TLIAM: A Series Of Quite Fortunate Events
- Thread starter Meadow
- Start date
Basically a one party state. Fun.
There's only one part I have trouble with
I can't imagine the general public would have been very happy about this. They voted for a Crosman government. Labour won. And now Macmillan is carrying on because of some Labour MPs defecting? There would be uproar. I mean that's as close to a coup d'etat as you'd want to get without helicopters surely?
There's only one part I have trouble with
I can't imagine the general public would have been very happy about this. They voted for a Crosman government. Labour won. And now Macmillan is carrying on because of some Labour MPs defecting? There would be uproar. I mean that's as close to a coup d'etat as you'd want to get without helicopters surely?
It's Meadow and Lord Roem. They know how to arrange a coup against Labour. Although last time it was a bit rowdier.
Labour basically ran on Communism But Every Time Someone Shouts Moscow We Shout Lalala, it's not the Labour Party of OTL 1968. There no doubt were some marches in the streets - 1968 was a good year for such things - but it would only have been a step above the protests that would've ensued in 2015 if Cameron had won the most votes but a LabNatLib coalition had got rid of him. Nothing Mac can't handle.
Will nothing stop the New Democrats?
Will the Liberals become the party of opposition now that the What's-left-of-the-Labour Party is going to go uber-lefty?
Will this TL have even more twists and turns?
Will the Liberals become the party of opposition now that the What's-left-of-the-Labour Party is going to go uber-lefty?
Will this TL have even more twists and turns?
Fascinating work, Gents.
US involvement in the supersonic airline trade means that Harmony will sell a lot better than Concorde. Pan-Am, TWA, American, US. Any of them take a half dozen for a key route (NY-LA, transatlantic, both) and they'll all do the same to prevent being upstaged. Quite fortunate, really. (Well, yes)
Conversely, Romney letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle, even if it was a 'demonstration', could set an unfortunate precedent. It's now an acceptable part of diplomacy, at least for the US and consequently the USSR.
Natural party of government is taken up to eleven, and, while I can't prove it, I guessed Japan before I read it in thread. If, of course, that's what is actually happening here.
No idea who the next leader is going to be. I am quite happy to wait for the reveal.
US involvement in the supersonic airline trade means that Harmony will sell a lot better than Concorde. Pan-Am, TWA, American, US. Any of them take a half dozen for a key route (NY-LA, transatlantic, both) and they'll all do the same to prevent being upstaged. Quite fortunate, really. (Well, yes)
Conversely, Romney letting the nuclear genie out of the bottle, even if it was a 'demonstration', could set an unfortunate precedent. It's now an acceptable part of diplomacy, at least for the US and consequently the USSR.
Natural party of government is taken up to eleven, and, while I can't prove it, I guessed Japan before I read it in thread. If, of course, that's what is actually happening here.
No idea who the next leader is going to be. I am quite happy to wait for the reveal.
@Mumby has been recommending your work to me for ages and I'm glad I finally got round to reading it cause this is amazing!
My body was not prepared
My body was not prepared
Harold Macmillan
National Democratic and Labour
1973-1977
National Democratic and Labour
1973-1977
Iain Macleod had reconciled with Harold Macmillan two years after the success of the Anglo-American Suez gambit. His resignation from the Cabinet with Butler had been out of personal loyalty to the then-Foreign Secretary, something the Prime Minister respected. Ever the gentleman, Macmillan also noted with appreciation the manner in which Macleod waited patiently on the backbenches for a chance to return to government. His penance carried out, in 1958 a junior post at the Treasury had put his ministerial career back on track.
On the morning of 16th March 1973, a car was sent to the private residence of the Home Secretary, to collect Mr Macleod and take him to the Palace to kiss hands. Understandably, Macleod’s widow has never revealed the precise details of his passing, and all legends of a collapse at the breakfast table or a clutched heart while getting out of bed are entirely scurrilous. What we do know is that a coroner’s report found no foul play and concluded what was already painfully clear by the time Harold Macmillan’s car was flagged down by police outside Horse Guards Parade: the new leader of the NDLP was quite dead.
And so, Macmillan’s car turned around.
By mid-morning, the press had realised something was wrong. Initial confusion over Macmillan’s car manoeuvres had eventually been dismissed as obviously a misunderstanding, with Occam’s Razor suggesting that Macleod, not Macmillan, was inside. But when he was spotted, however briefly, re-entering Buckingham Palace, Fleet Street came to life. In rushing to describe this as an early signifier of a coup d’etat, Labour’s deputy leader (elected alongside Hugh Scanlon at the tumultuous Scarborough conference of ’72) made the first of many gaffes that would earn her the nickname ‘Audrey Unwise’.
One of Macmillan’s first acts was to clarify the line of succession in the event of the Prime Minister’s death or incapacity. Macleod had never actually been Prime Minister, of course, but Macmillian was by this point aware of his own mortality and planned accordingly. Previously a sinecure position, the Prime Ministerial (Appointment) Act of 1974 made the post of First Secretary of State a statutory one, with the view that the holder would automatically be appointed by the sovereign during times of crisis. The holder of that role, naturally, was a matter for the Premier according to the rules of their party. As it was, the NDLP had no provision for a deputy. Such constitutional innovations were not in place during the frantic spring morning that that followed Macleod’s death. William Whitelaw recorded in his diaries that the NDLP’s Steering Committee considered the possibility of declaring the Party Secretary the de facto Deputy Leader for about three minutes before realising that would have meant Quintin Hogg strolling into Downing Street before teatime.
And so it was, that the 79 year-old Macmillan found himself standing outside Downing Street to address the befuddled media. Unlike previous occasions, the Prime Minister’s remarks were brief, bordering on blunt. “This is a duty to which I find unexpected,” he said, “but one that I shall endeavour to follow according to the basic principles of constitutional government.” With no obvious successor at a time when international relations were again at the forefront of people’s minds (firefights on the Sino-Soviet Border had flared up again), there was no one else that country wished to turn to.
The last time Macmillan had led an election campaign, it had been on the back of a surging Labour Party and an anemic economy - conditions ripe, in other words, for the first socialist government since 1945 to take power. This time, there was no such fear. With the NDLP now straddling virtually the entire acceptable political spectrum, defeat was de facto impossible. With Scanlon committing a Labour government to wage controls, disarmament, and withdrawal from NATSP and NATO, a handsome victory was not in doubt. With the sympathy vote secured by Macmillan’s uncharacteristically emotional farewell to Macleod, a landslide was inevitable.
And so, for the third time, Harold Macmillan led the Conservative Party to win a three-figure majority in the House of Commons. Yes, he was a little slower than he had been. Yes, the kindly-uncle persona had given way to a beloved but slightly doddery grandfather. Yes, the satirists found themselves having a field day (“Captain Mountbatten is still alive” continues to be the highlight of German festive television). All of this proved largely irrelevant to the campaign.
The hastily-pulped election materials featuring a youthful Macleod and various Macleodite slogans (including some promoting Monetarism, to Macmillan’s disappointment) was replaced with red, white and blue banners simply bearing Macmillan’s image and name. The draft manifesto, which had contained tentative d-nationalisations and a House of Lords-led report exploring stock market deregulation, was similarly done away with as Macmillan decreed that “keeping the ship of state steady” was to be the order of the day.
The PM’s image of Britain as a stable rock in a turbulent sea matched the national mood. As noted, foreign affairs became increasingly dominant on the front-pages of the newspapers. Away from the quagmire on the Amur, the Soviets flexed their muscles in their satellite states with the removal (largely without bloodshed) of the uppity Nicolae Ceaușescu, whilst in the Middle East, Israeli forces formally annexed the Sinai (for the ever-fortunate General Nasser, this was the act that finally brought his star a little too low, although he was able to make his way over the border into the Kingdom of Libya without attracting too much attention). The Labour Party was just not seen as a credible force to deal with these events.
On Friday 6th April 1973, the results came in. Labour shadow Development secretary Anthony Wedgwood-Benn recorded in his diary that “[the results] are devastating for anyone but the Nationals, so it is perhaps for the best that almost everyone seems to be a National now.”
He was not exaggerating by much. Macmillan had won the first majority of the popular vote of any party since the Great Depression, and cleared the 50% barrier by a stunning 12 points. 501 NDLP members took their seats at the opening of the new parliament, while Hugh Scanlon led a Parliamentary Labour Party that could just about fit onto a single-decker bus. Emlyn Hooson had clutched the only straw available to him when he positioned his party as “the voice of those desperate for free markets”, and in return had piled up votes in London and Home Counties seats where the Liberals were a distant third, while losing a swathe of the Liberals’ alleged heartland in the West of England.
The ’73 result was a greater result than anyone had really expected, and it unquestionably brought Macmillan some breathing room. However, he was now less than a year away from being an octogenarian. “Gladstone served the country at 84”, Lady Caroline Faber was said to have protested when a friend noted his father’s age to her at a state banquet for the Emperor of Japan. “Yes,” came the reply, “but your father doesn’t spend his time chopping wood and courting ladies of the night.” Across the table, the Home Secretary made a mental note.
A week later, the so-called “Hogg Letter”, allegedly penned on the headed paper of the Nationals’ Party Secretary and asking Macmillan to make arrangements to retire within twelve months, was burnt with the cigar matches of the grandee tasked with its hand-delivery. No-one blamed him, nor did anyone really have an issue when the former Viscount Hailsham was kicked upstairs as Ambassador to the United Nations. The NDLP would decide when the Prime Minister was ready to go, not the Cabinet. Besides, there were more important things to worry about.
The Sterling Crisis had various roots, and it certainly was alone of the major currencies of the time in having a great deal of problems. The various crises in the Middle Eastern had more than tripled the price of oil, with various knock-on effects on food prices and shipping. Geoffrey Rippon made some token efforts to deal with problems - including instructing the Ministry of Power to ration petrol. This had predictable results, none of them good. A cartoon of the Chancellor dressed in a cape and opera hat, preying on defenceless Morris Travellers as “Geoff the Rippon”, provided an early test for the new government’s supermajority. Shortly after, Rippon was sacked and replaced by the former Labour MP, Roy Jenkins, who promptly made efforts to devalue the Pound. Salvation, however, came from elsewhere.
In February 1974, at his State of the Union Address. President Romney announced that “as our greatest partner for peace and stability in an uncertain world”, a significant package of economic assistance would be given directly to HM Treasury. The deal generated one of tne of the finer tabloid headlines of the age when the Mirror splashed EIGHT BILLION QUID… PRO QUO?’ on its front page. While the paper had declined in relevance with the sundering of the Labour Party, it remained the voice of ‘Labour National’ voters, and maintained a respectable circulation. It turned out to be speaking for more than just the left wing of the governing party, however, with questions soon being asked in parliament about exactly what had been agreed with Romney in exchange for the bailout. “Freedom’s debt is repaid,” the President may have insisted while pumping Macmillan’s delicate hand, but stability in South East Asia was, put politely, not worth half the amount. Exactly what strings were attached to the £8bn have never been publicly released, implying they may never have been made explicit in any documentation, but most of them would become clear enough in the coming years.
‘Englandization’ first entered the American lexicon in 1969 as a shorthand for a state which voluntarily prostrated itself to the requirements of a larger power. An enraged Macmillan walked out of a television interview when confronted with the term in 1974 but – typically – NOP polling found 64% of voters agreed he was right to reject the ‘insult’ out of hand.
Public opinion was less clear cut on Ulster. Although the Ulster Unionists had been founding members of the NDLP, the Government’s policy (done, it was rumoured, under pressure from the White House, itself lobbied by Irish-American Senators), was distinctly more forthcoming to nationalists than the heirs of Edward Carson would have desired. 1974’s Government of Ireland Act greatly reduced the scope of Unionist gerrymandering at both Westminster and Stormont, prompting a number of radicals to establish the Ulster Covenant Party aimed at restoring the unique character and principles of the province rather than - as the young Tommy Herron noted - “Basingstoke on the Lagan”. The UCP started small, winning only a handful of seats in the Northern Ireland House of Commons, but their fiery oratory and links with paramilitary groups led to further radicalisation down the line. Two years later, splits in the Unionist movement had become insurmountable. When a parade by a unionist group through a Catholic area of Belfast turned into a rock-throwing contest and led to the death of a Protestant teenager named Billy Wright, matters came to ahead. The bombing of an Irish pub in Manchester and the assassination of the Archbishop of Liverpool on the same grim afternoon in March 1976 brought Ulster Terror to the mainland. The Orange Terror had begun.
Things were similarly contentious overseas. Whilst the policy of ‘Dominionisation’ had led to a step-backwards, rather than overall retreat from Empire by the Macmillan governments, it was was still a step too far for the likes of Ian Smith in Rhodesia. The messy process of dissolving the Central African Federation had pleased nobody and angered many, and the huge disconnect between Downing Street and Salisbury had only grown further as the Colonial Office insisted on improved civil rights for black Africans in the region. By 1973, Smith had had enough. On Monday 1st October, a date chosen as the day in which Rhodesia had originally come existance as a Crown Colony, Smith declared the country to be a “sovereign, free, and independent republic, in true justice and recognition of the liberties afforded to her people by Almighty God’.
The result was consternation. At a stroke, Macmillan’s policy of a ‘third way’ of Imperial reform had been shattered, and with it, all peace in Southern Africa. Although international recognition for the new Republic was hard to come by, the image was a terrible one for Downing Street to deal with. Whitelaw’s resignation as Foreign Secretary and his replacement with the more hardline Julian Amery (not, it is to be said, a man naturally seen as an exemplar of modern race relations), made it clear that the Prime Minister was not prepared to take Smith’s Gambit at face value.
It is only recently that historians have gained access to the Cabinet papers concerning the Rhodesia Crisis, and even now there is considerable conjecture as to the differences between intention and reality. However, the end-result remains inarguable. Three days after the Declaration of Independence, the United Nations overwhelmingly passed a motion condemning Smith’s actions as “illegal and racist”, and endorsing any and all action taken by the British Government to reverse the decision. Security Council resolutions in favour of trade sanctions against the new regime (the first in UN history) followed over the next few days. Macmillan, however, went further. Shortly after midnight on Sunday 14th October, a special forces team crossed over the border from Zambia, whilst a Royal Naval flotilla sailed into the Mozambique Channel as a means of cutting off oil imports entering the country from Portuguese Easter Africa. There is - however - no evidence for the long-standing rumours that strategic bombers were flown into RAF Lusaka.
The full details of the SAS operation have since been covered elsewhere, most noticeably in 1993’s Academy Award winning epic, Mashonaland. The film is historically accurate, but obviously sensationalised in some areas. Smith was not taken at gun-point and flown to Francistown in a captured LearJet, nor did a young Robert Mugabe hold off a brigade of Rhodesian soldiers to allow time for the SAS troops to flee towards the airport (although it was enough to secure Forest Whitaker’s first Oscar). Nevertheless, four days after British forces crossed the border, Smith was in British custody in Botswana whilst an interim Government was formed under the joint-leadership of Edgar Tekere and Ahrn Palley, one of the few white politicians to have opposed the declaration of independence. Southern Rhodesia, soon renamed Zimbabwe, became a British-backed UN protectorate the following year. Today, it forms part of the Confederation of South-East Africa.
The role of Britain’s trade unions in the Macmillan Consensus has been the subject of academic controversy since it was less ‘history’ and more ‘the news’. Seeking to steer clear of the ‘obstructionism versus integralism’ arguments that have been ending friendships in university faculties across the country for decades, the matter will here be discussed briefly and factually.
The National Council of Workers was born when Hugh Scanlon took over the TUC and led it towards a much more pro-Moscow line than had been the case until his tenure as general secretary. Largely ignored for several years, it almost folded twice. However, by the time Mr Scanlon found himself at the head of the Labour Party instead, the NCW had come through its awkward teenage years and developed into a vast network of trade unions which sought to reject ideological battles in favour of “constructive engagement” with the government’s Social & Industrial Policy, both the 1971 and 1974 attempts.
When S&IP was finally successfully navigated through the House of Lords in 1975, it was the NCW which enthusiastically signed up to the Industrial Arbitration Board. The TUC, led by Scanlon ally Jack Jones, decried the IAB as a means of criminalising “any and all strike action”. It is true that in the eight hundred disputes the IAB was called in to rule upon in its first incarnation, it only authorised strike action in three of them. However, it is just as true, but less-widely known, that in 85% of the disputes it ruled on, an average of five and a half years would pass before the same dispute resurfaced. NCW executive chairman James Callaghan (a former Labour MP) earned the nickname ‘Sunny Jim’ for his unflappably cheery disposition and fondness for saying with a bright smile, “all parties have come away satisfied!” A popular joke was that the only party truly satisfied by the situation was the NDLP.
It is hard to argue that the National Democratic and Labour Party was anything other than happy during this period. While Macleod’s death had shocked and saddened almost everyone, there had been a slight unease when he had won the party leadership. He was young and radical, and about to lead a party that had been led by elderly patricians for more than half a century. Macmillan’s return – or rather, lack of departure – was so comforting to the parliamentary party that any talk of an immediate rerun of the leadership election was confined to the newspaper diarists. When Macmillan proved to have been renewed by the whole experience, the party resolved to “simply let him crack on”, in the words of one young backbencher. With the country largely agreeing, it was the ideal time for the PM to take aim at the few dissenting voices which remained.
“PRIME MINISTER DEAD” screamed the white-on-black of Private Eye’s final cover. Any attempt whatsoever to make light of the tragedy would likely have backfired on the satirical publication. But long-serving editor Richard Ingrams chose to accompany the headline with an image of Macmillan at his most gaunt and skeletal-looking. The resulting outcry – whipped up by a pro-Macmillan Fleet Street – saw emergency legislation sail through parliament, and the Eye was banned from sale the following week. Never one to waste an opportunity to renew his government, Macmillan exploited the crisis further with the creation of the new Department for Culture.
Quickly nicknamed the ‘Department for Decency’, the DfC was responsible for ensuring “good character, upstanding morality, and artistic accountability” in everything from sculpture to popular music. Crossbencher Lord Cobbold became the first Secretary of State for Culture, and few could avoid remarking that he had previously served as the last Lord Chamberlain to be tasked with theatre censorship. Of course, they didn’t have very many satirical magazines in which to make such observations.
1975 had seen a low-key celebration of Macmillan’s twenty years in power, limited to NDLP conference as Macmillan declined proposals for street parties and a one-off bank holiday. His popularity remained sky-high, thanks once again to the stability of the British economy while Europe floundered in the wake of the oil shock. There were a few more dollars inside the Bank of England than there used to be. But, as Macmillan quipped, what mattered was “the value of sterling on the street”. The only flurry of excitement in the polls came when Scanlon’s shadow chancellor, Eric Heffer, unveiled plans for a Labour government to decimalise currency by 1982. The public split down the middle on the issue, more on generational lines than traditional party support. Thanks to Macmillan’s usual governing technique of simply copying any popular Labour proposal, all eyes were soon on the premier. After a stormy week virtually locked inside Downing Street, Macmillan emerged, with Chancellor of the Exchequer Tony Crosland hovering at his shoulder like a disciplined hound, and informed the press with a steely jovial tone that “pounds, shillings and pence are going nowhere”. The same could not be said for Crosland, who resigned “for reasons of ill health” shortly before Christmas 1976. He was replaced by Bill Deedes, brought back in from the cold by a bolstered and confident Macmillan.
As 1977 dawned, the official expiry of parliament was not a concern to Britain’s apparently invincible octogenarian premier. A general election date of 12th May had been pencilled into Macmillan’s personal diary two years in advance, and he had every intention of fighting it as leader and Prime Minister. It was in February of 1977, however, two days after his 83rd birthday, that Macmillan finally made a decision he had, in fact, already taken five years earlier: to retire. This time, however, it was completely on his own terms (he joked to all who would listen that “if they had been snapping at my heels, I would never have given them the satisfaction”. A polite letter to Party Secretary Margaret Thatcher made Macmillan’s intentions clear, and while the wording has never been made public, the understanding was that he would win the NDLP one last landslide, then hand over to a younger man. It was an understanding readily accepted by the restless youngsters that made up much of the backbench, but also met with trepidation from the veterans of Macmillan’s many cabinets. Could anyone fill his shoes? Someone could perhaps have proved their mettle by challenging him and besting him in a contest – now, with the Grander Old Man stepping aside entirely of his own volition, there was a risk that any fool might be sucked into the vacuum he was leaving.
But this was no concern of Macmillan’s. Visiting Her Majesty in April 1977, he informed her for the second time of his intention to retire in the near future. With parliament duly dissolved, his thoughts turned to the election campaign. A relaxed approach would have been understandable given Macmillan’s age and the election’s near-certain outcome, but the genial and uncomplacent PM was in no mood for such things. His age made an energetic nationwide tour a slightly too risky prospect, but changes in legislation during the previous parliament would change the campaign.
The Broadcast Act of 1974 entitled political parties to ‘non-hostile’ interviews on the BBC in prime time during election campaigns. Due to quirks of the legislation, as the incumbent PM Macmillan was given two opportunities to do make his case while Hugh Scanlon only got one. Hooson received fifteen minutes on Radio 4. A legal challenge was threatened, and indeed carried out, but the law was the law. Neither of Macmillan’s confident, jovial interviews are particularly remembered, but Scanlon’s fiery blurting of his party’s plans for socialism and blistering attack on the BBC’s “anti-Moscow bias” entered folk memory almost immediately.
The election loomed, and all projections suggested the NDLP, and their manifesto promising continuity and stability above all else, would retain or slightly increase their enormous Commons majority. Macmillan allowed it to be known within the party that he considered the summer of 1978 a good time to retire. Scanlon found himself looking over his shoulder as his own party began to wonder if it would even survive the coming onslaught.
It is not hyperbolic to say that events the day before polling day changed everything.
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Why would *Zimbabwe be part of the Confederation of West Africa? Unless this is some kind of African EU-type dealie.
That, or he's never actually going to die. At this point, I'm seriously beginning to entertain the possibility that he's sold his soul to the devil in exchange for being the eternal Prime Minister...