Dislocated to Success (3 page)

Not that I didn't do my bit. I was one of the co-sponsors of Leo Abse's groundbreaking legislation; some felt that was somewhat brave, and there was a little trouble with the constituency, but by framing the need in somewhat unpleasant ways and with the spirit of the swinging sixties it managed to pass. I was quite surprised who voted for it and who didn't; a lot of socialist Catholics opposed it root and nail, whilst liberal-conservative Catholics were generally for it. It was one of the few times Michael Foot
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, Roy Jenkins, Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell
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must have been in agreement. Of course, it was with strict conditions that some police forces and magistrates liked to exploit, and only in England and Wales; Scotland had to wait 20 years more, and we are now in the position that the law has been changed in four states of the Holy Roman Empire before it has in Northern Ireland - although to give them their due, the current Government looks like it is about to take that step.

Apart from a handful of very brave local councillors, no politicians at the time of the Dislocation were openly gay - although there were a fair few MPs who were gay, and there were a number who, as one of my more risqué friends put it, “helped the gays out occasionally.” It was not the time or the place for such; Maureen Colquhoun had been treated abominably in the last parliament, and we all saw how Peter Tatchell was monstered by the press in Bermondsey in 1982. It was generally accepted that if you were discovered, then the best you could hope for was to be allowed to finish your term; if it was too scandalous then you would have to resign.  Of course, young Parris
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has finally proved this theory wrong, but he had a 20,000 majority and even that took a hit.

We all coped in different ways: some sublimated their sexuality completely or just let it loose on holiday in some suitable spot; others consumed rent boys like candy; some haunted public toilets and other such spots looking for sexual solace. A handful of the newer and younger ones occasionally went to a gay pub or club and hoped not to be recognised; others managed to acquire some form of stable relationship. It was a dangerous demi-monde in many ways - full of thrill-seekers, but thrill-seeking is not uncommon in politics and there were plenty of supposedly perfectly heterosexual MP’s playing with fire in one way or another - just look at Cecil Parkinson
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.

However, I was one of the lucky ones; politics is a surprisingly tolerant place - especially in the Conservative Party, which often amazes people. My periods in academic law and journalism were very similar; of course, you do have to be careful, but the gilded cage is large enough to sing a little - just not too loudly. I was also lucky to have met Adrian at Oxford in the mid-50's, and we had spent the last twenty or so years as a slightly odd couple - he the proper corporate lawyer specialising in banking, myself the academic lawyer and then journalist and politician. With our responsible jobs, there was no question of living together or being recognised as a couple except amongst all but our most intimate friends. Back then, that privilege was really for either the very rich or, oddly, the lower-middle classes. Having said that, we had been a part of each other's life for a long time; in fact we had been talking about a special holiday in 1981 to celebrate our pretend Silver anniversary. It was very much a weekends, holidays and occasional dinners kind of relationship, which was not uncommon amongst people of our class; there was otherwise too much to lose.

Now - with the Dislocation - he was lost, gone to whatever has happened to people; we will never know, but I often think about it. I sometimes wonder if there was a vice-versa Dislocation and if he joined Roy Jenkins, Peter Carrington and others to seek audience with King George II and aid the UK of the 1730s towards the modern world. He was accredited to the various European Courts, and I could see him arguing cases there on behalf of the House of Hannover.

I was somewhat distraught that evening; Adrian was a big part of my life, I really didn't know what to do. He was gone, no-one except the Lord would know where; would he return, would he not return, was he safe where he was and where was he? It was utterly frightful, in some ways worse than death, because death is a just a quietus until the sure and certain Resurrection - and only a few demented Americans really believed that was around the corner. Of course, now only a few believe in a SnapBack - mainly those who still grieve deeply for their loved ones - but certainly for the first year or so it was quite a common belief. Even the PM said to me once - "one day, I'll wake up and this will all have proved to be some horrid dream". I wasn't entirely sure she slept for some time after the Dislocation; I shared that problem for a few weeks, drinking rather too much temporarily-irreplaceable wine in order to get Morpheus to make a call.

There was also the awkwardness of the grieving; how much did you grieve for someone who may not be gone, or may not be dead? How much could you grieve in public for someone who officially was just good friends? Would there be a service or not? All very difficult on a personal level, but especially for homosexual couples who had been Dislocated - although those heterosexuals living over the brush had problems as well. Families who disapproved of relationships quite often excluded the other half from at the settlement of their lost loved one’s affairs. I was lucky in that Adrian's sister knew and accepted the situation; his remaining parent wasn't even aware her son was gay. Many, many others have been in the same position over the years; it has been one of those constant tragedies.

Chapter 4

I had just woken up when the phone rang; it was Gow,
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enquiring if I would firstly be at 11 o'clock Cabinet, and secondly if I could talk to the Speaker about the plan for today - which was just to have a PMs statement. I was also informed we were to be a Government of National Unity for a while, which rather surprised me. We would be joined by Jim, Denis
[22]
, my main opponent Silkin and - amazingly - David Owen
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as Foreign Secretary. Of course, Peter Carrington had been in NATO in Belgium; he was a considerable loss to us. Jim and Denis were good news, Silkin was a case of better inside the tent than outside it - as the former Americans crudely put it - but David Owen struck me as the wrong choice to handle things if we were back in time. I will cheerfully admit now that I was to some extent wrong about this; David wasn't good at handling the trans-courts, and he did a lot of damage with the United Provinces, but he made a solid call on early support for Poland-Lithuania that I might not have made and he was excellent at handling the cis-embassies within the confines of what was done. I reflected and told Gow I would be there.

Luckily, I had a messenger pop round very early with a summary of what was known and unknown: we were in 1730 not 1980; there would be quite heavy rationing as soon as possible; we had to find out ways to import food and raw materials; and we had a empire again. Whilst some of my fellows almost fell for the Brewster line - and might have done so if he hadn't have been so, well, Yankee about it - I am afraid that I gave a little squeal of glee at the thought of British North America rather than the United States of America.

I will also admit to being slightly wicked. I was nearly out of coffee, so I wandered to Mr Patel’s mini-mart and... well, I bought a little more than I would have done normally - and a few other things as well. I wasn't as bad as some ministers - who sent their staff out shopping - and we all now know that the Speaker was the worst of the lot, but that was hushed up at the time and he was punished by only getting a K instead of the Viscountcy he was due. I just spent what I had in my wallet - which wasn’t a very good idea, as the banks shut that morning for the next two days.

I also rang my Private Secretary with my arts and culture hat on, and asked what they knew and what was being done. They hadn't done much; they didn't see what could be done that would be useful. I admit that I tended to agree with them at this juncture, but then he said "If this is correct, Bach is alive"; that caused a little spark, and I suggested a list of both culturally prominent Britons who had disappeared and culturally prominent people who were alive. I promised to pop in the next day. I was also tempted to ring Adrian's sister, Rachel, but decided that I couldn't; whilst the newspapers were full of speculation, most of what we knew was hush-hush - and also, I really didn't know what to say. I did start to think about this as I knew we would be having the conversation soon enough. However, I did decide to do a little homework and went and had a quick look through the shelves - one advantage of my current ministry and my previous career was that I did get sent a lot of free books. There was nothing totally germane, but I picked up a volume by John Stoye who I remember was waspishly entertaining.

I didn’t get long to read before first cabinet, because for a week or so we had two cabinets a day and apart from Ian we had a full house. It was a bit of a mess; a lot of people were all over the place, I really think everyone just wanted the nightmare to stop. The only bit of humour was when David said that the Soviet ambassador was getting antsy, arrogant and threatening and Margaret said - “we have Polaris, have they managed to get to cannon yet?” It summed up the new imbalance beautifully. The only things we had to fear in this new world were civil strife, disease and starvation - there was no external power or alliance of powers who could remotely threaten us. We weren't a superpower, we were THE superpower - in fact quite the hyperpower. Recognising this new power and actually starting to use it took some time; we had long been used to working with our NATO or EEC partners - or, as the left put it, we had been puppets of the Americans. Anyway, First Cabinet was cut very short; the PM needed to work on her statement to the House.

I sat in my room with Quintin and Joppers and tried to work out how the hell we could timetable legislation. We decided we pretty much had to abandon everything that was on the books; we really needed Christopher
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with us, but he was dealing with the personal crisis of having several Lost family members - the House of Lords had to wait a little longer.  A couple of pieces were kept on as they were sufficiently advanced to finish within a week or two, by which time we should have more concrete emergency legislation from the drafters.

Quintin thought that there would have to be at least a dozen major pieces of legislation plus an omnibus bill to get through as soon as possible. The ‘soon as possible’ gave Joppers and myself the collywobbles - these were likely to be far reaching bills with serious consequences; heavy use of the guillotine would not be appropriate. The most critical thing would be to pass a couple of statutory instruments through on Thursday, one regarding rationing and one regarding a quarantine scheme.

Whilst Orders in Council were in place, there was always the danger of some judge crazed on crusted port going off on some flight of fancy in a judicial review at the request of some well-meaning lunatic. Quintin felt that Rationing would only need a bill if the Socialists cut up rough, but the Quarantine provisions would be a major and early endeavour. Of course, working the drafters in a hurry leads to mistakes, especially when working under strict guillotines, and we ended having some slightly awkward legislation - luckily, most of it just expired within a couple of years.

The news had already filtered back earlier that day that the Soviet Union was now looking remarkably like the Russian Empire, and just before the Prime Minister spoke we were given to understand that the initial sightings of the East Coast of Canada and the USA showed what we feared. As it was, the PMs statement was really rather good; it didn’t reach out as well to the people as the Queen’s statement later that week, but it showed grit and resoluteness. Francis moaned that she was trying to sound like Churchill, but I simply said that was probably a good thing; we could have done with Winnie now just for the morale boost. Jim Callaghan’s reply was also very good, but very few people listened to it. With that Parliament was adjourned with a full debate tomorrow on the crisis replacing everything else.

I then, as I had promised earlier, went to my Department, who were hitting the books to produce a cultural Who’s Who of 1730. One bright girl suggested that we should also look into protocol and court dress etc for the period; I did start to say that was the FO’s job, then thought that actually the expertise was probably here. We could do it and send it to the FO, and if they chose to have Not Invented Here syndrome then that was their problem. However, it must be said that in general the department had little to do and indulged itself in Bees in the Bonnet; I should have reined that in, but my mind was elsewhere. What I did do was telephone Rachel; she had heard the news, and I said that I was very sorry and that I couldn’t really have rung before. It was difficult and tense, but she agreed to come up to Town at the weekend and said that it was fine if I went and sorted out Adrian’s cleaner and got rid of perishables, etc. I was rather glad of that; there were some of my clothes there, and I wanted a chance to remove a few items from the flat which might otherwise cause embarrassment. Nothing to worry women and servants, but photos and mementos which might cause awkward questions to be asked.

There were three main discussions at Cabinet, and one minor affair. The first was the Americans; they were the major group of foreign nationals under arms in the UK - and they had access to nuclear weapons. What was interesting was how quickly the tone changed around them; many around the table started off as staunch Atlanticists, yet within a week most had come around to the idea that having a new version of the USA arising was not really a good idea. At this time it was still a little more of “what can we do to help them”, but you could feel the ground moving and there was a great deal of concern they might do something rash. The second item was the rationing plan; Peter and Jim had worked very hard on this, and whilst the figures were a little out they were a good if somewhat grim guideline of what we faced. Some of the civil defence work around this was to prove useful, but much of it had assumed communal feeding of survivors using Soyer boilers after a nuclear war - which clearly wasn’t going to happen. There was a great deal of work going on with the idea, but the fatal error had already been made: rationing had been announced with no scheme either in place or to be rolled out imminently. The third point was quarantine; there had already been two or three attempts to cross the border in Ireland, and a number of sailing ships had already been turned back - or, if British, were being escorted into a harbour where they could be detained. Peter had raised the spectre of foot and mouth from Ireland - there had been an outbreak the year before and it had been very unpleasant. It was decided that, even in the long-term, we would have to be more like Australia in terms of agricultural quarantine. The minor affair was the Channel Islands - they had been a Crown Dependency before, but this had caused all sorts of problems. Peter’s civil servants had an idea for bringing it up to scratch very quickly and using it as a testbed, but they felt they would need direct rule to do this. The end point was that the Queen would have to be consulted.