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Comrade Bilger, believe me it is. The Education Committee is meeting at six. The Chief

Education Officer, the Principal, Councillor Blighte-Smythe '
    'That militaristic shit. What's he know about education? Just because they gave him the MC in

the war he thinks he can go about trampling on the faces of the working classes.'
    'Which, considering he has a wooden leg, doesn't say much for your opinion of the proletariat,

does it?' said Wilt warming to his task. 'First you praise the working class for their

intelligence and solidarity, then you reckon they are so dumb they can't tell their own interests

from a soap advert on TV and have to be forcibly politicized, and now you tell me that a man who

lost his leg can trample all over them. The way you talk they sound like morons.'
    'I didn't say that,' said Bilger.
    'No, but that seems to be your attitude and if you want to express yourself on the subject

more lucidly you may do so to the Committee at six. I am sure they will be most interested.'
    'I'm not going before any fucking Committee. I know my rights and -'
    'This is a free country, as you keep telling me. Another splendid contradiction, and

considering the country allows you to go around getting teenage apprentices to simulate fucking

toy crocodiles I'd say a free fucking society just about sums it up. I just wish sometimes we

were living in Russia.'
    'They'd know what to do with blokes like you, Wilt,' said Bilger. 'You're just a deviationist

reformist swine.'
    'Deviationist, coming from you, is great,' shouted Wilt, 'and with their draconian laws anyone

who went about filming Russian fitters buggering crocodiles would end up smartly in the Lubianka

and wouldn't come out until they had put a bullet in the back of his mindless head. Either that

or they would lock you up in some nuthouse and you'd probably be the only inmate who wasn't

sane.'
    'Right, Wilt,' Bilger shouted back, leaping from his chair, 'that does it. You may be Head of

Department but if you think you can insult lecturers I know what I'm going to do. Lodge a

complaint with the union.' He headed for the door.
    'That's right,' yelled Wilt, 'run for your collective mummy and while you're about it tell the

secretary you called me a deviationist swine. They'll appreciate the term.'
    But Bilger was already out of the office and Wilt was left with the problem of finding some

plausible excuse to offer the Committee. Not that he would have minded getting rid of Bilger but

the idiot had a wife and three children and certainly couldn't expect help from his father,

Rear-Admiral Bilger. It was typical of that kind of intellectual radical buffoon that he came

from what was known as 'a good family'.
    In the meantime he had to finish preparing his lecture to the Advanced Foreigners. Liberal and

Progressive attitudes be damned. From 1688 to 1978, almost three hundred years of English history

compressed into eight lectures, and all with Dr Mayfield's bland assumption that progress was

continuous and that liberal attitudes were somehow independent of time and place. What about

Ulster? A fat lot of liberal attitudes applied there in 1978. And the Empire hadn't exactly been

a model of liberalism. The most you could say about it was that it hadn't been as bloody awful as

the Belgian Congo or Angola. But then Mayfield was a sociologist and what he knew about history

was dangerous. Not that Wilt knew much himself. And why English Liberalism? Mayfield seemed to

think that the Welsh and Scots and Irish didn't exist, or if they did that they weren't

progressive and liberal too.
    Wilt got out a ballpoint and jotted down notes. They had nothing at all to do with Mayfield's

proposed course. He was still rambling speculatively on when lunchtime came. He went down to the

canteen and ate what was called curry and rice at a table by himself and returned to his office

with fresh ideas. This time they concerned the influence of