(Please note: this is fiction! Do not write to me and tell me it’s not true. I know.)
A conservative government gains power in the general election on the 7th of June 2001, and a nationalist sentiment rises among the population as immigration becomes a more and more contentious issue; bandwagon-boy Hague exploits this and gradually introduces more and more severe anti-immigrant measures, culminating in closing the country to all immigrants, to the unheeded condemnation of the international community.
Farming in the UK is buffeted by a number of post-foot-and-mouth scandals, including a smaller-scale resurgence in Wiltshire, and over 15,000 farms in total close as a result of FMD and it's after-effects, with massive job losses.
The USA suffers a massive terrorist attack by Arabic dissidents on the 11th of September, 2001, when airliners are hijacked and used to ram and demolish the world trade centre in New York and seriously damage the Pentagon in Washington. The British response is mutedly sympathetic, and criticised in some circles for not being more supportive. Although the effect on the markets is not huge at first, confidence is undermined; British money markets are still adjusting to their own problems, caused by the new government and policy shift and the effect on foreign relations this has caused. Their reaction is to fiercely protect themselves. This reaction spreads, and the cumulative effect is that the US economy starts to totally collapse in April 2002. With the increasing first-world standard of living, the reasons to buy more stuff are growing fewer and fewer, and as the speed of boredom eclipses the inventiveness of the corporate world, the 'consumer goods' bubble finally bursts.
In addition, the burden of increasingly huge amounts of US government money spent on attempting to identify and wreak vengeance upon the perpetrators of the attack cause crucial budgetary deficit. Despite their protective measures, the UK suffers too, adding to the angst here with further job losses, bankruptcies and closures.
Germany and France also suffer collapses, and as a result, they look to their own troubles and withdraw a little from the EU. Benelux and Scandinavian left-wing politicians step in to fill the gaps in the EU with great success, helping France and Germany to their feet again, taking the opportunity to reform a great deal of EU law, removing the pointless bureaucratic laws on straight bananas and the like, integrating a number of more marginal EU states more usefully into Europe and reminding the people what the EU is actually for in the best possible way. UK Governmental obstinacy, stemming largely from the re-emergence of Little-Englandism, hinders EU attempts to help the UK. Seeking to redress the damage their financiers have caused, British military support is heavily pledged first to assisting the US in Afghanistan, then to helping the US leave Afghanistan.
As part of an immigration clampdown, the UKBA is reinforced. It begins a recruiting drive in autumn of 2002, while also mounting several high-profile and large scale raids, and introducing a severe fast-track deportation procedure. As a result, the raids in the Midlands net several hundred illegal immigrants, all of whom are deported inside 72 hours of their arrest.
Identifying the state of the mortgage and housing markets as a major cause of the financial crash, EU lawmakers propose and pass the Affordable Housing Directive, a controversial measure to limit house prices based on GDP per capita per area; while this is good for most EU states, especially the less affluent members, the effect in the UK is projected to be dramatic, resulting in much more affordable housing but also widespread negative equity. The law is projected to come into force on 15 March 2003.
In February 2003, the UK officially leaves the EU; Hague declares that Europe is 'a poisonous chalice, full of false promises and empty words' and that the Affordable Housing Directive 'will be the utter ruin of the country'. There is a massive public outcry. The Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and Northern Ireland Assembly declare that pulling out of the EU was illegal, but inside the year, all are dissolved. Several polls show something between 28% AND 73% of UK citizens want to be in Europe. New rounds of large-scale raids by the swollen UKBA result in thousands of citizens of EU member states, who were previously exempt, being deported. A couple of Irish terrorist groups reactivate and begin to call for a return to Europe, backed by public gun assassinations of two well-known Conservative MPs.
The impact on business is swift. With a sudden loss of the advantages trade agreements and open borders had conferred and Trade with Europe suffers badly, and many exporting businesses are ruined, especially those that rely on mass labour are also hit hard by the lack of cheaper foreign labour; because of minimum wage rules, Britons cannot fill the jobs. Hardline rightwing groups supporting immigration cuts are jubilant, but soon business interests realise the significance of immigrant labour.
Sympathy with the cause begins to grow. New Labour, now massively shrunken after their 2001 defeat, back the government position, but the growing left-wing, old Labour-style Society Party oppose it, calling for a return to Europe. Their membership grows, and their profile grows despite not having any seats in Parliament other than the ones occupied by a few old-Labour deserters. Europe grows in financial strength, many industries close, many jobs are lost. Prisons grow fuller; no prison exists that is not officially overcrowded, and there is a media-hyped scandal when it is revealed that the police are being unofficially instructed not to arrest drug users of any stripe in order to save prison space. Drug use statistics are up as more depressed people seek escape, and burglary figures are also up. Violent crime, especially seemingly random assaults and gun crime, goes up at a great rate, and in late 2002 all major urban police forces are issued handguns for the first time. In the 2003 review, unemployment is at over 13 million. Only 32% of the number of farmers that worked the land prior to the 2001 FMD outbreak still do so. Huge expanses of land lie fallow and become overgrown. Police kill over 100 people within 3 months of the issuing of handguns; gun crime figures increase slightly.
June 2003 sees the repealing of the minimum wage rules. Unemployment drops hugely but people cannot live on these wages; by late August, the official number of deaths resulting from starvation and exposure in people and families who are nonetheless working tops 1000, while deaths and maladies resulting from health and safety issues rise sharply, due to the lack of skilled tradespeople (plumbers, electricians etc.) who have returned to Europe.
Pressure to reinstate these laws is ignored. Overseas charities who try to provide for the starving are continually harassed with red tape.
In September of 2003, a combined sabotage and bomb attack freezes tower bridge in a raised position. There are no casualties. The action is denied by Irish Republicans and Unionists, but claimed by a group called Europa, a pro-European re-entry group, who issue a statement saying that 'this is the price of burning bridges'; in effect, that until procedures are begun to re-enter Europe, attacks will continue and escalate in severity. They state that they do not wish to cause suffering, but have no alternative. The response to this is much more mixed than to most terrorist actions. A lot of people consider it ideologically sound, although many are against terrorism, but the response is of course completely negative from government. Two more swing bridges are sabotaged and 3 fixed bridges are demolished. Numerous tax offices are robbed by Europa. Posters begin to appear all across the country, suggesting that people not pay their taxes if they are not satisfied with their government, explaining that the prisons are too full to make arrests a viable threat; pundits discuss this on the TV, and the increasingly desperate government spin cannot convince many. On tax day, only a little over three fifths of the tax due is actually paid in. Many communities in rural areas, especially in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, refuse to pay en mass.
After a long, problematical few days, during which riots and violent demos in many cities occur, Hague orders Welsh riot police into the village of Beddgelert in Gwynedd on the 24th of February, 2004, to arrest everyone as an object lesson in the penalties of non-payment. A number of villagers produce weapons; five policemen are shot dead, seven seized as hostages, and four villagers are killed by police, two of them unarmed and to all appearances innocent, and another of internal injuries sustained while in custody. Ten remaining armed villagers hole up in 2 houses with their spouses and children, with them ostensibly as hostages alongside the police hostages, although it is plain that they are perfectly willing. There is an Armed Response Team sent in at 3 AM the next morning. The villagers kill five of of the 12 police sent in and wound two more, one fatally, while the police kill seven of the villagers and drag some of the hostages out. At 4 PM, one hundred and eight British Army troops in ten-tonne trucks, APCs and scout tanks surround the three remaining villagers and their hostages, ordering unconditional surrender inside five minutes. No-one surrenders. The troops open fire on the house with light artillery. The villagers fire back, killing a soldier and wounding four others before they are killed. The three villagers, their four police hostages, two women and two children are all slain by the Army in this assault.
In many other non-paying villages and areas, police, tax officials and army squads move in together. Three other places attempt armed resistance, but the army are ready and none succeed as in Beddgelert, although 5 inland revenue officials, 4 policemen, 13 troopers and 34 villagers are shot (with varying degrees of fatality) in the process. All across the country, many people have spot fines imposed by police. By the time public order is restored, practically everyone knows someone who tried to avoid taxes.
From this time some of the press portray the dead of Beddgelert and those arrested elsewhere as martyrs and some portray them as traitors. Opinion becomes more and more polarised pro- and anti-Europe. Perhaps surprisingly, this polarization is largely unaffected by the news that the whole armed insurrection was organized, supplied and co-ordinated by Europa. Wide-focus opinion polls published a week or so later show that 41% of people in the UK do not disapprove of Europa, and 34% would profess to actively supporting them. Support is strongest in remote areas, including most of Wales and Scotland, Northern Ireland and the rural north of England.
Europa becomes a rallying point for many people who are against the daily increasing hard-line approach the government is taking to the current global problems. This is increased by the announcement from the Society Party that Europa's aims have their full backing, although their methods are 'not officially condoned'. After a few weeks in which little happens, on the 25th of April a large stolen fishing boat is rammed into the Skye Bridge, almost toppling it. Inspections show that the bridge is not far from collapse. PM Hague declares that this is the final straw, and orders arrests. With the backing of the vast majority of parliament, over 4000 people are arrested in the small hours of the 27th. Every police officer in the country is involved in these raids in some way. The detainees include some of the few dissenting MPs, public left-wingers, high-up charity workers, public figures who are supporters of European reintegration, some policemen, plus great numbers of ordinary people. Their houses are searched, their belongings seized, but very little of an illegal nature is found; some drugs, a dozen or so guns, the odd minor offence. The Government announces that these people are being held on suspicion of terrorist offences, although most arrested celebrities are released inside the day.
After three days with no sign that anyone else will be released, Europa makes an angry public announcement, stating that the arrests have netted only one major and seventeen minor Europa agents, plus a handful of useful contacts. It then declares that many of these agents have signed a waiver to the effect that they will allow themselves to be revealed to the authorities if such an action is deemed to assist the common good. They then proceed to name all of them. Following this is the warning that 'extremely severe action' will be taken in two days time if all the people not named, i.e. the innocent, are not released. The government response is that they are perfectly within their rights to hold terrorism suspects for up to ninety-nine days without charge according to the 2003 Criminal Justice Bill Amendment Act, a law widely opposed and demonstrated against at its inception, and are under no obligation to either release the people currently in custody or to otherwise comply in any way to the demands of terrorists; in short, they do nothing.
At 5.31 AM, on the 1st of May, 2004, an e-mail sent by Europa at midnight to the Prime Minister arrives, declaring war on the Government. The email stipulates that a policeman must exit the front door of 10 Downing Street carrying a black plastic rubbish bag in one hand and a white one in the other, walk to Westminster Bridge and throw them in the river, by way of confirmation of receipt of the email, before 6 AM. As per instructions, this occurs at 5.35 AM. At 5.38 AM, four ex-Soviet remotely triggered anti-ship limpet mines, attached by Europa divers to the hulls of HMS Glamorgan and HMS Dundee, at anchor in the Portsmouth naval dockyard, explode, crippling and sinking both ships at anchor. 13 sailors die. At 6.03 AM, a fourteen-man Europa squad storms the Greater Manchester Police Headquarters, where nine of the captured Europa agents are being held, and successfully rescue them via a helicopter and motor boat. At 6.10 AM, the major Europa agent named is rescued from Paddington Green police station in similar fashion by a 6-man team who arrive by lorry and escape by motorbike. At 6.14 two other agents' rescues are attempted, but the police station in Stevenage is unexpectedly well staffed and successfully resists the 4-man team's attack. At 6.32 AM, a single man armed with silenced weapons and dressed in the uniform of a British Army sergeant infiltrates and attacks the army base in the city of Chichester, killing 17 people, including the base commandant and nine high-ranking officers, and forwarding numerous highly sensitive documents to unknown recipients via the internet, before being shot dead. Three minutes later, four more bases are similarly attacked, with seven other military sites attacked in the same way in the next hour. At 7.34 AM, the headquarters of the Inland Revenue in Washington, Teesside are evacuated as a fire is started by Europa agents, destroying a great deal of taxation data. By 8 AM, police stations, military bases and official buildings across the country have been attacked in a variety of ways and many are under siege from mobs.
By 10 AM, the Europa actions have ceased, the mobs dispersed, the population are frightened, the media climaxing, the military trigger-happy and the authorities in disarray. Europa release a statement to the media that civilians need not fear but should stay out of the way, adding that any loss of life was deeply regrettable, but warnings had been given, and that anyone wishing to join Europa's cause, which they describe as 'to restore democracy, human rights, freedom, global friendship and happiness to Britain' will be welcome. This is countered by a string of government officials, MPs, lords and establishment academics decrying them as terrorists, enemies of peace, war criminals, monsters, barbarians, libertines, fascists, socialists, communists and numerous other things. Media analysis thrashes around ecstatically on every broadcast medium. The USA, China, Japan and several South American states express solidarity with Britain and the British government. Canada and the EU Member States are somewhat more reserved in their response; the general line is that they regret things got this far, of course, but it was not entirely unexpected or undeserved.
By the next day, the news is well and truly out, and everywhere in the world is aware of what's been happening. The people of Russia, many of whom still believe in communism, are seeing echoes of Red October in the British uprising and are very enthusiastic, to the fascinated horror of news crews. Australia and, naturally, the US, offer to send troops, but Hague declines. Martial law is publicly declared at noon, and all major cities are flooded with troops and placed under curfew. In the following week, three more ships are mined at anchor. Villages are visited by Land Rovers full of troops who are never seen again. Armed guerilla forces attack military bases which are all but emptied of troops by curfew enforcement and make off with large amounts of armaments and equipment. Army squads meet groups of several thousand demonstrators in the cities and fire live rounds into non-compliant crowds, killing over three hundred and fifty unarmed civilians. Over a hundred other unarmed people are gunned down by soldiers, around fifty at the hands of Europa. Tanks are stationed outside the houses of parliament and Buck House. The entire country is turned upside-down and shaken.
Inside a month, most of rural Wales, Scotland and the north of England is hostile to government forces, an attitude ranging from sullen non co-operation to armed mass ambushes. Europa agents are despatched to various key points to organise and co-ordinate pockets of resistance, take charge of stolen military supplies and keep order.
On the 6th of June, the anniversary of D-day, all at once, a whole new military force begins to form in Britain. In western and northern Scotland, the streets are awash overnight with people wearing the twelve-starred European flag on their clothes and carrying old, mismatched, battered but entirely serviceable military and paramilitary weaponry. They are regarded with suspicion for the first days, but most of these groups are composed of local men and women that people are familiar with, some of them cops, which makes the populace a bit less uneasy, and they speak of a restoration of fairness and justice and law. Within a week these ragged militias prove themselves in deeds as well as words by actually restoring some semblance of the rule of law, preventing lootings and keeping order with a minimum of fuss. But after nine days, the British Army tries tentatively to move in, sending first infantry and, when that fails, light armour, and finally tanks. With some losses across the board, although the order is to retreat if engaged, the army is kept out of these areas by these fighters who are now called "the Europa militia" by many, aided by both old and new military equipment, much of it of European origin. A major factor is the use of remotely-triggered explosives by Europa, using mobile phones to trigger various kinds of munitions from antipersonnel blasts to antitank mines. The army pulls back, and the Europa militia follow, until most of Scotland above Fort William is effectively out of the government's control. A military build-up begins in southern Scotland and a punishing counteroffensive is planned.
But the day before the attack, on the 23rd, exactly the same kind of Europa militia force appears overnight in northern Wales and drives out the government and the Army. The Army is slightly less surprised and its response is less ragged, but the increased losses that the Welsh suffer only serve to heighten their ire and awaken old nationalist sentiment, and the Army is once again pushed back.
Europa's militia is surprised, however, when the Army's attack the next day occurs despite the opening of a second front in Wales. The Army advance north and any resistance is met with indiscriminate artillery bombardment and airstrikes. Hundreds of Scots are killed. The army move in further. By the 26th, all resistance to the advance is gone; people stash their weaponry and merge back into their communities. The army occupy all of northern Scotland by the 30th of June.
On the night of the 2nd of July, every army post in Scotland is attacked simultaneously. Over nine thousand die that night, with the death toll roughly 55% on the Army side, 40% on Europa’s, and the rest civilians. This approximately translates to about 5000 British Army deaths, 3500 Europa deaths. That discounts the 3500 living casualties both sides suffered. Anyone involved on either side has a story of confusion and bloody terror. Regardless of whether they are simply a front line soldier or a general, they can relate to some measure how they felt as if all the pent up hatred in the country was tapped, that it was more than just men and women fighting for a cause squinting down the sights, gripping the knife or lighting the molotov, how the whole country got personal. Soldiers who had not seen action before The Bloody Second knew an old yet unfamiliar fear. They experienced something different from the lingering sense of faint doom that airstrikes or insurgent suicide bombs or wars of attrition engender; the British Army brigades occupying Scotland were the first soldiers of a first-world power in two generations to experience what it is like to be on the receiving end of a bayonet charge.
Europa soldiers, armed mostly with AK variants of eastern European manufacture, commercial night vision equipment and the most stealth possible, crawl as close as they can to British positions and fix bayonets. At the pre-arranged time, they rise and charge, shouting furiously and firing into the mass of the British soldiers. This frequently catches them totally by surprise and allows the Europa forces to overrun and kill them in seconds, often hand to hand or on their bayonets. Some British Army units manage to return fire before the line closes, in which case the charge usually falters and fails. Nonetheless this tactic will later pass into legend, even though the many people who try to replicate it in the following conflict usually end up dead.
The army withdraws in a ramshackle fashion, and Europa do not press an advance, instead fortifying their positions. The next two days are given over to artillery and air bombardment of Scots positions by the Army, but from the 5th of July onwards, anti-aircraft weapons begin to be used by Europa. Handheld soviet SA-7 launchers are the first to be seen, but only a week or two afterwards fixed emplacements are observed by RAF crews. Not long after this, where previously Nokia bombs and sticky tape had been the only Europa anti-tank weapon, handheld anti-tank launchers begin to be seen. Military equipment of increasing sophistication is flooding into Scotland, and eyes turn towards Europe.
The EU position, of course, is denial. The press seek out various bits of ever more incriminating evidence to link the EU and Europa, finding paper trails and supply routes, but the public seem fairly unconcerned by this, worrying more about where their next meal is coming from and whether they'll wake up dead tomorrow. The Army divert some of its heavier firepower towards subduing Wales. Naval vessels and are sabotaged, overrun, sunk and in two cases even stolen by Europa, as anti-shipping tactics are gradually tested. Most of the Scottish military harbours, with the exception of Rossyth, are variously put beyond the use of the government during July of 2004. Airports are not generally affected, but aircraft are frequently targeted.
Another development in late July is the revelation of certain aspects of Europa financing, which is for the first time linked to EU government sources, albeit tenuously, in the press.
Autumn sees the appearance of Europa armour. On the Scottish front, ex-Soviet and old or irregular European tanks, APCs and artillery begin to mass and push south. Loyalist forces resist, but suffering harassment from sabotage, withdraw to the east coast. As Europa bottle the Loyalists up between Edinburgh and Newcastle, they take the West and move into Yorkshire. It seems plain that they intend to link up with welsh forces, and Loyalist forces move into the West Midlands in force.
The French and German coast is inundated with English refugees in anything that floats, while Spain and Portugal see an influx of Britons staying on in their holiday homes. Many are shipped back, but many more are not. Calais, Amsterdam and Haarlem become centres of the British ‘expatugee’ cultural world.
Things that have not happened:
Iraq II (Saddam is still in charge)
Iain Duncan-Smith, Michael Howard, David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Theresa May
7/7 & 21/7
Much of Afghanistan
