For Want of a Drink

Per Ardua ad Nauseam..

Grimond was always fond of military analogies - the Liberal Party was forever to be marching toward the sound of gunfire, engaging with the enemy, tactically advancing and the rest.

His admirers loved it - some others in the parliamentary party found it a shade repetitive and cumbersome but there was little doubt the public found Jo Grimond inspiring. As Parliament broke for the summer holidays in 1961, Grimond could look back on a remarkable period with 7 gains in by-elections since the turn of the year.

Assembly in 1961 was a buoyant almost euphoric gathering. However, there was serious discussion regarding the Party's strategy at the next election. The Conservatives were in trouble after nearly a decade in power but Labour were not seemingly able to break into Conservative areas and prospective seats in numbers sufficient to suggest a Labour majority was inevitable.

If there were to be a hung Parliament, what would or should the Liberals do ? The weight of history mitigated against strong support for a deal with Labour but could the party seriously prop up a defeated or semi-defeated Conservative Government ? Grimond was careful,not to be seen to be favouring one side or the other and offered a policy which would later be known as equidistance but was called "a plague on both their houses" by Day.

The autumn by-election season of 1961 began with another spectacular Liberal gain in Manchester Moss Side and the election of one of the Party's most colourful MPs, Ruslyn Hargreaves. Hargreaves would in time provide ample fodder for the gossip columnists and tabloid press in the 1960s but his election made him the 22nd Liberal MP.

The same day saw James Buchanan snatch Oswestry by just 179 votes from the Conservatives after two recounts.

The spring of 1962 continued to show strong progress - after a mildly disappointing result in Lincoln, the Liberals stormed home in Blackpool North with 40-year old Harry Hague winning by nearly 3,000 votes while in suburban London Orpington was captured by Eric Lubbock who won the seat by nearly 15,000 votes, a remarkable triumph for the London by-election team.

In Labour seats, Liberal fortunes were also starting to improve with strong second places in Stockton-on-Tees and Derby North though mostly taking votes from the Conservatives rather than seriously eating into the Labour vote share. At Middlesborough West on June 6th 1962, the defending Conservatives were pushed into third as the Liberals got to within 1,300 votes of the successful Labour candidate.

On the same day, however, Ronald Gardiner-Thorpe captured West Derbyshire from the Conservatives by 3,000 votes and in July the Liberals snatched Leicester North East from Labour.

The Conservative Prime Minister MacMillan had been planning to purge up to half his Cabinet but as it seemed Labour was suffering as much as his party from the Liberal surge, he held back keeping Selwyn Lloyd in post as Chancellor.

if the 1961 Liberal Assembly had been euphoric, the 1962 Assembly was even more so though wiser heads were warning this was mid-term popularity rather than a definite shift away from the two main parties. The truth was some in the party began to wonder if they might not be in Government sooner than anyone expected.

The problem for the campaigning team was the Party couldn't fight 640 simultaneous by-elections. Apart from the 24 seats already held, the party had developmental activity in another 50 but beyond that virtually nothing.

The first signs the Liberal tide had peaked came with the clutch of by-elections held on 22nd November 1962. The five contests produced one gain at Chippenham and three strong second places but Labour profited more winning four seats from the Conservatives and Hugh Gaitskell seemed to have become the real Prime Minister-in-waiting.

Sadly, on January 18th 1963, Gaitskell died. Harold Wilson energed from the election as the new Labour leader and for the Liberals the road would get much tougher.
 
The Sixties...

The death of Gaitskell and the election of Harold Wilson coincided with a string of contests in 1963 in Labour seats. The Liberals got off to a strong start by capturing Colne Valley from Labour on March 21st 1963.

This had been one of the few Labour seats where the Liberals had finished second in 1959 and a strong local team, aided by helpers from Rochdale and Manchester, helped capture the seat for Richard Wainwright by 900 votes as the Conservative share collapsed.

However, the next batch of contests were much harder for the Liberals and Labour held a string of seats in the spring and early summer of 1963 including Gaitskell's old seat in Leeds. The Liberals managed a few second places but never came anywhere near taking a seat from Labour.

Labour appeared to be regaining vote share and confidence under its new leader and with an election inevitable by the autumn of 1964 it looked once again as though the best Liberal prospects would be facing Conservative challengers but the Tories too were about to change leader.

The resignation of John Profumo had triggered a by-election in his Stratford constituency which on paper looked a safe Conservative seat. Indeed, in 1959, Profumo had won over two thirds of the vote and the Liberals had polled a derisory 8%.

Nonetheless, Day and others in the Liberal hierarchy thought the circumstances of the by-election offered them a chance and so they fought the seat hard with volunteers from all other England. The Liberal candidate was one Derick Mirfin, a local man, but Day soon realised he lacked the charisma of a Kennedy or a Wainwright.

Labour, on the other hand, had learned from the Liberal handbook and put up Andrew Faulds, an actor, as their candidate. Faulds was telegenic and charismatic and this proved crucial.

The election was held on a glorious sunny August day and Faulds won by 186 votes from the Conservative with Mirfin polling 31% in third place, just 572 behind the winner.

Counterfactual historians argue that had the Liberals won Stratford, the 1964 election would have produced a very different result but that's impossible to substantiate. In truth, Labour profited from the collapse of the Conservative vote to the Liberals - a point not lost on Conservative campaigners. If a rock solid seat like Stratford could go Labour, what would be left for the Conservatives ?

The Stratford defeat was a factor in the convulsion that saw MacMillan stand down as Prime Minister during the Conservative conference in October 1963 and his replacement by Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, younger brother of the Liberal MP William. The move, along with other overtures, was an attempt to ease some of the Liberal vote back to the Conservatives.

After that disappointment came another bleak spell for Grimond's Liberals. A strong second place in Kinross and West Perthshire failed to prevent Alec Douglas-Hume becoming an MP and Labour's gain in Luton owed nothing to the Liberal candidate who limped home with 9%.

As 1964 began, the signs of a rampant Labour Party were everywhere. Labour made such unlikely gains as Sudbury & Woodbridge, Devizes and Dumfriesshire from the Conservatives with Liberal candidates trailing in third. Even at Winchester, Labour got to within 1,000 votes of the Conservatives.

Grimond believed a Labour win inevitable in the late summer of 1964 and the party adopted a two-tier approach to the election - campaign hard in Conservative seats and try to save what could be saved from those held or captured from Labour.

The Labour surge helped defuse the issue of who to support in the event of a Hung parliament - Douglas-Hume had seen MacMillan's 1959 majority cut in half by by-election losses and knew it would be a very hard fight for the Party to win a fourth election. In truth, the Conservatives had been brought to the brink of political collapse by fatigue and scandal and the country was anxious to see them gone.

Grimond was determined the Liberals should be seen as part of that change without being seen as too strongly supportive of Labour.
 
The 1964 election, called at almost the last possible moment by Conservative leader and Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Hume, was in many ways both the most and least interesting since 1945. The outcome was never really in doubt - Labour under Harold Wilson enjoyed a healthy advantage in all the polls taken in the campaign and the sense was very strong that Douglas-Hume, for all his virtues, was yesterday's man.

"A patrician in a bourgeois age! was how he was described by Liberal MP Robin Day in one of the set piece interviews conducted by the BBC and ITV which drew a storm of complaint from the strong Conservative press. Campaigning against the Conservatives was one thing but the Liberals found it much harder against Labour who were surging on the personal popularity of Wilson and the sense of "time for a change" after 13 years of Conservative Government.

The Liberal campaign was two-tier and despite fielding an unprecedented 580 candidates still found it impossible to compete with the business interests supporting the Conservatives and the Unions backing Labour.

Labour duly won, crushing the Conservatives and romping home with a majority of 42 over all other parties. The Liberals won 31 seats but progress was patchy. Four seats were lost to Labour in the north where Ludovic Kennedy held Rochdale with just 413 votes to spare aided by a collapse in the Conservative vote. Further south and west, the Liberals swept forward against the Conservatives with Wales a particularly positive area with gains in Denbigh and Merioneth.

Grimond was generally pleased but knowing the Party faced another four or five years in Opposition, decided he could not continue to lead for the whole term. At the first gathering of the new Parliamentary Party on October 20th, he informed his colleagues he would be stepping down within six months. The stage would be set for the first contested party election in a generation and at least three MPs thought they had a chance of victory.
 
Extract From: Life in Sixties Britain" by Malcolm Sutcliffe (published London 2016)

"The 1960s were a time of political scandal and the destruction of reputation. Hard on the heels of Profumo came the Thorpe Affair which rocked the surging Liberal Party to its core and destroyed the career of a man who once seemed destined to become the successor to the legendary Jo Grimond.

Grimond had announced his decision to stand down to colleagues soon after Labour's convincing 1964 election victory. Grimond had been leader for 14 years and recognised Labour would be able to serve a full four or five year Parliament (or so it seemed) so it was best for him to go sooner rather than later.

The Guardian claimed the Liberals "had an enormous reservoir of talent" among the Parliamentary Party but in truth the leadership options were few. Jeremy Thorpe was immediately cited as a front runner due to his telegenic appearances in the campaign and his huge popularity in the West Country. He quickly secured the support of Mark Bonham Carter and others. John Bannerman briefly raised the flag for Scotland but the real opponent emerged from Mid Wales in the shape of Emlyn Hooson.

Hooson had been in Parliament for 11 years but was still under 40. His astute leadership of the Liberal Democrats in Wales, aided by Lady Megan Lloyd George, had paid dividends at the recent election but beyond the Principality, he had few allies and seemed to be trailing Thorpe among MPs and activists in the spring of 1965.

When Peter Bessell, MP for Torbay and a close friend of Thorpe, got a strange telephone call in the night, he was concerned. Bessell "knew", though he would deny it vehemently later, of Thorpe's homosexuality which was illegal at that time and his relationship with one Norman Scott, would be model. The extent to which Thorpe's sexuality was known within senior Liberal circles would be unclear even forty years on when the relevant papers were declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. It seems unlikely Grimond knew the full story but it's clear other senior MPs knew a great deal more and there were allegations Thorpe was "protected" by friends in the Security Services.

Nonetheless, with a new power in Whitehall and big changes in the senior echelons of the Civil Service following the arrival of Wilson, it now seems Thorpe's "protection" was running out. Bessell's "contact" had irrefutable evidence of Thorpe's homosexuality and the story broke on February 21st 1965. Thorpe immediately went to ground in North Devon as did Scott and there were those on the Labour side who were not unsympathetic to Thorpe's plight but the papers were soon in full cry demanding Thorpe and Scott be arrested.

Wilson had no real interest in the Liberals but some of his senior colleagues had liked Thorpe and persuaded the Attorney General not to proceed with a criminal prosecution. Attempts at a civil prosecution from some right-wing groups were denounced by Conservative leader Reginald Maudling but Thorpe was forced to resign in disgrace and the subsequent by election proved a humiliating loss for the Liberals with the Conservatives recapturing North Devon by just 364 votes in an early blow to Emlyn Hooson's leadership.

Thorpe and Scott fled to Brazil and became figures of some notoriety for a while - Scott was once seen having lunch with Ronald Biggs, one of the Great Train Robbers. As we now know, homosexuality was legalised by Home Secretary Roy Jenkins in 1967 but Thorpe and Scott remained in exile until Scott's death in 1978 from an overdose. Thorpe returned to England a broken man but time is a great healer. He found love again in the early 80s and found a new lease of life rejoining his beloved Liberal Party in 1988 and appearing to thunderous applause at the 1990 Conference. He became an active spokesman for older LGBT people and enjoyed a new popularity with the young appearing at the PRIDE events in London and elsewhere.

I visited Thorpe at his Devon home as part of the research for this book. Though well into his 80s now, he remains active and a testament to the social journey Britain has made since the dark days of the 1960s."
 
In hindsight, there seems an inevitability about Emlyn Hooson's accession to the Liberal Party leadership in 1965 even without the Thorpe Affair yet it didn't seem that way at the time.

Thorpe had become the darling of the Westminster scene for his flamboyance and wit but within the party, Hooson and his staunch ally JA Jones had always had a strong alliance. When Robin Day chose to back Hooson over Thorpe, it made the latter's task more difficult and many argue Thorpe might have lost anyway but his sudden withdrawal under the media spotlight in February 1965 paved the way for Hooson who defeated Bannerman 25-5 in the poll of MPs.

After the Grimond years, successful though they had been, Hooson was a breath of fresh air - he, along with Jones, Day and others had been the "Young Turks" of the 1950s who had rebuilt the party and returned it to political relevance.

In a surprising move of reconciliation to the Thorpe supporters, Hooson appointed the new MP for North Cornwall, John Pardoe, as the Party's economic spokesman keeping Jones as the Home Office spokesman and promoting Day to be the Foreign Affairs spokesman. The new team soon established themselves both inside and outside Parliament as a dynamic alternative to Wilson's technocracy and the moribund Conservatives. Another new MP to see early advancement was David Steel, just 27 years old who had wrested Roxburgh, Selkirk and Peebles from the Conservatives the previous autumn.

The Tories had replaced Douglas-Hume with Reginald Maudling in March 1965 though, ironically, the problems of the Liberals rather overshadowed the Conservative leadership election. Maudling started well with local council gains from the Liberals in May and the capture of Thorpe's North Devon seat in the by-election following Thorpe's resignation but the Conservative revival stuttered and stalled during the autumn of 1965 and into 1966 as Labour regained their composure and, with a strong economy behind them, established a solid opinion poll lead.

The Liberals had performed poorly in by elections in early 1965 with the shadow of the Thorpe scandal hanging over them but at both Hall Green in May and at Hove in July the Liberal candidates pushed Labour into third place with a solid 25% share of the vote albeit a long way behind the victorious Conservatives.

The death of Megan Lloyd George in May 1966 was a blow for the party and for Hooson who had come to respect and admire Lady Megan despite their philosophical differences. Hooson had begun to stake out his own direction for the Liberals with his Assembly speech in September 1965. He was trenchant in his criticism of both Labour and the Conservatives proclaiming a policy of "equal distance" but was supportive of devolution with extensive powers for both Scotland, Wales and even Ulster. This drew the ire of die-hard supporters of independence but weakened both Plaid Cymru and the SNP until the rapprochement of the 1970s and 1980s as the Liberals became the "sensible devolution party".

The Carmarthen by-election was a hard fought contest between the Liberals, Labour and Plaid Cymru but the seat was narrowly retained by Hywel Davies albeit with the majority slashed from 6,500 to 700. The other contests in 1966 and 1967 continued the pattern of strong Liberal performances but without success - second places in Honiton and Nuneaton hinted at future progress.

Hooson believed Wilson would go to the country in the spring of 1968 - the economy was going well though the balance of payments was alarming it was outside most people's immediate purview. London, if not the rest of the country, was swinging and the Conservatives were mired in irrelevance. Maudling faced internal opposition from Iain MacLeod and others who had backed Heath and Powell's appointment as Shadow Chancellor had not been as effective as some Tories had hoped.

However, both Powell and Pardoe ("Cassandra father and son" as they were dubbed by the Daily Express) continued to warn of economic problems. Labour had inherited a substantial deficit from the outgoing Conservative Government and had sought to borrow to bring that down but signs of a balance of payments and sterling crisis were looming and when the storm broke, it would have a shattering political impact.
 
The "Devaluation Crisis", as it would be called, rocked the Wilson Government at a critical time in the electoral cycle. Labour had planned an election in the summer of 1968 and for most of the period since the October 1964 election success, polls had shown the party to be enjoying a comfortable and rising lead over the Conservatives.

Indeed, a briefing paper circulated at the 1967 Labour Conference suggested a landslide was likely with seats to be gained from the Conservatives and Liberals.

The economy had been a nagging problem throughout the Wilson years. Labour had inherited a large debt and deficit from the outgoing Conservatives but rather than supply side reforms and tax cuts, the Government had resorted to infrastructure spending based on borrowing. The balance of payments had deteriorated as the country sucked in more imports notably from the booming West German economy and for the first time from the new rising star of Japan.

The deteriorating balance of payments situation worsened further in the autumn of 1967 as payments for new aircraft and ships became due and the inevitable run on the pound started in early November. Under pressure from the Bank of England and Cabinet colleagues such as Deputy Leader George Brown, Wilson refused to cut public spending believing higher prices on imported goods would act as a deterrent to British consumers and encourage them to buy more British goods.

The crisis peaked in mid November and on the 21st, Chancellor James Callaghan was forced to cut the cable rate from $2.80 to $2.40. The political fallout was devastating - Callaghan himself resigned days later and Wilson's infamous "this will not affect the pound in your pocket" broadcast did nothing to convince anyone. Labour's reputation for sound economic management lay in ruins and the polls began to show a steady erosion in the party's support to both the Conservatives and the Liberals.

The Liberals had watched the Devaluation Crisis with the same mixture of anticipation and incredulity as had much of the rest of the country. John Pardoe paid a generous tribute to Callaghan in the Commons and the Party quickly realised there would be no General Election in 1968 and Wilson might try to hang on to the autumn of 1969 in the hope of some improvement.

The raft of by-elections on March 28th 1968 confirmed the slump in Labour's fortunes - the Conservatives won the seats of Acton, Dudley and Meriden from labour but the Liberals polled strongly and took a strong second place in Warwick & Leamington. The local election results in May were appalling for Labour in London and the Liberals won seats on Councils where they had never had real representation such as Bromley, Camden, Islington and Lambeth.

John Creasey came within 200 votes of winning Oldham West in June while two weeks later, the former West Indian cricketer, Sir Learie Constantine, who Emlyn Hooson persuaded to stand as a candidate, polled a remarkable 31% beating Labour into third place but again both seats were gains for the Conservatives.

The 1968 Liberal Assembly met in buoyant mood though while those candidates facing Labour were optimistic, those facing the Conservatives (and that was the bulk of the Party's MPs) were more concerned. Hooson once again stressed "equal distance" but the bulk of his fire was directed toward Wilson and Labour and while Maudling was criticised, political observers were left in no doubt that if no party achieved an overall majority at the next election, an arrangement between the Conservatives and Liberals was a definite possibility.

There seemed little sign of a revival in Labour's fortunes and the internal crisis deepened with the loss of Bassetlaw on October 31st 1968. Labour blamed the intervention of a Liberal candidate who polled 10% but the collapse in the Labour vote spoke volumes.

Wilson knew time was running out and as 1969 dawned, Labour did to do something to rescue its poll numbers. Wilson went for a giveaway Budget in March and called the General Election for May 1st. At a special Liberal Conference, Emlyn Hooson prepared the Party for battle - little did he know how significant and challenging his first as party leader would be.
 
Extract from "The Hippy Election - the 1969 General Election in Britain" by Marcus Shawford, published London 1985

Harold Wilson was backed into a corner and his options weren't attractive. Technically, he could go on into the early months of 1970 but his real options were either the spring or autumn of 1969. Peter Shore, appointed Chancellor after the resignation of James Callaghan, presented a classic giveaway Budget in March 1969 and Wilson went to the palace days later to seek a dissolution from the Queen.

The Conservatives were eager for the fight though Reginald Maudling remained an unconvincing public figure. Younger Conservatives such as Iain MacLeod and Margaret Thatcher wanted the Party to adopt a more fiscally conservative stance but in truth the party remained wedded to Butskellism but with more competency than Labour had provided in Government. The Conservatives also hoped to claw back some of the losses inflicted by the Liberals in 1964.

Emlyn Hooson, like Maudling, was preparing to fight his first General Election as Party leader even though he had been an MP for 16 years. Hooson had presided over a policy of "equal distance" between Labour and the Conservatives but many believed he was already seeking the ground for supporting a minority Conservative administration. This had not gone unnoticed within Liberal Party ranks and Hooson had been forced to grant all MPs a vote on any post-election support arrangement.

The priority for the party was to defend some of the 30 seats held against the inevitable Conservative revival notwithstanding any opportunities that might be provided from Labour's collapse. An NOP poll two weeks from polling day gave the Conservatives a 10-point lead over Labour and led to headlines in the pro-Conservative press proclaiming a possible landslide for Maudling. Oddly enough, the poll had the effect of suppressing any talk about post-election arrangements. It did show the Liberals polling around 20%, a small increase on 1964.

For the first time, the three main party leaders faced an extensive hour long interview on both the BBC (Richard Dimbleby) and ITV (Reginald Bosanquet) across a range of issues. It was remarked generally that Hooson did well while Maudling had seemed diffident and even defensive at times. The avuncular Wilson had been forced into defending the Government's economic record which was difficult territory. As polling day approached, the Conservatives were confident of a win, the Liberals were optimistic for a good result and Labour were hoping it wouldn't be that bad.
 
The 1969 General Election was or would prove to be a significant watershed in British political history. It brought a sudden and dramatic end to five years of Labour Government and left the unlikely figure of Reginald Maudling as Prime Minister.

The Conservatives won an overall majority of 30 (including the Ulster Unionists) on a 38.4% share of the vote. Labour won 263 seats on 33.1% of the vote and the Liberals won 30 seats on 25.5% of the vote. It was a personal disappointment for Emlyn Hooson who had believed the Liberals could win 50 seats and hold the balance of power but the Conservative revival had proved too strong in key areas. The Liberals won six seats and lost seven and the biggest casualty was J A Jones whose seat in Dorset was recaptured by the Conservatives.

Nonetheless, John Pardoe is supposed to have telephoned Hooson on the day after the election and told him "the future is ours" and behind the lack of seats won was a story of advances made widely across England and Wales and some surprising gains such as Chippenham and Pembroke.

Thus, the Conservatives were returned to Government. In her memoirs, Margaret Thatcher, a junior minister wrote of the sense of opportunity and empowerment but then stated "no one that fine spring morning could have envisaged the storms that would batter us in the coming years". More prosaically, Ken Clarke, a newly elected MP who won the Rushcliffe seat from Labour, would write some 30 years later, "we wanted Reggie to be like Midas for whom everything he touched turned to gold. How wrong we were. Once he became Prime Minister, everything he touched turned to shit".

From the civil rights riots in Ulster in the summer of 1969 onward, almost nothing went right for the Conservative Government as it and the country were engulfed ina rguably the most turbulent political and economic spell of recent times.
 
and left the unlikely figure of Reginald Maudling as Prime Minister.

I am enjoying the timeline but I would rewrite the above in the interests of political/historical accuracy. It is not how it would have been seen on the day.

With the advantages of hindsight, we know Maudling to have been a somewhat shady politician, but none of this came out until about three years later (Poulson scandal) and even then he was only thought to be unfortunate in his business associates until 1977 (Peachey scandal). So, in 1969, you have a socially liberal Conservative who has been touted as a potential future party leader for over a decade (since 1955), one of the first members of the Conservative Research Department, one of the party's leading economic experts, former Paymaster General, Colonial Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, famously calm and effective in TV and radio interviews -a bit weak on foreign affairs and little or no defence background granted, assuming the office of First Lord of the Treasury and he is "an unlikely figure"?
Why would that be?
I think that he would have crashed and burned like Heath or Brown did myself. But that wouldn't have been obvious in 1969 any more than it was obvious when either of the other two became leader of their party or PM.
 
I am enjoying the timeline but I would rewrite the above in the interests of political/historical accuracy. It is not how it would have been seen on the day.

With the advantages of hindsight, we know Maudling to have been a somewhat shady politician, but none of this came out until about three years later (Poulson scandal) and even then he was only thought to be unfortunate in his business associates until 1977 (Peachey scandal). So, in 1969, you have a socially liberal Conservative who has been touted as a potential future party leader for over a decade (since 1955), one of the first members of the Conservative Research Department, one of the party's leading economic experts, former Paymaster General, Colonial Secretary and Chancellor of the Exchequer, famously calm and effective in TV and radio interviews -a bit weak on foreign affairs and little or no defence background granted, assuming the office of First Lord of the Treasury and he is "an unlikely figure"?
Why would that be?
I think that he would have crashed and burned like Heath or Brown did myself. But that wouldn't have been obvious in 1969 any more than it was obvious when either of the other two became leader of their party or PM.

Fair comment though Maudling's career was ended by his involvement with John Poulson in 1972. His Government will be "unfortunate" to say the least.
 
Extract from "Maudling in Retrospective" by Dominic Sandbrook, published 2009

History has not been kind to Reginald Maudling or his Government. Many blame him for the failure of Conservative ideas and thought in Britain and the long period since Britain enjoyed Conservative Government is largely laid at Maudling's door.

For Maudling himself, power brought little or no joy. Scandal and an early death, rumoured inaccurately to be suicide. For his Government, battered by an unprecedented storm of internal and external crises, disaster and defeat. For the Conservative Party, a protracted period in the wilderness. For Britain, a social democratic morass for a generation.

And yet it had started so well. Maudling has become Prime Minister in May 1969 on a tide of Conservative confidence and optimism. The Party had won a majority of 30 over other parties which on paper looked sufficient for a full 5-year Parliament. Maudling moved quickly to reward his main lieutenants - leadership opponent Heath was made Foreign Secretary with special remit for leading negotiations to join the EEC, a job he had held under MacMillan in the earlier part of the decade. Enoch Powell became Home Secretary and Iain MacLeod Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The honeymoon did not last as the summer of 1969 brought trouble from a source that would bedevil the Maudling and later Heath Governments for the duration of their tenure in office - Ulster. Protests from the Civil Rights Movement brought a violent response from the Protestant dominated police which prompted further disorder.

Northern Ireland Secretary William Whitelaw announced a military deployment following a request from the Stormont Government in August 1969 and, to the cheers of many Catholics, the British Army appeared on the Falls Road, the Shanklin, the Creggan Estate and right across Ulster.

Whitelaw wasn't blind to the effective apartheid of Northern Ireland politics whereby Protestants occupied senior positions and dominated the Police with Catholics largely excluded but the Conservatives were allied with the Ulster Unionists and with a majority of only 30, the last thing Maudling and Whitelaw could afford was a rift with Stormont but in effect that's what happened from early 1970 onward as IRA violence rapidly escalated.

As far as the British economy was concerned, MacLeod had inherited a huge deficit and debt from Roy Jenkins and had moved quickly to reverse many of Labour's spending commitments in an Emergency Budget in July 1969 and at the Conservative Conference that autumn, Maudling made clear the restoration of law and order, joining the EEC and curbing Union power would be the three key priorities. Never the most effective of speakers, Maudling was however cheered to the rafters by the Party faithful.

Labour, on the other hand, found itself drifting into chaos after the defeat. Wilson was tired and ill and decided to stand down at the Party Conference. In an emotional speech, he urged the Party not to abandon its traditional principles of social justice and protecting the poor. Almost as soon as he had sat down, bookmakers were pricing up his successor. Callaghan was the favourite despite the disaster of the Devaluation Crisis - he had worked hard to rehabilitate himself following the events of 1967. The Left's standard bearers were Michael Foot and Richard Crossman while Tony Crossland and Roy Jenkins were the traditional Gaitskellites. Wilson refused to endorse anyone.

After an exhausting series of ballots, Callaghan defeated Foot 143-120 in the final round and emerged as the Labour leader. He moved swiftly to build a Shadow Cabinet with Foot, Jenkins and Crossman all getting senior posts.

With few by elections during late 1969 and early 1970, the Conservatives faced a potentially awkward contest in Bridgwater in the spring of 1970 but held off the Liberal challenge by 4,000 votes.

The 1970 local elections were good for the Conservatives but on 7 July, Chancellor Iain MacLeod was taken ill with what was initially diagnosed as appendicitis. Just over a week later he was discharged from hospital - three days later he was dead.

With him ultimately died the hopes and ideals of the Maudling Government.
 
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Maudling tried through 1970 to portray a more avuncular figure and fronted several advertisements for the conversion to decimal coinage which took place on 15 February 1971.

He was also keen to accelerate Britain's entry to the EEC and had tasked Edward Heath, who had performed a similar role under MacMillan, to carry out the negotiations. Georges Pompidou, who had succeeded De Gaulle as French President, had been well known to Heath as a Cabinet Minister and later French Prime Minister. Remarkably, with both France and Britain having new political leadership, the same became true of West Germany where Willy Brandt, who had been Foreign Minister to Ludwig Erhard in the Grand Coalition from 1966, took over a Chancellor in a new Coalition with the FDP following the Bundestag elections on September 28th 1969.

Maudling met Brandt and Pompidou on November 12th 1969 in London and the three effectively agreed Britain's membership of the EEC though that was the start of negotiations which would carry on over the next couple of years culminating in the United Kingdom, along with Denmark and Eire, joining the EEC on 1st January 1972. The accession Treaty would need careful managing through the Commons but it more strongly exposed Labour divisions than Conservative ones and with Liberal support, the final Treaty was passed on July 6th 1971 with a majority of 145 in the Commons.

Relations with Washington improved as Maudling met Nixon in the summer of 1969. Britain was still unwilling to participate in Vietnam but Nixon was now determined to extricate America from south east Asia or at least to reduce the footprint of the commitment. Maudling also met Leonid Brezhnev in early 1970 and publicly supported Brandt's Ostpolitik which marked a clear shift in West German attitudes to Moscow.

The Trade Unions had not taken well to the fall of Labour in 1969 though arguably their refusal to accept "In Place of Strife" was a contributory factor. Relations with the new Maudling Government were perfunctory and meetings with Industrial Secretary Margaret Thatcher were frosty at best. Thatcher was determined to curb Union power but the Conservative Manifesto had been quite vague on the subject. However, backed by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and other think tanks, Thatcher quickly produced the Industrial Relations Act and announced it to much fanfare at the 1969 Conservative Conference.

The Act was part of the Queen's Speech and after considerable debate came into law on August 1st 1970. It severely limited Union power including a ban on secondary picketing and proposals to tighten Union ballots and provide an opt-out for individuals thus ending the "closed shop". The TUC under Vic Feather was incensed and the leaders of the biggest unions, Jack Jones, Hugh Scanlon and Joe Gormley formed a united front in opposition during 1970 with strikes called before the act went into effect.

When a Dockers' dispute in November 1970 led to violence, Police arrested five Dock Union leaders and charged them with being in breach of the Act. The arrests became a cause celebre with the dockers ending up in Pentonville Prison but widespread union and non-union opposition eventually led to a repeal of the Act in the autumn of 1971 and the resignation of Margaret Thatcher who moved to the backbenches as a fierce critic of the Government.
 
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