Free Crusaders by Richard T. Kelly Page A

Ridley’s causticity would dissolve in more alcohol, or that any further explication of his past and the lessons drawn from it would receive an indulgent hearing.

Chapter IV
THE RIGHT ANALYSIS
    1983–1984
    ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, out, out!’
    Tentative at first, mindful of a police horse clopping close by his shoulder, John enjoined his voice to the crowd.
    ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! Out, out, out!’
    It seemed the cry of hundreds, thousands, clustered all about him on a central London thoroughfare, exuding the thrill of a warrant for ungovernable behaviour in the streets of the capital. And so John clenched his fist and punched at the air, once, twice, thrice, just like his fellow marchers – with the notable exception of his sister , traipsing along to his right, chin tucked into her chest as if to deter long-lens paparazzi.
    ‘That’s right, comrades,’ some voice was barking through a bullhorn . ‘Shout it out so Reagan can hear you in Washington. Let’s send him a message, loud and clear, he’s not the boss round here, and England’s not the fifty-first state!’
    Susannah was wincing. John peered past her to where Paul Todd – his new best friend – shot him a complicit grin.
    *
    At dawn that morning of 15 October 1983, Durham CND had departed the city in a hired coach. En route down the M1 John sat alone at the back of the bus, his head stooped over a Collected Marx & Engels , hardly stirring until the cover of the thick paperback was rapped by a knuckle and he looked up to see the twentyish lad across the aisle – lofty and lean, beak-nosed and cheery, in a jacket and jeans of washed-out black denim.
    ‘Y’enjoying the grand old man there, are ya?’
    Paul Todd wore a small headset at his neck, and John dared toenquire what was the music, though fearing the answer might as well be in Chinese. ‘Bauhaus’ was Paul’s enigmatic reply. But John had a half-notion that the term applied to certain German buildings , and Paul’s smile invited him into a conversation. He was a mechanic, it transpired, at Sacriston Colliery, and John spoke as best he could of his familial share in pit history. Paul was keener to extract John’s view on the Eighteenth Brumaire and the distinction between bourgeois and proletarian revolution. But it was affable talk that detained them for an hour or more until the coach traversed a grimy stretch of north-west London to reach Waterloo Bridge, the murk of the Thames, and the Palace of Westminster. Waiting on the broad pavement of Victoria Embankment was Susannah, in loose jeans and a waxed jacket, clutching a furled Telegraph newspaper, her hair in a glossy bob. She met John with a wan smile, Paul with a limp handshake. This was her final year of reading economics at University College, and John had been given to understand that student life bred scruffiness and ill hygiene. Yet such was Susannah’s grooming that she might have been studying deportment these two years past. She had traded her spectacles for contact lenses and looked the better for it, if now prone to oddly pop-eyed blinks.
    On foot the trio made their way amid a growing multitude toward the appointed meeting place, Embankment Underground station.
    ‘How much was your coat?’ Susannah asked, fingering the army jacket of black twill John wore over a white school shirt.
    ‘It was second-hand,’ John murmured.
    ‘I don’t doubt it. Just like old Foot in his donkey jacket, eh?’
    ‘That was a great reason not to vote for him, I’m sure.’
    ‘Oh, but Mr Foot kindly gave us a million others, just to be safe.’
    John groaned inwardly. Old Foot had led Labour to a crucifixion at the last election, even Newcastle Central falling to the Tories. Bookish, a bit scruffy, a tad gammy, he had nevertheless stood and fallen on a manifesto John considered close to godly, albeit rough-hewn – indeed much like the monthly agendas of his local Labour branch, a long wish-list, perennial wants and more recent