12.05.2004

George and the right to choose

With apologies to the Twilight Zone, Manny Neira invites you to take a journey into the imagination: what if ...?

You may be familiar with the theory, beloved of a thousand science fiction writers, that we live not in a universe, but a multiverse. At every decision point, where events could have gone one way or the other, each universe has split into two. Therefore, throughout history, every conceivable possibility has been realised in a universe somewhere. There is a universe in which Trotsky won the battle for power against Stalin in the Soviet Union. There is another in which Marx was killed in a freak beard-trimming accident early in life, and leftists have had to learn to pronounce the word 'Engelsism'. And there are some even stranger. With apologies to the Twilight Zone, let me take you to just one.

Somewhere in this universe, the small hours of the morning find Mrs Galloway yawning as she drives, with an overcoat pulled over her pyjamas, to an all-night garage. She is on an errand to buy a dozen Marathon bars and a jar of peanut butter. Once home, she will watch George dip each chocolate bar into the light-brown spread and eat them, one after the other, without stopping. The cravings were preferable, she supposed, to the morning sickness: but how could it have happened at all when they had been so careful?

Gorgeous George was pregnant.

The famous Armani suit has already been let out twice. They could not afford a new one, thanks to the Red Platform: an organisation she could not name without cursing.

It ceased to exist over a year ago, having won a majority within the Communist Party of Great Britain to impose political conditions before calling for electoral support for her husband. The CPGB itself had grown dramatically, apparently as a result of some new recruitment strategy, and relentless pressure by the Daily Worker had finally won a majority in Respect ("The 'R' is for republicanism," she muttered under her breath, repeating its famous slogan) to demand all its candidates accept only a worker's wage for representing workers - and some other trifling changes to do with socialism or something. George's journalistic income had largely dried up (employers' prejudices against expectant fathers were simply criminal) and their income had dropped by about 80%.

They simply couldn't afford another child. There was nothing for it: he'd just have to have an abortion.

She pulls into the drive, and carefully checks the door of her home for booby traps. The 'Real AWL' had been particularly active recently, and security measures had been stepped up around the Galloway household. No trip wires in evidence, she lets herself back into the house, and calls a slightly weary "Home, pet", as she tramps up the stairs. George puts down his copy of Men are from Venus, women are from Mars, and grabs the bag of goodies as she enters the room.

She watches in a kind of shocked fascination as he eats bar after bar of chocolate. No matter how many wives experienced the cravings of their pregnant husbands, they still found them weird. And with peanut butter? She'd smoked a little blow in her time, but the munchies had nothing on this.

"Darling," she ventures gently. "You know we can't have this child. You're just being stubborn."

George speaks between mouthfuls. "I will not have an abortion. Who speaks for the child?"

She admonishes him gently: "But you voted just last week in the European parliament to make free abortions available on demand across all EU member-states."

He dips his last stub of chocolate into the peanut butter. "I had to. People voted Respect because that's what they believed we stood for. We are a leftwing coalition: the majority of our members support the right to abortion, the majority we received from the electorate expect to get it. That's democracy. I'm there to represent them."

She looks sadly at him. "So you won't take advantage of your own law?"

He looks at her evenly and speaks with a quiet dignity, fiddling with the cord of his Fathercare nightie: "It's a man's right to choose."

Quiz

Did you notice the differences between that universe and this one?

1. In that universe, George Galloway knew the difference between his individual right to act according to his conscience, and the right of citizens to be democratically represented.

2. In that universe, Snickers are still called Marathons.

Everything else was the same - or may be, one day ...