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Two long years of preparations
Two long years of preparations

Tebbit had only been in the Cabinet for seven months. Before that he had served as a junior minister of state for a year and a half. His government experience was rather limited to say the least. He was the first to admit that yet didn’t see it necessarily as something to hold him back. He had drive and determination in him. Tebbit had his beliefs too, knowing what was right and what was wrong.

A journalist and a fighter pilot with the RAF before entering politics, Tebbit had made a name for himself in the mid- and late-Seventies speaking out against ‘social fascism’ and the ‘Marxist collectivist totalitarians’ when it came to unions. When Thatcher had appointed him to the Department of Employment, Tebbit had worked hard on union legislation to roll back what he saw were the worst excesses of undemocratic practices. His thinking had never been to disband unions or restrict their membership, just limit their influence. This carried on the moment that he was in Downing Street. Within a week as prime minister, Tebbit gave a series of speeches on the further trade union legislation he would bring in which would add to the Employment Act (1982) which he had already introduced to the Commons back in February. Tebbit only went into broad outlines rather than detail because he had a new Employment Secretary in the form of Tom King who would do all of that. The new prime minister believed that he was being fair in what he was saying.

Strangely enough, not everyone thought so. The trade unions didn’t like Tebbit and saw him as a threat to their members’ employment rights. His proposed reforms were nothing more than a destruction of their unions too. They would oppose his ideas with every means available including strikes and using their considerable political influence. It was to be a long, drawn out battle of wills.

In Parliament, Tebbit’s new government faced Michael Foot’s embattled Labour Party. The two men had clashed before and it was Foot who Tebbit had called a fascist… along with suggesting that Foot didn’t have the wit to see that he was. The planned additions to the Employment Act were one issue, the second was the Falklands. Foot had denounced the Argentinian invasion and also the circumstances leading up to it. Now, the Falklands were being surrendered to the nationalists in Argentina who he quipped at Tebbit were actually fascists and was the prime minister able to understand the real meaning of the word?

Throughout the rest of the year, national politics concerned trade unions and the fallout from the Falklands War. A son was born to the heir to the throne, there was a major IRA bombing in London and the Social Democrat Party gained a new leader in the form of Roy Jenkins. Still, the clashes in the Commons between Tebbit and Foot on those two important matters dominated affairs of state. When Parliament reopened after the Summer Recess, the two men were back at it again with what King proposed as amendments to union practices strongly opposed by Foot and defended by Tebbit. Argentina had officially annexed the Falklands and British civilians were complaining that they were being forced from their homes there. At times, other events such as the unemployment rate and the state of the economy came into the debates as well, yet those two events defined the rest of 1982 politically. Tebbit felt secure in his position and many of his colleagues were in awe of how he handled himself in the Commons. He defied the expectations of many though reinforced the belief in his capabilities as others had thought when they had voted for him to replace Thatcher.


An explosion ripped through partygoers at the New Year’s Ball of the Conservative Monday Club at the end of the year. Sixteen people were killed by the blast and the partial collapse of the building where the Ball was in full swing; dozens more were injured. It was an act of political terror.

The Monday Club was a group of right-wing politicians and political activists. Tebbit was a member though he hadn’t been at the event. Three Conservative MPs were among the injured and while the rest of the injured and those killed weren’t politicians, they were connected to the Conservatives in official roles, as activists and the wives of those as well. There were shock and outrage at such a thing and answers were demanded as to who was responsible. A little-known group called Red Action was found responsible for the bombing. Red Action had previously committed acts of violence in combatting racists such as the National Front and the accusation against the trio of men arrested as being behind the bomb was that they considered the Monday Club to be a better-heeled but just as wrong as the National Front. The bomb used in the attack was rather sophisticated though, thought by some to be far too much for a group such as Red Action to use. Moreover, those who expressed such doubts also pointed to a bombing being not the modus operandi of Red Action.

Less than a week later, Michael Foot was shot. The Leader of the Opposition was hit by two bullets fired by a lone gunman who fled the scene of the shooting in Foot’s constituency in South Wales. Foot was taken to hospital and his injuries weren’t life threatening. Political rancour was put aside in the face of a clear assassination attempt against a Member of Parliament and Leader of the Opposition. The police were joined by MI-5 in hunting for the gunman and they soon arrested Antony ‘Tony’ Malski. Malski was a figure from the far-right known to have a big mouth with nothing behind it. He led a breakaway faction from the National Front grandly-titled the National Socialist Action Party. He was a former soldier in the Territorial Army and a Nazi fanboy. Straight after his arrest near to the Welsh-English border, he tried to escape from a police vehicle. He was shot while trying to escape – Special Branch officers had him in their custody after clashing with Welsh police over control of Malski – and, unlike Foot, his attempted assassin didn’t survive his injuries.

The Monday Club bombing and then Foot’s shooting were a wake-up call for many in the security services. There were those out there all of a sudden willing to commit political violence in Britain. Where had such ideas come from? The ideological battles in Parliament must have brought about this came the thinking and that had spilled out into the actions of madmen radicalized by them.

When the latest round of violence broke out in Northern Ireland, orders came from London to crackdown hard. That was done. Provisional IRA and INLA terrorists were moved against harder in response to acts of violence; there was less emphasis against combatting Loyalist groups also committing terror despite Tebbit sending word to Ulster that their acts weren’t to be tolerated either. There in Ulster there were always allegations of collusion between elements of the security services and Loyalist groups and oftentimes that looked true. At home in Britain, when striking industrial workers in the North East and the West Midlands were judged to be troublemakers, the police were ordered against them. Tebbit’s government wanted to cut out growing political violence by cracking down hard upon it in its infancy. Unfortunately, such actions only brought about more of it.

Selected urban riots – nothing to do with politics – were soon being treated as political violence. 1983 saw youths in economically distressed areas commit acts of violence. Tebbit had no patience for them. Personally, as prime minister, he couldn’t directly interfere as that was a matter for the local police but he had pressure exerted from the Home Office. Whitelaw pushed back, arguing that the situation was only being made worse by the extremes being pushed for to stop rioting and told Tebbit it had nothing to do with politics but unemployment and police overreaction to sensitive communities. The Home Secretary was replaced by Leon Brittan. Brittan was given the task of dealing with such troublemakers – violent flying pickets and rioting youths – ‘more harshly’ than Whitelaw had failed to do so.

Tebbit refused to accept that there were those who wouldn’t obey the rule of law.


The next general election didn’t have to take place until May 1984. A few months into 1983, Tebbit decided that he would wait until then before going to the country rather than call an election this year either in the Spring or the Autumn. He had his own allies and a growing power base within the Conservative Party but he still didn’t think himself secure enough to run a successful campaign with some of the others who he wasn’t so sure of still aboard his government. He needed more time. This issues over his colleagues went alongside those he saw elsewhere with the domestic situation arguably becoming worse since he had taken over. The economy showed some signs of recovery and there was the hope that by next year it would be in a better shape. The urban troublemakers would have been dealt with by then, his thinking went.

Then there was the Labour Party too. Foot’s opposition was still chaotic despite their leader’s often effective performances in the Commons. The party had yet to effectively respond to the breakaway Social Democrats and showed no sign of doing so as Jenkins’ party rode high in terms of favourable views from the public alongside the Liberals in their electoral Alliance. Tebbit put his faith in Labour being destroyed from within before he battered them at the polls. His senior adviser in Downing Street, Michael Dobbs, said to the prime minister that Foot couldn’t control Militant and those on the hard left were going to continue to do irreparable damage. Foot was too conciliatory to them and another year of internal strife could bring the Conservatives a landslide at the polls.

Labour had been preparing to see a general election in 1983. They had the outline of a manifesto planned and that would bring together all of their party to present their vison to the voters. ‘A New Hope For Britain’ it was to be called; some others gave it less charitable names. It included a lot of renationalisation of industries and public services recently privatised, nuclear disarmament & a withdraw from the EEC, the abolition of the House of Lords and higher taxes. There were recent additions of rolling back union legislation to the manifesto as well. Having Britain leave NATO as well as changes to police activity in relation to industrial disputes hadn’t made it into the planned manifesto yet with the voices of many calling for those in the future. Militant was still causing trouble within the party and so too was the effect of the Social Democrat–Liberal Alliance which had won by-elections threatening the Labour vote. Would Labour have won on such a platform in 1983 when put to the voters? Some gave an emphatic yes, others were of the opinion that it would be suicide for the party to run on this platform in 1983 and even more fatal the next year.


So, the country didn’t get a general election during Tebbit’s second year in Downing Street. Violence continued across the nation. There were no more dramatic acts of terrorism – Irish Republican attacks aside – though there were some worrying signs of things to come. MI-5 did warn Brittan that there was some evidence that extremists on the left and the right gaining access to weapons and preparing for ‘something’ but there was no firm evidence of that presented to the Home Secretary. The bombing of the Monday Club and the shooting of Foot (which hadn’t slowed him down for long) were seen as exceptions.

There were riots and more industrial disputes; both of which brought a harsh reaction but not what was feared in terms of massive outbreaks of nationwide violence. Behind the scenes, small groups of troublemakers were making preparations and plans for if things didn’t turn out the way that they wanted it to yet there was no spark for major disturbances to occur. The full scale of their activities hadn’t been detected and neither was the situation ripe for them to act. That situation could change.

On Thursday May 3rd 1984, the country went to the polls. Tebbit believed the he would win reelection. Foot hoped to lead his party to victory. Jenkins and Liberal leader David Steel aimed to make a strong showing, even overtaking Labour. By the next morning the country would find out the results.

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