Chapter 8

Leicester. October the same year.

When all the doors were finally locked, and all the staff ushered gently into the main hall, the chairman of the meeting stood up and tapped lightly with his wooden gavel on the table. The nearly three hundred representatives of the various Royal British Legion clubs for the whole of the East Midlands stopped their chatting and settled down.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” began Alan Glazer from the dais, “thank you all so very much for joining us here. I know it was a little short notice for some of you, and I also know that it was a bit of a trek into Leicester for those of you from farther afield. It’s so good to see that so many of the local Legion clubs are represented, especially now that fuel is starting to be rationed.

“Extraordinary meetings like this one are being held in a number of places around the country, most of them are being held at the same time as this one, so that as many members as possible can be informed all at the same time.”

He raised his arms and indicated the sides of the hall. “As you can all see, and somewhat unusually, it has been decided that this information can, and indeed should, be shared with the people who work for and with us, but who are not actually members of the Legion. We rely on their help and support throughout the year, so it behoves us to treat them as equals in this time of trouble.”

Everybody in the room had nodded in agreement when Alan had introduced the staff, but there was a bit of a stir at the word ‘trouble’.

“As you are all no doubt aware, the government has become little more than a fascist, Hitlerite, xenophobic government. Earth First is not what it was. Anybody with their wits about them will see that the local elections due next spring are likely to be quietly postponed ‘in the national interest’ or some other such illegal platitude. Certainly I suspect, no, I strongly believe, that the next national elections will be cancelled. We, as an organisation of retired military personnel, have decided that it’s our duty to organise, and fight this so called Truth and Freedom party that has taken over.

“When Lucy Cadwallader went missing last February, just days after she went to see that Thorn animal, I don’t suppose too many people thought much about it. It just so happens that she’s the niece of my sister-in-law, and I’ve met her a few times. So I did think about it. Then, as we all know, her body was found, early July, in the New Forest, miles from her own constituency, miles from her home, and not somewhere she was known to visit. It’s been three months, and still no culprit has been found. One of her constituents is a policeman and he’s been keeping a quiet eye on the investigation. It is being hampered, quite deliberately, by TaF thugs and goons, but more importantly, also by the MoJ.”

Alan Glazer gave a cold smile. “I don’t suppose it surprises anyone here to know that both the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office have been infiltrated by the TaF to the point that one could liken either to Hitler’s Gestapo, or Stalin’s NKVD.”

He paused for a moment. “And of course that’s just one story, albeit one that most of us know at least a little bit about. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that virtually everyone in this room had a similar story to tell, and I’m only relieved that not all of the press has succumbed.”

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a youth, one of the servitors he thought, slipping out of the room by a side door. He ignored it, and carried on talking.

“I bet many here have at one time or another, been based at, or visited, Catterick Garrison, Britain’s, indeed Europe’s, largest army base. It was taken over by TaF over a year ago after the army was told to close it. I didn’t know why at first, but it turns out that it’s now the training ground for something called the Safety Patrol.

“I don’t know exactly what they are, but I have a horrible suspicion that they are going to be a Gestapo-like organisation. Apparently, so I’ve heard, there are over ten thousand people being trained there right now, and they are just starting to be deployed. We know Thorn and TaF have been finding it difficult to infiltrate the military, and he’s even found the police harder to infiltrate than I guess he thought he would. We think these Safety Patrols will be armed, and will be some sort of national security force loyal to Thorn personally. It’s also possible, probable even, that they will be the ones enforcing any Martial Law that’s declared, and I for one believe that that’s coming too.

“You’ve probably all seen the national and local news recently. Last week, here in Leicester, a young Jewish couple were kidnapped by a person or persons unknown. We all know it was the TaF by what happened to them. Both were shaved, she was raped, in fact some stories say he was raped as well, but I cannot confirm that: the local police aren’t talking, and I know they haven’t been too badly infiltrated by the TaF. Then both were left naked, gagged and bound, in the centre of Leicester, covered in Nazi symbols, some of which had been tattooed onto their bodies.

“The four Sikh or Hindu youths that were taken in Birmingham last weekend: I’m ashamed to have to say I actually can’t remember whether they were Sikhs or Hindus, but they were all from the Indian subcontinent. Heads and beards shaven.

“The two or was it three Moslems abducted in Nottingham about the same time. Similar thing happened. If you’re not white, Christian and British, and I’m not so sure about the Christian even, if you’re in any form of organisation that isn’t part of Earth First and in particular Truth and Freedom, or explicitly condoned by them, then you could get attacked.”

He pointed down to a gentleman a few rows back from the front, who had raised his hand.

“Sir, yes?”

“The boy scouts in Derby were having a jumble sale to raise funds for repairs to their hut, and to get some new equipment. They were brutally and viciously attacked and everything they had collected was burned or destroyed. One of the boys lost an eye; another lost a couple of fingers. Many others were injured, some quite badly burned. One of the fathers was killed and his wife very badly burned when a large portable grill was kicked over. When three of the parents protested and tried to intervene, they were taken away, we know not where. They’re Boy Scouts for god’s sake, children, ten to sixteen-year-olds. This was TaF. They are thugs and animals and we must destroy them like vermin.” Tears rolled down his face as he relived the scene that had partly blinded his grand-son.

Other hands started to rise now, and other stories, all equally distressing, were called out.

Alan allowed them to speak for a few minutes, but eventually raised his arms for calm again. It was cathartic for them, but it also had the effect of firing up their determination, and this he needed. He was as upset by what he had heard as everyone else in the room.

“We must do something about...” There was a loud interruption at the back of the room, and everyone turned to see two lads, probably in their late teens or early twenties, being dragged forwards by four burly men. Alan was not surprised to see that one of the boys was the youth he’d seen slip out of the room earlier. Behind them was a slightly older girl, though still only in her mid twenties. She too was being escorted forward, but unlike the two males, she wasn’t fighting it, but was walking calmly forwards under her own steam. All three had ugly expressions of hate on their faces. The two males were shouting out obscenities and threats, but were unable to prevent their enforced progress towards the dais.

When they reached the front, Alan turned once more to the crowd. “This is what we are fighting. These evil people. These are just the foot soldiers, the ignorant peasants who have been brainwashed,” he had to raise his voice over the protests of the three, “brainwashed into doing evil.”

“I was not brainwashed,” snarled the young woman.

“Or, as in this case maybe, these are simply evil people. Vermin who need to be put down. Put out of our misery.”

There was a stir throughout the room. “Are you going to kill them?” someone asked from the middle of the room.

“Do they deserve to be killed?” asked Alan of the room in general.

There was a muttering throughout the hall, and after a few moments someone at the back began to clap. Soon much of the room was clapping. Once again Alan held up his arms for quiet.

“You want me, us, to become what they are? Murderers and thugs?”

After a few seconds of stunned silence, Alan spoke again. “We are not them. We are going to hold them only until the end of this meeting. If we had let them out, the local TaF would have been here in force within minutes, this way we can finish the meeting in safety.”

“What about at the end of the meeting?” someone asked. “They’ll still be able to report us.”

“I’ll think about that later, I have something in mind for them. We’ll certainly hold onto them long enough for them to not be a danger to you.”

He stood back and waved the three, with their handlers, off to one side.

“Right, all of what I told you before is, very sadly, true. But it is not, directly, why we are here. That talk was to flush out these vermin here. This organisation was approached a number of months ago, and I, along with a number of people around the country, were invited to national headquarters, and given information which I am now about to give you.

“The people who contacted us are not permitted to interfere directly, but are prepared to help us. Not in getting rid of this government specifically, but instead getting the country ready for the invasion that many of us know to be coming. Preparing a defence. Preparing a home guard. Not ‘Dad’s Army’,” he grinned at the looks of relief and amusement around the room, “but an active, effective, hidden, underground fighting force.”

“But do we know they’re coming? How do we know that that isn’t all spin and bollocks by the Yanks?” This from someone off to one side of the room. “I don’t believe or trust anything that comes out of this government, but then, I’ve never really trusted any politician. That goes in spades for American politicians.”