On the morning of 24 January, Labour’s delegates descended once again on Wembley’s concrete conference centre. Even by the party’s own standards, what followed was a byzantine mess. To cut a very long story short, the delegates had to choose between seven different formulae for electing a new leader. Only three of the options stood a serious chance of winning. One was the National Executive’s latest plan, which gave the MPs, the unions and the activists 33 per cent of the vote each. The second, backed by Michael Foot, gave 50 per cent of the votes to the MPs and 25 per cent each to the unions and the activists. The third was a proposal backed by the moderate Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW), which gave 40 per cent to the unions and 30 per cent each to the MPs and the activists. Each formula would be put to the delegates in an exhaustive ballot. They would go on voting until there were only two left. The last one standing was the winner.59
As if all this were not convoluted enough, there were two complications. The CLPD had decided to rally the left behind USDAW’s 40–30–30 formula, calculating that this would win support in the unions while weakening the MPs. By contrast, the moderates and trade union leaders were all over the place. The GMWU’s David Basnett, for example, was pushing the formula that gave 50 per cent to the MPs. But the engineers’ leader Terry Duffy thought the MPs should get 75 per cent and was determined to abstain on anything that gave them less than 51 per cent, which made it impossible for him to back Basnett’s plan. For the left, this was a gift. The key thing was to get USDAW’s proposal into the final two. And after a ferocious lobbying effort they managed it, squeaking past the National Executive’s version by just 50,000 votes. That meant a final showdown against the Foot–Basnett formula, which had led from the beginning. And with the engineers abstaining, victory – by 3.4 million votes to 2.9 million – went to USDAW. The left had won.60
It was an extraordinary result, at once a tribute to the left’s organizational skill and a staggering indictment of the moderates’ divisions. The irony is that if the engineers had not been so stubborn, Basnett’s formula would have won. Instead, Labour now had an electoral system opposed by its leader, its National Executive, most of its MPs and many of the major trade unions, which gave those same unions the biggest say in the choice of the next leader. And for Foot, who had cut a lonely and passive figure throughout, it was a dreadful public humiliation. ‘He lost not only the vote but prestige and his reputation as a fighter,’ said the Mirror. He had ‘courageously faced the first test of his leadership’, agreed Austin Mitchell, ‘by giving no lead at all’. In a plaintive speech afterwards, Foot did his best to unite the delegates behind an attack on Mrs Thatcher. But even the Guardian thought he ‘looked like someone who wished he had stuck to book reviewing’.61
On the left, all was jubilation. The CLPD had prevailed, boasted Jon Lansman, against ‘the National Executive Committee, the Transport and General Workers’ Union, the Parliamentary Party and Michael Foot. We won against all the establishment figures.’ It was a ‘historic day – the product of ten years of work’, agreed Tony Benn. ‘No praise is high enough for the enormous skill of the CLPD.’ The power of the MPs, he exulted, had been broken for good. The ‘movement’ was now in charge: ‘It will never be reversed, and nothing will be the same again.’ He was much in demand, he noted happily, for television and radio interviews. He accepted only one, for the Soviet labour magazine, Trud.62
But many Labour MPs left Wembley in utter despondency. For the Mirror’s political correspondent Terence Lancaster, the biggest winner was Margaret Thatcher, who had been given a ‘propaganda weapon that not all the resources of Saatchi and Saatchi could better’. At a time when the unions’ national reputation was at its lowest ebb, Labour had adopted a system that might have been designed to prove that they were pulling the party’s strings. And not surprisingly, the voters hated it. Six out of ten disliked the new system, almost a third said it made them less likely to vote Labour, and half thought the Gang of Three ought to break away. In less than two weeks Labour’s popularity dropped by fully 11 per cent. It never recovered. In The Times an unknown wag placed a memorable entry in the announcements column. ‘IN MEMORIAM … LABOUR. – Party on January 24, 1981, after a long illness at Wembley. Funeral Westminster. No flowers.’63
The next day, Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and Bill Rodgers met in Limehouse, east London, and called for a new party.
16
When the Wind Blows
Where, I wonder, have I, and all those other thousands of CND members been all these years? Why did complacency descend on us like some heavy mushroom cloud?
Polly Toynbee, Guardian, 23 June 1980
The West is decadent and divided. It has no stomach to risk our atomic reprisals. Throughout Europe, daily demonstrations demand unilateral nuclear disarmament.
General Orlov (Steven Berkoff), in Octopussy (1983)
Britain in the 1980s lived in the shadow of the bomb. For anybody under the age of 40, the threat of nuclear annihilation had always been there, an inevitable feature of the modern world. But with the Red Army’s invasion of Afghanistan, the temperature of the Cold War had dipped below freezing. And not long after the Moscow Olympics, the international situation took a turn for the worse. Following years of stagnation, a Kremlin coup saw the ageing Leonid Brezhnev deposed by a junta of KGB hardliners. In February 1981, hoping to exploit the inexperience of the Reagan administration, Moscow’s new masters began massing troops on the borders of Turkey and Yugoslavia. To demonstrate their resolve, the British and Americans moved reinforcements to West Germany. But instead of backing down, the Soviet hardliners stepped up their military preparations. And suddenly, almost out of nowhere, the world was heading for war.
By the second week of March, Mrs Thatcher’s ministers were confronting the gravest international emergency for two decades. On the evening of Monday 9th, with reports of Warsaw Pact troops heading towards the Yugoslavian border, the Prime Minister addressed the nation, appealing for calm and emphasizing her determination to remain strong in the face of Soviet aggression. ‘For Heaven’s Sake Think’, implored the next day’s Guardian. The Sun was more bullish: ‘Good On Ya Maggie!’
Every hour the skies grew darker. At home, the next few days brought reports of panic buying in supermarkets and ‘growing shortages of canned foods, sugar and flour’. In the capital, petrol stations were running dry; in university towns, thousands of students marched for peace. Abroad, the situation moved closer to disaster. On Wednesday evening, with reports of intensified military preparations along the Turkish and Yugoslavian frontiers and thousands of people fleeing Britain’s cities for the countryside, the Commons passed an Emergency Powers Act. Nobody doubted now that the world stood on the brink of disaster.
As ill luck would have it, the decisive day was Friday 13th. As the Red Army smashed across the border into Yugoslavia, there were reports of Iraqi troops moving into eastern Turkey. At home, all eyes were on what the Home Office called ‘the deteriorating food situation’. Rural stores had run out of coal, oil, batteries and candles, while chemists were out of first aid supplies. The government declared a state of emergency, but it came too late to forestall outbreaks of looting in major cities. Sabotage was widespread: at Immingham, Lincolnshire, a terrorist bomb destroyed the entire oil refinery, while a bomb at the Devonport naval base killed four people. From across the Irish Sea came reports that Mrs Thatcher had offered a united Ireland in return for the provision of ‘temporary evacuation camps for selected British subjects’. Meanwhile, the BBC, now running nightly ‘Crisis Specials’, ordered staff to emergency sites. But as the corporation reported, many were ‘unwilling to leave their families’ at a moment of national emergency.
By Saturday morning there was real panic. In the Daily Mail a poll found that almost half of the population believed war was inevitable. Some people tried to make light of it: the cartoonist Jak pictured Mrs Thatcher sheltering from a nuclear bomb beneath an umbrella, w
hile the Telegraph’s Peterborough column debated the correct pronunciation of the word ‘coupon’. But few people were in the mood for laughter. ‘Civilian morale is not high,’ reported the Home Office. ‘Food rationing and lack of petrol have hit morale hardest.’ Sixteen more people were killed in sabotage attacks, while at RAF Finningley, South Yorkshire, the station commander disappeared, presumed kidnapped. But the day’s most eye-catching development came at Trafalgar Square, where a massive peace rally, led by ‘prominent left-wing MPs, leading trade unionists and personalities from many walks of life including sport and showbiz’, ended in clashes with the police. The next morning, every single paper ran the same picture on its front page: the Labour leader, Michael Foot, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, arms linked as the police moved in to arrest them.
Sunday was a day of worrying and waiting. In Downing Street, Mrs Thatcher was holed up with her military advisers, who warned that an attack on the West was expected ‘within hours rather than days’. Most of the papers ran ‘Protect and Survive’ adverts advising people how to react to a nuclear attack, while London’s stations were overwhelmed by crowds trying to get out of the city. Some commentators called for the Queen to be evacuated to Balmoral, but Buckingham Palace was having none of it. ‘The Queen’, said a spokesman, ‘has no intention of leaving the capital.’
Early the next morning, Monday 16 March 1981, came the moment Britain feared. While most people were still asleep, Soviet bombers struck at air defence and radar installations across the country. A few hours earlier, Warsaw Pact troops had launched a ‘full scale assault’ against NATO forces in West Germany. Now events were accelerating with devastating speed. All television and radio services were taken off the air, except for one BBC channel, controlled by the government. A few hours later, Whitehall was shaken by a colossal car bomb, followed by an explosion at Green Park Tube station that killed eight people and injured thirty-five. But there was no time to mourn, no time even to breathe. That afternoon, as enemy planes roared overhead, Mrs Thatcher declared war on the Soviet Union.
The next day, Tuesday, was one of the most dreadful days in Britain’s history. Early that morning, reported the Ministry of Defence, the nation’s air defences had been ‘virtually eliminated’. Almost every hour brought more civilian casualties, with hundreds killed in Glasgow, Plymouth, Liverpool and Devonport, while dozens more died in sabotage attacks at Edinburgh Airport, Avonmouth docks in Bristol and London’s Victoria station. In the streets, reported the Home Office, there were ‘scenes reminiscent of Vietnam … as families with children push overladen supermarket trolleys along the roads out of cities’. In Wales, farmers were said to be using shotguns against ‘marauding bands of youths’. And that night, as Mrs Thatcher addressed the Commons, the air was heavy with recrimination. In a conscious effort to emulate Winston Churchill, she invited Labour to join a National Government. But as reports later put it, the offer fell on ‘stony ground’.
On Wednesday 18th, despite more raids overnight, the sun rose as normal. The newspapers agreed that Britain would soon face a terrible choice: surrender to Moscow, or fall back on the ultimate deterrent. ‘Do or Die’, thundered the Telegraph. ‘Buy Time’, begged the Guardian. At noon, the War Cabinet met at Number 10. Mrs Thatcher’s intelligence chiefs warned her that the Red Army would soon break through in northern Norway and central Germany. And now she was forced to contemplate the most dreadful dilemma of all. When it came to it, would she press the nuclear button?
No British Prime Minister had ever faced such a decision. Quite apart from the human consequences, recorded the War Cabinet minutes, there would be ‘serious political repercussions … It would be imperative for the Prime Minister to speak to the Leader of the Opposition and one of his more reliable senior colleagues with a view to establishing a bipartisan approach.’ But there were ‘grounds for believing … that the general public would support resolute action by the Government’. And, in truth, the issue was never in doubt. Long ago, Mrs Thatcher had cast herself as the Iron Lady. Even if she had wanted to come to terms, she was the prisoner of her own persona. By the time the War Cabinet broke up, they were agreed. All that remained was to choose the target.
That night, the bombing continued, with hundreds killed at Gatwick and Heathrow. Under the circumstances, the Home Office thought public morale was pretty good, ‘with a quiet calm and expectancy now prevailing’. But when the War Cabinet met on Thursday morning, the news from the German front was worse than ever. Mrs Thatcher’s ministers were agreed: if the West’s conventional forces were broken, ‘the use of nuclear weapons to restore political balance would be justified’. It was a terrible gamble. The Ministry of Defence believed that Moscow would probably hit back with at least ‘250–500’ missiles of its own. On the other hand, the Joint Intelligence Committee thought the Kremlin might only use tactical nuclear weapons, which ‘would not necessarily involve nuclear strikes on targets in the United Kingdom’.
The way forward, then, seemed clear. Britain had no alternative but to use its nuclear deterrent. But rather than striking at the heart of the Soviet Union, it was safer to target Moscow’s satellites in Eastern Europe. Already NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe had suggested between twenty and thirty targets. Was that a bit high? Perhaps, but the strike could not be confined to ‘a few targets in, say, Bulgaria’ because ‘the political signal would be weak’. In any case, Mrs Thatcher had already discussed it with Michael Foot. Despite his commitment to nuclear disarmament, Foot was a patriot who recognized the darkness of the hour. ‘He raised no objections’, she reported, ‘to the use of nuclear weapons against targets in Polish territory.’
At 9 a.m. on Friday 20 March, the War Cabinet met for the last time. Overnight, Soviet bombers had levelled hundreds of homes in Liverpool, Manchester and Carlisle. In West Germany, exhausted British and American forces were falling back to the Rhine. France would be next, then the Channel. Mrs Thatcher had already received a formal request from the Supreme Allied Commander for a nuclear strike the following morning, with twenty-nine weapons aimed at military bases in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria. It would be accompanied by a ‘message of explicit warning coincident with or shortly after the strikes … to emphasize the restrained nature of our nuclear use and to warn of the grave risks of further escalation’.
This was it, the moment of decision. But Mrs Thatcher did not waver. If she lost her nerve now, all the sacrifices so far would have been for nothing. The West had done its best, she said, to ‘bring the conflict to a halt without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons’. Indeed, ‘never before had a Cabinet been faced with such a grim choice between capitulating to a powerful and malevolent aggressor, and embarking on a course of action which could end with the destruction of civilisation. But the choice had to be made, and it was the clear view of the Restricted War Cabinet that the consequences of bowing to aggression would be intolerable.’
And that was that. At dawn on Saturday 21 March 1981, as Britain slept, the missiles took off. By the time most people awoke, the apocalypse had begun.
There was, of course, no Third World War in March 1981. This was a secret ‘transition to war exercise’, codenamed WINTEX-CIMEX 81 and carried out in the Cabinet Office over two weeks. For some of the civil servants involved, it was clearly an opportunity to indulge a long-suppressed taste for fantasy, such as when they dreamed up tabloid headlines or imagined the police arresting the Archbishop of Canterbury. But there was more to it than bureaucratic role-playing. They spent days working out how Britain would cope during the drift into war, devoting almost 250 close-typed pages to petrol rationing, railway timetables, agricultural supplies and medical provision for injured servicemen. And the fact that the exercise ends with the decision to use nuclear weapons, taken at that last War Cabinet meeting on 20 March, speaks volumes about the unfathomable seriousness of such a moment. To go on would have been impossible: the consequences of a nuclear strike were
simply too awful to contemplate.1
The early 1980s were a golden age for prophecies of Armageddon. A decade earlier, the prospect of nuclear war had seemed to be fading from view. But from about the middle of the 1970s the mood had begun to change. With the Western economy beset by inflation, the Soviet Union gaining ground in the Third World and the United States sunk in a gigantic post-Vietnam sulk, history seemed to be moving in Marxism’s direction. And when revolution broke out in Iran at the end of 1978, it genuinely seemed that the world was spinning out of control. In many Western papers there was now talk of a worldwide Islamic fundamentalist upheaval, a global depression, an apocalyptic showdown for control of the Middle East. A year later, six out of ten people told Gallup that the Warsaw Pact was stronger than NATO, while almost nine out of ten agreed that the Soviet Union posed a threat to Britain. Almost two-thirds, meanwhile, thought there was a serious danger of military conflict. Few doubted that the Cold War was back on – or that the Communists were winning it.2
‘Never has the Western world shown itself to worse effect than it does at the present,’ wrote Lord Hailsham in the Sunday Express on 7 January 1979. The Soviet Union, he thought, boasted ‘by far the most powerful navy that the world has ever seen’, while ‘their superiority in men under arms, tanks and aircraft is terrifying’. On the right, this was now the conventional wisdom. Only a few months earlier, the former commander-in-chief of the British Army in West Germany, Sir John Hackett, had published his unexpected bestseller The Third World War (1978), a vision of a world war in 1985, in which the Kremlin provokes a conflict by pushing into the Middle East and occupying Yugoslavia. Unlike the Cabinet Office’s war game, Hackett’s scenario envisaged the Soviet Union using nuclear weapons after their drive towards the Rhine grinds to a halt. In a bad blow for Jasper Carrott, UB40 and fans of Aston Villa, the book ends with Birmingham obliterated by a nuclear bomb. And although Hackett conceded that a genuine war might unfold differently, there was no mistaking his urgency. There was, he warned, ‘a very high probability that, unless the West does a great deal within the next few years to improve its defences, a war with the Warsaw Pact could end in early disaster’.3
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