The old man is wary of officials - and that is official! Not just income tax officials, Ministry of Labour officials/national insurance officials/council office officials/passport officials/housing department officials/border control officials/rent collection officials/electoral registration officials/medical officials, but - and most of all - the official officials who are members of Her Majesty's Constabulary.
The old man's ancestors include the Teagues of Truro. Perhaps these Cornish horse-traders had nothing to do with the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685. But its aftermath certainly made an impact on the clan's mind-set. After the rising had been ruthlessly crushed Judge Jefferies orderd the execution of two hundred rebels and had a further two hundred transported into slavery in the Carribean. Children would shudder with fear if they were told that that "Judge Jefferies" was keeping an eye on them. When some of the Teagues moved to the coal mines and iron works of
South Wales the official officials would be drafted in by the State to ensure that the property of the employing class was safeguarded during strikes and lock-outs.
In 1956 the old man arrived at Bristol Temple Meads railway station in the early hours of the morning to find he had missed the connecting train to Twiverton. After setting out on the ten mile walk home the heavens opened up and torrents of rain poured down. As he paused for breath and rested his water-logged furnace bricklayer's travel bag on the pavement he saw that an official official's car was tracking his every move. His request to be given a few minutes of temporary shelter was hilariously dismissed.
The only official official who the old man holds in high regards is bike-pedalling Copper Jones. His job is to put the coercive arm of the state into our prefab estate. Although some Twivertonians belive that even Copper Jones has his "dark side"the old man concedes that he carries out his duties on our esate with considerable panache.
Dai 'Tolstoy' Lectic from prefab number one once engaged the old man in a long kitchen debate on the role of the official officials. Theey concluded that the police had a complex dual function of both safeguarding the sectional interests of the powerful and protecting the general good as well. Dai had a vinegar-stained copy of Edward Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' in his carrier bag (the Romans really loved vinegar!) This book posed one of the trickiest of questions regarding institutions which specialise in applying armed force: Who guards the guards? How do the unarmed control those they have armed?
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Monmouth Rebellion Postscript: In 1688 a group of upper class plotters met in a grand house in Chesterfield. They proceeded to do what the Duke of Monmouth had failed to do just three years before - make a 'Glorious Revolution' and overthrow the Stuart Monarchy. But regime change is a tricky business. A review of Bath. A Social History 1680-1850 or A Valley of Pleasure, Yet A Sink of Iniquity (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981) by R.S.Neale (published in the TLS) makes the following point: "What counts with regime change is not just what is done, but how it is done and who does the done."