BRITAIN SINCE 1945

Britain since 1945 is the established standard textbook on contemporary British

political history since the end of the Second World War. This authoritative
chronological survey discusses domestic policy and politics in particular, but also
covers external and international relations. The fifth edition of this important
book brings the picture to the present by including the following additions:

• a new chapter on Tony Blair’s administration including analysis of the

London Mayoral elections
• new material on John Major in the light of the memoirs of Major, Norman
Lamont and new work on the Labour Party at this time
• updated statistical data and tables
• in-depth coverage of the 1990s and the start of the twenty-first century

Britain since 1945 provides a concise and lucid history of Britain from post-war
to the present day for all students of contemporary British history and politics.
David Childs is Emeritus Professor in the Department of Politics at the
University of Nottingham.
BRITAIN SINCE 1945
A Political History
Fifth edition

David Childs

London and New York

 First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of
thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
© 2001 David Childs
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book has been requested

ISBN 0-203-99224-5 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-24803-5 (hbk)

ISBN 0-415-24804-3 (pbk)
 CONTENTS

List of Tables xiii

Preface xv
Acknowledgements xvi
Note and acknowledgements to the second edition xvii
Acknowledgements to the third edition xviii
Acknowledgements to the fourth edition xix
Acknowledgements to the fifth edition xx
List of Abbreviations xxi

1 SUMMER VICTORIES 1
Japanese to ‘fight resolutely’ 1
Churchill’s defeat 2
‘Incredulity’ as Conservatives lose 3
Attlee’s team: ‘These fine men’ 5
Attlee: ‘One of the best Chairmen’ 6
Britain: ‘it won’t be easy’ 7
Notes 8
2 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945– 9
51
Britain being ‘flayed to the bone’ 9
American loan: ‘This was a disaster’ 10
Public ownership: ‘I’ve waited all my life for this moment’ 11
National Insurance: a ‘paltry sum’ 13
The NHS: ‘vested interests lined up’ 14
 v

Housing and education: ‘hands were tied’ 16

Constitutional and trade union reform 17
RAF: ‘incitement to mutiny’ 20
Conservatives get ‘best salesman’ 22
Election 1950: ‘real detestation of…Labour’ 23
Notes 24
3 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 26
Paul Robeson congratulates 26
Indian Independence: ‘struck me…with a riding whip’ 26
Palestine: ‘Arabs be encouraged to move out’ 28
Colonies: ‘under the guidance of the Mother Country’ 33
War in Malaya 34
Cold War: ‘magnates…who financed Hitler’ 36
Marshall Aid and NATO 38
Korea: as ‘democratic…as Caligula’s Rome’ 40
Iran: ‘proud and subtle a people’ 42
Election ’51: after ‘exhausting and undignified process’ 44
Decline of socialism: ‘some form of Gestapo’ 45
Notes 46
4 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 51
‘Our future…little better than a German satellite’ 51
Churchill’s Cabinet: ‘reminiscent of bygone times’ 52
The Bevanites: ‘complacent assumptions’ 54
Eden: ‘high order of intelligence’ 55
1955: ‘first of the electioneering Budgets’ 55
Gaitskell’s ‘great talent and firm loyalty’ 56
ITV: ‘For the sake of our children…resist it’ 57
Cinema and the press 58
Europe: ‘Much ado about nothing’ 60
vi

Suez 1956: ‘That does amount to a lie’ 61

Notes 64
5 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 66
Macmillan: ‘more cousins and less opposition’ 66
Macmillan: ‘capable of being ruthless’ 68
Cyprus: ‘no question of any change’ 69
Economy: ‘like bicycling along a tightrope’ 71
‘Nonsense…that our trade unions…are irresponsible’ 73
‘Most of our people have never had it so good’ 75
Russians in space: ‘frivolity’ of the British 77
Kenya: Hola camp ‘sub-human individuals’ 79
Africa: ‘The wind of change is blowing’ 80
Kuwait: ‘expensive to stay; hard to get out’ 81
Aden: ‘Tolpuddle martyrs of the Middle East’ 82
‘Socialism that dares not is bound to fail’ 83
H-bomb: ‘naked into the conference chamber’ 86
New Left: a ‘sense of outrage’ 87
Labour’s ‘class image’ 89
‘Pacifists, unilateralists and fellow-travellers’ 91
EEC: ‘the end of a thousand years of history’ 92
EEC: ‘No three cheers for British entry’ 93
Economic troubles: the ‘guiding light’ 95
Mac the knife’s ‘July massacre’ 96
‘Speculators…holding the community to ransom’ 97
Profumo: ‘tawdry cynicism’ 98
Home premier: ‘bad joke of democracy’ 99
Britain: ‘relegated to…third class’? 101
Children: ‘if they believe they’re second class’ 102
The public schools: ‘a divisive factor’ 103
 vii

Wilson: ‘Let’s GO with Labour’ 104

Kennedy shot: ‘I didn’t believe it’ 105
Election ’64: ‘things might start slipping’ 106
Notes 107
6 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 112
‘…the news from Moscow’ 112
Wilson: ‘a modern counterpart of Richard III’ 112
Civil Service: ‘excessive power’ 114
Labour: ‘treated as ships passing in the night’ 116
Sterling: ‘a symbol of national pride’ 117
Brown at the DEA 118
Defence: ‘They want us with them’ 119
Technology: Britain’s ‘inability to stay in the big league’ 121
Rhodesia: ‘her conscience has haunted him’ 122
Heath replaces Home: ‘no gratitude in polities’ 123
Wilson’s 1966 victory: timing ‘was faultless’ 125
‘Labour Government is really finished’ 126
Crisis, 1966: ‘the frailty of a Chancellor’s hopes’ 127
IRC: ‘a kind of government-sponsored merchant bank’ 129
Rhodesia: ‘round and round in circles’ 130
War in Nigeria 132
Anguilla: ‘mock-gunboat diplomacy’ 133
EEC: ‘get us in, so we can take the lead’ 134
Devaluation: ‘the money in our pockets’ 135
Industrial relations: ‘committing political suicide’? 136
Cutting Defence: ‘we were all dogs’ 138
A‘post-midnight’ Privy Council 139
Student protests: ‘nasty touch of authoritarianism’ 140
Immigration: this ‘distasteful necessity’ 141
viii

Powell: ‘a nation…heaping up its own funeral pyre’ 143

Northern Ireland: ‘Blatant discrimination’ 144
Commons ‘spellbound’ 146
Lords ‘frustrate…elected Government’ 147
David Steel: ‘exceptional courage’ 148
Election 70: ‘exquisite June morning’ 150
Notes 150
7 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 155
1970–74
Downing Street: ‘The shutters were fastened’ 155
‘Restrict provision to…where it is more efficient’ 156
Industrial relations: ‘all hell will be let loose’ 158
Local government reform: ‘expense…not adequately faced’ 159
Corruption: ‘no option but to resign’ 160
NHS: Joseph’s ‘administrative labyrinth’ 161
Northern Ireland: ‘severe discrimination’ 161
Immigration: ‘only in…special cases’ 163
EEC: ‘something to get us going again’ 164
Oil crisis: ‘Danegeld is Danegeld’ 165
Miners’ strike: ‘it looked as if we were not interested’ 167
Election ‘74: Powell- ‘vote Labour’ 168
Notes 169
8 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 171
Wilson’s Cabinet: ‘buoyant atmosphere’ 171
Northern Ireland: ‘considering…total withdrawal’ 173
Election October 74: ‘fighting like hell’ 174
Thatcher: ‘shattering blow…to…Conservative establishment’ 176
A decade of women’s liberation 178
EEC referendum: Wilson fought ‘like a tiger’ 181
Industry: ‘The gap gets wider each year’ 183
 ix

Wilson goes: ‘astonished Cabinet’ 186

Steel: ‘quiet exterior…determined man’ 187
Crime: ‘violence…a natural aspect of society’ 188
Northern Ireland: ‘hope to a tragic community’ 190
Bullock: ‘more thoughtful…management’ 192
Pay policy: ‘ankle-deep in muck and slime’ 194
Devolution referenda: ‘the valleys were deaf’ 197
Election ‘79: ‘cradled a calf in my arms’ 199
Notes 200
9 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 204
Thatcher’s Cabinet: no ‘experience of running a whelk-stall’ 204
Thatcherism: ‘money…opens…astonishing range of choice’ 205
Budget 79: ‘an enormous shock’ 206
Thatcher: ‘Je ne l’aime’ 207
Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: ‘the large gamble’ 208
Thatcher: ‘loathed the trade unions’ 210
Labour: ‘an angry conference’ 210
SDP: ‘the choice…will be deeply painful’ 211
Thatcher: ‘I too became extremely angry’ 214
‘Why Britain Burns’ 215
The Falklands: ‘picking up the remains…in plastic bags’ 216
Election ‘83: ‘longest suicide note in history’ 220
Notes 222
10 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 224
Grenada: government ‘humiliated’ 224
Scargill: ‘northern clubland humour and popularist Socialism’ 226
MI5 ‘controls the hiring and firing of BBC staff’ 228
1985: ‘government by slogan’ 231
The Anglo-Irish Agreement: ‘treachery’ 232
x

Privatization: ‘selling off the family silver’ 233

Confusion on defence 236
Thatcher’s hat-trick 237
BBC: ‘lack of balance’? 238
‘Greed is good’ 241
‘Black Monday’ 1987 243
Rushdie: ‘prisoner in his own country’ 243
Football hooliganism 244
Prison riots/convictions ‘flawed’ 245
Educational reform: ‘lecturers’ pay…buys less’ 247
NHS: ‘terminally ill’? 249
IRA: ‘those killed…not…carrying arms’ 250
Goodbye SDP 251
‘Disaster of the poll-tax’ 252
‘Some…identikit European personality’ 253
Thatcher’s last Cabinet 254
Thatcher’s fall: ‘Few…spared a moment to regret’ 255
Notes 256
11 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 261
John Major: ‘Cabinet no longer…confrontation’ 261
War in the Gulf 262
Maastricht: Britain ‘at the heart of Europe’? 264
Election 1992: Major defies the odds 265
Euro ‘94: Labour’s new hopes 267
Literature: ‘over 8,000 novels’ 268
‘It’s all over for England’ 270
Clinton in Ireland: ‘making a miracle’ 271
Mad cows and Englishmen 273
Conservatives’ war: ‘put up or shut up’ 274
 xi

Bosnia: ‘Hell’s kitchen was cooking’ 275

Changing Britain 276
Lottery fever 278
The ‘sleaze factor’ 279
Monarchy in crisis 281
Farewell to Castlemartin 282
Former ministers: ‘Shamelessness of this move…’ 283
New Labour: ‘Pledge to Rich’ 284
‘From inequitable to inhuman’ 285
Election ‘97: ‘Deep national impatience’ 286
Results: ‘A tidal wave…’ over the Conservatives 288
Notes 291
12 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 294
Blair’s Cabinet 294
Hague: Conservative leader 296
Liberal Democrats: Ashdown goes 296
Decline of political interest? 297
Coming out 298
Taskforces: ‘A much wider source of advice’? 300
Devolution and constitutional change 301
The Lords reformed 303
Not in Euroland 303
Conflict in Kosovo 304
Navy: ‘Over committed…and undermanned’ 306
‘SAS train anti-fraud officers’ 306
Long negotiations in Northern Ireland 307
Universities: ‘Increasingly…global’ 309
Primary education 310
NHS: ‘Steadily to deteriorate’? 311
xii

Wealth and social justice 312

Privatization and safety 313
In foreign hands 315
Racism in police 315
Celebrating the millennium 319
Women 2000 321
Lonely Britain? 322
Conservative Party problems continue 323
Blair cult 325
London: ‘Dangerous buffoon’ beats party machines 326
Notes 328

APPENDIX: TABLES 331

Selected Bibliography 339
Index 351
 LIST OF TABLES

2.1 Industries taken into public ownership, 1946–51 13

2.2 Workers directly involved in strikes in all industries and services, 20
1944–53
5.1 Share in world trade (per cent), by country, 1938–62 71
5.2 Average number of days lost per 1,000 employees in mining, 74
manufacturing, construction and transport, 1951–62
6.1 Net official overseas assistance from Britain, 1964 and 1970 133
8.1 Women as total membership of certain professions (per cent), 1968 178
and 1977
10.1 Privatization in Britain, 1981–91 234
10.2 Male and female smokers in Britain (per cent), 1972, 1982 and 250
1992
11.1 Election results in seats 1997 and 1992 290
12.1 Elections to Scottish Parliament, 1998 302
12.2 Elections to Welsh Assembly, 1998 302
12.3 Complaints to the Police Complaints Authority 318
12.4 Women in European Parliaments 322

A.1 Principal ministers, 1945–97 331

A.2 Party strengths in the House of Commons, 1945–97 332
A.3 Elections to the European Parliament, 1994 and 1989 332
A.4 Number of women MPs, by party, 1945–92 333
A.5 Patents registered at the European Patent Office, by country, 1994 333
A.6 Personal computers per 100 of the population, by country, 1994 333
A.7 University graduates per 100 of the population aged 25–64, by 334
country, 1996
A.8 Economic power of the EU states measured by GDP per inhabitant 334
(DM)
A.9 Life expectancy at birth, by sex, Britain, 1931–91 335
A.10 Defence expenditures as average percentage of GDP (based on 335
current prices), 1975–94
A.11 Percentage of full-time employees working more than 48 hours per 335
week, by country, 1996
A.12 GDP and employment growth, by country, 1960–95 336
A.13 Britain’s balance of payments current account (£ million), 1984–94 336
A.14 British Nobel prize winners, 1945–88 336
xiv

A.15 Votes cast for main parties at general elections since 1945 338
(percentage)
 PREFACE

I have attempted a thorough revision of this book taking account of the new
material available, the changing perspective and the need to keep it to a
reasonable length. I hope supporters of the earlier editions will not be
disappointed. I am conscious of its limitations. Later writers will benefit from
more archival material and memoirs. Eventually, someone will write the ‘real’ or
‘secret’ history of the second half of twentieth-century Britain. They will
investigate the activities of lobbyists and foreign business interests in British
politics. They will want to uncover the influence of bodies such as the Free
Masons,1 London Clubland and organized crime. They will be able to give more
attention to the penetration by Soviet and other foreign intelligence agencies of
British institutions,2 and to the influence of domestic security agencies. I can
only mention them to a slight degree. These influences should be neither
underestimated nor overestimated. One does not have to be a protagonist of
conspiracy theories to recognize that they do form part of the whole story of
Britain during this period. It is the story of the decline of a state which, in 1945,
was briefly second only to the United States as a world power, and which, by
1995, was hobbling along attempting to keep up with the middle rank of the
European Union.
David Childs
Nottingham, February 1997

NOTES

1 Martin Short, Inside the Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Free Masons (1993).
2 Tom Bower, The Perfect English Spy: Sir Dick White and the Secret War, 1935–90
(1995).
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to express my sincere thanks to a number of people who have read and
commented on various chapters of this book—Dr David Butler, Nuffield College,
Oxford (Chapter 1); Col. R.L.Frazier, Department of History, University of
Nottingham (Chapters 2, 7 and 8); Professor F.S. Northedge, Department of
International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science
(Chapter 3); the Rt Hon. Lord Boyle, Vice-Chancellor, University of Leeds
(Chapters 4, 5 and 6). The writer alone bears responsibility for any errors of fact
or judgement contained in the book.
In addition, my thanks are due to many busy people who have either agreed to
be interviewed or who have taken the trouble to reply to written questions.
Among them are Kingsley Amis, the Lady Attlee, the late Lord Avon, Mr
A.A.Best, Lord Boothby, Lord Brockway, Lord Butler, Douglas Dodds-Parker,
MP, Bob Edwards, MP, the Rt Hon. Ernest Fernyhough, MP, the late James
Griffiths, Arthur Lewis, MP, Marcus Lipton, MP, Christopher Mayhew, the Rt
Hon. Philip Noel-Baker, MP, Maurice Orbach, MP, John Parker, MP, Baroness
Phillips, the Rt Hon. J.Enoch Powell, MP, J.B.Priestley, Lord Ritchie-Calder, the
Rt Hon. William Ross, MP, Alan Sillitoe, Mrs Margaret Simpson, the Rt Hon.
Michael Stewart, MP, Lord Taylor of Manfield, Woodrow Wyatt, Lord Wigg.
Finally, I would like to thank Mrs Ann Morris and Miss Elaine Dexter for
typing substantial parts of the manuscript.
D.H.C.
Nottingham, April 1979
 NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO
THE SECOND EDITION

I was very pleased to be asked, as a result of readers’ requests, to write an

extended version of Britain since 1945.
I have tried to take the second edition as seriously as the first by attempting to
talk to a wide variety of witnesses. It was a pleasant surprise to find so many
busy individuals who were prepared to be interviewed or reply to written
questions. Unfortunately, one or two MPs felt unable to help. I am therefore all
the more grateful to those who did: Joe Ashton, Margaret Beckett, Alan Beith,
Mark Carlisle, Kenneth Clarke, Don Concannon, Roy Hattersley, Denis Healey,
Jim Lester, Sir Anthony Meyer, Richard Ottaway, David Owen, Cyril Smith and
Ray Whitney. I am equally grateful to Beryl Bainbridge, Lynne Reid Banks, Stan
Barstow, Melvyn Bragg, Malcolm Bradbury, Maureen Duffy, John H.Gunn, Ken
Livingstone, David Lodge, Iris Murdoch, Tom Sharpe, Leslie Thomas, Stuart
Thompstone, Fay Weldon and Arnold Wesker. Finally, I want to thank my old
friend Karl Sparrow for his continuing interest in my work. With so many
different and conflicting points of view represented among those who have
helped me I must emphasize very strongly that all the views, ideas, interpretations
and descriptions in this book are entirely my own responsibility—as are any
errors.
There are obvious pitfalls in writing about events as recent as those between
1979 and 1985 (or even between 1945 and 1979). Some events (the Falklands
War?) which seem important at the time will seem less so at greater distance.
Other events (like the miners’ strike and the changes in South Africa and China)
could prove to be of very great significance for the future of Britain. I hope the
reader will take this into account and also remember the limitations of time,
space and resources open to the writer of a book of this kind, and not judge the
result too harshly.
D.H.C.
Nottingham, September 1985
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO THE THIRD
EDITION

Since the second edition, many dramatic changes have occurred in the world,
such as the demise of communism and the restoration of German unity, the
further development of the ‘ever closer union’ of the European Community, and
the Gulf War. At home, in Britain, we have witnessed the fall of Margaret
Thatcher and the victory of the Conservative Party under John Major. Britain has
further declined in international importance and most of its politicians and
people seem to accept this as they are more and more influenced by American
culture, foreign travel, the economies of Japan, the USA and Germany, and by
Britain’s membership of the EC.
On my many travels since 1986,1 have had the opportunity to discuss the
changes in Britain and elsewhere with a considerable number of politicians,
businessmen, academics and diplomats. I am grateful for these opportunities. I
am also grateful to Martin Brandon-Bravo (MP, Nottingham South 1983–92) and
to Sir Frank Roberts, GCMG, CGVO, who gave me some of their time to discuss
our changing world and their views on it. Professor Vincent Porter gave me the
benefit of his experience of the changes in the mass media and I want to take this
opportunity to thank him. Finally, I want to thank my old friend, Dr Robert
L.Frazier, for reading the new material and making many useful suggestions.
D.H.C.
Nottingham, April 1992
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO THE
FOURTH EDITION

I have attempted to get views from a cross section of politicians, from all parties,
both sexes and from all parts of the UK. Some politicians were clearly too busy
to respond. I am therefore more grateful to those who gave me their time and
shared with me the benefits of their experience. They include: Donald Anderson,
MP; the Rt Hon. Tony Benn, MP; the Rt Hon. Kenneth Clarke, QC, MP,
Chancellor of the Exchequer; Cynog Dafis, MP; Mrs W.M.Ewing, MP; the Rt
Hon. Lord Roy Jenkins, Mrs Angela Knight, MP, Economic Secretary to the
Treasury; Sir Jim Lester, MP; Kevin McNamara, MP; the Rt Hon. Michael
Portillo, MP, Secretary of State for Defence; Alan Simpson, MP.
I am also grateful to Mrs Joan Frazier for sharing with me her experiences of
going to Japan in 1952.
Finally, I think it is high time that I record my thanks to all my teachers, tutors
and others in the education system without whose help I would never have got
into any position to write this, or any other, book. Among them are Raymond
Gill, Wigan and District Mining and Technical College; the late Professor
F.S.Northedge (LSE); the late Professor W.A.E.Manning (LSE); the late
Professor Ralph Miliband (LSE and Leeds University); Professor R.H.Pear (LSE
and University of Nottingham).
D.H.C.
Nottingham, April 1997
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS TO THE FIFTH
EDITION

I am thankful to the late Lord Rothermere for telling me about his experiences
and his conversion to Blair’s New Labour. I am grateful to my former students
Kelvin Hopkins, MP and John Hayes, MP for giving me their impressions of the
Commons as newly elected Members and for their hospitality. I wish to thank
Piara Khabra, MP for sharing with me his experiences as an immigrant in
politics, Andrew Stunell, MP for giving me a Liberal Democratic view on
contemporary affairs and Martin Bell, MP for an independent perspective. The Rt
Hon Stephen Dorrell, MP gave me a long interview at short notice for which I
express my thanks. Gisela Stuart, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State,
Department of Health, took time from her busy schedule to give me an
interesting perspective on her life and times. My thanks are due to the Howard
League for Penal Reform, the Police Complaints Authority and to the Ministry
of Defence for material provided. Once again I must emphasize that I alone am
responsible for the views expressed and for any errors of fact or judgement in
this fifth edition.
D.H.C.
Nottingham, May 2000
 ABBREVIATIONS

ACAS Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service

AEU Amalgamated Engineering Union
AIOC Anglo-Iranian Oil Company
ANF Atlantic Nuclear Force
BBC British Broadcasting Corporation
BMA British Medical Association
BNOC British National Oil Corporation
BNP British National Party
BOAC British Overseas Airways Corporation
BP British Petroleum
BSE bovine spongiform encephalopathy
CAP Common Agricultural Policy (of EEC/EC)
CBI Confederation of British Industry
CDS Campaign for Democratic Socialism
CJD Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease
CND Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
CPGB Communist Party of Great Britain
CPS Centre for Policy Studies
CSE Certificate of Secondary Education
DEA Department of Economic Affairs
DTI Department of Trade and Industry
DUP Democratic Unionist Party (N.Ireland)
EC European Community
EEC European Economic Community
EETPU Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing
Union
EFTA European Free Trade Association
xxii

EMS European Monetary System

EMU Economic and Monetary Union
ERM Exchange Rate Mechanism
EU European Union
FIS Family Income Supplement
GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade
GCE General Certificate of Education
GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters
GCSE General Certificate of Secondary Education
GDP Gross Domestic Product
GLC Greater London Council
HDI Human Development Index
HMC Headmasters’ Conference
IBA Independent Broadcasting Authority
ICL International Computers Limited
IEA Institute of Economic Affairs
ILP Independent Labour Party
IMF International Monetary Fund
INA Indian National Army
IRA Irish Republican Army
IRC Industrial Reorganization Corporation
ITA Independent Television Authority
ITV Independent Television
JRC Joint Representation Committee
MAP Medical Assessment Programme
MI5 Military Intelligence 5, the informal name given to the Security
Service
MI6 The informal name given to the SIS or Secret Intelligence
Service
MLF Multilateral Nuclear Force
NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NBPI National for Prices and Incomes
NCIS National Criminal Intelligence Service
NEB National Enterprise Board
NEC National Executive Committee (of the Labour Party)
NEDC National Economic Development Council
NFFC National Film Finance Corporation
 xxiii

NGA National Graphical Association

NHS National Health Service
NIRC National Industrial Relations Court
NOP National Opinion Poll
NUM National Union of Mineworkers
NUS National Union of Seamen
OAPEC Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries
OECD Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
OEEC Organization for European Economic Co-operation
OPEC Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
OUP Official Unionist Party (N.Ireland)
PC Plaid Cymru
PCC Press Complaints Commission
PLP Parliamentary Labour Party (the Labour Members of the
Commons)
PNC Police National Computer
PPS Parliamentary Private Secretary
PSBR Public Sector Borrowing Requirement
RAF Royal Air Force
RFMC Rank and File Mobilizing Committee (Labour)
RP Referendum Party
RPM Resale Price Maintenance
SAS Special Air Service
SDLP Social Democratic and Labour Party (N.Ireland)
SDP Social Democratic Party
SET Selective Employment Tax
SIS Secret Intelligence Service
SNP Scottish National Party
TGWU Transport and General Workers’ Union
TUC Trades Union Congress
TSR2 Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance Aircraft
UDI Unilateral Declaration of Independence (Rhodesia)
UFC University Funding Committee
UGC University Grants Committee
UKIP UK Independence Party
UVF Ulster Volunteer Force
VfS Victory for Socialism
xxiv

YC Young Conservatives
YTS Youth Training Scheme
 1
SUMMER VICTORIES

JAPANESE TO ‘FIGHT RESOLUTELY’

On 26 July 1945 the Japanese Prime Minister, Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, called a
press conference to announce that his country rejected Allied calls for
unconditional surrender. It would fight resolutely for the successful conclusion
of the war in which it had been engaged since December 1941 when it attacked
the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. He had been warned by the new US
President, Harry S.Truman, that failure to surrender would result in the
‘complete and utter destruction’ of Japan. Outside Japan few people took much
notice of the Admiral’s defiant words. Benjamin O.Davis, Jr probably did. From
the battlefields of Italy he had returned in June 1945 to command the US Air
Force 477th Composite Group at Godman Field, Kentucky. He was the second
Black general in the history of the US regular armed forces.1 No doubt he
wondered whether his next journey would be to take part in the final assault on
Japan. Lieutenant Helmut Schmidt, of the German anti-aircraft artillery, was
hoping for an early release from a British prisoner-of-war camp, to return to his
devastated home town of Hamburg. He was part of the defeated German armed
forces which had surrendered unconditionally on 8 May, thus ending the Second
World War in Europe which had started on 1 September 1939. He was released
in August.2 He later became the Chancellor of West Germany. In the stifling heat
of a Russian prison, Captain Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a Soviet war hero,
contemplated his sentence of eight years forced labour for an alleged anti-Stalin
remark. He was one of millions of victims of the Stalinist system.3 Later he
received the Nobel prize for literature. Second-Lieutenant Eric Lomax endured
another sweltering day of near starvation in the squalor of Changi jail,
Singapore. He had been captured by the Japanese in 1942 and had survived
working on the notorious Burma-Siam railway. Many thousands of his comrades
had already perished.4 There was a rumour that the Japanese would shoot their
prisoners as Allied armies drew near, as they had done on any number of
occasions.5 In Plymouth, England, Michael Foot, a journalist, was not thinking
of any of these individuals. He did not know them. He was contemplating his
new life as a Labour Member of Parliament. On that date he was unexpectedly
2 SUMMER VICTORIES

the victor in the constituency of Plymouth Devonport, beating the former minister
Leslie Hore-Belisha.6 By the time Foot knew his fate, he realized that he was
part of a landslide. Everywhere Labour was winning in the wartime election of
1945. It was a win on the scale of the Liberal victory of 1906 and the ‘National’
(mainly Conservative) victory of 1931.
Voting day was 5 July—but not for everyone. There had been objections to 5
July as polling day because it clashed with holiday weeks in some northern
towns. To cover this, the Postponement of Polling Day Act, 1945 was rushed
through Parliament. It delayed voting for a week in 18 constituencies and for a
fortnight in one. Once the voting was over, there was the long wait until 26 July
before the results were known. This was because of the delayed voting in the
nineteen constituencies, and to allow the armed services’ vote to be brought back
from overseas. The parties got the reports from the constituency organizations
and made their predictions. The Times, 10 July, reported that the Conservatives
felt there was no evidence of a swing either way! The Labour Party expected a
1929-style situation in which they would be the largest party without an overall
majority. The Liberals were looking for between 80 and 100 seats, and the
Communists thought they had gained 4 or 5.

CHURCHILL’S DEFEAT
All over Britain people listened to the results coming through over the BBC radio
(or ‘wireless’ as people then called it). Among the early results which startled
Conservatives were the defeats of two Cabinet members, Brendan Bracken at
Paddington in London, and Harold Macmillan, the future Prime Minister, at
Stockton-on-Tees. By lunchtime, a Labour victory appeared certain as seats fell
to them in London and Birmingham. Churchill handed in his resignation as
Prime Minister to King George VI just after 7 p.m. Clement Attlee, the Labour
Leader, was asked by the King to form a government. The final figures gave
Labour 393 seats. In addition, four other MPs joined Labour after being elected.
These were three from the Independent Labour Party (ILP), which had broken
with Labour in 1931, and one from the left-wing Common Wealth Party. The
two Communists elected, William Gallacher and Phil Piratin, usually voted with
Labour, as did the Labour Independent, D.N.Pritt, QC, elected at Hammersmith
(London) and the independent Vernon Bartlett. The Conservatives and their
allies won 213 seats and the Liberals 12. In addition, the Conservatives could
usually count on 12 university members elected by the graduates of the
universities. The total Churchill government vote recorded was 9,960,809, over
900,000 of which had gone to candidates describing themselves as National or
Liberal National. The total opposition vote was 15,018,140, of which Labour got
11,992,292, the ILP 46,679, and Common Wealth 110,634. The Communists
attracted 102,780. Also on the Left, the Scottish and the Welsh nationalists
gained 30,595 and 14,751 respectively. The Scottish nationalists lost the only
seat they had previously held, Motherwell. Dr R.D.McInyre, their chairman, had
 SUMMER VICTORIES 3

won it from Labour at a by-election. He held it for just 32 days! Irish nationalist
candidates got 148,078 votes and other independents (Pritt among them) 325,203.
Finally, Liberal candidates secured 2,245,319 votes.7
Although Labour’s victory in votes was exaggerated in terms of seats, the
‘Left’ had clearly won a great victory. Even the Liberals had campaigned on a
platform nearer to that of Labour than that of the Conservatives. Perhaps the results
did not fully reveal the swing to the Left. The election had been fought on an old
register, which probably helped the Conservatives. Young people, more inclined
to vote Labour, had been more mobile during the war and were, therefore, more
likely to be on the register where they had grown up rather than where they were
living at the time of the election. This must have been true of many women war
workers. Moreover, only those over 21 had the vote. Thus, many who had served
the country in its hour of need were excluded. Nor must the effect of the service
vote be exaggerated.8 Only 59.4 per cent of the service vote was used. Just over 1
million service men and women voted themselves, and 750,000 votes were cast
by their proxies—wives, fathers, mothers, sisters and brothers. In any case, most
of servicemen were blue-collar workers in uniform. In peacetime they would
have been more likely to vote Labour than Conservative. The Conservatives had
the advantage of greater funds at their disposal. The average expenditure by
Conservative candidates was £780, for Labour candidates it was £595.9 They
also had the advantage of more cars to take aged voters to the poll, greater office
and publicity skills, and so on. The Conservatives also benefited from the
business vote, which enabled business owners to vote in their place of business
as well as where they lived. It is believed this gave the Conservatives between 3
and 5 seats.10

‘INCREDULITY’ AS CONSERVATIVES LOSE

Winston Churchill, who had been Prime Minister from May 1940, was thought
to be the Conservative Party’s greatest asset. They put great emphasis on him
during the election campaign. They thought they could repeat the performance of
David Lloyd George, Prime Minister in the First World War, who won so
convincingly in 1918. Yet, although he was not opposed by the other parties in
his constituency, an unknown independent candidate gained 10,000 votes against
Churchill, who of course retained his seat. Many people, it seems, felt that
although he did well during the war he was not the leader Britain needed for the
post-war reconstruction. In broad terms, the Conservatives lost because they
were seen as the government party which had failed to deal with Britain’s
interwar social and economic problems, including the misery of great
unemployment, and had failed to prepare Britain to stand up to Hitler. They had
been in office from 1916–22 (in coalition), 1922–24, 1924–29, 1931–40 and
1940–45 (in coalition). They were seen as the party of privilege, wealth,
stuffiness and nostalgia. Labour was seen as the party of the underdog, of
ordinary people and of hope. The ‘Conservative class’ was undoubtedly linked in
4 SUMMER VICTORIES

many people’s minds with incompetence. There had been so many disasters in the
war which pointed to amateurism and incompetence on the part of the officers,
the generals, the strategists, Churchill himself. The defeat at Singapore in 1942,
‘the greatest disaster in our history’,11 was one of these, the fiascos in France,
Norway and Greece were others. There were the naval tragedies, including the
sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse. Many of the Labour leaders, on
the other hand, were tried and trusted politicians, having served in Churchill’s
coalition but not having been tainted by his policies. This was true of Attlee,
Ernest Bevin, Herbert Morrison, Sir Stafford Cripps, Arthur Greenwood, Dr
Hugh Dalton, A.V.Alexander and Lord Jowitt. Others had served in more junior
roles. It was unconvincing to present these men as a threat to liberty, as
Churchill did in his campaign, when he claimed, ‘They would have to fall back
on some form of Gestapo’ to realize their socialist plans.12 Although too much
emphasis should not be placed on the fact, Labour, in its candidates, was an all-
class party. It had many aspiring middle-class contenders in addition to its
traditional trade union candidates. The Conservatives, on the other hand, stood as
a middle-class and upper-class party. The overall impression of 1945 is that
many people wanted a Britain in which social origins, family background and
place of education would no longer be of great importance. They wanted a
Britain in which people were treated with equality and had equal opportunities to
make something of their lives; a Britain in which poverty, unemployment,
malnutrition, ignorance and fear were banished.
There was surprise around the world as news spread that Churchill had been
dismissed by the British electorate. On the London stock market prices fell. The
Financial Times commented, ‘The City, with the nation was shocked by the
political landslide revealed yesterday.’13 Were Labour, Liberal and other
opposition voters not part of ‘the nation’? Shock? There was jubilation in the
copper factory in Widnes where Jack Ashley, himself later a Labour MP, worked.14
A.A.Best, a 53-year-old insurance agent in 1945, was on holiday in Hove on that
dramatic day. A woman school teacher at his hotel table expressed incredulity as
Labour gains mounted and wondered ‘what would become of us all. I said that this
was something I had been working for most of my life and was feeling very
excited at the prospects.’15 He found many other guests shared his feelings in
varying degrees. Nor was the Establishment wholly disappointed by Labour’s
victory. Montagu Norman, Governor of the Bank of England 1920–44,
commented in a letter in 1946 that, had Churchill remained Prime Minister, ‘I
daresay we should have had more disturbances and ill-feeling within this country
and possibly elsewhere in Europe’.16 Sir William Beveridge, author of the famous
report on national insurance and himself a defeated Liberal, felt the
Conservatives had ‘somewhat surprisingly’ got what they deserved.17 Thomas
Jones, ex-leading civil servant and intimate of Prime Ministers, wrote on 4
August, that ‘Many old people are alarmed at what may happen. I cannot develop
the slightest feeling of panic.’18 The Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians
 SUMMER VICTORIES 5

heard the news while taking afternoon tea: ‘They were so taken aback they stood
there in complete silence.’19

ATTLEE’S TEAM: ‘THESE FINE MEN’

Attlee’s first task was to select his government team. Like all Prime Ministers he
had to attempt to find suitable jobs for powerful personalities, reward talent and
service, consider public opinion and ensure that the different wings of his party
were placated. A surprise appointment was Ernest Bevin, leader of the transport
workers’ union and former Minister of Labour and National Service, as Foreign
Minister. Attlee’s rival, Herbert Morrison, former leader of the London County
Council and former Home Secretary and Minister for Home Security, was
appointed Lord President. Hugh Dalton, an academic economist and Churchill’s
Minister of Economic Warfare, took over as Chancellor of the Exchequer. James
Chuter Ede went to the Home Office. He had served as a junior minister in
Churchill’s coalition. The then an important post, went to A.V.Alexander, who
had held this post under Churchill. The Colonial Office, also important at that
time, went to George Hall. The separate, and very important, India and Burma
Office was given to Lord Pethick-Lawrence. He had served as a junior Treasury
minister in the 1929–31 Labour government. The key post of Minister of Health
went to Aneurin Bevan, an ex-miner, who, although relatively unknown to the
general public, was well known as a left-winger within the Labour ranks. Another
rebel appointed was Sir Stafford Cripps, a science graduate, wealthy lawyer and
Christian, as President of the Board of Trade. Emanuel Shinwell was put in
charge of Fuel and Power, regarded as vital to post-war recovery. Of Glasgow
Jewish background, he was regarded as a former rebel. Sir William Jowitt was
appointed Lord Chancellor. He had served as Attorney-General in MacDonald’s
1929–31 Labour minority government, briefly in his ‘National’ government and
in the Churchill coalition. Three other veterans of the MacDonald Labour
government were Lord Addison, Lord Stansgate (W.Wedgwood Benn) and
Arthur Greenwood. Addison was given the Dominions Office, which dealt with
relations with the independent Empire states. He held Agriculture and Fisheries
under MacDonald and his experience went back to Lloyd George’s coalition in
which he had served as Minister of Reconstruction. Stansgate got the Air
Ministry. He had held the India Office under MacDonald. Greenwood was
appointed Lord Privy Seal. He had served as Minister of Health in MacDonald’s
administration and in Churchill’s War Cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio. His
career had been marred by alcoholism. The other appointees were George Isaacs
at Labour and National Insurance, J.Lawson at the War Office, J.Westwood at
the Scottish Office and Tom Williams at Agriculture and Fisheries. Lawson and
Westwood had held junior posts under MacDonald. The only woman appointed
was Miss Ellen Wilkinson, who had been the Personal Private Secretary to
Morrison. She served but briefly as Minister of Education. She was a graduate of
Manchester University. Her life ended with an overdose of pills in 1947.
6 SUMMER VICTORIES

Attlee’s first Cabinet with 20 members was a fair mix both in terms of the Left
and Right within the Labour Party and social structure of the country. Ramsay
MacDonald’s first ever Labour government of 1924 included nine former
officials of working-class organizations, Attlee’s included 10. MacDonald’s
included more members with aristocratic or upper-class backgrounds than
Attlee’s. Bevin, Bevan, Morrison, Alexander, Shinwell, Hall, Isaacs, Lawson,
Westwood and Williams were all from working-class backgrounds, men whose
only universities had been ‘Life’. Cripps, Dalton, Jowitt and Pethick-Lawrence
were upper class. Attlee’s 1945 Cabinet included 10 university-educated MPs,
five of them, including Attlee, at Oxbridge. Of the other graduates three were
from London University, one from Leeds and one from Manchester. Five were
ex-public school boys, two of these from Eton. Only two members of the 1945
Labour Cabinet had not previously held government office. It was certainly a
talented and experienced government. Of it, Harold Macmillan said, These fine
men constituted a body of Ministers as talented as any in the history of
Parliament.’20

ATTLEE: ‘ONE OF THE BEST CHAIRMEN’

What of Attlee himself? At 62 Attlee was younger than his predecessors—
Churchill and Chamberlain—when they took over as Prime Minister. He was
very experienced in government, being the only member, apart from Churchill,
of the wartime coalition who had served from 1940 to the end. Although
Churchill’s style of government had been autocratic, Attlee was officially Deputy
Prime Minister from 1942, and had had a free hand in many domestic areas, if
only because Churchill was uninterested. Attlee had served outside the Cabinet
as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Postmaster-General in
MacDonald’s 1929–31 administration. Attlee was a ‘dark horse’ who was in the
right place at the right time. The impression is that few expected him to become
the Leader of the Labour Party. His physique, bearing, personality and lack of
oratorical skills led to this conclusion. He served as MP for Limehouse, Stepney,
1922–50. Thus, when Labour representation was cut from 288 to 52 after the
electoral debacle of 1931, he was one of the few Labour MPs with any
experience. He was elected Deputy Leader, with pacifist Christian socialist
George Lansbury the Leader. When Lansbury resigned just before the election of
1935 Attlee became acting Leader. Labour increased its Commons strength to
154 and Attlee was elected Leader, beating Greenwood and Morrison. Dalton,
who himself would have gladly taken on the leadership, called Attlee at the time
‘a little mouse’.21 Like Churchill, he was more impressed by Mussolini!22 Part of
Attlee’s success was because he was underestimated by rivals. Macmillan, who
had served with him in the wartime government, remembered him as ‘one of the
best Chairmen I have ever sat under’. Attlee was also a ‘good butcher’, a quality
said to be essential for a good Prime Minister.23 The son of a wealthy lawyer, he
took up law himself after Oxford. Like Dalton, he served in the First World War,
 SUMMER VICTORIES 7

rising to the rank of major. The poverty he witnessed doing social work in the
East End of London led him to the Labour Party. He was essentially a
conservative reformist who, as an admirer of monarchy and of his old public
school (Haileybury), sought not to abolish the class system but to end squalor by
affirmative action, and give more people the chance to rise up from the ranks into
middle-class society.

BRITAIN: ‘IT WON’T BE EASY’

On 6 and 9 August 1945 the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The Soviet Union invaded Japanese-controlled territory on 8 August.
On 14 August Tokyo was hit again by a total of 1,014 US aircraft. Before the
planes returned to their bases without a single loss, President Truman announced
the Japanese surrender.24 The surrender was unconditional, except that the Allies
agreed that the Emperor could and should remain as head of state under an Allied
occupation. The Japanese surrender, welcome though it was, was something of
an anti-climax compared with the surrender of Germany. Most people regarded
Germany as the main enemy and the campaign against the Japanese as a
sideshow. Yet, had the Allies been forced to invade Japan, the costs in lives and
materials would have been enormous.
The war had cost Britain about 264,433 armed forces dead, 60,595 civilian
dead and 30,248 merchant navy dead. Thousands of Indians, Australians, New
Zealanders, South Africans and others died as members of the British Empire
armed forces. By comparison, Germany lost an estimated 3,600,000 civilians and
3,250,000 service casualties. US armed services suffered 362,561 deaths.25 The
Japanese lost 2 million civilians and 1 million military casualties. The Soviet
Union lost an estimated 13,300,000 military deaths and 7 million civilian deaths.
Although terrible, the British figures were about half those of the 1914–18 war.26
Relative to population size, they were much lower than some other countries.
About a quarter of Britain’s wealth had been used on the war. By 1941 its
foreign exchange reserves had vanished. Britain then became dependent on
American Lend-Lease. By the autumn of 1945 Britain was only able to pay for
about 40 per cent of its overseas expenditure.27 About two-thirds of its merchant
fleet was lost and about one-third of the housing stock had been damaged or
destroyed by enemy action. In addition, other buildings—factories, schools and
hospitals—had been hit.28 Germany and Japan were in far worse shape. Yet the
expectations of the British people were high. They did not want to return to the
conditions of uncertainty and poverty which many of them had endured before
the war. After all that effort and all those promises, they expected a better life
soon. Remarkably, Attlee’s situation was summed up very well by the Countess
of Ranfurly, who wrote in her diary that she felt sorry for the new Prime
Minister, Clement Attlee: ‘it won’t be easy to succeed a hero like Churchill;
ghastly to be faced with the repair of our country—to help the thousands
8 SUMMER VICTORIES

returning from the war all wanting a job; and frightful having to raise money
from a weary, bereaved and poor population.’29

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Department of Defense, Black Americans in the Defense of Our Nation

(Washington, DC, 1985), 114–15.
2 Helmut Schmidt et al., Kindheit und Jugend unter Hitler (Berlin, 1994), 574.
3 Michael Scammell, Solzhenitsyn (1985).
4 Eric Lomax, The Railway Man (1996).
5 Martin Gilbert, Second World War (1990), 618, 635. See also John Dower, War
Without Mercy (1986), 300.
6 Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), 134.
7 The Times Guide to the House of Commons 1950 (1950), 274.
8 Robert J.Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen through
the Gallup Data (1989), 17–18.
9 R.B.McCallum and Alison Readman, The British General Election of 1945 (1947),
296–8.
10 D.E.Butler, The Electoral System in Britain since 1918 (1963), 146–8.
11 Clive Ponting, Churchill (1995), 558. This was Churchill’s comment to Roosevelt.
12 ibid., 718.
13 HMSO (ed.), When Peace Broke Out: Britain 1945 (1996), 84.
14 Jack Ashley, Journey Into Silence (1973), 61.
15 Letter to the author.
16 Andrew Boyle, Montagu Norman (1967), 326.
17 Lord Beveridge, Power and Influence (1953), 349.
18 Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters 1932–1950 (1954), 536.
19 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965 (1966), 286.
He was Churchill’s doctor.
20 Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (1969), 64, 67.
21 Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1918–40, 1945–60 (1986),
196.
22 ibid., 173. For Churchill see Ponting, op. cit, 350, 374, 377.
23 Macmillan, op. cit., 50.
24 Dower, op. cit., 301.
25 Gilbert, op. cit., 746.
26 John Stevenson, British Society 1914–45 (1984), 448.
27 Alec Cairncross, The British Economy since 1945 (1992), 45.
28 Stevenson, op. cit., 448–9.
29 The Countess of Ranfurly, To War with Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of the
Countess of Ranfurly, 1939–45 (1995), 362.
 2
ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY
UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

BRITAIN BEING ‘FLAYED TO THE BONE’

‘We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment, but for a very
long time to come.’ These words were spoken by Sir Hartley Shawcross, Attlee’s
Attorney-General in the House of Commons on 2 April 1946. Probably said in
the heat of the moment, it was a foolish comment, and not very accurate. Some
Conservatives, up and down the land, are reported to have remarked, ‘Yes, but we
have the pen nibs’. They were referring to the fact that most of the business elite
supported them, as did many in the civil service, local government and the armed
services. They implied that a radical government was limited in what it could do,
even in a democratic capitalist state. Shawcross’s remarks were also untrue in
another sense. Britain was increasingly coming under the shadow of the US. All
the fine words about British sovereignty spoken since 1940 have been largely
rhetorical appeals ignoring the actual situation.
By July 1940 Lord Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, put a paper to the Cabinet
which for the first time accepted that Britain’s future survival depended upon
substantial assistance from the US.1 Britain was negotiating to obtain 50 First
World War destroyers from America in exchange for granting the US bases in
seven British colonies. On 22 August, Sir Kingsley Wood, Chancellor of the
Exchequer, presented a paper to the Cabinet indicating that Britain was virtually
bankrupt. It ‘marked the effective end of Britain’s status as an independent
power’.2 Churchill sent Professor Tizard to the US in August with design details
of some of Britain’s most secret inventions—microwave radar, the cavity
magnetron, chemical warfare formulae, special explosives, jet engine designs,
and so on.3 Before it received aid, Britain was forced to sell all its assets in the
US, some below their market value.4 Churchill felt Britain was being not just
skinned, ‘but flayed to the bone’.5 By March 1941 the US Congress approved
Lend-Lease, which meant American war materials did not have to be paid for.
But Britain had to accept US views on what rules should guide future
international trade. At the second Quebec conference in 1944 President
Roosevelt committed Lend-Lease funds to restore Britain’s industrial capacity
after the war.6 However, his successor, Truman, reneged on this, terminating
10 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

Lend-Lease immediately after Japan surrendered. Britain was once again in a

jam! Dalton and his colleagues had to face this appalling situation, which was
‘very grim, grimmer than the worst nightmare of most experts’.7

AMERICAN LOAN: ‘THIS WAS A DISASTER’

Churchill had been regarded by many in Roosevelt’s administration as a
reactionary. Some thought it would be easier for Labour to obtain financial help
from Washington. Attlee’s chief negotiator, Lord Keynes, was optimistic about
the chances of getting renewed US help. In fact, only after months of hard
negotiations was a loan secured on which interest had to be paid with conditions
attached. Britain was offered a credit of up to $3,750 million at 2 per cent
interest with repayments starting in 1951. To the US credit was added a
Canadian loan of $1,250 million. Britain was required to end British Empire
preferences. At the time a 2 per cent rate of interest was not considered low. The
system of imperial preference had been built up from the end of the nineteenth
century, due to fear of the rising German and US economies. It matured at the
Ottawa conference in 1932. Under this system many goods from the independent
British Empire states faced lower tariffs than goods from outside the Empire.
The US now set the international economic agenda. Britain had to accept policies
of increasing multilateral trade by joining the General Agreement on Tariffs and
Trade (GATT) agreed in 1947. Britain also had to agree ‘in a formidable
imposition of orthodoxy on common sense’, as Kenneth Galbraith called it, to
give up the wartime controls and make sterling fully convertible within one year.
‘This was a disaster.’8 In July 1947 sterling was made convertible and there was
heavy selling of it in exchange for dollars. The economy, which had been
recovering well, came under great pressure. Within weeks the suspension of
convertibility had to be announced by Dalton. A considerable part of Britain’s
problem was government overseas spending on its massive commitments.
The terms of the American loan provoked widespread dismay. Both Empire
loyalists and socialist planning enthusiasts opposed them. The government took
the view that it had no alternative but to accept. The Commons accepted the terms
by 345 to 98, with many Conservatives abstaining. Among the Labour ‘noes’
were future Prime Minister James Callaghan, Barbara Castle and future Labour
Leader Michael Foot. In all, some 21 Labour MPs voted against the government.
The two Communists and the small group of fellow travellers approved the loan.
The Cold War had not yet reached the House of Commons.
The British had thought the Americans would be grateful to them for ‘standing
alone’ against Nazi Germany in 1940 and for their subsequent war effort. They
did not realize that many Americans felt Britain (or the Jews)9 had got them into
a European war again, as in 1917, against their better judgement. They saw
Britain as an old-fashioned imperialist power attempting to exploit American
generosity to maintain its decaying empire. Many Irish Americans still regarded
Britain as the oppressor of the ‘Emerald Isle’. Many Jews regarded Britain as the
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 11

power preventing the Zionists from attaining nationhood in Palestine. As for the
less influential American groups at that time, it is doubtful whether Japanese
returning from their internment camps10 or Black Americans in the ghettos or
returning from their segregated army units cared about Britain’s fate. For neither
the Italian-Americans whose own ‘old country’ was shattered from north to
south, nor the Mexican-Americans, facing an uncertain future, would Britain’s
economic resurrection have been top of the agenda.11 Other Americans viewed
Attlee’s government with suspicion, as it called itself ‘Socialist’.
A large body of independent experts believed the conditions of the loan were
impossible to fulfil,12 and their view was proved correct when, in August 1947,
the government was forced to suspend the dollar convertibility of sterling. This
was after barely one month of convertibility. Though the government was an
easy target for right-wing propaganda on the grounds that it was squandering the
loan, a similar dollar crisis struck Western Europe in the same year. Marshall Aid
was introduced by the Americans in the following year because, by that time, the
prosperity of Western Europe was seen as crucial to American defence. Britain
took its share of aid, but again faced difficulty in 1949. A recession in the United
States had made dollar exports more difficult, while strong demand at home
placed a new strain on the precarious balance of payments. Cripps, by that time
Chancellor, attempted to solve the crisis with a massive devaluation of sterling,
from $4.03 to $2.80.

PUBLIC OWNERSHIP: ‘I’VE WAITED ALL MY LIFE

FOR THIS MOMENT’
Writing in 1944, John Strachey, the ex-Communist Labour intellectual, told his
readers that ‘socialism involves the public ownership of all the means of
production; but that does not mean that they should all be owned by the State’.13
Industries like the railways would be state-owned; others would be owned by the
local authorities or would be co-operatives. And, he conceded, for a long time to
come ‘there will be a secure place in a socialist society for the small one-man, or
two-men, business, which exploits no one’. Strachey’s view was in fact close to
what Attlee had himself written in the 1930s.14 Despite the writings of Strachey
and Attlee, Labour fought the election on a moderate programme of
nationalization.
Socialists advocated public ownership to prevent unemployment, redistribute
wealth, rationalise production and create better relations in industry. The war
years saw an increase in interest in public ownership because of the successful role
played by the government in the economy at the time and, not least, because of
the successes of the Red Army, which were thought to be based on a highly
successful economic system created by the state from nothing.
Virtually all the industries taken into public ownership had a history of state
intervention, and in most cases there were non-socialist arguments for the state
taking them over. In many respects, Labour’s nationalization programme was a
12 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

continuation of the policies of earlier governments. Explaining his party’s

attitude to public ownership in 1947, Conservative Quintin Hogg (Lord
Hailsham) reminded his readers, ‘Disraeli encouraged the purchase by the
Government of a minority shareholding in a private profit-making concern, the
Suez Canal Company. The British Government became under Conservative
auspices perhaps the principal shareholders in the Anglo-Persian Oil
Company.’15 Rail nationalization had first been cated in the nineteenth century
by non-socialists such as William Galt and Edwin Chadwick, on the grounds that
British railways were less efficient than those on the Continent, and though
nationalization was resisted, successive governments increasingly regulated the
railways.16 In the interwar period Conservative governments carried out selective
nationalization policies. A Conservative government set up the BBC and the
Central Electricity Board in 1926. The legislation establishing the London
Transport Board, which put public transport in the capital under one authority,
was passed by a Conservative-dominated Commons in 1933. The Conservatives
were responsible for the nationalization of mining royalties and tithes in 1938
because they had ‘become a nuisance in private hands—the former because they
interfered with the technical layout of the coal mines, the latter because they no
longer formed an equitable or even impost on property’.17 Finally, the
Chamberlain administration brought Imperial Airways Ltd and British Airways
Ltd into public ownership in 1939. Churchill admitted in the debate on rail
nationalization that he had advocated it after the 1914–18 war.
Despite any continuation of previous policies, the importance of the
nationalization measures for many communities should not be underestimated.
C.F.Grey, a Methodist lay preacher and a miner until his election to the
Commons in 1945, spoke of the conditions the miners had endured.

Low wages, long hours, miserable compensation, bad conditions, wretched

death benefits, and virtual slavery were the lot of the miner. For years, the
miner stood this, until it got to breaking point. Now we have a younger
miner who is determined that he is not going to be a beast of burden.18

Another MP pointed out that mining accidents killed, on average, two men every
day. In 1943, 713 men had lost their lives in mining. The work-force was ageing
and not enough new miners were being recruited.19 The government was forced
to conscript men into the mines. Many of the mines were in poor shape and
massive investments would be needed to modernize them.
On Vesting Day, the day the mines were taken over, 1 January 1947, there
were celebrations throughout the mining communities, including dances,
marches, socials and bonfires. Typical was Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where
200 people attended a dance at the Co-op Hall and 600 children celebrated with a
visit to the pictures, tea and a huge bonfire at Clipstone, also in Nottinghamshire.
In Durham, the Minister of Fuel and Power, Emanuel Shinwell, returned to
celebrate with his constituents:
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 13

Orators skilled in their art had sent fiery words over the assembled
gathering. The platform sustained the imposing authority of the Cabinet, of
big business, of smaller business, of the powerful unions and of civic
bodies in the district. The band was smart and vigorous. But without
question, the show belonged to one man—an aged miner in a spotted
muffler and a cloth cap. They helped him to the platform. ‘I’m ninety-one
years old and I’ve waited all my life for this moment’, said Jim Hawkins.
‘There’s little time left. Let’s cut the cackle and get on with it.’ Aided by
willing hands, the old man made his way to a flagpole, clutched the cord
and ran up a blue flag on which was written in white the letters ‘N.C.B.’. By
his act, Jim Hawkins had translated nationalization into an accomplished
fact.20

For the miners and their representatives the Coal Act alone justified the Labour
government, it was the acid test of the potentialities of parliamentary politics.
The same was true for the steel and rail communities, which had been bedevilled
by poor conditions and, not least, by rigid hierarchies.

Table 2.1 Industries taken into public ownership, 1946–51

Industry Date of takeover Numbers employed
Bank of England 1 March 1946 6,700
Civil aviation 1 August 1946 23,300
Coal 1 January 1947 765,000
Cable & Wireless 1 January 1947 9,500
Transport 1 January 1948 888,000
Electricity 1 April 1948 176,000
Gas 1 April 1949 143,500
Iron and steel 15 February 1951 292,000

NATIONAL INSURANCE: A ‘PALTRY SUM’

Though the implementation of the public-ownership pledges was a crucial test for
the miners and the committed socialists in the Labour Party, the ‘masses’ gained
immensely more from the welfare legislation passed in 1946. This legislation
included the National Insurance Act, the Industrial Injuries Act and the National
Health Act. In 1948 the work was completed with the establishment of the
National Assistance Board. Another piece of relevant legislation, that covering
family allowances, had been enacted in 1945 by Churchill’s caretaker
administration.
14 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

Under the National Insurance Act the whole population was brought, for the
first time, into a comprehensive system covering unemployment, sickness,
maternity, guardianship, retirement and death. A Ministry of National Insurance
was set up along with a National Insurance Fund with an initial capital of £100
million. Annual grants from the Exchequer were foreseen, but both employers
and employees had to make weekly contributions. The latter was something that
many in the Labour Party were unhappy about. Some Labour MPs, Sydney
Silverman and Barbara Castle among them, rejected the idea that there should be
a time limit on the payment of benefits. Under the Act, an unemployed person
became eligible, after the first three days of unemployment, to receive a weekly
payment for 180 days, an insured person who then got a job and lost it again
after not less than 13 weeks qualified for another period of benefit.
Sickness benefit was provided after three days of enforced absence from
work. It could be drawn indefinitely up to retirement age, when it was replaced
by a pension. The maternity grant consisted of a single payment to the mother on
the birth of her baby, and mothers doing paid work received an allowance for 13
weeks to compensate for absence from employment.
The death grant was a lump sum to help cover the cost of the funeral. Widows
were taken care of under the Act. For the first 16 weeks, a widow under
retirement age was paid an allowance. There were allowances for her children up
to the age of 16 (if they remained at school to that age). Widows between 50 and
60 (60 being the retirement age for women) could also be eligible for a
continuing allowance. Finally, if a widow reached 40 while her children were
still at school, she could also receive an allowance. To be eligible for these
benefits, the widow had to have been married for 10 years. One other provision
made for death was that an orphaned child’s guardian could claim an allowance,
provided one of its parents had been insured under the Act.
Retirement pensions were granted under the Act to men at 65 and women at
60. Those eligible could continue working for a further five years with a slight
reduction of pension. As with all the benefits listed, pensions did not rise
automatically with the rise in the cost of living nor were they related to previous
earnings. Over the years their purchasing power declined because successive
governments failed to increase them to keep pace with inflation.
Family allowances were given to mothers for second and any subsequent
children up to the age of 15, or 16 if they remained in full-time education. The
allowance was fixed at 5 shillings (25 p) per week, what Barbara Castle called a
‘paltry sum’. In fact it was just about enough to buy 1 lb of Brooke Bond
Dividend Tea, a tube of Colgate toothpaste, and a Mars bar.21

THE NHS: ‘VESTED INTERESTS LINED UP’

Despite the wartime agreement on the need for a National Health Service, it was
this part of the post-war welfare legislation that was most actively contested. In
theory, the Conservatives agreed with the principle, but they voiced varying
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 15

degrees of opposition to the Labour government’s proposals. Greater than the

opposition of the Conservatives was that of the spokesmen of the British
Medical Association, the professional body to which the great majority of
medical practitioners belonged.
The National Health Service Act nationalized the nation’s hospitals, about half
of which belonged to the local authorities. They were placed under regional
boards. The teaching hospitals obtained a special status giving them a large
measure of autonomy. The aim was to provide adequate hospitals throughout the
country, replacing a system based on local initiative and charity, which had
resulted in widely differing local and regional standards. The local authorities
retained important health functions, such as maternity and child welfare, the
ambulance service, health visiting, and so on. Aneurin Bevan, the minister
responsible, wanted a service which would encompass all the nation’s citizens,
and provide them all, irrespective of their financial circumstances or where they
lived, with completely free and comprehensive medical care. Broadly speaking,
he achieved this, but not without considerable compromises. Firstly, although the
buying and selling of practices, which was thought to have led to an imbalance in
the distribution of general practitioners, ceased. But doctors did not become
salaried employees of the state. Secondly, he agreed to having private beds in the
hospitals in order to encourage specialists to join the new scheme. The patient
remained free to choose his or her own GP. The Act was a personal triumph for
Bevan, and was described by Dr H.B.Morgan, MP, medical adviser to the TUC,
as ‘as fine a piece of compromise health work as is possible in this country at the
present time’.22 There were some in the Cabinet, like Morrison, and in the Labour
Party in the country, who had certain reservations about taking the hospitals
away from the local (elected) authorities. But these reservations were overcome.
In judging the effectiveness of the Labour government one can ask this
question: was it merely extending the work of social welfare inaugurated by
previous administrations, or was it introducing something more fundamental?
The legislation was based on Sir William Beveridge’s report on Social Insurance
and Allied Services of November 1942 which recommended public protection
for all ‘from the cradle to the grave’. Churchill, whose coalition had
commissioned the report, had not been prepared to implement any legislation
incorporating any of the report’s proposals during the war.23 Public opinion polls
indicated that the majority of people in the country were disappointed with the
government on this issue, feeling that vested interests had won once again. In
February 1943, virtually the whole of the Labour back-bench voted against the
government, and their own leaders, in demanding the immediate implementation
of the Beveridge proposals. Even allowing that, had the Conservatives won in
1945, the Tory reformers would have been better represented in the Commons,24
it seems likely that a Conservative government would have been less ready to
realize Beveridge’s proposals than were Labour. As it was, their performance
over the National Health Service Bill was not reassuring.
16 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

Poor leadership and the absence of a coherent alternative policy allowed

the party to drift into a reactionary posture and become the mouthpiece for
the vested interests lined up in opposition to the bill.25

If Labour built on the foundations laid by earlier administrations, to many

working people the post-war measures appeared revolutionary. Pre-war
unemployment relief had excluded significant sections of the employed
population. Once benefit ran out, the unemployed faced the hated ‘means test’,
which enquired into the financial situation of his entire household. And even in
the 1930s there was the possibility of being committed to the equally hated
‘workhouse’.26 Sickness insurance was far from comprehensive. It did not cover
an insured person’s dependants and it discriminated against those with a poor
health record. Hospitals charged patients according to means. Children’s
allowances, maternity and death benefits had not existed in pre-war Britain, and
many citizens were still not included in the old-age pension scheme. Alan
Sillitoe, the writer who, in 1945, was a capstan-lathe operator in Nottingham, has
commented:

the Health Service was a sort of enormous sign of relief—no more Panel—
it made the most incredible difference to the mentality of the less well off—
probably the greatest single factor in this century in creating a new pride in
the English working class.27

Attlee told the author in 1962 that he believed it to be his government’s biggest
single achievement in home affairs.

HOUSING AND EDUCATION: ‘HANDS WERE TIED’

If unemployment, public ownership and social security had been key domestic
issues for the pre-war Labour movement, housing and education had never been
far behind them. Yet in these last two areas Attlee’s government had less that
was new to offer. In both cases lack of time and resources played their part.
Bevan, who was also responsible for housing, inherited a poor housing
situation. During the war perhaps one-third of the housing stock had been
damaged or destroyed. Yet he was under constant attack from the Conservatives
and the Left over housing. Under Attlee’s governments over a million homes
were built, which was not bad, considering the shortages of men and materials. The
government faced embarrassment over squatters and the wrath of the better-off
who had money but still could not easily find a home of their own. One solution
that was tried was factory-made ‘pre-fabs’ of which 124,000 were erected by
local councils. These were relatively well designed and comfortable by the
standards of the time, yet many thought they were not quite real houses. They
proved to be far more durable than anyone expected. Wartime rent controls were
extended in an effort to prevent profiteering and to help steady the cost of living.
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 17

The Town and Country Planning Act, 1947 obliged local authorities to survey
their areas and present plans for their development. Previously their powers had
been merely discretionary. The planning authorities were given extended powers
and grants from central government, but many local Labour politicians were
disappointed that their authorities did not get greater powers to deal with the
complex problems of urban renewal.
As Professor Marwick reminds us, the Labour administration’s ‘hands were
tied’, in education, ‘by the fact that a major Education Act had just been put on
the statute book, so that it was scarcely feasible to bring in another one’. And he
rightly points out:

Yet if ever there was a good Psychological moment for dealing with the
snobbism built into the system, it was in the aftermath of the 1945 election
victory. The major public schools were then at a low ebb, and certainly
expected little mercy at the hands of a Labour government.28

Given Attlee’s own view of socialism as a process of levelling-up, and his own
pride in his old school, it is surprising that no attempt was made to integrate the
public schools into the state system. One would not have expected
nationalization, rather, state scholarships for 75 or 80 per cent of the places. This
would have been in keeping with wartime discussions and would have won the
support of Liberal and Conservative reformers.
Labour did implement the pledge to raise the school-leaving age to 15 in
1947. They also implemented the tripartite system of secondary
education embodied in the 1944 Education Act without apparently considering
its divisive features.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND TRADE UNION REFORM

Attlee brought in constitutional reform, which many thought was long overdue
and some thought did not go far enough. Firstly, the power of the House of Lords
to delay legislation was cut from two years to one. Secondly, the Representation
of the People Act, 1948 abolished the business premises qualification to vote.
This caused bitterness on the Right.29 Legislation to restrict the use of cars to
convey electors to the polling station, passed in 1949, was repealed by the
Conservatives in 1958. Thirdly, the Trades Disputes Act, 1927 was repealed in
1946. ‘Contracting-in’ was, once again, replaced by ‘contracting-out’ for trade
unionists paying the political levy which usually went to the Labour Party. In
other words, if a member of a trade union affiliated to the Labour Party did not wish
to pay his political levy, he had to seek out his branch secretary and sign the
appropriate form. Under the 1927 Act the onus was on the individual to take the
initiative to pay the levy. The importance of this move for the Labour Party is
shown by reference to the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). During the
war the union tried hard to get its members to pay the levy. By 1945, 24.66 per
18 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

cent did so. In the first full year after the Act had been repealed, 1947, it was 82.
21 per cent.30 The repeal of the 1927 Act also made it possible once again for civil
service unions to affiliate to the TUC.
Given the economic situation, the government needed the trade unions more
than ever before. In 1945 it knew it could count on the complete support of the
union leaders and most of their members. Later, the government became
worried, unduly so, as it turned out, about Communist influence.
The war had brought impressive gains for the Communist Party of Great
Britain (CPGB) in the unions. They had consolidated their positions in the
National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) in Scotland and Wales. They had a
strong following in the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) and among the
London dockers. They had gained some influence among the Draughtsmen, the
Scientific Workers, the Clerical and Administrative Workers, and the lower
grades of the non-manual civil service. A Communist had been elected General
Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union in 1939, another was elected National
Secretary of the Foundry Workers. In the Electrical Trades Union, their men had
clawed their way into the posts of President and Secretary. Even in the Transport
and General Workers’ Union (TGWU), Bert Papworth, the Communist busmen’s
leader, had been elected in 1944 as one of its two representatives on the Trades
Union Congress (TUC) General Council. The Communists had warmly
welcomed the Labour government in 1945. And even after a year of Attlee in
Downing Street they remained enthusiastic.31 Yet with the coming of the Cold
War the Communist line changed. In August 1947, CPGB Secretary, Harry
Pollitt, argued in the Communist Review, There is nothing in common with
socialism in what the Labour Government is doing’. In this situation ‘important
changes in the policy of the Communist Party…should be made’. There could be
little room for doubt: the Communists were going over to the offensive against
the Labour government.
In its campaign against the Attlee government the CPGB found any amount of
combustible material. There were immediate issues which it could take up, not as
matters of ideological dispute, but as practical, bread-and-butter issues. The
White Paper on Wages and Personal Incomes (February 1948) was the principal
one. It was the first of many attempts by post-war governments at an incomes
policy. It related personal incomes to increases in the volume of productivity,
emphasizing the need to export to allow Britain to pay its way in the world. It
was accepted by the General Council of the TUC and by the bulk of the
Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). Phil Piratin, the Communist MP, called it ‘an
attack on the working class’. Another, literally bread-and-butter, issue was the
government’s problem in maintaining the rations. At the end of the war the
country had expected a steady expansion of the food supply leading to an early
ending of rationing. Through no fault of the government, this did not happen. In
fact, some rations went down. In November 1948 the bacon ration went down
from 2 ozs per week to 2 ozs per fortnight. In 1949 the average consumption of
many basic items of food was still lower than it had been in 1939.32 Both
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 19

Communists and Conservatives attacked this state of affairs. For the

Communists, the most effective vehicle for their attack was the trade union
movement.
In the tough economic and international situation, the Labour leaders decided
to act to neutralize the Communist influence. Any form of co-operation between
individual members of the Labour Party and Communists was prohibited. A
purge of the civil service was carried through and the TUC was asked to expose
Communists in its member unions. In the Labour Party itself the leadership
expelled several Labour MPs who had consistently supported the Communist
line. Many other MPs who had opposed government policies, and who continued
to do so, were not affected. Further, a whole series of Communist-dominated
‘front’ organizations were proscribed for Labour Party members.
The move against Communists in the civil service came in March 1948. Attlee
announced that it had been decided that no one known to be a member of the
Communist Party, or associated with it ‘in such a way as to raise legitimate
doubts about his or her reliability’, would be employed on work ‘vital to the
security of the State’.33 To mollify opinion among his own back-benchers, he
said the same rule was being applied to fascists. This did not convince the 43
Labour MPs who put down a resolution regretting the statement. But other MPs
rallied to the Prime Minister and 31 Labour MPs put their names to a resolution
congratulating him. The Co-operative Party and the TUC approved the
government’s action.
Distasteful though many in the Labour Party thought the purge was, they also
felt it was necessary. It came within a month of the Communist coup in Prague
which destroyed democracy in Czechoslovakia. Consciences were eased a little
in 1950 when it was announced that the atomic scientist Klaus Fuchs had
confessed to supplying nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union. The case of the two
defecting diplomats, Burgess and Maclean, in 1951, further strengthened the case
for the purge.
The trade unions were far more difficult to police than the civil service. Many
members who did not agree with communism believed that once a purge started,
it would not stop at Communists but would be directed against anyone
considered militant or even just a nuisance to the leadership. Communists, they
believed, should be dealt with by the normal democratic machinery, defeated at
elections and disciplined if they sought to extend their influence by breaking the
rules. On the other hand, some officials saw how Communists, usually very
small minorities, by concerted and untiring action, got their resolutions passed,
their nominees elected and their policies adopted. Such officials, who perhaps
had spent all their adult lives building up their unions, felt angry when they
observed how the apathy of the majority enabled unrepresentative minorities to
push through unrepresentative policies. One such official, Arthur Deakin,
General Secretary of the TGWU, in an ill-advised statement urged that
Communists be banned.34 If anything, such statements merely increased
sympathy for the Communists as victims of illiberal trade union bosses. But
20 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

Deakin saw how, occasionally, having got control of a union, the Communists
would stop at nothing to keep control. Such was the case in the Electrical Trades
Union.
The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, discussed in the next chapter,
increased the fear of Communists in the unions, who, it was thought, might seek
to interfere with defence supplies or even resort to sabotage. G.A.Isaacs, himself
a former printing union leader, warned the Commons about this possible threat.
In fact, the fears were greatly exaggerated. Most of the ordinary Communists
were basically law-abiding citizens who would never have got involved in
sabotage. In any case, their influence was very limited. At a time when the
Communists were either hostile to strike action, during the war, or still officially
reluctant to endorse it, up to 1948, there were many more workers on strike than
later, when the Communists were dedicated to militancy. The incidence of
strikes would seem to have nothing to do with Communist influence.35

RAF: ‘INCITEMENT TO MUTINY’

Opposition to Attlee’s colonial policies within the armed forces gave the
Establishment a shock, but it erupted at a time when the Communists still

Table 2.2 Workers directly involved in strikes in all industries and services, 1944–53
Year Workers Year Workers
1944 716,000 1949 313,000
1945 447,000 1950 269,000
1946 405,000 1951 336,000
1947 489,000 1952 303,000
1948 324,000 1953 1,329,000

endorsed his government and it was as much about dissatisfaction with service
conditions and the pace of demobilization as it was about political issues.
Nevertheless, there was resentment among some servicemen who were
compelled to implement Attlee’s colonial policies although they felt repelled by
them. Veterans of the RAF’s largest ‘mutiny’, which took place in 1946, claim
that the men resented being made tools of imperialism. Speaking about their
experiences in 1996, they said this was certainly a factor in the strikes which
spread across RAF bases in India, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Singapore and elsewhere
in the Far East. Over 50,000 airmen refused to obey orders and were threatened
with the firing squad if they did not return to duty. As the firing squad had been
widely used in the 1914–18 war, they had to take the threat seriously.36 The men
were also angry about their poor living conditions and the slow pace of
demobilization. In contrast, their officers lived in luxurious conditions. Norris
Cymbalist, a Jewish Londoner and Communist, who had volunteered for service
in the RAF, was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment. Arthur Attwood, also one
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 21

of a small number of Communists in the RAF, was accused of being a protest

leader. He was found not guilty of ‘incitement to mutiny’, but the RAF top brass
were not satisfied with the verdict and he was rearrested. There had been strikes
in the army at the end of the First World War, and there had been the ‘mutiny’ of
the Fleet at Invergordon in 1931,37 but these had been about demobilization, in
the first case, and about pay cuts in the second. The RAF strikes looked
ominously political. On 27 February, the Conservative MP, Wing-Commander
N.J.Hulbert, wanted an assurance from the government ‘that these Communist
agitators who have brought disgrace’ to the RAF ‘will be severely dealt with’.
Although most of the media followed the Air Ministry line of saying nothing
about the strikes, in Parliament Tom Driberg, Emrys Hughes and W.Griffiths
(Labour), Phil Piratin (Communist) and J.McGovern (ILP) challenged the
government over the treatment of Cymbalist and others. Calling the sentence
‘savage’, McGovern claimed to have received more letters on this case than on
any during the war.38 Outside Parliament a vigorous campaign was waged on
behalf of those sentenced. Attwood was released and Cymbalist served ‘only’ 22
months of his sentence.39
The strikes brought attention to the question of civil liberties and the
responsibility of ministers. The RAF HQ 232 Group issued an order (Ref. 232G/
2929/2/P.1) on 17 December 1945 warning airmen that they were not allowed
‘directly or indirectly’ to communicate with an MP to obtain redress of
grievances. John Strachey, the Under-Secretary of State for Air, repudiated this
order, calling it, on 20 February 1946, ‘a foolish mistake’. Clearly, in the higher
reaches of the RAF there were those who did not believe in civil rights for their
subordinates. What about the ministers involved? How much control did they
exercise over developments? Strachey, an old Etonian, was a former Communist
intellectual, who had served in the information department of the RAF with the
rank of wing-commander.40 Yet he seemed not to be in control of events. His
superior minister was Viscount Stansgate; a veteran of the Royal Flying Corps, he
too had been in the Second World War RAF and his son had been killed serving
in the RAF. Attlee gave him the task of negotiating with the Egyptians, leaving
Strachey to carry on in the Commons.41 Attlee was himself Minister of Defence
at the time. Strachey was moved on 27 May 1946 to the Ministry of Food.
Stansgate gave up in October 1946.
Other mutinies followed. Perhaps the most serious was one involving 258 men
of the 13th Bn, The Parachute Regiment at Muar Camp near Kuala Lumpur in
Malaya. They were arrested on 14 May 1946 after expressing dissatisfaction
about their living conditions and refusing to return to their lines. Most of them
had fought at D-Day, the Ardennes and the Rhine Crossing. Tried for mutiny in
September, eight of them were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment with hard
labour and 247 received two years. The sentences were later quashed on the
grounds of technical irregularities.42
22 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

CONSERVATIVES GET ‘BEST SALESMAN’

The Conservative Party reacted to its defeat in 1945 with a mixture of arrogance
and courage. The arrogance came naturally to a party which considered only
itself to be fit to rule, a party that had suffered its last decisive defeat in 1906.
Having been defeated at a time when the Left was surging forward throughout
Europe, it needed some courage to believe there was any major role for the party
in the future. Not surprisingly, thought was given to the idea of changing the
name and broadening it out into an alliance of non-socialists.
The Conservative Party did not succeed in becoming a broad coalition of non-
socialists, but it did succeed in attracting some popular figures who had not
previously been too closely associated with it. Most important of them was Lord
Woolton, who had shown his skills as Minister of Food during the war.
Macmillan called him ‘the best salesman that I have ever known’.43 Churchill
made him party chairman, with the job of modernizing the organization. Another
popular figure was Dr Charles Hill, who had become well known through his
broadcasts as the ‘radio doctor’. Hill and some of the younger recruits could have
been at home in the Labour Party. Iain Macleod and Edward Heath were among
them, and even Macmillan had considered joining Labour at an earlier period.
Woolton got the Conservatives to agree to put the constituency agency service
on a more professional basis, with great improvements in the standing and
remuneration of agents. Certainly, under Woolton’s guidance, they were able to
build up far better constituency organizations than Labour, an advantage they
have retained up to the 1990s. Woolton also played a major role in building up
the Young Conservatives. The YCs, as much a social as a political movement,
probably did help to orientate young people towards the Conservatives in the
1950s. Another major initiative of Woolton’s was his attempt to make
Conservative representation in the Commons more ‘democratic’. Until the
Woolton reform, those able to pay the most towards the upkeep of the
constituency they sought to represent were most likely to be selected as
candidates, especially in safe seats. This restricted the choice to about ‘half a per
cent of the population’, Woolton claimed. If the Conservatives continued in this
way, they deserved to be beaten.44 The Party therefore agreed that ‘In no
circumstances shall the question of annual subscription be mentioned by any
constituency selection committee to any candidate before he has been selected’.
Candidates could, however, contribute up to £25 per annum to their constituency
association, MPs up to £50. Though it was certainly a move in the direction of
modernization, it is doubtful whether this change has had quite the impact which
was expected at the time. It is even more doubtful whether it played any part in
the Conservative revival. Few of the Conservative candidates who fought the
1950 election were chosen after the recommendations of the Maxwell-Fyf-Report,
of which this was a part, came into effect. The Report admitted, there was a
tendency to select ‘obscure local citizens with obscure local interests, incapable—
and indeed downright reluctant—to think on a national or international scale’.45
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 23

During this period the Conservative Party refurbished its policies, committing
itself formally to the mixed economy and the welfare state. The focal point of
this revised policy was the Industrial Charter announced by R.A.Butler in May
1947. An Agricultural Charter followed, as well as policy documents on Wales
and Scotland, Imperial policy, and women. Butler, who had been given the task
of recasting policy by Churchill, later wrote that his aim was to give the party ‘a
painless but permanent facelift’.46 If he did, it was more an operation to remove a
few warts than cranial-facial surgery. Butler himself admitted the Charter was
‘“broad” rather than detailed, vague where it might have been specific’, because
Churchill did not want to be bound too much in opposition. It was also, he
admitted, written with ‘flatness of language’ and ‘blandness of tone’.47 It is
doubtful whether it took the Conservatives very far along the road to electoral
victory.

ELECTION 1950: ‘REAL DETESTATION OF…

LABOUR’
In the election of 1950 Labour seems to have been adversely affected by a
number of factors which had nothing to do with changes in the Conservative
Party. Boundary revisions probably lost Labour between 25 and 30 seats.48 The
Conservatives were undoubtedly the main beneficiaries of the new postal-vote
facility, which probably gained them a further 10 seats.49 With these 10 seats
Labour would have had a viable majority and could have looked forward to a
four-year Parliament, at the end of which the world would be far more
favourable to the party in government. On the other hand, the Conservatives lost
several seats due to the abolition of university seats. On a higher poll than in
1945, Labour gained 13.2 million votes, the Conservatives 12.5 million, and the
Liberals 2.6 million. Overall, Labour was reduced to a majority of six seats.
Labour had retained, even extended, its working-class support, but there had
been a hardening of middle-class opposition to Labour. As one Conservative
writer has explained, there was a markedly bigger pro-Tory swing in the
suburban areas.

It is clear that long before 1950 there had grown up in that class a real
detestation of…Labour…these years can be seen in retrospect as a sort of
twilight period between the era of cheap servants and the era of cheap
washing machines. The effect of the disappearance of servants constituted
a revolution in the middle class way of life far more drastic than anything
that followed the First World War; the effects were felt more acutely at this
time than later when prosperity returned, labour-saving devices became the
norm and people had recognized the need to adjust themselves to a change
which, they now saw, would never be reversed. However, illogically, this
state of affairs greatly conduced to middle class disenchantment with
Labour.50
24 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Clive Ponting, Churchill (1994), 501.

2 ibid., 505.
3 ibid., 501.
4 ibid., 509.
5 ibid., 510.
6 Peter L.Hahn, in F.M.Leventhal (ed.), Twentieth-century Britain: An Encyclopedia
(New York, 1995), 453.
7 Hugh Dalton, High Tide and After: Memoirs 1945–1960 (1962), 70.
8 John Kenneth Galbraith, The World Economy since the Wars (1994), 157–8.
9 Charles E.Silberman, A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today
(New York, 1985), 57. Hostility to the Jews, according to opinion polls, actually
increased between 1940 and 1944.
10 About 120,000 Japanese, many US citizens, were interned in 1942. Their racial
ancestry was the sole reason for their internment. Many young Japanese-Americans
fought in the US forces in the war. See Gerald D.Nash, The Great Depression and
World War II: Organising America, 1933–1945 (New York, 1979), 156–7. See also
Roger Daniels, Concentration Camps USA (New York, 1971).
11 In 1950, 52 per cent of Americans were of British origin, 21 per cent of German
origin, 16 per cent African, 14 per cent Irish and 7 per cent Italian. Daniel
Snowman, The USA: The Twenties to Vietnam (1968), 179.
12 G.D.N.Worswick and P.H.Ady, The British Economy 1945–1950 (1952), 32.
13 John Strachey, Why You Should Be a Socialist (1944), 66.
14 Rt Hon. C.R.Attlee, MP, The Labour Party in Perspective (1937).
15 Quintin Hogg, The Case for Conservatism (1947), 113.
16 E.Eldon Barry, Nationalisation in British Politics (1965), 85.
17 Hogg, op. cit., 112.
18 Hansard, vol. 418, col. 752.
19 ibid.
20 Illustrated, 25 January 1947.
21 As advertised in Illustrated, 23 August 1947.
22 Hansard, vol. 422, col. 130.
23 Angus Calder, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45 (1969), 531.
24 J.D.Hoffman, The Conservative Party in Opposition, 1945–51 (1964), 46.
25 ibid., 235.
26 Arthur Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War (1968), 172.
27 Letter to the author.
28 Marwick, op. cit., 357.
29 The Hansard Society, Parliamentary Reform 1933–1960 (1961), 5–6.
30 Irving Richter, Political Purpose in Trade Unions (1973), 246.
31 See review by William Gallacher in Labour Monthly, August 1946.
32 These figures are taken from All the Answers (Conservative Research ment, 1949),
39.
33 Hansard, vol. 448, col. 1703.
34 The Economist, 23 September 1950, 502.
 ACHIEVEMENT AND AUSTERITY UNDER ATTLEE, 1945–51 25

35 Department of Employment and Productivity, British Labour Statistics: Historical

Abstract 1886–1968 (HMSO, 1971), 396, Table 197.
36 Julian Putkowski and Julian Sykes, Shot at Dawn: Executions in World War I by
Authority of the British Army Act (Barnsley, 1989), discuss this and believe in 312
cases the victims should be exonerated.
37 See Alan Ereira, The Invergordon Mutiny (1981).
38 House of Commons, 29 March 1946.
39 Observer, 4 August 1996. The strikes were discussed in great detail in Channel 4’s
Secret History programme, ‘The strikes in the RAF’, on 8 August. In a half-hearted
attempt to justify the sentence on Cymbalist, Strachey reported to the Commons
(15 May 1946) that he had been convicted in January 1943 of stealing £24 from a
fellow airman. In 1944 he had been convicted of ‘using insubordinate language to a
superior officer’.
40 Strachey had written The Coming Struggle for Power (1932), regarded as the
definitive Marxist analysis in English at the time.
41 I am grateful to Tony Benn for reminding me of this fact. Stansgate was his father.
42 Trevor Royle, The Best Years of their Lives: The National Service Experience
1945–63 (1988), 25–6.
43 Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (1969), 292.
44 ibid., 294.
45 ibid., 296.
46 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler (1971), 145–6.
47 ibid., 145.
48 H.G.Nicholas, The British General Election of 1950 (1951), 4.
49 ibid., 9.
50 Robert Blake, The Conservatives from Peel to Churchill (1970), 263–4.
 3
COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

PAUL ROBESON CONGRATULATES

When he heard the results of the British general election Paul Robeson sent
Clement Attlee his congratulations. Robeson, a Black American actor and singer,
was well known to British cinema and theatre audiences. He saw Labour’s
victory as a defeat for imperialism. He was soon disappointed.1
Robeson was just one of many who felt let down by Attlee’s overseas policies,
including many in the Labour Party. Some thought Hong Kong should be
returned to China, Britain’s wartime ally, immediately (and not in 1997). Many
were shocked that British troops were being used, in some cases in co-operation
with the defeated Japanese, to restore the Dutch and French colonial empires in
Java (Indonesia) and Indo-China (Vietnam) respectively.2 They fought native
resistance groups built up with Allied help to fight against the Japanese
occupiers.
There was also the problem of what to do with the followers of the Indian
nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose. Despairing of British promises about the future
of India, he had thrown in his lot with the Japanese and, with their help, formed
the Indian National Army (INA). Most of its members were prisoners-of-war,
some of whom had been forced to join, others who had volunteered. Bose
himself died in an air crash, but many of his soldiers fell into British hands in
1945. In November 1945 three INA officers were sentenced to death in Delhi.
Their sentences were subsequently commuted to ‘rigorous imprisonment’.
Protests against the sentences led to violence in Calcutta, Bombay and Delhi.
Within three months 11,000 INA soldiers were released from internment and
sent home. They were greeted as heroes.3

INDIAN INDEPENDENCE: ‘STRUCK ME…WITH A

RIDING WHIP’
Shortly after the strikes in the RAF (see Chapter 2) there followed similar
developments in the Indian air force and navy. In February 1946 a naval mutiny
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 27

occurred in Bombay and was followed by others in Calcutta, Madras and

Karachi.4 As soon as one fire was put out another started somewhere else.
It was clear that Britain could not maintain its world-wide Empire, especially
if the local population was opposed to it. In the case of India, there was a
growing cross-party agreement that Britain would have to relinquish power, it
was only a question of how and when. Britain had made vague promises of
independence within the Empire in the First World War. These did not satisfy
nationalist opinion and, in the interwar period, tension erupted in India on many
occasions. India was perhaps the central issue of parliamentary life for six years
between 1929 and 1935.5 Eventually, the Government of India 1935 was passed
against the opposition of Churchill and other extreme imperialists. The Act set up
a complicated system of federal states dependent on Britain for defence and with
emergency powers in the hands of British governors.6 The Act did not satisfy
Indian aspirations and was in any case set in abeyance during the Second World
War. Wartime negotiations with India’s main political party, Congress, had
failed, resulting in the internment of its leaders and much violence and
repression. It was obvious that a speedy settlement was needed to avoid civil war
conditions.
Labour had stood for Indian independence in opposition and was ready to
implement it but the question was ‘how?’. Churchill had opposed independence
before and during the war, but by 1946 realized it could not be stopped. He and
the Conservatives ‘stood for a weak and divided India still dependent on
Britain’.7 He had secret lines of communication with the Muslim League leader
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, whom he encouraged in his aim of a separate state,
Pakistan.8 He also encouraged the princely states to break free from India. Attlee
and his colleagues favoured a united India if possible, but were not prepared to
use force in this direction. Attlee dispatched a mission to India to attempt to find
a solution. Led by Lord Pethick-Lawrence, it included Cripps and
A.V.Alexander, First Lord of the Admiralty. Pethick-Lawrence had first visited
India in 1897 and had met the Indian leader Gandhi before 1914. Like Gandhi
and other Indian leaders, he had seen the inside of a British prison. He had been
jailed in the First World War for being a conscientious objector. Cripps had led a
wartime mission to attempt to placate the Indians, but this had been sabotaged by
Churchill, who sent him. The mission advocated a united, federal state. In the
face of Jinnah’s opposition to a united India, Pethick-Lawrence could achieve
little. Attlee therefore appointed Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, who had
served as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in South East Asia, as the last
Viceroy. He was known to sympathize with the aspirations of the Asian peoples
for independence. His job was to lead India to independence. Attlee gave him
carte blanche, including the definite date for British withdrawal, not later than
June 1948. It was hoped that, if the Indians were clear that the British were going,
they would work harder to achieve a settlement among themselves. This did not
happen. India was partitioned into an Indian state and Pakistan. The provincial
assemblies were to decide to which state they wished to join. Hyderabad and
28 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

Junagadh, with Muslim majorities, were invaded and forced to join India.9 The
official transfer of power took place on 15 August 1947 and the last British troops
left on 13 February 1948.
Bloodshed erupted as Hindus migrated to India from Pakistan, and Muslims
left in the opposite direction. In Kashmir there was fighting before that state
decided to opt for India. And in the Punjab there was widespread violence
between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. Gandhi announced he would fast until the
violence ended. It appears that, because of his prestige, his action did cause many
to relent.10
The British withdrawal from its Indian Empire, which included India, Pakistan,
Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Burma, has been much debated. The fact is Attlee and
his colleagues were realists and many of them had long been convinced India
should be free to decide its own destiny. Had Churchill been in government,
Britain could well have been embroiled in a massive colonial war, as were the
French in Indo-China and the Dutch in Indonesia. Churchill’s attitude is
demonstrated by the fact that he would not shake hands with Mountbatten for
years, and said to him, ‘What you did in India is as though you had struck me
across the face with a riding whip.’11

PALESTINE: ‘ARABS…ENCOURAGED TO MOVE

OUT’
Of all the controversies over external affairs Palestine was the one which caused
the Attlee government the most bitter recriminations from its own supporters.
Alas, it remains of great present-day significance. For this reason a little more
space has been allocated to it here.
As part of the doomed Turkish Empire, Palestine fell under British military
occupation at the end of the First World War. The bulk of the inhabitants were
Arabs. The Jews had lost their pre-eminence there with the final destruction of
Jerusalem in AD 135. Britain’s official interest in Palestine started with the
Balfour Declaration of November 1917. It pledged the British government would
use its ‘best endeavours’ to facilitate the establishment of a ‘national home for
the Jewish people’. It stressed, however, that ‘nothing shall be done which may
prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine’. Finally, it stressed that the existing rights enjoyed by Jews in any
other country would not be prejudiced by the establishment of a Jewish home in
Palestine.12 By 1923 the League of Nations had approved both the Declaration
and the British occupation. Throughout the interwar period the Zionists13 sought
to realize the promise of the Declaration and eventually create a Jewish state.
British policy, between the wars, was never entirely clear. The government knew
from the start that the Palestinian Arabs opposed Jewish immigration, and they
demonstrated that opposition in civil disorders throughout these years.14 With a
full-scale Arab revolt on its hands, and war approaching, the British government
decided to impose a solution. This was set out in the White Paper of May 1939.
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 29

It called for a two-stage, ten-year, transitional period, leading to independence.

Jewish immigration would be allowed until the Jews made up one-third of the
population. After that, it could only take place ‘if the Arabs are prepared to
acquiesce in it’.15 In short, Palestine was to become a democratic state, with
power-sharing between the Arab majority and the Jewish minority, and was to be
linked to Britain by treaty. In the Commons the majority of the Labour Party
attacked the new policy, Morrison was joined by Churchill, still out of office, in
the onslaught on Malcolm MacDonald, Secretary of State for the Colonies.
MacDonald, the son of Ramsay, paid tribute to the Jewish settlers, ‘they have
turned the desert into spacious orange groves’, but reminded his critics that the
Arabs too had rights, they ‘had been in undisturbed occupation of the country for
countless generations’.16
In 1940 the annual conference of the Labour Party passed a resolution
favourable to Zionism, but Labour participation in government circumscribed the
debate during the war years to some extent. A Cabinet subcommittee chaired by
Morrison decided the partition of Palestine would be the best solution.17
Meanwhile, Dalton’s thoughts, slightly amended, became Labour policy, as
agreed at the annual conference in December 1944. Representations by the
Palestine Workers’ Society appeared to have been completely ignored.18 The
Labour resolution called for allowing Jews into

this tiny land in such numbers as to become a majority. There was a strong
case for this before the war. There is an irresistible case now, after the
unspeakable atrocities of the cold and calculated German Nazi plan to kill
all the Jews in Europe… Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the
Jews move in. Let them be handsomely compensated for their land and let
their settlement elsewhere be carefully organised and generously financed.
The Arabs have very wide territories of their own; they must not claim to
exclude the Jews from this small part of Palestine, less than the size of
Wales. Indeed, we should examine also the possibility of extending the
boundaries by agreement with Egypt, Syria and Transjordan. Moreover, we
should seek to win the full sympathy and support both of the American and
Russian Governments for the execution of this Palestine policy.19

Before Attlee had settled properly in Downing Street he felt the pressure from
Zionism’s most powerful friend. At the end of August 1945 President Truman
wrote to him asking that 100,000 Jewish displaced persons be admitted to
Palestine immediately. Both because of the practical difficulties involved, and
because of the likely reaction of the Arabs, Attlee was not very enthusiastic.
Attlee was prepared for Britain to withdraw from the Middle East, but the
government’s military advisers, led by Lord Tedder, Chief of the Air Staff,
believed Britain’s vital defence needs dictated that Britain be able to station
forces in Palestine. This meant Britain remaining there.20 After discussions with
both Zionist and Arab representatives, Bevin announced on 13 November that an
30 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

Anglo-American Commission of Inquiry would consider the Palestine question.

Meanwhile, in Palestine itself violence had broken out. In November 1944, Lord
Moyne, British Minister-Resident in Cairo, was murdered by Zionist extremists,
an act condemned by Dr Chaim Weizmann, President of the Zionist
Organization, and most other Jewish leaders. By 1945 the main Jewish fighting
forces in Palestine were embarking on a campaign of rail sabotage and attacks on
military installations. In the Arab states demonstrations turned into riots, as the
fury against Zionism mounted on 2–3 November 1945. Nearer home, Bevin
faced criticism from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and, remarkably, on
19 November the Jewish Brigade of the British Army of the Rhine went on
hunger strike in protest against Bevin’s statement.21
The Anglo-American Commission published its report in May 1946.
Predictably, it satisfied neither side. Basically, it called for a continuation of the
mandate regime ‘until the hostility between the Jews and the Arabs disappears’.
It recommended the admission of 100,000 Jewish victims of persecution, some
easing of the restrictions on Jewish land purchase, and the suppression of
violence. It did, however, talk about ‘ensuring that the rights and position of other
sections of the population were not prejudiced’. While the British government
was considering the implications of the report, the British forces were subjected
to renewed violence from the Zionists. On 1 July, Attlee announced, with regret,
the arrest of some leading members of the Jewish Agency, the governing body of
the Jewish community in Palestine. Attlee claimed those arrested were connected
with Hagana, the Jewish underground army, and that this body had been
involved in violence, which it had. The premier stressed that the security
operations were not against the Jewish community as a whole. In the Commons
Attlee came under fire from his own back-benchers led by Barnet Janner,
President of the British Zionists, and Sydney Silverman, and the non-Jews,
Richard Crossman, Michael Foot and Konni Zilliacus.
Even in a world used to violence, the blowing-up of the King David Hotel on
22 July 1946 caused genuine shock and anger. The hotel housed the British
military HQ, but it still carried on the civilian functions for which it was built as
well. The explosion, which was the work of the Jewish group Irgun Zvi Leumi,
claimed about 100 deaths. A number of leading British officials were among the
dead, and there were also a number of Arab and Jewish victims.22 The deed was
condemned by the Jewish Palestinian press and by Jewish leaders, but it
inevitably led to a worsening of relations between the Jews and the security
forces. During the next 23 or so months there followed what one Jewish writer
called a ‘deadly round-dance of terror raids, assassinations and blind reprisals’.23
After the Morrison Plan (31 July 1946), which advocated a federal Palestine,
failed to take off, the British government started to consider returning its
mandate to the United Nations. On 14 February 1947 Bevin announced that
Britain would submit the problem to the UN. A special UN committee of small-
and medium-sized states then investigated and on 31 August 1947 issued a
minority report, which roughly corresponded to the Anglo-US federal plan, and a
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 31

majority report, which called for partition. The majority report recommended the
setting up of separate Jewish and Arab states. But it would have left 500,000
Arabs within the Jewish state, deprived the Arabs of their only port, Jaffa, failed
to provide them with compensation, and put the Arab state under the economic
domination of its Jewish neighbour. As this plan was not endorsed by the two
parties in the dispute, Britain was not prepared to implement it, and announced
its intention to withdraw. The General Assembly of the UN endorsed the
partition plan by a vote of 33 to 13, with 10 abstentions, on 29 November 1947.
The majority included the United States and the Soviet Union. The Islamic states
and India, Cuba and Greece voted against. Britain, China, Mexico and
Yugoslavia were among those abstaining. The vote was, at least in part, the
result of pressure by the United States on its clients.24
Throughout this period Palestine suffered from mounting violence, except,
that is, for the brief interval of the 22nd World Zionist Congress (December/
January 1946/47). There were several angry confrontations between Labour MPs
and their leaders. Harold Lever, Jewish MP for Manchester Exchange and future
Cabinet member, charged, on 12 August 1947, that government policy
represented ‘two years of planless, gutless and witless behaviour’. He described
British rule as ‘this military dictatorship…this police State, this State of the
flogging block and the gallows’.25 This view was challenged by, among others,
Tufton Beamish (Conservative), who had served as a regular in pre-war
Palestine. In 1938 and 1939 a total of 109 Arabs had, after being sentenced by
the British, ‘paid the extreme penalty’. In 1939, 5,700 Arabs were in detention.
Arab casualties had been as ‘high as 4,000’ in these years.

But yet the terrorist activities of the Arabs in those years were never on
such a large scale as are the Jewish activities today. These figures provide
an extraordinary contrast with the total of only seven Jews who have paid
the extreme penalty for their terrorist activities during the last 18 months. I
feel we are entitled to know the reason for this contrast.26

The Labour MP for Wednesbury, Stanley Evans, expressed the fear that the King
David Hotel bombing could lead to repercussions at King’s Cross.27 It took
another year of terrorist activities before this happened. As a reprisal for the
execution of three Jewish terrorists, two British sergeants were kidnapped and
then hanged in a eucalyptus grove on 29 July 1947. One of the bodies was booby-
trapped. In Britain during the weekend of 1–2 August and on subsequent days,
there were outbreaks of unorganized rioting in Liverpool and Manchester.
Incidents, mainly the smashing of the windows of shops owned by Jews,
occurred in different parts of London and Cardiff, Eccles, Halifax, Glasgow and
some other places.28 Although very worrying at the time, this tide of spontaneous
violence disappeared almost as suddenly as it had erupted.
The biggest, and final, revolt of Labour MPs against their government’s
Palestine policy took place in March 1948. This was over the Palestine Bill
32 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

which sought to tie up the loose ends of the British withdrawal. The debate on
the second reading gave the government’s critics a chance to have a final go on
the issue. They claimed the government was running away, failing to keep its
electoral pledges, frustrating the work of the UN and condoning Arab threats of
violence. One Labour loyalist, Tom Reid from Swindon, a member of the earlier
Palestine Partition Commission, summed up the situation rather differently. He
believed the UN solution would lead to ‘war which will last 10, 20 or 50 years.
The Arabs will not submit so long as their sovereignty is to be taken away from
them.’ He wanted a Palestinian state.29 When the Commons was divided by the
Labour rebels, they were defeated by 242 votes to 32 (including the tellers).
Among the rebels were Sydney and Julius Silverman, Harold Lever, Barnet
Janner, Maurice Edelman, Ian Mikardo, Benn Levy, and some other Jewish
MPs, including the Communist, Phil Piratin. Other Jewish MPs backed the
government. Among the other rebels were John Platts-Mills, D.N.Pritt, William
Warbey and Konni Zilliacus. The vote did not fully reflect the unease on the
Labour benches. Among the ministers who had doubts were Bevan, Creech
Jones, Dalton, Shinwell, Strachey, George Strauss and Tom Williams.30 The vote
was a miserable end to a sad episode.
The Palestine emergency had cost the lives of 338 British subjects since 1945,
and the taxpayer had been forced to find £100 million to finance it. Over 80,000
British troops, one-tenth of the total at that time, had been used to police the
territory.
The Labour leaders had found themselves in a dilemma, torn between the need
for British friendship with the Arabs and their own friendship with the Jews.
Attlee himself probably had strong reservations about Labour’s pro-Zionist
stance before 1945, but had sought, by silence, to avoid a clash with such
powerful pro-Zionist colleagues as Dalton and Morrison. For many non-Jewish
Labour intellectuals, the Jews were a special breed who had made a massive
contribution to humanity. They were the victims of the hated Tsar and the
detested Führer. Moreover, the Jews were often comrades. The Labour
government, by ‘betraying’ the Jews, was betraying itself, probably as a result of
‘advice’ from reactionary Foreign Office officials.31 It was a process which had
started with Greece in 1944 (see p. 39), about which the leaders had done
nothing. As for the Arabs, British socialists of this type regarded them as the
hoodwinked dupes of reactionary rulers, and saw them as being in a similar
position to British working-class Tories. They were the reserve army of reaction
and it was no wonder that they found supporters on the Conservative side. The
Jews were the apostles of the new, the modern, of ‘progress’, and, therefore, as
Dalton put it, ‘we should lean…towards the dynamic Jew, less towards the static
Arab’.32
The weakness of the pro-Zionist position was precisely that it either treated the
Arabs with contempt or simply ignored them. The weakness of the pro-Arabs was
that they did not recognize that a new nation had grown up in the womb of the
mandate territory. And, because of its pride and its experience, this nation was
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 33

not prepared to put its security in the hands of its traditionalist neighbours with
vastly different standards from its own.

COLONIES: ‘UNDER THE GUIDANCE OF THE

MOTHER COUNTRY’
During the war Labour had promised the colonies that, should Labour take office,
they would experience ‘a period of unprecedented development and progress
under the guidance of the Mother Country’.33 Once in office, the ministers were
to find the situation far more complicated than they had anticipated. Firstly, the
financial resources necessary for this ‘unprecedented development’ were not
available. Secondly, difficult choices had to be made. Should limited funds be
channelled into the colonies according to the needs of the inhabitants, or should
they go into those colonies where they were most likely to bring a return for
Britain in terms of higher living standards and dollar exports? As it was,
‘Decision-making on colonial economic policy suffered, as always, from
constraints imposed by the Treasury, which had to honour commitments to the
USA and to Britain’s Commonwealth partners.’34 This need to stimulate exports
from the colonies certainly influenced government thinking on nationalization of
Tate and Lyle sugar interests in Jamaica and United Africa Company mining
interests in Rhodesia; ‘it appeared wiser not to disturb entrepreneurs British or
American’.35 Nevertheless, British money did get to the colonies. The Colonial
Development and Welfare Act, 1945 provided some of the means—£125 million
to be spent over 10 years. In addition, two new corporations were established to
develop agricultural and other projects: the Colonial Development Corporation
with borrowing powers of £100 million and the Overseas Food Corporation with
initial borrowing powers of £50 million. Further legislation in 1949 and 1950
approved an increase in the funds available. Over £30 million were wasted on the
Tanganyika groundnuts scheme. The scheme, which originated with the United
Africa Company, a subsidiary of Unilever, was based on inadequate analysis of
soil and rainfall. Strachey, Minister of Food, who was ultimately responsible,
was mercilessly attacked by the press and the Opposition. But, as his biographer,
Hugh Thomas, has reminded us, the loss ‘of public money on a scheme which
attempted to alleviate the world food shortage is admittedly less of a catastrophe
than the loss of many more millions on military projects or upon expensive
aircraft such as has occurred since that time’.36
Labour’s colonial experts put economic development ahead of political
progress in their priorities. Economic advance would lead the way to greater
political maturity in the future. As it turned out, they underestimated the
development of political consciousness among the Africans. Serious disturbtook
place in the Gold Coast (Ghana) in 1948. There was discontent among cocoa
farmers over the low price they received for their products, and among ex-
servicemen over poor pensions. When the police fired on a peaceful ex-
servicemen’s demonstration, riots broke out. After two commissions of inquiry a
34 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

new constitution was introduced in 1950, ‘a system well on the way to

responsible government’.37 Elections under the new constitution were won by
Kwame Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party, Nkrumah graduating from jail to
become Prime Minister in 1952.
There was also a good deal of political activity in central Africa—Northern
Rhodesia (Zambia), Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (Malawi). The war had
brought about the awakening of African political consciousness in these
territories. African National Congresses were formed in Nyasaland in 1943 and
in Northern Rhodesia in 1948. With the help of British trade unionists, the
Northern Rhodesian African Mineworkers’ Union was set up in the same year.
These developments were seen as a threat, as indeed they were, to white
supremacy in both Northern and Southern Rhodesia. Most of the white political
leaders now sought to retain their supremacy by means of a Central African
Federation, a project about which many harboured doubts. With the victory of
the Afrikaner nationalists in South Africa in 1948, the English-speaking whites
felt that federation was the only alternative to either eventual domination by the
Blacks or by the South Africans. To the Black Africans, their freedom seemed to
depend on maintaining Colonial Office control until they were ready to govern
themselves. They saw federation as exchanging control by London for control by
the white settlers. If the three territories were united, it would be Southern
Rhodesia that would play the most influential role. There were nearly two and a
half times as many white settlers in Southern Rhodesia as in the other two areas
put together. The Blacks feared that the racial policies pursued in Southern
Rhodesia since it attained self-government in 1923 would be extended to the
other two territories. Creech Jones believed this too, and during his term of office
he played his part in resisting settler pressure.38

WAR IN MALAYA
Another area which caused the Labour government a headache was Malaya. It
was important as a producer of tin and rubber, an important dollar-earner which
had come under British control between 1874 and 1910. Singapore, at its
southern tip, was still regarded as a vital naval base. But Malaya had its
problems. It was an ethnic melting pot. Less than half its population were Malay.
The Chinese, who dominated the commercial life of the country, actually
outnumbered the Malays in 1947. In addition, there were considerable numbers
from India and Pakistan, as well as Indonesians and Aborigines.39 Malaya had
been ruled by the British indirectly through the native rulers, the sultans, and this
arrangement had seemed to work until the Japanese invasion of 1942. The
occupation which followed greatly influenced Malaya. The native peoples
witnessed the defeat of the British and realized they were not omnipotent. The
Japanese encouraged, to a limited extent, Malay nationalism, discriminating
against the Chinese. The British promoted resistance and the Malayan People’s
Anti-Japanese Army was established with their help. It was a mainly Chinese,
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 35

communist-influenced, force. After the war the British disbanded it, but not
before it had settled some old scores against, mainly, Malays accused of
collaboration with the Japanese. In general, there was a feeling that there could
be no simple going back to the old scheme of things.40 The new Labour
government recognized this and introduced a constitution designed to reduce the
sultans to constitutional figureheads, give Malay citizenship to most inhabitants
irrespective of racial origin, and prepare the way for eventual self-government.
This radical change met with stiff opposition from influential Malays and their
allies in London. Malay nationalism was aroused against the Chinese and
Indians, and the British were forced to back down. The new Federation of
Malaya agreement of 1946 restricted citizenship and restored at least some of the
privileges of the sultans. At the head of the government system was a British
High Commissioner, Sir Edward Gent, responsible to the Colonial Office in
London. The reversal of policy provoked unrest among the Chinese and this,
along with the high price of rice, led to civil disturbances. In 1948 armed
struggle replaced civil disturbance as the Malayan Communist Party attempted to
exploit genuine grievances. As in Burma, the Philippines and Indonesia, it started
as part of Moscow’s strategy of militancy world-wide,41 but the guerrilla war
which followed tied up considerable numbers of British and native troops and
police between 1948 and 1960.42 The British troops were often national service
conscripts. Malaya was, of course, ideal guerrilla country, but the rebels lacked a
safe cross-border sanctuary so vital in such campaigns. The British found
themselves trapped in an ‘anti-insurgency’ campaign similar, in some respects, to
their earlier campaigns in South Africa, Ireland and Palestine. This involved
collective punishments, the forced resettlement of 600,000 Chinese peasants and
the abandonment of normal democratic norms. Both Labour and Conservative
governments followed a policy of ‘ruthlessness where ruthlessness is necessary’
coupled with ‘equal firmness and vigour in pressing on with economic and
political development of the country’.43 In the end, the defeat of the insurgents
was probably due as much to political developments as to military action.
Firstly, the rebellion was largely confined to the Chinese community, a fact
which set severe limits on its success.44 Secondly, most of the fighting was over
by 1955. This was a period when both the Soviet and Chinese leaders were
seeking détente, and had therefore ceased supporting armed insurrection. Thirdly,
in Malaya itself constitutional advance had led to the election of the Triple
Alliance Party of Tunku Abdul Rahman, a party uniting Malays with Chinese
and Indians. A Malay of royal descent, Tunku became Chief Minister, and then
Prime Minister, of an independent Malaysia in 1957. Tunku pursued a policy of
peace by negotiation, amnesty and reconciliation towards the rebels. The
emergency was formally ended in 1960.
36 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

COLD WAR: ‘MAGNATES…WHO FINANCED

HITLER’
By June 1946, less than a year after Labour’s assumption of office, there was
open criticism at the annual conference of Bevin’s handling of external affairs.
There seemed to be a widespread feeling that Bevin was being blinded by
reactionary Foreign Office officials. His failure to stem the growing breach with
the Soviet Union caused the delegates most concern. The world was far more
complex than most of them realized and the developing Cold War was far more
the result of great power rivalries than of ideology. In 1945 the world desperately
needed statesmen of vision. What it got was Stalin, a little-travelled Georgian
dictator whose only foreign language was Russian; Truman, an American
President new to the world stage; and Bevin, a trade union boss already suffering
from a terminal illness which forced him from office in 1950. All three thought
in terms of their respective ‘empires’ and their needs. Each was influenced by his
country’s experience of pre-war appeasement, and the determination not to be
caught off guard a second time.
In the latter stages of the war the Western powers watched resignedly as Stalin
regained most of the outer provinces of the old Tsarist Empire, especially in the
Baltic states and Poland. Pressure on neutral Turkey in March 1945 to cede the
provinces of Kars and Ardahan, taken by Russia in 1878 and retaken by Turkey
in 1918, failed, pushing Turkey into the arms of the United States. Pursuit of old
Tsarist aims in northern Iran, taken under Soviet military occupation, also helped
lead that country into dependence on the United States. Between the end of 1944
and 1947, Britain and the United States fought a weak, diplomatic rearguard
action in Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania. They protested as these ex-enemy
states were reduced, step by step, to the level of Soviet satellites.45 They were
equally helpless when Poland suffered the same fate. Yugoslavia and Albania too
appeared to have allowed themselves to be reduced to the level of Soviet
dependencies. In this latter case, though, appearances proved to be deceptive.
Apart from certain undercover operations in Albania, only in Greece did
Britain, and later America, actively intervene in Eastern Europe. The struggle in
Greece appears as a turning-point in the Cold War. Greece was traditionally within
the British sphere of influence. Since the end of 1944 Britain had been involved
in helping the exiled royalist government of Greece prevent the communist-led,
anti-Axis, resistance movement from taking over the country. On 21 February
1947 Britain informed the United States that it was withdrawing financial aid to
Greece in five weeks’ time. It asked the United States to assume the burden of
supporting Greece. Truman responded to the British call, introducing the Truman
Doctrine’, involving, initially, support for Greece and Turkey, and ultimately
leading to the Marshall Plan and NATO. If the United States had really been
contemplating renewed isolation before February 1947, after that date it became
deeply engaged in European affairs once again.46
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 37

The British withdrawal from Greece was dictated as much by financial as by

other considerations, and finance played a major role in shaping British policy in
Germany. Before the surrender of Germany the Allies had agreed on the division
of the country into four zones of occupation—Soviet (Russian), American,
British and French—and on the division of Berlin into four sectors. Germany
was to be ruled, for the time being, by a four-power Control Council in Berlin.
The Allies were also agreed on the need to eliminate all vestiges of Nazism and
militarism, and on the need to give the German people a democratic future. They
differed to some extent in their views of Germany’s frontiers, in their judgement
of what Germany should pay in reparations and, most importantly, in their
interpretation of the term ‘democracy’. At Potsdam, in July 1945, Britain, the
Soviet Union and the United States agreed further on treating Germany as an
economic whole, that the Germans should have living standards ‘not exceeding
the average…of Europe’ (excluding the Soviet Union and Britain) and that
payment of reparations should leave enough resources to enable the Germans to
subsist without external assistance. The three powers did not bind themselves to
an exact figure on reparations, nor did they reach final agreement on Germany’s
eastern frontier, which they left for a future peace settlement.
In practice, all pursued policies in their respective zones based on their own
economic needs, their experience of the Germans and their own political
traditions. The British left many of the old officials, tainted with Nazism, in their
posts because, it was thought, their professional experience was vital for the
rapid rehabilitation of the administrative machine.47 At first, the British and
Americans, who had co-operated so closely in the war, went their separate
ways.48 Both soon regretted this. Britain ‘gained’ an area which was largely
industrial and needed foodstuffs from elsewhere. These were not forthcoming
and the British people had to tighten their belts just a little bit more to feed their
Germans. Clearly this could not go on for long, and Britain welcomed the
American proposal, made in July 1946, to merge the economies of the
occupation zones. The French and the Russians rejected this. By September 1946
it was clear that the US was taking a much more positive view of how Germany
should be treated than hitherto. Secretary of State James F.Byrnes, in a speech at
Frankfurt, recognized that European recovery would be that much slower if
Germany were ‘turned into a poorhouse’. This mirrored the greater realism
which was entering into American thinking and the growing belief that Germany
would be needed as an American ally against the Soviet Union.
Welcome though the Anglo-US co-operation was from the standpoint of
Britain’s precarious finances, it did carry with it one important penalty. In all
important respects Britain had to defer to the United States on Germany. One key
example of this was the fate of the basic industries in the British zone.

We have to consider the ownership of the German basic industries. These

industries were previously in the hands of magnates who were closely
allied to the German military machine, who financed Hitler, and who, in
38 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

two world wars, were part and parcel of Germany’s aggressive policy. We
have no desire to see those gentlemen… return to a position which they
abused with such tragic results… Our intention is that these industries
should be owned and controlled in future by the public.49

Bevin’s view coincided with that of the German Social Democrats, the left wing
of the Christian Democrats, and the Communists. Even though such socialization
measures were approved by democratically elected regional parliaments and by
referenda, they were blocked by the United States, because of that country’s
opposition to socialism.50
The Soviets in their zone pursued contradictory policies. The excesses of
Soviet troops in the early days of the occupation, and Soviet territorial
ambitions, greatly weakened the appeal of communism in Germany. Soviet
reparations policy had the same effect. Yet, at the same time, the Russians
proclaimed their support for German anti-Nazis, and talked in terms of a united,
democratic Germany deciding its own future.51 On the whole, the Soviet Union’s
need for massive reparations determined most of its policies most of the time.
Thus, it played a decisive part in destroying the communist movement in
Germany and making socialism unpopular in that country.
In addition to the reparations they took from their own zone, the Russians
demanded more from the Western zones, including a say in the running of the
mighty Ruhr industries. This the British and Americans were not prepared to
concede. The conference of the four foreign ministers in Moscow in March 1947
ended in failure.

MARSHALL AID AND NATO

The pro-Soviet Communist Parties of Western Europe implemented a new policy
of militancy, at a time when the economies of their countries were facing
extreme difficulties resulting from a severe winter and a severe shortage of
dollars. They were powerful in France and Italy and at least significant forces in
several other states. It was in these circumstances that the US Secretary of State,
George Marshall, made his offer, in June 1947, that if the countries of Europe
could agree on a combined plan for recovery, the American government would
finance it. Britain, France and the other states of Western Europe accepted
setting up the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). On 2
July 1947 the Soviets turned it down. Many regard that date as of crucial
significance for East-West relations.52 It is doubtful whether the Americans
expected them to accept, but the Soviet rejection was a blunder. Their cause
would have been better served by subjecting the American proposals to closer
scrutiny and perhaps forcing the Americans to reject them.
In September 1947 the Soviets set up the Communist Information Bureau
(Cominform) consisting of the East European Communist parties together with
those of France and Italy. This was probably in part a reaction to growing
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 39

Western co-operation.53 A further conference of the British, US, French and

Soviet Foreign Ministers held in London in November 1947 ended in deadlock.
The French now agreed to their zone being integrated in Bizonia, as the Anglo-US
zones were known. The Soviets stepped up their control of Eastern Europe, the
most dramatic event of which was the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia in
February 1948. Czechoslovakia had been seen as a test case for the ability of
Communist and non-Communist, East and West, to live and work together.
The West’s next move was the signing of the Brussels Pact (17 March 1948).
This united Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg for
defence purposes. It was designed by Bevin as the forerunner of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) at a time when West European morale was
low, and some responsible politicians even thought ‘the Russians would be in
Paris by August, an opinion in which the French Chief of Staff concurred’.54 The
Treaty was meant to convince the reluctant Americans that the nations of
Western Europe were prepared to get together to defend themselves. Under the
Treaty, the Western Union was established which has continued to exist
independently of NATO, although its military organization was merged with
NATO in 1950. Allied moves to carry through their West German currency
reform in West Berlin led to the Russians withdrawing from the Control Council
and blockading the three Western sectors of the city. Cut off from the West by
land, West Berlin was, rather miraculously, supplied by air. Bevin played a
major role in persuading the Americans to attempt this with RAF support. As
part of the Western response to the Berlin crisis, two groups of American B29
bombers, with atomic bombs, were dispatched to Britain in July 1948.
Czechoslovakia, Berlin and other Soviet moves made the setting up of NATO in
April 1949 a virtual certainty.55 Early in May 1949 the Russians called off the
blockade, having achieved nothing. In the same year the two German states were
called into existence.
Britain took a leading part in the creation of a West European defence
community, and in the setting up of the OEEC, yet it hung back from a future in
a united Europe. Attlee was on record, as Leader of the Opposition in 1939, as
saying Europe must federate or perish. Bevin, Bevan and other members of the
government had expressed similar sentiments. However, post-war Europe
appeared less attractive in reality than it had in wartime dreams. The main
European states, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, did not appear to add up to
much before the mid-1950s (Spain much later). And Europe’s apparent demise
enhanced Britain’s status and sense of its own importance. The British Empire,
being transformed into a Commonwealth and with Britain at its head, appeared
poised for a new world-wide role. London was still the centre of the world’s
second international trading system, and Britain had as many men under arms as
the United States.56 In Labour’s ranks, too, there were those who feared that a
united Western Europe would be capitalist, clerical and reactionary, especially as
Christian Democracy gained the ascendancy in Italy, West Germany, Belgium
and even France. Further, British ministers argued that only 25 per cent of
40 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

Britain’s trade was with Europe, the other 75 per cent was extra-European.
Britain helped to found the Council of Europe in May 1949, thus paying lip-
service to a united Europe. But Bevin made sure it was harmless, with
‘splendidly vague’ aims ‘to achieve a greater unity between its members for the
safeguarding and realising the ideals and principles which are their common
heritage, and facilitating their economic and social progress’. Nor did Britain join
the European Coal and Steel Community, the forerunner of the European
Economic Community (EEC), set up on French initiative in 1951. This marked
the beginning of the split between Britain and ‘the Six’ which proved so difficult
to heal.
Another reason for Britain’s sense of superiority during those years was its
application to join the nuclear club. The decision to develop the bomb was taken
in 1946 by the Defence Committee of the Cabinet. Attlee had been influenced by
the Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy chaired by Sir John Anderson, who
had occupied this position under Churchill. Attlee went ahead despite American
refusal to provide Britain with the detailed technical know-how. There appears to
have been little discussion before the decision was taken, and little questioning
of it afterwards. It must be remembered that the US was not yet committed to
European defence and, given Britain’s experience of the wartime nuclear project,
the temptation to develop the bomb must have been strong. Yet, by the time
Britain had tested a nuclear device (1952), its defence was based on the nuclear
umbrella of the United States. Nor did Britain possess an effective delivery
system. Moreover, Britain’s bomb was partly devised to wipe out the numerical
advantage of Soviet land forces at a time when the Soviet Union did not yet have
a nuclear capacity. By 1949, to the surprise of Western experts, the Soviet Union
had successfully tested its first bomb. Undoubtedly, the feeling that having the
bomb was part and parcel of remaining a great power influenced the decision to
go ahead. After all, France did the same. The cost to Britain must have been
enormous at a time when the nation faced continuing economic difficulties,
although it was hoped the atom bomb would reduce defence costs over all.57

KOREA: AS ‘DEMOCRATIC…AS CALIGULA’S

ROME’
With the outbreak of the Korean War, the Cold War looked as if it were turning
into the real thing. Briefly, Japan had controlled the destiny of Korea between
1895 and 1945. Soviet and US troops occupied it in 1945. Both powers set up
regimes to their own liking in North and South Korea respectively. In June 1950
North Korean units crossed the demarcation line into the South in force.
Dismayed by the Communist takeover in China in 1949, the Americans felt they
must act. They committed large military forces to the defence of South Korea
and got the United Nations to condemn the aggression and authorize counter-
action. The war appeared to be almost over as US-UN troops rolled back the
Communists virtually to Manchuria. The UN forces were then taken by surprise
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 41

when Chinese ground forces entered the war on 20 October 1950. After initially
driving the UN forces back, they were held on roughly the original demarcation
line along the 38th Parallel. Armistice negotiations began on 10 July 1951. An
armistice was signed and a cease-fire came into effect on 27 July 1953. The war
had not formally ended in the late 1990s. It cost the loss of 687 British lives, with
2,498 British service personnel being wounded. The United States’ forces lost 33,
629 lives and 105,785 were wounded.58 In addition to the South Koreans, small
numbers of Belgian, Canadian, Dutch, Ethiopian, French, Greek, Filipino, Thai
and Turkish troops also participated as part of the UN force.59
One disquieting aspect of the war were the atrocities committed by Britain’s
ally South Korea. Atrocities by North Korea had been expected, but not by the
‘democratic South’. War correspondent James Cameron of Picture Post regarded
the South as ‘democratic…as Caligula’s Rome’. His reports were censored by
his paper’s owner. The editor, Tom Hopkinson, resigned. Later The Times and
Daily Telegraph had to follow the Daily Worker in publishing news of atrocities.
In one case, Captain Butler Williams of the 29th British Brigade had to threaten
to shoot the local police chief in order to stop a mass execution of civilians at
Sinmak.60
British support for American action in Korea was speedy. Despite this, there
was also anxiety lest General MacArthur, the American Commander-in-Chief,
should extend the conflict to China or America should use the atom bomb on
China, provoking a third world war— Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia had, by
that time, concluded a formal alliance. Attlee flew to Washington in December to
seek assurances from President Truman. It appears that Truman had not
contemplated using the atom bomb.61 He was able to allay Attlee’s fears and
later relieved MacArthur of his command.
The Korean War had important effects on the British economy and the British
political scene. Increased American purchases of Australian wool and Malayan
tin and rubber greatly improved the position of the sterling area, leading to
suspension of further Marshall Aid to Britain from the end of 1950. Later in
1950, Britain and other European states experienced severe balance of payments
difficulties as the cost of the raw materials they had to import increased more
rapidly than the value of their exports. The massive rearmament programme
embarked upon under US pressure62 greatly handicapped British export
industries in competition with those of West Germany, which were not engaged
in arms production. Britain was spending a higher percentage of its national
income on defence than any of its European NATO allies, and as a fraction of
national income its defence expenditure was not very much below the US
figure.63 The government openly admitted that the additional rearmament would
lead to a reduction in the standard of living.
The increase in the period of conscription from 18 months to two years was
also unpopular with many of the government’s own supporters. Differences over
the pace of rearmament brought about a serious split in the government ranks,
which made its downfall more inevitable. On 23 April 1951 it was announced
42 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

that Bevan and Harold Wilson, President of the Board of Trade, had resigned
from the government. The following day, John Freeman, Parliamentary Secretary
to the Minister of Supply, joined them. A number of Bevan’s colleagues claimed
that he resigned because he was disappointed. Hugh Gaitskell had replaced
Cripps as Chancellor on 17 January, Bevan became Minister of Labour at the
same time. On 9 March, Morrison replaced Bevin at the Foreign Office. Bevan
felt he had been unjustly passed over. Be that as it may, the fact is that Bevan,
whilst in no way rejecting the need for adequate armaments, took a different view
of Britain’s ability to cope with the actual scale of rearmament proposed. More
fundamentally, he took a different view of the Communist challenge. He saw it
more as an ideological challenge born of evil social and economic conditions. He
feared ‘the western democracies were in grave danger of undermining their
economic strength’.64 He also felt the Soviet Union was too weak economically
to be contemplating military aggression. The decision to introduce National
Health Service charges to help to pay for rearmament was the last straw for
Bevan rather than merely a pretext for resignation. James Callaghan, then a junior
minister, found him ‘tormented as to whether he was taking the right course’.65
What Labour’s constituency activists thought of Bevan’s action was indicated at
the Labour Party conference in October. Bevan topped the list in the election for
the constituency section of the National Executive Committee (NEC). Emanuel
Shinwell, identified as an anti-Bevanite, lost his seat after 15 years, and was
replaced by Barbara Castle, one of Bevan’s supporters.

IRAN: ‘PROUD AND SUBTLE A PEOPLE’

Before it fell from office the Labour government faced new problems in the
Middle East, especially in Egypt and Iran. As the problem with Egypt came to a
head after the change of government in Britain, it is best left until the next
chapter.
Iran decided unilaterally to cancel its 1933 agreement with the Anglo-Iranian
Oil Company (AIOC) and to nationalize it. Founded in 1909, the company was
British-owned and operated. In 1914 the British government obtained a
controlling interest. Up to 1933 Iran had received 33 per cent of the profits; from
that date it got a better deal, but Britain still took the lion’s share. Moreover,
Britain regarded most of Iran as being in its sphere of influence and treated it
accordingly. Reza Shah, dictator throughout the interwar period, was initially
installed by the British. When he showed signs of independence and wished to
keep his country out of the war, he was forced to abdicate after the Anglo-Soviet
invasion of 1941. His son succeeded him. In their Tehran Declaration of
December 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin recognized Iran’s help in the
war and promised economic aid when it was over.66 It was partly as a result of
not receiving US aid that the demands for nationalization of the AIOC grew. A
second factor was the Labour government’s policy of dividend limitation, which
had the unforeseen effect of reducing the Iranian government’s oil revenue from
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 43

1948 onwards. Another important factor was the genuine sense of outrage among
Iranians that their only asset was in foreign hands. Though the British argued
that they, and not the Iranians, had developed that asset, the Iranians argued that,
after more than 40 years of exploitation, they had more than paid for the
development costs. Just as important were the colonial-style relations which
existed between the Iranians and the British. As Harold Macmillan has
commented, the high AIOC officials ‘did not seem to know how to handle so
proud and subtle a people’ as the Iranians.67 An insider found the British officials
‘confused, hidebound, small-minded and blind’.68 The British Ambassador, Sir
Francis Shepherd, was an ‘imperialist of the Curzon school’.69 Few British
understood that many Iranians were still angry over the invasion, even though
these Iranians were not uncritical of the old Shah. The main weakness of the Iranian
position was not the abrogation of the agreement, but the lack of a coherent,
stable, national democratic movement. The best-organized component among the
anti-British elements was the Moscow-orientated Tudeh Party. This party was
built up with Soviet and British help during the war, at a time when both powers
sought an anti-Nazi party.70 It attracted many intelligent and dedicated sons and
daughters of Iran,71 who sought to redress the fearful injustices which existed in
that country.72 Later, its naive pro-Soviet stance represented a danger not only to
British interests but to Iranian as well. Most Iranians were immune to Soviet
wiles due to the appalling record of the Soviet occupation, 1941–45. Dr
Mossadegh, ‘an honourable but emotional septuagenarian’73 and a right-wing
patriot, who had become Prime Minister, commanded no well-organized
movement of his own. At the official level, Britain ‘equivocated between gestures
of force to protect its Persian oil interests and compliance with United States
“representatives” to find a settlement’.74 The British Chiefs of Staff argued for
military action in July 1951. Lord Fraser, the First Sea Lord, wanted to dispatch
the entire home fleet into the Mediterranean as a preliminary to large-scale
military invasion of Abadan.75 While Morrison favoured action, Attlee, Gaitskell,
Dalton, Philip Noel-Baker and Griffiths urged caution.76 Attlee was ready to
accept the principle of nationalization and that the British would operate the oil
industry on the basis of friendly partnership: ‘we must not alienate genuine
nationalist feeling in Persia by clinging to the old technique of obtaining
concessions and insisting upon exact compliance with their terms’.77 At another
level, the hysteria of the British popular press and the pathetic jingoism of some
MPs78 did nothing to help Anglo-Iranian relations or the British public’s
understanding of the situation. By the time Britain offered a 50–50 share of the
profits and accepted the principle of nationalization—already agreed to by the
Americans in Saudi Arabia—it was too late. Britain resorted to blockade,
effective because Iran had no tanker fleet, independent outlets or navy.
Eventually, Mossadegh was overthrown by an American/British coup in 1953.79
Certainly, in part, Iranian attitudes in the 1990s have their origins in the actions
of the West in the 1950s.
44 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

ELECTION ’51: AFTER ‘EXHAUSTING AND

UNDIGNIFIED PROCESS’
Having been returned with an overall majority of six in 1950, Attlee and his
colleagues were hard pressed to retain control of the Commons. MPs were
brought from hospital beds in ambulances to Westminster to vote. It was ‘an
exhausting and undignified process’, wrote George Wigg. The government, tired
men, nevertheless held out longer than expected, from 6 March 1950 to 5
October 1951. Perhaps from Labour’s point of view Attlee would have done
better to have retired from office, he was already 68 and ill, giving a new leader
the chance to establish himself and then fight an election. On the other hand, it was
a time of crisis in the world and dissension in the party. Perhaps he convinced
himself that his own personal standing was a great asset to his party, and that it
was right to let the country decide as soon as possible for or against the
government.
One last interlude in the Attlee period which deserves a mention was the
Festival of Britain, May to September 1951. By ‘injecting a note of gaiety and
fun at a time of economic crisis and war in Korea, the festival played a vital role
in restoring public morale and in demonstrating British resilience to the rest of the
world’.80 The Festival in part marked the centenary of the Great Exhibition of
1851, but its greater purpose was to ‘demonstrate to the world the recovery of the
United Kingdom from the effects of war in the moral, cultural, spiritual and
material fields’.81 It was about Britain, rather than the British Empire, and
covered the arts, sciences, technology and manufacturing. Although the main
exhibition was centred on the South Bank in London, there were events in various
parts of the country. The Royal Festival Hall remains as a symbol of the hopes of
the Festival and the period.
The election was a relatively quiet one. Labour stood by its record and warned
of the dangers of a third world war. Perhaps it went too far and, like the
Conservatives in 1945, attributed to its opponents extremist tendencies which were
not there, implying that Churchill was not to be trusted with issues of peace and
war.
When the election results were in, the Conservatives found they had not done
as well as expected. They had a majority over Labour of 26 and of 17 over all
parties combined. Labour had a net loss of 20 seats. Most of the Conservative
gains were probably the result of Liberals turning to the Right, there being only
100 Liberal candidates throughout the country. The Conservatives were better
organized and used the postal-vote facilities to greater effect than Labour. Indeed,
it has been suggested that the postal vote reduced Labour from a viable to a
hairsbreadth majority in 1950 and gave the Conservatives their clear majority in
1951.82 The slight drop in turn-out, partly the result of bad weather, would also
have helped the Conservatives. Yet Labour could feel it had scored a moral
victory, for it achieved not only a higher vote than the Conservatives, but the
highest vote ever recorded for any political party in Britain. Only the
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 45

peculiarities of the British electoral system had given the Conservatives a

majority.

DECLINE OF SOCIALISM: ‘SOME FORM OF

GESTAPO’
The election of 1945 finally established the Labour Party as a full-sized
alternative to the Conservatives. However imperfectly, the working class was
represented for the first time at the centre of the political arena. Labour gave
hope to the democratic socialists throughout Europe, socialists who sought
fundamental change by civilized means. What exactly had Labour achieved, and
where had it failed? Abroad it led the way in decolonization in a manner which
compared favourably with the policies of other colonial powers. It failed to
appreciate the opportunities that existed for building a new Europe, though it
must be admitted that Europe did not seem to add up to much at that time. It
committed Britain to defence expenditure far beyond the means of the country,
setting the pattern to be followed by other post-war governments. At home, it
succeeded in shifting the emphasis in the economy from war to peace production
remarkably smoothly. It carried through its domestic reform programme in
fulfilment of its election promises. This programme seemed more radical at the
time than it actually was. For instance, despite the pleas made by Labour
educationalists, Attlee’s government did nothing to restructure the country’s
unfair and divisive education system. Its conception of relations within industry
was also very limited. It took up the ideas of the German trade unions and
introduced employee participation in industry in the British zone of Germany, but
did not attempt to apply this lesson in Britain.
Government is about priorities and power. Politicians in office are harassed
individuals with little time to consider anything other than day-to-day issues.
When it comes to positive change, they respond only to their perception of the
popular mood or to strong, organized opinion both inside and outside Parliament
(as with coal). Attlee and his colleagues were cautious men who went just about
as far as popular consciousness thrust them.
Looking back at the Attlee government period Britain appears remarkably
conservative despite the massive move to the Left in 1945. Britain was
conservative in the sense of order, people ‘knowing their place’, in the sense of
the place of women, official attitudes to capital punishment, homosexuality,
interracial marriages, sex, unmarried mothers, and so on.83 In the cinema (so
important before the age of television), in the theatre and on the ‘wireless’, the
accents were predominantly southern and middle class (the old order); the
working class, the great majority, were still largely figures of fun. Attlee and his
colleagues were restricted by their own ideologies (or lack of them). Attlee, and
many like him in Labour’s ranks, wanted to abolish poverty and give more
people the chance to become ‘middle class’; they were not seeking to abolish the
‘middle class’ and its values. Keynesian economics appeared to give them the
46 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

tools with which to maintain full employment. Redistributive taxation could

‘level-up’ society, making socialism redundant.
The socialists of the period were also undermined by the nightmare of
Stalinism. The reality of Stalinism was so appalling as to lead to doubts about the
socialist ideal as such. As more came out about the Soviet forced labour system,
the regimentation of artists, the bloody terror as practised from 1948 to 1953, it
was easier to believe Churchill’s propaganda of 1945, that all socialist measures
must lead to some form of Gestapo to enforce them. Although they remained
socialists, those towering figures of George Orwell, Bertrand Russell and
J.B.Priestley helped to create an atmosphere in which the stuffiness and
pomposity of Britain, with all its illusions, eccentricities and complacency,
seemed infinitely preferable to great socialist experimentation. The brilliant
Marxist intellectuals like J.D.Bernal (X-ray crystallography), Alan Bush (music),
Maurice Dobb (economics), R.Palme Dutt (ideology), J.B.S.Haldane (biology),
Arnold Kettle (English literature), Ivor Montague (film) and the ‘Red Dean’ of
Canterbury, Dr Hewlett Johnson, were marginalized by their slavish acceptance
of Moscow’s farcical claims.84 The same was true of Communist Leader, Harry
Pollitt, who could rouse audiences with his attacks on conscription, prescription
charges and imperialism, but was less convincing when he defended Eastern
European show trials, denounced the Labour leaders and demonized Tito of
Yugoslavia.85 Raymond Williams, whose Reading and Criticism was published
in 1950, was one of the few who attempted to ‘reject Stalinism and to sustain,
under heavy attack, an indigenous socialism’.86 There was ‘heavy attack’ on
anything socialist in the media. The BBC had a monopoly of the radio, and the
press was heavily right-wing. Socialism was presented as at best romantic
nonsense and at worst evil. Many of the 40,000 or so Communists and their
sympathizers remembered how the press had predicted the defeat of the Soviet
Union in 1941 and had been proved wrong. The press had then heaped praise on
the Soviet Union only to do a somersault again after 1945. To a degree,
something of the same happened in its attitude to Germany. Why should anyone
believe the press in its new campaign of vilification against the Soviet Union, the
left-wingers argued. Nevertheless, public opinion polls showed a growing
concern with what was seen as a loss of liberty.87 All this, too, helps to explain
how the Conservatives were able to regain power in 1951 and to hold on to it.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Martin Duberman, Paul Robeson: A Biography (New York, 1989), 299.

2 John Saville, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour
Government 1945–46 (1993).
3 Martin Gilbert, Second World War (1990), 725.
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 47

4 Denis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present
(1996), 335.
5 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: The Memoirs of Lord Butler (1971), 38.
6 Lynn Zastoupil, ‘Government of India Act (1935)’, in F.M.Leventhal (ed.),
Twentieth-century Britain: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1995), 332–3.
7 Clive Ponting, Churchill (1995), 471.
8 ibid., 740.
9 Roger D.Long, ‘India, Partition of’, in Leventhal, op. cit., 394.
10 General Sir William Jackson, Withdrawal from Empire: A Military View (1986),
42.
11 Ponting, op. cit., 742.
12 The Times, 9 November 1917.
13 Zionists: the followers of Theodor Herzl, who had revived the idea of a Jewish
state as a result of anti-Semitic outbreaks in nineteenth-century Europe. Herzl
(1860–1904) lived in Vienna.
14 In 1922, out of a total population of 752,048, there were only 83,177 Jews; in
1941, out of a total population of 1,585,500, there were 474,102 Jews. Palestine
and Transjordan in the Geographical Handbook Series (BR 514; Naval Intelligence
Division, London, December 1943), 172.
15 Walter Laqueur, The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle
East Conflict (1969), 74.
16 Hansard, vol. 347, col. 1940.
17 Michael J.Cohen, The British White Paper on Palestine, May 1939 Part II: The
Testing of a Policy, 1942–45’, Historical Journal (1976), 727–58.
18 International Department of the Labour Party Box 5 File: Palestine Labour Party
Policy 1944–47, letters from Palestine Arab Party (3 May 1944) and Palestine Arab
Workers’ Society (11 May 1944).
19 Hugh Dalton, The Fateful Years: Memoirs 1931–45 (1957), 425–6.
20 Ritchie Ovendale, ‘Britain and the End of the Palestine Mandate, 1945–48’, in
Richard J.Aldrich and Michael F.Hopkins (eds), Intelligence, Defence and
Diplomacy: British Policy in the Post-war World (1994), 139.
21 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, A7563, 17–24 November 1945.
22 Keesing’s, op. cit., A8019, 20–27 July 1946.
23 Maxime Rodinson, Israel and the Arabs (1968), 37.
24 Walter Millis (ed.), The Forrestal Diaries (New York, 1951). James Forrestal, US
Secretary of Defense, commented on 1 December 1947 that Robert A.Lovett, Under-
Secretary of State, had said, ‘he had never in his life been subject to as much
pressure as he had been’ at that time by Zionists. He mentions pressure on Liberia
(p. 346). See also Margaret Truman, Harry S.Truman (New York, 1973); the
President was ‘deeply disturbed by the pressure which some Zionist leaders put on
him to browbeat South American countries and other nations where we might have
influence into supporting partition’ (p. 384), and (p. 386) Zionist contributions to
Democrats’ campaign fund.
25 Hansard, vol. 441, cols 2340–2.
26 ibid., vol. 441, col. 2354.
27 ibid., vol. 426, col. 1056.
28 Keesing’s op. cit., A8782, 16–23 August 1947.
29 Hansard, vol. 448, cols 1332–3.
48 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

30 The deep emotions felt, not recorded in votes, are shown in the case of John
Strachey, who was prepared to use his position in the government to advise the Jewish
Agency on whether they should sabotage British installations: ‘Strachey gave his
approval to Crossman. The Haganah went ahead and blew up all the bridges over
the Jordan. No one was killed but the British Army in Palestine was cut off from its
lines of supply with Jordan.’ For this remarkable incident see Hugh Thomas, John
Strachey (1973), 228–9. As the Cabinet papers indicate, in the Cabinet, Bevan,
Dalton and Creech Jones put the Zionist case. See CAB 128/11CM(47)4; CAB 129/
16/CP(47)32.
31 See the comments of Lord Wigg, George Wigg (1972), 144. See also the same line
in R.H.S.Crossman, A Nation Reborn (1960), 67–8. For Dalton’s view see Hugh
Dalton, High Tide and After: Memoirs 1945–1960 (1962), 147.
32 ibid., 146.
33 Quoted in Partha Sartha Sarathi Gupta, Imperialism and the British Labour
Movement 1914–1964 (1975), 282.
34 ibid., 303.
35 ibid., 319.
36 Thomas, op. cit., 254.
37 Sir Andrew Cohen, British Policy in Changing Africa (1959), 43.
38 Colin Leys and Cranford Pratt (eds), A New Deal for Central Africa (1960), 29–30;
Martyn Dyer, The Unsolved Problem of Southern Africa (1968), 105.
39 J.M.Gullick, Malaya (1963), 245.
40 ibid., 83.
41 Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991 (1993).
42 Noel Barber, The War of the Running Dogs (New York, 1972), 34, believes there
were local issues provoking the revolt and (pp. 156–7) puts the number of security
forces in action in 1952 at 40,000 regular troops (25,000 from Britain), 60,000 full-
time police and 200,000 home guard. For a critical look at British policy see Victor
Purcell, Malaya: Communist or Free? (1954).
43 According to Thomas (op. cit., 264), this was the essence of the policy advocated
by Strachey, then Secretary of State for War, to Attlee in December 1950. For
another view of Labour policy see James Griffiths (Colonial Secretary, 1950– 51),
Pages from Memory (1969).
44 Gullick, op. cit., 102.
45 Elizabeth Barker, Britain in a Divided Europe 1945–1970 (1971), 44–9.
46 Barker (ibid., 68) and others assume Bevin was having to plot to engage US
interest in Greece and other areas of Europe, but US influence in Greece was
increasing, though somewhat slowly. R.L.Frazier gives us a thorough investigation
of the British decision to withdraw in Anglo-American Relations with Greece: The
Coming of the Cold War (1991).
47 Willy Brandt, My Road to Berlin (1960), 154, quotes the example of the police in
the British zone. The British liked the old police because they knew their job and
obeyed orders promptly. Interestingly, Brandt (p. 152) claims Schumacher, the
Social Democratic leader, was ‘too socialist’ for the Americans, ‘too aggressive’ for
the British and ‘too German’ for the French. Ivone Kirkpatrick, The Inner Circle
(1959), 232, says he was never to establish relations ‘of confidence and friendship’
with Schumacher, though he did with some other Social Democrats. Kirkpatrick
was High Commissioner in Germany, 1950–53.
 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR 49

48 Harold Zink, The United States in Germany 1944–1955 (Princeton, NJ, 1957), 112.
49 B.Ruhm von Oppen, Documents on Germany under Occupation 1945–54 (1955),
184.
50 John Gimbel, The American Occupation of Germany (Stanford, CT, 1968), 117–
20, 228–34.
51 The conflicting Soviet attitudes are brought out in Henry Krisch, German Politics
under Soviet Occupation (New York, 1974).
52 Robin Edmonds, Setting the Mould: The United States and Britain 1945–1950
(New York, 1986), 168.
53 Barker, op. cit., 77.
54 Kirkpatrick, op. cit., 205.
55 C.J.Bartlett, The Long Retreat: A Short History of British Defence Policy 1945–
1979 (1972), 47.
56 Edmonds, op. cit., 166.
57 For a discussion of this see A.J.R.Groom, British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons
(1974).
58 Trevor Royle, War Report (Edinburgh, 1987), 177. See also David Rees, Korea:
The Limited War (1964), 460–1.
59 Edwin P.Hoyt, The Bloody Road to Panmunjom (New York, 1991), 262.
60 Royle, op. cit., 190–3.
61 See John W.Spanier, The Truman-Mac Arthur Controversy and the Korean War
(New York, 1965).
62 Attlee quoted by Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, 1945–1960 (1973), 310, said in
1959: ‘Pressure on rearmament was very heavy from the United States. I think they
were inclined to press too hard.’ James Callaghan, then a junior navy minister, says,
‘the Cabinet, under American pressure…took a decision to rearm’. See James
Callaghan, Time and Chance (1987), 107.
63 David Rees, Korea: The Limited War (1964), 233. Coral Bell, Negotiation from
Strength (1962), 56–9, has a good discussion of the economic effects.
64 John Campbell, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism (1987), 236.
65 Callaghan, op. cit., 110.
66 L.V.Thomas and R.N.Frye, The United States and Turkey and Iran (Cambridge,
MA, 1952), Appendix III.
67 Harold Macmillan, Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955 (1969), 343.
68 Kenneth O.Morgan, Labour in Power 1945–1951 (Oxford, 1994), 466.
69 ibid., 468.
70 I.G.Edmonds, The Shah of Iran: The Man and his Land (New York, 1976), 99.
71 Sepher Zabith, The Communist Movement in Iran (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA,
1966), gives a detailed history of the party.
72 George Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran (New York, 1949),
supplementary Chapter 12, 2.
73 George E.Kirk, A Short History of the Middle East (1961), 274.
74 ibid., 274. For a study of Iran’s foreign policy see R.K.Ramazani, Iran’s Foreign
Policy, 1941–1973 (Charlottesville, VA, 1975).
75 Morgan, op. cit., 469.
76 ibid., 469.
77 Wm.Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East, 1945–1951 (Oxford,
1985), 669.
50 COLONIAL RETREAT AND COLD WAR

78 See, for example, Ray Gunter, 21 June 1951, Hansard, vol. 489, cols 755–9.
79 Edmonds, op. cit., 135–8; Crozier, op. cit., 19; Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of
Power (1979), 66.
80 F.M.Leventhal, ‘Festival of Britain (1951)’, in Leventhal, op. cit., 286–7.
81 Quoted in Robert Hewison, Culture and Consensus: England, Art and Politics
since 1940 (1995), 58.
82 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 63–4.
83 I have written more about British society from 1945 to 1955 in my Britain since
1939: Progress and Decline (1995).
84 Henry Pelling, The British Communist Party: A Historical Profile (1958) is a good
general outline. For an inside view see, Willie Thompson, The Good Old Cause:
British Communism 1920–1991 (1992). For the intellectuals see Neal Wood,
Communism and British Intellectuals (1969). For the Communist Party in this
period see David Childs, ‘The Cold War and the “British Road”, 1946–53’,
Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 23 (1988), 551–71. For Bernal see Maurice
Goldsmith, Sage: A Life of J.D.Bernal (1980). For Haldane see Ronald W. Clarke,
J.B.S.: The Life and Work of J.B.S.Haldane (1968).
85 For Pollitt see Kevin Morgan, Harry Pollitt (Manchester, 1993). The most
disreputable Communist attack on Tito was made by James Klugmann, From
Trotsky to Tito (1951). It was made worse because Klugmann knew the wartime
Yugoslav partisans.
86 As quoted in Hewison, op. cit., 56.
87 Roger Eatwell, The 1945–1951 Labour Governments (1979), 154.
 4
CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

‘OUR FUTURE…LITTLE BETTER THAN A GERMAN

SATELLITE’
On 5 October 1952 the 16,000-ton Japanese freighter Heiyo Maru sailed from
Tilbury docks, London, on its way to Kobe. On board, four passengers—an
Australian, a British diplomat and his Danish wife, and a British woman joining
her husband who was a serving officer in the US Army— shared the boat with a
cargo of concrete and Volkswagen cars.1 The trip, which took 49 days, was
significant in that the Heiyo Maru was the first Japanese merchant vessel on the
high seas after Japan’s defeat in 1945. On 23 April Japan had regained its
sovereignty. At that time Britain followed the US with the world’s second-
largest merchant fleet. Japan produced virtually no cars and the German
Volkswagen was regarded by the British as a joke! Unobserved by most people
in Europe, Japan was already taking the first steps towards world economic
superpower status. The Korean War proved a salvation for the Japanese
economy.’2 The Americans found they needed vast supplies for their armies in
Korea. Japan supplied $3 billion-worth of them. This was a sum nearly double
Britain’s gold and dollar reserves in 1952. Former members of the Japanese navy
manned 46 ships in Korean waters during the conflict.3 Sony, the Japanese
company, developed the first pocket-sized transistor radio in 1952. The transistor
had been invented by English-American physicist William Bradford Shockley
and others in 1948.
The world was changing in 1952. On 1 November the US exploded its first
hydrogen bomb. The Soviet Union had become a nuclear power in 1949 and was
also attempting to make an ‘H-bomb.’ It succeeded in 1953. West Germany, the
Federal Republic of Germany, had become an independent state. Like Japan, it
had agreed not to develop nuclear weapons. In Korea the war continued. The
Anglo-Iranian oil dispute continued. In October diplomatic relations between the
UK and Iran were severed. In Egypt, Britain’s ally, the corrupt King Farouk, had
been overthrown by military reformers. In the US, General Dwight D.Eisenhower
defeated his Democrat opponent, Adlai Stevenson, to be elected President. He
was inaugurated in January 1953 as the 34th President and the first Republican
52 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

since 1933. The CBS television network used a UNIVAC computer, the first to
be commercially available, to predict the results. Its first, correct, prediction of a
landslide for Eisenhower was not believed and it was quickly reprogrammed and
so gave an incorrect forecast. In Moscow Stalin’s paranoia increased, as he
believed that the leading Soviet doctors were plotting to kill the Soviet
leadership. This was the world of Churchill’s final ministry. In this changing
world Britain experienced difficulty in finding its place, clarifying its position
and renewing its identity. Dalton recorded in his diary on 26 June 1952 that Tony
Crosland, MP, had just returned from lecturing in West Germany. His view was
that West Germany was going ahead very fast. ‘Our future, as he sees it, is little
better than a German satellite!’
In reality Britain was in decline, but various factors masked that decline.
Britain was feeling good; tea rationing ended and identity cards, a wartime
measure, were abolished in 1952. In the following year sweet rationing was
abolished. Britain became a nuclear power on 3 October 1952, when its first atom
bomb was exploded in the Monte Bello Islands just off North West Australia. It
still had its ticket to sit at the ‘top table’.4 In the same year the world’s first pure
jet airliner, the British Comet, went into service with the British Overseas
Airways Corporation (BOAC). In May 1953 Edmund Hillary and Sherpa
Tenzing Norgay became the first men successfully to climb Mount Everest.
Though Hillary was a New Zealander, it was counted as a British success; such
was the feeling for the Commonwealth in those days. At Jodrell Bank, the 76.2 m
(250 ft) radio ‘dish’ telescope was completed in 1955. This achievement led to
the widespread illusion that Britain was in the forefront of the space race. The ‘New
Elizabethan Age’, as the media called it, was inaugurated after the death of
George VI in 1952 and the accession of his daughter Queen Elizabeth II. Her
coronation on 2 June 1953, at a magnificent, feudal ceremony, was watched by
25 million people on television. There was honour too for Winston Churchill; in
1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He followed such literary
giants as T.S.Eliot (1948), William Faulkner (1949), Bertrand Russell (1950) and
François Mauriac (1952). He also got a garter from the Queen! Roger Bannister
thrilled the nation by becoming the first man to run a mile under four minutes. It
seemed to some, even many, there was still a lot of greatness left in Great Britain.

CHURCHILL’S CABINET: ‘REMINISCENT OF

BYGONE TIMES’
At 77, Churchill was not expected to remain long at the helm. This dismal
election result, remarkable though it was considering the defeat of 1945, gave
him no mandate for great changes. In an attempt to broaden his support, the former
Liberal Churchill offered a coalition to his old party.5 This was turned down. The
old chieftain argued that the Conservative Party’s return to office was due to his
charisma and this gave him the right to exercise his own preferences in making
Cabinet appointments. It was a 16-member Cabinet of old men, mainly veterans
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 53

of the wartime government. To a degree, Churchill was curbed by the need to

present a broad, moderate image to the electorate. R.A.Butler, who was regarded
as a moderate, was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. Eden got the Foreign
Office, a reward for his ability in foreign affairs, popularity and, not least, his
pre-war anti-appeasement role. Lord Woolton’s appointment as Lord President
was both a tribute to his services in renovating the party machine and an
acknowledgement of his presumed appeal to non-committed middle-class voters.
Macmillan, like Woolton and Eden, had served Churchill during the war, and
was a moderate on home affairs. He became Minister of Housing and Local
Government. The appointment of the Marquess of Salisbury as Lord Privy Seal
was a sop to the party traditionalists. Walter Monckton was sent to the highly
sensitive Ministry of Labour because of his reputation as a conciliator. Sir David
Maxwell-Fyfe was invited to turn his tough legal mind to the problems of the
Home Office. As during the war, Churchill acted as Minister of Defence. There
was only one woman in the government, Florence Horsbrugh, and she served
only briefly in the Cabinet from September 1953 to October 1954.
Already deaf, Churchill’s age was telling against him and he was less and less
effective as Prime Minister. According to Woolton, he ran his Cabinet in a way
which was ‘often reminiscent of bygone times’.6 He drank too much, wandered
too much and was too erratic. He was a poor chairman of his Cabinet and one
who ignored vast areas of government activity.7 Within three months of taking
office he had another mild stroke, which for a while left him unable to speak
coherently.8
In this situation it must be asked who was running Britain during this period?
When Churchill was officially ill Butler held the fort. The only trouble was that
the government’s main priority in its first year was the economy, and Butler had
no experience in this area. Butler relied heavily on the Permanent Secretary to
the Treasury, Sir Edward Bridges, who was not himself an economic specialist.
He in turn relied on his subordinates, Sir Edwin (later Lord) Plowden and
William (later Lord) Armstrong, to brief the Chancellor.9 In 1952 disagreements
about economic policy led to Budget Day being postponed.10 Britain’s difficult
economic situation, resulting from the Korean War and rearmament, led Butler to
call for massive cuts, but he faced stiff opposition from within the government
about where they should fall. Education and the NHS faced cuts, and so did the
foreign travel allowance for tourists. Even the meat ration was cut to less than its
wartime value. Once peace broke out, in the second half of 1952, the economic
situation changed. The terms of trade moved dramatically in favour of Britain
and the other industrial nations.

If Labour had hung on a little longer, they might have been the
beneficiaries of the rising tide of affluence which would have been to some
extent a feature of the 1950s, whichever party had been in office. The years
from 1951 to 1955 can be seen in retrospect as a lull in our turbulent post-
54 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

war history. Churchill’s presence at the top masked the decline of Britain’s
world power status.11

The ‘affluent society’ was just around the corner and the Conservatives were
going to get the credit for it!

THE BEVANITES: ‘COMPLACENT ASSUMPTIONS’

The Labour Party had been at war with itself since its defeat in 1951. Attlee, 68
in 1951, did the party no good by remaining Leader. It is not clear whether he did
so because of his rivalry with Morrison or Churchill, hoping for one final taste of
office before his final farewell. The rivalries among those hoping to replace
Attlee—Bevan, Gaitskell and Morrison— increased. Personal rivalries fuelled
ideological disagreements and vice versa. Bevan certainly wanted a more
‘traditional’ socialist policy based on public ownership at home and a quasi-
pacifist, anti-imperialist, policy abroad, than did Morrison or Gaitskell. He did
not believe that Keynesian economics could solve the problem of unemployment
under capitalism. This was clear from his In Place of Fear (1952). In personal
terms, he probably resented the prominence of the London element in the Labour
leadership— Attlee, Bevin, Cripps, Dalton, Morrison—and later Gaitskell and
George Brown. It is interesting that his wife, Jenny Lee, was Scots. Ironically,
his most devoted followers, Richard Crossman, Tom Driberg and Michael Foot,
were from privileged backgrounds. Given his background, it is understandable
that he felt that a great, predominantly working-class movement should be led by
someone like himself, rather than by someone who had no direct experience of
the physical hardship and psychological humiliation of the interwar working
class. Though popular with the Left of the party, ‘Nye’ could not have united
Labour or gained enough floating voters to put Labour back in government.
In 1952 Labour’s individual membership reached a record high, 1,014,524, as
did trade union affiliated membership, 5,071,935; this seemed to favour Bevan.
His supporters won six of the seven constituency party seats on the NEC at the
annual conference in Morecambe (1952). In a speech at Stalybridge, Gaitskell
alleged some Communist infiltration of the delegates.12 This is likely, though it
should not be exaggerated.
The Parliamentary Labour Party had decided by the small margin of 113 to
104 to support the principle of German rearmament.13 This Bevan opposed. In
April 1954 he resigned from the ‘shadow cabinet’ ostensibly over Labour’s Indo-
China policy, which was close to the government’s.14 His intention was to lead
the campaign against German rearmament at Labour’s annual conference.
Tempers flared when it endorsed German rearmament by a very small margin
with allegations that the small Wood-workers’ union delegates had voted against
the policy of their union. Bevan also lost to Gaitskell in the contest for the
treasurership of the party.
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 55

Tony (Anthony Wedgwood) Benn, MP, wrote in his diary (20 November
1952), ‘Particularly obnoxious do I find the complacent assumptions by the
Bevanites that the ark of the socialist covenant resides with them.’ As well as
intrigues on the Labour Right, including some organized Catholic activity, this was
also a reason for the Bevanite failure.

EDEN: ‘HIGH ORDER OF INTELLIGENCE’

Churchill played ‘cat and mouse’ with his colleagues regarding his retirement.
Eden, the ‘crown prince’, became more and more tense at the delay.15 Churchill
finally went on 6 April 1955. As expected, Eden replaced him.
Educated at Eton and Oxford, Eden (1897–1978) was the personification of
the classic English gentleman. After service in the trenches in the Great War he
entered the Commons in 1923. He came to prominence as Foreign Secretary,
1935–38. He resigned from Chamberlain’s government because he disagreed
with appeasement of Nazi Germany. There was disappointment in many quarters
that he did not follow up his resignation with a popular crusade against the
government. He ‘lacked the courage to continue the fight’.16 On the outbreak of
war in 1939 he agreed to rejoin Chamberlain’s government as Dominions’
Secretary. In 1940 the new Prime Minister, Churchill, put him in charge of the
army, but elevated him to Foreign Secretary later in the year. He occupied this
post until Churchill’s defeat in 1945. He made a good impression on Cordell
Hull, Roosevelt’s wartime Secretary of State, ‘as an agreeable personality and a
high order of intelligence’,17 but some of his Cabinet colleagues were less
impressed. Reginald Bevins, Macmillan’s Postmaster-General, thought he should
not have been Prime Minister. He found he ‘chopped and changed his mind’ and
‘was no judge of men’.18 As Prime Minister he constantly interfered in the work
of his colleagues.19 Eden was a sick man when he took over and continued to be
troubled by serious health problems.

1955: ‘FIRST OF THE ELECTIONEERING BUDGETS’

On 15 April, nine days after becoming Prime Minister, Eden decided on an
election six weeks later, on 26 May. Fear that the economic situation was
deteriorating influenced this decision.20 Lancashire cotton workers, then an
important group in the North West, traditionally went on holiday in May, ‘which
would mean that a considerable number of traditional Labour voters would be
unable to vote’.21 Labour was handicapped by party splits and by the moderation
of the Conservatives since 1951. There was no unemployment, incomes were
rising ahead of inflation and Butler presented ‘the first of the electioneering
Budgets which from then on bedevilled the British economy with “stop-go”’.22
The international climate was mild. During the campaign the Austrian Peace
Treaty was signed, with the Americans, Soviets, British and French agreeing to
withdraw from a neutral Austria. Macmillan, Eden’s Foreign Secretary, was seen
56 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

with Molotov, his Soviet counterpart, talking peace. The message was that the
Conservatives could deliver on peace, though Macmillan had played no part in
the deal. One fact which could have given Labour useful ammunition, a
Monopolies Commission report on rubber tyres, was suppressed by the Board of
Trade after strong representations from Dunlop, strong supporters of the
Conservatives. The report concluded that rubber tyre manufacturers operated a
massive price ring against the public interest.23
For the first time, this ‘least memorable of all the post-war contests’24 gave the
leaders the chance to appear on television. Eden, Macmillan, Butler and Iain
Macleod (Minister of Health) appeared to answer editors’ questions. Attlee did a
cosy fireside chat with his wife and one journalist. The honours were about even.25
Most people still did not have television.
The election on 26 May gave the Conservatives 345 seats (321 in 1951),
Labour 277 (295), Liberals 6 (6) and others 2 (3). The turnout this time was
down from 82.5 per cent in 1951 to 76.8 per cent. The Conservatives actually lost
over 400,000 votes compared with 1951, but Labour had lost over 1.5 million!
The Liberal vote declined very slightly. The small Communist vote increased
from 21,640 to 33,144 (0.1 per cent). The Conservative gains were mainly in the
South, but they also picked up seats in the North, the Midlands and one in
Scotland.
Gaitskell, soon to be Labour’s Leader, believed strikes were one of the major
contributions to Labour’s defeat.26 These included an inter-union dispute in the
docks, which was in full swing during the election. Benn saw prosperity as the
key.27

GAITSKELL’S ‘GREAT TALENT AND FIRM

LOYALTY’
After the election Labour held its inquest into the results. Investigating for the
NEC, Wilson found Labour’s organization had been defective. The number of
full-time agents in the constituencies had fallen from 296 in 1951 to 227 in
1955.28 There was pressure on the old leaders to go. Attlee succumbed and
retired in December 1955 to become Earl Attlee. Morrison (67) was not prepared
to retire and fought hard to succeed Attlee. As expected, Gaitskell won the
leadership contest by 157 votes to 70 for Bevan and 40 for Morrison. With 111
votes Bevan was also defeated in the deputy leadership race by fellow Welshman
and fellow ex-miner, James Griffiths (141 votes).
Hugh Gaitskell (1906–63) was only 49 at the time of his election. He had
served as Attlee’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and, like ‘Clem’, was from an
upper-middle-class background; his father was in the Indian civil service. After
education at Winchester and New College, Oxford, he spent some months as
Rockefeller Research Fellow in Vienna. There he experienced the brief, bloody,
civil war in 1934. Before lecturing in economics at University College, London,
he worked as an adult education tutor in Nottingham. During the war Gaitskell
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 57

worked for Dalton at the Ministry of Economic Warfare, becoming MP for South
Leeds in 1945. Gaitskell’s public image was that of a sincere man who could
readily manipulate facts and figures but who was less clever in human
communication. In private life, his friend, John Betjeman, the poet, remembered
the young Gaitskell as ‘a gentle and kind person who had no objection to a drop
of drink and was very easy company and full of jokes’.29 According to Dalton,
he stood, ‘high out of the ruck of rivals. During his ministerial apprenticeship he
had displayed, both in public and in inner council, great talent and firm
loyalty.’30 In 1953 Benn found Gaitskell, ‘intellectually arrogant, obstinate and
patronising. I respect—but cannot quite admire—him.’31

ITV: ‘FOR THE SAKE OF OUR CHILDREN…RESIST

IT’
The Conservatives had nationalized the British Broadcasting Company in 1926,
transforming it into the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). It had a
monopoly of radio broadcasting and, after television was introduced in 1936, of
that too. It was financed by an annual television licence fee which was regulated
by Parliament. After being interrupted during the war, television was restarted on
the same basis in 1946. The BBC had a reputation for providing reliable news
services, a wide variety of programmes, bringing culture to the masses, and for
being rather stuffy. The Report of the Broadcasting Committee 1949 rejected
advertising and any breach of the BBC’s monopoly. A Conservative member of
the Committee, Selwyn Lloyd, favoured the introduction of the American system.
Churchill never gave a television interview and seemed not to be interested in the
issue.32 But he did think the BBC was Communist infiltrated.33 It appears that
Lord Woolton sold the idea of commercial television to the Cabinet. Outside
Parliament, Norman Collins, a former BBC executive, was the key figure
promoting the idea. He was backed financially by Sir Robert (later Lord)
Renwick, an old-Etonian stockbroker, who was a large contributor to the
Conservative Party. C.O.Stanley, Chairman of Pye Radio, was also important.
These, and a small number of determined and powerful business interests, fought
the combined opposition of the churches, the universities, the professional
educational bodies, most of the press and cinema industries, the Labour Party
and the TUC, and a host of other bodies.34 The Archbishop of York’s view that
‘For the sake of our children, we should resist it’ was ignored. Any number of
Conservative MPs favoured breaking the monopoly. Some shared Churchill’s
view of the BBC; some had financial interests involved; and some opposed
public ownership on ideological grounds. After a long debate, the Television Act,
1954 was passed establishing commercial television under an Independent
Television Authority. The new service commenced in September 1955. Under
the Act, Britain was divided into regions, with regional companies licensed to
broadcast commercially supported programming within a single region. These
companies each had a monopoly in their individual regions. The coronation and
58 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

the election of 1955 showed the potential of television. In March 1955 4.5
million television licences had been issued; by March 1958 the number had grown
to 8 million.35
The growth of television and the competition between the BBC and
Independent Television (ITV) both reflected changes in society and helped to
produce them. The BBC was forced to become more ‘popular’ in much of its
output, with much more emphasis on light entertainment. It was hard pressed to
compete with ‘soap operas’ like Coronation Street and Crossroads. Controversy
about television continued, and the Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting was
appointed to review the position. Its report, published in June 1962, showed that
the BBC put out more news and current affairs, serious drama, sport and
travelogues. ITV was slightly ahead on light entertainment and religion, but
devoted much more of its output to crime, westerns and comedy. There was
concern about violence, sex and depravity on television. The Committee reported
that there was a belief that ‘the way television has portrayed human behaviour
and treated moral issues…had…done something…to worsen the moral climate
of the country’. It also attacked television for being ‘trivial’. Many massappeal
programmes were ‘vapid and puerile, their content often derivative, repetitious
and lacking in real substance’.36 In all this the BBC fared better than ITV. The
Committee also felt the regions and Scotland were neglected. Although the
government rejected many of Pilkington’s recommendations, it did allow only
the BBC to go ahead with a second TV channel: BBC2 began transmitting in
April 1964.
Pilkington was not entirely fair to ITV, in that Granada Television, one of the
main companies, had led the way in providing controversial current affairs
programmes of a high standard. It also pioneered the coverage of election news.
In 1958 it gave the first extensive coverage to a by-election, in Rochdale.37 In
1959 it broke new ground with a series of ‘election marathons’, in which the
candidates from 100 seats in ‘Granadaland’, the North West, debated the issues.
The competition between BBC and ITV broadened and raised the level of
debate and discussion about all national and international problems. This is not
necessarily an argument in favour of commercial television, but it is certainly an
argument against any organization having a monopoly in this vital sector of mass
communications. It is convenient to mention here that Edward Heath’s
Conservative government ended the BBC’s monopoly of radio in June 1972 with
the passing of the Sound Broadcasting Act. This provided for the setting up of
commercial radio stations in October 1973. One innovation they forced on the
BBC was the phone-in, which started in 1974 and has since been widely used in
elections.

CINEMA AND THE PRESS

The cinema, which had always suffered from American competition, underwent
a revival during the war as fewer American films were available and the
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 59

government showed a greater interest in it. This continued under the Attlee
governments. Harold Wilson, as President of the Board of Trade, established the
National Film Finance Corporation (NFFC) to help finance British films. These
were seen as potential foreign currency earners and propaganda for ‘British
values’ abroad. At that time Britain could use its position in Germany and
Austria as well as the Empire to secure the screening of British films. Adaptation
of the classics, such as David Lean’s filming of Dickens’s Great Expectations
(1946) and Oliver Twist (1947) were successful. War films, costume dramas and
the Ealing Studios comedies (e.g. The Lavender Hill Mob, 1951) were also
popular.38 The film industry did little to enhance the status of women in these
years.39 Two films which will be always recalled when discussing the period are
the restraint romance, Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945), and the Cold War
drama, The Third Man (1949), from the Graham Greene story. In the 1950s,
more American competition, the decline of German and Empire markets and,
above all, the onslaught from television, led to a crisis in the cinema. Thousands
of cinemas were transformed into bingo halls as cinema audiences declined. Most
of the cinemas belonged to two chains, Rank and ABC. They determined what
the public saw. Rank were also important as film producers. As in the 1930s,
American financing and involvement became more important once again. The
unanswered question was why could the British not make (cheap) films of the
quality of the French nouvelle vague or like the Italians, Swedes or, in the 1970s,
the West Germans.
Attempts were made in the late 1950s and early 1960s to create a British ‘new
wave’. This was based on what had proved successful on television and on the
adaptation of successful novels about provincial, working-class life. It was also
based on money from the US and the NFFC. The decline of the cinema seemed
to make it easier for independent producers like Tony Richardson and Bryan
Forbes to break in. Films like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) and
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962), taken from Alan Sillitoe’s
books, and Look Back in Anger (1959) and The Entertainer (1960), based on
John Osborne’s plays, won critical acclaim, but did little to halt the drift from the
cinema.40
Both the cinema and newspapers were hit by the fall in advertising revenue
due to television. According to the Royal (Shawcross) Commission on the Press
(1961–62) the advertising revenue going to the press fell from 55 per cent in
1952 to 47.5 per cent in 1960. It then rose over the 1960s, and according to the
next (McGregor) Commission on the Press (1974– 77), it reached 70.1 per cent
in 1975. By contrast, television’s share of advertising rose from 3.4 per cent in
1956 to 17.5 per cent in 1960, and 24.4 per cent in 1975. The percentage of
revenue going to the cinema went one way all the time—down. The Shawcross
Commission expressed concern about the continued growth of concentration in
the press. In 1948 the top three newspaper groups were responsible for 43 per
cent of total daily and Sunday newspaper circulation. By 1961 the top three
controlled 65 per cent of circulation. With costs rising sharply, the weaker papers
60 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

went to the wall. The Liberal News Chronicle was closed in 1960. Later the
Conservative Daily Sketch and the Labour Daily Herald died after years of
decline. The Sun, owned by the Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch, replaced it.
Shawcross was also concerned about newspaper groups owning substantial shares
in television, like the Mirror group, Lord Beaverbrook and Roy (later Lord)
Thomson, the two Canadian newspaper wizards. Increasingly, British papers
were foreign-owned. McGregor found the trends noted in 1961 had continued.
These were concentration of ownership, economic difficulties due in part to the
massive price increase in newsprint and overmanning, continued dependence on
advertising and a sharp division between the ‘quality’ papers and the ‘popular’
press. The two commissions offered no solutions to these problems. By 1977 left-
wing opinion was even more poorly represented than in 1961. Down to the
1990s, the Conservatives maintained their press advantage during election
campaigns.

EUROPE: ‘MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING’

In 1956 industrial production in Japan reached its pre-war level.41 In the same
year West Germany overtook British car production.42 Britain’s key industry was
already beginning to suffer from a ‘sclerosis of technique’.43 The Cabinet gave
itself little time to think about the implications of these facts. It was more
concerned about immigration and hanging, at home, and, abroad, by the
Common Market and the Suez Canal.
Post-war immigration to Britain from its colonies started to grow in the early
1950s as news of British prosperity spread and the country faced a shortage of
labour. Under Churchill, the Cabinet started to discuss the implications and
debates continued under Eden without resolving the matter. Under British law
any Empire citizen, or citizen of Southern Ireland, could come to Britain and
reside there. UK citizens did not enjoy reciprocal privileges. The fear was the
rising trend of West Indian immigration. Again and again the matter was raised,
but the divided Cabinet could not agree on any action. Most immigrants were in
fact from Ireland—an estimated 750,000 since the war.44
The government fought hard to defeat a private member’s bill introduced by
the Labour MP Sydney Silverman to abolish capital punishment. Doubts had
grown in the Commons about hanging as a result of the execution, in 1955, of
Ruth Ellis and of Timothy Evans in 1950. In the case of Ellis it was felt that a ‘crime
of passion’ committed by a woman did not merit the death penalty. In Evans’s
case there were serious doubts about his guilt. These doubts were later confirmed
and he was pardoned posthumously in 1966. Silverman secured a Commons
majority of 19 in favour of abolition, with some Conservatives, led by Peter Kirk,
voting with most of the opposition. The unrepresentative and unelected Lords
threw out the Bill two weeks later after the government had orchestrated the
action. It could have killed the Bill earlier and saved much parliamentary time.
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 61

Although this controversy generated much anger, it was struck off the agenda by
far more dramatic events elsewhere.
The European Economic Community of six states—West Germany, France,
Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg—the so-called Common
Market—came into being on 1 January 1958. Questioned in 1957 about the
‘Common Market’ nearly 50 per cent of those asked were ‘don’t knows’. But
those who did come off the fence were in favour of Britain joining.45 By then it
was almost too late. Attlee, Churchill and Eden had all rejected membership as
the negotiations progressed. In 1956 Selwyn Lloyd, the Foreign Secretary,
replied to a memo on the subject from his junior minister, Anthony Nutting, with
a note saying ‘Much ado about nothing’.46 The feeling was very much that
Britain had its special role to play in the Commonwealth and in association with
the US and therefore should not get involved in a common market. Britain did,
however, attempt to slow down the negotiations by feigning continuing interest.

SUEZ 1956: ‘THAT DOES AMOUNT TO A LIE’

Though officially independent, Egypt had been dominated by Britain since 1882,
and British troops, mainly conscripts, were stationed there in ‘flyblown, sand-
strewn…forlorn and disagreeable’ camps.47 The climate was vile and the
population hostile. There was constant tension between the 70,000 British and
the Egyptians. Between 1950 and 1956, 54 British servicemen were killed.48 In
one retaliatory incident, on 25 January 1952, the British killed 40 Egyptian
auxiliaries in a battle in Ismailia.49 In July 1952 the Egyptian Free Officers
movement overthrew King Farouk, and then, in February 1954, its own leader,
General Neguib. The new man was Colonel Gamal Nasser. It was not known at
the time that Nasser had been sponsored by the CIA.50 He was seen as a
modernizer who could unite the Arab peoples and prevent the Soviet influence
spreading in the area. Under the Anglo-Egyptian Agreement of 1954, the British
bowed to US pressure to evacuate, within two years, the Suez Canal Zone.51 The
last British troops left in March 1956.
Britain, with the blessing of US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, set up
the Baghdad Pact in 1955 comprising Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey and Britain. Its
aim was to keep the Soviets at bay. Nasser refused to join the Pact, rightly
feeling that it would undermine his influence with the Arab masses. Eden at first
supported Nasser and met him in Cairo just before taking over from Churchill as
Prime Minister.52
The other major problem was Nasser’s relations with Israel. A precarious
peace had existed since the 1949 Arab-Israeli cease-fire. Moshe Sharett, Israeli
Prime Minister between December 1953 and February 1955, had established
contacts with the Egyptians, but his replacement was the hawkish David Ben
Gurion. France supplied the Israelis with the modern weapons, punishing Egypt
for its assistance to the Algerian rebels seeking freedom from the French. With
his forces in a poor state Nasser sought military aid. Neither the Americans nor
62 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

the British were prepared to supply heavy weapons to the Egyptian armed forces.
Nasser joined the Bandung bloc of neutral states led by Nehru’s India and Tito’s
Yugoslavia and sought military aid from the Soviet bloc. In September 1955, a
barter deal of arms-for-cotton was announced with Czechoslovakia. To keep
their influence, the Americans, together with Britain and the World Bank,
promised aid to Nasser to build the Aswan Dam. This would massively increase
Egypt’s electricity supply and greatly increase irrigation. Eden and the Americans
were also busy designing a package, code-named, ‘Alpha’, to bring Egypt and
Israel together.53 Dulles fell out with Nasser after he recognized Communist
China in May 1956. The Americans withdrew the promise of economic aid in
July. In any case, the Senate Appropriations Committee was jibbing at voting the
loan; an alliance of Southern Democrats, who feared increased Egyptian cotton
exports, the anti-Communist Chinese lobby and the highly influential pro-
Israelis, was organized to block the loan in July 1956. According to Anthony
Nutting, then junior Foreign Office Minister, Britain had decided against the loan
in March after Glubb Pasha, the British officer commanding the Jordanian armed
forces, had been replaced. It was in these circumstances that the British-owned
Suez Canal Company was nationalized by Egypt on 26 July 1956.
Britain was the biggest single user of the Canal. Two-thirds of Western
Europe’s oil was imported via the Canal.54 It could not be denied that its
efficient operation was a matter of serious concern to the UK and some other
states. Of course, Egypt needed the fees collected and had made it plain the Canal
would remain open to all as in the past (except for Israel). Britain, France and the
US reacted by freezing Egyptian assets in their countries. Britain called up 20,
000 reservists and dispatched reinforcements to the eastern Mediterranean. At
home, Labour Leader Gaitskell, on 2 August, compared Nasser to Mussolini and
Hitler and even admitted there might be circumstances in which Britain would be
compelled to use force. He did, however, link it to reference to the UN.55 Eden was
looking to use force.
The British and French ‘cooked up with Israel a secret plan for a joint
simultaneous invasion’.56 The Americans attempted to dissuade them. On 13
September Dulles publicly rejected the use of force. Meeting secretly in Paris in
October, British, French and Israeli representatives agreed the Sèvres Protocol.
Under it, Israel attacked Egyptian positions near the Canal on 29 October. Britain
and France then gave both sides an ultimatum to withdraw, knowing Egypt could
not comply. Anglo-French air attacks commenced on 31 October and on 5
November their invasion began. On 7 November Britain and France were forced
to agree to a UN demand for a cease-fire.
The Americans had not been informed of the plan and President Eisenhower
mobilized diplomatic forces at the UN to condemn the action. Eisenhower
declared, ‘The US was not consulted in any phase of these actions, which can
scarcely be reconciled with the principles and purposes of the United Nations.’57
Dulles, within days of being operated on for cancer, felt ‘just sick about the
bombings’.58 Britain and France were forced to use their vetoes at the UN
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 63

Security Council. They could not do this when a US motion in the General
Assembly was adopted on 2 November. This called for an immediate cease-fire
and withdrawal of the attacking forces. The Soviet Union threatened Britain with
nuclear attack. Many Commonwealth countries distanced themselves from the
British position. Worse still, there was a run on sterling, mainly in the American
market.59 This caused some in the Cabinet to think again. The Chancellor of the
Exchequer, Macmillan, ‘switched almost overnight from being the foremost
protagonist of intervention to being the leading influence for disengagement —as
well he might, for the loss of 279 million dollars in that November represented
about 15 per cent of our total gold and dollar reserves’.60 The US Treasury
opposed British requests to withdraw capital from the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) until it agreed a cease-fire.61 Britain had little choice. The
interruption in British oil supplies and the blocking of the Canal by Egyptian-
scuttled ships added to Britain’s rapidly worsening economic situation.
Moreover, the campaign divided Britain. Most of the Labour and Liberal parties
opposed the move. In the Commons, MPs demanded to know whether Eden had
known of the Israeli attack. He vehemently denied any collusion. Speaking in
1996, Sir Donald Logan, then Assistant Private Secretary to Selwyn Lloyd, then
Foreign Secretary, who had attended the Sèvres talks, admitted he had known of
the Anglo-French-Israeli collusion. When he heard Eden in the Commons he
noted, ‘I thought to myself, “That does amount to a lie”’.62 He did nothing to
expose it. Anthony Nutting, MP, junior Foreign Office Minister, resigned from
the government on the issue, as did another junior, Sir Edward Boyle, MP. Eden
also lost his press secretary William Clark.
Field Marshal Lord Carver, then a colonel and deputy Commander-in-Chief
East Africa, believed Operation Musketeer showed ‘complete blindness to the
likely after-effects’.63 The cost to Britain was immense. There was not only the
actual cost of the operation, but the cost from lost production and exports. The
Suez Canal was only re-opened in March 1957. Nasser was strengthened by the
attack. Had the Israelis acted alone they would possibly have toppled him. To a
degree, the Anglo-French-Israeli attack helped to divert attention from the Soviet
invasion of Hungary which occurred at the same time. British prestige and
influence were weakened world-wide.
The best that can be said about Eden, as Lord Carrington found him in
October 1956, was that he ‘was nervous and his manner neurotic. It was easy to
see he was a sick man.’64 He was haunted by memories of the 1930s’
appeasement policy towards Hitler. There is some evidence from opinion polls
that Eden’s popularity in the country rose during the crisis. A majority of those
asked opposed military action, but once it was taken 49 per cent favoured it early
in November. On 19 November it was announced that Eden was ill again and when
he retired 56 per cent of those asked expressed themselves satisfied with him.65
He resigned on 9 January 1957. At the final Cabinet meeting he broke down in
tears and cried, ‘You are all deserting me, deserting me.’66
64 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Information from one of the passengers, Mrs Joan Frazier.

2 In the words of Aneurin Be van.
3 Roger C.Thompson, The Pacific Basin since 1945 (1994), 60.
4 ibid., 60.
5 Lord Butler, The Conservatives: A History from their Origins to 1965 (1977), 427.
6 Quoted in ibid., 428.
7 Clive Ponting, Churchill (1995), 756–7.
8 ibid., 756.
9 Anthony Howard, RAB: The Life of R.A.Butler (1987), 182.
10 ibid., 186.
11 Robert Blake, The Conservatives from Peel to Churchill (1970), 269–70.
12 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1990), 152, called the estimate ‘ridiculous’. He
felt the speech cast doubt on whether Gaitskell should be leader. Philip M.
Williams, Hugh Gaitskell: A Political Biography (1979), 308, conceded the speech
was ‘badly worded and the Communist passage a mistake’.
13 Henry Pelling, A Short History of the Labour Party (1961), 111.
14 John Campbell, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism (1987), 288.
15 Richard Lamb, The Failure of the Eden Government (1987), 3.
16 James Margach, The Abuse of Power (1978), 102.
17 Cordell Hull, The Memoirs of Cor dell Hull, vol. II (1948), 1474.
18 Reginald Bevins, The Greasy Pole (1965), 37.
19 Lamb, op. cit., 13–14.
20 ibid., 4.
21 ibid., 5.
22 ibid., 8.
23 ibid., 12.
24 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 14.
25 Lamb, op. cit., 11.
26 ibid., 25.
27 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (introduced by Ruth Winstone)
(1995), 37.
28 Pelling, op. cit., 114.
29 John Betjeman, ‘School Days and After’, in W.T.Rodgers (ed.), Hugh Gaitskell
(1964), 17. Healey (op. cit., 154) was amazed by Gaitskell’s dancing!
30 Hugh Dalton, High Tide and After (1962), 352.
31 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 35.
32 John Whale, The Politics of the Media (1977), 22.
33 Ponting, op. cit., 759.
34 H.H.Wilson, Pressure Group (1961), gives a good account of the campaign for
commercial television. One of the key figures in commercial television tells his
story in Lew Grade, Still Dancing: My Story (1991).
35 Whale, op. cit., 33.
36 Sir Harry Pilkington, Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960 (HMSO),
June 1962, Cmnd 1753, 31, 33. Most of the report was written by Professor
 CHURCHILL AND EDEN, 1951–57 65

Richard Hoggart, well known for his book The Uses of Literacy (Harmonds-worth,
1959).
37 Jeremy Tunstall, The Media in Britain (1983), 9.
38 Robert Murphy, Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939–49 (1992),
contains some very useful material and comments.
39 Murphy, op. cit., 101–9.
40 Alexander Walker, Hollywood, England: The British Film Industry in the Sixties
(1986), discusses these films.
41 William Horsley and Roger Buckley, Nippon New Superpower: Japan since 1945
(1990), 53.
42 Roy Church, The Rise and Decline of the British Motor Industry (1994), 44.
43 Michael Dintenfass, The Decline of Industrial Britain 1870–1980 (1992), 25.
44 Lamb, op. cit., 20.
45 Robert J.Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen through
the Gallup Data (1989), 51.
46 Lamb, op. cit., 91.
47 Trevor Royle, The Best Years of Their Lives: The National Service Experience
1945–1963 (1988), 179.
48 ibid., 181.
49 ibid., 182.
50 Brian Crozier, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991 (1993), 25.
51 General Sir William Jackson, Withdrawal from Empire: A Military View (1986),
146.
52 Lamb, op. cit., 159–60.
53 ibid., 161.
54 Robert Blake, The Decline of Power 1915–1964 (1985), 366.
55 Leon D.Epstein, British Politics in the Suez Crisis (1964), 66.
56 John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (1993), 92.
57 Russell Braddon, Suez: Splitting of a Nation (1973), 94.
58 Braddon, op. cit., 96.
59 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: Memoirs of Lord Butler (1971), 194.
60 ibid., 194.
61 Hugh Thomas, The Suez Affair (1966), 174.
62 The Times, 17 October 1996.
63 Michael Carver, Out of Step: The Memoirs of Field Marshal Lord Carver (1989),
272.
64 Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington (1988),
119.
65 Wybrow, op. cit., 48.
66 Margach, op. cit., 113–14.
 5
MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT
SOCIETY, 1957–64

MACMILLAN: ‘MORE COUSINS AND LESS

OPPOSITION’
When Eden fell in January 1957, Butler (55) looked a likely candidate to be
premier. He had held the fort when Eden was absent with as much efficiency as
anyone, and he was well qualified in other respects. He had served under five
Prime Ministers, having held office 1932–45 and from 1951 onwards. As
Minister of Education he was credited with the Education Act, 1944 and more
recently he had served as Chancellor (1951–55), and as Lord Privy Seal and
Leader of the House. Within the Conservative Party he was too statesmanlike to
arouse the activists. The widely used term ‘Butskellism’, used to draw attention
to the similarities between his economic policies and those of Gaitskell, did him
no good with the Right of Centre in his own party, nor did his doubts about
Suez. With two Suez hardliners, Salisbury and Kilmuir, organizing the
consultations, before Salisbury and Churchill advised the Queen on Eden’s
successor, Butler’s fate was sealed.
The new Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan (1894–1986), did not have as
much experience as his rival. In the pre-war period he had an honourable record
of dissent over the government’s failure to deal with unemployment and over
appeasement. He first gained office under Churchill during the war, serving as
Resident in North Africa. He was successful as Minister of Housing and Local
Government (1951–54), then at Defence (1954–55). After a few months at the
Foreign Office, he served at the Exchequer (1955–57). Educated at Eton and
Balliol, he joined his father’s publishing business. In the First World War he
served as a captain in the Grenadier Guards, was wounded three times and ended
the war ‘badly wounded’.1 His military experience became very important for
him and he developed a ‘certain contempt’ for those who had not served in the
forces.2 This contempt was to influence his judgement of colleagues and
opponents. As MP for Stockton-on-Tees between the wars, he had been shocked
by the poverty of his working-class constituents and turned to the Left on
economic and social issues. It is believed that, had the war not intervened, he
would have joined Labour.3 Macmillan had another life in the interwar period. In
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 67

1920 he married into the influential Cavendish family and soon was related by
marriage to 16 MPs.4 ‘Perhaps most important, the Cavendish connection
increased his fascination with the life of the great country houses—a life which
cut across his own austere family background, and his intellectual discipline. He
loved the aristocratic style of their politics.’5 Whether the long-standing
relationship between his wife, Lady Dorothy, and Robert Boothby, MP
influenced his political life is impossible to say.
Macmillan was one of those Conservatives who worked to remove
Chamberlain from leadership in 1939, and one of those who voted against him at
the end of the decisive debate in 1940. His reward came days later when the new
Prime Minister, Churchill, appointed him parliamentary secretary to the Ministry
of Supply under Herbert Morrison. In June 1942 he was moved to the Colonial
Office with the higher rank of Undersecretary of State and in November
Churchill asked him to go to North Africa as Minister Resident. This involved
the difficult task of working in co-operation with the Americans and the French.
He had the advantage with the Americans that his mother was American and
with the French that he spoke their language. ‘He could show his diplomatic
skills, Anglo-American relations were crucial and very difficult.’6 He impressed
many of those he met at this time. Lady Diana Duff Cooper, who had met many
men of power, saw in him a future Prime Minister.7 After a number of other moves
in the Mediterranean theatre Macmillan ended his first period of office as
Secretary for Air, with a seat in the Cabinet, in Churchill’s caretaker government
of six weeks’ duration. Defeated at the election he was returned at the Bromley
by-election in November 1945.
Macmillan first earned the approval of his parliamentary colleagues in the dark
days of opposition. As a member of the shadow cabinet he was the party’s expert
on industrial policy. He specialized in studied scorn of Labour’s proposals, even
though, as in the case of coal nationalization, this sometimes involved him in
condemning policies he had advocated before the war. His ‘Edwardian’
appearance became fixed at this time .
As Minister of Housing, Macmillan talked about a crusade. Yet his success
was based on plans inherited from Dalton for a smaller ‘People’s House’.8 His
brief period at Defence coincided with the announcement of Britain’s intention to
build the hydrogen bomb. At the Foreign Office he was largely responsible for
the ill-fated Baghdad Pact which helped to push Egypt towards Russia.9 Though
invited, he did not go to the Messina conference in 1955, which led to the setting
up of the Common Market.10 As Chancellor, he will be remembered, if at all, for
his introduction of Premium Bonds. The Suez affair tipped the balance decisively
in his favour. Remarkably, considering he was Chancellor, he was strongly for
resolute action against Nasser. He did not appear to consider the possible
financial implications. Remarkably, too, as one who had worked so closely with
Eisenhower, he was obviously wrong in his estimate of American reactions to
British intervention. He did, however, have the good sense to advise Eden to
68 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

accept a cease-fire when he saw the gold and dollar reserves rapidly
disappearing.

MACMILLAN: ‘CAPABLE OF BEING RUTHLESS’

Macmillan realized he needed Butler in the Cabinet if further schisms were to be
avoided, and he was fortunate that Butler, who wanted the Foreign Office, agreed
to take over the Home Office. Selwyn Lloyd was kept on as Foreign Secretary to
appease the Suez Group and as an act of defiance to the world. Kilmuir was
reappointed Lord Chancellor, and Peter Thorneycroft, another Suez hardliner,
became Chancellor of the Exchequer. Alan Lennox-Boyd stayed on at the
Colonial Office. Duncan Sandys, a son-in-law of Churchill, was appointed
Minister of Defence with increased powers. It was not surprising that, in a
Cabinet led by Macmillan, the ‘Suez Inner Cabinet’, those responsible for the
planning of the operation, should be well represented. What is surprising,
considering the Conservative Party’s attempts to present itself as a broad
people’s party, was the extent to which it was still a highly exclusive body. Of
the 16 members of the Cabinet in January 1957, six had been to Eton and only
two had not attended Headmasters’ Conference (public) schools. Eden had kept
his Cabinet an all-male affair and, at first, Macmillan followed his example.
Admittedly, Macmillan’s choice was limited. There were only 10 female Tory
MPs in the Commons. Labour, even in defeat, had 14 women MPs. One other
feature of Macmillan’s 1957 government was that the new generation of Con-
servatives—Heath, Maudling, Powell, Profumo and Soames among them— were
starting their rise to prominence. Sir Edward Boyle, who had been with
Macmillan at the Treasury, was persuaded to return. He had opposed Suez, but
Macmillan ‘had a very high regard for his talents as well as for his character’.11
Boyle served in Education under Lord Hailsham who, like his junior, was an old
Etonian. Hailsham was promoted to the Cabinet in June 1957.
There was another astonishing feature of Macmillan’s Cabinets. As
Christopher Hollis, himself then a Conservative MP, wrote, in 1961:

What is even more interesting is the lavishness with which Mr Macmillan

had filled his offices with relations by marriage. John Bull on January 4,
1958, calculated that of the eighty-five members of his government, thirty-
five were related to him by marriage, including seven of the nineteen
members of his Cabinet… There has been nothing like…since the days of
the eighteenth century… What is the reason for this extraordinary reversion
—particularly at the hands of a man who is…more attuned to ‘the wind of
change’ than to traditional policies? Doubtless it simply is that nepotism is
one of the strongest of human emotions…Mr Macmillan has more cousins
and less opposition than any Prime Minister in our history.12
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 69

How did Macmillan run his Cabinet? Dr Charles Hill paid tribute to Macmillan’s
chairmanship of the Cabinet, which he dominated by sheer superiority of mind
and judgement. But he also commented that Macmillan annoyed his ministers
because, ‘now and again the Cabinet was consulted at too late a stage in the
evolution of some important line of policy’.13 John Wyndham (later Lord
Egremont), who was ‘rich, high-born and [belonged] far more to the eighteenth
century than to the age of the common man’, worked for Macmillan as unpaid
private secretary. He found his master

always polite, courteous and outwardly calm, and he was very quick in
getting through his work…because of his seniority both in years and
experience, and because despite that gentleness of manner, he was capable
of being ruthless—as were his small staff—managed to interfere time and
again with Ministries over the heads of various Ministers. Sometimes this
riled other Ministers.14

Macmillan’s public image was moulded by (Sir) Harold Evans, his press
spokesman. As the veteran lobby correspondent James Margach has commented:

Macmillan’s public panache—the more remarkable since he was shy to the

point of sickness before big occasions—is testimony to the value of highly
professional public relations behind the scenes. In this crucial sector of
power Macmillan avoided the errors committed by so many other Prime
Ministers… Evans…proved the most outstanding No. 10 spokesman in my
long experience.15

CYPRUS: ‘NO QUESTION OF ANY CHANGE’

Macmillan’s first priority was to rebuild the confidence of his colleagues, of the
party at Westminster and in the country at large. Secondly, he had to reassure the
world that Britain was not finished, but was still able to play a considerable role
in world affairs. Remarkably, he was able to do both. When he took over, the
Conservatives appeared to be heading for certain defeat. Yet two years later they
were returned with an increased majority.
Macmillan was not at first certain he could achieve these objects, and within
weeks of taking over the first crack appeared in his Cabinet. Lord Salisbury
resigned on 28 March. The issue was Cyprus. Officially it had been ‘leased’ from
Turkey in 1879 and annexed in 1914. It was seen as a barrier against Russian
influence in the Mediterranean. After 1945 the great majority of its people,
Greek by language and culture, sought an end to the colonial status and union
with Greece. Violence erupted in 1955 after a junior minister at the Colonial
Office, Henry Hopkinson, had said on 28 July 1954 that ‘there can be no
question of any change of sovereignty in Cyprus’. In 1955 Eden had ordered the
arrest of Archbishop Makarios, who was the spiritual leader of the Greek
70 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

Cypriots, and his deportation to the Seychelles in 1956. The violence escalated
and the incoming Prime Minister realized that the only possible course was
renewed talks with Makarios. To Salisbury and some other Conservatives this
appeared to be another retreat in the face of violence. Macmillan put forward a
plan which looked like a partition scheme, which was unacceptable to the Greek
Cypriots. Hundreds were to die in Cyprus before the Zurich Agreement, worked
out by Greece, Turkey and the Cypriots, was concluded in 1959. Under this
Cyprus became independent within the Commonwealth in 1960. Special
safeguards were included to placate the Turkish minority. Britain was able to
retain certain bases there. The Americans had thrown their weight behind the
ending of the British colonial regime, fearing a conflict between Greece and
Turkey, both members of NATO.16
Apart from the blow of Salisbury’s resignation Macmillan’s position started to
improve. Much of the debris of Suez had already been cleared up by Butler,
acting for Eden, before January 1957. The Canal itself was cleared by 9 April
and opened to shipping. Soon oil supplies to Britain improved so much that petrol
rationing, introduced in December, had ended by May 1957. In the same month
Britain felt strong enough to ignore protests from Japan and appeals from the
Pope and Nehru, and went ahead with exploding its first H-bomb in the Pacific
near Christmas Island. Bevan too had made a last-minute appeal against the
British H-bomb.17 For the ‘get tough’ section of Macmillan’s own party, and
many of the electorate, the test, and the others which followed, signified
Britain’s continuing importance. On the other hand, they were worried by the
note of ‘softness’, ‘liberalism’, or ‘realism’, depending on one’s point of view,
which was soon an established theme of Macmillan’s ministry. Some regretted
the announcement on 4 April that there would be no further call-ups for military
service after 1960. In addition to the possible implications of this move for
Britain’s ability to hold its colonies together, some felt national service had a
value as a means of disciplining youth. In March 1957 Ghana gained its
independence and Dr Kwame Nkrumah, a man heartily detested by the Right in
Britain, became its President. At the end of August the Federation of Malaya
became independent. In Britain, the Right could take no comfort from ‘Rab’
Butler at the Home Office. Yet the Homicide Act, 1957, which further restricted
capital punishment to certain specified types of murder, such as killing a police
constable or prison officer on duty, was not the work of Butler. He had inherited
it from his predecessor.18 In seeking to modernize the penal system he was to fall
foul of the ‘hangers and floggers’ in his own party in later years, thus weakening
his chances of succeeding Macmillan.
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 71

ECONOMY: ‘LIKE BICYCLING ALONG A

TIGHTROPE’
Macmillan understood that the electorate was more concerned about economic
policy than colonial policy, but economic management was a dilemma. As he
put it,

to maintain the British economy at the right level, between inflation and
deflation, balancing correctly between too much and too little growth, was
a delicate exercise… It was not a subject to be solved by mathematical
formulae, or exact calculation. It was like bicycling along a tightrope.19

It is doubtful whether there has been a Prime Minister since the war who has not
thought like that, despite the confident words they have uttered, from time to
time, about Britain’s economic prospects. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to
suggest, as Macmillan seemed to do, that it was impossible to identify some of
the sources of Britain’s economic problems during the post-war period, and
during his period of office. What experts have differed on is the weighting they
attach to particular factors. All agree that Britain was bound to decline relatively
as a world economic power. As other states developed, Britain’s share of world
trade would inevitably decline. In particular, as pre-war competitors recovered
from the ravages of war, this was clearly going to happen.20

Table 5.1 Share in world trade (per cent), by country, 1938–62

1938 1950 1951 1959 1962
UK 22 25 22 17 15
USA 20 27 26 21 20
West Germany 23* 7 10 19 20
Japan 7 3 4 7 7
Note: * refers to whole of Germany. The figures are taken from the Board of Trade
Journal

What became controversial was the extent of Britain’s decline. Why should
West Germany, Italy, Japan, and certain other countries perform consistently
better than Britain in the 1950s? One answer was that they were starting from
such low bases, compared with Britain, that they were likely to find it easier to
increase their production in goods and services, at least for a number of years,
than the more ‘mature’ economies.21 This did not apply to countries such as
Sweden and Denmark, which achieved greater increases in their per capita gross
national product during the period 1951–62 than did Britain.22 The movement of
relatively cheap labour from agriculture to industry was another factor in some
countries—Japan, Italy, France, and later Spain—which made it easier to
increase production compared with highly urbanized Britain. Germany was
72 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

helped by 3 million refugees from the East. This factor should neither be
forgotten nor exaggerated. Andrew Shonfield, in a much-praised study, laid bare
some of the key causes of Britain’s economic weaknesses. One was too much
investment abroad and too little at home. ‘History’, he wrote in 1958,

once again is the greatest impediment to clear thinking on the subject of

British investment overseas. The words themselves have a subtly pleasing
and adventurous sound. One way or another it has gone pretty deep into
folk myth that British greatness and wealth have depended on pouring out
our treasure abroad.23

Shonfield found that in most cases, oil being one of the exceptions, it was better
to invest in undertakings at home rather than abroad. However, the 1957 Budget
encouraged investment abroad at the expense of home investment.24 A second
source of weakness, according to Shonfield and some other observers, was
defence expenditure, especially overseas. Aside from the United States, Britain
consistently spent more on defence than its NATO allies.25 With regard to this,
Shonfield urged,

an obvious course for a British government seeking a rapid way of

strengthening the country’s balance of payments would be to review the
whole of this military spending abroad, the subsidies to foreign governments
as well as the cost of actual British garrisons, with a determination to make
a drastic cut.26

He had doubts about Hong Kong, Gibraltar, Malta and the high cost of British
forces in Germany. His point seemed to be that Britain would have earned more
abroad than Germany, had it not been for its overseas defence expenditure.27
The maintenance of the pound as a reserve currency was another factor
holding back British industry. As Samuel Brittan put it:

We are often told that growth has had to be halted ‘to protect the pound
sterling’… Yet in the ten years from 1953 to 1963, British prices rose
faster than those of every other major European country except France; and
our gold and foreign exchange reserves were, at less than £1,000m., hardly
any higher at the end of this period than at the beginning… Britain now
has to maintain the sterling area on a reserve less than half of Germany’s
and a good deal smaller than that of France. Yet neither country maintains
an international currency, and France has a much smaller foreign trade than
Britain. Britain has thus done just as badly in the ‘sound finance’ league of
conservative bankers as in the production league of modern-minded
economists. We have too often sacrificed rapid growth for the sake of a
strong pound and as a result of all our pains frequently ended up with
neither.28
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 73

‘NONSENSE…THAT OUR TRADE UNIONS…ARE

IRRESPONSIBLE’
The trade unions and industrial management were also often criticized for the
poor record of the British economy. Strikes got a great deal of space in the media.
The situation was seen as far worse than it actually was. Gradually, a kind of
hysteria built up, which, as with the balance of payments, made matters worse.
British trade unions certainly had their problems; there were too many of them,
with well over 180 unions affiliated to the TUC in the Macmillan era. In some
cases, several operated in one industry, leading to inter-union rivalry and
demarcation disputes. This contrasted with West Germany’s 16 industrial unions
affiliated to the DGB. But whereas Britain’s unions had grown up over a long
period, Germany’s trade union structure had been imposed by Hitler. The
democratic trade unions decided it was convenient to retain structure after 1945.
Britain’s trade unionists were criticized for their apathy which led, in some
cases, to unrepresentative minorities taking control, a problem common to all
voluntary bodies. Usually, the leadership of unions is more moderate than many
of the local activists who do most of the unpaid, yet necessary, work. On this
point, a Conservative publication of the day commented,

about 90 per cent of Britain’s strikes are ‘unofficial’, in so far as they are
not supported by the executive of a trade union. This may well be evidence
of poor communications within some unions, or lack of authority from the
top, but it makes nonsense of any implication that our trade unions, as such,
are irresponsible or unduly militant.29

As mentioned in Chapter 2, the only serious case of Communist abuse of power

in a British trade union was in the Electrical Trades Union. In that union the
Communists used ‘fraudulent and unlawful devices’ to keep power. This
situation was brought to light by Woodrow Wyatt, then a Labour MP, in
collaboration with two leading members of the union, Les Cannon and Frank
Chapple. Wyatt published the accusations in the New Statesman and they were
broadcast on BBC’s Panorama. The union was eventually expelled from the
TUC and the Labour Party, but it was six years between the allegations being
made in 1956 and the removal of the offenders.30 The activities of these
Communists was a blow to the whole trade union movement. External
supervision of union elections and secret ballots on strike action would have
helped to assuage public fears. Unfortunately, these measures were not always in
place. On the other hand, the idea that the unions were largely responsible for
Britain’s economic decline must be resisted. The Conservatives themselves
pointed out in 1964 that in the past 10 years, Britain had lost fewer days through
strikes than any other major industrial country in the free world except Western
Germany. And in the 15 years after the Second World War, we lost only one-
74 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

ninth of the working days which were lost through industrial disputes in the 15
years after the First World War.31

Table 5.2 Average number of days lost per 1,000 employees in mining, manufacturing,
construction and transport, 1951–6232
Country Days
USA 1,185
Italy 780
Canada 649
Japan 579
Belgium 501
Australia 462
France 391
UK 272
West Germany 72
Sweden 53

Most of the unrest in the 1950s occurred in four industries—shipbuilding, the

docks, mining and motor vehicle manufacture—which only employed about 7
per cent of the working population. They were industries with special problems.
Certainly, in the case of the docks and motor manufacturing, unrest could unduly
upset the export trade. Another point which needs to be made in relation to strikes
and the economy is that there is not necessarily any relationship between growth
and strikes. In West Germany there was little labour unrest but much growth.
Italy, Japan and Canada experienced great increases in economic development
and also industrial relations which were much worse than Britain’s. Some other
countries came in between on both counts. It is also difficult to prove that radical
leadership of unions produces more labour unrest. American trade unions were
free of Communists, yet they were much more strike-prone than Communist-led
French unions. Even in West Germany, the biggest union, IG Metall, was headed
in the 1950s by Otto Brenner, a left-wing socialist. If British trade unions were
only marginally responsible for the nation’s economic problems in the 1950s,
what about British management?
Increasingly in the 1950s, a feeling developed that British industry was failing
to attract enough young people of high calibre. It was also believed that
managers were badly trained compared with their rivals abroad, and that there
was too little upward mobility from the shop floor. On the shop floor itself there
was not enough technical training, a fact recognized in a White Paper, Technical
Education, published in 1956. It proposed expansion of technical training
opportunities at all levels, including a doubling of the number of workers given
‘day-release’ by their employers. Higher up the ladder, a committee set up by the
Ministry of Labour to investigate the selection and training of supervisors in
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 75

industry found, in 1962, that ‘the provision of systematic training for supervisors
is still relatively limited… Moreover, some of the training given is inadequate,
superficial and sporadic.’33 Higher up still, in the boardroom, an Institute of
Directors’ study early in 1969 revealed that only 18 per cent of their sample of
managing directors held a university degree. Most of those who did had been to
Cambridge. The majority of managing directors surveyed had been to public
school. They were mainly from

what might be called the upper and upper-middle class of business owners,
executives, and professionals. Seven out of ten managing directors had
fathers in this group, while one out of ten had fathers in the last three
categories of skilled and unskilled workers and farmers. Overall we can
say that potential success in British industry is quite closely linked to
parental occupation and family status.34

The American management expert Dr David Granick called Britain ‘the home of
the amateur’. He stressed that professionalism was a serious charge against an
individual in British industry.35 Apparently, British managing directors did not
think there was any special experience which was useful to a future managing
director, though marketing was favoured by some. Neither foreign experience,
nor legal or technological training, were considered essentials.36 Much of this
contrasted with top management in the United States, Japan and West Germany.

‘MOST OF OUR PEOPLE HAVE NEVER HAD IT SO

GOOD’
What is remarkable about the second half of the 1950s, given the discussion
above, is that this period came to be regarded as idyllic, the era of the affluent
society, a society in which, because of unprecedented prosperity and full
employment, Britain was changing fundamentally and for the better.
Unemployment had disappeared during the war, had remained minimal under
Labour, and stayed that way for the remainder of the 1950s. That in itself was a
dramatic change for many of the working class. Better still was the fact that
earnings had risen faster than prices. Between October 1951 and October 1953,
wage rates rose by about 72 per cent and retail prices by nearly 45 per cent. The
increase in earnings had been even greater. On average, earnings of men in industry
had risen by 95 per cent since 1951.37 Further, there had been a reduction in the
official working week. The new degree of affluence was measured in the
acquisition of consumer durables: according to the Observer (2 January 1966),
by 1965, 88 per cent of households in Britain had television, 39 per cent were
equipped with refrigerators, and 56 per cent with washing machines. Yet this
was not so amazing as it appeared at the time. In atom-bombed Japan, by 1964,
90 per cent of homes had TV and over 50 per cent had refrigerators and washing
machines.38 In 1951 there had been 2.25 million cars on the roads; in 1964 the
76 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

figure had increased to over 8 million. In Britain, this great rise in the ownership
of these, and other, consumer goods was the result of the extension of hire
purchase and the lowering of purchase tax, as well as the rise in earnings. In
1951 there had been 100 per cent purchase tax on such items as electric fires,
cosmetics and cars. In 1963, the rate of tax on these goods was down to 25 per
cent. Refrigerators, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, and radio and TV sets
had all been taxed at a rate of 66.33 per cent under Labour. Under Macmillan it
was down to 25 per cent. Pots and pans, which had not been subject to tax under
Labour, were taxed by Eden. Under Macmillan there was still a 10 per cent tax
on these items.39 Home ownership just about doubled under the Conservatives.
Britain was being transformed into a nation of home-owners: over 40 per cent of
the population owned their own homes. If there were still too many slum-
dwellers, the Conservatives could claim that between 1955 and 1964 over half a
million slums had been taken out of the housing stock and over 1.5 million
people rehoused.40
Far more people were taking their holidays away from home than ever before
—something like three-fifths in 1964, and a significant minority of them were
going abroad. In one other area affecting standard of living, Macmillan and his
colleagues felt proud of their achievements, though this was a more ambiguous
achievement than the others. Income tax had been reduced five times during the
Conservatives’ term of office. The standard rate fell from 9s. 6d. (47.5p) to 7s.
9d. (39p) in the pound. Cutting income tax is always popular; people seldom ask
themselves whether the cuts in government expenditure which must follow are in
their, or the country’s, long-term interest. Macmillan commented, rather rashly,
some believed, in July 1957, only a few months after becoming Prime Minister:

let’s be frank about it; most of our people have never had it so good. Go
round the country, go to the industrial towns, go to the farms, and you will
see a state of prosperity such as we have never had in my lifetime—nor
indeed ever in the history of this country.

He went on to admit, ‘we cannot forget that some sections of our people have
not shared in this general prosperity’,41 and promised them help. The Prime
Minister could have said again in 1959, with greater conviction, most people
‘have never had it so good’, and even more so when he retired from office in
1963. Given Macmillan’s own view of the fragile nature of the British economy,
one can rightly ask how it was all achieved. The answer was rooted in increased
production, improved terms of trade and some reduction in the arms burden. The
index of industrial production, which excludes agriculture, trade, transport and
other services, had risen from 85 in 1951 to 115 in 1962.42 Moreover, the pattern
of industrial production was changing. Electronics, computers, synthetic fibres,
agricultural machinery and motor vehicles were making great headway. Britain
had developed the largest petro-chemical industry in Europe, and the British
automobile industry had doubled production since 1951. Great strides had been
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 77

made in agriculture too. With fewer holdings, less land and less labour, far more
was being produced than before the war.43 Before the war, Britain had produced,
in terms of value, about one-third of its food. By the 1960s it was producing
about half. The second source of prosperity was the great improvement in the
terms of trade Britain enjoyed in the 1950s. Samuel Brittan estimated that

After the collapse of the Korean boom, food and raw material prices fell so
much that in 1953 we could buy thirteen per cent more imports for the
same amount of exports than in 1951. The 1957–8 world recession
triggered off another, and a slower slide in commodity prices, which
eventually improved our terms of trade by another fourteen per cent,
making twenty-nine per cent altogether. These two movements together
were worth the best of £1,000m a year to the British public.44

This happy state of affairs changed in the 1960s. Under the Conservatives
defence expenditure declined as a percentage of the gross national product
(though it remained higher than that of the other members of NATO, excepting
the United States). This also made it easier for the government in its efforts to
create an affluent society.

RUSSIANS IN SPACE: ‘FRIVOLITY’ OF BRITISH

Although British defence expenditure was seen by Macmillan as too high, it
continued to weigh down the economy throughout his period of office. At the
beginning of the 1960s, Britain was still spending £51 every second on arms; £3,
060 a minute; over £1,608 million a year. By November 1963 there were still
approximately 357,000 regular servicemen and boys in the forces. By
comparison, in 1960, £894.6 million was spent in Great Britain on education.
Few doubted that Britain needed armed forces; but did it need its own nuclear
capacity, and did it need so many troops abroad? Those who did believe Britain
required its own ‘deterrent’ argued, in the words of Harold Macmillan, that it
‘gives us a better position in the world, it gives us a better position with respect
to the United States. It puts us where we ought to be, in the position of a Great
Power.’45
The arrival of the space age in 1957 indicated, once again, that Britain was no
longer in the first division. Contrary to Western expectations, the Russians
launched the world’s first artificial Earth satellite, Sputnik 1, on 4 October 1957.
This successful launch put 83 kg. into space. It remained there until 4 January
1958. On 3 November the Russians followed this up with the equally successful
launching of Sputnik 2, containing the dog ‘Laika’, the first mammal in space.
Macmillan records that The Americans were not unnaturally alarmed by so
striking a proof of Russian scientific and technological progress’. Macmillan
received many letters protesting about the cruelty to the dog, which he found to
be indicative of the ‘characteristic frivolity’ of the British.46
78 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

The first American riposte to the Soviet challenge came only on 31 January
1958, when the United States launched Explorer 1. But the Soviets continued
their exploits, being the first to ‘hit’ the moon with an unmanned craft in 1959. In
the same year they produced the first photographs of the hidden side of the moon.
Their man, Yuri Gagarin, was the first man in space in 1961, and their woman,
Valentina Tereshkova, was the first woman in orbit in June 1963. The Soviet
Union had clearly demonstrated its capability of producing intercontinental
missiles of the greatest accuracy and of sufficient weight to carry megaton
warheads to any town or city of the United States. One would have thought that
this would have led to a drastic reappraisal of Britain’s independent nuclear
deterrent. As Professor Northedge has commented, the Sputniks

had the effect of carrying the two super-Powers still further away from
lesser states like Britain which aspired to remain in the nuclear league.
This was a moment, if ever there was one , when Britain without any
dishonour might have renounced pretensions to remain in the front-rank
class of nations and come to terms with the west European states when the
shape of the EEC was still in process of moulding. But that opportunity
was not taken.47

Instead, the pro-British deterrent lobby argued that, given the progress of Soviet
rocketry, the United States could become increasingly inhibited in using its
nuclear retaliatory power to defend Western Europe. With the single possible
exception of defending West Berlin—and even there the Americans appeared
firm when faced with Soviet threats in 1959—there seemed no likelihood of
Eisenhower abandoning his NATO allies. This was equally true of his
successors. Nor did there appear to be any conceivable situation in which Britain
dare contemplate using its nuclear capacities independently of the US. Britain
relied on the American nuclear umbrella in peace and war. Originally envisaged
as carriers of Britain’s deterrent, the V bombers—Vulcans, Valiants and Victors
—were obsolete when they were first introduced in 1956. The installation in
Britain of American ‘Thor’ intermediate range ballistic missiles in 1957–58, with
a two-key system—an American key activated the nuclear warheads and a
British key launched the missile—served to emphasize British dependence on
American technology and leadership. This was not changed by Macmillan’s
success, as a result of meetings with Eisenhower at Bermuda (March 1957) and
Washington (October 1957), in getting the Americans to amend the Atomic
Energy Act of 1954. Under the amended legislation of 1958 Britain was able to
get American nuclear weapons know-how of the kind it had been deprived of
since the passing of the McMahon Act in 1946. Britain was able to buy from the
US component parts of nuclear weapons and weapons systems and to make
possible the exchange of British plutonium for American enriched uranium. It
also made possible the sale to Britain of nuclear propulsion plant for the first
British nuclear submarine, the Dreadnought.
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 79

The other draining and damaging (to Britain’s image) aspect of defence was
its policeman’s role in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

KENYA: HOLA CAMP ‘SUB-HUMAN INDIVIDUALS’

As we have seen, British troops were involved in shooting wars in Malaya and in
Cyprus. If Britain’s friends had sympathized in the first case, they were more
critical in the second. British forces were also used to suppress the elected left-
wing government of Dr Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana in 1953, and found
themselves ‘restoring order’ there again in 1962 after Jagan’s People’s
Progressive Party (PPP) had, once again, won the elections. Though there were
racial tensions in the country and the PPP was not above reproach, it looked as
though British and American interests were changing the rules of the game—the
electoral system was altered to ensure that a leader enjoying their confidence
emerged. The colony eventually became independent as Guyana in 1966.
The situation in Malta was, to say the least, badly handled. In 1947 Malta had
been granted internal self-government and had elected a Labour administration.
Britain still regarded the naval and military base there as essential, and in 1956 it
was agreed that the island should become part of the UK, sending three MPs to
Westminster. Malta had served Britain well for 150 years and had earned itself
warm praise for its help during the Second World War. The British government
showed itself parsimonious when evaluating Malta’s annual grant, and the 1956
talks broke down, therefore, on the question of money. At the beginning of 1959
the constitution was suspended and direct rule reimposed. At the elections which
followed, Labour was defeated by the (Conservative) National Party backed by
the Catholic Church. The new government was also dissatisfied with the financial
arrangements and Maltese political opinion turned to thoughts of complete
independence. The island, with a population of just over 300,000 and few
resources, achieved this in September 1964.
In Africa, too, hauling down the Union Jack was by no means easy. The
difficulty was greater where white-settler interests were involved. This was so in
Kenya and Southern Rhodesia. Armed revolt broke out in Kenya in 1952 and
continued until 1956, when the Commander-in-Chief of the African ‘Mau Mau’
insurgents, Dedan Kimathi, was wounded and captured.48 During the
‘emergency’ 10,527 Mau Mau were killed, 2,633 captured and 2,714
surrendered. British losses were 12 soldiers and 578 police and King’s African
Rifles (63 Europeans). Civilians killed included 32 Europeans, 26 Asians and 1,
817 loyal Africans.49 Between 75,000 and 80,000 Kikuyu, nearly 30 per cent of
the men of the tribe, were interned50 in camps which were often ‘living hells’.51
The most notorious of these, Hola Camp, where 11 detainees were murdered,
was exposed by Barbara Castle in the Commons on 27 July 1959.52 John Peel, MP
and ex-colonial service officer, called those killed ‘sub-human individuals’.53
Enoch Powell denounced this remark by his fellow Conservative, calling it ‘a
fearful doctrine which must recoil upon the heads of those who pronounce it’.54
80 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

The nationalist wind which was beginning to sweep across the African continent
went unrecognized by this ‘privileged, anachronistic society’.55 Much of the land
was in the hands of the 50,000 whites who dominated the 5 million Africans. The
situation was further complicated by tribalism, the Kikuyu being the majority,
and by the presence of an Asian trading and professional class. Iain Macleod,
who became Colonial Secretary in October 1959, recognized the inevitability of
majority rule and immediately started to release detained Africans. The London
conference of January 1960 recognized eventual majority rule. In August 1961
Jomo Kenyatta, jailed in 1953 for alleged Mau Mau activities, was released
because his dominance of Kenya African politics was recognized. Kenyatta had
been fighting for African rights since the 1920s.56 His 1953 conviction was due
to the bribing of the presiding judge and the chief prosecution witness.57 It was to
take two more conferences and two more Colonial Secretaries, Maudling and
Sandys, to finalize the independence constitution. At midnight on 11 December
1963 Kenya obtained its independence and entered the Commonwealth as the
eighteenth sovereign member.

AFRICA: ‘THE WIND OF CHANGE IS BLOWING’

The Labour government had resisted the demands of the European settlers for the
creation of a Central African Federation. Yet the Federation comprising Southern
Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) came into being
on 1 August 1953. Thus, 300,000 white settlers came to dominate 9 million
Africans. The scheme had been opposed by the great majority of Africans and, in
Britain, by the Labour and Liberal Parties, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the
Moderators of the Church of Scotland and the Free Church Federal Council. The
(non-Communist) International Confederation of Free Trade Unions also
opposed it. Opposition from the Africans boiled over in early 1959. African
organizations held meetings which were technically illegal. A state of emergency
was declared, first in Nyasaland and then in Southern Rhodesia, where deaths
occurred when the police attempted to quell protest demonstrations. Many
politically organized Africans were arrested, including Dr Hastings Banda,
widely recognized as that territory’s African leader. A British government-
appointed commission under Mr Justice Devlin reported adversely on some
aspects of the way the disturbances had been handled. Macmillan himself first
became convinced that there could be no progress without the release of Banda a
year later on his famous tour. He also convinced himself of the increasing
African opposition to the Federation. It was during this trip in January 1960 that
he made his speech in the South African parliament containing the much-quoted
passage:

the most striking of all the impressions I have formed since I left London a
month ago is of the strength of this African national consciousness. In
different places it takes different forms, but it is happening everywhere. The
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 81

wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or

not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all
accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.58

His hosts refused to bend to this wind and left the Commonwealth in 1961.
Macmillan recognized the inevitable in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland,
allowing the development of internal self-government based on African majority
rule, with Kenneth Kaunda and Hastings Banda emerging as leaders in the
respective territories. Both territories were allowed to secede from the Federation
and become independent in 1964.
As the Central African Federation was dying, the British government was
planning other federations. There was the Federation of Nigeria, which gained its
independence in 1960, a land with a population much larger than that of Britain.
Like the Central African Federation, its basic weakness was that it was an attempt
to unite separate regions which were different in economic and political
development, and whose peoples had different tribal loyalties, different languages
and different religions. In 1966 Nigeria’s attempt at a democratic federation
ended with a military coup. It was then held together by force of arms.
The wind of change also swept through Sierra Leone (1961), Uganda (1962),
and Tanganyika and Zanzibar (which joined together to form Tanzania in 1964).
All four became independent members of the Commonwealth under the
Conservatives.
In 1962 the curtain was finally drawn on the West Indies Federation. This had
been weak from the start. Inter-island communications were poor in an
organization in which Jamaica and Trinidad, the two main components, were a
thousand miles apart. The Federation had been run on a shoestring because the
central government had no real power to raise revenue. Jamaica withdrew from
the Federation after a referendum, and Trinidad and Tobago after a general
election. Both became independent members of the Commonwealth in August
1962. This left the problem of what to do with the smaller islands. However, by
1966 Barbados, with a population of just over 200,000, became independent,
Grenada, whose population was 104,000 in 1970, followed in 1974.
The one other attempt to set up a federation during this period was in
Malaysia. Characteristically, it too failed. In August 1965 Singapore seceded
from Malaysia to become an independent republic. Both states, however,
remained members of the Commonwealth.

KUWAIT: ‘EXPENSIVE TO STAY; HARD TO GET

OUT’
Not deterred by such failures, the British government went ahead with the
merging of Aden with the Federation of South Arabia. Since the Suez action
Egypt had become more, not less, significant. So had the Soviet Union. Britain
and the US grew alarmed at each manifestation of Arab nationalism, wrongly
82 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

judging it to be a threat to their interests or a device of Soviet imperialism. In

July 1958 the pro-British, reactionary regime of Nuri es-Said was overthrown by
a military revolt following the Egyptian model, and Iraq withdrew from the
Baghdad Pact. Earlier in 1958 Syria and Egypt had proclaimed their union in the
United Arab Republic. This experiment was brought to an end by a Syrian
military coup against Nasserite officials in Damascus in 1961. Alarmed, the pro-
Western Lebanese President Chamoun requested US help under the Eisenhower
Doctrine. He wrongly supposed that Egypt was interfering in the civil war which
was developing in Lebanon. American marines were landed, but did not get
involved in any fighting, and a compromise resulted. King Hussein of Jordan
made a similar request to Britain and paratroops were duly dispatched. These
were withdrawn after an all-Arab resolution was agreed in the UN General
Assembly pledging non-interference between Arab states. British troops were
also ordered to Kuwait, a British-protected state since 1899. In 1961 Kuwait, by
that time an important oil producer, became independent and immediately came
under pressure from General Kassim’s regime in Iraq. A request for British help
followed. Macmillan recorded in his diary (8 July 1961):

We worked through some long and anxious nights, especially when we

thought Kassem would seize Kuwait city and territory virtually unopposed.
Now our worry is the opposite. Since the Iraqi attack has not in fact
developed, all the pressure will be turned on us. It is going to be difficult,
and expensive, to stay; hard to get out.59

British troops did in fact withdraw in September 1961. Kuwait was admitted to
the Arab League and the members of this body sent a mixed force, including
Egyptians, to ensure its independence from Iraq. Britain meanwhile had a
problem in Yemen.

ADEN: ‘TOLPUDDLE MARTYRS OF THE MIDDLE

EAST’
The Yemen was a truly medieval kingdom which laid claim to Aden and the
British-protected sheikhdoms bordering it. It had been too weak to realize its
ambitions, even though from the mid-1950s it had received arms from the Soviet
bloc. In 1962 a revolution broke out and the new rulers orientated the country
towards Cairo. Most states recognized the new regime. Foolishly, Britain did
not. Civil war followed in the Yemen and continued for many years.
Given all this turmoil in the Middle East, Aden did not look like a good
prospect as an independent state. It had been seized by the British in 1839 as a
vital refuelling port en route to India. With a population smaller than Nottingham,
and in an area only half the size of the Isle of Wight, its inhabitants were
dependent largely on a declining entrepôt trade, an oil refinery and the British
base. Most of the population of 220,000 (1963) were Arabs, either born locally
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 83

or from the British-protected states or Yemen. There was also a minority of

Indians and Pakistanis, many of them engaged in trade. The Aden TUC, like the
British TUC, affiliated to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions,
had a powerful hold over the Arab workers and was not satisfied with the
constitutional progress made in the colony. Even the middle-class moderates in
the Aden Association wanted an elected legislature, an elected ministry and Arabic
as the official language. It was 1958 before Arabic was recognized, but the
fulfilment of the other demands seemed far off.60 Most of the population were not
eligible to vote. The trade unions demanded complete independence from Britain
and some form of association with the surrounding states, but not under their
prevailing regimes. In 1959 there were widespread strikes. The government’s
answer was to make strikes virtually illegal. Aden was becoming more
prominent in British defence planning by the 1960s. It was a familiar pattern.
With the liquidation of the Canal Zone, Cyprus had become more important.
When Cyprus became independent, Kenya was upgraded as a military base. As
Kenya moved towards its freedom, Aden’s future was scrutinized more closely.
In August 1962 the British government published a White Paper proposing the
merger of Aden with the surrounding Arab Emirates to form the Federation of
South Arabia. Politically advanced was to be tied to the feudalistic neighbouring
sheikhdoms which were under British protection. Under the proposed
constitution, Aden would have been in a minority position. In the Commons,
Denis Healey, for Labour, claimed it meant ranging Britain ‘with all that is most
backward and anachronistic in the Middle East’.61 George Thomson attacked the
flogging and imprisonment of several Aden trade unionists who had gone on
strike against the proposed merger. They were, he said, ‘the Tolpuddle martyrs
of the Middle East’.62 In December 1962 Abdullah al-Asnag, Aden’s trade union
leader, and some others, were jailed for ‘conspiring to publish a seditious
publication’. More repression followed and the merger took place in spite of local
protests on 18 January 1963. It was left to the incoming Labour government to
deal with the mounting violence and disorder.
The last military excursion under the Conservatives was happier in its results
than most of the others. In January 1964 British troops were sent to Kenya,
Uganda and Tanganyika at the request of their governments. The British, with
speed and efficiency, quelled army mutinies in those countries. The failure of the
colonial administrations gradually to lay the foundations of professional officer
corps before independence, and the attempt to do so hastily afterwards, together
with dissatisfaction over pay, were at the root of the trouble.63

‘SOCIALISM THAT DARES NOT IS BOUND TO FAIL’

The Suez campaign had given Labour the chance to unite over a great national
issue. This mood did not last, and unresolved differences within the party soon
came to the fore again. They were divided over their long-term aims and over the
more immediate issues of public ownership and defence. Groups and individuals
84 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

within the party re-examined Labour’s experience of office and reasons for its two
successive electoral defeats. They looked again at the changes in British society
and asked themselves whether their policies needed refurbishing in the light of
those changes. By 1954, G.D.H.Cole, who, as a professor of Politics at Oxford, a
writer and a Labour activist, had influenced many of those who played significant
roles in the Labour movement, asked, ‘Is our goal the classless society, or only
the so-called “open” society which is in fact still closed to a majority of the
people?’64 Cole was in no doubt himself what he wanted: ‘a society of equals,
set free from the twin evils of riches and poverty, mastership and subjection’.65
He felt Attlee had done little to realize this dream, and the post-Attlee leaders were
becoming even more timid.

Democratic Socialism…dare not frighten possible marginal supporters; and

it dare not flout that so-called ‘public opinion’ which is really newspaper
opinion put about by the reactionary press. It dare not offend the
Americans… A Socialism that dares not is bound to fail; for the fighting
spirit which created the Socialist movement is no less needed to carry it
through to its goal. The use of parliamentary and constitutional methods
need not destroy this spirit.66

Cole was articulating the doubts and fears of thousands of Labour members, and
a significant minority in the parliamentary party. For these people, Labour
seemed to be dying from the Establishment embrace. Cole had always
consciously rejected Marxism, but he believed that, in order to realize Labour’s
aims, more public ownership, not necessarily state ownership, was imperative.
He had always advocated economic democracy, that is, workers’ control of
industry, the participation by all those employed in a particular industry in
making the decisions which affect their lives and livelihoods. He wanted to see
many other changes in society as well, but he thought economic democracy was
the key to the transformation of society. Crossman wrote in a similar vein in his
Socialism and the New Despotism (1955):

We seek to make economic power responsive both to the community as a

whole (the consumer) and to the worker in any particular industry (the
producer). Plans for nationalization which do not satisfy the aspirations to
workers’ control are the technocrats’ perversion of our Socialist ideal. We
must frankly admit that, so far, our nationalized industries have been little
better than that.67

Crossman, who was already a members of Labour’s NEC, recommended his

colleagues to study the experiment of Mitbestimmung (co-determination) in
German industry. This was something Labour had ignored. It was also ignored
by more conservative writers who were impressed by West Germany’s good
industrial relations. Crossman thought Keynesian economics had weakened the
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 85

economic case for public ownership but not the moral case. He was concerned,
however, about all types of irresponsible power— in private industry, in the state,
in parties and in trade unions—in the mass society and the threat they presented
to personal freedom. Both these writers agreed with Bevan that more common
ownership would be necessary to achieve the socialist ideal.
Other, thoughtful members of the Labour Party came to different conclusions
on economic policy. In 1956, the Socialist Union, a group based on the monthly
journal Socialist Commentary, saw a danger in any monopoly in any sector of
economic life. They were forcefully impressed by the totalitarian nature of the
Soviet economy and the implications of that for the rest of the world. ‘Where
revolutions have overthrown the regimes of the past…public enterprise, a
planned economy, even social services —are deliberately employed to reduce
every individual to the helpless victim of the state.’68
Cole and the Left denied that Soviet-style regimes inevitably followed
nationalization where there was a free electoral system, free trade unions, free
media and workers’ control. But the Socialist Union believed competition was
needed for both political and economic reasons:

The private sector of a socialist economy is not there merely on sufferance,

to be tolerated only on grounds of political expediency… Within the limits
of equality, there must be opportunities for people to spend as they wish, to
own, to initiate and experiment; they must be able to form associations to
further their economic interests.69

At greater length, Anthony Crosland argued in the same way in his The Future of
Socialism (1956). Gaitskell, in his contribution to the debate, looked for ways
Labour’s aim of a society in which ‘there are no social classes, equal
opportunity…a high degree of economic equality, full employment, rapidly
rising productivity, democracy in industry, and a general spirit of co-operation
between its members’70 could be achieved without nationalization. These
measures included the growth of social services, severe taxation on high
incomes, an increase in the share of national income enjoyed by wage- and
salary-earners, and educational reform.
All the writers, on the Left as well as on the Right of Labour, were deeply
influenced by the new, negative image of the Soviet Union, a vision strongly
coloured by (socialist) Orwell’s 1984, which was widely discussed. They were
also influenced by the indifference of the majority of the workers to the issue of
public ownership. Further, they, and much of the public, had suffered
disappointment over the nationalized industries in Britain; though it must be
stressed that such disappointment resulted from a naively optimistic view of
what could be achieved in run-down industries over a short period. Finally,
Gaitskell, as party leader, was concerned about the damage to Labour’s image by
the close association of the Party with nationalization. At successive elections
pro-‘Free Enterprise’ bodies had launched massive publicity campaigns against
86 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

further nationalization. For all these reasons, whereas Cole, Bevan and others
still placed a great deal of emphasis on ‘common ownership’, Gaitskell
drastically restricted the role of public enterprise. It was his view which
prevailed.
At the Labour conference at Brighton in 1957, Wilson, for the NEC,
introduced Industry and Society, which set out the party’s view on public
ownership. It was basically Gaitskell’s conception. It committed Labour to the
renationalization of the steel industry and road haulage, but there was no
‘shopping list’ of industries to be taken over. Only those industries which were—
through monopoly power, bad labour relations, failure to export, and so on
—‘failing the nation’ were possible candidates for nationalization. This policy
was adopted by 5.3 million to 1.4 million, with Bevan’s wife, Jennie Lee, the
National Union of Railwaymen and, more strongly, Morrison and Shinwell
against.71

H-BOMB: ‘NAKED INTO THE CONFERENCE

CHAMBER’
The other big issue which caused Labour much heart-searching was the H-bomb.
The Bevanites had opposed Britain’s decision to manufacture the H-bomb. In
1957 Bevan changed his position dramatically and thus deprived Labour’s Left of
its leader, destroying in the process the faith of some of the rank-and-file in all
leaders. This shift was announced at Brighton. Britain’s bomb, Bevan now
argued, could force the other superpowers to take notice of Britain and could
give the UK a decisive voice in international affairs. In opposing a unilateralist
resolution, he declared: ‘if you carry this resolution…you will send a Foreign
Secretary…naked into the conference chamber’. He believed the bomb could give
Britain ‘the opportunity of interposing’ between the US and Russia, ‘modifying,
moderating, and mitigating influence’.72 The offending resolution was then
thrown out with the help of the block votes of the big trade unions rather than the
rhetoric of Bevan. Most delegates from the constituency parties, representing the
activists who did most of the menial political work, delegates who had
previously supported Bevan, voted the other way.
Some of those dismayed, defeated, and disgusted activists were already
working in what was to become a new mass movement to rid Britain of its
nuclear weapons—the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). CND was
announced in February 1958, but for some time before this various groups had
been set up to oppose British, and all other, nuclear weapons. In 1954, a small
group of MPs under the chairmanship of Fenner Brockway formed the Hydrogen
Bomb National Campaign Committee. Among its more prominent members
were Tony (Anthony Wedgwood) Benn and Anthony Greenwood. CND itself, a
much larger, non-party, non-sectarian movement, resulted from discussions
which followed an article by J.B.Priestley in the New Statesman (2 November
1957). Priestley wrote:
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 87

The British of these times, so frequently hiding their decent, kind faces
behind masks of sullen apathy or sour, cheap cynicism, often seem to be
waiting for something better than party squabbles and appeals to their
narrowest self interest, something great and noble in its intention that
would make them feel good again. And this might well be a declaration to
the world that after a certain date one power able to engage in nuclear
warfare will reject the evil thing for ever.

It was a patriotic appeal to idealism and it impressed many young people who
were searching for something more elevating than mere affluence. The
movement was headed by (Earl) Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, its secretary
was Canon L.John Collins of St Paul’s Cathedral. On the executive committee
they were joined by Michael Foot, close friend of Bevan and editor of the Left
Labour weekly Tribune; Ritchie Calder, noted as a scientific journalist;
Priestley; James Cameron, a well-known journalist; Kingsley Martin, editor of
the New Statesman; Howard Davies of the UN Association; and Lord Simon of
Wythenshawe.73 In April 1958 the movement organized a protest march from
London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.
Marchers covered the 50 miles between 4 and 7 April. Frank Allaun, Labour MP
for Salford East, Dr Donald Soper, the Methodist leader, and Pastor Martin
Niemöller, the German pacifist and First World War U-Boat commander, led 5,
000 marchers on the final day. CND was established ‘to demand a British
initiative to reduce the nuclear peril and to stop the armaments race, if need be by
unilateral action by Great Britain’. Despite the support of a number of Labour
MPs it remained largely a movement of the intelligentsia, the middle classes and
youth. Among the more prominent intellectual supporters were the writers John
Braine, John Brunner, Mervyn Jones, Doris Lessing, Sir Compton Mackenzie,
Iris Murdoch, Alan Sillitoe and Arnold Wesker. Others prominent included art
critic John Berger, sculptor Henry Moore, historian A.J.P.Taylor, actors Spike
Milligan, John Neville and Vanessa Redgrave, and film directors Anthony
Asquith, Basil Wright and Lindsay Anderson.74 Such a list by no means exhausts
the star-studded lists of sponsors and activists.

NEW LEFT: A ‘SENSE OF OUTRAGE’

CND drew strength from the anger of a section of the literary class over what
was considered to be the complacency which appeared to be smothering post-
war Britain. Their spokesmen were dubbed by the press the ‘angry young men’.
One of the most significant was John Osborne (1929–94), who became famous
overnight with his play Look Back In Anger. Put on by the new English Stage
Company at the Royal Court Theatre in 1956, it marked a turning-point in the
British theatre, with greater interest in social criticism and experimentation.
Arnold Wesker (b. 1932) was successful with his portrayals of East-End, Jewish
working-class life. Alan Sillitoe described the problems, tensions and hopes of
88 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

the working class in Nottingham, where he had himself been a factory worker.
David Storey (b. 1933), the son of a Yorkshire miner, made his name with This
Sporting Life, about the tough life of Yorkshire Rugby League players, which he
knew first-hand. Of all the characters who emerged from the pages of this new
genre, the best known was Joe Lampton, hero of John Braine’s (1922–86) Room
at the Top. Joe ‘was brought up on the fringes of poverty and squalor in an ugly
North Country town. He had emerged with one overriding aim: to fight his way
into the bright world of money and influence.’75 Joe was not particularly
political and he, and his creator, subsequently found much of their anger against
the system appeased by fame and fortune. These, and some other similar writers,
probably had marginal political influence, but they were much more important
for helping to revitalize the British theatre and cinema. Indirectly, they exposed
the weakness of the English education system. Only Storey had managed to get
to an institution of higher education. Some of them had not even been to a
grammar school.
The writers were not the only young critics of society in the late 1950s. The
Suez campaign and the Hungarian Revolution produced what became known as
the New Left. Roughly speaking, the New Left was a coming together of
Communists disillusioned by Soviet actions in Hungary and disillusioned young
members of the Establishment who disapproved of the Suez campaign. The core
of the New Left was the group of supporters of the New Left Review, which was
a merger of the Universities and New Left Review and the New Reasoner.
Whether they were ex-Communists or ex-Conservatives, New Lefters were often
Oxbridge graduates. Ralph Samuel and the West Indian and later sociology
professor, Stuart Hall, were the driving force behind the movement which
presided over the establishment of a chain of Left clubs and coffee bars
throughout the country. At a time when political parties were complaining about
apathy and the difficulty of finding audiences for prominent politicians,
considerable numbers of people in London paid to attend New Left meetings.
Among their contributors, Ralph Miliband, of the London School of Economics,
derided the Attlee governments for their lack of radicalism; Brian Abel-Smith,
also LSE, felt the middle classes were benefiting more from the welfare state
than the working classes; Hugh Thomas, ex-Foreign Office and future
Conservative, denounced the Suez operation. Paul Johnson, journalist and later
Thatcherite, suffered from a sense of outrage. He wanted an end to the monarchy,
the Lords, the public schools and Oxbridge, the regimental system, the Inns of
Court, the honours list and much else. He warned that if Labour ‘surrenders its
sense of outrage, and allows the power-motive to become its political dynamic, it
will cease to be a progressive movement, and something else will take its
place’.76
With the interest generated by CND and the New Left, with the Labour
leadership looking reasonably united, and with by-election swings against the
Conservatives, things appeared to be looking up for Labour. However, when the
election was called for 8 October 1959, the polls revealed the Conservatives as
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 89

the favourites. The Conservatives had mounted a successful advertising

campaign, aimed at the aspiring housewife, with the slogan, ‘Life’s better with
the Conservatives… Don’t let Labour ruin it’. They had also played on their
credentials as seekers of international accord, with Macmillan flying to Moscow
earlier in the year and then to Washington and other capitals. The government
also announced the ending of conscription. Labour had some good TV
broadcasts, and the Liberals fought well under their new leader, Jo Grimond, but
the Conservative bandwagon was rolling. Gaitskell made one campaign blunder.
He had advocated an ambitious pensions’ scheme. When asked, ‘Where’s the
money coming from?’, he gave a doubt-raising pledge: ‘There will be no
increase in…income tax so long as normal peacetime conditions continue.’77
The results put the Conservatives back with a net gain of 21 seats. Labour had
a net loss of 19 seats. Liberal representation remained at 6 seats. The Liberals
took some comfort from the fact that their share of the vote had increased from 2.
5 per cent in 1951, and 2.7 per cent in 1955, to 5.9 per cent in 1959. Both major
parties had their share of the poll reduced, Labour by 2.6 per cent to 43.8 per
cent, the Conservatives by 0.3 to 49.4 per cent.78 Labour had gained slightly
among women and lost among men. It had lost any advantage it had with young
voters, but more older people had voted Labour. Labour also suffered from
abstentions, though turnout was up from 76.8 to 78.7 per cent. The swing to the
Conservatives tended to be smallest in places where turnout increased most. Most
of the Conservative gains were in the Midlands and outer London. Clydeside and
South Lancashire swung more decisively to Labour. The Conservatives had a
100-seat majority and an unprecedented three electoral victories in a row.
Among the new Conservative intake was Margaret Hilda Thatcher, returned for
the safe Conservative seat of Finchley.

LABOUR’S ‘CLASS IMAGE’

It was inevitable that the third election defeat of Labour would lead to more
argument at all levels about its aims and methods. Immediately after the election
Labour ‘revisionists’ began to prescribe medicine to save their party from what
they diagnosed to be a slow, lingering, but certain, death. Douglas Jay, who had
served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury under Attlee, led the attack in the
Labour weekly Forward (16 October 1959), claiming Labour was suffering from
‘two fatal handicaps—the class image and the myth of nationalization’. Many
prosperous workers, especially women, no longer classified themselves as
working class. They aspired to something more. They were also hostile to
nationalization. Labour should drop nationalization and get away from its cloth
cap image. Even the name ‘Labour’ was a disadvantage, though he did not propose
to ditch that. Gaitskell supported Jay’s views, but at the annual conference in
November he expressed himself more cautiously. He questioned whether Clause
IV, adopted in 1918, which called for the common ownership of the means of
production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular
90 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

administration and control of each industry or service, gave the correct

impression of Labour’s aims. ‘It implies that common ownership is an end,
whereas in fact, it is a means.’79 He was right that Labour did not contemplate
nationalizing everything, ‘the whole of light industry…every little pub’, but he
was not correct that common ownership was seen as an end in itself. According
to Clause IV, the end was ‘To secure for the producers by hand and by brain the
full fruits of their industry’. He was right when he urged that Labour was not just
about common ownership, and clearly Labour needed to recast its image. The
problem was that the delegates felt bitter and angry about Labour’s defeat. They
felt it was the victim of the Conservatives’ slick public relations campaign which
had cost far more than Labour felt it could afford. With talk of changing
Labour’s constitution and engaging in public relations activities, Gaitskell
seemed to be indicating a lack of faith in the tenets of the party at a time when
many were looking for a reaffirmation of faith. In other words, his intervention
was psychologically ill-timed. It received, therefore, the appropriate rebuff from
speaker after speaker.
In an attempt to resolve matters, Gaitskell commissioned a survey of opinion
on voters’ attitudes. Dr Rita Hinden, for 10 years secretary of the Fabian Colonial
Bureau, and editor of the Socialist Commentary, believed the survey revealed
Labour’s weakness as poor class image, nationalization and ‘weak, divided
leadership’.80 When one looks at the survey, carried out by two skilled
investigators, Mark Abrams and Richard Rose, the evidence is not unequivocal.
Labour was identified with the working class rather than with the ‘nation as a
whole’, and this was a problem in attempting to win over non-Labour working-
class voters who were less likely to see themselves as working class. Yet Labour
did far better than the Conservatives on ‘Raise the standard of living of ordinary
people’. Far more non-Labour voters believed this of Labour than Labour
supporters applied this to the Conservatives. On public ownership, the
researchers found there was neither ‘blind faith or blind rejection’.81 Some
nationalized industries—electricity, atomic energy, airlines—were regarded as
successes. For gas ‘the votes for success are about 50 per cent higher than for
failure; only when people come to judge coal-mining and the railways were they
emphatically convinced that public ownership has been a failure’.82 Even among
Conservative supporters, ‘favourable attitudes towards public ownership exceed
unfavourable views for four out of six listed industries’.83 But there was little
enthusiasm for additional nationalization. Hinden concluded that Labour could
not afford to be doctrinaire on this issue. Other conclusions are of course
possible. It could be argued that the survey merely revealed the ignorance of the
public at large about the problems of the railways and the mines. It is also
plausible to conclude that the airlines, atomic energy and electricity benefited
from a more modern and exciting image than coal and railways. Further, a great
deal of money had been spent on anti-nationalization campaigns which Labour
had done little to counter. The Left had not thought creatively about the
alternatives to state corporations and many had still not digested the negative
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 91

aspects of the Soviet experience. The ‘revisionists’ made a mistake with their
timing, and some were too dogmatic on too little evidence. Probably due to
ignorance, few supporters of ‘common ownership’ used as evidence the successes
of such publicly owned firms as Volkswagen, Renault and some of the Italian
and Austrian state enterprises.
The surveys did show that Labour suffered from its leadership battles, with
Macmillan scoring over Gaitskell as a leader ‘Strong enough to make
unwelcome decisions’. This was considered the most important quality in a
Prime Minister. One surprise in the survey was that Labour was seen as the party
which was more likely to work to prevent a nuclear war, and this was put top of
the list of priorities by those interviewed.84 How best to do this was the issue
which provoked more controversy than any other in Labour’s ranks in the two
years which followed.

‘PACIFISTS, UNILATERALISTS AND FELLOW-

TRAVELLERS’
The two big events in Labour’s history in 1960 were the death of Bevan and the
defeat of Gaitskell on the nuclear issue. Despite not seeing eye to eye on public
ownership, they stood together in public. James Griffiths had decided, in 1959,
not to seek re-election as deputy leader, and Bevan was unanimously elected in his
place by the parliamentary party. He died of cancer in July.
Opinion seemed to be moving in favour of CND, but a great break-through
was made when Frank Cousins, who had led the TGWU since the spring of 1956,
brought his union into line with CND. Cousins (1904– 86), the son of a
railwayman, had worked in the Nottinghamshire pits, and as a truckdriver, before
becoming a union organizer.85 Labour’s nuclear defence policy was also under
attack from the Victory for Socialism (Vf S) group, which included Allaun, Foot,
Ian Mikardo, Stephen Swingler and some other Labour MPs. The group had been
revitalized in 1958 and pursued a consistently left-wing line on all aspects of
party policy. Important at this time were policy differences over defence. With
the cancellation of Blue Streak in April 1960, Gaitskell was caught off balance
as ‘it seemed at first that the defence of British nuclear independence was now
academic. Without a delivery system the defence of the British bomb seemed
absurd and unrealistic.’86 When the party conference discussed the issue at
Scarborough in October 1960, it was the CND line that carried the day. Cousins,
with his union’s block vote, tipped the balance. He proposed a resolution on
behalf of his union calling for ‘A complete rejection of any defence policy based
on the threat of the use of strategic or tactical nuclear weapons’.87 It not only
sought the end of the British bomb, it also sought the withdrawal of all American
nuclear bases from Britain. It did not, however, call for a withdrawal from NATO
and, as Gaitskell was able to point out, left important matters unclear. It was
adopted by the slender margin of 3,282,000 to 3,239,000. The leader, despite his
passion, oratory and obvious sincerity, did his cause no good by his comment,
92 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

‘What sort of people do you think we are? …Do you think we can become
overnight the pacifists, unilateralists and fellow-travellers that other people
are?’88 Cousins was certainly no fellow-traveller and resented the accusation.
The Communists had withheld support from CND until mid-1960 because the
movement criticized both the US and the Soviet Union. Seeing in CND’s
growing strength a chance to defeat Gaitskell, they changed their tune. Despite
their later high visibility on marches, they did not make serious inroads into the
movement.
On 13 August 1961 the East Germans sealed off their part of Berlin and
started building the notorious Wall. Macmillan felt, The danger is, of course, that
with both sides bluffing, disaster may come by mistake.’89 This is what many in
CND were worried about. Even more hair-raising was the Cuban missile crisis of
1962. The Soviets had installed offensive missiles on Cuba, which were
withdrawn when Kennedy gave assurances that Cuba would not be invaded.

EEC: ‘THE END OF A THOUSAND YEARS OF

HISTORY’
Gaitskell’s defeat led to the setting up of the Campaign for Democratic Socialism
(CDS) in November 1960. It was the brainchild of William Rodgers, General
Secretary of the Fabian Society, and Anthony Crossland. Its aim was to support
Gaitskell and his policies. Gaitskell as Party Leader was not directly involved.
Jay and Jenkins were among the MPs involved. Several members of the shadow
cabinet—Brown, Callaghan, Healey among them—supported it. From the Lords,
Attlee, Dalton and Pakenham (Lord Longford) were associated with it. The CDS
also managed to secure the support of a number of leading trade unionists, such
as William Carron, leader of the AEU; Sam Watson of the Miners; Ron Smith,
General Secretary of the Post Office Workers’ Union; Anne Godwin, General
Secretary of the Clerical and Administrative Workers’ Union; and
W.J.P.Webber, General Secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association.
Disagreements within CND and the CDS helped to bring about a partial reversal
of the Scarborough policy on nuclear defence at the 1961 conference. The
conference supported NATO and US bases in Britain but called for the
abandonment of Britain’s bomb. The same conference opposed West German
troops training in Wales and the establishment of Polaris nuclear submarine
bases. The conference also adopted the moderate home policy document Signposts
for the Sixties.
By 1962 Labour was facing another major issue: Britain’s proposed entry into
the European Economic Community (EEC). Most of the Left, including the VfS
group, opposed this. The Parliamentary Labour Party (31 July 1961) wanted
entry dependent on approval by the Commonwealth Prime Ministers and the
European Free Trade Association (EFTA).90 Most of the CDS favoured entry, but
Jay and Gaitskell did not. At the Brighton conference in October 1962, Gaitskell
announced what amounted to a rejection of entry. Gaitskell spoke of ‘the end of
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 93

a thousand years of history’ and the end of the Commonwealth if Britain

joined.91 The conference agreed a resolution. It opened: Labour ‘regards the
European Community as a great and imaginative conception’. It went on to lay
down five tough conditions of entry: strong and binding Commonwealth
safeguards; freedom to pursue an independent foreign policy; fulfilment of
pledges to Britain’s partners in EFTA; ‘the right to plan our own economy’; and
guarantees to safeguard the position of British agriculture.92 It was a moment of
triumph for Gaitskell. His speech had endeared him to many constituency
activists who had previously regarded him with suspicion. But he was robbed of
full and final victory by his short illness and strange death on 18 January 1963.

EEC: ‘NO THREE CHEERS FOR BRITISH ENTRY’

All Labour’s debates about the EEC were purely academic; so were the
government’s negotiations. Britain had no chance of entry at that time. At the
end of the two-day Commons debate in July 1961 announcing Britain’s
application to join, only one Conservative and four Labour MPs93 voted against
the proposal; 25 Conservatives and the official Opposition abstained. Macmillan
had already sounded out opinion among influential groups, and got a favourable
response. Important sections of the press were positive and public opinion, to the
extent that it existed, did not appear to be hostile. The plan to take Britain into
the EEC originated, not in Parliament, but in the Treasury, the Foreign Office
and the boardrooms of big business. The EEC, it was argued, would provide
British industry with the two things it badly needed: a larger home market and
the stiff competition which would force it to improve. There were those who
were less certain about the future of the Commonwealth. Would not
Commonwealth states look increasingly to other states than Britain for increased
trade and aid? The Commonwealth Immigration Act, 1962 represented a turning
away from the older intimacy with the Commonwealth. Implicitly, it was part of
the reappraisal of Britain’s role and direction, but not by the man who carried the
responsibility for it, R.A.Butler. He had reservations about the EEC. Macmillan
did, however, succeed in convincing his colleagues, and the initiative was
endorsed by the Conservative annual conference.
Macmillan got on well with Kennedy, whose sister Kathleen had married
Macmillan’s wife’s nephew. This was in spite of their differences of age, style,
background, nationality and the fact that Kennedy claimed to lead the ‘party of
hope’ rather than the ‘party of nostalgia’. The two ‘found the same things funny
and the same things serious’.94 The EEC was serious. Macmillan got the blessing
of President Kennedy in April 1961, and again in April 1962, for Britain’s entry.
Kennedy did, nevertheless, warn Macmillan, on the second occasion, ‘that
Britain must not expect to take care of everyone in its economic wake—either in
the Commonwealth or the European Free Trade Association—at America’s
expense’.95 The United States wanted Britain in for political, rather than
economic, reasons. ‘Britain, with its world obligations, could keep the EEC from
94 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

becoming a high-tariff, inward-looking, white man’s club. Above all, with

British membership, the Market could become the basis for a true political
federation of Europe.’96 Kennedy demonstrated how important he thought
Britain’s membership to be by mobilizing half his Cabinet to impress this on
Gaitskell when he visited Washington in 1962.97 He raised the matter with
President de Gaulle in June 1961. The French President was, however, wary of
Britain, regarding it as the Trojan Horse of Washington. Anglo-French co-
operation in nuclear defence could have recommended Britain to de Gaulle;
Macmillan foolishly did not see this.98 Anglo-US nuclear co-operation ‘became a
major element in de Gaulle’s determination to keep Britain out of Europe’.99 The
Nassau Agreement (discussed below) ‘fully confirmed his basic assessment that
British strategy with its dependence upon the United States clashed with a
European orientation of Britain’s economic policy’.100
Another adversary of Britain’s admission to the EEC was Konrad Adenauer,
who had been West German Chancellor since 1949. and Macmillan did not see
eye to eye on the Soviet Union. Adenauer believed Macmillan was inclined to
make concessions to the Soviets for electoral purposes, and was too ready to
suggest German concessions in Britain’s interest. He is said to have described
Britain as the exploiter of ‘us poor dumb Continentals’.101 Adenauer told de
Gaulle that Macmillan had offered economic union to the US—without success.
Adenauer was also worried that sterling was weak, that the administrative
apparatus of the EEC could not yet integrate Britain and the other applicants, and
that Britain was hoping to undermine Franco-German unity. Britain and the
Federal Republic were also at odds over the cost of stationing British troops in
Germany. De Gaulle fed Adenauer’s suspicions. He claimed to the Chancellor
that Macmillan had sought to include the Commonwealth in the EEC, and feared
the US would be next in line for admission. Adenauer is reported to have
concluded his discussion with de Gaulle on the issue by saying, ‘No three cheers
for a British entry’.102 The negotiations, led by Edward Heath, started in October
1961, and when they looked close to success, on 14 January 1963, de Gaulle held
a press conference in Paris, declaring that his country would veto the UK’s entry
into the EEC, come what may. The other members of the Community would
have, in principle, welcomed Britain’s admission. The same was true of many
members of the West German Establishment and the opposition Social
Democrats.
After the failure of his EEC bid, Macmillan clung even more to the US. At
Nassau in December 1962, when the failure in Europe was in sight, he got
Kennedy to agree to sell Polaris missiles for launching British nuclear warheads
from British-built submarines. Polaris replaced the Skybolt missile which, jointly
developed by Britain and the US, had been cancelled because of mounting costs.
In some quarters this gave renewed credibility to the government’s claim to have
a British, independent deterrent, and to the claim to a ‘special relationship’ with
the United States. Macmillan’s last major initiative in external affairs was the
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. This was signed in Moscow in August 1963 by Britain,
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 95

the Soviet Union and the United States. The treaty banned nuclear explosions in
the atmosphere, outer space and underwater, but not, alas, underground. Many
other states immediately signified their readiness to sign; unfortunately, France
and China were not among them. Macmillan could be proud of the outcome,
limited though it was, for he had sought it longer, and with greater zeal, than any
other statesman.

ECONOMIC TROUBLES: THE ‘GUIDING LIGHT’

By early 1961 the economy started to show signs that it was entering the ‘stop’
part of the ‘stop-go’ cycle which had become a feature of the post-war economy.
At home output was rising slowly, abroad the pound was under pressure and the
balance of payments remained in the red. In April, Selwyn Lloyd, who had
replaced Amory as Chancellor in July 1960, introduced a politically damaging
Budget—a combination of increases in the insurance stamp and health charges,
and reductions in surtax. More action followed in July. This included raising the
bank rate from 5 per cent to 7 per cent, a surcharge on purchase tax, cuts in
public expenditure and the prospect of a pay pause and long-term planning of the
economy. Within a month Britain was granted a large credit by the International
Monetary Fund (IMF). In February 1962 the Chancellor announced a 2–2.5 per
cent ‘guiding light’ for pay settlements.
A new feature of government policy to counter Britain’s economic weakness
was the setting up of the National Economic Development Council (NEDC),
proposed by the Chancellor in July. Its task was to examine British economic
prospects, stretching five or more years into the future. Its membership consisted
of appropriate ministers, civil servants, academics, and management and unions
in industry. Among the eight industrialists on NEDC were Reay Geddes of
Dunlop, F.A.Cockfield of Boots, Lord Robens of the Coal Board, a former
leading Labour politician, and Dr Richard Beeching of the British Transport
Commission. Beeching became the target of popular wrath for his plans to prune
the railways. On the union side were Cousins, Carron, Sid Greene of the rail
union, and Ron Smith. George Woodcock, General Secretary of the TUC, 1960–
69, was also a member. Remarkably, Woodcock was one of the few professional
economists on NEDC. A former Lancashire spinner who had started work at
twelve, he gained a first-class honours degree in economics at Oxford. After an
interlude in the civil service, he worked as senior economist to the TUC for 10
years.
Macmillan had favoured ‘planning’ in the 1930s and had published a book, The
Middle Way, which advocated what became known as indicative planning. But
NEDC was not the product of his fertile mind. A group of somewhat unorthodox
industrialists, led by Sir Hugh Beaver of Guinness and reinforced by Reay
Geddes, had convinced Lloyd of the idea.103 They, and some others, had been
impressed by French experience. Despite wartime devastation, colonial retreat,
labour unrest and severe political turmoil, France was achieving higher economic
96 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

growth than Britain. The French claimed to take economic planning seriously, so
it was thought that Britain should follow their example.104 One idea behind
NEDC was the need for an economic forecasting and advisory body independent
of the Treasury. There was a good deal of scepticism about the quality of the
Treasury’s advice, and the crisis of 1961 strengthened that scepticism. The
NEDC was also designed as a body through which the two sides of industry
could work out a strategy for the future. It was sold to the public as planning by
consent. In terms of what the Conservatives had said about planning for over 10
years, it represented a dramatic shift in policy. As the Conservative journalist
Henry Fairlie put it in Encounter (September 1962), it represented

almost the exact reverse of the attitude of ‘Set the People Free’, which was
Conservatism in 1951; of ‘Conservative Freedom Works’, which became
Conservatism before and after 1955, and of ‘I’m all right, Jack’, which was
Conservatism in 1959.

There was dismay in certain Conservative circles and a majority of the Cabinet
opposed it.105 Another measure conceived to help the country’s limping economy
was the National Incomes Commission announced by the Prime Minister in July
1962. This was presented as an impartial review body on pay, but it never got off
the ground because the unions did not regard it as such. ‘Neddy’ and ‘Nicky’, as
the NEDC and the Commission became known, did nothing to help the
Conservatives’ sagging fortunes.

MAC THE KNIFE’S ‘JULY MASSACRE’

From June 1961 Labour led the Conservatives in the polls, and a number of by-
elections warned the government of its likely fate at a general election. The most
dramatic of them was the loss of the ‘safe’ Conservative seat at Orpington in
March 1962. The interesting aspect of this result was that the Liberals won, not
Labour. It marked part of a trend of rising Liberal support. Although Orpington
was not Labour-type territory, there was much speculation that this Liberal
victory marked a more permanent trend towards the Liberals. This was not the
case. The new Liberal voters were, in many cases, part of the suburban revolt
against the Conservatives rather than positive conviction that the Liberals had
anything to offer. Orpington, however, was no flash in the pan. It highlighted a
trend. Dissatisfied or bored with the two main parties, more voters were
prepared to experiment with minor parties from the early 1960s on. The major
parties’ grip was loosening a little. In June 1962 Labour took their first seat from
the Conservatives since the general election, at Middlesbrough West. On the same
day the Liberals pushed Labour into third place at Derbyshire West, where the
Conservatives retained the seat but with a much reduced percentage of the vote.
In the following month, Labour retained Leicester North East, and this time the
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 97

Liberals pushed the Conservatives into third place. The next day occurred what
became known as the ‘July massacre’.
Macmillan had been ridiculed as ‘Macwonder’ and ‘Super Mac’. Now he was
christened ‘Mac the knife’. The Opposition scoffed at him, though some admired
his audacity in private. Among Conservatives there was shock and anger. He had
embarked upon the biggest Cabinet reshuffle of the post-war period. Out went
his Lord Chancellor, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Minister of Defence,
Ministers of Education, Housing and Local Government, and a number of others
of lesser importance. Lord Mills, Minister without Portfolio, also departed.
Those so slain had not formed any ‘anti-party group’ against Macmillan, nor
could they be said to represent the Right or the Left of the party. In the main they
seemed to be ‘fall guys’ for policy failures. In two major areas the vacancies
gave Macmillan the chance to appoint younger, reform-orientated, ministers.
These were Reginald Maudling (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Sir Edward
(later Lord) Boyle (Education). Some of the changes gave hope to Tory
reformers, but at the grassroots level confidence was shattered. The electorate
was not impressed either. In November 1962, in the first by-elections after the
reshuffle, Labour took Dorset South and Glasgow Woodside from the
Conservatives, and scored a near miss at Norfolk Central. Nor did the death of
Gaitskell in January 1963 seem to alter the trend very much. It was still,
however, much more a trend against the government than positively for Labour.

‘SPECULATORS…HOLDING COMMUNITY TO
RANSOM’
In addition to the economic and other problems facing Macmillan, the
government was confronted with a series of scandals which, taken together and
stretching over a fairly long period, must have harmed the credibility of the
Conservatives. First of all there was public anger over the effects of the property
boom of the 1950s and early 1960s. Over 100 people became millionaires
between 1945 and 1965 as a result of their activities as property developers.106
Jack Cotton, Charles Clore, Harry Hyams, Jack and Philip Rose, and Sir Harold
Samuels became well known for their coups and take-overs of property firms,
and the controversy much of their redeveloping caused. War damage and
economic development naturally led to the redevelopment of towns and cities.
But the frenzied redevelopment of the period owed much to the repealing—
1953, 1954 and 1959—of the Labour government’s town and country planning
legislation, under which development profits went to the state, and the creation
of a free market in development land. The familiar skyline of London was
shattered by the high-rise blocks—in part, office blocks no one wanted, luxury
flats no one could afford and hotels which were beyond the means of the natives.
Most developers kept within the law; some did not. One notorious case, which
became a symbol of the time, was that of the landlord Peter Rachman. He bought
run-down property for redevelopment. His problem was sitting tenants who
98 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

would not move. He therefore used any number of brutal and illegal means to get
them out. Sir Basil Spence, President of the Royal Institute of British Architects,
said:

The speculators are cornering the limited supply of building land in town
and country and holding the community to ransom. The money that should
be going into better architecture and higher standards is being taken by
people who have contributed nothing to the building process.107

PROFUMO: ‘TAWDRY CYNICISM’

There were a number of other scandals which cast their shadows over the affluent
society and the Conservative Party. The hold-up of the Glasgow-London mail train
and robbery of £2.5 million on 8 August 1963 must rank as one of the most
spectacular crimes in history. Although the Prime Minister could not be blamed
for this, it did appear to be one more indication that Britain was as out of date
and Edwardian as Macmillan’s image. It came at the tail-end of a number of spy
and security affairs. There was the Portland (Underwater Weapons
Establishment) spy scandal in March 1961.108 There was the case of John
Vassall, a Foreign Office clerk black-mailed into spying for the Russians and
convicted in November 1962. There was the conviction of the double agent
George Blake, who had betrayed many British operatives behind the Iron
Curtain. In January 1963 Kim Philby, former Middle East correspondent of the
Observer, and former head of the Soviet section of Britain’s Secret Intelligence
Service, reached the safety of the Soviet Union, for which he had been working
for many years. Worst of all for Macmillan was the Profumo affair. John
Profumo, Secretary of State for War, a minister not in the Cabinet, had an affair
with Christine Keeler, a 20-year-old model, who was simultaneously involved
with Captain Eugene Ivanov, assistant Soviet naval attaché and an intelligence
officer. Profumo’s mistake was to deny, in the Commons, his sexual relations
with the girl. This untruth was exposed by the Sunday Mirror. During June-
September 1963 Lord Denning investigated the matter. He criticized Macmillan
in his report: ‘It was the responsibility of the Prime Minister and his colleagues…
to deal with this situation: and they did not succeed in doing so.’109 Denning did
not believe the case revealed a fall in the integrity of public life in Britain. The
difference was that, compared with the past, ‘Scandalous information about well-
known people has become a marketable commodity’. Doubtless this was so, but
many people thought the affair revealed the hypocrisy in high places. An editorial
in The Times (4 July 1963) summed up what many disillusioned Conservative
voters thought: ‘The tawdry cynicism that the worst Conservatives flaunt needs
to be exorcized.’ Ronald Butt, in the Financial Times (20 September 1963),
blamed the ‘pay pause’ and Profumo for the decline in Conservative support. He
believed ‘a large section of the middle-class had come to think the government was
not “fair”’. Pounded from all sides, and suffering from an illness which was not
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 99

just diplomatic, Macmillan resigned in October 1963. Maudling reported him as

saying that ‘he never thought he could be “brought down by two tarts”’.110

HOME PREMIER: ‘BAD JOKE OF DEMOCRACY’

At the Conservative conference at Blackpool Home read out Macmillan’s letter
of resignation. It caused ‘consternation, confusion and intrigue’.111 There
appeared to be four potential successors: Maudling, Macleod, Heath and Butler.
Two others, Home and Hailsham, seemed disqualified by virtue of being in the
Lords rather than the Commons. The removal of this disqualification was,
however, made possible by the Peerage Act, 1963, which was given all-party
support and became law on 31 July. Under the Act, a peer can disclaim his
peerage for his lifetime. The campaign to change the law was led by Tony Benn,
the Labour MP, who succeeded to his father’s title in November 1960. Butler
was well qualified in terms of experience; Maudling in terms of youth. Maudling
(1917–79) was brought up in comfortable circumstances in Bexhill and London.
After wartime service in the RAF and Oxford, he qualified as a barrister and
worked for the Conservative Research Department. Elected to the Commons in
1950, he served as Minister of Supply (1955–57), Paymaster-General (1957–59),
President of the Board of Trade (1959–61) and then as Colonial Secretary before
his appointment as Chancellor in 1962. He was promoted to the Cabinet in
September 1957. Hailsham won the Oxford by-election in 1938 as a staunch
supporter of Chamberlain’s appeasement policy. His major appointments were
First Lord of the Admiralty, Minister of Education, Lord President of the
Council and Minister of Science. He unexpectedly renounced his peerage to
make himself a contender. Macleod was joint Chairman of the Conservative
Party with Lord Poole. He was thought to be out of the race because he was ‘too
left-wing, too tired’.112 Conservative leaders were not elected in those days. As
Maudling has recorded, the decision was reached through ‘the rather mysterious
channels of communication within the Party’.113 Butler tells us that Macmillan
switched his support to Home, ignoring the mounting opposition within the
Cabinet to him, and advised the Queen to ask him to form a government.114 Both
Hailsham and Maudling withdrew in favour of Butler, but to no avail. The row
over the new Prime Minister led to Macleod and Enoch Powell refusing to serve
under Home. Pressure forced the Conservatives to change their method of
selecting the Leader from ‘mysterious channels’ to election.
The Times (19 October 1963) drew attention to the new Prime Minister’s
weaknesses: ‘It is not the earl but the politician over whom the doubt arises.
Except for a spell in the junior office of Minister of State for Scotland in 1951–
55 Lord Home has no administrative experience of home affairs.’ Home (b.
1903) was first elected, as Lord Dunglass, to the Commons in 1931 and worked
as Chamberlain’s Parliamentary Private Secretary (1937–39). Tuberculosis kept
him out of the political arena for some time, and he was defeated in 1945. He
was briefly an MP again (1950–51) before succeeding as 14th Earl. He entered
100 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

the Cabinet as Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations in 1955,

becoming Foreign Secretary in 1960. His promotion to the Foreign Office caused
a storm. He fell in with Macmillan’s attempts at détente. On the EEC, though not
enthusiastic, he went along with official attempts to gain entry. On southern
Africa and the Middle East he was more to the Right than Macmillan. The new
tenant of 10 Downing Street was estimated by the Observer (20 October 1963) to
be owner of 96,000 acres of farmland, forest and grouse moor in Scotland. This
empire included 56 large farms and many other properties. Home had married
the daughter of his old headmaster at Eton, a lady with a reputation for having a
social conscience. He disclaimed his earldom, becoming plain Sir Alec Douglas-
Home, and was duly elected MP for Kinross and West Perthshire.
In his conference speech Butler talked about the Conservative society where
‘there are a variety of ladders to the top and…positions of responsibility are not
reserved for one coterie or class or band of education’.115 He was postulating an
ideal, something to be aimed at, but it is not unfair to ask what progress the
Conservatives had made towards realizing this society. We need not dwell on the
fact that it was not true of the Cabinets of Macmillan or Sir Alec: out of 23
members of Douglas-Home’s Cabinet 10 were old Etonians, only three had not
been to public schools. It one looks at the background of Conservative
candidates in the election that followed, one is forced to the conclusion that
Butler was either a voice crying in the wilderness or merely a politician engaging
in empty demagoguery, mouthing the rhetoric of the time to win back Mr
Orpington. Out of 304 Conservative MPs elected in 1964, 229 were products of
public schools, 97 of them from Eton, Harrow and Winchester. More than half
had been at Oxbridge. Perhaps more significant still was the fact that the
replacements for Conservative MPs who either had died or had retired during the
period 1960–64 were of exactly the same background as the MPs they
replaced.116 Although it was estimated that between 30 and 40 per cent of trade
unionists voted Conservative, there was only one bona fide Conservative trade
unionist in the Commons: Ray Mawby, a former electrician. What was true of
education was also true of occupation. Bank employees, computer operators,
local government officers, draughtsmen, works managers, white-collar civil
servants, GPs, and all the rest—hardly any one of these occupational groups,
‘Orpington man’, were likely to be found on the Conservative benches. Did it
matter? Reginald Bevins, Macmillan’s Postmaster-General, answered the
question in 1965:

A Party that cannot gain power without a big share of the working class
and lower middle classes’ vote cannot afford to be led predominantly by a
group of old Etonians, however gifted they may be. This makes a bad joke
of democracy and nowadays it is seen that way, especially by the younger
generation. It is also dangerous because when a majority of our leaders
come from the same social strata, far removed from ordinary life, they are
unlikely to make decisions which are acceptable to ordinary people… The
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 101

notion that some people are born to rule, or even know how to rule, must
be destroyed.117

BRITAIN: ‘RELEGATED TO…THIRD-CLASS’?

Sir Alec found his party divided not only over his leadership, but also over
legislation, which nearly robbed the government of its majority. This was the
abolition of resale price maintenance (RPM). Heath, as Secretary of State for
Industry, Trade and Regional Development, was responsible. The Abolition of
RPM was designed to increase competition in the retail trade and thus contribute
to keeping prices down. The small shopkeepers who were regarded as solidly
Tory felt they needed RPM to enable them to compete with the supermarkets. At
one stage, the government’s majority dropped to one. It was the closest a
government had come to defeat on an important measure since 1951.
One important measure which Sir Alec’s regime agreed to implement was the
expansion set by the Robbins Committee on higher education. This was probably
the most important single domestic reform embarked upon by the Macmillan-
Home governments. The Committee had been set up by Macmillan in December
1960 under the chairmanship of Lord Robbins, a professor of economics.
University places were to double, reaching 218,000 within 10 years, with 390,
000 places in higher education as a whole. Robbins had examined higher
education in the United States, the Soviet Union, West Germany, France and
certain other countries. It was by no means critical of what had been achieved in
Britain. Staff/student ratios were better in Britain, few students failed to graduate,
and more students were assisted from public funds than in most countries. Yet it
was felt that many more could benefit from higher education, and many more
graduates would be needed if Britain was to maintain its place in the modern
world. It was particularly concerned about technology, applied science and
management. The Committee recommended that the existing Colleges of
Technology be developed as technological universities. It also recommended five
special institutions to promote technology. It was influenced by the lack of any
parallel in Britain of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the technical
universities of Zurich and Delft. Robbins found that education for management
was not satisfactory. There had been criticism of this both from the business
community and the NEDC. It was recommended, therefore, that at least two
major postgraduate schools should be established in key business centres. It also
stressed the need for foreign-language courses for those at technological
universities. Another innovation Robbins wanted was a National Council for
Academic Awards to award degrees to students studying in institutions other
than universities. Robbins also called for improvements in the pay and
conditions of university staff. Finally, it wanted a separate Minister of Arts and
Sciences. This recommendation was not accepted by the government.
Robbins’s was the fifth report on education since February 1959. It was a sign
of the great public interest and anxiety on the issue. The McMeeking Committee
102 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

(1959) wanted improvements in technical training and more apprenticeships. The

Crowther Report (1959) wanted the school-leaving age raised to 16, and part-
time education for those who left school. A government White Paper published
in 1961 recommended more and better technical education, with new courses,
high entry standards, extension of day-release opportunities and more sandwich
courses. Finally, the Newsom Committee (1963) also advocated raising the
school-leaving age and offering an alternative to the General Certificate of
Education (GCE) ordinary level.
The Conservatives could claim that, since 1951, students in higher education
had doubled and seven new universities had been created. The number of
teachers in training had risen from 28,000 in 1955 to 55,000 in 1963 and there
had been an explosion in the numbers taking GCE ‘O’ and ‘A’ levels. Yet this
did little to change the impression that Britain was failing in the international
league table, and that this failure would have consequences for its future
commercial and industrial competitiveness. Dr Jacob Bronowski, Director-
General of the National Coal Board’s process development department and a
popular television figure and writer, wanted more scientists in boardrooms and
politics. Unless Britain thoroughly and rapidly upgraded the status of scientists,
it would soon be ‘relegated to the status of a third-class power’.118

CHILDREN: ‘IF THEY BELIEVE THEY’RE SECOND

CLASS’
There was also much debate about the divisive nature of secondary education.
The Education 1944 had established secondary schooling for all, but it was based,
in theory, on selection at 11 for one of three types of education: modern,
technical or grammar. The technical schools remained few. The great majority of
working-class children went to modern schools and the majority of pupils in
grammar schools were from the middle class. At first, as the 11-plus was
supposed to test intelligence, it was presumed that most working-class children
were less intelligent than their middle-class peers. However, after 1951 doubts
were raised about the validity of these tests. In that year the GCE replaced the
School Certificate as the academic examination which would eventually lead to
university. It was presumed that ‘modern’ pupils would not take it. Later some
secondary modern headteachers started to introduce a GCE stream in their
schools, with surprising results. The numbers of modern pupils achieving GCE
results similar to those of grammar school entrants, though a minority of those
taking the exam, were significant enough to lead to serious doubts about the
usefulness of the 11-plus.119 The 11-plus came to be seen as a test which
discriminated strongly, if not deliberately, against the working class. With the
increasing demand for paper qualifications, middle-class parents whose children
were 11-plus failures demanded a chance for their children to take the GCE, so
the number of moderns offering GCEs rose. But critics of the system pointed out
that these schools suffered from poor staffing ratios, less-qualified teachers and
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 103

poorer facilities, as compared with grammar and public schools. If selection at 11

was an arbitrary, often unfair, method, with great variation according to which
part of the country one lived in,120 then this unfair distribution of resources in
secondary education could not be justified. It discriminated against the great
majority of the country’s children.
Both the discrediting of the 11-plus and the maldistribution of resources
provided powerful arguments in favour of comprehensive schools, which were
supposed to provide equal opportunities for all children, allowing individual
children to rise as far as their abilities would take them. The comprehensive
system was also designed to give the children a greater sense of security and self-
esteem than the selective system, which had marked so many children as
failures. The government was not prepared to take action to force through
comprehensives, and doubtless many Conservative politicians were not
convinced of the need for change. Sir Edward Boyle, who became Minister of
Education in the summer of 1962, was sympathetic towards reform. He
commented that if children are made to feel they are ‘second-class children, then
they react by behaving as second-class children. You must never make children
feel they are being divided into sheep and goats.’121 He welcomed the London
County Council’s decision to end the 11-plus.

THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS: ‘A DIVISIVE FACTOR’

The other big issue in secondary education was the future of the private sector,
both the direct-grant grammar schools, which received some support from local
authorities, and the more exclusive public schools. The public schools generated
much anger on the Left because their pupils did so well at gaining university
places and getting into the civil service and the professions. If socialists and
Liberals were angry about the situation, Tory reformers were embarrassed. As
Sir Robin Williams of the Conservative Bow Group put it, The public schools…
attract a degree of envy and resentment which is unhealthy in a stable democracy.’
He continued:

since the pupils at these schools come with limited exceptions from well-to-
do homes…and mix with children of similar backgrounds, they have little
chance of learning about the way of life and habits of mind of those
different from themselves. The lack of this knowledge means that the
understanding which must form the basis of ‘the social unity which makes
all men brothers’ is also absent. Although such is not the intention of those
who run the public schools, they are in fact a divisive factor in society.122

Sir Robin proposed Queen’s Scholarships and other means so that eventually 35
to 50 per cent of admissions at leading public schools would be ‘grant-aided
pupils’. As a party the Conservatives had no plans to tamper with this area so
important to the upper echelons of their clientele. Labour, in its Signposts for the
104 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

Sixties, advocated the setting up of an educational trust which, ‘after full

consultation’, would integrate the public schools into the state system. This was
Labour’s policy under Winchester-educated Gaitskell and it remained the policy
under its new, grammar-school-educated Leader, Wilson.

WILSON: ‘LET’S GO WITH LABOUR’

Harold Wilson (1916–95) was elected Leader of the Labour Party in February
1963, when he beat George Brown on the second ballot by 144 votes to 103. In
the first round James Callaghan had come bottom of the poll with only 41 votes
and had been thus eliminated from the contest.123 As was customary then, only
Labour MPs took part in the vote. Wilson had won with many votes from the
Centre and Right of the party as well as from the Left. Yet his election was seen
by many as a shift to the Left. A careful study of his record would have led to the
conclusion that his stance was slightly Left of Centre. As President of the Board
of Trade, he had resigned from Attlee’s Cabinet with Bevan, not as an anti-rearmer,
but because he believed the degree of rearmament would cripple the economy.
When Bevan resigned from the shadow cabinet in 1954, Wilson took his place,
and his impressive analytical skill, knowledge of economics, ability to deal with
statistics and, not least, the ability to make people laugh, earned him a reputation
for professionalism. In November 1960 he stood against Gaitskell in the election
for the party leadership, losing by 166 votes to 81. It was not that he was a
unilateralist, he claimed, but because he disagreed with Gaitskell’s failure to
accept the conference decision on nuclear disarmament. On the Clause IV issue
he took up a nicely ambiguous position. He wanted to unite on policy, not divide
on theology. Basically, he advocated a moderate policy on public ownership. He
had got two cheers from the Left for his advocacy of increased trade with the
Soviet bloc and for his support for a campaign against world poverty. Like his
close political companion Crossman, he was a friend of Israel, which was not
without significance in the Parliamentary Labour Party. So much for Wilson the
platform figure. What was he off the platform?
Wilson’s father was an industrial chemist by profession, a Lib-Lab by political
conviction and a Baptist by religion. Wilson was born in Hudders-field, where
his family were prosperous enough to own a car and to send Harold and his
mother for a visit to his uncle in Australia. In 1932 the family moved to
Merseyside and lived in ‘pleasant semi-rural surroundings’.124 Harold’s next
move was to Jesus College, Oxford, with a scholarship from Wirral Grammar
School. He read philosophy, politics and economics. On graduation he was
appointed lecturer in economics at New College, where he came into contact
with Sir William Beveridge. When war came, he was drafted into the civil
service, soon becoming head of the Manpower, Statistics, and Intelligence
Branch of the Ministry of Labour. By the end of the war he had had a wide
variety of appointments in the service. His contribution was significant enough to
be mentioned in the official history.125 He was in an excellent position to choose
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 105

the civil service, academic life or politics as a career. He won Ormskirk for
Labour in 1945, and by 1947 was the youngest member of the Cabinet and
President of the Board of Trade. In 1940 Wilson married Gladys (Mary) Baldwin,
daughter of a Congregationalist Minister from Cambridge. They had met in 1934
when she worked as a typist at Port Sunlight.
Like Home, Wilson was limited by what he inherited and by the knowledge
that an election was not far off. The party realized that too and responded to the
challenge. The ginger groups of Left and Right, VfS and CDS, disbanded and
put themselves at the disposal of the new leader. With the possibility of a Labour
victory apparently strong, the energies of some CND activists were transferred to
Labour, and the movement retired, once again, to the outer fringes of the
political scene.
If Wilson believed in anything, he certainly believed in the influence of the
media. And he was determined to exploit this to his own advantage. On the basis
of research done by Dr Mark Abrams’s polling agency, Labour’s publicity was
aimed at the ‘target voters’, and especially those in the marginal constituencies.
Target voters were thought to be one-sixth of the electorate, who might be
expected to change their views and, just as important, actually vote. On
nationalization and defence they inclined towards the Conservatives; on housing
and education, they were closer to Labour. Luckily for Wilson, they were not too
interested in defence or nationalization, but they were interested in Britain’s
general standing in the world. John Harris, Labour’s Director of Publicity, had
recruited a small, unpaid team of supporters who worked in public relations and
the media. This team worked with Abrams. In May 1963 Labour launched an
advertising campaign based on Abrams’s findings. This was conducted through a
number of national dailies. A portrait of Wilson featured prominently, together
with the campaign symbol and slogan—a thumbs-up sign and the invitation,
‘Let’s GO with Labour and we’ll get things done.’ This campaign was something
entirely new for Labour. Wilson could thank the Gaitskellites for it. Most of the
unofficial publicity team had been Gaitskellites. Wilson did not hesitate to
employ their skills.
The Conservatives were old hands at public relations and they too started a
publicity campaign in May 1963. They did not concentrate on Macmillan, more
on what they considered to be their own achievements and the failings of their
opponents. Moreover, they had more to spend than Labour. Once the leadership
issue was settled, they went over to popularizing the new Prime Minister.

KENNEDY SHOT: ‘I DIDN’T BELIEVE IT’.

Tony Benn recorded that when he was told over the phone of Kennedy’s
assassination on 22 November 1963, ‘I didn’t believe it’.126 The President’s
death could have been bad for Labour. Wilson tried to present himself as a
British Kennedy, but had little to go on. His rhetoric contained a certain
similarity to that of Kennedy, but there the similarity ended.127 Their
106 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

backgrounds had nothing in common. They were born within a year of each
other, but there was no physical resemblance between either Wilson and
Kennedy or Wilson and the two aspiring ersatz Kennedys—Willy Brandt and
Pierre Trudeau. Wilson’s rhetoric of science, efficiency, meritocracy, new
frontiers, the New Britain, led many of his acolytes to overlook his lack of
height, his utterly non-athletic appearance and his lack of any sartorial style.
Still, with the hero dead, would voters fall back in shock to a more traditional
leader?
Sir Alec too had his problems. The New Year found him facing army mutinies
in Africa, rioting in Southern Rhodesia and fighting between Greeks and Turks
in Cyprus. In Vietnam the conflict escalated. At home there were the traditional
worries. In February he received a Treasury memorandum warning of a sharp
deterioration in the balance of payments’ outlook. Unless remedies were applied
quickly there would be another serious payments crisis in October.128 In an
interview with the Financial Times (7 February 1964) Maudling admitted that
Britain was going to have a ‘tight situation in the latter half of the year’. Despite
the dangers, Home decided to hold on until the autumn. He knew the possible
advantages. It gave him more time to project himself, a good summer could have
a soothing effect upon the electorate, the Opposition could run out of steam or
simply bore the electorate to death by campaigning during the holiday period. This
turned out to be a good gamble. Labour wisely abstained from too much
campaigning in the summer, but the summer was good and it did seem to help
the government.

ELECTION ’64: ‘THINGS MIGHT START SLIPPING’

As the election campaign opened in September 1964, Labour’s hopes were
dashed with Gallup and NOP polls putting the Conservatives ahead—for the first
time in three years! Labour looked destined for the role of perpetual opposition.
How was it possible that the Conservatives had made such a total recovery? Did
Sir Alec have a certain charisma after all? Deference, among men as well as
women, was not dead by 1964. Some women felt he looked in need of help—he
brought out their maternal instinct—and they were prepared to give it. Having
been out of office for so long, Labour were open to the charge that they lacked
the ability to govern. Wilson was good on television, but the Conservatives
claimed that Labour was just a one-man band. They also alleged that Labour’s
proposals were either impractical or too costly. Brown repeated a similar slip by
Gaitskell in 1959. In answer to a question on housing asked at an uneventful
meeting in a Derbyshire village, he talked in terms of a possible 3 per cent
interest rate for new home loans. At the time the interest was 6 per cent. The
Sunday Express translated Brown’s words into a definite commitment.129 The
‘commitment’ made Labour appear at best amateurish, at worst, irresponsible.
Yet, as Butler expressed his fear in a Daily Express interview, ‘things might start
slipping in the last few days… They won’t slip towards us.’130 He was right. On
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 107

30 September there was bad news on the balance of payments front. Home was
more confident when dealing with defence than with domestic issues. But most
voters were more interested in prices and the balance of payments than in
prestige and the balance of terror. Hogg’s remark that anyone voting Labour was
‘stark staring bonkers’ did the Conservatives no good. When the polling-stations
closed, it was anyone’s guess, and it was still anyone’s guess hours later after
most of the results were out. Even when Wilson arrived in London at
lunchtime the next day, he could only comment, ‘It’s getting more like the
Kennedy story all along. We’ll get the result from Cook County soon.’131 His
relentless pursuit of supreme political office ended at 3.50 in the afternoon when
he got the call from Buckingham Palace. Labour had a majority of four.
It has been estimated that had 900 voters either not voted for Labour or
abstained, Wilson would have lost the election.132 If there had been no postal
vote, Labour’s overall majority would have been 20 and possibly 40.133 Labour’s
poor organization and Liberal interventions had also cost a few seats. Yet, all in
all, it was a disappointing result after such high hopes. Labour had to ask itself why
it had lost working-class support. Certainly in a few areas, most notably in
Smethwick, it was due to fears of unrestricted Commonwealth immigration
which had come to be associated with Labour. But this was not the whole
explanation. The parties had to ask themselves what factors lay behind the lower
turnout compared with 1959. Did it indicate greater contentment with the state of
Britain, or did it mean greater disillusionment with both major parties? No
satisfactory answers were found to these questions. The 1964 result was a
harbinger of the unsettled state of opinion, the more questioning, more doubting,
more cynical attitude of the 1970s, which distinguished that period from the
period 1945–59.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 James Stuart, Within the Fringe (1967), 47.

2 Harold Macmillan, Winds of Change, 1914–39 (1966), 99.
3 James Margach, The Abuse of Power (1978), 116–18.
4 Anthony Sampson, Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity (1967), 25.
5 ibid., 25–6.
6 ibid., 64.
7 Diana Cooper, Trumpets from the Steep (1960), 174.
8 Sampson, op. cit., 99.
9 ibid., 107.
10 ibid., 109. Reginald Maudling, Memoirs (1978), 231, makes the same comment.
11 Harold Macmillan, Riding the Storm, 1956–1959 (1971), 191.
12 Christopher Hollis, The Conservative Party in History’, Political Quarterly, 3 (July-
September, 1961), 219–20.
13 Lord Hill, Both Sides of the Hill (1964), 235.
108 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

14 Lord Egremont, Wyndham and Children First (1968).

15 Margach, op. cit., 118.
16 F.S.Northedge, Descent from Power: British Foreign Policy 1945–1973 (1974),
186. Barbara Castle, Fighting all the Way (1993), 291–308, gives her personal
involvement with the Cyprus problem.
17 Frank Parkin, Middle Class Radicalism (Manchester, 1968), 112.
18 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: Memoirs of Lord Butler (1971), 201.
19 Conservative and Unionist Central Office, The Campaign Guide 1964 (1964), 42.
20 ibid., 42.
21 ibid., 11
22 ibid.
23 Andrew Shonfield, British Economic Policy since the War (1958).
24 ibid.
25 See figures in Michael Balfour, West Germany (1968), 317; also those in Stockholm
International Peace Research Yearbook 1978, 144–5.
26 Shonfield, op. cit., 107.
27 ibid., 153.
28 Samuel Brittan, The Treasury under the Tories, 1951–1964 (Harmondsworth,
1965), 136.
29 The Campaign Guide 1964, op. cit., 153.
30 Henry Pelling, A History of British Trade Unionism (1963), 253.
31 The Campaign Guide 1964, op. cit., 153.
32 ibid.
33 Ministry of Labour, Report of the Committee on the Selection and Training of
Supervisors (HMSO, 1962), 12.
34 ‘Profile of an M.D.’, Financial Times, 14 February 1969.
35 ibid.
36 ibid.
37 The Campaign Guide 1964, op. cit., 174.
38 William Horsley and Roger Buckley, Nippon New Superpower: Japan since 1945
(1990), 76.
39 The Campaign Guide 1964, op. cit., 31.
40 ibid., 190.
41 ibid., 173.
42 ibid., 9.
43 ibid., 115.
44 Brittan, op. cit., 138–9.
45 Andrew J.Pierre, Nuclear Politics: The British Experience with an Independent
Strategic Force (1972), 178.
46 Macmillan, Riding the Storm, op. cit., 314.
47 Northedge, op., cit.
48 General Sir William Jackson, Withdrawal from Empire: A Military View (1986),
113.
49 ibid., 114.
50 ibid., 114, 352.
51 ibid., 347.
52 Castle, op. cit., 288.
53 Hansard (Commons), vol. 610, col. 193.
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 109

54 Hansard (Commons), vol. 610, col. 235.

55 Nigel Fisher, Iain Macleod (1973), 144; Jackson, op. cit., 109.
56 Denis Judd, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present
(1990), 349.
57 ibid., 352.
58 Harold Macmillan, Pointing the Way, 1959–61 (1972), 156.
59 ibid., 385.
60 Gillian King, Imperial Outpost: Aden: its Place in British Strategic Policy (1964),
148. See also W.P.Kirkman, Unscrambling an Empire (1966).
61 Hansard (Commons), vol. 667, col. 266.
62 Hansard (Commons), vol. 667, cols 309–10.
63 W.F.Gutteridge, The Military in African Politics (1969), 37.
64 G.D.H.Cole, Is This Socialism? (1954), 16.
65 G.D.H.Cole, World Socialism Restated (1956), 5.
66 ibid., 47.
67 R.H.S.Crossman, Socialism and the New Despotism (1955), 13
68 Socialist Union, Twentieth Century Socialism (1956), 15.
69 ibid., 147.
70 Hugh Gaitskell, Socialism and Nationalisation (1957), 5.
71 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 1956–57, 15892–3.
72 Michael Foot, Aneurin Bevan, 1945–60 (1975), 575.
73 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 1956–57, 16175A.
74 Parkin, op. cit., 104–5.
75 John Braine, Room at the Top (Harmondsworth, 1959), inside cover.
76 Paul Johnson, ‘A Sense of Outrage’ in Norman Mackenzie (ed.), Conviction
(1958), 217.
77 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 19.
78 D.E.Butler and Richard Rose, The British General Election of 1959 (1960), 204.
79 Vernon Bagdanor, ‘The Labour Party in Opposition, 1951–1964’, in Vernon
Bagdanor and Robert Skidelsky (eds), The Age of Affluence, 1951–1964 (1970),
98.
80 Mark Abrams, Richard Rose and Rita Hinden, Must Labour Lose? (1960), 100.
81 ibid., 31.
82 ibid.
83 ibid.
84 ibid., 13, 16.
85 Margaret Stewart, Frank Cousins: A Study (1968).
86 Stephen Haseler, The Gaitskellites: Revisionism in the Labour Party 1951–64
(1969), 189.
87 Stewart, op. cit., 101.
88 ibid., 102.
89 Macmillan, Pointing the Way, op cit., 393.
90 The Campaign Guide 1964, 584–5.
91 The Labour Party, Report of the Sixty-first Annual Conference of the Labour Party
(1962), 159.
92 ibid., 246.
93 The four Labour MPs were technically independent because they had had the Whip
withdrawn because of their earlier opposition to the PLP’s defence policy. Much of
110 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64

the argument that went on at this time over the EEC in Britain is given in Lord
Windlesham, Communication and Political Power (1966).
94 Arthur M.Schlesinger Jr., A Thousand Days: John F.Kennedy in the White House
(New York, 1965), 340–1.
95 Schlesinger, op. cit., 720.
96 ibid.
97 ibid.
98 John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (1993), 128.
99 Joseph Frankel, British Foreign Policy 1945–1973 (1975), 306.
100 ibid.; Campbell, op. cit., 128.
101 Terence Prittie, Konrad Adenauer 1876–1967 (1972), 268.
102 Prittie, op. cit., 293.
103 Samuel Brittan, Steering the Economy: The Role of the Treasury (1969), 150.
104 Thomas Wilson, ‘Planning and Growth’, Crossbow, Supplement No. 3, 1962. This
gives some clues about the government’s ‘rethinking’ on economic planning and
outlines French experience. Christopher Dow’s The Management of the British
Economy 1945–60 (Cambridge, 1964) was also influential, as were the works of
Shonfield.
105 Brittan, op. cit., 152.
106 Stephen Aris, The Jews in Business (1970), 163.
107 Financial Times, 17 June 1960.
108 Gordon Lonsdale, the spy in question, gives his version in Spy: Twenty Years of
Secret Service (1965). For Philby see Bruce Page, David Leitch and Philip
Knightley, Philby: The Spy who Betrayed a Generation (1968).
109 Guardian, 26 September 1963.
110 Maudling, op. cit., 124. Two young women featured in the affair.
111 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible, op. cit., 242.
112 Observer, 13 October 1963.
113 Maudling, op. cit., 128.
114 Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible, op. cit., 128.
115 ibid., 244.
116 D.E.Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964 (1965), 239.
117 Bevins, op. cit., 156–7.
118 The Times, 17 September 1963.
119 Brian Simon, Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School (1953); David
Rubinstein and Brian Simon, The Evolution of the Comprehensive School 1926–
1972 (1973), 56.
120 J.W.B.Douglas, The Home and the School (1964), 24.
121 Sunday Times, 9 September 1962.
122 Robin Williams, Whose Public Schools? (1957), 21.
123 The votes on the first ballot were Wilson 115, Brown 88, Callaghan, 41.
124 Gerald Eyre Noel, Harold Wilson and the New Britain (1964), 27.
125 Noel, op. cit., 48–9.
126 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn (introduced by Ruth Winstone), The Benn Diaries
(1995), 105.
127 Kennedy’s influence on Wilson is discussed in David Nunnerley, President
Kennedy and Britain (1972), 232–4.
 MACMILLAN AND THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY, 1957–64 111

128 See William Rees-Mogg and Anthony Vice, ‘Treasury Warns Sir Alec of a Balance
of Payments Crisis’, Sunday Times, 16 February 1964.
129 Anthony Howard and Richard West, The Making of the Prime Minister (1965),
163–72.
130 Campbell, op. cit., 164.
131 Howard and West, op. cit., 235. Cook County, in the district of Illinois, whose
marginal vote for Kennedy in 1960 swung the state and therefore the United States
in his favour.
132 ibid., 225.
133 Butler and King, op. cit., 226.
 6
WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–
70

‘THE NEWS FROM MOSCOW’

On the day that Sir Alec Douglas-Home was being overthrown by the ballot-box,
Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was overthrown by a Kremlin intrigue. Harold
Wilson reflected later, ‘It was an open question whether, if the news from
Moscow had come an hour or two before the polls closed, there would have been
an electoral rush to play safe and to vote the existing Government back into
power.’1 He could also have mentioned that on the same day the Chinese were
exploding their first atom bomb. However, millions of people around the world
were not watching events in London or Moscow but in Tokyo, where the
Olympic Games were in full swing, thus reflecting the economic success and
stability of Japan. In South Africa Nelson Mandela was attempting to come to
terms with the hard realities of the ruthless prison sentence which had just been
imposed upon him. Happy to be Prime Minister but disappointed that his
majority was only four, Wilson moved quickly to construct his government.

WILSON: ‘A MODERN COUNTERPART OF RICHARD

III’
Like his predecessors Wilson had to strike a balance between various sections of
his party, disarm potential rebels by including them, and satisfy the aspirations of
his rivals. He achieved a fair degree of success in this. He showed commendable
loyalty to Patrick Gordon Walker by offering him the Foreign Office. He had
lost his seat at Smethwick which he had held since 1945. Gordon Walker (1907–
80, educated at Wellington and Oxford), had served Attlee at Commonwealth
Relations, 1950–51. He had been a leading Gaitskellite. George Brown (1914–
85) was given the new post of Secretary of State at the Department of Economic
Affairs (DEA). Brown left school at 15 to become a clerk and then a fur
salesman. At 22 he was working for the TGWU. Elected to the Commons in
1945, he served as Minister of Works (1947–51). He was something of an
embarrassment for his fits of temper, his drinking and public lapses.2
Wilson appointed James Callaghan (b. 1912) Chancellor of the Exchequer. He
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 113

was a Cardiff MP, the son of a chief petty officer, who had served as a wartime
naval officer and as junior minister at the Admiralty and at Transport under
Attlee. Like Brown, he had come to prominence on the trade union wing of the
party. Douglas Jay (1907–95, Winchester and Oxford), an experienced
economist and Gaitskellite, got the Board of Trade. Sir Frank Soskice (1902–79
St Paul’s and Balliol) had been Attlee’s Solicitor-General and, briefly, Attorney-
General; Wilson made him Home Secretary. The Earl of Longford (b. 1905, Eton
and Oxford), a scion of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, banker, publisher, prominent
Catholic, friend of Gaitskell and, as Lord Pakenham, Attlee’s Minister of Civil
Aviation and later First Lord of the Admiralty, was appointed Lord Privy Seal.
The Ministry of Defence went to Denis Healey (b. 1917, Bradford Grammar and
Oxford), who was regarded as a distinguished commentator on defence matters.
He had served with distinction in the war. A student Communist, the Cold War
thrust him to the Right of the Labour Party, as did the experience he gained as
head of Labour’s International Department, 1945–52. Agriculture went to Fred
Peart (b. 1914, secondary and Durham), a former school teacher and wartime
captain. Ray Gunter (1909–77), a former official of the Transport Salaried Staffs
Association, was given the Ministry of Labour. The new Minister of Education
and Science was Michael Stewart (1906–90, Christ’s Hospital and Oxford). A
wartime captain in intelligence, he served Attlee as Under-Secretary of State for
War. Lord Gardiner (1900– 90, Harrow and Oxford) served as Lord Chancellor,
1964–70.
What of Wilson’s friends, his old Bevanite comrades who had done so much
to help him succeed? Barbara Castle (b. 1911, Bradford Girls’ Grammar and
Oxford), a journalist from an old ILP family, was named Minister of Overseas
Development. Charming as well as intelligent, she had been on Labour’s NEC
since 1950. Richard Crossman (1907–74, Winchester and Oxford) took over
Housing and Local Government. Anthony Greenwood (1911–82, Merchant
Taylors’ and Oxford), the son of Arthur Greenwood, took over the Colonial
Office. Arthur Bottomley (1907–) went to the Commonwealth Office. He had
served Attlee as a junior minister at the Dominions Office and Overseas Trade
and was a former trade union organizer. Another former union organizer, James
Griffiths (1890–1975), who had been Deputy Leader of the party, 1955–59, and
Attlee’s Colonial Secretary, 1950–51, got the Welsh Office. Griffiths was Centre-
Right. An unexpected member of the Cabinet was Frank Cousins (1904–86),
General Secretary of the TGWU, who was given the new Ministry of
Technology (see p. 127).
The architect of Wilson’s 1963 victory, George Wigg (1900–83), had to be
content with being Paymaster-General, which was a post outside the Cabinet. He
had risen through the ranks of the army to become a colonel in the Education
Corps. He had done more than anyone to bring down Profumo. In his memoirs
he commented about Wilson’s appointments:
114 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

the more violent and loud-mouthed an opponent had been, the better his
chance of being included in the Wilson administration… Many times I told
Wilson he was a modern counterpart of Richard III, who advanced his
enemies, forgot his friends, and ‘got done’ for his trouble.3

Wilson had a Cabinet of 23—the same size as that of Douglas-Home. Of this

number, 10 had attended Headmasters’ Conference (‘public’) schools and
Oxford; one, the Prime Minister, a maintained grammar school and Oxford. Two
others had gone from non-public schools to provincial or Scottish universities,
and 10 had not received higher education.
Although Barbara Castle was the only woman in the Cabinet, Miss Margaret
Herbison was appointed Minister of Pensions and National Insurance, outside the
Cabinet. A graduate of Glasgow University and a teacher, Herbison had served
as junior minister under Attlee. Four women were appointed as junior ministers.

CIVIL SERVICE: ‘EXCESSIVE POWER’

Marcia Williams described Wilson as a traditionalist who enjoyed much of the
ceremonial.4 Yet before gaining office he had written about sweeping away the
‘Edwardian establishment mentality’.5 In office, one finds Wilson going along
with archaic rituals. ‘I left the Palace boiling with indignation and feeling that
this was an attempt to impose tribal magic and personal loyalty on people whose
real duty was only to their electors.’6 Thus wrote Tony Benn on 21 October 1964
after having been sworn in as a member of the Privy Council and Postmaster-
General in Harold Wilson’s government. The ceremony, at Buckingham Palace,
was quite elaborate. Crossman was equally scathing: ‘I don’t suppose that
anything more dull, pretentious, or plain silly has ever been invented.’ The
ministers had to learn how to kiss the Queen’s hand, bow, kneel and walk
backwards.7 Jenkins remarked on the ‘fantastic archaism of the oath’.8 These
were ministers with crippling official schedules facing a disappearing pound yet
Wilson, the ‘moderniser’, did nothing to bring this to an end.
Another area which proved resistant to change was the honours system. Benn
records his frustration at how the distribution of honours seemed to be effectively
controlled by a small committee of civil servants rather than by the ministers
supposedly running the departments.9 Even Wilson had ‘a fantastic struggle’ to
get the footballer Stanley Matthews a knighthood.10
Barbara Castle believed Wilson was

instinctively conventional. He had been a backroom boy himself during the

war…so he had a natural appreciation of the work that civil servants do.
When he became Prime Minister, flanked by a charming and co-operative
Cabinet Secretary in Sir Burke Trend, and backed by a Cabinet Office
trained to service his every whim, his appreciation turned into something
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 115

dangerously like an uncritical acceptance of the status quo…he never

seriously challenged the establishment.11

J.R.Colville, formerly Joint Private Secretary to Churchill (1951–55), believed

the government had been let down by lack of a proper statistical service.12 When
Crossman took over the Ministry of Housing and Local Government he was
amazed that the first statistician had been appointed nine months previously and
his department was still not fully manned.13
Labour politicians were not alone in being critical of the civil service.
Reginald Bevins wrote, in retirement, that the civil service is ‘seriously affected
by its self-importance and its judgement…[is] sometimes corrupted by its
excessive power’.14 Critics, on both Left and Right, alleged three major
weaknesses at the top end of the civil service. Firstly, lack of expertise. Secondly,
an educational and social exclusiveness which limited the value of their
judgements about a complex industrial society which was also a political
democracy. Thirdly, a lack of experience of industry, commerce and local
government, producing the same effect. All these criticisms were made by the
all-party Estimates Committee in its sixth report in 1965. The Committee found
that the proportion of Oxbridge entrants to the Administrative Class (the top
level) had risen from 78 per cent (1948–56) to 85 per cent (1957–63), and that
the proportion from local authority maintained and aided schools went down
from 42 to 30 per cent. Those whose fathers were manual workers dropped from
22 per cent to 15 per cent. The proportion who took degrees in classics went up
from 21 to 24 per cent, while social sciences fell from 24 per cent to 17, and only
3 per cent recruited were mathematicians, scientists or technologists. Finally, the
proportion of successful candidates with first-class honours fell from 40 per cent
to 30 per cent. At a time when the fields of university recruitment were widening,
the proportion of Administrative Class recruits from these wider fields, instead
of rising, was actually falling.
It was concern about the power, technical competence and efficiency of the
civil service which led to the setting up of the Fulton Commission on the Civil
Service in 1966. When it reported in 1968 the Commission commented, The
Service is still essentially based on the philosophy of the amateur… Today this
concept has most damaging consequences… The cut is obsolete at all levels and
in all parts of the Service.’ Fulton wanted more professionally qualified entrants,
more training within the service, abolition of the class system with better
prospects of promotion from the lower ranks, more entrants with ‘relevant’
degrees from a wider variety of universities and more secondment from the civil
service to other parts of the public service and private sector. In 1978 Lord
Crowther-Hunt, who drafted much of the Fulton Report, commented, ‘In
general, the Civil Service implemented those parts of Fulton that it liked and
which added to its power, and failed to implement the ideas that would have
made it more professional and more accountable to Parliament and the public.’15
116 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

LABOUR: ‘TREATED AS SHIPS PASSING IN THE

NIGHT’
The tiny majority in the Commons was obviously a major headache which no
one had contemplated. In theory it would have been possible to come to some
kind of arrangement with the Liberals. The difference between them and the
Labour Party on many issues was not all that great. The Liberals argued that they
had earned the right to recognition and consultation, as their vote had increased
from 1.6 million in 1959 to over 3 million in 1964. This represented over 10 per
cent of votes. Yet they had only 9 votes to deliver in the Commons. For Wilson
this course was, in practice, virtually impossible. Any kind of agreement with the
Liberals would have aroused the worst suspicions of most of the rank-and-file of
the Labour Party, recalling the times of Ramsay MacDonald. Wilson did not
hesitate in deciding to see it through with the meagre forces available to him.
That was undoubtedly the right decision. With or without the Liberal votes,
ministers and back-benchers alike were going to be under tremendous pressure.
The Opposition had the initiative and could pounce at any time.
The slender majority must have caused some difficulties with many of the top
civil servants, who, being only human, could not help but view the new
administration as less than permanent. No doubt, as Marcia Williams, Wilson’s
political secretary and confidante, put it, the civil servants at 10 Downing Street
gave Labour a cold reception when they arrived there: ‘We were treated as ships
passing in the night.’16
No doubt the civil servants regarded Williams and what came to be known as
Wilson’s ‘kitchen cabinet’ as interlopers. This was a small group around Wilson,
the key figure of which was Marcia Williams.

It is impossible to understand the real Wilson and ignore Mrs Marcia

Williams, whom he later created Lady Falkender. For more than twenty
years she remained the greatest political influence in his life… I doubt very
much whether Harold Wilson would ever have become Party leader and
Prime Minister but for the ambitious thrust provided by Mrs Williams.17

So wrote James Margach. In Wilson’s own account of the period her name does
not appear. His press secretary, Joe Haines, and Wigg, Benn and Crossman came
to the same conclusions.18 The ‘kitchen cabinet’ included, in addition to
Williams, Wigg, Professor (later Lord) Kaldor, Professor (later Lord) Balogh,
both academic economists, Peter Shore, MP, Gerald Kaufman, MP, and others at
various times.19 Clearly, any Prime Minister needs aides and advisers,
individuals he knew in opposition, whose judgement he trusts. But there are
dangers. Firstly, the civil service can start to feel underrated and gradually
become demoralized. Secondly, the Prime Minister’s colleagues can feel that
their legitimate influence and power are being undermined, that their ideas and
contributions are not wanted, and that they can either resign or simply become
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 117

yes-men. Thirdly, the public can feel that the politicians they have elected are
being outmanoeuvred by shadowy figures hovering in the background. This can
undermine public confidence in the government and the democratic process. In
the Wilson case all three happened to some extent. Wilson believed Britain was
in fact becoming a more presidential system of government. This did not always
work out happily for Britain or the Labour Party. George Brown felt this, and
gave it as the reason for his resignation in 1968.

[It] seemed to me that the Prime Minister was not only introducing a
‘presidential’ system…that is wholly alien to the British constitutional
system…but was so operating it that decisions were being taken over the
heads and without the knowledge of Ministers, and far too often outsiders
in his entourage seemed to be almost the only effective ‘Cabinet’.20

Wilson had come to office carrying on as Prime Minister almost on a day-to-day

basis, and had inherited a bad economic situation, which needed immediate
attention. These two factors, as much as his distrust—of civil service, of many of
his old Gaitskellite rivals, of sections of the mass media—and his Kennedy
complex, must have greatly determined his political style. In these circumstances
he would have felt it imperative to have a tight grip of hand-picked individuals
he could rely on—his ‘kitchen cabinet’.

STERLING: ‘A SYMBOL OF NATIONAL PRIDE’

The massive and mounting balance of payments deficit, the biggest since the
war, was Wilson’s first major problem. It was dealt with by Wilson, Brown,
Callaghan and Jay. The action taken was not put to the Cabinet for discussion; on
the contrary, ‘Cabinet as a whole had no advance notice so we simply had to
accept the fait accompli or resign’.21 Wilson wrote that this was the central thrust
of his administrations during 1964–70.22 He decided that devaluation of sterling
was not going to be part of his plan to deal with the deficit. It was felt that this
would be politically damaging for Labour, reviving memories of the earlier
devaluation under Attlee. Labour could have devalued and rightly blamed the
situation on the outgoing administration. It chose not to do so, clinging to the old
dollarsterling rate ‘as a symbol of national pride’.23
On 11 November, Callaghan introduced a crisis Budget, a package containing
the stick and the carrot. National insurance contributions were raised, up too went
the duty on petrol, and income tax would go up in the spring. For Labour
supporters the carrot included a capital gains tax and the replacement of the
existing income and profits taxes on companies with a corporation tax. The
Budget also increased retirement pensions and abolished prescription charges for
medicines. Earlier in October the government had placed a surcharge on imports
at the rate of 15 per cent. Finally, it promised to examine ways of cutting public
expenditure. The temporary surcharge, which attracted criticism abroad, had
118 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

been planned by the outgoing Conservative government. The measures were not
enough to ease the pressure on sterling. On 23 November the bank rate was
raised to a record 7 per cent, and Lord Cromer, Governor of the Bank of England,
was set to get assistance from foreign central banks. The mission was completed
by 25 November, when pledges of massive support stabilized the situation,
leaving the country dazed and deeply in debt.
That the country was not exactly enthusiastic over Wilson’s policies was
indicated by two by-elections on 21 January. Both were in safe Labour seats and
both were caused by the need to get Gordon Walker and Cousins into the
Commons. Both previous MPs had been hustled off to other pastures to make
way for the ministers. Understandably, the voters were not very impressed by
this procedure and some protested by not voting. In Leyton, Gordon Walker was
defeated and at Nuneaton Cousins was returned with a much-reduced majority.
Gordon Walker was replaced by Michael Stewart. If the electorate was less than
enthusiastic about the new government, this was not because it favoured the
Opposition. The Conservatives too did badly in by-elections. On 24 March,
David Steel, an unknown young Liberal, took Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles,
from the Conservatives.
Callaghan’s April, 1965, Budget was more deflationary than the special crisis
Budget, but foreign financial centres were not impressed, and by the end of June
he sought help from Henry Fowler, the American Secretary of the Treasury. Less
than a month later the Chancellor announced the severest package so far
introduced by Labour—still more tightening-up on hire purchase, delays in or
cancellation of government projects, and restrictions on local authority
borrowing.

BROWN AT THE DEA

Despite the difficulties involved in setting up a new ministry, and despite the tug-
of-war with the Treasury and the Bank of England, Brown had moved with
enthusiasm and resourcefulness in the weeks following his appointment. In
December 1964 he produced the Joint Statement of Intent on Productivity, Prices
and Incomes signed by representatives of the government, the TUC and the
employers’ side of industry. Trade unions and management agreed to ensure that
increases in all incomes would be related to increases in productivity. The
government promised to prepare and implement a general plan for economic
development, providing for higher investment, improving industrial skills,
modernization, balanced regional development, higher exports and for the largest
possible sustained expansion of production and real incomes. The NEDC was to
be the vehicle through which this was to happen.24 In February 1965 the
National Board for Prices and Incomes (NBPI) was established, headed, perhaps
surprisingly, by a former Conservative MP, Aubrey Jones, a director of Guest,
Keen & Nettlefolds and chairman of Staveley Industries. He had been a minister
in the outgoing government. At this stage the NBPI had very little power. The
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 119

brave words of the statement of intent were not translated into practice, and
incomes went up ahead of productivity in the first half of 1965. The Americans
were not impressed. Fowler expressed the view that it would be difficult to give
further aid if the voluntary system were maintained. ‘It was in these
circumstances that we began first to think in terms of statutory powers.’25 The
situation was regarded as critical enough to recall the Cabinet early from
holiday.26 Brown came back from the south of France to go into conclave with
the TUC. The result was that the TUC accepted the statutory control of prices
and incomes. The NBPI was made a statutory body, with the Secretary of State
having the right to refer any price or wage proposal to it. He had the power to
enforce decisions by ministerial order and to defer the implementation of any
wage or price settlement while the Board’s investigations were continuing. The
legislation provided for an ‘early-warning’ system for price increases and wage
and salary settlements. Two weeks after his success at the TUC conference,
which ratified the agreement between Brown and the TUC leaders, Brown
published, on 16 September, his department’s National Plan. It set the annual
rate of growth at 3.8 per cent. This seemed reasonable to most people, though it
was a higher rate than Britain had been achieving. As the summer drew to a
close, the Prime Minister and his colleagues felt reasonably happy about
progress on the economic front. They were less happy about the developing
situation abroad.

DEFENCE: ‘THEY WANT US WITH THEM’

Like many in the Labour Party, Wilson had been strongly critical of American
policy in the Eisenhower era, especially over foreign policy. He had also been
strongly critical of the sale of British companies to American interests and of the
evolution in Britain of an ‘Americanized society’.27 The arrival of Kennedy at
the White House brought about a change in Wilson’s appraisal of the US. He
early identified himself with Kennedy and saw little to criticize in the Kennedy
administration’s policies. By the time Wilson was in Downing Street, Lyndon
Baines Johnson had taken over the White House. Within six weeks of assuming
office Wilson was off to confer with President Johnson. It seems clear that
Johnson wanted to avoid devaluation of the pound, fearing repercussions on
world trade. In return for financial help, the Americans sought support from
Britain for Johnson’s foreign and defence policies.28 According to Crossman,
Wilson reported to the Cabinet, ‘They want us with them.’ He seemed to think
his government could ‘influence events’.29 This was largely self-delusion,
however. According to Wilson, he resisted the call for British involvement in
Vietnam apart from a jungle-training team from Malaya and ‘our teams for
antisubversive activities’.30 The Wilson-Healey-Walke- team were also urged by
Johnson to keep up their commitments east of Suez. Healey is reported to have
told the Cabinet that, although the Americans did not want Britain to maintain
huge bases, they wanted it ‘to keep a foothold in Hong Kong, Malaya, the
120 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

Persian Gulf, to enable us to do things for the alliance which they can’t do’.31
Drew Middleton, the distinguished American correspondent, writing in 1965,
commented that Britain’s tremendous defence expenditure ‘reduced Britain’s
competitive commercial position’. He continued, ‘Both the Kennedy and
Johnson Administrations encouraged the British to maintain these bases. Did this
advantage to the United States in terms of world stability outweigh the risk of
encouraging a steady decline in the British economy?’32
One other major defence problem confronted Wilson—what to do about
Britain’s nuclear force. The party had been led to believe it would give up a
weapon which Wilson had claimed was neither independent nor a deterrent.
Wilson thought he could appear to be doing that, without in reality doing so, by
participation in an Atlantic Nuclear Force (ANF). Such a force would serve a
second purpose. It would serve as a counter-proposal to the American-backed
Multilateral Nuclear Force (MLF), which had been talked about for years. When
presented to NATO in 1960 by the Americans, it meant ‘a force of Polaris
missile submarines to be jointly owned and operated…and to be manned by crews
of mixed nationality’.33 The MLF would add to NATO strength, help the United
States financially by the NATO allies’ financial contributions and ‘funnel the
Federal Republic’s supposed nuclear appetite, and…court her away from France
by forging new Genman-American links’.34 Neither the Conservatives nor
Labour had been enthusiastic. There were strong doubts about the practicality of
mixed manning. There was some fear of a German finger on the nuclear trigger
and that this would weaken Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States.
The ANF was in fact a modified version of a proposal of the outgoing
Conservative government. By December 1965 the Americans were losing their
enthusiasm for the MLF and gave Wilson the go-ahead to explore his ANF idea,
which would have been based on existing US, British and possibly French
nuclear forces, with a small ‘mixed-manned’ element to assuage German feeling.
The 1966 Defence White Paper stated that it was the ‘aim to internationalize our
nuclear strategic forces in order to discourage further proliferation and to
strengthen the alliance’.35 After early 1965 the great debate on the British
deterrent ‘came to a standstill as the issue faded away’.36
It can rightly be asked, after the fierce controversy within the Labour Party in
1960, how Wilson was able to retain the British bomb with so little fuss. A
number of factors contributed to this. Firstly, key unilateralists were prisoners in
the government—Cousins, Castle and Greenwood. Secondly, Wilson’s tiny
majority helped to keep the Left in line. Thirdly, most Labour MPs and activists
felt Wilson had a steadier trigger-finger than Douglas-Home or any other likely
Conservative premier. Fourthly, the government used the argument that the
Polaris submarine fleet was already too advanced to turn back and that it was
creating jobs in an industry badly needing them. Fifthly, it was hinted that
Britain’s bomb could be used to protect democratic India against Mao’s China,
for China had carried out its first nuclear explosion on the day of the British
election. Sixthly, it was argued that Britain’s abandonment of the bomb would be
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 121

an empty gesture when it looked likely that any number of states would soon
have it. Two other arguments, which did not appease the quasipacifists but
carried conviction with those worried about the costs and the practical side of
Britain’s nuclear force, were that the Polaris submarines, unlike the earlier V-
bombers, were cheap, and that possible co-operation with France could be used
as a ticket of admission to the EEC. Wilson was also helped by the noisy
opposition of the Tory Right when it was suggested that Britain internationalize
its nuclear force. This helped to make Wilson’s proposal appear more radical
than it really was. The innovatory appointment by Wilson of a Minister for
Disarmament, Lord Chalfont, was also another factor in his favour, though
Chalfont’s complete lack of any connection with the Labour Party weakened the
effect of the move.
One other practical defence problem which the Cabinet had to decide during
this period was the future of the Tactical Strike and Reconnaissance Aircraft
(TSR2), which is discussed below.

TECHNOLOGY: BRITAIN’S ‘INABILITY TO STAY IN

THE BIG LEAGUE’
One of the innovations brought in by Wilson was to create a Ministry of
Technology. It was not much of a ministry with not much of a minister. The
trade union leader Frank Cousins was persuaded to take it on rather than a high-
powered scientist or technologist. This made many think Wilson’s only motive
was to imprison the leader of Britain’s biggest trade union. Tony Benn took over
from Cousins in July 1966. Benn (b. 1925), a former President of the Oxford
Union, had worked for the BBC before his election in 1950. Like his father,
Viscount Stansgate, and his brother, he had served as a wartime officer in the
RAF. Of the eight junior ministers who served between 1964 and 1970 only two,
Lord Snow and Dr Jeremy Bray, had any scientific/technological background.
Jenkins at Aviation admitted later he had difficulties with the briefings because of
his ‘non-technical cast of mind’.37 Under Wilson the Cabinet did discuss
technology. Crossman noted a ‘dreary’ discussion on computers lasting an hour
and a half on 3 June 1965. ‘If we are going to force Whitehall to buy British, we
are going to subsidize inefficiency in a way which will be difficult to defend.’
Cousins apparently favoured buying British computers. Professor Tom Kilburn,
Alan Turing and others at Manchester University had led the way in computer
technology in the 1940s, and Lyons, the restaurant chain, had developed the first
business computer in 1951. However, by the 1960s Britain was outstripped by
the United States, whose government had put large sums into defence-related
computer technology. Government was divided about just what could now be
achieved.
Apart from difficulties because of their lack of scientific/technological
training, there were problems because of the overlapping responsibilities of the
different government departments. There was Jenkins at Aviation, Healey at
122 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

Defence, Benn at the Post Office and Cousins at Technology. Jay at the Board of
Trade also felt he needed to be consulted and Callaghan as Chancellor held the
purse strings. This problem was not, of course, peculiar to Wilson’s regime.
Jenkins and Benn suffered from not being in the Cabinet.
Did Britain have much technology to oversee? Well, there was the TSR2,
there was the Harrier vertical take-off jet, there was the Hovercraft, there was
fuel injection for car engines introduced in 1966. The Anglo-French Concorde
project was well-advanced. Britain was ahead in the peaceful uses of nuclear
energy which was seen in the 1960s as the future. These were all ‘firsts’ for
Britain.
Work had begun on the TSR2 in 1959 and ‘it was reputed the most
sophisticated aircraft ever built’.38 Yet within months of Wilson taking office
this swing-wing or variable-geometry plane was axed. According to Jenkins,
‘The essential trouble was that it showed no sign of achieving any market beyond
the Royal Air Force.’39 Jenkins was instrumental in setting up the Plowden
Committee on Aviation. It advised that Britain should buy US planes.40 In 1962,
35 per cent of the pounds spent by British firms on R&D went to aircraft, while
chemicals, vehicles and machinery claimed 12 and 10 per cent, respectively.
German firms spent nothing on aircraft, but 33 per cent of R&D on chemicals
and 19 per cent on vehicles. For Japan the figures were 28 per cent on chemicals,
13 per cent on vehicles and nothing spent on aviation.41
In terms of its Nobel prize winners since 1945, Britain is a rich country. The
impressive list of names is given at the end of the book (pp. 315–16). Writing in
January 1965, Benn lamented:

Defence, colour television, Concorde, rocket development—these are all

issues raising economic considerations that reveal this country’s basic
inability to stay in the big league. We just can’t afford it. The real choice is,
do we go into Europe or do we become an American satellite?42

RHODESIA: ‘HER CONSCIENCE HAS HAUNTED HIM’

On 11 November 1965 Ian Smith, Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia,
proclaimed his country independent of Britain. Southern Rhodesia had enjoyed
internal self-government since 1923, but was still technically a British colony.
Out of a population of 5.3 million only the 252,000 or so whites had any say in
the running of the country. In April 1964 the white electors had voted
overwhelmingly for Smith’s white supremacist Rhodesia Front Party. Between
October 1964 and November 1965 Wilson worked hard to promote a settlement
with Rhodesia. He met the Rhodesian leader at the funeral of Sir Winston
Churchill in January 1965. Smith visited London again in October 1965,
expressly to parley with Wilson. In between, Bottom-ley and Gardiner visited
Rhodesia to study the situation. In the summer another British emissary,
Cledwyn Hughes, visited Rhodesia. The Labour government laid down five
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 123

principles which had to be fulfilled before it could agree to formal independence.

The first and most important of these was that the ‘principle and intention of
unimpeded progress to majority rule, already enshrined in the 1961 constitution,
would have to be maintained and guaranteed’.43 Implementation of these five
principles would have required a radical change in the way of life of the whites,
which they were not prepared for. Wilson appeared ready to go to any lengths in
order to delay the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI).44 He ran the
danger of making himself appear ridiculous. Wilson succeeded in splitting the
Conservative Party over Rhodesia. Yet many of his parliamentary colleagues,
and some in the Cabinet, remained sceptical. Barbara Castle, in particular,
according to Crossman, wanted Wilson to take firm action; ‘even if her influence
hasn’t prevailed, her conscience has haunted him and made him uneasy and unsure
of himself’.45 It was the issue she came nearest to resigning over.46 The governor
was instructed to declare the Rhodesian government dismissed and the regime
illegal—without practical effect. A policy of mild sanctions was also adopted:
expelling Rhodesia from the sterling area, loss of Commonwealth preference on
Rhodesian exports and a ban on the purchase of Rhodesian sugar and tobacco.
Wigg thought sanctions were ‘a soft option’.47 Callaghan too thought stronger
measures could have been used.48 But few really wanted to use force. It was
certainly a mistake to announce before UDI that Britain would not use force.
Wilson had to try to satisfy many different constituencies. At the UN the African
and other non-aligned states, backed by the Soviet bloc, pressed for immediate
action, including the use of troops and imposition of majority rule. At home
many influential groups were against such action. The government also had to
consider Rhodesian action against Zambia, on which Britain was dependent for
40 per cent of its copper. Wilson believed that interruption of this supply would
cause widespread dislocation in British industry and could render 2 million
unemployed.49 On 20 November the UN Security Council called on all states to
sever economic relations with Rhodesia and for an oil embargo. In April 1966
the UK secured authority to prevent, by use of force if necessary, the arrival of
tankers bringing oil to Rhodesia at Beira, in Portuguese Mozambique. As with
his economic policy, so with Rhodesia—and in his relations with the United
States—Wilson was walking the tightrope.

HEATH REPLACES HOME: ‘NO GRATITUDE IN

POLITICS’
On 22 July 1965 Sir Alec Douglas-Home announced that he was giving up the
leadership of the Conservative Party. The Conservatives had never quite got
together again after their defeat. Sir Alec’s supporters claimed the narrow
majority won by Wilson showed he had done a good job. The fact was, however,
that he trailed Wilson in the opinion polls after October 1964. The loss of the
Roxburgh seat in Douglas-Home territory, in March 1965, gave ammunition to
the critics of the 14th Earl. As Maudling put it, ‘As usually happens in the
124 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

Conservative Party the old rules of public life applied, namely that there is no
gratitude in politics, and you should never kick a man until he is down.’50 The
Conservatives faced the problem that an election could not be far off and they
had to settle the leadership question, one way or the other, as soon as possible.
This time they had an election procedure which was similar to that of the Labour
Party. There were three candidates: Edward Heath, Reginald Maudling and
Enoch Powell who, already something of an enfant terrible of the party, did not
expect to win. He was merely testing the ground to see how much support there
was for his peculiar brand of laissez-faire, anti-Establishment Conservatism. Iain
Macleod, who reviewed a book of Powell’s speeches just before the contest,
conceded he ‘has the finest mind in the House of Commons. The best trained and
the most exciting.’51 That did not help much. The Daily Mail and the Daily
Express predicted a Maudling victory and the polls too indicated his
popularity.52 Yet when the votes of the 298 Conservative MPs were counted on
26 July, Heath was clearly the victor. He gained 150 votes to 133 for Maudling
and only 15 for Powell. Under the rules, Maudling could have forced a second
ballot, but he decided not to. In Heath the Conservatives had decided for a
Macmillan-type, that is, as far as his policies were concerned; in other respects,
he was similar to Wilson. Through his powerful attacks on Labour as shadow
Chancellor, Heath had gained the respect of his colleagues and overcome his
association with the failed attempt to get into the EEC.53 Despite this, Heath was
the victim of snobbery because of his ordinary, provincial background.54
In his background, Heath had much in common with Wilson and with his
rival, Enoch Powell, yet he differed from both. It could be said of Powell (1912–
96), as of Heath (b. 1916), that his mother made him. Powell’s mother was a
teacher; Heath’s had been in service. Powell’s father too was a teacher; Heath’s
was a carpenter who set up his own business. Powell had the grit of the Black
Country in him; Heath grew up in the more placid atmosphere of Broadstairs on
the south coast. Powell attended a HMC school; Heath a grammar school. Both
gained scholarships to university, Cambridge (Trinity) and Oxford (Balliol),
respectively. As young men both were loners. Heath was a highly successful
organist and student politician; Powell pursued his scholastic ambitions and
became the youngest professor of Greek (Sydney University) in the British
Empire. Both were anti-appeasement Tories before the war, and both had had
‘good’ wars. Powell ended the war as a brigadier in intelligence, Heath as ‘only’
a lieutenant-colonel of anti-aircraft artillery in the socially prestigious
Honourable Artillery Company. Before entering Parliament in 1950 Heath
worked as a civil servant, news editor of the Church Times and trainee merchant
banker. Powell worked for the Conservative Research Department, also gaining
election in 1950. Both were known as frugal bachelors who did not smoke and
drank little. Powell married his former secretary in 1952, whereas Heath
remained unmarried. Politically, from the start, Powell was a doctrinaire right-
winger, while Heath was a pragmatist of the Centre-Left. Powell was an
imperialist; Heath was pro-Europe. Powell served Macmillan as Financial
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 125

Secretary to the Treasury and Minister of Health. Heath served under Eden and
Macmillan as Chief Whip (1955– 59), Minister of Labour (1959–60), Lord Privy
Seal attached to the Foreign Office, and Secretary of State for Trade and Industry
(1963–4). Both had Cabinet experience.
Benn found Heath in 1957 ‘a most amiable and friendly soul’.55 Jenkins wrote
of his ‘grumpy integrity’.56 Willy Brandt, German Chancellor, recorded, ‘I never
felt Edward Heath’s reputed lack of personal warmth.’57 Macleod felt he did not
know Heath much better after their 20 years as colleagues than when they had
entered the Commons together in 1950. Lord Carrington, who served in Heath’s
government, believed Heath was ‘A somewhat lonely man, he needed friendship,
yet found it hard to unbutton himself to the affection of others’. He found that
Heath could be ‘touchy and autocratic. But in my experience Prime Ministers
tend to become autocratic.’ He also believed Heath to be ‘extremely
courageous’.58
Under Sir Alec, the Conservatives had started to look at their party structures,
policies and appeal. This work continued under Heath. Lord Chelmer
recommended improved status, training and remuneration for constituency
agents. The (Iain) Macleod Committee recommended more political discus sion
in the Young Conservatives and the raising of the upper age limit for
membership to 35. Not without some pain, the list of approved parliamentary
candidates was overhauled. It was hoped there would be a trend against the
preference for landowners, retired businessmen and service officers. The results
were not impressive. Butler and King in their survey of the 1966 election
concluded that the educational pattern remained much as in previous years.
There was a slight decline of old Etonians, from 94 candidates in 1964 to 84 in
1966.59

WILSON’S 1966 VICTORY: TIMING ‘WAS

FAULTLESS’
In theory, the British Prime Minister has the initiative in the timing of the
election. In practice, his choices are circumscribed by the economic situation, the
international climate, public opinion and, not least, his majority. Wilson had a
majority of one when he called the election for 31 March 1966. Callaghan
believed his timing was ‘faultless…we owed our victory to his tactical skill, his
determination, his orchestration, and the confidence he conveyed to the
electorate’.60 Labour had had a notable by-election success in Hull in January
and this helped Wilson make up his mind.61 The Conservative manifesto, Action
not Words, moved strongly in favour of EEC entry and trade union reform, and
advocated retaining the east of Suez bases. Labour’s Time for Decision echoed
the themes of 1964, calling for steel nationalization, a national transport plan,
regional planning, planned growth of incomes and a Ministry of Social Security.
Both parties promised 500,000 new homes. Labour blamed the country’s woes
on the previous administration and many people thought this reasonable. Labour
126 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

were expected to win and were returned with a 96-seat majority on a 47.9 per
cent share of the vote (44.1 in 1964). The Conservatives gained 41.9 per cent (43.
4) and the Liberals 8.5 per cent (11.2). Turnout fell from 77.1 to 75.8 per cent,
the lowest since 1945. Labour won back both Smethwick and Leyton, and
appeared to have increased its support higher up the social scale, especially
among the young. It gained even more support among the unskilled and the very
poor.62 The Liberals took comfort from the increase in their parliamentary
strength from 9 to 12.
Labour’s victory was remarkable for a number of reasons. It was the first time
that a twentieth-century Prime Minister had led his party to a second electoral
victory with an increased majority. For Labour it was only the second time that it
had achieved a comfortable majority since the Labour Representation Committee
was established in 1900. It was important too in that it proved 1945 was not a
special case caused by the unique conditions of war. It demolished those who
thought Labour could not win without a Lib-Lab pact. Some political
soothsayers began saying that Labour had become the natural party of
government. Heath was held up to ridicule as a loser. Some of Labour’s more
gullible socialists were in a state of shocked ecstasy over the results. Suddenly
their wildest dreams looked like becoming reality. The long, sometimes bitter
and often sterile arguments about resolutions on party policy, the hours in dingy,
half-empty assembly halls, in shabby, smoke-filled committee rooms, canvassing
in wind and rain, had not been in vain. Uncannily, even before all the election
posters had been superseded on the hoardings, socialist dreams were turning into
nightmares.

‘LABOUR GOVERNMENT IS REALLY FINISHED’

On 14 June 1966 Crossman expressed the view that ‘the Labour Government is
really finished’.63 This was less than three months after their spectacular win.
What had gone wrong?
One factor undermining morale was undoubtedly the seamen’s strike which
began on 16 May and lasted until 1 July. Only half British shipping was affected
by it. The union wanted a pay increase larger than the government’s 3–3.5 per
cent norm. The seaman’s wage was low, his work was hard, his conditions of
service were Victorian—or worse! Later Wilson wrote that for years the
seamen’s union

had been little more than a companies’ union, and the shipowners and
union officials had an equal responsibility for the utter frustration of union
members… Frustrations outside the field of wages and conditions related
to such matters as the failure to press for the modernisation of the 1894
Merchant Shipping Act.64
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 127

The government had allowed handsome salary improvements for judges. In

depressed mood Crossman recorded on 19 May, ‘The Cabinet is formally
committed to breaking the strike in the way we didn’t break the doctors’, the
judges’ and the civil servants’ strikes… We listen to George Brown telling us to
resist to the death. We listen to James Callaghan telling us to resist to the death,
although it would cost us a small fortune in foreign exchange.’65 As the strike
continued, with all the drama of a national emergency having been declared
giving the government sweeping powers, Crossman got more depressed.66 His
mood, as he himself recognized, was shared by very many in the Labour
movement, from MPs down to humble party members. By not allowing the
employers to settle the dispute, the government were really undermining their
own policy on prices and incomes. They seemed to have a double standard, one
for the better off and another for the poorer, or less well-organized, section of the
working classes. The only chance for such an incomes policy to succeed was to
be fair and to be seen to be fair.67 It could be claimed, as Crossman said so often
about the administration of which he was a member, that they never thought
ahead, never anticipated difficulties and had simply to react to an immediate
situation. If this was so and the government was merely reacting instinctively,
then it was an indication of how far apart were the instincts of most of the
Cabinet from those of their followers. The strike ended as a technical victory for
Wilson. He used the feat of Communist influence in the union to torpedo the
strike, a tactic often denounced by Labour in the past. This tactic caused dismay
among some members of the Cabinet, including Peter Shore and Benn.68 The
ordinary seamen supported the stoppage, but the leadership advocated a return to
work, pressurized by the government and media as being dupes of a Communist
plot. It is doubtful whether Wilson convinced any of his own rank-and-file by
this tactic that his incomes policy was a just one. More likely, it marked the
beginning of real and sustained disenchantment with a hitherto popular leader.

CRISIS, 1966: ‘THE FRAILTY OF A CHANCELLOR’S

HOPES’
On 1 July, the day the seamen’s strike ended, Callaghan met Wilson and Brown
to discuss the future. He assured his colleagues they would get through the summer
without the need for any further ‘economic measures’. ‘Such is the frailty of a
Chancellor’s hopes and forecasts, I had scarcely left the Cabinet Room and
returned to the Treasury when I learned that serious selling of sterling had begun
that very morning.’69 Two days later Frank Cousins resigned because of his
opposition to the government’s prices and incomes policy. In the US, his
resignation ‘proved particularly disturbing to market confidence’.70 A further
blow was France’s terms for Britain’s entry into the EEC. Prime Minister
Pompidou called on the British to devalue and carry through another dose of
deflation.71 On 14 July the bank rate was raised from 6 to 7 per cent, a harbinger
of the gathering economic storm. On the same day Labour lost the Carmarthen
128 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

by-election to Plaid Cymru (PC). As the situation got more critical, the
triumvirate were unable to agree. Brown favoured devaluation; Callaghan and
Wilson were against it. ‘With a tactically foolish decision’,72 Wilson warned the
Commons that deflationary measures would be announced in two weeks’ time.
He still insisted on playing his world role and flew to Moscow to act as a go-
between for President Johnson over the escalating war in Vietnam. Officially, he
was promoting British exports! Within hours of his return the Cabinet met to
discuss the austerity package on 19 and 20 July. ‘Nothing had been adequately
prepared. Nothing thought out properly.’73 The package included 10 measures
which together were regarded as the toughest deflation since 1949. Hire
purchase, as usual, was hit, with down-payment on cars, motor-cycles and
caravans raised to 40 per cent. There were higher down-payments on other items
and shorter repayment periods. The ‘regulator’ was invoked, a device introduced
by Selwyn Lloyd in 1961 under which a Chancellor could raise or lower indirect
tax rates by 10 per cent. Callaghan used it to increase taxes on drink, oil, petrol
and purchase tax. Certain postal charges were increased. There was an increase of
10 per cent on the year’s surtax liabilities. More controls on building were
introduced, except in the development areas. Big cuts were made in investment
programmes in the nationalized industries and local and central government; but
housing, schools, hospitals and government-financed factories, including
advance factories built in development areas, were excluded from the cuts. There
was a tightening-up of foreign-exchange controls. What probably had the greatest
psychological sting was the six-month freeze on wages, salaries and ‘other types
of income’, to be followed by a period of severe restraint.
Devaluation was again rejected in Cabinet by 6 in favour to 17 against.74 One
other item was a proposed cut in overseas civil and military expenditure. Of
particular concern were the costs of maintaining the British forces in Germany;
the Chancellor flew to Germany immediately to emphasize that concern.75 As
Wilson later wrote, he faced ‘the roughest House any Prime Minister had faced
for a very long time. But it was nothing to the evening that lay ahead.’76 Brown
announced he was going to resign on the devaluation issue. He was, however,
persuaded not to do so by a ‘round robin of Members’.77 It was a most unusual
situation caused by a most unusual politician. On that day Benn found him ‘in
many ways an attractive and full-blooded figure’.78
Brown had to make his contribution by incorporating proposals for a wage
freeze into his prices and incomes legislation. This contained an element, no
more than a threat or a hint, of compulsion. In the case of a deliberate breach of
the pay standstill, an Order in Council could be laid before Parliament to impose
penalties of up to £500.79 When the Bill came before the Commons on 4 August,
25 Labour MPs abstained. In the circumstances, the government could consider
itself very lucky.
On 24 July, in his diary, Crossman assessed Wilson’s position, ‘I suppose it is
the most dramatic decline any modern P.M. has suffered. More sudden than
Macmillan’s.’80 Callaghan, writing later, admired Wilson as a fighter who never
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 129

lacked courage when his back was to the wall.81 There was truth in both views.
Wilson was able to get the TUC General Council to ‘acquiesce’, by a majority
vote of 20 to 12, in the incomes policy, subject to the proviso that ‘social equity’
was preserved.82 He was given strong public support when he visited President
Johnson on 28 July.83 He returned to see England beat West Germany in the
World Cup at Wembley. This event certainly did a little to restore the nation’s
confidence.
Having succeeded thus far, Wilson reshaped his Cabinet in August. Brown
was relieved of the burdens of the DEA and swapped jobs with Michael Stewart
at the Foreign Office. Crossman was promoted to Lord President of the Council
and Leader of the House. Greenwood succeeded him at Local Government.
Greenwood’s place at the Ministry of Overseas Development was taken by
Arthur Bottomley, who in turn handed over Commonwealth Relations to Herbert
Bowden. The latter’s responsibilities went to Crossman. By promoting Crossman,
Wilson probably believed he was making the former Housing Minister more
dependent on him. He was also giving him the unpleasant task of disciplining the
Parliamentary Labour Party, thus forcing the former rebel to become a
policeman.84
The final hurdle for Wilson was the Labour conference in October, at which
the wage freeze was adopted by a substantial majority. The government found it
necessary to use its compulsory powers in only a tiny handful of cases. For the
six-month period of the freeze, from July to December 1966, there was no
increase in weekly wage rates. For the following six months there was a rise of 2
per cent in average earnings. During the same period the retail price index
increased by 2 per cent.85 To a limited extent the policy was successful.

IRC: ‘A KIND OF GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED

MERCHANT BANK’
Already in April 1966 Richard Marsh was promoted by Wilson to the Cabinet as
Minister of Power and given the job of piloting through the Bill to nationalize
steel. This went through and the British Steel Corporation was established in
1967. Marsh (b. 1928), MP for Greenwich, had been a CND member. He later
served as Minister of Transport (1968–69), resigning his seat in 1971 to become
Chairman of the British Railways Board, 1971– 76. He was created a life peer in
1981 and left the Labour Party.
In addition to steel nationalization, a number of other measures were
introduced designed to regenerate British industry. One was legislation to create
the Industrial Reorganization Corporation (IRC). This body had been established
in January 1966, but an Act of Parliament was required to provide it with funds.
It was ‘a kind of government-sponsored merchant bank, to encourage efficient
firms to take over the less efficient, to encourage mergers and help finance them,
to be, in effect, a stimulator of change by the mere fact of its existence’.86 Its
first chairman was Frank Kearton who, according to Brown, ‘did an absolutely
130 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

fantastic job there while still having his own job as chairman of Courtaulds. How
he managed to find the time for both has always puzzled me.’87 The most notable
take-overs helped by the Corporation were GEC’s take-over of AEI and English
Electric, and the merger of Leyland Motors with the British Motor Corporation.
The idea was not just to bail out ailing industries, nor simply to subsidize
prestige projects, as the Conservatives had done in the cases of Concorde and the
ocean liner Queen Elizabeth II. It was to provide Britain with large companies
which could compete effectively in international markets. Thus, British Leyland,
it was hoped, would be able to take on the state-owned Renault, and Volkswagen,
which had been developed from public funds. British Leyland, formed in 1968,
continued to have troubles, results of inefficient plant location, overmanning and
poor industrial relations, and was only saved from collapse by nationalization in
1975 on the recommendation of the Ryder Report. The ailing computer industry
was also helped, and after a series of shake-ups International Computers Limited
(ICL) finally emerged as the only British computer firm. The Ministry of
Technology had been involved in this task since 1965. Wilson also tried to
encourage industry by introducing the Queen’s Award to Industry, and more
industrialists were given recognition in the honours list than previously. Finally,
industrial training boards were established. They were soon in operation for the
road transport, hotel and catering, civil air transport and petroleum industries.
Others followed.
One other measure of modernization was decimalization. In December 1966
the Decimal Currency Board was created under the chairmanship of Sir William
Fiske to prepare the introduction of decimal currency in 1971. Little or no effort
was made to line Britain up with Europe in other areas of weights and measures,
and even in the 1990s many in Britain still had not got the hang of the metric
system, which must be damaging economically.

RHODESIA: ‘ROUND AND ROUND IN CIRCLES’

Wilson’s final major trial in the eventful summer of 1966 was the meeting of
Commonwealth leaders. Inevitably, the main item on the agenda was the
situation in Rhodesia. The conference very nearly led to the break-up of the
Commonwealth, because the great majority of the African states wanted to
commit Britain to NIBMAR—no independence before majority African rule.
Wilson was not prepared to agree to this. He stuck to his earlier five principles
and added a sixth, ‘just as, in the period before majority rule, there must be no
exploitation of the majority by the minority, in the period after majority rule was
reached the minority must equally have built-in guarantees against exploitation
by the majority’.88 He succeeded, a remarkable feat, in getting the conference to
agree to a communiqué embracing the six principles and calling on Rhodesia to
restore the authority of the governor. If the Smith regime did not do so, the
British government would not be prepared to submit to the British Parliament
any settlement involving independence before majority rule. Backed by the
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 131

Commonwealth, the communiqué ended, Britain would sponsor in the UN

Security Council a resolution providing for effective and selective mandatory
sanctions against Rhodesia.89 The illegal regime had until the end of November
to call off the rebellion. On the advice of the governor, Wilson agreed to see
Smith again. He feared failure to reach agreement could lead to a confrontation
with South Africa, with economic costs to Britain.
The two leaders met between 2 and 5 December. Rather dramatically, this
took place on board the cruiser HMS Tiger, which went ‘round and round in
circles’ in the Mediterranean.90 Though Wilson was prepared to agree
to Rhodesian independence on terms which would have meant Black majority
rule would have been a very long way off, the talks failed to produce a
settlement. The leaders held further fruitless talks, this time on HMS Fearless,
moored at Gibraltar, in October 1968. Even so, in the spring of 1969 the farce
continued, with further ‘desultory exchanges’91 between London and Salisbury,
but Rhodesia drifted more and more in the direction of South Africa, acquiring
the trappings of an authoritarian racist regime. Undoubtedly some domestic
opinion was appeased by all Wilson’s efforts to reach an agreement. If the Prime
Minister’s efforts to come to terms with Smith won him some brief improvement
in his image at home, they surely weakened Britain’s image abroad. So fond of
recalling Dunkirk, Wilson was inviting comparison with Chamberlain rather than
with Churchill. In his memoirs Callaghan regretted that his preoccupation with
sterling

prevented me from urging forceful action by Britain… A number of the

most senior officers of Southern Rhodesia’s armed forces were in great
mental turmoil…and we might have successfully capitalised on these
feelings to bring about Smith’s quick capitulation. I must accept my full
share of collective responsibility…more forceful action by us…might have
saved Britain from many uncomfortable moments in later years.92

Tied up with the Rhodesia issue was that of dealing with South Africa. In
opposition, Wilson had spoken with some eloquence in condemning the
apartheid regime. He promised a Labour government would not sell arms to
South Africa. However, he refused to go further, to a general boycott of trade.
The argument used was that such a policy would hit the Black South Africans
harder than the white minority. The problem of trade in military hardware was
never satisfactorily solved by Wilson. On the one hand, he had to square
anything his government did with the clear commitments given before October
1964. On the other hand, however, he was under pressure, at a time when the
economy was particularly vulnerable, to allow industry to sell as much as
possible overseas. He was also under pressure from the Ministry of Defence and,
some of the time, the Foreign Office, because of the Simonstown Agreements.
These dated from 1955 and provided for co-operation between Britain and South
Africa in the defence of the sea routes round the Cape of Good Hope, regarded
132 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

by defence experts as vital for the West’s supplies of strategic raw materials.
Primarily, South Africa would need naval equipment, including naval aircraft, to
fulfil this commitment. Soon after taking office, Wilson weakened the effect of
the arms embargo by agreeing that existing contracts would be honoured; under
this loophole, 16 low-flying Buccaneer strike bombers already on order were
delivered. Trade seemed to have been as important as defence in this case.93 In
this earlier period Vauxhall Motors was given permission to sell four-wheel-
drive chassis for armoured cars or motor lorries for the South African army.94
Clearly, this was equipment which could be used for internal repression. A crisis
blew up over the question of arms sales to the Republic in December 1967.
According to Wilson, the strains caused by this issue in the Cabinet were ‘strains
more serious than any other in our six years of Government’.95 Remarkably,
neither Benn nor Callaghan recall this in their respective books. Wilson was
pressed by Brown, Healey, Callaghan and Gordon Walker to lift the ban on the
sale of arms to South Africa. Wilson opposed this and was backed by Castle,
Greenwood, Shore and some others. After much heat and anger, the Cabinet
decided on 18 December against any change of policy.96 The government did
agree a deal between Rio Tinto Zinc and South Africa on uranium mining which
virtually gave the Republic a nuclear capacity.97 This was not, apparently,
discussed at Cabinet. Finally, it should be added that Britain was bound, as a
member of the UN, to carry out the resolution of 18 June 1963 banning arms
supplies. Under Wilson, trade with South Africa grew. Remarkably, the system of
imperial preference was still in operation for trade between the two states, even
though the Republic had left the Commonwealth in 1961.

WAR IN NIGERIA
Yet another difficult and painful African problem was the civil war in Nigeria.
From its independence in 1960, Nigeria had been plagued by tribal rivalries.
Never far below the surface, these were a key element in the civil war which
erupted in July 1967. Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu proclaimed the independence
of the south eastern (Ibo) region of Nigeria. At first, the new state, Biafra, had
considerable success against the military forces of the junta led by General
Yakubu Gowon, which ruled Nigeria. In autumn 1967 Gowon requested military
supplies from Britain. The British government responded favourably to this
request and eventually the ‘federal forces’ of Gowon prevailed over the Biafrans.
The official British position was that it did not want to assist, by neutrality, the
Balkanization of Africa. Secondly, Britain was worried that if it failed to assist
Federal Nigeria, the Soviet Union would. In fact, some Soviet military supplies
were sent to Nigeria. The British government was also worried about British
investments and supplies of oil. Ten per cent of Britain’s oil came from Nigeria
at this time, when Britain’s other supplies were less than certain because of the
situation in the Middle East. One other factor was that most other African states
were against Biafra, which was in strange company, with Zambia, Tanzania,
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 133

Rhodesia, South Africa and Portugal, for their different reasons, sympathizing
with it. Outside financial interests were providing Biafra with arms from France,
and the infant state’s backers launched a highly successful publicity campaign.
Biafra was presented as a long-suffering nation caught between the alternatives of
liberation or genocide.98 In December 1968 Gallup showed that the great
majority of British people were emotionally involved with Biafra.99 In the
Labour Party, the respected former Colonial Secretary James Griffiths supported
Colonel Ojukwu. There was considerable support for Biafra in the Parliamentary
Labour Party and in the Cabinet. Wilson paid a brief visit to Nigeria and certain
other African states in March 1969 in an attempt to urge moderation on the
Nigerian government and offer his services as a mediator. Little came of the
visit. In Britain the government and independent organizations offered relief to
both sides. The controversy ended only with the defeat of Biafra in 1970.

ANGUILLA: ‘MOCK-GUNBOAT DIPLOMACY’

Britain had failed effectively to promote peace in Nigeria just as it had failed to
promote peace in the war between India and Pakistan in 1965. On that occasion
the leaders of the two belligerent states went not to London but to Tashkent for
the Soviet Union’s help in settling the dispute. It was a measure of Britain’s
decline and the decline of the British government’s credibility in the world at
large. Potential tragedy turned to farce when Britain sent a detachment of troops
and metropolitan police to the rebellious island of Anguilla, in the Caribbean,
one of the left-over bits of the ill-fated Caribbean Federation. The occupation of
the island of roughly 6,000 inhabitants in 1969 meant that, in Wilson’s own
words, The musical-comedy atmosphere, the mock-gunboat diplomacy, the
colourful personalities of some of the leading police, made it the joke of the
year. The cartoonists inevitably had the time of their lives, and who could blame
them?’100
Labour’s idealistic hopes of the late 1950s and early 1960s for the
Commonwealth were shattered in another way. The party had advocated greater
assistance to the developing countries. Wilson had set up a new Ministry of
Overseas Development, with Mrs Castle in charge, to emphasize this interest. As
we have seen, Bottomley replaced Castle in August 1966. Both were in the
Cabinet. When Bottomley left the Cabinet a year later, the new

Table 6.1 Net official overseas assistance from Britain, 1964 and 1970
Amount
Year £ million % of GNP £ million (1970 prices)
1964 176 0.53 201
1970 186 0.36 186
134 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

minister, Reg Prentice, was not included in the Cabinet. Nor was his successor,
Mrs Judith Hart, in 1969. This marked the downgrading of this priority. Net
official assistance from Britain to the developing countries fell under the Wilson
government.101 Though the Labour leaders kept up the rhetoric about the
Commonwealth, many of them had decided, quite early on in the life of the
Wilson administration, that Britain needed a new, European orientation in its
relationships.

EEC: ‘GET US IN SO WE CAN TAKE THE LEAD’

Labour had said little about Europe in the 1966 election, but the changing trade
pattern caused hard thinking on the subject. EFT A was not proving adequate for
British purposes, and the EEC seemed unlikely to accept some form of British
associate membership. Britain’s trade pattern was changing. In the period 1959–
66 exports to the EEC states had increased annually by 9.6 per cent, to EFTA
countries by 9.5, to the US by 6.4, to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa
by 3.8, and to the less-developed countries by 1 per cent. There had been big
percentage increases in exports to Japan and Eastern Europe too, though these
areas were not very significant as trading partners. In 1966, Britain still sold 24.5
per cent of its exports in the less-developed countries, with the EEC coming
second (19.2), EFTA third (14.9), the United States fourth (11.8) and Australia,
New Zealand and South Africa taking 12.3 per cent.102 The decline in the relative
importance of trade with the old Commonwealth states and South Africa took
place in an environment of preferential tariffs and high national income growth
rates. Trade with the EEC had improved in spite of trade barriers, which would
get worse if Britain remained outside. Some politicians had thought in terms of a
North American Free Trade Area as an alternative route for Britain, but this was
a purely academic concept, not even under consideration by the United States. It
was with these kinds of figures that the members of the Cabinet, together with a
number of officials, went to Chequers in October 1966. Brown, Stewart and
Callaghan were fundamentally in favour of joining the EEC; Castle, Jay and
Peart were fundamentally against, and most of the others were in between. There
was a ‘really furious row’,103 but the meeting agreed that Wilson and Brown
should go on a grand tour of the EEC to test the ground. This they did, and
Britain formally applied to join the Community in May 1967. On 10 May the
government managed to get an impressive vote in favour of the application—488
to 62. Among the ‘Noes’ were 35 Labour MPs. Another fifty or so abstained.
The Wilson-Brown attempt to get into Europe ended on 27 November 1967
when de Gaulle once again vetoed Britain’s application. He talked about
Britain’s economic weaknesses, but his real motive was that he saw Britain as
still an American satellite with undue pretensions to grandeur. The fault was not
of course all with the President. The British economy was weak, the British
government did at times sound like the Voice of America on Vietnam and other
issues, and British leaders still seemed to be living in a world which was not
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 135

quite real. Willy Brandt, a friend of British entry, then West German Foreign
Minister, recalled how he visited Brown in December 1967: ‘I was greeted by
the perplexing and disillusioning plea: “Willy, you must get us in so we can take
the lead”.’104 Brown himself wrote in 1971, ‘Britain’s future rests upon her
emergence as the leader of a new bloc in the world…a new European bloc which
would have the same power and influence in the world as the old British
Commonwealth had in days gone by.’105
Wilson knew that the French President was still the same man who had put
paid to Britain’s previous application. In such circumstances, they would have
done themselves, and the country’s prestige, more good by sounding out the
possibilities through the normal diplomatic channels, and through George
Thomson, who had been given special responsibilities for Europe. As Crossman
recorded in his diary on 9 February 1967, ‘Here we have Harold and George who
should be concentrating on vital domestic problems like prices and incomes
gallivanting round Europe and occupying the time of very important officials.’

DEVALUATION: ‘THE MONEY IN OUR POCKETS’

Callaghan prepared his 1967 Budget in a mood of optimism. The sterling
exchange rate was steady and the currency was under no speculative attacks.106
In May the pound started to come under pressure again. A set of bad trade
figures, tension in the Middle East and Britain’s EEC application were key
factors. The sterling area and Britain’s balance of payments’ problems were
regarded as obstacles to entry, as was the parity of sterling at $2.80.107
Unofficially, Callaghan held discussions for a multi-billion-dollar loan in early
summer.108 According to one source,109 this would have involved Britain
maintaining a major military presence in the Far East, turning its back
completely on Europe and becoming a virtual US dependency. Wilson rejected
this, doubting he could sell it to the party or the British people. Callaghan ended
his Budget speech with the words, ‘We are back on course. The ship is picking
up speed. The economy is moving ahead.’110 He was hit two months later by the
Arab-Israeli Six-Day War which closed the Suez Canal and sunk sterling. Worse
was to come. In September an unofficial strike of dockers broke out in Hull,
London, Liverpool and Manchester. Cousins’s best efforts could not resolve it.
This too weakened sterling. What the voters thought about the situation was
revealed by Conservative gains from Labour at Cambridge and Walthamstow
West by-elections on 21 September. On 2 November Labour lost Hamilton to the
Scottish National Party (SNP) and Leicester South West to the Conservatives. It
limped home at Manchester Gorton. In October Callaghan bravely faced his
many critics at the Labour Party conference at Scarborough. Yet the delegates
gave him a standing ovation. He had won a skirmish but, on 18 November 1967,
he lost the battle to banish devaluation. The devaluation took the pound down
from $2.80 to $2.40. Benn recorded it as a ‘great moment of defeat for the
Government’.111 The following day Wilson did his ‘absurd broadcast on
136 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

television’ saying, ‘Devaluation does not mean that the value of the pound in the
hands of the British consumer, the British housewife at her shopping, is cut
correspondingly. It does not mean that the money in our pockets is worth 14 per
cent less.’112 Heath called it ‘the most dishonest statement ever made by a Prime
Minister’.113 This was an exaggeration, but Wilson had been very badly advised.
Callaghan resigned. Wilson sent for Jenkins and ‘with singular directness’ told
him he wanted him to be Chancellor. ‘I said, “thank you very much,” and
accepted without question or reservation.’114 Remarkably, Callaghan did not
leave the government, but took over from Jenkins at the Home Office. At this
dangerous time, Wilson wanted to keep his two main rivals tied up in the
government.115 The son of Arthur Jenkins, a Welsh miners’ MP, Jenkins (b.
1920) took a first in PPE at Balliol and served as a captain in the Royal Artillery.
A highly successful author of biographical and historical works, he was director
of operations for the John Lewis Partnership.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: ‘COMMITTING

POLITICAL SUICIDE’?
Barbara Castle served as Minister of Transport, 1965–68. One of her notable
achievements was to introduce the breathalyser test, which cut down road
accidents but got her much abuse.116 She was, however, to get far more abuse
from within the Labour movement in her next job as Secretary of State for
Employment and Productivity, 1968–70. She was under no illusion that ‘I may
be committing political suicide’.117 She faced aggressive union leaders such as
Jack Jones of the TGWU and Hugh Scanlon of the AEU, the problems of inter-
union rivalry118 which so bedevilled the British trade union scene, unofficial
strikes, union opposition to equal pay for women,119 rivalries within the
government itself possibly made worse by the reshuffles which helped to fire the
ambitions of her colleagues and, above all, opposition to prices and incomes
policy.
As inflation mounted so did strikes. There were 2,116 disputes in 1967 and
over 2.7 million working days lost. In 1969 the number of disputes had risen to 3,
116 and over 6.8 million working days were lost. Britain’s record was still better
than those of the United States, Canada, Italy, Ireland and a number of other
industrial countries, but much worse than West Germany and Sweden. Japan had
improved its position relative to Britain, so had France, except for the year of the
massive strikes of 1968. Unofficial strikes, those called by a group of workers
without union authority, accounted for 95 per cent of all strikes. As Castle
argued, they were often more disruptive than major official ones because of their
unpredictability.120 In 1965, Wilson set up the Royal Commission on Trade
Unions and Employers’ Associations under the chairmanship of Lord Donovan,
a Lord Justice of Appeal and former Labour MP. The Commission reported in
June 1968. It drew attention to the problems caused by the large number of trade
unions. This meant fragmented bargaining between employers and employees in
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 137

individual firms, inter-union rivalry, leapfrogging in pay claims, and unofficial

strikes. The Commission was reluctant to put much emphasis on legal sanctions
as a means of improving industrial relations. The reason for this view was that
such sanctions would be difficult to enforce and would make a tense situation
worse. The conclusion was based on foreign experience and the reluctance of
employers in Britain to go to court. The Commission wanted a special Industrial
Law Committee to keep the law under review. Castle consulted with the TUC, the
CBI and the Parliamentary Labour Party about Donovan121 and invited various
people for a final go at Sunningdale. Cabinet colleague Peter Shore proposed
taking power to impose a conciliation pause during which the two sides to a
dispute could be brought together to talk over their differences and try to avoid a
strike.122 Castle took this up.
Meanwhile, the Conservatives had been thinking out their proposals on
industrial relations and had published them under the title Fair Deal At Work.
The government was under considerable pressure to initiate legislation from the
public, as well as the Opposition, and, not least, from Britain’s creditors abroad.
Castle published her proposals on 17 January 1969 in a White Paper, In Place
of Strife, the title consciously playing on Bevan’s In Place of Fear. Despite
‘sharp reactions from the Labour movement’,123 at the end of the Commons debate
on the White Paper, it was approved by 224 votes to 62, of which 53 were cast
by Labour MPs. The Conservatives abstained. The Industrial Relations Bill
which followed foresaw the setting up of a permanent Commission on Industrial
Relations to carry out a variety of functions in relation to unions and employers.
It would have also established an Industrial Board to hear certain types of case
against employers, trade unions and individual employees. It was by no means
merely designed to restrict the activities of trade unions. It contained many
proposals which would have strengthened employees’ rights. It sought to
establish the principle that no employer had the right to prevent or obstruct an
employee from belonging to a trade union. It sought safeguards against unfair
dismissal and greater rights for employees under the Contracts of Employment
Act, 1963. It proposed giving trade unions the right to have certain sorts of
information from employers, subject to safeguards for confidential information.
What worried trade union leaders were certain proposals which, in the words of
Vic Feather (later Lord Feather), would ‘introduce the taint of criminality into
industrial relations’.124 Under the proposed legislation the Secretary of State
could, by Order, require those involved to desist for up to 28 days from a strike or
lock-out which was unofficial. The Secretary of State would also have had the
power to order a ballot where an official strike was threatened. Another clause
enabled the proposed Industrial Board to hear complaints by individuals of
unfair or arbitrary action by unions. Finally, the Bill would have included the
Donovan proposal withdrawing the immunity of unofficial strikers from legal
sanctions. This was the proposal which ran into most trouble. It soon became
clear that the government had no chance of securing passage of the Bill. Castle was
supported by Wilson, Benn, Jenkins and Shore. Against them were Callaghan,
138 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

Crosland, Marsh, Roy Mason and Fred Lee.125 After endless ‘negotiations of
almost Byzantine complications with a variety of trade union leaders’,126 a face-
saving formula was worked out on 19 June 1969. The TUC General Council
agreed to a solemn and binding undertaking, setting out the lines on which they
would intervene in serious unofficial strikes. The government would not
continue with the proposed legislation during the current session of Parliament,
but would continue its discussions with interested parties about possible future
legislation. This situation made it easy for Heath to score points in the
Commons. ‘What will happen’, he asked, ‘should unofficial strikers ignore the
trade union leaders, and go on striking?’ Wilson had no answer.127

CUTTING DEFENCE: ‘WE WERE ALL DOGS’

After a ‘marathon series of Cabinets’128 on 16 January, other measures were
taken to deal with the economic malaise. Labour stalwarts had to swallow many
a bitter pill. Most of the soothing words spoken at the previous party conference
became just one more catalogue of broken promises. Prescription charges, which
had caused so much anger in the Labour Party, out of all proportion to their effect,
were reintroduced. The national insurance contribution was increased. The
number of houses to be built was cut. Free school milk for secondary school
pupils was ended. The raising of the school-leaving age, demanded for so long,
was deferred until 1973. This last measure was too much for Lord Longford, who
resigned from the government, Wilson’s only Cabinet casualty. The
Conservatives could gloat, but they too saw some of the things dear to many a
Tory heart being destroyed in the financial holocaust. The Territorial Army was
virtually to disappear and so was Civil Defence. After two votes, the threat of
resignation from Healey129 and a strong warning from President Johnson,130 the
order for the American F111A aircraft was cancelled. Millions had to be paid in
compensation but, nevertheless, hundreds of millions of pounds were saved.
Going too were Britain’s commitments east of Suez. ‘Harry Lee’, Lee Kuan Yew,
Socialist Singapore Prime Minister, flew in to lobby against the British
withdrawal. He gained a nine-month delay.131
Labour MPs had argued for years that Britain should give up its remaining
global commitments; now this was happening, but for the wrong reasons—
simple financial expediency—the whole business began to look like a series of
panicky pullbacks caused by a collapsing currency. In March 1967, 63 Labour MPs
had voted against the Defence White Paper, which contained renewed
justification for staying east of Suez. Wilson warned that MPs could bite once
like a dog, but if they did it again their licence would not be renewed. Benn and
many others found it deeply insulting: it implied that ‘we were all dogs and he
was our trainer’.132 The Middle East war of June 1967 had revealed Britain’s
inability to influence events in that area in any way. Yet it took some time for the
lesson to sink in. Wilson later admitted, ‘I was one of the last to be converted.’133
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 139

A ‘POST-MIDNIGHT’ PRIVY COUNCIL

The next financial crisis came a short time after the January 1968 cuts, and could
easily have resulted in another devaluation. The dollar was weak because of the
United States’ deficit on the balance of payments. The underlying cause was ‘the
beginning of the end of the role of the dollar, battered by the improvident
financing of the Vietnam War, as the effortless sun of the Bretton Woods [1944]
solar system…whatever currency the gale was directed against the side-winds
were devastating for sterling.’134 By March 1968 the situation was desperate.
Washington ‘requested’ Jenkins to close the London gold market, the principal
market through which traders were deserting the dollar for gold. The alternative
for Britain was ‘to be drowned within twenty-four hours’.135 Jenkins had 15
minutes of advice from the banker, Siegmund Warburg, who told him to use the
closing of the gold market, ‘as a smokescreen to close the foreign exchange
market as well… He confirmed the official view that we were on the very brink
of another devaluation.’136 Wilson hurriedly called a ‘post-midnight’, 10-minute
Privy Council at Buckingham Palace to issue an Order in Council proclaiming a
bank holiday.
The financial crisis was as notable for its accidental, political consequences as
for any economic ones. Somehow, Brown was not informed of the meeting and
felt, not for the first time, slighted and dejected. An ugly scene took place at
Downing Street and he resigned on 15 March. Crosland and Stewart were ‘also
very niggled about not having been consulted’137 but stayed. Stewart replaced
Brown at the Foreign Office.
Jenkins faced another nightmare. The Commons, facing an all-night session on
the Transport Bill, was in uproar and demanded to hear from the Chancellor. At
3.20 a.m. Jenkins made a statement and answered questions.
Before Labour MPs could recover their composure, they were hit again. When
the Budget proposals were announced on 19 March, they must have believed
their 1964 programme had been sentenced to death by a thousand cuts. The
Budget ‘turned out to involve the most swingeing increases in taxation the
country had ever faced on one single occasion’.138 Tax on petrol, cigarettes and
whisky, road fund licences, corporation tax, SET, betting tax—all were
increased. Income tax allowances were cut so as to neutralize the previous family
allowances except for the poorer families. As a sop to the Left there was to be a
special surcharge on large investment incomes. The only consolation was that
income tax was not going up. Castle thought Jenkins ‘won the reluctant
admiration of the Tories opposite, and brought our people to their feet waving
their order papers at the end’.139 When the voters were given their chance to
show what they felt about the Budget, they threw out Labour from Meriden,
Acton and Dudley. All went to the Conservatives on 28 March.
140 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

STUDENT PROTESTS: ‘NASTY TOUCH OF

AUTHORITARIANISM’
The economy apart, 1968 was a sad and frightening year in other respects too. In
May 1968 an unexpected crisis blew up in France. Student protests at the
University of Nanterre, just outside Paris, over conditions there spread to Paris.
Students occupied university buildings and set up ‘counter-universities’.
Peaceful demonstrations soon became violent confrontations with armed police.
The streets of Paris were lit up at night by blazing cars. Students at other
universities in France took similar action. Then, to the astonishment of their own
leaders, workers started to go militant. Strikes and factory occupations spread
like wildfire throughout the country. Suddenly it looked as though de Gaulle, in
office since 1958, would fall and France would be plunged into civil war. De
Gaulle and his family left for Germany and appeared to give up.140 It was only
after the government had given in to most of the economic demands of the
workers, and called new elections, that the Republic returned to some sort of
normality. The French students had learnt something about the art of protest,
1960s-style, from the Germans and the Americans. German students were
incensed by the successes—1966–69—of the extreme right-wing NPD, which
appeared an effective political force at that time. They also opposed Chancellor
Kiesinger (1966–69) who had been a member of the Nazi Party, and they
opposed the Vietnam War. In the US the protests were also about Vietnam, and
about racial discrimination.
Britain experienced its own more modest, and more moderate, form of student
protests in 1968. There were protests about living conditions at universities,
about their hierarchical structures, methods of teaching and sexual segregation.
The most extreme protests were at the London School of Economic and Political
Science, and Essex University. There were also occupations of libraries and
offices, stealing of confidential papers and other actions at many other
universities and polytechnics. Some reforms followed these actions. As
elsewhere, students also took to the streets protesting against the Vietnam War
and racism. Left-wing students were angered by the Labour government’s
general support for the United States over Vietnam. The horrors of Vietnam were
seen nightly on television and many felt sympathy for a small nation which seemed
to be the hapless victim of power politics. Michael Stewart, the Foreign
Secretary, faced catcalls and jeers at Hertford College, Oxford, when he
defended the government’s stand on Vietnam to a student audience. He silenced
many when he said he enjoyed teach-ins and would rejoice ‘when students in
China, the Soviet Union and even in North Vietnam would have the same
freedom to express their views’.141 The government discussed the student
protests. Wilson could not understand why the universities were not taking a
stronger line, and wanted to know whether student grants could be withdrawn.
Stewart was attracted to this idea. Crossman saw parallels with the fall of Weimar
and wanted no hesitation in dealing with people who destroyed free speech.
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 141

Benn, recording this, felt ‘there was a nasty touch of authoritarianism from other
Ministers which I found depressing’.142
The Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968 to overthrow the
Reform Communist regime briefly united all shades of opinion in Britain,
including the Communists, in condemnation of this aggressive act against another
small nation.

IMMIGRATION: THIS ‘DISTASTEFUL NECESSITY’

In February 1967 the extreme right-wing National Front came into being, gaining
limited support largely on the immigration issue. Fear of the extent of ‘coloured’
Commonwealth immigration led Macmillan to introduce the Commonwealth
Immigration Act, 1962. Under this Act, immigrants were admitted as one of
three categories. There were those who had been offered definite jobs (Category
A), and those who had certain specific skills which were in short supply
(Category B). There was also Category C, made up of those who did not qualify
under the other two. This third category was dropped in 1964. In July 1965
Wilson placed a ceiling of 8,500 on the total number of vouchers to be issued. Of
this total 1,000 were reserved for Maltese. The net total number of non-white
Commonwealth immigrants was officially estimated at 42,700 in 1955. It
fluctuated downwards to 21,850 in 1959, jumping up to 57,700 in 1960. There
was an upsurge in 1961–62 because of the impending legislation. Over 240,000
came in those two years. Though the numbers fell away, the average for the three
years 1963–65 was over 53,000. The majority of those entering in these years
came in as dependants.143 Obviously, the Act was not as effective as its authors
had expected.
In 1968 a new problem aggravated the situation. Substantial numbers of
Asians had gone to East Africa when that area was under British colonial rule.
They became of key significance in the commercial life of those territories and in
the professions. When the three territories in the area became independent as
Tanganyika (1961, later Tanzania), Uganda (1962) and Kenya (1963), special
provision was made for these Asians. Those born there would become citizens of
the newly independent state, provided at least one parent had been born in that
state. Those not so covered remained citizens of the United Kingdom and
colonies or British-protected persons. These then had the option of remaining
British passport-holders or applying, within two years, for citizenship of the state
where they lived.144 Increasingly, these states put pressure on their Asians. They
were pursuing a policy of Africanization and wanted to rid themselves of these
foreign communities. In 1967 the pressure was on in Kenya. The numbers of
Asians coming to Britain from this source started to increase. Britain sent
Malcolm MacDonald, who knew Kenyan leader Kenyatta, to try to persuade the
Kenyan government to moderate its policy, but to no avail. The result was that
further restrictive legislation was passed after little discussion and much heart-
searching. Crossman saw it as another Cabinet ‘balls-up’: ‘Already in 1965 we
142 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

should have known all about the Kenya Asians because a paper was put up to
Cabinet raising all the issues.’145 He put the blame on the Cabinet Secretariat
‘which is supposed to be a kind of super progress-chaser and keep a look-out for
all Cabinet decisions and watch that they’re adequately carried out’.146 Even had
the Secretariat done so, the dilemma which faced the government and Parliament
would not have been solved: should Britain break its pledge to these Asians or
run the risk of racial violence in the future? The government decided it could not
take the risk and a Bill was rushed through Parliament in seven days to become
law on 1 March 1968. It extended the operation of the 1962 Act to those
possessing citizenship of the United Kingdom and colonies if they were without
substantial personal connection with this country. This was defined in terms of
birthplace of parents or grandparents. The Liberals, 15 Conservatives, including
Iain Macleod, and 35 Labour MPs voted against the Bill.147 The official
Opposition line was to abstain. Callaghan, who was responsible for this
‘distasteful necessity’, was ‘upset at the harsh tone of some of the personal
criticism’.148
The government did not deal with the problem of immigration and racism
merely by imposing restrictions. It did make a start to providing equality for
those already in Britain. Two Race Relations were placed on the statute book.
The first, in 1965, made it unlawful for any person to practise discrimination on
the grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins against anybody seeking
access to facilities or services at restaurants, cafés, pubs, theatres, cinemas, dance
halls and all other places of public entertainment or recreation. It also covered
public transport and places maintained by local authorities. The Act set up a
Race Relations Board, with local committees to hear complaints and attempt
conciliation. Where this was not possible, civil proceedings could be instituted
by the Attorney-General. The Act of 1968, the result of the investigations of a
committee under Professor Harry Street, was much wider in scope and extended
the law to employment and housing. The government hoped to appease the anti-
restrictions minority in Parliament as well as the immigrants. It realized that
legislation would not change attitudes overnight, and put the emphasis on
conciliation rather than compulsion. Divided on the issue, the Conservative Party
voted against the 1968 Act though about 20 Conservatives, led by Sir Edward
Boyle, abstained. Wilson also sought to take the heat out of the immigration
issue by providing extra help for those local authorities with high concentrations
of immigrants. The immigrants made up, in 1966, about 3.2 per cent of the
population of Greater London, about the same in the West Midlands, 1.8 per cent
in West Yorkshire and 1 per cent in South East Lancashire. However, within
those areas there were particular boroughs—Brent and Hackney,
Wolverhampton, Huddersfield, Birmingham and Bradford—and parts of
boroughs, where concentrations were higher.149
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 143

POWELL: ‘A NATION…HEAPING UP ITS OWN

FUNERAL PYRE’
Depending on one’s point of view, the government had, by its new restrictionist
policies, either taken a realistic stand or appeased the racists and the ignorant. At
any rate, it looked as though it had got the problem of the Kenyan Asians under
control. At this time television viewers were given nightly a reminder of the
horrors of racial tension from the United States. Martin Luther King, Black civil
rights leader and Nobel Prize winner, had been assassinated on 4 April 1968.
Severe racial tension and violence exploded in the days that followed. In
Washington, DC ‘entire blocks of buildings were going up in smoke… Before
the holocaust was over, 40 other cities had experienced similar tragic outbreaks…
from coast to coast.’150
It was in this situation of remorse and fear that Enoch Powell, defence
spokesman of the shadow cabinet, made a widely publicized speech on
immigration and race relations, on 20 April, before the passage of the second
Race Relations Bill. He wanted to stop the inflow of immigrants and promote the
maximum outflow, ‘with generous grants and assistance’. He opposed the Bill as
something which ‘is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the
agent provocateur the power to pillory [Britons] for their private actions’. He
also opposed it because, ‘Here is the means of showing that the immigrant
communities can organize to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign
against their fellow-citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal
weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided.’ His rhetoric
and emotionladen examples were skilfully deployed to back up his views. Those
whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. We must be mad, literally
mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependants…
It is like watching a nation busily engaging in heaping up its own funeral pyre.’
He spoke of the formerly ‘quiet street’ which had become ‘a place of noise and
confusion’, where lived a single old white lady, who was abused by her
immigrant neighbours and had ‘excreta pushed through her letter-box’.151
Powell found he had struck a popular chord. Hundreds of letters of support
poured in. According to Gallup three in four agreed with what he said.152 In
London a group of 200 dockers and meat porters marched to Westminster to
congratulate him, and ‘shout obscene things at Labour MPs’. According to Benn,
‘there were strikes all over the place in support of Enoch Powell’.153
Heath sacked Powell from his team on 14 April 1968, calling his speech
racist. Powell denied he was a racist, saying there were many of the peoples of
India who were ‘in many respects’ superior to Europeans.154 Boyle, Hogg,
Macleod and Willie Whitelaw, the Chief Whip, had indicated they would resign
if Powell stayed. Most Conservative MPs supported Heath155 but he was flooded
with hostile letters, often obscene.156 Trouble had been brewing between Heath
and Powell for some time. Powell was ambitious. Perhaps his Birmingham
speech was part of the provincial revolt against the accepted complacency of
144 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

Establishment London, or simply a reflection of a fatal maverick streak, a protest

against the polite consensus politics aimed at the middle ground where passion is
dead and the clash of principles is replaced by the calculations of pollsters,
psephologists and speech-writers. Whatever its origin, the speech could not have
done race relations, law and order or, in the long run, its tormented author any
good. If anything, it strengthened Heath. It certainly strengthened Wilson. On 2
May he gave a forthright and eloquent answer to Powell which did much to
restore, temporarily at least, his sagging popularity with his own supporters.
Finally, the speech marked the beginning of the widening gulf between Powell
and the Conservative Party.

NORTHERN IRELAND: ‘BLATANT

DISCRIMINATION’
On 17 April 1969 a remarkable young woman was elected to Parliament—
Bernadette Devlin, a 21-year-old student, and a left-wing, independent Irish
republican. She had beaten the Ulster Unionist candidate at a byelection in the Mid-
Ulster constituency. This was the culmination of a struggle which had begun
over two years before and, some would say, it was part of a larger struggle which
had been going on for centuries.
In 1921 the British government and Irish nationalist representatives signed a
treaty under which Ireland was to become a self-governing dominion of the
British Empire, similar in status to Canada, and styled the Irish Free State.
Northern Ireland, six counties, was to be free to stay out of the new dominion
and remain part of the United Kingdom. The two parts of Ireland, the
predominantly Catholic South, and the predominantly Protestant North, already
had parliaments set up under the Government of Ireland Act, 1920. The treaty of
December 1921 brought to an end years of armed conflict between the forces of
the British Crown and the Irish Republican Army—a somewhat different body
from the ones competing for that title in the 1960s. Total peace did not come to
either part for some years, mainly because extreme republicans could not be
satisfied with anything less than a republic, free of Britain and incorporating the
whole of Ireland. Various forms of discrimination against the Catholics in the
North, who make up roughly one-third of the population, meant that no chance was
given for the development of non-sectarian politics. In 1935 British troops had to
restore order in Ulster. Catholics felt they could never achieve their full rights in
the mini-quasi-state of Ulster ruled permanently by the Ulster Unionist Party.
For their part, the Northern Protestants felt under siege, as the state based on
Dublin did not relinquish its claims to the six counties making up Northern
Ireland. The constitution of 1937 claimed to be for the whole of Ireland. In 1949
the Catholic state formally became the Republic of Ireland, thus severing all
remaining constitutional ties with Britain.
The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the handful of militant irreconcilables, had
been ruthlessly suppressed in North and South during the Second World War and
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 145

it was some years before the organization was capable of any action again. An
armed campaign during the period 1956–62 against partition was a failure. With
greater prosperity in both parts of Ireland, and opportunities in Britain and the
USA, few young men could be recruited for such romantic gestures. By the 1960s
the IRA announced the struggle was political rather than military.157 It began to
look as though sectarian attitudes were breaking down on both sides.158 The
coming to office of Captain Terence O’Neill (1914–1990), as Prime Minister of
Northern Ireland in 1963, was a sign of this. He replaced Lord Brookeborough
(Basil Brooke, 1888–1974), who had led the Unionists for 20 years, during
which time ‘Blatant discrimination’ was practised in housing and other areas.159
O’Neill was regarded as a moderate and embarked upon a programme of modest
reform. For the first time since the partition, the leaders of the two Irish political
entities met, O’Neill having invited the Irish Prime Minister Sean Lemass to
Belfast in 1965. There were, however, rumblings of discontent among the more
extreme elements in the Protestant community. Prominent among them was Rev.
Ian Paisley. In August 1966 O’Neill warned Wilson of the need ‘for a short
period for Ulster to assimilate his earlier reforms’.160 By this time the Catholics
too were stirring. In 1967 the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association was
formed through the earlier work of Dr Conn and Mrs Patricia McCluskey, who
were keenly interested in securing for Catholics a fair share of new council
housing so long denied them. They were influenced by the changing political
climate in both Britain and Ireland, and by the example of the successful civil
rights campaigns in the United States.
On 5 October 1968 a civil rights march, attended by three Labour MPs from
London, went ahead in Londonderry as planned, even though it had been banned
by the Northern Ireland Minister of Home Affairs, William Craig. The marchers
were attacked along the route, and the police used ‘needless violence’161 against
them. Backed by the British government, O’Neill was prepared to step up the
implementation of the reform programme, including a development commission
to replace the Protestant local authority in Londonderry, and an ombudsman to
investigate particular grievances. O’Neill was, however, outflanked by the right
wing of his own party. He dismissed Craig, and two other ministers subsequently
resigned. He called an election in February 1969, hoping his moderate policies
would be endorsed. This tactic was not entirely successful. For the first time in
24 years his own constituency was challenged and O’Neill was returned on a
minority vote, with Paisley coming close to beating him. There was no kind of
understanding between the Catholic civil rights candidates and moderate
Unionists. The victory of Ms Devlin in April was another blow in that it aroused
the extreme Protestants even more. More demonstrations and disorder took place,
and bombings of public utilities seemed to indicate the inability of O’Neill’s
Stormont government to maintain order. Accordingly, he announced his
resignation on 28 April. Major James Chichester-Clark replaced him. Another
factor in O’Neill’s downfall was his determination to introduce universal adult
suffrage for local elections. Northern Ireland still retained franchise laws
146 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

restricting voting to persons with statutory qualifications as property owners or

tenants. The result was that about one-quarter of persons eligible to vote in
Westminster elections were not eligible to vote in local elections, and plural
votes could be claimed by people with multiple property qualifications. This hit
Catholics harder than Protestants.162 The new Prime Minister, no doubt with one
eye on London, agreed to implement this measure of reform and proclaimed an
amnesty for political offenders.

COMMONS ‘SPELLBOUND’
Devlin’s maiden speech held the Commons ‘spellbound’, but both Wilson and
Crossman recalled they found her negative and uncompromising in her
approach.163 No doubt the new, working-class MP fresh from Queen’s
University believed the Commons understood little and cared less about Ulster.
She knew the reality behind the statistic that there the unemployment rate was
always above the UK average, being three times higher for Catholics than for
Protestants. She and her lonely Belfast colleague Gerry Fitt knew the reality of
the discrimination against educated Catholics which drove them out of the
province to find jobs, of the discrimination in the shipyards where the bulk of
those employed were Protestants. Crossman remarked on how little the Cabinet
knew about the conditions in Ulster and quotes Healey as admitting the same.164
He called both O’Neill and Chichester-Clark inarticulate, upper-class
landowners, and this did seem to be part of the problem. O’Neill, it could be
claimed, knew the world, and was refreshingly open to outside influences, but
did he know Ulster? Both he and his successor were set apart from the bulk of
their own party by education, speech, manners, lifestyle and money. Such men
could only maintain their leadership as long as they mouthed the traditional
shibboleths of Unionism, but they proved incapable of leading their flock into
new, non-sectarian, pastures. As the Ulster crisis deepened, they were put aside.
Chichester-Clark went in March 1971. Paisley came more and more to
prominence as an authentic leader of a considerable section of Protestant opinion.
Unfortunately, his colourful personality and oratory were put to destructive,
rather than constructive, purposes.
In August 1969 there was renewed violence. The annual (Protestant)
Apprentice Boys of Londonderry March led to Catholic fears of a violent
passage through their territory, Bogside. For 48 hours Catholics hurled abuse,
stones and petrol bombs at the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who responded with
tear gas. The Irish Republic’s tricolour flew over Bogside and ‘Free Derry’ was
proclaimed. All this led to tension in Belfast. There too barricades went up and
firing broke out (it is not clear who started it)165 between the police and
Catholics. Five Catholics and two Protestants died. Catholics were forced out of
their homes which were then burned.166 Callaghan, as Home Secretary, sent in
British troops to restore order and establish truce lines. He visited the devastated
areas himself. More promises of reform followed. Official investigations
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 147

substantiated Catholic complaints. The Cameron Commission of September 1969

concluded that civil rights grievances had a ‘substantial foundation in fact and
were in a very real sense an immediate and operative cause of…disorders’.167
The Hunt Report in October recommended the disbandment of the B Specials, a
Protestant auxiliary police force, and the disarming of the regular police. The
British government implemented these recommendations together with the
setting up of the Ulster Defence Regiment, which was to be a non-sectarian body
to support the civil power. Unfortunately, many Catholics saw it as merely the B
Specials in military uniform. The Protestants were angry about the loss of the
‘B’s and riots took place. On 11 October the British Army intervened to crush
fierce Protestant riots in the Shankhill, Belfast. The Catholics had won a victory
but were split among themselves about their objectives and how to achieve them.
Not even the IRA agreed on what they wanted; this body split during the 1960s
into the official, or ‘Red and Green’, IRA and the Provisional, or ‘Green’, IRA.
There was a third group, the Saor Eire, or Free Ireland. The differences of
doctrine of the three groups need not concern us; what is of interest is that they
could, with a minimum number of recruits and a minimum cover, inflict so much
damage on life and property in Northern Ireland. It is also possible to pose the
question, but not answer it, of whether the British government could have
prevented the worst by earlier intervention, including power-sharing in Ulster.
Easter 1970 saw vicious rioting between troops and Catholic inhabitants of the
Ballymurphy housing estate on the edge of West Belfast. For the first time since
the Second World War British troops were again in conflict with Irish republicans.

LORDS ‘FRUSTRATE…ELECTED GOVERNMENT’

In 1968 Wilson attempted to fulfil Labour’s pledge to deal with the House of
Lords. The upper chamber had a built-in Conservative majority, because of the
hereditary principle, which had been dented, but not destroyed, by the
introduction of life peerages in 1958. Since then the Lords had become only
slightly little less unpopular in Labour circles. There was renewed anger when, in
June, the Lords rejected the Southern Rhodesia (United Nations) Sanctions
Order, 1968. Wilson later wrote that ‘not since the Parliament Act of 1911 had
the Lords deliberately set themselves out to frustrate…the executive actions, and
in this case actions to fulfil international commitments, of the elected
Government’.168 But he did not seek to abolish the Lords. In November the
government published its White Paper on Lords Reform, the result of all-party
talks. At that time there were roughly 736 hereditary peers by succession, 122
hereditary peers of first creation, 155 life peers, 23 serving or retired Law Lords
and 26 bishops.169 The main proposals of the White Paper were that the
hereditary basis of membership should be eliminated and that no one party
should possess a permanent majority in the Lords. Hereditary peers would still
have the right to attend and speak, but not vote. The Bill to reform the Lords was
defeated by a strange alliance of left-wing and Conservative backbench
148 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

opposition led, respectively, by Michael Foot and Enoch Powell. The Left feared
that a revived, but still grossly undemocratic, second chamber would exercise
more power and authority. Some Conservatives were worried about the increase
in the power of patronage which would go to the Prime Minister. Powell himself
remained an unashamed believer in the principle of primogeniture in the Lords.
Under Wilson MPs were invited to put their own House in order. New and
younger Labour MPs felt that the Commons’ hours and methods were inefficient
and downright inconvenient. An experiment, introduced in the session 1966–67,
of holding sittings of the Commons in the mornings proved a failure because
most Conservatives, having outside professions, were against it.
More successful was the experiment with specialist committees. These had
been advocated by those who believed the back-bencher had little chance to
examine the work of government. Experiments were started with the Select
Committee on Estimates by dividing it into six subcommittees covering various
aspects of public policy from Defence and Overseas Affairs to Technological and
Scientific Affairs. These committees met in private. Interestingly, in view of the
problems with this area in the 1990s, a Select Committee on Agriculture was set
up at the end of 1966 and wound up again a year later due to lack of interest.
More permanent were the Committees on Education and Science, Race Relations
and Immigration, and the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs. These produced
some useful reports, but it is doubtful whether they increased the back-benchers’
power vis-à-vis the executive.170
The Parliament of 1966–70 also attempted to make the administration more
responsible to the public through the Commissioner for tion Act, 1967. The
Commissioner, or Ombudsman, was given the task of investigating written
complaints made to MPs by members of the public who claim to have sustained
injustice in consequence of maladministration. The Commissioner had only
limited impact compared with similar offices in other countries. His jurisdiction
was severely limited. He was not empowered to deal with complaints about local
government, National Heath Service hospitals, personnel matters in the civil
service or armed services, the nationalized industries or the police. In addition,
the Commissioner’s work attracted little attention, and many MPs preferred to
investigate complaints themselves rather than use the Ombudsman. However, by
the late 1970s, there was a big increase in the number of complaints lodged,
which seemed to indicate the office served a genuine need.
The 1966–70 Parliament also changed the suffrage. Under the Representation
of the People Act, 1969 the voting age was lowered to 18. The majority of
Conservatives voted against this on a free vote.

DAVID STEEL: EXCEPTIONAL COURAGE

The Parliaments of 1964–70 passed six other Bills which were in keeping with
trends in other advanced societies. They were not party political measures, but it
is unlikely that a Conservative-dominated Commons would have approved them.
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 149

The first was the abolition of capital punishment, due to the untiring efforts of
Sydney Silverman, who introduced his Murder (Abolition of the Death Penalty)
Bill in 1964. It was passed in July 1965. The Lords then carried a Conservative
amendment that the measure should lapse automatically after five years unless
both Houses passed motions for permanent abolition. Such motions were
approved in December 1969. MPs decided to risk running counter to public
opinion on this issue.
In July 1967 the Sexual Offences Act legalized homosexual practices, in
private, between consenting adults in England and Wales. This was a private
member’s bill introduced by Leo Abse, a Welsh Labour MP. In October of the
same year the Abortion Act became law. This had been introduced by Liberal
MP David Steel. Jenkins, then Home Secretary, commented, ‘I think that as a
young member…with a marginal constituency and without a great party
machine…he has shown exceptional courage’.171 The Act made abortion much
easier on the grounds of physical or mental risk to the pregnant woman or any
existing children of her family, or when there was a substantial risk that if the
child were born, it would suffer physical or mental abnormalities. The number of
abortions greatly increased after the passing of the Act, which continued to be
opposed by a strong pressure group based on the Catholic community. Parliament
also modernized the law on divorce in 1969. The irretrievable breakdown of the
marriage became the sole reason for granting divorce. In line with other
countries where divorce was available Britain was experiencing an explosion of
divorce before the Act. Between 1959 and 1969 the annual number of petitions
for divorce and annulment in England and Wales had increased by something
like 133 per cent. This trend continued. The secularization of society, the
improving education of women and the increase in the number of married
women at work were probably the main causes for this development. The term
‘women’s liberation’ erupted into the mass media around 1968. Also in keeping
with this trend was the National Health Service (Family Planning) Act, 1967,
which enabled local authorities to provide a family planning service for all who
sought it, either directly or by way of a voluntary body. The advice was free, the
contraceptive devices were to be charged for according to the means of the
recipient. The Theatre Act, 1968, introduced by Labour MP George Strauss,
ended censorship of plays in London, about which there had been controversy
for many years. No doubt this move made it easier for provincial theatres to be
more controversial with their productions. The legislators resisted change in one
area—drugs. Drug-taking, trafficking and other related offences continued to
cause mounting concern. Dangerous-drug offences doubled between 1969 and
1972. The causes remained uncertain and somewhat obscure, but this was the
start of a long-term trend. All these measures, which recognized the changes in
society and attitudes, and in turn helped to produce them, were seen by some as a
dangerous lurch in the direction of the permissive society, by others as moves
towards a more honest and more humane Britain.
150 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

ELECTION ’70: ‘EXQUISITE JUNE MORNING’

When Wilson appeared on a TV sports programme as a football fan, there were
those who thought the election could not be far away. Polling day was on 18
June and everything pointed to another Labour win. The local election results in
May had gone Labour’s way. The opinion polls gave Labour a good lead. Top
people—Cecil King the newspaper magnate, Lord Renwick and Norman Collins
of ATV, Lord Crowther of Forte, Lord Shawcross, former Attlee minister turned
TV tycoon, Paul Chambers of ICI, Lockwood of EMI, and McFadzean of Shell,
and others too—met together and wondered how they could use their mouths and
their money to scotch Wilson. King commented gloomily, ‘On television Wilson
lacks all authority but looks genial and confident; Heath looks a nice man but is
just not convincing—it is hard to say why.’172 Money wages were up and the
balance of payments looked healthy. In spite of all the setbacks, ownership of
consumer durables and home ownership had continued to rise. Two days before
the vote, adverse balance of payments figures for May were announced. England
was knocked out of the World Cup and, despite his differences with Heath,
Powell urged his supporters to vote Conservative. Within the Labour Party all
was not well. In May, Labour MPs had once again demonstrated their
disagreements over the government’s support for the US on Vietnam. Individual
membership of the party had fallen every year since Labour was in office. For
those who had to man the creaking, run-down Labour constituency machines,
these were years of frustration and failure. In some respects Britain was a
franker, freer place to live than it had been even in the early 1960s, but the great
plans for reform had not come off.
On 19 June at 4 a.m. Crossman and his wife motored home. It was the ‘cool,
delicious dawn of an exquisite June morning’.173 Politically, it was the delicious
dawn of the man with the boat rather than the man with the pipe. To everyone’s
amazement, Heath, the most despised politician in post-war Britain, had won. The
Conservatives had fewer votes than in 1951, 1955 or 1959, but they had gained a
majority of 43 over Labour. The quiet election with the lowest turnout since
1935 had proved to be Wilson’s undoing. It was also Brown’s. He lost his seat
and therefore his position as deputy leader.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Harold Wilson, The Labour Government 1964–70: A Personal Record (1971), 2.

2 Peter Paterson, Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George-Brown (1993).
3 Lord Wigg, George Wigg (1972), 259.
4 Marcia Williams, Inside Number 10 (1975), 102.
5 Harold Wilson, The New Britain: Labour Plan Outlined (1964), 9. This volume
includes all the radical, Kennedy-style rhetoric. There was no plan as such.
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 151

6 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (introduced by Ruth Winstone)
(1995), 117–18. See also comments of Williams, op. cit., 17.
7 Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 1: Minister of Housing
1964–66 (1975), 29. Remarkably, Barbara Castle ‘enjoyed the novelty of going to
Buckingham Palace for the swearing in’. See Barbara Castle, Fighting all the Way
(1993), 340.
8 Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (1991), 160.
9 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 180.
10 ibid., 124; Joe Haines, The Power of Politics (1977), 147.
11 Castle, op. cit., 341–2, 367.
12 Sunday Times, 12 September 1965.
13 Crossman, op. cit., 31.
14 Guardian, 21 June 1965.
15 Sunday Times, 19 March 1978.
16 Williams, op. cit., 27.
17 James Margach, The Abuse of Power (1978), 177.
18 Haines, op. cit., 157–75; Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 124; Crossman, op. cit., 582;
Wigg, op. cit., 316.
19 Wigg, op. cit., 316.
20 Lord George-Brown, In My Way (1971), 161.
21 Jenkins, op. cit., 159.
22 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 5.
23 Jenkins, op., cit., 190.
24 Samuel Brittan, Steering the Economy: The Role of the Treasury (1969), 204.
25 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 131.
26 Crossman, op. cit., 315.
27 Paul Foot, The Politics of Harold Wilson (1968), 207. He used this term in a speech
in 1960.
28 Joseph Frankel, British Foreign Policy 1945–1973 (1975), 205.
29 Crossman, op. cit., 95.
30 ibid., 94.
31 ibid., 95.
32 Drew Middleton, Crisis in the West (1965), 91.
33 Andrew J.Pierre, Nuclear Politics: The British Experience with an Independent
Strategic Force (1972), 244.
34 Pierre, op. cit., 245.
35 ibid., 290.
36 ibid., 291.
37 Jenkins, op. cit., 159.
38 Roy Sherwood, Superpower Britain (Cambridge, 1989), 17.
39 Jenkins, op. cit., 171.
40 Sherwood, op. cit., 23.
41 Michael Dintenfass, The Decline of Industrial Britain 1870–1980 (1992), 47.
42 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 121.
43 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 143.
44 Crossman, op. cit., 378.
45 ibid., 378.
46 Castle, op. cit., 384.
152 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

47 Wigg, op. cit., 326.

48 Crossman, op. cit., 382
49 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 183.
50 Reginald Maudling, Memoirs (1978), 134.
51 Andrew Roth, Enoch Powell, Tory Tribune (1970), 328.
52 John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (1993), 182.
53 ibid., 168–70.
54 ibid., 199.
55 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 49.
56 Jenkins, op. cit., 204.
57 Willy Brandt, People and Politics (1978), 249.
58 Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington (1988),
252–3.
59 D.E.Butler and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1966 (1966), 207–
8.
60 James Callaghan, Time and Chance (1978), 192.
61 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 24.
62 Butler and King, op. cit., 265.
63 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 156.
64 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 237.
65 Crossman, op. cit., 524.
66 ibid., 533–4.
67 ibid., 547.
68 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 157.
69 Callaghan, op. cit., 196.
70 ibid., 196.
71 ibid.
72 Jenkins, op. cit., 191.
73 Crossman, op. cit., 578.
74 Callaghan, op. cit., 199; Jenkins, op. cit., 195.
75 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 259.
76 ibid., 260.
77 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 161.
78 ibid.
79 Crossman, op. cit., 577.
80 ibid., 581.
81 Calllaghan, op. cit., 200.
82 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 262.
83 ibid., 265.
84 Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 2, 1966–68 (1976), 17.
85 Callaghan, op. cit., 206–7.
86 Brian Lapping, The Labour Government, 1964–70 (1970), 43.
87 Brown, op. cit., 95.
88 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 278.
89 ibid., 286–7, 138.
90 Williams, op. cit., 170.
91 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 577.
92 Callaghan, op. cit., 145.
 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70 153

93 Crossman, 1964–66, op. cit., 54.

94 Foot, op. cit., 275.
95 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 470.
96 ibid., 474.
97 Frankel, op. cit., 141.
98 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 556–7; Trevor Royle, War Report
(Edinburgh, 1987), 212–15.
99 Lapping, op. cit., 67.
100 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 626.
101 Pears Cyclopaedia 1976–77 (1977), G33.
102 D.G.M.Dosser, ‘Britain and the International Economy’, Westminster Bank
Review, May 1968.
103 Crossman, 1964–66, op. cit., 83.
104 Willy Brandt, People and Politics, 161.
105 Lord George-Brown, op. cit., 209.
106 Callaghan, op. cit., 213.
107 Brittan, op. cit., 226.
108 Callaghan, op. cit., 212.
109 Paterson, op. cit., 225.
110 Callaghan, op. cit., 214.
111 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 174.
112 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 464.
113 Campbell, op. cit., 225.
114 Jenkins, op. cit., 215–16.
115 ibid., 215–16.
116 Castle, op. cit., 375.
117 ibid., 339.
118 ibid., 414–15.
119 ibid., 412.
120 Callaghan, op. cit., 416.
121 ibid., 414.
122 ibid., 415.
123 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 626.
124 Peter Kellner and Christopher Hitchens, Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten
(1976), 96.
125 Callaghan, op. cit., 276.
126 Jenkins, op. cit., 289.
127 Campbell, op. cit., 229.
128 Jenkins, op. cit., 227.
129 ibid., 227.
130 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 179.
131 Jenkins, op. cit., 228.
132 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 168.
133 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 243.
134 Jenkins, op. cit., 234.
135 ibid., 238.
136 ibid., 236.
137 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 184; Jenkins, op. cit., 238.
154 WILSON’S ATTEMPTS AT REFORM, 1964–70

138 Andrew Alexander and Alan Watkins, The Making of the Prime Minister 1970
(1970), 36.
139 Jenkins, op. cit., 245–6.
140 Willy Brandt, My Life in Politics (1992), 241.
141 John Dickie, Inside the Foreign Office (1992), 94.
142 Winstone/Benn, 220.
143 Frank Field and Patricia Haikin, Black Britons (1971), 12.
144 Humphrey Berkeley, The Odyssey of Enoch: A Political Memoir (1977), 77–8.
145 Crossman, 1966–68, 733.
146 ibid., 734.
147 Campbell, op. cit., 242.
148 Callaghan, op. cit., 266.
149 Field and Haikin, op. cit., 15–16.
150 Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–
69 (New York, 1971), 175.
151 Berkeley, op. cit., contains the speech in full.
152 Robert J.Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen Through
the Gallup Data (1989), 51.
153 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 187.
154 Robert Shepherd, The Power Brokers: The Tory Party and its Leaders (1981), 364.
155 Campbell, op. cit., 245.
156 ibid., 244.
157 Martin Dillon and Denis Lehane, Political Murder in Northern Ireland (1973), 35.
158 This is the impression gained by the writer on a visit to Northern Ireland in 1963
when he interviewed Captain O’Neill, Gerry Fitt and others.
159 Callaghan, op. cit., 271.
160 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 670.
161 Lord Cameron, Disturbances in Northern Ireland (Belfast, 1969), Cmd 532, para.
51.
162 Richard Rose, Governing without Consensus (1971), 441.
163 Richard Crossman, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 3:1968–70 (1977), 451;
Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 674. For Devlin’s own views see
Bernadette Devlin, The Price of My Soul (1969).
164 Crossman, 1968–70, op. cit., 478–9.
165 Rose, op. cit., 106.
166 James Callaghan, A House Divided: The Dilemma of Northern Ireland (1973), 74.
167 Rose, op. cit., 107.
168 Wilson, The Labour Government, op. cit., 537.
169 Frank Stacey, British Government 1966–1975: Years of Reform (1975), 73.
170 Stacey, op. cit., 21–37.
171 Jenkins, op. cit., 209.
172 Cecil King, The Cecil King Diary, 1965–1970 (1972), 327, 330–1.
173 Crossman, 1968–70, op. cit., 949.
 7
THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER:
EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

DOWNING STREET: ‘THE SHUTTERS WERE

FASTENED’
On 19 June at 2.15 p.m. the 316th Conservative victory was announced, but
Wilson could not resign until the Queen had driven back to Buckingham Palace
from the race meeting at Ascot.1 There was ‘a shell-shocked feeling’ at the last
Labour Cabinet meeting in Downing Street.2 A woman threw paint over Heath as
he later went into No. 10. He spent less than an hour there before driving off to
Windsor for the Queen Mother’s 70th birthday party.3
Heath’s Cabinet was not one of new faces. Unusually, Sir Alec returned to the
Cabinet as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary. Another aristocrat, Lord
Carrington, was given Defence. Maudling got the Home Office and Macleod the
Treasury. Hogg became Hailsham once again, returning to the upper house as Lord
Chancellor. Not quite so well known to the public was Robert Carr, the
Cambridge-educated metallurgist and industrialist as Minister of Labour. Another
key appointment was that of Anthony Barber as Chancellor of the Duchy of
Lancaster with special responsibility for negotiating Britain’s third EEC attempt.
Farmer and landowner William Whitelaw became Leader of the House, and
Peter Walker, the self-made millionaire and chairman of Lloyd’s insurance
brokers, took over the Ministry of the Environment. Among the other significant
appointments were Sir Keith Joseph, deputy chairman of Bovis Holdings Ltd, as
Secretary of State for Social Services, and James Prior, a Cambridge-educated
farmer and land agent, as Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. One other
appointment of great significance, though it was not really seen as such at the
time, was Margaret Thatcher at Education and Science. Essentially, it was a
fairly moderate and meritocratic 18-strong team. If it did not represent, in social
terms, the mass of ordinary party members, it did represent a shift from the
upper-class emphasis of previous post-war Tory Cabinets to the more middle-
class elements of the party. One rough indicator was the fall in the number of old
Etonians from eleven to three.4 One Kennedy-style innovation was the setting up
of a ‘think-tank’ under Lord Rothschild, known as a Labour supporter, to advise
the government on possible policy initiatives.
156 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

Heath suffered his first ‘devastating blow’5 weeks after taking over. On 20
July his neighbour at 11 Downing Street suffered a heart attack and died. He was
the ‘one charismatic personality the Government possessed’.6 Macleod was
replaced by Barber, who had served four years in the Treasury followed by a
year in the Cabinet as Minister of Health. Geoffrey Rippon took over as ‘Mr
Europe’. John Davies, former Director-General of the CBI, with only a few
weeks of Commons experience behind him, became Minister of Technology.
Heath came across as a civilized and decent man. His facial characteristics
made him an ideal target for the cartoonists. His accent, it was said, owed more
to the elocution master than to any natural evolution. The fact that he was not
married caused rumours about his sexual preference.7 Before 1970 he got a rough
deal from most of the media—whatever their politics. Perhaps the fact that he
appeared to have confounded their predictions, by winning the 1970 election, had
given him a certain defensive arrogance, behind which the ‘real’ Ted Heath was
condemned to remain hidden. At any rate, according to James Margach, ‘When
Prime Minister he became authoritarian and intolerant.’ At 10 Downing Street
‘The shutters were fastened and the door opened only to a select few by a
Government which was the most secrecy-conscious since the war. Downing
Street became the most closed society in all my experience.’8

‘RESTRICT PROVISION TO…WHERE IT IS MORE

EFFICIENT’
When he was elected Heath seemed to represent a break with the post-war
consensus. Meeting at Selsdon Park, Croydon in January 1970, his shadow
cabinet appeared to have lurched to the Right.9 This was the image conveyed at
the election. ‘Selsdon man’ appeared to want to break with the state-
interventionist and welfare policies of previous administrations, and set compass
to sail towards a neo-capitalist El Dorado. In some respects he was influenced by
the Republican Right in the United States and by a somewhat false impression of
the West German Christian Democrats. The state would interfere less in the
economy, but would also give fewer handouts to industry. Firms would have to
become more efficient or perish. As Davies told the Conservative Party
conference in October 1970, ‘I will not bolster up or bail out companies where I
can see no end to the process of propping them up.’10 Public expenditure would
be cut, individuals would pay less income tax, but they would have to do more
for themselves.

The object…is not to destroy the social services but to restrict provision to…
where it is more efficient. The aim is to free as many people as possible
from the need to rely…ublic authorities, to restore a greater degree of
family responsibility expanding the amount of private provision.

In his speech Heath made similar promises. The delegates ‘went wild’.11
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 157

Doctrinaire Conservatives could chuckle with delight at the announcement

that Thomas Cook & Son, the successful state-owned travel agency, was to be sold,
that the National Coal Board was to be encouraged to sell its brickworks, British
Rail its hotels, and the nationalized gas industry was to be prevented from
pursuing its exploration of the North Sea gas and oil fields. Given this approach,
it was only to be expected that the Industrial Reorganization Corporation should
be closed down. Smiles of Job disappeared when the government was faced with
the alternative of breaking its pledge on ‘lame ducks’ or letting Rolls-Royce, a
symbol of British engineering skill, go to the wall. Heavily committed to a costly
programme of development on the RB 211 engine for the Lockheed TriStar, the
company needed immediate financial help to avoid bankruptcy. The government
argued it had no choice but to step in with a loan. When the company collapsed
three months later, the government nationalized it.
Like the previous government, Heath’s administration was worried about
inflation. Barber introduced a mini-Budget in October 1970 which cut
government expenditure on school milk, council house subsidies, prescription
costs and dental treatment. Income tax cuts were promised in six months’ time.
There was some restriction on credit. These measures could be attacked as
socially divisive, and even inflationary. They would fall on the working classes,
thus giving rise to increased wage claims. The same was said about the Housing
Finance Act of 1972.
The aim of this legislation was to cut subsidies to council house tenants by
introducing a ‘fair rent’ policy. It meant considerable rent increases for very
many tenants and a consequent rise in their cost of living. Those who could not
afford the increases could get rebates. Over 30 per cent of families lived in
council properties at that time. The experiment was started of encouraging local
councils to give their tenants the opportunity to buy the homes in which they
lived. Apart from being considered as a step along the road to the old
Conservative goal of a ‘property-owning democracy’, it was thought this policy
would generate more funds for new council house building. Critics claimed it
merely reduced the stock of cheaper housing for the less well-off. House prices did
leap up between 1970 and 1972 by about 30 per cent per annum. This also
increased inflation.
In opposition the Conservatives were against Wilson’s prices and incomes
policy. When they returned to office, they abandoned it. The National Board for
Prices and Incomes was abolished, only to re-emerge later. Heath sought some
kind of voluntary agreement with the unions and the Confederation of British
Industry (CBI). This did not work to the govern ment’s satisfaction and in
November 1972 a 90-day standstill was imposed upon wages and salaries,
dividends, rates and rents, and on all prices other than imports and fresh foods.
Offenders were liable to be fined. In April 1973 this was replaced by a more
flexible form of restraint known as Stage Two. Under new legislation two bodies
were established: a Price Commission and a Pay Board. Though there were to be
exceptions, the total annual increase for any group of employees should not
158 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

exceed £1 a week, plus 4 per cent of the current pay-bill excluding overtime. The
Pay Board gave its prior approval for settlements involving more than 1,000
employees, but in other cases it had to be notified. It became an offence to strike
or threaten to strike in order to force an employer to contravene an order of the
Board. Price increases were limited under Stage Two, but there were a fair
number of exceptions. Large firms had to give prior notice to the Price
Commission, medium firms had to report regularly and small firms had to keep
price records. Imports were one of the exceptions and the price of goods from
abroad went up rapidly in 1973. Stage Three of the pay policy was introduced in
October 1973. Under it there were only modest increases allowed, with a limit of
£350 a year on the amount to be received by an individual. Again there were
important exceptions for such things as ‘unsociable hours’, and there was some
progress towards equal pay for women. Threshold payments were also
introduced, allowing modest, automatic increases in pay each jump in the cost of
living index.12 These measures did not keep down the rate of inflation, the
biggest single factor being the soaring cost of imported raw materials, oil and
food.

INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS: ‘ALL HELL WILL BE LET

LOOSE’
The government hoped that legislation relating to trade unions would play an
important part in helping the economy. Accordingly, it introduced the Industrial
Relations Act, 1971. It was passed in spite of strong TUC opposition. The Act
had many similarities with In Place of Strife. Under the Act unions were forced
to register or forfeit the legal immunities available to registered unions.
Registration did, however, bring with it obligations. Union rules had to set out
clearly which officers had authority to instigate or direct industrial action; they
had to deal with ballots and elections, dues and discipline, and members’
complaints against the union. As one authority put it at the time, ‘Almost every
union…will be compelled to redraw its rules in accordance with these guiding
principles and they will have to do it quickly because a timetable is laid down
and it is a pretty law introduced the concept of unfair industrial action, under
which the brisk one.’13 The ‘guiding principles’ would be those of the registrar.
The threat of a sympathetic strike or other industrial action was included.14 Also
included was industrial action by an unregistered union, a strike to bring about a
closed shop, or action designed to induce changes in collective agreements. The
legislation established a system of industrial tribunals and a National Industrial
Relations Court (NIRC). The Act included a number of items which every trade
unionist would favour, such as the statutory right to belong to a union and
protection against unfair dismissal. One of the main arguments against the Act
was that Britain’s industrial relations were much better than those of the United
States, with its wealth of labour legislation, from which the framers of the Act
borrowed much. Even more important, it embittered relations between
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 159

government and the unions at a time when the maximum co-operation was
needed. Heath simply ignored the experience of his predecessor and crashed on.
Industrial relations deteriorated throughout the Heath period and this was partly
due to the Act. In February 1971 there was an impressive display of trade union
opposition to the Act when over 100,000 members demonstrated in London. In
the following month 1.5 million engineering workers staged a one-day strike
against it. Other similar strikes followed. After the Act came into force in
August, the TUC continued to oppose compulsory registration and subsequently
32 unions were suspended from registering. The TGWU was fined for contempt
by the NIRC twice in 1972. On 21 May 1972 five dockers were committed to
prison for contempt by the NIRC. Vic Feather, Secretary of the TUC, had
warned: ‘As soon as the first trade unionist goes to prison, all hell will be let
loose.’15 This did not happen, but opposition continued. The Act probably made
unionists more determined to oppose the government’s pay policy. Certainly, in
this period there was increasing use of industrial action in support of pay claims.
Gas and power workers, engine drivers, miners, ambulance drivers, hospital
ancillary staff, firemen and civil servants, all contributed to the increase in days
lost through industrial action.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT REFORM: ‘EXPENSE…NOT

ADEQUATELY FACED’
Another major piece of legislation was the Local Government Act of 1972. It
stemmed from the proposals of the Redcliff-Maud Committee, which was set up
under Wilson. Local government in London had been reformed in 1963 and no
changes were made there. The system in the rest of the country had remained
virtually unchanged since the 1880s. There was widespread feeling that it no
longer corresponded to the realities of Britain in the 1970s. There was an
artificial distinction between town and country, there was fragmentation of
services, and councillors were highly unrepresentative of the communities they
served. The Act set up 46 counties in England, with a two-tier system. In six
predominantly urban areas new authorities, metropolitan counties, were
established. Within them were a number of metropolitan district authorities
forming a second tier. In the rest of England existing county boundaries were
retained as far as possible, with the new counties having authority over the
formerly independent county boroughs. The former county boroughs and district
councils then became the second tier. Wales was divided into eight counties with
a similar, but not identical, structure to that in England. In Scotland the structure
was modified under legislation passed in 1973. Another feature of the Act,
designed to make it easier for a wider range of individuals to serve on local
councils, was the introduction of a flat-rate attendance allowance. Under the
Local Government Act, 1948 a financial allowance had been introduced, but it
covered only loss of earnings. The new allowance was a step nearer to actually
paying councillors a salary. The aldermanic system, under which a proportion of
160 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

council members were indirectly elected by fellow councillors, was abolished.

This had been introduced in 1835 as a sop to the Lords, and had led to a situation
where, occasionally, parties defeated at the polls were able to hang on to power
with the help of their aldermen who were not yet up for re-election. These measures
failed to produce more representative councils or raise the low level of
participation in local council elections. In 1964 over half the county council seats
had not been contested; many remained uncontested after the Act came in. The
Act did not solve the problem of the relations between local and central
government nor the problem of finance. No change was made in the rating
system. Massive increases in rates took place in 1974. Some of these had nothing
to do with the some were indirectly caused by it, some were directly the result of
it. The expense of the new system and how to meet it were questions not
adequately faced.’16

CORRUPTION: ‘NO OPTION BUT TO RESIGN’

The lack of competition in local elections, with small groups from one party
exercising unchallenged power on councils for many years, was undoubtedly an
important cause of corruption which came to light during this period. The key
figure was John Poulson, an unqualified architect. In the 1960s he was said to be
earning £1 million per annum in fees. He controlled four companies, one with his
wife, and was declared bankrupt in 1971. Local authorities claimed negligence
over his work. And when his bank-ruptcy was being investigated, it was
discovered he had paid £334,000 to MPs, local councillors and civil servants.
Superficially, Poulson was a highly respectable man. He was a Commissioner of
Taxes. He was also Chairman of the Executive Committee of the (Conservative
satellite) National Liberal Party. His wife was a JP and Chairman of the
Yorkshire Women Conservatives. However, he showed no political prejudice
when seeking business favours from local politicians and others in official
positions. His two best-known associates were Alderman Andrew Cunningham
and T.Dan Smith. Cunningham was Chairman of Durham County
Council, Felling Urban District Council, Durham Police Authority, Northumbria
River Authority, Tyneside Passenger Transport Authority and the North-Eastern
Regional Airport Committee. He worked as regional organizer of the General
and Municipal Workers’ Union. For a time he represented that union on the NEC
of the Labour Party. Smith was, among other things, leader of the controlling
Labour group of Newcastle upon Tyne City Council and a member of the
Redcliffe-Maud Committee. Poulson, Cunningham, Smith and some others were
jailed for their activities. Other trials followed, which were connected with
Poulson’s affairs, involving officials of British Rail, the National Coal Board,
South-Western Metropolitan Hospital Board, and other councils.17 In London,
Glasgow, Yorkshire and Wales there were convictions for corruption in local
government unconnected with Poulson. In South Wales alone, there were 19
corruption trials connected with local government in 18 months during 1976–77.
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 161

Altogether, 30 people, including 20 businessmen, were found guilty in the Welsh

cases. Of the 30, 12 were sent to prison.18
Heath had one casualty in the Poulson affair. Maudling had been a business
associate of Poulson. As Home Secretary he was in charge of the Metropolitan
Police, who were investigating the architect’s activities in London. As Maudling
later wrote, he felt he ‘had no option but to resign’.19 He was replaced by Carr.

NHS: JOSEPH’S ‘ADMINISTRATIVE LABYRINTH’

In another ‘modernizing’ move, the Water Act, 1973 deprived local authorities
of their functions as suppliers of water and sewerage services. These became the
responsibility of ten regional water authorities and a National Water Board.
In July 1973 the National Heath Service Reorganization Act became law. The
intention was to replace the tripartite service of hospital, GP and local authority
created in 1948 with a single integrated service, more efficient and more
equitable between regions. Designed with the assistance of management
consultants McKinsey, the new structure comprised district management teams
at the base, 90 area heath authorities on top of them, with these in turn
responsible to 14 regional heath authorities, with the Secretary of State at the
very top with responsibility for overall planning and resource allocation. It was

an administrative labyrinth more complex and less efficient than before…

It created a new army of managers—between 1973 and 1977 the number
of administrative and clerical staff rose by 28 per cent: by 1980… Joseph’s
reorganisation was an undoubted cause of poor performance, low morale
and industrial disruption in the NHS.20

The long-term problem of underfunding continued, as did the disquiet about the
treatment of long-stay patients, the elderly and patients in mental hospitals.
Though some progress was made, Britain’s infant mortality rates remained higher
than in many other modern countries. Proportionate to population Britain had
fewer medical practitioners than many other European states, and fewer hospital
beds. The NHS remained highly dependent on Asian immigrant doctors to keep
the hospitals manned.21

NORTHERN IRELAND: ‘SEVERE DISCRIMINATION’

Heath certainly did not inherit a happy situation in Northern Ireland. On 3 July
1970, 2,000 British troops were sent into the Lower Falls area of Belfast to
search for arms. The troops found 50 pistols, 26 rifles, 5 submachine-guns, and a
great deal of ammunition in the 3,000 homes they searched.22 The Catholics
retaliated to the raid by stone-throwing, which was answered in turn with tear-
gas. A curfew was introduced in a attempt to get the situation under control, but
the violence escalated. In the five years of O’Neill’s government only three
162 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

persons had died in disorders.23 In 1973 alone 250 were killed (171 civilians, 66
army or Ulster Defence Regiment, 13 police). From the beginning of the
troubles, in 1968, to the end of 1973, 927 had died, 207 of them British
soldiers.24 Maudling came to the conclusion: There was no doubt in my mind that
the Catholic community had had less than their fair share in governing their own
country, and that there was severe discrimination against them.’ But the more the
IRA used violence, the greater the reaction among the Protestants against
concessions. ‘We were really trying to walk up an escalator that was moving
down.’25 Heath accepted the package of reforms announced by Wilson, but it
would take time and patience to implement them. The reforms had to be
implemented through the Ulster Unionist Stormont regime. On the advice of
Brian Faulkner, who had replaced Chichester-Clark as Prime Minister in March
1971, London accepted, in August, the introduction of internment without trial in
Northern Ireland. At the same time it attempted to explore a settlement. In
September 1971 Heath had talks with Faulkner and Jack Lynch, the Prime
Minister of the Irish Republic. These talks led nowhere and the bombings and
assassinations continued. One particularly bad incident occurred in Bogside,
Londonderry, on 30 January 1972, when a banned civil rights march ended with
13 Catholics dead and 16 wounded, killed by British troops. No British fatalities
occurred. On 30 March 1972 the Northern Ireland constitution was set aside and
all legislative and executive functions were transferred to London. William
Whitelaw was appointed Secretary of State for Northern Ireland with special
authority. Exactly one year, and many bombs, later the government published a
White Paper, Northern Ireland: Constitutional Proposals. This involved a new
system of devolution based on elections by proportional representation and an
executive equipped with powers similar to the old Stormont regime. Only
responsibility for law and order would be retained by the Secretary of State. A
referendum, boycotted by all the Catholic-supported parties, produced a 57.4 per
cent vote of the total electorate in favour of retaining the union with Great
Britain. Elections for the new assembly were held in June 1973. Negotiations
were then carried on with the Official Unionists, the moderate Alliance Party,
and the (largely Catholic) Social Democratic and Labour Party to set up an
Executive. When Whitelaw was replaced by Francis Pym in November 1973, the
situation was looking hopeful. One matter remained outstanding, the proposal in
the White Paper to establish a Council of Ireland. A conference was held at
Sunningdale, Berkshire, in December attended by representatives of the British
government, the Northern Ireland Executive-designate, and the government of
the Irish Republic. It was agreed to create a Council of Ireland which, though it
would have a mainly consultative role, would have certain functions to do with
tourism, agriculture and the environment. Direct rule ended on 1 January 1974.
During 1973 the death toll was 250 as against 468 in 1972.26 This was the
situation when the Conservatives left office. Britain had committed about 20,000
troops, about the number used in 1921 to dealing with the ‘troubles’.27
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 163

One other aspect of the situation in Northern Ireland was the damage to
Britain’s image abroad. Internment brought with it accusations of torture by the
British forces. By 10 November 1971, 980 men had been detained without trial.
Some of them alleged ill-treatment or torture. The government asked the
Parliamentary Commissioner, Sir Edmund Compton, to investigate. He
dismissed the charge of torture, but he concluded, referring to 11 cases of
‘interrogation in depth’, ‘We consider that the following actions constitute
physical ill-treatment: posture on the wall, hooding, noise, deprivation of sleep,
diet of bread and water.’28
What was perhaps even more disturbing for the government than bombs in
Belfast was bombs in London. On 12 January 1971, bombs shattered the peace at
Robert Carr’s home in Hertfordshire. No one was injured but the police believed
those responsible aimed to kill the Carrs.29 The bombs were the work of a new
group calling themselves the Angry Brigade, who claimed to be against the
capitalistic, mass-communications society, whether hidden behind the Western
democratic or Soviet façade. Its members were mainly the products of
Cambridge and Essex universities. They planted other bombs before being
detected. They were caught and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment.
Even with the Angry Brigade out of the way after August 1971, other bombs
disturbed the peace of England. In February 1972 seven people were killed by an
IRA bomb in Aldershot. Bombs exploded in central London in March 1973,
killing one and injuring 238. In August 1973 letter-bombs were received in
London and two people were injured at the Stock Exchange. In the following
month there were 13 injured by bombs in London underground stations. A bomb
also exploded at Chelsea barracks. On 18 December 60 were injured by further
bomb explosions in London. The bombings continued in January 1974.

IMMIGRATION: ‘ONLY IN…SPECIAL CASES’

At the election the Conservatives had promised that ‘work permits will not carry
the right of permanent settlement’ and that ‘immigration will be allowed only in
strictly defined special cases’. The Immigration Act, 1971 was designed to
redeem these pledges. Under it, permits replaced the former employment
vouchers and enabled the holder to remain in Britain initially for one year only,
with no automatic right to bring their dependants. The Act created a new
category of immigrant—‘Patrials’—individuals having close ties with Britain, by
birth for instance, who can come without restrictions. The Act strengthened the
law to prevent illegal immigration and introduced a scheme of financial
assistance for immigrants seeking voluntary repatriation.
In another area of Commonwealth policy the government was unable to
redeem its election pledge—Rhodesia. In 1970 Rhodesia declared itself a
republic and introduced a constitution which permanently denied Africans a
majority in its parliament. Home nevertheless went to Salisbury and signed an
agreement with the rebel regime. He obtained certain limited concessions.
164 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

Britain even offered aid. The settlement would only come into effect when the
British government was convinced that the majority of cans supported it. Heath
accordingly sent Lord Pearce on a mission to assess the state of Black opinion. In
May 1972 he reported that Black Rhodesians were generally not favourable to
the terms of the settlement, which therefore lapsed.
If the Black Commonwealth states were not too happy about Britain’s
handling of the Rhodesian situation, they were even less understanding about
Britain’s relations with South Africa. Once again, the issue of arms sales became
a controversial issue. It dominated the Commonwealth conference held in
Singapore in February 1971. The British government accepted an obligation
under the Simonstown Agreement (1955), signed by Britain and South Africa, to
supply the Republic with naval equipment, for it believed that Anglo-South
African naval co-operation was necessary to keep open the sea lanes to the
Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. In effect, Heath was merely continuing the
policy of previous governments. Heated words were exchanged in Singapore,
with Heath denying that such sales gave a certificate of respectability to South
Africa. Britain saw no contradiction between supplying naval equipment and
condemning apartheid. There were many examples of a democratic country
allying itself with another whose system and whose treatment of its people it
disliked. For example, opposition to the Russian system had not prevented
Britain and America allying themselves to the Soviet Union in the Second World
War. A split was narrowly averted by agreement over a declaration of principles
which included the passage: ‘We recognize racial prejudice as a dangerous
sickness threatening the healthy development of the human race and racial
discrimination as an unmitigated evil of society. Each of us will vigorously
combat this evil in our own nation.’30

EEC: ‘SOMETHING TO GET US GOING AGAIN’

In 1969 de Gaulle resigned as French President and was replaced by Georges
Pompidou. Wilson decided to have a second attempt to get into the EEC. Labour
was defeated at the polls before negotiations were completed. In opposition
Labour became divided on the issue. In May 1971 100 Labour MPs, including
Healey and Crosland, signed a pro-EEC advertisement in the Guardian. Others,
including Benn, Castle, Foot and Shore, led the opposition to entry. Wilson
wobbled somewhere in between. Meanwhile, Heath had taken up the challenge
and started negotiations with Brussels. Heath had told the voters EEC entry was
‘something to get us going again’. Yet by mid-year a majority still disapproved of
the British application to join the EEC.31
On 28 October 1971 the House of Commons voted on the principle of British
entry into the EEC. The motion in favour of entry was carried by 356 to 244,
with 22 abstentions. The Conservatives had a free vote; Labour a whipped vote
to oppose the government. Supporting the government on entry were 69 Labour
MPs, led by Roy Jenkins, deputy leader. Another 20 Labour MPs abstained.
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 165

Heath watched 39 of his own party voting with the Opposition, two other
Conservatives abstained. Emlyn Hooson parted company with his fellow
Liberals and voted against. It was ‘Heath’s finest hour’.32 He had worked very
hard for that moment, helped by Francis Pym. His party conference at Llandudno
had already endorsed entry, by 2,474 votes to 324, as had the Lords, by 451 to
58.33 On the Labour side, the TUC opposed entry. Many on the Labour side, and
some Conservatives like Powell, called for a referendum. Heath and Wilson
rejected the idea as against British traditions and claiming it was a device
favoured by continental dictators.
Britain signed for entry on 22 January 1972. Also signing the treaty of
accession were Ireland, Denmark and Norway. To pro-Marketeers it lightened
the gloom of a bleak month with the start of a miners’ strike, unemployment
breaking through the, psychologically damaging, 1 million barrier, and the
tragedy of Londonderry on 30 January.

OIL CRISIS: ‘DANEGELD IS DANEGELD’

On 6 October 1973 Egyptian forces successfully crossed the Suez Canal and
stormed the heavily fortified defences of Israel’s Bar Lev line, determined to
retake territory lost in the 1967 war. The Syrians also attacked Israel, hoping to
avenge 1967. With the Americans pouring arms and prestige into Israel, and
Soviet weapons and prestige at stake in Egypt, anything could happen. Once
again the forces driving the world towards Armageddon were brought to a halt.
Before the end of the month this fourth Arab-Israeli war was over. By the time
the UN cease-fire came into effect, the Israelis held 1,500 square kilometres of
Egyptian soil beyond the Canal, compared with only 500 square kilometres
retaken by the Egyptians in Sinai.34 Perhaps as many as 20,000 Arabs had given
their lives in this latest round. Some 2,500 Israelis were killed.35 As during the
previous Middle East war, the pro-Israeli organizations in Britain got into top
gear to raise money, gain friends and influence politicians. Traditionally, the
Jewish community is better represented among Labour’s ranks than among the
Conservatives. Many on the Labour side still regarded Israel as an embattled
socialist state. The government could, therefore, expect much Opposition
criticism of its Middle East policy. Heath’s difficulty stemmed from the fact that
for many years Britain had supplied arms to Israel and Jordan. He wanted to
supply ammunition and spares to neither of these states during the war, claiming
this would help to minimize the conflict. This would be changed, however, if
Israel’s existence were in danger. Home told the Commons on 18 October that
Britain would not allow any risk to the security of Israel.36 But he realized that,
with the risk of US-Soviet confrontation and the danger to oil supplies, Britain
and the West could face the worst problem since 1945.37 Wilson admitted that
the Palestinians and the Egyptians had a case, but he put his weight behind Israel
— ‘a democratic socialist country’. He reached his old form when dealing with
the oil threat:
166 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

We must not be blackmailed by oil sanctions… We had to face the same

situation in 1967…that was a most important factor leading to the
devaluation of 1967… We must decide what is right as a nation, as a
Government, as a Parliament, and abide by it. Danegeld is Danegeld,
whether exacted by pillagers from the Kattegat or by the oil-rich monarchs
and presidents.38

The government also came in for much criticism from Liberal leader, Jeremy
Thorpe, and from some of its own back-benchers, like Hugh Fraser, John Gorst,
Tom Iremonger, Philip Goodhart and Sir Henry d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, who spoke
‘as a supporter of the State of Israel’.39 The Arabs had few friends in the
Commons on that October day. Andrew Faulds, who had won back Smethwick
for Labour in 1966, braved the indignation of many of his colleagues to say, ‘It is
Israel’s intransigence which has made the fourth round of the Arab-Israeli
conflict inevitable.’ The Arabs were only reoccupying their own territory. Would
anyone have called the D-Day landings to liberate Europe aggression, he
thundered.40 He voted with the government at the end of the debate, as did a few
other Labour MPs. In addition to those named above, some other Conservatives
voted with the Opposition. The revolt failed, however; the government carried
the House by 251 votes to 175. The vote did nothing to alter events beyond
Britain’s shores, which were to have a dramatic impact upon the economy and
the government.
On 17 October the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OAPEC) decided to cut back oil production by an immediate 5 per cent, with a
further 5 per cent reduction to be imposed each month until a settlement was
reached with Israel on the lines of UN Resolution 242 which, in part, called for
an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied Arab lands, but also called for the Arabs
to make peace with Israel. Coincidentally with this, and of much greater
importance, a meeting of the Gulf states of the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), including Iran, also decided to denounce earlier
price agreements and impose new, much higher, price levels—a measure that had
been coming for some time. It was partly the result of the realization by the
exporting countries that oil was virtually the only asset they had, and that
Western inflation meant they were getting less and less for it. New militant
nationalist regimes had gained power in Algeria, Libya and Iraq, and it was only
a matter of time before they changed their relations with the companies
exploiting the oil. Libya shook the oil world in 1971 with a sudden decision to
nationalize BP’s Sarir concession. Market conditions had given the governments
of the exporting countries a better chance to impose their will on the importing
states. The Yom Kippur War speeded up the process. Continued American
support for Israel led even the conservative, Western-orientated King Feisal of
Saudi Arabia to favour the use of oil as a weapon. The Shah of Iran, not involved
in the Arab-Israeli quarrel, saw that his country’s oil could be used to help him
achieve his grandiose ambitions for Iran’s economic development, and for his
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 167

own role as a world statesman. Suddenly, the industrial nations seemed

sentenced to a slow death, for increasingly their prosperity had been based on
cheap oil from the Middle East. Attempts at intervention would have been met
by Arab sabotage of the pipelines—with disastrous consequences. The Arabs
pursued a policy of differentiating between states according to their attitude to
the Arab cause. The British policy of neutrality helped the UK compared with
some other European states. But oil prices soared and Britain was in a weaker
position than many other industrial states to pay the extra cost.41 Two-thirds of
its oil came from the Middle East.

MINERS’ STRIKE: ‘IT LOOKED AS IF WE WERE NOT

INTERESTED’
Even without the oil crisis, Britain’s economic situation was not good. The
balance of payments was in deficit, inflation was worse than under Wilson and
unemployment was higher. The pay policy had somehow staggered on to Stage
Three. On 10 October the National Coal Board offered the miners 13 per cent.
This was rejected and an overtime ban followed. The government had last faced
confrontation with the miners in 1972 and had lost. The industry had been
declining for years. Its work-force had fallen from 593,000 in 1960 to 269,000 in
1973. By that time mining looked important again. The miners felt they could
enforce higher rewards for the tough and still dangerous work they performed. In
March 1973 seven miners were killed by floodwater at Lofthouse colliery,
Kirkcaldy. On 30 July 18 lost their lives in a pit-cage accident at Markham colliery
in Derbyshire. In 1973, 40,000 miners were suffering from The Dust’—
pneumoconiosis,42 accepted as incurable. Most miners did not want to strike if they
could avoid it. Strikes cost strikers money; strikes cost unions money; and strikes
mean extra work for union officials. Joe Gormley (1917–93), Irish-Lancastrian,
President of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) (1963–73), and a
Catholic, was not looking for trouble.
Mick McGahey, Vice-Chairman of the NUM, had got near the top without
giving up his genuine anger and determination to change the system. The son of
a Scots miner, he was, like his father, a Communist. Gormley had beaten him for
the chairmanship of the NUM, so he had to be content with the chairmanship of
the Communist Party (1974–78). He became a bogeyman for the Conservatives,
who greatly overestimated his influence.43 The constant obsession with the
Communists was probably an important factor in clouding the government’s
judgement and leading to its downfall. From the Conservatives up and down the
country Heath got the message to smash the miners!44 Heath apart, the
government was not in good shape. Whitelaw, tired from his ordeal in Northern
Ireland, took over the equally vulnerable post of Employment in December
1973. He did not know much about the trade unions. Barber was suffering ‘acute
fatigue and Carr was close to collapse’.45 Sir William Armstrong, head of the
168 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

civil service and close aide to Heath, who was dubbed ‘Deputy Prime Minister’
by the union leaders,46 suffered a nervous breakdown during the crisis.47
On 2 January 1974 the three-day working-week was introduced. Certain cuts
had already been made in November in streetlighting, floodlighting, and
television. A State of Emergency was declared. Britain seemed to be sinking day
by day. It was in this situation that the TUC offered a possible way out: the
government to treat the miners as a special case; other unions not to use the miners’
settlement as an argument to better settlements for their own members. For the
TUC this represented a big concession, one which could involve union leaders
themselves in difficulties later. Chancellor Barber turned it down. Talks went on
but, as Margaret Thatcher later wrote, ‘the damage had been done: it looked as if
we were not interested’.48 On 24 January the NUM executive asked for a strike
ballot of their members. On the same day the Pay Board published its report on
relativities. This suggested a long-term arrangement for considering special cases
left behind in the pay race. Neither the Board nor Whitelaw felt the miners’ case
should be investigated, as this would put too much pressure on the Board.
Whitelaw later admitted he believed this was a mistake.49 By 30 January Heath
indicated that, if the miners resumed normal working, their case could go to the
Board. It was too late. The mood of the miners was revealed on 4 February when
it was announced that almost 81 per cent of them had voted to strike. Further
talks and manoeuvres failed and on 7 February Heath called a general election for
28 February. Heath had been swayed by Carrington, Chairman of the
Conservative Party, by the new Energy Minister, Prior, and by Davies and
Thatcher.50

ELECTION ’74: POWELL—‘VOTE LABOUR’

No one could complain that there was no choice in the election of February
1974. There were 2,135 candidates compared with 1,837 in 1970 and 1,868 in
1950, the previous record.51 In addition to the three main parties, there were 54
National Front candidates, 44 Communists, Welsh Nationalists contesting all
Welsh seats, a confusing array of candidates in Northern Ireland, and the Scottish
National Party fielded 70 candidates. Labour was challenged by independents
from its own ranks. On the Right, Dick Taverne stood as a Social Democrat in
his old constituency of Lincoln, and four others who agreed with his views stood
elsewhere. On the Left, Eddie Milne stood for the Blyth constituency he had long
represented. Labour feared union unpopularity would drag it down. This could
easily have happened, given the long-standing media campaign against the unions.
On the other hand, Heath appeared stubborn and bloody-minded. As the
campaign developed, a number of developments strengthened this view. On 17
February Wilson appeared to play a trump card by announcing he had concluded
a ‘social contract’ with the unions. This turned out to lack much substance but
was good propaganda none the less. Bank profits announced during the month
led to the feeling that Heath’s society was unfair. On 19 February the National
 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74 169

Westminster Bank revealed a 50 per cent increase in its profits. On 25 February

Powell, who was not standing, advised Conservatives opposed to the EEC to
vote Labour, revealing the following day on television that he had used his
postal vote in this way.52 Worse was to come for Heath. Campbell Adamson,
Director-General of the CBI, told a conference of managers that he would like to
see the next government repeal the Industrial Relations Act. (He had not realized
his speech was being recorded!) Three days before polling news of the largest
monthly trade deficit the country had known was published.53
Many still thought the Conservatives would win. Yet after much waiting
Labour emerged with 301 seats to 297 for the Conservatives. The Liberals were
up from 6 to 14. The SNP gained 7, the Welsh PC 2 and the Ulster loyalists 11 of
the 12 Northern Ireland seats. Gerry Fitt of the Northern Ireland Social
Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) was also returned. The first inconclusive
election since 1929 gave something to all. The Liberal vote went up from 7.5 per
cent to 19.3 per cent. The Conservatives remained slightly ahead of Labour in
actual votes, but received their lowest share for 50 years. The nationalists had
done well. Labour had improved its position but its percentage vote was the
lowest since 1931. After some manoeuvring with Thorpe, Heath was forced to
concede that the man with the boat had been thwarted by the man with the pipe.
The incumbents in Downing Street changed: the problems remained the same.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 100.
2 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (introduced by Ruth Winstone)
(1995), 234.
3 John Campbell, Edward Heath: A Biography (1993), 291.
4 Howard R.Penniman (ed.), Britain at the Polls: The Parliamentary Elections of
1974 (Washington, DC, 1975), 5.
5 Campbell, op. cit., 302.
6 ibid., 302.
7 ibid., 257.
8 James Margach, The Abuse of Power (1978), 160–1.
9 Campbell, op., cit., 264–7.
10 Penniman, op. cit., 11.
11 Campbell, op. cit., 312.
12 Pears Cyclopaedia 1976–77 (1977), G4.
13 A.H.Thornton, The Industrial Relations Bill: For and Against (Nottingham, 1971),
9.
14 ibid., 10.
15 ibid., 30.
16 Peter G.Richards, The Local Government Act 1972: Problems of Implementation
(1975), 156.
170 THE UNEXPECTED PRIME MINISTER: EDWARD HEATH, 1970–74

17 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 24 June-30 June 1974, 26583A; Reginald

Maudling, Memoirs (1978); Edward Milne, No Shining Armour (1976), an MP’s
account of his fight against corruption in the North East.
18 Sunday Times, 4 December 1977.
19 Maudling, op. cit., 193.
20 Campbell, op. cit., 384–5.
21 Frank Stacey, British Government 1966–1975: Years of Reform (1975), 157–75,
gives an account of the various proposals for NHS reform.
22 Richard Rose, Governing without Consensus (1971), 111.
23 ibid., 112.
24 David McKie, Chris Cook and Melanie Phillips, The Guardian/Quartet Election
Guide (1978), 159.
25 Maudling, op. cit., 183.
26 McKie, Cook and Phillips, ibid.
27 Charles Townsend, The British Campaign in Ireland 1919–1921 (1975), 212.
28 Sir Edmund Compton, Report of the Inquiry into Allegations against the Security
Forces of Physical Brutality in Northern Ireland Arising out of Events on 9th
August 1971 (Cmnd 4823, HMSO, 1971), 71.
29 Gordon Carr, The Angry Brigade: The Cause and the Case (1975), 15.
30 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 13–20 February 1971, 24441.
31 Robert J.Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: History as Seen Through the
Gallup Data (1989), 98.
32 Campbell, op. cit., 405.
33 ibid., 403.
34 Henry Stanhope, The Times, 26 October 1973.
35 David Downing and Gary Herman, War Without End, Peace Without Hope (no
date), 245.
36 Hansard (Commons), vol. 861, col. 424, 18 October 1973.
37 ibid., col. 426.
38 ibid., col. 441.
39 ibid., col. 479.
40 ibid., cols 498–9.
41 This is covered in Christopher Tugendhat and Adrian Hamilton, Oil: The Biggest
Business (1975).
42 Sunday Times, 29 April 1973.
43 Campbell, op. cit., 567.
44 ibid., 569; Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord
Carrington (1988), 263.
45 ibid., 570.
46 Peter Hennessy, Whitehall (1990), 238.
47 Sunday Times, 7 March 1976.
48 Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (1995), 232.
49 Sunday Times, 29 February 1976; 7 March 1976.
50 Thatcher, op. cit., 233; Campbell, op. cit., 571.
51 David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of February
1974 (1974), 89.
52 Butler and Kavanagh, op. cit., 105.
53 Barbara Castle, Fighting all the Way (1993), 451.
 8
LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS,
1974–79

WILSON’S CABINET: ‘BUOYANT ATMOSPHERE’

Wilson took over again on 4 March 1974, heading Britain’s first minority
government since the Labour government of 1929–31. According to Barbara
Castle, ‘Despite the precariousness of our situation there was a buoyant
atmosphere as we met for our first Cabinet.’1 Wilson’s 1964 experience stood
him in good stead and he resolved, once again, to act as if he had a working
majority. He knew the other parties would think twice before forcing another
election. He constructed his Cabinet around well-known figures the country was
used to: Healey at the Exchequer, Callaghan at the Foreign Office and Jenkins at
the Home Office. Edward Short, the former Durham headmaster and wartime
captain in the Durham Light Infantry, became Lord President of the Council and
Leader of the Commons. Deputy leader of Labour, 1972–76, he had served at
Education and Science, 1968–70. Anthony Crosland (1918–77) went to
Environment. A wartime parachute captain, whose father was a senior civil
servant and one of the Plymouth Brethren, Crosland gained a first in PPE at
Oxford and was a wartime captain in the Parachute Regiment. He had previously
served at Education and Science, the Board of Trade and Local Government.
One small advance for women was that for the first time two women were
included in the Cabinet: Barbara Castle and Shirley Williams. Castle took over
Social Services and Williams was appointed to the new post of Secretary of State
for Prices and Consumer Protection. The daughter of well-known academic, Sir
George Catlin, she was the first female President of Oxford University Labour
Club. Elected to the Commons in 1964, she did postgraduate studies at Columbia
University and worked in Ghana and for the Financial Times. She had served in
the Ministries of Labour and Education, and at the Home Office. Unlike Castle,
she was strongly for Britain in the EEC.
Castle found it ‘remarkable’2 that Michael Foot (b. 1913) had been appointed
Secretary of State for Employment. Like fellow leftist Benn, his father had been
a Liberal MP. He was President of the Oxford Union in 1933 and worked as a
journalist for Lord Beaverbrook before becoming editor of the left-wing weekly
the Tribune. He lost his seat in 1955, but was subsequently elected at Ebbw
172 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

Vale, Bevan’s old seat, in 1960. Anti-Marketeers Benn, Castle and Foot were
joined by Peter Shore as Secretary of State for Trade. After King’s College,
Cambridge, Shore served as head of Labour’s Research Department. He was
Deputy Leader of the House, 1969–70. Down to the 1990s all four remained
opponents of the EEC/ EC/EU.
To the uninitiated, Wilson seemed like a miracle-worker. Within a few days of
his Cabinet meeting the miners’ strike was over, the nation was put back to
working full time and the State of Emergency was ended. The balance of
payments deficit was larger than any before, though a considerable part of this
was due to the increase in the price of oil and therefore beyond Heath’s or
Wilson’s control. Healey presented his first Budget on 26 March, increasing
corporation tax, bringing more people into the higher tax bracket and increasing
the highest rate of all from 75 per cent to 83 per cent. The standard rate of
income tax was also raised. A ceiling on mortgage relief was introduced, with
VAT on petrol, ice-cream, soft drinks and sweets. The duty on cigarettes, beer,
wine and spirits went up. Healey’s Budget was not all punishment, however. The
old-age pensioners were promised the biggest increase ever and social security
benefits were increased. Considerable food subsidies were introduced and
stricter price control was promised by Williams. The government also looked
hard at prestige projects, dropping the Channel Tunnel and a third London
airport but allowing Concorde to struggle on to the runway. Crosland
discouraged the sale of council houses, introduced a rent freeze, and subsidized
mortgages for owner-occupiers because of the threat of increased interest
charges. The government appeared to be acting decisively to end irrelevant,
divisive and inflationary policies, and giving some help to the great mass of the
people. Reg Prentice, at Education, attempted to speed up the development of
comprehensives. Some opposed this, but many average parents saw it as offering
their children a better chance in life.
The miners’ strike was over, yet the government still had to prove it could
successfully operate its Social Contract with the unions. It abolished the Pay
Board, but allowed Stage Three to run its course. Foot managed to steer clear of
trouble with the engineering workers and, on the whole, there was relative peace
for the next few months. Not so in the NHS. In May nurses turned to striking
against low pay. They were given a substantial award of up to 30 per cent. In
July hospital workers also turned to industrial action to reinforce their claim
against poor pay. The government managed to get the Industrial Relations Act
abolished and set up the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS)
headed by Jim Mortimer, a socialist, former draughtsman and trade union
official with an economics degree from London University. Except for the
troubled motor-car indus try, there appeared to be a reasonable chance that
government and unions could co-operate. This was especially so after the
September conference of the TUC, at which Wilson and the unions agreed on
moderate wage settlements for the coming year. Healey introduced a second
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 173

Budget on 22 July, cutting VAT and announcing help for ratepayers. It was a
good Budget for an approaching election without being an obvious bribe.

NORTHERN IRELAND: ‘CONSIDERING…TOTAL

WITHDRAWAL’
Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, 1974–76, reported to the
Cabinet on 10 April that the situation was getting extremely serious. It was
agreed to ‘begin considering the implications of a total withdrawal’.3 Electoral
success encouraged the extreme Protestants to greater militancy. On 15 May the
authorities were taken by surprise by a massive strike of Protestant workers
against the proposed Council of Ireland. The Northern Ireland Executive
collapsed and direct rule was reintroduced. The bombings continued, provoking
fear and anger. In May a bomb exploded in a car park at Heathrow Airport. On
17 June another went off beside Westminster Hall, injuring 11 people. In the
following month there were explosions in Birmingham and Manchester and
again at Heathrow. The bomb which went off at the Tower of London on 17 July
killed one person and injured 41. In October two bombs in crowded pubs at
Guildford killed five and injured 70. There were other explosions later in the
year. All these outrages were attributed to, or claimed by, the Provisional IRA.
The Prevention of Terrorism Act, 1974, given the Royal Assent in November,
was the frightening response to a frightening situation.
One other terrorist attack which did not succeed was the attempt to kidnap
Princess Anne in London on 20 March. Only the quick reaction and bravery of
her personal bodyguard, James Beaton, foiled the plot. Four people were injured
and Beaton himself was severely wounded.
Abroad the situation looked as tense, changeable and dramatic as at home. In
Israel, Golda Meir’s Cabinet resigned in April. This marked a weakening of the
hold of the Labour Party on the government of the state which they had ruled
since 1948. In May, Willy Brandt, the Social Democratic Chancellor of West
Germany, resigned because one of his aides was exposed as an East German
agent. Fellow Social Democrat, Helmut Schmidt, replaced him. In France,
President Pompidou died suddenly and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was elected in
May, an event of some significance in the growing closeness of Franco-German
relations; Schmidt and Giscard were reputed to be close friends. More dramatic
still was the resignation in August of President Nixon after a long campaign
against him because of the Watergate scandal. His successor as 38th US
President was Gerald Ford. Also of importance was the coup which led to the
overthrow of the Portuguese dictatorship, which had managed to hold power
since 1926. The new government brought to a close the disastrous colonial war
and dismantled the Portuguese colonial empire with grave consequences for the
Smith regime in neighbouring Rhodesia. In Ethiopia, Haile Selassie was turned
out by his armed forces. This too had consequences for the Soviets and the
Americans in Africa. Of direct importance for Britain was the overthrow of
174 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

Makarios in Cyprus in July. Later in the same month the island was invaded by
Turkish troops. Britain attempted to mediate with only little success. Wilson
cancelled Royal Navy visits to Greece and Chile, states where the democratic
governments had been overthrown by the military. This helped raise Britain’s
prestige abroad, especially as the Greek military dictatorship collapsed. It
certainly helped the government with its own back-benchers, who were offended
by a Royal Navy visit to South Africa and by the government’s readiness to
honour a contract for a destroyer for Chile. Undoubtedly, the government’s main
initiative abroad was its renegotiation of Britain’s terms of entry into the EEC,
started by Callaghan in April.

ELECTION OCTOBER ’74: ‘FIGHTING LIKE HELL’

Heath faced a dilemma after February 1974. He risked public indignation if he
appeared too partisan, if he appeared to be trying to bring down the government
merely for narrow party reasons. Yet not to fight the government was to
demoralize Conservative activists still further. His precarious position was not
helped by the loss of some prominent members of his team. Sir Alec Douglas-
Home, Barber and Christopher Chataway, the former athlete and TV journalist
who had reached Cabinet rank under Heath, all announced their retirement from
politics. They gave personal reasons, but their departure cast doubt on their
belief in an early Conservative return to office.
The inevitable election came in October. Both major parties were on the
defensive. The Conservatives, it could be claimed, had run away from office in
the first place and thus brought the country to its present pass. Labour was
suffering from defections and splits, especially over the EEC. Christopher
Mayhew gave up a safe seat to fight Bath for the Liberals. Lord Chalfont
defected in September, claiming the Left had taken over Labour. There was a whiff
of scandal close to Wilson whose one-time office manager, Anthony Field,
brother of Marcia Williams, was involved in a ‘land reclamation’ scheme in the
North West. It was the kind of deal Labour had long denounced. Mrs Williams was
rewarded for her hard work on behalf of Wilson by a peerage, which was
announced in May. Benn found it amusing;4 Castle saw it as a gesture of
defiance.5 Others were just annoyed. The exposure of forged documents foiled
attempts to smear Wilson and Short. Nevertheless, the scandal surrounding
Cunningham and T.Dan Smith was real enough (see p. 167).
The smaller parties were not all that happy about the election; for them it
meant substantial expenditure they could not afford. As usual, the Conservatives
spent most. Their national campaign cost £950,000 against Labour’s £524,000.6
The Liberals were afraid that, as in the past, a Labour government would
provoke Liberal-waverers to vote Conservative. Only the anti-power-sharing
Ulster Unionists could go into the campaign sure of their supporters. This time
they had the added attraction of Enoch Powell, who was the candidate in the safe
Unionist seat of South Down. This did not stop him from once again letting it be
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 175

known that he would vote Labour because Labour stood for a referendum on the
EEC.
On 10 October, 72.8 per cent of the electorate, 5.3 per cent fewer than in
February, braved the showers, the grey and the gloom to record their votes. They
gave the Conservatives 35.8 per cent—their lowest percentage vote since 1935—
and put Labour back with a majority over all other parties of just three. This
majority was based on winning back three seats from rebel ex-Labour MPs in
Lincoln, Sheffield Brightside and Blyth. The polls had predicted a good win for
Labour.7 The campaign was relatively quiet though Benn observed the
Conservatives ‘fighting like hell’ in their marginals. Labour’s vote was up by 2.1
per cent, giving them 39.2 per cent. Neither the Liberals’ greatest hopes nor their
worst fears were realized. They lost 1 per cent of their vote and (net) one seat.
Surveys had shown there was some confusion about what they stood for. Many
Liberal activists saw themselves on the Left. Liberal MPs regarded their party as
a Centre party. The party’s vote was drawn more from the Right-of-Centre and
Liberal policies were closer to the Conservatives than to Labour.8
What of the other parties? The anti-immigrant National Front fielded 90
candidates, without success. It appeared to take votes from all parties equally and
gained most support in the East End of London. The only parties which could
count the election as a real victory were the anti-power-sharing Ulster Unionists
—though they lost one seat on a recount— and the SNP. Both increased their
support, the SNP dramatically so. Eleven SNP candidates were elected, four
more than in February; their gains were at Conservative expense. In Wales the
nationalists, PC, increased their representation from two to three. They took one
seat from Labour, but were Labour-orientated on most issues.
Sociologically speaking, British politics had not changed much since 1945.
The Conservatives still had a majority among women, but only just. Women, 52
per cent of the electorate, had consistently saved the Conservatives from defeat
in 1951, 1955, 1959 and 1970. In terms of social class, the Conservatives still
commanded the support of 63 per cent of the middle class (to Labour’s 12 per
cent) and 51 per cent of the lower-middle class (to Labour’s 24 per cent).
Labour’s greatest support was still among the unskilled and ‘very poor’, 33 per
cent of the voters, 57 per cent of whom declared for Labour as against only 22
per cent for the Conservatives. In terms of age, the Conservatives had a majority
of 49 per cent to 37 per cent for Labour among the over 65s, 20 per cent of the
electorate. Labour enjoyed its greatest advantage among the 18–24 age-group,
who formed only 11 per cent of the electorate. Labour also enjoyed a massive
majority among the 2 per cent of ‘coloured’ voters, a category which did not
exist in any significant numbers before 1964.9
In terms of their backgrounds, the new MPs were very much like the old. ‘Mr
Industrial Charter’, the much-acclaimed Conservative trade unionist, was
nowhere to be seen among their 277 MPs. The Conservatives remained largely
the party of the middle and upper-middle classes, particularly from the southern
half of England. Labour was becoming a party drawn from the provincial lower-
176 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

middle class, drawn especially from the teaching and, to a lesser extent, the legal
profession. Its 319 MPs increasingly spoke with Scots’ or Welsh accents.
Women remained very underrepresented in the Parliament which was to take
Britain through to the 1980s. Only about 4 per cent of MPs were women, and
most of them were Labour. This compared with around 22 per cent in Sweden
and Finland, and about 2 per cent in France, Canada and the US.10 In West
Germany 7.3 per cent of the MPs elected in 1976 were women.11

THATCHER: ‘SHATTERING BLOW…TO…

CONSERVATIVE ESTABLISHMENT’
Having lost three elections out of four it was inevitable that Heath should have
been under great pressure to vacate the Conservative leadership. Sir Geoffrey
Howe believed ordinary voters hated Heath, regarding him as ‘stubborn and
insensitive’.12 Under pressure, Heath accepted the recommendations of a party
committee chaired by Lord Home that, when the Conservatives were in
opposition, there should be an annual leadership election. This was put into
effect on 4 February 1975. Heath was opposed by Margaret Thatcher and Hugh
Fraser, MP. Thatcher says she stood because Keith Joseph felt disqualified. He
had made a controversial speech at Edgbaston (19 October 1974) in which he
lamented the high and rising proportion of children being born to mothers least
fitted to have them.13 Thatcher then stepped forward as standard-bearer of free
market economics. There was some surprise that Heath was only able to muster
119 votes to Thatcher’s 130, and Fraser’s 16.14 Heath decided to throw in the
towel and retire to the back-benches. In the second round Thatcher was elected
by 146 votes to 79 for Whitelaw, 19 each for Prior and Howe, and 11 for John
Peyton.15 She regarded her victory as a ‘shattering blow…to the Conservative
establishment. I had no sympathy for them. They had fought me unscrupulously
all the way.’16 Benn recorded at the time, ‘I think we would be foolish to suppose
that Mrs Thatcher won’t be a formidable leader.’17 As she met the Conservative
MPs after her victory, Howe thought she looked ‘very beautiful’ at this, ‘almost
feudal, occasion. Tears came to my eyes…her almost reckless courage…had
won their support, if not yet their hearts.’18
When she was elected at Finchley in 1959, Thatcher had far more
achievements behind her than most women of her age and social class. Her
father was a grocer who became the Mayor of Grantham. She made her way on
scholarships from Kesteven and Grantham Girls’ School to Somerville College,
Oxford, where she read chemistry and gained a B.Sc. and M.A. Not content with
this, she qualified as a barrister in 1954. Married to a wealthy businessman since
1951, she was able to get her childbearing over quickly by having twins, a boy
and a girl, in 1953. Obviously she had tremendous dedication, drive and
determination, as well as intelligence, to go on climbing up and up the ladder.
Having a constituency in London helped, given even the minimum of domestic
responsibility. Her husband, Dennis, was indispensable, he ‘was always there—
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 177

anything I wanted he could provide, and he was always there. His being older
may have had a lot to do with this.’19 Although a seasoned MP, Thatcher had
less experience than Heath, Home or Macmillan when they took over. Like
Heath, she had a manner which excited ridicule in many circles. Benn was not
ridiculing her when he recorded in his diary: ‘She’s like the Queen really; she
looks like her, talks like her and is of the same age.’20 Shirley Williams, from a
more privileged background and also a product of Somerville College, had, in
the 1970s, a younger, more classless, contemporary, and friendlier aura about
her.
In addition to her father, Thatcher had two political mentors, Sir Keith Joseph
and Alfred Sherman. ‘Apart from the fact of their being Jewish, Alfred and Keith
had little in common.’21 Sherman was a London ex-Communist who had fought
in the International Brigade in Spain. He became a fervent supporter of
capitalism and a Daily Telegraph journalist. With Joseph he set up the Centre for
Policy Studies (CPS). The CPS wanted to break with what it regarded the post-
war Lab./Con. ‘socialist’ consensus, and introduce thorough-going free market
policies. It set the agenda for Thatcher in government. The intellectual
framework for the CPS was the book by the Austrian economist, Friedrich von
Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944).
Thatcher had no choice but to retain the members of Heath’s shadow cabinet.
Hailsham soldiered on in her cause, as did Davies. Carrington led the party in the
Lords. Prior, formerly Lord President and Leader of the House, came into
prominence as shadow employment minister. Sir Geoffrey Howe, who had
served as Solicitor-General, and then as Minister for Trade and Consumer
Affairs (1970–72), also played a prominent part, as shadow chancellor. A QC
and solicitor’s son, he was educated at Winchester and Trinity Hall, Cambridge.
He shared Thatcher’s views on economics. Among the right-wingers appointed
was Airey Neave (1916–79), an old Etonian company director and Second World
War Colditz hero, who covered Northern Ireland. Norman St John-Stevas, a
barrister and prominent Catholic, who had openly declared for Thatcher during
the election, got Education. The other woman in the team was Sally Oppenheim,
daughter of a diamond-cutter and Sheffield tycoon. Educated at RAD A, she
became spokesperson on consumer affairs. Thatcher believed Whitelaw and
Joseph were ‘the two key figures, one providing the political brawn and the other
the policy-making brains of the team’.22 Between February 1975 and November
1978 Thatcher had four major reshuffles designed to neutralize the Heathites.
Heath supporter Sir Ian Gilmour, originally at Home Affairs, was moved to
Defence. Maudling brought into the team as shadow foreign secretary was
sacked in January 1976. Likewise, Michael Heseltine was moved (November
1976) from Trade and Industry to Environment because he was not enough of a
free marketeer for Thatcher.23
178 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

A DECADE OF WOMEN’S LIBERATION

If the rise of Thatcher was a symbol of the progress made towards equality of the
sexes, this progress should not be exaggerated. Labour-saving devices in the
home, family planning, higher expectations and economic necessity meant that
over 50 per cent of married women were employed. However, at the end of the
1970s women could still complain about their low pay as compared with men.
Women’s gross hourly earnings as a percentage of men’s in 1970 were 63.1 per
cent. In 1977 they had advanced to 75.5 per cent. This was partly because
Barbara Castle’s Equal Pay Act, 1970 covered only women doing ‘the same or
broadly similar’ work as men. And in the decade of ‘women’s lib’, roughly since
1968, the advance of women into the key professions had not been so dramatic.24

Table 8.1 Women as total membership of certain professions (per cent), 1968 and 1977
Profession 1968 1977
barristers 5.8 8.2
GPs 9.7 13.5
accountants 1.5 3.1
school teachers 57.3 59.5
electrical engineers 0.2 0.5

There were still few women university lecturers, but more women bus-drivers
than before, and women were becoming even more numerous in retailing,
banking and the welfare services. The number of women in the police and the
armed forces had not changed greatly, but they were playing a more active role.
The decade saw, for the first time, women becoming jockeys, Lloyds
underwriters and RSPCA inspectors. Dame Rosemary Murray became the first
woman Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University and Dame Josephine Barnes
the first woman President of the British Medical Association. The number of
women filing divorce petitions rose dramatically, indicating greater
independence on the part of women. In 1968 husbands filed 20,600 petitions and
wives 34,400. In 1976 the figures were 42,866 and 100,832, respectively.25
Perhaps the decline in religious wedding ceremonies in the 1970s was due more
to the change in women’s attitudes than men’s. In 1971, 41 per cent of marriage
ceremonies in England were held in register offices; in 1976 this figure had risen
to 50 per cent.26 In formal legal terms women’s rights were advanced during the
1970s. The Guardianship of Children Act, 1973 gave mothers equal rights to
fathers when making decisions about a child’s upbringing, whereas previously the
father’s rights had been paramount. The Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings
Act, 1973 enabled a married woman living apart from her husband to have a legal
domicile of her own. The Criminal Justice Act, 1972 ended the property
qualification for jury service, thus enabling more women to serve on juries—
significant, because even in 1977 only 6.5 per cent of home loans were granted
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 179

to women, and only 39.5 per cent of home loans were based on two incomes.27 The
Sex Discrimination Act, 1975 made it unlawful to discriminate on grounds of sex
in employment and in the provision of educational facilities, housing, goods,
services and opportunities. It is also unlawful to discriminate in advertisements
in these areas. The Act also created the Equal Opportunities Commission to
investigate discriminatory practices. The battering of women by their male
partners also became an issue in the 1970s. The result was the Domestic
Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act, sponsored by Jo Richardson, Labour
MP, which gave women who were not in the process of separating from their
husbands the power to get injunctions against their spouses or co-habitees to
prevent them entering the house. National conferences of the women’s liberation
movement were held from 1970 to 1978. But in 1978 the conference broke up
over the question of whether a single resolution against violence against women
should replace all other demands.28
Racial discrimination and immigration continued to be an issue throughout the
1970s. Jenkins, when Home Secretary, pursued a liberal course, granting an
amnesty to illegal immigrants who had entered the country before 1 January
1973. This measure, designed to remove the threat of blackmail and exploitation
from this group, was attacked by the Opposition. Jenkins also gave
Commonwealth or foreign husbands of British women the same right of entry as
wives of British men. This too was attacked by the Conservatives. Matters were
made worse by confusion, which led to controversy, about the reliability of
Home Office statistics on the number of immigrants entering the country. Under
Merlyn Rees as Home Secretary, there was some tightening up of entry rules.
Meanwhile, Parliament also had to decide what to do about ensuring equal
treatment for those already in Britain, especially the generation which had been
brought up or even born in the country. There were fears that Black youths,
living in the decaying ghettos of the inner cities, undereducated, unemployed and
dispirited, could become a permanent pool from which the criminals and
subversives would be recruited. This was one of the main reasons for the Race
Relations Act, 1976, which attempted to deal with discrimination over a broad
field, and established the Commission for Racial Equality. For one thing, the Act
extended previous legislation to cover most clubs, which was opposed by the
Conservatives as an infringement of the rights of the citizen in the private
sphere.
One other issue which continued to cause bitter strife was education. As with
race, so with education, the parties proclaimed their abhorrence of discrimination
and their desire to achieve high standards for all. They differed on their means to
these ends. The Labour Party was for the comprehensive system and opposed to
fee-paying schools. The Conservatives claimed they favoured improving all
schools and that the retention of the independent sector gave freedom of choice
to parents. They found it difficult to deny, however, that in practice few parents
had any choice. Labour’s Public Schools Commission, 1968 had recommended
integration of the independent schools, but nothing had come of this. The second
180 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

1974 government did abolish grants to the direct-grant grammar schools, schools
with high academic standards, many of whose pupils were holders of scholarships
awarded by local authorities. These schools had to choose between joining the
‘state’ sector or going completely private. Most chose to do the latter. Many of
the Catholic schools among them joined the ‘state’ system, retaining their
denominational character.
Controversy also continued in educational politics about standards, which some
alleged were falling and others alleged were not keeping pace with the needs of
the times and the needs of industry. Some of those leading the assault believed
that ‘informal’ teaching methods were to blame. Speaking at Ruskin College,
Oxford, Callaghan paid lip-service to this widespread concern. He cautiously
criticized ‘informal’ methods and regretted that many of the more able students
preferred to stay in academic life or to find their way into the civil service, rather
than into industry There was some truth in this, though it was really playing to
the gallery, a gallery where prejudice was strong. Callaghan underestimated the
connection existing by then between the universities and industry. As for the
civil service, its importance had grown rather than lessened. Obviously, first-
class brains were needed there too. The ‘informal’ methods certainly needed
better-trained and more resourceful teachers, with smaller classes. The assault
was renewed in the 1970s on mixed-ability groups, a feature of comprehensive
schools. It had been argued that by not segregating children according to ability
the better pupils stimulated the less able ones. The critics of this system
maintained that it held back brighter children, led the poor pupils into frustration
because they could not keep up, and was particularly damaging in maths and
languages. Sir Alan Bullock’s committee, set up to look at the teaching of
English in schools, did criticize some of the students in training and called for
more stringent entry requirements. The committee, which reported in February
1975, also called for a more professional approach to the teaching of English.
Lord James of Rusholme had already led a committee of investigation into
teacher training, which recommended an all-graduate profession and more in-
service training of teachers. Women’s rights activists were disappointed by the
lack of progress in providing nursery education. On the positive side, the school-
leaving age was raised to 16 in 1972. It is doubtful whether the great majority of
schools were really equipped to meet the challenge this extra year represented.
The exam system was hotly debated again in the 1970s. The General
Certificate of Education (GCE), introduced in 1951, and the Certificate of
Secondary Education (CSE), in existence since 1965, had proved their worth.
Both catered for a wide range of abilities and interest. Both offered a wide
variety of subjects outside the original hard-core academic ones. Even their
overlapping at the bottom end of the GCE and the top end of the CSE was
useful. More and more young people were leaving school armed with these
qualifications, thus justifying the view of Robbins about the wasted talent in
society. In some circles there was a strong view that these exams should be
replaced by a single one, which would be tively tidy and would apparently give all
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 181

pupils some sort of certificate; but the arguments in its favour did not seem all
that compelling. There was the fear, expressed by Conservative spokesmen, that
such an exam, virtually under the control of the schools themselves, would
substitute subjective judgements for objective assessments. In Britain fewer
young people stayed on beyond 16, compared with countries like West
Germany, Sweden and Japan.29 Of those who went on to higher education, many
obtained degrees which did not give them easily marketable skills. This was true
in many other countries. In Britain, there were unemployed graduate teachers
who could not find jobs because local authorities had not the funds to employ
them. By the end of the decade teachers, especially in schools and universities,
felt less happy than in the days of hope in the early 1960s. The pay of university
staff, even more than school-teachers, lagged behind that of comparable
professions. In this respect the polytechnics were better off. They were, to a
considerable extent, trying to abandon their distinctive role of putting on more
practical, more vocational, more ‘relevant’ courses, and attempting to match the
universities. Some departments of some polytechnics, though, were certainly
exploring their disciplines in novel and interesting ways. One great success in
higher education was the Open University, an achievement of the first Wilson
administration. It offered admission to students without formal GCE
qualifications. It failed to attract the large working-class clientele originally
hoped for, but it gave a second chance to thousands who had either failed to get
into a university, chosen not to go to one or had chosen non-university
professional qualifications. It pioneered new teaching methods and, for the most
part, achieved entirely respectable standards. It led some academics to conclude
that in the 1980s the universities should be exploring, together with the
government and other interested bodies, ways of encouraging older people to aim
for a university education. This was important when one considers the
difficulties of finding a place in higher education, especially for the working
class and for women, who remained grossly underrepresented in universities,
polytechnics and teacher training establishments.

EEC REFERENDUM: WILSON FOUGHT ‘LIKE A

TIGER’
One of the first problems facing Wilson was how to resolve the explosive issue of
Britain’s EEC membership. Tough ‘renegotiations’ went on with Wilson fighting
‘like a tiger’.30 According to Callaghan, who did most of the negotiating, the
change in leadership in West Germany (Schmidt) and France (Giscard) in 1974
greatly helped matters.31 The negotiations were concluded in Dublin on 10
March 1975. A White Paper on the renegotiations was published on 27 March
1975. The four main areas of negotiation were the Common Agricultural Policy;
the level of contributions to the EEC budget; relations with the Commonwealth
and developing states; and Britain’s ability to pursue its own regional and
industrial policies. Some concessions were granted. A plan was agreed under
182 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

which member states would be eligible for reimbursements on their contributions

on the basis of their gross national product and economic growth. Britain also
managed to negotiate concessions on sugar, beef and New Zealand dairy
products. The renegotiated package was presented to Parliament in April. The
Commons then voted by 396 to 170 in favour. The government relied on the
Conservatives and Liberals to get the legislation through. Only 137 Labour MPs
voted in favour; 145 voted against and 33 did not vote.32 The pro- and anti-
Marketeers in the Cabinet agreed to differ, but only after Wilson had threatened
to resign.33 Wilson, influenced by German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt,34
Callaghan, Healey, Jenkins and Short, headed the 16 supporters. Seven Cabinet
ministers rejected the new terms— Benn, Castle, Foot, Ross, Shore, John Silkin
and Varley—because they thought EEC membership would be ‘markedly
unfavourable’ from the economic point of view. ‘But the gravest disadvantages are
political.’ They saw these as the inevitable shift of power from the elected
Commons to the non-elected Commission and Council of Ministers in Brussels.
And they claimed:

Timid voices and vested interests will now combine in seeking to persuade
us we have no choice; that Britain outside the Common Market would
suffer great disadvantage. Do not believe them. On the contrary, a far
greater danger to our legitimate economic interest, to the continued unity
of the UK, and to the practice of democracy in this country arises from our
continued membership of the EEC.35

On the Right, Powell and his friends put similar arguments. Labour’s promised
referendum, an idea of Benn’s four years earlier,36took place on 5 June 1975.
Among the campaigners in the cross-party Britain In Europe were Labour’s
Jenkins, Gledwyn Hughes (Chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party), Shirley
Williams and Vic Feather, the Conservatives’ Heath, Maudling and Whitelaw,
and the Liberals’ Grimond and Steel. Wilson and Callaghan campaigned
separately for ‘yes’ votes, as did Thatcher, who was criticized for her low
profile.37 Only 64.5 per cent of the electorate bothered to vote. They gave the
pro-EEC forces a two-to-one majority in favour of the renegotiated terms: 17.3
million voted ‘yes’, 8.4 million ‘no’. The ‘yes’ vote represented 43 per cent of
the total eligible to vote. The Labour special conference had voted
overwhelmingly on 26 April against EEC membership. Delegates were not
convinced by the argument that the socialists were the biggest group in the
European Parliament and that, together with the Communists and Left Christian
Democrats, there was likely to be a majority in favour of the working classes in
that Parliament. It was argued that the European Parliament was without
effective powers. During the referendum Benn and Foot joined Powell to oppose
the EEC. The Communists, PC and the SNP also joined the anti-EEC camp.
They were opposed, however, by a powerful alliance of the Establishment, most
of the press, and big business. Both sides were given equal time on television and
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 183

literature from both sides was sent at government expense to every household.
However, as Thatcher was later to write:

The ‘Yes’ campaign was very well organized and very well funded— not
least as a result of the efforts of Alistair McAlpine, whom I would shortly
recruit to be Conservative Party Treasurer. For all the talk of a ‘great
debate’ it was really a contest between David and Goliath, which Goliath
won.38

Most of the ordinary voters appeared baffled by the arguments about wine lakes
and butter mountains, about sugar and sovereignty, beef and bureaucrats, New
Zealand cheese and Italian Communists. Economic arguments were the main
ones deployed; the idea of ‘an ever closer union of European people’ ensuring
that war would not take place again between members was hardly touched on.
Some voters were persuaded that without an empire Britain needed new friends;
others that, having joined, Britain would have to pay a heavy penalty for leaving;
more by the possibility of emulating the ‘economic miracles’ of Western Europe;
and still more by the smiles or frowns of their favourite politicians when the EEC
was mentioned. Many members of the ‘silent majority’ felt that if Benn, Powell
and the Communists were against the EEC, it must be a good thing. Many trade
unionists, despite Feather’s argument to the contrary, believed that if British
Petroleum (BP), ICI, the big banks and Uncle Sam thought Britain should join,
then it could only be bad for Britain. The more thoughtful reflected on what
would happen to a lonely Britain nearing the year 2000 faced with high trade
barriers, built by mighty new states armed with cheap labour and modern
technology, capable of waging fierce trade wars for political as well as economic
reasons. They believed it would be better to co-operate with states with similar
values, similar standards and similar problems than to be forced to rely on the
good-will of totalitarian or unstable regimes, of Japanese corporations, Arab oil
potentates or even their American cousins.39
The cross-party unity in Britain In Europe gave false hopes to some, and fears
to others, that a moderate national government would emerge to run the country
in a period of severe strains caused by the oil crisis and a period when consensus
would have been very useful to promote badly needed reforms in British society.
Wilson40 and Thatcher41 did not want this, nor did Benn and others on the Left.

INDUSTRY: ‘THE GAP GETS WIDER EACH YEAR’

One of the key items in the Queen’s Speech on 29 October 1974 was the proposal
for a National Enterprise Board, subsequently set up under the Industry Act of
1975. The NEB became a state holding company to administer government
holdings of shares in companies, acquire additional ones and give financial
assistance to businesses in trouble. It removed restrictions on the Secretary of
State for Industry, included in the Conservatives’ Industry Act, 1972, which
184 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

prevented him acquiring more than 50 per cent of the equity share capital, and
required him to dispose of any share acquired as soon as it was practical to do so.
Under the British Leyland Act, 1975 the NEB acquired 95 per cent of the equity
of that ailing motor company. Ferranti, the electronics and defence company,
followed, with the NEB taking 50 per cent of the ordinary voting shares. Rolls-
Royce (1971) Ltd, already publicly owned, became part of the NEB empire.
Other firms were subsequently assisted. Among these was the American-owned
Chrysler company, which needed a massive cash injection to avoid a total shut-
down with the loss of about 27,000 jobs. Chrysler was not taken over. The
government did take over the ailing aerospace and shipbuilding industries
after being forced to drop nationalization of ship-repair companies to get its
legislation through. Though the Conservatives tried to denounce much that the
government did in this direction, it is doubtful whether they would have done
much differently, judged by Heath’s record. Had the government not intervened,
unemployment would have gone much higher and so would the cost of
unemployment. The idea was to rationalize these troubled industries as well as
nationalize them. In the other direction, the government sold off a profitable
block of shares acquired by BP, itself partly owned by the state, during the
earlier rescue operation for Burmah Oil; this was to placate Britain’s foreign
creditors and allowed some reduction in borrowing. In November 1975 the
government held a meeting at Chequers of union chiefs and industrialists to look
at the problems of industry and government policy towards them. This led to an
agreement which identified 30 sectors of industry deserving of government
attention and help, either because they were intrinsically likely to succeed, or
because assistance could make the difference between success or failure, or
because they were thought vital to the success of others. It looked sensible
enough, concentrating the limited resources where they could do the most good.
Ferranti was turned round to produce a profit, but went out of business as a
private business in the 1990s.
Britain’s difficulty as a manufacturing nation was highlighted by a calculation
of Dr Frank Jones, industrialist and inventor. According to Jones, in 1976 total
assets per employee in manufacturing industry stood at £7,500. In Japan this figure
was just over £30,000 and in West Germany about £23,000 per employee. The
discrepancy in assets per employee…has been crucial in enabling the Japanese
and German employee to manufacture at two or three times our productivity…
The gap gets wider each year.’42 Jones thought the government was taking too
much in tax from industry. Others claimed too much capital had been exported
over a long period. The banking system also came in for criticism. Some
commentators thought British banks could learn from Japanese banks and from
British building societies on improving methods to ensure the financing of long-
term loans to industry. British building societies operated in ways similar to
foreign banks by ‘lending long from short-term deposits…If such a mechanism
were adopted by the banks in Britain for their industrial customers… Britain
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 185

would stand to reap considerable growth benefits similar to those experienced by

both Japan and West Germany.’43
Controversy about British management and its contribution to the so-called
‘British sickness’, economic malaise, continued from at least the early 1950s,
and was even seriously discussed in the late nineteenth century. There was a
feeling that British employers were less qualified than their German, American
or Japanese rivals, and that they understood their employees less. There was also
the feeling that foremen, technicians and professional engineers were less well
qualified and were undervalued. Three writers who had studied German firms
put this point about foremen in Management Today (March 1978), emphasizing
that compared with his British colleague, the German Meister was better
qualified and enjoyed higher status. The relatively poor prestige of professional
engineers in Britain was also thought to be a cause for the failure to attract more,
and more talented, applicants to university engineering courses.44 Many British
managers, top executives and businessmen were less well educated than many of
their rivals abroad. Unlike Britain, in Japan and Germany an appropriate
university qualification was the single most important prerequisite to qualify for
managerial rank.45
A Brookings Institution team headed by Professor Richard E. Caves of
Harvard came to the conclusion, in 1974, that Britain’s secondary school system
was a key factor in poor management and bad industrial relations.

Nowhere else does the middle class make such extensive use of private
schools and bear such financial burdens to avoid sending children to state-
supported schools. Whatever may be said in favour of Britain’s private
schools, one result…is to create two distinct social groups that share no
common educational experience. The economic life of the nation cannot be
separated from the social context, and lack of common schooling
inevitably hampers the kind of communication needed to improve
industrial relations.
The prevalence of private schools undoubtedly reinforces the prejudice
against being ‘in trade’. Although Britain is an urban industrial society, the
social ideal of many Britons is still the country squire living on his lands.
The middle-class and upper-class disdain for industry is matched by a
curious reluctance among lower-class people to take advantage of what
opportunities exist to rise through the management hierarchy, normally an
important channel of social mobility in advanced countries.

The team gave British management low marks for professional quality. For
instance, the study concluded that overmanning was mainly the fault of
management, not the unions, and that financial controls were often deficient. The
investigation did, however, point out that Britain’s poor growth went back 100
years. ‘Industry’s chronic reluctance to invest is not due to lack of savings or
company liquidity, and has not responded much to tax incentives.’46
186 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

WILSON GOES: ‘ASTONISHED CABINET’

According to Castle, when Wilson announced his resignation on 16 March 1976
it was to an ‘astonished Cabinet’.47 He had warned her that he was going, but
gave the impression it would be later. Callaghan had been warned, weeks before,
at Wilson’s request, via Harold Lever.48 Wilson told Healey only minutes before
in the lavatory at 10 Downing Street.49 Thus, Callaghan had the opportunity to
‘prepare himself to take over’.50 Callaghan duly stood in the election to replace
Wilson. On the first ballot he gained 80 votes to 90 for Foot, 56 for Jenkins, 37
for Benn, 30 for Healey and 17 for Crosland. On the second ballot Callaghan
attracted 141 votes, Foot 133 and Healey 38. In the final ballot on 5 April, the
‘conservative’ Callaghan was elected with 176 votes to 133 for Foot the ‘radical’.51
There was much speculation as to why Wilson had resigned. He claimed it
was because he was 60 and it had long been his intention to do so. Dining with
Foot on 7 March Benn had heard ‘a very strong rumour’ that Wilson was about
to go. There is a possibility that some papers which were stolen from Harold’s
desk may envelop him in some way in a scandal.’52 In 1987, Peter Wright, a
senior member of MI 5, the security service, wrote that there had been two plots
against Wilson, one in 1968 and another in 1974–5. These involved many
members of the service who thought Wilson was ‘wrecking the country’.53 Many
thought Wilson was ‘soft’ on the Soviet Union and its spying activities in Britain.54
Sensibly, the new Prime Minister recognized Foot’s standing among Labour’s
left-wingers and those opposed to the EEC, and appointed him Lord President
and Leader of the House. Foot’s nominee, Albert Booth, replaced him at
Employment. Healey remained at the Treasury and Jenkins at the Home Office.
Mrs Castle had to make way for David Ennals, and felt she was being discarded
‘like so much old junk’.55 Crosland became the new Foreign Secretary but died
suddenly in 1977 to be replaced by the almost unknown medical practitioner
David Owen. He was the youngest Foreign Secretary since Eden. He had served
as a junior minister at the Department of Health and Social Security, and then at
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. His was a controversial appointment, as
there were others better qualified. The controversy increased when, in almost his
first act, Owen announced the appointment of Callaghan’s son-in-law, Peter Jay,
with his ‘machine-gun mind’,56 as Ambassador to Washington. Owen also came
in for criticism over Rhodesia and his expressions of support for the despotic
Shah of Iran.
Callaghan was regarded as a safe bet for Labour. He had been Chancellor,
Home Secretary and at the Foreign Office and was, therefore, the most
experienced. He was slightly Right of Centre politically, but his strength was
thought to be his strong links with the unions. Of Irish descent, due to the early
death of his father, he had to leave grammar school at 16. He found a safe berth
in the junior ranks of the Inland Revenue. He made his way through the union
movement, becoming a full-time official of the Association of Officers of Taxes
in 1936. When war broke out he volunteered for the navy, giving up his reserved
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 187

occupation. He had a quiet war in naval intelligence. A protégé of Dalton and

Laski, he was elected MP in 1945 for Cardiff South East.

STEEL: ‘QUIET EXTERIOR…DETERMINED MAN’

The Liberals were also forced to change their leader. In May 1976 Jeremy
Thorpe, who had been leader since 1967, resigned. Under his leadership the
Liberals had achieved their best post-war electoral result in 1974, but this was
due more to the electorate’s boredom, frustration and disgust with the other
parties than to identification with Liberal policies. The Liberals enjoyed the
advantage of not being in office. They were not more united than the other two
parties. The radicalism of Peter Hain’s Young Liberals —Hain later defected to
Labour—Cyril Smith’s Northern populism, Trevor Jones’s community politics,
Lord Gladwyn’s right-wing Liberalism, were all different from each other. As
for Thorpe, he thought of the Commons ‘as if it were the Oxford Union Debating
Society’.57 His social style and dress—expensive, flamboyant and rather
deliberately out-of-date clothes—caused much adverse comment.58 The son of a
Conservative MP and King’s Counsel and himself a barrister and television
journalist, he was elected to the Commons on the second attempt in 1959. As the
Liberal leader, he never managed to escape from the shadow of the previous
leader, old Etonian Jo Grimond, who remained in the House. Thorpe was forced
to go after allegations made by former male model, Norman Scott,59 that Thorpe
was trying to get him murdered. They had had a homosexual relationship. Scott
had received payments from Thorpe for some years. Thorpe was subsequently
tried on a conspiracy charge but acquitted. He lost his seat in 1979. This kind of
blow to the Liberals made it easier for the Conservatives, especially in the South
West.
The new Liberal leader David Steel seemed refreshingly different from
Thorpe. Educated in Nairobi and at Edinburgh University, he was the son of a
clergyman. Like Thorpe he had been a television journalist, and was the
youngest member of the 1964–66 Parliament (see p. 123). He was a supporter of
liberal causes such as Shelter and the Anti-Apartheid Movement. He led the
Liberals into the ‘Lib-Lab’ pact of March 1977. Under this arrangement, the
Liberals promised to sustain the government, which was by then in a minority, in
return for consultations on government legislation. The pact brought the Liberals
nearer to office than they had been at any time in the post-war period. Callaghan
recorded, ‘Beneath his quiet exterior, David Steel is a determined man, but one
whom I found scrupulous and always considerate.’60 Steel could do nothing to
stop the loss of support for the Liberals. As usual when Labour was in office,
floating Right-of-Centre voters returned to the Conservatives. After arguments
and recriminations, with Smith leading the assault, the pact with Labour was
terminated in the summer of 1978.
188 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

CRIME: ‘VIOLENCE…A NATURAL ASPECT OF

SOCIETY’
In common with other industrial societies, Britain suffered from increasing crime
during the 1960s and 1970s. There were the crimes which resulted from
increased temptation and opportunity, like shoplifting, and crimes the causes of
which baffled the experts, such as vandalism and football hooliganism. And
there were more serious crimes, such as assault, muggings and the use of
firearms. To meet this challenge, more police were recruited. The police became
better trained, more professional, organized in larger units and, perhaps, more
discontented. In 1949 there were 58,990 policemen in England and Wales and 1,
176 policewomen. The totals for 1959 were 70,156 and 2,338, respectively. They
increased to 87,342 men and 3,492 women in 1969. By 1976 there were 101,042
men and 6,997 women serving in the police in England and Wales. The
authorized strength was 116,880, so that the police were over 8,000 below
strength.61 Throughout the post-war period, police forces had been under
strength. Compared with the early post-war period, the police service had
become a centralized force. In 1949 there were 127 police forces in England and
Wales. By 1979 there were only 43. Officially, they were still run by committees
of local government representatives and magistrates. Although great strides had
been made in training, the police still did not have enough specialists to deal with
particular types of crime which were becoming more prevalent. These included
fraud, corruption and drugs-related offences. Race relations presented the police
with a special problem, as surveys indicated that young immigrants felt they
were likely to be unfairly dealt with by the police.62 Undoubtedly the greatest
challenge to police ingenuity was the appearance of urban terrorism. This was
virtually unknown in Britain during the 1950s. Britain’s ‘political police’, Special
Branch, was established during the 1880s to deal with Irish Republican
terrorism, but the interwar period was relatively quiet. The IRA engaged in a
bombing campaign in England at the start of the Second World War, and there were
minor attacks after that. Urban terrorism and the increasing use of firearms by
criminals forced the police to give greater attention to training in the use of
firearms and to the development of special units to deal with these crimes. Public
attention in the 1970s focused a great deal on violence connected with political
demonstrations and trade disputes. The Red Lion Square riot between Left and
Right extremists in 1974, and the demonstrations and picketing connected with
the Grunwick industrial dispute in 1977, attracted a great deal of attention. Too
much was made of these by the media but, as Sir Robert Mark, Commissioner of
the Metropolitan Police, pointed out one had to consider:

Whether social violence has increased in this country or whether that is an

illusion created, even if unintentionally, by newspapers and television.
Violence has always been a natural aspect of society and, indeed, many
social changes now regarded as wholly acceptable have been achieved by
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 189

it. Local self-government, social legislation and parliamentary reform all

owe something to social violence. The trade unions did not emerge without
it. The Chartist movement between 1837 and 1848 laid the foundation of
what we now regard as constitutional democracy. The suffragette
movement between 1905 and 1914 resorted to violence to a degree now
largely forgotten or unremarked. There was violence during the General
Strike and during the hunger marches of the thirties: but violence had
tended to diminish as the claims which inspired it have been conceded.

Sir Robert went on to emphasize that there was nothing new in squatting, sit-ins,
demos or even home-made bombs. He was warning against overreaction to the
activities of violent minorities, and recommended the minimum use of force to
contain them.

In a free society such as ours, government must be by consent. The forcible

suppression of a minority…is the negation of freedom and can only be
achieved by overwhelming resources of manpower willing to enforce
undemocratic laws.63

Two aspects of the development of the police since the mid-1960s worried some
observers. One was the apparent increase in corruption, the other was the ‘Big
Brother’ aspect of policing. In the 1960s there were a number of cases of police
misusing their powers. One led to the conviction of two Sheffield policemen for
severely beating up suspects, another involved Detective Sergeant Challenor of
the Metropolitan Police, who had acted illegally in 24 cases. Among other
things, he planted evidence on left-wing political demonstrators. At his trial he was
found unfit to plead through insanity. In the same case, three others were
sentenced on charges of perverting the course of justice.64 There were also a
number of cases where immigrants were the victims. The spectacular case of
corruption in the 1970s was that involving members of Scotland Yard’s Obscene
Publications Squad, who had taken large bribes from proprietors of pornographic
bookshops. They were jailed in 1977 for offences that had been committed over
a considerable period. In 1976 Sir Robert Mark revealed that in the four years he
had been Commissioner, 82 officers had been required to leave the Metropolitan
Police after formal proceedings. Another 301 left voluntarily amid criminal or
disciplinary inquiries. Of 72 officers tried by jury, 36 were acquitted.65 In the
decade before Mark, an average of 16 officers were eased out of the service. Was
there more corruption about? Or was it that Mark set higher standards than his
predecessors? Or was it that a greater press and public awareness of corruption
and malpractice was forcing matters into the open? It is difficult to be sure. But
Mark had taken over with the brief to clean up Scotland Yard’s CID, and there
had been corrup tion cases at the Yard in the 1930s. Part of the trouble was that
laws on gambling, prostitution, licensing, pornography and drugs, which were
difficult to enforce, put police officers into temptation’s way.66 Another reason
190 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

why some officers broke the rules was the pressure to get results. The Police
Act, 1976 was an attempt to help restore public confidence in the police by
setting up a Police Complaints Board with functions relating to complaints from
the public. The chairman and his deputy (or deputies) were to be appointed by
the Prime Minister. ‘The members of the Board shall not include any person who
is or has been a constable in any part of the United Kingdom.’67 The Minister for
the Civil Service was given oversight of the Board’s activities. The Board
replaced the much-criticized system under which the police dealt with
complaints themselves.
Another aspect of police work which worried some was the development of
the Police National Computer (PNC). This was just part of the computerization of
information by banks, credit firms, insurance companies, employers, local
authorities, voluntary bodies and the NHS. The White Paper Computer and
Privacy 1975 recognized the possible dangers from the storage of information in
this way: inaccurate, incomplete or irrelevant information being stored; the
possibility of access to information by people who should not need to have it; the
use of information in a context or for a purpose other than that for which it was
collected.68 By the end of the 1970s Britain was behind some other countries—
Canada, Norway, Denmark, France, Sweden, the USA and West Germany—in
providing a legal framework to protect its citizens from malpractice.69 A
committee chaired by Sir Norman Lindop reported on the whole issue in
December 1978. It dealt with the PNC, which holds five major files: the index to
criminal records in the Criminal Records Office; a file of vehicle-owners; a file of
stolen and suspect vehicles; an index to the national fingerprint collection; and a
file of wanted or missing persons. The advantages of this to the police are too
obvious to need further comment. Lindop, while supporting the police in their
use of the PNC, urged ‘that the best way to avert any fears and suspicions of such
systems would be for them to be subject to the data protection legislation which
we propose’.70 The storage of data on patients by the NHS was another sphere
which caused concern.
The other ‘Big Brother’ aspects of police and security work which many found
disquieting were the ease with which the Home Secretary could deport
‘undesirable aliens’, the apparently increasing use of phone-tapping, the vetting
of juries and the complete secrecy surrounding these and certain other operations
of government and police activities.

NORTHERN IRELAND: ‘HOPE TO A TRAGIC

COMMUNITY’
Northern Ireland continued to be the most intractable and urgent political
problem for Callaghan as for Wilson. Under the Northern Ireland 1974, a 78-
member Convention was established to initiate power-sharing. Elections to the
Convention, held in May 1975, gave the anti-power-sharing Unionists nearly 55
per cent of the votes and 46 seats. The SDLP and other Catholic groups got 26.2
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 191

per cent, and the moderate unionists, Northern Ireland Labour Party, and
Alliance Party—all power-sharing parties— nearly 19 per cent. As agreement
could not be reached, Merlyn Rees, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland,
dissolved the Convention in March 1976. Hopes were raised that at least the
violence would end after talks between British officials and Provisional Sinn
Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, led to a cease-fire in February
1975. Rees ordered the British forces to keep a low profile. Certainly there was
much less IRA activity against the security forces, but there was no end to the
sectarian killings. In summer 1975 the cease-fire broke down completely. In
January 1976 elements of the Special Air Service (SAS), tough troops trained in
irregular warfare, were sent to reinforce the army. This represented a hardening
of the government’s policy. On the other hand, Rees began to release the
detainees held without trial. By Christmas 1975 all had been released.
There was renewed hope again in August 1976 when there were spontaneous
mass demonstrations for peace. These had been sparked by the killing of three
children by a terrorist car which was out of control. A Peace Movement came
into existence headed by Mrs Betty Williams, Miss Mairead Corrigan and Mr
Ciaran McKeown. They took part in similar demonstrations up and down the
United Kingdom and Ireland. They braved denunciations by the IRA and, as
Airey Neave put it, The Women’s Peace Movement, courageous and sincere,
certainly brings hope to a tragic community.’71 The Movement was awarded the
Nobel Prize for Peace. Peace, however, did not break out. In 1976 a total of 296
individuals were killed in Northern Ireland; the total for 1977 was 112. Between
1968 and 1978 about 2,000 civilians and soldiers had died as a result of the
disorders. Just about the worst of vicious crimes were the activities of the
‘Shankhill butchers’, a group of Belfast Protestants who, after heavy drinking,
seized individual Catholics off the street at random and tortured their victims
before cutting their throats with butchers’ knives. The ringleader, William
Moore, admitted to 11 murders. In February 1979 11 Protestants were given a
total of 42 life sentences for 19 murders and other serious charges. All were
judged sane by medical experts.72
England too continued to be plagued by the senseless violence of Northern
Ireland. As mentioned on p. 181, the Wilson government had to deal with
escalating terrorism in 1974, culminating in 20 deaths when bombs went off in
Birmingham pubs on the night of 21 November. Under the Prevention of
Terrorism Act, passed one week later, the IRA became an illegal organization in
Great Britain; the Home Secretary was given power to ‘exclude’ suspected
individuals from Great Britain; and the police got power to detain suspects for up
to seven days without charging them. Necessary though this was, it looked like a
step towards 1984. The Commons refused to be panicked into introducing the
death penalty for terrorism when the issue was raised in 1974 and 1975. On both
occasions a majority of Conservatives voted in favour. One crucial argument
against 5capital punishment for this crime was that it could easily lead to an
escalation of violence, including kidnappings and reprisals.
192 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

BULLOCK: ‘MORE THOUGHTFUL…MANAGEMENT’

The government was forced to put a brave face on one by-election reverse after
another. In June 1975 it lost Woolwich West to the Conservatives. In November
1976 Walsall North fell. There a special factor helped the Conservatives. The
former Labour MP and former Cabinet Minister John Stonehouse was convicted
of corruption and fraud and sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment. In March
1977, Birmingham Stechford, Roy Jenkins’s old seat, was won by the
Conservatives. A similar blow was the fall of Ashfield, a mining constituency, in
April. The Conservatives also took Ilford North in March 1978. The government
was in the doghouse because, like its predecessor, it could not control the
economy. And again, like its predecessor, it had made promises in opposition it
could not fulfil in office. Britain had reached a state of ‘stagflation’—a
stagnating economy with high unemployment which was nevertheless hit by high
inflation. Britain’s inflation rate in the 1970s was higher than all other EEC
states, except for Ireland and Italy; higher than Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, the
United States and Japan. Unemployment reached new post-war peaks, nearing 1.
5 million. In 1977 it was higher than in other leading Western industrial nations,
except for Canada. This unenviable record was due to a considerable extent to
Healey’s deflationary measures of the previous year, which in turn were the
result of the sterling crisis of that year. At the beginning of the year the pound
had stood at $2.024; by the last days of September it was down to $1.637. The
pound appeared to be dying. Only massive borrowing abroad prevented it from
doing so. Then, suddenly, the pound was climbing up once again, towards $2.
The heavy dose of public-spending cuts, the greater stability afforded the
government by the Lib.-Lab. pact, the expectation of oil revenues from the North
Sea fields, all helped to reverse the trend. The freeing of the pound from its
previous linkage with the dollar also helped, especially as the dollar crisis
deepened, caused by America’s large deficit on its overseas trade.
It was all too easy to blame the government or ‘socialism’ for this state of
affairs, but this explanation was hardly convincing. The Social Democrats had
been in government in West Germany, the most successful European industrial
state, since 1966, and had led that country since 1969. They had led the equally
successful Austria since 1970, and had been in government there throughout the
post-war period except for 1966–70. France apart, Labour’s European sister
parties had been in government in most of the other West European states for most
of the previous 10 years. Another easy target was the trade unions. In the first
two years of the Labour government there was a great improvement in industrial
relations; after that there was a turn for the worse. In the period 1973–77
Britain’s record was better than Australia, Canada, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the
United States. It was true of course, in the 1970s as in the 1960s, that Britain
suffered from archaic trade union structures. At the end of 1977 there were still
something like 485 trade unions in Britain.73 In 1977 there were still 74 unions with
memberships of under 100, compared with 126 in 1967. Those with
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 193

memberships between 100 and 499 had actually increased from 136 in 1967 to
144 in 1977, but made up only 0.3 per cent of total union membership. Nearly 63
per cent of British trade unionists were organized in the 11 biggest unions. But
the situation was far from satisfactory. The unions did themselves no good, as far
as popular esteem was concerned, by failure to have postal voting for important
union elections and secret ballots for strikes. In the 1970s unions seemed to
enjoy less public approval than at any time since 1945. This is remarkable
considering the growth of unions and the fact that they were more representative
than ever of the ‘workers by hand and by brain’. Indeed, the growth areas had
been among the white-collar supervisory and technical employees. In 1977 there
were 12.6 million union members in Britain, which probably meant they and
their family members made up half the population.
Britain’s industrial relations continued to look very bad compared with those
of West Germany. For many of the politically interested West Germany
remained the state to study and to emulate. The TUC belatedly came round to the
view that perhaps there was something in West Germany’s system of co-
determination, employee participation in management. Under pressure from his
own back-benchers Wilson set up the Bullock Committee, under Lord (Alan)
Bullock, to investigate the possibilities. In its report published in January 1977, it
commented that in West Germany

many of those we met saw a strong and direct connection between the
success of the West German economy since World War II and the presence
of employee representatives on supervisory boards. West German
industrialists, though opposed to parity representation, were largely in
agreement that board level representation provided a system of legally
enforced communication between managers and employees which led to an
earlier identification of problems involving changes for employees and to a
more thoughtful and farsighted style of management.74

The Committee also reported favourably on similar developments in Sweden. It

might also have considered the position of trade unions in Austria, where they
have the right, among other things, to pass judgement on every important draft
bill before it is presented to Parliament.75
The main proposals of Bullock were that, in an enterprise employing more
than 2,000 people, the unions would have the right to call for a ballot of the
work-force on proposals for trade union directors. If the ballot were favourable,
with a minimum of 50 per cent of employees voting, the unions involved would
form a Joint Representation Committee (JRC). The company board would then
be reconstructed, comprising two equal groups appointed, respectively, by the
shareholders and the JRC, and a third smaller group co-opted in agreement with
the other two. There would also be an Industrial Democracy Commission which
would give advice and decide the composition of boards in the case of deadlock.
A minority of Bullock rejected these proposals in favour of more modest
194 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

representation at below board level. Bullock’s proposals came to nothing. It is

doubtful whether the government was ever very serious about them. The
Committee was originally conceived to stop a Private Member’s Bill, proposed
by Labour MP Giles Radice, on industrial democracy. The Conservatives
opposed Bullock, so did the employers’ organizations and so did some trade
union leaders. Certainly, there would have been difficulties in trying to establish
a framework for industrial democracy, but it appeared that the leaders of British
politics and industry were not ready to break new ground away from old-
fashioned, authoritarian structures towards co-operation through participation.
Only in the nationalized industries was a limited experiment embarked upon.
One ray of hope in the otherwise gloomy 1970s was the emergence of Britain
as an oil power. The first discovery of oil in the British sector of the North Sea was
made in 1969 and the first oil was landed in 1975. By mid-1978 nine fields in the
British sector were producing oil. Under the Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines
Act, 1975 a public corporation, the British National Oil Corporation (BNOC),
was established. BNOC took over the British offshore interests previously held
by the National Coal Board, and those of the Burmah Oil Company. Majority
participation agreements were signed between BNOC and all the companies
operating North Sea fields. There was controversy about the state’s involvement
in the oil industry, with the Conservatives preferring to leave things largely to
private companies. However, the government’s schemes for a public sector plus
participation agreements were modest compared with those of many oil-
producing states, from Austria and Norway to Mexico. Britain was set to be self-
sufficient by 1980. North Sea gas expanded rapidly in the late 1960s and early
1970s and was also making a major contribution to Britain’s energy
requirements.

PAY POLICY: ‘ANKLE-DEEP IN MUCK AND SLIME’

Callaghan announced in July 1978 a continuation of incomes policy with a 5 per
cent maximum rise compared with the previous year. There were exceptions for
self-financing productivity deals, for low pay and for the fire service, armed
forces and police. The TUC were aggrieved that they had not been consulted.
The policy was rejected by the annual TUC conference, at Brighton in
September, and by the Labour conference in October. On the eve of the TUC
conference at Brighton, Callaghan invited the six top trade union leaders to
dinner at his Sussex farmhouse to get from them their view of the forthcoming
pay round and on the timing of the election. Apart from Scanlon, the others
urged him to go to the country swiftly.76 In fact, he had already decided weeks
before not to hold an early election.77 Some believe, had he been more open with
the TUC leaders about his intentions, they would have made greater efforts to
keep their members in line.78 As it was, there followed the ‘Winter of
Discontent’. Disputes which involved car workers, BBC technicians, oil-tanker
drivers and public sector workers ranging from grave-diggers to hospital porters
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 195

gave the Conservative ‘media a field day’.79 Among the strikers were fitters,
‘ankle-deep in muck and slime’, processing the excrement of a million
Mancunians at Chadderton sewage-works, who felt, after nearly four years of
pay policy, that enough was enough. Some strikers would have been better off on
social security than working. Some, indeed, were receiving Family Income
Supplement (FIS). As one angry tractor-driver is reported to have said, ‘But why
should I go crawling for FIS when I work a 40-hour week?’80 He summed up the
anger of many of his colleagues who believed Labour had done little for them
and that Britain was an unfair society. The incomes policy was not fair between
high-paid and low-paid manual workers, nor was it fair between different sections
of society. As Katharine Whitehorn explained, at the top end there were ample
ways round it:

Company car, of course—three out of five on our roads are so owned. Big
meals, that’s old hat. Live in the Tied Penthouse at company’s expense, get
medical insurance on the firm; school fees are coming into it… Go to the
races in the company box, get your golf club subscription paid—good for
the firm’s publicity. Help with moving costs and low-interest mortgages—
well, that’s still money of a sort.81

Then there were the credit cards, free petrol, and free travel. And if you were
made redundant, a golden handshake. And there was still old wealth, like
that of 26-year-old Gerald Grosvenor, son and heir of the Duke of
Westminster who, because of the accident of birth, owns all the lands of
Belgravia and one-third of Mayfair—including the south side of Oxford
Street and land of 33 embassies. But also has a shopping centre in Wales;
shooting in Scotland; trout in Shrop shire; family seats in Cheshire and
Fermanagh (NI); office blocks in Melbourne; a palm-fringed hotel in
Hawaii; and an Island in Vancouver.82

Yet the government could claim that they had achieved much in the
circumstances. By the end of 1978, except for unemployment, the economic
indicators were good. Inflation was down, the growth rate had risen to 3.5 per
cent, the balance of payments had moved into surplus and the public sector
borrowing requirement (PSBR) was under control.83 In fact, the situation was
not as bad as was believed. Up to late in 1976, the way the Treasury measured
public expenditure was misleading. As Healey wrote later, ‘it was unforgivably
misleading’.84 When they defined public spending in the same way as did other
countries, British spending was significantly reduced. And when they costed Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) like other countries, ‘the ratio of public spending to
GDP fell from sixty per cent to forty-six per cent. By 1978/9 my successive cuts
had brought it down to about forty-two per cent—about the same as West
Germany.’ For years the public and the world had been given a false picture
about British public spending. Had Prime Minister, the Chancellor and his team
196 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

taken a more relaxed view of incomes policy, not been so blind to the warnings
from the union leaders,85 or decided to go to the country earlier, history would
have been different. It is worth recalling that Healey was surrounded by
individuals who were anything but amateurs, with Edmund Dell, former ICI
executive, Paymaster-General, 1974–76, Secretary of State for Trade, 1976–78;
Joel Barnett, certified accountant and Chief Secretary to the Treasury, 1974–79;
the wealthy businessman Harold Lever, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
1974–79; Douglas Wass, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, ‘as able an
economist as any’;86 and Gordon Richardson, lawyer and former Chairman of
Schroders, Governor of the Bank of England, 1973–83. It was left to Leo
Pliatzky, who served at the Treasury, 1950–77, to bring Britain in line with the
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) definition
of public spending.87 Given this wealth of talent the mystery is how the
government got into so many difficulties.
What kind of society was Britain at the end of the 1970s? After the Heath,
Wilson and Callaghan governments it remained a divided society with great
differences of wealth and status. On an international standardized scale of
poverty it had more poor than West Germany or Sweden but fewer than France,
the United States or Canada.88 According to the official statistics, in the
mid-1970s, the richest 1 per cent owned one-fifth to one-quarter of all personal
wealth. In income terms the richest 1 per cent took home about the same as the
poorest 20 per cent.89 However, although there was argument about the extent,
most agreed that Britain was a more equal society in 1979 than it had been in
either 1939 or 1959. Wigan had changed for the better from what it was when
George Orwell visited it in the 1930s, and nearby Bolton, ‘Worktown’, was quite
different from how Tom Harrison found it in 1936 and 1959.90 The same was
true of the other ‘Work-towns’. The great expansion in the ownership of
consumer durables, the expansion of home ownership, the development of
council housing, social welfare and close to full employment for all but the last
few years had raised the level of the majority of the working class. For those who
remembered life before the war or even in the 1940s, it was like a revolution. In
terms of income, working-class wages had gone up more between 1938 and 1976
than those of many professional people.91 As in other industrial societies,
economic changes produced social class changes. The class structure was no
longer a pyramid, it was more like a light bulb, reducing the numbers at the
bottom of the pile. Even for the 1.4 million unemployed in 1979, life on the dole
was infinitely better than it was for their fathers in 1939, though who can say
that the psychological effects were not as devastating?
In other respects too life in Britain was not so bad. The percentage of people
who owned their homes was higher than in West Germany, though lower than in
France, and ‘housing standards in the United Kingdom compare well with those
in other developed countries. Densities of occupation are generally lower than in
other major EEC countries, for example, and the proportion of dwellings lacking
amenities are substantially lower.’92 Suicide rates had been falling in Britain
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 197

during the 1960s and 1970s, and Britons were less inclined to kill themselves
than were some other Europeans. They were also less inclined to kill each other
on the roads.

DEVOLUTION REFERENDA: ‘THE VALLEYS WERE

DEAF’
As we saw in Chapter 1, the Scottish nationalists briefly held Motherwell in 1945
after a by-election win, losing the seat to Labour in the general election. It was
22 years before their next success, this time in the Hamilton by-election in 1967.
Once again, the seat was lost in the subsequent general election, but they got a
consolation prize—the Western Isles. A second seat was won in the by-election
at Glasgow Go van in November 1973 when Margo Macdonald defeated the
Labour candidate. The breakthrough came for the SNP in the 1974 elections. In
October of that year the SNP gained 11 seats and 30 per cent of the vote in
Scotland. In any European country that would entitle it to be called a major party.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru won 3 seats and 10.8 per cent of the vote. Its
breakthrough had come when Gwynfor Evans won Carmarthen from Labour in a
by-election on 14 July 1967. It came as a shock to many English people that so
many voters in Scotland and Wales were so dissatisfied as to vote for parties
which sought to establish separate states. In both cases a powerful ingredient of
this vote was the failure of the two main parties to deal with the economic and
social difficulties of the two countries. In both Scotland and Wales
unemployment rates remained higher than the average for Great Britain.
Migration had long been the only alternative to the dole queue for many.
Housing too remained a problem in the 1970s. In 1976 the stock of housing in
Wales was older than that of England. A Department of Environment report
showed that Clydeside had 90 per cent of the most concentrated areas of urban
deprivation in the United Kingdom.93 The situation of the rural communities and
small farmers was another cause of discontent in both countries. There was a
feeling of being forgotten and neglected. With Britain in a state of economic
crisis under both Labour and Conservative governments, it was easy for the
nationalists to preach political and economic sovereignty as the solution. They
could claim their countries were being exploited by England and offer
themselves as something new, yet traditional, parties of hope and nostalgia,
radical but also respectable.
The two nationalist parties had been fighting since before the Second World
War to achieve separation from England. In neither case could it be argued that
this was not feasible on the grounds of either size or the state of their economies.
Wales had a population of 2.7 million in 1976 and Scotland 5.2 million. Thus,
Scotland was bigger in population than Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel and
New Zealand (among many others), and Wales was bigger than Iceland,
Jamaica, Malta or Singapore (among others). Economically, most of the growing
oil industry was off the coast of Scotland. Wales ‘exported’ drinking-water on a
198 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

massive scale to England. Scotland had a fair degree of autonomy through the
Scottish Office which, set up in 1885, took over most Home Office functions and
education. Since 1892 the Secretary for Scotland has had a seat in the Cabinet. In
1939 the Scottish Office was opened in Edinburgh, and had come to cover most
aspects of government. Scotland had always maintained its own legal system.
Under Wilson the Cabinet post of Secretary of State for Wales was created, with
wide powers. In the case of both Scotland and Wales, there was more public
expenditure per head than in England throughout the 1970s. More than in
Scotland, language was an issue in Wales. A radio talk by Saunders Lewis,
calling for a new public campaign on behalf of the Welsh language, was taken up
in the early 1960s.94 This led to the Welsh Language Act, 1967, steered by
Cledwyn Hughes at the Welsh Office. After ignoring Welsh for years, BBC
Wales devoted much of its output to programmes in the Welsh language.
According to the census of 1971, only 1.3 per cent of the inhabitants of Wales
spoke only Welsh, a further 20.8 per cent spoke Welsh and English.
What kind of policies were the nationalists advocating for their respective
countries? Plaid Cymru wanted to set up a co-operative economy of ‘living
associations of free people’ in contrast to Labour’s state capitalism and
Conservatism’s private capitalism.95 The SNP wanted an Industrial Development
Corporation to stimulate industry and Scottish participation in the oil companies
rather than nationalization.96 In foreign policy both parties opposed the EEC and
took up a quasi-pacifist line on defence problems.
The Kilbrandon Commission on the Constitution which reported in 1973
advocated devolution in Scotland and Wales, but only devolution consistent with
the preservation of the essential political and economic unity of the United
Kingdom. Back in office, Labour, who had originally set up Kilbrandon, gave
the people of Wales and Scotland the chance to vote on proposals to establish
assemblies in the two countries. These referenda on 1 March 1979 produced an
anti-devolution majority in Wales of four to one. As Callaghan put it, ‘the
valleys were deaf to the sound of our music’.97 In Scotland there was only a
narrow victory for devolution on a low poll. This was to have dramatic
consequences. Under the legislation already passed, due to 34 Labour critics of
devolution who voted against their own government,98 devolution could only be
implemented if 40 per cent of the total electorate voted in favour. As they had
not done so, it was set aside. This eventually led to a vote of censure being tabled
by the SNP. The government lost because one Labour MP was dying, and Gerry
Fitt (SDLP), who usually supported the government, voted against, angry
because he believed the proposed increase in the number of Northern Ireland
constituencies would benefit the Ulster Unionists, The government was defeated
by 311 votes to 310—an election was inevitable.
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 199

ELECTION ’79: CRADLED ‘A CALF IN MY ARMS’

Despite their splits and divisions, the Conservatives had been preparing for the
election for some time. Thatcher had put herself in the capable hands of Gordon
Reece, a successful TV producer. He persuaded her to change her hair, clothes
and voice, and taught her how to be more effective on TV. Saatchi & Saatchi
were given the Conservatives’ public relations account. The election was fought
with sound-bites and photo opportunities rather than set political speeches. Reece
planned the campaign ‘down to the last and most trivial detail…most of her
supposedly informal meetings with the voters were minutely stage-managed’.99
The secret was to get television and press photographers to pseudo-events put on
to produce nice images. One of these was Thatcher visiting a farm where, as she
later admitted, she cradled ‘a calf in my arms for the benefit of the cameras and,
I hoped, the wider public’.100 These techniques had been deployed in the US by
the Republicans. Harvey Thomas, who had worked for the American evangelist
Billy Graham, organized ticket-only rallies. All this cost a great deal of money,
and the Conservatives spent £2.3 million compared with Labour’s £1.6
million.101 As for politics, the Conservative manifesto was a moderate document.
Little was said, for instance, about denationalization. Thatcher turned down the
chance to debate on television with Callaghan, who was regarded as being too
experienced to make it worth the risk. Callaghan remained well ahead of
Thatcher in the personal ratings of the two contenders. Labour stuck to more
traditional styles of broadcasting. All three party leaders featured strongly in the
party political broadcasts and were given presidential treatment by the media.
Callaghan was given 60 per cent of the time devoted to Labour in BBC1 news
bulletins. The percentages of their parties’ viewing time for Thatcher and Steel
were 63 and 69, respectively.102 As usual, Labour suffered from press hostility,
with only the Daily Mirror unequivocally for Labour. The Sun waged the most
unbridled campaign against Labour, claiming, on 24 April, ‘How Many Reds In
Labour’s Bed?—Power Of The Wild Men Will Grow If Uncle Jim Is Elected
Again’. The same paper also featured articles by Labour defectors—Lord
George-Brown, Sir Richard Marsh, Lord Chalfont and Reg Prentice—on why
they supported the Conservatives.
The 1979 election was more free from extraneous events and sensations than
any other contest since the war. It was the first to be fought in April for more
than a century and was unusual in that election day was also the day (3 May) on
which most of the local councils in England and Wales were elected. None of
these factors appears to have had any bearing on the outcome—an effective
majority for the Conservatives, and a very bruising defeat for Labour. Britain’s
first woman Prime Minister was elected with 339 seats (up 62 compared with
October 1974). Labour won 269 (down 50) and the Liberals 11 (down 2). Of the
small parties, the SNP lost 9 of its 11 seats and the Welsh Nationalists were left
with 2 out of 3. Neither the National Front nor the Ecology Party (whose candidates
stood mainly in southern Conservative-held constituencies) achieved even any
200 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

nearmisses.103 With their 43.9 per cent vote, the Conservatives had a smaller
percentage than their earlier post-war victories of 1951, 1955, 1959 and 1970.
With 37 per cent Labour had taken a lower percentage than at any election since
1931. In crude terms, ignoring the difference in the numbers of candidates, the
Liberal percentage (13.8) was their highest post-war total, except for the peaks of
1974. In Scotland, the SNP’s 1974 high of 30.4 per cent fell to 17.3 per cent. It
lost 7 seats to the Conservatives. In Wales, Plaid Cymru’s percentage fell from
10.8 to 8.1—its lowest share since 1966—and its leader, Gwynfor Evans, lost his
seat at Carmarthen.
Who had deserted Labour? Ivor Crewe was later to write:

Labour lost through the desertion of its working-class supporters… as high

as 16 per cent among younger working-class men… The main components
of the anti-Labour swing were…straight conversion from Labour to
Conservative, and movement to and from the Liberals (especially October
1974 Liberals reverting to their original Conservative loyalties).104

Professor Crewe believed that the divorce between Labour principles and
working-class opinion had caused this situation. Some, especially the better paid,
warmed to Conservative calls for tax cuts and action against welfare
‘scroungers’. Some felt the Conservatives were right in calling for tougher action
on law enforcement. Some saw Labour as being about working-class solidarity,
drinking with your mates at the miners’ welfare, shopping at the Co-op, being
like everyone else and staying the same. Better education, the media, the exciting,
if mythical, world of the advertisers and American soap opera, were all
disturbing the old values and causing more and more working-class people to
aspire to something else. By 1979 some felt that the Conservatives were more
likely to offer chances to improve their lives.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Barbara Castle, Fighting all the Way (1993), 453.

2 ibid.
3 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (introduced by Ruth Winstone)
(1995), 287.
4 ibid., 289.
5 Castle, op. cit., 487.
6 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 100.
7 ibid., 32.
8 David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of October 1974
(1975), 285.
9 Butler and Kavanagh, October 1974, op. cit., 278.
10 Collin Mellors, The British MP (Farnborough, 1978), 107.
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 201

11 Tina Hoffhaus, ‘Wahlsysteme und Frauen Representation’, in Aus Politik und

Zeitgeschichte (3 November 1993).
12 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994), 89.
13 Margaret Thatcher, The Path to Power (1995), 262.
14 Thatcher, op. cit., 277.
15 ibid., 280.
16 ibid., 277.
17 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 309.
18 Howe, op. cit., 94.
19 Observer, 18 February 1979.
20 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 309.
21 Thatcher, op. cit., 251.
22 ibid., 286.
23 ibid., 318–19.
24 Sunday Times Magazine, 1 October 1978, special feature on the women’s
movement.
25 Central Statistical Office, Annual Abstract of Statistics 1977.
26 Central Statistical Office, Social Trends 9, 1979 (HMSO, 1978).
27 Sunday Times Magazine, 1 October 1978.
28 Susan Pedersen, ‘Feminism’, in F.M.Leventhal (ed.), Twentieth-century Britain: An
Encyclopedia (New York, 1995), 285.
29 W.Kenneth Richmond, Education in Britain since 1944 (1978), 110.
30 James Callaghan, Time and Chance (1987), 315.
31 ibid., 316.
32 Harold Wilson, Final Term: The Labour Government 1974–1976 (1979), 105.
33 ibid., 106.
34 Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (1991), 399.
35 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, 1975, 27137.
36 Callaghan, op. cit., 309.
37 Thatcher, op. cit., 335.
38 ibid., 334.
39 The referendum campaign is covered fully in David Butler and Uwe Kitzinger, The
1975 Referendum (1976).
40 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 314.
41 Thatcher, op. cit., 331.
42 F.E.Jones, ‘Our Manufacturing Industry—The Missing 100,000 million’, National
Westminster Bank Quarterly Review (May 1978).
43 Management Today, December 1978.
44 Conservative Political Centre, The Engineering Profession: A National Invest-ment
(July 1978), 7.
45 M.Yoshino, Japan’s Managerial System (Cambridge, MA, 1968), 277; Graham
Turner, Business in Britain (1969), 431.
46 ‘The English Sickness’, Fortune (Chicago), May 1974.
47 Castle, op. cit., 487.
48 Callaghan, op. cit., 386.
49 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1990), 446.
50 ibid., 446.
51 Callaghan, op. cit., 394.
202 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79

52 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 347.

53 Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York, 1987), tells of the campaign against Wilson,
especially pp. 368–72.
54 Chapman Pincher, Their Trade is Treachery (1981), 209.
55 Callaghan, op. cit., 489.
56 David Owen, Time to Declare (1992), 299.
57 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 240.
58 Susan Barnes, The Life and Soul of the Party’, Sunday Times Magazine, 3 March
1974.
59 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 347.
60 Callaghan, op. cit., 465–6.
61 Central Statistical Office, Annual Abstract of Statistics, 1957 and 1976.
62 Peter Evans, The Police Revolution (1974), 53.
63 Sir Robert Mark, Policing a Perplexed Society (1977), 80.
64 Barry Cox, Civil Liberties in Britain (1975), 185–6; he fully documents several
important cases.
65 Guardian, 26 February 1976.
66 Cox, op. cit., 192.
67 Police Act 1976, Chapter 46, Part I, para 1 (2). For the police see also Roy Lewis, A
Force for the Future (1976).
68 Report of the Committee on Data Protection, Cmnd 7341, December 1978, 451–2.
69 Data Protection, op. cit., see Chapter 4.
70 ibid., 220.
71 Quoted in The Campaign Guide 1977, 584.
72 Guardian, 21 February 1979.
73 Department of Employment Gazette, January 1979, 26.
74 Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, Cmnd 6706, January
1977, 57.
75 Financial Times, 28 October 1977.
76 John Grant, Blood Brothers: The Division and Decline of Britain’s Trade Unions
(1992), 89.
77 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 447.
78 Healey, op. cit., 462.
79 Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain Under Thatcherism (1993), 95.
80 Tom Forrester, ‘The Bottom of the Heap’, New Society, 18 January 1979.
81 Katharine Whitehorn, ‘The Unfair Exchanges’, Observer, 10 December 1978. See
also Joe Irving, ‘A Perk is as Good as a Pay Rise’, Sunday Times, 5 March 1978.
82 Peter Lennon, ‘The World’s Richest Wedding Cake’, Sunday Times, 8 October
1978.
83 Castle, op. cit., 506.
84 Healey, op. cit., 401.
85 ibid., 398.
86 ibid., 391.
87 ibid., 402.
88 The Economist, 3 February 1979.
89 A.H.Halsey, Change in British Society (Oxford, 1978), 30–1; Anthony Giddens,
‘The Rich’, New Society, 14 October 1975, using Inland Revenue statistics, thought
the top 1 per cent owned nearer 30 per cent.
 LABOUR’S MINORITY GOVERNMENTS, 1974–79 203

90 Tom Harrison, Britain Revisted (1961).

91 Association of University Teachers Bulletin, January 1977, 13. The material was
from the Economist Intelligence Unit.
92 Social Trends 9, 1979, op. cit., 152.
93 Quoted in The Campaign Guide 1977, 550.
94 Kenneth O.Morgan, The People’s Peace: British History 1945–1990 (Oxford,
1992), 205.
95 Plaid Cymru, Towards an Economic Democracy (Cardiff, 1949).
96 James G.Kellas, The Scottish Political System (Cambridge, 1975), 132.
97 Callaghan, op. cit., 558.
98 ibid., 508.
99 Patrick Cosgrave, Thatcher: The First Term (1985), 63.
100 Thatcher, op. cit., 450.
101 Butler, British Elections, op. cit., 86.
102 David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (1980),
209.
103 ibid., 419.
104 Ivor Crewe, ‘The Labour Party and the Electorate’, in Dennis Kavanagh (ed.), The
Politics of the Labour Party (1982), 11.
 9
THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83

THATCHER’S CABINET: NO ‘EXPERIENCE OF

RUNNING A WHELK-STALL’
Thatcher’s first Cabinet had 22 members, compared with 24 in the outgoing
Labour Cabinet. She re-organized some of the ministries. Prices and Consumer
Protection (set up in 1974) was merged with Trade. The minister in charge of
transport lost Cabinet status and Social Security was to be represented by one
Cabinet minister instead of two. Finally, the separate post of Paymaster-General
was re-established and went to Angus Maude, a kind of pre-Thatcher Thatcherite.
The key appointments were: Whitelaw (Home Secretary), Hailsham (Lord
Chancellor), Carrington (Foreign and Commonwealth), Howe (Exchequer),
Joseph (Industry), Pym (Defence), Prior (Employment), Gilmour (Lord Privy
Seal with special responsibility for foreign affairs), Walker (Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food), Heseltine (Environment), Patrick Jenkin (Social Services),
Norman St John-Stevas (Leader of the Commons and Minister for the Arts), John
Nott (Trade), Humphrey Atkins (Northern Ireland) and Mark Carlisle (Education).
Only three Cabinet members had not served under Heath, most had more
experience of the corridors of power than Thatcher. She had inclined towards
competitors and Heathites, making them prisoners of collective Cabinet
responsibility, but she ensured that such individuals were kept away from
financial and economic affairs. Howe was regarded as the ‘chief mechanic’ of
monetarism.1 John Biffen, Chief Secretary at the Treasury, a friend and disciple
of Powell, was regarded by Thatcher as a guru.2 Nott was a monetarist and David
Ho well (Energy) a convert.3 Prior thought they were all theorists: none ‘had any
experience of running a whelk-stall, let alone a decent-sized company’.4
Paul Foot, the left-wing journalist, claimed Thatcher’s Cabinet was the
‘richest’ since 1822.5 Whatever the truth, they were a wealthy, well-heeled lot.
Whitelaw, Carrington, Soames (Leader of the Lords), Prior, Pym and George
Younger (Scottish Secretary) represented the traditional Tory gentry. Heseltine
and Walker were the whiz-kids of business. Joseph had inherited his father’s
business, Bovis, while his colleague Atkins had married into wealth. Nicholas
Edwards (Wales) and Nott had made their way as merchant bankers, while Howe
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 205

and Jenkin were successful company lawyers. There were five old Etonians in
the Cabinet compared with three in Heath’s smaller Cabinet. In the 1924
Conservative Cabinet there were seven out of a total of 21.6 The great majority in
1979 were Oxbridge educated, none had studied at a provincial university or
London. The Conservative victory resulted in a reduction in the number of
women MPs from 27 to 19 (11 Labour and 8 Conservative). This was the lowest
number elected since 1951. Two women, Sally Oppenheim (Consumer Affairs)
and Lady Young (Education and Science), joined the Thatcher government
outside the Cabinet. One junior appointment with curiosity value was that of Reg
Prentice as Minister of State for Social Security (Disabled). Prentice was the first
politician since 1945 to have served in both Labour and Conservative
governments.

THATCHERISM: ‘MONEY…OPENS…ASTONISHING
RANGE OF CHOICE’
The term ‘Thatcherism’, was probably invented by Professor Stuart Hall who
referred to it in an article in Marxism Today (January 1979). Thatcher was not yet
in office, but he took her ideas seriously. The term gained popular currency. No
one had ever talked of Wilsonism, or Macmillanism. There had been Butskellism
(see p. 70) denoting dedication to the mixed economy, indicative planning, the
welfare state and consultation with the unions. It is true that in the late 1940s and
1950s the Conservatives had used the rhetoric of free enterprise, setting the
people free and freedom of choice, but they had kept to Macmillan’s ‘middle
way’ until 1965. Heath had used this rhetoric more sharply, reinforced by the
Selsdon Park conference on Conservative principles in 1970. But Conservatives
argued that the U-turns of 1972–73 had led Heath away from New Conservatism
and back to the old Keynesian consensus. In practice, Healey, who later claimed
he was an ‘eclectic pragmatist’ more influenced by Karl Popper than by Keynes
or Milton Friedman, introduced Britain to ‘monetarism’.7 Under pressure from
the IMF in late 1976, he engaged in major public spending cuts in conformity
with the monetarist analysis.8 In other words, Keynesianism was already being
overtaken before Thatcher took over.
It became fashionable in New Right circles in Britain to claim that
Keynesianism was at the root of Britain’s problems. Those countries such as
West Germany and Japan, which had made a point of emphasizing free
enterprise or capitalism, had done far better than Britain. Those states which had
claimed to be socialist, the Soviet Union and its satellites, had done worse. The
United States still proclaimed itself as the bastion of free enterprise, and although
it had economic difficulties, it remained the world’s leading economy. To many,
all over the world, it still appeared as the land of unparalleled opportunity.
However, this view ignored the massive, and growing, social problems in the
USA. It also ignored the part played by the state in West Germany, Japan,
France, Italy, Spain, the Republic of China (Taiwan) and South Korea—all
206 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

‘economic miracles’, all states with massive welfare programmes. The

Thatcherites were simply following the American New Right as well as their
own gut feelings. Since the 1960s the Republican Right in America had been on
the offensive against what Richard Nixon (President, 1969–74) called, ‘the
professional welfarists, the urban planners, the day-carers, the social workers, the
public housers’.9
In theory, by drastic pruning of the welfare programme taxes could be cut.
This would in turn give people greater choice of how to use their own money and
generate more prosperity because, it was assumed, individuals could spend more
money more effectively than public agencies. The freed money in private hands
could be used to support a variety of private welfare schemes and privatized
services and still leave more money available to spend on consumer goods and
services, thereby creating more jobs and less need for state ‘handouts’. These
ideas appealed especially to those who had started life in humble circumstances
but who had subsequently found a place in the American Dream: individuals like
Ronald Reagan, Nixon and Milton Friedman. Nixon and Reagan (US President,
1981–89) were practitioners; Friedman the guru. The son of Austro-Hungarian
immigrants who became shopkeepers, Friedman ‘weathered poverty, anti-
Semitism, academic isolation and plain abuse en route to an extremely
comfortable retirement’.10 He won the Nobel Prize in 1976 for his work as an
academic economist. He became popular with the economists who advised the
military regimes in Chile and Argentina, with right-wing Israeli Prime Minister
Menachem Begin and with Margaret Thatcher. With him is associated the term
‘monetarism’: the theory that it is the money supply alone which should
determine the amount of spending in the economy. As already mentioned, Hayek
was another important influence. He too received the Nobel Prize (1974) for
Economics. Hayek preached that, ‘It is money which in existing society opens an
astonishing range of choice to the poor man, a range greater than that which not
many generations ago was open to the wealthy.’11 Among Hayek’s followers in
Britain was Anthony Fisher, who founded the Institute of Economic Affairs in
1956. The IEA gradually grew in importance as a think tank. It competed for
influence with the Adam Smith Institute and Joseph’s CPS (see p. 185).

BUDGET ’79: ‘AN ENORMOUS SHOCK’

Howe’s first Budget in June 1979 pointed to the priorities of the new
government with the shift from direct to indirect taxation and top priority given
to reducing inflation rather than maintaining employment. Accordingly,
the standard rate of income tax was reduced with greater relief at the top end of
the scale. VAT went up from 8 or 12.5 per cent to a uniform 15 per cent. Up too
went interest rates. A programme of cuts in public expenditure was announced.
By November interest rates reached record levels and further spending cuts were
announced, affecting all departments except the armed forces and the police.
Incomes policy was dropped and, after initially allowing pay increases already in
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 207

the pipeline, public sector pay was subjected to even more rigorous scrutiny than
under Healey. According to Howe,12 even Thatcher had been worried about the
increase on VAT and had assented only when assured there would be no increase
in excise duties on tobacco and alcohol. The Budget was bad news for
pensioners. In future, state pension increases would be based not on ‘the
movement in prices and earnings, whichever is the greater’, but solely on
prices.13 Pensioners were set to get poorer relative to those in work. Those in
work became less numerous. The pound rose in the wake of North Sea oil
revenue and the rise in interest rates which attracted foreigners to invest in
sterling. This in turn made British goods more expensive to foreigners and led to
declining export orders and rising unemployment. The high interest rates led to
the same result. In 1978 unemployment had stood at 1.25 million or 5.4 per cent
of the work-force. By October 1980 it had reached over 2 million, and in January
1982, 2.67 million. The Cabinet was not at one with this policy. Prior later
claimed the first Budget was ‘an enormous shock’.14 He, and some others, felt
they were being excluded from the Thatcher revolution’. The volatility of public
opinion was soon revealed. In the election to the European Parliament in June, the
Conservatives repeated their success on a very low poll. But Callaghan remained
popular and the mood was already going against the government. The Gallup
poll at the beginning of 1980 put Labour 9 points ahead of the Conservatives.
This was confirmed at the Southend East by-election on 13 March 1980. A
Conservative majority of 10,691 was reduced to 430. This represented a fall in
the Conservative share from 56.1 per cent to 36.8 per cent, and a rise in the
Labour vote from 29.1 to 35.6. Had the Conservative candidate not been the
maverick, anti-EEC Teddy Taylor, the seat would have fallen.

THATCHER: ‘JE NE L’AIME’

Although she had undertaken study visits abroad and had a certain reputation in
right-wing circles, Thatcher was in no sense an expert on foreign affairs. As she
looked around the world she could not have expected a warm welcome on the
international stage. In Washington, Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, remained in
office until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, a Republican and Thatcher
soulmate, in January 1981, There were lessons for Thatcher in Carter’s fate. He
had failed to get re-elected for a second term because of mismanagement of the
economy and of the crisis of the US hostages in Iran. In Bonn the Social
Democrat Helmut Schmidt, a formidable figure, held office until 1982, when he
was replaced by the moderate, conservative, Christian Democrat, Helmut Kohl.
France was presided over by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing who, though right-wing,
was a friend of Schmidt. Giscard is reported to have said of Thatcher, Je ne l’aime,
ni comme homme, ni comme femme.15 He fell victim to his country’s economic
problems and was defeated at the polls in 1981 by Socialist François Mitterrand.
In Canada, the Progressive Conservative Joe Clark took office in the same month
as Thatcher. Only seven months later he was forced to resign after failing to get
208 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

Parliament to agree to his austerity budget. Defeat at the subsequent election led
to the formation of another Liberal government, once again headed by the
sophisticated veteran, Pierre Trudeau. In Moscow another political long-distance
runner was still at the helm. Leonid Brezhnev had seen Western leaders come
and go since 1964; he had no intention of going and held on until his death in
1983. He was followed in quick succession by Yuri Andropov (who died in
1984) and Konstantin Chernenko (who died in March 1985). In 1985 the new
man in the Kremlin was Mikhail Gorbachev, who appeared to get on well with
Thatcher when he visited Britain just before becoming the Soviet Union’s top
politician.
The background against which these actors performed was a dangerous one.
The Iranian Revolution of 1979, which eventually brought the Islamic
fundamentalist Ayatollah Khomeini to power, brought greater instability in the
Middle East. War broke out between Iran and neighbouring Iraq, and in
December 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. The following year
brought unrest in Poland leading to the setting up of the Solidarity (trade union)
movement there, its subsequent banning and the imposition of military rule. In
Communist China the elite fought for power and tried to rid themselves of the
legacy of Mao. The USA wrestled with its conscience about what to do about
revolution and counter-revolution in its client states, El Salvador and Nicaragua.
The stage on which Thatcher made her debut was one on which the performers
could receive bullets or bombs as well as bouquets. In March 1979 the IRA
struck down one of Thatcher’s closest associates, Airey Neave, in London. In
August they killed Earl Mountbatten during a fishing trip off the coast of County
Sligo (Ireland). They also assassinated Britain’s Ambassador in The Hague, Sir
Richard Sykes. In 1981 there were unsuccessful attempts on the lives of Reagan
and Pope John Paul II. President Sadat of Egypt was less lucky. Bombs killed the
Iranian head of state and the head of government in 1981 and the much-respected
Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, fell victim to an assassin’s bullet in 1984.
Most of these outrages were committed in countries with a tradition of political
violence, but the world did seem to be becoming a more violent place, with both
government agencies—especially in Latin American countries and Libya—and
rebel groups using murder, extortion and terror to achieve their political ends.

RHODESIA TO ZIMBABWE: ‘THE LARGE GAMBLE’

The fall of the dictatorship in Portugal in 1974 was followed by the rapid
decolonization of its empire in southern Africa This sudden change in the
political geography of Africa greatly increased the pressures on the white settler
regime in Rhodesia. A guerrilla war was fought with ‘plenty of tragedy and
sickening atrocity’,16 between the white Rhodesia Front and the Black rebels
backed directly by Zambia, Tanzania, Mozambique and Cuba and, indirectly, by
the other Black African states. The United States wanted a settlement because of
the fear of Soviet influence growing in the region. By 1976 Smith had seen the
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 209

writing on the wall and knew his only option was to negotiate the best surrender
terms possible. He sought an ‘internal settlement’, enabling the whites to retain
decisive influence long after formal power had been transferred to the Black
majority. As part of this attempt, Bishop Abel Muzorewa was installed as Prime
Minister in April 1979, ‘with Smith firmly behind his right shoulder’,17 after one-
man/onevote elections. The attempt failed because of lack of recognition by the
outside world. Hopes that Britain’s new Conservative government would come
to the rescue of Smith and his bishop proved unfounded. A significant minority
of Conservatives would have recognized the Bishop. Thatcher, not at home with
foreign affairs, though lacking sympathy with the leaders of Black Africa,18
followed the lead of Carrington. She was forced to join most of the
Commonwealth, including the Conservative government of Malcolm Fraser in
Australia, Washington and the UN in giving Muzorewa the thumbs down. A
conference was called at Lancaster House (London) where the Bishop and Smith
faced Mugabe and Nkomo, the leaders of the Black parties Zanu and Zapu,
united in the Patriotic Front. The conference, which nearly broke down several
times, produced an agreement which temporarily returned Zimbabwe-Rhodesia
(as it was now called) to the status of a British colony. Thatcher even took ‘the
large gamble’19 of sending Lord Soames as governor, even though the war
continued and no settlement was near. After tough negotiations a cease-fire was
agreed and the guerrilla forces legalized. A Commonwealth peace-keeping force
took over the policing of the cease-fire. Economic sanctions against the colony
were dropped. A democratic constitution was accepted which gave the whites,
who represented 3 per cent of the population, 20 per cent of the seats in
parliament. After two months of electioneering Mugabe’s Zanu won 57 seats in
the 100-seat parliament. Mugabe formed a government which included Nkomo,
whose party held 20 seats. On 17 April 1980 Rhodesia became the independent
state of Zimbabwe.
In most quarters the settlement was given a euphoric reception. It brought to
an end a war which had claimed over 20,000 lives, bringing together implacable
enemies pledged to co-operation. It seemed to offer a model of sorts for South
Africa. It gave the whites a chance to either learn to live with the Black majority
or gradually withdraw, saving at least some of their assets. It boosted Britain’s
image in the Third World and, indeed, in the wider world. Finally, it restricted
the growing Soviet influence in the area. Thatcher’s prestige rose, though she
later ‘tended to sound displeased with her handiwork’.20 Mugabe managed to
stay in power later going against both his former white enemies and his former
comrades-in-arms in Zapu. Muzorewa was jailed in 1982 and Nkomo sought
refuge abroad in fear of his life. In its reports Amnesty International has
criticized widespread detentions and use of torture as well as ‘extrajudicial
executions’ (1984 Report). This does not mean that the Lancaster House
settlement was worthless. In 1980 the British government had little room for
manoeuvre. Britain was in no position to enforce a solution: it could only work with
the parties concerned towards one.
210 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

THATCHER: ‘LOATHED THE TRADE UNIONS’

Prior, Employment Secretary until September 1981, said Thatcher ‘loathed the
trade unions’ (Guardian, 20 May 1985). Had she had a free hand, their activities
would have been severely curtailed. There was widespread agreement among
Conservatives (and beyond their ranks) that trade union reforms were necessary.
Under the Employment Act, 1980 employers were given the right to take legal
action against secondary picketing and most kinds of secondary action
(‘blacking, etc’.). All new closed shops had to be approved by four-fifths of
those affected and public funds were made available to encourage unions to hold
postal ballots. Tebbit’s Employment Act, 1982 laid down that no closed shop
should be enforceable unless it had been agreed by an overwhelming majority of
the employees concerned in a secret ballot. It provided compensation from public
funds to people dismissed from closed shops. It also made ‘union labour only’
requirements in contracts illegal. Trade unions became liable for damages if they
were the cause of unlawful industrial actions. Finally, it gave employers legal
redress against industrial action where the action was not wholly or mainly about
employment matters (i.e., strikes which could be considered political). Tom
King’s Trade Union Act, 1984 aimed to give more power to what its authors
thought were the moderate majority of trade union members. It required a secret
ballot of members before strike action if a union wished to retain its immunity
from civil action for damages. It also required secret ballots every 10 years by
unions which maintained a political fund (part of which usually goes to the
Labour Party). From 1 October 1985 all elections for union officials were to be
‘fair, free, secret and direct’. Naturally enough, many trade union activists saw
the legislation as ‘union bashing’ and advocated ignoring it. They wanted to
commit a future Labour government to its repeal. The trouble was that the
majority of rank-and-file unionists (as polls indicated) favoured the legislation.
And in a number of ballots between 1980 and 1983 trade unionists rejected strike
calls by their leaders. The movement was split over the issue of taking
government money to fund secret ballots. The electricians (EETPU) and the
engineers (AUEW) supported the acceptance of such funding; the majority of the
TUC did not. Political fund ballots which were held proved to be victories for the
Labour Party. As in the United States and West Germany, union membership fell
during this period. According to the Employment Gazette (January 1985), it had
peaked at the end of 1979 to 13.3 million, but then dropped steadily, and by the
end of 1983 had fallen by nearly 15 per cent, even though employment had fallen
by only 8 per cent.

LABOUR: ‘AN ANGRY CONFERENCE’

As was only to be expected, tension continued to build up in the Labour Party
after its defeat in 1979. Callaghan’s kindest critics thought he was guilty of bad
judgement over the pay policy and the timing of the election; the harshest
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 211

believed he had betrayed the movement. The truth was that no Labour
government, from MacDonald’s first minority government in 1924 onwards, had
ever satisfied the socialist aspirations of many of its followers. In addition, every
Labour administration had made errors of judgement over particular policies
which further fuelled dissatisfaction in their own ranks. In the 1970s, Labour’s
zig-zag course on the EEC had been one of these; pay policy had been another.
The myth that the annual conference decided issues made matters worse.
Delegates passed resolutions only to find that their leaders in government
ignored them. Wilson had been guilty of this over the EEC and defence after
1964. Labour conference in October 1979 was ‘an angry conference’, according
to Benn,21 tempered only by the need to show unity in face of the Conservative
victory. Callaghan was given a standing ovation but the Left scored a number of
significant victories. The conference had voted for the mandatory reselection of
MPs by their constituency parties. It had vested control of the election manifesto
in the National Executive Committee (elected by the conference). It had voted
for a commission of inquiry into the party’s finances and membership which
would also make recommendations about a new way of electing the leader. The
Left were well represented on this commission.
At its annual conference at Blackpool in 1980 Labour confirmed mandatory
reselection, election of the leader by an electoral college drawn from all parts of
the movement, opposition to nuclear arms and to the EEC. It refused the call to
leave NATO and the demand that the NEC should have control over the
manifesto. Callaghan then decided to bow out, to be replaced by Foot, who
defeated Healey by 139 votes to 129 on the second ballot. The polls showed that
the public had favoured Healey or Williams as Labour’s leader.22 Never a
Marxist, Foot (67) appeared to have moved little intellectually since the 1950s.
He remained committed to unilateral nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from the
EEC and extensive development of public ownership. Healey was just the
opposite. Foot was the last leader to be elected solely by the members of the PLP.
A special conference at Wembley in January 1981 decided that the leader would
be elected by a process in which the unions had 40 per cent of the votes, the PLP
and the constituency parties 30 per cent each. This was a victory for Benn and
the Rank and File Mobilizing Committee (RFMC). The RFMC was an umbrella
organization uniting the Labour Co-ordinating Committee, the Militant
Tendency, Institute for Workers’ Control, and other groups. Despite the public’s
continued antipathy to Foot, Labour ended 1980 12.5 per cent ahead of the
Conservatives.23

SDP: ‘THE CHOICE…WILL BE DEEPLY PAINFUL’

All of these developments were just too much for leading ex-Cabinet ministers
David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams. They decided they could
no longer fight for their ideals within the Labour Party and that secession was
their duty. The break came in stages. On 7 June 1980 they announced they would
212 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

leave the party if it committed itself to withdrawal from the EEC. At the annual
conference in the same year Williams and Tom Bradley refused to speak in
favour of the NEC of which they were members. In November Owen announced
he would not seek re-election to the shadow cabinet and Williams (who had lost
her seat in the 1979 election) said she would not seek a Labour candidature
unless party policies were changed. On 1 December Labour announced that the
Social Democratic Alliance was a proscribed organization, membership of which
was incompatible with that of the Labour Party. The three discussed future co-
operation with the Liberals. At the Liberal Assembly in September 1980 David
Steel urged them to leave Labour. Another factor in the situation was the return
to Britain in January 1981 of Roy Jenkins, who had served since 1976 as
President of the EEC in Brussels. It is true, as one of his political followers
wrote, ‘his image of grand statesmanship, high living and foreign friends threw
doubt on his political future’, but he was probably the most experienced British
politician in 1981.24 As President of the EEC he had been in a position of
responsibility roughly equal to that of head of government and he had been Deputy
Leader of Labour, Home Secretary, Chancellor and Minister of Aviation. In his
Dimbleby Lecture on BBC TV in November 1979 he had questioned Britain’s
existing political arrangements and proposed a much stronger ‘radical centre’
which, he believed, would bring into politics ‘many people of talent and good-
will’ who were alienated by the ‘sterility and formalism of much of the political
game’.25 He was in touch with the Liberals and Labour Euro-dissidents and his
associate, David Marquand, former Labour MP for Ashfield who worked with
Jenkins in Brussels, made suitable noises at the Liberal Assembly in September
1980. Thus it was that the ‘gang of three’ became the ‘gang of four’, when
Jenkins joined his former colleagues to issue the Limehouse Declaration on 25
January 1981, the day after Labour’s Wembley conference. The Declaration
claimed that ‘A handful of trade union leaders can now dictate the choice of a
future Prime Minister’ and that Labour had moved ‘steadily away from its roots
in the people of this country and its commitment to parliamentary government’.
Its authors wanted ‘to create an open, classless and more equal society, one
which rejects ugly prejudices based on sex, race or religion’. To this end they
would set up a Council for Social Democracy to rally support. They wanted
Britain to play a full part in the EEC, NATO, the UN and the Commonwealth.
On the vital question of the economy they said:

Our economy needs a healthy public sector and a healthy private sector
without frequent frontier changes. We want to eliminate poverty and
promote greater equality without stifling enterprise or imposing
bureaucracy… We need the innovating strength of a competitive economy
with a fair distribution of rewards. We favour competitive public
enterprise, co-operative ventures and profit sharing.

They went on:

 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 213

We recognize that for those people who have given much of their lives to
the Labour Party, the choice that lies ahead will be deeply painful. But we
believe that the need for a re-alignment of British politics must now be
faced.26

Interestingly, Owen, in his book Face the Future, published in 1981, had
denounced Fabian paternalism and state socialism in favour of Robert Owen,
William Morris and G.D.H.Cole (see p. 88 for Cole).27
It was a statement which could have been supported by the great majority in
the previous Labour government and many Labour activists, and the majority of
Labour voters. On 5 February the Council published an appeal for support in the
Guardian. It carried 100 names in addition to the four. It included 13 former
Labour MPs, among them Lord George-Brown, Kenneth Robinson, Edmund
Dell and Lord Diamond, who had all served in recent Labour Cabinets. Several
distinguished academics were listed headed by (Lord) Alan Bullock and Sir Fred
Dainton (Chancellor of Sheffield University). The business world was
represented by Lord Sainsbury and his son David. A touch of ‘glamour’ was
added by Steve Race, the broadcaster, Sir Geraint Evans, the opera singer and
Janet Suzman, the actress. Although Frank (later Lord) Chapple, leader of the
electricians union (EEPTU), lent his support, he did not join the SDP.28 In fact, a
major weakness of the new party was its lack of major trade union figures. The
advertisement produced nearly 8,000 replies,29 two-thirds of them contained
money.30 On 26 March 1981 the Social Democratic Party (SDP) was launched in
the Connaught Rooms, London, in the presence of 500 journalists.31 Within days
it had 14 MPs—13 Labour and one Conservative, Christopher Brocklebank-
Fowler. Within a matter of weeks it was claiming a membership of over 50,
000.32 As was only to be expected, the SDP was attacked from both Right and
Left. Mrs Thatcher saw them as socialists. Their erstwhile comrades in the
Labour Solidarity Campaign, the group of MPs set up by Roy Hattersley to fight
the Left in the party, believed, Their lack of firm policies and their determination
to be all things to all people ensures them the backing not only of misguided but
genuine protesters, but also a ragbag of political misfits and outcasts.’33 The SDP
seemed to be taking off so successfully that even some Liberals were worried
and resentful. This was understandable as opinion polls, even before the SDP
was formally launched, gave it 23 and then 31 per cent support as against 13 and
13.5 for the Liberals. (In the second poll the Conservatives had 25.5 per cent and
Labour 28.)34
The leaders of the SDP and the Liberals realized that they needed to co-
operate if they were to succeed, and by the autumn of 1981 the conferences of
the two parties agreed on an alliance. They then fought a serious of remarkable
by-elections at which they grabbed three seats from the Conservatives. At
Croydon (22 October 1981) the little-known Liberal, William Pitt, won. At
Crosby (26 November 1981) Shirley Williams overturned a Conservative
majority of 19,272, and at Hillhead, Glasgow (23 March 1982) Roy Jenkins won
214 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

against the odds. However one views the SDP, it cannot be said that its founders
chose an easy road or that their motives were crudely ambitious. Most of the
MPs who joined the SDP had safe seats; had they kept quiet they could have held
on. Had Owen, Rodgers and Williams remained with Labour, it is likely they
would have been at least tolerated. Williams appeared likely to get another
Labour seat. Only Jenkins appeared to be debarred from possible re-election as a
Labour candidate. As rational, experienced politicians, they must have known
that they were likely to fail. As David Marquand, the biographer of Ramsay
MacDonald, could remind his colleagues, those who joined Mac-Donald’s
National Labour Party in 1931 became clients of the Conservatives before being
eliminated from politics. And Sir Oswald Mosley’s attempt to launch the New
Party failed totally in the same period. The British two-party system punished
severely those brave enough to challenge it. In Italy moderate socialists had
broken with the Socialist Party in 1948 because of its pact with the Communists.
They succeeded in establishing themselves as Social Democrats and gained a
minor, but not insignificant, place in politics. They could only do so because the
Italian system was based on proportional representation. The Alliance badly
needed to change the British electoral system.

THATCHER: ‘I TOO BECAME EXTREMELY ANGRY’

Howe’s 1981 Budget was, according to the polls, the most unpopular since the war.
Opposition to it mounted in the Cabinet as the fears grew that Thatcher and
Howe were digging the party’s grave. Matters came to a head at the Cabinet
meeting on 23 July. The ‘wets’ wanted extra public spending rather than tax
cuts. Tempers rose. As Thatcher later put it, ‘I too became extremely angry.’35
There was also strong disagreement on trade union reform, with Thatcher
wanting tougher legislation than Prior. On 14 September Thatcher re-shuffled
her Cabinet. Out went ‘huffy’ Gilmour and Carlisle ‘who leaned to the left’.
Joseph replaced Carlisle. A’shocked’ Prior was moved from Employment and
exiled to Northern Ireland.36 Norman Tebbit, a former official of the British
Airline Pilots’ Association and a ‘true believer’ of Thatcherism,37 replaced him.
Howell was moved from Energy to Transport and replaced by Nigel Lawson. One
curiosity was that Janet Young, who had been leader of Oxford City Council,
replaced ‘angry’ Soames as Leader of the Lords, the first woman to hold the post.
Finally, out too went Peter Thorneycroft as Conservative Party Chairman. Cecil
Parkinson, a dynamic accountant and excellent presenter, replaced him. The son
of a railwayman, Parkinson, who went from local grammar school to Cambridge,
had been a Labour Party member. Thatcher now had control of the Cabinet. ‘The
whole nature of the Cabinet changed as a result of these changes.’38
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 215

‘WHY BRITAIN BURNS’

The cover story of the American magazine Time on 20 July 1981 was entitled ‘Why
Britain Burns’. From Liverpool it reported ‘a convulsive release of pent-up
hatred in a wild surge of rioting, burning and looting’. Manchester, it continued,

sank into almost nightly rioting. In London, where the incendiary madness
started the previous weekend with a race riot in…South-hall, the sparks
returned to alight in at least a dozen other neighbourhoods… The battles
pitted racist ‘skinheads’ against ethnic Asians, have-nots against haves, and
just about everybody against the police.

Similar events occurred in Birmingham, Ellesmere Port, Hull, Nottingham,

Newcastle upon Tyne, Preston and other towns. The apparently spontaneous
riots were a mighty follow-up to what had already taken place in Brixton and
Bristol. They shocked foreign observers of Britain. The influential West German
magazine, Der Spiegel (20 July 1981), thought, ‘At the time of the marriage of
Prince Charles and Lady Diana England is on the verge of civil war.’ The riots
highlighted the plight of youth, the inadequacies of the police, the problems of
London and other inner city areas, and the difficulties of the immigrant
communities.
The riots of 1981 were an important factor in the introduction of the Youth
Training Scheme (YTS) in 1983, which replaced the old Youth Opportunities
Programme. As a Conservative publication freely admitted in 1983, ‘Only half
Britain’s school-leavers are trained compared with nine-tenths in Germany and
four-fifths in France. Over a third of school-leavers entering jobs receive no
training at all, and another fifth scarcely any at all.’39 There was much criticism
of the training given and the low pay, but it was better than nothing. In apparent
contradiction to this policy, the government, in 1981, ‘saved’ money by
abolishing 16 of the Industrial Training Boards, retaining only seven. Young
people were also discouraged from staying at school after 16 by the fact that if they
did this they could not claim social security payments, unlike those who stayed
at home and did nothing. As the universities and polytechnics were suffering
severe cuts under Joseph at Education, some young people felt it was pointless to
try for public exams. By the 1980s the government had another major worry
about young people—drugs.
After the Brixton riots Lord Scarman was appointed to inquire into the
disturbances there. His report (25 November 1981) called for the recruitment of
more police from the ethnic minorities, longer training for recruits with more
emphasis on policing in a multiracial society and dismissal as the normal penalty
for racially prejudiced behaviour (this last was rejected by Home Secretary
Whitelaw). Scarman also recommended more foot patrols and an ‘independent
element in the investigation of complaints’ against the police.
216 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

Since the early 1950s Brixton was regarded as an area of Black settlement and
there were by then other parts of London associated with particular ethnic groups
like the Jews and the Irish. By 1982 London was in danger of becoming a series
of ghettos for Asians, Australasians, Blacks, Chinese, Cypriots, Irish, Jews,
white British working class, middle class and, most recently, those from the
Middle East or Hong Kong. The Japanese were starting to move into Finchley.
Immigration from ‘the New Commonwealth and Pakistan’, which numbered 32,
200 in 1973 and 37,000 in 1979, fell to 30,300 in 1982. Whether this was
because Britain was not as attractive as it had been or because of the tightening
up of immigration rules (announced on 14 November 1979) is not clear. The
harder look at applicants was designed to reduce the numbers of those who
married existing residents of the UK primarily to secure entry. The British
Nationality Act, 1981 was also meant to clarify and restrict citizenship to those
with close ties with the UK. Those seeking naturalization would have to meet a
language standard, and foreigners marrying British citizens would have to wait
three years before they could gain naturalization. The minorities felt the new
restrictions discriminated against them. The Swann report, Education For All
(1985), made a strong plea for reforms in the education system to encourage the
Black community and concluded that ‘ethnic minority teachers have been and
are still subject to racial prejudice and discrimination, both in gaining
employment and in advancing their careers’. It rejected the separate schools
favoured by some Asian groups. Although worried about immigration, the
government allowed entry to 10,000 Vietnamese refugees.
Horrific rioting broke out again in the Handsworth district of Birmingham
and, a few weeks later, in Brixton in the summer of 1985. In the first case
(mainly) Black rioters smashed, looted and destroyed Asian shops, killing two
traders. In the second, (mainly) Black rioters took to the streets after the police
had shot a Black mother by accident during a house raid. Similar incidents
sparked off rioting in Peckham and Tottenham a few days later. Had the rioters
been influenced by the scenes of violence from South Africa? By 1985 there
were just over 1 million people of Asian origin in Britain, just under 1 million of
West Indian origin and 53 million whites.

THE FALKLANDS: ‘PICKING UP THE REMAINS…IN

PLASTIC BAGS’
It is safe to say that many Britons had no idea where the Falklands were when
they heard, on 2 April 1982, that Argentina was invading them. Nor did they
know that the islands had long been the object of nationalistic fervour in
Argentina, where they were known as the ‘Malvinas’. Argentina claimed the
islands on the ground that it had succeeded to rights claimed by Spain in the
eighteenth century. The British title to the islands ‘is derived from early
settlement reinforced by formal claims…in the eighteenth century and completed
by effective possession, occupation and administration for nearly 150 years’.40 In
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 217

1982 virtually all the 1,800 inhabitants were of British ancestry and wanted to
remain British. But, as Britain’s power declined and its purse got smaller, it was
prepared to consider ‘decolonization’. From 1965 onwards it negotiated with
Argentina over the dispute. There is no doubt that the long dispute was
intensified by the military regime which had overthrown Argentina’s elected
President in 1976. In Britain the small, but very noisy, Falklands lobby, headed
by Sir Bernard Braine, MP, worked hard to prevent any solution which
diminished British sovereignty. It appears that in 1980 Nicholas Ridley, the
minister dealing with the dispute, came near to finding a solution. This would
have involved recognizing Argentine sovereignty but Argentina agreeing to
continued British administration for a limited period. Strong vocal opposition in
the Commons (2 December 1980) led to the Cabinet abandoning this idea.41 This
should have indicated to the Argentine rulers that any attempt to seize the islands
would be risky. Perhaps other facts helped to mislead them. The British Antarctic
Survey announced it was closing its research station on South Georgia. The
Ministry of Defence made public its decision to withdraw the armed (Falklands
patrol) ship Endurance, a move defended by Thatcher when questioned by
Callaghan in the Commons.42 The decision, under the 1981 Nationality Act, not
to grant a right of abode in Britain to about 800 Falklanders who did not have a
grandparent born in the UK could have led the Argentine government to believe
Britain was not really serious about the fate of the islanders. The failure to
implement the Shackleton Report (1977), which made proposals for the
development of the islands’ economy, seemed to indicate London’s lack of
commitment. Finally, perhaps Argentina misinterpreted Britain’s action in giving
up its last colony on the American mainland. Belize (formerly British Honduras),
with its population of 147,000, became independent in September 1981. British
troops did, however, remain because of fear of attack from neighbouring
Guatemala which claimed the territory.
Relations between Britain and Argentina deteriorated as talks continued.
Facing rapidly growing opposition at home (due to deflationist economic
policies and repression), the military leaders led by President, General Leopoldo
Galtieri, decided to seize the islands to unite their nation. On 1 April 1982 their
Foreign Minister, Nicanor Costra Mendez, informed the British Ambassador that
diplomatic channels were closed. The invasion took place the following day.
Several Argentine soldiers were killed when the small detachments of British
marines resisted. One British serviceman was severely wounded before the final,
inevitable, surrender. The British troops, the governor, Rex Hunt, and any
islanders who wished to go with them, were evacuated by the invaders.
What could Britain do in these circumstances? The Cabinet heard, from the
Chiefs of Staff, that a military operation to retake the islands was ‘more likely to
fail than succeed’.43 Thatcher had already appealed to President Reagan, who
phoned the Argentine President to no avail. According to Thatcher, the US did
not want to see the Galtieri regime fall.44 Britain got the UN Security Council to
adopt a resolution calling for the withdrawal of Argentine forces—even the
218 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

Soviet Union did not vote against this! It received the support of the EEC,
including an embargo on arms and military equipment to Argentina and a ban on
imports from Argentina, and the backing too of the Commonwealth and NATO.
And even though most Latin American states supported Argentina’s claim on
sovereignty, few supported its use of force. The Bank of England took action to
freeze Argentine assets in Britain. The Argentine regime, which already had a
bad image because of its abuse of human rights, faced diplomatic isolation and
possibly crippling sanctions.
Had the Argentine junta not been so desperate and waited a few months
longer, these measures might have been the limit of British retaliatory actions.
Britain was planning, as the Daily Telegraph (18 May 1981) put it, ‘To Gut The
Navy’. Much of the surface fleet was to go, including the aircraft carriers
Invincible and Hermes. The cuts were designed to save money and recognize
that in future the Royal Navy’s role was mainly the defence of the British Isles
and its communications with Western Europe. It could do this, so argued Sir
Ronald Mason, Chief Scientific Adviser to the Ministry, by abandoning surface
vessels in favour of submarines. Opposition came from Navy Minister, Keith
Speed, and senior naval staff. Speed was forced out of office; the sailors
remained to fight from within. Unfortunately for Galtieri, these cuts had not been
implemented by April 1982 and the First Sea Lord, Sir Henry Leach, saw the
Falklands crisis as an opportunity to get the government to think again. In the
absence of the Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Terence Lewin, Leach persuaded
Thatcher (she needed little persuasion!), and through her the Cabinet, to send a
task force to the South Atlantic. ‘Certainly without his personal dynamism it is
unlikely that the fleet would have sailed so soon, and as a result more cautious
counsels might have gained wider currency.’45
On 5 April bands played, flags were waved, women wept and men tried to
look cheerful at Portsmouth as the task force glided out to sea. On the same day,
under the onslaught of the Conservative Right, Carrington and his junior
ministers resigned.46 Carrington had in fact tried to keep Endurance in the South
Atlantic,47 but was under attack for the apparent failure of his officials to spot the
danger. He was replaced by Francis Pym (60), ‘the quintessential old style Tory’,48
an old Etonian ‘wet’, who had the advantage, like Whitelaw, of having seen
action in the Second World War. A former Chief Whip, he had served at
Defence, 1979–81, and then as Leader of the House. He had the thankless task of
seeking a peaceful settlement without appearing to be an appeaser. Thatcher set
up, the Overseas and Defence Committee South Atlantic, known as the War
Cabinet, a small committee of Thatcher, Pym, Nott (Defence), Whitelaw (Home
Secretary), Parkinson (Duchy of Lancaster/Conservative Party Chairman). Sir
Terence Lewin, Chief of Defence Staff, always attended. So did Michael Havers,
the Attorney-General, as did senior Defence and Foreign Office staff.49 The
negotiations continued, with Pym more ready to compromise than his
colleagues. Even President Reagan put pressure on Thatcher to compromise.50
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 219

And the US Ambassador to the UN, Mrs Kirkpatrick, tilted in the Argentine
direction.
The task force eventually comprised over 100 ships and 27,000 personnel. It
included aircraft-carriers, destroyers, submarines, auxiliaries, landing craft and
merchant vessels, including the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth II, used as a troop
carrier. The mission would have been impossible had not the armada been able to
use US-leased facilities on the British-owned Ascension Island, about mid-way
across the South Atlantic. There the troops trained, the supplies were re-checked
and re-loaded for combat, and the ancient Vulcan bombers and Nimrod
reconnaissance planes found a base. Meanwhile, the Argentine troops waited on
the cold, bleak Falklands. As the diplomats went on talking, the military acted. On
25 April came the news that South Georgia had been recaptured. Remarkably,
there were no British casualties. One Argentine sailor was wounded and one was
killed by accident the following day. However, Admiral ‘Sandy’ Woodward,
commander of the task force, knew the retaking of South Georgia was a near
miracle. To take the main islands would need complete air and sea mastery. The
British were operating 8,000 miles from home, the Argentines only 300 miles.
For the first time since 1945, the Royal Navy was facing a modern fleet.
Woodward knew the weather would take its toll of ships if they remained in
those waters for long. The British needed swift action. These kinds of
considerations led to the order to sink the cruiser General Belgrano on 2 May.
The cruiser went down after being hit by torpedoes from the submarine
Conqueror. Critics argued that it was wrong to attack it as the cruiser was 35
miles outside the Total Exclusion Zone around the Falklands which the British
had announced. It was also argued that it escalated the conflict and lost Britain
international support. Finally, it was claimed that the Belgrano was heading for
its home base at the time. Such reasoning ignores the fact that the vessel
provided aircraft direction for the Argentine air force and that it was equipped
with modern missiles. Further, its removal was a major psychological blow to the
Argentine navy, which then kept out of the conflict. Two days later a Type 42
destroyer, Sheffield, sank after being hit by an Exocet missile. Of the Belgrano’s
crew 368 died; 21 men from the Sheffield met the same fate. Later the Type 42
Coventry, the Type 21s Antelope and Ardent, the landing ship Sir Galahad and
the container ship Atlantic Conveyor joined the Sheffield at the bottom of the
South Atlantic.
Operation Sutton, as the landings on the main islands were code-named, began
on 21 May as Royal Marines and SAS troops stormed ashore and established a
beachhead at San Carlos on the western end of East Falkland island. The mini-
war effectively ended with the surrender of Port Stanley on 14 June to the British.
In between these dates an assortment of crack British troops—Paratroopers,
Marines, Royal Artillery, Scots and Welsh Guards— covered rough terrain in
bad weather and forced the surrender of the numerically vastly superior Argentine
forces. They had surprised the world, and the government which sent them. They
could not know that their courage and daring would play its part in the re-
220 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

election of the Prime Minister. Nor had they time to think that their actions
speeded the fall of the Argentine junta, the members of which were subsequently
put on trial. The recovery of the Falklands cost Britain 255 killed and 777
wounded, ‘three times the British casualties during the EOKA campaign in
Cyprus, one-third the number of British killed in Korea, and a hundred fewer
than those killed in Ulster since 1969’.51 Argentine casualties were far heavier. It
is almost a miracle that British losses were so low: the dangers were enormous.
This raises the whole question of whether the campaign was an appropriate
response to the illegal Argentine occupation. Millions of people in Britain
thought it was not; the great majority thought it was. Many people, including
Thatcher,52 felt a sense of excitement, pride and satisfaction at the exploits of
‘our boys’ on television every night in the carefully censored reports. It was like
old movies about the Second World War— only better! Such people forgot, as
one MP, a former soldier, put it, that war is ‘about picking up the remains of
comrades in plastic bags’.53 It was a change from hearing about national decline,
unemployment, cuts, the falling pound and more cuts. Some politicians, like
Michael Foot and the Conservative MPs Sir Anthony Meyer and David Crouch,
welcomed the sending of the task force, and then were appalled when the
shooting started. Yet, once the task force was under way, it would have been
irresponsible to leave it treading water in such an hostile environment. The
Labour MP Andrew Faulds called the expedition ‘absolute lunacy’, and his
opinion was not without foundation.54 Benn and about 30 other Labour MPs
agreed.55 Firstly, there was the likelihood of appalling casualties, both military
and civilian. No one could have known they would be so light. Without vital US
intelligence, satellite communications and other help it could easily have gone
the other way. There was a fear that Britain would lose its trade and influence in
Latin America, and a fear too that the conflict could lead to increased Soviet/
Cuban influence in the area. The expedition provided the Warsaw Pact with
valuable information on how Western weaponry stood the test of actual combat.
Some were afraid Britain’s image among her friends would be dented, but any
loss at the time of the Belgrano was probably made up later by the swift victory.
Finally, there was, and remains, the massive financial cost of the undertaking,
and the subsequent attempt to construct a ‘Fortress Falklands’. Britain could
have resettled the islanders on a lavish scale at a fraction of the cost. There was
much talk of honour and dignity during the crisis, but the same politicians who
used such terms had no problem in handing over millions of Hong Kong Chinese
to Communist China.

ELECTION ’83: ‘LONGEST SUICIDE NOTE IN

HISTORY’
In January 1982 the polls showed the Liberal/SDP Alliance ahead of the other two
parties, with Labour second. By March Labour had a six-point lead. A month
later the Conservatives had gained a three-point lead, which increased to 12.5 in
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 221

May. With the defeat of Argentina in July the Conservatives stood at 46.5 per
cent, 19 points ahead of Labour and 22.5 points ahead of the Alliance.56 Clearly,
the Falklands campaign had worked wonders for Thatcher.57 Yet the
Conservatives had their difficulties. Unemployment had reached 3 million in
May 1983 as against 1.2 million when they took over. If the basis of calculation
had remained the same, there would have been another 300,000 in the total.58
For voters, unemployment remained the most important concern. Public
spending was higher than under Labour.59 The good news was that inflation had
fallen dramatically.
When Britain went to the polls on 9 June 1983 the question was not who
would win, but merely how big the Conservative majority would be. A
secondary question was whether the Alliance would replace Labour as the main
opposition. Cecil Parkinson took charge of the Conservative campaign, spending
£3.8 million as against the £2.56 million spent by Labour.60 Thatcher’s itinerary
was planned down to the last detail. In the middle of the campaign she attended a
Western leaders summit in the US. No less than five industrial psychiatrists and
behavioural psychologists were consulted about two sets of curtains—dark blue
and light blue—for the newly decorated press conference room at (Conservative)
Central Office. Once again61 Parkinson modernized the computer system at
Central Office with money from the Dunbar Club, a group of Asian businessmen
who supported the Conservatives.62 With this he developed direct mailing in a
number of constituencies which needed strengthening.63 Once again Saatchi &
Saatchi went to work for the Conservatives. Labour helped greatly by presenting
themselves as a party at war with themselves, led by an unworldly, ageing
idealist. Its programme was called by Gerald Kaufman, ‘the longest suicide note
in history’.64 It was too detailed in places, too woolly in others and threatened to
disband Britain’s nuclear forces unilaterally and take Britain out of the EEC. The
Conservatives bought 1,000 copies to be sent to their major supporters lest they
forgot what they faced if Labour won!65 According to Healey, ‘our electoral
campaign was worse organised than any I have known’.66 The deputy leader also
admitted making a bad slip in an attack on Thatcher, for which he later
apologized.67
The electorate gave the Conservatives 1 per cent fewer votes than in 1979 on a
lower turnout of 72.7 per cent (76 in 1979). Yet their majority increased from 43
to 144. The 42.4 per cent (43.9) gained by the Conservatives was lower than
their percentage in 1970 (46.4) or in 1950, 1951, 1955, 1959 or 1964.
Nevertheless, Labour had been savagely mauled. With 28 per cent, its share was
the lowest since 1918. The Alliance felt cheated because, with only 2 per cent
fewer votes than Labour, it had won just 23 seats compared with Labour’s 209.
Among the defeated candidates were Tony Benn, William Rodgers and Shirley
Williams. Labour had lost support right across the board, but its losses were
heaviest among the skilled working class, trade unionists and owner-occupiers. It
was estimated that only 39 per cent of trade unionists voted Labour. Labour also
failed to capture young voters; only 33 per cent voted Labour, compared with 42
222 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’ 1979–83

per cent who voted Conservative. In geographical terms, the North-South divide
had been strengthened, with Labour gaining only two seats in the South of
England outside London. It looked like becoming a ghetto party of the inner
cities and areas of high, long-term unemployment; a party of unskilled council-
house tenants. Facing its first major test, the Alliance gained 26 per cent
compared with the Liberals’ 14 per cent in 1979. This was a great achievement.
In southern England it had replaced Labour as the opposition to the
Conservatives. It had taken two votes from Labour for every one it took from the
Conservatives. But although the Alliance had picked up votes everywhere, it had
failed in the old Labour strongholds and it had not done so well in North West
Wales and parts of Scotland where the nationalist vote held. Having failed to
make a major breakthrough, its problem was to consolidate the votes it had.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Hugo Young, One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher (1991), 142.

2 Young, op. cit., 142.
3 ibid., 145.
4 ibid., 152.
5 Daily Mirror, 7 May 1980.
6 Zig Layton-Henry (ed.), Conservative Party Politics (1980), 191.
7 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1990), 383.
8 Young, op. cit., 154.
9 Richard Nixon, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1979), 424–5.
10 Observer, 17 February 1980.
11 Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944), 67.
12 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994), 130.
13 ibid., 135.
14 ibid., 136.
15 Anthony Sampson, The Changing Anatomy of Britain (1982), 52.
16 Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past (1988), 288.
17 Carrington, op. cit., 289.
18 Patrick Cosgrave, Thatcher: The First Term (1985), 76.
19 Young, op. cit., 181.
20 ibid.
21 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (introduced by Ruth Winstone)
(1995), 482.
22 Robert J.Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: History as Seen through the
Gallup Data (1989), 123.
23 ibid., 123.
24 Sampson, op. cit., 102.
25 Listener, 29 November 1979.
26 David Owen, Time to Declare (1992), 481.
27 ibid., 483
 THATCHER’S ‘REVOLUTION’, 1979–83 223

28 ibid., 494.
29 ibid., 488.
30 ibid., 494.
31 Daily Telegraph, 27 March 1981.
32 Guardian, 22 May 1981.
33 Daily Telegraph, 27 March 1981.
34 Ian Bradley, Breaking the Mould? (1981), 95. See also Ivor Crewe and Anthony
King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (1995).
35 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), 149.
36 Thatcher, op. cit., 151.
37 ibid., 152.
38 ibid.
39 The Campaign Guide 1983, 89.
40 Central Office of Information, Britain and the Falklands Crisis: A Documentary
Record (1982), 2.
41 Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands (1983), 56–7. See
also comments of Howe, op. cit., 245. Also, Nigel West, The Secret War for the
Falklands: The SAS, MI6, and the War Whitehall Nearly Lost (1997).
42 Young, op. cit.
43 Howe, op. cit., 245.
44 Thatcher, op. cit., 188.
45 Hastings and Jenkins, op. cit., 87.
46 Thatcher, op. cit., 185.
47 Young, op. cit., 265.
48 ibid., 187.
49 ibid., 188–9.
50 ibid., 220–1.
51 Hastings and Jenkins, op. cit., 357–8.
52 Thatcher, op. cit., 205, 212; Young, op. cit., 273.
53 Ex-Guardsman and MP Don Concannon in conversation with the author.
54 Hansard (Commons), vol. 24, col. 497, 24 May 1982.
55 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 536.
56 Wybrow, op. cit., 127.
57 Young, op. cit., 297.
58 ibid., 316.
59 ibid., 318.
60 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 86.
61 ‘The Medici of Madison Avenue’, Observer, 24 March 1985.
62 Cecil Parkinson, Right at the Centre (1992), 215.
63 Parkinson, op. cit., 215.
64 Healey, op. cit., 500.
65 Parkinson, op. cit., 229.
66 Healey, op. cit., 501.
67 ibid., 502.
 10
THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–
90

GRENADA: GOVERNMENT ‘HUMILIATED’

Having won her second term Thatcher lost no time in reshuffling her
government. Howe moved to the Foreign Office and his place was taken by Nigel
Lawson (51), who had served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1979– 81,
and at Energy, 1981–3. Born in Hampstead into a family ‘complete with nanny,
cook and parlour maid’,1 he was the son of a tea merchant. He was educated, like
his father, at Westminster School and Oxford. After national service in the navy
he worked for the Financial Times and Sunday Telegraph before editing the
weekly Spectator. Leon Brittan (44) got the Home Office, having served as
Chief Secretary of the Treasury from 1981. Educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s,
Cambridge and Yale he had built up a lucrative libel practice. Like Lawson he
was Jewish and like him was elected to the Commons in February 1974. Both
were regarded as Thatcher’s protégés. Michael Heseltine (50) moved from
Environment to Defence. Educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford and elected in
1966, he had been the darling of many a Conservative conference. A successful,
wealthy, businessman, he was regarded as a Thatcher rival. Of her critics, Pym was
demoted to the back-benches and Prior was left brooding in Northern Ireland.
In the Labour camp a dismayed Foot took the responsibility for his party’s
defeat and resigned. The Cabinet had been told that ‘if Healey had been the
leader or if he were to replace Foot before a 1984 election it would be touch and
go’.2 But he too decided to step down as deputy leader, remaining only shadow
foreign secretary. Although four candidates stood in the leadership contest, it
soon became clear that the race was between Neil Kinnock on the Left and Roy
Hattersley on the Right. A group of union leaders declared their support for
Kinnock, who swept to victory on a majority of nearly 3–1 in Labour’s newly
established electoral college. This climaxed at the party’s annual conference at
Brighton, in October, where Roy Hattersley was elected deputy leader on the
first ballot against a weak challenge from left-winger Eric Heffer, MP. Thrown
out by the electors, Benn wrote in his diary, ‘I understand how unemployed people
lose their sense of self-worth.’3 He had some consolation, however, since the
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 225

conference elected him top of the executive constituency section. In other words,
the activists still loved him!
Most ordinary voters knew little about Kinnock, and this was hardly surprising
considering that he had not held office and had only been on the executive
committee of Labour since 1978. From a Welsh mining family, he had studied at
the University of Wales (Cardiff) and had been elected to the Commons in 1970.
He had climbed a long way as a ‘soft’, non-Marxist Leftist supporting CND,
opposing the EEC and calling for more public ownership. His personal charm
and the backing of Foot had taken him the rest of the way to the top. He had the
advantage of youth (41). In certain respects he resembled David Steel rather than
David Owen, who was now elected (unopposed) to the leadership of the SDP in
place of Roy Jenkins. The two new leaders were soon having an impact. By
November, although Kinnock was still behind Thatcher, Steel and Owen, he was
thought to be more in touch with the electorate than all his rivals, to be less
extreme than Thatcher, to be behind only Steel on sincerity and to be behind only
Thatcher on toughness.4 Tebbit was not alone in thinking he was ‘a windbag…
[who] would pose the Prime Minister few problems’.5
Margaret Thatcher was robbed of some of the rejoicing at the Conservative
Party conference at Blackpool in October 1983 by one of those silly little
scandals which were increasingly afflicting British Conservative politics. As the
Daily Telegraph (15 October) put it, ‘Mr Cecil Parkinson resigned in disgrace
from the Cabinet yesterday after his fight to remain Trade and Industry Secretary
was undermined overnight when his jilted mistress issued an unexpected
statement to “put the record straight” about their affair.’ She revealed she was
expecting his child. He had been on the verge of being appointed Foreign
Secretary after the election.6 Howe regarded him simply as a consummate
executor of Thatcher’s commands.7 But even Thatcher could not save him.
Parkinson’s replacement at Trade and Industry was Norman Tebbit. The new
Chairman was John Selwyn Gummer (43), a parson’s son and Cambridge graduate
who some thought offered ‘presentational skills’ and ‘youthfulness’.8
Thatcher was soon brought down to size, not by the Opposition at home but by
friends abroad. On 24 October massive US forces invaded the small Caribbean
island republic, and British Commonwealth member, Grenada. The Marxist
leader Maurice Bishop had been overthrown and killed by another self-styled
Marxist faction. Reagan ordered in the US marines to restore order. Thatcher and
Howe were ‘dumbfounded… What…were we to make of a relationship, special
or otherwise, in which a message requesting the benefit of our advice was so
quickly succeeded by another which made it brutally clear that advice was being
treated as of no consequence whatsoever?’9 The key decision had been taken two
and a half days before Reagan had contacted Thatcher.10 Britain had argued
against the operation. The government ‘had been humiliated’.11
The second direct elections to the European Parliament, which took place in
June 1984, indicated that Labour had made considerable headway under its new
leader. A miserable turnout (32 per cent compared with 57 per cent in France and
226 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

West Germany and 84 per cent in Italy) and the old, first-past-the-post system
(Britain was the only country in the EEC using it) gave the Conservatives 46
seats (61 in 1979), Labour 33 (17) and the SNP (1). The percentage votes were:
Conservatives 40.8, Labour 36.5 and Alliance 19.5. Conservative and Alliance
support had weakened since the general election, but the Alliance rightly felt it was
the victim of a system which penalized third parties. On the same day as the
Euro-elections, Mike Hancock, a well-known local Social Democrat, took
Portsmouth South from the Conservatives on a 14 per cent by-election swing.
Although the Euro-elections did represent a setback, Thatcher need not have
mourned too much, because she was already getting help from unexpected
quarters.

SCARGILL: ‘NORTHERN CLUBLAND HUMOUR AND

POPULARIST SOCIALISM’
In 1981 the government had ‘executed a smart U-turn and surrendered to the
miners’ over the projected closure of uneconomic pits.12 The reason was that
coal stocks were low and the miners were seen to back their moderate leader Joe
Gormley.13 After that ‘humiliation’14 the government built up coal stocks at vital
power stations, converted power stations to dual oil/ coal firing and built up
police mobile units.15 These measures were based on a’plan’ Nicholas Ridley
had conceived in Opposition.16 Nigel Lawson, as Energy Secretary to June 1983,
developed a new mine in the Vale of Belvoir, for political reasons. It would help
to persuade the moderate Nottinghamshire miners to go on working if a strike
came. He also developed landing sites for helicopters at power stations so that
vital chemicals could be flown in during a strike.17 Ian MacGregor (70) was
appointed in September 1983 to head the coal industry. A metallurgy graduate of
Glasgow University who emigrated to America, he was ‘widely seen as an
overpaid, overaged, ruthless American’18 who had slashed jobs as chairman of
British Steel. Behind MacGregor stood Peter Walker, the new Energy Secretary,
and behind him stood Thatcher. She was in no mood to compromise, having just
been confirmed in office by the electorate in June 1983. She faced not Gormley,
but Arthur Scargill (45), who took over the National Union of Mineworkers
(NUM) presidency on Gormley’s retirement in April 1982. His Marxist militancy
and oratory, which the Observer (6 December 1981) called a ‘clever blend of
northern clubland humour and populist Socialism’, led to his election, in 1973, as
Yorkshire area president of the NUM.
The massive increase in oil prices had helped coal in the 1970s, but the
recession of the early 1980s had changed that. In any case, the old ‘smokestack’
industries were in decline. Less coal was needed. For example, steel, which in
1980 had consumed 7 million tons of coal, used only 4 million in 1983. The coal
industry continued to shed labour. Since 1974 its manpower had fallen from 250,
000 and 259 pits to 181,000 and 174 pits in March 1984.19 MacGregor wanted a
speeding up of the closure of uneconomic pits and major redundancies. Yet many
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 227

miners were not looking for a strike. They had rejected strike action in three
previous ballots.20 In response to news of pit closures, the NUM imposed an
overtime ban on 31 October 1983. The troubles in the coal fields were
temporarily overshadowed by a printers’ strike between the National Graphical
Association (NGA) and newspaper proprietor Eddy Shah. Shah won. The NGA
paid heavily for breaking the new law restricting picketing.21 This should have
warned the NUM leadership of the changed climate.
The flashpoint for Britain’s longest and bitterest major strike since 1926 was
Cortonwood pit, Yorkshire. There the moderate NUM was told without warning
the pit was to close within a month, on 6 April. The NUM had been assured the
pit was good for five years. Only months before £1 million had been spent there
and miners had been transferred from nearby Elsecar.22 A similar fate awaited
Polmaise pit in Scotland. The Yorkshire and Scots area committees approved
strike action. This was then approved by the national executive of the NUM by
21 votes to 3. Strike action in other areas was given prior approval and ‘flying
pickets’ were sent from militant areas to persuade workers not yet on strike to
join in. These tactics were designed to bring off a national strike without a ballot.
By 14 March 1984, 133 pits were idle.23 When the national executive met on 12
April the Leicester area called for a national ballot to decide the issue. Scargill
ruled this out of order. His colleagues agreed by 13 to 8 with 3 abstentions.24 It
was difficult to understand why Scargill had decided on a strike when winter was
over and less coal would be required; coal stocks were high and cheap coal could
easily be imported. By May, Benn, himself MP for the mining constituency of
Chesterfield and an associate of Scargill, recorded, ‘It looks as though the miners
cannot beat the Government.’25
The strike then intensified, becoming more bitter. Violence crept in between
strikers and working miners, and between strikers and the police, especially over
a three-week period at Orgreave coking plant near Sheffield. Scargill was among
the 273 arrested.26 On 31 May Benn recorded, ‘It looks like civil war.’ The two
sides came close to a settlement on 9 July, but in the end Scargill refused to
compromise.27 Even Mick McGathy, Communist and veteran Scottish NUM
leader, would have regarded acceptance of MacGregor’s terms as a victory.28 On
14 August the Financial Times reported that 73 per cent of the miners were still
out. Of 181,000 only 48,000 were at work, compared with 40,000 at the start of
the strike. Over half those working were in Nottinghamshire. The strike then
dragged on led by the ‘troika’—Scargill, McGahey and Peter Heathfield, new
general secretary of the union.29 It finally ended in March 1985 when the strikers
marched to work with banners held high and bands playing, but without a
settlement. Despite the bands there was the bitterness, neighbour against
neighbour, brother against brother. Benn watched the return to work in
Chesterfield: ‘the level of hatred is frightening.’ But he also had feelings of
‘hope and dignity’.30 Within a short time 20,000 men had decided to leave the
pits.
Sir Ian Gilmour summed up the strike as follows:
228 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

But for Scargill’s Leninism and the violence, the NUM would have had a
fully arguable case. The NCB clearly did have plans for massive closures,
and not surprisingly many miners felt that they were struggling to defend a
way of life. The strictly economic arguments were also mixed…the
miners’ strike was enormously costly to the country. And the long-term
benefits of running down the coal industry are doubtful…in the not-so-
distant future the policy of closing most of the country’s mines may well
seem shortsighted.31

For Lawson, ‘The miners’ strike was the central political event of the second
Thatcher Administration.’32 However, the strike ‘reduced output, worsened the
balance of payments, exacerbated unemployment, increased public expenditure
and borrowing, and undermined the pound…the pound fell sharply on the
foreign exchanges.’33
Richard Bailey, writing in the National Westminster Bank Review (August
1985), commented:

The cost to the public in postponed tax cuts, and the loss of jobs in
businesses dependent on the coal industry are impossible to quantify. The
115,000 miners who stayed out for the whole period each lost between £7,
000 and £8,000 in wages, and their families piled up a grievous load of debt.
The National Coal Board…lost between 40 to 50 valuable coal faces, as
well as over £50 million worth of machinery and equipment. The miners’
union ended the strike with their funds run down.

Benn felt the TUC had been ‘pathetic’, and the Labour hierarchy had been ‘quite
inadequate’.34 But, as Healey pointed out, it was very difficult for Kinnock,
himself a miner’s son.35 How could he support Scargill’s use of undemocratic
means, condoning violence and his ‘tactical and strategic errors’? The polls
showed that, unlike 1974, the public did not take the miners’ side. Nevertheless,
unemployment remained the main public concern. And eight out of ten felt the
rich were getting richer and the poor were getting poorer. In October they felt
Britain was divided into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, with government
policies favouring the ‘haves’.36 The strike led to the break-up of the NUM with
the Union of Democratic Miners being set up in Nottinghamshire. No wonder
Healey felt Scargill’s strike was a ‘Godsend’ for Thatcher.37

MI5 ‘CONTROLS THE HIRING AND FIRING OF BBC

STAFF’
As Britain moved towards 1984 it was only natural that people should measure
the reality of society against the nightmare world of Orwell’s Airstrip One. Had
we escaped Big Brother or had he grown smarter, making his surveillance and
control less obvious? Few really believed our world was that of Winston Smith,
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 229

yet most would admit we had been naive in not realizing the extent of the state’s
control mechanisms.
In 1980 the Post Office Engineering Union claimed that the practice of phone-
tapping went well beyond the categories of terrorism and crime detection,
embracing political organizations and trade unions. The New Statesman (4 March
1982) claimed that MI5, which is responsible for intelligence and security within
Britain, had linked its Mayfair-based computer with a growing number of other
government computer data banks, giving it access to information on 20 million
people. Its own files had details of 500,000 ‘subversives’. It seemed unlikely that
the Data Protection Act, 1984 would give the individual greater privacy from
public data users. Under the Act, data users have to register with an official
registrar and individuals have access to information held on them. However, the
exceptions, including data involving national security and certain aspects of
criminal investigation, reduce the Act’s impact. Cathy Massiter, who worked in
MI5 for 14 years, claimed that during her years of service (1970–84), its
emphasis shifted from being essentially a counter-espionage service aimed at
hostile foreign powers to being a domestic surveillance body. It infiltrated agents
into organizations such as CND and broke the law to gain information. This
happened, she said, under both Labour and Conservative governments. One
prominent person who claimed to be a victim of MI5 was Lord Bethell, the
writer and Conservative MEP. He was smeared by MI5 and forced to resign as a
junior minister. MI5, he claimed, had not checked information given about him.
Many people were shocked when the Observer (18 August 1985) published a
report saying that MI5 ‘secretly controls the hiring and firing of BBC staff’. The
paper published a list of eight individuals whom it said had been blacklisted. The
system had been in existence since 1937.
Some people believed the security service wasted so much time hunting the
unorthodox that it missed the real targets. In 1979 Britain was shocked to hear
that Sir Anthony Blunt, a former intelligence officer and more recently the
Queen’s art adviser, had been a Soviet agent. Worse still, it was alleged that the
former head of MI5 between 1956 and 1965, the late Sir Roger Hollis, also
worked for the Soviet Union. In 1985 the service was criticized for failing to
detect the problems of one of its members, Michael Bettaney, who was convicted
of attempting to pass information to the Russians. Rumours persisted that over the
years several MPs had worked for the Soviets, including double-agent Tom
Driberg.38
In 1987 the government attempted to stop publication of Peter Wright’s book
Spycatcher. As we saw in Chapter 8 Wright, formerly a senior MI5 official,
claimed there had been a plot to bring down Wilson. He also claimed he and his
colleagues had ‘bugged and burgled our way across London at the State’s
behest’.39 In a judgement pronounced on 26 November 1991, the government
was condemned by the European Court for breaching Article 10 of the European
Convention on Human Rights. The Court did not condemn the government’s
original attempt to prevent potentially sensitive material from being published,
230 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

but it did condemn its continued efforts after the book had become widely
available abroad. This and similar cases led to the Security Service Act, 1989, an
attempt by the government to allay fears about the activities of MI5. The Act
established the post of Commissioner (an Appeal Court judge) to oversee the
issue of warrants for telephone tapping and other forms of surveillance and a
tribunal to investigate complaints. It did not cover MI6 or the Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). The government also introduced a new
Official Secrets Act which became law in 1990. This reinforced the secrecy rule
on civil servants. In future they would not be able to claim that they were leaking
information in the public interest, as Clive Ponting had done during the
Falklands campaign. At his trial the jury believed him. Heath was one of a
number of Conservatives who joined Labour and the Liberals in attacking the
new legislation. Heath pointed out that, when a backbencher, Churchill had
received leaked information about the inadequacy of Britain’s defences. He had
used this to warn the country.40
In another move, trade unions were banned in 1984 at GCHQ in Cheltenham,
which employed some 7,000 people. GCHQ intercepts diplomatic, military,
commercial and private communications obtained by spy satellites and listening
posts around the world. Those who refused to give up their trade union
membership were sacked. This move was opposed by Labour and the Liberal
Democrats and ‘the case continued to reverberate for years before the European
Court of Human Rights and with the International Labour Organization’.41
According to Howe, but for Thatcher’s ‘absolutist instinct’, a compromise could
have been found. She could not ‘appreciate, still less accommodate, somebody
else’s patriotism’.42 The Conservative Foreign Minister, Sir Austen
Chamberlain, in 1927 (only months after the general strike!) did not deny union
membership to the recruits of the infant organization.43 In 1996 under Major
there was an attempt to introduce a new tame union to avoid censure by the
International Labour Organization.
The police were becoming more the focus of complaints: that they suffered
from corruption, harboured racial prejudice and sexism, bent the rules and used,
on occasions, excessive force. Such accusations were made about the
metropolitan police in a 1983 report drawn up for Sir David McNee, the head of
the London police (1977–83), by the influential Policy Studies Institute. There
were similar accusations about the Merseyside and Birmingham forces. The
debate continued about whether crime was, with few exceptions, really more
prevalent than in the past, since crime statistics depend so much on how much
crime the public reports and whether police chiefs are interested in particular
types of crime such as traffic offences, drugs or pornography at particular times.
There was a strong campaign after the Conservative victory of 1983 to
reintroduce capital punishment. The Commons rejected this, as it had in 1979
and 1982. As part of its contribution to the debate, the Guardian (4 July 1983)
published the stories of six men, wrongly convicted of murder, who would have
hanged had the death penalty been in force.
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 231

1985: ‘GOVERNMENT BY SLOGAN’

With rising unemployment and plunging support in the polls, it was to be
expected that there would be rumblings of discontent among the Conservatives.
In this situation Thatcher decided on cosmetic surgery. In September 1985 the
eighth reshuffle since 1979 was announced. Lord Young of Graffham was
appointed to Employment. Former Health Minister, Kenneth Clarke, was
appointed his deputy and spokesman in the Commons. Both had Cabinet rank.
There was criticism that the head of such an important ministry as Employment
was not in the Commons. Brittan was demoted and moved from the Home Office
to Trade and Industry. Tebbit became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and
Conservative Party Chairman. His predecessor, Gummer, was demoted to
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Douglas Hurd moved from Northern Ireland to
the Home Office with King replacing him. Finally, among the major changes,
Kenneth Baker took over from Jenkin at Environment. Howe commented later, he
saw Jenkin ‘as one of a number of colleagues whose ability to shape the
collective wisdom of the government had been diminished, and finally lost, by
too frequent job changes and premature disposal’.44 By this time Thatcher faced
more opposition from within her own party than any other Conservative Prime
Minister since Chamberlain in 1940. If she glanced behind her towards the back-
benches she saw virtually a government in exile: Carlisle, Gilmour, Heath,
Jenkin, Prentice, Prior, Pym, Rippon, St John-Stevas. They had all criticized
certain aspects of government policy; some, like Heath, criticized almost
everything. There was a great comment on Thatcher’s alleged authoritarian style
of government, the proposal to abolish the state earnings-related pension scheme
(serps), the generous pay awards for top public servants in 1985, the privatization
of the royal ordnance factories and naval dockyards, cuts in the diplomatic
service and BBC external services, effective cuts in student grants and, above all,
the failure to cut unemployment and ‘rate capping’, that is, penalizing local
authorities which did not fall in with the government’s line on expenditure cuts.
Pym denounced what he called ‘government by slogan’ and in May 1985 set up
his Centre Forward ginger group.45 There were rumours of a ‘Walker faction’,
and Walker was seen by many as a potential successor to Thatcher.46 In fact,
Walker, despite the ‘futile bravado of his open disagreements’ over policy,47
remained in the Cabinet until 1990. From the Lords, 23 January 1985, Harold
Macmillan (Earl of Stockton) attacked ‘the monetarists…who have done infinite
harm’. He also called for a national government.
On 9 January 1986 Heseltine picked up his papers and walked out of a
meeting of the Cabinet. On 24 January Leon Brittan resigned from the
Department of Trade and Industry (DTI). Heseltine wanted a European rescue
for the British helicopter firm, Westland, which was in difficulties. Thatcher and
Brittan favoured a link-up with the US company Sikorsky.48 Thatcher prevented
Heseltine bringing the matter to full Cabinet. He used the media to help his case
for a European solution to Westland’s problems. Thatcher retaliated. A letter
232 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

from the Solicitor-General, Patrick Mayhew, to Heseltine, and damaging to him,

was leaked to the Press Association by an official at the DTI.49 Thatcher then
attempted to gag Heseltine by insisting that in future all his statements on
Westland be cleared by the Cabinet Office. This brought matters to a head and
Heseltine made what was ‘probably the most spectacular’ resignation of the
century.50 Pressure from Conservative back-benchers forced Brittan to go.51
Howe believed Brittan faced ‘jealous critics, some with malodorous streaks of anti-
Semitism, [who] were never too far away’.52 The affair raised the issue of just
how far civil servants should be forced to do the dirty work of their ministers,
and just how far ministers were responsible for the actions of their civil servants.
The Westland affair ‘threatened the Government itself and fuelled ‘the flames of
anti-Americanism’.53 The company was sold to Sikorsky.
The largest proportion of parliamentary time between 1983 and 1987 was
devoted to abolition of the Greater London Council (GLC) and other
metropolitan authorities.54 This was largely an attempt to undermine the power
of Labour in local government rather than for any sensible or rational reasons.
The Conservatives believed the only way to wrest London from Labour control
was by abolishing the GLC altogether. They later sold the home of London
democracy, County Hall, not to the London School of Economics, but to a
Japanese business. Ken Livingstone, Labour leader of the GLC, was targeted as a
hate figure.55 Kenneth Baker performed this task.56

THE ANGLO-IRISH AGREEMENT: ‘TREACHERY’

Just before 3 a.m. on Friday 12 October 1984 a bomb went off in the Grand Hotel,
Brighton. The Cabinet narrowly escaped being wiped out by the IRA. There
were five fatalities and dozens grievously injured.57 TV viewers were shocked to
see Norman Tebbit being carried strapped to a stretcher from the wrecked hotel.
By then they had seen similar scenes before. At Christmas 1983 an IRA bomb
killed six people and injured 100 others outside Harrods department store in
London. There were other less dramatic incidents. The bombs underlined the
need for Britain and Ireland to break the circle of violence. In yet another
attempt to do so, Thatcher and the Irish Prime Minister, Dr Garret Fitzgerald,
signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement in November 1985. Both governments
recognized Ulster as part of the UK, so long as this was supported by the
majority of those in the North. Under the Agreement an intergovernmental
conference was established which would give the Irish government the right to
comment on certain aspects of Northern Irish affairs. It also sought to improve
cross-border co-operation, especially on security matters.
What most people saw as a positive move was strongly contested by Ulster
Unionist MPs and certain Conservatives. Ian Gow, a Treasury minister, and
Thatcher’s ‘most intimate and devoted supporter’,58 resigned over the issue after
only weeks in office. In Ulster all the Unionist MPs resigned their seats because
they saw the Agreement as the first step towards Irish unity. All but one of them
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 233

were re-elected at by-elections on 23 January 1986. A one-day strike in Northern

Ireland was organized as a show of force. Powell denounced the Agreement as
‘treachery’. Howe argued that ‘Two civilized peoples must be able to find ways
of living peacefully together. If France and Germany can do it, then why not
us?’59

PRIVATIZATION: ‘SELLING OFF THE FAMILY

SILVER’
Lord Diamond, the former Labour minister, speaking in the Lords (23 January
1985) attacked what he called ‘using the proceeds of a most valuable national
asset (oil), to meet current expenditure’. He then asked rhetorically, ‘When will
the Government cease…selling off the family silver to pay for the groceries?’ This
turn of phrase came to be associated not with Diamond, but with Lord Stockton,
when he criticized the privatization programme on 9 November 1985.60 By this
he meant privatization of public assets by the Thatcher government. Originally,
in the 1979 election, the Conservatives said little about this, and the main thrust
on this front came after the 1983 victory. Earlier the government’s holding in BP
was sold, some British Rail assets were put on the market, as were British
Aerospace, the National Freight Corporation, Cable & Wireless, Britoil and the
radio-chemical centre, Amersham International. The first sales were seen as
means of raising revenue and thus keeping down the PSBR.61 These brought in
£1.76 billion in Thatcher’s first term.62 This was a useful but not massive
addition to the government’s coffers. After the relative caution of the early years,
privatization became a crusade and, as Gilmour put it, ‘a diversion’,63 a diversion
from the other economic failures. The various reasons behind privatization were,
so Gilmour thought, improvement of the performances of the industries
concerned; sorting out effective management structures caused by the difficult
relations between government and nationalized industries; the destruction of the
power of the unions; the raising of revenue through the sales; and the
popularization of capitalism through wider share ownership.64 The programme
gained coherence and momentum (see table below) when Lawson became
Chancellor. John Moore, Financial Secretary under Lawson, had ‘day-to-day
supervision’. He went about his task ‘with missionary zeal’.65
The Conservatives argued that they were freeing the taxpayer from the burden
of subsidizing the nationalized industries. Most of them were of course profitable
businesses, otherwise there would have been far greater reluctance on the part of
the public to invest. Gas and electricity competed against each other, and British
Airways competed with other airlines. They suffered from having their initiative
and commercial development held back by the Treasury. Some of their problems
were due to being industries with long traditions (as with the railways, and the
Post Office). This applied to
234 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

Table 10.1 Privatization in Britain, 1981–91

Date Company % of equity initially sold Proceeds (£m)
Oct. 1981 Cable & Wireless 50 224
Feb. 1982 Amersham International 100 71
Nov. 1982 Britoil 51 549
Feb. 1983 Associated British Ports 51.5 22
June 1984 Enterprise Oil 100 392
July 1984 Jaguar 99 294
Nov. 1984 British Telecom 50.2 3,916
Dec. 1986 British Gas 97 5,434
Feb. 1987 British Airways 100 900
May 1987 Rolls-Royce 100 1,363
July 1987 British Airports Authority 100 1,281
Dec. 1988 British Steel 100 1,281
Dec. 1989 Regional Water Companies 100 5,110
Dec. 1990 Electricity Companies 100 5,092
Mar. 1991 National Power and PowerGen 60 2,230
May 1991 Scottish Power and Scottish 100 2,880
Hydro Electric

other parts of British industry and not just the public sector. There is some
limited evidence that, in the 1980s, productivity rose faster in the state-owned
industries, such as British Rail, than in the privatized ones.66 Although the
privatized shares found a ready market, sold as they often were at great
discounts, the public were by no means all convinced that privatization was a
good thing. In late October 1983 a Gallup poll showed that 39 per cent favoured
selling off British Telecom and 46 per cent were against it. Those in favour
believed it would increase competition, lead to a better service and stabilize or
reduce prices. The top four reasons given by opponents were that BT was a
profit-making concern, that the service would deteriorate, that the profits should
go to the public and that prices would rise.67 In Scotland, in so many respects
treated traditionally as a separate entity, where the bulk of the people had voted
for parties opposing the privatization, they went ahead anyway.
Although not opposed to privatization as such, Gilmour summed up the actual
development as follows:

Nearly all the industries were sold off for much less than they were worth…
The City of London…through various kinds of fees anyway made a
killing… Thus the government was negligent guardian of public assets,
failing to look after the interests of the collective public. Yet individual
members of the public profited mightily from the government’s lax
generosity. The cut-price sales provided a considerable boost to the private
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 235

wealth of those who subscribed to them. This was as good a way of bribing
voters with their own money (and other people’s) as has ever been
invented.68

By 1992 the proportion of the population owning stocks and shares had risen
from about 7 per cent in 1979 to 22 per cent.69 The number of home-owners rose
from 57.2 per cent in 1979 to 71 per cent.70 These dramatic increases were due
largely to privatization. Most shareholders had a few shares in privatized
companies or in former building societies, like Abbey National, which had been
converted to banks. The government also introduced tax-free savings schemes
such as Tessas (Tax-exempt special savings accounts) and Peps (Personal equity
plans) which appealed to the moderately prosperous. However, after 10 years of
Peps only 1.8 million out of 45 million eligible adults were investors.71 The
likelihood was that the number of shareholders would decline, but that the
number of home-owners would continue to increase. Moreover, the number of
individuals as a percentage of all shareholders had dropped dramatically since
the 1960s. As reported in Social Trends 25 (1995), an analysis of the share
registers of UK listed companies found that the proportion of total equity held by
individuals at end-1993 was 18 per cent; this compares with 54 per cent in 1963.
Privatization had not halted with this long-term trend.
Why should the number of shareholders decline? Most had been attracted by
the massive advertising campaigns for the privatized utilities which were
unlikely to be repeated by normal companies. Many sold their shares
immediately and took their windfall profits. Many of those who held on hoping
for long-term gains or out of loyalty to a regional firm or, in a very small number
of cases, because they thought they would go along to the annual general
meeting and voice their concerns, came to realize that they were regarded as a
nuisance by the directors. Many were shocked to find they were forced to sell
their shares when companies were taken over. When East Midlands Electricity
PLC was sold to DR Investments (UK) PLC, an American group, in 1997, the
small investor was forced to sell his shares. If he did not accept the offer from
DR Investments, his shares could be compulsorily acquired under the Companies
1985. The number of shareholders would inevitably fall as most would not invest
in the new owner, DR Investments. Those who bought the maximum 100 shares
in East Midlands Electricity when the company was privatized in 1990 received
cheques for £650 for their shares in 1997, just about enough to buy two cheap
out-of-season holidays. Of course they had made a small, temporary gain. But an
asset, built up by themselves and previous generations, a part of which they as
citizens had owned until privatization, had been alienated from them for a second
time. Henceforth, a few foreign investors made the decisions about their
electricity. ‘We were conned into buying them, now we’re bullied into selling
them’, remarked one West Bridgford (Nottingham) small shareholder, a voter in
Kenneth Clarke’s constituency. Mysteriously, on the very day the cheque arrived
so did a letter from John Major warning of the dangers to the small investor from
236 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

Labour! It was the same with the utilities up and down the land, which were
being taken over by foreign companies. This was the reality of the Thatcher/
Major share-owning democracy.
How would the new patterns of ownership influence the voters? Perhaps the
council house tenants who bought their homes were, in many cases, drawn from
the ranks of the pro-Conservatives. However, these new home-owners would be
even less likely to vote Labour than before.72 And Labour would have to be very
careful how it dealt with this sensitive issue.

CONFUSION ON DEFENCE
As the 1987 election approached Labour was still not clear about its defence
policy. Since 1979 there had been a resurgence of CND. This was partly because
it was easier to support such a movement when Labour was in opposition than
when it was in government. There had also been the example of a similar
powerful movement in West Germany, and the intensification of the arms race
after 1979 gave a boost to a movement which, although of the Left, united people
from a wide variety of political back grounds. CND wanted Britain to give up its
own nuclear deterrent unilaterally and it opposed Cruise and Trident missiles.
Basically, this was Labour’s position too, as revealed in its policy document
Defence and Security of Britain (August 1984). Labour would work within
NATO to get it to agree on a policy of ‘No first use’ of nuclear weapons. It
would also work to reduce defence spending towards the average level of our major
European allies. At the 1987 election Labour promised to use money saved from
abandoning nuclear weapons on modernizing the conventional armed forces,
including the Royal Navy. Where did the Liberal-SDP Alliance stand on
defence? Generally, the SDP supported NATO policies, including the aim of
multilateral disarmament on the one hand and the deployment of Cruise missiles
on the other. It wanted to retain Britain’s nuclear force but rejected Trident,
which represented a new step in the arms race. The Liberal leader, David Steel,
found no difficulty with this approach, but the Liberal Assembly had adopted a
more unilateralist stance on 20 September 1984.
Most polls showed that the majority of British people accepted that Britain
needed to be in NATO. In a dangerous world it was too weak to defend itself
alone. All the parties accepted this. Again the majority of the electorate believed
some element of nuclear defence was necessary. Only CND wanted NATO to
abandon its nuclear weapons unilaterally. There were great divisions over
Britain’s own nuclear weapons. Most Labour and Liberal Party members were
prepared to abandon the British bomb. The Conservatives and most of the SDP
wanted to retain it. The question was, in what form. The last Labour government
had started the Chevaline modernization programme which was designed to keep
Britain’s Polaris fleet effective until the mid-1990s. But what then? Thatcher had
decided to acquire the Trident II submarine-launched missile system from the
United States to replace Polaris. The government argued that the cost would be
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 237

only 3 per cent of the total defence budget and 6 per cent of the equipment
budget. The four submarines and their nuclear warheads would be designed and
built in Britain, bringing employment to British workers. Trident would be a
powerful weapon which would give Britain some say in the nuclear future. Its
critics said it tied Britain even more to American nuclear strategy, especially
since the Trident missiles would be serviced not in Britain but in the USA. The
government was on strong ground when it said that NATO’s nuclear weapons
had helped to prevent war—the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran-Iraq war
had happened because one side thought the other had no deterrent—but it was on
much weaker ground in relation to Britain’s own nuclear forces. Those who
argued that Britain should have an independent nuclear capacity would have
been more convincing had they looked to nuclear co-operation with France
rather than the United States. France had built up and was maintaining an
independent nuclear force. Perhaps this would become of critical importance for
an independent European Community defence strategy in the twenty-first
century. This was something totally rejected by Thatcher. There was confusion
about Cruise missiles. CND saw them as an intensification of the arms race, but
if it was accepted that nuclear weapons were an essential part of defence, then
they could be seen merely as a modernization of NATO’s defence armoury.
Defence policy had never been decided on purely rational grounds but was a
product of historical fears, electoral strategies, vested interests and the shape of
the economy. No British party before or after 1945 had conceived a well-
thought-out strategy based on a ruthlessly realistic appraisal of Britain’s future.
Relative to what it earned, Britain continued to spend more than its allies (except
the United States) and trade rivals on defence. This was one factor in its decline.

THATCHER’S HAT-TRICK
On 11 June 1987 Thatcher scored a historic victory by winning her third
successive election. No other Prime Minister since Lord Liverpool in 1826 could
claim such success.73 After 1945 the Conservatives had won in 1951, 1955 and
1959, but under different leaders each time. Thatcher had carefully set the scene
by a successful visit to Moscow, to show she was serious about peace, and a tax-
cutting budget, which came in the week before polling. Labour had fought a
good fight with a ‘brilliant broadcast boosting Neil Kinnock’.74 Labour scored on
the NHS, but Conservatives had done well on taxation and defence. The Alliance
had suffered marginally from having two equal leaders—Steel and Owen.
On closer inspection the Conservative victory was not as impressive as it
seemed. On a turnout of 75.5 per cent, the Conservatives gained 42.2 per cent of
the UK vote, Labour 30.8 per cent and the Alliance 22.6 per cent. Labour’s
result was its worst since 1923, in terms of percentage poll. Yet everywhere there
was a swing to Labour, reaching a mere 1.1 per cent in London and the South
and a maximum of 7.5 per cent in Wales. Everywhere there was a swing against
the Alliance, held at 2 per cent in London and the South, but reaching a
238 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

maximum of 5.3 in both Wales and Scotland. There was a swing to the
Conservatives in London and the South (1.2) and the Midlands (0.9), and swings
against them in the North (−1.8), Wales (−1.5) and Scotland (−4.4). The
Conservatives suffered a net loss of 21 seats and Labour a net gain of 20, but the
Conservatives actually gained seats from Labour in London and the Midlands.
Their strength concentrated more and more in the South. The Alliance had a net
loss of five seats (a net loss of 1 compared with 1983). Among their casualties
was Roy Jenkins, who lost Hillhead (Glasgow) to Labour. Its vote fell by 3 per
cent, the Conservative vote declined slightly from 42.4 to 42.2, while Labour’s
rose by 3.2 per cent.
Only 10 of the 72 MPs elected in Scotland were Conservatives, and only 8 of
the 38 in Wales. The SNP and PC each made a net gain of one seat, giving them
three seats each. The Afro-Caribbean and Asian communities saw four of their
number elected, all as Labour MPs. Among them was Diane Abbott (Hackney
North), the first ever Black woman to be elected. The highest ever number of
women were elected to the Commons: 21 Labour, 18 Conservative and 2
Alliance.
Northern Ireland produced a slight shift to moderation. The two rival
Protestant-based parties, Official Unionist Party (OUP) and Democratic Unionist
Party (DUP) of Ian Paisley entered an electoral pact which secured for them 12 of
the 17 seats. They lost one to the moderate, Catholic-based Social Democratic
and Labour Party (SDLP), which won three seats in all (one in 1983, one by-
election win in 1986). The SDLP ended Enoch Powell’s 37 years in Parliament
by taking Down South from him. The pro-IRA candidate retained for Sinn Fein
the seat he won in 1983 in Catholic West Belfast. One independent Unionist
retained his seat in Down North. Both the Unionist (54 to 49.5) and Sinn Fein’s
(13.4 to 11.4) percentage of the vote fell, while those of the SDLP (17.9 to 21.1)
and the non-sectarian Alliance Party (8 to 10) increased. Turnout was down from
72.8 to 67 per cent.
David Butler summed up the results as revealing a divide between ‘haves and
have-nots, the rich and the poor. It was an election of social and political
bifurcation, and the most polarized election in living memory.’75 Many sections
of society felt they had never had it so good and were prepared to thank Thatcher
for that.

BBC: ‘LACK OF BALANCE’?

Roy Jenkins, then Home Secretary under Labour, appointed the Annan
Committee on broadcasting in 1974 and it reported in 1977. Unlike Pilkington, it
was strong in its criticism of the BBC and was also concerned about the
‘diminishing number of independent sources of news, comment and opinion’.
Annan led to the launch of Channel 4 in 1982. Responsible to the IBA and
financed by the ITV companies through advertising revenue, it tries to give
attention to minority interests—ethnic, social, political and intellectual. By 1985
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 239

it had broken new ground with programmes of special interest to ethnic

minorities, the gay community and other minorities. Right to Reply aimed to give
viewers the opportunity to make their criticisms of programme-makers face-to-
face on television. Channel 4 news was designed to provide in-depth news
coverage.
Another development was the extension of the number of hours of
broadcasting, with both BBC and ITV offering mainly news and chat from 6.50
a.m. and 6.15 a.m., respectively. In its first year ‘Breakfast Television’ had only
limited impact. All channels started to broadcast until long after midnight.
The Independent Broadcasting Authority (IB A, to 1972 IT A) continued to
appoint the programme companies, to supervise their programme arrangements,
to control the advertising and to build, own and operate the transmitting stations
for both ITV and independent local radio. From 1981 it was chaired by the ex-
Labour politician Lord (George) Thomson. The IBA used its powers on occasion
to promote regional and local interests by redividing the boundaries of the
programme companies. These numbered 15 for television and 42 for local radio
in 1985.
The BBC continued to invite criticism of its handling of controversial
subjects. In 1981 the then Director-General, Sir Ian Trethowan, ordered severe
cuts of a Panorama programme on the security services. In 1985 his successor,
Alasdair Milne, agreed to withdraw a programme on Northern Ireland at the
request of the Home Secretary. The BBC also aroused controversy over the
security vetting of job applicants (see p. 239).
The BBC continued to be hated by a section of the Conservative Party who
thought it was arrogant and biased.76 Tebbit claimed, ‘The BBC had a well-
known record in committing libel and then trying to brazen it out.’77 As a result
of allegations in a Panorama programme it was forced to pay substantial
damages to Conservative MPs Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton.78 Tebbit
accused it of ‘failing standards’ and ‘lack of balance in the drama department and
parts of current affairs’.79 Howe and other members of the government were
angered when, on 28 April 1988, Thames Television broadcast Death on the
Rock, about the shooting of three IRA members in Gibraltar (see p. 262). The
programme was broadcast before the inquest into their deaths, and suggested
they were killed ‘unlawfully’. The inquest in Gilbraltar decided otherwise.80
These Conservatives intended to reduce the power of the BBC and break the
power of the unions in independent television. Their weapons were changes in the
leadership of the BBC, a financial squeeze and deregulation of TV and radio.
Dependent on Parliament for the level of its licence fees, the BBC is more
directly open to political pressure than are its rivals. Its board, like that of the
IBA, is appointed by the Home Secretary. The Chairman from 1980 to 1983 was
a Conservative landowner, Lord Howard. He was replaced by Stuart Young, also
Conservative, an accountant whose brother, Lord Young, was in the Cabinet.
The appointment of James Marmaduke Hussey as Chairman of the Board of
Governors of the BBC in 1986 was seen as a step in the right direction. Other Board
240 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

and personnel changes followed. Hussey demanded the resignation of Alasdair

Milne, and an accountant, Michael Checkland, was appointed Director-General
to steer the BBC in the direction of an even greater market orientation. The
government restricted its revenue by not allowing its licence fee to keep pace
with the rise in inflation. This was one of the policies spelt out in its White Paper,
Broadcasting in the ’90s: Competition, Choice and Quality. Other
recommendations included in the new Broadcasting Act were the setting up of a
new independent national TV service (Channel 5), three national commercial
radio stations, and new local radio and TV channels. The IBA was abolished and
it was required to auction its broadcasting licences to the highest commercial
bidders. It was replaced by two new bodies, the Independent Television
Commission and the Radio Authority, both of which had fewer regulatory
powers and whose decisions could be challenged in the courts. Under earlier
legislation, the Broadcasting Complaints Commission and the Broadcasting
Standards Council were established. The first examines complaints of unjust or
unfair treatment on TV or radio, the second sets and monitors standards of taste
and decency. The existing TV networks were faced with increasing competition
from satellite television, though this had progressed less than expected by the early
1990s. The two satellite companies—Sky and British Satellite Broadcasting—set
up in 1986, were forced to merge after sustaining massive losses. Employment
for television technicians was deliberately casualized by requiring both BBC and
the ITV companies to commission a quarter of their programmes from
independent programme-making companies.
Both the BBC and ITV claimed to have financial worries and made staff
redundant. Commercial television suffered from increasing competition for
advertising revenue from commercial radio and the growing number of free papers
funded entirely by advertising. However, television claimed 30.7 per cent of all
advertising revenue in 1984, compared with 22.6 per cent in 1970.81
Viewers’ tastes were undoubtedly changing, but old favourites could not be
dislodged. In the 1990s Granada’s working-class soap opera, Coronation Street,
still attracted a great number of viewers. The BBC’s Cockney rival, EastEnders,
was also high in the ratings. One new domestic product was Brookside, from
Liverpool. Phil Redmond, who devised the Liverpool soap, explained in
Brookside: The Official Companion: ‘I wanted to tackle the relevant social
issues. Things like long-term unemployment, women’s position in society, the
black economy, the micro-electronic technological revolution and its impact on
both management and union structures within industry.’ Later his programme
explored many other issues which Coronation Street found too disturbing. These
included lesbianism, drugs and incest.
The press remained dominated by four or five key proprietors—Rupert
Murdoch, Robert Maxwell, ‘Tiny’ Rowland, Conrad Black and Lord Stevens.
Four out of five of them were not natives of the British Isles. The Murdoch and
Maxwell empires were in deep financial trouble by the 1990s, with Maxwell’s
finally collapsing. Most of the press remained firmly anti-Labour. An attempt to
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 241

establish a new left-wing Sunday, the Sunday Correspondent, failed, though the
more centrist new daily the Independent, founded in 1986, rapidly established
itself as a quality paper with a circulation of 400,000 by 1989, roughly
equivalent to those of the Guardian and The Times. On its tenth birthday the
Independent was in some difficulties. Concerned mounted in the 1980s and
1990s about intrusive, investigative journalism as the tabloids vied with each to
expose the sexual lives of prominent people. The result was the Calcutt inquiry
into Privacy and Related Matters. It resisted the calls to curb the press through
legislation. Instead, it recommended the replacement of the Press Council by the
Press Complaints Commission (PCC). Unlike its predecessor, the PCC is simply
a complaints body and not a defender of the press. It commenced work on 1
January 1991.
Americanization of British TV continued with countless crime series such as
Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, and Miami Vice, and soap operas like
Dallas and Dynasty. Soon there were new challengers from Australia such as
Neighbours and Home and Away. It is remarkable how quickly the Australian
products became popular.

‘GREED IS GOOD’
The cinema continued its decline over the 1970s and the early 1980s despite the
great success of particular films. According to Social Trends 15 (1985) cinema
admissions fell from 176 million in 1971 to 63.1 million in 1983. Between 1984
and 1989 cinema admissions rose annually. Social Trends 25 (1995) found that
in 1993 admissions climbed to 113 million. As always, most of the films shown
were American, as were the two most popular films. In 1985 the Government
withdrew all support for the film industry, including the Eady levy which had
attracted inward investment for film production from Hollywood since 1951. Not
surprisingly, by 1990 the production of feature films had fallen to its lowest level
since the 1920s. It was only the puny privatized National Film Finance
Corporation, renamed the British Screen Corporation, and the larger television
companies, which financed new British productions. Support from Channel Four
was crucial for the making of many British films. Film-makers had to consider
the potential for exhibiting their products on television and as videos—an
expanding market—as well as their traditional concern for the American market.
Among the British films which made a great impact were a number which to a
degree helped their audiences to understand Britain’s colonial past and recent
British society: Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi (1982), Wilfrid Shingleton’s
Heat and Dust (1983) and David Lean’s A Passage to India (1985) examined the
Anglo-Indian relationship. Attenborough also scored with Cry Freedom (1987)
about the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, which was highly relevant to
black/white relations in Britain. Bernardo Bertolucci’s UK/Italian The Last
Emperor (1987) was a lavish look at twentieth-century Chinese history with Peter
O’Toole and was noted for its visual splendour. Dance With A Stranger (1985),
242 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

Wish You Were Here (1987) and Scandal (1989) took irreverent looks at the
‘never had it so good’ period. They all centred on women’s experiences. In The
Krays (1990) Peter Medak dealt with organized crime in London in that era.
Perhaps film-makers felt unable to cope with contemporary themes and believed
audiences preferred to escape into the past. A few did take up the challenge. My
Beautiful Laundrette (1985), written by Hanif Kureshi and directed by Stephen
Frears, said much about the experiences of the Asian immigrant community and
about being gay in contemporary Britain. Richard Eyre’s Ploughman’s Lunch
(1983) was a sceptical look at Thatcher’s Britain during the Falklands conflict,
while Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda was set in contemporary Ireland. His Riff-
Raff (1991), a film about building workers, was voted the European film of the
year in 1991. The films of David Puttnam achieved international recognition, and
at least three of them—Chariots of Fire (1980), Local Hero (1982) and Defence
of the Realm (1986)—were very relevant to the British experience. Class
differences and the harmful effects of repressed feelings were the subject of the
adaptations of E.M.Forster’s Room with a View (1986) and Howards End
(1992). Directed by James Ivory, they were set in Edwardian England. The same
themes came into Shadowlands and Remains of the Day, both of which featured
stunning performances by Anthony Hopkins, perhaps the most successful British
screen actor of the decade. In 1996 Trainspotting, set in Edinburgh, touched a
raw nerve with the very contemporary theme of the misery caused by drugs,
while Kenneth Branagh’s Peter’s Friends focused on reactions to AIDS.
Branagh was better known for his Shakespearean adaptations. Sanitized,
storybook England proved popular in the form of adaptations of Jane Austen’s
Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.
In post-Thatcher Britain film-makers fought on in their attempt to keep the
industry alive with plenty of talent but little cash. Hollywood films accounted for
85 per cent of box office takings in the UK in the first half of the 1990s. Yet
British film-makers won a third of all Oscars over the period 1976–96.82
The film which best summed up the age of Reagan and Thatcher came from
Hollywood: Oliver Stone’s Wall Street. Loosely based on happenings in the
United States—corporate raiding, insider trading and the troubles of the airline
business—it was a cautionary tale of a would-be yuppie. The handsome,
ruthless, entrepreneur (Michael Douglas) sums up the enterprise culture of the
1980s when he tells a shareholders’ meeting:

Greed, for want of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through the essence of the evolutionary spirit, greed in
all its form. Greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the
upward surge of mankind.

It would not only save their company but ‘that other malfunctioning corporation
called the USA’. The film delivers the answer from the lips of the trade union
leader (Martin Sheen) who tells his yuppie son (Charlie Sheen), ‘Stop going for
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 243

the easy buck and produce something with your life. Create instead of living off
the buying and selling of others.’

‘BLACK MONDAY’ 1987

How different the elections results would have been had Thatcher waited until
Thursday 22 October! The Conservatives enjoyed a great deal of good luck after
1979. The Thatcher era coincided with the exploitation of North Sea oil and with
low commodity prices which brought in turn low inflation. Technical
innovations such as the auto-bank and credit cards gave many a feeling of being
better off, even though many got deeper into debt. The period must also have
seen the transfer of modest wealth, by inheritance from the first generation, who
had experienced full employment for most of their working lives, to their
children. Videos, microwave ovens, computers, radio-cassette-recorders and, to a
lesser extent, mobile phones and satellite television all helped to create demand
and give an air of excitement. Eight years of strongly rising share prices also
helped. Without that rise very many would have been put off buying shares in
the privatized undertakings. On ‘Black Monday’, 19 October 1987, things started
to go wrong. Over £50 billion were wiped off the value of shares in London. By
the end of the week values had fallen by nearly £102 billion.
The slump in share prices was world-wide and was prompted largely by the
lack of confidence in the US economy with its large balance of trade and budget
deficits. Prices had, in any case, risen unduly on a speculative wave based on the
Reaganite mood of the 1980s. In the City of London sackings became common.
In December 1988 Morgan Grenfell announced 450 redundancies in the City. In
January 1989 the Chase Manhattan Bank announced that 135 of its staff were to
go. The financial services sector entered a lean period which lasted beyond the
Thatcher era. Big names got into trouble because of the slump and major
scandals helped to make small investors wary about investing their savings in
stocks, shares and unit trusts.

RUSHDIE: ‘PRISONER IN HIS OWN COUNTRY’

In 1989 the publishing world was involved in a bitter dispute about the novel The
Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Published in 1988 it was acclaimed by critics
and won the Whitbread Prize for fiction. Some Muslims, however, thought it
blasphemous, and the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini sentenced Rushdie to
death. At issue was a small part of the book which treated the Qur’an and Islam
in a satirical way. Rushdie later apologized to Muslims for causing offence but it
did him little good and he became ‘a prisoner in his own country’.83 Muslims in
Britain called upon the government to ban the book or change the law to make
possible its banning. Many writers and intellectuals rallied to Rushdie’s support.
The issue brought to the surface the sense of injustice felt by many, often
younger Muslims, in Britain. The affair caused Britain to delay the restoration of
244 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

diplomatic relations with Iran. All the EC countries withdrew their ambassadors
from Teheran. They were restored in 1990 after the death of Khomeini. In 1997
an Iranian foundation was offering £1.5 million to anyone who killed Rushdie.84
Although Britain avoided the open racial confrontation which defaced the
streets of France, Germany, Switzerland and other states in the late 1980s, many
immigrant groups felt threatened. Reports indicated that ethnic minorities were
disadvantaged in many areas of national life. Although the Conservative Party,
like the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, was adopting more parliamentary
candidates from the immigrant communities, some Conservatives made remarks
which did not endear them to British Blacks and Asians. This was certainly true
of Tebbit, who, in his memoirs, wrote of illegal immigrants attracted by the
prospects of easy living without work.85 Britain, like the other Western European
states, was faced with many applicants for political asylum. It was also faced
with the new menace of gang warfare in south London, Manchester and
elsewhere among the ‘crack’ dealers. There were signs too that the Chinese
community was in danger of being infiltrated by the Mafia-like Triad gangs.

FOOTBALL HOOLIGANISM
Football as an entertainment activity provoked much discussion in the 1980s.
Tragedy and violence marred the game. A fire at Bradford City Football Club on
11 May 1985 resulted in 55 deaths and many more seriously injured. Serious
criticisms were made of the state of the stadium. On the same day violence
stopped the game in Birmingham. Later in the same month (on 29 May) 38
Italian spectators were killed after a wall collapsed during violence at Heysel
Stadium, Brussels, before the European Cup Final between Liverpool and
Juventus. Subsequently, several British fans were convicted of manslaughter.
The violence of English fans led to English teams being banned indefinitely from
European competition. Shortly afterwards FIFA imposed a world-wide ban on
English football teams. Thus was Britain’s image as the home of gentlemanly
sport badly shattered. On 12 June British fans were involved in a weekend of
violence during the European soccer championships. Tragedy struck Liverpool
again when on 15 April 1989 95 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at
Hillsborough football ground in Sheffield. Later, North Yorkshire police were
blamed for the disaster due to lack of proper crowd control. Questions were
again raised about conditions at football stadia. In November 1989 North
Yorkshire police agreed to pay over £50 million to relatives of the victims. There
was a partial lifting of the ban in 1990/1 when two English clubs—Manchester
United and Aston Villa—were re-admitted to Europe. Remarkably, Manchester
United won the European Cup-winners’ Cup. The ban was finally lifted in the
1991/2 season. It is only fair to mention that Germany, among other states, also
had problems with football hooligans.
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 245

PRISON RIOTS/CONVICTIONS ‘FLAWED’

In 1992 Britain had a higher proportion of its population in prison than any other
of the 12 EU states except Portugal.86 This was partly due to sentencing policy in
Britain rather than higher crime rates. This was not new. Who were the
prisoners? What had they done? Males were more than 20 times as likely to go to
prison under sentence than females. Amongst males the highest rate was the 17–
20-year-olds. In England and Wales, 22 per cent of male prisoners in 1993 had
been convicted of violence against the person, 14 per cent of robbery, 14 per
cent burglary, followed by 11 per cent for drug offences and 8 per cent for theft
and handling. Those convicted of rape made up 5 per cent and other sexual
offences another 5 per cent. This pattern varies according to ethnic origin with
over a fifth of non-white sentenced offenders having been convicted of drug
offences.87
It was well known that British prison conditions were below par for decades.
Many of the inmates held in 160 prisons lived in appalling conditions. Sooner or
later serious trouble was expected. In one of a series of incidents, on 5 January
1987, prisoners took over Barlinnie Gaol, taking three prison officers hostage.
Then, on 1 June, 26 prisoners staged a mass breakout from Haverigg Prison. All
but three were soon recaptured. In Scotland at Longriggend Prison 56 prisoners
staged a rooftop protest on 19 July 1988. Early in May 1989 there were three
days of rioting at Risley Remand Centre. Its closure was announced in July after
an inquiry. On 1 April 1990 prisoners took over part of Strangeways Prison,
Manchester, and held it for three and a half weeks. This was the longest siege in
British prison history. In August 1991 there were riots at the newly opened
showpiece Moorland Gaol near Doncaster, and at Lindholme Prison in South
Yorkshire. After the Strangeways siege Lord Justice Woolf was asked by Home
Secretary Kenneth Baker to investigate conditions. Baker promised better
sanitary conditions and less overcrowding. He also introduced a new (serious)
offence of prison mutiny and new security measures. There was also an
unacceptably large number of suicides in Britain’s prisons, mainly among young
male inmates.
Even though Britain had more policemen and women than ever before it faced
a tide of rising crime. Perhaps due to media reporting of more spectacular or
outrageous crimes, there was widespread misapprehension about crime. While
young men had a 1 in 83 risk of being assaulted in a year, only 1 in 50 felt very
unsafe. Yet 1 in 3 older women felt very unsafe, with an annual risk of assault of
only 1 in 4,000. According to police figures, in 1997, nearly 94 per cent of crime
was non-violent. The police claimed that, since 1981, 999 calls were up 136 per
cent, reported crime was up 73 per cent, detections had risen by 20 per cent but
staffing levels by only 11 per cent.88 However, crime had certainly broken out of
the ghettos and had spread to the leafy suburbs. Firearms were being used more
frequently, often in gang wars connected with drug dealing. Britain was horrified
by the killing of 16 primary school children and their teacher at Dunblane,
246 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

Scotland, on 13 March 1997. A deranged gunman entered their school and fired
indiscriminately before killing himself. A similar incident had occurred in
Hungerford in August 1987. Firearms regulations were strengthened as a result.
By 1997, the police were concerned that heroin, once the scourge of inner-city
council estates, was being used increasingly by middle-class children as well.
According to the Standing Conference on Drug Abuse, there were reports of
London, Merseyside, the South West and the North East being flooded with
heroin, most of it coming from Afghanistan, Turkey and Iran.89
The public were alarmed by rising crime, and politicians took up tough
postures to reassure them. However, there was also unease about the number of
wrong or unsafe convictions. On 23 June 1988 the Commons again rejected
capital punishment. On the same day the West Midlands Serious Crimes Squad
was to be disbanded after allegations of fabricated confessions. On 19 October
1989 the ‘Guildford Four’ were released from jail after their sentences for their
alleged part in the Guildford pub bombings of 1974 were quashed. The
‘Birmingham Six’ had their convictions set aside after they had been in prison
over 16 years for their alleged part in the Birmingham pub bombing of 21
November 1974. The IRA had claimed responsibility for this crime which caused
the death of 21 people. The Home Secretary, Kenneth Baker, immediately
announced a Royal Commission to investigate the entire criminal justice system
in England and Wales. The Birmingham Six had been convicted after
investigations carried out by detectives of the West Midlands Serious Crimes
Squad. In December 1991 the ‘Broadwater Farm Three’ had their convictions for
the killing of a policeman in 1986 quashed. It is convenient to mention here three
other cases. On 9 October 1996, Colin Wallace was cleared of manslaughter
after a 16-year struggle and more than six years in prison. In 1990 he had
received compensation after an inquiry into his dismissal by the Ministry of
Defence. He claimed he had been a victim of persecution because of his threat to
expose British intelligence tactics in Northern Ireland, including blackmail of
prominent Ulster homosexuals.90 The ‘Bridgwater Three’, who had been
convicted of murder, were released on 22 February 1997 after 18 years in prison,
after the Crown admitted their original conviction was ‘flawed’. Knitwear
entrepreneur, Shafqat Rasool, was jailed for 10 years in March 1996 for plotting
to supply heroin, but his conviction was quashed in February 1997. In prison he
was refused permission to visit his son, who was dying of leukaemia in a local
hospital.91 These are some of the many cases, most of which did not receive the
same publicity. The importance given to confessions as evidence and the
pressure on the police to get results were thought to be key elements in these and
similar cases.
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 247

EDUCATIONAL REFORM: ‘LECTURERS’ PAY…

BUYS LESS’
The government pushed ahead with reforms in education and health. They were
presented as extending the enterprise culture, giving more choice to consumers,
making these services more attuned to modern needs, promoting excellence and,
above all, making them more cost-effective. In fact, they were largely a strategy
for reducing the cost of increasingly expensive services in a society with an
ageing population and a declining economy.
Under the Education Reform Act, 1988 schools were forced to introduce a
National Curriculum which included certain core subjects such as maths and
English. Few objected to this as it was normal in other European countries and
had been under discussion when Callaghan was Prime Minister. Thatcher fell out
with her Education Minister, Kenneth Baker, over history. She thought there
‘was insufficient weight given to British history’. She also wanted facts taught in
a chronological way.92 Far more testing of children was also on the agenda to
ensure that acceptable standards were attained. The two separate exams, GCE ‘O’
level and CSE, were merged into the new General Certificate of Secondary
Education (GCSE), which covered a much wider range of achievement and was
less narrowly academic. More controversial was legislation which allowed schools
to opt out of local authority control after a vote by parents. There was fear that
some of the best schools would do this, leaving only poorer schools in poorer
areas under local authority control. The opt-out schools were maintained by a
direct grant from the ministry. On 2 November 1988 Skegness Grammar School
became the first school to vote to opt out. Local authorities were also required to
produce ‘league tables’ of school exam results. Critics felt this was unfair to
schools, especially in inner-city areas, which had special problems in employing
and retaining good teachers, and where many children were not academically
motivated. In a move which its supporters claimed was trying to help just such
children, the creation of 20 city technology colleges was announced in October
1986. These were to be mixed-ability colleges with an emphasis on modern
technological skills. They were to be a partnership between local industry and
the government, taking pupils exclusively from the inner-city area within which
each was located. Critics thought they would be merely taking resources away
from existing schools. The government also put money into providing funds for
pupils to transfer from local authority schools to the private sector. On 22 July
1986 the Commons voted by a majority of one to ban corporal punishment in
schools. This brought Britain into line with other EC states.
The same trend towards introducing ‘market principles’ was present in the
government’s policy towards higher education, which saw a massive increase in
student numbers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The government wanted
universities to compete against each other to ‘bid’ for public money. Within
universities, departments and even courses would compete with other for
resources. In future their budgets would be determined partly by the amount of
248 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

research they conducted. They would be expected to get more money from
student fees and the research councils, and less from the University Funding
Committee (UFC), which replaced the University Grants Committee (UGC) in
1989. Universities had always welcomed overseas students, but now it became
imperative to recruit from outside the EU as these visiting students had to pay
full fees. Sponsorship by private business and wealthy individuals became more
important. The emphasis was on educating more students more cheaply, and
preferably in ‘relevant’ subjects like business studies. Because there was a belief
that the polytechnics did this, more importance was given to them. Under the
Further and Higher Education Act, 1992 they were released from local authority
control and became free to call themselves universities—which they all decided
to do. The UFC and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council were
merged in 1993 into a single body, the Higher Education Funding Council for
England. A mixture of sensible and dubious reforms were being introduced and,
as usual, without proper regard to finance. Over 10 years’ funding per student
was cut by 30 per cent and student-staff ratios declined. In 1987 there were 10
students to every staff member, by 1996 there were 16.5.93
The government gave university staff little encouragement. As the Financial
Times (25 January 1990) commented, ‘Since 1979, lecturers’ pay has fallen more
than 20 per cent relative to average earnings… Indeed, lecturers are one of the
few groups whose pay actually buys less in terms of goods and services than it
did in 1979.’ Other changes which were the product of government policies were
the abolition of tenure for the new generation of lecturers (or those existing
lecturers who were promoted or moved to other universities), the growing
number of those on temporary contracts, and the introduction of early retirement
and redundancy schemes.
The Education (Student Loans) Act, 1990 provided for ‘top-up’ loans for
students in higher education as an alternative to raising the grants of students in
line with inflation. The grant element was to be frozen, with students becoming
increasingly dependent on loans, casual work, sponsorship and, perhaps above
all, their parents. (‘Casual work’ did, in a few cases, include striptease and
prostitution.) Most of those in higher education, including the students, opposed
this development, as did Labour. The greatest fear was that loans would put off
potential students from poorer backgrounds. In the past Britain had prided itself
on having a relatively large number of students from working-class and other
non-academic families.
Great concern continued to be voiced about the relative ignorance of British
youth compared with the youth of neighbouring countries. Too few young people
in Britain had adequate education in maths, science or a foreign language. Too
few continued their education after 16. Too few received training once they
entered employment. A report published by the Council for Industry and Higher
Education (November 1991) revealed that the British work-force was
significantly underqualified compared with those of Germany and France. In a
‘league table’ of 15 Western industrial states, ranked in order of number of 18-
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 249

year-olds in full-time education, Britain came fourteenth. In terms of graduates

per 1,000 in any one age group, Britain was behind France, West Germany,
Japan and the USA in the number of engineering and technology graduates it
produced, but ahead of both Germany and Japan in science, maths and computer
graduates. Overall, Britain produced fewer graduates than each of these four
states.94 In the winter of 1991/2 there were a number of student sit-ins at
universities and polytechnics to protest against the underfunding of higher
education. In 1996, for the first time, university staff staged a one-day strike.
Meanwhile, Sir Ron Dearing, former head of the Post Office and Chancellor of
Nottingham University, was charged with inquiring into the future of higher
education.

NHS: ‘TERMINALLY ILL’?

Putting money into the National Health Service (NHS) was more important to
most people than anything else. Politicians had to promise to protect it. ‘Full-
scale privatization was electorally impracticable; a sort of ersatz privatization
was not.’95 Nevertheless, Thatcher was determined to introduce market
principles into the NHS.96 Ancillary services were opened up to competitive
tendering. These changes produced some savings—‘usually gained by paying the
already low-paid even less—though weighed against them should be the hidden
administrative costs of contracting out (such as increased monitoring) as well as
the disruption and loss of morale in NHS staff and, sometimes, lower standards of
cleanliness’.97 Prescription charges were greatly increased, as were dental
charges, and, a new departure, charges were introduced for eye tests. More
fundamentally, general practitioners were encouraged to become ‘fund holders’.
They were allocated budgets to buy health care for patients, including non-
emergency operations. Large hospitals, roughly 300 of them, were encouraged to
opt out of regional health authority control, becoming self-governing trusts
within the NHS. They would sell their services to the NHS health authorities and
to private hospitals and patients, and would be responsible for their own
budgets. The regional health authorities would be free to buy the cheapest
treatment for their patients wherever it was available, and wherever waiting lists
were shortest. Attempts were made to cut down on the ‘hotel side’ of health care
by sending patients home earlier. This was justified on the grounds of
improvements in medical techniques and in housing. The government constantly
reiterated the point that it was not planning to privatize the NHS, that it was
wedded to a universal service, financed by taxation and free at the point of use.
Yet the public was bombarded with advertisements for private health care. This
was beyond the pockets of most people and, in most cases, could only deal with
getting routine operations for subscribers without the waiting they would
experience as NHS patients. More complex conditions could only be treated by
the NHS. The changes in the NHS threw up costly management teams and led to
patients being shunted around the country, either because facilities were no
250 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

longer available locally or because a service was being provided more cheaply
elsewhere. In 1997 the government could cite statistics to show that more doctors
were treating more patients than ever before, and that ‘over the last 20 years,
expenditure has risen faster than total national income. Over the same period the
share of NHS expenditure in GDP has risen from 4.8% to 5.8%.’ Even so, not
enough money was being allocated to maintain the NHS.98 The government was
unable to deny that hospitals were being forced to close wards in order to balance
their books. John Chawner, Chairman of the Central Consultants Committee of
the British Medical Association, believed in 1990, ‘the NHS is chronically
underfunded [and] is terminally ill from lack of cash’.99 By 1997 the situation
had not improved. The BMA warned that hospitals were facing the worst cash
crisis in 10 years.100 A survey of nurses in January 1997 revealed that 56 per
cent felt the NHS changes made matters worse; only 12 per cent noted any
improvement.101
The threat of AIDS, first identified in the early 1980s, still seemed very
limited in Britain by the mid-1990s. It appeared to be worst in central London
and Edinburgh. The death of a few prominent figures—film actor Rock Hudson,
rock singer Freddie Mercury and film director Tony Richardson among them—
helped to increase public awareness of AIDS, as did a government-sponsored
publicity campaign in favour of ‘safe sex’.

Table 10.2 Male and female smokers in Britain (per cent), 1972, 1982 and 1992
1972 1982 1992
men 52 38 29
women 42 33 28

The threat from cigarettes had not diminished. In its report, The Smoking
Epidemic—Counting the Cost (November 1991), the Heath Education Council
estimated that smoking was killing 110,000 people a year and costing the NHS
£437 million. Figures in Social Trends (1995) indicated that fewer people
admitted that they were smokers of cigarettes. Despite these figures many young
people were taking up smoking in the 1990s.

IRA: ‘THOSE KILLED…NOT…CARRYING ARMS’

Twenty years after the arrival of British troops in Northern Ireland to defend the
Catholics, the IRA stepped up its campaign against the British Army. It carried
the war to Gibraltar and Germany as well as England. Since 1986 the terrorists
had a new weapon, Semtex explosive, which was powerful, light and relatively
safe to use. It was manufactured in Czechoslovakia.102 On 6 March 1988 three
members of an IRA unit were shot dead in Gibraltar by the SAS. Much
controversy followed because, as Howe admitted in the Commons, 7 March,
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 251

Those killed were subsequently found not to have been carrying arms.’ And the
car they left parked ‘did not contain an explosive device’. However, they left 64
kilograms of Semtex high explosive in a Ford Fiesta over the Spanish border in
Marbella.103 Two of the three had convictions for terrorist offences and it seems
certain they intended to attack a British military parade in Gibraltar. At their
funeral in Milltown cemetery, Belfast, a gunman attacked the mourners, killing 3
and wounding 68. ‘It was at the funeral of two of these mourners’, Thatcher later
recalled,104 ‘that what was to remain in my mind as the single most horrifying
event in Northern Ireland during my term of office occurred.’ Two British
corporals on observation duties were dragged from their car and lynched by IRA
sympathizers. The first bomb to be detonated by the IRA in England since 1984
went off at an Army Communications Centre in North London in August 1988
killing one soldier.105 On 20 August, 7 soldiers were killed and 28 injured when
their bus was blown up in County Tyrone.106 The worst IRA attack was at Deal,
in Kent, on 22 September 1989, when 40 musicians were killed at the Royal
Marines School of Music. Terrorists had killed the ‘witty, clever, industrious,
affectionate’107 Ian Gow, MP, with a car bomb at his home on 30 July 1990.
Between 1969 and 1989 deaths due to civil disturbance in Northern Ireland
reached a total of 2,772. In July 1989 Thatcher replaced Tom King with Peter
Brooke as Northern Ireland Secretary. Brooke had Ulster connections which
were not likely to impress the Catholics! Anglo-Irish relations came under strain
during this period. Thatcher felt Irish Prime Minister Charles Haughey (1979–
81, 1982–83, 1987–92) was not giving whole-hearted cooperation in beating the
IRA. ‘The border was virtually open so far as terrorists were concerned.’108

GOODBYE SDP
Immediately after the 1987 election, Liberal leader David Steel called for the
merger of the two Alliance parties. Months of, at times, bitter negotiations
followed. Most Liberals favoured the move, a small group who did not, split off
to form their own Liberal Party. More in the SDP had doubts about the move.
Nevertheless, in January 1988, the two parties voted to merge. Their new party
was named the Social and Liberal Democratic Party (SLD). David Owen refused
to go along with the majority of his colleagues into the new party and attempted
to keep alive the old SDP. He was joined by two MPs, Rosie Barnes and John
Cartwright. The other two SDP MPs, Charles Kennedy and Robert Maclennan,
together with ex-MPs Shirley Williams and Roy Jenkins, did join. Bill Rodgers,
the fourth member of the ‘gang of four’ also joined. Personal rivalries played an
important part in Owen’s decision. But Owen claimed he differed strongly from
the Liberals over Europe. They wanted a Federal Europe, he wanted to retain the
essentials of nationhood within the EC. He resumed the leadership of the rump
SDP from March 1988 to June 1990. After bad by-election results, the national
committee of the SDP voted, on 3 June 1990, by 17 to 5 to suspend the party
constitution, thus terminating the SDP’s activities. The decision followed the
252 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

Bootle by-election (17 May) in which the SDP got fewer votes than the other
losers—the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Greens, Liberals and Raving
Looney Party. The SDP also did badly in local elections. Many Owenites later
sought sanctuary with the Conservatives. Though he admired Major, Owen
resisted calls to join the Conservatives. As Lord Owen (from 1992) he became
the EU mediator in Bosnia.
The SLD, popularly known as the Liberal Democrats, was launched in March
1988 with Steel and Robert Maclennan as joint leaders. On 28 July 1988 Paddy
Ashdown was elected leader of the Liberal Democrats with 71.9 per cent of the
vote, and Ian Wrigglesworth, formerly of the SDP, was elected President.
The new leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown, was elected to
Parliament in 1983. Born (1941) in India to Irish parents, he was educated at
Bedford School and Hong Kong University, where he qualified as a Chinese
interpreter. He had served as a captain in the Royal Marines, 1959–71, and then
as a diplomat, 1971–76. Later he worked in management, including some time
with Westland Helicopters. His last job before his election to the Commons was
as a youth worker, 1981–83.

‘DISASTER OF THE POLL-TAX’

Anxious to curb the powers of local authorities, which were increasingly non-
Conservative, no less than 141 Bills affecting local government were introduced
between 1979 and 1989. No less than 17 affected local government finance.109
The most controversial of them was what Howe in his memoirs called the
‘disaster of the poll-tax’.110 This was pushed through as the community charge in
April 1988. It originated in the mind of Lord (Victor) Rothschild,111 Waldegrave
(Local Government)112 helped to frame it and Kenneth Baker (Environment)
convinced the Cabinet.113 Thatcher had a ‘profound personal commitment’ to
it.114 Two-thirds of the Cabinet sat through ‘innumerable meetings’ chaired by
Thatcher.115 Heseltine and Lawson argued against it.116 In a memo of 15 May
1985, Lawson pointed out: ‘The biggest gainers would be better off households
in high rateable value properties; the losers would be poorer households,
particularly larger ones.’117 The aim was to make everyone pay towards the costs
of local government and not just, as under the rating system, householders.
Under the old system, the amount paid was fixed according to the size of
dwelling. Under the community charge everyone in a given district would pay
the same tax set by their local authority. The unemployed, students and certain
other categories could claim exemption from most of the tax. Labour, the Liberal
Democrats and the nationalist parties opposed the new system, as did some
Conservatives, including Heath. Fearing defeat in the Lords the government
called in its ‘backwoodsmen’ and, on 23 May, secured the second-largest
attendance in the twentieth century.
Many people in Scotland and a significant minority in England and Wales
refused to pay the new tax. The Labour leaders condemned this type of
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 253

opposition and disowned those who promoted it. In most cases such non-payment
hit Labour-run councils, often already in bad shape financially, more than
Conservative councils, which were usually in more prosperous areas. Moreover,
those seeking to avoid payment by not registering lost their right to vote, thus
depriving the opposition parties of at least some votes.
On Saturday 30 March 1990 rioting broke out in London following a peaceful
demonstration against the poll-tax by around 40,000 people. A few hundred
protesters went on the rampage in the Whitehall-Trafalgar Square-Leicester
Square area of Central London. The Times (2 April 1990) reported, ‘London’s
image as a safe and pleasant city was damaged by the riots which caught
thousands of innocent tourists unawares.’ Lawson later wrote, ‘What was
insupportable was the anguish caused to millions of ordinary people, with no
political axe to grind, up and down the land.’118 He considered the poll-tax
Thatcher’s ‘greatest political blunder…as Prime Minister’.119 In April 1991,
under Major, the poll-tax was replaced with the Council Tax, based largely on
banded property values.

‘SOME…IDENTIKIT EUROPEAN PERSONALITY’

In October 1972 the original EEC had agreed to move towards Economic and
Monetary Union (EMU) and Britain had gone along with that. There was later
heated discussion about what the term meant, with Thatcher arguing it meant
merely co-operation rather than a move towards a single currency.120 The
European Monetary System (EMS) had been agreed in March 1979 as a
mechanism linking the exchange rates of the EC currencies. Its operating arm
was the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). The Labour government did not take
Britain in. The Conservatives argued at that time in favour.121 Yet, once in
government, they did not set about joining. The truth is: Thatcher was against it.
The Treasury was sceptical.’122 By 1985 Lawson and Howe were advocating
entry, backed by the Governor of the Bank of England, Robin Leigh-Pemberton.
At a crucial meeting of Cabinet and officials on 1 November, only Biffen
expressed opposition, that is, until Thatcher spoke. She simply refused to accept
entry, leaving her colleagues wondering ‘where on earth we went next’.123
Despite Thatcher’s opposition, there was reference to the EMU in the Single
European Act, 1986. This removed internal barriers within the EC and sought to
reduce the gap between the rich regions and the poorer ones.
In April 1988 came the draft report of Jacques Delors, the President of the
European Commission. The report called for a three-stage development to full
monetary union. Howe, Lawson and Thatcher objected to the automatic link
between stage one ERM and stage three EMU. Later, after being re-appointed as
President, Delors made a speech which was decidedly profederalist. At the TUC
he was given a standing ovation for a speech on the Social Charter. Thatcher’s
riposte to Delors was given on 20 September 1988 at the College of Europe in
Bruges. There she set out her position on Europe. She said, ‘Willing and active
254 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

co-operation between independent sovereign states is the best way to build a

successful European Community… It would be folly to try to fit them into some
sort of identikit European personality.’124 She wanted a ‘Europe of Enterprise’
not a protectionist Europe. She rejected also defence co-operation which would
weaken NATO. Thatcher felt she was blackmailed by Howe and Lawson to
announce Britain’s readiness to join the ERM.125 When sterling did finally join
the ERM (5 October 1990), she claims she only agreed under pressure from all
sides, with only Ridley as her ally.126 Lawson argued the ERM ‘would reduce
exchange rate fluctuations and we would be able to use it to assist us in our anti-
inflationary policy’. He believed Britain forfeited influence by not joining
earlier.127 Howe concluded, had Britain joined in 1985, ‘the United Kingdom
would have helped to build a secure bulwark against the excesses of the boom-
bust cycle of the late 1980s’.128
The third direct elections to the European Parliament in June 1989 were held
under the shadow of Thatcher’s Bruges speech. According to Lawson,129 ‘the
Conservative campaign…was characterized by a crude and embarrassing anti-
Europeanism’.128 Labour, on the other hand, had become the party of Europe.
Many Conservative MEPs and MPs started to feel that under Thatcher’s leadership
Britain was becoming dangerously isolated within the EC. Labour were the clear
winners, gaining 45 seats (33 in 1984) as opposed to the Conservatives’ 32 (46)
and the SNP’s 1 (1). In Northern Ireland, where the proportional representation
system was in operation, the two Unionist parties—OUP and DUP—gained, as
before, one seat each, and the SDLP held its one seat. In the rest of the UK the
old first-past-the-post system kept out the Liberal Democrats and the Greens
who, to great surprise, won 14.9 per cent of the vote. At 35.9 per cent, the
turnout was the lowest in the EU. This compared with 68.3 per cent in the Republic
of Ireland, 48.7 per cent in France and 62.4 per cent in West Germany.

THATCHER’S LAST CABINET

In his book Kill the Messenger, Bernard Ingham, Thatcher’s Press Secretary,
wrote, ‘I was beginning to dread trips abroad with the Prime Minister. I could
never be sure who would resign next on our return.’130 He was writing about the
period 1989–90. After the 1987 election Tebbit had retired, remaining Chairman
until the autumn. Nicholas Edwards (Wales) also resigned. Biffen, who had
criticized Thatcher’s style, was sacked from his post of Leader of the Commons.
He was replaced by John Wakeham. Also sacked were Lord Hailsham, Lord
Chancellor since 1979, and Michael Jopling (Agriculture). Parkinson was
brought back into the Cabinet as Energy Secretary. Two newcomers were John
Major as Chief Secretary to the Treasury and John Moore at Social Services. In
October 1987 Lord Havers (Lord Chancellor) resigned and Whitelaw, who had
served since 1979, went in December 1988. In July 1989 Moore, who had been
talked of as a possible future leader, was sacked. Paul Channon was removed at
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 255

the same time and George Younger (Defence) and Lord Young (Trade and
Industry) both resigned.
After the strong showing of the Greens in the 1989 Euro-elections, Nicholas
Ridley was moved from Environment, where he had been since 1986, to Trade
and Industry. His replacement was the ‘wet’ Chris Patten. Norman Fowler
(Employment) and Walker (Wales) left to ‘spend more time with their families’
in January and March 1990, respectively. After a row with Thatcher at the EC
summit in Madrid (July 1989), Howe was moved from the Foreign Office to
become Leader of the House; he came close to resigning. His ‘whole family was
shell-shocked’.131 His replacement was Major. After Thatcher’s return from the
Commonwealth conference in October 1989 she was faced with the resignation
of Lawson. He had asked her to choose between himself and her personal
economic adviser, Professor Alan Walters, who frequently disagreed in public
with Lawson.132 She chose Walters. Thus, Lawson gave up his ambition to be the
longest-serving Chancellor in the twentieth century. He had served six years and
four months. David Lloyd George (1908–15) served seven years and one month.
Major replaced Lawson. Hurd replaced Major as Foreign Secretary. On her
return from the Houston economic summit in July 1990, Thatcher had to find a
replacement for her friend Ridley. He had provoked a storm when he described
the EC as ‘a German racket’. Ridley (1929–96), educated at Eton and Balliol,
was a civil engineer by training and a Thatcherite by conviction.
During her period in office Thatcher sacked 14 Cabinet ministers and 21
resigned. The first Cabinet had 22 members, those of 1983 and 1987 21 each.
Between June 1987 and November 1990 all but one of the Cabinet was either
sacked or shuffled around. Kenneth Clarke, QC went from Trade and Industry to
Health and then to Education. His moves followed strong criticism of his policies
at each ministry. Clarke (b. 1940) had joined the Cabinet in 1985 as Postmaster-
General and Minister for Employment. He was regarded as a ‘wet’. Educated at
Nottingham High School and Cambridge, he had been tipped as a potential
leader of the Conservatives. Major held the Foreign Office for a few weeks in the
summer of 1990. It was difficult to believe that any of the ministers had a firm
grip on their departments. By the summer of 1990 there had been 15 major
Cabinet reshuffles. This contrasted with the way things were run in Germany by
Chancellor Kohl (and his predecessors). There, nine of Kohl’s original 17
ministers from 1983 were still serving in the same offices. By contrast, Thatcher
had only three left of her 1983 Cabinet.

THATCHER’S FALL: ‘FEW…SPARED A MOMENT TO

REGRET’
On 3 December 1989 an almost unknown Conservative MP, Sir Anthony Meyer,
decided to stand against Thatcher for the party leadership. Thatcher was the first
Conservative leader to be subject to annual re-election under rules established at
the time of Heath. This was the first time she had been challenged. Neither Meyer
256 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

nor anyone else expected him to win. He merely wished to test the unease in the
party over various aspects of domestic policy and, above all, over Europe.
Remarkably, since he did not even campaign, he attracted 33 votes to his leader’s
314. There were 24 spoilt papers and three did not vote. It was a decent vote for
the ‘gentle’, 69-year-old, old Etonian, former diplomat Member for Clwyd North
West.133 Thatcher did not read the signs and went on as before in her opposition
to the EC and in her style of leadership. When Howe resigned on 1 November
1990, after almost 16 years in her service, she was robbed of what was left of her
credibility. He gave Britain’s role in Europe as his reason.134 On 14 November
Heseltine announced he would challenge her for the leadership. Among his
supporters were former junior health minister Edwina Currie and Emma
Nicholson, a former vice-chairman, which shocked the Thatcher camp.135 For
many MPs the poll-tax, Thatcher’s mounting unpopularity on the doorstep and
personal dismay at her style of government came ahead of fears about her
attitude to Europe.136 In the first round Thatcher polled 204 votes to 152 for
Heseltine. There were 16 spoilt papers. She was only four votes short, under
Conservative Party rules, of victory. She was backed by Tebbit and Parkinson
and by those she had appointed to office. She immediately announced that she
would stand again. But less than 24 hours later she gave up. Tim Renton, Chief
Whip, had told her support was crumbling.137 The Westminster rumour machine
went into ‘overdrive’.138 Gossip ‘ran like wildfire’.139 Parkinson urged her to
stand again, as did Portillo, ‘a passionate supporter’,140 but a ‘deeply hurt’141
Thatcher resigned. She had made many enemies. Less than half her 1987
Cabinet was still in government and only three had survived since 1983.142 Yet
Parkinson believed that, had she kept her nerve for a few more hours, she could
have won.143 The battle was now on to block Heseltine. In the second round on
27 November, John Major gained 185 votes, Heseltine 131, and Hurd 56.
Although just short of the 197 needed for victory, Major was declared elected
when the other two candidates withdrew. Nicholas Ridley later wrote of the
Conservative Party, ‘It is a very cruel animal… It is ruthless and cruel. Few that
evening spared a moment to regret both the fact and the manner of her going, let
alone permit themselves a tear. There was much unconcealed pleasure at the
clever way they had got her out.’144
Thatcher permitted herself a tear.145 Abroad, Kohl was about to secure another
four years in office in the first election since German reunification. In Moscow,
Gorbachev regretted Thatcher’s fall,146 not realizing he would fall himself a year
later. In the Middle East the dogs of war continued to gather.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (1993), 3.
2 Norman Tebbit, Upwardly Mobile (1988), 203.
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 257

3 Ruth Winstone (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries (1995), 556.

4 Guardian, 21 November 1983 for Marplan; Robert J.Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out,
1937–87: History as Seen Through the Gallup Data (1989), 132 for Gallup.
5 Tebbit, op. cit., 209; Cecil Parkinson, Right at the Centre (1992), 42–3.
6 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994), 296; Hugo Young, One of Us: A
Biography of Margaret Thatcher (1991), 343.
7 Howe, op. cit., 295; Parkinson, op. cit., 234–6, 248–54.
8 Tebbit, op. cit., 209.
9 Howe, op. cit., 329.
10 ibid., 330.
11 ibid., 331.
12 Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (1993), 102.
13 ibid., 103.
14 Lawson, op. cit., 148.
15 Gilmour, op. cit., 104; Paul Routledge, Scar gill: The Unauthorized Biography
(1994), 129.
16 Routledge, op. cit., 129.
17 ibid., 131; Lawson, op. cit., 159.
18 Lawson, op. cit., 157.
19 Observer, 18 March 1984.
20 Gilmour, op. cit., 106. Peter Kellner, New Statesman, 22 March 1985, revealed that
private polls indicated that a majority of miners would not have supported strike
action in a national ballot in spring 1984.
21 Routledge, op. cit., 135.
22 ibid., 138.
23 ibid., 146.
24 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, November 1984, 33230.
25 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 564.
26 Routledge, op. cit., 154.
27 ibid., 161.
28 Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1990), 504.
29 Routledge, op. cit., 159.
30 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 575.
31 Gilmour, op. cit., 111
32 Lawson, op. cit., 161. For MacGregor’s view see his The Enemies Within (1986).
33 Lawson, op. cit., 160.
34 Winstone/Benn, op. cit., 575.
35 Healey, op. cit., 504. See also Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), 523.
36 Wybrow, op. cit., 135.
37 Healey, op. cit., 504.
38 Chapman Pincher, Their Trade is Treachery (1986), 237.
39 Peter Wright, Spycatcher (New York, 1987), 54.
40 Financial Times, 22 December 1988.
41 Howe, op. cit., 346.
42 ibid., 347–8.
43 ibid., 339.
44 ibid., 445.
258 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

45 Guardian, 15 May 1985, 20 May 1985. Francis Pym’s ideas are developed in his
The Politics of Consent (1984).
46 The Times, 3 May 1985. Walker was profiled in the Observer, 26 November 1985.
47 Young, op. cit., 267.
48 Howe, op. cit., 464.
49 ibid., 446.
50 Gilmour, op. cit., 226.
51 Peter Hennessy, Whitehall (1990), 307; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street
Years (1993), 435.
52 Howe, op. cit., 469.
53 Thatcher, op. cit., 436.
54 Young, op. cit., 449.
55 Howe, op. cit., 287.
56 Young, op. cit., 523.
57 Howe, op. cit., 419; Tebbit, op. cit., 229.
58 Howe, op. cit., 425.
59 ibid., 427.
60 Gilmour, op. cit., 116. Lord Stockton seemed to retract his statement on 14
November 1985 when he said, ‘As a Conservative, I am naturally in favour of
returning into private ownership and private management all those means of
production and distribution which are now controlled by state capitalism… What I
ventured to question was using these huge sums as if they were income.’ Hansard
(Lords), vol. 468, col. 391.
61 Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Era and its Legacy (Oxford, 1991), 91.
62 ibid., 91.
63 Gilmour, op. cit., 117.
64 ibid., 119.
65 Lawson, op. cit., 226.
66 Riddell, op. cit., 93.
67 Wybrow, op. cit., 132.
68 Gilmour, op. cit., 126.
69 Social Trends 1993.
70 Charles Pattie and Ron Johnston, ‘The Conservative Party and the Electorate’, in
Steve Ludlam and Martin J.Smith (eds), Contemporary British Conservatism (1996),
46.
71 Guardian, 8 February 1997.
72 Pattie and Johnston, op. cit., 53.
73 David Butler, British General Elections since 1945 (Oxford, 1995), 41.
74 ibid., 40.
75 David Butler, The Times Guide to the House of Commons, June 1987, 256, in a
chapter with R.Waller ‘Election of Haves and Have Nots’.
76 Tebbit, op. cit., 255.
77 ibid., 255.
78 ibid.
79 ibid., 257
80 Howe, op. cit., 533–5.
81 Advertising Statistics Yearbook, 1985, 50.
82 Guardian, 19 October 1996.
 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90 259

83 Howe, op. cit., 512.

84 Daily Telegraph, 15 February 1997.
85 Tebbit, op. cit., 129.
86 Social Trends 25 (1995), 167.
87 ibid., 166.
88 Association of Chief Police Officers, Your Police are Making a Difference (fourth
police factsheet, n. d.).
89 The Times, 18 November 1996.
90 The Times, 10 October 1996.
91 Manchester Evening News, 7 February 1997.
92 Thatcher, op. cit., 596.
93 The Times, 17 February 1997.
94 Alan Smithers and Pamela Robinson, Beyond Compulsory Schooling: A Numerical
Picture (1991).
95 Gilmour, op. cit., 191.
96 ibid., 190.
97 ibid., 190.
98 ibid., 187.
99 Independent, 9 November 1990, see his letter.
100 Guardian, 11 January 1997.
101 Guardian, 29 January 1997.
102 Thatcher, op. cit., 411.
103 Howe, op. cit., 551.
104 Thatcher, op. cit., 407.
105 ibid., 410.
106 ibid., 411
107 Alan Clark, Diaries (1993), 319.
108 Thatcher, op. cit., 410.
109 Howe, op. cit., 623.
110 ibid., 569.
111 Lawson, op. cit., 570.
112 Howe, op. cit., 520.
113 Parkinson, op. cit., 27.
114 Lawson, op. cit., 561.
115 ibid., 561.
116 Parkinson, op. cit., 27.
117 Lawson, op. cit., 574.
118 ibid., 583.
119 ibid., 584.
120 Thatcher, op. cit., 741.
121 Howe, op. cit., 111.
122 ibid., 112.
123 ibid., 450.
124 Thatcher, op. cit., 745.
125 ibid., 712.
126 ibid., 722.
127 Lawson, op. cit., 925.
128 Howe, op. cit., 689.
260 THATCHER: TRIUMPH AND FALL, 1983–90

129 Lawson, op. cit., 922.

130 Bernard Ingham, Kill the Messenger (1991), 386.
131 Howe, op. cit., 590–1.
132 Lawson, op. cit., 960–5.
133 Howe, op. cit., 609.
134 ibid., 649.
135 Parkinson, op. cit., 29.
136 Howe, op. cit., 670.
137 Parkinson, op. cit., 36.
138 ibid., 36.
139 Howe, op. cit., 672.
140 Thatcher, op. cit., 855.
141 Parkinson, op. cit., 38.
142 Howe, op. cit., 446.
143 Parkinson, op. cit., 37.
144 Nicholas Ridley, My Style of Government (1991), 252. For an account of the fall of
Thatcher see Alan Watkins, A Conservative Coup: The Fall of Margaret Thatcher
(1991).
145 Thatcher, op. cit., 857, 861.
146 Mikhail Gorbachev, Memoirs (1996), 545.
 11
IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’,
1990–96

JOHN MAJOR: ‘CABINET NO LONGER…

CONFRONTATION’
When the victory of John Major (b. 1943) for the leadership of the Conservative
Party was announced, Margaret Thatcher said she was ‘thrilled’. Alan Clark,
reflected the view of many Conservative MPs when he wrote, John Major ‘being
calm and sensible, is infinitely preferable to that dreadful charlatan, H.But John
is virtually unknown. He’s not at all flash, and a lot of colleagues think it’s flash
that we need at the moment. And he’s not classy, which doesn’t worry me in the
slightest, but worse, he doesn’t (like Mrs T.) even aspire to be classy.’1
Major had reached the top job in British politics after just eleven years in
Parliament and three years in the Cabinet. He was the youngest Prime Minister
for nearly a century. Born in Merton, Surrey, the son of a circus performer, he
was educated at Rutlish Grammar School in Wimbledon. He left school at 16,
taking employment as a labourer and as a clerk before joining the Standard
Chartered Bank in 1965. He worked for the bank in Nigeria and, later, as
personal assistant to the former Chancellor, Anthony Barber. In 1970 he married
Norma Johnson and they had a son and a daughter. After joining the Young
Conservatives at 16 Major served on the Lambeth Borough Council. He was
elected to the safe seat of Huntingdon in 1979. Major’s first ministerial
experience was at the Department of Social Security (1985–87). He served as
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, 1987–89. After a brief spell as Foreign Secretary
he was appointed Chancellor in 1989. In ideological terms he was broadly
acceptable to all sections of his party. He was liberal on such issues as
immigration and in his opposition to capital punishment. He was reckoned to be
for ‘sound money’ in the Conservative tradition but he called for a ‘classless
society’. Finally, he was much more positive about the European Community
than Thatcher had been.
‘To many senior ministers, Cabinet government was no longer by
confrontation but rather by discussion.’2 Major retained the services of
Douglas Hurd at the Foreign Office, moved Kenneth Baker to the Home Office,
gave Environment to Michael Heseltine, and gave the Chancellorship to Norman
262 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

Lamont. Tom King stayed at Defence. Kenneth Clarke and William Waldegrave
retained Education and the NHS respectively. Hurd (b. 1930) was a product of
Eton and Cambridge. A former diplomat and author of political thrillers, he had
been associated with Edward Heath. Baker (b. 1934), St Paul’s and Oxford, had
served at Education since 1986 and before that at Environment (1985–86).
Lamont (b. 1942) had been a merchant banker after graduating from Cambridge.
He had worked as Financial Secretary to the Treasury from 1986. Christopher
Patten (b. 1944) was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party with a seat in
the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He had been educated at St
Benedict’s School, Ealing, and Balliol, Oxford. He was regarded as a ‘Wet’ and
had served at Overseas Development. Major’s government was one of Oxbridge
lawyers and bankers. Its members lacked experience of manufacturing industry,
science, and the educational background of most of the electorate. It was drawn
from the south rather than the north of the kingdom. This was not new.

WAR IN THE GULF

One of the first things Major had to deal with was the continuing crisis in the
Persian Gulf. On 2 August 1990 Iraq invaded Kuwait, the small Arab Kingdom.
Having 13 per cent of the world’s known oil supply and a population of only 1.8
million (1986), it was rich, though most of its people were poor. The UN
condemned the invasion, as did the Arab League, the United States and the
Soviet Union. The Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein, declared Kuwait annexed on
8 August, by which time a powerful coalition was building up against him.
Months of diplomatic moves followed, until on 16 January 1991 Operation
Desert Storm got under way. This was an offensive of air and land forces of
(mainly) the USA, Saudi Arabia, the UK, France, Egypt, Syria and Italy. Britain
had 45,000 men and women involved, which was less than one-tenth of the US
force.3 Iraq was subjected to heavy aerial bombardment until on 24 February the
land forces moved forward. By 27 February, Kuwait was in allied hands and Iraq
had announced its readiness to accept unconditionally all UN resolutions.
Military action by the US-led coalition ceased the following day.
Mrs Thatcher had announced her support for the US moves immediately after
the invasion. She was backed up by the leaders of the opposition parties. This
national unity continued under Major until the mini-war was over. The action
cost the British forces 24 killed in action. In addition, 23 died on active service,
43 were wounded and 1,688 suffered from other injuries and illness needing
hospitalization.4 The Americans lost something like 79 dead, 213 wounded and
50 missing. Iraq suffered heavy military and civilian casualties. It was estimated
in 1997 that the additional military cost of the war to Britain was around £2,494
million. The Export Credits Guarantee Department estimated that total claims
arising from the conflict would amount to £637 million. The bulk of these costs
were met by Germany (£274m), Japan (£192m), Kuwait (£660m), Saudi Arabia
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 263

(£582m) and United Arab Emirates (£278m) and other states.5 British firms got
between 8 and 10 per cent of the contracts offered for the restoration of Kuwait.6
Despite the national unity over the Gulf War, it raised many questions about
the policy of Britain and the other Western powers. They had aided Saddam in
his eight-year war against Iran. Iraq had received sophisticated military and
scientific equipment from the West as well as from the Soviet bloc. Some asked
why the coalition had allowed the Hussein regime to survive, especially when he
started attacking, once again, the Kurdish minority in Iraq. The war allied the
West with their former enemy Syria, a regime mixed up in international terrorism.
The fall of Communism in the old Soviet Union meant that Syria had lost its
chief backer and had to repair its bridges to the West. Iran came in from the cold,
Britain restored relations with Tehran, and the Iranians remained neutral in the war.
The war caused the spotlight to be turned on the Kuwait regime. It was revealed
as an absolute monarchy with a poor record on human rights. Kuwait had been
under British tutelage until 1961. Questions were also asked about the bombing
of civilians by the United States and its allies. This contravened the 1949 Geneva
Convention. Saddam was also guilty of this by firing rockets indiscriminately at
Israel and Saudi Arabia. In London on 2 February, 30,000 demonstrators
gathered to oppose the war. Similar protests were held in Bonn and Los Angeles.
Labour MPs Clare Short and Tony Banks were among those opposing military
action. Edward Heath had his doubts and tried hard, in his personal capacity, to
reason with Saddam.
Saddam attempted to link his occupation of Kuwait with the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Although the USA, Britain and other Western
states claimed this was a separate issue, it became clear that it was an issue
which would not go away. All the British parties supported the Madrid peace
conference at which, in October 1991, for the first time, the Israelis and the
Palestinians sat down together to discuss a settlement of their differences.
One unexpected outcome of the Gulf fighting were claims made by about 750
ex-service men and women, that they had been exposed to dangerous chemicals
which resulted in permanent disablement. A Medical Assessment Programme
(MAP) was established to enable veterans to be assessed by a military medical
consultant. By December 1996 around 950 veterans had been examined and a
further 217 were on the waiting list.7 Although the Ministry of Defence helped
those concerned it refused to admit there was a ‘Gulf syndrome’, unlike its
counterpart in the USA. In 1996, however, the Ministry was forced to admit that
pesticides were used ‘which may possibly be a clue to some of the conditions that
some Gulf War veterans have suffered from’.8
One happy side of the changing situation in the Middle East was the release of
Western hostages by Islamic fundamentalist groups allied to Iran. On 18
November 1991, Terry Waite, the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, was
released after 1,763 days in chains. He had been attempting to secure the release
of others when he was abducted in Beirut. He was the last Briton to be set free in
Lebanon.
264 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

The Gulf War helped Major’s image for a short while, but the halo effect did
not last long as the recession hit Conservative voters. Major also had to unite his
party, which was divided on Europe.

MAASTRICHT: BRITAIN ‘AT THE HEART OF

EUROPE’?
In 1991 Major built ‘day by day…his personal relationship’ to Chancellor Kohl.9
Major held his first speech outside Britain in Bonn, then still the seat of the
German government. In this he said, ‘I want us to be where we belong. At the
very heart of Europe. Working with our partners in building the future.’10
Although Major also said that ‘Europe is made up of nation states: their vitality
and diversity are sources of strength’, most observers believed the speech
represented a shift of emphasis from Thatcher’s view.
Major went with his team—Hurd, Lamont and Tristan Garel-Jones (Foreign
Office minister responsible for Europe)—to Maastricht in December 1991. There
was much to discuss, much to argue about, but a great deal of preliminary work
had been done in previous, lengthy negotiations. In one key area, Sir Nigel
Wicks, the Treasury’s chief negotiator, had demanded tough preconditions to be
met before any European countries tried to form a monetary union—the famous
‘convergence criteria’.11 Major’s position was: ‘He would accept no
commitment to a “federal” union; no compulsion to join a monetary union; no
subjection of foreign or interior policy to Brussels control.’ NATO and British
competitiveness must be protected.12 The Social Chapter was considered by
Major as something which would undermine British competitiveness. In the
1980s Britain had committed itself to a ‘social dimension’ to the EC.13
At Maastricht, the tough, tiring negotiations went on; at one point Major lost his
notes revealing his negotiating positions.14 The two heads of government closest
to him were Kohl and the Dutch Prime Minister, Ruud Lubbers.15 Kohl wanted
the negotiations to succeed16 to help Major in the coming British elections. In the
end the heads of government of the twelve EC members agreed a draft treaty.
The opening words stated that it was designed as a ‘new stage in the process of
creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions
are taken as closely as possible to the citizen’.17 It established a European Union
based on the EC, which would, in addition to economic competence, have ‘a
common foreign and security policy and a common interior and justice policy’.
In the economic sphere, economic and monetary union was the aim, and
‘Ultimately this will include a single currency’. Another future possibility was a
‘common defence’. Owing to British opposition ‘federalism’ was not included in
the Treaty. It was agreed Britain could opt out of the Social Chapter of the
Treaty, which was based on the 1989 Social Charter of the EC. Britain, and
Denmark, also had the right to remain outside the single currency.
On his return Major got a majority with only seven Conservative rebels, led by
Tebbit, in the initial Commons debate on the Treaty negotiations. Thatcher
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 265

abstained as did most Labour MPs.18 The full, final English versions of the
European Treaties on Political and Monetary Union were signed by Hurd and
Francis Maude—on behalf of the Chancellor—on 7 February 1992.19 In 1993,
when the Maastricht Bill was put to Parliament, the opposition was greater and
Europe came to plague Major right up to the election in 1997.
Labour was, on the whole, more enthusiastic about the EU than the
Conservatives. It criticized the opt-out from the Social Chapter, claiming Major
could only offer the British jobs on the basis of poorer wages and conditions than
those enjoyed in other EU states. Many European businessmen agreed, feeling that
Britain was being given an unfair trading advantage.

ELECTION 1992: MAJOR DEFIES THE ODDS

Major was often accused of lacking a ‘big idea’. The Citizen’s Charter,
published on 22 July 1991, was, to a degree, his answer to this.20 In an address
on the Charter (27 January 1992) he set out six principles for the public services:
clear published standards; consultation of users and customers; increased
information to enable citizens to find out what services are available; more and
better choice; greater accessibility; greater responsiveness when things go
wrong. There followed charters for patients, parents, tenants, passengers, job
seekers, taxpayers and travellers.21 Although Kinnock called the Charter a
‘mixture of the belated, the ineffective, the banal, the vague and the damaging’
(22 July 1991), it was good propaganda for the coming electoral struggle.
Moreover, the public service had a case to answer, and it is amazing that Labour
had not thought of something of the kind themselves!
Labour went into the election with high hopes. In the seven by-elections of
1991 the Conservatives had lost all their four seats where by-elections had been
held, two to Labour and two to the Liberal Democrats. Secondly, the economy
remained in recession, the worst since the 1930s. The recession was hitting many
who would normally vote Conservative—owner-occupiers who could not sell
their homes, small businessmen suffering from high interest rates, some in the
financial sector suffering redundancy. The polls also put Labour ahead. However,
on a higher turnout of 78.1 per cent (75.4 in 1987), Major led his party, on 9
April 1992, to an unexpected victory with an overall majority of 21.
Labour seemed to suffer from the fact that it had not been in office since 1979;
some voters feared this: to them, Labour was an unknown party. The
Conservatives scored by frightening off potential Labour voters with fears about
higher taxes if Labour won. Whether higher Conservative expenditure on its
campaign than Labour or the Liberal Democrats could afford, paid dividends, is
not certain.22 All three parties could claim some comfort from the results. For the
Conservatives it was their fourth win in a row, something virtually unknown in
British politics. They had gained the highest vote ever of any party: 14,092,891
(13,736,405 in 1987). In Scotland, probably due to fears about the break-up of
the UK, they had reversed their decline. For Major it was a personal triumph.
266 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

Kinnock could claim Labour had greatly improved its position on 1983 and 1987
with 11,559,735 (10,029,797 in 1987). In Wales Labour had almost as many
votes as the other three parties combined. Labour had also improved its position
in the North of England, the Midlands and the South. It had fought off the Liberal
Democratic challenge to be the main alternative to the Conservatives. The
Liberal Democrats with 20 seats were two down on the 22 won by the Alliance
in 1987. They gained four West Country seats from the Conservatives. The last
four SDP seats returned to Labour. Owen’s SDP remnants had sought, but failed,
to get an accommodation with the Conservatives. The Liberal Democrats could
claim that, although the election result was fairer than usual between the two
main parties, the first-past-the-post electoral system once again produced a
distribution of seats that was unrepresentative of the distribution of votes.
According to Ivor Crewe’s calculations, the Conservatives won 52 per cent of
the seats on 42 per cent of the vote, Labour won 42 per cent of the seats on 34
per cent of the vote, but the Liberal Democrats won only 3 per cent of the seats
on 18 per cent of the vote. Under proportional representation (assuming a 2 per
cent threshold of representation) the result would have been Conservative 274,
Labour 225, Liberal Democrats 117, SNP 15, PC 3, others 17.23 Clearly a
coalition government would have been necessary.
In 1992, 22 seats were held by majorities of under 1,000 votes. Labour held 11
such seats and Liberal Democrats 3. Major’s overall majority of 21 rested on his
11 most marginal seats won by under 600 votes. Thus the election was decided
on a handful of votes. The traditionally superior organization of the
Conservatives must be included as a factor. Their better use of the expatriate vote
could have swung the election. Perhaps commentators have underestimated the
role of the tabloid press in this situation. The Sun claimed it had won the election
for the Conservatives. Newspapers accounting for 67 per cent of sales backed
Major. A general reason for the Conservative win was the person of John Major.
The Conservatives’ replacement of Thatcher by Major ‘was a brilliant act of self-
renewal’.24 Remarkably, voters tended to absolve his government of
responsibility for Thatcher’s follies even though his Cabinet had served under
the Iron Lady.
For Labour the result was a bitter blow. Their 34 per cent vote was lower than
at any election since 1931 (32 per cent) except for 1983 and 1987. Kinnock and
Hattersley took responsibility for the defeat and resigned.
In 1987 the far Right had fielded no candidates. With Thatcher still at the helm
they knew their appeal would not be great even among their usual sympathizers.
In 1992, the National Front and the British National Party put up 27 candidates.
All of them lost their deposits, gaining only 12,000 votes altogether.25 Kenneth
Baker, the Home Secretary, had warned against Labour and Liberal Democrat
policies in this area, which gave the Daily Express (7 April), just two days before
the election, the chance to proclaim, ‘Baker’s Migrant Flood Warning—Labour
Set To Open Doors’.
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 267

EURO ’94: LABOUR’S NEW HOPES

John Smith, QC, was elected to succeed Neil Kinnock as Labour Leader and
Margaret Beckett as Deputy Leader. Smith (b. 1938) had the advantage of
ministerial office between 1974 and 1979, and in the shadow cabinet since then.
A lawyer educated at Glasgow University, he was a good speaker and an
imposing figure. Beckett (b. 1943) had served as Education and Science
Secretary 1976–79. Educated at Manchester College of Science and Technology,
she had worked for Granada Television before winning Lincoln in October 1974.
Smith attempted to steer a path between the modernizers and the traditionalists in
the Labour Party. Smith was a formidable parliamentary debater and was making
headway among the public but suffered from ill health. He died from a second
heart attack on 12 May 1994. Beckett took over as caretaker Leader to see Labour
through the Euro-elections.
Labour had scored a victory in the local elections of 5 May with John Smith as
their leader. It was feared his death would do them harm in the fourth direct
elections to the European Parliament on 9 June 1994. As it turned out, they went
well for Labour. On a turnout of 36.1 per cent (35.9 in 1989), Labour took 44.24
per cent (40.1) to the Conservatives 27.83 per cent (34.7). This gave Labour 62
(45) of Britain’s 84 seats and the Conservatives 18 (32). With 16.72 per cent (6.2
plus 0.5 for the SDP) the Liberal Democrats gained two seats. Previously they
had none. The SNP increased its representation from one to two, attracting over
32 per cent of the vote in Scotland and 3.19 per cent overall (2.7). In Wales PC
gained 17 per cent. The Green Party vote collapsed, falling from 14.9 per cent to
3.24. Labour and the Liberal Democrats had concentrated heavily on domestic
issues. The Conservatives had played the Euro-sceptic card and, unlike Thatcher
in 1989, Major had been heavily involved in the election. To the applause of the
Euro-sceptics Major called for a ‘multi-track, multi-speed, multi-layered’ Europe.
Labour was more positive but promised to offer the electors a referendum before
ever agreeing to a single European currency. The Liberal Democrats remained
the most pro-Europe. Of the twelve member states only Portugal and the
Netherlands had (slightly) lower poll participation than Britain. On the day of the
Euro-elections, five by-elections were held. Labour held all of its four seats with
hugely increased majorities. The Liberal Democrats took Eastleigh from the
Conservatives.
Once the Euro-elections were over, the Labour leadership contest got into full
swing on 10 June. The contenders were Margaret Beckett, John Prescott and
Tony Blair. The first two also announced they were standing for the deputy
leadership as well. Gordon Brown (b. 1951), shadow chancellor, who was widely
expected to stand, announced his support for Blair. Beckett and Prescott had
traditional ‘old Labour’ images. Blair was the front runner from the start. When
the party voted on 21 July 1994 he was the clear winner. He took 57 per cent of
the votes, to Prescott’s 24.1 per cent and Beckett’s 18.9 per cent.26 Among
Labour MPs and MEPs he took 60.5 per cent. Even among trade unionists, he
268 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

had 52.3 per cent. In the deputy leadership elections Prescott won by 56.5 per
cent to 43.5 per cent. Prescott (b. 1938) had been an MP since 1970 and was the
shadow spokesman on transport. He had been a member of the shadow cabinet
since 1983. He had worked as a merchant seaman, 1955–63, and then as a union
official. He was educated at Ruskin College, Oxford, and Hull University. He
was leader of the Labour delegation to the European Parliament, 1976–79.
Blair (b. 1953) was completely different from his deputy. He was a product of
public schools and St John’s College, Oxford. The son of a Durham University
Conservative law lecturer and barrister, Blair also worked as a barrister before
entering the Commons in 1983 sponsored by the TGWU. In 1980 he married
Cherie Booth, a successful barrister, and the daughter of actor Tony Booth. Like
Smith, Blair declared himself a Christian Socialist. He had supported CND,
accepted the party’s anti-EEC policy, but was roughly left of centre of the
Labour Party. He opposed Tony Benn’s Leftism, supporting the party leaders
Foot, Kinnock and Smith.27
Blair appeared to do wonders for Labour. In October 1994, at Labour’s annual
conference held at Blackpool, he launched the slogan ‘New Labour, New
Britain’. By the end of the year, opinion polls put Labour at 61 per cent!28
A Labour special conference, held at the Methodist Central Hall, London,
voted on 29 April 1995 to drop Clause IV of the party’s constitution
which advocated ‘common ownership’. It was replaced by a desire to create a
community ‘in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the
many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and
where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect’. It
called for ‘A dynamic economy serving the public interest’ in which ‘the
enterprise of the market and the vigour of competition are joined with the forces
of partnership and co-operation’.29

LITERATURE: ‘OVER 8,000 NOVELS’

Salman Rushdie, the controversial British-Asian novelist, wrote in The Observer
(18 August 1996), that, ‘Over 8,000 novels were published in Britain last year. It
would be a miracle if 80 of them were good. It would be cause for universal
celebration if even one were great.’ This was a rather harsh judgement on his
fellow fiction writers. There were numerous good storytellers. More often than
not they had to provide us with hilarity, comedy, adultery, sex and gloomy
muddling through. Increasingly politicians were attempting to entertain us in this
way. Edwina Curry published a best seller, A Parliamentary Affair, which did,
however, come in for much criticism. Like any number of books published in the
1990s, it would have been regarded as pornographic in the 1970s. She followed,
among others, fellow Conservatives Lord Archer and Douglas Hurd. They
tended to dwell on scandals and ‘sleaze’ in politics. Despite the need to entertain,
much social observation on the state of Britain crept into the literature of the
1990s. In Madeleine Wickham’s A Desirable Residence (1996), the school-
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 269

teacher couple, ‘go for it’, in Thatcherite-style, and buy their own business, a
near-derelict tutorial college. Like millions of others in Major’s Britain they
become the victims of ‘negative equity’ as housing prices fell well below what
many had paid for their homes in the 1980s. The characters in John Irvin’s
Trainspotting, although equally contemporary, inhabited a different world from
those of Wickham’s. They existed in the very real drugs underworld of one of
Europe’s most deprived, depressed and dangerous cities—Glasgow. Among the
more established ‘literary’ writers, David Lodge produced the very popular
Therapy (1995). He satirized the increasing tendency of modern Western man
and woman to seek therapy for the unhappy state of their minds and bodies. The
book catches the mood of Major’s Britain. In his imaginary city of Rummidge,
the 1960s centre has been converted into ‘The Rialto’:

It was a typical project of the later Thatcher years, that brief flare of
prosperity and optimism between the recession of the early eighties and the
recession of the early nineties. Now the new buildings, with their stainless
steel escalators and glass lifts and piped music, stand expectant and almost
empty, like a theme park before opening day, or like some Utopian capital
cities of a third-world country… The principal patrons of the Rialto in the
daytime are unemployed youths, truanting schoolkids, and mothers with
infant children…30

He could have added, ‘and old-age pensioners’. There were many ‘Rialtos’
throughout Britain. Would there be the wealth to sustain them? Robert Harris
cashed in on the mood of Britain with its continuing obsession with the Second
World War, its anger and dismay that its old enemy, Germany, was doing so
well, and the renewed fears of German hegemony in Europe. His book,
Fatherland (1992), sold very many more copies than Therapy. It was a thriller set
in Germany in 1964 after Nazi Germany had won the war and ruled Europe! In
some ways more compelling than either, Eric Lomax’s award-winning The
Railway Man (1995), told the story of the author’s experiences as a prisoner of
the Japanese, 1942–45. One cannot help admiring Lomax’s determination to
survive, his attempts to understand and be reconciled with his former enemies.
But the book’s popularity was in part due to the continued fascination with the
war. It cannot have done anything to allay suspicions of Japan, where, up to
1996, the atrocities of the Imperial Japanese Army had still not been fully
acknowledged. Simon Weston drew on his own experience to write Phoenix
(1996), a disturbing novel about the rise of neo-Nazism among British soldiers.
Andrew Roberts with his The Aachen Referendum (1995) and Graham Ison with
Division exploited the fears of some about ‘the United States of Europe, the
corrupt, bureaucratic, xenophobic, Euro-superstate which…almost snuffed out
the British national identity’ (Roberts).
270 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

‘IT’S ALL OVER NOW FOR ENGLAND’

The above was the headline in the Conservative Daily Telegraph (27 June 1996).
It was those beastly Germans again who had defeated England in the Euro ‘96
football semi-final. The Daily Telegraph wrote about ‘the hopes and prayers of a
nation’ being ‘shattered’. It was a sad reflection on Britain that such an event
was taken so seriously and that it brought out jingoism and xenophobia. The
same paper on the same day admitted the British, ‘in comparison to their
wealthier, better-educated European partners…have little to be smug about’.
Quoting the 31st annual edition of Regional Trends, published by the Office of
National Statistics, it pointed out that eight of the fifteen member states of the
European Union were wealthier than Britain as measured by gross domestic
product per head of population. Britain had a poor record of educating its 16- to
18-year-olds. Of the fifteen EU states only Greece and Portugal had fewer in
education or training than Britain. In yet another Telegraph article on that same
day the news was that ‘British companies are continuing to slide down the
world’s research and development league table, despite rising profits and growth
in the economy’. After nearly twenty years of Conservative government Britain
had grown poorer by international standards. And its record on education and
training, and research and development, vital for industrial and commercial
progress, revealed that the downward trend was going to continue into the
twenty-first century.
The Conservatives persisted in claiming that Britain was doing well yet so
many companies, well-known symbols of British achievement, were foreign-
owned. Among them were Champneys, the top people’s health farm; Hamleys,
the world-famous toy store; Cadbury, the chocolate manufacturer; Thomas
Cook, the travel company; Harrods, the London store; ICL computers; Rover, the
car company; Wedgwood, the Staffordshire pottery firm; Rolls-Royce, Britain’s
most prestigious engine manufacturer. The bulk of British Airway’s fleet was
American-built. Whatever happened to the great British aviation industry? What
was left of British Aerospace was attempting to merge with the Taiwan state-
owned aviation company. Boots had sold its pharmaceutical research division to
concentrate on retailing. Raleigh had given up designing bikes in favour of
assembling cycles from overseas. The older industries of coal, steel and
shipbuilding almost disappeared in the way the cotton industry had at a slightly
earlier period. By 1997 the majority of the original eleven privatized electricity
companies were American-owned.31
The Conservatives told the electorate this did not really matter so much
because the salvation of the country lay in other directions, in the service
industries and in its great financial institutions. Up to a point, and as a general
principle, this sounded sensible, yet even here the picture was very patchy.
According to the UK’s National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), in 1996,
new fraud trends were reaching beyond conventional financial services.32 These
threatened to overwhelm the limited resources of the NCIS. There were any
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 271

number of cases of mismanagement or fraud which cost billions to the British

economy. They were hardly a good advertisement for the much-vaunted
‘entrepreneurial culture’. In many cases those responsible walked away from the
debris with few consequences to themselves. When British & Commonwealth
went down in what the Daily Telegraph (5 June 1990) called The biggest
financial collapse the City has known’, many thousands of investors lost most of
their money. Thousands of small businesses went under with the collapse of the
Bank of Credit and Commerce International in 1991. In the same year thousands
of Mirror Group pensioners found their incomes under threat after the strange
death at sea of Robert Maxwell,33 the international businessman. Maxwell, it later
transpired, as head of the Mirror Group, had stolen from the pension funds on a
massive scale. With losses of £750 million, the 233-year-old Barings Bank had
to be rescued from gross mismanagement and near collapse by a Dutch company
in 1995.34 Worse still were the mounting debts at Lloyd’s of London, the
traditional insurance giant. Morgan Grenfell, on the other hand, found help from
Deutsche Bank after its three top-performing European funds collapsed. There
were allegations of irregular investments in unquoted securities. Over 90,000
investors took considerable losses.35 These and other City crashes called into
question the City of London’s way of doing business and the skills, abilities and
integrity of many of its leaders. By the 1990s, many of the City’s banks were, in
any case, foreign-owned. The fact was ignored by the protagonists of foreign
investors that these ‘benefactors’ could pull out at any time, that any innovation
depends on the parent company overseas, and that they reduce the room for
manoeuvre of any government as Third World governments had found out in the
past. Here the argument is not that there should not be foreign investors; it is that
it cannot be healthy when so many key firms are foreign-owned. This is not the
case in those economic giants Japan and Germany.
The ‘haemorrhage of enterprise’ is how Alan Milburn, Labour MP, described
the collapse of many small firms in the 1990s. The Conservatives had seen the
small firm as an integral part of the enterprise culture, and their owners as a
reservoir of Conservative voters. Yet under Major more than a million of them
went to the wall. Only 171,175 new businesses were registered for VAT in the
year before April 1996, compared with almost 270,000 six years earlier. The
number of new businesses registering fell every year from 1989/90 onwards. The
total number that had deregistered over the first five years of Major’s
administration was almost 1.08 million. Only 912,000 new businesses had
registered.36

CLINTON IN IRELAND: ‘MAKING A MIRACLE’

The arrival of Major at 10 Downing Street did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm
of the IRA for violence. In 1990 there were seventy-six deaths in Northern
Ireland and six outside it.37 Of the many attacks in the early 1990s the most
daring was the mortar attack on 10 Downing Street on 7 February 1991. Shortly
272 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

before 10 a.m., when fifteen ministers and officials were on the ground floor
discussing the Gulf War, a mortar bomb exploded in the garden. Windows were
shattered but no one was hurt. The bomb, one of three, was fired from a
disguised van 200 metres away. The assailants escaped on a motorbike. On 18
February one man was killed and more than forty were injured when a bomb
exploded at Victoria Station in London. Paddington Station was also hit on the
same day without casualties. London Bridge Station was hit on 28 February with
no casualties. A bomb killed three at the Baltic Exchange in the City on 10 April.
One person died from a bomb attack at the Sussex Arms pub in London on 12
October. No details were available on another explosion in Downing Street on 30
October.38 In March 1993 a bomb killed two small boys in a busy shopping
centre in Warrington. A bomb went off in the City of London on 23 April 1993,
killing a photographer and causing £1 billion of damage. On 18 June 1994 six
Catholics were slain by the Ulster Volunteer Force as they watched television.
The UVF claimed it was a retaliatory attack.
In December 1993 Major and Albert Reynolds signed a joint peace initiative—
the Downing Street Declaration—which included the offer to include terrorist
groups in political and constitutional negotiations within three months of a
permanent end to violence. After months of pressure, including that from the
SDLP and the US, the IRA announced a ceasefire on 1 September 1994. Major
then lifted the broadcasting ban on the armed groups and their supporters. As a
concession to the unionists, he promised the results of negotiations on the future
of Northern Ireland would be subject to a referendum. This helped to entice the
‘loyalist’ armed groups to announce their cease-fire on 14 October. Other
concessions followed and British civil servants started exploratory talks with
Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA. Major insisted, however, that before
full-scale talks could begin the IRA would have to surrender its weapons. This
the IRA was reluctant to do. During the twenty-five years of violence 3,169 people
had been killed, 2,224 of them civilians.39
In 1995, with little violence, Northern Ireland enjoyed the ‘peace dividend’—
an increase in investment and tourism, and the reduction of British troop levels.
Yet the promised talks did not get under way. Sinn Fein remained barred from
talks until they gave assurances about the decommissioning of the arsenal. The
unionists would not attend because they believed a ‘framework document’,
presented by the British and Irish governments on 22 February, was the
beginning of moves towards a united Ireland. The document recommended the
setting up of a new cross-border body to deal with issues of shared concern.
Partly in disgust, James Molyneaux, leader of the main Ulster Unionist Party for
sixteen years, announced his resignation on 28 August. London and Dublin were
not too happy with his successor, law lecturer David Trimble. He had the
reputation for being a hardliner, but proved to be more flexible than his
reputation. Despite the difficulties, a wave of hope swept through Ireland when
US President Bill Clinton visited both Northern Ireland and the Republic in
November 1995. In Belfast he received an unprecedented welcome from both
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 273

Protestants and Catholics. Given the influence of the powerful Irish-American

lobby in Washington, DC, many thought the war was really coming to an end. It
was agreed to establish an international body chaired by former US Senator
George Mitchell to deal with the decommissioning of weapons and initiating all-
party talks. This move, though welcome, revealed the weakness of the British
government in a matter regarded as Britain’s internal affairs. Various
conciliatory gestures had been made by London and Dublin to keep the peace
initiative on track. Clinton had told the people of Northern Ireland they were
‘making a miracle’, but it looked like just another dream (or public relations
stunt), for the IRA resumed violence causing massive damage with bombs in
London and Manchester in 1996. There were 220 casualties when the
commercial heart of Manchester was destroyed by a 3,300-lb bomb on Saturday,
15 June 1996. Over 80,000 shoppers had to be evacuated. Manchester was more
surprising as a target when one considers that so many people of Irish
background live there. Miraculously, no one died but the damage was estimated
at £500 million.40 Two large car bombs were detonated by the IRA inside the
compound of the British Army headquarters (Northern Ireland) at Lisburn in
County Antrim on 7 October 1996. These caused one death and over thirty were
injured.

MAD COWS AND ENGLISHMEN

The government was ‘bombed’ from an unexpected quarter when near panic
broke out in March 1996 over the safety of British beef. Beef sales had been
under pressure for some time due to growing interest into healthy eating,
vegetarianism and rising beef prices. It emerged that the country could be facing
a major public health crisis because of a possible link between a disease found in
cattle, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) known colloquially as ‘mad
cow disease’, and the fatal disease found in humans known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob
Disease (CJD). The story broke as a ‘leak’. On 20 March, Health Secretary
Stephen Dorrell was forced to admit in the Commons that ‘the most likely
explanation at present’ for the ten most recent CJD cases among young people
was ‘that these cases are linked to exposure to BSE’ prior to the introduction of a
November 1989 ban on the use of offal in human food products. Agriculture,
Fisheries and Food Minister Douglas Hogg, introduced new measures to deal
with the crisis later in March. Beef sales plummeted in Britain and across Europe.
The veterinary committee of the European Union voted on 25 March, with only
the British dissenting, to ban the export of British beef and beef products. The
crisis rumbled on throughout 1996 and into 1997. Farmers had been grappling
with BSE since the 1980s. Many people believed the government had been at
least incompetent in its handling of the affair, some thought its close links with
the farming community had led it to resist the drastic measures necessary to stamp
out the disease. The crisis gave the Euro-sceptics more ammunition because of
the attitude of the EU.
274 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

CONSERVATIVES’ WAR: ‘PUT UP OR SHUT UP’

After the 1992 election Major revamped his Cabinet. Two women joined the
Cabinet: Virginia Bottomley at Health, and Gillian Shephard as Employment
Secretary. Hurd remained at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The big
change, however, was Heseltine’s appointment as Secretary of State for Trade
and Industry, and Clarke became the new Home Secretary. This appeared to be a
shift to the ‘left’ and away from Thatcherism. With Lamont still at the Treasury
the main priority in economic policy remained low inflation rather than growth.
Lamont resigned in 1993 in the wake of the fiasco over the ERM. Britain had
only joined in October 1990 but abandoned membership in September 1992. The
continued recession and worries about the future of the currencies in the ERM
put pressure on the lira and the pound in favour of the German mark. The pound
looked sick despite massive support and effective devaluation followed on 16
September ‘Black Wednesday’. Britain left the ERM and the pound floated
downwards outside it. Major came close to resignation. Lamont soldiered on
until 1993 when Clarke took over the Treasury.
The 1980s haunted Major and his colleagues from time to time. Waldegrave,
Alan Clark and Lord Trefgarne, when junior ministers under Thatcher, relaxed
government guidelines, originally drawn up in 1985, over exports of ‘non-lethal
military goods’ to Iraq. In order to avoid public debate on the issue they declined
to draw attention to the changes. The trouble was that three executives of Matrix
Churchill, an engineering firm based in Coventry, were put on trial for allegedly
breaching export regulations. They were eventually acquitted in November 1992,
but only after much controversy. They claimed they had been encouraged by
government departments, including MI6 (the SIS) only to be later thrown to the
wolves. The controversy led to the appointment of Sir Richard Scott’s committee
of inquiry. Many prominent politicians, including Thatcher, gave evidence, but
when the report came in February 1996, it was soon buried. It threw up questions
of the morality of arms exports to dictatorships, government secrecy and
ministerial responsibility. The politicians concerned rode out the storm.
Major continued to face criticism from his own side in 1994–95. Increasingly
dismayed by these attacks he took the unprecedented step of resigning the
leadership of the Conservative Party in order to force his critics into silence. He
told them bluntly to ‘put up or shut up’.41 On 4 July 1995 he sought re-election
and defeated his opponent John Redwood, who had resigned from the
government, by 218 votes to 89 with 20 abstentions. In the reshuffle that
followed, Heseltine became Deputy Prime Minister, Malcolm Rifkind went to
the Foreign Office (replacing Hurd who had resigned on 23 June) and Michael
Portillo took over at Defence. Jonathan Aitken, who had joined the Cabinet as
Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1994, resigned following allegations that a
company of which he had been director, had, in the 1980s, circumvented the
embargo on the sale of arms to Iran. Major’s brave move changed little. The
election had shown both his strength and his weakness. It had given Redwood
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 275

much publicity. The Euro-sceptics continued with their sniping and the
government’s majority sank lower and lower. It lost the Perth and Kinross by-
election to the SNP in May and Littleborough and Saddleworth to the Liberal
Democrats on 27 July. When former minister Alan Howarth joined Labour on 7
October, its majority fell to five. Peter Thurnham joined the Liberal Democrats
on 13 October and Emma Nicholson MP crossed the floor to join the Liberal
Democrats on 29 December 1995, reducing the government’s majority to three.
The government moved into a minority after the sudden death of Iain Mills, MP
for Meriden, on 17 January 1997. Major became dependent on the goodwill of the
Ulster Unionists and the Euro-sceptics in his own party. It seemed to get more anti-
EU day by day. By 19 February, Chancellor Clarke, appeared isolated after his
colleague, Foreign Secretary Rifkind, told the Germans the British government
was hostile to a single currency.42 Former Prime Minister Heath cut little ice
when he attacked Rifkind. He lined up with Labour on devolution, the minimum
wage and the Social Chapter and, as the Guardian reported on 24 February 1997,
he was advised by Euro-sceptic Teresa Gorman MP and others to leave their
party and join New Labour. The Conservatives faced another threat over their
attitude to the EU. The wealthy Sir James Goldsmith set up the Referendum
Party and threatened to put up candidates against pro-EU MPs. Beyond adding a
little more colour to the political scene, it did not seem likely to have much
impact.
It seemed symbolic of the collapse of the enthusiasm for Europe that
Eurotunnel, the company owning the cross-Channel tunnel, teetered on the verge
of bankruptcy and had to keep being rescued.43 On 18 November 1996 the
‘inevitable’ happened. A fire broke out on a freight train going through the
tunnel and several people were injured. Services were suspended for a few days.

BOSNIA: ‘HELL’S KITCHEN WAS COOKING’

The fracturing of Yugoslavia in 1991 with Slovenia, Croatia and then Bosnia-
Hercegovina declaring themselves independent led to the worst conflicts in
Europe since 1945. All three states were recognized by the EC/EU and the USA
and admitted to the UNO. After brief wars Yugoslavia recognized the
independence of Slovenia and Croatia. In Bosnia-Hercegovina a bitter ethnic
civil war broke out. The Bosnian Muslims (44 per cent) and the Bosnian Croats
(17 per cent) struggled to an agreement with each other against their stronger
Serb adversary. The Serbs (31 per cent of the population) were backed by
Yugoslavia (by that time reduced to Serbia and Montenegro) and its powerful
army. The NATO states were reluctant to get involved but, ‘Hell’s kitchen was
cooking’.44 The term ‘ethnic cleansing’ entered the vocabulary as the Serbs
forcibly expelled Muslims and Croats from their homes in Bosnia. A turning
point occurred on 5 February 1994 when sixty-eight civilians were killed by a
mortar attack in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. Television pictures of this and
other massacres led to increasing calls for NATO action. President Clinton, in
276 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

office since January 1993, recommended NATO launch air strikes against Serb
positions to protect Bosnian Muslim ‘safe havens’. When some of these havens
fell, in July 1995, the Serbs killed thousands of Muslims as at Srebrenica. The
Serbs also detained UN peacekeepers as hostages in retaliation for NATO air
strikes. NATO then stepped up its air strikes and on 5 October a cease-fire was
announced. The parties signed an agreement at Dayton, Ohio, which was
followed up by the Paris Peace Accord of 14 December. The Serbs recognized
Bosnian independence and 20,000 US troops joined 40,000 other soldiers from
NATO, Russia and other states to monitor the peace agreement. Throughout the
conflict, Clinton feared that the use of allied ground troops could lead to high
casualties and that the conflict could spread with Russia backing its traditional
ally Serbia. NATO’s credibility was also at stake. Clinton was not alone in these
fears. In Britain, Major found:

No party was more split than the Conservatives, which was divided into
four camps. Some argued that there was no British interest involved, and
that we should have nothing to do with the war. Others thought we should
try to deliver humanitarian aid, but not if our troops met opposition on the
ground. Others urged us to bomb the Serb forces, and others still wanted
both bombing and the deployment of ground troops. Overall, there was
strong unease about growing British involvement in what were seen as
treacherous conditions, with the risk of a military disaster.45

In Cabinet, Clarke, Portillo and Defence Secretary Rifkind were uneasy about
British involvement; Major, Heseltine and Hurd, in favour. From the back
benches, Heath joined forces with Benn to oppose such action. As the Bosnian
crisis subsided another Yugoslav crisis worsened in the province of Kosovo.

CHANGING BRITAIN
Britain was continuing its rapid change in the 1990s as it had done in the 1980s.
On 26 August 1994 the Sunday Trading Act came into force. This permitted
small shops in England and Wales to open at any time on Sundays and large
shops to open for six hours between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. This completed the
transformation of the English Sunday which had started in the 1940s when local
authorities were given the right to hold referenda on the opening of cinemas on
Sundays. The move was part of the continuing secularization of Britain. Figures
published in 1997 revealed further loss of support for all the major Christian
churches, including the Catholics. Less than a quarter of all English babies were
baptized into the Church of England in 1996 compared with more than two-
thirds in 1950.46 In a move to modernize, the General Synod of the Church of
England voted on 22 February 1994 to allow women to be ordained as priests. A
highly vocal minority refused to accept the change and sought admission to the
Catholic Church. Other Christian denominations already had women clergy. The
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 277

Church of England controversy over women clergy highlighted again the role of
women in society.
Women were breaking through on all sectors of the economy. It was
particularly noticeable in the media. Kate Adie became well known as a war
correspondent in the Gulf War and in Bosnia, but she was just one of a number
of women foreign correspondents, behind whom stood an army of women in
other areas of the media. Major promoted a number of women into prominence
in the public service including the head of MI5, Customs & Excise, and the
Crown Prosecution Service. Britain’s first astronaut was Helen Sharman, who
joined a Soviet space mission. The number of women solicitors rose from 5,175
in 1983/84 to 12,683 in 1989/90. Similar trends were apparent in the other
professions. In the Foreign and Commonwealth Office women represented 46
per cent of the mainstream recruitment in 1981, but 77 per cent of those entering
in 1991. In the navy women were allowed to put to sea in 1990. By 1997 almost
half the navy’s ninety ships had a total of 700 women on board.47 The RAF
trained women to fly combat planes, but the army did not send its women to the
front.48 Women still suffered sexual harassment in the forces, but were
successfully challenging this. In the 1990s Britain had a larger female proportion
of the work-force than any other EU state. Yet women in Britain were worse off
in terms of maternity benefits. The lack of nursery places also hampered women
in their careers. The government attempted to counter criticism of their record on
this with a nursery voucher scheme. Men were losing their dominant role in the
economy partly because of the decline of the old heavy industries such as coal,
iron and steel and ship-building. Many of the new jobs were part-time in retailing
and the service sector which were more likely to suit women than men. There
was speculation about what these economic changes would do for the wider
relations between the sexes and their roles in the home and in society. The
changing position of women appeared to be one of the most fundamental
changes gathering speed in society, which would eventually have a fundamental
impact on Britain’s political life.
Homosexuality became far more acceptable in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1996
the age of homosexual consent was reduced from 21 to 18. There was
controversy in the Church of England on the matter with the ‘Gays’ winning the
day. Channel 4 did much to champion the Gay cause. The armed forces
continued to fight a rearguard action against homosexuals in its ranks. Any Rip
Van Winkle who had gone to sleep in 1979 and woke up in 1989 would have
been astonished by the high visibility of homosexuals. The serious press took
advertisements for Gays and Lesbians seeking partners. Actors such as (Sir) Ian
McKellen and Stephen Fry did much to enhance the prestige of Gays.
Rip Van Winkle would be shocked by the homeless ‘sleeping rough’ in
doorways in the towns and cities of Britain and above all in London. Once again,
as they had done in the 1930s, beggars abounded in London and other large
towns.
278 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

Another noticeable change was the growth of sponsorship. In addition to the

normal advertising on television, many other programmes were sponsored by
commercial companies—even the weather reports! There was even consideration
of allowing sponsorship of the police in certain areas. Police would wear the
logos of sponsoring firms on their uniforms.
Britain was getting wired up in the 1990s. It had a higher level of personal
computers in use than many other countries. Although still a minority, more and
more people were spending more and more time ‘surfing’ the internet. You could
read the newspapers on the internet, form friendships world-wide, exchange
ideas, play games, indulge sexual fantasies, and so on. On the one hand, for those
who could afford the relatively small investment, this opportunity represented
more freedom. On the negative side, it could represent a new age of even less real,
face-to-face contact, and less involvement in trying to make society a better
place.
After bitter arguments and various promises by Heseltine, most of the coal
mines were either closed or sold off. By 1992, Britain had only about fifty pits,
not all producing coal, employing 44,000 compared with 211 employing 294,000
in 1981.49 By 1994 privatization and closure had reduced the number to twelve
with 10,000 miners. Major attempted to privatize one of Britain oldest Crown
establishments, the Post Office. There was so much opposition, the plan was
withdrawn. Yet despite its tiny majority and known public opposition, Major
pressed on with privatization of the nuclear industry and the railways. British
Rail passed into history.
The year 1997 saw Britain giving up its last major colony. Hong Kong, with a
population of around 6 million, reverted to Chinese sovereignty in that year. The
Chinese promised to retain the capitalist economy of the former colony. They
were not prepared to accept democratic reforms Britain had belatedly introduced
under its last governor, Chris Patten. Under the British Nationality (Hong Kong)
Act 1990, an estimated 180,000 individuals had the right of abode in the United
Kingdom. Not all of them would necessarily come. An unknown number of
illegal Chinese immigrants were entering Britain. What impact this new
community would have on Britain could only be guessed at.

LOTTERY FEVER
When the National Lottery was launched on 14 November 1994 Britain was the
last country in Europe to have one. Britain was the only country in which the
Lottery had private enterprise involvement. By 1996 it was estimated that 90 per
cent of adults had played the Lottery and 30 million played regularly thus
making Britain’s lottery ‘the biggest in the world’. Of every pound staked, 5p
went to the trader selling the ticket; 50p went in prizes; 28p was placed at the
disposal of the National Lottery Distribution Fund; 12p was taken in Customs &
Excise; and 5p went to Camelot, the company running the operation.50
Expenditure on the Lottery meant that consumers diverted an estimated £450
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 279

million from food, confectioneries and tobacco, and £450 million from
entertainment. Remarkably, up to October 1996, there were £58.9m unclaimed
prizes.51 There was fear of lottery addiction, especially among young people, and
that the young would get the wrong message. Forget training and qualifications
and attempt to strike it rich through the Lottery. The Lottery was creating some
new jobs, but others were being lost in other sectors of the gambling industry
such as the football pools.52 London was benefiting most from Lottery projects.53
The government seemed determined to introduce more and more gambling
opportunities into Britain. On 5 February 1997 the first mid-week lottery draw
was held. The Home Office announced in November 1996 that, after
representation from the gambling and tourist industries, a large London casino
would be able to install Vegas-style slot machines, with unlimited stakes and
payouts in designated towns. A number of conference towns were designated as
suitable. One of them, Croydon, after a free vote of its elected councillors,
rejected the idea because of the harmful social impact. But the Home Office
wanted to press ahead despite local objections.54 Three years after it started, the
National Lottery had created 320 millionaires.55 It is appropriate to mention that
there were 81,000 millionaires in Britain in 1996. Of individuals with more than
£5 million, nearly 60 per cent had inherited their wealth. The Sunday Times
index of wealth ‘still reads like a roll call of the establishment, with the
Sainsbury family, Viscount Rothermere and Duke of Westminster at the top’.56
By the turn of the century, Sir Richard Branson and George Soros were among
the top ten. A new generation of internet and mobile-phone millionaires had
joined the rich.

THE ‘SLEAZE FACTOR’

In the 1990s the seventeenth-century word of unknown origin, ‘sleaze’, meaning
squalid, dirty, filthy, seedy, sordid, disreputable, became increasingly associated
with Conservative politics, the Establishment and the monarchy. At one level it
was about government ministers privatizing great national assets and later getting
well-paid jobs on their boards. It was about MPs taking money from private
interests which could clash with their public duties. At another level it was about
preaching ‘back to basics’, returning to the alleged high moral standards of the
past and then being engaged in adultery or perverse sexual practices. Cecil
Parkinson and David Mellor were notable cases of ministers forced to resign
because of extra-marital relationships. Steve Norris, Minister of Transport,
actually wrote a book about his exploits!57 In 1993 Asil Nadir, a Turkish Cypriot
businessman, facing fraud charges in London, fled to Northern Cyprus. It was
later revealed he had been a generous contributor to Conservative funds.
Industrialist and Conservative treasurer, Lord McAlpine, admitted that his party
had received donations from Hong Kong and from US business interests. Two
junior ministers, Tim Smith and Neil Hamilton, were forced to resign after the
Guardian (20 October 1994) accused them of accepting ‘cash for questions’ in
280 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

the Commons in the interest of Mohamed al-Fayed. This was before they became
ministers. All this led to the setting up, in October 1994, of the committee,
chaired by Lord Nolan, on standards of conduct in public life. Nolan, reporting in
May 1995, recommended that MPs continue to be allowed to have outside
earnings, but that details of these earnings be published. It also made
recommendations about the rules governing civil servants joining the private
sector on leaving the public service. The government resisted disclosure but was
defeated when twenty-three Conservatives joined the opposition in voting for
full disclosure. In 1996 the register of MPs’ interests was published for the first
time. It related solely to outside earnings connected to their parliamentary work.
A total or £3.2 million was disclosed. According to the Daily Telegraph (8 May
1996) more than three-quarters of this money went to Conservative MPs for
consultancies related to their parliamentary activities. MPs were not required to
disclose earnings from directorships and other work not linked to parliamentary
work. The total figure earned is, therefore, likely to be far higher. Some MPs, Sir
Edward Heath and six former Cabinet ministers among them, refused to reveal
their earnings.58 In the case of Labour MPs, most outside financial support came
from trade unions.
On 2 October 1996 the Guardian published the names of twenty-one
Conservative MPs who, in 1987, had received payments towards their election
expenses from Harrods owner Mohamed al-Fayed. More than half of them were,
had been, or became, government ministers including Michael Portillo, the
Defence Secretary, and Norman Lament, Chancellor of the Exchequer (until May
1993). The payments were made through an intermediary, Ian Greer. At the same
time, two Labour MPs and Alan Beith, Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader,
received payments. They were not illegal. On 3 October a Labour front-bench
member in the Lords, Baroness Turner, resigned when it was revealed she was a
business associate of Greer. It is disturbing to consider that a foreign
businessman had given money to a group of MPs which together was larger than
the government’s majority at the 1992 election. The electorate had the right to be
concerned that increasingly MPs and parties were being financed by private,
even foreign, business interests. Would politicians be able to maintain their
independence in these circumstances? Conservatives had often attacked Labour
politicians for representing trade unions, but these were democratic bodies whose
members were ordinary British voters, and MPs’ links with unions were
completely visible. The Conservatives had claimed the high moral ground and
lost nineteen ministers in almost as many months.59 David Willetts, the
Paymaster-General, was the last to go before the election. He resigned because
of his actions as a government whip before joining the government. The last pre-
election blow to the government was the loss of the Wirral (Cheshire) by-
election to Labour on 27 February.
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 281

MONARCHY IN CRISIS
On 29 August 1996 the heir to the British throne, Prince Charles, got
confirmation of his divorce from Princess Diana after fifteen years of marriage,
many of which were subject to scandal and conflict. More than a little energy
was spent on the future title of Diana. On the day of the divorce the Queen
decreed that in future divorced wives of male descendants to the Sovereign
would not be entitled to use the style Royal Highness.60 The whole story was
significant only as part of the collapse of the myth of the British monarchy. This
myth had held up fairly well with the support of all Britain’s post-war prime
ministers. It started to crack with the everincreasing exposure of the members of
the Royal Family to media attention in the 1980s. Britain’s increasing economic
difficulties also turned the spotlight on the financing of the monarchy. The
mistake of the monarchists was to claim so much for the Royal Family in terms
of what it gave Britain in terms of continuity, stability, service and success.
Part of the justification for retaining a monarchy based solely on the accident
of birth, which gave the incumbent enormous wealth, massive status and great
influence, was that the Royal Family gave the nation an example of traditional
values. In fact, by 1996, the Queen’s only sister, Margaret, was divorced, as was
the Queen’s only daughter, Princess Anne, and Anne’s brother Andrew was
divorced from his wife Sarah. One other prince remained unmarried. There were
rumours about Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband. Anne made history when she
remarried in 1992. This was the first royal remarriage after a divorce since Henry
VIII. Far from being positive role models, the Royals appeared to be less stable,
less able to cope with life than average Britons.
The life-style of the Royals led questions to be asked about various aspects of
the monarch’s role. Was it right that the monarch should be head of the Church of
England? The various heirs to the throne appeared to be entirely unsuitable as
potential inheritors of that title. In any case, in a Britain in which most people led
a secular life-style, and considerable minorities followed other faiths, was it
healthy to have the state linked so closely to one denomination? Was it right that
heirs to the throne should be prevented from marrying adherents of other
religions?
Most people acknowledged that the Queen had worked hard in what she
considered the national interest. When she reached 70 in 1996 some believed she
ought to consider announcing her retirement. Inevitably, the question was raised
whether it is sensible to have the position of head of state held at the whim of the
existing incumbent with absolutely no rules or even conventions about
retirement.
The massive expenditure of time and space by the media on the Royal Family
diverted attention from the many other more pressing issues. And all the pomp
and circumstance surrounding them led many abroad to doubt the seriousness of
the British, particularly in view of the unreal arguments about British sovereignty
and membership of the European Union.
282 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

Serious doubts were also being entertained about whether Britain could
continue to pay the enormous sums involved upholding the monarchy. The
monarch had paid tax until George V in the 1930s. The Queen only agreed to pay
income tax in 1996. It remained unclear just how rich she was partly because of
various attempts by her admirers in the Establishment to obscure the sums
involved. Various costs of the monarchy had been farmed out to appropriate
ministries. Thus the royal yacht and the Queen’s flight were paid for by the
Ministry of Defence, the royal train by the Ministry of Transport and so on. Few
people realized that even the clothes worn by the members of the Royal Family
on their official engagements abroad were paid for out of taxation. According to
the Independent (27 August 1996), Princess Margaret’s week in San Francisco in
1995 cost the taxpayer £7,200 for her clothes. Prince Edward’s tailor presented a
bill for £2,200 for his four-day trip to Swaziland in 1993. In the same year, the
Duchess of Kent’s four days in the Seychelles required £4,300-worth of
tailoring.
Supporters of the monarchy argued that it helped to bring in tourists. Yet were
the French less able to attract tourists to Paris because they had no monarchy?
Was it not true that the White House in Washington, DC, attracted great crowds
of tourists? Was republican Rome unable to keep its hotels full and its museums
overflowing with foreign tourists? The same argument was used that the Royals
helped the export drive. Amazingly, those highly successful economies Germany,
South Korea and Taiwan managed without such help, and the Japanese royals
have been used little as commercial ambassadors.
By 1996 the popularity of the Royal Family had fallen dramatically as
compared with earlier periods and most people felt the monarchy should at least
be scaled down, reformed to be more like the less ostentatious monarchies of
northern Europe.

FAREWELL TO CASTLEMARTIN
On 13 October 1996 the German Army withdrew from Castlemartin, Pembroke,
in Wales. The Bundeswehr had conducted tank training there since 1961. Over
84,000 German soldiers had trained there during this period. Without doubt most
people in Britain knew nothing about this, although it was in no way secret. The
Germans had attempted to remain unobtrusive, but had tried to maintain good
relations with the local community through regular football and darts fixtures,
contributions to local charities and so on. German reunification and the end of
the Cold War eliminated the need for such training facilities in Britain. The
farewell came at a time when Anglo-German relations were in relatively poor
shape compared to the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1970s a survey showed that the
majority of British people saw (West) Germany as Britain’s best friend in
Europe. A survey of MPs in 1986 revealed that, although a few MPs could not
distinguish between the two German states, West Germany was admired by a
majority of Members of all three parties.61 Margaret Thatcher had opposed
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 283

Germany reunification in 1989,62 and Nicholas Ridley had called the European
Community a ‘German racket’. He had been forced to resign for this remark. But
anti-German feeling surfaced over fears of German hegemony in Europe. Most
Britons probably did not know that Britain was Germany’s fourth largest trading
partner63 and top destination for German foreign investment.64 Nearly a quarter
of German investment abroad in 1995—DM 10,644 billion—went to Britain.
Britain was also the biggest single investor in Germany, with a total of DM 2.7
billion. Switzerland followed with DM 2.036 billion.65 The average Briton’s
vision of Germany was the constant stream of films on television about the
Second World War and the Holocaust. Crimes committed by other states in that
war were virtually ignored. In 1995, a survey of school children revealed that when
it came to desirable foreign destinations, Germany was bottom of the list. They
would rather go to Bosnia.66 The mood was, to a large degree, the product of
ignorance and the efforts of the Euro-sceptic wing of the Conservative Party.
Other factors were the publicity given to the activities of tiny groups of racists in
Germany against foreign guest workers and asylum seekers, and the argument
about the safety of British beef.

FORMER MINISTERS: ‘SHAMELESSNESS OF THIS

MOVE…’
Another controversy which Lord Nolan sought to mediate was the movement of
civil servants and former ministers from ministries to jobs in the private sector.
In any number of cases they went to work for firms with which they had
negotiated as public servants. Tim Eggar gave up his job as Energy Minister to
be a part-time executive chairman of the UK subsidiary of an American
engineering firm supplying oil companies. His appointment was announced three
months and nine days after his resignation, just within the minimum guidelines
laid down by Nolan. Among earlier cases was Tebbit who became a director of
British Telecom, the company he privatized in 1984. Lord Young was at the DTI
when Cable & Wireless was privatized; later he joined the company as executive
chairman. ‘From the first day in his new job, he would be negotiating with the
government department he had left the previous summer.’67 Peter Walker, as
Energy Secretary, was responsible for the British Gas privatization. Later he
joined the board of the privatized British Gas as well as Rothschild, the company
that handled the flotation.68 Steve Norris, former transport minister, who had
privatized London’s buses, joined Capital City Bus as non-executive chairman.
Labour MP Brian Wilson, called it This shameless move’, which would
‘heighten the public impression that Tory ministers legislate for their own futures
rather than the national interest.’69 Norris accepted a £150,000-a-year job as head
of the Road Haulage Association, a trade body, four months after leaving
office.70 There was also disapproval when Lord Wakeham joined NM
Rothschild, the merchant bank, just six months after leaving the Cabinet. As
Energy Minister from 1989 to 1992, he paved the way for the privatization of
284 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

British Coal. Rothschild handled the privatization and payments to them were
later attacked by the all-party Commons Public Accounts Committee.71
Another case of massive financial gain was the £6 million in secret loans
granted to Roy Thomason, MP for Bromsgrove, by Lloyds, Barclays, Midland,
NatWest and TSB, so that he would not go bankrupt. His bankruptcy would have
involved his resignation from Parliament and the probable loss of his seat to
Labour. The House of Commons committee on standards and privileges ruled
that Thomason should have declared the loans.72 To April 1996, over a million
small businesses had gone to the wall since Major became Prime Minister.73 At
least several thousand of them could have been saved by the above-mentioned
banks with £6 million. In some cases the business owners lost their homes when
their businesses went under.

NEW LABOUR: ‘PLEDGE TO RICH’

In terms of its members the Labour Party that Tony Blair took charge of was not
so different from that which Foot led or even that of Callaghan and Wilson.74 It
consisted of local parties, which were a mixture of ideologues, trade union
activists, ethnic minorities and a few middle-class reformers. The mixture varied
enormously. Some parties were virtually just one or other of the first three. In
some areas where coal had been king, the NUM still dominated. In areas where
there was a strong Irish, Asian or Jewish minority, the particular minority tended
to dominate. Sometimes it was a coalition of ethnic minorities. The problem was
that the dominance of such groups put off outsiders. Alternatively, local parties
dominated in these ways did not welcome new members who did not belong to
their particular ideological, ethnic or trade union group. Such was the experience
of some who responded to Blair’s press advertising campaign in 1995. Yet it was
precisely such people Blair said he wanted to recruit, reform-minded individuals
who rejected Conservatism, who felt they ought to be more active as citizens, but
who did not have a narrow, fixed perspective on politics. If they successfully
fought their way into the Labour camp what did Blair offer them in terms of
policy?
The Daily Express (28 September 1996) headline proclaimed, ‘Blair’s Pledge
To Rich’. The leader of ‘New Labour’ had apparently pledged, ‘I won’t hit big
earners’. As the election approached there appeared to be no pledge that Labour
leader Tony Blair would not break, no policy he would not change in order to
win the extra votes to secure his tenancy at 10 Downing Street. As we have seen,
Labour had cast off many of its old policies under Kinnock and Smith, but
somehow it had remained recognizable as the Labour Party. No one could quarrel
with the argument that Labour must change with the times. It is also true that a
party in opposition can never be sure just what it will face when taking office, it
must therefore not promise too much. On the other hand, if it goes too far down
this road it runs the risk of making its own supporters apathetic. Labour normally
had greater difficulty in mobilizing its vote than did the Conservatives. New
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 285

Labour went all out in its drive to prove its adherence to the capitalist system. In
1996 Blair visited a number of Pacific rim ‘tiger’ economies and pronounced
himself impressed. Their growth rates and the increasing skills of their peoples
were impressive, but success had been achieved by authoritarian regimes, without
trade unions and with an unenviable record on human rights. The capitalist
system in 1996 had no answer to the problem of growing unemployment. Blair
appeared to agree with Major that we would have to learn to live with it. In the
twentieth century, Britain only had full employment once the Second World War
was in full swing (1940), to around the end of the 1950s. Unemployment had
grown with each successive government. Employment had been helped
by compulsory national service to 1963 and massive expenditure on armaments.
In the days just before he went to meet his maker even Lord Stockton
(Macmillan) told the Lords, The problem was never solved—let us be frank
about if (23 January 1985).
By January 1997, 31 per cent of voters saw Blair as being in the centre
politically, where 44 per cent placed themselves. Only 27 per cent put Major
there, but 55 per cent thought Ashdown was also in the centre.75 However,
despite their efforts, the Blair team failed to convince the electorate that taxes
would not go up under Labour. A Guardian/ICM (4 February 1997) telephone
poll revealed that most electors, whether Labour, Liberal Democrat or
Conservative, were prepared to pay more in tax for better public service. The
trouble for Labour was that Conservative defectors were least ready to do this.
Another possible problem for Labour was that those interviewed do not always
tell the truth, or are influenced by a number of factors. Some interviewees feel
embarrassed to admit to views, which are not entirely ‘respectable’. Some of the
support for monarchy and religion in the past was probably due to this, and
racism is likely to be understated in polls. In 1992 the Conservatives appeared to
be so unpopular that their support was understated in the polls. Would this
happen again in the run up to the 1997 election?

‘FROM INEQUITABLE TO INHUMAN’

The 1996 Human Development Report prepared by the UN revealed what a sorry
state the world was in. The wealthier were getting wealthier, while the poor were
getting poorer. The world’s 358 billionaires, including such notables as the
Sultan of Brunei and Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, the computer giant,
had more assets than the combined incomes of countries representing nearly half
—45 per cent—of the earth’s population. The UN administrator of the report,
James Speth, said if the current trends continued, ‘economic disparities between
industrial and developing nations will move from inequitable to inhuman’.
Within the developed nations the report singled out Britain and Australia for
displaying growing economic injustice between the haves and have-nots. In both
countries, the richest 20 per cent of their populations earned ten times more
money than the poorest 20 per cent. Britain came sixteenth on the human
286 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

development index (HDI) below many of its EU partners including France and
Spain. The HDI ranks countries according to access to health care, educational
standards and basic purchasing power.
The Cohesion Report, published by the European Commission in Brussels in
1996, showed that on poverty—defined as households having less than 50 per
cent of the national average income—Britain fared among the worst of the EU
states. It had about 17 per cent of all households on or below the poverty line—
the same as Spain and only a little ahead of Greece and Italy—way behind
Germany (11 per cent) or the Benelux countries (5 per cent).76
As Britain approached the election of 1997, Major struggled to keep his
fragmented party together on a mounting tide of hostility to the European Union
and ‘German hegemony’.77 The Conservatives had held office for all but twenty
years since 1918. It was a period of almost uninterrupted decline. New Labour
attempted to show itself as a safe capitalist-supporting alternative. It seemed that
Britain had suffered from the death of a sense of outrage, which had sustained
the great reformers of the past. But impoverished, divided, Britain was more
dependent than ever on its neighbours in the EU and on the world economy, and
Major and Blair knew this. The British Prime Minister had never had so little
influence and authority, power and respect in the world. Britons could take little
comfort from abroad. Virtually all of the world’s most important states faced
crises of one kind or another. In the United States the great majority of voters did
not even bother to vote in the 1996 Presidential election thus depriving not only
President Clinton, but also the system of much of its democratic credibility. In
Russia, Boris Yeltsin, notorious for his drinking, clung to office, after major
heart surgery, as President of a decaying, near bankrupt empire. In China a clique
ruthlessly enforced their dictatorship, which was anything but ‘the dictatorship
of the proletariat’, over one quarter of the world’s population. There were fears
that the death of leader Deng Xiaoping in February 1997 would bring instability.
The ruling family of the rich Indonesian Republic ran it as a family business.
Prosperous and democratic Canada crept steadily closer to splitting into two
separate states. Germany alone still appeared to be reasonably democratic, well
run, prosperous and coping with the problems of post-unification.

ELECTION ’97: ‘DEEP NATIONAL IMPATIENCE’

As the longest election campaign in modern times got under way, Major sensed
that there was

deep national impatience with our party… The feeling was amplified many
times by the bickering, squabbling and backstabbing that now afflicted
Conservatism almost like a death-wish, and which did more damage to our
prospects than Tony Blair could have dreamed of doing.78
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 287

He believed the electorate were bored with his party after so long in office. There
was sleaze—‘the exotic follies of a handful of MPs’—but it was exaggerated.79
As for Labour, it ‘managed not to seem frightening any more’. He was
‘bewildered’ by New Labour, ‘old Labour’s devious offspring’.80 He still hoped
that Labour would make ‘an unlucky stumble’ during the campaign.81 Luck
nearly came to Major’s aid when a senior adviser to Blair left ‘Labour’s entire
election campaign’ plan at Burger King in Euston Station.82 The gods were not
with Major, Labour’s documents were recovered safely. Labour was better
prepared than ever before with all the paraphernalia of modern electioneering.
Blair seemed to improve as the campaign went on. His wife, Cherie, ‘a top
lawyer, a have-it-all superwoman, Catholic, a high achiever’83 and mother of
three, was an asset. Behind Blair stood Peter Mandelson (b. 1953), an Oxford-
educated MP, former TV producer and grandson of Herbert Morrison, Philip
Gould, Alastair Campbell and several other media and public relations
professionals. At the heart of their campaign were focus groups of electors who
articulated their hopes and fears.
Sleaze dominated the early stages of the campaign. At Tatton, BBC foreign
correspondent, Martin Bell, stood as an independent against Neil Hamilton. The
opposition candidates withdrew in his favour. As the electors were getting bored
the Conservatives turned their attention to the economy, taxation, the unions and,
not least, Labour’s inexperience. Throughout the campaign posters were
displayed on key sites proclaiming ‘Britain is Booming, Don’t Let Labour Blow
It’. In private, Labour strategists admitted these were their weaknesses.84 Labour
hit trouble on 4 April when Blair made a comparison between the tax-raising
powers of the proposed Scottish Parliament and a parish council. He appeared to
be insulting the Scots with a sham parliament. ‘A press conference the following
day was like slow torture for Blair as journalists harried him relentlessly.’85
Labour also got into difficulties over privatization, something the public was not
keen on. Gordon Brown announced that, in government, Labour would compile a
list of public assets with a view to disposing of the ‘inessential’ elements.86
Drama hit the campaign on 23 April, eight days before polling, when a Guardian
headline announced, ‘Bombshell for Labour, Lead Shrinks to 5 Points as Tories
catch Euro Mood’. It looked like the Conservatives still had a chance of winning.
Also, Labour’s War Book giving details of confidential polls highlighting
Labour’s weaknesses as well as its strengths and its campaign strategy, fell into
the Conservatives’ hands.87 They held press conferences claiming it revealed
Labour was going to attempt to misrepresent the Conservatives’ pensions
plans.88 The Conservatives strongly denied they would abolish the state pension.
Labour pressed them hard on the issue. Major believed the pensions’ issue cost
them votes.89 The Liberal Democrats focused on education, claiming it was
‘national suicide’ not to raise taxes to improve the system.
All the main parties did reasonably well with their broadcasts. In addition they
had ample opportunity to get themselves across in BBC’s Question Time and
Newsnight, and other news programmes including those of the new Channel 5.
288 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

The internet, still a novelty for most people, was also used by the parties.
Additional controversy was provided by the screening, by BBC1 and BBC2, of a
broadcast by the British National Party (BNP), which was openly nationalistic,
calling for repatriation of all immigrants, withdrawal from the EU, and the re-
introduction of the death penalty. Channel 4 refused to broadcast it. Also banned,
by all channels, on the grounds of taste and decency, was a programme by an
anti-abortion group, which was fielding over fifty candidates, the minimum
required for a five-minute broadcast. Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party, the
Natural Law Party, the Referendum Party, the UK Independence Party (UKIP)
and the Liberal Party (a splinter group), all got television slots. The Times
advised its readers which candidates were Euro-sceptic and indicated a
preference for them.
Polling day, 1 May, was warm and sunny. This should have helped Labour in
that it traditionally found it harder to persuade its supporters to vote. Would people
feel happier and therefore less likely to vote for change?

RESULTS: ‘A TIDAL WAVE…’ OVER THE

CONSERVATIVES
The first seat to declare was the safe Labour seat of Sunderland South with a low
turnout of 58.77 per cent. ‘Old Labour’ MP Chris Mullin was re-elected.
Although it showed a decisive 10.31 per cent swing to Labour, all sides were
cautious about its significance. It soon became clear, however, that a historic
political landslide was under way. The first big shock for the Conservatives was
the loss of Birmingham Edgbaston at 21 minutes past midnight. It had been in
their hands since 1922. To make matters worse for some Eurosceptics, it was
won for Labour by German-born law lecturer Gisela Stuart. By 3.12 a.m. Labour
had its majority. The electorate had rejected Euroscepticism, xenophobia, racism
and sleaze. Down went Euro-sceptics Nick Budgen, Norman Lamont, Michael
Portillo and Angela Rumbold. But out too were pro-European Conservatives
Hugh Dykes and Edwina Currie. Pro-Europe Kenneth Clarke survived at
Rushcliffe. Seven of his Cabinet colleagues, including the Foreign Secretary,
Malcolm Rifkind, did not. Many junior ministers and former Cabinet members
were also defeated, Martin Bell triumphed at Tatton against Neil Hamilton.
Wales and Scotland were declared ‘Tory-free zones’. Although Labour was the
main victor in these two countries, the SNP increased its seats to six and PC
retained its four seats. The Liberal Democrats had their best results since the
1920s, a personal triumph for Ashdown. Clearly, tactical voting had helped to
bring about this political revolution, which overturned Conservative majorities of
over 15,000.
‘A tidal wave has burst over the Conservative Party tonight… The sea wall is
collapsing all around us.’ So commented defeated former minister David Mellor.
It swept the kingdom from north to south and east to west, giving Labour 45 per
cent of the vote. This was their second best ever. Ironically, in 1951 they won 49
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 289

per cent and lost! The Conservatives had their lowest percentage (31) vote in any
democratic election! The Liberal Democrats declined slightly with 17 per cent.
Sadly, at 71 per cent, turnout was the lowest since 1935. It was the highest in
Brecon and Radnorshire (82.24 per cent) and Stirling (81.84) and lowest in the
inner city constituencies such as Liverpool Riverside (51.93). Where Labour was
safe turnout was often lower. It was also on the low side in some Conservative
seats, perhaps reflecting a tendency of disillusioned Conservatives to stay at home.
In terms of seats, this was Labour’s best ever result. For the first time since 1979
Labour voters were evenly distributed between men and women.90 Traditionally,
women were more likely to vote Conservative. Labour had succeeded in
attracting more middle-class voters and had spread its representation to all parts
of Great Britain. The Conservatives had been pushed back into the rural and
semi-rural areas of England and a few outposts in London.
In Northern Ireland Sinn Fein achieved its best result in forty years gaining 16.
1 per cent. Gerry Adams seized West Belfast from the SDLP and Martin
McGuiness defeated the DUP in Mid-Ulster. This result would put pressure on
Blair to grant concessions.
In terms of parties, the electorate had been presented with a wide choice, but
all the small parties were defeated. The Referendum Party (RP) attracted 2.7 per
cent of the poll. It did better in England than in Scotland or Wales. Its best result
was at Harwich, where Jeffrey Titford won 4,923 (9.20 per cent). Many of the
RP candidates got higher votes than their leader, Sir James Goldsmith, who
attracted only 1,518 (3.45 per cent) and lost his deposit at Putney. There were
few places where the RP could have influenced the result. If, as seems likely, it
attracted more Conservative votes than Labour votes, it possibly influenced the
outcome at Harwich, where Labour’s majority was only 1,216 and in six other
constituencies won by Labour. It possibly helped the Liberal Democrats win
Eastleigh, Lewes and Winchester. That Goldsmith’s cash had some impact is
shown by the fate of the UKIP. Its candidates usually trailed behind those of the
RP. It probably attracted the same sort of voters, though its stand on Europe was
clearer than that of the RP. Nigel Farage gave it its best result at Salisbury, 3,302
votes (5.72 per cent). The RP did not field a candidate there. Only at Torbay did
it possibly affect the outcome. Without competition from the RP, it took 1,962
votes (3.68 per cent). The Liberal Democratic victor’s majority was just twelve.
The Greens did poorly, their best vote being 2,415 (5.48 per cent) at Stroud, and
the Liberals at Liverpool West Derby (4,037 or 9.58 per cent). The BNP made
little impact, its best results being in the 1930s hunting grounds of the British
Union of Fascists. In Bethnal Green, David King won 3,350 votes or 7.50 per
cent. On a 61.20 per cent turnout, he beat the RP and four others with
serious programmes. On the Left, the most important challenge came from the
Socialist Labour Party, nine of whose fifty-seven candidates got into four
figures. The best result was Imran Khan in East Ham. He beat the Liberal
Democrat, BNP, RP and National Democrat, gaining 2,697 votes (6.78 per cent).
290 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

In Scotland the Scottish Socialist Alliance (SSA) gained 3,639 votes (11.09 per
cent) in Glasgow, by far its best vote.
The number of women MPs doubled from sixty to 120, 101 of them Labour.
Among the Labour MPs were the twin sisters Maria and Angela Eagle. The
Commons had become much younger. Labour’s Clair Ward (Watford) was only
24. Perhaps this massive increase of women would prove to be a kind of
revolution of great significance for the future. The ethnic minorities secured
increased representation. All outgoing Labour MPs from ethnic minorities were
re-elected. They were joined by Marsah Singh (Bradford West), Dr Ashok
Kumar and the first Muslim, millionaire businessman Mohammed Sarwar
(Glasgow Gowan). The only Asian Conservative MP, Nirj Deva, was defeated at
Brentford & Isleworth. Labour’s Oona King (Bethnal Green & Bow) became the
second black woman MP. As ever, the Jewish community was well represented
in the new Parliament. A Jewish Chronicle (9 May 1997) survey of ‘the 20 known
Jewish MPs’ revealed thirteen Labour (eight in 1992), six Conservative (eleven)
and one Liberal Democrat (one). In Thatcher’s old seat, Finchley & Golders
Green (with redrawn boundaries) her pro-Israel, but non-Jewish, successor, John
Marshall, lost to Labour’s Dutch-born Dr Rudi Vis.
On 2 May the pictures of the Blair family standing on the steps of 10 Downing
Street flashed around the world, offering a refreshingly modern, youthful,
democratic image of Britain. The world warms to Blair’s victory’, commented the
press. The Stock Exchange responded by climbing

Table 11.1 Election results in seats 1997 and 1992

1997 1992
Labour 418 270
Conservative 165 336
Liberal Democrats 46 20
Ulster Unionists 10 9
Scottish Nationals (SNP) 6 3
Plaid Cymru 4 4
SDLP 3 4
Democratic Unionist 2 3
Sinn Fein 2 0
Independent (Martin Bell) 1 0
Other Unionist 1 1
Speaker 1 1
Total 659 651

higher than ever. Major responded by resigning as Leader of the Conservatives.

Since his party had taken over in 1979 Britain had fallen from the thirteenth
richest country in terms of GDP per person, to eighteenth. Despite this, with its
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 291

youngest Prime Minister since 1812 Britain looked to the millennium with
cautious optimism.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Clark, op. cit., 349–50.

2 Peter Riddell, The Thatcher Era and its Legacy (1991), 235.
3 General Sir Peter De La Billière, Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf
War (1992), 4. See also [Major-General] Patrick Cordingley, In the Eye of the
Storm (1996).
4 Information provided to the author by Michael Portillo, Secretary of State for
Defence.
5 Information provided by Michael Portillo.
6 De La Billière, op. cit., 328.
7 Information provided by Michael Portillo.
8 Independent, 6 October 1996.
9 Sarah Hogg and Jonathan Hill, Too Close to Call: Power and Politics—John Major
in No. 10 (1995), 76.
10 Hogg and Hill, op. cit., 79.
11 ibid., 140.
12 ibid., 142.
13 ibid., 143
14 ibid., 153.
15 ibid., 147.
16 ibid., 148.
17 The quotes are taken from the full text given in the Independent on Sunday,
Supplement, 1 October 1992.
18 Hogg and Hill, op. cit., 161.
19 ibid., 162.
20 Keith Dowding, ‘Government at the Centre’, in Patrick Dunleavy et al. (eds),
Developments in British Politics (1993), 177.
21 Conservative Central Office, The Campaign Guide 1992, 229–31.
22 Butler, British Elections, op. cit., 88.
23 Ivor Crewe in The Times Guide to the House of Commons April 1992, 254.
24 Ivor Crewe, ‘Voting and the Electorate’, in Dunleavy, op. cit., 114.
25 John Solomos and Les Back, ‘Migration and the Politics of Race’, in Dunleavy, op.
cit., 324.
26 John Rentoul, Tony Blair (1995), 399. Blair presented himself in Tony Blair, New
Britain: My Vision of a Young Country (1996).
27 Rentoul, op. cit., 85.
28 ibid., 403.
29 ibid., 488–9 for full text.
30 David Logue, 85.
31 Guardian, 24 February 1997
32 The Times, 10 October 1996.
292 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96

33 Tom Bower, Maxwell. The Final Verdict (1995). An interesting account of

Maxwell’s life.
34 Nick Leeson, Rogue Trader (1996). The man at the centre of the storm tells his side
of the story.
35 Sunday Times, 8 December 1996.
36 Observer, 8 September 1996.
37 Hogg and Hill, op. cit., 47.
38 Keesing’s Contemporary Archives, News Digest for February 1996, 40968 quoting
Hansard, 4 March 1996.
39 Britannica Year Book 1995, 492.
40 Information provided by Manchester City Council.
41 Hogg and Hill, op. cit., 270. A very useful study of the Conservatives is Steve
Ludlam and Martin J.Smith (eds), Contemporary British Conservativism (1996).
42 The Times, 20 February 1997.
43 The Times, 3 October 1996.
44 Major, op. cit., 535.
45 ibid., 536.
46 Guardian, 7 February 1997.
47 Guardian, 7 February 1997.
48 Guardian, 7 February 1997.
49 Barry Supple, ‘Coal Mining in Leventhal, op. cit., 169.
50 HM Treasury, Economic Briefing, April 1996.
51 Independent, 20 November 1996.
52 Independent, 30 September 1996.
53 Independent, 30 September 1996.
54 Daily Telegraph, 13 November 1996.
55 Daily Telegraph, 15 February 1997.
56 Daily Telegraph, 15 February 1997.
57 Independent, 24 September 1996.
58 The Times, 8 May 1996.
59 Sunday Times, 15 September 1996.
60 The Times, 29 August 1996. The most serious of the many books on the Queen is Ben
Pimlott, The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II (1996).
61 David Childs/Axel Noack, ‘Commons/Bundestag survey revealed’, in Politics &
Society in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Vol. 1, No. 1, Summer 1988.
62 Thatcher, op. cit., 792–6.
63 German Embassy, 14 November 1995.
64 German Embassy, 3 June 1996.
65 German Embassy, Economic Report, 3 June 1996.
66 Guardian, 27 September 1996.
67 Mark Hollingsworth, MPs for Hire: The Secret World of Political Lobbying
(1991). This book gives many cases.
68 Hollingsworth, op. cit., 153.
69 Guardian, 7 November 1996.
70 The Times, 18 November 1996.
71 The Times, 22 November 1996.
72 Sunday Times, 28 July 1996.
73 Observer, 8 May 1996.
 IN MAJOR’S ‘CLASSLESS SOCIETY’, 1990–96 293

74 Among the many books on Labour are: Andrew Thorpe, A History of the Labour
Party (1997); Geoffrey Foote, The Labour Party’s Political Thought: A History
(1997).
75 Observer, 12 January 1997.
76 Guardian, 7 November 1997.
77 David Baker, Imogen Fountain, Andrew Gamble, Steve Ludlam, ‘Backbench
Conservative Attitudes to European Integration’, The Political Science Quarterly,
April-June 1995. The authors concluded that their 1994 survey revealed the
hostility of the parliamentary Conservatives to the EU, 56 per cent of whom wanted
‘in effect’ to tear up the Treaty of Rome.
78 Major, op. cit., 692.
79 ibid., 693.
80 ibid., 694.
81 ibid., 690.
82 Gould, op. cit., 344.
83 Independent, 3 May 1997.
84 Gould, op. cit., 351, 353.
85 ibid., 361.
86 ibid., 362.
87 ibid., 377.
88 Major, op. cit., 716.
89 ibid., 717.
90 Coxall and Robins, op. cit., 206.
 12
BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

BLAIR’S CABINET
In forming his 22-strong Cabinet, Blair kept to his shadow cabinet team. As
expected, John Prescott was appointed Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of
State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions. Gordon Brown was made
Chancellor of the Exchequer. Robin Cook went to the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office. Lord Irvine was appointed Lord Chancellor. Jack Straw
went to the Home Office and David Blunkett to Education. Margaret Beckett, the
top woman member, was given the Board of Trade and Trade and Industry. Dr
Jack Cunningham was handed the relatively lowly Ministry of Agriculture, Food
and Fisheries. Donald Dewar got Scotland and his fellow Scot, George
Robertson, Defence. The sensitive job of dealing with the NHS was given to
Frank Dobson. Ann Taylor was appointed President of the Council and Leader
of the House of Commons. Apart from Irvine, all these were well-known public
figures.
Cook (b. 1946) graduated from Edinburgh University and went on to work for
the WEA as a tutor-organizer before his election to the Commons in 1974.
Elevated to a life peerage in 1992, Irvine (b. 1940) had progressed via Glasgow
and Cambridge Universities to the Bar in 1967; A QC, he had worked for the
Labour cause in the Lords whilst maintaining his legal practice. Straw (b. 1946)
was a graduate of Leeds University, a barrister and former President of the
National Union of Students. He worked for Barbara Castle before taking over
her seat in Blackburn in 1979. Blunkett (b. 1947), graduated from Sheffield
University and was a professional politician in local government before he
entered Parliament in 1987. The son of a railwayman, Dobson (b. 1940) entered
the Commons in 1979. A graduate of LSE from York, he had a career in the
electricity industry and was Chair of Camden Council. Cunningham (b. 1939),
son of a well-known Labour local politician, gained a Ph.D. in chemistry from
Durham University where he worked as a research fellow before being elected to
Parliament in 1970. The son of a GP, Dewar (b. 1937) a graduate of Glasgow
University, first entered Parliament in 1970. Robertson (b. 1946) graduated in
economics from Dundee University and worked for the Boilermakers’ Union
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 295

before his election to the Commons in 1978. Married with two children, Taylor
(b. 1947) was elected to the Commons in 1987 before which she worked as a
part-time Open University tutor and Monitoring Officer for a housing
corporation. She was a graduate of Bradford University. Blair’s Cabinet had no
experience of government and little experience outside politics.
Ten out of the 21 members of the Cabinet who gave information had attended
HMC ‘public schools’. At least another six were the products of grammar
schools. Five were Oxbridge graduates, two were Durham graduates and two
were Edinburgh graduates. All had a higher education behind them. Compared
with the previous administration there had been a shift from south to north. No
less than eight were Scots and two were Welsh, most of the others either
represented or came from the Midlands or the North.
More women were in the Cabinet than ever before. Five were members of
Blair’s original government formed in May 1997. The total was still five after the
reshuffle of October 1999 when they were Margaret Beckett, President of the
Council and Leader of the House of Commons, the most senior; Ann Taylor,
Parliamentary Secretary, Treasury and Chief Whip; Clare Short, Secretary of
State for International Development; Baroness Jay, Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the
House of Lords and Minister for Women. Jay was the daughter of former Prime
Minister James Callaghan. Finally, Dr Mo Mowlam was appointed Minister for
the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster after serving as
Northern Ireland Secretary. Her successor was Peter Mandelson who was brought
back into government after ten months on the back benches. He had been forced
to resign after it was revealed that he had omitted details of a massive home loan
from a fellow Labour MP, Geoffrey Robinson, on his mortgage application.
No members of the new immigrant communities were included in Blair’s
Cabinet, but two were included in the wider government. Paul Boateng served in
the Home Office, and Keith Vaz, who came from Aden, served as Minister of
State at the Foreign Office from October 1999. Boateng, whose father was from
Ghana, had been a junior minister from the start of the Blair administration.
Outside the government, Blair nominated the first Sikh, Tarsem King, managing
director of Sandwell Polybags and leader of Sandwell Borough Council, to be
elevated to the Lords in 1999. Also on the Labour benches in the Lords were
Lord Nazir Ahmed (1998) of Rotherham, a well-known member of the Muslim
community, Lord Paul (1996), Indian-born standard bearer for British-Asian
businessmen, Lord Alli (1998), Lord Bagri (1997), Lord Desai (1990), Professor
of Economics at the LSE, Lord Patel of Blackburn (2000), and Professor Bhikhu
Parekh of Hull University.
What was New Labour’s parliamentary party in sociological terms? Never
before had so few manual workers—13 per cent—been elected on the Labour
side. When Labour last won an election in 1974, 28 per cent came from manual
occupations. A few more ex-manual workers were among the former union
officials elected. Of course, many Labour MPs were from working-class homes.
Trade union sponsorship of MPs was discontinued in 1995 and replaced by
296 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

‘constituency plan agreements’ between unions and selected local Labour Parties.1
This was likely to further reduce the manual working class in the Commons.
More Labour MPs (66 per cent) than ever before were graduates. Labour was
heavily weighted to public-sector professions, especially teaching and local
government. In absolute terms, Labour’s top professions were school teachers 54,
politicians or political organizers 40, polytechnic or college lecturers 35, civil
servants/ local government 30, publishers or journalists 29, barristers or
solicitors 29, and university lecturers 22. Out of 418 Labour MPs, 111 were in
education. Altogether 37 (9 per cent) of Labour MPs claimed business or
managerial experience.2

HAGUE: CONSERVATIVE LEADER

With the resignation of John Major as Conservative leader after the election
defeat of 1997, the Conservatives had to choose a leader from their depleted
ranks. Under the rules the leader, elected exclusively by MPs, had to get a
majority of the votes and a margin of 15 per cent of those entitled to vote over
his or her nearest challenger. William Hague came second of the five candidates
in the first ballot with 41 votes out of 164. Kenneth Clarke led with 49. The
bottom two candidates then dropped out. In the second ballot, the winner would
be any candidate gaining an overall majority. This time Clarke scored 64 to
Hague’s 62. John Redwood was then eliminated. In the third round Hague beat
Clarke by 92 votes to 70. Certainly before the contest, Hague was hardly known
to the public. He was born in 1961, the son of a Yorkshire businessman. From
Wath-on-Deane Comprehensive School he went to Magdalen College, Oxford,
where he was President of the Oxford Union in 1981. After further studies at
INSTEAD Business School in France, Hague joined Shell UK. He worked for
McKinsey & Company, 1983–88, entering Parliament in a by-election in 1989.
He thrived under Major, ending up as Welsh Secretary, 1995–97, not a job which
had got him many headlines. However, he had served under Howe, Leon Brittan
and Lamont and thus had covered a broad spectrum of Conservative politics. It
was no easy task for him to put together a shadow cabinet to strike the public
imagination and he was dogged, like his predecessor, by internal party strife. He
had to decide what to keep and what to ditch of the inheritance of Major and
Thatcher. Hague lost no time in getting married after becoming Conservative
leader.

LIBERAL DEMOCRATS: ASHDOWN GOES

To considerable surprise Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Democrats since
July 1988, announced he would retire in mid-1999. He was still only 58. In 1997
he had led his party to its greatest success since 1929. It had overtaken the
Conservatives at the local government level and had moved back near the centre
of the political stage after being so long a party of the Celtic fringe, which
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 297

occasionally pulled off a spectacular by-election success. Ashdown and other

Liberal Democrats had served on a special Cabinet committee under Blair to
discuss constitutional and electoral reform. They could claim some success in
this direction. Former Social Democrat Charles Kennedy succeeded Ashdown. On
9 August he was declared the winner in the leadership contest. Over four ballots
he defeated four of his colleagues, gaining 56.6 per cent of the vote to 43.4 per
cent for Simon Hughes MP. One disappointing aspect of the election was that
only 62 per cent of those eligible voted by returning their postal votes. The
Liberal Democrats prided themselves as a party of grassroots activists, unlike the
other two parties. The other aspect of the contest was that Kennedy achieved
victory with a much lower margin than Ashdown in 1988. Kennedy (b. 1959),
was the son of a Scottish crofter who, after graduating from Glasgow University,
studied at Indiana University on a Fulbright Scholarship. He was elected to the
Commons in 1983 after working as a journalist. At the annual Liberal Democrat
conference at Harrogate in September 1999, he rejected calls from activists to
position the party to the left of Labour. Instead, he called for a strong,
independent, progressive party. He wanted a more powerful European Union and
an early referendum on British entry to the euro, which he supported. His
difficulty was how to reconcile the desire of many members that the party was a
distinctive force in British politics, yet to continue to benefit from association
with a popular prime minister.

DECLINE OF POLITICAL INTEREST?

Under Blair, interest in politics seemed to be waning. Turnout at the European
elections, local elections and by-elections was low. The worst case was the
Leeds Central by-election on 10 June 1999 when Labour held the seat on a 19.6
per cent turnout, the lowest at any parliamentary election since 1945. Labour
held Wigan on 23 September on a turnout of 25 per cent. In both cases there was
a swing to the Conservatives. Because the SNP was the challenger, there was
greater interest in the Hamilton South contest on the same day. There 41 per cent
voted and Labour held on in spite of a 22.6 per cent swing to the SNP. Political
interest was undermined to a degree by the disarray in the Conservative ranks,
discipline in Labour’s ranks, the relative closeness of the Liberal Democrats to
Labour, the apparent success of the economy promoting optimism, and the
growth of other diversions—sport, celebrities and dominance of US stories in the
British media. British domestic politics appeared dull and of little relevance.
After their massive defeat the Conservatives found it difficult to chart out an area
on the political map. There was less to argue about as New Labour had taken
over some policies and values associated with their old opponents and the
Conservatives wanted to distance themselves from much of their recent past.
New Labour did its best to promote these trends by pushing its new ideology of
enterprise, achievement and merit which somehow seemed to come across better
from ‘classless’ Labour politicians and ‘spin doctors’ than they did from the
298 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

Conservatives, most of whom were from more old-style privileged backgrounds.

The Prime Minister and his wife, Cherie Booth, were themselves far more of
celebrities than their predecessors, the Majors. With the rise and rise of football
and pop culture celebrities such as footballers Paul Gaiscogne, David Beckham,
Gary Lineker and Alan Shearer, the Spice Girls and Chris Evans, radio and TV
presenter who went on to be a media tycoon himself, came to the fore. Blair got
his share of positive publicity but he was often seen deferring to his political
soulmate, the handsome President Bill Clinton. For most of 1998 the media
intrigued television viewers with astonishing, salacious and sordid revelations
about the President’s intimacies with Monica Lewinsky. The official Starr
Report did not spare the President and was available as a reasonably priced
paperback. Meanwhile, another celebrity vanished suddenly from our screens.
In the early hours of 30 August 1997 the news media stunned many by
announcing that Diana, Princess of Wales, had been killed in Paris in a car crash.
The death of the former wife of Prince Charles, although of no political
significance, hit Britain in the same way as the assassination of President
Kennedy had hit the US in 1963. A leggy blonde, Diana had gained millions of
fans by constant media attention. She had admitted adultery on television in 1995
and struck a chord with perhaps half her audience who were themselves either
divorced or who had divorced parents. She told her audience that the ‘biggest
disease’ was people being unloved. Like millions she used the anti-depressant
Prozac.3 As she got older Diana got involved with good causes, children’s
charities, Aids and the anti-land-mines’ campaign. This endeared her to a more
serious audience. The circumstances of her death, with Dodi Fayed, added even
greater interest. Fayed senior, Mohamed al-Fayed, claimed the two were victims
of a conspiracy by the ‘British Establishment’. He claimed they had marriage
plans. The days up to and beyond her funeral gave the media thousands of
stories. It appeared that every politician and every celebrity had to say something.
Typical comments were those of old Conservative Kenneth Clarke MP: ‘She was
treated disgracefully by sections of the press.’ New Labour MP, Vernon Coaker,
called for a national day of mourning. He said the ‘nation as a whole needs to
grieve properly. This is a devastating day’.4 Abroad, Michael Jackson cancelled a
concert in Belgium on hearing the news of Diana’s death. The funeral service in
Westminster Abbey presented Blair with an excellent media event. The Royals
underestimated the effect of Diana’s death and appeared to react slowly, if not
coldly. They lost ground rapidly after the death of Diana, who had given them a
glamorous, larger-than-life image. They were ill-suited to the age of informality,
instant intimacy, intrusive journalism and total exposure. The death of Diana led
to calls for greater protection of privacy.

COMING OUT
Investigative journalism had played a considerable part in the downfall of the
Conservatives under John Major. Blair decided that all skeletons should be
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 299

brought out of the cupboard from the start rather than by journalists at a later
stage. One significant change in this respect was the openness about MPs’ sexual
orientation. Until the advent of Blair’s premiership this had been very much a
taboo subject. In the Cabinet, Chris Smith, the Culture Secretary, announced that
he was gay. Nick Brown, Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, followed
him. Peter Mandelson refused at first to comment on his sexual orientation, but
later admitted that he too was gay, without damage to his career. In fact, by the
reshuffle of October 1999 he ranked fifth or sixth in a Cabinet of 22. Michael
Portillo, Defence Secretary under Major, kept his gay student days out of the
media whilst he was in office. His gay past only came to the public attention
when he was attempting to re-enter the Commons in 1999. He succeeded at the
by-election for Kensington and Chelsea. His Labour successor as MP for Enfield
Southgate, Stephen Twigg, had made no secret of his gay orientation during the
election campaign of 1997. In the Lords, Lord Alli was the only openly
homosexual peer. He had been ennobled, aged 34, by Blair in 1998. He was
consulted by Blair on youth and other matters. Outside politics, Michael
Barrymore, one of Britain’s leading television entertainers, got a divorce from
his wife Cheryl, and announced he was gay. OK! First for Celebrity News (29
December 1999) magazine thought its readers would want fifteen pages of him
with his new, young, boyfriend, Shaun. The couple told the readers, ‘We want to
adopt a child one day.’ Another sign of the times was the availability of the
magazine Diva Lesbian Life and Style in WH Smith, a store not renowned for
being unorthodox. Following a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, in
September 1999, the armed services were forced to give up their opposition to
having open homo- sexuals in their ranks. Three men and one woman who had
been dismissed in 1993–94 because of their sexual orientation were offered
reinstatement.
Another aspect of the changed climate was the ‘discovery’ by politicians of
family members who were the product of pre-marital or extra-marital
relationships. Clare Short was reunited with her grown-up son, the product of a
teenage liaison, whom she had given up for adoption. In 1999 former Prime
Minister, John Major, revealed that he had a half-sister, his father’s ‘love-child’,
who had been adopted by a cowhand. ‘I’m so pleased to have found her,’ he was
reported as saying.5
Blair’s colleagues also took divorce in their stride. Three had experience of
divorce before joining the Cabinet. Robin Cook and his wife of thirty years
announced their divorce shortly after he took office. In a classic case, he married
his much younger secretary. In 2000, Peter Hain, Cook’s junior in the Foreign
Office, and his wife announced their separation after nearly twenty-five years of
marriage.
300 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

TASKFORCES: ‘A MUCH WIDER SOURCE OF

ADVICE’?
New Labour seemed to bring with it a new political vocabulary. One solution to
any problem seemed to be to set up a ‘taskforce’ to investigate it. Government
figures showed that forty had been set up between 1997 and January 2000.
Among them were taskforces on urban renewal, pensions, football and even
‘near-earth objects’. The first was headed by Lord Falconer who claimed, that

before they make decisions, Ministers can receive advice from beyond only
the traditional advice available either within Whitehall or beyond
Whitehall in relation to special interest groups… It makes for more
transparent government and provides a much wider source of advice.

Unlike ‘quangos’ (NDPB), part and parcel of the previous government’s

arrangements, they were not permanent and members were not paid. Some
thought they should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny and that they
downgraded Parliament.6 Another way of ‘tackling’ a problem was to appointed
‘Tsar’ to sort it out. Most notably Keith Hallawell, a senior police officer, was
appointed ‘drugs’ tsar’. In March 2000 it was announced that heart patients
would go on a ‘fast track’ which was to be overseen by a ‘heart tsar’. This was
part of a ‘national crusade’. Thus heart patients joined young offenders, asylum
seekers and others on fast tracks. Hopefully, they would reach a more pleasant
terminus. There were education ‘hit squads’ to take over failing schools. Such
terminology was designed by ‘spin doctors’ to make the public feel that this was
a tough ‘no nonsense’ government, which would take drastic action to solve
problems. The term ‘spin doctor’ was not new nor was the deployment of such
publicity experts. In fact, successive governments and institutions had turned
increasingly to public relations to make themselves popular. In 1979 Buckingham
Palace employed only three information officers; by 1995 it employed twelve.
The Inland Revenue employed five and eighteen in those years, respectively. In
the same period the Metropolitan Police’s public information officers increased
from six to sixty-one! In the private sector, the employers’ body, the
Confederation of British Industry, increased the number of its information
officers from eight to eighteen.7 Betty Boothroyd, Labour MP and Speaker of the
Commons, launched what The Times (6 April 2000) called, ‘an astonishing
attack on the Government for making major policy announcements in the media
before informing Parliament’.
The accusation that Blair and his colleagues were ‘downgrading Parliament’
was a perception which was fairly widespread. Labour MPs were less likely to
dissent than of old. This was partly the result of the tougher discipline introduced
before the 1997 election. There were tighter standing orders and Labour MPs
were equipped with electronic message pagers to keep them informed of the
party line. The fact that 192 Labour MPs out of 418 had no previous
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 301

parliamentary experience must have made it easier to keep them in line. Some in
Labour’s ranks thought their leaders were ‘control freaks’. Most of those who did
rebel were old hands like Jeremy Corbyn, Tony Benn, Dennis Skinner, Audrey
Wise, Tam Dalyell, Alan Simpson, Diane Abbott, Ken Livingstone and Ann
Clwyd. These were joined by two of the new intake, John McDonnell and Kelvin
Hopkins. Even among the top rebels there were wide differences in their
propensity to dissent. In the first two sessions of Parliament Corbyn voted against
the government twenty-four times but Livingstone did so on only thirteen
occasions. Women MPs seemed less inclined to rebel than men and none of the
newly-elected ones did so.8 Women MPs did complain about the unsociable
hours they were forced to work and the lack of crèche facilities, but this was a
matter for Parliament rather than strictly a government matter. What were the
issues on which MPs rejected their government’s measures? There were
rebellions on eight Bills, the most important being the Social Security Bill over
which 27 MPs dissented, the Teaching and Higher Education Bill (34 MPs),
Criminal Justice [Terrorism and Conspiracy] Bill (16 to 29 MPs) and the House
of Lords Bill (35 MPs). Briefly, some MPs opposed tuition fees in higher
education, some thought the Criminal Justice Bill erred too much on the side of
the state rather than the accused and some thought the Lords Bill did not go far
enough favouring its replacement by a democratically elected body. In foreign
affairs, forty-seven Labour MPs disagreed with their government over Iraq
mainly on the grounds that continued sanctions harmed innocent people rather
than dictator Saddam Hussein. The NATO action in Kosovo also brought
opposition from thirteen MPs, which is discussed below.9 One other issue which
angered some Labour MPs was the Freedom of Information Bill. On 5 April
2000, thirty-six Labour MPs voted against the government believing the Bill
gave ministers too much freedom to keep items out of the public domain. Earlier
in the week, forty-one Labour MPs supported restoring the link, cut by the
Thatcher government, between pensions and average earnings.

DEVOLUTION AND CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE

Blair redeemed his pledge to establish a Scottish Parliament and a Welsh
Assembly and to reform the House of Lords. He also brought the voting system
for the European Parliament into line with that of the other EU countries. He
stopped short of making changes to the voting system for the House of
Commons. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly came into existence
after referenda in both countries. In the Welsh case the pro-devolution
campaigners won by the narrowest of margins. In May 1999 elections to both
bodies took place. Voting was by a modified PR system similar to that used in
Germany. Each elector had two votes, one to cast for the ‘first-past-the-post’
constituency, and the second for the party list. The idea is that the elector is
empowered to vote for an outstanding candidate of his/her choice, irrespective of
party, with his/her first vote. The second vote goes to the party he or she prefers.
302 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

The overall effect of the ‘topping up’ system is to produce a parliament that is
broadly proportionate to the number of votes each party attracts. Under the old
system, the Conservatives would have got no seats in spite of their relatively
high poll.
In Scotland the main protagonists were Labour, traditionally strong there, and
the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP). In Wales, Labour’s main
challenger was PC, which captured a number of Labour strongholds. In both
cases Labour was hit by the relative apathy of its supporters. There had been
dissension about the selection process for Labour candidates, which many
thought was rigged in favour of Blair’s men. (See Tables 12.1 and 12.2.)
Despite the criticism of Hague, the Conservative Party did improve its
standing in the local government elections of May 1999. Although the
Conservatives recovered only about half the representation lost to them in the
previous elections for the same seats in 1995, the results were seen as
strengthening Hague’s hand against his critics. The Conservatives also won an
unexpected victory in the European Parliament elections of June 1999, gaining
37.77 per cent of the vote in mainland Britain compared with 28.03 per cent for
Labour, 12.66 per cent for the Liberal Democrats, 6.96 per cent for the UKIP and
6.25 per cent for the Greens. Labour’s poor showing was partly due to the
introduction of proportional representation, which gave voters greater choice,
and Blair’s low-key approach to the

Table 12.1 Elections to Scottish Parliament, 1998

Party First (% vote) Second (% vote) Seats
Constituency Top-up Total
Labour 38.8 33.8 53 3 56
SNP 28.7 27.0 7 28 35
Conservatives 15.6 15.4 0 18 18
Liberal Democrats 14.2 12.5 12 5 17
Others 2.7 11.4 1 2 3
Note: Turnout: 59 per cent

Table 12.2 Elections to Welsh Assembly, 1998

Party First (% vote) Second (% vote) Seats
Constituency Top-up Total
Labour 37.6 35.4 27 1 28
Plaid Cymru 28.4 30.5 9 8 17
Conservatives 15.9 16.5 1 8 9
Liberal Democrats 13.4 12.6 3 3 6
Others 4.7 5.1 0 0 0
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 303

elections, which caused apathy among Labour supporters. A third factor, which
told against Labour, was the perception among the better informed, that Jack
Straw was reducing choice by decreeing that the lists would be ‘closed’. A
closed list means that the voter may only cast a ballot for a party rather than an
individual candidate. This was regarded by some in Labour ranks as an attempt
to ditch left-wing candidates, and two Labour MEPs, Hugh Kerr and Ken
Coates, left the party in protest. Labour’s only consolation was that turnout had
been abysmally low: 32 per cent for the local government elections in England
and 24 per cent for the Europe elections in mainland Britain. Another partial
explanation was that British voters seemed increasingly likely to offer their
support to different parties depending on the type of election. There was a
hierarchy of elections.10 Despite these successes Hague got little respite.

THE LORDS REFORMED

Since it came into existence in 1900 Labour had campaigned against the House of
Lords. The Liberal government had in 1911 passed the Parliament Act because
the Lords had thrown out its ‘People’s Budget’. Under that Act the Lords lost their
veto over money Bills and could delay non-monetary legislation for only two
years. In 1949, under Attlee, the delaying power was cut to one year.
Macmillan’s government introduced Life Peers in 1958. Wilson attempted further
reform in 1968 but failed. The main case against the House of Lords was that it
was based on the hereditary principle. Secondly, its reform had left it unelected.
Even the life peers were appointed for their own lifetime by the Queen on the
advice of the Prime Minister. In October 1998 there were 507 life peers, 633
hereditary peers, 26 Lords Spiritual (the two archbishops and bishops of the
Church of England) and a similar number of Law Lords. Of the life peers 172
were Conservatives, 148 Labour, 44 Liberal Democrats, 120 Cross-Benchers and
24 others. Of the hereditary peers 300 took the Conservative whip, only 18 were
Labour, 24 were Liberal Democrats, 202 Cross-Benchers and 89 others.11 After
hard negotiations it was agreed that the hereditaries would lose their sitting and
voting rights except for 92 of their number whom they would elect. Blair
announced this as stage one of a more radical reform. His critics alleged that the
new, transitionary, system gave him even greater patronage. The defenders of the
upper chamber claimed that it did useful work scrutiniz-ing and amending non-
financial Bills. Despite the reform it still had a non-Labour majority.

NOT IN EUROLAND
The Labour government’s record on the EU bore similarities to that of Major in
that Blair, Brown and Cook reached office wanting a ‘Britain at the heart of
Europe’. Like Major’s administration they seemed to cool in office. Cook put
out more pro-EU signals than Brown. Was this just a case of the Foreign Office
versus the Treasury rather than the convictions of the ministers? Lord Roy
304 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

Jenkins, Blair’s friend and mentor, confided his disappointment to Independent

readers on 9 February 2000.
The Amsterdam Treaty was signed on 2 October 1997 after two years of
discussion and negotiation. For Britain it was the culmination of a process which
started when Major was in office and was completed when Blair was in Downing
Street. Basically, it committed member states to giving their citizens greater
rights as citizens and consumers, involving national parliaments more closely in
the affairs of the EU, and to closer collaboration and joint action on foreign
affairs. The Treaty also broke new ground on public health giving the Council
power to adopt wide-ranging measures.
Smarting under the attacks on British beef the government was relieved when
in 1999 the agricultural committee of the EU decided there was no longer any
danger from British beef and the ban on it should be lifted. Dissent came from
France and its government refused to lift the ban on the basis of scientific advice
taken. This helped to fuel anti-EU feeling in Britain. Later, one of France’s
leading scientific advisers on BSE admitted that her country had thousands of
undiagnosed cases, and infected animals could have entered the food chain.
Professor Jeanne Brugère-Picoux said that although France had officially
registered seventy-five of BSE in the previous ten years, she believed the real
figure to be ‘far higher than that’. Infected French beef could have entered
Britain. France’s third case of variant CJD—the type linked to eating BSE-
infected beef, which killed forty-eight people in Britain—was confirmed at the
end of 1999.12
When the ministers of twelve countries met to formally celebrate the
introduction of the single currency of the EU, the euro, on 1 January 1999,
neither Blair nor Brown were among them. Britain’s official policy was ‘wait
and see’. Blair promised the voters a referendum on the issue if the government
recommended joining. Sensing growing hostility to the euro, fanned by sections
of the press, the Conservatives declared they would not want Britain to join
within the lifetime of the existing Parliament or the next. Hague faced opposition
from former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke and Michael Heseltine, both of whom
joined Blair’s pro-EU Britain In Europe group. The Liberal Democratic leader
Charles Kennedy also joined this platform. Pro-entry supporters claimed the
artificially strong pound, which everyone agreed was damaging British exports
by making them expensive, would fall in value if the government announced it was
applying to join. By May 2000 the government had not moved on the issue.

CONFLICT IN KOSOVO
Up to the millennium, the most important foreign affairs’ initiative that Blair got
involved in was the war in Kosovo in 1999. Kosovo was part of Serb-dominated
Yugoslavia. It was their ‘holy land’. They had taken it by conquest in 1912 and
in the inter-war period had expelled Muslims, Albanians and Turks. It was held
after the Second World War by Tito’s Yugoslavia but the Albanians in Kosovo,
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 305

who formed the majority of the population, never gave up their desire for
autonomy, independence or union with neighbouring Albania. In 1974 Kosovo
was granted autonomy. This was reversed in 1989 and once again Albanians
were terrorized by the Serbian police. A secret ethnic Albanian guerrilla army
(KLA) was established to fight the Belgrade authorities but most Albanians
wanted non-violent resistance. The crisis worsened in 1998–99 when up to 800,
000 people fled from Kosovo with accounts of massacres, atrocities and forced
expulsions by Serb forces.13 Long negotiations in Rambouillet, France, failed to
produce a diplomatic solution, which would have left Yugoslavia with
sovereignty over the province but would have led to the re-establishment of
Kosovo’s autonomy. Under pressure from TV pictures covering the story, NATO
was forced to act. On 24 March 1999, NATO launched air attacks on Yugoslavia’s
air defences and military installations. This was the beginning of a 78-day air
offensive by mainly US and British air forces. Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic then agreed to withdraw Yugoslav forces to allow a UN (but largely
NATO) international peacekeeping force to move in on 9 June. A UN
administrator was sent in to set up a local administration and co-ordinate efforts
to rehabilitate the economy. Most of the refugees returned to their shattered
homes. Blair gave complete support to the Americans and NATO throughout the
crisis. Some, like Liberal Democratic leader, Paddy Ashdown, a former soldier,
thought NATO should have acted much earlier and on the ground. Blair urged a
ground involvement after the bombing campaign appeared to be causing
‘collateral damage’, but Clinton held back fearing heavy US casualties. In Blair’s
view, this would have reduced the damage and civilian casualties, which despite
NATO’s sophisticated rockets, resulted from the onslaught. Sadly, after their
liberation by NATO some Albanians took part in revenge killings in Kosovo of
Serbs who had not taken part in the ‘ethnic cleansing’. Most of the public
supported the government over Kosovo. A small number of Labour MPs did not.
Tony Benn put their case. He said they were not apologists for the Yugoslav
President Milosevic. Benn and his colleagues were worried about all the
refugees, Serbs and Albanians. Force should only be used with UN approval, not
by NATO alone.

I think it is an insult to our intelligence to personalise all conflicts as if,

somehow, shooting Saddam Hussein and Milosevic would return peace to
the Middle East and the Balkans. What folly to engage in such schoolboy
politics. There are complex historical conditions. If Milosevic were shot,
somebody else would come along who is just the same, because the Serbs
are united.9

Many more Labour MPs had reservations on Bosnia, Kosovo and other issues but
believed that public dissension and division had called into question Labour’s
credibility in the past.
306 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

NAVY: ‘OVERCOMMITTED…AND UNDERMANNED’

By 1999 Britannia no longer ruled the waves. Only three warships could patrol
the high seas at Christmas 1999. Unprecedented cost-cutting had brought almost
every ship in the fleet into dock to save money. Apparently the Navy was facing
a £500 million budget deficit which had crippled the fleet’s operational
capacities. Mike Critchley, author of British Warships and Auxiliaries,
commented, ‘The Navy is overcommitted, undermanned and underfunded’14.
The drugs patrol in the West Indies had to be scaled down. At the same time, an
expensive TV advertisement claimed the RN was winning the battle against drugs
in foreign parts. A similar situation prevailed in the RAF and the Army. The
majority of Britain’s frontline planes were grounded and there was a severe
shortage of pilots. At the end of the century, a third of the Army’s newest tanks
and more than half of its older models were not fully operational.15 Britain’s
ability to mount even Kosovo-type operations was limited.
Defence expenditure started to fall in real terms in the late 1980s as the Cold
War thawed. According to the Ministry of Defence’s Annual Report 1998/99, in
real terms, it was £29.8 billion in 1986/87 and fell to £26.8 billion in 1991/92,
roughly that is, at the end of the Cold War. It continued to fall to £21.6 billion in
1997/98 after which it rose to £22 billion in 1998/99. In 1998 only France and
the US of the NATO states spent more than Britain. Yet defence experts believed
Britain was not spending enough to fulfil the tasks it had set itself.

‘SAS TRAIN ANTI-FRAUD OFFICERS’

According to a government-funded report published in 1999, three quarters of
the 1.7 million people on incapacity benefit were capable of work. Professor
Stephen Fothergill of Sheffield Hallam University, who compiled the report,
stressed that he was not accusing claimants of fraud, but insisted that most could
work. ‘We believe that there are 1.25 million of “hidden unemployed” people on
incapacity benefit, who are capable of work.’ The research revealed that Britain,
where 2.5 million people, or 7 per cent of the working-age population, were on
incapacity or other sickness benefits had a worse record than virtually all of
Europe. The comparable figure for Germany was 4 per cent, Spain was less than
3 per cent and France was less than 2 per cent. Only Italy among the large
European states had an inferior record, with 11 per cent. In 1999, incapacity
benefit was being paid to three times more people than the number twenty years
ago. The figures were highest in areas of high unemployment. No doubt previous
governments had taken a relaxed attitude to the problem in order to reduce the
numbers of officially registered unemployed. After the government ordered a
tightening up, a 51-year-old Iranian refugee, who spoke very little English, and had
a leg missing, had his disability application refused and was told to report for
work.
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 307

According to Conservative MP David Davis, Public Accounts Committee

Chairman, social security fraud cost taxpayers £1.53 billion in 1997–98.16 In
February 2000, Alistair Darling, Social Security Secretary, claimed that welfare
fraud was running at more than £3 billion a year. In one of the worst cases
exposed, Awan, a Pakistani, who came to Britain as an illegal immigrant, netted
£400,000 over fourteen years. He had claimed benefit for forty-three children
and housing benefit for eleven homes. He admitted fifteen charges of forgery and
was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail.17 Benefits experts have calculated
that money lost to benefit cheats in one year could have paid for 100,000 new
nurses, fifty-six new hospitals or 21,000 new homes. Piara Khabra, MP for
Ealing/Southall, commenting on the Awan case, said, ‘Cases like this give the
whole Asian community a bad name. However, we must not forget that people
from all races are capable of defrauding the system and it does not mean that
everyone from that race is bad’.18 As part of their ‘get tough’ policy the
government set up a ‘hotline’ enabling anonymous callers the chance to
denounce alleged fraudsters. SAS soldiers were also brought in to train Benefits
Agency anti-fraud officers in surveillance methods.19 The other side of the
benefits’ coin was that an estimated 900,000 pensioners were not claiming
benefits they were entitled to. Thousands of pensioners were also on reduced
pensions because of the failure of the new computer system installed at the
Benefits Agency.

LONG NEGOTIATIONS IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Blair tried to keep up the peace momentum in Northern Ireland initiated under
Major. Dr Mo Mowlam, was appointed as Secretary of State for Northern
Ireland, the first woman to occupy the post. Her friendly informal style helped a
little and she gained sympathy for carrying on despite a brain tumour. In 1999
she was replaced by Peter Mandelson. On 10 April 1998, Good Friday, all the
parties on both sides of the border signed a multiparty peace agreement. This
was approved in simultaneous referenda on 22 May by voters of Northern
Ireland and the Republic. In the North, 80.95 per cent of those eligible voted and
71.2 per cent voted in favour. In the Republic, on a turnout of 55.59 per cent, 94.
39 per cent were in favour.20 The relatively low vote in the South is partly
explained by the fact that a significant number of Irish voters worked abroad.
Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Aherne, assisted by Major and Clinton, had
worked hard for the ‘Yes’ campaign. However, six of the ten Ulster Unionist MPs
opposed this deal backed by their leader David Trimble. The deal led to the
setting up of the Northern Ireland Assembly elected on the basis of proportional
representation. The main Ulster Unionist Party gained 28 seats, the SDLP 24, the
Democratic Unionist Party 20, Sinn Fein 18 and the non-sectarian Alliance Party
6. Another 10 Unionists, including independents, were also elected. Finally, 2
members of the Northern Ireland Women’s Coalition gained seats. In all, 14
women won seats in the 108-member Assembly. The Assembly, in turn, elected
308 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

a power-sharing Executive with ministers from all parties represented in the

Assembly. Sinn Fein had reversed its long-standing policy of boycotting elected
institutions in the North as ‘partitionist’. Long negotiations were needed to thrash
out the details of the agreement. Throughout 1998–99 there were minor incidents
such as revenge beatings and killings. Drumcree remained a flashpoint. The
Protestant Orange Order insisted on its right to parade along the Garvaghy Road,
a largely Catholic area, as it had done since 1807.21 Violence occurred when the
march was banned in both 1996 and 1997. In 1998 the new Parades Commission
banned the march and more violence erupted. The march passed off peacefully in
1999.
Overall, optimism prevailed and economic aid poured into the province.
Northern Ireland looked set to have its own parliament and government as it had
from 1921 to 1972 when Heath suspended them. The difference was that these
would be inclusive, not sectarian. On 30 November 1999 the new twelve-member
Executive took office headed by David Trimble (UUP) with Seamus Mallon
(SDLP) as his deputy. Sinn Fein was represented by two ministers: Martin
McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, was appointed Minister of Education
and Ms Bairbre de Brun got Health, Social Security and Public Safety. Gerry
Adams, Sinn Fein’s President since 1983, did not join the government.
On 9 January 2000, Mandelson announced his programme of reform for law
enforcement in Northern Ireland. Over five years the police force was to become
evenly divided between Catholics and Protestants instead of being 90 per cent
Protestant. The most controversial measure was the proposal to change the name
of the police from the Royal Ulster Constabulary to the Police Service.
General John de Chastelain, Canadian head of the disarmament commission
set up under the Good Friday agreement, was increasingly frustrated as no
weapons were being handed over. Blair had given assurances that politicians
linked to paramilitaries who refused to hand over weapons would not hold
office. Trimble had promised his party that he would resign from the Assembly
if there were no IRA decommissioning by 31 January. The Unionists had been
persuaded to co-operate in the new assembly on the basis that the IRA and other
paramilitary groups would ‘decommission’ their weapons. This did not happen
and it led ultimately to the collapse of the Good Friday Agreement. After only
nine weeks, on 11 February 2000, Mandelson suspended the Northern Ireland
Assembly because of the lack of progress on ‘decommissioning’. Here was
largely meant the IRA, which was supported by Sinn Fein. Sinn Fein would not
give any unequivocal assurances that the IRA would ever hand over its weapons
to the international commission and refused to say ‘the war is over’. There were
some who agreed with the Sinn Fein view that as the devolved assembly had
been working ‘why collapse it?’ However, Des O’Malley, Chairman of the
Foreign Affairs Committee of the Irish Parliament, felt that the Republican
movement had to make up its mind: ‘either it was going to be a political party or
remain an illegal army’.22 The SDLP disagreed with the suspension decision.
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 309

That violence was still viewed as an option by a small minority was evident
when a car bomb exploded in Omagh only four months after the Good Friday
Agreement was signed. It killed twenty-nine people and was the worst atrocity in
the history of the post-war ‘Troubles’. The bombing was the work of a
republican splinter group calling itself the Real IRA. It was condemned by both
sides. According to official figures, a total of forty-nine people were killed in
Northern Ireland after the Good Friday Agreement. A total of 2,422 were injured
as a result of terrorist attacks between April 1998 and 10 February 2000.23
An extra complication for Blair and his colleagues was that, according to the
1991 census, there were 582,020 people born in the Republic living in Britain.
Countless others were from Northern Ireland. Many more were members of
families that originated in Ireland.24 All were potential voters whose views had to
be taken into account.

UNIVERSITIES: ‘INCREASINGLY…GLOBAL’
In the 1990s, universities around the country were looking increasingly to non-
EU students to boost their incomes as they were expected to find ever more
funds from non-governmental sources. The government set great store by this.
Blair believed, The institutions, their students and our economy will reap
considerable rewards.’ A high-level advertising campaign was mounted to attract
overseas students who paid high fees at British universities. In 1999 there were
198,000 overseas higher-education students in the UK. This represented 17 per
cent of the market compared with the USA, which attracted 68 per cent of
international students in the mainly English-speaking countries. Australia
attracted 10 per cent and Canada 5 per cent. Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong
were Britain’s ‘traditional strongholds’ for recruitment of students. Yet there was
an 11 per cent slump in overseas recruitment. This was the first drop in twenty
years. The collapse of Asian financial markets and the strong pound were thought
to be causes.25 University admissions tutors were under pressure to admit foreign
students even when, in some cases, their qualifications were below those
required of British students. Yet there was pressure on academic staff to ensure
they passed their exams. Another variation of securing income from overseas
was to set up satellite campuses abroad. This did not always work satisfactorily.
In 1999, Manchester University stopped selling degree courses to Israel after
criticism from an education watchdog, the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA).
The same criticism was made of Derby University by NATFHE, the lecturers’
union.26
In January 2000, it was announced that MIT and Cambridge University were
to link up. It was the idea of Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer and
dedicated America fan. Brown wanted to bring MIT’s techniques for
encouraging entrepreneurial activity and innovating speedily from the laboratory
into industry to Cambridge and to higher education generally. To this end he was
handing over £45 million to MIT and another £23 million to Cambridge. They
310 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

were expected to raise a further £16 million from private industry. The head of
MIT, Lawrence Bacow, explained, ‘This is an enormous opportunity to build
strength upon strength in a number of fields. Increasingly, universities of the
calibre of Cambridge and MIT are global.’27 The arrangement had its critics from
those who believed other British universities, which were ‘made to dance
endlessly to win a small amount of money’, had been insulted. Firstly, the deal
by-passed the normal competitive bidding procedures. Secondly, a number of
universities, like Nottingham and Warwick, had shown themselves proficient at
spinning off private sector work from know-how and brains. That universities
were under enormous pressure is shown by the fact that nearly a third were
running ‘continuing deficits’.28 The financial difficulties of students appeared to
be increasing. The numbers taking up loans had increased from 28 per cent in
1990–91 when the scheme began, to 64 per cent in 1997–98.29
The Higher Education Funding Council, in a report published in December
1999, found that the growth of the new universities (former polytechnics) had
not resulted in any weakening of privilege. The majority of universities have a
long way to go to broaden access to all able students. Even those taking a higher
proportion from state schools tended to select students from higher social
classes. British universities seemed to be set to become divided into an unofficial
class system with two, three or four strata. The Russell Group saw themselves as
actual or potential world-level institutions. They wanted to charge top-up fees,
which would make it near impossible for many potential students to study there.
There were reports that, what the National Union of Students told the Nottingham
Topper (15 March 2000) was ‘a tiny minority’ of students were turning to
prostitution to pay their way. Universities were pleased to be able to report that
drop-out rates were still lower in Britain than in many other countries. In Britain
they were 18 per cent, Germany 28 per cent, US 37 per cent and France 45 per
cent.30

PRIMARY EDUCATION

Primary schools are improving dramatically after the Government’s

insistence that standards will rise only if schools get the basics right
in the early years. Test results for 11-year-olds show a leap of 10 per
cent in the proportion of pupils reaching the expected standards in
maths (up to 69 per cent) and a rise of 5 per cent in English (to 70
per cent)… Ministers explain the big improvement by pointing to the
new literacy hour, the daily period of reading and writing based on
what the Government calls ‘tried and tested methods’, which was
introduced just over a year ago [by David Blunkett].31

Blunkett believed that the numeracy hour, which went nationwide this term but
was in use in most schools in 1999, has done wonders for children’s mental
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 311

arithmetic. Some were less sure about the claims because science results went up
by 9 per cent even though there was no dedicated hour and no target. By the end
of the twentieth century the British government seemed to be more test
orientated than ever before. Blunkett could not be accused of having no ideas.
His ‘big idea’ for 2001 was free summer camps for all 16-year-olds who wanted
them. He was impressed by American camps for middle-class children. His
camps were to combine outdoor activities with helping out in old people’s homes
or renovating old buildings in the countryside.32 In January 1998, Blunkett broke
new ground by agreeing to give public funds to two Muslim schools. The
previous government had refused this. They joined the state sector in September
1998 to be funded at the same level as other primaries, including those run by
Anglicans, Catholics and Jews. Blunkett told the Sunday Telegraph (12 March
2000) readers that Labour’s ‘war’ with the grammar schools was over. Ballots of
parents would decide whether they remained selective or not.
Blair’s government was criticized for not reversing the trend of selling off school
land and playing fields to make up the shortfall of funds as parents were
expected more and more to raise money for their children’s schools. However,
unlike previous governments Labour stipulated that money so raised had to be
ploughed back into sport or education.33

NHS: ‘STEADILY TO DETERIORATE’?

In January 2000, in France, an international team succeeded, for the first time, in
transplanting arms from a dead donor to a man who had lost his arms. Medical
scientists were talking about the prospects, within a decade, of many individuals
living 300 years. Yet the NHS remained beset by problems and controversy just
as it had done under Major and earlier administrations. A conference of top
specialists, in 1999, claimed that Britain’s cancer treatment programme was poor
relative to other advanced countries.34 Government ministers, first Frank Dobson
and then Alan Milburn, did their best in the battle of statistics to convince the
public that they were solving the problems left behind by the Conservatives. But
the voters remained sceptical. The Office of National Statistics reported that, in
1998–99, winter deaths of the elderly were the highest for ten years.35 A real test
of the situation came in the winter of 1999–2000 with the outbreak of a flu
epidemic. The NHS could not cope. Scotland seemed to be hit harder than
England and Wales but everywhere there were reports of operations being
cancelled so that beds could be reallocated for incoming flu patients. A Times
(11 January 2000) correspondent claimed that France was coping better than
Britain. New cases there were being reported at a rate of up to 300,000 a week,
compared with about 100,000 in Britain. It was the worst outbreak in both
countries in recent years. Yet in contrast to Britain, the French did not see it as a
crisis. About 70 per cent of those most at risk, the over-70s, had been vaccinated
in France. In Britain the figure was much lower. Secondly, there were far more
beds available in France. Thirdly, almost all of the flu sufferers in France were
312 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

treated by GPs, unlike in Britain. The outbreak led to a renewed argument about
the inadequate funding of Britain’s much-vaunted NHS. Lord Winston, the
fertility pioneer and Labour peer, was severely critical of the way the health
service was going. ‘Do we want a health service that is steadily going to
deteriorate and be more and more rationed and will be inferior on vital areas such
as heart disease and cancer compared to our less well-off neighbours?’ A poll
published in the Observer (16 January 2000) claimed, ‘Blair in the Doghouse on
Waiting Lists’. Only 47 per cent of those polled trusted the government to
develop the right policies for the NHS while 49 per cent did not trust the
government. This did not help the Conservatives very much as only 25 per cent
trusted them and 69 per cent did not trust them. As the paper pointed out, the NHS
compared badly with those in other developed countries. Britain had one doctor
for every 625 people. In France it was one for every 344. In 1997, Britain spent
£869 per head on health, compared with £1,245 in the Netherlands, £1,490 in
Germany and £2,559 in the US. Women with breast cancer had a 67 per cent
chance of living more than five years, compared with 80 per cent in France,
Sweden or Switzerland. Blair told television viewers on 16 January that his aim
was to increase British spending on health to reach the EU average within six
years. This was not a firm commitment but based on the assumption that the
economy would remain buoyant and would continue to grow. If realized, it
would still leave Britain behind France, Germany and other more affluent
European states. In another blow to the credibility of the NHS, figures showed that
over 5,000 patients died each year from infections they picked up in hospital.36 The
National Audit Office, the official watchdog, added more fuel to the fire when it
reported, in February 2000, that the number of operations cancelled on the day
they were due to take place had risen to an all-time high. Between 1998 and
1999, cancellations increased by 12 per cent to a total of 56,000 at hospitals in
England. Unnecessary deaths in hospitals were exposed by Sir Brian Jarman of
the Imperial College School of Medicine, in February 2000. He estimated that at
least 30,000 people might be dying in hospital every year as a result of medical
accidents that could have been prevented.37 Labour had campaigned on the NHS
at successive elections as a key issue. Would this become its Achilles’ heel?

WEALTH AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

The gap between the richest and the poorest in Britain widened in the first year
of the Labour government, with a million more people earning less than two-
fifths of the national average income. This was amongst the findings of a report
commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and conducted by the New
Policy Institute. The government’s reaction was to blame it on the developments
under the Conservatives over the previous eighteen years.38 At the same time,
according to the Independent on Sunday (12 December 1999):
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 313

The rich got richer last week. City bonuses went through the roof, with 2,
500 staff at investment bankers Goldman Sachs sharing £100m in salary
top-ups. The extraordinary wealth of celebrities was also highlighted when
Manchester United’s captain, Roy Keane, broke his team’s pay ceiling
with a salary of £50,000 a week. Elsewhere in Britain, 2 million children
are living in homes where no one has a job… There are 14 million people
living below the poverty line.

In 1986, according to Inland Revenue figures, 1 per cent of the adult population
owned 18 per cent of ‘marketable wealth’, 10 per cent owned 49 per cent and 25
per cent owned 71 per cent of the wealth. In 1996, the last published figures
revealed that 1 per cent owned 19 per cent, 10 per cent owned 52 per cent and 25
per cent owned 74 per cent.39 When measured against such figures, Blair’s
achievements, trumpeted in October 1999, seemed extremely modest, ‘We’ve
put in the biggest-ever increase in Child Benefit. The first-ever national minimum
wage. The biggest-ever investment in health and education. One and half million
families helped by the Working Families Tax Credit.’40 There was also the £100
winter fuel allowance to pensioners in 1999 but there were no plans to link
pension increases to the rise in average earnings, which many in Labour’s ranks,
like Barbara Castle, had long called for.
Was the ‘Carnival Against Capitalism’, in June 1999, a sign that growing
numbers were getting frustrated with the way things were going? The Carnival was
very modern in that it was organized on the internet to attract environmental
protesters and opponents of capitalism to the City of London. The Daily
Telegraph (19 June 1999) reported that the Carnival

deteriorated into violence yesterday as protesters pelted police with bricks

and bottles and attacked financial institutions, causing widespread damage.
After more than six hours of rioting and vandalism by up to 4,000
protesters, one woman was known to be in hospital after falling under the
wheels of a police van.

In May 2000, a riot occurred in London during an anti-capitalist demonstration.

PRIVATIZATION AND SAFETY

Bob Ayling, BA’s chief executive and a supporter of Blair, said in a speech that
Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s policy of partly privatizing the National
Air Traffic Service meant that commercial returns would be paramount. The
flying public…should be deeply concerned if any future strategic partners did
not have as their objectives safety of flight, security of investment and sensible
growth in the future.’ He added: The strategic partner should not have profit as a
primary objective.’41 Fifty Labour MPs, led by Gavin Strang, the former Labour
Transport Minister, opposed plans to part-privatize Britain’s air traffic control on
314 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

the grounds of safety. Others among them were Tony Benn, Ken Livingstone and
Diane Abbott. Michael Moore for the Liberal Democrats said the privatization
plans were seriously misguided and his party would vote against the Transport
Bill, which contained this proposal.42 In the week of the debate, on Wednesday,
22 December 1999, a Korean Boeing 747 cargo jet exploded just after taking off
from Stansted airport, near London. All four crew were killed. Korean Air,
which owned the plane, had rapidly developed into the world’s second biggest
cargo carrier, but it had a poor safety record.43 Despite opposition from the
Labour majority of the Commons Transport Committee, the government decided
to press ahead with part-privatization. The preferred option of Labour MPs was a
non-profitmaking trust similar to the one set up in Canada. The Conservatives
wanted total privatisation.44
Blair also prepared the Post Office for privatization, which made Labour
traditionalists see red and made many more fear that local and rural post offices
would disappear. Plans to privatize the nuclear industry suffered a setback after
it suffered loss of orders in Japan and Germany caused by the falsification of
safety records. The Irish and Danish governments called on Britain to stop
nuclear reprocessing at the key Sellafield plant. The policy, initiated by Thatcher
of selling off or transferring council housing from local authority ownership to
housing associations continued under Blair. Council housing was rapidly
becoming history.
Concern about safety on Britain’s privatized railways continued to grow as the
century drew to a close. This was fuelled by the Paddington rail crash in October
1999, caused by a train going through a red light, and before that the Southall
crash in 1997 in which seven people died and 150 were injured.45 In the
Paddington disaster, thirty-one people died. It was revealed that trains frequently
went through red lights. The tracks were often in need of attention; the signalling
equipment was no longer modern. In addition, trains on some lines were often
delayed or cancelled, coaches were old and fares were high relative to standards
on Western European railways. No wonder that the number of passenger
complaints of poor service and delays passed the 1 million mark in 1998. This
was an 8 per cent rise on the previous year, Tom Winsor, the Rail Regulator,
reported.46 The enquiry into the Southall crash concluded that the driver and
privatization were responsible for the crash. Despite privatization the railways
continued to cost the public billions in subsidies, which were paid to the rail
companies. It is only fair to record that even countries like Norway and Germany
suffered rail crashes. In February 2000 the German Amsterdam to Basel express
crashed in Brühl with the loss of eight lives and 149 injured. Damaged track was
thought to be one possible cause. Like British rail operators, German railways
had been cutting back on staff over several years.47 Earlier, in Eschede, Lower
Saxony, the worst accident in German rail history had occurred with the loss of
101 lives. On 10 March 2000, another accident occurred in London injuring
thirty passengers. Luckily no one was killed.
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 315

IN FOREIGN HANDS
The sale of British assets to foreign companies continued under Blair as under
Major. The Rover motor company was bought by Germany’s BMW. Asda, the
retail chain, was sold to America’s Wal-Mart. EMI, the flagship of the British
music and entertainment industry, merged with the much larger US Time-
Warner conglomerate. BTP, one of Britain’s remaining chemical companies, was
bought by a Swiss rival. Schroder, the last major merchant bank quoted on the
London Stock Exchange, sold most of its operations to Citigroup. Glaxo
Smithkline Beecham, set to become the world’s biggest Pharmaceuticals
company, announced it was moving its headquarters from London to New York.
Four of the six top fund managers that control 70 per cent of British pension assets
were foreign-owned in 1999. Did it matter? The optimists could say that it
brought in foreign capital, better management and in many cases created jobs.
The pessimists could argue that jobs disappeared too, other jobs had to be
heavily subsidized by the taxpayer, that vital decisions about technology, output
and products, were made elsewhere. One other problem was that foreign
penetration of the City attracted more crime. City police were said to be
convinced that the Colombian drugs cartels, the Italian Mafia and criminal gangs
in Britain and Eastern Europe used the City to launder their money.48 The
dangers of foreign ownership exploded in the face of Stephen Byers, Trade and
Industry Secretary, when BMW announced in March 2000 that it was selling
Rover with heavy job losses. After weeks of nail-biting tension it was sold for
£10 to the Phoenix Group who promised job losses would be kept to a minimum.
As the searchlight was turned on Ford at Dagenham where, it was announced on
12 May 2000, car production would cease, no one believed that Rover had got
more than a respite.

RACISM IN POLICE
Two murder cases in London brought into question the attitude of the
Metropolitan Police to racism. One was the murder of Stephen Lawrence in
April 1993, in south-east London. The other was the killing of Michael Menson
in north London in 1997. Lawrence was a teenager, Menson was 30, both were
black. In the first case the police were forced to admit they had bungled the
investigation. In the second case, they refused at first to regard it as anything
other than suicide. The Metropolitan Police’s investigation of the Lawrence case
was strongly criticized by Sir William Macpherson, who concluded in a report
published in February 1999 that, ‘The investigation was marred by a
combination of professional incompetence, institutional racism and a failure of
leadership by senior officers.’ Menson’s three attackers were eventually tracked
down, tried and convicted. One of them, Ozguy Cevat, of dual British/Turkish
nationality, fled to Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus. There he was charged
with manslaughter in the Menson case and convicted. Lawrence’s attackers
316 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

evaded justice. In both cases, the families of the victims were responsible for
them gaining wide public attention.49 Despite big gains in status, wealth and jobs
by the ethnic communities over the last thirty years of the century, few doubted
that racism still existed. Few British whites, racists included, realized that many
of them were likely to have black genes. Dr Steve Jones, Britain’s leading
geneticist, of University College, London University, calculated that one in five
white British, had a direct black ancestor. This was the result of his research on
census data from the sixteenth century. More black people had come to Britain
as slaves or as traders than was generally known. ‘Even the Queen has
discovered she has black and mixed-race royal ancestors who have never been
publicly acknowledged.’ Queen Charlotte, the wife of George III, was one of
them.50

How were Britain’s ethnic communities faring at the end of

the century?
By the end of the twentieth century it was estimated that there were 157,000
people of Chinese origin in Britain, that is 0.3 per cent. According to Professor
Tariq Modood (University of Bristol), 41 per cent of Chinese workers were in
professional or managerial positions. This compared with 30 per cent of whites,
15 per cent of Asians and 11 per cent of Caribbeans. The Chinese had overtaken
whites to emerge as the group most likely to earn salaries in excess of £25,000.51
Who were the new Britons? The numbers who gained UK citizenship were 40,
500 in 1995, 43,100 in 1996 and 37,000 in 1997. Most of them were from the
Commonwealth. In 1997, 2,800 were from the ‘Old Commonwealth’—
Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa—and 16,300 were from the
‘New Commonwealth’ mainly Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, the
Caribbean and other African states. In addition there were 4,200 from British
dependencies including Hong Kong.52
Jack Straw was troubled by figures revealing that in 1999 the number of
people seeking political asylum in Britain topped 71,000, a record and over 50
per cent up on 1998. The backlog of applications awaiting a decision reached
100,000 for the first time. In an effort to dissuade asylum seekers and show the
electorate he was ‘getting tough’, Straw ensured that many passengers on a
hijacked Afghan airliner, which arrived at Stansted in February 2000, were
‘persuaded’ to return. The hijackers were arrested and others on the plane were
allowed to stay pending the outcome of their asylum applications. People from
the former Yugoslavia topped the nationalities seeking asylum.53 There was also
concern about the number of illegal immigrants entering the country. Since the
fall of Communism in 1989, there had been increasing numbers from Eastern
Europe. Often these were Romany from the Czech Republic, Slovakia or
Romania, where, they claimed, they faced persecution. Their presence in the
coastal towns of southern England caused friction. Often they arrived hidden on
freight trains or in trucks. In the summer of 1999, in one incident, immigration
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 317

officials spotted a group of fifty refugees trying to escape from Willesden freight
terminal in north London.54 In April 2000, under the Immigration and Asylum
Act (1999), asylum seekers would be forcibly dispersed from southern England
and given vouchers for food and clothing rather than cash. It was hoped this
would help to stem the tide. Straw and his Conservative ‘shadow’, Ann
Widdecombe, faced criticism for their advocacy of tough measures on asylum
seekers. Bill Morris, the General Secretary of the Transport and General
Workers’ Union, rattled ministers when he claimed in the Independent that Straw
and his colleagues had ‘given life to the racists’. Morris, himself of immigrant
background, was joined by Diane Abbott, the Liberal Democrats, ethnic and
refugee bodies and the Catholic bishops.

Firearms offences: ‘Enough is Enough’

Illegal immigration was usually the result of organized crime and brought crime
with it. ‘Yardie’ gangs, dealing in crack and cocaine, brought violence to the
streets of London, Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester. Their leaders were often
Jamaican-born and in 1999 they were responsible for the deaths of thirteen
people with many others injured.55 According to the Guardian (14 January 2000)
shootings in Cheetham Hill, an area of social deprivation, in Manchester, totalled
forty-one in 1999. The paper reported how Simon Brown was blasted with a
shotgun in front of relatives and in the Manchester Black Community Trust
centre. The new millennium opened with the shooting of Roger Ormsby on 5
January. In Nottingham, between 1 January and 10 March 2000, there were nine
shooting incidents.56 In Birmingham, where there had been more than 30
shootings within a year, police ran a poster campaign using the words of Martin
Luther King, ‘Enough is Enough’. This campaign was backed by the black
newspaper, The Voice, and other bodies. These incidents were part of the
growing trend of offences in which firearms were used. In 1983 there were 7,962
such incidents. The figure increased to 10,373 in 1990 and 13,951 in 1993. The
police used firearms three times in 1983, three times in 1990 and six times in
1993.57
At a time when there was growing alarm about the drugs scene in Straw’s own
constituency of Blackburn, ‘Drugs’ king’ Perwaiz Hassan, a Pakistani national,
was jailed for eleven years for masterminding a shipment of cannabis resin worth
£44 million. Hassan, who lived in London, had wealth estimated at £6 million.58
In 1999, the Home Office was concerned that up to fifty solicitors’ firms were
raking in millions of pounds of tax-payers’ money from legal aid immigration
rackets. Four firms were closed after the Legal Aid Board and the Law Society
launched a crackdown.59 Another area of growing crime was credit card fraud,
which soared by 40 per cent in 1999. One credit card transaction per 1,000 was
said to be fraudulent. The National Criminal Intelligence Service believed that
Chinese Triads were mainly responsible for trebling credit fraud between 1994
and 1998.60 When Jack Straw reported on the crime situation in January 2000, he
318 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

was forced to admit that violent crimes, including mugging, had increased for the
first time for some years. Straw said the Metropolitan Police were afraid to use
their right to stop and search suspects for fear of being branded racist since the
Lawrence Inquiry.61 The Police Federation Chairman Fred Broughton agreed. He
commented, ‘Stops and searches are down, street crimes are up. Cause and
effect.’62 Straw took comfort from figures showing a reduction in car theft and
burglary. The Home Secretary was accused of not fulfilling his election pledge to
put more ‘bobbies on the beat’. In England and Wales there were a total of 124,
808 police officers employed in 1998, in March 1999 the number had fallen by 0.
8 per cent to 123,845.63 According to figures given by Lord Bassam in the Lords
(17 January 2000) expenditure on England’s thirty-nine police forces was to be
increased from £6,852,800,000 in 1999/2000 to £7,045,100,000 in 2000/01.
These were hefty sums, but many experts believed they were still inadequate.
Since it took up its work in 1985 the number of complaints against the police
referred to the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) had mounted. This could in
part be due to the growing awareness of the work of the PCA and to a greater
readiness among the public to complain. This appeared to be the trend in every
sphere of national life. Certainly before the 1970s the British tended to be
passive and accept what they were given. This gradually changed in the
remaining years of the century. Once

Table 12.3 Complaints to the Police Complaints Authority

1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994
Comp 3, 6, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 9, 9, 9,
leted 581 646 566 516 283 273 953 200 047 853
cases
Comp 7, 15, 13, 12, 11, 16, 18, 19, 17, 19,
laints 897 865 147 523 155 712 065 289 991 118
Perce 11.1 10.4 9.2 9.4 9.7 8.2 8.5 8.7 10 11
ntage
of
fully
invest
igated
cases
leadin
g to
discip
linary
action

again, American influences were important in promoting the idea of rights and
litigation. A second factor was the influence of Western Europe’s culture of
rights as Britain moved closer to its neighbours. Political and commercial
competition was a third factor. Privatization had led to the call for safeguards for
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 319

consumers and this resulted in the setting up of various watchdogs. This is in no

way to suggest that complaints were not justified in many cases. Advertising
offered so much, yet in many cases people were disappointed when products fell
below expectations. Protection of minorities also enhanced the call for greater
transparency, the setting up of a proper system to redress and recruitment of
more police officers from the ethnic communities. In 2000, Tarique Ghaffur was
appointed to one of the most senior posts in the Metropolitan Police, Deputy
Assistant Commissioner, after a ‘meteoric rise’ through the ranks of the police
service in Leicestershire and Lancashire. From a Punjabi family, Ghaffur came to
Britain as a 15-year-old from Uganda.64
Another problem that confronted Straw was what to do about British citizens
who had spied for Soviet bloc intelligence agencies. As East bloc archives had
been opened more of them had been exposed. Dr Robin Pearson, of Hull
University, was accused, in the BBC documentary, The Spying Game
(September 1999) of working over many years for the East German secret police
(Stasi). He was suspended from his teaching duties for two years. Jenny
Willmott, President of Hull’s student union said, ‘Students of Dr Pearson felt
they had been betrayed by him.’65 Pearson was one of a number of spies who had
worked for the East Germans or Soviets. The most significant revealed was
Melita Norwood, a life-long Communist, who had given early nuclear secrets to
Moscow. The Solicitor General decided not to prosecute them because of the cost,
and the difficulty of securing convictions.

CELEBRATING THE MILLENNIUM

The previous Conservative government had decided Britain should have a
special dome for the end of the millennium to celebrate Britain’s achievements.
This was taken up by Tony Blair who agreed to build a Millennium Dome on
derelict land in south London. Peter Mandelson was put in charge as minister for
the project. Jennie Page, a former civil servant, was the hands-on boss of the
project with a budget of £758 million and a staff of 20,000. Her job was to stage
‘the most spectacular millennium event anywhere in the world’.66 The Dome was
attacked as a London-based project, which would be expensive for non-
Londoners to visit. It also came under fire for ignoring British history and
lacking a ‘spiritual dimension’. The spectacular opening on New Year’s Eve ran
in to problems. Many of the invited VIPs, notables, celebrities and sponsors
found they had to queue and wait on a chilly night to get in because of a fault in
the initial organization. In the aftermath, the Dome was criticized because it
looked like ‘an upturned porridge bowl, joyless, ugly, confusing’.67 Later it was
said that between 70 and 80 per cent of ordinary members of the public admitted
in the first weeks found it an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. However,
not enough people paid to visit the Dome in January and Ms Page was forced to
resign. Her replacement was Philippe Bourguignon from Disneyland Paris.
320 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

As the new century approached, Britain decided to take an early and extended
break. It was said to be the longest festive shutdown on record. Many were on
holiday for eleven days from Christmas Eve until 4 January.68 Christmas was
also cheaper in 1999 for the third year in succession.69 Unemployment was lower
than it had been for twenty years and mortgage interest rates were relatively low.
Perhaps these were the reasons why, on Tuesday, 28 December, the Daily Mail
reported that the British had gone ‘sales crazy’. On the day before there had been
a massive surge towards the shops in the hunt for bargains. Savings accounts
were raided and credit cards were used generously to finance the spree. Mobile
phones were high on the list of purchases, as were computers.
Although more people attended Christian services over the holiday period, the
number of churches open continued to decline. In 1989 there were 38,607
churches of all denominations in England. In 1999 the number had fallen to 37,
717.70 Over the 1990s, Britain had been mesmerized by the desire to get rich
quick. The Lottery and the high earnings and wealth of a few had focused
attention even more than in the past on this. The television quiz programme,
‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’, started in 1999, revealed this and fuelled it.
The festivities were clouded slightly by fears that among the Christmas parcels
there would be bombs sent by Islamic terrorist groups linked to the Saudi-born
millionaire, Osama bin Laden.71 The breakaway ‘Continuity IRA’ faction
threatened to bomb Kempton Park race course. There were also fears world-wide
among the interested and informed few that the ‘millennium bug’ would cause
computers to fail. Argentina grounded all its planes. The Russians and the
Americans got together to ensure that failing computers in defence systems
would not cause a world war. In Britain, 20,000 credit card swipe machines were
hit as a system collapsed on 28 December.72 By mid-January, however, the
‘Bug’ did not seem to have done much damage in Britain or elsewhere. Shock
waves hit the City of London on 5 April 2000 when its computer system crashed.
As The Times (6 April 2000) reported, ‘Where screaming hordes of anarchists,
the Blitz and the IRA failed, a computer breakdown succeeded yesterday. The
City ground to a halt.’ The paralysis lasted seven hours. Because it was the end of
the British tax year huge business was expected. The Times believed, ‘London’s
reputation as a world financial centre was seriously damaged.’ Businesses
suffered again in May when a ‘virus’ from the Philippines infected computers
world-wide and increased fears of ‘cyber terrorists’. Others infections followed.
Despite the official optimism, Britain was entering the twenty-first century
with a transport system which was poor by the standards of Western European
states, and a faltering health service. The term ‘rip-off Britain’ had come into use
summing up the widespread feeling that British consumers were being forced to
pay higher prices than their continental neighbours for cars, food, many
consumer goods and banking. Although successive governments had stressed the
importance of education and training from 1945 onwards, Britain’s school system
was below the standards of the majority of European states, all of which were state-
run. The great majority of British people could not speak or write grammatical
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 321

English and had shaky maths. Television and radio still made many
documentaries about history and current affairs, yet most people had no
knowledge even of twentieth century history. Industrial and professional training
left very many Britons unskilled. According to Unicef, British children were
among the least healthy in Europe, affected by poor diet even before they were
born.73 Teenage pregnancies were higher in Britain than in any other EU state.
Britain had one of the highest prevalences of drug use in Europe and the
government was said to be losing the fight against serious drug abuse.74 Britain
had a growing alcohol-abuse problem, with more women turning to excessive
drinking. It had a record of sending proportionally more of its population to
prison than any other EU state except Portugal.75 No one could explain why the
UK had the highest incidence of asthma in Western Europe.76 Its electoral system
was unfair by the standards of Western Europe and it was alone in having an
undemocratic second chamber. Yet British people were freer than they had been
at any other time and they were certainly enjoying unprecedented prosperity.
Real disposable incomes had roughly doubled since 1970. The arts flourished as
much as at any time in the past. Gordon Brown was optimistic. He told an
American audience, in February 2000, that the government was on a mission to
make Britain the world’s best place for business, a global leader in e-commerce
and the education capital of the world.77

WOMEN 2000
Women gained voting rights on the same basis as men in 1928 but in the Parliament
elected in 1997 they were still greatly outnumbered by men. They were also in this
respect well behind most of their sisters in the European Union. Remarkably, the
situation was even worse in France. In most cases there was a rough correlation
between their representation in Parliament and their pay as a percentage of men’s
pay. As we saw above (p. 299) women had made enormous progress since 1945
in moving towards equality with men. Clearly they still had a deal to go. This is
illustrated by the position in higher education. According to figures given in a
written reply by George Mudie to Joan Ruddock in the Commons (26 July
1999), 264 men had been appointed professor in 1997–98 but only 41 women. In
1996–97 the figures were 209 and 43, respectively. These figures excluded those
promoted within their own institutions. In the armed forces only 7.7 per cent of
total strength in 1999 were women. From April 1998 the number of posts in the
Army open to women increased from 47 to 70 per cent.78 In April 2000,
Baroness Prashar (b. 1948), of Kenyan Asian background, was appointed First
Civil Service Commissioner. She was Chairman of the Parole Board in England
and Wales. She was made a life peer in 1999. The CSC is responsible for the top
appointments in the civil service.
322 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

Table 12.4 Women in European Parliaments

Women members of parliaments of the EU Women’s pay as a percentage of men’s
states, 1998 (percentage) pay
Sweden 43 Sweden 87
Denmark 35 Denmark 88
Finland 34 Finland 82
Netherlands 31 Netherlands 71
Germany 30 Germany 77 (West)
European 30 (1999) 90 (East)
Parliament
Austria 24 Austria 74
Spain 20 Spain 74
Luxembourg 18 Luxembourg 84
Britain 18 Britain 74
Belgium 17 Belgium 83
Portugal 13 Portugal 72
Ireland 11 Ireland 73
France 8 France 77
Greece 6 Greece 68
Source: Das Parlament, 21 January 2000.

LONELY BRITAIN?
On Friday 10 December 1999 the author had to wait from 23.00 to 23.15 to get
through to a Barclaycard customer adviser. What does that say about telephone
banking, Barclaycard and Britain? Certainly there were not enough ‘advisers’ to
handle the demand, but why were so many people ringing so late on a Friday
night anyway? What did this say about the quality of life in Britain at the end of
the twentieth century? On 13 January 2000, the Samaritans disclosed that they
were deluged by lonely and depressed callers during the Christmas and New Year
periods. Some 246,000 callers rang the helpline over the period starting 25
December and ending 7 January, 18 per cent more calls than the previous year. The
charity believed that high expectations and ‘millennium hype’ could have
contributed to a sense of anti-climax and depression.79 In the highly successful
film, Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994), Hugh Grant portrayed the uncertain,
lonely English-man. A decade earlier, Steve Martin played his American
equivalent, in Arthur Hiller’s The Lonely Guy (1984). Helen Fielding’s Bridget
Jones’s Diary (1996) gave expression to the many thirty-something single
women who were not happy being alone. It sold over a million copies. Clearly it
was perceived as a growing problem. In 1961, in Britain, the proportion of
households occupied by just one person was 10 per cent. In 1999 it was 30 per
cent. The Department of the Environment estimated that by 2010 it would be 40
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 323

per cent.80 Divorce was a factor in this, putting off marriage was another. Some
believed that many successful young women, and men, were consciously
deciding to remain single. They did not want to make the compromises necessary
for a long-term commitment or/and bringing up a family. Was Britain gradually
dying like Italy and Germany were doing? Writing in 1999 Tom Nairn was
pessimistic about the future of British society and the Blair agenda feeling the

trouble may be terminal. Even as a trademark ‘British’ has passed from

being one of the soundest properties on the international ideas-mart
(liberal, trustworthy, decent, first among equals)…to being a down-market
leftover—not quite a slum but heading in that direction.81

These were the challenges facing Blair as, full of confidence, he prepared his
party for the next election and the next term.

CONSERVATIVE PARTY PROBLEMS CONTINUE

Past scandals continued to haunt the Conservative Party. Jonathan Aitken, the
former Cabinet Minister, was sent to prison for perjury and perverting the course
of justice. Lord Archer had to withdraw from the race to become the
Conservative candidate in the London mayoral elections after being exposed as a
liar. Former minister and MP, Neil Hamilton (see p. 292), lost his law suit against
Harrod’s owner Mohamed al-Fayed and was left with over £1 million to pay in
costs. Al-Fayed had alleged that Hamilton had corruptly taken money from him
to put questions in Parliament and the jury believed him. The Independent (22
December 1999) called Hamilton ‘a fatally flawed politician on the make who
grabbed, gambled, lied and lost’. The Parliamentary Commissioner for
Standards, Sir Gordon Downey, concluded in July 1997 that evidence that
Hamilton had accepted payments was ‘compelling’. Former Conservative Party
Treasurer Michael Ashcroft came under attack for being a tax exile.82
Although in media time, it seemed already in another age long ago, past
Conservative leadership battles were fought again in 1999. John Major’s
memoirs revealed the animosities between him and Thatcher, and him and many
of his other colleagues, ‘the bastards’. Judith Chaplin (1939–93), his closest
political adviser at the Treasury and at No. 10, 1989–92, kept a secret diary. She
felt that as Chancellor, ‘he has little economic knowledge, he deals mostly in
economic platitudes with ill-thought out ideas’. Major is quoted as saying of his
former leader Thatcher, ‘I want her isolated, I want her destroyed.’ He felt
‘“she’s bonkers”.’83 In February 2000 Teresa Gorman, maverick Conservative
right-winger, faced the longest suspension of an MP from the Commons for
failing to declare interests, for misleading a disciplinary committee, for making
false accusations against her accusers and for interfering with witnesses, the
Standards and Privileges Committee concluded. She had failed to declare an
324 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

interest when she promoted two bills supporting small landlords in 1990 and
1991.84
Hague continued to be dogged by problems with his team and his associates into
the new century. In the week before Christmas 1999 it was announced that a
former Conservative front-bench spokesman for London had defected to Labour.
This was Shaun Woodward, MP for Witney, a former BBC producer who had
masterminded Major’s 1992 electoral victory. Woodward claimed that Hague
had thrown away John Major’s ‘sensible’ wait-and-see policy on the euro and
described the party’s guarantee to cut the tax burden as ‘reckless’. He was also
critical of the party’s stance on gays.85 Hague came under fire from ex-
Chancellor Kenneth Clarke. He told BBC listeners that he feared the
Conservative Party had moved ‘very strongly to the Right’.86 Hague’s last
setback in 1999 was an attack, on 29 December, from his predecessor John
Major the day after Clarke’s salvo. Writing in The Spectator, and referring to
Thatcherism, Major argued, There are no votes in yesterday and many will be
lost if the ghost of government past appears to lead the party by the nose.’87
Like Blair, Hague also suffered embarrassment when his party attempted to
chose a mayoral candidate for London. The popular Lord Archer was forced to
resign after admitting asking a friend to lie for him in an earlier court case. Later
he was suspended for five years from the Conservative Party. The Conservatives
eventually settled on Steve Norris, a former Transport Minister with a ‘colourful
lifestyle’.
In preparation for the May 2000 elections and the final phase of the 1997
Parliament, Hague revamped his team combining former ministers and bringing
in younger members. Michael Portillo (1953–), former Defence Secretary and
Chief Secretary to the Treasury, was appointed Shadow Chancellor. He was a
Cambridge graduate and the son of a Spanish refugee. Michael Ancram (1945–),
remained Conservative Party Chairman. The son of the 12th Marquess of
Lothian, he was an Oxford graduate and lawyer who had served at the Scottish
Office and the Northern Ireland Office. Shadow Home Secretary was Ann
Widdecombe (1947–). She remained the most senior woman in Hague’s team. A
graduate of Birmingham and Oxford in Latin and PPE, respectively, she was a
university administrator before her election in 1987. She had the advantage of
considerable ministerial experience including Minister of State, Home Office,
1995–97. Francis Maude (1953–), shadowed on Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs. He was the scion of a Conservative parliamentary family. A lawyer, he
was a Cambridge graduate and had served at the DTI, the Foreign Office and as
Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1990–92. Also from a well-known
Conservative family was David Heathcoat-Amory (1949–), the Shadow Chief
Secretary to the Treasury. A graduate of Oxford, he was one of three old
Etonians in the 22-member team. Also an old Etonian, Sir George Young (1941–),
was Shadow Leader of the House. As Secretary of State for Transport, 1995–97,
he had become unpopular as the minister responsible for rail privatization.
Archie Norman (1954–) the successful chairman and former chief executive of
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 325

Asda was elected to the Commons in 1997. He was a graduate of Cambridge and
Minnesota Universities in economics and business. His brief was environment,
transport and the regions. Former Guards officer Iain Duncan Smith (1954–),
was appointed Shadow Defence Secretary. He was first elected to the Commons
in 1992. Parson’s daughter Theresa May (1956–) was also elected in 1997. An
Oxford graduate, her rise was seen in part due to Hague’s desire to offer high-
profile roles to his few women MPs. She was given the education brief. Angela
Browning (1946–) returned to the Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Trade Secretary.
She had served in Major’s government as parliamentary secretary for the
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Dr Liam Fox (1961–), a Scottish
GP, was elected in 1992 and served his leader well on health matters. Andrew
Lansley (1956–) was appointed shadow minister for the Cabinet Office and
policy renewal. A politics graduate from Exeter University he was a former civil
servant and Director of the Conservative Research Department. He arrived at the
Commons in 1997. Bernard Jenkin (1959–), shadow transport spokesperson, a
Cambridge graduate in English literature, was elected to the Commons in 1992.
Before that he had worked for Ford and Legal & General.

BLAIR CULT
On 19 November 1999 it was announced that Mrs Blair at 45 was expecting her
fourth child. Thus Blair became the first Prime Minister to be fathering an
offspring whilst in office. The following day the Daily Mail, the Mirror and the
Sun devoted their entire front pages to this. In the Daily Telegraph Cherie Blair
competed with the long saga of Ken Livingstone’s fight to become Labour’s
candidate for Mayor of London. The other papers thought the legal battle
between former MP Neil Hamilton and Harrod’s owner, al-Fayad, was more
newsworthy. In Nottingham ten women aged from 17 to over 60 picked at
random on the street gave their views.88 Eight said they had no interest. Only one
was enthusiastic, wishing Mrs Blair well. Two said they thought there were more
important things to put in the papers and one wondered whether it had been
planned as a diversion from other issues. The pundits thought it could only help
the Prime Minister. After 1,000 days in office, in January 2000, Blair was in a
much stronger position than his three predecessors as Prime Minister at a similar
stage in the political cycle. Abroad, Social Democratic leaders like German
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder sought to improve their public image by
identifying with him. He was becoming a cult figure. Yet within the Labour
Party there had been rumblings of discontent especially in 1999 and into 2000.
Many felt that Blair had unfairly supported Frank Dobson, the former Health
Secretary, to be Labour’s candidate for the new post of Mayor of London and
had been unduly hostile to Ken Livingstone, MP and former GLC leader. Junior
Defence Minister Peter Kilfoyle, regarded as a Blair loyalist, resigned in January
2000. The resignation was seen as a warning to the government that it was losing
its traditional working-class voters.89 There was also trouble for the Prime
326 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

Minister in Wales. There too he had pushed his man, Alun Michael, to take over
as the Welsh Assembly’s First Secretary. Michael was voted down in February
2000 and replaced by Rhodri Morgan, a more traditional Labour figure. One of
the issues in Wales and the North-west was that these and other regions were
struggling to get EU funds because the Chancellor Gordon Brown refused to
confirm the matching funds that would trigger payments from Brussels.90 In
Wales, Scotland and London, Labour was accused of unfairness in its internal
election procedures. The electoral college method was used rather than one
member, one vote. Trade union leaders were allowed to cast thousands of
members’ votes without consulting them. Livingstone received far more votes
from individual party members than Dobson who won by a narrow margin based
on union votes and MPs. On the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the
Labour Representation Committee, which became the Labour Party in 1906, New
Labour faced criticism from its old supporters like Will Hutton who thought the
party was moving to the right. Shirley Williams, now representing the Liberal
Democratic cause in the Lords, formerly a minister in Callaghan’s government,
gave a measured judgement:

What worries me about New Labour, which in many ways is an interesting

and impressive party, is its dedication to the concept of the redistribution
of income and wealth is much less clear than it used to be. What was once
the bedrock was the concept there should be not complete equality, but not
huge extremes in inequality. As a country we are very unequal; not as bad
as the United States, but much worse than the rest of Europe. So it’s not as
clear as it was, what the basic philosophy of the Labour Party is.91

Livingstone seemed to agree with a lot of this and after testing the waters he
declared on 6 March he would stand as an independent in the London mayoral
election. He was immediately suspended from the Labour Party and subjected to
a vicious campaign of abuse by his erstwhile ‘comrades’, many of whom had
been glad to be seen in his company in his GLC days. Would he score a
remarkable victory or be swept into the dustbin of history? The first poll,
published in the Guardian (7 March) gave him a massive lead. The campaign
looked like becoming a battle to mobilize the ethnic vote. Bids were made for the
substantial Irish, Scottish, Jewish, Turkish, Greek and Asian votes.

LONDON: ‘DANGEROUS BUFFOON’ BEATS PARTY

MACHINES
On Thursday, 4 May 2000, millions of voters had the opportunity to cast their
ballots in local elections in England. There was also a parliamentary by-election
in the safe Conservative seat of Romsey. The greatest interest was of course in
the first election for the London Mayor and for the 25-member London
Assembly. In the run up to the local and London elections Hague launched his
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 327

‘Common Sense Revolution’. He attempted to raise the temperature by

promising to keep the pound and calling for ‘bogus asylum seekers’ to get
detained. This message seemed to go down best in the Euro-sceptic West
Country and in the South-east, where coastal towns faced growing numbers of
would-be refugees. In the West Midlands the problems of Rover hit Labour.
Elsewhere, women’s job losses in the textile industry could also have lessened
enthusiasm for Labour.92 Throughout the country the Conservatives won about
600 seats, mainly at Labour’s expense. The poll, under 30 per cent, was even
lower than usual and it was reckoned Labour suffered from massive abstentions.
There was some evidence of voters switching from Labour to the Liberal
Democrats who snatched control of the Labour stronghold of Oldham and took
Cambridge from Labour. Labour also lost control of Bradford, where the party
had its beginnings in the 1890s. Hague’s night of joy was spoiled by the loss of
Romsey to the Liberal Democrats on a 12.56 per cent swing. The turnout was a
respectable 55.41 per cent. The only consolation for the Conservatives was that
the Labour candidate lost his deposit. Labour voters had seen as their priority the
defeat of the Conservatives and some Conservatives appear to have abstained.
The result was an excellent one for Charles Kennedy, strengthening his position
as Liberal Democratic leader. In London, Livingstone won as predicted, gaining
58 per cent to Conservative Steve Norris’s 42 per cent. Labour’s Frank Dobson
just managed to come in third ahead of the Liberal Democrat Susan Kramer.
Only about 35 per cent of Londoners took the opportunity to vote. The victory
was a great personal achievement for Livingstone who defeated three candidates
with party machines behind them and seven other candidates. Livingstone had
faced a spiteful campaign against him with the traditionally Labour daily the
Mirror (3 May) urging its readers to vote for Norris, calling Livingstone, This
dangerous buffoon’. The paper attacked Blair’s handling of Labour’s selection
procedure and ‘selfish’ Dobson. No papers endorsed Livingstone. Despite such
attacks Livingstone’s win was due to his media exposure over a long period.
Although some voters were kicking the government by voting for him, and
although his personality and London background helped, he did offer the
electorate an alternative agenda. A key issue was the partial privatization of the
underground, which he strongly opposed. Having arrived much later on the scene
Kramer followed his lead on this issue. The election to the London Assembly
was by proportional representation and resulted in Labour and Conservatives
gaining nine seats each, the Liberal Democrats four seats and the Greens three.
This was based on a vote of 30.30 per cent for Labour, 28.99 for the
Conservatives, 14.80 for the Liberal Democrats and 11.08 for the Greens. The
Christian People’s Alliance attracted 3.33 per cent, the British National Party 2.
87, the UKIP 2.05 and the London Socialist Alliance 1.63. Although leading
Green Darren Johnson had stood against Livingstone for Mayor, Livingstone had
advised his supporters to give their first vote for Labour candidates and their ‘top
up’ vote for the Greens in the assembly elections. Given the fragmented nature
328 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

of the Assembly, the Greens had greater potential significance than their
numbers suggested.
Livingstone’s life had been inseparably bound up with London since his birth
in Streatham in 1945. After leaving comprehensive school in 1962 he worked as
a lab technician. He went on to do teacher training but became a professional
politician in the early 1970s. His rise started when he was elected to the Lambeth
Borough Council in 1971. This led to his leadership of the Greater London
Council (GLC) in 1981. After the abolition of the GLC in 1986 he was elected as
Labour MP for Brent East in 1987, being re-elected in 1992 and 1997. He served
on the NEC of the Labour Party, 1987–89 and 1997–98.
After the London and local elections, analyst Peter Kellner93 believed that
Blair was still most likely to win the next general election because of greater anti-
Conservative tactical voting, the greater enthusiasm of Labour voters for
Westminster as opposed to local or European elections, and the opinion poll
results. However, by May 2000, poll results did reveal that Labour’s support was
declining94 and although Hague still had an image problem, so had Thatcher
before her victory in 1979 and so had Heath in 1970. Events in Scotland, Wales
and London revealed that Blair had misjudged the outcry from his own
supporters when they perceived he was exercising too much control over their
parties. Moreover, Labour’s economic strategy was hurting manufacturing
industry, by not dealing with the ‘strong pound’ and by appearing to care more
about the IT-based ‘new economy’ than the old. The government was also under
attack, from ‘Middle England’, for Brown’s assault on ‘elitism’ at England’s
ancient universities. It aroused sleeping dogs in rural constituencies when it
announced time for a Bill to ban foxhunting. Labour and the Liberal Democrats
had won some of these constituencies in 1997. Yet the Blairs scored on a
personal note when their fourth child, Leo, was born on 20 May. Would this help
the government? More substantially, the impasse in Northern Ireland was broken
and Mandelson reinstated the Executive and the Assembly on more vague
promises. Was this really the end of violence? The Economist Intelligence Unit
predicted that Britain would be seen as the second most desirable business
environment, behind the Netherlands but ahead of Canada, in the period 2000–
2004.95 But inward investment seemed to be slackening and the government
appeared less than united over the euro with Cook and Mandelson more
enthusiastic than Brown. By the summer of 2000, Hague’s Conservatives were
edging nearer to Blair’s New Labour in the polls.

NOTES
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

1 Butler and Kavanagh (1997), 206.

2 Butler and Kavanagh (1997), 205.
3 Oliver James, Sunday Times, 31 August 1997.
 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT 329

4 Nottingham Evening Post, 1 September 1997.

5 Daily Telegraph, 13 October 1999.
6 House of Lords Weekly Hansard No. 1790, 10–13 January, Columns 524–6.
7 Davis (2000).
8 Cowley (2000).
9 Parliamentary Debates (Hansard) Volume 329 House of Commons.
10 Rallings and Thrasher (2000).
11 http://news.bbc.co.uk, 24 February 2000, ‘UK Politics: A-Z of Parliament’.
12 Sunday Times, 2 January 2000.
13 http://news.bbc.co.uk, 29 February 2000.
14 Independent on Sunday, 8 December 1999.
15 The Observer, 23 January 2000.
16 Independent, 13 January 2000.
17 The Asian, 3–9 February 2000.
18 The Asian, 3–9 February 2000.
19 Independent, 18 February 2000.
20 http://news.bbc.co.uk, ‘Good Friday Agreement’, 24 February 2000.
21 http://news.bbc.co.uk, ‘Siege of Drumcree’, 24 February 2000.
22 BBC 2 Newsnight, 16 February 2000.
23 Independent, 18 February 2000.
24 1991 Census, Volume 1, 24, Table 1.
25 Daily Telegraph, 19 June 1999; The Times Higher Education Supplement, 11
February 2000 and 7 April 2000.
26 Manchester Evening News, 12 November 1999; For Derby see Independent, 4
April 2000.
27 Independent, 6 January 2000.
28 The Times Higher Education Supplement, 14 January 1999.
29 The Times Higher Education Supplement, 14 January 1999.
30 The Times Higher Education Supplement, 3 December 1999.
31 Independent, 8 December 1999.
32 Sunday Times, 2 January 2000.
33 Daily Mail, 6 January 2000; The Observer, 13 February 2000.
34 Daily Mail 9 November 1999.
35 Independent, 30 December 1999.
36 Daily Telegraph, 16 February 2000.
37 Independent, 1 March 2000.
38 Independent, 8 December 1999; Independent on Sunday, 12 December 1999.
39 Inland Revenue 1999, 137, Table 13.5.
40 Inside Labour, October 1999.
41 Independent, 8 December 1999.
42 The Times, 21 December 1999.
43 The Times, 23 December 1999.
44 Independent, 18 February 2000.
45 Daily Telegraph, 6 October 1999.
46 Daily Telegraph, 26 August 1999.
47 Der Spiegel, 14 February 2000.
48 Independent, 25 November 1998.
49 Independent, 22 December 1999.
330 BLAIR’S NEW LABOUR EXPERIMENT

50 Sunday Telegraph, 3 October 1999.

51 Independent, 6 February 2000.
52 Office of National Statistics, Table 4.2.
53 The Times, 26 January 2000.
54 Sunday Telegraph, 3 October 1999.
55 Sunday Telegraph, 25 July 1999.
56 Nottingham Evening Post, 10 March 2000.
57 Figures supplied by the Police Complaints Authority.
58 The Asian, 2–9 February 2000.
59 Independent, 13 January 2000.
60 The Observer, 23 January 2000.
61 The Asian, 2–9 February 2000.
62 The Police Review, 4 February 2000.
63 Chartered Institute, 4, Table 2.
64 The Asian, 2–9 February 2000.
65 The Times Higher Education Supplement, 11 February 2000.
66 The Times, 9 December 1999.
67 The Independent on Sunday, 9 January 2000.
68 The Times, 23 December 1999.
69 The Times, 23 December 1999.
70 Guardian, 24 December 1999.
71 Guardian, 24 December 1999.
72 Daily Mail, 29 December 1999.
73 Daily Telegraph, 1 July 1999.
74 The Observer, 23 January 2000.
75 The Howard League for Penal Reform, Fact Sheet 32.
76 National Asthma Campaign, February 2000.
77 Sunday Times, 20 February 2000.
78 Ministry of Defence, What Do You Know About…Equal Opportunities in the
Armed Forces, No. 8, 1999.
79 Guardian, 14 January 2000.
80 The Observer, 16 January 2000.
81 Nairn (2000), 297.
82 The Times, 9 December 1999.
83 Sunday Telegraph, 19 September 1999.
84 Independent, 18 February 2000.
85 The Independent on Sunday, 19 December 1999.
86 Daily Telegraph, 29 December 1999.
87 Independent, 30 December 1999.
88 Interviewed by the author, 19 November 1999.
89 The Times, 31 January 2000.
90 The Observer, 13 February 2000.
91 http://news.bbc.co.uk, ‘Labour’s Centenary’, 29 February 2000.
92 Guardian, 16 May 2000; see Mel Steel, ‘Material Witness’.
93 Evening Standard, 5 May 2000.
94 Daily Telegraph, 12 May 2000; Guardian, 16 May 2000.
95 The Economist, 20 May 2000.
 APPENDIX: TABLES

Table A.1 Principal ministers, 1945–97

Prime Minister Foreign Secretary Chancellor of the Home Secretary
Exchequer
C.Attlee (1945–51) E.Bevin Dr H.Dalton Chuter Ede
H Morrison Sir S.Cripps
H.Gaitskell
W.Churchill (1951– Sir A.Eden R.A.Butler Sir D.Maxwell-Fyfe
55) G.Lloyd George
Sir A.Eden (1955– H.Macmillan R.A.Butler G.Lloyd George
57) S.Lloyd H.Macmillan
H.Macmillan S.Lloyd P.Thorneycroft R.A.Butler
(1957–63) Earl Home D.Heathcote H.Brooke
Amory
S.Lloyd
R.Maudling
Sir R.A.Butler R.Maudling H.Brooke
A.DouglasHome
(1963–64)
H.Wilson (1964– P.Gordon Walker J.Callaghan Sir F.Soskice
70) M.Stewart R.Jenkins R.Jenkins
G.Brown J.Callaghan
M.Stewart
E.Heath (1970–74) Sir I.Macleod R.Maudling
A.DouglasHome A.Barber R.Carr
H.Wilson (1974– J.Callaghan D.Healey R.Jenkins
76)
J.Callaghan (1976– A.Crosland D.Healey R.Jenkins
79) Dr D.Owen M.Rees
M.Thatcher (1979– Lord Carrington Sir G.Howe W.Whitelaw
90) F.Pym N.Lawson L.Brittan
Sir G.Howe J.Major D.Hurd
J.Major D.Waddington
D.Hurd
332 APPENDIX: TABLES

Prime Minister Foreign Secretary Chancellor of the Home Secretary

Exchequer
J.Major (1990–97) D.Hurd N.Lamont K.Baker
M.Rifkind K.Clarke K.Clarke
M.Howard
T.Blair (1997–) R.Cook G.Brown J.Straw

Table A.2 Party strengths in the House of Commons, 1945–97

194 195 195 195 195 196 196 197 197 197 197 198 198 199 199
5 0 1 5 9 4 6 0 4 4 9 3 7 2 7
Co 21 29 32 34 36 30 25 33 29 27 33 39 37 33 16
nse 3 8 1 5 5 3 3 0 6 6 9 7 5 6 5
rva
tiv
e
La 39 31 29 27 25 31 36 28 30 31 26 20 22 27 41
bo 3 5 5 7 8 7 3 7 1 9 8 9 9 1 8
ur
Lib 12 9 6 6 6 9 12 6 14 13 11 23 22 20 46
era
l
Ot 22 3 3 2 – 2 2 7 24 27 17 21 24 24 30
her
s*
Tot 64 62 62 63 63 63 63 63 63 63 63 65 65 65 65
al 0 5 5 0 0 0 0 0 5 5 5 0 0 1 9
Note: * includes the Speaker

Table A.3 Elections to the European Parliament (seats)

1999 1994 1989 1984 1979
Labour 29 62 45 32 17
Conservativ 36 18 32 45 60
es
Liberal 10 2 0 0 0
Democrats
Scottish 2 2 1 1 1
National
Plaid Cymru 2 0 0 0 0
Green 2 0 0 0 0
UKIP 3 0 0 0 0
SDLP 1 1 1 1 1
Unionist 1 1 1 1 1
Democratic 1 1 1 1 1
Unionist
 APPENDIX: TABLES 333

1999 1994 1989 1984 1979

Source: 1999: Daily Telegraph, 15 June 1999; 1994 and 1989: The Times Guide to the
European Parliament June 1994.

Table A.4 Number of women MPs, by party, 1945–97

Conservative Labour Liberal Other
1945 1 21 1 1
1950 6 14 1 –
1955 9 14 – 1
1959 12 13 – –
1964 11 17 – –
1966 7 19 – –
1970 15 10 – 1
1974 9 13 – 1
1974 7 18 – 2
1979 8 11 – –
1983 13 10 – –
1987 17 21 2 1
1992 20 37 2 1
1997 13 101 3 2

Table A.5 Patents registered at the European Patent Office, by country, 1994
USA 16,779
Germany 11,046
Japan 10,442
France 4,384
UK 3,138
Netherlands 2,240
Italy 2,046
Switzerland 1,981
Sweden 924
Belgium 695
Austria 573
Spain 338
Denmark 334
Source: Bundestag Report (Bonn), July– August 1996, 9

Table A.6 Personal computers per 100 of the population, by country, 1994
USA 30
Switzerland 22
334 APPENDIX: TABLES

UK 13
Germany 12
France 10
Japan 8
Source: Das Parlament, 9–16 August 1996, 9

Table A.7 University graduates per 100 of the population aged 25–64, by country, 1996
Canada 41
USA 31
Norway 25
Sweden 24
Germany 22
Switzerland 21
Holland 21
UK 19
Denmark 19
Finland 18
Ireland 17
France 16
Greece 13
Portugal 7
Italy 6
Source: Bundestag Report (Bonn), July– August 1996

Table A.8 Economic power of the EU states measured by GDP per inhabitant (DM)
Luxembourg 60,200
Denmark 48,400
Germany 42,400
Austria 42,000
France 38,400
Belgium 38,300
Sweden 37,300
Holland 37,000
Finland 35,400
EU average 32,600
Italy 27,400
UK 27,100
Ireland 27,100
Spain 20,400
Greece 15,400
 APPENDIX: TABLES 335

Portugal 15,100
Note: According to a report of the German Bundesbank, the only states of the EU which
were on target to meet the Maastricht conditions for monetary union were
Germany, France, Britain and Luxembourg (Die Welt, 25 April 1996)
Source: Das Parlament, 2 August 1996, 1

Table A.9 Life expectancy at birth, by sex, Britain, 1931–91

1931 1961 1981 1991
males 58.4 67.9 70.8 73.2
females 62.4 73.8 76.8 78.8
Source: adapted from Social Trends 22 (1992), 123

Table A.10 Defence expenditures as a percentage of GDP (current prices), 1975–98

1975–79 1980–84 1985–89 1990–94 1995 1998
Belgium 3.2 3.3 2.8 2.0 1.6 1.5
Czech Republic N/a N/a N/a N/a N/a N/a
Denmark 2.3 2.4 2.0 1.9 1.7 1.6
France 3.8 3.9 3.8 3.4 3.1 2.8
Germany 3.4 3.4 3.0 2.2 1.7 1.6
Greece 5.6 5.4 5.1 4.4 4.4 4.8
Hungary N/a N/a N/a N/a N/a N/a
Italy 2.1 2.1 2.3 2.1 1.8 2.0
Luxembourg 0.9 1.1 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.9
Netherlands 3.1 3.1 2.9 2.4 2.0 1.8
Norway 2.8 2.7 2.9 2.8 2.4 2.3
Poland N/a N/a N/a N/a N/a N/a
Portugal 3.4 3.0 2.7 2.6 2.6 2.2
Spain N/a 2.2 2.2 1.7 1.5 1.4
Turkey 4.4 4.0 3.3 3.8 3.9 4.4
UK 4.9 5.2 4.5 3.8 3.0 2.7
Canada 1.9 2.0 2.1 1.9 1.5 1.2
USA 5.0 5.6 6.0 4.7 3.8 3.2
NATO total N/a 4.5 4.5 3.6 3.0 2.7
Source: NATO Review, Spring/Summer 2000.

Table A.11 Percentage of full-time employees working more than 48 hours per week, by
country, 1996
UK 22
Ireland 9
Denmark 7
336 APPENDIX: TABLES

France 7
Greece 7
Portugal 7
Germany 6
Spain 5
Italy 4
Luxembourg 4
Belgium 3
Netherlands 1
Source: Eurostat 1994 data, Observer, 10 November 1996

Table A.12 GDP and employment growth, by country, 1960–95

% GDP growth % employment growth
1960–73 1974–95 1960–73 1974–95
USA 4.3 2.5 2.0 1.8
Japan 9.4 3.2 1.3 0.9
Canada 5.4 2.9 3.3 1.9
France 5.4 2.2 0.7 0.2
Germany 4.4 2.6 0.3 1.2
UK 3.2 1.8 0.3 0.1
Italy 5.3 2.4 −0.4 0.3
Source: Observer, 1 December 1996

Table A.13 Britain’s balance of payments current account (£ million), 1984–94

Year Amount Year Amount
1984 1,482 1990 −19,293
1985 2,238 1991 −8,533
1986 −864 1992 −9,468
1987 −4,813 1993 −11,042
1988 −16,475 1994 −1,825
1989 −22,398
Source: Annual Abstract of Statistics 1996 (Treasury, HMSO), 277

Table A.14 British Nobel prize winners, 1945–88

Year Chemistry Medicine Physics Economics Peace
1945 Ernst Chain
Alexander
Flemming
Howard Florey
 APPENDIX: TABLES 337

Year Chemistry Medicine Physics Economics Peace

1947 Robert Edward
Robinson Appleton
1948 P.M.S.Blacket
t
1951 John
Crockroft*
1952 Archer Martin
Richard Synge
1953 Hans Krebs*
1954 Max Born*
1956 Cyril
Inshelwood*
1957 Alexander
Todd
1958 Frederick
Sanger
1959 Philip Noel-
Baker
1960 Peter
Madawar*
1962 John Kendrew Francis Crick*
Max Perutz Maurice
Wilkins*

1963 Alan Hodgin

Andrew Huxley
1964 Dorothy Hodgkin
1967 Ronald Norrish
George Porter
1969 Derek Barton*
1970 Bernard Katz*
1971 Dennis Gabor
1972 Rodney Porter* John Hicks*
1973 Geoffrey Nikolaas Brian Josephson*
Wilkinson* Tinbergen*
1974 Martin Ryle
Anthony Hewish
1977 Nevill Mott* James Meade*
1978 Peter Mitchell
1979 Geoffrey Arthur Lewis*
Hounsfield*
1982 John Vane
338 APPENDIX: TABLES

1985 Richard Stone

1988 James Black
Note: *denotes shared award with non-UK winner

Table A.15 Votes cast for main parties at general elections since 1945 (percentage)
Turnout Conservatives Labour Liberals
1945 73 40 48 9
1950 84 44 46 9
1951 83 48 49 3
1955 77 50 46 3
1959 79 49 44 6
1964 77 43 44 11
1966 76 42 48 9
1970 72 46 43 8
1974 (Feb.) 78 38 37 19
1974 (Oct.) 73 36 39 18
1979 76 44 37 14
1983 73 42 28 26*
1987 75 42 31 23*
1992 78 42 34 18**
1997 73 31 43 17
* Includes SDP vote.
** Liberal Democrats.
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

OFFICIAL PUBLICATIONS AND REFERENCE

PUBLICATIONS

Annual Abstract of Statistics

Conservative Research Department, The Campaign Guide
Hansard (Parliamentary Debates)
HM Treasury, Economic Briefing
Keesing’s Contemporary Archives
Pears Cyclopaedia
Social Trends
The Times Guide to the House of Commons (published after each election)

JOURNALS

Contemporary Record
Contemporary Review
Economic History Review
The Economist
History Today
International Affairs
Journal of Contemporary History
Labour Research
Media Culture and Society
National Westminster Bank Review
Parliamentary Affairs
The Political Quarterly
RSA Journal
Talking Politics
Teaching History
Unless otherwise indicated, the place of publication is London.

BIOGRAPHY AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Anderson, Bruce, John Major: The Making of a Prime Minister, 1991.

Ashley, Jack, Act of Defiance, 1992.
Baker, Kenneth, The Turbulent Years: My Life in Politics, 1993.
Baridge, Trevor, Clement Attlee: A Political Biography, 1985.
340 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lord Beveridge, Power and Influence, 1953.

J.R.Bevins, The Greasy Pole, 1965.
Bower, Tom, Maxwell: The Final Verdict, 1995.
Boyle, Andrew, Montagu Norman, 1967.
Brandt, Willy, My Road to Berlin, 1960.
—— My Life in Politics, 1992.
Brown, Colin, Fighting Talk: The Biography of John Prescott, 1997.
Lord Butler, The Art of the Possible: Memoirs of Lord Butler, 1971.
Callaghan, James, Time and Chance, 1987.
Campbell, John, Nye Bevan and the Mirage of British Socialism, 1987.
—— Edward Heath: A Biography, 1993.
Carlton, David, Anthony Eden: A Biography, 1981.
Lord Carrington, Reflect on Things Past: The Memoirs of Lord Carrington, 1988.
Carver, Michael, Out of Step: The Memoirs of Field Marshal Lord Carver, 1989.
Castle, Barbara, The Castle Diaries 1964–70, 1974.
—— The Castle Diaries 1974–76, 1980.
—— Fighting all the Way, 1993.
Clark, Alan, Diaries, 1993.
Clark, Ronald W., J.B.S: The Life and Work of J.B. S.Haldane, 1968.
Cooper, Diana, Trumpets from the Steep, 1960.
Cosgrave, Patrick, Thatcher: The First Term, 1985.
Crosland, Susan, Tony Crosland, 1982.
Crossman, Richard, The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. 1: Minister of Housing 1964–
66, 1975.
—— The Diaries of a Cabinet Minister, vol. III: 1968–70, 1977.
Crozier, Brian, Free Agent: The Unseen War 1941–1991, 1993.
Dalton, Hugh, The Fateful Years: Memoirs 1931–45, 1957.
—— Memoirs, 1945–60: High Tide and After, 1962.
Dalyell, Tam, Dick Crossman: A Portrait, 1989.
De La Billière, General Sir Peter, Storm Command: A Personal Account of the Gulf War,
1992.
Donoughue, Bernard and G.W.Jones, Herbert Morrison: Portrait of a Politician, 1973.
Duberman, Martin, Paul Robeson: A Biography, New York, 1989.
Eden, Sir Anthony, Full Circle, 1960.
Lord Egremont, Wyndham and Children First, 1968.
Ellis, Nesta Wayne, John Major, 1991.
Fisher, Nigel, Iain Macleod, 1973.
Foot, Michael, Aneurin Bevan, 1945–1960, 1975.
Fowler, Norman, Ministers Decide: A Memoir of the Thatcher Years, 1991.
Lord George-Brown, In My Way, 1971.
Gilbert, Martin, Winston Spencer Churchill, 1976.
Goldsmith, Maurice, Sage: A Life of J.D.Bernal, 1980.
Gorbachev, Mikhail, Memoirs, 1996.
Gormley, Joe, Battered Cherub, 1982.
Grade, Lew, Still Dancing: My Story, 1991.
Grant, John, Blood Brothers: The Division and Decline of Britain’s Trade Unions, 1992.
Griffiths, James, Pages from Memory, 1969.
Haines, Joe, The Power of Politics, 1977.
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 341

Hamilton, Alan, The Real Charles: The Man Behind the Myth, 1988.
Hamilton, Willie, Blood on the Walls, 1992.
Harris, Kenneth, Attlee, 1982.
—— Mrs Thatcher, 1988.
—— The Queen, 1994.
Harris, Robert, The Making of Neil Kinnock, 1984.
Hattersley, Roy, A Yorkshire Boyhood, Oxford, 1983.
Healey, Denis, The Time of My Life, 1990.
Lord Hill, Both Sides of the Hill, 1964.
Hogg, Sarah and Jonathan Hill, Too Close to Call: Power and Politics—John Major in
No. 10, 1995.
Hoggart, Simon and David Leigh, Michael Foot: A Portrait, 1981.
Howard, Anthony, RAB: The Life of R.A.Butler, 1987.
Howe, Geoffrey, Conflict of Loyalty, 1994.
Hull, Cordell, The Memoirs of Cor dell Hull, 1948.
Hyde, Douglas, I Believed, 1950.
Ingham, Bernard, Kill the Messenger, 1991.
James, Robert Rhodes, Anthony Eden, 1991.
Jay, Douglas, Change and Fortune: A Political Record, 1980.
Jenkins, Roy, A Life at the Centre, 1991.
Johnson, Lyndon Baines, The Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency 1963–69,
New York, 1971.
Jones, Jack, Union Man, 1986.
Jones, Mervyn, Michael Foot, 1994.
Jones, Thomas, A Diary with Letters 1932–1950, 1954.
Kellner, Peter and Christopher Hitchens, Callaghan: The Road to Number Ten, 1976.
Lord Kilmuir, Political Adventure: The Memoires of the Earl of Kilmuir, 1964.
King, Cecil, The Cecil King Diary, 1965–1970, 1972.
Kirkpatrick, Ivone, The Inner Circle, 1959.
Lamb, Richard, The Failure of the Eden Government, 1987.
Lawson, Nigel, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical, 1993.
Lee, Jennie, My Life with Nye, 1980.
—— This Great Journey, 1963.
Leeson, Nick, Rogue Trader, 1996.
Lonsdale, Gordon, Spy: Twenty Years of Secret Service, 1965.
Lyttelton, Oliver, The Memoirs of Lord Chandos, 1962.
Macmillan, Harold, Memoirs, vol. III: Tides of Fortune, 1945–1955, 1969.
—— Memoirs, vol. IV: Riding the Storm, 1956–1959, 1971.
—— Memoirs, vol. VI: At the End of the Day, 1959–1961, 1973.
McSmith, Andy, John Smith: Playing the Long Game, 1993.
Maudling, Reginald, Memoirs, 1978.
Millis, Walter (ed.), The Forrestal Diaries, New York, 1951.
Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival, 1940–1965, 1966.
Morgan, Kevin, Harry Pollitt, Manchester, 1993.
Morrison, Herbert, Autobiography, 1960.
Nixon, Richard, The Memoirs of Richard Nixon, 1979.
Noel, Gerald Eyre, Harold Wilson and the New Britain, 1964.
Owen, David, Time to Declare, 1992.
342 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Page, Bruce, David Leitch and Philip Knightley, Philby: The Spy who Betrayed a
Generation, 1968.
Parkinson, Cecil, Right at the Centre, 1992.
Paterson, Peter, Tired and Emotional: The Life of Lord George-Brown, 1993.
Pearce, Edward, The Quiet Rise of John Major, 1991.
Pimlott, Ben, Hugh Dalton, 1985.
—— (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, 1918–40, 1945–60, 1986.
—— The Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth II, 1996.
Ponting, Clive, Churchill, 1994.
Prior, James, A Balance of Power, 1986.
Prittie, Terence, Konrad Adenauer 1876–1967, 1972.
Ranfurly, The Countess of, To War with Whitaker: The Wartime Diaries of The Countess
of Ranfurly, 1939–45, 1995.
Rentoul, John, Tony Blair, 1996.
Ridley, Nicholas, My Style of Government, 1991.
Roberts, Frank, Dealing with Dictators: The Destruction and Revival of Europe, 1939–
70, 1991.
Rose, Norman, Churchill: An Unruly Life, New York, 1994.
Roth, Andrew, Enoch Powell, Tory Tribune, 1970.
Routledge, Paul, Scargill: The Unauthorized Biography, 1993.
Sampson, Anthony, Macmillan: A Study in Ambiguity, 1967.
Scammell, Michael, Solzhenitsyn, 1985.
Schlesinger, Arthur M.Jr, A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, New
York, 1965.
Schmidt, Helmut et al., Kindheit und Jugend unter Hitler, Berlin, 1994.
Schoen, Douglas E., Enoch Powell and the Powellites, 1977.
Shinwell, Emanuel, Conflict Without Malice, 1955.
—— I’ve Lived Through It All, 1973.
Short, Edward, Whip to Wilson, 1989.
Silver, Eric, Vic Feather, 1973.
Steel, David, Against Goliath: David Steel’s Story, 1989.
Stewart, Margaret, Frank Cousins: A Study, 1968.
Tebbit, Norman, Upwardly Mobile: An Autobiography, 1988.
Thatcher, Margaret, The Downing Street Years, 1993.
—— The Path to Power, 1995.
Thomas, Hugh, John Strachey, 1973.
Truman, Margaret, Harry S.Truman, New York, 1973.
Vernon, Betty D., Ellen Wilkinson, 1982.
Walker, Peter, Staying Power, 1991.
Whitelaw, William, The Whitelaw Memoirs, 1989.
Lord Wigg, George Wigg, 1972.
Williams, Francis, A Prime Minister Remembers, 1961.
—— Nothing so Strange: An Autobiography, 1970.
Williams, Marcia, Inside Number 10, 1975.
Williams, Philip, Hugh Gaitskell: A Political Biography, 1979.
—— (ed.), The Diary of Hugh Gaitskell, 1945–56, 1983.
Wilson, Harold, The Labour Government, 1964–70, Harmondsworth, 1971.
—— Final Term: The Labour Government, 1974–1976, 1979.
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 343

—— Memoirs 1916–1964: The Making of a Prime Minister, 1986.

Winstone, Ruth (ed.)/Tony Benn, The Benn Diaries, 1995.
Wright, Peter, Spycatcher, New York, 1987.
Wyatt, W., Into the Dangerous World, 1987.
Lord Young, The Enterprise Years: A Businessman in the Cabinet, 1990.
Young, Hugo, One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher, 1991.
Ziegler, Philip, Wilson: The Authorised Life, 1993.

BRITAIN

Bagdanor, Vernon and Robert Skidelsky (eds), The Age of Affluence, 1951–1964, 1970.
Blake, Robert, The Decline of Power 1915–1964, 1985.
Butler, David and Gareth Butler, British Political Facts, 1900–1994, 1994.
Calder, Angus, The People’s War: Britain 1939–45, 1969.
Calvocoressi, Peter, The British Experience, 1945–75, Harmondsworth, 1979.
Coleman, Terry, Thatcher’s Britain, 1988.
Dunleavy, Patrick, Andrew Gamble, Ian Holliday and Gillian Peele (eds), Developments
in British Politics, 1993.
Eatwell, Roger, The 1945–1951 Labour Governments, 1979.
Gilmour, Ian, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism, 1993.
Hennessy, Peter, Never Again: Britain 1945–51, 1992.
Hewison, Robert, Culture and Consensus England: Art and Politics since 1940, 1995.
Jenkins, Simon, Accountable to None: The Tory Nationalization of Britain, 1996.
Kavanagh, Dennis, Thatcherism and British Politics, Oxford, 1987.
Kellas, James G., The Scottish Political System, Cambridge, 1975.
Lapping, Brian, The Labour Government, 1964–70, 1970.
Leventhal, F.M. (ed.), Twentieth-Century Britain: An Encyclopedia, New York, 1995.
Marwick, Arthur, British Society since 1945, 1996.
Morgan, Kenneth O., Labour in Power, 1945–51, Oxford, 1984.
—— The People’s Peace: British History 1945–1990, Oxford, 1992.
Ponting, Clive, Breach of Promise: Labour in Power, 1964–70, 1988.
Riddell, Peter, The Thatcher Era and its Legacy, Oxford, 1991.
Sampson, Anthony, The Changing Anatomy of Britain, 1982.
Shanks, Michael, The Stagnant Society, Harmondsworth, 1963.
Sherwood, Roy, Superpower Britain, Cambridge, 1989.
Sked, Alan and Chris Cook, Post-war Britain: A Political History, 1996.

DEFENCE, EMPIRE, FOREIGN POLICY, FOREIGN

STATES

Aldrich, Richard J.and Michael F.Hopkins (eds), Intelligence, Defence and Diplomacy:
British Policy in the Post-war World, 1994.
Barber, Noel, The War of the Running Dogs, New York, 1972.
Barker, Elizabeth, Britain in a Divided Europe 1945–1970, 1971.
Bartlett, C.J., The Long Retreat: A Short History of British Defence Policy 1945– 1979,
1979.
344 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

—— ‘The Special Relationship’: A Political History of Anglo-American Relations since

1945, 1992.
Braddon, Russell, Suez: Splitting of a Nation, 1973.
Carr, Gordon, The Angry Brigade: The Cause and the Case, 1975.
Central Office of Information, Britain and the Falklands Crisis: A Documentary Record,
1982.
Cohen, Sir Andrew, British Policy in a Changing Africa, 1959.
Dockrill, Michael, British Defence since 1945, Oxford, 1989.
Edmonds, I.G., The Shah of Iran: The Man and His Land, New York, 1976.
Epstein, Leon D., British Politics in the Suez Crisis, 1964.
Frankel, Joseph, British Foreign Policy 1945–1973, 1975.
Frazier, R.L., Anglo-American Relations with Greece: The Coming of the Cold War, 1991.
Gimbel, John, The American Occupation of Germany, Stanford, 1968.
Gorst, Anthony and Lewis Johnman, The Suez Crisis, 1996.
Gowing, Margaret, Independence and Deterrence: Britain and Atomic Energy 1945– 52,
1974.
Graham, Robert, Iran: The Illusion of Power, 1979.
Groom, A.J.R., British Thinking about Nuclear Weapons, 1974.
Gullick, J.M., Malaya, 1963.
Gupta, P.S., Imperialism and the British Labour Movement, 1975.
Gutteridge, W.F., The Military in African Politics, 1969.
Hastings, Max and Simon Jenkins, The Battle for the Falklands, 1983.
Hendry, Joy, Understanding Japanese Society, 1987.
Horsley, William and Roger Buckley, Nippon, New Superpower: Japan since 1945, 1990.
Hoyt, Edwin P., The Bloody Road to Panmunjom, New York, 1991.
Jackson, General Sir William, Withdrawal from Empire, 1986.
Johnson, Christopher, In with the Euro, out with the Pound: The Single Currency for
Britain, 1996.
Judd, Denis, Empire: The British Imperial Experience from 1765 to the Present, 1996.
Kennedy, Paul, The Realities behind Diplomacy: Background Influences on British
External Policy, 1865–1980, 1981.
King, Gillian, Imperial Outpost: Aden: its Place in British Strategic Policy, 1964.
Krisch, Henry, German Politics Under Soviet Occupation, New York, 1974.
Laqueur, Walter, The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East
Conflict, 1969.
Louis, Wm. Roger, The British Empire in the Middle East 1945–51, Oxford, 1985.
Louis, Wm. Roger and Roger Owen (eds), Suez 1956: The Crisis and its Consequences,
Oxford, 1989.
McAllister, Richard, From EC to EU: An Historical and Political Survey, 1997.
Middlebrook, Martin, Taskforce: The Falklands, 1982, 1996.
Miller, Davina, Export or Die: Britain’s Defence Trade With Iran and Iraq, 1996.
Nicholas, H.G., The United States and Britain, Chicago, 1975.
Northedge, F.S., Descent from Power: British Foreign Policy 1945–1973, 1974.
Nunnerley, David, President Kennedy and Britain, 1972.
Pierre, Andrew J., Nuclear Politics: The British Experience with an Independent Strategic
Force, 1972.
Pincher, Chapman, Their Trade is Treachery, 1986.
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 345

Porter, Bernard, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism 1850–1995,
1996.
Ramazani, R.K., Iran’s Foreign Policy, 1941–1973, Charlottesville, VA, 1975.
Rees, David, Korea: The Limited War, 1964.
Richardson, Louise, When Allies Differ: Anglo-American Relations during the Suez and
Falklands Crises, 1996.
Rodinson, Maxime, Israel and the Arabs, 1968.
Royle, Trevor, The Best Years of Their Lives: The National Service Experience, 1945–
63, 1988.
Saville, John, The Politics of Continuity: British Foreign Policy and the Labour
Government, 1945–46, 1993.
Sharp, Paul, Thatcher’s Diplomacy: The Revival of British Foreign Policy, 1997.
Snowman, Daniel, USA: The Twenties to Vietnam, 1968.
Thomas, L.V. and R.N.Frye, The United States and Turkey and Iran, Cambridge, MA,
1952.
Thompson, Roger C., The Pacific Basin since 1945, 1994.
West, Nigel, The Secret War for the Falklands: The SAS, MI6, and the War Whitehall
Nearly Lost, 1997.
Yoshino, M., Japan’s Managerial System, Cambridge, MA, 1968.
Young, John W., Britain and European Unity, 1945–92, 1993.
Zabith, Sepher, The Communist Movement in Iran, Berkeley, CA, 1966.
Zink, Harold, The United States in Germany 1944–1955, Princeton, NJ, 1957.

ECONOMIC, EDUCATIONAL AND SOCIAL POLICY

Alford, B.W.E., British Economic Performance, 1945–1975, 1988.

Barnett, Correlli, The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as a Great Nation,
1986.
Barry, E.Eldon, Nationalization and British Politics, 1965.
Beckerman, Wilfred (ed.), The Labour Government’s Economic Record, 1964–70, 1972.
Brittan, Samuel, The Treasury under the Tories 1951–1964, Harmondsworth, 1964.
Lord Bullock, Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, Cmnd 6706,
January 1977.
Cairncross, Alec, The British Economy since 1945, Oxford, 1992.
Church, Roy, The Rise and Decline of the British Motor Industry, 1994.
Coates, David and John Hillard (eds), The Economic Decline of Modern Britain: The
Debate between Left and Right, Brighton, 1986.
Dinterfass, Michael, The Decline of Industrial Britain, 1870–1980, 1992.
Douglas J.W.B., The Home and the School, 1964.
Galbraith, John Kenneth, The World Economy since the Wars, 1994.
Halsey, A.H., Change in British Society, Oxford, 1978.
Harrison, Tom, Britain Revisited, 1961.
Hutton, Will, The State We’re In, 1995.
Lowe, Rodney, The Welfare State in Britain since 1945, 1993.
Marsh, Catherine and Sara Arber (eds), Families and Households, 1992.
Marwick, Arthur, Class Image and Reality in Britain, France and the USA since 1930,
1981.
346 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Richmond, W.Kenneth, Education in Britain since 1944, 1978.

Rubinstein, David and Brian Simon, The Evolution of the Comprehensive School 1926–
1972, 1973.
Simon, Brian, Intelligence Testing and the Comprehensive School, 1953.
Thomas, W.A., The Finance of British Industry, 1918–1976, 1978.
Williams, Robin, Whose Public Schools?, 1957.
Worswick, G.D.N. and P.H.Ady, The British Economy 1945–50, 1952.

ELECTIONS

Butler, David, The British General Election of 1959, 1960.

—— The Electoral System in Britain since 1918, 1963.
—— British General Elections since 1945, Oxford, 1995.
Butler, D.E. and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, 1974.
—— The British General Election of October 1974, 1975.
—— The British General Election of 1979, 1980.
Butler, David and Anthony King, The British General Election of 1964, 1965.
—— The British General Election of 1966, 1966.
Butler, D.E. and Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, The British General Election of 1970, 1971.
Howard, Anthony and Richard West, The Making of the Prime Minister, 1965.
King, Anthony, et al., Britain at the Polls, Chatham, NJ, 1993.
Kitzinger, Uwe, The 1975 Referendum, 1976.
McCallum, R.B. and Alison Readman, The British General Election of 1945, 1947.
Nicholas, H.G., The British General Election of 1950, 1951.

ETHNIC COMMUNITIES, RACE, IMMIGRATION

Alderman Geoffrey, The Jewish Community in British Politics, Oxford, 1983.

Aris, Stephen, The Jews in Business, 1970.
Daniels, Roger, Concentration Camps USA, New York, 1971.
Department of Defense, Black Americans in the Defense of Our Nation, Washington, DC,
1985.
Field, Frank and Patricia Haikin, Black Britons, 1971.
Holmes, Colin, John Bull’s Island: Immigration and British Society, 1871–1971, 1988.
Silberman, Charles E., A Certain People: American Jews and their Lives Today, New
York, 1985.
Spencer, Ian R.G., British Immigration Policy since 1939, 1997.

GOVERNMENT, PARLIAMENT AND

ADMINISTRATION

Barber, James, The Prime Minister since 1945, Oxford, 1991.

Dickie, John, Inside the Foreign Office, 1992.
Evans, Peter, The Police Revolution, 1974.
Hennessy, Peter, Whitehall, 1990.
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 347

Hollingsworth, Mark, MPs for Hire: The Secret World of Political Lobbying, 1991.
Kellner, Peter and Norman Frowther-Hunt, The Civil Service: An Inquiry into Britain’s
Ruling Class, 1980.
Mark, Sir Robert, Policing a Perplexed Society, 1977.
Mellors, Colin, The British MP, Farnborough, 1978.
Stacey, Frank, British Government 1966–1975: Years of Reform, 1975.
Wass, Sir Douglas, Government and the Governed, 1984.

MEDIA

Briggs, Asa, Sound and Vision: The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom,
Oxford, 1979.
Cockerell, Michael, Live from Number 10: The Inside Story of Prime Ministers and
Television, 1988.
Cockerell, Michael, Peter Hennessy and David Walker, Sources Close to the Prime
Minister: Inside the Hidden World of the News Manipulators, 1984.
Hooper, Alan, The Military and the Media, 1982.
Margach, James, The Abuse of Power, 1978.
Murphy, Robert, Realism and Tinsel: Cinema and Society in Britain 1939–49, 1992.
Pilkington, Sir Harry, Report of the Committee on Broadcasting 1960, 1962.
Rosenbaum, Martin, From Soapbox to Soundbite: Party Political Campaigning in Britain
since 1945, 1997.
Royle, Trevor, War Report: The War Correspondent’s View of Battle from the Crimea to
the Falklands, 1987.
Tunstall, Jeremy, The Media in Britain, 1983.
Walker, Alexander, Hollywood England: The British Film Industry in the Sixties, 1986.
—— National Heroes: British Cinema in the Seventies and Eighties, 1985.
Whale, John, The Politics of the Media, 1977.
Wilson, H.H., Pressure Group, 1961.
Wybrow, Robert J., Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen through the
Gallup Data, 1989.

NORTHERN IRELAND

Aughey, Arthur and Duncan Morrow (eds), Northern Ireland Politics, 1995.
Bruce, Steve, God Save Ulster, Oxford, 1989.
Buckland, Patrick, A History of Northern Ireland, Dublin, 1981.
Lord Cameron, Disturbances in Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1969.
Compton, Sir Edmund, Report of the Inquiry into Allegations against the Security Forces
of Physical Brutality in Northern Ireland Arising out of Events on 9th August 1971,
Cmnd 4823, 1971.
Coogan, Tim Pat, The I.R.A., 1980.
Devlin, Bernadette, The Price of My Soul, 1969.
Dillon, Martin and Denis Lehane, Political Murder in Northern Ireland, 1973.
Farrell, Michael, The Orange State, 1980.
348 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Holland, Jack, The American Connection: U.S. Guns, Money and Influence in Northern
Ireland, New York, 1987.
Kennedy-Pipe, Caroline, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland, 1997.
McAllister, Ian, The Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labour Partry, 1977.
Rose, Richard, Governing Without Consensus, 1971.
Wichert, Sabine, Northern Ireland since 1945, 1991.

POLITICAL PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS

Lord Butler, The Conservatives: A History from their Origins to 1965, 1977.
Charmley, John, A History of Conservative Politics, 1900–1996, 1996.
Cook, Chris, Short History of the Liberal Party, 1900–92, 1992.
Crew, Ivor and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic
Party, 1995.
Foote, Geoffrey, The Labour Party’s Political Thought: A History, 1997.
Haseler, Stephen, The Gaitskellites, 1969.
Hoffman, J.D., The Conservative Party in Opposition 1945–51, 1964.
Jones, Tudor, Remaking the Labour Party from Gaitskell to Blair, 1996.
Kavanagh, Dennis (ed.), The Politics of the Labour Party, 1982.
Layton-Henry, Zig (ed.), Conservative Party Politics, 1980.
Lindsay, T.E. and Michael Harrington, The Conservative Party 1918–1979, 1979.
Ludlam, Steve and Martin J.Smith (eds), Contemporary British Conservatism, 1995.
Morgan, Kenneth O., Labour People: Leaders and Lieutenants, Hardie to Kinnock,
Oxford, 1987.
Parkin, Frank, Middle Class Radicals, Manchester, 1968.
Pelling, Henry, The British Communist Party: A Historical Profile, 1958.
—— A History of British Trade Unionism, 1963.
—— A Short History of the Labour Party, 1996.
Richter, Irving, Political Purpose in Trade Unions, 1973.
Shepherd, Robert, The Power Brokers: The Tory Party and its Leaders, 1991.
Smith, Martin and Joanna Spear, The Changing Labour Party, 1992.
Thompson, Willie, The Good Old Cause: British Communism 1920–1991, 1992.
Thorpe, Andrew, A History of the British Labour Party, 1997.
Thurlow, Richard, Fascism in Britain: A History 1918–1985, 1987.
Watson, Alan, A Conservative Coup: The Fall of Margaret Thatcher, 1991.

ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR FIFTH EDITION

OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

Chartered Institute of Public Finance & Accountancy, Police Statistics 1998–1999

Actuals, 1999.
EP News.
HMSO, Police Complaints Authority: The First Ten Years, 1995.
HMSO, 1997 Census Ethnic Group and Country of Birth: Great Britain Volume 1, 1993.
 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 349

NATO Review.
Office of National Statistics, International Migration: Migrants Entering or Leaving the
UK and England and Wales, 1997, 1999
Stefan Reade (ed.), Inland Revenue Statistics 1999, 1999.

NEWSPAPERS/MAGAZINES

The Asian
The Asian Times
Das Par lament
Inside Labour: The New Labour Magazine
London Jewish News
West European Politics

BOOKS

Gerry, Autobiography, Dublin, 1998.

Ambrose, Stephen E. and Douglas G.Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign
Policy since 1938, 1997.
Balen, Malcolm, Kenneth Clarke, 1994.
Ball, Stuart, The Conservative Party since 1945, 1998.
Baston, Lewis, Sleaze: The State of Britain, 2000.
Bell, Martin, An Accidental MP, 2000.
Blake, A History of the Conservative Party from Peel to Major, 1997.
Butler, David and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1997, 1998.
Carvel, John, Turn Again Livingstone, 1999.
Clark, Alan, The Tories, Conservatives and the Nation State 1922–1997, 1998.
Cohen, Nick, Cruel Britannia, 1999.
Crew, Ivor, B.Gosschalk and J.Bartle (eds), Political Communications: Why Labour Won
the General Election of 1997, 1997.
De Winter, L. and H.Tursan, Regionalist Parties in Western Europe, 1998.
Fairclough, Norman, New Labour, New Language, 2000.
Fielding, Steven, The Labour Party since 1951, 1997.
Geddes, Andrew and Jonathan Tonge (eds), Labour’s Landslide, Manchester, 1997.
Gould, Philip, The Unfinished Revolution: How the Modernisers Saved the Labour Party,
1998.
Heath, Edward, The Course of My Life, 1998.
Ignatieff, Michael, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond, 2000.
Judah, Tim, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 2000.
Kavanagh, Denis, The Reordering of British Politics After Thatcher, Oxford, 1997.
Lamont, Norman, In Office, 1999.
Lipsey, David, The Secret Treasury: How Britain’s Economy is Really Run, 2000.
Major, John, The Autobiography, 1999.
Marr, Andrew, The Day Britain Died, 2000.
Mawhinney, Brian, In the Firing Line, 1999.
Mitchell, Austin and D.Wiener, Last Time. Labour’s Lessons From the Sixties, 1997.
350 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Morgan, Kenneth O., Callaghan: A Life, Oxford, 1997.

Nairn, Tom, After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland, 2000.
Osborne, Peter, Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Art of Media Management,
1998.
Pym, Hugh and Nick Kochan, Gordon Brown: The First Year in Power, 1998.
Weinbren, Daniel, Generating Socialism. Recollections of Life in the Labour Party, 1997.
Wrigley, Chris (ed.), British Trade Unions 1945–1995, Manchester, 1997.

ARTICLES

Cowley, Philip, ‘The Marginalisation of Parliament?’, Talking Politics, Winter 2000,

Volume 12, No. 2.
Davis, ‘Public Relations, News Production and Changing Patterns of Source Access in the
British National Media’, Media, Culture, Society, January 2000, Volume 22.
Jones, Alistair, ‘UK Relations with the EU, and Did You Notice the Elections?’, Talking
Politics, Winter 2000, Volume 12, No. 2.
Margetts, Helen, The 1997 British General Election: New Labour, New Britain?’, West
European Politics, October 1997.
Rallings, Colin and Michael Thrasher, ‘Assessing the Significance of the Elections of
1999’, Talking Politics, Winter 2000, Volume 12, No 2.

INTERNET MATERIAL

http://news.bbc.co.uk.
 INDEX

Aachen Referendum, The 181 Amnesty International 219

Abadan 46 Ancram, Michael 339
Abbey Nation 245 Anderson, Lindsay 92
Abbott, Diane 249, 314, 328, 331 Anderson, Sir John 43
Abdullah al-Asnag 88 Andrew, Prince 293
Abel-Smith, Brian 93 Andropov, Yuri 217
Abortion Act 156 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company 13, 45
Abrams, Dr Mark 95, 111 Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) 243
Abse, Leo 156 ‘Angry Brigade’ 170
Adam Smith Institute 215 Anguilla 139
Adams, Gerry 302, 322 Annan Committee 249
Adamson, Campbell 176 Anne, Princess 181, 293
Addison, Lord 5 Antelope (HMS) 229
Aden 86, 87–8, 308 Anti-Apartheid Movement 196
Adenauer, Dr Konrad 99 Apprentice Boys 153
Adie, Kate 289 Arab-Israeli wars (1948, 1956) 64–7;
Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration (1966) 141;
Service (ACAS) 180–1 (1973) ‘Yom Kippur’ 173
Afghanistan 217, 247, 257, 331 Archer, Lord 280, 338, 339
Agricultural Charter 24 Ardent (HMS) 229
Agriculture 81, 285 Argentina 215, 226–30
Aherne, Bertie, 321 Armstrong, Sir William (Lord) 56, 173
AIDS 261 Ashcroft, Michael, 338
Aitken, Jonathan 338 Ashdown, Paddy 263, 298, 301, 310, 319
Albania 39, 318 Ashley, Jack (Lord) 4
alcohol abuse 336 Asquith, Anthony 92
Aldermaston 92 Aston Villa 256
Alexander, A.V. 4, 5, 29 Aswan Dam 65
Algeria 174 Atkins, Humphrey 213, 214
Allaun, Frank 92, 96 Atlantic Conveyer 229
Alli, Lord 312 Attenborough, Sir Richard 252
Alliance (Liberal-SDP) 230, 247 Attlee, Clement R (Lord) 2, 4, 5, 8, 12, 17,
Alliance Party (NI) 170, 200, 321 23, 28, 29, 30, 46, 48–9, 52 (note 62), 57,
Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU) 88, 97, 110, 117;
19, 97, 147 background and career 6–7;
Amersham International 244 on Europe 42;

351
352 INDEX

purged Communists 20; Beeching, Dr Richard (Lord) 100

retired 59; Begin, Menachem 215
view of Socialism 18 Beira 129
Attwood, Arther 22, 23 Beith, Alan 292
AUEW 220 Belfast 169, 170, 200, 249, 262, 284, 302
Austen, Jane 253 Belgium 42, 64, 78
Australia 7, 78, 140, 141, 202, 218, 252, Belize 227
298, 330 Bell, Martin 300, 301, 303
Austria 59, 201, 202, 203 Benefits Agency 321
Awan case, 320–1 Benn, Anthony Wedgwood (Tony) 58, 60,
Ayling, Bob 328 91, 111, 119, 121, 127–8, 130, 134, 142,
Ayatollah Khomeini 217, 254 144, 145, 147, 150, 172, 179, 180, 182,
183, 185, 190, 191, 192, 195, 220, 221,
Bacow, Lawrence 323 279, 314, 319, 328;
Baghdad Pact 65, 71, 86 background 126–7;
Bailey, Richard 238 defeated 1983 231;
Baker Kenneth 241, 242, 256, 257, 258, and Falklands 230;
264, 273, 278 and miners’ strike 237, 238;
balance of payments 8, 76, 100, 112, 122, renounces title 104
152, 175, 176, 238 Benn, William Wedgwood see Viscount
Balfour Declaration 30 Stansgate
Balogh, Thomas (Lord) 121 Berger, John 92
Banda, Dr Hastings (President) 85 Berlin 40;
Bangladesh 331 blockade 42;
Bank of Credit and Commerce Wall 97
International, 282 Bermuda 83
Bank of England 4, 123, 227, 265 Best, A.A. 4
Banks, Tony 274 Bethell, Lord 239
Bannister, Dr Roger 55 Bethnal Green 303
Barbados 86 Betjeman, John 60
Barber, Anthony (Lord) 163, 175, 182, 272 Bettaney, Michael 240
Barclays Bank 296; Bevan, Aneurin 5, 6, 16, 18, 34, 44, 45, 57,
(card) 337 60, 89, 91, 96, 110
Barings Bank 282 Beveridge, Sir William (Lord) 5, 17
Bar Lev Line 173 Beveridge Report 5, 17
Barnes, Dame Josephine 187 Bevin, Ernest 4, 5, 6, 32–3, 38–40, 51 (note
Barnes, Rosie 263 46), 57
Barnett, Joel (Lord) 205 Bevins, Reginald 58, 106, 120
Bartlett, Vernon 2 Biafra 138–9
Barrymore, Michael 312 Biffen, John 213, 265, 266
Bassan Lord 332 Birmingham 149, 181, 200, 224, 241, 255,
Beamish Major Tufton 33 257, 331;
Beaton, James 181 Edgbaston 184, 301;
Beaver, Sir Hugh 101 Handsworth 226
Beaverbrook Lord 63 ‘Birmingham Six’ 257
Beckett, Margaret 278, 279, 307 Bishop, Premier Maurice 235
Beckham, David 311 Black, Conrad 251
Blackburn 332
 INDEX 353

‘Black Monday’ (1987) 254 British Aerospace 243, 282

Blair Cherie (neé Booth) 279, 300, 311, British Airways 13, 244, 282
340 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)
Blair, Tony 296–7, 300, 302, 303, 334, 338, 13, 49, 60, 207, 221, 249–51, 300, 301
340; British and Commonwealth 282
background 279; British Gas 296
elected leader 279; British Guiana 83
first Cabinet 307, 312; British Leyland 135, 192
Euro and 317–8; British Medical Association 12, 187, 261
on NHS 326; British National Oil Corporation 203
on universities 323 British National Party (BNP) 278, 301, 303,
Blake, George 103 343
Blunkett, David 307, 324–5 British Nationality Act (1990) 290;
Blunt, Anthony 239 Hong Kong Act (1990) 290
Boateng, Paul 308 British Overseas Airways Corporation 55
Bolton 206 British Petroleum 191, 193, 243
Bombay mutiny 28 British Rail 13, 164, 168
Boothby, Sir Robert (Lord) 71 British Screen Corporation 252
Boothroyd, Betty 303, 314 British Steel Corporation 135
Bose, Subhas Chandra 28 British Telecom 245, 296
Bosnia 287–8 British Union of Fascists 302
Bottomley, Virginia, 285 Brittan, Leon 234, 241, 242
Bowden, Herbert (Lord) 134 Brittan, Samuel 76, 81
Boyle, Sir Edward (Lord) 67, 72, 102, 149, Brixton 224, 225, 226
150 Broadcasting in the ‘90s 250
Bracken, Brendan 2 Broadcasting Complaints Commission 251
Bradford 149, 303; Broadcasting Standards Council 251
Grammar 118 ‘Broadwater Farm Three’ 257
Bradford City Football Club 255 Brocklebank-Fowler, Christopher 223
Bradley, Tom 221 Brockway, Fenner (Lord) 91
Braine, John 92 Bronowski, Dr Jacob 107
Braine, Sir Bernard 226 Brookeborough, Lord 151
Branagh, Kenneth 253 Brookings Institute 194
Brandt, Chancellor Willy 51 (note 47) 111, Brookside 251
130, 141, 181 Broughton Fred 332
Bray, Dr Jeremy 126–7 Brown, George (Lord George-Brown) 57,
Brecon and Radnorshire 302 97, 109, 112, 117, 122, 123–4, 133–4,
Brenner, Otto 78 135, 138, 140–1, 145, 157, 209, 222
Brentford and Isleworth 303 Brown, Gordon 279, 307, 317–8
Bretton Woods 145 Brown, Nick 312
Brezhenev, Leonid 217 Browning, Angela 340
Bridget Jones’s Diary 338 BSE see mad cow disease
Bridges, Sir Edward 56 Brunei, Sultan of 298
Brighton bombing 243 Brunner, John 120
‘Bridgwater Three’ 257 Brussels, Treaty of 41
Brief Encounter 62 Buckingham Palace see Elizabeth II
Bristol 224, 243, 244, 331 Budgen, Nick 301
Britain in Europe 191–2 building societies 245
354 INDEX

Bullock, Sir Alan (Lord) 189, 202 Walthamstow W. (1966) 141;

Bullock Committee 202–3 Wigan (1999) 310;
Burgess, Guy 21 Wirral (1997) 293;
Burma 37 Woolwich W. (1975) 201
Burma-Siam railway 1 Byers, Stephen 329
Burmah Oil Company 203 Byrnes, James F. 40
Bush, Professor Alan 49
‘Butskellism’ 70, 214 Cabinet, size and members’
Butler, David 131, 249 backgrounds:
Butler, R.A. (Lord) 24, 56, 70, 72, 74, 98, Attlee 6,
105, 112 Blair 307–8;
by-elections: Callaghan 195;
Ashfield (1977) 201; Churchill 56;
Bromley (1945) 71; Eden 58;
Cambridge (1966) 141; Heath 162–3;
Carmarthen (1966) 133; Macmillan 72;
Crosby (1981) 223; Major 272–3;
Croydon (1981) 223; Thatcher 213–14, 224;
Derbyshire W. (1962) 102; (‘War Cabinet’) 228, 234, 241, 266–7;
Eastleigh (1994) 279; Wilson 74, 179–80
Glasgow Govan (1973) 206; Cabinet Secretariat 148
Hamilton (1966) 141, 206; Cable & Wireless 243, 244, 296
Hamilton S. (1999) 310; Cadbury 282
Hillhead (1982) 252 223; Calcutt inquiry 252
Hull (1966) 131; Calcutta 28
Illford N. (1978) 201; Callaghan, James (Lord) 11, 45, 97, 109,
Kensington (1999) 312; 122, 123, 127, 128, 133–4, 137, 138,
Leeds C. (1999) 310; 144, 148, 179, 182, 188, 199, 204, 205,
Leicester S.W. (1966) 141; 208, 216, 227, 258, 296, 308;
Leyton (1965) 123; appointed Home Secretary 140–2;
Littleborough and background 118, 195;
Saddleworth (1995) 287; and EEC 190–1;
Manchester Gorton (1966) 141; elected PM 194–5;
Mid Ulster (1969) 150; resigns 220
Middlesbrough W. (1962) 102; Cambridge University 79, 130, 162, 180,
Motherwell (1945) 3, 206; 187, 224, 234, 235, 267, 273, 323–4
Norfolk C. (1962) 102; Cameron, James 44, 91
Nuneaton (1965) 123; Cameron Commission (1969) 153
Orpington (1962) 101; Campaign for Democratic Socialism 97,
Oxford (1938) 104; 110
Perth and Kinross (1995) 287; Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament 91–3,
Portsmouth S. (1984) 236; 96–7, 111, 239, 246–8
Rochdale (1959) 61; Canada 11, 78, 143, 184, 199, 201, 202,
Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles (1965) 205, 217, 299, 328, 330, 344
123, 129; Cannon, Les 77
Romsey (1999) 342; Canterbury, Archbishop of 84
Southend (1980) 216; capital punishment 153, 200
Walsall N. (1976) 201;
 INDEX 355

Cardiff 34, 118, 196 China 28, 33, 43, 65, 100, 117, 126, 147,
Carlisle, Mark 213, 224, 241 217, 230, 299
Carr, Robert (Lord) 162, 168, 170, 175 China (Taiwan) 215, 295
Carrington, Lord 67, 130, 162, 176, 185, Christian Democracy 42, 191
213, 218, 228 Chrysler 192
Carron, William 97, 100 Church of England 288, 293, 335
Carter, President Jimmy 216 Church of Scotland 84
Carver, Field-Marshal, lord 67 Churchill, Sir Winston 2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 13, 15,
Castle Barbara (Lady) 11, 15, 16, 45, 118, 25, 31, 45, 47, 58, 61, 63, 71, 128, 137,
119, 126, 128, 138, 139, 172, 179, 180, 240;
182, 186, 190, 194, 195, 307, 327; Gestapo speech 4, 49;
exposed Hola Camp 84; India and 29–30;
In Place of Strife and 142–4; style of government 6, 55–6
opposed EEC 140 cinema admissions 252
Castlemartin 295 Citizen’s Charter 276
Catlin, Sir George 179 City of London 4, 171, 245, 254, 282–3,
Catholic Church 289, 331, 335 284, 327, 329, 335
Caves, Professor R.E. 194 city technology colleges 258
Central African Federation 36, 84, 85 Civil Service 10, 20, 56, 119, 120, 121,
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 65 188, 337
Centre forward Group 242 Clark, Alan 272, 286
Centre for Policy Studies 185, 215 Clark, William 67
Ceylon 22 Clarke, Premier Joe 217
Chadwick, Edwin 13 Clarke, Kenneth 241, 273, 286, 301, 309,
Chalfont, Lord 126, 182, 209 312, 318, 339;
Challenor, Det. Sergeant, 198 background 267
Chamberlain, Neville 6, 13, 58, 71, 104, Clause IV 94, 110, 279
137, 241 Clerical and Admin. Workers’ Union 19,
Chamberlain, Sir Austin 240 97
Chambers, Paul 157 Clinton, President Bill 311, 319, 321
Chamoun, Camille 86 Clore, Charles 102
Champneys 282 Clwyd, Ann 314
Channel Five 251, 300 Clydeside 94, 207
Channel Four 249, 252, 300 Coaker, Vernon 312
Channel Tunnel 287 Coates, Ken 316
Chaplin, Judith 339 coal industry 13–14, 236–9, 282, 289, 297
Chapple, Frank (Lord) 77, 222 Cockfield, F.A. 100
Chariots of Fire 253 Cohesion Report, The 298
Charles, Prince of Wales 225, 293, 311 Cold War 38–41, 295, 320
Chase Manhattan Bank 254 Cole, Prof. G.D.H. 88–9, 229
Chataway, Christopher 182 Collins, Canon L.John 91
Checkland, Michael 250 Collins, Norman 60, 157
Chelmer, Lord 130 Colonial Development and Welfare Act 35
Chernenko, Konstanin 217 Colville, J.R. 120
Chesterfield 237, 238 Comet airliner 55
Chichester-Clarke, James 152, 169 Commissioner for Admin. Act (1967) 155
Child Benefit 327 Common Agricultural Policy 190
Chile 182, 215 Common Wealth 2
356 INDEX

Commonwealth 35, 42, 55, 74, 85, 86, 97, Council of Ireland 170, 181
136–7, 140, 171, 190, 218, 222, 227, Cousins, Frank 96, 118, 123, 126, 127, 133
235, 266 Coventry (HMS) 229
Commonwealth Immigration Act 98, 147 Craig, William 152
Communism (in Britain) 2, 3, 11, 19–21, Creech Jones, Arthur 34
49–50, 57, 77, 93, 97, 133, 147, 175, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease 285
185, 191 Crewe, Prof. Ivor 209–10, 277
Communism (in Western Europe) 41, 78, crime 197–9, 256, 331–4
191 Criminal Justice Act (1972) 187;
Communist Party of Great Britain see (1998) 314
Communism (in Britain) Cripps, Sir Stafford 4, 5, 6, 12, 29, 44, 57
Community Charge see poll-tax Critchley, Mike 319
Companies Act (1985) 246 Cromer, Lord 123
Compton, Sir Edmund 170 Crosland, Anthony 55, 89–90, 97, 144, 145,
comprehensive schools 108, 180, 188 172, 179, 195
Computer and Privacy 199 Crossman, Richard 32, 51 (note 30), 57, 89,
Concorde 127, 135, 180 118, 119, 121, 125, 127, 132, 134, 135,
Confederation of British Industries (CBI) 140, 147, 148, 152
143, 163, 164, 176 Crossroads 61
Conqueror (HMS) 229 Crouch, David 230
Conservative Party 2, 3, 4, 16, 20, 23–5, Crowther, Lord 157
47–8, 49, 59, 101–2, 111, 123, 125, 128, Crowther-Hunt, Lord 120
131, 143, 148, 163, 164, 175, 182, 183– Crowther Report 107
4, 188, 208–10, 219, 247, 250, 303–4, CSE 189, 258
311, 338–40, 342–3 Cruise missiles 247
Conservative Party candidates: Cuba 33, 97
1950, 24; Cunningham, Alderman Andrew 167, 183
1964, 131; Cunningham, Dr Jack 307
1966, 131; Currie, Edwina 268, 280, 301
1974, 184 Cymbalist, Norris 22
Conservative Party leadership contests: Cyprus 73–4, 182, 229, 292, 330
1963, 104–6; Czechoslovakia 21, 41–2, 65, 147, 262
1965, 129–30; Czech Republic 331
1975, 184–5;
1990, 267–8; Daily Express 112, 129, 278, 297
1995, 286–7; Daily Herald 63
1997, 309 Daily Mail 129, 335, 340
Contracts of Employment Act (1963) 143 Daily Sketch 63
Cook, Robin 307, 313, 317 Daily Telegraph 44, 185, 227, 235, 281,
Cooper, Lady Diana Duff 71 282, 292, 327, 340
Corbyn, Jeremy 314 Daily Worker 44
Coronation Street 61, 251 Dainton, Sir Fred (Lord) 222
Corrigan, Mairead 200 Dallas 252
Cortinwood Pit 237 Dalton, Dr Hugh 4, 5, 7, 34, 35, 46, 55, 60,
Cotton, Jack 102 71, 97, 196
cotton industry 282 Dalyell, Tam 314
Council of Europe 42 Dance With A Stranger 252
council house sales 164, 245, 246, 328
 INDEX 357

Darling, Alistair 320 Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings

Data Protection Act (1984) 239 Act (1973) 187
Davies, Howard 91, 176 Donovan Commission 143
Davies, John 163, 185 Dorrell, Stephen 285
D’Avigdor-Goldsmid, Sir Henry 173 Douglas, Michael 253
Davis, David 320 Douglas-Home, Sir Alec (Lord Home)
Davis, General Benhamin O. 1 110, 112, 117, 119, 129, 162, 182, 184,
Deakins, Arthur 21 185;
Dearing, Sir Ron 260 career 105
Death on the Rock 250 Downey, Sir Gordon 338
De Brun, Bairbre 322 Downing Street bombs 283–4
De Chastelain, General John 322 Downing Street Declaration 284
Decimal Currency Board 136 Dreadnought (HMS) 83
Defence 44, 82–3, 246–8 Driberg, Tom 22, 57, 240
Defence expenditure 48, 81, 248, 319–320 drugs 257, 313, 329, 333
Defence of the Realm 253 Drumcree 321
De Gaulle, President Charles 99, 140–1, Dulles, John Foster 65, 66
146, 172 Dunkirk 137
Delhi 28 Durham 14
Dell, Edmund 205, 222 Dutt, R.Palme 49
Democratic Unionists 249, 266, 303, 321 Dykes, Hugh 301
Deng Xiaoping 299 Dynasty 252
Delors, Jacques 264
Denmark 75, 172, 199, 207, 276, 328 Eagle, Angela and Maria 303
Denning, Lord 104 Ealing Studios 62
Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) East Ham 303
123–4 East Midlands Electricity 246
Derby University 323 Eastenders 251
Desirable Residence, A 280 EC see European Economic Community
Deutsche Bank 282–3 Eccles 34
Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund 77, 78 Ecology Party 209;
Deva, Nirj 303 see also Green Party
Devaluation 1949, 12; Economist Intelligence Unit 344
1967, 141–2; Edelman, Maurice 34
1992, 286 Eden, Sir Anthony (Lord Avon) 56, 66–7,
Devlin, Bernadette 150, 152 72, 80, 130, 195;
Devlin, Mr Justice 85 background 58–9
Devolution (Scotland and Wales) 206–7, Edinburgh 196, 261
315–16 education 18–19, 108–9, 180, 188–9, 225,
Dewar, Donald 307 226, 258–60, 281, 324–5, 336
Diamond, Lord 22, 243 Education Act (1944) 18, 108
Diana, Princess of Wales, 225, 293, 311– Education for All 226
12 Education Reform Act (1988) 258
Disraeli, Benjamin 13 Education (Student Loans) Act (1990) 259
Division 281 Edward, Prince 293
divorce 187, 338 Edwards, Nicolas 214, 266
Dobb, Maurice 49 EEC see European Economic Community
Domestic Violence Act 187
358 INDEX

EEC Referendum 190–1 European Exchange Rate Mechanism

EETPU 220 (ERM) 265, 286
Eggar, Tim 296 European Free Trade Area 97, 98, 140
Egremont, Lord 73 European Monetary Union (EMU) 265,
Egypt 31, 54, 64–7, 86, 173–4, 217 275
Eire see Ireland Evans, Chris 311
Eisenhower, President Dwight D. 54, 66, Evans, Gwynfor 206, 209
71, 83, 124 Evans, Harold 73
Elections see general elections Evans, Stanley 33
Electrical Trades Union 19, 77 Evans, Timothy 64
11-plus exam 108 Eyre, Richard 253
Eliot, T.S. 55
Elizabeth II 55, 70, 119, 145, 162, 293–4, Fabian Colonial Bureau 95
312, 330 Fabian Society 97, 222
Ellesmere Port 224 Face The Future 222
Ellis, Ruth 64 Fair Deal At Work 143
Employment Acts (1980 and 1982) 219–20 Fairlie, Henry 101
Encounter 101 Falconer, Lord 313
Endurance (HMS) 227, 228 Falkender, Lady (Marcia Williams) 119,
Ennals, David 195 121, 182–3
Environment, Dept. of 338 Falklands War 226–30
Entertainer, The 63 Family Income Supplement 204
EOKA campaign 74, 229 Family Planning Act (1967) 156
Equal Opportunities Commission 187 Farouk, King 54, 65
Equal Pay Act (1970) 186 Fatherland 281
Essex University 147 Faulds, Andrew 173, 230
Ethiopia 182 Faulkner, Brian 169
ethnic communities 34, 149 184, 188, 224– Faulkner, William 55
6, 231, 249, 254, 256, 303, 330–1, 341– Fearless (HMS) 137
2; Feather, Victor (Lord) 143, 191
see also immigration Feisal, King 174
Eton College 6, 72, 105, 131, 162, 214 Ferranti 192, 193
EU see European Economic Community Festival of Britain 27
European Coal and Steel Community 42 Field, Anthony 182
European Convention on Human Rights Fielding, Helen 338
240 FIFA 255
European Court of Human Rights 312 film industry 62–3, 252–4
European Economic Community (EEC/EC/ Financial Times 4, 104, 178, 234, 237, 259
EU) 64, 97, 98–9, 105, 133, 140–1, 172, Finchley 159, 303
176, 179, 180, 182, 190–1, 201, 206, Finland 184, 207
208, 220–1, 222, 227, 247–8, 255, 265, Fire Brigades Union 19
275–6, 285, 294, 298, 317–8, 341 First World War 7, 22, 29, 30, 78
European elections: Fisher, Anthony 215
1979 216; Fiske, Sir William 136
1984 236; Fitt, Gerald (Lord) 153, 177, 208
1989 265–6; Fitzgerald, Premier Garret 243
1992 278;
1999 316
 INDEX 359

Foot, Michael 1, 11, 32, 57, 96, 172, 179, death 98, 102;
180, 190, 191, 195; EEC and 97
elected Labour leader 221; Galbraith, Prof. Kenneth 11
resigns 234, 278 Gallacher, William 2
Foot, Paul 213 Galtieri, General 227
football hooliganism 255–6 Galt, William 13
Forbes, Bryan 62 Gandhi, Mahatma 29–30
Ford Motors 329 Gandhi, Premier Indira 217
Ford, President Gerald 182 Gardiner, Lord 118, 128
Foreign Ministers’ conferences 41 Garel-Jones, Tristan 275
Forrestal, James 50 (note 24) Gates, Bill 298
Forster, E.M. 253 GATT 11
Fothergill, Prof. Stephen, 320 GCE/GCSE 107, 108, 189, 258
Four Weddings and a Funeral 338 GCHQ 240
Fowler, Henry 123 Geddes, Reay 100, 101
Fowler, Norman 266 General Belgrano 229, 239
Fox, Dr Liam 340 general elections:
France 4, 41, 67, 76, 78, 100, 101, 107, 1945 2–5;
125, 126, 133, 140–1, 142, 184, 190, 1950 25;
199, 205, 206, 215, 217, 225, 236, 243, 1951 47;
255, 298; 1955 59;
BSE and 317–8; 1959 93–4;
defence spending 320; 1964 112–13;
Europe- elections 266; 1966 131;
graduates 260; 1970 157;
Gulf War and 273; 1974 (Feb.) 176–7;
nuclear force 247–8; 1974 (Oct.) 183–4;
planning in 101; 1979 208–10;
Suez and 64–6; 1983 230–2;
health care 325 1987 246–9;
Fraser, Hugh 173, 184 1992 276–8;
Fraser, Malcolm 218 1997 299–303
Frears, Stephen 253 Gent, Sir Edward 37
Freeman, John 44 George VI 2, 55
Friedman, Milton 214, 215 German Christian Democrats, 40, 163, 217
Fry, Stephen 290 German rearmament 57–8
Fuchs, Dr Klaus 21 German Social Democrats 40, 89, 99, 202
Fulton Report 120 Germany:
Future of Socialism 90 British policy in 38–41;
Fyfe, Sir David Maxwell, see Kilmuir Lord Democratic Republic 181;
Federal Republic of 1, 44, 54, 55, 57–8,
Gagarin, Major Yuri 82 64, 75, 76, 78, 89, 99, 107, 125, 127,
Gascoigne, Paul 311 142, 146, 181, 184, 189, 190, 202, 205,
Gaitskell, Hugh 44, 45, 57, 66, 70, 89, 93, 206, 214, 217, 236, 243, 246, 255, 262,
109, 112; 283, 294, 299;
background 60; Nazi 281;
Claus IV and 94–5; war losses of 7, 8;
360 INDEX

united Germany 294–5, 299, 320, 326, ‘Guildford Four’ 257

329 Gulf War 273–5
Ghana (Gold Coast) 36 Gulf War Syndrome 274–5, 283
Gibraltar 76, 137, 250, 262 Gummer, John Selwyn 235, 241
Gilmour, Sir Ian (Lord) 186, 213, 224, Gunter, Ray 118
238, 241, 244, 245 Gurion, David Ben 65
Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 181, 190, 217
Gladwyn, Lord 196 Hagana 32
Glasgow 5, 34, 119, 168, 236, 248, 278, Hague, William 339–40, 342;
280, 303 background 309–10
Glubb, General Sir John, ‘Glubb Pasha’ 65 Haile Selassie, Emperor 182
Goddhart, Philip 173 Hailsham, Lord (Quintin Hogg) 13, 72,
Godwin, Anne 97 104–5, 112, 150, 162, 185, 213, 266
Goldsmith, Sir James 287, 302 Hain, Peter 196, 313
Good Friday agreement 322 Haldane, J.B.S 49
Gorbachev, President Mikhail 217, 268 Halifax 34
Gorman, Teresa 287, 339 Halifax, Lord 10
Gormley, Joe (Lord) 175–6, 236 Hall, George 5, 6
Gorst, John 173 Hall, Prof. Stuart 93, 214
Government of India Acts (1919, 1935): 29 Hallawell, Keith 313
Government of Ireland Act (1920) 151 Hamburg 1
Gow, Ian 243, 262 Hamilton, Neil 250, 292, 300, 301, 338,
Gowon, General Yakubu 138–9 340
Graham, Billy 208 Hancock, Mike 236
Granada Television 61, 278 Harris, John 111
Granick, Dr David 79 Harris, Robert 281
Grant, Hugh 338 Harrison, Tom 206
Greater London Council 242, 243 Harrods 282
Greece 4, 33, 39, 73, 181, 281, 299 Harrow 106, 118
Green Party 265, 278, 303; Hart, Judith 140
see also Ecology Party 343 Harwich 302
Greene, Graham 62 Hassan, Perwaiz, 332
Greene, Sid 100 Haughey, Premier Charles 262
Greenwood, Anthony (Lord) 91, 118, 134, Havers, Lord 266
138 Hawkins, Jim 14
Greenwood, Arthur 4, 5, 6, 7, 118 Von Hayek, Prof. Friedrich 185, 215
Greer, Ian 292 Healey Denis (Lord) 87, 97, 125, 138, 172,
Grenada 86, 235–6 179, 180, 181, 190, 195, 201, 205, 216,
Grey, C.F. 13 221;
Griffiths, James 46, 96, 118, 139 and 1983 election 231;
Griffiths, W. 22 background 118;
Grimond, Jo 93, 191, 196 on miners’ strike 238, 239;
gross domestic product 205, 304 and monetarism 214;
Grosvenor, Gerald (Earl) 204 resigns 234
Guardian 172, 219, 222, 241, 252, 287, Heat and Dust 252
292, 298, 300, 331, 342
Guardianship of Children Act (1973) 187
Guatemala 227
 INDEX 361

Heath, Sir Edward 24, 62, 72, 99, 104, Housing Finance Act (1972) 164
106, 142, 157, 162–4, 171, 172, 191, Howard, Lord 250
195, 205, 214, 240, 241, 343; Howard’s End 253
and 1974 elections 176–7, 180; Howarth, Alan 287
background 130; Howarth, Gerald 250
defeated by Thatcher 184; Howe, Sir Geoffrey (Lord) 184, 213, 214,
and EEC 172; 224, 234, 235, 240, 250, 262, 265, 266;
elected leader 129; on anti-Semitism in government 242;
and Gulf War 274; first budget 215–16;
and miners 175–6; on poll-tax 264;
opposes poll-tax 264 resigns 267–8
Heathcoat Amory, Derek (Viscount) 100 Howell, David 213, 224
Heathcoat-Amory, David 340 Hucknall (Notts) 14
Heathfield, Peter 238 Hughes, Cledwyn (Lord) 128
Heffer, Eric 234 Hughes, Emrys 22
Heiyo Maru 54 Hughes, Simon 310
Harbison, Margaret 119 Hulbert, Wing-Commander, N.J. 22
Hermes (HMS) 228 Hull 224, 334
Heseltine, Michael 186, 213, 273, 290; Hull, Cordell 58
against poll-tax 264; Human Development Report 298
resigns 242; Hungary 39, 67, 93
stands against Thatcher 267–8; Hungerford 257
joins euro campaign 318 Hunt, Sir Rex 227
Heysel Stadium 255 Huntingdon 272
Hidden Agenda 253 Hurd, Douglas (Lord) 141, 268, 273, 275–
Higher Education Funding Council 324 6, 280, 286
Hill, Charles (Lord) 23, 73 Hussey, James Marmaduke 250
Hillary, Sir Edmund 55 Hutton Will 341
Hillsborough 255 Hyams, Harry 102
Hinden, Dr Rita 95
Hiroshima 7 Iceland 207
Hitler, Adolf 66, 67 immigration 63–4, 113, 169, 171–2, 186,
Hogg, Douglas 285 330–1
Hogg Quintin see Hailsham, Lord Imperial Airways 13
Hola Camp 84 incomes policy 134, 135, 204
Hollis, Christopher 72 Independent 251, 252, 294, 317, 331, 338
Hollis, Sir Roger 239–40 Independent Broadcasting Authority 250
Homicide Act (1957) 74 Independent Labour Party 2
homosexuality 156, 289–90, 312 Independent Television Commission 251
Hong Kong 28, 76, 125, 225, 230, 290, 323 India 7, 22, 28, 29, 30, 33, 65, 126, 139,
Hooson, Emlyn 172 217, 331
Hopkins, Anthony 253 India and Burma Office 5
Hopkins, Kelvin 314 Indian National Army 28
Hopkinson, Henry 74 Indo-China 28, 58;
Hopkinson, Tom 44 see also Vietnam
Hore-Belisha, Leslie 2 Indonesia 28, 37, 299
Horsbrugh, Florence 56 Industrial Charter 24
housing 8, 18, 80, 206, 245, 277, 280, 328
362 INDEX

industrial democracy 89, 202–3 Jaguar 244

industrial management 78–9 Jamaica 35, 85, 207
industrial relations 21–2, 77–8, 131–3, 142– James, Lord 189
4, 164–6, 175–6, 180 Janner, Barnett (Lord) 34
Industrial Relations Act (1971) 165, 176, Japan 1, 7, 28, 37, 54, 63, 74, 75, 78, 117,
180 127, 142, 189, 193, 194, 201, 214, 225,
Industrial Reorganisation Corporation 135, 260, 274, 281, 283, 305, 328
164 Jay, Douglas 94, 97, 118, 122, 127, 140
Industrial Training Boards 224 Jay, Baroness 308
Industry And Society 40 Jay, Peter 195
In Place Of Fear 57 Jenkin, Bernard 340
In Place Of Strife 142–44 Jenkin Patrick 213, 214, 241
Ingham, Sir Bernard 266 Jenkins, Roy (Lord) 97, 127, 144, 145–6,
Institute of Directors 79 156, 172, 179, 188, 190, 191, 195, 201,
Institute of Economic Affairs 215 263;
International Computers Ltd 136 background 142;
International Federation of Free Trade loses seat 248;
Unions 85, 87 and SDP 221–4, 317
International Labour Organisation 240 Jerusalem 30
International Monetary Fund 66, 100, 214 Jewish Agency 32
Internet 290 Jewish Chronicle 303
Invergordon mutiny 22 Jewish Brigade of British Army 32
IRA 154, 170, 171, 181, 197, 200, 217, Jinnah, Mahomed Ali 29
243, 250, 257, 262, 283–5, 321–2, 335 Jodrell Bank 55
Iran 45–6, 54, 65, 174, 195, 217, 247, 255, John Paul, Pope 217
257, 274 Johnson, Dr Hewlett 217
Iraq 65, 86, 87, 174, 217, 247, 273–5, 286, Johnson, Paul 93
314 Johnson, President Lyndon B. 124, 133,
Ireland, Northern 150–2, 169–70, 181–2, 134, 144
183, 199–201, 229, 249, 257, 262, 283– Jones, Aubrey 124
4, 302, 321–3 Jones, Creech 34, 36
Ireland, Republic of 37, 64, 142, 169, 201, Jones, Dr Frank 193
202, 207, 217, 243, 266, 284 Jones, Jack 142
Iremonger, Tom 173 Jones, Mervyn 92
Irgum Zvi Leumi 32 Jones, Dr Steve 330
Irvin, John 280 Jones, Thomas 5
Irvine, Lord 307 Jones, Trevor 196
Isaacs, George 6, 21 Jopling, Michael 266
Ismailia 64 Jordan 173–4
Ison, Graham 281 Joseph, Sir Keith (Lord) 162, 184, 185,
Israel 65–7, 173–4, 207, 274, 323 186, 213, 215, 225
Italy 1, 41, 64, 75, 142, 201, 202, 215, 223– Joseph Rowntree Foundation 327
4, 236, 273, 299, 320 Jowitt, Lord 4, 5, 6
ITV 61, 249–52
Ivanov, Captain Eugene 103 Kaldor, Nicholas (Lord) 121
Karachi 29
Jagan, Dr Cheddi 83 Kassim, General Abdel Karim 86
 INDEX 363

Kaufman, Gerald 121, 231 Kramer, Susan 343

Kaunda, President Kenneth 85 Kumar, Dr Ashok 303
Kearton, Sir Frank 135 Kureshi, Hanif 252
Keeler, Christine 103 Kuwait 86, 87, 273–5
Kellner, Peter 343
Kennedy, Charles 263, 310, 318, 342 Labour Party 4, 19, 20–1, 25, 28, 47, 48,
Kennedy, Kathleen 98 59–60, 66, 84, 93, 94, 101, 112, 121,
Kennedy, President John F. 97, 98–9, 111, 131, 140–1, 172, 183–4, 190–1, 195,
124 207, 220–1, 266, 340–1;
Kent, Duchess of 294 and 1992 election 276–8;
Kenya 84, 87, 148 and 1997 election 302–4;
Kenyatta, Jomo 84, 148 and defence 246–8;
Kerr, Hugh 316 drops Clause IV 279–80;
Kettle, Arnold 49 and EEC 97;
Keynes, J.M. (Lord) 11,214 Maastricht and 275;
Khabra, Piara 321 poll-tax and 263
Khan, Imran 303 Labour Party conferences:
Khomeini, Ayatollah 217, 254 1940 31;
Khrushchev, Nikita 117 1950 45;
Kiesinger, Chancellor Kurt-Georg 146 1952 57;
Kilbrandon Report 208 1957 90;
Kilburn, Prof. Tom 127 1959 94–5;
Kilfoyle, Peter 341 1960 96;
Kill the Messenger 266 1962 97;
Kilmuir, Lord 70, 72 1966 135;
Kimathi, Dedan 84 1967 142;
King, Cecil 157 1974 191;
King, David 302 1978 204;
King, Oona 303 1979 220;
King, Prof. Anthony 131 1980 220;
King, Rev. Martin Luther 149 1981 221;
King, Tarsem (Lord) 308 1983 234;
King, Tom 219, 241, 263, 273 1995 279
King David Hotel 33 Labour PLP composition (1997) 309;
Kinnock, Neil 238, 278, 297; rebels 314
and 1987 election 248–9; Lamont, Norman 273, 274, 286, 292, 301
and 1992 election 276–8; Lansbury, George 7
background 235; Lansley, Andrew 340
elected Labour leader 234 Laski, Prof. Harold J. 196
Kirkpatrick, Mrs Jean 228 Lawrence, Stephen 330
Kirkpatrick, Sir Ivone 51 (note 117) Lawson, J. 6
Kobe 54 Lawson, Nigel (Lord) 224, 236, 244;
Kohl, Chancellor Helmut 217, 267, 268, background 234;
275 and EMU 265;
Korea 54, 215, 294 on Euro-elections 266;
Korean War 21, 43–4, 54, 229 on miners’ strike 328;
Kosovo 314–15, 318–20 poll-tax and 264;
Krays, The 253
364 INDEX

resigns 266–7 Loach, Ken 253

Leach, Sir Henry 228 local government 166–8, 264
League of Nations 30 Local Hero 253
Lean, David 62, 225 Lockheed Tri Star 164
Lebanon 275 Lodge, David 280
Lee, Fred 144 Lofthouse Colliery 175
Lee, Jennie 57, 90 Lomas, Eric 1
Leigh-Pemberton, Robin 265 London Assembly 342–3
Lemass, Premier Sean 151 London 34, 54, 94, 141, 149, 166, 168, 170,
Lend-Lease 10–11 171, 180, 183, 217, 248, 257, 261, 283–
Lennox-Boyd, Alan 72 4, 290, 291, 330
Lessing, Doris 92 London School of Economics and Political
Lever, Harold (Lord) 34, 195, 205 Science 146, 244
Levy, Ben 34 London Socialist Alliance 343
Lewin, Sir Terence 228 Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner,
Lewinsky, Monica 311 The 63
Lewis, Saunders 207 Longford, Lord 97, 118, 144
Leyland (British Leyland Motor Look Back in Anger 63, 92
Corporation) 135, 192 Lords, House of 19, 154, 172, 316–17
Liberal Party (splinter group) 301, 302 Lubbers, Premier Ruud 275
Liberal Party (subsequently Liberal Luxembourg 64
Democrats) 2, 3, 25, 47, 59, 66, 93, 94, Lynch, Premier Jack 169
109, 113, 182, 190, 209, 221–4, 230,
247–8, 266, 276–8, 279, 310, 328, 331, Maastricht, Treaty 275–6
342; McAlpine, Alistair (Lord) 191, 292
become Liberal Democrats (1988) 263; Mac Arthur, General Douglas 44
defence policy 247–8; MacDonald, J.Ramsay 5, 6, 31, 121, 220
pact with Labour (1977) 196; MacDonald, Margo 206
perceptions about (1974) 183; MacDonald, Malcolm 31, 148
reject coalition with Churchill (1951) McGahey, Mick 175–6, 237, 238
56; McGovern, J. 22
revival (1962) 101–2; MacGregor, Dr Ian 236–9
SDP and (1983) 221, 223, 230–2; McGuiness, Martin 302, 322
‘victory’ 1997 301; McIntyre, Dr R.D. 3
vote for EEC (1971) 172; McKellen, Sir Ian 290
vote to admit Kenya Asians (1967) 148 Mackenzie, Sir Compton 92
Libya 174, 218 McKeown, Ciaran 200
Limehouse Declaration 222 Maclean, Donald 21
Lincoln 176, 183 Maclennan, Robert 263
Lindop, Sir Norman 199 Macleod, Iain 24, 59, 84, 104–5, 129, 130,
Lineker, Gary 311 150, 163
Liverpool 34, 141, 224, 251, 255, 302 McCluskey, Conn and Pat 152
Liverpool, Lord 248 McMahon Act 83
Livingstone, Ken 314, 328, 340 McMeeking Committee 107
Lloyd Selwyn (Lord) 60, 100, 101, 133 Macmillan, Harold (Lord Stockton) 2, 23,
Lloyd George, David 3, 6, 266 56, 58, 59, 80, 82, 93, 96, 97, 100, 103,
Lloyd’s 282 105, 130, 185, 270 (note 60), 298;
Lloyd’s Bank 296
 INDEX 365

attacks privatization 243; Martin, Steve 338

on Attlee 7; Marwick, Prof. Arthur 18
background 70–1; Mason, Roy 144
cabinet Style 73; Mason, Sir Ronald 228
and EEC 98–9; Massiter, Cathy 239
introduces Premium Bonds 71; Matrix Churchill 286
on Iran 46; Matthews, Sir Stanley 119
and Profumo 104; Mau, Mau 84
and Suez 66; Maude, Angus 213
‘winds of change’ speech 85 Maude, Francis 276, 340
McNee, Sir David 241 Maudling, Reginald 72, 84, 102, 129, 162,
Macpherson, Sir William 330 168, 186;
mad cow disease 285 background 129
Madras 29 Mauriac, François 55
Major, John 240, 246, 264, 266, 267, 272, Mawby, Ray 106
288, 297, 299, 309, 312, 313, 339; Maxwell, Robert 251, 282
and 1992 election 276–8; Maxwell-Fyfe Report 24
and Euro-election 1994 279; May, Theresa 340
background 272; Mayhew, Christopher 182
and Gulf War 273–5; Mayhew, Sir Patrick 242
and Maastricht 275–6; Medak, Peter 253
resigns 1995 286–7; Meir, Premier Golda 181
resigns 1997 304 Mendez, Nicanor Costra 227
Major, Norma (neé Johnson) 272 Mercury, Freddie 261
Makarios, Archbishop 74 Messina conference 71
Malawi 36, 84 Meyer, Sir Anthony 230, 267
Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army 37 Mexico 33, 203
Malaysia (Malaya) 37–8, 74, 86, 125, 323 MI5 195, 239–40, 289
Mallon, Seamus 322 MI6 240, 286
Malta 76, 83, 147, 207 Miami Vice 252
Management Today 194 Michael, Alun 341
Manchester 34, 141, 181, 224, 256, 285, Middle East see separate states
331 Middle Way 101
Manchester United 256 Midland Bank 296
Manchester University 6, 127, 323 Mikardo, Ian 34, 96
Mandela, President Nelson 117 Milburn, Alan 283, 325
Mandelson, Peter 300, 308, 312, 322, 334 Miliband, Prof. Ralph 93
Mao Tse Tung 217 Militant Tendency 221
Margach, James 73, 121, 163 Milligan, Spike 92
Margaret, Princess 293 Millennium Dome 334–5
Mark, Sir Robert 197 Millennium Bug 335
Marxism Today 214 millionaires 291, 298
Marquand, Prof. David 223 Mills, Iain 286
Marsh, Sir Richard (Lord) 135, 144, 209 Milltown Cemetery killings 262
Marshall, John 303 Milne, Alasdair 250
Marshall, General George 41 Milne, Eddie 176
Marshall Aid 12, 39, 41 Milosevic, President Slobodan 318
Martin, Kingsley 91 Mirror Group 282
366 INDEX

Mirror 340, 343 National Coal Board 14, 107, 164, 168,
MIT 324 203, 237–9
Mitbestimmung 89–90 National Council for Academic Awards
Mitchell, Senator George 284 107
Mitterrand, President François 217 National Criminal Intelligence Service
Mohamed al-Fayed 292, 311, 338, 340 282, 333
Molyneaux, James 284 National Curriculum 258
monarchy 293–5 National Economic Development Council
Monckton, Sir Walter (Lord) 56 100, 124
Montague, Ivor 49 National Enterprise Board 192
Moore, Henry 92 National Film Finance Corporation 62, 252
Moore, John 244, 266 National Front 147–8, 183, 209, 278
Moore, Michael 328 National Health Service 16–17, 45, 56, 144,
Moore, William 200 168–9, 180, 199, 248, 260–2, 325–6
Morgan, Dr H.B. 16 National Incomes Commission 101
Morgan, Grenfell 254, 282 National Insurance Acts (1946) 15–16
Morgan, Rhodri 341 National Labour Party 223
Morris, Bill 331 National Lottery 291, 335
Morrison Herbert (Lord) 4, 5, 6, 7, 16, 31, National Plan (1965) 124
44, 46, 58, 59–60, 71, 90, 300 National Union of Mine workers 19, 175–6,
Mortimer, Jim 180–1 236–9, 297
Moscow 93, 100, 117 National Union of Railwaymen 90
Mosley, Sir Oswald 223 National Union of Students 324
Mossadegh, Dr Mohammed 46 National Westminster Bank 176, 296
Motherwell 3 nationalization, Conservative view of 13,
motor vehicle industry 63, 81 71, 94
Mountbatten, Lord 29, 217 nationalization debate in Labour Party 12–
Mowlam, Dr Mo 308, 321 14
Moyne, Lord 32 NATO 39, 41–2, 76, 81, 96, 125–6, 220,
Mozambique 129, 218 222, 247–8, 265, 275, 314, 318–9
Mugabe, Robert 218–19 Natural Law Party 301
Mullin, Chris 302 Neave, Airey 186, 217
Murdoch, Iris 92 Neguib, General 65
Murdoch, Rupert 63, 251 Nehru, Premier Jawaharlal 74
Mussolini, Benito 7 Neighbours 252
Muzorewa, Bishop 218, 219 Netherlands 64, 217, 279, 326, 344
My Beautiful Laundrette 253 Neville, John 92
New Left 92–4
Nadir, Asil 292 New Left Review 93
Nagasaki 7 New Reasoner 93
Nairn, Tom 338 New Statesman 77, 91, 239
Nassau (Polaris) Agreement 99–100 Newcastle-upon-Tyne 167, 168, 224
Nasser, President Gamal Abdel 65–6 New Zealand 7, 140, 190, 191, 207, 330
National Assistance Board 15 News Chronicle 63
National Board for Prices and Incomes 124, Newsom Report (1963) 107
164 NIBAR 136
Nicaragua 217
Nicholson, Emma 268, 287
 INDEX 367

Niemöller, Martin 92 Organization for Economic

Nigeria 138–9, 272 Co-operation and Development 205
Nixon, President Richard M. 215 Organization for European Economic
Nkomo, Joshua 218, 219 Co-operation (OEEC) 41
Nkrumah, Kwame 36, 74 Orgreave Pit 237
Nobel prize winners, British 127, 354–5 Orwell, George 49, 90, 206, 239
Noel-Baker, Philip 46 Osborne, John 63, 92
Nolan, Lord 292, 296 Ottawa Conference (1932) 11
Norman, Archie 340 Overseas Development, Ministry of 139–
Norman, Montagu 4 40
Norris, Steve 292, 296, 339, 343 Owen, David (Lord) 195, 221–4, 263, 277
Northampton 5
North Sea gas and oil 164, 203, 216 Paisley, Rev. Dr Ian 152–3
Northedge, Prof. F.S. 82 Pakistan 29, 30, 65, 139, 225, 331
Northern Ireland Assembly 321–2 Palestine 12, 30–5
Norway 4, 172, 199, 203, 329 Palestine Arab Workers’ Society 31
Nott, John 213, 214, 228 Page, Jennie 334
Nottingham 87, 92, 260, 331, 341 Panorama 250
Nottingham Topper 324 Pap worth, Bert 19
Nottinghamshire 237–8, 239 Parkinson Cecil (Lord) 228, 266, 268, 291;
nuclear development 55 and 1983 election 231;
Nuclear Test Ban Treaty 100 background 224;
nuclear weapons (British) 42–3, 55, 90–2, Howe’s view of 235;
96, 99–100, 125–6, 220, 246, 248 resigns 235
Nuri es-Said 86 Parliamentary Affair, A 280
Nutting, Anthony 64, 65 Passage To India, A 252
Nyasaland 36, 85 Patten, Chris 266, 273, 290
Paul, Lord 308
Observer 103, 105, 236, 239, 280, 326 Pearl Harbor 1
Official Secrets Act 240 Pearson, Dr Robin 334
Official Unionists 169 Peart, Fred (Lord) 118
oil crisis (1973) 173–4 Peel, John 84
Ojukwu, Odumegwu 137–8 Peerage Act 104
Omagh bombing 322 pensions 15–16, 180, 321
O’Malley, Des 322 Persian Gulf 125, 171
O’Neil, Capt. Terence 151–2, 169–70 Peter’s Friends 253
OPEC 174 Pethick-Lawrence, Lord 5, 29
Open University 190 Petroleum and Submarine Pipe-lines Act
Operation Sutton 229 (1975) 203
opinion polls 17, 49, 67, 93, 95–6, 101, Peyton, John (Lord) 184
111, 112, 129, 150, 157, 177, 216, 221, Philby, Kim 103
224, 230, 238, 245, 279, 297, 300; Philip, Duke of Edinburgh 293
defence 247; Pilkington Committee on Broadcasting 61,
on privatization 245 249
Oppenheim, Sally (Baroness) 186, 214 Piratin, Phil 2, 20, 22, 34
Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Pitt, William 223
Countries 174
368 INDEX

Plaid Cymru 133, 177, 183, 191, 205–8, Priestley, J.B. 49, 91
249, 277, 278, 303, 315–316 Prince of Wales (HMS) 4
Platts-Mills, John 34 Prior, James (Lord) 162, 176, 184, 185,
Pliatzky, Sir Leo 205 213, 216, 219, 224, 234, 241
Ploughman’s Lunch 233 prisons 256–8, 336
Plowden, Sir Edwin (Lord) 127 Pritt, D.N. 34
Plymouth 1–2 privatization 164, 243–6, 328
Poland 38, 217 Profumo, John 72, 103–4
Polaris 99, 125, 247 Provisional IRA see IRA
police 197, 225, 241, 256–8, 289, 332–3; public schools 6, 7, 18, 79, 93, 105, 109,
Metropolitan 198–9, 330 119, 188
Police Complaints Board 199, 332, 333 public schools, Report of committee on 188
Police Federation 332 Public Sector Borrowing Requirement
Police National Computer 199 (PSBR) 205, 244
poll-tax 264, 268 Puttnam, David (Lord) 253
Pollitt, Harry 20, 49 Pym, Francis (Lord) 170, 213, 228, 234,
Polmaise Pit 237 241, 242
polytechnics 189, 190, 225, 259
Pompidou, President Georges 172, 181 Quality Assurance Agency 323
Ponting, Clive 240 ‘quangos’ 313
Poole, Lord 104 Quebec Conference (1944) 10–11
Port Stanley 229 Queen Elizabeth II 135, 228
Portillo, Michael 268, 286, 292, 301, 312, Question Time 300
339
Portland spy scandal 103 R&D expenditure 127
Portsmouth 228 race relations legislation 148–9, 187–8
Portugal 138, 182, 218, 256, 279, 281 Race, Steve 222
Post Office Engineering Union 239 Radice, Giles 203
Post Office Workers’ Union 97 Railway Man, The 281
Postponement of Polling Day (1945) 2 Railways 328
Potsdam conference (1945) 39 Raleigh 282
Poulson, John 167–8 Rambouillet 318
poverty, 1970s 205; Ranfurly, Countess 8
1990s 290, 298 Rank and File Mobilizing Committee 221
Powell, Enoch 72, 84, 129, 149–50, 154, Rasool, Shafqat 257
157, 172, 191, 213, 243 Reagan, President Ronald 215, 216, 217,
Prashar, Baroness 337 227, 228, 235–6
Premium Bonds 71 Reading and Criticism 49
Prentice, Sir Reg (Lord) 140, 180, 209, Redcliffe-Maud Committee 166
214, 241 Redgrave, Vanessa 92
Prescott, John 307, 328; Redmond, Phil 25
background 279; Redwood, John 286, 309
elected deputy leader 279 Reece, Gordon 208
Press, Royal commission on 63 Rees, Merlyn (Lord) 181, 188, 200
Press Complaints Commission (PCC) 252 Referendum Party 287, 301, 302
Press Council 252 Regional Trends 281
Preston 224 Reid Thomas 34
Prevention of Terrorism Act 181, 200
 INDEX 369

Remains of the Day 253 Rowland, ‘Tiny’ 251

Renault 95, 135 Royal College of Physicians 5
Renton Tim 167 Royal Institute of British Architects 103
Renwick, Lord 60, 157 Royal Navy 319–20
Representation of the People Act (1948) 19 Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) 153, 322
Republicans (USA) 163, 208, 215 Ruddock, Joan 337
Repulse (HMS) 4 Rumbold, Angela 301
Resale Price Maintenance 106 Rushdie, Salman 254–5, 280
Reynolds, Albert 284 Ruskin College 188, 279
Reza Shah 45 Russell, Bertrand (Lord) 49, 91
Rhodesia 35–6, 84, 85, 128–9, 136–7, 171, Russell Group 324
182, 218–19 Russia see Soviet Union
Richardson, Gordon 205
Richardson, Jo 187 Saatchi brothers 208
Richardson, Tony 62, 261 Sadat, President 217
Ridley, Sir Nicholas 226, 236, 266, 268, Saddam Hussein 314, 319
295; Sainsbury, David (Lord) 222
EC ‘German racket’ 267; Sainsbury, Lord 222
opposed ERM 265 St John Stevas, Norman (Lord) 186, 213,
Rifkind, Malcolm 286, 287 241
Riff-Raff 253 Salisbury, Lord 56, 74
Right to Reply 249 San Francisco 294
riots: Sarwar, Mohammed 303
1947 34; Samaritans 337
1981 224–5; Samuel, Ralph 93
1985 226; Samuels, Sir Harold 102
1990 poll-tax 264 Sandys, Duncan (Lord) 72
Rippon, Geoffrey (Lord) 162, 241 Satanic Verses, The 254
Rip Van Winkle 290 Saturday Night and Sunday Morning 63
Road to Serfdom, The 185 Saudi Arabia 46, 174, 273–5
Road Haulage Association 296 Scandal 252
Robbins, Lionel (Lord) 106–7 Scanlon, Hugh (Lord) 142, 204
Roberts, Andrew 281 Scargill, Arthur 236–9, 301
Robertson, George (Lord) 308 Scarman, Lord 225
Robeson, Paul 28 Schmidt, Chancellor Helmut 1, 181, 190,
Robinson, Geoffrey 308 217
Rodgers, William (Lord) 97, 221–4, 231 Schröder, Chancellor Gerhard 341
Rolls-Royce 152, 164, 282 Schumacher, Dr Kurt 51 (note 47)
Room At The Top 92 Scotland 59, 105, 167, 204, 206–8, 232,
Roosevelt, President Franklin D. 11, 45 237, 245, 248–9, 256, 264, 266, 277
Rose, Jack 102 Scott, Norman 196
Rose, Philip 102 Scottish National Party (SNP) 3, 141, 176–
Rose, Richard 95 7, 183, 206–8, 249, 266, 277, 278, 301,
Ross, William 190 310, 315
Rothermere, Viscount 291 Scottish Office 6, 207
Rothschild, Lord 163, 264 Scottish Parliament 315–6
Rothschild, N.M. 296 Scottish Socialist Alliance 303
Rover Motors 329
370 INDEX

Second World War 1, 29, 30, 172, 186, Smethwick 113, 117, 131, 173
197, 281; Smith, Chris 312
casualties 7 Smith, Iain Duncan 340
Security Service Act (1989) 240 Smith, John 278, 279, 297
Seamen’s strike 132–3 Smith, Premier Ian 128–9, 136–7, 182, 218
Selassie, Emperor Haile 182 Smith, Ron 97
Selsdon Park conference 163, 214 Smith, Sir Cyril 196
Sex Discrimination Act (1975) 187 Smith, T.Dan 167–8, 183
Sexual Offences Act 156 Smith, Tim 292
Seychelles 74, 294 Smoking Epidemic 261–2
Shackleton Report (1977) 227 Soames, Sir Christopher (Lord) 72, 218,
Shadowlands 253 224
Shah Eddy 237 Social Chapter of EU 264, 275–6, 287
Shah of Iran 45 Social Contract 176, 180
Sharett Moshe 65 Social Democratic Alliance 176, 221
Sharman, Helen 289 Social Democratic and Labour Party
Shawcross, Sir Hartley (Lord) 10, 157, (SDLP) 170, 177, 200, 208, 249, 266,
221–4, 236, 247, 263 284, 303, 322
Shearer, Alan 311 Social Democratic Party (Britain) 221–4,
Sheen, Charlie and Martin 253 236, 247, 263, 277
Sheffield 183, 186, 255 Social Democratic Party (Italy) 223
Sheffield (HMS) 229 Social and Liberal Democratic Party see
Shephard, Gillian 285 Liberal Party
Shepherd, Sir Francis 46 Socialism and the New Despotism 89
Sherman, Sir Alfred 185 Socialist Commentary 89, 95
Shinwell, Emanuel (Lord) 5, 14, 34, 90 Socialist Labour Party 301, 303
Shockley, William Bradford 54 Solzhenitsyn, Captain Alexander 1
Shonfield, Andrew 76 Sony 54
Shore, Peter (Lord) 121, 133, 138, 143, Soper, Dr Donald (Lord) 92
144, 180, 190 Soskice, Sir Frank (Lord) 118
Short, Clare 274, 308, 313 Sound Broadcasting Act (1972) 62
Short, Edward (Lord) 179, 183, 190 South Africa 85, 117, 136–7, 140, 171, 182,
Sierra Leone 85 219, 226, 330;
Signposts for the Sixties 97 war losses 7
Sillitoe, Alan 63, 92 South Arabia 86
Silkin, John (Lord) 190 South Wales, corruption in 168
Silverman, Julius 34 Soviet Union 1, 7, 21, 33, 37, 38–9, 42–3,
Silverman, Sydney 15, 34, 64, 155 44, 49, 66, 82, 86, 91, 100, 103, 138,
Simon of Wythenshawe (Lord) 91 139, 172, 182, 195, 214, 218, 227, 240
Simonstown Agreements 137, 171 Spain 76, 185, 202, 215, 226, 298, 320
Simpson, Alan 314 Special Air Services 200, 229, 321
Singapore 1, 22, 37, 171, 207, 323 Special Branch 197
Singh, Marsah 303 Spectator 234, 339
Single European Act (1986) 265 Speed, Keith 228
Sinn Fein 200, 249, 284, 302, 321–2 Spence, Sir Basil 103
Sir Galahad 229 Speth, James 298
Skegness Grammar School 258 Spice Girls 311
Skybolt 99 Spiegel, Der 224
 INDEX 371

‘spin doctors’ 314 Sykes, Sir Richard 217

Spycatcher 240
Stalin, Joseph 1, 38, 45, 55 Taiwan see China (Taiwan)
Stanley, C.O. 60 Tanganyika 35, 85, 88, 148
Stangate, Viscount (William Wedgwood Tanzania 85, 138, 148, 218
Benn) 5, 6, 23, 126 taskforces 313–5
Starr Report 311 Tashkent 139
Steel, Sir David 123, 156, 221, 235, 247, Tate & Lyle 35
263; Taylor, A.J.P. 92
background 196; Taylor, Ann 307–8
Callaghan on 196 Taylor, Teddy 216
steel industry 135, 282 Tebbit, Norman (Lord) 224, 235, 241, 243,
sterling 11–12, 66, 76–7, 112, 122–3, 133, 250, 266, 268, 276
141–2, 145–6, 201 Technical Education, White Paper on 79
Stewart, Michael (Lord) 118, 134, 140, Technology, Colleges of 107
145, 147 Technology, Minister of 118, 127, 136
Stevens, Lord 251 Tedder, Lord 32
Stevenson, Adlai 251 Tehran Declaration 45
Stockton-on-Tees 70 television development 60–2, 249–51
Stone, Oliver 253 Tenzing, Sherpa Norgay 58
Stonehouse, John 201 Tereshkova, Valentina 86
Storey, David 92, 93 Thatcher, Denis 185
Strachey, John 12, 23, 34, 36, 51 (notes 30, Thatcher, Margaret 162, 213–32, 254, 262,
43) 266, 278, 280, 286, 328, 339;
Strang, Gavin 328 background 185;
Straw, Jack 307, 316, 331–4 bans unions GCHQ 240;
Strauss, George 34, 156 Bruges speech 265;
Street, Prof. Henry 149 EEC referendum and 191, 192;
strikes see industrial relations elected to Commons 95;
students’ revolt 146–7 elected leader 184–5;
Suez canal 13, 65, 145, 173 EMU 265;
Suez operation 64–6, 88, 93 Falklands 227–31;
suicide rates 206 opposes German unity 295;
Sun 210, 277–8, 340 Grenada 235–6;
Sunday Correspondent 251 poll-tax 264;
Sunday Express 112 resigns 267–8;
Sunday Telegraph 234, 325 signs Anglo-Irish Agreement 243;
Sunday Times 291 Thatcherism 214–15;
Sunday Trading Act (1994) 288 trade unions 219;
Sunderland South 301 wins elections 1979 208–10;
Suzman, Janet 222 1983 230–1;
Suzuki, Admiral Kantaro 1 1987 248–9
Swaziland 294 Theatres Act (1968) 156
Sweden 75, 78, 142, 189, 199, 201, 203, Therapy 280
205, 326 Third Man, The 162
Swingler, Stephen 96 This Sporting Life 92
Switzerland 201, 255, 326 Thomas, Harvey 208
Syria 31, 173, 273–5
372 INDEX

Thomas, Hugh (Lord) 36, 93 Turner, Baroness 292

Thomas Cook 164, 282 Twigg, Stephen 312
Thomason, Roy 296
Thomson, George (Lord) 88, 141, 250 Uganda 85, 88, 148, 334
Thomson, Roy (Lord) 65 UK Independence Party 301, 302, 315, 343
Thorneycroft, Peter (Lord) 72, 224 Ulster see Northern Ireland
Thorpe, Jeremy 177, 196 Ulster Unionists 151, 169–70, 177, 183,
Thurnham, Peter 287 200, 243, 249, 266, 284, 287, 321–2
Tiger (HMS) 136 Ulster Volunteer Force 284
Time magazine 224 unemployment 206, 216, 230, 238, 241,
Times, The 44, 104, 252, 264, 301, 314, 264, 297
325, 335 Union of Democratic Miners 239
Titford, Jeffrey 302 United Africa Company 35–6
Tito, President 49 United Nations 33, 43, 66, 86, 128–9, 136,
Tizard, Prof. Sir Henry 10 154, 218, 222, 227, 273, 287, 298, 319
Tokyo 7, 117 United Nations Association 91
Tolpuddle martyrs 88 United States of America 32, 33, 35, 42, 76,
Torbay 302 81, 82, 91, 99–100, 125–6, 127, 129,
Town and Country Planning Acts 18 142, 147, 163, 184, 193, 199, 201, 205,
Trade Union Act (1984) 219 214, 247–8, 253, 287, 319, 323, 326;
trade unions 19–20, 77–8, 123, 164–5, balance of trade 254;
202, 219–20, 240, 250, 293 German policy 39–41;
Trades Union Congress 16, 19, 20, 77, 87, graduates 260;
100, 123–4, 134, 143, 165, 166, 177–6, Gulf War 273–5;
202, 204, 220, 238, 265 loan to Britain 11–12;
Trainspotting 253, 280 Northern Ireland policy 284, 305;
Transport and General Workers’ Union 19, Suez crisis and 65–7;
118, 166, 331 war losses (WWII) 7,
Treasury 35, 98, 101, 205, 244, 265, 275, (Korea) 43,
286 (Gulf) 273–4
Trefgarne, Lord 286 Universities and New Left Review 93
Trend, Sir Burke (Lord) 119 University Funding Committee 259, 323
Trethowan, Sir Ian 250
Triad gangs 255, 332 Vaz, Keith 308
Tribune 91, 180 V-Bombers 82, 126, 228
Trident missiles 247 Varley, Eric 190
Trimble, David 284, 321 Vassall, John 103
Trinidad 85 Victory for Socialism 97, 110
Triple Alliance Party 38 Vietnam 125, 133, 145, 146, 157;
Trudeau, Premier Pierre 111 see also Indo-China
Truman, President Harry S. 1, 7, 32, 38, Vietnamese refugees 226
39, 44 Vis, Dr Rudi 303
TSB 296
TSR2 126, 127 Waite, Terry 275
Tudeh Party 46 Wakeham, John (Lord) 266, 296
Tunku Abdul Rahman 38 Waldegrave, William (Lord) 264, 273, 286
Turkey 38, 65, 73, 182, 257
Turing, Alan 127
 INDEX 373

Wales 97, 167, 168, 183, 204, 206–8, 209, Williams, Shirley (Lady) 180, 185, 191,
232, 248–9, 264, 277, 278, 288, 295, 231, 263;
302, 315–16 background 179;
Walker, Patrick Gordon 117, 123, 138 and SDP 221–4, 341
Walker, Peter (Lord) 162, 242, 266, 296 Williams, Sir Robin 109
Wall Street 253–4 Williams, Tom 6, 34
Walters, Prof. Alan 267 Willmott, Jenny 334
War, impact of Second World War on Wilson, Brian 296
Britain 7–8 Wilson, Gladys Mary 110
Warbey, William 34 Wilson, Harold (Lord) 44, 59, 62, 90, 117–
Warburg, Siegmund 145 21, 124–5, 144, 145, 147, 152, 154, 157,
Ward, Claire 303 164, 169, 176–7, 180, 182, 183, 191,
Warrington 28 192, 199, 200, 205, 207;
Warsaw Pact 230 career 110;
Warwick University 324 EEC and 140–1;
Wass, Sir Douglas 205 elected leader 109;
Water Act (1973) 168 ‘kitchen cabinet’ 121–2;
Watergate scandal 181 ‘pound in pocket’ speech 142;
Watson, Samuel 97 resigns 194–5;
wealth distribution in Britain 205, 245, 249, Rhodesia policy 128–9, 130, 136–8;
291, 298 seamen’s strike 132–3;
Webber, W.J.P. 97 South Africa and 137–8
Welsh Assembly 315–16, 341 Working Families Tax Credit 327
Weizmann, Chaim 32 Wish You Were Here 252
Welsh Language Act (1967) 207 women:
West Nationalist Party see Plaid Cymru employment 186–7, 289;
Welsh Office 92 in armed forces 288, 337;
Wesker, Arnold 92 in education 190, 337;
West Indies 85 in Parliament 72, 184, 214, 249, 304,
West European Union (WEU) 41–2 314, 336–7
West Yorkshire 149 Wood, Sir Kingsley 10
Westland affair 242 Woodcock, George 100
Westminster, Duke of 291 Woodward, Admiral ‘Sandy’ 229
Whitelaw, William (Lord) 150, 162, 169, Woodward, Saun 339
175, 184, 191, 213, 225, 228, 266 Woolton, Lord 23, 56
Whitehorn, Katharine 204 World Bank 65
Wicks, Sir Nigel 275 Working Families Tax Credit 327
Wickham, Madeleine 280 Wrigglesworth, Ian 263
Widdecombe, Ann 331, 340 Wright, Basil 92
Wigan 205–6 Wright, Peter 195, 240
Wigg, George (Lord) 47, 118, 121 Wyatt, Woodrow (Lord) 77
Wilkinson, Ellen 6
Willets, David 293 Yardie gangs 331
Williams, Captain Butler 44 Yeltsin, President Boris 299
Williams, Betty 200 Yemen 87
Williams, Marcia see Falkender, Lady Yew, Premier Lee Kuan 14
Williams, Raymond 49 Young, Sir George 266, 340
374 INDEX

Young, Lady 214, 224

Young, Lord 241, 250, 266, 296
Young, Stuart 250
Youth Training Scheme 225
Yugoslavia 33, 49, 65, 318–319, 331

Zambia 36, 84, 129, 138, 218

Zanu 218
Zanzibar 85
Zapu 218, 219
Zilliacus, Konni 32, 34