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three sons, Billy, John and Joseph, named after the Soviet leader, were minded by her mother for the duration. Stanley had become a member of the Communist Party soon after joining Austin, not on account of any strong ideological convictions, but because that was what most of the lads did. At the start of the war, the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact caused him and several of his friends to question their allegiance, but by the end, what he came to think of as little more than a misstep could be forgotten. An alliance that was good enough for Mr Churchill was good enough for him.
    Billy, their oldest, had left home at sixteen ‘to see the world’ and now worked for an oil company in Texas. John still worked at Longbridge, although he did not share his father’s deep faith in the union and they had grown apart. Joseph had surprised everyone, becoming a chefin London and Stanley looked forward to his youngest son’s visits with unexpected hunger. The factory, the union, the Daily Worker , or Morning Star as it became, were his world. Incidental news from the centre of capitalist power proved to be a guilty pleasure for both him and Mabel, especially as Joseph, unlike John, displayed little interest in politics.
    â€œWill you be going to the institute?” Mabel asked, the name given to the canteen where shop stewards and workers congregated to socialize, hold meetings and generally put the world to rights, a world which had become excessively wrong of late, in all their eyes.
    â€œYes. Derek wants us out.”
    â€œThat’ll be the second time this month,” she said. “What’s it this time?”
    â€œManagement’s trying to cut overtime again,” he told her.
    â€œWell, if cars aren’t selling,” she proffered hesitantly but thought better of continuing along that line and changed tack. “These stoppages are costing us, Stan. Just think what it’s doing to families with children.”
    â€œAye. It’s hard. But if we lose this one, Mabel, we’ll lose everything.”
    Mabel Preston knew better than to argue. She’d said her piece. Now it was down to her to manage the household finances as best she could. She just wished she had some of the magic on show in the parable of the five loaves and two fish. Especially as she was buying a little extra each week to share with the young family next door who were being hit hard by the frequent disruption in earnings. When all was said and done, they had to stick together. She knew that. Solidarity was their only strength.
    * * *
    The institute was full, as it tended to be before a vote. Peter Farris was in the chair with Derek Robinson on his left. The shopsteward had laid out the position. A minimum level of overtime had been negotiated three years earlier when production was in high gear and now that sales had stalled, management wanted to break the agreement.
    â€˜If agreements can be entered into when convenient and dropped when not, they are not agreements,’ the steward had declared to the general satisfaction of everyone in the room. ‘This is our factory,’ he claimed, ‘and we must be consulted.’
    The room, with windows bolted shut against the outside cold, possessed the moist warmth of a womb. Secure, they felt comforted by each other, packed inside. Like the prisoners of Plato’s cave, their assertions seemed real, even though they were merely shadows of reality projected through the lens of Marxist-Leninist theory poorly understood.
    â€œDelegates,” Peter Farris announced from the chair after the minutes of the previous meeting had been read. “I have asked Jack Pugh from our sister plant in Cowley to say a few words. As you know, Cowley has been in the vanguard of our struggle and Jack one of its leading lights. Jack.”
    A wiry, dark-haired man in his mid-thirties, with a clipped goatee beard and piercing green eyes, rose from one of the plastic chairs in