Soon after the cabinet reshuffle, Britain's new Prime Minister George Brown announced that he would be heading on a 'goodwill tour' around the United Kingdom in order to engage with the British public and to ensure that the Labour government remained good on its manifesto promises and was still engaging with the British public. His tour was scheduled to also visit the 'Celtic Fringes' of the nation, including Northern Ireland. Many felt that the real aim of visiting the other constituent nations of the United Kingdom was to attempt to stem the leaking of votes from Labour to various nationalist organisations and movements in Scotland, Wales, and to a lesser extent in Northern Ireland (the NILP had in recent years effectively adopted a relationship with the Labour Party with its one MP, akin to that the Scottish Unionist Party had with the Conservative Party.)
Nationalism in all four constituent nations of the United Kingdom had begun to filter into Westminster in during the mid-to-late 1960s. The first victory for one of these groups was the English Nationalist Party's stunning victory at the 1966 general election in the seat of Nelson and Colne. While for the most part not a surge in English nationalist feeling, instead a backlash against the constituency's long-serving MP Sydney Silverman in favour of the strongly pro-death penalty Patrick Downey. Downey's victory ensured the the ENP would cease being yet another minor party, indeed his platform included support for greater local government or even devolved powers in England and an abolition of income tax. These policies, plus the general right-of-centre beliefs of the party set it apart from most of the other nationalist parties and movements in the country. To the north in Scotland, the Scottish National Party was once again in parliament. The party had gained representation in a by-election in 1945, but this was quickly lost in the Labour landslide later that year; the party gained its second MP with Winnie Ewing's surprise victory in the Hamilton by-election in 1967. The rise of the SNP saw the formation of the Kilbrandon Commission, which reported in favour of devolution north of the border. Such was the perceived threat of the SNP, that the Conservatives (still called by their traditional Unionist Party title in Scotland) in 1969 adopted a policy plank at the party's conference in favour of increased local government powers in both Scotland and Wales (later extended to limited devolution at the 1971 part conference; probably aided by the pro-devolution beliefs of new leader Robin Chichester-Clark); Labour meanwhile remained steadfast in its refusal to grant devolution unless it was endorsed by a majority in a non-binding referendum. At the 1970 general election, the SNP lost Hamilton and came close to winning the Labour-held seat of the Western Isles. The party, however, maintained its representation at Westminster with a stunning victory by new party leader William Wolfe in the Labour-held seat of West Lothian. Wolfe defeated serving MP Tam Dalyell in a particularly nasty campaign where anti-Catholic sectarian prejudices were a significant undertone of Wolfe's campaign. While it was highly questionable, the campaign paid off and Wolfe was the one giving an acceptance speech in the early hours of the morning. The SNP was seen as a threat to both Labour and the Unionists, and even to the Liberals, all of whom held seats that could become vulnerable to an SNP surge.
In Wales, the Party of Wales, or Plaid Cymru, was also performing well at the ballot box during the 1966-1970 parliament. The party scored a sensational by-election victory in the seat of Carmarthen, called after the death of the popular Labour MP Megan Lloyd-George (daughter of the former Liberal Prime Minister) several months into the new parliament. Despite coming in third place in the prior general election, Plaid Cymru’s candidate and party President Gwynfor Evans scored a major upset, taking nearly 40% of the vote in the nominally safe Labour seat. Two further by-elections in Rhondda West in 1967 and Caerphilly in 1968 produced unheard of swings of 30% and 40% respectively, in both cases slicing the Labour majorities drastically. At the 1970 general election the party saw its percentage of the vote surge from around 4% in 1966 to 10% in 1970, but they were unable to repeat their victory in Carmarthen as Evans was defeated by Labour candidate Gwynoro Glyndwr Jones by around five thousand votes. The party would, however, return to its record-breaking by-election swings, this time in the seat of Merthyr Tydfil. The seat (and its predecessor, Merthyr) had been held by Labour MP S. O. Davies since 1934. In 1970 Davies, who claimed to be 83 years old but was thought to be nearing ninety; was deselected in favour of a more youthful candidate. Davies characteristically announced that the people of Merthyr, not the (local) Labour Party, would decide his future. “
I am still the member of Parliament. Let the people of Merthyr decide whether they want S. O. or not. I have been the member for 36 years and I've always made Merthyr my absolute priority. Party interests have been secondary[.].” He was advised against running against the party by friends, no deselected candidate had ever defeated their party at the ballot box; Davies as an independent candidate was predicted to get no more than a thousand votes.
Not long after the deselection meeting, Callaghan called a snap general election, leaving the Merthyr Labour Party with little time to select a new candidate (they would settle on moderate Amalgamated Engineering Union official Tal Lloyd, who had served as a councillor and Mayor for multiple years.) A defiant Davies launched his own bid as an Independent Labour (‘Socialist’) candidate and despite having little to no money or party organisation (his election leaflet was a single sheet of paper with the message ‘You Know Me, I’ve Never Let You Down’), Davies began to gather support and an informal ‘party’ infrastructure, in part due to his support from young voters in the seat (a great irony for a man who was deselected on account of his age.) The local Labour Party and Lloyd ran into difficulties over the AEU’ failure to support an unofficial strike at the local Hoover factory; meanwhile, Davies’ supporters toured the constituency in the final days of the campaign, with cheerleaders singing songs and slogans. On election night Davies was returned with a majority of nearly seven thousand. Davies would remain an informal Labour MP, being briefed by the party as any MP would be. After a debate on whether the government should embark on yet another attempt to join the EEC (membership seemed more likely with the victory of the centrist President of the Senate and acting President of the country, Alain Poher in the 1970 French Presidential election against Communist candidate Jacques Duclos, in a race dubbed as the second round of the 1969 referendum), something Davies strongly opposed. On the way home from the debate, Davies developed a chest infection and would die several days later at the end of February 1972. In the ensuing by-election, his informal party structure would bow out in favour of Plaid Cymru and its candidate Emrys Roberts. Roberts would be elected with a majority of around 500 votes over Labour candidate Edward Rowlands. It seemed even in death Davies was a persistent headache for the local Labour Party. Plaid looked ahead to the next general election, predicted to be held in 1975 with anticipation. Besides Merthyr, the seats of Carmarthen (Evans contesting it once again), Caernarfon, and Merionethshire, all looked promising targets in the event of a Labour slump in Wales.
Although not a purely Welsh phenomenon, the Democratic Party of Desmond Donnelly and Woodrow Wyatt was another example of the rise of nationalism, this time in a form of British nationalism (or unionism.) The party had its roots in the 1964-1966 parliament, where Donnelly and Wyatt routinely caused headaches for the whips office and the government as a whole, due to their persistent opposition to further steel nationalisation and later the government's policy over South Arabia, which proved to be the metaphoric straw that broke the camel's back. The new party, despite generally being a Labour product, was very much on the right. The party advocated a return to national service, greater transatlantic relations, British intervention in Vietnam, radical changes to the taxation system, and the abolition of the welfare state; these policies placed the party even to the right of the Tories (especially in terms of welfare.) The party contested a variety of by-elections through to the end of the parliament, notably including in Louth (1969, where Sir George Fitzgerald, Bt. polled over 2,000 votes) and Newcastle-under-Lyne (1969, where the party polled over 3,000 votes and beat the Liberal Party into fourth place.) The party contested several dozens of seats up and down the country for the ensuing general election, though it only polled well in Donnelly's Pembrokeshire, Wyatt's Bosworth seat, and in Newcastle (where the party repeated the feat they had achieved the year before.) In the end, the party held its two nominal seats, owing to informal pacts with the local Conservative Parties (Donnelly had an especially warm relationship with the Pembrokeshire Conservative Association); Donnelly with a 9,000 vote majority and Wyatt with a landslide 23,000 vote majority. While modern academics would estimate that the party cost Labour around 3-5 seats across the country, Donnelly was adamant that the party had cost Labour upwards of twenty seats throughout the country. Donnelly would playful state many years later that, "
If we had fielded a candidate in Belper, I'd have had George Brown taxidermised [...] his head would've looked nice mounted on my study wall." Nonetheless, the Democratic Party was seen to be, by many inside and outside of the Parliamentary Labour Party, to be a party of hard-right Monday Club loons, little to no threat to anyone bar Labour MPs in ultra-marginal seats.
Nationalism in Northern Ireland took two different strands, those of Irish Nationalism and British Unionism (a form of nationalism in itself.) Near the end of the sixties and into the new decade the decades-long hegemony of the Ulster (or Official) Unionist Party over Northern Irish politics had begun to weaken and falter. This weakening of the party’s hold was first seen in the 1969 general election in Northern Ireland (for the Stormont devolved parliament.) At the election, the Ulster Unionists saw their percentage of the vote tumbled from nearly 60% down to just under 47%, they also lost three seats, the most they had lost since 1945. The official opposition party, the ageing Nationalist Party also took a tumble, falling down to a mere 6 seats, losing among other seats that of its leader Eddie McAteer. The NI Labour Party won three seats (one was that of Gerry Fitt who had joined the fold after his Republican Labour Party effectively wound up) and attracted nearly 11% of the vote. Labour would gain another Stormont MP when Ivan Cooper was elected to Westminster for the party at the second Mid Ulster by-election; he would take the party whip at Stormont as well, raising the party to four MPs there.
The headache for Ulster Unionist leader Terence O’Neill only got worse, due to the fact that 10 of the Ulster Unionist MPs elected, were in fact opposed to his leadership, giving him in effect no majority. O’Neill was also humiliated by the fact he was nearly defeated in his Bannside constituency by the Rev. Ian Paisley and his Protestant Unionist Party. By May O’Neill was put out of his misery when a UVF bombing campaign of Belfast’s water supply “
quite literally blew me from office.” In the ensuing UUP leadership election his cousin, the patrician James Chichester-Clark faced the middle-class Brian Faulkner. Faulkner won the leadership election in the party’s leadership council by a single vote.
In March 1970 the rebellious MPs and the nominally conservative Faulkner’s relationship was in freefall. The whips of William Craig, Desmond Boal, Harry West, Norman Laird, and John McQuade were all resigned. West would regain the whip some months later, Laird would die soon after and was replaced by his son John Dunn Laird (elected as an Ulster Unionist); Craig, Boal and McQuade, however, all refused to retake the whip. Faulkner meanwhile began to repair relations with O’Neill-ite and moderate MPs at Stormont. He appointed the likes of Phelim O’Neill (no relation) to the cabinet, which also included the likes of James Chichester-Clark and John Brooke (son of former Prime Minister Basil Brooke.) This rapprochement strategy did not appease some on the liberal end of Unionism, with Independent Unionist Bertie McConnell and Ulster Unionist Robert Porter defecting to the Ulster Liberal Party (which had usually only had a single MP, elected from the Queens University seat which had been abolished in 1969.)
Faulkner would earn the ire of some O’Neill-ites and many Nationalists with his government’s refusal to adhere to the Hunt Report, which had recommended the disbanding of the Ulster Special Constabulary. Faulkner was also dealt a bloodied nose by the by-election victories of Paisley’s Protestant Unionists in Bannside and South Antrim (held by O’Neill and Richard Ferguson respectively) which were won by Paisley and William Beattie. These losses were somewhat offset by the defection of liberal Independent Unionist Lloyd Hall-Thompson to the party, but it was little consolation. Faulkner meanwhile sought to keep a steady hand and to maintain his control over the situation. He was in effect given a free hand by Home Secretary Bob Mellish who supported him in his efforts to step up law enforcement which would fall under Faulkner’s political control. James Callaghan, the Prime Minister, suggested reforms to the operational control of the security forces and the disbanding of the ‘B’ Specials; Mellish would talk the Prime Minister out of these positions, in effect cutting Callaghan out of the loop on Northern Ireland.
The situation in Ulster appeared to be improving by the start of 1972, the supposed IRA offensive was mocked as the ‘I Ran Aways’ instead. This would all change with a press conference held by the rebel Ulster Unionists and the two PUP MPs at. It was announced that they would come together to form a new political party, the ‘Vanguard Democratic Unionist Progressive Party’ or Ulster Democratic Vanguard for short. The VDUPP was seen as a major threat for the UUP and Faulkner; while the Prime Minister had ensured that the bleeding on the party’s left flank had been stemmed, the wound on the right flank was far more serious and had been left to grow without much effort to stop it. Soon after it was announced that Craig and Paisley would become ‘Co-Leaders’ of the new party, fittingly announced to the 12th of July; Faulkner was met by his Chief Whip John Brooke. Brooke informed Faulkner that while the government had the 27 seats needed for a majority, the likelihood of the party reaching a majority in the general election the next year was “
highly unlikely.” The party also had the distinct threat of the fact that the now more or less fully enfranchised Catholic electorate could see gains in nominally safe Unionist seats, due to split in the Unionist vote. The Nationalist Party had seemingly rejuvenated itself by managing to unite its Belfast and Londonderry wings, a major problem in the years before, with the election of Fergus McAteer as party leader. McAteer, the son of the party’s former leader, ensured that the party would adopt a more ‘militant constitutionalist’ stance on the constitutional question, thus stemming its loss of votes to other parties, such as the National Democrats. The party also benefitted from the formation of a group of ‘Young Turks’ notably Paddy O’Hanlon and Austin Currie. The NI Labour Party meanwhile had the ability to undercut the Nationalist vote with figures such as Cooper, Paddy Devlin, and Fitt present, and the Unionist vote with figures like David Bleakley (the new party leader and former Stormont MP) and Erskine Holmes gearing up for Stormont runs. Faulkner agreed with this assessment and set about try to tack the party to the right on security issues. This proved to be rather difficult due to the presence of O’Neill (Phelim) among other moderates in the cabinet, who would forbid trying to tack to the right. Faulkner has thus met the realisation that the party would have to shore up on its moderate and liberal support and effectively wish for the best as it lost the hardline front to the VDUPP. Faulkner would soon after defeating stalking horse challenges for the party leadership, though there was a surprisingly large amount of votes for the non-candidate Brooke, two for Phelim O’Neill, and two for the VDUPP leader Craig.
While violence during 1972 never got as bad as it did in Quebec, there was a constant fear that the resentment and ill feeling that had been brewing for some time, would eventually blow. As fate and luck would have it, that was not the case. The non-fatal shooting of an RUC officer in Belfast in October of that year, apparently by Catholics (it would later materialise that it had happened in an accident where a firearm had misfired and hit the officer), led to some recriminations when a group of loyalists took it upon themselves to deal out 'punishments' to any Catholic (and occasionally a Protestant) who was unlucky enough to run into them in the night. What started as beatings soon progressed into kneecappings - by 1975 bodies were beginning to be found with serious injuries caused by a barber's razor and a presumed handgun. The Shankill Butchers reign of terror was only just getting started.
Faulkner meanwhile continued his radical approach to politics in Northern Ireland. A cabinet vacancy in late 1972 saw Faulkner appoint Catholic Unionist Dr. G. B. Newe to the post. While Newe, who was not an MP and thus could only hold the post in question for a temporary period of six months; the fact that a Catholic had been appointed into the Unionist government (which had been led by the arch anti-Catholic Basil Brooke a mere decade prior) was still astounding. Faulkner's cabinet would continue to limp forward into the new year, with the supposed threat from Nationalists neutered for the meantime; the threat from the VDUPP remained a very real threat.
When George Brown became Prime Minister in early 1973, he invited Faulkner to Number 10 to discuss Northern Ireland policy and policing reform in the province. Faulkner was shocked when Brown informed him that he would be pulling the plug on Stormont and would be seeking to impose direct rule under the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Mahon (a Merseyside Catholic.) Faulkner, deeply agitated and highly stressed, informed Brown that if that were the case he could have his resignation as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Unionist Party on the table there and then. Brown, flustered, backtracked and immediately reversed his policy saying that he would support the retention of Stormont, but reforms and new elections were necessary. Faulkner begrudgingly agreed and thus announced the calling of elections for late June that year. Craig was incensed, he believed that Faulkner was trying to wrongfoot him by calling an election before Vanguard were in a state to run an effect election campaign.
The election campaign was short and brutal. '
Not welcome here Brian' and '
Go Home Brian' read signs in various front windows of many houses in the Shankill area of Belfast. Faulkner would privately note to his ally John Brooke that the party could wish goodbye to gain over thirty seats, for once the party was in a struggle for a majority. Faulkner also noted that the party had issues in several seats where the party nominally fared well, but the threat of a divided Unionist vote ensured that a potential pickup here and there for Labour and the Nationalists was indeed possible. The Nationalists themselves were buoyed by that fact, and also due to the fact that several independent and minor party Nationalist MPs now faced threats in their own seats. John Hume, an Independent Nationalist for Foyle saw his re-election bid against McAteer the younger increase in difficulty with the entrance of 'People's Democracy' candidate Eamonn McCann who could potentially dilute Hume's vote. NI Labour meanwhile ran a highly effective campaign, appealing to moderates and working class voters on both sides of the metaphoric fence, though most people expected their success to be consigned to the Belfast area and to Cooper's County Londonderry seat.
Faulkner's fear was realised after the general elections results were announced. The UUP had lost nearly 10% of its vote and 12 seats, dropping its total down to a mere 24 seats. Vanguard gained an astounding 24.3% of the vote, but their vote was too sparsely placed to gain them many seats beyond those of the initial defectors; winning only seven seats. The Nationalists had a successful night, gaining 5 seats including some Unionist seats on a split vote; McAteer was victorious by a slender margin in Foyle over Hume and McCann. Labour gained four seats to take its total to equal that of the VDUPP. The Ulster Liberals meanwhile won three seats, the two held before the election and the City of Londonderry seat, won by solicitor and civil rights campaigner Claude Wilton. The UUP had finally lost its majority.
Faulkner weakened, but not defeated, considered tendering his resignation, he was talked out of this by his wife Lucy and by Brooke (who was seen as his most logical successor in the Premiership.) Faulkner, however, would receive aid in the form of the Ulster Liberal and two NI Labour MPs (Bleakley and Holmes), who stated they would give his government support in the lobbies on important and vital legislation. Several Nationalists stated they would let his government survive, but they expected reforms coming from his end "
in the near future" as McAteer would say. This provided the government with a nominal majority of six seats - decent but hardly safe.
George Brown's 'tour de Britain' began in earnest in May 1972, when he decided to take his case to the country, in an effort to revitalise the government's flagging support in the opinion polls. Initially, his 'soap box-ing' in the main squares or central shopping areas of villages, towns, and cities up and down England were met with curiosity and the odd patch of opposition. In one notable case, Brown was heckled by an elderly man, Arthur Duffy, who proceeded to call him a variety of names for around half an hour. After that he left, only to return a few minutes later with a handful of eggs, which he proceeded to throw at the Prime Minister. Brown skillfully dodged them all and then characteristically asked Duffy if he was finished. Duffy said nothing as he walked towards the bemused politician; he then proceeded to try and push Brown off his 'soap box.' The photo of the two men shoving each other was famously featured in the next edition of Private Eye. '
New Labour Leadership Challenge' boomed the satirical magazine. After the publicity of the Duffy episode, Brown's events began to attract far more attention. A programme of where he would be stopping was published in various national newspapers, despite fears that a radical could easily take the opportunity to try and attack the Prime Minister, nothing of the sort would occur. That is not to say that the barnstorming events themselves were without further incident. In Glasgow, one heckler made issue of the fact that Brown was an Anglo-Catholic, and proceeded to call him "
papist scum" and asked him multiple times if he was a "
papist." Brown, quoting the Anglo-French author and Liberal MP for Salford, Hilaire Belloc, stated that "
So what if I was a Catholic. So what if I heard mass every day or used some rosary beads ever night. If that would offend you, good sir... then I would pray God may spare me the indignity of being your Prime Minister." Those assembled cheered Brown on and proceeded to silence the heckler.
Brown attended a variety of events in Wales and in Northern Ireland, despite various officials and civil servants pleading with him to not go. In Wales, the former Prime Minister James Callaghan, who was the local MP for the Cardiff area in question, attended one of his successor's events, where he playfully heckled Brown (Brown initially thought it was an actual heckler when he realised that it was, in fact, his predecessor he jokingly stated that Callaghan was "
worse" than the usual hecklers.) Callaghan was then hounded onto another 'soap box' and soon after things culminated in the two breaking into a rendition of 'Oh My Darling, Clementine.' In Northern Ireland, the events were less successful. Held in the wake of the general inconclusive Stormont elections, the Prime Minister was rather popular with the Catholic populace who saw the Labour government in Westminster as actually fighting for their rights. Brown would be swamped by Catholic women in certain areas of Belfast, asking for a dance and also requesting he sample some home made food they had prepared for him. The response from some Protestants was less stellar. VDUPP co-leader Ian Paisley would lead some supporters to heckle the Prime Minister, one of whom (sometimes suggested to be Paisley himself) threw an orange at the Prime Minister which proceeded to give him a blackened eye. Regardless Brown continued his tour until it concluded several months after it had concluded. By the end of it, Labour now sat with a 3% lead in the polls, causing some concern on the Tory benches. Some Conservative Central Office staff members and advisors suggested Chichester-Clark should go on a similar 'fact finding mission.' This was turned down by Chichester-Clark who felt the idea was silly and would not have any long-term effect on the polls.
Time would tell on that front. Meanwhile Brown was jetting off to the other side of the Atlantic to repair another faltering relationship, that with Washington, D.C.
