What If... Thatcher Took the Hint?

As the votes were counted, it was clear that Margaret Thatcher's optimism had been well founded. In a contest between the most successful leader of the Conservative party in living memory and an elderly backbencher, the result was never in any real doubt. Mrs Thatcher had trounced Sir Anthony Meyer, winning the backing of 314 Tory MPs to Sir Anthony's 33. In the dying days of the 1980s, the Conservative leader looked safe until at least the next general election. However, over the Christmas parliamentary recess, Thatcher consulted with her close advisers. If abstentions and spoilt papers were taken into account, 60 MPs had failed to back their leader. After over a decade in office, dissent was growing on the backbenches. The economy was starting to show signs of faltering, and the Community Charge was provoking an enormous clash in the country. Reluctantly, Thatcher came to the realisation that she would not win a fourth general election in 1991 or 1992.

But few of Thatcher's cabinet ministers can have been expecting her announcement at the first meeting of 1990. She told them she had decided that, after ten and a half years in office, it was time to stand down, thus giving her successor time to establish themself before a general election. The country was stunned. To many, the candidate to replace Mrs Thatcher was obvious. Since his dramatic walkout resignation from her cabinet in 1986, Michael Heseltine had been waiting in the shadows for his moment to strike. Extremely popular with voters, and with a public image to match that of Thatcher herself, there seemed no way that the premiership was not Tarzan's for the taking. When it emerged in the first ballot of the Tory leadership election that his only challengers were to be the patrician, remote, One-Nation Tory Douglas Hurd and the right wing backbencher Nicholas Budgen, it looked as though Heseltine was home and dry.

But there was another high profile ex-cabinet minister lurking in the wings. Norman Tebbit, former Financial Times journalist, former RAF and commercial pilot, and the MP for Chingford since 1970, had been a Thatcherite cheerleader from the word go. Instinctively anti-socialist, it was Tebbit who had helped put the ideology of Thatcherism into words which resonated with the public, most famously with his 'get on your bike' ethic (although he never actually said those exact words). After steering the Conservative party to victory in the 1987 election, many had expected Tebbit to be appointed to one of the great offices of government. But Tebbit carried a deep scar from his time in government. He had been badly injured in the Brighton bombing of 1984, and his wife had been left paralysed. He retired from the government to devote his time to caring for her. But, as he told Woodrow Wyatt in 1988, if Thatcher was to go and he didn't like the look of her replacement, he would be forced to intervene. And, for all their cooperation in abolishing London's education authority, Tebbit and Heseltine did not see eye to eye. So Tebbit threw his hat into the ring, declaring he wanted to see Thatcher's achievements taken to new heights. Budgen, knowing the game was up, withdrew. Thatcher was delighted, and made little secret of who she would prefer to see succeed her.

When the results were counted, Tebbit had the backing of 215 MPs, versus 126 for Heseltine, 30 for Hurd and 3 abstentions. Under the complex rules for electing a new Tory leader, Tebbit had won comfortably, avoiding a second ballot. His first act was to build a new cabinet. Mrs Thatcher had only changed the big players of Chancellor, Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary a few months before, so Tebbit offered John Major, Douglas Hurd and David Waddington the chance remain in their jobs, which they all accepted. Michael Heseltine found himself recalled to the government, going back to the Ministry of Defence.

One of Tebbit's first moves in government was to announce a review of the hated Community Charge, widely known as the Poll Tax, under the direction of his new Environment Secretary Ken Clarke, a known Tory moderate. Clarke was set what became known as the 'Tebbit test'; any replacement for the old rates had to be acceptable to all Tebbit's Essex constituents, from council tenants to rich millionaires. Although bills did arrive in households in March, the knowledge that the tax was likely to be scrapped helped to take the wind out of the sails from the anti-Poll Tax groups. A demonstration planned for the end of March in London fizzled out, and with the issue negated the Conservatives began to gain on Labour in the polls. But with the economy beginning to dip into recession, Tebbit would clearly have a struggle on his hands.

Then the IRA struck again. Eyebrows had been raised by Tebbit's choice of Ian Gow, a Thatcher loyalist and strident Unionist, as his Northern Irish Secretary. But no one was expecting what followed. In July 1990 Gow was killed when a car bomb detonated outside his constituency home in Sussex. The IRA claimed responsibility, pointing to Gow's closeness to Thatcher and Tebbit, and his support for Unionism. Tebbit then shocked the political world by deciding to become his own Northern Irish Secretary, and ordering a security crackdown in the Province. The result was an enormous upsurge in violence, as a heavier army presence led to increased paramilitary attacks. The loyalist paramilitary groups also stepped up their activities, and it began to look as if the Prime Minister was leading Northern Ireland back into the appalling violence of the 1970s.

Whether all of this would have changed without the death of one of the most prominent paramilitaries will never be known. Driving to a political meeting in Belfast in September 1990, a car containing the prominent Sinn Fein politicians and alleged IRA commanders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness was attacked by gunmen. McGuinness was killed in the shootout, while all the other occupants were badly injured, with Adams having to have his leg amputated. Whilst it has never been proved that the SAS were responsible for the attack, it was widely believed at the time; no loyalist group came forward to claim responsibility for the attack, and Tebbit took advantage of the incident to make the Downing Street Declaration, in which he promised that the UK government would never bow to the men of violence. Adding off the record that Adams losing his leg gave him a taste of his own medicine was very much an insight into Tebbit's mindset. Relations between London and Dublin cooled dramatically, as Tebbit returned to the idea that Northern Ireland was a security problem for the United Kingdom, not a constitutional one to be solved jointly with the Irish. In turn, the IRA stepped up its bombing campaign on the mainland, with the London Docklands, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Liverpool all seeing bombs during this tense period. But after these attacks, the IRA and Sinn Fein retreated underground, realising they could not survive an all out war with the British army. Instead, they began to plan for a road to a peaceful end to the Troubles.

But Northern Ireland had always defied the norms of British politics, and bizarrely Tebbit's popularity seemed boosted by his strong policies there. Coupled with British success in the Gulf War against Iraq, Tebbit went into the 1991 election with high hopes, campaigning on a distinctively Thatcherite manifesto of resistance to the EC, lower immigration, lower taxes and a smaller state. The result was victory, a majority of 89 seats. For Labour, Neil Kinnock was devastated. The change of Prime Minister 18 months before had apparently been enough to sink his chances of becoming Prime Minister. He resigned, to be replaced by John Smith, although there were many who thought if Labour could not win in the midst of a recession, after 12 years of Conservative rule with an openly right wing leader at their head, they might never be able to win at all.

With this overwhelming mandate behind him, in the autumn of 1991 Tebbit headed off to the EC summit at Maastricht for the negotiation on the new European treaty. Never a friend of Brussels, Tebbit tore into the idea of 'ever closer union' and a European single currency. For good measure, he announced that Britain would leave the Exchange Rate Mechanism if a single currency was agreed upon. After much wrangling, Tebbit agreed to the creation of a European Union, but extracted an opt-out for Britain from much of its provisions. This opt-out from the ERM would prove critical, as it saved the pound from collapse when the system broke down in September 1992. However, not all Conservative MPs were pleased with Tebbit's performance. Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke and Chris Patten all resigned from the government; however, these pro-Maastricht rebels in the Conservative party were not enough to threaten Tebbit's substantial majority.

Although the recession of 1990-93 was deep and painful, the economy soon bounced back, with Chancellor John Major taking much of the credit. Inflation dropped to record low levels, and unemployment began to fall as well. and  Tebbit's administration was also particularly active in the field of social security reform, removing entitlements from many higher earners, but also increasing sanctions for abuse of the system. Tighter immigration controls proved popular, as did schemes to encourage ethnic minorities to integrate into British society. In education, plans to introduce tuition fees for university education provoked a storm of protests amongst students. However, vice-chancellors were delighted, and many worried parents were pacified by the generous scheme of grants, bursaries and loans which was introduced. Many on the left attacked Tebbit and his government as being too harsh, too insular, but these criticisms just seemed to bounce off the Prime Minister. Indeed, as he pointed out, he was not so ardently Thatcherite that he would dream of extreme privatisation; the Post Office and British Rail remained in public hands, although the last of the coal mines did go. Overseas, Britain became increasingly disconnected with the rest of the EU, but did support the UN intervention in the former Yugoslavia. It was enough to guarantee Tebbit victory at the 1995 general election, albeit with a reduced majority of 47.

But this was to be the last hurrah of the Tebbit government. It had been clear for a while that there was an increasing disjuncture between the Conservative party and modern British culture. After their defeat in 1995, Labour chose Tony Blair as their new leader; after all, they'd only kept Margaret Beckett after John Smith died because they were afraid Tebbit would use any vacancy to call an election. Blair proved very popular with the public, and Labour rapidly pulled ahead of the Conservatives in the polls. It seemed that economic competence was no longer enough; voters wanted a government which cared too. Disastrous local election results in 1996 saw the Conservatives almost pushed into third place, and they lost hundreds upon hundreds of council seats, a trend which was set to intensify.

But the Prime Minister was already set to resign. After his 65th birthday in March 1996, Tebbit had hinted he would not be leader at the next election, and then surprised everyone by announcing he would stand down in time for the Tory conference in October. In the contest to replace him Michael Portillo, darling of the Thatcherites and ultimate heir-presumptive to their cause since the late-80s, emerged victorious, the youngest Prime Minister since the 19th century. Tebbit was initially enthusiastic about his replacement, declaring to the conference "if you thought I was right-wing, wait till you see this guy." But Portillo surprised everyone by emerging as a social liberal; his 'Portillo Moment,' whereby he promised to use extra tax revenues to care for those at the bottom of society, was originally seen as a game changer. However, Portillo had reckoned without the civil war this move would cause to erupt in the Conservative party, with his predecessor, now Lord Tebbit, leading the attack. Portillo's move came to be seen as an attempt to steal the rug from under Tony Blair. All the tensions of a party which had been in power for nearly twenty years exploded into the open, and Labour pulled further and further ahead in the polls. That Portillo had a former leader of his party sniping at him from the Lords did nothing to help his position. Portillo held off the election for as long as he could. But his government had ceased to function, meaning he had little concrete achievements to point to other than muddling through. The nadir of his premiership came with the frankly naff Millennium Celebrations in December 1999; after a year, no one could still work out what the Millennium Dome had been for. And so in May 2000, 21 years of Conservative rule were brought to an end with the landslide victory by Tony Blair and the Labour party. Portillo barely held on to his Enfield seat. The next day, the IRA declared a ceasefire and called for negotiations to open with the new British government. Truly, the Tebbit era had ended.

P.S. Tebbit Cabinet, 1990

Prime Minister- Norman Tebbit
Chancellor of the Exchequer- John Major
Foreign Secretary- Douglas Hurd
Home Secretary- David Waddington
Defence Secretary- Michael Heseltine
Education Secretary- Ken Baker
Health Secretary- Chris Patten
Trade and Industry Secretary- Nicholas Ridley
Social Security Secretary- Cecil Parkinson
Environment Secretary- Ken Clarke
Employment Secretary- Peter Lilley
Transport Secretary- Tom King
Energy Secretary- Norman Fowler
Scottish Secretary- Malcolm Rifkind
Welsh Secretary- Edwina Curry
Northern Irish Secretary- Ian Gow
Chief Secretary to the Treasury- Norman Lamont
Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Minister- John Gummer
Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster- John Biffen
Leader, House of Commons- Sir Geoffrey Howe
Leader, House of Lords- Lord Belstead

P.P.S. Prime Ministers, 1990-2014

1979-1990- Margaret Thatcher (Con)
1990-1996- Norman Tebbit (Con)
1996-2000- Michael Portillo (Con)
2000-2009- Tony Blair (Lab)
2009-2013- Gordon Brown (Lab)
2013-2014- William Hague (Con)

Cold Calling, University of York Style

So last night I fell victim to a very peculiar version of cold calling. I was phoned up by my old university, which was looking to "find out what you're doing and where you're at." Apparently the university employ cash-strapped first years to call up graduates and keep tabs on them; supposedly in an attempt to not look like they stop caring the moment you are handed your degree certificate, but (I strongly suspect) also to try and guilt trip you into departing with some money to enable future generations of students to also have a good time.

Mercifully, I can talk for Britain, and having nowt better to do decided to see who would blink first. This resulted in a 45 minute conversation, with some real blinders:

"So I see you did an MA in Medieval History with us; out of interest, what encouraged you to do that at York?"

Hmm, well apart from the internationally recognised Centre for Medieval Studies (which he'd not heard of) being there, a fairly large part of my decision was that I'd already been a student there for three years. A fact he wasn't aware of. A great start, York. At least give the man some basic facts...

"You were in Halifax College, yes? At least you weren't as far away as Hes East..."

Sorry to break it to you, but when I started there in 2008, Hes East consisted of some diggers waiting for the archaeology department to stop excitedly pointing at a hole in the ground. Halifax was renowned for being 'miles away.' But, hey, nice try...

"Yes, I'm still in Halifax you see; I'm in my first year."

Oh. Dear. The poor guy on the end of the phone is barely older than the students I currently work with. When I was an MA student, one of the biggest realisations was how detached you became from the undergraduate life of the university. Three years may not seem like much, but the level of work and general maturity (within reason...) was in fact like a chasm. Now, two years out of university altogether, it began to seem more like an interstellar void...

"You were a university librarian? Wow, that's cool... They've always seemed really strange people to me!"

Also file under 'Howto Lose Friends and Alienate People.'

"So, are you interested to hear how the last round of elections went?"

No, not really. I realised YUSU politics was ridiculous whilst I was at university, and it hasn't got better in my mind since.

"I'm just wondering, why did you become a librarian when you finished your MA? I mean, it's about as far from doing medieval history as I can imagine... but then again, I can imagine 2012 wasn't a good year to graduate, was it?"

No, actually, Mr 1st year. I don't think you can imagine. I don't think you can imagine what it was like one little bit, to go straight from MA life to graduate unemployment (although I did lifeguard, so more properly it was severe underemployment). What it was like to be rejected from job after job. To be made to feel that four years of higher education had actually made things worse, not better. To discover that employers didn't care. And with the only consolation being everyone else you knew was in the same boat. And that, although things are fine now, I will never, ever forget the experience...

I look forward to their next call with great interest!

The Wit and Wisdom of... John Smith

The opportunity to serve our country—that is all we ask.

Closing remarks of John Smith, leader of the Labour Party, to a fundraising dinner, 11/05/1994. The next morning he was struck dead by a double heart attack, prompting an enormous outpouring of grief from across the political spectrum. His death paved the way for the premiership of Tony Blair. Smith is arguably amongst the finest Prime Ministers this country never had.

The Return of the Passenger

Dear Passenger,

We'd like to remind you that this weekend, between Saturday 3rd and Monday 5th May, the line into and out of London Euston will be closed.

This is the first of a series of closures necessary to deliver Network Rail's £81m project that will see the replacement of 12 miles of track, signalling equipment and overhead power lines in the Watford area. This essential work is part of a £120m wider scheme to improve reliability on the route between Milton Keynes and London Euston.

Now, normally, this email from London Midland would have me seething with rage. They're closing the West Coast Mainline, one of the busiest, if not the busiest, stretches of railway in the UK. Which is also my local line. In to and out of London. At great expense. Which will be paid for from raised fares. For improvements which should have been done years ago.

And yet I was delighted. Why? Because I was a passenger. Not a customer. That must be a first in the post-British Rail world. Hopefully a sign of the future?

The Wit and Wisdom of... Maggie Thatcher, mk II

The right hon. Gentleman is afraid of an election is he? Oh, if I were going to cut and run I'd have gone after the Falklands. Afraid? Frightened? Frit? Couldn't take it? Couldn't stand it? Right now inflation is lower than it has been for thirteen years, a record the right hon. Gentleman couldn't begin to touch!

Margaret Thatcher, attacking Denis Healey in the House of Commons, 19th April 1983

What If... Ireland Never Became Independent?

Dublin, April 1916. As the smoke starts to clear the damage done by the savage fighting becomes clear. A week earlier, a shadowy body known as the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) had tried to take advantage of Britain's distraction by the First World War, and had launched an uprising with the aim of creating an independent Irish republic. Now, with the city in ruins and the surviving rebels captured by the British army, it must have seemed that their very lives were in danger.

Hard as it is to believe now, there were many who doubted whether Ireland could be kept in the United Kingdom. Despite being ruled by Britain for 700 years, Ireland was Britain's most troublesome colony. Centuries of armed rebellions had all failed, so in the 19th century Irish nationalism was instead channelled through the route of parliamentary reform; persuading the parliament in Westminster to give Ireland its own assembly. However, in the mainly Protestant north of Ireland, the idea of being ruled by a Catholic-dominated legislature in Dublin caused shivers of fear.

Tensions reached new heights in the 1910s. The Liberal government of Herbert Henry Asquith was dependent on the support of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the House of Commons, and therefore was obliged to press ahead with Home Rule. The Conservative party, reeling from two close election defeats in 1910, responded by backing the calls of Unionists in Ulster for exclusion from Home Rule. In desperation, and encouraged by the Conservatives, the Unionists began to arm to resist rule from Dublin. The nationalists responded by also raising forces.

By 1914, the situation seemed grim. Neither side would back down. When Asquith ordered the army to prepare to disarm the Ulster Unionists and uphold the Home Rule Bill, army officers indicated they would resign rather than carry out their orders. And in what seemed the final straw, three civilians were shot and killed by the army and Dublin Metropolitan Police in July 1914 during the interception of a nationalist gun-running mission. Civil war was now feared to be days away.

But it was another shooting in that long summer which saved Ireland the trauma of a civil war, and thus kept it inside the United Kingdom. The heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was killed by Bosnian Serbs, precipitating an international crisis which plunged Europe into war. The Home Rule Act was suspended until the conflict finished, and both the Irish National Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteer Force pledged their services to the government. It seemed as if Britain had pulled back from the brink.

Then came the Easter Rising of 1916. Irish popular opinion was outraged: the rebels had brought huge damage down on Dublin, and threatened to wreck the cause of nationalism for good. The army was also furious, and wanted to execute the ringleaders to send a message that Britain would not tolerate treason. In the nick of time, Asquith managed to halt the executions, instead imprisoning the rebels for the duration of the war. He knew that public opinion would swing behind republicanism if Britain gave them martyrs.

Instead, it was left to Asquith's successor as Prime Minister, David Lloyd-George, to find a solution to the Irish Question when the Great War ended in 1918. He came up with an ingenious compromise; the nine counties of Ulster were to be excluded from the new devolved Irish Parliament until 1930, when they would start to send representatives to Dublin. As for the rest of Ireland, it would recommence sending MPs to the Westminster Parliament at this date. It seemed a torturous compromise, and there was a fresh wave of bombings from the IRB, still desperately trying to gain independence for Ireland. But most of Ireland's politicians were exhausted by the deadlock, and the deal was accepted in 1922.

And after all the despair and stress, the deal worked. True, it cost Lloyd-George the premiership, as his Conservative allies were disgusted at the apparent betrayal of the Ulster Protestants. But the new regime in Dublin, headed by rebel-turned-politician Eamon de Valera, proved competent enough in the face of chronic economic crises, and there was no wholesale repression of Protestants in public life. Attacks by the IRB soon ceased as the organisation withered away, and most Irish people seemed content with the stability their new status had granted them. There was also a great deal of cross-over with Ulster, as many organisations, such as the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), government departments, churches, and sporting bodies, were run on an all-Ireland basis. But in 1930, when Irish MPs returned to Westminster and Ulster sent its first delegates to Dublin, many feared a return to division.

What staved off further crisis was the Second World War, which had a unifying effect on British society as a whole. Although de Valera was known to be cool towards the idea of war with Germany, he nonetheless gave his backing first to Neville Chamberlain and then Winston Churchill in the war effort. But the Second World War unified British society at a level deeper than high politics, and by the end of the conflict any doubts that the two didn't share a common future were resolutely buried. Historians still doubt whether Britain could have kept going without access to the Atlantic ports of Berehaven and Queenstown, vital lifelines in the Battle of the Atlantic. The Irish regiments of the army played a vital role in the war effort, with many Irishmen serving in the British army. The war also helped to bring former rebels in from the cold; former IRB commander Michael Collins struck fear into the hearts of the Nazis in occupied Europe with his running of SOE, fighting guerilla wars alongside resistance groups. When the war finished, the Irish Labour Party swept both the Westminster seats and the Irish Assembly elections, ending the dominance of the old Irish Parliamentary Party. Defeated, De Valera accepted a peerage as Baron de Valera of Ennis in County Clare; this was the ultimate symbol that Ireland had returned to the fold of normal British life.

The second half of the 20th century continued this pattern, with Ireland sharing in Britain's economic ups and downs, but benefiting enormously overall from the larger economy of its neighbour. The Irish Assembly also proved a useful springboard for politicians who aimed to make it big at Westminster. Liam Cosgrave's experience of managing Ireland's economy made him a valuable addition to Edward Heath's 1970-74 Conservative government, although he later clashed with Margaet Thatcher as one of the leading Wets in her first cabinet. Mary Robinson was one of the driving forces behind Harold Wilson's landmark social reforms, while Charles Haughey's undoubted economic experience was not enough to prevent his lurid private life becoming a damaging distraction for Labour in the 1980s. David Trimble's support for John Major kept his beleaguered government going through the 1990s. And who could forget the unbeatable partnership of Tony Blair and his Foreign Secretary, Bertie Ahern? Or, critics might say, who could forget their selling of honours and dodgy property dealings? More recently, Michael Martin's anti-austerity programme in Labour-run Ireland is proving an ever more embarrassing contrast with David Cameron's administration, with few expecting Peter Robinson to be back in Dublin Castle after May's elections.

But this success story has not been without its pitfalls. It took many Unionists a long time to adapt to the idea of the Irish Assembly, with severe rioting and civil unrest in Belfast and Derry in the late 1960s and early 1970s requiring the army to help the RIC restore order. Mercifully this unrest abated, but not before the career of promising Unionist politician Brian Faulkner had been cut short by his poor response to the crisis. Controversial Unionist politician Ian Paisley also threatened a return to the divisions of the past; in response, voters kept the Irish Unionist Party locked out of Dublin Castle for a generation. The IRB has also re-emerged from the shadows from time to time, most noticeably when it destroyed Nelson's Pillar in Dublin in 1966, and in sporadic attacks against the RIC and the army. But the cause of republicanism in Ireland is going nowhere any time soon. The main republican party, Sinn Fein, polls terribly at both Westminster and Dublin elections. The true mindset in the country was seen during the Queen's visit to Ireland in 2011, the first since George V in 1911, and widely considered a success. Perhaps the best indication that Ireland is here to stay was given by the Queen herself, when she used the trip to make her recently married grandson, Prince William, the Duke of Cork.

P.S. First Ministers of Ireland, 1919-2014
1919-1930- Eamon de Valera (IPP)
1930-1934- William Cosgrave (IUP)
1934-1946- Eamon de Valera (IPP)
1946-1950- William Norton (ILP)
1950-1962- Basil Brooke (IUP)
1962-1970- Jack Lynch (ILP)
1970-1974- Brian Faulkner (IUP)
1974-1978- Gerry Fitt (ILP)
1978-1982- Ian Paisley (IUP)
1982-1998- Dick Spring (ILP)
1998-2002- Bertie Ahern (ILP)
2002-2006- Mark Durkan (ILP)
2006-2010- Peter Robinson (IUP)
2010-2014- Michael Martin (ILP)

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I'm sure you'll all be pleased to see I haven't stopped writing these posts, but finding the time is getting harder and harder! This one has been an on-off concern since mid-2012. There are more in the pipeline, so watch this space!

The Wit and Wisdom of... Robin Cook, Mk. III

Tonight Parliament has the opportunity to insist that Ministers must accept responsibility for their conduct in office and to assert that the health of our democracy depends on the honesty of Government to Parliament. That is what we shall vote for tonight. 

Of course Conservative Members have enough votes to defeat us. If they vote to reject those principles, however, they will demonstrate not only that the two Ministers who have been most criticised in the Scott report should leave office, they will convince the public that this is an arrogant Government who have been in power too long to remember that they are accountable to the people, and that the time has come when the people must turn them all out of office.

Robin Cook, 26/02/1996, on the Scott Report into government arms sales to Iraq, contrary to UN sanctions. Widely seen as one of the best parliamentary performances of modern times, the debate and vote nearly destroyed the Conservative government.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/democracylive/hi/historic_moments/newsid_8183000/8183769.stm

(To give an idea of Cook in full flow on the issue!)