Extract from the book 'Uprising' by Arun D Ellis

Extract below

Community Leaders

Three days later a group of community leaders from lower Boro, Southside made their way to a small community hall; 30 people give or take and each one had received a personally delivered verbal invitation, issued in the name of Donald Snr. Terry had insisted on all wards being represented and had borne impatiently the resultant delay. He’d been given the low-down on the leaders, including a vivid description of the one woman in the group; Irene, widow of one of the most feared men in Boro whose viciousness paled now besides the rumours that surrounded her name.

It was 19:00 hrs by the time the last one was seated. Jimmy had posted his brothers and several of their mates at the various doors; a dual purpose was served, keeping the selected in and the interlopers out. The community leaders understood the risks of such a large meeting and their attendance indicated implied acceptance, but the added burden of knowledge concerning the chip’s locator facility was known only to Terry, Don and the others.

Terry had positioned himself on the stage behind a lectern; a shield, a leaning post and a symbol of authority. Don was seated in one of the chairs in the row behind him, with Lawrence and Dave, stand-in father figures protecting Donald’s boy, positioned solemnly on either side of him. Eric was in the audience, his choice. Sandra had been persuaded to stay home, to be there in case Donald turned up had been Don’s argument, stoutly supported by Terry. He looked out over the assembly, thinking again how glad he was that Sandra was out of it, if this went wrong, it could go seriously wrong. Then he spoke his voice betraying none of this concern, “Gentlemen, and Irene, thank you for coming,”

She acknowledged the personal salute with the barest flicker, some in the audience nodded, others sat stony faced, and all wondered who Terry was.

“You’ve been invited here to talk about the future,” said Terry, “but before we can do that I have to raise a rather thorny issue, that of informants.”

“Where’s Donald?” demanded a large black man in the front; he’d caught Terry’s attention at the start, not just size but demeanour singled him out, this must be the feared Ice Man of whom he’d been told.

Moment of partial truth… “Donald’s not here yet,” said Terry

“Why not?” demanded a small wiry man from a few rows back, “and pardon my French, but who the fuck are you?”

“My name’s…” began Terry at which point Don stepped forward.

“It’s okay,” he said, “most of you will know me and for those who don’t, I’m Donald’s son.”

“So?” said someone.

“My dad would vouch for Terry,” said Don, “if he was here.”

“Well that’s dandy,” said Ice Man, “but not good enough.”

“It’ll have to be,” said Terry, “that is, until Donald gets here.”

“Where is Donald?” demanded the wiry man, getting into his stride.

“Late,” said Terry.

The room was filled with blank looks.

“Look,” said Terry, “you’ve all been invited here by people you know and trust, and Donald would be here if he could. You all know each other and you know Don or most of you know Don, so there should be no real problem.”

“If there is,” said Ice Man, “you’ll be the first to find out about it.”

“I’m sure I will,” said Terry.

“Okay,” said Don, “just give us a chance to explain, that’s all we’re asking.”

There was no reaction from the group so Terry chose to ignore the silent hostility and ploughed on, “First,” he said, “I’d like to tell you a story and I’d appreciate it there were no interruptions until the end, if that’s ok.”

“No it’s not,” said Ice Man, “I didn’t want to be here. I’m not about to sit here an’ let someone I don’t know talk at me.”

“Well,” said Terry, “that’s understandable but please, if you bear with me I think you’ll like what I have to say, eventually that is.”

“I’m with Ice Man,” said someone else, “this is a shit thing you got me into, O’Connell.”

Jimmy jumped in, “Listen, you might not like being here but this needs to be done, things need to be said, we ain’t none of us gettin’ nothin’ outta the way things run round here and it’s about time we did something about it.”

“Is that right?” said Ice Man, rising to his full 6’ 6”.

“Okay ‘Ice Man’,” said Terry, “we can all see how big you are but what are you doing for your community? How are your people coping with the shortages?”

“I’m doing just fine,” said Ice Man, “ain’t no whitey gonna try and slip into my territory and take over.” Having said his piece he folded himself back onto the chair.

“That’s not what this is about, Ice,” said Don, “it’s about all of us acting together, to change things.”

“Ah, this is a waste of time,” said someone from the back of the hall, rising to leave, “you ain’t gonna change nothin’. It’s been like this for years and it’ll always be like this.”

“Sit down Jake,” snapped Jimmy as Brendan readied himself to bar the exit.

Terry thought quickly, recalling the bios he’d been given. If memory served, Jake controlled a small ward, not mission critical; he could use him as a test case. “It’s okay Jimmy, if he wants to leave, let him, at least we’ll know which side of the fence he’s on.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” demanded Jake.

“It means the sinks are crawling with informants,” said Terry, “and anyone who isn’t interested in changing things for the better is more than likely an informant.”

“I ain’t no informant,” said Jake, “and I’ll kill any man who says I am.”

“No one’s saying you are an informant, but,” said Don, turning his hands up in the classic questioning pose, “if you’re not interested in improving things then it’s a bit sus.”

“Sit down Jake,” said Ice Man, “first we’ll hear what little whitey has to say and then if we don’t like it,” he paused for effect, “we’ll kill him.”

Jake grunted a bit, then nodded and sat.

“Okay,” said Terry, “let’s begin at the beginning shall we, where this war really started.”

“War?” demanded someone, “What war?”

“Please, gents,” said Don, “just listen.”

“Yeah, but you said there was a war,” said the same voice, thin and reedy, anxiety paramount.

“He didn’t mean between us, Tim,” said Eric, turning in his chair to look at a young man three rows behind him, “just listen and you’ll see where he’s going.”

“Give me a chance; all of you” said Terry, “please.”

There was a brief silence.

Then “We’re listening whitey,” said Ice Man, “but we ain’t patient types.”

“Okay,” said Terry, “the beginning then. Back in the 80’s,”

“Are you taking the piss? What the fuck do you know about the 80’s?” said someone.

“Look,” snapped Terry, “The world outside your little ghetto is turning to shit and if you really want to change things for your community now’s the time to jump on board.”

“That’s cute, whitey,” said Ice Man.

“Well, you might think so, but it doesn’t seem so cute to me, whilst you people are stuck here, barely scraping a living, d’ you have any idea how the rich are living? How much they have? How completely different your lifestyles are? They live like gods and you live like slaves so listen up, ‘cause this is a wakeup call.”

Ice Man stared at Terry for a full 30 seconds before leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms, “I ain’t no slave … and the clock’s tickin’, so get on with it, white boy.”

Terry waited a few seconds, “Okay, so we’re back in the 80s with Thatcher. I know everyone’s heard of Thatcher, hell one of the streets here is named after her, but what she did to this country takes some understanding so I’d like to run through it again so we can see how they achieved all of this,” He waved his arms, indicating all of them, the small hall, their small lives. Those gathered moved restlessly in their seats, some nervously, some irritably and some he noted, rather aggressively. Jimmy nodded to Paddy to move closer to the most restless group …all known bully boys. “Okay, first things first, Thatcher wasn’t the architect; that dubious honour belongs to Keith Joseph, Thatcher was a believer and a credible mouth piece.”

“Keith Joseph? Why’s he got two Christian names?” Sean hissed at the person nearest him who happened to be a Muslim, obvious to anyone but Sean, and one clearly not pleased with the assumptive reference to the infidel’s religion.

“Keith who?” whispered Don to Lawrence.

“Bit before my time,” said Lawrence, “no idea how Terry’s heard of him.”

“Probably his posh education,” sneered Dave, by no means a ‘Terry’ convert, and having taken a seat on the stage only in support of Donald’s son.

“Thatcher and her cronies told British workers that they weren’t competitive enough and then created the right circumstances for British industrialists and entrepreneurs to close their factories and businesses in Britain and then reopen them in poorer 3rd world countries where costs such as wages and rents were nonexistent,” said Terry, passion trembling in his voice.

He’d vented and decried the whole concept to whoever would listen throughout his adolescence. This was the first time he’d tried it out on a real audience, sod’s law it had to be one so hostile.

“The intention of economists at the time was that the private sector would create or develop a service based economy in Britain.” The room was quiet, all eyes on him. He took a sip of water, ‘Christ why am I doing this? “The rich invested in what was termed at the time ‘emerging markets’, namely, companies being set up in the 3rd world by western industrialists and Corporations.” He stood upright; he’d been leaning over the lectern as he spoke, trying to get his message across and putting his whole body into it. “The idea was that the west would invent, the third world would build and the western worker would buy.”

“Yeah, we get the idea,” said a female voice, the infamous widow “and we know already.”

“You should do,” said Terry, looking out across the room, trying to locate her “but somewhere along the way you’ve learned to live with it rather than resist the unfairness of what occurred.”

“Who’re you to talk?” said Jake, “what d’ you know about what we’ve learned to live with? Who the fuck is he, anyway?” He directed this at Don.

“Look please,” said Don,” If you’ll just bear with us for a bit longer.”

“Keep going,” said Ice Man, “I want to hear what you gotta say.”

Terry nodded, “So that was the plan they sold to the people…that the west would ‘invent’, the 3rd world would ‘build’ and the western worker , employed in the service industry which replaced the manufacturing base, would ‘buy’. Now, whether it was meant to be permanent or they had other long term plans, we’ll never know… but what we do know, and what should’ve been clear at the time, is that the ‘private’ sector didn’t create enough service based industry jobs.”

He took another sip of water, he didn’t like public speaking and his throat was painfully dry, “So people were out of work, not enough buying going on….to fill the gap the government created public sector service jobs, all governments did it, right or left; they had to reduce unemployment, to create demand for other services, to increase spending power, maintain the number of consumers for these goods being made in the 3rd world.”

The room came alive at that moment, throat clearing and murmurs of what? Dissent? Agreement? Terry couldn’t tell. Neither could Jimmy who made himself more visible and pointed organizing fingers at the door guards.

“Yeah, they created the national debt that we’re still paying off,” shouted someone,

“All of this was designed to make sure,” continued Terry, raising his voice against the catcalls now emerging from the crowd, “that the industrialist and the investor had their constant return of interest.” He paused briefly, ‘this is a nightmare. How’m I ever going to convince these people that they’ve been had.’

“You got this all wrong.” shouted someone else.

Don and Dave were on their feet; Lawrence still seated was making ineffectual calming hand gestures.

“What’s he on about?” hissed Sean to Brendan.

“Fucked if I know,” said Brendan, “I just hope he knows what he’s doing.”

“What d’you mean?”

“You been paying attention?” asked Brendan.

“Yeah.”

“Well, he’s pissed off just about everyone in the room, and if he don’t put it right there’s gonna be an awful ruckus.”

“So?” said Sean, “we can handle it.”

“Idiot,” said Brendan, “c’n you count?”

Sean scanned the room, “I’m not scared of any of these fat fucks.”

“Good,” said Brendan, “then you fight ‘em, all of ‘em.”

Ice Man stood up and signaled to the room for silence, and then he sat down again; an unexpected ally.

Terry took heart and continued, “In the end, a service based economy, shops, restaurants, hotels, holidays, is vulnerable to collapse when there’s a recession and that is exactly what happened, with the great banking disaster of 2008.”

He started to pace, coming out from behind the lectern and moving from one side of the stage to the other, his stride lengthening as his confidence grew. “I’m not going to go into the ins and outs of how the banks lost all the money, I’m just going to say that it put huge pressure on the world economies and governments when they were already exposed…most of them, just like the UK, had spent a lot on creating jobs that didn’t bring any financial return by way of Gross Domestic Product. The net result was that the economies of several countries collapsed and a desperate period of austerity began for all, except….”

He paused and took a drink before continuing, then recommenced his pacing, “It wasn’t actually austerity for all. It was austerity for the likes of you and me. The seriously rich are seriously rich still. The industrialist still had his factories in the 3rd world and the investor still had his money in emerging markets, all they had to do was find a new consumer for their products …which they did.”

Ice Man started to nod his head almost imperceptibly; it was not wasted on Don and the others.

“They made money more available to the workers in the 3rd world so they could become buyers as well as builders” he was almost shouting now, “Western governments told their people they’d over spent on their credit cards, bringing this recession on themselves” he paused, and then he did shout, a controlled burst of fury “but this was a lie.”

He checked the room, he had their attention. He softened his voice “The industrialists and investors wanted to maximize their return, so they put all their funds into the 3rd world. The result was massive unemployment and poverty in the west, western governments raised fewer taxes, and to top it off those same governments reduced the taxes for the rich, scared of the threat of them leaving if they didn’t.”

He walked over to the lectern and leaned against it, needing its shelter and all his energy for the finale. “Governments, like the UK government, hid behind ‘austerity measures’ to reduce services for the masses, like libraries and refuse collections, to privatise the NHS, to cut social benefits and scrap free public education, then they forced up property prices and cut out social housing.”

He glared round the room, his anger at the conspiracy fuelling the tirade. “You’ve all heard of the Occupy Movements? Ordinary people taking to the streets to protest peacefully about the 1% who own everything? People willing to stand up for the rest of us against the system and its weapons; pepper sprays, tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets…”

“Yeah, we heard” Jake stood up and spoke, looking round at his fellow leaders, rallying support, “and where are they now? In prison, dead, destitute…”

Terry looked down from the stage and met his eyes. He nodded slowly, “Yes …they were crushed, deliberately and coldly crushed in the tidal wave of anti-terrorist laws brought in to combat so-called atrocities on our streets.” He lifted his arms “As was Colin Carpenter and the rest of the Independents, who were trying to achieve a fairer society using democracy, trying to occupy the political space…yet the real atrocity is here and now, in Boro and places like it all over the world, where hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people, are condemned to live their lives in squalor and penury while the world’s 1% still lives in obscene luxury.”

He stopped talking, took a deep steadying breath, wondered briefly if he was insane, and then continued, “They drove the poor to places like this; fenced them in, no way in or out without a pass, ghettos. The mass of the British people now live in places like Boro…I know this for a fact…” final pause, “because I used to work in Relocations.”

The hall erupted. Chairs overturned as their occupants leapt to their feet, a few were sent flying towards the stage. Jimmy and Paddy waded in, fists flying as some of those nearest the stage leapt on to it, trying to get to Terry. Dave happily gave as good as he got, standing back to back with Don who was enjoying himself for the first time since his dad’s disappearance.

Lawrence disappeared; physical violence had never been his strong point. Terry cleared the stage swiftly of the most ambitious attackers, a motley crew of barrel-bellied bullies who were used to size being important. He had the look of someone prepared to defend a position for hours if needs be and gradually the number of takers lessened.

It took a good fifteen minutes for tempers to cool and for people to settle down enough so that individual voices could be heard. By that time Sean and Brendan had cut a swathe through the section of the crowd who’d been luckless enough to sit their side of the hall. One of these had been Eric, apparently unrecognized in the mêlée and now unconscious on the floor. It was another twenty minutes before Terry felt able to reclaim his position at the lectern. The chairs had been righted and people who could sit comfortably were doing so, those more appreciably damaged were leaning against the walls and some, like Eric, had stayed down.

Ice Man had remained aloof from the fracas. He stood and made sure he was seen, “We’re gonna sit here a little longer, and you get to finish your little lecture but you better have something good at the end of it ‘cause if not, that little confession of yours is gonna cost you big time.”

“Fair enough,” said Terry, “but to be honest, I don’t really get why you’re all so upset with me, considering most, if not all of you, are informers.”

There was a collective intake of breath as Don moved swiftly to Terry’s side, “you can’t call them informers,” his voice a hiss.

“That’s not a thing for you to say,” Ice Man’s control was slipping, “and you’re asking for it, saying such a thing.”

“Come on, we all know you’re informers,” Terry persisted, shrugging away from Don, “you know it and I know it, the only ones who don’t know are your followers.”

Jake made a lunge onto the stage, Terry sent him flying backwards with a front push kick, resuming conversationally “Look, we can all end up fighting again but that’s not what this is about, we’re here to work together and find a real way forward.”

Don tried again, “you won’t get anywhere calling them informers.”

“Why not,” said Terry, “they are; how else you think their little empires run so smoothly?”

“They don’t have to be informers for that to be the case,” said Don, “look at dad and how he ran things.”

Terry looked at him without speaking, sighed then turned back to the audience, “Listen,” he shouted, reaching to the back of the room “I know you’ve just been trying to make things work for your people, trying to work out a set of rules with the pigs, trying to keep things calm in the ghettos to keep the riot squads out but that hasn’t worked, all that’s happened is they’ve left you here and swelled the size of the ghettos.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” yelled a voice from the back.

“Don’t you get it? You’re as much victims as anyone who’s ever been sent here, you’ve not been rewarded for your loyalty, with a big house, money, beautiful women fawning over you...”

“That’s what you fink” said the same voice, nursing a black eye and a grievance.

“He’s seen your Brenda, Mike, he must’ve.” laughed another.

Terry grinned but continued quickly, “you live here, with the rest of us, in a ghetto and you have probably lived here most of your lives. Some of you’ve had children here…but what are you getting out of the deal? What are you getting for your years of loyalty?”

“Quiet everyone,” yelled Ice Man, “as for you” he gave Terry a long, hard stare, “you’re talking yourself into a nice early grave, whitey.”

“He keeps callin’ him ‘whitey’, ain’t that racist, Brendan?” Sean whispered hotly into his brother’s ear, for once apparently thinking before he spoke.

“Sean, shut the fuck up” the subtlety evidently wasted on Brendan.

“Yeah, don’t I know it,” said Terry, “the authorities want me dead, you guys probably want me dead and if I don’t win you over, one of you will make certain that I am dead. So yeah, I’m taking a very big risk here but I’m prepared to do that for a better life, for a better way, for me and my friends. All I ask is that you let me finish.”

Ice Man stared at Terry for what seemed an age but was probably only a few seconds, and then he nodded and sat back down.

Terry continued, “What you might not know is there is more than one place in the UK called Boro” he stopped, waited for it to sink in, then continued, “there are three; Boro; Boro 2 and Boro 3, each with a total population of 5 million. Boro is a Triplet city.” There was a shared intake of breath and a shuffling of feet, but no-one spoke. “There are other cities, Liverpool, known as ‘the Pool’; Manchester aka Mancs, Newcastle or ‘Toontown’; all of them ghettos and all of them Triplets.”

He looked behind him at a noise from Don who shook his head quickly; he was just as appalled as the rest of them.

Interruption over, “The M4 corridor is now the UK’s dividing line; anything north of the line is a ghetto. Meanwhile the nouveau riche, those who belong to the new global aristocracy, the super rich, they all live south of the line, below the M4 corridor, in luxury.”

He pointed south for effect, “they have everything you can only dream of and it’s all financed by dividends from manufacture and sale in the 3rd world. They don’t need us anymore and that’s why the government doesn’t look after us, why there’s no investment in UK manufacturing.”

Ice Man rubbed his chin, “You claim to know a lot about us but we don’t know nothing about you ‘cept you claim to have worked in Relocations.”

“He did,” said Don, quickly defensive.

“There’s more to it,” said Ice Man, “no-one who just worked in Relocations would know all that.”

“You’re right, Ice Man, there is more.” Don and Dave leaned forward in their chairs, Lawrence put his head down, grimly awaiting this next revelation, “I’m Special Forces and I’m trained to infiltrate and destroy.”

Jimmy responded with a loud burst of amused annoyance, “I knew it, yer bastard!” He gestured to Paddy, “see, he’d never of taken us otherwise.”

Sean’s loud; “I told you he was a liar” was hushed swiftly by Brendan’s elbow to the gut.

Don and Dave looked shocked; Lawrence sat still and silent.

The community leaders, each of them an informant as Terry had said, all of them government plants, were equally stunned. What was going on? Why had the government sent a Special Forces operative to brief them like this?

“Were you sent here to tell us all this?” asked Ice Man, “or are you rogue?”

“Both,” said Terry.

“Which means what, exactly?” demanded Don, recovering and angry.

“I was sent here to contact community leaders, the government informants here” he waved his arm to indicate the whole group, now sitting as if pinned to their chairs. “I was to monitor the situation on the ground.” He paused and turned to face Don,

“However, I’m also rogue - I’m a member of a group trying to overthrow the current regime which is driving our country into the ground and destroying the lives of the vast majority of its people.”

“Are you accusing my dad of being an informant?” demanded Don.

“It is what it is,” stated Terry, “ask your friends here, they know.”

“What in hell’s going on?” demanded Eric, conscious now, having missed all but the last 5 minutes of the proceedings.

“This sounds well dodgy,” said Jake.

“It is,” said Ice Man, “Quiet everyone. Quiet. What are you up to, whitey?”

“You’ve got to listen to me and think about what I’m saying.” He broke off and stared out at the angry faces. “The state is meant to represent the will of the people, the will of the majority of people but today it only represents a few thousand people, everyone else is either ignored by or is a slave to the system. That’s it. That’s all there is. Whatever you were promised in the past, whatever you’ve been promised recently, none of it is real, none of it is ever going to happen, you are always going to be here enforcing their code and if you should ever question it or ask for your pay off… they will kill you.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Ice Man.

“Because I’m the man they’d send,” answered Terry.

Even Ice Man felt the need to get involved this time; he made it as far as two feet in front of Terry before a turning kick to the head floored him. The rest of the activities took place over him and next to him and he was quickly joined on the floor by a few colleagues who’d not taken heed of the warning afforded by his prone position. The fighting was over quicker second time round; Jimmy and Paddy were faster off the mark and isolated the worst troublemakers, Sean and Brendan’s side of the hall still hadn’t recovered from the first bout and most were too damaged to join in at all, others with a bit more energy threw a few punches but their hearts weren’t in it. The vocal arguments went on for a bit and then after some sub-debates, a bit of shoving and pushing everyone was back in their seat.

Recovered from his brief flirtation with unconsciousness, Ice Man took up Terry’s spot by the lectern, “Okay, okay” he said, flattening his hands in the universal signal of calm, “I don’t like him any more than you do” rubbing the side of his head as he spoke “but it seems to me he got a point. We been stuck in this shit hole for 20 years grubbing out a living and I don’t see anything changing, we still gonna be here another 20 years time.” There were murmurs of assent all round him and much nodding of heads. “I don’t like the idea that some fat banker is sitting on his arse laughing at us, thinking we too stupid to know what’s going on, that don’t sit well with me at all.” More nods, “but if we act, then we all gotta go the same way ‘cause if just one of us sings the wrong tune this place be crawling with Feds and we all be dragged out an’ shot.” He glared at Terry and then back at the crowd, “I don’t mean to get shot, so if anyone thinking to sell us out, he better know we’ll find out an’ when we get him he take days to die.”

“We’re all in this together,” shouted someone, “we all gotta make an oath.”

“An oath is good,” said Ice Man, “and it better be on the bible.”

“Not everyone’s religious, Ice,” said Jake.

“Don’t matter, they sell us out, we get them, the pigs hate this shit as much as us, they won’t take much persuading to come over, anyone does sell us, we get to them,” He tilted back his head, raised his eyes to the ceiling and opened his palms, “and they face the Lord or me.”

Terry walked to the lectern “Remember it won’t just be us in Southside, we need to spread word across the whole of Boro and to the other ghettos so there’s a general uprising.” There were shouts of agreement, “and remember, the people who have jobs and work within the system, the ones working to keep the rich and the ghettos in place are so heavily in debt and so screwed by their workloads that they will join us.”

“But can you be sure of that?” asked Eric.

“Oh they’ll join us, they might be slow off the mark because they don’t look outside their tiny bubble, but they will, once we make it clear to them that they, the workers, are serfs to a system, that their debt is the yoke that holds them, once they realise the reality they will rise with us.”

“They will rise,” intoned Ice Man.

“And remember,” said Terry, “We, the people are the state. So the 1% who have seized control of the nation and its money, they’ve committed an act of treason, treason against the people is the same as treason against the state.”

Don, Dave and Lawrence surrounded Terry, “We need to talk,” said Don.

“I know,” said Terry, but first we need to see this ends smoothly or we’re all dead.”

“We need to talk,” said Don.

“Okay,” said Terry, “tomorrow.”

“No, now,” said Don.

“Tomorrow, we gotta make sure this all ends well here tonight or else everything is lost.”

“You got a lot of questions to answer,” said Dave.

“Not really,” said Terry.

“Tomorrow?” said Dave.

“Tomorrow,” said Terry.

≈ ≈

Superintendent Bill Travers opened his emails. There was one marked high security. He opened it and entered his password. The message told him that over 30 local community informants had been gathered in one place with a number of known transgressors. He was instructed to resolve the issue. “What the fuck does that mean,” he muttered, “resolve the issue?”

Hope you enjoy the book and have a nice weekend

Cheers

Arun

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