A world recovering from war and a global pandemic. A roguish Prime Minister who takes political advice from his young mistress. A secret service out of control. A real-life murder mystery. All the elements for a novel were right there in front of me. How could I resist?
Imagine this. It’s 1907 and a 26-year-old Leftist troublemaker name of Victor Grayson is selected to fight a by-election in a West Yorkshire constituency for Labour. And he’s not only young, he’s charismatic, a firebrand, a man who knows how to connect with audiences. Young voters love him. But you know who doesn’t love him? The Labour leadership. The Labour leader – a man named Keir as it happens – even makes a special trip North to try and persuade the local party to adopt someone more sensible. A tame committee man. Someone respectable. But the local party stubbornly persist in wanting their mob orator.
Labour has never won this seat before, it’s always gone for the Liberals or the Conservatives, and those parties are quite happy to be facing Grayson. Surely the hard-headed workers of Colne Valley’s mill towns won’t trust a baby-faced rabble-rouser to be their representative in parliament?
But, against all predictions, they do. It’s a serious shock result. An Edwardian Chris Mason would have been in ecstasies. The political order turned upside down. 
In a suitably rousing speech from a cart outside Slaithwaite (pronounced slow-it) Town Hall, Grayson declares the result to be a victory for pure revolutionary socialism, that he feels it is his duty to be the old men and women’s MP, the starving child’s MP. That the voters of the constituency “have worked for the means of life to be the property of all classes. We stand for equality, human equality, sexual equality.”
Incendiary stuff.
Once in parliament, our Victor continues to champion the left behind, the unemployed, the desperate. His language is so fierce that he is expelled from the chamber more than once. At one point he calls the House of Commons a “House of Murderers”.
But while this is happening Grayson is also enjoying the shiniest joys of London. Parliament! All those bars! And then there’s the well-known aphrodisiac effects of power. Victor Grayson has always been open-minded about his sexual preferences (he had a long affair with a male factory worker before his election) and now the youthful, handsome, fast-talking, hard-drinking MP is in his element.
This, for Grayson, is as good as it gets.
By 1910, he is out of parliament, by 1912 he is married to a young actress, by 1913 he is a father, and by 1914 he is a bankrupt and taking gigs for the Government trying to recruit soldiers for the Great War. His former comrades on the left consider the war to be an Imperialist crime against the working class. He’s also (probably) secretly taking money from the new Secret Intelligence Service to spy on those trade unionists and others on the left.
By 1920, with the war over (and Grayson now a single father following the death of his wife, Ruth), perhaps it’s time for a return to frontline politics? He has the way to do it, too. He’s discovered that the Prime Minister is taking cash for honours and doing it quite brazenly. Grayson’s plan is to name those involved in brokering the deals, and re-establish his credentials with the left-wing press, maybe publish his memoir. Then, on the evening of September 20, 1920, he leaves his surprisingly luxurious rooms in Piccadilly and vanishes.
No body is ever found.
Stephen May. Credit Jonathan Ring.
So what happened to him? Was he killed by the Secret Service on orders of the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister’s mistress? Was he murdered by his former colleagues on the left? Did he fall in the Thames drunk? Did he simply go to ground to escape the pressures of his complicated life? And why did it take seven years (seven years!) for anyone to report him missing? His landlady didn’t call the police, she just sent his things to his in-laws who were caring for his daughter. And they didn’t report him missing him either.
Who knows what really happened to Victor Grayson? No one. Not me. Not for sure. But I’ve written a novel about this politician, this socialist icon you’ve probably never heard of, even though you definitely should have done.
Green Ink by Stephen May is published by Swift Press. For more information, click here.
