone awful. The cleaver staunching the flow of blood and brain bits, still breathing, conscious eyes searching for answers.
Steve E. and Crusty Trevor sat down on the settee opposite - making a killing not so easy.
'What do we fuckin' do now? Asked Steve E., 'you should've gone for his fuckin' throat, he looks like he could last for fuckin' weeks'.
'He's got the fuckin' Beanfield video Stevey, Look!'. There it was. 'Battle of the Beanfield'. Crusty Trevor flicked the video tinier, straightened the former deputy Commander so he had full on eye contact with the television, loosened the machete a little to let his brain bits flow, traced C.L.F. on to his forehead from the blood now seeping through the wound and exited the French windows.
'CANCER MANIAC SLAYS FORMER COP CHIEF'
Roger Daltrey was a cunt. No explanations were necessary or offered for his execution. The plastic-waxed Barbourians were at his gates and if you didn't give an instant whelp of delight or at least a frisson of illicit pleasure that such an absurdity had been murdered then there was no hope for you. Daltrey drowned on his fish farm. Trout Mask Replica.
'A.L.F. CLAIM DALTREY SLAYING'
More smokescreens. The C.L.F. motif scratched on Daltrey's forehead with a fish hook had mutated in the dank fish pond to A.L.F. Robin Webb stitched up again with a bloody fish hook appearing in his car. Gandalf revisited. The beginnings of The Great Fear in the rock starbroker belt. Security thick necks swarming at pro-celebrity golf tournaments. Forsyth, Tarbuck, Davidson, Edmonds, Clapton, Collins, John, under armed guard. Versace killers stalking the Weybridge gravel pits. Weirdos arrested. I.D. parade queues outside Walton on Thames copshop. Gun-toting cops from Heathrow moonlighting on Tolworth Broadway. 'TOYAH FLEES ABROAD' and 'RICK WAKEMAN HIT WITH IRON BAR IN STREET GANG ATTACK'. Cop raids on hospices. All new cancer diagnoses to be reported to M.I.5. Consultants failing to notify terminal tumours to Special Branch guilty of an arrestable offence. Home Secretary proscribes the Cancer Liberation Front under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
Steve E. types C.L.F. Communique No.3 into website. Will not compute. Steve E. and Crusty Trevor bewilderment as Communique No.3 is revealed as already Communiqued. NEWSFLASH:
PAUL DANIELS SLAIN BY C.L.F. TERROR MURDER COUNT GROWS TO THREE
Autonomous Communique from South Yorkshire Command Cell of the C.L.F. reads in full:
'Paul Daniels was asphyxiated today by being placed in Old Ma' Shipton's well. His Mr. Blobbying of the legacy of Old Mother Shipton was crime enough. Ships of iron shall float in the sky and millionaire Tory scumbags will surely die'. END COMMUNIQUE.
A freelancer. Steve E. and Crusty Trevor rejoice. Wakeman hit by street gangs and Daniels does the disappearing trick courtesy of an unknown class warrior. Daltrey and Daniels. Professors of alphabetology trek the newsrooms providing public comfort food against the horror of randomness.
'MILLIONAIRE MAGICIAN MURDERED. WHO'S NEXT?'
Steve E. and Crusty Trevor consult their hit list 'We'd better hit some cunt like Frank Bruno or they'll think we're a bunch of white liberals' said Steve E.
'No, no more hits for a bit. Let the panic take hold. When Ravachol and Emile Henry were bombing the salons of the rich in Paris a piece of scenery collapsed backstage at the opera house one night 'Les Anarchistes! Une bombe' came the cry. More bourgeois were crushed to death in the stampede for the exit than Ravachol and Henry ever managed to kill themselves. Let's sit back and see what develops for a few weeks, then we can bargain for the release of the Bristol mob and the punkers'.
Steve E. concurred. The Groucho Club erected bullet proof windows and Paul Daniels' attractive millionairess young widow was charged with murder and causing a public panic by issuing a fake C.L.F. communique. 'How the Fuck can you have a false C.L.F. communique?' mused Trevor as he surveyed the ever increasing firepower assigned to 'Operation Copslayer'.
It was just Spring and the world was mud luscious and puddle wonderful. They holed up in a chalet at Sandy Lane on the Gower peninsula and caught their breath at the events of the last few weeks. Their mutation into folk devils, pondering on the probability of their imminent Butch and Sundance deaths, and wondered at how the fuck they'd got where they were. The accidental terrorists.
'I don't even fuckin' believe in terrorism...............I'm a fuckin' collective action boy......terrorism's a fuckin' middle class fantasy wank, a fuckin' dead end' they laughed at the absurdity of their situation.....'it's a fuckin' dead end for us' smiled Trevor. 'Postpone the fuckin' post mortems Steve, we ain't in the Guardian fuckin' obituary pages yet'.
Victor Serge's words echoed from the midnight of the century to a wooden chalet in the druggie haven of Sandy Lane. 'They were wandering in the city, without escape, ready to be killed somewhere, anywhere, in a train or a cafe, cornered, alone in defiance of a horrible world'.
The fragments of Serge's writing stalked Steve E.'s brain for several days as the yellow gorse of the Gower spring tore into his weasel flesh arms.
'A positive wave of violence and despair began to grow. The outlaw anarchists shot at the police and blew out their brains. Others, overpowered, before they could fire their last bullet into their own heads, went off sneering to the guillotine 'One against all' 'Nothing means anything to me' and 'DAMN THE MASTERS, DAMN THE SLAVES AND DAMN ME''. Serge's words called out from history to Steve E.'s present.
Bonnot, wrapped in a mattress, shooting at the cops till the last. Peter the Painter peacock strutting down Whitechapel High Street to the Autonomy Club but now slipping quietly away from No.12 Sidney Street. The Hounsditch murders, dead cops in Abney Park cemetry. Steinie Morrison struggling like a demented colossus on Whitechapel station, a dead man already, on his way to force fed choking. Serge himself, cardboard for his shoe soles, slipping anonymously from life in Mexico City.
The ever lightening summer nights as they weaved homewards down the Pennard Castle valley clutching their late night supplies from the Parkmill Happy Shopper. A last summer idyll before the storm would break about their heads. Suspended time, cancer terrorists in remission. Pulses racing as they scrabbled home among the reedy streams and distant headlight beams. Fireflies dancing in the smoke at Rhossili and time closing in with the tide.
Marge Piercey's 'Vida'. The Weather Underground fighting on years after Port Huron and the Days of Rage. Silas Bissell hoovering up the rich. You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Geronimo Pratt on bail. People you thought were dead rising from the grave with stuttering pump action shotguns like Muhammed Ali's silent words in Brixton market. Leary freed by the Weathermen, dead, gone along with Rubin and Hoffman, but Weatherwomen ghosts blasting bullion vans and serving 500 year sentences as orderlies in facilities of correction.
Peter the Painter returning with Spring heeled Jack as his bagman, wanting more than his fifteen minutes. Kathy Boudin freed by Weathergrandchildren. Sacco and Vanzetti pleading again in Deadham with the advantage of hindsight forensics:
'Guilty as fuck your Honour and proud of it. We done it good and proper We was never innocent So fuckin what If we hadn't shot the fucker we'd have just been A good shoemaker and a poor fish pedlar Fuck that for a lark'
A Sergeant Pepper cover of anarcho-terrorisers. Vaillant, Henry, Ravachol, Bonnot, Czgolgoz, Berkman, Nechaev. Valerie Solanas offing Will Self on the Late Review. Paul Daniels unconvicted widow struggling to shove his arse down the well. Magic out of that one wankface!
THE ANGRY SIDE
But Steve E. knew mostly why he'd come back to the Gower. Vapour trails tracing back to the summer of '72 when Hilary Creek and Anna Mendelson - one quarter of the Stoke Newington Eight - had been bailed for a last glance of freedom for a decade to a blissful Gower summer. Doomed women facing a life stretch hugging naked on Oxwich beach, kiss flicking under broody Swansea rainstorms waiting for the turnkey's chastity belts. An intensity of repressed desire.
Visitors and more visitors from London. Ian Purdie, Darcus Howe, World in Action - lolloping with wine bottles and dancing among the depositions at Three Cliffs Bay. Steve E. trying to read the body language - Hilary Creek's body language. Misreading the signs - hugs, squeezes, laughter and warm affection weren't sexual longing. Or had they been?
Maybe he'd double misread the signs. Did she want him or not? What about the Angry boys not granted the Angry girlies bail privilege? FUCK. Desire suppressed as the hot summer slipped away. Facing a life sentence with a celibate summer.
One late summer's afternoon she'd called round to his Swansea flat.
'Fancy a drive out somewhere Steve?'. The use of his first name seemed somehow intimate as did the suggestion of a trip with no purpose. 'Gower?' 'No, Llanelli' She eyebrowed disbelievingly. 'Llanelli?' 'Yes'
She was a confident driver, only one hand lazily on the steering wheel, speeding down the Carmarthen Road with effortless flicks of the wrist in and out of the traffic. He knew she'd be a confident lover and he'd be happy to surrender to her control. 'What's with Llanelli Steve?' she smiled. 'It feels the right time' he said, pushing the shared intimacy of mood between them towards open acknowledgement.
The sun shone down on the red brick tinplate town, glimpsing dapples among the silted docks and mud-flatted Loughor estuary. It was as as promising a venue for a doomed romance as you could find, a place of thwarted love and moment who's time has gone before you ever realised it existed.
Away from her Angry Brigade sister Anna, the support group, the interminable depositions, the pressure rising as each summer day ebbed away towards prison, they walked arm in arm among the scrubby warehouses and long coagulated rust meldings of the dock railtracks. The eyes of the world's Tinopolis followed them among the head bowed cranes and coal dust lumber. The marooned groynes tracing a finger towards Stebonheath and derelict tinplate sheds like long forsaken whaling stations on South Georgia.
Her warm confidence made him feel at any moment she would stop the meander and pull him close to her - the proximity of the moment accentuating the pulse beat in his eardrums. She didn't. Neither did he pull her close to him. In a critical one hundred yards expectation peaked and dissipated. When they glanced at each other again it was like the summer was over. The warmth of friendship would stay - the warmth of friendship.
She could carry sticks of gelignite strapped to her waist through customs, blow up a cabinet minister's house and drive like Juan Fangio but.....but, but, but,.....but maybe that one summer's night in the Tintown she wanted something different - to be irresponsible for once, to have the responsibility for what she did taken away from her.
Whatever. Maybe he'd dreamed the whole thing up. Whatever.
Now he was the Gower outlaw, dodging to the shoplight through the sand dunes. Another celibate rebel on auto-destruct. He needed a fuck. He couldn't die without a fuck.
THE FUCKFEST
When she answered the door he started himself by flashing Solanas's words through his brain.
'The male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he'll swim a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there'll be a friendly pussy awaiting him.'
Crusty Trevor had called him a scrotum brained fuckwit jeopardising their entire existence but still he'd come. He was risking everything, waltzing past the Swansea cop shop to her tower block within striking distance of the police station clock. Solanas was fuckin' spot on. Trevor was spot on - his brain was 'in his fuckin pants!'
'Fuckin' hell, Stevey', she whisked him in self aware of his danger. A loopy stupid 'I knew you'd be back again' grin framed around a gummy smile. Silence as he took in the shock. She'd always been a bit thin but not fuckin' skeletal. Still the winceyette nightie with clogs hinted at a stylishness still present. He moved towards her, presumptuously, to pull the winceyette over her head and feel her stick thinness next to him.
'There's my friend next door Stevey - I need to see to him - sit down'.
'A punter?' he quizzed.
'No Stevey, a friend. It's alright, I won't introduce you - you're safe Stevey. Stay. He'll go shortly.' There was a smile, whose power over him she knew too well, but it had depended on her having teeth in her head. She tried to fix him with that smile as she exited the room. It didn't come off. But at least she tried to make it come off - he comforted himself.
He hadn't seen her since he left Swansea in 1981. Two letters and a telephone conversation one drunk night after five years of bitter sweet untogetherness. She had been on the upward trajectory of whoring then - an evangelical whore even - an ideological whore - fronting him the money for his FUCK OFF magazine and bunging him Ł70 to get the first issue of CLASS WAR printed. How come the press never picked up on that one he had often wondered with his tabloid editor's eye for a good story:
'MADAM CYN WHORE FUNDS CLASS WAR FANATICS'
She fucked the rich to redistribute their wealth - mainly to herself, but then, for sure, osmotically to her comrades by way of drinks, food, or dossing rights in her Ladbroke grove Hat. Outright revolutionary grants were not applied for like Chumbawamba's welcome post 'Tubthumping' disbursements and rarely given.
RUTHIE
She started at 15 fucking her mother's friends' husbands in downtown Mumbles. Suddenly she had power. She was more powerful than her mother in her Swansea Soroptomist circles. Rotary Club men - her mother's respectable friends - could be reduced to powerless wrecks by the naked smile of this hitherto insignificant teenager. She worked out all on her own that you could get money for it. She'd only given away three fucks before she wised up.
She never realised she was a prostitute till later when Mr. Mumbles Yacht Club refused to pay up and she bricked his front windows in and got nicked. Her magistrates court revelations 'TEENAGE LOLITA IN GOWER ROTARIANS FUCKFEST' were dismissed as fantastical but kept the Ugly Lovely Town agog for two days and sent her mother tumbling from polite society into a terminal swoon.
The sixteen year old signing on and giving her occupation as PROSTITUTE with a FUCK YOU insolence established the rationale for her work. 'I can earn more in an hour than you can in a fuckin' week dear!'.
She flounced lip-curlingly out of the state benefit safety net forever into a life of self-help and social entrepreneurship, de-spunking the boys and empowering the girls on the way. She evangelised prostitution. It wasn't just a job like any other - but with better pay rates - it was something you were a MUG not to be.
'We are all prostitutes' read the ripped t-shirts of the Swansea class of '78 girl punkers. Not a slogan - a statement of fact. Teenage punkettes with money to burn - outspending the bleached Gower surfie boys whose fathers they were fucking. A slewed peripheral economy out of sync. Mohicaned 'Belsen is a Gas' girls whipping the fuck out of the City Fathers. A power inversion. A city where real power lay in the hands of teenage proletarian women. Guilty corporate pillow-talk secrets passed to anarcho-scandal sheets. Councillors on corruption charges, council leaders gaoled and then gaoled again. The girl done good.
TEEN CUNT POWER WRECKED THE CITY
Maybe it could wreck the nation. She fucked off to London to find out.
'I ain't fuckin' no fuckin' copper'
Liz was the agitprop to Ruthie's sly subversion. Partners in the lesbian sex show at Cynthia Payne's Ambleside Avenue parties Cynthia drew her foul-mouthed big earner to one side.
'Just give a quick hand relief dear, and don't swear, just a quick de-spunk'.
'I ain't wanking no copper off either'. Liz retained her principled stand. The Chief Inspector had to look elsewhere for fulfilment as Cynthia smoothed the unpleasant stain from the atmosphere. 'Alright Liz, alright, see to the bank manager instead dear'.
Liz would do the lesbian show and fuck allcomers but not coppers. That was her limits, what kept the vital part of her to her integral self, distinguished her from Ruthie who put her whole self in. The limits made Liz last the pace while Ruthie fizzed starwards like she had in Swansea.
But Ambleside Avenue was pedestrian, suburban boring. It wasn't even B-List celebrity.....Derek Nimmo once was as hot and edgey as it got. Cynthia Payne reminded Ruthie of her Mumbles mother, full of wanky deference and eager to please any old male tosspot who came through the door. Strictly Derek Nimmo league - the Church Army with napkins. London wasn't Swansea. Teenage harlots were only big news when they had their throats cut and randy councillors were news from nowheresville.
After Cynthia got raided the second time there was some talk of a 'prominent Irish politician' being a regular house guest. In fact she'd have been fuckin' lucky to get a retired Alderman from Catford but Ruthie sensed an Ian Paisley story coming on in a press blind spot and managed to screw the News of the World for a couple of hundred quid on saying she recognised a photo of Paisley when shown to her by a pants-wetting-sleuth-hound.
She set up on her own in Paddington. Conveyor belt-fucking. Drinking and drugging to blot out the dumbfuck boredom. Holidays at the Stonehenge Free Festival provided the yearly release and prostitute activism with Helen Buckingham a new cause.
In battle with the Kings Cross Womens Centre she had her finest rhetorical hour. Arguing with the English Collective of Prostitutes - who'd managed to effectively clean up on the media franchise for speaking on behalf of prostitutes - too dumbfuck stupid to speak for themselves - Ruthie sneeringly berated them as 'Neither English (they were all American) Nor collective (Selma James and Wilmette Brown ran the whole show with a Stalinist grip) Nor Prostitutes - 'who'd pay to fuck her' she lip curled at Wilmette Brown. Her last vestiges of prossie activist celebrity vanishing down the accompanying scandalised plug hole as the mortified sisters looked on aghast.
But London generally did not quake. She became a run of the mill Paddington whore with an ever increasing smack problem. Her flat got repossessed. She got two years gaol for dealing back in Swansea and copped tuberculosis inside. Steve E. lost contact. Just keen to hold on to the odd rumour that she was still alive.'
'IT'S FUCKIN' MEN INNIT'
The front door shut. She kissed him on the cheek. 'Stevey I love you for killing that Stonehenge copper - you did it for me, I know you did. D'you wanna fuck Stevey? Do you want some herb tea first? Have you seen my rat Stevey? What a lovely surprise? How did you know where I was? Stevey I ain't gonna be in this place long. I've met this man, he's gonna build me a house in Barbados but his wife don't like it. I bet you ain't had a fuck for ages. I saw you on the television Stevey. I ain't got no stockings Stevey - ain't got no hips to hold 'em up. I'm getting better now Stevey - gonna buy a place again. It's alright here though, not so bad as it looks Stevey. I'm getting my teeth back soon, when I start earning again. You ain't caught me at a bad time Stevey'.
Steve E. laughed at her head numbing mix of speed rush and punterese. She tried for a coquettish smile in the old way and sat down on his lap.
'Stevey we can't fuck - I got herpes too bad, but no teeth's good for something ain't it Stevey?'
'Ruthie, shut the fuck up for just a minute' he smiled affectionately. He was beginning to feel rotten about his earlier presumption and her instant perception of the motivation for his visit.
He stripped his clothes off, pulled up her wincyette nightie and pushed his head inside to the neck till it covered them both. He felt her warm stick thinness next to him, like she could be snapped in two above the buttocks if he squeezed too hard, and the lightness of her bodyweight. She was quiet now, concentrating on the motion of her hand on his penis.
'This ain't gonna be potato juice is it Stevey?', she whispered, biting on his ear lobe as a slug of viscous come settled into the crook of her thumb and forefinger.
'Night'. She sucked on her thumb and slept in Steve E.'s foetal embrace under the wincyette canopy.
'Have you got the full blown job or just H.I.V. Positive?' asked Steve E. on waking.
'Just Positive - two years now. Stevey - you're such a fuckin' hypochondriac, how come you let an Aids ridden smack addict with Hep B. give you a fuckin' wank?'.
'Fuck knows. You must have taken advantage of my weakness you bastard. How come you still got punters who'll fuck you?'.
'It's fuckin' men innit. Diggin' their own graves with their dicks'.
'I was hoping you'd have Karposi's Sarcoma, then you could have joined the C.L.F.'.
She hit Steve E. with a pillow, surprising them both with her playfulness. He tickled her in the few parts where there was any flesh to tickle and marvelled there was room for a fast beating heart in such a skinny frame.
'Stevey, I know you think I was a twat for going on about the Stonehenge festival all the time but I was right wasn't I? You wouldn't have killed the copper if I wasn't right. You shouldn't have been so fuckin' arrogant about it - it was fuckin' magical. I miss it. I miss it loads. You must have changed your mind. That's a big thing for you Stevey, to ever say to yourself you were wrong.
He laughed. It was a long time since he'd enjoyed the intimacy of someone who knew him so well.
'Stevey, I ain't so brainless as you think you know. Stevey, you're doing things wrong. Can I tell you?'
'If not you, who?' he smiled.
'If you just go on killing people they're never going to negotiate with you. They'll never release the Bristol people. You did badly wrong to get them punky girls life - they'd only gone out for a demonstration and now you've fucked their whole lives up.........
'I thought you had something positive to fuckin' say'.
'You never could take any fuckin' criticism even when you knew it was right. I bet you do feel real bad about them girls but you won't fuckin' let on will you'.
He smiled again. 'You're fuckin' dangerous, you know too fuckin, much. Go on. I can take it'.
'Stevey, you've got to have something they want before they'll negotiate with you - something they want real bad - like hostages. You don't really think they give a fuck about a few dead celebs or time served coppers do you? Shooting Peter Stringfellow ain't gonna open the doors of any prison, you know that Stevey. Stevey I know hostages is too messy but I got an idea about something that could work.
He nodded.
'Dig up Diana's body. Dig up Diana's body and ransom it for the release of the Bristol punks'.
Steve E. left for Sandy Lane.
EXTREMISM IN THE DEFENCE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE..........MODERATION IN THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE NO VIRTUE
Trevor had been seriously impressed by the Animal Retribution Squads' attempt to dig up the Duke Of Beaufort's body. 'John Curtin told me they was going to keep it upstairs at someone's mum's house but the mum grassed them all up. Fuckin' spot on idea though. Then they tried to do John Peel's grave......'
'But he ain't dead'.
'Not the fuckin' D.J. you twat, the fuckin' hunter'.
'Yes, apparently Class War had some idea about digging Churchill up but they bottled it'
'You do fuckin' surprise me' sarcasticed Trevor.
'You know what else Ruthie told me. Liz, this woman she used to go whoring with, really fuckin' good looking, she used to fuck Earl Spencer. And..... Earl Spencer used to call her Diana all the time.....Liz looked a bit like fuckin' Diana .....so she reckoned Spencer had this thing about fuckin' his kid sister'.
'That don't surprise me. They're all fuckin' in-breds the aristocracy. Look at the fuckin' Windsors. Maybe that's why Spencer was so fuckin' keen to spirit the body back to Althorp as sharpish as he could - so he could give her a final fuckin' poke in the coffin. I think we should fuckin' do it. When Steve L. had those two coppers on the roof hostage they brought Harry Roberts straight fuckin' to him'.
'Listen, Ruthie had another good idea. She'll act as spokeswoman for us, for the C.L.F. - like Robin Webb does for the A.L.F. We'll never be able to contact anyone when we've got the body or we'll be traced. She'll go on T.V. - the fuckin' lot - and negotiate for us. I trust her to fuckin' do it'.
'Fuck me. She's gonna be as popular as Myra Hyndley. Is she really geared up for it? Does she really know the shit that'll come down on her? She'll get done for conspiracy or shot in the fuckin' street or something. The punks was bad enough, do we really wanna fuck someone else's life up - especially someone you're still so obviously fond of?'.
'She wants to do it. She'll do it good'.
Steve E. and Crusty Trevor pushed off from Sandy Lane for Althorp - an immaculate caravanette attached to their Hertz hire car.
WHEN THEY GOT THERE.....THE CUPBOARD WAS BARE
Burke and Hare went to work on the Althorp island intending to lever the Queen of Hearts from Earl Spencer's profit margins as an incidental bonus.
'Spencer you fuckin' in-bred cunt, how fuckin' deep have you buried her?' Trevor plunged his spade back into the burial mound. 'This place fuckin' stinks - it's more like a shit'ole midden than a fuckin' hallowed fuckin' resting place. Jesus, we're gonna have to hit something fuckin' soon or we're fucked'.
They concentrated on driving through in one spot. Steve E. threw the pick axe again and again while Trevor punched a rod through the softer mud. The oak coffin was at last disclosed.
'We ain't got any fuckin' time to dig this out Stevey, we'll have to smash the top of the fuckin' lid open. If we can't drag the whole fuckin' body out through the gap 'cos of the weight of mud we'll have to hack the fuckin' head off and make do with that'.
'Shit, what fuckin' state will it be in. I can't fuckin' do it.' Steve E. pulled his face mask tighter round his nostrils.
Trevor didn't argue. Years on the festival scene gave him the practical skills which the more cerebral Steve E. lacked. He smashed through the thick oak with regicidal ferocity. A window of opportunity appeared. He stretched his arm through to feel for the cadaver.
'It must be all fuckin' slipped up the one end' he shouted 'give me the fuckin' torch'. Trevor's head and right arm vanished into the coffin. After several minutes wriggling his face returned.
'Steve, there's nothing in there'
In case the meaning wasn't quite clear he added 'Steve, Diana's fuckin' body ain't fuckin' there'.
'Well where is it?' blurted out Steve E. as if its absence gave Trevor powers to detect where it was.
'FUCK. Think about it Steve. If this gets out there'll be fuckin' uproar. We gotta think on our feet clever and quick. What's Spencer done with the fuckin' body? C'mon, we gotta stick everything back the way it was and fuck off outta here'.
Burke and Hare retreated panting to their gleaming in the moonlight caravanette. They motored gently to their site thirty miles away. Steve E. for the first time felt confused. And scared.
SCENE: IRTHLINGBOROUGH CARAVAN PARK (Approved by the Caravan Touring Club of Great Britain)
'There's only one reason why Spencer would empty the fuckin' coffin. Think about it. When he fucked Ruthie's mate Liz he called her Diana. He is a fuckin necrophiliac - stuffing her corpse somewhere in Althorp. Remember them rumours about the 'Spencer Curse'. People thought it was funny, made up, but maybe it's fuckin true'.
'Trevor you're fuckin' losing it mate. He's just buried her somewhere else. We've gotta find her tonight before they discover we've rumbled the empty coffin. We're in danger of losing the fuckin' plot here. Alright it was fuckin' weird but so what if he is a fuckin' necro it ain't gonna make any difference to us. We need something to fuckin' ransom - the body - otherwise let's fuck off back to Swansea'.
'Yes, o.k. we go back tonight. Stevey have you ever thought about the fuckin' absurdity of the C.L.F.? We're a fuckin' urban guerrilla's Dads Army - we can't overthrow the state with a pick and shovel. Spencer must have loads of fuckin' guns in there, lets get armed up tonight as well. You're going to look well fuckin, stupid doing your Bonnot act, wrapped up in a mattress but waving a shovel about when the cops storm in'.
Steve E. laughed.
SCENE: TEMPLE OF DIANA MUSEUM, ALTHORP HOUSE. 2 A.M.
Steve E. froze. Trevor clicked away with his camera. Behind the glass sensitive temperature controlled panels stood the virginal Diana in her wedding dress. From a concealed ventilation duct crawled a naked Earl Spencer. He kissed the Diana model gently on the cheek before inserting his erect penis into the cup of the model's hand and swaying his hips back and forward.
'WE YOUR BLOOD FAMILY WILL LOOK AFTER YOU'.
Over the speaker came Spencer's funeral oration at Westminster Abbey. He undipped the wedding dress which fell away to the floor in one practised sweep.
'WE YOUR BLOOD FAMILY WILL LOOK AFTER YOU'.
The speech was reduced to a repetitive sampled beat to whose throb Spencer propelled his penis in the model princess's palm.
'It's not a fuckin' model' Trevor gritted through his teeth. 'Look at the scar tissue around the chest and neck. It's Diana - he's fuckin' embalmed her and stuck her in the fuckin' museum'.
He clicked away. Steve E. was rooted in dumbness.
Spencer folded the naked Diana corpse to a kneeling position, supported at the neck by a U-shaped clamping rod. He prised the lips apart and inserted his penis into the mouth of the mute Diana.
'WE YOUR BLOOD FAMILY WILL LOOK AFTER YOU'.
The rhythm of the words increased in tempo as he thrust again and again till, a spent force, he slumped sobbing to the ground.
Trevor cleaved the air, crashing through the glass panels with his pick axe, straddling Spencer with the handle, garrotting his windpipe.
'Kill the fucker' screamed Steve E.
'No, he's going to be more use to us alive when these photos get out'.
The Spencer armoury was possessed. The cadaverous princess was chucked into the caravanette's chemical toilet. The necrophiliac Lord of the Realm rendered unconscious with a shovelling blow to the head. The C.L.F. caravan trundled unsuspected back to the Gower with its deathly ransom.
Now it was down to Ruthie to withstand the storm.
'ENGLAND'S ROSE DUG UP' Daily Mail 'GRAVE ROBBING BASTARDS' Sun 'DI-A-BOLICAL' Sun (late edition) 'Ł1 MILLION REWARD' Daily Mirror 'DESCENT INTO THE ABYSS' Guardian 'DEATH PENALTY FOR TREASON' Express 'THIS IS NOT THE WAY. RECALL THE T.U.C.' Socialist Worker 'CHARLES COMFORTS WILLS' 'BLAIR TO BALMORAL' 'UNSPEAKABLE EVIL' Richard and Judy
Middle England wallowed in a catharsis of spectacular outrage. Talk show hosts searched for superlatives of superlatives. 'Words could not do justice'.......blah, blah, blah, blah......................................................
'DARK CLOUD ACROSS THE NATION'S HEART' Blair (via Campbell)
'EARL SPENCER'S HEROIC STRUGGLE AGAINST ARMED MOB'.....Cut to head bandaged Earl staring blankly at smashed open coffin.
Shares in Althorp p.l.c. plummet. Candlemakers clean up again outside Kensington Gardens. A nation united. First Diana's body jokes in school playgrounds. Co-ordinated police raids on Earth First! Green Anarchist! Class War! Black Flag! Freedom bookshop! McLibel Campaign! Cancer hospices! Radiotherapy wards! Woodcraft Folk!
'BRING BACK INTERNMENT FOR ANARCHISTS' Evening Standard 'BRING BACK DISINTERRMENT FOR ROYALS' Anarchist slogan in Brixton.
'Candle In The Wind' back at No1. 'Body Shop' changes name to avoid giving offence. Weeping Wills and Harry on every black-edged front page. 'Shallow Grave' dropped from T.V. schedules. Street attacks on anyone with unsuitably cheery face.
'NEWSFLASH'
'We interrupt this programme of martial music for a C.N.N. live reportage of a Communique received from the C.L.F. and read by a C.L.F. spokeswoman'.
The Sandy Lane chalet TV. is turned up. Steve E. and Trevor know this is it. A tiny Ruthie appears in the middle of a thousand camera flashes.
'Fuckin' hell, she's got fuckin' teeth from somewhere' blurted Steve E.
She's reverted to '77 punk style - Safety pin in ear, tartan bondage trousers, jet black hair, black beret - a calculated V-Sign to the watching mourners. SCHLOCK! T.V. as never seen before.
'C.L.F. COMMUNIQUE No.5. The body of the Princess of Wales will be returned intact, and all further C.L.F. assassinations cease on the unconditional release of all those arrested at the Bristol R.T.S. action including all gaoled for police murder. We ask for no immunity for ourselves. If this request is not complied with in one week Diana will be put through the mincer and fed to liberated mink. END'.
'I'll take questions'. Her jaunty lightness of tone and accomplished T.V. confidence temporarily disarms her interrogators.
'Fuckin hell' whispered Steve E. 'she ain't supposed to be taking fuckin' questions'.
I.T.N.: 'You say you are just a spokeswoman who receives communiques anonymously from the C.L.F. How can we be sure you do speak for them?'.
Ruthie: 'Easy, for sure. This come in the post this morning'. Produces Diana's ear from envelope. 'Check it out with Spencer's for the D.N.A.'.
BBC: 'Do you personally condone the CLF action?'.
Ruthie: 'Diana was a jet setting cow like the rest of the royal scum. I hope the mink get a cowin' lush feed. Yes, you next'.
She conducted the press conference with a consummate unfazed professionalism. Her time and tide had waited for her and she was full flow on the crest of the fuckin' ebb. She cracked jokes, lip curied, and V-Signed her cheeks to the swoons of Middle England. She removed her beret to reveal the felt tipped forehead inscription:
'SMACK HAG H.I.V. WELL POSITIVE. UP THE C.L.F.'
'SMACK HAG' on her knuckles joints. 'Fuckin' hell' exclaimed Crusty Trevor 'she's got fuckin style or what!'. Steve E. remained rooted to the television.
'And one final point. When you get the skeleton back you might like to ask the brave blood relative what his semen is doing in her mouth. VICTORY TO THE C.L.F.'.
An accentuated clenched fist black power gloved salute with one hand while she rubbed her pelvic thrusting crotch with the other. Enter police in rush, end of conference and arrest of CLF spokeswoman.
'Well that's public sympathy on our side then' smiled Steve E.
'Fuck public sympathy' snapped Trevor. 'It's material facts that change history. D'you realise the fuckin' potential of this Steve? When word gets out that Spencer didn't bury Diana, that he's a fuckin' necrophiliac fuckin' England's Rose every night there's gonna be fuckin uproar. And when it comes out that the other fuckin' royals, parliament, Blair, the aristocracy, the church all fuckin' knew about and connived at it then the whole lot'll come crashing down. Fuckin' revolution by fuckin' accident or what?'.
'And how are we going to prove all that'.
'Steve, don't be a clever cunt now. Listen, we've got the photos. O.K., they might devise their way out of that - say they were faked or something - but Spencer's DNA will be in the fuckin' semen in her mouth. It's the stain on Monica Lewinsky's dress. The fuckin' clincher'.
Steve E. was wondering what was happening to the CLF spokeswoman. The cops would know that she was more use to them if she was free and able to receive communications from the CLF so they could chase clues. He knew she could fly it on the seat of her pants, just make fuckin' stuff up. But....he surprised himself ...would he ever see Ruthie again?
He switched back to the cogency of Trevor's analysis, and allowed himself a twinge of optimism. 'This is fuckin' Year Zero' he murmured to his co-conspirator.
'NO NEGOTIATIONS. NO PRISONER RELEASE. NO SURRENDER TO BLACKMAIL. NO GIVING IN TO TERRORISM'. The press and government were unanimous. There would be no acceding to the CLF's demands.
'EXECUTE THE SMACK HAG' The Sun
Week One of Year Zero past with no prisoner release. Trevor travelled to Birmingham to mail a brown 'Do Not Bend' manilla envelope to a large mansion in Northamptonshire. They waited.
CLEAR THE SCHEDULES: PRIME MINISTERIAL STATEMENT:
Blair at No .10 in sombre mood
'At the express request of Earl Spencer, and in recognition of the agony of suffering undergone by his nephews William and Harry and all members of the Windsor family, Her Majesty's government has decided, in these tragic circumstances, to meet the demands of the C.L.F., with great reluctance at the abandonment of the due process of law. Accordingly prisoners will be released at 7a.m. tomorrow to meet the conditions for the release of the Princess of Wales' body. No immunity will be offered to any beyond those released prisoners and the perpetrators of this unspeakably evil deed will be pursued with the utmost rigour'.
B.B.C. Breakfast News.....Major breaking news story......Horfield Prison, Bristol ......7a.m.
56 male prisoners released, giving clenched fist salutes. The police hold back a visceral proletarian mob spitting their finger jabbing hatred.
Styal Prison, Cheshire
Twenty four women prisoners released simultaneously. The punkettes, now shaven headed like World War II collaborators, breaking the protocol - chins jutting into microphones, screaming:
'VICTORY TO THE C.L.F.! SMASH THE FUCKIN' STATE! FEED DIANA TO THE FUCKIN' MINK!'
'Some viewers may not find these scenes offensive.' Althorp season ticket holders demand a rebate. Paul Daniels cremated. Mohammed El Fayed offers Ł5 million reward for capture of the C.L.F.
The Gower television flicks to OFF.
'Fuck, Fuck, We've fuckin' done it.' The tension poured from Steve E.'s trembling shoulders, his hands shaking with heart popping relief.
'Yes, that's the half a revolution done - now for the other fuckin' half - the half that no fucker's ever done before. When we give up the body Blair will renege on the agreement for sure. The punks will have to be sussed enough to fuckin' realise they'll be pulled again and vanish sharpish. They'll also have some fuckin' ideas on where to find us so we'll have to go from here. Any ideas Stevey?'.
'Back to London. One of the old Freestonia squats off Latimer Road'.
'Then we'll fuckin' out-renege fuckin' Blair boy bigtime. Release the Spencer photos to the news agencies. Conspiracy of the century - POW! - Who fuckin' knows what might happen then?'
'Trevor, how come you're so fuckin' hard nosed about everything but fuckin' starry eyed about this?. The government will never let the photos get out. You're off your fuckin' head if you think that the press is going to expose this and get revolutionary mobs out on the streets. If the photos are going to do anything - and it's a hell of a fuckin' trump card I agree - we'll need to get it out on the internet first - somewhere they can't fuckin' fully control'.
'Bollocks. Murdoch's got no love for the royals or fuckin' Blair. He's more powerful than both of them. He'll fuckin' go for it. But he won't be able to control it. He'll be like fuckin' Cromwell - hoping for the overthrow of established privilege for a millennial meritocracy - but he'll unleash forces he can't fuckin' fathom. Then it'll be down to us to act ruthlessly to push things our way - that one fuckin' step further'. Steve E. thought but said nothing.
'Oh fuck it Steve, you might be fuckin' right, maybe it is fuckin' fantasyland - but we can release it on the internet at the same time - try fuckin' everything we fuckin' can to get it into people's heads the fuckin' conspiracy that's gone on. And they'll be fuckin' enraged Steve, fuckin' enraged. C'mon we gotta be united on this now for fuck sake'.
CROSSING THE RUBICON
Steve E. smiled, stretched out his hand to Crusty Trevor. 'We have crossed the fuckin' Rubicon' he said in his best Piet Botha Boer accent. 'Stevey' said Trevor 'I think we crossed the Rubicon just before fuckin' Hannibal'.
WIND STREET POST OFFICE SWANSEA: The Queen of Hearts is card board boxed up and shrink wrapped. weighed up and stamped and dispatched on Parcel Force's guaranteed delivery within three working days service to her ex-mother-in-law at Buck House. Sandy Lane has done its time and the Twin Town terrorists depart the pretty shitty city for the old squat havens of Ned Ludd Gate.
HOME SECRETARY'S STATEMENT TO A PACKED HOUSE OF COMMONS:
'I have to report to the House that as of 3p.m. this afternoon, with two regrettable exceptions, all those released from Bristol and Styal prisons have been re-arrested under the terms of the Prevention of Terrorism Act for belonging to, or assisting the promotion of, a proscribed organisation - the C.L.F. I am grateful for the bi-partisan support of the whole house on this matter and further encouraged by the message of support received from the absentee Sinn Fein members. The police and security services assure me that the arrest of the remaining active CLF cell is imminent following the discovery of their hide out in Wales and other information received.
Details of the re-interrment of the Princess of Wales will be made public by Earl Spencer tomorrow but there are thought to be some tickets still available on the gate. Hear, Hear'. Statement Ends.
ADULT PHOTO REPRODUCTION SERVICES. GOLDHAWK ROAP.
The proprietor: 'What's that mate, some young buck fuckin' yer missus?'.
'Wish it was pal' said Steve E. with just a glint of sincerity.
Twenty Spencer Photo Nasties reproduced, blown up, spine stiffened and Do-Not-Bended to the newsdesk bloodhounds waiting for the big one to plop into their ungrateful maws. BBC/ITN/SKY/CNN. Then wait for the endgame to unravel.
It doesn't. NOTHING. And then more nothing. Crusty Trevor has miscalculated bigtime. Faulty fuckin' analysis times fuckin' 10. Should've gone straight to the Net - now the government can get its retaliation in first, spike the fuckin' story, undermine the photocredibility.
Front page tabloid identical leads on Sunday morning:
'BEYOND BELIEF - VILE SPENCER SMEARS'
'Twelve senior British journalists were yesterday shown surely the most obscene photographs of all time. The crazed fanatic minds that produced these vile horrors in an attempt to destabilise the British monarchy have defiled the heart of a nation. The poor quality faked photographs would have been risible but for the sheer awfulness of their intent. A CLF prostitute - positively identified as the CLF media spokeswoman and self-confessed Smack Hag known as Ruthie - masquerades as the corpse of the Princess of Wales while a CLF terrorist, attempting to pass himself off as Earl Spencer, engages in necrophiliac relations with her. CLF attempts to pass off this inhuman act of depravity as genuine via the Internet will be treated with contempt by all right thinking people. Earl Spencer had no comment as he is busy tending to the re-interrment of his sister and comforting his nephews. It will be an offence under the Prevention of Terrorism Act to possess or distribute these photographs. We can only hope the CLF monsters are apprehended before sinking to still further depths of depravity'.
Signed by all twelve editors of the British National Newspapers Association.
But not everyone is so compliant. The proprietor of 'Adult Photo Reproduction Services' for one. Keeping a strictly non-confidential sly copy back for himself he got more than the 'young buck fucks my missus' wank night special he was expecting from his uninvited additional copies. Fuck the PTA this is a Goldhawk Goldmine! Copying desks hum into the night all over the city from Hounslow to Haggerston- Steve E.'s photos reproducing for a grand a time. Small time entrepreneurialism spreads the word not polemical agitprop. Search for sedition in the most unlikely quarters. Porno millionaires created overnight, mutating, from 5p photocopier shops and electric key charge merchants in front of cob webbed lottery card machines, into unconscious carriers of the revolutionary virus. Forget your Rubik's Cubes, Deeley Boppers and Yo-Yos every fuckin' Toby and market trader is getting their piece of Operation Prairie Fire and fuckin' off to Ronnie Knight land on the proceeds.
Government placemen and spindoctored media toadies are outflanked by investigative mavericks, dissident boffins, forensic probers, renegade DNA analysts, unemployed body profilers. Internet postings, dental record thieves, eagle-Eyed anarcho-analysts, web guerrillas, ex-lovers with freckled prick stories, photo-fit fanatics, para-political researchers, and Notes from the Borderlanders. When the mode of the music changes the walls of the city shake.
A first frisson of awful doubt begins its inexorable gnaw at England's Maw. Rank breakers, opportunists, power merchants, axe grinders, grudge bearers clog the airwaves.
The doubts gather round Althorp like pack ice cracking an empty bean tin. If the photos are genuine the consequences are too awful to contemplate.
THE PHOTOS ARE CONFIRMED AS GENUINE. A guttural cry of collective wrath is heard emanating from deep within the bowels of the stout yeomen of England. THE PHOTOS ARE GENUINE. Earl Spencer is prevented from privately cremating Diana's body.
Calls for D.N.A. tests on the semen traces found on the corpse. First denied, then acceded to by Tony Blair. The phoney war of Monica's stain. Spencer flees to South Africa.
'D.N.A. TEST POSITIVE. EARL SPENCER A NECROPHILIAC.....IT'S OFFICIAL.'
FUCKIN' SHOCK OR WHAT!
MOBS SACK ALTHORP. Diana cremated on the funeral pyre of Althorp mansion's eaves before a million banshee punters. Blair's doctors of ill repute hold the damaged limitation line:
'Spencer family tragedy' 'Anguish of Wills and Harry' 'Historical roots to feud between Windsors and Spencers' Turn the heat back on the hunt for the CLF terrorists. But this scapehare won't run. The doubts seep through the bloody rotten arras of the royals.
'DID THE WINDSORS KNOW?' 'DID BLAIR KNOW?' 'WHAT IF THEY ALL KNEW? WHO COULD COMPREHEND THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH A CONSPIRACY? WHO COULD COMPREHEND THE CONSEQUENCES OF SUCH WICKEDNESS?'
Steve E. and Crusty Trevor could. A collective paralysis infected the country. Streets and towns deserted as a stampede into privacy took hold to contemplate the awfulness of what was possible.
'A time for healing' - the Archbishop of Canterbury who had knowingly blessed the empty coffin and ignored 'the Spencer curse' for generations. The spin doctors evoked the spirit of wartime Britain and the Queen who'd stayed at the side of her people in London in the direst hour - now the Queen Mother.
A week of calm had passed. The Queen Mother to mark the period of the end of the nation's collective sorrow by appearing at Kensington Palace Gate on the eve other 100th birthday. Continuity and Renewal in the very Heart of the English Nation. For some.
For others 'Seize the Time.' That moment lost in all histories before was peering across London from the derelict windows off the Goldhawk Road. Berlin 1919, Barcelona 1936, Budapest 1956, Paris 1968, London 1999. The welled back anger waiting to burst out or subside. Make your mind up time before the hour dribbled past unseen.
C.L.F. FINAL COMMUNIQUE
ECHOING BACK FROM THE ANGRY SUMMER OF '72 TO BEYOND THE POINT OF NO RETURN
TO BE ISSUED TWO HOURS AFTER THE FIRST C.L.F. STRIKES
IF YOU WANT PEACE.....PREPARE FOR WAR
DUMMER, HAMPSHIRE: C.L.F. freelancers batter Major Ron Ferguson to death with his polo mallets.
B.U.P.A HOSPITAL, CROMWELL ROAD, LONDON: Skinny Agency Nurse Ruth mistakenly administers a fatal dose of horse tranquilliser to Princess Margaret.
KENSINGTON PALACE GATE: 11 a.m. QUEEN MOTHER'S 100th BIRTHDAY A shaven headed member of the CLF punkette death battalion discharges a pistol's worth into the face of the rancid crone.
Kensington Palace looted. The dams of deference are cracking. Crowds swarm the streets of central London, pouring from long forgotten alleyways and hidden towpaths longside the subterranean River Fleet. Springheeled Jack leaps the grimey stacks beckoning the swarms onwards towards Trafalgar Square. King Mob is back in town, gathering strength like a nascent wasps' nest down Charing Cross Road, The Strand, Regent Street.
Garrods, the Royal Jewellers, set ablaze; its vainglorious baubles pressed into the hands of liberated 'Big Issue' sellers. Steve E. and Crusty Trevor in the van of the black clad mobsters. Rounding Trafalgar Square into The Mall. Halting at its start. The Windsors are gathered on the Palace balcony, unaware of Bowes-Lyons little mishap, waving to a few hundred rural lickspittles, backwoodsmen, bucolic ballygombeen men, and bull-barred barbourians bussed in by the Duke of Westminster. One last divine right con trick, one last try to keep the lid on.
They have sight of the huge crowd, silent now, moving inexorably down The Mall. Royal flushed faces straining to ascertain the motivation. That Ceaucescu Moment Steve L. so dreamed of seeing.
The burly figure of a Yeoman of the Guard, pike in hand, suddenly erupts from across St. James' Park to front the march, plumed hat extravagantly underarmed. Re-assured the Windsors wave as enthusiastically as their breeding does allow. The mob halts before the gates.
The Yeoman bows exaggeratedly low turning his head - the head of The Lunk - towards Steve E. and Crusty Trevor. He pushes the plumed hat aside and thrusts the severed head it was concealing on to the spearpoint of his pike. He swivels to deliver the expected royal supplication to the Windsors - but juts aloft the head of the Queen Mother. A skinny nurse and two flame-haired punkettes seize the crone's head and plant it atop the Palace Gate.
Full astride the gates of Buck House she surveys the faces of the mob - flickering by torch brands in the royal deathlight. Levellers, Diggers, Ranters, Luddites, Chartists, Rioters, Mutineers, Syndicalists, Strikers, Angry Brigaders, Dockers Tannermen, Matchgirls, Suffragettes, the Hawkhurst Gang, the Tyburn Mobsters. John Ball, Sylvia Pankhurst, Robert Lockier, Peter the Painter, Lillian Wolfe, Steinie Morrison, Gerard Winstanley. The dispossessed from the runnels and the gutters come to get what's theirs. Squatters from Villa Road, Effra Parade, Stamford Hill. Wildcats. Winston Silcott. Poll Tax Rioters. Wat Tyler. And Tyler smiles.
General Ned Ludd and Captain Swing stride forward to read the Proclamation
'The time is a fast approachin' when a great many great mens heads will be a comin' off'.
The punkettes, fiery, incandescent, against the blood red sun in the black sky:
'LET US DEVASTATE THE AVENUES WHERE THE WEALTHY LIVE. WE ARE NOT IN THE LEAST AFRAID OF RUINS FOR WE CARRY A NEW WORLD IN OUR HEARTS'
THE GATES OF BABYLON ARE RENT ASUNDER
THE END
------
You can order further copies of this novel by sending £3.50p (cheques/P.O.s payable to Ian Bone) to: P.O. BOX 14672 LONDON E9 5UQ
You can contact the author directly on: Pager: 01523 160145
You could also get active with Movement Against The Monarchy (M.A.'M)
Thanks to Jane Nicholl - Anarchist and Living Legend!
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