WI: Callaghan in 1978?
- Thread starter AlfieJ
- Start date
He might have won, it would have been pretty close. It would have been a bit of a leap in the dark. The by-elections of the time were very mixed. Even if he did win, he would have only had a tiny majority and would still have had a lot of problems with a divided party.
Had she lost, the knives would have been out for Margaret Hilda, she wouldn't have survived. I would expect the emergence of Whitelaw as leader of the Tories.
The Callaghan succession would have still have been very messy, but there is no reason to think he wouldn't last for whatever passed for a full term.
MrwBrightside
Banned
What Ian said. I'd expect the Labour third term government to only stagger onto around 1980 before the majority/minority is diminished and a fourth election in six years is called, leading to a Tory win under Whitelaw.
The opinion polls were up and down in late 1978. Most put Labour ahead but not all of them. Remember that Labour had a lead in 1970 too.
I suppose Callaghan was waiting for the lower inflation, falling unemployment and improving trade balance to sink in to the electorate. If he called an election in 1978 he may have won but with a slim majority.
If he had, the Winter of Discontent would still have happened. Inflation would have crept up and by 1980/81 the global recession would have hit.
If Thatcher had won then she would have a smaller majority and be a one term leader. If she implemented her policies in 1978 then the battle with the unions would be harder, public support would be weaker and her monetarist policies would have hit hard earlier and the recovery damaged by the global recession.
I suppose Callaghan was waiting for the lower inflation, falling unemployment and improving trade balance to sink in to the electorate. If he called an election in 1978 he may have won but with a slim majority.
If he had, the Winter of Discontent would still have happened. Inflation would have crept up and by 1980/81 the global recession would have hit.
If Thatcher had won then she would have a smaller majority and be a one term leader. If she implemented her policies in 1978 then the battle with the unions would be harder, public support would be weaker and her monetarist policies would have hit hard earlier and the recovery damaged by the global recession.
Interesting question is what happens if the Callaghan government staggers on into 1982 and Argentina invades the Falklands in April 1982.Defence cuts might well mean Britain is no longe capable of sending a Task Force to retake the islands. But if everything else is going badly for the Callaghan government (severe recession, continuing serious conflicts with the unions, rising social discontent in the country) would this be the shock that results i the fall of the government and a general election letting the Tories in, now ledperhaps by Whitelaw or one of Thatcher's OTL Ministers such as Tebbit or Heseltine?
The defence cuts that threatened the Royal Navy were made by the Thatcher Government. It was John Nott the Defence Secretary that ordered Invincible to be put up for sale and the surface fleet to be reduced. The pre Falklands Thatcher government only cared about the Soviet threat and was fixated on nuclear weapons.
Callaghan was outspoken in his support for retaking the Falklands. He wouldn't have hesitated to send a Task Force as OTL. In fact if Callaghan were PM I doubt the Argentinians would have invaded.
Most polls from 1978 I can find in my book seem to indicate that the average was for level pegging. It was the Winter of Discontent that sank Callaghan.
Actually, having been re-elected might help him with the WoD, he has a fresh mandate - albeit weak. He might get a very short honeymoon.
Pangur
Donor
I can see why you mention Whitelaw as leader of the tories and Hesseltine for that matter however Tebbit ? he always struck me as some one who got a chance as a minister only because of Thatcher
Actually without the Winter of Discontent Thatcher may not have taken on the Unions. The only difference between the Tory manifesto planned for a 1978 GE and that published in 1979 were the trade union reforms and until the WoD enraged public opinion on the issue many Tories were wary about the issue. One of Thatcher's strengths, until she started believed her own hype in the mid 1980's was that she was careful to pick her battles. She was never the most ideological of politicians anyway and she would have probably chosen a different course.
I agree that Thatcher was not really all that ideological. She was more a collection of right wing sentiments and anti socialist instincts. But I think it was clear that even a Tory government in 1978 wouldn't want to allow the unions to do to them what they felt they did to Heath. Some kind of anti union action would have been taken and there would have been some sort of confrontation sooner rather than later.
Even the 1979 Tory Manifesto wasn't all that honest about what they intended to do. It didn't say anything about using 3 million unemployed as a tool to reform the labour market, smash the power of the unions and bring down inflation. But that was the intention all along as far as Thatcher and her monetarist allies were concerned.
So I wouldn't think that they would be much more honest with their 1978 manifesto. IMO she would put on a conciliatory face for a few months until the government had found its feet and then she would start replacing all the moderates with people more right wing.
IIRC the way the Tories sold their union reforms was as democratising the trade unions and empowering the rank and file. While the perception of that time and in particualr the WoD is of over powerful Union Barons, the reality is that many strikes, including the most notorious actions in 1978/79, such as the ambulances and the Liverpool gravediggers, were wildcat actions called entirely by militant shop stewards, like Red Robbo, in many cases the Union Leaderships were powerless to stop them and the workers themselves were not happy with what was going on but felt they couldn't cross the lines. There's a story that one of the leaders of that Liverpool strike was beaten up in a pub by people furious at being unable to bury a relative, whether its true or not people were angry at what happened and it gave the Tories an open goal.
As Devolved said the cuts were conservative cuts. Remember also the Calaghan government's response to Argentine sabre rattling in 1977. A task force was sent to the South Atlantic and that seems to have prevented further Argentine action re the Falklands at the time.
A Callaghan government may not have planned to decommision Endurance without a replacement in 1982 plan to sell teh Invincible to Australia or Introduce the 1981 British Nationality Act which woud have effectively removed British citizenship form most Falkland Islanders on 1 January 1983 (the Falkland Islanders were moved from Dependent Territory citizenship to full citizenship under the BNA via an amending act in 1983)
The Callaghan Government was still making defence cuts during their term of Office, The Ark Royal was scrapped in 1978. With the left wing militants probably still gaining ground in the Labour Party in a third term and a continuing bad economic environment there would have been great pressure for defence cuts rather like those the Tories were making i OTL. And perhaps those cuts would have been even faster under Callaghan than they were under Thatcher. Assuning that to be the case Callaghan, even if his government diid not fall, might not have had the ability to deploy a viable task force as much as he might have wished to do so. The resulting foreign policy defeat would probaby result in a Tory election victory in 1983 or 1984 under a new leader replacing Thatcher after her 1979 defeat.
Why do you think they would have been faster under Callaghan. Callaghan was no dove. Even if defence cuts had een mde along the lines of teh conservative ones Callaghan has an advantage over Thatcher: the Argentine junta knows that Callaghan will react to aggression on their part.
Also being mindful of what did happen in 1977 would Labour consider scrapping Endurance with no replacement? or would Labour bring in an act stripping the Falkland Islanders of British citizenship? Even if not pivotal these were issues that helped convince the junta that Britain didn't cre about teh Islands in 1982.
I agree. The decision to withdraw Ark Royal was made long before 1978. The ship was almost falling to pieces by the late 70's anyway. As for the the Labour Left they were only really bothered about nuclear weapons.
Also Callaghan was an old flag waving patriot. He would have taken a rowing boat and retaken the islands himself if he had to. There's no evidence at all to suggest worse cuts than under the OTL anti conventional forces Thatcher government.
I can see Callaghan resigning midway through the second term and Healey succeeding him.