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An Earlier Channel Tunnel

Simon

Oblivious
Back in 1964 Britain and France agreed to build a tunnel under the Channel although geological studies and initial preparations took until 1973, with construction having provisionally started in 1974. Tunnel boring machines were in place on both sides and a three hundred metre test bore, later re-used as part of our timeline's tunnel, carried out before the recently elected Labour government cancelled the project due to rising costs, questions over EEC membership, and personal objections to the general concept of a tunnel on the part of a number of cabinet ministers - making the kinds of statements that wouldn't seem out of character of UKIP nowadays.

So what happens if Labour are unable to cancel the project? Short of changing party's policies on Europe and politicians views wholesale I was thinking of something similar to Concorde where the contract, ironically at the behest of the British who were worried about the French pulling out, imposed such high penalties for cancellation as to make it virtually impossible. Other than an extra cost in the second half of the 1970s which makes things even more awkward does its opening have any major effects on things?
 
Given the time frame, and the industrial disputes that plagued Britain in the 1970s ('The British disease'), the tunnel probably wouldn't be completed until 1980-81, so it would most probably be opened by Margret Thatcher, who would be able to claim credit for completing what the Callahan government couldn't.

Labour MPs and trade unionists would then spend the next decade refusing to ride on it.
 
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