Winter of Discontent
"...the government continues to believe that the situation as it stands is temporary, that all parties can and will reach a satisfactory conclusion shortly..."
- James Callaghan, Prime Minister's Questions
The wave of strikes that rocked Britain in 1979 rivalled those of the 1940s in size and intensity, and could not have been timed more poorly for the Callaghan government, as the coldest winter in recent memory also struck the nation.
The Sun, Britain's largest tabloid, at last turned on Labour, running the headline "We Reelected HIM?" and it seemed as if the Prime Minister was determined to avoid the BBC news cameras that frequently tried to gather his thoughts from Downing Street. The victory high from the recent general election had evaporated more quickly than any in memory; Tory snap polls suggested they would win a majority comfortably if an election were held today, and the fresh new face of Willie Whitelaw, buffeted by his ease with the press and thunderous rhetoric during PMQs, placed him squarely in the mind of the British populace as the opponent of the militant trade unions that were forcing them to go without power. When debate in Parliament was held by oil lamp because they could not turn the power on, Whitelaw demanded, "Is
this Britain? The nation that defeated fascism now cowers in the dark as Marxist union leaders turn off our power? What has become of us?" The hard-edged, "hard medicine" rhetoric of Thatcher (which was seen as having helped cost the Tories a very winnable election) had been replaced by more familiar and comforting soft nationalism, with Whitelaw's friends in the press helping portray the unions as greedy opponents of "the ordinary Briton."
Of course, it wasn't quite as simple as that; the government's wage policies artificially restricted government employee raises compared to private sector unions, most notably with Ford's substantial wage hike that had helped trigger the wave of strikes in late 1978, and with inflation at all time highs, after the economic crises of the preceding decade, refusing to help workers maintain their purchasing power would have been a bitter pill for Labour to swallow. Callaghan's personal popularity had helped buffet Labour during difficult years heading into the 1978 elections; now, he was held responsible for the slow response to the "Winter of Discontent," and it started to seem as if he was losing his passion for the job, with his desire to step down within a year well known. Chancellor David Owen's proposals seemed adrift and unlikely to solve the problem; within Cabinet, debate over how to solve the matter paralyzed the response during the critical weeks of January.
It did not help matters in Britain that 1979 saw the Callaghan government experience its first major foreign policy break from the United States, and a surprising one - Rhodesia. The 1978 Internal Settlement had not been accepted by all African rebels and reserved so much power for Ian Smith's white minority that the UK had been unable to accept it either, for fear of angering the rest of the Commonwealth. Upon becoming Foreign Minister, Denis Healey had vowed to maintain that stance. That became considerably more difficult when the 1979 Zimbabwe-Rhodesian elections were held and delivered a majority to Prime Minister Bishop Abel Muzorewa and his UANC coalition. UN election observers described it as fair and open despite violence from Robert Mugabe's militants and, in a shocking move that caught Whitehall off guard, the White House congratulated Muzorewa on his victory and on "the peaceful and negotiated settlement that led to free elections granting Zimbabwe-Rhodesia achieving black majority rule" and, going even further, at a press conference in Mexico, Secretary of State Bush praised Zimbabwe Rhodesia as "an example that proves that the peaceful and orderly transfer to democratic majority rule is possible anywhere in Africa and indeed the world." Bush may have spoken in general terms, but the administration had one audience in mind with his choreographed comments: South Africa, where Ford was start to gradually ratchet up pressure on the Pretoria government to release political prisoners and viewed, along with Bush and Baker, the "Rhodesia Model" as being one to follow to end apartheid, particularly as no dispute between the National Party and ANC even close to resembled Rhodesia's ugly Bush War.
Of course, it wasn't that simple; Mugabe and Nkomo violently rejected the Internal Settlement and continued their campaign supported by neighboring states (many of which had their own armed insurgencies just across porous borders, allowing weapons and militants to flow freely back and forth), leading to the strange sight of the United States lifting sanctions on Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and supplying it with weapons and training while the UK suddenly found itself isolated and on the same side as the Soviet Union and Cuba in the dispute. Everywhere the Callaghan government looked, it seemed, there was trouble, leading to the inevitable question: how long could the Prime Minister, who had just last year delivered Labour an unexpected majority and kept the unpopular and rigid "milk-snatcher" from Downing Street, hold on...?