Fifty-First State (20 page)

Rosie, who had been at school with the dead teacher, Kim Durham and was her son's godmother said loudly, ‘They've already killed Kim – and you want them to own the base! I'll tell you the difference – we'll never be able to kick them out. That's the difference. They'll take over more and more land. They'll walk the streets as if they owned them. And next time they kill someone they'll hardly need to apologize.'

Harry Wainwright's wife, Wendy, glanced at Rosie, as perhaps pub etiquette suggested she shouldn't. Her gaze was thoughtful. Geoff Armstrong leaned over the bar and looked towards Rosie. ‘A word of advice. No politics in my pub, young lady,' he said. Geoff Armstrong would not hear criticism of the base or its occupants. He had been a serviceman himself and he benefited from the trade. He had created two rooms upstairs, with four-poster beds, for the relatives of the officers on the base who wanted to visit a traditional British inn.

‘Thanks for the advice,' declared Rosie. ‘I hope you'll still think the same when someone else gets killed. Or somebody bombs the base and all your windows blow out. This'll make us more of a target than we already are.' Rosie had said the unsayable. The Hamscott Common base provided many local people with work. She had broken the taboo against speaking about the possible dangers of living near the base.

‘That's enough, young lady,' said Geoff. ‘US personnel come in here, you know.'

‘Well, then,' said Rosie standing up. ‘I don't want to upset any of your well-paid customers. I think I'll just take myself down to the Goat.' She eased out from behind the table and began to walk out.

‘I hope you'll enjoy the company of the smelly demonstrators there,' Geoff called out to her back. ‘Because I don't want you in here again. You're barred.'

Rosie walked out and Kevin, out of loyalty, followed. ‘You, too,' Geoff called after him. ‘You're barred, too.'

‘I see the police have blocked off Templesfield Road,' observed the postman, Tom.

‘It's a liberty,' said Warren, ‘cutting the village off like that.' Without access by the road running past the airbase, many potential customers of the Rose and Crown would be forced to use the bypass and, once on it, might decide to carry on to the next town.

The landlord of the local pub in a two-pub village has enormous power over his regulars. If he bars them where can they go, every night, for a drink? In Warren and Tom's case, only to the Goat, with its loud music and undesirable clientele. Because the inn, the centre of their lives, was controlled by Armstrong, they didn't mind goading him a little.

Armstrong reacted with force, ‘The council's seeing to that – getting rid of all these demonstrators and their bloody nonsense. And they're
putting pressure on the trustees of the almshouses to stop those daft old gits aiding and abetting them. Don't worry. It's all in hand.' But he was rattled, and the regulars knew it.

With Rosie and Kevin gone, Art and his girlfriend drank their drinks in silence until they agreed quietly to follow their friends down to the Goat. Armstrong watched them leave, his face expressionless.

At their table the middle-aged couples, who had watched this scene, were silent. Julian said, ‘This bill is going to cause a lot of trouble. I've never seen so many demonstrators. Quite frankly, I'd defend to the death their right to say what they like, but not to pee on my roses like the one I caught today. But if this bill goes through certain elements are going to be very unhappy.'

Another silence fell. Harry said, ‘I'm beginning to worry about Wendy being by herself here, while I'm in London.'

‘I'm sure that's not necessary,' said his wife.

Julian said, ‘Quite frankly, I've been wondering whether now's the time to go back to London. I'm worried if this bill goes through Hamscott Common could become a terrorist target.'

‘I suppose we all are,' said Harry. ‘But let's not jump the gun. It may not happen. There's a lot of opposition to the bill. I'll step up and get us all another drink.'

After Harry had gone to the bar Beth said to her husband, ‘We came here because you grew up here and wanted a garden.'

‘I know. But if the US gets hold of the base the air traffic overhead will intensify and there's no point in blinking at facts, darling. If they start loading arms and troops for Iraq there's danger of an attack, on land or from the air. What can you do about people who don't care if they live or die?'

As Harry came to the table with two pints, followed by the landlord with the women's drinks Wendy Wainwright burst out. ‘Why are they doing this? Why not leave things as they are?'

No one replied. No one knew what to say.

Sugden's, Fox Square, London SW1. November 30th, 2015. 8 p.m.

Edward Gott, his secretary Jeremy Saunders and Joshua Crane were all dining at Sugden's.

‘There they are again,' Leslie Smith-Dickinson, PPS to the Minister of Education remarked to the three others at his table. ‘Gott and his boyfriend. They don't look happy.'

‘Lover's quarrel,' suggested another man at the table.

It was not that, and they knew it. That evening, the Ministry of Defence Lands Sale Bill had been passed at its first reading. Those in favour, 540; against, 83. There were dissidents from both parties: forty on the Labour side, ten among the Tories. Joshua Crane had been one.

It had not helped the government that two days earlier US bombing raids on Syria had been intensified. News reports and pictures were coming in of a hospital in flames, mosques destroyed, people fleeing wildly through the streets, a trail of men, women and children under bombardment, trying to escape from a Damascus in flames. A day earlier, two American oil executives had been kidnapped in Iraq. The raids on Syria were, the President said, to stop them from giving aid, comfort, training, weapons and money to Iranian terrorists.

From Petherbridge's point of view the timing of the raids, many originating from British bases, was disastrous. Earlier in the day, standing in the rain outside the House of Commons, Joshua had asked Gott, ‘Why would the US make it harder for Petherbridge to put through legislation they want passed?'

‘It makes the job he's doing for them harder. Increase the hours, increase the quotas, grind the faces of the workers, let them know who's holding the whip…'

‘Even if it means not passing the bill?'

‘It'll be passed,' said Gott. ‘Petherbridge has moved too quickly for us. The party won't want to break ranks so soon after a victory. And Chatterton's backing the bill. He's persuaded his inner circle and the NEC not to oppose it and do you know why? Because even if Petherbridge has got a thumping majority Chatterton still thinks he's in with a chance, one day, of becoming Prime Minister. He's fed up with seeing his own supporters in the streets, crying out against US actions in the Middle East, backed by Britain. First it was Iraq – twice – then the Lebanon,
now Syria. Every time the US uses those bases to pursue what is basically its foreign policy, not ours, the public gets angrier and the Prime Minister takes the blame for the actions of a powerful ally he can't control. If Chatterton got his wish and became PM, his own supporters would be up in arms against him, asking for his removal. So he's keen to see the bases in US hands. That way, whatever happens isn't the PM's fault.'

‘Mark Moreno wanted to fight,' Joshua said.

‘Mark Moreno will be the next Labour leader,' Gott said with certainty. ‘But he isn't now.'

‘We're fucked anyway,' said Joshua, thinking unhappily about voting in direct defiance of his Party Leader. ‘Shall we get in out of the rain?'

The debate, in a standing-room-only House of Commons, began with the Secretary to the Minister of Defence, speaking slowly and dully, saying that over the past seventy years the defence of Britain had depended on its US ally, that though the enemy had changed over those years, it was still true that Britain needed their help. The additional advantage would be the seven billion pounds the US had offered to the British government for a hundred-year lease, which would go straight to the British taxpayer. When he sat down there was a single cry from the Opposition benches, ‘Kim Durham!' and a roar of attack and defence from both side, which the Speaker had difficulty in quelling.

The Labour Shadow Defence Secretary's position obliged him to make a weak speech, more questions than declarations. Would the land on which the air force bases stood be legally US territory? Where US servicemen committed a crime against a civilian, off the base, under whose jurisdiction would they come? Was handing over the bases tantamount to handing over British foreign policy to the USA? Did the suggestion embodied in the bill come under the heading of the basing of foreign troops on British soil? Would the Government examine the constitutional implications of the bill?

When he sat down the same backbencher called out again, ‘Kim Durham!' This time he was followed by Mark Moreno, sitting directly behind Chatterton, who in turn yelled, ‘Kim Durham!'This was Moreno's challenge, the first time he had publicly defied his leader, an announcement to party and country that he was no longer prepared to be loyal to Carl Chatterton. The intervention was followed by uproar.

This local excitement detracted from what was agreed later to be the best speech of the debate. Amir Siddiqi for the Liberal Democrats spoke calmly, but with an underlying passion. The bill was dangerous, ill thought-out and possibly treasonable. He would ask bluntly the questions the Shadow Defence Secretary had asked politely, almost as if uninterested in the answers. Was it safe to hand over eight air force bases to a foreign, nuclear power, however friendly? Would the presence of the bases and
their use for US foreign policy bring down on Britain the wrath of the US's enemies? Was the handover not just further proof that Britain was nothing more than a US client state? How would this abnegation of responsibility be seen by European partners? Would the handover not compromise Britain's position in NATO? If the Tory party had been paid by the US they could not have done worse for their own nation. That he spoke not just for his party but for the country as a whole.

This finale, the matter of the money, caused many heads on the Conservative benches to bow. The debate had exposed rocks below the water. When Mark Moreno shouted the name of the woman killed by US troops on a British airbase, he was challenging his party boss's leadership. Amir Siddiqi was, as many in the House knew, referring to the growing speculation about the source of the party's pre-election donations.

Public demonstrations, newspaper leaders, the head-shakings and leaked warnings from other European leaders had made no difference – the vote on the first reading of the Ministry of Defence Lands Sale Bill was won.

Gott called William over and asked for another bottle of wine. ‘It's not the end,' he assured Joshua. ‘It's not even the beginning of the end. Anyway, you've got the tiger by the tail now, Joshua. If you don't get Petherbridge, now you've voted against him, he'll certainly get you.'

‘You don't need to tell me,' said Joshua, tight-lipped.

Sugden's, Fox Square, London SW1. December 17th, 2015. 10 p.m.

Only a fortnight later they were back at the same table. Arriving where Joshua Crane and Jeremy Saunders were already sitting, Edward Gott eased himself into his chair, sighing theatrically. ‘Interesting times,' he said as he beckoned over the wine waiter. There were black marks under his eyes and his normally ruddy skin was sallow. With the first reading of the Ministry of Defence Lands Sale Bill passed, the next stage of the fight was on. Gott was canvassing support; meetings up and down the country were being arranged.

That morning the new Iraqi leader, Mohammed Al Bactari, had asked the National Assembly to back him over nationalizing the Iraq oilfields. There had been no opposition. Already there was fierce fighting between Iraqi troops and the US-employed pipeline guards.

The five-year-old New Arab League had issued a warning to the US that more military activity in the Middle East would lead to reprisals. The League, small, factional and not inclusive, led by the unpopular Ahmed Al Saud, was not considered to be a serious threat, yet the announcement had sounded more than usually determined and many of the League states were heavily armed. There had always been a fear that the Arab states would forge an effective alliance – this might be the time.

Parliament was in recess, but already Alan Petherbridge was fielding questions about what Britain's answer would be if the US requested British troops for an invasion of Iraq. He was saying only that no request for military support in any area had been made by the US. This answer was no answer, as the newspapers made clear. It did not help that two officers and nine men from a Midlands regiment had just been killed in an ambush in one of the semi-autonomous tribal areas separating Afghanistan from Pakistan. It had not been Petherbridge's government that had committed multinational troops to the area – but the eleven deaths reinforced the public's opinion that the British Army should not involve itself in any more foreign wars.

At four that afternoon a Muslim man, a Polish IT student – had blown himself up on a bus outside Selfridges in Oxford Street, killing three passengers and wounding seven more. Because it was thought that this might be the start of a series of bomb attacks all traffic in inner London had been halted. A protest about the coming war in Iraq. Sir John Smythe,
the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, said he feared this might be the first of many such incidents. MI5 and MI6 were in conference. Police were on standby. In Edgware Road, outside Paddington Green police station, destination for terrorists suspects, the road was blocked by armed police and traffic only filtered through after checks on the drivers.

When the wine waiter came to the table, he turned out to be the restaurant's manager, William Frith. The real wine waiter had rung earlier, saying he was flying back to Lyons immediately. When Gott asked him why he was taking orders for drinks, William told him about the disappearing French waiter. Gott frowned. ‘Well, I hope you're going to stay,' he said. ‘People are panicking,' said William. ‘And I suppose if it's a real threat my wife and I ought to go to my parents in Spain.' He moved off. It was a busy night. Upstairs, the threat of reprisals from the Middle East or of terrorists at home weren't worrying Jack Prentiss. He was delighted, foreseeing an ongoing political crisis which would fill his restaurant and the rooms upstairs for the foreseeable future.