Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #349313 in Books
• Published on: 2001-05-01
• Original language: English
• 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

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.

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...

Mildly entertaining political novel from a Bennite perspective

As a political novel this is a reasonable entertaining story of intrigue and plots in which the security services, centre/right elements in the trade union movement, and the moderate wing of the Labour party, join forces to try to bring down a left wing Labour Prime Minister.

As a historical document, "A Very British Coup" is an insight into the mindset of the hard left of the Labour party in the 1980s when it was written.

The author, Chris Mullin, subsequently became (and currently still is) Labour MP for Sunderland South. Irony of ironies, he was even a minister under Tony Blair, and has recently published his memoirs, in which he describes one of the three departments in which he held office as "the Department for Folding Deckchairs." Incidentally, if the extracts from those memoirs which have appeared on the Daily Mail website are any guide, they are side-splittingly funny.

But at the time "A very British Coup" was first published Mullin was a Labour activist, and a ringleader of the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy, who had recently written "How to select or re-select your MP." This was a guide on how to de-select (e.g. sack) Labour MPs who dared to take a position to the right of Tony Benn, and replace them with hardliners.

The hero of this book is the newly elected PM, Harry Perkins, who apart from being a a genuine working class figure instead of a member of a dynasty of Labour politicians, appears to be modelled on Tony Benn. This applies both to his policy positions and his CV: for example, Perkins and Benn had both been Secretary of State for Energy, in the book and in recent history respectively.

Contrary to what another review has written, it is most unlikely that Perkins was based on Harold Wilson: Perkins is the hero of the book, and if you look at "How to Select or De-select your MP" you will find it pretty clear that in the 1980's Chris Mullin was not a hero-worshipper of the Wilson or Callaghan governments.

The primary enemies who plot to bring Perkins down in the novel are the British and American security services, the "moderate" leadership of the engineers union, and Perkins' own Chancellor, Wainwright, who is described in the book as "the only moderate in the cabinet" - and who is also on the payroll of the security services.

It is civil service/security service characters, and internal Labour movement opponents, not the Tories, who are seen as the main enemy of the left-wing government in the book. Most of the Conservatives in "A very British Coup" are presented as cartoonishly evil but ineffective comic relief figures. The one exception being a nice girl who gets sacked as a research assistant in the Shadow Cabinet office after the intelligence services bug her phone and conclude (correctly) that she has provided useful information to one of the Prime Minister's staff.

Note that the story in this original book is not identical to the plot of the TV series based on it: as seems almost obligatory for TV adaptations of political novels, they changed the ending.

The Observer described this book at the time as "a delicious fantasy to enjoy" and it can be read on that level, but it was also a warning from a member of the "Campaign for Labour party democracy" of what he was afraid the enemies of the left inside and outside the Labour party would try to do to them if they ever won an election.