Dislocated to Success Read Online Free PDF Page A

never been in evidence to me - like the PM, the Firm understood full well the nature of their social contract with the nation. It may well be true that the Clarence House bought up a lot of Dubonnet, but I would remind people that alcohol was never on the ration.
     
    On returning home, I got a short précis of what had happened at evening cabinet from Francis; it had mainly been about Ireland again, but with quite a bit of wrangling about the status of various other places and what we wanted to do with them. It seemed Willie had found some Irish TD who was in London at the time and who was willing to play ball, which turned out to be very helpful in the end.. Then it seemed that Geoffreywas in a bit of a tizzy; he produced his new sums, which basically came out as “Cuts All Round” - only to be tripped up by people pointing out that loan interest might just have gone down somewhat, as there was no one to repay in some cases. We also had reopen the retail banks to the public on the Friday, which the police weren’t in favour of but everyone else was; people had to be able to access their wages, and many employers needed to collect cash for their employees.
     
    I think Thursday was the worst of the civil disorder; although there were still some isolated incidents and a lot of small scuffles at some shops into the next week, but Denis had been in touch with all the major chains and given them a few words of advice about stocking policy until the ration books were out. Most of them took it to heart, although Fine Fare and Tesco's were a little troublesome. There were also some small demonstrations about what had happened to "our men", mainly from Forces families; Francis dealt with these most sympathetically, and the PM came out to one of the groups and spoke to them for nearly an hour - they liked that. There was no problem from them, and their dignified and simple protest I think acted as an archetype of how to behave to others.
     
    I had to go to the constituency on the Saturday. Normally my “surgeries” have three or four people attending; one will be an immigration case, one will be difficulties with the local council and the others can be just about anything at all. I have never seen such a large queue in my life - I had to ask the councillors to help out when they had finished their “surgeries”, as I had to be back in London by 4pm. I promised I would do the whole day next weekend; it was the least I could do. There were a selection of novel problems to me: some Forces families who had lost fathers, sons, brothers etc; some people concerned about special diets and rationing; one couple complaining that they had lost their package holiday; and some Canadians worried they they would overstay their visas. I did the best I could, but to be honest at that stage there was little I could do except offer support and sympathy. Many other MPs of all parties had similar experiences at their weekend surgeries as well, and the contact with constituents was actually quite helpful in helping them to be able to push some issues as a priority over others. You could tell that society was feeling fragile, and the Government needed to look strong and reassuring. We managed that, after a fashion, but behind the scenes the reality was often very different.
     
    Of course, having returned to London, I then had to meet Rachel at Adrian’s flat; we sat down and had a stiff drink whilst discussing what to do. There a number of difficulties, not least in that there had already been a few robberies of homes that were abandoned. Also, at this point, it wasn’t clear what the legal position was. With so many people lost, the old “seven years until dead” rule wasn’t going to work well - and anyway, I didn’t want to go down that route and neither did she. We decided that I would pay the bills and that we would get the place cleared, get some extra locks fitted and his effects put in storage; that would be probably be illegal, but