A Very British Coup [Hodder and

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dence of NATO, the Royal Family and the Sun, who are able to return to business as usual.

Now comrade Mullin's starting point was to argue against those in the capitalist press and the media that such things could not happen. Naturally the reviewers in such places have risen to the bait.

No, they have argued, civil servants and secret police would not act like this. They would accept the policies of any democratically elected government, however left wing Mullin very effectively demolishes this argument. He does this in particular by inventing very little. The activities of the press, MI5 and so further are so clearly based on things that have happened already that he scarcely needs to invent anything at all.

However, Mullin's concern is to show that it is socialists and left wingers who are the greatest adherents to democratic institutions and ideas. He destroys the arguments of the right, but he does not really deal with those from Will democratic values and socialist ideas be implemented through the parliamentary and judicial system as presently constituted? The novel does not address itself to this question, but it poses it just the same.

The greatest problem of suspending disbelief lies, in a way, in the policies of the left government. Let us argue that it ought to be possible for left wing leaders to take over the Labour Party in 1987. After all we were not so far from this in 1981.

Will such leaders then hold the line? Will they carry out without flinching the sort of policies (not especially radical, in all conscience) outlined here? Perhaps. But I have doubts.

Even when we have suspended disbelief as far as this, will the next step be the mobilisation of strike action against a socialist government? (Again, there is an assumption that such a government could introduce an incomes policy of sorts. But let that pass.)

There can be doubt that a Chapple-like figure might