THE REVOLUTION BEGINS
Ursula Deedes moved
into Number 10 Downing Street the next morning amid an unparalleled blaze of
publicity. There were radio and TV crews
from all over the world who were falling over each other to get an interview
with the western world’s most talked about politician. Despite the trauma of moving
house, Ursula found time to deal with all the obvious questions of what
seemed like a thousand and one journalists, the ‘happy patter’ questions plus
one or two about her policy intentions, particularly from the American and
European journalists who were concerned with how the new regime would relate to
them. Ursula was polite and courteous
but refused to go into details there and then, assuring them that a policy
statement would be forthcoming before the end of the week.
Then, having disposed
of the press, and having sent Andrew and the children temporarily back to their
home in Kew, Ursula began to take charge.
She summoned a meeting of all her most talented and influential
colleagues at number 10 that very morning, some of them being surprised by the
speed of her actions. Thus at 11 am,
fifty senior members of the R. A. P. gathered around her and the forming of the
new Government began. Sir Edward Young was
named Home Secretary, and Byron McCormack the new Chancellor. Other jobs were very thoroughly debated and
by the end of the morning, Ursula had the Cabinet she wanted. Then they got on to policy and this took the
rest of the day. The hidden agenda was
now discussed for the first time ... the draconian steps which Ursula had long
thought were necessary to restore Britain’s social order and its respectability
and a plan of campaign was finalised ... a plan which would shock some people
to their very roots.
The meeting broke up
late in the night and despite intense speculation, the new Ministers would not
reveal a thing to waiting pressmen, except the formal announcement of the new
Ministerial posts themselves and the fact that the new Prime Minister would be
taking a few days overdue holiday before Parliament reconvened. They said that
before she left she would be making a televised address to the nation the
following Thursday morning at 8 am. The
Press and TV were compelled to speculate on the significance of this,
particularly the timing!
Full of the election
and of the Ministerial Appointments, the Press and TV paid scant attention to a
news item that the new Government had decreed that a number of Army units were
to be recalled from Northern Ireland and from peace keeping roles in Europe as
part of a cost cutting exercise, nor that the Home Office had acquired a number
of now disused Army camps from the Ministry of Defence. Why should they pay attention ... there were
far more exciting items to report with crimes now at an all-time high and
tourists afraid to visit ‘Europe’s crime capital’ as Britain was unhappily
dubbed.
As Britain went about
its business and the Press and TV continued to monitor the comings and goings
of the new Government, everything seemed to be going on as normal. Ursula was photographed with the family, and
smiling she was photographed arm in arm with Julie McLaren, described by the
Press as Ursula’s inspiration throughout the campaign. A Sun reporter said to his boss that he thought
he sensed something more than friendship in the intimacy of the photograph, but was blown away in a howl of guffaws.
“You wanna fly with
that one? You’re an arsehole! And you can pay your own libel costs ... not a
fuckin’ prayer!” and the thought was immediately forgotten.
During the nights of
Tuesday and Wednesday, the 24th and 25th March, troop carrying aircraft flying
in from Northern Ireland, Germany and the Gulf landed at military ‘dromes all
over the country, the disembarking troops being dispersed to pre-arranged
destinations. Over the previous few
days, a number of people out walking or driving had
come across convoys of army vehicles ... tanks, armoured cars and jeeps ...and
had assumed that some UN military operation was in place.
On Thursday morning,
March 26th 2001, some chosen areas of Britain woke up
to a terrible shock. Moss Side in
Manchester was one such place, as were Brixton and New Cross in London,
Handsworth and Nechells in Birmingham, Toxteth in Liverpool, parts of Glasgow,
Newcastle, Bristol and Cardiff. In all
these places racketeers and drug barons had operated with impunity for many
years and that morning was for many of them to be their last day of freedom for
a long time ... and for some their last day on earth.
The owners and
dealers in the safe houses, the gaming clubs, the drug centres looked out on
the morning of March 26th to find a cordon of tanks and armoured vehicles
around the area and within minutes the sound of splintering wood and metal
could be heard as troops, working with splendid precision and timing burst in
armed with automatic rifles and sub-machine guns. Hundreds of terrified men and women,
gangsters, thugs, racketeers all of them, were lined up against walls all over
the country and searched then taken away in troop vehicles. Any who resisted were instantly shot dead:
there were some thirty deaths during the round up. The remainder were taken to what would be the
new Home Office internment camps, still done out as army billets, for there had
been no time to make the appropriate changes before the round up began, but the
camps were now all surrounded by a 20 ft high barbed wire fence. In any event, the military were still in
charge and soldiers guarded the prisoners constantly.
While most of Britain
was just setting out for work, or perhaps lingering to hear the unusually timed
Prime Ministerial broadcast unaware of what was going on except for news
flashes on radio and TV of unusual military activity, some terrified people
were being grilled by special units of Army, Special Branch and MI5. All this had been set up in two days after
the election, a covert operation which had worked beyond the new government’s
wildest dreams.
At 8am on all TV
channels and on radio, programmes gave way to a ten minute
broadcast by Ursula Deedes, the new Prime Minister. She began:-
“My message is to all
the people of the United Kingdom and to all those who do us the honour of
visiting these shores on vacation or on business. I am sure you will be surprised by the early
hour of this broadcast but I can assure you it is with
good reason. I could not have made this
broadcast any earlier for it would have removed the element of surprise from an
operation which I will acquaint you with shortly, nor could I have left it
until this evening’s peak viewing time ... for by then the country would be
awash with rumour and half-truth. So I have decided to speak to you now.
“First of all, the
rousing endorsement of my policies at the polls last Thursday has given me a
fillip that I could not understate and has convinced me that the British people
are sick and tired of the vicious criminal element which has made this country
the terror capital of Europe. I promised
that the Radical Action Party would live up to its name and this is exactly
what it has done.
“We have taken steps
which, and I will not lie to you, will probably shake some of the liberal
elements in the country to the core and there will doubtless be much comment in
the press ... but I will neither ban such comment nor shrink from it. The R.A.P. will not implement a dictatorship
and the organs of communication are free to say what they will ... but we will
not be deflected from steps we see as sadly necessary.
“The police have for
many years been under strength and are, I am sad to say, pitifully ill-equipped
to deal with the wave of vicious crime which has spiralled over the last few
years, largely as a result of the drugs industry and
centred in certain areas of our major cities.
Despite their best efforts they have lost men and women, in action ...
killed or wounded by evil people, or to private industry ... demoralised and
depressed. Well, no more ... the police
are to be given a boost in terms of pay, technology and licence,” she paused,
“... yes licence, for too long the criminal has had the advantage in our courts
and within the Prosecution Service.
Well, that will change. However the police need a fresh start ... a start dealing
with a population which has, if such a thing is ever possible, an ‘acceptable’
level of crime which the Police are competent in terms of numbers to deal with.
“At present, that is
not the case and it is for that reason that the Government has taken some very
severe steps.”
At this point,
various maps of Britain’s inner cities appeared behind Ursula’s head and an
electronic pointer accompanied her speech.
“In the areas you see
behind me, deprived inner city areas where the drugs barons and other criminals
have ruled for far too long,” she paused again “... the Government has declared
a state of emergency which suspends the normal constitutional dealings. The
criminal situation there is being dealt with very effectively. Last night and
early this morning, troops of the Kent Regiment, the Argylls, the Royal
Gloucesters and divisions of the Special Air Service moved into the areas and
cordoned them off. The soldiers, working with senior police chiefs and MI5,
have identified known hardened criminals and are, at this moment, dealing with
them as the situation necessitates.
“The State of
Emergency will exist only in particular areas and notices will indicate when
such areas are being entered. It will last as long as
the Government deems necessary and there will be a daily update from one of our
spokespeople on the 9 pm news. The criminals concerned in this operation will
NOT be brought before a civil court for two reasons. One ... the extent of
their criminality and their influence is well known and documented
and the influence is such that these people would make civil trials costly and
possibly pointless by threats and blackmail. Two ... so ingrained is the
problem in these areas that the cost of the trappings of a civil trial would be
astronomical. Therefore the Army has full authority to
deal with these miscreants and to dispense appropriate justice until the
situation is stabilised.
“I will not pretend
that all our Police chiefs are happy about this development, but I have
discussed it in full with them and they realise that
at present they are sadly ill fitted to deal with infrastructural problems of
this magnitude. Therefore provincial police forces
will co-operate with Special Branch and MI5 in submitting to the Army all known
facts on arrested miscreants. There will be no publicity surrounding the
sentencing of the people concerned ... that will be an Army matter and subject
to a ‘D’ notice. The overriding concern is that the problem is dealt with effectively.
“This operation will
shock a large number of people. I am ready for that. I
am more than happy to accept criticism if it means that people who for so long
have lived and walked in terror in this country can sleep happily in their
beds. For those people who put their trust in me ... I will not let you down.
Men and women who are law abiding have no reason to feel threatened in this
country today. For the others, today is just the start. Thank you for your time
and good morning!”
Ursula was not wrong
about the uproar. As the new Prime Minister got up from her seat, with the TV
cameras switched off, she gave a self-satisfied smile and joined her husband
and children in the sitting room of their new home, a family proud of the new
Prime Minister but who was still Mom to them, and got down to the business of
going away for a week’s quiet holiday in the Western Isles that very night, where
Ursula could rest and Andrew could fish and the kids could play without fear of
violence or death. Soon, Ursula was determined, the rest of Britain would be
the same.
They were on their
way within an hour, leaving, as agreed, Sir Edward Young to face the flak of
the Government’s shock announcement, and flak there most certainly was. The
news media were buzzing with the story, journalists caught by surprise by both
the story and its implications, which had been Ursula’s intention. She knew
that although TV got the stories across more quickly, the newspapers still held
the nation’s emotional pulse and because of the timing they would not be able
to comment until the next day by which time the policy would have been largely effected in this ‘surgical strike’.
There was no doubt it
was ruthless, Ursula had admitted as much and by all definitions it was
undemocratic. She had admitted that too and she knew that stories of what had
happened to some of the captives would leak out and the minor criminals would
run to the newspapers with their stories. She did not care
and the Government had braced themselves for just this possibility, believing
that the stories themselves would act as a deterrent to others.
Ursula was far away
in a secret hideaway by the time the storm broke and Sir Edward Young faced a
very difficult and stormy session with the media which he handled by means of a
series of prepared answers. Opposition M.Ps, the few
that were left, all clamoured for some media time to wring their hands and talk
of a return to the dark ages and the death of democratic politics. The fact
that Britain had been employing these methods in Northern Ireland for nearly
half a century with the cognisance and encouragement of these same M.P.s seemed
to escape them ... but it did not escape Sir Edward Young who made a very
effective plea for time to let the new policy work, that it was a one off clean-up
campaign which may last some months, before true democratic justice was
restored.
What happened in
practice was even sterner, even more chilling even than the Press had
intimated. The Army very efficiently having secured the miscreants in the
camps, then proceeded to grade them in accordance with information supplied
from the Police and the security services. There were four grades of prisoner:- Grade A were the capos, the top bosses and hit
men, the men and women who dealt out death over the telephone and by fax
machine. Grade B were the lieutenants who acted on and further delegated the
orders, the cruel executioners of their masters
commands. Grade C were the pushers, the men and women who stood on the street
corners dealing out crack, Ecstasy, cocaine to young and old alike, too far
removed from the power structure to be anything but functionaries and finally
Grade D the couriers, the runners who delivered messages and sometimes packets
to the pushers themselves. These were usually youngsters, now very frightened
and sweating with fear, awaiting their fate.
Once the grades were
established, the questioning began in total secrecy and for maybe a week,
soldiers trying to sleep had to bury their heads in the pillows to try and blot
out the noise of screaming A and B grade prisoners under ‘severe interrogation’
in the punishment block. Once the Army had all the information it needed to
round up other names that had dodged the net, the A and B category prisoners
were compelled to sign a confession form which, after their ordeals, most did
with alacrity. Then they were told they would be transferred to a high security
camp by lorry and were taken out in the middle of the night to open woodland
miles from anywhere. Some farmers in the lonely farmhouses swore they heard
distant volleys of rifle fire in the middle of the night, but
put it down to thunder or electrical disturbances of some sort. The lorries
however returned to the camps empty and the prisoners were never to be seen
again.
For the rest, there
would be very painful lessons to learn before they would again see the light of
day. The Grade C prisoners were ordered to be detained in the camps until such time as the Home Office could effectively take
over and make a rational assessment of the length of time they would be
detained in the new top security prisons and what additional punishments they
would receive.
The Grade D prisoners
were mainly women and girls regarded as lightweight ... more stupid than
criminal and in some cases merely frightened of boyfriends, husbands ... and in
some cases even fathers. It had therefore been resolved to let them go home,
after admitting their guilt in writing. However, they were still guilty of
criminal activity and the Army chiefs had decided they would not be released
unpunished. They would be given a lesson to remember, a sharp humiliating
lesson which would leave most of the girls crying themselves to sleep that
night!