Reading these short stories from the mid-1980s, it is clear that I enjoyed things set in the near future. Living in that era when the present was bleak the future really looked like it was going to be dystopia. This story written in Spring 1986 was influenced by the number of anarchists I knew in my late teens and how I perceived them as misguided in expecting any change to come after seven years of Thatcherism. They seemed to follow radicalism because it seemed cool and I remember complaining that it was a shame the pop group U2 did not support the IRA as it would make them cooler to follow. This story was also influenced by programmes like 'Noah's Castle' which I have mentioned before which I found both attractive and yet frightening, and certainly all too possible. Looking at it now, I see a connection into my novel, 'The Karskoe Assassin' about a group of terrorists which is manipulated and destroyed by the authorities.
There was also the constant example of Northern Ireland with its incessant violence and bleakness; the burnt out cars and the armoured vehicles were drawn from those television images. Seeing funerals of those killed in mid-March of this year, it seemed in fact despite the peace process quite a great deal has not changed. The title of this story was a distortion of 'The Red Flag' a Socialist anthem which used to be sung at Labour Party conferences and there were complaints from left-wing students at the school that I had abused it. However, I was pleased that I had at least attracted their attention and usually the only one who commented on my 'odd' stories was one of the History teachers. One thing that comes out in this story as with 'Manmade Man?' was how addicted I was to ellipses, presumably because they seemed urgent and trendy. 'MP' in this story refers to Military Police, clearly I had assumed that they would be given jurisdiction over the civilian population in this future. When I had visited the Netherlands in 1985 I had seen Dutch military police being used in Amsterdam on civilian-jurisdiction duties to combat the drugs trade. I remember they drove mud-brown Volkswagen camper vans. The reference to the prime minister I think was inspired by the Brighton bombing of 1984 which I had envisaged a very harsh government response to.
The People's Flag is Deepest Black ...
The armoured car drove slowly past, its headlights cut deeply into the cool darkness.
"... declared. Stay off the streets, looters will be shot. Martial law has been declared. Stay off ..." The address system droned on as the vehicle round the corner into the next street.
"Come on, along here." A figure with its voice muffled by thick scarves scrambled out of an alley, a shorter person followed behind.
Bricks and bottles lay strewn along the road. The pair passed the burnt out remains of a small call, still smouldering. There was the sound of gun fire in the distance, across town and flashes lit up the sky. Suddenly glass shattered and an alarm rang out. There were footsteps, the the rattle of machine gun fire. A man fell to the ground, dead; his flour bags scattered and burst on the tarmac.
The first figure approached a side door, its wood was battered, the small windows by it were boarded over. The figure knocked, then again. There was a pause and the door swung open. The two entered and closed the door; they passed through another then up a narrow staircase. Finally they entered a room, lit by a few candles.
"Who's this?" A fat woman sat at a table with a rifle lying in front of her, "why's he here?" she leant forward to address the taller figure.
"Keith put him onto us, he wants to join," the first unwrapped his scarves, exposing the face of a man in his early twenties, red and sweating from running.
"Look, we've got enough trouble with the MP's on our backs continually. We're moving West, away from the centre of things, hopefully to re-group. This whole thing's been a mess, has been since the Prime Minister was gunned down. It's been a chain of bombs, shootings and riots."
"We realise there's chaos but there's nothing we can do, the overthrow failed and now the Army's in power." a middle-aged man interjected as he appeared from the shadows behind her.
"You're right, the people come first. There's hunger, no services; the junta's crippling the nation, 'till we're squeezed out - ten shot or arrested in a fortnight from this cell alone."
"That's why I brought him. We need as many as possible." the young man broke in.
The plump woman turned to the shorter figure; he removed his face-mask. The woman leant forward.
"Why do you want to join?"
"I want a better Britain, fit for humanity." the youth replied.
"Cut the rubbish. This is no interview. We want dedicated troops, to liberate us from this oppression."
"I'm willing to risk it, for the end of domination."
"Sounds too rehearsed. He's an infiltrator." The middle-aged man concluded.
"Look I'm starving. I've got nothing to lose. I can help." the youth added.
"What can you do? Fire this?" the woman questioned.
"I could practice."
"Practice is not what we've got time for, we're leaving soon."
"I've got nothing with me."
"What you've got is enough. Take this." she handed him an automatic pistol. "Get him a sub-machine gun as well. Use them well."
"Trust me."
"We'll have to. One step out of line and we shoot. the middle-aged man handed him the gun. "We don't stay for injured."
"MP's!" There was a shot from downstairs; another younger woman leapt up from downstairs, with a gun at her waist.
"You idiot!" the leader bellowed, "Through here!" The rest of the group hurried through another door into an adjoining room, then outside onto the roof. The candles blew out in the strong draught. The leader snatched up her rifle. There was a crash and a CS canister burst through the window. The youth ran forward through the smoke, but the woman threw him back; he crumpled against the door.
"They followed you," she spluttered, "you traitor."
The youth turned. There were two thuds as the bullets tore into his back. The body tumbled down the rotten stairs. The leader turned and ran through the door as she heard feet hammer up the stairs.
Showing posts with label 'Noah's Castle'. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 'Noah's Castle'. Show all posts
Friday, 1 May 2009
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Is 'Noah's Castle' on the Horizon?
This probably sounds like a Biblical posting, but in fact it refers to a novel, 'Noah's Castle' written by John Rowe Townsend and published in 1975 which was televised as a children's series in 1980 on ITV. People often look back nostalgically at the drama series produced for children on British television in the 1970s. Some of the series were incredibly serious and not that appealing, there was a bit too much Victorian dullness to them, but fantastical elements were also common producing programmes which are seared into the memory of people who saw them. If you search the internet for information about 'Noah's Castle' you will also find references from people in their 30s and 40s saying how chilling it was.
Looking back on that time I remember quite a few dramas worth a mention and would point you to 'The Changes' (broadcast 1975; based on Peter Dickinson's triology of novels: 'The Weathermonger' (1968), 'Heartsease' (1969) and 'The Devil's Children' (1970)), 'The Owl Service' (first broadcast 1969; based on Alan Garner's novel of the same name (1969) still very frightening) and 'A Traveller in Time' (broadcast 1978; based on Alison Uttley's (1884-1976) novel of the same name which I believe was published in 1934 and re-released in 1977). These were dramas aimed at 'older children' which had a fantastical elements, respectively a force making people destroy machines, a kind of animal spirit trying to dominate a house, and slipping back into Elizabethan times, but also addressed the issues in an adult way, often looking at responsibility, loyalty, dealing with danger, etc. I know some of these issues are tackled by even cartoon series these days, but these series needed commitment. I think that their descendant is the Harry Potter series which combines fantasy and the serious and is also tied into novels. So, perhaps the demand for these things has not entirely disappeared.
It is a shame, that despite so much 'retro' TV getting on to DVD that these series are not available. There was a 4-hour video of 'The Changes' but I have not seen the others. Given how well 'Mr. Benn', 'The Clangers' and 'Catweazle' have all gone down with the 6-year old in my house I was thinking that in a couple of years he might be ready for this kind of series, he can recite the Harry Potter films back word-for-word (very irritating if you are trying to watch them!).
Sorry, I have wandered right of track now in typical mid-life nostalgia. The reason why I have picked on 'Noah's Castle' out of all of these is because it is set in the near future and focuses on the UK experiencing a period of hyper-inflation. Even growing up in the 1970s when pictures from Northern Ireland of riot police and soldiers in armoured vehiclers, those full-face helmets, with baton guns and real guns fighting against protestors, were common to envisage such things in a street in the Home Counties, protecting food convoys was startling, I think to adults as well as child viewers. Of course we had been through inflation in the 1970s triggered by the sharp oil price rises from 1973 onwards so it seemed quite possible that things would go further. Of course Thatcher had come to power in 1979 and soon we moved from inflation to mass unemployment as being the great social divider (does any of this sound familiar in the current situation?) It is nearly 30 years since I saw the series and read the novel, but some things stand out. The hero in the series is Norman Mortimer, the Noah character. He runs a shoe shop and in one scene a man tries to buy a pair of children's shoes but they cost £320. Nessie, who if I remember correctly is the elder daughter and her boyfriend become involved in an increasingly radicalised movement which supplies food to elderly people, a bit like a revolutionary meals-on-wheels service and all they can bring to this one old person is a handful of potatoes.
The Mortimers, who have four children and a large detached house, effectively begin barricading themselves in. Thus like Noah in the ark they would weather the 'storm' of food shortages and come out into whatever world would come after. Norman Mortimer has been stockpiling food for months during the lead up to the real crisis and feels he and his family can survive keeping outsiders back. Of course his family is divided over this especially the two sons Barry and Geoff, one of whom supports his father, the other who increasingly contests his views. So, like all the best of these series, it combines broad sweeps of drama with family tensions too. The issue of a father on a mission trying to get his children to come along with him is a common but interesting them that many readers/viewers can relate to. In terms of the series I thought the way it appeared to be just into the future, not only in terms of the police (remember this was before the UK police force outside Northern Ireland had any riot equipment as was revealed in 1981 during the Brixton riot when they relied on shields improvised from dustbin lids, so it was more startling than today) but also in terms of fashions, which was a clever touch. The teenagers wore things that were high trends in 1980, but seemed to have become as normal as jeans by the period of the story. In some way, though we did not experience food riots in the 1980s, the series was echoed greatly in clashes between police and protestors during the Miners' Strike 1984-5 and the Poll Tax Riots of 1990. By then of course the police had the equipment they had been shown with in 'Noah's Castle'.
To some degree 'Noah's Castle' was almost a 'what if?'. One could envisage that if James Callaghan had held an election in Autumn 1978 when he was expected to and so scraped a victory before the widespread public sector strikes of Winter 1978/9 that by, say, 1982 you could have had a situation as shown in the book/series. This would have come about, if, there was another sharp oil price rise (as in fact happened following the Iranian Revolution of 1979) and pay had not been restrained by mass unemployment and to keep the economy going on a pseudo-Keynesian basis consumption was kept up by wage settlements leading to hyper-inflation. I do not know if Townsend was a monetarist but his novel could have easily been used to show up the potential dangers of an unrestricted flow of money through public spending and consumption that the monetarists sought to counter.
Are we coming back to an era when 'Noah's Castle' again appears feasible? Possibly. Interestingly, I do not remember if there was reference to fuel costs spiralling, though I think I remember power cuts in the series. This of course is the big burden on the British public alongside petrol and food costs. Back in the 1970s in the UK all power supplies and utilities like water and sewage were state-run which meant that there was far greater control over prices. Now they are all run by very greedy private companies which make vast profits, so this factor comes to the fore in a way Townsend could not have foreseen. Petrol has always been a major factor in inflation across the world and prices since the late 1960s have been driven up by both the countries producing the oil and by the multinational companies which move it around and refine it. Interestingly the British seem far happier rioting about petrol than they are about food. In the 20th century there were very few food riots in the UK, someone might correct me on this, but the last one was probably in Liverpool in 1911 when the whole city was effectively under a state of siege with a dock and railway strike meaning food was not getting into the city and armed police and soldiers patrolled the streets, protected food convoys and defended bakeries from attack. Contrast this with blockades and fuel protests against the increase in petrol prices and duty on petrol that we have seen throughout the 2000s. In addition, farms are being raided by people trying to get hold of 'red' diesel which is sold at a subsidised price to farmers and they even follow tankers around to see where the fuel is being delivered. People are increasingly processing used food fats and oils at home to make bio-fuel and now even chipshops are being broken into to get hold of their oil. I think a lot of this comes down to the British being more concerned more about their 'right to drive' than feeding their families.
To some extent the impact of inflation has been reduced by competition among UK shops. Whilst £1 in every £10 spent in the UK goes to Tescos, there are four (five now with the Co-op takeover of Somerfield) large supermarket chains that seem happy to reduce prices and compete sharply between them. Of course we have lost the small shops of the 1970s but in times of inflation they cannot keep up because they lack the economies of scale. UK supermarkets still have a profit margin wider than that of equivalents on continental Europe which is partly why food price inflation bites harder in the UK than it does elsewhere in the EU/ Due to climactic factors and demand food prices are rising globally but in the UK the price to the consumer is affected more by the cost of moving the food to the shop than the actual food price, bringing us back to petrol.
What we are seeing which is characteristic of the 1970s is the circle of price rises prompting demand for salary increases especially in the public sector and we are seeing strikes as in the 1970s by everyone from school caretakers to coastguards and even the police are demanding the right to strike something they have not done in the UK since 1918. Public sector pay has been kept down during the stable period of New Labour rule and even without the current difficulties it is likely there would be demands for increases. The interesting thing is people expect inflation to come from high demand and so assume that it will mean a high demand for workers. However, a lot of the inflationary factors have become detached from demand, well certainly local demand as much of the oil price rise comes from Chinese rather than US or European demand for oil. Similarly the food price inflation does not come from any shortage of food, the EU still produces more food than it needs, it comes from factors such as transport costs. So, unsurprisingly we are seeing rising unemployment too. Another difference to the 1970s is that in 1974, a year behind the USA, for the first time more economic activity in the UK came from service sector jobs rather than manufacturing. This shift was accelerated by the Thatcherite policies. Service work is more responsive to shifts in demand from the public and the sector which is seeing the fastest fall, housing, is showing the quickest rise in unemployment as seen by falls in building and estate agency employment.
Of course it is weird that the single greatest contributor to UK inflation, house prices, are falling fast, an average house has dropped £4000 (€5040; US$8000) in the past month. To some degree this is beneficial because it means that once other inflationary factors cool, then the UK will not be as so out of step with the rest of the EU as it usually is. In addition, it should cool the vicious speculatory pressure that has been going on in the UK with loads of money being pumped into high-value developments, buy-to-let, etc. which overheats the economy. In some ways though we have not seen an abrupt crash, we are almost coming to the end of an era of over-speculation in a way that the Wall Street Crash of 1929 did in terms of shares. It will very much hurt those people who took out mortgages for 90%-125% of the value of their property, but for most people they will be able to hang on (unless they get made unemployed and there is more payment insurance these days than 20 years ago). It will be tenants with rents already rising in some cities I have visited by £80 per month (about an 8% increase) and those who lose out when the landlord/lady defaults on the mortgage and the tenants are evicted with no rights to remain under current UK law.
I do not think we will see 'Noah's Castle' as a reality in the near future, partly because in contrast to France and Spain the British rarely riot about anything and are easily cowed by the police let alone the Army. They see no common interests with anyone else and actually what is liable to happen in the UK as inflation rises will be communities turning against themselves, seeking out local scapegoats rather than the people behind the difficulties. Of course immigrants and ethnic minorities are going to be attacked, so rather than the assaults of food convoys as portrayed in the series I can see police defending the homes of Polish workers in the UK from violent mobs. What is certain is the relative peace and stability of say 1994-2007 is now at an end. Even the most positive see the problem persisting at least until 2009. It took 1990-3 before the problems with the housing market collapse shook themselves out, some perhaps 2011 is a more accurate prediction. In the meantime we are going to have a nasty mix of 1970s-style inflation and shortages and 1980s-style mass unemployment which is not going to make the last quarter of the 2000s a nice time to live. Maybe I should be stockpiling tins of food and candles now.
Looking back on that time I remember quite a few dramas worth a mention and would point you to 'The Changes' (broadcast 1975; based on Peter Dickinson's triology of novels: 'The Weathermonger' (1968), 'Heartsease' (1969) and 'The Devil's Children' (1970)), 'The Owl Service' (first broadcast 1969; based on Alan Garner's novel of the same name (1969) still very frightening) and 'A Traveller in Time' (broadcast 1978; based on Alison Uttley's (1884-1976) novel of the same name which I believe was published in 1934 and re-released in 1977). These were dramas aimed at 'older children' which had a fantastical elements, respectively a force making people destroy machines, a kind of animal spirit trying to dominate a house, and slipping back into Elizabethan times, but also addressed the issues in an adult way, often looking at responsibility, loyalty, dealing with danger, etc. I know some of these issues are tackled by even cartoon series these days, but these series needed commitment. I think that their descendant is the Harry Potter series which combines fantasy and the serious and is also tied into novels. So, perhaps the demand for these things has not entirely disappeared.
It is a shame, that despite so much 'retro' TV getting on to DVD that these series are not available. There was a 4-hour video of 'The Changes' but I have not seen the others. Given how well 'Mr. Benn', 'The Clangers' and 'Catweazle' have all gone down with the 6-year old in my house I was thinking that in a couple of years he might be ready for this kind of series, he can recite the Harry Potter films back word-for-word (very irritating if you are trying to watch them!).
Sorry, I have wandered right of track now in typical mid-life nostalgia. The reason why I have picked on 'Noah's Castle' out of all of these is because it is set in the near future and focuses on the UK experiencing a period of hyper-inflation. Even growing up in the 1970s when pictures from Northern Ireland of riot police and soldiers in armoured vehiclers, those full-face helmets, with baton guns and real guns fighting against protestors, were common to envisage such things in a street in the Home Counties, protecting food convoys was startling, I think to adults as well as child viewers. Of course we had been through inflation in the 1970s triggered by the sharp oil price rises from 1973 onwards so it seemed quite possible that things would go further. Of course Thatcher had come to power in 1979 and soon we moved from inflation to mass unemployment as being the great social divider (does any of this sound familiar in the current situation?) It is nearly 30 years since I saw the series and read the novel, but some things stand out. The hero in the series is Norman Mortimer, the Noah character. He runs a shoe shop and in one scene a man tries to buy a pair of children's shoes but they cost £320. Nessie, who if I remember correctly is the elder daughter and her boyfriend become involved in an increasingly radicalised movement which supplies food to elderly people, a bit like a revolutionary meals-on-wheels service and all they can bring to this one old person is a handful of potatoes.
The Mortimers, who have four children and a large detached house, effectively begin barricading themselves in. Thus like Noah in the ark they would weather the 'storm' of food shortages and come out into whatever world would come after. Norman Mortimer has been stockpiling food for months during the lead up to the real crisis and feels he and his family can survive keeping outsiders back. Of course his family is divided over this especially the two sons Barry and Geoff, one of whom supports his father, the other who increasingly contests his views. So, like all the best of these series, it combines broad sweeps of drama with family tensions too. The issue of a father on a mission trying to get his children to come along with him is a common but interesting them that many readers/viewers can relate to. In terms of the series I thought the way it appeared to be just into the future, not only in terms of the police (remember this was before the UK police force outside Northern Ireland had any riot equipment as was revealed in 1981 during the Brixton riot when they relied on shields improvised from dustbin lids, so it was more startling than today) but also in terms of fashions, which was a clever touch. The teenagers wore things that were high trends in 1980, but seemed to have become as normal as jeans by the period of the story. In some way, though we did not experience food riots in the 1980s, the series was echoed greatly in clashes between police and protestors during the Miners' Strike 1984-5 and the Poll Tax Riots of 1990. By then of course the police had the equipment they had been shown with in 'Noah's Castle'.
To some degree 'Noah's Castle' was almost a 'what if?'. One could envisage that if James Callaghan had held an election in Autumn 1978 when he was expected to and so scraped a victory before the widespread public sector strikes of Winter 1978/9 that by, say, 1982 you could have had a situation as shown in the book/series. This would have come about, if, there was another sharp oil price rise (as in fact happened following the Iranian Revolution of 1979) and pay had not been restrained by mass unemployment and to keep the economy going on a pseudo-Keynesian basis consumption was kept up by wage settlements leading to hyper-inflation. I do not know if Townsend was a monetarist but his novel could have easily been used to show up the potential dangers of an unrestricted flow of money through public spending and consumption that the monetarists sought to counter.
Are we coming back to an era when 'Noah's Castle' again appears feasible? Possibly. Interestingly, I do not remember if there was reference to fuel costs spiralling, though I think I remember power cuts in the series. This of course is the big burden on the British public alongside petrol and food costs. Back in the 1970s in the UK all power supplies and utilities like water and sewage were state-run which meant that there was far greater control over prices. Now they are all run by very greedy private companies which make vast profits, so this factor comes to the fore in a way Townsend could not have foreseen. Petrol has always been a major factor in inflation across the world and prices since the late 1960s have been driven up by both the countries producing the oil and by the multinational companies which move it around and refine it. Interestingly the British seem far happier rioting about petrol than they are about food. In the 20th century there were very few food riots in the UK, someone might correct me on this, but the last one was probably in Liverpool in 1911 when the whole city was effectively under a state of siege with a dock and railway strike meaning food was not getting into the city and armed police and soldiers patrolled the streets, protected food convoys and defended bakeries from attack. Contrast this with blockades and fuel protests against the increase in petrol prices and duty on petrol that we have seen throughout the 2000s. In addition, farms are being raided by people trying to get hold of 'red' diesel which is sold at a subsidised price to farmers and they even follow tankers around to see where the fuel is being delivered. People are increasingly processing used food fats and oils at home to make bio-fuel and now even chipshops are being broken into to get hold of their oil. I think a lot of this comes down to the British being more concerned more about their 'right to drive' than feeding their families.
To some extent the impact of inflation has been reduced by competition among UK shops. Whilst £1 in every £10 spent in the UK goes to Tescos, there are four (five now with the Co-op takeover of Somerfield) large supermarket chains that seem happy to reduce prices and compete sharply between them. Of course we have lost the small shops of the 1970s but in times of inflation they cannot keep up because they lack the economies of scale. UK supermarkets still have a profit margin wider than that of equivalents on continental Europe which is partly why food price inflation bites harder in the UK than it does elsewhere in the EU/ Due to climactic factors and demand food prices are rising globally but in the UK the price to the consumer is affected more by the cost of moving the food to the shop than the actual food price, bringing us back to petrol.
What we are seeing which is characteristic of the 1970s is the circle of price rises prompting demand for salary increases especially in the public sector and we are seeing strikes as in the 1970s by everyone from school caretakers to coastguards and even the police are demanding the right to strike something they have not done in the UK since 1918. Public sector pay has been kept down during the stable period of New Labour rule and even without the current difficulties it is likely there would be demands for increases. The interesting thing is people expect inflation to come from high demand and so assume that it will mean a high demand for workers. However, a lot of the inflationary factors have become detached from demand, well certainly local demand as much of the oil price rise comes from Chinese rather than US or European demand for oil. Similarly the food price inflation does not come from any shortage of food, the EU still produces more food than it needs, it comes from factors such as transport costs. So, unsurprisingly we are seeing rising unemployment too. Another difference to the 1970s is that in 1974, a year behind the USA, for the first time more economic activity in the UK came from service sector jobs rather than manufacturing. This shift was accelerated by the Thatcherite policies. Service work is more responsive to shifts in demand from the public and the sector which is seeing the fastest fall, housing, is showing the quickest rise in unemployment as seen by falls in building and estate agency employment.
Of course it is weird that the single greatest contributor to UK inflation, house prices, are falling fast, an average house has dropped £4000 (€5040; US$8000) in the past month. To some degree this is beneficial because it means that once other inflationary factors cool, then the UK will not be as so out of step with the rest of the EU as it usually is. In addition, it should cool the vicious speculatory pressure that has been going on in the UK with loads of money being pumped into high-value developments, buy-to-let, etc. which overheats the economy. In some ways though we have not seen an abrupt crash, we are almost coming to the end of an era of over-speculation in a way that the Wall Street Crash of 1929 did in terms of shares. It will very much hurt those people who took out mortgages for 90%-125% of the value of their property, but for most people they will be able to hang on (unless they get made unemployed and there is more payment insurance these days than 20 years ago). It will be tenants with rents already rising in some cities I have visited by £80 per month (about an 8% increase) and those who lose out when the landlord/lady defaults on the mortgage and the tenants are evicted with no rights to remain under current UK law.
I do not think we will see 'Noah's Castle' as a reality in the near future, partly because in contrast to France and Spain the British rarely riot about anything and are easily cowed by the police let alone the Army. They see no common interests with anyone else and actually what is liable to happen in the UK as inflation rises will be communities turning against themselves, seeking out local scapegoats rather than the people behind the difficulties. Of course immigrants and ethnic minorities are going to be attacked, so rather than the assaults of food convoys as portrayed in the series I can see police defending the homes of Polish workers in the UK from violent mobs. What is certain is the relative peace and stability of say 1994-2007 is now at an end. Even the most positive see the problem persisting at least until 2009. It took 1990-3 before the problems with the housing market collapse shook themselves out, some perhaps 2011 is a more accurate prediction. In the meantime we are going to have a nasty mix of 1970s-style inflation and shortages and 1980s-style mass unemployment which is not going to make the last quarter of the 2000s a nice time to live. Maybe I should be stockpiling tins of food and candles now.
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