There was a local election pending. It seemed that
once you got involved in politics that elections or preparations for them were
continuous and that the detail could consume your life, as it obviously had for
many of the people I worked alongside. Sometimes I wondered, looking at the
local councillors, at other Labour party members or at people in the
Initiative, who also had families whether they weren’t also hiding out in
it all somehow. Avoiding other aspects of their life, pledging commitment to
something greater, so that they could ignore other disappointments,
keep themselves distracted from dreams or forms of self-expression they were
too timid still to attempt. Certainly for many years I had used my own writing
in such a way, an escape clause, a way of getting out of facing up to
concrete immediate unhappiness, a justification for why certain life choices
would always be closed off to me. Better to sit and fret over a blank page,
immerse myself in that limitlessness than try to accept what I really wanted
and fail at it. Perhaps I was wrong to be sceptical, perhaps they were simply
more ethical, more committed than I was, truly lived their politics in a way I
was incapable of doing.
Still, for some reason it seemed I was the one Nick wanted to talk
to about the local elections and so I was summoned to The John O’Gaunt to meet
up with him one Thursday evening. He was tanned, looked a little different
somehow to the last time I’d seen him, a little distracted. Perhaps that’s not
the right word, but before he had been focused on something more
immediate, the Initiative, refugees, classes, and now though he was still
concerned with all those things there was a different light in his eyes, a
slightly different tone to his voice, his vision was a little more expansive.
How’s it going? he asked me.
The..?
Canvassing. Local stuff.
Oh, alright I suppose.
We had already gone out and done some around what I now
thought of as my area north of the Lune with a couple of
the more committed regulars and met mostly apathy, it was a local election
after all, low turnout low stakes, incremental gains to be made and even though
we were relying on more local focus on politics, trying to move
it away from relying on central government and national frameworks it was
hard to motivate people, myself included, for activities that felt so small-scale.
I didn’t naturally have the temperament for it, I suppose, I tended to
have a certain wildness to my thoughts and a certain ambition that this
incremental work wasn’t suited to, but, equaly, I was beginning to learn
to live within my limits and to build up endurance and stamina, to be a foot
soldier and accept that the bigger roles belonged really to people like Nick
We need to make sure . We need critical mass he said, took the top
inch off his pint. Critical mass, like scalable was one
of his favourite terms.
You seen Denham about?
I smiled. I had. Once or twice we had gone past each other rather
uncomfortably, our groups on opposite sides of the road with a terse nod of
acknowledgement. I recognized him from the description I had been given
You see who he was with? Two of those boys from the
stall. That’s a bad sign. Those boys are barred from a couple of town centre
pubs. Even the Bells, he said, and the landlord there, he’s an ex-copper.
Giving people shit about not being patriotic, racist abuse, hassling students.
Small town idiots, I said.
He pursed his lips. We need to keep eye on them. We need to keep
an eye on who's working together. Denham’s lads involved in all that.
Reclaiming England, all that stuff.
I tensed slightly, I was suspicious of what seemed to have been
his long obsessive battle with Denham , his nemesis, and I didn’t
want to get dragged into it. Didn’t want to be the one who had an especial
responsibility to keep an eye on things.
He
had another go at his pint, and I decided it was an opportune moment to change
the subject.
How long have you been back? I got the impression you were down in
London for longer than you though.
European tour, he said. London, Brussels Barcelona, Athens.
Hence the tan.
Lot of interest in what we are doing here, Similar projects on the
go too, lot of interesting conversations, lot of new ideas. Especially around
currencies. Keep the money local but also start to try and trade with other
areas in those co-operative credits. C-credits.
Won’t Brexit make that tricky? We were still waiting to leave the
European Union at that point but the underlying assumption was we would be
doing so imminently and maintaining a “close relationship”. It would be
a mostly symbolic separation that would mollify the racists and
the xenophobes, they would go back to sleep and we would scrub the
RAPEFUGEES graffiti off the walls and things would go on more or less as
before, except this time with a socialist government.
No, we are not thinking that big yet, thinking about between
towns, maybe between counties, trying keep a percentage of it in c-credits,
just between cooperative suppliers as much as possible, try to stop it leaking
out into non-cooperative businesses. Right, so that’s why I am asking
about the canvassing, Denham out and about. What’s he up to. You know who
he is involved with right? They are not going to like it.
We were back on the subject again
I think he was there to add some star power to the doorstep I said
and Nick grinned. Local boy made good, that kind of thing.
He was shortish, a little flat footed, hair looked to be dyed
blond and receding at the front, slight mullet at the back.
He reminds me of an Eighties light entertainer, someone used to
doing the rounds of the pubs and clubs, an occasional TV
spot, a once yearly show on Blackpool pier.
Well, talking of TV, Nick said, let me introduce you to the media
lads down from London.
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