Appendix B, Part XI: As the World Turns
At the dawn of the twentieth century, the very height of British imperial power, a small but vocal and enthusiastic minority of the chattering classes at Westminster, led by the quixotic Liberal Unionist Joseph Chamberlain, were agitating for an evolution of the Empire from its traditional form into a cooperative
Imperial Federation which would return legislators representing not only the UK but also her Dominions beyond the Seas - initially only the “civilized” pre-WWI White Dominions (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, and South Africa), but eventually all of the territories spanning the length and breadth of the Empire. This did not happen before World War I, which would prove nearly as devastating to the relationship between Britain and her Dominions as the conflict itself had been in terms of lives lost. From that point forward, the Empire - having reached its territorial zenith as the result of gains made in that war - began to drift apart, until it was
forced apart after World War II, due to a variety of internal and external factors. An increasing number of Britons believed that their future lie across the channel, with the continent that had for so long been the object of their vexations, as opposed to beyond the seas with their former countrymen.
Certain political forces on the continent, however thrilled and grateful they might have been at the part which the British had played in their liberation from Nazi oppression, were not quite so willing to embrace them as partners in peacetime. Once bitten, twice shy, so the expression went, though in the case of the United Kingdom it took
three rejections (two from French President Charles de Gaulle, and a third as the result of protracted negotiations between the EEC leadership and British PM Harold Wilson) before Perfidious Albion finally sought friends elsewhere, and even then, their decision to remain a part of the EFTA and seek closer trade relations with the Commonwealth Realms in the meantime was perceived on all sides as a stopgap measure. What the British government had not expected was that a number of key geopolitical realignments would be taking place in the 1970s which would have dramatic repercussions on the ultimate destinies of not only the UK, but all of the continental powers as well…
With the collapse of the Backwards Bloc in the 1970s, its three European members (Spain, Portugal, and Greece) floated the idea of seeking membership in the common market, also known as the EEC, so as to have greater access to foreign goods, services, capital, and people. The three countries had already reduced trade barriers amongst themselves during the Backwards Bloc years, with Spain and Portugal in particular forging what had become known as the “Iberian Compact”, essentially a common market in miniature (albeit, and unlike the EEC,
without erecting trade barriers with the rest of the world). As Portugal was already a member state of the looser EFTA, this in effect made Spain an indirect member of that bloc as well. As a result of the Iberian Sunrise, both countries agreed to pursue a joint destiny for themselves: they would jointly seek admittance to the EEC, or failing that, Portugal would lobby for Spain’s entry into the EFTA. At first the EEC easily seemed the more logical destination for the two Iberian monarchies, with a much greater upside, but gradually the EFTA came to look more and more attractive, as a result of the changes transforming both the EEC and the EFTA beginning in the 1970s, and into the 1980s.
Both blocs first enlarged from their charter rosters in the 1970s: the EEC admitted Denmark in 1973; the EFTA admitted Iceland in 1970, Ireland at British behest in 1974 - as the Celtic republic had originally sought to join the EEC alongside the UK, but effectively could not do so without them - and Finland, an associate member of the EFTA since 1961, joined as a full member shortly thereafter; both moves were in response to the oil crisis and the Humphrey shock, amongst other economic uncertainties in the mid-1970s. This brought EFTA membership to ten states, though the UK remained the only economic Great Power within the bloc, with the world’s sixth-largest economy in 1975. [1]
The EEC, by contrast, though it was willing to admit the very large British economy in 1973, eventually changed direction, choosing to focus on economic, social, and political integration of her existing members, the Inner Six plus Denmark. These included
three of the world’s ten largest economies: West Germany (#4), France (#5), and Italy (#7). [2] Ironically, Denmark, which arguably stood the most to gain from stronger ties with her more prosperous partners in the EEC, would consistently prove a thorn in the side of integration, its population seeming to prefer that the EEC retain what had up until that point been its primary function as a common market, despite the lofty (and vague) ambitions for “ever closer union” that had been a part of the vision for the bloc since its inception. Many EEC bureaucrats would ruefully remark in the years to come that admitting Denmark in the first place was probably a mistake, but there was no going back now. EEC politicians and economists began to float the idea - which, in various forms, had dated back to the nineteenth century - of a common currency for all EEC states. This began in earnest with the development of the European Unit of Account in 1974, in direct response to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Politicians in the EEC were enthusiastic about monetary union, and were eager to make lemonade out of the lemons that the Humphrey shock had handed them, despite the fact that monetary union was made
more, not
less, difficult with the severe fluctuations brought about with the switch to a pure fiat system. However, when US President Reagan once again tied the value of the US dollar to the Gold Standard in 1977, policymakers within the EEC suddenly found themselves facing a golden opportunity of their own, and monetary union became the driving force of economic and political policy within the EEC from that point forward. Though the EEC continued to invite new applications for membership, expansion had become a definite sideshow to integration. Danish trepidation over having joined the European project, meanwhile, continued to rise.
Spain, Portugal, and Greece all had reservations about joining a trade bloc where monetary union was on the cards - EEC bureaucrats had gone so far as to insert clauses into draft treaties with these countries making “eventual membership within a European Monetary Union and exclusive usage of its monetary unit for currency” a pre-condition of further negotiation. That gave all these countries pause, and in the end, they joined the EFTA - Spain in 1979, and Greece in 1980 - for the time being. Spain in particular was a boon to the EFTA as the world’s 11th-largest economy in 1980, more prosperous than any other EFTA country save the UK. Greece was no slouch either, with an economy comparable in size to existing members Portugal and Finland. The microstate of Liechtenstein, whose only borders were with two EFTA members (Switzerland and Austria), also joined the bloc at this time, giving the EFTA proper a membership of thirteen states.
The UK was in a unique situation - as the EFTA, unlike the EEC, did not preclude independent trade agreements with states outside of the bloc, the UK retained trade reciprocity with many of her former colonies, a legacy of the old Imperial Preference system. Nowhere was this more to British benefit than in Australia - one of the world’s ten largest economies in 1975. The two countries had always shared very close cultural ties, although Australia’s population had diversified from its predominantly Anglo-Celtic ancestry after World War II (90% of Australians were of British and/or Irish heritage in 1947) to include settlers from elsewhere in Europe (most notably Italians) and, increasingly, Asians. In joining the EEC, the UK would be required to abandon her trade links with Australia, and British politicians were very much aware of this at the time, but gave it little thought, even though it would have devastated the Australian economy. It was only
after the fact, once it was clear that Britain would
not be joining the EEC, that commentators sought to make political capital out of existing trade links to the Commonwealth - “our brothers and sisters beyond the Seas”, who had fought in the same wars, spoke the same language, and shared the same culture - and how these would have been jeopardized by EEC membership. Gradually, this helped turn the tide of public opinion against joining the EEC, especially once the Commonwealth Trade Agreement began to take shape.
The largest economy in the CTA other than the UK itself was Canada, the world’s eighth-largest economy in 1975. Had Canada remained under the leadership of Liberal PM Pierre Trudeau, who disdained Canada’s British heritage and did his best to de-emphasize or even eliminate it from the workings of the Canadian government (a trend kickstarted by his predecessor, Lester Pearson, in the 1960s), it would have been unlikely that Canada would have taken so dominant a role in the emergence of the “New Commonwealth”, as it was sometimes called, in the 1970s. However, Tory PM Robert Stanfield was from Nova Scotia, culturally far more British than Trudeau’s Francophone province of Quebec, and he recognized that the best way to reduce the influence of the American economy and culture over that of Canada was to find ballast to it - Trudeau had favoured Red China to this end, but Stanfield realized that the Commonwealth in general and the UK in particular would be
much better partners. The Commonwealth Trade Agreement turned out - much like the European Coal and Steel Community of the 1950s had been for the EEC - to be the first step in something altogether grander and more all-encompassing than a mere trade treaty.
Many economists and even some politicians in Canada favoured trade reciprocity with the United States, but others feared that their much stronger industrial base would cripple the Canadian manufacturing sector, putting hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of jobs at risk, which would easily subvert the benefits from cheaper and more accessible goods and services. The UK and particularly Australia seemed far less remote a threat to Canadian manufacturing interests. Canada was particularly interested in including the various Caribbean island nations that were part of the Commonwealth in the CTA, as crops were grown there which were impractical in the colder Canadian climate - even after the Turks and Caicos had joined Canada as its third territory in 1981, the economy of that small island chain was based largely on tourism and (as increasing numbers of well-off Canadians made their homes there in the winter) the service industry. Canada also had a large Caribbean diaspora population who favoured closer economic ties with their homelands. Jamaica was the most populous Commonwealth Realm in the Caribbean, with nearly 2.2 million people in 1981; Trinidad and Tobago followed with a population of 1.1 million. No other Commonwealth Realm in the Caribbean had a population of over 500,000. Jamaica had a particularly important role in the formation of the CTA as the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 1975 - the event considered the “birth” of the trade bloc - was held in its capital of Kingston. The host of the event, Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley, opposed protectionism and favoured closer trade links with the mature, much larger economies who formed the core of the CTA, and most other Commonwealth organizations. These were the “Big Three” of the UK, Canada, and Australia. In 1975, they were three of the world’s ten largest economies, providing their bloc with an important distinction which was, appropriately enough, shared with the EEC.
As was the case with the EEC, the CTA evolved over time. Initially, the organization committed itself solely to the reduction of trade barriers, but there was also some discussion of possible regulatory functions for the distribution of goods across the “Common
wealth Market”, as commentators, particularly in the UK, came to refer to it. Free movement of people, an important pillar of the EEC, was also discussed, and this suggestion was met with the most enthusiastic response - the problem was that the Big Three were all eager to have their citizens freely live and work amongst
their countries, but all feared the problem of opening their borders to the citizens of impoverished Caribbean countries. This was a barrier to a number of moves toward integration - the notion suited the Big Three, and perhaps a select few others, but only when it was limited to just
them. As a result, the Big Three began to meet privately amongst themselves to discuss economic and political matters. The first meeting was held in 1977, shortly after the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting that year in London, and ostensibly to discuss the particulars of the Commonwealth Space Agency; however, the CTA and how it could serve as a springboard for further economic integration was also a topic of discussion.
New Zealand, despite its much smaller population than the big three (just over 3 million in 1981; the UK had over 56 million, Canada had 25 million, and Australia had 15 million), was a similarly mature economy, and usually shared similar objectives and goals with the Big Three, as well as from possible expansion of the CTA into other competencies. However, it was excluded from the “brain trust” meetings for reasons of optics; if New Zealand, one of the old “White Dominions”, were excluded from the meetings, they would look less like a conspiracy of the oppressors against the oppressed of the former Empire, although many did indeed make this argument regardless; New Zealand’s exclusion merely served to annoy the Kiwis.
What eventually became known as the
Commonwealth
Free
Movement
Area, or
CFMA, emerged as the result of discussions beginning at the first formal Big Three Meeting in 1978, held shortly after Canadian PM Robert Stanfield won re-election, at his official retreat in Harrington Lake, in the Gatineau Hills across the Ottawa River from the nation’s capital. [3] All three PMs in attendance agreed that
all citizens of all three countries should in principle have freedom to live and work in any of the three, which would supersede the existing paradigm of emigrants from (usually) the UK merely having the right of return. By 1978, all three countries had net immigration, and there was little fear of a flood of emigrants from one or two of them to the others as the result of such an arrangement. All three agreed that New Zealand should also become a charter member of the CFMA, but had strong reservations with regards to the Caribbean Commonwealth Realms; emigration from the region to all of the Big Three countries was already very high in the 1970s, and that was
without full freedom of movement. It was, therefore, decided at that meeting that developing the Commonwealth into a more elaborate organization with further-reaching competencies should be a “layered” process: membership of the CTA should
not automatically confer membership of the CFMA, but, by contrast, membership of the CFMA
was contingent on existing membership of the CTA. Another mechanism agreed upon at this meeting was the right of any and all existing members of any Commonwealth organization to veto further enlargement. After the meeting concluded, New Zealand was informed of plans for the CFMA and showed an interest in becoming a member.
However, it was during the early-1980s that plans for integration of the core Commonwealth Realms into a multi-layered, quasi-confederal organization had to clear some important ideological roadblocks. The Commonwealth of Nations could not be depicted as a true brotherhood of equals so long as the UK Parliament at Westminster retained the ability to amend the constitutions of other Commonwealth Realms at will, and without recourse on the part of those Realms. It was important to the UK - and to politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - that the New Commonwealth could not be compared to the Empire of old. To this end, the concept of
patriation - the Commonwealth Realms, former Dominions, bringing the ability to amend their own constitutions home from Westminster - entered the public consciousness. Nowhere more than in Canada did this concept catch on with the chattering classes.
PM Stanfield’s recently-deceased predecessor, John Diefenbaker, had in 1960 introduced what he considered the crowning legislation of his career, the Canadian Bill of Rights, the first codified human rights law in Canadian history. However, as a mere piece of federal legislation, it was no more sacrosanct than any other; it could easily be repealed by any subsequent government. Although this was an accepted fact under the Westminster system (and indeed, the UK Parliament had made
parliamentary supremacy a cornerstone of the British political system), Canadians, who were influenced by Americans and
their inviolable, supreme, and enduring Constitution - which was
far more difficult to amend than by simply ramming a bill through Congress - were disquieted by this notion. The Quebec referendum of 1980 gave those who favoured constitutional reform a once-in-a-generation opportunity to forward their cause, and many seized it. The ensuing 1982 federal election (fought after the Quebec provincial election of 1981 had returned a federalist government to the National Assembly, ensuring their likely cooperation with plans for constitutional reform) was premised largely on differing visions for a Canadian constitution. The Liberals favoured vesting additional powers in the federal government at the expense of provincial governments, enshrining affirmative action and other redistributive programs, mandating official bilingualism, and vesting the power of judicial review upon the Supreme Court of Canada [4]; the Conservatives already had a “blueprint for a Constitution” in Diefenbaker’s Bill of Rights. Stanfield’s personal popularity, his record of solid stewardship, his willingness to work with politicians across the ideological spectrum, and his more developed constitutional platform (PC campaign materials included free copies of the Canadian Bill of Rights, and Tory attack ads focused on the vagueness of what a Liberal Constitution might look like) resulted in his third consecutive majority government, the first (and only) for a Tory PM since Sir John A. Macdonald himself in 1887.
After the 1982 election, Stanfield immediately set to work drafting the Constitution. Ultimately, the process would take two years. The Canadian Bill of Rights, the centerpiece of the new constitution, was indeed modeled heavily on Diefenbaker’s 1960 legislation, though with some modifications. Official Bilingualism was codified, with the famous “Stanfield Compromise” (French-language services must be provided by the federal government in all regions where the French-language population exceeds the national average) formally enshrined:
“The official languages of Canada are English and French. The federal government must provide services to its citizens in at least one of these languages, whichever is the language spoken by the larger proportion of native speakers in a given census division. In census divisions where the proportion of native speakers of one of these two languages is in minority, but exceeds the national average, services must also be provided for speakers of this language. Services provided by all of the provinces for their citizens must meet these same criteria, with the exception that the proportion of native speakers of the minority language must exceed the provincial average. If the provinces lack the capacity to provide minority language services for their citizens, the appropriate resources will be made available by the federal government, the other provinces, or private enterprise, where appropriate. Separate funds or surcharges may be raised by these governments to provide for these services if necessary.” [5]
This provision provided for the rights of French-speakers throughout Canada, and for those of English-speakers in Quebec, albeit only within select regions. The final clauses were inserted at the insistence of Quebec’s Premier, who was only willing to agree to provide English-language services for Anglo-Quebecers if the provincial government did not have to pay for them,
or if these Anglo-Quebecers were willing to pay what quickly became known as the “Anglo tax”, which passed in 1985, after he had won re-election; the constitution was interpreted by the Supreme Court as meaning that the tax could
only be used to fund providing minority-language services, and this alarmed many activists who feared that this was promoting a form of segregation (and indeed, the equality section of the Bill of Rights had to be revised to specifically permit this form of discrimination, again at the behest of the Quebec delegation).
One of Stanfield’s more minor alterations, which (in typical Canadian fashion) was the most widely reported
and the most widely disputed despite its complete lack of relevance to the everyday lives of the Canadian people, was a name change for the nation-state. The name
Dominion of Canada naturally implied that it was a
British Dominion, and indeed the group of former colonies granted home rule in the late-19th and early-20th centuries (Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland) were formally known as the “British Dominions Beyond the Seas”. Therefore, Stanfield decided to give Canada the title it had originally sought at Confederation in 1867:
Kingdom of Canada, a title which was ultimately rejected at that time for fear of provoking the United States. By 1984, the United States, though still a staunchly republican nation, was secure enough in its own station that it was nothing more than mildly bemused at Canada deciding to call itself a Kingdom. After all, it
was a monarchy, and Elizabeth II had explicitly reigned as Queen
of Canada since her coronation in 1953. Stanfield presented Canada’s formal name change to Kingdom of Canada as a reflection of Canada’s status as a mature, fully independent constitutional monarchy. This was met with opposition among republicans - predominantly
Québecois - and indeed, the Quebec Premier had originally opposed this name change (the draft constitution referred to the Kingdom of Canada in long form, though “hereafter Canada” in most of the document), but Stanfield insisted on it in exchange for several other concessions. Monarchists, needless to say, were delighted, and some even proposed creating a parallel Canadian peerage, though only granting such titles to the Royal Family (for example, something along the lines of creating Charles, Prince of Wales, as Prince of Ontario, and referring to him in that context as heir apparent to the Canadian throne); however, this was never seriously entertained by the government. The name of the national holiday, Dominion Day, was changed to
Canada Day, effective July 1, 1984 (a Friday).
The
Kingdom of Canada Act 1984 passed through the British Parliament in that year, which among its other provisions formally relinquished any further right by that Parliament to amend or otherwise alter the Canadian constitution. Two other acts, the
Commonwealth of Australia Act 1984 and the
Kingdom of New Zealand Act 1984, passed immediately thereafter, in sequence; Australia, being formally titled a Commonwealth instead of a Dominion, declined to change its name to
Kingdom as Canada and New Zealand had done. Stanfield’s crowning legislative achievement finally having come to pass, he retired from politics at the age of 70, and after 12 years as Prime Minister (pending the selection of his replacement), leaving a wide-open leadership race for his successor. The frontrunner from the very beginning was the young, charismatic, and urbane Finance Minister, Brian Mulroney. Mulroney was in many ways Stanfield’s opposite: he was a member of the “Blue Tory” wing of the party, which represented Toronto and Montreal business elites, as opposed to the “One Nation” Red Tory wing. Stanfield was, especially by the standards of a politician, straightforward and genuine, whereas Mulroney was very slick and polished. However, that sheen - and the massive financial edge he had over his rivals with the support of those business elites - enabled him to win the PC leadership convention, and with it, the office of Prime Minister. Mulroney was a strong advocate of free trade, having been a staunch supporter of not only the CTA but also the CFMA, and he also spoke frequently of increased trade reciprocity with the United States, although there was a great deal more resistance to lowering trade barriers with an overbearing southern neighbour than there was lowering them with more distant countries whose exports were far less of a threat to Canadian farmers and manufacturers.
It was early in Mulroney’s tenure as PM that the CFMA finally came into force. The four charter members were the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. All member states of the CFMA would retain full border controls, but could not refuse to admit a citizen of any other CFMA member state to reside and work in their own state for an indefinite duration - in effect, full freedom of movement between the four countries. There was some discussion of broadening the CFMA’s powers further - for example, allowing citizens of all member states to vote in local elections, a right already enjoyed in most capacities by Commonwealth citizens in the UK - but this would come later. For the time being, the CFMA had already enshrined itself as the “Core” of the Commonwealth. In essence, it allowed New Zealand to join the Big Three without actually
enlarging the Big Three - indeed, once the CFMA came into existence, formal Big Three meetings ceased altogether, as further discussions could continue within the context of CFMA policy meetings instead. Enlargement of the CFMA was an issue which would face considerable debate in the years to come: most of the Commonwealth Realms, and even many Commonwealth republics, were for obvious reasons very eager to join the CFMA - India, in particular, despite having spent the last several decades drifting away from the UK with regards to foreign policy, showed considerable interest in joining both the CTA and the CFMA. India had a massive population base - on track to lap China in the coming decades, given the higher birthrate - and a seemingly endless supply of cheap labour. For this reason alone, the CFMA states were tremendously cautious of admitting India to either organization, even though business interests in the CFMA and the CTA at large were in favour.
The United Kingdom, the largest economy and - despite all of the political and constitutional changes throughout the Commonwealth in the 1970s and 1980s - still the effective head of the association, had the benefit of
also being part of the EFTA, as it had been since 1960. The UK, uniquely, represented the intersection between these two treaty zones, being the only state which was a member of both. The resulting free trade area to which the United Kingdom had exclusive access was 75% the size of the archrival EEC, roughly half that of the United States, and approximately the same size as that of Japan, the world’s third-largest economy. Unsurprisingly, many of the countries within each trade bloc flanking the UK wanted in to their overlapping free trade zone, although there was surprising resistance in certain corners, particularly the Republic of Ireland.
Many Irish - particularly those who retained their ancestral disdain for their one-time imperialist oppressors - continued to resent the UK for effectively blocking their entry into the EEC. The Irish national identity was built largely on what it was
not - British - as on what it
was in and of itself, a value it shared with another Anglosphere country with a much larger and more overwhelming neighbour, Canada. Ireland had become a republic in 1949, at which time the British Commonwealth and the Commonwealth Realms (those which recognized the British sovereign as their head of state) were synonymous, resulting in their expulsion from the organization; ironically, this would be the impetus toward relaxing these rules, allowing the modern Commonwealth of Nations to become an organization of states with a common cultural heritage, and not necessarily a common head of state. Nevertheless, Ireland had never rejoined the Commonwealth despite this change in membership criteria, and being a member state of the Commonwealth was a precondition to joining the Commonwealth Trade Agreement (indeed, all existing members were Commonwealth Realms). Ireland nevertheless was in many regards - cultural, ethnic, historical - far more similar to the member states of the CTA than any of the
actual other member states of the Commonwealth. Irish politicians put out feelers towards entering into some kind of trade agreement with the CTA as early as the late-1970s, but the mere suggestion of rejoining the Commonwealth in order to do so would be touching a third rail in Irish politics. The eventual solution was a bilateral treaty between every member state of the CTA and the Republic of Ireland, which had the side benefit of proving to the Irish the benefits of being part of a looser, less restrictive trade association. Had Ireland joined the EEC, it would have been unable to conclude a trade agreement with the CTA on its own - now it stood alongside the UK at the CTA-EFTA intersection. Ireland then signed
another bilateral treaty, this time with the CFMA, allowing its citizens to live and work anywhere within not only the United Kingdom, but also Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and vice-versa. This set of bilateral treaties enabled both sides to have their cake and eat it too: Ireland became a
de facto member of the “core” Commonwealth without formally re-joining the organization, whereas the CTA and CFMA membership did not have to worry about having “snubbed” countries within the Commonwealth by passing them over to admit Ireland, as Ireland hadn’t technically “jumped the queue” and been admitted to either organization.
Nevertheless, the CTA and the CFMA became campaign issues in the elections held in the two largest economies belonging to that bloc: Canada and the United Kingdom. Mulroney’s government had enjoyed a bump in the polls following his taking office in early 1985, and as he was a new PM, there was some pressure for him to win a mandate of his own rather than coast on Stanfield’s 1982 mandate, even though the Canadian constitution allowed him to stay in office without calling an election until 1987. To this end, he called an election in the spring of 1986. John Turner, who had been Leader of the Opposition since 1975, retired after losing the “Constitutional Election” in 1982, becoming the first Liberal leader in a century to have never served as Prime Minister. [6] In the leadership convention that followed, which maintained the Liberal Party tradition of alternating Anglophone and Francophone leaders, Jean Chretien, the MP for Saint-Maurice, Quebec, was chosen as leader. [7] He benefitted from his contrasts to Mulroney, and indeed to Turner; he had humble origins and a folksy image (embodied in his nickname, “the little guy from Shawinigan”), and enjoyed tremendous personal popularity. Although he had only enjoyed a relatively minor role in Cabinet in Trudeau’s government (as Minister of Indian Affairs), he had become one of leading figures in the Shadow Cabinet, also playing a key role in the “Constitutional Election” of 1982, where his passionate, if inarticulate (his childhood bout with Bell’s palsy famously, as comedians joked, rendered him “unable to speak in either of Canada’s official languages”) vision for Canada’s future earned him plaudits. [8] From then on, his future leadership of the party seemed inevitable. Slightly older than Mulroney, he was 52 when the election campaign began. The two smaller parties, the NDP and Social Credit, retained at the helm the men who had led them into the 1978 and 1982 campaigns, Lorne Nystrom and Andre-Gilles Fortin, respectively.
Still, Chretien couldn’t compete with the very strong economy and Mulroney’s charisma - Mulroney was also a fierce debater, demolishing Chretien in both the English- and French-language debates. As a result, Mulroney won the election easily; most of the new seats created through redistricting by the 1981 census went PC, allowing his party to increase its majority in the House of Commons without actually poaching a great number of ridings from the other parties. Nonetheless, Mulroney’s popularity with Quebec voters enabled his party to do better in Quebec than Stanfield had ever done - Chretien himself came perilously close to losing his seat, surviving only because he was able to come up the middle between the Tory and Socred candidates in his riding. The Anglo elite in Montreal completed their decisive shift towards the PCs in this election, the Tories sweeping the West Island (which included Mulroney’s riding of Dorval), and - in a definite wound to Liberal pride - Trudeau’s old riding of Mount Royal, not won by the Tories in over a half-century.
The UK, on the other hand, was a very different story. The Tories at Westminster had been in power since 1974 - nearly as long as the Tories in Ottawa, who had formed government since 1972, but unlike their Canadian brethren, the UK Conservatives went into the election with the same old leader - Willie Whitelaw. Although 1986 was a rematch of 1982 - Leader of the Opposition David Owen, for Labour, had held on to power despite the left-wing schism in his party - Owen still managed to carry the impression of being a fresh face, and an antidote to the staleness in the upper echelons of British politics. The British economy had been slower to recover from the late-1970s recession than Canada or much of the rest of the world, despite her ambitious trading and migratory agreements. Whitelaw remained personally popular, but his party machine wasn’t so fortunate.
A number of Cabinet reshuffles would eventually result in John Major, an MP since 1974, being named to one of the Great Offices of State as Chancellor of the Exchequer. [9] His relative youth despite his prominence in Government - aged just 40 when he became Chancellor - and his reputation for competence and for being a dull, steady pair of hands - meant that he was being groomed as Whitelaw’s successor by the power brokers at the Conservative Central Office almost immediately. Whitelaw had been PM for over a decade by this point; his tenure had exceeded the length of that of his immediate predecessor, Harold Wilson, in late 1983, making him the longest-serving Prime Minister of the twentieth century. [10] However, Major’s reputation for extreme dullness (as the son of a circus performer, he was often said to have been the only child who ran away
from the circus to become an accountant) was completely shattered by the revelation of a shocking affair with a Tory backbench MP, Edwina Currie; both parties were married with children. Overnight, this destroyed Major’s prospects for moving next-door to No. 10, Downing Street, from No. 11, although in the end he
did vacate No. 11, as he resigned his position; neither Major nor Currie would seek re-election in 1986.
The Major-Currie sex scandal was merely the culmination of a number of monocle-popping incidents which shook public faith in the Conservatives - being the party which had always placed placed greater stock on family values and upholding the social contract. The
British
Board of
Film
Censors (
BBFC) found themselves mired in controversy when one of the films they had certified for release was discovered to contain several frames of what appeared to be an erect penis in one scene, in clear violation of the informal (and unacknowledged) “Mull of Kintyre rule”. [11] This was brought to the general public’s attention through the relentless campaigning of social activist Mary Whitehouse, known for her staunch conservatism. There was considerable controversy over whether the object (for lack of a better word) being referred to actually
was an erect penis - it was depicted only in silhouette, and not in such detail as to settle all doubt, as it was out of focus. Some commentators suggested that the offending object could merely be something phallic in shape, such as a candlestick; however, critics dismissed this possibility as far-fetched, and indeed, polls showed that many who were shown the offending images did believe that they depicted an erection. Whitehouse’s influence with Conservative voters could not be understated: her lobbying was instrumental in the passage of the Protection of Children Act 1978, which had banned child pornography. [12] As a result, between the BBFC fiasco and the Major Affair, the Tories began to fall far enough in the polls that Labour consistently placed ahead of them.
Once it became clear that Owen could win the next election, what support remained for the splinter Democratic Socialist Party continued to evaporate - especially as that party (as is so often the case for parties on the far-left) began to splinter. The Labour Party thus won a small but workable majority in the general election of 1986, with the Tories remaining a fairly robust opposition; Whitelaw resigned as leader of the party shortly thereafter, his successor due to be chosen in the autumn. The Liberal Party, in the end, performed about as well in 1986 as they had in 1982; the collapse of the DSP saw Labour regaining many of their left-wing strongholds, but the Liberals also gained seats at the expense of the Tories, in constituencies where the electorate was not demographically predisposed to vote Labour, but where outrage at the perceived immorality of the Conservative Party was deemed sufficient to turf their MP in protest. David Owen thus became the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; unlike the
last changeover between Labour and the Tories, this one would see the new government pursuing a consistent foreign policy with the old one. Owen was eager to strengthen trade links with the CTA and the EFTA, even floating the idea of a fully amalgamated CTA-EFTA “super-bloc”, with London serving as its financial and economic centre. However, despite having once been a proponent of joining the EEC, he did not favour the direction that integration was now taking in that bloc, and despite the Whitelaw government continuing to pay lip-service to the notion of someday re-opening negotiations to join, Owen formally dropped this pretence, making clear in a speech on a state visit to Paris - in the presence of the President of France, no less - that “the economic and political future of the UK lies firmly outside of the EEC”.
Despite their divergent destinies, both blocs seemed to be evolving in lockstep with each other. As the CFMA came into force, so too did the European Currency Unit, or the ECU (₠) - popularly spelled and pronounced
écu, particularly in French, as it shared its name with several French coins. Only member states of the EEC were allowed to mint
écu coins and print
écu banknotes, and not even all of these chose to do so; Denmark had negotiated an exemption for itself, and continued to use the Danish krone, albeit at an exchange rate pegged to the
écu. [13] The EEC quickly negotiated agreements with the microstates of Monaco, San Marino, and the Vatican City, allowing each of them to mint and print their own
écus and use them as legal tender - these countries were far too small to ever meet the criteria for EEC admission under normal circumstances, and thus special ones were deemed to apply. The Glenn Administration in the United States informed the EEC of their plans to once again eliminate the gold standard and convert the US dollar to a pure fiat currency, giving the
écu a deadline for when it could come into force before
more turbulence would close the window of opportunity, which was January 1, 1982. Later that year, the “Glenn shock” once again destabilized world currencies, but the EEC countries stuck it out.
The surprising success of the single currency inspired those who dreamed of a United Europe to push for further integration, or “more Europe”, as the notion was sometimes described. This included a central bank - which became the primary objective, so as to better organize and control the new currency - and a common defence policy. France pushed hard for the common defence policy, having left the NATO command structure and wanting to head a purely European military alliance. However, all of the other member states of the EEC - including West Germany - were already NATO members, and there were concerns that an additional military and defensive alliance between them would be superfluous.
However, and as it happened, co-operation and co-ordination with regards to military technology often took place beyond the borders and auspices of the EEC or any other, similar, supranational organization. The greatest example of this was the ongoing relationship between Britain and France, dating back to the Entente Cordiale of 1904, eighty years earlier. The two used their combined influence and might to force through a carrier-friendly Eurofighter Typhoon, which would eventually serve as the primary fixed-wing vessel for many of Western Europe’s (ground-based) air forces, in addition to the air arm of the Royal Navy and the
Marine Nationale.
The 1980s were also a productive time for aircraft carriers. The
Invincible-class light carriers (
Invincible,
Illustrious, and
Indomitable) were commissioned, one after the other, in this decade; all three were in active service by 1986. However, these shiny new carriers, though they were by this point the
only carriers serving in the Royal Navy, were considered a mere appetizer to the main course which was yet to follow: the two
Entente-class supercarriers.
Truly these ships were worthy of the term
supercarrier - they would be larger than any other carrier ever built by any navy other than that of the United States, although this distinction - which was originally unique to the
Entente-class - would be shared with the first Soviet supercarrier, also under construction, originally named
Riga but renamed for the recently deceased Soviet Premier
Leonid Brezhnev when she was launched in 1985 (as the General Secretary had died in 1982, after her keel had been laid down). [14] Both ships had very similar dimensions in all respects: displacement at maximum load (roughly 60,000 metric tonnes), length overall (about 300 metres), beam (about 75 metres overall, and half that at the waterline), and draught (over ten metres deep). However, the
Entente-class carriers had two decisive advantages over the
Leonid Brezhnev: their nuclear propulsion (necessary for Britain and France, both of whom maintained far-flung colonial possessions, as opposed to the Soviet Union, which effectively had no overseas territories), and their surfaces being fitted with catapults, which allowed them to launch heavier, more traditional aircraft; the
Leonid Brezhnev was limited to a cheaper, lighter ski-jump design. The nuclear propulsion for the Entente-class vessels was truly worth noting: it marked a first for any vessel in any navy other than that of the United States. Construction would probably take close to a decade, but naval enthusiasts and nationalists alike were thrilled: the
Entente-class carriers were truly great ships fit for Great Powers, capable of meaningful power projection.
The UK was far from the only Commonwealth Realm to enlarge her fleet in the 1980s. The two
Commonwealth-subclass vessels built by the United States for Canada and Australia were completed in 1986. In Canada, one of Brian Mulroney’s first acts as PM was to change the planned name of the new carrier from
Diefenbaker - which remained controversial - to
Macdonald, after Canada’s first Prime Minister and Father of Confederation; Macdonald, like Mulroney, had been a Tory, but unlike other long-serving Tory PMs (apart from the still-popular - and still-living - Stanfield), such as Borden, Bennett, and Diefenbaker, Macdonald retained a mostly positive legacy and continued to be widely liked by Canadians. HMCS
John A. Macdonald, as she was properly known (though she quickly acquired the informal nickname “the John A.”) was commissioned with great fanfare in the summer of 1986, departing from CFB Halifax for a tour of the Arctic. Her motto, officially in Latin and a variant of the national motto, translated to English as “from sea to sea to sea”, emphasizing her role in protecting Canada’s coastline along the three oceans - the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Arctic - that it bordered.
Australia received HMAS
Australia shortly after the
Macdonald had arrived in Halifax; the two sister ships set sail from where they had been built simultaneously in Pascagoula, Mississippi, but the voyage to Sydney was a much longer one from the US Gulf Coast, though fortunately the ships were capable of traversing the Panama Canal by design. Naturally, it was winter in the Southern Hemisphere when the
Australia arrived there, and thus the Australian government could not send
Australia on the equivalent prestige mission (to the Australian territorial claim on the continent of Antarctica) until the new year, after enough of the relentless ice floes had melted away. Instead,
Australia went on a tour of every major city as she circumnavigated the country - and the continent - for which she was named. She met with enthusiasm wherever she went - it helped that she had the undivided attention of naval enthusiasts Down Under, as her predecessor, HMAS
Melbourne, had been retired in 1982.
Outside the Commonwealth, the two
Iberia-class carriers built by the Spanish shipbuilding firm Bazan for the two Iberian countries -
Principe de Asturias for Spain and
Infante D. Henrique for Portugal - had both been launched by 1986, built one after another on the same slip. They were still being fitted out, but would be serving their respective navies in active roles before the end of the decade. Spain - which had lost her last far-flung overseas possessions with the coming of democracy as a result of the Iberian Sunrise in the 1970s - planned for the maiden voyage of the
Principe de Asturias to be a modest Australian-style coast-to-coast tour, followed by a sojourn to the Canaries. Portugal, on the other hand, planned to send the
Infante D. Henrique (already referred to by her inevitable nickname
O Navegador - the Navigator) on an ambitious tour of all her far-flung insular possessions, from the Azores through the Panama Canal to Macau and Portuguese Timor, and back again - albeit by travelling in the opposite direction from whence she came, allowing for a circumnavigation of the globe, which was after all a long-established tradition of Portuguese mariners. [15] Given the long stretches of ocean that such a tour would entail,
O Navegador would have to make several detours at friendly ports along the way, including Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Perth in Australia. Controversially, she would also have to stop in South Africa, a state with which Portugal continued to maintain good relations despite the increasingly tight economic sanctions being imposed upon the apartheid regime by the rest of the free world.
The free world was changing in many ways, and at trajectories which had been completely unanticipated a quarter-century earlier, at the height of the Cold War. The United Kingdom had shifted from a tentative Continental orientation back to the overseas orientation which had defined the British Empire, but the New Commonwealth was a very different beast, one which promoted cooperation and consensus-building between equal partners. The EEC was not able to enlarge itself to consume all of Europe, despite multiple attempts, but focusing on integration was showing great promise for the future. Britain and France, despite being leading members of opposing economic blocs, were able to continue working together on projects which were in their mutual interest, the fruits of an alliance which had lasted for over 80 years, and showed no signs of ending anytime soon. Canada, which had spent so many years distancing itself from its Imperial heritage, now embraced its status as a core member nation of the Commonwealth. Canada and Australia continued to enjoy a very good working relationship with the United States despite their increasing ties with the United Kingdom. Spain, Portugal, and Greece were all taking important steps toward democracy and economic diversification despite having been charter members of the authoritarian Backwards Bloc in the not-too-distant past. Long-term plans, ironically, had a funny, funny way of changing course in an instant, and it behooved the leaders of world governments to maintain the flexibility and the strong working relationships needed to take advantage of the unexpected.
---
[1] Among the other member states of the EFTA, Sweden (at #16), Switzerland (#18), and Austria (#23), were all in the top 25 world economies, with Norway (#26) just below this threshold. New member Finland was the world’s 30th-largest economy in 1975; Ireland, by contrast, was not within the Top 50. (Portugal, which remained a member of the EFTA despite forming the Backwards Bloc, was the world’s 34th-largest economy in 1975.)
[2] Among the other EEC countries, The Netherlands (#14) and Belgium (#17) were no slouches either, and thus allowed the EEC to claim a full quarter of the world’s twenty largest economies; even newcomer Denmark (#24), though the weakest economy in the EEC outside tiny Luxembourg, was only a laggard in relative terms, not absolute ones.
[3] The Harrington Lake retreat, quite conveniently, has two guest cottages in addition to the main cottage (and one for the staff), and therefore the British PM stays in the
upper guest cottage, and the Australian PM stays in the
lower guest cottage.
[4] The Liberal policy is extremely similar to their OTL plans under PM Trudeau in the early-1980s, which resulted in the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. ITTL, Trudeau plays a key advisory role in the development of the Liberal platform for constitutional reform, and actively campaigns in support of it, much as he continued to meddle in constitutional affairs after his retirement from federal politics IOTL.
[5] You may be wondering where this convoluted formula stands in comparison to OTL. IOTL, Canada was enshrined as a
fully bilingual country, where services must be provided in English
and French nationwide, which put many Anglophone civil servants who lived in largely Anglophone regions of the country (particularly the West, where it was a contributing factor in the “Western alienation” which rose as a political force in the 1980s) out of work. Quebec, on the other hand, discriminated against its Anglophone minority with increasing severity in the 1970s IOTL, starting with Bill 22 (passed in 1974 by the
federalist Liberals, who ironically enjoyed - and still enjoy - broad support from Anglophone voters), and culminating in Bill 101, passed by the separatist Parti Quebecois in 1977. This resulted in a mass exodus by many of the province’s Anglophones, who resettled in the Greater Toronto Area; most of Montreal’s financial interests moved to Toronto as well, providing that city (which would likely otherwise meet much the same fate as many
American Great Lakes cities of the 1970s) with a critical boost which has allowed it to overtake Montreal as the country’s economic hub. ITTL, the “Stanfield Compromise” is both convoluted and prone to loopholes, but it
does represent a compromise (or
rapprochement, if you prefer) of a sort, and sometimes optics can mean everything in politics.
[6] IOTL, Edward Blake, leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (and, therefore, Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition) from 1880 to 1887, was the last (non-interim) leader of that party
not to become Prime Minister until Stephane Dion stepped down from the leadership after his defeat in 2008. (Dion was followed by Michael Ignatieff, who lost his seat in the 2011 election and returned to academia - and, eventually, to the United States, from whence he came.) Turner, for his part, briefly served as PM when he replaced the retiring Pierre Trudeau in 1984 - only to lose to Mulroney in that year’s federal election, one of the largest landslides in Canadian history.
[7] The Liberal tradition for alternating between Anglophone and Francophone leaders is one which is almost as old as the party itself. After Edward Blake (Anglophone) succeeded Alexander Mackenzie (Anglophone) in the 1880s, every subsequent succession has adhered to this formula:
- Laurier (Francophone)
- Mackenzie King (Anglophone)
- St. Laurent (Francophone)
- Pearson (Anglophone)
- P.E. Trudeau (Francophone)
- Turner (Anglophone)
- Chretien (Francophone)
Notably, this chain is identical IOTL and ITTL, though the dates of succession vary in the case of Turner and Chretien. IOTL, it has endured to the present day:
- Martin (Anglophone)
- Dion (Francophone)
- Ignatieff (Anglophone)
- J. Trudeau (Francophone)
[8] Chretien’s Bell’s palsy paralyzed one side of his face, and thus when he speaks, it is out of only one side of his mouth. This is immediately obvious visually. Some good-natured ribbing about this (the “fluent in neither of Canada’s official languages” crack is borrowed from a common joke IOTL) is considered acceptable (Canadian political humour can be surprisingly mean-spirited), but
a famous PC attack ad against Chretien in the 1993 campaign which drew attention to his disability was widely considered to have crossed the line. Not coincidentally, the PCs (who were the incumbent majority government going into the election) were subsequently reduced to
two seats (no, that isn’t a typo) and only 16% of the vote (they had won 43% in 1988 - Canada uses FPTP and thus a majority of the popular vote is not needed to win a majority of the seats). It should be noted that Mulroney, the PM in the 1980s IOTL who had resigned before that election, will
not make the same mistake his successor did in this regard.
[9] John Major was, IOTL, elected to Lambeth Borough Council in 1968, but was defeated in 1971. ITTL, he holds on in 1971 - and then runs for the vacant Streatham seat in 1974, which he wins. (Bill Shelton, the Tory MP who won the seat IOTL, here loses Clapham in 1970, thus depriving him of the springboard needed to contest this seat). This gives Major a decade’s experience in the Commons before he becomes Chancellor - the same amount as he had IOTL before he was appointed to the position (in the twilight years of his predecessor’s tenure).
[10] Recall that Wilson served ITTL from October, 1964, to February, 1974, without a break: approximately nine-and-a-half years. ITTL, the last PM to serve a longer term than Whitelaw (and Wilson before him) was the Marquess of Salisbury, who held three non-consecutive administrations (1885-86, 1886-92, 1895-1902) for a total of thirteen years in government, a record which no subsequent Prime Minister has bettered even IOTL. (The last Prime Minister with a longer
unbroken term was the Earl of Liverpool, who governed uninterrupted for nearly 15 years, 1812-27, which is also the third-longest Premiership
ever in its own right (behind Walpole and Pitt the Younger).
[11] The
“Mull of Kintyre” rule, which for the record the BBFC formally denies ever actually existed, essentially states that no penis depicted onscreen shall have an angle from the vertical in excess of the Kintyre peninsula. Much like the informal “one F-word” rule for the MPAA, it is extremely arbitrary but is nevertheless an unusual example of a clear guideline from an agency otherwise renowned for its vagueness.
[12] The Protection of Children Act 1978 began life IOTL as a private member’s bill proposed by a Conservative MP after a petition in support of it started by Whitehouse’s organization received well over a million signatures. Her advocacy for the bill, and support of its passage, is generally considered the greatest positive to result from her extremely controversial and polarizing career in social activism. ITTL, the bill is put forward by the Home Secretary, becoming law shortly before the 1978 general election.
[13] Similar to IOTL, where Denmark has negotiated a permanent exemption from the Euro but remains a member of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, or ERM.
[14] Unlike the
Entente-class, the
Leonid Brezhnev is based on an OTL design, which (like most Soviet military projects) has a long and convoluted history: the lead ship was renamed four times over the course of her development. Ordered as the
Riga, she was renamed for
Brezhnev after his death in 1982; after Gorbachev, who denounced Brezhnev’s legacy, took over in 1985, she was renamed
Tbilisi; by 1990, when she was commissioned, the writing for Georgia’s long-term membership in the Soviet Union was no doubt on the wall, and she was renamed one last time, following the Nimitz-class paradigm, for a WWII Fleet Admiral,
Nikolay Kuznetsov. Today, she serves as flagship for the Russian Navy. It should be noted that, IOTL, the
Kuznetsov is
not considered a supercarrier - at least, not by Wikipedia. [CITATION NEEDED]
[15] The intended route of circumnavigation is approximately as follows:
- Lisbon
- Azores
- Panama Canal
- Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
- Okinawa, Japan
- Hong Kong and Macau
- Port Hera, Dili, Portuguese Timor
- Perth, Australia
- Durban, South Africa
- Sao Tome and Principe
- Cape Verde
- Madeira
- Lisbon
---
Thus concludes this ante-penultimate update of
That Wacky Redhead, the final instalment of Appendix B, and the first update on this third iteration of the forum (or as I like to call it, the “New New Forum”). Thanks, as always, are due to
e of pi for assisting with the editing of this update, as well as to
Dan1988,
Thande, and
Electric Monk for their additional input! This update was a
lot of fun for me to write, and not only because the material being covered is extremely topical at the moment! I want to say that this will be the last
long update, since there are only two left and I plan for both of them to be more direct and focused, but you never know. In the interim, you can expect a guest post from longtime friend to the thread
Dan1988, covering some of the material featured in this update from a radically different perspective. Until then, thank you all so much for reading!
(Fun fact, for those of you who appreciate this sort of thing:
this update is one of the very few to mention neither TWR nor her studio.)
