New Deal Coalition Retained: A Sixth Party System Wikibox Timeline
Foreign Snapshot
The parliamentary Labour Party of Great Britain was divided into two wings, the socialist Bevanites and the more moderate Gaitskellites. With Harold Wilson’s close loss to Iain Macleod in 1964, the Bevinites lost credibility with much of the caucus and Gaitskellite George Brown won the leadership nod and the subsequent general election in 1967.
Despite this, the first year of Brown’s premiership was fairly leftist in nature. Funding for social services were raised by nearly ten percent, new regulations of working conditions and workplace liability implemented to the delight of the trade unions – the traditional Labour/Gaitskellite base. The Social Security Act of 1967 greatly expanded unemployment insurance as well as raising the Universal Family Allowance for the first time since Anthony Eden was Prime Minister. In order to prevent a ballooning of the deficit, Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Harold Wilson instituted both a devaluation of the pound and a small cut in the defence budget (deactivation of several infantry units and the retirement of the Vickers Valiant strategic bomber to name two, leading to the expulsion and resignation of right-wing Labour MP Desmond Donnelly) that didn’t hamper strategic projection or Commonwealth defence.
As per the Lab-Lib pact, criminal justice reform was tackled as well as anti-discrimination measures – earning the denunciation of Conservative Shadow Cabinet member Peter Griffiths, who dubbed it a “Violation of every Briton’s natural rights.” Newly elected Liberal leader Eric Lubbock replied pithily, “In the honorable member’s viewpoint, that only extends to white Britons.” Fulfilling one of the Liberal Party’s core election promises, Brown pushed through legislation creating proportional elections for town council seats (large cities were exempted from this).
However, by 1969 the two coalition partners were beginning to sour on each other. The socially conservative Brown refused to consider Liberal efforts to abolish the death penalty, decriminalize homosexuality, and support a loosening of abortion laws (a free vote on abortion legalization conducted and defeated under Macleod), all of which angered the Liberal caucus. Ultimately, when an effort to institute proportional representation to Westminster and reform the House of Lords was blocked, Lubbock and Deputy Leader Jeremy Thorpe broke the coalition and joined with the Tories to conduct a vote of no confidence – Brown was subsequently forced to call an election for June, 1969.
After the defeat of the Macleod Government, the Conservatives had gone through a major soul searching between the main wings of the party. On one side were the fiscally conservative socially moderate One Nation Tories lead by Edward Heath, and on the other were the Conservative Monday Club who’s standard bearer emerged to be club founder Julian Amery – a smaller third “Populist” faction also emerged, modeling themselves as less liberal Gaitskellites or George Wallace Democrats led by two term Smethwick MP Peter Griffiths. Since Macleod had been a member of the One Nation faction, a desire for a breath of fresh air allowed Amery to win the subsequent leadership election 161 votes to Heath’s 111 and Griffiths’ 33. Appointing several One Nation moderates such as Heath, Robert Carr, and James Prior to the Shadow Cabinet along with Griffiths, Amery nonetheless made sure the major positions were taken by his allies such as J. Enoch Powell, Geoffrey Rippon, John Peyton, Edward du Cann, and a young up-and-comer by the name of Margaret Thatcher.
The election of 1969 was as hard fought as the two previous ones, both the Conservatives and Labour seeking to win a majority government. Charges were lobbed left and right, Brown calling Amery a regressive extremist while Amery shot back that Brown was an incompetent that couldn’t even hold his government together. Surrogates were even more dirty, Labour charging that the Monday Club led opposition was plotting to implement “Serfdom-like labour conditions” while Shadow Secretary Griffiths stated that Labour wished to flood the nation with “The collected dregs of the Third World.”
Only two weeks before the election, Prime Minister Brown arrived at an interview for the BBC visibly intoxicated (similar to an interview from the 67 election, but without doubt of his intoxication), mouth reeking of gin and speech slurred. When confronted, he lambasted the reporter as a “Barmy Sod” and other choice words. The scandal was plastered on all the papers the next day, Amery and Powell gleefully trumpeting the charges about the “Alcoholic controlling our Kingdom’s atomic arsenal.” While not much of a charge in the working class Labour strongholds, it was quite potent in the marginal electorates.
In Northern Ireland, the Ulster Unionists lost their stranglehold on the region’s seats even while the Republican SDLP lost the electorate of Londonderry after what had been considered a fluke in 1967. Despite vicious instances of fraud and voter intimidation on the side of the unionists – though the republicans weren’t innocent of such sins, far from it – West Belfast fell to the SDLP after several recounts, preserving the party’s one seat in Westminster.
The most humiliating result for Labour was Prime Minister Brown losing his own constituency of Belper to the little known journalist and Monday Club member Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, his name soon catapulted into the national dialogue and drafted by Amery to be fast tracked within the Tory leadership. Brown would be granted a life peerage by the Queen, and the loss would cause him to seek out treatment for his alcoholism. “One good thing to come out of this, I should say,” he later recounted.
In addition, Desmond Donnelly was returned to his constituency in a landslide, this time as a Monday Club Tory.
Following his visit to Buckingham Palace for Her Majesty’s assent to form Government, Amery and his Monday Club allies wasted no time in instituting their right-wing agenda. First was the Industrial Relations Act of 1969, abolishing closed shop workplaces and creating a Royal Commission to negotiate union contracts on the behalf of the Government. While not Amery’s signature legislation, its quick passage proved to observers of the direction and governing strategy of the newly-elected Tory government. Full speed ahead.
As part of Amery’s pledge to maintain Commonwealth influence and global military reach, a dramatic reworking of diplomatic policy was instituted by Foreign Secretary William Whitelaw and Defence Secretary J. Enoch Powell. Relations with the United States, Israel, NATO allies, and commonwealth realms were strengthened, and a pragmatic attitude toward the more independent states was seen from the Foreign Office. For Amery and Whitelaw, maximizing the UK’s influence was the order of the day.
The most prominent example was in the former dominion of Nigeria, now an independent republic. A loose conglomeration of various ethnic groups, at the time of Amery’s ascension to 10 Downing Street the Abuja regime was in the middle of a two year civil war against the self-declared Republic of Biafra. An independent state for the Igbo people, widespread famine had taken hold since the state was declared in 1967.
While Brown had maintained a slight lean to the Federal Government, robust military aid from the Soviets and Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime in Cairo for the Nigerians swung Amery toward Biafra. Determining that a victorious Biafra would possess a greater gain for the Commonwealth (oil sales, military basing rights, favorable economic treaties) than a victorious Nigeria. As such, multi-millions of pounds of economic aid was approved by Westminster for Port Harcourt.
Six months later in the Accra Conference, the Republic of Biafra was recognized as an independent state (including the newly conquered territory up to Benin City), ending the war and earning the British Commonwealth a new member. British prestige had also increased considerably – if not a superpower, a world one nonetheless.
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In power since toppling Louis St. Laurent in a close election in 1957, the Progressive Conservative government of John Diefenbaker had been re-elected three times, Canadian voters giving their confidence in them for eleven years. Originally a minority government, residual gains from his landslide re-election at over 210 seats in 1958 and a near hero status in Canada’s central heartland and northern reaches maintained the Tory hold into the sixties. As such Diefenbaker had never won less than 160 seats since the decade before.
Keeping his popularity high thanks to anti-communism, a Nixonian civil rights policy (such as appointing the first indigenous Canadian to the Senate and fighting against Commonwealth status for South Africa, clashing with President Rockefeller and Prime Minister Macleod), civil liberties protections in the Canadian Bill of Rights, robust defence policy (such as his strong stand in favor of the Bomarc nuclear missiles and the Avro Arrow interceptor), and a booming economy, by the late sixties said popularity had started to wane. The high crime rate and counterculture disruptions from their southern neighbor had begun to seep into Canada, and Diefenbaker struggled to control it. In addition, several fiscal choices to balance the budget shortfall of 1967 angered far-right members of the Progressive Conservative caucus, leading to nine defections to the as yet dead Social Credit Party. Rejuvenated by these defections, leader Alexander Bell Patterson hoped to expand the party into the culturally conservative west and Quebec (one of the party’s former strongholds until the 1966 election wiped their numbers down to two).
While the counterculture had hurt the Tories, for the Liberals it was a shot in the arm. Out of power and electorally crippled since 1958, the shifting mood of the Canadian electorate seemed perfect for current Liberal leader Pierre Trudeau. Having only been elected one year before being made party leader following the 1966 election, Trudeau had shifted the party considerably to the left since. Well versed in the dynamics of the social changes of the late sixties, Diefenbaker and other Tory Ministers watched with shaking heads as mobs of youths (including many pretty young women) would mob Trudeau as one would expect for a celebrity following his nationwide speaking tour in September 1966. Though his avocation for the same socially liberal policies as his close friend Gough Whitlam was instituting in Australia, the increase in Liberal fortunes in 1967-68 were carried on the back of their charismatic, hip, handsome, and nonconformist leader. The people adored him.
Many in America would laugh at and mock incessantly (including a particularly scathing comedy routine by Johnny Carson) at the reason for Diefenbaker calling the 1968 election – the Great Flag Debate. While the Prime Minister favored the red backgrounded Union Jack dominion ensign, Trudeau and Quebec MPs from all parties favored the Maple Leaf flag. While mocked in America, in Canada it was a bitter dispute. Seeing an opportunity to secure a victory before “Trudeaumania” grew too large to beat, the Prime Minister called an election on the issue, both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives campaigning like one would if a challenger, the former attacking the Tories as out of touch and torpid after eleven years in power while the latter attempted to use Trudeau’s charisma against him by painting him as personally immoral (the charge had some credence due to the Leader of the Official Opposition’s questionable sexual relationships).
The Progressive Conservatives were crushed, but maintained a strong base of support against Trudeaumania and the right wing challenge by Social Credit. Now though it was the Liberals who would celebrate. Pierre Trudeau had heralded the lone liberal triumph in a period dominated by conservatives and populists.
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After the close election of 1967, as with their ideological colleagues in the mother country, the Whitlam Labor Government wasted no time in enacting the finer points of its leftist agenda. Australia’s commitment to Military Assistance Command Vietnam was withdrawn, conscription ended, a nationwide legal aid established for indigent criminals (a nationalized version of the state level organizations established following the US Supreme Court decision Gideon vs. Wainright), the enacting of no fault divorce laws, and direct grants for infrastructure projects to the states. By large the most popular policy was the establishment of the Department of Urban Development – the goal of expanding sewage facilities to all homes and apartments in urban, suburban, and small city Australia. It was a personal goal of his, having lived in the underdeveloped neighborhood of Cabramatta.
Much more sweeping leftist reforms such as universal healthcare and free college tuition were blocked by the Coalition/DLP alliance in the senate. Leader of the Opposition Billy Snedden – who despite nearly losing in 1961 had made his seat of Bruce safe in the two subsequent elections – used every procedural technique to oppose Whitlam’s legislation, causing tension within the Lodge. Frustrated, Whitlam called a double dissolution election for 1969 in order to seek the nation’s vote of confidence in his government.
The gamble grew more and more ill-advised as the campaign continued, the Coalition and ALP neck and neck. Whitlam’s domestic policies were rather popular, but the more socialist elements were mistrusted by the marginal voters in the “mortgage belt” middle class suburbs of the major cities. A feud with newly elected Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson over the status of Australian Papua (Whitlam pushing for independence while Bjelke-Peterson wished for it to remain a dependency of Queensland) didn’t help the Prime Minister in the Sunshine State. Snedden focused on Vietnam, proclaiming that unless it was secured that the Communist menace would reach Darwin by the end of the following decade, Whitlam being reckless in removing Australia’s commitment. Financial problems with the Tasmanian ALP state government brought bad headlines for Whitlam just as the election was rounding down, but observers proclaimed it could go either way.
With the new Prime Minister promising President Wallace that seven brigades of the Australian Army, air support, and the Royal Australian Navy’s two light aircraft carriers would be deployed to Vietnam with all due haste, the mettle of the new Coalition government would soon be tested.
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Since its founding in 1948, the State of Israel had been controlled by the left-wing political party Mapai. Boosted by the latent socialism of the vast pool of eastern European Jews that formed the wave of immigration to the Palestine Mandate and Israel following WWII and Independence, Mapai (under David Ben-Gurion, Yigal Allon, and Levi Eshkol respectively) had consistently triumphed over the heavily fractured right-wing with hefty electoral pluralities and coalition agreements with the Orthodox religious parties in the proportionally representative Knesset.
Levi Eshkol was riding high in public support after negotiating the Treaty of Amman with the Jordanians and British Prime Minister Iain Macleod – immortalized in the famous photo of the IDF paratrooper detachment arriving to garrison the Western Wall. Surprisingly, he subsequently announced his intention to retire, the subsequent leadership contest won by Minister of Foreign Affairs Golda Meir in early 1968 – one of the few female leaders of any nation at the time. Balancing the coalition government between Mapai, the National Religious Party (representing Orthodox and religious Jews), and Rafi (a center-left party founded by former Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion after political differences caused him to leave Mapai) was shaky but vastly easier than the problems regarding the fractured Israeli right. Until 1969 that is.
The secular right-wing parties had been divided into various blocks since Independence, the Herut party led by former Irgun commander Menachem Begin always placing first but kept at a mere fraction of Mapai due to vote splitting by the Liberal and Agudat Yisrael parties. As the Israeli economy began to slump slightly at the end of the decade, Begin negotiated a merger between Herut and the Liberals into a party renamed Gahal (short for Gush Herut-Liberalim, or Herut-Liberals Bloc). Surging in the opinion polls over economic and national defense concerns, Meir tactically called a general election in 1970 before Gahal could build a polling lead.
The campaign was tough, the right and the left clashing over quality of life issues and the mechanisms of Meir’s foreign policy regarding Israel’s Arab enemies. The minor coalition partner Rafi had split right before the campaign, the main bloc of Shimon Peres facing the centrist National List of David Ben-Gurion, who quit the party to support a constituency-based Knesset. Debuting in 1970 was the United Arab List, formed to give a voice to Arab Israeli’s seeking the right of return for exiled Palestinians. With the vast number of them in the West Bank now citizens of Jordan, the party immediately began to fall under radicalized UAR influence.
The right found the perfect foil in the UAR and UAL, dubbing them threats to Israel and the need to keep a powerful military front against the former. Mapai attacked Begin as an extremist and warmonger, while Gahal countered the charges by sending the extremely pious party leader to communities across Israel, winning over much of the Mizrahi working class and economically threatened suburbanites.
However, the deciding issue was Meir’s controversial December 1968 visit to the Soviet Union. Seeking General Secretary Semichastny’s mediation of a peace treaty with the United Arab Republic (as Macleod did with Jordan), the move was positively regarded until the Israeli press discovered that the Soviets were funding Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization even after the Moscow visit – though no one knows for sure, it was speculated that anti-Israeli groups in the UAR or even Arafat himself ordered the leaking of the information. Gahal having made anti-Communist rhetoric a major plank of its campaign, Begin and his right-wing allies surged several points in the week before election day.
As early returns began to pour in, Gahal pulled into a modest lead over Mapai that lasted most of the night. Even with the possibility of the result having been discussed, it was still shocking to many political and media figures in Israel so used to the dominance of the left in the Jewish State. As Channel 1 anchor Haim Yavin (then a junior figure, but would soon become known as “Mr. Television” to Israelis) proclaimed when 75% of the vote had been counted “Gvirotai veRabotai - Mahapakh!” Ladies and Gentlemen, a Revolution! Menachem Begin was said to have been smiling as he heard this.
However, the right had celebrated too early. As the last returns trickled in a surge in votes for the National List among Tel Aviv suburbanites pushed Gahal’s numbers down several points.
Coalition talks immediately began as Meir and Begin scrambled to form a government. Rafi immediately renewed its agreement with Mapai while the two smaller right-wing parties attached themselves to Gahal as expected. Negotiations would center on the National Religious Party and National List (the former long allied with Mapai but a free agent now).
Having taken a decidedly right-wing turn in the last few years – coupled with anger from their Orthodox voting base over Meir’s negotiations with the Soviets – the National Religious Party announced on May 23rd that they would be governing with Gahal and the right. Putting Begin with 60 votes, he needed at least one more to be able to form government. Talks begun in earnest with Ben-Gurion, Begin offering him the position of Foreign Minister and other key posts to National List members – as well as the backing of his constituency plan for the Knesset.
On May 26th, the leaders of Gahal, Agudat Yisrael, Poalei Agudat Yisrael, and the National Religious Party announced with the white-haired Ben-Gurion of the National List backing of the Gahal government – with a surprise. Mapai Knesset member Moshe Dayan, his eyepatched face instantly recognizable, stated that he would buck his party and serve as Begin’s Defence Minister. A vengeful Mapai would subsequently kick him out of the party, leading to Dayan officially joining Gahal in June (flipping the numbers and giving Begin’s party the largest block of seats in the Knesset).
For the first time in the nation’s history, Israel had a right-wing government,
While several moves by Begin were initiated for domsetic services (including privatising several minor state industries) and internal security (warrented after a series of PLO aircraft hijackings and the attempted murder of the Israeli ambassador to Turkey by the Soviet/UAR-funded Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine), the most visible policy was the military expansion. Pushing hard for a degree of self-sufficency to reduce Israel’s dependence on lengthy supply lines from the UK and US – in case of war since Begin was overall a pro-western Prime Minister – Begin and Moshe Dayan oversaw a huge overhaul of the domestic defence industry, including obtaining the rights to manufacture F-4 Phantoms and Cheiftian tanks from President Wallace and Prime Minister Amery.
Such changes were viewed positively by Washington and London, but with scowls and worried faces by Cairo and Damascus.
With no one willing to challenge the military might of the US, UK, or the French Community, Israel was the only choice left open to the two men and their military commanders.
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Haha!
And that's pretty original. Diefenbaker continues his horrible administration for a few more years...
Hopefully Trudeau is able to pass his important social reforms and crushes terrorism.
Oh, and hopefully he reforms the constitution and passes something like the Charter.
Huh-what? I think it's implausible for Dief to support Avro Arrow due to his faith.
Well, Trudeau has a mandate, a modest majority, and is very popular (spoiler, the Libs will gain seats in the next election)
Largely the NDP's voters were wooed by Trudeau, who ITTL is co-opting the Canadian Left for the Liberal Party
So, the usual Liberal strategy (move left to attract NDP voters) is at work?
Looking forward to seeing an Amery Government?
Haven't seen the last of Gough Whitlam either
Looking forward to seeing an Amery Government?
Haven't seen the last of Gough Whitlam either
Oh yes I am!
Though I am concerned at the Trudea-reich beginning; Paul Hellyer needs to emerge somehow.
Lol!
Remember, Wallace's VP ITTL is McNamara. What could ol' Curtis be put in charge of?
Lol!
Remember, Wallace's VP ITTL is McNamara. What could ol' Curtis be put in charge of?
Secretary of State?