John Christopher - Pendulum

[dem bones]

John Christopher - Pendulum (Michael Joseph, 1974: originally Hodder & Stoughton, 1968)

England swings like a pendulum do

This is not science-fiction but terror-probability, as the England that we know - 'the guardian of justice and peace' — is thrown into violent convulsions by an economic depression reminiscent of the gloomy days between the two World Wars.

For those who can remember those days of evil it is something to be accepted. But for the young, it is the call to strike. Gangs of hooligans rampage throughout the land bringing in their wake a bitterness and anger that is almost sub-human.
Action, as always, produces reaction. The pendulum swings yet again, but the stability that follows is that of supra-discipline, of grim religious retaliation. And the England that had been warm is now a country of freedom-frozen despondency.

Originally published in 1968, the nightmare happenings of Pendulum seem it anything even more probable today.

Rod and Hilda Gawfrey return from celebrating her parents' anniversary to find their home overrun by teenage biker hooligans vomiting on the carpet, scrawling obscenities on the wall, etc. The yobs have gatecrashed Stephen, their eldest son's party. Rod, the wealthy managing director of Gawfrey Constructions, confronts the spotty ringleader, "Perry's brother," and reports him to the police. So begins a vendetta.

The Gawfrey's share their home with Hilda's parents and her sister, Jane Weston. Jane, twenty-eight, is employed as secretary to Professor Walter 'Sexy' Stainton, a forty-something TV personality and lecturer at Pallister University (Stainton's nickname is well-earned: when first we join him in the office he is banging Jane on the carpet). It is a time of student unrest. The Government have reneged on a promised increase in grants (!). Stainton, in cahoots with a shady opportunist politician named Greary, covertly agitates on behalf of the kids, suggesting they bolster numbers by recruiting hooligans. He reasons: "The wage-earner has economic power, through his ability to withdraw his labour. The student hasn't, though his importance to the future of the country is greater than any other element in it." The suicide of young Matthew Marshall, who, in an apologetic suicide note to his girlfriend explained he could not cope with escalating debts, lends a martyr to the cause. The students declare a national day of mourning in his memory, with marches throughout every city.

Martin Weston, timid brother of Hilda and Jane, is a primary school teacher and member of the Fellowship, a fundamentalist Christian group who meet evenings in the Scout Hall and do good works in the community. Betty, a school colleague, seems attracted to him, but we're not sure her interest even registers, so fixated is he on the seeming futility of existence. It hurts most that his pupils have no future.

"Their end was not in their beginning, but their end was certain in a world where men profited from the vices and weaknesses of other men. Cigarettes for manliness. Beer for strength. Puff and guzzle and fornicate. Hate and lie and cheat, like the other good fellows. Go for the easy shilling, the dishonest quid. It lay in wait for all of them, even Joey. Perhaps especially Joey. Cramming at the Comprehensive for an Oxford scholarship, and then the gates opening on the broad road to luxury and power. Balkan Sobranie instead of Players, Whisky instead of brown ale, expensive motor-cars and expensive mistresses. A waste and a horror."

A riot on the streets of Pallister sees three deaths, one a policeman. Jane is knocked unconscious and good as stripped during the affray. An angry cop manhandles her aboard a black maria only for an officer to intervene. Fortunately Superintendent Jenner witnessed her attempt to prevent an assault on a police horse by a thug brandishing a pole.

The riots spread throughout Britain. A bomb is detonated outside Parliament. Dozens are burnt alive when a department store is torched in Glasgow. The protests claim fifty lives, but, far as chief rabble-rousers Stainton and Greary are concerned, it's a price worth paying ten times over. Despite a nationwide wage freeze, the Prime Minister has caved in to the students demands!

The Trade Unions, incensed that poxy layabout kids can get their increase just by throwing a few tantrums, demand a 15% pay rise. One General Strike later, the Government has fallen.

In local news, Gawfrey's teen adversaries are on probation for their vandalism of his development project. We sense they'll not forgive him in a hurry.

End of Part One (P.65 of 253)

[dem bones]

The Winter after the Summer riots before. The economy collapsed along with the Government, hence mass unemployment, power cuts, rationing. Ron Gawfrey has gone from hugely successful building contractor to glorified rag and bone merchant in a matter of weeks - and he's one of the lucky ones. Gawfry gets by on shifting food via black market and fleecing the old and desperate, buying their valuables for a pittance.

The hooligan problem is such that motorcycles have been outlawed and martial law imposed in Pallister and other cities - not that the yobbos take a blind bit of notice. Flushed by their new-found power, the bikers are up for serious violence versus anyone who comes into their orbit. Moncrieff, Martins colleague at the primary school, is brutally beaten up when a former pupil decides he is a "fairy." Martin himself is set upon when he unhappily chances upon a gang of gay bikers on acid raiding a chemist. They force feed him LSD.

Now that she's enjoying a relationship with square-but-stable Police Super Micky, Jane is wising up to just how manipulative, sexist, megalomaniacal and self-serving Walter really is. That said, he's a natural born leader, brokering a truce between the leaders of Pallister's five major gangs so they work as one - and under his guidance - toward the New Britain. "What is important and valuable about the present situation is precisely the fact that it is an insurrection by youth. Youth's role in the past has been to support revolutions by middle-aged and old men for objectives which were only partially and incidentally connected with youth's own needs and aspirations. In any culture, the young represent the dynamism of the society, its creativity. If that can be released, channelled ..."

Television has been off air for weeks and very few local radio stations continue to broadcast. No public transport, few cars on the road. The violence is such that few citizens dare venture outdoors. Rumours of cannibal roasts in the streets persist. Can it be true that the Queen has abdicated and handed over to young Prince Charles? "I'd like to hear what Cliff Michelmore makes of it."

On the same day the power returns and Downing Street announces the recent troubles are at an end, the Prime Minister appoints a "special advisory committee" comprising Michael Geary and cronies.

Micky, recovering from the battering he took when the mob stormed the police station and massacred three of his colleagues, is less than impressed. "Geary, who organised the student riots last summer. [Brendan] Bone's the lead vocalist of the group called the Battered Oyster, isn't he? The one that got off on that heroin charge about a year ago. And Le Tissier's a disk jockey. I don't know about Parkinson." Stephen helps him out. "Big Carnaby Street man. He started spot beards."

The kids - or at least, the middle-aged and old extremists pulling their strings - have inherited "the sick man of Europe" and there are gonna be a few changes around here.

After an unusually profitable days trading, Gawfrey returns home to find it's been commandeered by hooligans led by his old adversary, "Perry's brother."

End of Part 2. (p. 129}

[dem bones]

The Robeys must be defied because they were out to wreck everything that mattered. They were fascists, reactionaries, trying to drag the country back a century. The speaker appealed to everyone - to youth in particular - to come out and prevent them getting a stranglehold on things. If they failed, the future was unthinkable. No liberty, no dancing, no pop music. Religion thrust down everyone's throat. Slave labour camps .... The pop music came on again, a dirge somewhat appositely entitles: "You've just shattered everything to pieces."

With Bridge House in the hands of the yobs and his family under house arrest, Rod plans to break out after dark, round up sixty or seventy able bodied fellows on the Gostyn Estate (staunchly Conservative) to take on the gang. Micky doubts the neighbours have any stomach for confrontation. They've certainly not shown any to date. Sure enough, the pair are grassed up and made to stand trial for offences against the state. Fortunately, 'the Commander' (AKA 'Perry's brother') has taken a shine to Hilda who reminds him of his dear old Ma, and Rod is spared. All things considered, the family are treated far better than they had any right to hope for.

Meanwhile, the fanatical and not a little insane Brother James has assumed control of Fellowship, whose numbers are swelling with each day. The Robey's and their followers congregate at Trafalgar Square for a mass rally. When two of their number are shot dead, the Brothers exhort their flock to "Go forward! Smite the Heathen in God's name!" Evidently this is the call to arms the "silent majority" have been waiting for and they lay into the hooligans with bloodthirsty zeal. The Creeping Jesus revolt is on, and life in Britain is about to get infinitely worse than ever before!

Now it is the turn of the Fellowship and their law enforcement wing, the Vigilantes, to visit "Justice" upon Yobs, 'Yob-lovers,' 'Whores,' Adulterers, Liberals (aka 'anarchists'), the Permissive Society that spawned them, and anyone who disputes the word of Brother James. It would be wrong to reveal the fates of the main players in the drama, so will just mention that some adapt far better than others to the new regime.

A novel I'd been after since Vault MK I, eventually picked up a copy at last October's Pulp & Paperback fair (thanks to Crom, who spotted and pointed it out to me). Eventually it reached a point where I could put off reading it no longer and, as you've maybe guessed, it is no disappointment, unfortunately as relevant to today's political climate as it was 1968's (the pendulum has swung back and forth several times in between).

Pop culture references: Grundig radiogram; "Nig-nogs." Marks & Spencers. "The sick man of Europe." "Hip-shorts." The Gay bikers' song-of-the-moment is Acidman: "I go high, I go high/ The grues stay down but I go high/ The Mary Jane I pass it by/ The acid hits me high, high, high ..."

File under: Valancourt should possibly consider a reprint.