January-June 1977
The fall out from the assassination of West was huge. Following a straight leadership contest, James Molyneaux became the new leader of the newly renamed Ulster National Party and the new Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. His first move in office was to declare that the culprits would be “tracked down to the end of the earth and they will be brought to justice”. This poured fire onto the flames, causing riots over the new year period across the province, which had to be kept in check by the new Northern Irish Army. Over the period, there were sixty-two deaths, but only two men were ever brought to trial for murder, both Catholics.
Meanwhile, things were going awry in the SNP administration, with Donald Stewart resigning as Home Secretary over efficiency savings which would have meant 2,000 fewer police officers across Scotland. In his resignation speech, he decried the lack of leadership from the Prime Minister, Billy Wolfe stating that he was being influenced too much by factional elements in his cabinet.
This was a disaster for the SNP as the election was less than six months away. What they needed now, more than anything was unity across the board. That this was lacking was a major problem in their campaign to be the first elected government across the board in Scotland. Opinion polls were fluid, but on average, by the beginning of February, the Labour Party were on around 32%, the SNP on 31%, the Tories on 24%, the Liberals being on 9%. If things carried on in this manner, Scotland was in for a period of chaos.
Peter Shore had managed to calm things down in the United Kingdom. For the first few months of his premiership, there was not much political news. This was the case until March.
British Leyland, a part nationalised company, was a major employer in Birmingham, but was costing the government a huge amount of money simply to keep the plant open. The problems were exacerbated by a strike which was engineered on site.
The government, following frantic, but unsuccessful talks with the trade unions, declared that they had no option but to scale back the workforce in Longbridge. This caused a major strike, which threatened to escalate.
Shore declared that he would not be bullied and called for a meeting of the cabinet over the issue. This resulted in a heated argument within the cabinet over how the situation could be resolved, and upon its conclusion, the resignation of Denis Healey from the cabinet, declaring in his resignation speech that he feared that "what the Prime Minister intends as action is indeed inactivity".
The resolution was for a national commission on pay to be introduced and agreement that the broad principal should be implemented in Leyland that pay should be linked to production. Further talks were to be held with the unions, but on these terms.
Belfast was slowly getting into a worse position. By the end of March, certain areas of Northern Ireland were no-go areas for anyone with non-republican sentiments and during the period, the IRA were continuing a guerrilla war against the loyalist establishment.
In response on March 17th, St.Patricks Day, Norman Hutton made the Londonderry declaration, establishing a government paramilitary to counter the threat of the IRA. In addition to this, internment for suspected terrorists was to be brought back and a curfew was to be put in place in certain areas of the Province, to be defined by the RUC.
This was met, the following day by a show of force, with tanks and troops flooding areas such as West Belfast, rounding up suspects. All in all, some 3,070 men and 765 women were arrested and sent to detention centres in the Maze and a newly built facility near Larne.
This was met with international condemnation, and the threat of sanctions was ramped up. In the Irish Republic, demands were put in place for the government to intervene, but they were prohibited from moving troops north by the terms of Northern Irish independence in which the UK promised to defend Northern Ireland from external threats. As a result, in covert actions, the Dublin government began channelling funds and arms to the IRA.
At the end of March, the first general elections of Scotland and Northern Ireland were both called. Both polls were to be held on May 5th.
The Scottish campaign was an open one, with all sides pushing strongly that individual votes could turn the tide in their favour. Labour ran a strongly left-wing campaign, pushing for a retention of the nationalised industries in Scotland and calls for cuts in the defence budget to pay for increasing the Home Office budget. Controversially, their deputy leader, Willie Hamilton was openly calling for a republic at the same time.
The SNP pushed strongly as they did the year before the fact that the Labour government had attempted to hide the McCrone Report from the Scots. They argued that once the oil money began flowing, they Scottish economy would take off and that any cuts were temporary. This was as nothing as compared to the Conservative campaign, which attempted to be more nationalist than the nationalists. Teddy Taylor, the party leader argued that it was the Conservatives who brought about the return of the Scottish monarchy through the Prince Regent, and that they were the only party who would break from what he called “the cosy left-wing consensus”. The Liberals ran a very targeted campaign, attempting to make a breakthrough in several constituencies.
Overall, all the parties were successful in part, and this was reflected in the outcome. The Labour Party finished first in seats, with forty-two, they were closely followed by the SNP, who finished above Labour by 1% in the popular vote on forty-one seats. The Conservatives finished third with thirty-five seats and the Liberals last with twenty-three seats. Three independents were elected.
Following a fortnight of bartering, an unlikely outcome was arrived at, with the Labour Party going into a coalition government with the SNP. Bruce Millan, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party would become the Prime Minister, but the SNP would get an equal number of seats to Labour in cabinet. Billy Wolfe, the outgoing Prime Minister announced that he would be retiring as the leader of the SNP, to be replaced by George Reid, who became Deputy Prime Minister.
The Northern Irish campaign was somewhat different. Sinn Fein announced that it was their intention to boycott the elections and in this they were following talks by the moderate SDLP, whose leader Gerry Fitt made the point that with the curfew in nationalist areas alongside the heavy restrictions being placed mainly on nationalists, he could not be confident of a fair election. This led to a straight fight between the Loyalist parties, with a fight to see who could be tougher on the IRA. This fight was won convincingly by the Ulster National Party of Molyneaux, with the Ulster Democratic Party of the Rev.Ian Paisley becoming the opposition.
As the situation developed, the Queens jubilee tour of Northern Ireland was cancelled.
The Irish Republic called for EEC sanctions against Northern Ireland, but they were defeated. Northern Irelands descent continued unabated.