It's Battersea Barricades Day - 23rd April

Jodi Taylor reads an extract from The Battersea Barricades

Discover the story of the Battersea Barricades and the people who fought there on the 23rd April.

Extract from The Battersea Barricades by Jodi Taylor

It was St George’s Day at St Mary’s. That’s the St Mary’s Institute of Historical Research. We’re located just outside Rushford, although, as Leon often points out, if I don’t keep a firm grip on Professor Rapson, Miss Lingoss, Mr Swanson and all the other nutters in R&D, we won’t be located here for very much longer. We investigate major historical events in contemporary time.

It was St George’s Day at St Mary’s and most of us were wearing a rose. No, not the same rose, obviously. It’s at this point Markham always gives thanks for not being Welsh – as, I suspect, do the Welsh – because he says he would never know where to put his leek. Mr Evans frequently offers to demonstrate. Markham points out that Evans is from Halifax so what does he know, and there’s often a bit of a scuffle, resulting in a light blizzard of Deductions From Wages to Pay for Damages Incurred forms dropping from on high.

So – where was I?  St George’s Day at St Mary’s. Done that. Roses. Yes, we’ve done that, too. Have I mentioned the fire-breathing dragon? As Miss Lingoss had pointed out in the scorched aftermath of that particular trauma – it had been a perfectly legitimate experiment designed to ascertain whether it was possible for a dragon to manufacture and breathe fire without blowing its own head off and yes, all right, shame about the apple tree, but it would probably grow back. Better than ever. Like eucalyptus trees. I’d felt a headache coming on and requested she go and annoy someone else.

Returning yet again to the present – St George’s Day – Rosie Lee, my assistant – and trust me, you’re far more likely to catch sight of a fire-breathing dragon than of her actually doing any work – had pushed off early. ‘It’s St George’s Day, Max,’ as if that was any sort of excuse, and I was alone which, trust me, at St Mary’s, is not necessarily a Bad Thing.

I tidied up a bit, dictated two reports and pulled out a copy of next month’s assignments to take down to Mrs Enderby in Wardrobe so she could make a start on assembling the costumes.

I knew something was going on outside because, at his request, I’d loaned the entire History Department to Professor Rapson. I could hear voices. Lots of voices. But no screaming. Not yet, anyway. I would investigate later when it was too late for me to be implicated in whatever was about to happen. I grabbed the schedule and trotted around the gallery, down the stairs, through the deserted Great Hall, and into the Wardrobe Department.

The three of them were sitting together at the far end of the room. They were all wearing black with a red rose pinned to their dresses. Mrs Mack had kicked off her shoes and sat with her legs curled underneath her. Mrs Enderby sat primly in her seat, unusually free from the French chalk that was a hazard of her profession, and Mrs Shaw was staring blankly out of the window. They were in a world of their own.

I had forgotten today was their anniversary. I don’t know how I managed that. It’s not as if the dates and events hadn’t been drummed into us in school. But I had.

I’m going to digress again. Brace yourselves.

Constitutional monarchy. People think because the monarch reigns rather than rules, he or she has no teeth. That’s not actually true – something people who think our hereditary monarchy should be replaced by easily bought, corrupt, publicity-seeking criminals with egos the size of a planet, or politicians as they’re sometimes known, don’t seem to be able to comprehend.

The monarch advises and warns and, because he or she can say no, a wise politician – sorry, just struggling with the unfamiliar use of the words ‘wise’ and ‘politician’ in the same sentence – a wise politician ensures they never have to. It’s a system that worked well, give or take a few tweaks, until comparatively recently. Until something went wrong. No one knows what. The details are restricted under the Hundred Years Rule and possibly won’t be made public even then, because no politician wants the electorate to realise that power actually resides with the people, so no one knows exactly what happened, but something did.

‘Constitutional Crisis’, shrieked the headlines. Except in the Daily Mail, of course – this was before it was banned – which led with a double page full-colour spread on women in the public eye, highlighting their losing battle with cellulite.

Anyway, it seemed the government either had done or planned to do something even more amazingly stupid than usual. It would probably all have died down eventually, but the old king, an amiable duffer by all accounts and idealistically the polar opposite of then very right-wing government, made a statement. It was comparatively mild – as he was himself – but it flicked the government on the raw. And then, having chucked the royal cat amongst the political pigeons, he went on to make an extremely ill-advised broadcast to the nation, attempting to explain his position and justify his actions. He would have done better to have kept quiet. You could almost hear Edward I, a man who never explained or justified anything in his entire life, turning in his grave.

The government, alarmed by the magnitude of support for the royal point of view, panicked, and assumed what it called Emergency Powers, and what everyone else called Losing the Plot.

Sadly, despite his best efforts, the old king had only succeeded in making things very much worse. He was bundled from the political scene before he could do any more harm and despatched to Scotland – which was being even more than normally fractious – on the grounds that each deserved the other.

There was a great deal of muttering across the country, which probably wouldn’t have come to much because we’re British and we mutter all the time, albeit quite politely, but having got the hang of overreacting, the government, aware of what had happened in the US, suspended a few more civil liberties and announced their latest, greatest idea – the possible future introduction of what they liked to call, ‘The People’s President’.

Once everyone stopped laughing, however, this was discovered to be a very real threat and suddenly people woke up. The thing is – in this country, everything belongs to the Crown and not the government. The police and armed forces swear their oath of allegiance to the monarch and his/her elected government. The courts belong to the monarch. People are detained at His Majesty’s pleasure. The laws might be passed by Parliament, but they’re upheld by the Royal Courts. The real power of the throne is that it holds no powers itself, but prevents those powers being held by others, which means that, theoretically, the government can’t arrest a bunch of dissidents and bundle them into court with instructions to the judge to find them guilty and send them down for twenty years.

Well, obviously, all that was being kicked into touch and people didn’t like it. That’s not the way we do things. We’ve chopped people’s heads off for less. Politely, of course.

The mutterings increased and in Cardiff, of all places, people channelled Owain Glyn Dŵr and Llewellyn the Great and, for all I know, Ifor the Engine, and took to the streets to voice their opinion of things in general and the government in particular.

And not just in Cardiff. All over Wales they came down from the mountains, climbed out of the valleys and sang at people. Well, no, obviously they didn’t, but you get the drift.

The Northern Irish, writhing under the yoke of British oppression – they said – joined in as well, and the Scots, never ones to be late to a party, lined up behind Hadrian’s Wall and prepared for the traditional summer pursuits of cattle rustling, maiden-snatching and independence declaring.

I’m exaggerating, but only slightly. And, obviously, it wasn’t a spontaneous uprising. None of this happened overnight. It took about a decade for the slow erosion of freedoms and civil liberties to come to a head. It wasn’t a case of a single section of society feeling disconnected. Everyone felt disconnected. The government had finally achieved a perfect score because, now, no one was happy. Anyway, inevitably, matters came to a head.

It was a long, hot summer. Tempers frayed, hosepipe bans were imposed, England were kicked out of the first round of the World Cup, beaten 3 - 0 by the People’s Republic of Somewhere Or Other, population twenty-five thousand if you included the livestock. Suddenly a further series of draconian laws hit the statute books, rushed through the Commons on the nod and not allowed anywhere near the House of Lords at any price because some twenty or thirty of the few remaining peers had publicly announced their intention of kicking the Bill up the arse – together with the government it came in on. The House of Lords was quietly ignored and everyone geared themselves up for the Summer of Discontent.

I don’t think anyone expected things to escalate quite so quickly or quite so dramatically. Troops were despatched to Cardiff – to ensure public safety, they said, and for the good maintenance of order. Anti-government protesters became out-and-out rebels and took to the streets.  

Terrified of losing what control remained, the government tried to tighten its grip and succeeded only in losing it completely. It must have been like clutching at smoke. The tiny town of Thirsk – at no small cost to themselves – publicly declared their support for Cardiff. Additional troops were deployed northwards and we were off.

Violence began to spread across the country like a fringe of fire on lighted newspaper. Pitched battles were fought in the streets. Property was destroyed. Schools and universities closed. Local authorities were disbanded and their powers claimed by the government. Only temporarily, of course. They said. Public gatherings of more than five people were forbidden.  Hundreds of people were hurt. Some died. The government issued warning after warning. Additional powers were granted to the police and the military. Habeas corpus was suspended. There were running battles in the streets.

Of course, when law and order breaks down, everything breaks down. The streets weren’t safe, even during daylight. There were food riots and power cuts which led to widespread looting. Private scores were settled, and it seemed there was no way of preventing the country from sliding into anarchy and chaos.

The government hit back. Those deemed to be … less British … were informed they were no longer welcome. Political dissidents – and there were a lot of them by this time – were rounded up. Snatch squads at dawn became a common event and the rest of the world looked on, appalled, as Britain seemed set to disappear, like Narnia, in fire and water.

There was no one to help. Europe was imploding. No one had a clue what was happening in the US, but according to the few who had made it out, it wasn’t good. Russia and China had stopped talking to one another which was generally reckoned to be about the only good news around. Storms, droughts, and floods played havoc across the world. People started to believe that it was the beginning of the end of the world.

We hope you enjoyed this free extract. CLICK HERE to buy The Battersea Barricades from Amazon. Available in ebook and audiobook formats. Also in print in Long Story Short.