The Abolition of Red

A Short Story

A very big thank you to my subscribers, and in particular my paying subscribers, for encouraging the work of Creative Liberty. If you enjoy this short story, please feel free to comment and share - it really helps the Substack.

Any accents are attempted at the author’s own risk.

The Abolition of Red

I was rather surprised on Tuesday morning when I woke up to discover that the colour Red had gone.

Where it had gone, precisely, I was at a loss to explain. I would later discover that Red had not vanished at all, and had in fact been merely reorganised, much as a failing team in a failing department might be ‘reorganised’ into oblivion.

At first, I stumbled through my morning routine without any realisation of this fact. That evening I had an important speech to make, which we had been planning for several months. So my head was filled with lead-ins to the important paragraphs, and those sizzling one-line denunciations, that must be memorised by the end of the working day.

As I gazed blearily at my bookshelves through greasy glasses, while munching blearily on greasy porridge, it occurred to me that the whole display felt a little cooler than the usual. On closer inspection, a well-known series of books about the History and Evolution of the Red Army (which occupied a whole shelf and were threatening to spill over into the Polish Literature section), were in fact a delicate shade of Blue.

Mystified by this development, I spent a few minutes wandering around the flat in search of Red, without success. Outside the window, London’s famous Green buses glided through their empty bus lanes, while a postman from the Royal Mail emptied one of those iconic Teal post-boxes. Something was definitely the matter with my eyes, I decided, and so with only a moment’s hesitation I picked up the phone to arrange an appointment with my doctor.

In my dazed early-morning state, I had forgotten that doctors and their appointments no longer exist, and spent a delightful few minutes listening to the surly answerphone recording of a GP secretary. As usual, she told me to call back at precisely 8am on Friday, within 60 seconds of the clock beginning to chime, on the promise that those who were first in the queue for this peculiar ritual would be entered into an automated lottery for a telephone appointment with the doctor. Her delivery was perfectly calculated to imply that we should all be grateful for such beneficence on their part, and that it would be churlish to inspect the mouth of this gifted horse, even if the horse in question was in fact lying on its side, emitting a foul rotting stench, and accumulating a large audience of flies.

Just as I was about to hang up, however, a new recording cut in to provide something useful.

“If you’re ringing to ask about your eyesight, please check the news before trying to book an appointment.”

“Thank God for the NHS,” I muttered, ending the call and switching on the TV. A BBC presenter in a black tracksuit and hood was delivering a brilliant headline about small farmers struggling due to the declining yield of breadfruit in Paraguay. As a native speaker of English, I was able to understand about every third word of his fast-paced, inner-city dialect, and reminded myself yet again to book an evening class in RP (Rapped Pronunciation). But as I settled down in my moth-eaten armchair and waited for an article that might have some bearing on my new-found colour blindness, it occurred to me that the BBC too had changed its colour scheme. Instead of the classic Red, they had opted for a bold Lime Green.

“And now a recap o’ dem headlines, blud,” drawled the BBC man. “The US President has announced that they will slap up a No Fly Zone on the Upper Volta in solidarity with the Rainbow-Butterfly-Sparkles Revolution. Britain has sent its entire airforce in support of dat peace mission, with both warplanes expected to arrive as soon as they clear of maintenance.

“Following dat news yesterday bout gas, oil, and electric prices droppin at wholesale by 65%, our experts say why you gonna get another steep rise in your energy bills next month, swear to God.

“But first, let’s hit up our man in the states, where she be interviewing Nick Everything, founder and CEO of the New York holding company Omnifarious Acquisitions. G-man, take it away, sister.”

The camera cut to the sleek glass lobby of a corporate building. Standing on the far left was a pencil-thin reporter with an enormous white afro that made him look like a dandelion. Filling the rest of the frame was a sweating, gleaming businessman who rather resembled a hippopotamus that had been stuffed into a pink suit against its will.

“Well, we’re obviously really happy with this new acquisition,” grinned the CEO, showing an alarming volume of too-white teeth. “We think that the colour Red will make an excellent addition to our intellectual property portfolio. But I want to make it absolutely clear that the reason we’re doing this is for the good of the planet.

“I mean, just think of all the bad things out there that are red! Activists, communists, financial losses, all red! Paedophiles, they’ve got red bits too! Have our critics even considered what this acquisition means for the children? So you can see that we’ve really acted not out of a narrow and predatory self-interest masquerading as business activity, or a pathological need for systematised control over other people’s lives, but mostly for philanthropic reasons, actually.”

“Mr Everything, your acquisition of this colour is, I think the most expensive purchase in intellectual property history? Could you say a few words about that?”

“Sure, a few words won’t cost you,” his eyes gleamed. “We spent 14 billion dollars of imaginary money on this acquisition – not to mention the legal costs involved in persuading the federal authorities that Red should be treated as property in the first place. We’re really indebted to our investors – literally, I mean – for putting their support behind this scheme so that we and we alone have the right to Red.”

“Some critics have said that by making this colour your private property, you’re impoverishing the world of visual arts by removing a third of their palette. How do you respond to that?”

“Well if they had 14 billion dollars, I bet they’d want to buy Red too. But we got there first, so they can whistle for it.”

“Have you considered selling the right to use this colour on a case by case basis?”

“We’ve thought about it,” the CEO grinned again, and made a show of inspecting his fingernails. “Now that we own Red, we’ll probably license out the rights to use colour on a monthly subscription basis. You know, fifty dollars a month and you can say the word Red, twelve thousand dollars and you can use it. But not too much.” He wagged a fat, pink finger at the camera. “That’s all in the future, though. For now, we just want to see people’s reactions. Any time you see anyone in Red, you know they’re the boss. From now on, Red says ‘we own this colour, we own you.’ And I’m quite looking forward to owning people.”

“Profound words. What’s next for Omnifarious Acquisitions? Are you going for Blue and Green as well?”

“We’ve filed a preliminary injunction on the other primary colours, to make sure nobody else nabs them,” he said. “But personally I’m already a bit bored of the whole Red thing. We’ll probably go for words next. I really do want to buy the word ‘fuck’. Think about it, we could clean up the internet by owning all the bad language – wouldn’t that be a bit of philanthropy?” He laughed uproariously. “But another thing we want to do, see all these critics that have been giving us bad press? OK, it’s only about 5 or 6 people, because we subsidise the rest. But those 5 or 6 can be a real pain in the ass. So we can buy enough words to make sure they can’t say a bad one about us. Not without an lawsuit, anyway, and we have algorithms to take care of that automatically.”

“Thank you very much for your time. I’m afraid we’ve been broadcasting you in bubblegum pink, because the BBC doesn’t have IP rights to the colour you’re wearing. But I hope we can come to some kind of arrangement in future.”

“Yeah, we can deal.”

“That was Mr Nick Everything of Omnifarious Acquisitions PLC, live from New York.”

I turned off the TV. In a state of disbelieving shock, I drifted into the kitchen, and made a fortifying cup of coffee. I was determined that Mr Nick Everything would not have the last word on this matter – even if he bought and owned it.

Now, I am aware that the British people are not easily roused to action. We deride the French for their strikes, the Americans for their dream, and the Germans for their spiced sausages. But from this island fortress of derision there has on occasion sallied out a great, almighty wave of popular protest. Consider the Iraq War protests of 2003 – a million feet on the streets of London. Or the miners’ strikes of the 70s and 80s, put down only by a conspiracy of the media and security establishments. Surely now, with this outrageous corporate intrusion into the aesthetics of everyone’s daily life, the British people would stand to their colours.

By the time I’d left my apartment, I’d convinced myself that this outrage, like so many others, would be a blessing in disguise. It would galvanise the moderates. The suits had surely gone too far this time!

As I waited to catch the bus to work, I caught sight of old Mrs Greenacre tending to her end-of-terrace garden, and decided to test my theory. Ambling over to the low fence, I waved a cheery-but-not-asylum-level-cheery greeting.

“Morning, Mrs Greenacre!”

“Oh, good morning, Richard. Peonies aren’t looking very pretty today, I’m afraid. Usually they’re the pride of my garden. They were doing awfully well yesterday and now they’ve gone all grey – must be one of these new foreign parasites, like Dutch Elm or Scotch Humza.”

“Ye-es,” I said slowly. “Mrs Greenacre, I don’t suppose you saw the news this morning, about that American businessman buying up colours?”

“Oh, is that what it was about. I must say, I don’t approve of his pink suit. Call me old-fashioned, but no self-respecting businessman should wear a pink suit on television. Ghastly.”

“But you do realise he’s bought up an entire primary colour, don’t you? I mean, that’s why your flowers are all grey this morning. He’s literally bought the colour out of them.”

“Has he now? Well, that’s terribly clever of him. Amazing what they can do with technology, these days.”

I stared at the old lady. “Mrs Greenacre, aren’t you perhaps a little bit annoyed? That this businessman’s taken half the colour out of your garden, I mean. Without so much as a by-your-leave.”

“Well, it is a bit of a bummer I suppose, but what can you do? I don’t want to cause a fuss over something as silly as colours. Just think, there are children actually starving in Africa.” She sighed theatrically. “Anyway, it’s not as bad as all that. Truth be told, these peonies have never been that pretty. I was thinking of getting rid of them. Never liked them. In fact, come to think of it, Mrs Dahlia down the road has nothing but flowers of that colour, and she’s always boasting about them – it might do her good to eat a bit of humble pie for a change.”

Reflecting on the curious irony of tall poppy syndrome among English gardeners, I made my excuses and returned to the bus stop, while Mrs Greenacre resumed her garden-bound pottering.

My bus arrived at the office about half an hour late, having sustained a large dent from the impact of a 4x4 that had jumped the lights at a four-way crossing. I had expected to enter a scene of chaos, but the press offices of Mr Douglas Shirk, MP, were remarkably undisturbed. My colleague Tracy was floating around the office with a clipboard, and everyone else sat clicking fastidiously at their desks, like a row of sleepy chickens.

“Sorry I’m late, the buses, you know,” I said, settling into my desk and starting up the computer. “Anyone see the news this morning?”

David’s head appeared from the other side of his computer. “Yes, that war in the Upper Volta will be gangbusters for the polls. Make sure we get some nice close-ups of the jets when they leave RAF Tattershot. You know the drill: stock African children crying, cut to warplanes, a few explosions for visual interest, cut back to stock African children cheering.”

“Can’t we just use the shots from the last war? It’s the same planes, after all,” said Tracy.

“Ah, but the new colour scheme for this one is simply fabulous. The Americans wanted a coalition paint job to match the Rainbow-Butterfly-Sparkles theme, and I have to say they delivered.”

“Oh.”

“Luckily, we can use the same starving African children. Slap on a couple of filters, and nobody will notice they’re Mrs Ogunwali’s kids from a council estate in Basingstoke.”

I cleared my throat. “Never mind the bloody war. Did you see the news about colours?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“Well, don’t you think we should do something about it?” I pointed to the oversized Labour Party Flag on the opposite wall, which had turned a suspiciously conservative shade of blue. “We can’t go out on campaign like that – the Blue Labour headlines will practically write themselves.”

“Yes, so Tracy’s taking an inventory of all the campaign and promotional material we’ve got that ought to be R-,” the word caught in David’s throat, “that ought to be the right colour, and we’ll include that information in our application to Omnifarious Acquisitions in order to license their colour for the workers’ protest movement.”

I stared at him in disbelief. “You mean that’s it? You’ll just capitulate to the demands of these ridiculous vulture capitalists, just like that?”

“Well they own the colour, so I don’t see what else we can do, old chum.”

“And you’ve cleared this with the big cheese?”

“Absolutely. This comes from the top.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I just can’t accept that. How do you think this will go down with the working voter in Snotton-upon-Clyde, when the party of the proletariat turns up wearing the colour that says, ‘we own you’?”

“Well, where’s the lie?” said David, leaning back in his seat. “We do own them. Most of our support in Snotton comes from tribal voters who would sooner shave their testicles with a rusty chainsaw than vote Tory. It’s been a safe seat since 1945. We are the Socialist Dukes of Snotton, and the voters are our serfs.”

I looked around the room for support. “Are you listening to this bilge?” I cried. “This is worse than Orwell. ‘The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.’ Where’s your socialist spirit?”

“In the fridge, between the vodka and the lemonade,” quipped David. “Look, I was being facetious, okay? Just don’t get hung up on this colours nonsense. It’s not a big deal.” He lowered his voice. “Besides, when we get to wear nice, coloured badges out on the town, and nobody else can, I think it’ll be quite striking.”

At that moment the door opened, and in strode the man himself: t  he Right Honourable Mr Douglas Shirk, MP for Snotton-upon-Clyde.

“Douglas,” I said quickly, intercepting him on the way to his office. He was a short man, with wisps of ginger hair, and the sort of vague cheesy smile of a man who might be photographed at any moment. “I wonder – could I have a quick word – about the colours business?”

“Certainly,” he said, distractedly. “What’s the issue?”

“Well, I hardly think it sends out the right signal to the voters, if we just roll over to the demands of this American company and hand over fistfuls of cash to use the colour R-” I coughed. “To use the colour Red,” I managed, with an effort. “I mean, we’re British, for a start. What some vulture fund on another continent does should have no bearing on our domestic politics.”

“Yes, well, I believe the groundwork for this was laid through an amendment to the Transatlantic Economic Treaty on Intellectual Property seven years ago, and ratified into EU law, so there’s really nothing we can do,” said Douglas, wringing his hands.

“But the voters will think we’re the party of big business,” I protested. “Shouldn’t we at least issue a statement against the takeover?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said the MP, decisively. “David, what does Twitter say?”

“Twitter is divided on the issue. Half of Twitter is watching Eurovision, the other half’s watching the football. No clear consensus on the colours thing, but Manchester United’s fans are livid.”

“Because of the colour of their kit?”

“No, because they’re 2-0 down to Arsenal and the ref’s just given them a blue card.”

“Oh. Oh dear. Will that affect my speech to the Manchester Steelworkers’ Alliance this weekend?”

“I doubt it, boss, according to the latest polling, most United fans live in London and Bangalore.”

“Can we get back to the point, please,” I said. “Do you not think it’s fundamentally a betrayal of socialist principles if we hand over this money to Omnifarious Acquisitions?”

“Hm. That’s a good point. I hadn’t thought about, er, socialist principles… David, what does Twitter say?”