THE REVOLUTION began almost as an accident.
bourne to be precise.
had been booked long in advance.
room at Mrs Johnson's, not far from the Wish Tower.
ever got chatting to anyone over a few shandies.
framed glasses and the moustache.
He wore cheap, sensible clothes, off the peg from Littlewoods, and a bargain pair of plastic open-toed sandals he had found for f4 in a sale. He had a plastic mac folded in his sports jacket pocket in case of rain.
To his workmates he was Arnold the Sensible.
But they also regarded him as a bit of a Trot. Arnold was a strong union man, and had been known to buy one or two of those small circulation left wing papers that slag off the Labour leaders as too right wing. He could be roused to righteous anger. And his arrival in Eastbourne was to trigger the downfall of British capitalism.
The weather played a role. For a month before his holiday it had been brilliantly sunny, searingly hot. Conditions in the bakery had been so hellish the management had even been forced to reduce the water content in the "cream" for the doughnuts, to avoid it all turning liquid. At one point Arnold led a protest walkout, but his committee collapsed on him when management offered jugs of iced water. AFTER sweating through this heat, Arnold found the first days of his holiday dogged with heavy cloud, rain and even a splattering of hail. It was miserable. Like many others wandering around Eastbourne, he was pissed off.
In the fish bar he always went to for lunch, Arnold began to moan about the weather. But as a bit of a Trot, he moaned politically. His grumbles about the rain were an echo of his hankering for the good old days of his youth in the 1970s — when you had sunny summers, proper strikes, wage increases, flared trousers and Labour governments.
"We never used to get weather like this under Labour," he would tell anyone in earshot.
"No mate, you're right there," responded one of those old enough to reArnold Jenkins — 'Red Arnold' or the 'British Zapata' as he was later to be known, because of his curiously-shaped moustache - had nothing more ambitious in mind than a holiday by the sea. In EastHis fortnight away from the cream doughnut production line at the vast Marvel bakery (slogan: "If it's a fresh doughnut, it's a Marvel")
He had saved up his spending money and reserved his usual B&B As usual, he travelled down by train from Wolverhampton. As they passed each station, he would check progress against his timetable. Arnold was a methodical chap. He was a fund of interesting facts if he His largely nondescript features were enlivened only by cheap darkthe summer the door. we really want." ward to listen. plenty of seats in here, pension plans.. bloke. younger bloke, sitting with his wife at tics."
"That's all you know about it," said the gaunt pensioner, to a rumble of approval from the other diners. "I'm the chair of a pensioners' campaign, so I know what I'm talking about. Why should pensioners have to travel everywhere by bloody bus? We wouldn't need bus passes if they gave us a decent pension to spend on what He paused. The young bloke looked embarrassed. Others were leaning for"Go on, mate, tell us more. The weather's lousy outside, and there are " said Arnold. "Stand up so we can all hear you."
"Well, alright..." said Stan; the gaunt pensioner, standing and clearing his throat for a well-rehearsed speech.
"We fought for Britain in the D Day landings, and now we can't afford a day trip to bloody Calais. British pensioners are the laughing stock of Europe. Since Thatcher got in 'these Tories have really taken us to the cleaners, just so as to persuade younger workers to take out private . " he began.
"I don't want to listen to this political stuff," interrupted Gary, the young "Well we do, so piss off," yelled an irate Arnold, confident of support "Come on love, we're leaving,"
tences.
"You go if you want, I'm listening", said his wife, Rosa from Redditch. She was a care assistant in a nursing home, and really liked older "Yeah, you tell him, darling," yelled one of the older women.
fish!" RED-FACED, Gary got up angrily and stormed out, only to collide with a coach party of pensioners on the pavement.
"Sorry, love, I didn't mean to hurt you," he grunted in apology to the grey-haired woman he had knocked over. He helped her to her feet. "I had to get out of that cafe. There's a whole the chant. there. bunch of them in there, talking poli"Politics?" said a stout, whitehaired woman, who had been tempted to hit Gary with her umbrella. "What kind of politics?"
"Leftie stuff, all about pensions..."
"That cafe there?"
"Yeah." "OK comrades, into the cafe," shouted Elsie, the group leader, a former shop steward and life-