And the Land Lay Still (76 page)

PART FIVE

Fate said,
I’ll bloody show ye
. But no, Don didn’t believe in fate, God or any of that. He believed in humanity, and that humans had the power and the will to change themselves and the world, but not necessarily for the good, and that was where socialism came in, the only way forward was socialism and democracy, and in Britain that meant Labour, the only party committed to those ideals but rooted and realistic enough to be able to deliver them, or some measure of them. Everything else was a diversion, every other political party either reactionary and anti-progressive, or oppressive and destructive. The far left was insane and out of touch, the right was an offence to ordinary people’s dignity. But the Labour Party was in trouble, it had run out of steam, exhausted itself trying to manage an ailing economy in an unforgiving world. Suddenly it looked old: Jim Callaghan looked old, Michael Foot looked old, even Denis Healey – who was only three years older than Don and with whom he’d always felt an affinity because of their shared war experience in North Africa and Italy – looked jaded. They were put out to pasture and the younger, leaner, bolder Tories under Margaret Thatcher moved in. The old compromises were crumbling. Soon they would be gone altogether. Nothing must stand against the new religion of the market. Public spending must be slashed, wages screwed down, the money supply ruthlessly controlled, inflation battered into submission. If the poor, the sick and the weak suffered in the bygoing, this was regrettable, but it was the poor, sick, weak British economy that needed emergency treatment and without it the future would be grim for everyone. If businesses closed and unemployment rose, it showed that the medicine was working. Don, who had once despised what they called one-nation Toryism, a kind of gentlemanly appreciation that it was counter-productive to squeeze the workers
too
hard, now found himself nostalgic for it. Compared with some of the slavering fanatics barking around the Prime Minister’s heels – compared with Thatcher herself – it almost rated as
decent
. He detested what he saw on the news every night, the undoing of society. He was appalled by summer riots in Liverpool, London and Bristol, the kind of violence he associated with America, not with England. Labour was breaking up on the rocks, torn apart by ideological warfare. Was he losing touch with his country, or was it losing touch with him? And which country? He remembered Jack Gordon. Scottish Nationalism lay wrecked along with so much else, its proponents arguing amongst themselves. And he thought of Charlie, patrolling the streets of Derry or wherever the hell he was, ready to shoot or be shot at on behalf of Her Britannic Majesty’s government. Forty years since the war and still the fighting continued. And for what, for what?

He spent his weekends and many of his evenings out in the garden, putting his back into something he could still be proud of.

§

Byres Brothers had been laying off workers for two years. Most of the drivers were no longer employees: the firm made them redundant, then later hired new men, self-employed men, as subcontractors. Some of the old drivers set up on their own, buying their own cabs, hiring themselves out to the highest bidder. Even in the repair shop, when a man retired he was replaced – if he was replaced at all – by someone on a short-term contract. And Don’s union was powerless to stop all this happening. The trade unions generally were disunited: they were competing for members and different unions adopted different methods of dealing with changing employment practices. More than half the men at Byres Brothers were no longer in a union, and those that were were split between two. And Byres Brothers wasn’t big enough to get the full attention of senior union officials, who had enough on their plates elsewhere, trying to stop huge job cuts in manufacturing, resisting closures or, more often than not, negotiating thousands of redundancies as plants and businesses all over the country closed their doors.

There was talk of standing up to the management – especially over a wage offer which didn’t come anywhere near matching inflation, running at nearly 20 per cent – but it remained just that, talk. Nobody wanted to lose a day’s pay when there was no real prospect of the offer being improved, and with the fear of unemployment
lurking in the background. When it came to a choice between retaining a skilled job or idleness, there
was
no choice.

Don was the shop steward for his union. Byres Brothers had never directly negotiated with the unions over wages, but in some respects the presence of the unions had made discussions around pay and conditions easier for the business: if the union reps were satisfied that grievances were taken seriously and disputes settled by negotiation then there was a much-reduced likelihood of walkouts, slowdowns or other disruption. Auld Tam Byres had always thought he was giving too much away, but he was shrewd enough to see that open confrontation would cost him more. But Tam was dead. Wullie Byres was in charge now, and times had changed. The latest wage offer was very poor. Don, feeling both that he had to do something and that there wasn’t much to be done, went to see Wullie in his office at the back of the depot.

Wullie was friendly enough – he’d known Don for forty years – but he wasn’t in the mood for negotiation. ‘Ye’ll just need tae grit your teeth and let your politics stick in your thrapple,’ he said. ‘That’s what we had tae dae for years. It’s your turn noo.’

‘The boot’s on the other foot, ye mean?’

‘Aye, ye could say that.’

‘I dinna think the workforce has ever had that much clout, Wullie.’

‘Aye weel. I dae.’

‘The offer’s totally unacceptable,’ Don said. ‘Wi inflation the way it is, ye’re asking us tae take a cut. A big cut.’

‘Christ, Don, ye sound like yin o thae buggers on
News at Ten
. Ye’ll be banging your fist on the table next. If the offer’s unacceptable, dinna accept it. But ye’ll no get a better yin. Then what’ll ye dae?’

‘We could come oot.’

Wullie shrugged. ‘Dae what ye like. I’ve nae mair money for ye. Times are tight. If ye dinna want tae work there’s plenty men oot there that does.’

‘Ye ken I’m a grafter,’ Don said. ‘And the others.’

‘Some o them,’ Wullie growled.

‘This is aboot a fair wage for a fair day’s work.’

‘I’d agree wi ye on that. It is a fair wage.’

Don tried to imagine what was going on inside Wullie’s head.
He’d been almost apoplectic in the last months of the Labour government, ranting about uncollected rubbish and unburied bodies as if he had to step over them on his way to work every morning, and now he was an enthusiastic supporter of Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and the rest of them. He might laugh at their terribly English voices but he was in awe of them too. ‘The lady’s not for turning.’ ‘There is no alternative.’ Maybe you needed a voice like that to get things sorted. And by God Wullie thought they needed sorting. Mrs Thatcher was on his side against the barbarians – Communists, punk rockers, hordes of idle black bastards setting fires in the streets. If it was down to him he’d shoot the bloody lot of them – but maybe he didn’t have to, because Margaret Thatcher seemed to have the gumption to pull the country back from the brink. ‘She’s mair o a man than maist o her Cabinet,’ he’d said to Don a few weeks before. ‘Nae sex tae her, but ye dinna elect a Prime Minister tae be sexy, dae ye?’

‘Listen, Don,’ Wullie said now, ‘I could walk away frae this the morn’s morn if I wanted tae. I could sell the business and never hae tae lift a finger for the rest o my days. So ye dinna intimidate me coming in here and saying ye might come oot on strike. I’ve no done a heid count o your members recently but I’m no feart. The thing is, I’m no ready tae retire yet. I’m like you, I’m a grafter. I’m sixty-three. My faither was in here till the week afore he died, as ye ken. What age was he? Seventy-five. I’m no gaun onywhaur for a while, and there’s nae need for you tae go onywhaur either. But ye may as weel get used tae it. We’re in a new era. Either ye fecht it and lose, or ye work wi it. It’s your choice.’

‘We’ll see,’ Don said. He liked Wullie better than he should. Always had done. And he wouldn’t admit it, but he was pretty sure that Wullie was right.

‘Aye,’ Wullie said with a wink, ‘we will.’

§

A conference was held in Glasgow, in the theatre behind the Mitchell Library. A Saturday in July 1983. Three weeks earlier Margaret Thatcher had won her second General Election, routing the Labour Party under Michael Foot’s leadership. The conference organisers had a big question for those attending: ‘Which way now for the
Scottish Left?’ ‘We have to go to this, we have to go,’ Adam Shaw said. So they went, he and Mike Pendreich and three hundred or so other disparate souls who might have been described as belonging to the ‘Scottish Left’. But on the day some were even unhappy about that designation. They felt that the adjective somehow betrayed the spirit of the noun it described. Someone was selling copies of a poster that said in big letters SCOTTISH WRITERS AGAINST THE BOMB. On it were the names of dozens of writers opposed to nuclear weapons on the Clyde. An argument started. ‘Oh, you can’t say that.’ ‘Can’t say what?’ ‘If you say “Scottish writers” you’re excluding other writers who are also against the Bomb. That’s parochial, that is.’ ‘Who are you calling parochial? We’re just saying we don’t want nuclear missiles here.’ ‘You’re pandering to nationalism.’ ‘
We’re
pandering to nationalism?’ A fight almost broke out.

Those who hadn’t come to trade ideological insults had come to lick their wounds after the election, and to see what, if anything, could be done next. Until about a year before, it had still been possible to hope that the Conservatives might only last one term. There was so much unemployment, such general misery and despair, that many on the left didn’t think ordinary people could stand any more of it. Even the extravaganza of Prince Charles’s marriage to Diana Spencer in 1981 had surely been only a temporary diversion. The opinion polls said there had never been such an unpopular Prime Minister or such an out-of-touch government. But then a fascist dictator in Argentina took it upon himself to invade the Falkland Islands, thereby saving the Thatcher regime and destroying his own. The steel-haired Britannia dispatched a task force to win the Falklands back. Some predicted, or longed for, disaster – Mrs Thatcher’s Suez. The predictions were wrong. If it was her Suez she turned out to be Nasser, not Anthony Eden. Suddenly, for millions, Mrs Thatcher was a heroine, the woman who’d put the ‘great’ back into Great Britain. Boosted by the ‘Falklands factor’, she won the 1983 election with a huge majority. Labour haemorrhaged support to the Liberals and Social Democrats, and in terms of the number of votes gained were nearly beaten into third place.

A deep depression hung over the Glasgow conference. It was hardly surprising that people bickered over the wording of a poster. There wasn’t much else to shout about.

Various pompous, contrite, humble and not-so-humble MPs, councillors and union leaders – almost all male – came to the microphone. Often they took the opportunity to attack the views of previous speakers. The main arguments focused on the question of ‘the Scottish card’. What was it, and how could or should it be played? Did the Thatcher government, rejected by three-quarters of the Scottish electorate, even have a mandate to govern Scotland? The Labour speakers could not entertain that proposition. To accept it would undermine the Union, playing into the hands of the SNP. And what if, at a future election, Labour won a Westminster majority that depended on their Scottish and Welsh seats? Where would be their mandate to govern England? The Communist Party representatives, who did not have to worry about the possibility of being in government, said that the Scottish Left had to come to terms with the concept of Scottishness. The SNP left-wingers present enthusiastically agreed, but they were badly out of favour with their own party, which had performed terribly in the election but was nevertheless sticking with the traditional independence-and-nothing-less stance it had reverted to after the 1979 referendum. Left-wingers had little influence within the SNP, and ‘soft’ nationalists had none in Labour. There was a tension in the air: identity politics versus class consciousness. The one policy that offered some prospect of common ground, devolution, was once again being squeezed from all sides. Nobody loved it, and nobody had much of a good word to say for it. Only the representatives of the Campaign for the Scottish Assembly, the cross-party, non-party organisation that had been doggedly reconstructing the case for devolution since the failed referendum of 1979, seemed genuine in their enthusiasm.

Adam’s chin sank on his chest as he listened. Mike thought about taking a break and going to find a cup of tea. Then the next speaker stalked up to the microphone and he decided to wait. It was Robin Cook, his own MP, he who had been so fierce against the very idea of an assembly only a few years before.

‘I have not,’ Cook said, his red beard jutting out defiantly, ‘I have not been an extravagant supporter of the Scottish dimension.’ Where previous speakers had droned, Cook yapped, and everybody sat up. ‘But I’ve changed my mind. I don’t give a bugger if Thatcher
has a mandate or not – I will simply do whatever I can to stop her.’ There was a stunned silence, then a smattering of applause. Cook carried on, but whatever else he said didn’t really matter. The rigid anti-devolutionist had moved – out of expediency, no doubt, but it was a brutal, honest kind of expediency. Adam nudged Mike. ‘If he can shift his position, anybody can.’

Adam’s brother, Gavin, the Politics lecturer, was also at the conference. Mike had met him once or twice before, and had found him very distant. He didn’t think Gavin took him or his opinions seriously. But they went for a drink afterwards, analysing the day and concluding that in a mostly bleak landscape the Cook movement had supplied the brightest glimmer of hope, and Gavin was different: friendlier, and as willing to listen as to talk. When they parted he grasped Mike’s right hand in his at the same time as his left arm went round Adam’s shoulder in a brotherly hug. It felt, a little, like being welcomed into a family.