Chapter 10

Hyde Park, London. March, the same year.

“WE WANT WORK ... WE WANT WORK ... WE WANT WORK...”

The chanting had been going on for what seemed like hours to the small contingent of police officers designated to marshal the peaceful protest as it wound its way around central London. Similar protests were taking place in a number of other towns and cities around the country, but most of the protesters had made their way to London to join the main march. Although they had hoped for more, the organisers had realised they were lucky to get the five thousand or so protesters that had turned up. It was a small protest in the grand scheme of things, but it was about to have a big impact, and not in the way the organisers wanted.

None of the marches had been organised by the trades unions, but despite that, many union banners could be seen. The protest wasn’t even aimed at any particular employer, nor at the government, yet many in the news media took it that way.

“Can I ask who you are protesting against?” one reporter asked a young man holding a large, handwritten, placard reading “I WONT TO WORK”. The reporter was amused by the misspelling, but didn’t try and correct it.

“I’m not. Not really. I’m jus’ tellin’ people I want to work. I want a job.”

“So you’re not complaining about government policy?”

“What gov’ment policy? There ain’t none. The gov’ment’s s’posed to have banned all replicators, but there’s still loads around, and my boss said he had to sack me ‘cos o’ gettin’ rid o’ the replicators. Bleedin’ cheek if you ask me.”

“So he told you that without the replicator you would have no work?”

“Tha’s right. Bleedin’ liberty.”

“Was it true? Should the government have banned the replicators?”

The pair had been walking while they talked, but now the young man stopped and turned to face the reporter properly.

“He had ten workers. He got one replicator and got rid o’ three workers. Then he was made to get shot o’ the replicator and he made all the rest o’ his workers redundant. You tell me. He just didn’t want to employ anyone, and used it as an excuse. Bastard.”

“But surely, if he hadn’t been forced to give it up, you would still be in a job?”

The young man considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “Maybe,” he said reluctantly.

“So the government is to blame after all?”

“Maybe. Perhaps. But he could o’ just got them three people back in.”

“Who did you work for?”

With a few actually fairly mild expletives the reporter got the young man’s name, his address, and his previous employer.

“As long as you don’t broadcast me full name. Just call me, oh, Brian will do.”

“Agreed.”

The two parted with a brief handshake, and the reporter moved to another person to ask his questions. His editor would put his tape together into a coherent report, remove some of the unnecessary swear words, bleep others out and hide the man’s name. Always assuming the tape was used.

“Excuse me, do you mind if I ask you who you are complaining about?” He asked a young woman carrying a small child.

“Why won’t Thorn find us jobs? He’s made them get rid of the feddy things, but they’re still not employing people.”

“‘Feddy things’?” the reporter asked delicately.

“You know,” said the young woman scornfully, “them replicator things.” She turned to her friend to say something, and ignored the reporter, who moved to another person.

“Excuse me sir, do you mind if I ask you who you are complaining about?”

The older man, probably into his fifties, turned to the reporter with a half smile. “That’s easy young man. I want a job, but for that to happen I want the government to kick start the economy.”

“What should they be doing?”

“I heard what that young lady said about the replicators. That’s just frippery and fluff. They’re not important. The government has banned many imports, and the law of unintended consequences has meant that most of our exports have been banned in retaliation. I did many thousands of pounds worth of business every day with firms in Antwerp, Brussels, Bonn, and many other places in Western Europe. Now I can’t sell them, so I’ve had to make my staff redundant. They were skilled people, but if I can’t sell, I can’t employ.”

“What did you sell?”

“Precision micro engineering. We built tiny machines. Oh not these nano things you hear about. No, the smallest things we made were in the multiple millimetres, but they were precision made to exacting tolerances. I’d love to do that again, but the government needs to kick start the economy first.”

“Did you use replicators?”

“We had one, but we used it in the kitchen. We didn’t have a canteen as such, we weren’t big enough for that, so when we were offered one, we took it and used it in the kitchen.”

“But shouldn’t you have employed somebody to do that?”

“Then we would have had to build extra space, and we had no room for that. Our kitchen was a room, nine foot by eleven containing a micro wave, kettle and toaster, two fridges, a sink, and loads of cupboards. People brought in their own food. When we got the replicator, we just used it like a glorified food vending machine.”

“So it didn’t cause you to go out of business, or allow you to get rid of staff?”

“Oh no. The government did that quite nicely all on its own.”

“Thank you. Do you mind if I ask you your name and the name of your company?”

“Sure, just as long as you don’t broadcast it.”

“Thank you very much sir,” the reporter said a few minutes later.

There were a large number of reporters at the protest. Perhaps unintentionally, they all seemed to turn the blame onto the government. At first this didn’t matter, but the more people they spoke to, the more some of the protesters decided that perhaps the government was to blame after all.

All would have come to nothing however, had not some of these interviews been broadcast before the protest had even reached its final destination by Speakers’ Corner, on the edge of Hyde Park. Even then it wouldn’t have mattered too much had some of the louder and noisier participants not begun to shout anti-government rhetoric.

That was all that a few pro-government officials and supporters needed, and the police were ordered to arrest those people, and disperse the rest.

The police, of course, objected. It was a matter of principle with them that provided a march did not get physically violent, and provided they were not advocating violence or other illegal activities, then marches and protests were generally allowed to proceed. Marches that were campaigning to change the law and allow something that was currently illegal - cannabis for example - were also allowed to proceed: they were not advocating doing something illegal; they were trying to change the law.

To the police officers on the ground then, this march was perfectly legal, perfectly above board, mostly good humoured, loud, even musical in places where people had brought trumpets and drums, and very definitely acceptable.

“Leave them be,” one of the bronze commanders told his men. “As yet they’re happy and they’re peaceful.” When the Truth and Freedom official had left, fury showing on his face, the police superintendent quietly told his men to be on the lookout for trouble from the TaF.

The march eventually wound its way to Speakers’ Corner, where a number of people began to speak to the crowd. The first few speakers didn’t mention the government and its policies, but then a young woman got up onto the low stage and began to directly ask what the government was going to do.

“It’s all very well them saying we should work,” she shouted, “but if they then allow companies to export our jobs to China or India, how do they expect us to work?”

There were growls of agreement from the crowd, but still, so far, the crowd showed no signs of violence.

Not far away, Superintendent Dean Turtle of the Metropolitan Police, the local Bronze commander, was monitoring the crowd carefully, looking for trouble.

“Sir,” said a police sergeant, drawing his attention away from the crowd of demonstrators. “Over there.”

Turtle turned to where the sergeant was pointing. A small crowd of about a dozen or so uniformed men were gathering, though from this distance it was hard to see what the uniform was, or who was leading it.

“All right Sergeant, take two constables and go and see who they are, and what they’re up to. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you to keep calm and non-confrontational, but if they’re going to start something I need to know about it.”

“Yes sir,” said the sergeant briskly. Turning, he pointed at two constables standing not far away, also monitoring the crowd. “You and you, with me.” The three police officers wandered slowly in the general direction of the uniformed men. Sergeant Alec Bradshaw also did not want violence to occur, and his approach to the uniformed men was as low key as he could make it. It was a hundred years since Ernst Rohm’s brown shirted thugs had started to take to the streets in pre Second World War Germany; Bradshaw hadn’t been interested in 20th century history, so he didn’t immediately connect the brown shirts of these men with the brown shirts of Rohm’s SA. There were no swastikas for one thing. If he had, and had retreated at that point, some of the violence might have been avoided.

“Hello guys, you okay?” asked Sergeant Bradshaw of the man who looked to be in charge. The look he got in return raised his hackles, but he remained outwardly calm. “Can I ask what you’re up to?”

“Our jobs,” came the abrupt reply.

“And what might that be? I don’t recognise your uniform. Who exactly are you?”

The other two constables, both younger than Bradshaw, who was himself only twenty-three, looked on curiously, but said nothing. One noticed that many of the men here were carrying clubs of various sorts. He pointed it out casually to his colleague.

“We are the authority around here now,” came the arrogant reply. “And you will get lost or we’ll have you. You’re too scared to do your jobs, so we’ll do it for you.”

Bradshaw’s eyebrows rose. “I think,” he said slowly, “you had better disperse and go home. We don’t need any more trouble around here.”

More of the uniformed men had arrived now, and the three police officers suddenly realised there wasn’t just a dozen or so, but over forty. All three independently decided it would be prudent to retreat, but there was nowhere to go. The scuffle was brief and all three police officers ended up bleeding and immobilised, dumped behind some bushes on the edge of Hyde Park out of sight.

To Superintendent Turtle, this was a disaster, because when he next looked towards the uniformed men, some twenty minutes later, there were over a hundred milling around, and they looked to be organising themselves.

“Oh hell fire,” he muttered. “You,” he pointed at an inspector, “get the riot squads out here. I think there’s about to be violence.” He quickly contacted his silver commander, another superintendent based about two miles away with the Ambulance and Fire service silver commanders, and told her what was happening.

“Right, get your men into a cordon line between the two,” she ordered, “I’ll get bronze outer to bring his men up. Have you got any riot gear to hand?”

“No, but I’ve sent for the riot teams. We were never expecting this march to turn violent though.”

“Okay, good. Erm, any chance you can try and disperse the march, advise their leaders?”

“I’ll give it a try, but I think we’re in trouble. Those guys look like they mean business; and they’re starting to move this way.”

“Any idea who they are?”

“No,” said Turtle. “I’ve not seen them before. They look a bit like some of those Truth and Freedom thugs you sometimes see wandering around, but I’ve never seen anything like this before.”