The First Casualty by Ben Elton Page B

which the vats of food stood, McAlistair held out his enormous hand.
    ‘May Ah trouble you for the ladle, Warder.’
    ‘You want to give comfort to a coward and a traitor?’
    ‘Currently Ah see only a fellow soul in distress, Warder.’
    With much ill grace the warder handed the ladle to McAlistair, who, taking up a tin bowl, served Kingsley with stew and placed a hunk of bread on top of it.
    ‘There ye go now, wee policeman. Here’s your supper. ‘Thank you.’
    McAlistair turned to go and Kingsley spoke after him. ‘May I join you at your table, sir?’
    McAlistair stopped and turned, staring at Kingsley for a moment.
    ‘No y’fuckin’ can’t, ye disgusting little English flatfoot.’
    His words hit Kingsley harder than the warder’s fist had done. ‘Ah’ll see y’gets your food just now because it’s yer right and unlike you , Inspector, Ahm a man who’s powerful bothered about a fellah’s rights.’
    ‘Please, I — ’
    ‘But do Ah look like the sort o’ man who would break his bread with a fellah who thinks himself too good t’fight alongside the coupla’ million British working men currently wearing the King’s colours?’
    The hall was still silent. All eyes remained upon Kingsley, witness to his humiliation.
    ‘Ye wore a uniform o’ His Majesty y’sel’ did ye no, Mr Kingsley? Police blue so it was. Ye wore it at y’trial. Ah saw it in the Illustrated London News , a warder showed me so he did. A police inspector, stood in the dock for reasons of his conscience. An’ Ah got t’thinkin’ how a man like you whose conscience never troubled him in all the years o’police brutality agin the common man had suddenly found one now? All the years o’ strikebreaking and spying, the mounted thugs on their big horses sent agin starving miners. How in all those years of lockouts when coppers in that same blue uniform o’yours stood at factory gates to stop union men from going to their work, all those years o’ great platoons o’men in blue protecting scabs brought in from miles away by absent bosses to break the local union. How in all those years, Mr Kingsley, o’ belonging t’ an organization whose principal reason for existence is not to uphold justice but to protect the properties of the rich who leech upon the labour of the common man who has no property to protect. How is it that your conscience never troubled ye then? The ‘logic’ o’ killing soldiers offends you, it seems, but the logic o’ killing working men, miners, dockers, weavers, printers and the like, that appeals to ye no doubt.’
    McAlistair spoke in a loud, commanding manner, for he was used to addressing crowds at dockside wharves, factory gates and pitheads. He knew how to hold an audience and so, although the ranks of prisoners were again eating their stew, they remained silent and listened.
    ‘I have never killed a working man,’ Kingsley replied, ‘save those I have caused to be hung. And I do not believe that the police have killed above a handful.’
    ‘Oh, Ah think you’ll find it’s more than that, Inspector. And that’s not including them as die in misery and need for want o’ the rights that are denied them. So no, I shan’t sit with ye, sir. I wouldn’t piss in your mouth if your tongue was on fire. Good day.’
    The big red-headed man turned on his heel and went back to his table, where his companions quietly applauded.
    Kingsley took his stew and sat in a vacant space, causing those nearby instantly to gather up their bowls and move away. Alone with his thoughts, he knew that the big trades unionist had had a point: Kingsley had lived all his life in a society in which there were any number of logical contradictions. Britain’s power over the populations of its Empire. Capital’s power over labour. Men’s power over women. Kingsley had spent his life sworn to protect so much that was unjust, immoral, illogical, why was this war so different? Once more Kingsley could only give the answer of