In 2011, the British Con-Dem coalition government imposed massive cuts to public spending, ostensibly to reduce the national deficit. The funding shortfalls produced by this austerity programme were to be met by opening up essential public services –schools, hospitals, universities, hospitals, libraries, and so on – to corporate investment and, where the profitability was likely too be too small or too distant in time, voluntary work within the affected communities.  This latter option, known as the Big Society initiative, met with little success and was quietly dropped from political and news agendas. Not, however, before introducing the country to an array of costumed crimefighters and, eventually, a handful of genuine heroes.

Memos and recordings of secret high level meetings leaked to the press in 2015 show that, in an attempt to reduce the cuts to the police service, senior officers conspired to provoke the wave of protests sweeping the UK into violence. They reasoned that the greater the threat to property – one tape reveals officers agreeing to use ‘public order’ as a euphemism – the more likely corporate bosses were to pressurise politicians into maintaining, perhaps even expanding, the police budget. This strategy proved disastrous. Many aspects of police work were suddenly opened up to competitive tender, with tax-payers’ money diverted into the coffers of multinational security consultant companies. The size of the police force was massively reduced. Many former officers found themselves employed by these new ‘security providers’ as freelancers or on short-term contracts, doing the same work for little more than minimum wage.  Only the least profitable of police work – crimes against people, particularly in the poorest  sectors of society – were left to the police force.

Meanwhile, the Big Society initiative encouraged neighbourhood watch schemes and other community groups to police their own streets. And while many people were concerned about the violence and injustices this introduced, the media lapped it up. Steven Seagal presented four seasons of the reality TV series Have-A-Go Heroes, a ratings hit that inspired numerous imitators,  including Ross Kemp’s Britain’s Hardest Heroes and Danny Dyer’s Village Vigilantes. Richard Branson, Simon Cowell, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Alan Sugar joined forces to produce Britain’s Got Talents, a show which uncovered the nation’s would-be superheroes, and The X-Factory, which followed each season’s finalists as through superhero boot camp. For a while, every school-child wanted to be the next Wicca Man, EastEnder, White Van Man, Hammer or CiderMan, the west country cyborg.

Even General Dodd, the former head of Britain’s top-secret Meta-Human programme,  came out of retirement, bringing with him a veritable army of long-forgotten heroes. From seniors’ villages and sheltered accommodation they came: Colonel Bogey, Boy’s Own, the Dandy, the Minx, Brown Owl, Flying Picket, the Space Hopper…

But things were already going badly wrong. As austerity measures drove the country ever deeper into recession, private police forces, security contractors and criminal gangs – the differences becoming increasingly nominal – started to carve up cities between them. No-go zones and exclusion zones proliferated. Emergency powers were declared. Black-shirted militias were formed. Labour camps opened. Cities burned. Heroes died, citizens died. And so did civil liberties.

At first, only a handful of voices dared raise themselves in opposition.

Banned once more, and once too often, from a shopping mall in Liverpool because she refused to uncover her face for security cameras, a sixteen-year-old girl decided enough was enough. Calling herself Hoodie, she burned down a militia R&R centre in a former library. This first act of heroic resistance attracted others, and soon she was joined by Bradford’s The Muslamist and Wolverhampton’s ASBOy.

In Glasgow, the Northern Emergency Defence System announced its existence, its opposition to the state and its intention to kick some ass. Among the first to respond to this call to action was the Essex-based group Counter-Hegemonists Against the Violent State, soon renowned for their attacks on private security forces, the English Defence League and other hate-mongering groups. Citizen Media was everywhere, breaking the corporate stranglehold on information and tirelessly insisting that neither he nor his fellow costumed freaks were the real heroes.

‘The people are the heroes’, he would say at the end of each broadcast. ‘Now get heroic’.

The Insurgency had begun.

Soon Clegatron’s beleaguered headquarters would be destroyed, the Lobbyists scattered.

But even then, the Angel of the North was stirring in its slumber.

Whispering to Hoodie, The Muslamist and ASBOy about the threat that was still to come.

The pair of supervillains they had yet to face.

MeritocracyMan and the Philanthropist… 

• From Jason Wyngarde, The Second Battle of Britain (London: Verso, 2023)