Something like this was being built in ravaged, reunited Britain. The communes would take another battering, however. This time it was from the weather. As the delegates to the nation assembly stood on the steps of Alexandra Palace they could see vivid sunsets. Soon they would feel rain. Winter had arrived and it would rain, with few apparent breaks for over year.
Towns and cities coped as well as they were organised. London had seen huge bouts of violence. Though it was well looked after by its citizens the task just kept mounting.
There were the dead zones, vast dangerous areas of rubble raked by wild animals and the occasional bandit. There were many organised scavengers, who spent each day picking and sorting through the wreckage for reusable material.
As the rainwater seeped and pooled it undermined the dead zones further. There were several large collapses, which killed a number people. The dead zone on the Isle of Dogs was completely overrun. By the beginning of the following summer there was a small lake, marshland slowly feeding out of and into the rest of the Thames. An expedition found it was already being reclaimed by wildlife; some aquatic plants, reeds, insects, wild birds, frogs and the odd fish.
Summer near Westminster was spoiled by a great stink, most noticeable during one of the few dry days. A few of the new reservoirs were becoming fetid and poisoned. The commune feared an outbreak of disease and sent brave teams out to dam the waters as best they could. But the rain kept coming and the rank water started spilling into the streets.
The damming operation became a mopping and diverting operation. Londoners had a great deal of trouble keeping their wells untainted. A number of communes had treating works that distilled their water. In the middle of flooding the prospect loomed of water having to be rationed. To counter the threat communes pooled resources and began building two large-scale distilleries in Herne Hill and Highgate.
The Big Kettles, as they became known, came on line at the end of the summer. Raising the old River Tyburn solved the problem of the Westminster water. Before long there was fresh water flowing over the ruins of the old Palace of Westminster.
Another was food. A lot of crops sewn (and there were not a lots of crops sewn) were destroyed by the flooding. Collective gardens at ground level suffered, although some survived. One novel solution was putting soil on roofs, attaching gulleys and run-offs, and growing there.
Despite this food had to be rationed further and further. Fishing hauls and infrequent imports soothed the strain. If anything threatened social peace it was lack of food. The London council started requisitioning food, although it was difficult to keep fresh, in order to start rationing.
There were occasional bouts of speculation. Black markets would crop up from place to place. One frequent spot was the down western edge of the Westminster dead zone, old Kensington and Chelsea. To begin with illegal traders simply had their food confiscated. As the situation declined the commune was forced to get tough. An ingenious solution was found. Persistent offenders were put on the toughest draining duties or building new allotments. The worst were banished from the city.
Intensive rationing weakened many people’s resistance to illness.
There were still hospitals of a sort. Some survived by having the means to put together basic medicine, although these means too were scarce. Some tried to use alternative forms of medicine, making do with whatever natural products they could come by. The biggest lack was anaesthetic. Many formerly routine operations were now impossible. In the main hospitals were places where you were cleaned and rested until you got better or died or, worse still, were thrown out to make way for someone else more injured or ill, and had to get better or die in the comfort of your own home.
Flu became more deadly. Lung diseases declined in some cases due to the much-decreased pollution, but increased in others (the cold and lack of hygiene). Open wounds and broken were difficult to deal with; simple to clean, difficult to get to heal properly. Alcohol and drug abuse plummeted through simple lack. This also took down heart disease and obesity.
The real menace was poisoned water and food. Diarrhoea, cholera and dysentery were common killers. TB was also given a boost, seeping lodged in many dampened, half-ruined buildings. There were no inoculation programmes any more. Fear of outbreaks lurked all the time, of things like measles, mumps and rubella.
Getting on into autumn, London Bridge collapsed, damming the Thames, creating a huge pool before sending rapid torrents carving through Southwark and Tower Hamlets. This was cleared with great difficulty only one week later, by which time large parts of each borough were packed with mud and debris, and largely abandoned.
Flooding was a problem elsewhere in Britain. In short time the cities of Swansea, Cardiff and Liverpool were lost to the sea. Places like Gloucester, Bradford, Bristol, Sheffield and Lincoln seemed sunk. The remaining rail and road suffered. It was quite common to having started a train journey then having to stop halfway through and turn due to landslides, collapsed bridges. Distance opened out across the land as it had done centuries ago.
But it wasn’t all gloom. Early spring on a calm day, trawlers in the English Channel spotted an unusual boat. It was a mid sized cruise ship with an American flag, a refugee ship. Roughly 200 survivors had made it across the ocean, having set sail from Savannah. Tugs were sent out to greet them and guide the ship up the Thames. Once the river got too shallow the passengers and crew were taken upstream to the city proper in a small flotilla. People came from all over the city to watch and wave. Everybody was happy. The commune made the survivors guests of honour.
A few weeks later France became communal. The French of course invented the modern notion of commune. Many were tickled and please to here it carried on by the British. Since the general strike against the conspirators uprising much of social control had been handed over to strike committees, which refused to disband and demanded the government be accountable to them instead of the National Assembly. The President was happy to oblige, although the National Assembly, which had previously a slim majority for the government, objected.
The National Assembly, which had been defended against the conspirators, was stormed in mid session by a demonstration of strikers, who carried the right half of the assembly off. After weeks of silence, some rightwing politicians began trying to incite the army against the strikers. It seemed like there may be a coup attempt by fascist sympathisers in the military. Instead regiments, initially ones based around Paris, elected to join the strike.
The freshly minted Republic made a quick alliance with the communes in Britain. France was less battered by the sudden climate change. It’s aid, in particular food aid proved crucial.
The social fallout from the catastrophes east and west transformed Europe. The cities of Northern Europe were taken over by their citizens and formed into a latter day alliance, a new Hanseatic League that dissolved the legacy of Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Berlin was on the frontline of the turmoil, subject to raids from Polish and Russian warlords, horror stories from the remains of Leipzig, Warsaw and Dresden.
The Swiss came up with a different solution. The country was largely cut off from the outside world. The government, fearing invasion, called the up the entire national guard and placed the country under the rulership of a three-man consulate in a weird combination of popular resistance and dictatorship.
Bands of Italian fascists attempted to escape into the mountains after they were beaten. The Swiss National Guard chased them back to the foothills, but then pursued them all the way into Northern Italy. The country was effectively occupied and the consulate was strangely reluctant to withdraw.
The crisis and the rearguard action went on transforming the world. The old order faded rapidly. What was previously taken for granted was set aside in the struggle to survive, quickly forgotten, rarely lamented.
After a second hideous winter the sun came out over London. People had seen clear daylight, intermittently, during the year without sun, but this day it just seemed to shine that little bit longer, that little bit brighter. The following day the sun came out again, and the next day, and the day after that. It was then that it dawned, the worst was over. People wanted to honour that day, the day when the sun finally returned, but what day was it? People eventually agreed, it was April the 29th.
