State of Emergency: the Way We Were

by Dominic Sandbrook

  Roy Hattersley wrote later that the day Jenkins resigned was the moment ‘the old Labour coalition began to collapse’. In the light of what happened later, it did indeed look like a dress rehearsal for the launch of the SDP, with two other members of the Shadow Cabinet, George Thomson and Harold Lever, resigning in sympathy and Bill Rodgers, David Owen, Dickson Mabon and Dick Taverne all leaving their junior shadow positions. Even in the short term, it did tremendous damage to Wilson’s reputation. As the Telegraph’s Colin Welch wryly remarked, the gulf between the public images of Jenkins and Wilson was enormous: on the one hand ‘an almost saintly figure, heroic, shining, guided only by honour and high principles, even to the sacrifice of his own career’; on the other, ‘a dark serpentine crawling trimmer, shifty and shuffling, devious, untrustworthy, constant only in the pursuit of self-preservation and narrow party advantage’. Wilson himself found this deeply infuriating: during a Shadow Cabinet meeting, he once snapped: ‘I’ve been wading in shit for three months to allow others to indulge their conscience.’ By now, however, there was not much he could do about it; trapped into a position of wriggling ambiguity, he had become for many observers the incarnation of everything that was wrong with British politics in the 1970s: its narrowness, its short-termism, its petty positioning, its navel-gazing introversion. On the Labour right, he was regarded with something like repugnance; even on the left, he was seen as merely the best of a bad bunch. He was ‘the principal apostle of cynicism, the unwitting evangelist of disillusion’, declared an extraordinary leader in the New Statesman in June 1972. ‘We say it with reluctance but we believe it to be true. Mr Wilson has now sunk to a position where his very presence in Labour’s Leadership pollutes the atmosphere of politics.’35

  This was strong stuff, though not entirely baseless. It might well have been better for all concerned if Wilson had retired after 1970, bequeathing the leadership to the tougher, more reassuring Callaghan; certainly his historical reputation would be much higher if he had. And yet there was something to be said for his undeniably slippery tactics during the European debate. At a time when Labour might easily have torn itself apart, Wilson at least managed to hold the party together. Even Denis Healey, who generally held his leader in very low esteem, thought that he showed ‘great courage in refusing absolutely to reject British entry in principle’. Whereas Callaghan would probably have demanded a stance of outright opposition, and Jenkins would have split the party by declaring wholehearted support, Wilson’s implausible complaints about ‘the terms’ actually kept the principle of European membership alive. What this meant is that when Labour returned to office, it was committed to holding a referendum rather than automatically taking Britain out of Europe. Wilson may have looked like a weasel, but in the long term, his approach worked: Labour stayed together, and Britain stayed in Europe. It was sheer ‘duplicity’, writes the pro-European Hugo Young, but it was ‘nonetheless one of Wilson’s finer hours’. Of course, Britain’s European destiny was above all Edward Heath’s achievement. But his great rival perhaps deserves a share of the credit – or the blame.36

  While Labour’s senior figures were busy tearing into one another with the brutal relish of First Division footballers on a muddy Saturday afternoon, the Prime Minister had already turned his thoughts to the battle for public opinion. In May 1970, he had made the vague but ringing promise that Britain would enter the EEC only with the ‘full-hearted consent’ of its Parliament and people. But with just one in five voters backing European membership at the time of the election, winning public consent would clearly take some doing. Even after negotiations had begun, Gallup found that one in three people thought their standard of living would decline if Britain joined the EEC, while fully 73 per cent thought that their food bills would rise ‘a lot’. Even in April 1971, just before Heath’s historic summit with Georges Pompidou, nearly 70 per cent of the public said they opposed British membership, most citing rising prices as their biggest concern. But although the economic dimension was clearly the most important, many people did have reasons that were more cultural, almost spiritual, for resisting European entry. Asked in July whether they would lose their British identity if the country went into the Common Market, 27 per cent thought ‘a lot’ and 62 per cent ‘some’. If Heath wanted to win them over, his adviser Michael Wolff told him, his appeal must not only address the prices issue, but should be ‘based on high ideals and national destiny and should be particularly aimed at youth’.37

  Heath’s answer was the biggest state publicity campaign since the war, with a Cabinet committee coordinating a vast range of nationwide talks and events, including almost 300 public speeches by government ministers. Not even holidaymakers were safe: on beaches across the country, families basking in the summer sun were accosted by girls in tight T-shirts with the logo ‘SAY YES TO EUROPE!’, who were handing out copies of a free newspaper called the British European. Inside, graphs showed Europe’s faster growth rate and the great welter of economic benefits that would come Britain’s way, while national icons such as Kenneth More and Bobby Moore assured readers that they were all for European cooperation. But the message was not all food bills and productivity charts: ‘EUROPE IS FUN!’ screamed the cover, next to a photograph of a Page Three lovely in a skimpy Union Jack bikini. ‘More Work But More Play Too!’ Needless to say, this kind of stuff drew widespread derision: in the Commons, one Labour MP mockingly charged that Heath’s ministers were ‘as frenetic in their enthusiasm to convert public opinion as the Chinese Christian who decided to baptise his troops with a hosepipe’. But they were undeterred: even the government’s White Paper on the terms for entry was recruited into the campaign, with no fewer than 5 million copies distributed in Post Offices as a 16-page booklet with a fetching green and black cover. It was a telling sign of public indifference, though, that the reaction was ‘muted enthusiasm and often perceptible lack of interest’. In Trafalgar Square’s Post Office, which had the longest counter in Britain, the booklets were piled almost to the ceiling, but they were ‘barely touched’ by customers. ‘Most people are rather bored by it all,’ explained a middle-aged housewife. ‘They are sure we are going in anyway.’38

  In the press, the mood was overwhelmingly pro-European. Both The Times and the Guardian were extremely keen from the very beginning, as were the Sunday Times, the Observer and The Economist, while the Telegraph, reflecting its loyalty to Heath, moved off the fence and into a position of unquestioning support, telling its readers that when MPs finally came to decide the question, ‘they will be passing a judgement on a civilisation, a culture, an economic union, a nascent defence capability, above all an idea of Europe that cannot be rejected without grievous results for Europe’s future and our own’. The Mail had been wavering since the early 1960s, but as soon as Wilson and the trade unions declared their opposition, it announced it was strongly in favour. So was the Sun, which boasted that it had been in favour of EEC membership for its entire lifetime, while the bestselling Mirror ran a stream of fiercely pro-European pieces. ‘Are a people who for centuries were the makers of history – and who can again help to make history – to become mere lookers-on from an off-shore island of dwindling significance?’ demanded a ferocious editorial in July 1971. Even its lighter pieces often had a pro-Market slant: there was even a ‘Guide to the Euro-Dollies’, reporting on how they rated as kissers. Only the Express stood ‘alone – with the people’, as it put it, warning that the talks had been ‘a victory won by French diplomacy over British interests’. It was therefore delighted when Prince Philip, making one of his trademark public interventions, waded into the debate to attack the Common Agricultural Policy. ‘The people admire his good sense,’ said the Express, ‘and wish it were more widely shared by our rulers.’ But its competitors were less impressed. The Prince was a ‘chump’, said the Mirror, while the Sun thought it was high time ‘our sailor Prime Minister told the sailor Prince which way the wind blows’.39

  In cultural circles, too, the mood w
as strongly pro-European. When the magazine Encounter organized a symposium of writers and intellectuals in the summer of 1971, forty-six respondents were in favour and only seventeen against. Still, the sceptics were joined by such impressive names as Anthony Burgess, who claimed that ‘England is to be absorbed, her own distinctive character sordined, and the end of a great Empire to be completed in the bastardisation of a great empire-building nation’, while Kenneth Tynan told The Times that the EEC was ‘the most blatant historical vulgarity since the Thousand Year Reich’. It was a ‘capitalist bloc’, Tynan wrote in his diary, sounding ‘the deathknell of socialism in Western Europe’, although the fact that these thoughts followed a long anecdote about Britt Ekland’s knickers rather deflated the impression of progressive commitment. But not all theatrical diarists of the day were sceptics, for Kenneth Williams sent Heath a letter in May 1971 ‘saying I admire him very much; do hope he gets us into Europe’. And even Doctor Who came out in favour of the Common Market. A week after Heath had signed the Treaty of Accession in January 1972, the Doctor and his companion Jo arrived on the planet Peladon, which had just applied to join the Galactic Federation, much to the displeasure of its High Priest and presumably the Peladonian equivalents of James Callaghan, Kenneth Tynan and the Daily Express. The High Priest insists that the Federation will ‘exploit us for our minerals, enslave us with their machines, corrupt us with their technology’, but he is eventually unmasked as a double-dealing blackguard. Meanwhile Jon Pertwee’s Doctor, like some infinitely more dashing Ted Heath, convinces Peladon’s King that only Federation membership can bring the modernization his people need. But the Doctor has to come to terms with his own prejudices, too; for among the members of the Federation are the once-terrifying Ice Warriors, now reformed. At first these towering Martian reptiles seem certain to prove the villains of the piece – but once they have saved the Doctor’s life, it becomes clear that they are simply Doctor Who’s answer to Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt.40

  Not surprisingly, public opinion began to shift under this barrage of commentary. What is clear from the polls is that most people did not really know what to think about the EEC, and did not care much either way. Public support ebbed and flowed with bewildering speed: just a year after 70 per cent of the public had proclaimed themselves against, polls in July 1971 showed the pro and anti camps dead level – but then a few months later the pro camp had collapsed again and the opponents were 12 per cent ahead. Conservative supporters naturally rallied to Heath, and local constituencies reported overwhelming support by the end of 1971, but there was no sense of a ‘Great Debate’. The historian A. J. P. Taylor grandly claimed that it was ‘the most decisive moment in British history since the Norman Conquest or the loss of America’, but most people were content to follow the advice of their favourite politicians or columnists rather than dig out the White Paper and decide for themselves. Perhaps the best reflection of public opinion was the experience of the Conservative official who was sent to Liverpool on a mission to gauge local attitudes to Europe. On arrival, he stopped a woman in the street and asked what she thought of the Common Market. ‘Where are they building it, love?’ she asked.41

  Once the terms had been agreed, Heath’s central priority was to get the appropriate legislation through the House of Commons. This was trickier than it looked, since there were bound to be Tory rebels, and he might need to rely on support from the Labour right. Of all his parliamentary critics, by far the most persistent, elegant and passionate was his implacable adversary Enoch Powell, once a keen supporter of the Common Market, but now the fiercest of sceptics. As early as February 1970, Powell had warned that entry into the EEC would mean absorption ‘economically, legally, commercially and politically’ into a European super-state. And as Heath’s negotiations neared their goal, Powell’s warnings became ever more apocalyptic. If Britain signed the Treaty of Rome, he told the Commons in January 1971, it would ‘lead to an irreversible alienation of our separate sovereignty’. He denied that Britain even had a basic European identity: her place had always been with her back to Europe ‘and her face towards the oceans and the continents of the world’. The battle in the Commons, he said, was a ‘life and death struggle for its independence and supreme authority’, a struggle ‘as surely about the future of Britain’s nationhood as were the combats which raged in the skies over southern England in the autumn of 1940. The gladiators are few; their weapons are but words; and yet their fight is everyman’s.’42

  If Powell had merely been a lone maverick, then Heath would have had nothing to worry about. The problem, though, was that at least thirty Conservative MPs, most on the right of the party, shared his views and were expected to vote against the government when it came to the crunch. By the middle of October 1971 the moment of truth was at hand, with the House being asked to give its approval of the government’s decision to join the EEC, and the atmosphere crackled with tension, every day bringing fresh reports of ‘nose-counting, arm-twisting, weak knees and stiff upper lips’. If Heath had had his way, the government would have ploughed unswervingly onwards, demanding the loyalty of its supporters, and might well have crashed to defeat. But he was lucky to have in Francis Pym an outstandingly clear-sighted Chief Whip, who managed to persuade him – after weeks of trying – that it would be better to allow a free vote on the grounds that he wanted a true reflection of the will of the House, rather than a vote on purely partisan lines. That way, Pym argued, they might lose a few more Tory votes, but they would be able to pick up far more Labour rebels, who would be much happier to defy their party leadership if they were not technically voting with the government. As Heath himself admitted, it was only through ‘Pym’s wise instinct’ that he eventually secured a majority in perhaps the single most important Commons vote of the late twentieth century.43

  Although the debate opened on 21 October, it was not until a week later, on Thursday 28th, that it reached its nail-biting climax. The atmosphere that night was thick with tension and excitement, the peers’ and diplomats’ galleries crowded with spectators, even the entrances to the Palace of Westminster jammed with demonstrators, well-wishers and curious passers-by who just wanted to be on hand for a genuinely historic occasion. ‘See the Ambassadors’ Gallery over there?’ muttered an old attendant, showing a nice sense of irony. ‘Haven’t seen it so full since we used to matter in the world.’ Among the observers was Jean Monnet, father of the European project, who had long dreamed of seeing Britain join hands with its neighbours, and now sensed that the moment was at hand. Even many parliamentary correspondents, cynical by nature and by trade, thought that this was Parliament at its best, showing off the varied rhetorical styles of no fewer than 176 MPs, all the way from Dennis Skinner to Enoch Powell. The final night alone offered a fine array of parliamentary talents, from the flamboyant Michael Foot to the languid Reginald Maudling, from the debonair Jeremy Thorpe to the avuncular Jim Callaghan. Even Jeffrey Archer got a word in, although it was only to complain about the queues outside. And while Harold Wilson, who opened the night’s debate for the Opposition, was on unusually feeble form – ‘soporific’ and ‘well below the level of events’, according to the watching Douglas Hurd – the Prime Minister made a brave stab at matching the momentousness of the occasion. ‘I do not think that any Prime Minister has stood at this Box in time of peace and asked the House to take a positive decision of such importance as I am asking it to take tonight,’ Heath began, before turning to the great changes that were overtaking the world in the early 1970s – the rise of multi-polar diplomacy, the decline of the Cold War, the emergence of China and the onset of economic globalization. He ended, however, on an unusually personal note:

  Throughout my political career, if I may add one personal remark, it is well known that I have had the vision of a Britain in a united Europe; a Britain which would be united economically to Europe and which would be able to influence decisions affecting our own future, and which would enjoy a better standard of life and a fuller li
fe …

  When we came to the end of the negotiations in 1963, after the veto had been imposed, the negotiator on behalf of India said: ‘When you left India some people wept. And when you leave Europe tonight some will weep. And there is no other people in the world of whom these things could be said.’ … But tonight when this House endorses this Motion many millions of people right across the world will rejoice that we have taken our rightful place in a truly united Europe.44

  When Heath had sat down, the House voted. The only questions were how many Tories would rebel against their Prime Minister, and how many Labour members would follow Roy Jenkins into the government lobby. Some of Jenkins’s friends were seriously worried for his safety: at lunch, Roy Hattersley had excitably suggested organizing a bodyguard to get him out of the Commons and into a getaway car, which even Jenkins thought was ridiculous. Even so, there was a gaggle of Labour MPs waiting for him outside the government lobby, glaring ominously when Jenkins walked past. And when the tellers finally announced the verdict to a packed House – the Ayes 356, the Noes 244 – there was an extraordinary explosion of feeling, a surge of delight and anger of a kind rarely seen in the oak-panelled solemnity of the Commons chamber. ‘Fascist bastard!’ some Labour loyalists screamed at the serene figure of Jenkins, while others physically pushed and punched his fellow rebels. One Labour member, Reg Freeson, yelled ‘Rat-fucker! Rat-fucker!’ in Jenkins’s face (although the latter arguably had the last laugh, noting with relish in his memoirs that the hard left eventually kicked Freeson out of his Brent seat in favour of Ken Livingstone). ‘It was awful’, Tony Benn admitted in his diary. But passions were running high: even the usually austere Enoch Powell was not immune. ‘It won’t do! It won’t do!’ he shouted at his own front bench.45