Alasdair Gray - Ten Tales Tall and True

This book is inscribed to Tom Maschler because in 1989 he suggested I write another book of stories; to Xandra Hardie because she reminded me of his suggestion; to Morag McAlpine because she gave me the home where I wrote it.

HOUSES AND SMALL LABOUR PARTIES

This tale is informed by three sources: five weeks as a joiner’s labourer in the summer of 1953; talks with my father who, after a spell of manual labour, worked ten years as a wages and costing clerk on Scottish building sites; a paper by A J M Sykes called Navvies: Their Work and Attitudes published in Sociology , Volume 3, Number 1, by The Clarendon Press, Oxford, January 1969.

THE MARRIAGE FEAST

This tale was inspired by the Memoirs of Kingsley Amis published by Hutchinson in 1991, and especially by the account of his meeting with Dylan Thomas.

FICTIONAL EXITS

This gives two examples of people overpowered by strong organizations, one of them fantastic, one which happened. The true example is included because its mad logic harmonized with the fantastic. It should not be read as propaganda against our police for the following reasons.

1. Most of the police I meet are polite and helpful. I also know a detective who enjoys my fiction.

2. Propaganda, like pornography, is a low class of art. The Bible and the writings of Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley, Dickens, Tolstoy et cetera often denounce or promote social organizations, but readers who notice these bits usually find them dull or offensive.

3. Although High Court judges have recently released people unfairly imprisoned by our police the police are less to blame than those who have forced bad working conditions on them. Our police used to have a good reputation because they seldom arrested folk without evidence against them. It was illegal for them to break into our houses without a warrant signed by a justice of the peace; illegal to arrest without charging the arrested person with a crime; illegal to quote as evidence what they said we had said, if we denied it and no independent witness confirmed it. As a child in a Yorkshire primary school I was taught that these safeguards of British liberty were guaranteed by the Magna Carta.

In 1982 the government abolished these safeguards because Irish Republican Army bombers were getting away with murder. In effect the government told the police, “Fight the dirty bastards as dirtily as you like. Arrest people on suspicion and get the evidence afterwards. Up and at them!” So careful search for evidence was put second to quick results, and since our police now had some of the freedom enjoyed by Stalin’s police they got quick results. After IRA bombings in Guildford and Birmingham clusters of Irish were arrested, tried, convicted and jailed. The British government, press and people were sombrely glad; the police were relieved. Had they worked carefully, without using torture and perjury to back their suspicions, innocent Irish would have walked free but the guilty might not have been caught and the government would have looked impotent. Conservative governments willingly declare their impotence when confronted by unemployment and widespread wage reductions (their strongest supporters are enriched by these) but when confronted by violence they prefer injustice to looking impotent.

The lack of old police restraints allows many more than the Irish to be falsely accused and punished. It let some muddled policemen break in on a blind man, knock him down and have him fined for it. I use this event to make my story funnier, not for propaganda purposes. If you dislike such mistakes vote into power a radical party which will restore the ancient safeguards.

THE TRENDELENBURG POSITION

Although the writing of this story was helped by my dentist, Mr J Whyte of Glasgow G12, it does not reflect his political, religious and sporting preferences.

MISTER MEIKLE — AN EPILOGUE

Mr Arthur Meikle was born on April the 17th, 1910, and died on March the 30th, 1993. Sometime before his death he allowed me to use him as a character in my last tall tale, read the result, and approved. He also kindly sat for his portrait in the illustration. Thousands of former pupils know him as a real good teacher of English who worked in Whitehill Senior Secondary from 1939 to 1956, Hutcheson’s Boys’ Grammar from 1956 to 1975. He also edited Julius Caesar in the Kennet Shakespeare series, published by Edward Arnold Ltd in 1964. This very cheap little book has been reprinted more often than all the editions of my books added together. The easily read, richly informative notes have the wise, thoughtful tone of Mr Meikle’s teaching voice, making it both an excellent school-book and acting script.

I also thank Archie Hind for letting me describe him as one of Mr Meikle’s colleagues, though the two never met.

TYPOGRAPHY

The patient skills of Donald Goodbrand Saunders, Michelle Baxter and Joe Murray set up all of this book except the illustrations.

Goodbye!