This from the Morning Star December 24 1985 ( 32 years!)
Once upon a time in a sceptered Isle riled a Great White Queen. (GWQ) Beloved by her subjects, she ruled with a stern, but loving hand, denying anything that was not good for them.
She knew There was no alternative and convinced them right was on her side. Before her succession, her Isle had fallen into evil ways with the [people expecting something for nothing and believing the world owed them a living.
The pages of the great chronicles of the time warned that only ill would come of this attitude, and lo! it had come to pass. Told that they had “never had it so good” people fell into wayward ways fed by rulers giving into their weaknesses and pandering to the idleness and giving into their cries for “More!”. The Great White Queen aimed to change all that.
She came from a humble background being the daughter of a shop trader. In her formative years, she learned the maxim of thrift, and the “God helps them what helps themselves.” But not in her father’s establishment of course. Her road to the top was difficult but one day she found a hidden power, that of an enchantress, a sorceress.
The power was revealed when one day a man asked her for a kiss telling her it would help her ambitions. There was a kiss. There was a flash. And where the man had stood there was a frog who went through life with her, always one step behind. And with the frog came a Lily Pad in Dulwich.
With these terrible powers, she soon became an aid to those in power. Her first act was to come to the aid of children, who were growing obese, she saw, so she disposed of their enemy, free school milk. As she grew in power, she cast aside Kings who stood in her way of her desire to unburden her people from the dead hands holding them back.
When she took to the throne she told her people at the gates of the palace, in the words of Glen Miller, that she would restore harmony to the band of brothers and sisters. But she did not say that she would be the conductor, lead singer and called the tune.
She was not aware. However that even as she took the seat of power, the mountains and the Valleys of a far land, a young wizard was at work learning the tricks of the trad, tricks he hoped to use against her. In what seemed like no time at all, she increased the quality of life of her peoples times and environment.
Steel mills stopped spewing out fumes, none one had to go down the mines to work or work in the shipyards and assemble cars. People were left in peace. And the sick were not pestered by nurses and doctors who wanted to them good. Children were left to [pursue the things they held dear to their hearts as those who once tried to teach them were sent to Coventry, Nottingham or the River ACAS. In fact, the majority of people did not.
There were some malcontents who complained about then idyllic conditions and subversive bodies from TUCson who told others that it could be better. Kindly she told those that there was who came to her door complaining that “there is no alternative, TINA! – There can be no U-turns, NUTs, Soft options don’t offer real fillips SODORF”
In fact, she told them kindly, courteously, curtly, courageously, crazily and continuously: TINA- NUTS-SODORF,”
When there came a time when some people believed her enchantment was failing, she pulled off her greatest magic. A far dominion dominated by sheep was invaded by scrap metal merchants and in a trice, she mounted a great Armada and smote them from without. There was great rejoicing for her Magic and nobody seemed to notice the blood.
Then when she had to fight a battle with a duffel-coated old pretender the greatness of her victory dwelt within the peoples’ mind and they again sustained her. Her power reached limits never seen before culminating ion making things that diseased her disappear into thin air.
Before their very eyes, the peoples saw great institutions go: The GLC, Ken Livingstone, Metro counties, Oil revenues, British Telecom, British Gas, Michael Heseltine, and they wondered at it. But in the land of mountains and valleys, the wizard (you remember him) was perfecting his tricks.
He was getting on particularly well with hat-tricks. One of his best tricks was to pull out of the hat Roy Hat-tersley. “That’s the ticket” he shouted “a dream ticket.” But it was now known that the sorcerers lose it potency as age advances, And this was happening to the Great White Queen. The first signs were peculiar and centred on her physique, her eye started to drift, a finger contorted and she kept falling down over political banana skins.
Meanwhile, the wizard was faced with what he thought was a “Bad Hat Trick standing in the way of his gaining the crown. He thought “I can’t keep this Hat-ton.” And the Bad Hat was banished to sell his city, it is said, down the river (Mersey).
Despairing of her own great powers the GWQ turned to the great physicians of the day who dwelt in the great private houses she had helped sustain. They could not help. As her spells lost their potency her crown became tarnished. Even this trying to were cast down.
As the Great White Queen desperately to survive the gods turned on her. She was attacked on all sides The North, South. East and Westminster
It was seen, particularly by the young, for they know about these things, “Look, the sorceress has got no source “ they said. And sourcerly sang: “Nobody a sorceress when she’s sixty?” The people decided that enough was enough. It was best that she went all in one go; and not a bit at a time. “Go!” They cried.
The Great Queen cried, “you need me even if I’m not all there.” “TINA,” they said “NUTS,” they shouted. “SORDORF,” they told her. As for the young Wizard? His day has yet to come. Maybe.
THE END.
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