Conferences are Murder (9 page)

She found her in a distant corner with half a dozen other women, all of whom Lindsay recognized from her JU days. Three of them were clerical and administrative workers like Pauline, and the others were lay officials from the book and magazine sectors of her old union. Even from a distance, Lindsay could see this wasn't a cheerful girls' night out. In a serious huddle, heads close together, the women were speaking forcefully to each other, fingers jabbing at the table top, cigarettes, dragged on furiously. They were so engrossed that no one even noticed Lindsay till she said, “Is this a private council of war, or can anyone join in?”

Sally, a book editor who had represented the staff of a major publishing conglomerate for as long as Lindsay had known her, growled, “Anyone who isn't one of the bosses.”

Pauline squeezed up to make room for Lindsay, who said, “Surely you're not expecting the bosses here?” She waved at the room in a gesture that would have been expansive if she hadn't clobbered a lager-drinking woman with a Sinead O'Connor haircut, black leggings and a short black skirt. She looked like a punk Tinkerbelle in mourning. “Sorry!” Lindsay exclaimed.

“ 'S all right,” the woman said. “She means that lot,” she added, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb across the room at a group of National Executive Council members who surrounded Tom Jack and Andy Spence.

“The management,” Sally said, her voice even more hostile than the poisonous look she cast at Union Jack as he threw his head back and guffawed. “Call themselves trades unionists? If Margaret Thatcher stood as this union's equality organizer, they'd vote her in.”

“I guess I'm a bit out of touch,” Lindsay said. “What's been going down?”

“It's the same old story,” one of the other clerical workers piped up. “If you're looking for a lousy boss, pick a trade union baron.”

“After the merger, there was a surplus in the new joint staff
pension fund,” Pauline explained. “We're talking millions, not thousands. We wanted to use the money to improve benefits, but Union Jack and his buddies on the NEC decided instead that in their role as our employers, they'd take a pensions holiday.”

Lindsay shook her head. “You've lost me,” she said. “I need the idiots' guide.”

Pauline grinned. “Sally's the expert on that.”

Sally leaned back, closed her eyes and recited. “A company pension fund is financed by contributions from employers and employees. The money is invested to provide pensions. If a fund accumulates more money than it needs to fulfil its existing obligations, there are various options. One, improve benefits and entitlements. Two, the employer takes a pensions holiday and suspends his contributions till the surplus is eaten up. Three, the employer gives the employees a pension holiday, which is, in effect, a pay rise funded out of the pension fund, a useful option in times of recession when business is bad and a rise can't be paid for out of current profits.”

“Alternatively, the boss-man takes the whole kitty, blows it on new toys, then jumps off the back of his yacht. This is known as ‘doing a Maxwell,' and is, unfortunately, slightly less than legal,” the young woman in black chipped in.

Pauline took up the tale again. “So we suggested they give us a pension holiday too, since that was the only way we were going to get a rise, given the state of the union finances. They said no. But now they've actually done their sums, they've decided to shed a lot more jobs than they'd originally planned. And surprise surprise. Every single one of us who'd kicked off about the pension situation is on their hit list. Me included.”

Lindsay drained her first can and crushed it in her fist. “Wild,” she said. “Surely the redundancies are voluntary?”

Sally snorted. “You were one of the ones that got the golden handshake from the
Daily Nation
in their new technology purge in'86, weren't you?”

“More gilt than golden,” Lindsay said. “Yes, I was one of the lucky ones, though it didn't feel like it at the time.”

“And wasn't that supposed to be a voluntary deal?” Sally demanded.

Lindsay popped the top of her second Bud and took a long swig. “I take your point,” she said finally. “Voluntary as in press gang.”

“Exactly. And Tom Jack managed to make that shitty
Daily Nation
stitch-up look like the best possible deal for the majority. Now he's using what he learned back then to shaft the union's own staff. Anyone who looks like they might be a trouble-maker is going out the door,” Sally said.

“So I'm supposed to accept the tin handshake gracefully, as of the end of next month,” Pauline said.

“They won't get away with it,” the woman in black said defiantly. The others looked at her as if she'd dropped in from the planet Out To Lunch. “Well, they won't,” she added, uncertainly.

“I take it there's action planned?” Lindsay said.

Sally smiled grimly. “Oh, there's action planned all right. Union Jack and his buddy boys won't know what's hit them before this week's out.”

3

“It was strange, you know,” Lindsay said, gazing into the middle distance somewhere beyond Jennifer. “Sometimes it was like we'd all been frozen in aspic some time in 1984. The rhetoric was the same, the attitudes, even the faces. As if the last nine years just hadn't happened. And then I'd look around, and suddenly it was all different. There we were, sitting in a conference hall with the very same people who'd supposedly been our enemies and our rivals. Talking about streamlining our administration, improving our public profile, developing new services to meet changing needs, like some post-Thatcherite corporation. And Union Jack still at the heart of it, cutting his coat according to what would keep him in power.”

“When did you actually first speak to him?” Jennifer glanced at her watch as she asked the question.

“I'm sorry, I keep getting side-tracked. It's probably the drink. I've had more than I should have tonight. On Monday evening,
after the women told me about the redundancies, I went over to the bar to get a round of drinks in. On the way, I had to pass Tom and his NEC cronies. Being Tom, he couldn't let me pass without getting into my ribs.”

 

“Ey-up lads, lock up your daughters. The Gay Gordons are back in town,” Tom roared as Lindsay tried to slip unnoticed past the bunch of fixers gathered round the general secretary. “What happened? The Yanks realize they'd been sold a pup?”

“Nice to see you too, Tom.” Lindsay tried to carry on towards the bar, but he moved to block her way. He was trying to push her into behaving like some butch blundering dyke, trying to make her shove him out of the way. As if she'd make any impact on that stocky, bullish figure in her path. Lindsay smiled sweetly, shaking her head. “Still the same old charmer, eh?”

“Well, Lindsay, it's a dirty job, but somebody's got to do it, haven't they? Otherwise, we'd fall into the hands of some of them dangerous radicals. You know the ones—they're out there, ready and waiting to turn us into a matriarchy, leaving us lads to be nothing but the playthings of you lasses,” Tom said, leaning so close she could smell the beer on his breath and see the individual hairs in his thick, curly beard. He hadn't changed much, she thought, either superficially or more deeply. These days, there were gray hairs among the brown in his hair and beard, but his warm brown eyes were still the same, holding the eyes of his audience, whether it was one person or a thousand, forcing them to be the ones to look away first.

“You should be so lucky, Tom,” she said.

He smiled the familiar smile, his full sensual lips barely parting. His crooked teeth were the only chink in his armor that Lindsay had ever noticed. But even that he turned to an advantage. She had heard him once in full flood, explaining how he would never have his teeth fixed because every time he looked in the mirror they reminded him of the importance of a free National Health Service, and of how his working-class roots had prevented him from having the gleaming white smile of the bosses. It was a performance that had to be seen to be believed. He winked
confidentially and said, “Oh, but I am lucky, Lindsay, I'm a very lucky man.”

“I wonder if you'll still be saying that at the end of the week,” Lindsay mused softly.

Jack's brows dropped in a frown that seemed to promise the wrath of God. “I hope you're not threatening me already, Lindsay. Bloody hell, woman, you've only been back in the country five minutes.”

“You sound very paranoid, Tom. Fancy you feeling threatened by a little woman like me! As it happens, it's not me you've got to worry about. Maybe you should have taken more time to consider the consequences when you decided to behave like management.” Lindsay moved to one side, hoping to get away.

Jack's scowl deepened and his nostrils flared. “You always were full of piss and wind,” he said. All the fun had gone out of it now. The rest of the group had fallen silent, shifting uneasily, almost imperceptibly moving back from the two antagonists.

“It used to take more than that to rattle you, Tom,” Lindsay said matter-of-factly. “I didn't realize that dumping union staff on the dole queue was such a sore point with you.”

“Just what gives you the right to come back here and monopolize the high moral ground? You've got no right, no right at all to treat me like a piece of shit. If you were a bloody delegate at this conference, I might just listen to what you have to say. But you're a nobody now. Do you hear? A nobody!” Jack shouted at the top of his powerful bass voice.

Taken aback by the force of his onslaught, Lindsay held her hands up, palms facing him. “Hey, Tom, cool it. I was just putting a point of view.”

“You've got no right to a point of view in this union any more. You don't even live in this bloody country. Listen to me, Lindsay Gordon, and listen good. You've done your share of troublemaking in this union. You and your cronies wasted enough of the JU's time and money with your daft feminist schemes and gay rights propaganda. Well, you're not going to hijack the AMWU. So you can stop right there.”

Lindsay tried the deep-breathing techniques she'd learned at
a seminar in Sausalito. They failed. She flushed a deep scarlet and took a step towards him. “Don't you dare talk to me like that, you conniving turncoat bully,” she said in a low voice that attracted more attention in that crowded bar than shouting would have done. “And don't try blowing smoke in everybody's eyes. What you and that National Executive you've got tucked in your back pocket are doing to the head office staff is nothing to do with feminism, and you know it. It's to do with good old-fashioned bad management and the broken promises between employer and employee. The only reason most of the people you're getting rid of are women is the age-old reason. They're cheap to pay off. How did you put it to me back in '86, when the
Daily Nation
were making me redundant? Let me get it right . . .” Lindsay closed her eyes momentarily, as if deep in thought. “Oh yes, now I remember. Quote: ‘The reason why women get paid less than men is that they will keep taking these low-paid jobs.' End quote.”

For a brief, terrifying moment, she thought Tom Jack was going to hit her. His eyes widened and his hands bunched into fists at his side. He staggered slightly, then, with perceptible effort, he regained control of himself. “If you've got the sense you were born with, you'll stay out of my road,” he said quietly, his voice tight with suppressed anger. “There's plenty of rules in the rulebook for getting rid of the likes of you.”

Lindsay shook her head theatrically, playing up her air of astonishment as she moved past Jack and made for the bar. “ ‘A working-class hero is something to be,' right enough,” she said to no one in particular.

 

“Not what you'd call a private confrontation, then,” Jennifer said wryly. “Have another,” she said, pushing the cigarette packet towards Lindsay.

“I'll pass, thanks all the same. Not only was it not private, it hit the headlines. By breakfast next morning, everyone in the place knew we'd had a run-in.” Lindsay summarized the couple of paragraphs that had appeared about their fight in Conference Chronicle's “Gossip and Innuendo” section.

Jennifer looked alert, like a cat hearing the tin opener at the opposite end of the house. “Who produces this Conference Chronicle, then?” she asked.

Lindsay shrugged. “I wish I knew. And so does everyone else. Half of the delegates and officials want to lynch whoever it is, and the rest want to buy them a large drink. I've never known any fringe publication generate this kind of interest. You always get the odd scurrilous flyer round conference, but nothing this organized. It's incredibly well-informed. It takes on the left as well as the right, it has a go at full-time officials, lay activists, the lunatic fringe, the boringly predictable establishment. I know it's a dreadful old cliché, but truly, nothing seems to be sacred to Conference Chronicle. It's reasonably witty, it's competently put together, and it's delivered as if by a band of paper-boy fairies that no one's seen or heard. Certainly, the distribution's a hell of a lot more efficient than the members of the old distribution union ever managed!”