When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies

by Andy Beckett

  In the early sixties, while Heath was patiently leading the British negotiators through eighteen months of entry negotiations, British public support for joining the EEC peaked at a less than overwhelming 53 per cent, before falling back. In 1964, after de Gaulle had vetoed the British application anyway, Heath and the Conservatives were removed from power. It took until 1967 for the subsequent Labour government to overcome its anti-Common Market faction and apply for membership again. Once more, de Gaulle said no. In 1969, he retired as French president and was replaced by the less obstructive Georges Pompidou, but a British wariness towards the Common Market endured. The following February, the Wilson government, which was still officially committed to trying to join, published a White Paper on the likely costs of being part of the EEC. Food prices, it predicted, could rise by between 18 and 26 per cent; the overall rate of inflation – already beginning to become a national anxiety – by 5 per cent. The document did not read like the work of a Europhile government. A few weeks later, in their 1970 election manifesto, Labour promised again to seek EEC membership. But, the manifesto went on: ‘If satisfactory terms cannot be secured … Britain will be able to stand on her own feet outside the Community.’

  It took Heath’s shock election to change the British position fundamentally. In a typical moment of pro-EEC advocacy during a television broadcast in July 1971, he was direct and emotional where previous prime ministers had been vague or legalistic. ‘For twenty-five years we’ve been looking for something to get us going again,’ Heath said. ‘Now here it is … We have the chance of new greatness. Now we must take it.’ Douglas Hurd describes the care and eagerness with which Heath, the former civil servant, had prepared for the climax of the negotiations with the French two months earlier:

  At Number Ten the briefing sessions were held in the garden, where for hours on end the Prime Minister sat under a tree, dunking biscuits in tea. Experts were produced … They each had their session under the tree, while ducks from the park waddled amorously across the lawn …

  In his autobiography, Heath makes the talks with Pompidou that followed sound even more idyllic:

  It was symbolic to me that all this should be happening in Paris, the city to which I had come as a boy … For two days there were just the two of us, each with an interpreter … It is difficult to think of more attractive surroundings in which to carry on talks of this kind. The elegance of the Elysée inspires a spirit of reasonableness … [On the second evening] we held our conference for the press … I had managed to convince President Pompidou… that Britain was genuine in its desire to enter the European family … The President and I looked across at each other with delight … For me personally, it was a wildly exciting moment.

  The actual terms secured for Britain’s admission into the Common Market were less perfect. The British government’s initial bargaining position, that it should contribute 3 per cent of the EEC budget in the first year of British membership – absurdly low for a large European state hoping to become one of only ten Common Market countries – was not well received. In the end, Britain had to agree to contribute almost 9 per cent, rising to almost 19 per cent by 1977, its fifth year of membership. Underlying the scale of the concession was the assumption that Britain would maintain its economic status relative to its Common Market collaborators during the seventies and therefore be justified in paying such a large share of the EEC budget. It was an assumption that would prove highly optimistic.

  Compromises with consequences were also made in other politically charged areas. Compensating dairy farmers in New Zealand for the loss of their traditional British customers – as the Common Market removed the trade barriers between Britain and continental Europe, New Zealand butter would become expensive compared with European imports – cost the British government £100 million. Britain was also forced to accept the EEC’s Common Fisheries Policy, which opened its waters to trawlers from countries with far less extensive and productive coastlines. Most notoriously of all, Britain had to sign up to the Common Agricultural Policy, which forced EEC countries to buy farm produce from each other, regardless of whether it was more expensive than produce from elsewhere, and which effectively paid Common Market countries with less efficient farmers, notably France, a subsidy.

  Joining the EEC, in short, required Britain to give ground to ancient enemies, loosen ties with old imperial allies and make life harder for its fishermen and farmers, both interest groups with a privileged and historic role in the national consciousness. The move would mark a profound break with the British political consensus, not only of the post-war decades but of earlier decades, and earlier centuries. In return for this upheaval, Heath promised an undefined, EEC-driven economic revival in Britain and, even vaguer, the country’s participation in a new Europe free of its traditional rivalries and wars.

  Unsurprisingly, not everyone was persuaded. Turning the deal made with Pompidou and during subsidiary negotiations into legislation required 104 separate votes in Parliament and took up much of 1971 and 1972. Enoch Powell, on the Conservative right, and Tony Benn, on the Labour left, both argued eloquently in the Commons – and to wider audiences – that joining the EEC would undermine British national sovereignty. Harold Wilson, with characteristic cunning and shamelessness, reversed his party’s position on the Common Market, and opposed Heath’s plan. Both Labour and the Conservatives experienced large-scale internal rebellions against their EEC policies. These splits would endure through the seventies and far beyond, with ultimately disastrous consequences for both parties. More immediately, the divisions and U-turns over the Common Market, like the factional, world-weary parliamentary manoeuvrings of the decade as a whole, helped feed the growing public disillusionment with the main parties, which was beginning to shrink their share of the vote at general elections, make such contests more volatile and render British politics as it had existed since 1945 less viable.

  Yet, for all this, Heath got his way. Sometimes by the tiniest of margins, often by the crudest Commons arm-twisting, on one occasion by threatening rebel Conservative MPs with a general election if the government was defeated, at a time when the miners were on strike and his administration was deeply unpopular, he won every parliamentary vote on the Common Market. His agreement with the French was accepted by the other five EEC countries. Britain would become a member on 1 January 1973.

  Like the 1970 election, it was a personal triumph for Heath. It showed his political strengths: doggedness, a degree of idealism, his tendency to be underestimated by opponents. But as in 1970, the success did not represent a lasting breakthrough in his wider political standing or an overwhelming public mandate for his policies. On the day Britain joined the Common Market, The Times published a MORI poll on attitudes to entry. It found 38 per cent of Britons happy at the prospect, 39 per cent unhappy, and 23 per cent undecided. The same day, the pro-membership Daily Mirror, which described the EEC as ‘the greatest trading bloc in the entire world’ and headlined Britain’s admission as ‘A Day in History’, revealed the results of its own more detailed survey. Despite the paper’s prediction that ‘today’s child [who] leaves school in the 1980s … will have to be Anglo-European to survive’, those polled showed a limited appetite for a more continental Britain. ‘Would you like to see these “Common Market customs”?’ the survey asked:

  YES NO

  regular wine with meals 23% 21%

  more pavement cafes 11% 34%

  more shops open on Sunday 5% 40%

  coffee and a roll for breakfast, not bacon and eggs 13% 58%

  pubs open all day 18% 44%

  Two days later, on 3 January, The Times published a prominent article doubting one of the main potential economic impacts on Britain of EEC membership:

  Our climate, both economic and meteorological, is unattractive to most European workers. There is no reason that many or even any will want to give up a job in, say, Holland, to earn less money in a country with shorter holidays and a higher unemployment rate, unfa
miliar beer and a foreign language. Equally there is no reason to expect a large-scale migration of British workers in search of sun or fatter wage packets.

  Within three decades at most, all of these working patterns and pleasures would be part of everyday life in Britain. But three decades can be an eternity in politics, and in 1973 Heath’s long-standing enthusiasm for a closer Europe, like his concerns about the power of the unions and the impact of airports, was too far ahead of British public opinion – and at times too clumsily communicated. Between 3 and 14 January, both these political weaknesses were vividly demonstrated by Fanfare for Europe, an official national festival to mark Britain’s admission to the EEC. With a perky trumpet as its logo, the festival was intended to be part celebration, part rallying call, part advertisement for the mutual benefits of EEC membership. Yet what ensued was considerably less inspiring than previous government-backed cultural events, such as Attlee’s 1951 Festival of Britain. On 3 January, a football match at Wembley between a team drawn from the original six Common Market nations and one selected from the new member states – Britain, Denmark and Ireland – was played before a less than half-full stadium. ‘The loudest cheer of the night’, reported the Guardian, ‘greeted the news on the information board that Norwich City had reached the final of the League Cup.’

  At the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, there was a rather diffuse exhibition of ‘Treasures from the European Community’, including bronze-age trumpets from Denmark and a George Stubbs painting of a racehorse, each selected by a member government and displayed in their own isolated, high-security alcove. There was also a ‘Dutch breakfast’ and food festival at a London hotel; an exhibition of European sweets at the Whitechapel Art Gallery; a stage show in French and English for all the family at the Caricature Theatre in Cardiff; and, in Scotland, a coordinated demonstration of ‘Continental cooking’ in Gas and Electricity Board showrooms.

  Press coverage varied from politely supportive to dismissive. The event that received the most publicity was the opening gala. Wilson, pointedly, did not attend, flying off instead to the Scilly Isles, his habitual holiday refuge and one of his favourite public stages for playing the plain Englishman against the cosmopolitan Heath. Meanwhile, the Guardian and other papers made the gala sound like an uncomfortable evening:

  About 300 opponents [of the EEC] booed and chanted ‘Sieg Heil’, as the Queen, Prince Philip, and Mr Heath arrived at the Royal Opera House … the Queen and Prince Philip both seemed momentarily shaken by the size and noise of the demonstration – the largest involving members of the Royal Family seen in London.

  In his autobiography, Heath makes no mention of any of this. Instead, he describes a blissful night, with legendary classical musicians and actors from many nations ‘drawing widely upon our shared European heritage … Performers and audience then mingled afterwards for a splendid dinner … My heart was full of joy …’ Given his years of work for EEC membership and the unappealing tone, either hysterical or carping, of some of his opponents on the issue, Heath’s selective view of his European achievement was perhaps understandable. However, even he had to concede that entry did not quickly invigorate the British economy as he had hoped. ‘After … 1973–4 the Community lost its momentum,’ he wrote. ‘Each member state drifted back to seeking its own, unilateral solution to unemployment and inflation.’

  In 1972, while the small print of Britain’s admission was being negotiated, ambitious EEC plans had been conceived for a continent-wide industrial policy, with economic and monetary union to follow by the end of the decade. But by the time Britain joined, the world economy was entering an unstable phase that would soon render these schemes impractical. One element of this instability was a surge in the value of commodities: in Britain, the cost of food went up by over a tenth during the first nine months of 1973. Although price rises caused by the country’s involvement in the Common Agricultural Policy made up only a small fraction of this increase, the Common Market was seen as the main villain. Blaming Brussels was on its way to becoming one of the most entrenched British political habits. Meanwhile, during the mid-seventies, trade between Britain and the Common Market countries expanded beyond its pre-1973 levels steadily rather than spectacularly, slowed by the global recession: according to the Department of Trade, British exports to the EEC rose from £4.1 billion in 1973 to £5.6 billion in 1974 to £6.5 billion in 1975. Heath had taken the country into Europe, yet other British prime ministers, less Europhile but governing in more favourable economic circumstances, would be the true beneficiaries.

  During Heath’s government, it was another controversy about the relationship between Britain and its closest neighbours that had a more immediate impact. It concerned Northern Ireland.

  During my childhood in the seventies, although I was barely aware of politics, Northern Ireland was always there in the background. Part of it came from having a father in the army. For the middle years of the decade he was stationed in Maidstone in Kent, an old military town half-buried under concrete and ring roads. One of its functions then was as a staging post for British soldiers en route to Londonderry, South Armagh and Belfast. Among the army families we mixed with, even in conversations between army children, this was a prospect that was talked about with a quiet dread. When a squadron from the regiment my father commanded was sent to Northern Ireland, and he went out to visit them, a vague unease descended on my family that did not lift until he came back. When I asked him about his trip, he answered in euphemisms. He was never sent to Northern Ireland again, yet the possibility remained.

  One day on the army housing estate where we lived, I remember soldiers in full battle dress, rifles cradled in very still hands, suddenly ghosting into position either side of the chainlink fence that surrounded the playpark. At the time, it seemed quite exciting, like a grown-up version of the war games I played with the other children. After a few minutes, the soldiers slipped away. It was only after visiting Derry thirty years later and seeing some old photographs of the Creggan, a local estate strongly associated in the seventies with IRA activity that had semis and low hedges just like the estate in Maidstone, that I realized what the soldiers in the playpark had been practising.

  In 1978, my father was posted to Germany, but Northern Ireland followed us. A British officer my parents knew was shot by the IRA on his doorstep a short drive away. For a time, the army lent us a small mirror, attached at an angle to a long handle, so that we could check under our car for bombs each morning.

  Yet in truth these incidents in Germany and Kent were exceptions. Most of the time in my family, as in many British families in the seventies, Northern Ireland was the great unspoken. My father’s father was Irish, a Protestant from Limerick in the Republic, but he was dead, and my father would gently but firmly dissuade me and my sister whenever we suggested a holiday there. Family discussions about Northern Ireland would quickly peter out, with my mother saying she felt browbeaten by Ian Paisley and all the others, and my father muttering about ‘impossible people’. The riots, bombings and shootings continued numbingly on the news. It seemed like it would never end. The army, meanwhile, gave my father clearer military situations to think about.

  By the seventies, the British state had been trying to forget about Northern Ireland, and about Ireland in general, for almost half a century. In a sense this was understandable. Over the centuries prior to the partition of Ireland in 1921, Britain had invaded and colonized the island, and worried incessantly about rival powers doing likewise; suffered repeated military reverses there, and committed infamous atrocities; attempted to exploit and modernize the Irish economy with uneven results; and contributed to the growth of a ferocious local religious sectarianism. In the decades immediately before 1921, the ‘Irish Question’ had led to bombings in London, mutinous behaviour in the British army and the expression of open support by a leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, Andrew Bonar Law, for an insurrection in Ulster against the elected government of the United Kin
gdom.

  So from partition onwards Britain drew back. Northern Ireland was given its own government with a large degree of independence. In 1923, it was decided that ‘matters of administration for a minister in Northern Ireland could not be discussed’ in the Commons. Visits to the province by British ministers and prime ministers dwindled to almost nothing, and the British political parties began to operate there only sporadically. The Conservative and Unionist Party became simply the Conservative Party. Northern Ireland’s representation in the Commons shrank to a mere dozen MPs, even fewer than that warranted by its small population, only a thirtieth of the United Kingdom’s as a whole. At Balliol in the thirties, Denis Healey records in his autobiography, it was normal to talk about ‘the insolubility’ of ‘Ulster’s problems’. In the Commons, Winston Churchill famously characterized the province and its politics as ‘the dreary steeples of Fermanagh’.

  Successive British governments tried to keep Ulster relatively peaceful and prosperous through subsidies. Public spending there, calculated according to a formula that was not revealed to the Cabinet, was over a third higher per head than elsewhere. Less generous strategies were also employed to sedate Northern Ireland’s politics: from 1937, the controller of the BBC was given the power to veto the transmission to the province of any Ulster-related programme deemed problematic. In Britain, Northern Ireland featured little in school textbooks, newspapers or university syllabuses. During the Second World War, the province served as an important airbase, but afterwards Ulster’s strategic value to Britain declined, and Whitehall’s remaining interest diminished accordingly. In December 1967, when Jim Callaghan became home secretary, he discovered that the supervision of Northern Ireland