TLIAW: Walking In My Dreams
- Thread starter Comisario
- Start date
The End Of An Era
In danger of losing their leader to drink, the leadership of the Conservative Party pulled together and determined that an intervention should be held and a public statement be made on the state of the Prime Minister’s health. On the 13th February 1979, a statement was released on the steps of Number 10 by Anthony Barber, flanked by William Whitelaw (Home Secretary) and Francis Pym (Foreign Secretary), where it was announced that Macmillan had been struck by flu and would have to take an indefinite period of rest given the situation. Labour suddenly retreated from their attacks on Macmillan’s frequent absences and Rees offered his hopes that the Prime Minister would recover soon.
Speculation as to what the source of Macmillan’s problems was existed, but few journalists were going to voice their opinions in public for fear of offending the public with their allegations. It was only after Maurice Macmillan’s death that the story of his alcohol addiction would break into public discourse, which led to the widespread panic over alcoholism that swept Britain in the mid-1980s and prompted the Labour government of the day to tighten up alcohol licensing laws and implement minimum pricing on alcoholic drinks that would become inaccurately known as the “Tipple Tax”. Still, in 1979, the word wasn’t out and the Conservatives had a new plan to reboot economic growth in Britain that was taking the attention away from Macmillan’s health.
The 1979 budget led to unfettered credit controls, increased consumer spending, and a ten-point lead in the polls for the Conservative Party by May 1979. Britain was, for a few months, in the exact state that Barber had promised. But, as the summer arrived and Macmillan returned to his duties as Prime Minister, the “golden age” of fiscal freedom that Barber had promised was about to turn against the Chancellor.
Barber’s liberalising instincts were proven wrong by the plain facts that faced the government when the summer recess was coming to close and Parliament was due to be reconvened as MPs’ constituents were feeling debt start to claw at their personal finances and net house prices were increasing beyond the financial reach of most Britons. The affordable housing market was shrinking due to the dual pressures of freely available mortgages and the concurrent house price inflation, consumer spending was increasing to a point where exports were being undercut and the balance of payments was set to turn to deficit within two years, and a consensus of economists advising the NCI and the Treasury formed to urge the government to retake control of credit and reconsider Barber’s course of action. It was a swift turnaround from the enthusiastic response Barber had received before his budget was unveiled, leading the cabinet to believe that the unfavourable trade and inflation figures represented a temporary spike. “Britain can take it!” was the message the government gave off, placing them at odds with the country as families began to fear for their living standards for the first time in almost a decade.
As the Conservatives put a brave face on the disaster of the overheating economy, the Labour Party faced a very human tragedy. On the 10th November 1979, Merlyn Rees died in a car crash in Rockville, Maryland. Rees had been invited to the private birthday celebrations of President Shriver in Maryland as an unofficial part of a “diplomatic, political exchange” that saw Rees entertained at the White House and at the Shriver family’s estate whilst Vice President Bentsen was given a tour of Scarborough by members of the NEC. Sadly, Rees’ trip to the United States was cut short by a road traffic accident that occurred whilst the Labour leader was in a taxi on his way back to his hotel on the night of the 10th November.
The sudden death of Rees in such a tragic accident sent shockwaves across Britain. Labour had lost its affable leader – the very man who should have become Prime Minister in the next year – and there was a sudden vacuum in the leadership that needed to be filled. It reminded many people of 1963 and the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Without that tragic event, Anthony Greenwood might never have become leader and fundamentally changed Britain as he did in his six years of office. Despite it being so close to the next general election, the example of Greenwood – of great success arising from dark tragedy – allayed their concerns that the party would be unprepared with a new leader and only a few months left before Parliament had to be dissolved.
Peter Shore declined to seek the leadership out of respect for his former superior’s memory, Michael Foot declared that he felt that a younger man was needed to take the reins of leadership, and Tony Benn was very close to putting his name forward before being dissuaded by a group of Labour left-wingers (supposedly led by Greenwood and Castle, who were equally as excited by Benn’s talent as they were nervous about his divisiveness) who thought that he would serve the party better as Shadow Chancellor. Instead, John Silkin was the first to throw his name forward and be subsequently castigated for his “uncouth” willingness to step into a dead man’s shoes. It was a terrible start for a campaign that began with no momentum and inevitably failed with no momentum. Aside from the quixotic Silkin, there was Albert Booth (Shadow Employment Secretary), Shirley Williams (Shadow Education Secretary), and Roy Jenkins (the aging leader of the party’s social democrats). They stood out as the main three candidates, each polling into double figures amongst party members and MPs, whilst John Silkin and Eric Varley fought to maintain some semblance of relevance.
Jenkins played well with the lingering social democrats in the party who still believed in Europe as an ideal and advocated “In” during the EEC referendum campaign. He had little else to lose at this point and, by maintaining 18% support amongst the party membership and the Parliamentary Labour Party, he could still claim that the social democrats had to be listened to as a sizeable proportion of Labour’s membership. This claim was out of tune with what the party really thought, which was somewhere between the thinking of Booth and Williams. She attempted to stake out a position between Jenkins and Booth, positioning herself as a sensible moderate in the Merlyn Rees mould. This, however, was a strategy that was to backfire quite spectacularly when Williams reportedly derided Tony Benn as a member of the “loony left” and found herself at odds with Rees’ old conciliatory approach. She wasn’t “Merlyn Rees in a skirt” – not matter how she attempted to portray herself.
Albert Booth, in temperament but not in politics, was closer to Rees in a variety of ways. He was humble, modest and consensual in his approach to politics. On the one hand, he was a determined unilateralist; on the other, he wanted to convince rather than force others into agreeing with his position. Luckily, this was a mainstream position and he had the backing of large swathes of the party who needed no convincing. On industrial issues, he aimed to work with the unions as an ally and wanted to push them to take the vanguard position in Labour’s economic plans. Booth pledged to reinstate the Department of Economic Affairs and implement the policies of “worker-directors” in British industries and Bennite mutualisation. All of these policies were aligned with the leadership of the TUC, with General Secretary Len Murray urging Labour MPs to vote for Booth to reignite “Greenwood’s revolution”.
After the first ballot of the contest, Booth came out with a plurality of the votes. John Silkin was knocked out in the first round and Eric Varley dropped out due to his poor showing, leaving just Williams and Jenkins to share the votes of the divided Labour Right. On the second ballot, Booth shot ahead with 58% of the vote and his victory was declared on the 28th November 1979.
With a new and untried leader, Labour looked set to wobble in the polls before it could make inroads in the polls. That was the orthodox analysis, at least. The reality of the polls showed Labour storm ahead of the Conservatives by seven points, in actual fact, and the Liberals also saw a rise of four percent in their share of the votes. Booth and Thorpe were the young stars leading into the 1980 general election.
With the economy worsening and inflation steadily rising by February 1980, it was clear to Macmillan that Barber’s plan had set the country down a road of economic uncertainty and he was quick to admonish the Chancellor for holding the line on his fiscal reforms when the line had been washed away by debt and public disquiet.
On the 5th February, the announcement went out that controls on credit and regulations on mortgages would be re-imposed, with a corresponding lowering of interest rates to remedy the problem of accumulated debt. There was a sense of relief that Macmillan was back in charge following his leave of absence in the previous year and the polls reflected that by adding, on average, two more points to the Conservative total. Whilst this wasn’t enough to displace the Labour Party, it showed that Macmillan could still be a leader. At the same time, it has to be noted, he was receiving treatment for his alcohol addiction and his newfound confidence has, in retrospect, been deemed a reflection of his improving mental and emotional state.
Within two weeks of the announcement, Parliament was dissolved by Maurice Macmillan and polling day was set for the 20th March. Each campaign fought tooth and nail, but there was only ever going to be one winner following the party leadership’s loss in the EEC referendum and Barber’s broken promises in the aftermath. Booth’s style on the campaign trail was personable, if uncharismatic – a fact that he referenced throughout the campaign, which led many wary middle-class voters to be convinced by him due to his modest and self-deprecating nature. He was no hectoring hammer for the “loony left”, but a humble, working-class peacemaker with a sense of anti-charisma that appealed so strongly to the electorate after the Conservatives’ vain attempts to appear “slick” and “professional”.
On the 20th March 1980, the second Macmillan era came to a close as David Dimbleby declared that Labour had won 339 seats to the Conservatives’ 280. Effectively, the two party swapped positions and the Liberals rose to 14 seats.
Maurice Macmillan had set out to achieve so much in office and, having served for longer than Harold Macmillan and Anthony Greenwood, it seems a shame that the greatest accolade he could ever achieve would be “great manager” rather than “great statesman”. He managed the Greenwoodite consensus and updated the Conservative Party to meet the challenges of governing a more left-wing country than they had left in 1964, thus overcoming the debacles of the Maudling and Powell years. Still, he lost his chance at forging a great legacy for himself when he lost the EEC referendum. In British history textbooks, Maurice Macmillan’s time in office is compared quite positively to the 1950s in many areas, but the ending of the second Macmillan era is always compared to the ending of the first in 1963. With a physically weakened leader and a dangerous dash for growth, both eras of prosperity had come to an abrupt end.
Maurice Macmillan would go on to turn back to drink after his election defeat, leading to his ousting later that year in 1980. For another four years, he would struggle with his dependency on alcohol and would eventually die of alcohol poisoning on the 17th January 1985, just four months after Albert Booth’s Labour government was re-elected with a renewed mandate. His father, Harold Macmillan, would outlive his son for another three months before passing away at his home in Sussex.
The two former Prime Ministers would be buried side by side, father and son, in St Giles’ Church, Horsted Keynes in West Sussex.
Speculation as to what the source of Macmillan’s problems was existed, but few journalists were going to voice their opinions in public for fear of offending the public with their allegations. It was only after Maurice Macmillan’s death that the story of his alcohol addiction would break into public discourse, which led to the widespread panic over alcoholism that swept Britain in the mid-1980s and prompted the Labour government of the day to tighten up alcohol licensing laws and implement minimum pricing on alcoholic drinks that would become inaccurately known as the “Tipple Tax”. Still, in 1979, the word wasn’t out and the Conservatives had a new plan to reboot economic growth in Britain that was taking the attention away from Macmillan’s health.
The 1979 budget led to unfettered credit controls, increased consumer spending, and a ten-point lead in the polls for the Conservative Party by May 1979. Britain was, for a few months, in the exact state that Barber had promised. But, as the summer arrived and Macmillan returned to his duties as Prime Minister, the “golden age” of fiscal freedom that Barber had promised was about to turn against the Chancellor.
Barber’s liberalising instincts were proven wrong by the plain facts that faced the government when the summer recess was coming to close and Parliament was due to be reconvened as MPs’ constituents were feeling debt start to claw at their personal finances and net house prices were increasing beyond the financial reach of most Britons. The affordable housing market was shrinking due to the dual pressures of freely available mortgages and the concurrent house price inflation, consumer spending was increasing to a point where exports were being undercut and the balance of payments was set to turn to deficit within two years, and a consensus of economists advising the NCI and the Treasury formed to urge the government to retake control of credit and reconsider Barber’s course of action. It was a swift turnaround from the enthusiastic response Barber had received before his budget was unveiled, leading the cabinet to believe that the unfavourable trade and inflation figures represented a temporary spike. “Britain can take it!” was the message the government gave off, placing them at odds with the country as families began to fear for their living standards for the first time in almost a decade.
As the Conservatives put a brave face on the disaster of the overheating economy, the Labour Party faced a very human tragedy. On the 10th November 1979, Merlyn Rees died in a car crash in Rockville, Maryland. Rees had been invited to the private birthday celebrations of President Shriver in Maryland as an unofficial part of a “diplomatic, political exchange” that saw Rees entertained at the White House and at the Shriver family’s estate whilst Vice President Bentsen was given a tour of Scarborough by members of the NEC. Sadly, Rees’ trip to the United States was cut short by a road traffic accident that occurred whilst the Labour leader was in a taxi on his way back to his hotel on the night of the 10th November.
The sudden death of Rees in such a tragic accident sent shockwaves across Britain. Labour had lost its affable leader – the very man who should have become Prime Minister in the next year – and there was a sudden vacuum in the leadership that needed to be filled. It reminded many people of 1963 and the death of Hugh Gaitskell. Without that tragic event, Anthony Greenwood might never have become leader and fundamentally changed Britain as he did in his six years of office. Despite it being so close to the next general election, the example of Greenwood – of great success arising from dark tragedy – allayed their concerns that the party would be unprepared with a new leader and only a few months left before Parliament had to be dissolved.
Peter Shore declined to seek the leadership out of respect for his former superior’s memory, Michael Foot declared that he felt that a younger man was needed to take the reins of leadership, and Tony Benn was very close to putting his name forward before being dissuaded by a group of Labour left-wingers (supposedly led by Greenwood and Castle, who were equally as excited by Benn’s talent as they were nervous about his divisiveness) who thought that he would serve the party better as Shadow Chancellor. Instead, John Silkin was the first to throw his name forward and be subsequently castigated for his “uncouth” willingness to step into a dead man’s shoes. It was a terrible start for a campaign that began with no momentum and inevitably failed with no momentum. Aside from the quixotic Silkin, there was Albert Booth (Shadow Employment Secretary), Shirley Williams (Shadow Education Secretary), and Roy Jenkins (the aging leader of the party’s social democrats). They stood out as the main three candidates, each polling into double figures amongst party members and MPs, whilst John Silkin and Eric Varley fought to maintain some semblance of relevance.
Jenkins played well with the lingering social democrats in the party who still believed in Europe as an ideal and advocated “In” during the EEC referendum campaign. He had little else to lose at this point and, by maintaining 18% support amongst the party membership and the Parliamentary Labour Party, he could still claim that the social democrats had to be listened to as a sizeable proportion of Labour’s membership. This claim was out of tune with what the party really thought, which was somewhere between the thinking of Booth and Williams. She attempted to stake out a position between Jenkins and Booth, positioning herself as a sensible moderate in the Merlyn Rees mould. This, however, was a strategy that was to backfire quite spectacularly when Williams reportedly derided Tony Benn as a member of the “loony left” and found herself at odds with Rees’ old conciliatory approach. She wasn’t “Merlyn Rees in a skirt” – not matter how she attempted to portray herself.
Albert Booth, in temperament but not in politics, was closer to Rees in a variety of ways. He was humble, modest and consensual in his approach to politics. On the one hand, he was a determined unilateralist; on the other, he wanted to convince rather than force others into agreeing with his position. Luckily, this was a mainstream position and he had the backing of large swathes of the party who needed no convincing. On industrial issues, he aimed to work with the unions as an ally and wanted to push them to take the vanguard position in Labour’s economic plans. Booth pledged to reinstate the Department of Economic Affairs and implement the policies of “worker-directors” in British industries and Bennite mutualisation. All of these policies were aligned with the leadership of the TUC, with General Secretary Len Murray urging Labour MPs to vote for Booth to reignite “Greenwood’s revolution”.
After the first ballot of the contest, Booth came out with a plurality of the votes. John Silkin was knocked out in the first round and Eric Varley dropped out due to his poor showing, leaving just Williams and Jenkins to share the votes of the divided Labour Right. On the second ballot, Booth shot ahead with 58% of the vote and his victory was declared on the 28th November 1979.
With a new and untried leader, Labour looked set to wobble in the polls before it could make inroads in the polls. That was the orthodox analysis, at least. The reality of the polls showed Labour storm ahead of the Conservatives by seven points, in actual fact, and the Liberals also saw a rise of four percent in their share of the votes. Booth and Thorpe were the young stars leading into the 1980 general election.
With the economy worsening and inflation steadily rising by February 1980, it was clear to Macmillan that Barber’s plan had set the country down a road of economic uncertainty and he was quick to admonish the Chancellor for holding the line on his fiscal reforms when the line had been washed away by debt and public disquiet.
On the 5th February, the announcement went out that controls on credit and regulations on mortgages would be re-imposed, with a corresponding lowering of interest rates to remedy the problem of accumulated debt. There was a sense of relief that Macmillan was back in charge following his leave of absence in the previous year and the polls reflected that by adding, on average, two more points to the Conservative total. Whilst this wasn’t enough to displace the Labour Party, it showed that Macmillan could still be a leader. At the same time, it has to be noted, he was receiving treatment for his alcohol addiction and his newfound confidence has, in retrospect, been deemed a reflection of his improving mental and emotional state.
Within two weeks of the announcement, Parliament was dissolved by Maurice Macmillan and polling day was set for the 20th March. Each campaign fought tooth and nail, but there was only ever going to be one winner following the party leadership’s loss in the EEC referendum and Barber’s broken promises in the aftermath. Booth’s style on the campaign trail was personable, if uncharismatic – a fact that he referenced throughout the campaign, which led many wary middle-class voters to be convinced by him due to his modest and self-deprecating nature. He was no hectoring hammer for the “loony left”, but a humble, working-class peacemaker with a sense of anti-charisma that appealed so strongly to the electorate after the Conservatives’ vain attempts to appear “slick” and “professional”.
On the 20th March 1980, the second Macmillan era came to a close as David Dimbleby declared that Labour had won 339 seats to the Conservatives’ 280. Effectively, the two party swapped positions and the Liberals rose to 14 seats.
Maurice Macmillan had set out to achieve so much in office and, having served for longer than Harold Macmillan and Anthony Greenwood, it seems a shame that the greatest accolade he could ever achieve would be “great manager” rather than “great statesman”. He managed the Greenwoodite consensus and updated the Conservative Party to meet the challenges of governing a more left-wing country than they had left in 1964, thus overcoming the debacles of the Maudling and Powell years. Still, he lost his chance at forging a great legacy for himself when he lost the EEC referendum. In British history textbooks, Maurice Macmillan’s time in office is compared quite positively to the 1950s in many areas, but the ending of the second Macmillan era is always compared to the ending of the first in 1963. With a physically weakened leader and a dangerous dash for growth, both eras of prosperity had come to an abrupt end.
Maurice Macmillan would go on to turn back to drink after his election defeat, leading to his ousting later that year in 1980. For another four years, he would struggle with his dependency on alcohol and would eventually die of alcohol poisoning on the 17th January 1985, just four months after Albert Booth’s Labour government was re-elected with a renewed mandate. His father, Harold Macmillan, would outlive his son for another three months before passing away at his home in Sussex.
The two former Prime Ministers would be buried side by side, father and son, in St Giles’ Church, Horsted Keynes in West Sussex.
THE END
A sad end for Supermac II, but not an unexpected one. I look forward to seeing how a Booth premiership will play out (and I presume he isn't the MP for Barrow ITTL, which might on the other hand be interesting in a Chinese (or perhaps Canadian) sense).
Certainly a sad end. I genuinely teared up a bit writing about the deaths of the two Macmillans.
I don't know what you mean by that second bit, actually. Regardless, he is still the MP for Barrow-in-Furness.
Well, Canadian elections are notorious for swinging in unpredictable ways, and this leads to an unusual thing where it's not uncommon for party leaders to lose their seat in spite of a swing toward the party as a whole.
Ah, I see! Well, the main reason for Booth's loss (his unilateralism) IOTL isn't that much of an issue as Greenwood and Caste had made the nuclear arms industry defunct by decommissioning Polaris and so there are no unemployment fears to drive people out to vote against Booth in Barrow-in-Furness.
I'm very glad. As to a third part, there most definitely won't be one. At least, I won't do one for a very long time as I've got other projects in mind at the moment and I'd like to crack on with those for the foreseeable future.
The Shapiroverse is done, essentially. Thank you so much for reading.
Grief, mainly. I've muddled around with a few of the deaths as I always think that those sorts of timings (especially with a PoD 25 years before) shouldn't be exactly as they were OTL. Just a little thing I do in TLs.
Another great TLIAF - very sad to see the decline of Macmillan the Younger, and the sudden death of Merlyn Rees. The ending is very powerful; I can see why it could have been difficult to write.
Will we be seeing more from the Shapiroverse in the future?
Will we be seeing more from the Shapiroverse in the future?
Thank you very much.
It's very unlikely that we'll see anything more of the Shapiroverse within the next year. I've got other projects, some TLIAWs/TLIADs and some fleshed out TLs, that I want to tackle.
I'm glad you enjoyed it (aside from the sad bit about Macmillan the Younger).
I also see President Shriver
I wondered when you'd pick up on that. I was going to go deeper into the '76 election, but I thought I'd leave it out so it didn't seem forced into the text.
1976: Sargent Shriver/Lloyd Bentsen (D) vs. Ronald Reagan/Howard Baker (R)
The Republicans and Democrats split the South (but for different reasons and to different extents - Reagan obviously had the upper hand in the South) and the American Independent Party was left with Alabama and Mississippi in 1976.
Whilst I did expect to see a Labour victory in '80, you still blindsided me with Rees' untimely death and the rise of Booth. It was a strange mix of being pleased with the result, though still feeling bad about all the tragedy that had come about to happen.
Macmillan the Younger's fall from grace and death were exceedingly tragic; I fear that I may have had onlookers on the bus a little concerned & worried at my reaction whilst reading on the way home last night.
All that's really left for me to say is well done, Comrade Comisario. Well done! A masterful piece of work and a more-than-worthy successor to Walking Back To Happiness! Bravo!
Macmillan the Younger's fall from grace and death were exceedingly tragic; I fear that I may have had onlookers on the bus a little concerned & worried at my reaction whilst reading on the way home last night.
All that's really left for me to say is well done, Comrade Comisario. Well done! A masterful piece of work and a more-than-worthy successor to Walking Back To Happiness! Bravo!
I was going to have Merlyn Rees carry on and win the election, but then the speculation came that it'd be Peter Shore or Tony Benn in the 1980s. I thought, then, that I'd make a blindsiding move and put Booth to keep people guessing.
I suppose I might have overdone it on the tragedy, but I'm not too worried if I'm not the only one who got all emotional over the ending (despite me being the one who wrote the bloody thing in the first place, haha).
I'm glad you thought it was a worthy successor, I really am.
That's it for the Shapiroverse, now! I hope you don't mind me leaving the '80s in suspense for everyone.
Sideways
Donor
Nasty
I'm sad to hear that, this has been a fun timeline. Thanks for giving us something entertaining to read.
Nasty
It's always best to keep people guessing.
Well, it's been a pleasure to write. I thought I'd end it now as I've got exams coming up next year and I didn't want to keep on and on when I know I'll be swamped with work come January. I've got ideas for other projects to tinker with to give me my ahistorical fix.
Cheers, mate. I'm glad I could introduce you to an obscure face - and one I hope will get more of a look-in from now on, as he's a very intriguing character who could have gone far in the party if, say, Foot had won the leadership in 1976.
Really good TL overall. It's built a 'better' world while still being realistic.
I'm pleased to hear that! As is often said, it's so easy to build a really depressing dystopia than realistically improve our world. I'm glad my attempt seems to have worked.
I was having my suspicions that Booth would succeed Rees at some point in the future, mostly due to your elevating his status in the penultimate update though didn't expect it to be so soon.
Oh, not at all - it was just the right amount of it that still allows that balance for real-life tragedy without being overboard with the levels. Hit the mark perfectly!
Well I'm very glad to have been an avid fan & reader of the Shapiroverse and enjoy all it's had to offer.
Not at all; we already know that Labour will remain in office post-1984, so that's always a positive in my book! I hope that we might one day see a return to it, though I know you have plenty of other projects waiting to bring onto the boards!
Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
1957-1963: Harold Macmillan (Conservative majority)
1959: Hugh Gaitskell (Labour), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1963-1964: Quintin Hogg (Conservative majority)
1964-1970: Anthony Greenwood (Labour majority)
1964: Quintin Hogg (Conservative), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1968: Reginald Maudling (Conservative), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)
1970-1973: Barbara Castle (Labour majority)
1973-1980: Maurice Macmillan (Conservative majority)
1973: Barbara Castle (Labour), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)
1975: Barbara Castle (Labour), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)
1980-: Albert Booth (Labour majority)
1980: Maurice Macmillan (Conservative), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
Presidents of the United States of America
1961-1963: John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson (Democratic)
1960: Richard Nixon/Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (Republican)
1963-1965: Lyndon Johnson/Vacant (Democratic)
1965-1969: Lyndon Johnson/Hubert Humphrey (Democratic)
1964: Barry Goldwater/William E. Miller (Republican)
1969-1977: George Romney/Ronald Reagan (Republican)
1968: Hubert Humphrey/Edmund Muskie (Democratic)
1972: Sargent Shriver/Terry Sanford (Democratic)
1977-: Sargent Shriver/Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)
1976: Ronald Reagan/Howard Baker (Republican)
1957-1963: Harold Macmillan (Conservative majority)
1959: Hugh Gaitskell (Labour), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1963-1964: Quintin Hogg (Conservative majority)
1964-1970: Anthony Greenwood (Labour majority)
1964: Quintin Hogg (Conservative), Jo Grimond (Liberal)
1968: Reginald Maudling (Conservative), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)
1970-1973: Barbara Castle (Labour majority)
1973-1980: Maurice Macmillan (Conservative majority)
1973: Barbara Castle (Labour), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)
1975: Barbara Castle (Labour), Eric Lubbock (Liberal)
1980-: Albert Booth (Labour majority)
1980: Maurice Macmillan (Conservative), Jeremy Thorpe (Liberal)
Presidents of the United States of America
1961-1963: John F. Kennedy/Lyndon Johnson (Democratic)
1960: Richard Nixon/Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (Republican)
1963-1965: Lyndon Johnson/Vacant (Democratic)
1965-1969: Lyndon Johnson/Hubert Humphrey (Democratic)
1964: Barry Goldwater/William E. Miller (Republican)
1969-1977: George Romney/Ronald Reagan (Republican)
1968: Hubert Humphrey/Edmund Muskie (Democratic)
1972: Sargent Shriver/Terry Sanford (Democratic)
1977-: Sargent Shriver/Lloyd Bentsen (Democratic)
1976: Ronald Reagan/Howard Baker (Republican)
Great TL. Can I ask if you have any tips for making one? My last few have been left whistling in the wind.
Thanks.
I'd be happy to help. Just drop me a PM on what troubles you're having and I'll see what I can think of.