A Very British Scandal
1979-1982:
Margaret Thatcher (Conservative)
1979 (Minority with Liberal and UUP Confidence and Supply) def. James Callaghan (Labour), David Steel (Liberal)
In a close run election Margaret Thatcher would emerge from the fray with only a plurality of seats in 1979. She had beaten Callaghan in the popular vote, but had an edge of just one seat over him in the Commons, and many initially speculated that Callaghan might continue to lead a minority propped up by the Liberals and the SNP (an idea Callaghan himself balked at). In the end, however, a promise for rolling devolution and the possibility of electoral reform was traded for control over the treasury as David Steel lay back and thought of England, propping up the Conservatives with the help of the UUP. The initially two years of Thatcher's premiership went poorly; monetarist policy increased unemployment and embittered industrial workers, and her polling position slipped, particularly after the 1981 breakaway of the "Social Democratic Party" from Labour, who held a tentative first place in most polls. Early talk of an "SDP-Liberal Alliance" was stamped out by David Owen who, in the words of Denis Healey, "
would rather Cyril Smith pissed in his face than compromise with the Liberals" - with Steel seen as Thatcher's lapdog, Williams and Rodgers agreed against Jenkins' private sympathies.
Will, Thatcher had a chance of winning the election if she could turn the economy around, with Michael Foot dragging Labour down like a lead balloon. That was until, under increased media scrutiny, Cyril Smith's 1981 "Dodgy Deal" with Turner and Newall was discovered by the Daily Mail - at first the Mail thought they merely had a financial scandal which might bring down an MP in the party propping up the government, but further investigation revealed far darker truths about Cyril Smith. The Rochdale MP, it was discovered, sat at the centre of a network of pedophiles and blackmailers in the very heart of the British establishment. Six months of investigative journalism would dredge up every last sordid chapter of "Britain's Watergate", and in February 1982, a damning front page article entitled "Sexminster - The Deviants who run Britain" would appear in the Mail as sympathetic police officers were given every daring secret by the paper. Cyril Smith was dead in the water, arrested as he entered the Commons. Jimmy Saville was exposed and arrested trying to flee the country that evening. Leon Brittan (though never concretely proven to have even involved) was destroyed. Garry Glitter was nearly lynched by an angry mob. Worst of all, however was the discovery of senior MI6 figures tied to the whole scandalous affair who, shortly after being summarily dismissed, all fled the country or committed suicide. In their place they left the "Dodgy Dossier" known in British political lore as the "Black Book".
The Book contained the names and details of thousands of peodphiles and victims of blackmail, ranging from figures accused of consorting with Rent Boys, dodgy police officers taking bribes or kick backs, corrupt politicians, and homosexuals - anyone with any secrets in Westminster was revealed. Good men like Norman St John-Stevan went down alongside the most vile of pedophiles. In the three weeks after the initial article was published as it was met with responses from other papers and Daily Mail followups, the Westminster establishment (especially the Conservatives) were gutted. Protests engulfed Westminster, particualrly after it was discovered Thatcher had tried to use her position to protect Brittan and, perhaps, some suspected her mentor Keith Joseph. Thatcher's heavy handed response, the coverup, and the collapsing economy sealed her fate. In April 1982 Thatcher was thrown out by the party's MPs (those not in jail cells) as the Liberal Party imploded over the Smith allegations and the UUP backed away from the Tories. The years of Thatcherism were over, and with them the British establishment.
1982-1982:
Edward du Cann (Conservative minority)
30 days. That was all the time Edward du Cann had to save the Conservative Party. Considering what he inherited, du Cann should be ranked amongst the best Tory PMs - polls in April 1982 showed the party in single figures, and by the May election he had raised this to the high teens (primarily through the mass suspension of all members accused of immoral acts). Nevertheless, this was a last ditch fight - the Prime Minister knew that the party would lose the election, now it was more a question of whether it would actually win any seats. A breakaway party led by Ian Gow and backed by Enoch Powell had been talked about in early July, but du Cann had managed to prevent this (for now), but the "morality men" has insistently pushed out anyone even vaguely under suspicion, leading a number of as yet untried (but deeply unpopular) ex-ministers like Leon Brittan to run as "Independent Conservatives" heavily splitting the vote. Despite it all the PM held out that 50 seats could be won through the party's fantastic organisational skills and entrenched constituency support. It would be a disaster, but not an apocalypse, and perhaps some other man could build a respectable third party out of the ruins and one day re-enter government.
General Galtieri would steal 42 of those seats.
The invasion of the Falkland Islands was the last straw. The Conservative Party died on a windy April day when Argentina occupied those southern Atlantic islands and British blundering and hesitancy lost them forever. Edward du Cann knew it was all over from then on, as any progress he had made slipped away from, him. Even the prosecution of any cabinet colleague found even vaguely guilty would not be enough, nor would overt but reluctant condemnation of Thatcher's heavy handed tactics. When election came in May the Conservatives won 17% of the vote and 8 seats. Du Cann was gone, Thatcher was gone, the cabinet were all out. Harold Macmillan took the leadership from the Lords but resigned after less than a year and was succeeded by David Waddington, a bland figure who continued the party's terminal decline. Edward du Cann, inheritor of the scandals of the 70s and early 80s, was to be the last Conservative Prime Minister. Only the shambollic death of the Liberal Party saved the Tories from the utter humiliation of last place.
1982-
0000: Roy Jenkins (Social Democratic)
1982 (Majority) def. Michael Foot (Labour), Edward du Cann (Conservative), David Penhaligon ('Cornish' Liberal), David Steel ('Official' Liberal)
Roy Jenkins and his Social Democratic Party had been destined to take the government from "SmithGate" onwards. Labour was still too radical under Foot and Benn, and the SDP was the only party of genuine, total, outsiders (save, of course, for its four leaders). Promising a new and transparent government, absolute scrutiny over the actions of politicians and the pursuit of justice against any and all perverts or deviants in high office. Jenkins himself found such a strategy abdominal, but Owen insisted upon it, and alongside his attacks on the government's refusal to seize the Falklands again this quickly made him Britain's most popular politician. In the general election the Conservatives won 8 seats, Labour 272, and the Social Democrats 340 (a majority of just 32 despite the odds). Only two Liberals kept their seats, Penhaligon because he was backed by the SDP, and Steel by a hair's width. The Liberal Party, after decades of decline, was dead in the wake of Cyrl Smith's crimes. David Steel was the last Liberal MP, serving until the 1986 General Election, whilst Penhaligon would join the SDP in 1985 and would eventually serve as Home Secretary.
As Roy Jenkins entered government as the first SDP Prime Minister, he promised a brand new nation which would build a civilised society out of the ruins of the scandalous old order. Even as Gow, Powell, and Tebbit led a hard right breakaway from the collapsed Conservative Party and Labour drifted to the hard left under first Heffer and then Benn things looked bright and the future dimly positive. It was a bittersweet ending to centuries of tradition which would culminate in the total transformation of British politics and society (Proportional Representation came in in 1988, an elected senate in 1992, and finally the abolition of the monarchy under Michael Meacher's government in 1998). Still, nothing could ever be worse than the sinister cabal of pedophiles which had been found lurking at the heart of Britain's institutions. The dirty laundry of the 1970s and 1980s had been very publiclly aired, and even though new hope for reform was born from it, British politics dark heart had been forever exposed.