“Morning, Harold,” hailed the Chairman of the Union of Britain to his secretary, as he trudged in through the door of his office space. Outside, the faint sound of traffic up and down Whitehall could be heard through the open window of the room.
“Hullo, Mr Snowden,” came the reply from Harold, “I’ve got your morning brief here”.
“Oh, err, thanks,” muttered Snowden, slumping into the chair behind his desk with a heavy sigh. He’d been at it for ten years now and was beginning to feel like it was getting the better of him. He hadn’t slept at all last night, and his heart didn’t agree with the valium these days. Flicking through his morning papers, he quickly sorted them into his three categories; ‘requires attention’, ‘it can wait’ and ‘bin’. The first pile he would try to deal with before the first coffee wore off, the second usually after lunch, but almost always after several more coffees. It was a fairly easy system and it had worked this long, he reasoned. Today, the first pile contained a memo from Arthur across the road, minutes from yesterday’s defence meeting that he had been too ill to attend (again), and a few copies of early-stage legislative proposals. The second, today’s copy of The Guardian, some memos from agriculture, housing, that sort of thing. After a brief peruse, last week’s copy of The Worker, which he had never fully looked at (and probably would never bother, now) sailed into the waste paper basket next to Harold’s desk, followed quickly by some pamphlet or other from Mosley’s rabble. What was it? He’d already forgotten the name; The Totalist Charter, or some such rubbish. These days that bunch of extremists were churning out a pamphlet a fortnight, and they hardly ever added anything notable. Snowden hadn’t read one of them for months.
“Actually, you might want to take a look over that last one, sir,” Harold piped up from the corner, as Mosley’s booklet landed near his feet. He leant under his desk and tossed it back to Snowden, who picked it up tiredly and flipped to the cover page. One eyebrow raised in apprehension as he looked at the photo insert on the first page.
“What the hell is all this about?” Snowden muttered. “Some sort of declaration from Mosley, Valois, Mussolini and…” he tailed off as he searched for the name of the fourth man in the photo.
“Beria, sir,” came the helpful response from his secretary. “The leader of Georgia.”
“Ah yes, Georgia, I often forget about them,” Snowden mumbled. “What’s this, err…”
“Beria?”
“Yes, yes, Beria. What’s he like?”
“Well, I’ve heard some...” Harold paused as he tried to find a savoury term for what he knew of Beria’s ‘tendencies’. “...odd stories - about him. It looks as if Mosley and his band have come up with their own ideology. What was it, again?”
“‘Totalism’, apparently,” Snowden grumbled as he carried on flicking through the booklet. “It’s been the works for some time, or so I’ve heard. Hopefully it’s not something I’ll have to be dealing with. Mind, I don’t suppose it will be whatever happens.”
Harold gave a wry smile from behind his desk; it was an open secret that the Chairman had been intending to resign for some time now, and the upcoming Trade Unions’ Congress seemed as likely a time as any. Presumably it would also be a fairly convenient time for Mosley and his ilk to make their bid for leadership, mused Harold Wilson.
Also really enjoying these post game updates.
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