The Bone Clocks

“Every other British newspaper is a propaganda sheet,” replies Ian. “Even The Guardian. Take one.”

It seems rude to refuse, so I say “Thanks” and study the front page: the headline is WORKERS UNITE NOW! over a photo of striking miners. “So do you, like … agree with Russia?”

“Not at all,” says Ian. “Stalin butchered Russian communism in its cradle, Khrushchev was a shameless revisionist, and Brezhnev built luxury stores for Party sycophants while the workers queued for stale bread. Soviet imperialism’s as bad as American capitalism.”

Houses loop past, like the background on cheap cartoons.

Heidi asks, “What do your parents do for a living, Tracy?”

“They own a pub. The King’s Head. Near Camden.”

“Pub landlords,” says Ian, “get bled white by the big breweries. Same old story, I’m afraid. The worker makes the profit and the bosses cream it off. Hello-hello, what’s all this about?”

The traffic ahead’s come to a standstill, halfway up a hill.

“An invisible war’s going on,” says Heidi, which confuses me till I realize she doesn’t mean the slow traffic, “all through history—the class war. Owners versus slaves, nobles versus serfs, the bloated bosses versus workers, the haves versus the have-nots. The working classes are kept in a state of repression by a mixture of force and lies.”

So I ask, “What sort of lies?”

“The lie that happiness is about borrowing money you haven’t got to buy crap you don’t need,” says Ian. “The lie that we live in a democratic state. And the most weaselly lie of all, that there isno class war. That’s why the Establishment keeps such an iron grip on what’s taught in schools, specially in history. Once the workers wise up, the revolution will kick off. And, as Gil Scott-Heron tells us, it will not be televised.”

I don’t know who the heron is, but it’s hard to think of our history teacher Mr. Simms as a cog in a vast plot to keep the workers down. I wonder if Dad’s a bloated boss for employing Glenda. I ask, “Don’t revolutions often end up making things even worse?”

“Fair point,” says Heidi. “Revolutions doattract the Napoleons, the Maos, the Pol Pots. But that’s where the Party comes in. When the British revolution kicks off, we’ll be here with our structure in place, to protect it from Fascists and hijackers.”

The traffic inches forward; Ian’s van rumbles on.

I ask, “D’you think the revolution’ll be soon, then?”

“The miners’ strike could be the match in the gas tank,” says Ian. “When workers see the unions being gunned down—first with laws, then bullets—it’ll be clear that a class-based revolution isn’t some pie-in-the-sky lefty dream, but a matter of survival.”

“Karl Marx,” says Heidi, “proved how capitalism eats itself. When it can’t feed the millions it spits out, no amount of lies or brutality will save it. Sure, the Americans will go for our jugular—they’ll want to keep their fifty-first state—and Moscow will try to grab the reins, but when the soldiers join in, as they did in 1917 in Russia, then we’ll be unstoppable.” She and Ian are so sure of everything, like Jehovah’s Witnesses. Heidi leans out to look ahead: “Police.”

Ian mutters about Thatcher’s pigs and attack dogs, and we reach a roundabout where a lorry’s lying on its side. Bits of windscreen are scattered across the tarmac, and a policewoman’s merging three lanes of traffic into one. She looks calm and in control—not piggish or wolfish or on the lookout for a runaway teenager at all, so far as I can see.

“Even if Thatcher doesn’t trigger the revolution this year,” Heidi turns to say, strands of her raspberry-red hair blowing in the wind, “it’s coming. In our lifetimes. You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. By the time we’re old, society’ll be run like this: ‘From each according to his or her abilities, to each according to his or her needs.’ Sure, the bosses, the liberals, the Fascists, they’ll all squeal, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. And speaking of eggs,” she looks at Ian, who nods, “fancy breakfast at our place? Ian cooks a five-star full English.”

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