Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline

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After a dreadful time for Willie Whitelaw, precipitated by the defection of 24 MPs to form the Unionist Party, conspirators still on the Conservative backbenches now wondered if they should mount a coup against their leader. Letters of no-confidence were soon flying in to the chair of the 1922 Committee (guardian of the Tory rulebook). One restless MP said: "A month ago, you would have found five or six people who would sign a piece of paper for it. Now the number is up to at least 9. We have now come to the crisis point." Mr Whitelaw's allies directed their fire at his old rival Michael Heseltine, for a highly damaging allegation that the leader was surrounding himself with yes-men in central office. Francis Pym regarded these remarks as "self-indulgent to the point of madness". Branding it the "worst time possible for anyone to raise the leadership question", he added: "Since he has put the issue of the leadership centre stage, we have to say this is a serious miscalculation and is not in the interests of the Conservative Party or the country at large." Other hitherto loyal MPs said that this latest crisis was entirely created by Whitelaw and his deteriorating relationship with Mr Heseltine, whom he appointed treasury spokesman only in October. An experienced shadow minister said: "I have never seen the party so rudderless. Issue after issue is being bungled." On 14 January 1985, Gallup released a poll for The Daily Telegraph that would bring the leadership its death knell. The Liberal/SDP Alliance scored 37%, Labour 32%, Conservatives 15% and Unionists 13.5%. Two days later at Prime Minister's Questions, the Tory chief attacked the Government over crime, a key touchstone. He was cheered by his own backbenchers; however, Mr Whitelaw failed to land a real blow on David Steel in what was a competent but hardly rousing performance. "We have the opportunity to decide whether or not we want to plunge the party into internal warfare," he told the BBC.



Making a short statement outside the Conservatives' imposing Westminster headquarters, accompanied by his wife Celia, Whitelaw said he would stand down immediately and give the next leader his full loyalty before retiring at the next election. In a rapid sequence of events, Michael Heseltine announced he would run - and Nigel Lawson, a prominent monetarist now in charge of foreign policy, publicly threw his weight behind the shadow chancellor. Mr Heseltine also received the backing of Leader in the Commons Geoffrey Howe and shadow technology secretary Kenneth Clarke. Figures from the right of the party including home affairs spokesman Leon Brittan announced that they would "step aside" to maintain party unity. Most Tory wets left in Parliament resigned themselves to the fact that a quick and bloodless succession was essential to restore public opinion. This made it less of a political contest and more of a coronation. In his pitch to members, Heseltine offered a change from both Thatcherism and moderation. A man of strong emotions, he had come to detest the Iron Lady's divisive effect on the party and nation. So he was too carried away for cold-eyed calculation and the Heseltine team was not well-stocked with political strategists, many of whom (from the 1983 leadership race) had since defected to the SDP. However, in the absence of a challenge, he was able to pursue a vision without compromise. There were economic right-wingers who saw Mr Heseltine as an election winner and a self-made tycoon who, in his own words, stood a better chance of preventing "the ultimate calamity of a Labour government".

 

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Throughout his career in front-line politics, Michael Heseltine had argued for a centre-right, liberal form of conservatism. He was very much in favour of further European integration and a fierce supporter of Margaret Thatcher's 'right to buy' scheme, which he introduced as Environment Secretary. He was a strong advocate of regional policy, and famously visited Merseyside soon after the 1981 Toxteth riots in Liverpool. After serving in the army, Heseltine made his millions in publishing as the co-founder of Haymarket Media Group. His manifesto for the Conservative leadership rested on interesting policy ideas, with a notable influence from corporatism, localised devolution and semi-Keynesian theories of economic planning. Despite favouring a more de-centralised system, he was quite against the use of referenda to answer issues of the day and preferred the parliamentary route. Mr Heseltine additionally proposed: the establishment of a National Growth Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, to oversee the implementation of a strategy for wealth creation over the long term; a public-interest test for foreign takeovers; to devolve £15 billion to the regions of Britain in a bid for economic growth; and new directly elected mayors. Apart from MPs and peers, his backers included liberal members of the post-war Young Conservatives group. Heseltine promised to work with anyone who wanted to make Britain fit for the late 1980s. He would "bring hope" to families and understood that the country needed to reform itself following the previous decade. "Life has moved on and the people now are employed in very different, much healthier industries."

On 27 January, Heseltine was crowned the new Tory leader - without a contest. The fact that there had only been "one valid nomination" was announced by the 1922 Committee chair that afternoon. Mr Heseltine's ascendancy came against a background of deep divisions for the right in British politics. However, the succession had been surprisingly painless - unifying - as potential rivals such as Nigel Lawson, Francis Pym, Leon Brittan and even Geoffrey Howe ruled themselves out of the race. Peter Tapsell - the anti-monetarist, Eurosceptic former Conservative MP defeated in 1983 - said he believed Mr Heseltine would take an inclusive approach. Essentially, poor ratings had forced even friendly MPs to oust Willie Whitelaw, who had been given the chance to gracefully resign before anyone pushed him. The party were divided over economic policy and unpopular because of the Falklands fiasco. Heseltine was popular in the country but represented an ideological shift from Thatcher back to the centre. He paid tribute to Mr Whitelaw but, next to him, the successor's agenda offered a modernisation of campaign techniques, mainstream but radical initiatives to heal society and an active government willing to co-ordinate business with the players in each sector of industry. However, he publicly claimed that there was "no alternative" to mass pit closures, an option ruled out by the Alliance coalition. Pragmatic, centre-right monetarists (or 'Lawsonites') cheered when their new leader insisted that closures would be economically necessary.

 

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Shadow Cabinet of Michael Heseltine, 1 February 1985:

 

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During the early weeks of 1985, candidates toured the length and breadth of Britain and Northern Ireland on the final stretch of a dramatic race to become the first elected Leader of the Unionist Party. At a hustings in Essex, Norman Tebbit claimed that his new political home would not be a significant force if Margaret Thatcher were Prime Minister, as a row blew up between the Unionists and Conservatives (at the time, still led by Willie Whitelaw). The furore, which exposed deep tensions on the right over Europe and Ulster among other issues, highly embarrassed many senior Tories attempting to move the dial away from the controversial 1979-83 administration. Mr Tebbit told The Sun there had been "a lot of over-reaction by the Conservative Party" to a string of defections by Thatcherite and Monday Club supporters. "Mrs Thatcher would certainly have taken on all comers rather than treating us like this," he said. "I am concerned that Whitelaw and others may be trying to stifle debate. Instead of ignoring the rise of the Unionists, we have to start to have a debate and to understand each other, and to find out if there is some way in which we can co-operate." On the campaign trail, Enoch Powell informed journalists that he would use his appearances to appeal to any Tories worried about Britain's promotion of "managed decline", Europe and immigration to vote Unionist at the next general election: "Now is the time for all Conservatives to desert their party, because a vote for my leadership is the only vote to restore this country's independence." The Bow Group thinktank suggested the Unionist Party could be bigger than the Conservatives within five years at its current growth rate, as Tory MPs pleaded with Mr Whitelaw to "work together" via local deals to keep Labour out and defeat the Alliance. Michael Heseltine denounced the Unionists, likening Powell's followers to members of the National Front: "You always have these right-wing racialist operations pandering to the lowest common denominator in politics." He warned his party that any formal pact would drive "pivotal" voters in the political centre ground away from the Conservatives. Mr Heseltine's ally Kenneth Clarke described some Unionist spokespeople as "clowns" and "indignant, angry people", adding: "Fringe-right parties do tend to collect a number of waifs and strays." Others were much more interested in a deal. Friends of Thatcher claimed that she was "secretly cheering on" the Unionists and had "a lot of leanings" towards their policies.

Powell defended trade unions and desired to build unity with the working class by winning them over to monetarist policies through logic, intelligence and political arguments against socialism. Tebbit, on the other hand, desired to severely limit the power of the unions even further than before by engineering open industrial showdowns. With thousands attending huge rallies for Mr Powell from Belfast to the home counties and northern Labour strongholds, his rivals talked up their own policy agendas. The socially traditionalist Jill Knight insisted that she was driven by a concern to protect children’s innocence when suggesting a ban on the "promotion" of homosexuality in schools as a "normal family relationship". She was unapologetic about wanting, like Powell did, immigrants from Asia and the Caribbean returned to their countries of origin. “I know Enoch extremely well and have a very great deal of respect for him,” she said. "A lot of immigrants want to go back home. He didn’t incite violence, he didn’t say he was going to cause blood on the streets, he said that there will be blood on the streets because people will get so angry." A Presbyterian minister who served as grand master of the Orange Order, Rev. Martin Smyth (in his familiar bowler hat) delivered speeches that delighted his provincial base but perplexed outsiders. His message appeared to be that the Union was at risk from the dark forces of nationalism, but that the good Orange folk should rely on the leadership provided by himself. Chief among Smyth's parliamentary allies were Roy Beggs and Harold McCusker. He failed to win endorsements from Northern Irish MPs sceptical of his plans for a federal UK such as Ken Maginnis and William Ross, both of whom joined the Powell campaign instead alongside Jim Molyneaux.

The result was held at an event organised by the Ulster Unionist Council in Bangor, County Down on 12 January. Tebbit's flight landed after noon; he then greeted the other candidates flanked by key supporters George Gardiner, Tim Eggar and Ivan Lawrence (to name a few). Knight turned up forty minutes later with arch-reactionaries Rhodes Boyson, Peter Griffiths and Nicholas Winterton in tow. The Smyth campaign had already been present. Mr Powell, armed with the most endorsements from MPs, appeared in high spirits as he took his place in the front row of chairs next to wife Pamela and influential backers John Biggs-Davison, Peter Hordern and Molyneaux. Having listened to the total number of votes for each candidate, it was declared to rapturous applause that Enoch Powell would be duly elected with 57% in the run-off against Norman Tebbit (on 43%), after Mrs Knight and Rev. Smyth won a minority of support and bowed out of the contest. Powell had created a public image as an austere, unemotional man of reason trained in the classics. He was, in fact, highly prone to strong feeling and commanded the devotion of affluent right-wingers and discontented workers in run-down communities alike. He was a Thatcherite before Thatcherism, advocating privatisation and unashamed capitalism so vigorously that Friedrich Hayek said in 1965: "All our hopes in England now rest on Enoch Powell." His attacks on immigrants saw him expelled from the Conservative frontbench in 1968. Powell was such a firm believer in protecting Britain's integrity that he left the Tories in 1974 to become the Ulster Unionist MP for South Down. Now, vindicated as Unionist Party leader, he was adamant that rejecting Europe was a test of our "will and the power to remain a nation".

 

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Front-bench team of Enoch Powell, 1985:

 

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Tony Benn used a widely trailed speech in Liverpool to launch a direct attack on the British media, winning loud applause for his assertion that newspaper owners "campaign single-mindedly in defence of their commercial interests and the political policies which will protect them". He was never under any illusion about the capability of the mainstream right-wing "lords of the press", especially in the 60s and 70s, to set the agenda. Mr Benn often felt the full force of that power, being subjected to hostile personal attacks. He was criticised for his championing of the workers at the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971. His enthusiasm for nationalisation and workers' co-operatives (plus his backing for Sinn Féin) attracted continual press venom. During the 1974 general election campaign, The Daily Express carried a cartoon of Benn with a Hitler-style moustache. The vilification was unrelenting. When he ran (successfully) for the deputy leadership in 1981, The Sun led the charge against him and found plenty of support from within the Labour Party itself. Benn's biographer, David Powell, described the campaign against Benn as "venomous" and quoted the Labour MP and Benn supporter, Michael Meacher, as saying: "There was never less than a half-page of vitriol in the press every day, and the source was the right wing of the Labour Party." The following year, that paper - jointly with other titles - was also unimpressed with his call for compromise after Argentina's invasion of the Falklands, calling him a "loony leftist". In 1984, with Mr Benn having swept to the Labour leadership on the back of an overwhelming members' vote, The Sun indulged in its most sustained and vicious character assassination. It ran a feature headlined "Benn on the couch: a top psychiatrist's view of Britain's leading leftie". It claimed he was "a Messiah figure hiding behind the mask of the common man... greedy for power and willing to do anything to get it." Benn later entertained delegates at the National Union of Journalists' annual meeting. "There were 16,000 readers of The Sun in my constituency," said Benn, "and the Labour vote went up." His two victories over Denis Healey in the early 1980s made no difference to the press antagonism. Rupert Murdoch's popular tabloid continued to harass the socialist firebrand, once asking disingenuously whether he was "the most dangerous man in Britain". It all demonstrated the extent to which trust in much of the mainstream press was now at a low point among Labour members. The possibility of a radical left-wing government was also forcing the media industry to take seriously proposals from party activists to break up the stranglehold maintained by Murdoch and other corporate owners, sponsor worker-run local papers and democratise the BBC.



Enoch Powell's election by Unionist MPs to lead their party provoked ire from many on the political left and centre. Soon after his return to the heart of front-line politics, however, one journalist raised the words of Jim Callaghan in 1977 - that these were "serious men" unlike the Liberals and David Steel who was, according to the former PM, "very adolescent". He took to the Unionists at once "because they were his kind of straight, tough old-fashioned conservative people". Mr Powell had been responsible for the alignment of Ulster Unionists with Labour, a bold assertion of political independence from the Conservatives. At a secret meeting with Harold Wilson in November 1974 shortly after his election for South Down, Powell confided his view that the "pacification" of Ulster under a Labour government would bring "a more secure result" than a settlement reached under Ted Heath's party. Jim Molyneaux's later discussions with Margaret Thatcher as Conservative leader ensured fragile Unionist support on the condition that her future administration would foreclose devolution to Northern Ireland and not rule out direct integration with a new tier of local government as existed on mainland Britain. Of course, in the heated 1982 Falklands and confidence debates, Unionist loyalty to the Tories was shown to be as unreliable as their pact with Callaghan. By 1985, a radicalised Labour had little time for Powell. He shared with Benn both aversion to the European Community and a desire to change the Attlee settlement; nevertheless, as the Irish question once again reared its head, Powell's band of political rejects came to loggerheads with Labour and the republican cause. Mr Steel quietly predicted "trouble ahead" but kept talks with Dublin going.



As politicians of all kinds began exploring candidacies for the new Scottish Parliament in Holyrood and the Welsh Referendum Bill moved through its Commons readings, the union became very much a live topic. Frustrated with his party's disagreements, Mr Benn removed John Prescott from his role as Shadow Welsh Secretary after the MP argued that Scottish and Welsh devolution carried popular appeal. His brief was taken up by Labour deputy leader Neil Kinnock, a sceptic of reform. Elections to the Scottish Parliament would be held in June, with prospective MSPs able to run from outside Westminster or serve in Holyrood while continuing as MPs. Every major party searched for candidates other than the Unionists, with Powell refusing to entertain the notion of devolved assemblies and willing to boycott the process. Most activists supported him in this endeavour but a handful declared that they would stand as Independent Unionists with a view to abolishing the Scottish Parliament from within. For his part, new Conservative leader Michael Heseltine rubbished this stance and claimed that "radical devolution" could mend the "broken fabric" of Britain's society, proposing a further de-centralisation of power instead of the SNP's demand to end the union. Busy in government with detailed preparations for a "new settlement" along the lines set out by Heseltine, Alliance ministers grew increasingly frightened of the threat posed by Powell's movement. Liberals in particular were incensed by a Unionist campaign in marginal southern constituencies held by the Tories until 1983. While Arts Minister Clement Freud named Powell as "undoubtedly" the best House of Commons orator, Prime Minister Steel described Unionist policies on immigration as "an attempt to write into British law legislation that discriminates between citizens on the grounds of race, and which represents a grave breach of international and internal political obligations". In response, Mr Powell came out fighting. Roy Jenkins was, he accused, "the greatest Euro-bureaucrat of them all" preferring anything "foreign" over British culture; the SDP was "the extreme pro-European party" committed to the destruction of parliamentary independence; and Steel's government as a whole represented an out-of-touch, weak-willed establishment. Conflict between Unionists and the Liberal/SDP Alliance had the potential only to spiral in the turbulent months and years to come.

 

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In amidst a sensational environment of leadership defenestrations and new parties, the fledgling Alliance juggled its own set of personal relationships (which moved up and down regularly) and Government policy trade-offs. Even since the SDP's experimental plane took off in 1981 and the pact with David Steel's Liberals had been forming, the attitude of leading Alliance figures (i.e. the now-PM's inner circle and the Gang of Four) became crucial to bringing activists with them and settling national priorities. Now at the helm of the British state, senior cabinet ministers were eager to maintain a friendly, business-like dynamic. Mr Steel got on increasingly well with Bill Rodgers, due to the Chancellor's vision of the Alliance whereby Liberals could focus on winning Conservative or Unionist seats and the SDP got a free hand targeting Labour, on an equal basis. In the old days, Roy Jenkins and his coterie would have been fine with Liberal primacy; as Shirley Williams' project advanced in operational and electoral terms, though, others in her party were eager to play a stronger deck of cards. 1983 had seen their candidates win a more or less fifty-fifty allocation of gains with the Liberals. Despite additional switchers from Tony Benn's Labour to the SDP, David Owen (close ally of Mrs Williams but something of an Alliance sceptic) professed that "We have created an entirely new party. We are founders, not defectors". By 1985, the Foreign Secretary's overriding mission - to build a united, radical party of the left, not the "soft centre" - edged closer to reality when the SDP joined the Socialist International group (in whose ranks were also Labour). Owen's actual policy proposals drew on a variety of ideological assumptions from across the left-right spectrum. Nevertheless, it was a risky path to go down because many Liberals had grown suspicious whenever the SDP claimed to be the true guardians of the Labour tradition.



Steel's party, for decades made up of quasi-independents at Westminster, can really be categorised into three outlooks by the mid-1980s. First, the leadership: the Prime Minister and his advisors were committed to the Alliance, a full realignment of the British political system based on close partnership with other tribes and, at least, an equal standing for the Liberals in government with the SDP. Running counter to this were veterans of the wilderness years on the fringes of opposition. Cyril Smith feared being swamped and once notoriously said that he had no wish to get on board Jenkins' plane, envisaging a Liberal hegemony with the SDP "strangled at birth". While polls showing that a partnership could deliver greater fruits for the parties than if they had acted separately - and with the 1983 triumph bearing it out - qualms from this faction remained. Third, younger urban radicals outside the Government made their opinions known more vocally. The Association of Liberal Councillors, led by activists and back-bench MPs such as Michael Meadowcroft and Tony Greaves, pioneered a 'community politics' directed at Labour and sought to defend individual rights over centralised government. Grass-roots radicals found themselves as removed from social democracy as they were from conservatism; many were unhappy with the Alliance leaders' pursuit of a big, interventionist state and economic growth. The ALC's network of greens, libertarians and 1960s 'New Left'-style anti-establishment outsiders would come to further prominence in subsequent decades. For the time being, Steel's detached but fairly tolerant approach to members brought results. His main focus as Prime Minister was on keeping the bandwagon rolling, sustaining the Alliance's new base of voters and co-ordinating policy with the Gang of Four alongside trusted Liberal ministers.



Marking just over two years in office, Steel and Williams decided to renew their coalition vows. The pair laid aside any hopes of differentiation in early March 1985 by launching a joint agenda for the rest of their term. In a range of proposals designed to illustrate that the Alliance had not run out of ideas, the PM and his deputy set out plans for a major house-building programme; a national recycling initiative; NHS and old-age pensions reform; assistance to farmers; continued work on setting up modern transport infrastructure; and to de-centralise businesses further as one condition of generous subsidies to train workers and bring down youth unemployment. All key pledges made by Ian Gilmour, an ex-Tory 'Heathite' in the SDP. The aim was to develop details of the policies in successive months leading up to the next year's budget and legislation. Mrs Williams argued that her own vision involved equality and social justice advanced by government action. "The new politics is pragmatic, innovative, and holds to values rather than dogmas." She predicted that changing the voting system would prove to "transform British democracy", praised "the liberal conscience" for removing "nasty" Thatcherite immigration restrictions and promised to see through an "exciting, radical policy" on the environment. The "broadest possible consensus to carry the country" was needed with "a fairer distribution of the burdens". Politicians, therefore, had an obligation to "make it work". Steel, speaking to Granada in a joint interview with Williams on the eve of the document's launch, made a bold declaration that the Alliance's "shared sense of purpose has grown over time". He even floated the prospect of binding the parties closer together over a range of big structural reforms, many of which would not come into force until after the next general election.

 

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On hearing the Government's bulletin that it would introduce a flurry of liberal-conservative pet projects, Tory MPs grew nervous as they watched party membership numbers drop. Former representative Peter Walker, defeated in 1983, finally switched to the SDP to join mentors Ted Heath, Ian Gilmour and allies. It appeared that defections from Labour and Conservative relied not only upon each politician's ideological antipathy with their old party but temperament, career chances and shifting factional loyalties, too. Mr Walker was a grammar school-educated 'self-made man' having risen from humble origins to get rich in asset-stripping. Yet politically, he identified more closely with associated veterans of the 1970s Heath ministry rather than Michael Heseltine's new programme of a West German-style 'social capitalism'. It is not that any of these players differed much on the post-war Keynesian basics; regardless, Heseltine's concessions to keep the monetarists on side infuriated a few MPs on the Tory left, the economic theory of neoliberalism being permitted to survive having been apparently discredited at the ballot box. On the whole, Conservative to SDP switchers in 1985 regarded the Alliance as a better vehicle for implementing moderate change in areas of economic and social policy. Defeated MP John Biffen, however, might have sympathised with Enoch Powell on 'free markets' but disliked the penny-pinching of Norman Tebbit and the hard bright young zealots in the Unionist Party. Eventually, he felt obliged to make a speech calling for "consolidation" on the right and endorsed the "balanced ticket" of Mr Heseltine and his Shadow Chancellor, Nigel Lawson.

Zooming out from Westminster, the impact of progressive reform was starting to fundamentally alter the national way of life - sunny ideals becoming the hallmark of Alliance Britain. David Steel and Bill Rodgers' fruitful relationship acted both as a positive result and catalyst of better economic indicators. Growth continued, bolstering employment, profits and incomes. Price rises, uniquely, remained stubborn at 4.5%. Shirley Williams blamed Margaret Thatcher's 1980 'Right to Buy' initiative letting council house tenants own their property. Half the proceeds of the sales were paid to the local authorities, but the last government restricted authorities' use of most of the money to reducing their debt until it was cleared rather than spending it on building more homes. The effect was to reduce the council housing stock, particularly in areas where property prices were high, such as London and the south-east of England. In order to help those trying to get on the housing ladder and provide security for all, Mrs Williams tasked Roy Jenkins and Des Wilson with developing a strategy of reconstruction. According to talented Liberal environment and housing secretary Mr Wilson, his department would support the Right to Buy scheme but only on the basis of replacing every property sold, and prioritised social housing as the second-largest form of tenure. Ignoring complaints from the private landlord lobby, Jenkins said he believed that council tenants should be able to buy their homes but that the policy should be reviewed to return good value for the taxpayer and prevent affordable housing stock from being lost. Additional funding would be made available to upgrade the condition of existing properties for the sake of tenants. "The point is that we have got to make sure that Right to Buy is fair and equitable to the public purse, to taxpayers and that we can then build more affordable housing off the back of it."



Workplace harmony recovered in 1985 after the miners' dispute, a crowning struggle of militant trade unionists to turn the tide against sweeping legislation enacted by the Thatcher and Steel governments. NUM president Arthur Scargill had spearheaded a confrontational resistance to the Coal Board's plan for very limited pit closures and a 'just transition' towards green energy jobs. Following his failure to win the ballot to mount a national strike, Mr Scargill's power began to wane. Anti-militant sections of the NUM, fed up at their elected president's refusal to step down under concerted pressure, broke away to establish the Union of Democratic Mineworkers. Officials from the UDM, located in Nottinghamshire, advised ministers on how to weaken the NUM, a form of treachery which meant they were labelled as 'scabs' for undermining organised labour. Overall, analysts have since determined that although Scargill would never reach his peak of influence between 1984-85, trade unions did become more democratic (in the majoritarian sense of requiring ballots) and stayed healthy compared with projections of the Tories' dreams for ever-harsher curtailments. Industrial output rose along with productivity, following record state spending and the trialling of employee participation. This was hugely significant given the scale of manufacturing decline during Thatcher's spell in office, in which the massive and dramatic economic contraction after 1979 led to soaring unemployment and profit losses. With valuable aid in the form of government subsidies, the job market recovered and factories bounced back. The Chancellor harnessed North Sea oil revenues to plough money into the nationalised industries (which accounted for 10% of the economy and 15% of capital investment) and public services. Aside from warnings that inflation could rise or the economic might start to overheat and force reduced expenditure, good news fuelled the years of prosperity that commenced. Prime Minister Steel found himself at ease with the notion of lowering department budgets once a period of growth had returned, in line with a Keynesian axiom that the boom, not the slump, was the time for austerity.

 

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As Sinn Féin travelled into the spotlight, it began to rapidly increase its electoral mandate. In November 1983, Gerry Adams MP had become its President and he steered the party back into mainstream politics. The UK and Irish governments were very concerned that Sinn Féin's Republican ideas would 'steal' voters away from the moderate Nationalist party, the SDLP. They was also concerned about this and appealed to the Irish Government for support. John Hume, leader of the SDLP, managed to persuade Dublin to create a forum for discussing the future of both parts of Ireland. Called the New Ireland Forum, it had first met in the summer of 1983 and was to produce a report. However all the Unionists along with the British Government and Sinn Féin boycotted it. This left the SDLP and the Irish Government as the only parties present. Nevertheless, the Forum went ahead and debated the future of Ireland. The New Ireland Forum Report was published in May 1984. It suggested three scenarios for the future of the island: (a) a united Ireland (b) a confederation of Northern Ireland and the Republic (c) shared authority over Northern Ireland. Prime Minister David Steel warmly accepted the NIF's report and indicated his support for the third option of joint sovereignty. While this response satisfied the SDLP, it drew ire from Unionists. The UK Government understood that the problems in Northern Ireland were not going to stop until a settlement could be reached. So they began secret negotiations with the Irish government in 1984 to develop common ground. That December, the British PM flew to meet Ronald Reagan at Camp David. The US President told Mr Steel that "making progress is important" and that "there is great Congressional interest in the matter".



1985 saw London and Dublin reach a deal. The UK recognised the Irish Republic's right to make proposals concerning Northern Ireland; the Republic recognised that a united Éire would only be achieved through majority consent; the two governments set up a conference between them to discuss issues of mutual interest and to help produce a better society in Northern Ireland; and the resulting treaty would formalise joint authority over the province, by means of a trusteeship. Signed in Belfast on 19 March, the Anglo-Irish Agreement passed a vote by the Irish Government and by the UK Government with a huge majority. Although every Unionist MP opposed the Agreement, this was ignored. The reaction within the Unionist community was uproar, genuine shock and a feeling of betrayal. From their point of view, the idea that their own law-makers could give a foreign country the right to a say in Northern Ireland affairs without consulting the province's MPs was incredible. The Unionist deputy leader, James Molyneaux, said that Northern Ireland was being delivered "from one nation to another". Although the SDLP supported the agreement, Sinn Féin and Tony Benn's Labour Party were against it because the Irish Government was recognising Northern Ireland's existence. Some British and many Irish politicians spoke out against the Agreement. In April 1985, Powell and Molyneaux visited Paisley in North Antrim. Here, they upheld a pan-Unionist electoral pact between the Unionist Party and the DUP in a document hailed by Loyalist supporters, known as the Antrim Declaration. All the Northern Irish Unionist MPs resigned to protest the treaty with Dublin, forcing new elections (held under first-past-the-post) all over the province. Though the Unionist vote went up, they lost the constituency of Newry and Armagh to the SDLP.



Soon began a campaign to have the Agreement abolished using the slogan 'Ulster Says No'. Banners appeared on local government buildings all over Northern Ireland, including a huge one on Belfast City Hall. The mass demonstrations, led by the Rev. Paisley and Mr Powell, continued all through 1985. In June, both organisations started boycotting all UK Government officials, to little effect. The Northern Ireland Assembly, which was a product of the failed Sunningdale Agreement, would hold fresh elections in 1986. Later in the year, the DUP and Ulster Volunteer Force decided to use violence to try to force the abolition of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. They began a terrorist campaign against Catholics and specifically the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who they saw as traitors since they were required to enforce the Agreement. Attacks on homes increased. 1986 would see a 500,000 signature petition given to the Queen. Between 1984 and 1987, violence persisted with almost 300 murders, by all terrorist groups. Unionists continued to hold rallies, organise strikes and disobey the law. Several individual members of the UK Government went on the offensive. Most notably, ex-PM and SDP President Ted Heath hit out at Mr Powell, re-igniting a bitter feud going back to at least 1968. As Conservative leader he had dismissed the maverick right-winger from his role of defence spokesman over the provocative 'Rivers of Blood' speech, which Mr Heath described as "racialist". From outside the diplomatic process, Provisional IRA member-turned-Stormont Assembly representative Martin McGuinness disparaged the pan-Unionist alliance. Ultimately, centrist actors in Britain and Éire took it as their historic duty to safeguard the Agreement from Republicans and Loyalists, end the Troubles and bring about a future of peace, re-unification and development. In Mr Hume's words, it would be "an agreed Ireland" in which northerners and southerners "reached an accommodation as to how we share this piece of earth".

 

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Social reformer William Beveridge had, during the 1940s, envisaged a clear framework of welfare provision in the United Kingdom. The Alliance were inspired by his thinking and carried out legislation to return social security back to the original model. In 1985, the Single Benefit Act did away with means-testing. In the place of a host of allowances, including free school meals, housing benefits, Family Income Supplement and Supplementary Benefit, claimants would get a universal amount in return for a contribution via progressive taxation e.g. National Insurance. The sum for each person was to be decided based on a calculation of their household expenses and childcare needs. At a press conference in Rotherham, South Yorkshire after the bill had become law that March, Richard Wainwright (Employment Secretary, Liberal) and Ian Wrigglesworth (Pensions and Welfare Secretary, SDP) explained the policy before answering media questions. Giles Radice (Social Services Secretary, SDP) was not present because his portfolio had been deliberately scaled back when the Government came to office in 1983. This permitted him to focus on child protection and other fields outside of benefits, healthcare or employment. Many families' needs crossed between these areas; so, in practice, departments often collaborated on policy. Conversing with journalists, Mr Wrigglesworth suggested that previous governments had "let people down tremendously" by watching them slip through the cracks of the safety net. He argued that if they could bail out industries, "you should be able to keep the welfare state, not only for Rotherham but for the whole of the nation, in good shape and going on into the future". Mr Wainwright claimed that by raising and streamlining the welfare system to heighten its efficiency, the Government could end deep poverty and guarantee a basic level of income for each individual. The new act drew plaudits from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, whose founder had worked as an advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. For the Liberals in particular, this amounted to an historic milestone and their coming full circle as a party of government, with the ability to change social and economic outcomes for the better.

 

[Lucon50]

Building towards some of the first UK elections using the single transferable vote, political figures (from the Alliance, Labour, Co-operative, Ecology and Communist parties), local councils, trade unions and churches signed the 'Claim of Right for Scotland' in 1984. This declared the sovereignty of the Scottish people. Having implemented their manifesto promise to establish a Parliament based on extensive home rule, Liberal and SDP ministers went on the campaign trail. The poll would be held in June 1985. Many Conservative-aligned businesspeople and media protested against devolution, alongside the Unionists. However, Tory leader Michael Heseltine came round to the idea, freed of any fear (legitimate under first-past-the-post) that a divided right could let the Government or the Bennites make disproportionate gains at his party's expense. While the various 'Yes' leaders held different views over Scottish independence, they put these aside immediately after the Devolution Bill received royal assent. A prominent academic called it "the most significant development in Scottish political history since the Union of 1707". Opponents were afraid that a federal process would catalyse the break-up of the UK.

Labour, heavily split on the question, contained many advocates who saw a degree of home rule as the answer by giving Scots a voice over their own affairs - saving Great Britain by reforming it. This proved effective against nationalists, most notably the Scottish National Party, whose by-election wins and blackmailing of Jim Callaghan over devolution had led to that ministry's downfall. The majority of nationalists (whether gradualist or from the left-wing 79 Group) hoped that de-centralisation could give Scots the first taste of independence, resulting in a full separation and withdrawal from the hated union with England. A good number of trade unions, whose combined membership in Scotland registered at just below one million by 1985, fervently backed 'Yes' through activism by shop-floor representatives and newly powerful employees in the workplaces of Britain. Government policy was influenced not by scepticism from the old Labour right, but the long-running efforts of Liberals over many decades. Indeed, proposals for home rule existed in the day of Victorian PM William Gladstone. Grass-roots members of the Scottish SDP were given ballot access to vote with their Liberal brothers and sisters for candidates running to stand on behalf of each Alliance party. The intelligent and popular heiress to one of the families of the Scottish Liberal movement, Ray Michie, would defeat classical liberal Malcolm Bruce to get selected as the members' choice for June.



Teddy Taylor, a Scottish right-winger in the Powell camp, had managed to apply the leader's boycott so that Unionist candidates would not contest the forthcoming election. It was not really difficult; his associates north of the border shared an unyielding wish to preserve the British constitution. Iain Sproat, one of the 1983 vote's Tory casualties and a 'free market' Euro-sceptic, fit naturally amongst the Unionist ranks and tried hard to prevent devolution from happening. Yet, he and other pragmatists decided over Spring 1985 to battle from inside the new settlement. Enoch Powell is said to have looked resigned at the news that several would run as Independent Unionists. He was optimistic at least that the party, if conflicted on tactics, stood practically as one in their founding mission. Rev. Martin Smyth endorsed the new assembly, drawing criticism from Jill Knight and her fellow assorted reactionaries. Mr Powell refused to ever recognise the legitimacy of a Scottish Parliament. No prospective official Unionist Party MSPs would be nominated.

At the other end of the aisle, Liberals and Social Democrats proudly celebrated their accomplishment, a glorious victory for the work of innovators such as Jo Grimond (presently Lord High Chancellor in the Alliance ministry). The first candidates for election to the Scottish Parliament originated in the Liberal Party led by David Steel - his successor as party leader, now the British premier at 10 Downing Street. Many Liberal icons through the ages had been of Caledonian birth, including these two men for whom it was a personal source of jubilation. The Liberal Party campaigned to promote the devolved Scottish Parliament as part of its wider policy of a federal United Kingdom. For the SDP, quietly competent moderniser and workhorse Donald Dewar persuaded centre-left members from every local branch to affiliated unions. He won against the young Charles Kennedy (who appealed most to Liberals), becoming party leader in Scotland. Industry Secretary John Smith hailed Dewar's win. Norman Tebbit dubbed them "A bad David and Shirley tribute act". In each vote, the seasoned veteran beat an outside challenger.

 

[Lucon50]

Michael Heseltine's early tenure of the Conservative Party coincided with a revolution in the political structure of Scottish Toryism. Nearly bereft of Westminster representation, a devolved Parliament was the only show in town for Tories north of the border. Adjusting to this new environment was a major task for the Scottish party. The combined impact of the 1983 general election wipe-out - their worst performance of all time and lowest share of the vote since the Great Reform Act - and the onset of devolution brought three fundamental challenges for the Scottish Conservatives. First, the party had to adjust to devolution within Scotland in terms of party organisation, policy, autonomy and campaigning. Organisational change and a reinvention of the Tories as a Scottish party were high priorities after 1983. Second, the electoral defeat required the party to rebuild electoral support in Scotland and do so rapidly because of the proximity of the devolved elections of 6 June 1985. Third, a deficiency of Scottish Conservative representation at Westminster, the onset of devolution and the election of Mr Heseltine as UK party leader markedly altered the relations between the Scottish and UK Conservatives. Heseltine's attitude to devolution and to a more autonomous Scottish Conservative Party was not easy to verify. Were he to have been a centralist, it would have undermined the efforts of the Scottish Tories to appear 'Made in Scotland' in advance of the 1985 poll. Similarly, were he to play the English nationalist card, they would have faced major strategic problems. Fortunately, the potential of this third challenge to seriously undermine a post-1983 recovery was offset by a speech Heseltine gave which laid out his thoughts on the new settlement.

Active Conservative management of the Union was almost non-existent during the Thatcher era. Indeed, with the exception of the establishment of the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs and some modification of the Scottish Grand Committee in 1979, there were no distinct initiatives until the election of Willie Whitelaw. Even then, his leadership offered a paternalistic (but apologetic and compromising) response to the growing surge of nationalism, as represented by the SNP. Labour had agreed a rapprochement with the insurgent movement through the 1970s. Meanwhile, Tories kept to a hard line, refusing to budge on constitutional change after the first devolution referendum of 1979, which contributed to the party’s unpopularity and anti-Scottish image. Mr Heseltine became adamant that minimalist reforms would not suffice. Rather, public demand ensured that his leadership would steer away from the promotion of centralised control and accept the benefits of devolution. However, voters drifting to the Unionists were not easy to regain. The party therefore had severe image and identity problems to deal with after 1983. Rejecting Margaret Thatcher's obstinacy, Conservatives demonstrated a more pragmatic face. Allowing some Scottish autonomy was certainly easier to do outside of government. Heseltine sought to demonstrate new-found populism, a calculated attempt to fly the flag for Scotland at every opportunity. Hard-core unionists were distrustful; therefore, when the time for a leadership race north of the border arrived, MPs' nominations for the role involved a bunch of possible contestants all from the centrist wing. One-nation moderate Charles Sanderson lost out to Malcolm Rifkind, a pro-European liberal with Heseltine's blessing to modernise the party.

 

[Lucon50]

Ever since the SNP - who had been propping up a minority Labour government to hold a devolution referendum (which ultimately failed) - voted along with the Tories in a no-confidence motion to bring it down, hostility between the parties increased to an unprecedented level. Some stalwarts carried on the fight and only a few months after the Conservatives won the 1979 election, the Campaign for a Scottish Assembly was founded. The Liberal/SDP victory in 1983 gave impetus to the movement. Not long after David Steel became Prime Minister, he pleased campaigners by insisting that legislation would take place without another referendum. With the Scottish Conservatives in decline, the argument that a 'democratic deficit' existed north of the border was weakened as Alliance representation gave Scottish interests a voice. Under the guidance of Tony Benn, the party's left and right wings teamed up in resistance to home rule. Others pointed out that Labour could flourish in devolved government where they'd been relegated at a UK level. Culturally, the period was highly creative with musicians, writers, and artists contributing to the vigorous debate about Scotland's identity. These members of civic life had drawn up an impressively written document articulating Scotland's 'Claim of Right' to sovereignty; ministers' support did, however, dispel the need for a citizens' assembly to thrash out the details.

In accordance with the Devolution Act, the new Scottish Parliament would comprise 98 MPs elected across 14 seven-member constituencies. Religious and community bodies rushed to embrace the proposals. The Scottish Council of the Labour Party were lukewarm to the idea. Nevertheless, members gathered in May 1985 to pick their first spokesman for a devolved Scottish Labour Party under an electoral college. Unlike the Alliance (many of whose brightest stars were busy in government posts), the Tories (boasting a little over 100 MPs) or the Unionists (who were staging a boycott), Labour produced more than two leadership options. Anti-devolutionist Brian Wilson, a man of the old right, would face Dennis Canavan (of the Socialist Campaign Group) and William McKelvey, a keen left-winger able to work across tribal lines. This readiness to compromise helped McKelvey to get elected as leader, rounding off a series of multi-party contests. Benn congratulated him yet retained his incredulity about the "fragmentation" of power emerging from devolution, suspicious that it would hamper a Labour government in Westminster. For its champions, the bright campaign of Spring 1985 promised reform and a hope that politics could, indeed, be very different.

 

[Lucon50]

The Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists originally fell out of love in 1982 after Margaret Thatcher's government sent hundreds of armed personnel in an unsuccessful mission to recapture the Falkland Islands, now Las Malvinas. Simmering tensions concerning national pride flared when the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed in March 1985, a deal which gave Dublin a greater say and scrutiny over Northern Ireland affairs. Relations were really never the same between what was once a powerful alliance known as the Conservative and Unionist Party. Desertion by a number of High Tories and free-market right-wingers to form a new wider movement with Jim Molyneaux's party put even greater strains on the marriage. Furious that Norman Tebbit and Enoch Powell had conspired to divide his base, new Conservative leader Michael Heseltine decided to go behind the traitors' backs and seduce voters on Mr Molyneaux's doorstep. Tories started standing candidates in Northern Irish unionist heartlands taking away well heeled pro-union voters from the breakaway party. Mr Powell regarded Heseltine's entrance into local Ulster politics as political infidelity. The Unionists' hurt was made all the more painful by the fact that a new breed of young professional Northern Ireland Conservatives tried to portray themselves as being above the sectarianism of the local parties, including the party they were historically hitched to. Although it was not Mr Heseltine who defected but the traditional right, several members of this faction still blamed the Tories (1983's terrible defeat, the Willie Whitelaw era and Mr Heseltine's nouveau riche agenda) and regarded themselves as betrayed. Powell and Tony Benn had become the first leaders to sense the tectonic shift in politics contributing to the earthquake of 1987.

Before the Northern Irish council elections in May 1985, though, Ian Paisley got ahead of the curve and instead of beating a path to Heseltine's door ended up addressing the ultras of the Monday Club. Senior Tories urged their Northern Ireland party to organise in the Province and help transform politics from Orange versus Green to left versus right. At the time, in Northern Ireland there was a low intensity civil war raging. Mr Powell tried to reach out and win new voters among the Roman Catholic middle class, a minority but still significant section of whom opinion polls consistently found were pro-union. However, the Unionist Party had links to the exclusively Protestant Orange Order, a body of men and women which argued that Catholics were not true Christians and the Pope was an anti-Christ. The Democratic Unionist Party, meanwhile, poured scorn on the idea of a reunion with the Tories. Paisley, Molyneaux and Powell appeared to greet voters on the Spring campaign trail, shoulder to shoulder under the terms of a pan-unionist deal for the local elections and by-elections held across Northern Ireland to protest against the treaty with Éire.



From the establishment of the Six-County state, local government in that area was a bastion of sectarian bigotry and the means by which Unionism exercised discrimination in housing, jobs and voting. Sinn Féin boycotted local elections up to the early 1980s but the party's decision to contest for council seats across the North in 1985 saw sectarian local government facing the biggest challenge in its history. The council elections of 1985 represented another significant stage in the development of Sinn Féin's electoral strategy. In 1982 the party won five seats in elections to an Assembly set up by British Secretary of State Jim Prior and boycotted by both Sinn Féin and the SDLP. In 1983 Gerry Adams became MP for West Belfast and Danny Morrison missed out on a seat in Mid-Ulster by only a handful of votes. There were 26 district councils and Sinn Féin decided to contest 17 of them with a view to targeting winnable seats rather than maximising the vote across the Six Counties. At the start of the campaign the party publicly set the modest target of 30 to 35 seats. From the beginning of the campaign Sinn Féin candidates, directors of elections and election workers were subject to extensive harassment by the RUC and British Army and to threats from unionist paramilitaries. Paisley's DUP fought the campaign on the slogan "Smash Sinn Féin" and he was photographed with this slogan written across a sledge hammer - a chilling image for nationalists who knew the reality of doors being smashed in by British raiding parties or loyalist death squads. Sinn Féin fought the campaign by urging people to "vote republican" and pledging "effective local leadership". Gerry Adams stated that the aim was to build a "middle leadership" of Sinn Féin elected representatives across the Six Counties. Nationalist representation on councils in the North had been almost the sole preserve of the SDLP. Its allies in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Labour Party attempted to defend it from the republican challenge, with the ever faithful Irish News acting as the SDLP's cheerleader.



565 council seats were up for grabs. In spite of these obstacles the political establishment received another jolt when Sinn Féin won 68 seats, securing representation on all 17 councils contested (nearly 12% of overall vote). Sinn Féin won more seats than the SDLP on Belfast, Fermanagh and Omagh councils, taking the chairs of the latter two. Unionists reacted with fury and began attempting to exclude Sinn Féin from councils, sometimes physically. The DUP's Sammy Wilson described them as "poison" and "evil gunmen who have crawled out of West Belfast". Loyalists cheered as the pan-Unionist coalition swept into local authorities everywhere, pushing far ahead of its rivals. For the Liberals' sister party in Northern Ireland, the Alliance, it was a modest outcome. John Hume's SDLP took comfort in the power-sharing agreement they had achieved, open to more integration with the South in future. Worried ministers in London used any seat gains as a chance to demonstrate broad consent for their blueprint of joint sovereignty. Everyone else pointed to a rapidly worsening Troubles of violence and polarisation, their impact growing obvious all around.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

The Conservatives and the Ulster Unionists first fell out of love in 1982 after Margaret Thatcher's government sent hundreds of armed personnel in an unsuccessful mission to recapture the Falkland Islands, now Las Malvinas. Simmering tensions concerning national pride flared when the Anglo-Irish agreement was signed in March 1985, a deal which gave Dublin a greater say and scrutiny over Northern Irish affairs. Relations were really never the same between what was once a powerful alliance known as the Conservative and Unionist Party. Desertion by a number of High Tories and free-market right-wingers to form a new wider movement with Jim Molyneaux's party put even greater strains on the marriage. Furious that Norman Tebbit and Enoch Powell had conspired to divide his base, new Conservative leader Michael Heseltine decided to go behind the traitors' backs and seduce voters on Mr Molyneaux's doorstep. Tories started standing candidates in Northern Irish unionist heartlands taking away well heeled pro-union voters from the breakaway party. Mr Powell regarded Heseltine's entrance into local Ulster politics as political infidelity. The Unionists' hurt was made all the more painful by the fact that a new breed of young professional Northern Ireland Conservatives tried to portray themselves as being above the sectarianism of the local parties, including the party they were historically hitched to. Although it was not Mr Heseltine who defected but the traditional right, several members of this faction still blamed the Tories (1983's terrible defeat, the Willie Whitelaw era and Mr Heseltine's nouveau riche agenda) and regarded themselves as betrayed. Powell and Tony Benn had become the first leaders to sense the tectonic shift in politics contributing to the earthquake of 1987.

Before the Northern Irish council elections in May 1985, though, Ian Paisley got ahead of the curve and instead of beating a path to Heseltine's door ended up addressing the ultras of the Monday Club. Senior Tories urged their Northern Ireland party to organise in the Province and help transform politics from Orange versus Green to left versus right. At the time, in Northern Ireland there was a low intensity civil war raging. Mr Powell tried to reach out and win new voters among the Roman Catholic middle class, a minority but still significant section of whom opinion polls consistently found were pro-union. However, the Unionist Party had links to the exclusively Protestant Orange Order, a body of men and women which argued that Catholics were not true Christians and the Pope was an anti-Christ. The Democratic Unionist Party, meanwhile, poured scorn on the idea of a reunion with the Tories. Paisley, Molyneaux and Powell appeared to greet voters on the Spring campaign trail, shoulder to shoulder under the terms of a pan-unionist deal for the local elections and by-elections held across Northern Ireland to protest against the treaty with Éire.

View attachment 83183

From the establishment of Six-County state, local government in that area was a bastion of sectarian bigotry and the means by which Unionism exercised discrimination in housing, jobs and voting. Sinn Féin boycotted local elections up to the early 1980s but the party's decision to contest for council seats across the North in 1985 saw sectarian local government facing the biggest challenge in its history. The council elections of 1985 represented another significant stage in the development of Sinn Féin's electoral strategy. In 1982 the party won five seats in elections to an ill-fated Assembly set up by British Secretary of State Jim Prior and boycotted by both Sinn Féin and the SDLP. In 1983 Gerry Adams became MP for West Belfast and Danny Morrison missed out on a seat in Mid-Ulster by only a handful of votes. There were 26 district councils and Sinn Féin decided to contest 17 of them with a view to targeting winnable seats rather than maximising the vote across the Six Counties. At the start of the campaign the party publicly set the modest target of 30 to 35 seats. From the beginning of the campaign Sinn Féin candidates, directors of elections and election workers were subject to extensive harassment by the RUC and British Army and to threats from unionist paramilitaries. Paisley's DUP fought the campaign on the slogan "Smash Sinn Féin" and he was photographed with this slogan written across a sledge hammer - a chilling image for nationalists who knew the reality of doors being smashed in by British raiding parties or loyalist death squads. Sinn Féin fought the campaign by urging people to "vote republican" and pledging "effective local leadership". Gerry Adams stated that the aim was to build a "middle leadership" of Sinn Féin elected representatives across the Six Counties. Nationalist representation on councils in the North had been almost the sole preserve of the SDLP. Its allies in Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Irish Labour Party attempted to defend it from the republican challenge, with the ever faithful Irish News acting as the SDLP's cheerleader.

View attachment 83184

565 council seats were up for grabs. In spite of these obstacles the political establishment received another jolt when Sinn Féin won 68 seats, securing representation on all 17 councils contested (nearly 12% of overall vote). Sinn Féin won more seats than the SDLP on Belfast, Fermanagh and Omagh councils, taking the chairs of the latter two. Unionists reacted with fury and began attempting to exclude Sinn Féin from councils, sometimes physically. The DUP's Sammy Wilson described them as "poison" and "evil gunmen who have crawled out of West Belfast". Loyalists cheered as the pan-Unionist coalition swept into local authorities everywhere, pushing far ahead of its rivals. For the Liberals' sister party in Northern Ireland, the Alliance, it was a modest outcome. Worried ministers in London took any seat gains as a chance to demonstrate broad consent for joint sovereignty. Everyone else pointed to a rapidly worsening Troubles of violence and polarisation.

Successfully conquering the Falklands would make the Argentine junta invade Uruguay or Chile, which Argentine ultranationalists had supported since the 1910s.

 

[Lucon50]

Successfully conquering the Falklands would make the Argentine junta invade Uruguay or Chile, which Argentine ultranationalists had supported since the 1910s.

Yep I decided to mention Argentina's TTL invasion of Chile in May 1984! See this post: https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/in...x-a-wikibox-timeline.6341/page-5#post-1400110

The Junta are victorious, annexing Santa Cruz Province and other minor Argentine claims on Chile, whose dictator Pinochet (a friend of Thatcher's) falls unceremoniously from power.

 

[NotDavidSoslan]

Yep I decided to mention Argentina's TTL invasion of Chile in May 1984! See this post: https://forum.sealionpress.co.uk/in...x-a-wikibox-timeline.6341/page-5#post-1400110

The Junta were victorious, annexing Santa Cruz Province and other minor Argentine claims on Chile, whose dictator Pinochet (a friend of Thatcher's) falls unceremoniously from power.

Thanks!