Dislocated to Success (4 page)

My return home was late, my supper was meagre, but there were a couple of interesting messages on my answering machine. I returned the call to Kensington Palace immediately, of course, and found myself invited to supper the next night; another was from my old Cambridge College asking if I could give them a ring in the morning - they were concerned about their overseas students, which was understandable.

Chapter 5

As had become the new norm, we were to have a Morning cabinet, the afternoon in the House debating the emergency powers granted and then an evening cabinet. I managed to wheedle out of evening cabinet with my invite. This was fine; my department was unlikely to be called upon to contribute and my efforts were mainly with the Whips to organise the next few weeks’ Parliamentary time. A lot of the morning was spent talking about Ireland, which was somewhat tricky; as we now know the Irish were thinking there was a rebellion in the North and messages were coming back that they were marching troops north to put bring Ulster back to heel. This was potentially a very sticky situation - there were a wide range of people in the border counties who would be delighted to slaughter an Ascendancy army.

Having said that, there was an increasing feeling that Ireland could be our saviour in terms of rationing: it was close to the UK, it had plenty of very good farmland, it had a growing agricultural population, it was used to indirect British rule and it probably could be turned around enough in a couple of years. But it was still Ireland, with all the associated problems that came with it and with an added Ascendancy. There were also a lot of Irish citizens in the UK, some of which had already started making restive noises. The only strange thing was the lack of comment from Northern Ireland; Molyneux
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was sufficiently on-side as to not rock the boat, but I would have expected everyone else to be vigorously trying to capsize it as usual. The PM asked Willie to take responsibility for Ireland, which was sad for Willie really because of his many unhappy experiences there under Ted.

During the day, we started to get reports coming in of trouble at food shops; messengers came in and out with notes for Willie, and he had to go out a couple of times. Just before we headed for lunch, he had a quiet word with Denis and Francis. The food-related trouble was at its worst in the inner cities, although he said shelves were being cleared everywhere. Denis suggested that the rationing coupons should be printed regardless of the finalised scheme; we could always alter the allocations afterwards. If booklets could be printed fast enough, a scheme could be imposed next week. There were concerns of this being haphazard, but it was clear that otherwise there would be major problems with public order. It also saw the first discomfiting of Keith,
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and it was at the hands of Norman Tebbit - or, as many called him, the Chingford Skinhead. Norman pointed out that the BBC had been widely speculating on items likely to run out and that he suspected prices would increase quite considerably. He was quite right - on picking up the papers at Mr Patel’s this morning, I noticed he had moved his remaining chocolates behind the counter and had increased the prices. Mr Tebbit has always had a keen eye on the populist wing of the party, and suggested that perhaps we should consider some price controls on these items - not because he was against profit, but because he felt that ordinary people would be priced out. Keith threw a bit of a wobbler about this and then got slapped down by the PM, who said “it isn’t a free market, it’s a scarcity market”. She didn’t back the measure - she was unsure if it fell with the powers we had awarded ourselves - but she didn’t say no. Geoffrey didn’t look too happy either,
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but he was having trouble with his sums at the time and I think he wanted to keep everything stable until he had worked out what we now owed and who to.

Kensington Palace was interesting; obviously, one can say very little about meetings with Royal Personages. I was probably the member of the Government with the best contacts amongst The Firm, being an infrequent visitor to both Kensington Palace and Clarence House, but the vast, vast majority of discussions were on a purely social or cultural level. However, for a few visits after the Dislocation things were... not so much political, and certainly not Party political, but - like every other group of people - we discussed the Dislocation. The Queen Mother was kind enough to give me an old copy of the Almanach de Gotha - or, as she amusingly called it, the new Stud Book - which actually came in amazingly useful until we had all our notes in order. She also around this time started her extensive correspondence with the various Royal Families of Europe, which was so grubbily revealed and sensationalised by the Guardian in 1988. I would say that all the rumours of hoarding and ration breaking have never been in evidence to me - like the PM, the Firm understood full well the nature of their social contract with the nation. It may well be true that the Clarence House bought up a lot of Dubonnet, but I would remind people that alcohol was never on the ration.

On returning home, I got a short précis of what had happened at evening cabinet from Francis; it had mainly been about Ireland again, but with quite a bit of wrangling about the status of various other places and what we wanted to do with them. It seemed Willie had found some Irish TD who was in London at the time and who was willing to play ball, which turned out to be very helpful in the end.. Then it seemed that Geoffrey
was in a bit of a tizzy; he produced his new sums, which basically came out as “Cuts All Round” - only to be tripped up by people pointing out that loan interest might just have gone down somewhat, as there was no one to repay in some cases. We also had reopen the retail banks to the public on the Friday, which the police weren’t in favour of but everyone else was; people had to be able to access their wages, and many employers needed to collect cash for their employees.

I think Thursday was the worst of the civil disorder; although there were still some isolated incidents and a lot of small scuffles at some shops into the next week, but Denis had been in touch with all the major chains and given them a few words of advice about stocking policy until the ration books were out. Most of them took it to heart, although Fine Fare and Tesco's were a little troublesome. There were also some small demonstrations about what had happened to "our men", mainly from Forces families; Francis dealt with these most sympathetically, and the PM came out to one of the groups and spoke to them for nearly an hour - they liked that. There was no problem from them, and their dignified and simple protest I think acted as an archetype of how to behave to others.

I had to go to the constituency on the Saturday. Normally my “surgeries” have three or four people attending; one will be an immigration case, one will be difficulties with the local council and the others can be just about anything at all. I have never seen such a large queue in my life - I had to ask the councillors to help out when they had finished their “surgeries”, as I had to be back in London by 4pm. I promised I would do the whole day next weekend; it was the least I could do. There were a selection of novel problems to me: some Forces families who had lost fathers, sons, brothers etc; some people concerned about special diets and rationing; one couple complaining that they had lost their package holiday; and some Canadians worried they they would overstay their visas. I did the best I could, but to be honest at that stage there was little I could do except offer support and sympathy. Many other MPs of all parties had similar experiences at their weekend surgeries as well, and the contact with constituents was actually quite helpful in helping them to be able to push some issues as a priority over others. You could tell that society was feeling fragile, and the Government needed to look strong and reassuring. We managed that, after a fashion, but behind the scenes the reality was often very different.

Of course, having returned to London, I then had to meet Rachel at Adrian’s flat; we sat down and had a stiff drink whilst discussing what to do. There a number of difficulties, not least in that there had already been a few robberies of homes that were abandoned. Also, at this point, it wasn’t clear what the legal position was. With so many people lost, the old “seven years until dead” rule wasn’t going to work well - and anyway, I didn’t want to go down that route and neither did she. We decided that I would pay the bills and that we would get the place cleared, get some extra locks fitted and his effects put in storage; that would be probably be illegal, but if we didn’t dispose of anything it would probably stand up OK given the circumstances. Of course, it was a minefield; Rachel wasn’t even the next of kin - that was the somewhat gaga aged parent. She took some keepsakes and we split the non-perishable contents of the food cupboards - which seems asinine now, but was very much the thing at the start of the Dislocation.

On the Sunday evening, Willie dropped around to discuss business; he’d had a long journey back from Penrith and was in need of some sustenance, so we went to his club for what was probably the last non-rationed restaurant meal I was to eat without being being on official business for six years. He said what he thought the priorities would be for legislation, and I disagreed with him; there was going to be an immediate need to deal with a number of other issues which we hadn’t mentioned. What to do with foreign visitors, not just in the long term sense but in the short term? The hotels were getting restive, and there were already stories of people being thrown into the street. What to do about perfectly viable businesses which had just been crippled by the loss of their export trade? Willie raised a few others he’d picked up: families where the breadwinner had been out of the country; people with overseas assets; one couple had been to see him about their House in County Kilkenny. One of the very useful things that we picked up from MPs who had been to their constituencies was a pretty clear list of items that politicians and civil servants had not picked up on or regarded as a priority.

Chapter 6

The second week actually saw the start of the return of relative normality, at least politically; Cabinet was only scheduled for twice that week, although there were a number of working parties on various issues at the PM’s beck and call. I was finally able to settle down the list of legislation for the near future and agree suitable amounts of debate on the subject. With Silkin supposedly on-side, my main tormentors were Clement Freud
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, Ted and the grim figure of Enoch. Clement, to be fair, was mainly being playful; his main torment was of the Labour party, several members of which would have wanted to oppose everything just for the principle of it all and felt constrained. Ted was just being a sulky beast, as usual - any excuse to find a way to lambast the PM. Enoch was very concerned with “important constitutional issues” and particularly with Ireland; I had a fiver with Joppers over whether he would at some point refer to “Our rightful Sovereign Frederick Lewis”. I lost, but having seen his memoirs it was a close run thing - only his oath to the Queen as a member of Parliament stopped him.

Whilst the food-related disorder of the previous week had pretty much stopped, as rationing had now fully cut in, there were different problems emerging that affected a number of people. The UK had a drug shortage - both legal and illegal - and this started to be noticed. On the legal side, there were a number of drugs which had only been made abroad and were running out of supply. Norman
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and Patrick had laboured hard with a group of doctors and scientists to produce a list of things that our pharmaceutical companies needed to start making in a priority order. They were looking at this and coming back with estimates as soon as they possibly could; they had a very high priority for support funds. However, this did not and could not stop people running out of their regular drugs; in many cases they could be placed on other UK made treatments, but in some cases they could not - and this did lead to some very grim stories. The newspapers were not terribly helpful about this, even when you get the head of Glaxo saying “there is no way we can produce this in less than three months” it still isn’t good enough. The Times was particularly unhelpful, running a ludicrous story about how cancer patients were dying because we were making smallpox vaccine a priority. The PM summoned Rees-Mogg
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to Downing Street, and I was told that she could be heard three rooms away berating him. I raised a glass to her when I heard that - smallpox had been clearly identified as the No 1 threat to the UK. Cancer is vile and horrible, but it would be nothing compared to if one of the epidemic nasties got loose in the UK.

However, rather less reported at the time was the small epidemic of crime that occurred as illegal drugs ran out. Obviously, some drugs remained available; barbiturates and amphetamines mainly, although the former were in short supply for a year or so - this caused quite a considerable problem amongst people who took them legally for their conditions, never mind those who abused them. The drugs that were going out of supply were cannabis, cocaine and heroin. Now, cannabis users were not really a source of trouble and cocaine use was fairly rare and in fairly rarified circles - a few media personalities had their near permanent colds clear up - but heroin had its grip on a lot of people, and a lot more than we had thought.  As supplies became shorter and shorter, prices went up - in some areas, street crime became a real problem virtually overnight. Of course, by now in some areas the police were used to having the gloves off and there were a few days of a big clamp down; in others, where there had been little problem with food disorder, their reaction was slower. Of course, there then started to be medical problems: some addicts sadly died during “cold turkey”; some ended up being committed to mental hospitals; and others put various strains on Accident and Emergency departments. I am happy to say that even to this day heroin is not even a minor problem in the UK, although the number of young people who go to İstanbul to smoke opium and hashish is on the rise.