United Kingdom of Patrival

[SovietPrussia]

OOC Notes...

Since I'm kind of bored with the SovietPrussia RP, I've decided to adapt Patrival from my RPing elsewhere. Will be updating this as I write more material. Read it in your own time, no rush. And more importantly, enjoy!

...and an introduction

Well the general theme of this RP is 19th century Britain turned up to 11, in a 21st century world. Patrival is a constitutional monarchy, but its kings and the House of Lords still exercise the veto over the House of Commons. In recent decades though, a non-intervening monarch had allowed the liberal Lord Bentley to dominate politics. However, King Charles Augustus II's passing and a new more conservative monarch will cause drama. That's where we pick up the story. You'll also need some handy terms for shiz to make sense.

Quatrica - Patrival's colony.

Lord Bentley - The Liberal Party Prime Minister. Since he was appointed back in the 60s, he's held a tight grip over the political world.

Kevin Neate - country's favourite journalist and political comentator. Think Jeremy Paxman

Strathmore - The Royal Family name and estate.

Lord - A collective term for an aristocrat in the political process. The term originated from the sense of peerage and equality between nobles in the Noble-Electorate of Patrival. Some Lords however, adopt one of their other official titles, famously Baron Bentley (whose biography will be up soon).

Conservatives - Into protectionism, monarchism, and foreign policy hawkism.

Liberal - Free trade, international cooperation, defending middle class interests. Think Thatcher.

Radicals - Politically unsucessful Liberal believing in Quatrican Home rule and improving the social and economic status of women in society. Pro-choice in abortion and homosexual relationships.

Check the works below for dates and bear in mind current affairs at the time of writing, and who's writing it.

UPDATE 27/5/10: Since I've written this, Lord Bentley's been killed off, well not quite - just in a coma but not an active player.

[SovietPrussia]

United Kingdom of Patrival[/u]

Government[/u]

These bodies work tirelessly to defend the values of our great nation. This is an explanation of all the major positions within the government and who carries out those duties.


Royal Family

King Of Patrival, Emperor of Quatrica, Head of the House of Strathmore – H.R.H King Edward II

Queen(Consort) of Patrival, Princess of Quatrica – H.R.H Queen Emily

Crown Prince of Patrival – H.R.H Prince Henry

Princess-Royal of Patrival – H.R.H Princess Sarah

Princess-Lesser of Patrival – H.R.H Princess Matilda



The King is the head of state of our United Kingdom and the Head of the Royal House. All legislation requires his assent to pass into law. His immediate family and the privy council support and offer private advise at their own pleasure to H.R.H.

Great Officers of State
Lord High Steward – (vacant)
Lord High Chancellor – Sir Adam Beddersfield
Lord President of the Council – The Rt. Hon. The Lord William Bentley

Lord Privy Seal - H.R.H Queen Emily
Lord Great Chamberlain – The Rt. Hon. The Lord Henry Waxman
Lord High Constable - (vacant)
Earl Marshal - H.R.H Prince Henry
Lord High Admiral - H.R.H King Edward II

The Lord High Stewart is an honorary position the Prime Minister designates to preside over a trial of a peer of the House of Lords. The Lord High Chancellor is appointed by the King on recommendation by the Prime Minister to head the judiciary of the country.

The Lord High Chancellor serves as the head of the judiciary in the House of Lords.

The Lord President of the Council is an honorary position usually awarded to the Prime Minister.

The Lord Privy Seal presides over the Privy Council.

The Lord Great Chamberlain plays a major part in the ceremonial events of the royal family.

The Lord High Constable is a now defunct position only recalled for coronations.

The Earl Marshall and Lord High Admiral are chivalric positions whose only roles are to maintain the royal family’s yachts and stables.

His Majesty’s Government Frontbench

Prime Minister – The Rt. Hon. The Lord William Bentley
Chief Secretary of State - The Rt. Hon. The Lord Paul Hutchinson
Chancellor of the Exchequer - The Rt. Hon. The Lord Paul Hutchinson
Secretary of State for the Home Department – The Rt. Hon Harold Robins
Secretary of State for Defence – Sir Henry Asquith
Secretary of State for Foreign and Imperial Affairs - The Rt. Hon. Hamish White
President of the Board of Trade - The Rt. Hon. The Lord Randolph Terry
President of the Board of Education - The Rt. Hon. The Lord Randolph Terry
Secretary of State for Cultural & Recreational Affairs – The Rt. Hon. David Butler
President of the Board of Agriculture & Fisheries– The Rt. Hon. Alexander Spencer
First Commissioner of Works & Public Buildings – The Rt. Hon. Quincy Baldwin
Secretary of State for Health – The Rt. Hon. Alexander Spencer
Secretary of State for Local Government - The Rt. Hon. James Cumin
Cabinet Secretary – The Rt. Hon. Sir Andrew Williams

Through themselves, their respective ministers and under-secretaries, and their departments (where applicable), the Frontbench and Cabinet assist the Prime Minister in the running of the country.

The Chief Secretary of State is the deputy for the Prime Minister.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer is appointed by the PM to develop and execute public finance and economic policies. Through the Director of the Royal Bank of Patrival, he sets the central bank’s interest rates.

The Home Department manages the police, counter-terrorism, the secret services, justice and immigration. The Home Secretary also holds the position of Law Officer of the Crown who advises the rest of the Cabinet on matters of constitution and law.

Defence handles the treatment of veterans as well as the protection of Patrival’s shores.

The Foreign Office heads embassies to other nations, to the United Nations and to TITO. The Offices also manages foreign aid.

The Board of Trade administrates the following: intellectual property affairs, economic regulation, business, science, innovation, energy policy, transport, trade policy, foreign investment, employment policy and workplace relations.

The Cultural & Recreational Affairs department ensures the promotion of sport, cultural events and tourism.

The Board of Agriculture & Fisheries represents the interests of farmers and fishermen.

The Board of Education ensures the proper running of Patrival’s universities and schools.

The Health Department prevents the spread of deadly infectious diseases, inspects hospitals and maintains the purity of Patrival’s urban water supplies.

The Commission of Works and Public Buildings has responsibility for the natural beauty of the countryside and the conservation of historic sites. Tourism policy and state archaeology projects are organised from this office.

The Cabinet Secretary is head of H.M’s Civil Service and serves as Paymaster General

Parliament

Speaker of the House of Lords - The Rt. Hon. Dennis Heighs

Speaker of the House of Commons – The Rt. Hon. Hugh Watchman

Leader of the House of Lords - The Rt. Hon. The Lord William Bentley

Leader of the House of Commons - The Rt. Hon. Hamish White

Leader of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition – The Rt. Hon Rupert Afflet

Military – Defence Council of the United Kingdom of Patrival[/u]

These officials and bodies protect Patrival’s shores from any and all threats.

Commander-in-Chief – H.R.H King Edward II

Ministers

Secretary of State for Defence – The Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Asquith
Minister of State for the Armed Forces – The Hon. The Lord Jack Kingston
Minister for Defence Equipment and Support – The Hon. John Presterfield
Minister for Veterans - The Hon. John Presterfield
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State – The Hon. The Lord Stuart Billsworth

MoSftAF– All matters regarding regular, territorial, and reserve armed forces. All legal proceedings.

MfDEaS – Providing the armed services with the most advanced weaponry available.

MfV – Veterans affairs including pensions and other state support.

PUSoS – Assistant to the Secretary of State

Professionals

Chief of the Defence Staff – Admiral Sir Kelvin Watt
Chief of the Naval Staff – Admiral Sir Henry Baidwadder
Chief of the Imperial General Staff – General Sir Oscar Callburg
Chief of the Air Staff – Air Chief Marshal Sir Albert Reel
CofDS - The professional head of the Patrivian Armed Forces and the principal military adviser to the Patrivian Government

CotNS – The professional head of the Royal Navy of Patrival

CotGS – The professional head of the Patrivian Army

CotAS - The professional head of the Patrivian Air Force

[SovietPrussia]

The Undeclared War – Bentley and Neate[/u]


No two people have shaped modern Patrival more than Prime Minister William Bentley, and award-winning journalist and philanthropist Kevin Neate. Despite having more-or-less identical ideological ideals, the two of them would share a rivalry and hatred lasting decades. Their lives are full of parallels and similarities which could easily have resulted in, God forbid, Kevin Neate running the country.

Young William was the eldest son of Lord Basil Robins, the Baron of Bentley. Born on 1st January 1938 into the privileged ruling class of Patrival. He was shielded by his world from the grotesque poverty and squalor the rest of the country lived in. He was oblivious to the imminent revolution beyond the walls of his father’s estate. He would have learnt to wear his bow tie and waistcoat from a young age. He was an aristocrat after all. He honoured the family tradition of his first sherry at the age of 10 and was fluent with the piano, Greek, Latin and horse riding by 12.
But it was in 1950 when he became painfully aware of the wider world. He’d frequently ask his father why TITO aircraft flew over the idyllic Patrivian countryside, but never knew the extent of which the underclasses of the country had suffered to fund the war effort. The notoriously reactionary King Charles Augustus I slowly lost control of the country to the rising Liberal Movement. William’s father lectured him on an almost daily basis on the dangers of letting Liberals, socialists, trade unionists or feminists come to power. He would often be beaten for showing signs of sympathy for the political have-nots.
The Baron Bentley had taught the boy himself until 1951, when he sent William to Bingham Boarding College. His teachers would try just as hard to indoctrinate the pupils into the dogma of anti-liberalism. But he and many of his peers shunned it. They quickly enrolled secretly in the Freethinkers, a radical liberal organisation deemed to be terrorists by the government. However, after the murder of Albert Johnson, the head master of the school, many of the Freethinkers were rooted out and expelled from the school before being taken into custody. While William was not caught by the authorities, his politics began to de-radicalise. He realised that progress could not be made by making the opposition look more and more like the reasonable side.
In 1956, William graduated from Bingham with enough top grades to get into Rosendale University and study History, Psychology and Chemistry. Under enormous pressure from his father, now the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, William joined the Conservative Party. His father was quick to help him rise up in the ranks until in 1961, he stood for the House of Commons in his home constituency, Bentley. He lost the election by 1.2% of the vote to an independent candidate. He would say later in his life that his failure to win the seat was down to him not truly believing in what he stood for. In 1962 he married Mary Evans, the daughter of a successful businessman in the capital.
In 1964, Baron Bentley was caught without his bodyguards by a gang of anarchists who proceeded to stab him to death. William became the Lord William Robins, Baron of Bentley, or Lord Bentley for short. Without his father constantly watching over his career, he left the Conservative Party shortly before the Liberal Party was outlawed by royal decree.
By 1968, at the age of 30, he had made his name as an expert parliamentarian and was appointed as Minister for Family Affairs. When the King was assassinated by a Femiterrorist, the progressive Prince Charles Augustus rose the throne. In January 1969, he was appointed as Prime Minister. His ministry began with the relegalisation of the Liberal Party and Bentley joined as a charter member. A month later he was elected as Party Leader and Chairman with a majority of 91%. But the conservative majority in parliament refused to support any bill proposed by the government until the Prime Minister dealt with the ongoing civil war. After a six month standstill and the foiling of several parliamentary coups and votes of no confidence, a compromise was reached. With Liberal support, the reactionary Conservatives could ban the assembly of more than 3 women in any given place and put a family-head consent based curfew on women; in other words, no women could leave the home without explicit permission from her father or husband. In return, the conservatives conceded on the enfranchisement of the middle class. The socialist and syndicalist threat was countered by two years of street battles until the authorities prevailed.
1970 was a good year for the Bentley family. Bentley and his wife had two children that year - Nicholas and Sophie. Nicholas would grow up to be more progressive than his father, pioneering women’s rights with the help of his sister.
Bentley was reappointed by the King after the 1971 General Election when the liberals were swept to power in the Commons. Many of these new liberals happened to be part of a new political clique called the ‘Moderates’. Liberal on most issues but conservative on the hot political issues of the day. The ‘Radical Liberals’ of Bentley’s youth were marginalised in the new political landscape. The reactionaries reluctantly fell into line with the mainstream conservatives to prevent the Yellow Menace from pushing forward any further liberal reforms.
A constitutional reform act was passed in 1973 guaranteeing the regularity of fair elections and forbidding the appointment of a Prime Minister who did not have the support of the Parliament. Constituencies were reorganised and the Lords reformed to allow, for the first time, Liberal composition to be above 20% of the House. In the same year, the 1973 Education Act was passed, making primary education compulsory and the subsidising of the Federation of Liberal Schools. The subsidy was however repealed a year later after considerable pressure on the Prime Minister by the moderate wing of his own party. But the act had severe consequences for Lord Bentley. A year later, Kevin Neate enrolled at the Woolton Liberal School of Economics.

Kevin Neate was born on 20th October 1954 in Barber, a small village outside the capital. He was part of an upper middle class family of accountants. Much of their success came from encouraging landlords to impose harsher rents on their tenants or longer hours in their coal mines. His conservative minded father and uncle home schooled him in maths, acting, and English literature. He was the youngest of five children and learnt to fend for himself at a young age, developing an aggression and determination which would remain with him for the rest of his life. He, like William Bentley, was appalled by the living conditions of the working class and inspired by the Freethinker movement which he joined in 1967 when he attended Bingham. By day he would take an active role in the extra-curricular drama activities and was instrumental in setting up the Bingham Mail, the school newsletter.
He was expelled in 1969 after his criticism of the crackdown on the Freethinkers. Just his luck that the Freethinkers were officially pardoned by the Prime Minister a month later. He was however unable to reattend the school. His family refused to have anything to do with their son after the controversy and Neate was for the first time without financial support to continue his studies.
He took a job cleaning dishes for a small restaurant in Edinton and rented a cheap tenement room. He hoped the new Liberal government would act quickly to help the urban poor who he now felt a sense of comradeship with. However, he was never at all supportive of the socialist movement which was strong in the working class underworld and was adamant in his belief for self-betterment. The government simply had to intervene to give the working man a chance. Neate was initially impressed by the drive Bentley had to reach a consensus with the conservatives, and for a long time accepted that Bentley would sooner or later push for social reform. Bentley reminded the audience at every year’s Liberal Party Conference which Neate made sure he was in the front row for. The Woolton Liberal School of Economics was founded in 1973, and as soon as he could, Neate signed up.
Neate took a joint degree in journalism and politics and joined the Woolton Debating Lunch Club. Lord Bentley officially opened the Club and met Kevin Neate personally for the first time. The chatted over coffee, talked about women and geographical upper river features. Everything went well until they moved onto politics, when Bentley carefully evaded the questions. Neate only realised what had happened later that day. He thought Bentley was different from other politicians; he was wrong. But the club session ended on a happier note, with its members, many of whom were Freethinkers in years past, singing Die Gedanken Sind Frei. They raised a toast to Adam Smith before splitting up to go to their classes.
Over the next few years, the Lunch Club would grow in size and organisation into a Student Syndicate in all but name. The first Club President election was held in 1976. With the lifting of most media restrictions in the Great Compromise of 1975, the first televised debate in the country was held. Listeners from all over Woolton and its surrounding villages sent in questions by letter the previous day and they were answered in a four hour debate between the five leading candidates. Neate hosted the debate and was critically acclaimed by the local newspaper for his own questions to the candidates.

The 1976 General Election was conducted by less modern means. Parties would call upon their supporters in the media to support them and the leading candidates would tour the country, visiting battleground constituencies. The leading issue was the Great Compromise of 1975, a series of acts solving the big dividing questions of the Bentley era. The policy of active colonisation of Quatrica was halted and tariffs reduced in return for the Public Decency Act 1975, cracking down on many of the cultural expressions the Conservatives resented. CCTV systems and gated communities were set up in return for the Safety at Work Act which required employers to meet a bare minimum of standards inspected by government officials. While the Great Compromise was a triumph for Bentley, the election presented a more even footed parliament the following year, with most people unable to see the differences between the parties. But the influx of settlers into Quatrica continued unofficially. Many of the new settlers were the reactionaries who were in power just 10 years earlier. Entire native villages were burnt down by the new generation of colonists and the Quatricans had little choice but to organise themselves and strike back. The 2nd Quatrican Colonial War began. Bentley would later try to play down the failure of his colonial policy and pin his loss of the next election to the repealing of the Corn Laws, causing many farmers to lose business and cut back on farm worker employment. However, he stated that the benefit to consumers and a general fall in food prices boosted consumer spending. Many of the new colonists farmed their new land and sold the food back to Patrival. Conservatives saw the colonists as saving the nation from the ‘unclean foreign animal fodder’ which was allowed into the country following the repeal of the Corn Laws. But the growing Quatrihumanist movement in Liberal circles was highly critical of the new wave of settlers and of colonialism in general.

In 1978, the first coordinated attacks on major colonist settlements took place. 351 Patrivans were dragged out of their homes and beaten to death. The uproar back home was enormous. A motion of no confidence was called by a Moderate Liberal in the joint Commons-Lords session and supported by an overwhelming majority of conservatives and a few of Lord Bentley’s own party. The Prime Minister was forced to call a General Election. The Crown Prince Edward affirmed his support for Terry Howe, the leader of the Opposition in the Commons while King Charles Augustus gave his support to Bentley.
Kevin Neate had been given a job as a political commentator on PBC (Patrivian Broadcasting Company) Radio 1 just in time for the election. He quickly shared his research with the rest of the country. Bentley was revealed to have been involved in an honours scandal where three Liberal newspaper owners had been discreetly knighted a few years before. He highlighted the urban-rural divisions which were beginning to split the country down new lines and criticized Bentley for moving the country towards the mess it was in until a decade before. Terrorism was on the rise again and youth crime rates exploding. Later that day, other journalists picked up on Neate’s attack on Bentley for betraying his own values for power. The Liberal bear was furious. He remembered Neate as the young idealist liberal who was expected to fall into line with the former-Freethinker Neatites. A private meeting between the two degenerated into the two of them hurling abuse at each other for hours before Neate stormed out. On election night, Neate arrived late from the meeting to give live coverage of the event. He explained his lateness in full before Bentley got back to the Liberal Party headquarters. Neate had crossed the line by violating the privacy of the “discussion”. He made a final statement to the public, denying the honours scandal every occurred and claimed that the knighthoods were earned. He dismissed the rest of Neate’s attacks as being ‘too personal, prejudiced and irrelevant to the issues to be taken seriously.’
But it was too late for Bentley. With a 33 seat majority, Howe and the Conservatives usurped the Liberal government. Prince Edward and Howe met the King in his summer residence and convinced him to submit to public will and appoint Howe as the next Prime Minister.

Bentley went into political retirement at 40 and moved back to the Bentley Manor. He purchased a small plot of land in the forest and built a modest lodge for himself. He’d spend his days moving between the lodge and the manor; fishing and entertaining the occasional guest. He began writing his memoirs and spending more time at home raising his children. He halved his servant retinue and donated the money saved every month to various charities. The next few years relieved him of his built up stress level and sleep debt from ten years in high public office.
Kevin Neate meanwhile was celebrated by conservatives, much to his dismay, as the man who brought Bentley down. He made up for it by being one of the government’s strongest critics and ironically was hailed by liberals as the man who brought down Howe in the years to come. He joined the Patrival@10 team and became the public’s favourite for his aggressive interviewing style. He made a reputation as a populist in his controversial documentary on the life of the urban poor in 1981. In it he attacked the policies of both Bentley and Howe in helping the underclasses of the country but also socialism for its consequences to democracy and freedom elsewhere in the world. In December that year, on the King’s birthday, his name was on the knighthood list. However, Neate declined the honour when he said to the King personally, ‘Sir Kevin just doesn’t suit me.’ Privately, Neate told the monarch that the ruling class wasn’t ready to commend a man for caring.
Neate’s private life moved forward in late 1982 when at the age of 28 he married his childhood sweetheart from Bingham School for Ladies, Natalie Saddler. They adopted three children from the South Edinton Orphanage – Iona, Katherine, and Milton. Iona would one day marry the Articunan Islands Ambassador, Katherine would marry world famous science fiction author Karl Schulte and Milton would become the Head of RICSCD, the R&R International Civil Service Coordination Department. They lived in a comfortable two-bedroom apartment in Edinton. The Neates would share their home with the family chimp, Bonzo.
Neate spent 1983 raising money to set up a primary school extension to the orphanage. Over the first half of the year, £200,000 poured in with several pledges of regular donations to keep the school going. It was promptly built by the end of the year and 800 spaces for orphans and adopted children opened. Lord Bentley got word of this and made a personal donation of £27,000, the largest single contribution.
The state-of-emergency imposed by Prime Minister Howe ended in September 1984 when a government mediated truce was signed by the colonists and natives of Quatrica, maintaining the status quo with financial compensation being made to the Quatricans. An election was held in February 1985 which Howe surprisingly lost after a series of riots in Edinton sparked by the government’s refusal to sponsor the Neate project and the excessive red tape involved in the construction work. Neate leaked the information to Bentley who made it public, alienating the middle class from the government. Bentley promised a substantial state investment in every major city in the country and a development of new high-speed railways in Quatrica. But what was most revolutionary was the promise of semi-privatisation of the Bank of Patrival and a Thatcherist deregulation. However, Bentley did not address the women’s rights issue officially, but many liberals in the country gave their wives and daughters a lot of personal, non-political freedom.

Bentley was returned to office, but his new friendship with Neate didn’t last. The promised public investment never arrived. But the middle class support Bentley won in his financial reform would do him well for the next decade and a half. The money supply began to grow rapidly, but with interest rates remaining high to fight inflation. The credit boom began with many middle class families building extensions and improvements to their homes. The home-improvement industry took off. Televisions became more and more common in middle class homes and modernising of equipment in local businesses improved efficiency, at the expense of working class jobs. The Liberal Party was unwilling to provide state welfare for the poor and the Conservatives were even more opposed to it.
In 1985, the government began a program to encourage Model United Nations conferences in secondary schools in the country. Lord Bentley’s son, Nicholas became the winners of the Best Delegate prize in one of the many conferences taking place that summer. In his account of the conference, he also met his girlfriend and later wife Ellie Woods.
In 1986, Kevin Neate was arrested on the charges of inciting violence and his documentary from four years earlier was banned. Neate saw this as the ultimate betrayal of Bentley to market forces and the super-rich. When news of his arrest broke, the inner city riots continued. The government responded with force. The boom began to slow by 1987, but never slipped into recession thanks to a slow reduction of interest rates from 8% down to 6%. Inflation however, went above 5% for the first time in forty years. The increase in prices was crippling for the working class, whose purchasing power continued to decline. The middle and upper classes on the other hand prospered.
In 1991, a nationwide sit-in attended by the King and most of the country’s working class forced both the Liberal government and Conservative opposition to submit. Neate was released and his documentary legalised. A medical insurance assistance act was passed, and the government would offer less well-off families financial help in acquiring medical insurance and modest tax increases on the rich pushed through. The more devoted protestors attempted the same thing a year later to push for a more substantial government healthcare plan, but without Neate’s, the King’s, or universal working class support, the crowd was dispersed by riot police. A group of ten protestors sneaked into the PBC buildings and hijacked a radio station. There was enough time to play The Internationale before security seized them.
Neate took up his job at Patrival@10 again shortly after being released from prison. His coverage of the 1992 R&R Olympic Games and of the Prince Edward’s wedding would give him international renown. The increase in the PBC budget allowed the showing of old Doctor Who, Blackadder and Only Fools & Horses series, much to the delight of the nation’s youth, and a doubling in Neate’s salary. He put his new earnings straight into the Neate Project, increasing the quality of education in his primary schools. Televisions were purchased for every classroom where for an hour every school day, children could relax to their favourite British programmes. Free school meals were introduced too. Since the setting up of the Project, Youth crime rates plummeted in the capital. More and more wealthy liberals from within and without Patrival put money into the newly reorganised Neate Foundation, which serviced for secondary schools for the urban poor too. Viscount Dexter Carlus, a personal friend of Neate from high school, pressured the R&R Educational Subsidy Board to allocate funding to the Foundation. Neate was awarded the R&R Medal for Charitable Excellence and the Nobel Anti-Poverty Prize in 1996. His children who had now come of age made contributions to the clinic branch of the Foundation.

Bentley celebrated his 58th birthday in 1996 in a dinner party attended by many institutional, political, and international figures including Anime Daisuki, Kevin Neate, Grub, King Charles Augustus and Viscount Carlus. He was informed of his grandson’s birth halfway through. He stood up and announced it to those present. ‘Everyone, it is my utter pleasure to announce that We are a Grandfather. (OOC: remember the famous Thatcher quote, ‘We are a Grandmother’? ) My daughter Sophie has asked for His Majesty to be the Godfather and for the child to be named after my father, Basil.’ Bentley was received by wild applause and a slight smile from the 41 year old Kevin Neate. Neate’s daughter Iona was pregnant and due to deliver in only three months.
1999 was the 30th anniversary of Lord Bentley’s rise to the Premiership. The last third-century had seen great recovery from the chaos of the previous third-century. But the social order from the pre-Bentley years had been destroyed in the process. The threats of socialism and feminism had been neutralised, but at great cost to the ruling class. Bentley smashed the power of the reactionary aristocracy thanks to a friendly monarch and the partially unintentional aid of Kevin Neate. Terry Howe, while out of high office for most of his political life, had held firm as the Leader of the Opposition with Prince Edward’s support. The Freethinkers and Radicals held the Liberal cause together so Bentley wouldn’t be alone. And the moderates on both sides were the ground infantry of the undeclared war of ideology.



Sir Hubert Collar, Author.

Essay dedicated to my cat, Tibbles

[SovietPrussia]

The Birth of Patrivian Liberalism, Volume I (1992)


The 19th century was indeed the century of the individual. It saw revolution and reform throughout the world. The young United States of America, the 1848 Revolutions and the Reform Acts of Great Britain. While the United Kingdom moved forward along with most of its Empire and later Commonwealth, the independent-minded yet homeward-looking Patrival remained entrenched in traditional politics and social orders.

The seeds for reform were planted in the early 19th century like Britain, but were brutally suppressed by the Dukes and the ruling classes of Patrival while in the mother country, liberalism was embraced in a series of reforms beginning in 1832 with the Great Reform Act, granting voting franchise to the middle class. Patrival would only catch up 130 years later. But to understand why the ruling classes were so opposed to change, you must look at how they viewed the rest of the world.
They looked to the United States and saw the ‘Britishness’ swept away violently. They saw the French Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic devastation to the old order. They remembered the Peterloo Massacre back home in 1819. Republic and Democratic values worried them greatly. Many viewed Patrival as the last bastion of peace and stability in a hostile and foreign world. Things were simpler here. The lower classes did what the upper classes told them to do. And the natives did what the lower classes wanted them to do. This simple hierarchy had worked for the past three centuries and by God they weren’t about to let that change. The Church operated to bolster their hold on society and teach Patrivians about the importance of civilizing the Quatricans further inland.
The colonization process had its winners outside of the aristocracy. The merchant class of the coastal towns and cities had grown steadily since the arrival of the English colonists in the early 1500s. These merchants had profited from Empire, but felt spurned by the heavy duties and tariffs enforced and encouraged by the upper class. Their hard-earned wealth was in their minds being stolen and handed to the privileged few born into power. They were tired of the Church and Establishment telling them how to run their lives and how wicked their lifestyles were. They were the ones coordinating the exploitation of Quatrica’s natural resources and yet were getting no reward.

In 1840, Duke Richard IV inherited the Patrivial following his father’s death. To tackle the potential liberal problem, he devised a different strategy from calling in the troops whenever there was unrest. His government’s first course of action was the setting up of new conservative-minded universities and grammar schools, including the Bingham Boarding College. The college would grow in prestige and one day boast very famous and successful alumni. Its first head master was Sir Bradley Hulme, an arch-reactionary and former education minister in the last of Duke Richard III’s government. The Student Dormitories, College Assembly Hall and the Bingham Bistro were constructed to service students and teachers alike, and would be the stage for the country’s most ruthless, backstabbing and fast-paced politics. It became the home of the Freethinkers movement and the birthplace of the Liberal movement. The Bingham School for Ladies taught aristocratic girls everything they needed to know to be the ‘perfect host’ for their husbands’ dinner parties with famous authors and ambassadors. While the lady students weren’t nominally involved in student politics, that rule was hardly enforced and was their only opportunity in life to be equal to their male future-husbands.
Howard “King” George, Edmund Strathmore and Boris Miller were among the first to enrol at Bingham. HKG and Boris Miller would co-found the Freethinkers and Edmund Strathmore, the nephew of the Duke would become the first Head Prefect. Despite the three of them being only fifteen years old, Binghamers had to grow up fast. Other major players included deputy-prefect Ernest Smart, Victoria Eden of the Bingham School for Ladies and David Cumberland, a prominent member of the Bingham Dramatist Society.
Ernest Smart and Strathmore met in the Bingham Bistro in June 1846, just as their first school term began. What began as discussing cricket and their ambitions with regards to the Ladies School moved towards student politics. The Head Master was to appoint the Head Prefect later that month. Strathmore had the family contacts and charm to get appointed, but Smart had the administrative know-how and hard-working personality to make it all work. The two reached an agreement which gave Strathmore the position, but he in return would make Smart his trusty lieutenant.
HKG was in the bistro later that day. He wasn’t new to the soap box and certainly not new to getting in trouble with the Prefectures of his previous schools. Last month it was middle-class enfranchisement, the month before it was Quatrican independence. This time it was the abolishment of the monarchy. A step too far for many, especially for Strathmore and Smart. It wasn’t long before the speech degenerated into a fist-fight which the Head Master personally intervened in to stop. Boris Miller was present too. After the fight was over and HKG dragged away by Sir Hulme, he returned to his room, deep in thought. On the way back, he quite literally walked into David Cumberland, deep in rehearsal for his performance of Hamlet. Immediately noticing the disease of shyness in Miller, Doctor Cumberland quickly cast Boris as Claudius and passed him the script. Without much of a choice, Miller went along with it quietly. Reluctant at first, he grew into acting and in turn into public speaking. It reached the point where Cumberland and Miller would argue over who got the leading roles.
Victoria Eden meanwhile was becoming fluent in Portuguese, piano, and serving tea in a martini glass. At one of her Bach concerts, she caught the eye of Edmund Strathmore. An unsuccessful flirt and retreat later, an observant HKG sensed a slight aristophobia. What Miss Eden expected to be another tipsy prefect’s frankly awful attempt to charm her took her by surprise. A political campaign was a refreshing change to the usual attention from other male students she got. She was intrigued. Then swayed. It was hard to see why HKG was bothering though. As a woman, she was expected to be seen, not heard. Student politics may have been in its infancy, but her opinions would never hold any influence on the Assembly Hall floor. Maybe he just enjoyed having a bash at the Duke. But whatever HKG wanted, Miller wasn’t the only one contemplating and getting lost in dormitories.

On return from the ’46 Christmas break the Head Master revealed plans to institute a student legislative body and debating society, the Bingham Union Society. It had jurisdiction over extra-curricular activities, charity events, and could (nominally) lobby the Government Board for Education for curriculum suggestions. All Bingham Students were entitled to join for a two shillings monthly subscription. The Union was run by the Standing Committee, elected by Union members, and consisting of a Chief Moderator who would chair debates, a treasurer who would organise all fundraising and bookkeeping, a steward who would organise catering and entertainment for the Union, a Librarian who would edit the Union Newsletter and invite guest speakers, and a Secretary would organise social events. Two forms of debate were established early on. Open Chamber debating where two teams of three debaters would have their names pulled out of the President’s hat from a pool of all volunteers and for the following week they would have to prepare a debate on a subject chosen by the Standing Committee. The Union members present would vote at the end of the debate for the winner. The second form of debate was the legislative debate where the twenty dormitories would each elect a senator for the Bingham Union Society Council. A President would be selected by popular vote to act as spokesperson, figurehead and leader of the Union when dealing with other organisations. Elections would take place every January and July for the Council positions.
In early 1847, Howard George of course stood for the office of President and for his dorm senator position. He won the latter unopposed, but the former was closely contested. Standing against him were John Talbot and George Rickards, one a moderate conservative, the other a reactionary. Due to personal health problems, Rickards dropped out of the race in favour of Talbot in a speech where he called Howard as “King George”, in obvious reference to his Republicanism and accusing HKG of stirring up resent against the monarchy for his own political ambitions. The actor community was largely divided until Boris Miller publically endorsed HKG and with Cumberland behind Miller, the vote was swung in HKG’s favour. Talbot and Rickards warned the Union about the dangers of liberalism and especially republicanism, calling attention to the French example before conceding the election.
HKG excelled in his new office. His first bills included details on a joint decision between the Head Master and President on the appointment of vacant Standing Committee positions and giving them a joint-veto over Union impeachment and removal of Committee members. This was promptly passed with a wide margin. His next act was to greatly expand the extra-curricular sports clubs and to commend the treasurer on his excellent fundraising campaign. In the Open Chamber, his name was chosen for a debate on the merits of protectionism. On the other side was David Cumberland. While Cumberland’s team put up a brave fight in favour of protection, the Chamber was decided. With a 58% vote, the President won the debate.

His day job as the rambling student President was a clever mask for his night work. His opponents never gave HKG much thought. To them, his mind lacked the organisation or focus to cause any serious harm. They had no idea what he was getting up to away from the Assembly Hall floor and when he wasn’t arguing with his lecturers and getting caned. The Freethinkers was his pet project. Its members would fight for liberalism on all fronts whether they were within or without the College. Even if it involved violating the law and resorting to violence. Republic, gender equality and democracy were at the top of their wish-list. Well at the top of HKG’s anyway. The other key members were Boris Miller and a few months later Victoria Eden. Little did they know that the Freethinkers would cause the stack of cards to finally fall, causing the ruling establishment to collapse in on itself. While terrorist activity was purely hypothetical at this stage and seen as the last approach they’d take to liberal reformation.
HKG learnt of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s exploits in Latin America and was inspired. He was eager to meet the man himself. Eden taught the Freethinkers Italian on George’s request. He shared his reading of Adam Smith, Thomas Paine and others. Support for the Freethinkers grew but remained totally secret until Head Prefect Strathmore caught word of a ‘liberal revolutionary army’ within Bingham. He and Deputy Smart quickly got onto the case. The two of them worked through the April-May Break and eventually pinned it down to HKG. Meanwhile, Miller became increasingly alienated by HKG’s Republicanism, who began openly praising the work of Napoleon Bonaparte and even Robespierre. When news of the Freethinkers was leaked to the Union in June, George immediately denied all involvement and when one of his peers informed him that Strathmore was behind the leak, HKG accused the Head Prefect of partisanship in apolitical office and called for his immediate removal. The Head Master was unwilling to agree to the impeachment and Strathmore stayed put. The Union, with the Head Master’s assurance, continued to look at Strathmore’s evidence. Miller, fearing the end of the Freethinkers either to total crackdown or HKG’s radicalism, let edited Minutes of a group meeting circulate the Assembly Hall. It put total responsibility and accountability onto HKG while hiding the true size and influence of the Freethinkers. The Union, unaware of what truly happened, attempted to impeach the President. HKG used every loophole in the book to hold onto power as long as he could. But with the July elections coming up, he knew his time was up. He lost his Presidency and then resigned from his Senator seat. Before long he stopped coming to Freethinker meetings and his school lectures.

By October, he had descended into alcoholism and was frequenting opium dens in the down-market districts of the Capital. His Bingham Union subscription stopped coming through shortly after. Nothing was heard from him until news of his death came through on the 19th January 1848. He was hit by a bullet fighting for Liberalism in the Sicilian Revolution on the 12th of that month. Eden and Miller agreed that it would be proper to commemorate his with a portrait of HKG next to one of Garibaldi in the Freethinker Headquarters, hidden in a Bingham wine cellar.


George Harrods

[SovietPrussia]

Ecclesiastical Chancellors

Archbishop Thomas Heseltine – 1573-1590
Archbishop Benedict Dauncey – 1590-1599
Bishop Clement Cromwell – 1599-1604
Archbishop Benedict Dauncey – 1604-1607

Duke’s Chancellors (favourites in the Lords. Tradition of Parliamentary rule established)

Hubert Steward, Lord North 1607-1620
Richard Attlee, Lord Tudor 1620-1632
Hubert Steward, Lord North 1632-1635
Henry Baker, Lord Shaftesbury 1635-1650
William Steward, Lord North 1650-1666
Samuel Piper, Lord Seppage 1666-1674

Patrivian Parliament Act 1674 – Establishes post of Chief Secretary of State, election must be called at least once every 10 years.

Chief Secretaries

Samuel Piper, Lord Seppage 1674-1675
Geoffrey Howard, Lord Drake 1675-1678
Samuel Piper, Lord Seppage 1678-1681
Geoffrey Howard, Lord Drake 1681-1690
Charles Blake, Lord Terry 1690-1702

Loose partisan lines drawn.

Howard Attlee, Lord Tudor 1702-1712 (Homelander – Closer ties to Britain)
Richard Tapping 1712-1724 (Whig – More independence)
Thomas Harding, Lord Blair – 1724-1730 (Homelander)
Donald Piper the Elder, Lord Seppage 1730-1751 (Homelander)
Paul Staite, Lord Marchall 1751-1763 (Whig)
Donald Piper the Younger, Lord Seppage 1763-1769 (Homelander)

Homelander near-Hegemony destroyed by the Seppage Desertion. Whig dominance established.

Paul Staite, Lord Marchall 1769-1772 (Whig)
Donald Piper the Younger, Lord Seppage 1772-1780 (Whig, switched party)
James Hulford 1780-1795 (Whig)
Sir Michael Paul 1795-1800 (Whig)
James Hulford 1800-1801 (Whig)
Sir Michael Paul 1801 (Whig)

Internal chaos in the Whigs causes collapse of the party.

Edward Blake, Lord Terry 1801-1820 (Homelander)
Harold Staite, Lord Marchall 1820-1823 (Marchallite – Whig remnants)
Samuel Attlee, Lord Tudor 1823-1832 (Homelander)
Bartholomew Cromwell, Lord Hobbes 1832-1842 (Homelander)
Benjamin Paine, Lord Morrison 1842-1848 (Homelander)
Cornelius Major, Lord Radcliffe 1848 (Homelander)
Kevin Young, Lord Benn 1848 (Homelander)
Cornelius Major, Lord Radcliffe 1848-1849 (Homelander, emergency rule.)

1848 Liberal Revolutions spread to Patrival. Riots in the capital and the ransacking of the parliament building causes the military under John Percival to step in in early 1849. Regime is briefly interrupted by a liberal coup in 1871 before Percival regains power. Regime collapses after his death in 1879.

John Percival, Lord Protector of Patrival 1849-1871 (Military)
Paul Paine, Lord Morrison 1871 (Revolutionary Liberal – anti-Percival)
John Percival, Lord Protector of Patrival 1871-1879 (Military)
Alistair Harding, Lord Blair 1879 (Monarchist – Establishing Patrival as an independent state)

Anglo-Patrivian Commonwealth Treaty 1879 – Patrival as an independent state from Britain, with a full military alliance)

Patrivian Royalty Act 1879 – reorganises government and monarchy to adapt to statehood

Prime Ministers

National Front formed in 1879 to establish Patrivian independence and control the military

Alistair Harding, Lord Blair 1879 – 1899 (National)
Sir David Hutton 1899-1903 (National)

Collapse of the National Front. Two parties formed on trade law differences. Socially identical.

Sir David Hutton 1903 (Liberal – free trade)
David George 1903-1910 (Conservative – protectionism)
Oliver Staite, Lord Marchall 1910-1915 (Conservative)

National Front re-established for First World War effort.

Oliver Staite, Lord Marchall 1915-1917 (National)
Field Marshall Harold Patton 1917-1919 (National)

National Front disestablished.

Sir Harold Patton 1919-1921 (Patrivian Values Party – all power to monarchy & Prime Minister, popular appeal of Patton)
Edward Fox, Lord Downsfield 1921-1928 (Conservative)
Derrick Hulford, Lord Mannhelm 1928-1932 (Liberal)
Cecil Blake, Lord Terry 1932-1939 (Conservative)
Winston Clark, Lord Sandbury 1939-1941 (Liberal)
Marcus Hoare, Lord Huddersfield 1941-1943 (Liberal)

Templespeak Consensus marked by movement towards reconciling with the working class. Price controls tested. Ended by poor relations between the Unions and the Government, continual economic strife and social unrest.

Horatio Hulme, Lord Templespeak 1943-1944 (Independent)
Sir Anthony Butler 1944-1950 (Patrivian Values – Keynesian, Trade Union sympathetic)
Horatio Hulme, Lord Templespeak 1950-1962 (Liberal – socialist crisis control, otherwise backseat management)
Thomas Buchannan, Lord Wurrex 1962-1965 (Conservative – Jingoism, economic nationalism)
Hubert Fox, Lord Downsfield 1965-1969 (Conservative)

Bentley Era marked by growing economic liberalism domestically but protectionism heightened. Return of peace to Patrival.

William Robins, Lord Bentley 1969-1978 (Liberal)
Terry Howe 1978-1985 (Conservative)
William Robins, Lord Bentley 1985-2010 (Liberal)


Longest serving heads of government

Lord Bentley – 34 years
John Percival – 30 years
Donald Piper the Elder, Lord Seppage – 21 years
Alistair Harding, Lord Blair – 20 years
Edward Blake, Lord Terry – 19 years
Archbishop Thomas Heseltine – 17 years
William Steward, Lord North – 16 years
Hubert Steward, Lord North – 16 years
Henry Baker, Lord Shaftesbury – 15 years
Donald Piper the Younger, Lord Seppage – 14 years

Parties longest in government

Homelander – 100 years
Liberal - 53 years
Whig – 44 years
Conservative – 40 years
Military – 30 years
National – 28 years
Marchallite – 3 years
Patrivian Values – 8 years
Monarchist – 1 year
Revolutionary Liberal – 1 year

[SovietPrussia]

Early History of Patrival: 987-1601 (1991)


The United Kingdom of Patrival’s history begins long before the first European settlers arrived. Before the English language was heard of in this part of the world. Before even Christianity had reached their shores.

It begins circa 987 A.D. on the Quatrican Continent with an agreement between the native Emperor of Quatrica and the noble families of their vassal, Patrival. The Nobles of Patrival agreed to continue in the bondage of vassalage provided their dialect of Quatrican and their variation of the Imperial Cult would be respected in Patrivian villages. This culture and language would come to be known as Old Patrivian.
The more centralised and coincidentally European style of self-governance in Patrival contrasted with the more tribal and confederate traditions of Quatrica proper. A Noble Republic formed in which nobles could stand for the position of Noble-Elect and control foreign and defensive policy. However, most powers were still held by the individual landowners. This system was referred to as ‘Patrival’, meaning ‘state’ or ‘dominion’.
In circa 1200, a Portuguese trading post was set up. The Noble Patrivians were eager to find a way to translate their language and communicate with the merchants. In the various cultural exchanges, the Portuguese asserted Patrivian independence from Quatrica proper. Over the following centuries, the Portuguese settlers were assimilated into the Patrival, rather than the more colonially-traditional vice versa. Catholicism was mixed with the already modified Quatrican Imperial Cult and with other ‘undesirable’ sects of Christianity in Europe.

Centuries later, the eccentric English nobleman, The Lord Henry Cromwell of Strathmore led a voyage of discovery and adventure into the Unknown. Mapmakers had believed the Quatrican continent to simply be a small island in the Wellington Ocean. While the mainland turned out to be quite different, Lord Strathmore encountered a series of uninhabited islands he’d name after himself. In 1477, the first English colonists built a settlement on the larger of the two. Further inland Lord Strathmore built Strathmore Castle, his family’s summer residence for generations to come. Many who were disillusioned with the Catholic Church of Christendom migrated from England to the new unofficial colony. Silver was prospected on the second island and a mining operation set up. The mines would fill the Strathmore family coffers and buy them many friends and a lot of influence on the Mainland in the following decades.
In 1491, Lord Strathmore sent colonists to the south-west of his islands where they quickly hit land. Some moved up and down the coast, looking for the best farmland available. It wasn’t long before they encountered the Patrivians. His son, Phillip Cromwell, then 24, led a team of diplomats to meet with Noble-Elect Tash Khunti. With talks in Portuguese, relations took off very quickly, with the Strathmorians pleased to see the level of religious tolerance and the Patrivians happy to have new trading partners. Several silver mining operation permissions were granted for a 60% cut for the Patrivians, with Quatrican slave labour to be provided for by the Patrivians.
By the early 16th century, with the local economy prospering, Philip Cromwell founded the Bank of Patrival. Meanwhile, Henry VIII of England recalled Strathmore and revoked his Lordship. The reason is believed to be because of the King’s jealousy of Strathmore wealth. After Strathmore’s execution in 1511 and several skirmishes, the Strathmorians prevailed and got their colonial possessions reinstated.
Philip Cromwell found himself as the new Lord Strathmore and had immense popular support as a war hero against England. A year later, upon the death of Tash Khunti, Cromwell rose to the position of Noble-Elect. His first act was to commission the designing and construction of Edinton, a new town to serve as the capital of Patrival. The financial costs of the project made much of his support in the aristocracy evaporate. A Noble’s Referendum quickly overruled the Noble-Elect and they threatened to impeach him unless a land reform was passed, granting the nobles new titles and reorganising estates followed by the Creation of the House of Lords which would need to consent by majority vote for a rise in estate taxes. The Nobles’ Dictate as it would later be known was agreed to by the Noble-Elect and his project continued. Edinton would include a Noble-Elect’s Palace, an abbey in the style of Westminster, townhouses for the wealthy and for Lords’ parliamentary residences. The Houses of Parliament were built on the banks of the River Edinton and the Noble-Elect’s Marina just next to it. Further upriver would be the location of Bingham Boarding School centuries later and downstream was the Portu-Patrivian port, recently renamed Tudor. An appreciation in silver and an “understanding” reached with the Medici Family in Italy meant that the Strathmorian coffers would continue to fill, allowing several tax cuts for the nobles, securing Lord Strathmore reelection in 1522. However, he only served another 2 years before dying of a chest infection. The by-election was won by John Strathmore, nephew of his predecessor. The vast family wealth accumulated over the last 45 years was spent on making Edinton one of the most beautiful towns in the world. Fountains, public gardens, sculptures, boulevards, and an art school were added to the capital. Work on the Abbey and Houses of Parliament was accelerated by the increased harshness with which the slave labour was treated. Approximately 70% of the labourers working on the capital during these years died from exhaustion or work accidents. Edinton earned the nickname ‘City of Bones’.
Noble-Elect Strathmore was returned for a second term in 1532. His second tenure was marked by the exodus of Protestants from Europe into Patrival and then into Quatrica. The natives were pushed further and further back inland until the Religious Toleration Act 1536 was passed, swearing religious loyalty to the Church of England, but with religious tolerance being granted to all Western European Christian faiths, but outlawing the practice of Quatrican Imperial Cult. Content with their emancipated status in Patrival, it wasn’t long before the colonisation of Quatrica slowed down and the exodus ended at Patrival.
John Strathmore retired as Noble-Elector and Lord of Strathmore in 1542, passing the former unofficially and the latter officially to his younger brother Jonas. Jonas Strathmore won the election with a 79% vote.
A consolidation of the Anglican faith took place over the following thirty years until a merger between fifteen small sects and churches into the Church of England, represented by the Archbishop of Edinton. The first, Roger Allington, was appointed by English Queen Elizabeth I in 1545. Allington was a rather orthodox and unrevolutionary clergyman. He and Jonas Strathmore carefully detailed the structure of the Patrivian Branch of the Church of England. The Archbishop’s passing in 1560 marked the rise of Thomas Heseltine. The bishop of Tudor was promoted at age 31 with Queen Elizabeth’s permission. His early years as the Archbishop were uneventful. Lord Strathmore’s loyalty to the Homeland and his cautious personality kept Heseltine in line until the Lord’s death. However, the Archbishop built up a relationship with Strathmore’s nephew, Paul.

When Lord Jonas Strathmore died in 1573, his holdings were passed onto his son, Paul Strathmore. Completely uninterested in politics, he appointed Thomas Heseltine as his Lord High Chancellor, the archaic equivalent of a Prime Minister and not to be confused with the today’s Lord High Chancellor. A staunch hater of Catholicism, Quatricans and Homeland interference. To raise his ‘Army of the Lord’, he needed funds. He concluded that the only effective methods of raising the required money would be to properly institutionalise taxation. A proposal to establish Patrival Revenue and Customs was presented to the House of Lords. Aware that the tax loopholes they had exploited for generations were under threat, they rejected the bill by an enormous majority. Outraged, Heseltine went to Strathmore to form a new legislative body. One of commoners who shared the Archbishop’s fear of undesirable faiths making a comeback into government. For the first time, the Lords was circumvented and the Archbishop’s bill was passed straight to Strathmore to be signed into law. With the new lower house effectively appointed by Heseltine and the Lords neutralised, the Strathmores had a nominal control over Patrival many of their ancestors could only dream of. However, in practice, it was Archbishop Heseltine who exercised that power. His private army would sweep the country, exterminating Quatricans from the villages surrounding Edinton, Tudor, and other major towns. Catholics were rounded up and executed by mass burnings at the stake. In a more eccentric move, the theatre was outlawed and people were forbidden from cooking, travelling outside their settlement, household chores, and other recreational activities on a Sunday. Heavy fines were placed on those violating the new laws and the Archbishop’s personal wealth grew. He spread it among his favourites in parliament and at Lord Strathmore’s court.
Another step forward was Lord Strathmore’s murder by a lunatic on 19th February 1576. His successor, Bartholomew Strathmore, was a firm believer in the Divine Rule. It was by God-given right that he was Lord Strathmore and not some Quatrican peasant. He quickly moved to reform the House of Commons to represent rich non-aristocratic landowners and gave it institutional responsibility to propose legislation equal to that of the House of Lords, believing that Patrival was the land, so the landowners should have the most parliamentary power. To Heseltine, it was a surprise, but not a disaster. The Lord did not dismiss the Archbishop as Lord High Chancellor and did not seek to crack down on his personal wealth and influence. The two grew politically close, working to exempt the Church from taxation and centralise. The power of the House of Lords as lawmakers diminished. But they would still go on to produce the most future Prime Ministers, and would veto much radical legislation from the Commons over the following centuries. In 1582, the duo declared independence from the Church of England. Clergymen were offered the choice; convert to the new Church of Patrival or face trial and execution. The majority agreed. But the new Church was organisationally and ideologically identical to the English Church, but with a different head: Lord Strathmore.
The Quatricans on the other hand weren’t given any opportunity or choice to assimilate. Heseltine’s rhetoric became more and more violent. By 1585, he was calling for “total extermination of the beast.” His Army of the Lord and many armed militias prepared to lead the way deeper into Quatrica. The River Eyston was at the edge of the known world. Few had ventured further west from its banks, expecting only savagery and barbarism in the savannah grasslands and deserts beyond. Heseltine offered all Christian religious minorities full amnesty and land in the “Crusade against the Beast” Hundreds of ferries carried the zealous and evangelical settlers across the Eyston and into Quatrica. Thus the First Quatrican Colonial War had begun.
The invasion force ravaged the countryside, evicting Quatricans from the land and preparing the land for Patrivian settlement. But after three years of fierce Quatrican resistance in the form guerrilla warfare and a war of attrition, Lord Strathmore adopted a new strategy. Leading an army personally, he marched on the Quatrican Capital of Giddah. He met the Imperial Heir’s army in an open battle on March 22nd 1588. The Battle of Ska-Cudan was a decisive victory for the Patrivians. The Imperial Heir was hit by a cannonball and killed instantly. Strathmore’s army reached the capital the following morning and stormed the Palace. The Emperor was captured and forced to abdicate in favour of Lord Strathmore. Aware that an occupation of a country as large as Quatrica was impossible, he resolved to leave most power in the hands of the Quatrican nobility. Heseltine was furious. His crusaders would not take up arms against their Lord. The religious minority composition believed the whole affair was arranged to distract them from the true enemy.
The land immediately west of the Eyston was settled by Patrivians, but the rest remained in Quatrican hands. Ambitious landowners and aristocrats would every now and again lead an expedition to wrestle control of areas from the legal Quatrican owners, but this process was slow and would take hundreds of years.
Heseltine meanwhile, was ruined. The humiliation and cost of a failed and prolonged war and then for victory to be snatched in one sudden prestigious battle by someone else was enormous. His personal wealth exhausted, and his influence dried up, Heseltine faded into obscurity and was quietly dismissed as Lord High Chancellor in 1590. His protégé the lawyer and diplomat Benedict Dauncey was appointed to replace him. This was followed by Heseltine’s death in 1591.

Dauncey’s central policy was reconciliation with England, the Catholic Church, and the Quatrican nobility. He also ensured the presence of local courts and greatly improved the efficiency of local justice systems. He was a much less ambitious character than his predecessor and Strathmore became the dominant political force in the country until his death in 1601. In his will and testament, he requested that the Noble-Electorate of Patrival and the Strathmore estate be merged into the Duchy of Strathmore-Patrival. His son became the Duke of the reorganised state.

George Harrods

[SovietPrussia]

Sites of Great National and Cultural Importance

Warrender Palace - Official residence of the Royal Family.

Strathmore Estate - Summer residence of the Royal Family.

Edinton Cathedral - burial place of Patrival's monarchs, site of royal coronations.

Forum of Nobles and Freemen - Houses of Parliament, home of the legislative branches of Patrival's government.

Lauder House - Prime Minister's official Residence.

Statue of Archbishop Heseltine - Statue of the First Prime Minister.

Located outside the Forum of Nobles and Freemen.

Statue of King Charles-Augustus II - Statue of the late King.

Located outside Edinton Cathedral.

Statue of John Percival - Statue of the late military dictator

Educational & Scientific Establishments

Edinton School of International Relations - University famous for its politics, international relations, and psychology courses.

Bingham Boarding College - Top secondary school in the country. The children of important government and royal officials traditionally attend here.

Woolton Liberal School of Economics - Famous for its limited but high quality available courses: political economy, accounting and Classical history.

Rosendale University - Known for its Literature and history courses. Home of the Rosendale Union; a prestigious debating society.

Federation of Liberal Schools, Central Office - An organisation set to promote and protect less conservative-leaning Universities from outside pressure.

Tudor School of Law - Courses include law, politics and theoretical physics. Stronghold of Conservatism.

Huddersfield University of Chemistry and Biological Sciences - Centrist University. Also has courses in applied physics, astrophysics, telecommunications and optics.

University of Adillburgh - Moderate Conservative University, education policy think tank. Renowned for its archeology and linguistics courses.

Bentley Institute - Social policy think-tank, dedicated to Lord William Bentley's ancestor, the Home Secretary during the 1830s and 40s Lord Hubert Bentley.

Estay Institute - Neo-liberal Economics think-tank.

Edinton Grant Centre - Offices of the Ministry of Science where public funding and charitable donations are provided to research teams. Universities and private companies often provide funding and support innovators alongside the Ministry.

Various Science & Technology Parks - 35 S&T Parks operate within Patrival. High-tech industries have prospered around them and several Engineering companies have built world class transportation and road systems down the River Harlbolder which flows from Woolton and the Quatrican highlands in the south, through Rosendale-upon-Newbold, Edinton, and finally Tudor before flowing into the sea.

Protected Areas

Hoare Wetlands - Wildlife Reserve

Soper Forest - Wildlife Reserve

Woolton Uplands District - National Park

Strathmore Estate - Summer Residence of Royal Family treated as a National Park when vacant. Strathmore Castle doubles as a visitor centre and high-price youth-hostel for the wealthy yearning for the outdoors.

Quatrican Hotsprings - National Park, major geological research site.

[SovietPrussia]

Liberalism Indeed – A column from the Socialist International Newsletter Monthly magazine (2000)


The last few decades, guided by our Prime Minister the Lord Bentley, have been prosperous for those who can afford it. A special contract has existed between Lord Bentley, the Liberal Party, and the middle class. Bentley will push for Thatcherist reforms which benefit the bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie support the Liberal Party and the Party supports Lord Bentley. The aristocratic landowning class is too small to resist in the House of Commons and Bentley isn’t going to give the overwhelmingly huge working class the vote just so they can elect someone else. Quatricans have seen very little rises in living standards in the past century and women aren’t going to forgive the man who essentially made them the property of their husbands. The Bentlists will argue that order was restored to a country in anarchy. What they ignore is that Bentley employed the most illiberal, unorthodox and subtle methods that even his father or Lord Protector Percival could only dream of. Rather than promote liberty and equality, Bentley created the criminal offense of existing. Women cannot leave the home without the family head’s explicit permission, the working class are threatened with a fire-on-sight policy by employers and then by government troops if they attempted anything resembling trade unionism or collective bargaining, the secret service are used to infiltrate political organisations, the civil service and House of Lords pander to Bentley’s every desire. Such methods were considered ‘Unpatrivian’ and dishonourable before his premiership. Even under Lord Percival, power and oligarchy were not as ruthlessly exploited as under Bentley. Reform as he often spins to his press baron controlled media (save Kevin Neate, God bless him) is a myth. His sabotage of progressive bills - deliberately including clauses too radical for the liberals and others too reactionary for everyone else, contradictory points, even spelling mistakes – has prevented any actual change for people outside Bentley’s bubble of spin doctors, vegetable ministers and narcissism. The monarch may claim to be a champion of liberalism and freedom, but when every government official from the Prime Minister to secondary school teachers claims to as well, those words have lost all meaning. And how convenient it is for the King that Lord Bentley has crushed all opposition to the establishment, legal or otherwise, guaranteeing a future for the outdated aristocracy and monarchy.

The Conservatives, who have been out of power for most of the last half-century, have the ball in their court. Already several of their backbenchers have been suggesting that real social and political reform is needed for the Party as well as the country. I call upon them to leave their outdated ideology behind them; they’ve already done better than the Liberals at liberalism, why stop now?

But it is utterly amoral for the working class to continue their current existence. Meagre negative income taxes, no state or employer funded welfare, the elderly laboured to death in the workhouses, and a second economy based on scavenging, barter, and car-boot sale style markets. The key to improve one’s lot is political freedom and representation in the country’s institutions.

Isaac von Heidelberg

[SovietPrussia]

OOC: I hate this character so much. What he got in the end was too good for him.

The Baron of Patrival(2001)


Few Patrivian statesmen of the upper house have gone by a title other than the social norm of ‘Lord’. Ever since the days of the Noble Electorate, a sense of peerage and republican equality between upper house members existed. But then again few Patrivian Lords have had quite the same ambition, drive and fanaticism as Lord Basil Robins, Baron of Bentley and father of today’s Prime Minister. The Baron of Patrival, as his opponents and later as his supporters would call him, grew up knowing he would go into politics and return the country to a level of law and order enjoyed only under the Lord Protectorate and dictatorship of John Percival. His fascistic fear of feminists, the rise of the working class and of liberalism would be his principal drive through his 62 year life, cut short by the knives, fists and boots of an anarchist cell while in a public lavatory. But no biography of the Lord himself would be complete without detailing the transformation Patrival went through during his political career.

The Bentley family line entered history on January 9th 1742, the hottest day since records had begun at the Duke Richard II’s coronation. As a side event for the day, the new Duke’s sister, Caroline Strathmore. Her husband-to-be was the gentleman cotton farmer George Robins. While it paled in publicity to the coronation, no one could predict the consequences of this union. Their eldest son was appointed as the first Baron of Bentley, the generation after saw the family enter the pig iron industry, and the generation after that into newspapers. But it was the newspaper baron’s grandson who would make the dynasty truly famous.

160 years, 9 months and 3 days after that marriage, The Baron Bentley was born. He entered the world during the last full year of the ‘National Government’ which oversaw Patrival’s transition to an independent state from Great Britain. His father, the then Lord Bentley was mostly uninterested in politics and used his title’s and press empire’s influence to grant favours to his parliamentary friends. His early years were dominated by the traditional upper class education, learning rhetoric, piano, Greek, Latin and horse riding from an early age. His first sherry was at ten and he was into politics by the time he was 15. As an attendant at Bingham Boarding School, he was exposed to the vibrant student politics and was more than ready to exercise his right to vote at age 16. In his autobiography, he says his first vote was cast at age 17 in the 1919 General Election, following the collapse of the Great War National Front. He voted for the Patrivian Values Party, a reactionary bloc of the Conservatives which had risen during the War years. When the Coalition stood, they were smoothed over by the more moderate majority. But in 1919, they were swept to power under the leadership of war hero Sir Harold Patton, who relinquished his military command in return for a knighthood and the Premiership. The government was short-lived though, much to the dismay of the young Basil Robins. Regular life had largely been restored after the First World War ended, but the illegal trade union movement and Feminist Alliance had brought the country to its knees. However, the majority of Patrivians saw the brutal government response as excessive. But while Patton’s government didn’t last, his fundamental ideology would be transferred into mainstream Conservatism for upcoming decades and he’d be favourably compared to in future decades. The status of women had grown slowly in the previous century, even to a point where many local councils allowed them to vote in local elections, but their rights were then curtailed to a point where they were slaves to their husbands and fathers in all but name. Any legal rights were stripped off of them, but to Robins the results were clear, femiterrorist activity plummeted and other threats to the status quo intimidated to a point where for several years after, political activism practically ceased.

While Basil Robins voted with his heart for the most reactionary party standing, he was married by his father to Alice Wright, the daughter of a wealthy city industrialist in 1924. Their marriage was not a happy one according to one household servant.

Their dinners were a cold and awkward affair. Few words exchanged. When he wasn’t working in his father-in-law’s business with the aid of a mistress or two, he’d be avoiding his wife or beating her for that one brief affair with another man.

Robins attended a four year course on economics privately tutored to him at the request of the Wright Family and when Alice’s father, James Wright passed away in early 1929, he inherited the family textile business. While unemployment rose throughout the country thanks to the Great Depression, Robins took the opportunity to halve wages when his workers had no where else to go to for work. Operations were expanded and he was lauded by many parliamentarians for providing work and bread for the masses. A petition of 1,307 names was passed to him in 1930, including Conservative Leader Lord Terry, a close friend of both James Wright and Lord Bentley. An agreement was reached where Robins would stand for a safe seat in 1932 and would be appointed as Home Secretary, provided Robins ensured the financial and press support for Terry’s Conservatives. The election was a landslide victory. Even several disillusioned liberal MPs switched sides to support the new government.

The Lord Mannhelm Ministry had utterly failed to kickstart recovery in the economy. To pay for the high military spending to keep the country’s dissidents in line, the government resorted to abandoning the Gold Standard. The influx of money inflated middle class savings away and destroyed the accounts of the businesses that were left. Consumer spending continued to plummet until the food riots in Edinton forced the government to call an election, which it lost to Lord Terry’s Conservatives. Economic policy in the early years of Terry’s Ministry was centred on “resetting” the financial sector. All consumer debt was requisitioned by the government and military spending and state employee numbers curtailed to allow a halving of money printing and an eventual return to the Gold Standard. In the meantime, Robins was tasked with fighting a civil war with decreasing resources. He wrestled a pay rise for riot police officers from the government and began a recruitment campaign. At the same time he used his contacts in the Press to make sure public opinion would always be on his side, rather unsuccessfully though. From their coverage of his time as Home Secretary, he built up a modest collection of quotations reproduced by countless newspapers.

A woman’s place is the home; to serve and support her husband in all her capacity. She must obey him unquestionably and be disciplined by the most brutal methods necessary should she ever step out of term.

A socialist, a communist, a democrat, a social democrat, a syndicalist and a liberal democrat are one and the same in their goal, their tactics, and their treason. No family can rest safely at night until this disease on human dignity is rooted out and annihilated.


Robins was determined to crush any and all opposition to the stability of the country. The government became the first ever to use mustard gas against its own people; a detail conveniently missed out by the editor of The Patrivian Bugle. In retaliation, nearly all the liberal-leaning staff resigned.

In June 1933, dockworker and political activist Kurt Russell was released from his four year sentence of hard labour. He immediately rejoined his comrades in the Socialist Revolutionary League. By the end of the week he was in touch with influential coal miners, dockworkers, factory workers, steel workers and more to discuss the possibility of a General Strike calling for the immediate removal and arrest of Basil Robins. The cold wave and coal shortage in July and August heightened working class resentment and frustration. On the 21st August, 10 year old John Clark was caught drawing a portrait of Vladimir Lenin in chalk on a wall by Lord Wardendale and beaten to a pulp with his cane. Several armament workers intervened and mugged the aristocrat, handing his wallet to the young boy. Lord Wardendale wouldn’t stand for this. He wrote a letter to the Home Secretary, voicing his anger and demanding immediate action against those responsible. The workers were arrested, found guilty of assault and hanged. For Russell, that was the last straw. On the 25th, he hijacked the local radio station and simply said, ‘The time is right, the time is now.’ By 11:00, workers across Tudor down-tooled and walked to the city square. Stewards were eagerly waiting and handed out banners, flags and other protest-essential gear. At 13:20, they began marching to the City Council Hall. Behind barricades and armoured cars around the building, the riot police assembled. Sheriff Arthur Hall stood next to Mayor Hubert West on the Council Hall balcony as they watched the protestors approach. At their head was Kurt Russell himself, holding a piece of paper with three demands on the behalf of the workers of Patrival: The introduction of a 40-hour maximum working week, two weeks paid holiday, and the arrest of Basil Robins. They stopped only four metres in front of the police and Constable Harry Daun leapt forward to accept the piece of paper. He hurried back to the Council Hall where the Sheriff and Mayor peered at it before it was telegrammed to the Cabinet in Edinton.

While the Prime Minister and Home Secretary argued, rifles and revolvers were distributed through the mob while cells of revolutionaries established sniper-nests in the nearby buildings. Then Constable Daun reported back to Russell, the government were going to fight. Russell turned to the mob, raised his left fist and began singing. After about the first line, the crowd began to join in.

The people's flag is deepest red,
It shrouded oft our martyr'd dead
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold,
Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high,
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We'll keep the red flag flying here.

Russell turned around once more and walked towards the barricade, the mob loyally followed. Then at 17:01 the Sheriff gave the order. But the front line police refused to raise their batons and allowed the protestors to pass. The second liners would most likely have done the same if not for a shot fired by one of the sharpshooters, hitting the Sheriff between the eyes. The police charged. The Council Garrison, positioned on the roof, hurled grenades down, killing almost a hundred in seconds. The mob retreated into the side streets. A sniper battle ensued. An update was passed by telegram to the Cabinet, and Robins stormed out and returned to his office. He sent six tanks and fifty truckloads of soldiers to Tudor by train to contain the uprising. He made especially clear his instructions, shoot-to-kill.

The next morning, the army occupied the city. In a speech to the House of Commons, Robins commented on the situation.

Honourable and Right Honourable Gentlemen, Mister Speaker, yesterday at half past five I ordered the crushing of the Bolshevik Revolution in Tudor, the great city unfortunate enough to house such villains and scoundrels. But I give you my word that by this time next week, the streets will be safe once more and the Muscovite Menace, Russell, shall be presented to this Parliament for trial. Comrade Stalin will watch as his conspiracy against the liberty of our shores is confounded. The Red Flag shall never flutter in the winds of Edinton whilst I hold office as Home Secretary. As I speak, our brave soldiers are rooting out the threat and guaranteeing our children a safe world to live in. We must not falter or give an inch of ground to these dogs or everything out forefathers have fought for will burn in our time. And we will have none to blame but ourselves. Onward, I say! Onward and stamp upon the cockroaches!

And indeed, it wasn’t long before the revolution ran out of steam as the unburied bodies piled up on the streets, feasted on by the rats. Russell was found hiding in one of the working class houses and was taken before the Lords and House of Commons. The chief prosecutor was of course Basil Robins. Russell was not given any defence team or even allowed to speak in his own defence. The trial lasted the best part of an hour until Robins found him guilty of high treason, murder, disturbing the peace, vandalism and theft. He was sentenced to death by mustard gassing.

January 1934 was a mild, quiet summer in Patrival outside the political class. Robins had survived 11 assassination attempts since Russell’s execution. The Conservative government wasn’t doing much better. Their 1932 approval rating of 72% had plummeted to 9%. In every by-election, they’d lose the seat by a huge swing in support. Party donations dropped to 5% of 1930 levels and the Prime Minister was regularly egged on his way to the House of Lords. Even the reactionary King Charles Augustus I had tried to distance himself from his government. On 3rd March, twenty Conservative backbenchers agreed to desert the government and break away to form the Independent Conservative Party. Now only holding a 3-seat majority in the Commons, the government was on very thin ice. The situation wasn’t helped when Robins’ father passed away, leaving Robins as the new Lord Bentley. His Shaleshire seat was won by an Independent Conservative and the government majority was reduced to two.

But events abroad and then closer to home would change the political landscape of Patrival to the benefit of the government. Patrivian ascension to the 10000 Islands Economic Co-Operation Area and the Ten Thousand Islands Treaty Organisation followed by the creation of the Patrival Expeditionary Force were popular steps. The trade concessions from other 10000 Islands nations provided a new international market and the beginning of the XKI Green Revolution thanks to Patrivian inventor and fertilizer manufacturer James French. On top of this, the armaments industry exploded to increase exports to a militarising Europe. For the middle class, an economy on the upswing meant more of their spending was going towards having a good time. For the first time in decades, they would associate with the upper classes in the various cabarets, nightclubs, bistros and parties becoming more and more common. Jazz became an instant hit in the privileged classes. Patrival was enjoying the 1920s a decade late. Government approval climbed to 18%, but the personal approval rating of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Huddersfield, was in the high 40s. A short-lived era of good feeling, low inflation and a stock market boom made the new Lord Bentley seem obsolete. His fiery speeches in Parliament and raging arguments in the Cabinet became less frequent. He spent his remaining two year tenure as Home Secretary working with minor Bills and Acts; not at all his sort of thing. His disgusting methods as Home Secretary had always been shunned as ‘vulgar’ by the upper class, but now they were not seen as necessary. The Russell Rebellion had all but been forgotten. While he was on his annual Quatrican holiday in November 1936, the Prime Minister sacked him as Home Secretary. In Lord Terry’s memoirs, he recalls their last conversation together.

He took it surprisingly well. But before I had the chance to put the telephone down, Bentley as always had to have the last word. He asked me how I got on with Huddersfield. I said, “Very well, why?” He replied, “Oh, he is very ambitious.” I laughed.

But Bentley wasn’t going to stand for it. The coordinated attacks on several cabarets by socialist terrorist cells split Conservatives between the government and Lord Bentley. The Liberals took the opportunity to push through a vote of no confidence only narrowly beaten in parliament. Bentley deserted his Party and registered for membership of the Patrivian Values Party, or the Fatherhood Front as it was colloquially known as. Party leader Sir Adam Wilson informed Bentley that the military were prepared to support them if they attempted a putsch. From his estate in Bentley, Robins and Wilson schemed. On Christmas Day, the local barracks was seized by the Patrivian Vanguards, the Party’s paramilitary wing. They armed themselves and telegraphed their co-conspirators across the country. Radio stations in the major cities were hijacked and the word was spread before power to the capital was cut. Colonel Brice of the Tudor Garrison took the initiative to address the people of the city.

Fellow Patrivians, I’m sure you’ve heard the news about the Lord Bentley. And I’m sure you can see your life. While the parliamentarians enjoy an opulent lifestyle, you suffer in silence. Violence is the only way our nation communicates with itself. We must take a stand and tell them no. Class conflict, the undeserving sucking up the country’s wealth, holding us down for their own profit, all this must be purged from our shores before the corruption destroys us. I have just been informed that Lord Bentley is marching on Edinton at the head of a Revolutionary Army. Join him, join your brothers, join your country. Arm yourselves and find me in the city square. We move at noon!

Bentley, Wilson and Brice converged outside the capital and marched in unopposed into the city until they reached the Parliament Square at 14:15. From the Houses of Parliament, they came under sniper fire. Machine gun nests hidden in other nearby buildings opened fire and tanks rolled in from several sides. Colonel Brice burnt to death trying to escape his tank while Wilson was run over by an armoured car. Bentley was wounded when a bullet went straight through his left thigh. After less than an hour of fighting, the revolutionaries were driven out of the city and pursued across the countryside. Bentley was captured, tried and sentenced to house arrest.

He was criticised in parliament, being referred to ironically as Baron Bentley rather than Lord Bentley. (OOC: Equality among Lords, remember? A big aristocratic insult) The Baron was unable to defend himself, being locked up in his estate. He would spend the following years in his temporary retirement, painting. Outside his personality cult, his works were largely unknown and ignored, most purchases made to have something to fuel the fire with. On 12th February 1937, his first daughter, Hannah, was born. In January the following year, William, the future Prime Minister followed.

At the end of the year, Bentley was pardoned and returned to Edinton and political life. While he was away the Conservative Party had fallen apart. It would only be a matter of time before the single-digit approved government collapsed. They lost the majority in parliament months earlier and Terry relied on juggling the demands of the Independent Conservatives and Patrivian Values Party to keep the Premiership. Adam Wilson’s son, Stanley, had assumed leadership of the Fatherhood Front and Lord Waxman led the Independent Conservatives. The boom of the mid 30s had subsided, the economy kept afloat only by the rising price of armaments. The Opposition Leader, Lord Sandbury of the Liberal Party, hammered the government on almost every point, including the early release of Bentley, thus paving the way for his return. Bentley struck back fiercely, but was received with laughter by his peers. He had become a caricature, regularly featured in the Punch magazine. The twist was that it wasn’t as much of an exaggeration as many believed. Four years ago was a world away.

By early 1939, it became clear to the Patrivian Foreign Office that war in Europe was drawing closer and selling arms to both sides wasn’t going to be acceptable to the international community for much longer. They were faced with a dilemma; should Patrival stand with the mother country, Britain, or fight back the forces of liberalism and socialism alongside Hitler and Mussolini. Alternatively, there was the popular option of neutrality. Lord Terry needed every scrap of political capital he could get and decided without a cabinet meeting to “stay out of Europe’s War.” The rest of the first half of the year was relatively uneventful, but in mid-August a political scandal struck the nation. Several working class movements were indeed receiving support from the Soviet Union, just as Bentley warned. What made the matter even worse was that the government has attempted to cover it up due to the fact that the Home Secretary was receiving bribes from the Soviets in return for a softer line on the socialists in the country. Lord Huddersfield abandoned Terry’s side and joined the Independent Conservatives. The governing party’s approval rating fell to a historic low of 0%. Terry’s was offered a choice. Leave or be forced out. Terry stood down as Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative Party. The Deputy PM, Lord Gilmore, assumed leadership of the government and the party for the election.

Unsurprisingly, Gilmore soundly lost the election and the vast majority of the party’s seats in the Houses of Commons. The Old Conservative Party that emerged out of the First World War National Government died in November 1939. The Independent Conservatives disbanded and most returned to a shattered Conservative Party to reconstruct it in their own shape. Lord Huddersfield however had drifted towards the Liberal Party and went in that direction instead. The Patrivian Values Party meanwhile enjoyed a quarter of the seats in the Commons while the Liberals had a sizeable 60% majority. The Conservatives, even after the Independents rejoined, were left with a measly 15%. Bentley had come off well in the political upheaval. Some even cheered him in the streets. But the real winner was Lord Sandbury, the leader of the Liberal Party and now the Prime Minister of Patrival.

The new government’s first act was to declare war on Germany and honour Patrival’s alliance with the United Kingdom. However, the King would not assent to the bill until a National Wartime Government was formed. Fresh from a triumphant general election, it was a humiliation. After a month and a half of indecision and stalemate, on the 12th January 1940, the government caved in to the King’s demands. The new government would be Liberal in name, but bipartisan in composition. A disproportionate number of war cabinet positions were handed to the Conservatives and Patrivian Values Party. Bentley found himself in the spotlight once more. War was declared the next morning. The new cabinet took a shape similar to that of the previous National government: A Prime Minister, Chancellor of Armaments and the Exchequer, Minister for Home Security, Foreign Secretary, Secretary of State for War, First Lord of the Admiralty, Cabinet Secretary, and Secretary of State for the Air Force.

As Minister for Home Security and for Armaments and the Exchequer, he would have near total control over the country’s internal affairs in gearing it for war. Foreign Secretary Lord Waxman made sure embassy staff in all postings had mandatory self-defence training and would oversee the recruitment of Quatrican battalions. The Admiralty, Air Force and Army prepared a joint-recruitment campaign, The Prime Minister, the King and Minister-without-Portfolio Lord Huddersfield rallied the nation. Stanley Wilson of Patrivian Values was appointed Lord Privy Seal, a largely honorary position to keep him quiet and out of Bentley’s way to power. Chief of Staff from before the war, Horatio Hulme, assumed his position in the cabinet too without a portfolio.


Protests in major cities to the war were ordered to be dispersed by the police. But the crowds responded with rioting. Bentley now had just the excuse he needed. He pushed the Homeland Defence of Patrival Act 1940 which instituted heavy censorship on newspapers and radio stations, restriction of movement, checkpoints, the ability of the police to hold a person indefinitely without trial, the right to free assembly(including protest) removed, a 20:00 until dawn curfew, and regular inspections of private letters. The Act was followed up with a Home Front Safety Act, for the forcible allocation of labour. Rationing was introduced so that food, rapidly produced munitions and weapons could be sent to Europe. These measures had destroyed support for the Liberal government, and the Premier relied on those outside his party to stay in office. Thus the Dictatorship of Lord Bentley was born.

Wilson’s untimely death towards the end of the year and the ascension of Sir Anthony Butler as leader of the Fatherhood Front spelt the beginning of the end of the Lord Sandbury Ministry. Butler broke his party away from the National Government, calling for the removal of twenty three Liberal Lords who obstructed the Home Front Safety Act. Lord Huddersfield pledged his agreement to this demand should he become Prime Minister. Lord Bentley of course wasn’t against the idea of getting rid of a few Liberal Lords, and the King was happy to consent. The Prime Minister had little choice but to cave in. He traded his position in his Party, from which he was expelled from, for the security of his government. He gambled and lost both. On the 2nd March 1941, the King requested his resignation in favour of Lord Huddersfield.

Huddersfield’s Ministry began with the release of the popular poet Leonardo Nixon. An Edinton born upper-middle class fellow who wrote many of his works in old-Patrivian. He miraculously saved the language from extinction in the English dominated region, making it a must for the high society of Patrival to have some grasp of. The neo-Patrivian operas, poems and music would remain popular up to the present day. It bought the government some very much needed popularity and time to assert itself. But Baron Bentley didn’t let it go without a fight. After weeks of heated arguments in the cabinet, he agreed only when Nixon was forbidden from publishing anything politically sensitive. The political result was a defeat snatched from the jaws of victory.

The government’s first challenge came in late April. The many minor working class organisations merged into the Confederation of Patrivian Labour - the CPL. They spread word for a protest march to Edinton, calling for the end of Patrival’s involvement in the War. They were joined by the newly formed United Front of Women’s Suffrage – the UFWS. This materialised on the eve of Operation Barbarossa on Germany’s eastern border coincidentally. It was of course seen as a communist uprising by the right-wing of Edinton and dispersed violently by police and military forces. Reactionary press barons reported the following days that the Eastern Front was opened by the Soviets. This myth would split the National government between continued but reluctant support of the Allies and now the Soviets, or to seek a separate peace with Germany and their allies. Rejoining the war on the Axis wasn’t off the table either. On 12th September, Parliament voted by 103 to 67 in favour of switching sides.

In response, the CPL adopted a new strategy, guerrilla warfare and bombings. The Foreign Office was obliterated with the Foreign Secretary and his deputy along with hundreds of staff members inside. Lord Huddersfield himself was shot in the leg with a revolver by former Liberal MP Oscar Hawsley. Baron Bentley wouldn’t be left out of the action. When attacked himself, he wrested his attacker to the ground before beating him to death with his cane.

By the end of the year, the economy had become dependant on the buying of armaments by Germany and security on the German Navy after the British and French scuttled most of the Patrivian’s. Independence from Berlin diminished. Pressure was placed on Huddersfield to tighten anti-Semitic laws and to crack down on democratic forces. In February ‘42, he submitted the National Unity Bill to the Commons. It contained details on the removal of parliamentary assent to bills so it could all be done in cabinet before being passed onto to King, which the Prime Minister could overrule if necessary. Huddersfield was indeed a true liberal. It was defeated by 154 votes to 16. Fourteen MPs were arrested on treason charges and the bill was resubmitted. But it was defeated by 80 votes to 76. The arrest of six more MPs and another resubmit, it passed by 77 votes to 73.

The House of Lords, save most cabinet members, unanimously voted the bill down thrice before the Prime Minister threatened them with a new proposition.

If I must, I shall flood this House with one thousand new pro-bill Lords who shall then proceed to disestablish this institution. This time, the Lords delayed the National Unity Bill by nine months, and with the King’s urging, the Prime Minister backed down and accepted the wait. Members of the Commons stopped attending parliament, out of fear of arrest. The anti-Semitic laws passed easily through both Houses and were signed into law by the King. Baron Bentley gave his usual spiel in the House of Lords in favour of the ‘National Rebirth’ and closer ties to the German Reich. When the war ended, he would claim to have been coerced into these speeches in order to stay on the inside and hold back the worst excesses of a Fascist regime.

In October, the CPL and UFWS coordinated an attack on the parliament buildings. On the stroke of midnight of the 7th, a bomb was detonated in a broom cupboard in the House of Commons. The building was severely damaged but not totally destroyed. A similar plot to blow up the King’s Palace was foiled. Most of the conspirators were not captured, and those who were chose to commit suicide rather than reveal their comrades. But by the end of the month, the suicide bombings started. The Prime Minister was forced to postpone his National Unity Bill so he and Bentley could deal with the threat. On the 4th December, Franklin Reeves, the leader of the CPL, ordered his revolutionary Red Army to step up their attacks in the ‘final stage of the Rising.’ A battle for the streets ensued. Bentley unsurprisingly suggested that the government should,

‘Shoot them where they stand. [Mustard] gas will finish off the survivors.’

The battle lasted until New Years Day when the rebels were pushed out of the major cities. The government’s position of strength didn’t last. The UFWS, after hesitating over whether to support the revolt, joined the fight on the side of Reeves. This time the government and the royal family were forced to evacuate the city and run the country from the Strathmore estate temporarily.

‘Temporary’ turned out to be longer than initially predicted. The police and military did not quell the rebellion as they always had. The Police Officers Syndicate was established in early February 1943 and joined the CPL, leaving the military to fight alone. In mid-March, they too had had enough. Chief of General Staff, Field Marshall Horatio Hulme secured the support of the Americans and the British in attempting a coup. In the war cabinet, Baron Bentley was criticising him on his utter failure to maintain order. His reply was calm, cool, and quick.

My Lord Bentley, what you fail to understand is the sheer magnitude of the chaos which grips this nation. And what have you as Home Secretary, Lord Huddersfield as Prime Minister, and this entire cabinet done to alleviate the problems at the heart of the troubles. For this reason, I regret to inform you that I have the full backing of Prime Minister Churchill, President Roosevelt, and His Majesty King Charles Augustus in relieving you all of executive duties. My men shall escort you to your lodgings where you shall remain until further notice.

The Patrivian Values Party expelled Stanley Wilson, and he was promptly executed by Field Marshall Hulme. Lord Huddersfield met the same fate less than an hour later. Lord Bentley however was sentenced to life imprisonment. The leaders of the CPL and UFWS would be tracked down over the following year and made to disappear. The King appointed Hulme as the Lord Templespeak and invited him to form a new government. Meanwhile, Allied troops occupied the country to restore order. One woman wrote to her mother,

These days it’s difficult to keep track of whose tanks are rolling down the city square. And frankly it hardly matters. There will be waving a different flag by the end of the week.

But these soldiers wouldn’t be driven out so easily. Bentley watched from his cell the country’s transformation. After decades of civil war, the Templespeak Ministry promised a new future based on social cohesion, peace and bread. The heavily populist policies included the mass selling of food at half price to the population. The government introduced decimalisation, civil service reform and a meagre but radical working tax credit to less well off families with 3 or more children. The increased purchasing power of the population caused the economy to boom, and Patrival would be weaned off the armaments industry. When the reforms were finished in late 1943, the government repealed the war measures controlling the country’s people. Anthony Butler, the new leader of the Fatherhood Front, received a knighthood from the King for the de-radicalisation of his party and the end of reactionary terrorist activity.

Bentley’s short but intense time in prison was cut short in May 1944 when Templespeak stood down as Prime Minister. In the subsequent election, Butler’s Fatherhood Front won a historic victory with over three quarters of the House of Commons seats thanks to the historic enfranchisement of middle class men. Baron Bentley was pardoned and invited to be the Lord President of the Board of Trade. A rather lowly cabinet position but necessary if he wanted to return to the great offices of state. He instituted many new tariffs and ingenious trade rules and taxes. The tax credit was increased by 5% and extended to lower-middle class families. The work incentive was hailed by Bentley as a “highly productive reform for morally outstanding working families.” Funded by the civil service reform cuts and new custom duties, the new policy would be at the centre of the post-war Templespeak Consensus. The changes the country would undergo in the late 40s would largely be unchallenged until the final years of the Wurrex Ministry and the Templespeak Era 20 years later.

In July of that year, Bentley attended the Bretton Woods Conference in the United States alongside Foreign Secretary Adam Hillswitch. Little was agreed and Patrival stayed outside the IMF, the Bretton Woods System and other financial institutions. A separate agreement was reached with the Americans in September where the United States would fund development of Patrival’s post-war economy and move it away from armaments. The overvalued dollar from the Bretton Woods system made it ideal for Patrival’s industries to export there, even if Patrival was not a full member. The Patrivian stock markets were reopened the next morning and a general relaxation of economic restrictions. The most modern mining equipment available was installed in Patrivan precious metal mines. This and education-science funding were provided with American aid money. Production increased in the mines by 20% and the money supply was increased just above matching level. When the surrender of Germany came in 1945, the limited involvement in the Pacific Theatre allowed Patrival to demobilise. Bentley’s critics remained as stern as ever to oppose him. The assassination attempts would follow him to his grave – albeit their organisation and frequency dropped gradually over the years. But for the younger and more forgiving members of society who did not remember his worst excesses over a decade earlier, Bentley became a national icon inseparable by association from the popular government. The Board of Trade made sure he’d stay out of trouble, just where the Prime Minister wanted him. The Baron’s resentment grew over the next five years into jealousy of Anthony Butler. And the PM’s interference with his department, especially in the setting up of the first Patrivian “Science Park” proved to be a constant annoyance. A minute from a meeting of theirs regarding the Science Park matter conveys Bentley’s thoughts.

God did not intend the duties of His Majesty’s government to extend beyond the provision of public order, the defence of our most sacred Empire and the promotion of self-help and thrift. Anything more is an unnecessary burden on the public purse and the hard working Patrivian taxpayer. These “Science Parks” you speak so highly of will only serve to indoctrinate our children in love of future governments, Marxist or otherwise. Our nation’s values are for people to provide subsistence and advancement for their own character. They are for the individual, not for everything to be handed down at the expense of honest citizens and their wellbeing.

Bentley uncharacteristically submitted to the Prime Minister and the Science Park construction went ahead. Butler had tested the water, so to speak for a new education policy and for controlling Bentley’s Board of Trade. New universities were constructed to contain the disproportionately large middle and upper classes. Tension between the traditional aristocracy of Quatrica and the nobility and new-money of Patrival were diffused by allowing the two groups by ending the segregation between them in schools and universities. While this put off the issue of Quatrican independence for several decades, Bentley couldn’t believe what he saw before him, even if education wasn’t his department. To him Quatricans were a servant race, not equals. And more government interference meant higher taxes for the wealthy. He quickly moved to denounce Butler in the House of Lords.

Peers of the Upper House, I do not often speak out against the forces of order and stability in our nation; but the Butler Government has made several transgressions that destroy our society from within. The Science Parks and new state universities interfere with Patrival’s natural economic state. They collectivise our youth and our futures. They stifle our innovation, the driving force behind all progress. I ask Sir Butler, how many of our great forefathers were educated to believe the merits of socialism and the equal distribution of misery rather than the sanctity of God, Nation, and Fatherhood? I call on you, Prime Minister, turn this ship of state around or I fear by the end of the decade, this House shall be led from these ancient halls to the gallows and our estates handed to any Quatrican peasant or Patrivian proletarian.

Butler decided against dignifying Bentley with a response. He continued with his course, aware of the high popularity his government was enjoying, and previous ones had lacked. Bentley’s outburst in the House of Lords was not discussed or even mentioned in passing at Cabinet meetings. His honour was partially restored when he suggested the semi-withdrawal of the Allied forces present in Patrival since the 1943 Templespeak Coup. It was dismissed out of hand by the rest of the Cabinet who preferred the idea of total withdrawal. American President Harry Truman and British and French Premiers Clement Attlee and Charles de Gaulle met with the Baron in Paris in December. Butler was deliberately circumvented for the talks for reasons put forward by President Truman.

It’s comforting to have at least one man we can trust inside Patrival. As much good as Butler’s done for his country, foreign policy isn’t his strong point.

Truman was aware of the growing threat of the Soviet Union and saw the need of maintaining the influence of the United States across the world. But any heavy handed approach to Patrival, especially a regime change was completely out of the question. Destabilising the country would have opened the possibility of the Russians entering the theatre. After a week of ignoring repeated calls from Butler for Bentley to return, he finally submitted; but only to hand his Prime Minister a document signed by Truman, Attlee, and de Gaulle agreeing to a semi-withdrawal but a guarantee of ten permanent military bases. Pressured by the King himself, Butler added his signature.

The Patrivian Values Party Conference 1945 took place on the days leading up to Christmas. It was a rather cheery, almost celebratory event. The Fatherhood Front had finally brought peace and prosperity to the country. But the cost was for the Party itself. Patrivian Values was founded back in 1919 with the clear single goal of preserving the power of the monarchy. Indeed the monarch was still extremely influential but his traditional official power had not been restored in the slightest. On nearly every other taken-for-granted monarchist and conservative value they had traded principle for power. Laissez-faire and minimal government interference was only openly and vocally supported in the cabinet by Baron Bentley, and he wasn’t even technically a Patrivian Values member. The Party allowed the continued presence of foreign soldiers, a huge embarrassment. Even the fanatical patriotism and religiousness of the Fatherhood Front had been eroded and downsized by public office. They were competent administrators, granted, but its parliamentary backbenchers and its low-ranking activists grew more and more spurned.

The Liberals and Conservatives on the other hand were in disarray. Countless short lived Party leaderships were barely noticed by the media and the country as a whole. They shared 15% of the House of Commons. Party infrastructure collapsed, donations all but ceased, campaigning practically froze and their whips in parliament not enforcing their leaders’ agendas. The government’s popularity was in no jeopardy and there was little hope for either until autumn 1946. In March of that year, Lord Templespeak joined the Liberal Party. He received unanimous support in achieving the leader position before offering his 10% stake in the legislative branch to the government in exchange for the Treasury. The Chancellor of the Exchequer in both his and Butler’s ministries coincidentally resigned the previous week over details of the Science Park Program so with immense popular support, Templespeak’s offer was accepted. The new chancellor and Baron Bentley never quite saw eye to eye, to put it lightly. Templespeak was unlike the rest of the cabinet and not particularly religious. While this did not really bother his co-workers, it was utterly unacceptable to Bentley. The Baron did his best to humiliate Templespeak at every opportunity.

Winter 1946 was unexpectedly harsh. Coal prices soured and it was Bentley’s task to prevent this issue getting out of control. While the working class were not so badly hit as in 1933, for many people life became extremely difficult, even with their tax credits. Templespeak was credited for solving the crisis by buying up large quantities of coal, critics would argue that much of this was from his own mines and therefore heavily discounted if there was any personal cost at all, and selling it at very low prices to struggling families. State intervention kept food prices artificially low too. Templespeak’s first budget accounted for these costs and announced a new super-tax on the estates of the rich. While low by modern standards, it was outrageous for the upper class. The House of Lords delayed the budget by twelve months, the maximum delay time, and postponed it until the next year’s budget. A veto in all but name. Templespeak talked a reluctant Prime Minister Butler into appointing four new pro-bill Lords. The King refused but pressured the House of Lords to return the budget in an amended form to the Commons for a second debate. The more centrist bill passed back and forth until early October when the House of Lords conceded the battle and the King signed it into law on the 9th. Bentley came out of the melee rather well. Plans to expand the Quatrican railway system were scrapped and the civil service was kept at a minimal size. Science Parks were not funded as highly as Butler wanted. The budget would do. A confrontation with the most popular man in the country was not practical and Bentley knew it. The years of playing the political game and being in and out of the cabinet may have aged him physically a great deal, but mentally too. He wouldn’t exaggerate his importance like he would have a decade earlier. Templespeak on the other hand had the appeal to the masses to get away with almost anything. He acquired the positions of Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State to cement his position as Butler’s heir apparent.

Bentley did however have one unlikely tool. He met with the Prime Minister on 12th October at the beginning of a welcomed spring. Over lunch they discussed the future of the government. The Baron used all his persuasive clout to encourage the Prime Minister to have a cabinet reshuffle. But the man wouldn’t budge. He was terrified of the dangerous repercussions of dismissing Templespeak. Bentley persisted. Unfortunately for the two of them, one of Templespeak’s informants caught word of these meetings. The Chancellor would not stand for his Prime Minister even sitting down to plot with the Baron. He submitted his resignation the following morning. Butler was reduced to begging his Chancellor to stay in the government. The Prime Minister got his way on the condition that Adam Hillswitch be dismissed as Foreign Secretary and replaced with one of Templespeak’s men: Sir Jonathan Byrd. Butler trusted Hillswitch as his closest ally in the cabinet. On the other hand, he thought of Byrd as a “treacherous crony”. It didn’t help that he heard shortly after that a dismayed Hillswitch had begun talking with the Liberal Party about the possibility of applying. But the man he felt most betrayed by was Templespeak. He began to suspect the entire threat was a ploy to gain more power. At the end of the month, he dismissed several lower down cabinet members who he just generally distrusted.

Aware of the breakdown in Cabinet, the King suggested that the two houses of parliament and the Cabinet itself take an extended recess from the beginning of November until February. Bentley planned to spend his holiday in his Quatrican villa, but he was called to Washington by the Ambassador to the United States. American Secretary of State George Marshall wanted to speak to their ‘inside man’ about the possibility of exploring the Quatrican deserts for oil. In return Bentley was promised support from the United States should he rise to the Patrivian premiership in the future. He was very keen to guarantee a secure safety net for his political career. He and Secretary Marshall were deeply concerned about the growing support the more left-wing members of the government had for legalising trade unions which may be influenced by Moscow. This culminated in the passing of the Working Syndicate Act 1947 passed the following year.

When parliament reconvened in February and passed the bill, the working class transformed itself. With protection from redundancy for Union activity, millions of workers formed legit syndicates. Contrary to conservative fears, they were not radicals or revolutionaries but more interested in working with employers to produce a mutually beneficial arrangement. The Trades Union Congress first convened in that February under the chairmanship of Harold Campbell – a young and dynamic but moderate former parliamentarian and undersecretary in the Board of Trade. The success of the initial experiment gave the government the support it needed to legalise industrial action, excluding strikes and sit-ins. Employers around the country formed their own Business Interests Association. The first TUC-BIA annual wage negotiation took place at the end of the month. The result was a record rise in wages, meagre as it was in real terms. The short term effects on the stock markets were more dramatic, even disastrous. An inflation panic destroyed confidence in the major indexes. The banking sector came onto the brink of collapsing. Financier Thomas Buchannan, one of the wealthiest men in the country had a sizeable stake in these indexes and owned majority stakes in several of their companies. He personally bailed out the banking sector by buying up a large chunk of key index corporations and a lot of influence. The government lowered interest rates marginally to indicate their confidence in the currency not needing a boost in value, and the international markets reacted well. The Patrivian Sterling returned to near its pre-crisis value and financial life rebound back to normal.

The TUC were not happy about the affair though. The BIA’s leading companies were now in the pocket of one man who was completely unaccountable to the public. Buchannan did not think highly of the TUC either. The 64 year old business mogul despised workers who were “not in the workplace or the pub.” But provided he was out of power, the TUC promised to remain committed to cooperating with employers instead of competing with them.

Bentley’s private life continued to flourish. His third child, Henry, was born in May as the Saturday Runrise newspaper of the Baron’s Press Empire became the nation’s most circulated. His pig iron mines in the east of the country diversified into metal refining and coal mining. His enterprising mining company manager Robert Woodsey, who would later marry Bentley’s daughter, had even dabbled successfully in the stock market. The two men would rise in Patrival’s rich list. At their peaks, Woodsey would rank at #33, while Bentley would hit #24. He now owned an extensive estate in the Patrivian countryside for his family to grow up in. Several very public donations to the country’s finest schools and universities helped in convincing their deans to provide some kind of commemoration. A fountain dedicated to the Baron was built in June in the town centre of Bingham. Ironically, his son was injured in a dual during his time at the local school. Outside his sphere of supporters, other press barons and public figures opposed him with the same determination as they had since his entry into politics.

This period of personal bliss ended in mid-November, just after parliamentary recess began, when Bentley’s wife, Alice, suffered from a double stroke. After a weak recovery over the next month and a half, a third stroke killed her on New Year’s Eve. Her last few weeks were not dignified; painful, paralysed and depressed, she passed away in the early evening. Despite their very cold forced relationship, and Bentley’s lack of support to her in the final weeks of her life, he and the rest of the family mourned her death for the next two months.

Parliament reconvened in February. Bentley’s supporters returned sombre, sympathetic to the Baron while his opponents avoided personal attacks for the rest of the year. On the other hand, Harold Campbell’s TUC was more confident than ever. At the wage negotiation they demanded a rise considerably above the inflation rate. With last year’s crisis still fresh in the memory of BIA and Buchannan, they refused any rise at all. Bentley was called in, with specific instructions from Templespeak not to inflame the situation further. Butler was in no position to argue. He had only just avoided a political crisis in an open battle with his Chancellor thanks to the King’s intervention. His Majesty recommended Templespeak’s option, and the King was the only public figure Butler really trusted anymore.

Bentley went along quietly. It marked a historic turning point in his relationship with Templespeak. The former General came close to having the Baron shot exactly half a decade ago. Bentley saw no benefit to openly fighting a man still universally loved by the country. A wage increase on the inflation rate was finally agreed to, and while the stock markets didn’t react well, no crash occurred. The government’s popularity held firm, and Butler’s personal rating increased. But within the military and roughly seven large state and private corporations, there was rumblings. Buchannan managed to remain untouched by the rumours, even though records released fifty years later showed his financial involvement. Colonel Matthew H.C. Stark and corporate men Sir Hamish Carter and Tiberius Smith attempted a putsch that May. They stormed the House of Commons, killing two members and injuring several others before escaping. They then got into the Palace and held the royal family hostage. They ordered the King to dismiss Butler in favour of a ‘Transitional Government’ under Colonel Stark. With his wife and children at gunpoint, he was forced to agree. He was coerced into putting an arrest warrant on Templespeak and Butler. The rebels captured the two men and most of the cabinet in the Prime Minister’s residence before the loyalist members of the military had any idea what had happened. Baron Bentley was now the most senior government official not in captivity. He informed the local garrison who, now fully aware of events, called for backup from neighbouring towns. The rebels barricaded themselves in the Palace, and threatened to have Templespeak and Butler killed unless Bentley and the local Garrison leader stood down. Unfortunately for the rebels, part of 1930s Baron Bentley was still very alive inside of him. A carefully timed smoke grenade volley and assault rescued the captives, but Stark escaped. Smith and Carter, still officially uninvolved, helped the Colonel get out of the Capital.

The following police investigation was headed as a personal project of Lord Bentley. By the end of June, implicated the two central collaborators, but was too late to prevent their leaving of the country. And was too late to stop them destroying most of the details of the Plot. It was estimated that there was between forty and fifty key conspirators still hidden in the civil service, military, and corporate world. The case was reluctantly closed at the end of the year. Bentley was hounded by most of the Press for his incompetence; two men confirmed, neither detained. The affair certainly didn’t help Butler’s state of mind either. Now he was convinced that the military and civil service were against him too. But when the Home Secretary resigned in protest during the fallout dominating the news in January 1949, Butler replaced him with Alec Castle, the department’s junior minister for Crime. He seemed like an honest, simple-tasted man who Butler could rely on. And indeed he would be the Prime Minister’s key ally in the final year and a half of his Premiership.

The last five years had been good for Patrival’s economy. High growth and low inflation had been hallmarks of the Templespeak Era. But it came to an end with the coordinated Quatrican Nationalist attacks on the country’s five largest precious metal mines. Production of currency-backing goods dropped, sparking a mass stock market panic on the Patrivian-Quatrican Precious Metals Company. The financial sector followed suit and this time, Buchannan wasn’t able to save it. The currency collapsed and inflation exploded; just in time for the wage negotiation.

Late January estimates of inflation were at 6%, a historic high, by the first week of February they had climbed to 8.5%, by the second week they passed 11.6%. When the conference began on the 20th, it stood at 17% as government gold reserves depleted to feed panicking investors. The TUC suggested an emergency freezing of prices nationwide and a wage increase of 20%. Bentley replied to the TUC assembly floor by setting fire to the paper before leaving. Templespeak and Butler were in no position to weaken the government, and they both agreed that it was time for the Baron to leave the cabinet. When Bentley announced his resignation the following morning, the BIA boycotted the wage negotiation and its leaders invited Lord Bentley to join the now practically defunct Conservative Party. Buchannan was quick to join and in a power sharing deal with the Baron, agreed that Bentley should be his Shadow Chancellor, Deputy, and eventual successor.

The parties as they stood in March 1949 were the Patrivian Values government who ruled as the centrists on the spectrum; in coalition with the Front were the Liberal Party on their slight populist left. Finally, the Conservatives were back on their 1930s reactionary platform. Bentley’s Conservatism argued that the Templespeak Consensus had made the government complacent to the Stark Putsch, the Quatrican Nationalists, and the threat of the TUC. The King made it clear that he would not appoint another Prime Minister until after a general election, which would have to be called on Butler’s terms. With a vote of no confidence or a cabinet coup out of the question, Templespeak and his Liberals left the government to enter Opposition. The three parties began to write their manifestos, with the central theme being inflation and the Quatricans. All three parties took a hard line on the Nationalists, but their inflation controls were radically different. The Liberals wanted the price freeze and wage increase, the Conservatives wants to send in the troops, while the Fatherhood Front not taking any clear approach at all.

Inflation neared 150% by July; at which point the government had no choice but to institute a price freeze. The killing blow came when the Patrivian Values Party collapsed. Its members split between the Liberals and Conservatives, but the King was determined to keep Butler on as the head of a caretaker government until a January 1950 election in which Butler would not stand. This wouldn’t be the last time a Patrivian monarch would appoint the Prime Minister without parliamentary backing in the next few years. But Templespeak, Bentley and Buchannan were forced to settle with this deal. The wage increase came in September, and with the arbitrary price controls, inflation fell to 0. However, trading in government gold reserves, currency trading, and stock marketing were suspended until further notice to prevent further financial woes.

In November, Butler was taken to an emergency High Court in the Lords and presented with charges of gross incompetence in public office and was thus impeached, which had effectively happened by this point anyway. No one outside of the prosecution claimed it was anything but a show trial. He was sentenced to house arrest for life before parliamentary recess began. On their reconvergence in 1950 without the Prime Minister, the election proceeded; surprisingly without any violent incidents. Lord Templespeak was whisked into the Premiership once more with Buchannan and Bentley in a strong opposition. Patrivian Values was returned with no seats in the House of Commons and less than ten in local council elections. It would be the last time a heavily populist, family values based, loosely ideologically lined party such as the Fatherhood Front would be called upon to serve in government. Meanwhile Buchanan won Butler’s seat with a majority of 203 votes.

[SovietPrussia]

A slow start to the Second Templespeak Ministry ended with the reopening of the major gold mines in Quatrica. Gold reserves were refilled and increased by 5% of their original value before currency and stock market trading were slowly reintroduced. Direct convertibility of the Patrivian Sterling into and from currency-backing goods like gold and silver were brought back under a heft transactions tax of 50% for those without a government permit. Forced deflation followed by reasonable levels of inflation below the 10% mark ensued. The rate still hovered above pre-crisis levels for some time until the dust fully settled. Meanwhile, the working class enjoyed a very high purchasing power.

The cause of the catastrophe was very clear. And the Quatrican gold industry needed to be decentralised from several large mines to numerous ones on smaller scales, with tighter security measures. Military operations were stepped up in the Colony and the terrorist threat neutralised. Meanwhile, Harold Campbell resigned his chairmanship of the TUC to direct his efforts to a separate project of his.

For some time I have wished to set up an anarcho-syndicalist community in either Patrival or Quatrica. Myself and a number of close friends plan to leave later this week. I have had a wonderful time working with you all, and wish my successor the best of luck. Good night.

Campbell’s decision raised a number of eyebrows in the mainstream, and especially on the Right. But for now, the TUC’s fate rested in the hands of the more militant Ben Russell; the nephew of the famous Kurt Russell. While his policies were timid in his first few years, keeping an unspoken agreement with the BIA to keep wage increases at the rate of inflation. But Baron Bentley’s suspicion of Russell and the TUC as a whole never waned. Russell too despised Bentley in return – he hadn’t forgiven Bentley for his uncle’s death.

Unlike all of his recent predecessors in the Premiership, including his own first short tenure, Templespeak did not inherit a crisis or any immediate threat to the country or his public image. Bentley and his Party were in for a long twelve years in the wilderness. Despite his opposition to the government’s economic policy, Bentley was unable to prevent the passing of many ‘Trotskyist’ bills such as the Mining Health & Safety Act and the Nationalisation of the Precious Metals and Stones Sector Act which established a much stronger hold on currency than before. Ironically, this policy would be championed later on by Conservative Prime Minister Lord Wurrex (Buchanan) and decades later by Foreign Secretary Paul Hutton as well as his protégé and successor Hamish White.

Back in 1950, Bentley’s speeches were as fiery as ever, making up for Buchannan’s less charismatic leadership in the Party. The backbench opposition wouldn’t have been pleased with the prospects of Bentley in the top job. The Baron’s true support in the party lay with the local activists and the Conservative councillors in local government. But the selection of party leaders was in the hands of the parliamentary party. While the date of council elections would later be pulled into line with the General Election, in 1950 it took place towards the end of the year; giving Bentley a chance to promote himself to his colleagues. As Shadow Health President, Lord Downsfield put it,

He [Bentley] can be a true populist when he put his mind to it. I figure he hates his cabinet colleagues more than he hates his ‘d**n Bolsheviks’.

Buchannan wasn’t to be left out on the scepticism. He jokingly gave Bentley a second position as Conservative Local Government Spokesman. The Baron took the appointment very seriously though and campaigned vigorously in the local elections. The result was surprisingly excellent. In response, Buchannan prepared a proper job description for the position, Templespeak appointed a Secretary of State for Local Government and the nearly defunct Patrivian Values Party reformed itself into a purely council election party in alignment with the Conservatives. This was the first time these local elections had ever been considered of any significance by the central governing classes, but from now on they would be a central battleground for political campaigns, and the Conservatives would eventually champion local governance and decentralisation long after the Baron’s death.

A new project many Conservatives took up was membership of the New Stockton Group – a country club dabbling in the role of a think-tank. Its formation in late September 1951, at the start of the spring, marked a beginning transition away from the Keynesian and Laissez-faire divisions on economic policy within the Party. A new ideology was going to take the limelight, but it would be another two to three decades before it would enter the mainstream of both parties. Economic Nationalism, as we know it today, involved the maintaining of heavy restrictions on imports except from Quatrica, and the systematic purchasing of extraction rights to natural resources abroad. Combined with an artificially strong currency backed with gold hoarding and low inflation from suppressed wages, it would be seen as the economic miracle of the Baron’s son’s premiership. The Baron himself joined the group in early December and would become infatuated with it for years to come. Buchannan and his cabinet and corporate supporters still detested any kind of active government in the economy while the majority of conservatives at the parliamentary and local level accepted the idea of a Keynesian approach. The local activists and casual supporters while amused and charmed by the Baron at his less violent career zenith, were more inclined along centrist lines while expecting that if in power Bentley wouldn’t bring an end to the Templespeak Consensus.

Apart from economic policy and hunting, the third activity of the Group was to devise new campaigning techniques. Their first contribution was the suggestion to use the radio intensively. Beforehand, party leaders would avoid it to reduce the chance of a gaffe. Local leaders would use it moderately but at the same time very casually and relaxed. Therefore in the 1954 football World Cup, the Conservatives took the initiative to buy up the Patrivian radio commentary, promoting Buchannan and Bentley amongst the genuine commentary before signing out with I Vow to Thee, My Country. Templespeak responded in a public statement,

Fresh ideas on the part of the New Stockton Group would be a nice for a change. In their defence though, the commentary was rather entertaining!

And in accordance with the Prime Minister’s cynicism, opinion polls didn’t react at all to the broadcast. It was a political failure for the Conservatives but paved the way for other innovations on their part. The Liberals didn’t need to propagandise; Templespeak’s personal popularity did that for them. It would even be joked many years later than Che Guevara would ware Lord Templespeak tee-shirts.

Templespeak decided to call a snap election in late 1955 and capitalise on his government’s popularity which mirrored his own. In the lead up to the Christmas Eve polling, both parties employed tactics new and old in all their might to persuade voters. Bentley shadowed Buchanan as the leading Conservative public figure, opposed to the hero of the progressives of Patrival, Lord Templespeak. The election coincided with a state visit from the new Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain. Both electioneers vied to greet the monarch and the press retinue which followed. One practice which arose from the 1955 general election which would be criticised by many in the intellectual community until the present day was to essentially copy the policies of the other party. Until now it was considered too populist for establishment politicians to divulge in. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives stated to the public their commitment to fighting crime, price stability, and growth. And they especially emphasised the incredibility of their opponents. Commentators of the time largely believed that the electorate remained largely unaffected by this level of pandering. This strategy was more suited to the mass democracy of Western Europe and the United States, not the wealth dominated system.

The Liberals were returned to power with an increased majority in the Commons. The Conservatives lost control of all their marginal seats, including Bentley’s former constituency, Shaleshire. Buchanan lost his own seat in the Commons by 709 votes to the Patrivian National Party. The PNP was an insignificant minor party founded by the most zealous remnants of the Fatherhood Front. In the Conservative Party, Buchanan was replaced as leader by Baron Bentley. The King intervened. He created Thomas Buchanan as the Lord Wurrex. He then requested the Party that Buchanan be reinstated as leader. Bentley submitted quietly to his sovereign as Buchanan took up his place in the House of Lords in the front row with Bentley.

In 1956 Bentley’s son graduated from Bingham Boarding School and joined the Young Conservatives Organisation at his university on his father’s advisement. The Young Conservatives was yet another of the new campaigning techniques and one of the Conservatives’ most popular.

The Baron’s foreign policy stance took an isolationist turn later that year when he spoke out strongly against Templespeak’s contribution to the Suez Crisis in defence of Great Britain. The venture proved to be disastrous for Britain and for Patrival. Anthony Eden’s government fell and Templespeak was in for a media blitz. Bentlist press barons attacked the Prime Minister relentlessly. Bentley himself was well received by many in the House of Lords and spectators agreed that Templespeak had lost ground over the crisis.

But what strength Templespeak lost in 1956 he gained back in 1957. He began by reassuring his own partisans. Templespeak denounced the radical elements of his party; the feminists and republicans. He especially criticised the Freethinker movement which he described as ”A force for great chaos.” He and Bentley emphasised their opposition to the radical liberals. But the radical wing had grown drastically due to the increased involvement of local activism and would be at the centre of the problems the country would face ten years later. A visit from the new British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan resulted in two trade contracts for automobiles and copper ore, and a public announcement promoting the post-war and Templespeak Consensus’s.

Inflation made a comeback in the final quarter of 1958. The government responded by raising the interest rate to 12%. The rise caused a minor tanking in house prices and stock markets. Recovery became apparent by the New Year but was staggered and slow. The results were clear though. Inflation returned to an ‘acceptable’ level.

Growth stayed under 3% in 1959 and the government came under heavy criticism from the Bentlist Press and from Buchanan in the House of Lords. Opinion polls showed Templespeak’s personal approval rating at 84%, the lowest since his 1943 coup. The government eventually caved in to the retrospectively vague attacks and reduced the interest rate to 11%, then 10%. House prices stayed constant for a month before beginning to decline.

The turn of the decade was happier than the previous three. It marked Templespeak’s own ten years in power and Bentley’s almost thirty years in politics. It was prosperous and peaceful relative to these dates but hardly so in its own right. Brokers and bankers felt like they were on the edge of a crisis or even a recession. The latter is exactly what happened. The first quarter report showed growth of -0.9%. Uncertainty over interest rates and therefore debt repayment levels heavily discouraged lending. The inter-quarterly report put growth at 1.3%. By the end of the second quarter the figure fell to 1.9%. The BIA petitioned the government to take action and the TUC petitioned Templespeak to help them protect wages. Templespeak reduced interest rates again and expanded government-owned industries. Growth at the end of the third quarter rose to -1.5%. For Bentley and the Conservatives this was too much. They prepared their election manifestos and mobilised their local activists. The snap election never came though. Templespeak confirmed that there was no intention of calling it before 1962.

Disaster struck the Liberal government in 1961 when Lord Templespeak suffered from a stroke and subsequent coma. His deputy Charles Essex assumed the Premiership but stated,

“I have no intention of this being a permanent arrangement. For official purposes Lord Templespeak is still the Prime Minister; even if I am the one carrying out his duties. We in the Cabinet are hopeful he will make a speedy recovery and will return to lead the country within the year.”

The radical liberals saw their chance. They called for the replacement of top Cabinet officials with radicals. The Deputy Prime Minister had been seen as a compromise between the moderates and the radicals and an ally by both sides. Bentley spat on the radicals as “treasonous dogs.”

Top BIA officials shocked the nation when they announced their support for the Radical movement in the Liberal Party. Buchanan stepped back as Bentley stepped up the attacks on the Opposition Leader’s personal friends. What looked like Bentley’s Press Empire deserted him to back up the BIA. The Trade Unions put their weight behind the radicals in the Liberal Party too. The King retaliated next along with many Conservative backbenchers in both houses of parliament to stand behind Baron Bentley.

By mid 1962 Templespeak had not recovered and Essex was pressed to call the election. A spike in world arms prices alarmed the military and police who informed the King of the situation and what they might have to carry out. The election proceeded and the Conservatives won a majority of 21 seats. Buchanan was invited to the Palace to kiss the King’s hand and become the new Prime Minister. Bentley was appointed as the Chancellor of the Exchequer – his highest position yet. The Premiership was only one man away.

Buchanan promised in the campaign to champion the middle class industrialists which dominated the BIA. Bentley resolved to smash the power of the bourgeoisie altogether after a private letter he received from the King asking for his support in restoring the power of the aristocracy. The effects of Templespeak’s last decisions in office flowered. Economic growth returned to a positive value. Business regulations were relaxed and the tax credit was reduced and so was the Templespeak super tax put in place years before. The TUC threatened a strike, whatever the legality of this action was. Buchanan broke it quickly with the military and proceeded to ban the TUC. Nearly all of its leaders had arrested, tried, and imprisoned by the end of the year.

When Bentley’s private letter was leaked by a senior civil servant to the public in February 1963, liberal students rioted. They were joined by socialist, feminist and syndicalist resistance demanding the abolition of the House of Lords and the enfranchisement of working class men and women of all social classes. The Baron was the first person Buchanan turned to in dealing with the rebellion. For the first time since before Templespeak’s coup, mustard gas was deployed. The United Nations condemned the Patrivian government heavily and Harold Macmillan promptly cancelled the trade agreement signed a few years before.

The rest of the year was dominated by engagements between the authorities and the revolutionaries. High food and fuel prices made the winter worse for the poor of Patrival. The police and military were armed with the most modern technology available to fight the uprising. Unlike in 1943, the government maintained control thanks to the divided nature and aims of the factions within the Radical Revolution.

Relations between Baron Bentley and Buchanan fell to an all time low by early 1964. The King’s letter had not gone well in the cabinet. And now the King had suggested to the Prime Minister that the middle class be disenfranchised. Bentley compromised that the House of Lords would have increased powers at the Commons’ expense. His Majesty threatened to dissolve parliament and call an election if the Prime Minister did not agree. As Lord Bentley argued,

“Prime Minister, the Liberal Party without Templespeak holding them back is a threat to national peace. They are terrorists, not politicians. They must be treated as so. Why I ask, do we sit in the House of Lords debating with them when we should be shooting at them from behind a police barricade?”

Buchanan agreed to pushing the Act through parliament and it was signed into law in June. However the Prime Minister sacked Baron Bentley from the government in August and replaced him in the Cabinet with Hubert Fox, the Lord Downsfield.

The reshuffle of the balance of power at the top did not dampen the fiery climate in the country as a whole. The Liberals institutionalised the Freethinkers into the Party and funded arming them. It forced the government to ban the Liberal Party altogether. But not before the final catalyst.

The 24th October was a mild evening. Baron Bentley was reading another letter from the King requesting him to come to the Palace to be appointed Prime Minister. Buchanan had yet to be informed, the plan was to wait until the deal was finalised. Bentley decided not to reply by phone or telegram and wanted to tell His Majesty in person. He asked the cab driver to stop for a few minutes outside a public lavatory. At roughly 19:02, coincidentally the same number as the year of his birth, he spoke his last words to the driver,

“Just one second good sir. I’ll be back in two minutes.”

Inside, unaware of who was about to come in were Gerald Paulson, Hubert Smith, Harold Southman and James Kilard. They were planning to take part in a robbery of the Bank of Patrival later that night and couldn’t believe their luck when the Baron walked in. Before Bentley had a chance to finish his business, they pulled him from the urinal with a small chain by the neck and started to beat him. After a moment they drew knives and made sure he suffered as much as possible. In his blood they wrote “For Russell” on the walls before leaving out the window above one of the cubicles.

It was twenty minutes before the driver suspected something and discovered his body. By the time Bentley was in hospital he’d been dead for just over an hour.

Buchanan’s Ministry was saved for another year before the King found a new favourite in the form of Lord Downsfield. Buchanan, Downsfield and the King himself would meet their own timely ends in 1970, 1972, and 1969 respectively. The assassins would be captured and executed before the end of 1964. The Russells would fade out of politics over the following decades. Anthony Butler would engage in many charitable and scientific pursuits in the last ten years of his life after his pardon in 1974 and before his death at the age of 84. But it was Lord Templespeak who laughed last. He recovered from his coma in 1977. The first thing he said was to his doctor,

“Where’s Bentley?”

We can only theorise as to what his reaction was to what happened in his absence. But we do know how he responded to Patrival continuing to change dramatically under another Bentley. He supported the Prime Minister in most of his endeavours and the two became personal friends during the 1980s.

The Baron’s famous son achieved what the highest hopes had for the father. Today’s Lord Bentley entered politics in his early thirties and ascended to the Premiership exceptionally quickly. His legacy would shadow his father’s, though no one could realise it at the time. His father’s legacy came close to stopping his own from taking off.

Lord Basil Robins, the Baron of Bentley, had seen his country change at its very foundations. And he did everything in his power, though ultimately unsuccessfully, to prevent it. The Patrival he knew lying in blood in the final moments of his life would have been unrecognisable to the young Bentley and his world of National Government and the aftermath of the First World War.

Baron Bentley was never a likeable politician. He contrasted greatly with Lord Templespeak whose popularity was his only key strength. Despite being hated by his contemporaries and historians alike, it must be agreed that he had a lasting impact on the political landscape of Patrival equal to that of his son and Templespeak. It is likely that he will continue to do so for many decades to come as his policies are implemented and repealed in the inevitable future crises. We can only wish the statesmen of tomorrow the best luck in dealing with them.



Essay written by Harold Hawkins