Vignette: Guilty Clem
- cepmurphywrites
- Mar 28
- 6 min read
By Paul Hynes.
On the Sea Lion Press Forums, we run a monthly Vignette Challenge. Contributors are invited to write short stories on a specific theme (changed monthly).
The theme for the 76th contest was The Last Labour Government.
*****
The walls were a queasy mix of white and green which might have resembled vomit had the room not stank of disinfectant. The low drone of the cheap electric lighting only added to the toxic atmosphere.
Clem had been in far worse places, but after over a year’s house arrest at Chequers it was a jarring transition. The man from Special Branch who lazily adorned the wall next to the cell door seemed far more relaxed with the surroundings, though the Action newspaper his eyes were skimming felt like a prop to avoid who he was guarding. Clem noticed his captor’s eyes scanning the Fascist drivel before they stole a glance at the man whose government had briefly managed to ban it.
The editorial line was unforgiving, featuring his own face and other former members of his government underneath the headline ‘CRUSH THE SABOTEURS’. The paper extolled a venom which he couldn’t see in the young man’s stare which once again failed to meet him. Clem allowed himself a smirk. The big lout wouldn’t have lasted a day at Gallipoli.
A rap on the door caused his guard to shudder and it swung open before he could recompose himself.
“Right, out you go! We need to speak with our client. This is still England, you know!”
The solicitors weren’t much older than the guard though they commanded much more authority despite their cheap suits and cardboard belts. They smelled of gin and smoke, a warm reprieve from the stench of disinfectant, and as the door slammed shut on his captors, Clem felt a fleeting sense of freedom despite knowing all too well the news these two might deliver promised to be anything but good.
“Apologies for the delay, Prime Minister, it took us a while to find out where you were being held. The CPS hasn’t been quite as obliging as it used to be these past years. My name is Bill Sedley and this is my associate Sigmund Siefert, both of Seifert and Sedley. It’s good to see you at last.”
Sedley and Siefert were vaguely out of breath and slunk down on the chairs in front of the table. It appeared they had been running around all day.
“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, gentlemen, but I haven’t been Prime Minister in over a year,” Clem replied neutrally.
“Well, we’ll see about getting you back to where you belong,” Siefert replied with a light accent, a smile on his lips.
‘Belonging’ wasn’t a word Clem had been used to in his political life. Some might say it had been a meteoric rise: a junior minister on his first term in parliament in 1924, leader of the opposition only a few years later, and then Prime Minister after that.
It was a record overshadowed by the accidental nature of it all. The first Labour government had been ushered in without a majority or even a plurality in the Commons, treated like interlopers by civil servants who had known nothing but Liberal and Tory regimes. Then there had been the collapse of the Labour Party, the defection of its leadership, and Clem being one of the few MPs with ministerial experience to survive the resultant Tory landslide.
He had been treated as an interim leader, a safe pair of hands whilst the party recovered and a real leader arose. However, he had still been in power in 1938 when Chamberlain had gambled on his Munich election only for the public mood to sour on the Faustian deal and for the Tories to experience their own defections over Appeasement.
To the shock of all his opponents, outside of Labour and within, Clem had found himself going to the palace, whilst in Germany the streets were still littered with the broken glass from the brutal Nazi pogrom which had occurred just before polling day. He had found the civil servants no less accommodating as Prime Minister and without a majority there was little hope for much of a legislative agenda even if the winds of war had forced attention away not long after Christmas.
“What your usurpers have planned, Prime Minister, is a special inquiry. Their intention is to pin everything that went wrong during the war on your government, and the ‘international interests’ which you were supposedly allowing to manipulate it. They’re looking for a treason conviction. There’s even talk about holding it in Westminster Hall.”
The location conjured a sterner, medieval interpretation of justice in Clem’s mind. He was sure the location hadn’t escaped the mind of those intending to try him. A place for Cavaliers and Jacobites to be judged. Romantic rogues, perhaps, but treacherous ones.
Accidental Prime Minister or not, Clem had always gone out of his way to ensure no-one could doubt his patriotism. It was why he had always made sure to go by his rank in the Great War whilst up for election. Though he had opposed rearmament in the early thirties, he had not expected the country to be as badly prepared for the war it was thrust into in September. Nor had he been helped by the unwillingness of the Foreign Office to assist in the last desperate attempts at collective security. Worst of all, no-one had seen the collapse of France coming, or the rout of the BEF with it.
Even in those disastrous days of early June, Clem had been keen to persevere; he knew the British Empire could summon tremendous resources to carry on the fight and was hopeful the British people could be united by a new national government. Instead he had been told by the opposition that there was little appetite for him to carry on or for continuing the war.
“I had hoped my successors would have been more gracious,” Clem lamented dryly.
“I’m sure their bourgeois notions of sportsmanship are offended, Prime Minister, but quite frankly they’re in the shit and they want to pour it on someone else. You’re a convenient scapegoat to try and sell to the British public, and of course to their new Nazi chums.”
“It is the same thing that happened in Germany and then in France,” Siefert added. “The existing establishment lay the groundwork then the Fascists take over. Petain is apparently planning a similar trial just now. But here, we intend to make sure the British public knows exactly who the blame for the war lies, both at Westminster and their puppet masters in Berlin.”
Clem noted Siefert’s accent sounded German. It wasn’t the only puzzling thing about the two. They were slightly amateurish and clearly not monied, but they were young, and they were sharp, their whole careers ahead of them.
“Gentleman, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but if I’m going to be exposed to a show trial why would you wish to be associated with me? I doubt volunteering to defend a man supposedly responsible for all the nation’s woes means a promising future for either of you.”
“You might be right,” Sedley acknowledged with a bashful smile, “but given that we’re both Communists I suspect we would have pissed off the right people sooner or later.”
Clem frowned.
“You know I’m not a Marxist.”
“You aren’t exactly an idol to us anyway,” Siefert replied, “but we are in this together, like it or not.”
“If the prosecution intends to paint me as colluding with Communists, which no doubt they will, surely it would be beneficial to me to not be sat next to them?”
“I won’t lie, Prime Minister, the current regime would probably see that as a gift initially. The thing about a show trial is that it allows for a certain amount of clairvoyance. Many are refusing to accept the peace has made them safer when their government is rewarding those who started the war. Increasingly the way you were removed is being viewed as the coup it was. They're going to try and prove otherwise. From that, we can guess they’re going to try and stitch you up with someone more established and respectable, perhaps a KC. Someone who will be assured they will keep their reputation and legitimise the new regime by having you limply admit you were merely horrendously incompetent, a Bolshevik stooge rather than the real thing. As much as Mosley and the like will want you strung up, you’ll be allowed to disappear into ignominy as long as you allow Hoare and the like a veneer of respectability by playing along.”
“But we think you have more to say than that,” Siefert added. “They want to have a show trial, we plan to turn it on them. Use it as your stage to reveal the real criminals, those responsible who are now trying to blame you. They expect you to arrive meek and desperate to avoid charges of treason? Let us see how they react when you turn it on them. Let us expose them together. ”
Clem looked around him; the queasy cell, the infamy being piled upon him by his former colleagues, the disgrace of it all. It appeared all those who had previously underestimated him had been vindicated and yet, as the young solicitors had made clear, there was the opportunity to exploit their hubris one last time.
“Well, gentlemen, I suppose we would begin with the mess I inherited—”
Once again, the non-starter sprung to action.
Paul Hynes is the author of the Decisive Darkness series and the Red Fuhrer series.
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