Unsafe Foundations. A British 1970s Timeline

nezza

NB this is a redux of a TL called "No Norman, A Jeremy Thorpe TL but without the conspiratorial nature and just focuses on the political events. Thanks to @sarahz and @Garrison for the guidance from the previous TL

POD:
28th February 1974
General Election Results

Labour 319
Conservative 277
Liberal 14

29th February 1974
Talks between the Tories and Liberals over a potential coalition collapsed after 1 day

Tuesday 5th March 1974. Lord North Street

Harold Wilson: "Jeremy, you must stop this sort of thing"
Jeremy Thorpe "What sort of thing?"

HW: Don't be a idiot, I've never been comfortable with homosexuals and if it had been anyone else in charge of the Liberals I wouldn't even be having this conversation but right now neither of us are in control.

JT: "So what are you proposing?"
HW "What Heath wanted, a formal coalition"

JT "That depends"
HW " On what"

JT" What you're prepared to offer"
HW " You're not getting the Home Office. That's going to Roy"

JT " Foreign Office?"
HW, No, Jim's taking that

JT " What, Callaghan at the FO, He's got no diplomacy at all...wait, you're not offering me the Treasury?"
HW, No.

JT "So what the hell are you proposing"
HW "A new cabinet role, Secretary of State for European Affairs"

JT "Go on"
HW. The referendum will be next year and I have to offer freedom to speak on both sides to all my MP's including the cabinet. You would be the best person for the pro-Europe vote.

JT "What about Jenkins?
HW "I don't trust him. If it had been possible I'd have let the bastard rot on the backbenches but I need his supporters. Roy will lead the pro-EEC campaign, he would be the senior figure. But you Jeremy will be my man on the inside.

JT "Supposing I agree, how do I know that after the referendum you call an election and throw us out"
HW "I intend to call one in October. We haven't got enough seats between us and you know that. The plan is to sort out the miners and Ulster and then go to the country on a ticket of national unity.

JT "With the Liberals as junior partners!"
HW "You'd want the tories back in? Heath may be done for but there's Maudling or Whitelaw waiting in the wings and they're more formidable. Jeremy I'm not going to lose again. This is the only chance you have.

"JT, If I agree I want three cabinet posts, and 3 undersecretaries of state"
"HW, We have a deal
 
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nezza

SELECTED CABINET POSITIONS
Prime Minister: Harold Wilson
Chancellor: Denis Healey
Chief Secretary To The Treasury: John Pardoe

Foreign Secretary: Jim Callaghan
European Affairs Secretary: Jeremy Thorpe

Home Secretary: Roy Jenkins
Education Secretary: David Steel

Trade and Industry Secretary: Tony Benn
Employment Secretary: Michael Foot

SELECTED JUNIOR MINISTERIAL POSITIONS

Home Office Minister: Alan Beith
Foreign Office Minister: Clement Freud
Lord Privy Seal: Lord Avebury
 

nezza

"If there was such a role of a 'political fight promoter' then he would have a field day with the coalition government with two major prize fights. Healey and Pardoe simply hated each other. Both of them were brilliant politicians and each of them had their own histrionic quirks. Healey being a bruiser against Footlights member Pardoe with his theatrical leanings

David Steel told me many years later that the weekly meetings between Healey and Pardoe became a highlight of the political week and that seconds were often employed to act as go-betweens. On more than one occasion Pardoe would simply get up and walk out whilst Healey was talking (*)

The battle between Callaghan and Thorpe was very different. Again with the above combatants familiarity bred contempt. Both of them were ineffably polite and charming but underneath the surface their differences over Europe were very evident. Thorpe was the arch pro-European as indeed all Liberals were. Callaghan was an admitted Atlanticist who in answer to a remark I made to him during that time about working with the French:

"what haggling with the French? They're absolute arseholes'

I think that was the only time I heard Jim use the language he's picked up in the Navy


In all seriousness though to say the coalition was flawed and unsafe will go down in history as one of the greatest understatements. Wilson didn't want to go into coalition with Thorpe, his defeat in 1970 still rankled with him. Even though he and Thorpe were close friends Wilson was uncomfortable with homosexuality, he wasn't homophobic in the accepted sense of the word but he preferred not to think about the physical aspect. He later said to me that he didn't like what they got up to.

Wilson the strategist however knew he had to ensure the coalition survived. Labour had promised to hold a referendum in 1975, a direct result of Tony Benn's successful adoption of such a mechanism in 1973. The creation of European Affairs Secretary was a powerplay to keep Thorpe and the Liberals in double harness as well as neutering Callaghan. It was a very dangerous game not just of the politics but also because of the risk not just from the proto-Bennites but also from Thorpe's secret life

(John Cole "As It Seemed To Me" Published in 1995)

(*NB I know that recently David Steel has been the source of much controversy regarding the actions of Cyril Smith. This timeline will like its predecessor eschew all mention of Smith from here on in and just focus on the politics)
 

nezza

"I stormed into Wilson's office in the Commons and howled in fury at him. I told him it was disgraceful that he should form a coalition with the Liberals when so many had voted for our policies. I told him it was a betrayal of the movement

Wilson said that he didn't give a damn about the movement. He had no choice but to form a coalition.

'I cant go into the commons next week for the Queens speech with every party ranged against me. With the Liberals on our side we've got a better chance. There's no way the Tories will want another election so soon. Besides which part of this is your fault'

'My fault, what the hell do you mean'

'Your referendum idea 2 years ago. I've got to hold it and need as much support as possible. I can't rely on you and the rest of the awkward squad'

'I bridled at this and told him that I was sticking to my principles. Something he never had and stormed out of the door. The only bright spot I can think of is that Healey and Pardoe will have to work together. I can imagine someone will have to hold their coats

Tony Benn's Diary 7th March 1974
 

nezza

13th March 1974

"BBC News at 6 o'clock. Good Evening. The first Prime Minister's Questions of the new parliamentary session was suspended today following outbursts from opposition members regarding the coalition. Several Conservative MP's accused the Prime Minister of leading a coup while the European Affairs Secretary Jeremy Thorpe was accused of betraying the country"
 

nezza

10 Downing Street 14th March 1974

Harold Wilson: Sir Michael I appreciate this is an unusual meeting and I appreciate your coming so quickly.
Sir Michael Hanley: Thank You Prime Minister, How can I help you?
HW: As you know the government is very unstable. We have no majority and our alliance with the Liberals is shaky to say the least. The issue I have is with Mr Thorpe, specifically his private activities.
MH: In what respect Prime Minister,
HW, Come now Sir Michael. Neither of us are fools.

MH: Well its well known that Mr Thorpe is a homosexual and that his activities have been known to us for quite some time
HW: What is your concern?
MH: That Mr Thorpe's proclivities may lead him open to blackmail or extortion
HW: Have you any evidence?
MH: Nothing that we could call substantial. Up until recently he wasn't really an issue. But now the situation has changed so have our concerns...Prime Minister may I speak freely?
HW: Of Course

MH: Prime Minister, I and by that I mean the department are seriously concerned that you have made Mr Thorpe not just a senior member of the cabinet but also given him a prime role in the upcoming referendum. We are worried that if Mr Thorpe's homosexuality were revealed then it would have grave consequences for the government and the country. To be frank Prime Minister having a deviant in the cabinet at such a dangerous time could be fatal.
HW: I had no Idea you were prejudiced.
MH: Prime Minister I have a very strong belief in the way in which the world should be and buggery is not part of that world, If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act. Leviticus Chapter 20, Verse 13

HW: Sir Michael, I appreciate your candour as well as your biblical knowledge. which I why want you to keep a very close eye on Mr Thorpe. I want you to monitor every aspect of Mr Thorpe's life. I want to know where he goes, who he sees, what he speaks about.
MH: As European Affairs Secretary he will already have protection.
HW: I'm not talking about protection. I'm talking about watching him
MH: Prime Minister, are you asking me, asking the department to spy on Mr Thorpe?
HW: Yes Sir Michael I am

(NB Sir Michael Hanley was Director General of MI5 from 1972 to 1978)
 
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nezza

"During that period politics as we knew it was on hold. It was Disraeli that said 'England does not love coalitions' but it can be said that England and indeed the UK as a whole was confused about their new government. From a continuity point of view and for the daily life of the nation the coalition was realistically the only way forward. A Tory/Liberal alliance would have been impotent against the combined forces of Labour and the various nationalist and unionist parties. The UUP and DUP would have roasted Heath in the Commons over the Stormont Executive.

A cabinet minister (who's identity I swore to keep secret) told me in April 1974 that 'this will be over by Christmas'. In terms of the actual government this was true. Wilson's plan was to deal with the miners, oversee the demise of the executive and (reluctantly) enact the EEC Referendum Act then call an election in October, gain a majority and jettison the Liberals. Best laid plans..."

Cole 1995
 

nezza

Benn, 14th March 1974
"First cabinet of the new session and it was the most maddening and depressing one I'd ever attended. Thorpe, Steel and Pardoe walked into Downing Street with looks of supreme arrogance on their faces. Once inside the like of Williams and especially Jenkins were fawning over them like a dog with a bone. I sat next to Edmund Dell in the new seating arrangement. Thorpe sat to the left of Healey and Pardoe next to Eric Varley.

Harold opened the cabinet by welcoming the new members which I found sickening. Then he started about the lack of a majority and how the Miners needed to be dealt with...I didn't pay attention to the rest. My only comforting thought was that Wilson will have to call another election soon and that will be our chance to have a full Labour government back in power and to dump the Liberals back where they belong
 

nezza

Michael Cockerell: What was Harold Wilson's health like at this time?"
Joe Haines: "He was getting slowly worse. He was getting through 4 or 5 brandies a day, large brandies. I remember we were at Lord North Street on the afternoon before Harold got the call from Buckingham Palace to see the Queen..."

MC: "This was in March 1974"
JH "Yes it was. Harold was drunk, very drunk. The truth was he expected the Tories to win despite everything. When we found out that the talks between Heath and Thorpe had collapsed so soon Wilson actually panicked. He knew he was sloshed and had to get himself sorted. Looking back its a miracle he was together enough to accept the Queen's commission. If you look at the film of Harold and Mary outside Downing Street after coming back from the palace you'll see that Wilson was very monosyllabic when answering questions. He was seriously hungover. The next day Bernard Donoghue asked me if this was normal. I had to say yes it was.

MC: "And what was Bernard Donoghue's reaction?"
JH "He used a word that I can't repeat here"

(The Downing Street Patient, BBC 2004)
 

nezza

Interviewer: "How much of a risk was Jeremy Thorpe to the country?"

Chapman Pincher: "It depends what you mean by to the country. He wasn't a Russian spy or anything like that. He was a serious risk in terms of potential blackmail or exploitation. Michael Hanley who headed MI5 during that time was a very right wing man. He detested socialism and thought homosexuality was the work of the devil but he was a loyal if prickly servant of the crown. Wilson asked him a couple of days after the February 1974 election to spy on Thorpe and warn Wilson if there was any risk of Thorpe's private life becoming public"

Interviewer: You're saying that Harold Wilson told MI5 to spy on a cabinet member?"

CP: "Yes, yes I am. This is the first time that this has been revealed in over 20 years. Only a handful of people knew about this. Wilson kept it incredibly secret which given his regular off the record chats with friendly newspapers was quite remarkable. Not even Peter Wright knew. If he had then it would have been in that book of his"

I: "How did you find out?"

CP: "In 1981, long after Wilson and Thorpe had left office I was contacted by a fairly senior member of MI5 who I'd know as an acquaintance for about a decade. He told me that Thorpe was spied on by MI5. I'd suspected it for a long while beforehand but it was nice to have it confirmed. To be honest though it wasn't a surprise at all. Thorpe had been known about by the security services since the early 1960's. There was a man called Norman Josiffe who was a groomsman in Oxfordshire that had an affair with Thorpe. From what I understand Josiffe was mentally unstable and plagued Thorpe after their relationship ended, Josiffe was claiming that Thorpe had took his National Insurance Card..

I: "Thorpe had Josiffe's National Insurance Card?"

CP: "Yes, that's correct. Whether that's true or not is unknown but Josiffe was relentless. What actually brought him to MI5's attention was that in the early 1960s Josiffe wrote a huge 18 page letter to Thorpe's mother saying that Thorpe had seduced Josiffe at her house in London. He, Josiffe also claimed that Thorpe's mother knew Thorpe was gay. The letter was sent first to the police and then to MI5 where it was placed in a safe, a huge old-fashioned iron safe in the office of Roger Hollis who was then the director general of MI5. As far as I know that file was still there when Hanley took over in 1972"

I: "Why was this file never revealed?"

CP: "It was the attitudes of the time. In the early 1960s homosexuality was illegal as well as being regarded as being sick. Had Thorpe been outed he would have been thrown into prison, that if he hadn't killed himself first. Death before dishonour and all that"

I: "What happened to Josiffe?"

CP: "Thorpe asked a friend of his, a fellow Liberal MP called Peter Bessell to act as a go-between. At first Bessell paid Josiffe a weekly retainer of £5 which in the early 1960's was a hell of a lot of money but by the time Thorpe became Liberal leader in 1967 Josiffe was becoming more demanding. Somehow and I don't know the specifics Thorpe and Bessell were able to find Josiffe a job abroad, in France I believe to study Dressage on the provision that Josiffe never contacted Thorpe again"

Voiceover: "Peter Bessell died in 1988 in California, attempts to find Norman Josiffe by Channel 4 have been ended in failure"

("The Secret Society, Channel 4, 1996)

NB. There was a series on Channel 4 in 1996 called "Secret Lives" which had episodes on Harold Wilson and Jeremy Thorpe. Chapman Pincher who was a newspaper Defence correspondent for The Daily Express was interviewed in the Wilson episode about rumours regarding a plot to overthrow Wilson. I've used material from the following three documentaries and a lot of artistic licence to write the above post:

Harold Wilson: The Final Days Channel 4 1996

The Plot Against Harold Wilson: BBC 2006

Secret Lives: Jeremy Thorpe 1996

This will be the only time I'll mention the Jeremy Thorpe/Norman Josiffe (Scott) affair in this TL
 
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nezza

"Ive always had mixed feelings about hindsight. Journalists are supposed to analyse what they're being told and then extrapolate what they're actually being told. Even though the legislation for the Referendum Act hadn't started going through Parliament by April 1974 behind the scenes cross-party groupings on both sides. Had I the wherewithal I would have been able to pinpoint that period where everything started to change"

Cole 1995
 

nezza

"Attended parliamentary questions to the Foreign Office. Jim and Thorpe looked like The Odd Couple. Thorpe was so smooth and unctuous at the Despatch Box it made me feel physically sick.

Later had a chat with Bob Mellish. His office is down the corridor from Denis's study in the Treasury and he told me that he has grown to hate Mondays because of the rows that emanate from there between Healy and Pardoe. Now Bob is more than capable of arguing but he says that these rows are horrible. It has simply reinforces my belief that this coalition is a complete disaster.

The only response I have to to work as hard as I can to ensure that when the election comes later this year that it will result in a majority Labour government"

Benn 22nd April 1974

(NB Bob Mellish held the role of Parliamentary Secretary To The Treasury between the 5th of March 1974 to the 8th of April 1976)
 

nezza

‘All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.‘
Enoch Powell 1977

Powell wrote this about Joseph Chamberlain's failure to grasp the Conservative Leadership. If he had written this about Heath then it would have been ironic at best. Heath after February 1974 certainly wasn't happy. He was more morose then ever before and his legendary lack of tact and refusal to take advice just increased in intensity. While his position was safe for the foreseeable future as he would lead the Conservatives into the October 1974 election there was already talk on who will take over"

(Edward Heath: The Unauthorised Biography by Edward Ziegler, 2010)

(NB the book is real but the above quote is fictional.)
 

nezza

"If there was a fantasy figure for the right in the Mid 1970's then Sir Walter Walker would be that man. He was the personification of reactionary and traditional.


In 1974, the year of the continuing Conservative battle with the miners, the fall of the Heath government and two general elections, Walker supported an organisation calling itself the Unison Committee for Action. With an inner committee including bankers, barristers and businessmen, the UCA claimed it could run the country's essential services, such as fire, ambulance and auxiliary police if there was a collapse of law and order, and if "the means of sustenance" ran short. Nonetheless, Walker said, it was neither a private army nor a paramilitary body.

Walker dispersed his opinions over a wide front. He backed corporal punishment, denounced domestic communist subversion, supported Ian Smith's white supremacist regime in what was then Rhodesia, denounced homosexuals, called for a tougher policy against the IRA, and backed Enoch Powell as Conservative party leader, pointing out that Winston Churchill had spent the 1930s in the wilderness before the menace of Hitler was recognised.

In the era of Heath, Harold Wilson, Jeremy Thorpe and James Callaghan, Walker announced that he would not have employed any of the then party leaders. "

(Obituary of Sir Walter Walker 14th August 2001)

(NB the underlined paragraphs are from the actual piece:
www.theguardian.com

Obituary:Sir Walter Walker

Distinguished soldier who became enmeshed in rightwing political fantasies.
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 

nezza

Sarthak Bikram Panta said:
Interesting! Go on!
Click to expand...


"Certainly

"Harold Wilson was in some way the archetypal little Englander. One could imagine him in Downing Street watching Coronation Street with Mary eating an HP sauce smothered bacon sandwich with a pint of beer on the table next to him. But when it came to Europe he was more nuanced. He knew as 1974 progressed that the Referendum rapidly approaching he had to do what he can to ensure that whatever happened he kept his unstable government together.

We don't know for certain when he decided to allow his MP's the freedom to choose which side to campaign on but In some ways it was a political masterstroke. Heath may have took us into the EEC but Wilson wanted to be the Prime Minister who would seal the UK's relationship with our continental neighbours."

(Dominic Sandbrook "Seasons In The Sun", Published in 2012)
 
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