Read Online The Storytellers by Robert Mercer-Nairne - Free Book Online Page B

events are rarely predictable, even in a Marxist world, and before the day was out he would have garnered more publicity than he could possibly have imagined.
    * * *
    Harvey had received a message from George Gilder the day before that he and his photographer should get up to Tamworth right away. An independent distributor, incensed by the union’s grip on his business, had agreed to take a stand and there was sure to be a confrontation. Harvey suspected his editor had been alerted by a contact in MI5, probably the fabled Peter Betsworth, whose real name George Gilder undoubtedly knew. Sylvia had taken the call from The Sentinel and was in a state of high excitement when her son returned for the evening, barely allowing him over the threshold before sending him off to the station with a packed sandwich and thermos of tea.
    The bed and breakfast his taxi driver had taken them to waswalking distance from Hunters’ yard and their hosts, Doug and Marjory Faversham, seemed to have as little time for the unions as did the taxi driver who brought them to the door. ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to hold the country to ransom,’ was Mrs Faversham’s opinion, candidly delivered along with that morning’s bacon, sausage, fried bread and two eggs, a sentiment his mother certainly shared.
    He probably shouldn’t have been surprised to discover a handful of other journalists already outside Hunters, being handed cups of coffee and tea by Doreen and Anthony Hunter, assisted by their two sons, Amos and Virgil, and daughter, Abigail. The Hunters had even typed up a page of history about the firm. It was started by Tony’s father, Tom, shortly before the Second World War, which it had survived thanks to Tom’s wife, Constance, driving their one truck in support of the war effort. The aftermath had been harder on account of the depressed conditions, but they were up to three trucks when the first Arab oil embargo hit in 1967. This they overcame, but were almost brought down by the second oil embargo in 1973 and rapid inflation it caused, followed by the three-day week introduced by Edward Heath at the end of that year as part of his battle against the National Union of Mineworkers.
    Somehow they pulled through and had since even managed to increase their fleet to five trucks, with the help of a sizeable bank loan secured against the business and their homes. Now, however, they were boxed in. Although all five trucks were full of diesel oil, they knew they would be barred from entering the Kingsbury depot to replenish their supplies. Hunters’ loyal customers, built up over many years, depended on them and there was simply nothing they could do. So the family had decided to go out, if that was to be their fate, in a blaze of adverse publicity for the unions. They had even had one of their drivers pretend to be a member of the TGWU and alert the Kingsbury shop steward that his firm planned to make deliveries.
    It was not a good morning for any kind of outside confrontation;so bitingly cold, even the scattered snowflakes were half-hearted. Harvey felt sure that opposing sides in a mediaeval battle around Tamworth Castle would have agreed to postpone hostilities, at least until the frost had left the soil and made the ground safe for horses. But such considerations were not part of modern man’s lexicon. So much now took place inside that the outside and its character was unfamiliar territory, leading urban children to think that cornflakes were grown at supermarkets inside pretty coloured boxes.
    The journalists had quickly turned their backs on winter but the arrival at Hunters’ gates of Jack Pugh’s battered Ford Cortina and the van from Kingsbury caused them to consider leaving the warmth of Doreen Hunter’s kitchen. But Tony told them to ‘sit awhile,’ saying ‘that lot can freeze their buns off until we’re good and ready’.
    The plan was simple. On his nod, the