State of Emergency: the Way We Were

by Dominic Sandbrook

  9. Stuart Holland, ‘The Industrial Strategy’, in Anthony Seldon and Kevin Hickson (eds.), New Labour, Old Labour: The Wilson and Callaghan Governments, 1974–1979 (London, 2004), pp. 297–9; Tony Benn, Office Without Power: Diaries 1968–72 (London, 1988), pp. 448–9, 457; Sunday Express, 8 October 1972; The Times, 14 February 1973; Observer, 18 February 1973; Sunday Telegraph, 13 May 1973; Benn, Against the Tide, pp. 6–7, 32, 42, 50, 54.

  10. Banker, February 1974, quoted in David Kynaston, The City of London, vol. 4: A Club No More, 1945–2000 (London, 2001), pp. 490–91.

  11. Ibid., pp. 483–5; Simon Gunn and Rachel Bell, Middle Classes: Their Rise and Sprawl (London, 2003), p. 208.

  12. Kynaston, A Club No More, pp. 488–90; Keith Middlemas, Power, Competition and the State, vol. 3: The End of the Postwar Era: Britain Since 1974 (Basingstoke, 1991), pp. 10, 14, 30, 33; The Times, 16 January 1974, 25 March 1974.

  13. Hansard, 19 December 1973; The Times, 19 February 1974; Edward Pearce, Denis Healey: A Life in Our Times (London, 2002), pp. 403, 406; Daily Express, 23 January 1974; Daily Mail, 25 February 1974.

  14. Hatfield, The House the Left Built, pp. 193, 197, 207, 228–9; Benn, Against the Tide, pp. 46–9, 62.

  15. Philip Ziegler, Wilson: The Authorized Life (London, 1993), pp. 401–2; Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson (London, 1992), p. 610; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 125, 161–2; Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 609; Benn, Against the Tide, p. 97; David Owen, Time to Declare (London, 1992), p. 224; Roy Jenkins, A Life at the Centre (London, 1991), p. 364.

  16. Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 147, 172, 174; Larry Lamb, Sunrise: The Remarkable Rise and Rise of the Bestselling Soaraway Sun (London, 1989), p. 172; Roy Greenslade, Press Gang: How Newspapers Make Profits from Propaganda (London, 2004), pp. 289–90.

  17. Daily Mail, 4 January 1974, 7 January 1974, 28 February 1974; Benn, Against the Tide, pp. 87, 109; Evening Standard, 27 February 1974; Evening News, 20 February 1974; and see Stephen Dorril and Robin Ramsay, Smear! Wilson and the Secret State (London, 1992), p. 231.

  18. Campbell, Edward Heath, pp. 598, 604; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 93, 83; The Times, 23 February 1974; King and Wybrow (eds.), British Political Opinion, p. 28; Financial Times, 15 February 1974.

  19. Benn, Against the Tide, pp. 106, 109; Cockerell, Live from Number Ten, p. 198; Bernard Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen: An Autobiography (London, 2003), pp. 109, 115; and see Pimlott, Harold Wilson, pp. 608–9; Ziegler, Wilson, pp. 404–5.

  20. Ivor Crewe and Anthony King, SDP: The Birth, Life and Death of the Social Democratic Party (Oxford, 1995), pp. 10–11; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 26, 53, 80, 130; Cockerell, Live from Number Ten, p. 200.

  21. Richard Clutterbuck, Britain in Agony: The Growth of Political Violence (London, 1978), p. 112; Jim Prior, A Balance of Power (London, 1986), p. 93; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 67, 72.

  22. The Times, 16 February 1974; Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 606; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 97, 139, 186; Ramsden, An Appetite for Power, p. 412.

  23. The Times, 22 February 1974, 26 February 1974; Daily Mail, 22 February 1974; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 100–101, 91, 108–9; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp. 607, 610; Ronald McIntosh, Challenge to Democracy: Politics, Trade Union Power and Economic Failure in the 1970s (London, 2006), pp. 85–6.

  24. The Times, 25 February 1974; Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 611; Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, p. 365; Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, p. 112; Daily Mirror, 1 March 1974; Alwyn W. Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (London, 2008), p. 95.

  25. Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (London, 1998), pp. 684, 693–4, 699–701; The Times, 16 January 1974, 8 February 1974.

  26. Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 701, 705–7; Pimlott, Harold Wilson, p. 611; Daily Telegraph, 24 February 1974.

  27. Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 194, 104; Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 708–9; The Times, 26 February 1974.

  28. Sunday Express, 24 February 1974; The Times, 26 February 1974, 27 February 1974; Campbell, Edward Heath, pp. 606, 608–9.

  29. The Times, 26 February 1974, 27 February 1974; Cockerell, Live from Number Ten, pp. 202–3.

  30. Daily Express, 28 February 1974; Daily Mail, 28 February 1974; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 110, 179; Greenslade, Press Gang, p. 290; Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, p. 112; Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No. 10 (London, 2005), pp. 41–2.

  31. Ibid., pp. 41–3.

  32. Ibid., p. 44; Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, p. 114.

  33. Campbell, Edward Heath, pp. 613–14; McIntosh, Challenge to Democracy, p. 151; Heffer, Like the Roman, pp. 710–11.

  34. Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 258–73.

  35. Ball, ‘The Conservative Party and the Heath Government,’ p. 348; Butler and Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974, pp. 141, 259, 263–4, 271, 278, 280; Pimlott, Harold Wilson, p. 613; Vernon Bogdanor, ‘The Fall of Heath and the End of the Postwar Settlement’, in Ball and Seldon (eds.), The Heath Government, p. 378.

  36. Prior, A Balance of Power, p. 95; Douglas Hurd, An End to Promises (London, 1978), p. 128; Kavanagh, ‘The Fatal Choice’, pp. 368, 370; McIntosh, Challenge to Democracy, pp. 166, 362.

  37. Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 45–8; Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, pp. 114, 117.

  38. PRO PREM 16/231, ‘Note for the Record: Events Leading to Mr Heath’s Resignation on 4 March 1974’, 16 March 1974; PRO CAB 128/53, CM (74) 9, 1 March 1974.

  39. Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, p. 49; Pimlott, Harold Wilson, pp. 614–15; Joe Haines, Glimmers of Twilight: Harold Wilson in Decline (London, 1993), pp. 81–2; Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries 1974–76 (London, 1980), pp. 32–3.

  40. PRO PREM 16/231, ‘Note for the Record’, 16 March 1974; PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘1974 Elections’, Aide Memoire for Meeting with Mr Thorpe, 2 March 1974; PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘1974 Elections’, Note of Meeting with Mr Thorpe, 2 March 1974; PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘1974 Elections’, Armstrong to Heath, 2 March 1974.

  41. PRO PREM 15/2069, ‘1974 Elections’, Telephone Conversation between the Prime Minister and Mr Thorpe, 3 March 1974; PRO CAB 128/53, CM (74) 10, 3 March 1974; PRO PREM 16/231, ‘Note for the Record’, 16 March 1974.

  42. See Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (London, 1989), p. 354; Douglas Hurd, Robert Peel: A Biography (London, 2007).

  43. Prior, A Balance of Power, p. 72; and see Campbell, Edward Heath, p. xix.

  44. Ibid., p. 619; Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, p. 115.

  45. Campbell, Edward Heath, p. 618; John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 1: The Grocer’s Daughter (London, 2000), p. 255; Hurd, An End to Promises, p. 137; PRO PREM 16/231, ‘Note for the Record’, 16 March 1974.

  46. Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 52–3; and see Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, p. 119; Jenkins, A Life at the Centre, pp. 369–70.

  47. The Times, 5 March 1974; Time, 18 March 1974; Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, pp. 53–4; Donoughue, The Heat of the Kitchen, pp. 120–22.

  Further Reading

  The advantage of writing about very recent history – as well as the great disadvantage – is that so much material is immediately available on the Internet. In the 1970s, a historian writing about events four decades earlier would have been compelled to make endless long trips to research libraries, cranking through the rolls of microfilmed newspapers until he was driven almost mad with boredom and frustration. These days, however, the online archives of The Times, the Guardian and the Observer are available to subscribers at the click of a mouse, as are the archives of the American magazine Time, whi
ch gives a fascinating outsider’s view of British affairs. For the ultimate insider’s view, though, there is no better source than the National Archives, whose website now has plenty of digitized material, including the minutes of all Cabinet meetings (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/) as well as a selection of particularly significant government documents from year to year – although of course most documents need to be consulted at the archives in Kew.

  All the parliamentary debates from the decade can be consulted at the terrific Hansard site (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/sittings/1970s), while the BBC site’s On this Day feature carries reports and brief clips relating to many major news stories of the time. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/archive) has a stupendous range of documents, speeches, minutes and articles covering the whole of her career over half a century, including dozens of documents on the Heath government. But by far the most impressive online resource is the University of Ulster’s CAIN archive (http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/) on the conflict in Northern Ireland since 1968, which has a vast wealth of chronologies, statistics, documents and eyewitness accounts – more than enough, in fact, for even the most assiduous researcher.

  Although the 1970s have not had the same scholarly attention as earlier decades, this book necessarily draws on the research of other historians. I have tried to acknowledge all my debts in the Notes, but it is worth repeating that, as with my previous books, writing State of Emergency would have been impossible, or at least a lot more difficult, had it not been for the hugely rich work of all those scholars who have already crossed some of this ground. Books about the period are now coming out every year, most recently Andy Beckett’s journalistic account When the Lights Went Out: Britain in the Seventies and Francis Wheen’s hilarious Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age of Paranoia (both 2009). The best place to start, though, is still Phillip Whitehead, The Writing on the Wall: Britain in the Seventies (1985), an evocative account by a former Labour MP who interviewed many of the key players for a Channel 4 documentary series. For general accounts of the culture of the period, meanwhile, see Robert Hewison, Too Much: Art and Culture in the Sixties, 1960–75 (1986), Dave Haslam, Not Abba: The Real Story of the 1970s (2005), and Howard Sounes, Seventies: The Sights, Sounds and Ideas of a Brilliant Decade (2006). And for a highly impressive attempt to bring all this material together, see Alwyn W. Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (2008), which has some terrific material about television, pop music and pulp bestsellers, among other things.

  On the politics of the era, the obvious starting point is John Campbell’s masterful biography of Edward Heath (1993), a classic of the genre and far more informative than Heath’s stodgy memoirs. The only scholarly account of the government itself is Stuart Ball and Anthony Seldon (eds.), The Heath Government, 1970–1974: A Reappraisal (1996), a fine collection of detailed essays on everything from economic policy to Northern Ireland. Douglas Hurd’s An End to Promises (1978) is a thoughtful and colourful insider’s memoir. The most useful biographies of other key figures are Simon Heffer, Like the Roman: The Life of Enoch Powell (1998), John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 1: The Grocer’s Daughter (2000), Mark Garnett and Ian Aitken, Splendid! Splendid! The Authorized Biography of Willie Whitelaw (2003), and Lewis Baston, Reggie: The Life of Reginald Maudling (2004), all of which are superb. On the Labour side, Ben Pimlott’s Harold Wilson (1992) and Philip Ziegler’s Wilson: The Authorized Life (1993) do their best to lighten the gloom with moments of wry humour, while Kenneth O. Morgan’s Callaghan: A Life (1997) is an excellent read. But the real pleasure lies in reading what Wilson’s colleagues wrote about themselves and each other: for example, in Denis Healey’s boisterous The Time of My Life (1989) and Roy Jenkins’s stylish A Life at the Centre (1991), and above all in the relevant volumes of Tony Benn’s diaries, Office Without Power: Diaries 1968–72 (1988) and Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–1976 (1989). And among a host of books on the political turmoil of the early 1970s, I would single out Richard Clutterbuck, Britain in Agony: The Growth of Political Violence (1978), Michael Hatfield, The House the Left Built: Inside Labour Policy Making 1970–1975 (1978) and especially David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of February 1974 (1974).

  For more on the British economy, the reader is spoilt for choice. The scholarly essays in Richard Coopey and Nicholas Woodward (eds.), Britain in the 1970s: The Troubled Economy (1996) are absolutely indispensable for specialists but perhaps a bit hard going for the lay reader. Edmund Dell’s hilariously waspish The Chancellors: A History of the Chancellors of the Exchequer, 1945–90 (1996) is a more obvious place to start. Geoffrey Owen, From Empire to Europe: The Decline and Revival of British Industry Since the Second World War (1999) is quite outstanding, and I also recommend David Smith’s insightful The Rise and Fall of Monetarism: The Theory and Politics of an Economic Experiment (1991) and David Kynaston’s characteristically brilliant The City of London, vol. 4: A Club No More, 1945–2000 (2001). On the unions, I learned a lot from the essays in John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell (eds.), The High Tide of British Trade Unionism: Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1964–1979 (2007), as well as from older books such as Paul Ferris, The New Militants: Crisis in the Trade Unions (1972) and Stephen Milligan, The New Barons: Union Power in the 1970s (1976). On Northern Ireland, meanwhile, I relied heavily on Peter Taylor’s trilogy Provos (1997, pbk. 1998), Loyalists (1999, pbk. 2000) and Brits (2001, pbk. 2002), Richard English’s thoughtful Armed Struggle: The History of the IRA (2003), and Kevin Myers’s colourful, hilarious and justly acclaimed Watching the Door: Cheating Death in 1970s Belfast (2008).

  For the sections on Europe, I found Hugo Young, This Blessed Plot: Britain and Europe from Churchill to Blair (1998) enormously useful. For holidays, I relied on Miriam Akhtar and Steve Humphries, Some Liked It Hot: The British on Holiday at Home and Abroad (2000); on environmentalism, I found Meredith Veldman, Fantasy, the Bomb and the Greening of Britain: Romantic Protest, 1945–1980 (1994) very helpful. Among a host of excellent books on women and feminism, meanwhile, I recommend Mary Ingham, Now We Are Thirty: Women of the Breakthrough Generation (1982), Sheila Rowbotham, A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States (1999) and the essays in Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (ed.), Women in Twentieth-Century Britain (2001). For more on race and immigration, see Mike Phillips and Trevor Phillips, Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (1999), Shamit Saggar, Race and Politics in Britain (1992) and Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: The Story of Immigration to Britain (2004). And despite the swathes of amusingly dated Marxist cultural analysis, Stuart Hall et al., Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order (1978) remains well worth a look, while Martin Walker, The National Front (1977) is the best book on a distinctly unpleasant subject.

  On a happier note, Paul Ferris, Sex and the British: A Twentieth-Century History (1993), Cate Haste, Rules of Desire: Sex in Britain,World War I to the Present (1994) and Hera Cook, The Long Sexual Revolution: English Women, Sex and Contraception 1800–1975 (2005) all make much more cheerful reading. The most useful book on London is Jerry White’s masterful London in the Twentieth Century (2001), while Mark Clapson’s books Invincible Green Suburbs, Brave New Towns (1998) and A Social History of Milton Keynes: Middle England/Edge City (2004) are terrific on suburbia. On pop music, see Barney Hoskyns, Glam! Bowie, Bolan and the Glitter Rock Revolution (1998), as well as Dave Harker’s indispensable essay ‘Blood on the Tracks: Popular Music in the 1970s’, in Bart Moore-Gilbert (ed.), The Arts in the 1970s: Cultural Closure? (1994). On football, Hunter Davies, The Glory Game (1972), is a classic, while I also relied on Eric Dunning, Patrick Murphy and John M. Williams, The Roots of Football Hooliganism: A Historical and Sociological Study (1988), Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (1990) and Andrew Mourant, Don Revie: Portrait of a Footballing Enigma (1990).

  Perhaps the most enjoyable books on the 1970s, though, fall in
to none of these categories. Among contemporary works of non-fiction, few books are more moving than Ken Coates and Richard Silburn, Poverty: The Forgotten Englishmen (1970), while Jeremy Seabrook’s evocative City Close-Up (1973) overflows with the voices of the people of Blackburn, Jonathan Raban’s elegant Soft City (1974, pbk. 1975) is terrific on bohemian London, and Ann Oakley’s passionate Housewife (1974) brings to life a group of women usually ignored by historians. For splendidly dark recreations of the grittier side of life in the 1970s, see Gordon Burn, Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son: The Story of Peter Sutcliffe (1984) and Kester Aspden, The Hounding of David Oluwale (2008). And while there are plenty of published diaries relating to the period, I found the most illuminating to be Ronald McIntosh, Challenge to Democracy: Politics, Trade Union Power and Economic Failure in the 1970s (2006), James Lees-Milne, Diaries, 1971–1983 (2008) and Russell Davies (ed.), The Kenneth Williams Diaries (1993) – this last both hilarious and unbearably sad.

  In fiction, the seventies offer plenty of unexpected pleasures: among the most atmospheric and revealing are Kingsley Amis, Girl, 20 (1971); Martin Amis, The Rachel Papers (1973); John le Carré, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1974); Margaret Drabble’s The Ice Age (1977) and The Middle Ground (1980); and Piers Paul Read’s A Married Man (1979, but set five years earlier). Above all, of course, there is Malcolm Bradbury’s coruscating The History Man (1975, pbk. 1977), dated in parts, disturbingly relevant in others. This was a golden age of the theatre, too: for savage dissections of the Heath years, see Howard Brenton and David Hare, Brassneck (performed 1974) and David Hare, Knuckle (performed 1974), although the best drama of the decade was surely Alan Ayckbourn’s uproarious and tragic trilogy The Norman Conquests (1973). For guidance through the literary and dramatic worlds, incidentally, I relied on two outstanding works: D. J. Taylor, After the War: The Novel and England Since 1945 (1993) and Michael Billington, State of the Nation: British Theatre Since 1945 (2007).