Interesting stuff- can't wait to see where the POD will be! A Heath-wank TL could be a lot of fun though, if the Argentines have a go sometime in his term...
Consensus Unbroken - Thande's New Timeline
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Thande
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This will be the last chunk of OTL history I promise - the next part will begin the AH.
*
1966.
Death of Henry Solomons, Labour MP for Kingston-upon-Hull North. At the ensuing January by-election – perhaps because of the announcement of the construction of the Humber Bridge – Labour candidate Kevin McNamara holds the seat and even achieves an 8.91% swing to Labour. It is rare for ruling governments to win by-elections and even though Hull North was a fairly strong Labour seat, the fact that McNamara increased his majority convinces Wilson (clinging to his majority by the skin of his teeth) to call a general election for March.
Wilson’s gamble pays off. Labour wins a majority of 96, their largest since Attlee’s 1945 result. Grimond’s leadership of the Liberals continues to pay dividends, with their number of seats rising from 9 to 12. However, this is considered insufficient and Grimond will resign. Despite the Conservatives’ disappointing result, Heath remains leader.
For the first time, the state opening of Parliament is televised.
Despite his newly strengthened position, Wilson is plagued with problems. The economy is in trouble, a state worsened when the National Union of Seamen went on strike in May. Wilson declared a state of emergency, blaming Communist agitators for both the strike and divisions in his own party. The NUS backs down, but this is only the start for years of trouble between Labour and the unions.
In response to the pound weakening, Wilson and his Chancellor, Jim Callaghan, institute a wages freeze and bar more than £50 being taken abroad to encourage people to holiday and spend in Britain instead. Wilson sets an example by holidaying in the Isles of Scilly. All of this is to try and avoid devaluing the pound, which Wilson opposes at any cost due to the fact that Attlee had done the same in 1949 and he wanted to avoid Labour being seen as the party of devaluation. By the end of the year, however, Britain will be faced by a £162 million trade deficit as a result of this refusal.
President de Gaulle breaks with NATO and French military forces are withdrawn from the NATO command structure. In response, NATO moves its headquarters from Paris to Brussels.
An IRA bomb destroys a statue of Lord Nelson in Dublin.
The Ba’ath Party takes power in Syria.
Meeting in Rome of Pope Paul VI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Michael Ramsey, opening up a new dialogue between the estranged Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.
Harold Wilson is called ‘another Churchill’ by President Johnson for his support over the Vietnam War, although he continues to rule out sending British troops. Wilson also goes to Moscow to try and negotiate a Vietnam ceasefire with the Soviets, but they rebuff his advances.
England wins the World Cup. The nation rejoices in a manner unseen since the Coronation, with Wilson smoothly riding the wave. The World Cup itself is stolen, but then dug up by a dog after being buried in a garden.
After the assassination of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, he is succeeded by B.J. Vorster. Vorster continues and expands apartheid policies, but is perceived as more of a human figure, using PR to try and mend South Africa’s image and being pragmatic with his foreign affairs.
As part of the Sino-Soviet split, the USSR announces that all Chinese students must leave the country.
Tensions with Spain over Gibraltar heat up, with Spain demanding Britain cease military flights to the Rock. Britain baldly rejects this. Spain closes the border.
Aberfan mining disaster in Wales kills more than 100 people.
Harold Wilson meets with Rhodesian rebel leader Ian Smith on HMS Tiger in the Mediterranean. Smith resents blackmail from the Black Commonwealth leaders, while Wilson is enraged that the Rhodesian problem threatens to split the Commonwealth. The talks go nowhere, with Smith somewhat willing to compromise but Wilson insisting the Rhodesians concede the illegality of their UDI as part of the settlement. After the talks, a furious Wilson proclaims NIBMAR in relation to Rhodesia. He also goes to the United Nations and sanctions are imposed upon Rhodesia. Ian Smith declares Rhodesia a republic in response.
Soviets score two space firsts – Luna 10 is the first manmade object to orbit the moon, while Venera 3 is the first to land on another planet (Venus).
Actor Ronald Reagan is elected Governor of California in a landslide. He is already spoken of as a potential Republican Presidential candidate as early as 1968, though more probably in 1972.
North Sea Gas is discovered.
Military coup in Argentina, known as the Revolución Argentina, which instates General Juan Carlos Onganía as leader. Onganía’s government suffers the same problems as the UK’s, facing a wages freeze and a currency revaluation. The junta faces widespread public protests, mostly from supporters of the exiled President Juan Perón.
1967.
With Jo Grimond stepping down, the Liberal Party holds a leadership contest, which is won by Jeremy Thorpe.
Parliament votes to nationalise 90% of the British steel industry.
Apollo 1 disaster in the United States. The USA, USSR and UK sign the Outer Space Treaty, demilitarising space.
Torrey Canyon disaster – an oil supertanker runs around off the Cornish coast. The RAF is mobilised to bomb and ignite the oil slick with napalm.
The United Kingdom and Ireland both apply for EEC membership. The Netherlands supports the British bid. The EEC merges with the European Coal and Steel Community to form the European Community/ies (EC).
Biafra proclaims its independence from Nigeria.
The Summer of Love takes place in the Western world. In stark contrast to this expression of counter-culture, China undergoes the murderous Cultural Revolution and the Six Days’ War rages between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Wilson blames the latter for the drop in value of the pound. Callaghan is finally forced to devaluate the pound by 14.3%. Wilson makes a gaffe when he claims to the public that ‘this does not of course mean that the pound in your pocket is worth less’ – it is.
BBC 2 begins colour television broadcasting.
Defence Secretary Denis Healey announces the intention of the British government to withdraw its military forces from ‘east of Suez’ (except Hong Kong) which means Malaysia and Singapore, appalling the Australians and Americans.
After a request from the United Nations, a referendum is held in Gibraltar on whether to join Spain. Of the 12,182 voters, precisely 44 want to do so. This shuts up Franco for a bit.
Execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia.
South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performs the world’s first heart transplant operation.
The Marine Broadcasting Offences Act shuts down most British pirate radio stations.
Concorde, the joint Anglo-French supersonic passenger liner, is unveiled for the first time in Toulouse.
1968.
The Prague Spring. Alexander Dubcek becomes leader of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets react to his reforms predictably – with tanks.
In the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong launch the Tet Offensive. Though Vietnam is falling apart for President Johnson, at home he secures his place in history by signing the Civil Rights Act.
Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary (and former Minister for Health), Enoch Powell, makes a speech in Birmingham that rocks the political establishment. Popularly known as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech after a metaphor Powell used drawing upon Virgil, the speech condemns anti-discrimination legislation and warns that continued immigration to the United Kingdom will lead to the same racial strife dominating the headlines in the United States. Broadly speaking, the establishment condemn the speech (with Powell being sacked by political enemy Ted Heath) while much of the public supported it, with London dockers going on strike to protest against the treatment of Powell. Regardless, a can of worms has been opened and immigration and race relations irreparably become a political issue in Britain.
May protests in Paris almost spiral into a revolution.
Assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
End of steam passenger trains in Britain.
Apollo 8 is the first manned mission to orbit the Moon.
American oil tycoon Robert McCullough buys the old London Bridge and has it reconstructed in the USA.
Decimalised currency begins to circulate in Britain.
British Motor Holdings is merged with the Leyland Motor Corporation to form British Leyland. This combines almost all British car manufacturers into one company.
After Lyndon Johnson says he will not seek re-election, Hubert Humphrey wins the Democratic nomination but is defeated at the election by Republican Richard Nixon.
1969.
Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, publishes the White Paper In Place of Strife, calling for tougher union legislation to prevent the Government being held over a barrel by the unions. Despite receiving some support from Wilson, however, the White Paper is defeated by cabinet members led by Home Secretary Jim Callaghan (close to the unions).
The left-wing nationalist group People’s Democracy marches from Belfast to Londonderry in Northern Ireland, provoking clashes with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The nationalists proclaim a ‘Free Derry’ commune in Londonderry, creating a stand-off. The modern Irish Troubles have begun.
Infamous London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray sentenced to 30 years in prison each.
North Sea Oil is discovered.
The Apollo 11 moon landing. America recovers her pride from every previous loss in the space race by winning the only battle anyone remembers.
Britain sends troops to Anguilla to put down a rebellion, which completely disintegrates when they arrive and the whole intervention turns into a big party. Only in the Caribbean.
Charles is made Prince of Wales.
The Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet flies for the first time.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus premieres on BBC 1.
All diplomatic ties severed between Rhodesia and the UK.
ARPANET, the distant ancestor of the Internet, becomes operational in the United States.
1970.
The British voting age is reduced from 21 to 18. The 1970 general election is the first fought under these new rules. With signs of the economy picking up and a good performance in local elections, Wilson decides to hold an early general election. Polls predict a Labout victory and Labour election propaganda paints Heath’s Tories as ‘Yesterday’s Men’. However, a last minute swing to the Conservatives produces a shock result – they win with a majority of 31. The collapse in the Labour vote leads to the high-profile George Brown losing his seat (he was soon made a peer). Jeremy Thorpe makes a disappointing debut, with the Liberal Party’s representation shrinking to just 6 MPs. Some wonder if the party can survive at all.
Heath vows to take the country into the EEC and to control the unions. He reassures the Americans by maintaining a token force east of Suez.
In Argentina, after Onganía fails to defeat the Montoneros (Peronist guerillas) he is deposed by fellow general Roberto M. Levingston.
Canada recognises the People’s Republic of China.
The PLO hijacks three airliners, starting a trend of terrorism that will plague the 1970s.
The Beatles break up.
The pound is decimalised. Existing pre-decimal one and two shilling coins still in circulation continue to be accepted as 5p and 10p, while new coins are rolled out.
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Edward Heath
Lord Chancellor: Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Ian Macleod (replaced by Anthony Barber after his death one month after the election)
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Maurice Macmillan
Foreign Secretary: Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: James Prior
Defence Secretary: Peter Carington, Baron Carrington
Education and Science Secretary: Margaret Thatcher
Employment Secretary: Robert Carr
Social Services Secretary: Sir Keith Joseph
Housing and Local Government Secretary: Peter Walker
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Anthony Barber
Scottish Secretary: Gordon Campbell
Minister for Technology: Geoffrey Rippon
Trade and Industry Secretary: John Davies
Minister of State, Trade and Consumer Affairs: Sir Geoffrey Howe
Minister for Transport: John Peyton
Welsh Secretary: Peter Thomas
1971.
Heath’s policy of confrontation with the unions backfires, with strikes being even worse than under Wilson. Then the Conservatives, faced with the prestigious Rolls-Royce going under, nationalise it and look like hypocrites.
With the American Apollo lunar programme having great success and their own moonshot programme still suffering problems, the Soviets quietly cancel it, deny they were ever in the race, and launch the first space station Salyut 1 instead.
The Troubles continue to heat up, with 11,000 British troops in Northern Ireland and internment of nationalists.
President Nixon ends the Bretton Woods global economic system by announcing the United States will no longer offer convertibility of the dollar to gold bullion.
The 2,500 Year Celebration of Iran takes place. Being the Shah’s brainchild, it does not endear him to his restless people, partly due to being an expression of ostentatious wealth when many Iranians suffer from poverty, partly because it focuses on Cyrus the Great and virtually ignores Islam.
The United Nations admits the People’s Republic of China and expels the Republic of China (Taiwan) according to the One China policy.
The House of Commons votes 356-244 in favour of joining the European Community.
Britain’s abortive space programme launches its first and only satellite from Woomera in Australia – the Prospero X-3, using the troubled Black Arrow carrier rocket.
An IRA bomb explodes at the top of the Post Office Tower in London, causing it to be closed to the public.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, ending with the independence of the former East Pakistan as Bangladesh.
The UK removes its military bases from Malta.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (now Foreign Secretary to Heath) signs an agreement with Ian Smith to recognise the independence of Rhodesia. The Labour Party cries foul.
1972.
Bloody Sunday Massacre in Londonderry when British Army soldiers kill 14 unarmed nationalist protestors.
Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth.
British Embassy in Dublin burned to the ground by protestors.
The National Union of Mineworkers, led by Joe Gormley, goes on strike due to miners’ wages not rising in proportion to those of other manual labourers. The Heath Government reacts by declaring a state of emergency. A month later, Heath backs down and the miners are awarded a 21% increase in pay.
After this, the British economy undergoes a brief boom.
“Only Nixon could go to China”: President Nixon makes an unprecedented visit to the People’s Republic of China. As his anti-communist credentials are unquestionable, American commentators cannot spin this. In reaction, Britain enhances its own relations with the PRC and the two exchange ambassadors.
German Red Army Faction terrorists kill three American soldiers in Heidelberg.
Nixon and Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty to reduce nuclear stockpiles.
British European Airways Flight 548 crashes in Staines after taking off from Heathrow, killing 118.
IRA bombs kill many across Northern Ireland.
Last US troops withdrawn from Vietnam.
British Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher advocates a policy of reducing expenditure in some areas to focus on others. The media seizes on the fact that this means an end to free milk in schools, dubbing her ‘Milk-snatcher Thatcher’. Less publicly, in her capacity as Science Minister, Thatcher meets with Heath and the two agree to realign British scientific research towards more utilitarian and practical goals.
Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda, starts deporting Asians and seizing their property.
Apollo 17. Eugene Cernan is the last man on the moon. Werner von Braun quits NASA in protest at Nixon scaling back the agency’s funding, effectively ending any prospect for future missions beyond Earth orbit.
At the Olympic Games in Munich, Palestinian terrorists kill two Israeli athletes and nine more are killed in a rescue attempt.
East and West Germany recognise each other.
Death of the Duke of Windsor (the former Edward VIII prior to his abdication).
Atari is founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
President Nixon defeats left-wing Democrat George McGovern in an election that is both a landslide (Nixon wins 60.7% of the vote) and has the lowest voter turnout since 1948 (55%).
1973.
The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the EC. When Heath goes to sign, a female protestor dumps ink all over him – obscurely, due to a completely unrelated protest about the redevelopment of Covent Garden.
Last of the Summer Wine airs for the first time on BBC 1.
IRA bombs (backed by Libyan dictator Muamar Gaddafi) strike the Old Bailey and Whitehall. A referendum in Northern Ireland affirms that it should remain part of the UK, but most nationalists boycott the poll.
New London Bridge opened by the Queen. Meanwhile in New York the World Trade Centre opens, while in Chicago the Sears Tower becomes the tallest building in the world.
Lofthouse Colliery Disaster in Yorkshire kills seven miners.
1.6 million British workers strike on May Day (after a call to do so by the Trade Union Congress) in protest of the Heath government’s anti-inflation policies (due to massive trade deficits). The National Union of Mineworkers now encourages miners to ‘work to order’ (do only the minimum of work to avoid being sacked) which causes coal stocks to dwindle.
Matters are made even worse when the Yom Kippur War breaks out in the Middle East. When the United States continues to resupply Israel with arms, the Arab members of OPEC retaliate by imposing a ruinous oil embargo on the West.
The House of Commons abolishes capital punishment in Northern Ireland.
NASA launches Skylab, America’s first space station.
The Greek junta abolishes the monarchy and declares the country a republic.
The Sunningdale Agreement. The Parliament of Northern Ireland, already suspended by the British Government, is abolished and replaced with a new Northern Ireland Assembly. Elections for the latter produce power-sharing results between unionists and nationalists for the first time. The new Executive is disrupted by unionist militants led by Ian Paisley.
Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Philips.
Throughout the year the Watergate Scandal rages throughout American politics.
Coal shortages caused by the NUM’s strike action cause Heath to institute the three-day week to reduce electricity consumption.
Unionists in Northern Ireland fall out with Sunningdale and the whole executive collapses. In protest, the Ulster Unionist Party – who had previously acted as the Northern Ireland wing of the Conservative Party – withdraw their eight MPs from the Conservative whip.
Elections in Argentina. Juan Perón is banned from running, but his stand-in Hector Cámpora is elected. In the midst of the oil crisis shaking Cámpora’s government, Perón finally returns from exile and becomes President once more.
1974.
Edward Heath, incensed with the miners, calls a general election under the slogan ‘Who Governs Britain?’, hoping for a popular mandate. The public is divided. Sympathy has started to turn, with the TUC becoming increasingly unpopular by an aggravated public. On the other hand, the Tories have certainly made a dog’s breakfast of it so far. This uncertainty is reflected in the election result: the first hung parliament since 1929.
Both major parties had also lost votes through voter dissatisfaction with them both. The Liberals had their best result for years with over six million votes, although the vagaries of first-past-the-post meant they only had 14 MPs. The Scottish National Party also made a major breakthrough, assisted perhaps by politics over North Sea oil. The vast number of one-off parties is illustrative of the public’s alarm and activism over the economic situation and course of the country.
Although Labour had won four more seats, according to constitutional convention Heath continued as interim PM to see if he could form a working majority. Heath approached Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe with the intent of forming a coalition government. Thorpe was wary. Even the Conservatives and Liberals together would only make 311 seats, seven short of a majority. Furthermore, the Liberal Party was disorganised, had just had an influx of new untried talent, and wasn’t ready for the compromises needed to be in power – particularly considering the general trend of thought in the party was anti-Conservative. Most of the Liberals’ seats were straight Liberal vs. Conservative contests where Labour had no significant presence.
Having failed, Heath therefore resigned as Prime Minister and Wilson became PM again, forming a minority Labour government. He quickly gave in to the miners’ demands, temporarily stabilising the economic situation.
The last two Japanese soldier holdouts from the Second World War, Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura, surrender in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively.
End of the Arab oil embargo (except from Libya), although the lasting effects of 1973 will be felt for a long time.
The Carnation Revolution in Portugal overthrows the Estado Novo regime and democracy is restored. The Portuguese colonies in Africa, which the old regime had been grimly trying to hold on to, are conditionally granted independence after negotiations.
Italian neo-fascist terrorists bomb a train.
Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia overthrown by the Derg, a communist junta.
Turkey invades Cyprus in response to concerns that the island might attempt union with Greece. The unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is established.
The IRA bombs two pubs in Birmingham, killing 21 people. Two pubs in Guildford frequented by WRACS female officers are blown up later in the year.
An assassination attempt on Princess Anne fails.
Traditional counties are mucked about with by the government for the first time since the thirteenth century.
Enoch Powell caused scandals by urging voters to vote Labour due to the Conservatives favouring EC membership. He breaks with the Conservatives and joins the Ulster Unionist Party, being elected for South Down later in the year. He rejects sectarianism and attempts to pursue a course by which Northern Ireland would be treated no differently to the rest of the UK.
The Watergate scandal ends in the resignation of President Nixon. Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, had already resigned and been replaced with Republican Minority Leader Gerald Ford. Therefore, Ford becomes the first unelected President of the United States.
In Argentina, Juan Perón dies of old age and his wife Isábel takes over as President. She tries to carry on in his stead, but fails to effectively respond to economic troubles and the terrorist activities of the communist group Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army or ERP).
Disappearance of Lord Lucan.
Harold Wilson calls a second election. This time, Labour wins a tiny majority of three.
There are calls from the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee for Heath to stand down, but there is as yet no formal procedure for challenging an incumbent leader. Heath agrees to review the rules and puts himself up for re-election. (Subsequent to this, the Conservative leader will be up for party election annually, although this is usually a formality).
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Harold Wilson
Lord Chancellor: Elwyn Jones, Baron Elwyn-Jones
Lord President of the Council: Edward Short
Lord Privy Seal: Malcom Shepherd, Baron Shepherd
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Denis Healey
Foreign Secretary: James Callaghan
Home Secretary: Roy Jenkins
Defence Secretary: Roy Mason
Education and Science Secretary: Reg Prentice
Energy Secretary: Eric Varley
Environment Secretary: Anthony Crosland
Social Services Secretary: Barbara Castle
Industry Secretary: Tony Benn
Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary: Shirley Williams
Trade Secretary: Peter Shore
Transport Secretary: William Rodgers
Scottish Secretary: William Ross
Welsh Secretary: John Morris
Northern Ireland Secretary: Merlyn Rees
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Harold Lever
Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury: Robert Mellish
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: Fred Peart
Minister for Planning and Local Government: John Silkin
1975.
Work is abandoned on the British end of the Channel Tunnel.
The Conservative leadership election produces a shock result. Former Education Minister Margaret Thatcher, moving steadily to the right, had intended to endorse Sir Keith Joseph for the leadership. However, Joseph elected not to run due to controversy he had provoked over comments in which he appeared to endorse eugenics. Thatcher ran herself instead and beat Heath convincingly, though not quite sufficiently under the rules (which required 50%) to win outright.
Heath then resigned and a second ballot was held in which Thatcher easily defeated Willie Whitelaw, the candidate of the establishment. For the first time, a major British political party had a female leader.
Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
End of the Vietnam War with the fall of Saigon.
Sikkim votes in a referendum to join India.
The Suez Canal opens for the first time since 1967’s Six-Day War.
Independence of Portugal’s African colonies, which mostly become Communist states. Other independences of the year include Papua New Guinea from Australia and Suriname from the Netherlands.
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project marks the end of the first stage of the Space Race and is a signal of the coming era of détente.
Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, is too ill to govern and dies before the end of the year. King Juan Carlos I takes over as head of state.
Australian constitutional crisis when the Governor-General dismisses Gough Whitlam’s government.
The G-6 is formed.
Ronald Reagan enters the race to become the Republican candidate in the 1976 presidential election, challenging incumbent Gerald Ford.
Labour’s election manifesto committed it to a referendum on EC membership. The Cabinet is divided over the EC, with left-wing members such as Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Peter Shore campaigning for a ‘no’ vote while Wilson and the others campaign for a ‘yes’. Most Conservatives also campaign for a ‘yes’, as do the strongly Eurofederalist Liberals. The UUP, thanks to Powell’s influence, campaigns for ‘no’. In the end, a resounding 67.2% of the electorate on a 64.5% turnout votes to stay in the EC. This endorsement strengthens Wilson’s position and weakens that of the Labour left – for now.
Aston Martin sold to the International Semi-Conductor Company of America.
Dutch Elm Disease devastates Britain’s elms.
The economy is still in poor shape. Employment has hit a million, the pound is worth only 75% what it was in 1971, and prices have risen by an average of 22%.
*
1966.
Death of Henry Solomons, Labour MP for Kingston-upon-Hull North. At the ensuing January by-election – perhaps because of the announcement of the construction of the Humber Bridge – Labour candidate Kevin McNamara holds the seat and even achieves an 8.91% swing to Labour. It is rare for ruling governments to win by-elections and even though Hull North was a fairly strong Labour seat, the fact that McNamara increased his majority convinces Wilson (clinging to his majority by the skin of his teeth) to call a general election for March.
Wilson’s gamble pays off. Labour wins a majority of 96, their largest since Attlee’s 1945 result. Grimond’s leadership of the Liberals continues to pay dividends, with their number of seats rising from 9 to 12. However, this is considered insufficient and Grimond will resign. Despite the Conservatives’ disappointing result, Heath remains leader.
For the first time, the state opening of Parliament is televised.
Despite his newly strengthened position, Wilson is plagued with problems. The economy is in trouble, a state worsened when the National Union of Seamen went on strike in May. Wilson declared a state of emergency, blaming Communist agitators for both the strike and divisions in his own party. The NUS backs down, but this is only the start for years of trouble between Labour and the unions.
In response to the pound weakening, Wilson and his Chancellor, Jim Callaghan, institute a wages freeze and bar more than £50 being taken abroad to encourage people to holiday and spend in Britain instead. Wilson sets an example by holidaying in the Isles of Scilly. All of this is to try and avoid devaluing the pound, which Wilson opposes at any cost due to the fact that Attlee had done the same in 1949 and he wanted to avoid Labour being seen as the party of devaluation. By the end of the year, however, Britain will be faced by a £162 million trade deficit as a result of this refusal.
President de Gaulle breaks with NATO and French military forces are withdrawn from the NATO command structure. In response, NATO moves its headquarters from Paris to Brussels.
An IRA bomb destroys a statue of Lord Nelson in Dublin.
The Ba’ath Party takes power in Syria.
Meeting in Rome of Pope Paul VI and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Arthur Michael Ramsey, opening up a new dialogue between the estranged Roman Catholic and Anglican churches.
Harold Wilson is called ‘another Churchill’ by President Johnson for his support over the Vietnam War, although he continues to rule out sending British troops. Wilson also goes to Moscow to try and negotiate a Vietnam ceasefire with the Soviets, but they rebuff his advances.
England wins the World Cup. The nation rejoices in a manner unseen since the Coronation, with Wilson smoothly riding the wave. The World Cup itself is stolen, but then dug up by a dog after being buried in a garden.
After the assassination of South African Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, he is succeeded by B.J. Vorster. Vorster continues and expands apartheid policies, but is perceived as more of a human figure, using PR to try and mend South Africa’s image and being pragmatic with his foreign affairs.
As part of the Sino-Soviet split, the USSR announces that all Chinese students must leave the country.
Tensions with Spain over Gibraltar heat up, with Spain demanding Britain cease military flights to the Rock. Britain baldly rejects this. Spain closes the border.
Aberfan mining disaster in Wales kills more than 100 people.
Harold Wilson meets with Rhodesian rebel leader Ian Smith on HMS Tiger in the Mediterranean. Smith resents blackmail from the Black Commonwealth leaders, while Wilson is enraged that the Rhodesian problem threatens to split the Commonwealth. The talks go nowhere, with Smith somewhat willing to compromise but Wilson insisting the Rhodesians concede the illegality of their UDI as part of the settlement. After the talks, a furious Wilson proclaims NIBMAR in relation to Rhodesia. He also goes to the United Nations and sanctions are imposed upon Rhodesia. Ian Smith declares Rhodesia a republic in response.
Soviets score two space firsts – Luna 10 is the first manmade object to orbit the moon, while Venera 3 is the first to land on another planet (Venus).
Actor Ronald Reagan is elected Governor of California in a landslide. He is already spoken of as a potential Republican Presidential candidate as early as 1968, though more probably in 1972.
North Sea Gas is discovered.
Military coup in Argentina, known as the Revolución Argentina, which instates General Juan Carlos Onganía as leader. Onganía’s government suffers the same problems as the UK’s, facing a wages freeze and a currency revaluation. The junta faces widespread public protests, mostly from supporters of the exiled President Juan Perón.
1967.
With Jo Grimond stepping down, the Liberal Party holds a leadership contest, which is won by Jeremy Thorpe.
Parliament votes to nationalise 90% of the British steel industry.
Apollo 1 disaster in the United States. The USA, USSR and UK sign the Outer Space Treaty, demilitarising space.
Torrey Canyon disaster – an oil supertanker runs around off the Cornish coast. The RAF is mobilised to bomb and ignite the oil slick with napalm.
The United Kingdom and Ireland both apply for EEC membership. The Netherlands supports the British bid. The EEC merges with the European Coal and Steel Community to form the European Community/ies (EC).
Biafra proclaims its independence from Nigeria.
The Summer of Love takes place in the Western world. In stark contrast to this expression of counter-culture, China undergoes the murderous Cultural Revolution and the Six Days’ War rages between Israel and its Arab neighbours. Wilson blames the latter for the drop in value of the pound. Callaghan is finally forced to devaluate the pound by 14.3%. Wilson makes a gaffe when he claims to the public that ‘this does not of course mean that the pound in your pocket is worth less’ – it is.
BBC 2 begins colour television broadcasting.
Defence Secretary Denis Healey announces the intention of the British government to withdraw its military forces from ‘east of Suez’ (except Hong Kong) which means Malaysia and Singapore, appalling the Australians and Americans.
After a request from the United Nations, a referendum is held in Gibraltar on whether to join Spain. Of the 12,182 voters, precisely 44 want to do so. This shuts up Franco for a bit.
Execution of Che Guevara in Bolivia.
South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard performs the world’s first heart transplant operation.
The Marine Broadcasting Offences Act shuts down most British pirate radio stations.
Concorde, the joint Anglo-French supersonic passenger liner, is unveiled for the first time in Toulouse.
1968.
The Prague Spring. Alexander Dubcek becomes leader of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. The Soviets react to his reforms predictably – with tanks.
In the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong launch the Tet Offensive. Though Vietnam is falling apart for President Johnson, at home he secures his place in history by signing the Civil Rights Act.
Conservative Shadow Defence Secretary (and former Minister for Health), Enoch Powell, makes a speech in Birmingham that rocks the political establishment. Popularly known as the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech after a metaphor Powell used drawing upon Virgil, the speech condemns anti-discrimination legislation and warns that continued immigration to the United Kingdom will lead to the same racial strife dominating the headlines in the United States. Broadly speaking, the establishment condemn the speech (with Powell being sacked by political enemy Ted Heath) while much of the public supported it, with London dockers going on strike to protest against the treatment of Powell. Regardless, a can of worms has been opened and immigration and race relations irreparably become a political issue in Britain.
May protests in Paris almost spiral into a revolution.
Assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.
End of steam passenger trains in Britain.
Apollo 8 is the first manned mission to orbit the Moon.
American oil tycoon Robert McCullough buys the old London Bridge and has it reconstructed in the USA.
Decimalised currency begins to circulate in Britain.
British Motor Holdings is merged with the Leyland Motor Corporation to form British Leyland. This combines almost all British car manufacturers into one company.
After Lyndon Johnson says he will not seek re-election, Hubert Humphrey wins the Democratic nomination but is defeated at the election by Republican Richard Nixon.
1969.
Barbara Castle, Secretary of State for Employment and Productivity, publishes the White Paper In Place of Strife, calling for tougher union legislation to prevent the Government being held over a barrel by the unions. Despite receiving some support from Wilson, however, the White Paper is defeated by cabinet members led by Home Secretary Jim Callaghan (close to the unions).
The left-wing nationalist group People’s Democracy marches from Belfast to Londonderry in Northern Ireland, provoking clashes with the Royal Ulster Constabulary. The nationalists proclaim a ‘Free Derry’ commune in Londonderry, creating a stand-off. The modern Irish Troubles have begun.
Infamous London gangsters Ronnie and Reggie Kray sentenced to 30 years in prison each.
North Sea Oil is discovered.
The Apollo 11 moon landing. America recovers her pride from every previous loss in the space race by winning the only battle anyone remembers.
Britain sends troops to Anguilla to put down a rebellion, which completely disintegrates when they arrive and the whole intervention turns into a big party. Only in the Caribbean.
Charles is made Prince of Wales.
The Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet flies for the first time.
Monty Python’s Flying Circus premieres on BBC 1.
All diplomatic ties severed between Rhodesia and the UK.
ARPANET, the distant ancestor of the Internet, becomes operational in the United States.
1970.
The British voting age is reduced from 21 to 18. The 1970 general election is the first fought under these new rules. With signs of the economy picking up and a good performance in local elections, Wilson decides to hold an early general election. Polls predict a Labout victory and Labour election propaganda paints Heath’s Tories as ‘Yesterday’s Men’. However, a last minute swing to the Conservatives produces a shock result – they win with a majority of 31. The collapse in the Labour vote leads to the high-profile George Brown losing his seat (he was soon made a peer). Jeremy Thorpe makes a disappointing debut, with the Liberal Party’s representation shrinking to just 6 MPs. Some wonder if the party can survive at all.
Heath vows to take the country into the EEC and to control the unions. He reassures the Americans by maintaining a token force east of Suez.
In Argentina, after Onganía fails to defeat the Montoneros (Peronist guerillas) he is deposed by fellow general Roberto M. Levingston.
Canada recognises the People’s Republic of China.
The PLO hijacks three airliners, starting a trend of terrorism that will plague the 1970s.
The Beatles break up.
The pound is decimalised. Existing pre-decimal one and two shilling coins still in circulation continue to be accepted as 5p and 10p, while new coins are rolled out.
Cabinet members of Her Majesty’s Government
(as of June 1970)
(as of June 1970)
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Edward Heath
Lord Chancellor: Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Ian Macleod (replaced by Anthony Barber after his death one month after the election)
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: Maurice Macmillan
Foreign Secretary: Sir Alec Douglas-Home
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: James Prior
Defence Secretary: Peter Carington, Baron Carrington
Education and Science Secretary: Margaret Thatcher
Employment Secretary: Robert Carr
Social Services Secretary: Sir Keith Joseph
Housing and Local Government Secretary: Peter Walker
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Anthony Barber
Scottish Secretary: Gordon Campbell
Minister for Technology: Geoffrey Rippon
Trade and Industry Secretary: John Davies
Minister of State, Trade and Consumer Affairs: Sir Geoffrey Howe
Minister for Transport: John Peyton
Welsh Secretary: Peter Thomas
1971.
Heath’s policy of confrontation with the unions backfires, with strikes being even worse than under Wilson. Then the Conservatives, faced with the prestigious Rolls-Royce going under, nationalise it and look like hypocrites.
With the American Apollo lunar programme having great success and their own moonshot programme still suffering problems, the Soviets quietly cancel it, deny they were ever in the race, and launch the first space station Salyut 1 instead.
The Troubles continue to heat up, with 11,000 British troops in Northern Ireland and internment of nationalists.
President Nixon ends the Bretton Woods global economic system by announcing the United States will no longer offer convertibility of the dollar to gold bullion.
The 2,500 Year Celebration of Iran takes place. Being the Shah’s brainchild, it does not endear him to his restless people, partly due to being an expression of ostentatious wealth when many Iranians suffer from poverty, partly because it focuses on Cyrus the Great and virtually ignores Islam.
The United Nations admits the People’s Republic of China and expels the Republic of China (Taiwan) according to the One China policy.
The House of Commons votes 356-244 in favour of joining the European Community.
Britain’s abortive space programme launches its first and only satellite from Woomera in Australia – the Prospero X-3, using the troubled Black Arrow carrier rocket.
An IRA bomb explodes at the top of the Post Office Tower in London, causing it to be closed to the public.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, ending with the independence of the former East Pakistan as Bangladesh.
The UK removes its military bases from Malta.
Sir Alec Douglas-Home (now Foreign Secretary to Heath) signs an agreement with Ian Smith to recognise the independence of Rhodesia. The Labour Party cries foul.
1972.
Bloody Sunday Massacre in Londonderry when British Army soldiers kill 14 unarmed nationalist protestors.
Pakistan withdraws from the Commonwealth.
British Embassy in Dublin burned to the ground by protestors.
The National Union of Mineworkers, led by Joe Gormley, goes on strike due to miners’ wages not rising in proportion to those of other manual labourers. The Heath Government reacts by declaring a state of emergency. A month later, Heath backs down and the miners are awarded a 21% increase in pay.
After this, the British economy undergoes a brief boom.
“Only Nixon could go to China”: President Nixon makes an unprecedented visit to the People’s Republic of China. As his anti-communist credentials are unquestionable, American commentators cannot spin this. In reaction, Britain enhances its own relations with the PRC and the two exchange ambassadors.
German Red Army Faction terrorists kill three American soldiers in Heidelberg.
Nixon and Brezhnev sign the SALT I treaty to reduce nuclear stockpiles.
British European Airways Flight 548 crashes in Staines after taking off from Heathrow, killing 118.
IRA bombs kill many across Northern Ireland.
Last US troops withdrawn from Vietnam.
British Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher advocates a policy of reducing expenditure in some areas to focus on others. The media seizes on the fact that this means an end to free milk in schools, dubbing her ‘Milk-snatcher Thatcher’. Less publicly, in her capacity as Science Minister, Thatcher meets with Heath and the two agree to realign British scientific research towards more utilitarian and practical goals.
Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda, starts deporting Asians and seizing their property.
Apollo 17. Eugene Cernan is the last man on the moon. Werner von Braun quits NASA in protest at Nixon scaling back the agency’s funding, effectively ending any prospect for future missions beyond Earth orbit.
At the Olympic Games in Munich, Palestinian terrorists kill two Israeli athletes and nine more are killed in a rescue attempt.
East and West Germany recognise each other.
Death of the Duke of Windsor (the former Edward VIII prior to his abdication).
Atari is founded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
President Nixon defeats left-wing Democrat George McGovern in an election that is both a landslide (Nixon wins 60.7% of the vote) and has the lowest voter turnout since 1948 (55%).
1973.
The United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark enter the EC. When Heath goes to sign, a female protestor dumps ink all over him – obscurely, due to a completely unrelated protest about the redevelopment of Covent Garden.
Last of the Summer Wine airs for the first time on BBC 1.
IRA bombs (backed by Libyan dictator Muamar Gaddafi) strike the Old Bailey and Whitehall. A referendum in Northern Ireland affirms that it should remain part of the UK, but most nationalists boycott the poll.
New London Bridge opened by the Queen. Meanwhile in New York the World Trade Centre opens, while in Chicago the Sears Tower becomes the tallest building in the world.
Lofthouse Colliery Disaster in Yorkshire kills seven miners.
1.6 million British workers strike on May Day (after a call to do so by the Trade Union Congress) in protest of the Heath government’s anti-inflation policies (due to massive trade deficits). The National Union of Mineworkers now encourages miners to ‘work to order’ (do only the minimum of work to avoid being sacked) which causes coal stocks to dwindle.
Matters are made even worse when the Yom Kippur War breaks out in the Middle East. When the United States continues to resupply Israel with arms, the Arab members of OPEC retaliate by imposing a ruinous oil embargo on the West.
The House of Commons abolishes capital punishment in Northern Ireland.
NASA launches Skylab, America’s first space station.
The Greek junta abolishes the monarchy and declares the country a republic.
The Sunningdale Agreement. The Parliament of Northern Ireland, already suspended by the British Government, is abolished and replaced with a new Northern Ireland Assembly. Elections for the latter produce power-sharing results between unionists and nationalists for the first time. The new Executive is disrupted by unionist militants led by Ian Paisley.
Princess Anne marries Captain Mark Philips.
Throughout the year the Watergate Scandal rages throughout American politics.
Coal shortages caused by the NUM’s strike action cause Heath to institute the three-day week to reduce electricity consumption.
Unionists in Northern Ireland fall out with Sunningdale and the whole executive collapses. In protest, the Ulster Unionist Party – who had previously acted as the Northern Ireland wing of the Conservative Party – withdraw their eight MPs from the Conservative whip.
Elections in Argentina. Juan Perón is banned from running, but his stand-in Hector Cámpora is elected. In the midst of the oil crisis shaking Cámpora’s government, Perón finally returns from exile and becomes President once more.
1974.
Edward Heath, incensed with the miners, calls a general election under the slogan ‘Who Governs Britain?’, hoping for a popular mandate. The public is divided. Sympathy has started to turn, with the TUC becoming increasingly unpopular by an aggravated public. On the other hand, the Tories have certainly made a dog’s breakfast of it so far. This uncertainty is reflected in the election result: the first hung parliament since 1929.
Both major parties had also lost votes through voter dissatisfaction with them both. The Liberals had their best result for years with over six million votes, although the vagaries of first-past-the-post meant they only had 14 MPs. The Scottish National Party also made a major breakthrough, assisted perhaps by politics over North Sea oil. The vast number of one-off parties is illustrative of the public’s alarm and activism over the economic situation and course of the country.
Although Labour had won four more seats, according to constitutional convention Heath continued as interim PM to see if he could form a working majority. Heath approached Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe with the intent of forming a coalition government. Thorpe was wary. Even the Conservatives and Liberals together would only make 311 seats, seven short of a majority. Furthermore, the Liberal Party was disorganised, had just had an influx of new untried talent, and wasn’t ready for the compromises needed to be in power – particularly considering the general trend of thought in the party was anti-Conservative. Most of the Liberals’ seats were straight Liberal vs. Conservative contests where Labour had no significant presence.
Having failed, Heath therefore resigned as Prime Minister and Wilson became PM again, forming a minority Labour government. He quickly gave in to the miners’ demands, temporarily stabilising the economic situation.
The last two Japanese soldier holdouts from the Second World War, Hiroo Onoda and Teruo Nakamura, surrender in the Philippines and Indonesia respectively.
End of the Arab oil embargo (except from Libya), although the lasting effects of 1973 will be felt for a long time.
The Carnation Revolution in Portugal overthrows the Estado Novo regime and democracy is restored. The Portuguese colonies in Africa, which the old regime had been grimly trying to hold on to, are conditionally granted independence after negotiations.
Italian neo-fascist terrorists bomb a train.
Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia overthrown by the Derg, a communist junta.
Turkey invades Cyprus in response to concerns that the island might attempt union with Greece. The unrecognised Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus is established.
The IRA bombs two pubs in Birmingham, killing 21 people. Two pubs in Guildford frequented by WRACS female officers are blown up later in the year.
An assassination attempt on Princess Anne fails.
Traditional counties are mucked about with by the government for the first time since the thirteenth century.
Enoch Powell caused scandals by urging voters to vote Labour due to the Conservatives favouring EC membership. He breaks with the Conservatives and joins the Ulster Unionist Party, being elected for South Down later in the year. He rejects sectarianism and attempts to pursue a course by which Northern Ireland would be treated no differently to the rest of the UK.
The Watergate scandal ends in the resignation of President Nixon. Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, had already resigned and been replaced with Republican Minority Leader Gerald Ford. Therefore, Ford becomes the first unelected President of the United States.
In Argentina, Juan Perón dies of old age and his wife Isábel takes over as President. She tries to carry on in his stead, but fails to effectively respond to economic troubles and the terrorist activities of the communist group Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (People’s Revolutionary Army or ERP).
Disappearance of Lord Lucan.
Harold Wilson calls a second election. This time, Labour wins a tiny majority of three.
There are calls from the Conservative backbench 1922 Committee for Heath to stand down, but there is as yet no formal procedure for challenging an incumbent leader. Heath agrees to review the rules and puts himself up for re-election. (Subsequent to this, the Conservative leader will be up for party election annually, although this is usually a formality).
Cabinet members of Her Majesty’s Government
(as of October 1974)
(as of October 1974)
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Harold Wilson
Lord Chancellor: Elwyn Jones, Baron Elwyn-Jones
Lord President of the Council: Edward Short
Lord Privy Seal: Malcom Shepherd, Baron Shepherd
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Denis Healey
Foreign Secretary: James Callaghan
Home Secretary: Roy Jenkins
Defence Secretary: Roy Mason
Education and Science Secretary: Reg Prentice
Energy Secretary: Eric Varley
Environment Secretary: Anthony Crosland
Social Services Secretary: Barbara Castle
Industry Secretary: Tony Benn
Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary: Shirley Williams
Trade Secretary: Peter Shore
Transport Secretary: William Rodgers
Scottish Secretary: William Ross
Welsh Secretary: John Morris
Northern Ireland Secretary: Merlyn Rees
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Harold Lever
Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury: Robert Mellish
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: Fred Peart
Minister for Planning and Local Government: John Silkin
1975.
Work is abandoned on the British end of the Channel Tunnel.
The Conservative leadership election produces a shock result. Former Education Minister Margaret Thatcher, moving steadily to the right, had intended to endorse Sir Keith Joseph for the leadership. However, Joseph elected not to run due to controversy he had provoked over comments in which he appeared to endorse eugenics. Thatcher ran herself instead and beat Heath convincingly, though not quite sufficiently under the rules (which required 50%) to win outright.
Heath then resigned and a second ballot was held in which Thatcher easily defeated Willie Whitelaw, the candidate of the establishment. For the first time, a major British political party had a female leader.
Microsoft is founded by Bill Gates in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
End of the Vietnam War with the fall of Saigon.
Sikkim votes in a referendum to join India.
The Suez Canal opens for the first time since 1967’s Six-Day War.
Independence of Portugal’s African colonies, which mostly become Communist states. Other independences of the year include Papua New Guinea from Australia and Suriname from the Netherlands.
Apollo-Soyuz Test Project marks the end of the first stage of the Space Race and is a signal of the coming era of détente.
Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain, is too ill to govern and dies before the end of the year. King Juan Carlos I takes over as head of state.
Australian constitutional crisis when the Governor-General dismisses Gough Whitlam’s government.
The G-6 is formed.
Ronald Reagan enters the race to become the Republican candidate in the 1976 presidential election, challenging incumbent Gerald Ford.
Labour’s election manifesto committed it to a referendum on EC membership. The Cabinet is divided over the EC, with left-wing members such as Tony Benn, Michael Foot and Peter Shore campaigning for a ‘no’ vote while Wilson and the others campaign for a ‘yes’. Most Conservatives also campaign for a ‘yes’, as do the strongly Eurofederalist Liberals. The UUP, thanks to Powell’s influence, campaigns for ‘no’. In the end, a resounding 67.2% of the electorate on a 64.5% turnout votes to stay in the EC. This endorsement strengthens Wilson’s position and weakens that of the Labour left – for now.
Aston Martin sold to the International Semi-Conductor Company of America.
Dutch Elm Disease devastates Britain’s elms.
The economy is still in poor shape. Employment has hit a million, the pound is worth only 75% what it was in 1971, and prices have risen by an average of 22%.
Thande
Donor
Part #1: The Poisoned Chalice
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
*
From – “The Rose and its Thorns: A History of the Labour Party, 1900-2012” by Jane Tyndall (HarperCollins, 2020) –
In 2010 the world was rocked by the release of the low-budget British arthouse film Votemongers. Despite not being associated with a prominent studio, the film would never have escaped notice even if its subject had been without controversy, for its primary stars were John Cleese, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, the three surviving members of the ‘Monty Python’ troupe reuniting one last time. This cast ensured that the film enjoyed greater exposure in the United States and Europe than might otherwise have expected, though if the legions of Python fans on either side of the Atlantic had expected a zany comedic romp, they would be disappointed. And shocked.
Written by the young playright Matthew Pratt, Votemongers was an invariably misunderstood piece of provocative propaganda. Pratt had grown concerned by the rise of reactionary movements across the Western world that seemed contemptuous of democracy, citing the Fronte Nationale in France and the Fourth of July Party in the United States (both of which had been whipped up into a frenzy by their respective nations electing their first female president). He wanted to make a film attacking such movements, but decided that a direct assault would backfire (in a 2013 interview, he claimed the inspiration arose from a controversial anti-drug campaign in his secondary school years before, where a disreputable figure spoke in favour of drug use rather than a respected one condemning it). Therefore, he produced Votemongers, a film about amoral politicians in an unnamed but Britain-like country. The three Pythons played the leaders of the three major political parties who, in an arrangement obviously inspired by Orwell’s 1984, viciously attacked each other in public and ganged up two against the other, while in private they were cordial chums who clinked champagne glasses while reflecting on how their arrangement served to distract the ordinary voters from the deprivation they suffered. The film included several criticisms of democracy, mostly taken from historical anti-democrats such as Sir Oswald Mosley, and ended in the politicians being blown up by a Guy Fawkes-inspired resistance movement – which, in a downer ending, then promptly split into authoritarian and anarchist factions and continued a ruinous civil war as the credits rolled.
Pratt had intended the film to provoke what he saw as the complacent political establishment of the West into formulating and expressing arguments against the new anti-democratic movements. Predictably it succeeded too well and most people assumed Pratt himself – and the Pythons – were anti-democrats, in an ignominious end to the latter’s careers. Votemongers’ controversy was only heightened when it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Why has this media phenomenon been brought up at this point, when our narrative history of the Labour Party is at a point more than thirty years before Votemongers was ever thought of? Because among the film’s criticisms of democracy from mutually incompatible fascist, theocratic and anarchist perspectives, there were also a few espoused on meritocratic grounds. This was the argument that the American chattering classes tended to seize on thanks to their President’s power to select anyone he wanted for his cabinet, yet in some ways this is to miss the point. The chief meritocratic argument focused on the point that in a Westminster system, to become Prime Minister a politician might buy support in a leadership ballot by promising other potential candidates posts in his cabinet, and that once in power he might dismiss others thanks purely to personal grounds.
The validity of this criticism is debatable, but accusations of it have never been far away from Parliament. Yet as we turn to the second half of the 1970s, we find it becoming increasingly prominent. The Labour Party might continue to struggle with an ideological divide between left and right, but the history of the future would be written in the passion of personal conflicts more than disagreements over policy...
*
From – “A Decade of Crisis: The British Seventies”, by John A. Alexander (Penguin, 2017)
To the surprise of the public, Harold Wilson unexpectedly announced his resignation as Prime Minister in March 1976. Officially, his reason for doing so was that he had always intended to step down once he reached the age of sixty. Inevitably, however, theories both plausible and less so have circulated ever since. Some have suggested his wife Mary, who always disliked his political career, may have put pressure on him to retire, and there is some evidence for this. There are also accusations of plots on behalf of MI-5 to remove a man they saw as a liability. Or of course Wilson might simply have felt tired and worn out from having led the Labour Party for thirteen years, eight of them as Prime Minister and rarely far away from economic strife or other crises.
In any case, Wilson stepping down triggered a Labour leadership election. His long term as leader had been a period in which both the ideological divide in the Party had widened and potential leaders from both sides had seen rises and falls in their political fortunes. Because of this, a record six candidates stood in the first ballot: left-wingers Michael Foot (Employment Secretary) and Tony Benn (Energy Secretary), and right-wingers Jim Callaghan (Foreign Secretary), Roy Jenkins (Home Secretary), Denis Healey (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Tony Crosland (Environment Secretary). The first ballot saw Foot emerge narrowly ahead of Callaghan, but overall the votes were considerably split. Crosland, having earned the smallest number of votes, was automatically eliminated and Jenkins and Benn both voluntarily withdrew. The second ballot was therefore a Callaghan-Foot-Healey contest. As no candidate scored more than 50% of the vote, the lowest-scorer (Healey) was eliminated and the contest went to an unprecedented third ballot, in which Callaghan was elected. He became Prime Minister on August 5th.
Callaghan faced an uphill battle. The tiny majority he had inherited from Wilson was already being worn down to nothing. Nine days after Callaghan became Prime Minister, John Stonehouse – a Labour MP formerly tipped as future leader, now caught in a fraud trial for faking his own death – defected to the minor English National Party. Two Scottish MPs also left the Labour Party in protest over the government’s failure to secure a devolved Scottish Assembly, forming the breakaway Scottish Labour Party. Meanwhile, the Conservatives continued to rally around their charismatic leader Margaret Thatcher, though her radical monetarist ideas alienated many former Heathites or ‘wets’. The Liberals on the other hand were thrown into disarray with their leader Jeremy Thorpe being accused of plotting the murder of his homosexual lover. After his resignation, former leader Jo Grimond came back temporarily before a leadership election in which he was replaced with David Steel.
As Prime Minister, James Callaghan was a mass of contradictions. On the one hand, unlike his predecessor he had never attended university, which sometimes showed: he was a true working-class Labourite. On the other, he was perhaps the most qualified person for the job on the grounds of political experience, being the only man ever to have held all four of the United Kingdom’s Great Offices of State – Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and now Prime Minister. He had suffered a spell in the political wilderness after the devaluation crisis of 1967 and many had then written him off, but had fought his way back up through the Home and Foreign Offices until Wilson once again saw him as a natural successor. He was closely tied with the trade union movement, but was a member of the right wing of the Labour Party and deeply suspicious of many of the left’s policies. Initially a critic of Europe, he later warmed to it after renegotiating the UK’s membership agreement with the EEC while he was Foreign Secretary, and afterwards defended membership against the Europhobic left. Most of all, he was perceived by the public to be a warm, friendly, approachable figure – ‘Sunny Jim’ – while in private he could be very vindictive and hold personal grudges against other senior Labour members. However the latter was not necessarily a contradiction, and his tendency to have a chip on his shoulder faded away throughout his term as Prime Minister.
Nonetheless, his early Cabinet appointments clearly showed signs of personality conflicts. Barbara Castle, his old political enemy over In Place of Strife and presently Secretary of State for Social Services, was kicked out to the backbenches before she could finish overseeing a bill to abolish the NHS’s pay beds. Roy Jenkins wanted to become Foreign Minister, but was rebuffed. Partly this was because Callaghan did not want to upset the uneasy truce over Europe within the Labour Party, with Jenkins being a fervent eurofederalist who would have alienated the Footite-Bennite europhobic Left. However, there was also truth in the accusation that Callaghan simply disliked Jenkins on a personal level. Jenkins was initially kept on as Home Secretary, but soon resigned to become President of the European Commission. Meanwhile, Callaghan gave the post of Foreign Secretary to Anthony ‘Tony’ Crosland, as much because he was an inoffensive figure on Europe and because Callaghan liked him as for any particular qualification for the job.
Of such things history is made...
*
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Leonard James ‘Jim’ Callaghan
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Denis Healey
Lord Chancellor: Elwyn Jones, Baron Elwyn-Jones
Lord President of the Council: Michael Foot
Lord Privy Seal: Malcolm Shepherd, Baron Shepherd
Foreign Secretary: Anthony ‘Tony’ Crosland
Home Secretary: Merlyn Rees
Defence Secretary: Fred Mulley
Education and Science Secretary: Shirley Williams
Employment Secretary: Albert Booth
Energy Secretary: Tony Benn
Environment Secretary: Peter Shore
Social Services Secretary: Davod Ennals
Industry Secretary: Eric Varley
Overseas Development Secretary: Reginald Prentice
Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary: Roy Hattersley
Trade Secretary: Edmund Dell
Transport Secretary: Bill Rodgers
Scottish Secretary: Bruce Millan
Welsh Secretary: John Morris
Northern Ireland Secretary: Roy Mason
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Harold Lever
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: John Silkin
Minister for Social Security: Stanley Orme
*
From – “The Callaghan Ministry”, by Dr Oscar B. Fitzgerald (Random House, 2002) –
Since the Second World War, and arguably preceding it, the major complaint by many Britons about their government – regardless of party – was that politicians were more concerned about Britain’s image abroad, and living up to the powers and responsibilities she had enjoyed in the nineteenth century, while neglecting domestic matters. Even Attlee’s ministry, the most focused on domestic policy, nonetheless took the decision to pay for the (expensive) development of a nuclear weapon – not as a defensive measure, as it was later framed, but because Britain must have atom bombs if she was to continue operating on the same level of geopolitical power as the United States. The thirteen years of Conservative rule following Attlee emphasised this idea even more, with the Suez crisis showing how hollow the claims of superpowerdom were.
1976 was a year when failure to confront problems at home meant that the country seemed to be literally falling apart. In a hugely symbolic moment, even Big Ben ground to a halt for months due to internal problems. That summer, a heat wave caused a massive drought and water shortages. It was in this environment that Callaghan took power. He was well aware from his experience in government since the 1960s that these issues could no longer be staved off. On the other hand, his ministers still found themselves irretrievably drawn into foreign issues of little interest to the impatient voters, whether they be in the European Community, Africa or Asia. Predominant among these was the matter of Rhodesia.
Rhodesia, as a crisis, had eaten up and spat out more than one British Foreign Minister and Ian Smith had outlasted them all. Smith was a great survivor, a man who knew how to play the British political parties off each other and keep merrily reigning away in the background. He had successfully defeated Wilson’s sanctions following UDI. The Royal Navy had maintained a patrol off Portuguese Mozambique from 1966 to 1975, preventing oil from reaching Rhodesia, yet the patrol proved porous and Smith was able to obtain sufficient supplies via minor ports, utilising his alliances with apartheid South Africa and imperial Portugal. The British patrol ended in 1975 with the independence of Mozambique after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, and this cessation seemed like an admission of defeat. Yet matters were moving ahead at a pace in Southern Africa.
Firstly, Rhodesia found itself becoming increasingly isolated and surrounded by black-ruled states. Angola and Mozambique had achieved independence and, while the former was the site of a proxy war between Cuba and South Africa, the latter proved to be a serious thorn in Smith’s side. President Samora Machel allowed the black Rhodesian guerilla group ZANLA to build bases in Mozambique and stage from there over the border. Smith retaliated by allowing the anti-Machel Mozambican group RENAMO to stage from Rhodesia in turn, but Machel’s policy was nonetheless a game-changer. At the same time, Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda allowed both ZANLA and ZIPRA (the armed wings of the political parties ZANU and ZAPU respectively) to stage from his country. South Africa’s Prime Minister, B. J. Vorster, was becoming convinced (under determined diplomatic pressure from Britain and the United States) that a white-ruled Rhodesia on his border was becoming more of a liability than a useful buffer state.
It was therefore at this point that Smith’s Rhodesia found itself sufficiently over a barrel for negotiations to reopen. American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met Smith in Pretoria for talks, and Smith returned to Rhodesia claiming the two had agreed a deal by which a ceasefire would be declared, followed by the establishment of a half black, half white interim Governing Council and handover to black majority rule within two years. However, the black leaders immediately protested that they had never been party to the deal, as Smith had implied. Trying to salvage something from the immediate infighting, Kissinger organised a conference in Geneva that October between Smith and the black leaders: Bishop Abel Muzorewa and the Reverend Canaan Banana of the United African National Council, the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, leader of the moderate ZANU-Ndonga, Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), and Robert Mugabe of the more militant ZANU faction. The conference would be chaired by Ivor Richard, Britain’s representative at the United Nations.
British Foreign Minister Tony Crosland agonised over whether he should attend the conference in person. No British Foreign Minister had visited Rhodesia since UDI, and the policy of the Foreign Office was to refer to the territory as though it were still a British colony – “Southern Rhodesia”, never using “Rhodesia” alone as Smith’s regime did. It was thought that attending might weaken Britain’s diplomatic position. At the same time, Crosland had declared on television that Rhodesia was the most serious problem confronting Britain, and it would seem hypocritical not to take a direct hand in the peace process itself. Besides, that might make Britain look weak and halfhearted in a different way. Smith would use any excuse to try and dissolve the earlier agreement while hoping that Britain would soon hold a new general election and might soon have a Conservative government. There were many on the Conservative benches who expressed concern and sympathy for Rhodesia’s white population, and Smith knew he could play on that.
The conference lasted well into the new year. Crosland clashed with Ivor Richard and had soon hijacked the British position at the conference, confusing the Rhodesian delegates and forcing them to scheme in new ways to try and gain advantage. Crosland was something of a maverick who enjoyed saying outrageous things and watching journalists or his fellow negotiators look aghast. In his unlikely position as Foreign Secretary he had already made an impression on the European Commission: due to his background being MP for Grimsby, he was the only person at European summits who actually understood all the fishing quota data, and had negotiated a more favourable arrangement for Britain. Now he moved in a less predictable fashion. He had leadership ambitions and had to make his mark. Rhodesia had been a headache for Prime Ministers since Harold Macmillan. If he proposed a radical solution, and it was successful...it could make his career.
To that end, Crosland gambled. He offered to negotiate away Britain’s diplomatic position (unbeknownst to Callaghan, who was somewhat appalled when Richard informed him of all this) by putting aside the claim that, as a legal British colony and thanks to NIBMAR, Rhodesia would have to re-submit to British rule before black majority government could be installed and independence declared. Instead Rhodesia would go directly from its current state to the temporary power-sharing regime Kissinger had suggested, before holding general elections under universal suffrage scheduled for September 1978. Crosland’s move horrified the Foreign Office but pleased the Americans and gave Smith an option for an honourable exit. Smith agreed to the arrangement, though he kept plotting to disrupt it at a later date. The black leaders were more problematic. Initially the chief split was between Muzorewa and Banana and Sithole on one side and Nkomo and Mugabe on the other. The latter two owed their current negotiating strength to military leadership and though they would contemplate a ceasefire, they were unwilling to disarm and step down. Crosland then proposed that the resistance groups would be integrated into the existing Rhodesian armed and police forces. Smith reacted with violent rhetoric about compromising with ‘terrorists’. Richard leaked this comment and it helped shore up the British Government’s position with black African leaders such as Kaunda of Zambia, Nyere of Tanzania and Obasanjo of Nigeria – all of whom were suspicious that Britain was overly sympathetic with the white Rhodesians.
Smith’s intransigence encouraged most of the black leaders to commit to the deal, with Nkomo calculating that if Smith pulled out at this stage it would further turn opinion against him. Mugabe on the other hand remained aloof, thus breaking his alliance with Nkomo. Mugabe, inspired by the Mozambicans, was convinced that only black liberation movements achieved by military force could ever be lasting. He also believed that Smith would inevitably go back on every deal, and had the thought that if he remained as the one black leader who never compromised or dealt with Smith, he would gain a hardline and prophetic reputation and be the automatic choice for ruler of Zimbabwe when it did achieve black majority rule.
Crosland and Richard now finally mended their bridges and, supported by Kissinger, hammered out a policy that finally made Smith say uncle – though of course he had no intention on actually following through with the deal. After negotiating with Obasanjo, the proposal was for a three-nation oversight group with troops to ensure the new elections would be free and fair and also the integration of the black and white forces. This group would be one-third British, one-third Nigerian and, on Kissinger’s insistance, one-third South African, as this would ensure that Rhodesian whites felt their rights were protected. The policy was enormously controversial at home and Callaghan had to defend himself from backbench criticism by Labour MPs who had always opposed apartheid. However he was supported by Michael Foot of all people, who said that it was a price worth paying to ensure Rhodesia remained an entirely Commonwealth affair (though South Africa was no longer a member of the Commonwealth, it was still closely associated). This move on Foot’s part confused and divided the Labour left, allowing the issue to drop. Callaghan nonetheless remained annoyed at Crosland, who he had formerly gotten along well with, and more or less told him to remain concentrating on the Rhodesia problem until it was settled – after which point, it was implied, Crosland might be sacked for his radical policy. While Crosland remained deeply involved in the negotiations, his junior Minister of State, David Owen (who had previously been Minister for the Navy and Minister for Health) took over many of his more global duties. Developments in Iran soon consumed his attention...
*
From – “South America Since 1918” by John J. Andrews (Harvard University Press, 2009) –
On 24th March 1976, with the Argentine economy in tatters, President Isabel Perón of Argentina was removed from power by a military coup led by General Jorge Videla, Admiral Emilio Massera and Brigadier Orlando Agosti. The new regime called itself the ‘National Reorganisation Process’ and its raison d’etre was the destruction of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, People’s Revolutionary Army), a group of leftist rebels taking inspiration from Che Guevara. Actions against the ERP had begun in 1975, but with the removal of Perón the junta pursued even stronger policies. The right-wing paramilitary group Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance or ‘Triple-A’) was allowed to operate with the tacit consent of the government, acting against suspected left-wing groups. By this point both the communist ERP and the left-wing Peronist Montoneros had been practically destroyed, but the Triple-A and the junta continued with their paranoid Dirty War nonetheless. People were ‘disappeared’ off the street never to be seen again.
The junta initially found itself in a strong position internationally due to support by the United States. The US government had known about the coup before it happened and had essentially consented to it. Henry Kissinger was positively enthusiastic about the junta, claiming Argentina had been ‘ungovernable’ thanks to the economic crisis and that military rule was needed. When pressed over human rights violations, apologists for the regime usually simply pointed out that Augusto Pinochet’s neighbouring dictatorship in Chile was even worse.
However, November 1976 would bring two events that the junta and its supporters would come to bitterly regret...
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
*
From – “The Rose and its Thorns: A History of the Labour Party, 1900-2012” by Jane Tyndall (HarperCollins, 2020) –
In 2010 the world was rocked by the release of the low-budget British arthouse film Votemongers. Despite not being associated with a prominent studio, the film would never have escaped notice even if its subject had been without controversy, for its primary stars were John Cleese, Michael Palin and Eric Idle, the three surviving members of the ‘Monty Python’ troupe reuniting one last time. This cast ensured that the film enjoyed greater exposure in the United States and Europe than might otherwise have expected, though if the legions of Python fans on either side of the Atlantic had expected a zany comedic romp, they would be disappointed. And shocked.
Written by the young playright Matthew Pratt, Votemongers was an invariably misunderstood piece of provocative propaganda. Pratt had grown concerned by the rise of reactionary movements across the Western world that seemed contemptuous of democracy, citing the Fronte Nationale in France and the Fourth of July Party in the United States (both of which had been whipped up into a frenzy by their respective nations electing their first female president). He wanted to make a film attacking such movements, but decided that a direct assault would backfire (in a 2013 interview, he claimed the inspiration arose from a controversial anti-drug campaign in his secondary school years before, where a disreputable figure spoke in favour of drug use rather than a respected one condemning it). Therefore, he produced Votemongers, a film about amoral politicians in an unnamed but Britain-like country. The three Pythons played the leaders of the three major political parties who, in an arrangement obviously inspired by Orwell’s 1984, viciously attacked each other in public and ganged up two against the other, while in private they were cordial chums who clinked champagne glasses while reflecting on how their arrangement served to distract the ordinary voters from the deprivation they suffered. The film included several criticisms of democracy, mostly taken from historical anti-democrats such as Sir Oswald Mosley, and ended in the politicians being blown up by a Guy Fawkes-inspired resistance movement – which, in a downer ending, then promptly split into authoritarian and anarchist factions and continued a ruinous civil war as the credits rolled.
Pratt had intended the film to provoke what he saw as the complacent political establishment of the West into formulating and expressing arguments against the new anti-democratic movements. Predictably it succeeded too well and most people assumed Pratt himself – and the Pythons – were anti-democrats, in an ignominious end to the latter’s careers. Votemongers’ controversy was only heightened when it won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.
Why has this media phenomenon been brought up at this point, when our narrative history of the Labour Party is at a point more than thirty years before Votemongers was ever thought of? Because among the film’s criticisms of democracy from mutually incompatible fascist, theocratic and anarchist perspectives, there were also a few espoused on meritocratic grounds. This was the argument that the American chattering classes tended to seize on thanks to their President’s power to select anyone he wanted for his cabinet, yet in some ways this is to miss the point. The chief meritocratic argument focused on the point that in a Westminster system, to become Prime Minister a politician might buy support in a leadership ballot by promising other potential candidates posts in his cabinet, and that once in power he might dismiss others thanks purely to personal grounds.
The validity of this criticism is debatable, but accusations of it have never been far away from Parliament. Yet as we turn to the second half of the 1970s, we find it becoming increasingly prominent. The Labour Party might continue to struggle with an ideological divide between left and right, but the history of the future would be written in the passion of personal conflicts more than disagreements over policy...
*
From – “A Decade of Crisis: The British Seventies”, by John A. Alexander (Penguin, 2017)
To the surprise of the public, Harold Wilson unexpectedly announced his resignation as Prime Minister in March 1976. Officially, his reason for doing so was that he had always intended to step down once he reached the age of sixty. Inevitably, however, theories both plausible and less so have circulated ever since. Some have suggested his wife Mary, who always disliked his political career, may have put pressure on him to retire, and there is some evidence for this. There are also accusations of plots on behalf of MI-5 to remove a man they saw as a liability. Or of course Wilson might simply have felt tired and worn out from having led the Labour Party for thirteen years, eight of them as Prime Minister and rarely far away from economic strife or other crises.
In any case, Wilson stepping down triggered a Labour leadership election. His long term as leader had been a period in which both the ideological divide in the Party had widened and potential leaders from both sides had seen rises and falls in their political fortunes. Because of this, a record six candidates stood in the first ballot: left-wingers Michael Foot (Employment Secretary) and Tony Benn (Energy Secretary), and right-wingers Jim Callaghan (Foreign Secretary), Roy Jenkins (Home Secretary), Denis Healey (Chancellor of the Exchequer) and Tony Crosland (Environment Secretary). The first ballot saw Foot emerge narrowly ahead of Callaghan, but overall the votes were considerably split. Crosland, having earned the smallest number of votes, was automatically eliminated and Jenkins and Benn both voluntarily withdrew. The second ballot was therefore a Callaghan-Foot-Healey contest. As no candidate scored more than 50% of the vote, the lowest-scorer (Healey) was eliminated and the contest went to an unprecedented third ballot, in which Callaghan was elected. He became Prime Minister on August 5th.
Callaghan faced an uphill battle. The tiny majority he had inherited from Wilson was already being worn down to nothing. Nine days after Callaghan became Prime Minister, John Stonehouse – a Labour MP formerly tipped as future leader, now caught in a fraud trial for faking his own death – defected to the minor English National Party. Two Scottish MPs also left the Labour Party in protest over the government’s failure to secure a devolved Scottish Assembly, forming the breakaway Scottish Labour Party. Meanwhile, the Conservatives continued to rally around their charismatic leader Margaret Thatcher, though her radical monetarist ideas alienated many former Heathites or ‘wets’. The Liberals on the other hand were thrown into disarray with their leader Jeremy Thorpe being accused of plotting the murder of his homosexual lover. After his resignation, former leader Jo Grimond came back temporarily before a leadership election in which he was replaced with David Steel.
As Prime Minister, James Callaghan was a mass of contradictions. On the one hand, unlike his predecessor he had never attended university, which sometimes showed: he was a true working-class Labourite. On the other, he was perhaps the most qualified person for the job on the grounds of political experience, being the only man ever to have held all four of the United Kingdom’s Great Offices of State – Chancellor of the Exchequer, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and now Prime Minister. He had suffered a spell in the political wilderness after the devaluation crisis of 1967 and many had then written him off, but had fought his way back up through the Home and Foreign Offices until Wilson once again saw him as a natural successor. He was closely tied with the trade union movement, but was a member of the right wing of the Labour Party and deeply suspicious of many of the left’s policies. Initially a critic of Europe, he later warmed to it after renegotiating the UK’s membership agreement with the EEC while he was Foreign Secretary, and afterwards defended membership against the Europhobic left. Most of all, he was perceived by the public to be a warm, friendly, approachable figure – ‘Sunny Jim’ – while in private he could be very vindictive and hold personal grudges against other senior Labour members. However the latter was not necessarily a contradiction, and his tendency to have a chip on his shoulder faded away throughout his term as Prime Minister.
Nonetheless, his early Cabinet appointments clearly showed signs of personality conflicts. Barbara Castle, his old political enemy over In Place of Strife and presently Secretary of State for Social Services, was kicked out to the backbenches before she could finish overseeing a bill to abolish the NHS’s pay beds. Roy Jenkins wanted to become Foreign Minister, but was rebuffed. Partly this was because Callaghan did not want to upset the uneasy truce over Europe within the Labour Party, with Jenkins being a fervent eurofederalist who would have alienated the Footite-Bennite europhobic Left. However, there was also truth in the accusation that Callaghan simply disliked Jenkins on a personal level. Jenkins was initially kept on as Home Secretary, but soon resigned to become President of the European Commission. Meanwhile, Callaghan gave the post of Foreign Secretary to Anthony ‘Tony’ Crosland, as much because he was an inoffensive figure on Europe and because Callaghan liked him as for any particular qualification for the job.
Of such things history is made...
*
Cabinet members of Her Majesty’s Government
(as of October 1976)
(as of October 1976)
Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury and Minister for the Civil Service: Leonard James ‘Jim’ Callaghan
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Denis Healey
Lord Chancellor: Elwyn Jones, Baron Elwyn-Jones
Lord President of the Council: Michael Foot
Lord Privy Seal: Malcolm Shepherd, Baron Shepherd
Foreign Secretary: Anthony ‘Tony’ Crosland
Home Secretary: Merlyn Rees
Defence Secretary: Fred Mulley
Education and Science Secretary: Shirley Williams
Employment Secretary: Albert Booth
Energy Secretary: Tony Benn
Environment Secretary: Peter Shore
Social Services Secretary: Davod Ennals
Industry Secretary: Eric Varley
Overseas Development Secretary: Reginald Prentice
Prices and Consumer Protection Secretary: Roy Hattersley
Trade Secretary: Edmund Dell
Transport Secretary: Bill Rodgers
Scottish Secretary: Bruce Millan
Welsh Secretary: John Morris
Northern Ireland Secretary: Roy Mason
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: Harold Lever
Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: John Silkin
Minister for Social Security: Stanley Orme
*
From – “The Callaghan Ministry”, by Dr Oscar B. Fitzgerald (Random House, 2002) –
Since the Second World War, and arguably preceding it, the major complaint by many Britons about their government – regardless of party – was that politicians were more concerned about Britain’s image abroad, and living up to the powers and responsibilities she had enjoyed in the nineteenth century, while neglecting domestic matters. Even Attlee’s ministry, the most focused on domestic policy, nonetheless took the decision to pay for the (expensive) development of a nuclear weapon – not as a defensive measure, as it was later framed, but because Britain must have atom bombs if she was to continue operating on the same level of geopolitical power as the United States. The thirteen years of Conservative rule following Attlee emphasised this idea even more, with the Suez crisis showing how hollow the claims of superpowerdom were.
1976 was a year when failure to confront problems at home meant that the country seemed to be literally falling apart. In a hugely symbolic moment, even Big Ben ground to a halt for months due to internal problems. That summer, a heat wave caused a massive drought and water shortages. It was in this environment that Callaghan took power. He was well aware from his experience in government since the 1960s that these issues could no longer be staved off. On the other hand, his ministers still found themselves irretrievably drawn into foreign issues of little interest to the impatient voters, whether they be in the European Community, Africa or Asia. Predominant among these was the matter of Rhodesia.
Rhodesia, as a crisis, had eaten up and spat out more than one British Foreign Minister and Ian Smith had outlasted them all. Smith was a great survivor, a man who knew how to play the British political parties off each other and keep merrily reigning away in the background. He had successfully defeated Wilson’s sanctions following UDI. The Royal Navy had maintained a patrol off Portuguese Mozambique from 1966 to 1975, preventing oil from reaching Rhodesia, yet the patrol proved porous and Smith was able to obtain sufficient supplies via minor ports, utilising his alliances with apartheid South Africa and imperial Portugal. The British patrol ended in 1975 with the independence of Mozambique after the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, and this cessation seemed like an admission of defeat. Yet matters were moving ahead at a pace in Southern Africa.
Firstly, Rhodesia found itself becoming increasingly isolated and surrounded by black-ruled states. Angola and Mozambique had achieved independence and, while the former was the site of a proxy war between Cuba and South Africa, the latter proved to be a serious thorn in Smith’s side. President Samora Machel allowed the black Rhodesian guerilla group ZANLA to build bases in Mozambique and stage from there over the border. Smith retaliated by allowing the anti-Machel Mozambican group RENAMO to stage from Rhodesia in turn, but Machel’s policy was nonetheless a game-changer. At the same time, Zambia’s President Kenneth Kaunda allowed both ZANLA and ZIPRA (the armed wings of the political parties ZANU and ZAPU respectively) to stage from his country. South Africa’s Prime Minister, B. J. Vorster, was becoming convinced (under determined diplomatic pressure from Britain and the United States) that a white-ruled Rhodesia on his border was becoming more of a liability than a useful buffer state.
It was therefore at this point that Smith’s Rhodesia found itself sufficiently over a barrel for negotiations to reopen. American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger met Smith in Pretoria for talks, and Smith returned to Rhodesia claiming the two had agreed a deal by which a ceasefire would be declared, followed by the establishment of a half black, half white interim Governing Council and handover to black majority rule within two years. However, the black leaders immediately protested that they had never been party to the deal, as Smith had implied. Trying to salvage something from the immediate infighting, Kissinger organised a conference in Geneva that October between Smith and the black leaders: Bishop Abel Muzorewa and the Reverend Canaan Banana of the United African National Council, the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole, leader of the moderate ZANU-Ndonga, Joshua Nkomo of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), and Robert Mugabe of the more militant ZANU faction. The conference would be chaired by Ivor Richard, Britain’s representative at the United Nations.
British Foreign Minister Tony Crosland agonised over whether he should attend the conference in person. No British Foreign Minister had visited Rhodesia since UDI, and the policy of the Foreign Office was to refer to the territory as though it were still a British colony – “Southern Rhodesia”, never using “Rhodesia” alone as Smith’s regime did. It was thought that attending might weaken Britain’s diplomatic position. At the same time, Crosland had declared on television that Rhodesia was the most serious problem confronting Britain, and it would seem hypocritical not to take a direct hand in the peace process itself. Besides, that might make Britain look weak and halfhearted in a different way. Smith would use any excuse to try and dissolve the earlier agreement while hoping that Britain would soon hold a new general election and might soon have a Conservative government. There were many on the Conservative benches who expressed concern and sympathy for Rhodesia’s white population, and Smith knew he could play on that.
POINT OF DIVERGENCE
Tony Crosland decides to attend the Geneva Conference. In OTL he stayed away, and faced considerable criticism for it.
Tony Crosland decides to attend the Geneva Conference. In OTL he stayed away, and faced considerable criticism for it.
The conference lasted well into the new year. Crosland clashed with Ivor Richard and had soon hijacked the British position at the conference, confusing the Rhodesian delegates and forcing them to scheme in new ways to try and gain advantage. Crosland was something of a maverick who enjoyed saying outrageous things and watching journalists or his fellow negotiators look aghast. In his unlikely position as Foreign Secretary he had already made an impression on the European Commission: due to his background being MP for Grimsby, he was the only person at European summits who actually understood all the fishing quota data, and had negotiated a more favourable arrangement for Britain. Now he moved in a less predictable fashion. He had leadership ambitions and had to make his mark. Rhodesia had been a headache for Prime Ministers since Harold Macmillan. If he proposed a radical solution, and it was successful...it could make his career.
To that end, Crosland gambled. He offered to negotiate away Britain’s diplomatic position (unbeknownst to Callaghan, who was somewhat appalled when Richard informed him of all this) by putting aside the claim that, as a legal British colony and thanks to NIBMAR, Rhodesia would have to re-submit to British rule before black majority government could be installed and independence declared. Instead Rhodesia would go directly from its current state to the temporary power-sharing regime Kissinger had suggested, before holding general elections under universal suffrage scheduled for September 1978. Crosland’s move horrified the Foreign Office but pleased the Americans and gave Smith an option for an honourable exit. Smith agreed to the arrangement, though he kept plotting to disrupt it at a later date. The black leaders were more problematic. Initially the chief split was between Muzorewa and Banana and Sithole on one side and Nkomo and Mugabe on the other. The latter two owed their current negotiating strength to military leadership and though they would contemplate a ceasefire, they were unwilling to disarm and step down. Crosland then proposed that the resistance groups would be integrated into the existing Rhodesian armed and police forces. Smith reacted with violent rhetoric about compromising with ‘terrorists’. Richard leaked this comment and it helped shore up the British Government’s position with black African leaders such as Kaunda of Zambia, Nyere of Tanzania and Obasanjo of Nigeria – all of whom were suspicious that Britain was overly sympathetic with the white Rhodesians.
Smith’s intransigence encouraged most of the black leaders to commit to the deal, with Nkomo calculating that if Smith pulled out at this stage it would further turn opinion against him. Mugabe on the other hand remained aloof, thus breaking his alliance with Nkomo. Mugabe, inspired by the Mozambicans, was convinced that only black liberation movements achieved by military force could ever be lasting. He also believed that Smith would inevitably go back on every deal, and had the thought that if he remained as the one black leader who never compromised or dealt with Smith, he would gain a hardline and prophetic reputation and be the automatic choice for ruler of Zimbabwe when it did achieve black majority rule.
Crosland and Richard now finally mended their bridges and, supported by Kissinger, hammered out a policy that finally made Smith say uncle – though of course he had no intention on actually following through with the deal. After negotiating with Obasanjo, the proposal was for a three-nation oversight group with troops to ensure the new elections would be free and fair and also the integration of the black and white forces. This group would be one-third British, one-third Nigerian and, on Kissinger’s insistance, one-third South African, as this would ensure that Rhodesian whites felt their rights were protected. The policy was enormously controversial at home and Callaghan had to defend himself from backbench criticism by Labour MPs who had always opposed apartheid. However he was supported by Michael Foot of all people, who said that it was a price worth paying to ensure Rhodesia remained an entirely Commonwealth affair (though South Africa was no longer a member of the Commonwealth, it was still closely associated). This move on Foot’s part confused and divided the Labour left, allowing the issue to drop. Callaghan nonetheless remained annoyed at Crosland, who he had formerly gotten along well with, and more or less told him to remain concentrating on the Rhodesia problem until it was settled – after which point, it was implied, Crosland might be sacked for his radical policy. While Crosland remained deeply involved in the negotiations, his junior Minister of State, David Owen (who had previously been Minister for the Navy and Minister for Health) took over many of his more global duties. Developments in Iran soon consumed his attention...
*
From – “South America Since 1918” by John J. Andrews (Harvard University Press, 2009) –
On 24th March 1976, with the Argentine economy in tatters, President Isabel Perón of Argentina was removed from power by a military coup led by General Jorge Videla, Admiral Emilio Massera and Brigadier Orlando Agosti. The new regime called itself the ‘National Reorganisation Process’ and its raison d’etre was the destruction of the Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP, People’s Revolutionary Army), a group of leftist rebels taking inspiration from Che Guevara. Actions against the ERP had begun in 1975, but with the removal of Perón the junta pursued even stronger policies. The right-wing paramilitary group Alianza Anticomunista Argentina (Argentine Anticommunist Alliance or ‘Triple-A’) was allowed to operate with the tacit consent of the government, acting against suspected left-wing groups. By this point both the communist ERP and the left-wing Peronist Montoneros had been practically destroyed, but the Triple-A and the junta continued with their paranoid Dirty War nonetheless. People were ‘disappeared’ off the street never to be seen again.
The junta initially found itself in a strong position internationally due to support by the United States. The US government had known about the coup before it happened and had essentially consented to it. Henry Kissinger was positively enthusiastic about the junta, claiming Argentina had been ‘ungovernable’ thanks to the economic crisis and that military rule was needed. When pressed over human rights violations, apologists for the regime usually simply pointed out that Augusto Pinochet’s neighbouring dictatorship in Chile was even worse.
However, November 1976 would bring two events that the junta and its supporters would come to bitterly regret...
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Thande
Donor
I'm worried what's the forth of july party?
Is it what i think it is?
ATL version of the tea-partiers, basically, only fuelled by chauvinism over the US's first female president rather than its first black one.
Interesting start. You don't give exact dates, but I guess you're assuming that his involvement with the Geneva Conference has butterflied away the cerebral haemorrhage that Crosland died from in Feb 1977.
Looking forward to more ...
Cheers,
Nigel.
I take it it will be smaller then, seeing as a slim majority of Tea Partyers are women?
And I've always wanted to see a Callaghan wank, great job.
Not necessarily. There might be more blacks, for example, and of course there would still be female members.
I'm sure the social class that most blacks reside in would prevent any large number from voting for a party that is even more right wing than the republicans. Unless the US has become radically different since the PoD.
Thande didn´t said, that the fourth of july party is a right wing party And we don´t know, who the first female persident is. Maybe it is SARAH PALIN
i really hope we can avoid Hillary as that's such a cliche to have her succeed in getting the presidency.
Thande didn´t said, that the fourth of july party is a right wing party And we don´t know, who the first female persident is. Maybe it is SARAH PALIN
I wouldn't expect the left to be chauvinist but this is America, does a left exist?
Mugabe must fail. I think you have already hinted that Argentina will rattle the sabre and finding no echo this time, invade the Falkland Islands a few years earlier than OTL. If this happens you can expect a kit inspection by every RN geek aboard.
Thande
Donor
I know, I'm dreading it
At least one has the advantage that the fleet review for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 means it's easy to get hold of info on the RN. It's the Argentines I'm worried about.
I know, I'm dreading it
At least one has the advantage that the fleet review for the Silver Jubilee in 1977 means it's easy to get hold of info on the RN. It's the Argentines I'm worried about.
http://warships1discussionboards.yuku.com/directory
These boards may help. They love a plea and may well out-geek (although there is some overlap, including PMN1 and myself). Be prepared for more detail than you asked for.
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