TLIAW: Walking Back To Happiness

"Walking back to happiness, woopah, oh, yeah, yeah
Said goodbye to loneliness, woopah, oh, yeah, yeah
I never knew I'd miss you now I know what I must do
Walking back to happiness I shared with you"
- Helen Shapiro, Walking Back To Happiness​

In the aftermath of Scarborough, the Labour Party was in disarray. The nature of internal party debate had changed within a matter of months, from the question of unilateral nuclear disarmament to the possibility of a left-wing leadership challenge to Hugh Gaitskell. Conference had passed motions in favour of unilateralism, much to the chagrin of the right-wing Gaitskellites with their multilateralist stance, and Gaitskell ignored conference’s decisions without fear. Policy was out of the hands of conference delegates, he believed, and their decisions could not force his hand. Instead, he stayed on the multilateralist course in the hope that somebody would challenge him, lose to him, and thus vindicate his leadership. Of course, a challenger would emerge.

The Labour Left was nominally led by a group of highly influential MPs: Richard Crossman, Barbara Castle, Anthony Greenwood and Harold Wilson. Each one was independent of the other, but they were united in their opposition to Gaitskell. Losing in 1959 had not endeared him to some of Labour’s most passionate representatives, and so the leader’s office could not inevitably carry on unscathed whilst Labour remained seated on the Opposition benches. And so, Barbara Castle called together her left-wing allies on the NEC to a meeting in London to discuss who should be the one to throw down the gauntlet and challenge Gaitskell to leadership contest. Harold Wilson, the young Shadow Chancellor, was the first man to whom the left-wingers turned. But, when confronted with the prospect of taking on Gaitskell in a quixotic leadership challenge, Harold “was obviously very unwilling to stand and sat looking more and more miserable”. Utterly without optimism for the endeavour, Wilson made it very clear he would not take up the left-wing’s banner. Instead, it was to be Anthony Greenwood.

Tony Greenwood, MP for Rossendale, took his colleagues by surprise in announcing that he would resign from the Shadow Cabinet as a sign of no confidence in Gaitskell’s leadership. He made it clear that the fight on his hands concerned the unity and confidence of the Labour Party, rather than the controversial issue of unilateralism. Castle, as the only major female member of their group, also tried to put herself forward, but found herself shot down. Crossman described the possibility of her mounting a leadership challenge as “a farce”, and it took Greenwood many hours to soothe her feeling of indignation. Wilson’s inner turmoil over whether to run or not was no more than a sideshow to the campaign forming around Greenwood, masterminded by Richard Crossman. Whilst Greenwood stood with the caveat of retaining the option to stand down in favour of someone with greater, unifying appeal, a week passed without an intervention by Harold Wilson. The enigmatic Yorkshireman was pushed aside by his erstwhile comrades and their hopes were placed upon an altogether more handsome head.

On the 3rd November 1960, the vote was taken by the Parliamentary Labour Party to decide the future of Labour’s leadership. However, few thought of it in such terms. In the event, the candidature of Anthony Greenwood garnered 76 votes to Gaitskell’s 171. Nobody expected Greenwood to win, but that was never the purpose of the leadership challenge in the first place. Over one third of Labour MPs disagreed with Gaitskell’s leadership and that would be the foundation of another, emboldened challenge in the future. Wilson had lost his credibility in the eyes of the Left and had become, in the words of Barbara Castle, “a prisoner of the Right”. This was his single chance, but indecisiveness and melancholy had doomed Wilson’s chance to reclaim his stature on the Left of the party. He could do little more than sulk, alone and wracked with regret, over the lost chance of his own leadership challenge. Of course, few considered the possibility of him winning or coming even close to the number of parliamentarians Greenwood could persuade to support a left-wing challenge.

Gaitskell was unshaken, even encouraged, and felt that he had a mandate from his parliamentary colleagues to carry forward his plan for Labour as he saw fit. A multilateralist defence policy would be the premier part of his reforming agenda and, at the 1961 Blackpool conference, Gaitskell had the previous year’s unilateralist ruling overturned by 2.5-to-1. To the country, Labour looked united around Gaitskell. Internally, however, the old ideological rifts remained in place.

It would take two years for the old battle between Left and Right to be played out in public once again, but then Labour would be on the rise in the polls and on the verge of retaking Number 10 for the first time in over a decade.​

Over the course of 1962, Macmillan’s government sustained blow after blow. It was starting to look like the end of his personal popularity and the beginning of the steep decline of the Conservative Party.

In March, the Orpington by-election was spectacularly lost by the Conservatives to the Liberal candidate, Eric Lubbock. Peter Goldman, the Conservative candidate, had been predicted to win the by-election with a sizeable majority. However, on the 14th March, the constituents of Orpington opted to give Goldman and his party a bloody nose by throwing their support towards the young Lubbock. Whilst the personal issue of refusing to live within Orpington plagued Goldman’s campaign, it was discerned that his close relationship with the Exchequer and his high position in the Conservative Research Department were the main reasons he was rejected so clearly by the electorate of Orpington. The Conservative Party had become toxic and things could only get worse. In July of that same year, the knives came out for seven ministers in Macmillan’s cabinet. Dubbed “the Night of the Long Knives” in the press, Macmillan replaced an entire third of his cabinet with new ministers who were more “amenable” to his policies and his vision for the country. Selwyn Lloyd, the vastly unpopular Chancellor of the Exchequer, was the most high-profile sacking of the lot and was the one that caused Macmillan the most grief. Pay pauses and restrictive measures on growth had transformed the image of Lloyd into that of an “austerity Chancellor”, an image totally at odds with the Conservative Party’s belief in ever-growing affluence, and so he clashed with Macmillan on policies that he believed would increase inflation further and amount to nothing more than “election gimmicks”. In his place, Reginald Maudling was made Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lloyd’s replacement was soon buried under a mountain of memos urging him to go for “the big stuff – the national plan, the new approach, the expand or die”.

By the end of the year, the Conservative Party had dipped far below Gaitskell’s Labour in the polls. But, it wouldn’t be Gaitskell’s Labour Party for much longer.

On the 18th January 1963, Hugh Gaitskell died of lupus erythematosus. His death was a sudden blow to Labour’s confidence and unity, with many fearing that the party would turn in on itself once again like it did during the wilderness years of the 1950s. The left-right divisions were sure to rear their ugly heads and, in the February leadership election, they did.

George Brown took over as a temporary leader to stand in whilst the position of Leader of the Labour Party stood vacant. For Brown, however, this was to serve as his great chance to win the leadership and keep it out of the hands of left-wingers like Greenwood and Castle. He announced he would run for the leadership towards the end of January and was soon joined by Anthony Greenwood, the former challenger of 1960. Greenwood had spent the three years since his leadership challenge campaigning on social reforms and nuclear disarmament, endearing himself to the party faithful and shoring up his position on the Left.

No other left-wing challenger was forthcoming, least of all Harold Wilson, and the centre-ground was there for the taking. Greenwood seized upon a message of unity, similar to the one he espoused in his leadership challenge in November 1960, whereas George Brown’s pitch to the Parliamentary Labour Party concerned the fears of the Gaitskellites about an unreconstructed Bevanite taking the party to the “unelectable left”. James Callaghan, another right-winger and Shadow Chancellor since November 1961, considered running for the leadership himself but was dissuaded from splitting the right-wing vote. Anthony Crosland, an ally of Callaghan, wrote in his diaries that the leadership election had come to “a choice between a spiv and a drunk”.

Based upon ideology alone, the contest should have fallen in Brown’s favour. This time, however, the personalities of the two candidates could not have been further apart. Greenwood exuded confidence and charisma, which Brown clearly lacked. On television, Greenwood was a consummate performer who wasn’t afraid of the likes of Robin Day: he revelled in his own unflappability. He appeared clean-cut and straightforward, even when his flattery was so obviously insincere. In all this and more, he was poles apart from George Brown. Brown was neither a consummate performer on television nor a charmer in person. His style could be abrasive, even leading him into a physical altercation with Nikolai Bulganin (Soviet Chairman of the Council of Ministers) in 1956, and his frequent drunkenness only exacerbated the issue. There was a certain irony to the situation, as Anthony’s father, Arthur Greenwood, had stood for the leadership in 1935 and found that his loss was partly down to his own unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

On the 7th February 1963, the ballots were cast and a clear winner emerged after a single round of voting. 246 Labour MPs cast their votes, with 131 voting for Greenwood and 115 voting for Brown. The Gaitskellite Right had been trounced less than a month after their late leader’s death and their worst nightmares were beginning to come true. For men like Brown, Callaghan and Crosland, apocalyptic warnings of Labour’s defeat at the next election were understatements. For weeks, they went into a period of introspection, questioning their mistakes and Labour’s electoral chances for the foreseeable future. The inevitable critics would go mute, however, in the following months.

Greenwood’s victory would soon be out of the headlines, usurped by new and sensational events from the government benches of the Commons.​

The polls showed the Labour Party resurgent in the public’s minds, placing Tony Greenwood within five points of overtaking Harold Macmillan’s Conservative Party. As the papers played up the prospect of Anthony Greenwood as Prime Minister, the Tory government concerned itself with matters of state.

Chairman of British Railways, Dr Richard Beeching, issued his report – The Reshaping of British Railways – on the 29th March. Recommending sweeping cuts to Britain’s railway system and closures of almost 2,500 rail stations and over 5,000 miles of rail lines, the report laid out a plan of “modernisation” for British Railways that drew widespread criticism and protest. This did little for the Tories’ poll ratings, especially among rural voters – often seen as some of the most strident Conservative supporters in the country – due to the fear that many rural communities would lose their much-needed railway links to the rest of the country. The next controversy would be the Polaris Sales Agreement that, although protested by tens of thousands of CND members and supporters across the country, only caused a slight dip in the polls for the Conservatives. Greenwood slammed the agreement, believing it to be “one step closer to midnight”. In the Commons, Macmillan made coherent arguments for keeping certain minutes of the agreement secret and for pressing forward with this extension of Britain’s nuclear capabilities. The Commons debates around Polaris demonstrated that Macmillan could still pull off his old-style patrician performance, rebuffing the far younger Greenwood until the questions were dropped and the country moved swiftly on. There was a glimmer of hope for the Conservative Party, as if their reputation was on its way up again.

Then, Profumo hit.

It was the scandal that would come to define the latter part of the Macmillan era. A tangled web of deception and scandal was born from an affair between a showgirl known as Christine Keeler and Macmillan’s Secretary of State for War, John Profumo. Profumo vehemently denied any and all accusations of impropriety and, to Macmillan at least, his word was trustworthy. But, as the months wore on and the public facts of the affair grew to include the involvement of a Soviet naval attaché and a Jamaican gangster, Profumo could not hold to his denials any longer. On the 5th June 1963, John Profumo admitted to the House of Commons that he had misled his fellow members, the press and the country by denying his affair and its implications. Promptly, he resigned from the Privy Council, the cabinet and the Commons.

The Conservative government was in disgrace and the polls reflected this with a stark warning to all those loyal to the government and fearful of what a Greenwood government might mean. Summer polling, reported in a variety of newspapers of all political persuasions, predicted an inevitable and resounding victory for the Labour Party in the next general election. An earthquake had hit British politics, shaking the foundations of national confidence in Harold Macmillan. The unflappable Edwardian gentleman was now at the mercy of the press and the pollsters, who all now saw his government on the way out. To make matters worse, his health appeared to worsen over the summer months and whispers abounded within the Conservative Party that Macmillan would have to go if the country was to remain in the “safe hands” of the Conservative Party. The party’s conference in October 1963 began with Harold Macmillan’s announcement that he would be stepping down as leader of the Conservative Party due to the mounting problems with his health. Lord Home, the Foreign Secretary, stood as Macmillan’s spokesman when he said “that it will soon be possible for the customary processes of consultation to be carried on within the party about its future leadership”. Thus, the party conference was transformed into the one opportunity for Macmillan’s prospective successors to present themselves to the wider party and the “Magic Circle” of Tory grandees who would select the next leader.

Three candidates arose to succeed Macmillan: Lord Hailsham, the Leader of the House of Lords; Rab Butler, the Deputy Prime Minister; and Reginald Maudling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The most prominent of the three was arguably Rab Butler, the man who’d been passed over in 1957 when Anthony Eden resigned from office and had served in three of the four Great Offices of State. However, it was only a matter of days before Butler would slip up in a major conference speech. His name was quickly ruled out for his lack of ability in energising the party faithful. He wasn’t the kind of man the Conservatives needed in such desperate times.

Reginald Maudling, the youngest candidate, was seen as a viable candidate and he wanted to use the conference to make a rousing speech of his own. With his staunch ally, Iain Macleod, at his side, the Chancellor stood in the conference hall to deliver a well-written speech to an anxious audience. Maudling utterly failed to rouse the passions of the assembled Conservatives, delivering his speech in a dull, laboured tone which put all but the most ardent Maudlingites to sleep. He was unable to endear himself to the people that so often looked upon him as one of the most easy-going and modern of Conservative ministers.

The true leader to arise from the Conservative Party Conference was Lord Hailsham. He was the champion of the ever-expanding Conservative associations in the 1950s, mainly because of his power in the internal structures of the party as Party Chairman, and his personal popularity had stayed strong during an era when confidence in Conservative politicians was at an all-time low. Macmillan’s position was to advise the “Magic Circle” to choose Hailsham and, given his conduct at conference, they saw little reason to disagree. Whilst “Q for Quintin” badges did appear later at conference, the Tory grandees were already assured that Hailsham was the man to take the job. Macmillan formally stepped down as leader of the Conservative Party and as Prime Minister on the 18th October, with Lord Hailsham being sent to the Queen to form a government of his own on the very next day. In his speech on the steps of Number 10, Lord Hailsham announced that, under the Peerages Act passed earlier that very year, he would be renouncing his peerage and would be henceforth known as Quintin Hogg. The safe seat of St Marylebone was chosen for Hogg, who contested the by-election when the previous MP, Wavell Wakefield, resigned to allow Hogg into Parliament.

Hogg inevitably won the 7th November by-election. The Conservatives had their energetic Prime Minister to take on the suave Anthony Greenwood and turn the tables in time for the next general election. The future looked a little bit brighter.​

Following the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on the 22nd November 1963, Anthony Greenwood was interviewed on the This Week programme on the subject of the Labour Party leader’s relationship with the late Democratic President. His response was eloquent and solemn, though some criticised him for “lacking emotion” given the circumstances, and his conduct only aided Labour in the minds of the British people.

As 1963 turned to 1964, the Prime Minister struggled to recover his party’s position in the polls. All signs pointed to a Labour victory.

In April 1964, the first elections to the Greater London Council saw Labour win decisive control of the council. The months marched on and the Conservative government found great difficulty in climbing back up the polls to even have a fighting chance in the next election, and the results from the GLC elections did little to inspire hope in the Tory faithful. Still, they soldiered on over the summer with Quintin Hogg at the helm.

His style had been criticised as “blustering” and “bullish” at time, but nobody could doubt his energy. Pre-election campaigning began just after the end of the summer recess, when Hogg toured the Conservative Party associations up and down the country in order to fire up the crowds. In some towns and cities, he found hostility amongst younger and more liberal people who were enthused by the uncompromisingly socialist ideals of the Labour Party. But, for the most part, the crowds looked upon Quintin Hogg as their saviour – the only Tory leader who could defeat Greenwood and stop his “Bolshevik rabble” from overturning the government in a time of great desperation. Maudling’s “dash for growth” was taking its momentous downturn and, in time for the dissolution of Parliament on the 13th September, speculation abounded that a balance of payments deficit of over £800 million would meet the British public under continued Conservative rule. The Conservatives managed to seize upon the notion that their time in government should be brought to a close lest the country turn to bankruptcy and various ministers attended television debates and made broadcasts to fight the idea. This caused last minute resurgence in the polls, but it wasn’t good enough to displace Labour from its lead.

The Conservative Party needed something to cling onto, and they got their chance when, at the prompting of Anthony Wedgwood Benn and the reluctant consent of Richard Crossman, Anthony Greenwood offered to debate the “pressing issues of the election” in a BBC television debate. The Prime Minister agreed wholeheartedly and the time and date of the debate was fixed at 6:05pm on the 1st October, exactly one week before polling day.

Much to the chagrin of fans of Town and Around and the films of Glynis Johns, the debate was scheduled to last fifty minutes until the beginning of Tonight. Richard Dimbleby, the veteran broadcaster and host of the BBC’s Panorama programme, asked a series of questions to both the Prime Minister and the Leader of Opposition on a variety of topics, including the issues of Polaris and unilateralism, the war in Rhodesia, the worsening balance of payments deficit, and the Labour Party’s manifesto pledge to re-nationalise the steel industry. Throughout the fifty minutes, Hogg was constantly on the defensive regarding the records of both his and Macmillan’s governments. In stark contrast, Greenwood could alternate between sharp-witted attacks on the Conservatives’ record and ebullient promotion of Labour’s future policies. Certainly after the broadcast, many felt Hogg had been cheated of his own chance to attack the Labour Party, but Hogg felt the lack of such chances acutely. These feelings built up in his mind, urging him to take on more aggressive tactics. Towards the end, he did just that and made one of the biggest blunders of the campaign.

Fifteen minutes before the end of the debate, the Labour Party’s unilateral disarmament proposals came up in one of Richard Dimbleby’s questions. Greenwood, however, was given the chance to justify his pledge to disarm Britain before the Prime Minister had a chance to criticise his party’s new policy. As Greenwood began to speak, Hogg interjected loudly and proceeded to attack him in a manner not dissimilar to verbal assault. References to “Labour’s Sovietisation”, the “abandonment of British freedom” and the “insanity” that now “ruled Labour”. The vitriolic attacks shocked the audience at the BBC, but Richard Dimbleby was swift to move onto Greenwood’s response in spite of Hogg’s brashness and bluster. For those at Conservative Party Headquarters and the people at home, a feeling grew within all minds that the Conservatives had shouted away their last chance at victory.

The 8th October was a grim day for the Conservative Party. Labour rose to 347 seats from 258, with the Conservatives falling to 276 seats. Even the Liberal Party saw a slight rise, as they had secured four more seats and brought them into double digits (at exactly 10 seats) for the first time since 1945.

Anthony Greenwood was Prime Minister. It was to be the beginning of a tumultuous era in British history: the swinging, socialist 1960s.​