Sally smiled grimly. “Oh, there’s action planned all right. Union Jack and his buddy boys won’t know what’s hit them before this week’s out.”

Chapter 3

3

“Tabling bodies are reminded that the laws of libel apply as firmly to draft motions as they do to the media we all work for. Publishers of fringe flyers would be well-advised to remember this too. And don’t forget the ever-present risk of slander in the bar. When you’ve had a few too many, keep your insults to yourself.”

from “Advice for New Delegates”, a Standing Orders Sub-Committee booklet.

“It was strange, you know,” Lindsay said, gazing into the middle distance somewhere beyond Jennifer. “Sometimes it was like we’d all been frozen in aspic some time in 1984. The rhetoric was the same, the attitudes, even the faces. As if the last nine years just hadn’t happened. And then I’d look around, and suddenly it was all different. There we were, sitting in a conference hall with the very same people who’d supposedly been our enemies and our rivals. Talking about streamlining our administration, improving our public profile, developing new services to meet changing needs, like some post-Thatcherite corporation. And Union Jack still at the heart of it, cutting his coat according to what would keep him in power.”

“When did you actually first speak to him?” Jennifer glanced at her watch as she asked the question.

“I’m sorry, I keep getting side-tracked. It’s probably the drink. I’ve had more than I should have tonight. On Monday evening, after the women told me about the redundancies, I went over to the bar to get a round of drinks in. On the way, I had to pass Tom and his NEC cronies. Being Tom, he couldn’t let me pass without getting into my ribs.”

“Ey-up lads, lock up your daughters. The Gay Gordons are back in town,” Tom roared as Lindsay tried to slip unnoticed past the bunch of fixers gathered round the general secretary. “What happened? The Yanks realize they’d been sold a pup?”

“Nice to see you too, Tom.” Lindsay tried to carry on towards the bar, but he moved to block her way. He was trying to push her into behaving like some butch blundering dyke, trying to make her shove him out of the way. As if she’d make any impact on that stocky, bullish figure in her path. Lindsay smiled sweetly, shaking her head. “Still the same old charmer, eh?”