The Long Walk Back
Anthony Greenwood was enjoying his time as Prime Minister of a country with some of the lowest unemployment figures in a decade and a balance of payments surplus that had stayed strong since late 1965. With the Conservative Party having taken a nosedive into obscurity with the leadership of Powell, Joseph and Thorneycroft, there were no real alternatives for the public to turn to. The Liberal Party, under new leadership in the guise of Eric Lubbock (who won the relatively overlooked 1967 Liberal leadership contest), was offering a message of centrist reliability and security that would have appealed to more people had their number of seats increased further in the 1968 general election. But, their seats remained static and their vote dipped slightly to benefit Anthony Greenwood’s Labour Party.
All in all, the country appeared to be heading towards a sustained period of prosperity unknown since the 1950s. This, however, was really the calm before the storm.
The takeover of the TUC by Vic Feather, a prominent left-winger with ties to many Labour ministers, was the first signal that the good times ahead might be in jeopardy. Feather was made Acting General Secretary of the TUC when George Woodcock stood down on the 20th February, placing him in prime position to become General Secretary in his own right by September 1969. An abrasive and colourful character, Feather was just the sort of trade unionist that the Labour government was uneasy with. All the political agreements in the world couldn’t help the fact that if the TUC refused to cooperate with the government all of a sudden, then production in Britain would come to a halt.
Next was a series of uninspiring trade figures published from April to August that frightened the Treasury and the DEA. Exports were beginning to fall, cutting into the trade surplus and leading some to speculate that the country could be heading towards Hogg era trade deficits once more. The problem obsessed the government at the time, taking up much of the cabinet’s time in working out a solution to the problem. Productivity didn’t seem to be the problem and near-full employment appeared, on the surface, to be working as labourers were indeed buying the goods that they themselves were manufacturing. It was suggested that British people were buying up too many British products and thus were undermining Britain’s trade overseas. Report after report returned little evidence that this was the case, however.
Instead, it was surmised that businesses were paying out too much in wages to too many workers. The drive for full employment had meant a serious overcrowding of certain industries, meaning that workers’ hours were driven down as more labourers shared equal labour and were taking home equal pay. Three-way agreements between the government, businesses and the unions were in place to guarantee no artificial suppression of wages, but had failed to take into account that workers would start “eating into each other’s hours”. Previous attempts to sort the issue within the private sector had been met with stiff union opposition and the economy weathered the lack of change. By 1969, however, the economy was starting to show the cracks in the system.
Cabinet meetings led to fruitless discussions and divisions, but there was someone who would offer a way out. Anthony Wedgwood Benn, the Minister of Technology, had been an enthusiastic advocate for new “high-tech” jobs in Britain for many years. A veritable “whizz kid”, Benn was known for his innovative thinking and belief in the power of technology to advance the cause of socialism. That is why, on the 2nd September 1969, he proposed that government funding be diverted towards the burgeoning sectors of computing and electronics to create a wider range of jobs. The cabinet was receptive to the idea, believing this to be their chance to reignite Labour’s claim to modernisation and solve the looming economic crisis before it could unravel into a disaster. However, small steps towards this idea would need to be taken before Benn’s plan could be implemented. Many workers did not have the skills to operate in these new industries and so a new national training service would have to be set up. The “National Employment and Skills Service”, known as “Nessie” by many people across the country, was to come under the authority of the Ministry of Labour and run with the co-operation of the Trades Union Congress. It would, with government funds, provide the sorely needed training to workers so that they could fill the “jobs of the future” that Benn envisioned.
At first, it seemed as though Britain was back on the right path. It wasn’t to last, however.
By the winter of ’69, the plans to build new computer manufacturing sites in Manchester, Reading and throughout the West Midlands were not being fulfilled and specialist training provided by the NESS was taking longer than previously expected. Businesses became impatient in waiting for their many workers to move into new workplaces and, for the first time in years, pay deductions were occurring on a huge scale. Naturally, the unions and the Labour Party were furious. Strikes suddenly grew in number, with more and more workers feeling that their wages were under attack. Benn’s plan was beginning to look foolish and there was almost no control for the government to exert over the unions. Greenwood ruled out declaring a state of emergency, believing that to be an undemocratic and cowardly abuse of power. Instead, he opted to sit down with the leaders of the TUC to provide a new plan.
On the 29th December, a deal was hammered out to shape the next steps in Greenwood’s push for modernisation. Gunter, Benn and the TUC agreed to push for small tax increases to provide the NESS with more staff and resources for training. At the same time, to deflect a loss of investor confidence in Benn’s overarching project, Britain’s electronic manufacturers and computing firms would be nationalised and the Ministry of Technology would set up the nationalised industries with co-operative elements – workers, researchers and government officials would sit on the governing boards to plan production and management more carefully than could be done if left in private hands.
In the country, there was a knee-jerk reaction against the continuing “Sovietisation of Britain” as more industries were nationalised in the name of economic modernisation. The Conservative Party under Powell and Joseph railed against the government, claiming that Labour was being led by the unions and giving them undue influence in the working lives of the British people. The tax increases were another sign that Labour was bullying business to appease the trade unions, thus adding to the fear amongst business leaders that their own industries could be next. Amongst Powellites, especially the workers on the nationalised docks, the blame for all these problems was not the government’s commitment to full employment. No, instead they blamed immigrants for flooding the labour market and forcing businesses to drive down wages. Still today, many working-class people view the crisis of 1969 as the logical end result of unrestricted immigration and point to it as an example of the necessity of immigration restrictions. Whether this is really evidence to support immigration restrictions is still in dispute.
The short-term effects of the new deal, however, saw more than 25,000 workers trained by February 1970 and a further 50,000 predicted by the end of the summer. The NESS became a highly popular institution and, despite various rebranding efforts over the years, still exists in modern Britain for the purpose of providing training opportunities to workers and businesses. Tax revenue from increases to the upper rates of income tax and to capital gains tax went straight into government projects to build new manufacturing sites, which in turn aided the construction industry to keep up their workers’ wages and resolve pay disputes that were emerging. In the long-term, the co-operative nature of the new industries would lead to a greater legacy of decentralising power from government to workers in the nationalised industries, allowing groups such as the Institute for Workers’ Control to further influence Labour party policy over the next two decades.
Greenwood had weathered the storm, but there were fears that his personal charm and passion for radical socialism would only lead to further conflict. He certainly had the power to force the unions back and claim some more control over their ability to hold the government’s plans back – as they did during the spate of strikes during the winter of 1969. But, even when his Chancellor and Home Secretary offered to look into restricting some of their powers, Greenwood kept the idea off the table and thereby alienated more moderates in cabinet. Tony realised this and, after spending the early spring of 1970 deliberating on his decision, made his decision to stand down as Prime Minister.
It was a decision taken with the consultation of family and friends, many of whom tried to dissuade him from resigning. Greenwood, though, was a man who believed in good timing. The public had warmed to him and didn’t hold him personally responsible for Britain’s stuttering economy, as far as he could tell. Though he still had many more ideas to implement (such as the abolition of the House of Lords and more regulation of Britain’s financial system), Greenwood was convinced that he had enough of a legacy to be proud of and left his plans to his successor to implement in her next three years as Prime Minister. He was getting older too and he realised that the fresh-faced man who challenged Hugh Gaitskell in 1960 had become wrinkled and he had let his hair grow too long. The years had taken their toll. His wife, Gillian, was also instrumental in convincing him to stand down. Because of, and not in spite of, the improving economy (and the myriad of other factors he felt were pushing him), Greenwood realised that almost six years as Prime Minister had been enough.
On the 2nd May 1970, Anthony Greenwood made his announcement on television. He was resigning from the role of Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, leaving both positions to whoever could win the backing of the party to succeed him. Within three weeks, Barbara Castle would become the first female Leader of the Labour Party and the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was the premier Greenwoodite candidate, beating both the social democratic Tony Crosland and James Callaghan (the token candidate of the Old Right) in a three-way contest.
Anthony Greenwood had fundamentally changed Britain in his six years at Number 10. From the struggling post-imperial power it was under Quintin Hogg to the modern, democratic socialist state that it was becoming by 1970, Britain had undergone a metamorphosis so unlike any that it had gone through before. In years gone by, it would have taken war and great social upheaval to provoke such changes, but Greenwood had managed it by the ballot box. The future looked a little brighter and, in retrospect, few historians have painted Anthony Greenwood as the main culprit for the problems that would befall Britain in the 1970s. Instead, he still stands out as one of Britain’s greatest post-war Prime Ministers. In the latest poll undertaken by the BBC in August 2015, Tony Greenwood was second to Clement Attlee as the nation’s favourite. Years before, he was even considered first. Though seen as divisive for his strong ideological leanings and the major modifications he made to the post-war consensus, many accredit him with being the founder of “modern Britain” – a nation with a strong welfare state, an ethical foreign policy, and an independent outlook from the rest of Europe.
After resigning in May 1970, Tony Greenwood took a holiday with his wife to their cottage in East Mersea in Essex. He believed he deserved a rest and, every year after until his death, he would return with his wife and his family to sit and reminisce on his time as Prime Minister whilst also offering the odd interview whilst sitting in the kitchen of his cottage or on Mersea beach. Even outside of the hectic world of frontline politics, Greenwood managed to appear as the sophisticated elder statesman – whether in his open shirt and shorts overlooking the North Sea or in his personal visits to the White House to offer President Romney support as America made its hasty and controversial withdrawal from Vietnam.
Survived by his wife, Gillian, and two daughters, Susanna and Dinah, Anthony Greenwood (made Lord Greenwood of Rossendale in 1973) died in London on the 11th April 1982 – two months before the Ministry of Defence officially announced that it would destroy Britain’s nuclear material and permanently scrap all plans to rebuild Britain’s nuclear armaments.
THE END
