Paul Tudor

Paul Elliot Tudor (March 13, 1930-December 9, 2018) was an Anglo-Dogger Liberal Politician and writer, who served as Prime Minister of Doggerland from 1st August 1971 to 20th April 1987. He became Prime Minister after being chosen as leader of the dominant Liberal Party, following the assassination of the previous Prime Minister Jeroen Kost. He had previously served in Kost's cabinet as Minister of Domestic Affairs and played a key part in drafting Kost's response to the National Protectors of Doggerland.

Early Life
Paul Tudor was born into a wealthy family in Hoovsted on 13th March 1930. His father was General Rand Tudor, a highly respected figure in the Dogger military for his role in suppressing Pro-Democracy strikes in the early 1920s. His mother Violet Tudor had strong family ties to the English aristocracy, including future English Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. This would help give Tudor strong political and social ties he would capitalise upon later in life. His childhood was largely comfortable, only being seriously troubled by bullying at schools by Dutch students for his English heritage.

At age 13 he attended Nandels College, at that time a notable English private school modeled closely off the United Kingdom's Eton. He has been described by his teachers there as an excellent student, despite occasional feelings of homesickness and anxiety. While there, he learnt Dutch, Latin and Greek, avidly read about Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George, Horatio Nelson and other famous English political and military figures and got heavily involved in sports and military training. Many believe his political ambitions truly began here, inspired by the English political tradition and his victory in an election to determine "Head of the House". Privately however, he expressed a level of doubt, fearing that his English heritage might stifle his chances with the Dutch elite.

At 18, he enrolled at the University of Carabou, studying Law. His success academically extended here too, but reported feeling isolated from many of his fellow students. To help fix this, he joined the Liberal Party got involved in his campus Liberal Society and Debate club. His membership of the Liberal Society was highly opportune, as it made him valuable contacts within the Liberal political sphere and earned him a close long-lasting friendship with Rudolf Kost, son of increasingly prominent MNA Jeroen Kost. While this friendship is widely understood to be merely that, there were (and are) rumours that Paul and Rudolf may have been in a homosexual relationship.

Tudor graduated in 1952, moving back to Hoovsted and gaining employment at a shipbuilding company there as an upper manager. He purchased the relatively small estate of Exeter House a few miles from the city boundaries, to which he would reside for most of his life. He donated large amounts of money, partially borrowed from his parents, to the Liberal Party during their 1956 election bid. This helped the Liberals win in key areas and further increased his influence within the party. In 1957, he met Fenna Milhous at an extravagant party held by his old friend Rudolf Kost. They soon entered a relationship and married two years later.

In 1960, Tudor used his close connections within the party and his money to get selected as a Liberal Party candidate. The Workers' Party would repeatedly use Tudor's youth and inexperience as an attack against him, questioning why he was selected despite the existence of other supposedly more qualified Liberals and calling him "Mr Silver Spoon". While the party overall would lose power, Tudor gained a seat.

Kost Cabinet
Following his substantial, although highly controversial, victory in 1968, Jeroen Kost reshuffled his cabinet to remove moderates opposed to his emergency measures to defeat the NPD and to promote loyal allies. As part of this, Paul Tudor was appointed Home Secretary.

Tudor and Kost quickly began writing the Dogger Safety Act, in order to crack down further on the NPD and concentrate more power in their government. The bill was written hastily and forced through the parliamentary timetable almost as fast, with debate and the suggestion of amendments being limited to mere days. The passed with a firm majority, despite Further Left LWP MNAs and Liberal rebels opposing it. The Act, now law, put up military Checkpoints all across Northern Doggerland, created a number of work camps for suspected NPD members and forced civilians into strategic hamlets in rural parts of Bloca.

Tudor spent most his time in office micro-managing the war on the NPD, fluctuating police and troop levels throughout Doggerland to deal with insurgencies and terrorist incidents. The nature of the crisis meant Kost relied heavily on him and frequently had him present in media appearances. Leaks and reports from inside the cabinet indicate that many ministers increasingly hated Tudor, enraged by how this "young upstart" was getting so close to power and frightened by his willingness to "suspend and curtail core liberal freedoms" to defeat terrorism.

When a wave of strikes and protests broke out in the Universities, Shipping and Textile Industries and in key public services like healthcare and education in mid-1969, Kost and Tudor ordered police to protect workers who crossed picket lines from their co-workers. When this was found to do little to stop the strikes, the government accused the most militant unions of having links to the NPD and began using the Home Office's agents to investigate, spy, provoke and sabotage them. Student protests were met with harsh police suppression, using tear gas and rubber bullets to break the protestors' morale. By the end of the year, the situation had calmed and most workers and students returned to their workplaces and classes.

Conflict with the NPD only continued to ramp-up with beginning of the decade and Dogger troops were increasingly demoralised and filed with dread for the enemies. In an attempt to address this, Kost went to Fort Åleselle to inspire the northern forces and address the nation. Before he could say much at all, he was shot 5 times by Private VeAnndrais. He died soon after arriving at a field hospital nearby. Despite the NPD claiming responsibility for the attack, many (such as podcaster and ULPP leader Kenson) have famously speculated that Tudor was behind the assassination himself, but there is little evidence to suggest this is true so far.

The sudden assassination of Prime Minister Kost threw the government into crisis and fear. In a 1980 interview, Tudor described the NPD as seeming "omnipresent and all-powerful". Deputy Prime Minister Karl Van Houten became Acting Prime Minister until a leadership election could be held in the Liberal Party and refused to stand himself. Few expected Tudor to win this race, he was again thought to be too young, too privileged and too English. However, he was able to exploit a number of key factors better than anyone else. Firstly, he gained the endorsement of the Kost family through Rudolf Kost. At the funeral in Mistlân, Tudor stood out with his famous "One Too Many" Speech that heavily praised Kost and promised to completely destroy the NPD. Tudor began to position himself as the man that would continue the Kost legacy and the candidate strong enough to smash the NPD. Furthermore, the expected frontrunner, Chancellor Giel Heiko, withdrew from the race on June 20th citing illness. Notable Conspiracy Theorists have claimed this was a result of blackmail, but the Dogger government has consistently denied this. Tudor did little to stop the Anti-Dogger riots in the cities, calling the riots "understandable" and only lightly urging the rioters to "stay home".

He was able to convince Van Houten to call a party conference in Hoovsted, attempting to show that the Liberals "would not live in fear of the terrorists". He then used his position as Home Secretary to deploy hundreds of militarised police around the conference-hall and invited the military to station one-thousand troops around the city. While there, General Anthony Seymour endorsed Tudor and advised all Liberal party members to support him. While many on the Left condemned this intervention into politics, few saw it as a serious issue compared with the climate of The Long Penance and a majority of Liberals at the conference enthusiastically applauded and cheered Tudor. It is highly likely that many there legitimately wanted Tudor to succeed Kost and strongly approved of him, but many believe that the highly armed police and military presence nearby had a heavy role in weakening any Liberal opposition to him. Similarly, many critics doubt that Tudor would have won the first round of the leadership election with 57% of the vote if such controversial tactics had not been used. Either way, Tudor's victory made a second-round unnecessary and he became Prime Minister of Doggerland on 1st August 1971.

War on the NPD
Tudor was well aware that his administration would now live or die on its ability to defeat the NPD. It was his main promise in the leadership campaign and the Liberal's main promise during the election. However, the war in the north was not going the government's way. Using their strong base among the population there, the NPD took complete control of Fort Åleselle and began broadcasting propaganda and executions over local news. Hysteria about a new NPD-controlled Doggerland spread in the media and the cities. One junior minister was rumoured to have presented Tudor with a plan to divide the country into North and South to bring peace, only to be berated and shouted down in response.

Tudor identified that the NPD's decision to escalate the war from a low-level guerrilla war to a more conventional conflict in Fort Åleselle made them far more vulnerable to conventional military tactics and infiltration. Furthermore, he increasingly understood the NPD was now less of a single united organisation and more of a coalition of various paramilitaries with often conflicting ideological and religious outlooks. Therefore, he instructed the Domestic Intelligence Service (DIS) to greatly expand operations inside Fort Åleselle and various NPD held towns, telling Director Alexander Smit to "identify and exploit all sectarian and political divides. Turn criticism into personal attack, debate into fist-fights, accidents into betrayals and overactive skirmishes into wars."

The military campaign was continually complicated by poor infrastructure, a hostile population and acts of sabotage on behalf of the NPD. This made bringing supplies and reinforcements up north a serious challenge and allowed the NPD to largely nullify any advantage the Dogger army had in overall numbers. Fighting was sporadic and costly, focusing on securing villages, key towns and hills and closing and reopening roads for either side. Tudor continued to closely manage troop and police levels, angering a number of generals but perhaps leading to a few small victories. In early December 1972, the situation had stabilised again and fighting died down, but the bulk engagements would restart by March and April 1973.

On July 19th, 1973, NPD sympathisers raided the Bastek underground LGBT+ bar in Port Nandels and began assaulting patrons and destroying the establishment. The fighting spread and increased in severity, spilling into the surrounding streets. The local police were soon called in, but mistook the NPD attacking them for the bar's patrons and began teargassing the building and making forceful arrests. In the chaos, 4 Patrons were kidnapped by NPD forces and other NPD began to trickle out into surrounding buildings and groups of by-standers. The police realised their mistake and turned on the NPD and apprehended many. The "Bastek Riots", as it became to be known, as a double-edge sword. On the one hand, it made the police look incompetent and overly prejudiced. On the other, it would increasingly pit the NPD against the LGBT+ community in Doggerland and lead to the Sworick population becoming alienated from the Protectors. The government would drop propaganda leaflets, featuring a modified sequence of events, to paint the NPD as "intolerant clerical savages" to those living around conflict zones. To cement the idea that the government was defending liberalism against reaction, Tudor made rescuing the LGBT+ hostages a priority. The task was carried out just 3 weeks after their kidnapping and was again used in propaganda.

In the Autumn, NPD forces in Åleselle were able to advance south to a new line on the White River and north to the outskirts of English-majority Peltsburg City. This, in combination with the embarrassment of police conduct during Bastek, convinced Tudor of the need for a major offensive in Spring and Summer of 1974. He began planning what would be later jokingly dubbed "Operation Sappho" with military leadership in October and clashed with them over how it should look. They warned him that a traditional mass-offensive would lead to high numbers causalities and could worsen civilian opinion of the government and suggested a more cautious approach. Despite this, Tudor mostly refused to compromise and largely got his way.

At 01:00 on 29th February 1974, Operation Sappho was launched with 25 simultaneous offensives on villages and small towns across the White River and the Botick Mountains. The attacks were met with surprising high numbers and levels of preparedness (likely due to NPD spying), with the army missing deadlines and taking high casualties. Nevertheless, Tudor believed the opportunity to win the war had to be taken and authorised government forces to push the NPD out of the sections of Whiteville City.

The First Battle of Whiteville saw the army arduously fight the NPD for individual streets and communities, taking great losses that it found difficult to replace in-time to resist NPD counterattacks. Atrocities towards civilians of all ethnicities weren't uncommon, with famous instances like the killing of families hiding in St. Marius Metro Station conducted by the army or the NPD executions of Calvinist priests, but Tudor was careful to cover-up and filter reports of these acts where they were done by his own troops. The NPD was also condemned for its increasingly frequent use of child soldiers and chemical weapons during the battle. By the beginning of April, the army had secured two bridges in the centre the the city and was able to reliably begin crossing into the city's north-side.

On the Peltsburg front, fortunes originally fared much better for NPD forces. They were able to rebuff the Fifth Division's south-ward offensive at Hope's Hill and captured the hated General Sir Donald Smuts. Hearing the news, actors sympathetic to the NPD from the Dogger minority in Peltsburg organised a protest against the military occupation of the city on 8th April. The protestors ran into the army and English milita groups and the situation escalated quickly, with the protestors hijacking a tank and running over military personal and armoried vehicles causing 23 army deaths. The tank fled the city in an attempt to reach NPD lines but was intercepted and destroyed, killing all 4 of the crew. Meanwhile, the protest was forcefully disbanded, with the majority of the protestors sent to forced labour camps. Tudor publicly labeled the incident "a sign of NPD desperation" but was still widely mocked for the failure at Hope's Hill.

Meanwhile in Whiteville, the army faced wave after wave of assaults on their positions across the river and were largely unable to take any ground, causing a rough stalemate to develop across the urban frontline. Within NPD controlled territory, internal divisions between Dogger and Sworick NPD militias became more severe by the day. Many of the Catholic and Conservative groups within the city were involved in the rounding-up and execution of LGBT+ and Sworick civilians and many in the NPD's leadership held the Sworicks in great contempt. Ideological differences between Right-Wing and Left-Wing organisations were also hard to paper-over. The Government's agents pounced on this chance and began spreading reports of Anti-Sworick atrocities far and wide, before anyone could be captured.

A small street battle between Utse Witteveen and Alof VeCinnéide's forces at 04:00 UTC on the 4th July soon generalised into the surrounding areas and became an all-out NPD Civil War inside Whiteville. The next day, Wittenveen read out the "Call for a Stateless Society", that declared their forces completely independent from the NPD and the Government and formalised a state of war between all three. The statement also called for Sworick civilians to arm themselves and "push out Tudor and Alof's boys alike - spilling all fascist blood necessary". This, and the following Sworick uprisings, threw frontlines into disarray and greatly complicated the situation. However, thanks to Tudor's propaganda and improved intelligence services, he was able to win defections of Sworick moderates to the Government in exchange for amnesty and the army was able to form a new secure front line not dissimilar from that held a month ago. From here, Tudor ordered and helped manage a slow push northwards, overcoming NPD and Sworick ambushes and counterattacks and reaching the city's northern limits on October 12th. Wittenveen's forces began to dissolve into the local population while the NPD retreated back to Åleselle and the surrounding countryside. The First Battle of Whiteville was declared over by Tudor in an address to the nation on November 9th 1974. However, Government troops were completely unable seriously to follow-up their success in the countryside or anywhere else on the frontline, leading to the early conclusion of Operation Sappho.

Repeal of the Emergency Enabling Act and Dogger Safety Act
With Tudor's problems mounting and increasing acceptance of the LWP's line that he was a "Dictator-in-progress", Crowley sensed an opportunity to win a clear legislative defeat over the government and re-balance the authority of the Prime Minister and National Assembly by repealing the Emergency Enabling Act and Dogger Safety Act. While Tudor was personally eager to hold onto his powers, he understood that using a three-line whip in this situation could cause a civil war in his party, and so decided to only use a one-line whip on the motion. Statements made to the press in 2011 indicated that Tudor expected Crowley's motion to fail substantially. This, in combination with heavy lobbying on-behalf Crowley, the Justice Party and various Dogger interest groups, arguably led to Crowley's motion to repeal these acts narrowly passing. Tudor was reportedly devastated, supposedly stating soon after "the shith*ads in my own party! They've handed this country to terrorists and bolsheviks in the vein hope they will grant them any mercy in the filthy ruins of this country I built". Tudor contemplated resignation but decided to instead call a Snap Election for April 1987, believing (according to his statements on the campaign trail) that his ability to connect with Dutch and English voters would save him.