Introduction

What was it like in the early days of New Order? Not from the politician’s perspective, you understand – that has been written about in countless political memoirs over the last twenty years – but from the perspective of the man in the street. Some claimed the election of New Order was a great intellectual triumph, an imaginative harnessing by women of their own power for their own benefit.

The trouble is “intellectual” doesn’t have a great track record here in the UK. I’m reminded of the W.H. Auden poem that goes: “To the man in the street who, I’m sorry to say, is a keen observer of life, the word ‘intellectual’ suggests straight away, a man who’s untrue to his wife.”

Our “man-in-the street” is David Anders. For reasons we don’t know, David started to keep a journal in May 2021, just when New Order was elected. It’s not clear how it survived, but it did. As well as creating the journal, David saved a number of press cuttings and other items. These are reproduced in the location they appear in the narrative. Now the journal is providing social and political historians with new insights into the early days of New Order.

From what we learn in the journal, he works in an office in Stanbury, a small provincial town about fifty miles south west of London. He lives not far away in a small village called Fordswell. He has a girlfriend, Angela Casey, that he has been with for the past few months. He’s not sure if she is “the one,” but they get on well and it seems to be working. She has her own place but sometimes sleeps over with David. From the journal it seems as though Angela was not one of the founding New Order activists but she soon develops enthusiastic support for their programme.

The Diary of David Anders

Thursday, May 13th 2021

Well, this election campaign has been a right farce. The Liberal – Labour coalition has been a disaster – it’s surprising it lasted as long as it did. Neither Labour nor Conservative seem to have any answer to the shambles the country is in. I’ve listened to both of them and, apart from each blaming the other for the Brexit fiasco, neither of them seem to have the slightest idea of what we should be doing next. I didn’t vote. Can’t see how either of them are going to make any difference.

I suggested to Angie, my girlfriend (we’ve been together about two months I guess), that we forget about it all and get an early night. She wasn’t in the mood though — wanted to go and watch the results with some girlfriends of hers. Shame really, I quite fancied a fuck to take my mind off it. Had to make do with a beer from the fridge.

Friday May 14, 2021

Blimey, I don’t think anyone saw that coming, least of all the press.

Turns out pretty much everyone agreed with me that the two main parties didn’t have a clue. Plenty of people didn’t vote – a record low turnout the pundits say. But those that did have put this “New Order” party in with a massive majority. I can’t say I took much notice of them during the election. There was one woman I saw on one of the television debates trying to talk what sounded like sense but she got howled down by the others there. Don’t think I saw anything about them much in the papers. They had a lot of posters around, now I come to think about it, stuff on social media and there were a few meetings in the village hall. Angie stood me up for one of them. I was a bit pissed off about that but she’d come back saying it was all very interesting and we’d had great make-up sex. Her on top – she doesn’t usually want to do that.

So, we’ll see what this lot do with the country. They can’t fuck it up any worse than the last bunch of useless dicks.

Angie was back late from work. She works in admin for a small firm of lawyers. It’s not that well paid – she feels she’s wasting her degree, but it was what she could get and the firm do quite a lot of civil liberty work which Angie says means she feels at least she’s involved with something worthwhile.

Sunday May 16th 2021

Had a good long lie-in until Angie kicked me out of bed. “Haven’t you heard, women are running the country now. You ought to get me breakfast!” We had a good laugh but then I thought, well, fair enough. It meant we spent the whole morning on the bed, fooling around. Coffee, orange juice, bread rolls, the Sunday papers, and a lazy screw: can’t ask for more really, can you?

There was a big feature in the newspaper on the front runners for government posts. I made the mistake of saying the woman they think will get Minister of Culture and Arts looks like a stripper. Angie wasn’t amused. Turns out she’d been at that meeting Angie went to and Angie thinks she’s got some really good ideas about how to run the country and, she said, “One is we won’t put up with that sort of sexist shit any more!” You wouldn’t believe how much being hit with a rolled-up copy of the Sunday Times magazine can hurt. Laughed about it afterwards, though.

I don’t think there’s going to be any men in the Government if the article is right. Angie reckons that’s what she’d expect. Seems that New Order want to “get away from male dominated decision making,” she says. They seem to think that’s what gave us the financial crash, Brexit, the farce over the Argentinians finally taking over the Falklands Islands, and that last round of jobs-for-sex scandals in Parliament. Can’t argue with that really, I suppose, so maybe a change will be a good thing.

Wednesday May 26th

It’s been a strange week at work with people trying to settle down after the election and all the changes New Order are talking about. I don’t believe half of it, but the girls in the office are all wandering around with a smirk on their faces. The whole “male dominated decision making” thing seems to have caught on. There’s “No MDDM!” graffiti everywhere on walls around town. Somebody even posted a cartoon of our manager on the office notice board with a red line through his face and “No MDDM!” underneath it.

The Government’s Minister for Trade has said she’s going to introduce legislation requiring all company boards to have a majority of women members. The Institute of Directors has kicked up a stink about that. The Labour party opposition leader said why don’t they add worker representation to that and the New Order spokeswoman said they’d start listening to their suggestions once they had a majority of women on Labour’s National Executive Committee. Childish really, but you can’t blame them after the way that Labour acted when the Brexit talks collapsed.

Tuesday June 1st

Our company has really got on the “No MDDM!” bandwagon. (Not surprising, really – we do a lot of business with Government, so they were bound to want to be seen as playing the game.) Every working group now has to have a majority of women. I got kicked off the Service Planning Group to make way for some 21-year-old girl graduate – Lucy, I think — so they could make the numbers balance. She seemed a bit embarrassed about it, but it didn’t stop her taking the place. Still, at least I don’t have to sit in those boring-as-shit meetings any more. Three of the senior managers – all men – quit today. Nobody gave any reasons but new appointments mean the Operations Division, Sales & Marketing, and Finance and Accounting are now all led by women.

Wednesday June 2nd

Popped into the pub tonight. Angie was off at some meeting or other. Kev and Norm were there. Kev was moaning that his wife has got really keen on the whole New Order agenda and has got really bossy. She says if the country is going to be run by women, then her house is, too. Kev says he can’t understand how New Order ever got in. Who would ever vote for an idea like that? He seems to have missed the fact that their manifesto was pretty popular with women, which were half of the electorate (actually more like 60% of those that actually bothered to vote according to the analysis I’ve read).

Then Norm said he’d actually voted for New Order. He’d thought they’d be a breath of fresh air. Kev was dumbstruck! Said the only reason he would vote to put women on a pedestal was so he could look up their skirts. Karen, the barmaid, called him out for that. Told him to watch his language or he could do his drinking at home. Norm tried to explain what he thought – how the country needed a change of direction and New Order would do it – but Kev was pretty scathing. He reckons it’s only a matter of time before they’re rounding up men and putting them in sex camps to keep the women amused. I think he’s exaggerating but some of the things they are talking about, like restricting where men can be employed, are worrying.

Angie got back from her meeting late. I don’t know what she’d been to but she was really up for it when we got to bed. Rolled me over on my back and sat astride my chest and slid herself forward until her crotch was over my face. Grabbed me by the hair so it was pretty obvious what she wanted. I like to think I’m OK at that, so I got stuck in and that seemed to get her going nicely. I thought that would get her warmed up and then we could roll over and I’d get to fuck her as usual. She wasn’t having any of that, though. Every time I tried to back off, she pulled my head back until she came – practically broke my neck.

“Mm, that was nice,” she said, rolled off me, and went to sleep. I was just left there with a sore face and my dick sticking up like a tent pole while I had to listen to her snoring.

Thursday June 3rd

I got propositioned at work! That’s something new.

Lucy – the girl that took my place on the Service Planning Group — stopped by my office. “Sorry you got kicked off the team,” she said. “I wanted you to know I didn’t have anything to do with it.” I grunted something non-committal. It wasn’t a big deal after all – nothing compared to the mass exits of directors across FTSE 100 boards across the country. “But I thought, you still might like to give me your input. In private, so other staff wouldn’t know you were being included. I mean, you’ve got a lot of experience in services. And, well, it might be fun...” At this point Lucy was perched on my desk with her skirt practically up to her hips and licking her lips with a “you might think I’m getting ready to kiss you but I could be just about to bite your dick off” look on her face. I suppose I must have hesitated.

“You know you can always use friends around the office. Especially on the right side of the gender line.”

I nodded and said something like “that would be great” as she hopped off my desk. I’m hoping Lucy forgets about this but I have a feeling she won’t. I don’t think I’ll mention the conversation to Angie, though. Lucy’s about five years younger than Angie and me. She might not understand.

Thinking about it, it sounded pretty close to harassment. Maybe I’ll start a Twitter hash tag: #mentoo. Trouble is, I’ve got a feeling that if I reported it to HR, the new woman they’ve got running it wouldn’t be too keen to listen.

Friday June 4th

Tried talking to Angie about Wednesday night. She said she’s been reading this book by one of the New Order founders about how men’s view of sex has been allowed to take over and how women’s needs are ignored. Apparently, penetration by the male member is a political act. I asked her if she fancied an evening’s political activism. Apparently, that was the wrong thing to say. She stormed off back to her flat.

I hadn’t realised that Angie had actually become a New Order party member.

Saturday June 5th

I spent most of today on the phone trying to apologise to Angie, mostly talking to her answering machine. When I finally got through to her, she let me talk for a bit and then said, “All right, I’ll think about it, but IF I do, we’ll do sex my way or not at all. All right?”

Chapter 1 »