Union Jack. V. McDermid L.

       1

      ‘Delegates are discouraged from travelling to conference by private car, and mileage expenses will only be paid in extraordinary circumstances. This is because, firstly, the union has negotiated a bulk-rate discount with British Rail; secondly, there are limited car-parking facilities available at the hotels we are using; and thirdly, the chances are that when driving home on Friday afternoon at the end of conference you will still be over the limit from Thursday night’s excesses. It is not the union’s policy to encourage members to lose their licences due to drink-driving.’

      from ‘Advice for New Delegates’, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

      ‘This traffic’s murder,’ Ian Ross complained, easing the car forward another couple of feet. ‘Look at it,’ he added, waving his arm at the sea of hot metal that surrounded them.

      Lindsay Gordon did as she was told, for once. In the distance, Blackpool Tower’s iron tracery stood outlined against the skyline like an Eiffel Tower souvenir on a mantelpiece. ‘Only the Journalists’ Union could organise a conference that involves 400 delegates travelling to the biggest holiday resort in the North of England on Easter Monday,’ he remarked caustically. ‘Bloody Blackpool. It’s taken us an hour to travel six miles. By the time we get to the hotel, the conference will be over and it’ll be time to come home. I bet you wish you’d taken the train, don’t you? You could have been walking along the prom by now, eating candy-floss and wearing a kiss-me-quick hat.’ Ian glanced sideways and saw the bleak look on Lindsay’s face. He sighed. ‘Sorry, love. I wasn’t thinking.’

      ‘It’s okay. I’ve told you. You don’t have to treat me like a piece of porcelain.’ An awkward silence filled the car. Lindsay patted Ian’s hand and repeated, ‘It’s okay.’

      Ian nodded. ‘Time for The World At One. Shall I stick the radio on?’

      ‘Sure.’ Lindsay leaned back in her seat and tried to let the radio obliterate her thoughts.

      ‘A hundred arrests are made in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in the worst violence of the miners’ strike so far. Police clash with miners outside several collieries, and NUM leader Arthur Scargill accuses officers of intimidation. Anti-apartheid protesters besiege the Home Office after last week’s decision to grant British citizenship to the South African runner Zola Budd. And Senator Gary Hart fights to continue his campaign against Walter Mondale for the Democratic nomination in the US Presidential race.’ The announcer’s voice droned on, fleshing out the day’s headlines. But Lindsay’s mind was already miles away.

      It had been a mistake to come. She had been too easily persuaded by Ian. She wasn’t ready for this. It was hard enough coping with the day to day routine of life, a routine that was manageable precisely because it was familiar, because her mind could drift off into free-fall while she gave the appearance of being in touch with what was going on around her. But to plunge into something so strange and challenging as her first national union conference was madness. It had been bad enough just reading about conference. She’d had to give up on the ‘Advice for New Delegates’ booklet half-way through, her head spinning with such bizarre and diverse items as ‘taking a motion seriatim’ and ‘compositing sessions’. How on earth was she going to wrestle with the real thing with only half her brain functioning?

      Ian had meant well, she knew that. He was a news sub-editor on the tabloid newspaper where Lindsay, at twenty-five, was the most junior staff reporter. When she had started to show an interest in the union, speaking up at the meetings of the Daily Nation’s office chapel, it was Ian who had taken the time to explain to her how their union functioned in national newspapers. He had spent the weary, slow hours of several night-shifts outlining the organisation and the internal politics that governed the union far more than the rule book.

      Lindsay, who had learned about socialism and solidarity from her fisherman father as soon as she could grasp the concepts, was bemused by the schisms and hierarchies of what she had naïvely imagined would be an organisation unified by a common aim. It didn’t take her long to decide that the entrenched power of the national newspaper chapels generated its own inbuilt conservatism, and that the real arenas for potential change within the union lay elsewhere. The radical concepts of feminism and genuinely representative democracy that were dear to her were clearly never going to find fertile soil in this sector of the industry. Here traditions had provided the hacks with a comfort zone where they could all be good old boys together, and to hell with troublesome dykes, poofs, women, jungle bunnies and cripples.

      That complacency placed the Daily Nation’s chapel high on Lindsay’s list of institutions in need of a short, sharp shock. But before she could do anything about it, she’d been overtaken by events that had rendered the Journalists’ Union as significant as a speck of dust in a rainstorm. In the weeks that had followed, Ian had tried to take her mind off her own problems by involving her in the JU, but she couldn’t have cared less. When he’d tried to jog her out of her misery by arranging for her to be elected as one of the Fleet Street Branch’s dozen delegates to the Annual Delegate Conference, she’d simply let herself be carried along with the tide.

      Frances. It would all be all right if Frances was still with her. They could have laughed about these codes and rituals that made the Freemasons sound rational. Frances would have worked through the agenda with her, discussing the 246 motions. She and Frances would have snuggled up in bed together, giggling over the strange injunctions in the advice booklet. And Lindsay would have had the anticipation of nightly phone calls to keep her going through the difficulties of the days. She wouldn’t be going through this state of semi-panic that seemed to grip her all the time.

      But Frances wasn’t ever going to be with her again. Lindsay knew that getting used to that idea was the hardest thing she’d ever have to face. No more Frances at the breakfast table, frowning over The Times’ law reports, or, if she was due in court, taking a last-minute look through her brief for the day. No more meeting for a snatched lunchtime drink in one of the dozens of pubs between the Daily Nation’s Fleet Street offices and the law courts. No more sitting on the press benches, watching Frances on her feet defending her client, face stern beneath the barrister’s absurd curly wig. No more coming home from a hard day’s news reporting to sit on the side of the bath sipping dry white wine while Frances luxuriated in the suds and they swapped stories. No more Frances.

      It wasn’t self-pity. At least, she didn’t think it was. It was the difficulty of adjusting to absence. Someone who had been there was no longer around. And it had left a Frances-shaped hole in her life that sometimes felt as if it would engulf her and drain the very life from her. That was the worst feeling of all. The pain of loss, a physical stab in the chest that sometimes made her gasp, that was bad enough. But the hollowness, that was the worst.

      With a start, Lindsay realised that Ian was speaking. ‘I’m sorry?’ she said.

      ‘That lot,’ Ian said, gesturing with his thumb at the radio. ‘Bloody coppers on their horses, acting like the Cossack army. The writing’s on the wall, Lindsay. This government isn’t going to stand for any sort of trade union activity, you mark my words.’ When he was angry, Ian’s Salford accent always reemerged from the southern patina it had acquired over ten years of working in London. The thickness of his accent was a rough guide to the level of his anger. Right now, he sounded like a refugee from Coronation Street.

      ‘Before Thatcher’s finished with us, she’ll have the Combination Acts back on the statute book. A few years from now, we’ll all be arrested for conspiracy if we try to hold a chapel meeting,’ he continued.

      Lindsay sighed and reached for her cigarettes. ‘It’s so short-sighted,’ she said. ‘The government’s always telling us about the wonderful economic success of the Germans, about how they don’t have strikes. It never seems to occur to them that that’s because the German bosses consult the workforce before they embark on anything