Counterrevolution
Britain after Communism
Britain after Communism
1987-1989: Norman Fowler (CPGB)
1987 (Party Conference) def - Roy Jenkins, Cecil Parkinson
Norman Fowler's victory at the 1987 Communist Party of the Commonwealth of Great Britain conference was a surprise but not a shock; most had expected flashy party deputy chairman Cecil Parkinson or old bureaucrat and ex-reformer turned hardliner Harris Jenkins to triumph, so when a relatively unknown junior minister and moderate reformer was nominated few quite expected him to win. Entering the conference, however, Fowler and his supporters - mostly business and reform minded younger Communists - played to win, first isolating Parkinson through the exposure of several sex scandals, and then questioning the competence of the elderly Jenkins... the party's faith in both was shaken. His victory in the first round was a blow to the party establishment, but not to the system, and Fowler seemed like he would be business as usual; some minor reforms and then stasis. The socialist system would survive.This perception changed in 1988 when the "Unity" Trade Union led by John Smith declared a General Strike on November the 5th to bring the government down; the so-called "Guy Fawkes" strike debilitated the country at a time when shocks were hitting the Soviet system as well, preventing the effective coordination of the Berlin Pact to keep British Communism afloat. As the strikes carried on from November into December and then into the new year, Fowler looked increasingly unable to resolve the underlying issues. A hastily prepared reform package was passed, only for an abortive military coup to halt proceedings; Fowler survived and the leaders of the coup were arrested, but it sent the Commonwealth's premier a clear signal; the CPGB would never accept genuine reform, but without it the General Strike would never end. Fowler made the only choice he could; he left his party and with the help of supporters rallying around the "National Reform" party journal formed an emergency government.
1989-1989: Norman Fowler (Independent "National Reform" leading Emergency Government)
The internal reaction of CPGB staff to Fowler's quitting the party was extraordinary; a motion of no-confidence was attempted and failed in the National Assembly thanks to the mass defection of Fowlerite deputies, and with all the hardline Communist generals already imprisoned after the '88 putsch, a coup was off the tables. Instead the party elected the cold, grey functionary John Major as its new chairman, took the role of the opposition in the National Assembly and waited, confident that the people would quickly rise up and depose Fowler. Such complacency probably explains why it was so easy for Fowler to make his next set of moves.
Passing sweeping reform legislation, Fowler turned a rigid Communist dictatorship into a far more flexible regime, holding local government elections May 1989 which saw a huge majority for Unity backed candidates, whilst new Britain won control in only a handful of areas - indeed the CPGB won more seats than Fowler's personality vehicle. These reforms were not enough - the General Strike did not end, and John Smith continued to call for the dissolution of the National Assembly and the call for a fresh set o elections to choose a new constitutional convention. Fowler refused until June when, after the collapsing Soviet Union stopped shipments of vital goods to Britain, the regime's position finally utterly collapsed, and even non-Unity affiliated workers went on strike. Norman Fowler announced his resignation to the National Assembly, but not before dissolving it entirely and calling for a new National Constitutional Convention.
1989-1990: John Smith (Non-Partisan-Unity-National Reform)
1989: (All-Party Constitutional Convention) def - John Major (Continuity CPCGB), scattered regional Anti-Constitutionalists
John Smith, on a combined "Unity-New Britain" backed ticket won a colossal majority in the 1989 elections for the Constitutional Convention, crushing the forces of the Continuity CPGB and used his mandate to implement swinging reforms. Britain watched on in horror as the Soviet Union died and her continental puppets collapsed into Civil War and anarchy, but a healthy dose of consensus politics and US funding helped keep the country together even as her economic prospects worsened. In six months Smith and his allies had rewritten the constitution, bringing in devolution, stronger local government, a supreme court and proportional representation to elect the National Assembly, alongside a largely ceremonial Presidency. In 1990 Smith, chairman of the Constitutional Convention, dissolved the body and called a new election to the first Parliament of the Republic of Great Britain.
1990-1995: John Smith (Citizens')
1990: (Majority) def - Paddy Ashdown (Centre), Tony Newton (Unionist), Malcolm Bruce (National Liberal), John Major (CPGB), Norman Fowler (National Reform), John Lennon (Natural Law)
1994: (Minority with Natural Law Confidence and Supply) def - Paddy Ashdown (Alliance of Centrists and Liberals), John Major (CPGB), Michael Meadowcroft (Continuity NatLib)
Though the elections were free and fair, there was no doubt who was going to win them. With three centre right parties contesting the election, CPGB flagging in the polls, and Fowler's New Britain a failed laughing stock, Smith was able to win a majority despite the improbability of such a result in a proportional system, securing 56% of the vote, alongside a legislative super-majority with the support of the sympathetic centrist parties and the esoteric Natural Law Party. The Centre Left ascendancy under Citizens' (the unified political vehicle of Unity) prevented too heavy a series of privatisations and deregulations as was seen in Chirac's corrupt, post-Communist, French oligarchy or in now hyper-capitalist Russia, whilst still allowing for the emergence of a more market-based free economy. These policies were not popular with Haig's America, but they were with the people of Great Britain, who readily accepted the new order as the economy grew and their standard of living rose.
Despite winning 45% of the vote in 1994, Smith would be denied another majority with the centre ground having united under Ashdown's Alliance of Centrists and Liberals, and with the CPGB having regained some ground, whilst Meadowcroft's "radical centrist" Neoliberal Continuity National Liberals did surprisingly well. Much to the later chagrin of his colleagues Smith would enter into an alliance with Natural Law, the party of "generic nice things" who largely acted as if they were slightly incompetent Citizens' MPs led by star candidate and popular poet John Lennon. Recently discovered letters and memos suggest that, had he served longer, Smith would have implemented major reforms to the British health Service and kept state-funding for public services high, and prevent the American basked "Neoliberal Revolution" from engulfing Britain. Unfortunately, one year after winning re-election, Smith died of a massive heart attack, and was succeeded by an unlikely contender...
1995-2001: Sue Slipman (Citizens')
1998: (Coalition with Liberal Britain) def - Bill Rodgers (ACL), Leon Brittan (CPGB), John Lennon (Natural Law), Norman Tebbit (Common Sense), Alan Clark (National Integrity)
Sue Slipman had risen up through the ranks of the Citizens' Party rapidly since joining it as a student at the University of London in the late 1970s, coming to lead the "Students' Unity Movement" in 1979 and then the chairmanship of the Women's branch of the union, participating in the 1988-1989 General Strike, before being elected to the Constitutional Convention in 1989 and then Parliament a year later. The first Education Secretary under Smith, the thirty one year old Slipman became Home Secretary in 1990, becoming a surprising champion of the parties right after having initially been seen as one of the most pro-Communist leaders of the Unity Movement. When Smith died in 1995 there was little cohesion within the party over who should take over the leadership - the Chancellor Charles Faulkner was too much a man of the left and the Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey, too closely identified with the party's extreme capitalist right - only Slipman commanded the respect of cabinet colleagues on both sides, and so in 1995 the 46 year old Home Secretary found herself in Admiralty Arch.
From the beginning Slipman did things very differently to Smith. Her cabinet reshuffle saw her install Howe at the treasury at the advice of her economic advisors from the US, and Charles Faulkner was demoted to Home Secretary as Frank Field was brought into the Foreign Office from his old post as Defence Secretary. Slipman and Field would visit the US in 1996, where she would meet Jean Kirkpatrick, then campaigning for the Democratic nomination, and the two would strike up a close friendship, with Kirkpatrick making an official state visit after defeating Donald Rumsfeld and becoming President in 1997. Britain under Slipman joined the Western Hemisphere Treaty Organisation and largely abandoned her European former allies as France and the Fourth German Empire tried to resurrect the old Antwerp Pact. Slipman further worked to liberalise the economy, privatising the National Oil Corporation and a number of major infrastructure projects, before "streamlining" the BHS into the new British Insurance System. Cuts to spending led to tax cuts which, alongside deregulation and a huge stock market boom brought about superficial prosperity, and further US financial aid.
The 1998 election saw Citizens' reduced by a further 3%, and this time they were forced to enter into a coalition with the rising Liberal Britain Party, but they still emerged the largest party, with the stale old Communist Grandee Leon Brittan falling flat, and Slipman having stolen much of the ACL's clothing from the left and Norman Tebbit's radical libertarian "Common Sense" party damaging it from the right. Slipman's tax cuts and giveaway budgets continued to please the crowd as Howe was replaced at the Treasury with Field (leaving the Foreign Office open to rising star Charles Kennedy) and she seemed to be inducing a bounce back for Citizens', even as she sold off state-owned industries en masse to American and Asian (mainly Japanese) corporations. This would fall apart when, on the 22nd July 2001, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Anthony Benn would announce he was investigating Slipman's ties to counterrevolutionary agents embedded within Citizens' - a partisan appointee of Smith's to the left of the party, many initially dismissed Benn's allegations... until the Prime Minister failed to prove that they were untrue, shredding a number of documents which had been subpoenaed. Asked to stand before Parliament and answer questions on the subject, Slipman refused and Frank Field declared he would challenge her for the leadership. On the morning of August the 1st a police team arrived at Admiralty Arch with a warrant from the Supreme Court to arrest the Prime Minister... but she was already gone, resurfacing a month later in Zhirinovsky's Russia, having stolen ten million dollars from the Treasury and having covertly purchased large swathes of state industries through shell corporations. Britain was shocked.
2001-2005: Frank Field (Citizens')
2001: (Minority with ACL Confidence and Supply) def - George Galloway (CPGB), David Icke (Natural Law), Michael Meadowcroft (Liberal Britain), Edward Leigh (Liberty)
The unfortunate inheritor of such a dramatic scandal was the Chancellor Frank Field. A good man with considerable administrative talents, Field had not expected to be Prime Minister for at least another four years, and yet here he was having inherited a shocking scandal and a paranoid country. Field immediately disavowed his predecessor, and worked tirelessly to root out other Communist agents within Britain, even considering banning the CPGB in September 2001. The public, fortunately, did not blame Field, and though the 2001 election saw Citizen's achieve their worst result ever at just 39% of the vote, they remained in government with support from the ACL, who were still slightly too weak to seize power for themselves, but had grown rapidly off the suspicions placed upon Citizen's (as had Common Sense, now remained "Liberty"). Field was still in office, but few saw him lasting any longer than the ACL wanted him to.
In the end one must judge Field's to be the least effective of the three Citizen's administrations; taking "Slipmanism" to its logical conclusion, he engaged in mass-scale privatisations, selling off the remainder of state owned industries to create - largely inferior - state regulated markets. For four years after winning election narrowly in 2001 Field trundled on over economic stagnation and a general sense of malaise until, Chief Secretary to the Treasury Michael Fallon was forced to resign over a sex scandal, opening a floodgate of investigative journalism which revealed the connection of a number of high-ranking Field appointees in the Civil Service to Communist spy rings. Capitalising on a renewed sense of paranoia, the ACL finally withdrew their support from the government as they crossed 50% in the polls for the first time, triggering a General Election.
2005-2010: Stephen Dorrel (ACL)
2005: (Majority) def - Frank Field (Citizens'), David Cameron (CPGB), Alan Sked (Liberal Britain), Peter Lilley (Liberty), Roger Knapman (NeoTory), David Icke (Natural Law)
Capitalising on the idea that they alone were the party that could stem the tide of Communism - especially as David Cameron's CPGB surged in London and the North - the ACL was brought to power in a boom year for the British right. Right-wing parties collectively won 62% of the vote, giving the ACL, Liberal Britain under the centrist Alan Sked, the Liberty Party and Roger Knapman's hard-right "NeoTories" a commanding majority to do away with the last vestiges of Communism. Field resigned as Citizens' leader, and a divided contest saw him replaced by Tim Collins, who only narrowly beat Charles Kennedy, causing an internal schism in the party which the ACL once again capitalised on. The era of dominance for Citizens' was dead as the ACL occupied the centre ground and presented itself as moderate and competent; a coalition of ex-bureaucrats, the representatives of the less radical anti-Communist intelligentsia, and the most "compassionate" new oligarchs, the ACL had little policy to implement beyond keeping things running smoothly.
Still, Dorrel did have one big policy on his agenda; centralisation and "rationalisation" of the constitution after the chaotic devolution of the Smith years. Rapidly the "Devolved Assemblies" in Scotland, Wales, the North, Yorkshire, Cornwall, and the West Country were scaled back, a feat made all the easier when, in 2006, former ACL leader Paddy Ashdown beat Charles Windsor in the Presidential election, preventing the former Prince from a fourth term in office, allowing for radical constitutional reforms contrary to the "Prince-President's" view of a free-market, decentralised, environmentalist utopia. These reforms, however, alienated a significant chunk of the party, especially the so-called "Scottish Liberal" faction under Menzies Campbell. When a proposal was submitted by the Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs Oliver Letwin for London to be given greater devolved powers than Scotland in 2010, after five years of relative prosperity, Campbell led his supporters out of the government, and forced an early election.
2010-2012: Stephen Dorrel (Moderate)
2010: (Coalition with Citizens') def - Peter Lilley (Liberty), David Miliband (CPGB), Steve Radford (Liberal Britain), Ming Campbell (Scottish Liberal), Roger Knapman (NeoTory), Caroline Lucas (Natural Law)
This was not enough to bring Dorrel down. Seeing an opportunity to tighten his grip on the reins of the party, the PM reorganised and renamed the party as the "Moderate Party" and led a campaign which simultaneously stocked anti-Communist fears in the face of the Southern European "Resurgence" (Southern Italy had reverted to Communism after the exit of ultra-Nationalist Padania from the Italian Federation, whilst Greece and Yugoslavia had always remained Communist and, after brief Civil Wars, had now become heavily Stalinist) and played on their moderate credentials. Moderate failed to secure a majority, and was forced into coalition with Citizens' (now swept into third place as Liberty promised to reduce taxes to just 20% for all and instead introduce a "Land Tax" and a massively reduced budget). This was an uneasy coalition, with neither party being able to agree on any more substantial policy areas, and Dorrel forced, at times, to rely on Liberal Britain and his ex-ACL allies now under Michael Gove to pass legislation citizens agreed with. When Parliament refused to send a treaty on an alliance between Britain and France to President Ashdown for ratification in 2012, Dorell decided to resign, leaving the country to the Grand Old Man of the ACL...
2012-2016: Chris Patten (Moderate)
2012: (Minority with Liberal Britain Confidence and Supply) def - Douglas Carswell (Liberty), Andrew Brons (National Integrity), Tim Farron (Citizens'), Seamus Milne (Communist), Michael Gove (Scottish Liberal)
Chris Patten was an old man in a hurry by the time he had entered government. His tenure saw the forces of moderation slide further in the polls as he called an early election in 2012 to "shatter" Citizens' (in the hopes the party would fold into the Moderates) which saw him win an increased plurality now propped up by Steve Radford's radicals, but also saw the ultra-Nationalist, pseudo-fascist National Integrity Party rise from just 1 seat (gained due to Mike Hookem's shock defection from the now rebranded, ultra-Socially Liberal, Communist Party under Seamus Milne) to third place, capitalising on the backlash at the Communists' move away from social conservatism and widespread disaffection amongst the victims of Neoliberalism. In 2014 Ashdown was defeated for a third term by Independent Candidate and television celebrity Jeremy Clarkson, endorsed by Liberty, the CBI and the foreign, Slipman backed, Consortium for British Advancement, and Clarkson, with his vision of radically cut "red tape" worked poorly with Patten, a man who was trying to create a centralised "British Internet Service" to rival the Massachusetts based "Digital Valley" e-commerce corporations and computer manufacturers. Such a large state project was disdained by his coalition partners, and when he refused to mute it with further tax cuts, Liberal Britain under new leader Brian Paddick finally left the coalition.
2016-xxxx: Douglas Carswell (Liberty)
2016: (Coalition with Liberal Britain) def - Lytton Blair (National Integrity), G.I.D Smith (Communist), Chris Patten (Moderate), David Lammy (Citizens'), Liam Fox (Caledonian)
The long-anticipated triumph of Liberty was somewhat displaced in the news after the 2016 General Election by Charlie Blair's sudden rise to power at the head of National Integrity, and the resurgence of "Conservative Communism" under George Iain Duncan Smith, alongside the collapse of Moderate as Patten and Ashdown blundered through an incomprehensibly poorly coordinated campaign. The official opposition had now been formed by a party promising non-voluntary repatriation, a wide-ranging eugenics programme, and a war to recapture Northern Ireland - and about 25% of the British people (and growing) seemed happy with that. As promised, Carswell slashed taxes and finally did away with the last vestiges of Communism, privatising BHI and the infant British Internet Service, as well as selling most active state infrastructure projects to private contractors at a profit. Even the electronic services used to run elections were privatised against a backdrop of speculation that the British Election Administration had been infiltrated by the CIA and the Russians to create more desirable results - instead elections could now be changed at the whim of what Carswell maintained were always "benevolent" corporations (which just happened to be some of Liberty's biggest donors...). Two shocks hit the Carswell government early on - first was the election of National Integrity backed "shock-jock" Katie Hopkins to the Presidency on a tide of Working Class support in 2018, and second was the start of the Yugoslav-Hungarian War in 2019, which now threatens to engulf Europe in a blaze of nationalist, genocidal conflict.Britain, however, is fine - taxes are lower than they ever have been, devolution is being restored and autonomy granted right down to the borough level (and so what if that means some National Integrity controlled boroughs are now making laws to keep out poor, gay or non-white people, that's democracy for you!), and the inefficient bureaucratic Communist state is gone. Truly, the counterrevolution has been completed...
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(This is the write up for an earlier list which I've modified a little bit - credit to @Comisario who did a similar kind of post-Communist Britain list a while ago, a reread of which helped to inspire me doing a proper writeup for this. And of course credit to @Meadow and his "Meet the New Boss" which is this site's seminal work on a Communist Britain. Its dystopic, and weird, and a little bit over the top, but that was kind of the point of the original post-Communist cyberpunk world; I hope you enjoyed it!)
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