RIP Airey Neave (1916-1979)
Airey Neave MP was assassinated 46 years ago today, leading to a radical change in Tory and Labour policy on Northern Ireland. His son and grandchildren were friends-of-a-friend, so I've met the family once or twice, including a Christmas dinner. Neave himself I've always found fascinating, and history would have been very different had he survived.
And I'm not the only one: there is a very strange piece of early 2000s internet literature in which Neave is a major character: it's called "What If Gordon Banks Had Played?". It defies genre: though it's presented as "alternative history", it's also a thriller, and a fictional conspiracy theory. In the story, an event in 1970 leads to Neave surviving and playing a central role. He is one of many mainstream politicians presented extremely negatively in the story.
However much it might traduce Neave's legacy and that of many other innocent mainstream politicos, "What If Gordon Banks Had Played" is a work of genuine greatness. It's also hard to find online, not least as even its author thought it was probably defamatory and didn't wish to be strongly associated with it, given his subsequent career. So to make it available to a new generation, I plan to serialise it here on Gemini.
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