Cold Monday

Like most of my thrillers, COLD MONDAY started life on the back burner. Just a small pot, simmering away.

After the dull, grinding post-War years of my childhood, teens and early working life, the British nation had laboured under years of hard-up and uninspired government, both socialist and old-fashioned Conservatism.

Only later we – after the Berlin Wall fell and the West had access to secret Stasi files – had it confirmed that many of Britain’s woes were indeed being secretly manipulated by our Cold War enemies, the Soviet Union. After all, the seeds of the country’s commercial and industrial demise had, indeed, been sown as part of elaborate sabotage operations by the Kremlin.

Good Reading Magazine:
‘Strong presents a gripping, all too-believable scenario of our world’s latest social experiment going off the rails as corruption and the lust for power overrule morality and common sense.’
(5* Rating: Highly Recommended)

The Communists really had infiltrated our unions and coerced our workforce into becoming a manufacturing basket-case. It wasn’t just the wild imaginings of the editorial staff of the right-wing Daily Telegraph. Even today, these very real facts are over-looked.

Anyway, by then Margaret Thatcher has swept to power, reforming the unions, privatising the utilities and tried to make everyone self-sufficient house-owners and shareholders. It was like a house-clearance. Unless you were a miner, you had spare change in your pocket, global warming was reaching the peak of its cycle so everyone could afford a barbecue and the sun shone every day.

My first thriller Whisper Who Dares – a paperback original – became a major bestseller.

What nearly everyone had, sort-of, missed, was that somewhere in all of that, Britain had finally joined the tariff-free European Common Market. After years of British politicians banging on its door to demand entry, French President General de Gaulle had leaned firmly against it – payback time for Dunkirk and the spat over the liberation of Paris.

In fairness, in a speech shown recently on Nick Robinson’s excellent historical documentary, the general very clearly spelled out that he didn’t think the ‘European Project’ was right for us, nor us for it. How right he was to be.

In preparation Britain, replaced its simple Purchase Tax with the convoluted accountants’ dream of VAT and in 1971 replaced our beloved £.s.d. with metric. Maybe the latter was no bad thing.

Then we had the 1975 Referendum to join the Common Market. As a young man who was self-employed, involved in all aspects of marketing and who loved everything about business, I was all for ‘free trade’ and no tariff barriers. Did I listen to the wiser siren voices of Enoch Powell or Tony Benn? Nope, didn’t even hear them. I thought nothing of it and voted to plunge in.

It was only after Margaret Thatcher’s fall from grace and PM John Major signing the country up to Maastricht that people began to realise that ‘something was different’. It was hard to put your finger on it. The country and its politicians had somehow become wrapped in lethargy, kind of cocooned. Silly, petty rules and laws crept into everyday life with no apparent sense or reason.

Still, wrapped up with the everyday drama of work, paying bills and raising families most people didn’t realise just how much had changed. I certainly hadn’t.

Then one Saturday in 1997 I visited the local Cuckoo Fair to celebrate May Day with cake and craft sales, Morris Dancers and maypoles. Amongst the stalls was one for UKIP – the United Kingdom Independence Party. I’d never heard of them. Intrigued, I began chatting to the charming young man running the stall. He introduced himself as Nigel Farage.

The rest is history. Suddenly I realised what had been happening to Britain under my nose and everybody else’s.  The original Common Market had morphed gradually over the years into European Economic Community and then finally the European Union – there I’ve said it. And no one batted an eyelid. The United States of Europe is one step away and no one has seemingly noticed.

Within weeks I was working with the then-leader, Michael Holmes, on basic Public Relations projects as the party structure barely existed and inter-communications was near-impossible.

Personal circumstances cut that short. But then, for a while, I assisted the redoubtable Christina Speight (apparently creator of the Strongbow Cider brand) and stalwart anti-EU campaigner producing her monthly political pamphlet Facts, Figures & Phantasies. It comprised goings-on in Brussels and her acerbic comments on its political madness. My God! What a revelation that was.

I soon realised that the average man and woman in the street had no idea how the EU made decisions that affected every aspect of their lives through its laws, regulations and even influence. That influence would have done Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Communist China or even North Korea proud.

It even has an ongoing multi-billion Euro propaganda campaign that includes wining and dining the political elite of European nations, funding the BBC and even programmes directed at children in school to brainwash them about the benefits of the European Union. It is not overt. It is subtle, slimy and sly beyond belief.

This attitude goes back to its very roots, when it realised that nation states would not willingly give up their sovereignty, especially Britain. So it was planned from the outset to be an incremental integration based on free-trade.  The Common Market – to which the majority of Britons voted. I was one of them. Other siren voices – from Enoch Powell to Tony Benn – warned what was really happened, but in the innocence of youth and as a lover of good business practise, I ignored them or didn’t even hear them.

I noticed that when nation states had Referendums on different subjects, Brussels felt free to ignore the results, to send the people back to vote again until they got the answer right. I learned that the EU was so democratic it was run on exactly the same lines as the former Communist Soviet Union. A point made by Mikhail Gorbachev, no less.

Basically it is the desire of the European political elite to rival the United States of America, the Russian Federation and Communist China on the world stage. It is not about trade and finance. It is about power, control and influence. That, it was revealed this year, was also how Adolf Hitler had planned to administer the conquered Europe of the Fourth Reich for at least a thousand years.

During my research I learned about the EU’s plans for hi-speed train link ups throughout Europe and creation of an integrated European Armed Force of which the UK would provide the main aircraft carrier contribution.

Following the experimental Euro Corps, which has already been deployed (as always step-by-step) a fully integrated EU Army is envisaged, which will begin life as a pan-European Border Force. The EU touches absolutely everything in your life. I learned that the EU was financially and morally corrupt at every level and open to abuse and infiltration. That is not fiction, it is fact. Does the Genk Protocol exist, or something similar? Probably, why wouldn’t it? We will never know until it is too late. That is the point.

What we do know – as has been seen during the run-up to this EU Referendum – is that Brussels is as ruthless as any undemocratic and unanswerable organisation on earth. Never forget that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

As a thriller writer, I found myself in the very real position of being aware of a democratic nation in peril and no one – even politicians not seeing the wood for the trees, let alone Joe Public bored stiff with its deceptively remote politics – understanding that there is a great and ruthless conspiracy to create the juggernaut of a new world super state.

Just imagine a well-connected friend of yours – maybe an MEP – discovers something he shouldn’t about the epic corruption that is known to occur within the European Union’s sprawling structure. What if the scale of what he finds out might be outrageous enough to bring the entire international edifice crashing down?

Exactly how ruthless, vindictive and unlawfully do you think that Brussels would behave in order to shut down the leak of such a truth? If you’ve got this far, I suspect you’ve answered your own question. Absolutely nothing must be allowed to stop the juggernaut that is the birth of a new European super power to rival the USA, the Russian Federation and China.

Like all my stories, I try to make the back-stories as factual and true as possible. That is particularly relevant to Cold Monday – to such an extent that I felt compelled to devote a couple of years to researching and writing it. As an action thriller it combines the worlds of real international power politics with intelligence, espionage, terror organisations and special forces.

Buy Cold Monday online now.

During this recent campaign for the upcoming EU Referendum in Britain you may just have noticed how ruthlessly the big players and political elite have moved already to protect the most dangerous new political experiment on the planet.

Visit my blog here to learn more about how the European Union actually works. Its revelations may come as a shock.