At the police station, Garrett Walker’s young daughter is already out of the cells by the time he arrives. It’s an outrage, and Garrett feels his anger rising with every step that he takes forward into the future. “It’s enough that we spend all our lives working to put up the palaces these parasites live in,” says Garrett, “they live off our backs for so many years while they let us keep only just enough to ward off starvation. It’s all a criminal act.” The other unemployed workers shout their agreement. A strange man near the back of the room looks on, silently measuring the mood of the workers. In the darkness of the night the passions of working men are roused, in ways they’ve not been since the failed rising fifteen years ago. And the rolling hills of Surrey have seen much bloodshed in that time, along with wailing and the gnashing of teeth. In the night, tonight, the unemployed workers assembled accomplish little but to vent their rage, each of them returning home to find their families in full agreement with the emerging consensus, soon their moment to be at hand. As an interim measure, the wealthy man arranges his holdings through a series of complicated measures meant only to conceal his crimes. But it’s more than something so simple as the concentration of power in the hands of a small group of people. It’s the way we’re all taught to look at the world. It’s the way we’re made to expect certain urges, certain thoughts and feelings whenever we look on our own that put in our minds certain ideas about how the world ought to work. It’s the way we’re built by those who were built before us, in turn by those who were built before them, given a set of instinctive ways of thinking by something larger than any of us, something that, itself, does not think or feel, and seeks only its own survival. “Valeri,” says Harpal, the two running into each other when next he arrives at the plant, “I hope you’ve learned your lesson. I expect you to be here every day.” The act of the plant’s resuming operations and taking back what workers who will come is meant not as an act of reconciliation but as an act of humiliation, clearly signalling to Valeri and the others on the futility of their struggle. Strike all you want, Harpal seems to be saying, but you’ll still wind up working here, enriching us. And so it is; with every smooth, rhythmic contraction and expansion of his muscles, that first day back and every day thereafter, Valeri surrenders a piece of himself to the day’s labour and in so surrendering allow his flesh and his spirit to be torn asunder. At the shop, Valeri says, “I go home tired and sore every night and still I get threats every day. I won’t sit still. We won’t live like this forever.”
“You might,” says Ruslan, “however long forever might be for people like you, if you’re not careful.” It’s clear to both Valeri and Ruslan they’re talking about much more than the job in front of them. But then Ruslan strikes a nerve, saying, “you’re going to wind up just like your parents.” But this is said with deliberate intent, although Valeri can’t see it for the anger that seizes control of him and compels him to lash out.
At the Anglican church which Darren Wright still attends, Father Bennett is acutely aware of the secret sermons held by the rogue church, though he knows not how many of his flock have been drawn to them. He stands at the pulpit and declares, “and in the Book of Matthew, chapter five, verse seventeen, Christ said ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’ And in the Book of Romans, the epistle Paul wrote ‘the powers that be are ordained of God.’ My children, this is why we must turn away, even in these trying times, from the temptation to disobedience and rebellion.” There’s more, but Darren, Sheila, and the others hear little of it, after the sermon is over confusedly making for the across the vestibule and out into the street. But on his way out Darren spots the Father looking downcast, almost lonely. As it is written in 2 Corinthians 11:13-15, ‘For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.’ In these trying times, men like Darren and women like Sheila have come to see Father Bennett as in service not of God but as a false apostle whose works are made of fraud.
It’s a troubling sight, with the tapping of the thousands of boots against the asphalt lending the scene a surreal mood. After Ruslan invoked the memory of Valeri’s dead parents, it was a step too far. Before he knows it, Valeri’s clenched fist shoots for Ruslan’s jaw, Valeri stopping himself with his knuckles just centimetres away. But Ruslan doesn’t flinch. It’s a seminal moment in Valeri’s life, one of many, but one which will only gain some significance in his own mind with the passage of so much time. Already it occurs to Valeri he’s lost his job, but he can’t simply walk away. He must make the managers take every painstaking step in forcing the inevitable, as the managers must resist every step forward for the workers against them. In the morning when next he turns up at the shop, Valeri’s hauled in for an interrogation, with Mr. Kennedy himself present. While Mr. Kennedy watches silently, the managers recall Valeri’s every sin, whether real or imagined, reaching back as long as he’s been working at the shop. He’s made to confess to them all; he refuses, then storms off, his intemperate nature giving him to an open display of melodramatic fury.
After the arrests, it seems to Sean Morrison there’s nowhere safe from the police raids. In truth, the failing of the student groups is their uncertainty over why they must strike. At the student hall, the room buzzes with the chatter of the polytechnic’s students who’ve assembled in response to the mass arrests. All eyes turn to a short, slender man who takes the stage and gives his speech. He uses terms they’ve heard before and know of in only the vaguest of ways, terms like ‘class warfare’ and ‘industrial democracy,’ Sean listening intently with all the others. In the wake of the arrests, they are more receptive than they’d have been. It’s as though a dark cloud, a noxious gas has seeped into the hall and expanded to fill every space within, lending a surreal sense to the scene. Men like Sean are caught in a trance, enraptured by this new speaker, from within the shadows emerging a presence that compels them all to this way of thinking they’ve all heard of before yet which seems so new and exciting nevertheless. It doesn’t take long. After Valeri storms off, he’s found by the managers, with a pair of muscular guards. “This is serious,” says Harpal. “I’m aware of that,” Valeri says. “I hope you are,” says Harpal, before making past him and down the floor towards the next returnee. She stops at every one. But she’s only discharging her duties, carried out on behalf and under the orders of men vastly more powerful and important than her. Valeri returns home that afternoon, the power of a pittance to sustain and to restrain him lost. “It’s not over,” says Murray, approaching from behind to rest a hand on Valeri’s shoulder. “Of course not,” says Valeri. “We must be relentless if we’re to succeed,” says Murray. They exchange nods, then part ways, for the rest of the day this exchange leading only to the next, and then the next, and the next. Murray speaks, from time to time, with a knowing look in his eyes assuring Valeri he must know more. It seems everyone knows, in some instinctive way, every person has their role to play and must play it through to its logical end in search of a meaning that was never there. But herein lies the problem. Any search for meaning inevitably leads to a confused and disoriented understanding of our difficult and tumultuous times, which only induces every player to keep on playing their roles. In the streets and on the factory floors across the country an increasingly desperate energy takes root, infusing itself into the teeming masses who act out impulsively, sometimes dangerously, not provoked but elicited nonetheless. In the morning the smoking, burnt-out remains of a working class apartment block collapses of its own accord into a pile of debris, the wreckage left to smoulder while the fires of liberation burn.