Machines Like Me

We hadn’t heard anything by twelve thirty, so I set off. I took my usual route towards Vauxhall and Waterloo Bridge, but I was still a mile from the river and I was in heavy traffic. Of course. Our own concerns had obliterated the great event that was obsessing the entire nation. It was the long-awaited first day of the general strike and a huge demonstration, the biggest ever, was taking place in London today.

Division was everywhere. Half the trade union movement was against the strike. Half the government and half the Opposition was against Healey’s decision not to leave the European Union. International lenders were imposing further spending cuts on a government that had promised to spend more. The fate of the nation’s nuclear weapons was not yet resolved. The old arguments were bitter. Half the Labour Party membership wanted Healey out. Some wanted a general election, others wanted their own man or woman in place. There were calls, derided here, applauded there, for a national government. A state of emergency remained in place. The economy had shrunk by five per cent in a year. Riots were as frequent as strikes. Inflation went on rising.

No one knew where such discontent and discord were taking us. It had brought me to a potholed street by a line of shabby junk shops in Vauxhall. Gridlock. While we were stationary, I phoned home. No news. After waiting twenty minutes, I eased off the road and half mounted the pavement. I’d seen an item that might be of use, displayed outside along with piled desks, lamp stands and bed frames. It was a wheelchair of the minimal, upright, tubular-steel design once used in hospitals. It was dented and grubby, with frayed security straps, but the wheels turned well enough and after some haggling, I paid £2 for it. The junk-shop owner helped me lift what I told him was a water-filled mannequin out of the van and into the chair. He didn’t ask me what the water was for. I tightened the chest and waist security straps more forcefully than any sentient being could have tolerated.

I stowed the stretcher, locked the van and began the long trudge northwards. The chair was as heavy as its burden and one wheel squeaked under the weight. None of its fellows turned as easily as they had when the chair was empty. If the pavements had been deserted, it would have been hard enough, but they were as jammed as the roads. It was the usual conundrum – people were flowing away from the march just as thousands were surging towards it. At the slightest incline, I had to double my efforts. I crossed the river at Vauxhall Bridge and passed by the Tate Gallery. By the time I reached Parliament Square and was starting along Whitehall, the front wheels began to tighten against their axles. I was grunting at each step with the effort. I imagined myself as a servant in pre-industrial times, transporting my impassive lord to his leisured appointment, where I would wait, thankless, to carry him back. I’d almost forgotten the purpose of my exertions. All I knew was getting to King’s Cross. But now my progress was blocked. Trafalgar Square was packed tight for speeches. We approached on an explosion of applause and shouting. The litter under my feet, thin streamers of fine plastic, tangled with the wheels. I risked being trampled by going down below knee level to pull the mess clear. It was going to take me a long time to reach the Charing Cross Road, 200 yards away. No one wanted or was able to give way. It was no easier to retreat than to advance. All the side streets were filling now. The din, the clatter, the foghorns, bass drums, whistles and chants were both thunderous and piercing. As I fought to edge His Lordship forward, I penetrated – but so slowly – layers of disappointment and anger, confusion and blame. Poverty, unemployment, housing, healthcare and care for the old, education, crime, race, gender, climate, opportunity – every old problem of social existence remained unsolved, according to all the voices, placards, t-shirts and banners. Who could doubt them? It was a great clamour for something better. And pushing my dirty broken chair, its complaining wheel lost to the din, I squeezed through the crowd unnoticed, with a new problem about to be added to the rest – wondrous machines like Adam and his kind, whose moment had not quite yet come.

Making progress up St Martin’s Lane was just as hard. Further north, the crowds began to thin. But just as I reached New Oxford Street, the noisy wheel locked and for the rest of the way I had to lift and tilt the chair as well as push. I stopped at a pub near the British Museum and drank a pint of shandy. From there, I phoned Miranda again. Still no news.