Machines Like Me

Two minor sex scandals followed by resignations, one fatal heart attack, one fatal, drunken collision on a country road, one member crossing the floor on a matter of principle – in seven months the government had lost four consecutive by-elections, its majority had narrowed by five and was hanging, as the newspapers kept saying ‘by a thread’. This thread was nine seats thick, but Mrs Thatcher had at least twelve rebellious backbenchers whose main concern was that the recently passed ‘poll tax’ legislation would destroy the party’s hopes at the next general election. The tax financed local government and replaced the old system based on the rental value of a house. Every adult aged over eighteen was now levied at a flat rate, regardless of income, but with reduced charges on students, the poor and the registered unemployed. The new tax was presented to Parliament sooner than anyone expected, though the prime minister had plans drawn up seven years before, when she was Leader of the Opposition. It had been in the party’s manifesto, but no one had taken it seriously. Now here it was, on the statute book, ‘a tax on existence’, difficult to collect and generally unpopular. Mrs Thatcher had survived the Falkland defeat. Now, still in her first term, it was possible she would be toppled by her own legislative mistake, ‘an unpardonable act’, said a Times leader, ‘of mystifying self-harm’.

Meanwhile, the loyal Opposition was in good shape. Young baby boomers had fallen in love with Tony Benn. After a great push to expand the membership, more than three-quarters of a million had joined the party. Middle-class students and working-class youths merged into one angry constituency, intent on using their votes for the first time. Trade union bosses, tough old operators, found themselves shouted down at meetings by articulate feminists with strange new ideas. New-fangled environmentalists, gay liberationists, Spartacists, Situationists, Millennial Communists and Black Panthers were also an irritant to the old left. When Benn appeared at rallies, he was greeted like a rock star. When he set out his policies, even when he itemised the minutiae of his industrial strategy, there were hoots and whistles of approval. His bitter opponents in Parliament and press had to concede that he gave a fine speech and was hard to beat in a TV studio confrontation. Fiery Bennite activists were appearing on local government committees. They were determined to purge the ‘dithering centrists’ of the Parliamentary Labour Party. The movement appeared unstoppable, the general election was approaching and the Tory rebels were dismayed. ‘She has to go’ was the muttered slogan.

There were riots with customary ritual destruction – smashed windows, shops and cars set on fire, barricades thrown up to block the fire engines. Tony Benn condemned the rioters, but everyone accepted that the mayhem helped his cause. There was yet another march planned through central London, this time to Hyde Park where Benn would give a speech. I was his cautious supporter, anxious about the purges and riots and the sinister pronouncements of Benn’s band of Trotskyite followers. I counted myself a non-dithering centrist who also felt ‘she has to go’. Miranda had another of her seminars, but Adam wanted to come. We walked with our umbrellas through steady rain to Stockwell Tube and travelled to Green Park. We arrived on Piccadilly in sudden glistening sunshine, with huge white cumulus clouds stacked high against a mild blue sky. The dripping trees of Green Park had a burnished coppery look. I had failed to talk Adam out of the black suit. In the drawer of my desk he had found an old pair of my sunglasses.

‘This isn’t a good idea,’ I said, as we shuffled with the crowd towards Hyde Park Corner. Somewhere far behind us were trombones, tambourines and a bass drum. ‘You look like a secret agent. The Trots will give you a good kicking.’

‘I am a secret agent.’ He said it loudly and I glanced around. All fine. People near us were singing ‘We Shall Overcome’, a song whose hopeful sentiments were crushed at first utterance by a hopeless melody. Its second line feebly repeated its first. I cringed at the three weak, inappropriately falling notes crammed into ‘come’. I loathed it. My mood, I realised, was crepuscular. The jollity of crowds had this effect on me. A shaken tambourine put me in mind of those shaven Hare Krishna dupes by Soho Square. My shoes were wet and I was miserable. I wasn’t expecting to overcome.