Who Dares Wins

by Dominic Sandbrook

  7. MO G226, Summer Directive 1981; MO W633, Summer Directive 1981.

  8. MO R470, Summer Directive 1981.

  9. Christopher Driver, The British at Table, 1940–1980 (1983), pp. 58–9; Guardian, 9 April 1979; MO W633, Winter Directive – Food, 1982.

  10. Driver, British at Table, pp. 59, 135; Guardian, 25 January 1978; MO N403, Autumn Directive 1981.

  11. The Times, 20 May 1980; Observer, 24 February 1980; MO W633, Winter Directive – Food, 1982; MO R470, Winter Directive – Food, 1982.

  12. The Times, 24 May 1983; Driver, British at Table, p. 106. The Barnstaple review is quoted in The Times and comes from Lesley Nelson, Vegetarian Restaurants in England (Harmondsworth, 1982).

  13. The Times, 24 May 1983; Driver, British at Table, pp. 104–5.

  14. Guardian, 2 September 1983, 18 May 1983; Beatrix Campbell, Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 80s (1984), pp. 69, 11, 13.

  15. MO G226, Summer Directive 1981; The Times, 15 March 1980, 25 May 1983.

  16. Guardian, 15 June 1981; The Times, 10 December 1981, 17 September 1981.

  17. The Times, 21 November 1981, quoting Beryl Downing, Quick Cook: Recipes in Thirty Minutes and Under (Harmondsworth, 1981).

  18. Joe Moran, Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime (2007), pp. 150–54; Independent, 22 July 2009; Daily Telegraph, 10 October 2010; The Times, 2 January 1982.

  19. Driver, British at Table, pp. 142–4; Observer Magazine, 10 January 1982; Sunday Times, 28 March 1982.

  20. Driver, British at Table, pp. 144–5; Guardian, 9 April 1979.

  21. Arthur Marwick, British Society since 1945 (1982), p. 242; Ian Jack, Before the Oil Ran Out: Britain in the Brutal Years (rev. edn: 1997), p. xvii; The Times, 9 May 1980; MO S496, Winter Directive – Food, 1982.

  22. Moran, Queuing for Beginners, p. 155; Guardian, 19 October 1978.

  23. Ibid., 4 August 1984, 6 October 1984; The Times, 11 December 1984; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 21; ‘Remarks visiting ASDA HQ’, 7 December 1988, TFW.

  24. Guardian, 11 February 1980.

  25. David Kynaston, The City of London, vol. 4: A Club No More, 1945–2000 (2001), pp. 424, 558, 712; Moran, Queuing for Beginners, p. 74. The parable of the jam sandwiches is recounted in Harry Hopkins, The New Look: A Social History of the Forties and Fifties in Britain (1963), p. 153.

  26. Daily Mail, 8 November 2006, 5 June 2010; Guardian, 1 March 1985.

  27. Observer, 18 May 1980; Moran, Queuing for Beginners, pp. 79–80.

  28. Christopher Driver (ed.), The Good Food Guide, 1980 (1980), pp. 15–17; The Times, 25 May 1983; Fodor’s 1982 Guide to Great Britain (New York, 1982), pp. 90–91, 96; Let’s Go, 1982: The Budget Guide to Britain and Ireland (New York, 1982), p. 47.

  29. Driver (ed.), Good Food Guide, 1980, pp. 51, 87, 107; Fodor’s 1982 Guide to Great Britain, p. 136; Let’s Go, 1982, p. 81.

  30. Driver (ed.), Good Food Guide, 1980, pp. 93, 250, 258, 269, 378, 358–9.

  31. The Times, 24 May 1983; MO C108, Special Report, ‘Royal Wedding’, 1981.

  32. Driver, British at Table, p. 113; Guardian, 23 January 1982; Observer, 13 February 1983.

  33. Mark Batey, Brand Meaning: Meaning, Myth and Mystique in Today’s Brands (2nd edn: 2016), p. 96; Driver, British at Table, p. 161; Guardian, 27 July 1982, 15 November 1982.

  34. Let’s Go, 1982, p. 81; Driver, British at Table, p. 90; The Times, 17 October 1983, 23 May 1983.

  35. Driver, British at Table, pp. 90, 88, 73, 77; The Times, 23 May 1983; Lincoln Allison, Condition of England: Essays and Impressions (1981), p. 189.

  36. The Times, 14 December 1976, 15 May 1976, 17 October 1983.

  37. Guardian, 24 May 1980; The Times, 21 June 1983, 17 October 1983.

  38. Guardian, 17 April 2013, 28 September 1982; The Times, 20 May 1980.

  39. The Times, 19 October 1981. My account of Lymeswold’s origins also draws on an episode of Radio 4’s history series In Living Memory (23 January 2013).

  40. Guardian, 28 September 1982. I transcribed Walker’s words from In Living Memory, as above.

  41. Guardian, 3 November 1982, 9 November 1982; The Times, 18 November 1982.

  42. Hansard, 17 February 1983; The Times, 22 November 1982; and see Independent, 11 April 1997.

  43. Guardian, 31 May 1985; The Times, 20 July 1983.

  44. Glasgow Herald, 8 June 1982, 5 January 1983; The Times, 19 February 1983.

  Chapter 6. You Are Mad and We Hate You

  1. Guardian, 19 March 1979, 25 January 1979, 9 October 1979; Tony Benn, Conflicts of Interest: Diaries, 1977–80 (1990), p. 533.

  2. Observer, 4 November 1979; Guardian, 9 October 1979, 2 November 1979, 24 April 1980. On Frank Scuffham, a fascinating man, see Church Times, 15 November 2013.

  3. Geoffrey Owen, From Empire to Europe: The Decline and Revival of British Industry since the Second World War (1999), pp. 114, 133, 137–9, 149; The Times, 5 October 1977, 1 March 1976, 19 December 1977.

  4. Owen, From Empire to Europe, pp. 138, 142; Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years (1993), pp. 108–9; John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 2: The Iron Lady (2003), p. 98; Jim Prior, A Balance of Power (1986), p. 128; ‘General Election Press Conference’, 2 May 1979, TFW.

  5. ‘TV Interview for LWT’s Weekend World’, 6 January 1980, TFW; David Parker, The Official History of Privatisation, vol. 1: The Formative Years, 1970–1987 (Abingdon, 2009), pp. 15, 17, 27–51; E. H. H. Green, Thatcher (2006), pp. 83–4, 89–90, 98; Sun, 21 July 1978; Nigel Lawson, The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (1992: 1993), p. 199; Hoskyns to Thatcher, ‘Loss-Making Nationalised Industries’, 15 September 1980, TFW; Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher: The Authorized Biography, vol. 2: Everything She Wants (2015), pp. 34–6, 188–9.

  6. Stephen Milligan, The New Barons: Union Power in the 1970s (1976), p. 7; and see Chris Wrigley, ‘Trade Unions, Strikes and the Government’, in Richard Coopey and Nicholas Woodward (eds.), Britain in the 1970s: The Troubled Economy (1996), pp. 274–5; Owen, From Empire to Europe, p. 437.

  7. On the unions, see Robert Taylor, The Fifth Estate: Britain’s Unions in the Seventies (1978), pp. 337–8, 353; Robert Taylor, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract’, in Anthony Seldon and Kevin Hickson (eds.), New Labour, Old Labour: The Wilson and Callaghan Governments, 1974–79 (2004), pp. 92–3, 99, 101; John McIlroy and Alan Campbell, ‘The High Tide of Trade Unionism: Mapping Industrial Politics, 1964–79’, in John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell (eds.), The High Tide of British Trade Unionism: Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, 1964–79 (new edn: Monmouth, 2007), pp. 100, 106; Owen, From Empire to Europe, pp. 433–9.

  8. Guardian, 20 October 1979, 23 October 1979, 20 June 1979.

  9. ‘Final Report of the Nationalised Industries Policy Group’, 30 June 1977, TFW; ‘Authority of Government Group Report’, 22 June 1977, TFW; The Times, 18 April 1978; John Hoskyns, Just in Time: Inside the Thatcher Revolution (2000), p. 127.

  10. John Hoskyns and Norman Strauss, ‘Stepping Stones’, 14 November 1977, TFW (see esp. pp. S-1, 5, 6–7, 13, 17, 30, A12–A13); Hoskyns, Just in Time, pp. 42–3, 45–7, 86; ‘Minutes of Leader’s Steering Committee, 51st Meeting’, 30 January 1978, TFW; ‘Speech to Conservative Party Conference’, 14 October 1977, TFW; John Campbell, Margaret Thatcher, vol. 1: The Grocer’s Daughter (2000).

  11. Louis Heren, Alas, Alas for England: What Went Wrong with Britain (1981), pp. 120–21; Hugo Young, One of Us: A Biography of Margaret Thatcher (rev. edn: 1990), p. 109; Prior, Balance of Power, pp. 8, 10; Daily Telegraph, 12 December 2016. The affair in question is chronicled in Simon Raven, Sound the Retreat (1971).

  12. Prior, Balance of Power, p. 113; Young, One of Us, pp. 161, 310; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 28, 104; Ferdinand Mount, Cold Cream: My Early Life and Other Mistakes (2008), p. 289.

  13. Lawson to Thatcher, 1 March 1976, TFW; Green, Thatcher, pp. 113, 123–6; ‘Memorandum by the Secretary of Sta
te for Employment: The Way Forward on Pay’, C (79) 6, 15 May 1979, TFW; Moore, Not for Turning, pp. 458–9, 511.

  14. Prior to Thatcher, 14 May 1979, TFW; Prior, Balance of Power, pp. 158–9; Green, Thatcher, pp. 117–18; and see Campbell, Iron Lady, pp. 89–90; Moore, Not for Turning, pp. 460–61.

  15. Prior, Balance of Power, pp. 164, 158; Young, One of Us, p. 194; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 105; Campbell, Iron Lady, p. 91. For a detailed chronology of the build-up to the steel strike, see Hoskyns to Thatcher, ‘Steel Strike – Lessons Learned’, 9 May 1980, TFW.

  16. Owen, From Empire to Europe. p. 143; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 109–11; Guardian, 22 June 2015; Hoskyns, Just in Time, p. 182.

  17. Ibid., pp. 146–7, 149; Joseph to Thatcher, ‘BSC Steel Strike’, 21 December 1979, TFW. The conspiracy-theory view of the strike is best captured in Ken Loach’s ITV film A Question of Leadership (1980).

  18. ‘No. 10 Record of Conversation’, 8 January 1980, TFW; Sunday Express, 13 January 1980; Hansard, 17 January 1980; see also Green, Thatcher, pp. 113–14.

  19. Prior, Balance of Power, p. 126; Sherman to Thatcher, ‘The Blockade of Britain – Decisive for British Democracy’, 14 January 1980, TFW; Young, One of Us, p. 193; Alan Clark, Diaries: Into Politics, 1972–1982 (2000), p. 144.

  20. Prior, Balance of Power, p. 163; Daily Express, 7 February 1980, 14 February 1980.

  21. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 105; ‘No. 10 Record of Conversation: Thatcher-Methven’, 5 February 1980, TFW; Hoskyns, Just in Time, p. 152; Hoskyns to Howe, ‘Trade Union Reform’, 29 January 1980, TFW.

  22. Howe to Thatcher, ‘Immunities for Secondary Industrial Action’, 4 February 1980, TFW; Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994), pp. 165–6; Hoskyns to Thatcher, ‘Jim Prior’s Proposals Are Inadequate’, 13 February 1980, TFW; Hansard, 14 February 1980; Prior, Balance of Power, pp. 164–5.

  23. The Times, 12 February 1980; Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, Keith Joseph (2001: Chesham, 2002), p. 349.

  24. The Times, 15 February 1980, 20 February 1980; Daily Mirror, 15 February 1980; Daily Express, 15 February 1980; see also Sheffield Star, 9 April 2015.

  25. Sunday Express, 17 February 1980.

  26. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 107, 112; Moore, Not for Turning, pp. 511–12; ‘No. 10 Record of Conversations’, 17 February 1980, TFW.

  27. ‘Minutes of Ministerial Committee on Economic Strategy: E (80) 6, Secondary Picketing’, 18 February 1980, TFW; Prior, Balance of Power, p. 165; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, p. 107.

  28. Owen, From Empire to Europe, p. 143; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 112–13; Moore, Not for Turning, p. 513; Anthony Hayward, Which Side Are You On? Ken Loach and His Films (2004), pp. 161–2.

  29. Owen, From Empire to Europe, p. 144; Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 113–14; Moore, Not for Turning, p. 513; Green, Thatcher, p. 114; Young, One of Us, pp. 196–7; Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, p. 164.

  30. Owen, From Empire to Europe, pp. 145, 444; Nicholas Comfort, The Slow Death of British Industry: A Sixty-Year Suicide, 1952–2012 (2013), p. 112; Anthony Sampson, The Changing Anatomy of Britain (1982: 1983), pp. 407–8; Prior, Balance of Power, pp. 129–30; Ian MacGregor with Rodney Tyler, The Enemies Within: The Story of the Miners’ Strike, 1984–5 (1986: 1987), pp. 94–5.

  31. Owen, From Empire to Europe, pp. 144–5, 149; The Times, 16 June 1988; Guardian, 8 October 1988.

  32. Hoskyns to Thatcher, ‘Steel Strike – Lessons Learned’, 9 May 1980, TFW.

  33. The Times, 27 March 1980; Daily Express, 16 April 1980, 17 April 1980; Sunday Express, 11 May 1980.

  34. Guardian, 15 May 1980; Daily Express, 13 May 1980; Daily Mirror, 15 May 1980.

  35. Andrew Taylor, ‘The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions’, in John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell (eds.), The High Tide of British Trade Unionism: Trade Unions and Industrial Politics (new edn: Monmouth, 2007), pp. 174–5; Time, 12 February 1979; Bernard Donoughue, Downing Street Diary, vol. 2: With James Callaghan in No. 10 (2008), p. 452; Daily Mail, 12 February 1979; Alwyn W. Turner, Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s (2008), p. 267.

  36. Keith Britto, ‘Public Opinion after the First Seven Months of the New Government’, 21 November 1979, TFW; Keith Britto, ‘Public Opinion Background Note 132’, 26 September 1982, TFW; Denis Healey, The Time of My Life (1989), p. 462; MO S496, Special Report 404, ‘Trade Unions’, 1983.

  37. Guardian, 26 January 1979; Hoskyns to Thatcher, ‘CBI’, 29 June 1979, TFW; Howe to Thatcher, ‘Relations with Trade Union Leaders’, 27 May 1980.

  38. Louis Heren, Alas, Alas for England: What Went Wrong with Britain (1981), p. 80; Sampson, Changing Anatomy of Britain, p. 61; Observer, 24 February 1980; and see Daily Telegraph, 22 May 2004.

  39. Sampson, Changing Anatomy of Britain, pp. 77–8; The Times 16 September 1980.

  40. Sampson, Changing Anatomy of Britain, p. 68; The Times, 9 December 1980, 11 November 1980.

  41. Alan Bleasdale, Boys from the Blackstuff (1982: 1985), p. 243; Beatrix Campbell, Wigan Pier Revisited: Poverty and Politics in the 80s (1984), pp. 155–6; Jeremy Seabrook, Unemployment (1982: 1983), pp. 178–9, 181.

  42. The Times, 9 March 1982; Sampson, Changing Anatomy of Britain, p. 78; David Butler and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 1979 (1980), pp. 163, 343, 345, 350; Taylor, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Social Contract’, p. 97; Taylor, ‘The Conservative Party and the Trade Unions’, p. 175; The Economist, 2 June 1979; Observer, 12 September 1982.

  43. Campbell, Wigan Pier Revisited, pp. 155, 174.

  44. Thatcher, Downing Street Years, pp. 104–5; Campbell, Iron Lady, p. 164; Green, Thatcher, pp. 118–19; Moore, Not for Turning, pp. 649–50; Norman Tebbit, Upwardly Mobile: An Autobiography (1988), pp. 233–41; Daily Express, 13 July 1983; Peter Dorey, ‘Weakening the Trade Unions, One Step at a Time: The Thatcher Governments’ Strategy for the Reform of Trade-Union Law, 1979–1984’, Historical Studies in Industrial Relations, 37 (2016), p. 186.

  45. Ian Gilmour, Dancing with Dogma: Britain under Thatcherism (1992), p. 100; Campbell, Iron Lady, pp. 93–4; Green, Thatcher, p. 199.

  46. The Times, 30 April 1981; Observer, 4 April 1982; Owen, From Empire to Europe, p. 443; Sampson, Changing Anatomy of Britain, p. 59; Brian Harrison, Finding a Role? The United Kingdom, 1970–1990 (Oxford, 2010), p. 161; Campbell, Iron Lady, pp. 90, 165; Guardian, 8 September 1983; Daily Mirror, 1 September 1980.

  47. Guardian, 6 May 1983; The Times, 11 November 1980; Sampson, Changing Anatomy of Britain, p. 379.

  48. Christopher Johnson, The Economy under Mrs Thatcher, 1979–1990 (1991), p. 312; John Wells, ‘Miracles and Myths’, Marxism Today (May 1989), pp. 22–5; Owen, From Empire to Europe, p. 444; Harrison, Finding a Role?, pp. 168, 332.

  49. Nicholas Crafts, Britain’s Relative Economic Performance, 1870–1999 (2002), p. 86; Johnson, Economy under Mrs Thatcher, p. 15; Simon Wren-Lewis, ‘On the Economic Achievements and Failures of Margaret Thatcher’, 10 April 2013, https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/on-economic-achievements-and-failures.html; see also, for example, Paul Krugman, ‘Did Thatcher Turn Britain Around?’, 8 April 2013, https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/did-thatcher-turn-britain-around/; John Van Reenen, ‘The Economic Legacy of Mrs Thatcher Is a Mixed Bag’, 10 April 2013, http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/the-economic-legacy-of-mrs-thatcher-2/.

  50. Guardian, 12 August 1980, 29 May 1981; Observer, 26 July 1981; ‘Corby People Recall Steel Works Closure 30 Years Ago’, 1 June 2010, http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/northampton/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8715000/8715706.stm; see also Heather Behan, ‘The Rise, Fall and Rise Again of Corby’, 22 July 2011, http://www.open.edu/openlearn/the-rise-fall-and-rise-again-corby.

  51. The Times, 15 March 1980, 13 June 1980, 19 June 1980; Peter Stredder to Tim Lankester, ‘Consett Steelworks’, 6 October 1980, TFW.

  52. The Times, 19 June 1980, 10 July 1980, 13 September 1980, 15 September 1980, 27 November 1980, 2 November 1
981; David Smith, North and South: Britain’s Economic, Social and Political Divide (1989), p. 132; Guardian, 26 March 1983, 12 February 1987.

  Chapter 7. Who Needs Enemies?

  1. Daily Mirror, 5 March 1981; Guardian, 29 December 1983. In general, see Simon Morgan-Russell, Jimmy Perry and David Croft (Manchester, 2004), but be warned. ‘Before looking at the ways in which Hi-de-Hi! expresses this liminality,’ runs a typical sentence, ‘it is worth elucidating briefly Bakhtin’s definitions of carnival and the grotesque body.’ What would Ted Bovis say?

  2. Paul Theroux, The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey around the Coast of Great Britain (1983), pp. 142–6.

  3. Gordon Burn, Pocket Money: Bad-Boys, Business-Heads and Boom-Time Snooker (1986), pp. 84–5; Miriam Akhtar and Steve Humphries, Some Liked It Hot: The British on Holiday at Home and Abroad (2000), pp. 51–2; Theroux, Kingdom by the Sea, pp. 53, 34; The Times, 2 July 1983, 22 August 1981.

  4. Ibid., 11 December 1980, 10 December 1981, 24 August 1981; Guardian, 23 November 1982; Robert J. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, 1937–87: A Social History as Seen through the Gallup Data (Basingstoke, 1989), p. 132; MO C108, Summer Directive 1981.

  5. Guardian, 23 November 1982, 12 December 1981; The Times, 24 August 1981; Daily Express, 3 February 1979, 12 March 1983.

  6. Guardian, 13 April 1981.

  7. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, p. 131; the quotation comes from the second episode of Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, ‘Who Won the War Anyway?’, which went out on 18 November 1983.

  8. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, pp. 124, 132.

  9. Financial Times, 18 January 2017; Anthony King and Robert J. Wybrow (eds.), British Political Opinion, 1937–2000: The Gallup Polls (2001), p. 301.

  10. Ibid., p. 301; Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, p. 122; Gordon Reece to Richard Ryder, 28 November 1979, TFW; Keith Britto, ‘Public Opinion Background Note 132’, 26 September 1982, TFW.

  11. Wybrow, Britain Speaks Out, p. 121; MO C108, EEC Special, 1982; MO S496, EEC Special, 1982; MO D156, EEC Special, 1982.