As the snow continues to fall, and commentators start looking through the records for the last time we had a cold spell like this, I'm reminded of January thirty-one years ago, the so-called winter of discontent in 1979, when the last Labour government began its final descent. This is an extract from my book Crisis? What Crisis?:
It was, to start with, bitterly cold, the coldest January since 1963. Weeks of frost, freezing fog, hailstorms, sleet and snow were followed in early February by a combination of a sudden thaw and heavy rain that produced widespread flooding. And then came yet more blizzards. In Scotland there were reports of beer freezing in pub cellars and of frozen waves in Oban harbour as the temperature plunged to –25º Celsius, while the whole country’s transport system struggled to cope.
Ted Heath had at least been lucky with the weather in 1973–74; Jim Callaghan was not. ‘Let those who possess industrial muscle or monopoly power resolve not to abuse their great strength,’ he had pleaded in his New Year’s message. ‘Individual greed and disregard for the well-being of others can undermine and divide our society.’ His call fell on deaf ears and the New Year started instead with strikes by the drivers of oil tankers and lorries. A series of one-day stoppages by rail workers and even by short-haul British Airways pilots added to the problems.
Within days there was a fuel shortage, with just one petrol station reported open in Liverpool and with prices inflating daily from the existing 75p a gallon up to £2 and even £3 in some places. The AA warned drivers not to undertake long journeys: ‘They probably won’t be able to get back, because the situation is grim in many areas.’ Flying pickets sealed off the ports to lorries coming from abroad and fears of imminent food shortages sparked a wave of panic buying, many taking advantage of the deep-freezes that had become part of every middle-class household over the last few years. Two million workers were threatened with being laid off if the strikes continued, pigs were reported to be resorting to cannibalism as food supplies to farms ran low, supermarkets began rationing essentials such as butter and sugar, and newspapers shrank in size as supplies of newsprint dwindled.
Callaghan missed the onset of all this, being out of the country on a six-day trip to a summit meeting of Western leaders, a meeting which – to add insult to injury – was being held on the agreeably warm Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. His absence was duly noted, generally with an appropriately British reference to the weather. ‘Britain could well be on the brink of a disaster that will make Ted’s three-day week seem like a golden age,’ raged the Sun. ‘Meanwhile Jim yawns lazily on his tropic isle...’
Showing posts with label Jim Callaghan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Callaghan. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Thursday, 21 August 2008
Tim Haigh vs Dr Death
David Owen is one of the more fascinating figures to have inhabited British politics over the last four decades. Promoted to foreign secretary by Labour prime minister Jim Callaghan at an absurdly young age, and one of the founder-members of the SDP (before splitting that party as well), he was potentially the best leader the Tory Party never had.
He's also, of course a doctor, and his most recent book, In Sickness And In Power (Methuen), combines his twin interests in medicine and politics - an account of how ill-health impacts upon the behaviour of world leaders, and thereby influences the course of world history.
It's a fascinating subject and you can hear him discussing it with the very wonderful Tim Haigh here: Tim Haigh Reads Books.
This is the first of a new series of podcasts from Green-Shoot.com. It's much recommended (and not simply because I'll be turning up in a later podcast).
He's also, of course a doctor, and his most recent book, In Sickness And In Power (Methuen), combines his twin interests in medicine and politics - an account of how ill-health impacts upon the behaviour of world leaders, and thereby influences the course of world history.
It's a fascinating subject and you can hear him discussing it with the very wonderful Tim Haigh here: Tim Haigh Reads Books.
This is the first of a new series of podcasts from Green-Shoot.com. It's much recommended (and not simply because I'll be turning up in a later podcast).
Sunday, 3 August 2008
Crisis and Discontent
The title of my book, Crisis? What Crisis?, comes from one of the most celebrated political misquotes of the 1970s (kind of a modern equivalent of ‘Let them eat cake’) as expressed in a Sun headline on 11 January 1979.
The context was the coldest January in Britain since 1963, and a strike by the drivers of oil tankers and lorries. The resultant fuel shortage was raising the forecourt price of petrol by up to 400%, panic buying was creating food shortages, and there were reports that two million workers could be laid off if the situation continued.
Meanwhile Jim Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was out of the country on a six-day summit meeting on the agreeably warm Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.
When he flew back, he told the reporters gathered to greet him that things weren’t as bad as they made out: ‘I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos,’ he said in the reassuring, emollient tones that had served him so well over the years.
And the Sun summed up his comments in that famous headline: Crisis? What Crisis?
He hadn’t actually said that, hadn’t even used the word ‘crisis’, but the expression attached itself to him instantly and came to symbolize the Labour government’s apparent dislocation from reality. And the main reason that it stuck was that it was already in common usage.
The phrase came originally from the 1973 film of Frederick Forsyth’s novel, The Day of the Jackal (though not from the book). By the winter of that year, during the oil crisis that helped bring down the Conservative government of Edward Heath, it was being used as a headline in the Daily Mail. It even turned up in the Sun itself in 1974, trailing a television programme in which David Dimbleby looked at American portrayals of contemporary Britain. And in 1975 the progressive-pop band Supertramp released a hit album with the title.
In short, the words were already in the air, waiting to be given the killer application.
The other great cliché of January 1979 was ‘the winter of discontent’. And again it wasn’t a new coinage for British politics in the ‘70s. A headline in London’s Evening Standard in February 1974 read: The Winter of Our Discontent. That was during the three-day week that Heath had called in response to industrial action by the miners.
In both cases, then, the phrases ‘crisis? what crisis?’ and ‘the winter of discontent’ were originally employed to refer to a Conservative administration, but went on to become primarily associated with a Labour government. As I point out in the book:
‘Thus did 1978-79 adopt the linguistic imagery – and eclipse the memory – of 1973-74, so that the Labour Party became associated with all the ills of 1970s Britain, as though the pre-Thatcher Tories had never really existed, or rather as though they had been closet socialists all along. In future years the phrase “the winter of discontent” would frequently prompt confused memories of the three-day week, alongside the genuine events of the Callaghan era.’
And the reason I’m prompted to write this blog-entry is that I just came across a page on the BBC website that includes these words:
‘Mrs Thatcher came to power during an especially creative period for UK music in the early aftermath of the punk rock movement which had experienced its first stirrings three years earlier.
‘Set against a backdrop of a three-day week and the winter of discontent, homegrown protest music began to flourish like never before, giving a voice to a young disenfranchised audience.’
You see what I mean? The three-day week was in January-February 1974; its imposition was an act of desperation by a Tory cabinet that included Margaret Thatcher. Nothing to do with what is meant here by the winter of discontent, which occurred five years later under Jim Callaghan.
But it all gets mixed up together. And it shouldn’t, you know, it really shouldn’t.
The context was the coldest January in Britain since 1963, and a strike by the drivers of oil tankers and lorries. The resultant fuel shortage was raising the forecourt price of petrol by up to 400%, panic buying was creating food shortages, and there were reports that two million workers could be laid off if the situation continued.
Meanwhile Jim Callaghan, the Labour prime minister, was out of the country on a six-day summit meeting on the agreeably warm Caribbean island of Guadeloupe.
When he flew back, he told the reporters gathered to greet him that things weren’t as bad as they made out: ‘I don’t think that other people in the world would share the view that there is mounting chaos,’ he said in the reassuring, emollient tones that had served him so well over the years.
And the Sun summed up his comments in that famous headline: Crisis? What Crisis?
He hadn’t actually said that, hadn’t even used the word ‘crisis’, but the expression attached itself to him instantly and came to symbolize the Labour government’s apparent dislocation from reality. And the main reason that it stuck was that it was already in common usage.
The phrase came originally from the 1973 film of Frederick Forsyth’s novel, The Day of the Jackal (though not from the book). By the winter of that year, during the oil crisis that helped bring down the Conservative government of Edward Heath, it was being used as a headline in the Daily Mail. It even turned up in the Sun itself in 1974, trailing a television programme in which David Dimbleby looked at American portrayals of contemporary Britain. And in 1975 the progressive-pop band Supertramp released a hit album with the title.
In short, the words were already in the air, waiting to be given the killer application.
The other great cliché of January 1979 was ‘the winter of discontent’. And again it wasn’t a new coinage for British politics in the ‘70s. A headline in London’s Evening Standard in February 1974 read: The Winter of Our Discontent. That was during the three-day week that Heath had called in response to industrial action by the miners.
In both cases, then, the phrases ‘crisis? what crisis?’ and ‘the winter of discontent’ were originally employed to refer to a Conservative administration, but went on to become primarily associated with a Labour government. As I point out in the book:
‘Thus did 1978-79 adopt the linguistic imagery – and eclipse the memory – of 1973-74, so that the Labour Party became associated with all the ills of 1970s Britain, as though the pre-Thatcher Tories had never really existed, or rather as though they had been closet socialists all along. In future years the phrase “the winter of discontent” would frequently prompt confused memories of the three-day week, alongside the genuine events of the Callaghan era.’
And the reason I’m prompted to write this blog-entry is that I just came across a page on the BBC website that includes these words:
‘Mrs Thatcher came to power during an especially creative period for UK music in the early aftermath of the punk rock movement which had experienced its first stirrings three years earlier.
‘Set against a backdrop of a three-day week and the winter of discontent, homegrown protest music began to flourish like never before, giving a voice to a young disenfranchised audience.’
You see what I mean? The three-day week was in January-February 1974; its imposition was an act of desperation by a Tory cabinet that included Margaret Thatcher. Nothing to do with what is meant here by the winter of discontent, which occurred five years later under Jim Callaghan.
But it all gets mixed up together. And it shouldn’t, you know, it really shouldn’t.
Wednesday, 25 June 2008
Gambling on Gordon
The first bet I ever placed was in 1984, and paid off very nicely when Pebbles romped home to victory in the 1000 Guineas at odds of 16-1. The following year I backed Dennis Taylor at the start of the World Snooker tournament to win the title at 25-1, though a last-minute loss of confidence saw me take the each-way option, to my subsequent regret as he came back from seemingly inevitable humiliation to beat Steve Davis on the final ball of the final frame.
Somewhat predictably, I peaked too early, and my sporadic gambling career has been marked by a series of lost stakes ever since. The sequence of ill-considered punts culminated some eighteen months ago, as Tony Blair was preparing to vacate Downing Street, with what I’ve promised myself was definitely my last bet: twenty quid said that Peter Hain would be the next leader of the Labour Party.
As you’ll have noticed, I was entirely wrong. Hain didn’t get the leadership. He didn’t even get the deputy-leadership. In fact, shortly after coming fifth in a field of six for that job, he was obliged even to step down from the cabinet altogether, after some controversy over campaign contributions.
Despite the loss of the money, though, I still reckon my reasoning was sound. I argued that Gordon Brown was so clearly the wrong man for the job that Labour MPs would see the error of their ways and would decide against an act of collective political suicide.
Obviously the party cards were stacked in his favour, but equally obviously he could never put together the kind of cross-class coalition needed to defeat a Tory Party that was so successfully reinventing itself under David Cameron. Why, then, would Labour MPs vote in a leader almost guaranteed to lose them their jobs at the next election?
As we celebrate the completion of Brown’s first year in office, none of this seems to have been invalidated by events.
Admittedly my endorsement of Hain was less prescient – but it’s hard to see how he could have made a worse fist of being prime minister than Brown has done. My logic said that he was old enough not to stand in the way of younger pretenders for too long, and could have made a decent compromise candidate, taking Labour to probable defeat, but leaving Cameron with a minority government or – at worst – a very small majority.
In any event, the Labour Party evidently wasn’t thinking what I was thinking, and now it’s stuck with a leader who appears destined to emulate Jim Callaghan’s unenviable record of being prime minister without ever winning a general election.
The similarities between Brown and Callaghan are striking. Both followed a prime minister who had proved adept at winning elections (three triumphs for Blair, four for Harold Wilson), but who had lost the support of the party, was considered a bit too shallow and gimmicky, and seemed exhausted by office. In both cases, the new incumbent was a former chancellor who was regarded as a good Labour man, a safe pair of hands with a strong emotional and structural attachment to what used to be known as This Great Movement of Ours.
And yet, once in office, they disappointed their followers, pursuing right-wing economic policies almost indistinguishable from those of the Conservative Party, and finding themselves locked in damaging pay disputes with public sector workers whose support should have been automatic.
Both have been castigated for failing to call an election: Callaghan in autumn 1978, and Brown in autumn 2007. In both cases they would probably have won, Brown by virtue of novelty at least. Callaghan went on to lose to Margaret Thatcher the following year; Brown has the comfort of another two years before time runs out.
Both faced rising enthusiasm for nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. And both were vulnerable to English suspicion for representing constituencies outside England.
The differences between the two men, however, are proving ever more significant as the months pass.
Callaghan was, above all, distinguished by his enormous breadth of experience in office. He had been a minister in the government of Clement Atlee (at the department of transport, he’d introduced cats’ eyes and zebra crossings to the nation’s roads), and apart from being chancellor, had also served as home secretary and foreign secretary. Quite possibly he will prove to be the last ever prime minister to have also held the other major offices of state. And while he hadn’t been a conspicuous success at any of those previous jobs, he did at least know in some considerable detail how government and Whitehall worked.
Brown, on the other hand, spent fourteen years on the opposition benches before being catapulted into Number Eleven. He’s never run – or even participated in running – a spending department. For someone who, unlike Blair, hasn’t shied away from the word ‘socialism’, it wouldn’t have done any harm to have known what it was like to argue for more resources, rather than simply to hold the purse-strings.
Beyond the economy, the difference in style was evident in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election last month, where the Tories celebrated taking their first by-election seat from Labour since Ilford North thirty years ago.
That election, back in 1978, came just weeks after Thatcher’s famous World In Action broadcast in which she successfully appealed to the supporters of Enoch Powell, warning that ‘People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’. In the election itself, Sir Keith Joseph built explicitly on this position, with a direct plea to the Jewish vote: ‘Therefore I say that the electors of Ilford North, including the Jews – who are just like everyone else, as the saying goes, only more so – have good reason for supporting Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party on immigration.’
The effect was all that could have been hoped for, and the defeat of Labour’s Tessa Jowell was greeted with dismay on the left: ‘The party is depressed at the apparent success of Thatcher’s exploitation of the race issue,’ noted Benn glumly in his diary
In Crewe & Nantwich it was the Labour Party that was accused of playing the race card, from their slogan for Tamsin Dunwoody (‘One of us’) downwards. Callaghan was not exactly in the progressive vanguard when it came to race and immigration (‘We don’t want any more blacks in Britain,’ he’d told Benn in 1970), but under his leadership, at least Labour didn’t descend to the dog-whistle. To do so, and then to lose, looks like the tactics of desperation.
Then there’s the question of temperament. Callaghan’s public persona was that of Sunny Jim, a cheerful calming presence in times of trouble. His image of unflappable reassurance may have cost him dear in the winter of discontent (prompting the famous ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ misquote in the Sun), but mostly it stood him in good stead and saw him retain a high level of personal support: before, during and after the 1979 general election, he scored higher in opinion polls than did either his party or Thatcher.
Nowadays, Brown trails even Labour’s lowly standing in the polls. And despite all attempts to re-vamp his image and all the encouragement to smile more often, he still looks as though a slightly sulky gloom is his default position. One can’t help but be reminded of P.G. Wodehouse’s comment that ‘It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.’
Most important of all is the difference between the two men’s assumption of office. Callaghan came through in 1976 as the victor in a contest that saw a host of substantial and weighty challengers: Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland, Tony Benn, Denis Healey and Michael Foot, any one of whom could make a plausible case as a potential prime minister. They were the best and brightest candidates available, and they came from right across the spectrum of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Had Brown faced a similar field a year ago, he would probably still have won, but he would have emerged with the kind of unquestionable authority that he now so patently lacks. It would have been hard for the press to indulge in the promotion of, say, David Milliband’s cause if he’d already been seen off by Brown.
And of course it would have given me at least an outside chance of seeing a return on my stake.
But then again, to return to one of my few successes at the bookmakers, in 1985 Dennis Taylor was eight frames to nil down before he staged that remarkable comeback to snatch victory from Steve Davis. A rotund, uncharismatic figure from the Celtic fringes proved capable of overcoming the golden young star who everyone thought was invincible. And he did it by sheer resilience and a refusal to accept defeat when it was staring him in the face.
Maybe, just maybe, Brown is not the new Callaghan at all; maybe he’s the new Dennis Taylor.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Somewhat predictably, I peaked too early, and my sporadic gambling career has been marked by a series of lost stakes ever since. The sequence of ill-considered punts culminated some eighteen months ago, as Tony Blair was preparing to vacate Downing Street, with what I’ve promised myself was definitely my last bet: twenty quid said that Peter Hain would be the next leader of the Labour Party.
As you’ll have noticed, I was entirely wrong. Hain didn’t get the leadership. He didn’t even get the deputy-leadership. In fact, shortly after coming fifth in a field of six for that job, he was obliged even to step down from the cabinet altogether, after some controversy over campaign contributions.
Despite the loss of the money, though, I still reckon my reasoning was sound. I argued that Gordon Brown was so clearly the wrong man for the job that Labour MPs would see the error of their ways and would decide against an act of collective political suicide.
Obviously the party cards were stacked in his favour, but equally obviously he could never put together the kind of cross-class coalition needed to defeat a Tory Party that was so successfully reinventing itself under David Cameron. Why, then, would Labour MPs vote in a leader almost guaranteed to lose them their jobs at the next election?
As we celebrate the completion of Brown’s first year in office, none of this seems to have been invalidated by events.
Admittedly my endorsement of Hain was less prescient – but it’s hard to see how he could have made a worse fist of being prime minister than Brown has done. My logic said that he was old enough not to stand in the way of younger pretenders for too long, and could have made a decent compromise candidate, taking Labour to probable defeat, but leaving Cameron with a minority government or – at worst – a very small majority.
In any event, the Labour Party evidently wasn’t thinking what I was thinking, and now it’s stuck with a leader who appears destined to emulate Jim Callaghan’s unenviable record of being prime minister without ever winning a general election.
The similarities between Brown and Callaghan are striking. Both followed a prime minister who had proved adept at winning elections (three triumphs for Blair, four for Harold Wilson), but who had lost the support of the party, was considered a bit too shallow and gimmicky, and seemed exhausted by office. In both cases, the new incumbent was a former chancellor who was regarded as a good Labour man, a safe pair of hands with a strong emotional and structural attachment to what used to be known as This Great Movement of Ours.
And yet, once in office, they disappointed their followers, pursuing right-wing economic policies almost indistinguishable from those of the Conservative Party, and finding themselves locked in damaging pay disputes with public sector workers whose support should have been automatic.
Both have been castigated for failing to call an election: Callaghan in autumn 1978, and Brown in autumn 2007. In both cases they would probably have won, Brown by virtue of novelty at least. Callaghan went on to lose to Margaret Thatcher the following year; Brown has the comfort of another two years before time runs out.
Both faced rising enthusiasm for nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales. And both were vulnerable to English suspicion for representing constituencies outside England.
The differences between the two men, however, are proving ever more significant as the months pass.
Callaghan was, above all, distinguished by his enormous breadth of experience in office. He had been a minister in the government of Clement Atlee (at the department of transport, he’d introduced cats’ eyes and zebra crossings to the nation’s roads), and apart from being chancellor, had also served as home secretary and foreign secretary. Quite possibly he will prove to be the last ever prime minister to have also held the other major offices of state. And while he hadn’t been a conspicuous success at any of those previous jobs, he did at least know in some considerable detail how government and Whitehall worked.
Brown, on the other hand, spent fourteen years on the opposition benches before being catapulted into Number Eleven. He’s never run – or even participated in running – a spending department. For someone who, unlike Blair, hasn’t shied away from the word ‘socialism’, it wouldn’t have done any harm to have known what it was like to argue for more resources, rather than simply to hold the purse-strings.
Beyond the economy, the difference in style was evident in the Crewe & Nantwich by-election last month, where the Tories celebrated taking their first by-election seat from Labour since Ilford North thirty years ago.
That election, back in 1978, came just weeks after Thatcher’s famous World In Action broadcast in which she successfully appealed to the supporters of Enoch Powell, warning that ‘People are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’. In the election itself, Sir Keith Joseph built explicitly on this position, with a direct plea to the Jewish vote: ‘Therefore I say that the electors of Ilford North, including the Jews – who are just like everyone else, as the saying goes, only more so – have good reason for supporting Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Party on immigration.’
The effect was all that could have been hoped for, and the defeat of Labour’s Tessa Jowell was greeted with dismay on the left: ‘The party is depressed at the apparent success of Thatcher’s exploitation of the race issue,’ noted Benn glumly in his diary
In Crewe & Nantwich it was the Labour Party that was accused of playing the race card, from their slogan for Tamsin Dunwoody (‘One of us’) downwards. Callaghan was not exactly in the progressive vanguard when it came to race and immigration (‘We don’t want any more blacks in Britain,’ he’d told Benn in 1970), but under his leadership, at least Labour didn’t descend to the dog-whistle. To do so, and then to lose, looks like the tactics of desperation.
Then there’s the question of temperament. Callaghan’s public persona was that of Sunny Jim, a cheerful calming presence in times of trouble. His image of unflappable reassurance may have cost him dear in the winter of discontent (prompting the famous ‘Crisis? What Crisis?’ misquote in the Sun), but mostly it stood him in good stead and saw him retain a high level of personal support: before, during and after the 1979 general election, he scored higher in opinion polls than did either his party or Thatcher.
Nowadays, Brown trails even Labour’s lowly standing in the polls. And despite all attempts to re-vamp his image and all the encouragement to smile more often, he still looks as though a slightly sulky gloom is his default position. One can’t help but be reminded of P.G. Wodehouse’s comment that ‘It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.’
Most important of all is the difference between the two men’s assumption of office. Callaghan came through in 1976 as the victor in a contest that saw a host of substantial and weighty challengers: Roy Jenkins, Anthony Crosland, Tony Benn, Denis Healey and Michael Foot, any one of whom could make a plausible case as a potential prime minister. They were the best and brightest candidates available, and they came from right across the spectrum of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
Had Brown faced a similar field a year ago, he would probably still have won, but he would have emerged with the kind of unquestionable authority that he now so patently lacks. It would have been hard for the press to indulge in the promotion of, say, David Milliband’s cause if he’d already been seen off by Brown.
And of course it would have given me at least an outside chance of seeing a return on my stake.
But then again, to return to one of my few successes at the bookmakers, in 1985 Dennis Taylor was eight frames to nil down before he staged that remarkable comeback to snatch victory from Steve Davis. A rotund, uncharismatic figure from the Celtic fringes proved capable of overcoming the golden young star who everyone thought was invincible. And he did it by sheer resilience and a refusal to accept defeat when it was staring him in the face.
Maybe, just maybe, Brown is not the new Callaghan at all; maybe he’s the new Dennis Taylor.
But I wouldn’t bet on it.
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