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Recent content by Lucon50

  1. L

    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Delors

    With the UK’s European future struggling to be born, the Alliance doubled down on its vision. At a Liberal-SDP joint rally in Cardiff, posters declared them the “Parties of Europe and the Environment.” It was the boldest fusion of their new identity: eco-friendly, active, social-market and...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: One Nation, One People

    Britain found herself perched on an electrifying ledge: politically turbulent, economically recovering, socially uniting - and, to the surprise of many, still under the stewardship of an Alliance government that had outlived the cynics’ predictions. The SDP-Liberal coalition was beginning to...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline

    That's the impression I get too. Here, the wealth tax was levied by the previous Steel-led ministry when Bill Rodgers was chancellor. As his successor, Penhaligon has frozen the 1-2% rate (with pressure from the Tories), given a few goodies to businesses and low-paid workers, but also introduced...
  4. L

    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: 1989 Budget

    Following days of tense but fruitful discussions between the SDP-Liberal Alliance government and the Conservatives, Chancellor David Penhaligon rose in Parliament to deliver what was billed as a highly important budget. Mr Penhaligon opened by acknowledging the delicate position the country now...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Alliance-Tory budget talks

    For Shirley Williams and David Steel, pre-budget negotiations with John Major’s Conservative Party would reveal not only the durability of their pact but the idea that adversarial politics could yield to a more European style of constructive co-operation. What had begun as an awkward arrangement...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Growth

    Chancellor David Penhaligon, sleeves rolled up, marshalled HMRC’s largest administrative drive in decades. Inspectors leafed through documents, chasing unpaid dues from landed estates, property speculators and private investors. For Alliance backbenchers, this was the ethical purpose of their...
  7. L

    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Senate

    Constitutional clashes were on the way. The SDP-Liberal Alliance’s long-awaited plans to remake the House of Lords teetered on the edge of becoming law. The Great Reform Bill’s core promise - to replace the centuries-old, hereditary-and-life-peer body with a modern second chamber - passed by a...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Peace, Retrenchment and Reform

    On 7 March, the Comprehensive Education Bill came to its final Commons readings. It would ban any new grammar schools, expand state funding and phase out the 11-plus altogether. For many Liberals and Social Democrats, this was the fulfilment of a long battle for equal access to learning. Major...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Lights, camera, action

    At the end of February 1989, the House of Commons chamber opened to television cameras. For the first time ever, the British public could watch their MPs argue, jeer and rise to make their voices heard - not just read about it in the papers or catch clipped quotes on the radio, but see it unfold...
  10. L

    Who would be the King of Poland in 1918?

    Were there any prominent Poles, from the aristocracy maybe, who would be likely collaborationist candidates for the throne of a puppet state?
  11. L

    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Good employment

    Westminster prepared for another test of the fragile Alliance-Conservative confidence-and-supply arrangement in late February. The National Minimum Wage Bill was reaching its final Commons hurdle. The measure promised to set a statutory wage floor for the first time in British history. David...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Fight the right

    “The Alliance,” David Steel declared, “will not allow the extremists of Labour or the reactionary Unionists to drag Britain backwards into bitterness and division.” In a BBC Radio 4 interview, Denis Healey settled into the role of SDP elder statesman, killing the Bennites with kindness. “Tony’s...
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    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: Mid Glamorgan by-election

    By the end of the 1980s, the political temperature in South Wales was running high. Mid Glamorgan, a 4-seat constituency, was a heartland of Labour power - deep Valleys country, mining tradition, union halls at every crossroads. But the once-solid bloc vote was beginning to crack. The...
  14. L

    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: People and planet over profit

    1989 was a packed year in British politics. As the Conservatives reeled from their three-way split on House of Lords reform, John Major acted swiftly to shore up his base of support. With gusto, at a press briefing the Tory leader threw his weight behind the government’s moves to expand civil...
  15. L

    Breaking the Mould Redux: A Wikibox Timeline
    Threadmarks: "Stick to the deal"

    For months the Great Reform Bill had wound its way through Parliament. Hereditary peers were already gone. The bill’s final shape offered a hybrid second chamber: half of the new Lords to be elected by proportional representation, the other half appointed by a statutory independent commission to...
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