State of Emergency: the Way We Were

by Dominic Sandbrook

  Behind Wilson’s good cheer lay the fact that a Conservative–Liberal coalition was now looking distinctly unlikely. Early on Saturday morning, Thorpe had slipped out of his North Devon home, wearing a country coat and wellington boots over his characteristically dapper dark suit. He trudged across three damp fields to a neighbouring farm, and from there drove to Taunton station, hoping to escape press scrutiny. He did not make it to Downing Street until four that afternoon, when Armstrong smuggled him past the demonstrators through the Foreign Office and the steps from St James’s Park. But while Thorpe’s talks with Heath were ‘friendly and easy’, Armstrong recorded, there was no great breakthrough. Although Heath was willing to contemplate a ‘high level inquiry’ on electoral reform, Thorpe pointed out that Liberal activists would want something rather more concrete – especially as they were seething at the injustice of having won almost 20 per cent of the vote but only fourteen seats. And although Thorpe was naturally excited at the thought of becoming a political kingmaker and perhaps even sitting in the Cabinet as Home Secretary, he was well aware that many Liberals loathed Heath and would be furious at the prospect of saving his bacon. Indeed, within hours of Thorpe leaving Downing Street, he rang his friend Nigel Fisher, a Tory MP, and told him that he was already ‘encountering a rather embarrassing problem with his colleagues about the Prime Minister personally. They feel they could not agree to serve as long as he is the Prime Minister.’ On top of that, ‘there could be no deal’ without a commitment to electoral reform within six months, which Heath could never give without alienating his own backbenchers. And that, in essence, was the end of that.40

  Thorpe did not put Heath out of his misery until Monday afternoon, when he had finished his soundings among his Liberal colleagues. ‘I am sorry, this is obviously hell – a nightmare on stilts for you,’ Thorpe told him on the phone on Sunday night, adding that if it were left to him, he would love to ‘work something out’. But when Heath summoned his Cabinet on Monday morning, it was painfully obvious that there was nothing to discuss. As they all agreed, the economic situation was so desperate that only a secure, stable government could sort it out – which meant a formal coalition with the Liberals, and that was clearly not on the agenda. In any case, ministers reported that Tory backbenchers were ‘increasingly worried by talk of a deal with the Liberals over proportional representation’. To all intents and purposes, the game was up. ‘From now on,’ Robert Armstrong recorded, ‘it was probably only a matter of hours before the Prime Minister resigned.’ In the Cabinet Room he organized an impromptu champagne farewell for Heath’s chief civil servants, including the now recovered Sir William Armstrong, but the Prime Minister was in no mood for sentimental partings. ‘It was not a cheerful occasion,’ Armstrong noted, and a few hours later Heath confessed that ‘he felt worn out’. Late that afternoon, the Liberals definitively rejected his offer. His premiership was over.41

  Heath had been Prime Minister for three years and 259 days, although his period in office was packed with so many crises that he seemed to have been there for a decade. By conventional standards, his government had been a total failure. When elected, he had promised to revive the British economy, yet unemployment broke through the one million mark for the first time since the 1930s, inflation began to surge into double figures, the money supply ran disastrously out of control, government borrowing rose to record levels and the balance of payments deficit – which had played a key part in his rise to power – reached an unprecedented £380 million. He had promised to revitalize the nation’s industry, yet by 1974 Britain was mocked abroad as the Sick Man of Europe, its travails epitomized by the humiliating collapse of Rolls-Royce. He had promised to rekindle the values of competition and free enterprise, yet he threw millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money not only at Rolls-Royce but also at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, in clear defiance of his experts’ advice. He had promised to let the free market govern wages and prices, yet he left office having set up a gargantuan apparatus of Pay Boards and Price Commissions that appalled many of his own supporters. He had promised to reform industrial relations on clean, rational lines, yet he presided over the most debilitating industrial conflicts in living memory and saw his government twice humiliated by the miners. He had promised ‘not to divide but to unite’, yet he left office loathed by many of his own people, who saw him as a cruel, confrontational reactionary. And he had promised ‘to create one nation’, yet he presided over some of the most savage civil conflict in the history of the United Kingdom, with blood on the streets of Belfast and bombs in the streets of London.

  Yet much of the conventional wisdom about the Heath government is simply wrong. It is not true, as critics on the left claim, that he was bent on confrontation with the unions. In fact, he wanted nothing more than to work in partnership with them, tried to bring them into economic decision-making, and did all he could (as he saw it) to avoid the miners’ dispute that brought him down. And it is not true, as his Thatcherite adversaries insist, that he cravenly abandoned his free-market ‘Selsdon Man’ commitments when the going got tough. It is true that in some ways he anticipated Mrs Thatcher – in his provincial grammar school background, in his emphasis on entrepreneurship, in his impatience with tradition. But he was too much a creature of the system, too deeply marked by the experiences of the Depression and the war, to be a true proto-Thatcherite. His friends Denis Healey and Douglas Hurd – one Labour, one Tory – agreed that the politician he most resembled was Sir Robert Peel, who smashed his own party with the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846. Like Peel, Heath was an industrious, earnest, terse and repressed man from outside the magic circle. Like Peel, he was a modernizer, a reformer, a pragmatist who believed that every problem had a rational solution and that reasoned argument could reconcile competing interests to the greater good. Like Peel, he saw further than many of his colleagues: in his case, his European enthusiasm marked him out as a much more visionary politician than most of his contemporaries. But like Peel, he lacked the communication skills, the deftness of touch, the political dexterity and personal charisma to win the nation to his standard and to unite his party around him.42

  That Heath had serious flaws as a national leader is surely not in doubt. He was a terrible speaker; he was preposterously rude and grumpy; he was far too impatient; he tried to do too much too quickly; and he was insensitive to the values and pressures that drove other people. It is worth pointing out, however, that he was also incredibly unlucky. No Prime Minister since Ramsay MacDonald had been dealt such a terrible hand: in June 1970, not even the most pessimistic forecaster could possibly have predicted the collapse of the global financial system, the rise of worldwide inflation, the oil shock, the escalation of violence in Northern Ireland, and the wider sense of social breakdown that flowed from the rise in street crime, the explosion of football hooliganism and the controversies over permissiveness, immigration and delinquency. As his friend Jim Prior later wrote, Heath, his government and the institutions of Britain were like a ‘captain, his crew and an ageing ship setting out with new charts on a voyage during which he planned to introduce new disciplines and to refurbish the engine and hull. But what neither Ted nor any of his officers could know was that we were heading for heavy seas.’ It was the worst possible context in which to attempt such a brusque and rapid programme of modernization, and it was Heath who paid the price.43

  If his administration was a failure, though, it was not an ignoble one. And although Heath got the date of his re-election bid badly wrong, the fact remains that on many of the big questions he was absolutely right. He was right, for example, to see that Britain’s future as a trading nation lay within the European Community. He was right in his prescription for Northern Ireland; there is a peculiar injustice that his regime is remembered for Bloody Sunday when the Sunningdale agreement so closely anticipated the peace process of the 1990s. He was right to see that Britain’s industrial relations were an anarchic shambles, right to see that its public institutions were c
omplacent and sclerotic, right to see the dangers of rampant wage inflation, and right to see that British industry needed drastic modernization to compete in a globalized world. The irony, though, is that he paid a heavy penalty for being right on so many issues and for his impatience to tackle them all at once. As his biographer remarks, the truth is that the British electorate, fattened by decades of affluence, shrank from the painful changes Heath was offering. When they were offered the chance of a quieter life under good old Mr Wilson, they took it. As Bernard Donoughue, of all people, later admitted, ‘the electorate realised that Heath was right and one day there had to be a battle with the unions to curb their irresponsibilities. But the public was not quite ready for it yet. They were tempted by Wilson’s Labour as the fudge to put off the evil day of battle.’ But that day was coming, all the same.44

  Early on the morning of Monday, 4 March, Heath held one last, rather pointless Cabinet meeting, a bleak occasion at which most of his ministers were too tired and depressed even for the usual farewell compliments. Only Margaret Thatcher roused herself to offer an emotional tribute, praising the ‘wonderful experience of team loyalty’ she had shared since 1970 – an extraordinarily ironic moment, given what was to come. Just before six, the Prime Minister bade farewell to the Downing Street staff, having told Robert Armstrong that he did not want to endure the humiliation of returning to collect his grand piano and his manuscripts of music scores after he had formally resigned. It was Armstrong, the fellow musical enthusiast, who replied on behalf of the staff, wishing him ‘good health and better luck’. Upstairs, his aides were frantically stuffing piles of paper into boxes and bin liners, rushing to evacuate the building before their replacements arrived.

  And then it was all over, and the two men left for Buckingham Palace. ‘On the drive we neither of us said a word,’ Armstrong recalled. ‘There was so much, or nothing, left to say.’ Even at this last, supremely emotional moment, Heath remained impassive, masking his shock and disappointment behind the familiar granite mask. But for Armstrong, who had become so close to his chief, it was all too much to bear. After Heath had disappeared to see the Queen, Sir Martin Charteris took the young Private Secretary aside and murmured a few words of sympathy. ‘I do not remember what he said,’ Armstrong wrote later, ‘but I remember that I nearly broke into tears when he said it.’45

  In Lord North Street, where Harold Wilson was waiting for the call to kiss hands as Prime Minister, there was a sense of relief and jubilation at his second coming – something many had thought impossible only weeks before. From the brink of annihilation, Wilson now found himself once more the master of British politics, as well as the first Labour leader in history to win three general elections. But some things had not changed. While Wilson was upstairs shaving for his meeting with the monarch, his aides were arguing about the shape of his new Cabinet. Since his last administration had been blighted by an extraordinary amount of factionalism and disloyalty, his colleagues might have been expected to have learned their lesson. But even before he had gone to the Palace, the bickering had started. At lunchtime, Wilson had sent Bernard Donoughue to the Commons to tell Roy Jenkins that he was not going to be the new Chancellor, as promised, but would have to be content with the Home Office. It was typical Wilson: he hated giving people bad news, so he asked his aides to do it instead. And Jenkins’s reaction, too, brought back memories of the 1960s. ‘You tell Harold Wilson he must bloody well come to see me,’ he exploded, ‘and if he doesn’t watch out, I won’t join his bloody government!’ Since they were standing on a public staircase, Donoughue found the whole scene excruciatingly embarrassing, but Jenkins seemed undeterred by the attention. ‘This is typical of the bloody awful way Harold Wilson does things!’ he shouted, as if he wanted everybody to hear him. It was not an ideal start.46

  Just after seven that evening, Wilson’s car left for Buckingham Palace and his audience with the Queen. Behind him, crammed into a rented Daimler, followed his closest aides, and as Wilson and his wife went in to see the monarch, they sat downstairs in an unheated palace room and complained about the lack of drinks. An hour later, after the new Prime Minister had emerged, they drove on to Downing Street. It was almost exactly fifty years since Wilson, a cheeky little boy in an oversized cap and knee-length shorts, had been photographed by his father on the steps of Number 10. Now, as he trudged almost disconsolately to the familiar spot, his shoulders hunched, his smile thin, his eyes weary, he looked older than his 57 years, a white-haired little man in a crumpled suit. And this time, as the photographers’ flashbulbs popped in the evening air, there were no fine words. ‘We’ve got a job to do,’ he said slowly, his flat Yorkshire voice barely audible above the mingled cheers and boos of the crowd. ‘We can only do that job as one people, and I’m going right in to start that job now.’

  As the heavy black door swung shut, there was silence in the Number 10 hallway. ‘It was eerily quiet,’ remembered Bernard Donoughue, who stood behind his leader, barely able to believe his good fortune. Along the walls the staff stood and waited: policy advisers and press officers, civil servants and messengers, security officers and secretaries. ‘They were totally silent,’ Donoughue wrote, ‘and appeared apprehensive, as if we were a threatening force of alien occupation. The tension was tangible.’ Only a few hours before, they had stood in exactly the same spot to bid farewell to Edward Heath. Many of them, Donoughue noticed, had been crying. For a brief moment, nobody spoke. Nobody moved. And then from among the rows of men in dark suits Robert Armstrong stepped forward and began to clap, and suddenly the applause and the cheers rang around the hallway, and Harold Wilson stepped forward and began shaking the outstretched hands.47

  In the sunshine of June 1970, Edward Heath and his women MPs, with Margaret Thatcher second from right, greet their new dawn. Reality, however, soon hit home: by October, a council workers’ strike meant that piles of rubbish were festering on the streets of London.

  The moral fibre of Britain’s youngsters provoked considerable anxiety during the early 1970s. Above, boys play on the streets of west London before the 1970 FA Cup Final. Below, a photographer catches secondary school boys smoking, May 1972.

  For the elderly, Edward Heath’s new Britain could seem a frighteningly alien place. Above, an old woman waits to be evicted from her dilapidated flat, 1973. Below, shoppers return to the brave new world of north London’s Highbury Quadrant.

  Despite their reputation, the union bosses were less powerful than they seemed. Above, the TGWU’s Jack Jones strikes a suitably imperial pose, flanked by the AEU’s Hugh Scanlon and the Vehicle Builders’ Alf Roberts. Below, postal workers heckle their leaders after the collapse of a strike, March 1971.

  The ‘most dangerous man in Britain’, Tony Benn was already reinventing himself as the tribune of the working classes when this picture was taken in February 1971. Below, miners emerge from West Yorkshire’s Lofthouse Colliery after a pit accident that claimed seven lives in March 1973.

  When the miners went on strike in early 1972, the government found itself helpless as power cuts devastated the economy. Above, headlines announce the latest emergency measures on 11 February. Below, policemen struggle to hold back pickets at the Saltley Gate coke depot, Birmingham.

  Young and old, rich and poor: in February 1972, there was no escape from the power cuts. Fashion buyer Sally Hayton has breakfast with her father in their Fulham flat, while in Hillcrest Avenue, Edgware, Sheryl Hart does her homework by candlelight.

  Margaret Thatcher looks delighted on her first day as Secretary of State for Education, June 1970. To some critics she was the ‘Milk Snatcher’. But to the children of Harwood Primary School, shown protesting in 1973, she was something much worse: a ‘Loo Snatcher’.

  Afghan coats … earnest expressions … preposterous hairstyles … a casserole recipe: these squatters, photographed in 1974, might have come directly from Central Casting. But mainstream pop culture could look just as ridiculous: below, chart-topping Slade show o
ff the glam-rock look, late 1973.

  The black faces on Britain’s streets, like this woman at Brixton market, testified to the pace of social and cultural change in the early 1970s. Even the Channel was no longer the ultimate barrier: on 28 October 1971, to the short-lived delight of the tabloids, Parliament approved Heath’s historic decision to join the EEC.

  Holidays reflected a broader change in popular taste. In Carry On at Your Convenience (1971), the Boggs works outing takes Sid James and Kenneth Williams to a traditional English seaside resort. But by 1974, Coronation Street’s women were off on holiday to Majorca, complete with annoying guitarist and flamenco dancers.