Bang!: A History of Britain in the 1980s (6 page)

The Ayes to the Right

James Callaghan was in a bind. He had until November to face a general election. The longer he held out, the more chance there would be that memories of the Winter of Discontent
would fade and the new accord with the unions might hold. Alternatively, the longer he postponed his fate, the more time there was for the higher pay deals to fuel soaring inflation and for the St
Valentine’s Day engagement to be broken off in the clear absence of heartfelt commitment. Grimly, government strategy rested upon hoping that something might turn up. Reworking an already
tired metaphor, the prime minister’s policy adviser, Bernard Donoughue, compared the mood to like ‘being on the sinking
Titanic
without the music’.
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The sense of desperation was sharpened by the want of a parliamentary majority. During its life, the government had lost over thirty Commons divisions. The continually tight arithmetic had
produced countless moments of drama. As early as 1976, tempers had turned violent when, through conscious deceit, the Labour whips overturned the parliamentary procedure decreed by the Speaker for
a select committee and secured the nationalization of the shipping and aviation industries by one vote – by suddenly rushing a ‘paired’ Labour MP through the lobbies without
informing his Tory ‘pair’, who, in a previous mutual arrangement, had agreed not to vote. Unable to contain their glee, Labour MPs burst into raucous jeering on the floor of the
Commons. Amid chanting of ‘The Red Flag’, fisticuffs broke out behind the bar of the House as the two sides vented their fury while, to gasps of astonishment, an incensed shadow
minister for industry, Michael Heseltine, seized with both hands the symbol of Commons authority, the
Mace. He subsequently claimed he had been offering it to the Labour
benches as a protest against their unconstitutional actions, although by the time the story had grown with the retelling (television broadcasts were still banned from the chamber) he was depicted
as wielding it like an offensive weapon.
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The consequences included the abandonment of the pairing system, ensuring that late-night sittings became
torturous as the Conservatives kept pushing Labour’s whips to the limits of their disciplinary powers, hoping a late vote might catch them off guard. The consequence of this style of warfare
was that politicians were reluctant to stray far from the Palace of Westminster’s precincts. Inevitably, this made Parliament’s extensive range of in-house bars the natural assembly
point. Alcohol-fuelled emotions ran high in Annie’s Bar and the Strangers’ Bar, the latter generally known as the ‘Kremlin’ on account of its hard-drinking, left-wing
clientele. When the Labour whips could not run their quarry to ground there, they patrolled the gentlemen’s lavatories and, where necessary, extracted their intoxicated and sometimes unwell
MPs from behind locked cubicle doors.
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When not corralling their own supporters, Labour whips were also kept busy plying the eleven Scottish Nationalist MPs with alcohol. The withdrawal of Liberal Party support made it critical that
the SNP’s continuing will to vote with the government was fortified. The result was memorably described by the journalist Alan Watkins, who observed of this period that, for the Scot Nats,
every night was Burns Night.
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The political price paid for their allegiance was the devolution of powers to Scotland and, on a lesser scale, to
Wales. It was a cause close to few hearts in the Cabinet, certainly not to the prime minister’s, even though – or, rather, because – he was the member for Cardiff South.
Nonetheless, devolution seemed necessary not just to shore up the government’s position in the Westminster lobbies but also as a measure of appeasement which, it was hoped, would dissuade the
Scottish and Welsh electorates from embracing the campaigns for outright independence of the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

There was a problem. The devolution legislation passed through Westminster, but it did so badly mauled by Labour backbenchers who shared the doubts best articulated within their ranks by Tam
Dalyell, MP for West Lothian. His ‘West Lothian Question’ asked why should Scottish MPs have a vote on English matters at Westminster but English MPs have no right to intervene in
Scottish matters in a Scottish Parliament. Not only did the government have to commit itself to subjecting its devolution proposals to referendums in Scotland and Wales, an amendment by George
Cunningham, a Scots Labour MP who sat for Islington, introduced a new electoral rule – that a simple majority of those voting would not be enough and endorsement by 40 per cent of the total
electorate would be needed before devolution was introduced. This created a huge hurdle. The Welsh vote was effectively lost
even before the campaign got under way. In
Scotland, the ‘yes’ campaign was hampered by Labour’s sliding support and, arguably, by the Scottish football team’s dismal first-round exit from the 1978 World Cup in
Argentina (despite a heroic victory over Holland, Ally MacLeod’s much-hyped team lost to Peru and only scraped a draw with Iran, taking what comfort it could from England’s failure to
qualify). The two referendums were held on 1 March 1979. Welsh voters rejected devolution by a margin of four to one. The Scottish vote went narrowly in favour, by a margin of 52 per cent to 48 per
cent. Representing almost 33 per cent of the total electorate, however, the ‘yes’ vote failed to clear the 40 per cent hurdle.

Having failed to secure devolution, the SNP no longer saw any reason to continue propping up an increasingly unpopular Labour administration. On 21 March, the party tabled a vote of no
confidence in the government. Quickly seeing the chance of causing an upset, the Conservatives immediately did likewise. The Commons vote was held on 28 March. Both sides realized it would be
tantalizingly close. One highly canvassed possibility was that the division would end in a tie. In that case, the Speaker would cast his vote for the government.

Throughout the day of 28 March, political horse-trading became the principal occupation of those charged with bringing out the vote. Roy Hattersley, the secretary of state for prices, spent the
day wooing two Ulster Unionist MPs, who agreed to support the government in return for a special price index for Northern Ireland. Hattersley duly put the deal in writing. Unfortunately, he signed
it with a green biro. Refusing to have anything to do with a document confirmed in the colour of Irish nationalism, the Ulster Unionists demanded that the whole statement be retyped, allowing the
signatures to be written again in black. With even greater reluctance, Hattersley importuned Enoch Powell, the former Tory turned Ulster Unionist. The intended bribe was the construction of a gas
pipeline from the mainland to Northern Ireland. This effort failed, as much as anything because of Callaghan’s reluctance. Indeed, while Hattersley was trying to square the Ulster Unionists,
the prime minister received Gerry Fitt, the moderate leader of the Irish nationalist SDLP, in Downing Street. Fitt did not want to bring Callaghan down but made it clear that Ulster’s
nationalist community wanted Roy Mason, the Northern Ireland secretary, to be sacked. At this, Callaghan, a non-drinker, nodded to an assistant who had a bottle of gin brought in. The gesture went
down badly. Fitt was not going to be intoxicated into surrender and ended up abstaining in the division.

By contrast, nothing could have been more appealing than alcoholic blandishments to Frank Maguire, the Independent Republican MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone. A pub-owner in Lisnaskea, Maguire
had once shocked Fitt by confiding that he did not condemn IRA atrocities for fear the IRA
might blow up his pub. Relishing his opportunity to be put on the government’s
hospitality account, Maguire chose the no-confidence debate to make one of his rare flights across the Irish Sea to Westminster. Jock Stallard, a government whip who also happened to be Roman
Catholic, was assigned to act as Maguire’s saloon minder, shielding him from opposition solicitations as he moved seamlessly from bar to bar. Even an increasingly furious Fitt was unable to
get near him. It was all in vain. During the evening, the flush-faced and increasingly disoriented Maguire gave Stallard the slip. His wife found him and took him home, ensuring that he missed the
division. Such was the Labour whips’ desperation that they next tried to keep the government alive by carrying a fatally ill man through the division lobby on a stretcher. Sir Alfred
‘Doc’ Broughton was the Labour MP for Batley and Morley, and the idea was to bring him down from Yorkshire by ambulance. He agreed to make the sacrifice, but in the event it proved
impossible to get him down and he died five days later.

Leaving nothing else to chance, at 7 p.m., the government whips ordered all Labour MPs to assemble for a headcount. Meanwhile, in the Commons chamber the no-confidence debate was reaching its
denouement. The rhetorical highlight came when the government’s case was summed up by the Leader of the House, Michael Foot. In a sparkling performance which relied on humour to cover the
seriousness of the situation, the finest Labour orator of the age chided Thatcher while reserving his sarcasm for the Liberal leader, David Steel. Thatcher, Foot declaimed, was ‘leading her
troops into battle, snuggling concealed behind a Scottish Nationalist shield, with the Boy David holding her hand’. He was less worried about Thatcher – ‘she can look after
herself’ – than about Steel: ‘But the leader of the Liberal party – and I say this with the utmost affection – has passed from rising hope to elder statesman without
any intervening period whatsoever.’ The government benches rocked with laughter. Labour knew the Liberals would vote against them. The trial of their former leader, Jeremy Thorpe, for
conspiracy to murder, was due to begin in the spring and the party now wanted the election over and done with before the court case got under way.

The judgement on Callaghan’s future came far sooner, with the calling of the division at 10 p.m. The BBC was transmitting live coverage, although because of the prohibition on televising
parliamentary debates, viewers across the country had to make do with a sound-only broadcast adorned by a mixture of footage of Big Ben and occasional sketched images of the (empty) chamber.
Rumours quickly spread, based on little more than who was last seen smiling or looking relaxed. Jimmy Hamilton, a Labour whip, was observed giving the thumbs-up. Labour thought they had won.
‘I don’t believe it!’ stuttered Mrs Thatcher, who came to the same conclusion when her whips passed her their tally. In the excitement, they had forgotten to
include their two tellers in the vote. Moments later, the truth was revealed when the tellers came into the chamber with the Conservatives standing on the right. The declaration was
made. The Speaker repeated the result in his precise Welsh intonation: ‘The Ayes to the right, 311. The Noes to the left, 310. So the Ayes have it.’

Tory MPs rose exultantly to their feet, cheering and waving their order papers. They had won by one vote, beating Labour and its remaining allies with the help of thirteen Liberals, eleven
Scottish Nationalists and eight of the eleven Ulster Unionists. No Commons vote had forced a general election since 1924, when the first Labour administration, also a minority government, fell.
More extraordinarily, it was the first time a government had been brought down on a vote of no confidence since 1841. Callaghan rose to his feet, stood at the dispatch box and announced: ‘Now
that the House of Commons has declared itself, we shall take our case to the country.’ Several left-wing MPs, chief among them a young Welsh member called Neil Kinnock, broke into a stirring
and heartfelt rendition of ‘The Red Flag’.

Marketing Maggie

‘Labour Isn’t Working’ proclaimed the poster, its play on words illustrated by a queue of the jobless snaking towards the entrance to an unemployment office.
This proved to be a famous moment in billboard history. Twenty years later, it was voted ‘poster of the century’ by
Campaign
, the advertising industry’s leading magazine.
Its success supposedly showed that advertising companies had come of age. They were not just about marketing cold beer to men and refrigerators to women. They could sell a political party too. No
less an authority than the Conservative Party chairman, Lord Thorneycroft, credited the poster with deciding the election result. And he had not even liked it when he first saw it.
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Encouraging the belief that the 1979 general election was won by a poster obviously suited those who made their career in the commerce of persuasion. It was surely fitting that a decade in which
public relations, marketing and advertising were portrayed as thrusting ‘growth industries’ – at a time when ‘real industries’ were in decline – should have been
launched in this way. The claim not only suited ad men in their efforts to drum up new business but also chimed with critics of the extravagant, eye-catching and sometimes deceitful public
pseudo-art that adorned eighties Britain. To detractors, ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ was emblematic of everything that was worst about advertising’s powers of superficial appeal:
the punning slogan persuaded voters to elect a Conservative government that presided over far longer dole queues than existed under Labour.

Rarely has so slight an advertising promotion been credited with such influence. In fact, the ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ posters only appeared on twenty billboards during the
summer of 1978 in anticipation of the autumn election that never happened. The image had been knocked up at the last moment and given relatively low priority in the campaign put together by Saatchi
& Saatchi, the advertising firm engaged by the Tories. According to the poster’s creator, Martyn Walsh, the agency’s co-founder, Charles Saatchi, was sceptical of its value and it
was nearly never used. But it gained fleeting notoriety because Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, made the
tactical error of complaining about it in the chamber
of the House of Commons. Not only did this raise its profile by turning it into a news story, but Healey failed to land his blow. His claim that the Tories had reached a new low by ‘selling
politics as if it was soap powder’ concerned the specific accusation that those in the queue were not really unemployed but were paid actors. In fact, those forming the jobless queue were
neither unemployed nor paid actors but volunteers from Hendon Young Conservatives, and because less than twenty of them could be mustered the long queue had been created by the photographic trick
of taking multiple photos of them in different poses and then superimposing the images to make it look as if there were hundreds of people stretching to infinity.
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