A Tale of Three Bombs

Leander · Post by **Leander** » Sat Nov 26, 2022 6:19 pm

This is a fanfiction / carry-on from Fredrick Forsyth's The Fourth Protocol (book version). It speculates that there was no discovery of the plot via that seaman who met his end in Glasgow nor any action by Philiby or that KGB man.
The bomb goes off and Lakenheath rather than Bentwaters is the target: there are reasons for that. Plan Aurora doesn't go perfect but still fulfils Soviet interests nonetheless.
It's a three Part story.

*
*

PART ONE

I

At 9:43pm on the night of June 11th, 1987, a week before the upcoming UK General Election, there was an explosion atop Maidscross Hill in west Suffolk. A device went off within a four-by-four wheeled vehicle that had been driven rashly up there, within the confines of a nature reserve. The man who detonated the bomb believed that it was on a timer and that he had two hours to make his escape. He had been deceived. The bomb which went off instantly upon him triggering it was a thermonuclear one with a yield of the equivalent of ten kilotons. He was atomised immediately.

Maidscross Hill wasn’t much of a feature before that ground burst of the bomb and it was utterly no more afterwards. It was wiped from the face of the earth with a crater left in its place. To the west of the new crater, the village of Lakenheath was blasted to ruin. There would be remains of the village left but nothing more than that. RAF Lakenheath was to the east and south of where the bomb went off. It was an American airbase on British soil, home to a whole wing of F-111F strike-bombers. No warning came to the thousands who served at the airbase and, like the hundreds of British civilians in the village after which the facility was named, immense numbers of US airmen and their families were victims too. They either died instantly, or would soon succumb to either their injuries or radiation poisoning from being so close to the explosion.

A tell-tale mushroom cloud rose above the bomb side into the dark sky. Raging out from it, following the mass of lethal radiation produced, was a blast wave. That was what destroyed the airbase and the village both. The actual destructive fireball atop what had once been Maidscross Hill was small. Because the bomb went off at ground level, most of its energy was wasted. Nonetheless, enough damage was done nearby. No one who had been in the village or the airbase would believe that there was any waste. As to that airbase, it was wiped out. There would be a few surviving structures where reinforced concrete buildings – aircraft shelters for those F-111s mostly – would remain standing, but hangars, administration buildings, on-site recreational facilities & base housing took the full anger of that blast wave.

RAF Lakenheath was an expected target in warfare, for either a conventional or nuclear strike, but this was peacetime. No one in that village either had ever really thought that their lives would end in the manner that they did, especially not that warm early summer night in Britain when no wars were being fought and all talk was of the national political situation. No one had been prepared for the blast and the (metaphorical) fallout which would come.

II

To say that confusion reigned in the aftermath of what was soon being called the Lakenheath Bomb was quite the understatement. There on the ground in west Suffolk, hell had come. Survivors quickly joined the victims and there was no real understanding of what was going on among residents in other villages and small towns across the region. Nearby there were other military facilities including RAF Mildenhall which was another American airbase. Communications were affected and there was quite the widespread fear from so many of radiation as well as further explosions. The night-time attack meant that civilians were at home with plenty of them coming outside afterwards in what would be unfortunate for those who were fast exposed to invisible fallout. Aircraft started racing down the runway at RAF Mildenhall and that situation was repeated at the British-only airbases of RAF Coltishall, RAF Honington & RAF Marham too. Aircraft were ‘flushed’ as per emergency wartime procedures while the higher-ups were seeking answers. Military personnel not flying took shelter, mostly doing the sensible thing in light of the inevitable post-attack bomb effects.

Down in London, the Prime Minister was interrupted during a meeting of her party campaign officials while she was in Downing Street with them. Margaret Thatcher was lost for words, completely taken aback by the news that reached that that there had been a nuclear explosion up in East Anglia. There were many questions from her and others in government as the night got later. Advice was given to Thatcher that she should leave London but she opted to remain. Ministers rushed to London apart from the Viscount Whitelaw, the de facto deputy prime minister. He headed towards a reputed ‘secure location’: an emergency government bunker away from London. The Queen was woken and informed, and so too was the Leader of the Opposition, Neil Kinnock. A decision was quickly made that, despite the hour, there needed to be a public announcement. Most Britons would be asleep yet it was still thought necessary. There wasn’t much information that Thatcher and her top people knew though they didn’t plan to tell the nation much, not so early on. The BBC would be instructed to make an announcement following a hastily drafted script prepared in Downing Street. At midnight that was done.

What exactly had happened up there in west Suffolk was something that everyone wanted to know. The Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, spoke with his opposite number in Washington and there would soon be a trans-Atlantic conversation between Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. The Americans knew as much as the British: not a lot. There had been a nuclear explosion either at or close by one of their key airbases for their forces deployed in Western Europe. There was no contact with RAF Lakenheath. The United States was, like Britain too, seeing no other signs of incoming or expected military strikes of the nuclear nature. Their intelligence services were clueless about the whole thing, just as Britain’s were. This was a bolt from the blue. Reagan told Thatcher that he was trying to establish contact with Soviet General Secretary Grigory Romanov. She was concerned that Romanov was out of contact though did concede that it was the early hours there in Moscow. Reagan would eventually talk to him and the Soviet leader stated that he was stunned at the news about what had happened in Britain. He spoke of a desire for peace yet expressed grave concern over the future of Europe considering that a nuclear detonation had just been witnessed. Something such as that was ‘entirely unacceptable’.

Those in Downing Street were informed of what had been said from Moscow as they continued to meet throughout the night. They didn’t see Romanov’s comments for what they were though. Their attention was on what was occurring within their own country when it came to how to respond the Lakenheath Bomb. Military forces nationwide were on alert and so too were those overseas. The Soviets didn’t look likely to be about to come crashing through the Iron Curtain and firing missiles into the UK but no chances were taken with that. Of pressing concern was the situation on the ground in west Suffolk. How big the bomb was, where exactly it had gone off and who was responsible were key facts that needed to be established. Getting help to those in need was discussed though Thatcher and her ministers were briefed by officials that for those alive still who had been closest to the blast, there could be no help sent to them. Radiation was a big talking point. Experts were quick to present probable courses of what was likely to be a mass of fallout. The Lakenheath Bomb had gone off on the ground so it seemed, robbing it of much of its destructive power, but creating a lot more fallout than would have been the case had it gone off high up in a traditional air burst fashion. Lakenheath wasn’t that far from the coast and the winds would most surely blow much of it into the North Sea yet there was going to still be plentiful poisonous contamination across East Anglia. No matter what was done, a lot of people were going to get extremely ill and die. Panic was expected to erupt in that part of the country but also beyond too. There was another script written for an early morning BBC announcement to compliment the night-time one.

Those politicians spoke in the early hours of the Friday ahead of the election due to go ahead the following Thursday. Thatcher’s Conservatives were ahead in the opinion polls with the campaign dominated in many ways by the things that they wanted to talk about: the economy and security. Kinnock’s Labour had been running a reasonable campaign though there had been a lot of internal dissent – easily something that had fast erupted into the public sphere – over the matter of nuclear weapons. It was a long-term Labour problem where Centralists in that party were uneasy with Britain as a nuclear weapons state but accepted that: those in the Labour Left were absolutely opposed to that. When the Conservatives had campaigned on security, they had used that split against Labour. American nuclear weapons in Britain were also a matter of extensive public debate during the campaign for which party should form the next government. That was due to the deployment in recent years of Cruise to bases in the country alongside the already existing arsenal of air-droppable bombs that the Americans had at such places like RAF Lakenheath. It was a divisive issue with opinion polls saying that most Britons weren’t absolutely opposed to nuclear weapons whereas only a minority, albeit a very vocal and organised one, was yet that didn’t mean such weapons were welcome.

One of Thatcher’s senior ministers raised the subject of postponing the election. The Lakenheath Bomb was a good enough reason, one that the public would naturally expect. How could there be electioneering when such a crisis was unfolding as what was happening in East Anglia? In addition, he raised the possibility of an accident around one of those bombs that the protesters were against. What if an inadvertent detonation had occurred at RAF Lakenheath? That was unlikely, so came the counter from another minister, in addition to what the top level military personnel had said earlier said when it was discussed about that being not something probable, but no one could say it was impossible. More information was needed on that. Thatcher was rather unsure that that could have happened though there seemed no other explanation at the time. It didn’t look like a Soviet attack and nuclear terrorism was the realm of bad fiction. An accident sounded increasingly likely.

As to the General Election, she decided that it would be going ahead as scheduled. That decision was to be quite the mistake made.

III

The Romanov-led Soviet Union was at the forefront of the immediate international response to the Lakenheath Bomb. Condemnation came thick and fast from Moscow for the nuclear explosion that had occurred in Britain with firm blame for that laid upon the United States. There were claims made that the bomb was an American one from that airbase which had detonated there. American incompetence where it was alleged that had led to an accident occurring was said to be the cause though there were hints too that maybe it was in fact some sort of sabotage for nefarious aims. The Americans, whom Moscow reminded everyone were the only ones to have ever used them in warfare, had endangered the peace by their lack of care over such weapons, ones held on foreign soil too. The chorus of denunciation came from other sources as well with governments and public figures joining in though from Moscow it was relentless. The British Government spent the days following the blast saying that the cause of the blast was ‘uncertain’ and that only fed Moscow’s allegations. It was said in the Soviet capital by officials talking to the world’s media that the Soviet Union feared more explosions elsewhere in Europe and was taking steps to protect itself in such circumstances. Some would interpret that as the prelude to war though Soviet intentions on that were played down there in Moscow and elsewhere.

In the United States, there was a lot of focus on the human cost of that nuclear explosion. Thousands of American lives looked lost. RAF Lakenheath was a huge base which was home to not just aircrew for the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing with its four squadrons of F-111s but all of the associated ground personnel. Military families had lived on-base and even in the village of Lakenheath too. The loss of that combat force of strike-bombers was something else to consider as well where a significant contribution to NATO had just been eliminated when that mushroom cloud had risen above Suffolk. As to what the Soviets were saying, the response from Washington was one of denials about any sort of sabotage and also rejections that their nuclear weapons in Britain & other European countries were of any threat to the people who lived there. There was no quick answer to be given on what had caused the explosion that had destroyed RAF Lakenheath though. The Americans didn’t even know if it was one of their bombs that had gone off.

Out of the public arena, there were Anglo-American disputes over the investigation into the Lakenheath Bomb. The British Government wanted the Americans to check upon the safety of weapons stored elsewhere, something that the Americans claimed that there was no need to do. They were also thinking about the rescue of survivors at RAF Lakenheath and a worry too over recovery operations for the nuclear arsenal stored at that irradiated site. British military units had sealed off a wide area in the region of west Suffolk as well as certain parts of neighbouring Cambridgeshire and Norfolk as well. They were evacuating people and moving in specialist teams. The Americans wanted to do what they did best and take charge yet London was having none of that. From up above, the Americans looked downwards though upon the entire area. With satellites and then an overflight by a high-flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, they pinpointed Ground Zero. It was where Maidscross Hill had once stood, located outside the perimeter of the airbase. Nearby there were munitions storage bunkers though not ones for the B-61 nuclear bombs. Regardless, Ground Zero was outside of the airbase.

The Lakenheath Bomb gave a shot in the arm to the operations of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. CND had a long history of activity in the UK though the reignited nuclear tensions of the Eighties had revied it greatly, especially with the issue of Cruise. A big demonstration had been in the planning to go to RAF Molesworth in Cambridge for the last Saturday before the election. That was another American-operated facility, not that far from Lakenheath. It was a march which went ahead and was far bigger than planner. There were some people who stayed away due to the issue of radiation fears but many more were willing to go in their place. From across the breath of the country, people from all walks of life, young families to pensioners to politicians, attended. Never had the matter of American nuclear weapons in the UK been at the forefront of everyone’s minds than it was at that time. Across on the Continent, similar movements to CND, ones which there had long been unproven allegations made of Soviet influence over, likewise benefited from what had happened over in Britain. The doomsayers had been proved right. Those bombs were dangerous, the warmongering United States threatened their lives by bringing such weapons into Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany too.

Upending everything else that the campaign had been about before that explosion, the Lakenheath Bomb became the defining part of the politicking that took place in the last few days before the General Election. It just dominated it all with nothing else seeming to matter. A trio of shadow cabinet members from Kinnock’s team went to Molesworth. Labour Party candidates, those who were MPs already or seeking to be, spoke about the loss of live and the destruction in west Suffolk extensively. The matter of radiation that Britons were being exposed to was addressed again and again. The Conservatives couldn’t talk about anything else despite their wish to. They had to defend American nuclear weapons in the UK all while their government was unable to give any sort of genuine answer as to what had occurred. No one likes to hear ‘we don’t know what happened’ but that was really all that could be said. Opinion polling in the last few days pointed to a collapse in support for the Conservatives. Thatcher’s ministers questioned those polling numbers in public though in private believed them. There had been secret wobbles within the highest reaches of the party campaign staff before the Lakenheath Bomb and those were only worsened by the nightmare situation that the party found itself in. Kinnock’s attacks on the government over the whole situation weren’t as pointed as some of his Labour people would have hoped and he wasn’t repeating the attack lines used by the harshest critics of nuclear weapons, but his still landed strong blows against the Government. Moreover, while campaigning, Kinnock turned down an approach made from Moscow. Romanov’s people wanted him to come there to talk with the General Secretary to apparently defuse international tensions. One of his top aides urged him to do so with the argument that he would be a hero but Kinnock would have none of that. He wasn’t going to Moscow!

The day before the General Election, the tabloid newspaper The Sun, often a mouthpiece of Thatcher’s government, ran a story about an alleged plotted internal Labour Party move to replace Kinnock as leader in the aftermath of a Labour victory. Like Ken Livingstone had done in London back in 1981, an ‘unnamed senior MP’ was seeking to call a vote of confidence in Kinnock post-victory and install a Hard Left government against the wishes of the voters. That newspaper urged Britons to stop that happening by voting for the Conservatives. No one really believed such a thing. It sounded silly. Labour figures spoke off the record to other media outlets with the claim that any plot was doomed to failure even if it existed: if the voters elected Kinnock, they would get him as their next prime minister, not some imaginary challenger ready to emerge from the shadows and turn Britain into a Stalinist nightmare.

IV

In the last days of the election campaign, individual Labour activists, parliamentary candidates and even shadow ministers were calling for the Americans to remove their nuclear weapons from the UK. Some demanded that Britain disarm too. The official party position, where everything was now about the Lakenheath Bomb, was to criticise the response from the incumbent Conservatives in response to that blast in west Suffolk. Kinnock attacked the apparent failures to save lives that could have been saved, to evacuate people away from the spreading fallout (plus to provide properly for those who were moved) and also for not ‘being honest’ with the public. Where ministers kept saying that they didn’t know the exact cause of the nuclear detonation, that was attacked. Why couldn’t they tell the country what was the cause and who was responsible? That worked wonders for Labour. They received positive feedback from potential voters and so hammered home that approach. Kinnock wasn’t to every voter’s taste, but what he was saying resonated with many.

The smaller parties competing for votes and parliamentary seats were also terribly busy in the last days of the campaign where, again, all that they could talk about was the Lakenheath Bomb. The Social Democrats, a new party which had only a few years beforehand broke away from Labour due to the influence of the Hard Left, copied what Kinnock and his top people were saying. They attacked the Conservatives just as much on the same issue over the claimed lack of an effective response. The SDP was in favour of nuclear weapons on UK soil – American and British ones – but kept silent on that. That party was in an electoral alliance with the Liberals. The latter were opposed to nuclear weapons and so their politicking in the final days of campaigning concerned calls to see such weapons gone from Britain. It wasn’t the same approach as taken by Labour’s outspoken left flank, but could easily have been mistaken for such. The tiny Scottish Nationalists wanted all nuclear weapons gone, including those from out of Scotland as well. Each of those parties was on the left of the UK political spectrum and it was from the Conservatives whom they wished to take votes and seats in the House of Commons. The Lakenheath Bomb was all that they wanted to talk about, each attacking the Conservatives with that.

Norman Tebbit, a long-time Thatcher ally serving as party chair, told his prime minister on the day of the General Election that they’d lost. Votes were still being made across the nation with results many long hours off, yet he was convinced of defeat. He told her that they should have postponed polling day. They hadn’t and the country was going to get a Labour government. Tebbit would be proved correct.

Through the night of June 18th and into the early hours of the following morning, constituency declarations brought about a Labour victory. The SDP and Liberals failed to bleed votes away from Labour as they had done in the previous election four years beforehand. Labour did very well, gaining a swing in the double digits against the Conservatives. They won an outright majority where, once all the results were in, they had twenty-six more seats than all the other parties combined. That was more than enough for a relatively stable government, so it appeared anyway. Many recognised ‘cranks’ won seats under the Labour banner and they were from the Hard Left. Kinnock would be the next prime minister yet all signs pointed to him having a good few dozen rebellious MPs to have to deal with.

The Friday morning saw Thatcher admit defeat. She spoke with her top people and then made a public address to the country. Off she went to Buckingham Palace afterwards where the Queen was waiting to receive her resignation. The royal estate at Sandringham in Norfolk had received a dose of radioactive fallout though she’d been at Windsor Castle the night of the Lakenheath Bomb and since then too. She’d come to London the on the Thursday in case there was a change of government. That had occurred. Thatcher was received and resigned. As per custom, the outgoing prime minister was asked whom could command a majority in the Commons to replace her. She informed the Queen that that would be Kinnock. Thatcher then departed Buckingham Palace to go back to Downing Street ahead of Kinnock formally being appointed and arriving there later in the day himself.

The expected next prime minister was at the Labour Party’s Walworth Road headquarters that morning. He had meetings with top party officials and also civil servants too. His deputy, Roy Hattersley, who was going to be appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, left there with him in a car. Hattersley wouldn’t meet the Queen upon Kinnock’s appointment after Buckingham Palace had politely called upon Kinnock to go there, but he was to be with Kinnock that morning. Their car had a police escort and there were three others – a driver, an aide to Kinnock & another policeman – in the vehicle when it pulled out onto the busy Walworth Road. Cameramen and journalists were there along with party workers & activists all making a fuss for the benefit of the media. There were thus plenty of witnesses to the explosion.

The Walworth Road Bomb wasn’t nuclear. It was a high explosive device formed from Semtex. Remote detonated from within a building across the road with line of sight upon the targeted vehicle, the car bomb would kill all five occupants plus a policeman on a motorcycle as well. Dozens were injured among the witnesses to the assassination of Neil Kinnock.

Eight days apart, two bombs with earth shattering effects had rocked Britain. Both of them were the work of the Soviet Union and were part of Plan Aurora. That was top secret, known only to a select few with Moscow.

The opening moves of the project direct personally by Romanov had gone perfectly. A nuclear device made to resemble an American B-61 had been assembled within Britain from parts smuggled in. It had killed the triggerman, someone expendable, less he later be captured. The results of that blast in East Anglia, physical and political, had been only partially as expected. There was uncertainty over who was responsible and the outcome of the General Election had been successfully subverted. However, Kinnock hadn’t done as projected though in terms of his cooperation with Soviet goals nor had things gone to plan when it came to internal party opposition getting ready to make their move. He was supposed to have been deposed right after Labour won power, forced out by a vote among his MPs. That vote never happened and in the days leading up to the General Election the foreign plotters realised that outcome.

The Walworth Road Bomb was a planned contingency operation as part of the overall plot. A Briton himself pushed the button to kill Kinnock though he was an implement of Romanov, even without knowing that. The man had his own motives and desired outcome. Alas, the former mattered for nothing and the bomber had no future either. He was killed within an hour of his infamous act of political assassination and his remains hidden. A false trail was laid to point elsewhere as to who set off that June 19th bomb, pointing somewhere far away from the Soviet Union indeed. Plan Aurora was to continue though, with unease about his lack of any further direct input, Romanov had a completely hands off approach. What was to happen in the aftermath was not anything more that could be controlled, let alone effectively influenced.

V

Britain’s head of state was the Queen. She appointed prime ministers and ministers both to form a government in her name. Throughout her reign, prime ministers had resigned and new ones had been appointed by her though each time there had been an interval where the country had no head and government and its head of state held all of the power. The situation usually lasted an hour or so, never very long.

There was a line of succession for the Crown though not one for the role of head of government. The Queen could appoint any MP, any member of the House of Lords or, in theory at least, anyone at all to become her new prime minister. When news of the Walworth Road Bomb reached Buckingham Palace, an unheralded situation occurred. There was no one to name as the new head of government. Palace officials spoke with the Cabinet Secretary over at Downing Street where the country’s senior-most civil servant offered what guidance he could. He pointed out that the Labour Party had a rule book that its members were bound by. In a situation where there was no leader, such as the one arising with Kinnock’s apparent assassination, a new leader would have to be elected. That was no easy process. There would be senior party figures who would wish to sidestep that and position themselves or nominate someone else to fill the void left by Kinnock to have a new prime minister ready for the Queen to appoint, but that couldn’t be done. His recommendation was that there be a wait for clarity. Things were moving on that note already with shocked Labour politicians still able to understand that their party needed a new leader, but they wouldn’t be able to organise anything at the drop of a hat. The country would have to wait for a new prime minister. There were ministers, Conservative ones, still in office despite their party’s defeat at the polls and they would serve. However, there would be no prime minister until Labour got its act together.

Britain thus entered the extraordinary situation of not having a prime minister. There was no head of government, just a collection of ministers from a defeated party serving. The Cabinet Secretary would present no other viable option to the Queen than to leave them in place and wait upon Labour to elect a replacement as leader.

Political terrorism like the assassination of Kinnock wasn’t something entirely unknown in recent times. The IRA had tried and failed to kill Thatcher a few years past and there had been other attempts on the lives of leaders but still nothing compared to the Walworth Road Bomb. The efforts of the authorities, in particular the Metropolitan Police and the Security Service, had failed to stop that outrage. Only a week beforehand there had been the Lakenheath Bomb and now the nation’s incoming prime minister was dead. A major security operation was mounted post-attack though to many eyes, that looked a little late! Suspects were sought though who was responsible wasn’t apparent. Questions were asked as to whether it was the IRA, some other unknown domestic group or even a foreign power like Libya. No one could give a definitive answer though. Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, was reputed by media sources to be incandescent with rage at the failings to detect a murder plot against Kinnock, one that was successful too. All the anger in the world did nothing to change the fact though that the democratically elected political leader had been blown up in the street in full view of cameras.

Many Labour MPs were grief stricken at Kinnock’s death. Others were less so upset: they might not have wanted him dead but he wasn’t widely loved in many quarters. Quickly, by the same evening that he’d been assassinated, contenders emerged to replace him. Each moved cautiously with how they approached a leadership run less they be accused of be cold hearted and insensitive though there was a lot of self-defence given with excuses made that the party and country both needed a new leader. Four figures would put themselves forward. There was Tony Benn (outside of Kinnock’s shadow cabinet), the junior shadow foreign office minister Robin Cook, Michael Meacher who held the shadow health brief and shadow trade & industry secretary John Smith. Others considered throwing their hat into the ring, but no others did. Those men all had different ideas for the future of their party and Britain. To elect one of them couldn’t be done in a day though.

The Queen remained effectively in sole charge of the nation while Labour rapidly began the process of having an emergency leadership election. Her actions in taking sole charge like that led to much criticism, even from those who were actually enjoying the spectacle that that was for their own gain. It was undemocratic, they said, and that was used for political advantage. The Queen did what she thought best though, what her advisers said was the only thing to do. No Labour MP dared step forward and risk the wrath of their party by putting themselves forward to be an interim prime minister where they wouldn’t be able to command a majority. The Queen was advised not to appoint a Conservative to that post either less it blow up the in Crown’s face. There were still ministers in office and they ran the government. Plenty of ordinary people weren’t happy though, especially strong Labour supporters. They had elected a Labour government and instead had the Conservatives in power with a hereditary monarch exercising what was regarded as illegal power. Assertions came that that situation would soon end once Labour had its election though. In the meantime, the uncomfortable and controversial situation remained with Britain not having a prime minister in office. Little news was made public in the meantime too about the truth of the Lakenheath Bomb nor who was behind the Walworth Road Bomb either.

Benn was a well-known political figure with a big national following. He was from the Hard Left and a proponent of a particular form of democracy. The man had enemies though because he had been around long enough to make them. An early favourite among outside commentators to win the fast paced Labour leadership election, Benn faltered. He didn’t have the support many assumed he would have. Cook had been Kinnock ally; someone many had been certain would move to lead a major government department in a Labour government. He was an unknown to many though and didn’t have the necessary following to succeed Kinnock no matter how much he wanted to. Another Scotsman like Cook was Smith. He was another up-and-comer with Labour under Kinnock, another party Centralist. A future statemen he looked to many, though not for the time being. Then there was Meacher. He was a young man yet had government experience from the Seventies and quite the surprising early following. Meacher was supported with earnest by many of the new intake of MPs, those from the Hard Left who surprisingly won their seats at the General Election on the back of the metaphorical fallout which had come from the Lakenheath Bomb. He embraced the vision of the future that they had, one that an earnest supporter in the form of the newly elected Pat Wall assured them Meacher wouldn’t let them down on.

If it was only a matter of MPs voting, Cook or Smith would have won that election. However, the Labour Party had an electoral college where the percentages of the votes were shared out in an unequal fashion among the trade unions, the constituency parties and the MPs too. In the first two, the Hard Left dominated. Kinnock had been fighting for some time against them with bloody battles to take them on. Benn was a friend to them though not seen as leadership material by 1987 and his outlook when it came to the future clashed with much of their ideological leanings: they had moved beyond him despite how much the right-wing tabloids wanted to focus on Benn. Cook and Smith had not a favourable impression either. Meacher did though, considering how he sold himself to the union bosses and the constituency parties. With the campaign so short, deals were stuck and passions ran high too. The local organisations and the block voting of the unions (where they didn’t consult their members due to the emergency situation) came out for Meacher in strength. He had a minority of MPs behind him but that was where the electoral college came into play to decide the leadership.

It took eight days. The lightning fast campaign or the excruciating drawn out process – it depended upon your point of view – was over with by June 28th. Meacher won the leadership with Smith coming in second and Benn behind him: Cook was placed quite the embarrassingly last. The Hard Left, fronted by a surprising figure, had won the Labour leadership.

All attention turned to the Queen and the expectation that she would appoint such a man with views that so many Britons, including many Labour voters too, to the role of the next prime minister the following morning.

VI

Meacher won the Labour leadership because he had signed up to the Manifesto for a British Revolution. The MBR had previously been spoken about in the manner of some sort of conspiracy theory with it said that there was no such thing and, if there was, it was nothing serious. Only in the week before Meacher won power did the proponents put their ideas down on paper. For many long years, it had been a collective dream with disputes about specifics. After Kinnock was killed though and Benn didn’t look like he was willing to take the required steps, Meacher was sought out by those behind the MBR. They presented him with a programme for government, one to transform Britain in revolutionary fashion. The Hard Left agenda when it came to domestic and foreign affairs was contained within the MBR.

It was a twenty point plan. It went beyond the reversal of Thatcherism that many in Labour wanted and had campaigned for. Kinnock nor Centralist MPs in his party hadn’t been onboard with any of it. Meacher was though. Nationalisations across the board, the abolition of the unelected House of Lords, government control of the media, reforms to the judiciary & prisons, unionisation of the police, national currency controls and private wealth registration for the purposes of redistribution & taxation were all contained within the MBR. Then there were the Big Five, a term given to international effects that would come with the MBR being brought into play.

The British Armed Forces were to be cut back significantly and withdrawn from overseas deployments.

There would be UK nuclear disarmament.

The European Economic Community would be withdrawn from.

Britain would leave NATO.

American military forces would be forced to leave the UK, taking their nuclear weapons with them too.

Late additions presented to Meacher by strong supporters – mostly with the Socialist Campaign Group – for his leadership such as Wall and also the newly elected MP ‘Red Ken’ Livingstone were for that withdrawal of the British Army from overseas to include Ulster too. In addition, the ‘colonies’ would be given up: Bermuda & the islands in the Caribbean, Gibraltar and the Falklands. Britain had five years before fought a war to keep the Falklands but the plan was to see them given to Argentina and for Spain to be granted Gibraltar as well. Ulster wasn’t about to be handed over to the Republic of Ireland though the initial stages for an eventual transfer were to begin on that. Meacher wanted to see how things played out there first once the troops left.

Labour MPs voted four-to-one for other candidates than Meacher. He won his leadership through votes elsewhere in spite of that rejection. There was a system to be gamed, that being the electoral college, and he won that game fair and square. His MPs would never accept the MBR but it was to be his programme for government nonetheless.

In the days leading up to the final outcome of the result being known, when the media and the country started to become aware that a Hard Left victory looked certain and instead of Benn it would be Meacher, there was strong opposition exposed towards Meacher. Opposition, Establishment and Labour figures all spoke against him. The MBR was leaked to the press in what many suspected was a deliberate move too. Against that hostility towards Meacher, his defenders sprang into action. Wall would attack his fellow Labour MPs – winning himself no friends with that – before he started making wild allegations and claims of what the future held to those who would listen.

Bradford North’s new MP claimed that there was evidence (which he didn’t present) that the Walworth Road Bomb had been the work of the Establishment. He alleged that it was they who had killed Kinnock to stop a Labour government. There were no names given, just a baseless allegation. When it came to the matter of some questions being raised in the media over whether the Queen would actually appoint Meacher as the new prime minister, Wall stated that if she didn’t, Britain would be turning the clock back to the Seventeenth Century… and he reminded everyone how that had ended. In a People vs. the Crown fight, the former would win out. He was criticised for claiming that he wanted to see a civil war yet defended himself by saying that if there was one, it would be started by shadowy figures within the Establishment. There were plots against Meacher he said, ones where Labour figures were embroiled alongside those from the Establishment.

On the matter of the Lakenheath Bomb, Wall asserted that that was an American bomb that had gone off there, not one brought in by some unknown foreign power. Either an accident had occurred or someone from the airbase had set it off. A government statement made the by the still in office Defence Secretary George Younger – that Conservative had held his Scottish seat by a whisker – had said that Ground Zero was actually outside of perimeter fence of RAF Lakenheath. Wall rubbished that idea, claimed that it was a lie. There was another conspiracy afoot there, one to cover up ‘the truth’. Once in office, where Britain would have a socialist government, Wall claimed that Meacher would reveal the real truth of the whole matter once and for all. That was because the new government would be ‘taking an axe’ to the security services too. They’d be made democratically accountable and investigations would begin in to all that they had done to subvert democracy in the country.

The Queen had no other choice but to appoint Meacher as the next prime minister. People like Wall claimed that she wanted to keep power for herself and there were figures on the side-lines urging another candidate to be named instead. There was no one else though. Labour had the majority of MPs in the Commons and, despite the misgivings of so many over Meacher, where there were promises made not to vote for the MBR, he was their elected leader.

Unless the Queen did want to see the 1600s repeated, it would have to be Meacher.

She duly invited him to Buckingham Palace on June 29th and asked him to form a government in her name. They had a pleasant meeting. Meacher wasn’t a zealot with his personal anti-Monarchist views. He didn’t want the Crown to exist as it did but it wasn’t on his agenda to see Britain suddenly transformed into a republic as there were some voices from the Hard Left calling for after the Queen had for more than a week ruled solely over the UK. In time, maybe there would be a republic yet Meacher knew that the Monarchy had a role to fulfil. There would be a day for that battle but not one in the foreseeable future. He had too much else to be getting on with now that he was in power.

After seeing the Queen, he travelled with heavy security to Downing Street. Once there, before he even got about forming his government, Meacher fired the opening fusillade of the first battle which he wished to have. That began when his first statement outside No.10 came with a declaration that he wanted the Americans to pull their military forces, and their nuclear weapons, out of Britain. He demanded that they go, saying that he would make that happen too.

jemhouston · Post by **jemhouston** » Sat Nov 26, 2022 9:16 pm

Good start

Bernard Woolley · Post by **Bernard Woolley** » Sat Nov 26, 2022 10:54 pm

I once wrote a story based on a similar idea. I chose the SAS raid as the PoD. The British government was able to provide evidence of the Soviet plot and it was also proven the nuclear material was not American. It didn’t end well for the world.

MikeKozlowski · Post by **MikeKozlowski** » Sun Nov 27, 2022 1:18 pm

Leander,

Well done, sir! Please follow up.

Mike

Poohbah · Post by **Poohbah** » Tue Nov 29, 2022 4:20 am

If I were POTUS, my answer would be very simple:

"Very well. We're leaving. We're also pulling out of all other bilateral arrangements with the UK, with immediate effect. And we will convene a NATO conference to see about kicking your sorry asses out of the the Alliance. We're also moving to have India take over your Perm-5 seat on the UN Security Council."

Figure Labour would have a no-confidence vote in Commons within thirty minutes.

Leander · Post by **Leander** » Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:40 pm

MikeKozlowski wrote: ↑Sun Nov 27, 2022 1:18 pm Leander,

Well done, sir! Please follow up.

Mike

Thank you, will do.

Bernard Woolley wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 10:54 pm I once wrote a story based on a similar idea. I chose the SAS raid as the PoD. The British government was able to provide evidence of the Soviet plot and it was also proven the nuclear material was not American. It didn’t end well for the world.

Where he was 'crawling towards an atomic bomb at the time'?
Very possible outcome, yes. I'm going down a different route where an innocent party (only in some ways) gets the blame.

jemhouston wrote: ↑Sat Nov 26, 2022 9:16 pmGood start

Thank you.

Poohbah wrote: ↑Tue Nov 29, 2022 4:20 am If I were POTUS, my answer would be very simple:

"Very well. We're leaving. We're also pulling out of all other bilateral arrangements with the UK, with immediate effect. And we will convene a NATO conference to see about kicking your sorry asses out of the the Alliance. We're also moving to have India take over your Perm-5 seat on the UN Security Council."

Figure Labour would have a no-confidence vote in Commons within thirty minutes.

They want Britain though. The situation is different with a desire at the top in DC to keep the UK as an ally yet still show them who is boss. When you are dealing with fanatics though, that will go awry.

Leander · Post by **Leander** » Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:53 pm

Part Two (a)

VII

Reagan had first been told that Thatcher would easily win re-election. Then there was outside chance that Kinnock would become prime minister before a briefing had informed the American President that Kinnock was actually going to replace Thatcher. Suddenly, things had changed again with Kinnock reported dead. Benn was supposed to be the new British leader, before a new update on the rapidly changing political situation in the UK said that it was to be Meacher instead. It had been said to Reagan that a Marxist was taking over in London though his Secretary of State George Shultz corrected that. The incoming PM was a socialist. He had proto-communist allies and there were Marxists who supported him, but he wasn’t a communist despite what tabloid newspapers in Britain might be claiming. There were strong backers of his to worry about yet none of them had any ties to Moscow. Meacher wasn’t the Kremlin’s candidate, despite what a few blowhards had been trying to convince their president of.

Ties between Britain and the United States were immensely strong. There were the economic and cultural links along with the shared history and language to cement quite the trans-Atlantic relationship. Behind the scenes, in the world of military cooperation and especially intelligence sharing, the bonds were even greater. London and Washington were long-term allies regardless of changes of governments. There had been disputes, including some that Thatcher and Reagan – regarded by observers as extraordinarily close – had had. The American invasion of Grenada, lukewarm backing of Britain during the Falklands War and also the conduct of the investigation into the Lakenheath Bomb had brought tensions in spite of that closeness. Still, those were personal disputes between leaders. Officials in the two capitals had many ties because they had shared interests, shared enemies and a shared view of the world too.

Meacher, and in particular some of the top people he surrounded himself with as he fought that successful fight to secure the premiership, threatened at once to upend all of that. His first address from Downing Street had been to deliberately make a point of ending those ties. He said that he wanted the Americans to leave Britain from their bases while taking their nuclear weapons with them. Across the UK, there were facilities which the United States Armed Forces had sole use of. They had their airbases where there were combat aircraft and nuclear stores. There was a naval anchorage in Scotland where Poseidon- & Trident-armed nuclear submarines were stationed. Supply depots for conventional weapons were scattered across the country and there were also reserve airbases too from where in times of tension or full scale conflict, American jets could also fly from. They had communications bases and electronic eavesdropping stations. An unsinkable aircraft carrier off the coast of Europe had been the term often used to describe the American military presence in Britain though their facilities represented more than just that. They had a major presence in the UK and had been in-country for a long time.

Reagan met with Shultz and his key national security team immediately after Meacher’s statement. The ambassador in London was on a secure line from across the ocean as well. The president was reminded that Meacher’s mouthpieces during his short campaign had said that seeing the United States leave Britain would be a priority though it was admitted that the haste with what had been done was a surprise. So too was how it was all said in public rather than through formal or informal channels direct with the United States. Discussed too was what else the new British Government was seeking to do when it came to the plans to leave NATO, have Britain disband its own nuclear weapons programme and also slash the conventional military forces too. All of that was a threat to the Western Alliance, a threat to United States interests.

Domestically within the UK, Reagan was assured that Meacher would have a short time in office. It was another five years at the most before another General Election would have to be held yet Shultz believed that his own party would force him out long before that. They wouldn’t vote for so much of his agenda. He wasn’t a natural leader either. A crisis would happen and Meacher would be toast. When and exactly how that would occur were the big unknowns of course. Asked by his president about the power that Meacher could wield to enact his agenda, especially when it came to those matters negatively affecting American interests, Shultz asserted that the new prime minister would have his hands tied by his MPs. The Parliamentary Labour Party was a big tent organisation. Hard Left figures were there but so too were Centralists. The latter shared the same geo-political outlook as the deposed Conservatives. They wouldn’t vote in the Commons to see Britain disarmed of its nuclear weapons and its conventional military forces slashed. They wouldn’t agree to leaving NATO either. Support from any of the smaller opposition parties either wouldn’t come nor would it be enough to allow Meacher to defeat his own sure-to-be rebels who would stymie his agenda not just on the international front but so much of what had been announced domestically as well.

The matter of American military forces in the UK was different. Shultz and Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger had diverging viewpoints on what would happen with that. Whether it would require a parliamentary action or be a matter for Meacher’s Cabinet was something Reagan’s people couldn’t agree on. Discussed with Reagan was how to respond. A refusal was one to be made, that was the president’s decision. The United States would say no to Meacher’s demand. What would happen would happen, but there was going to be a complete rejection of the outrageous call. Weinberger asked his president to consider what that might mean. He presented a brief hypothetical: if Meacher set about trying to force the issue, not through political & diplomatic means, but by actual force, then what could happen?

The president asked that his national security team begin working contingency plans there. He, and Shultz too, both stated that they didn’t believe that the situation would come to anything like that because Britain was an ally despite its dramatic new leaders, but preparations would still be made at least at the paper planning level.

There was an update for Reagan from William Webster concerning the Lakenheath Bomb and the Walworth Road Bomb both. Webster had only weeks beforehand taken office as the new head of the CIA. For almost a decade previously he had been at the FBI where he’d served as director there as well. The man was an intelligence community figure of some note. He’d personally intervened in the matter of those two explosions within Britain where he’d been in plentiful contact with those in the UK’s own intelligence organisations. Downing Street under Thatcher had pushed back some against bullish moves by Webster to see American agents take a leading role though during the week-plus period where there was no prime minister over in London, Webster’s people had found that Howe and Hurd had been willing to look the other way somewhat. Both men were now out of the Foreign Office and the Home Office respectively but they had opened things up when they had no direct oversight.

More information had been gathered around the nuclear blast in west Suffolk and the car bomb used in the assassination in South London. Webster confirmed that the Ground Zero of the Lakenheath Bomb was somewhere that access had been granted to and samples taken from. Analysis was being done in Britain and in the US too with preliminary results from trace elements showing that it hadn’t been an American nuclear weapon that had gone off either by accident or design. It wasn’t a British bomb either. Someone else had put that bomb in place and seen it detonated. Who and who remained still a mystery though. Yet… there was some – circumstantial – evidence that maybe Libya was involved. Why Libya? Thirteen months beforehand, F-111s from RAF Lakenheath had bombed Tripoli. Gaddafi had vowed revenge. Shultz and Weinberger were unsure about that where they believed that Libya didn’t have access to a nuclear weapon but if they did, they’d use it against Israel or inside America. Britain was an unlikely target despite the apparent connection. Reagan asked if was the Libyans, could they have more than one bomb?

As to Kinnock, he hadn’t been murdered by the British security services (as conspiracy theorists had claimed over there) nor a recognised terrorist group like the IRA. The CIA had seen British intelligence that pointed to a single Briton, a left-wing extremist, being responsible. He was dead but there was irrefutable confirmation that Webster believed in pointing to him being guilty. The bomber had wanted to see a socialist government take power in Britain with the apparent belief that his bomb would do that. He’d gotten his wish though that was after he’d lost his own life.

Someone had killed him though. Who, Reagan had asked, was responsible for that? However, there was no answer pointing the finger of blame that Webster could give his president. The man surely hadn’t acted alone but there were unanswered questions as to who had helped him. It was rather farfetched to think that there would be another Libyan connection there too.

VIII

Ron Brown was given the job of Defence Secretary by Meacher. The Scottish backbench MP was considered by almost everyone to be completely out of his depth in such a job. He was an ally to Meacher though, someone who had backed the winning candidate in the Labour leadership race. More than that, he was willing to sign up to the set agenda when it concerned making fast, major cuts to the British Armed Forces while pulling home from overseas deployed forces and also cutting ties with traditional allies. Other possible candidates for the top job at the MOD weren’t going to go along with all of that. Brown took an axe to the top people that at his ministry with civil servants and senior-most uniformed military personnel, those who stated opposition to his government’s agenda, being fired. They’d contested his instructions when it came to ending nuclear submarine patrols at once and the opening stages of preparations for nuclear disarmament. His government had a democratic mandate and they didn’t. On his own agenda, Brown set about making the British Army, the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force somewhere that those below officer rank were unionised. He’d long been a proponent of that, arguing from the backbenches in favour of it. Resistance came his way straight away but Brown met that head on.

Another Margaret was in Downing Street. Margaret Beckett was given the role of Chancellor of the Exchequer, whose residence was at No.11. Benn had first been offered the job of taking charge of the Treasury where Meacher held out that olive branch to his challenger in the recently concluded party leadership election. He wouldn’t take the role though, nor any other one in the socialist government that Meacher put together. There were many bones of contention that he had with it all but foremost was the plan to set up worker’s militias. Aghast at such an idea Benn was. He was a believer in democracy and the rights of the worker, considering himself more enlightened than anyone else in Parliament on that, but he believed in parliamentary democracy. Militias would be a mob and he would have none of it. Benn wasn’t going to be one to keep his opposition to himself either. Second choice she might have been, but Beckett threw herself into the Treasury job. For several years, she’d been moving slowly away from the Hard Left where she started as an MP, turning into a Centralist so critics said, but she considered herself a socialist. She set out to be a socialist chancellor too. The rich were going to pay their fair share of tax in Britain. No longer would they get away with what they always had done in hiding their wealth and not paying their way. She had an urgent meeting with the Governor of the Bank of England. At the end of that, he was fired from his job. He’d failed to do anything about the capital flight during the preceding week and refused to intervene to stop more of it. How could the rich be taxed if they were moving their money overseas? Beckett would put a stop to that. In addition, the man had overseen a run on Sterling from foreign banks with ineffectual action taken. The man was booted out of the door!

Neither Cook nor Smith would join Meacher’s government – they weren’t asked anyway – when it contained someone such as Wall who, defying what they both saw as common sense, Meacher sent him to the Home Office. As Home Secretary, Wall had responsibilities over the police, prisons, immigration and the judiciary. The Home Office also had a supervisory role over MI-5. That wasn’t a day-to-day task for the home secretary but Meacher handed the responsibility for Britain’s domestic security service to him. Wall fired the Director General on the first day he was in charge. He at once ordered an inquiry to begin, which he would chair himself, as to alleged MI-5 involvement in the assassination of Kinnock in an attempt to subvert UK democracy. The Metropolitan Police commissioner was also removed from his job while police chiefs across the country told that there would be coming centralisation of county forces, mandatory unionisation for members and a complete change in policing across the board. Creating the worker’s militias which had left Benn – and so many others too – up in arms was also a brief given to Meacher, a task he relished to take on.

Chris Mullin had been pencilled in by Meacher to go to the Department of Trade & Industry yet a last minute change saw Mullin instead be granted the role of Foreign Secretary. He took over at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office with the agenda set for him to conduct a sea change in Britain’s international relations. He’d backed Benn in the leadership election and wasn’t close to Meacher while also not getting along at all with Wall. Nonetheless, he accepted the offer made because he understood the importance of the role and believed that it was his duty to take it on. What was being called ‘British Withdrawal’ – a term of innuendo – was a complex brief when there was nuclear disarmament, troop removals and the renunciation of treaties to be done. Pulling out of the EEC was going to be not easy, so too with NATO. Where the Falklands and Gibraltar were to see British presence removed was also going to be extremely tricky. None of that compared to the immediate challenges that Mullin faced when it came to the Americans and their presence in the UK though.

Long a critic of US foreign policy, Mullin wasn’t anti-American. Detractors would say he was because he had long been so outspoken against what he saw as a great wrong but that was just an ignorant knee jerk reaction to his views. Meacher had at once told the country, and the watching Americans too, that he wanted nothing less than an American withdrawal from the UK: their military personnel and their nuclear weapons. Mullin was a realist. He knew that that would be no easy process. He suspected that there would be all sorts of opposition from across the Atlantic and within Britain too. Whether the Americans would eventually go, he couldn’t be sure. It wouldn’t happen overnight either. Yet, a nuclear explosion had occurred at a US airbase on British soil, one where the Americans had their weapons. After the Lakenheath Bomb, Mullin believed that even Kinnock would have been forced to have the Americans remove their remaining weapons. Britons were dead and there was a radioactive crater in the English countryside. Their nuclear bombs had to go from their airbases, their Cruise missiles had to be flown out of the country and they too had to remove their submarines from Holy Loch. The latter was a naval anchorage up in Scotland, pretty damn close to Glasgow. Much attention in the previous weeks had been on the air-deliverable bombs, along with the long-standing opposition to Cruise as well, though what was at Holy Loch was even more destructive in explosive potential. Mullin was of the view that some sort of accident had happened at Lakenheath and he didn’t want to think about the consequences if there was another accident up there in Scotland so near to the population centre that was Glasgow.

He met with the US Ambassador and then had a phone conversation with Shultz afterwards. Mullin put to them both the position of the British Government: American nuclear weapons must leave the UK. His statement was met with a firm refusal. That was how things on that matter started, and it was something he was sure wasn’t going to improve.

On his third day in the job, Mullin was informed when at the FCO on Whitehall that the CIA had kidnapped a Libyan national from British soil. The man had been shoved aboard an aircraft at RAF Alconbury while bound & blindfolded and flown out of the country, destination unknown. It was outrageous! Aware he was about the increasing view in Washington that Gaddafi might have had something to do with the Lakenheath Bomb yet Mullin didn’t believe that. What he saw was Reagan going down the path of eventually holding Libya responsible for killing all of those airmen & their families – plus nearby Britons too, something that the Americans spoke less and less about each time – and reacting accordingly. If the United States came to the firm belief that Libya was responsible, Mullin feared that they would retaliate in kind. He worried that they would attack Libya with nuclear weapons themselves. Should that happen, then Britain would have no part of it. He spoke with Meacher about the issue and his prime minister agreed with him. The UK wouldn’t be party to, even by silence on the matter, the Americans attacking yet another third world country. There would be no repeat of May 1986 where American bombers, those from RAF Lakenheath in fact, had flown offensive air missions to kill innocent Libyans from British soil. They had another whole wing of them (more F-111s again) at RAF Upper Heyford. Mullin told Meacher than more than just oppose anything like that on a diplomatic level, they should try and stop it if it occurred too.

The prime minister agreed though he was quickly distracted. July came around and there was trouble from an expected source. That was Northern Ireland where the talk from Ulster wasn’t any more of just stern opposition to the new government in London but of rebellion outright rebellion instead.

IX

There had been no mention in the Labour Party manifesto for the General Election about pulling troops out of Northern Ireland. Many in the party wanted such a thing, believing that British soldiers there were the problem rather than the solution to The Troubles. Those voices had got their hearing pre-election and voting had gone the other way as to party policy. That was all before Kinnock had been assassinated though and Meacher had taken over. His backers for the leadership, along with the core group of enthusiastic supporters who had put him in office as the new prime minister, were convinced that there needed to be a pull out though as part of the overall British Withdrawal platform. Meacher went along with them. His government set about seeing that that was done. His new Northern Ireland Secretary Bob McTaggart made the announcement and Brown over at the MOD started issuing orders for Headquarters Northern Ireland – the operational HQ for those taking part in the long-standing Operation Banner – to begin the preparations. There was planning to be done first and those troops weren’t leaving Ulster overnight, but the intention was to bring them home and thus fulfil the long-held wish by Irish Republicans of ‘getting the Brits out of Ireland’, something shared by the Hard Left on the mainland.

The aftereffects of the Lakenheath Bomb hadn’t been something regarded as having a direct impact upon how voting went on polling day in Ulster. Of the seventeen seats in the Commons up for election, the Ulster Unionists won nine, the Democratic Unionists (DUP) took four, the Social Democratic Labour Party (SDLP) won two, with an independent Unionist and Sinn Fein each secured one both. For many long years, the Ulster Unionists had been near one and the same with the Conservatives on the mainland. Bitter splits had come through various London–Dublin agreements though with the Ulster Unionists having their own agenda. They were certainly no friends of Labour and the Hard Left of that party was an enemy. The DUP were a breakaway from the Ulster Unionists, even more opposed to any form of involvement from the Republic of Ireland in Ulster affairs that those that they had split off from. As to the SDLP, they were a sister party of those on the mainland though strongly tied to the Centralist wing in Labour. Sinn Fein needed little introduction: they were the political wing of IRA no matter how hard they tried to pretend they were anything but. The SDLP hadn’t been consulted before the announcement about British Withdrawal and it wasn’t thought among their political leaders that it was a good idea. Sinn Fein naturally disagreed with their fellow Nationalists on that note. The Ulster Unionists were up in arms though not as literally as the DUP were. While the latter sought to present an air of presentability, they were deeply involved with Loyalist armed groups. Only a year beforehand the DUP had shown its hand with Ulster Resistance. A mob had invaded the territory of the Irish Republic for the benefit of the cameras but there were weapons and a guerrilla set up ready for the feared one day nightmare of the Nationalists making their move. Loyalist terror groups existed, a couple on near par with the IRA, but Ulster Resistance was big and ready to swallow them whole should it come to that final showdown long talked about.

The DUP’s leader, Ian Paisley, declared that that moment had finally come. The socialists, communists even, who’d swept to power over in London were going to hand Ulster over to the IRA and the Irish Republic. He called for a fight, for the Ulster Resistance to make itself known once more and to stop that. Loyalists were urged to band together – with weapons in-hand – and put a stop to that. He made a blood-curling speech, one to incite the masses. Republicans took notice just as much as Unionists did. No one could ignore the armed ranks that Paisley encouraged rather than directly led. He was their spokesman, their inspiration, and made threats of unleashing them against enemies.

Under the authority of Operation Banner, there were thousands of British troops in Ulster. They had a wide range of security duties there. It was a difficult posting for those deployed there. They were targeted by terrorists, hated by so much of the population and knew that they had little support back home. Irish-born soldiers in the British Armed Forces didn’t serve in Northern Ireland. Instead, it was personnel from England, Scotland, Wales and elsewhere. They were suddenly told that the plan was to send them home. Most welcomed that, despite the general understanding that should they go, Ulster would fall into chaos. They’d obey orders though, lawful ones made in the ultimate name of the Queen. However, upon hearing what those in London were planning to do and then witnessing the reaction from Unionist political leaders in Northern Ireland, there were those among the personnel of the Operation Banner deployment who disagreed with that. They were a minority, yes, yet not an insignificant one. Ulster was a mess but anarchy and civil war would take place without them in-place to stop it. The new government in London was looked upon with disgust and some voices argued that it was an illegitimate regime.

Those who regarded the decision made as wrong had no organisation nor leader. They were all bound by their oaths of service made and there remained loyalty among them to their monarch. Acting against orders was treason. Paisley was seen for what he was and didn’t appeal to the various scattered soldiers who had a personal belief that they should stay. They didn’t know what to do and couldn’t act, not without direction and a sense of someone ready to put things right.

Allegations were made days into his premiership that Meacher had had some sort of hand in the murder of Kinnock. Such assertions were absurd, made from the deranged. Outlandish claims against a man like Meacher were red meat for certain tabloid newspapers though and also a few bitter Conservatives as well. Ink and airtime were granted to those making such claims even if they had no evidence to back it up. The right-wing media outlets who sensationalized it all were those who had been from the start absolutely opposed to so much of Meacher socialist agenda, in particular the stated intention of his government to take control of the media. For the public good that was supposed to be. To silence legitimate criticism so his detractors countered.

Wall had already shouted from the rooftops his unfounded and without evidence claims that some shadowy cohort of right-wing bombers and the Establishment had been behind the slaying of Kinnock, Hattersley and those others murdered on the morning of June 19th. Now assertions that it was in fact the work of people supporting his man, even in direct contact with Meacher, which came out. The right-wing tabloids had no shame when they defended themselves by claiming that if Wall could blame someone, they would blame someone else. The new home secretary was furious when those newspapers linked him himself too to an apparent plot against Kinnock so as to see Wall get where he was. That hit home, hard too. Others in Meacher’s government were more alarmed though not at the tabloids but what angry Conservative MPs stood up in the Commons and said there where they had no fears about legal action being taken against them because they used Parliamentary Privilege to make their own claims. Details of the MI-5 investigation into the Walworth Road Bomb were spilled for all to hear, for the newspapers to report on. The initial investigation had been looking at a left-wing terror group before Wall sacked the head of MI-5 and instead ordered an inquiry looking at that intelligence organisation itself as being responsible. All that had been uncovered before Wall’s intervention was revealed.

None of it looked good for the prime minister. There were links made to people who’d worked on his leadership campaign, those who had been major proponents of the Manifesto for a British Revolution. None of them were MPs nor held appointed office within his government. They were party activists, dedicated followers of a Hard Left agenda who had suddenly made Meacher their man whereas in years before they would have fallen in behind someone like Benn. Meacher’s press officer hotly denied that the prime minister had any connection with such people. Wall made a statement attacking the hostile newspapers though also rubbishing the claims from those MPs: as to what MI-5 had apparently been uncovering before he shut down their work, he called that a lie. It was all a falsehood, none of it was true, and those making such claims were enemies of the people.

Just like the increasing American belief that Libya might have been behind the Lakenheath Bomb, those in Moscow at the very top among Romanov’s closest circle looked on with surprise at what was going on in the UK with the Meacher/Wall claims. Libya was innocent of setting off that nuclear bomb and the followers of the new prime minister were likewise free of guilt. Paranoia, insanity even seemed to have taken over among their enemies in the West. Nonetheless, that was all good news for their own leader’s agenda of seeing the end of the Western Alliance. Moscow wasn’t about to start telling the truth. Romanov was happy to let it all play out while waiting to exploit the fallout being generated.

X

From out of Northern Ireland came images on British television screens of mobs of armed men parading in the middle of Belfast and Londonderry where they had taken over those cities. The newspapers were full of the same thing with editorials accusing the government of doing nothing to stop the Paisley-inspired Ulster Resistance from preparing for a pogrom there against Catholics… plus too any Protestants who didn’t agree with him. Why couldn’t Meacher and McTaggart put a stop to that? The newspaper barons such as Rupert Murdoch yet also surprisingly Robert Maxwell too were firmly against Meacher. His premiership was a week old and there was no friendliness from them because of his desire to end their monopolies. Maxwell’s Daily Mirror had seen resignations en masse from many journalists not willing to go after Labour like their proprietor demanded but he carried on. There was a firing over in Whitehall where the non-political Cabinet Secretary, the nation’s top civil servant, was forced from office by the prime minister. He was blamed for the failure to stop civil service internal stifling of the government’s agenda. Politicians were elected, Meacher had told him, and thus they were the ones who were in charge. In something quite unprecedented, the very day he was fired, that civil servant gave an interview to the Murdoch-owned Times. He savaged Meacher, hanging the government’s dirty washing in public.

Against that backdrop, Beckett was in the Commons to deliver the government’s urgent Emergency Budget. A lot had been done in a short space of time to put it together. Had he and Kinnock have not died in the Walworth Road Bomb, Hattersley would had delivered something similar to what Beckett did. Much of what was brought before MPs was in the Labour election manifesto. There would be re-nationalisations and taxation. However, Beckett, at Meacher’s direction, had gone much further than just rolling back Thatcherism and bringing in socialism. Budget details had been leaked beforehand and met opposition among many in Labour. What was left of the British economy, so claimed former shadow foreign secretary Denis Healy, was about to be destroyed. Labour Centralists were aghast at it all. Beckett tried her best to win many doubters over but she was fighting a losing battle with that. Hours before she went over to the Houses of Parliament from her Treasury office, she spoke with Meacher and told him that they must delay and have a rethink. He would have none of that.

Labour MPs wouldn’t dare vote down their party’s budget!

The government lost the budget vote by just three MPs. There were a handful of Labour MPs who voted directly against it, but dozens more abstained. The Conservatives and the other opposition parties had smelt the blood in the water ahead of the vote and went in for the kill with significant whipping done to stay on message but more than that to make every vote count. They hadn’t actually thought they would win, just make it very tight and see the prime minister squirm. Labour whips met subterfuge from some and outright refusals from others when pressing MPs to vote with the government. Jo Richardson had been made Leader of the House. Her job was to get Beckett’s budget through the Commons, working with the whips. She was out of her depth just as much as the new whips were. There was a lack of experience among the government which Meacher had put together. Few had governmental experience or even a long time spent with the shadow set-ups of Foot and Kinnock. They didn’t know what they were doing and the count wasn’t right. No hint of actual defeat had reached Meacher and Beckett before the Speaker had the numbers read out.

Only after the defeat did the opposition parties claim that what had been seen was in effect a confidence vote in all but name. Tradition said that failure to pass a budget was a vote of no confidence in the sitting government. Meacher and Labour ministers denied that that was the case. Healy spoke to the press, saying that he had abstained from the vote. He claimed that it had been a confidence vote in Meacher and the outcome of that was clear to see. Cook said the same, as did the former shadow home secretary Gerald Kaufman. Those were senior Labour MPs, figures who refused to have anything to do with Meacher. The prime minister was toast, so claimed Kaufman. The Sun would have a front page with a slice of burnt toast complete with Meacher’s face superimposed on it the next day.

Four MPs ‘crossed the floor’ and defected from Labour in the aftermath of the budget vote. None of them was a household name and only weeks beforehand they had all been elected on a Labour Party banner. They joined the Social Democrats, a breakaway party formed back in 1981 when Labour had been under the leadership of Foot. The SDP had twelve MPs before and thus sixteen afterwards: far lower than the total of twenty-nine when first formed. The previous two general elections hadn’t been kind to the SDP and Kinnock in particular hadn’t been a cause to force out Labour MPs like Foot had been. David Owen had taken the party leadership after the ’83 election and he was someone whose personality kept many would-be defectors at bay. More might have defected in July ’87 had the SDP had a different leader. Nonetheless, Owen made a big deal over what was done with those defections. More Labour Centralists were welcome in the SDP to escape the ‘madness of the Hard Left’ which Meacher was front-and-centre of.

Thatcher still led the Conservatives. She had resigned as prime minister after defeat at the polls and had been nearly talked into resigning the leadership by top party figures until the Walworth Road Bomb happened. That changed everything and kept her in her job. There was still a lot of anger in her party at how she had led them to defeat. Blame was put upon her reaction to the Lakenheath Bomb where it was said that she should have delayed the General Election. Seeing Labour MPs defect to the SDP following the budget vote defeat, there was talk from Thatcher supporters that there would soon be another opportunity for Britons to go to the polls. Meacher was doomed and would continue to bleed MPs. She would have a meeting with Owen not long afterwards and also talk with his electoral pact partner David Steel who led the Liberals. Steel didn’t have the near visceral hatred for the Hard Left that Owen did and also was no friend to Thatcher. Regardless, he was open to cooperation between the Opposition parties.

When the right moment arose, expected at some point soon when the correct pieces fell into place, they would push for an official Vote of No Confidence. That would bring down the government and force another election. Doing it at the right time was something that Thatcher told her two partners was key though. If the timing and circumstances was wrong, a win for the government would bolster Meacher where he could claim victory and be strengthened. His own MPs would be needed to help pull him down and there was much tribal loyalism there when faced with external attacks. The timing had to be perfect.

As to Meacher, his government still had a working majority. The numbers were down from the General Election with vacancies caused by the murders of Kinnock & Hattersley and then those defections, but there was still a clear majority of Labour MPs. Some had voted against the budget though many more had abstained. With the latter, it was clear that they weren’t minded to actively vote against their government despite the disgust against its actions. Meacher met with many Centralist MPs afterwards. He ignored voices on the side-lines calling those who’d failed to support the government all sorts of unpleasant names because it was clear that that was an approach that would see him fall. He tried to reason with his opponents, even when knowing it would fail. An open door method was thought best rather than aggression. How that would work out in the long run was difficult to predict though. Events were occurring at a rapid rate, all coming unexpectedly. Holding onto power wasn’t going to be easy, not with such opposition that Meacher faced coming from seemingly all sides.

XI

There was no real proof, something in the form of concrete evidence, to lay the blame for the Lakenheath Bomb at the hands of Libya. Paranoia, circumstantial data and a lot of conjecture was all that there was. Gaddafi had motive to do such a thing, so it was decided in Washington, but no proven capability. That aside, where was the evidence to say that he’d actually ordered it done even if he’d somehow got hold of a nuclear weapon and decided to use it in the English countryside rather than outside of Tel Aviv or in the middle of DC? Reagan’s top people could provide none of that. There was some suspicious signals intelligence, a kidnapped Libyan spook who’d been up to no good and a few other breadcrumbs but nothing more. In the House and Senate both, there were political figures from both parties making strong speeches where the claim was that Libya was responsible for the deaths of all of those Americans killed at that airbase yet, again, there was no proof. Told by their president to bring him proof and if they did, he would unleash a devastating response from the United States, Reagan’s advisers couldn’t do so.

Vice President Bush had once served as head of the CIA. Not for long and he was a politician rather than a career spook like Webster, but his counsel was listened to by Reagan. If the CIA and the other agencies within the US Intelligence Community had something solid, they would be presenting it readily. They didn’t. A gut feeling wasn’t enough, so Bush said. He spoke of his own gut feeling on the matter: there was a chance that the Soviets had something to do with it all. The vice president didn’t like the timing and how Moscow seemed to have a prepared response to it all. The whole matter suited them so he thought. However, just like those pushing for a fresh attack on Libya to make the 1986 strike look like nothing more than an expensive fireworks show, he had no evidence at all either. Libya wasn’t acting like an innocent, wronged party either in what would be the expected manner (if Gaddafi’s actions could ever be something foreseen) for a country where there were informal allegations being made over something like the Lakenheath Bomb. He celebrated the nuclear attack, saying that the warmongering United States deserved it too. That fed into the views of those who believed his guilt, proof or no proof, but didn’t budge neither Reagan nor Bush from their positions on the matter.

While that debate raged in America’s capital, there was a movement of US forces should the evidence be found. Reagan approved that, allowing for preparations to be made ahead of time so if proof was found, a strike could come fast. The US Navy moved two aircraft carriers along with their attendant battle groups. One went from the Eastern Med. to near Sicily while another steamed up through the Red Sea from the Middle East – a Pacific Fleet carrier was sent to take over station in the Arabian Gulf – through Suez. That second deployment got the attention of the world’s media. As was the case the year beforehand, European NATO allies were not of mind to be involved in any attack against Libya unless they were too given firm proof of Gaddafi being involved in that nuclear explosion several weeks past. US Air Force jets based in Spain and West Germany wouldn’t be used in an attack, nor would Greek & Italian airbases as staging posts either. A strike would have to come from further afield by the US Air Force. Big bombers were readied at home with airborne tankers ready to assist B-52s. There was also the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing at RAF Upper Heyford. They had several squadrons of F-111s and had flown as unused back-up aircraft for the one conducted by the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing in ’86. The plan was to use them in any July ’87 attack out front. Reagan was well aware of the attitude of the new British Government towards US forces in the UK but gave approval for readiness to be made with those aircraft. They might fly in any strike or they might not: either way, they were going to be prepared to do so.

At RAF Upper Heyford, an airbase to the north of Oxford, there had been a reinforcement made of the armed ground security unit there following the Lakenheath Bomb. Extra Security Police soldiers had joined those already at the facility. The same had been done at almost all American bases in the UK as an immediate response to that nuclear blast. Many military families had left the various sites too, flying home on the same transport jets that the armed soldiers had come in on. RAF Lakenheath had been blown apart by a nuclear weapon yet the deployment of soldiers had gone ahead regardless of that. Anyway, they were there to provide additional security around the stored weapons at the airbases and the storage sites. Furthermore, US Navy SEALs had flown to RAF Machrihanish up in Scotland too. That was a ‘surge site’ for US Navy aircraft in wartime though also had nuclear weapons present. Machrihanish was also pretty close to Holy Loch. British approval for those deployments made in the last days of Thatcher being in Downing Street had been given though it hadn’t really been needed. Those soldiers remained scattered across the UK, effectively doubling the armed presence that the United States had on British soil.

As part of a series of previously planned exercises, the 501st Tactical Missile Wing conducted an exercise from out of RAF Greenham Common. There had been queries made up the command chain as to whether, in light of the current outspoken hostility from the British Government, there should be a delay to that. From all the way at the Pentagon came back down the simple instruction: carry on as planned. Thus, early on a Sunday morning not a week after Meacher had taken the reins as prime minister, an emergency alert went out within that base in the Berkshire countryside. One of the missile flights was given an urgent deployment order. They were on standby already and not told it was only a drill. With undue haste, the vehicles got rolling. It could have been the real thing where they were about to go to war. Everything was done by the book. Wheeled vehicles carrying personnel for the missile flight to operate away from the base just they would do in wartime left Greenham Common. There were four launch vehicles among the convoy, each with a quadruple launcher for GLCM missiles. Inert nuclear warheads were carried though that was known only to the detachment commander. A pre-sighted location outside of Berkshire was the destination where they were to fast set themselves up awaiting a launch order for the missiles which had a continental-wide reach.

‘Cruise’ was a mightily controversial issue within the UK. Over on the Continent, in West Germany especially, there was just as much dispute over the GLCM cruise missiles with nuclear warheads deployed in their countries as well. Nonetheless, over there they hadn’t had a nuclear weapon – albeit one going off at an airbase instead of a missile base – detonating in recent weeks. The peace camp outside Greenham Common was something that there had long been attention on with all of those women there and the muck printed by tabloid newspapers about them. Lesser known were the activities of Cruise Watch. Volunteer veteran anti-nuclear campaigners busied themselves attempt to track and even interfere with the semi-regular off-base deployments made by the Americans with their missiles. Those activists used radios, off-road vehicles and might have even received tip-offs (nothing could be proven) about where and when the Americans would make their move. Using a non-violent approach but effective tactics to disrupt the alert deployments was the goal of Cruise Watch. They wanted to annoy the Americans, to get in their way in the most dramatic fashion too where the result would be media attention.

They got their wish on July 5th.

A new member among the team, a woman who’d previously been at the peace camp and so angered after the Lakenheath Bomb, made a foolish error that cost her dear. She was literally chasing the American vehicles when they were some distance away from their base and was run over by first one of them. It was a support truck, not one of the launch vehicles itself. There were other vehicles too in the convoy and a second vehicle, a HMMWV carrying armed airmen with a Security Police detachment, also unfortunately ran over the body in the road near to Pewsey in Wiltshire. It was all an accident, her fault in fact. The crazy woman initially running in the middle of the road and then lying down in it just hadn’t been seen in time by either driver. The protester was left dead afterwards and there would be claims made that if not the first vehicle, then the second one had run her over her on purpose. Those claims would make the news and get political notice too. Cruise Watch would get its coveted national coverage after all.

XII

A weekend of violence occurred in Northern Ireland. Paisley’s Ulster Resistance was at the centre of it all though IRA gunmen, plus terrorists from further Republican groups too, were in action as well. There was rioting and attacks against the Peace Lines: sections of walls within Belfast that divided communities to keep sectarian violence down. Homes were burnt down, so too businesses. Taxis were hi-jacked with gunmen demanding that drivers take bombs to police and army facilities. The Royal Ulster Constabulary was overstretched and in serious trouble. It was an armed force but the RUC needed military support. The British Army was called upon to assist in bringing things under control. Upon a Cabinet decision, one which Meacher strongly supported, no troops with Operation Banner were sent out to break up the violence. Such a decision was costly. Many more lives were lost than otherwise would have been. Betrayal, came the howls from Unionists. Even many Nationalist communities would have welcomed – silently of course – the urgent deployment onto the streets of soldiers at a time of extreme violence.

Assassinations took place across the backdrop of civil unrest. A leading Sinn Fein councillor in Belfast was murdered in his home with one of his teenage sons also shot. A car bomb exploded to murder a prominent SLDP activist. At an illegal roadblock in South Armagh by the IRA, a DUP politician was dragged from his stopped vehicle and executed beside the road: another such stop, this one by the smaller yet just as deadly INLA terror group, saw an off-duty RUC officer shot to death as well. Inside the barracks complexes where troops were kept inside upon express orders from London, shots were fired towards several of them and there was also an improvised mortar strike as well. Regardless, they weren’t allowed to leave where they were to stop the arson, killings and attempts at ethnic cleansing that was seen in certain areas as well. Despite him being in favour of the planned withdrawal from Ulster, McTaggart had wanted to see troops used but the Northern Ireland Secretary was overruled by the Cabinet. He could do nothing to change the minds of his colleagues on the matter. Meacher and Wall told McTaggart that soldiers on the streets would only make things worse. It was the duty of the RUC, plus political efforts, to see ‘normalisation’ happen in Ulster.

Attention that weekend in government was upon what had happened in Wiltshire with the anti-nuclear protester killed by that convoy of American military vehicles. Far more lives were being lost over in Northern Ireland yet all focus was on what had occurred outside the little village of Pewsey. CND activists were claiming that she’d been run over on purpose, that she’d been murdered in fact. Cruise Watch got loads of coverage where an eloquent spokesman for that group told the story of something he hadn’t personally witnessed but in the manner as if he had. Two vehicles in turn had run her own in what surely couldn’t have been a simple accident! There was different sorts of coverage in the media when it came to that woman. It mattered to them whether or not she had been from the Greenham Common peace camp. Such a thing shouldn’t have, yet it did. To right-wing tabloids, she almost deserved what she got should she have been one of them. Other outlets focused on her being a mother of young children and that loss to an innocent family. Cut down in her prime she’d been, all while fighting for their future in a nuclear-free Britain.

Meacher spoke to friendly journalists. He didn’t use the word ‘murder’ like Wall did when he had spoken to others. Nonetheless, the anger from the prime minister was all over his remarks. He lashed out against the Americans for doing what they had been in driving armed convoys through the English countryside while carrying nuclear weapons. The apparent accident with one of their bombs at RAF Lakenheath weeks beforehand had already killed hundreds of Britons and now another life had been lost. Meacher repeated his demand that the United States remove its nuclear weapons, all of its soldiers in fact, from the UK and do so without delay.

Go home, was his message, and stop killing us.

Brown and Mullin became aware that the Americans had certain plans to use the UK as a springboard for an attack on Libya should they gain the intelligence sought to bring proof that Gaddafi had been behind the Lakenheath Bomb. Details on what exactly was going to be done when it came to the UK being that unsinkable aircraft carrier for them as it was often called reached the defence & foreign secretaries. F-111s would fly from RAF Upper Heyford and RAF Fairford, a standby US Air Force base in Gloucestershire, would be employed as a forward staging post for B-52s flying from home bases. Neither man was best pleased, Mullin especially.

In the previous year’s attack against Libya made by the Americans, those Lakenheath-based F-111s had flown a long and circular route from Suffolk all the way to their targets and back using airborne tankers. They hadn’t gone in a straight line but rather around the edges of Western Europe in long overwater flights. France, Italy, Spain and West Germany had all shut their airspace to American aircraft engaged in offensive air missions against Libya. The UK was sovereign, so Mullin told Brown, and could do, in fact should do, just as their European neighbours had done back in 1986: deny overflight rights for any strike against the Gaddafi regime. If the Americans wished to continue regardless of the diplomatic opposition that the British Government would unleash upon them, then they would have to do so from bases and airspace elsewhere. Britain could say no and the two of them believed that it must.

Meacher agreed fully with that. Other Cabinet members briefed on the matter were in alignment with the prime minister too. They decided not to wait though. Mullin expressed concern that the reckless Americans would just do it without informing Downing Street because they would expect objection. Once it had happened though, they’d just shrug their shoulder. That would leave those in government a party to it all, even if they didn’t directly know. No one wanted to part of what could be a plausible deniability defence, not when there was agreement that the United States was utterly in the wrong. Mullin set about informing SecState Shultz of that while SecDef Weinberger was also sent an official government message via the Pentagon.

Those actions were taken only hours before the death in Wiltshire of that protester under a Cruise convoy. For all of his distrust of characters like Reagan and his anger at decades of United States foreign imperialism, Mullin was no paranoid crank when it came to what the Americans were capable of. The home secretary raged about that being some sort of deliberate provocation but the foreign secretary knew better. It was an unfortunate accident, something that was coincidence… like RAF Lakenheath being where Libya had last been bombed from. The Americans weren’t going to run over a British civilian with their nuclear weapons convoy to show London who was really in charge! Yet, it had happened. He convinced Meacher that it was just coincidence but did agree that a response had to be made. Wall put forward a course of action to take in reply and Mullin, like other Cabinet members, agreed with it.

From the Home Office was an edict sent to local police forces. Cambridgeshire Constabulary, Gloucestershire Constabulary and Thames Valley Police were told that come the Monday morning, they were to begin closing off selected access to certain American airbases. RAF Molesworth, RAF Fairford, RAF Greenham Common & RAF Upper Heyford were not to have particular vehicles enter them. Fuel tankers and any trucks containing munitions weren’t to go into each. Out of the two of them which housed Cruise, convoys of those missiles were to be stopped from leaving. Police officers were to deploy to access points to turn them away inbound vehicles and halt trucks carrying nuclear-armed missiles. Other vehicles would enter & leave, but not those ones which would be bringing in fuel & munitions plus carrying such weapons. Pushback came from the decentralised police HQs, ensuring that Wall’s agenda to see them all merged in a disestablishment of semi-independence down the road be brought forward in planning. Wall himself, plus Meacher talking direct to the chief constable of Thames Valley Police too, got personally involved. That was to happen regardless of those top policemen arguing that that was a really bad idea! Lawful orders had been given by the democratically elected and those were to be followed.

Brown also set about seeing that access to American airbases from the fixed Government Pipelines & Storage System network was also cut off. That was controlled by the MOD and was a back-up link for sending aviation fuel to the airbases alongside the regular fuel tankers which came in. He warned his colleagues that even with road access gone and the taps switched off, the Americans could still get fuel for their jets. They could fly it in. More than that, he also echoed what the police chiefs had said about it all not being the best thing to do. The Americans would react. Such caution was listened to, and Mullin did agree with a lot of what the defence secretary had to say, yet like Meacher, he believed that it was a step that must be taken. If they wanted to really stop the Americans, they would be using active force against them. That wasn’t happening. This was to be a passive move made to make more than just a point but to send the strongest of all messages to Washington about how serious the UK was about wanting them to take their forces home. Brown refused to be quiet without saying his piece though. He asked his Cabinet colleagues to consider what would happen should the United States decide to up the ante. What if they tried to break that partial blockade, threatening to use force? What then?

Leander · Post by **Leander** » Tue Nov 29, 2022 6:53 pm

Part Two (b)

XIII

A camera crew from ITN News received a tip off that ‘something interesting’ was going to happen at RAF Upper Heyford. The source was good and a producer had his team there when officers from Thames Valley Police arrived at the main gate. They were recorded setting up a blockade to deny access to vehicles that weren’t apparently approved to enter. Observing US airmen inside the base were seen coming out and talking to them with a senior officer soon summoned. There was arm waving and stomping of feet. No weapons were visible beyond the ones carried by the base security force yet it all still made for good drama for the camera. What the journalists would have wanted was to hear what was being said but they couldn’t get close enough. The policemen kept them back from the confrontation and then wouldn’t let them talk to the Americans either. Footage was sent back to London from their vehicle to a surprised news desk. Soon enough, confirming that the same thing was happening over at least one other location, ITN News prepared to put the story out to the public with live footage coming from the military facility in Oxfordshire.

Outside of RAF Molesworth, there were no officers from Cambridgeshire Constabulary present to block access to fuel & munitions trucks entering as well as cruise missile convoys which might come out. Instructions had come the night before from the Home Office with the home secretary himself talking to the chief constable, but come the Monday morning, he didn’t deploy his policemen. He believed that it was an unjust action, something not for the police to do. If the government wanted to do that, then they should use soldiers. Wall got the chief constable on the phone and demanded the man’s resignation. That was refused. The home secretary then told him that he was being removed from his job. The reply from the chief constable was that Wall was going have to force that act. He wasn’t leaving his post unless he was dragged out. Try and find a Cambridgeshire Constabulary officer, the man said, who’ll do that if you can.

Over in Suffolk, close to where the Lakenheath Bomb had gone off back in June, there were no policemen sent to RAF Mildenhall. A civilian official arrived with an RAF officer before dawn and woke up the commander of the Third Air Force with an urgent message though. The Suffolk airbase was the headquarters for US Air Force operations in the UK with tankers and command-&-control aircraft calling Mildenhall home. Headquarters staff were based there with their commander and he was told that morning of the action being taken by British police units – RAF Molesworth was on the list provided despite what wasn’t happening there – at selective US Air Force facilities. Fuel and munitions weren’t to be allowed to enter and no Cruise columns could leave for any planned or unplanned exercises. The meeting was brief and there were no hysterics. The senior American general was taken aback by what was going on though not entirely completely surprised. The political situation was tense and he had standing instructions from back home to not overreact to what those in Washington had feared might come in the form of some sort of provocation from a power-mad, anti-American new British Government. The visitors left, escorted off the airbase which despite the identifier night as well have been sovereign United States territory: the RAF wasn’t a user of the facility, just the US armed forces who oft considered themselves ‘home’.

An urgent call made over the satellite link went to the Pentagon. It was the early hours there but the Watch Station soon started walking important people (in and out of uniform) up when the news came from RAF Mildenhall of what the British were saying they were doing. Reagan, Bush, Shultz & Weinberger would all meet at the White House and discuss an immediate response. At the vice president’s suggestion, the president agreed that they should play the innocent, offended party. Meacher and his government were breaking legally binding status of forces agreements. That would be something made public in official White House and Pentagon statements. Shultz would contact Mullin, Reagan instructed, and try to work through the mess. What wasn’t to be done was anything rash. Meacher wanted that, so they decided, and they wouldn’t get the opportunity. Vehicles carrying what the British were saying couldn’t enter the bases weren’t to head towards them and the missile convoys wouldn’t roll out. Air freight flights could supply the selected bases and there would be a halt on exercises with the missiles… for the time being anyway.

Thatcher and Owen had a conversation that morning. The SDP leader wanted to get the ball rolling on a vote of no confidence. Meacher’s action, Owen said, were enough to see a rebellion of Labour MPs and a bringing down of the government so a new General Election would have to be held. There was disagreement from Thatcher on that. It wasn’t going to be enough to cause the prime minister’s own rebellious Centralists to do that. Furthermore, she asked Owen to consider how the Liberals might react. Their own anti-nuclear, in particular anti-Cruise, stance had been an issue in the election only the month beforehand which had caused the SDP-Liberal electoral alliance difficulties. They might abstain, even vote with Meacher. For the government to win such a vote, Thatcher reminded Owen, would be a catastrophe.

Instead, she proposed a different solution. The Conservatives and the SDP would go all out in calling for urgent questions in the Commons where they would call the defence, foreign & home secretaries before MPs. They would force a debate if they pushed hard enough. Owen came around to that line of thinking, adding in too that there was the matter of the unilateral ceasing of UK-US intelligence sharing by the British Government. His co-conspirator agreed. They’d go all out and it would take a few days, enough to set the mood music. Soon enough, something else would happen and the momentum would be with them to topple Meacher and his cohorts. What was expected by the recently deposed prime minister was that either the government or the Americans would go too far and take an action that would cause outrage. She told Owen that she didn’t relish what might be as far as an armed clash, but it might be the necessary think that would bring down Meacher and get rid of the socialists who had taken over from her government.

Brown and Mullin were both duly brought before MPs when the Speaker agreed with the two largest opposition parties that what was happening meant it was right and proper for the two of them to make appearances. There were a couple of Labour MPs, prominent ones too, who joined with Conservative and SDP MPs in condemning what was going on. Meacher’s actions were wrong, so the assertions were made. The intelligence matter really caused a stink in the Commons from those who were unaware of that. The level of cooperation before the abrupt cut off was larger than the United States had with any other ally. It covered all sorts of matters in every field imaginable. Britain benefitted from it just as much as the Americans did where they combated individual threats and dangers to them both through the acts of spies, signals intercepts and satellite coverage.

Giles Radice, a respected Labour MP who’d been in Kinnock’s shadow cabinet and subsequently refused to have anything to do with Meacher’s government, questioned Wall on that cessation when the home secretary made his appearance. Wall countered what Radice had to say about the government endangering UK national security all to make a childish political point. It was the United States which was the greatest danger to the country’s security and sovereignty, so Wall declared. They were the ones which threatened democracy in Britain and posed a clear and present danger to the UK. Laughter from Radice at such a suggestion played on the evening news broadcasts alongside images of the shocked faces of other Labour MPs. Wall came out of the same coverage looking deranged too, so said one particular commentator in the next morning’s newspapers. But then that wasn’t the first time either.

Another Labour MP, Bryan Gould, had a successful pop at Wall too. The Conservative frontbench was less active though. There were outrages spoken against what was happening in Ulster but those came from backbenchers. What was done by Thatcher’s shadow cabinet was to let Labour attack itself. Their capacity for self-sabotage was quite something and was needed if the government, which still had that majority, was going to fall.

XIV

Prime Minister’s Questions was twice-weekly event with half an hour sessions on Tuesday and Thursday where MPs were given the opportunity to stage political theatre in asking their loaded questions to the country’s leader. The Tuesday session was an unpleasant affair for Meacher without much vocal support from his backbenches. Thursday was even worse for him where the opposition parties, but also his own MPs, continued to bash the government. At the end of the second PMQs, Meacher left the Commons quickly after an aide delivered a message and raced back to Downing Street to an urgent Cabinet meeting. He was told that Strategic Air Command aircraft were arriving en masse into the UK.

SAC was part of the US Air Force. It operated the intercontinental bombers and also the airborne tanker fleet which gave it a global reach. A wing of tankers approached Britain while Meacher was speaking, an act which was afterwards seen as no coincidence. They’d had enough over in Washington and were making their play. Several KC-10 Extender airborne tankers flew into various American airbases across the UK. They went to the ones which the home secretary had had the police shut off selective access to & out of but also to the various other facilities in England and Scotland for their sole use. The KC-10s were better known for air-to-air refuellings though they carried a lot of aviation fuel. To American airbases they went, landing with full tanks to top up supplies at such locations where the partial British blockage hadn’t really bitten at that point. Air movements were cleared by RAF Strike Command at the last minute. Those aircraft were inbound and permission was granted to enter airspace, which wasn’t refused: despite political differences, those were aircraft from an allied nation heading towards their own bases.

When he was back at Downing Street talking with his colleagues, that was when Meacher found out that there was a squadron of B-52s following behind the tankers. Eight of those huge bombers were heading towards RAF Fairford. Permission was being asked for them to do as the KC-10s had done and enter UK airspace for a flight into that Gloucestershire facility. A rapid decision was made by Cabinet, one which not everyone agreed with. Instructions were sent to RAF High Wycombe, the command centre which was the headquarters base for Strike Command, to deny them entry. A return question came back asking where they were supposed to tell the Americans to divert to?

Anywhere but the UK was the answer. That was something sent onwards yet, to the dismay of those in Downing Street, while the refusal was acknowledged as being received, the B-52s maintained their course and headed straight for RAF Fairford. SAC had already given its own instructions to the aircrews, ones approved by the Pentagon who had presidential permission to up the ante and test the British reaction. Wall suggested stopping those bombers. He was asked as to how that could be done. Use RAF fighters to shoot them down was his solution. Meacher wouldn’t countenance such a thing, nor would any other members of the Cabinet. They weren’t going to agree to anything like that.

Word soon reached the Cabinet that the bombers were on the ground at that Gloucestershire airbase where Thames Valley Police had (very unhappy) officers deployed outside. They’d landed there in direct violation of instructions not to enter the UK. Reagan had sent them in the face of everything that Meacher’s government had said about wanting American forces to leave the UK, denying permission for any air strikes against Libya to be made from British soil and also the partial restrictions imposed on the ground outside facilities such as RAF Fairford.

Transport Secretary Eric Heffer and Energy Secretary Clare Short had each blanched at Wall’s suggestion of using the RAF to shoot down American aircraft though did support him when the home secretary proposed that – following the arrival of that mass of SAC aircraft in such sudden, underhand fashion – Britain announce an air blockade against further American military air movements. No more flights in and out of their bases would be allowed, including those of tactical combat aircraft and even unarmed transports. Brown and Mullin were each insistent that Meacher and the Cabinet not do such a thing. Brown laid out why it would be a mistake. To announce that would mean enforcing it. Enforcing it would mean shooting down American aircraft. To not do so, to not go as far as engaging those aircraft, would mean that the word of the British Government meant nothing. It would all mean war with the United States, Mullin said, or, failing that, complete and utter humiliation on the diplomatic stage for the country where Britain was shown to be as helpless as a baby when faced by the Americans playing games with them.

Meacher would agree with his defence & foreign secretaries for those reasons but more so because he remained a pacifist. To start a war, one like that, was entirely against everything in his character. He told his Cabinet his feelings on that matter, explaining – lecturing so Beckett would later tell her husband – his pacifism at length. What thus came afterwards was quite the surprise to the chancellor and others present.

Wall had had the Home Office take action to replace the leadership of Cambridgeshire Constabulary where the chief constable, the deputy chief constable & assistance chief constable had all be physically removed from their roles by officers sent in from Lincolnshire Constabulary. The roadblocks outside the American’s cruise missile base at RAF Molesworth had been set up, late compared to those elsewhere. Like the others, they had been manned by officers not keen to do their duty. Reports had reached Wall that the roadblocks were weak and had been circumvented. Other police forces from regions across the country had chief constables who didn’t want to send additional officers to support them with those senior men making rumbles about doing as what had initially been done in Cambridgeshire and refusing to act should new orders come from the Home Office to blockade on the ground further American bases. Hearing that, Wall started to talk again about his National Police Service plan but the prime minister got things back on track. Meacher told his Cabinet that he wanted to expand and tighten the noose around the Americans by targeting all of their bases including storage depots and communications stations, not just a few airbases as had been the case at the beginning of the week. County police forces weren’t up to the task of that so he believed that the British Army should be deployed on that duty of penning the Americans inside their bases.

Beckett told him that she would resign as chancellor if he ordered such a thing. Meacher called her bluff and put it to a vote among the Cabinet. There was significant division among them but the majority backed the prime minister. Beckett walked and so did Allan Roberts who had been serving as Employment Secretary. Neither of them would stay in a government where it was prepared to use troops in such a manner with Roberts telling his colleagues as he departed the Cabinet that soon enough, those troops would be receiving orders to enter the bases and there would be a shooting war. In a long interview with The Guardian, a left-wing broadsheet newspaper which had been exceptionally critical of Meacher throughout his tenure, Beckett would lay out in detail her reasons for quitting less then two weeks after being appointed as the UK’s first female chancellor. Meacher had gone mad. Wall and other like him were flirting with open conflict with the United States. She had no faith in the government and would, if the situation arose, vote against it in a confidence motion in the Commons.

Owen was on the phone to Thatcher that evening when he got hold of an early copy of the next morning’s Guardian via a contact. The SDP leader read out the key passages to his Conservative counterpart, especially the bit about how Beckett would vote in a hypothetical vote. The former prime minister agreed with him that now was the time to act. Enough had been done by Meacher to seal his own fate as Britain’s shortest-serving prime minister. They’d bring a motion of no confidence in the Commons against his government and have rebellious Labour MPs help pull it down. None of that could be done until the following week though.

Leander · Post by **Leander** » Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:27 pm

Part Three (a)

XV

There were nearly thirty military bases across the UK which the United States had either sole control over or significant access to. In addition to the devastated RAF Lakenheath, there were another trio of frontline flying bases in Suffolk: RAF Bentwaters, RAF Mildenhall & RAF Woodbridge. Flight operations of combat aircraft also went from RAF Alconbury (in Cambridgeshire) and RAF Upper Heyford (Oxfordshire). There were standby bases for the US Air Force at RAF Chicksands (Bedfordshire), RAF Fairford (Gloucestershire), RAF Sculthorpe (Norfolk) & RAF Wethersfield (Essex). The cruise missile bases were at RAF Greenham Common (Berkshire) and RAF Molesworth (Cambridgeshire). Communications stations for the US Air Force were located at RAF Barford St John (Oxfordshire), RAF Croughton (Northamptonshire), RAF Daws Hill (Buckinghamshire), & RAF Uxbridge (Greater London). RAF Upwood (Cambridgeshire) was for administrative use and there was a ready hospital with attendant airfield capable of handling the largest of aircraft at RAF Little Rissington (Gloucestershire). A huge ammunition depot was located at RAF Welford (Berkshire) while GCHQ Bude (Cornwall), RAF Feltwell (Norfolk) and RAF Menwith Hill (North Yorkshire) were strategic-level communications interception posts like RAF Fylingdales (North Yorkshire) was though with Bude & Fylingdales mostly being British concerns. There was a massive US Army stores depot at Burtonwood in Lancashire. The US Navy had communications stations at RAF Blenheim Crescent (Greater London) and RAF Edzell (Scotland). They additionally operated RAF Machrihanish (Scotland) as a standby airfield with a nuclear weapons store there and also at RAF St Mawgan (Cornwall) with that latter base being mostly British-operated. Outside of RAF Brawdy in Wales, the US Navy had a station for their SOSUS ocean surveillance system. Finally, there was the Holy Loch ballistic submarine base up in Scotland as well.

Orders from the prime minister were for the British Army – supported by Royal Marines too – to seal off access to all of those locations. Americans inside wouldn’t be allowed out and any outside at the time would be denied re-entry. With the bases spread across the UK, that was to be no easy task. It wasn’t something that could be done overnight, at the snap of the fingers of Meacher in Downing Street. Brown faced significant problems within the MOD to get it done. He was first told that it was impossible to do. Of course, that was a lie. The Chief of the General Staff was removed from his post and a new commander of the British Army appointed with haste. That senior officer did what he felt was his duty in such difficult circumstances and obeyed a lawful instruction from a Crown-appointed Defence Secretary. In rapid fashion, a plan was put together: an ‘on the back of a packet of fags’ plan at that. Operation Vineyard was the name. Troops started moving only on the Saturday afternoon. Ahead of that there had been resignations and removals from command made of dozens of mid-ranking officers who had refused to act. They said it wasn’t right, that it was an order which they felt compelled to not obey. Others stepped up and did their duty though, even with a heavy heart, because their orders were legal and coming from a recognised authority.

In the same manner in which various units saw service in Ulster on Operation Banner duties, when it came to Vineyard it wasn’t just infantry units which were put into play for the task of throwing a cordon around the multitude of American military facilities. Armoured units without their tanks, gunners who’d left their artillery back at garrisons and sappers without heavy engineering equipment were deployed alongside infantry units. Battalion-sized units were tasked to head towards the largest bases with the Vineyard plan calling for a deployment of undetermined length so while a company might man the roadblocks, the other two or three would be on rest and standby in close proximity. Smaller sites and the ones not in everyday use required less of a detachment of troops sent towards them while at the British bases where the Americans had access limited access to, even smaller detachments went there considering that there were already UK forces on-site. At the four already blockaded locations, the police officers there were grateful to be withdrawn from an unwelcome duty. However, in the middle of London, Metropolitan Police officers were instructed by the Home Office to help aid the soldiers sent towards the US Embassy in Belgravia. The policemen were there in Grosvenor Square ahead of a company from the Irish Guards who came up from Chelsea Barracks. The soldiers were tasked to surround the diplomatic compound with the policemen on-hand to keep civilians away. There were cameramen with news crews there as well to be kept back.

In the summer of 1987, the British Army had a wealth of commitments outside of the mainland UK. There was the constant drain of the Operation Banner mission in Northern Ireland where a large number of troops were deployed on operational tours. Troops were on exercise in Alberta for regularly scheduled wargames on the Canadian Prairies. There were soldiers in Belize to guard against any Guatemalan invasion and more in the Falklands to stop the Argentinians should they once again be foolish to make another strike. More of the British Army was in Gibraltar as well as in Cyprus too. Hong Kong was garrisoned and there were troops in Brunei. A far larger contingent of troops was in West Germany with an additional brigade in West Berlin. The British Army of the Rhine was a corps-plus size force garrisoned across the north of West Germany ready to repel (alongside NATO forces) a hypothetical Soviet invasion. There were many troops in the UK though the majority of them had a wartime tasking to head to the Continent – West Germany but also Norway and the Baltic too – either in the event of war with the Eastern Bloc or, better yet, already of any shooting starting to be in-place ahead of time. Lighter units were primarily in the UK ready to go overseas via fast transit by air or sea. That included the Paras and also the Royal Marines alongside ‘Line Infantry’ units.

Over on the Continent with the BAOR were the majority of the regular-manned support units of the British Army: its logistical elements. There was Territorial Army support on-hand back in the British Isles though, along with the mass of light infantry that the TA controlled, would all need to be mobilised ahead of time. Contingency plans for wartime were for mobilisation of the TA to see those support elements go over there too, operating alongside Host Nation Support infrastructure that the West Germans were ready to provide to the British, the Americans and their other allies. What that all meant was that while the British Army had a significant logistical component, most of it was either outside of the country or needing to be mobilised. The TA wasn’t mobilised for Operation Vineyard and therefore it was the need for supporting infrastructure to be in-place supporting the soldiers sent to man blockades which caused the two day delay in getting it all going. Short and Wall voiced beliefs in Cabinet that the British Army was deliberately dragging its feet. While that was somewhat true, Wall’s talk of Establishment plots wasn’t without any merit, such ideas still ignored the reality of the situation. Even though those troops deployed to surround US bases didn’t leave the UK mainland, they still needed extensive logistical support. The unsexy part of warfare, away from the soldiers with rifles in-hand, the advancing tanks & the fighter jets screaming in was what kept them moving and in the field.

Orders for units deployed as part of Vineyard were to not engage the Americans unless they were engaged first. They were supposed to blockade the Americans inside their bases and keep others out without the use of unnecessary force less they were attacked first. Physical actions and the threat of being ready to open fire were the instructions. Madness, said generals and brigadiers: the response from the MOD was that that was political necessity. Regardless of such insanity with soldiers sent off on a mission like they were with those orders, there remained the possibility – or certainty, depending upon your point of view – that they would see action in the end. The men deployed needed ammunition. Their vehicles needed fuel and ordnance too. Supporting helicopters for liaison, transport and patrol duties needed both. Maintenance teams for equipment & vehicles as well as engineers for a wide variety of tasks needed their own gear. There were signal units and medical teams to be deployed as well. All of that came alongside the human needs for the soldiers involved. They needed food and drink as well as access to washing facilities and toilets. They needed accommodation for when they weren’t standing manning blockades. Their uniforms would need laundry services. The unsexy side of warfare all of that was.

Sent away from their garrisons to what were rural locations – the US Embassy excluded –, soldiers on Vineyard duty were going to be living in the field. They needed providing for and so did all of their equipment while a constant run of consumable supplies was also required. No one in Cabinet had really considered that before they were given marching orders. Such was the reason for the delay beyond discipline problems with higher-ups and their moral objections. No one could say how long those soldiers would be deployed for and what would happen in the long run either. What was widely believed though was that they’d either end up fighting their way into those bases or, they’ll be a political climbdown either in London or Washington. The blockades themselves were surely not to be something to go on as they were for any length of time. Such a thing wasn’t really thought feasible in light of how that was going to play out diplomatically and politically.

XVI

There would be No Alamos on Reagan’s watch. The American president made it clear that should there be invasions of the bases in the UK which the British were surrounding with troops, no significant armed resistance would be put up leading to multiple last stand situations. Even reinforced in recent weeks like they had been, the Security Police units weren’t in any position to do that and nor should they. No heroics, no one was to be stupid enough to think that they could keep the British out while waiting for the arrival of the US Cavalry. If the airbases and other installations fell into British hands, it wasn’t exactly like they’d be captured by true enemies of the United States. Forcible entry was to be met contested with words and physical actions, yes, but no gunfire.

It just wouldn’t be worth it.

Camera footage, photographs and on the ground reporting from journalists over the wire feed was broadcast across the United States following the British implementation of Operation Vineyard. It wasn’t a surprise when it actually occurred. There had been the resignation of Cabinet members and also signals intelligence intercepts beforehand. The ambassador over there in London, plus SecState Shultz calling from Washington to the Foreign Office, had told the British not to do it. Diplomacy was the way to go ahead with the presence of US bases on UK soil. The flights of SAC tankers and bombers, meant as a test of how far the British were willing to press things, had gone awry though in a mistake which Reagan accepted was on him. Mea culpa, so the president said. At the same time though, Meacher seemed determined to force a conflict himself. Everything he was doing was over the top and completely outrageous. His unpredictability was something that those in Washington – naturally – couldn’t predict.

In the House and the Senate, even on Main Street USA, there was anger expressed and demands made for action to be taken. Calls were issued for the United States to go as far as sending the Marines to Dover and the 82nd Airborne to Heathrow. There was a chorus of criticism against the Reagan Administration’s actions ahead of the British moving troops with attacks against the president saying that he shouldn’t have allowed the situation to go as far as it had been. His detractors blamed it all upon him though there was still sufficient opposition to the British prime minister as well. Anglophobia reared its head in some quarters. From certain Irish American public figures of note, there was calls for military action to be taken over more than just the issue of the surrounded bases but to settle scores when it came to Ulster as well. On the flip side, while assailing their president’s actions as foolish and harming the interests of the United States, selected voices demanded that the United States should pull out of the UK entirely and leave the British to it. All told, support for Reagan was limited. Everyone was taking shots at him and his administration. A circular firing squad, so Bush called it, where none of those riflemen had a real solution to the whole thing.

Back when Meacher had first taken his premiership and spoke at once of his desire to have the United States vacate its British bases, there had been a presidential directive for contingency plans to be made should words from Meacher turn into action when it came to those facilities. The State Department had people working on diplomatic avenues of approach while at the same time there was activity over at the Pentagon as well. When Reagan had his national security team gather in the Situation Room below the White House following the start of the armed blockades around the bases, he wanted to hear about what could be done in response.

Shultz spoke up first. All that could be done on the international stage was being done. The United States was working with allies to bring the British around. From Western Europe, Canada and East Asia, there was a unified position where America’s partners, what had long been Britain’s partners too, were trying every trick up their sleeves to get the new British Government to see sense on a whole range of important matters which would affect them all. It wasn’t just about the American bases for them but the British trading ties overseas including the EEC ones. Then there was NATO too which Meacher government wanted to leave. Coordinated actions were being taken in the economic sphere to put pressure on London alongside the diplomacy in play. Shultz spoke too of his department’s efforts to maintain the long standing relations with people and organisations that went both ways across the Atlantic. Those connections were real and they were important. However, there was only firm opposition coming from Meacher, Mullin and the top people in government there. They wouldn’t budge on their agenda of seemingly pulling down one of the most important pillars of the Western Alliance, that being the US-UK relationship. As to a contingency plan for if the British did go through with it all, what Shultz had wasn’t much. There would be work arounds and band-aids applied yet none of that was any replacement for what was at risk of being utterly demolished.

SecDef Weinberger informed his president that serious work had been undertaken at the Pentagon in light of events since Meacher’s election victory. There were military options as contingency plans which the outlines of them he briefly presented. Firstly, there was an evacuation mission. Transport aircraft would fly in to load up people, equipment & stores with tankers there to get combat aircraft out as well. The problems with doing such a thing were many and multi-faceted. There was a risk that that would send the British over the top and into action with armed interference and that was the same concern with the second option as well. That was a reinforcement mission to deploy troops into the airbases ready to defend them: other sites would have to be left all alone though. The challenges were just as great with a reaction that Weinberger speculated would be like with the first: it would see the British start to fight while it was underway. His people had a third, Operation Copper Sphere, though before he moved to that, he nodded to Webster to brief the president on something they had already discussed between them.

The CIA head spoke of the volatile political situation in the UK with his belief that Meacher was very soon going to fall. His people over there had contacts among those seeking to bring down the government, backing up open source intelligence from what was being said in the media. Parliamentarians were moving to force him out by a vote in the House of Commons. In normal circumstances, that should see a resignation and either a replacement named or a new nationwide election. Alas, Webster feared that Meacher wouldn’t go in such circumstances. His closest cohorts would seek to keep him in power, defying even the Queen where they would claim a democratic mandate. In such circumstances, the fear was that there would be two governments formed complete with a split in the loyalty of the British Armed Forces. The expectation would be that most of those in uniform wouldn’t fight their fellow Britons but if they did, they’d fight for the side their monarch supported because they swore an oath to the Crown. Nonetheless, civil war, a limited one it must be said, was not beyond the realms of possibility. Should that occur, Webster could see no other choice for the United States than to go with Weinberger’s Copper Sphere.

The SecDef outlined that. The US Army XVIII Airborne Corps, the US Marines’ II MAF and a whole host of US Air Force & US Navy assets would go into action. Copper Sphere would have them land in Southern England: in Hampshire and Wiltshire to take seaports and airheads. That was the most favourable ground where there was a good chance that – due to where Windsor Castle over in Berkshire was but also the concentration of British Army installations – there would be pro-Royalists forces active in any British-vs.-British fight. Once ashore and linking up with friendly forces, the aim would be to turn towards London and help liberate it if that city was occupied by anti-Royalist elements.

A couple of jaws might have dropped in the Situation Room.

Thoughts turned to how long that would take to set up. How bad things would have to get in Britain first for the need to be for American forces to enter the country and take on all comers. How many casualties would be taken on their own side and among opponents. How the rest of the world would react, the Soviets included. How ordinary Britons would react. How much it would all cost.

National Security Adviser Frank Carlucci stated his opposition to Copper Sphere and Bush agreed. Shultz didn’t like it and Webster admitted that he didn’t want to see an outcome like that. It was something drawn up by Weinberger’s people at his direct as what to do in a worst case scenario yet even he told his president that he would never want to see it in action. Regardless, the SecDef and the Director of Central Intelligence both affirmed to Reagan that if the worst did happen in Britain with things go crazy there, then something like that needed to be prepared for less they were willing to sit by and watch Britain tear itself apart. Reagan spoke of his hope that Webster would prove incorrect should parliamentarians in London failed to see off Meacher and things got out of control. He wouldn’t want to oversee anything like Copper Sphere happening, let alone be witness to a civil conflict in Britain. His faith was in the British to sort it out themselves, so he announced, but he did with a heavy heart instruct Weinberger to have those preparations continue less it all be unfortunately necessary. Hopes were held out for British democracy in the Mother of all Parliaments to prevail so as to avert that nightmare.

XVII

Come the following Monday, the government sought to begin the process of bringing through Parliament their Trade Union Bill. It was a big piece of legislation and not something that could be done fast due to the intricacies of parliamentary procedure. It was considered a central piece of Meacher’s agenda. Trade union restrictions brough in under Thatcher would be overturned. The law would be changed to ensure that the police and the armed forces could organise too. Immense protections would be brought in for workers by the ability to strike (secondary strikes included) and have seats on the boards of large companies, the ones not being brought into public ownership in a wave of nationalisation that was. That was something unable to get moving ahead though because the Conservatives put forward a motion of no confidence in the government. It was put to the Speaker by the Leader of the House that the urgency of the trade union bill trumped a ‘nuisance’ attempt to destabilise the government’s agenda. He would have none of that. Such a motion was more important than anything else. Procedural tricks were attempted by the government where they grasped at straws. Assertions were made from all quarters, including Labour backbenchers too, that such a thing was not just against the rules but cowardly. Was the government running scared of MPs? Richardson backed down and stopped government opposition to the vote to be held later that day.

The three largest opposition parties were all onboard with the scheduled vote. Getting additional support from the smaller parties was sought and there was confirmation from the leadership of them that they would take part in the vote and cast votes against the government too. The SDP went to work among Labour backbenchers with Owen and his people seeking to convince as many of them as possible to if not vote against Meacher, then do as they had done with the Emergency Budget and abstain. Thatcher’s top shadow ministers – ministers themselves weeks beforehand – met with other Labour MPs and informed them of late weekend developments with regards to the government’s behaviour which made them unfit for office. They cut off all sharing of information with the Conservatives of government business. Under Privy Council rules, the Opposition was entitled to be kept informed of important matters. Wall had been the first to see nothing from the Home Office reaching his shadow and that was being repeated across government. That was entirely unacceptable, the message was, and a sign that Meacher needed to fall because he was allowing that to happen. All of that came alongside the deployment of the British Army to surround US military bases, the violent unrest in Ulster which the government was washing its hand off and the whole disaster which was Meacher’s premiership. Those backbenchers were asked to pull him down, either directly or indirectly.

Attention in the Commons and also outside among journalists was on what way certain MPs would vote. How would Benn cast his ballot? Would Beckett do as she had said she would when she resigned as chancellor the previous week and vote against the government? Livingstone had replaced her at the Treasury and spoke to the media outside the Houses of Parliament where he said that if Labour MPs voted with the Conservatives and the others to ‘subvert the democratic will of the people’, they could no longer consider themselves Labour. If that was meant to frighten rebellious backbenchers, it only did the opposite. Someone like him at the Treasury, along with extremely divisive figures such as Wall at the Home Office, didn’t bring forth enough of a sense of loyalty in Labour MPs to consider Meacher’s government to be fit for office. When Red Ken was speaking, there was a secret meeting held among three dozen plus Labour MPs inside within the confines of a large office suite. They took part in a secret ballot to give a mock result on what the result would be among them if that was the no confidence vote. Only a handful of ballots were cast to support the government. Of course, it wasn’t indicative of what the final result would be because those MPs weren’t Meacher supporters, but it told everyone who heard about it the strength of feeling. Word leaked out about it that evening with anger expressed in public from Heffer, Short, Wall and Livingstone too about ‘secret plots’.

There was talk among Labour MPs about the consequences of Meacher being forced out and there not being an immediate General Election. Someone would have to replace him. Meacher might even shamelessly run again rather than accept defeat. How could they stop him or one of his cohorts from carrying on with the disaster which was the current government’s behaviour? There were discussions about possible unity tickets among different figures who wanted the leadership for themselves. Disagreements were had though on that. There was too the fact that, as before, it wasn’t them who’d be picking a replacement for Meacher. It would be the same voting manner as before with the party electoral college. No decisions were reached, let alone brought into view. There was too much division among the ranks and too many wannabe leaders, all of whom had the problem of Meacher’s backers to deal with down the road.

The vote was held that night. Meacher spoke to the packed Commons ahead of it and so did Thatcher too. MPs then went to cast their ballots. The process took time but when it was finally over with, the Speaker called MPs to order when they all returned from the division lobbies to retake their seats (and stand too due to capacity issues in the Commons Chamber). The result of the vote of no confidence in the government was read out.

The Commons had no confidence in the government. Meacher lost the vote by almost fifty votes. Abstentions doomed him. So too did how small his government as well. In normal circumstances, a government would have a large ‘payroll vote’ ready to be employed with ministers, junior ministers, parliamentary private secretaries & trade envoys all on hand who would be counted upon to vote with the government. Two weeks in though, Meacher hadn’t filled all of those posts. His MPs didn’t want to be part of his government and bound by collective responsibility. As to the voting figures, on the Labour side the number of his own MPs who would have voted against Meacher would certainly have been far larger if it had been a secret vote like that one held earlier in the day among a select group. The second one wasn’t though and consequences were feared by MPs back in the constituencies should they be part of bringing down the government. MPs swallowed their hostility against Meacher and his cohorts to vote for a government that they didn’t believe in. However, the opposition parties had whipped their MPs well and then there were too all of those abstentions which combined to see the result come out the way that it did.

Parliament was run on precedent. What had been done before would always be done. The last Labour government had lost a vote of no confidence – led by Jim Callaghan back in 1979 – and so the prime minister had asked the Queen to dissolve Parliament so an election could be held. Before him, when there was no confidence in any government, there would be either an election or the prime minister would resign to be replaced by someone else who could command the confidence of the Commons. That was how things were done. There was no law that said what had to be done, just tradition and precedent to follow what had happened in the past.

Meacher spoke to the Commons after the vote had gone so decisively against him. He told MPs and the listening country – there was no television broadcast from inside the Commons, just radio recordings – that he wouldn’t go. He would remain in the post he had been elected to in a democratic election. The prime minister was going nowhere and he declared he would continue to lead the country.

The Queen was at Windsor. She had been planning to come to London and be at Buckingham Palace to await the outcome of that vote. The thinking had been that either the prime minister would lose and resign thus needing her to appoint a new holder, or that he’d ask for a dissolution of Parliament. If the vote had gone the other way, something which her clued in private secretary said was unlikely, she would have returned back to her castle in Berkshire while Meacher remained in-place. The news came through of what the prime minister had said after his defeat. She was shocked. Her advisers were just as stunned. There was no precedent for that situation. Yet, she was there at Windsor Castle because a warning had been issued to her over the weekend that she should stay there. Should Meacher fall, she should ask him to come there rather than go into the capital. Naturally, when advised upon that by her private secretary, the head of state had asked as to why that was the case. Surely there was no danger?

Starting the previous Friday, the Conservatives and the SDP had been talking up just exactly what they planned to do when bringing forward their motion of no confidence to topple Meacher. There’d been some bragging done in certain quarters about how they were going to throw him out of Downing Street. That had been reported in the media before party leaders could shut down such people from endangering their efforts to not upset rebellious Labour MPs enough to force them to stick with Meacher out of tribal loyalty. Some of those rebels had taken note but more importantly so had several blowhards outside of Parliament. There were leaders of a couple of trade unions, people who had put Meacher in power because he was willing to give them what no other Labour leader would, who had had some strong things to say about that socialist government in power being brought down. Arthur Scargill and his RUM were looking at getting final victory after Thatcher had broken them the other year. The union bigshots representing railwaymen and power workers wanted what they’d been promised too. At the direction of Wall, they’d already started making preparations for worker’s militias… or just armed mobs as detractors such as Benn had called them. The unions were talking of a General Strike if Meacher was to be forced out, of too sending their militias down to London. The Queen’s top people had seen what had happened in Ulster where the government kept the troops in barracks. The concern was that if there was an unruly mob in the capital, it would be best if the Queen didn’t go there because it wasn’t something that could be assured that the government would call out the authorities to deal with them.

George VI had stayed in London during the Blitz. The Queen herself had faced difficult situations before. Her thinking was to go into London, not to be frightened away. The advice wasn’t to do that though. The situation could explode if the mob got out of hand and the government continued to act irrationally against the national interest. Stay at Windsor, she was told, for everyone’s good so that there could be no risk. She was thus there that night when Meacher lost that vote and subsequently refused to so as tradition demanded and either quit or ask for a dissolution. He defied the will of Parliament and said he was staying where he was. From Windsor, the Queen would have to deal with a political crisis like none seen beforehand.

XVIII

On the night of the successful vote of no confidence against Meacher, there was unrelated violence in the capital. Down in South London, a riot erupted following a police incident in Brixton. The Metropolitan Police had been one of the first public organisations which had had its wings clipped by the incoming government and was meant to ‘be sensitive to community tensions’. It wasn’t that night yet they could hardly be blamed for what occurred. Not that far away, first in Peckham before trouble spread to nearby Camberwell Green too, further rioting occurred with attacks made against the police in a deliberate manner. Troublemakers from Brixton were the instigators. Sirens were heard all night. There was an orange glow to the dark skies as fires burnt among vehicles and businesses. Three lives were lost, one of those a policeman who was assailed by a gang of youths and stabbed repeatedly. The backdrop of such severe unrest was there while there was that dramatic night in Parliament though despite the arrival of cameramen in those trouble-hit areas, the newspapers the following morning covered only Meacher.

For a prime minister to refuse to abide by the results of such a vote as what had occurred was entirely unprecedented. He couldn’t be serious, surely? Such was the immediate reaction to Meacher’s statement after that vote where he claimed his election had meant that he couldn’t be forced out by MPs. Newspaper coverage of it all was the first that most of the country had heard of what had happened. The vote had been held very late the night before and people had gone to bed. When the next morning those who didn’t hear the news on the radio saw the frontpages of the tabloids and the broadsheets, some asked whether it was April 1st. The headlines weren’t friendly anywhere. The newspapers with left- & right-wing coverage both had editorials demanding that he quit. Inside the Times, that publication had a joint letter by the last two Labour prime ministers (one crafted late in the night and not in the early editions) with Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan calling upon Meacher to do ‘the honourable thing’ and resign his post as prime minister. Without the confidence of the Commons, with a collapsing government and the public mood against him, they urged him to stand down.

Not in the newspapers because it happened that morning after the vote was the resignation of a pair of top figures from Meacher’s Cabinet. The embattled Richardson quit her role as Leader of the House after her disastrous couple of weeks doing that impossible job for Meacher. She was followed out of the door by Mullin. One of the architects of the stand off with the Americans over the issue of their bases, and someone who’d relished the opportunity to take an axe to traditional British foreign policy, Mullin just couldn’t stay serving under Meacher in light of current events. Critics would say afterwards that Mullin fled the sinking ship as all rats would where he got out first to try and salvage his reputation. He would dispute that and claim that it was a matter of principle: he wouldn’t stand by and watch Meacher defy the will of the majority of Parliament. The prime minister would have a devil of a time finding someone to replace Richardson in a job which no one would want apart from desperate grafters among the ranks of the wholly unsuitable and inexperienced. As to naming a new foreign secretary, he temporarily assumed that role for himself at such a crucial moment.

In a combined approach, the Soviets and their closest Eastern European allies chose that moment to make a friendly move towards the British Government. Throughout the crisis with the United States where the two allies were going at one another, Moscow had been on the side-lines with statements made and positions postured but nothing direct had been done. That changed. The hand of friendship was offered in terms of trade and diplomatic support. Meacher heard out the offer. It was the only real friendship shown from overseas since his premiership had begun. However, where it came from wasn’t a welcome source. America had shown in recent weeks just what it considered to be the acts of a friend and Meacher could only imagine how worse things would be down the road as a partner to the authoritarian regime in Moscow. It would be a deal with the devil and, for all of his ongoing troubles, he would have none of that. The hand was to be slapped away.

Where she remained at Windsor, the Queen was visited by advisers and important officials. No minister was invited to see her nor anyone from the opposition parties. Discussions were had on how to act in light of what the prime minister was doing, or, better put, wasn’t doing. It was put to her that the only option as to how to go forward was for her to dismiss Meacher from his post. He served at her majesty’s pleasure and the time for that was over with. The man was unfit for office and must be fired, such was the consensus of opinion.

While not done in recent times, there had been the removal of a prime minister before. The Australian PM had been relieved of his duties by the Governor there acting on behalf of the Queen due to that country having the same head of state as the UK did. A political crisis there on the other side of the world had been solved in that manner. The backlash had been significant though it was dealt with. Nonetheless, that was completely different. Australia wasn’t Britain and the circumstances weren’t the same. What Meacher had done was effectively claim that he couldn’t be removed by Parliament and that no one else could. Should the Queen do it, there was a lot of concern expressed to the Queen that the outcome could be a real threat to the stability of the nation. A few voices spoke of public unrest, others speculated that there might have to be force used. Those were the same people though who advised that Meacher must be dismissed. Him staying in post was undemocratic and wasn’t a situation that could continue.

The Queen’s private secretary called Downing Street and requested that Meacher come to Windsor for an urgent audience with his monarch. There was the question asked as to what the meeting would be about. That wasn’t one which one of the prime minister’s closest advisers would be told: the impertinence of the man! It was said that Meacher was ‘unavailable’. Cowardice was what the private secretary would decide was going on over there. The prime minister didn’t want to come to Windsor to be relieved of his duty and thought that by staying where he was, that the situation would be resolved. After informing the Queen, and allowing her to reflect upon that news, he then received new instructions. He himself went into London and to Downing Street, arriving there through the Cabinet Office in the early afternoon. With him he carried an official notice bearing his monarch’s royal stamp. It was a dismissal notice informing Meacher that he had been removed from his post.

The reaction to that didn’t go as the Queen and her advisers expected. Meacher refused to accept what had happened. He rejected his firing and the ability of his monarch to do so too.

In an address to the country, put out through the compliant BBC which had personnel from the Wall-led Home Office there, Meacher spoke to the British people. He told them what had happened and how he was going to respond. As their elected prime minister, he would be staying in office. The Queen had no mandate to force him and his government out. He was the only one with a mandate because had the votes of the Labour Party members. His position was that he would carry on leading the country, providing for the nation a government for the people against those wishing it harm.

With that statement, many Britons would believe that that evening was the moment when their country firmly slid into a dictatorship.

Leander · Post by **Leander** » Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:27 pm

Part Three (b)

XIX

Ted Heath, another former prime minister, this one a Conservative and still a sitting MP, was the first senior politician to respond to Meacher’s statement and call him a dictator. Doing an interview with ITN News, Heath’s comments were broadcast to the nation. He’d also spoken to the BBC, saying the same thing, yet what the man deposed by Thatcher twelve years beforehand as party leader had to say to them wasn’t broadcast. Without fanfare, the national broadcasting service had been brought to heel by the government. Emergency measures had been enacted to control what was broadcast with regards to the news. It was all supposedly for the public good though they weren’t informed. As to that other news programme, and then most importantly the national newspapers, they would soon afterwards suffer the same consequences for their actions in allowing themselves to be mouthpieces of opposition to the prime minister. Meacher had given Wall full authority to do so and the home secretary went at that task with gusto. The media was no longer to be free to express negativity about the people’s government. It was silenced.

With the reins on, Wall would use broadcasters and the print media to ensure that the narrative which the government wished to give to the public was all that they heard. The right of the Queen to attempt to dismiss Meacher was one which was illegitimate. It had no standing and the prime minister, plus ministers remaining with the government too and not quitting, had all the authority in the country. Democracy would prevail, so it was said, and an effort to return to the undemocratic sole rule by the Queen which had so recently been seen wouldn’t be happening. There were no more comments from those such as Heath or the two living former Labour prime ministers either. MPs not prepared to toe the government line found themselves without a public outlet. Public figures who wanted to warn of civil war had too no one to broadcast their dire warnings. Several newspapers didn’t put out editions and what news that there was to be had was only what was approved by officials sent by the Home Office to media outlets. There were urgent attempts made to challenge that. The SDP sought judicial review of the government’s actions with regard to the media while Conservatives were also going down the legal route to the High Court concerning not just that silencing of opposition but also Meacher refusing to leave office.

None of what Wall was doing was legal. The emergency measures used had no legal standing without parliamentary approval nor Royal Assent either. Regardless, he pushed onwards with that. As to the prime minister, he turned down requests from senior Labour figures to come to Downing Street and talk with him there. They wanted him to quit and to stop the autocratic behaviour which they were witnessing. His doors were closed to them though. Only those who wished to show fealty were welcome with the prime minister. Wall would meet with many of his fellow MPs over in the Houses of Parliament. He lectured them on what he deemed their support for a coup against the democratically elected government. Shouting back at him, his fellow MPs called his prime minister a dictator and they refused to back what they said was the only coup afoot. The home secretary would have a more compliant audience when he spoke to key activist figures from his party’s Hard Left. They wanted to hear from Meacher though were satisfied enough with what Wall had to say. There were plots underway to bring down the government where the Establishment was finally showing its true colours. A fight was to be had with them, so the prime minister’s biggest cheerleader said. He found a receptive audience to those comments. They only had to look at the behaviour of their MPs, the Queen and unelected government officials who were refusing to stay on.

In Whitehall, there was a wave of absenteeism. At the ministries, staff didn’t turn up for work. Some would call in and say that they were unwell though most of those who didn’t show up weren’t ones to go that far. They were just absent from their places of work. Civil servants had witnessed the dismissal of a prime minister and then his subsequent refusal to leave office. To go to work, to help the machinery of government keep running, wasn’t for them. Government could carry on without them though not for long, especially as the numbers started to increase when people went home at lunchtime without returning to the office. A good number of them when leaving were witnesses to what was happening down in Parliament Square. The Houses of Parliament were forcibly closed with MPs denied entry. There were sirens from police cars as the Met. Police was instructed by the government to shut the place and in response, MPs and staffers, from all parties, tried to force their way in. No media coverage was there to witness the unprecedented scenes that unfolded as democracy was being brought to an end like it was with screams, shouts and the smashing of truncheons into skulls.

Over at Rheindahlen in West Germany, the British Army of the Rhine had its main HQ. What was going on back home was being covered widely by the West German media. At the same time, there was nothing of note sent officially from the MOD to the general officer commanding. The GOC had his mass of British Army forces in barracks – where they could see the news too – but no instructions from home to do anything. There was no need, Brown had decided, to give any orders to British troops based over there when there was a complicated political situation at home. However, the GOC saw what he saw and brought together his top people. Those in uniform who met in his office decided that the incumbent government back in London was illegitimate after Meacher had been dismissed by the Queen. That he had ignored that was irrelevant. The GOC no longer would accept the authority of Meacher, Brown nor anyone else associated with that government. Calling the MOD over a secure line, the defence secretary was informed of that.

The same decision was taken in Lisburn in Northern Ireland. The GOC over there too decided that he would no longer recognise the authority of those in Whitehall. The government had no prime minister after the man holding that post had been dismissed by the Queen acting under her legitimate authority to do so. There had been a vote in the Commons watched closely at Thiepval Barracks before that as well. Broadcasts made from the BBC in London were recognised for what they were: the work of a dictatorship whose first move had been to hobble the free media. They could have broadcast what they like and issue any orders that they felt like, but there would be no recognition of that authority from Lisburn. The GCO considered the Queen as the current leader of the country and until the political mess in Whitehall was sorted out, only instructions from those associated with her would be listened to. Brown and the MOD could go do one.

The undeclared military rebellion from British forces deployed overseas was one thing but of more immediate significant was what occurred on home soil. The senior generals, admirals and air marshals were talking of meeting to discuss possibly taking action to no longer recognise the authority of the government though ahead of them doing so, junior men were already taking matters into their own hands.

3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment was the unit which had been tasked to surround RAF Greenham Common and deny the Americans inside of their entry & exit both. The lieutenant-colonel in command of 3 PARA saw what was happening in London and decided that his instructions to remain outside of the cruise missile base were ones which should never have been sent, let alone followed by him. He started pulling his men back from the roadblocks and overwatch positions towards the ad hoc base camp established nearby for his battalion. 3 PARA began packing up, ready to back to Aldershot.

In command of the units deployed to RAF Alconbury, the Burtonwood depot, RAF Menwith Hill & RAF Molesworth too was the 24th Infantry Brigade. From garrisons across Yorkshire, plus Blackpool on the Lancashire coast as well, the brigadier in command had sent four battalion-groups to those sites to blockade each. Gunners with the 27th Field Regiment, the Royal Artillery were outside of the Cambridgeshire airbase. 3rd Battalion, the Light Infantry surrounded that huge ammunition & stores depot. Tankers with the 14th/20th King’s Hussars who’d left their Challengers back at base had deployed to surround the strategic listening station. Soldiers serving with the 1st Battalion, the Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire were denying access to that cruise missile base. Without waiting on higher instructions, in what he was certain would actually cost him his career, the brigadier began ordering his men back to their various garrisons. Staying where they were, waiting for a possible order from an illegal government to invade such sites, wasn’t what that officer was prepared to do. His men started packing up, abandoning their positions.

No one informed the MOD of this. News of what was happening where mid-ranking officers were acting without orders were relayed to the senior men in charge of the British Armed Forces direct. The decision on how to respond would be up to them.

XX

Those British Army officers who decided on their own to start redeploying their men were finished in uniformed service no matter what the outcome of the political crisis which gripped Britain in the summer of 1987. They should have done the correct thing and gone up the chain of command rather than doing what they wanted to do. An example which should have been followed was that of the GOC the South-Eastern District. He had troops of his deployed outside of various American military facilities in the South of England and 3 PARA at RAF Greenham Common was one of his. That general at Aldershot was concerned about the political situation around the Queen being at Windsor Castle – within the confines of the administrative district under his authority – and her will being defied from the wannabe dictator in Whitehall. A rash move was feared, especially by the home secretary who was enamoured with the idea of Establishment plots. For the protection of his monarch, the GOC requested from his own superior, the new Chief of the General Staff, that the Life Guards at Combermere Barracks there in that Berkshire town ‘turn out’. He wanted them out of their garrison and deployed around the royal residence less a mob, police officers or even other soldiers be sent there by the government. The Chief of the General Staff had been at Aldershot when asked that and gave permission for that to occur. Within the hour, on a warm July evening in the Thames Valley, soldiers in their tracked armoured vehicles (Scimitars, Scorpions & Spartans) were out of barracks alongside Fox wheeled armoured cars. Windsor was somewhere that the writ of illegitimate authority from the government no longer ran. There were troops there which, yet undeclared, had no loyalty to Meacher and his cohorts.

The head of the British Army had that trip to Aldershot on his way to the UK Field Army HQ over at Wilton yet went back towards the capital rather than on to Wiltshire. He stayed away from the MOD though and instead travelled to the Northwood Headquarters. That was a Royal Navy command centre outside of the city and where he met with the heads of that service and the Royal Air Force too: their own superior the Chief of the Defence Staff was also present. So began the Northwood Conference. Those four senior officers, joined by a select few key subordinates, discussed the ongoing alarming situation where they had what each regarded as an illegal government occupying positions of power. The standoff with the United States, the wave of unrest seen in Ulster and the growing dictatorial power grab was something that they, and everyone else in uniform, was well aware of. The British Armed Forces were apolitical yet such circumstances as which they found themselves in meant that what was happening had gone beyond politics. The prime minister had been dismissed yet he had refused to yield to that instruction, going as far as telling the public through the media, which was being brought under firm control to end the nation’s free press, that the Queen had no authority. Every man at the meeting in Northwood and every single serviceman & servicewoman in the nation had sworn an oath to the monarch and her successors. That was who they were loyal to, not a bunch of chancers who grabbed power and were seizing more of it in illegal fashion.

The Chief of the Defence Staff was Admiral John Fieldhouse. He’d barely survived in post the few crazy weeks where Meacher had been in Downing Street and Brown had been within the MOD. Subordinates had been fired and personal humiliations heaped upon him. Fieldhouse had kept that famous British stiff upper lip throughout all of it. No longer though. It was he who had called the meeting and it was he who told those at the Northwood Conference that it was they in uniform who must act to depose Meacher. They’d have to use force to do that. It would mean lives would be lost and there would likely be recriminations down the line. He urged them to aid him in doing so and said that he would only act with permission from the Queen too, where his loyalties lay.

Fieldhouse would go to Windsor after Northwood once a meeting was set with the Queen. By that point, Brown was enquiring after his whereabouts. A lie was told claiming that he was ill and, foolishly, Brown actually believed it. An appointment requested with his monarch was granted. There in Windsor, Fieldhouse found himself alongside a group of politicians whom the Queen had called to come to see her on the morning of July 17th. Thatcher and Tebbit were there, so too Owen. Steel from the Liberals alongside his unofficial #2, the odious Cyril Smith, were present. Healy and Smith from Labour were additional attendees of the Queen’s own semi-secret summit. She asked those present for a solution to the crisis. Would dissolving Parliament and calling new elections do the trick? Would it instead be necessary to order the removal of Meacher’s surviving ministers as well as him? Could she send a senior emissary to see Meacher and talk him down? None of the politicians thought that any of that would work. They had no solutions which looked like those would solve the crisis though. Even Thatcher, who Fieldhouse had spent much time with within Downing Street at the beginning of the Falklands War, didn’t impress him with any course of action to take. Only when invited to speak to propose a solution did Fieldhouse tell them what none of them wanted to hear.

The only way to end the mess was the use of force.

The Chief of the Defence Staff said that he would have troops sent to detain Meacher, Wall, Brown and others. It wouldn’t take very long. It would be bloodless, or nearly so, if things went right too. He pointed to the lack of any form of military support that the government had and expressed the belief that no military unit would fight against those acting at the direction of the Crown. He could have soldiers remove those politicians from Whitehall and kept isolated afterwards. A national government, a coalition of unity from the figures represented at Windsor, was what he suggested then take power in the name of their monarch. Parliament would be reopened and things would get back to normal with legal means used against those who’d set about installing a dictatorship. Owen, (John) Smith too expressed concern about Wall being able to mount a defence using non-uniformed forces. Fieldhouse shook his head. The Met. Police would do nothing. There were no masses of worker’s militia organised despite the talk of doing so because, for all of their bluster, the union bosses weren’t really onboard with that. Meacher had no public support either: it wasn’t like crowds of civilians were going to form a protective ring around Downing Street. No defenders of the regime would stop what could happen to end all of that. When could he see it all done, the other Smith asked? At daybreak tomorrow, Fieldhouse replied. He only needed his monarch’s permission and a little bit of preparation.

After some consideration, the Queen gave him a response to that proposal.

The most senior man in the British Armed Forces had gone to Windsor to request permission to execute a plot in the making against Meacher’s government. There was already another one underway though, a different kind of coup. Wall had long spoken of such a thing, mocked for doing so where the reaction to another one of his outrageous accusations was one of rolled eyeballs, laughter and scorn. Yet, the home secretary was correct.

There were other plotters who been scheming to strike themselves. They didn’t have the patience of those in uniform nor the concerns about the political outcome that opposition politicians did. None of them sought out the authority of their head of state to act. That they would do so too, long before any assault transport helicopters could deposit airmobile soldiers in Horse Guards Parade.

And they would have foreign help for their endeavour.

XXI

Codenames for British military operations were both randomly generated and meaningless so as to not give away intent. Inspiring designations weren’t given either. For example, Banner covered long-standing Northern Ireland ops, Corporate was for the recapture of the Falklands & Vineyard was for the most recent missions concerning US bases across the UK. Fieldhouse broke with tradition when it came to Operation Subtle. HMS Subtle had been a submarine which was his first command and the codename was meant ironic in a backhanded sort of way. It was a complicated mission and didn’t include any Royal Navy elements apart from signals support. Instead, the British Army, supported by the RAF, were at the forefront of it. He as a serving admiral in his capacity as the Chief of the Defence Staff directed it all though.

Subtle began with a strategic deception, in the Soviet maskirovka fashion. History was looked to and a controversial event thirteen years beforehand when the British Army had sent soldiers and armoured vehicles to Heathrow in an unplanned exercise, supposedly concerning a terror threat. It had been done when Wilson was in office and rumours were swirling that a plot to bring him down was the purpose of the apparent show of military strength. Fieldhouse recreated that somewhat where late on July 17th, soldiers again rushed to that huge airport to the west of London. Half of the Irish Guards, those not on duty surrounding the US Embassy as a show of strength there made by Meacher’s Government, raced there in the middle of the night to maintain a physical presence in the face of an apparent terrorist threat. MI-6 was involved in that, working with Fieldhouse. With those soldiers in-place and the news bringing together senior ministers in the early hours of the following morning, Fieldhouse had those whom he plotted to seize all in one centralised place and looking at the wrong thing. Defence Secretary Brown was told about the Irish Guards though not other troop movements made during the pre-dawn hours of the 18th. Subtle brought in towards London more soldiers, ones with different orders.

Gurkhas (1st Battalion, the 6th Queen Elizabeth’s Own Gurkha Rifles) from Church Crookham and men with the Queen’s Regiment (that regiment’s 3rd Battalion) garrisoned in Canterbury began moving by road in trucks towards Central London. Officers at the MOD had them heading towards Heathrow yet at Northwood, where Fieldhouse directed Subtle from, they were inbound upon Whitehall. Both units were the back-up for another two battalion-groups of troops moving in the same direction. Fieldhouse was filling the middle of the capital with troops in a large number when zero practical opposition was expected. He was being cautious. Out of Wellington Barracks, located between Downing Street and Buckingham Palace, 2nd Battalion, the Coldstream Guards deployed on a security mission to nearby locations through the hours of darkness. Guardsmen deployed to the Home Office, New Scotland Yard, the BBC Centre and also the Houses of Parliament. Their orders were to secure them. Also underway were the Paras backed up by Redcaps. 2 PARA was at Ternhill over in Shropshire and had for weeks been held on alert to go to Ulster… a call which had never come. RAF Chinooks and Pumas started collecting them from there along with a company of Royal Military Police out of Aldershot and another one from Colchester too. Unit commanders had been briefed by the Chief of the General Staff on what their tasks were to be in London: taking Downing Street and the MOD ahead of detachments of the SAS already flying in on their own helicopters for a dawn assault.

Entirely unbeknown to Fieldhouse, the Queen and those politicians with whom both had met with at Windsor the day beforehand, a group of conspirators had chosen the same day to act. Led by a retired MI-5 official, a group of spooks from that intelligence organisation obeyed their former master when he set them the task of killing off the Cabinet. There was a CIA involvement too, one which had the approval of Webster himself and, ultimately, Reagan who had a partial plausible deniability about the whole thing. The Americans supplied a bomb and last-minute intel. concerning Meacher and his top cohorts all being together in one place requiring an earlier than expected gathering: the initial plan had been to blow them up in Downing Street. The timescale was rapidly moved forward but in a successful fashion because those involved knew what they were doing.

The Cabinet Office was a huge office building which sat on the corner of Downing Street where that iconic road met Whitehall. It was connected to No.10 and below the building there were secure briefing rooms for use in times of emergencies and crisis. Woken in the middle of the night over the supposed threat of a major IRA attack against Heathrow, the Cabinet was in one of those briefing rooms. They were meeting when at five in the morning a fire alarm when off in the building above them. The few people working up there were evacuated. Those below knew nothing of that. They were unaware that the door to the room in which they were meeting was – quietly – locked too. Specialist protection officers from the Met. Police outside the room played their part in the whole thing by evacuating the building under threat of a possible raging fire too.

With Meacher in that bunker-like room were Wall, Brown, Heffer and Short. In addition to the prime minister, home secretary, transport secretary & energy secretary were half a dozen aides and military personnel. There was also a briefcase on the floor under the table around which they all sat or stood, one left behind by a serving MI-5 officer who had ‘momentarily left the room to make a phone call’. He was clear of the building when the bomb in that briefcase went off.

A reinforced ceiling, strengthened walls and a blast-proof door kept the force of that blast contained. The evacuation above to save other innocent lives had been unnecessary. An explosion within that room killed everyone and was only partially felt up above. In there, there would afterwards be no intact human remains to be collected by any investigators. Those present at that meeting were turned to nothing more than paste.

The dead had been talking about Heathrow before that bomb went off. Mass arrests of political opponents had been on the table too, something that Wall had taken the opportunity to at that time bring up. Off in distant Liverpool where the new chancellor Livingstone had been woken in his hotel room while on an official trip, the phone line went dead for him. It would be some time before he realised how lucky he had been to not be there had he been if the meeting had been several hours later and the plotters had gotten their wish to see him dead too. Nonetheless, from their point of view it was a success. They’d killed Meacher and Wall. Britain was leaderless but the Hard Left figures who’d been running it had been smashed to scorched matter.

It wasn’t twenty minutes later before the helicopters started to arrive. Captured Argentinean A-109s, ones seized in the Falklands War and serving with 8 Flight, Army Air Corps now, hovered above Downing Street, the MOD Main Building across on the other side of Whitehall and the Cabinet Office too. It was dusk when they arrived and London had yet to wake up. SAS men from that formation’s Counter Revolutionary Warfare Wing rappelled down ropes dropped out of the helicopters. The SAS started taking physical control of the home of the prime minister, where Brown’s office was and also the building where it was believed that the Cabinet was still meeting in talks about the distraction at Heathrow.

Behind those helicopters came the bigger ones bearing the Paras and Redcaps. Horse Guards Parade was one landing site while Parliament Square was enough. Each was a small temporary helipad where the wheels barely touched as men exited helicopters which lifted off to allow others waiting in the queue to do the same. Outbound, one of the big Chinooks that had picked up half of 160 Provost Company from Aldershot had an inflight emergency on the way back to RAF Odiham. It put down hard in Hyde Park – crew all uninjured – and scared the swans somewhat. That was the only hiccup in an otherwise perfect mission in a high risk urban environment for a helicopter assault which was anything but subtle.

Civilian security personnel and police officers were encountered by soldiers involved in the mission, including a Met. Police motorcyclist who was unamused by traffic violations of one of those ground convoys of troops in Bedford 4-tonners rolling over Westminster Bridge. He, nor anyone else, did nothing to stop them. That included the troops of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment who, due to (unfounded) concerns over the loyalty of their commander, had sudden orders confining them to barracks. Redcaps searched for names on their lists of detainees waiting to be taken to the Glasshouse – a military detention centre at Colchester – but had little luck. Paras then Gurkhas and men from the Queen’s Regiment joined them in fanning out across Whitehall. Throughout all of Operation Subtle, a few accidental discharges aside, no shots were fired in the bloodless completion of the task at hand.

The tomb which was the briefing room where the Cabinet had been was then discovered. The Cabinet Office Bomb had robbed them of their prizes yet saved the incoming new government a heck of a lot of trouble.

XXII

Red Ken would spend the rest of his long political career bathing in the light of the claim that he had nearly been martyred like the rest of the Cabinet had been. Before then, Livingstone had spent three weeks in military custody where he was held without charge in isolation: it was practically internment, as had been seen previously in Northern Ireland. When he emerged a free man during August, Livingstone would begin the process of taking legal action alongside his public soapbox appearances. His case went on for many years with dismissals of it within the UK by the High Court and then the House of Lords too. Nonetheless, the European Court of Human Rights gave him his justice when it would eventually declare that his detention, along that of others at the time too (Mullin as well), had been illegal. By then it wouldn’t all matter, except to Livingstone and how he used that verdict for political purposes.

Those who had murdered the rest of Meacher’s Cabinet, the prime minister included, were identified and taken into custody soon after they committed that infamous act. MI-5 officers they were and were caught by their colleagues who saw them too held without charge in isolation, though for a far longer time than political detainees had been. They’d be released without charge in the end and forced into separation from the civil service with their names blacklisted. Their leader, a retired spook himself, might have been expecting a parade down The Mall from a grateful nation and a knighthood from the Queen. What he got was exile abroad where he took up residence in the United States. The man had worked with agents of a foreign power – a friendly one, but still another country – to assassinate his country’s leaders. That wasn’t on, no matter how much he wanted to justify his actions. Reagan and the CIA would get it in the neck afterwards too in trans-Atlantic anger at being involved in that all but it was in private and it was taken on the chin. Everyone had gotten what they wanted in the end in both DC and London and that anger faded pretty quick too.

Healy would take the reins of power as the new prime minister. The Queen asked him to form a new government in her name and that he did. It was a unity government, a coalition of the four major political parties all (crammed) together on the government benches in the Commons. Labour, Conservative, SDP & Liberal MPs served within it. Thatcher was deputy PM and there were government posts shared out. A couple of dozen Labour MPs went Independent and sat on the opposition benches – where there was plenty of room – alongside the smaller parties outside of government. The Queen asked Parliament and the public both for national unity at such a time following the political chaos that had been seen throughout June and July. Her government sat into August, long into what would usually be the summer recess. There was much government work to do. MPs argued amongst themselves plenty and the Liberals would leave the unity government by the time the Commons finally rose at the end of the month.

No public backlash against either the armed forces, the Queen nor the national government occurred. Such a thing had been feared yet it failed to materialise. There were no mass protests nor any outward violence on any scale. There were many Britons who were unhappy, outraged even at it all though. Letters were written to newspapers, small demonstrations were held, public statements were made and resolutions were passed. Still, somewhat normality returned to the UK even with the political situation being with that national unity government kept in place at the wishes of the Queen. Pollsters set about gauging reaction when commissioned by political parties to uncover feelings about the whole thing as time moved onwards. Labour was especially interested in that because under Healy’s leadership, the backlash against them was something that was strongly felt to be real when it came from their previous voters. The prime minister would be right to be concerned on that too.

Inevitability, the national government fell apart early the next year. At Healy’s request, Parliament was dissolved and a General Election was held in March 1988. Labour were in trouble from the start though it wasn’t all as bad as feared by the time the last results were declared. They lost power but not significantly so when the SDP didn’t do as good as promised. The Conservatives too struggled with Thatcher still in role. Once those last declarations were made, she didn’t have a majority. A deal with done with Owen where a new coalition – Conservatives and the SDP – ended up in power. Within a year, Thatcher would be forced out by her own MPs and Nigel Lawson would end up as the new prime minister. Labour would elect Smith as their own new leader before then and could look forward to the next election with a possible comeback on the cards there.

No proof ever emerged as to Libya being behind the Lakenheath Bomb. Reagan, and his successor Bush too, wouldn’t take action against Gaddafi’s regime without it. Within Britain, there long remained a clamour for the truth to be revealed about that incident along with the subsequent Walworth Road Bomb and the Cabinet Office Bomb too. All three explosions, one nuclear and two conventional, had rocked the UK during the summer of 1987 with earth-shattering political outcomes. Nonetheless, there was no public information released. Rumours swirled about the Cabinet Office Bomb being the work of ‘the Establishment’ and that perception took hold widely. The destruction of that American airbase and the assassination of Kinnock remained thoroughly a mystery though.

Romanov’s Soviet Union would fall in the winter of 1994. It wouldn’t be an entirely peaceful collapse with nationalist and ethnic infighting resulting in violence within certain corners of that empire. A new Russian Republic emerged alongside more than a dozen other states. Out of one of those, Turkmenistan in Central Asia, a defector fled to the United States the following year with documentation he’d stolen from Moscow before the USSR had imploded. There were KGB files concerning the Walworth Road Bomb and how that was a Soviet intelligence operation. They hadn’t pushed the detonator button on the bomb which had killed the presumptive prime minister but supplied everything else to the lone wolf terrorist who had… and then killed him too. That information as shared with the British Government though kept secret alongside the real truth of the Cabinet Office Bomb.

Still, the guilty party behind that nuclear blast in the west Suffolk countryside would remain unidentified. The first of the three Bombs had been the most destructive and its perpetrators never truly discovered.

THE END

jemhouston · Post by **jemhouston** » Sun Dec 04, 2022 7:57 pm

Good story, not as bloody as I expected.

Nik_SpeakerToCats · Post by **Nik_SpeakerToCats** » Sun Dec 11, 2022 10:23 pm

Brrrrr....

'Interesting Times...'

History, Politics And Current Affairs

A Tale of Three Bombs

A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs

Re: A Tale of Three Bombs