A Place Called Freedom - Ken Follett [66]
“A cup of coffee, perhaps? Wine sends you to sleep but coffee wakes you up.” Without waiting for a reply he said to the servant: “Coffee for everyone.” He turned back to Mack. “Now, McAsh, why was my advice to you so wrong?”
Mack told him the story of how he had left Heugh. Dermot and Charlie listened intently: they had never heard this. Gordonson lit a pipe and blew clouds of tobacco smoke, shaking his head in disgust from time to time. The coffee came as Mack was finishing.
“I know the Jamissons of old—they’re greedy, heartless, brutal people,” Gordonson said with feeling. “What did you do when you got to London?”
“I became a coal heaver.” Mack related what had happened in the Sun tavern last night.
Gordonson said: “The liquor payments to coal heavers are a long-standing scandal.”
Mack nodded. “I’ve been told I’m not the first to protest.”
“Indeed not. Parliament actually passed a law against the practice ten years ago.”
Mack was astonished. “Then how does it continue?”
“The law has never been enforced.”
“Why not?”
“The government is afraid of disrupting the supply of coal. London runs on coal—nothing happens here without it: no bread is made, no beer brewed, no glass blown, no iron smelted, no horses shod, no nails manufactured—”
“I understand,” Mack interrupted impatiently. “I ought not to be surprised that the law does nothing for men such as us.”
“Now, you’re wrong about that,” Gordonson said in a pedantic tone. “The law makes no decisions. It has no will of its own. It’s like a weapon, or a tool: it works for those who pick it up and use it.”
“The rich.”
“Usually,” Gordonson conceded. “But it might work for you.”
“How?” Mack said eagerly.
“Suppose you devised an alternative ganging system for unloading coal ships.”
This was what Mack had been hoping for. “It wouldn’t be difficult,” he said. “The men could choose one of their number to be undertaker and deal with the captains. The money would be shared out as soon as it’s received.”
“I presume the coal heavers would prefer to work under the new system, and be free to spend their wages as they pleased.”
“Yes,” Mack said, suppressing his mounting excitement. “They could pay for their beer as they drink it, the way anyone does.” But would Gordonson weigh in on the side of the coal heavers? If that happened everything could change.
Charlie Smith said lugubriously: “It’s been tried before. It doesn’t work.”
Charlie had been a coal heaver for many years, Mack recalled. He asked: “Why doesn’t it work?”
“What happens is, the undertakers bribe the ships’ captains not to use the new gangs. Then there’s trouble and fighting between the gangs. And it’s the new gangs that get punished for the fights, because the magistrates are undertakers themselves, or friends of undertakers … and in the end all the coal heavers go back to the old ways.”
“Damn fools,” Mack said.
Charlie looked offended. “I suppose if they were clever they wouldn’t be coal heavers.”
Mack realized he had been supercilious, but it angered him when men were their own worst enemies. “They only need a little determination and solidarity,” he said.
Gordonson put in: “There’s more to it than that. It’s a question of politics. I remember the last coal heavers’ dispute. They were defeated because they had no champion. The undertakers were against them and no one was for them.”
“Why should it be different this time?” said Mack.
“Because of John Wilkes.”
Wilkes was the defender of liberty, but he was in exile. “He can’t do much for us in Paris.”
“He’s not in Paris. He’s back.”
That was a surprise. “What’s he going to do?”
“Stand for Parliament.”
Mack could imagine how that would stir up trouble in London’s political circles. “But I still don’t see how it helps us.”
“Mikes will take the coal heavers’ part, and the government will side with the undertakers. Such a dispute, with workingmen plainly in the right, and having the law on their side too, would do Wilkes nothing but good.”
“How do you know what Wilkes will do?”
Gordonson smiled. “I’m his electoral agent.”
Gordonson