the wheel had turned. It was time to pay for the broken promises. Across
Britain people watched their TV screens in awe as powerful bankers sat
cowed before a parliamentary committee. The scene vaguely resembled a
Star Chamber court, or a Stalinist show trial, where the fallen, recently powerful,
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confessed and were tried for their crimes. This was not for all that held in some
grim secret prison, but in the cradle of British democracy, before the cameras of an
agape world. Regretfully there would be no sentencing, and to the disappointment
of a great many, there was not the least risk of a headsman’s axe or a firing squad.
The accused bowed their heads, said they were sorry, then flew home in their
private jets. Nothing was easier, an act of contrition, three Hail Marys and three
Our Fathers and they left the confessional scot-free, their pockets bulging with the
hundreds of millions they had extorted from savers and investors, who in addition,
as tax payers, would have to foot the bill to bailout their stricken banks.
It was an extraordinary turn of events. Only two or three years earlier the
founders of Cool Britannia had reiterated, as they had done so for almost a decade,
that the country would never ever again suffer another cycle of boom and bust ―
whilst the nation’s carefree subjects enjoyed perhaps the greatest credit powered
spending spree in history. Politicians and bankers had told a credulous public
almost daily that the boom would go on forever. Each and every one was
persuaded the capital tied-up in their modest homes offered a source of new wealth
and seemingly unlimited spending power. It made Harold Macmillan’s boast ‘you
never had it so good’ look mean.
The sorry band of bankers, perched on the edge of the bench of the accused,
lamentably pleaded the crash had been impossible to predict. Conveniently
forgetting they had turned a deaf ear to the predictions and warnings of a multitude
of serious economists and journalists. Those who had sounded the warning bell
well before the onset of the crisis had gone unheeded, derided as contrarian and
pisse froides.
Of course bankers had not been alone in their refusal to look reality in the face.
New wealth based on property prices had become an everyday story. The boast of
new found riches was echoed in every pub, club or Starbucks café, up and down
the country, in every smart restaurant and at every chic diner party. Confidence
reigned as the nation’s brilliant leader dished out advice to Europe and the rest of
the world, urging the shirkers to emulate Cool Britannia’s dazzling model of
success. Blair’s grinning face seemed ever present on television screens across the
planet as he waged Bush’s wars, vaunting his skills as a leader, as if Britain still led
a mighty empire.
It was an undeniable fact that New Labour had encouraged and even urged the
greed of bankers. In fact people at every level of British society had been urged to
enrich themselves, to grab a piece of the action. Mandelson, Blair’s henchman, led
the pack of yapping jackals, said: In the modern Labour Party we are relaxed about
those who express an insatiable and pathological desire for self-enrichment at the
expense of our fellow man that borders on the truly evil, and on another occasion,
we are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich.
Fitzwilliams squirmed as he watched the sorry show on TV at his home in County
Wicklow, thirty kilometres from Dublin. The vast and magnificent family home
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had been bought by Fitzwilliams’ grandfather before the First World War. It had
been originally built by an Anglo-Irish Earl and designed by Richard Cassels in the
latter part of the 18th century. The stately home was considered to be one of the
finest examples of Palladian architecture in Ireland.
The Fitzwilliams family, one of Ireland’s landed families, had built their fortune
in the late 19th century in brewing and property development in Dublin, before
branching out into banking in the early nineteen twenties. His grandfather, a keen
collector of art, boasted a collection of works by Goya, Vermeer, Peter Paul
Rubens and Thomas Gainsborough.
Fitzwilliams’ wife, Alice, was a leading figure in the Irish Thoroughbred
Association. Beyond their two children, her interests lay in the family owned stud
farm that lay within the borders of their estate. Outside of important horse shows
and racing events in the UK, she rarely travelled outside of Ireland. The City of
London and the business world held little or no interest for her. As for her husband
Michael, he was left to devote all his attention to the bank.
As Fitzwilliams looked beyond the windows of his office, towards the lake and
the gentle hills of the Wicklow Mountains, he thanked his lucky stars, he had
survived the great debacle. Others had not been, or would not be so lucky. Fortune
had smiled upon him and he swore he would never again allow his bank and more
specifically his family to be drawn into the kind of desperate situation he had faced
in the last frantic months of 2008.