Vegan Reich
Tina Hay dressed and made a mug of tea before ringing Chris, her business partner. Together they were running Phentasm East Anglia’s summer music festival. It was looking good. All the bands had confirmed and ticket sales had already put them into profit. Most of the promo work had been supplied on the never never, as the top-flight acts they’d conned into appearing boosted the confidence of their creditors. Tina rolled a cigarette as she spoke to Chris on her mobile. They were staying on site overnight but she needed a lie-in tomorrow morning, while he’d be up early attending to anything that needed sorting.
Since the yanks had packed up their weapons and gone, the region had felt the pinch and, besides bribing international software firms to set up shop, was coming round to the idea that a rock festival might bring in some extra wedge. In the music press the flat Fenland location of Phentasm had been compared unfavourably to the green hills of Glastonbury. Tina put this idiocy down to the fact that most rock hacks were New Londoners, eager to display their urban consciousness by adopting a city-idealised vision of ‘the country’ as either a big farm, a landscaped park or an empty space.
Tina had been living and working in London for ten years and it was here she’d met Chris at a party to launch some worthless product. She’d worked for a record company at first but got bored, then tried her hand at various media jobs, settling on publicity as the most bearable: PR work was easy if you could lick arse without gagging. Tina was from South Cambs originally and had lived on the edge of the Fens till she left home. It was the only place she had ever seen, apart from the sea, where the sky was the main feature of the landscape. Of course she was free to romanticise because she no longer lived there. Moving to London she’d rented a small flat in Hackney which overlooked a main road, busy day and night. Tina was looking at a property in rural Cambridgeshire and was hoping to close the deal with her share of the profits from Phentasm. Tina had watched Cambridgeshire change from being predominantly rural to mainly suburban in the last fifteen years. City culture was engulfing rural England. She longed for peace and quiet, unaware that this rural ideal was simply a commodity she was being sold.
Chris Fitt shoved his mobile back into his shoulder-holster and pulled gingerly at his slacks, releasing the material stuck to the end of his uncircumcised cock. Two nights ago he’d been out to a club in Shoreditch and some teenager had picked him up. He took him back to his place and the little spunker had kept him up all night. The youngster had a nice tight arse and a mouth full of sharp teeth, and the double assault on his prick had left it red-raw. Tina had woken him up and he needed a cup of filter coffee. He was well shagged-out before he got here and getting up at sparrow’s fart would do him no good at all.
Some months ago Chris had agreed with Tina that there was nothing further to be gained from their sexual relationship so they decided to call it a day, but continued to work with each other professionally. They’d decided to locate Phentasm in Cambridgeshire after arguing the pros and cons of Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. There hadn’t been an event like it in East Anglia for years and although initially there had been some local opposition, this subsided after Tina had emphasised the economic benefits. The music press had doubts too, they equated the countryside with hills and derided the idea of a festival in the Fens, but thanks to the line-up they’d put together things were working out.
Chris had wasted his ‘yoof’ listening to records and producing DIY fanzines. This had been enough to get him a job as a staff writer on a rock weekly in the mid-80s. In the early nineties he’d jacked-in an editorial position to become a club DJ. He became famous for his eclectic mix of house, techno and funky sixties and seventies tunes but his background was a bit of a mystery to his colleagues. It wasn’t hip to say you came from Lowestoft, so Chris kept mum. Eventually he’d discovered many of his colleagues in the business actually came from this part of the country too. It was strange the way people in the music biz were almost ashamed of coming from East Anglia, unlike the mancs, scousers and fake-cockneys who all shouted about their roots. Maybe it was the general lack of recognition for the regional accent. When he’d arrived in London everyone thought he was from the West Country. His cultural awareness didn’t awaken any dormant regional pride, it merely confirmed Chris’s suspicion that concentrating on the regional origins of rock music was a divisive sub-nationalistic tendency. He hated football for the same reason.
Wilf Hobson changed his name to Dog when he was sixteen. Going to gigs dressed up in bondage strides, painted leather jacket and hair spiked with glue didn’t fit with the name he’d been given. That was back in the early 80s. He’d bought a van in the mid-80s and had been travelling since then, parking up wherever he could, living off the land. He was forced to visit towns in order to pick up his fortnightly benefit check from the government. He figured it was better for him to be happy wandering about rather than stuck in some poxy room in a city, poverty stricken, on hard drugs and robbing old ladies. He had a swig of Tennents Super and sucked on the end of a joint. He fucking loved his skunk!
Dog met up with people every year at festivals. There was a brilliant community feeling about the whole life-style. The way that straights were always ready to point the finger at him and his kind made him sick. Alright, so he didn’t have a bath every day, so what? He might have a crusty arse but his conscience was clean! As a Dark Green anarchist, he was proud of his grass-roots political convictions. The straight world had fucked the planet up and the Great Mother was about to wreak havoc in return. The seasons were fucked. The trees were dying. Cities were spreading like cancer. Cars were belching out poisonous gas and choking the environment. He’d tried to use unleaded petrol in his van, but the engine was too old to take it, anyhow, his was only one vehicle out of millions used by the straight world! It was only people like him that were making a difference at the moment. The rest of the country deserved to die, squirming in their own vomit, as the cities poisoned themselves to the point of destruction! The Great Mother would protect her children, of course, and he and his kind would be saved! No consumer scum would survive the coming holocaust!
The Dark Green activist network was made up of two magazines and the odd meeting. Dark Green didn’t go in for public actions, they just claimed other people’s activities as their own. Since non-hierarchical organisations were too easy to infiltrate, the core leadership of this communal movement had decided to remain incognito. The Dark Green network was causing a lot of trouble to the authorities. Thanks to their superb line in hyperbole the mass media had credited them with halting the progress of more than a dozen road-building schemes up and down the country since the start of the previous year.
Their organisation was well underground, based around a hidden leadership dictating policy which was communicated to regional groups over Britain. They were intent on returning Britain to its true state – an agrarian society organised around self-governing feudal communities. Dark Green was going to give the fat, bloated System a gigantic heart-attack! But destroying civilization was not for the faint-hearted. As Intelligence Chief of Eastern Command Dog was well aware that Special Branch were monitoring local groups while MI5 was co-ordinating the surveillance. The secret state was spending thousands on cracking the DG network, that just added to his sense of achievement.
Dog and his mates were making a proper nuisance of themselves. He’d heard tales from some of the city-based activists that their phones were tapped and they’d been followed by plain clothes cops and their own offices were always being raided. The spooks were on their case. Walking into the village, he saw the headline on a board outside the newsagents: ‘Festival Boost to Local Economy’, and scowled. Phentasm would make a packet for the promoters, ruin the land and rip off the punters. If he didn’t get an invite to the event from the promoter he’d be going over the wall as usual.
Derek Folds, singer and frontman for Shelf-Life, was doing an interview with Jill Carter of the Music Mail. He’d agreed to this person accompanying his group on their mini-tour of Britain after his management had instructed him to cultivate a good press image. This was vital to the ongoing viability of his career after an outburst in which he belittled his fans as morons for consuming the pap he produced. Derek was expending a great deal of effort attempting to break out of the pop-star mould he’d spent six years getting into.
He was bored with the scene. The music biz was full of cretins. Off stage most groups could hardly string a sentence together and practically none of them had read a single word of modern literature! Every chance he got, he talked about the books he was reading and how he was writing poems and stories. With the connections he’d cultivated he would soon be in a position to have some of his stuff published. He’d been reading everything he could find by Will Self and Charles Bukowski. These were true individuals, just like him! They walked it like they talked it! The way they wrote about dolly-birds was refreshing in the face of all the PC bollocks around the pop scene. Even his girlfriend Sheila, the singer with Gussette, liked them, so they couldn’t be anti-women. What people needed were examples of how to live, written with style.
‘Actually, that’s the good thing about pop music,’ he drawled, ‘you can be an individual and show people alternative ways of living.’
Jill nodded to show she was paying attention, despite the fact that the rock bore was sending her to sleep.
‘You can learn as much from books and art as you can from music. That’s what Shelf-Life are about…’ Derek droned on, ‘intelligence and individuality. We’re the epitome of eclectic postmodern life. Our career is, like, a series of media situations.’
Jill changed the tape over and pressed ‘record’. She sneaked a glance out of the window at the passing fields. The pint-sized jerk stopped talking long enough to take another dab of coke and offered the bag to Jill. She rubbed some of the white powder onto her gums. Initially she’d been delighted to tour with Shelf-Life, the intelligent face of English pop, but it had quickly become a drag.
‘Are you looking forward to the festival?’ Jill enquired, virtually defeated by her pretentious subject.
‘Yeah! It’ll be interesting to see how it goes. The organisation’s been really good, despite the line-up wrangles!’
‘Have you visited the Fens before?’
‘Well, a few of my friends went to Cambridge, so I know the area fairly well, obviously.’
Derek now wished to be taken seriously. He’d recently told the press about his privileged family background and this was received warmly by the Sunday magazines. Initially his upper-middle-class roots had been kept a dark secret. Like most people in the supposedly classless music world, he’d feared that he’d scare off a potential audience who required street-authenticity. He’d done music, now he wanted to be a novelist like Will Self.
Dog had given up going to see indoor concerts years back. That was just after he’d got into anarchism. He’d read a lot about it from the record sleeves of bands, like Crass and Conflict, but never did anything until he heard that a few anarchos he knew were regularly attending hunt saboteur demos. This was his introduction to the bloody world of revolutionary politics. He’d been hospitalised by a hail of fists, truncheons and flying boots, wielded indiscriminately by his father’s hunting friends and their blue-uniformed lackeys. The second time he’d got wise and gone tooled-up. The pigs had sussed that he wasn’t soft and left him well alone, settling on arresting a middle-aged lady and a kid.
You couldn’t get near a hunt meeting now for police cordons and hired muscle. This was the reason Dark Green had de-targetted hunt-sabbing two years back. Soon after he’d stopped, though, he meet up with some old mates who’d put him onto the eco-activists. He’d been impressed by their dedication and initiative in taking credit for other people’s actions. Dark Green was a trained guerilla force, not some bunch of one-issue animal-lovers. They were committed to bringing an end to the current system and replacing it with a network of rural communities run on feudal lines.
Dog gulped his Golden Pippin Ultra 12% Cider and finished pasting-up July’s newsletter. It was a restricted document for command staff only. Alright, so he wouldn’t win any media awards, but the point was that he’d produced it himself. There would be no earth-raping corporate hardware in their new system of self-governing agricultural communities! He was making a statement by using craft-skills he’d taught himself. The headline read: ‘Smash the Music Money Makers!’, and the text dealt with the facts about the take-over of free festivals by businessmen, followed by a call for more direct action.
Music should be free and live, record shops should be boycotted, community drumming workshops should be set up to teach people the value of living in tune with earth-rhythms. For years now the capitalist controllers of the music industry had been infiltrating festivals. Dog had just finished reading Triangular Extortion, seditionary shaman Gary McMara’s breathtaking critique on the subject, in which he exposes the ways in which the Vatican and the pop industry have been infiltrated by the cult of the all-seeing eye.
The last Glastonbury had been marred for Dog and his cadre by the vast uniformed presence and the threat of plain-clothes operators. They’d set up a sound-system without permission and had it confiscated before they’d got fifty punters dancing. They’d lost a packet on the impounded PA. This time they weren’t going to be denied their legitimate right to express themselves freely. It was time for Dark Green to do more than simply take credit for other people’s actions, they had to do something themselves.
He rolled the A4 sheet into a cylinder, put an elastic band round it and passed it to Justin Sinclair, a new recruit. Dark Green needed street-tough kids who had nothing to lose, but all they were getting through the door was drop-outs from sixth form colleges and universities. He had to admit the lad had a taut arse and a terrific-looking cock pressing against the inside of his combat trousers. But such thoughts were forbidden! In a post-urban civilization it was every healthy man’s duty to procreate on demand to strengthen the community’s chances of survival. The future depended on strong, fine children who would live free from pollution and consumer gimmicks. He must ignore his deviant sexual urges and concentrate on the common good. If that meant fucking birds, then so be it!
After instructing Justin to run off 10 copies and get them in the post before dinnertime, he scanned the year-planner. He had a two-thirty appointment with the local print co-op to negotiate a price for 200 copies of the DG paper Flagless Nation, and he had to ring HQ. He got up and locked the door of his bedroom-cum-office. Flipping his cock out he watched it stiffen and inhaled its heavenly perfume. A swift wank wouldn’t hurt the revolution.
Tina was due to meet the bands in their tour-buses as they arrived. It was all part of the arse-licking expected by rock groups these days. Part of the festival contract required the bands to arrive the night before they were due to play. She was proud that she’d managed to arrange a dawn photo-shoot for all the bands who turned up. She knew that there would be absentees, but she’d planned to maximise her pay-off for Phentasm. However it worked out it would look good in the press and add to her reputation as a fixer.
The Celtic angle had been her idea. She’d become interested in Britain’s ancient cultural legacy, which had been suppressed by Rome and Christianity. She’d recently had a Celtic band tattoo done on her left arm, the sinister member. This limb represented a symbolic opposition to Christianity, which always alluded to the right-hand side as holy and its opposite as the reverse. She’d also become interested in the work of an underground movement that was protesting against the increasing urbanisation of Britain. This cause was something she passionately believed in, especially since she’d decided to move back to the country. The last thing she wanted was to spend a fortune on a decent property in a pleasant location and then find herself face-to-face with the sort of traffic conditions she’d paid good money to leave behind in London. However, as long as she was far enough away from a by-pass not to be able to hear it, she couldn’t give a toss what the road-builders did.
Tina had invited representatives of the Dark Green Network to Phentasm so she could show them her usefulness as an organiser of large-scale events. They’d erected their teepees a couple of days before the main event, then decorated the main stage. Activists were given space in which to organise recruiting, a drumming space and a tribal culture workshop which would detail how the forces of ‘civilisation’ from the Romans to the EC were intent on destroying the naturally anarchic spirit of the Celto-British tribes. Tina hoped to gain their backing for a full-scale campaign to halt development in her chosen part of East Anglia.
Chris disagreed with her, but he was already a lost soul, a city-convert. By choosing to reject his roots he had forfeited his right to a place on the cultural presidium proposed by the Dark Green executive which would make the final decisions about the carve-up of land throughout the country. Tina was determined she wasn’t going to be left out. She could see the split with the EC only months down the line and that would lead to the destruction of the Norman-dominated British state.
She had done some research and found that Dark Green had contacts in very high places. Of course, she gave no credence to the filthy-arsed anarchos who chose to put themselves on the front line. But by making her position clear she hoped to get an ‘in’ with the shadowy figures backing the movement.
Ray Musgrave, a rock-god with genuine working-class roots, scratched the side of his nose. This was the signal for his driver to fetch the big bag of Charlie. Ray never carried more than a quarter and he’d done his little bit of ‘personal’ earlier. The site was all but deserted with the festival due to kick-off in less than 24 hours. Part of the contract had been for all the acts to turn up early in order to take part in some poxy photo-opportunity. It was an unusual clause for a festival, but they were paying £££s so he’d gone along with the demand.
Up on stage technicians were installing the lighting rig. Ray sneered at the mock-Celtic images painted onto the sides of the main stage. By utilising this puerile pagan imagery the promoters hoped to tap into some authentic culture-stream that the kids viewed as preferable to Christianity. The Celts were just one of countless ethnic groups who held a claim to the genetic and cultural ancestry of Britain. What about the Anglo-Saxons or Romans, Danes, Friesian pirates, Bronze Age nomads, Jews, Hugenots, Normans? The list was almost endless.
The sun was going down and the sky was darkening. Hippies were gathering around fires. The shriek of tin whistles annoyed the fuck out of him, and the drums were doing his head in! Ray didn’t mind the original hippies, in fact he was currently earning obscene amounts of wonga ripping-off tunes from late-60s rock groups, but he hated their latest whingeing incarnation. He flicked away a fag-end and shook his head in disgust. He sprinted back to the tour-bus wondering if it was all worth it.
Chris guided the flat-bed lorry carrying half a dozen portable khazis into position. He didn’t mind doing the donkey-work, Tina was far better suited to the flesh-pressing side of things. But he was pissed off about Tina’s involvement with the underground eco-bores. She reckoned that London, like all cities, was dying. Cities were cancerous tumours eating up our island race. What a load of cobblers!
He’d looked into the fringes of the ecology movement. Behind their championing of environmental issues Dark Green were proposing vast social reorganisation along feudal lines. They publicly stated that they were fully committed to the immediate abandonment of city culture and a return to what they termed ‘traditional’ society. But their literature was ominously silent about how this earth-saving social miracle could be brought about. They glossed right over the obvious fact that a population of 60 million could never be squeezed into tiny hamlets of roughly a hundred people in such a limited space as the British Isles. Their grasp of race issues and sexual politics was also primitive. Their magazine, Flagless Nation, spent a great deal of time stressing the efficiency with which Mother Earth seemed to deliberately control her excess human stock by inventing ever more novel ways to rid the planet of dangerously high numbers of people: plague, TB, cancer, syphilis, AIDS, ebola, all were featured and eulogised as other fanzines extolled the virtues of particular celebrities.
This ghoulish delight in gross human suffering sent a shudder down Chris’s spine. The gap between this crew’s caring facade and the viciously misanthropist implications of the imposition of a neo-rural society seemed clear to him… nothing short of rapid depopulation would suffice! The answer could only be some form of genocidal programme.
Chris spied Tina wandering across the field and called over to her. She heard him shout, and moved towards him.
‘Are you sure about these eco-arseholes?’ Chris nodded towards some hippies huddled around an open fire.
‘Look, this is my decision, right? If you’ve got a problem with my organisation then let’s hear it.’
‘This is bollocks!” Chris bellowed, ‘Dark Green are fucking you over! I dunno what you reckon you’re getting out of the deal!’
‘Why don’t you relax, Chris? Don’t hassle my guests, right? Chill out.’
Being told to chill out really pissed him off. When he was DJ-ing and he responded to some drugged-up tosser giving him a hard time he was told the same thing.
‘How can I relax? I’ve got a living to make!’ he barked, ‘you seem to be telling me those cunts are more important to this festival than me.’
‘Don’t be stupid, Chris! All I’m saying is, this event was always about people coming together,’ she paused, ‘about issues …’
‘You keep on like that and you’ll start fuckin’ believing it!’ Chris shot back.
‘These shit-stains are not only giving me a king-size headache with their fucking bongoes, they’re also a vicious bunch of creeps. I’ve read their paper. They want to liquidate the cities! They’ll ship me and the rest of London off to a fucking death-camp!’
‘You’ve got a big problem. I can’t talk to you when you’re like this.’ She turned and walked off.
This was a common strategy Chris had noticed in ‘new age’ types. When faced with a different point of view they invariably tried to turn any adverse dialogue around so that their questioner became the intransigent one.
Duncan Oade was the chairman of AgriSolutions; during the last four years he’d built the business into a multi-million pound operation. His company offered development capital to businesses involved in the food production industry. The last couple of years had shown him that there was a niche for a political organisation which offered the people of Britain a way to control their own destinies. He had developed a network of powerful allies in industry and politics through extensive lobbying and attendance at tedious, but necessary, committee meetings of local and national business interest groups. These rich, short-sighted mugs were putting up the cash which would facilitate the social change he envisaged, simply to gain medium term economic advantages from Britain leaving the constraining economic policies of the EC.
Oade had become convinced that the only way forward was to establish growth-limited, self-sufficient rural communities based around hamlets connected to a regional centre. Britain must abandon city-development. Britain, as a political and cultural body, must cease to exist and would be replaced by a network of independent rural bodies. Excess population would first be excluded from the life of the newly-established mini-states and then liquidated. The environment must be saved from the cancer of urbanism at any cost!
On the dawn of the next morning the underground movement known as Dark Green would be transformed into Green Age, a genuine political force! Oade and his associates had gradually taken over the leadership of various groups of disaffected youths. By proliferating as a grass-roots organisation, they had become aligned with the anarchist movement. Oade was happy with that if it brought in new blood. His propaganda focussed on the menace of fascism which gave it an acceptable radical face that appealed to solemn young anarcho-activists. These kids were relatively easy to control by emphasising the individuality and creativity of activism. Likewise, they were quick to embrace ludicrously reductive political and social dualities: rich/poor, fascist/anarchist, technology/craft.
The first blow was to be struck in East Anglia. For years national politics and the public had refused to accept this area as anything more than a featureless aberration. Apart from a couple of first division soccer teams, Oade was willing to bet that the only exports most people outside the area could name from this glorious region would be Cambridge University and certain turkey products! He was continually annoyed at the public perception of East Anglia. The apparent emptiness of the place, based on its flatness, was always cited, as the antithesis of the professed spiritual richness of hilly areas like Glastonbury.
Devolution was a fact now in Scotland, Wales, and even Northern Ireland had its own independent assembly. The lack of obvious linguistic differences between the Eastern Counties and the rest of Britain was no reason to oppose cession! Let the West country keep her Tors! Let Scotland swing the mighty Claymore! Let Londoners map out their squalid culture! But let the East reclaim her destiny! Dark Green would strike here first. The vile results of city expansion and enforced rural decay would finally be overthrown! Duncan Oade would lead the return to the soil!
Just before dawn Dog made his way to the Phentasm site in Dark Green East’s brand new Transit. Up and down the country well-trained cells of committed activists were poised to assault symbolic and material targets and claim victory in the name of the New Green Dawn. In Glastonbury and at Stonehenge squads were ready to seal off the Tor and stone circle. In London vital traffic arteries were to be blocked to cause road chaos, a symbolic thrombosis from which the City would never recover. Dog and his crew were on site at Phentasm to bring the message home to tribal youth. The skinny eco-maniac drove the van up to the service entrance and flashed his pass at a security guard. Other members of the team unloaded the sound-system that would herald the New Dawn.
Jill got up early to take in the sunrise. Dawn was spreading its violet palms over the lightening sky. She was still buzzing from last night and needed some fresh air away from the bollocks being spouted by the rock elite. She made her way round the perimeter fence and ended up at the main stage where all the action seemed to be. By her watch it was 5:00am. A rasping fart echoed over the field and she looked behind her to see a gathering crowd of pasty creatures being shepherded by a small posse of more self-possessed human beings. It was the stars being taken to a photo-shoot.
‘Attention! You are now subject to community law!’, a voice bellowed.
Jill worked out that the voice was coming from a massive sound-system behind the stage area. The wasted musicians stood still staring around them, wanting their managers to work out what was going on. A wiry shape leaped from the stage and made its way toward the celebrities. Other figures moved into view. They were all carrying weapons.
‘All band members are to prostrate themselves face down on the ground! NOW!’
A smattering of applause broke out from the press pack surrounding their meal-tickets. They seemed to think it was a joke. The chief gunman grinned at the powerless dolts in front of him. He had nothing but contempt for them and their decadent kind.
‘If you follow my instructions I probably won’t have to shoot anyone,’ the lean gunman roared.
He motioned to a fat woman in ripped purple tights who waddled over to him, followed by a mongrel puppy weaving in and out of her legs.
‘Sandra, watch them for me while I tell ‘em the score.’
‘This is futile! Anyhow, we’re all socialists and most of us are vegetarians. You can’t do this!’ Derek Folds blurted out a sudden protest which Dog ignored, except to return a disgusted grimace before grabbing the wretch’s cheeks and squeezing tightly.
‘You’ve all had your chance to make a difference and none of you have taken it. You are guilty of planet rape and compliance with a system of social slavery. All of you are gonna be put back in your coaches till showtime… none of you are gonna make an appearance ‘til then.’
‘What about the hospitality area?’, Tina darted out and whispered urgently, ‘the pop press will expect some celebs. It will look odd if no-one shows, these ponces would never pass up free booze!’
Dog stiffened and then pushed her away.
‘In that case, march the scum to the hospitality bar immediately,’ the eco-activist growled, ‘but no-one’s talking to anyone, right?’
‘No-one said anything about guns,’ Tina whimpered once separated from the other prisoners.
‘Course they didn’t! You wouldn’t have let us in if they had, would’ya?’, the wiry eco-rebel shook his head in disbelief. ‘This whole show was about lining your pockets, but now you’re gonna be making a very large donation to us! OK?’
Chris Fitt finished wandering round the site checking fences. He went over to the catering area to see if he could get a spot of breakfast. He was still uneasy about the soap-dodgers. The last thing Phentasm needed was some kind of Altamont-style scenario going down. They’d never get their security deposit back from the local council and their insurance company would shit itself.
Walking out of the back-stage café, he’d noticed Tina huddled on the grass. She was sobbing and sitting beside her was a hunched figure Chris recognised as Dog, one of the Dark Green activists Tina had befriended. As the filthy shape reached forward to ponce a fag off her, Chris saw the automatic stuffed into the belt of his trousers. He backed away immediately. There was no doubt left in Chris’s mind that the eco-fascists had staged a coup.
Sound-systems were chucking thousands of Ks of bass into the morning air and the smell of frying meat and onions wafted about on the breeze. Phentasm was nearing capacity. The crowd was gathering in the best spots to see the bands, watching the contents of a flat-bed articulated trailer unloading. Some hippies were busy erecting a pre-fabricated wooden-framed structure made from criss-crossed batons. It looked like a massive pair of legs. Then they added a new bit, on top of what they’d already assembled. The on-board crane was lowering this part into position as Chris watched. It made a torso joined to the legs below it. Arms were bolted on either side and finally a head was mounted above the rest to top-out the ghastly edifice. There was something terribly familiar about the way it stood astride the earth like a DIY colossus. But Chris was already on his way out of the site.
Stakker’s 1988 electro-smash Humanoid roared out from the enormous PA on the main stage. Recognising the pre-arranged signal, Dog dragged Tina to her feet and pointed toward the Wicca Man.
‘You can’t! Not in front of thousands of people! It’s monstrous!’ Tina spluttered.
‘These islands haven’t seen the spectacle of the Great Ritual for nearly two thousand years. This scum don’t deserve the honour of being the first to be offered!’ Dog thundered.
He gave orders for the prisoners to be assembled immediately. The sight of the Wicca Man brought a lump to his throat. This was the symbol of their culture of resistance. This was the symbol which opposed the waste and greed of consumer-capitalism. He drained the gaudy can of Hawk Optimum 8% Perry. They would find newer and increasingly more grotesque ways of punishing those who sought to perpetuate the disease of commodity-culture. Dark Green would bury eco-criminals alive, up to their necks, and let the miscreants rot in the very earth they’d helped to destroy! This was the last push towards unstoppable social revolution. They would fight mass society by offering a series of autonomous actions by networked groups. This was the first step to establishing the self-governing, self-sufficient communities which would be needed as the state lost control of the planet. Britain was coming home!
A mini-bus passed through the guarded perimeter. Inside was Duncan Oade, his partner Teri, and other top members of the Dark Green Network’s Eastern Co-ordinating Committee. Dog greeted Oade with a wry grin. The businessman returned Dog’s handshake.
‘Congratulations! Your troops have pulled off a major success here today. This is something we can all be proud of. With the publicity gained from hijacking such an important youth event we’ll force a nationwide discussion of our political role. National dissolution will follow.’
Dark Green’s executive applauded and Oade motioned with his hands for them to cease. He stared straight ahead.
‘That looks interesting, what is it?’ he pointed to the giant Wicca Man. Dog told him and laughed at the surprise his answer registered.
‘B-but that’s ridiculous. The whole point of this exercise is to get people involved in the creation of a New Albion, not assault their senses with m-mass b-bloodshed!’, he stammered, ‘besides, it’s against my orders!’
‘The revolution is here, there is no chain of command. From this point we have devolved all due process to the community,’ the gaunt street-politician paused to study the faces of the astonished businessmen, ‘any questions?’
Oade was speechless. He’d gravely underestimated the ability of this street-tough eco-veteran. But the first blow had been struck effectively. At the very least, the brutal response this armed gang would attract from the police and security forces would move public opinion in their favour and help mobilise youth interest.
‘Dog, I suggest you continue with your plans. The show’s all yours!’ Oade announced.
‘There’s thousands of our fans out there! There’s no way they’ll allow our ritual slaughter, we’re contemporary cultural icons!’ Derek Folds, the singer with Shelf-Life, sobbed.
‘Yeah!’ sneered Ray Musgrave, raising his arm in a clenched-fist salute, ‘we put our trust in the people! Consumerism is the ultimate democracy because people are free to negotiate positions of cultural power!’
Dog shook his head in disbelief. These fools were quite convinced that their anti-social actions were morally vindicated by their economic success. This scum represented a tide of darkness that was rolling over the whole planet. The world was festering under waves of manufactured music, deodorants, plastic, people and concrete! The earth was threatened by scientists, junk and poisons. If it wasn’t for networks of devoted activists opposing the filthy hordes of consumerism the very solar system would be swamped in human filth! How he hated his inherited genetic material because it linked him to unpure elements! The rock stars’ whining only hardened Dog’s resolve to offer their wretched carcasses in human sacrifice. His body stiffened and his face contorted with beserk rage.
‘At last I claim my birthright! I pronounce my true name without shame! I am Wilf of Anglia, son of Trevor! Take these symbols of social decay to the sacred place!’ he shrieked.
The eco-fascists ignored the celebs’ pitiful mewling and shoved them onto the main stage. The crowd went barmy. From habit the seasoned performers grinned in appreciation. Wilf Trevorsson bellowed a curt speech.
‘This is the Green Age! We stand on community land. The relationship between human and earth has been reestablished. The consumption-cycle has been broken by an audacious act of revolutionary force! These people are no longer your property! You are no longer their subjects! You are all free to choose life in extended family units, unfettered by the compulsion to consume! Let us celebrate our ancient Eastern Motherland and the true meaning of festival!’ Wilf raised his can of Valu-Mart Xtra 9% Lager and poured a libation to the Mighty She, then downed the fiercesome brew with one superhuman gulp.
Sandra Keats and her gang of specially-trained wimmin herded the consumer-fodder off the stage and into the enclosure that held the Wicca Man. She showed no mercy to her snivelling prisoners as they marched to certain death. Britain would learn that the Great Mother enjoyed the taste of the warm blood of her defilers. Proudly, she waited as Wilf Trevorsson signalled for kindling to be placed at the foot of the monstrous vertical oven.
The pop stars were shrieking with fear. Unable to escape from the blasphemous wooden beast, they fought one another for space. There was just room for arms, legs, heads to protrude from the interior of the massive abomination. As the flames licked at the ankles of the fearful pagan icon the crowd grew silent. Smoke rose up the legs of the Wicca Man and caused panic among the sacrificial victims inside. The stars were screaming and clawing at each other as their will to survive drove them to inhuman lengths to cheat death. Lower down, in the thighs of the beast, the thick fumes had already choked several well-known dance acts whose bodies were now charred beyond recognition, bursting like sausages in the flames. In the belly of the Wicca Man the sacrificial fire had turned the pop elite into a bunch of dribbling maniacs fighting for their lives. Ray Musgrave strained to break free, vainly stretching out his arms, as gobbets of flesh melted and dripped down his lean body. Derek Folds was howling in agony, scorched beyond recognition as the flames leaped around him, then, suddenly, his eyeballs burst and he fell, tearing at his burning skin. The rock gods were being torched like BSE-infected cattle.
A voice rose above the crackling fire and the screams of the doomed celebrities.
‘No to human sacrifice!’ Jill Carter yelled at the top of her lungs.
As much as she despised the wretched ideological vacuity of most pop entertainers, she couldn’t stand by and watch the ritual slaying of fellow human beings. The crowd murmured uneasily. Groups of fans surged forward. They recognised the reality of the situation.
‘If they succeed we’ll be plunged into an age of imposed pseudo-folk tradition!’ Jill bellowed. The crowd hissed with rage. Groups of fans started to invade the stage but were held back by security guards.
‘Rock music will die without electricity!’ Jill yelled.
The crowd thundered its response and massed to the attack. The stage was taken. The music fans were incensed but, as they fought, their idols were incinerated in front of them. They were unable to save the lives of their gods, but someone would pay dearly for the void tickets!
‘Storm the free bar!’, ‘Take all complimentary catering for hungry fans!’, ‘Claim all music equipment as due recompense!’, ‘It is the festive masses who will serve as the shock troops of the moment and oust the tyranny and degeneracy of anti-technological ruralism!’, ‘We demand that all our demands are met!’ Slogans like these, plus many others, were shouted as the stage was looted.
The eco-fascists were not prepared for a full-on riot. Despite their basic training in neo-Druidic martial-arts the initiates of the New Green Dawn were no match for the incensed festival-goers. Most were beaten senseless immediately, caught off guard by the furious mob. Some were trampled as they regrouped to counter-attack, others were caught and bashed remorselessly by the angry mob as they tried to get away. Dark Green’s van was overturned and torched as the Wicca Man collapsed, still burning, showering charcoal and crackling onto the horrified crowd. An anarchist video-art collective did its best to record the extreme violence, but disorder undid them and they and their cameras were trampled beneath thousands of feet. And above the noise of battle emanated the ugly sound of massed voices howling a single protest against the end of the illusion of fun.
Wilf had misjudged his audience. Who’d have thought they’d actually want to save the cowardly scum who imposed themselves through a corrupt media? As he slipped backstage, Wilf spotted the bloated Green Age supremos celebrating the moment of communal victory with a sex-session.
Duncan Oade was doing some rectal expansion on Pete Harris, an electronics expert from Fakenham, grunting and sweating over the kneeling figure in front of him. The small-businessman gasped as Oade’s hard prick stretched his arsehole. Outside he could hear the sound of smashing glass and shouting, but all he wanted was his arse filled up with hot cum. Tina Hay had protested her innocence of earth-crimes and was rescued from burning by Oade who introduced her to his partner Teri. Blood-curdling screams emanated from the Wicca Man, but the wimmin were intent on grinding. Teri exposed her funky twat to Tina, then worked several fingers into herself before pushing Tina onto the grass. It wasn’t long before Teri slipped out of her pregnancy smock and shoved her tongue up Tina’s pulsating snatch. Tina felt her yoni swell and moisten at the touch of the fecund womun’s expert tongue. The knocked-up bitch smelled fantastic. With her back on the grass and the fertile womun licking her, Tina could feel the spirit of the Goddess, Hecate, Ceres, Artemis, Mother Earth inside her. The crowd roared beyond the confines of the hospitality bar.
Wilf was repulsed by the sight of decadent sexual abandon in the face of counter-revolution. He fired one round into the guts of Duncan Oade, who shot his wad instantly. The backstage entrance collapsed under the weight of unauthorised intruders. He made good his escape.
The rioting fans bust through stage security. What they found was a dead man still joined by the penis to the arse of a naked, sobbing, middle-aged tosser whose sphincter had contracted with fear, and a bunch of naked people scampering around looking for their clothes and a way out. The fury of the mob was all but spent by the time it was confronted by this sorry sight. A rumour spread that several armed-response vehicles were entering the festival space even as the crowd’s anger was subsiding. Having stripped the stage and immediate area the mob dispersed. The looters were escaping with their haul of booze, food, and expensive music equipment. When the police back-up arrived the crowd had retreated, leaving only certain well-known local business-people for the authorities to question. The cops imposed a cordon to contain the situation. Meanwhile, the looters were escaping with the spoils of riot.
Jill’s medium-term security was assured. Not many rock hacks were bright enough to make it out of the weeklies. She’d rung several national newspapers on her mobile after the riot started and was currently initiating a bidding war for her story. She’d also got some dynamite pictures which would be worth a mint back in the smoke.
Wilf had stolen a motorbike and was on his way to join the earth-tribe hordes at Stonehenge. The revolutionary post-industrial Green Age would revere him as a global hero for what he had achieved. As he rode he imagined the article in praise of him that anarchist elder-statesman Gary McMara would compose in his honour: ‘Wilf had a duty to stay alive. He was one of a select band of activists who were all that stood between society and its immersion in a new age of fascist barbarism.’ The stolen bike burned up the road and took Wilf Trevorsson in the direction he wanted to go, dreaming of revolutionary glory, skunked out of his brain, travelling at dangerously high speed on the wrong side of a country road…
Tina Hay stroked the hair of her lover Teri, who responded in kind. They had both made separate statements to the local CID which, while unusual, revealed no obvious basis for criminal charges. Teri was still a little upset about Duncan’s sudden and violent death, but Tina whispered to her that they would be alright. If she could hang on to Teri she would soon be the partial recipient of a multi-million dollar legacy and a sizeable country estate in Suffolk.
Chris Fitt had cut his losses and scarpered. He was hitch-hiking to Peterborough where he would catch a train to Cambridge. He had a job lined-up DJ-ing the Judas College May Ball. He’d get decent-sized helpings from the buffet, and free booze, though the rich punters were all a load of putrid shit. But under capitalism everyone was forced to make a living.
Neil Palmer, 1996. Originally published in Suspect Device, edited by Stewart Home (Serpent’s Tail, 1996)
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