A Brief History of Britain 1851-2010

by Jeremy Black

  This was the first time during the age of mass democracy in Britain that a party had won three successive general elections; the last time that there had been three successive victories was in the 1830s. At 49.3 per cent, the Conservative percentage of the vote was slightly down on 1955, but Labour’s fall, to 43.9 per cent, was far greater: Labour won 258 seats. The modest revival in the percentage of votes won by the Liberals was won at the expense of the Labour share, and in 1960 Must Labour Lose? by Mark Abrams and Richard Rose appeared. Labour had lost much of the middle-class support it had received in the late 1940s, while the Conservatives had proved successful in winning back an important degree of working-class support. Sympathy for the trade unions was weakened by the 1955 rail strike and the 1958 bus strike. The Conservatives also made use of new techniques of media electioneering, including hiring a public relations firm.

  Once re-elected, the Conservatives, however, proved unable to maintain their record for effective economic management. Macmillan increasingly looked weak, not least as a result of his failure to enter the EEC. However, he fell in October 1963 for a more mundane reason: a prostate illness. He was replaced by the 14th Earl of Home, the Foreign Secretary, who relinquished his peerage to re-enter the Commons as Prime Minister, becoming Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1903–95). Both the method of selection, a closed process dominated by party grandees, especially Macmillan, and the choice of the aristocratic Home, rather than more accessible politicians, were bitterly criticized as out of date, and by some Conservatives as well as Labour.

  This political situation was exploited by Labour under Harold Wilson. He was to be revealed in office as a fixer, largely concerned to keep his Cabinet together, but, in 1963–4, he was able to portray himself as the leader able to take Britain forward, in particular by linking science and socialism so as to provide effective planning and solutions. Condemning in 1964 what he termed ‘thirteen wasted years’ of Conservative government, Wilson sought the mantle of John Kennedy, the recent Democratic President of the US. He looked very modern and democratic in contrast to the aristocratic Douglas-Home.

  Politics, 1964–79

  The general election of 15 October 1964 led to a narrow victory for Labour: by 44.1 per cent and 317 seats to 43.4 per cent and 304 for the Conservatives. In large part, this victory was due to a strong increase in the Liberal vote at the expense of the Conservatives, albeit yielding the Liberals only nine seats. The Conservatives seemed dated. The impact of repeated attacks by satirists, in the age of That Was The Week That Was and Private Eye, is difficult to assess, but cannot have been helpful. The electorate had become wealthier in the 1950s, but the percentage willing to vote Labour in 1964 was only slightly below that of 1951. The Conservatives were again to discover in 1997 that rising real wealth under their government did not prevent a Labour victory. Yet, whatever the inability of the Conservatives to respond effectively to socio-cultural shifts, their vote remained over 40 per cent.

  Labour came to power with high hopes, including schemes to use planning to improve economic performance, harness new technology, and end the ‘Stop-Go’ cycle. In 1965, the government produced the National Plan, an optimistic blueprint for growth, but Labour policies lacked a sound economic basis, not least because Wilson refused to tackle acute balance of payments problems by devaluing the currency. Instead, he sought to follow a balancing act across the policy front: in defending sterling, keeping a British military presence east of Suez, and also supporting American policy in Vietnam but without sending British troops there.

  On 31 March 1966, Wilson won re-election over the lacklustre Conservatives, now led by Edward Heath, by 48 per cent and 364 seats to 41.9 per cent and 253; but the problems of the economy rapidly reasserted themselves, and in November 1967 the pound was devalued by 14.3 per cent after strenuous attempts to prevent the inevitable that called Wilson’s judgement into question. Britain’s lessened international status was further shown by the rejection of a second application to join the EEC, Wilson’s failure to mediate in the Vietnam War, and the drawing up of plans for Britain’s withdrawal from east of Suez. The failure of his attempt to improve industrial relations and reform the trade unions in 1969, by giving government powers to demand strike ballots or impose cooling-off periods, encouraged a sense of broken hopes.

  Yet, the Wilson years were also seen as a time of social advance in which the government fostered a mood for progressive change. Liberalization of the laws concerning abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment, censorship and divorce, and the passage of the Race Relations Act in 1965, were all intended to transform Britain into a more tolerant and civilized society. This, when taken together with important reforms in the education system, including the changeover to comprehensive education (however questionable in hindsight), and the establishment of the Open University, as well as the deep-seated concern for such disadvantaged groups as the elderly and handicapped, reveal a government guided by a genuine humanitarian imperative. Increased pensions and reform of the Rent Act made a major difference to much of the population.

  Defying the opinion polls, the general election of 18 June 1970 was won by the Conservatives under Heath, who, like Wilson, pushed through changes in what he saw, often misguidedly, as an attempt to modernize Britain. The decimalization of the currency in 1971 so that the pound was composed of 100 new pence in place of twenty shillings, each divided into twelve pence, discarded centuries of usage and contributed to inflation. The Local Government Act of 1972 drastically altered the historic territorial boundaries of local government. This Act constituted an important symbolic breach with the past, which formed a major contrast with the US, where the role of the individual states offered, and still offers, a continuance of older English roots that, ironically, have become attenuated in Britain. Joining the European Economic Community, to which Britain acceded in 1973, was central to Heath’s consensualist plan to modernize Britain and to make it more effective internationally and domestically.

  At the same time, Heath’s government made the first concerted effort to reduce the scope of government action in post-war Britain, a policy that reflected a reaction against the failure of the planning experiments of both Conservative and, especially, Labour governments in the 1960s to revitalize Britain’s flagging economic fortunes. When he came to office, Heath outlined an economic policy different from that of Wilson, one that was more prudent and far less ready to intervene in the economy, not least in a refusal to subsidize inefficient industries. Income tax and public spending were to be cut alongside a move away from corporatism and towards, instead, encouraging individual effort. This was the policy described as that of ‘Selsdon Man’, named after Conservative planning sessions at Selsdon Park, Surrey, in January and February 1970. However surprisingly, this stance paralleled aspects of 1960s social liberalism. The critical Wilson referred to Conservative ideas as ‘Stone Age economics’.

  The Conservatives regarded their policies as essential in order to help Britain compete effectively within the EEC. John Davies (1916–79), the outgoing Director-General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), was appointed head of a large Department of Trade and Industry, and Davies announced that taxes were not well spent propping up ‘lame ducks’: failing industries. Industrial corporatism was reversed, and the legislative and administrative structures dismantled. Seven of the regional development agencies were abolished.

  As, however, with Northern Ireland (see p. 238–9), events blew policy not only off course but also back the way it had come. In February 1971, the government intervened to nationalize Rolls-Royce, Britain’s leading manufacturer of aero-engines, when it was threatened with bankruptcy. Later in the year, Upper Clyde Shipbuilders was rescued under pressure from a union work-in and following an initial government refusal to provide support. These U-turns contributed to a sense of a weak government responding to pressure (ensuring that Thatcher in the 1980s was to be determined to stand firm), while the Industry Act of 1972 was designed to provide for
manufacturing companies that were in difficulty. Unemployment rose to over a million, a shock after three decades when it had been generally low.

  Under Heath, the immediate problems of economic management hit hard, putting great pressure on the balance of payments. Government expenditure and inflation surged ahead. The money supply (provision of money and credit) was greatly expanded, rising 20 per cent between 1971 and 1973. Public spending also shot up, by nearly 50 per cent in real terms, during the government’s period of office, in large part in an attempt to reflate the economy, an attempt that was launched in the summer of 1971 and that persisted until 1973.

  Efforts to create a more regulated context for industrial relations by means of the Industrial Relations Act of 1971 and a de facto incomes policy were blown apart by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), setting the scene for a decade of crisis in governability as successive governments found themselves forced into a corner by the excesses of trade union power. In 1972, the NUM staged the first national coal strike since 1926 in pursuit of a large pay claim. Mass picketing closed access to coal stocks, and the government declared a state of emergency, only to give in. The attitude of the NUM was particularly serious because oil and gas supplies from the North Sea were not yet available.

  In February 1974, faced by a new NUM wage claim, Heath called a general election to bolster his position and try to overawe the miners, but, on 28 February, although he had a bigger percentage of the popular vote, Labour won more seats (301 to 297), and Wilson regained power once the Liberals had rejected a coalition with the Conservatives. In the general election held on 10 October 1974, Wilson won a larger parliamentary majority, but it was still modest. Moreover, due to extra-parliamentary problems he was unable to govern effectively, and in 1974–6 Wilson completed the process of dissolution begun by Heath: an economy, state and society that had been muddling through for decades, operating far below the level of effectiveness of other countries, but, nevertheless, at least avoiding crisis and breakdown, slid into chaos. With wages rising rapidly, but controls on prices and dividends, there was a massive fall on the stock market, and there was no incentive to invest. As a result of this economic illiteracy, 1974–6 was the closest that Britain has yet come to the fall of capitalism, which, indeed, was sought by some of the NUM leadership. The issue was not only ‘Who governs Britain?’, the question asked by Heath in 1974 when he sought to defeat the miners, but ‘Could Britain be governed?’.

  Wilson resigned unexpectedly in March 1976, to be succeeded by James Callaghan, the Foreign Secretary, who, unlike the ‘hard left’, did not believe that it would be possible to resist economic pressures by a policy of state socialism: nationalizations, high taxation and tariffs. Instead, he advocated pragmatism and was willing to rethink the Keynesian prescriptions of the previous thirty-five years. When the IMF, to which Britain had to go for a loan in 1976, demanded cuts in government spending, and, in the face of pressure from the ‘hard left’ for a siege economy, they were imposed by Callaghan. As a result, confidence was restored and the pound rallied.

  Yet, a crisis in industrial relations culminated in the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978–9. Widespread strikes against the norm of an increase that year of 5 per cent in pay created a sense of crisis. Hospitals were picketed, the dead unburied in Liverpool, and troops called in to shoot rats swarming round accumulated rubbish. The large number of simultaneous strikes, the practice of secondary picketing, the violence and mean-mindedness of the picketing (which included the turning away of ambulances), and the lack of interest by the strikers in the public, discredited the rhetoric and practice of trade unionism. In one quarter alone, 16.5 million working days were lost to labour disputes.

  The government also lost control of the parliamentary arithmetic of support when it failed to push through devolution in Scotland and Wales. A Scotland and Wales Bill introduced in 1976 proposed assemblies with control over health, social services, primary and secondary education, development and local government, but with no taxation power and with the Westminster Parliament retaining the veto. The Bill met opposition from Scottish and Welsh nationalists, who felt it did not go far enough, but, more substantially, from Conservatives, who saw it as a threat to Britain, and some Labour MPs. In order to secure the passage of the Bill, the government had to concede referenda, but, held on 1 March 1979, they found the overwhelming majority of the Welsh who voted doing so against devolution, while, in Scotland, although the majority of the votes cast was for devolution, it was not the necessary 40 per cent of those on the electoral register.

  Labour failure and opposition to trade union disruption led to a surge in support for the Conservatives under the largely unknown Margaret Thatcher, who had become Party leader in 1975 in a determined rejection of Heath and his policies. In the general election of 3 May 1979, Thatcher won power with a majority of forty-three seats, helped by a vigorous campaigning style in which she used photo opportunities and advertising agencies. The country had voted for change, although it was not clear what that change would be.

  The Thatcher Years

  Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, remains a figure of great controversy. She held continuous office for longer than any other Prime Minister in the age of mass democracy, indeed than any since the 2nd Earl of Liverpool in 1812–27. She was more hated on the left than any other Conservative Prime Minister, and ‘Thatcherite’ became a term of abuse to a degree that ‘Heathite’ could never match. Furthermore, she aroused strong negative passions within her own party: Heath hated her, and the ‘One Nation’ paternalists who had dominated the party since Churchill replaced Chamberlain in 1940, were appalled at what they saw as her divisive language and politics. Thatcher, in her turn, had clear contempt for those Conservatives she called the ‘wets’, and a dislike of a tradition, ethos and practice of compromise and consensus, that, she felt, had led to Britain’s decline. Indeed, she attacked what she termed ‘the progressive consensus’.

  In practice, as with all politicians, there was much compromise: Thatcher was not the most Thatcherite. Indeed, there was to be criticism that her rhetoric of ‘rolling back the state’ was misleading, and that government expenditure did not fall as anticipated. Nevertheless, there was a stated determination to persist that was different in degree and style from that of her predecessors.

  Economic problems interacted with fiscal policies, notably major cuts in public expenditure in the budgets of June 1979, March 1980 and March 1982. Indeed, recession and deflation at the start of the 1980s hit hard and helped make much of the economy uncompetitive. Unemployment rose greatly as manufacturing contracted. In terms of public perception, these were ‘real’ jobs. They were predominantly male and in traditional industrial tasks such as metal-bashing.

  Thatcher’s response defined her government: ‘The lady’s not for turning’ she told the 1980 party conference, and the delegates loudly applauded. She remained adamant in 1981 despite urban rioting from April, especially in Brixton and Liverpool, but was saved politically by the division in the opposition, as the Social Democratic Party was formed in March 1981, breaking away from a leftward-moving Labour, and, the following year, by the successful handling of the Falklands War. The latter increased Thatcher’s already strong sense of purpose and self-confidence, her disinclination to adapt to the views of others. The war also cemented her already strong relations with party activists, relations that were improved by Thatcher’s care of her image. Indeed, Thatcher began the latet-wentieth-century ‘image’ revolution for politicians, notably with hiring consultants and with changes to her voice and hair.

  Her strong support in the Conservative Party outside Parliament enabled Thatcher to push through an agenda that had not hitherto enjoyed widespread support within the Conservative Party, especially privatizations of nationalized industries. Success opened the way for new goals. Thatcher became less cautious, but, aside from her specific policies, she was always keen on the very process of striving, indeed beli
eved it to be ennobling as well as necessary.

  Having won a much larger parliamentary majority, of 144 seats, in the general election of 9 June 1983, when the Social Democratic–Liberal Alliance won nearly as many votes as Labour (although far fewer seats), Thatcher faced opposition from the NUM. Under the leadership of Arthur Scargill (1938–), the union mounted in 1984–5 what was really a political strike designed to defeat the government and forward revolutionary socialism. This was a key moment in the political history of Britain. The miners, however, split over the strike, in part due to Scargill’s divisive and authoritarian policies and the intimidation and violent picketing by the strikers of those who continued to work, notably of Nottinghamshire miners by their Yorkshire counterparts; brought home by television reporting, this also helped to alienate much of the public.

  Meanwhile, Thatcher focused the government’s resources, especially the police, on defeating the strike, which collapsed as poverty and helplessness sapped support. The ability to draw on French electricity generating capacity through a new cable under the English Channel was also significant.

  Due to the defeat of the strike, which was called off in March 1985, Thatcher’s recasting of labour away from heavy industry and mining, and the traditional heroisms of trade union history, and towards new industries in which the workforce had different social and political values, had been taken a long way forward. Whereas there had been twenty-eight coal mines in South Wales in 1984, there were only seventeen in the whole of Wales in 1987, and fewer than 1,000 miners in mid-Glamorgan by 1992.

  Instead of trade unions, nationalized industries and council houses, Thatcher wanted a property-owning democracy in which corporatism was weak and capital supreme. Institutions and opinions that resisted were marginalized, and one centre of opposition, the Labour-controlled Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone (1945–), was abolished in 1986. This was part of a wider process of governmental centralization that, however, was accompanied by the sale of most of the nationalized industries and much of the council housing. Widespread share and home ownership became the coping stones of the new property-owning democracy, helping Thatcher win re-election on 11 June 1987, albeit less comfortably than in 1983. She still had an overall majority of 101 and there was no comparison with 1951 and 1970 when, in each case, Labour governments had lost the third election in a row.