House of Cards
Through early June and towards the middle of the month, the business of Parliament continued. The Queen’s Speech had been voted for with Labour supported by Alliance votes and the government was getting underway trying to fulfil its election promises and running into problems as they did so. The growing Peoples Front was no more than a nuisance and there wasn’t that much attention being paid to Northern Ireland either. Parliamentarians were busy and party politics continued.
Amendments to the Queen’s Speech were put forward in the Commons concerning several matters though quickly a Conservative amendment was tabled when it came to the EEC and British Withdrawal which attracted attention. There was enough support gained for a vote to be scheduled on the issue and this became rather contentious. The tabled motion put before the Commons was for there to be a referendum on whether the country should pull out with the voters having a say on the matter. Labour had given the people a vote in 1975 when they were last in government and wanted to leave the trade bloc and the Conservatives wanted that done again. The intention behind the amendment wasn’t fully honest though; there was an eagerness from Tebbit to be seen to doing something important and to maintain his position after his election defeat. Furthermore, it was realised that such a vote, which could go either way if some of the whispers about the Social Democrats were true, was going to cause serious problems for Labour in the Commons and bring embarrassment. The Liberals and the Social Democrats weren’t formal coalition partners in any shape or form; there were also possible Labour rebels to the government whip as well with the EEC not something that Labour MPs were united on. The public might not have shared the excitement in Parliament over the EEC but that didn’t really matter.
The Liberals were firmly wielded to voting with the government on the issue and the number of Labour rebels was thought to be very small. Promises were made to those who might rebel on other issues and reminders made that they as Labour MPs would be voting with Tebbit’s Conservatives. When it came to the Social Democrats, their views on Europe were well-known but it had been the decision of the party leadership, pushed by their parliamentary partners with the Liberals, to vote against the amendment. The Conservatives were causing trouble and angling to strike a blow against the government. Moreover, the talk within the Social Democrats was remaining with Labour in the Commons to influence events from inside rather than be left impotent outside: British Withdraw could be moderated, even stopped, at a later date, there was no rush.
On the evening of the vote, which took place on June 11th, Labour was focused on their Militant MPs and making sure that they turned up to vote with the government. In addition, attention was paid too in trying to gain extra votes from smaller parties such as those with the SNP, Plaid and the SDLP whose views on the EEC were similar to that of Labour. Several Labour MPs were committed to rebelling or abstaining – the latter was better than the former for the government – but the measures elsewhere were hoped to work. The Liberals were all onside and the Social Democrats were meant to be as well.
The government lost the vote. Even with SNP votes, they failed to defeat the tabled amendment due to their own rebels and also a total of eight Social Democrats (more than half of the MPs with that party) either abstaining in the case of two or outright voting for the proposal for a second referendum put forth by the Conservatives by the other half a dozen.
The immediate fallout were two resignations from the Social Democrats while Labour was still in shock. The chief whip resigned for he had failed to keep his MPs in-line and then Jenkins announced that he couldn’t continue; the former president of the European Commission was no fan of British Withdrawal but he had been humiliated and his parliamentary party was out of control. Owen and those others who didn’t toe the party line stated afterwards that they believed in the right of the people to choose either a pull-out from the EEC or continuing membership. They were not tied to the government in anything more than confidence and supply and this vote had been on neither. There was talk too of how the economy had taken a hard hit upon the result of the general election and British Withdrawal would doom the country to poverty as a result of an end to free trade with Western Europe. There was no explanation given on why they had been as deceiving as they had been though in how they had acted like they had; they didn’t want to talk about how they had lied to John Cartwright, the departed chief whip, nor not told their party leader or allies either what they were going to do. Labour rebels were just as culpable as the faction of the Social Democrats that Owen now led but they had not deceived their party whips or leadership beforehand. They weren’t making dramatic public statements afterwards nor holding press events or desperate to get media interviews.
Christmas had come early for the Conservatives. They got an immediate morale boost. Tebbit still had those with their knives sharpened and ready to be drawn for his leadership but he had kept his MPs in-line – well… his whips had – and afterwards there was a feeling that the party was on the path to return to power. There was talk of bringing about a vote of no confidence in the government soon enough and seeing how that would turn out. The infighting within the Social Democrats, the Alliance and Labour (less so with the latter but still present a little) all pointed to a good chance of success with such a strategy. A victory there would be far more significant than one of the EEC and the now stalled British Withdrawal: Labour’s one month old government was susceptible at the moment to collapse and with that, there would have to be another election, wouldn’t there?
That political drama with the vote in the Commons and then the recriminations afterwards went on through the rest of the working week. During the coming weekend, a Peoples Front march had been refused permission to take place in London due to the Trooping of the Colour. No one in power gave that any serious thought due to the political machinations ongoing in Parliament after the vote on the Monday night.
Where there were those on the extreme left who had been radicalised and had been slowly arming themselves, the same had been occurring on the far right too over the past few years with again no serious major outlet for their potential.
The odious National Front (NF) had been beset by splits during the Thatcher’s premiership. With Tebbit in Downing Street there were growing internal problems within the party yet, at the same time and somewhat contradictorily, the NF was on the ascendancy as well. The situation with urban riots, oftentimes (though not always) with racial issues among them, was fertile breeding ground for them. The British National Party (BNP) had broken off and taken away a lot of active, important members with them and started to gain recruits like the competing NF did. The two preyed on feelings of division and tension within communities, sweeping in with their messages of hate and putting all perceived wrongs right if only they were listened to. That would start with the race issue, naturally. The NF had always been beset by the problem that when met with greater force than their own showing of force, their weakness was shown. Big-mouths would be the first to disappear when counter-protesters showed up or communities forcefully stood up to them and while skinheads might fight for a few moments, they would often fold too. The police would gain no reprimand from their superiors for cracking skinheads either. First known as the New National Front, the BNP had the same difficulties.
Then came the idea of the Political Soldier. It was an ill-defined faction within the NF though had some adherents in the BNP. The concept was still forming but it was one of violence and revolutionary zeal at its core. Younger members of the NF and the BNP indoctrinated new recruits in tenants of the overall idea. They spoke of a broken Britain which had suffered the humiliation in the Falklands and blamed the minorities… which was laughable. The message was passed on that Ulster was next to be lost and then the rest of Britain would break up too. Racial purity could stop this yet minorities had powerful allies supporting them in the form of the establishment of all political colours. Fighting them was what needed to be done.
Political Soldier factions formed in both the NF and the BNP. There were some who soon lost interest as well as others who spoke to the authorities as informers. The passion expressed by adherents to the Political Soldier idea didn’t seem to concern those in authority but the sudden moved to gain weapons plus learn how to use them did. Some measures were taken to stop the efforts and seize weapons already in far-right extremist hands, but it wasn’t enough. Twice arms caches coming from fellow extremists in Northern Ireland were stopped and arrests made. What the authorities didn’t get a-hold of were other weapons that the NF and BNP armed factions, those Political Soldiers, were gaining from less dramatic sources: the theft of privately-held weapons taking place with sudden frequency and ended up being stored ready to one day be used. There would be an issue with training and also ammunition too, but guns were gathered.
Patriotic groups, those who saw themselves as on the right but certainly not extremists, had been around in the 70s. GB75 had been one man talking big, Civil Assistance had been real. Such movements (imagined and real) had folded with Thatcher’s win in 1979, but towards the end of the Tebbit premiership several sprung up again. Patriots saw themselves as those who would step up in the event of a major national crisis where there was paralysis from officialdom. The violent riots where outbreaks of unrest were cracked down hard upon leading to later unrest brought to another halt, an endless cycle, were looked at with concern. Where there were industrial strikes too that attracted flying pickets bringing with that state action to put a forceful end to that was in again looked at with worry. Tebbit was seen as strong by many people, but Patriots weren’t so sure. The wind was blowing towards something big happening. Tebbit’s premiership had been regarded as radicalising people nationwide against him and the whole establishment rather than bringing a sense of security as was the feeling elsewhere. A revolution was feared with the disastrous consequences of that. In such a situation, Patriots would step in when chaos came and keep the country running, bringing order if they had to.
The peaceful Labour return to power wasn’t anticipated by Patriots. The wide variety of groups who were geographically separate and with different ideas hadn’t read the mood of the voters right. They quickly saw something they did fear though: the loony left in-charge and then a street movement run by those demanding further drastic measures for the government to take. These threatened not just the health of the country but democracy itself, such was how Patriots saw this. Disunited at first, Patriots started to come together. They had financial connections with some well-off, even rich backers and also shared printing facilities for their mountains of literature predicting dire outcomes that they undertook with zeal. There was a lot of harmony at the top during discussions and mergers between leaders who were united in alarm at the present and especially the future more than seeking personal power and the vanity of being at the very top.
Members of the Patriots, the multiple groups nationwide, came from all walks of life and backgrounds. It took all sorts to join the various groups who came together as the Patriots and those who did tended to stick with it for some time either. By mid-1984, they had a large following of serving policemen and military personnel and others such as prison officers and retired people from those professions as well as reservists who belonged to the groups; there was too a Masonic presence that brought together organisational skills and sturdy supporters. The Patriots in their various forms were not illegal nor were they high-profile. They didn’t attract official attention nor commit acts of violence. They didn’t have a violent ideology. They were present though and worried at what they saw happening. They weren’t going to act unless something else happened first to bring chaos and disruption. Should that occur, bringing order in a welcome manner was their only official intention of their individual group and when they started to unite under the banner of the Patriots.
Not everyone who joined the Patriots thought like that though and a lot of those people used the cover of a peaceful organisation to plot and plan their own actions for when that need came to commit them. It was an organisation with manpower and access to legally-held firearms, plus people who knew how to use them. For those with nefarious ideas, that was appealing.
The British Armed Forces were apolitical. Like the Monarchy, the military was a political football at times to be kicked around and whose victories & defeats were treated like a game.
The Falklands had been a defeat for the British Armed Forces. Arguments could be made that the war hadn’t been lost on the battlefield just at home and there had been a very good chance of military success if it hadn’t been for the Hermes being hit, but that hardly mattered overall. British ships had sailed home with troops aboard them and the islands in the South Atlantic remained in Argentinian hands. Humiliation came and there was a lot of demoralisation across those who wore the uniform. Recruitment and retention was hit hard. The losses suffered in the Falklands – Hermes was the most dramatic but not the only loss – weren’t replaced. Tebbit’s government had remained committed to spending plans and the military as a whole but there was no zeal when it came to defence issues after that defeat. The NATO deployment in West Germany remained and there were troops in Northern Ireland involved in the security situation there; the mission was the same for the military in defending the nation. The Royal Navy took more of a knock than the British Army or the Royal Air Force but throughout the British Armed Forces, there was a feeling of shared shame at the defeat inflicted. There were those who pointed their fingers at the government to shoulder that blame and who should be ashamed – self-serving politicians! –, not those who served their country and were treated like they were.
The Labour victory in the election came as a surprise to the military. There was already an awareness of the party’s policies on defence matters but such things hadn’t been feared. The thinking among the generals and the admirals was that should Labour have been elected, they would hardly carry those out. The party was full of sensible people and those who understood the need for a strong military. Foot was no appeaser nor was Labour about to sell the country out to the Kremlin either. The manifesto was all fluff and none of those promises were any of the sort. Upon forming a government, Labour went to try to keep to their commitments that they had made to the electorate. Any idea that the people hadn’t voted for such ideas was rubbished by politicians; of course the people had.
Unilateral nuclear disarmament was not welcome yet still rather abstract to those in uniform. It didn’t upset many and those that it did realised that it was something difficult to achieve politically especially with a minority government relying on smaller parties. What was of more pressing concern were the ideas for ‘reorganisation’ of the British Armed Forces. A less reliance on professionals and instead reservists was what the new government had as its policy. A withdrawal from military facilities aboard (Gibraltar, Cyprus etc.) apart from those in West Germany was called for too. Capabilities for long-range deployments were to be cut. It was the offensive side of the military, the ability to act as a great power would, that the new government wanted to bring an end to. When it came to that reorganisation, there was a worry from those in uniform that while government policy itself was something that they didn’t agree with, worse was going to come later on with those opposed to the military in Parliament further moving against them on ideological grounds.
There was something else too: that reorganisation spoke of personnel cuts to those at the very top to get rid of the bloated senior military staff of so many generals and admirals.
However… the military wouldn’t dare act against Her Majesty’s Government (HMG). The British Armed Forces were servants of the crown and the crown’s ministers. That was a duly elected government. It would be unacceptable to do anything against HMG. There was no appetite generally for ‘stepping-in for the sake of democracy’ or ‘safeguarding the country’ like a few comments made by some at the top suggested in passing to others. Those who made such remarks were shot down and told not just that would never have support but it was near-treason too. The elected government wasn’t one of traitors. Blood wasn’t being spilt in the streets. The people had a functioning government. There was security and stability. The changes which were being proposed would have to be managed as best as possible and there was too the feeling that a new election would come soon enough.
One general and some of his adherents in uniform stopped sharing their thoughts with their comrades-in-arms. They talked among themselves instead and plotted and planned should the worst happen. All that they would do, the said to each other, was ‘act in the national interest’.