Callum joins the Liberation Militia

Callum’s entry into the Liberation Militia marks a decisive turn from grief into organized action: Jude offers him a way to make a difference, and Callum accepts, entering a clandestine movement that gives him purpose and status while drawing him into revenge and coercion. The recruitment follows the execution of his father, Ryan, and begins a transformation Callum later describes as the loss of the person who once loved watching the sun set on the beach.

Background and Recruitment

Callum’s first encounter with the militia’s consequences comes before he joins it. At Heathcroft, he and three other Nought students are surrounded by police as a hostile crowd chants outside the school. Crosses shout “NO BLANKERS IN OUR SCHOOL,” while officers try to clear a path to the entrance and hold the crowd back. The scene places Callum’s political world in the immediate setting of racial hostility and contested school access.

The institutions around the students do little to reassure them. A television report describes the Noughts admitted to Heathcroft as meeting “some hostility,” omitting the police failure to protect them from being poked, pinched, and punched, and leaving out the spit covering Callum’s jacket. At school, Mr Costa suggests that Nought students who find it difficult should go elsewhere, while Mrs Paxton warns that they are constantly targeted and that retaliation is only a matter of time. These details form the climate in which the militia can present itself to Callum as a means of action, though the novel does not treat its violence as a simple remedy for that discrimination.

The personal rupture that immediately precedes Callum’s enlistment is Ryan’s execution. At Hewmett Prison, Callum is present among the Nought mourners when the authorities announce that Ryan Callum McGregor, of 15 Hugo Yard, Meadowview, is to be hanged after conviction on seven counts of murder and political terrorism. Callum and Sephy meet eyes across the courtyard before the execution. Later, Jude makes clear that he knows what happened to their father and declares that it is “payback time.”

Jude approaches Callum while he is eating chips and asks whether he would like to do something more worthwhile. He does not initially spell out the offer. Instead, he asks Callum to decide whether he is “in or out,” presenting the militia as a chance to make a difference. Callum recognizes that turning Jude down may mean never being asked again. After pausing over the decision, he accepts; Jude tells him to go home, pack, and make peace with their mother, warning that he will not see her or anyone else they know for a while. Jude welcomes him into the group but adds that he hopes he can trust him.

Training, Rank, and Revenge

Callum later recalls that his father had warned him the Liberation Militia never lets a recruit go once it has taken him. His own progression begins at the bottom: he is little more than a tea boy, then becomes a grunt carrying out orders from anyone in his cell, which consists of six men and three women. He advances to private and then sergeant, joining a new cell. At nineteen, he is proud of having earned the rank.

The promotion gives Callum access to people and information beyond his immediate circle. He uses militia contacts and resources to locate Dionne Fernandez, Lola Jordan, and Joanne Longshadow, the Heathcroft pupils who had beaten Sephy for sitting with him and being with him. He investigates their homes, families, preferences, and vulnerabilities, applying the militia’s methods of intelligence gathering to a private vendetta.

Callum targets them one by one: Lola first, Joanne next, and Dionne last. He takes particular care to make Dionne suffer as she had made Sephy suffer. He describes the revenge as deliberately cold, but also recognizes its personal cost: with each act, he loses more of himself. He contrasts the man he has become with Callum Ryan McGregor, who once loved sitting on the beach to watch the sun go down, and judges that earlier self to have disappeared.

The Militia’s Wider Operations

Callum’s enlistment also brings him into the organization’s wider campaigns. Before the Dundale Shopping Centre bombing, he realizes that the Liberation Militia is planning something at the shopping centre and that Jude knows about it. Remembering that Sephy is there, he reacts with horror. The episode shows that he is close enough to the group’s plans to recognize a threat, even as his immediate concern is Sephy’s safety.

Later, Callum is part of a militia operation to abduct Sephy and demand ransom. In the forest cabin used to hold her, preparations have been underway since information arrived that she might be returning home. Jude and Pete have secured the General’s permission, and a senior deputy is expected to visit afterward. The hideout is known only to a select few; the group plans to keep guards at both the front and back, taking advantage of the clearing because anyone approaching would be exposed without cover.

The operation’s purpose is not limited to ransom. On a crisp early-autumn evening, the plan is to collect the money and impose further demands on Kamal Hadley before he can see his daughter. The ransom is intended to fund future militia activity, and Sephy is not to see her father until five imprisoned members have been released. Three of those five, the group knows, are key members rather than the underlings the authorities believe they are. Jude assigns Callum to drop off a second set of instructions, collect the money, and return to the cabin, while Jude, Pete, and Morgan make relay calls from separate locations to hinder tracing. His role in this scheme shows how far his enlistment has carried him: from a recruit seeking purpose to a participant in the militia’s secretive use of hostage-taking and political pressure.

Change and Significance

Callum’s path into the militia is shaped by overlapping injuries: the hostility he experiences as a Nought, the violence directed at Sephy, and the execution of his father. Jude turns the last of these into an explicit appeal to revenge, while the promise of making a difference gives Callum’s decision a political vocabulary. His rise through the ranks then supplies practical means—contacts, information, and authority—with which he pursues personal retaliation and takes part in larger operations.

The arc does not present militia membership as a clean passage from powerlessness to justice. Callum gains rank and a sense of purpose, but directs the organization’s reach toward revenge and becomes involved in coercive action against Sephy and her family. His own account of the person he has lost gives the change its measure: the enlistment brings him into a collective cause, yet the acts carried out in its name deepen the separation between the boy he remembers and the man he has become.