London Pride (23 page)

‘They won't, will they, our Peggy?' Baby persisted.

Peggy pulled her mind back from her worries to comfort her. ‘No,' she said. ‘Course they won't. They're British.' But looking at the angry faces all round her she knew she wasn't at all sure. ‘Come on, let's get home.' I'll ask Jim about it at the ding-dong tonight, she thought. He'll be bound to know.

That evening when the grown-ups were all singing ‘Dear old pals' she went to sit on the stairs beside her next-door neighbour.

‘Ain't it awful this strike,' she said companionably. ‘I hope they stop it soon. Did you see the soldiers this morning?'

His face darkened as if he was annoyed. ‘Yes I did,' he said, ‘more shame to 'em. They're traitors to their class, that's what they are.' He was quoting what Mr Cooper had said in the library, and that made him feel grown-up and knowledgeable.

It made Peggy feel rather stupid because she didn't understand what he was saying. She decided to talk about the price of food because everybody understood about that. ‘Sugar's gone up a penny a pound,' she said. ‘Ain't it awful?'

He scowled as though his eyebrows were being pinched.
‘This is a strike,' he said. ‘A general strike. There's jobs at stake. How can you rabbit on about sugar at a time like this? Don't you know nothing, Peggy Furnivall?'

‘Not much,' she admitted humbly. ‘They never tell you nothing, do they? An' there's no papers.'

He softened a little at this. After all if Mr Cooper hadn't told him about it in the library on Tuesday, he wouldn't have known much either. ‘I'
ll
tell you then,' he said, and explained, ‘It's to help the miners, you see.'

She didn't see, but she nodded at him encouragingly.

‘The mine owners told the miners they'd got to work longer hours for less pay. So the miners said no, and quite right too, seeing they're on starvation wages as it is. And then the mine owners locked 'em out so's they couldn't work even if they wanted to. Imagine that, being locked out a' work and with no money coming in. So now all the other trade unions have decided to stop work an' all, to show solidarity with the miners and to let the mine owners know they've gone too far. An' that's what they've done. They've stopped everything, mines, trains, buses, trams, docks, everything. An' they won't go back to work again until the miners get a fair deal.
Now
what do you think?'

She was impressed and her face showed it. ‘I never knew none a' that,' she said.

‘It's the very first time there's been a general strike,' he told her and he was glowing with the pride of it. ‘I think it's noble. All the poorest workers standing together for a better deal, thousands and thousands of them, losing pay, an' going without, but standing firm, d'you see, an' that's why they'll win.'

‘Like an army.'

‘Yes, that's right. Like an army fighting a just war.' That was Mr Cooper's phrase too and it thrilled him to be able to use it. A just war.

‘Will it go on long?' she asked.

He knew the answer to that too. ‘As long as it takes.'

‘Well if that's what they're doing I hope they win,' she said.

At that moment Mr Allnutt came striding into the room from his kitchen bearing a most peculiar object before him on a battered tin tray. It consisted of a short plank of wood
with a thick cylinder of coiled wire balanced on top of it. There were lots of untidy ends of wire sticking out of the plank in front of the cylinder and two yellow wires leading from the cylinder into a pair of black headphones which looked very ugly and uncomfortable.

‘There you are!' he said proudly. ‘My new wireless set. Whatcher think a' that?'

‘Did he call it a wire-less?' Megan said, giggling at him once he'd passed, ‘But it's
all
wires. That's all it is, wires an' a bit a' wood.'

The singing petered out, as their neighbours turned to see what he'd brought. A space was made on one of the benches and the wireless was lowered reverently into position. People were coming back into the room from the street, flocking round their host, waiting excitedly for their turn to put the earphones over their ears and listen. Even Mrs Roderick was in the queue.

‘If you want to know what's really going on,' Mr Allnutt said, encouraging them, ‘you listen to this. No good expecting that rag a' Winston Churchill's ter tell you the truth.
British Gazette
, I ask you!'

‘I know what it is,' Jim said with sudden recognition. ‘It's a radio. They're broadcasting the news. That's what it is.' And he jumped up from the stairs and went to join the throng, with Megan and Peggy following dubiously after him.

They had to wait ages before the earphones were put into their hands and then what they heard was really rather a disappointment. It was a man's voice droning on about the law. ‘Sir John Simon,' it said, ‘speaking in the House on Thursday night made it clear that every railwayman who was on strike in disregard of his contract was personally liable to be sued in the County Court for damages, and every trade union leader was liable in damages to the uttermost farthing of his personal possessions.'

Peggy couldn't understand a word of it and relinquished the earphones to Mrs Allnutt after a few puzzled seconds.

‘It's a man. Talking.' Mrs Allnutt said. ‘Listen to that, Mrs Roderick.'

Mrs Roderick lowered the earphones gingerly across her
marcel waves. ‘Can't hear a thing,' she said. ‘Only buzzing.'

‘What?' Mr Allnutt said. ‘Give it here, Mrs R. Can't have that.' And holding one earphone against his right ear he listened intently. ‘Must be something loose somewhere,' he diagnosed. ‘Early days you know. Hang on a tick. I'll soon fix it.'

They hung on, chattering together like starlings, and for a great deal longer than a tick. A strong smell of burning drifted back to them from the kitchen and presently Mr Allnutt emerged with a soldering iron steaming in his hand. ‘Keep well clear!' he called. ‘Now then let's see.'

It took him such a long time to find the right wire to fix that the sing-song began again while he was at work. Three songs were sung and he still hadn't located the fault although he called out a progress report between every verse, and was cheered and applauded. Finally after much running in and out to reheat the iron, his son persuaded him to take the wire to the fire and he and his machine disappeared into the kitchen again, to his wife's considerable relief.

‘He's such a worry with that awful thing,' she confided to Flossie. ‘I've been worried out me wits one a' these kiddies'ud go an' get burnt.'

‘Still,' Mrs Geary commiserated, ‘it's nice to get a bit a' news. I've missed my
Evening Standard
.'

‘Standard!' the parrot agreed. ‘Star, Newstandard!'

‘Well will you hark at that?' Mrs Geary said impressed. ‘He's a caution! He must've heard the newsboy.'

‘More than I have,' Mrs Roderick complained. ‘They could have kept the papers going.'

‘I wonder how long it'll be before we see a paper again,' Flossie said.

It was sooner than anyone imagined.

When Megan arrived to call for Peggy on Wednesday morning, a mere nine days after the strike began, she said her Dad had got a paper and it was all over. ‘They called it off, so Dad says. Yesterday evening.'

‘Thank heavens for that,' Mum said, buttoning Baby's coat. ‘Now perhaps we can have a bit of bacon for a change.'

‘Tomorrow?' Baby hoped.

‘We'll see,' Mum said cheerfully taking her stand on the front doorstep ready to wave goodbye.

Mrs Boxall was opening her door to urge Pearl and Lily out and they could hear Jim leaping down the stairs.

‘Strike's all over, Mrs Boxall,' Mum said. ‘Back to normal now, eh?'

‘Oh!' Mrs Boxall said, giving Pearl a little push with her good hand. ‘Off you go or you'll be late.'

‘Who won?' Baby wanted to know.

‘The soldiers,' Megan said. ‘Soldiers always win. They've got the guns.'

‘It doesn't matter who won,' Mum said. ‘It's over. That's the main thing.'

But Peggy was wondering what Jim would say because she could see him coming towards them along the dark hall.

When he stopped out on the pavement she could see he was biting his lips with emotion. ‘It ain't true,' he said to Megan. ‘They'd never give in so soon. They was winning. It can't be true.'

‘Perhaps Mr Allnutt heard on the wireless,' Peggy suggested.

He was knocking on the Allnutts' door as she spoke.

Mr Cooper opened it and both children could see from his expression that the news was as grim as they feared.

‘Called off last night,' he said. ‘I can't understand it.'

‘What went wrong?' Jim asked.

‘No idea, son. You'd better go to school or you'll be late. I'll tell you dinner-time if there's anything else on the wireless.'

‘It's a tragedy!' Jim said to the girls as they walked to school. ‘A disaster! What'll happen to the miners now?'

That evening Mr Baldwin broadcast to the nation. He said the ending of the strike was a ‘victory for common sense', and added ‘our business is not to triumph over those who have failed in a mistaken attempt.'

But the newspapers triumphed just the same. The
British Gazette
ran the headline, ‘Men to return forthwith. Surrender received by Premier in Downing Street.' And the
Mail
crowed, ‘Surrender of the revolutionaries.'

It was a total and ugly defeat. And as they were all to
discover, after a defeat the victors take their spoils and exercise their new-won power and the losers suffer. The miners struggled on alone for nearly six months but there was no strike pay for them because the funds were dry, and in the end starvation forced them back to the pits, where they were obliged to work longer hours and for less pay, exactly as the owners had required them to do in the first place. And of course other employers were quick to follow the lead of the triumphant mine owners. Soon rates of pay were being cut in other manual jobs and even clerks, who had thought themselves above the argument and had turned out in their thousands to help break the strike, now faced the necessity of cutting their living standards as their income dropped. Although some of them were cute enough to cut someone else's living standards instead. And one of these more astute gentlemen was Mr Margeryson, Joan's employer.

Flossie was most upset.

‘Are you sure you've not annoyed him?' she asked tetchily when Joan came home with her unwelcome news.

‘No,' Joan said miserably. ‘He says it's the strike. Everybody's got to take a ten per cent cut to pay for the strike.'

‘That's all very well but what are we supposed to do?' Flossie wailed. ‘It's enough to bring on my nerves. Well I can't manage with less than you give me and that's all there is to that. You'll have to make do with less in your pocket, that's all.'

‘I have little enough as it is,' Joan said. ‘Two an' three it was. Now it won't even be a shilling. Just as well I don't smoke.'

‘Could you get another job?' Peggy wondered. ‘Somewhere nicer.'

But Joan sighed most miserably. ‘Not with my record,' she said. ‘No one'ud have me. The only way I shall ever get away from old Miss M is if someone'll marry me. And who'll do that?'

‘I'll see if Jim can get me a job in the market Saturdays,' Peggy promised, trying to comfort her.

But even Saturday jobs were hard to come by now, and try as he might Jim couldn't persuade anyone to take her on.

Meals in the Furnivall household diminished. Bread and scrape replaced bacon and eggs for breakfast and dinners were often reduced to vegetable soup or potatoes baked in their jackets. It upset Flossie to be living so poorly but it was either that or go without her weekly trip to the pictures and she knew she simply couldn't live without the pictures. She justified her decision by telling herself that her three girls had always been strong, even Baby for all her delicate start. A little hardship wouldn't hurt them, provided it didn't go on too long. They only had to hold on for a little while and Peggy would be at work. Five school terms. Why, it was hardly any time at all.

To Peggy, secretly worrying about their lack of funds and cursing the law that kept her unprofitably at school when she ought to have been earning for her family, five terms was a very long time indeed.

‘I wish they'd let us leave at twelve like they did in the old days,' she said to Megan. ‘Mrs Geary was at work on her twelfth birthday. She was telling me.'

But they wouldn't, so it was no use fretting about it.

The misery of that first winter after the strike was made worse by bitterly cold weather. There were storms and gales all through November and at Christmas-time it snowed, thawed and snowed again, so that the streets were full of trodden re-frozen slush, brown-smeared and litter-embedded and looking uglier by the day. All three of the Furnivall girls got chilblains and Megan caught the flu and was very ill for nearly a fortnight.

The spring was late and cold and the summer was the wettest in living memory. Tabby produced another litter, which cheered them all a little, although Peggy was glad there were only three kittens this time, because there were fewer fish pieces to feed her with now and she was as hungry as her mistress.

But the year passed eventually, and three of the five school terms were over, and now the older pupils began to leave, one by one as they reached their fourteenth birthday.

‘I wish I'd been born in September,' Peggy said to Jim as they walked to school one foggy November morning.

‘When were you?' he asked.

‘August. I shall have to wait till the end of the year.' Her snub nose was quite red and the chill was making her eyes water.