Free Fifty-First State by Hilary Bailey Page A

were hit two nights running by a fleet of bombers. A third of the armada of bombers were launched from British bases, including Hamscott Common. The justification for the attack was, said the American President, that Syria had been harbouring international Muslim terrorists who had infiltrated Iraq over the border, flooding the country with subversive propaganda, agents and money. Syrian complicity had created the results of the Iraqi elections. In America, the public was divided about the attacks. The British public refused to believe the President’s arguments. The European Parliament met to condemn the raids. The assault on Syria could not have been timed better if the intention had been deliberately to finish Muldoon as Prime Minister. Some thought that might have been the case.
    Predictably, there were demonstrations throughout the country. A suicide bomber, a young man from Harlesden, blew himself up in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. Twelve British oil executives in Nigeria were kidnapped. There were bloody riots in the East End and Southall.
    The Conservative Party had changed greatly since the days when a contingent of Tory grandees would visit a Prime Minister they no longer required, and, with the air of men putting down a loaded revolver on a table in front of a disgraced officer, suggest the Prime Minister should take the only way out and resign. There are procedures these days – but at this point the inner group of the Conservative Party knew they had no time for a bruising leadership contest. Muldoon must go, quickly, on grounds of ill health. The chairman of the CBI, Gisela Sutter, and the Party Chairman, Sir Graham Barnsbury, asked for appointments. So did an old lion who had once been in Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet (and had been among those who told her she must go). The Party Leader in the House of Commons tried to arrange a meeting with Muldoon. A gentleman closely connected with Buckingham Palace planned to drop in for tea. And there were others – Lord Haver of Blindon, the twentieth richest man in Great Britain, the Chief Whip, the Chairman of the Bank of England, and several more – all men who could not be put off and would not be. The PM’s diary filled with the names of his would-be assassins.
    After the first of these meetings, Gisela Sutter, the CBI Chairman, reported to Lord Haver and then, separately, to Lord Gott – the two men disliked each other – that Muldoon was not taking the hint. Graham Barnsbury told Lady Jenner, the Conservative leader in the Lords, that Muldoon had told him he thought it important to stay on, to stand firm and weather out the storm. Anything else would discredit the party and him, personally. Such statements have been made by politicians in the past, just before clearing their desks and booking a holiday but Muldoon was that most formidable of obstacles, a weak, obstinate and cunning man. The assassins met and made another plan.
    Meanwhile, Muldoon, who knew his world to be full of enemies, cancelled as many appointments as he could, sent the Deputy PM to the House of Commons for Question Time and went to ground, as far as he was able to. The British Parliament has no fixed sessions but votes itself, each year, a generous four months of holidays. The House was due to go into recess in mid-July this year, and would reconvene in mid-October. No child, waiting for the start of the summer holidays, could have looked forward to them as much as Frederick Muldoon did to the dissolution of Parliament, due in four weeks.
    Standing in Fox Square by the podium of Sir Galahad’s statue, Petherbridge said to Canning, ‘Tom, you and I have had our differences in the past but we need you now. You know why. You’re the only man Muldoon will listen to. He’s in his bunker, like Hitler, and he won’t come out. You’re practically the only man he trusts. But he can’t survive. You know it, I know it, and at the back of his mind