Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #353208 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

Synopsis
Harry Perkins has led the Labour Party to a stunning election victory. His manifesto included public control of finance and the dismantling of the newspaper monopolies. As MI5 conspires with the press barons to bring him down, Harry finds himself caught up in a no-holds-barred battle for survival.

Customer Reviews

Democracy?
Ex-steelworker Harry Perkins becomes Labour Prime Minister against all the odds and his enemies - the City, the media, senior civil servants, opposition M.P's, as well as embittered members of his own Party - launch a Machiavellian plot to bring him down. Perkins' Foreign Secretary resigns after a highly publicised affair, the unions bring the power workers out on national strike, the Americans rebel against plans to remove airbases from British soil and finally, Perkins is put under the spotlight as an old affair is uncovered by the gutter press.

Mullins' 1982 political fantasy gets better with every reading. Without bashing the reader with left-wing politics, it manages to be entertaining, thought-provoking and staggeringly prophetic, particularly in the light of recent events in Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's Governments. ( The Foreign Secretary incident bears a startling resemblance to the case of David Blunkett ). The open contempt for democracy displayed by the Right rings true, particularly when one realises that private armies were being organised by Wilson's enemies in the mid-70's. Was Perkins modelled on Wilson? I think so. That Wilson resigned only a year or so after winning a general election causes one to wonder...

Superb Political Thriller Still Relevant in the Blair Era.
Although written in 1982 at a time when the prospect of an alliance between the Tories and SDP still seemed plausible, A Very British Coup remains one of the classic British political thrillers of the late 2oth Century. One does not have to share Mullin's leftist political perspective to agree with the central tenet of his argument that it is fundamentally undemocratic for a government to be thrown off course by oppositionist forces in society, be they in the media, secret services or military. The novel visualises the aftermath of a surprise Labour election landslide (a remote prospect in 1982) led by socialist former Sheffield steelworker Harry Perkins. Slowly but surely the reader is able to observe the government's ultimately fatal undermining by malevolent reactionary forces beyond its control. 'A Very British Coup' indeed. Mullin - now better known as the Labour MP who helped lead the campaign to free the Guildford Four - seems to be implying at times that this story has already happened - that working class hero Perkins is in fact Harold Wilson who gave way unexpectedly to a more conservative successor (Jim Callaghan) in 1976. Whatever - this is still a powerful warning against complacency on the Left. 'The forces of conservatism' as Blair puts it are always with us and at any rate any political junkies should relish this regardless of their own ideologies once they have adapted themselves to the novel's pre-Falklands War perspective.