It Could Be Us 7/7

John Magill, Afterword

She found it in a dictionary the size of a breeze block, wedged on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in the B&B lounge, next to the Scrabble that nobody ever played.
“Gerrymander (verb): manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favour one party or class.”
Cass mouthed the words like a riddle, then read it again, slower this time. The ink on the page was faint, like it didn’t want to be read. But there it was. Not just a whisper behind a closed door. Not just a shrug in the kitchen over cheap coffee and shittier gossip.
It had a name.
She copied it into her notebook, under all the other words:
BSC
CAVENDISH
HERMES POINT
WRONG
WHY THEM
GERRYMANDERING
The word looked ugly, even in her careful handwriting. Like a monster with a clipboard.

The next time the district auditor came in, it was raining. Not proper rain - that would’ve been too clean. This was drizzle with an agenda, soaking through coat shoulders and steaming up glasses.
Cass was at the front desk with a stack of forms when she saw him pass by. Neat suit. Red folder. A look like he didn’t trust walls not to listen.
She hesitated for half a breath, then followed.
“It’s Mr Magill, isn’t it?”
He turned.
She held out the envelope she’d stuffed the papers into. It was dog-eared at the corners, folded over once and held shut with a scrap of tape.
“I think you should see these.”
He frowned. Took them. Flipped through the first couple of pages. His eyes narrowed.
“Where did you get these?”
“Does it matter?”
A pause.
He gave a single nod, tucked the envelope under his arm, and walked away.
She turned back to the office and nearly walked straight into the woman from the Operations room.
“Cass, isn’t it?” the woman said. She had sharp eyes and a clipped voice.
Cass nodded.
“I saw you with the auditor.”
Another nod.
The woman’s expression didn’t change, but her shoulders dropped. Like something heavy had shifted.
“I wondered who it would be,” she murmured. “Who’d finally hand it over.”
Cass stayed quiet.
“You seem like a smart kid. You’ve probably figured most of it out. The relocations, the points system. The BSC project.”
Cass gave a small shrug. “Enough.”
The woman leaned against the wall, arms folded. “It all started after ’86. Shirley - Porter, the leader of the council, you know - was rattled. Lost Bayswater to Labour. She didn’t want a repeat in 1990. So the plan was simple: move out the ones who’d vote red. Replace them with people who’d vote blue - or wouldn’t vote at all.”
Cass looked away. “Hermes Point.”
“Chantry too. Binsey House. Anywhere far enough away that their vote wouldn’t matter. Cemeteries sold off, hostels cleared, people shuffled like playing cards.”
“And nobody stopped it?”
“We tried,” the woman said. “Some of us. Others kept their heads down. I signed off on things. I didn’t ask enough questions.”
Her jaw clenched. “I might get a surcharge, you know. Me and the rest of them. That’s what Magill’s looking at now.”
Cass’s gaze was steady. “Yeah. But it’s not you in Hermes Point, is it?”
The woman blinked.
“It’s not your sister coughing from the damp. It’s not your mum waiting for a heater that never comes on.”
The woman said nothing.
Somewhere in the background, the fax machine coughed. A typewriter clacked like distant thunder.
“Just don’t forget,” Cass said, “who this actually happened to, yeah?”

Later, she walked out into the clearing rain, air smelling like wet concrete and something green trying to grow. Her shoes squelched at the toes.
She passed the bins. The smokers’ bench. The dog-eared poll tax poster half-peeled off the foyer wall. She didn’t look back.
She caught the bus just before it pulled away.
Sat by the window.
Took out her notebook.
On the page, next to Gerrymander she added four more words:
They’ll never hear us.
Then she closed the book. And watched the city go by.

Afterword

Cass isn’t real. But the rest of it is.
In 1986, the Conservative Party nearly lost control of Westminster Council - their flagship borough, their gleaming jewel. In response, council leader Dame Shirley Porter launched the Building Stable Communities programme. It had a nicer ring to it than “social cleansing.”
The scheme was simple: relocate council tenants - poor, vulnerable, politically inconvenient - out of marginal wards and into tower blocks in safer seats. Replace them with voters more likely to support the Conservatives.
Families were moved into high-rise buildings riddled with asbestos and damp. Some were told not to put up pictures in case they disturbed the asbestos. Others found themselves so far from their communities that they stopped voting altogether.
Meanwhile, cemeteries were sold for five pence each. Homeless families were hidden in unsafe hostels. And all of it was done on official paper, with headers, footers, and sign-off sheets.
Eventually, the truth got out. In 1996, Shirley Porter was ordered to pay a £36.1 million surcharge for her role in what became known as the “Homes For Votes” scandal - one of the most notorious acts of political gerrymandering in British history.
She paid just under £12 million. Then she left the country.
She lives in Tel Aviv now, in considerable comfort.
Hermes Point was demolished in the mid-nineties. It was so full of asbestos there were pigeons nesting in it.
The families who lived there were never compensated. Years later, another tower block burned.
Grenfell.
Different council. Same story. Ignored warnings. Cheap materials. People who didn’t matter enough to be safe.
The families remember.
So should we.

I first learned about the Homes for Votes scandal through the brilliant BBC Radio 4 play Shirleymander by Gregory Evans. That play lit the fuse - not just because of what was said, but because of what it made me feel: that this wasn’t just history. It was a warning.
Huge thanks to the journalists, historians and campaigners who kept the truth alive when others tried to bury it. The facts behind this story were drawn from public records, archived reports, and tireless investigative work. The people who uncovered it - and the ones who were affected by it - deserve better than silence.