Three Fusils Conjoined

Out of the scorned seam of Tory tradition, Britain's National Coal Board proudly mined itself a coat of arms. Henceforth all the board's letters and documents will bear a twin row of black triangles (representing coal), flanked by British lions, each shouldering a sun (heat & light).

Tories wavered between laughter and pro test at this new expropriation. The heraldic description of this new Socialist symbol runs: "Per feese argent and sable three fusils conjoined in feese counter charged. The supporters -- on either side a lion sable charged on the shoulder with a sun in splendour or." The board's announcement dotted the "i" of Author J. B. Priestley's comment, printed a day before in the New Statesman and Nation: "We are revolutionaries who have not swept away anything . . .

We are a nation of sabbath-keepers who do not go to church . . . We get free spectacles and false teeth and, for lack of hospital beds, may die in a ditch. We have probably the best children and the dullest adults in Europe. We are a Socialist-Monarchy that is really the last monument of liberalism." Speaking in Faversham, Kent, Tory Robert Boothby posed an earthier dilemma. To him, the proposed reduction of food imports seemed "a pretty prospect --an endless vista of free false teeth with nothing to bite."

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